Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
WNYC Studios is supported by Zuckerman Spader. Through nearly five decades of taking on high-stakes legal matters, Zuckerman Spader is recognized nationally as a premier litigation and investigations firm. Their lawyers routinely represent individuals, organizations, and law firms in business disputes, government, and internal investigations and at trial. When the lawyer you choose matters most.
Online at zuckerman.com. Radiolab is supported by AppleCard. Reboot your credit card with AppleCard. Earn up to 3% daily cash back that you can grow at 4.40% annual percentage yield, APY, when you open a savings account through AppleCard.
Apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app on iPhone. Subject to credit approval. Savings is available to Apple Card owners. Subject to eligibility. Savings and Apple Card by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Member FDIC. Terms and more at applecard.com. Radiolab is supported by Progressive. Most of you aren't just listening right now. You're driving, exercising, cleaning.
What if you could also be saving money by switching to Progressive? Drivers who save by switching save nearly $750 on average, and auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. Multitask right now. Quote today at Progressive.com, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023.
Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations.
See Mint Mobile for details.
Hey, Lulu here. There is this thing that radio producers love to say. Radio is the most visual of all the storytelling forms. More than the movies, more than photography, more than TV, which...
Maybe sounds counterintuitive, but the idea is that because your imagination is a bottomless resource, the visual experience you get here is way more immersive and vivid and lush and has better special effects than any film studio could ever just financially, logistically produce. Who knows if that's always true, but I will say...
The story that has stuck with me visually the most over decades of listening is the one I'm about to play for you. It's called The Living Room, and it actually comes to us from another podcast that's been around for just about 20 years called Love and Radio. If you haven't heard of them, they make beautiful, sound-rich stories, sometimes a little dark, always special. And this episode, it is about bearing witness to something that maybe you weren't supposed to bear witness to, but
Um, the images from it, I literally have never been able to get them out of my head. Before I play it, two quick notes. One, whereas we usually try to talk to everyone involved in a story, this episode is based on one person's vantage point. We did fact check it to make sure the key elements did in fact take place, but you know, take it as one very powerful sliver of
of a complex situation. And secondly, warning, adult themes ahead. Probably not the best one to listen to with kids. All right. Let us slip into the living room from Love and Radio. Wait, you're listening? Okay. All right. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radiolab. Radiolab. From WNYC. See? Rewind.
So I'd been living in my apartment about 15 years. And one evening, I walked in the living room, which has three bay windows, which face the gardens in the back. And over half a block of gardens and across a small street, there was this bright window that I'd never noticed before. But it's at the exact eye level of my third floor apartment. And after a while, I realized that I'd never seen it because...
There had always been curtains, and so it was always, I think, dimly lit. The curtains were often closed. And all of a sudden, there's this bright light and no curtains, and it was like a movie screen. Fifteen years, and that window has meant nothing. I haven't even noticed it, and now it's all I think about. There were new tenants, and it had always been a living room, and now it was suddenly a bedroom. And there were these two people living
And they were naked. This young couple in their 20s. They were really lovey-dovey, and they were always naked. That's Diana Weypert, who tells the story, and she told it to radio reporter Brianna Breen, who produced this piece with Nick and Brandon. The thing is, they pushed...
their bed so that the head was up against the windows. So their heads, you could see both of their heads lying there. So you'd see things that you just, like, they were just shocking. I just had been there all of this time, and suddenly you could see people having sex really clearly, like, amazingly clearly. I had no idea that you could see so well across such a distance. And it was really uncomfortable, really.
My husband and I were still adjusting to parenthood, and it wasn't the most romantic time in our lives. My son was probably three, and when you're new parents to a toddler, especially because he sleeps in bed with us too, so he's literally right between us, the last thing you need is a couple of hotties getting it on across the window, reminding your husband of everything he's...
So to have this really beautiful young woman that was really thin and naked all the time, really, you know, it was very frustrating. And, you know, she had this beautiful, tall, lanky, well-built boyfriend.
And so I first, I just, because I felt like my husband was going to be staring at this naked woman all the time, I started closing the living room curtains, which is really kind of silly. And it made our room really dark and we never closed those curtains. And so that didn't work. So I thought about like making a really big sign that said like, close your curtains or buy curtains. They didn't even have curtains.
