“I realized that, you know, adults don't know anything about the world. It's just, you know, sort of a big enigma.”
Radiolab · Ideas & Essays · November 2026
Context
As an 11-year-old, he photographed unfamiliar birds on his family's farm, and no teacher, professor or research institute could tell him where they came from. This is what he took from it; he went on to spend some 40 years studying animal migration.
Transcript
And they didn't. Nobody knows where they come from. Nobody knows where they go to. Nobody knows what's happening to them. And I said, Well, that can't be. I mean, you guys, you know, you're scientists. You have to know these things.
So you're a meandering 11-year-old with a question that no adult could answer.
Yep. And I realized that, you know, adults don't know anything about the world. It's just, you know, sort of a big enigma.
Over the next 40 years, Martin will find that the movement of birds and not only birds, but all kinds of animals all over the planet, which we see happening every fall and every spring, heading north, heading south, even though it seems sort of usual. This is one of those mysteries that only gets…
an evolutionary cul-de-sac.
So before we get to Martin's lifelong search for the meaning and the mystery of migration, we start with our own investigation to the subject with our favorite untangler of animal mysteries, Lucy Cook.
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