Dolly Parton's America: Sad Ass Songs

25:58If he comes back in time, she basically won't be shamed by her community. But of course, He doesn't. She's ostracized from her family. And then the baby's born.

26:17And the baby died. Stillborn. way she knew she'd never have a father's arms to hold her.

26:33And dying was her way of telling me he wasn't coming down from Dover. And so she felt like that God had done her a favor. God had taken the baby back. In my mind, the baby was better off back with God than it would have been with me. And they wouldn't play it on the radio back at that time. It's one of my best songs ever. They wouldn't play it on the radio because of the content? They wouldn't play it on the radio, not because the kid died, but because she got pregnant. Because it was an illegitimate, at that time. See, that was when I first wrote that. That was in my early days of my career, and I wanted to put it out as a single, and RCA wouldn't do it.

27:15Keep in mind, this song was written five years before Roe v. Wade. But I suggested to Dolly that maybe one of the reasons RCA didn't want to put it out is that it's just too dark? Well, you, as a songwriter, and see, you've got to remember, too, that's how I grew up. All those old mountain songs and all those old songs from the old world, all those old English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh ballads about the Knoxville girl. A little girl in Knoxville, a town we all know getting killed and thrown in the Knoxville River, and I was very, you know, impressionable. Okay, okay, okay. Let me just take a digression here because that song that Dali just mentioned sent me down another rabbit hole.

28:01In the interview, I didn't catch it when she said, The Knoxville girl getting killed and thrown in the Knoxville River. But listening back, I was like, wait, what? A Knoxville girl thrown in a river? It turns out this is a very old Appalachian ballad that is sung from the perspective of a man who goes to meet his young wife or girlfriend, I guess. and they're taking a walk along the river. And then all of a sudden... I picked a stick up off the ground and I knocked that bad girl down. Picks up a stick, beats her. She fell down on her beamed knees. For mercy, she didn't cry. She begs for mercy.

28:44This is in the song. She begs for mercy, but he keeps beating her with the stick until she's unconscious. And then... I take her nearby, her golden curl, I drug her round and round. He drags her by her hair. Throwing her into the river that flows through Knoxville town. Then he throws her in the river. And I was like, wait, this is what she was talking about? I grew up with that. What is this twisted song? Who's the girl? Why does the guy murder her? So I ended up calling this journalist Hello Can I speak to Paul please? You're doing so, hi Jad His name is Paul Slade, he's a music writer based in London And he recently wrote a book all about this Called Unprepared to Die Which looks at the real murder stories Behind Knoxville Girl And a range of other American murder ballads First thing he told me is that there are tons of these songs Stabbed her with my knife So many almost always about a man I shot her through the head killing a woman, often his wife, by shooting her or my mind is to drown you and leave you drowning her, that's a big one.

30:00But with the Knoxville Girls song, what Paul did was he traced it back from East Tennessee, where Dolly would have heard it, back to England. The first version of the song I've seen was 1685 or thereabouts. We can't be precisely sure about that. The song was originally called The Bloody Miller. So I went looking for surviving copies of The Bloody Miller's ballad sheet. Now, obviously, there are no original recordings of the song, but he did manage to find a copy of the sheet music from the original printing 330-ish years ago. And at the top of that sheet music, there was like a little intro. And says this, a true and just account of one Francis Cooper of Hogstow near Shrewsbury, who kept company with one Anne Nichols for the space of two years and being urged by her father to marry her.

30:51He most wickedly and barbarously murdered her. Oh, wow. So it lays it all out right there. Well, yeah, we've got the name of the killer, his victim, and we've got a location, which is Shrewsbury. Paul goes to Shrewsbury, digs around in the archives, finds a copy of a diary from a shoekeeper at the time, confirms that, yes, there was a murder that happened right at the time that the song was written. He visits the grave of the murder victim, confirms that, yes, she was a real person. He checks the burial records to confirm that, yes, her death was actually very violent. And it was the age old story.

31:26The woman, Ann Nichols, was pregnant. And the guy, Francis Cooper. He's got this girl pregnant and he doesn't want to marry her. So that's why he's killed her. She never spoke another word. I only beat her. As for how it ended up in a song, Paul says what likely happened is that this guy, Francis Cooper, the killer, gets caught. And on the day of his execution, a songwriter showed up to witness the hanging and then immediately documented it in song, which was a common practice at the time. Very often the sheets themselves were actually sold at public hangings. While the condemned man was still swinging, there'd be people wandering around selling ballad sheets, telling the story of that particular crime.

