text
stringlengths 30.2k
72.3k
|
|---|
So a horse walks into a movie theater, gets his popcorn and a Diet Coke, and sits down in one of the few seats that are left. He realizes right away there's a cow sitting directly in front of him wearing this huge hat, totally inappropriate to wear indoors, one of the big, tall Stetson hats, completely blocking his view. So the horse taps the cow on the shoulder. Excuse me? Cow doesn't budge. No response at all. So again, the horse taps him on the shoulder. Excuse me? The cow is like ice. He's like a statue. So OK, one more time. He taps him on the shoulder. Hey, can you take off your hat? Cow turns around. And he's like, oh, my god, it's a talking horse. Not the greatest joke in the world. But what I love about that joke is that for once in the joke, the animals acknowledge that we should not be having animals talking in jokes. That's the actual punchline of the joke. That's the premise. We as human beings are so constantly blurring the line between animals and people in kids' stories, and movies, and the way we talk to our pets. We can't help ourselves. And we do it so much we even have jokes where the animals call us out on it. And I bring this up because that's our show today. Today in our program, we have two stories of human beings not just trying to blur the line between people and animals but trying to erase that line completely. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us, people. Act One, Monkey in the Middle. So there's some places where animals almost never go, places that are designed by humans for humans. This act ends up in a place like that, but it starts about as far from there as you can get. Dana Chivvis explains. Our story begins deep in the rainforests of Indonesia on an island called Sulawesi. A few years ago, the photographer David Slater traveled there from his home in England to photograph a troop of monkeys. I'd gone a whole day just following them into the thick of the forest, through the tangles and the vines and the muddy undergrowth and the cobwebs and the poisonous snakes. Oh, man. You name it, I had to go through it. And it was just so amazing just to be like a monkey. I was a monkey honestly. I had met monkeys before, like I said, all over the world. And I know a little bit about monkey etiquette and showing your teeth-- not to show your teeth, not to stare them in the face. Yeah, this is one of the secrets, actually, of being able to get good photography is making the animal relaxed. There was one shot David really wanted to get-- a full face portrait with a wide angle lens. But every time he got close to taking the shot, the monkeys would look away. So after two days of these near misses, he changed strategies. He put his camera on a tripod and threw down some cookies to try to entice the monkeys over. He was hoping they'd get curious about the camera and start pushing the button themselves. They were curious. They were not pushing the button. So David attached a cable with a button on the end of it to the camera. The monkeys liked that. They started playing with it, putting it in their mouths, fighting over it. And of course when it got pressed, they automatically looked into the lens. And the fact that it's going ch, ch, ch, ch, ch, it's monkey language. They fired off a few shots. David reviewed them. They weren't bad, a little out of focus. So he adjusted the settings and put the camera back. The monkeys were into the whole project by now. In fact, they were getting a little too excited. They almost knocked the tripod over. So David laid down on his stomach and stretched his arm out to steady the tripod with two fingers. A few other monkeys noticed their strange new friend lying full out on the floor and hopped onto his back. So I had monkeys on my back whilst I'm trying to keep my camera from being knocked, while some monkeys, or two or three monkeys, are trying to play with the button. And all of a sudden, I heard the camera going off. And I didn't dare. I knew that if I looked up at them, they would probably look away. So I let them click it, click it, click it. And I sort of very carefully looked up to see them pulling these amazing contorted faces, like howling mouths, and the smiling mouth, and more besides. The monkeys were taking selfies-- amazing, beautiful, weird selfies. I just wanted it to go on forever really. When David finally stood up and checked their work, he saw that the shots weren't just regular, old, everyday selfies. They weren't that guy at the gym taking pictures of his muscles in the mirror. These were next level, transcendentally good. They somehow escape the bounds of selfie and enter the realm of art. There was one shot in particular that caught David's eye. The monkey's face is very close to the camera looking straight into the lens. It's hair perfectly coiffed. Eyes friendly, big and round and amber. All of which are nice details, and details are important. But the focus of this selfie, the main event, is the monkey's self-satisfied grin-- teeth that are too big for its mouth with gaps between them, a real grin, like he knows he's smiling for a picture. I just saw it on the front cover of National Geographic or something like that. And I just thought, I need to get this to my agents. David and his agents put out a press release about the selfies. They thought they could grab people's attention with the photos and then use the opportunity to send a message about conservation. And also they wanted to sell the pictures, of course. These monkeys, crested black macaques, are considered to be critically endangered, which is just one step before extinct in the wild. They've lost 80% of their population in the last 40 years because of humans, which is why David went to Indonesia in the first place. He wanted to take photographs that would inspire us humans into caring more about these little monkeys, to stop killing them. The selfies didn't end up on the cover of National Geographic, but the British tabloids were interested. The Daily Mail was the first newspaper to publish the story about the selfies. This was in 2011. Within an hour, it was all over your country, Australia, Germany. I was getting emails everywhere. My inbox went crazy. People wanting to know the story, wanted to use the image. Literally, my phone was hot with calls. Over the next few months, the monkey selfies sold pretty well. David was licensing them to publications and selling prints. And then one day, he goes online to research the monkeys. I started to just search crested black macaque one day in the Google. And there was Wikipedia, top of the list as always. I clicked on that, and there's my image. And I thought, where have they got this from? Have they been to Caters News Agency and paid a license fee for it? They had not. So I sent them a letter. Sent them a letter saying, I think you're using this without a license fee. Could you show me one, or would you pay? They wrote back, saying, this image we believe is public domain. In other words, anyone could use it without David's permission, for free. To David, that was just stealing. He makes a living from selling his pictures. So it was really helpful to have one that was such a hit. But now, anyone could download it from Wikipedia and hang it on their wall or print it in their publication. Wikipedia's opinion is that information on the internet should be free. And David soon learned that they had decided the selfie was in the public domain-- Because the monkey pressed the button. So the monkey was technically the creator of the photo. But in Wikipedia's assessment, monkeys can't own copyrights. Hence, the photo was free and fair for all to use. It belonged to the internet. David was baffled. He thought-- Well, surely I've got the copyright. I set it all up. I've got the intent. I had the creativity. All the monkey did is press the button. Wikipedia includes a note below the photo, which reads, quote, "This file is in the public domain because as the work of a non-human animal it has no human author in whom copyright is vested." This decision of Wikipedia's, to declare the photo public domain, that was the opening volley in the monkey selfie battle to come. It was the moment when mother nature was shoved aside, and human nature, with its overstuffed baggage of laws and opinions and domination, took a seat. David went on the offensive, assembled a team of lawyers, studied up on copyright law. He even looked into finding venture capitalists to fund a lawsuit against Wikipedia. Wikimedia-- that's the foundation that owns Wikipedia-- they just gave him the finger. This was at their big conference in London. It's called Wikimania. One of the founders, Jimmy Wales, was there. I soon got to know, from the good Wikipedians out there, that Jimmy Wales and many of the delegates were mocking me by printing out my image on great big boards that were placed all over the conference facility. And Jimmy Wales and various other people were encouraging the delegates to take selfies with my selfie. That's just mean. There's quite a few of these images around the place on the internet, but the one with Jimmy Wales is particularly odious. Wait. I want to look that up really fast here. Hang on. Yeah. Jimmy Wales monkey selfie. Jimmy Wales Wikimania. Here we go. Oh, yeah. Look at that. If you type Jimmy Wales monkey selfie into the Google, you'll find a photo of an adult male human holding his phone up in one hand and the monkey selfie in the other right next to his face. And he's got his lips puckered up like a duck. He looks ridiculous. Now, is he-- is that face he's making-- is that-- Well, it's like a duck face. I don't know where that comes from. I don't either. But a lot of people seem to do this duck lips. How did you feel when you saw that Jimmy Wales selfie with your monkey selfie? So angry. David was fighting Goliath. And then one day, the battle took on epic new proportions. It was like King Kong walked onto the scene, and now David had to battle him too. The dispute with Wikimedia had generated some press in the UK. And one day, David's wife was online. There it was. Photographer being sued by a monkey. You found out the monkey was suing you because your wife found it online. Yeah. Just as I found out Wikipedia was stealing it because I stumbled across it, I also stumbled across the fact that I was being sued by a monkey. The monkey in the selfie photos was suing him for copyright infringement with the help of PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. David called his lawyers and said-- Look. Have you seen what's happening now? What can we do? And they said, Dave, this is clearly an April Fools'. Somebody is having you on. They said, just sit back. Let's see what happens. But do not respond to it. And you can't-- you've got nothing to worry about until you get served papers. Let's see what happens. Right. And sure enough, one afternoon I was at home. And there's a knock at the door. And a man in a black suit was standing in my porch way. I opened the door. He thrust a large A4-sized white envelope in my hand. And he says, I've been instructed to pass these to you. So I said, what are they? And I opened it in front of him. And I took it out. And I said to him, do you know what this is? And he said, not really. I said, I'm being sued by a monkey. And I showed him. And he started laughing. And we had a little chat. Because he was just a local from a local firm down the road from me. And he went on his merry way. I've read the complaint. It's kind of weird. You flip through pages and pages of legalese about copyright law. And then at the end when you get to the exhibits, it's just a bunch of monkey selfies, grinning, serious, howling monkey selfies-- like a legal document put together by Curious George. The monkey, whose name is Naruto, was suing David through his next friends, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The case is officially called Naruto, a Crested Macaque, by and through his Next Friends, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Inc., v David John Slater, an Individual. In legal parlance, next friend is a status like guardian. When someone can't represent themselves in court, the next friend can step in for them. That's just the same as if it was a baby or a disabled adult who couldn't speak or represent himself. I see. That's not unusual in human law. PETA has a reputation for pulling stunts to attract attention to the plight of animals. Once, they dumped horse manure on the sidewalk outside Gordon Ramsay's restaurant in London after a guest on his cooking show made a dish with horse meat. They made a comic book called Your Mommy Kills Animals and then handed it out to moms who were wearing fur coats at performances of the Nutcracker. They campaigned to change the word fish to sea kittens so that people would associate seafood with their adorable kitty cats and stop eating them-- the fish, I mean. But Jeff Kerr-- he's the general counsel to PETA-- he says this monkey selfie case is not one of those stunts. We first saw the monkey selfie in approximately 2014 when the dispute between Mr. Slater and Wikimedia became international news. Our view was immediately that Naruto, who created the photograph, should own the copyright to it. Jeff saw the dispute as this photographer wants to sue Wikimedia, and Wikimedia is claiming the photo is in the public domain. But who's standing up for the monkey? That's what the law is. And our argument, very simply, is that that should apply equally to him, even though he simply happens not to have been born human. But certainly the monkey didn't think like, now this is great. I've got a camera in my hands. I'm going to snap a couple frames and update my Bumble profile with whatever I get. The monkey's not thinking of it as, I'm taking a photograph here. But that's not required under the copyright law. All that's required is that-- the copyright law simply provides that the author, the creator of the image, is entitled to own it. It doesn't say that the author has to know that he or she is making a photograph. If somebody gives you their camera and asks you to take a photograph, and you arrange them and you take the photograph, under those circumstances, you technically would own the copyright. There are like 20 French tourists that I need to sue. PETA is an American organization. And the case was to be heard in federal court in San Francisco. David talked to his lawyers in England. And they told him he needed to hire an American attorney and fight this. I was advised by talking to these attorneys that I really did need to follow this through, because there would be a chance, an outside chance albeit, of it just going the monkey's way if I didn't challenge it. The monkey would win? Yeah. Well, it was in the court in California. And everybody has the opinion that anything can happen there. I don't know how true that is. But I was being told I can't take that risk. But of course-- Have you been to California? Well, no. It's kind of true. David hired Andrew Dhuey to represent him. Do you remember when you first heard about the case? Was it when-- did David call you? Is that how you first heard about it? No, I read about it. And I don't remember where I read about it. But I got pretty excited when I saw that it was filed in San Francisco federal court because I'm right across the bay in Berkeley. So I thought, wow, I would be perfect for this case. Andrew is an intellectual property lawyer. Works for himself. And when he read about the case, he reached out to David to ask if he could take it. Why did you think you were perfect for the case? Well, I think the case kind of lent itself to making monkey puns and things like that. And I just thought that would be-- I kind of like to do that. I like to joke around. I don't know if you've seen my LinkedIn profile. I'm in a Chippendales costume. For his LinkedIn picture, Andrew chose a shot of himself wearing eyeglasses, a bow tie, and nothing else. All these years-- I've been practicing for like 25 years, and I've never been able to joke around in anything I filed in court. So I was like, hey, this would actually be a case where I could do that. That said, he's a real intellectual property lawyer. He's defended the toy company Wham-O, won an important case against Panasonic. And for Andrew, the case was a one banana problem. He answered Naruto's complaint with a motion to dismiss the case. Monkeys, he said, do not have standing to sue in federal court. His argument is based on a precedent set in 2004 in a case called Cetacean Community v George W. Bush, in which all the world's whales, porpoises, and dolphins sued the president. All the world's whales, porpoises, and dolphins argued that the military's use of underwater sonar was hurting them, changing their natural behaviors, like eating and mating. Basically, sonar is just an incredibly loud sound wave. So cetaceans, that's a scientific word for a category of marine mammal-- cetaceans flee when they hear sonar, sometimes even beating themselves to get away. In that case, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decided that unless Congress explicitly states otherwise, animals do not have standing to sue in federal court. So that's the case Andrew pointed to in his defense. But PETA hired an outside attorney to represent the monkey Naruto in court, a guy named David Schwarz. This guy, Schwarz, he comes from a fancy law firm in Los Angeles known for intellectual property law. Most of his case was an intellectual property argument that Naruto was the legal owner of the copyright because he was the one who made the photo. But PETA also saw this case as an opportunity to nudge the law and set a precedent. They disagreed with the ruling in the cetacean case. They believe animals should have recourse in court. Calling civil matter 15-4324, Naruto v David John Slater, et al. Counsel, please come forward and state your appearance. This is a recording from the hearing in the federal district court in San Francisco. The judge asked Schwarz if he has an example of an animal ever being granted a copyright. In the vast history of common law prior to the Copyright Act, was there-- do you have an example of where an animal was granted a copyright? I do not have an example where an animal was granted a copyright. We could make the counterargument as to how other humans were denied protection under that law due to the color of their skin. One could see the contradiction in a statutory interpretation where we see that problem in the antebellum days. But when you look at the cornerstones of-- That's quite a stretch, Mr. Schwarz. Just to pause on this for a moment. Yes, Schwarz is comparing a monkey's lack of copyright to chattel slavery, which is offensive and seems weirdly blind to the racist history of comparing black people and monkeys. Even Schwarz seems uncomfortable with it. He's saying that denying a monkey the right to own property because of its species is the same as denying humans the right to own property because of the color of their skin. That's quite a stretch, Mr. Schwarz. Pardon me? That's quite a stretch. But go ahead. And I certainly wouldn't make it the centerpiece of any argument here today. But it is fair to say that before the adoption of the 14th Amendment, the concepts of property ownership in the area of patents foreclosed the ability of a slave to claim ownership to a patent. What's going on here is that PETA sees the monkey selfie case in the context of a larger end game. If they can get a court to agree that denying a monkey the right to own property is the same as denying a human the right to own property, that opens the door for the legal system to completely reconsider the legal status of animals. An animal would be declared an owner of property instead of just being property. This isn't the first time PETA has tried an argument like this in the courts. In 2011, they sued SeaWorld on behalf of five orcas at SeaWorld Orlando and SeaWorld San Diego. Orcas are huge, 20 to 30 feet long. And they weigh about six tons. They typically travel around 75 miles in a day. PETA said that keeping these orcas at SeaWorld in small concrete tanks against their will to perform for human entertainment, that was slavery. PETA lost that case. But SeaWorld has agreed to end its captive orca program after the last of their 27 orcas dies. To understand why PETA is pursuing cases like these, you have to consider two very different pictures about how the world works. In one of them, humans are at the top of the food chain-- either because God wanted it that way, or because we figured out how to use our opposable thumbs so well that we could hunt and gather, and till the soil, and build cities, and create copyright laws. We make the rules for everything else in this world. And the other picture-- and this is the one PETA has hanging on their wall-- humans are not at the top. Humans are just another mammal walking around on earth. And if we're going to give ourselves certain rights as humans, we should extend those rights to our fellow animals. You guys are saying humans are not superior to other animals. We're not. We are just another member of the animal kingdom. And it doesn't-- it's just prejudice and hubris that prevents us many times from seeing that. This is Jeff Kerr again, the general counsel to PETA. That property status is something that we think is just an abomination. Like Naruto, these animals are feeling, sentient beings. They should be entitled to fundamental legal rights beyond simply food, water, veterinary care, and shelter. This idea that animals should have recognized, fundamental legal rights is not unprecedented. Three years ago in Argentina, a judge granted a habeas corpus petition filed on behalf of an orangutan at a zoo in Buenos Aires. She was being held in a tiny, crappy cage. The judge decided the orangutan had basic rights as a non-human person, including the right to freedom. And in New York state, an attorney is fighting to get the courts to recognize that two captive chimps, Tommy and Kiko, are non-human persons deserving of legal rights, just like corporations get. The thing is-- David Slater, the photographer who's getting sued by the monkey, he agrees with PETA on this point. In fact, he used to defend PETA to his friends when they grumbled about the stunts. David even worked with them once on a campaign to protect wild hogs near his home in England. That's one of the greatest shames on them is that they've attacked somebody who is trying to achieve the same goal as they are. Saving animals from suffering is a very noble cause. But I think sometimes they get carried away with their power. Did the fact that this group that's sort of on your side was the one kind of attacking you or opposing you, did that make you stop ever and think, well, now, wait a minute? Do they have a point? No. I've had to think very carefully about what my philosophy is. Because the book, my Wildlife Personalities book, that's part of the court case, I argue for animals having more fundamental rights, like dignity, and access to their ancestral forests, and access to food. So I am an animal rights advocate. Naruto and PETA lost that first round in court. Andrew Dhuey called David to tell him the news. We just took it very casually. We just said, yeah, of course. Of course that's going to get thrown out. Andrew Dhuey said this all along to me. There's no way that this is going to go anywhere. And then the monkey appealed. Good morning, Your Honors. And may it please the court, David Schwarz on behalf of the appellant. The case went before three judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. That's the court that ruled against Trump's travel ban twice this year. These judges are not messing around. Schwarz made it 30 seconds into his oral argument before one of the judges interrupted him. Mr. Schwarz, before we get there, there's a preliminary question which I'd like you to address. At this stage, the attorneys and the judges are going to debate case law. And the judges have a lot of questions for Schwarz-- the first being, how are you qualified to be Naruto's next friend? You don't know the monkey. And then a few minutes later, Judge Randy Smith interrupts Schwarz to grill him about injury. That's the legal term for harm or damage. Well, what's your injury? There's no way to acquire or hold some money which the copyright would give. There's no losses to reputation. There's no even allegation that the copyright could have benefited somehow Naruto. What financial benefits apply to him? There's nothing. But, Your Honor, the redressability issue doesn't necessarily turn on the compensation. It could be-- Well, I want to know what then is the injury. There's no case that says copyright infringement itself is injury. So what injury do we have? Whatever the legal merits of this case are, there's just something really enjoyable about hearing lawyers throw around terms like redressability and compensation and injury when they're talking about a monkey. I mean, if you give me a case that says copyright infringement itself is injury, I'll believe you. But I don't think you've given me one. What's your injury? The judges and Schwarz volley over case law and legal precedent and the definition of author for 20 minutes before handing the floor to David's lawyer, Andrew Dhuey. And after two years of research and legal filings and oral arguments, Dhuey finally gets his wish to make a monkey joke in court. Monkey see, monkey sue will not do in federal court. After that, his oral arguments can pretty much be summed up as, you should throw this case out. And can you please make PETA pay my legal fees? Once Dhuey is done, Angela Dunning gets up. She's the codefendant's attorney. PETA also sued the self-publishing book company that David had used. So Angela Dunning gets up to deliver her defense, which is also pretty straightforward. Naruto can't benefit financially from his work. He's a monkey. David Slater wasn't in court in San Francisco that day. He didn't want to spend the money to travel all the way to California from Wales. But he watched the whole hearing online. When I watched it-- and you see three judges there. And then one attorney comes up, and then my attorney comes up, Andrew and then Angela, and they started talking about monkeys. It made it real all of a sudden. That, yes, he was being sued by a monkey. Naruto didn't make it to the hearing either. He stayed in the rainforest in Indonesia. And to my knowledge, nobody asked him what he thought of all this. After two years, the humans managed to figure things out on their own. They told the appellate court they didn't want it to rule in the case after all. And in September, David and PETA announced they'd reached a settlement. The details of the settlement are confidential. So I can't tell you much about it. But here's what I do know. David Slater still has the monkey selfie copyright registered in his name in two countries. And he agreed to donate 25% of the proceeds of the photos to protect the crested macaques. About Wikipedia, they've still got the monkey selfie up there for anyone to download. They still claim it's in the public domain. David will have to sue them to get it taken down, which he says he plans to do. There's just one other thing that should be mentioned about Naruto. There were a bunch of monkeys around when the selfies were being taken that day. And PETA consulted with the primatologist who works with those crested black macaques. She's the one who identified Naruto as the monkey in the famous selfie. But David says that's not right. Naruto is a male. I distinctly remember it being a female. I distinctly remember that pink rump which the female macaques have. Basically what you're saying is is that Naruto is making a fraudulent claim himself. Yes. It's the wrong monkey in court. He's taking credit for an artistic work that was actually made by a female monkey. Yeah. And I think the feminists amongst us should start to protest. I'm sure she's not the first lady monkey to have this kind of experience. It's in the nature of both humans and monkeys to horse around in front of cameras. But it's a uniquely human characteristic to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, years of our lives, to go to court over it. Dana Chivvis is one of the producers of our show. Coming up-- our first act was about a monkey horsing around. Next up, we have a horse monkeying around. That's in a minute. From Chicago Public Radio. When our program continues. This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, we choose a theme, bring you different kinds of stories on that theme in today's show, So a Monkey and a Horse Walk Into a Bar. Today we have stories of people trying to completely erase the line between animal and human. We've arrived at act two of our program. Act two, If Wishes Were Horses. So there was a thing that we were interested in for this week's show that's at the heart of this new short piece of fiction by Amy Bonnaffons. Here it is. This is an excerpt from a longer story read by two actors, Grace Gummer and Geraldine Hughes. Quick warning that this story acknowledges the existence of sex. Every morning we meet in the kitchen and unsheathe our needles. My roommate Serena delicately peels down her underwear. I count to three, hold her hip to steady her trembling frame, then jab, thrusting the handle until the fluid disappears. Then it's my turn. We're in this together, at least for now. The two needles look identical, although their contents are different. We have different goals. Serena wants to become a mother. I want to become a horse. What does it mean to be a horse? First, it means not being a person-- no credit cards, no fad diets, no existential questions, no more boring meetings or family dinners, no political allegiances or disappointments, no responsibility to anyone but yourself. How do I become one? It's quite simple. State your desire in writing, and we'll take it from there. Is it expensive? No. Why not? Because there's not yet sufficient demand for the procedure. All the more reason for you to try before it becomes pricey and exclusive. Right now, it costs less than a Pilates vacation in Tulum. I wanted something human existence couldn't offer. As I neared my 40th birthday, I felt increasingly constricted by daily postures-- sitting in a chair at my desk, cocking my head with feigned interest at a party, stirring spaghetti sauce over the stove. I started taking expensive vacations to engage in extreme physical challenges-- mountain climbing, skydiving, snowboarding. These pursuits all induced a feeling of mastery and freedom, but only after learning a complex set of rules regarding harnesses, buckles, and straps. I wanted to do away with constraints entirely. Then I learned about becoming a horse. How does the process work? The process now known as equinification was discovered by Janus Belacek, a Hungarian doctor, transforming human DNA into horse DNA. The process requires only a simple series of shots. Why does it only work on women? We're not sure, but we think it's because they want it to. Where do these horse women live? Atalanta Ranch, which occupies an entire island off the coast of Florida, and has been built expressly for this purpose. What do the horses on the ranch look like? They look like horses, tall, graceful animals designed for running and grazing, muscles rippling beneath a shiny coat of fur, hair flying in the wind. They look like they're doing nothing other than actively being themselves. Of course, I went to visit. The ranch was just as they described. The horses looked healthy and vibrant. Their hooves pounded across the plains making a sound like rainfall. "Do you think this is some kind of modern version of the lesbian separatist utopia?" I mused that night to Kathy, one of the other women on the tour, over gin and tonics at the island's guesthouse. "Except not just for lesbians?" She laughed. "Old fantasies die hard." She gave me a meaningful look. "Can I ask something? What's your reason?" "Boredom," I said without hesitation. She nodded. "What about you?" I said. "What are you escaping?" She replied with a long story about her body, which had endured nearly every tried and true form of female trauma-- abuse, rape, abortion, endometriosis, hysterectomy. "I guess," she said, "I want a different body with a clean slate." They kept refilling our drinks without our asking. And soon we were very drunk. Somehow, we found ourselves in my room stripping off our clothes. This sex was like a competition. Who could manage to escape her body using the other's body first? Later, embarrassed, we turned away from each other. Just then I sensed movement behind the window. I got up stark naked and pulled aside the curtain. One of the horses was standing right outside, staring in with her dark liquid eyes. I felt the bed creak behind me then heard Kathy gasp. She saw it too. The horse gave a deep, slow nod. Then she turned and disappeared into the night. When I become a horse, will I still have human consciousness? You will simultaneously be your human self and not be your human self when you become a horse. You will think the same thoughts, but in a horsey manner. Your personality will have the same attributes but horsily expressed. Your thoughts will take on a horsey cadence. Your feelings will pulse and throb with thick, horsey blood. We cannot guarantee that you will continue to inhabit your human identity in any recognizable way. Serena went to the doctor and found out that her second attempt at IVF had failed. "We don't say failed," the doctor said kindly. "We say unsuccessful." "It's almost as bad," said Serena. Serena and I became friends in a PhD program. I dropped out after our third year when I realized that the most pleasurable part of my life was my summer waitressing job. But it got old. I tried a few other restaurant jobs then finally settled for freelance copyediting, for which my half degree apparently qualified me. Serena graduated with honors and won an award for her thesis on 18th century women's novels. But after graduation, despite her accolades, she couldn't find a job. I encouraged her but privately ascribed her failure to her meekness with strangers. In the end, she got a job teaching English at an all-girls high school. To her surprise, the girls recognized her quiet power and obeyed her, surrounded her with a mute halo of reverence. She became one of the school's most beloved teachers. Yet no matter how deeply the work absorbed her, she always felt like a failure. Isn't this really a glorified form of suicide? We prefer to think of it in the opposite way, as a kind of birth. But your friends and relatives may not see it this way. You may have to prepare them for your transformation as you might for your death. Will I need to make out a will then? Yes. You may not bring anything with you to Atalanta Ranch beside your body. It started happening right after my 40th birthday in June. I woke up in the middle of the night with a strange feeling in my feet-- not pain exactly, but pressure so intense it absorbed my whole attention. I cried out in surprise, and Serena rushed into my room. And then we pulled back the covers to see that my feet had been replaced by perfect horse hooves, black and stone-like, cloven in the middle. As predicted by the pamphlets, I felt disgust then wonder. The pamphlet said-- The transformation of your own body will be a spectacle arousing both revulsion and awe. I got up and tried to walk around. Serena and I both giggled manically. My hooves were tender, and it hurt to walk on them, like when my feet used to ache at the end of a night on high heels. I felt lopsided and clumsy. These hooves weren't made to carry a bipedal organism. But hearing their clop, clop, clop around the floors of the apartment, I grew excited. We couldn't sleep the rest of the night. We stayed up rereading the informational pamphlets, speculating on how quickly the rest of me would start to turn. As if by magic, by some prearranged signal of the gods, Serena peed on a stick the next morning and discovered she was pregnant. Are the horses tame or wild? The horses at the ranch are wild. We provide nothing but acreage for running and grazing. We do nothing to break them. There are no harnesses, no bridles, no whips. Among other purposes, the ranch exists in order to cultivate wildness. What is wildness? And may wildness be cultivated? Isn't that a contradiction? That is what we're trying to find out. All we can say is either you personally resonate with this desire, or you don't. Either you like the idea of shaking off your restraints and are willing to give up everything you know in the attempt to do so, or you're like most people, comforted by language, by clothing, by laws. Walking around town with my hooves, I gained a new kind of attention. Women regarded me with disgust or envy, men with disgust or desire. My first night out at a bar with some friends, I was the object of many stares. But I sensed a particular heat coming from one man at a corner table. He wore the distinct, recognizable look of a graduate student-- floppy hair, and a lanky frame, and a too-large cotton hoodie. Every time I looked over at him, he turned away, red-faced. Eventually, when he approached the bar to get another drink, I addressed him. "Hey," I said. He blushed again, flicked his eyes down to my hooves, then back up, then blushed deeper. "Hey," he said. "Am I the first you've seen?" "Yeah," he said. "Sorry, I guess I was staring." "It's OK." "Is that-- is that the only part of you that's--?" "So far, yes." He nodded, swallowed. I grabbed a pen from my purse, scribbled my number on a napkin. I wasn't particularly attracted to him, but I had been horny since my hooves had appeared. "My friends and I are about to head to another bar. But if you want to meet up later, text me. I'll be free by midnight." Later that night, in his spartan studio apartment, he stared at me as if he'd never seen a woman before. I felt his gaze lingering on the spot where the slope of my ankle gave way to the ashen density of the hoof. But as he reached out to touch me, a violent, molten feeling welled up within me. I recognized it as rage. But it was too late. It had already happened. I had kicked him. He jerked backward, his hands to his face. Blood seeped out between his fingers. He said something or tried to, but all I heard was, [GROANING]. The old me would have gone and fetched him a towel, called him a taxi, accompanied him to the hospital. But the sight of his bloody face only increased my rage, tinged it with contempt for his weakness. I fought the urge to kick him again, harder. It was all I could do to get out of the house. I hurried down the stairs of his walk-up, pushed open the door, and ran through the streets of Somerville, awkward on my hooved limbs but propelled by the heat his near touch had unleashed. I ran past university gates, over the bridge, through Boston at full sprint. At some point, I realized my awkward gait had been replaced by something graceful and rhythmic and, well, horse-like. I had stopped noticing the strangeness of my hooves. I was using them as they were meant to be used. I was cantering. By the time I approached my own neighborhood, I'd slowed to a trot, but I felt elated. My very nature was changing. I was becoming wild. The man's touch had been a bridle, and I'd kicked it away. What symptoms might I experience during my transformation? The same symptoms you would experience during any transformation-- mood swings, growing pains, strained relationships, the occasional blinding toothache. To find a centaurite support group near you, consult our website. Over the next few months, the change slowly inched upwards. My human ankles became horse ankles. I grew coarse, caramel-colored hair on my legs. My femurs stretched and thickened. Occasionally, I felt sharp pains in my bones, growing pains. But other than that, the physical transition felt invigorating. My rage, however, only grew. I was energized by aimless, volcanic fury 100% of the time. Perhaps I wasn't changing my nature but recognizing something that had always been there. My boredom had never really been boredom but rather a deep, deep anger. Where had this come from? Did everyone have it? My anger was obvious now to everyone I met. I responded to routine rudenesses, catcalling, crowding on the subway by snarling, flashing my eyes, baring my teeth. People's eyes grew wide. They stepped back. They treated me like the dangerous animal I was. I loved it. Serena, too, was changing. The pregnancy had rooted in her body, and she blossomed. The first sonogram showed not one but two fetuses in her belly. Every moment she wasn't teaching, she was at the computer researching the development of the strange creatures inside of her. I, on the other hand, found myself unable to sit still. I'd sit down, get through one paragraph, then feel it kick through me, the wildness, the aimless rage. Then one evening, I got so frustrated with my work that I stood up and kicked a hole right through the kitchen cabinet. Serena appeared in the doorway, pale, one hand on the swell of her belly. We stared at each other, gripped by the same mute question. How much longer could we go on like this sharing the same space? That night, lying in bed, I heard the unmistakable sound of muffled weeping. I got up, knocked lightly on Serena's door. I walked in, sat on the edge of the bed, lightly stroked her hair. "What's the matter?" I said. "Nothing," she choked out. But before I could respond, she corrected herself. "I'm terrified. This is the biggest thing I've ever done, and I'm doing it totally alone." "You have your family," I said. "You have your friends." "Yeah, except for you." "You can come visit me," I said. "Bring your kids to the ranch." "Tell them what?" "This is your aunt Cassie. She was restless and turned herself into an animal." "That's supposed to be an example of some sort? Things get hard, and you just leave? Just peace out of human life entirely?" In the greenish light coming through the window, Serena seemed distinct and alien, like someone I had never seen, really seen, before. The protrusion of her belly was impossible to ignore. There were two whole people in there. For the first time, the terrifying marvel of this fact hit me full force. Perhaps her transformation was even stranger, even wilder than mine. Is the change reversible? No change is ever reversible. What happens if the process doesn't work on me? You'll get your money back. And we may ask you to participate in an ongoing scientific study of long-term centaurite health outcomes, for compensation. But you may decline. That's it? It's not possible for us to do more. Our hope is that the centaurites living among us will be viewed not as freaks or as failures, but as courageous-- female animals who gathered up all the uncertainties of their existence into one single, massive risk. I went for a checkup with the Atalanta doctor. The visit was routine, had been scheduled for months. But I was nervous. My progress since the last visit seemed to have stalled. She examined me all over and said "hmm" a lot. I grew increasingly worried. When I got home from the doctors, I saw that yet another delivery of baby stuff-- hand-me-downs from friends, large Amazon boxes full of equipment-- had arrived at the apartment and completely taken over the living room. To reach the couch, I had to pick my way over and between the boxes, stepping as delicately as possible with my horse legs, legs that were not made to do anything delicately. Even when I got there, I couldn't sit down. It was piled high with baby clothes. I lost it. I whirled around and began kicking with an aimless violence that startled me with its force. I had not intended this. I was beyond intention. Like if I stopped kicking and hurling things, I would cease to exist. By the time I managed to stop, I had wrecked not only most of the new baby equipment but also the large flat screen television and the coffee table. I looked around at the torn baby blankets strewn with broken glass, the mutilated breast pump, the mangled stroller. Just then, a key turned in the lock, and Serena stood in the doorway. She looked from me to the mess, from the mess back to me. Her face hardened. I could offer no defense or consolation. I had only one option. "I'm going to leave now," I said. "I'll find someplace else to stay." She nodded with no expression. I walked aimlessly, vaguely in the direction of the downtown hotels. My muscles grew leaden with shame. I felt like I was walking underwater. What pained me was not the notion that my wildness, my horseyness, had finally overtaken me. It was the suspicion that my violence had been entirely human. That night, under a scratchy hotel blanket, I contemplated my situation. For the first time in nearly a year, I cried-- sobbing into the lumpy pillow, mourning the grotesque monster that I was, howling at my failure, my loneliness, my inadequacy as woman and as animal. Eventually, from sheer exhaustion, I slept. When I woke in the morning, I saw that during my few hours of sleep the fur had finally reached upwards. My breasts were gone, replaced by a fine equine torso. I raised my hands to touch it, then realized that they had been replaced by another set of hooves. I felt practically ambushed by relief. I went downstairs to the concierge, asked her to use her human fingers to make a phone call. Red-faced and excited, she rang Atalanta. They would send someone that afternoon, they said, to pick me up. Can my loved ones visit me at the ranch? Yes. Will they recognize me? Most of them claim to, but it's impossible to determine how much this recognition depends upon wishful thinking. Can they ride me? We don't recommend it. So far, every attempt has ended in tragedy. I have four horse legs, and a horse torso, and a horse head. Outwardly, at least, I am all animal. I believe I still have a human brain mostly. But every day, its language grows rougher around the edges. For minutes at a time when I'm running or eating in the pasture, I have no thoughts. My brain is not empty exactly. It's as though a hot wind blows certain textures through my mind. My rage has diminished, but I am neither contained nor calm. I feel many emotions now, but they don't quite fit the words I know. I would describe them mostly as variations of active receptivity, of alert acceptance. Somewhere soon, Serena will be teaching her children the words for things. This is a table. This is a chair. This is a horse. Meanwhile, my language is slowly departing, the words replaced by syllable and breath-- yes, mm, yes, huh, no, mm, [WHINNYING]. Maybe she'll come visit me one day. Perhaps in my absence her hard judgments of me will soften, turn into questions. They will lead her to me across the long grass. And I'll look at her and nod. She won't try to ride me, but I'll let her approach, put a hand on my forehead. We'll both feel a sudden snare of recognition-- wildness face-to-face with itself. Grace Gummer and Geraldine Hughes reading a short story by Amy Bonnaffons. It's a part of her collection of short stories called The Wrong Heaven, which is available for preorder at Amazon and elsewhere. We're program was produced today by Robyn Semien. Our staff includes Elna Baker, Elise Bergerson, Susan Burton, Ben Calhoun, Zoe Chace, Dana Chivvis, Sean Cole, Kimberly Henderson, David Kestenbaum, Seth Lind, Miki Meek, Jonathan Menjivar, B.A. Parker, Alissa Shipp, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu. Our senior producer is Brian Reed. Special thanks today to Leo Mankiewicz. Our website, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, he was explaining to me the other day why he had a horse in a hot tub. This is one of the secrets, actually, of being able to get good photography is making the animal relaxed. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
