Welcome to the dinner party download. This is your icebreaker.

Here's a joke for y'all. Why can't a bicycle stand up on its own?

Because it's too tired.

Oh my god, I'm Rico Gagliano.

I'm Brendan Francis Nuneum.

And from APM American Public Media, this is the Dinner Party Download,

the audio culture magazine that gives you everything you need to prepare for weekend conversations.

Yes, you just got a quote joke from Will Toledo of the band Car Seed Headdress.

That'll help break the ice.

They've got a new album, and we'll hear more from him later. Plus, we'll speak with Master Thespian Sir Ian McKellen about Sherlock Holmes, Gandalf, and Dame Judy Dench. She's a very naughty, naughty, naughty girl. Somehow doesn't surprise me, you know. Kind of make sense. It does. And if this all sounds familiar, that's because this is an encore broadcast of a show we first aired in December.

So cast your mind back to a time of mold wine and toux.

When, as at any party, we started with Small Talk.

We are here speaking with Anne Friedman.

She's a freelance writer and also co-host of the lovely podcast, Call Your Girlfriend.

Anne, what story are you going to be talking about at parties this weekend?

I'm going to be talking about pigeons that can identify cancer.

Whoa.

I know.

I'm going to feed them now.

No longer just a nuisance on city streets.

Apparently, scientists did a study where they put a bunch of pigeons in a room

and had them look at blown up images of biopsies and the like and peck one button if it was

...