32:11So it really was like almost journalism. Yeah, yeah, that's a big part of it. And are these songs usually sung from the perspective of the murderer? Yeah, it's much more common to tell them in the words of the murderer. Paul says these songs were actually pretty big business. songwriters would go to the hangings and then travel from town to town singing the songs for money they would change the name of the song to match the town that they were in and that's probably what happened at some point one of the songwriters hopped on a boat came to east tennessee changed the song to knoxville girl and that was the song that got sung to little dolly parton on her porch.

32:54Perhaps one way to see Dolly's early sad-ass songs period is that she was taking these songs that she'd heard as a girl, you know, these pulpy ballads of men brutally killing nameless women sung almost always from the perspective of the men, and she was flipping it so that you finally heard from the victim.

33:27Now, Dolly was not the only person to do this, to sing from the victim's point of view. When we spoke with longtime journalist and historian Robert Orman, he told us you've got to add that caveat. It's not that she's the only one. It's that she's better than anybody else. He said she just had a knack for imagining lives that weren't being seen. Like, what's it like to be that woman at the bottom of the river? Let me tell her story. There are few finer songwriters, male or female. Mind you, she's writing all of these songs when she's 21. I'm 21 years old now, and I started singing, Mama said, I was squalling when I was born.

34:06And I was still squalling. But I started singing in church. My grandfather was a preacher. And I started singing in church when I was as far back as I can remember. I would imagine five, six years old. I believe this is the earliest recorded interview that exists of Dolly Parton. It's 1967, Nashville. She's been interviewed by a guy named Everett Corbin from the Music City News. Dolly, I suppose you'd help me if we just go back to the beginning. I was born. We'll start with when I was born, okay? I was born on January the 19th, 1946, in Sevilla County. It's Sevilla, Tennessee. It's a little town between Knoxville, Tennessee, and Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

34:44and you might shorten it by saying the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. She talks about her family, how there were 12 kids, how they grew up in this little cabin in the mountains, worked the fields, piled into the same bed at night. What type of songs do you prefer? I like ballads, real strong, pitiful, sad, crying ballads. I write a lot of sad songs and I just write about things that maybe I've seen happen or things that have been in the family. Well, I have a new album out I didn't mention. Or it's not out. This will be out. It should be out by the end of this month. But it's called Hello, I'm Dolly.

35:25Now, there's no earth-shattering information on that tape. But what I take from it is just, wow, that's a very different human being. Coming to us from a very different world. That interview was 52 years ago and Dolly Parton is still making music. So I think it would be a disservice to her to just focus on the sad ass songs.

35:48And one of the things you see over the next couple of decades is a really interesting shift. And for this, I want to bring back Helen Morales. Hi, Dad. If you recall, she was the one who wrote the book Pilgrimage to Dollywood. She was the one who urged us, don't focus on the boob jokes. Look at the lyrics. and one of the things that you do see, she says, if you look at the lyrics from the sad-ass songs of 67, 68, 69, 70, up until now, you see a progression that is the progression of women in America. You know, her lyrics go from songs like The only way out is to walk over me Just to prove that I love you, I'll crawl at your feet.

36:36And just to prove that I love you. I still can't believe that. That's a little BDSM, actually. Well, exactly. The pleasure is in being treated badly. And then she moves on to songs that really are calling men out for cheating on women, for behaving badly. Your attitude sinks and I hate it. Your hair is a cocky and brood. You Don't Know Love from Shinola.

37:07One of the great lyrics. You Ain't Worth the Salt In My Tears. Women are angry about whether pleasure is in leaving men or in being angry. And then in the final one, she moves on to songs where men are less important. And it's just about women improving their lives. And what's a good example of that phase? Well, things like some of her most recent music changes. Hello, I know you've got a world of problems and you think you can't do anything to solve them. But I'm here to tell you you can. Something got you down, got you chained and bound. You've got to break it. Face it. If you've built a wall and know it needs to fall, then shake it.

38:03Yes. Something that you know is damming up the flow. Tear the dam down, dam down. Let me explain it. If you don't take the reins, it's going to stay the same. Nothing's going to change if you don't change it.

38:30Let's do this.