Randy Amos was police chief in Albertville, Alabama, during years when lots of immigrants moved to town. And people in town sometimes did not know what to make of them. I remember I would get calls from people saying, you've got to do something about these Mexicans next door. I'd say, well, what are these Mexicans doing? And they said, well, they're devil worshipers. And I said, what do you mean they're devil worshippers? Well, they're over here killing goats. And of course, they would hear the cry of a goat when the throat was being cut, which is a bad sound. I agree. But they eat the goat. That was not a satanic ritual that they were going through. And so we'd go back to the caller and explain to them, look, these people are not worshipping Satan. I'm sorry that you had to hear the goat cry. But it's not violating any laws or ordinances that we have in existence here in Albertville, Alabama. Well, from WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. This is our second episode about Albertville, Alabama. You don't need to have heard last week's show to understand this one. But just in case you missed it, here's our premise, very quickly. The current attorney general, Jeff Sessions, wants to limit immigration to our country. His views have been instrumental in shaping administration policy. And as we explained in last week's show, his perspective comes from what he saw as a senator from Alabama when undocumented immigrants moved into poultry plants and other jobs around the state into towns like Albertville. In just 20 years, Albertville went from being 98% white to more than 1/4 Latino. Basically, there were 15,000 people and then another 6,000 arrived, mostly for jobs in the town's chicken processing plants. There's no official estimate of this, but the people who know the Latino community best say that more than half the Latino adults are living here illegally-- maybe a lot more than half. In the past, Jeff Sessions has mostly spoken about the effects of those immigrants on jobs and wages-- stuff that we talked about in last week's show. Last week, we stayed inside the chicken plants. But 6,000 new residents, non-white residents, in this little white town-- that also upended things outside the plants, to the point where Albertville became the statewide symbol in Alabama of everything that is wrong with immigration. At one point, one of the big national heavy hitters on the immigration issue, Kris Kobach, flew in and declared the city a disaster zone. He wrote, quote, "I have been all over the country fighting this fight, and I have seen the damage done by illegal immigration in cities of every size. But Albertville is in a class by itself." He described a town of mobile home ghettos and a city budget, quote, "thoroughly drained by illegal immigration." And the story of what really happened is so different from that. It's a mix of small local stuff in neighborhoods and in traffic-- traffic is actually a big deal-- and the local stuff sort of colliding with big national political forces that blew into town like a hurricane and reshaped how Albertville saw itself for a while-- but only for a while. And now, with the distance of a few years, it is actually possible to figure out the truth of what those 6,000 newcomers did to Albertville-- what they did to crime rates and schools and property values. It's possible to say what having them in town really cost taxpayers. And we're going to get to all that today. My coworker, Miki Meek, and I have interviewed over 100 people for this. Miki is co-hosting these two hours with me. Stay with us. Act one-- Fender Benders and Christmas Lights. So in the early years, back in the '90's, as people slowly realized that newcomers have arrived and there are lots of them, the problem with the newcomers isn't the stuff that you usually hear about when people talk about immigration. It's not jobs or wages or the cost to taxpayers. It's other stuff, neighbor to neighbor stuff, cars and yards and dead goats. The first immigrants to move to town were single Mexican men living together in trailer parks. They weren't in the neighborhoods yet. So unless you worked at a poultry plant, your first meaningful encounter with one of the newcomers was probably in your car. The number of hit-and-runs more than doubled in Albertville once immigrants moved to town. And everyone we met seemed to have a story of someone in their family getting into a wreck or fender bender. Again, here's Randy Amos, the police chief in Albertville back in the '90's, and Benny Womack, his successor. First of all, they didn't drive very well and not familiar with the laws over here. It put an extra load on our officers answering those calls. They would run a stop sign, run a red light, DUI. They didn't have a driver's license, and they wouldn't have insurance. And it was almost a common practice. If they had a crash, and their vehicle was not disabled, they would run. You know, you can understand that. Because they were in here-- in the US-- illegally. They didn't want to be in contact with law enforcement. I talked to a bunch of the guys who arrived in the early waves of Mexican workers about this. They said, yeah, it's true. Most of them didn't know what they were doing on the road. Here's Claudio, who was in our first episode. He's speaking through an interpreter. He's like, I didn't know what that light was. I didn't know what that line meant. No, they didn't know. They would just, like, drive around, like, without doing absolutely anything, totally like idiots. You don't know what a stop was. You don't know what speed limit was. Was that hard to figure out-- to learn all the rules? Si. Si. They came from really rural places, where some of the guys told me they got around on a donkey or a horse. They didn't drive cars. Of the dozens of people we talked to, one of the people with the most interesting and complicated perspectives on the conflict between the Latino newcomers and the white people in town is Jeannie Courington. She was a city council member, a small business owner-- the kind of a town booster who opened the town's recycling center and then worked there for free for years just to get it off the ground. And she was one of the locals who stood between the two communities as a go-between, explaining one side to the other. And when things eventually got pretty heated between the two sides, she was one of the main voices in Albertville urging tolerance and understanding, though she started with some of the same feelings that other people had. Back in the '90's, when Mexican workers were first arriving in Albertville, she owned and ran the town's travel agency on Main Street, which, in those pre-internet days, people would come in to book flights home to Mexico. And she is very frank when she talks about what that was like for her. I mean, I remember when they started coming in, because it was so-- it kind of made you nervous. They usually would come in multiples. They didn't come alone. I guess they were as afraid of us as we were afraid of them. And there was just three women in the office. So it was kind of unnerving. Most of them kind of looked a little rough around the edges. [LAUGHS] It would be like if I was in a room with any minority. I'm just not used to-- that's just not my everyday, you know-- you just always are a little concerned in everything. Because it's the unknown. And the only thing you hear is the bad things. So it kind of unnerves you. But she got used to being in a room with a minority. And that feeling changed for her. A lot of these early customers became regulars. And when the first Latino businessman moved onto Main Street with a little grocery store onto her same block, they ended up checking in with each other almost every day. This is him-- Jose Contreras. Well, when I just have a chance, I can just go over there and just say hi and blah, blah, blah, and, you know, make some jokes. Jose is always making jokes. It's his go-to move in lots of situations. He's from the Dominican Republic, then Florida and Georgia. He came to Albertville in the '90's, because he heard Mexicans were moving into town, and he saw an opportunity. Guys would line up in front of the store on payday, because he'd cash their checks. And because he spoke English, and because he's this warm, friendly guy, he became the de facto community leader for Latino transplants. The person they'd go to for advice on how to navigate everything from housing to where to play soccer. Jose loves sports. He jokes that he and Jeannie bonded because they're both outsiders. Because she's not born in Albertville. She was born in Crossville. Just, like, 10 minutes away. Yeah. Well, no, it's about 25 minutes away. Yeah. She said that you're definitely, like, the first Latino friend that she ever had. Yeah. [LAUGHS] Yes. I think so, yeah. Because she's a lady that-- she's in the-- I don't know what is the word that will come up to my mind. She's a high class lady. She's more open-minded, because she has traveled. Was she the white person in town who you knew the best? Oh, yeah. She's the only one that I can trust. [LAUGHS] Jose explained to Jeannie a whole other way to look at people who are living here illegally, and what they go through, debunking all sorts of stuff. And so she went off reading and researching on her own and found herself suddenly this translator to the white people in town. Somehow it would just always come up. It would come up about people being here illegal, and I would try to explain, well, our government makes it really hard for them to become legals. They have to go through so many steps. And I'd try to explain, even though they may be illegal, somehow they've got a social security number, and they're paying taxes. I felt like I was always defending them. I just felt like-- I don't know. I guess I just had a sense in my gut that they're here to stay. By 1996 or '97, with so many hundreds of people moving to town, housing's tight. The workers start moving from the trailer parks into rental houses in the neighborhoods around town, lots of them packed into single family homes. Some houses started moving their families up from Mexico. Quick picture of the town-- Albertville is nice. There's a quaint little historic section in Main Street. The Tennessee River is nearby. It's pretty green. There's a four-lane highway with all the regular strip mall stuff and fast food. Most of the town is one-story houses with shutters, neatly mowed lawns, and little red flags for the high school band all over the place. And for the locals, anything in the residential areas that deviated from that look was not so welcome. And so after the traffic accidents, this becomes the next big deal in town. Jeannie gave us a driving tour and explained why this grated on people so much. If you look right here, just as an example, things like this would be what people would see and be very upset with. And just describe this yard. Well, you have a car parked right in the front yard. You can see where they've destroyed the grass that's been on it because of all the traffic on it. You see garbage cans sitting right in the front door, trash scattered on the yard. Here, you see this next house. You've got one, two, three, four, five, six cars sitting in it. Years ago, there'd be lots of people living in one house. There'd be noise. Landlords wouldn't keep up the property. People moved in and out. They were there to make money, not settling into the neighborhood. And these were people from the countryside in Mexico, where a perfectly kept front lawn was not a thing. Residents were scared it would drive down property values. But for Albertville, overall, with thousands of people moving to town in a limited amount of housing, property values went up, faster than for the state as a whole. We drove by one house painted a bright lime green and another bright blue. There were houses in town with Christmas lights year round. Jeannie was like, that's just not what people here are used to. It's like, that's not our culture to do that. But when non-white people move into a white neighborhood nearly anywhere, you'll hear this-- like, messy yards, too many people in one house, too many cars. They're noisy. There's loud music-- like, that kind of stuff. And then often, that's code words for people just don't want non-white people moving in. That's true. Yes, some of it is prejudice. You're going to look at the house and you think, I've got a wife and a five-year-old kid. That looks pretty trashy with all these cars there. That doesn't look safe for my family while I'm going to work. That's the prejudice part. That's the prejudice part. It's really easy to show up in any small town anywhere and look at how people react to change and decide that it all belongs in this bucket of prejudice. But in Albertville, it was hard to parse out just how much was prejudice and how much was just people dealing with something new. That was real, also. And we'd get into these conversations where people would ask us to take that seriously. Like, there really were more hit-and-runs. Some streets really did look different than they used to. One guy who worked at the local paper, whose family had lived in town for generations, put it this way. For a place which hadn't seen much change, it was just a lot to take in in a very short period of time. People look different, and paint their houses differently, and speak a different language, and it just seemed to come out of nowhere. People did not know how to deal with it. Immigration economist George Borjas named a book after this great quote about immigration. The quote's about immigrants arriving in the country. Somebody once said, we wanted workers, but we got people instead-- meaning real people, who had their own ways of life. It might not match up with how people live in the new country. It's never easy. That's what happened in Albertville. The next thing people noticed totally plays into all sorts of ugly stereotypes. People see Spanish names on the police blotter, which was printed in the local newspaper, the Sand Mountain Reporter. These were usually write-ups about driving without a license, DUIs, public intoxication-- small stuff. And then, years into all of this, people started seeing major crimes appear in the paper committed by Latino men around Albertville. A man was shot and dismembered just outside of town. Five pounds of meth were seized in a drug raid. Five brothels were busted in the trailer parks around town. Chief of Police Benny Womack says brothels were something the town had never seen before. The Hispanic community was getting all the attention about crime and that sort of thing. It becomes a big issue for the citizens. Immigrant crime, of course, is one of those big topics where liberals and conservatives square off with their arguments that are, at this point, very familiar to many of us. But liberals point out that most studies on immigrant crime show that people who immigrate to this country are less likely to commit crimes than native born Americans. America Firsters say that even one crime committed by somebody who's not in the country illegally is a crime too many, and we shouldn't stand for it. That's the president's view, and he set up a federal office that documents these crimes. So putting the rhetoric aside, how exactly did this play out in this one small town in Alabama? Well, during the period when the immigrants arrived-- 1990 to 2010-- there was an explosion of all kinds of crime in town. The numbers are kind of stunning. Arrests for drug possession quintupled. Property crime rates more than tripled. That's burglary, theft, and car theft. Violent crimes almost quadrupled, though in the last few years, they've fallen back to where they started. But I talked to John Siggers, who's the commander of the drug enforcement unit for the county Albertville is in-- Marshall County-- and was an Albertville police officer from 1997 to 2007, right in the middle of the period that we're talking about. And I asked him about all that extra crime. Are most of the drug arrests Latinos? No. No. Absolutely not. Most of the meth possession cases are-- I would say-- 90-something percent Caucasian. And what about the property crime cases in town? That would be Caucasian. He explained these kinds of property crime rates are just a side effect of drug use and drug crime. It's people stealing to feed their habits. You know, that happens, not just in Albertville, not just in Marshall County or Alabama, but all over the country. The way police describe it there was an epidemic of meth use around Albertville that started around the time the immigrants arrived. It was all over the country back then and unrelated to their arrival. Around Albertville, there was mostly home-cooked meth. But then state law made it difficult to get the ingredients for home-cooked meth, and the Mexican drug cartel stepped in using Albertville as a base to supply a swath of northern Alabama. Sigger says today that every meth arrest they make they can trace back to Mexican distributors. But Sigger says that if there were no Latino population in Albertville, there very well might be just as much drug and property crime in town, because the meth would just come in through Atlanta. So whether the Hispanic population was here or not, Atlanta is still the hub. And we're located three hours from Atlanta. The drugs would still come in here. So Albertville is in this strange situation where most of the immigrant residents are not involved in drug trafficking or organized crime. The police say they actually tip them off about crimes. And if the immigrants had never been to town, the amount of drug trafficking and crime really might not have been very different in Albertville. But that is not the conclusion people are drawing from what they read in the newspaper. For the first decade and a half that Latino families were moving to Albertville, probably the best place to track how longtime residents were feeling about the changes was in the local paper, the Sand Mountain Reporter. They had letters to the editor in a column called "Speak Out," where any irate resident could call an answering machine and leave an anonymous message that would then get printed in the paper. People complained pretty much any time the city spent money on Latino residents. And then an equal number of their neighbors would call the complainers "bigots" and tell them to go read their bibles, which didn't stop anyone. It was like every week, every week. People were just like, get all these illegals out of here, taking the welfare and using it, taking our jobs, doing crime-- like every week, every week, every week. This is Ricky Ibarra, one of the first Latino graduates of Albertville High School, part of the generation of kids who grew up speaking English, and whose parents moved to town to work in the poultry plants. He says the older Latino people, they don't read the newspaper. But, like, the college students, high school students, we're more to what's going on, you know? So you would want to read it just to see what the atmosphere was. And it was pretty bad it sounds like. But it was bad because you read it-- or at least, to me-- I would read it and-- I mean, I used to work in companies where we were just surrounded. Sometimes I was the only Mexican there. So it used to have me feeling like, I wonder if they're thinking the same thing, which-- I mean, that was bad, because some of the people I used to work with they were pretty good with me. But it would just mess up the whole day. Because you would see that early in the morning. And then it'd just have you thinking thoughts. Which brings us to act two, The March. In 2006, President Bush tries to get Congress to create a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. There's a wave of marches around the country in support of that. Good evening. The issue of immigration stirs intense emotions. And in recent weeks, Americans have seen those emotions on display. On the streets of major cities, crowds have rallied in support of those in our country illegally. Ricky and a bunch of other Latino residents who had been living in town for a while and spoke English started talking about whether they should organize a march in Albertville for immigrants. They tried to enlist Jose Contreras, the guy with the grocery store on Main Street, who they were buddies with. Here's Jose. I'd say, are you crazy? You're going to be all in jail. [LAUGHS] And he said, why? Why? I said, because you have to ask for permission. Are you sure? I said, let me find out. I can find out. And I called Jeannie. Jeannie, of course, his friend on the city council who owned the travel agency. At this point, Albertville is around 20% Latino. The population has been growing for 15 years. But there's been no official outreach from the city. There's no Latino resident on the city council. So this was the back-channel way things would get done. Jose would talk to Jeannie about things going on in the community. Jeannie would take it to the people running the city. And so he brought it to my attention. And then I went to the mayor and the city council president at that time. And they kind of just laughed. And they didn't think it was-- nobody's going to show up. So needless to say, everybody was a little bit shocked when there was about 5,000 people. 5,000 marchers poured through the streets of Albertville, blocking off the lane of traffic. White people were shocked. Latino people were shocked. The organizers were shocked. Oh, yeah. We were laughing. I was laughing. We were like, I don't know what we did. Jeannie shared a snapshot she took of the crowd-- a long, calm procession. All the people-- yes, they all wore white shirts. But they all-- if you notice that they all were carrying an American flag and talking about being-- I don't have my glasses on. So I can't read their sign there. So-- but-- We love the USA. Yes. The organizers told people not to bring Mexican flags. People picked up litter along the route. Jose and his friend Luis reimbursed the police department for their officers' overtime during the march. Again, here's Ricky. It was actually the biggest crowd in Alabama, even bigger than Birmingham and Hunstville. I mean, do you think this march-- do you think it freaked out some people in town to see in such-- Oh, I think it did. I mean, I think that's what it did, really. Because they were more stunned. I think it did freak the people out of the community. Again, Jeannie. It was a shock. I mean, it was like, holy cow, you know? I've never seen this many people-- you know, they'd see them around town but never in that massive a number. It was just kind of hard for our town to kind of absorb. So it was like a wake-up call. Yeah, kind of. And they were afraid they were going to take over their town. Why did you take these pictures? Well, I guess I felt like, at that time, it was a moment of history. And it is a historical moment. What does it represent? Change. Coming up-- why some of the people in the march came to regret it. That's in a minute on Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. It's our second program about Albertville, Alabama, the town that went from nearly all white to more than 1/4 Latino in two decades. My co-host today is Miki Meek. We've arrived at act three of our program. Act three-- Backlash. So after the march, now that the locals had realized just how many Latino families had moved into town, a long period of backlash kicks off. At first, it's modest. The city council passes a few new ordinances and starts enforcing a few old ones, hoping to clean up the way things look around town. Oh, and by the way, if you want to hold a march, you now needed to apply 10 days in advance. They also tried to get the federal government to deport people. The police partner up with ICE-- Immigration and Customs Enforcement-- so that anytime they have someone in jail they suspect is undocumented, they call ICE. In the first year, 300 people are turned over into ICE custody. And the city asks the feds to give Albertville police officers the power to do immigration arrests. Police Chief Benny Womack said most people in town didn't understand that his officers couldn't enforce federal immigration law. You see, the citizens-- and probably still don't-- know why a police officer, a local police officer, can't do something about that problem. That's where I was getting flack. Why don't you do something? You're a cop. And sometimes even if you explain it to them, they don't understand. If Benny wanted his cops to make immigration arrests, they had to get special authorization and training under a federal program called 287(g). The city applied for it. Their congressmen and their senator, Jeff Sessions, went to bat for them. A handful of officers did some training with ICE, and Benny kept requesting 287(g) authorization and a detention facility to hold immigration violators. But it all fell apart. Federal priorities changed, and they never ended up getting the authorization they wanted. While all of this was going on in town, this interesting thing happened. The anti-immigration forces on the national scene scored a huge victory against the president of the United States, President Bush, and a bipartisan group of senators. They killed off Bush's proposed path to legal status in 2007. And then, with the wind at their backs, they headed out into a period of energized experimentation in Arizona, Georgia, and in Alabama. They started raising the flag on the issue around the state. A conservative group called The Eagle Forum held public meetings in Mobile, Montgomery, Huntsville, Tuscaloosa, Birmingham. State legislators sounded the alarm about how undocumented immigrants were a drain on taxpayers and how they drove down wages and stole jobs. Joe Hubbard was a state representative for Montgomery, a Democrat, who noticed how his Republican colleagues seemed to be strategizing from a new playbook. He says that before this-- Your state legislator was as local a politician as you got. He was the guy that you talked to about schools. He was the guy that you talked to about funding for that road project you need. I think that from 2004 to 2006-- and ultimately, in 2010-- you saw efforts by the Alabama Republican Party to nationalize local elections, and to talk about what's going on in DC, the Congressional Democrats, Nancy Pelosi, on and on. I think there was polling that showed immigration, which, heretofore, has been a national issue, could make for good state political fodder. The person leading the charge in Alabama was a Republican state senator, Scott Beason. As he stumped the state calling for action, he got accused of trying to rile up voters over something that was a non-problem in Alabama. Alabama's not Arizona or Texas. They just didn't have that many immigrants, documented or undocumented. It was just 3% of the population. Only a handful of states had fewer. But Beason had an answer at the ready. And a lot of people said, let's don't deal with this issue, because we don't have a big population. So why would you deal with it? But what I looked out and saw was the states that did not deal with it decades ago eventually became paralyzed, because the population had grown so big businesses were addicted to the labor. So we were trying to nip it in the bud. And when you were going around, talking about this around the state, did you feel like it was popular? Did you feel like people were on your side? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. What was the polling like? It was overwhelming. Beason's an environmental consultant turned Tea Party politician-- a chatty guy. And his first big win was convincing the legislature to create a special commission, which he co-chaired-- the Alabama Patriotic Immigration Commission-- to hold hearings around the state on the issue. Albertville inserts itself into this discussion more than any other city in the state of Alabama. People were saying Albertville is a place you need to check out. It just kind of bubbled to the top. Scott Beason says-- and there's no doubt it's true-- that the person who pushed Albertville to the top was a longtime Albertville resident named Teresa Ferguson. I know Teresa well. Well, a lot of Republicans in the state know Teresa. And a lot of that is from her efforts of saying, hey, come look and see what is going on here. How would you describe Teresa Ferguson? I think she's a great lady. I would say one of her gifts is the ability to reach out to elected officials. And I think she really cares about her community. And she's one of the nicest people I've ever met. Now, there's a whole a cake. I mean, there's plenty more. Thank you. Of the dozens of interviews that we did in people's homes in Alabama, this was the only one that started with an Italian cream layer cake, served by our interviewee, Teresa Ferguson. Teresa is in her 60s, runs a pearl jewelry business from her house-- one of her sons, a big political strategist. And Teresa is so connected in the world of Alabama politics that during our interview, at a personal request, the state's current attorney general dropped by. Are you sure you don't want a piece of cake? I'm great. Thank you. At a community event-- Teresa was on the stage with Donald Trump this year when he came to the state to endorse Luther Strange for Senate. And she's known Jeff Sessions for years. She first got to know him to get help with a family situation. Her daughter-in-law is Chinese, and was in China about to have a baby, having a hard time getting a visa. And the process was just taking too long. And she was introduced to Sessions when he was visiting a local hospital. And I told him-- I said-- as a joke-- I said, I probably should just fly her to Mexico and bring her in the back of a pickup truck. That would be a lot easier. That's the way everybody else does it. You know? And what did he say? And he just kind of laughed and had this funny look on his face, I think. She ran into him at other events. She started telling him about all the problems in Albertville she felt were caused by undocumented immigrants. And he was just so nice to listen. I mean, he's just such a nice man, anyway-- just a precious person. And he listened-- you know, because you have a couple of minutes to bend their ear a little. And then after that, I guess after you talk to him a couple of times, there's my friend. [LAUGHS] Teresa's beef with the undocumented immigrants in town was a mix of things, including the belief that they were costing the town money it just couldn't afford. You get labeled a racist if you just want to even discuss. It's that you're here, and it's against the law, and we're paying for you to be here. You're not paying your taxes. You're going to school free. We get into that later in the show. We asked an economist to run the numbers on that for us. Teresa talks about teacher friends of theirs-- her husband worked for the public schools before he retired-- who have to pick and choose what they buy at the grocery store. And then they see Latino families in the cashier line with food stamps-- and I just want to say, I know they're not food stamps anymore, but that's what everybody in town calls them. Kids who are born here can get them even if their parents are undocumented. The last time I went through the line, just as an example, the family did not speak English. One child-- probably about 10-- they had several children-- spoke English-- very polite, very nice. They finished with their groceries. Cashier said, your groceries were, like, $93-- something like that. That will be $2.69. When you see that time and time and time again-- When you see something like that-- people in the grocery store-- like, it's possible those kids are American citizens. Well, they are. Because they have the WIC card. The parents, probably, are not. So do you feel like it's unfair if the kids are citizens? Nothing's ever fair. That's not the deal. But you know, we can't take care of everybody. So you have to look to take care of the people in your own country first. In 2008, the group that was organizing meetings about immigration around the state-- The Eagle Forum-- asked Teresa to organize one in Albertville. And she did. The immigration debate took center stage at a town hall meeting in Marshall County tonight. WAFF 48's Trang Do joins us live in Albertville. Trang, the scene got pretty heated. Emotions ran high at the two-hour meeting tonight. And many were eager to voice their opinions. The meeting attracted more than 200 people on both sides of the immigration debate. I just remember standing in the door, greeting everybody as they would come in. Thank you for coming! It was popping at the seams that night-- mostly people I didn't know! At the meeting, people weren't complaining like always about the local stuff-- about messy yards and uninsured drivers. Everybody agreed that they were part of a bigger story. This wasn't just Albertville's problem. It was Alabama's and the country's. And for the first time, they got a glimpse that they could rise up and do something about it. The 90-minute presentation explained how they could fight the problem at the local, state, and national levels, and how to pressure their representatives. Speakers urged them to support a new anti-immigration bill that was going to be coming up in the state capital. And in the wake of that meeting, Teresa and a couple people start this group, Concerned Citizens, where they try to figure out what can be done next. It's not a big group-- maybe 10 to 12 regulars. But two of them ended up running for office. And they defined the city's new political climate. By the time the next election came around in Albertville, in the summer of 2008, immigration was the main thing everyone was talking about-- fueled by Concerned Citizens and a new statewide fervor over the issue. Their senator, Jeff Sessions, came to City Hall and talked to an overflow audience of mostly older white folks who fumed about the expense to taxpayers and 287(g), that program the police wanted that would let them enforce immigration laws. Sessions promised to follow up and get their officers trained. In the city council race that year, there was a lot of talk about how the city was at a critical juncture. Jeannie Courington, the travel agent who found herself always explaining the Latino population to their white neighbors, was an incumbent on the city council back then. And she ran for mayor to try to redirect the conversation away from confrontation. At the candidate forum, she says, people demanded action. You know, I think everybody thought that you could do something about it-- that you could, you know, control it. And you know, we couldn't control that. We can't build a wall around Albertville. But those were some of the things. I mean, they were just naive enough to think that-- I mean, that would be a direct question. If you're elected mayor, what are you going to do about all these Hispanics or illegals in town? What are you going to do, meaning to get rid of them. Yeah. Uh-huh. Exactly. And what would you say? Well, they're here in our community, and I believe that they're here to stay. We need to befriend them. It's not going to be the all-white, sweet little community we used to be. And do you think that hurt you with voters? I think so. Her friend Jose told her that her strategy was all wrong if she wanted to win. Here's how she needed to talk about immigrants. Kick them out. Tell them that you're going to kick them out each by each. Wait, you told Jeannie to just lie? Just say you're going to kick out all the immigrants? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I said, go ahead and say a lie, because-- and she'd never say it. She never said it. She never said it. And that's why she lost. And that's why she lost. Jose wasn't right about what the voters wanted. Most people in town turned out not to be as worked up as that. They did not pick a hard-liner. They chose a pretty moderate mayor, Randy Amos. He's the police chief you heard at the top of the show explaining that killing a goat did not violate city law. His views on immigration weren't that different from Jeannie's. He got more than twice the votes of any other candidate. But in a stunning and unexpected turn of events, because of a fluke, the town went in a direction they did not choose. Right after the vote, the city found out that someone in Randy's campaign had missed the deadline to file some campaign forms. They couldn't certify him as the winner of the mayor's race. Instead, Randy was put on the city council. And for mayor, they appointed somebody who'd won a council seat who was a member of Teresa Ferguson's group, Concerned Citizens, who had vowed forceful and immediate action against undocumented immigrants, named Lindsey Lyons-- a business owner who runs the Arby's on the big highway through town. Soon after he took office, he talked about his plans to tackle the way the city looked, schools, uninsured drivers-- The crime, the drugs, all the automobile accidents, and so forth. This is an interview he did with Birmingham News. For the most part, the majority of the people here are caring, loving people. But on the other hand, illegal is illegal. And we have no choice but to enforce what laws we have and not just bend the rules because we're asked to bend the rules. From the start, he and Randy Amos locked horns and pretty much never stopped fighting. People picked sides. And Lyons sets the council on a divisive crusade targeting the Latino population. They bar city contractors from hiring undocumented immigrants. They make English the official language of Albertville. They ban taco trucks, which leads to an uproar. 200 people pack a town hall meeting. Not everything passes, like the proposal to force Latino businesses to translate their signs into English, or their proposal that would fine anyone who keeps their Christmas lights up past January 31st, or anyone who has indoor furniture on their porch outdoors, or broken vehicles on their lawn. And then one of the hard-liners on the council turned for help to the national anti-immigration heavyweight we quoted at the top of the show-- an innovator from the very cutting edge of the movement. Albertville city officials are continuing their quest in curbing illegal immigration. So they've enlisted the help of a nationally recognized attorney, Kris Kobach. He is the man when it comes to illegal immigration issues. Councilman Chuck Ellis says he's-- Today, Kobach is an ally of President Trump's. He's the person who explained to Donald Trump how the US actually could make Mexico pay for a wall. He's the vice chair of the federal commission that the president set up to investigate voter fraud. But back in the 2000s, Kobach was traveling to cities around the country, helping them draft anti-immigration ordinances that tested the limits of what the law would allow. They targeted landlords who rented to undocumented immigrants and employers who hired them, hoping to create an environment where they just could not get jobs or housing anymore. Then they make the rational decision-- hey, wait. It's not worth it to be here anymore. I'm going to leave. This is Kobach in an Eagle Forum meeting in Alabama around this time. You don't have to round people up and bus them home. You give them incentives to go home by rationing down the probability that they will get a job. I'd emailed him. I don't know how I got his email address. It seemed like it was on a website or something. This is Chuck Ellis, the mayor's closest ally on the council, also a member of Teresa Ferguson's group, Concerned Citizens. And I told him who I was. And he said that he had read about that before in couple of places. He wanted to know how he could help me. I stood right over there behind that chair, and we chatted. And he said, hey, look, I'll come out. The proposal was to hire Kobach to help them write a law that would fine employers who knowingly hired undocumented immigrants. This plan died when one of the moderates on the council, Diane McClendon, called another city that used Kobach-- Valley Park, Missouri. Kobach helped them write ordinances that targeted employers and landlords. The city passed the ordinances and immediately got sued by civil rights groups for being discriminatory and unconstitutional. This mired them for years in expensive and fruitless litigation. Diane talked to their lawyer. And I asked him what came out of it. He said it cost millions-- the city-- millions. And I said, would you recommend it? He said, absolutely not. He said, nothing is going to come of it. And he said, I would not recommend it. The council voted against hiring Kobach on a 3-2 vote. But Kobach found someone else to work with-- state senator Scott Beason, the guy leading the statewide fight against undocumented immigrants, the guy who created that commission to investigate the problem. In 2010, he and Kobach got their chance to do something major. For the first time in over 100 years, Republicans swept both Alabama houses and the governorship, which suddenly made it possible to pass sweeping new legislation targeting immigrants. Kobach helped Beason draft it. It was called HB 56, the Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act. And now to the crackdown on illegal immigration in Alabama. The state's new immigration law is considered one of the toughest in the country. So we came here to Albertville, Alabama. 