Elements

**Jad Abumrad** (0:11)
Radiolab, from WNYC. I'm Jad Abumrad.

**Robert Krulwich** (1:25)
I'm Robert Krulwich.

**Jad Abumrad** (1:26)
This is Radiolab. And today, Elements.

**Kent Myers** (1:30)
Yeah. I carried your oxygen, and you walked beside me through the lobby commenting on the decor when you needed to stop for breath.
By the ocean of breath twice, I remember, I carried your oxygen. It was heavy, a bleak alloy, steel.

**Jad Abumrad** (2:10)
This Hour is a collaboration with poets, like the ones you heard and will hear more of.

**Robert Krulwich** (2:15)
Musicians.

**Jad Abumrad** (2:16)
Reporters.

**Robert Krulwich** (2:16)
And of course, the Periodic Table of Elements.

**Jad Abumrad** (2:20)
Speaking of which, our producer, Soren Wheeler, whose sodium-sparked brain conceived this entire show, he will lead us off.

**Soren Wheeler** (2:29)
So this one starts with a story I heard from Jamie Lowe. She's a writer in Brooklyn. And at the heart of this story is this particular 24-hour period in Jamie's life that she is uneasy about.

**Latif Nasser** (2:41)
Pav, let's just set it up for one second. So what are we about to watch?

**Jaime Lowe** (2:44)
I'm not actually exactly sure where it starts, but we're about to watch, I think, the night before Valentine's Day, 2001

**Soren Wheeler** (2:53)
I eventually convinced her to sit down with producer Latif Nasser and sort of just walk us through the tape.

**Latif Nasser** (2:58)
Go for it. You're in control there with the space bar.

**Jaime Lowe** (3:00)
All right.

**Jaime Lowe** (3:03)
Yeah, I'm on?

**Jaime Lowe** (3:04)
You're on.

**Soren Wheeler** (3:08)
The video starts, it's nighttime. Jaime and her friend Mike, he's the one filming there outside his apartment in Brooklyn and the camera is pointed at a bunch of high school students who were just walking by.

**Jaime Lowe** (3:18)
So what's your deal?

**Mike Ryan** (3:19)
Tell me, so you want to be an actress, right?

**Mike Sunich** (3:21)
Yeah.

**Leanne Lantos** (3:22)
What tell me you need to tell them?

**Mike Ryan** (3:27)
Hell yeah, really?

**Mike Sunich** (3:29)
That's so cool.

**Jaime Lowe** (3:29)
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. That is my enemy.

**Mike Sunich** (3:33)
Thou art thyself though not a Montague. What's Montague?

**Jaime Lowe** (3:45)
Somehow I'm like egging them on to recite it. This is the part that, wait, you can't see I'm screaming.

**Soren Wheeler** (4:02)
Camera eventually turns to Jaime. She's sitting on the stoop. A huge curly hair, wide eyes, and she starts to sing the kids a song.

**Jaime Lowe** (4:17)
Even if I were.

**Jaime Lowe** (4:19)
I was pretty convinced that I was like a great singer and rapper.

**Ben Lilly** (4:22)
She likes to sound her own voice.

**Latif Nasser** (4:25)
Wait, do you sing a lot in?

**Jaime Lowe** (4:27)
No, never. I am not a singer.

**Mike Ryan** (4:35)
It was fun to watch people react to her. She made people really happy wherever she went.

**Jaime Lowe** (4:39)
Do you guys live here?

**Mike Ryan** (4:40)
We went to flea markets and she would talk to people and she would pull this spark out of them. It just felt like New York loved her.

**Soren Wheeler** (4:48)
That's Mike Ryan, guy holding the camera. He'd only met Jaime just three weeks earlier, not long after he moved to New York, and they pretty much instantly became friends.

**Mike Ryan** (4:57)
She was so positive.
As I recall, she's talking to some little kids on a stoop. But then that next four or five hours was pretty defining.

**Jaime Lowe** (5:13)
Mike's apartment, I think.

**Latif Nasser** (5:14)
You're just walking around.

**Jaime Lowe** (5:16)
In a bra and open dress, sparkly red bra and plastic bag.
On the stomach. Belly dancing. You might have to shield your eyes like this.

**Soren Wheeler** (5:30)
Fast forward about four hours.

**Jaime Lowe** (5:33)
That's Mike. He's sleeping. Oh, boy.
Good morning. It's Valentine's Day, 2001 Good morning.
That's kumquats and avocados. The kumquats I picked with my grandpa in the kumquat tree about three or four days ago. That's true. There's three breakfast bars.

**Latif Nasser** (5:55)
What is all that stuff on the cutting board?

**Jaime Lowe** (5:58)
They're cut up power bars.

**Jaime Lowe** (6:00)
From the present I gave you, it's hiding the cup of wine that we're going to drink.

**Jaime Lowe** (6:04)
And a cup of wine, of course, at 7.4 in the morning.

**Mike Ryan** (6:08)
So do you need a nap or anything at noon or do you just keep pumping?

**Jaime Lowe** (6:14)
Oh, you poor Mike.

**Mike Ryan** (6:15)
So, Jaime, what's going to happen today?

**Jaime Lowe** (6:18)
Today, I'm going to contact MTV to debate Gore, Bush, Nader or Roth. And Fidel Castro, yeah, he's an amazing man.