Louis, Can of Cola

April 19, 2024·24 min·2 clips

A cola can wrestles with whether he is the soda, the can, or something else entirely.

Everything Is Alive is a podcast in which host Ian Chillag interviews inanimate objects as though they were sentient beings. In this episode, Chillag speaks with Lewis, a can of GoTo Cola, a store-brand soda modeled on Coca-Cola. Lewis was purchased as part of a 24-pack at a Safeway and brought to a 12-year-old's bowling alley birthday party. He watched the rest of his case get consumed while he was set aside, then brought home and forgotten in the back of a refrigerator. Lewis describes partially freezing in the back of the fridge and later being taken on a road trip to Florida that he also survived without being drunk. Asked what it felt like to watch his fellow cans disappear at the party, Lewis invokes Robert Shaw's USS Indianapolis monologue from Jaws, describing a long dark night of waiting. The interview takes a historical detour when Lewis argues that unhealthy beverages are not new, citing Radithor—a 1920s product that dissolved radium in water and was marketed as a cure and virility booster. Lewis recounts that Eben Byers, a prominent user, died of radiation poisoning and was buried in a lead-lined coffin, only to be exhumed in 1965 and found still radioactive. Chillag spontaneously calls Jeff, an eBay seller who is currently offering original Radithor bottles, and Jeff admits he has not tested them with a Geiger counter. Back with Lewis, Chillag asks about the hierarchy of sodas, prompting Lewis to explain that Fanta, though considered low-status in the US, is enormously popular in Thailand, where Strawberry Fanta is left as an offering to friendly ghosts because its red color resembles blood. The interview then turns philosophical: Lewis considers the afterlife of his aluminum body through recycling, describes a recurring nightmare he interprets as a past-life memory of being part of an airplane, and applies Descartes' mind-body problem to the question of whether he is the can, the soda, or some combination. Lewis notes his expiration date is two weeks away, acknowledges his purpose is to be consumed, and describes the paradox of dreading and hoping for the same event. The host offers to drink Lewis on-air, and Lewis accepts on the condition that the host finish the entire can. Lewis delivers brief final remarks—that life is a gift and everything transforms—before being opened. He then narrates the experience from inside: feeling spacious, then warm, as he enters the host's stomach, before the episode ends.

As heard by us

A calm soda interview that turns bottom shelf status into deadpan comedy.

The episode stays with Lewis, a can of GoTo Cola, in a calm, deadpan chat about being the store brand cousin of Coca-Cola. The slow pace helps.

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Why you'd press play

Press play for a deadpan interview with a store-brand cola who is perfectly at peace being bottom shelf.

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