Terrestrials 12. The Bullseye: Treasure Hunt to Recursive Islands
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All right. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radiolab. Radiolab. Radiolab. From WNYC. C. C? Yeah. Three, two, one. Imagine you are surrounded by water. Which is surrounded by land. Which is surrounded by water. Which is surrounded by land. Which is surrounded by water.

You guessed it. Water. Which is surrounded by land. Which is surrounded by water. Which is surrounded by land. Which is surrounded by water. Which is surrounded by water. You have become a recursive island.

All right, now is where I make you guess the theme song. I have a hunch you're going to get it. Terrestrials, terrestrials, we are not the worst, we are the... Uh, bestrials? Bestrials. Terrestrials is a show where we uncover the strangeness right here on Earth and sometimes break out into song. I am your host, Lulu Miller, joined as always by my song bud. Ahoy there.

And this season, we're looking at things that are usually... Okay, so Alan, first things first. I mean, what the rock is a recursive island? Okay, so recursive just means repeating over and over and over and over and over and over again. Island means...

Well, island. Island? Okay, got that. Okay, okay. So a repeating island. Exactly. Meaning it's... An island! On an island in the ocean. Okay. And not only do these things look cool, I mean, from outer space, one would look like a bullseye. Whoa, right. They are ecologically almost magical because they can grow strange plants and animals found nowhere else on Earth. Whoa.

All right, well, we are going to do things a little differently today because you fell in love so much with these strange, powerful little bullseyes called recursive islands that I'm going to back away from the mic and you are going to take us on a journey to visit some of them. Right, and we're going to kick things off with the guy who made me fall in love with recursive islands, Josh Calder. This is Josh. As a kid, he was super into collecting toy cars and action figures, but in college, he developed a new hobby,

The polite term is hobby. The less polite term is obsession. Back then, he had a job working in a special dark and dusty part of the library known as the map room. I think some librarian sent me down there. So I was looking at thousands of maps. And his job was to organize all these maps. So as he'd smooth them out on these huge tables, he would let his finger run across the green mountains...

the Blue Lakes, and one day he did a double take. Emphasis on double. I just noticed on some map, oh look, there's an island nicely contained within another island. In a lake.

His recursive island obsession was born. I began to think, well, where else are there? And then I began to make lists. He began scanning maps of the ocean, looking for little bullseyes. Goat Island in Lake Erie. Wahiwaka Island in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Islands nestled in lakes on islands. Then one day, he notices something on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. An island!

♪ In a volcano crater ♪ ♪ In a land ♪ ♪ In the ocean ♪ - It was a triple bullseye. The lake inside the volcano crater had an island inside of it named Vulcan Point. Our buddy Josh was enchanted. - Take a look at that. That is a lovely one. - And he just kept searching for more and more triple island bullseyes, spending hours and hours combing through hundreds of pages of maps.

Eventually, Josh's eyes ventured to the easternmost point of Canada. I noticed there was quite a large island on an island in Newfoundland. Newfoundland is an island itself, a big one. And it's dotted with lakes like Swiss cheese. And right there in one of those lakes, there was a triple bullseye island that, on Josh's map anyway, had no label. And a label in the land.

And to Josh's eye, it looked even bigger than the more famous triple island in the volcano. But he wasn't sure, so... Determined to lay eyes on the island, young Josh made his plans for a journey to the great north.

He paddled out towards that next ring in the bullseye. Scanning for wildlife?

Are there polar bears that far inland who will eat me? As he hiked through deep wilderness. I was going up a creek and I slipped and fell with my 60-pound pack and my camera filled up with water. And eventually, he came to the next ring of water and saw beyond it a tiny island. He blew up his little inflatable boat and he began to paddle. I rode out there and set up my tent.

