Susan Orlean likes to joke that her beat at The New Yorker is “maniacs.” Ten years ago, she wrote about a former laser physicist who had given up a successful career to become an origami artist. In time, Robert Lang became one of the world’s top practitioners, while origami became a surprising area of scientific study, with government grants funding research into how materials fold. Orlean caught up with Lang at the OrigamiUSA convention, where she tried her hand at Lang’s popular goldfish—which has a hinged jaw and fins—and talked with him about the life lessons of folding paper.
This story originally aired September 8, 2017.