Signal Hill: Caterpillar Roadshow

0:28Wait, you're listening. It was about what happens inside a chrysalis when a caterpillar crawls in and a butterfly or moth crawls out. Like what happens in that middle space. And it's one of my favorite pieces because it feels like, I don't know, it's got like science and poetry and philosophy. And it's also just this meditation on what it means to change. And though it was my first piece, which happened over 10 years ago, it is still actually the piece that I get the most feedback about. Like, I still get emails about it. People want me to do workshops on it. It inspired some famous persons like Wedding.

1:11And then a month ago, it popped up again when one of my editors was like, yo, Molly, this fabulous young radio reporter basically made a Goo & You sequel. I listen to it. It's great. It's a story that revisits the scientist, drags her whole family in to this kind of international tale, and then it becomes a meditation not just about change in an individual, but across generations. And so what we want to do for you is play an excerpt of this piece. It's called Caterpillar Roadshow. It's from this audio magazine called Signal Hill. And the reporter is Annie Rosenthal. So here's Annie. In the spring of 2022, my mom went into the mailroom at the university where she works, in D.C.

2:05In her box, there was a big flat envelope addressed to her, Martha Weiss. She didn't recognize the sender, Joe Nagai, J-O-N-O-E. Inside, there was a handwritten letter, four pages long. So, shall I read you part of the letter? Please. To Martha Weiss. Hello, nice to meet you. My name is Jo Nagai. I'm from Japan. I live in Kobe, Japan. I'm in the second grade at Ibuki Elementary School. When I found your research on the internet, I was so delighted. Two exclamation points. Two bold exclamation points. My mom is an entomologist. She studies insects. And she gets letters from strangers pretty often.

2:53They're mostly about this one study she worked on. She and her student were studying moths. And they figured out that an adult moth could remember something it learned as a caterpillar. Even after metamorphosis, the memory carried through. It made kind of a splash. What's your feeling like coming out of this? My feeling is wow. This is my mom on Radiolab. I think it's amazing that a caterpillar can have an experience, go into its chrysalis, five weeks pass, emerge as a seemingly different organism, and that it still can recall experiences that happened to it when it was a caterpillar. Freaking cool, I gotta say.

3:39There were a lot of interviews like that. And a lot of emails. But the letter my mom picked up that day at work was different from any of the fan mail she'd gotten before. For starters, the author was a kid in second grade, writing from the other side of the world. But more importantly, he was writing to tell her that he was an insect scientist himself. In the letter, Joe described his discoveries. I've studied swallowtail butterflies for three years. In kindergarten, he'd investigated how long a swallowtail butterfly could stay alive if it got stuck in the chrysalis. In first grade, he'd found caterpillars that molt more often than usual.

4:21But now, Joe said, he was hoping to try something a lot more complicated. I've always thought that my butterflies could remember me, even after their metamorphosis, because they always flutter around me whenever I try to let them go into nature. But sadly, some say that's impossible and ridiculous. I have some questions to you. Have you ever experimented in swallowtail butterflies? I want to try to find if a swallowtail butterfly could remember what it learned as a caterpillar. Joe, an eight-year-old, wanted to replicate my mom's groundbreaking experiment because he wanted to know if his butterflies could remember him.

5:03I came home and said to Dad, look what I got in the mail. You know, this was the most fun letter I ever got. Yeah, I was there when the package came. That's my dad, Josh. Full-size sheets of paper with his handwritten letters, photos of himself. A very cute kid with glasses. And his butterflies. He's looking through a magnifying glass. And then there are two pages of data figures. I mean, she was laughing and reading with her mouth wide open. I thought it was wonderful. Joe had no idea what a perfect correspondent he'd found. Because the only audience my mom respects more than her entomological peers is small children.

