Can you just say who you are? I'm Maria Matthiessen, Sarah's mother. My mother, you're my mother. Yes, I'm your mother. You were referring to me in the third person. No, I said Sarah's mother. Right. But I'm right here. You said, who am I? Maria Matthiessen. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life, distributed by Public Radio International. I'm Sarah Koenig sitting in for Ira Glass, who's here, by the way. He's just going to show up a little later. But I'm hosting the show today because this show is all about my mother, Maria Matthiessen-- Mrs. Matthiessen, to you. You can call her Maria if and when you are invited to do so. That's how she is. She has standards, strong ideas about how things should be done. She has a lot of rules about language, for instance. You don't say couch, it's sofa. Where's my pocketbook, you say? Nope. It's a handbag. Not a hand bag, a handbag. Perhaps you didn't hear the difference there. I assure you, Mrs. Matthiessen did. But my mother's most interesting set of rules is about conversation. About what you don't talk about. She's got an actual list of off-limits topics. Never talk about how you slept. Nobody cares. Never talk about your period. Nobody cares. Don't talk about your health, either. Nobody cares. [LAUGHS] Nobody ever cares about other people's health. I mean, if it's something serious and it's a friend, obviously you want to hear about it. It's the common colds, the-- Aches and pains. Aches and pains, it's really tiresome. So when I call you and say, oh, I have the flu, and I'm feeling terrible, in your heart, you actually don't care about-- No, I care, and I say, well, I'm so terribly sorry, and oh, you poor thing. And then I forget about it, go on with my life, as most people would. The list is seven items long. My mother didn't invent it. She learned it from a friend, a French friend, whose French mother told it to her. But even though it's not my mom's invention, it codified the topics she already thought were unworthy of conversation. So, to review, we've got how you slept, your period, your health. What else? Your dreams. Nobody cares about your dreams. And never talk about money, which Americans do all the time, including me. So all these things should be off the table because they're boring? Yes. So it's just to keep boringness out of your life, out of conversation? Although talking about money is considered, in certain circles, extremely rude. Not rude, just-- Vulgar. Vulgar, not done. So the others are done, I assume. It's just a question of whether you want to bore people or not. I mean, are you allowed to talk about it with your family, or just not at a gathering of friends, or something? I suppose so, if you want to bore your family. My mother takes this list pretty seriously. In fact, she is so dedicated to the eradication of dull and self-indulgent droning that she even added two topics of her own. Diet is a very big thing not to talk about. It's really boring. That includes your weight-loss regime and your food restrictions. Gluten, vegan, dairy-free, she hates all of it. And finally my mother's number one killer of discourse, her crown jewel-- Route talk. Route talk is when people tell you how they arrived, or how they came, how they got on the road, which road, how long it took. That is the top of my list for what you don't talk about. Those who transgress, who break these rules and bore my mother, are usually forgiven. We're all boring on occasion. And my mother is the first to admit that she herself can be boring. But they're not forgotten. The most infamous episode of route talk, for instance, was committed by a famous movie star who drove to our house on Long Island from New York City. The movie star was Robert Redford. Robert Redford was coming to our house. We were all super excited. And he told us how he came from New York all the way out here. Then I got lost in Shirley. And then I asked the cop. And then he recognized me and asked me for his autograph. And the whole thing, which takes two hours from New York, took two hours for him to tell us. Was he dead to you after that? Pretty much. Then there was the menstrual criminal. Oh, I've got my per-- we had a guest here, once. And the whole weekend was taken up with her period. What do you mean? Oh, it was appalling-- the cramps, and the thing, and running to the store to get equipment. And the whole weekend, that's almost all I remember about her. Do you think it's possible to have exceptions to all of these, say, at a dinner party, you know some story that would be worthy of a dinner party that would be about these things? Do you think there's exceptions where those could actually be good stories to hear? Not really. I mean, I'm looking at the list. Route talk is just completely out of the question. Diet-- especially at dinner parties, you don't want to hear what people can't eat. Today on our radio show we take on my mother and her French lady list. Our mission, to prove her wrong, to delve into the most boring topics in the world and wrench from them stories of such excellence and entertainment that my mother will be forced to rethink the entire course of her conversational life. Does she think we can do it? I doubt whether you can find great stories. I challenge you. All right, well, so, if we do it-- I'm not sure we will succeed. But if we do it, maybe I'll check in with you and play some of them for you, and see if you're-- Convinced. Convinced. Fine. I'll keep sort of an open mind. Actually, that should be on your gravestone. Here lies Maria. She had sort of an open mind. Stay with us. I hope you will too, Mom. OK, so it's been a couple of months since we had that conversation. Mom, you're here in the studio. And during that time, in those intervening months, a bunch of us here at the radio show went out looking for exceptions to your rules, for stories that are super-interesting on these topics, OK? That you would welcome at a dinner party. All right, so we're just gonna jump