Lucy

Lucy

Released Friday, 17th May 2024
 1 person rated this episode
Lucy

Lucy

Lucy

Lucy

Friday, 17th May 2024
 1 person rated this episode
Rate Episode

Episode Transcript

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Prices vary based on how you buy. Hey,

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it's Lulu. This is RadioLab. We

0:36

have a story with feelings today.

0:39

We've got an emotional one, a good one,

0:41

a great one from the archives that

0:45

explores the line between

0:47

humans and chimps and

0:50

then blurs it right out. It's

0:53

sort of a trio of stories. It

0:56

actually starts with a tiny little story I did when

0:58

I was a baby producer. You will hear my

1:00

voice at the tippy top. It involves

1:03

a researcher who was working with the great

1:05

Jane Goodall and did something she wasn't

1:07

supposed to do and kept it a secret for a

1:09

long time but finally spills it on the air. So

1:12

anyway, without further ado, here

1:15

comes the episode which is

1:17

called Lucy from our archives

1:19

kicking it off to Jad and Robert.

1:22

Wait, wait, you're listening. Okay. All

1:25

right. You're

1:29

listening to RadioLab from

1:31

WNYC. Rewind.

1:34

All right. Let's

1:42

start with an encounter. Yes.

1:45

Hello. Hello. Okay.

1:48

Can you hear me okay? I can barely

1:51

hear you. Okay, so this is, well, our

1:53

producer Lulu Miller was calling

1:55

around trying to find some stories

1:57

for this hour. Okay. Let's see.

2:00

up on the phone with a woman named Barbara Smuts. Is

2:02

that any better? Yeah. Barbara Smuts is

2:04

now at the University of Michigan, but years

2:06

ago she was a field researcher in Tanzania

2:09

working with the great Jane Goodall. You know,

2:11

following chimps at a distance and writing down

2:13

everything they do and that kind of thing.

2:16

Right. Okay. And

2:18

when she was in Tanzania, she ran into

2:20

in Gombe National Park a particularly young male

2:22

chimp named Goblin. Will you tell me the

2:24

story of Goblin? Oh, sure.

2:28

First of all, what does he look like? Well,

2:31

he's an adolescent male. If he

2:34

stood up, he would come up to quite

2:36

a bit above my waist. Yeah.

2:39

And almost immediately he started

2:42

picking on me in the sense that he would

2:44

walk past me and just kind of jab me

2:46

casually as he went by. And

2:49

sometimes he would punch me with a fist, sometimes

2:51

he would just kind of whack me with an

2:53

open hand or just kind of use

2:56

his body to just kind of shove at me as

2:58

he went past. You know, he'd look at

3:00

me as he approached and

3:02

I'd be going, oh no. And

3:05

is that something they would often do with humans

3:07

or was this rare? No, no, no. He was

3:09

in a phase of life. When

3:12

a male, as a male matures,

3:14

he rises in rank and before

3:16

he challenges any other adult male,

3:19

he rises kind of step by

3:21

step through the female hierarchy. He

3:23

basically intimidates female after female until

3:25

they give in and

3:28

acknowledge that he's superior and then he'll

3:30

pretty much leave them alone. So

3:33

he was at the point where he

3:35

dominated all but probably two

3:37

of the adult females. And you. And

3:40

me. So that part of it

3:42

is where Goblin was and the other part of

3:44

it is that I'm really small. So as you're

3:46

out there doing your research, what do you think

3:48

is going on? Did you think he just. Well,

3:51

I just felt like he was a bully. And

3:53

I was an easy target. And

3:56

in the evening, I would say that Jane could

3:58

tell her what happened. happened, asked

4:01

her what to do, and she would say, just

4:04

ignore him. Eventually he'll get

4:07

bored and he'll stop doing it, which was

4:09

this kind of standard advice, this

4:11

sort of myth of total scientific

4:13

objectivity, just ignore it and it'll

4:15

go away. But instead

4:17

he escalated. I remember one

4:19

time I was sitting at the top of a hill

4:22

and he came up behind me

4:24

and jumped on my back, which

4:27

forced me to roll down the hill. And

4:29

he kind of rolled down with me, you know, we were like this

4:32

ball rolling down a hill. Then

4:35

I would tell Jane and ask her what to do

4:37

and she would always say the same thing, just ignore it.

4:40

But one day, during

4:42

the rainy season, we

4:45

all carried raincoats with us and

4:47

when it wasn't raining we

4:50

would carry

4:52

them on our backs

4:55

so that it wasn't in the way. And

4:59

Godwin walked up to me one

5:01

day and yanked my

5:03

raincoat and

5:05

these raincoats, they were

5:07

like our most valuable possessions, the

5:10

raincoat. So he grabbed it and

5:12

he was going to run away with it. And

5:15

so we had this tug of war and so the

5:17

two of us were standing facing each other, you know,

5:20

tugging on this raincoat.

5:22

And then I did something that was

5:25

not premeditated at all. I

5:31

just leaned forward and I punched him as hard

5:33

as I could in the face. Oh

5:35

my God. What

5:38

did you think like right after you'd done it?

5:40

Were you shocked at yourself

5:42

that you just... Yeah, I'd never

5:44

punched anybody, much less a

5:47

chimp who I was supposed to be studying

5:49

from a distance. So I was shaking. What

5:51

did he do? He just collapsed. He

5:54

like turned into a little baby. He

5:56

collapsed on the ground and started whimpering.

6:00

And he looked to Figen, who was the

6:02

alpha male at the time, who was sitting nearby.

6:04

And he was like Figen's

6:06

little sidekick, always kind of hanging out

6:08

with Figen and playing up to him.

6:10

He ran over to Figen, screaming

6:13

like, this being just beat

6:15

up on me. Come on, let's get

6:17

her. And fortunately, Figen

6:20

did not take it seriously. I

6:23

remember he just reached over with his, you

6:25

know, great big hand. And

6:27

without even looking at Goblin, he patted him on

6:29

the head a few times. And

6:32

then went back to whatever he was doing. Because

6:35

it could have been really bad if he had taken

6:37

it seriously. I

6:40

did not go back and tell Jane Goodall I

6:43

had punched Goblin in the nose. And

6:45

I just, I didn't tell the story for a

6:47

long time. Why not? Well,

6:53

I think, you know, I would have gotten a

6:55

lot of disapproval. Anyway,

6:59

Goblin never bothered

7:01

me again. So

7:04

here's the reason we played that story. Because

7:06

here you've got this moment where you've got

7:08

a scientist, Barbara Smuts, who's, you know, trained

7:10

scientist, got scientific rules of objectivity and all

7:12

that. And she totally loses

7:15

that. Yeah, she slips. And

7:19

for just that moment, she's not really a human.