And as his hands touched the dirt of what he was now sure was the center of a triple bullseye, he realized that on that night... "I was the only person on the triple island." In his tent, completely alone, Josh was surrounded by the wonder of a place like this. The wind seemed to carry whispers of all of the people who had been drawn to these special islands long before Josh.

of the Beothuk and the Mi'kmaq, who have fished and hunted and cherished this very land for centuries, calling Newfoundland "Ukdahumkuk," meaning "across the waters." Or beyond them, in Japan, where a bullseye island called Chukubu is said to be home to gods who grant wishes. Or in Aotearoa, New Zealand, where a bullseye called Makoi Island is believed to have enchanted soil.

As Josh trundled off to dream that night, alone beneath the bright stars of the subarctic sky, he was now sure that the largest triple island was not inside that far-off volcano, but likely right there.

When we return, we are going to hear from somebody who knows how sacred these islands are, not just to people, but to plants and animals all over the planet. Like snakes. What? Oh, snakes? Stick with us. Okay.

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Terrestrials is back. I am Lulu here with Alan, and I thought we were doing an episode about recursive islands, but right before the break, you just told me we've got to hear something about snakes. Yep.

So picture, if you will, a scientist named Elba Montes. Hi. She's crouching down in some grasses... On the island of Ibiza. ...near Spain. She's reaching her hand into a small wooden box, a trap, and pulling out two brown and black spotted snakes. Oh my goodness, these snakes do not look happy.

Elba studies animals that live on islands, like these rather lively horseshoe whip snakes. One of them is just swinging its head around back and forth. Is it trying to bite you? Yeah. Did it get you? Yeah, it bit me several times. And you're just like not even flinching. Because she knows this one's not venomous and cool creatures like these are why she's here. It turns out islands are really good at making strange life forms.

Brightly colored snakes. Really beautiful. Long-beaked birds that exist nowhere else on Earth. Islands are less than 7% of land on the planet. However, 20% of the species of the world are on islands. Oh, wow. And also 50% of all endangered species are on islands. Elba explained that because islands are cut off from the mainland...

That makes them hotspots for evolution to make weird things happen. Plants and animals growing and shrinking and sprouting new colors or textures in ways that are perfectly suited to their little island habitats. That's right.

And because recursive islands are even more cut off... They are like biodiversity treasures. Recursive islands are even more unique, yeah, and special. You can find amazing features in animals and plants that have evolved on islands. She told me about some fascinating species that could only be found on islands. Okay, so...

A giant bird on New Zealand that was 12 feet tall. Wow. That's bigger than Big Bird himself. Also, a giant rabbit on the Balearic Islands that weighed 26 pounds. 26 pounds? Yeah. That's the Easter Bunny. Yeah.

And Elba says our volcano island, in that lake around it? We can find the world's only sardine that can live in fresh water. Ooh, tasty. I wonder if those canned fish would be less salty. Right. In some islands of Italy, there was a dwarf elephant. An elephant shorter than me? On Mediterranean islands, a dwarf hippopotamus. This hippo's barely up to my waist. Yeah, right. Wow.

I had no idea. How have I never heard of a dwarf hippopotamus? It is the cutest thing to me. No, because they are extinct. Oh my gosh. Yeah. When the humans arrived to those islands, they ate them or killed them and they died. That's tragic. Yeah, it's really tragic. Of course, not all humans hunt animals to extinction.

Elba explained that there have been many communities, many of them indigenous to islands, who have figured out how to coexist with the rare creatures that surround them. And their techniques and their voices need more attention. Yeah, for sure. That's the goal of studying islands, to have more knowledge about them so we can protect them better. I mean, it sounds like you're saying we need to protect these places because the land on islands, and especially recursive islands, really is...

Like sacred, almost, for plants and animals. Like, it makes special things. Yeah, they are really a treasure. Evolutionary science It's the magic of the island So, back to young Josh. He returned home from his big trek to Canada where he set foot on what he thought could be the world's biggest triple recursive island.

But he had a hard time finding anyone who cared. Because remember, this story took place long ago, before the internet. ♪

So Josh didn't know about people like Elba, who loved islands as much as he did. In fact, back then, there weren't any websites about islands until, well, Josh made one. My website was the very first for, like, island trivia. Suddenly, Josh has a digital bridge from his own little metaphorical island to island lovers all over the world.