5:51They are curious about stuff. And they haven't figured out that it's boring to look at plants or bugs. She's diagnosed elementary school as the last chance to intervene. Before the veil of indifference descends. Seventh grade, eighth grade, is it going to be on the test? Do we have to know that? Second grade, third grade, bingo. And something horrible must happen in fifth and sixth grade. Puberty. Everybody becomes more interested in each other than the bugs, which is good because it helps our species persist. Outside her academic work, my mom has spent decades weaseling her way into children's classrooms to make the case for the humble arthropod.

6:33She brought poop-shooting caterpillars to my kindergarten. She organized cricket races at my sister's 10th birthday party. Every year, she and her colleagues crawl around the woods, collecting caterpillars to show off at schools around the city. They call it the Caterpillar Roadshow. So with Jonah Guy, my mom wasted zero time in writing him back. Dear Jonah Guy, I was so excited to get your packet in the mail. It was such a fun and interesting letter. I loved reading about your experiments and your discoveries, and I'm so happy to have a new friend in Japan who loves caterpillars and butterflies as much as I do.

7:13To be clear, she didn't actually think Joe could recreate her experiment. The way she and her grad student, Doug Blackiston, had done their study was by training caterpillars to hate a specific smell, and then testing whether, once those caterpillars became moths, they still hated the smell. They did the training with this elaborate lab setup, where they'd release the chemical smell, then give the caterpillar an electric shock, so it would associate the smell with pain. Not totally a kid-level project. So in that first letter, my mom suggested Joe try something simpler, like teaching butterflies to learn colors.

7:49I could help you test this with your swallowtails, which might be a great research project for third grade. So here you're giving him the old, why don't you try colors before memory through metamorphosis. Exactly. I could write so much more, but want to send this off now so you will know how happy I am to have heard from you, your friend Martha Weiss. And then I included some pictures, a zebra swallowtail butterfly and an eastern tiger swallowtail, just to show that we both are swallowtail aficionados. A few weeks later, she got a response. Dear Professor Martha Weiss, thank you very much for your reply.

8:28I was so happy and surprised to have a reply from you. I couldn't believe it first. Thank you very much. Joe politely expressed interest in her color learning experiment and thanked her for the butterfly photos. Their blue is so beautiful and like deep ocean. But he stuck to his guns on the memory stuff. I really want to prove it's possible that my butterflies can remember what they learned as a caterpillar. I don't want to give up now. I really need your help. And Joe wasn't waiting for her approval. He told her he had already started adapting her protocols for his own at-home lab. But I don't have any devices in my house.

9:03I can't make electronic shocks. This wasn't what my mom had expected. The letter was so serious. Joe was so serious. So that summer, they became regular pen pals. In his emails, Joe kept her up to date on his work. And he was confident. Like he wasn't afraid to question my mom's research methods. Why, for example, she'd chosen the chemical she'd used to train the caterpillars. I have no idea why you picked ethyl acetate for the experiment of Manduka Sexta. I felt a little bit defensive about my use of ethyl acetate. Still, in every email, Joe thanked my mom for her time and attention. I know you're so busy, but I'm so happy when you write me back.

9:46In the fall, he wrote to say his study was done. It was 33 pages in Japanese, but he'd helpfully translated the basics. He said he'd done essentially the same study as my mom, trained caterpillars to hate a smell, tested whether they'd avoid it as butterflies. He'd used a little muscle therapy device to give the shocks, and lavender oil instead of that toxic chemical for the smell. So the caterpillars learned to hate the lavender. And according to Joe, when those caterpillars became butterflies, 80 % of them still avoided the smell. if what joe said was true not only had he replicated my mom and doug's groundbreaking experiment at home over summer vacation but he found their same results in a whole new species they'd studied moths but he was the first person in the world to show that memories could persist through metamorphosis in butterflies and what did you think when you got that email i was flabbergasted and delighted.

