FRIENDS. LATIF AND I ARE ABOUT TO INTERVIEW THE SCIENTIST WHO SHOWED THAT EVOLUTION KEEPS MAKING CRABS. From separate, unrelated species, the crab shape KEEPS evolving, almost like an ideal form. Evolution wants a crab. Got any Qs? Big or Small?
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Lulu Miller
@lmillernpr
Co-Host of Radiolab. Host of Terrestrials. Co-founder of NPR’s Invisibilia. Mom. Science nerd. Author of national bestseller "Why Fish Don't Exist.” 
Lulu Miller’s Tweets
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My 4 yr old: are crabs happy? Do crabs have friends?
My wife: does this mean there aren’t actually any different species on earth and instead we’re just all at different points on our way to Crab?
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Proposed sequel to On The Origin of Species: “On the Destination of Species.” And then you open the book and it’s just a centerfold of a crab.
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Recently moved outta this one but she was purdy
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once upon a time this girl wanted to write a book that maybe tied up a few of the very loose ends in her head, today that book comes into being. I‘m sure the bad reviews and hate are soon to follow but for this little moment, I’d like to give her a pat on the back.
Ya did it pal
Roxane Gay’s great new project includes “publishing an emerging writer twice a month... I define emerging writer as someone with fewer than three article/essay/short story publications and no published books or book contracts...
All essays will be paid a flat fee of $2,000.” twitter.com/rgay/status/13
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Some professional news:
(and a supes professional photo to accompany it)
my terms for moving to chicago were this: my wife has to plan us a tropical vaca every February we live here. Tomorrow morning, on the way to the airport, I find out where we are going.
I normally don’t post personal pics here but yesterday my son touched grass for the first time and I thought today could use a little
guys guys guys. the 10 year old girl on my block just informed me that she texts with a 5 YEAR OLD, who is preliterate, + exclusively uses emojies to communicate. WTF? Have any linguists studied this phenomena + written weighty treatises about it? i want to know everything 🎋🐬🍣
🌳 🌳 🌳 🌲 🌳 🌳 🌳🌳🌳🌳 🌳🌳 🌳🌳 🌳 🌳🌳🌲🌲🌳🌳🌳
Woa, just heard a draft of the Radiolab dropping on Feb 10 and all I can say is, tree-lovers, yew are gonna love it.
🌳 🌳🌳 🌳 🌳🌳🌲🌲🌳🌳🌳🌲
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Big Feelings over here.
10 years ago last month, first put our heads together at to incubate an idea for a show that took emotions seriously. That tracked how feelings/beliefs move through space + heads + change politics, technology, economy, medicine, etc 1/6
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Friend at @NPR says the network is canceling all of its seasonal #podcasts including @NPRinvisibilia , @Roughly, and @LouderThanARiot amid staff layoffs forced by budget shortfall
For the last decade, I have been working on a book.
Today, it has a cover.
Yes, Jad is stepping aside.
The gratitude I feel for how he changed my life as a listener, reporter + human lives beyond words. But +I tried explaining what this means for the future of
Statement: tinyurl.com/4n3c3zhk
TLDR: We'll try not to [bleep] it up
In honor of pride month, wanted to share this fortuitous moment in which the universe gifted us with a perfect rainbow under which to take a queer family photo. And every last family member was into it!
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That’s the line that killed me. Thanks for getting that.
New essay out today. It is about watching my son lose the skill that made him so good at dealing with chaos.... as said chaos mounts all around him. And us. Read it quick, while we’re still here !
🔥 🌪 🦠
WFDE at an airport bookstore!
Stealth signed their last copy. LAX. Terminal B. Book Soup.
😉
😢 my weird little fish book has always been so hard to describe but this one of the best encapsulations of what I’d hope a reader would find inside.
