I'm thankful for NPR and Adam

This morning I was listening to NPR on the way to work, something I haven’t done in a while. I go through phases of regularly listening to NPR. It all started the summer after I got home from my mission. I got home in December and my friend Adam got home that spring. We both worked at the same small office in SLC for the summer and during that time, Adam discovered NPR and immediately fell in love. He listened to it while he worked. It fed his curiosity and desire to know more about everything.

After work during the ride home, he would go on about what he’d heard that day. I’m afraid I wasn’t much of a carpooling companion, conversation-wise, back then. I listened and rarely had anything of substance to contribute. I was a smart kid and did well in school but it was mostly the kind of smart where you memorize facts and regurgitate them. I was really good at that. Adam, however, was fiercely intellectually curious.

That summer started something for me though. Sometimes I’d go home and look stuff up that Adam had been talking about. At the time, a lot of it had to do with the lead-up to the 2000 election. Looking back, it probably would have been the summer before the presidential primaries. After that summer, we lived together at BYU and I was able to continue witnessing Adam’s fierceness. As a side note, Adam was also the first person I came out to outside of my immediate family.

The following summer (or maybe the summer after) I worked driving an airport shuttle for a hotel in downtown SLC. This meant that I was in a minivan driving between the hotel and the airport all day long. I decided to start listening to NPR to help pass the time. And I listened from 6:00 am to 3:30 in the afternoon. Every single day. It didn’t take long for me to get hooked. NPR became my crack cocaine. I’d get my fill on the day’s news with Morning Edition. Then I’d listen to the Diane Rehm show and I loved her. I’d also listen to Doug Fabrizio’s beautiful voice on Radio West. Juan Williams on Talk of the Nation. Ira Flato on Science Friday.

Needless to say it ignited a fire of intellectual curiosity. I was also meeting interesting people every day on the shuttle. I think that summer was also the first time I heard of Sunstone. At that point though, I thought it was interesting, but something to be steered clear of. Anyway, that was the summer when I began to engage in the world around me instead of remaining in my own bubble.

The story this morning on NPR was about ants. Some guy is studying them because he thinks they can count. He says they have internal pedometers and that’s how they are able to find their way back home after venturing out for food. Instead of explaining his experiment for how he tested this, check out the story at NPR. My question is how and who chops off the legs of the ants at the knees for the one group of ants, and how and who superglued pre-cut pig bristles as leg extensions to the other group of ants. If you didn’t read the NPR article, I bet you want to now.

Happy Thanksgiving!