The importance of storytelling has been one of the great surprises of adulthood. When I was small, it was the way I drifted off to sleep or how I successfully made it through grade school recess without ever touching a ball. Twenty years later, it’s the only way to make friends and have influence. The person who can take the driest political agenda, the most esoteric scientific data, and turn it into a digestible morsel is the person who brings order to a chaos of information.
Listening to Radiolab is like sitting down to a three course meal of recipes from this blog — each episode is approximately two thirds curation and one third creation. The two thirds are delicious tid bits from books on human behavior, adapted with with the enthusiasm and spin of Radiolab’s hosts. The one third is pieces they have made themselves, experiments that resemble an interesting hash of pantry staples. All of the stories are savory and relatable, and I find myself repeating one a day to whomever will listen.
Anyway, I wanted to share an episode with you to show you what I mean. The shows are always about science, psychology, ethics, and/or statistics — sort of a Malcom Gladwell meets Bill Nye the Science Guy. I promise you, once you’ve tasted this one you’ll be asking for more.
Recipe
Speaking of curation, this recipe is actually from Smitten Kitchen. I’ll tell you what I did below so that you can modify her recipe if you would like.
I suggest using a small butternut squash…if I use a big one I always have squash left over (not a tragedy) and it’s a harder gourd to wield in general (and my knife is a little underpowered).
I like to cut my red onion into wedges and bake it along with the squash instead of mixing raw red onion dice into the salad.
It’s a really nice salad to have alongside fish or chicken…a bread or pasta entree has a consistency that is a little too similar.
We love radiolab! And Braised Anatomy. 🙂