HBM072: Ant God
Here Be Monsters
Here Be Monsters Podcast
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 1 February 2017
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As far as gods go, Jacob Lemanski is more tepid than most. Despite his omniscience, he feels unequipped to deal with the ethical decisions required of him.
Content Note: this episode contains a description of a domestic assault.
Jacob is the owner of AntLife, a company that makes large ant farms. In one of his prototype farms, he was experimenting with different soil types. One of his formulations caused a problem: tunnel collapse. And during a cave-in, one of his ants became trapped in a small underground cavern, just inches from the surface.
In this episode, Jacob recalls his personal history with both passivity and intervention, and tries to figure out what’s best for his ants.
Producer: Jeff Emtman
Editor: Bethany Denton
Music: The Black Spot
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From KCRW, this is Here Be Monsters. |
| 0:06.0 | Please note that this episode contains a vivid description of an assault. |
| 0:16.0 | It's dead, Jeff. My aane has died. |
| 0:18.0 | I've just been trapped in this cabin for maybe three days. |
| 0:27.0 | I went home after it got dark I left the ant pacing and I came back this morning it was dead. |
| 0:38.8 | It's curled up and it hasn't moved in hours. |
| 0:44.0 | My friend Jacob Lamanski called me a few months ago. |
| 0:50.0 | He wanted some advice on the problem he was having. |
| 0:53.0 | I didn't help him out with it though. |
| 0:56.0 | I figured he'd get better results if he just worked through it himself. |
| 0:59.0 | So I told him to get off the phone with me |
| 1:02.0 | and to just start recording his thoughts as they came to him. |
| 1:07.6 | I built this ant farm like six years ago as an adult, you he was like 26 or 27 when I made this thing |
| 1:17.3 | I built it myself out of two pieces of plexiglass I got from work |
| 1:21.9 | The two plates of glass are about a quarter inch apart and the whole thing is maybe three feet wide and maybe 20 inches tall. |
| 1:32.0 | I have it in a deep black frame and behind the ant farm I have |
| 1:38.7 | LEDs that shine through and there's a blue matting in the back so it looks like sky. |
| 1:46.0 | You know these ants that are in here right now I gathered them up just a couple weeks ago |
| 1:51.0 | from a giant ant hill south of town. I gathered the ants and I |
| 1:56.8 | gathered dirt just from right there with the ants and I put them all in here and |
| 2:01.3 | leaned it up against the wall and watched them dig and like there's no |
| 2:06.1 | planning they just they just dig and then they're making tunnels all over the place. I think people don't realize about ant farms is that it changes |
... |
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