This week we examine one of nature's most humble creations: crabs. Turns out when you look closely at these little scuttlers, things get surprisingly existential — about how to come into being, how to survive chaos, and how to live. We even examine the possibility of evolutionary destiny.
This ep is a two-parter, a double-decker crab cake of sorts. Served up on a bed of lettuce and beautiful weirdness. The first layer comes from producer Rachael Cusick, and is a story she told live on stage at Pop-Up Magazine (http://www.popupmagazine.com) as a part of their Fall of 2022 tour. It chronicles a cross-species love story between artist Mary Akers (http://maryakers.com/) and an overlooked pet store companion, a creature that even Chris Tudge (https://zpr.io/MyUNwPAaqewg) — the scientist dedicated to this creature, you could say — could not get a ring on. The second layer is cooked up by Lulu, who tries to understand why crabs keep evolving (according to recent work by Jo Wolfe (https://zpr.io/2GftY9RjbLkF), Heather Bracken-Grissom (https://zpr.io/HhvMVfnThp5P) and Javier Luque (https://zpr.io/s8CwvGFHcSM7)).
Crack a leg and see what we mean.
Special thanks to the entire team at Pop Up Magazine, Randi Rotjan, Jen Pechenik, Renae Brodie, Samantha Edmonds, whose story (https://zpr.io/ELQS4VkJGaSa) from The Outline introduced us to Mary,
EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by - Rachael Cusick and Lulu Miller
with help from - Annie McEwen
Produced by - Becca Bressler
with help from Ekedi Fausther-Keeys
Original music and sound design contributed by - Ghost Girl, Jeremy Bloom
with mixing help from - Arianne Wack
Fact-checking by - Diane Kelly
and Edited by - Haley Howle and Pat Walters
CITATIONS:
Articles:
If you want more details about hermit crab breeding, head over to Mary’s blog to read more: http://maryakers.com/inthecrabitat/
Or check out the Land Hermit Crab Owners Society: https://lhcos.org/
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Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Lucy
Selected Shorts
Memory and Forgetting
Small Potatoes
The Distance of the Moon
The Moon Itself
Short Cuts: Drawn Onward
Finding Emilie
Throughline: Dare to Dissent
Staph Retreat
Hold On
G: The World's Smartest Animal
Cheating Death
Breaking Newsve About Zoozve
G: Relative Genius
Zoozve
The Living Room
Our Little Stupid Bodies
Stochasticity
Zeroworld
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