Louis, Can of Cola

Support comes from wise, the smart way to manage the currencies you need around the globe. Fed up with losing out to hidden fees when you send your money abroad with your everyday bank? Choose the smart way. Wise. You can count on the exchange rate you'd usually find on Google. No one welcomes surprises. Plus, ditch that where's my money feeling? Most transfers arrive in under 20 seconds. Join millions saving billions on hidden fees. Be smart. Get wise. Download the Wise app today. Keys and Seas Apply. This show is supported by ODO. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. ODO solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. ODO is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out ODO at ODO.com. Let's just start, settle in. Have you introduced yourself for us? My name is Lewis and I am a can of GoToCola. That's a store brand. GoTo. GoToCola. It's similar to Coca-Cola. Similar. People call it a knockoff. I've been called the best of the worst. If you wanted to get my honest opinion, I believe in a blind taste test. Your average person wouldn't be able to tell the difference between me and a can of regular Coca-Cola. But bottom shelf, we can describe it comfortably as bottom shelf. I'm that piece with that. Literally on the… Most of the time. Yeah. Well, there's a lot I want to talk to you about today. Do you need water or anything? No, no. I'm completely self-contained. I want to ask you about your time before you ended up in the fridge. You're in now. So you I take it where you were in a supermarket? Yep. And where were you? I was in a safe way. I was bought at a case. So there were 24 of us. We were all purchased together and actually our next residence was a bowling alley for a 12-year-old birthday party. I saw most of the rest of my case drunk at that party. I was not drunk. I was saved for later and brought home and put into a refrigerator and then forgotten about for a few months, placed in the back of the fridge. Sure. I froze in the fridge, I was in the very back and the temperature got very cold. I didn't freeze all the way through, but I had a frozen couple of weeks. Pretty cool. You were slushy inside? I was slushy inside. Yeah. And I had a brief adventure when they realized I was still in the fridge and they took me out for a road trip. I got to sit in the front seat cup holder, you know? Yeah. And I took a little fun road trip down to Florida and then back again and they never got around to drinking me on that trip and they put me back in the fridge and that's where I've been ever since. It sounds like you were almost chosen so many times. Yeah. What does it feel like when you're at this birthday party and you're waiting for your moment? Have you ever seen the movie "Jaws?" Yeah. So you know the story that Robert Shaw tells to Roy Shider and the other guy. Anyway, you know the story about the USS Indianapolis where he's in the water and the sharks are coming and he's waiting to be picked off and he's waiting and having that long dark night and one by one is seeing his friends go. That's kind of what it was like for me. It was terrifying. And on the one hand I was very angry at human beings for being in this position to consume us. And then on the other hand I was also very angry how come you didn't want to consume me? Mm-hmm. Yeah. When you think about being consumed by a human, do you think about the human that you want to be in? If and when I'm finally consumed, I hope I'm consumed by someone who enjoys it. But I like to imagine that if you're drunk immediately, that instead of being a painful process, there's the sort of first moment of relief the can is cracked open. All of this internal fizzing that I have going on finally has somewhere to go. Just sort of drowned out from your external can and you have that last moment where you're fulfilling your purpose and beginning to blend in with this human being and you become part of their story. Truthfully, here's how I expect to go, assuming that I am consumed. I'm expecting it's going to happen in the middle of the night where I'm not waiting for it and someone's going to open the fridge and pull me out and that'll be that. It would be nice to be poured into a nice big pint glass, you know. Frosty mug would be a pretty good way to go. That'd be pleasant, you know. I doubt that's going to happen though. They don't reserve Frosty Mugs for go to coales. That's just another one of those facts of life. How did you see Joss? Oh, the human being who lives in my house was watching Joss. They took me out of the fridge and kept me on the table. I thought this is it. This is my big moment. Kind of part of me. There was the Robert Jossine where he's telling the story of the Indianapolis and I was thinking, boy, this is just too perfect. This would be amazing. He was reaching for me. He was going to go for me and then at the last minute, you know, another human being came into the house and scolded him on not drinking