right in. The first story stars Ninon, my friend Ninon, who you know. Oh, good. Yeah. For people who don't know Ninon, she's French. Which means her mother is also French, just like the lady who originated your list, Mom. So when I told her about your rules, actually, she reacted like it was all totally normal, because it turns out her mother taught her similar rules, including one of the most sweeping and potentially paralyzing conversational rules in all of Europe, which is, she said to Ninon-- before you open your mouth first ask yourself, is this interesting to anybody? So I'm turning to her for the menstruation rule-- never talk about your period, nobody cares. My specialty is to have gynecological issues when I'm abroad. I taped Ninon in an actual dinner party. It was in August, and we were outside. And I did that because I wanted to create the very conditions under which, according to you, a story like this should not succeed. OK, so this story happened when Ninon was 25. She was a graduate student. And she was doing research at an archive in Washington DC. And she was staying with this really nice American woman who she'd met back in France who'd kindly offered her a place to stay. And so I was staying at her house, and I was still in the phase where you're not completely comfortable. She was so kind, you know? She was like, you can stay any length of time. And I didn't have to pay any rent. OK, now for Ninon's so-called specialty. She discovers that she has some sort of gynecological cyst, which she has to get removed. It's a small surgery. And so now is when I admit to you that this story isn't strictly about menstruation. But I'm going to beg your indulgence. I'm going to beg your indulgence. That's cheating, I say. But just suspend that judgment for second, because I promise you, it has every hallmark of a menstruation story, as you're going to find out. OK, so anyway-- just hold on-- so Ninon needs this little operation. And then I went to the hospital for a day and came back. And so this operation involved my heavily, heavily, heavily, uh, blooding? Bleeding. Bleeding. And so I had to wear these giant pads, which I'd never seen the size of in the first place. It was basically like being in diapers. They were so huge, which was already very uncomfortable. So I had to be nice to this woman. So she obviously knew what had happened. I was very vague on the details. I didn't really say anything. So a couple of days after the operation, her host, this nice woman, tells Ninon she's having a little dinner party at her house for 8 or 10 friends, and would Ninon like to join in. And so Ninon says, sure. And so that night she goes downstairs to the party. So, you know, I had made sure that I was perfectly fine. I had gone to the bathroom, changed my diaper, was wearing some conveniently large gown that wasn't too tight. And so I was perfectly comfortable, and making chit-chat. And suddenly I caught, from the corner of my eye, something that I could not quite process at first, which was one of those giant pads, but filled with blood, like to the brim, under the buffet table, in plain sight, for everyone to see. And I was talking to this complete stranger who was, like, he had a huge ZZ Top beard. And it was really like a double-take. This is not true, this is me being very insecure about bleeding. So it was quite plain, in view, under the table. And I seemed to be the only one who had noticed. I don't know. I panicked. I thought, OK, what's going? Immediately, the first thing is, I need to get rid of that diaper. I need to pick it up, I need to seize it and dispose of it. So I made my way to that table while talking with him. I remember very well the DC subway that he had somehow participated in making. And I had planned in my head, while he was talking, that I would just drop something and pick up this giant pad and just leave. So wait, what'd you do? What'd you do? What happened? So I went near that table. But before I got there-- There is only one way this story gets worse for Ninon. Dog. Yes. You're right. And then, at some point, the dog was let in. A Labrador. A yellow lab. Let's say it again. The dog was let in. And I thought, my god, the dog is going to-- That's right, he is going to. And sure enough, he didn't have the same sort of subtle approach as I did. And the dog-- OK, so, when I first played this story for my colleagues here, they all said it was too disgusting, what happens next. It is. OK. So I'm just gonna tell you. So anyway, the dog does exactly what you think the dog's gonna do. It sees blood. It tears into the giant pad. And it's a yellow lab, so it's all showing on it's snout, the aftermath of this. At some point, I did go to the dog and wrench it off the dog and fold it and put it away. And the woman did come to me in the kitchen. And she said, I'm so sorry. Because she knew. She knew you-- She knew. She'd noticed the whole thing. And she figured out that the dog-- in fact, she explained to me, because I couldn't figure out how it was possible that this thing had landed under the buffet table. That was the thing that was missing for me. But it's her dog, in fact, who had-- Taken it. Yeah. She said nobody had noticed, which I found very hard to believe. But nobody showed that they had noticed. They were kind enough to just ignore it, as though it hadn't happened. It was like being in a nightmare. You know, it felt unreal. It felt completely unreal. Total humiliation. Right? Total humiliation. That is the hallmark of a good menstruation story. Poor Ninon. I know. OK, OK. We're going to score these on whether we have succeeded in finding exceptions to your rules, basically whether we've proved that these can be good topics of conversation. But hold your thoughts right now on Ninon's story, because I'm going to go to the second story now. And just to explain, for this show, my fellow producers all did stories. And for the next one, we need Ira. Hi, Ira. Hey there. Um, so Mrs. Matthiessen-- so