Hidden In Plain Sight

A kitten on a mountain trail turns into a bobcat. A $4 flea market frame turns into a multimillion-dollar Declaration of Independence discovery. A jar of pickles becomes a roadside legend that refuses to disappear. We built this hour around one idea that keeps proving itself: the biggest breakthroughs are often hidden in plain sight, not because they are invisible, but because we stop asking questions once we think we understand what we’re seeing.

We bounce from the Blue Ridge Mountains to small-town Iowa’s escaped kangaroo report, then back through history to the Antikythera mechanism, the ancient Greek device now considered the world’s first analog computer. For years it was dismissed as “just a clock” because it did not fit the story people expected. That same bias shows up in archaeology, where Caracol in Belize was known long before LIDAR mapping revealed terraces, causeways, and a 70-square-mile settlement that rewrites assumptions about Maya cities and population density.

From there, we get practical about curiosity: why truly understanding technology means being able to explain it simply, why “easy” tasks like making coffee are packed with hidden choices, and why documentation and technical writing matter more than most people realize. We even detour into true crime oddities where pants become evidence, then close with a love letter to archives, matchbooks as personal history, and museums as living engines of scientific research behind the glass.

If something here sparks a memory, share it with us: what’s the most interesting thing you’ve ever found that everyone else overlooked? Subscribe, share the episode with a curious friend, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

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Transcript

Welcome And The Theme

SPEAKER_02 0:15

Hello, folks. Welcome once again to the elevator show with Michael over there. I hope you had a good week. Had a very good week. Got a few things done. Tonight, well, today, whatever whenever you're listening to this, folks, this week, we've got escaped animals. Again, we've got accidental millionaires, ancient computers, lost cities, mysterious pickles, and perhaps the only criminal case where a pair of pants became the star witness. All the time. Because most discoveries aren't made by daring explorers. I mean some of those are. But sometimes discoveries happen because someone cleans out a drawer, or as we've learned, maybe just opens one. Or when someone asks a question or notices something odd or sees something everyone else somehow kind of missed.

The Kitten That Was A Bobcat

SPEAKER_02 1:28

I'm calling this show Hidden in Plain Sight. And I kind of think you'll understand why. Surprise! A man and his cat were walking in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Asheville, North Carolina, when uh his domestic cat heard some rustling in a leaf pile and discovered what this hiker thought was a stray kitten. So uh he saw this shivering, abandoned little tiny kitty, and he brought her home and fed her and integrated her into the household with everybody else. And as the months passed, the kitten uh began to change in ways that were a little confusing to him. She got large quick. She developed really large paws, started developing big tufts of fur in her ears, and noticed that she didn't really uh meow like a normal cat or really purr. No, she was not a kitty, she was a bob kitty. And local wildlife experts eventually intervened, warning this guy hey, keeping a bobcat in your house is really dangerous. And he uh and he realized obviously that, yeah, you know, that house isn't really the place for a wild animal. So he worked with the specialist there to kind of get her ready to go back to the wild and ultimately letting her go back in the Blue Ridge Mountains. And he says, though he deeply misses this beautiful, unusual companion, that uh, you know, he found peace watching her run into the woods, knowing that true love means letting wild things live wild. You know, I mean that's do you remember the poster uh when when I was a kid? Maybe not. Uh it was a had a seagull or something on it, and it said, if you love something, set it free. If it returns, it's yours.

SPEAKER_04 3:43

If it doesn't, it it was probably a bobcating.