38:35So the progression is basically from these very vivid portraits of misery to fight songs to this third phase, which are songs that maybe they're a little more self-helpy. They're certainly not just about men and women anymore. Oftentimes there's no men involved. And sometimes you don't get the vivid detail of the sad-ass songs. But what you get instead is a kind of relentless optimism. a relentless hope that you can't bring me down. You can joke about me all you want to, but I'm going to keep going. It's partly for this reason that Helen Morales refers to Dolly's music in her book as not just music, but as a toolkit for a living.

39:24I mean, her song Light of a Clear Blue Morning has really helped me out of many a blue period. And what is it about that song? The lyrics just convey a sense of being very confident that things are not okay now, but they will be okay. Can you describe a moment or the time in your life where that song served you or helped you? That's producer Shima Olai, by the way. You want me to go back to my worst moments? Yes, please. That's very un-Dolly Parton-like. That's very Dolly Parton-like. Uh, so, um, yeah, well, there was, there was a,

40:05I'm, I, yes, I'm not sure I want to talk about that on the, yeah. I'm not going to give you a specific example, actually. I do in the book, I talk about, um, when my sister was caught cheating at Oxford, um, and I just played that song on a loop. Um, I'm not sure that that's going to go down. That didn't go down very well in the book. I'm not sure I want to talk about that on the radio. Okay, yeah, yeah, fair enough. I'd be happy to read some out of the book if you wanted a snapshot of where I used her lyrics. Do you mind? I don't mind if you want that. I'm happy to do that. Which one would you like?

40:43You mentioned your sister, so maybe that one? Okay.

40:50Okay. It's true that one of the reasons Dolly Parton matters so much to me is that her songs have underscored special moments or heightened episodes in my life. One snapshot is of a weekend in July 1998. Newspaper journalists are laying siege outside my mother's home. One of my younger sisters has been caught cheating in her final exams at Oxford University and because she is also president-elect of the Student Union on a free education for all ticket. The press is out for blood. My mother is not taking it well and insists that this scandal will devastate my brother, her youngest child. My brother is sitting at the computer enthusiastically looking up famous alleged exam sheets and announcing them in thrilled tones.

41:37Geoffrey Archer! We open the newspapers. One has a photo of our mum's house, which in reality is a nice three-bedroom Victorian terraced house. The photo has the adjoining houses edited out so that it looks like a mansion. The spin in the accompanying article is how the mighty have fallen. The photograph in the next paper makes a house look like a slum. The spin of this article is look what happens when you let Greek Cypriot immigrants into the country. Richard Branson, yells my brother. It's not a calm summer. My mother develops agoraphobia. I put light of a clear blue morning on my stereo and wear out the cassette tape, playing it over and over.

42:19Cause I can see the light of a clear blue morning I can see the light of a brand new day I can see the light of a clear blue morning Oh and everything's gonna be alright It's gonna be your dream

42:53Oh my God, that sounds horrible. Oh yeah, it was... Sometimes having a song that you can play over and over is really helpful.

43:23Coming up, we meet someone who not only listened to the sad-ass songs, but lived them, and turned out to be a real-life Dolly Doppelganger.

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44:40You know, one beautiful thing that happened to me in Nashville was one of my Uber drivers gave me a charger for my phone, portable. And she had a Wonder Woman sticker on it. And it was just a beautiful moment. She's like, take it. I'm like, really? No. She's like, it's yours. Wow. That's Dolly Parton's America right there. Yeah. Okay. This is Dolly Parton's America. I'm Jan Abumrad here with producer Shima Oliye. We're at the beginning of a nine-part series where we dive into the life and music of the one and only Dolly Parton. What can she tell us about America? That's sort of the question. And we started this episode by saying that a lot of people of my generation, men mostly, tended to see Dolly Parton one way.

45:20But I would give about a year's pay to peek under there. And one of the reasons I wanted to do this series, and by the way, Shima is going to help me narrate this segment. Hey! Hello. So one of the reasons we wanted to do this, well, maybe you should just take it from here. Well, yeah, one of the big things that first got us thinking about Dolly Parton to begin with is that in the last couple of years, she seems to have gone from this thing that you described, from this idea you described, to mean something much deeper and much more hopeful for a new generation of women. I think Dolly Parton is an angel.

