Me too. And there is this greenies. And I had this this brass Penny was that my father. And I was standing there I was playing it and that I was really suddenly something clicked I was like oh. That must Those are all the bridges this Williamsburg Bridge as a Manhattan Bridge there's the Brooklyn Bridge that's New York it's small now. And I'm looking at the Statue of Liberty and my grandmother Anastasia Panny came from Albania and they went to Ellis Island I could see my history there too and I was suddenly hit me like oh my goodness this is like a coral reef. You can't see the people but look at this beautiful structure to him . That in that there it was just the whole city. Whole. Nature. Everything. Was. Connected and spiritual the 1st time. And so skip decided to stay. For a while for a while all over the world people are now moving of course we know this from that country to the city at this point who will 2 years ago across this extraordinary benchmark that's physicist Geoff West where more than Hoffa very planet is now open on if the one percent yet not made us wonder the cow do cities work is there some deep organic logic that holds all these people together or is right or gentle era puts it presages just these tumors of people on the landscape. Jabil Ron I'm Robert Krulwich This is Radio Lab and our topic today sitting. In a new. Very So in talking about cities I almost want to turn to New York City with its kind of hard to know where to start because every city has its own its own unique feel. Like for instance let me just give you my own stupid example here so every time I go to St Louis to visit my Mom and Dad I'm on the plane I mean my own kind of groove and I step off the plane into the airport and it's just like with the 1st step. Just to hit this wall of something is different like you feel the difference in your bones because well that's the question is he there I'm here what gives the city its feel oh is this Mr Bobbsey This is Mr Bob Levey Mr Bob Levine is a professor of psychology California State University and he thinks the answer to that question is time time that each city warps time in its own unique way my cities are my subjects and he studied this idea for the past 30 years in all kinds of different ways we looked at things like percentage of people wearing watches how long to take bank tellers in each city to change a 20 dollar bill really yeah and then we we looked at talking speed really talking there we get on the phone. Call post offices and set seemed like something that would be available every place and make a standard request which tell me the difference between regular mail certified mail and heard mail Ok certified is what you just need someone to find then he says they calculate the number of syllables Perceptor regular mail order mail that Salt Lake City Utah $2.00 syllables per 2nd but if you want. Springfield Mass. Just $3.00 syllables per 2nd and this one 3rd. Not really sure where it's from because tape lost the id it could be Nashville. I only want to know. If you want to. And if it is National $2.00 syllables per 2nd. Spring feels like but the whole talking thing was just really a prelude for Bob It got him into what he's most known for and what we find most fascinating we actually looked up at walking speed walking because well what I would do is I would get into a new suit and I'm in Mumbai India when I'm fighting each young man in Thailand we have to put out a call to radio listeners everywhere. To help us repeat study Hey good morning radio I'm recording from Dublin and downtown Oslo Copenhagen I would get into a new city and step one I would scope out mean business and shop in your living room books telling me the whole street names to get out some street roll ups bring my red string 60 feet long 20 metres means I'm here with the safety please step 3 use that string to measure out the design I just have to rule out some good you taped to one end to the sidewalk and it would just make the Morse the form go undercover to get in the card or. You know act like you're in a paper for waiting for somebody to write myself a discrete plate sound pretty it's fine to use a stopwatch high ridges a stopwatch stopwatch the 1st watch is working ready. And all goes quiet the minute I want to start early and start stop on it this experiment was actually harder than you would think. A lot of people do things not very easy to do timing was an issue people trying to sell you the puzzle I don't need this you're showing look I just don't know pensions time can't go get. This. Done step by step. Step. Step. Step. Actually. It didn't sound like that at all they were in sync as you can imagine every city had its own. Separate steps every step that is there to say step step step to fit which on some level we knew but still the range was pretty amazing stuff toughened to 14.4 seconds 27 seconds Buchanan Liberia 13.8 when is Sarah's $12.00 Mexico City 10 point one seconds Copenhagen 1.5 seconds 11.7 poor claim to have sick Jerusalem just to break it down on the high end you've got step steps you're on it step step step step the Dubliner s. Issues 9.5 minutes temperance forced to take on average 10.76 seconds to cover 60 feet compare that to Buchanan Liberia step step step step step something that actually the head got a teen pink blouse whose walkers covered the same distance in about 21 seconds 21 seconds so if you don't think about it in football terms by the time the Dubliner has scored a touchdown right from you can lay Bierria is somewhere I guess around midfield. In this book I think cording Oblivion is if you do these under the same conditions same place you will get the same time these times don't change Dublin is always about this steps you're on it's step step step and you stand in Liberia is always around this. Step Manhattan is we found is right about here and usually the step with thunder step step step in pink though Dublin but not bad but why the consistency What is it what is it that makes that walking speed. Where does it come from you know I mean is anybody beating the drum how well can you change the walk say a bunch of us got together and decided that we were just going to buy 5 percent on a given day we are. Do it will you will notice the difference do we make the city. Or does the city make us thank you to our