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This extraordinary book! I thought I’d read about David Starr Jordan, who identified and categorized hundreds of fish species. But this book is so wonderfully about questioning categories, loving mistakes and revisions, and being open to truths that shake up what we’ve believed
“In the future, [Zaila] Avant-garde dreams of being an NBA coach, or working with NASA, or perhaps pursuing something with neuroscience, a topic she learned about while listening to the NPR podcast ‘Invisibilia.’”
🤩🥰🤓 🐝 🥳
❤️ ❤️ nola.com/gambit/news/th
Another shout out to chemistry professors:
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What did we do after work this Friday evening? Learn the Rihanna Super Bowl choreography. 
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why do i not have a podcast called homophones where i call my fave gays and talk about language?
Hearing that line on what happened to be my 40th birthday was… 🫶
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"Ladies, don't let anyone tell you you are ever past your prime." - Michelle Yeoh #Oscars
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My dad off to teach his last class today. 50 years after teaching the first one. I am very proud of him. (Even though he’ll never see this as he eschews all social media, cell phone usage, and most technology unless it involves helping him discover the structure of ion channels)
Over the last year, I fell down a rabbit hole that ended up tumbling me through one the biggest paradigm shifts I've experienced in my four decades on this planet.
Today, I share it with you.
I hope you, squawk, enjoy.
I’m not sure I’m supposed to say anything about this yet but (now that it’s August 1st I can officially say that) NEXT MONTH I’m releasing a special project in the Radiolab Universe and I’m not sure I’ve ever been so excited about a thing. 🌱
👀still can’t quite believe this but Stanford has chosen Why Fish Don’t Exist as one of their Three Books to force incoming frosh to read. Alongside 👑 👑+ (a movie!) by
So honored, so excited for great convos to come. Thank you,
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some of you never had a phase where you dabbled in crossing your sevens and it shows
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some of you never had a phase where you dabbled in pronouncing the t in often and it shows
apparently river water sometimes freezes into a star and i just thought your monday might need to know that.
(as found by my pal Juliana Daughtery)
omg
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This sort of came up in the interview but from the worm perspective.
This question keeps popping up from unrelated people, making it—perhaps—the crab of questions? 🦀
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Flying. Sometimes you sit next to a dud, and sometimes you sit next to a 70 year old postmaster named Dwight, who writes Christian romance novels on the side. “From the male perspective”
Two chapters in and this book is perfect. Great gift for the nature lovers, the thalassophiles, the queers, and/ or the essay lovers in your life. Or just, ya know, your own broken self.
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Very exciting news.
is hiring. We are looking for someone to bring their weirdness, their warmth, their worldview, their skepticism, to help us make all kinds of new stories.
Please share with your networks.
jobs.jobvite.com/newyork-public
Wow. Check out this rebel annotation of historical signs in Muir Woods. Turns out the revisions/post-its/caution tape were done by parks staff themselves
🔥
Photos captured by WNYC's ever curious and alert
Halp. What book should I read over the holiday. Want to reallly fall into something.
So zombie-ed at the TSA part where u put all the things in bins, take of shoes take of jacket, I almost took off my pants
Wife: There should be a word for the unsettled/enui feeling you get when you finish a good book but haven’t started a new one yet.
Any ideas, website?
the only reason i feel okay in this moment is because of THIS TEAM. who will not just keep the fire going but make it roar.
would it be a cool writing exercise to make students describe the sky every day of the semester? Keep a little sky journal with an entry for each day. Train observation, metaphor. Maybe I’d just like to read the answers, scanning for proof of shared experience, or change.
I know it might be hard to tell but one of these pumpkins is a baby.
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three weeks ago on a layover in charlotte i got a pedicure and the nail technician said "not caring what people think about you is a weapon" and i can't stop thinking about it
We couldn’t find any patches of the “lesbian seagulls” from the 1970s so we went ahead & made our own! It can be yours now for the small price of throwing a few dollars a month our way.
If you sign up this month, you’ll get the patch!
