315- Everything is Alive

Episode Summary

Title: Everything is Alive This podcast features host Ian Chilock interviewing inanimate objects that are given human voices and personalities. In the first episode, he interviews Lewis, a can of generic cola. Lewis talks about his life experiences - being purchased for a child's birthday party but never actually consumed. He was forgotten in the back of a fridge before going on a road trip, but still not drunk. He feels anxious about finally fulfilling his purpose and being consumed, comparing it to the movie Jaws where the characters wait to be picked off one by one. Lewis educates the host on the radioactive energy drink Radithor from the 1920s that ended up killing people. The host calls the eBay seller of an original Radithor bottle to confirm its authenticity. They discuss Lewis' impending expiration date, the meaning of life for a can of soda, and the hierarchy of soda brands. Lewis sympathizes with canned soups who have disorienting experiences when opened after obscure lengths of sealed time. The episode explores profound ideas about existence and purpose through the funny premise of interviewing inanimate objects. Lewis comes across as a thoughtful, sentient character despite being a can of soda.

Episode Show Notes

Everything is Alive is an unscripted interview show with host Ian Chillag in which all the subjects are inanimate objects. In each episode, a different thing tells us its life story -- and everything it says is true.

Episode Transcript

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Look for Emergen-C crystals wherever you shop. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Every kid learns differently, so it's really important that your children have the educational support that they need to help them keep up and excel. If your child needs homework help, check out iXcel, the online learning platform for kids. iXcel covers math, language arts, science, and social studies through interactive practice problems from pre-K to 12th grade. As kids practice, they get positive feedback and even awards. With the school year ramping up, now is the best time to get iXcel. Our listeners can get an exclusive 20% off iXcel membership when they sign up today at ixl.com slash invisible. That's the letters i-x-l dot com slash invisible. This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Ian Chilog is a radio producer. You might recognize his name from the end credits of the NPR quiz show Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, or as the co-host of the now defunct podcast How to Do Everything, which I just loved. It's such a good show. He has a new podcast out right now launching this week, and it's delightfully weird. Well, the show is called Everything is Alive, and it's an interview show in which all the SPEAKER_05: subjects are inanimate objects. So I talk to things. SPEAKER_03: So what made you want to do a show like this? SPEAKER_05: Well, a couple of things. One, I think it's just like I would just sort of think this way. Like I'd get up from a chair and think about what a terrible job the chair had and how the chair must feel about being sat on all the time. And then also, I think, producing for so long, you're always trying to get to the primary source, you know? And you're always looking for experts. I thought it would be really fun if you're putting together a piece about rainbows or whatever, and rather than talk to the physicist who understands rainbows, if you could actually talk to the rainbow. So that's kind of the idea. SPEAKER_03: I know that listeners to 99% Invisible are fully capable of accepting that even the most mundane objects are infused with great meaning and can say something about us as humans, but you may not be prepared for that object to actually talk. So I asked Ian for a primer on how to listen to Everything is Alive. SPEAKER_05: You know, if I was talking to a candle, say, like a bedroom candle, it's not every candle. It's not speaking for every candle. It is one candle that has sat on one nightstand forever and been blown out by one person forever and has a relationship with that person. But they're kind of aware of their object communities. It knows more about candles than we do. It also has like very distinct lifetime of experiences. SPEAKER_03: But the things that it says are all factual. I think I was surprised by that when I first heard the samples that I've heard. SPEAKER_05: Yeah. They know things. They know real things about their world. For the most part, they're the inanimate object version of the person at the party who like always has an anecdote for everything. They're very aware of history and of stories of what they are. SPEAKER_03: So even though the situation is quite absurd on the face, when you hear a fact, it's a true fact. Yeah. SPEAKER_05: There is so much about the kind of personal life of the object that you know isn't exactly real. But when I'm telling a story about something