2011, Fox News. Alabama's new law, HB 56, was groundbreaking-- the most extreme anti-immigration state law ever passed, intended to make life in Alabama so unpleasant that people would self-deport. To accomplish this, they'd made it a criminal act for citizens to have all kinds of transactions with people that they knew or should know were undocumented-- to rent them a home or harbor them or transport them. It was illegal to give them a job. Most contracts with them were invalidated. Some public utilities refused to provide gas, electricity, or water without proof of status. Schools had to find out the immigration status of new students and report that information to the state. Police could detain anybody they even suspected might be in the country illegally. And to get the bill passed, Scott Beason says he definitely relied on Albertville. Albertville did make a difference by being able to take some legislators there. Because some people lived in places that weren't impacted by illegal immigration. And they were buying into this story that, oh, it's really not a big deal, and we really don't have a problem here. So it was more to show that, look, there are some towns who are being impacted by illegal immigration. So they could really see it. So it was a reality. Teresa Ferguson organized tours of the worst problem spots-- she called it the show-and-tell-- for any politician who came to town. State senators, three gubernatorial candidates, the attorney general, a member of Congress-- she had talking points on index cards that she carried around in her purse at all times. She drove me to some of the spots. But this is the trailer park I was telling you-- here in the back was a trailer used as a brothel. We went to places there had been prostitution and drug busts. I think this right here-- don't want to slow down very much. But you see-- She invited her own state senator, Hinton Mitchem, who had once lived in Albertville, out on the show-and-tell. A police officer drove them around to see rundown trailer parks and places they'd made arrests. After half an hour, she says, the car returned. And when they opened the door, Senator Mitchem looked like they had just beaten him with a stick. You know, he just was so sad. He said, I am so sorry. I did not know. So after Albertville helped get HB 56 passed, once it went into effect, when reporters looked for a place to see it in action, Albertville was the place they went to. Mayor Lindsey Lyons-- he was on Fox, CNN, NPR, and TV around the state. He told the Sand Mountain Reporter, quote, "People may not realize that Albertville had a large impact on this bill. Some of the ideas in the bill originated here in Albertville." Here he is being interviewed on NPR. There's less traffic on our streets now. There's less activity in the Hispanic-owned businesses that are here in Albertville. So we can tell a noticeable difference already. Do you like what this has done to your town? I'll tell you why I support it, and why I'm grateful right now. We've got close to 4,000 people in Marshall County out of work. And one of our local poultry plants, Wayne Farms, just had a job fair recently. And we had hundreds of Americans apply for these jobs that, in the past, could not get the jobs, because they would hire the illegal workforce. OK? And that's what I'm proud of right now. Lyons made this claim to lots of reporters. Tom Howell was head of HR at Wayne Farms in Albertville at the time. And I have to admit that they shocked me. Because that's certainly not true. It had no impact. Frank Singleton was and is the spokesperson for Wayne Farms. He says they lost 17 out of 850 workers. There were not hundreds of local people who suddenly showed up and got jobs at Wayne Farms as a result of any of those bills. The real impact of HB 56 on Albertville was this. Some people moved away. A lot of people stayed home or stayed off the roads. One guy told us he gave people rides in the trunk of his car. Businesses that catered to Latino customers saw a big drop. And in just three days, the schools lost about 120 Latino kids out of 1,400, according to administrators. It was all of a sudden-- you know, bing, bang, boom. This is the person in charge of outreach to Latino families for the school district, Judit Gay. Oh, that was a terrible week. I would see their parents come in, crying, and the teachers crying, and withdraw the children. And we would just look at each other and hug, and they would cry. And I mean, it was just a bad week. To lots of longtime residents in Albertville, it seemed like their town was constantly on television during this period-- that any time anybody did a story about HB 56, they'd come to Albertville and talk about how terrible the town was-- how, before the law, undocumented immigrants had ruined the city, stealing jobs, bringing in crime, drugs. Nathan Broadhurst was one of the moderates on the city council. It was all negative. I mean, every way we were being portrayed was negative. I think that was totally counterproductive. It caused fear and distrust. And it's hard to build a community on that type of thing. Act four-- The Numbers. So all the time in Albertville people would bring up the thing that's at the heart of the immigration issue for so many people. And that is-- the millions of people who are living in the country illegally, what's that cost taxpayers? Like, what's it cost them? And one of the things we were excited to investigate when we went to Alabama was to figure out, what is the real answer to that for this one town? Like, how much money was it? Well, there are different ways to estimate this. And the National Academy of Sciences tried to convene as impartial and unbiased a look at the evidence as possible to come up with numbers for the whole country. They assembled 18 economists and demographers and sociologists from varying points of view to figure out, what do immigrants cost taxpayers? They issued their report last year. Kim Rueben served on the NAS committee. She's an economist at the Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute and helped me sort through the findings. The 618-page report is dense with charts and tables. Rueben pointed out, if you're an undocumented worker in an Albertville poultry plant, you still have to present a social security number to get the job, and so you pretty much pay the same taxes as anybody. So you are paying sales taxes on the things you buy. You're paying property taxes, either if you own your home or through the rent you're paying to your landlord. And depending on whether or not you're working with somebody else's documents, you're paying income taxes and social security taxes. You're just not receiving the benefits when you retire. That money is a big bonus for the federal government. In 2010, for instance, the Social Security Administration estimates 13 billion went into the social security trust fund from undocumented workers. And only $1 billion was paid out to them. So again, an undocumented poultry worker in Albertville pays the same taxes as anybody and doesn't qualify for most government benefits. And what that means is that their biggest cost to government, Rueben says-- in fact, the one way they cost more than other people-- is schools. That's the big public service that they're using. Because they often have more kids than non-immigrant populations. Contrary to whatever stereotypes are out there, it's not a lot more kids-- 3/4 of a child more per couple than non-immigrant families in Alabama. But what that means for school costs when you run the numbers-- and Kim Rueben and her colleague Erin Huffer dug into the data on Albertville school costs to do that for us-- is that non-Latino taxpayers in Albertville are paying $272 every year in local taxes to cover those extra kids that their immigrant neighbors are enrolling in the Albertville city school system. Kim and Erin also researched food stamps for us. That's the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP. For all the complaints that we heard in Albertville about how, in the grocery store, you see Latina mothers using food stamps-- Teresa Ferguson, at one point, drove me to the big Foodland store so that I could witness this myself-- here are the facts on food stamps. When Latino families moved into Albertville and the county that it's in-- Marshall County-- between 1990 and 2010, SNAP use did go up in Marshall County. Rueben says it doubled. From 8% to 16%. But in the rest of Alabama, where there are hardly any immigrants, it went up way faster and way higher. From 11% to 26%. So having more immigrants in Marshall County correlated with lower food stamp use, not higher, and fewer taxpayer dollars spent. But these individual spending programs don't get you to the big picture. And to get the big picture, I think that the most helpful chart in the huge National Academy of Sciences report is a table they call table 812. Table 812-- its premise is, it says, OK, a new immigrant arrives in America tomorrow. What is everything that person is going to cost government at every level over the course of their entire lifetime, including what their kids costs and their grandkids? And then what is everything they and their kids and their grandkids are going to pay in taxes over that same period? So this chart looks at everything-- all federal, state, and local taxes, all federal, state, and local government services over a person's lifetime-- 75 years. And what table 812 shows very clearly is that whether you get more from government or give more to government really depends on how educated you are. It shows that immigrants who have even a little bit of college pay in more than they take over the course of their lives. But immigrants like the ones in Albertville's poultry plants, who mostly do not have high school educations, they are the costliest to government. Even in the rosiest scenario in this table, they, and their kids, and their grandkids, cost the government money over the course of 75 years. The author of this table-- this is a demographer named Gretchen Donehower-- did a calculation for us that specifically would apply to the undocumented population in Albertville-- that is, poultry plant workers who don't have a high school education and also don't have legit social security numbers. So they probably won't be collecting social security or Medicare in their old age. Those workers will cost the government $21,000. So it's $21,000 over 75 years. That's what an undocumented immigrant in Albertville's chicken plants and their kids and grandkids cost federal, state, and local taxpayers over the course of the immigrant's entire life. Of course, how you think about that $21,000 depends on your values. Maybe you think that's worth it for the economic growth and whatever other contributions the immigrant and his family will make. Or maybe you don't. But to put it that number in context, anyone in America who doesn't have a high school education is a net drain on government over the course of their lifetimes, on average. The NAS report includes data on this also. A native born American without a high school education will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars more than even a documented immigrant-- even somebody who collects old age benefits. If you didn't graduate high school, generally, you're just not earning enough to pay that much into the system. Act five-- Today. By 2012, just a year after the anti-immigrants state law HB 56 went into effect, everything in town reversed course-- all that anti-immigrant politicking. HB 56 was gutted. Key portions were found unconstitutional by the courts. The immigrant families who moved away from Albertville-- most moved back. In 2012, the mayor and the city council came up for election again. And-- Albertville voters hit the reset button last night. Not a single person elected in 2008 was voted back into office. The mayor and four councilpeople-- all out. The city council since then has not spent its time trying to figure out how to control or deport the town's Latino residents. In fact, at their meetings, immigration doesn't come up. A councilman told us they consciously keep it off the table. One sign of how things have changed is that the Trump administration is expanding the 287(g) program, which gives local police officers the power to do immigration enforcement, which Albertville sought for years. But they're not trying to get it anymore. Benny Womack, who was police chief during the most divisive years, said something we heard from a few people. I would say during that time period that we've all talked about here was growing pains for the city in a lot of respects. The city was in culture shock. I don't think it is so much anymore. The current mayor told us the city is now following the example set by the Albertville schools. And this is the single most surprising thing we found in Albertville-- was how the schools handled such a big population of immigrants. During the years the city council was picking fights with the city's Latino residents, right across the street, at the offices of the Albertville city schools, they were taking the exact opposite approach-- trying to integrate them into the community. And they did an exceptionally competent job of it. At the very beginning, in the early '90s, when they had just a handful of Latino students, they hired a person whose job was to advocate for them and to make sure the schools accommodated them. In 1996, the school started pre-K in one of the Latino trailer parks. They got a grant for teachers to visit the parts of Mexico their students came from to see the conditions they were used to learning in. At one point, the schools made the dramatic and difficult choice to stop pulling Latino kids out of class for separate language and other instruction. It took three or four years to fully put that into effect and retrain the teachers to completely include the Latino kids in their lessons. Today, the student population is nearly half Latino. And the Latino kids are integrated into the band, sports teams, activities, AP classes. And we're going to take the arc sine of each of those to get the theta. This is a lab for AP physics. Four girls roll marbles down a slope and take measurements, three of them Latina. Right now, Latino kids make up 43% of the high school and about 1/3 of the students in AP classes-- so not fully representative quite yet but getting there. Our coworker, Lilly Sullivan, attended high school with pretty much the same demographics as Albertville High School, and she was always one of the few Latinas in honors classes. And she visited five AP classes in Albertville, including this one. And what she saw kind of blew her mind. Right, Lilly? Yeah. It was really great to see. I just couldn't have imagined this. This is Bessie Gaspar. She's a senior. She's 17. And she is in that lab group. She's pretty bookish-- glasses-wearing. And this is how she explains the social dynamic at school. Well, this is kind of like a small community. So everybody's grown up with each other and knows each other. So there's nothing, like, really tense. Bessie's dad came to Albertville to work in a chicken plant. So I know her mom's, like, migrant farmworker family. And so when I asked her-- you know, she's doing all these activities, and she's just rattling them off. Clubs-- like, I'm president of HOSA. I'm the vice president of FBLA. (LAUGHING) I'm on the soccer team. HOSA is Health Occupation Students of America. And I was just like, how did you know how to do this? How did you know about these programs and stuff? And then she just says, like, oh, well, I had this one teacher freshman year who pulled me into this club and another teacher pulled me into this club. We had Mr. Bolding. He knew my dream of becoming a neurosurgeon, because I had admired Dr. Benjamin Carson for his surgery on the conjoined twins. And so he told me about HOSA. And so I joined. And I was like, oh. There was no way she was going to slip through the cracks, you know? It was just obvious that, you know, she's a Latina, and her teachers still had really high expectations of her. And they just expected her to do well. And so she did. To be clear, the school has not eliminated the achievement gap between the Latino kids and the non-Latino kids. When kids enter a school system not speaking much English, that's notoriously difficult. And part of the gap is more about poverty than ethnicity. But a statewide expert on testing in Alabama, Tom Spencer of the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama in Birmingham, explained to me that Albertville's student population is one of the poorest in the state. But each year, a higher proportion of their kids meet state standards. And when you put it in the context of poverty, they outscore where they'd be projected to score. They're actually significantly exceeding. And then when you get to the fact that they have a 95% graduation rate for Hispanics-- That's actually a higher rate than the white kids, who are only 92%. --they actually produced-- Albertville High School produced more Hispanic high school graduates than any other school in the state. And so what's that say to you? It says to me that they're doing something right up there-- that they're closing gaps, and they're doing something impressive. So in this town where things got really ugly and heated for a while, the schools were a countervailing force-- the one place where people actually got to know one another. We met white parents who said their kids made friends, or they volunteered at the schools, and it changed how they viewed immigrants. As for their Latino neighbors, I talked to lots of them about what it feels like in town right now. And mostly people said, I'm comfortable here. I made a life here. I like it. People own homes, are settled into neighborhoods, have white friends. But that's not the same as feeling welcome, especially in the last two years, they say, with the rise of Donald Trump. Marshall County went for Donald Trump 83%-- and by the way, 71% for Roy Moore this week. Carlos, who was in our first episode, says you see it most at the store. Not so much with the younger generation, because they've gotten used to growing up around us, but with the older generation-- they look at us in a bad kind of way. As a school's migrant advocate, Judit Gay talks to lots of Latino families in town. And she summed up something I heard from a bunch of people. She says they don't care about trying to win over anyone who doesn't want them here. Like saying, well, I got a job here, you know? I'm sorry. I got a job, and I'm going to do it until they want me here. Until they want me here? That's what people used to say. Yes. In the beginning of our first program on Albertville, we had this quote from State Senator Scott Beason, the guy behind HB 56. He said back in 2011, if you allow illegal immigration to continue in your area, you will destroy yourself eventually. If you don't believe illegal immigration will destroy our community, go check out parts of Alabama around Albertville. But Albertville was not destroyed. In fact, by lots of measures, it's thriving, with Hispanic businesses all over town. Main Street's coming back, retail box stores moving in. Local sales tax revenues are on the rise. They just spent millions building a beautiful new high school, and they're in the middle of spending more millions on a big rec center. As we reported last week, immigrants did not take jobs from American workers, but, apparently, created lots of jobs. We asked Scott Beason about how it all worked out. I'm glad that things are going well for them now. But I still believe that you can't just allow unbridled illegal immigration into one little town or whatever, even though things have turned out pretty positive for Albertville so many years later. What do you think the lesson of the town is? I think if we're going to learn anything, or I'd like something to be remembered about Albertville, it's that people in Alabama, people in Albertville, folks in the south-- they're good folks. And even when they have issues with an influx of folks who are from different countries or whatever, eventually, over time, we're very welcoming. But that would not make me want any other community to have to go through the same things that Albertville did just because 20 years later, well, it seems OK now. Talking to over 100 people in town, it's not true the town was welcoming. It's more like they fought it at every level-- in the city council, at the state level with HB 56. And they failed. And only after they failed did they decide to take another path-- took a cue from the people who actually were welcoming-- the schools. The anti-immigration activist Kris Kobach has said that in the 2000s, Alabama was a laboratory for the rest of the country and a model. And while the crackdown he and Jeff Sessions and others tried to engineer in the poultry towns around the state didn't pan out, they all moved on to try again-- this time from Washington, DC. The woman who used to bring politicians into Albertville, Teresa Ferguson, told us she stopped organizing in town long ago. It's not needed now. Because, she said, their guy is in the White House. She's counting on him, she told us, to set things right. Ladies and gentlemen, the pride of Albertville, the Albertville High School Aggie band. They will be performing in the Rose Parade in California on New Year's Day. Today's program was produced and reported by Miki Meek, Lilly Sullivan, Diane Wu, and me. Our interpreter was Gabriella Munoz. Original music by Marcus Thorne Bagala. Our staff includes Susan Burton, Zoe Chace, Dana Chivvis, Sean Cole, Whitney Dangerfield, Neil Drumming, Stephanie Foo, Kimberly Henderson, David Kestenbaum, Jonathan Menjivar, BA Parker, Robyn Semien, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, and Julie Whitaker. Our senior producer is Brian Reed. Our website, ThisAmericanLife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Tony Malatia. You know, he just saw the new Fast and Furious movie-- was not into it at all. They would just, like, drive around, like, without knowing absolutely anything-- totally like idiots. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
In November 1979, at the Nuclear Defense Command Headquarters inside Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado, computer screens suddenly showed that Soviets had launched nuclear missiles, hundreds of them, a full-scale attack on the United States. The military response was fast and dramatic. Crews responsible for launching our missiles were put on highest alert. Fighter jets took off. Before the president was asked to decide whether to retaliate, one person, a watch commander, thought something was not right and threw on the brakes. It was later discovered that a technician had accidentally put a training exercise into the computer simulating a full-scale attack. This kind of mistake, the technician who put the training exercise into the computer, is squarely in the category of human error. And human error mistakes are especially terrifying because you never can fully do away with them. We are just prone to error. Fortunately, most of us work jobs where the mistakes we make do not result in millions of people dead or anybody dead. But if you work for the US military, even when we're not at war, you can be surrounded at your job by gear whose whole purpose is to kill people. And so you can make mistakes on a scale the rest of us can't. Today on our program, we have two stories like that. In both of these stories, the slip-ups that people make are so small. They're mistakes that, at most jobs, would mean nothing, mistakes maybe you've made yourself. One involves missiles. One involves ships. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. And we begin with act one. Act One, The Wrong Tool For The Job. It's really easy for America's nuclear weapons to seem very abstract, right? We know they're out there. But it's like-- I don't know. In our minds, I think we picture like they're sitting somewhere. The power's turned off. They're parked in some missile silos, or airplane hangars, or something. And they're there, dark until some terrible situation. And then somebody enters secret codes. And then the power goes on, and they rise from the Earth like something out of a Michael Bay movie. But, of course, reality is not like that at all. In real life, the country's nuclear weapons are thousands of high-tech, very complicated machines. And the lights are not out. Things are happening. They need to be cleaned and taken care of and monitored by tons of people day and night, all the time. And things can go wrong. Joe Richman has this example. Back in September 1980, September 18, Jeff Plumb climbed into his pickup and headed toward the nuclear missile silo near a tiny town in Arkansas called Damascus. He was a 19-year-old missile technician, a new trainee, riding with another guy, David Powell, who was showing Plumb the ropes. David Powell was certified. He had done it over and over and over. For me, it was fairly new. It was the first time I was in training with David. Plumb was a city kid from near Detroit. He remembers sitting in the truck that day watching the farms and fields fly by until eventually the truck slowed, pulled into a gravel road in the middle of nowhere, passed through some woods, and came to a fence. There wasn't much to see, a concrete slab with a handful of radio antennas sticking up out of the ground. Under that concrete slab, though, was a 146-foot silo, like an inverted 14-story building. To get in was a sequence of gates, phones, secret codes, several super secure metal and concrete doors. And then at the bottom of the stairs, you could go two directions. Down one hall was the complex's three-story underground command center with all the communications equipment and computers and staff. A second hallway led to the missile silo. I was in awe when I would walk into the silo. When you open up the silo door, and you walk in there and look at this-- and sometimes the lighting in there was just right to where it just loomed in the dark like it was a bullet in a chamber ready to go, you know. And it had this dark black warhead on top, pure destruction at the fingertips of a couple of men. The missile in the silo that day, the one Jeff Plumb was describing, was called the Titan II. At the time, the Titan II was the most powerful nuclear weapon in the American arsenal. One of them, just one, could unleash the same power as all the bombs dropped in World War II, including the atomic bombs, times three-- all the bombs in World War II times three. But besides being America's most powerful nuclear missiles, the Titan IIs were also some of the oldest. One especially dangerous and aging part of the Titan II missile was its fuel system. By 1980, most nuclear weapons had switched to solid fuel. But when the Titan II was developed in the 1960s, nuclear weapons used liquid fuel. Liquid fuel meant that we took a nuclear warhead, and we put it on top of two gigantic tanks and filled those tanks with incredibly volatile liquids. One tank was rocket fuel. The other was something called oxidizer. Greg Devlin also worked on the Titan II missiles. And if they ever meet-- typically, they were meant to meet inside the motor, and then it propels it where it's going. But if they ever meet anywhere before that, you'll instantly have an explosion and a fire. So yes, it is a bomb sitting on a bomb. But even if you didn't mix these fuels, they were extremely dangerous. The oxidizer on its own was a Class A poison, the most toxic category for any chemical. It could ignite spontaneously if it touched leather, paper, cloth, wood. The fuel could ignite if it touched rust, or even if it didn't touch anything. If there were enough fumes and you waved your hand too fast, it could explode. So between burns, explosions, fire, between inhalation-- if you got it on your skin, it would turn to acid. We actually had a greater fear of the fuels on board than the warhead itself. The teams that handled this hazardous stuff were called propellant transfer systems teams, or PTS teams. Surprisingly young guys-- 18, 19, 20 years old-- they were known for partying hard, speeding, driving motorcycles. Sometimes they would do this thing where they would put missile fuel in a bucket. Then they would take a ping pong ball, fill it with oxidizer, and toss it in the bucket and watch it blow up, like Mad Max beer pong. These were the teams that David Powell was training Jeff Plumb to be a part of. Here's Plumb. We could do anything. That was our mindset. We were invincible, and nothing was going to stop us. You know, at 19, it just-- I didn't have any fear of things at that point in my life. So we're in the silo. Jeff Plumb and his trainer David Powell are ready to get to work on a job that was routine maintenance. One of the missile's fuel tanks was low on pressure. So the job was just to take off something called the dust cap, kind of like a gas cap but on a nuclear missile. Then they'd have to pump in more liquid, and voila. That was it. Except before they could start-- They had a problem with not being able to get the hydraulic platform to come down. The hydraulic platform went up and down the side of the missile, like a platform for window washers on a highrise. And it was broken. It's worth knowing these fuel tech jobs, PTS jobs, had actually gotten to be more and more of a grind around this time because the missiles were aging. Materials were outdated, dilapidated, deformed. Valves leaked. Pumps failed. There was a lot of things wrong with the missile silo. So there was more work to do without more people to do it, which meant PTS guys like Powell and Plumb were increasingly overworked and burned out, hustling from one missile to another to patch them up, regularly pulling 12- and 14-hour days. And now Plumb and Powell had to wait to do this routine maintenance job in the afternoon of a long day. We were very anxious to get this job completed. It was a Friday night. We were young, wanting to get back to hang out with our friends and drink beer, you know. So I remember laying around up in the control center, just hanging out with these guys for hours. Finally, they got word the hydraulic platform was up and running. So boom, green light. Plumb and Powell suited up in protective gear. Picture the guys who kidnapped E.T. And they head down the hall towards the missile silo, ready for action. And as we were going down the long cable way, we realized we didn't have the torque wrench. After hours of waiting, Plumb and Powell had left this crucial tool, the torque wrench, in their truck all the way up on the surface. It was kind of like forgetting your cell phone in your house, if your house had a bunch of enormous concrete and metal doors and required a secret code to get in. It was a pain in the ass on a long, irritating day. Jeff Plumb says personally he didn't know what to do. He was just learning. And the procedures, they were so meticulously laid out. You had to follow these detailed checklists. You needed the right tools. The checklist was the Bible, you might want to say. And Air Force regulations required us to go through that checklist and follow everything step by step. So Plumb's like, what do we do? And he looked at David Powell. And Powell said, don't worry. For what they were about to do, there was actually another tool, not the official one. But he'd used it before, so forget the torque wrench. It'll be fine. So we grabbed this ratchet-- like you would pull out of your toolbox, but quite larger. If you can picture it, it was a monstrous thing because it was about three feet long. It had about a three-foot long handle. And the socket weighed anywheres from five to eight pounds. It was a big socket. So it was a large piece of steel. Plumb looked at this wrench, like a three-foot Willy Wonka type wrench. And he wasn't so sure about it. And this giant socket wrench, besides being kind of the wrong tool, a huge, cumbersome wrong tool, it wasn't in the best shape. The two pieces of the wrench were supposed to click together, but they didn't. So we had a problem at that point. And so we improvised. Here's what they did. One guy held the socket over this thing they had to remove, the dust cap. The second guy held the huge handle of the ratchet and turned. Sure enough, the cap screwed right off. It worked, no problem. Great. So Plumb hands the socket off to Powell. And I remember saying to him, you've got this, right? You got-- you're OK? You got this? And he said, yeah, I got it. Let go of it. And so I remember releasing it. And I remember seeing it kind of just fall. And it hit the platform, the socket did. And it bounced, and it went between the platform and the missile. Just to make sure you're picturing this, Plumb and Powell were working way up in the silo, like window washers on the side of a nuclear missile, on a platform. Attached to the platform was this rubber bumper that was supposed to fit right up against the missile, so there was no gap for things to fall through. But as the Titan II facilities had aged, the rubber bumper didn't fit quite right. And so there was a small gap, a socket-sized gap. It was like it bounced, and it landed perfectly in the gap, you know. It was almost like-- it was like somebody playing Tiddlywinks or something. You know how you would-- or one of those old drinking games where you bounce something and land it into the hole perfect. You know, it was just it bounced, and it was gone. I literally watched it fall. We had dropped tools numerous times. It wasn't the first time that we ever dropped a tool and watched it fall. It was common. It just happened that when this socket fell, it went down 70 feet, 80 feet, whatever it was there, and it bounced off the thrust ring that the missile sat on, just this big giant round ring. And when it fell, it picked up maximum speed and hit the top of that thrust ring and just ricocheted into the side of the missile. I heard it hit-- boom. And the next thing you know, I just seen fuel spraying out. I just looked at it down there. I just looked in awe. I just-- I couldn't believe what just happened. The only thing I remember saying to David was, this is not good. This is not good. There's a hierarchy of not good. And this kind of not good might be at the top. This kind of not good was deadly, skin-melting, highly explosive rocket fuel spraying out of a 100-foot tall intercontinental ballistic missile. On top of that missile sat the most powerful nuclear warhead in the United States of America. You know, we didn't know how to respond. We looked at it for-- I don't know-- at least a minute trying to figure out what we were going to do about it. And then he contacted the team chief and told him that we had a cloud of vapor emitting from the missile. On the other end of the radio was the missile complex's command center, a three-story underground bunker filled with monitoring equipment, control panels, and a team staffing all of it. On that team was a guy named Allan Childers. Unlike the PTS teams, Childers was an officer. And he didn't just know a few specifics or mechanics of the Titan II. Allan Childers knew the missile inside and out. He'd spent six months studying it, reading a manual called the Dash-1 which laid out every piece of how the massive weapon worked. He and his crew spent most of their time using detailed checklists, going over all the missile systems one by one. Childers was standing behind a control panel when the call from Powell and Plumb came in. So the first thing we heard was that there was smoke in the launch duct. And of course, the commander's going, what do you mean? What's going on? And then I heard him say, what do you mean smoke in the launch-- and he was going to say duct. But I don't think he ever got the word duct out. As soon as that happened, the lights started coming on. And it's a klaxon alarm. And it's just waaa real loud. And all of the lights came on. So you're trained to punch the alarm off once it gets your attention, which it did, you turn the alarm off. Well, the alarm would turn off. But it would immediately come back on again as another light came on, and another light came on. And so these indicator lights were oxidizer in the launch duct, fuel vapors in the launch duct, fire in the launch duct. Horns and klaxons were going off, sirens. Pretty much every light on the instrument panel, they were lit up. Just moments later, Plumb and Powell had made their way from the silo back to the command center. When they got there, they found a huge scramble, everyone besides them trying to figure out what the problem was. They were trying to figure out how to deal with all these problems. They were resetting klaxons. And they didn't know what was going on. It was chaos. Because they didn't know. To be clear, faced with the fuel gushing out of the missile and now the command center firing questions at them, Dave Powell made a choice. It was the kind of choice you make when you're afraid of getting in trouble. He played dumb. He told them there was smoke in the silo, but nothing about the hole they had punched in the missile. Jeff Plumb made his own version of that decision, which was to keep quiet and follow Powell's lead. That created a crucial knowledge gap in the room. On the other side of that gap, Allan Childers and the rest of the command staff were left to scramble desperately, frantic to figure out what was wrong. All of that mattered because, if all the fuel leaked out, it's not like the missile would just sit there empty. The Titan II's fuel tanks were pressurized, like a tire. And if enough fuel leaked out, it would go flat. Or in the missile's case, it would collapse under its own weight. Enough oxidizer and fuel to carry a 330,000-pound missile across the ocean would smash together underneath a nuclear warhead. I just-- in my own mind, I pictured poking a hole in a pop can. And so all this pressure now is turning to a negative PSI-- which internally in my mind, I thought it's going to collapse. This tank is going to collapse in on itself. It's sucking itself in. I was scared. I was really concerned that this thing could blow up any moment. So my concern was to get out of there. I didn't know the safety of that warhead. There were so many questions. How fast was the fuel leaking? When could the missile collapse? Could the silo contain the explosion? Could an explosion set off the nuclear warhead? Minute by minute by minute, Plumb stood silent, unsure what to do. So I just-- I kind of kept my mouth shut. You know, I didn't answer. David was the one answering the questions. So they never told us what had happened. With Plumb and Powell holding out, Allan Childers and the team in the command center was slowly running out of options. We ran all of what we called our red tab checklist, our hazard checklist. And it didn't stop anything from happening. All the indicator lights stayed on. That's when the commander turned back to the team and said, what do you think it is? These indicators don't make any sense. And this was a half-hour into it. They said, we don't know. We don't know what's going on out there. All we saw was the smoke in the launch duct. Eventually, a guy from the command center team, Rodney Holder, turned to Plumb and Powell. And Rodney asked them again, what happened? What do you guys know that we don't know? And Airman Powell started crying. And that's when the commander went-- he said, you need to tell us what is going on out there. We cannot figure it out. And that's when, as he was crying, he basically said, I dropped a socket off the end of the wrench. And it punched a hole in the side of the missile. And the commander just-- I could still picture his face. It just turned white. And he said, you need to tell the command post what you did because they're going to have questions. And I don't want to be relaying it. So he handed him the phone. He brought him over to the console. He said, I'm going to put Airman Powell on. We have a serious emergency. We just found out what's going on, and I want him to talk to you. And he put him on, and he told him. I don't know how he got it out because he was crying so much, you know. I just remember everybody standing there watching, just dumbfounded. We're talking about a socket that was bigger than your fist punching a hole in the side of a missile. You couldn't patch it if you wanted to. And by then, so much had drained out you couldn't even open up the door and lean inside without it eating up your suit. So you couldn't do anything about it by then. And then the commander got back on the phone. And we were basically told to stand by. And we stood by. As news of what had happened traveled up the Air Force chain of command, everyone at the missile site was instructed to wait. To wait, of course, mind you, inside a nuclear missile complex teetering on the brink of a massive explosion. Just sit tight. Quite a bit of time went by like that, couple of hours actually. One of the main questions was whether to keep the missile teams underground, try to somehow, somehow fix the leak. Or is it bound to blow up, and you should get everyone out, run like hell, and hope the nuclear warhead doesn't go off? Or maybe a surprising question, is the command center actually the safest place for them? The launch control center, the control room, was supposed to survive a nuclear explosion. Eventually, it was a colonel named John Moser back at the Air Force base in Little Rock who made the decision. He knew the command center was designed to survive a nuclear attack, like a direct hit from a Russian nuclear missile. But how could he be sure? Nothing like this had ever happened before. They were off the map. For you giving the order, was it a clear call? Or was it-- were you conflicted? Were you unsure? I was not unsure. I was a straight up, clear order to evacuate because I didn't want people to be injured. We had no idea what was going to happen. We've never had an explosion or a potential explosion like this. It's never happened before. And I gave the order to evacuate. And I tried to talk him out of that. Allan Childers, back in the underground command center, disagreed with Moser's decision. He argued. I didn't think it'd blow up. And if it did blow up, I thought that the door and the complex would contain the explosion. It was underground. It had this cap on it. I had two blast doors protecting me that were the size of bank vault doors. And I was sitting in a facility that was designed to survive a detonation from a Russian nuclear weapon. So I thought we're safer down here than if we go up above. I guess I would think most people would be happy to get an order to say, get out of there. I felt devastated. Yeah, I was devastated that I had to leave. Even to this day, it bothers me that I had to leave. Never in the history of an active missile complex had you left the missile with a warhead on it, walked away from the site with the site still running. On principle, I didn't like it. The logic of it made no sense to me. I could not believe that we were leaving that complex. As in desperate shape as that site was, to leave that and not be able to tell people what was occurring out there in that launch duct-- even if we couldn't do anything, I felt like there was probably somebody was going to come up with something that we could do. And we would not be there to do it. Allan Childers made this case. He knew the Titan II missile inside and out. He knew the dangers, what could happen. He was staring at the United States on the brink of maybe setting off its most powerful nuclear missile right in the heart of the country. He clung to any hope to do something, anything to claw the situation back. But Childers wasn't in charge. And eventually orders came down, and Allan Childers and everyone else in the Damascus missile complex evacuated. With the benefit of hindsight, we can say that from this point forward, at every point in this story when the Air Force made a decision, it arguably made the wrong decision. Here, the Air Force ordered them to abandon post. The order was to evacuate through the complex's escape hatch, which had never been used before. It was a narrow tunnel that led to a ladder, which took them several stories back up to the surface. Greg Devlin was above ground with a bunch of backup teams from the Little Rock Air Force Base. It was really-- it was just really eerie that night. You know, you saw smoke coming out of the vents over here. You could get whiffs of fuel, hydrazine, which has like a fish type of an odor to it. So you could smell that. So it was a very hazy, eerie-looking scenario. And then with everyone on the surface, it seems the Air Force realized what Allan Childers had been arguing all along. That the best shot at diffusing this crisis, the only way to know what was up in the silo, was to have people inside. So you guessed it. They ordered two people to go back in. Again here, the Air Force zigged when it should have zagged. The order was not to go in the open escape hatch which everyone had just come out of. Instead, they told the folks on-site they should break in through the front doors of the missile complex. With precious time ticking away, don't go through the back door, which is sitting wide open. No, break through the front door of one of the US military's most secure facilities. Or front doors is more like it-- huge, concrete, and secure metal doors-- using only these tools-- a crowbar, a hammer, a long screwdriver, a bolt cutter, and a hydraulic hand pump. It's worth also mentioning had Allan Childers stayed in the command center like he wanted to, he could have opened all those doors with a push of a button. People on the site were frustrated and confused. But they followed orders and started burrowing back into the missile complex. The first two guys to go in were myself and Rex Hukle. We suited up. Devlin and his partner strapped on oxygen tanks to wade through clouds of lethal rocket fuel. They broke through several doors. And then after 30 minutes, a second two-person team went in to relieve them-- and not just any team. One of this duo was David Livingston. Livingston was a member of the PTS team. He was also David Powell's roommate, Powell who dropped the socket that started the whole thing. Livingston was actually Powell's best friend. They made it all the way to the blast lock door where there was a meter, a meter that took readings of fuel present in the air in the silo. And at 18,000 parts per million, it's explosion ready. It's ready to explode. That's redlined. That's pegged out. So when he called back and said, this thing's about to blow. And the command center said, come back now. So him and Dave Livingston traversed back up the flights of steps. They got just above ground. And within 30 seconds, an explosion happened. It was about 3 o'clock in the morning. And I was standing up listening to a conversation. And all of a sudden, I lost communications. This is Colonel John Moser again, who was 50 miles away at the Little Rock Air Force Base calling the shots. The moment of the explosion, he was talking to people on the site, and the line went dead. All you've ever read is when you have a nuclear explosion, you lose communications for some time. And we lost the communications. And I just had no idea if the blast wave was going to eventually hit Little Rock Air Force Base. I had no idea. I had no idea what was going to happen. But I thought we lost the whole works out there, everybody. And you know, I'm not a really religious guy. But I had to-- I almost dropped on my knees to say a quick prayer. While John Moser was at the Little Rock Air Force Base waiting for everything around him to be swept off the Earth by a nuclear explosion, Allan Childers was back at the Damascus missile site. It's so hard to describe an explosion like that. The only thing you see is this huge-- I mean nighttime turned into day. It was unbelievable. Because it was so bright all of a sudden. And I literally turned to one of the guys. And I was feeling my chest. And I said, it couldn't be a nuclear explosion because we're still here. And that's what dawned on me. We were still there. Man. Oh my gosh. I was standing at the fence. And I was facing the silo when it exploded. Again, Greg Devlin, one of the guys on the first team to go back in and who was watching as the second team worked. It was just a bang, the loud sound, and the concussion of wind. It was just-- it was like bang. It was like being in front of a-- picture yourself as nothing's there, but you just got hit by a Mack truck. And all of a sudden, rocks started falling. It was like rain falling. And it was all this gravel from the complex. And metal started falling out of the sky. And everybody started to run. The chunks of concrete that were landing everywhere were as-- I mean everywhere-- were as big as coffee tables. The real big ones were as big as pickup trucks and school buses and stuff like that. Those were everywhere. You could hear them hitting the ground around me. Man, it was like boom, boom, boom. I got up immediately. I took off running. I got five steps away, and a chunk of concrete hit the ground behind me as big as a-- bigger than a school bus. The trees were on fire. The grass was on fire. The only light we had was fires. And you could see the shadows of just about everything because there was so much fire around there. It was like being in this forest fire without a forest being around you. And then for just a second or two, it was this one point in time where there was no sound at all. It was like a total calm peace, kind of like the end of the world, for 10 seconds. And then you heard all the screaming and crying and guys yelling, oh my god, I'm hurt. This is the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. Good evening. Modern age terror swept an area of rural Arkansas today when fuel exploded around a nuclear warhead in a missile silo. The incident began when officials say a workman dropped a wrench. The morning after, everyone was trying to sort out what had happened-- the press, Air Force, local law enforcement, the public. Simply put, the fuel exploded. The nuke didn't go off. The Air Force was keeping tight-lipped, refusing to confirm whether there had even been a nuclear warhead on site. For the survivors, the injuries were extensive. Greg Devlin had burns on his face, neck, and back. His skin was burned off his left hand. Others had extensive burns and broken bones. One airman, David Livingston, was dead. Remember Livingston was David Powell's roommate and best friend. Livingston was on the second team to go back in. And he was standing just outside the silo when it blew. All that meant Powell had kind of dropped the socket into some huge Rube Goldberg machine of bad luck and indirectly killed his best friend. At the missile site, the damage was staggering, a monument to just how dangerous the situation had been. The missile silo's door, a 1.5 million-pound slab of concrete and steel, had blown off, spun like a Frisbee, and landed more than 500 feet away. And then there was the biggest question. Where was the nuclear warhead? The warhead ended up about a quarter mile away, intact, in a ditch. To me, that's amazing. As for the question of whether the nuclear warhead could have gone off, the military would later say no, impossible. There were too many safety measures in place. But lots of people who were familiar with nuclear weapons, who know them well, who worked on the Titan II, they say it absolutely could have. If the warhead had gone off, it's estimated the fallout could have reached more than 400 miles and killed people in Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois, and Indiana. After Damascus, the Air Force officially blamed the incident on human error-- so Jeff Plumb and David Powell, who dropped the socket. That never sat well with many of the people who were there who worked at Damascus, including Jeff Plumb. It wasn't uncommon for that to happen. Every guy that worked in those silos I know dropped a wrench or a tool at some point in his career-- every guy. And if they tell you they didn't, they're lying. Because there was no way to get around that. It just happened that one went the wrong way. Plumb says the Air Force knew that. They knew then, and they know now. That even when the stakes are nuclear weapons, human error is a factor. After Damascus, workers were required to tie tools to their bodies. One solution to the problem of human error, the lanyard. We should say we asked David Powell to talk about all this, but he didn't want to talk about it. We did learn that he only recently told his wife and family. He'd kept it secret for years and years. Jeff Plumb says he thinks Powell really struggled with it, just like he did too. After the incident, Jeff Plumb had an episode where he snapped, lost it, and started throwing beer bottles against the wall in a room at the Air Force base. It was bad. The Air Force demoted him, and things went downhill from there. He was eventually discharged from the Air Force. Even now years later, he finds the accident hard to talk about. I'll tell the story. And I'll begin to tell the story to someone, and then you just get caught up in it. You tell that story over-- I've told it I don't know how many times, you know, and relived it a few times. And I think I really have-- I think I've had enough, you know. Yeah, just thinking back on it, it just wasn't a very good time in my life at that point. So I think I really don't want to tell the story anymore. So yeah, this will be the last time. Yeah. This will be the last time. One of the remarkable things about Damascus is actually how unremarkable it was, how many accidents there have been like this one. When it comes to nuclear weapons, it's so easy to assume that everything is all taken care of, oversight is airtight, precautions and protocols are in place. The stakes are so serious. But the 70-year history of our nuclear weapons is littered with accidents like what happened in Arkansas. An accident like Damascus could never happen again because our missiles no longer use liquid fuels. So that risk is gone. But there are other risks. There are new ones-- enemies hacking into missile systems over the internet, low morale and other personnel issues among the people who maintain and operate our nuclear arsenal, and aging facilities and technology. I talked to half a dozen experts who are familiar with our nuclear weapons, from places like Yale, Berkeley, Harvard, and former military officials. They worry about mishaps and accidents that most of us never consider with weapons most of us never think about. All of them pointed out the accident at Damascus, no one saw that coming. There were supposed to be safeguards to prevent that from ever happening. One military expert said, the kind of accident we should worry about is the kind that seems impossible, like what happened in Damascus. Again, Greg Devlin. One dropped socket that A, should have let's just say not dropped; but B, should have never got past a platform; C, shouldn't have hit the thrust mount; D, shouldn't have hit the missile. If it hit, it shouldn't have punctured a hole in it. I mean there are so many things that shouldn't have happened, but one dropped socket wiped out an entire nuclear missile system. One dropped socket, nine-pound socket, took it all out. There's no one that thought that scenario out. A single dropped tool setting off the explosion of a nuclear missile. Greg Devlin says he would have put the chance of that at zero. Joe Richman is the founder of Radio Diaries. To make their podcast your next new podcast, you can find it at radiodiaries.