Pod Insights Unexplainable A rabbi and the Lorax walk into a bar... About this episode How the bedtime stories we grew up with inspire the stories we tell now.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:24 Speaker 02 So, Noam.
1:26 Noam Hassenfeld? Hello, Mara.
1:27 Speaker 02 Hello.
1:29 Speaker 02 I had some friends visiting this weekend, and they brought their little three-year-old Jay, who is just so cute, like, so cute.
1:38 Speaker 04 Yeah, he's done. It is done.
1:41 Speaker 02 And I was reading The Lorax by Dr. Seuss.
1:44 Noam Hassenfeld? To J?
1:45 Speaker 02 To J.
1:46 Noam Hassenfeld? Or just like for fun?
1:47 Speaker 02 Well, I also do that, but To J. And he was so into it.
1:52 Speaker 04 It speaks for trees.
1:54 Speaker 02 Like, I was doing the voices. It's just like, when you have a kid's attention like that, it's like you're casting a spell.
2:01 Speaker 04 He lifts himself up from the pants of his seat. Pants.
2:11 Noam Hassenfeld? Yeah, I mean, I honestly don't remember all that much about the Lorax. I remember it's environmentalist, there's some trees.
2:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, it starts off in this like smog-covered industrial wasteland. And then you like walk up to this old ruin of a house and have to pay the Wunsler to hear his story of this place.
2:32 Noam Hassenfeld? The Wunsler.
2:33 Speaker 02 And this, this Wunsler, you only ever see his arms in the illustrations. And he slumps down a whispermaphone. So it's this like very personal story for your ears alone. His story of like coming to this beautiful land of technicolored trees and humming fish and swans. And ultimately, how the business he starts goes on to clear cut the forest, gum up the ponds and smog smear the sky, basically making the industrial wasteland that you like walk through in the beginning. And I mean, this is the same, like the, the same physical book, Dr. Seuss book, Six by Seuss, that my mom read to me as a kid.
3:16 Noam Hassenfeld? Oh, I had that exact book. Love it.
3:18 Speaker 02 A classic. And it's just like one of those kinds of stories that stick with you for a long time.
3:30 Speaker 02 Last year I did this story, Did Trees Kill the World? And it's all about imagining this fantastical time with crazy trees in the deep, deep past. And I used the Lorax to help me structure the introduction to that story.
3:45 Noam Hassenfeld? What do you mean to help you structure it?
3:47 Speaker 02 Like if I take out all the narration from the top of that episode and replace it with the Lorax, it, it still works.
3:53 Noam Hassenfeld? Right, just, just, just take you out and put Dr. Seuss in?
3:56 Speaker 02 Yeah, we'll find out. I'm going to read you a little Dr. Seuss.
4:00 Noam Hassenfeld? All right, I'll buckle in.
4:04 Speaker 02 At the far end of town, where the grickle grass grows and the wind smells sour and slow when it blows and no birds ever sing except old crows, is the street of the lifted Lorax. Into the woods we go. And deep in the grickle grass, some people say, if you look deep enough, you can still see today where the Lorax once stood just as long as it could before somebody lifted the Lorax away.
4:34 Speaker 02 It's definitely nothing living inside that area.
4:40 Speaker 02 Lot of gravel.
4:45 Speaker 02 Some birds, too.
4:49 Speaker 02 What was the Lorax and why was it here? And why was it lifted and taken somewhere? From the far end of town where the grickle glass grows? The old Wunsler lives here. Ask him. He knows.
5:01 Speaker 05 Just thinking about time. Like geologists think about time in millions of years, hundreds of millions of years. That is where a tree stood. 385 million years ago.
5:15 Speaker 02 Unbelievable.
5:18 Speaker 02 So this was one tree.
5:21 Speaker 06 Are we saying that this is literally two trees? Like the star formations are like the basis of these two trees?
5:30 Speaker 05 Yeah. The impressions of the roots.
5:34 Speaker 02 Now I'll tell you, he says, with his teeth sounding gray, how the Lorax got lifted and taken away. It all started way back, such a long, long time back.
5:46 Speaker 05 Such an awesome, awesome, awesome thing to imagine a forest from that long ago.