SPEAKER_02 4:17

And it doesn't matter whether it's a British version or the American version or some version like in a in a trailer park or at a flea. I don't care what it is. I love to watch

A Four Dollar Frame Jackpot

SPEAKER_02 4:30

this stuff with these antiques and to find things that are, you know, just cool and old and things that may not be even worth tons, but they have a lot of interesting history. Well, um, in 1989, a guy in Pennsylvania went to an Adamstown flea market and he bought an old uh framed canvas uh picture, but not because he liked the picture, he liked the frame, and he paid $4 for it. He got home, he removed the canvas, and he discovered that there was a piece of paper folded, a folded piece of paper tucked behind it. That folded piece of paper was an original 1776 printing of the Declaration of Independence, and it eventually sold at auction for over $7.4 million. So, out there is a guy who paid $4 for a frame and accidentally became a millionaire. And mean meanwhile, I've been buying stuff at flea markets for decades, and you know, I mostly wind up with mysterious screws and bits of brass that don't go to anything.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

You take drugs, Danny? Every day. Good. So what's the problem? I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 5:51

I don't know.

A Kangaroo On The Loose

SPEAKER_02 5:52

Okay, so let's talk about the escaped animal of the week. This one's from Lee County, Iowa. The Lee County Sheriff's Office jumped into action last week to help capture a rogue kangaroo. According uh to the Penn City current Lee County resident Teresa Potter said one of her four young kangaroos had escaped its confinement this week. The Lee County Sheriff's Office reported on Friday that Deputy Bryson Henniger and Deputy Colin Crunshaw assisted with the capture of the kangaroo. They said no deputies were injured in the pursuit, no citations were issued, and the suspect was released on its own recognizance. So I think the Lee County Sheriff's Office deserves tremendous credit for issuing what may be the most Midwestern police report ever written. Let's talk about a certain point in history.

The World’s Oldest Analog Computer

SPEAKER_02 7:00

Do you know what the world's oldest analog computer is? I mean, is it the abacus? Because that's really old. I mean, that was invented in Mesopotamia around uh 2500 BCE. But it does math. And that's essentially all it does. So it's really technically a calculator. The Anticathera mechanism, that's a different story. This is a device that was recovered from a shipwreck near the Greek island of Anticathera in 1902. And they have dated it back to around 150 to 100 BCE. And it's now widely considered the world's first analog computer. At first, most scholars believed it was just a clock. Because, of course, the ancient Greeks did not have the advanced capabilities to do a whole heck of a lot more than that. So that's pretty much that's pretty much what it was. And that's what it was for decades. For ages. And then some people decided to take another look at it, and they thought, oh, maybe it's an ancient compass. Or it could be a planetarium, and it might even just be a toy. And of course, in the 1960s, uh, chariots of the gods said it was alien technology. And right around then is when science decided to take a really serious look at it. And they've taken a really serious look at it. And we still don't know everything it originally did, but I can tell you what it did do. It did astronomical calculations. It calculated the precise positions of the sun, the moon, and the planets relative to the zodiac. It could predict solar and lunar eclipses. Years ahead of time. It kept track on a subsidiary dial, kept track of the four-year cycles between the pan-Hellenic games that which included the ancient Olympic Games. I just find this so amazing. And they're still trying to figure out what else it might have done. But they haven't gotten to it yet. I mean, it's a very old thing. It sat in the bottom of the ocean for a long time. They're very lucky to have found it at all. But they have had it in their hands for a long time, and science is still trying to figure it out. People looked at it, they studied it, they argued about it. I mean, for years when they first saw it. They looked at it, they studied it, and they still didn't really understand what they were looking at. And it was right in front of them. It was hidden in plain sight for years.

Noticing The Little Things

SPEAKER_02 10:40

Now that's something uh it reminds me of something I I think I feel I need to talk about. Many of you folks know that this program began on W O M R FM Radio in Provincetown, Massachusetts, as the Anne Levine Show, and was my wife, my very best friend, and one of the most amazing people I have ever known. She had many gifts, and one of them was that she noticed things. She noticed good things, she noticed bad things, she noticed funny things, sad things. And while she was concerned with big things, it never made her forget the little ones. Like that story hidden in the newspaper about a freak taffy accident. Or plaids and stripes together, come on. Or she didn't wear that. Or why is vocal fry a thing people put on? You know, stuff like that. Anne spent a lot of her time helping people who needed somebody in their corner. And using radio, she gave a megaphone to voices that weren't being heard. But she never lost her ability to find the strange and funny, the human side of things, and a lot of what the show became grew out of a curiosity that we both shared. You know, the the desire to ask one more question or to take one more look. I wonder why. And that's why I'm still doing it. Because the world is full of strange things that need another look at. And that, my uh my friends, brings me to one of my favorite mysteries.

