american life

I heard a short story read on This American Life, called The Rememberer, by Aimee Bender. Here is the beginning:

My lover is experiencing reverse evolution. I tell no one. I don't know how it happened, only that one day he was my lover and the next he was some kind of ape. It's been a month and now he's a sea turtle.
I keep him on the counter, in a glass baking pan filled with salt water.
"Ben," I say to his small protruding head, "can you understand me?" and he stares with eyes like little droplets or tar and I drip tears into the pan, a sea of me.

Midway through the story:

On his last human day, he said, "Annie, don't you see? We're all getting too smart. Our brains are just getting bigger and bigger, and the world dries up and dies when there's too much thought and not enough heart."