6:01 Speaker 02 And that's how the story of the Lorax starts.
6:05 Noam Hassenfeld? Did you, did you start the trees episode with like that, with that same line? Is that at the far end of town or something like that?
6:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly. I wanted to imagine our world and the places that we're standing as completely different in different times. Like, I don't think it would be as impactful if you didn't see where you are in the current day to understand how much has changed since the past. It felt like that was an important part of the story to tell. Getting to that space, understanding what it is now, and then being transported back such a long, long way back.
6:43 Noam Hassenfeld? I mean, I guess I'm curious, there's a lot of stories that go back in time, right, that use the back in time.
6:52 Noam Hassenfeld? Exactly. Emphasize how something big, how big something is or how important it was. Like, was there something about the Lorax that made you want to use it for this story?
6:59 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, you know, the scientists that I talk to, it's their job to like, look at these rocks and peer back into the past and be able to recreate the image of these Sussian worlds. There were like broccoli topped trees and like trees that looked like fuzzy telephone poles. Like, it's just as bizarre as truffula trees.
7:21 Noam Hassenfeld? Right, right.
7:22 Speaker 02 I knew I wanted to be in a place where we were hearing this as a folk tale, almost.
7:29 Noam Hassenfeld? Interesting.
7:30 Speaker 02 And it's got me really thinking about what are the stories that we use as a framework in order to shape our ideas of the world? I didn't reference the Lorax at all in the Trees episode, but it was like, thinking about it was what helped me get to the point of writing it.
7:47 Noam Hassenfeld? I see.
7:48 Speaker 02 What do you, was there any like stories that you draw inspiration from that you heard as a kid?
7:53 Noam Hassenfeld? Yeah, I think, I think the story that comes to mind for me is one of my, one of my, one of my favorite stories from the Talmud.
8:01 Speaker 02 And this is a kid's book?
8:02 Noam Hassenfeld? It is definitely not a kid's book. This is a book of laws and debates. But my dad used to tell me stories from the Talmud. Basically, a bunch of rabbis are having this very, very esoteric argument. And I think you can imagine them in some type of schoolhouse building or something. I always like to imagine this kind of like dimly lit, you know, wooden taverny place and everyone's banging on tables. And there's this one rabbi, Rabbi Eli Azar. Rabbi Eli Azar is basically against everyone. So he's known as like the smartest rabbi around. He's kind of like prickly, but really, really, really smart, very well respected.
8:48 Noam Hassenfeld? And so basically, the entire court of rabbis is against him. And they're arguing, they're making their case, blah, blah, blah. And eventually, like, it's just getting to the point where he's not making any progress, but he's so convinced of himself that he does something weird.
9:07 Noam Hassenfeld? He gets up and he says, "If I'm right, this tree is gonna prove me right." And then a tree uproots itself and flies into the air.
9:21 Noam Hassenfeld? But the other rabbis, they say, "You don't prove things with a tree." So then he says, "If I'm right, the river is gonna prove me right." And then this river flows backwards, all of a sudden. And the rabbis say, "You don't prove things with a river." Then, I think, then he says, "If I'm right, the walls are gonna prove me right." Like, the walls of the room, and then the walls start caving in. But then I think the Talmud says something like, "Out of respect for this other rabbis, that they just kinda don't cave in all the way." They sort of stayed there halfway. And finally, Rabbi Eli Azar, he says, "If I'm right, heaven is gonna prove me right." And the word in Hebrew for heaven is the same as sky. It's shemaim.
10:02 Noam Hassenfeld? And then a divine voice comes out from the sky. And it says, basically, like, "Guys, what are you doing? You know Rabbi Eli Azar is always right. Like, why are you arguing against him?" And at that point, one of the senior rabbis, he gets so frustrated by all this. He gets up and he just goes, "It is not in heaven." Or, you know, "It is not in the sky."
10:30 Noam Hassenfeld? So basically, the Talmud then says, "Okay, what's going on here?" And it says, "Look, God gave us the laws. And at this point, you know, he's not gonna come down and give us any more revelation. It's not up to a voice from the sky to just to tell us what the law is. It's the people that come together." Basically, the Talmud agrees with the rabbis. You don't prove things with a voice. You don't prove things with a tree.