I call you Mrs. Matthiessen, right? Whichever. You may call me Maria. Oh, well thank you. Yeah. I heard the beginning of the show, there. I needed your permission, and now I have it. So Maria, I was sent out to find a story about diet that would be interesting for you. Oh, you are literally rolling your eyes at me, I just want to say to the radio audience. And to find one I turned to this guy named Steven Bratman. And he has spent a lot of time around people with extreme and unusual diets. So for starters, in the 1970s, he worked on this organic food commune in upstate New York, where the kitchen had to prepare meals for people with wildly different, deeply-held beliefs about food. I remember that there was a group of people that we called the rabbits, because they were sitting at one table, and their plates were just piled high with mostly lettuce, maybe garnished with some onions and carrots, or something. But the macrobiotic table was everybody had brown rice. And the purer you were, the less you had in addition to brown rice. So there were regular vegetarians, and there were vegans, and there were people who didn't eat nightshade plants, like potatoes or tomatoes. There was a whole non-onion, non-garlic, Hindu-influenced crowd. And there were meat-eaters. And these were all at different tables. Arguments would just break out between the tables. No actual fights, because everyone was expecting the meat-eaters to be the aggressive ones. Actually, the raw-foodists were the most aggressive ones. But the meat-eaters were much bigger. As the years passed, he became a doctor and a writer. He practiced alternative medicine. And he encountered and treated people who would arrive in his office doing things like-- there was a woman who decided that yellow foods were best for her body, and that's what she tried to eat. He had another patient who had shrunk to 95 pounds because her entire diet was Jerusalem artichoke pasta, canola oil, and watermelon. One woman was faint and weak all the time because she was getting very few calories and almost no protein from her diet. Her consciousness wasn't very clear. She was a little bit delirious from being in a state of starvation, until eventually she became so weak and so mentally confused that she was riding her bicycle to work and what appears to have happened is she just drove out into traffic. She just rode out into traffic and was hit by a car and was killed. And you think that's a result of her confused mental state from the starvation? She was starving, not very lucid. This was not anorexia. In anorexia, you eat less hoping that you're going to lose weight. Dr. Bratman says that these patients didn't really care about losing weight. Their diet was about making themselves more pure. So the woman on the bike said that when she would eat cashews or brown rice or food with protein in it, she felt like she had done something wrong. It felt sinful to her. And he found that arguing basic science and nutrition with a lot of these patients felt like arguing with somebody who had strong religious beliefs. They believed what they believed, where he felt like there was nothing he could say to convince his patients that their diets were hurting them. And so to get through to them, he invented a name. If I had a disease name for it, I could say no, you have a disease. You have orthorexia. He became, actually, kind of famous for coining this term and wrote a pretty good book about it called Health Food Junkies. The press is still constantly, years later, hounding him to talk about this subject. But does he actually like to talk about diet? Talking about diet is a fantastic interest to people who are obsessed with diet, of course. And that's a lot of people. And to their fellow hobbyists, of course this is very interesting. But to you? Um, to me, no. In fact, he hates it. And he was in northern California, in the Bay Area, where I guess people are constantly telling you about how they have switched to this or that diet and how wonderful it is. And he avoids this at all costs. When he meets people and they find out what he's done-- he's written a book, and he's an expert on this-- he tries to shut down that conversation as fast as he can. Which is to say, he has spent years of his life, of his career, thinking about diet. And Maria, he is just like you. He thinks it's boring to talk about. And I bring all this up to say, have we achieved the goal? Have we found an actual interesting story about diet? And haven't we proven to you that you can have an interesting story that's about diet? Well, Mom? Have we found an interesting story about diet? Well, yes, because he's an expert. And almost anybody who's an expert on something can be interesting. I'll quibble with you there, as somebody who's interviewed many experts. But your bigger point stands. Yeah, OK. OK, so I'm going to keep a tally here. We're going to have two columns. And if we found a story that's interesting on these supposedly boring topics, we win a point. If we fail to do that, you win a point. So for this one, I'm going to say This American Life wins that round. Now, can we just go back to Ninon's story, the period story? Yes, yes. How do you score that? Well, of course, she made it interesting. If Ninon told it, everybody would be riveted. Is it something I want to hear at a dinner? Possibly not. So half a point? Should we split it? Yes. OK. So that's one and a half points for This American Life and half a point for Maria Matthiessen. All right, moving on. Next up is health. Aches and pains. So my colleague Brian Reed was assigned this one. Hi, Brian. Hi, Mrs. Matthiessen. Hello. All right. And Brian searched to prove that aches and pains can make for compelling conversation. He discovered a couple who clash on this very point. So the husband is on your side. He does not like it when people talk about their health, especially at the dinner table, where a lot of this story takes place, as you're gonna hear. The guy's wife, on