Hey, it's Lulu. To start today, I want to play you a sentence that I heard 20 years ago that

changed the course of my life. Sound is kind of touch at a distance.

I was 21 years old, living in Queens, working at a coffee shop, more than a little lonely,

unsure what I was doing with my life, and boom. Sound is touch at a distance.

Those six eerie words floated out of the radio. I didn't know it yet, but it was this brand-new show

called Radio Lab that was doing something with sound and layering and music that almost

no one was yet bringing to journalism. That episode would then go on to do this very meta thing

of explaining how the words that were being spoken right then were just waves of vibrating air,

traveling across space and time into my ear drum. Which vibrates a few very small bones.

And the little bones transmit the vibration into this salty sea,

where the hairs are. And the hair cells are literally bent by way.

They bend like trees and breeze.

And when these hair cells bend, charged molecules flood inwards and activate the cell.

And it was like, I felt it. This stranger's voice had just made contact, literal contact with me.

And in that moment, I knew that was my path. I wanted to get into that world and use that medium

to do that thing. 20 years later, I still feel so lucky to be part of this show where every week

we send out sounds. And voices. And experiences.

And emotions.

I play about monsters every night. That, you know, actually touch you.

And look, I think in a moment like right now, when so many of us feel divided across space,

across geography, across ideology, I think sounds potential to sneak in and connect.

I think it really matters. But the truth is, and the reason I am here yammering about all this,

...