"By curtains we can see you!" And I thought about going by their building. I had no idea what their unit was and leaving a note. And then I started thinking that was really silly and prudish and started realizing that they were just young and I had to just get over it and live with it and move on. And so that's what I did. We got really used to them.
And they became sort of the symbol of what we used to be, you know, in our 20s. And they were living this really carefree time. And that's another thing that it was kind of hard not to sometimes... When you're in early parenthood, you get a little bitter, I think, about some of those freedoms. And we'd watch them sleeping till 11 while we'd been up since 5 with our toddler. And we saw them eating breakfast on the roof together.
So we got used to it and we would notice like, oh, look, they got a new plant in there. And they became sort of part of our lives, you know, because they were just always there and never, ever bought curtains. Do you think all the neighbors in your building and the surrounding buildings also saw this? It's funny. I think that the way that we're positioned, because all of the buildings around us are different sizes and our building is the tallest one on our block and
but it's exactly at the right level to see their windows. I have a friend next door and then a friend across the way, and all of them have windows facing the gardens, but not all of them are blocked. And I look at the other windows of the buildings around us, and I don't think anyone has this perfect level view. The irony is that I'm such a private person.
And I don't know, am I supposed to have maybe respected their privacy and just looked away? But it's impossible because that's the way the chairs face. They face the window. I couldn't not see them if I wanted to. But I guess I could have not gotten the binoculars. ♪
So time went by, and this is maybe a year and a half later, two years later. And I remember seeing their room, and the light was on, but it was empty. And I thought that was strange, because it was 5 o'clock in the morning, and they never went anywhere early. And it was like that for like a whole week. It was just this empty room with the light on. And I thought that was strange. They didn't seem to be there as often, or maybe just she would be there, and he was gone for long periods of time.
And we just kind of forgot about them. You know, we just, there were, there wasn't as much action going on and they weren't as present. And so we just kind of lived our lives and forgot about them for maybe seven or eight months. At the end of last year, in December, there was this night when my husband and I separately had both seen this woman naked sitting in the window. Kind of chubby, slump-shouldered woman who was just looking down at the street, you
And we both thought it was so strange. Just couldn't figure out who she was and what she was doing and why she was naked. And a few nights later, there was this young man standing right at the window by the bed. And he was skeletal. He was so thin. And he was bald completely. And we realized it was the same couple. They had completely changed. ♪
He was sick. There was something serious wrong with him. After that, I just watched the window all the time. Okay, we're going to pause right here. We'll be right back.
Radio Lab is supported by Apple Card. Reboot your credit card with Apple Card. Earn up to 3% daily cash back that you can grow at 4.40% annual percentage yield, APY, when you open a savings account through Apple Card. Apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app on iPhone.
Subject to credit approval. Savings is available to Apple Card owners. Subject to eligibility. Savings and Apple Card by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Member FDIC. Terms and more at applecard.com. WNYC Studios is supported by Zuckerman Spader. Through nearly five decades of taking on high-stakes legal matters, Zuckerman Spader is recognized nationally as a premier litigation and investigations firm.
Their lawyers routinely represent individuals, organizations, and law firms in business disputes, government, and internal investigations and at trial. When the lawyer you choose matters most. Online at zuckerman.com.
Radiolab is supported by BetterHelp. We all like to try to set our non-negotiables, whether it's hitting the laundromat every Wednesday or hitting the gym X times a week. These goals can start to slip when schedules get packed and the mind gets cloudy with stress. But when you're starting to feel overwhelmed, a non-negotiable like therapy is more important than ever. Therapy can help you keep your cup full by giving you the tools you need to get back into balance.
If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire about all your quirks to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash Radiolab today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Radiolab. ♪
Hey, Jon Favreau here. There's no shortage of political takes in 2024, but quantity doesn't cut it. We need a better conversation about the latest biggest election of our lives. On Pod Save America, me and my co-host cut through the noise to help you figure out what matters and how you can help. Every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, Pod Save America is breaking down the political news that makes us laugh, cry, and snap our laptops in half. Expensive year for laptops. Make sure to check out new episodes of Pod Save America on your favorite podcast platform or our YouTube channel now.
Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad. I'm Robert Kowich. This is Radio Lab. Let's get back to our story from Brianna Breen and the folks at Love & Radio, Nick Vander Kolk and Brendan Baker. So we're just going to go back to the room, see what we can see through the window. Here's Diane Wiper. I just watched the window all the time. And he would sit all day. He was there because I work from home. And I would see him all day in the bedroom, either lying down or sitting at the computer.
And then after a couple of weeks, he was just lying down and he was just there and his bald head would be up against the pane of glass all the time.
And she would be there, and she'd come in, and she would bring him things. But mostly it was just him there by himself. And sometimes he would have his knees bent, and you could just see how skeletal they were. They were just bones. And sometimes he'd kick off the blankets, and he was just lying there naked and emaciated. And then after a while, he was just always burrowed under the blankets.
I found myself thinking, like, well, maybe he's been through chemo and he's recovering. And, you know, he's going through this sick phase before he gets well because he's so young. You know, he's just such a young guy. And so we had to go to Colorado to see my family for Christmas. And I worried all the time I was there. I thought about them and I worried that he wasn't going to be there when we got back.
I worried all the time about it. When we got back about 10 days later, he was still there. But his head looked so much smaller. And there were a lot of people there. And then I got out my binoculars. I got my birding binoculars. I'm not proud of it. But at that point, I felt so invested. It looked like people coming to say goodbye. And there was this sort of short...
blonde, Midwestern-looking woman who I guessed was his mother. And then there was this young guy who just kept pacing the halls. You know, you could just see there were two doorways leading out of this room, and you could just see him go down one side and through the other and then back and forth and back and forth. And I figured he was the brother. And it looked like the girlfriend's sister was also there. It was just a guess. It looked like her. I remember there was just this...
little gathering going on in the living room right below. The neighbors were standing around and having drinks, and they had no idea at all what was going on right upstairs. I would watch people come and go. Then after a while, everyone left except for the girlfriend and the mother. And I spent all that evening sitting vigil on the back of the couch and watching and watching
And I remember the girlfriend lying beside him for a long time on her own, and she was just stroking his face so tenderly. It was so much affection that really transcends the kind of young love that you expect. All I could see was the top of his head all that time. And I remember later seeing her standing by the bed with the mother on the other side, and they were just all talking and
She put a hand on his forehead. She put the back of her hand on his forehead, and then she was wiping at her eyes. And you could tell that there was this sense that something, that it was getting closer. Then I could see this reckoning where she was wiping at her eyes and touching his forehead and wiping at her eyes. There were candles lit, and this young woman was on one side,
And his mother was on the other side. And they just were lying there for a really long time. And they had their hands just resting on his chest. And so I watched it for a long time. The mother and the girlfriend were lying on either side of him. And you could tell this was the end. I thought, now all that's left is the girlfriend and the mother. And inexplicably, me.
Me, like, I'm one of the three people at the deathbed. And they lay there for a long time. And then they just got up. And they went into the other room. And I realized that must have been the moment. And all this time, you know, I always had this sense that, you know, they're going to break up. They're going to move out. Nobody that age stays together very long. And I had no idea. It was just like this beautiful love story. So the next day...
The next day, I got up and I went to the window, first thing. And they were folding up blankets and stacking them on the bed. And I figured that he had been taken away. And so I was in the kitchen and my husband called because he knew how obsessed I'd gotten with this situation. And he said, there's activity over there. And I came running and I got my binoculars and I looked and realized that he was still there. He was still on the bed.
his body was still there and it was the coroner. So the coroner and his assistant came and they had these white plastic gloves on and they pulled his body to the edge of the bed and onto this white sheet. And I just remember the lifelessness of it. It looked so shrunken. It almost looked like a shrunken rubber proxy of a body. So incredibly dead. They wrapped him in the sheet and
And they zipped him into a vinyl bag, and they put him on this kind of gurney. They took the gurney out, and I just had this very strange impulse. And I ran and threw on my coat, kind of over my pajamas, and ran out to the street, ran to the corner. And I got there just as they were hauling him out. They were carrying him out, and the girlfriend was there.