He could share his discoveries with people who shared his interest. And even better, he could learn from them about the science of recursive islands and about all the people who were psyched about recursive islands long before Josh. He learned from them about secluded bullseye islands with temples, unique geography, cool creatures, islands he could go to, set foot on.

I think I'm officially around 608. Whoa. And even though his wife and his kids and his friends and his neighbors and his co-workers, they don't completely get his island obsession, Josh never turned away from the thrill of searching for little bullseyes, little doorways to worlds full of biological treasures. And one day after, who knows, maybe thousands of hours of squinting at maps, he noticed...

Even farther north in Canada... In the frigid waters of the Arctic Ocean... On Kidley Nurk Island... In a lake... On a smaller island... In an even smaller la- There's another unlabeled island! That's still fun. And at four acres, just bigger than two soccer fields, this island would take the crown as the biggest known triple island.

Among the island enthusiasts, Josh with his eagle eyes and his eagerness to share the location and the layered stories of these islands, he was a legend. Until... This is Jeopardy! Here comes drama. Here are today's contestants. A software engineer from Salt Lake City, Utah, Ken Jennings. Ken Jennings.

A clean-cut trivia icon with a winning smile, Ken Jennings was unstoppable with the buzzer on the quiz game show Jeopardy. He raked in millions in prize money and he eventually became the show's new host. Here is the host of Jeopardy, Ken Jennings. Thank you, Johnny Gilbert. And welcome, everybody.

What does this all have to do with recursive islands? Well, one of the areas of trivia that Ken was particularly good at was geography trivia. And back in 2012, five years after Josh shared his post about the world's largest triple island hiding in Canada, Ken published an article about the location of the same island. Article titled, Ken Jennings Finds One More Thing Canada Has That No One Else Does. But he didn't find it.

Ken, you scoundrel. And while Ken told us that he never meant to suggest that he, like, found it, found it. Because it's more fun to say Ken Jennings discovered it. It became attributed widely to him. Josh doesn't seem to hold much of a grudge against Ken. After all, he knows that this island isn't his island. This corner of the world has long been appreciated and honored by the people who call it home, who've lived there for generations.

But after all this time watching Ken bask in the spotlight for getting people excited about what possibly is the biggest triple bullseye on the planet, I was like, this is a stupid tiny thing, but it's my stupid tiny thing. Josh got to work doing what Josh does so well. I was like, eh, I'll just find a bigger one. So off he went.

Scouring maps, all alone, hour after hour, year after year for seven years, until, huh, he saw it. In the North Atlantic Ocean, on Baffin Island, in Nettling Lane, he noticed another little island, with yet another even bigger unlabeled island.

Oh, and this island was bigger than five soccer fields, more than doubling the size of the previous largest known triple island. Oh yeah, Josh. Sit back down, Ken Jennings.

You know, it's hard not to root for the guy who, without expecting much, went all in on his quirky little obsession and started sharing the beauty of these sacred spots with the rest of us. And some might say, big whoop, they're just dots on a map. But thanks to scientists like Elba and thanks to people all over the world, from the Mi'kmaq and Inuit to the North, to the people of the Philippines,

Japan, New Zealand, and beyond, who have revered and coexisted with life on these recursive islands for centuries, we all still have treasures to search for and protect. Keep searching. Keep searching. Keep searching. Keep searching. Keep searching. Keep searching. Keep searching.

♪ Keep searching ♪ Sometimes I like to think of my brain like it's its own little island, full of all my unique ideas and thoughts about stuff. And when I meet a new friend like Elba or Josh, it's like I'm building a bridge to their little brain. As we get to know each other, I learn the cool things that are going on in their noggins and they get to see things through my eyes. ♪ Doesn't always matter what you're trying to find ♪ ♪ As long as you keep searching, yeah, the world feels alive ♪ ♪ Doesn't always matter what you're trying to find ♪

As long as you keep searching, yeah, the world feels alive. So hey, for all our sakes, never stop searching and never stop sharing what's inside that amazing brain of yours. If you feel like you're stranded and nobody understands On an island building castles out of sand

Just wait, just wait, just wait for the world to catch on Keep searching, keep searching, yeah you gotta keep, keep going Keep searching, keep, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching Keep searching Keep searching, keep searching Keep searching, keep searching Keep searching Keep searching, keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching Keep searching

Alan Gofinski, everybody, with harp and vocal accompaniment by the musician Tambor.