lockers doesn't win a fight it was stuff like yeah that done this or that I'm here I kill them in Copenhagen I don't care and Scotch for the Borg and they're essential Thailand for game of energy xico city and I'm in Mumbai markets know how to open an art and props also to Daniel Estrin and an assessment I. Needed they did say their names are in there Ok So getting back to that question I asked a 2nd ago why is it that cities develop a particular beat Yes I mean is it because the city does it to the people or the people do it to the city Yeah and we ran into a couple of guys who many least have the the start of an answer yes. A couple of physicists Eilean f.b.i. Named Jeffrey West and Lesia Betancourt This is Jeff rivers of the other side of the trail here as well cool there at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico and lots of bases nothing like the cities we just visit it's almost biblical that it's experience of. The blue skies a sort of make you break them put a menorah is good thing brave enough in fact to claim from their high desert perch . That these beaches the meter of every city that we've just been to actually has underneath it a kind of logic if you told me the average speed of walking in some city and seek our Rochester New York where people walk about this 60 feet in 12.67 seconds if you don't tell them Roger and just tell him the number of beats he will tell you the population is baby one of a quarter 1000000000 people actual population $1030000.00 people and the average wage about $60000.00 a year. Actual average wage $15580.00 Wow but that wouldn't have let me ask you a precise question Are you a 100 percent correct or you are saying something close to a 100 percent other things 80 percent but if you start with just the number of footfalls per unit of time they can tell you all kinds of other things about the same place I can tell you how much crime there is in the city income wages g.d.p. Number colleges restaurant fancy restaurant the theaters police patent still being produced cultural events per capita. Libraries and the number of Aids cases it's going to have this you really mean all of these things are related in a quantitative and I use the word predictive rational Are you saying that just from the number of footsteps for a given time that you can tell but can you tell me how many libraries there are yes tell me how many should expect how many things can you count when your. Infinite number but it's limited by the things for which there are data they've got data from the u.s. Census that's Jonah Lehrer he's written about Luis and Jeff and he's the one to kind of got us thinking about all that if they are from Japan and China they're from sociological surveys displayed on cell phones when they put all these numbers together they discovered a deep pattern called comes from the footnote not the footstep Lamie of in the footsteps are reflection of this deep and fundamental pattern that governs everything just one fact what is it you really want to know you know what is it size how many people live their size matters size is the largest determinant of all characteristics of a city they would say Tell me the size of the city and I can explain the vast majority of all these different variables that we can measure as a city scales up they say 100-002-2000 extension 00 1000000 to 2000000000. Everything about it all those things that they've been measuring they scale up to but they scale up into a very simple mathematical formula it does not matter New York has big skyscrapers and it's on the ocean and the. Rocky Mountains the San Francisco San Francisco Bay Wait a 2nd wait wait wait thank you I was with you right up until that last point I mean you go to the Midwest and it's landlocked and then you go to Fort City and it's one of your I mean that's a minor it matters but these actually are superficial effects and account for only 1020 percent of a variation what they're saying is that those specificities the the local history is in large part insignificant but it is completely overwhelmed by these generic laws of urban scaling that to me is a very interesting and surprising idea something because we don't think of cities like that at all no we certainly do not that's because you're not a physicist so you don't think you know abstractly in that regard well why should I because sometimes it can be very useful remember what these guys have done is they've just created a average profile for every size city so if you're 1000000 or 7000000 or 12000000 here's how many things you should have now you can ask Ok let's look specifically at that city and also is it over performing underperforming right so what are some cities that are over performing for their size of the large cities San Francisco is quite an innovative city New York's about average about. Terms New York's below average you're just roughly speaking the number of patents that should 1st saw you produce for example about twice as many patents as Boston we do. To produce many more given the size difference between About average because they're counting patents. I mean who may who do we don't have into this is one of the problems with their larger theory which is that you know the engine that they were lying on your data at the us census collectors so that's a real blind spot hounding fabulous if we ever can figure out a way to count fabulous because he has a point you're not taking into account what actually the experience of living in a place well what this theory. Is tell you about the essence of New York the New York ness of New York. So to speak the soul of the city and where does that come from. Who knows. I mean I think there's a broad question is well obviously it has something to do with lots of people being jammed into a tight space Vironment bumping into each other kind of people who moved there what the physicists we call human friction in that story you can't really tell in math but you can hear it takes Skip he gave producer Aaron Scott a tour of his block. In Brooklyn listen to who keeps into every day so he took us on this tour of the 1st place we went was this Jamaican body shop but it happens in cars. Pushing the specialist. I mean it's basically these you know West Indies Jamaican guys listening to records . And hip hop. Reggae know what I call economy. Like