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Episode 208: The Map to Heaven

TANIS

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I Was Named After a Rat, Mrs. Frisbee in the Rats of Nim

Nick Silver: I was named after a rat from an exceptional work of children or young adult literature by Robert C. O'Brien called, Mrs. Frisbee in the Rats of Nim. The book was inspired by Dr. John Calhoun's work with mice and rat population dynamics at the National Institute of Mental Health during the 1940s to the 1960s. In the novel, the rats are literate and have an advanced and mechanized society. What if Conley wrote this story as a kind of premonition of what was going to happen to the world once something else took over? He writes under an assumed name because his contract with National Geographic forbade him from publishing with any

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