She was talking to one of them in the doorway and they loaded him into this van. And I realized that they didn't know me at all. Like I had, you know, I had no place to be there. And they looked at me. I remember the coroner's assistant looking at me like I was sort of a
like a rubbernecker in the street, you know, looking at this grisly scene. And I realized that's what I was. I had no place to be there. And suddenly it all felt so perverse. And so I went home and I felt very strange about the whole thing. And I tried to tell myself that
Well, I never wanted to be part of their lives. I was the one that wanted them to put up curtains. I wanted them to shut the intimate stuff out. I was uncomfortable with it. I was the one that wanted out. And I started remembering all of a sudden when I moved to that apartment so many years ago and I was in my mid-20s that I had to share the apartment with a roommate because it was too expensive. My bedroom was in the living room.
And I remember how when I first moved in, I pushed the head of my bed up against the three bay windows so that in the morning I could see the sky. And I remember that I had no clue. It never occurred to me that anyone could see me. I remember that I felt like whenever I looked out the window, I never saw anyone. And I never closed my curtains either. Did you ever find out either of their names? I never...
have found out their names and I looked through the local obituaries obsessively for weeks and there was never anyone that fit his description. There was never anyone young enough or that looked like him. So no idea. I walked by their place several times and there are only numbers on the mailboxes and the buzzers and there are no names. So I can't look up anything.
I don't know. Yeah, I have no idea who she is. I have no idea who he was. No idea what he was sick with. Just a couple days after it happened, she was up on the roof with a friend doing yoga. And I've watched her lying around a lot. She went out of town, I think, for a bit. And she's still there. I have been watching her recovery. And instead of being this young woman...
She looks totally different. She looks so changed. She just looks like this very experienced, world-weary person. She has a job now that gets her up very early because I get up at 6 and she's already dressed and heads out at like 6.15. And the other night I saw her and she was in her bedroom and she was wearing this baggy t-shirt and all the lights were on and...
And she was dancing, just dancing around her room. So yeah, I want her to move on. This young woman that I was so cranky and bitter about, you know, now she's, now she's, now I feel so protective and kind of maternal, you know. If you ran into her, like at the corner market or something, do you think you could ever say anything to her?
Yeah, if I ran into her, I wouldn't say a thing. What would I say? I've been watching you through your window. How creepy would that be? Yeah, no way. She doesn't, you know, she doesn't know that she doesn't know that there's this person that I don't know, that's this complete stranger that's out there really rooting for her, you know.
Diane Wipert told her story to radio reporter Brianna Breen, who produced this with the folks at Love & Radio, Nick Vandercolk and Brendan Baker. And Nick does have a little postscript here, which I think you ought to hear. Just after this interview was recorded last spring, Diane's neighbor closed her curtains and hasn't opened them since.
Special thanks to Aaron Belkin, Karen Duffin, Alison Sorrell, and Brian Posner. Thanks, of course, to Nick and Brendan and Brianna for letting us air that piece. Do yourself a favor. Go to loveandradio.org and subscribe to that podcast. There are stories I have heard on Love and Radio that I just will never forget. They have seriously burrowed themselves so deeply into my brain that I actually have nightmares. You should listen to them all. Loveandradio.org. I'm Chad Abumrad. I'm Robert Prolich.
Thanks for listening. All right, Lulu from the present with one last thing. There is a very special Radiolab live event ping-ponging its way across the country right now. It's been to L.A. and Boston and New York and Chicago and beyond, and it is about to make its very last stop in Seattle.
So if you live in the Seattle area and want to see a Radiolab episode unfold with all the wonder and play and immersive musical sound design before your eyes, come check it out. It's Thursday, February 15th at Town Hall Seattle. Our senior producer Simon Adler will be dressed on the stage in a snappy white suit leading you through live music and interviews and stories and images from space and
and an even stranger place called the 1970s. Again, coming to Seattle on Thursday, February 15th at Town Hall Seattle. Find out more and get your tickets at KUOW.org slash events.
Our staff includes: Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger,
and Natalie Middleton. Hi, I'm Erica Inyankers. Leadership support for Radiolab Science Programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
You come to the New Yorker Radio Hour for conversations that go deeper with people you really want to hear from, whether it's Bruce Springsteen or Questlove or Olivia Rodrigo, Liz Cheney, or the godfather of artificial intelligence, Jeffrey Hinton, or some of my extraordinarily well-informed colleagues at The New Yorker. So join us every week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts.