The Mystery Pickles By The Highway

SPEAKER_02 12:48

The mystery pickles of De Perez, Missouri. For years, drivers passing through de Perez kept noticing a jar of pickles that are sitting on the Interstate 270 exit at Manchester Road. It's just a jar of pickles, and no one knew who put it there or why. I mean, it's on like one of these concrete, you know, things, the road dividers, it's like on the side of the road guiding people on this exit, and it's just sitting there. No one knows who put it there, they don't know why it's there, and then occasionally it disappeared. And then pretty quickly another one reappeared. People started tracking it, they started taking pictures of it, they're talking about it online. Everybody's wondering, speculating what the heck is going on. At one point, there were multiple pickle jars. And not only just pickles, there were whole pickles, or there were sliced pickles, or there were pickle spears. It didn't really matter. And sometimes there was even like a jar of mustard. So, you know, people going along with the whole uh condiment kind of thing, I guess. I don't know. But the mystery is just somehow getting more mysterious because they still have no idea who is doing it. Now, it is assumed that there are many other people now doing it. Like the first the first time it happened, you know, it happened for a while. And there are there are theories about it, that it was a reminder to somebody. Um, you know, don't don't forget something on the way home from work, or maybe a couple people broke up and you know, pickles was their thing, and they're just leaving it there at the exit that they would normally take from work or whatever to like remind them that they're in the world. So kind of a weird stalking kind of thing. I don't know. From a practical point, it's ridiculous, obviously. And mostly it's glass jars, they sometimes get knocked off quite often. Uh, you know, when the road crews and stuff go through, they remove them, but someone always replaces them. It's weird, it's a jar of pickles. Uh but that's why I love it. Because curiosity doesn't always begin with something that's important, actually. Sometimes it begins with something really weird or something off. Uh something that makes you stop and ask, hey, wait a minute, what is going on here? And that's what Ann and I did on this show, and that's what I'll keep doing. Sometimes it's ancient civilization, sometimes it's lost technology, sometimes it's a jar of pickles sitting beside a highway. But it always starts with a question.