10:46And in this letter, I thought, holy cow, he's a real scientist and he's figuring out new stuff. As the months went on, my whole family became obsessed with Joe. We talked about him all the time. You just don't expect to see or hear that level of sophistication out of anybody without had a PhD. My dad again. Definitely not someone in elementary school. We go to see friends or family or something. We're like, you got to know, here's the latest updates on Jonah Guy. My sister, Isabel. What's the new T? What's he up to these days? What has he discovered? What kind of advances has he made? Every time I talk to your parents, I get the parents update and I get the Jonah Guy update.

11:35My boyfriend, Harrison. And there's always something exciting. For example, in September 2022, Joe presented his research to scientists at Shinshu University, then at Tsukuba University and Saga University. He also graduated from second grade. And then, in the spring of 2023, Joe wrote to my mom, rather casually, that he had a whole new research question. He wrote, by the way, I'd like to study if memories can be inherited to the next generation this summer. Joe wanted to study if caterpillar children could remember things that had happened to their parents. I know that most people generally think memories can't be inherited from ancestors, Joe wrote.

12:22But he'd found a recent study that suggested it might be possible in nematodes, these tiny freaky worms. If they could do it, he thought, why not swallowtails? It had never occurred to me to even ask that question. Joe's first study was advanced, but this was a whole other realm. Epigenetics. The ways environment and experience can change how our genes are expressed, even across generations. It's a field of biology my mom calls the new frontier. And it's not exactly her area of expertise. I don't live on the frontier. I live in the heartland. And so when he said, I read the nematode paper, I had to go scramble and find the nematode paper.

13:04I was too embarrassed to ask Joe which nematode paper, because I didn't want him to be too much ahead of me on the up-to-the-minute research. The inheritance of memory has only been studied in a few species. Those worms, some mice. My mom wrote back to Joe, this is a controversial topic, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. we can learn more by doing more studies. Joe forged ahead. He did his experiment again, but tested a second generation too to see if they avoided the same smell he'd trained their parents to hate. And a few months later, he wrote to my mom that the results were clear.

13:44His butterflies had passed their memories on to their children.

13:53When I was growing up, bugs were a central feature of our household. They were just always around. My mom raised silkworms in a box in the dining room, and she kept cicada exoskeletons in a jar in the kitchen, which my teenage friends found horrifying. She was waging the pro-bug campaign on the home front. And for a while, it worked. You don't squish bugs and you don't scream when you find a spider in the bathtub. I consider that a victory. But I guess at some point, that dreaded veil of indifference fell over me too. Or maybe it was just puberty. By the time I was in high school, I was less interested in bugs and more interested in people.

14:34These days, my extracurricular reading is about stuff like historical memory, how experience moves down through time. That's what I'm always trying to report on, although my editors tend to steer me towards the news. But now, my mom's tiny genius pen pal was saying he had proof that in this one species, what happens in a parent's early life can show up in their kid. The inheritance of traumatic memory. The caterpillar body keeps the score. My mom is always warning me against anthropomorphism. But in a way, it seemed like Joe was asking the same question I often am. How we get to be who we are.

15:19How to say butterfly in Japanese. Cho. Oh, I know that. I knew that because Madam Butterfly. A while back, my mom got this note from Joe. He said, dear Professor Martha Weiss, hello, how are you? Blah, blah, blah. Is it getting colder in your town, too? How do your caterpillars and butterflies spend during cold winter? Well, do you know the International Congress of Entomology, ICE 2024? The website is as follows with the URL. It will be held in Kyoto, Japan in 2024. Are you going to come and attend it? If you come there, I'd like to see you and can show you around Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe, my town.

16:00My mom did, in fact, know the International Congress of Entomology. It's one of the biggest conferences in the field. It was happening in August. She hadn't been planning on going this year, but a personal invite from Joe changed the equation. And once she decided to go, there was no question. Actually, all of us would come to Japan. My entire family, plus my boyfriend, bought plane tickets.

