Radiolab - Chasing Bugs

Remember the first time you ever saw an ant hill? That parade of black insects pouring in and out of a small sand mound...most of us stopped, looked and then moved on to other parts of the playground. E. O. Wilson is the kid who never took his eyes off the mound.

Duration: 21m
Broadcast on: 23 Sep 2008
Audio Format: other

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This video is supported by AT&T. We all love to connect via video calls or texts. Right now, at AT&T, you can get the new iPhone 18 Pro for $0 with iPhone trade-in. Any condition. It has the ultimate pro camera system and big leap in battery life, so you can turn this deal into a long-lasting connection. Learn how you can trade in your iPhone for the new iPhone 18 Pro requires trade-in of iPhone 14 or higher, excluding iPhone 16E, an eligible plan. Terms and restrictions apply, subject to change, visit an AT&T store for details. Hello, Chad here, this is Radio Lab, the podcast, coming to you now with not one of our big hour-long situations, but rather one of those in-betweens that we do between seasons. Our next season is about two months off, and one of the programs that we're going to be presenting is about people who fall in love with science, and then fall out of love with science. In that spirit, we thought we'd play a conversation for you now, which is more on the falling in-love side. Robert Crowe, my esteemed co-host, who you will hear in just a moment, recently interviewed maybe one of the greatest scientists alive, really, E.O. Wilson. He is a biologist, he is an entomologist, meaning he studies bugs, he's an author, a world-famous conservationist, he recently started the Encyclopedia of Life, which tries to make a list of every single species on the planet. He discovered so many things about how animals communicate, which you'll hear in a moment, particularly ants, and if you heard our emergence show, you will recognize a bit from that show that repeats in this conversation, but it's really cool to hear the whole conversation without too many edits, which is what we're going to play for you now. So here it is. Here's Robert Crowe, speaking with E.O. Wilson at the 92nd Street, why here in Manhattan? Let's see, for starters, I'm just curious, did you know, do you remember the moment when you said the word scientist, comma, I want to be one? That scientist, I guess, entomologist, you know, I just wanted to work on it. You said entomologist? Yeah, bugs. Oh, yes, when I was about eight or nine, I discovered that there were people who actually made their living chasing bugs, and, you know, every kid has a bug period, I was just set now never to grow out of mine, you were right of what you said, and I, down in Alabama, we had people who were driving around in green trucks for the Department of Agriculture, and some of them were exterminating insects, and they were made their living by finding and studying bugs, and I said, "Well, that's what I want to do. Never mind being a fireman or anything like I don't want to do that." Kill bugs. Yeah, I was frozen in that ambition. At the age of seven, five, six, seven, eight or nine, when I really settled down for... Now, did science seize you, or did science rescue you, because you were... How many schools did you go to before you were the age of fourteen or whatever it was... Ah, yeah, it was about thirteen or fourteen schools in eleven grades. I skipped one grade, so that made me always the runt of the class, which didn't help. See, with the runt, social skills, one new kid, every time... Oh, there's a new kid in the neighborhood, yeah. So that means what... Now, you have a choice here.

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