the other hand-- well, Brian, you tell. So Mrs. Matthiessen, when Gary Edelstone was growing up, family dinner parties were proper affairs-- fine China, silver serving bowls, neatly folded napkins. Let's just say these evenings, dinner conversation included, were conducted with a certain decorum. Gary longs for those meals, because at the dinner parties he's attended for the last 23 years-- the dinners he has every month or so with his in-laws, his wife Deborah Lott's family-- for one thing, people don't even sit down and start eating at the same time. Here are Gary and Deborah. Then, when everyone has gathered around, that's when the conversation will usually turn to medical symptoms. Just out of the blue? There's usually some cue. The cue is having a body. You know, having a body at the table is enough of a cue. The cardiologist said I have a young heart. Good. And low blood pressure. Good. Deborah, it turns out, comes from a family that obsesses over health. And when they all get together, she and her brothers, Bob and Allan, and Allan's wife Karen, their banter goes on overdrive. So Deborah and Gary were kind enough to record the last dinner party they hosted. They just put a couple of iPads on the table with the mics running. And they assure me that this is a typical dinner for them. But it's anything but typical. So Mrs. Matthiessen, it is my pleasure to be able to serve you the five course meal that you thought you never wanted, a gourmet tour of affliction and malady, with a family of disease connoisseurs. Ready? Yes. All right. So for starters, some amuse-bouche-- I hope I'm saying that right. Deborah asked her brother Bob why, if his doctor says he has such a young heart, he complains that it pounds so heavily when he climbs the stairs. He doesn't know why. He thought it might be a magnesium deficiency. You want some magnesium? Can I take it? Here we go. That's Gary you can hear there, already getting irritated. And we haven't even gotten to the appetizer yet. So Deborah, have you had your semi-annual brain scan? No, but-- We all want to know. --I do have floaters, right here. Your eye? Yeah. So when they go from a dark room to a light room, I have a light show right here. So I went to the ophthalmologist and he said that the vitreous is drying up, like this, and separating from the-- what? Oh my god. Well, no, he says it's normal aging. Do they ever put oxygen in your eyes? OK. Well, that's when I had my hole in the back of the eye. Well, that's not for floaters. Well, I had a floater. It was a piece of oxygen that floated around for years. So were you having hemorrhaging? Huh? Were you having hemorrhaging? There was blood in the eye. Cindy had that, where she hemorrhaged. How you doing over here, Mrs. Matthiessen? Well, [LAUGHS] I think this maybe one for me, rather than This American Life. Let's not get there too fast. You ready for the fish course? Yes. What did you get from those clams? Just had a little indigestion. Oh, Jesus. Clams? You were so sick. Well, clams can get you sick. I once got really sick from mussels. I mean, I had to stay away from shrimp. It was relentless. There was repartee about magnesium and potassium and blood pressure and bacteria and gluten and nitroglycerin and nitrates and Demano sugar and quinine and the flu shot and probiotics and vitamin B and the various effects each of these things might have on one's body. There were tales of muscle spasms, lungs full of fluid, insulin attacks, skin issues. She was a very nice person, but she sheds. Everybody sheds. There were also natural segues into some of the other outlawed topics, like how people were sleeping at night due to leg cramps, for instance. Or, this was a big one, diet. There were debates. Should you drink caffeine if you have atrial fibrilation? Could eating too many hot dogs give you stomach cancer? Is salt good for you, or bad for you? How about quinoa? Oh, quinoa, that's a good product, if you can handle it. At one point, somebody started talking about his hot flashes. You heard me right, his hot flashes. And suddenly Deborah began having one herself. I wasn't having them until he said it. And now I'm having one. But perhaps most telling were statements like this. They got a new blood thinner, but I'm not gonna try it. Why? Because the one I'm using works. Did you notice how Allan had no actual news to report? He had no problem to complain about. His blood thinner's working just fine. But he couldn't help himself. It's like sports. It's like people talk about baseball scores, or they talk about golf. People in my family talk about diseases and they talk about doctors. It's the culture of my family. What do you remember about how this began in your family? My father was kind of the king of hypochondriacs. And it was her father, Deborah says, who passed on the obsession with health to her family. By the time he was 25, he'd already gotten several full-body work-ups at places like the Mayo Clinic because he was convinced there was something wrong with his rib or his breathing or his digestive system. He was terrified of germs. He wouldn't eat anything that his hands had touched. As a kid, Deborah says, if you stubbed your toe, he would inspect it with a magnifying glass, then douse it in a red antiseptic called merthiolate, and then have a long discussion about whether or not you should get a tetanus shot. And I mean, we had a lot of rituals about food preparation. He was always concerned that there'd be botulism in the canned food, so we'd open the cans in a ritualized way. He would go to the cupboard and take out the can and wash it thoroughly, then examine it to make sure that none of this seams were in any way compromised. And then we would all lean over the can while he opened it to hear it puff. Puffing meant that it was airtight. And it would be this big moment to hear whether the can puffed and whether we would live if we ate what was in it. And he would do it with a certain sense of humor. He knew that