16:26In the months leading up to the trip, my mom helped Joe with his application to present a poster at the conference. She thought he had basically a dissertation's worth of research. She, on the other hand, was bringing a plan for an experiment she hadn't actually started yet. Maybe he can lend you one paper. Yeah, just come on. I loved the story of Joe, this child prodigy showing up my mom, esteemed entomologist. And I was telling everyone I knew about his big finding. But now we were about to actually meet him. And part of me had started to worry. Over two full years of correspondence, my mom and Joe had never actually spoken.

17:07In fact, she wasn't even writing him directly. You're emailing his mom's email. Because he doesn't have his own email. So his mother is the invisible portal through whom we communicate. So his mother is named Sari. And so I get an email from Sari and it says, hi, this is Joe. And then I write to Sari and say, hi, Joe. Although two times ago I wrote and said, hi, Sari. This is Martha Weiss. Joe invited us to come visit him in Kobe. And so I just wanted to check in with you. And have I heard from Sari? No. But I did hear from Joe what hotel he and his mother Sari will be staying in, in Kyoto. So I made reservations at that hotel too.

17:54Which I'm interested in this dynamic. Like, do you feel like you need to talk to his mom? I kind of do. You're sort of emailing a child all the time? Well, I feel the science is between me and Joe. But when he says, come visit me at my home in Kobe, then I need to check with his mom. Have you ever thought about, like, Zooming him?

18:19I guess I did initially, but I don't know. There's something sort of nice about writing. Sort of Jane Austen of you guys. A little more Jane Austen, exactly. I think he feels that way, too. I mean, do you like the mystery? Like, do you like that we just like, I mean, Jonah Guy is like a national hero in our house. Yes, I do like the mystery. I think that's part of it. And to be honest, I'm a tiny bit nervous about meeting him in person. What are you nervous about? I don't know. I mean, I guess our correspondence is, it's all about science and butterflies and there's nothing else in it. Like, what if he's like a mean kid who has temper tantrums and, you know, kicks and screams and bites his baby sister or, you know.

19:11I can't imagine that Joe is a biter. But are you at all worried that he's a catfish? Well, let me just say that I only recently learned the term catfish. And some people have said to me, is this kid for real? Do you think that this is an elaborate ploy? You're sort of a trusting correspondent. I'm a trusting correspondent. Hey, this is Molly again. We are going to take a quick break. But when we get back, we will find out, kid or catfish, when Martha and her entire family go to Japan. That's coming up after break.

20:05Hey, this is Radiolab. I'm Molly Webster. And today we are playing a super special story for you called Caterpillar Roadshow. It is about a bug scientist and a young boy in Japan who strike up a long-distance email correspondence because they're both really excited about the scientific work of caterpillars, butterflies, moths. Up until this point, though, they have never met in person. But that is about to change. Let's listen in. Welcome to Tokyo. The local time is 2.55 in the afternoon on August 15th. Please stay comfortably seated until the seatbelt line has been turned off. When we got to Japan, Joe still had a few days of school before the conference, so we had to find ways to distract ourselves.

20:53Which wasn't hard. We were surrounded by amazing and surprising things. Like the public toilets that automatically make the sound of a waterfall and birds chirping to cover up any embarrassing pee noise. And the beautiful glowing vending machines on every other block. At any time of day or night, you can pop in a couple hundred yen and get a whiskey highball or a sippy cup of apple juice or a perfect sports drink called Pocari Sweat. But the most amazing and surprising thing, bugs were everywhere. In the trees outside temples, restaurants, but also on t-shirts, book covers, street signs. On the subway, we saw a poster for an insect show at the Tokyo Museum of Nature and Science.

21:42Inside, the hall was packed with hundreds of people, more excited than I've ever seen anybody in a museum, honestly. And they weren't just stopping at the iridescent butterfly wings. They were reading about the way a spider disguises itself to mimic an ant. Structural color, parasitic wasps. Yeah, you see that a lot in Japan. You know, you go to just a public park in the center of Tokyo, and you'll see a parent with a butterfly net with their child carrying a little insect cage. This is Akito Kawahara. He's a big deal in bug science. The director of a center for butterfly and moth biodiversity in Florida.