it's one place and across across the street from this is kinda. Hidden with the dogs Jewish cookie big. Number one from that the butcher that sells live goats and chickens and here are the goats and on the corners. I. Kind of crossed our church I was in every Sunday they give it up to God with this exceedingly enthusiastic band. A huddle at the window. And I think this is the best music to feel that deeply. And then across the street from that one is a mosque. It's beautiful inside the cross the street there's this big building and the proprietor of the space is 8 foot fetish film producers told me your feet Show me your feet he . Got Jamaicans supports such shoes in the fifty's spandex thesis. Set in gave warn me your feet on the same block absolutely for me that's the hammer the nails that's the wrong greedy and. 2 now on the take it home and assemble it into a song and when you heard his music did you hear all that stuff some of it is clearer than others. The sounds of the neighborhood like the reg Aton music the West Indies auto body shops he kind of takes them and then filters it through some device that makes it sound like fellows feel. Today that Aaron spoke with Skip was the day skip decided he's leaving New York City and he put in his notice which I guess makes his latest album Sonic New York kind of a Dear John letter to the city you can hear it on our website Radiolab dot org And Robert Viens book the one about walking in time stuff is called the geography of time more information about that too on our website Radiolab dot org Also you can subscribe to our podcast or. I'm a radio level listener from Calgary Alberta Canada Radiolab is supported in part by the Alfred p. Sloan Foundation and seek public understanding of science and technology in the modern world more information about Sloan at w.w.w. Dot Sloan dot org That's just so old calling from. Radiolab is part of progress but. By eating food the scientists have some good options from multiple As far as comparisons of say the boat. All on its funded progress but progress there. I'm Jeremy Hobson Amtrak c.e.o. Richard Anderson says some of the railroads 15 cross-country routes are not good for business everybody needs to understand those 15 routes take about a $1000000000.00 cash a year from our congressional grants a wide ranging conversation about rail travel with the head of Amtrak next time on here now Monday between 11 in the morning and one in the afternoon on k c l u n n Saturday Barbara 102.3 f.m. 1340 am has just it may seem it's really good to see it on the sidewalk k.c.l. You news 'd stories that expand your world this project is called so many libraries unsane their punctuation marks fabricated in a thin steel. That look sounds work free open air lending life with the I love it actual It's Malcolm that but k.c.a.l. You news on your radio on the case and when you tell your smart speaker to play k.c.l. You on the next fresh air actor David Harbor from the Netflix series stranger things he plays the skeptical police chief of a sleepy town besieged by supernatural events on the worst thing it's ever happened here was when an owl attacked Eleanor Gillespie's head because he thought that her hair was a nest and we remember New Yorker cartoonist again Wilson who died recently joined us fresh air for Monday between one and 2 in the afternoon also at 8 in the evening on Cape Cod and. I'm Robert Krulwich this is radio and our subject right now is city so far we've tried to pin down the character of a place with man or with a story or with music. But trying to take a snapshot of something that's growing and changing all the time and that feeling that Skip had on the rooftop like a city with. Maybe the city really is like a living. Will you know some boys that's exactly right there. All through growing think about it says Jeff west every day every minute in comes energy food trucks water people out goes garbage they key is Song Stories people energy and energy out energy energy that's just what a city needs to do says Jeff metabolize food so to speak because without butts organisms Susan Swan will simply have to track So how does a city stay alive what does agree the take for a city to grow all that question got me thinking about New York and led me to a place I've been wanted to go for a while. Think. Of the river a little bit. Where are you under ground up 200 feet underground. So this is the sound of one of the city's one of them I'm standing in it it's actually what you would imagine. Being. You know. Polished cement. It seems to go forever. So that basically that you might call it a smaller are very inside the city's circulatory system when this is online in a couple months it will pump up to 290000000 gallons a day if. Something like that which is an awesome thought in the literal sense to wait and see. When you walk through the streets of it and this is Catherine Dempsey from the Department of Environmental Protection is water tunnels are anywhere from 20800 feet below your feet and they just they're silently there and when you turn on your tan. You take a drink. Of water. You are basking in a daily convene. Yes that is born from Blood Sweat and death. To explain you really have to go back to a time when there were no tunnels this would be. 79900 or so around that time says historian Diane glue should New York's population was booming tripled and 20 years and you suddenly had 100000 people all getting their water from the same spot a large freshwater pond called the collect and they had pigs one on around by the hundreds and the chamber pots on the streets and there were livestock in Lower Manhattan at the time people had cows for milk and so when they died they had to do something with them so. Often she says they threw their dead cows and everything else in the pond the same pond they were drinking from right now. Not surprisingly as the city grew people got sick in 798 there was yellow fever epidemic killed a couple of 1000 people and cholera and typhoid city officials were like this has to change and as if to accentuate the point in 835 there was a huge fire the fire department rushes out to put out the fire but they can't it was in December and the rivers froze and they couldn't get water to the fires if you don't have water to fight the fire the city burns out it's pretty