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Eric Molinsky helped report this story. A special thanks to Eric Schlosser, who was a huge help to us and whose book on nuclear arms safety Command and Control covers this and other accidents like it. Eric pointed out to us that while the United States no longer uses liquid-fueled nuclear weapons, they are still in use in North Korea. Coming up, from mistakes in the past to mistakes in the present. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, we choose a theme and bring you different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's program, Human Error in Volatile Situations. We've arrived at act two of our program. Act Two, Erring Like a Sailor. In August, a Navy destroyer, the USS John McCain, collided with an oil tanker. 10 sailors died. This is just two months after another destroyer, the USS Fitzgerald, crashed into a container ship, killing seven sailors. After the McCain crash, rumors swirled around that somebody, Russia or China or North Korea, hacked into the ship's navigation systems, caused the crashes. People said maybe hackers projected a fake GPS signal, so the ships didn't really know where they were. Maybe the hacking rumors got so much traction because it just felt better to believe the collisions were caused by an enemy, rather than the truth. After an investigation, it became clear we crashed the ships ourselves. It was human error. Months ago, one of our producers, Stephanie Foo, started looking into these accidents and learned something about the Navy, an underlying reality about daily life for sailors the Navy has said played a role in these accidents. And it honestly really surprised us. Here's Stephanie. Ty is a sailor who served on a destroyer in the Pacific for four years, the USS John McCain. He moved to another Navy job in 2016. He was friends with four of the 10 men who died on the McCain and really close to one guy in particular, Jacob Drake. Because Ty's still in the Navy, he asked that we use a different name for him. And we had an actor, Scott Shepherd, replace his voice. He was basically like a little chihuahua. This guy was probably 5'4" or 5'5". And then whenever we'd be roughhousing, and he'd punch me in the shoulder. And then I'd grab him around his shoulders, pick him up, and then put my other arm underneath his knees and just sandwich him up in the air. So that was how we got to be really, really good friends. Jacob Drake was 21 when he died. At first, Ty wondered if the hacking rumors were true. But a few months ago, at one of the sailor's funerals, a group of guys who were on the McCain during the collision started talking. And Ty learned what happened up on the bridge that morning at 5:24 AM. The sailors who were supposed to steer the ship didn't really know how to steer this particular destroyer and made a series of mistakes that caused the ship to drift portside right as it was approaching one of the most crowded waterways in the world, the Strait of Malacca. It turned left into the the nose of an oil tanker. The tanker punctured a hole in the USS McCain's hull, which flooded the berthing and drowned his sleeping friends. When Ty found out the reason for the crash-- I was [BLEEP] pissed. Operator error is what cost me four really good friends and 10 brothers total. It's a total waste. Like I don't know how else to describe that. We're taught from boot camp on attention to detail. That's what gets me the most because literally how small it was. The USS McCain was just one of six major accidents within the Navy's 7th Fleet this year. The Fitzgerald is also in the 7th Fleet. The most recent incident was the day before Thanksgiving when a Navy plane trying to land on an aircraft carrier crashed in the Pacific Ocean. Three men were killed. Most years, there are just a handful of deaths on Navy ships, three or fewer. This year, there were 17. About a month after Ty went to that funeral, the Navy released a report that detailed the causes of both the Fitzgerald and McCain collisions. The report verified the story Ty had heard. It also described the panic of the sailors and how they struggled to save each other, pulling each other up ladders, using the Jaws of Life to extract trapped sailors from their crushed racks. The report includes scratchy, hand-drawn pictures of what the sailors saw as they tried to exit their racks, how the water was up to their necks. It describes how afterward, when divers went into the berthings to retrieve the bodies, one body was found underneath a television and another inside a bathroom. The report also concluded that a long list of errors led up to each crash. The crew wasn't properly trained. They used their radars incorrectly. Then there were the sailors who were on watch. On the Fitzgerald, they looked out only one side of the ship, while ignoring the other. All these mistakes left some people wondering, why were the crews so unbelievably sloppy? Rick Hoffman is a retired Navy captain and an expert on Navy collisions. He spent five years of his career analyzing case studies of crashes to teach young officers about them. He pointed out in both the McCain and the Fitzgerald crashes, no one set off the collision alarm to warn the rest of the crew. No one shouted, hey, there's a 700-foot ship heading our way. It shocked him. There was no indication that the bridge was even aware that they were about to have a collision. They didn't sound the collision alarm. They didn't notify the crew. They didn't tell the captain. And that's mind-boggling. That's mind-boggling. These people are looking out the window. So you've got a sailor back there on a headset communicating with the bridge what he sees. And why that kid wasn't screaming is a mystery to me. I found some people who felt like they knew the answer to that mystery. Months before the Navy report on the crashes came out, I was on Reddit, where there's a community of people in the Navy. And I came across a long, impassioned discussion about the cause of the crashes. It began with a single comment, quote, "I wonder if the watch were sleep deprived." And then posters just responded in droves-- about 1,000 posts of sailors and vets telling story after story about how little sleep they'd gotten during their time in the Navy. Many people talked about averaging three to four hours of sleep per night, every night. And that years afterward, long after they'd left the military, they still had trouble sleeping more than four hours a night, which sometimes led to issues with depression. Someone remembered being so tired that they reported the moon as an enemy contact. One guy talked about cracking his head against a panel as he passed out from exhaustion onto it. The commenters believed that these recent accidents weren't just caused by human error. It was human error as a result of sleep deprivation. It seemed crazy that giant, billion dollar ships could crash, that people could die because of something as simple as sleep. So I started calling people in the Navy or who are connected to the Navy, talking to them about this. And over four months of reporting, the picture I got was staggering. Sleep deprivation seemed widespread. And there was this phrase people kept saying that sums up the Navy's attitude toward sleep. You sleep when you're dead. It's like a sleep when you're dead stigma. You're going to sleep when you're dead. Here's a bunch of Navy personnel. You criticize somebody by telling them they're a rack hound, which means they sleep all the time. You know, what are you? Some kind of a weeny? You only been up for two days? Come on. What's wrong with you? Suck it up. You going to [BLEEP] cry about it? Yeah. Wake up. Drink another cup of coffee. So yeah, I mean that's the attitude. In November, when the Navy released its public report about the McCain and Fitzgerald accidents, it confirmed that fatigue was one of the causes. Mike Love is one of the sailors who posted on the Reddit thread. And as soon as he heard about the Fitzgerald crash, he thought-- It wasn't even-- to me, it was like, well, obviously that's what had happened. It's that you're having a kid that's-- I don't know-- 19, 20 years old that you've been working 20 hours a day-- you're going to stand him out in the dark and tell him to look for stuff. Like what do you think is going to happen? He's going to [BLEEP] fall asleep. Mike served from 2004 to 2008. This is a rare thing, but he explained that he would sometimes work 24-hour days-- so work a whole entire 24 hours, and then go straight on to the next 24 hours. And he told me a story that really sticks out in his memory. He was stationed aboard a dock landing ship which-- well, all you need to know is that it's a bigass ship. And it was in the waters around Kuwait about 10 years ago. One night, he was doing rounds in a smaller boat, a patrol boat with five people in it. And they were circling the bigass ship. The guy who was driving the patrol boat looked tired. So Mike offered to take over. And I was like, man, you're looking pretty tired, you know. Do you mind if I step in? He was like, thank you. I appreciate it. It's been a long day. I was like, yeah, I feel you. And as I was thinking about this, I was just kind of remembering, I wonder how long I had been awake. And I remember questioning this. Yeah, that was-- I mean yeah, that would've been going on 72 hours right there. Jesus. 72 hours. Yeah. And I put my headphones in. And I'll never forget. It was playing Killswitch Engage. And I was trying to keep myself up, you know, some heavy metal-- ba, ba, ba. I remember the officer saying something into my ear. And he was like, yeah, you know, you don't need to swing it so close for the patrols. We can take a little time. And I look up. I was like, OK, OK. So he was driving around the bigger ship. And all of a sudden-- And then I just remember hearing the engines kind of vvrrvv. And I just hear like, Love, Love, Love. And I was like, what? And I looked up. And holy cow. You know, swung full right. I was maybe-- maybe 60 meters from the side of the ship. Heading full speed towards it. He swerved away with just seconds to spare. It was very, very close. You know, that would have easily, easily, easily killed us all. His shipmates started freaking out. And even then, Mike still couldn't keep his eyes open. And I remember him saying like, are you kidding me? You're falling asleep as I'm talking? And as he's yelling at me. And I was like, holy crap. He's yelling in my ear, and I still am that tired that I had fallen asleep. This story was like a lot of stories on the Reddit thread-- fatigue-induced close calls. And as Mike was telling me about this, he started describing what it felt like to be so sleep deprived. And just the way he talked about it, I realized, oh, you know this feeling really well. Like he'd been down that road so many times he'd come to recognize landmarks on the way. When you hit a 24-hour mark or so, you're going to get your general tired. You hit that wall where you're like, oh man, I can barely keep my eyes open. And then once you come out of that, you start to suffer loss of motor skills, your finer motor skills, your ability to focus your eyes. And then, for me anyway, it starts with the auditory hallucinations. And then you'll get the visual hallucinations that will start at the corner of your eyes. Right in the shadows where your eyes kind of can't focus, your brain will be interpreting them as movement. So as you hit day two or day three, you start to lose the ability to determine between wakefulness and sleep. So you can be talking to someone and actually fall asleep with your eyes wide open. And then the conversation will turn to complete gibberish. Like what are you talking about, dude? What did you just say? What do you mean? I said this. Scientists have studied this. National Institutes of Health studies have given cognition tests to sleepy and drunk people. And they showed that being awake for 23 hours is equivalent to being well over the limit for driving drunk. Reaction times for people awake that long were 200% worse than people who are well-rested. Their hand-eye coordination was 30% worse. On some tests, they made twice as many mistakes. You've got a whole ship of people driving drunk, and that's unacceptable. David Larter is a Navy vet, now a journalist for Defense News. And he's been thinking about the sleep issue and reporting on it for years. A few months ago, Larter was on an NPR program, 1A, with a retired admiral, Terry McKnight, who took a very old school Navy tack on all this. He said basically sailors have to deliver no matter what. You're an adult. You figure out when to sleep. The Navy is not Carnival Cruise Lines. This is hard work. People know that their watch-- they know when they're going to stand watch. And they should take the opportunity to be well-rested before they get up there. Larter told me that the Admiral's comment made him furious. He brought it up twice in our interview, fuming each time. And you need to make sure you're getting the proper amount of sleep so that blah, blah, blah. That it's on you. I'm sorry, Admiral. It's not. It's on you. It's on you to set the conditions where that's not-- oh, well, I didn't sleep. And that's a competition-- where you're not creating competition among people. Oh, I slept less than you. Oh, you slept during the middle of the day. You're a dirtbag. But that's the mentality. That's the mentality that drives this [BLEEP]. It's, oh, this is a tough job. And sailors just need to man up. And millennials these days are-- you know, they're soft. It's all garbage. It's always been a bad idea. It's always been bad to not let people get enough sleep. People have told me that a lack of sleep is a problem in all branches of the military. But the Navy is the worst-- the workweeks of 100 hours or more, sleeping just a couple hours for days on end. I spoke to the Navy's lead researcher on sleep deprivation and its effects on sailors, Nita Shattuck, to see exactly how pervasive this was. Did I just find some isolated incidents, or was this everywhere? Dr. Shattuck's gone out with sailors in deployment and equipped them with essentially very expensive Fitbits to see how much sleep they get. She told me that, on average, sailors get a little less than six hours of sleep a night, close to five hours a night when they're on deployment. She said it's a huge problem, maybe bigger than the Navy would like to admit. The official report on the McCain and Fitzgerald accidents lists a bunch of reasons for the accidents, training and leadership failures, and only devotes two sentences to fatigue. Shattuck thinks it's probably more significant than that. You know, I completely acknowledge that-- when I look at things, my husband laughs at me. And he says, you think it's all about sleep. But fatigue could be the major cause of a lot of this that's going on. So this report does not convince you otherwise? Given the timing, given the circumstances that I'm aware of, I think that fatigue is still a big part of this story. The timing being both accidents happened during the graveyard shift, 1:30 AM and 5:24 AM. I asked the Navy for details about how they knew the crews on the McCain and Fitzgerald were fatigued, how fatigued they were, and whether they could share the crew's schedules from the days before the accidents. They said they could not share that. But they did let me speak with Rear Admiral Jesse Wilson. He's the leader of the Atlantic surface fleet. And he said, for instance on the Fitzgerald, it was clear the crew was overworked the day of the accident. The ship's routine was very busy that day. And there were indications that certain watch standards were not well-rested, including the commanding officer himself. So more times than not, if one person on the team would have done something differently, would have said something differently, it could have changed the result of the entire event and, in this particular case, could have prevented a collision. Dr. Shattuck, the Navy sleep researcher, says one of the most problematic issues, and the thing that makes the Navy worse than all of the other branches, is that many sailors are on schedules that make them go to sleep at a different time every day-- which means one day bedtime might be 5:00 PM. The next, it might be 8:00 AM. Our bodies aren't built to do that, so sailors are constantly jet lagged. So why has the Navy allowed it to happen? Well, in part out of necessity. The Navy is understaffed. It's been steadily shrinking for decades. And even though we have about the same operational demands as we have since the '90s, the number of ships available to do that work has decreased by half. And on those ships, 14,000 jobs are unfilled, about 10%. The Navy has the money to make those hires. But they're having trouble recruiting people. That means the sailors we do have are much busier. They go out on longer deployments. And they wind up working longer hours. Earlier this fall, Navy veteran and US senator John McCain expressed his concern about this at an armed services hearing about the collisions. McCain's father and grandfather, by the way, were both Navy admirals and both named John McCain. They're the ones the destroyer USS John McCain is named for. The senator said this to the chief of naval operations, Admiral John Richardson. Admiral, is it true that some of our sailors are working 100-hour weeks? Sir, I'll not deny that. The sailors are working very hard. We have been doing some work study-- sort of workday type of studies. OK. But I'll just point out if we know that somebody's working a 100-hour workweek, I'm not sure we need a study. It's worth noting that all of the accidents this year have been in the 7th Fleet, the busiest fleet in the Navy. They're in the Pacific and responsible for patrolling the waters around North Korea, Japan, and the South China Sea, all very tense, very high action areas right now. In the wake of the McCain and Fitzgerald deaths, the Navy took steps to fix the problem of fatigue. In October, the Navy announced that it was going to start doing what Dr. Shattuck, the Navy sleep researcher, had been advocating for years. Make it mandatory that sailors sleep at generally the same time every day. The Navy calls it implementing circadian rhythms. All large ships, like destroyers, should have implemented the new schedules this month. Some smaller ships are expected to implement the policy this spring. I found a sailor on an assault ship that's been under circadian rhythms his entire deployment. So according to the Navy, he should be getting enough sleep. But he told me that in practice, even though he gets to go to bed at the same time every day, he still works 16 hours each day and has just eight hours off. The only way he could possibly get a full eight hours of sleep is if he skipped showering, reading, or relaxing for a single minute and instead collapsed directly on his rack and started sleeping right after duty. But of course, that's impossible. When he lies down, he says, he isn't able to fall asleep immediately and often thinks about work for a couple hours before he can drift off. He told me, quote, "If you're a human being in this system, you are OK with disrespecting your well-being every day." Brad Martin believes circadian rhythms are not going to fix the fatigue and accident problems in the 7th Fleet. He's a retired Navy surface warfare captain. He held four commands during his 30 years in the service. Now he's a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. That's going to be helpful. But I don't think just fixing that one thing is going to solve the whole problem. He doesn't think the Navy can solve the problem without hiring and training people to fill the 14,000 vacancies it has on its ships. Ultimately, more people are going to have to be retained or brought in. Putting people through the training pipeline is a tens of millions of dollars type of problem. Yeah. But then fixing the McCain and the Fitzgerald, those two ships alone is $800 million, so-- That's a very good point. If we could have spent $70 million to try to get ensured that the manning on those ships was such that we could confidently say they are really ready to go out and operate, it would have been a lot cheaper. In the Navy, sleep is the canary in the coal mine. Martin told me it's a warning of much deeper, systemic problems. When the Navy puts on a three carrier show of strength off the Korean peninsula, or sends a destroyer to the South China Sea, the whole point is to project an image of American power. But the reality is the Navy is trying to do too much with too little. And behind those dangerous, powerful machines are sailors trying to stay awake at the controls. Stephanie Foo is one of the producers of our show. Our program was produced today by Dana Chivvis. Our team includes Elna Baker, Elise Bergerson, Susan Burton, Ben Calhoun, Zoe Chace, Sean Cole, Hilary Elkins, Stephanie Foo, Chana Joffe-Walt, Michelle Harris, David Kestenbaum, Seth Lind, Jonathan Menjivar, B.A. Parker, Robyn Semien, Alissa Shipp, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, and Diane Wu. Our senior producer is Brian Reed. Our website, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know his Christmas present for me this year? I don't know. It just-- it just seemed a little hostile. Yes, it is a bomb sitting on a bomb. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
Seriously, America? Is this one so hard? This seems like an easy layup-- a 4-inch putt, a slow pitch across the plate, a thing that's so easy that even somebody like me who doesn't care about sports finds himself making sports metaphors. I'm talking about the DREAMers, the DACA kids who were brought to the US as small children. The majority of Americans have wanted to give them a path to citizenship since 2010. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham quoted a Fox News poll on the floor of the Senate this week that shows 79% of the public supports that, including 63% of Trump voters. Leaders of both parties in the House and Senate say they want it. The president says he wants it. In other words, it's super popular. Politicians support it. And yet, we've been trying 2001-- 2001! And we still don't have a permanent fix to this. There's this thing that President Trump said about his job on his 98th day in office. He said, "I thought it would be easier," which, OK, he was roundly mocked for that. But weeks like this one, I think that too. Like really, with so many things, I really thought our democracy could do these things. Like, why is it not easier? Well, from WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program, in this week of government dysfunction, we have two stories of lawmakers not able to accomplish tasks that seem, from the outside, very straightforward. Act One of our show is about Republicans. Act Two is about Democrats. Specifically with the Democrats, what are they doing? A year into the Trump presidency, what exactly is their plan? Why does it seem to be, you know, nothing? Stay with us. Act One, Send in the Gowns. President Trump hasn't got a chance yet to build his wall. One of the first things he did in office was to issue an executive order of what to do when people are caught crossing the US border. Even under President Obama, most of those people got kicked out right away through a process called expedited removal. But there were lots of people who got locked up, processed, and released after a few weeks into the United States while they waited for their day in court, which could take years. And then, often, they didn't even show up in court. It was kind of a mess. Border agents called it catch and release. You probably heard that phrase. The Trump administration wanted to get rid of catch and release. And so rather than do that, they decided they were going to take this group of people, detain them, and then get them in front of a judge fast, and then quickly deport anybody who should not be here. That, of course, required judges, more than they had at the border at the time. So they started flying immigration judges from around the country from their regular courtrooms to courts near the border. They would be there for two weeks at a time. And so this is an example of politicians seeing something they wanted to fix. They came up with a straightforward plan to do it. And we wanted to know, how's that working? Well, to answer that, we collaborated with The Marshall Project and their reporter, Julia Preston, who's visited immigration courts for over a decade in her old job as the immigration correspondent for The New York Times. She's broken many stories of this subject. She went with one of our producers, Jonathan Menjivar, to one of these courts. This one was inside a detention center in Laredo, Texas. Here are Jonathan and Julia. The first thing that happened when we got to this immigration court in Laredo was that we couldn't even get inside. Immigration courts are supposed to be open to the public, but this court, it's inside the detention center, which is run by a private prison company. So to get in, you have to get past an employee who's sitting behind a thick glass window. It was October when we visited, and the window was covered in Charlie Brown Halloween stickers-- Lucy in a wizard costume, Snoopy napping on a jack-o'-lantern. We'd made arrangements in advance with ICE, the Federal immigration enforcement agency, to let them know we were coming. But it didn't help. Eventually, we are cleared to enter. You're not allowed to record in court, so you're not going to hear any audio, but I'll just tell you. When we get into the courtroom, I realize I've met the judge before. His name is Barry Pettinato, and I met him when I was reporting a story last summer back in his home courtroom in Charlotte, North Carolina. In Charlotte, Judge Pettinato was fully in command, and he was running a fast-paced, no-nonsense courtroom. He has a record as a tough judge. It's not easy to win an asylum claim with Judge Pettinato. In Laredo, he told us he was in the second week of a two-week stint. He kind of jokingly asked me if I was following him around. Pettinato's courtroom in Laredo was hastily arranged last March to accommodate a judge. It's a cramped space with no windows, with the judge and the immigrants up very close to each other. But there is one of those raised wooden podiums for the judge, so it looks enough like a court. Judge Pettinato takes the bench and, right away, it's clear that things aren't going as smoothly as they did in his home court in Charlotte. Pettinato has this big stack of blue files, and initially, it's not clear which case he's supposed to hear. An immigrant is called who has the identity number 991, but the government doesn't seem to have the file for that person. In fact, it seems that person may already have been deported. But they do have a file for immigrant 919. Maybe they're supposed to hear that case instead? "Was that just bad data input?" Judge Pettinato asks. It isn't even 9 o'clock in the morning and he already seems exasperated. We soon find out he's not the only one. During a break between cases, the government attorney-- he's the immigration court equivalent of the prosecutor, and someone who generally wouldn't talk to the press-- he walks up to us and seems eager to share his frustration. He tells us the whole Laredo court is, quote, "just a bad setup." He explains how it works, or rather, how it doesn't really work. The judges come and go every two weeks. The clerks also come and go every two weeks. But the clerks don't necessarily come with the judges, so the judges may be working with clerks from some other part of the country they've never met before. There are two attorneys for the government. They come and go every four weeks. The Spanish language interpreters, who have to be in the court much of the time, are also coming and going. Everyone is coming and going. And there's no overlap between one rotation of judges or prosecutors and the next rotation. The government attorney tells us the result is just plain chaotic. A few minutes later, Judge Pettinato spends some time trying to get one lawyer on the phone, but it keeps disconnecting. Next up, there's an Albanian who agrees to participate in his hearing in Spanish, even though he doesn't really speak Spanish. "Me hablo mucho Italiano. Entiendo un poquito Español," he tells the interpreter. I speak a lot of Italian. I understand a little Spanish. The more time we sat in the courtroom, the more I realized we were noticing things I had never seen in years of observing immigration courts. There was no posted hearing schedule. Case files often went missing. Judge Pettinato was trying to move things along, but instead of efficiency, there were time-consuming mishaps and delays. And as a result, immigrants who were detained and anxious and who expected to have an orderly process and a fair hearing weren't really getting that. Nor were they getting the speedy treatment the Trump administration intended, or anything close. A lot of the fumbling happens because of a simple dumb reason. All of the files are still kept on paper. All immigration courts around the country work this way, but it's an especially big problem in Laredo. During one hearing, there's a lawyer, this guy who's driven up three hours from Weslaco, Texas. He's there to ask for a bond so his client can be released. But here's the hiccup. The files for this court in Laredo, they're not actually in Laredo, at least initially. They're filed in another immigration court 150 miles away in San Antonio. And every case file, it has to be physically sent here. And sometimes they don't make it, like with this lawyer. "You may have submitted it, but we don't have it," Judge Pettinato says to the lawyer. "I filed it in San Antonio," the lawyer says. "Well, that could explain it." Judge Pettinato's eyes roll as he says this. It's a strange thing to see in a courtroom, a judge openly mocking the flaws of the court he's running. Even stranger are the knowing nods in the room. Everyone here-- the lawyer, the clerk, the government prosecutor, even the interpreter-- they know this hearing can't go forward because of the haphazard way this courtroom has been set up. Judge Pettinato sets the bond hearing for a week out-- a time, remember, when some other judge will have replaced him. The guard then escorts the woman from Honduras that this whole hearing was about out of the courtroom. She's stuck in detention for another week, having no idea what will happen with her case. When you start asking around in Laredo for someone who really knows what's going on in this court, there's one lawyer whose name keeps popping up-- Paola Tostado. She's a real Texas highway rider lawyer from Brownsville, three hours to the south. She makes the drive to Laredo sometimes three times a week, keeping an eye out for a Texas breed of antelope called a nilgai. It's the size of a horse, and it can appear on the highway at 5:00 in the morning when she's driving to court. While most lawyers were wearing muted black in that dingy detention center, Paola announced her presence with a scarlet dress and 4-inch spike heels. And in a court filled with all these rotating judges, Paola, this young lawyer who graduated from law school in 2015, she seemed to have become a resident expert. We saw Judge Pettinato defer to her judgment a couple of times when she was in court. She's very persistent and confident. Paola told us she had this case that was emblematic of the messed up situations lawyers and immigrants find themselves in when a court isn't running properly. The case involved a guy from El Salvador who wanted to appeal after he didn't pass his first asylum interview. Paola drove up to San Antonio to speak with the court clerk and see her client's file. And the court clerk informed me that the case was closed, that the judge had closed the proceedings. Meaning his case was over. Done. And I said, well, that's impossible because my client is still in detention. And she's like, well, if you can give me some sort of proof that he is still in detention, which is ridiculous. Ridiculous because the proof that he was in detention was that he was still in detention. But the clerk had no record of that. The problem was that, if the case was formally closed, to get any order from the court to have the man released, Paola would need to get the case reopened. She tried ICE, the court in Laredo, the clerk's office in San Antonio, but nobody could figure out why a judge-- a judge who was no longer there-- had closed the case. Everyone was baffled, but everyone was also passing the buck. The man sat in detention in Laredo month after month. For any court, this is about as bad as it gets. The government was detaining this man, but legally, the court had no basis to hold him. And still there was no way to get him out because the case was closed. Finally, the immigrant solved the problem himself. ICE brought him a deportation order and he signed it. He just gave up. He just gave up. Exactly. He said, no, they just brought me the documents. I signed them. I want out of here. I want to go. I can't do this anymore. Welcome to the automated case information hotline. This wasn't an isolated incident. On the day we were there, Paola had another case just like it, a client who was in detention. She worried that he would despair and self-deport, as well. Paola called the hotline you can dial in to check the status of any case. She pressed a few buttons, and we got an update on her current client. The immigration judge closed proceedings on your case at Laredo SPC 4702 East Saunders, Laredo, Texas, 78041 on August 23, 2017. The hotline says his case was closed on August 23, 2017. That was months ago, but he was still in detention, still in need of a hearing to get his case moving-- a hearing he can't get because his case is closed. The system does not contain any information regarding a future hearing date on your case. Paola's client, he's in total limbo. He just sounds defeated. He just says, I just don't want to be sitting here waiting for nothing. If I'm waiting for something, if you tell me I have a court in two months, then I'll wait for that court in two months. But there's no court for me. So the question of the day here is, if we would be in another court, would this still be happening? Or is it just because we're here in Laredo and we're in an immigration court, which is-- it's not organized? Or who is there to blame here if there's someone to blame? Did you just put air quotes around "immigration court?" [LAUGHS] Yes. It's crazy. You wouldn't think this would be happening. Your question of would this be happening in another court, what do you think? I highly doubt this would be happening in another court. A day after we recorded this interview, this second client of Paola's was suddenly released, and he didn't even have to post bond. ICE gave no explanation why they let him go. Back at the courtroom, at one point, Judge Pettinato looks at the stack of blue files in front of him and whispers to his clerk, "the problem is, I can't do all of these." In fact, the immigration court system is drowning in cases. There's a huge backlog-- at last count, 650,000 cases waiting to be resolved. That number doubled in the last five years under President Obama. 650,000 cases works out to be about 2,000 for every judge, so immigrants often wait several years to have their cases heard. The Trump administration's plan to rush judges to the border was supposed to help with the backlog. If they could quickly turn away illegal border crossers, they could keep new cases from building up in the system. But sending a judge down to a border court for two weeks means that all the cases that were ready to go on their home docket have to be postponed and rescheduled. On Judge Pettinato's Charlotte docket, for example, because of how behind they are there, the cases he had scheduled for the two weeks he was in Laredo had to be reset to late 2018, about a year away. In practice, the backlog in Charlotte just got bigger. The thing is, not all the courts with these temporary judges look like Laredo. Some of the border courts have the opposite problem. They have more judges than they need, so judges have ended up sitting around in empty courtrooms with nothing to do. We talked to a judge named Lawrence Burman, who normally sits in a court in Arlington, Virginia. His first border detail was to a court in Jena, Louisiana. The problem was that we had four judges there, and there was really only enough work for two judges. So I had a lot of free time, which is pretty useless in Jena, Louisiana. I couldn't really do anything except review the other files for Jena. And once I reviewed all of them, read the newspaper OR read my email. Out of 10 court days in Jena, there were two days where Judge Burman had no cases at all. Meanwhile, back home, he could have been moving forward with as many as 50 cases a day. Instead, dozens of those cases were rescheduled to the next date he had available on his calendar, which, because of the enormous backlog in Arlington, is three years away, in 2020. A sitting federal judge isn't allowed to do an interview. That's why you're not hearing from Judge Pettinato. But Judge Burman is also a high-ranking official with the National Association of Immigration Judges-- it's kind of like their union-- so he can talk to reporters in that capacity. And before we move on, Judge Burman wanted to make it clear. What he's saying here, these are his views and things he's heard from other judges across the country. They are not the views of the Justice Department or the court system. Judge Burman never went to Laredo, but he's talked to other judges who've been there, and he confirmed all the problems we saw. He said Laredo was especially notable because there was never a crisis there in the first place. Prior to President Trump's order, all their cases were being heard by judges in San Antonio via a video system. The system wasn't great, but it was working. All the emergency shuffling did was replace judges in San Antonio hearing cases by video with a live judge in Laredo, which, for a while, left some of the judges in San Antonio with empty dockets. So basically, a judge who was already on the border-- San Antonio's not exactly on the border, but it's not too far-- had nothing to do. Another judge was pulled away from his docket and sent down there, presumably just so that they could say that they rushed more judges to the border. The "they" in this case is the Justice Department, which is run by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. They are actually the ones who oversee the courts. A peculiarity of the American immigration court system is that it's part of the executive branch, which is why the President can rapidly change the priorities of the court like this. The Department of Justice doesn't really understand what we do and probably don't care very much in the final analysis. It just wants to present to the attorney general the fact that they're doing everything that they can. So I assume that they just sent as many judges to the border as they had courtrooms to put them in without much regard to how many cases there actually were there. It's almost as if the Department of Justice and [INAUDIBLE] management are trying to see how they can make the system less and less efficient. In the name of efficiency? Well, I don't know what they think they're doing, but what they're doing is not efficient. Just my opinion and opinion of practically every judge that I know. Like we said, President Trump's plan for these courts was to process people and deport them quickly. And during our week in Laredo, we did see some bad hombres come through the court-- immigrants who'd gotten involved in drug trafficking. There was one Mexican who worked with a human smuggling ring, harboring other undocumented immigrants for $100 a pop. But in general, these emergency border courts were designed to handle a crisis at the border that isn't happening. In 2017, Customs and Border Protection recorded the lowest level of illegal migration in 45 years. President Trump made it clear that he was going to be tough on immigrants. And after he won the election, the numbers declined sharply. Many immigrants who are coming now are people who we can't deport quickly-- asylum seekers who have a right to have their case heard before an immigration judge. We spent a little time at the border in Laredo. And within just an hour, we saw eight people who had presented themselves to authorities requesting asylum. The numbers that are really way up over the last year are not at the border. They're the rest of immigrants inside the country, in towns and cities that are losing judges for weeks at a time to these border courts. The Trump administration has said they're pleased with the results of this surge of immigration judges, that it's been a success. The director of the Justice Department agency that oversees the immigration courts said, and I quote, "mobilized immigration judges had completed approximately 2,700 more cases than expected if they had not been detailed." Essentially, he argued that judges who were sent to the border, about 100 of them in all, they completed 2,700 more cases than they would have if they'd stayed in their home courts. But that doesn't take into account that sending judges to the border meant that at least 22,000 cases around the country had to be rescheduled in the first three months alone-- perhaps for a year, as in Judge Pettinato's Charlotte cases, or perhaps three years, like in Judge Burman's courtroom. We reached out to the Justice Department for comment. They didn't respond to our request for an interview, but they did answer some questions over email. An official stressed that the backlog in immigration court is getting better. To be clear, they haven't actually reduced the backlog. It's still increasing. But they point out that it's increasing at a slower rate. It was growing at over 3% per month when President Trump took office, and it's less than 0.5% now. But it's unclear if this change was because the Justice Department sent judges to the border or because of other efforts they've made to reduce the backlog, like hiring dozens of immigration judges. There was one other fact they wouldn't explain. Unceremoniously, at the end of last year, the Justice Department decided to stop sending judges to Laredo. They went back to the old video system. We asked them why that decision was made and got no response. Our last morning in Laredo, we saw a case that told us a lot about many of the immigrants who were being deported by this court. It was a hearing for an undocumented Mexican man named Fernando. He wasn't a recent border