7:21

He's not really a chimp. The

7:24

ringpole is the only important thing. The borders have

7:26

dropped is really what's happened. Yeah. Now

7:28

we're used to thinking of borders, you know, between us and the

7:30

animals as being fixed. And

7:33

most people would say this is good. Keep

7:36

them there, keep us here, keep us separate. Not, not

7:38

in this hour. We're going to meet

7:41

people who decided to go the other way. People

7:43

who are trying to live intimately, and

7:46

I mean really intimately, with

7:48

big wild animals. Something you

7:50

could either call incredibly stupid or our

7:53

last great hope. Because there are so many

7:55

of us on the planet. So

7:57

coming up, we've got two stories of a world. radical

8:00

experiment in sharing.

8:30

What country are we in? Okay,

9:34

so getting back to our story about Lucy.

9:37

This is a story that begins in

9:40

1964, and it's one that Charles

9:42

would have never heard about had he not bumped

9:44

into this obscure old memoir.

9:46

Long out of print. Yeah, what's the name of the book?

9:48

Do you actually have it with you? Yeah, hold on. It's

9:56

called Lucy growing up

9:58

human. chimpanzee daughter in

10:00

a psychotherapist family by Maurice K. Tamerlin.

10:03

Maurice K. Tamerlin, he is the psychotherapist.

10:05

He's a psychotherapist. And he's also the

10:07

dad in this story. And his wife

10:09

Jane, who's a social worker, she's the

10:11

mom. Now the thing to know was

10:14

that, especially for Maurice Tamerlin, this was

10:16

more than just adopting a baby chimp.

10:19

This was an experiment. He wanted

10:21

to know, given the right upbringing, how

10:24

human could Lucy become? You know, what

10:26

he says early on in this book,

10:30

would she learn to love us and

10:32

perhaps have other human emotions as well?

10:35

Would she be well behaved, rebellious,

10:37

intelligent or stupid? What about sex?

10:41

Maurice Tamerlin actually died in 1989, but

10:43

these are his words read by radio

10:46

host David Garland. Would she mother

10:48

her offspring? Would she learn to

10:50

talk? How intelligent might she be? And

10:52

so how did they get her? He says that he

10:55

and his wife Jane made all the arrangements,

10:57

went and got the chimp. On the day

10:59

the infant was born, the mother was anesthetized.

11:01

In the early morning of her second day,

11:04

Jane fed the mother a Coca-Cola, which had

11:06

been spiked with fensiclidine, a

11:08

drug which puts chimpanzees into a deep,

11:11

pleasant sleep. And

11:17

the baby was taken away. Jane named

11:20

her Lucy and brought her home on

11:22

a commercial airline, carried in a bassinet,

11:24

her face covered with a lacy blanket.

11:27

We were blissfully unaware of the

11:29

complexities we were creating on the day Lucy

11:31

came home. So

11:34

the baby was a day or two old? Just

11:36

two days old. So it wasn't weaned? No, and

11:39

that was part of the experiment. Did they bottle

11:41

feed her? Yeah, she quickly learned to hold her

11:43

own bottle. At two months, her eyes would focus.

11:45

At three months, she was trying to climb out

11:47

of her crib to go to people. And

11:50

at six months, she was pretty mobile on

11:52

all four lamps. She

12:00

would see us using silverware and immediately do so

12:03

herself. She began to dress herself in skirts. She

12:05

would often grab my hand, pull me to my

12:07

feet, and beg me to chase her, always

12:10

looking back to see that Daddy was not too

12:12

far behind. You

12:15

know, he really went at this with

12:17

this sort of full bore earnestness. You

12:19

know, when he calls her his darling

12:21

daughter. I took great

12:23

pride in my daughter's achievement. He does

12:25

feel like a real parent to Lucy.

12:28

She was so responsive to being looked at, held, and

12:30

stroked. But he's also,

12:33

to make no mistake, treating this

12:35

as a very intense cutting-edge experiment.

12:37

The next phase of the experiment, which

12:39

occupies a good deal of the book, involves one

12:42

of those talents that we thought

12:44

used to have only been limited to us. Language.

12:48

Okay. Can you introduce yourself, please? Okay.

12:50

My name is Roger Fouts. I'm

12:53

a professor of psychology and have

12:55

worked with chimpanzees since 1967. Roger

12:59

Fouts was called in by Maurice Temerlin

13:01

to address one of the, you know,

13:03

crucial questions of the experiment. Which he learned to talk. Right.

13:05

And at the time, he was the guy. He'd

13:08

just been part of a team that had proven

13:10

for the first time that chimps could use

13:12

sign language to communicate. So his

13:14

job with Lucy was to teach her

13:17

how to sign. And I think I came into

13:19

her life when she was, as I remember, it was 1970.

13:22

I think it was four or five.

13:24

She was four or five years old.

13:26

Roger taught her signs for airplane, baby

13:28

doll, ball, banana, barrette, berry, bird. Yeah.

13:31

So I was sort of like blanket. The

13:34

tutor friend babysitter that would come over

13:36

for a few hours, bow tie, each

13:39

day and spend some time, you

13:41

know, just playing with Lucy. I would

13:43

work on signs, camps. We'd read books

13:45

together or we'd go for walks.

13:47

And I would chat

13:49

with her, basically. Cry. Dirty.

13:52

And he says that Lucy, you know, just sort of picked

13:54

it up. Picked it all up. It was like a beginning.

13:58

She learned some 250 signs. And

14:00

the big question is, okay, so is it

14:02

mere mimicry or are

14:05

they able to spontaneously create

14:08

words and put them together

14:10

in a new original way? And

14:12

there's been a lot of anecdotal evidence

14:14

that in fact Lucy did

14:17

spontaneously create words.

14:20

In a later session, when shown a

14:23

piece of watermelon, Lucy tasted it.

14:25

And she called it candy drink. Huh.

14:28

A radish had

14:30

gotten quite old and one day she was

14:32

calling it food and food for I think

14:34

several days of the study. And then she

14:36

decided to eat this old radish and she

14:38

took a bite and spit it out. I

14:41

said, well, what is that? She called it cry hurt

14:43

food. Wow. She would

14:45

also lie to me. Really? Yes,

14:47

yeah, yeah. And lying, we should also say, is

14:50

another one of those things that people used to

14:52

think only we do. During one

14:54

of my sessions, I came in and she had

14:56

a potty accent and that she had been potty

14:58

trained, but sometimes she didn't always make it. And

15:00

I was upset because I was now faced with

15:02

having to clean it

15:05

up. And so I said, who's this that?