simple Yeah 700 buildings so that's our starting point a New York City that could not grow by the way the guy we just heard John checked on here he says sand og part of the long line of guys who blasted New York out of its poopy pawn phase and into his future here as you question why why you go. Well it should be clear tunnel plasters or earthmovers or something that's more or give any idea where that they came from comes in the dictionary it's very early and I love to look at people's faces when they ask me that night that's the answer this is scribe in Webster's dictionary as a laborer who digs or works in sand originals same hogs. These soft ground guys compressed air that's way to nothing to back up for a 2nd when the city decided to scrap the pond in favor of clean water from upstate it's faced a couple of challenges in this is also true when they decide to build the subway system namely nature like how do you for example build a tunnel under a river they were Santa x. Turn it down they don't. Really dug with what we call muck sticks shovels other rivers 506100 feet under the bottom over the river men with shovels excavating ground Snick Sokol I'm tunneling engineer generally it's a dark thing place. Now the obvious engineering problem is that the river bottom which is now above their heads is soft sand and silt some gravels How do you keep that from not falling on your head that's when compressed air started being used in basic ideas as an exit these huge pumps would basically pump air into the tunnels at such pressure that it would basically push the sealing up Exactly so the mud doesn't cave in on a compressed there are holes that thing from collapse and in on usually. The engineers on the shore had to get the pressure just right because if they didn't get this absolutely terrifying situation that is maybe the best cocktail party story ever we used to give an award we haven't given it many years as we call it the Marshall maybe a war. They were doing one of those tunnels to Brooklyn. The men are up in the face of the tunnel digging away. 'd very suddenly. There's a blow up in the face of the wall puncture hole develops tiny and 1st but it quickly becomes bigger and bigger until it's the size of sort of like an eye then a whole head in all the compressed air rushes into that hole it would be like you you shot a hole through an airplane only I would show Cats are flying into this whole lanterns shovels. Then a guy goes into the hole a guy yeah human being into the hole another guy in a 3rd the 3rd guy the most been the luckiest and hard at work this is an article from The New York Times as I struck the mud. That felt as if something was squeezing me tighter than it ever been squeeze before we blew through all of 60 feet of Mark. And through the roof. To the service pressure. Below it right up until. You tell me I was thrown about 25 feet above the water when I came out but I don't remember that. And he. Came back down and landed right alongside a police boat. In the water in the water so they took him to clean them up he went home he came to work the next day. That's why they gave him the award that's why the award is no I'm not kidding. But. In the early days no one kept track of how many people died building New York's tunnels the number it's probably in the thousands So wait this this right here this plucked or looking at this plaque was donated this is Richie Fitzsimmons He's the current head of the sand hogs union and we're standing in front of a big stone plaque with 2 dozen names also in memory of all the people that we lost in tunnels in New York City since 1070 you know since we started keeping records. Photos from other later he showed me a picture which really underlined the point it's a picture of him on his 1st press their job look at this is myself he's 19 huddled with 5 other guys in this crowded tunnel they're all black with soot and he points to each guy in turn dead dead dead dead had cancer still alive still alive if you ask any of the sand hogs why they do this. Mostly they'll tell you what we got to the city can't grow without its tunnels but you also get answers like this from chick he says when you're down there and it's pitch black you're just walking wallet and year $600.00 foot on the Manhattan you're approximately 30 its street is something you're in the middle of the greatest city in the world nobody even knows you exist nobody has a nobody. Just. Beautiful. Just that it's a we have place it's like being on a planet somewhere he says when he's literally in this rock that is half a 1000000000 years old he sometimes feels. Very humble here in the middle of the earth and you know this is you want to see nature it is that straw a romantic way of saying it and. There are human reality of it is here's Richie's take a member when you were a kid and they used to give you to and farms in the bay and farms were big. We are errands. If just so frickin many of them that if you got a squash if you if they got to use each other a step or 2 to keep that whole thing that's It doesn't sound very grand the way you put in reality our job is to conquer nature he says plain and simple we're builders human beings are builders and collectively. There's nothing that we can do. Toughen. Up Tobar 14th 8420 it was a huge celebration hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers line Broadway there was firing of cannons. And the ringing of church bells fireworks even and at the end of it all says Diana everybody gathered in City Hall Park and it turned a big fountain and. Water shot 50 feet into the air. New York City would never be the same now could finally be a city but here's where you start to wonder a little bit about the real legacy of cities what you see almost immediately after this moment according to Diane is that water usage skyrocketed suddenly and in your plumbing all the new buildings were me outfitted with water closets and kids were playing in the hydrants all day long and to make a long story short just 10 years later the city is out of water again so they get to build more tunnels and more and if you follow the water in those tunnels back up state you see the city is gobbling up reservoirs one after another doesn't switch minute had to kick people off that land the thing called eminent domain their villages would have