real, I don't cite it. You know, I don't tell you like where I heard it. And so we're just letting the objects behave in the same way. And so there's probably, you know, there's going to be some mystery and hopefully people will Google and figure out if things are real or not. SPEAKER_03: This is Everything is Alive, hosted by Ian Tilgh. SPEAKER_05: Well, let's just start, settle in, have you introduce yourself for us. SPEAKER_02: My name is Lewis and I am a can of GoTo Cola. That's a store brand? SPEAKER_05: GoTo, G-O-2, Cola. So it's similar to Coca-Cola? SPEAKER_02: Similar. People call it a knockoff. People have been called the best of the worst. You know, if you wanted to get my honest opinion, I believe in a blind taste test. Your average person wouldn't be able to tell the difference between me and a can of regular Coca-Cola. But yeah, bottom shelf, we can describe it comfortably as bottom shelf. I'm at peace with that. SPEAKER_05: Literally on the? Most of the time, yeah. Okay. SPEAKER_05: Yeah. Well, there's a lot I want to talk to you about today. Do you need water or anything? SPEAKER_02: No, no. I'm completely self-contained. I want to ask you about your time before you ended up in the fridge you're in now. SPEAKER_05: So you, I take it, were in a supermarket? Yep. And where were you? SPEAKER_02: I was in a Safeway. I was bought at a case. So there were 24 of us. We were all purchased together and actually our next residence was a bowling alley for a 12-year-old's birthday party. I saw most of the rest of my case drunk at that party. I was not drunk. I was saved for later and brought home and put into a refrigerator and then forgotten about for a few months, placed in the back of the fridge. SPEAKER_02: I froze in the fridge. I was in the very back and the temperature got very cold. I didn't freeze all the way through, but I had a frozen couple of weeks. You were slushy inside? SPEAKER_05: I was slushy inside. SPEAKER_02: And I had a brief adventure when they realized I was still in the fridge and they took me out for a road trip. I got to sit in the front seat cup holder, you know. And I took a little fun road trip down to Florida and then back again. And they never got around to drinking me on that trip and they put me back in the fridge and that's where I've been ever since. SPEAKER_05: It sounds like you were almost chosen so many times. What does it feel like when you're, say, at this birthday party and you're waiting for SPEAKER_04: your moment? Have you ever seen the movie Jaws? SPEAKER_02: So you know the story that Robert Shaw tells to Roy Scheider and the other guy. Anyway, you know the story about the USS Indianapolis where he's in the water and the sharks are coming and he's waiting to be picked off and he's waiting and having that long dark night and one by one is seeing his friends go. That's kind of what it was like for me. It was terrifying. And on the one hand I was very angry at human beings for being in this position to consume us. And then on the other hand I was also very angry, how come you didn't want to consume me? SPEAKER_04: SPEAKER_05: Yeah. When you think about being consumed by a human, do you think about the human that you want to be in? SPEAKER_02: If and when I'm finally consumed, I hope I'm consumed by someone who enjoys it. SPEAKER_02: But I like to imagine that if you're drunk immediately, that instead of being a painful process, there's the sort of first moment of relief, the can is cracked open. SPEAKER_02: All of this internal fizzing that I have going on finally has somewhere to go. It's sort of drowned out from your external can and you have that last moment where you're fulfilling your purpose and beginning to blend in with this human being and you become part of their story. Truthfully here's how I expect to go, assuming that I am consumed. I'm expecting it's going to happen in the middle of the night when I'm not waiting for it and someone's going to open the fridge and pull me out and that'll be that. It would be nice to be poured into a nice big pint glass, you know? Frosty mug would be a pretty good way to go. That'd be pleasant, you know? I doubt that's going to happen though. They don't reserve frosty mugs for go-to colas. That's just another one of those facts of life. SPEAKER_02: How did you see Jaws? The human being who lives in my house was watching Jaws. They took me out of the fridge and kept me on the table. I thought this is it. This is my big moment. Kind of part of me, there was the Robert Shaw scene where he's telling the story of the Indianapolis and I was thinking, boy, this is just too perfect. This would be amazing. He was reaching for me. He was going to go for me and then at the last minute, you know, another human being came into the house and scolded him on not drinking soft drink so he put me back in the fridge. Wow. Yeah, that would have been perfect, huh? Yeah. SPEAKER_05: You know, I should ask you, there's a lot of talk right now about