soft drinks. So I put me back in the fridge. Wow. Yeah. I would have been perfect. Hmm. Yeah. You know, I should ask you, there's a lot of talk right now about the health effects of soft drinks. People tend to think of them as very unhealthy. I'm just wondering, do you feel unhealthy? Do I feel unhealthy? It's hard to say because I think if you were feeling the way I feel, you would feel unhealthy. Right. But I feel like me. I can't say that that means I feel good. But to go back to your question, unhealthy drinks are not like a new thing by any means. Have you ever heard of Rady Thor? Rady Thor? Rady Thor? All right. So back in the '20s, there was an energy drink with radium called Rady Thor, okay? The idea was it was just radioactive material in water. They claimed Rady Thor gave you energy and cured a bunch of things. They also implied that Rady Thor increased male virility. Rady Thor also killed it, you know, people. So people would just drink radioactive material dissolved in water. I'm just looking it up here. There's actually, there's an eBay ad. There's a bottle of Rady Thor for sale. Oh, come on now. It's currently $659. You've got to be kidding me. It says here. This certified radioactive water was advertised as a "cure for the living dead" and "perpetual sunshine." It goes on. One guy who used it, Evan Buyers, died from radiation poisoning and they had to bury him in a lead-lined coffin. Yeah, and that's what you get when you drink radioactive material. So they made a beverage which not only killed a man, but his dead body would have had they not taken precautions, killed all life around him. Yes. Presumably his dead body is still radiating the poisons that he drank from Rady Thor. In fact, the ad goes on. They exhumed him for study in 1965 and his remains were still quite radioactive. Yep. It then mentions that the developer of Rady Thor was not an actual medical doctor. Yeah, that sounds about right to me too. Also the bottle is in very good condition. So there's your original power drink for you. That says to me more about human beings than it does about soft drinks, to be perfectly honest. Our willingness, our eagerness to find something to. Your chronic search for potency. Yeah. That's my evaluation of humanity. Chronic search for potency. (Bell) Hello. Hey, I'm calling for Jeff. Yep. Hey Jeff, you're the man behind the bygone times vintage, right? Haha. Yeah. I'm guilty. I notice one of your eBay listings. So you put up the Rady Thor? Rady Thor? Yeah. Yeah. Is that for real? Oh yeah. What happened? I was at a flea market and I found a set of about 20, 25 of these things. Okay. It was like a shipping crate or something. And so yeah, I have sold a few of those. Now, and is it a reproduction or is it an original bottle? No, these are original. Haha. Yeah. Original. Did you check them with a Geiger counter? Um, I have not. I don't know. I just assumed they wouldn't have any. There's no content in them obviously. But I haven't. No, I didn't. I didn't check them with a Geiger counter. I don't. I suspected that from the 1920s, it would be. done gone. I think maybe it wouldn't be gone. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe they would. I don't know. Can't put them under a black light or something. I hope it's still active. That raises the interesting question, sir. Did you know much about Radathor when you, you know, when you, no, no. Yeah. I got on, fortunately now we have the internet. Google was quite helpful. It's a really an interesting story. I don't know if you've taken the time to look into it, but it's fascinating. Yeah, well, I just, I just heard about it. It's crazy that we, we humans don't like. I like the story about the guy who died from it. And then they dug them up in the 60s and it's led line coffin. He was still radioactive. That's why where I feel like you should maybe get checked out. You were. I think I will. Yeah. I think I will now that you said that because I didn't really think that the glass would hold any of that, but I guess it's possible. You know, radiation, you don't want to mess around with, I guess, when it comes down. No, no, I hear you. Hey, I have to, I'm driving and I don't want to, I'm getting on to a visit road now. So I need to unfortunately hang up on you. Got it. Yeah. Be safe. Okay, bye. Lewis, one, one quick thing I want to ask you about. I have in my life occasionally dropped a can of soda. No, yeah. Has that ever happened to you? Oh, it's a awful experience. You feel, I mean, obviously very shaken. There's a rush, I guess, of a human being terms would be like a rush of adrenaline. And for a while, you're feeling just very, very hyper after the shakeup. And then you start to sort of resettle back to a neutral state, but you have this awful kind of nauseous, sicky, sleepy feeling after the fact. And you feel kind of dumb, you know, the shakeup kind of like rattles you a little bit and it takes a little bit of time for your intelligence to kind