A Mayan City Revealed By LIDAR

SPEAKER_02 16:12

And speaking of questions, let's talk about a city archaeologists technically found decades before they understood what they actually discovered. And boy, whew, what they finally understood. Years ago in the 1980s, I watched a PBS documentary about the excavation of Caracol in Belize. It's a Mayan city, ruins that were found there. And I have been absolutely fascinated with the Maya ever since. I spent a great deal of time uh looking at all of the uh photographs that were coming out of there and trying to understand what the glyphs meant. And then after I started learning and they started learning, and you know, information came out about these glyphs and who they represented it and so on. It was it was fast, and I kept up with it for years. It was great, but let me tell you more about it. In uh 1937, Caracol was discovered by a woman named Rosa Mai, who was a local logger who was just out wandering around looking for some mahogany. I mean, as a logger, you would think, right? And that was it. No one really went back to take a I mean, she talked about it, she told people about it, but no one really went back there until the early 1950s when a guy named uh Linton Satherthwaite from the University of Pennsylvania started doing the initial mapping and surveys of the site. And when he did that, he learned something special. There was a point in history where all of the Mayan cities just stopped building, stopped expanding. That didn't happen at Caracol, and that was very interesting. But from 1950, it took until 1985 before the Caracol Archaeological Project, led by Arlen and Diane Chase, began extensive and ongoing excavations, and this is what I saw on the PBS special about Caracol. In 1986, they discovered Ultra 21. Ultra 21 documented Caracol's 562 AD military victory over the rival city of Tikall, which was a giant city. It was the big boy out there. But they recontextualized the whole thing, naming Caracol as a major regional power. Now I wanna I wanna note that it is important that Caracol wasn't hidden because nobody had found it, it was hidden because no one understood the scale. That's a very different thing. One of the things that started that changed the entire world in archaeology started in April 2009 at the Mayan site of Caracol in Belize when LIDAR was first used. Now, if you don't know what LIDAR is, it's an acronym for light detection and ranging. And um to put it really simply, you can think of it like a really advanced flashlight. It's got a laser that moves around and it sweeps across an entire area, and when it does, it creates this sort of 3D cloud of points. So every time the laser goes out, it pulses a couple times, and each pulse records three things uh in distance the short, the medium, and the long range. And uh they get two pulses per like a square meter. And what they do when they go over acres and acres of this with a laser, which is exceedingly accurate, is they put it all into a computer, and then they can tell the computer that these particular things that they are looking at, because they know where they are in the photograph, they know where they are in the real world, these things are trees. So they write an algorithm to remove the trees, and once they remove the trees and the bushes, all they have is the ground and the things that were built there. And what they found was absolutely amazing. They found thousands of agricultural terraces that spanned hills and valleys, showing what they called a completely anthropogenic or entirely modified by human landscape. They found thousands of previously unknown ground covered residential structures, or they would they're mounds now. A lot of them have disintegrated into mounds. Um they found a bunch of urban features. They found Eleven new raised roads that they call causeways, and five new causeway termini showing the whole city was connected by a gigantic network of these things. They confirmed that the city was part of a continuous 70-square mile settlement. Folks, that's about the size of Kansas City, Missouri. And it really challenged the assumptions that Mayan cities were small or sparsely populated, because not so. Also, anthropologists ended up having to apologize for being wrong because this new view showed that water management, including reservoirs, were distributed throughout residential groups rather than being exclusively controlled by the elites. Blows my mind. This is some very cool stuff. And that's all very, very neat. And that all happened in the 1980s. Let's cut to last year, shall we? The Chases discovered the 1,700-year-old tomb of Tikabchak, the founding ruler of Karakol's dynasty from uh circa 331 AD. They found him in an area they had already started excavating in 1992. And I try to, I really try to imagine what advances would have been, you know, they're going to make from this find. And I wonder how much information they could have expanded on even further if they'd found this tomb in 1992, right? And we're still finding out what was going on there. They have an idea, like about how tall he was and all this stuff, and you know, so on and so forth. But uh there's so so I mean, archaeology and anthropology do not move quickly, and rightfully so. I mean, this stuff has been laying around for thousands of years, hundreds of years, millions of years. It should take a little time to uncover it all in a way that you can take a good look at it. Well, how many places, folks, in the world, in your living room, in the uh I don't know, outdoors, whatever. How many places have we found already and we haven't even realized what we're looking at? Through 2025, at least now this is not just Caracol, this is a cr uh through uh Mexico and Central America, they have found 70,000 new structures in Guatemala and Mexico. That's insane. They had no idea any of that was there. They've got seven major cities. Here we go. No, uh-uh. It was all city and and suburban areas. I mean, it was insane the amount of land that they covered where people were thriving. It's just incredible to to find this out because we never even had a clue.

SPEAKER_06 25:59

The time is here. Now's the time for a fight is here. Hey, what do you think of a nice little thing? Let's face box screen for the bicep tree.