the health effects of soft drinks. People tend to think of them as very unhealthy. I'm just wondering, do you feel unhealthy? SPEAKER_02: Do I feel unhealthy? It's hard to say because I think if you were feeling the way I feel, you would feel unhealthy. But I feel like me. I can't say that that means I feel good. But to go back to your question, unhealthy drinks are not like a new thing by any means. Have you ever heard of radithor? Radithor? Radithor? All right, so back in the 20s, there was an energy drink with radium called radithor. The idea was it was just radioactive material in water. They claimed radithor gave you energy and cured a bunch of things. They also implied that radithor increased male virility. Radithor also killed people. SPEAKER_05: So people would just drink radioactive material dissolved in water? SPEAKER_05: I'm just looking it up here. There's an eBay ad. There's a bottle of radithor for sale. Oh, come on now. It's currently $659. You've got to be kidding me. It says here, this certified radioactive water was advertised as a quote, cure for the living dead and quote, perpetual sunshine. It goes on, one guy who used it, Eben Byers, died from radiation poisoning and they had to bury him in a lead-lined coffin. Yeah, that's what you get when you drink radioactive material. SPEAKER_05: So they made a beverage which not only killed a man, but his dead body would have had they not taken precautions, killed all life around him. SPEAKER_02: Yes, presumably his dead body is still radiating the poisons that he drank from radithor. SPEAKER_05: In fact, the ad goes on. They exhumed him for study in 1965. Oh, come on. And his remains were still quite radioactive. It then mentions that the developer of radithor was not an actual medical doctor. SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that sounds about right to me too. SPEAKER_05: Also, the bottle is in very good condition. SPEAKER_02: So there's your original power drink for you. That says to me more about human beings than it does about soft drinks, to be perfectly honest. SPEAKER_05: Our willingness, our eagerness to find something to... Your chronic search for potency. SPEAKER_02: Yeah. That's my evaluation of humanity. Chronic search for potency. SPEAKER_06: Hello. Hey, I'm calling for Jeff. SPEAKER_05: Yep. Hey, Jeff. You're the man behind the bygone times vintage, right? Yeah, I'm guilty. I noticed one of your eBay listings. So you put up the radithor? SPEAKER_06: Radithor? Yeah. Yeah. Is that for real? SPEAKER_06: Oh, yeah. What happened was I was at a flea market and I found a set of about 20, 25 of these things. SPEAKER_04: Okay. SPEAKER_06: It was like a shipping crate or something. And so, yeah, I have sold a few of those. SPEAKER_05: And is it a reproduction or is it an original bottle? No, these are original. SPEAKER_06: Yeah, original. SPEAKER_05: Did you check them with a Geiger counter? SPEAKER_06: I have not. I don't... I just assumed they wouldn't have any. There's no content to them, obviously, but I haven't... No, I didn't check them with a Geiger counter. I suspected since they were from the 1920s, they would be done gone. I think maybe it wouldn't be gone. Yeah. SPEAKER_06: Yeah. I don't know. Maybe they wouldn't. I don't know. Can I put them under a black light or something? I hope it's not still active. That raises an interesting question, sir. SPEAKER_05: Did you know much about Radathor when you... No, no. No, I got on... SPEAKER_06: Fortunately, now we have the internet and Google is quite helpful. It's really an interesting story. I don't know if you've taken the time to look into it, but it's fascinating. Yeah. SPEAKER_05: Well, I just heard about it. It's crazy that we humans do that. SPEAKER_06: I like the story about the guy who died from it and then they dug him up in the 60s in his lead-lined coffin. He was still radioactive. SPEAKER_05: That's why I feel like you should maybe get checked out. I think I will. SPEAKER_06: Yeah. I think I will now that you said that because I didn't really think that the glass would hold any of that, but I guess it's possible. SPEAKER_05: You know, radiation you don't want to mess around with, I guess, when it comes down to it. SPEAKER_06: No, I hear you. Hey, how do you have to... I'm driving and I don't want to... I'm getting onto a busy road now, so I need to unfortunately hang up on you. SPEAKER_05: Got it. Yeah. SPEAKER_06: Be safe. SPEAKER_05: Okay, bye. Lewis, one quick thing I want to ask you about. I have in my life occasionally dropped a can of soda. Oh, yeah. Has that ever happened to you? SPEAKER_02: Oh, it's an awful experience. You feel, I mean, obviously very shaken. There's a rush, I guess, in human being terms, it'd be like a rush of adrenaline. And for a while you're feeling just very hyper after the shakeup. And then you start to sort of resettle back to a neutral state, but you have this awful kind of nauseous, sicky, sleepy feeling after the fact. And you