15:07

And she said, Sue. Who's Sue? Sue

15:09

was one of my students that would come in

15:11

and spend time with Lucy too. I said, no,

15:14

Sue's not here. And finally she blamed it

15:16

on the stuff. And yeah, said Lucy and

15:18

sorry. And so Sue. Yeah, this

15:20

is Sue. Sue's having a drum ball. The grad student

15:22

of yours who says she didn't actually see that lie

15:24

take place. Yes. But

15:27

she told us that when she met Lucy, she

15:29

was blown away by the incongruity

15:32

of it all. Like for instance, every time she

15:34

would walk in the house, Lucy would just walk

15:37

casually into the kitchen and search

15:39

through the cupboard for the kind of tea

15:41

she wanted that day and put

15:43

some water in a kettle and put it on

15:46

the stove and make us tea. Yeah,

15:48

became a routine. I'd come in and she would

15:50

start the tea. It was the casualness

15:52

with which she did it. The kind of

15:54

air about it that, yes, I'm making tea

15:56

and I would like you to have some

15:59

too because tea. is what we do. And

16:02

so the thing to do is to sit

16:04

down and to casually sip the tea with

16:07

Lucy and casually look

16:09

through the magazines, listen to

16:11

the radio. What magazines would she

16:13

look at? Well, she looked at, I

16:15

think, House and Garden and some

16:19

magazines that had pictures of women and

16:21

children in them, whatever the Timmerlands had

16:23

out. Wow. Lucy had developed an

16:25

awareness of our emotions. If

16:28

Jane is distressed, Timmerlands life, Lucy

16:30

notices it immediately and attempts to

16:32

comfort her by putting her arm

16:34

about her, grooming her, or kissing

16:36

her. If Jane is sick, Lucy

16:38

would exhibit tender protectiveness toward her,

16:40

bringing her food, sharing her own

16:42

food. And as we get to this

16:44

next part, this is sort of the midpoint of the memoir,

16:46

it's useful to sort of remember a basic fact of biology.

16:49

Speciation happens

16:52

when you've got one group of creatures that gets

16:54

divided into two, and then these two groups

16:56

evolve away from one another. And eventually they

16:58

get so far away from each other that

17:01

they can't have babies. And nature makes sure

17:03

that they can't have babies by making one

17:05

species basically undesirable to the other. You look

17:07

across, you're a baboon, you look across at

17:09

a chimp, and you go, eh. Yeah,

17:11

you're only sexually attracted to your own kind.

17:14

That is essentially what a species is. Now,

17:19

this isn't something you're supposed to be able to learn or

17:21

unlearn. This is just the way it is. Yeah, which

17:24

brings us to some troubling passages in

17:26

the book, beginning

17:28

really on page 105. Can you read

17:31

it? Yeah. And we

17:33

should warn that this next minute and a half

17:35

contains a sexual reference. One

17:37

afternoon around five o'clock, Jane and I were sitting

17:39

in the living room when we observed this sequence

17:41

of behavior. Lucy left the living

17:43

room and went to the kitchen, opened a cabinet

17:46

and took from it a glass, opened a different

17:48

cabinet, and brought out a bottle of gin. Gin?

17:51

Yeah, yeah, she loved gin and tonics.

17:53

That's actually not the important part. It's

17:55

what happens next. She takes

17:57

her gin, goes back to the living room, sits on the couch. And

18:01

there's really no other way to say

18:04

this. She starts to masturbate. But

18:07

even that's not the important part. It's actually

18:09

in the very next moment that a boundary

18:11

that took approximately six million years to establish

18:15

dissolves. Mr.

18:23

Temerlin sees Lucy doing this and he

18:25

thinks, hmm. This?

18:29

This is a perfect experimental moment. So

18:32

he runs off to the mall. Buys

18:34

a copy of Playgirl magazine and brings it back

18:37

to her. This is full of naked guy. Yeah.

18:40

And Lucy would masturbate

18:43

to these centerfolds. I

18:45

was not a part of that. I was never there

18:47

when Lucy looked at the porno. But

18:50

Sue says that she was there for

18:52

what happened next. Yes. I

18:56

was there when she was introduced to

18:58

her first adult male chimpanzee. Had Lucy

19:00

ever seen another chimpanzee before?

19:03

Never seen another chimpanzee from the moment

19:05

of birth. Wow. She says they brought

19:07

this male chimpanzee in. To see if

19:09

Lucy was attracted to chimpanzee

19:12

males. And was she? I...well,

19:16

the male chimpanzee would sit there

19:18

with his hand held out toward

19:20

her and she

19:22

was very frightened. And

19:25

she tried to move away. It

19:27

was then, says Sue, that she realized

19:30

that in every way that mattered, Lucy

19:33

was no longer a chimp. She

19:36

was stranded. Right in between this

19:40

great divide that I knew was there

19:42

between humans and nonhumans. And I did

19:44

not know how to negotiate this. There

19:46

is no category in our language except

19:49

a mythical one for something that's not

19:51

human and not animal. It's

19:54

not human. It's not human. It's not

19:56

human. Video

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wonderful daughter. In my

22:41

podcast Business Dad, I hope to open

22:43

the conversation about working parents a bit. You'll

22:46

get to hear from a wide range

22:48

of business dads from Rainn Wilson and

22:50

Guy Roz to Todd Carmichael and Shane

22:52

Batier to find out how they

22:54

balance being a dad with a successful career.

22:58

Business Dad is available now, so be

23:01

sure to listen and subscribe wherever you

23:03

get your podcasts. Hey,

23:10

I'm John Iboomrod. And I'm Robert

23:12

Krollwich. This is Radiolab. Today, we're

23:15

listening to a story about Lucy.

23:17

Lucy... The confused chimp. Confused chimp. The

23:19

chimp that's raised as a human. You dressed

23:21

like a human? Talks like a human. Even...

23:23

Well, a little bit anyway. Sexually attracted to

23:26

humans. So the thing to understand before we

23:28

go on in the story, says Charles, Seabird,

23:31

is you can do this

23:33

and you can do it heartily

23:35

and you can get one confused

23:37

chimp. But at some point, nature

23:39

reasserts itself, at least in this

23:41

way. As a chimpanzee grows, it

23:44

becomes very strong. Very

23:46

strong. And that, says Charles, is usually

23:48

the point where the human owner throws

23:50

in the towel. And you know, there are

23:52

people who really, who can't have children, who

23:54

have chimps as their substitute children. And they

23:56

all have to go through that moment where

23:58

the chimp gets... Too big, too

24:01

strong, too willful, too sexually

24:03

mature, and they invariably relinquished

24:06

the champ. But in Lucy's case, what happened? So

24:09

in Lucy's case, the Temerlins really

24:12

hung on way longer than most. Lucy

24:14

was 10 going on 11.

24:16

They had by this time rigged up

24:18

an entire portion of the house for

24:21

this very strong, willful animal. Behind bars,

24:24

padded rooms so you can bounce. Behind bars?