of come back to you. It's an awful experience. Hey, I imagine too, like we often, after that happens, we will tap on what would be your head. Don't, it doesn't do anything. It doesn't. Don't. There's no reason to do it. It doesn't do anything to the carbonation. All it does is annoy us in a very sensitive moment. Yeah, don't do that. So, Lewis, this might be awkward to talk about, but I feel like there's a hierarchy to sodas, at least in terms of how humans think about them. Sure. At the top, there's, you know, Coke and Pepsi. And then there's seven up and Sprite. And then there's these, you know, like your sunkissed and great soda, phanta that are kind of at the bottom. I wonder if that, does that hierarchy, does it mean the same thing to you? Well, let me tell you something about phanta. I mean, sure, here in the U.S., it's not the most sophisticated soft drink, but overseas, it's huge, like Japan, huge. Phanta. In Thailand, it's all over the place. If you walk down the street there, you'll see half open bottles of phanta everywhere. Strawberry phanta, in particular, everywhere, just hanging out. Just like sitting on the street. Yeah, just on the street. Because humans there use strawberry phanta as an offering to ghosts. So they leave it out on the street because they're giving it to ghosts. Yes. Friendly ghosts, according to local costume, love, sweet red soda. So if you leave it out, it attracts them. And they hang out around your house and protect you from, you know, I guess whatever unfriendly ghosts might come around. Who I guess don't love sweet red soda. Right. Do you know what it is about strawberry phanta in particular? Because of the color. So there's a theory that it's because they can't do blood offerings anymore. And so strawberry phanta, which is another, you know, red viscous liquid, would be the next best thing. Strawberry phanta, among the sodas available to us, looks the most like blood. Yeah, which I personally don't see. Okay. But, you know, that's a Thailand thing. We humans, we think a lot about, you know, spirits or at least, you know, what might happen to us after we die. Do you, as a cola, do you think about that the afterlife? Yeah. Oh, yeah. How do you not think about it all the time? Yeah. Because, you know, I'm, I'm reaching that age myself, or I'm probably not going to be around that much longer. You are, I mean, you are recyclable. Yeah. Which opens up a whole other conversation. You know, my, my body, my can will almost certainly be repurposed. And then that leads me to, you know, ask questions of like, well, have I already been repurposed? I don't know. You could have been any number of sodas or, or anything else, an airplane? I could have been. I actually, when I was younger, I used to have a recurring nightmare that I was, there was a plane crashing. There was an ocean and a beach. And in the, it was nighttime and it was raining and there was a plane crashing on the beach. And I used to like to think that in a previous existence, I was part of an airplane. And this was some sort of memory that had traveled with me. Maybe I was part of like a, I don't know, ventilation system on board of a 747 or something. You referred to your, your can as your body, or your body as your can. Is there an equivalency between, you know, a human's talk about body and soul is, is that I'm sorry? No, no. I'm only sighing because I wish I had the answer to this question. Is there an equivalence? Yes. Yes. The body, mind, problem that human beings have been dealing with since the days of daycart is something all too familiar to us, cans of soda. Am I just a can? Am I soda? What does it mean to be soda? Am I part of the larger ocean of soda out there? Am I just the individuated soda? Am I soda interacting with a can? Am I can being slowly eaten away by the soda inside me? I thought about this a lot. Yeah. I don't have an answer, but it's something I wrestle with all the time. What am I fundamentally? Once the soda is gone, the can remains, but by, by me, I think. Yeah, who knows? Who knows? These are the mysteries that permeate every level of existence as far as I know. I have to say, I think, I think about the type of can you are with the pull tab. Then I think about other cans in the kitchen, like a soup can. I don't know if you know any soup can. I know a couple of soup cans. It occurs to me you are so lucky because you think about the way a soup can gets open. I can't open to me. It seems like a torture device. It is. Let me tell you something else too. I thank God every day of my life that I was not born to can't administer any soup. I at least have lived a life I know where I've been. You know, I'm not all of my dreams may have necessarily come true. I may have taken a couple of bad turns here and there, but at least at the end of the day, I've been witness to my own life. These poor bastards are stuck in these soup cans. I talk about hermetically sealed. They lose all sense of time and perspective. When you open a can of soup, when they wake up, they have no idea how much time has passed. They're like astronauts coming out of cryogenic freeze and they're all spaced out and they're completely disoriented. They don't know what's going on and their wake-up call is being torn open by these damn can openers. What a nightmare of an existence. Their flesh is literally busted open only to wake up into a world that they don't know anything about. All the rest of us stay away from the cans of soup. I'll be honest with you. I feel awful about it, but whenever I try to talk to a can of soup, they are weird. You've mentioned that you're you're feeling like you're nearing the end of your life. Oh, yeah. What do you feel old or? