What happens
Disc jockey Al Jasper Collins is approached by his old wartime friend Ralph Therian, now a prosperous sculptor who works in a new medium: tiny plastic cubes carved from within. Therian sells his miniature artworks for enormous sums, and collector Larry Oss has bought one for thirty thousand dollars. Collins hears that the process depends on a catalyst that makes the plastic expand, and that Therian shares the secret with a technician named Bursen. Collins is invited to witness a demonstration in a secret loft, where the block swells to enormous size before being carved and shrunk back down. Tensions over money and the supply of the catalyst begin to rise between the partners.
New York City, in the 1950s, including Madison Avenue, a radio station, and a secret loft in a warehouse district.
Characters: Al Jasper Collins, Ralph Therian, Bursen, Larry Oss, Morgenstern
Listen for: Collins's dry asides about the radio business and the widening dispute over the catalyst and the money during the lab demonstration.
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.