Explaining Tech The Hard Way

SPEAKER_02 26:22

Oh come on, folks, let's join the band as we all make on the And now we come to the part of the show where we try to explain as best we can the present to people in the future. And I I thought about this the other day, and I thought, if I were to explain a USB thumb drive to an alien, how would I do it? I think I'd quit halfway through. Um let's tune in and see what my imagination came up with. Well, it's a thumb drive. Well, why is it called a thumb drive? Well, because it's about the size of a thumb. And why is the larger version called a hard drive? Well, because is it harder than a thumb? No, nope, not harder. So your naming system is arbitrary. You know, something like that. That's how what I expect. You get the idea. Now it's been said that one way to tell that someone truly knows what they're talking about is that they can explain it simply and well to both people who are familiar and to people who aren't so familiar. And there is a process to explaining things, and it is incredibly time-consuming at first. And I will I will tell you at least what I personally have done. I've personally documented every single step for hundreds, if not thousands, of operations in a manufacturing company. And by that, I mean every single step. Every single step that it takes to run a huge metal stamping machine, including all of the safety steps and you know what you do with the part when you're done with it. From that to how to put a phone call on hold and transfer it to another place. I've documented absolutely every single one of those things and every single step that's involved. And I'll I'll give you an idea of the scope of it. Imagine uh you're making a cup of coffee and you've never made a cup of coffee before. Okay, I can count at least a hundred individual steps or choices that you would have to make to make that cup of coffee. And and some of these include why why are you making coffee at all? Do you want coffee to keep you awake? Do you want coffee that isn't going to keep you awake? These are decisions you have to make before you do it. You have to choose the type and the roast and the grind of your coffee. And you may have to grind it if you've chosen to buy coffee that isn't ground, and there are reasons for that. There's so many types of coffee makers out there, too. You gotta pick one. And there are obvious massive differences between a French press and a drip coffee maker and a Keurig. And then there are the operating instructions for the each one of those makers themselves. How much coffee do you use? Uh, are you pouring things or does it pour things? Or where do you pour them? How much? You gotta measure it, you gotta move things around, you gotta push buttons. You have to have safety in mind if you're using a stovetop or something plugged into the wall. You get the idea, right? We tend to forget that we do or that we choose most of those things because they've become automatic, they've become familiar. And it is important, I think, to sometimes realize that you are doing a lot more than you think. A simple thing really is almost never simple. Or, you know, to put it in a way more people might understand, a simple thing is never so simple that you can't complicate the hell out of it. Right? Most technology only feels simple because somebody already learned the complicated parts for us.

SPEAKER_07 31:22

It's alive. It's

When Pants Become Evidence

SPEAKER_07 31:28

alive. In the name of God. I know what it feels like to be God.

SPEAKER_02 31:36

The man who burst into Santa Barbara savings and loan demanding money on March 1st, 1990, left few clues behind. Like most bank robbers, he wore masks to obscure his facial features. But it wasn't long before federal investigators believed they found their man, James D'Ambrosio. When he went to trial, D'Ambrosio was found guilty. A verdict reached in part by evidence that appeared to implicate him. And one key exhibit was his blue jeans. The FBI compared clothes, including the denim jeans worn by the robber to clothes in D'Ambrosio's possession, that were found during a search of his residence. An expert witness for the agency testified that specific identifiers on the jeans, including wear marks, creases, and faded material, affirmed that they were the same pair. So something like a denim fingerprint. And it helped the jury in their decision. D'Ambrosia would not be the only defendant to have their fate decided in part by their distinctive pants, though. And while some believe in forensic gene science, others have cast doubt on whether it's reliable enough to take them out of their Levi's and put them into orange jumpsuits. But law enforcement has always used the evidence left behind in a crime to identify suspects and prosecute cases. Though fingerprints aren't always left behind. And this has necessitated novel techniques. In 1985, police discovered a dead body with a grasshopper nearby. The insect was missing a leg, and to their surprise, a suspect's pants had a grasshopper leg stuck in the cuff. The body and the leg were a match for each other. Of course, it helps when there's visual evidence of a crime being committed. When security cameras became more commonplace at banks in the 1960s, they captured footage of robbers. Some wore clothing that sported distinctive stains. But it wasn't that often that any definitive conclusions could be drawn because you know picture quality wasn't all that great. Unless it was a really egregious sort of mark. And while camera resolution is still an issue, today it's gotten a lot better. I mean, they're doing 4K at the bank, you know that, right? They gotta be. And that's pretty good. So indeed, though, James Dambarozio was not convicted solely on his choice of genes. In mounting its case, the prosecution also showed that four of the eight tellers there were able to state with confidence that they could identify the robber's voice. So, I mean, there you go. And somewhere out there, there is a law enforcement professional whose specialty is literally looking at pants. And isn't that the kind of thing that makes you hopeful about humanity?