45:59I'm not going to say she's God, but she's definitely a heaven sent and I think that she makes the world a better place She just exudes amazingness We don't deserve her I don't even know if that's a word Dolly for me is like when I see her and I think of her I feel more confident in myself She's like the epitome of female power She's everything She's just the greatest person on earth I truly think that she is one of the most underrated feminist icons of our time So, one of the big questions for us was, how do we even start to explain the shift? Well, I have a little bit of a theory. This is Sarah Smarsh.

46:38She wrote a book called Heartland, and she's written a lot about Dolly, a lot about class. And just to add, Sarah has been kind of a spirit guide for us in our journeys into the Dollyverse. Definitely. My vague theory is that she was like the OG third wave feminist. Let me give some context to that. Please. First wave feminism. When people talk about that, they usually mean this group of women in the 1800s and early 1900s who were fighting for their rights. Second wave feminism. Welcome to the new wave of feminism. Welcome to each other. Welcome home. This was sort of Dolly's era. It was the feminism of the 1970s and 80s.

47:24It's where you had a lot of women start rejecting traditional roles and built the workplace and the home. That's a moment when women who had her business ambitions were being encouraged to sort of downplay their own quote-unquote femininity. You don't need to wear makeup. You can cut your hair short. You can put on the pants. And Sarah says that during the second wave, Dolly is one of the first to represent the future third wave. She went like in the opposite direction and was like, you have a problem with my tits, then here they are hanging out. My tits hanging out, pushing them out there. Of course I played it up.

48:00And you can deal with it while I make you my employee. and there is something about that that is sort of like I think a more kind of millennial spirit of approach to feminism. One of the women I spoke to, Red Sagalow, talked about it this way. There's this idea of what feminists are supposed to look like that they're supposed to like not shave and they're supposed to like burn their bras and all this bullshit and it's like no feminism can be whatever the it is you want it to be as a woman. You want to have big hair and big boobs and wear rhinestones, then do it. She, I believe, was the pioneer on that one.

48:38Sort of like, you know, the way that evolution happens, there's, at any given moment, there's like some deviation, and then it takes time for that to swell and natural selection to take place. Like among a field of second generation flowers, she was like a third generation spirit. The way that Sarah tells it, Dolly was kind of like the mutation. One of the first special flowers in this field. And then her flower power spread to all the other flowers until the entire field was filled with third wave Dolly flowers. Yeah. Brings us to present day. Sarah was curious to see what Dolly thought of this idea.

49:26So in one of our conversations, I asked her, do you think of yourself as a feminist? No, I do not. She shot that right down. I think of myself as a woman in business. I love men. And I really, because I have a dad, I have all those brothers, all my uncles I love, my grandpas I love, and I relate to them. And I write a lot of songs about women because I am a woman. or I just write songs that women experience. But I write a lot of songs for men. In fact, I've had hit songs by men. I write songs about my dad, the Dinner Bucket song. Every time I hear the sound of a train coming down a railroad track, hear a big jet plane flying high, I'd like to throw my hammer down right off to some distant town, not even take the time to say goodbye.

50:15But I got to think about my babies, about my wife and my old ladies, about how much she'd miss me if I was gone. So I write about working men. I write about gamblers. But I write songs for men and about men and their feelings too because I know how they feel. I look like a woman, but I think like a man. But I think like a woman too. But the idea of Dolly Parton, the feminist, bugs you in some way, I'm gathering. That word, I guess when you say feminist, it's just when I think at the time, like everybody goes to extremes sometimes. I do not like extreme things. I do believe in making a point and making it well.

51:02I don't believe in crucifying a whole group just because a few people have made mistakes. To me, when you say just the word feminist is like, I hate all men. So did she say no or she just like was evasive? No, she like recoiled. Like which surprised me. You know, I thought, I don't know. It was like I dropped a word bomb in the room. Well, I think she knows. Of course, I can't speculate. But I think that, let me put it through my own experience. I had a very complicated relationship to the term feminist when I was a teenager in rural Kansas. Fox News was kind of a new phenomenon in the 90s. Feminists now apparently stand for nothing.

51:54We didn't have cable news in our farmhouse, but... Families are disintegrating. Men are disconnected. You know, like the culture was starting to shift. The big picture here is women do earn less in America because they choose to. The sort of like backlash that is full-throated now was like burgeoning when I was a teenager. And I could feel it. And I had absorbed that just using the word feminism, it had some kind of, I don't know, it felt vaguely negative. And I was hesitant about the term. So you would now identify as a feminist? Of course. Does it bother you a tiny bit that she won't? Yeah, but I want to say, like, the part of me that's pissed off is the part of me that got to go to college.