crosser. He had no criminal record, so he wasn't a priority for deportation, even for the Trump administration, which says it's focusing on getting rid of criminals. We met his girlfriend, Irma, in the waiting room. She said together they were raising four children, all American citizens born here. Fernando had been picked up by local police after getting into a loud argument outside a Laredo bar. He wasn't charged or convicted of anything, but the cops turned him over to ICE. But when Fernando started laying out all the details of his story-- this was just a few minutes into his case-- Judge Pettinato interrupted him. "Sir, I've got a whole bunch of cases going on today. I get the gist." The judge was ready to issue his decision. Fernando would have to leave the country. He and his girlfriend looked stunned. Fernando choked up. He kept putting his head in his hands and staring at the wall. It was pretty clear he and Irma hadn't expected a decision. They thought this was just going to be a procedural hearing and they'd have time to get a lawyer. In fact, in a regular immigration court, that's exactly what would have happened. I've seen it many times. But now Fernando wouldn't get a chance to fully tell his story to a judge. These border courts are designed for speed. That's their whole point. And this is what that looks like. Judge Pettinato took a moment to explain to Fernando that, even though it was commendable that he wanted to stay in the US to help his family, legally, there was no way he could allow it. That same afternoon, Fernando was put on the bridge to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. Julia Preston and our producer, Jonathan Menjivar. That story was produced in collaboration with The Marshall Project, where Julia's a contributing writer. The Marshall Project does in-depth reporting on the criminal justice system. You can read the print version of Julia's story at themarshallproject.org. Coming up. OK, we and our staff truly did not understand what's happening with the Democratic Party, and we spent a few months trying to figure it out. What we learned in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, I Thought It Would Be Easier, stories about how difficult it seems to be lately for politicians to get things done, even things that seem pretty straightforward. We've arrived at Act Two of our program. Act Two, Fighting Amongst Demselves. So one of the most basic things a political party is supposed to do is stand for something and articulate it. And a few months into Donald Trump's presidency, the questions, what does the Democratic Party stand for? What are they doing? What is the strategy? They've grown so large that it had the power to render grown people speechless. The Democratic Party, um, is-- is-- Arguably, the national headquarters for impatience with the Democrats is the studios of MSNBC. Here's one of their anchors, Joe Scarborough. I'm talking about the national party is clueless. Where is the Democratic Party? Mika, where are the Democrats? I'm praying. No, no, I'm dead serious. No, I'm serious, too. What has happened to this party? The Democrats have lost over 1,000 state legislative seats over the past eight years. They've lost the White House to a guy who nobody would even hire as their CEO. They've lost over a dozen Senate seats. They've lost over 60 House seats over the past eight years. And the Democrats still don't know who they are. What is wrong with this party? One of our producers, Ben Calhoun, traveled around, interviewing Democratic strategists and politicians this summer and fall, trying to understand why there did not seem to be a coherent strategy or message. Here's Ben. It's one thing for Joe Scarborough, who exists in a state of suspended exasperation, to be rolling his eyes at the Democrats. It's a completely different thing for someone like Ken Martin to feel fed up. Ken Martin's one of the country's top Democrats. He runs the Minnesota Democratic Party, and he leads the association of all the state Democratic Parties across the country. And he's the vice chair of the DNC. Our brand is [BLEEP]. Our brand is toxic. People don't know what the heck it is. If you got 100 Democrats in this room right now and asked them what the Democratic Party stands for, you'd get 100 different answers. There's no consistency. No one knows what the Democratic Party is. If you got 100 Republicans in here, by and large, you would get at least some consistency on what their party stands for. People need to have some clarity as to who the Democratic Party is, why we do what we do, why we care, and what we're fighting for. How anxious are you feeling about this moment? Well, I feel very anxious. I feel, for the Democratic Party, this is an existential moment. But what exactly might people have been expecting from Democrats in the first year of the Trump era? To that question, I would offer what the Republicans did when Barack Obama was elected. They were at their lowest point in decades. They'd lost both houses of Congress and the Presidency. There's a story about that moment that's been documented by a bunch of places, best by reporter Robert Draper. On the night of Obama's inauguration, a bunch of Republicans go out for dinner at a fancy steakhouse, a place called The Caucus Room. It's a powerful bunch. You've got Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, Eric Cantor, Bob Corker, Frank Luntz, Newt Gingrich, more than a dozen people. And as Obama is visiting inaugural balls, this group sets a strategy. They would oppose and attack every idea Obama had. "If he was for it, we had to be against it," is how one senator put it. One key to this whole thing was that they all had to commit to the same plan. Paul Ryan, then a young congressman from Wisconsin, told the group, "the only way we succeed is if we're united." I think that story is amazing because it's exactly what they did. It's like staring at the source code for eight years of Republican politics. And you can trace the path of that strategy from that steakhouse, through their opposition to the stimulus and Obamacare and everything else, through Republicans retaking Congress and the White House. If Democrats had a meeting like this, in a steakhouse or anywhere, they did not walk out with a strategy that everyone is now following, right? A year into the Trump presidency, sure, the Democrats were united against the president's tax cuts and his attempts to repeal Obamacare, but beyond that, they do not have a clear message or strategy. And one of the big reasons-- they just don't agree. They don't agree about who they are, or what the party should be, or what they should be saying. And no one has the power to say, here's where we're going. In fact, when Democratic leadership sends out talking points, congressional staffers have told me they're taken more as suggestions and regularly ignored. Several Democrats told me they felt a little jealous of the discipline of the Republican messaging operation. And the Democrats aren't even in agreement about what went wrong in 2016. In the early months of the Trump presidency, Democrats were still picking that apart, trying to figure out what went so badly and searching for anything-- anything-- that had gone well. One place it felt like they might find hope was with a small list of congressional districts, which a few staffers had started calling the Trump 12. The Trump 12 were 12 congressional districts where Democratic congressional reps had won, even though Donald Trump had also won there. Most of them were in the Midwest and Pennsylvania, states that were pivotal for Trump. In hindsight, it seemed like Democrats who had held Trump back in those areas might have answers on how to reach white, working-class voters, rural white, working-class voters who'd abandoned the Democrats, which that's what led me to Cheri Bustos. Cheri Bustos is one of the Trump 12. She represents a district that covers the northwest corner of Illinois. It's mostly rural, heavily white, home of John Deere. Caterpillar Manufacturing started there. Last fall, Trump won in Bustos' district. But Bustos also won reelection by a 20-point landslide. In May, Politico wrote a profile with the headline "The Secret Weapon Democrats Don't Know How to Use." The article's question-- Cheri Bustos has lessons about how to win in Trump territory, but are Democrats listening? They were. She was chosen to co-chair the policy and communications committee in the House, three members who lead strategy and messaging for congressional Democrats. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee created a new position for her-- Chairwoman of Heartland Engagement, which, as someone from Wisconsin, can I just say nobody in the Midwest walks around talking about the Heartland. Also, like Democrats need to send an ambassador to part of their own country? Whatever. In late June, I went to see Bustos in Illinois to ask her about the party and what she thinks it should be doing. Gosh, what a great turnout. I caught up with Bustos at a union hall, one of these events she's been having called Build the Bench, where she tries to recruit and train people to run as Democrats, to create a farm team, something Democrats acknowledge they have not done a good job with lately. You're not going to say, will you please give me $20. If somebody's got a decent job, you're going to say, can you make $1,000 contribution? It's interesting to watch regular people encountering the less glamorous realities of running for office for the first time. It's kind of like they're seeing the back door to a restaurant. At one point, Bustos was talking to a woman who was thinking about running. The woman had shared a bio with Bustos. It explained she'd graduated top 10 in her college class. So a couple things. You've got a very good personal story. And it's great that you were 10th in your class, but people don't want to know that you're smart. And most people in our region are not college educated. When I ran for city council, I had what my bio was, and I had where I went to college. And I literally had somebody say, what? Do you think you're better than we are? I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, well, so you went to college. You think that's a big deal? So find a way to connect with people, and that's going to be your dad was a factory worker. You're the granddaughter of a farmer. Talk about how you can meet people where they are. Meet voters where they are. This is Bustos' core philosophy, her vision for what the party should be doing. In person, Bustos looks like a former college athlete, which she is, talks like a former health care executive, which she is, and compulsively parents like a mother of three, which she is. She's the only person who's asked me as an adult if I need to go to the bathroom before getting in a car. After a while, Bustos and I sat down away from everybody else. I don't think we, as Democrats, will fail if, number one, we start talking about jobs and the economy nonstop. That's, in my opinion as a Democrat, is what we need to do. The divisive issues that are out there-- I don't know why we would walk into a room and start with a divisive issue. I don't go into a room and start my conversation by talking about the fact that I'm pro-choice, talking about guns, one way or another, because those are issues that tend to divide. But I do go into a room and I talk about my fight for good jobs, for better wages, better skills, and better jobs. That is what we are fighting for everyday as Democrats. So now, if somebody asked me my views on issues that are more divisive, I'll answer it honestly, and then I'll get back to talking about jobs and the economy. I spent a lot of hours with Cheri Bustos at this point. And if I had to write her strategy for the Democrats on a napkin, it'd go like this. Congressional districts are so gerrymandered-- so many are solidly Democrat or solidly Republican-- that there are very few real swing districts like hers. And Bustos says voters in those districts are moderate. If the national party moves too far to the left, you know, Black Lives Matter, or immigrants' rights, or universal health care, well yeah, it will fire up people in big blue cities and on the coasts. But Democrats already have those votes. In the districts they need, districts like hers, the ones they have to win, she says that will do you in. So as a practical matter, keeping it centrist and moderate, that's the path to win back Congress and the presidency. And plenty of Democrats are with Bustos on that. The strategy isn't new. Targeting moderates and centrist voters, that's been the Democrats' playbook since Bill Clinton. But in 2018, it is remarkable, I think, not for what it is, but for what it leaves out. For starters, consider the most popular working politician in either party right now. Bernie! Bernie! Bernie! Bernie! Over the summer, following the defeat of the Republican repeal of Obamacare, Senator Bernie Sanders went on the offensive in a very non-Cheri Bustos way. He did a tour that was all about universal health care, progressive style, Sweden-worshipping, single-payer health care. If Canada can do it, if Europe can do it, if Scandinavia can do it, we can do it in the United States. Health care is a right, not a privilege. Sanders repeatedly drew crowds in the thousands in Democratic areas, but also deep red ones. Meanwhile, leftist activism surged in the wake of the Women's March from groups like Indivisible and Swing Left, to the whole assortment of Black Lives Matter groups, to protesters at airports all across the country. It is my honor to introduce to you the Congressman from Minnesota, Congressman Keith Ellison. When I started following Cheri Bustos around, I also started following Keith Ellison. Ellison's a congressman from Minnesota. He's black, the first Muslim elected to Congress. He used to chair the Progressive Caucus in the House. He ran and lost for DNC chair, but he took the number two job running the DNC-- deputy chair. This was Ellison talking to the Democratic Party of Vermont last year. The Republican Party is the party that wants to ban the Muslims and wall the Mexicans. It wants to keep transgender people from going to the bathroom. The Republican Party under Trump and Trumpism is the party that says that liberty and justice for all, except Muslims, Mexicans, you know, fill in the blank, right? The Democratic Party has to be the sharp edge, the pointy edge of saying liberty and justice for all. We don't care, man. These are our people, and we embrace them. That night, Ellison talked about transgender rights, gay rights, undocumented immigrants, Muslims, sexual harassment, pay inequity, single-payer health care. And he specifically talked about the issue of race, how he felt that it was being used to divide the country. He talked about Charlottesville, about the President and Republicans condoning racism. Rather than trying to avoid an issue like race because it was hot, he gave a speech that drove right at it for that very reason. We have got to be that vanguard. We have got to be that righteous group of people who never stop fighting for equality, who believe that the best of our country is yet to come, and that genius is not tied up in any ethnic group, but is in all ethnic groups. This is what we have to stand for. If I were to try to summarize Keith Ellison's argument for the party on a napkin, it might go like this. We are in an extreme moment. Wealth in America hasn't been so unequally skewed since the 1920s. And people feel stuck and ground down, and they're mad. And so they don't want the usual political talk. They want people who recognize how messed up things are and who are riled up too, and who won't shy away from conflict, who are going to propose things that are aggressive and bold. You're hearing one group of Democrats say, we need bold ideas that are going to solve your problem. And you hear another say, well, uh, we don't need so much bold ideas. We just need to, you know, just keep it real, tame. And we don't want to offend anybody. We don't want to upset the Republicans. You're going to be confronted with a choice. And you're going to say, I think one of the two groups is right. I think people are going to say that the bold ideas people are right. And most Democrats are going to understand that just incremental, tepid solutions to the deep, serious problems people are facing, it's just not going to be adequate. Progressives like Ellison question the conventional wisdom Democratic strategy of taking blue states for granted, and writing off red states as lost causes, and fighting only for swing districts and swing voters, he says it's hard to build a national party when you leave most people feeling ignored. Ellison calls all of that a minimalist strategy designed to fail. Like other progressives, he points to Hillary Clinton. That was her strategy. In an op ed in The New York Times in June, Bernie Sanders reviewed where that strategy has gotten Democrats-- to their lowest point in decades. He wrote, "If these results are not a clear manifestation of a failed political strategy, I don't know what is." Like Ellison, Sanders says Democrats need a strategy that seizes on what's got people worked up and excites them. And that, they say, is how Democrats can rebuild, drive votes, and make a comeback. So you had these very conflicting views of what the party needed. And eight months after Donald Trump was elected, there was such an absence of an official Democratic message, or strategy, or plan that people started to measure the empty space where one might have been. In July, The Washington Post and ABC News released this poll. It said 52% of Americans felt the only message Democrats had was that they were against Trump. Then finally, Democratic Party leaders stood on the bow of the boat and they pointed in a direction. It felt kind of like, all right, I know you're waiting. OK, OK. OK. So good afternoon, Berryville. On July 24, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, along with four more senators and four more congressmen, left Washington DC. They drove for an hour out into the country to this small town called Berryville in rural Virginia. Schumer kicked things off. This is how he explained what they were there to do. Too many Americans don't know what we stand for. Not after today. Now, we know that now we're in the minority in both houses of Congress. We can't delude anyone that this Congress will begin passing our priorities tomorrow. But we have to start presenting our vision for the country's future. This is the start of a new version for the party. So what they proceeded to lay out, the bold, new version of the Democratic Party was a bunch of things you've heard Democrats talk about before. Here were the parts of the plan-- lowering prescription drug costs, infrastructure, job training, anti-trust legislation, raising wages. It was a long list. Just the materials explaining it, 10 pages, single-spaced-- it was a lot of ideas, but definitely nothing too edgy or provocative. In that way, it weirdly felt like a message determined by subtraction. It was like a dish cooked up by taking politically-charged ingredients off the table, one by one, until no one would find it too salty or too spicy or too anything. What was surprising was how underwhelming the presentation was-- inoffensive, and yet sometimes tone-deaf. You had all the men, folksy in their rolled-up shirtsleeves, and then Schumer telling a story in the middle of rural Virginia about the Yankees. Now, last month, I went to a Yankees game. Just respectful note to the senator. America hates the Yankees. Nancy Pelosi kept the salt of the Earth term going when she came up next and she namechecked the San Francisco Giants. The speeches had bright spots, but they were largely standard issue, pastel platitudes, a lot of talk about hardworking families left behind and training workers for 21st century economy. There were only about 100 people. This was in a park that could hold thousands. They dutifully clapped when they were supposed to. The Dems called their policy package "A Better Deal." It was a reference to FDR's New Deal, and it came with a slogan that people rattled off in their speeches. Better jobs, better wages, and a better future. Better jobs, better wages, a better future. Better jobs, better wages, and a better future. The slogan, very similar to Papa John's "Better ingredients, better pizza," was mocked almost instantly. Trolling Republican protesters held up pizza boxes that said "Better jobs, better wages, still Pelosi." Cheri Bustos was there that day. Bustos was actually one of the architects of the Better Deal. When I asked her more about how the whole plan came together, she said it was a six-month process. It involved 180 members of Congress and all of the caucuses, like progressives, new Dems, Blue Dogs, Black Caucus, Hispanic Caucus. But despite all of that inclusion, the thing that she described, it did in fact sound like subtraction. She said health care, reproductive rights, civil rights, all of those things came up, but moderate Democrats resisted those things. This is the agenda, Bustos said. This is what we're going to be talking about from now until the midterm elections. The next day, I tracked down Keith Ellison in Washington DC. I found him in the tunnels underneath the Capitol on his way to go vote. Benjamin. What's up, my brother? Can I ask you some things on the run here? Please, please. The first thing I wanted to ask-- as the highest-ranking progressive in the party's power structure, honestly, I was just curious why he hadn't been at the Better Deal rollout. The stage had so many party leaders-- moderates, progressives from the Senate, the House, people in party leadership. So I went, and there was part of me that was expecting you to be there. Where? The Better Deal rollout. Yeah. Well, not everybody can do everything all the time. So no, I wasn't there, but it's all right. So yeah. So-- At this point, Ellison shot me a look. He looked over his glasses, and he raised his eyebrows, pursed his mouth, like, I know you're asking me a reasonable question, and on a stage filled with party leaders, especially one with only one black member of Congress, I'm the number two guy at the DNC. It would be totally reasonable for you to think that I might be there. But do you see me not talking to you? It made me laugh. Um-- I don't know what else to say. [LAUGHING] What's that look? Next question. All right. I asked Ellison what he thought of the Better Deal stuff. He was polite, said he thought it was a good step. Maybe it didn't satisfy everyone, but it was a start. That day, I saw a labor activist tweet that there wasn't anything to help organized labor in the Better Deal. Keith tweeted back, "Don't stress out about what's not in there. Help us promote what is." I later found out Ellison hadn't been invited to the stage in Virginia. And he wasn't the only one. A staffer of a progressive Democrat pointed to another person who was missing-- Bernie Sanders. He laid out this imaginary alternative version of that day, if they'd had Sanders speak. He said, how many people were in Virginia? 100? He said, imagine a real crowd, a Sanders-sized crowd. If they put even more Democrats on the stage, lots of them, and they said, we are here to F'ing fight for you, it would have felt different. I asked him why he thought Sanders hadn't been there. Well, they don't like him, he said. They don't get along with him. They don't like that he won't call himself a Democrat. Eventually, I put that question to Sanders' director of communications, who said, no, Sanders had not been invited. When I asked him why, he said, quote, "I would love to know the answer to that question." Bernie! Bernie! Bernie! In August, I traveled with Senator Bernie Sanders on this tour he did. There were three events, all to build support for universal health care, which he was pushing under the label, "Medicare for All." This sound is from the first rally in Indianapolis, maybe 1,500 people in downtown Indy, on the steps of this huge Civil War monument. The big crowd gathered as rain clouds got darker overhead. And then moments after it started to rain, Sanders came into view, and it sounded like this. There were four straight minutes of screaming. On every stop, Sanders pitches universal health care, but he also talks a lot about all kinds of issues-- race, poverty, immigration, voter suppression. And when he talks about the economy, it's not bland. In fact, he seems like he's having a really hard time not getting mad. His tone is all, these things are epically messed up, and most Americans are getting screwed. And I'm so upset about it, in fact, that my default way of speaking is what most people consider shouting. The American people know that the economy is rigged. They are working longer hours. And the rich get richer while the poor get poorer. They know that. And when we stand together, black and white and Latino, when we sat together with the Native American people and the Asian-Americans, and gay, and straight, and men, and women, when we stand together, when we have the guts to take on the billionaire class, when we have a vision for a new America, nothing, nothing will stop us. Thank you all, very much. After Indianapolis, it was onto Portsmouth, Ohio, a town of 20,000 where Sanders drew a crowd of over 1,000, in the middle of the workday, in a county that Donald Trump won by 37%. Last stop, Detroit, a crowd of around 2,000 in a megachurch, with a spillover crowd in an annex. One moment stuck out. It was near the end. Do not let anybody try to convince you that the views that you've heard here tonight and your views, that we are somehow a small minority. We are not. What the media does not talk about-- yes, there are divisions in this country on a number of issues. I won't deny that. But on major issue after major issue, on every issue that we have talked about, the American people are on our side. The polls back this up. Like, there are polls showing that most Americans do favor universal health care. Most Americans-- get ready for this one, this number comes from a Fox News poll of all places. 83% of Americans support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. And 76% of Americans say rich people should pay more in taxes. Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and the DNC are supposedly in charge of the party, but it's Sanders who has the profile and the power base to determine what Democrats in the country are talking about. This trip was evidence of just how true that is. Over the summer, I talked to moderate Democrats in Congress who thought Sanders was going to push single-payer health. They were dreading it. They worried they'd be pressured to support it, that it would become part of the Democrats' brand, part of what the party's about. And if it did, they'd get hammered back in their districts, which are more conservative. Cheri Bustos called it self-sabotage. We don't need any self-sabotage, she told me. But leaning on Democrats to embrace single-payer was precisely Sanders' goal. According to Sanders' director of communications, Sanders wanted to get Democratic senators to publicly support single-payer, including potential presidential candidates for 2020, because that way, he said, single-payer would become something that other candidates would feel pressured to support. And over the summer, one by one, Democratic senators signed on, way more than they expected. They were hoping for five or six, but they got 10, then 15, eventually, a third of all Democratic senators. The list included potential presidential candidates like Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Kirsten Gillibrand. At Sanders' final stop in Detroit, the Congressman hosting the event had put out the Democratic Party's Better Deal materials. They were laid out right next to the front door, as people streamed in. There were these huge, conspicuous piles. But over several hours, I didn't see anyone pick them up. As the crowd filtered out, I circled back. From what I could see, they hadn't been touched. A few days later, I got to see Cheri Bustos pitching the Better Deal to a newspaper editorial board in her home state. Bustos laid out the whole thing, the Better Deal, how it was created, all the involvement from congressional Democrats, all the different parts of it. We want to be in a position to help create 10 million good-paying, full-time jobs. There are still people hurting, and I think we need to acknowledge that and say that we want to do something about that. Right. Well, Donald Trump says that, too. It's hard to hear. The newspaper's political reporter, this guy named Chuck Sweeney, is saying, "Right. Well, Donald Trump says that too." Donald Trump says that too. He says exactly the same thing. Too many people are still out of work. You know, we need to do something about bringing back jobs. And that's why we talk about full-time, good-paying jobs. Right. But-- Well, I think there are people hurting. I don't know anybody that doesn't talk about that, so-- Yeah. Yeah. Remember, the whole point of the Better Deal was to explain what Democrats stand for, to define Democrats in terms that would resonate in places exactly like this one. Bustos forged ahead. Eventually, she started talking about how she's pro-business, one of the things that makes her moderate. She told the editorial board she thought it would be a good idea to lower the corporate tax rate. This was months before Donald Trump's corporate tax cut. So Democrats do support reducing corporate tax rates? Yeah, it's got bipartisan support, this-- What should the rate be? You know, I don't know. I don't know what it should be, but ours is one of the highest in the world. Right. And so as long as it's highest in the world, we're not going to have corporations who are going to bring that money home. So there's got to be some incentive. OK. I didn't-- see, I think, once again, I have no idea what the Democratic Party actually stands for anymore. I didn't during the 2016 campaign, either, which is probably why it wasn't the winning campaign. A couple top Democrats told me things usually get messy after a party loses the presidency. The thing is, our national parties are chaotic. When a party loses the presidency, it's like you take the sun out of the solar system. Everyone wants to go in their own direction until a new, definitive leader for the party emerges. Even with their steakhouse meeting, the Republicans had their own kind of chaos during the Obama years, with the Tea Party and moderates getting primaried out of office. For the Democrats, in the meantime, the party is torn. It's putting money into both of these strategies at the same time. Cheri Bustos just released a report called "Hope From the Heartland." It's kind of a blueprint for Democrats to turn things around in the Midwest. Keith Ellison got the party to invest a chunk of its limited funds in grassroots organizing-- not in targeted swing districts, but across all 50 states, states as red as Wyoming and as blue as Vermont. I called them both last week to ask if the Democrats' victories this fall in Alabama, in Virginia, in New Jersey, if that shed any light on which path the party should take going into the midterms. Cheri told me they clearly demonstrated that she was right about the party's direction. Keith, no surprise, said they proved his vision of the future is correct. I'm more convinced than ever, he said. More convinced than ever. Ben Calhoun is one of the producers of our program. Our program was produced today by Robyn Semien. The people who put our show together include Elna Baker, Elise Bergerson, Ben Calhoun, Whitney Dangerfield, Stephanie Foo, Michelle Harris, Seth Lind, Miki Meek, Alvin Melathe, Jonathan Menjivar, Alissa Shipp, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, and Julie Whitaker. Our senior producer is Brian Reed. Our managing editor is Susan Burton. This is the last week at our show for Jonathan Menjivar, who you heard in Act One. He's been here for seven years. He's added funny, smart, elegant writing to all of our stories, including mine. He was in charge of music for the show. We'll miss him. We wish him the best at his new job, at a podcast company called Pineapple Street Media. Our website, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, I think we're going to have to stop going to eat in Little Italy. He is just so embarrassing whenever the server comes around. Me hablo mucho Italiano. Entiendo un poquito Español. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
It's This American Life from WBEZ Chicago, I'm Ira Glass. Valentine's Day is around the corner, and here at the show we were talking about romantic comedies and how they don't get a lot of respect. I think it's maybe because of the bad ones. Every part of them just feels too obvious, you know? The couple meets, but they hate each other at first. They go through some things that make them, you know, learn some important lesson about themselves. You know from the very beginning they're going to end up together. And then, no surprise, they do. When it's not done well, it's all too obvious and tired, and you can feel the gears working in the thing. One of the producers on our show, Neil, he wholeheartedly really loves romantic comedies, has favorites that he's watched over and over dozens of times. He once collaborated with the producer of Sleepless in Seattle on a rom-com script that never got made. He has all kinds of thoughts about them. And he realized this thing about rom-coms and what's so satisfying about the good ones that I really think is true. I used to say that it was just watching just the close-ups of two beautiful people being funny and clever and witty to each other. Yeah. Being their sort of best selves, or sometimes worst selves, but then eventually their best selves. And that was kind of enough for me. Now, why shut me out? You know what happens to people who shut everybody out? They live the quiet, peaceful lives? No, they fester. That's Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline with a fake French accent in the movie French Kiss. Fester. I am festering. Inside, fester and rot. I've seen it happen. You'll become one of those hunched-back lonely old men sitting in the corner of a crowded cafe mumbling to yourself, (FRENCH ACCENT) my ass is twitching. You people make my ass twitch. If there's there's a simple thing that resonates for me, it's that, in the best of these movies, you get to see two people get along in a way that is great. It's just like nice to see that part of people. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, if you're projecting at all, it's the idea that you can be that connected to someone or receive someone that well. When you see it, you're like, oh, yeah, that would be nice. That's why I like the ones where people spend a lot of time together. That's key for Neil. In Neil's personal ranking of these films, which has the 2009 film The Ugly Truth at the very, very bottom, the three rom-coms that sit at the very top like the tousled hair above Hugh Grant's head, are French Kiss, Two Weeks Notice, which is a real estate rom-com, and his very favorite-- lots of people's favorite-- When Harry Met Sally. And they're all at the top of the list for this very reason, because of how much time the couple spends together talking. Take When Harry Met Sally. The thing that I like about it is that at least you get a vision of what their relationship actually is, because they spend 12 years together before they finally get together. So you get to see real fights. You get to see their relationship grow. You get to see their personalities clash. And so they actually have a chance to fall in love by talking to each other, as opposed to, in romantic comedies now, or like where there's the montage and music playing and then you're just supposed to come out of that thinking they're in love, they actually spend time with each other. Like there's a sequence of scenes in When Harry Met Sally where they're just getting along, and they're just talking on the phone. Hello? You sleeping? No, I was watching Casablanca. Channel, please. 11. Thank you. Got it. Now, you're telling me you would be happier with Victor Laszlow than with Humphrey Bogart? When did I say that? When we drove to New York. I never said that. I would never have said that. All right, fine. Have it your way. Have you been sleeping? Why? Because I haven't been sleeping. I think if I was dating someone who hated When Harry Met Sally, I don't know that I could date them. Like, [LAUGHS] I don't know that I could. If you're not interested in the relationship between Harry and Sally, I don't really understand what kind of person you are. [LAUGHS] I don't know. Wow. That's not to say that you're a bad person, it just means I don't think I understand you. OK. Romantic comedies are contrived. The people are way more clever and way better looking than in real life. The stories are full of things that would be ridiculous and sometimes maybe even on the stalker-y side if they happened to any of us. But this totally artificial form, when it works, reminds you of what it feels like to be in love and of somebody who wants to listen to what you say and who says things that you want to listen to. And so for this Valentine's Day, we're devoting our show to rom-coms. In each of our acts today, we found a story that reminds us of some aspect of a movie rom-com. And yes, we did go on a search for stories of people running, sprinting down the street in real life in an urgent rush to tell someone that they love them. Stay with us. Act One, Meet Cute. So the first thing a rom-com needs is for the couple to meet in an appealing way, the meet cute. The meet cute is supposed to make you feel like no matter what happens, these two people should be together. There are so many ways to do this. In The Wedding Planner, Matthew McConaughey saves Jennifer Lopez from a runaway dumpster that is rolling down the street. In Pretty Woman, Richard Gere gets lost in a very fancy car and Julia Roberts gives him directions. Bringing Up Baby, Katherine Hepburn picks up Cary Grant's golf ball on a golf course. In Reality Bites, Winona Ryder throws her cigarette into Ben Stiller's car. And Neil's favorite, When Harry Met Sally-- The thing about When Harry Met Sally is it has an extended meet cute, which I like. They take a road trip from Chicago to New York, and so they're kind of meeting for several hours. And from the very beginning, it's contentious because Harry has all these theories about relationships that she finds like crazy and off-putting. What I'm saying is-- and this is not a come on in any way, shape, or form-- is that men and women can't be friends because the sex part always gets in the way. That's not true. I have a number of men friends and there is no sex involved. No, you don't. Yes, I do. No, you don't. Yes, I do. You only think you do. You're saying I'm having sex with these men without my knowledge? No, what I'm saying is they all want to have sex with you. They do not. Do too. They do not. Do too. I think it sets up the chemistry. Like it sets up that there is something about them that you want to root for. Meet cutes do happen in real life, but for this first story in today's show, we have a piece of fiction, a story where the meet cute plays an important role in the story as a turning point for one of the characters. The story's by Simon Rich. The actor Daniel Radcliffe read it for us. "I don't understand," Professor Xander Kaplan said while his girlfriend sobbed into a pillow. "I thought you liked tulips." "I do," she said. "It's just-- you get them for me every year. It's starting to get a little impersonal. I mean, this time, you didn't even include a card." Xander winced. Her reasoning was sound. "I apologize," he said. "I obviously made an error in judgment." He tried to take her hand, but she pulled it out of reach. "Do you remember what I did for your birthday?" She said, "I got you that new Bunsen burner you wanted. I knit you a pair of wool socks so your feet wouldn't get cold in the lab. You never make that kind of effort for me. All you do is think about yourself." "That's incorrect," Xander said. "What about Emiladium? It took me nine months to synthesize that element and I named it after you." "You were going to synthesize that element anyway," Emily said. "You needed it for your secret project, that silver orb thing in your lab. Emiladium wasn't about me, it was about you. I mean, for god sakes, you won't even tell me what it does." Xander sighed. "Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?" Emily blinked back some tears. "I don't know. I mean, it's not like you can just go back in time and get me a different present." Xander's expression brightened. "Wait there," he said. "I'll be right back." Xander hurried down the hall, crept into his laboratory, and locked the door behind him. His time machine was right where he had left it. He climbed inside the silver orb and flicked on the power switch. His plan was simple, travel back in time to this morning, find a new gift for Emily, and bring it to the present. But there were a couple of risks. There was a chance, for example, that using the machine would cause the universe to explode. He'd never tested the thing out before. There was also no guarantee that he would be able to find a good present. He only had enough Emiladium to fuel five minutes of time travel. That didn't give him a lot of wiggle room. Wherever he went, he would have to shop efficiently. Xander was usually a pretty good problem solver. He had, for example, invented a time machine. But quantum physics and nuclear hydraulics were trivial compared to the rigors of gift shopping. He massaged his temples, trying to remember if Emily had dropped any hints lately. He vaguely recalled her staring at a vase in Crate & Barrel, but that place was full of vases. There was no way he'd be able to pick out the right one. He was trying to remember the name of her favorite perfume when a thought entered his head. Maybe he was thinking too small. His machine could transport him to any time and place in human history. Why go back a few hours when he could go back a few centuries? He knew Emily loved Shakespeare. She'd written her senior thesis on one of his tragedies. Why not travel back to the Globe Theater and swipe her an original script? It wouldn't be too difficult, he reasoned. All he'd have to do is dash back backstage and grab one. It would be the most impressive gift she'd ever received in her life. But which tragedy had Emily written her thesis about? He knew it was one of the king ones, Richard the something or Charles the something, but there are a bunch of those. What if he got it wrong? It was too risky. There was always jewelry. He knew the general construction dates for King Tut's tomb. He could park in front of the pyramid, run inside, and snatch a jade stone. He entered the coordinates and was about to push the lever when he started to second guess himself again. Buying women jewelry was always chancy. Emily had very specific tastes, and what if she didn't like jade? It wasn't like he'd be able to go back and return it. He thought back to the night they met. He was finishing his PhD at the time, and his lab had closed early because of Easter. He'd stuffed his papers into his briefcase and shuffled through the rain to the 116th Street Station. It was 4:05 AM and the platform was deserted, except for Emily. It had been several days since Xander's last conversation with a human, and when she started to speak to him, he felt the stirrings of a panic attack. But Emily's friendly smile managed, somehow, to put him at ease. She was awfully cheerful, given her circumstances. Her MetroCard had expired, she said, and the machines were broken. She'd been stranded for over 20 minutes. Would he be willing to sell her a ride? Xander nodded and watched as she rooted around in her purse for some cash to pay him back. It was a moment or two before it occurred to him that she had given him the chance to be gallant. "You-- you don't have to reimburse me," he said. "I'll swipe you in for free." She thanked him enthusiastically and then, shockingly, wrapped her arms around his torso. Xander wasn't used to physical contact. And although the hug was brief, it caused his entire body to tingle from head to toe. It was a startling sensation, like walking through an electrically-charged field. He still felt that way whenever she touched him. Xander was an atheist and believed fiercely in random causality. But by the end of their shared subway ride, he was sure he'd experienced a miracle. This wonderful person had shown up out of nowhere and given him a chance at love. And in return, he'd given her three years of misery. He thought about all of his Saturday nights at the lab, ignoring her calls, making excuses. He thought about the way she cried when he handed her the tulips. How could he make up for three years of romantic ineptitude with a single birthday present? He closed his eyes and concentrated. There had to be a right answer. Cleopatra's crown. Joan of Arc's sword. A baby dinosaur. What was the greatest thing he could give her, the very best present in the world? It was the hardest problem he'd ever attempted to solve. But then, as always, the solution came to him. Xander parked his time machine by the 116th Street Station and dashed into the subway. It was 3:45 AM a little over three years in the past. Emily was standing by the turnstile, swiping and re-swiping her expired MetroCard. He took a deep breath and approached her. "Let me guess," he said. "Expired MetroCard?" She chuckled. "How'd you know?" "I had a hunch. Come on, I'll swipe you through." "Oh, that's OK," she said. "I'll just go to the machine upstairs or--" "The machines are all broken," he said. "You'd better catch this one," he said. "The next one won't come for another 20 minutes." Before she could protest, he took out his MetroCard and swiped her through the turnstile. She smiled back at him with confusion. "Aren't you coming?" she asked as the train pulled into the station. Xander averted his eyes. He worried that if he looked at her, he would start to cry. "I need to take a different train," he said. "Well, at least let me pay you for the--" "That's all right," he said, his voice breaking. "It's a present." He was about to turn away when she leaned over the turnstile and hugged him. It was exactly as he remembered it, her long brown hair brushing softly against his neck, his entire body tingling with warmth. "Thanks," she said. He tried to say, you're welcome, but the words got caught in his throat. He waved goodbye as she boarded the train, then he marched out of the station alone. Daniel Radcliffe reading the short story, "The Present" by Simon Rich from Rich's book, The Last Girlfriend on Earth. Radcliffe is also the star of Simon Rich's