Help me identify a clip from NPR about 15 years ago.

January 11, 2012 9:42 AM

Help me identify a clip from NPR about 15 years ago.

I was listening in the car to NPR during day time about 10 to 20 years ago.
A man (presumably a journalist of some kind) was talking about how he had gone into the jungles in Africa I believe. He had gone with others from some tribe, and they all had gotten lost, I believe they were on a canoe or boat of some kind.

They had gone days without eating food and with little water I believe, and at that time they were discovered by fellow members of the tribe, who had no way of knowing that they were lost, or where they were lost. They carried food, water, and monkey brains to eat, and saved their lives through clairvoyance somehow...

I believe it was in the format of the journalist talking, and an NPR guy asking him questions.

This story stuck with me and I want to find it again..

posted by crawltopslow to media & arts (6 answers total)

Do you remember anything about the interviewer's voice? Nasally, deep, accent, etc? And what part of the country? Some NPR stations have local shows.
posted by tchemgrrl at 10:34 AM on January 11, 2012

Columbus Ohio, gosh it was so long ago, my best guesses are, the interviewer had the standard NPR intelligent voice, but I think a little deeper and louder than most.
posted by crawltopslow at 10:49 AM on January 11, 2012

Rupert Sheldrake tells a story I remember as being very much like this, and I think I heard it on NPR.
posted by jamjam at 10:58 AM on January 11, 2012

I found this where Sheldrake speared on NPR in 1996, but the RAM file seems to be broken when I open it in RealPlayer.
posted by crawltopslow at 11:17 AM on January 11, 2012

Don't know if it works but here's the Science Friday archive for the 5 Jan 1996 show.

I wonder if the interview might have been with Wade Davis when he was promoting his book One River. That's mostly set in the Amazon, not Africa, though.
posted by plastic_animals at 11:30 AM on January 11, 2012

There is a page on the Daily Mail site where Sheldrake alludes to an anecdote similar to the one I remember:

I am a biologist who has studied, researched and taught at both Cambridge and Harvard, and held senior academic posts on both sides of the Atlantic.

Yet I’ve long believed that presentiments, premonitions and other psychic phenomena such as telepathy should be taken more seriously by my scientific colleagues.

My fascination with this subject began during the Sixties when I was a graduate student in the biochemistry department at Cambridge University.

This was not long after the South African writer Laurens van der Post had published his accounts of life with the Bushmen of the Kalahari desert.

Like most traditional societies, theirs was one in which telepathy was not only taken for granted, but put to practical use, as van der Post saw when his hosts hunted down and killed an eland antelope many miles from camp.

As they were driving back in a Land Rover laden with meat, he asked one of the Bushmen how those back at camp would react when they learned of this success.

‘They already know — we Bushmen have a wire here,’ he replied, tapping his chest. ‘It brings us news.’

He was comparing their method of communication with the white man’s telegram or ‘wire’.

Sure enough, when they approached the camp, the people were singing the ‘Eland Song’ and preparing to give the hunters the greatest of welcomes.

Many other travellers in Africa have reported that people seemed to know when loved ones were coming home. ...

posted by jamjam at 3:43 PM on January 11, 2012