24:26

Bars. So they built a cage inside the

24:28

house? In their house. Which defeats the entire

24:30

purpose of the whole thing. That's right. That's

24:32

right. Was she destroying things? Oh god, she

24:34

was tearing the house to shreds. Lucy was

24:36

into everything. She could take a normal

24:39

living room and turn it into pure

24:41

chaos in less than five minutes. Just,

24:44

and with company, she

24:47

would just jump on a guest and start

24:49

bouncing up and down. Our friends and relatives

24:51

began to visit us less frequently. Now

24:54

that she's grown and is five to

24:56

seven times stronger than I am, she

24:59

could tear us apart literally. It

25:01

was more and more challenging and time consuming

25:03

and upsetting to the extent that he and

25:05

his wife finally said, all right, we can't

25:07

do this anymore. This is too much. Experiment

25:10

over. The

25:15

memoir ends with a big, fat

25:17

question. What will

25:19

happen to Lucy? On

25:23

the final page, Maurice Temerlin

25:25

says, well, we know we can't

25:27

keep her, but we don't, we don't

25:29

know what to do. The

25:32

end. I was raised in the romantic tradition

25:34

and I like books to have happy endings.

25:37

If they don't have happy endings, they

25:39

should have tragic endings. I

25:42

hate books which have no ending. Like

25:44

this one. Hi.

25:54

Oh, hi. Is this Janice? Yes, it is.

25:57

This is Janice Carter. Not only does she

25:59

know the ending, ending of the story, she's

26:02

actually the key player in it. Well, I hope

26:04

we have a decent conversation because

26:06

the lines are really terrible. It

26:08

took us a really long time to find Janice

26:10

Carter. She lives in a remote

26:12

part of Gambia in western

26:14

Africa, and that'll become relevant

26:16

in a second. How did you meet

26:18

Lucy? I met her.

26:21

One of my part-time jobs that I

26:23

had to put myself through grad school

26:25

was to clean Lucy's cage. That's

26:28

how I met her. I cleaned up

26:30

after her. In fact, Janice says

26:32

she was one of the few people who could actually handle

26:34

Lucy when she was out of her cage. Which,

26:36

a surprise to Timmerlands, because she

26:38

had been quite difficult to previous

26:40

caretakers. Was that because you were

26:43

stronger than the predecessor caretakers, or

26:45

you were clever, or?

26:47

Well, I think it was

26:50

probably more timing. I think

26:52

that the time that I entered Lucy's

26:54

place, she was looking

26:56

for something outside of that fear

26:59

of mom and dad, and

27:01

I was a friend. In

27:04

any case, Janice ended up being in Lucy's life

27:06

at the exact moment when the Timmerlands finally decided

27:08

what they were going to do with Lucy. They

27:11

visited a number of... It's

27:13

1977. They had just spent a

27:15

year traveling around the world looking at different options.

27:18

Zoos, research labs, chimp retirement homes, which

27:20

were these facilities that were springing up

27:22

to house chimps like Lucy, who had

27:24

been raised by humans or in the

27:26

circus. But every place they visited, she

27:28

says, was just too

27:31

depressing for them, too cage-like for

27:33

this being that they essentially considered their daughter.

27:35

And so, the decision they came to was

27:38

that the best way to honor Lucy, the

27:40

best way to really make her happy was

27:43

to simply let her go... in the

27:49

wild. And

27:54

they asked Janice to help them do it. Did you

27:56

have any idea or any experience of what you were

27:58

getting yourself into? So

28:09

after a 22-hour flight, Janice, the

28:11

Temerlins, and Lucy arrive in Dakar,

28:13

Senegal. I remember through

28:15

arriving really early in the morning.

28:18

I don't know how hot it was. It was early in the morning.

28:21

Compared to Oklahoma, this was just

28:23

different. Socks of insects

28:26

and mosquitoes and high, high,

28:28

high humidity. It was the

28:30

rainy season. After they landed, she says, they

28:32

piled into a car. And crossed the Gambia River.

28:34

And then made their way to a nature reserve.

28:36

A nature reserve. Which was basically just a bunch

28:38

of big cages. Really large enclosures

28:41

there. Sitting right outside in the jungle.

28:43

So they get there, coax Lucy

28:45

into one of these cages, say their goodbyes for

28:47

the night, and they leave her. To

28:51

spend her very first night alone. Outdoors.

29:02

After a few weeks, Maurice and Jane

29:04

Temerlin decided to leave. And

29:07

the plan was that Janice, for just a little while,

29:09

would stay behind. You

29:12

know, to help Lucy with the transition. She

29:14

started to lose

29:17

her hair and get skin

29:19

infections. No,

29:22

I wasn't happy being there

29:24

either. I hated it. How

29:26

long did you think you would be staying there? Three

29:29

weeks. Three weeks. Wow.

29:31

So we're saying that Janice

29:33

Carter has actually never left. At

29:40

the end of those three weeks, there was just

29:43

no way that I could

29:45

leave Lucy. The weeks turn

29:47

into months, and then into

29:49

a year. And still, Lucy's stressed out. She's

29:52

not eating, her hair is falling out. By

29:55

this point, a whole other group of chimps shows

29:57

up at this nature reserve. These are former captives.

29:59

like Lucy, and they start to

30:01

deteriorate as well. So

30:04

Janice decides what she needs to do is change

30:07

locations. So she takes Lucy and

30:09

all these other chimps to this

30:11

abandoned island that she found. This is

30:13

a long, narrow island. This is

30:15

in the Gambia River. A mile wide at its

30:18

widest point. Very thick,

30:20

green forest. And the idea here

30:22

was that you would release them, and they

30:24

would be able to do whatever

30:26

in the island and learn how to

30:28

climb trees and learn how to forage

30:30

and learn how to establish

30:33

relationships with each other. Was that the notion?

30:36

Yeah, in a nutshell. And

30:39

you would think that if

30:41

you gave them freedom, they would just

30:43

jump for joy. And that's the last

30:46

chapter of the book. But it's

30:49

not what happened. She says that when

30:51

Lucy and the other chimps got to the island and she

30:53

let them loose, they clung to her. During

30:57

the day, she'd walk them around

30:59

the island and point out to them, here are the fruits

31:01

you should be eating. These are the leaves you should be

31:03

eating. But they weren't interested in any of that stuff. They

31:06

were actually more interested in her stuff, which was

31:08

what they were used to. I had human

31:11

objects and tools that I needed for

31:13

my own survival, and

31:16

they wanted to use them. Like

31:19

when I would cook or brush

31:22

my teeth or take a bath or anything

31:24

that I wanted to do. They wanted to

31:26

be doing it with me. Janice figured

31:28

the only way this was going to work is

31:31

if she could somehow keep the chimps away

31:33

from her and her tools. And so here's

31:35

where she does something really radical. She

31:37

had run into a couple of British army officers

31:40

who were passing through the Gambion, some kind of

31:42

wilderness training thing. And she somehow

31:44

convinced them to build her a cage,

31:47

a giant metal industrial

31:49

cage, then to fly it over to

31:51

her island and drop

31:54

it funk right in the center. The

31:56

thing about this cage is

31:58

that it wasn't for the chimps. It

32:01

was for her. Yes. You lived

32:03

in a cage? I lived in a cage,

32:05

yes. Wow. And

32:16

in the beginning she says her cage didn't even have

32:18

a roof. No. In the

32:20

rainy season it rained on me. The

32:23

only thing above her head was this fine wire

32:25

mesh to keep the chimps out. And the

32:27

chimps all wanted to be inside with me. When

32:30

I said no, then they put time off

32:33

off of the cage and sleep out in

32:35

the open on

32:37

the wire on top right above

32:39

me. Every time there

32:41

was any sound in the night of a

32:43

hyena or anything,

32:45

they would immediately squeal

32:48

and defecate and urinate right on top of

32:50

me. Oh, God, easily. Then

32:53

I put corrugates on the roof, but then

32:55

they started dancing on the corrugates. They really

32:57

liked the sound that it made. They were

32:59

all day long, dizzy, dancing. It

33:03

sounds funny, and it was at times.