SPEAKER_01 35:12

It's 106 miles to Chicago. We got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it.

SPEAKER_02 35:21

Okay, so I got

Matchbooks As Tiny Time Capsules

SPEAKER_02 35:22

to looking through stuff again, and I found some stuff, believe it or not. And it reminded me a lot of what we're talking about here. Things that have always been like right in front of you. Just you don't really notice. I mean, in this case, sometimes you'd notice, at least back in the day. What I've found in the house is we have uh a collection of matchbooks. Which is really quite interesting because um they used to absolutely be everywhere because everybody smoked. I mean, back in the day, uh, you know, when I used to host my old-time radio programs, I was often shocked to hear cigarette commercials talk about being healthful and good for you. Come on. But it's something something that they said. Or if you listen to uh occasionally one of the uh like let's go to the lobby or intermission kind of things that I will put into the show here, and they talk about the nutrition and uh and all that stuff of this food in the uh in the stand in the snack bar. Come on. There's no nutrition there. There's no nutrition in that ice cream bar that they're talking about. Give me a break. But I mean, okay, yeah, technically there is, but uh, it's not really the nutrition you really kind of you want. Okay, it's not the kind you want nor need. But anyhow, so there's that. There's all kinds of interesting things, but I found these I found these matchbooks. And they're crazy. And um some people, some people love this stuff, some and I don't even know. I mean, they've just been kind of in little boxes and stuff around here. Now, I got one right here close to home. It's the Hyannis Yacht Club, and uh, well, you know, and on the back it says private club.

SPEAKER_04 37:31

Ooh.