Here’s how: members.radiolab.org
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Hello. Hi. So for many years I’ve been quietly obsessed with You’re Wrong About. It was a dream to come on this week. And I was not prepared for the SUCKER PUNCH that brought at the end. Complete with music. Complete with feels.
🌈 🏝️
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NEW EPISODE! Fly with us, lesbian seagull. This week @Radiolab’s @lmillernpr brings us a story of queer nature and scientists in denial, featuring seagulls, penguins, rams, swans, dolphins, and—maybe the gayest animal of all—humans. yourewrongabout.buzzsprout.com/1112270/130265
A thing that just happened. While battling with my editor on how to render a tricky section about why some philosophers think chairs don’t exist, the chair I was sitting on.. spontaneously broke!
WHAT DOES IT MEAN!??
Also. IT IS SUPER HUMILIATING TO HAVE A CHAIR BREAK UNDER YOU
Running while visibly pregnant:
-men question if u should be
-women slap u five
I don't think anyone likes the word "podcast."
We at r working on a show abt names + call upon the poets, branders, deep souls, old souls, young souls, soulless souls, linguists, pun machines, audiophiles, audoreviles, + word nerds among us to suggest some better terms:
Three years ago, I published a book about why fish don’t exist. Today, I publish a radio episode about why crabs keep existing.
wow just received an email from a high school librarian whose e-signature was
Currently Reading: [and then the book he was reading]
Classiest thing I’ve ever seen and I’m def gonna steal it.
Kinda wanna start a tumblr where gays post childhood photos to scold parents for being AT ALL surprised that they ended up gay.
Exhibit A:
My secret outdoorsy skill is knowing that u can order pizza to most campsites
Uh today’s Daily was simply brilliant. 8 year old asks the REAL questions about impeachment, and the conversation is deeper than any I’ve heard.
Also, dolphin analogies.
🐬
Please make Leo a recurring guest.
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On today's Daily: something ......different! A third grader's guide to the impeachment. Meet Leo, an 8-year-old who taught @nytmike and I a lot about how to think about the biggest story of the year: nytimes.com/2019/11/13/pod
heavy lil sigh.
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Dear listeners, some sad news. Bc of NPR's recent layoffs, we've learned our next episode will be our last. We’re gutted & we’ll miss you. Stay tuned for our final episode & thank u for listening all these years <3
tinyurl.com/4kz5e3zz
What a week. Sending love and solidarity to my NPR colleagues. I hope you can find some rest this weekend and trust in your value. A lot of us already have our claws out and will be trying to snap you up.
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hi friends. i am looking for stories where something pretty darn confusing happened that just has never made sense. extra points if a little scary or surreal. DM me with deets. For possible use on radio.
(P.S. NO ATTEMPTS WILL BE MADE TO SOLVE IT FOR YOU. SORRY)
Baby names bae won't let us do:
Kai
Clyde
Fern
Ginger
Roxanne
Bonnie
Lee
Take them. They're yours. They're beautiful. I'm crying. It's fine.
Radiolab let me crash their episode on horseshoecrabs and I can’t tell u how fun it was and what mysterious places we ended up. Hint. Vampires. Necrophiliacs. Orgies.
wnycstudios.org/story/baby-blu
for anyone who thinks I over-romanticized my wife in my book she just rollerbladed on gravel
🚨 Really excited to say, Radiolab's posted two more jobs. Producer + Associate Producer (plus Editor/Producer, which we posted). You can read about them here. 🚨
Come make strange, beautiful radio with us, + help push it to be stranger, more beautiful.
jobs.jobvite.com/newyork-public
Just wanted to say that the dropping on Friday gives me, a nihilist who does not believe in a moral arc bending toward justice, a tiny tiny sense of hope.
dear son, forgive me, for i have sinned. all quarantine i have been cutting your hair semi-decently but tonight I got a little too sure of myself and now you look like anne heche circa 1998
Good news:
The paperback of Why Fish Don't Exist comes out 4/6 + includes a TREASURE MAP into the world beyond categories.