33:06

It's not the kind of thing

33:08

that's being chimp. After

33:11

about a year, says Janice,

33:13

most of the chimps lost

33:15

interest in her

33:18

because they couldn't get her tools. She was stuck in a cage. They gave up.

33:20

They stopped hanging around her and they just wandered

33:22

off into the forest and foraged for themselves. That's Mooty. He's

33:24

stayed behind. The

33:29

obvious reason was that she was different than

33:31

all the rest of the

33:33

chimps. And so

33:35

Janice and Lucy entered into a kind of sign language battle of wills.

33:37

If I came out of the tent and looked to see if they

33:40

were all gone, there she was, right there, looking nearly forlorn

33:42

at me and using sign language to tell me to come out to be

33:44

with her. But Janice and Lucy were all gone.

33:46

But Janice with sign to Lucy knew

33:48

Lucy. Go! Lucy

34:01

would then sign back, no Janice come.

34:04

No, Lucy go. No Janice

34:06

come. Lucy go. And this

34:08

went on and on. I tried

34:10

and I tried and I tried and I tried.

34:12

But Lucy wouldn't move.

34:14

She would just stand there waiting for

34:16

Janice to help her. Sometimes

34:18

I would stand all day long

34:21

and I would try to ignore

34:23

her, ignore that she was there thinking

34:25

that if I ignored her then she'd go

34:27

off with the others. But that didn't work.

34:29

And if I did look at her then

34:32

she would sign that she was

34:34

hurt. She would use the sign for

34:36

hurt. Meanwhile, she wasn't

34:38

foraging for herself. She was getting thinner.

34:41

And I tried everything and really,

34:43

really knocked myself out trying to

34:45

do things for her. And

34:48

I just started to think maybe she never

34:50

was going to do it. And we would

34:53

argue about it. I ate everything.

34:55

I was eating ants. I was

34:58

eating sticky latex from pigs. I

35:00

was doing everything that I was

35:02

finding really nauseating to do. Just

35:05

so that she would

35:07

watch me do it and say wow, if she's doing

35:10

it then I'm going to do it too. And she

35:12

wouldn't do it. She'd just turn her head away. And

35:19

I honestly thought at one point that

35:21

she would rather starve to death than

35:23

have to work for her food.

35:26

I was losing hope. But

35:29

incredibly, Janice kept at

35:31

this for years. She

35:33

would have to toss Lucy some food, some of

35:35

hers, just to keep Lucy from starving. But

35:38

she kept at it. And

35:40

then one evening, after a

35:42

really, really long day, Janice

35:46

and Lucy were walking through the forest and they both

35:48

stopped because they're so beat and

35:50

crashed. And we fell asleep. On

35:52

the ground together. When

35:55

I woke up, Lucy

35:57

was actually four years old.

36:00

holding my hand and she had a leaf. She's

36:04

holding out a leaf? Yes. But

36:07

she reached out and she offered it

36:09

to me and then I

36:11

offered it to her and she

36:15

ate it. It was a miracle. It

36:18

was an absolute miracle. And

36:21

after that says Janice. Things turned. And

36:24

actually from that moment

36:26

on, Lucy did start to

36:28

make the effort and go off. And

36:31

be a chimp. And be a

36:33

chimp. That's Charles Seabird again. And it was

36:35

not too long after that that Janice went

36:37

away and... She left the island? Mm-hmm.

36:46

Janice says she'd periodically circle in

36:48

a boat just to keep an

36:50

eye on Lucy. But

36:52

she says she never, not once, set

36:55

foot on that island. At least not

36:57

for a year. Then

37:00

one day she

37:03

decided to go back. This day is the

37:05

first day that I went actually on

37:07

the island. She pulled her boat up to

37:09

the tip of the island where there was this little clearing.

37:12

And she parked. And as she did, Lucy and

37:14

the other chimps who'd heard the boat came

37:16

out of the forest and into the clearing. And

37:18

Lucy and her walked toward each other. And

37:20

I took with me some of Lucy's possessions

37:23

that had been important to her. Like her

37:25

mirror. And she used

37:27

to like to draw and book. Just to see

37:30

how she responded to it. And

37:32

what did she do? Well,

37:35

she looked at the thing. She looked at

37:37

the book. She looked at herself in the

37:39

mirror. And she signed to herself in the

37:41

mirror. Then all of a sudden, she

37:45

grabbed me. I

37:48

mean really grabbed me. One arm circled

37:50

all the way around me. And

37:52

she sort of held

37:55

me really, really tight.

38:00

It just really made me

38:03

breathless and I started crying.