And that's it. That's all that's happening today. Nothing else cool about it. What's that? Excuse me, I have a question. Me too. Me three. Me four. The Badgers. Listeners, with badgering questions for the expert. You ready? Yeah. My name is Mona and I'm 25. And what's your favorite island? Maybe the island of Elba because that's my name.

My name is Gus. I am six years old. And my question is how do animals move from island to another island?

They can go swimming, they can fly, and they can also raft. Raft? Yeah, some animals go on debris like a raft, floating on the water from one island to another. You're saying like a frog might just hop on a log and float off to another island? Yeah, I know of snakes that arrive to islands rafting, yeah. Surf's up! Hi, my name is Chase and I'm nine years old.

And I want to know, do islands float? Some of them do. For instance, the Uru people of Bolivia and Peru live on a group of about 120 floating islands in Lake Tititaca. Are you saying they make their own islands? Yeah, they do. They use bundles of dried reeds to make islands. That's so cool. It's amazing, yeah. Hi, I'm Thea, and I'm seven. Can you order?

Yeah, yeah, of course. But not all of them. Some islands are too tiny for people to live on them. Hi, I'm Michael R. Jackson, playwright and composer of the musical A Strange Loop. Recursive islands are kind of strange loops. If you could rename them, what would you call them?

Maybe a re-re-recursive island. A re-re-recursive island? Yeah. Hey, I'm Lulu. I'm 41. And my question is, what if I was on a triple recursive island, okay? So I'm on an island that's in a lake that's on an island that's in the ocean. Yeah. Yeah.

And what if on that island I was carrying a bowl of soup? And in that bowl of soup, I put a little crouton. And on that little crouton, I put a tongue.

thimble of water and in the thimble of water I put a tiny crumb. Would that be a five? A quintuple island? Probably yes. How about that? A quintuple island. I'm sure you have an island at some level, right? So yeah. That'll be a new record. I guess we should leave it there.

Although, I gotta say, I can't stop thinking about the recursive island inside a volcano. Is it like, could it be in any danger? Well, actually, yes. Because... Volcanoes erupted! In 2020, it erupted. And yeah, the island disappeared. Oh no! Did the lava just melt it? No, even wilder. The water all around the island, it got boiled up.

No way. Yeah, just sizzled right into the air, just turned into steam. And for years and years without water surrounding it, it just wasn't an island at all anymore. Except...

The rain eventually filled up that volcano cauldron again, and the island has returned. Whoa! So it's a resurrected triple recursive volcano island? It's back, baby! Woo! It just goes to show you the world keeps changing. Keeps, keeps changing.

All right, we're going to leave it there. Terrestrials was created by me, Lulu Miller with WNYC Studios. This episode was reported, produced, and all of the music created by none other than the talented Mr. Alan Gofinski. Ooh!

Our team includes Alan, Mira Birtwintonic, Ana Gonzalez, Tanya Chalas, Sarah Sambach, Val Powers, and Joel Plord, with fact-checking by Natalie Middleton. Special thanks this episode to Kid Advisors Lola and Evie Young, and to Julie Abodili, Sarita Bott, Shannon Webb Campbell, Jay Johnson, Jeremy Stern. And thanks again to the musician Tambor for plucking the harp strings and singing along.

Support for Terrestrials is provided by the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation, the Calliopeia Foundation, and the John Templeton Foundation. Thank you.

And finally, if you have a topic, a story, a creature, a person you think has been overlooked who we should cover, shoot us an email at T-E-R-R-E-S-T-R-I-A-L-S-S-W-N-Y-C dot org. And that'll do it for today. Thank you so much for listening. See you in a couple spins of this dirty, bullseye-covered old planet of ours. Whew.