Hey, this is Radio Lab. I'm Chad Abumrod. So in our last few episodes, you know, about

the evolution of typing in Chinese and Lebanese guys roadtrip across America, visiting all the

towns in the US called Lebanon. Just got us thinking about jumping across borders and, you know,

borders of culture and language and technology. And it reminded us of a show that we did a few

years ago that was basically all about that called translation. Hope you like it.

It's time now to practice some very useful phrases. I'll say them first, you repeat,

and we'll learn together. Let's begin. Today's seven experiments in translation. Lesson number one,

the best poem was by my mother. Do kaka rashi ati to tood o di mamah. Now you try.

Hello. Hi there. Hi. Is that Doug? Yes. Oh boy. So this episode was inspired by a guy named Doug.

Doug Hofstad, professor of cognitive science in Dianne University, Bloomington.

You may know him as the guy who wrote Godel Escherbach, which was a hugely influential book,

in certain circles published in I think 1979. But we actually got interested in him,

thanks to our producer, Lynn Levy, because of an obsession of his, which predates that.

Sixteen, I was sixteen. The year 1961. I was taking a French literature class on one day.

I came across this poem. A tiny little poem that kind of sat right in the middle of the page.

Like a long thin sausage vertical, you know, three syllables per line. So it was super skinny.

And 28 lines long and long. And it was delightful. It was very cute and funny. I fell in love with

the poem immediately and memorized. Did I still know it by heart? The poem is basically a get-well

card. It was written by this guy, Cleman Moro, who was a poet in the early 1500s. At the court

of Queen. And he wrote the poem for this Queen's daughter. She was seven or eight and she had gotten sick.

The flu or something. And this poem was supposed to cheer her up. And I thought it was very sweet.

Could you say it in French? Let's just hear it first. Yeah. Okay. It's called

...