38:09

She started to give these soft little

38:11

pants and I feel pretty certain what

38:13

she was saying to me was it's

38:15

okay. You know,

38:17

it's all okay now. At

38:25

that moment, somebody in Janice's boat snapped

38:27

a picture of her and Lucy hugging. This picture

38:30

of the Charles Siever printed in his pocket. It's

38:32

one of those images that when you see it,

38:34

I don't know why. It

38:37

just haunts you. Lucy

38:39

has her head against Janice's chest and Janice

38:41

has her arms around Lucy. It's one of

38:44

the more fraught moments. You have

38:46

to just look at the picture. I mean,

38:48

it sort of made me want to write the book. Something

38:52

about the complexity and the

38:54

invertedness of that picture. After

38:58

that, the other chimp had started to go

39:00

and she wanted to go with them and

39:02

she got up and she... She

39:06

didn't turn back to look at me. She

39:08

just kept walking. She

39:10

wanted to go with the other chimp and she did. A

39:19

year later, Janice went back

39:21

to visit Lucy again. But when she

39:23

got there, this time, Lucy

39:26

was gone. And I went to all the

39:28

different places looking to see if she could find

39:31

anything. And he did. We found her, the

39:33

body. She was lying right near

39:35

the place where Janice's cage had been, just

39:38

a skeleton. And

39:44

her hands and her feet were separated

39:46

from the rest of the skeleton. So

39:50

how did you know that that was her body? She

39:54

had a slit between her front teeth and

39:57

she was very long and there was

39:59

nobody else missing. And

40:02

maybe the saddest, strangest thing was

40:04

that we didn't find any signs

40:06

of her skin or

40:08

hair. It appeared that Lucy had

40:11

been skinned. And

40:13

no one knows actually what happened, but

40:16

because the hands were taken, which poachers do, they

40:18

thought one of the conjectures which makes it really

40:21

unbelievably tragic is

40:23

that they think that Lucy,

40:25

always the first to approach

40:27

humans, just sort of guilelessly

40:29

approached poachers and not knowing

40:31

that they were that and that they just

40:33

took advantage of their unwitting and over eager

40:36

prey. But that

40:38

was Lucy's end. The

40:42

scenario that I have developed

40:45

to cope with her death is that a

40:48

fisherman or someone who, some local person

40:50

that just happened to pull up next

40:53

to the land and was going to

40:55

take a break or cut a raffia

40:57

palm down or do something. And because

41:01

she always felt confidence

41:03

around humans, she probably

41:05

approached the person, perhaps she just

41:07

described the person and just

41:09

on the beach like the weekend,

41:11

she was probably shot. I've

41:15

got no other explanation.

41:35

Janice Carter still lives in Gambia, where

41:38

she now works not just with the chimps, but

41:40

with the local population to

41:42

protect the habitat for the chimps. And

41:45

Charles Seibert's latest book, which is a really

41:47

tremendous book, is the Washula Woods

41:50

Accord. Our sincere thanks to

41:52

him for turning this on to the Lucy story. Also,

42:04

if you go to our website radiolab.org,

42:06

you can see pictures of Lucy and

42:08

Janice, and also that particular picture that

42:10

I described of the hug. It's

42:15

just one of those pictures you really just have to see. It's

42:17

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but more recently, a large part of

44:02

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44:07

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44:09

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44:12

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Dad is available now, so be sure

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to listen and subscribe wherever you get

44:29

your podcasts. Hey, I'm Chad

44:31

Abumrod. Wow,

44:34

that was a big hey. Sorry,

44:38

I was just feeling it. I was

44:40

feeling it. I'm Robert Krollwood. This is Radio

44:42

Lab. We shouldn't be laughing

44:44

because we've been listening to a really, really

44:47

sad story about a chimp named Lucy who...

44:50

Was born as a chimp, raised as

44:52

a human and died in, well, under...

44:54

because she ran into a human that

44:56

she trusted and probably shouldn't have. Yeah.

44:59

And so the question that we want to ask now, and we asked

45:01

this question to Charles Siebert, you know, guy who wrote a lot about

45:03

chimp, says, what's the lesson that we

45:05

should draw from this? It's a good

45:07

question. I think what it says, it points

45:11

back to something I said earlier, that

45:14

the only option now and the

45:16

best way to dignify and honor

45:18

what they are, who they are,

45:21

they're more than what, is

45:23

to fence them, ourselves off

45:25

from them in little

45:28

pockets of their

45:30

home, that we leave alone.

45:33

That would be coexistence. Well,

45:40

if you can't do it that way, and there's a very

45:42

good reason why you couldn't do it that way, because there

45:44

are what, six, now 6.8 billion

45:46

people in the world, soon to go up

45:48

to nine billion... Too many of us. Too

45:51

many of us. So what do you do? Well,

45:53

one thing you might try, I mean, it's kind

45:55

of a far out notion, but you

45:58

could go back to the Lucy experiment. the

46:00

one we just described. It ended very badly. Yeah.

46:02

But this time you do it... How

46:04

shall I put this? You do it, um, differently. Just

46:07

us. There's a place in

46:10

Iowa where this is kinda happening. Kinda. You

46:14

can send our producer store in the

46:16

mail to check it out. And ready to go visit

46:18

to Savage Runbo. So to set things up, what was

46:20

the name of this place? The Great Ape Trust, although

46:22

I think the name is kind of in flaut. But

46:25

anyway, The Great Ape Trust, which is this place in

46:27

Des Moines, Iowa, where, um, it's

46:29

kinda like a compound where they keep a very

46:32

special group of bonobos. Is it bonobos

46:34

or bonobos? How do they say it? I think

46:36

they say bonobos. Huh. Okay,

46:39

so now you're gonna start working again. So

46:42

when I got there, Bill Fields, who's the director of the

46:44

place... Director of Scientific Research... That's

46:46

him, right there. Hi, I'm Bonobo Suddy. Bill

46:49

took me inside. And

46:51

then there's this place where they keep the bonobos.

46:54

But, uh, Bill had to kind of go in there ahead of

46:56

me and ask. Uh-huh.

46:59

That they

47:01

are ready to see me. Do you want the visitor

47:03

to come see you? Uh-huh. Okay.

47:06

Okay. All right. We're gonna bring the

47:09

visitor to see you. And

47:11

I walk into this room, which is this kind of big

47:13

concrete room. Uh-huh. The

47:16

rules are when there are visitors that the

47:18

bonobos are kind of kept behind this fence.

47:21

Oh, there's a fence in the room? Yeah.

47:24

And just on the other side of the fence is... ...concee.

47:28

Oh. What does he look like? He's pretty

47:30

big. Maybe if

47:33

he stood completely upright, he'd be a little bit shorter than

47:35

I am?

47:41

But he's Bill. And

47:43

more than that, he's got this... ...hug. And

47:49

he looks at you. Directly

47:53

in the eye. He was standing there

47:55

with his arms just kind of swinging. His fingers

47:57

are... ...amazing. What

48:02

my going to do! Some

48:05

little bit more like there's another person from

48:07

the other side of that meyer. So

48:17

here's one of the first things that confidence when

48:19

I kind like this. Like

48:21

a big plastic salad bowl. and he

48:24

taking too big plastic salad bowls face

48:26

down on the concrete and put his

48:28

hands on him and run on. Around

48:36

the room, Around

48:40

around circle and he just. Slams

48:45

himself up against of the wire

48:47

while the why would he think

48:49

he was doing. Know

48:51

what does this? Is

49:06

in the microphone. So

49:08

here's here's poses to Sue with

49:10

remember Sue from the last story

49:12

says have a drummer after she

49:14

worked with Lucy? This is about

49:16

thirty years ago. She got Tansy.

49:19

And she raised him. I mean she from

49:21

a little biddy? yeah but noble would you

49:23

know? Carry on the around with her all

49:26

the time loving him as much as I

49:28

love my son. she becomes light, watch movies

49:30

when he went to bed at night and

49:32

a mother to causing. The. Sounds

49:34

a little bit like the lucy think so,

49:37

but the difference here is that list. Time

49:39

to eat. We never wanted to take

49:41

him away from his mother metadata. Friends.

49:43

He also has been nobleman. Natasha was

49:46

born in the Congo so she carried

49:48

the knowledge as the novice culture as

49:50

best she could across the concepts. I

49:52

was a member of a different species.