22:18And he grew up in Tokyo. I called him to ask, basically, is this a thing? Or was I just on high alert for bug stuff? Like the bug-shaped toys we saw all over the city. So, gotcha, gotchas. So what it is, is essentially it's a gumball machine where you put some money, a dollar or two, into a machine. One, two, three. And a ball comes out. Ready? Yep. And inside the ball, there's a toy. There's a big boy. And there's a whole bunch of insect ones. And some of these insect ones are extremely realistic. Yeah, look how much you can make it move around. It's a deal for an articulating steel. And then look, we should get another one so they can fight.

23:05Japanese pop culture isn't just full of bugs. It's full of youth insect enthusiasts. Akito told me about a popular video game where you play a kid helping a scientist collect and identify escaped bugs. And the guy who created Pokemon, he started out wanting to be an entomologist. The game came straight out of the years he spent scouring the wilderness for bugs. People here have been insect fans for a long time. More than a thousand years ago, Japanese nobles kept crickets in cages to listen to their chirps. In the late 1800s, kids' magazines aggressively advertised bug collecting to patriotic and masculine boys.

23:45By the 1930s, insect hobbyist societies had hundreds of members who'd go on collecting trips, tromping around the forest and posing with their butterfly nets like big game hunters. Beetles in particular became kind of a status symbol, an exotic pet. It got to the point where, you know, people were trying to grow the biggest beetles and then they would sell them. And in one case, one of the beetles sold for an incredible$90 ,000. One of Akito's closest friends actually raises beetles. Every time I go back to Japan, he's driving a different colored Ferrari. And oftentimes I joke that I might have made the wrong decision in my career.

24:25to become a scientist, and maybe I should have just reared beetles and had a life that was different from what I'm doing now.

24:35Papilliozuthis, is that right? That's a butterfly. At the museum, I thought about Joe. From the distance of my mom's kitchen in D.C., his passion had seemed totally unique and mysterious. Here, it suddenly seemed a lot less random. We found an exhibit about swallowtails, and my mom texted Sari, Joe's mom, a picture. Sari sent back an emoji of a rabbit with exploding heart eyes. They'd finally made direct adult-to-adult contact. She and Joe and his brother were coming to meet us in two days.

25:13We're on the train, finally on our way to meet Joe. I can't go through it. I'm getting off of the next station and going back in the other direction. Too late. We pull into the station, get off the train, and there they are, just on the other side of the turnstile. Hi. Hello. I'm trying to be present for the meeting, and also fumbling to get my recorder rolling. Hello. How are you? Sari, in her late 30s, has a ponytail, a white blouse, a parasol for the sun. And then there are the two boys. That'll be Harry. Hayato, or Harry, age 13. mid-eighth grade growth spurt in a huge t-shirt and baseball cap.

25:55And next to him, the man himself. Joe? Yeah, I'm Joe. I'm Josh. He's a pretty small guy, with very discreet bangs, like the tines of a feathery fork, big Harry Potter glasses, and a round little face that makes him look younger than 10. He's wearing a traditional Jinbei, a matching wraparound shirt and shorts, and carrying a backpack about half his height. And you have your butterfly neck.

26:23He and my mom are both smiling big, but a little awkward with each other. Like meeting somebody for a first date after you've bared your soul to them over text. For the next few hours, Joe takes the reins. As we walk around the city, he makes the most of opportunities for viewing wildlife. For example, a pigeon we pass. and we can't touch it. But it is very cute. We visit Himeji Castle, Joe's favorite castle, and he points out big gulping fish swimming in the moat. Oh, it is beautiful. Look at their blue, flashing blue. Beautiful, wonderful. And he helps us work on our manners. If you eat food, first you say, Itadakimasu.

27:13Itadakimasu. Itadakimasu. What does that mean? We eat birds and fish and a lot of creatures. So we have to thank. To say thank you. Thank you. To say thank you to the creatures. Creatures, yeah.