Prologue

My name is Phil.

I grow Hoyas in Fort Wayne, Indiana with my family.

And a while back, I looked at a plant on my bench, one I'd had for years, and realized I had no idea who it was named for.

So I went looking.

Some of them you find, a hundred-year-old obituary, a Navy medal.

A woman who collected 30,000 plants and buried her husband in a jungle and wrote it on a specimen label because it was the only permanent thing she had.

And some of them you don't find at all.

The record just stops and whatever was there is gone.

That's what this show is.

One name an episode.

Back through the paper to the person underneath it.

What holds up? what falls apart and what nobody ever bothered to write down.

Because the big history takes care of itself.

The small history only survives if somebody writes it down.

And there are people alive right now who know things that aren't recorded anywhere.

It's all one obituary away from gone.

If I get something wrong, tell me.

I'll fix it, and I'll say so.

If you know something I don't, tell me that too.

I'll put it in the record, and I'll put your name on it.

Because names have roots.

It's worth knowing who's.

My name is Phil.

I grow Hoyas in Fort Wayne, Indiana with my family.

And a while back, I looked at a plant on my bench, one I'd had for years, and realized I had no idea who it was named for.

So I went looking.

Some of them you find, a hundred-year-old obituary, a Navy medal.

A woman who collected 30,000 plants and buried her husband in a jungle and wrote it on a specimen label because it was the only permanent thing she had.

And some of them you don't find at all.

The record just stops and whatever was there is gone.

That's what this show is.

One name an episode.

Back through the paper to the person underneath it.

What holds up? what falls apart and what nobody ever bothered to write down.

Because the big history takes care of itself.

The small history only survives if somebody writes it down.

And there are people alive right now who know things that aren't recorded anywhere.

It's all one obituary away from gone.

If I get something wrong, tell me.

I'll fix it, and I'll say so.

If you know something I don't, tell me that too.

I'll put it in the record, and I'll put your name on it.

Because names have roots.

It's worth knowing who's.