10:56 Speaker 02 Yeah, it sounds like this guy had a lot of magic tricks up his sleeve.
11:00 Noam Hassenfeld? Oh, you don't even know the half of it. There are so many other stories of this guy, like... I mean, later on, he gets excommunicated over this and he starts, he's just so upset, he starts shooting lasers out of his eyes.
11:15 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
11:15 Noam Hassenfeld? Or, I don't know, the Talmud doesn't say lasers, but it does say he was burning everything he can see.
11:21 Speaker 02 I mean, I've been there.
11:23 Noam Hassenfeld? He, okay, there's some, there's a point when someone cuts him in line at a bathroom. I could be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure, and a dragon comes out from the toilet and like eats the guy's insides.
11:36 Speaker 02 Wow.
11:36 Noam Hassenfeld? So petty, right?
11:39 Speaker 02 Petty.
11:40 Noam Hassenfeld? Smart and petty. Wait, actually, I'm looking it up and I think that was actually a different rabbi.
11:49 Noam Hassenfeld? This is like normal gossip for Talmud.
11:51 Speaker 02 Right.
11:53 Noam Hassenfeld? And then there's a little epilogue where it says like years later, this other rabbi is just walking around and he runs into the prophet Elijah. And everyone knows that Elijah is kind of hanging out with God sometimes in heaven, like he's doing his thing. And so he's like, I got one question for you, Elijah. I need to know what God was thinking, you know, when, when he heard the rabbi say it's not in heaven, like was he offended or what was going on? And Elijah tells this rabbi that God was smiling or laughing. It's not clear about the translation. And he says, my children have defeated me.
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15:05 Speaker 02 Sexymaphone, sexymaphone. Well, take me back to when you first, when you first heard this.
15:14 Noam Hassenfeld? Oh, this is probably a bedtime story from my dad. The thing with my dad is that he says the same story hundreds of times, going on long walks and having someone make a point. And then him being like, oh, this reminds me of the story of the Talbot. It is not in heaven, you know, tell the whole story. I also remember learning this at school. I remember learning this when I was in seminary in Jerusalem. Uh, like you, I don't know, this is a story that a lot of people learn over and over and over again.
15:47 Speaker 02 Is there a usual moral to the story?
15:50 Noam Hassenfeld? Um, I don't know, like any old Jewish story, I feel like there's a bunch of ways to read this. And I think there's a sense in which you can read this story that in the end, the rabbis basically saying, we are an interpretive collective, we interpret things together.
16:06 Speaker 02 Yeah.
16:06 Noam Hassenfeld? That's how we decide on meaning.
16:08 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
16:09 Noam Hassenfeld? So this story is like something that I, I think about probably more than any other story. You know, you put yourself into the position of each one of the rabbis in this story or God. And you can see from their perspective, like I've been the person who's been frustratingly clinging to an idea. And I've been the person who is trying to get that frustrating person to stop clinging to the idea. And so I, I, I come back to this story a lot because I feel like this story just has this deep streak of humility in it.
16:43 Speaker 02 So how is this story inspired some of your work on the show?
16:47 Noam Hassenfeld? So I, a couple of weeks ago, I made this episode on dark energy, about the discovery of dark energy, about this kind of potential rethinking of dark energy. And the scientist I talked to, Adam Rees, he told me about when he first discovered dark energy back in the nineties, he thought he'd made a mistake.
17:07 Speaker 05 You know, my first thought was disappointment. Oh, here I was hoping to learn something about the universe and I just learned I have a bug in my code.
17:15 Noam Hassenfeld? Adam observes the universe expanding really fast. It doesn't fit. He really doubted himself. And the two options are either rewrite everything we know about physics or introduce this new substance we don't understand. Dark energy.
17:30 Speaker 05 There certainly were people who said, you know, this has just got to be wrong.
17:33 Noam Hassenfeld? And then he told me how after months and months, he finally started to believe in what he was seeing. You know, he said, uh, here's, here's a quote from him. He says, you reach a point where you have to believe that the sky wants to tell us something.