49:54

I had a different kind of land

49:56

which human. Kind of language to says that the

49:58

whole idea of the experiment was to. It kind

50:00

of an emotional mine ah bond between

50:02

her and cons that would fill Kanzi

50:04

with an. Innate desire to. Understand

50:08

what I was going to say to understand

50:10

how I sell to want to communicate with.

50:12

Me and so pretty soon times he is using

50:14

this. They have a kind of special keyboard for

50:16

the he with these symbols. Me beat her says

50:18

him on it. Makes sense of computer voice as

50:20

a word. Milk.

50:25

He's. Using this symbol keep years

50:27

to communicate. This

50:32

is. The two of them sitting in front of the keyboard. Mommy

50:36

White cliffs over six

50:38

hundred Really saw a

50:40

man. This is

50:42

word. To. Me it just gets

50:44

a ponzi and he got older. Started

50:47

being able to communicate without the keyboard.

50:49

She would talk to him and. He

50:52

would talk bath. Mat

50:54

I'll give an example goes when I was

50:57

there were there was one point where we

50:59

are outsize. Society where

51:01

yes because he has his outside

51:03

space and were outside too but

51:05

he still fence then like before

51:07

and bill and time when you

51:09

are having this kind of fat

51:12

and box office apple. Ponzi

51:15

seems to be saying there's something I want

51:18

to show your there's something you need to

51:20

see. It's not quite clear was going I

51:22

fear. And. Bill can't quite figure

51:24

it out either so fancy takes us

51:26

then from the tool site over this

51:29

other place where there's on the other

51:31

suspects piss. Had asked if we can't

51:33

seem to because we're behind dispense but

51:35

when ponzi is basically pointing down and

51:37

a pet about out of have. Some

51:40

the whole lot. his watt

51:42

lamp. And. According

51:44

to Bill and Sue saying there's something

51:46

there's no matter how his consulting I

51:48

mean why I mean to you and

51:51

me a sound like. Having

51:56

like ice I could salvage Ponzi

51:58

was gesturing at something. You got

52:00

it, you got it. Right here,

52:02

right here. Is it

52:04

dangerous? Bill

52:06

and Sue are hearing Does it live

52:08

under the mud? Work. Has

52:12

it got teeth? It's

52:15

got teeth, it's got big teeth. And you

52:17

want us to get rid of it? Are

52:20

you scared of it? Not

52:22

too much. You can handle

52:24

it. Well, I

52:26

can't come in there right now, but I can

52:29

in a little bit and we'll check it

52:31

out. We were so interested in this situation

52:33

you're hearing right here. I'll come

52:35

and look. Are they really talking? So we

52:37

decided to call up Bill Fields.

52:39

Hello? Hello,

52:42

hello, hello. This is Bill. Hey Bill, so we

52:44

heard a bit of tape that Soren recorded where

52:46

you guys were outside and Kanzi was pointing in

52:48

a hole or something. And

52:50

it just sounded like you guys were having some kind of

52:52

real, bilingual exchange.

52:55

I mean, is that really what was happening? Yes,

52:58

that's what was happening. We have begun to

53:00

be able to decode his speech. If you

53:03

say, Kanzi, what do you want for breakfast?

53:05

He'll point on the lexogram keyboard he wanted.

53:07

Grapes, onions, tofu. Say, okay, I'm going to

53:09

go tell everybody we're going to have grapes,

53:12

onions, and tofu. And he

53:14

will just respond with right now. Like

53:16

vocally? Yes. What does that sound like?

53:18

I'm going to see if I can do it. So

53:22

it's in English? Yes. Oh

53:24

man. Yes, when he speaks to me, and I

53:26

understand it, it's in English. The

53:29

first time it happened, says Bill, he was a

53:31

grad student, and he and Kanzi were outside. I

53:33

was sitting on a stop. And

53:35

Kanzi was sort of in a field nearby,

53:37

but at a certain point he says Kanzi

53:39

stopped what he was doing, turned right, Bill.

53:41

And I'll do my best to reproduce it

53:43

for you. He said to me, like

53:50

that. He said what? He said

53:52

chase, but it was very hard for him to say it. Don't

53:54

you just ask yourself, like, really?

53:56

Am I sure that's what I heard? Not anymore. I

54:00

used to. It is such a

54:02

common occurrence in our lab and it's not

54:04

just my experience, it's my staff's experience, it's

54:06

Sue's experience. And so, Ron, what about you?

54:08

I mean, you were there. Do you buy

54:11

what he's saying? Kanzi speaks words. I

54:15

still don't know. Yeah. I mean,

54:17

the science isn't there, but what I do buy is

54:19

that there's real communication

54:21

going on and I think it may

54:23

be like a new kind of communication.

54:26

This is something I don't think has

54:28

happened anywhere else. Bill and

54:30

Sue have literally created a third

54:33

culture, a culture that is neither just

54:36

bonobo or just human, it's something

54:38

in between. And

54:40

I think that that culture

54:42

and those relationships are real.

54:45

Yeah. Now, the weird thing about

54:47

that is that with all

54:49

the great things that come out of that, there are also

54:52

moments of real confusion.

54:55

Like what? One time,

54:58

we had a principal investigator who was

55:00

visiting the lab at that time and

55:03

she was having a

55:05

very strong disagreement with

55:07

Dr. Savage-Rumbaugh about method

55:10

and this really upset Kanzi. Why was the

55:12

investigator screaming at Sue or what was she

55:14

doing? Why do you call him an investigator?

55:16

Is that like, is this some kind of

55:19

academic visitor? Is that what we need? That's

55:21

how scientists are referred to. You have the

55:23

principal investigator, the co-investigator. It's

55:25

not Columbo with a gun packing a gun. This is

55:27

like just some guy from some college somewhere.

55:29

It's a scientific investigator. Okay. So

55:32

just to fill out the scene, you've got Sue, Bill,

55:35

and this investigator in one room and

55:37

Kanzi in a different room behind some

55:39

glass. Very thick, clear glass. So Kanzi

55:41

can actually see what's happening in their

55:43

room. You can see that this investigator

55:46

is getting angry with Sue, his human

55:48

mom, getting more and more animated. It

55:50

was professionally aggressive and loud. And

55:52

what was the argument about? Do you remember it? Oh,

55:54

yes. It was about the format

55:56

that we were going to use for archived

55:59

video. That's it. Well,

56:03

you know, words have been fought over stupid things. And

56:07

as Sue and this lady are arguing, what was

56:09

Kanzi doing? He was banging on the window. So

56:12

I went to speak

56:14

to him. He walked into Kanzi's room.

56:16

Kanzi then went to the keyboard and told

56:19

him, you have to punish that investigator for

56:21

screaming at Sue. He didn't want, he wanted

56:23

me to go in there and

56:26

stop her from doing this. It was my responsibility

56:30

to take care of things and that if I

56:32

didn't do it, he was going

56:34

to bite me. Really? Were you being told,

56:36

man up, this woman is being attacked and

56:38

you're supposed to pound or bite that investigator.