Better news:
I convinced my one-time real estate agent, Luke, to send me his fish-scale jumpsuit to wear to the virtual launch.
PRAY IT FITS
DEETS TO COME
“There is dignity in allowing Ourselves to be more than the clinical language that describes how our minds work.” Stirred & moved by this breathtaking essay by Naomi Jackson.
Now I want to read everything by her. H/t in Best American Essays
I have a new piece on the feed today.
Listen only if you are ready to be tugged through a sci-fi horror wormhole and end up, splat, in present-day reality.
wnycstudios.org/story/g-unfit
I think that… I think that Fleishman is in Trouble might be the best thing on tv? Here is how my friend described it and, having just finished it — I couldn’t agree more.
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Huge congratulations to @lmillernpr: #WhyFishDontExist is one of @audible_com's Top Ten Best Audiobook for 2020 AND the featured winner in their Memoir category! adbl.co/33Ld3gn. Sound on to hear an excerpt, read by Lulu herself!
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omg a kid just hit me with a water balloon from a third story window is my summer blessed
Hey. A lot is going on in the world.
And a lot has been going on in our smaller world of radio too. Over the last couple weeks, there have been a lot of conversations abt the tolerance of abusive behavior in our industry. I want to say clearly to all the people (mostly women)1/3
Had our first pediatrician appointment. She ordered us not to write thank you cards in our rare moments of down time. I shall follow this woman anywhere.
🚨SEEKING ESCAPE🚨
Have u found some tiny escape in your locked down life? A mountaintop? A riverbank? A tiny corner of the apartment? Maybe u crawl inside a poem or up a tree?
If u have a spot, wonders if you’d take us there by recording an audio postcard
Deets below
Pup has a skin thing called “hot spots” and the vet’s actual prescription was.... a t-shirt.
I take my binoculars with me on neighborhood walks now so, yes, I’m enjoying my forties
Tonight’s put down
Me: “Goodnight, baby, I love you.”
Son: “I love bulldozers and trucks.”
Many book tour things getting cancelled. Would it be.. lame/ fun.. to throw an online book launch? I do some live-scored reading with my musician pal & broadcast it live thru FB or other & u can ask questions direct. Would u “attend?” Would something make u more likely to?
Crabhive.
This ep drops Friday...
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FRIENDS. LATIF AND I ARE ABOUT TO INTERVIEW THE SCIENTIST WHO SHOWED THAT EVOLUTION KEEPS MAKING CRABS. From separate, unrelated species, the crab shape KEEPS evolving, almost like an ideal form. Evolution wants a crab. Got any Qs? Big or Small?
i have a new essay out today. it is about fear, and whether your job as a parent is to listen to, or ignore, it. it is a piece i have been working on since my kid was six weeks old, as the world unfurls new horrors. it does not showcase my prettiest parts.
woke up this AM, my bday, to see 50% of my book tour cancelled, opened box of homemade pottery from my dad to find this (pic1), walked out to find this (pic2), but did some shoddy parkour on playground & kid he looked at me like this (pic3), so all in all calling 37 a win (pic4)
The 2 min below describe the most shocking thing I learned while reporting the Helen Keller episode. Seeing it in ASL adds a new power, new meaning.
If you check out nothing else about this ep, check this:
🙏🏾🙏🙏🏿 to
just remembered I need to proof the pages of the paperback by tomorrow am, everything is fine, don’t worry.
one thing i love about being in a lesbian relationship is that, yes, you have your classic "#1 Mom" mug. But you also get to have a "#2 Mom" mug for those days when you're really kind of phoning it in.
Recently went to camp. We spent time as humans after only being zoom squares. It was special for so many reasons including that we met a random dude who said oh yah I know Radiolab, “It’s a show about some stuff you’ve heard about + some stuff you haven’t heard about.”
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Train Twitter. What do you think is the prettiest route in North America. Like a special one to take a train-obsessed kid on someday?