to be bulldozed and burned cemeteries uprooted you see what's happening I mean you could see this city that we live in as a kind of monster just always hungry eat eat eat eat eat only the 2nd because like there is another logic available here like if you took all the people in New York City all those New Yorkers you know if you had every now been in New York City suddenly left New York City and moved to small towns all across America you would need a ton of resources to make that possible that's Jonah Lehrer again by the way so in a sense New York City saves lots of forests saves lots of water and the reason why well that takes us back to Jeff unleashes ideas about city Well I suppose because it all started years ago Jeff at the top. I was studying this time was living things let's go back to biology for a moment he looked at the huge variety of creatures and for each one he collected the data everything from its better balik rate men through it say all to quickly it breathes and he discovered something kind of fascinating about creatures as they grow bigger and bigger if you double the size of an organism you double the number of cells that need to be sustained with their 4 expect that the energy you need to supply would double you double the number of customers sort of speak yeah no no that is not the case instead of doubling it needs less energy per unit cell to sustain the whole organism so there is a kind of nervous way 2nd that means that the that the cell is somehow doing more with less but does it also mean though that an elephant cell somehow is more efficient and mouth cell that's correct and Jeff says the way they do that pretty simple they just move slower a process energy at a slower rate so if you take a mouse cell that lives in a mouse and does its work brings in resources spits at the waste being in my research spits out what it does this to kill or beat. But now says Jeff if you listen to an elephant. Means. It's obviously slower so it's using less energy. What does that have to do with cities turns out cities were kind of the same way in cities you see the same kind of efficiency when it comes to infrastructure electricity to length of road want a length of pipes length of electrical cable gasoline and how much gas is consumed is the point the bigger the city the less roads you need per capita what is per capita mean anyway so person per person the lesser. Cable lines you need per capita the most gasoline stations you need to convert to eccentric structural So every unit of pipe carries more water more sewage every line of electrical wire carries. Jeff does that mean then that if. If I move to a bigger and bigger city do I in a sense become greener the bigger the city I live in yeah that's a very interesting variation and this is where Luis And Jeff I think the case is still a little bit out and even John it gets complicated when you ask Are people more or less efficient this is when everybody starts to throw in all of these caviar and qualifications all the very well but then the. Equivocations and I do is in prognostications and depletions me let me just tell you what I think I think you'd better all right we all love to talk about how green we are we live in cities this is something everybody in the city talks about because we are because we we take the subway and the buzz we. Drive right the most energy can get in my day but listen me the analogy that you just gave me it does not work Ok you said that cells as they go from small bodies to big bodies slow down yeah well cities the opposite happens of course as cities get bigger each individual unit in that city moves faster so you don't know we speed up true we learn this earlier and this is not trivial Ok because as we speed up we bump into more people we have more ideas we invent new things we want more things we want more or more of your tastes new ideas more interactions more human friction more more choices yeah a better life that's what a city is all about I Is there anything wrong with that No not at all but there's all I'm saying is there's a cost to it that we don't like knowledge question Bettencourt did this back of the envelope calculation where it's long been known that a body at perfect rest of you lying your bed all day in a coma you will consume about 90 watts of electricity that's called your basic. If you're a hunter gatherer living in some tribe in New Zealand you will consume about $240.00 watts of electricity every day energy just simply to stay alive plus the energy you need to hug the government however if you are living in America the wattage required to drive your car run your computer make your clothes air conditioning being able to go to movies on and on and all of the various things that constitute a life if you add all those up your lifestyle requires about 11000 watts of electricity every day oh that's that's more energy than a blue whale requires Now some of you listening particularly if you're an engineer you may think wait a 2nd why you calling these watts when it's power through a system power through a human column Jools it's the technically correct word and they could be right when you want but the numbers are the same so let's just call them lots so one way to look at what cities have enabled us to do is basically live like 300000000 blue whales in America are you sure that cities are causing this development that begins and ends with cities and I can't assign it all to cities but that psychology of wanting more that the city psychology that's what people come to cities and then the lifestyle that grows up around that gets broadcast out on t.v. And radios in movies which city industries out into the country and if you just take a historical look at this like the last 300 years have seen more and more consumption right yeah and that trend says Joe it's grown in neat parallel with the growth of cities cities have enabled that kind of growth even if you a geyser right now we know that half the planet already is living in cities 80 percent of America so yes there are more people who agree with that more choices asking for more consumption more energy more more more more more even if that cities because they also are ingenious and they come up with all these new ideas maybe cities will solve the problem right now and yet someone somewhere in Calcutta is