Short Cuts: Drawn Onward

Hello, it's Lulu, this is Radiolab, and I'm whispering because I have a secret for you,

which is that if you are listening to this on the day we released it, April 2nd, 2024,

then you may not realize it, but you are currently standing in the middle of a secret holiday,

4-2-2-4, 4-2-2-4, it is the first palindrome date of the calendar year, yeah, and apparently

this month we've got a bunch of them, 4-20-24 is also a palindrome, 4-21-24, 4-22-24, actually

all the 20s, so anyway, first of all, I just wanted to let you know that we are walking

into a month with a bunch of palindrome dates, in case you want to celebrate and throw a

palindrome party, which would, I don't know, like you serve some upside-down pineapple

cake with a layer of right-side-up pineapple cake, so it's a palindrome cake, or you go

for a ride in a kayak, or in a race car, I don't know, anyway, so that, cool, palindromes,

but second, to honor this secret little holiday hiding in the calendar squares, I wanted to play

a tiny morsel of audio for you, going back to the original spirit of Radiolab, which was,

you know, Dad just spinning audio documentaries, strange little pieces from all over the world,

I wanted to bring you one that I recently heard that is itself an audio palindrome,

it is the same if you play it forwards or backwards, it involved a crazy amount of

production, there's a lot of voices, some eerie sound design, I really don't even understand how

they did it, but for me, when I listened to it, this sort of odd thing happened, which is that

over these layers of confusion and beauty, a sort of meaning or feeling rose, almost like a steam,

about how moving forward always involves some degree of moving backwards, anyway,

I thought you might enjoy, if you don't, if it's a little too odd-y for you, you know, odd-y like

my people in the homeland of Boston say, then, you know, it's okay, it's six minutes of your life,

we will be back with more narrative Radiolab very shortly, but yeah, I just thought I'd

toss this out into the week, a little morsel of sonic candy, as I palindrome parade by you,

it comes from the show, the wonderful BBC show Shortcuts, if you don't know them, every week,

they are putting out experimental and adventurous audio, and this comes from their episode,

Meeting Myself, Coming Back, here's their host, Josie Long.

they're saying something deeply profound and important, the very rules of their existence,

meaning that you have to repeat and reorder the same sounds again and again,

what I didn't fully appreciate is that palindromes extend to sequences of symbols

and sequences of music, you're currently listening to J.S. Bach's Crab Canon,

an arrangement of two musical lines, the second line actually being the first in reverse,

and when they're played together,

they form something conceptually similar to a palindrome,

and I love what this kind of thing does to my brain, but what about audio documentaries?

In our next piece, Sarita and Alan explore a common theme among those who immigrate to new places,

the yearning to return to the lands and the people left behind, to go back to where one begins,

in doing so, they set out to experiment with a novel production technique,

creating the first ever completely symmetrical audio documentary,

a sonic journey that ends where it begins, when the tape is played in reverse, every word,

note and noise sounds exactly the same, down to the millisecond, a true sonic palindrome,

titled Drawn Onward.

Each immigration community carries their own histories, experiences and narratives.

More hotels named like my community.

Early in the morning the bird would sing.

Birds, birds, billions of birds.

The sunsets were gorgeous as always.

The city lights come on.

Would whistle through the cracks.

Growing in the afternoon.

God, I'm in my grave.

All the 34 cousins would come to grandmother's place.

We would just sing and dance.

My dad used to say, life is fleeting.

I live here at the same time I lived in Mexico.

I left India in 2008.

I grew up in Indiana.

Most of the diaspora is now there.

Which I love, but it's also odd.

No, nothing.

I did have this little picture of Lalan, of baby Krishna.

It has all my old photographs in it.

I've always had a little diary and a pen.

My clothes, my shoes.

I didn't know the language, no people.

It was really difficult.

It was harsh.

It took time.

The moment I became fluent, I was not an outsider anymore.

I'm not Indian enough to be in India anymore.

I'm not American enough to be American.

It was all really very different.

The streets, food, the stores.

Culturally, I'm still Mexicana.

I'm just stepping on my way back.

Even if it's going to be for 17 years.

What is home now?

What does home mean for the new generations?

What the hell are you making me do?

I don't know.

I don't know.

The last resort you have.

I know.

What the hell are you making me do?

I don't know.

It describes your roots.

What the hell are you making me do?

I don't know.

I will return dead or alive.

Dead or alive, I'll be back.

The other stories in it, by the way, are really great.

There's a really funny one about a woman who makes a newspaper all about the mundanity of her life.

And then a really dark one about a dad who kind of regrets becoming a dad.

I was very honest about it.

Anyway, it's great.

Special thanks to Falling Tree Productions and Eleanor McDowell.

And that's it.

Enjoy your palindrome day.

I will say all this really has me thinking.

Why isn't the word for palindrome a palindrome?

Dictionary makers, linguists, get on that.

Can you get on that, please?

I humbly submit that the word palindrome should be extended to be palindromordinalap.

Palindromordinalap.

So itself is a palindrome.

Anyway, thanks for listening.

Have a good one.

Bye.

Leadership support for Radiolab 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.