it was kind of nutty. Or he would say, boy, this is neurotic behavior. Isn't this neurotic behavior? But he would never fail to do that, to check the cans. No. No, no, no. It's remarkable that Deborah is able to talk so easily about all this, because eventually her father went beyond compulsive. He became psychotic. For the last 15 years or so of his life, he suffered from full-blown delusions about his health and his doctors. Deborah says he took to his bed and never really got up again. And Deborah's mom encouraged the health talk, too. Deborah says her mom was very emotionally reserved, so the way the kids found to get her attention was to declare a good symptom. I mean, that's how she and my father communicated. He'd have a symptom, and she would fuss over him. So I think that from a very early age we learned that that's how you get love, that's how you talk about love. So please, bear that in mind as we now bring out the main course for the evening. No matter how uncouth it may seem, or squeamish it may make you, remember, they're talking about love. I went and had my ears cleaned. Oh, god. Yes. Six months. 100% impaction on the left, 80% on the right. That's what happens if you let things go. They fall apart. And here, after Allen informs everyone that his stomach has been really sensitive lately. Your large intestine-- you had a colonoscopy? For dessert, Allan told everyone about a guy he heard on the radio talking about all the terrifying spots in restaurants where traces of fecal matter have been found. Oh my god, your family. Gary, have you ever just had to get up and leave the table? Absolutely. Very often I just get disgusted with it and walk out. They don't seem to notice, though. So the question is, was I successful? Is Deborah's family proof that it's possible to talk about your health without being boring? No. It would be unimaginable in my life. Well, I actually wasn't asking you that question. I was asking them. Oh. Well, it doesn't bore me, because I guess I'm kind of libidinally invested in it. And the way my family does it is so vivid and grotesque that I'm not bored. It's kind of like a horror movie. Was it boring, Gary? Do you find my family boring? It's unpleasant. It's unappetizing. But I do see that they are relating to each other with it. This is how they bond with each other. But no, they're not boring. If Gary can give them that much, Mrs. Matthiessen, surely you can, too. Not really. Oh, come on. No. I'm with the poor husband. I would walk out. I think it's one for me. Really? I do. I think you did your story wonderfully successfully, but I thought it had a few longueurs. What's a longueur? Pardon me? No, where it dips into boringness. That's the longueur? That's the longueur. All right. So that means the score is now tied, actually. One and a half points for This American Life, one and a half points for you. Deborah Lott's a writer, by the way, and she just completed a memoir about all this stuff called Tell Me I'm Still Breathing. Coming up-- oh, Mom, can you do this part? Coming up, we find out if my daughter's colleagues know better than I do about what's interesting and what's boring. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio and Public Radio International, when our program continues. This podcast of This American Life is supported by MailChimp. More than 3 million people in businesses use MailChimp to design and send email newsletters. Teams can share feedback in real time to create campaigns and email subscribers. MailChimp also distributes hats for cats and small dogs. More at MailChimp.com. MailChimp, email marketing for everyone. It's This American Life. I'm Sarah Koenig, sitting in for Ira Glass. Today's show, "The Seven Things You're Not Supposed to Talk About," according to my mother, who is sitting right here with me. Hi, Mom. Hello, Sarah. And so we're taking you on, Mom, and your list of supposedly boring topics. For this show we went out and found stories on all of these topics, except for one. We didn't do money. And we didn't do money because you said it's on your list not because it's boring, but because it's tacky. It's crass. Plus, you say you do it all the time. So we skipped that one. But for all the others, we went out and found stories that we hope will prove to you that these topics can be interesting. You be the judge. Yes, I will be. As you always are. All right, we've come to the second half of our show. The score, one and a half for us, This American Life, one and a half for team Maria. OK. Next up on your list, sleep, as in, you don't think people should be talking about how they slept the night before anything. That's right. So we found a story about how someone slept that we think is not boring. You're going to hear from Dr. Cady Coleman. She's an astronaut for NASA. And she has spent more than 4,300 hours in space, including a mission in 2011 where she lived aboard the International Space Station for more than five months. Five months she was up there. Our senior producer, Julie Snyder, talked to Dr. Coleman about what it's like to sleep in space. For me it was just delightful because it was so clear. There just weren't any forces anywhere. You can't feel the weight of yourself, whether it's on your side or on your back or on your stomach. You don't feel like you are anywhere. And we each have a little cabin. It's the size of a phone booth. It has a door, like a panel door that just folds in and out. And that's big enough certainly for you and a computer and what we call a sleeping bag. And it's not a think sleeping bag, just a little bag that you can slither into and you can zip up. And it has armholes. And you can also clip that-- it's got hooks on it. You can clip it to the wall so that you don't go anywhere. Or, in my case, I liked to actually tuck my legs up inside and then zip it up. So that actually kept my legs tucked up, sort of sleeping in that kind of curled up position. Oh, so you're, like, in the fetal position, but you're