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| Debuted April 26, 2007 |
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The unpredictable things that can happen when you bring a new idea into the world. A promo featuring clips from the Prologue and Act One.
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Three stories of consequences that follow from human beings' doing what we do best: poking our noses everywhere, fixing things that may or may not be broken, and opening our big mouths. A hot dog stand in Chicago unleashes dark forces in the human soul; and scientists try, unsuccessfully, to create perfect pigs.
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Prologue.
A brain scientist named Todd Sacktor had a fairly controversial theory about how the brain stored memories. He thought it was largely due to one chemical in the brain, an enzyme, with special properties. He teamed up with another scientist, Andre Fenton, to test the theory. They shocked a rat whenever it walked into a certain part of its cage, until eventually the rat remembered not to go into that spot. Then they injected the rat with a substance that blocked Todd's chemical from doing its job in the brain, and boom! The rats completely forgot about the danger spot. Todd and Andre were thrilled and published their findings in Science Magazine, under the daunting title "Storage of Spatial Information by the Maintenance Mechanism of LTP." But then, regular people started contacting them, people who were suffering and in pain, asking Andre and Todd to erase all their memories, too, just like in the rats.
When we originally interviewed Todd and Andre, we knew we liked the story, but worried about how we'd illustrate it on-screen, all that talk of experiments and rats and memory. Director Chris Wilcha thought that people would grow tired of looking at actual rats in cages, no matter how beautifully shot by our cinematographer Adam Beckman. Then Chris hit upon an idea: actors...in rat costumes! The idea, believe it or not, was not meant to be goofy, but sort of quietly and mournfully absurd. We did not achieve this effect, and left the rat costumes on the cutting room floor—much to the relief of Todd, who told us later that he’d caught wind of the rat costumes and feared that we were going to turn his work into a big joke.
Host Ira Glass was filmed on a lawn in the town of Limerick, Pennsylvania, with the cooling towers of the Limerick Nuclear Power Plant in the background.
Appearing in this story:
• Dr. Todd Sacktor—Neurologist/Neuroscientist at SUNY Downstate Medical Center
• Dr. Andre Fenton—Neuroscientist at SUNY Downstate Medical Center |
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Act One. In Iowa, No One Can Hear You Squeal.
Our film crew goes to Iowa to investigate the ever-increasing role genetic science is playing on the modern pig farm. But once on the farm, some on the crew find out that there are things about pork production that, well, they don't actually want to find out.
We got the idea for this story from a great article in Harper's Magazine by a reporter named Nate Johnson. He came with us on the trip, as we drove all over Iowa to different farms and research facilities.
Appearing in this story:
• Chuck Wirtz—Hog producer
• Alex Blumberg—Producer
• Chris Wilcha—Director
• Adam Beckman—Cinematographer
• Ronnie Porto—Grip
• Eddie O'Conner—Soundman
• Nate Johnson—Reporter
• Ken Prusa—Pork quality expert at Iowa State University
• Max Rothschild—Animal geneticist at Iowa State University |
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Act Two. In Wiener Veritas.
A hot dog stand in Chicago, The Wiener's Circle, has this gimmick that you occasionally see in restaurants: the staff acts rudely, in sort of a playful way, and cracks jokes about the customers. Except at The Wiener's Circle, late at night, the gimmick becomes more than just a gimmick. It becomes scary.
Appearing in this story:
• Shawanna Smith—Employee at The Wiener's Circle
• Roberta "Poochie" Jackson—Employee at The Wiener's Circle
• Larry Gold—Co-owner of The Wiener's Circle
• Barry Nemerow—Co-owner of The Wiener's Circle |
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