56:40

And if you don't bite her, I will

56:42

bite you? Is that what essentially... Yes, and

56:45

I defaulted to human culture. I

56:48

said, Kanzi, I really

56:50

can't go argue. I can't interfere. I

56:52

just defaulted to the way things

56:55

would happen in the human world. And

56:57

so later they told Sue that Kanzi told me

57:00

he was going to bite me and

57:02

Sue said, Kanzi, you're not going to bite me. And

57:05

24 hours later after

57:07

he threatened to bite me, he says Sue was

57:09

putting Kanzi back in his enclosure, but Kanzi pushed

57:12

past her, ran down the hall, found Bill in

57:14

his office. He came and found me and he

57:16

bit me. He bit you? Where

57:19

did he bite you? On

57:21

the hand. It was really serious.

57:23

I lost a finger. Jeez.

57:26

What happened was the hand was bitten and they

57:29

had to reattach all of the ligaments so that

57:31

the rest of my hand would work. I

57:34

had three surgeries that week. The first one

57:36

was 14 hours, the next one was about

57:38

eight hours, and the third one was about

57:40

three hours. But the problem was I apparently

57:43

had sensitivities to drugs we didn't know about

57:46

and they had given me morphine and

57:48

I arrested. It stopped my

57:50

breathing and my heart. You almost died.

57:52

Yes. Wow,

57:55

sir. Would you think if you'd bitten him, he

57:57

wouldn't have bitten you? I'm certain of it. Yeah

58:01

so what'd you do then the minute

58:03

you just come back the lab and

58:05

to nothing happened or I came back

58:07

to the lab that fourteen days after

58:09

the event on. I was

58:11

not ready to but I didn't know

58:13

what else to do. But for eight

58:15

months I didn't speak to county and

58:17

a he was kept trying to make

58:19

up with me. I held he do

58:21

that. would he Would he say he

58:23

type his keyboard sorry or never he

58:25

would. He refused to tell me who

58:28

sorry but he would keep calling me a

58:30

bill says he's use the keyboard to ask

58:32

the other researchers to get bill get them

58:34

and when he went to reduce his camps

58:36

down and renew my friendship with him in

58:38

just act like nothing had happened. And

58:40

ah I simply wouldn't go and see him

58:43

and see came to me and tried to

58:45

talk me into going to same as during

58:47

times he's ready to apologize. But. She

58:49

come back and say know cause he's not

58:51

going apart as he doesn't think he should

58:53

and down I just stood on the ground.

58:55

you know cause he's gonna apologize to me.

58:59

Finally one afternoon, eight months later,

59:01

When. His colleagues came up to me

59:03

and told them kinds he wants to

59:06

he sorry and as soon as I

59:08

got down there he threw his body

59:10

up against the wire pressing up against

59:12

me. Hey just screamed and screamed in

59:14

my mouth which was to spirits submissive

59:17

scream. It was very clear

59:19

he was sorry and he was trying to make

59:21

up with me, and I ask him on the

59:23

keyboard, are you sorry and he told me? And

59:27

will receive to himself against of mine.

59:29

That mean you can still against the

59:31

separating device between you and him. Yes

59:33

he just pressed his body up against

59:35

that wire and so I put my

59:37

body up against him and we pressed

59:39

up against he to. Deceive.

59:42

What's happening here? You're telling a story

59:44

which reads more and more and more

59:47

like a soap opera between a community

59:49

of beings. The fact that one of

59:51

them is a little bonobo, another one

59:53

is a guy is almost incidental to

59:56

the story. It's like, I could put

59:58

this on Channel Five. It's.

1:00:02

Just kind of. He.

1:00:09

says. No.

1:00:19

Currently the great A process as much

1:00:21

as considers about seven the the know

1:00:23

there and a dozen or so and

1:00:26

of staff and researchers and while they're

1:00:28

certainly not the same they have created

1:00:30

at the very least some. Some

1:00:33

middle ground, And

1:00:35

for sue. That's not

1:00:37

about a solution to any

1:00:40

conservation problem or some scientific

1:00:42

breakthrough. It's is something. Deeper.

1:00:45

And more personal when I am

1:00:47

with the Now boasts I. See

1:00:50

a like I have

1:00:52

something that. I

1:00:54

shared with them long ago. That

1:00:56

I forgot. As

1:00:59

we've closed ourselves and separated ourselves,

1:01:01

we've gained a wonderful societies that

1:01:03

we've lost the kind of sold

1:01:06

his soul connection. That they.

1:01:09

Maintain. And

1:01:14

it sometimes seems to me as though

1:01:16

we're both are a kind of a.

1:01:20

A disadvantage species. They have things

1:01:23

that I've lost. I have things

1:01:25

that that they don't have. I

1:01:28

feel like if I could have

1:01:31

their abilities and keep mine. And

1:01:34

would be whole. You

1:01:51

can find more information about anything

1:01:53

the you heard in the shower

1:01:55

at our website. radiolab.org is also

1:01:57

Lucy Pictures and Janice and Com

1:01:59

the pictures. and you

1:02:01

can subscribe to our podcast. That's at

1:02:03

radiolab.org. I'm Jan Abumrad. I'm Robert Krowich.

1:02:05

Thanks for listening, Miles. Hi, I'm Rhianne,

1:02:09

and I'm from Denny Garland, Ireland. Babiolab

1:02:11

was created by Jad

1:02:14

Abumrad and is edited by Soreen

1:02:16

Mitter. Lulu Miller and

1:02:18

Mathis Nasser are our co-hosts. Drinkies

1:02:20

is our director of sound design.

1:02:22

Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy

1:02:25

Bloom, Becca Bresler, the Keddie

1:02:27

Foster Keys, W. Harry

1:02:29

Furtuna, David Gable, Maria Paz

1:02:31

Gutierrez, Sindhu Nana Sandeban, Matt

1:02:34

Geerti, Annie McEwen, Alex Mason,

1:02:36

Sally Clary, Valentina Powers, Sarah

1:02:39

Sandbach, Ariane Wach, Pat Walters,

1:02:42

and Molly Webster. The staff checkers are

1:02:44

Diane Kelly, Emily Kruger, Natalie

1:02:46

Middleton. Hi,

1:02:49

I'm Erica Inyankar's leadership support

1:02:51

for Radiolab Science Programming is

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provided by the Gordon and

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1:02:57

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1:03:02

support for Radiolab was provided by

1:03:05

the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Life

1:03:11

is a highway. And on it, there will

1:03:13

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only one McChrissy, so go ahead and

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hit the turn signal if you know

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about this juicy gem of

1:03:22

a detour. I'm

1:03:29

David Remnick, host of the New Yorker Radio Hour.

1:03:32

There's nothing like finding a story you can

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