52:40Hmm.

52:46The thing to know about Sarah is that she grew up poor, 40 miles outside of Wichita, Kansas. She said one of her chores growing up was, quote-unquote, slopping the hogs. She ultimately was able to scrape together enough money from four jobs and a scholarship to enter the University of Kansas. which was just a few hours up the road. But she told us that you can't overstate how far those two worlds feel from each other. The world she came from of farmers and laborers who mistrust the systems that have ultimately failed them, and the world of people who live in cities who run those systems. And she says certain words, they have a different life in those two worlds.

53:29But there are women who, as we speak, are living the tenets of feminism more strongly and in a more badass manner than women who wear the word on a t-shirt and march in the marches. And yet... What do you think of that word even? No. I don't think it... No. No. Would not take that term on themselves. She gave the example of a grandma. I think that men and women should be paid equally. There's just a lot of things that, well, that I don't necessarily agree with. And you're going to ask me what it is, and I can't tell you because I don't know. But, so maybe just introduce yourself. Tell me who you are.

54:19I'm Grandma Daddy. In talking with Sarah about This is Distant and about Dolly She kept bringing up her grandma And she's like if you met my grandma you'd know what I mean I'm a little nervous Oh yeah yeah no no it's great Your first time being interviewed by anybody other than me I believe She totally didn't want to be interviewed She did it I think as a favor to Sarah And mostly because She loves Dolly I think that she sings like an angel

54:55In any case, Betty was born just a few months before Dolly Parton. Well, I was born in 45, so... What is this? Well, that's an oldie. She showed us pictures of her from 1967, the same year that Dolly did that interview you heard earlier. I just made up my mind. That's what I wanted to do and anything I've made up my mind. That's me. And that's your beehive. And in the pictures... So you look just like Dolly. My hair did. Oh, my God. That's totally... It's identical. Betty told us she was a really rebellious kid growing up. She skipped school a lot. She got into fights, mostly with rich kids who bullied her and her cousins.

55:32Oh, yeah. I mean, that's the way that I dealt with things back then. You know, somebody give me any crap, you know, you shoot it right back. You didn't walk away. She told us about this one time when she was 17 and she was at home. And then her mom's ex-husband showed up. He was drunk, of course. They had broken up, and he came to the house one night, and he was drinking, drunk. And I had already gone to bed, and I could hear him in there arguing, and he called my mother a pig. And I got out of the bed, and I went in there and said, don't call my mother a pig, ever. And I went back to the bedroom, and then they continued to argue, and I heard him call her a pig again.

56:18And I got up and went in there and said, this is it. I picked up a cast-iron skillet that had grease in it and I slammed him upside the head and knocked him down. But he got up and he staggered to the front porch and then he fell off the porch and that's how it happened because he called my mother a pig and I told him not to do that. Wow, that's amazing. Your laughter brings me sunshine Every day is springtime My grandma grew up working on factory floors, waiting tables in diners on interstates and highways. And so, you know, she didn't take any lip. Sarah says that her grandma was the person that all the women in the family would come to when they had problems.

57:08Nonetheless, by the time Betty was 30 years old, she'd been married seven times. Most of those husbands had beaten or abused her. One had even shot her in the shoulder. Sarah told us about this one time when they were together, and her grandma kind of popped her jaw in and out, like clicked her jaw, and then said matter-of-factly. That was a gift from one of my sweethearts. Mmm. You know, it's heartbreaking to me to think about her enduring something like that. But I also kind of thought, like, what a bad bitch, you know? But as far as, you know, ever letting on, like, just by an inch that she had been hurt or had any sense of victimhood is like, no.

57:55She said that was just totally taboo. But Sarah says there was always this one moment where she'd get to see what was happening underneath. It was when they'd be driving to the groceries, and her grandma would pop in a cassette tape of Dolly Pardons' Coat of Many Colors. I just, like, never saw this woman crack, and that song, damn. Can we play it? Yeah. Sure.

58:21Okay.

