The anecdotes Raymo utilizes to convey his warning of the dangers of excessive scientific pursuits all have a certain verisimilitude that closer connects the common reader with the stories. Raymo begins his piece with an anecdote about "two unemployed men in search of a fast buck", as most young men are. Thus, the piece is read with a "this could happen the characters in the anecdote could be any common person. The "two unemployed young men" even quickly sell off the "stainless steel cylinder" to a "junk dealer", rather than a professional, seeking quick cash as most people do. Furthermore, Raymo writes a rather scientific based anecdote in the absence of any true scientific jargon, writing that the cesium atoms were "seemingly magical", describing it as a "glowing dust... like an enchanted sprite", rather than describing them as, for example, "a beta-decaying isotope of cesium, cesium-137". This allows the reader to feel as if the anecdote is specifically written for him/her rather than for a distant researcher.

Raymo's story about Marie Curie also acts to relate to the reader of the passage. Marie Curie was a renowned physicist who was the first women to win the Nobel Prize and the first person and only women to win it twice. However, in Raymo's anecdote, she is reduced to a common mother, "sitting at the bedside of her four-year-old daughter", rather than one of the most important physicists in modern history. Thus, Raymo emphasizes how anyone, such as two young men and a mother, can experience discovering such radioactive materials and warns the general public on the dangers of the "unexamined quest for knowledge".