new TV show, Miracle Workers, which will be out soon on TBS. And he stars in a new film, Beast of Burden that comes out this month. Act Two, The Obstacle. The main body of most romantic comedies is there's something or a group of things keeping them apart. There's always obstacles that are keeping these two people who are fated to be together apart. The obstacles can be big or little. Tom Hanks isn't over his dead ex-wife in Sleepless in Seattle. In Notting Hill, a guy falls in love with somebody who's too famous for him. In Bridget Jones, she's going after the wrong guy, which, of course, is Pride and Prejudice, and, I don't know, so many films. It's one of the most common. In When Harry Met Sally, they each are involved with other people for a lot of the film. But the real obstacle is that they're friends, which, in this film, has a special meaning, because if you remember when Harry met Sally on that car ride originally, he told her that he didn't think that men and women could ever just be friends. So this is new for him. Billy Crystal has a scene in the film with a sidekick character, a best friend, played by Bruno Kirby, where they talk about this. I don't understand this relationship. What do you mean? You enjoy being with her? Yeah. You find her attractive? Yeah. And you're not sleeping with her? No. You're afraid to let yourself be happy. Why can't you give me credit for this? This is a big thing for me. I never had a relationship with a woman that didn't involve sex. I feel like I'm growing. We went out looking for a real-life couple facing some obstacle that kept them from being together, and that's not actually very hard to find. But one of our producers, Elna Baker, heard about a couple where the obstacle that confronted them, once the relationship got going, was pretty unusual. It was a couple one of her friends was in years ago. Quick warning to everybody who's listening to this podcast version of our show, there are some words that we have un-beeped in this and other stories in the program. If you don't want to hear that, maybe you're listening with kids, you can get a beeped version at our website, thisamericanlife.org. Anyway, here's Elna. My friend, Michelle Buteau, is one of the most audacious, ballsy people I know. And she brings this attitude into all aspects of her life, including relationships. This is a story about her and her boyfriend. It starts in the '90s, when she was 18, going to college, living in Miami. And as college students do, she adopted a new cool persona for herself, one that wore dark lipstick, cargo pants, and danced in reggae clubs every weekend. I loved dancing. I wanted to be a fly girl on In Living Color. I definitely would have been Snoop Dogg's video ho if I had the chance. Yeah. And, yeah, I was out one night at a teeny bopper club, and that's where I saw him. I remember the smoke machine was working. It felt like we were at a bar mitzvah somewhere in Jersey. And literally, when the smoke cleared, I'm like, who is that tall boy with the khakis on and the big gold chain and the curly hair? How do I talk to him? And I kind of just sort of like inched my way over to him on the dance floor. I remember doing this move where we're like-- we both sort of like roll into each other's body, and I can get a whiff of his Drakkar Noir and I was like, mm, yes, yes, yes. And my heart was beating so fast, I could hear it. And I'm like, oh, my god, this is what love is. I feel like a Puerto Rican Molly Ringwald. Like in any good first encounter, there were magical coincidences. We were walking out to the parking lot, and we realized we both had the same car, Mazda Protegees, both leased by our moms. Was that a moment where you're like, this is fate? I mean, not only did I go to this club-- Oh, definitely. I'm like, what? Like, out of all the cars in the world, out of all the dance clubs, you and me. He was 18, too, but he seemed really grown up. He worked at Best Buy selling DVDs, and he was also a drug dealer. And in my mind, I was like, oh, my god, he's so cool. He's so good at math. He counts so quickly. In case you're thinking, drug dealer, red flag, he was barely a drug dealer. He dealt weed. Nearly every woman I know has dated a weed dealer. They quickly got serious. And he was Michelle's first big relationship. He was funny, smart. They had good banter. And he was this incredibly accepting person, made her feel comfortable, confident about her body and about sex, which she'd never really felt before. She imagined a real future with him. The plan was-- I mean, looking back on it, it seems so basic, but just to be with each other, and to have fun, and to have kids, and to go out to dinner after a movie on a Friday night, you know, the Olive Garden, Cheesecake Factory, just kind of exist in a really cute apartment with beige carpet and white blinds. Yeah, the American Dream. Fast forward three years into the relationship. Their lives are totally entwined. Their families are close. They vacation together. It was that point of no return place in a relationship where you're just like, here it is. This is it. But there was this one thing that seemed sort of off, a lack of photographic evidence, no pictures of himself as a kid, specifically no school pictures, no prom picture. Even his mom didn't have any shots of him. It was just weird. And then one night-- I had a dream that he called me up. He told me that he never graduated high school. When I called him the next day and I was like I had this crazy dream, he just started crying. I could just hear him gently sobbing and he's like, not only did I not graduate high school, I don't even know how to read. I'm just like, how? Like, I thought I knew you. Like, what? Like, haven't we read something together? Their entire relationship flashed before her eyes, one moment after another. Suddenly, it all made sense. And I was going back. You know, I realized, like, oh my god, this is why we go to the same restaurant. We would go to the same restaurant, and he'd order the same thing because he couldn't read the menu. Oh, wow. And he liked you go to restaurants that had pictures of the food. You know, I would write him poems and stuff and he's like, read them to me. You know, it's better when I hear it from you. And never wanted to go through his mail. I had to help him. When you stop and think about it, the fact that he'd been able to navigate the world convincingly and keep this from Michelle for over three years, it was an incredible feat. He must have been covering this up constantly. When he told me why he didn't know how to read, it just made my heart break even more. I mean, his dad died when he was young, and so his mom had to work three jobs. And he was depressed and just dropped out of the fifth grade, and nobody ever noticed. His mom didn't want to deal with it. And you know, I'm not judging because it must been so hard for her. The only thing that kept going through my mind, I remember, was, I want to save you. I want to help you. I want to make this better. You know, we're going to get back on track to what we had planned. She was not going to allow this obstacle to push them apart. She jumped into action. This was before you could Google everything, so Michelle went to the library and did research on adult literacy. She broke it down into manageable steps and wrote out a timeline for him. My game plan for him was I had a list of places he could go to to go to night school, a therapist he could talk to, easy adult reading books, tips and tricks. It was like a whole sort of care package of how to just take it on. And he was really overwhelmed by it. I don't know. It's like, OK, this is a really big deal. I get it. Michelle's dyslexic, and her boyfriend didn't have a learning disability. But still, she could empathize with how hard it can be to read. And at first, Michelle's boyfriend was totally on board with the plan. But after a year of Michelle offering him solutions, he still hadn't taken any action. It just seemed like he didn't want to. He got around the world just fine without reading. She started realizing, oh wait, his illiteracy was a way bigger problem for her than it was for him, and it really started pushing them apart. I stopped being his girlfriend and sort of became his coach or his mom, and it wasn't fun for either one of us. I tried every tactic. I was patient. I was nice. I was stern. And then I kind of backed off. I'm like, whatever. He needs to do on his own time. It started to bleed its way into every moment they shared together, like she could never fully relax anymore. Even when they were happy, she'd snap herself out of it and think, wait, no, no. We're forgetting that there's this huge, looming problem, and we've got to fix it before everything can be OK. She started to resent him. We don't even laugh anymore. We're not even holding hands like we used to. We're not even having sex like we used to, simply because you're not even going to this class. Like, if you just went to a class, I would just be so happy. Did you feel like, if you love me, you will learn to read? Absolutely. I mean, is that weird? But I totally felt like that. I was like, who's going to read books to our kids at night? Like, you've got to get it together. This was like the bane of my existence. I was like-- and I couldn't really talk to anyone about it, because how embarrassing. Because I didn't want my friends to think less of him, you know? And I wanted him to still feel like a man, so I just kind of carried this by myself. And at some point, I just looked at myself and I was like, you've got to go. But even then, it was just like, how do I leave somebody when they're down? Well, in a sense it actually-- like, it made the relationship last longer because everything became about him reading. And so if you could just crack that or fix that, then maybe it would work out. Oh, my god, what are you? Dr. Phil with tits? [LAUGHTER] Yeah, I mean, I feel like I always live like that. If I could just lose those 20 pounds. If I could just have a clean house all the time, I could do everything I really want to do on my list. And so, yeah, there was that. You know, if we could just get past this, then we'll live the life we're supposed to live. That's the promise of an obstacle. You feel like all you have to do is conquer it, and you get your happy ending. How would it play out in a rom-com? The obstacle being his illiteracy? Yeah. Ooh, OK. Boom. He learns how to read. He writes a New York best seller situation. It becomes a movie. Channing Tatum plays him. Lisa Bonet plays me. And we live happily ever after with a bunch of mixed children in a huge apartment with beige carpet by the Cheesecake Factory. Amazing. [LAUGHS] See, I was imagining that he would greet you at the airport with, like, a sign that he had handwritten himself that was like, Michelle, I can read now. Oh, my god. And then you'd see it, and you'd start crying. And you'd be like, oh! And he's worked so hard behind your back, secretly going to night school the whole time. Aww. I know. Instead, he just like fucked a stripper. OK, she wasn't a stripper, but she was sleeping with Michelle's boyfriend. Michelle suspects that the entire time she was struggling to get him to read, he was cheating on her. She was so focused on the obstacle she thought they were facing, she totally missed it. Of course, as rom-coms go, the thing missing from this story is com, at least until Michelle started doing stand up and figured out how to tell it on stage. When did you decide, this story's funny. I'm going to put it in my act? Because it's actually really sad, but-- Yeah, you know, most of my-- the first joke I ever wrote was about him. Will you tell it to me? Sure. It's lines at Disney World remind me of my ex-boyfriend, three hours of waiting for a two-minute ride. Ayo. But the story, I didn't feel comfortable doing it on stage till 13 years later. And I stayed with him, but then it got, like, real ratchet. Like, we would get into arguments, and I'd say shit like, but you said you'd learn how to read for me. Like, that's not how you want your first relationship to be. In her act, she even talks about how great it feels to tell this story on stage. But it just felt so good. It was so cathartic. I was like, yes, I got to get this out. And I just started doing jokes about him and blogging about him. And my friends are like, you got to be careful, because you're using his first and last name. And I was like, bitch, I don't give a fuck, because that motherfucker can't read! All right. Good night, everybody. I got to go. Elna Baker's one of the producers of our show. Michelle Buteau is going to be hosting a new podcast, Late Night Whenever from WNYC. It's going to launch in April. Coming up, a real life rom-com that involves Shakespeare, real kisses that are like stage kisses, and the police. That's in a minute, from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, for Valentine's Day, "Rom Com," stories mostly taken from real life that mimic things that we have seen in romantic comedies. We've arrived at Act Three of our show. Act Three, The Run. This, of course, in a romantic comedy is the scene where somebody has to cross town at some point, literally sprinting to chase down the person they love and stop them from either marrying somebody else or winning them back somehow. It doesn't always end up at the airport, but lots of these do. And honestly, I have to say, I was surprised we found this ever happened in real life, but here is one story like that. Marissa Kohan's dad used to like to tell the story. It was about his own marriage. He died a couple of years ago. His name is Ron. The story goes like this. When he was getting together with Marissa's mom, Marissa's mom, Debbie, drove across the country to move in with Ron in Florida. And before she left, she had the post office forward her mail to his house in Florida. And he saw a letter arrive from her ex-fiance. I think it's crazy, but my dad decided that he saw that letter and he had to read it. This is Marissa. So he just opened the letter, read the whole thing. And as my dad put it, my mom's ex-fiance was declaring his undying love for her, and was begging her not to go, and was saying he wants to get back together with her. And my dad freaked out. He decided, this is it. It's now or never. He decides he's going to meet her in Dallas, which is where she is in her car trip, and also is where the ex-fiance lives. He hurries to the airport. The way he told it was he was going through the airport, you know, running through the Florida airport. Gets a ring out of a little gumball machine. Puts, you know, however much that costs, a quarter or whatever, in the gumball machine, pulls out a Mickey Mouse ring-- because it's Florida, naturally. Gets on the plane. Flies and meets my mom in Dallas. And right there in the airport, gets down on one knee the second he sees her. I had no plans of seeing the ex-fiance at all, whatsoever. This is Marissa's mom, Debbie. She had no idea the ex-fiance had written a letter or that Ron had opened it. All she knew was that he had offered to drive the rest of the way across the country with her and was going to meet her in the Dallas airport. He gets off the plane, and I greet him. And practically the very next thing out of his mouth is, will you marry me? And he opens up his hand. And in his hand, he's got this little Mickey Mouse ring in his hand. And I am not proud of my reaction at all. [LAUGHS] Do you want to hear it? Yeah. [LAUGHS] My reaction was, are you crazy? This is the craziest thing I've ever heard of. I barely know you. That was my reaction. I have to say, that is my favorite part of the story. I could have been a little more gentle. No, what I love about it is that in the movies, when somebody does a gesture like that, often it's way crazier than what he did. Yes. And kind of stalker-ish. But the movie just acts like, oh, that was a totally lovely thing for a person to do because true love will out. And I like that you had the normal human reaction that a normal person would have. It would be like, are you nuts? Right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Well, I'm too pragmatic to fall for that one, I guess. True love eventually did win out though. At their wedding, in addition to a regular ring, she also wore the Mickey Mouse one. There was another story we heard about somebody running to win love, which actually kind of paralleled the run that happens at the end of Neil's favorite rom-com, When Harry Met Sally. In When Harry Met Sally, the way it goes is that it's New Year's Eve. Harry's wandering around the streets of New York, and he realizes that he loves Sally, has to tell her now, breaks into a run to go tell her. It's very New York-centric in this one because he tries to catch a cab, and of course he can't-- so he's just going to run the entire distance. David Kestenbaum has our real-life version of this story, about a guy named Steve Snyder. The thought that someone actually made one of these runs in real life seems so unlikely to me that I wanted to see where it had happened, retrace the steps of it. So I met Steve where the run began, at this burger place on Ludlow Street in New York City. Steve is the kind of guy who is not very good at hiding his feelings. Like, if this were a movie, you could title it "Say Everything." The setup to the run is this, he'd met this woman, Emily, at a birthday party. He was totally smitten. What I remember is the party kind of turned into sort of a tunnel vision moment. All I really did was talk to her. It didn't go great. He kept asking her, you want to go to a movie? Maybe we could hang out sometime. If there's a trajectory of my life, it's going from clingy to a little less clingy. Steve emailed her after the party. Nothing came of it. A year passes. And just like in When Harry Met Sally, they meet a second time. In Steve and Emily's case, it's at the very same birthday party, same apartment. And they become friends. It was the kind of friendship where, really, it could go either way. She seemed kind of interested in something more, but maybe not enough. And the longer they were friends, it was like, well, maybe that's what they were. Steve had a job as a film critic, so they would go to movies, lots of movies, where they would not hold hands and not kiss. There is a pathetic moment. So Lincoln Center Station, we're waiting for the train. It's like some crazy, 20-minute wait where the words actually come out of my mouth, you know, hey, if you ever want a film critic as a boyfriend, you just let me know. I think we were talking about-- it fit into the context of the conversation somehow, but I can't think of anything more pathetic. What was her reaction? She just kind of laughed and was like, yeah, OK, OK. The run happened on a night where they were not going to hang out. Steve thinks he was working on a review of some Mutant Ninja Turtle movie. And after work, he goes out with some friends to a music place. Music's so loud and it's kind of fun. You know, it's a great night. And we're dancing. I actually started dancing for once. We leave the place. We're going to go get some greasy food because we're hungry and we haven't eaten. And I have my bag and everything, so we walk into the burger joint. The place we are sitting in right now-- greasy spoon, tiled white walls and painted brick. It's like a piece of a subway station that's somehow above ground. You know, there's what, five tables here? It's tiny. And so I remember just kind of throwing my bag down. And then I pull out my phone just to check. And it's one of those weird nights, right? Like, I just haven't checked my phone almost any night-- any night, 99% of nights, you know, your phone's right next to you. If it's buzzing, you hear it. If it rings, you hear it. I don't know if I had bad reception in the place because it's kind of an older building, but I looked down, and I swear to god, I have like 22 text messages. And I'm like, what? And they're all from Emily. And so I run out of the burger place to the street. Right, let's go outside. All right, so you rush out here. I rush out here, and there's not exactly a lot of room. I mean, there's not room at all. So this is a crowded-- like, this is where you hang out till 4:00 AM. So I rush out and I start reading through the messages. And it starts very kind of innocently, very like, hey, what are you up to tonight? Oh, are you-- oh, maybe you're out? I was wondering if maybe you wanted to like get a drink or something? And then it starts escalating like, wait, are you not texting me? Or why aren't you texting me back? Usually, he was pretty quick at getting back to her. Because I was totally into her. And then it started being like-- it started getting a little more paranoid. And then I think she started thinking I was on a date or something. In just two hours, it looked like she'd gone through all these phases, everything laid out in all these texts, ending with one that Steve was not expecting. And the last text message said, maybe we need to talk about this whole not dating thing. I just-- I-- I thought, this is it. Like whatever's about to happen, this is the moment. And so I immediately called her. I immediately just hit dial. I didn't quite know what I was going to say. And I think she picked up the phone, said, hello, and I just kind of started going into it, like, I don't know what to say here. Like, yes, I want to date you. And what have we been doing? You know, I'm screaming in the street. The cars aren't moving. People stop walking by me. They just stop to see what's going on here, because I'm screaming like, I love you. I don't know how to be clearer, like, I love you. And so I'm screaming this. And this crowd is starting to cheer me on. Someone does yell, like, say you love him! Say you love him, yelling to her through the phone. And-- I love New York. [LAUGHS] And all I remember her saying, and it might have been all that she did say, was, you need to stop yelling. If you want to talk about this, you might as well just come here. And as far as I'm concerned, this is the moment-- like, it's on. This is happening. And I just start running down the street looking for cabs. Let's run. Let's run. [LAUGHS] OK. So I start running. We are now jogging up Ludlow Street. It's actually kind of exciting. The crowd's looking at me, wondering what the hell I'm doing. And literally, I'm banging on every cab, because it's that time of night where some are just saying they're off duty. So I think I hit a couple. And I'm sort of like, can you take me just up to the East Village, not that far? But taxi after taxi is like, no, or there's someone in it. So he keeps running. It's like I didn't tell my friends where I was going. I left my laptop, all these screeners that I had taken assignments to review, that the movie studios told me they needed back. I ditched everything. Can we talk about the running? Yeah. Why does love always involve running? [LAUGHS] That is interesting. Why did I feel like I had to run? In the movies, they run, but usually it's because someone's about to get married or about to get on a plane. It felt very urgent to get there very quick. This had been building up for years. And for a moment, she was willing to consider it. And I was going to get there before she said it was too late or she was too tired. Steve told me he'd been living in the friend universe for so long, and now it was like this little wormhole had opened up-- he didn't know for how long-- where he might be able to slip into the parallel universe of boyfriend. Steve did eventually get a taxi, he made it to her apartment, and he stayed over. And they did become boyfriend and girlfriend. In the movies, this is often the final scene. The end of the movie is the beginning of the relationship. You don't really get to see how it goes, how he gets too clingy, one of them meets someone else, how it just fades. But that is not this story. We got married, and now we have two kids. And I still can't believe it's all played out the way it did. I know things don't always work out in the end, but sometimes you just want to hear the ones that do. David Kestenbaum is one of the producers of our show. Act Four, You Had Me at Hello. So after Harry does his run across New York City on New Year's Eve and reaches Sally, he explains to her that he ran because, once you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible. And he tells her all the things about her that he notices and loves about her. That's the final thing you need for a rom-com. You need for somebody to declare that they see you in ways that you're usually not seen-- maybe you don't even know yourself. And it does happen in real life sometimes after some obstacles. Diane Wu has a story like that. She fell for him in an acting class. Jillian was a serious young actor bent over her desk taking notes when Geoffrey got up in front of class to read from A Midsummer Night's Dream. I just remember hearing his voice first and then actually looking up from my notebook and just watching him do the scene. And he was so, so good. And he had this really awesome voice. It's super low and really resonant, and he was really hot, too. By the time he sat back down, she was done. I was immediately more attracted to him than I'd ever felt attracted to anybody before. And I didn't know how to talk to him. I just knew that I wanted to talk to him, but I just didn't know how. It was like a mix between wanting to be right next to somebody and then run away and hide. Jillian was young, 20. She'd had boyfriends, but nothing too serious. And they'd always liked her more than she liked them, until Geoffrey. They were working together at a Shakespeare theater in New York. At the end, they put on a production of The Winter's Tale. Onstage, she'd sometimes gets so distracted that he was there that she'd forget her lines. Sometimes offstage, she thought maybe Geoffrey was flirting with her, but she couldn't tell for sure. And anyway, she had a rule, never sleep with a cast mate. So for four months, she kept her feelings to herself. Cut to the night of the final cast party. Everyone's at the bar that they always go to, and it's the first night they're no longer coworkers. So on her way over, Jillian makes it her mission to try and kiss him that night. She talks to him a lot at the party, but keeps chickening out. Finally, she gives up and decides to go home. And so I was standing there, and I was getting ready to hail a cab, finishing up the end of the cigarette, and I felt him come up next to me. And yeah, he just-- it was kind of like-- I remember him just like brushing back hair kind of off of my cheek. And it's that moment, you know, where you know that you're actually going to kiss. You just feel it in your two bodies. And he just so very lightly pressed his lips up against mine. And then it was like, well, now like an actual deeper kiss. And I know from the outside, we made it look good, because it very much felt like one of those-- like a good stage kiss. After their perfect first kiss, everything falls into place on cue. He invites her back to his apartment. She flicks her cigarette to the curb. He opens the door to the cab. She glides into the backseat. More kissing ensues. And I think that's probably the first time I've ever made out with anybody in the back of a cab. [LAUGHS] I think I was probably like, oh, this cab driver's here. They make out all the way across Manhattan, over a bridge, and up five flights of stairs. Somehow, Geoffrey manages to unlock the door without removing his lips from Jillian's. This impresses her very much. Everything is going so perfectly. So then I use his bathroom because I've been drinking a lot of beer all night. And I'm so nervous. I notice that my hands are shaking in the mirror. I'm so nervous. And I just look myself in the eye, and I actually gave myself a pep talk, like pointer fingers and dancing in the mirror and being like, this is everything you've waited for. It's actually happening. It's like excitement, nervous, I believe in you. Yeah. Then Jillian encounters the first obstacle in what will turn out to be a very strange night for her. And my whole heart just sinks. And I'm not actually going to be able to have sex with him. I just got my period. I realize that making out with him in the back of the cab and just my cigarettes and my leather jacket, you know, it makes me seem like I was this really cool city girl, but the reality of who I am is this very nervous person who grew up very conservative, like very, very conservative. Jillian grew up on a farm in rural Canada. This one time when she was young and got her period while wearing white pants, her whole family participated in a weird game of denial. Everyone just pretended like she sat in some jam. She didn't even like to say the word period. It was something that was kind of like very hush-hush and not something I was used to discussing openly. Jillian thinks, there's no way we can sleep together tonight. So she's disappointed, and she's stressing over how she's even going to tell him. But she can't hide in the bathroom much longer. He's waiting on the other side of the door. So I left the bathroom, and it was like I stepped out into another world, this romantic world where he'd actually taken a scarf and put it over a lamp, so the lighting was this orange mood lighting. And he didn't have a shirt on. And my mind remembers him glistening. He probably wasn't actually glistening, but that's how my mind remembers him. We checked. Her mind remembers right. Geoffrey told me, and he said, yes, this was very embarrassing looking back, but while she was in the bathroom, he slathered on baby oil to make his muscles pop. Anyway, they start to kiss. And I remember at first being really into it, and then remembering my situation. So my mouth does that thing where it curls up a little bit. And we kind of laugh a bit and he goes in to kiss me again, and I do that thing where I pull away again. And he was so sweet. He was like, wait, what's going on? You know, he noticed it. He read it right away, and was like, we don't have to do this. I want to be clear, nothing is expected of you in this situation. We don't have to have sex. And I was like, I want to. I really-- like I honestly-- I want to. It's just-- and I kept trying to think of, how am I going to phrase this? I think of this thing that my roommate used to say. She calls it her Aunt Flo. So I look at him, and I tell him that my Aunt Flo has just landed and she's very much in town. And he gets a little bit confused. He asked me if my Aunt has just arrived at the airport and if I have to go see her or something. So eventually, I just fess up. And I tell him, no, I have my period. And I'm pretty sure I whispered it. I'm pretty sure I was like, I have my (QUIETLY) period. And he smiled this half-smile and was like, so? I was like, so? What do you mean, so? And he just-- he didn't care. He didn't care. He was older than her, grew up with a bunch of sisters. Jillian is briefly astonished, considers this totally new possibility, not caring, decides she's into it, and they start kissing again. And because this is a family show, I will just say that everything that happened next went really well. In fact, it was the first time this particular activity went quite so well for Jillian. I felt like I finally understood what it was about. I remember lying there and listening to his heartbeat. Yeah, and just listening to his heartbeat was such a comforting sound that I can still hear it so distinctly. And after a while, he gets up to go to the bathroom, and he kind of flicks on that little light. She's talking about the lamp by the bed. And I turn off that light. And he flicks it on again, and then I turn it back off. And we have this little shared moment laughter. And he leaves, and I turn the light on again, and it looks like a crime scene. There is blood everywhere. This is the first time I had seen so much of my own menstrual fluid. I was afraid of it. I couldn't even fathom what he was going to think about it. Just when Jillian thinks it can't get worse, she looks up from the bed. And then I don't know how this happened, but my very own like red, bloody hand print is on his white wall. [GASPS] Oh, my god. I just panicked. Jillian tears the sheets off the bed and throws them aside. Next, the hand print. He didn't have any water or anything in his room, so I used my own saliva to wipe the bloody hand print off of the wall, like, out, out, damn spot. Next, she bundles up the sheets, but she has no idea what to do with them. She starts to put them in the hamper, but then realizes that he would still have to take them and wash them himself, which she cannot bear to imagine. She peeks under his bed to see if she can stash them there, but then she thinks, no, no, that's crazy. He'll still find them. Geoffrey will be out of the bathroom any minute. She's running out of options. So I stuff them into my own backpack. Wait, were you going to take them? Oh, yeah. Well, I have to get out of there. You're not going to get away with that, though. He's going to notice his sheets are gone. I know, but I wasn't thinking about that at the time. All I could think of is that I didn't want him to have to wash these sheets. And I didn't want him to have to clean up my mess, I guess. To cover her tracks, Jillian throws the comforter over the bed so you can't see the sheets are missing, straightens the pillows, and gets ready to bolt. When Geoffrey comes back from the shower, she makes up a lame excuse about why she can't stay the night, something about having to go to work early the next morning. She could tell how flimsy it sounded as she was saying it. And I just, oh, it breaks my heart, but I remember him looking so hurt and so confused. I wish that I didn't leave. Like, I wish that I had stayed, but-- She didn't. Geoffrey offered to help Jillian hail a cab, but she was like, no, it's fine. I'll just take the subway. She walked to the station, totally miserable. Then it really hits me that I have stolen this man's sheets. How do you come back from that? How do you-- how are you not the weird girl who took his bedsheets? Yeah. So then I'm so inside myself and I hear this voice being like, ma'am, excuse me, ma'am. And I look up. And in New York, they have this station outside of subway entrances with this folding table and the NYPD stands behind. And it's a random bag search. No! And here, Jillian does what any sensible leading lady would do when confronted by law enforcement. I pretend I don't hear them. And I try to exit the subway station in like a brisk, like, run-walk. And nothing looks more suspicious than trying to avoid a random bag search. I'm sure. I'm sure. Yeah. Oh. The officer catches up to Jillian, unzips her backpack, and pulls out the sheets, which are covered in blood. I remember him-- and the subway has such distinct lighting, like I just remember him holding up these sheets, my menstrual sheets of shame, like menstrual sheets of doom. I realize that they didn't look like menstrual sheets of doom, they looked like murder sheets of doom. He asked me to explain it, and I just start crying. And I can barely get the words out. I'm just trying to explain to him, it's my period on those sheets. And I stole the sheets from the guy that I was with. And I know that that's wrong. Like I know that the actual theft of the sheets is wrong. And I promised the officer that I would return them, but I just needed to wash them first. The police officer looks Jillian up and down, asks for her ID, and points her to go stand in a little box taped on the floor by the wall. She watches him walk over to his partner and have a very serious-looking conversation. The sheets stay crumpled up on the plastic folding table. Then he comes back, and gives me an ultimatum. So we can go down to the precinct and they can file a report and they've got to keep the sheets just in case it's evidence, you know, and they're going to ask me a bunch of questions and follow up, or I can take him back to the apartment, the apartment that I just came from, and have my partner corroborate my story. Oh, my god. And I had to think about it. Like, I honestly-- like, I honestly gave it a really solid, good think. There was a huge part of me that would rather go to the police station than have to go back and show Jeffery these-- not only show him these sheets, but also bring the police there. But, you know, my common sense caught up with me of, this looks like I've done something very wrong. They make the long walk to Geoffrey's apartment, silently. They get to the doorstep and buzz, wait for Geoffrey to walk down five flights of stairs. When he gets there, the police officer does all the talking. Good evening, do you know this woman? Geoffrey says he does, that they'd just been hanging out. Then the cop reaches into Jillian's backpack and pulls out the sheets. Do you know what these are? Geoffrey says, those are my sheets. The police officer asks, can you identify the substance on these sheets? And I just remember being fascinated, because without hesitating and almost in this stronger voice, he just says, menstrual fluid, which is like-- you know, I would call my period anything other than what it actually was. So for him to look a police officer right in the eyes and just say very confidently, menstrual fluid, it was just-- it sounded so scientific and very grown up. The cops, having fulfilled their narrative purpose and successfully reunited our couple, leave. And then I'm alone with Geoffrey. And I'm trying to apologize to him, namely for stealing his sheets, but also just for everything, for bringing the police back to his house. Jillian remembers sobbing through all of this. She's mortified. All of a sudden, Geoffrey stops her and says this thing that still hits Jillian in a soft spot. He told me-- I just remember him looking at me and he's like, you're so strange. [LAUGHS] He said, wonderfully strange. Everything that you could possibly think of going wrong went wrong, and it all still turned out OK. He still liked me, no matter what. This is like my favorite moment in any rom-com. It's the scene in 10 Things I Hate About You when Julia Stiles reads her poem to Heath Ledger in front of the entire class. It's Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets telling Helen Hunt how he just can't believe she runs into strangers all day long, and they don't know that they just met the greatest woman alive. And of course, it's Mark Darcy at the bottom of the stairs telling Bridget Jones, I like you very much, just as you are. To me, the whole point of rom-coms is to set up that line. It's what we all want to hear and say to the people we love most. But real life doesn't guarantee a plot line that pushes us to say it. Diane Wu, she's one of the producers of our show. Jillian and Geoffrey dated for a few months, and then they broke it off when real life, new jobs, her expired visa from Canada, got in the way. She says she's glad it ended before anything bad happened. Keeps the memory sweet, just like a movie. Today, Jillian Welsh is a comedian in Toronto. A version of this story first aired on the RISK! Podcast. Our program is produced today by Neil Drumming and Diane Wu. The people who put our show together includes Elna Baker, Elise Bergerson, Ben Calhoun, Danny Chivvis, Sean Cole, Whitney Dangerfield, Stephanie Foo, Damien Grave, Kimberly Henderson, Chana Joffe-Walt, David Kestenbaum, Seth Lind, Alvin Melathe, BA Parker, Ben Phelan, Robyn Semien, Alissa Shipp, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierny, and Julie Whitaker. Our senior producer is Brian Reed. Our managing editor is Susan Burton. Our website, thisamericanlife.org, This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Quick program note, our colleagues at our home station, WBEZ Chicago have a new podcast called Making Obama about Barack Obama's early years in Chicago, which features him, his friends, mentors, and rivals talking about his years in Chicago and his rise. It's six episodes, stuff I have never heard or read before about him. Making Obama, get it wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, he and I were reminiscing about that taxi ride we had years ago in England with Margaret Thatcher. And I think that's probably the first time I'd ever made out with anybody in the back of a cab. I'm Ira Glass. Happy Valentine's Day. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