not having to use-- Any muscles or anything. And so I would do that. And I would sometimes just unclip my sleeping bag, just because I really liked that feeling of kind of floating, kind of tumbling, waking up in the morning and having to figure out, oh, I guess that's the bottom of the thing that holds the computer. I must be upside-down. Things that are different up there about falling asleep are people down here are always thinking, OK, I want this pillow or that pillow. I like a soft one. I sleep this way, I sleep that way. And because we don't have gravity, it means we cannot rest our head on the pillow. And some people really miss that. But we have found a way around it. And there are some people that basically strap a pillow to their head so it feels like their head is on a pillow. What if you're a drooler when you're sleeping? I don't think you're gonna drool. Really? Why not? Well, you know, drooling is this pooling of saliva, right? And then it spills out because of gravity. You know, you turn on your side, and it's sort of spilling out. It's not really going to be even pooling, because now that I think about it, pooling is a gravity function. Dr. Cady Coleman. So that one was about how you slept, or how she slept in space. This next one is about dreams. Right? So you think people shouldn't be talking about their dreams to other people. I do think that. Right. All right. I'm going to remind you that a couple of weeks ago I took you to an apartment on East 36th Street in New York City. Remember? I remember vividly. OK. Here's the tape. How are you feeling right now? Apprehensive, to say the least. You might be called upon to share. Well, I ain't doing it. We were going to a dream club, a group of people who meet twice a month to talk about their dreams. Your idea of hell, basically. Here's what you said at the time. As a hobby every two weeks seems unbearable. We took the elevator to the sixth floor. Hi. Come on in. Hi, hi. Hi, I'm Sarah. This is my mother, Maria Matthiessen. It was this small, close apartment. We sat in this small circle in the living room. And it was dark in there, remember? I do remember. Yeah. One lamp or so lit. There were boxes piled up. Books everywhere-- art books, psychology books, books about Egypt. It was very, very quiet. That day's group was four people. One guy was sick, remember, in the bedroom. And then they started. They each told one dream. I'm in a projection room that is a complete mess. The carpet and the sticks of butter and the bird and my cat Charlotte. And he stands up with the chest pains, and then he collapses on the ground. The way I'm playing you this tape now of these dreams in these fragments, that is because that's how I was hearing them at the time. I could not, for the life of me, focus on what people were saying. And I want to be clear, it had nothing to do with those people, who were really nice, smart people, right? It's just that this is what happens to me when anyone tells me their dreams. And you were bored, too. I know the signs. Well, of course. Because at one point there was this rotary fan on the table, do you remember? And you picked up the cord of the fan, and you began coiling it. I knew you were gonna do it. You started coiling it up, and then you placed it gently on the table. You were trying to pass the time, respectfully. Back to their dreams. And it flies out of my hands again, under the tree. But Charlotte is there. She's eating a bird. I have the feeling that I have to run a picture show, soon. And I ask myself, what time is it? And this is exactly your objection to dream talk, right, which is that dreams are all about the feelings they evoke in the dreamer. Yes. Right. Which is very hard to convey after the fact. So what you're left with in the retelling is essentially, as you say, fiction. Yes. Bad fiction, hard-to-follow fiction. My mother stands up, getting hysterical, and says, now where am I going to spend the night? But then came the more lively part of the dream club, when they analyzed the dreams. They don't really like to call analysis, but that's pretty much what they were doing. So let's take Hugo's dream. Hugo was the newest member of the group. He was a retired projectionist, or as he was saying, motion picture projectionist. His dream consisted of four scenes. And I heard him tell it at the time. I taped it, I listened to the tape many times. I still could not tell you what all the scenes were. But I do remember that the final scene had horses in it. A herd of white stallions-- are they horses or are they aquatic creatures, I don't know-- are rising up from the depths. I sense that they are baring their teeth menacingly. And that's the end of the dream. So Hugo was disturbed by these horses. Remember? And he told us that's why he'd been coming to the dream club, in fact, that he had been struggling lately with these images he was having in his dreams. And he was trying to make sense of them because he thought he might be trying to tell himself something, but he couldn't figure out what it was. What these horses mean, rising out of this pool. That's what I can't-- I don't have any idea. What's your experience with horses? Very, very little. I've hardly ever been around them. I keep thinking, straight from the horse's mouth. It could be a message that feels threatening, coming from the deep. It's kind of a warning that it's coming, it's really going to just come right out of the water at me, or come right out of my unconscious or subconscious and bite me. You know, it's a horse. If only there could have been a scene five to clear it all up. But there wasn't. So just hearing their dreams, I was not into that at all. But interpreting them all together-- by the end, I was into it. I couldn't help it. It was like solving a riddle. The bird is this thing to protect. You have to take care of it, and it's super fragile. So eventually I explained to them why we'd crashed their dream club. And we came clean about your prohibition on