feel kind of dumb. You know, the shakeup kind of like rattles you a little bit and it takes a little bit of time for your intelligence to kind of come back to you. It's an awful experience. Hey, I imagine too. SPEAKER_05: Like we often, after that happens, we will tap on what would be your head. SPEAKER_02: Don't. It doesn't do anything. It doesn't. Don't. There's no reason to do it. It doesn't do anything to the carbonation. All it does is annoy us in a very sensitive moment. Yeah, don't do that. SPEAKER_03: You're listening to Everything is Alive on 99% invisible. SPEAKER_05: So Lewis, this might be awkward to talk about, but I feel like there's a hierarchy to sodas, at least in terms of how humans think about them. At the top, there's Coke and Pepsi, and then there's 7-Up and Sprite, and then there's these, like your Sunkist and grape soda Fanta that are kind of at the bottom. I wonder if that, does that hierarchy, does it mean the same thing to you? SPEAKER_02: Well, let me tell you something about Fanta. I mean, sure, here in the US, it's not the most sophisticated soft drink, but overseas, it's huge. Like Japan, huge. Fanta. In Thailand, it's all over the place. If you walk down the street there, you'll see half-open bottles of Fanta everywhere. Strawberry Fanta in particular, everywhere, just hanging out. Just like sitting on the street. Yeah, just on the street, because humans there use strawberry Fanta as an offering to ghosts. SPEAKER_05: So they leave it out on the street because they're giving it to ghosts. SPEAKER_02: Yes. Friendly ghosts, according to local custom, love sweet red soda. So if you leave it out, it attracts them, and they hang out around your house and protect you from, I guess, whatever unfriendly ghost might come around, who I guess don't love sweet red soda. Right. SPEAKER_05: Do you know what it is about strawberry Fanta in particular? SPEAKER_02: Because of the color. So there's a theory that it's because they can't do blood offerings anymore. And so strawberry Fanta, which is another red viscous liquid, would be the next best thing. SPEAKER_05: Strawberry Fanta, among the sodas available to us, looks the most like blood. Yeah. SPEAKER_02: Which we definitely don't see. But it's a Thailand thing. SPEAKER_05: We humans, we think a lot about spirits, or at least what might happen to us after we die. Do you, as a cola, do you think about that? SPEAKER_02: The afterlife? Yeah. Oh yeah. How do you not think about it all the time? Yeah. Because I'm reaching that age myself, where I'm probably not going to be around that much longer. SPEAKER_05: Mm-hmm. You are recyclable. Yeah. SPEAKER_02: And so that's the whole thing. Which opens up a whole other conversation. You know, my body, my can, will almost certainly be repurposed. And then that leads me to, you know, ask questions of like, well, have I already been repurposed? I don't know. SPEAKER_05: You could have been any number of sodas or? Or anything else. SPEAKER_02: An airplane? I could have been. I actually, when I was younger, I used to have a recurring nightmare that I was, there was a plane crashing. There was an ocean and a beach. And then it was nighttime and it was raining and there was a plane crashing on the beach. And I used to like to think that in a previous existence I was part of an airplane and this was some sort of memory that had traveled with me. Maybe I was part of like a, I don't know, ventilation system on board of a 747 or something. SPEAKER_05: You referred to your can as your body. Yeah. Or your body as your can. Yeah. Is there an equivalency between, you know, humans talk about body and soul? Is that, I'm sorry. No, no, no. SPEAKER_02: I'm only sighing because I wish I had the answer to this question. Is there an equivalence? Yes. Yes. The body-mind problem that human beings have been dealing with since the days of Descartes is something all too familiar to us cans of soda. Am I just a can? Am I soda? What does it mean to be soda? Am I part of the larger ocean of soda out there? Am I just the individuated soda? Am I soda interacting with a can? Am I can being slowly eaten away by the soda inside me? I've thought about this a lot. Yeah. I don't have an answer, but it's something I wrestle with all the time. What am I fundamentally? Once the soda is gone, the can remains, but bye-bye me, I think. SPEAKER_02: Yeah, who knows? Who knows? These are the mysteries that permeate every level of existence, as far as I know. SPEAKER_05: I have to say, I think about the type of can you are with the pull tab, and then I think about other cans in the kitchen, like a soup can. I don't know if you know any soup cans. SPEAKER_04: I know a couple of soup cans. SPEAKER_05: And it occurs to me, you are so lucky because you think about the way a soup can gets opened. Oh, yeah. A can opener, to me, seems like a torture device. SPEAKER_02: It is. And let me tell you something else, too. I thank God every day of my life that I was not born