SPEAKER_02 37:33

Well, I've been uh I've been a member of that private club. It's uh it's a nice place to go, you know, and you uh it's it's easy to get into uh because there's you know there's not huge lines. There, you know, it's really it's really pretty great. And we also uh Ann and I belong to the uh Dennis Yacht Club, which sounds like a real big deal, but it's not, it's it's what's called a barefoot yacht club. So yeah, people have boats and they and they teach how you know boating to kids and stuff like that, and they have a tennis court and they've got a little restaurant and a bar there, but it's all on a big piece of sand, and no one goes there wearing uh you know a tie or anything close. I mean, you might find some Tommy Bahama around there, but you know, most people are in flip-flops and and shorts and and whatever. Uh the guys, if they're wearing a shirt, you know, might be in a Tommy Bahama. But anyway, it's that kind of a place. And we uh and we, you know, we love going there, but it's uh it's not fancy, right? So yeah, members of the yacht club. Okay, thank you very much. I mean, that's kind of that's kind of cool. But the yacht club is still there, both the Dennis Yacht Club and the Hyannis Yacht Club. My point is is that these matchbooks are kind of a um they're a time capsule in a lot of ways because many of these places no longer exist. Now, here's another one that does. This is also in Dennis, uh, near where I live. It's it's the Red Pheasant Inn. It's uh it's got new owners now. Um, and it's being overhauled and expanded and everything, which is really kind of nice, and it's now being called just the pheasant. But that's a wonderful place. So, and uh by looking at this matchbook, it uh has the phone number on there, but it doesn't have the area code, so it kind of helps you date a little bit how how old that thing might be. It's really it's pretty interesting. Um, we go, let's see, we go from uh Cape Cod to New York City to Vivolo. Is that still there? I don't know. At 140 East 74th Street in New York City. But this absolutely uh, let's see, any matches taken from it? Yeah, I think that someone snagged the whole first row of matches out of there. That's pretty rude. Um here's one for the deservedly famous The Assembly Steak and Fish House. For your special party or function, whatever the occasion. Banquet, anniversary, business meeting, theater. Leave the details to us and be a guest at your own party. We can accommodate up to 500 people. This at 16th, 16th West 51st Street in Rockefeller Center. Are they still there? I wonder. Someone let me know. That would be that would be interesting. Uh let's see. Here's another one in New York. Rossini's Bay Bridge, Brooklyn, 8712 Fourth Avenue. I wonder if that's still there. Because if it is, it sounds like a place I'd want to go to. Uh, specializing in northern Italian cuisine, they've got a place in Brooklyn and in in the city. Huh. On Fourth Avenue. And on East 38th Street. Okay, well, this is all very fun. Let's see. We've got Paletti's on 84th. A Doral Hotel, the Tuscany on 39th Street, just east of Park Avenue. Is that still there? I don't know. Let's find out. The Jockey Club. Now that's not in New York. That's in Miami, I think, right? Yep, Biscayne Boulevard in Miami. How about that? This is a very fancy Lame uh matchbook here, very shiny gold. Okay, cool. Let's see what else we got here. I mean, it's it's amazing to me because what happened at these places? Were was Anne there? Were her parents there? Were these just left by a friend who came over to the house and you know, lit up a smoke and left his matches on the coffee table? I don't know. Here's one for you. Tony's and Tony's wife. 150 East 55th Street in New York. Fine food, fine service. And you can call them at El Dorado 54506. So that's what I'm telling you. Someone left one match in this matchbook. I'm glad they did because I have this matchbook now. That's really kind of cool. Let's see, roses, home cooked Italian food. That uh that was quite a I never went there, but I know roses and I know of it, and lots of places have been in that same spot since. And uh, I wish I could have gone there while she was while she was still there. Let's see. Solfamboka restaurant, New York City, between Madison, or Madison between 33 and 34. Okay. They're open for lunch and dinner, folks, and they have a cocktail hour, and they're also featuring fine northern Italian cuisine. So I don't know. You know, anybody want directions to these places? Let me uh let me let me know, and I'll I'll give you the addresses. The Cafe Carlisle on Madison Ave and at 76th in New York. Anyone? I think this is a brand new matchbook. No one's even taking a match out. Of this one. Ooh, no, that's we're talking fancy there. And I've got two of them. Oh, but someone took one out of the first book, so you know. Someone's got to come along and mess with things. However, let's take a look at the creme de la creme of the matchbooks we have here at the house. Part of the uh part of the semi-permanent collection. They're uh they feature the Meridian Hotel in Paris, and on the other side, uh the red, white, and blue or the blue, white, and red symbol of the Concorde in Air France. I got a few complete matchbooks from them. And also I think Anne got this on one of her trips over there on the Concorde. A uh pen. Pen set. I don't know if it's pen and pencil. It might be pen and pencil. I think it is. From Cross. It's really very nice. It's really very cool. And smart Concorde on the pen and you know, on the box and everything. My point is, none of that stuff is out there anymore. At least most of it isn't. I saw the very last flight of the very last Concord. It didn't really have any passengers on it. It was flying to uh the Boeing Air and Space Museum in Seattle, and it flew over the building that I was in, and we knew it was coming. So a bunch of us went outside and waved at it as it went overhead. That was really kind of cool. It's one of those things, you know, that uh if you can do it, do it because it's it's not important, but it's fun. And you should have some fun. And then you also have a story. Like, hey, I saw the last flight of the last Concord. It's very cool. That is a great story. And it doesn't have to be a lot more than that, because there isn't a lot more than that, right? The plane flew overhead and then it went and landed, and now it's part of a museum. Okay, thank you. That's fine. I'm good with that. But these these matchbooks help us remember things. And that was that's one way to help us remember. But