dream talk, that you think dreams are only really interesting to the dreamer. So we're a learning experience for your mother in your view. I see. Or maybe we were all validating her previous-- It remains to be seen. That one guy, who was a psychoanalyst, he argued that, sure, dreams are boring to other people, unless you do what this group does, make it a communal thing. And then it becomes a whole different animal. It becomes a shared experience rather than a lonely, alienating one. And you told him you bought that. Yes, I would agree with that. I think it was interesting to hear you interpret. So I don't find this boring. I think it's very interesting to-- I mean, only sports and sex are intrinsically interesting. Just say that again. Only-- Sports and sex. So? Is that a victory? Well, we debriefed in the lobby, right? And you said you really did find the analysis interesting. You weren't just being polite up there. But then you kind of took that back. Here's what you said in the lobby. In a sense, I rest my case. The dreams themselves were incredibly boring, unbearable if you had to listen to that over your breakfast table. It was the analysis that brought them life. But it doesn't change my opinion of talking about dreams in a general thing, unless you want to sit for two hours and analyze them. Maria Matthiessen, one. This American Life, zero. OK, Mom. So is that still your feeling about the dream club? Do you stand by that? Yes. All right. So if we add that point to the real tally, that makes it Maria Matthiessen 2.5, This American Life 1.5. And how about the one before, about how you slept? Dr. Cady Coleman, the astronaut? Yes, well, I think This American Life won that one. But I think it's really cheating. Because anybody who can go and get an astronaut to talk about how they sleep is not a level playing field in any way. And if I had a general dinner, as we're talking about, and I had all these fascinating people who were able to tell these amazing stories, that would be another matter. But who has an astronaut that they can put their finger on? You sound so annoyed. I am. [LAUGHS] I don't think it's fair. But remember, when I interviewed you months ago about this list, and I said, OK, so we're going to go out and find stories on these topics. And you said, I doubt whether you can find interesting stories on these topics. Yes. I mean, I had no idea of your resources. But aren't you pleasantly surprised? Wouldn't you rather be hearing an hour of entertainment than an hour of-- I certainly would. I mean, if you were winning this, then it would be really boring. But it doesn't convince me that I'm wrong in my original supposition that when ordinary people in an ordinary situation talk about these things, it's really boring. And I agree with you 100%. Well, I'm glad. But I also think that it's old-fashioned stuff, and I can't imagine that the grandchildren will care one whit about any of this. But no one wants to be boring. Nobody knows they're boring. But they can learn. And I feel like you're here to teach us. What an awful assignment. Mrs. McGregor. The killer of the fun. Yes. The spoiler of the fun. OK. We're going to move on to our final story, Mom. And I think you can guess what it is. Can you guess what it is? I can. Route talk, which was on top of my list. That is the top of your list, the number one thing you think should not be discussed. How you got on the road, how you got here, which highway you took, but then you got off on exit blah, but then that was blocked, so you had to take the detour-- right? That's the one. Yes. OK. The very brave Nancy Updike took on that one. Poor Nancy. Maria, I want to say up front that this story does take place in Los Angeles, the epicenter of route talk. We're going into the heart of route talk darkness. I talked to Chris Garcia, very nice man. And he told me about a drive he took about a year and a half ago from Manhattan Beach in Los Angeles to his parents' house-- about a 25 minute trip. Chris was driving, and his dad was in the front seat next to him. We start heading east on Manhattan Beach Boulevard. And then we make a right on Pacific Coast Highway and then a left on Artesia. So they're in the car, heading south. And they got the radio on, they're listening to oldies, sharing a bag of chips. They've driven this route probably hundreds of times. But something odd was happening in the car, so Chris started recording their conversation on his phone. It's not a great recording, but you can hear it. Chris and his dad speak Spanish to each other, as you'll hear in a second. And his dad was pointing out the window as they were driving. He says, ah, this is the famous thing It's the-- how do you call it? And then I say, Mira Costa. Mira costa. Huh? My high school. He's like oh, yeah, yeah. High school. So Chris knew when he was taking this drive with his dad that his father had Alzheimer's. He'd gone to the doctor, he'd been diagnosed. But this drive was the first time Chris had been with his dad when he'd forgotten something so familiar. Yeah. I'd never seen him forget anything, really. Like, I know that's a big thing about dementia and Alzheimer's, is people become forgetful. But he hadn't really exhibited those types of signs before. And where are you driving at this point? Right now we are-- Still on Artesia? We're still on Artesia. And the next thing he says-- he says did you play a lot? Did you play a lot at, what's it called, the school? Mira Costa? And I said, play what? And then he says, uh, for example, baseball? Which, to me, was very alarming, because that's all we did growing up. And it's a rite of passage among Cubans, you know? We played baseball all the time. Since I probably could stand up, I've been playing baseball with my dad. And I couldn't believe that he didn't remember that I had played baseball. I was in such shock that I just continued to speak as if we were having a completely regular conversation. And then he says, Mira Costa, what, um-- what