a can of minestrone soup. I at least have lived a life. I know where I've been. Not all of my dreams may have necessarily come true. I may have taken a couple of bad turns here and there, but at least at the end of the day, I've been witness to my own life. These poor bastards are stuck in these soup cans. Talk about hermetically sealed. They lose all sense of time and perspective. When you open a can of soup, when they wake up, they have no idea how much time has passed. They're like astronauts coming out of cryogenic freeze. They're all spaced out and they're completely disoriented. They don't know what's going on. And their wake-up call is being torn open by these damn can openers. What a nightmare of an existence. Their flesh is literally busted open, only to wake up into a world that they don't know anything about. All the rest of us stay away from the cans of soup. I'll be honest with you. I feel awful about it. But whenever I try to talk to a can of soup, they are weird. SPEAKER_05: You've mentioned that you're feeling like you're nearing the end of your life. Do you feel old? Oh, yeah. Oh, very much so. SPEAKER_02: I know for a fact I'm old. I can look at my expiration date. SPEAKER_05: Can I ask how close you are? SPEAKER_02: T minus two weeks to go, my friend. SPEAKER_05: So what... But you could keep going on after that. I could. It's not recommended, but I could. SPEAKER_05: Does it seem... I mean, I think about this with you because... And I'm sorry if I have... This isn't the right way to put it, but it seems like your purpose is to be consumed by a human. And so we all want to serve our purpose. We all want to be useful. And yet for you, the moment of your use is the moment where you are no more. And I wonder if that's something you anticipate with optimism or if it feels like approaching the end. That's a paradox, isn't it? It is, yeah. I guess on the one hand, I do sort of dread the idea of being consumed. SPEAKER_02: All beings endeavor to persist in their own being. SPEAKER_02: Spinoza said that. I heard about that from a cup of coffee. But on the other hand, I guess on some level, I still hope that I will kind of fulfill myself SPEAKER_02: by being consumed. I think that dream is still very much alive. Though if I'm being perfectly honest with you, I do sometimes fear that that moment has passed. SPEAKER_05: I feel weird saying this, but I could drink you. SPEAKER_02: Right now? SPEAKER_05: Yeah. I mean, I want you... I am thirsty, but I also want this to be a good moment for you. I want you to be ready. I don't want you to do it if you're not ready. SPEAKER_04: Well, I'll make a deal with you. SPEAKER_02: I've always said I wanted to go with my eyes wide open. I'm prepared to end it here if you promise me that even if you're disgusted by how I taste, you will finish the can. SPEAKER_05: I will make you that promise. Is there anything you want to say to the humans you've encountered, the cans you've encountered, the countertops you've known? I think overall I would say life is a gift and a blessing, and I don't believe anything SPEAKER_02: ends, but everything simply transforms into the next thing. I would say if I can be a little bit soft-hearted and sentimental for a moment or two, it's a gift to get to be anything at all. SPEAKER_04: Well, maybe what we'll do, just in the interest of journalism, is I'll drink about half, and SPEAKER_04: then we'll check in again. Do you want to talk while I'm drinking you? I don't... No. Okay. SPEAKER_02: No, I want to have the full experience. Okay. But I'll check in with you at the halfway mark. SPEAKER_05: All right. So I'm picking you up. SPEAKER_02: Give me one second. Okay. Are you ready? Mm-hmm. SPEAKER_04: This, I have to say, feels delightful. SPEAKER_05: All right, well, I guess cheers to you with you. SPEAKER_02: Here's hoping for the best. SPEAKER_05: I mean, you are delicious. SPEAKER_02: Thank you. You're very gentle. This is a trippy feeling, I'm not going to lie. All right, my first report. Feeling very spacious inside right now. I've got room to be. Yeah. But I'm also, I'm feeling the warmth of the tummy. Very strange thing, I'm in two places at once, spacious in my own body, but feeling warm and secure in your own tummy. SPEAKER_05: Wow. All of a sudden I find myself thinking about my body. I'm thinking about my body, and I'm hoping that my body is a good place for you. I think so. SPEAKER_02: I don't mind telling you my first impression of the inside of your own tummy. You seem to be taking pretty good care of yourself. Thank you. SPEAKER_05: Yeah. I am seeing some, are you sweating? Seeing some... With joy. All right, I'm going to have a little more. You go ahead and finish me off. SPEAKER_05: Okay. Are you, are you still there? SPEAKER_03: Everything is Alive is produced by Jennifer Mills and Ian Chilock. This episode had reporting from Patrick Wynn and Timothy Jorgensen. In the piece, we heard the song Sheets 2 by the band Mountains off their album Coral. Louis, the can of generic cola, was played by Louis Kornfeld. Find out more at everythingisalive.com. I'll have a behind the scenes discussion with Ian and a preview of this season of Everything is Alive after this. 