about to invent the super light bulb l a v do telephone pipe that will make it possible. For another 200 people to live together in peace harmony and beauty until the next round there. Isn't enough and loud howling from Norwich for much Radiolab supported by friends or why a new way to manage money apart order over to 6000000 people and it misses and there why then send and receive money internationally more as for why dot com Radiolab or on the app. Playing board games with friends or family is fun and can be more educational than you'd think What are the chance cards for the capitalists Oh this is a fun one your boss died but the new one acts in much the same way you begin to understand the problem is not a boss but a class of bosses political boardgames and The Secret History of Next Time On to the best of our knowledge from p r x. Sunday evening between 6 and 8 on k.c.a.l. You. Every weekday at the corner of Wall Street and Broad in New York City there is a ritual that takes place understanding where trends are going and working towards them feeding into them is part of what you do as you manage your brand but it we barrel for your journey of kind of repositioning our product I'm Molly Wood the tradition behind the New York Stock Exchange is opening and closing bells next time on Marketplace Monday at 3 pm Also at 6 30 in the evening on a.c.l.u. . This is Steve Inskeep when you roll out of bed bleary eyed and groggy if you're like me the 1st thing on your mind is getting something to wake you up so turn on the radio N.P.R.'s Daily News program Morning Edition has been working through the night to get you the news. It's essential to your morning is your cup of coffee so hit the ground running by listening to Morning Edition from n.p.r. News also live local news updates weekdays from when you wake up and throughout your commute on k.c.a.l. You and the k.c.a.l. Us up hey I'm Janet boom right I'm Robert Krulwich This is Radio Lab and I subject today is city and if cities are like organisms and one thing we should say about every organism that's ever been they die yeah they die so you would think cities would die you would but Jonah says no cities die very very rarely and they almost never die if there hasn't been a total total catastrophe physical catastrophe if you took 30 cities from the 1920 s. I can guarantee you all 30 of those red. Dimly selected cities would still exist on the map and the question is why why don't they die like every other social organization what is it about cities that gives them this crazy persistence that question led us to a place the by all measures should have died long ago a place called Centralia. Ok so we begin on the side of where we were on Route 61 in eastern Pennsylvania right this is bat by the way he's producer at Radio Lab The I know who penned his Thank you very much and he are waiting for this guy named Tom to meet up with their you Tom. They do it again so are you going to want to see it or just just now it is happy to be and we've asked Tom to show us around his town probably the best place to go up on the hill up there and look you know you can look over everything Ok you know you're. So we go in there with Tom we actually meet up with another time I was there a former postmaster so we now have 2 toms Tom very confusing any of the 4 of us stare down into a valley they used to have a town in it all the answers were all it was all streets with homes on them all over now Centralia is just trees right down here was the. Time to point to some trees above a high school over here no more trees standing there he church are still there you had a bit of a playground right at the bottom of this little hill right here you can still see the bars this rate things get a little strange I mean right next to the swing set where kids used to laugh their little heads off there's a hole in the ground right there I can see some steam coming out of the ground spewing steam and that I would later discover we got close to it but that steam was really hot here like a top and went Oh my God how. What Where exactly is the fire underneath this icon far here 50 feet maybe so 50 feet down that is cast you know this mill doesn't bother you guys what's more I mean you can smell it it smells like burning tires here. That must be from New York but stuck in your nose. Because it really did smell but the thing that one can deny is that underneath our feet there's a coal mines that stretches for miles 40 miles in each direction 30 miles and somewhere in those mines is a fire that's been burning for 40 years and has either destroyed this town or not depending on who you ask. This is that right here my name is Mary Lou guy and I'm 82 years old and I live in Centralia most of my adult life what year were you born in me asking what year was I born Yeah I did 27 Mary Lou Gunn grew up in a town not too far from Centralia tiny little farm town called burns so when she got to central she said Well that was like moving to the city it had a legion had a drug store it had it had a couple 1000 people lots of bars it was in central summit time we went down there were 22 bar rooms and I don't know if that was church because I didn't frequent but I was at that age and all these places that you just mentioned were right on top of each other so when you were walking around you'd see people all the time trying to post office was postmaster here for a number of years 20 you're pointing into a forest it's hard to imagine a state is hard to imagine so I go up to the post office and get my mail and you meet people in the post office you meet people coming out of the post office this was a good football field her ball rolling in nobody's cut the grass the bushes growing up and you'd have a story I would be an hour till I got home all hour this is 1000 trying. Ok fast forward it's Memorial Day 1902 this is where the barge the temple undergrad degree that affair started. Just about right here where I'm standing right tell me points to a little patch of nondescript yellow grass a white here how did it start to have any idea well it started the most likely scenario he says We also heard this from a writer named John Quigley author of The Day the Earth is it people used to heat their homes with coal and maybe somebody threw their ashes into the garbage which then ended up on