58:26We sat and listened to it in the living room. Back through the years, I go wondering once again. Back to the seasons of my youth I recall a box of reds that someone gave us Coat of Many Colors is, of course, about a little girl who is so proud of this coat that her mother sews for her from scraps. That's the only way that she's going to have warmth in the winter. She's proud of the coat. It's beautiful to her. and when she enters school, she is shamed for it.

59:13It's about poverty, yes, but it's also about a little girl who is being told to be ashamed, and she's saying, I refuse to be ashamed.

59:33My mama made for me, made just for me.

59:43Thanks.

59:47Sorry, guys. No. It just brings back so many memories. What do you think of? I think about my grandma's son. sewing my dresses and, you know, kids making fun of it. And I think that's why I became such a badass, because, you know, it's hurtful when people make fun of you. And my way to react was knock the hell out of them, you know.

1:00:26You're crying, too. It's my story. When Grandma Betty would listen to Dolly's music, Dolly was singing the song she didn't have the space in her life to sing. It's hailing outside. Is it? It's hailing. Oh, welcome to Kansas. It's sunny and it's hailing. That means we're a month away from tornado season. And then towards the end of the interview, she surprised us and told us something else. She said that after her seventh husband died, Arnie, he was the one guy who treated her well, by the way, after he died, she decided to sell the farm. And then as she's packing up her stuff, moving all the things out.

1:01:07We had 50-gallon barrels that we burnt trash in. And I think an old bathtub. And I took my nylons and my tight-fitting bras and threw them in the barrel and threw a match. She burned her bra! Did you really? I really did. That's legit feminism, then. even if that's by the book. Yeah. That's what it was. Hi, Charlie. Hello, Charlie. God, that is... Charlie is Sarah's cat, and she sort of walked in to be like, okay, y 'all, interview's over now. And as we were walking away, I kept thinking, clearly the lenses we have to see each other, the words that we use to describe each other, they're just not good enough.

1:01:50And maybe Dolly moves in that space where those words fail. My friends call me the Dolly Mama. You know, and I'm going to write a whole book on just sayings and just how to... By the way, after our Kansas adventure, we went back to Dolly one more time. And I took that question that I asked her and reframed it in light of something that we had seen and that Sarah Smarsh had told us, that there are feminists in theory, but there are also the feminists in practice. Yes. That's the one. And she puts you in that category. That's me. Like it's about how you live. Yes. That's a good way to say it. I think that's a good way of saying it.

1:02:33I live it. I work it. And I think there's power in it for me. Yeah. Love is like a butterfly, a rare and gentle day.

1:02:56By the way, the idea that feminists burn their bras, total myth. Didn't happen. Never happened. They almost did. They couldn't get the fire started, is that right? No, it was they needed a permit to light the bra on fire, and they didn't have the permit. Really? And that's why they were like, oh, I guess we can't do that. So they just threw the bras in the trash. Never set it on fire. Wow. Grandma Betty's the only one. Excellent. I'm going to go burn bras right now. Okay, I'm going to read the credits then. Dolly Parton's America was produced, written, and edited by me and Shima Oliayi. Brought to you by Awesome Audio, that's OSM Audio, and WNYC Studios.

1:03:36We had production help from W. Harry Fortuna and original music from Alex Overington. And huge thanks to the folks at Sony for allowing us to use some of Dolly's early music. Thanks also to the Everett Corbin Collection at the Center for Popular Music. Special thanks to Lynn Sacco, Danny Nozell, Kyle McClain, Teresa Hughes, Randy Schmidt, Pat Walters, Lulu Miller, Susie Lechtenberg, and Soren Wheeler. And a very special thanks to my dad, Najee. And of course, thank you, Jad Abumrad. Thank you, Dolly. There are eight more episodes of this series, Dolly Parton's America. You can find them all at dollypartonsamerica.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:04:21I highly recommend listening to the whole thing. I'm Soren Wheeler, and we'll be back next week with more Radiolab. Hi, I'm Eva, and I'm from Brooklyn, New York. And here are the staff credits. Radio Lab is hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser. Soren Wheeler is our executive editor. Sarah Sandback is our executive director. Our managing editor is Pat Walters. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Jeremy Bloom, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez,

1:05:11With help from Gabby Santos and Maya Appleby Malamed, our fact checkers are Nora Belblidia, Hillary Elkins, Rachel Gross, Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, Natalie Middleton, and Sophie Semayi.

1:05:32Hi, I'm Aubrey, calling from Salt Lake City, Utah. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.