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Maslow picked it out, remember Maslow? And I keep my vinyl records and CDs in it. It just is awesome. I love the way it looks. Article is offering 99% invisible listeners $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. To claim, visit article.com slash 99 and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout. That's article.com slash 99 for $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. What attracted you to tell the story of Louis, the generic Cola, as the first episode of Everything is Alive? SPEAKER_05: I think I imagined that a can of generic Cola would maybe have a chip on its shoulder. It's always being compared to like the big guy, you know, the Coca-Cola. It's even been made to try and trick people into thinking it's Coca-Cola. But you know, it has its own identity. Maybe that makes it bitter. I mean that in the emotional sense, not in the flavor sense. But because there's a relationship between generic things and non-generic things, that it would already have some personality that made sense. And the conversations are like, they're real interviews. We don't script them. We just ask a person to do a little research or we give them research. And then I interview them and I don't know. And so things where there's a little bit of character already to the thing, I think it's more fun and it's easier for the actor to voice it. SPEAKER_03: I know Lewis is an actor. Is the eBay guy an actor? SPEAKER_05: No. That's a real person. Yeah, that's a real person. Yeah, we called him up. I don't know. There was a number on his Facebook page and yeah, he's real. He's okay. I'll tell you that. SPEAKER_03: Good. Because he's a very good character. Yeah. That's amazing. And he's fine though. SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, he's fine. I did, I started to do a little research about like if glass would actually hold radiation. And I actually don't know the answer to that, but he, I can hit for his case, he's fine. SPEAKER_03: Can you tell people what to expect in this season of Everything is Alive? SPEAKER_05: We have, I mean, a number of things we're talking to. We're talking to a lamppost named Maeve. There's a bar of soap named Tara. Right now I'm working on an interview with Jake, who is a mailbox, a mousetrap who actually, SPEAKER_05: she has to use a pseudonym, but she's having, the mousetrap is having a lot of second thoughts about what she's asked to do. She doesn't, she does not want to kill mice. She has a lot of other ideas about what she could do instead, given the form she was given. SPEAKER_05: None of which are as good as being a mousetrap. Mousetrap can kind of only mousetrap, turns out. SPEAKER_04: That's right. SPEAKER_05: They're all really going to be different, and we really want them all to be different things. There are going to be deep thinking objects, and there are going to be superficial objects. And I think there are going to be unlikable objects. There are certainly objects who don't like me very much. And yeah. I think our goal is just that it be a diverse community of things. SPEAKER_03: Do they not like you on principle or through the action of you interviewing them? SPEAKER_05: No, yeah, it's through me interviewing them. It's funny though, I realize, because I feel the same interviewing a thing as I do interviewing a person. I really do. And sometimes after the interview, I'll realize there was something I was afraid to ask. And what was wrong with me? Why was I afraid of offending that dust pile? That was what I was. SPEAKER_03: Is there an ultimate get for you that you're working your way up towards? SPEAKER_05: There is, yeah. Yeah. You know, I'm trying to take the things very seriously. But I do think if the final episode of this show was an interview with an ice cube played by Ice Cube, I'd be very satisfied. SPEAKER_03: Everything is Alive is the latest show from Radio Topia from PRX. Get it at everythingisalive.com, at radio topia.fm, on Apple Podcasts and Radio Public. 99% Invisible is a project of KALW San Francisco and produced on Radio Row in beautiful downtown Oakland California. You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet at me at Roman Mars and the show at 99pi.org. We're on Instagram, Tumblr, and Reddit too. But our true home on the web is 99pi.org. Radio Topia from PRX. SPEAKER_01: At Discount Tire, we know your time is valuable. Get 30% shorter average wait time when you buy and book online. Did you know Discount Tire now sells wiper blades? Check out our current deals at DiscountTire.com or stop in and talk to an associate today. Discount Tire. SPEAKER_00: Let's get you taken care of. 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