to the dump they caught the whole thing on fire furniture rugs kerosene can't which John says wasn't that unusual some of the former firefighters said you know the tops caught on fire all the time and usually the fires just fizzled out on their own but this one for whatever reason before it did wandered a little bit it found its way over to an old exposed exposed cold and they're basically an old strip mine that should have been covered but wasn't so there was just a big open cavity when the fire got in there and the. Fire trucks came up in a hose down to let thought it was and they left the following day somebody says always to smoke and steam coming out of the ground up there and they were came back the next thing they tried to get the fire out they couldn't very well do it or weren't getting it because at that point those 2 links I want to know where to start with this mine for I want know where to start the 1st place that fire camped out was right underneath marionettes house. And from that point on it kind of took over like this is you know that is your scrapbooks when we were there she pulled out these 2 good Dick Stroud books you can take 4 men to lift this book teach book is literally 3 feet tall and they document in painful detail how that fire split the town into this is this is how intense I was with this mine fire that she heaved open the book and she showed us this picture of 3 people on the street in front of the whole this is my head that my son and me and husband holding a thermometer we dropped. Like a fishing pole down I mean like yeah this is their way of measuring the temperature of the fire below and wanted to read it was pretty high 100 degrees are 850 you something under your house you know this was on the street but the street right in front of her house and the garage was the garage was right there she showed us another picture of her standing in her garage in front of a trench that they dug in inside that trench you see flames so we used to go out at night and watch there that you know the glow in the embers fire up there got so bad that some of Mary Louise neighbors actually got government money to leave their houses they were the 1st people bought out they did everyone's like at the beginning did you think like oh maybe we should just get out of here you know there's a fire under her and you never know I never went instead she did exactly the opposite was my husband in this was a big official and this was dug in her heels and started writing letters on various men now again Musto We wrote letters to him we talked on the phone with him I can tell you the congressman for 12 and others all the Harrisburg officials and they were promised and everything but the sun but it never happened but other than the people who lived on that street and many many people in town didn't have to worry or even think about the mine fire nobody ever believed that the fire was was even seriousness and try to my husband myself and hello Moreau so everyone else was I don't think I would ever it's uptown if I was uptown all that changed on Valentine's Day 981 a little bit higher because of this guy felony I'm Todd the bosky with time was just a boy I was 1212 year old boy he's playing outside his grandmother's backyard and. I noticed some small wisps of smoke coming out of the ground so he went over to take a look as I bent down to investigate I noticed that my feet were starting to sink and it was really soft and it was like quicksand the more I tried the struggle the more all I was just opening the whole lot and he wound up sliding. I thought I used to my waist until he was I was under other way underground. Surrounded by schemes with hair smells like rotten eggs. But I was screaming for my cousin and his cousin heard him and came running over walked me out like a flower. What happened to him changed everything. Because suddenly reporters were everywhere reporters from leaving the Herald like the national news media everybody pointing their cameras at Todd right through a small plane over to see it was the mine or when I did I just go right through and doing stories about this town that was on fire beneath Centralia the underground coal fires still burn harsh and truly it is an inferno that literally tension parts of central Europe look like the outskirts of hell would focus on what had to happen for the town it wasn't long before some of the younger residents in the small informal group of young parents organized a March on Locust to have a different town the main street in town and many people are we talking about here a couple dozen and they walked 2 by 2 down the main street of Centralia like striking miners Mary Lou glared at them as they passed I was bitter I was bitter with. They claim they were for help in the town to be what they want what they were really for she figured was get now there look for funds to get relocated she even hated their name concerned citizens against the Centralia mine fire she thought how are they the concerned citizens She's the concerned citizen she had been fighting the fire for years yeah the media was there taking video cameras filmed the marchers looping red ribbon over everything and Mary Louise neighbor Helen cut the red ribbons down because we fought so hard to trying to save. Why did they want to do this people like Mary Lou and Helen woma they started telling people no no no here's why it's safe here's why you should say what parents from the other group were on t.v. Complaining about gas is in the home it could be a death health Mary Lou Helen and a few others started up their own committee and I did centrally area mine task force they got on t.v. Themselves and in the community they started putting up flyers sec sheets and handing them out you know door to door. Ok out of college meeting to order it town meetings the doing committees would get up there and make their case but this is it up here I'll get yelled down I'm not protest. I'm going to get rowdy absolutely ridiculous families fighting against families neighbors against neighbors there's a split town apart David is guy David Lam ran a motorcycle shop in town and he was also a member of this concerned citizens organization early morning and one morning about 4 am he was sleeping in an apartment and someone threw a Molotov cocktail through his plate