Piece Description

Ah, discovery. One of the great and noble pursuits of humankind. Also one of the most dangerous, frustrating, ego-driven, transcendent, sublime, dirty, long, demoralizing, inspiring......you get the idea. Why are inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge so seductive? We take a grand tour of characters and their stories of love and loss in the name of science. The Wonder of Youth At the age of thirteen, mathematician Steve Strogatz was astonished to find that pendulums and water fountains had a strange relationship that had previously been completely hidden from him. And as a young boy, neurologist and author Oliver Sacks pored over the pages of the Handbook of Physics and Chemistry, fantasizing about the day that he, like the shy gas Xenon, would some day find a companion with whom to connect and share. And he feels a great gratitude to the "Siberian bigamist" who revealed what matches might be most likely. Thrill of Discovery Erica Carmel was unimpressed in her physics class at MIT when a professor demonstrated that by swinging a bucket full of water around on a rope, he could invert the bucket above him without it dumping all over him. After all, she had made the same discovery when she was five, playing with her Easter egg basket. Discovery doesn't always come so easily. Geologist Rob Reves-Sohn spent a decade at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute planning an arctic expedition to one of the ocean's least accessible frontiers. Reporter Erica Lloyd hitched a ride on the ice breaker only to find out that the unknown frontiers don't give up their mysteries without a fight. Paul Davies, physicist and director of The Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University takes on one of the greatest mysteries of all time as the basis of his work. What he wants to know is: Why are we here? It seems so improbable, the more we learn about it. But he theorizes that perhaps our conscious observation of the universe is a part of the grand scheme of the universe and its laws---that our inquiry is fundamental. Glad Somebody Likes Bugs... Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne got all soft inside when he thought about how the botfly larva in his scalp was eating his tissue and turning it into a new organism. It was of him, like a child. His friend Sarah Rogerson was a little less charmed, and they both were surprised by the creature that ultimately emerged from his head. And Tom Eisner, professor of chemical ecology, loved bugs from earliest childhood, kept them in his room to keep him company when his family found themselves living in South America, bug paradise. He knew them well enough to classify them by how they smelled. These days, his subjects live for sometimes years, well-cared for in his lab, partners in his work decoding chemical signals to reach across the communication divide, trying to shorten the distance between coexisting organisms. * Note: non-NPR stations should call 1-800-329-5380 x2830 to secure broadcast rights *