17:47 Speaker 05 Wow, this is not a mistake. This is what the sky says.
17:53 Noam Hassenfeld? And there was something about the description of just the sky saying something
17:59 Speaker 02 Right.
17:59 Noam Hassenfeld? to us.
18:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
18:01 Noam Hassenfeld? He literally, he said this five or six times in different ways, listening to the sky, this guy says something, this guy wants us to know something.
18:12 Noam Hassenfeld? When he said that, I just couldn't stop thinking about this story with the two rabbis. There's a sense in which science is sort of a similar thing, like there is a cosmos out there, we have to understand what it does, but at a certain point, we have to come together, we have to tell a story that we all agree on, that makes sense with everything we know.
18:32 Speaker 05 I mean, I would say if these experiments are right, then all bets are off in terms of the future of the universe. There's not a simple story at the moment, and so we're wandering in the wilderness trying to understand what it means.
18:45 Noam Hassenfeld? We think science is this relationship between us and the cosmos, which obviously, yes, it is. But there is a sense in which science is a relationship between ourselves and deciding on the best, clearest way to tell a story about the cosmos.
19:03 Speaker 02 You said your dad would bring up this Talmud story all the time, like, this reminds me of a story. What, what kinds of situations would trigger that?
19:12 Noam Hassenfeld? It's a good question.
19:17 Noam Hassenfeld? Because this story has been told to me so many times, over and over and over again, I actually don't think I have a single memory of this story. If I think about this as, thinking about this as a kid, I think this often came up around questions of belief. You know, like, is God real?
19:41 Noam Hassenfeld? Are my questions about God okay?
19:47 Noam Hassenfeld? When I've had a lot of these questions, I've always come back to this story. Because it allows you to just put those questions to the side for a second. Because we make meaning here. And it just makes me feel, it just makes me feel more okay. It just makes me feel more okay with the bigness and absurdity of everything.
20:11 Speaker 02 Yeah.
20:11 Noam Hassenfeld? Like, max 5% of the entire universe is everything that we can see and understand. Right? Matter, gas.
20:20 Speaker 02 Stuff.
20:21 Noam Hassenfeld? Matter, the stuff in the universe is only 5%. Then you got 25% that's dark matter. So that's stuff that reacts with gravity, but we can't see it at all and we don't really understand it. We've never found it. And then 70%, so just the vast majority of everything, is stuff that we understand even less. We don't have words for it. We call it dark energy. But it's not, we just don't understand it. But, I mean, we don't understand anything. We don't even understand the 5% of the stuff that we can see.
20:56 Speaker 02 Right.
20:57 Noam Hassenfeld? So I guess for me, no matter what is out there, we can find meaning in interpretation. We can make our lives meaningful ourselves.
21:11 Speaker 02 That's really powerful.
21:13 Noam Hassenfeld? This is like, I'm just giving you like my, my Shabbat speech here.
21:18 Speaker 02 I love it. I love it. It's Friday night, the candles are lit.
21:22 Noam Hassenfeld? Yeah. It's a weird-ass experience for me.
21:36 Speaker 02 This episode was produced by me, Meredith Hadnot. I also run the show. We had editing from Jorge Just, mixing and sound design from Christian Ayala, music from Noam Hassenfeld, and fact checking from Melissa Hirsch. Julia Longoria is our editorial director. And Byrd Pinkerton waited as Aaron Bird motioned to his lackey, who slowly wheeled out a wooden carriage covered with a curtain. In a flourish, he yanked the cover off and Bird could see inside. A large wooden cage, and huddling in the far corner, shrunken and shriveling.
22:14 Speaker 02 Was the doctopus.
22:18 Speaker 02 Thanks, as always, to Brian Resnick for co-creating our show. And if you have any thoughts, Brian specifically, but also all the listeners out there, if you have any thoughts about our show, please send us an email. We love to hear from you. We're at [email protected] . We'd also love it if you could leave us a review or a rating wherever you listen. Tell a friend, shout it from the rooftops. Unexplainable is the place to be. It really, really helps us find new listeners. You can also support the show and all of Vox's journalism by joining
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