Museums As Living Science

SPEAKER_02 46:40

but who really does? Who does help us remember? I mean, we have we have things like museums, they help, right? I mean, most people, most students visit museums, they're they're observers, right? They walk through the exhibits and read the cards and admire the fossils and the artifacts and the specimens, and then they move on, you know, or painting or whatever, and they move on to the next room. And what often remains invisible is everything that is happening behind that glass. Because behind it, there are scientists that are identifying specimens, researchers asking new questions, curators deciding on how they're going to tell the story, and which discoveries deserve attention. And all of that begins right there in that hidden space. Through a conversation with Manchester Museum's curator of Earth Science Collections, David Gelshorpe, students are invited behind the scenes of a scientific institution to explore a question that reaches far beyond museums. When many people hear the word scientist, they imagine laboratories, I know I do, uh, experiments and absolute cutting-edge technology. But museum creation is not normally part of that conversation. But museums are among the world's largest centers for scientific inquiry. Their collections hold evidence of Earth's history, biological evolution, environmental change, human discovery. Every object there has a story, and every specimen represents a question that is waiting to be explored or divulged. David shares the history and purpose of Manchester Museum, and students begin to see that museums are not simply places that store information, but they're places where the knowledge itself gets organized, interpreted, protected, and shared. And that experience transforms a museum visit from a passive sort of, hey, let's look at stuff encounter into a real investigation about how science itself works. And it matters because we live in an age where information is abundant. It's overwhelming, in fact. Everyday new discoveries, images, videos, ideas, they're created faster than anyone can consume them. If everybody was trying to do it all at once, they couldn't. But not everything can be saved. Not every story is documented, and not every discovery really deserves attention. That's why museums are important. Curators, researchers, archivists, scientists, they're they're like the stewards of the knowledge, and their work helps societies preserve the evidence that that should be preserved and protect cultural and scientific heritage and ensure that you know future generations can continue learning from the past. Because I'll tell you what, we're we're not done. I mean, even the stuff that they feel they have thoroughly researched now, one day down the road, they're gonna they're gonna take another look at it and say, oh, wait a minute. You know, like they did at Caracol. 1992, they're digging around and they stopped to go do something else. And 30 years later, they go back to that spot and find their biggest discovery yet. It's pretty amazing. And for students exploring future careers, this experience expands the definition of what a science pathway, right, can look like. Because science is not only about making discoveries, it's about protecting them and organizing them and getting the information out to people and helping other other people understand why it matters. And it's important because these are the places we need these people who are interested, who who love these things. We need museum curators, we need earth scientists, paleontologists, uh archivists, people who manage collections, um science communicators, technical writers that can, you know, write this stuff that the communicators need to get out there. Research scientists, all of it, conservation specialists, all of those people. Because what connects all of those things isn't a degree or a job title, it's all about curiosity. Because each one of those roles begins with a desire to understand the world more deeply and to help other people do the same. Curiosity is the driver, it's the force behind discovery. But information doesn't preserve itself. You need people to protect it, you need people to write it down, you need people to make sure that what's been written down stays where people can access it and know what it says. And then you take science and it becomes meaningful when facts are connected to context and interpretation and connect with human understanding. What do you think? I guess it's getting time to wrap up the show, but um while we're while we're doing that, uh let's talk about what we learned this week. I don't know about you, but um I got a bit of more of an understanding that maybe the greatest discoveries out there aren't the things that we haven't found yet. But maybe they're sitting in an attic or a desk drawer or in an archive, in the basement of a museum or pockets. Maybe they're hidden beneath jungles. Maybe

What We Miss And Why It Matters

SPEAKER_02 54:10

they're hidden beneath assumptions. Maybe they're hidden in a drawer of pickles beside a Missouri Highway. I don't think the question is always what are we looking for? Sometimes the question is what have we been looking at all along without really seeing? I'm gonna leave you with this question. What's the most interesting thing you've ever found that everyone else has overlooked? Leave a comment and let me know because I would genuinely love to hear these stories. Next week we're gonna talk about perception and reality. How we know what we know, how we often fool ourselves and why sometimes seeing isn't believing. And until then, keep asking questions. Keep being curious, keep looking for the things hiding in plain sight. And to make that a little easier, let's all put a light on.

SPEAKER_03 55:28

There's my new star in heaven tonight, tonight.