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, very much so. I know for a fact I'm old. I can look at my expiration date. Okay. And can I ask how close you are? T minus two weeks to go, my friend. Wow. So what, but you could keep going on after that. I could. It's not recommended, but I could. Does it seem, I mean, I think about this with you because it, and I'm sorry if I have this isn't the right way to put it, but it seems like your purpose is to be consumed by a human. Yeah. And so, you know, we all want to serve our purpose. We all want to be useful. Yeah. And yet for you, the moment of your use is the moment where you are no more, and I wonder if that's something you anticipate with optimism or if it feels like, you know, approaching the end. That's a paradox, isn't it? It is, yeah. I guess on the one hand, I do sort of dread the idea of being consumed, you know, all beings endeavor to persist in their own being. Spinoza said that. I heard about that from a cup of coffee, but on the other hand, I guess on some level, I still hope that, that I will kind of fulfill myself by being consumed, you know. I think that dream is still, is still very much alive, though if I'm being perfectly honest with you, you know, I do, I do sometimes fear that that moment is past. I feel weird saying this, but, I could drink you. right now yeah I mean I want I I want you I am thirsty but I also I want this to be a good moment for you I want you to be red I don't want you to do it if you're not ready well I'll make a deal with you I've always said I wanted to go with my eyes wide open I'm prepared to end it here if you promise me that even if you're disgusted by how I taste you will finish the cam I I will make you that promise is there anything you want to say to the humans you've encountered the cans you've encountered the countertops you've known I think I think overall I would say life is a gift and a blessing and I don't believe anything ends but everything simply transforms into the next thing I would say if I can be a little bit soft-hearted and sentimental for a moment or two it's a gift to get to be anything at all well maybe what what we'll do and that just in the interest of journalism is all I'll drink about half and then we'll check in again great do you want to talk while I'm drinking you I don't know okay no I want to have the full experience okay but I'll check in with you at the halfway mark all right so I'm I'm picking you up give me one second okay are you ready this I have to say feels delightful all right well I guess cheers cheers to you with you here's hoping for the best I mean you're you are delicious thank you you're very gentle this is a trippy feeling I'm not gonna lie all right my first report feeling very spacious inside right now feeling I got room to be yeah but I'm also I'm feeling the warmth of the tummy very strange thing I mean two places at once spacious in my own body but feeling warm and secure in your own tummy wow all of a sudden I find myself thinking about my body I'm thinking about my body and I'm hoping that my body is a good place for you I think so I don't mind telling you my first impression of the inside of your own tummy you seem to be taking pretty good care of yourself thank you yeah I am seeing some are you sweating seeing some with joy all right I'm gonna I'm gonna have a little more you go ahead and finish me off okay are you are you still there this is everything is alive the show is produced by Jennifer Mills and me Ian Chilag we got help this week from Emily Speevak Sarah Geiss Mackenzie Fagan evil wall chover and Bill Curtis a very special thanks to Stevie Lane and Jorge Just also Teddy Blanks and Adam Squires at Chips were grateful to the reporting of Patrick Win and Timothy Jorgensen on this episode we heard the song Sheets 2 from the band Mountains that's off their album Coral everything is alive is a proud member of Radio Topia from PRX and we are eternally grateful to Julie Shapiro executive producer Lewis the can of generic cola was played by Lewis cornfield our website is everything is alive calm you can find us on Twitter at Ian Chilag and on Instagram at EIA podcast if there's a thing you want us to talk to let us know we'll see you soon