place-- what did you do? And what he meant was what position? What I inferred from it was what position did you play. And I say first base, and he's like, ugh, great. And pitcher. Leftie or rightie? And I say leftie. And then he starts laughing. He goes, man, woo! If I were around then, I would have shown you how to throw the ball. I would have taught you it all. I was a pitcher. I was a good one. Like, look! I'm a leftie, too! And then he starts pretend throwing the ball with his left arm. So they're about halfway home at this point. Chris had turned onto Hawthorne Boulevard. And his family used to live right off Hawthorne, so they're passing by this diner they had all these funny memories from called Norm's, the mall they always used to go to. But Chris' father was not recognizing anything. He had no idea where they were. And it was totally unnerving him. He just was looking at the streets and asking Chris, where are we? Trying to orient himself. I said we're taking the street to Western. [SPEAKING SPANISH] And then my dad says, I can't get out at Western. I don't have enough to cover that fare. I can't go that far. So now he thinks he's in a taxi? Yeah. Now he thinks I'm a cab driver. And he calls me young man. He goes, uh, where you going, [SPANISH]-- young man? And you could hear it in my voice, when I'm like, hm? I say we're going down to Western and then we're making a right and that will get us home. And I keep on reiterating home, la casa, our home. I'm taking you home. And none of this is really computing to him. When you were a kid, how was his sense of direction? Completely stellar sense of direction. When I was a student at Berkeley, my dad came to visit me, and I had class all day. And so my dad just went out by himself. And when I got home, my dad wasn't even home yet. He comes home an hour later, and he's like, yeah, well, I started off, I went to Oakland, I went to the farmer's market there. I almost got a baseball game, but I didn't. And then I took BART across to San Francisco, and then I went to Golden Gate Park. I met this wonderful Russian man who was very sweet, and then saw that Stow Lake place there and walked across the beach. You call that a beach? It's really foggy and cold. Anyway, really fun day. That's the type of sense of direction and the type of sense of adventure that my dad had, where you could just leave him in a city and he would just kill it. And he pretty much had one of the most amazing memories of anyone I'd ever known. So they're just about home at this point. And Chris had been planning on turning off of Hawthorne Boulevard onto 190th and then onto Western, like he usually did. But he was so caught up in what was happening in the car with his dad that he blew right past 190th, drove all the way to Carson, turned there. And that's when his dad turned to him and said, where are you from? He's like, where are you from, my friend? And I go, what? What do you mean, where am I from? And I say, I'm from here. And he says, the United States. And I say, yeah. And then, very sweetly, he turns to me and he goes, I'll appreciate this ride my entire life. You are a very good and decent person. (VOICE BREAKING) Still, you know, a sweet, charming guy, even though he didn't know that I was his son anymore. You can hear the indicator, the turn signal. And I tell him it's the next block, 218. [SPEAKING SPANISH] 2-1-8. Which is our block. And he goes, are you sure this is the street? Just let me out. And I say, Dad, I'm taking you all the way home. And then he goes, [SPANISH], which is like, he's going, like, what a stud. And then he's like-- To you. To me. He's like, what a stud. Many, many, many thanks, compadre. Like, thanks, brother. And then he goes, uh, may God-- oh, that's where I live. So all of the sudden he recognizes it. Yeah. And we walk up to the apartment, and I open the door. And I go, here we are, Dad. And he was like, you were the one that was driving me? And I go, yeah. And he goes, really? And I go, yeah. And he goes, oh, you were the one that was talking all this and that and all that stuff? And I go yeah, Dad, I gave the ride. My dad's like-- he's-- it such a sweet tone in his voice. He's like, really? Oh, ah! And he's just like, oh, I can't believe it! Nancy Updike, talking with Chris Garcia. Chris is a comedian based in Los Angeles, and to find out when he's coming to your city you can go to ChrisGarciaComedy.com. So Mom, route talk, huh? No. That wasn't a route talk story. That was a dad and lad and Alzheimer's story. We were hoping you wouldn't notice that. Well, I did, I'm afraid. OK. So you're saying that's a point for you? Yes. All right. So final score, let me look at my paper. We've got-- you won. Three and a half for you, and two and a half for This American Life. Well. You've won. I'm very glad to hear it. OK, Mom. Now's the time for the credits. Our program was produced today by Miki Meek, Ira Glass, and me, with Alex Blumberg, Ben Calhoun, Jonathan Menjivar, Brian Reed, Robyn Semien, Alissa Shipp, and Nancy Updike. Our senior producer is Julie Snyder. Production help from Dana Chivvis. Seth Lind is our operations director. Emily Condon is our production manager. Elise Bergerson's our administrative assistant and Adrianne Mathiowetz runs our website. Research help today from Julie Beer. Music help from Damien Graef and Rob Geddis. Our website, where you can subscribe to our free weekly podcast or listen to our new 24-hour stream of episodes from the archive-- like a radio station that only plays our show-- at thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. Thanks as always to our show's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia, who really put his foot down this week. If you're going to take something earlier that I said and put it here at the end to make me look stupid, I'm going to be really cross. I'm Sarah Koenig. Egg Ira will be back hosting next week with more stories of this American life. PRI. Public Radio International.