Carlo Rovelli has a cold. I get this message an hour after arriving in Santa Fe, where I’ve come to record a rare in-person interview with the beloved Italian physicist. Two days before, I was lounging in mineral hot springs just a few hundred miles south in Truth or Consequences, NM, when I learned Rovelli was in Santa Fe visiting the famed Santa Fe Institute. It felt like the stars had aligned. I was working on a show about the physics of time that was missing a final interview; Rovelli, author of one of the world’s best-known books about time, had just come out with a brand-new book theorizing the existence of cosmic phenomena that can reverse time.
Surely, I thought, this was meant to be. I called the Santa Fe Institute. Yes, Rovelli was willing to give an interview and yes, we could record at their campus. I changed my flight, booked a hotel, and read up on quantum gravity. But now Carlo Rovelli has a cold. He’s not sure he can do the interview after all, the message says.
Steve and I often travel with recording equipment because you just never know when you might need it. We were in Yellowstone National Park once when we spied a wolf biologist whose book we had sitting in the front seat of our car. He let us tag along at dawn the next day while he tracked the Park’s wolf packs. I’ve recorded wildebeest, hippos, and a pair of mating lions while on vacation in Africa. Steve convinced a Dutch curator to let him walk through the Frans Hals Museum with a microphone in hand.
Serendipity produces a lot of great radio moments. And it does again this time. The next morning I get a call at breakfast: "Hello? This is Carlo Rovelli…" He’s hoarse, but incredibly gracious. An hour later, I’m standing on his doorstep with orange juice, throat lozenges, Day-Quil — and a microphone. You can hear the result in this week’s show.
– Anne