glass window Mary Lou showed us an article from a scrapbook related to Lamb's activities as an officer of concerned citizens wow this is no joke this is like The Sopranos. This was really it was really bad and in the midst of all this chaos Congress started considering a bill that would basically let them buy out the town some observers believe that for about $50000000.00 central You could be totally bought out to the mayor decided let's hold a referendum and the issue was stay or go in the weeks leading up to the referendum Mary. Lou and Helen again went door to door talking to people they've known their whole lives and pretty much everyone they talked to said I really want to stay my mother wants to stay August 11th 1903 shortly before 10 to see banks and really as mayor announced the results there is 545 votes cast. 200 votes to stay 345 voted to relocate. Crying yes. In my heart I never thought that would happen ever you saw that everybody would with Wednesday maybe you 40 people might decide you maybe 30 but that was devastating to know that so many people want to move. It was and when you look at her scrapbooks everything stops after that day yet this is just thrown in papers just stop so broccoli that I was always bad in this because. I didn't want to I didn't want to do no more about it. That was the end. Almost immediately after that vote Congress bought out the town people started packing up and leaving Let me see where it is I have some it has the big numbers a fairly told us that when you decided to leave a demolition crew would actually come to your house and beat big red letters like this a big number one for your house looked like blood was dripping with like you remarked what would happen she says when your house was marked Is that your neighbors would see it they'd get nervous and then suddenly their houses would be marked and then suddenly the whole block would be marked and I knew every one of them quite well and I think I stopped talking to some and she'd see him on the street she says and looked the other way I didn't like and in the really and one day in the fall of 1987 these divisions caused something to happen that is just kind of like mythically bad and it involved a married couple who had been in the town most she'd been there her whole life and as a couple they were divided one wanted to stay one wanted to go I think it was the wife who didn't want to leave and that's why he was a shovel runner and he wanted to take the money you get from your location and get out there neighbors were moving had moved the houses around them were being torn down and they had to make a decision and all we really know is that at some point they started to argue and it escalated. He stabbed her to death with a kitchen knife and then drove up to an old stripping and set himself and his car on fire. Well. Is this going to sound like a strange question but is there anything about that that makes sense to you like Why couldn't people let go of this place. It is very primal. Beyond that she really couldn't say why and we asked Mary Lou who hung on long after the murder after that referendum after the town was basically empty I had no idea what. I had no idea if no idea no idea I just didn't want to move today 11 people live in town as Britain his wife my mom and him live down to the intersection point of the mall out from the hill we knock on every door figure we asked them what it is that keeps them living literally on top of a fire. Hydrant Good evening. While those the shortest but none of them wanted to talk to us but then Tom to took us to one last spot. Where we are right now here in spending measures Roman Catholic Cemetery. Is cemeteries just a few feet away from the hill where we started and it's a really strange Contras you go from the steamy hell and then suddenly you're in like woodsy Vermonters is that if you feel. This is my grandfather or my grandmother as 4 generations buried here do you know how many people are here. Orders over $3000.00 burials in a cemetery along the thing is even the people that left fled that fire continue to come back and be buried in the cemetery which means this place the cemetery is the only thing in Centralia that still growing. And suddenly put it earlier it is very primal made sense you can experience your life on a multigenerational plane this is where my great grandparents are buried which means in a sense this town will never die as long as the cemetery still here and I even read their name on it this year oh it's under the dirt. Do you. Get this. In the it's in the do thinks about Walters reporting that with me and also to Chris purple in Georgie Roland who directed a great documentary about Centralia called the town that was you can find out more information about that on our website at Radiolab dot org I'm Robert Krulwich and Jad Abumrad. From the pollute the studios at California Lutheran University this is listener supported k.c.a.l. You next year's u.s. Census will be the 1st conducted mostly online to make sure that doesn't lead to an undercount of communities of color one organization in Georgia is setting up free Wi-Fi hot spots we have an opportunity to be counted in to show up and if you don't then we're losing money losing power in terms of influence and representation I'm Ari Shapiro that story Monday afternoon on All Things Considered from n.p.r. News plus live local news updates listen starting at 330 Monday afternoon. It's 6 o'clock. This is n.p.r. For the California coast 88.3 k.c.a.l. You f.m. In h.d. 1000 Oaks one of 2.3 f.m. 1340 am k.c.a.l. You Santa Barbara and 89.7 k.c. Element k.c.a.l. M.h.d. Santa Maria 92 point one in San Luis Obispo listen on smart speakers with a command play k.c.l. You. To the best of our knowledge I mean strange champs. In 1905 a new board game came on the market called Settlers of Catan today 28000000 people play it on a regular basis for some it's almost a language we were in Florida and a hospital this very quiet and sin fix space. Grandfather was going to pass away very soon and so we sat down at one of the tables and just pulled out the game and set it up and played most of the game before we had to go and say our goodbyes and I think that that was for the 3 of us to be together in that moment without needing to say anything boardgames say so much more than.