Heather and her girlfriend live with a cat named Sid. The girlfriend was always inventing these cute little affectionate nicknames for Sid, but never did that for Heather. She was always praising Sid and asking Heather to praise Sid, but never gave that kind of approval to Heather. If anything, she was kind of detached when it came to Heather. So, even though Sid was just a cat, against her will, against her better judgment, Heather started to get jealous. I remember that I would sort of wake up in the morning, and I would hear her saying things like, you are so beautiful. You are a princess. Look at you. And, you know, as I opened my eyes, I realized that she was talking not to me, but to the cat. You felt like the third wheel. Mm-hmm. You know, I know if there had been another woman, I would have compared myself to her physically, sort of, what does she look like? What kinds of things is my girlfriend attracted to that I could aspire to? You know, what personality traits. Is she funny? You know, but there was just-- I didn't know what it was about Sid. I mean, I could see that she was attractive as a cat, and I could see that she had this nonchalance that was beautiful. You know, she didn't seem to care, really, that she was loved. So those were things that I did think about really-- cultivating, even. But-- You thought that cultivating a nonchalance, and-- You know, that I was this concerned about it shows you that it would have been a, you know, a fake. But, yeah, I mean, I thought about cultivating it like that. Since our pets win our love, they can also activate all the other feelings that can go with love-- jealousy, and anger, and dependence, and just everything else. And as soon as any one of those feelings kicks in, all the complicated dynamics that happen between any people, in any household, any family, all of those also inevitably kick in. And that's what happened with Heather and Sid the cat. I felt sort of the same way I felt-- you know how when you have a crush on someone, and then you're friends with their significant other, and all the awkwardness as you pretend that, you know, you sort of don't have the feelings that you do for this other person. I sort of felt like Sid was the significant other of the person, you know, for whom I had feelings. And so I felt awkward around Sid, and I felt like I had to-- I don't know. I felt like they were together before I was around, and I was an interloper. You know, all the awkwardness surrounding that. And so what's it like to be in a love triangle with another woman and a cat? Well, it was pretty, you know, diminishing. I mean, it was a beautiful cat. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program, "In Dog We Trust," stories of dogs and cats and other pets, and how they get caught up in our family dynamics as non-speaking members of our households. Our program today in three acts. Act 1, "The Youth in Asia," in which writer David Sedaris describes how a Great Dane-- and not a very smart one-- was able to completely replace him and his sisters when they grew up and moved out of their parents' house. Act 2, "Polly Wants So Much More Than a Cracker." Three small children who love their mom, but do not love their mom's pet bird. Act 3, "Resurrection." What it means in a family when a pet armadillo dies, and what it means when it doesn't die. Stay with us. Act 1, "The Youth In Asia." So when a pet dies, to what degree can it be replaced by another pet? And to what degree can pets replace people in our lives? Well, David Sedaris has this story. In the early 1960s, during what my mother referred to as the tail end of the Lassie years, my parents were given two collies, which they named Rastus and Duchess. We were living, then, in New York State, out in the country, and the dogs were free to race through the forest. They napped in meadows, and stood knee-deep in frigid streams, co-stars in their own private dog food commercial. Late one January evening, while lying on a blanket in the garage, Duchess gave birth to a litter of slick, potato-sized puppies. When it looked as though one of them had died, our mother placed the creature in a casserole dish and popped it into the oven like the witch in Hansel and Gretel. Oh, keep your shirts on, she said. It's only set on 150. I'm not baking anyone. This is just to keep it warm. The heat revived the sick puppy, and left us believing that our mother was capable of resurrecting the dead. Faced with the responsibilities of fatherhood, Rastus took off. The puppies were given away, and we moved south, where the heat and humidity worked against the best interests of a collie. Duchess's once beautiful coat now hung in ragged patches. When finally, full of worms, she collapsed in the ravine beside our house, we re-evaluated our mother's healing powers. The entire animal kingdom was beyond her scope. She could only resurrect the cute dead. The oven trick was performed on half a dozen dazed and chubby hamsters, but failed to work on my first guinea pig, who died after eating four cigarettes and an entire pack of matches. Don't take it too hard, my mother said, removing her oven mitts. The world is full of guinea pigs. You can get another one tomorrow. Eulogies tended to be brief, our motto being there's always more where this one came from. A short time after Duchess died, our father came home with a German shepherd puppy. For reasons that were never fully explained, the privilege of naming the dog went to a friend of my older sister's, a 14-year-old girl named Cindy. She was studying German at the time. And after carefully examining the puppy, and weighing it with her hands, she announced that it would be called Madchen, which apparently meant girl in what she referred to as Deutsch. When she was six months old, Madchen was hit and killed by a car. Her food was still in the bowl when our father brought home an identical German shepherd. The same Cindy christened as Madchen II. This tag team progression was disconcerting, especially for the new dog, who was expected to possess both the knowledge and the personality of her predecessor. Madchen I would never have wet on the floor like that, my father would scold, and the dog would sigh, knowing she was the canine equivalent of a rebound. Madchen II never accompanied us to the beach, and rarely posed in any of the family photographs. Once her puppyhood was spent, we more or less lost interest. We ought to get a dog, we'd sometimes say, completely forgetting that we already had one. During the era of the Madchens, we had a succession of drowsy, secretive cats who seemed to share a unique bond with our mother. It's because I open their cans, she said. Though we all knew it ran deeper than that. What they had in common were their claws. That, and a deep-seated need to destroy my father's golf bags. The first cat passed into a disagreeable old age, and died hissing at the kitten who had prematurely arrived to replace her. When, at the age of nine, the second cat was diagnosed with feline leukemia, my mother was devastated. I'm going to have Sadie put to sleep, she said. It's for her own good, and I don't want to hear a word about it from any of you. This is hard enough as it is. The cat was put down, and then came the anonymous postcards and phone calls orchestrated by my sisters and I. The cards announced a miraculous new cure for feline leukemia, while the callers identified themselves as representatives of Cat Fancy magazine. We'd like to use Sadie as our cover story, and we're hoping to schedule a photo shoot. Is tomorrow possible? After spending a petless year with only one child still living at home, my parents visited a breeder, and returned with a Great Dane they named Melina. They loved this dog in proportion to its size, and soon their hearts had no room for anyone else. In terms of family, their six children had been nothing more than a failed experiment. Melina was the real thing. The dog was their first true common interest, and they loved it equally, each in their own way. Our mother's love tended towards the horizontal, a pet being little more than a napping companion, something she could look at and say, that looks like a good idea. Scoot over, why don't you. A stranger peeking through the window might think that the two of them had entered a suicide pact. She and the dog sprawled like corpses, their limbs arranged into an eternal embrace. My father loved the Great Dane for its size, and frequently took her on long, aimless drives, during which she'd stick her heavy, anvil-sized head out the window and leak great quantities of foamy saliva . Other drivers pointed and stared, rolling down their windows to shout, hey, you got a saddle for that thing? When out for a walk, there was the inevitable are you walking her, or is it the other way around? Our father always laughed as if this were the first time he'd heard it. The attention was addictive, and he enjoyed a pride of accomplishment he'd never felt with any of us. It was as if he were somehow responsible for her size and stature, as if he'd personally designed her spots, and trained her to grow to the size of a pony. When out with the dog, he carried a leash in one hand and a shovel in the other. Just in case, he said. Just in case, what, she dies and you need to bury her? I didn't get it. No, he'd say. It's for-- you know, it's for her business. My father was retired, but the dog had business. I was living in Chicago when they first got Melina, and every time I came home, the animal was bigger. Every time, there were more Marmaduke cartooms displayed upon the refrigerator. And every time my voice grew louder as I asked myself, who are these people? Down, girl, my parents would chuckle as the puppy jumped up, panting for my attention. Her great padded paws reached my waist, then my chest and shoulders, until, eventually, her arms wrapped around my neck and her head towering above my own, she came to resemble a dance partner scouting the room for a better offer. That's just her way of saying hello, my mother would say, handing me the towel used to wipe up the dog's bubbling seepage. Here, you missed a spot on the back of your head. The dog's growth was monitored on a daily basis, and every small accomplishment was documented for later generations. One can find two pictures of my sister Tiffany, while Melina has entire volumes devoted to her Terrible Twos. Hit me, my mother said on one of my returns home from Chicago. No, wait, let me go get my camera. She left the room and returned a few moments later. OK, she said, now hit me. Better yet, why don't you just pretend to hit me. I raised my hand, and my mother cried out in pain. Ow, she yelled, somebody help me. This stranger is trying to hurt me, and I don't know why. I caught an advancing blur moving in from the left, and the next thing I knew, I was down on the ground, the Great Dane tearing holes in the neck of my sweater. The camera flashed, and my mother squealed with delight. God, I love that trick. I rolled over to protect my face. This isn't a trick. My mother snapped another picture. Oh, don't be so critical. It's close enough. With us grown and out of the house, my sisters and I foolishly expected our parents' lives to stand still. They were supposed to stagnate and live in the past, but instead, they constructed a new we, consisting of Melina and the founding members of her fan club. Someone who obviously didn't know her too well had given my mother a cheerful stuffed bear with a calico heart stitched onto its chest. According to the manufacturer, the bear's name was Mumbles, and all it needed in order to thrive were two AA batteries and a regular diet of hugs. Where's Mumbles, my mother would ask, and the dog would jump up and snatch the bear from its hiding place on top of the refrigerator, yanking it this way and that in hopes of breaking its neck. That's my girl, my mother would say. We don't like Mumbles, do we? I learned that we liked Morley Safer, but not Mike Wallace, that we didn't like Mumbles or thunder, but we're crazy about Stan Getz records and the Iranian couple who'd moved in up the street. It was difficult to keep straight, but having known these people all my life, I didn't want to be left out of the we. During the final years of Madchen II and the first half of the Melina epoch, I lived with a female cat named Neil. My mother looked after the cat when I moved from Raleigh, and flew her to Chicago once I'd found a place and settled in. Neil was old when she moved to Chicago, and then she got older. She started leaving teeth in her bowl, and developed the sort of breath that could remove paint. When she stopped cleaning herself, I took to bathing her in the sink, and she'd stand still, too weak to resist the humiliation of shampoo. Soaking wet, I could see just how thin and brittle she really was, almost comic, like one of those cartoon cats checking her fur coat at the cloakroom of the seafood restaurant. Her kidneys shrank to the size of raisins, and though I loved her very much, I assumed the vet was joking when he suggested dialysis. I took her for a second opinion. Vet number two tested her blood, and phoned me at home, saying, perhaps you should think about euthanasia. I hadn't heard that word in a while, and pictured scores of happy Japanese children spilling from the front door of their elementary school. Are you thinking about it, he asked? Yes, I said, as a matter of fact I am. In the end, I returned to the animal hospital, and had her put to sleep. When the vet injected the sodium phenobarbital, Neil fluttered her eyes, assumed a apt position, and died. A week after putting her to sleep, I received Neil's ashes in a forest green can. She'd never expressed any great interest in the outdoors, so I scattered her remains on the carpet-- --and then vacuumed her back up. The cat's death struck me as the end of an era. It was, of course, the end of her era. But with the death of a pet, there's always that urge to crowd the parentheses and string black crape over an entire 10- or 20-year period. The end of my safe college life, the last of my 30-inch waist, my faltering relationship with my first real boyfriend. I cried for it all, and spent the next several months wondering why so few songs were written about cats. My mother sent a consoling letter, along with a check to cover the cost of the cremation. In the left-hand corner, under the heading marked, memo, she'd written, pet burning. I had it coming. When my mother died, Melina took over her side of the bed. Due to their size, Great Danes generally don't live very long. My father massaged her arthritic legs, carried her up the stairs, and lifted her into bed. He treated her the way that men in movies treat their ailing wives, the way he would have treated my mother had she allowed such naked displays of affection. Melina's parentheses contained the final 10 years of his married life. She'd attended my father's retirement, lived through my sister's wedding, and knew who everyone was talking about when they mentioned the M words-- Mom, Mumbles, and Morley Safer. Regardless of her pain, my father could not bear to let her go. The youth in Asia begged him to end her life. [JAPANESE], they said. [JAPANESE] But he held out until the last minute. A month after Melina died, my father returned to the breeder, and came home with another Great Dane, a female like Melina, gray spots like Melina, only this one is named Sophie. He tries to love her, but readily admits that he may have made a mistake. She's a nice enough dog, but the timing is off. When walking the puppy through the neighborhood, my father feels not unlike the foolish widower stumbling behind his energetic young bride. Her stamina embarrasses him, as does her interest in younger men. The passing drivers slow to a stop and roll down their windows. Hey, they yell, are you walking her, or is it the other way around? Their words remind him of happier times, of milder forces straining against the well-worn leash. He still gets the attention. But now, in response, he just lifts his shovel and groans. David Sedaris. This story "The Youth in Asia" is in his book Me Talk Pretty One Day. A version of the story also appeared in Esquire magazine. You can catch David on tour all over the country starting in April. Details at DavidSedarisBooks.com/tour. Act 2, "Polly Wants So Much More Than a Cracker." When Veronica tells this story, it's a story about love. When she was 17, she saw a bird in a pet store, a macaw, which is kind of a big parrot-- brightly colored, with a three-foot wingspan. And I fell in love with her immediately. And, you know, I was still in high school. I had no money whatsoever. How expensive was she? Well, the price tag on the cage said $1,400, which was an inordinate amount of money. So how long did it take you to pay off the bird? It took me about five years to pay her off, working part-time jobs, babysitting. And what did you love about her? What was the thing that drew you to her? I find it hard to say, exactly, why I was drawn to her. I thought she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. It's hard to describe how it feels to love an animal. But as soon as I saw her face, I just thought she was the most beautiful thing, and I had to have her, and I wanted to see that face every day, and I wanted to care for her. And I didn't know anything about bringing up parrots, or feeding them, or caring for them. I just wanted to take her home like a big-- like a treasure. OK. Fast-forward 23 years. When we first broadcast this story, Veronica was 40 years old, married with two twin boys, Kyle and Cameron, aged five, and another boy, Daniel, who was eight. One of the things she didn't know about parrots when she first saw her macaw is that they can live for 80 years-- 80. So every morning, she would take the bird, whose name is Gideon, out of her cage so she could freely wander the house. And get into things she shouldn't get into, like a baby-- climbing into laundry baskets and ripping up clothes, and taking the kids' Pokemon cards and ripping them to shreds, and pulling newspapers out of boxes. And so at breakfast, you've got three little kids there. The kids will interact with each other. And Gideon will scream as loud as she can over their heads. Now let's play a recording of Gideon for people at home. It sounds really loud. It's intolerable. It's a sound that you don't want to hear. It sounds very dinosaur-like. Yeah. Well-- The word you just used was intolerable? It's the most unpleasant sound I think I have ever heard. But you've lived with this sound for 23 years. I've lived with that sound for 23 years. It's in my dreams. It's wherever I go. It's in the kitchen. It's in the dining room. It's in my bedroom. And the kids have grown up with her. So they won't really notice it at first. But after about the fourth or fifth scream, they will start covering their ears and shouting back at the bird. You stop it please? Mommy, will you take me and put her in the tree? Now you tape little interviews with your kids about Gideon. Here's Cameron, who's five. Do you like having Gideon in the family? Not really. Would you rather that she went somewhere else? Yeah. All the way to Sco-- to England. Because I don't want her to scream when we're watching TV. Would you rather have a different kind of pet than Gideon? Yeah. A dog that is really nice and doesn't bite and doesn't bark. But do you understand why mommy loves Gideon? No. This is Kyle, the other twin, also five. One time she just almost bited off my thumb. That kind of scared me. They're terrified of Gideon. If they're approached by her, they'll immediately scream and run away. They won't go near her now. And is that because Gideon is, in fact, a little dangerous? They're right to be a little scared? Well, Gideon's primary objective in life is to be my mate. And so every other person or creature that comes near me is a threat to our relationship. And my children are a very big threat to our relationship because we have physical contact with each other. She sees me carrying them and cooking for them and touching them and picking them up. And so she has a desire to kill them, basically. I mean, in the bird world, she would kill another predator or some intrusive love interest. Now after your kids were born and you saw how Gideon reacted to your children, and you saw how your children reacted to Gideon-- they were scared, that Gideon bit Kyle-- did it change your feelings about Gideon? I don't think anything can change my feelings about Gideon. But if I had a dog that I loved, and then I had a new baby in the house, and the dog was hostile towards the baby, I wouldn't feel the same way about the dog. I would feel protective of my kid, which I'm sure you did. Well, I do feel protective of the children, and I take certain steps to protect them from her, but I can't stop loving her because of her natural tendency to want to drive away competition. As I said, this is a love story, and that Veronica knows Gideon is driving everybody else who she loves crazy. She loves the bird. The same monogamous feelings that make Gideon mean to everyone else make Gideon fantastically sweet to Veronica. Gideon watches her every move, cuddles with her, blushes. Gideon actually blushes when they play together. She is all that Gideon lives for, and it's hard to turn away from that. Thank you, Gideon. Veronica also worries that if she gave the bird away, the bird would die. They mate so fiercely that sometimes when their mate vanishes, that can happen. I know, Gideon, it's upsetting. And then there's this story. When Veronica was 18 and barely owned Gideon for a year, she took Gideon outside like she did every day. And Gideon flew away. Veronica hadn't been careful enough clipping her feathers. She was wrecked. Every night, Veronica cried herself to sleep. Every day she sat on the roof, watching the skies. After six days, a kid on his way to school spotted the bird. And I quickly ran to where he said she was. And I saw her in probably the tallest tree and immediately scaled the tree, got all the way to the top. I was up about 50 feet. She was on the end of the branch, all the way out. And so I inched my way out. And about 3/4 of the way out-- I was only a foot away from her-- the branch snapped. And I fell straight down without hitting anything on the way. And just fell 50 feet and landed on my feet on hard ground. And I suffered a multiple compression fracture of my spine and I had a collapsed lung. I should have died, according to the orthopedic surgeon. Do you think the fact that you nearly died trying to save Gideon is one of the things that makes it impossible for you to give Gideon up? That's something I've thought about. Yeah, it's quite possible. I feel like it's brought us closer. It's not a pleasant thing that happened, but I feel like she would have died out there. You say that it brought us closer, but you're the only one who actually understands that you went out and you got injured trying to save Gideon. Gideon doesn't understand that. No, she doesn't understand that, but I know she understands something. She's very bonded to me. She became so close to me at one point that her hormones produced an egg. And that's something that happens only between couples. So I know she feels something. I don't really need to know much more than that. In the end, I think this is only partly a story about Veronica's love for Gideon. It's also a story about her family's love for her, that they put up with the bird. We all want to believe that the people who love us will at least accept the parts of us that are not so appealing. And in Veronica's case, the unappealing part just happens to have physical form and be a bird. Every day that her kids and her husband put up with that, they prove to her just how much they love her. I just don't know why you had to buy her. How much bucks was she? She cost a lot of money. Like how much money? She cost like $1,400. Whoa, just for a parrot? Why would they do that? Hi. The most remarkable thing, I think, about the phrase "I love you" is how rarely it's used literally to mean I love you, that I have a feeling of love for you. It's used much more often, I think, to mean 100 other things. Tell me that you love me. Or I need to get off the phone now. Or things are fine between us, right? Or yes, it's fine that we keep the parrot. Coming up, one of the best known stories from the bible, re-enacted with an armadillo, sort of. And what animal takes a licking and keeps on ticking? Answers in a minute, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose some theme, bring you different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's program, "In Dog We Trust"-- stories of pets and the ways they function as actual members of our families and affect family dynamics. We first broadcast this show years ago. We have arrived at Act Three of our program. Act Three, "Resurrection." So earlier in today's show, David Sedaris talked about animals that his mom could and could not bring back to life. This is another story about what it is that animals can take the place of in our lives and in our homes. It's a piece of fiction from writer Brady Udall. It was three days after our old man died that my brother, Donald, accomplished the most spectacular deed of his life. I wish I could have been there to see it. Donald taking the Greyhound down to Nogales all by himself, buying the baby armadillo for 800 pesos from a pie-faced Indian woman at the [INAUDIBLE] market, tucking the little thing under his arm like a football, and running the length of the pedestrian border station-- past the heat-struck tourists in their sombreros and loud socks, and the guards with their sidearms and walkie-talkies, pushing through the last steel-toothed turnstile, and sprinting like a madman into the heart of the Nogales slums. It was his proudest moment, though it did take him the rest of the day and half the night of wandering among the hookers and street corner punks to find a bus that would bring him back to Aho, where we lived. There he was, after I came home from hours of frantic searching, sitting stiff-backed on the couch, beaming. The little armadillo was rooting at the crotch of his pants, and Donald's pink sweating face had screwed itself up with such a grin of utter self-satisfaction. Donald ended up giving the armadillo to me. A present, he said, something to make me feel better. I thanked him, took the armadillo which clawed at my T-shirt like a cat, and gave it a little squeeze. What else could I do? My father had worked as a janitor for 21 years. But he was also a reader of books, a scholar, if it is possible to be both a scholar and a sixth grade dropout. And one of his favorite subjects was zoology. He could bore you into a coma with what he knew about the great horned owl or the common mealworm or the laughing hyenas of Africa. But of all the beasts of the animal kingdom, he loved and admired the humble armadillo most. Nope, not the smartest or the prettiest, he would say when one of them scattered across the highway in front of our old LeMans. But the hardiest, you see what I'm saying, the most resourceful. He often promised he would get us an armadillo for a pet, but he died before he could come through-- an end-all heart attack standing in line at the grocery store. I was 17, Donald 19. Our mother, a Guatemalan migrant worker who had married my father under the impression he would one day be a rich man who could buy her a Cadillac and a house with a swimming pool, had run off when we were babies. So it was just the two of us now. It took me about a week to get over the shock, and then I did what I had to. I dropped out of school, started working full time pouring concrete for Hasenpfeffer's and moved Donald and me to a cheaper apartment near the [? McComb ?] and Sons wrecking yard, where Donald could watch the cars getting pulverized from our window. We got money from the state that paid for Donald's medication, but the rest was up to me. Donald was really something else. What could be done with a guy who ate his own earwax, who carried a maroon mini bible in the band of his underpants, and read random scriptures out loud at inappropriate times? Who could be sashaying about the room one minute, doing a dead-on impression of Sammy Davis, Jr., and the next be downstairs in the closet grunting like a pig and trying to tear his hair out? From a distance, you wouldn't have been able to tell him from any other teenager. He had relatively good hygiene, did not usually talk to himself in public, and was something of a handsome devil, with his dark hair hanging down over pale green eyes. Sometimes I would take him to a party or a dance with me and the girls would flock around us. He could be as charming as Hugh Hefner in short bursts before he'd have to run off and hide in the bathroom. I remember once when I was nine or 10, and we were playing in the back yard. He kept pestering me, saying, I am the Indian. You are the cowboy. OK? I told him to shut his trap. I was busy building a cave for my army men. He wouldn't give up. Me Indian, you cowboy. Okey-dokey? Over and over. Damn it, Donald, you freak, I hollered. Do whatever you want, but just shut up for a second. I'm not a freak, he said, sticking his chin out. All right then, I said. The next time I looked up, Donald was on top of the doghouse with a bow and arrow set my father had bought for him at a garage sale. He had the arrow notched and pulled back to his ear, just like the Indians we saw on TV. I hadn't noticed before, but now I saw that he had taken off his shirt and tucked it in the elastic of his shorts so it looked like he was wearing a loincloth, and had used a little blood from the scab on his elbow to make fiendish red streaks across his face. He was doing it perfect, really, just like a TV Indian. I didn't believe he would really shoot me, so I just sat there like a jackass, my hands full of dirt. I didn't see him let go of the bowstring, but I certainly did hear the fop the arrow made when it hit me in the chest dead center. More from the surprise than anything, I fell flat on my back. It was only a target arrow, but it pierced my sternum just enough to stand up right from my chest, waving around sluggishly like a reed in a river. I lay in the grass and stared up at the neon yellow fletching of the arrow. My hands were still full of dirt. Donald jumped down from the doghouse and stood over me. He was smiling an odd, satisfied smile, as if he was expecting to be congratulated on his marksmanship. He looked down at me for a long time before he gently put his hand around the shaft of the arrow without pulling it out. He said, right smack dab in the heart, white man. I told Donald I wanted him to name the armadillo. After several days of deliberation, he decided to name it after Otis, the happy drunk on The Andy Griffith Show, who our father had resembled in almost eerie detail. I'd gotten used to taking care of Donald alone. I had no choice. But Otis was a different story. First of all, Otis smelled. He gave off a musky odor that intensified whenever he was nervous or hungry. And no matter if we scrubbed him raw with industrial soap and water, the smell would come back in an hour or so. And then there was the furniture. Armadillos are burrowing animals. This is something I learned from my father. And in the confines of our small apartment, Otis didn't have many opportunities to burrow. Instead, he would march through the house like a tiny gray tank and move the furniture around. He'd waddle into the living room, put his blunt forehead against one of the legs of the coffee table and bear down, inching it around the room, his little squirrel claws scrabbling on the wood floor. At least once a week, he would crawl between the mattress and box springs of my bed and take a dump. My father was right about armadillos. They are hardy, they are resourceful-- and if Otis is typical, they're as dumb as donkey crap. Sometimes in the course of his incessant apartment wandering, Otis would find himself trapped in a corner and would spend the rest of the evening attempting to claw his way out. Otis was technically my pet. But Donald cared for him, worried over and tormented and teased him, then made up with tearful professions of regret and affection. While I was away at work, they would do things together. Donald would carry Otis around outside, conversing with him, rooting in the weeds in the vacant lot, searching for earthworms or crickets for Otis's dinner. Sometimes Donald would hide behind the recliner, and when Otis passed by would jump out and shout in a high soprano wail, "Look out, Otis!" Poor Otis would spring two feet into the air like a startled cat, his leathery body twisting, his claws clutching at nothing. And once he'd landed, he'd scurry into the hallway looking back over his shoulder, embarrassment in those little piggy eyes. This kind of living arrangement was no boost to my social life, I can tell you. If I ever wanted to bring a girl home, I figured I'd have some difficulty explaining why the apartment smelled like a bear's den, why the furniture was strewn around, and why my brother was naked and hiding behind the couch, waiting to scare the daylights out of an armadillo. It took five years before I found someone I loved enough to bring home. Allison was good about everything, told me I was a saint and a Christian to be taking care of Donald. She was so wonderful and beautiful and good-smelling, I could barely stand it. Eventually, I proposed to her, after which I went home to talk to Donald. It was springtime in the desert, the smell of cactus blossoms everywhere. And I was so full of love and desire I could barely see straight. Allison and I had decided that we would get an apartment nearby. With my new promotion at Hasenpfeffer's and Allison's job at the county courthouse, we could afford our own place-- and with the help of the government's support, Donald. Donald would be all right as long as we checked on him daily, made sure he was taking his medication, and occasionally washed down the place with ammonia so the smell wouldn't bother the neighbors. I have to admit, the thought of escaping from Donald and Otis and that cave of an apartment was almost as enticing as the thought of being together with Allison. At home, when I sat Donald down to explain things to him, I could barely get a word out. I stuttered and stammered, kept wiping my mouth. When I finally made things clear, Donald whipped out his mini bible and frantically paged through it, but couldn't seem to come up with anything-- the first time I'd ever seen him at a loss for a scripture. He yanked at his hair and ground his teeth together until they squeaked. Finally without saying anything, he snatched up Otis who had been napping under one of the couch cushions and went into the laundry room, slamming the door behind him. I felt like kicking that door down and wringing his neck. Couldn't you at least try to be happy for me, to think of somebody other than himself for one minute? I wanted only to be with Allison, and I hated Donald for making it so difficult-- hated him for years of responsibility and obligation and lost opportunities-- hated him in the way only a brother can hate a brother. I took a few steps toward the stairwell to leave. I didn't care. I was going to stay at Allison's, my first night ever away from Donald, when I heard a splashing noise from inside the apartment. The laundry room door was locked and I shouted Donald's name, but got no response. I tried to kick in the door, which was made of something like cardboard. My foot went right through it. Once I had my leg free, I looked through the splintered hole and could see Donald hunched over the overflowing utility sink, both arms submerged up to his biceps. The back of his neck was purple and pulsing, full of angry blood. And it took me only a moment to understand. He was trying to drown Otis. I unlocked the door and grabbed him from behind, but he resisted me, grunting and plunging Otis deeper into the water. I wrestled him out into the living room, where we fell sideways against the couch. Donald twisted away from me and stood up, the water dripping off his elbows, forming a puddle around his shoes. Otis was curled up in a ball, just like when he slept. And Donald began to shiver so badly that he lost his grip, and let Otis' body slide out of his hands and hit the floor with a wet slap. Donald's face twisted into a mask of concentrated grief. See, he wept, see what I did? Looking at my brother, I felt all the parts of me that had been opening up since I had met Allison collapse on each other like so many empty rooms. It would have to be me and Donald, brothers, inseparable, no one else allowed. I don't remember if I looked away or if it was as sudden as it seemed, but one moment Otis was a sad, wet corpse, as dead as an armadillo could be. And the next, he was huffing and twitching and scrabbling to his feet. Donald let out an arching shriek, which sent Otis zigzagging into the kitchen where a mad chase ensued-- Donald slipping and flailing, knocking over chairs and pulling down the drapes, still choking and sobbing, now with relief. He finally herded Otis under the table. And once he had pulled him out, he held him up, his fingers locked in a death grip around his little body, and cried, "Otis is resurrected. Otis is resurrected." A fair trade. Donald got his armadillo back and I got to marry Allison. Never again did Donald show any sign of jealousy or resentment. He was the best man at our wedding, read a long section from Zephaniah at the reception, and even bought us a gift-- a book called Hot Sex for Cold Fish. Things went well those first few years. We saved up enough to buy the concrete business from old Hasenpfeffer, who retired to ride his Harley around the continent. And Donald and Otis seemed to thrive together. We stopped in to visit as often as we could. Allison cooked dinner for them on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And we paid a house cleaning service to scrub the apartment down every week, put the furniture back in place, and steamed the carpets. Donald had his first episode one night while I was in Phoenix at a heavy equipment auction. They found him digging up the lawn in front of the city First Bank, blabbering about how difficult it was to find high grade earthworms on the south end of town. When the cops tried to approach him, he pelted them with dirt clods and threatened to eat a fist full of worms if they got any closer. He spent most of the night in the holding tank before Sheriff Brasky figured out who he was and gave me a call. A few months later, Donald climbed an old elm at the city park, which branched out over a sidewalk. He managed to pee on a few passersby before the groundskeeper knocked him off a branch with a well-thrown rake. We took him to a doctor, who adjusted his medication and suggested that Donald be put in a home where he could get the care and attention he needed, where he could socialize with somebody besides an armadillo. I brought up the subject with Donald, but he told me he would rather die than give up Otis and go live in a house with a bunch of half-wits and knuckleheads. The only other option, we knew, was taking in Donald and Otis ourselves. Allison was eight months pregnant with our second baby. The business was really starting to take off. It just wasn't a good time, we told ourselves. We might be able to work something out in a few months when things had settled down. By the end of the summer, Donald was dead. The call came in the middle of the night like they always do. Sheriff Brasky told me that Donald had been hit by a car on 87 near the refinery. He had run through traffic completely naked, dodging cars and sprinting down the median until an old couple in a minivan clipped him with their bumper, knocking him over a temporary still divider and onto a concrete platform where he was partially impaled by a jutting piece of rebar. He bled to death before the ambulance arrived. After I went to the hospital to identify his body, I drove out to the accident site. For half an hour, I combed both sides of the highway without a flashlight until I found Otis cowering under a piece of discarded plywood. His left foreleg was mangled, nearly torn from his body. And he was bleeding from the soft flesh of his belly. I drove him over to the only veterinarian in town, Larry Oleander, and pounded on the door until he answered. Larry was an old retired cowboy with a glass eyeball and a dent in his head where a mule had kicked him. Jesus, Geronimo, Christ, he said. It was 4 o'clock in the morning. I held Otis out to him and he said, what you have there is an armadillo. Fix him up, I said. Son, he said, I don't know what you think-- Do it. Larry Oleander peered up at me. He sighed and held the screen door open. Come the hell on in. Larry amputated Otis' leg, stitched up the wound on his underside, and bandaged him until he looked like one big wad of gauze. When I tried to pay him, he waved his hand in front of my face, took a slug off a bottle of vodka he kept under the operating table. Jesus, Richard, just promise me you'll never make a peep about this to anybody. I took Otis home, and he has been part of our family ever since. Over the last few years, I've added on a wing to the house just for him. He has a room with a skylight and two bay windows, his own pillow bed to sleep under, and a bunch of old furniture to push around. As far as I'm aware, he is the only three-legged armadillo on Earth with his own personal wading pool. Allison is not thrilled about having an armadillo in her home, never has been. But she knows it's important to me. The kids-- we have four of them now-- can't stand Otis either. They want another pet, some kind of happy, slobbering dog or an albino snake to impress their friends. Otis is not only real, real, dumb, they argue, but also smells like doodoo. They're not sure which is worse. I tell them they are correct. They'll get no disagreement from me, but Otis is our pet and we're going to love him no matter what. I try not to let myself forget how blessed I am-- my beautiful family, my dream house up in the hills, a successful business that pretty much runs without me. I am happy and satisfied most of the time. But every once in a while, maybe once or twice a year, something will come over me-- a dark mood that I can't shake, usually at night when everyone is asleep and the house is quiet. And I'll get Otis out from under his pillow bed and take him upstairs. I run a bath, sitting on the lip of the tub, holding him close to my chest the way he likes it. Usually I just let him paddle around, but sometimes when the tub is almost overflowing, I take him firmly in both hands and plunge him into the water. There's not a clock in the bathroom, so I count one alligator, two alligator, three alligator. This is how I count off the seconds. Otis struggles like a tiny lion for the first two or three minutes, writhing and spasming wildly, sending up a boiling foam of bubbles, fighting and scratching with everything he's got, and I hate myself for what I'm doing to him. Usually between the fourth and fifth minute is when he starts to lose his will and his thrashing weakens, as he gradually curls up on himself like a flower dying, and goes utterly still. This is always the hardest part for me. The urge to pull him out is almost unbearable, but I go five or 10 seconds longer than the last time. One alligator, two alligator, three alligator, four alligator, five alligator-- until I can't stand it anymore. I lift him out and he lies there in my hands like a deflated soccer ball. And I'm sick with dread knowing that this time, I've taken it too far. I've killed him. I stare down at him and wait, hardly blinking, wait for that first twitch or jerk, for his nostrils to flare with life. And usually there's an almost imperceptible shudder from under his hard shell, a stirring. And his tail will begin to vibrate like a piano wire. And he slowly, hesitantly, opens up and stretches himself, clawing the air and coughing like a newborn. Sitting on the edge of the bathtub with Otis wet and dripping in my arms, I'm always overcome with the same vision-- Donald clutching a newly revived Otis, his face slick with tears, transformed from a man twisted inside out with grief to someone awestruck at the realization that our worst mistakes can be retrieved-- that death can be traded in for life, that what has been destroyed can be made whole again. With a sudden surge, Otis struggles to get out of my lap. He is an armadillo and there is exploring to do. I let him down and watch him slide around on the linoleum and try to push the toilet off its base, and I feel a small, bitter joy lodge in my heart. Otis is resurrected, I whisper. I carry him to his room and make sure he is comfortable under his pillow bed. And only then will I be able to walk peacefully through the dark, quiet halls of my home, kiss each of my children good night, and lie down next to my wife to sleep. Brady Udall. His short story "Otis Is Resurrected" was first published in Story Magazine. It is a work of fiction. No armadillos were harmed in the making of this radio story. Our program was produced today by Alex Blumberg and myself, and Susan Burton, Blue Chevigny, and Julie Snyder. Our technical director is Matt Tierney, production help from Alvin Melathe. In the years since we first broadcast our story in Act Two about Veronica Chater's macaw, she has published a memoir, which includes "Life with a Macaw." It's called Waiting for the Apocalypse. Special thanks today to the student staff of WWVU in Morgantown in West Virginia, to Mary Zimmerman, to Larry Josephson, to Deborah and Stephen Diggs. Our website, ThisAmericanLife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, it's weird. We've known each other for years, but every time I try to give him a hug, he starts yelling Somebody help me. This stranger is trying to hurt me and I don't know why. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
Memorial Day wasn't easy for Julie. Her mom's birthday was May 31. And her mom had officially declared that the period between Mother's Day-- which, of course, is in the middle of May-- and her birthday would be known in the family as "gala time." Which meant, basically, it would be the one time during the year where mom would get whatever she wanted. Which would've been fine except what mom often wanted was a road trip into the mountains on curvy roads, which didn't match Julie's personal style when Julie was a kid. I puked everywhere and always. I puked on every road trip from-- I puked any time we were in the car for longer than, like, a half an hour from the age of 4 to the age of 12. I used to be so drugged up on Dramamine, I didn't really ever experience my summer vacations. Say that again. I'd be so drugged up on Dramamine. You would be? Yeah. All the time? Oh, yeah. That you wouldn't even experience them as vacations? No, you just sleep. I would just feel glassy-eyed and kind of sweaty. And I remember we went-- it was a whole trip of the Northwest and Canada and coming down the coast. And I didn't see anything. I don't remember anything. I don't remember Glacier. I don't remember Yellowstone. I don't remember Vancouver. I don't remember anything. For three weeks I was on Dramamine one time. Except for one day, and that one day, I threw up. And so my mom put me back on it. She thought I was getting addicted. To Dramamine? Mm hmm. So she took me off. But then she was more scared of the throw up than of the addiction. I, like, power threw up all over the car. And my brother had two pairs of shoes right in front of me and I threw up one in each shoe. So he had to wear a pair of dress shoes and a pair of Nike's. And I threw up in my brother's baseball card collection that was also on the floor in front of me. Different brother. Well, this is the week of Memorial Day. And the thing about Memorial Day and the beginning of summer is that every person, every family has its Achilles' heel when summer finally arrives. If it's not the one person who gets sick in the car, it's the person who hates the sun; or the one who can't stand the beach; or the person who loves the beach-- loves it so hard, so fiercely so thoroughly that no one else in the family can understand it. There's a promise of summer, the hope we have of all things getting easier, of more fun, more free time. And then there's the reality of all we have to do to make summer live up to its potential. But didn't they install little bags or something? Well, yeah, my brothers did, actually, when we were, like, two and a half weeks into this road trip that we took. They decided all of a sudden that we were going to have puke drills and that we needed to prepare for them like an Olympic team. And so they strategically placed plastic and paper bags all over the place but also had this blanket that they had set up that you could quick pull out. And it would drape across my lap, because I had a problem controlling where it went as well. And also, then, somebody was in charge of opening all the windows. And the other person was in charge of keeping me off their stuff. And did this work? No, no. It's chaos when it happens. Because that was the problem. I could never give ample enough warning to really set the whole thing in motion. Because I'd be threatening to do it for, like, three hours. And then everyone would just stop paying attention to me. And then, all of a sudden, it would just happen. So pretty much, any summer vacation for you is pretty much a bust. Yes. I hate summer. You actually hate summer? Oh, totally, because of the expectations that you're supposed to have a good time, like, your life is supposed to be like a Pepsi commercial or something. And you're supposed to have this great time and because the weather's nice, you're supposed to go to the beach. And because the weather's nice, you're supposed to go to outdoor concerts and have fun and be happy all the time. And you're not supposed to sit in your house and watch TV and get upset. It's just terrible. And you're supposed to have a boyfriend or a girlfriend. It's just awful. It's an awful, terrible time of the year. Nobody wants you to be happy in the winter. You have no pressure to be happy. You can just be whatever you want. You can feel totally justified in being depressed. But in the summer, it's awful. Everyone wants you to be all happy. And then you just feel like a loser. So you're not even really that depressed about anything in particular other than the fact that you're just like, I kind of just feel like a loser. The way you're describing it, summer is just like a three-month-long prom date, where you're supposed to go and have a good time, but nobody ever does. Exactly. I think that's exactly what summer is. Exactly. You feel like such a sucker. But you can't really get out of it. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program, with Memorial Day here, a show about the promise of summer. And this hour on our show, we're going to try something different. Usually, those who are familiar with the show know that we will choose one theme and bring you a variety of all different kinds of stories over the course of the hour. Today, we're going to hear two stories interlaced throughout the hour-- one from Ron Carlson, one from Scott Carrier. We'll hear those stories in a minute. But first, a little mood music. Well, Act One and Two. Most of our ideas about the start of summer come from school, from that moment when we would get out of school in May or June and feel that flush of freedom. Even as adults, I think we yearn for that feeling to hit us again come Memorial Day, come the start of summer. The first of these two stories that we'll be hearing interlaced throughout the hour is by Ron Carlson, a story of somebody on summer break from college. Ron Carlson is a writer who lives in Arizona. In 1967, the year before the year that finally cracked the 20th century once and for all, I had as my summer job delivering medical oxygen in Phoenix, Arizona. I was a sophomore at the University of Montana in Missoula, but my parents lived in Phoenix and my father, as welding engineer, used his contacts to get me a job at Air and Oxygen Company. I started there doing what I called "dumbbell maintenance," the kind of make work that's assigned to college kids. I cleared debris from the back lot, mainly crushed packing crates. These were good days for me. I was 19 years old, and this was the hardest work I had ever done. The days were stunning, starting hot and growing insistently hotter. My first week, two of the days had been 116. And in that first week, I learned what not to touch, where not to stand. And I found the powerhouse heat simply bracing. I lost some of the winter dormitory fat and could feel myself browning and getting into shape. I was having a hard ride through the one relationship I had begun during the school year. Her name was Linda Enright, a classmate, and we had made the mistake of sleeping together that spring. Just once, but it wrecked absolutely everything. We were dreamy beforehand, the kind of couple who walked real close, bumping foreheads. We read each other's papers. I'm not making this up. We read poetry on the library lawn under a tree. And then, one night in her dorm room, we went ahead with it, squirming out of our clothing on her hard bed. And we did something for about a minute that changed everything. After that, we weren't even the same people. She wasn't she, and I wasn't I. We were too young citizens in the wrong country. All I could remember from the incident itself was Linda stopping once and undoing my belt and saying, here, I'll get it. The coolness of that practical phrase repeated in my mind after I'd said goodbye to Linda and she'd gone off to Boulder where her summer job was working in her parents' cookie shop. I called her every Sunday from a pay phone at an Exxon station on Indian School Road, and we'd fight. And if you asked me what we fought about, I couldn't tell you. We both felt misunderstood. Ron Carlson. Let's start the second of the two stories we'll hear throughout this hour. This is a very different kind of summer adventure, one spent outside with nature. Scott Carrier, a frequent contributor to This American Life, decided to canoe down the Green River in Utah. I have to confess a profound ignorance about what I'm doing. My preparation for this float trip consisted of buying a canoe and then grabbing a Wyoming road map from a rest stop on the drive up. I'd been in a canoe a couple of times, and I thought I knew how to make it turn and go straight. And I'd seen the river from several bridges I'd crossed on other trips in other years. And it was always wide and calm and flat. So I thought I could manage well enough. I could have practiced with the canoe, gone out with someone who could show me the strokes. And I could have read up on the river, learned about what was in store for me. But I chose not to do these things. When you try to lay things out, try to control what's going to happen, you always end up disappointed or frustrated. At least I do. My first surprise has been that the river, at the top, was not calm and flat. There were rapids-- big rapids. I floated down and camped where I first heard the roar. It sounded like this. This sound was carried on the wind to my tent off and on through the night. And it rained with lightning and thunder. I got up with the sun, made some coffee, and prepared for the worst. I double- and triple- wrapped everything in garbage bags and tied it all into the canoe. And then I took off my clothes. It would be easier to swim naked. And if I was to drown, I wanted, for some reason, to drown naked. I started down the river, praying for all the ants I'd ever stepped on, for all the bugs that had splattered into my windshield. I prayed for dirt and discarded things. I prayed for all my forgotten memories. And somehow, I made it. The canoe kept filling with water, but it stayed upright. And I got away with only a couple of welts on my shins. Two weeks into the summer, I was drafted to drive one of the two medical oxygen trucks. One of the drivers had quit, and our foreman came out on the dock in the morning and told me to see Nadine, who ran medical, in her little office building out front. They had the truck loaded. Two groups of 10 medical-blue cylinders chain hitched into the front of the bed. These tanks were going to be in people's bedrooms. I climbed in the truck and started it up, pulled onto McDowell, and headed for Sun City. At that time, Sun City was set alone in the desert, a weird theme park for retired white people. And from the beginning, it gave me an eerie feeling. The streets were like toy streets, narrow and clean, running in large circles. No cars, no garage doors open, and, of course, in the heat, no pedestrians. These people had come here from the Midwest and the East. They had been doctors and professors and lawyers and wanted to live among their own kind. No one under 20 could reside in Sun City. Mr. Rensdale was the first of my customers I ever saw in bed. I rang the bell and was met by a young woman in a long silk shirt, who saw me and said, "Oh, yeah. Come on in." I had the hot, blue cylinder on the single dolly and pulled it up the step and into the dark, cool space. I had my pocket rag and wiped the wheels as soon as she shut the door. I pointed down the hall. "Is it this way?" "No, upstairs. First door on your right. He's awake, David." She said my name just the way you read names off shirts. Then she put her hand on my sleeve and said, "Who hit you?" My old scar was still raw across my cheekbone. "I got burned." "Cute," she said. "They're going to love that back at where?" "University of Montana." "University of what?" She said. "There's a university there?" She smiled. "I'm kidding. I'm a snob, but I'm kidding. What year are you?" I'll be a junior, "I said." "I'm a senior at Penn," she said. I nodded, my mind whipping around for something clever. I didn't even know where Penn was. "Great," I said. I started up the stairs. "Yeah," she said. "Great." I drew the dolly up the carpeted stair carefully and entered the bedroom. It was dim in there, but I could see the other cylinder beside the bed and a man in the bed, awake. He was wearing pajamas and immediately upon seeing me said, "Good. Open the blinds, will you?" "Sure thing," I said, and I went around the bed and turned the mini blind wand. The Arizona day fell into the room. The young woman I'd spoken to walked out to the pool beneath me. She took off her shirt and hung it on one of the chairs. Her breasts were white in the sunlight. She set out her magazine and drink by one of the lounges and lay face down in a shiny, green bikini bottom. I only looked for a second or less, but I could feel the image in my body. While I was disconnecting the regulator from the old tank and setting up the new one, Mr. Rensdale introduced himself. He was a thin, handsome man, with dark hair and mustache. And he looked like about three or four of the actors I was seeing those nights in late movies after my parents went to bed. I liked him immediately. "What field are you in?" I asked him. He seemed so absolutely worldly there, his wry eyes and his East Coast accent. And he seemed old the way people did then. But I realized now he wasn't 50. "I, lad, am the owner of Rensdale Foundations, which my father founded." His whisper was rich with humor. "We make ladies undergarments. Lots of them." The dolly was loaded and I was ready to go. "Come after 4:00 next time if it's worth a martini to you, kid. And we'll do some career counseling." He gave me a thin smile and I left. Letting myself out of the dark downstairs, I did an odd thing. I stood still in the house. I had talked to her right here. I saw her breasts again in the bright light. No one knew where I was. The next house was an old block home gone to seed-- the lawn dirt, the shrubs dead, the windows brown with dust and cobwebs. I was fairly sure I had a wrong address and that the property was abandoned. I knocked on the greasy door, and after five minutes, a stooped, red-haired old man answered. This was Gil, and I have no idea how old he was that summer, but it was as old as you get. His skin, stretched tight and translucent on his gaunt body, was splattered with brown spots. On his hand, several had been picked raw. I pulled my dolly into the house and was hit by the roiling smell of dog hair and urine. I didn't kneel to wipe the wheels. "Right in here," the old man said, leading me back into the house toward a yellow light in the small kitchen where I could hear a radio chattering. He had his oxygen set up in the corner of the kitchen. It looked like he lived in the one room. There was a fur of fine, red dust on everything-- the range, the sink-- except half the kitchen table where he had his things arranged. I got busy changing out the tanks. Meanwhile, the old man sat down at the kitchen table and started talking. "I'm Gil Benson," his speech began, "and I'm glad to see you, David. My lungs got burned in France in 1919, and it took them 20 years to buckle." He spoke, like so many of my customers, in a hoarse whisper. "I've lived all over the world, including the three As-- Africa, Australia, and Alaska. My favorite place was Montreal, Canada, because I was in love there and married the woman, had children. My least favorite place is right here because of this. "One of my closest friends was Jack Kramer, the tennis player. That was many years ago. I've flown every plane made between the years 1928 and 1948. I don't fly anymore with all this." He indicated the oxygen equipment. "Sit down. Have a cookie." I had my dolly ready. "I shouldn't, sir," I said. "I've got a schedule and better keep it." "Grab that pitcher out of the fridge before you sit down. I made us some Kool-Aid. It's good." I opened his refrigerator. Except for the Tupperware pitcher, it was empty. Nothing. I put the pitcher on the table. "I really have to go," I said. "I'll be late." "Sit down," he said. "This is your last stop today. Have a snack." So began my visits with the old Gil Benson. He was my last delivery every fourth day that summer. And as far as I could tell, I was the only one to visit his wretched house. On one occasion, I placed one of the Oreos he gave me on the corner of my chair as I left, and it was there next time when I returned. Our visits became little three-part dramas-- my arrival and the bustle of intrusion, the snack and his monologue, his hysteria and weeping. I had "I've got to go" all over my face, but he would never read it. It always started with the story of long ago, an airplane, a homemade repair, an emergency landing, an odd coincidence, each part told with pride. But his voice would gradually change, slide into a kind of whine as he began an escalating series of complaints about his doctors, the insurance, his children, naming each of the four and relating their indifference, petty greed or cruelty. I nodded through all of this. I've got to go. I'd slide my chair back and he'd grab my wrist. By then, I could understand his children pushing him away and moving out of state. I wanted out. It's been easy floating the past couple of days. But the river winds back and forth in these big, long S-turns. And sometimes, I paddle maybe 10 miles to cover just one as the crow flies. Yesterday, at sunset, after a long, hot day, I pulled out and camped in a grassy field. I could see a ranch house about a mile in the distance. So the thought of being on private property did cross my mind. But like I say, the house was a mile away, and it was late. This morning I unzipped the tent, and the grass was covered with frost. My shoes, which I had left outside, were frozen stiff. So I got up slowly and just laid around until 10:00 or 11:00 looking at the scenery. I saw moose and beaver, bald eagles, Sandhill cranes, and many little birds I don't know by name. There was a little one in the willows by the river, and it was bright orange and yellow, like a parakeet you might buy in a pet store. So I was lying around thinking what a great place it was when a truck drove up and parked on a dirt road about a quarter mile away. And a man, a ranch foreman, Chuck Davis, came over to chew me out. Mrs. Kellen called me up and asked me to come down and please ask you to leave, which I have. The Kellens make their living-- or the operation of this ranch comes from selling hay that you're laying on right now. The ground that you've knocked down this side of the river is irrigating right now. You can look out there just 10 feet away from you and there's water. They're irrigating this, trying to put this up as hay. Do you have a lot of trouble with people trespassing? Yes, we do, at specific times of the year. Hell, I'm a hunter and a fisherman, a sportsman. And I like to go, when I get the time, to hunt and fish myself. But these people have paid a specific amount of money, and it's a large amount of money. They pay a large amount of taxes every year on this ground. And it's their right to say who comes and who goes on that property. Why do you have to come here? There's ground up there too for the public. From the Green River Lakes, there's millions and millions of acres of public ground, of national forest, of state ground. Why do you have to come on this specific piece of ground? It looked nice. [LAUGHS] Yeah, how long will it stay nice? How long will it continue to look nice if everybody comes down here-- and I'm not pointing a finger at you-- but if 10 people come through here and nine of them leave beer cans-- or even four of them-- every day, or build different fires and the fire ring is here, how long will this look nice? You've just got to draw the line somewhere. I apologized for my trespass and was quickly back on the river, paddling through some of the most beautiful country I'd ever seen and keeping my eye on both banks, the two lines I wouldn't cross again until sometime after dark. By mid-July, I had become tight and fit. I looked like a young boxer, and I tried not to think about anything. Backing up to the loading dock late on those days with a trunk of empties, I was full of animal happiness. And I moved with the measured deliberation the full day had given me. When I bent to the metal fountain beside the dock, gulping the water, I could feel it bloom on my back and my chest and come out along my hairline. Around this time, a terrible thing happened in my phone correspondence with Linda Enright. We stopped fighting. We'd talk about her family. The cookie business was taking off, but her father wouldn't let her take the car. He was stingy. I told her about my deliveries, the heat. As I listened to us talk, I stood and wondered, "Who are these people?" The other me wanted to interrupt to ask, "Hey, didn't we have sex? I mean, was that sexual intercourse? Isn't the world a little different for you now?" But I chatted with her. When the operator came on, I was crazy with Linda's indifference but unable to say anything but, "Take care. I'll call." Meanwhile, the summer assumed a regularity that was nothing but comfort. I drove my routes. I was used to sitting with Gil Benson and hearing his stories, pocketing the Oreos secretly to throw them from the truck later. I was used to Elizabeth Rensdale showing me her white breasts, posturing by the pool whenever she knew I was upstairs with her father. Driving the valley those long summer days, each window of the truck a furnace, listening to "Paperback Writer" and "Last Train to Clarksville," I delivered oxygen to the paralyzed and dying. And I felt so alive and on edge at every moment that I could've burst. I liked the truck, hopping up, unloading the hot cylinders at each address, and then driving to the next stop. I knew what I was doing and wanted no more. Rain broke the summer. The second week in August, I woke to the first clouds in 90 days. They massed and thickened. And by the time I left Sun City, it had begun, a crashing downpour. I didn't want to be late at the Rensdales. I was wiping down the tank in the covered entry when Elizabeth opened the door and disappeared back into the dark house. I was wet from the warm rain, and coming into the air-conditioned house ran a chill along my sides. When my eyes adjusted and I started backing up the stairway with a new cylinder, I saw Elizabeth sitting on the couch in the den, her knees together up under her chin, watching me. She was looking right at me. "This is the worst summer of my entire life," she said. "Sorry?" I said, coming down a step, "What'd you say?" "David, is that you?" Mr. Rensdale called from his room. His voice was a ghost. I liked him very much, and it had become clear over the summer that he was not going back to Pennsylvania. Elizabeth Rensdale whispered across the room to me, "I don't want to be here." She closed her eyes and rocked her head. I stood the cylinder on the dolly and went over to her. I didn't like leaving it there on the carpet. She was sitting in her underpants on the couch. "He's dying," she said to me. "Oh," I said, trying to make it simply a placeholder, let her know I'd heard her. She put her face in her hands and lay over on the couch. I dropped to a knee, and putting my hand on her shoulder, I said, "What can I do?" This was the secret side that I had suspected from this summer. Elizabeth Rensdale put her hand on mine and turned her face to mine so slowly that I felt my heart drop a gear, grinding now heavily uphill in my chest. Mr. Rensdale called my name again. Elizabeth's face on mine, so close and open, made it possible for me to move my hand around her back and pull her to me. It was like I knew what I was doing. I didn't take my eyes from hers when she rolled onto her back and guided me onto her. I wish I could get this right here, but there was no chance. We stayed together for a moment afterward, and my eyes opened and focused. She was still looking at me, holding me. And her look was simply serious. Her father called, "David?" from upstairs again, and I realize he must have been calling steadily. Mr. Rensdale lay white and twisted in the bed. He looked the way the dying look, his face parched and sunken, the mouth a dry orifice, his eyes little spots of water. I saw him acknowledge me with a withering look, more power than you'd think could rise from such a body. And I moved in the room deliberate with shame, avoiding his eyes. He rolled his hand in a little flip toward the bed table and his glass of water. Who knows what happened in me then? Because I stood in the little bedroom with Mr. Rensdale, and then I just rolled the dolly and the expired tank out and down the stairs. I didn't go to him. I didn't hand him the glass of water. I burned. Who would ever know what I have done? Sand Wash is way out in the Utah desert. You drive two and a half hours on a dirt road. And when you get there, it's a big canyon, a dry wash cutting down through shale stone badlands, and emptying into the Green River. The river at this point is slow and flat, the color of coffee with milk, and just about as warm. If you stand by the river, you might see a Great Blue Heron, a pair of Golden Eagles, a beaver, an otter. The river is a thin, snake-like oasis. But if you turn away from the water and look back up at the cliffs and barren plateaus, you might think you're now living on a dry, god-forsaken planet. It's just the Utah desert, close to where Rubin Farr buried his cat. Close to nowhere. This desert is controlled by the Bureau of Land Management. They manage the grazing permits, and they give out 10,000 floating permits every year to people who want to make the six- or seven-day trip down through Desolation Canyon. There's a BLM ranger stationed there, where you put your boat in the water. Her name is Michelle Sturm. She's six feet tall and carries a clipboard. She checks your permit, checks your equipment-- first aid kit, extra paddles, life jacket. She jokes around, doesn't give you a hard time. And it's easy to see she's not from around here, that she's on some kind of leave of absence, hiding out in the wilderness. I came off of working with homeless for two and a half years-- mentally ill adults and single males and hungry people and low income families in downtown San Jose, California, and was really just tired and not enough joy in my life. I wanted to be in the middle of nowhere. So the first night I was at Sand Wash, I really felt at home and comfortable, and this was the right place. And the light and the wind-- the factors that are really important and have bearing on your life are real significant factors, things you have absolutely no control over. And you can write by the moon at night. At night, these loud-- I don't know what they are-- sort of airplane-type bugs. But I don't think they're dragonflies, but something else just comes zooming in and zooming by the bedroom window and checking things out. And the bats are really fun. They come really close. And I hear boaters. And I hear people coming down the gravel road, and that's always a little apprehensive, as I don't know what they want. Are you going to go back to working with homeless people? I don't think so. I don't think so. I think you need to have a strong faith and religious belief to do that kind of work. And I think I tend to see it more as a political situation rather than a religious situation. And so it just really produces more anger than saintliness or something. So you're angry. Angry. What are you upset about? What bothers-- Well, the thing that bothers you is that you and everyone you're working with is doing as much as you possibly can. And yet, you can't do enough. And someone else has asked you for something else, and you can't do it. And you learn to have to say no. That's a pretty dismal way to operate. You don't want to have to operate always feeling your boundaries, and if I just keep stretching and stretching, I'm going to break, and so I have to protect myself so I don't break. And then I let all these people down. You see? What you see are shadows in the moonlight, the mouth of the canyon, the eerie shapes of red rock walls, the figure of a tall woman walking home to bed. Scott Carrier on the Green River in Utah. Coming up, finding a dead body and not finding one. In a minute, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, bring you a variety of stories on that theme. Today's show, The Promise of Summer. And rather than bring you a big bunch of stories this hour, we're interlacing two stories throughout the hour. One from Scott Carrier traveling down the Green River in Utah. One from Ron Carlson, a short story called "Oxygen" from his new book of stories, Hotel Eden. Before we get back to this story is a quick warning to listeners that Ron Carlson's story contains adult situations. No explicit language, but adult situations that might not be right for every listener. So the last month of that summer, I began seeing Elisabeth Rensdale every day. I told my parents I was at the library because I wanted it to sound like a lie and have them know it was a lie. I came in after midnight. The library closed at 9:00. Elizabeth and I were hardy and focused lovers. Knowing we had two hours, we used every minute of it, and we became experts at each other. We never went out for a Coke. We never took a break for a glass of water. We rarely spoke. There was admiration and curiosity in my touch and affection and gratitude in hers, or so I assumed. And I was pleased, even proud, at the time that there was so little need to speak. Meanwhile, Gil Benson had begun clinging to me worse than ever, and those prolonged visits were full of agony and desperation. I had never had such a thing happen before. And until it did, I thought of myself as a compassionate person. I watch myself arrive at his terrible house and wheel the tank toward the door, and I search myself for compassion, the smallest shred of fellow feeling, kindness, affection, pity. But all I found was repulsion, impatience. Give me the truck keys and a job to do. I had no compassion for Gil Benson. The Sunday before Labor Day, I didn't call Linda Enright. In each minute of the day, Linda Enright was in my mind. I saw her there in her green sweater by her father's rolltop. We always talked about what we were wearing, and she always said the green sweater, saying it innocently, as if wearing the sweater that I'd helped pull over her head that night was of little note, a coincidence, and not the most important thing that she'd say in the whole $8 call. And I'd say, just Levi's and a t-shirt, hoping she'd imagine the belt, the buckle, the trouble it could all be in the dark. I saw her sitting in the afternoon shadow, maybe writing some notes in her calendar or reading, and right over there, the telephone. I could get up and hit the phone booth in less than 10 minutes and make that phone ring, have her reach for it. But I didn't. I'll let her sit there until the last sunlight rocked through the den, broke, and disappeared. The last day of my job in the summer of 1967, I thought-- and this is the truth-- I thought for the first time of what I was going to say last to Elizabeth Rensdale. I tried to imagine it, and my imagination failed. When I climbed from her bed the nights I'd gone to her, it was just that-- climbing out, dressing, and crossing to the door. She didn't get up. This wasn't Casablanca or High Noon or Captain Blood. This was getting laid in a hot summer desert town by your father's oxygen delivery man. There was no way to make it anything else. Some of my customers knew I was leaving and made kind remarks or shook my hand or had their wife hand me an envelope with a twenty in it. I smiled and nodded gratefully, and then turned, business-like, to the dolly and left. These were strange goodbyes because there was no question that we would ever see each other again. It had been a summer, and I had been their oxygen guy. But there was more. I was young and they were ill. I stood in the bedroom doors in Sun City and said, take care. And I moved to the truck and felt something, but I couldn't even today tell you what it was. To the people who didn't know, who said, "See you next week, David," I didn't correct them. I said, "See you," and I left their homes too. It all had me on edge. The rain moved in for the day, persistent and even, and the temperature stalled and hovered at about 100. I thought Gil would be pleased to see me so soon in the day. But I surprised him, knocking at the door for five full minutes before he unlocked it, looking scared. Though I had told him I would eventually be going back to college, I hadn't told him this was my last day. There was no chatter right off the bat, no sitting down at the table. He just moved things out of the way as I wheeled the oxygen in and changed tanks. He stood to one side, leaning against the counter. When I finished, he made no move to keep me there, so I just kept going. At the front door, I said, "There you go. Good luck, Gil." His name quickened him, and he came after me with short steps in his slippers. "Well, yes," he started as always. "I wouldn't need this stuff at all if I'd stayed out of the war." And he was off and cranking. But when I went outside, he followed me into the rain. "You've got to go," I told him. "It's wet out here." His wet skin in the light looked raw, the spots on his forehead brown and liquid. Under his eyes, the skin was purple. I'd let him get too close to the truck, and he grabbed the door handle. "I wasn't sick a day in my life," he said. "Ask my wife." I put my hand on his on the door handle, and I knew I wasn't going to be able to pry it off without breaking it. Gil Benson pulled the truck door open and with surprising dexterity, he stepped up into the vehicle, sitting on all my paperwork. I looked at Gil, shrunken and purple in the darkness of the cab. He looked like the victim of a fire. "Gil," I said. "I'm late." I looked at him, but he did not look at me. He sat still, his eyes timid, frightened, smug. It was an expression you use when you want someone to hit you. I started the truck, hoping that would scare him, but he did not move. His eyes were still floating, and it looked like he was grinning, but it wasn't a grin. I kicked my door open and jumped down into the red mud and went around the front of the truck. When I opened his door, he did not turn or look at me, which was fine with me. I lifted Gil like a bride, and he clutched me, his face wet against my face. I carried him to the front door. He was light and bony like an old bird. And I was strong, and I felt strong, but I could tell this was an insult the old man didn't need. When I stood him there, he would not let go, his hands clasped around my neck. And I peeled his hands apart carefully, easily, and I folded them back toward him so he wouldn't snag me again. "Goodbye, Gil," I said. He was an old man alone in the desert. He did not acknowledge me. It happened in Desolation Canyon, a wilderness, a place of natural forces. But there was nothing about the river except a few easily negotiated rapids, nothing about the weather except a strong gust of wind at sunset, and nothing about the night, except the pulses of some distant heat lightning. There was nothing to explain the blue plastic ground cloth rolled around the body of a small, 16-year-old boy. This plastic, set on the floor of a rubber raft, the raft pulled up on a beach below a dirt road where the airplane would land, the young friend of the boy asleep on the sand, bleached blond hair, necklace, smooth, tense skin. A child. This man, an instructor, who came to fly the body out of the canyon. The boy who died was a 16-year-old student. And he died yesterday, on the seventh day of the course. He was discovered by a fellow student at his campsite at about 10:50 PM with no apparent pulse or breathing. And cardiopulmonary resuscitation was performed for 44 minutes. As far as you know, the death didn't have anything to do with the river or being on the river. I'm quite sure that wasn't the case. Do you have any ideas of what was the cause? At this point, no, I don't. I'm sure that the coroner's report will tell us what it was, but I can't say. I couldn't speculate. What's it like? What's it-- I don't know how to ask that question, but what's it like when one of your students dies? Traumatic, heartrending, for not only the instructors but fellow students. It's been a difficult 24 hours. It'll continue to be so. You know, a river has its own space and time. Earth dissolves into water, water into air. And death is like a river. You stand next to it, and all the words fall out of your head. I radioed Nadine that the rain had slowed me up, and I wouldn't make it back before 5:00. "No problem, sonny boy," she said. "Over." "I'll hit the Rensdales and on in. Over." "Sonny boy," she said. "Just pick up there. Mr. Rensdale died yesterday. Remember the portable unit, OK? And good luck at school. Stop in if you're down for Christmas break. Over." I waited a minute to over and out to Nadine while the news subsided in me. It was on Scottsdale Road at Camelback where I turned right. That corner will always be that radio call. "Copy. Over," I said. In front of the Rensdale's townhouse, I felt odd going to the door with the empty dolly. I rang the bell, and after a moment, Elizabeth appeared. She was barefoot in jeans and a t-shirt, and she looked at me. "I'm sorry about your father," I said. "This is tough." She stared at me, and I held the gaze. "I mean it. I'm sorry." She drifted back into the house. I pulled the dolly up the stairs to Mr. Rensdales room. It'd been taken apart a little bit, the bed stripped, our gear all standing in the corner. With Mr. Rensdale gone, you could see what the room was, just a little box in the desert. "I'm going back Friday." Elizabeth had come into the room. "I guess I'm going back to school." "Good," I said. I didn't know what I was saying. I started to say something else, but she pointed at me. "Don't come. Just do what you do, but don't come to the funeral. You don't have to." "I want to," I said. Her tone had hurt, made me mad. I walked to the bed and put my hands on her shoulders. "Don't." I bent and looked into her face. "Don't." I went to pull her toward me to kiss, and she leaned away sharply. "Don't, David." But I followed her over onto the bed, and though she squirmed tight as a knot, I held her beside me, adjusting her, drawing her back against me. About a minute later, she said, "What are you doing?" "It's OK," I said. Then she put her hand on my wrist, stopping it. "Don't," she said. "What are you doing?" "Elizabeth," I said, kissing at her nape. She rose to an elbow and looked at me, her face rock hard, unfamiliar. Our eyes were locked. "Is this what you came for?" She lay back and thumbed off her pants. "Is it?" "Yes," I said. It was the truth, and there was pleasure in saying it. "Then go ahead." She moved to the edge of the bed. She didn't move when I pulled away, just lay there looking at me. I remember it as the moment in this life when I was farthest from any of my feelings. I gathered the empty cylinder and the portable gear with the strangest thought. It's going to take me 20 years to figure out who I am now. I could feel Elizabeth Rensdale's hatred as I would feel it dozens of times a season for many years. It's a kind of dread for me that has become a rudder and kept me out of other troubles. The next year at school, I used it to treat Linda Enright correctly, as a gentleman, and keep my distance. I had the chance to win her back, and I did not take it. I left for my junior year of college at Missoula three days later. The evening before my flight, my parents took me to dinner at a steakhouse on a mesa, a Western place where they cut your tie off if you wear one. My parents were proud of me, they said, working hard like this all summer away from my friends. I was changing, they said. And they could tell it was for the better. Much, much later, I drove the dark streets. The radio played a steady rotation of exactly the same songs heard today on every 50,000 watt station in this country. Every fifth song was The Supremes. I knew where I was going. Beyond the bright, rough edge of the lights of Mesa, I drove until the pavement ended. And then I dropped onto the red clay roads and found Gil Benson's house. I knocked and called for minutes. Out back, I kicked through the debris and weeds until I found one of the back bedroom windows unlocked. And I slid it open and climbed inside. In the stale heat, I knew immediately that the house was abandoned. I called Gil's name and picked my way carefully to the hall. The lights did not work. I wasn't scared, but I was something else. Standing in that dark room where I had palmed old Oreos all summer long, I now had proof-- hard proof-- that I had lost Gil Benson. He hadn't made it back, and I couldn't wish him back. At home, my suitcases were packed. Some big thing was closing down in me. I had spent the summer as someone else, someone I knew I didn't care for, and I would be glad when he left town. We would see each other from time to time, but I also knew he was no friend of mine. I eased along the empty roadways trying simply to gather what was left, to think. But it was like trying to fold a big blanket alone. I kept having to start over. The sun is going down, and three families are camped beside a trout stream in southern Utah. The women are talking to each other by the picnic table. The men are watching the children play in the water. Two of the women are sisters. One has just had an affair with a man in Los Angeles. On the phone, she swore to her sister that she would tell her husband and insist on a divorce. But now, she's thinking she will not say anything ever about the affair and maybe wait a while on the divorce. Her sister is swaying back and forth with a baby in her arms. This morning, the baby stuck her right hand in a cup of hot coffee and cried for hours. Now she's asleep, but her fingers have big, balloon-like blisters that will break and heal slowly, leaving long, white scars. The third woman is two days pregnant and thinking about taking a nap. Of the men, one is trying to decide when would be the best time to drive into town and call his broker. One is thinking about running up the mountain to smoke a joint and watch the sun go down. The other is looking at the water wondering if the fish might like a grasshopper. The children are playing and fighting over a toy sailboat. The three-year-old boy is soaking wet and nearly out of his mind with the possibilities. The five-year-old girl is standing on the bank, making up rules and shouting out orders and dropping lettuce and cheese from her sandwich. There are little birds in the trees and big birds on the rock walls of the canyon-- red rock walls in the shadow of the afternoon sun. A dirt road comes around and down and crosses over the stream, and in the pool below the road, a pale snake slides silently into the water and swims to the other side, holding something rather large in its mouth. There are three cars, all white, and there's an Indian-- or rather, the ghost of an Indian who lived and died in this spot-- sitting cross-legged on the hood of the station wagon. This is the beginning of a story. The story is about how the husband realizes his wife has been unfaithful. And it's about how the Indian died and what the snake had in its mouth and how the two-day-old life inside the mother grows and is born and becomes a beautiful young woman who paints the poems of Rilke on the desert blacktop highway. The sun is going down, and three families are camped beside a trout stream in southern Utah. This is the beginning of a story, but there isn't enough time to tell it. Scott Carrier, and Ron Carlson before him. I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. A quick warning to everybody who's listening to this podcast version of our show. There are some words that we have unbeeped. If you don't want to hear that, maybe you're listening with kids, you can get a beeped version at our website, ThisAmericanLife.org. So Chana Joffe-Walt, one of our producers, has been reporting this story. It's going be the whole hour today. It's a really good one. Here she is. When Vivian started reading about the men in Hollywood, and the media, and their sexual transgressions, she thought of the men in her past who had behaved poorly, the man who assaulted her in her 20s, and the others-- A few unwanted kisses over the years-- I mean, truly unwanted, drunken guys just sort of pushing themselves on me, and, you know, the usual array of jokes and comments, and this and that. She thought of them, and she thought of Don, her partner of 23 years. And Vivian wondered. Don was a boss to dozens of women. He ran AlterNet, a progressive news website, and he was a flirt. It was easy for me to imagine that Don had missed unspoken signals-- being a little too present, a little too close, a little too eager, a little too-- you know, those kinds of things. She'd seen it. She'd seen Don's attention make women uncomfortable at parties, in restaurants. And what would end up happening is I would catch her eye, and we would roll our eyes together-- like oh, God, men --there would be a sort of a bond there, and things would go on. And this is like Don flirting with some woman in front of you. Yeah. He was a flirt? Yes, I knew he was a flirt. I also really knew that that didn't have anything to do with us. That had to do with a need for attention. Did you feel embarrassed by it? Of course, of course. But it pass quickly. It was usually very easy to move things along. Then I could step in. I could step between. I could engage her in conversation, whatever, right. Would you talk to Don about it? Rarely, because I didn't think I'd be believed. By him. By him. I think he'd sort of laugh it off, and say, oh, you just don't get it. It's all in fun-- which I do think was his attitude-- which I know was his attitude. So a couple of months ago, when Don told Vivian that BuzzFeed News was writing a story about him, Vivian was not surprised. People who used to work for Don at AlterNet were accusing Don of sexually harassing them. Vivian read the article. A number of women detailed encounters with Don-- unwanted advances, inappropriate touching, sending them explicit e-mails. Vivian recognized Don in some parts; others felt like they were describing a person she'd never met. Mostly, she had a particular experience reading that story that actually had nothing to do with Don. A memory came back to me from when I was 28 that I'm sure I hadn't thought about since it happened. She was training to be a psychologist with a bunch of young trainees at a clinic. She was in the back room where the staff took breaks and wrote notes. The supervisor was a man, as virtually all the supervisors at the time were, in his 40s, maybe even early 50s. Vivian was on the couch with a friend, a woman in her 40s, and the two of them watched as many of the young psychology interns, women Vivian's age, in their 20s, crowded around the supervisor. They're surrounding him, and sort of hanging on his words, and leaning in, and it's just got that-- no offense, his words weren't that interesting, you know. It's like, they were fine. But, oh my God, and he was eating it up. You could just see he loved this. And then I'm sitting in the back of the room, on the couch with this other woman, Lynn, and she looks up and she goes, hm, the cupcakes. Vivian lost it. She loved this word. It was perfect. And you understood immediately that that was meant to refer to the women who were surrounding the supervisor. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, and I was really proud that she was basically saying, you're not one of them. You know, I did not want to be one of them. She was basically saying that you're cool and they're not. Exactly, exactly. Like we're grown up women, and they're not. Oh, God, yeah. That's who I want to be. That is where her mind when reading about her partner of two decades in the news-- the cupcakes. Vivian felt full of regret. She regretted her contempt for the cupcakes. She regretted her acceptance that this was the way it would always be between men and women. Men would have power, and women would have to deal with that. What I found so interesting about this was, for Vivian, learning the news about Don sparked this memory that was not about Don, but in some ways it felt like it had everything to do with Don. It explained something to her about who she is, and how she is, and choices and assumptions she's made in her life. Now I want to tell you about another group of people I've been talking to, the women who worked for Don, including women who say they were harassed by him. I talked with them, and they each told me their Don stories, but they also did the same thing Vivian did. They brought up specific experiences from their past, things that happened years ago. Because, for them, that stuff in the past feels related to their experiences with Don. Over the last few months of Me Too stories, I keep wanting to hear more from the women who were in the news reports, their broader history, not just the bad experience they had with one man at an office or on a movie set, but the other moments before the harassment, because there is no Me Too moment that is actually separate from the rest of our lives. So today's show, we're going to do that. Five women tell their stories, Vivian and four women who worked for her partner, Don Hazen, over the course of many years, at different times, with a wide range of experiences. We're going to hear from each of them one at a time about their experiences with Don, and their experiences before Don. Don resigned from his job a few months ago, and told me the board that oversees AlterNet insisted he couldn't talk on the record. I can tell you some about his version of events, but you won't be hearing from him. It's not a story about him, it's about them, these five women. What these women are doing is what I think so many of us have been doing lately. They're doing it in ways I found brave and vulnerable. They're re-evaluating who they are, how they've related to men, how they came to think of certain things as normal. It's a reckoning, not just for men, for women. It's This American Life. I'm Chana Joffe-Walt. Stay with us. This is probably evident by now, but just to say, we will talk about sex in this show, not just its existence, but some of the specifics. And there are some moments of abuse, so take this as a heads up. OK. The women who worked for Don at AlterNet, beginning with Act 1, "Deanna." The list started when Deanna was eight years old. The first time it was Face from the A-Team. Deanna got a postcard of him that year when her family went to Universal Studios. She put a puffy red heart sticker on it, took it with her during the day-- --slept with it at night, and I actually-- and I'm eight. And I felt like I was going to die if I never met him. I actually thought I would die. I was like, I will cease to exist if I don't get to meet this person. The next one made her cry. He was 12, so was she. Deanna called her Aunt Rose from the basement, distressed. She'd written him letters, dedicated a song to him on the radio, and nothing, no response. Aunt Rose was quick to deliver advice. This is the way boys are. They don't understand you. They are dumb. They do not get you. You're strong and smart and independent, and that just is never going to make sense to men. Aunt Rose explained it would be Deanna's job to make sense of things to men. If she was going to have relationships with them, it would never be easy, and it would be on her to figure it out. Boys were too dumb to do it for themselves. Jay's dad was a minister. Jay liked Monty Python, and had a car, and very few opinions. He was incredibly sweet, and he was very much whatever you want to do. Well, what do you want to do? You know, not super-motivated on his own. I was like, come along with me. When Deanna went away to college, Jay said, I'll come, too. When she broke up with him, his mom called her mom to ask if there was any way they could get back together. Chris worked at the dollar store in the mall. Chris wanted more from his life. Deanna was 19, and got him a job on the other side of the mall at a Sam Goody she used to work at. She wanted more for him, too. He was funny, and moody, and he was the first person Deanna had sex with. Mark wanted a job in film or TV, but nobody wanted to give him film or TV jobs. It was his idea to move to New York, and once they were there, Deanna got a job first as a bookkeeper. Mark got no job. She called his friends, his friends' friends, and found Mark an IT job, which he hated, so she found him another job at a magazine, and he worked there for the next 10 years. Deanna moved out three weeks before 9/11. There was the German, the Israeli with the burger joint, men seemed to want wives, and Deanna didn't want to be a wife. Men also seemed to want her, but had no thoughts about what else that might look like. They don't get you, her mom would say on the phone. You have to show them how to be with you. The Iraq War was starting, and so was the presidential race. Deanna volunteered for the Howard Dean campaign. He had a rally in New York before her 28th birthday. And while she was at the rally-- This guy comes up to me, and he's got a reporter's pad, and he said, hey, after he's done talking, you know, can I talk to you? And I said, sure. And he said, you're a volunteer? An I said, yeah. And we talked for a really long time, and I actually got into an argument with him about Dennis Kucinich. He was pro. She understood, but come on, that guy could never win. And then he said, well, you know, can I have your email address? I'll send you the article when it's done. And I was like, sure, you know, what are you writing for, or whatever. And he was like, oh, I'm the Executive Editor of AlterNet. Don Hazen. AlterNet was not a major publication, but Deanna knew it. She read it all the time. The next day, Don sent her his article, very pro-Dean, and a personal note to her. See how much you influenced me already. And I was like, well, that's cool. I just convinced this, like, editor guy. That's awesome. I was like, that's really cool. Like, what made you change your mind? It started up this email conversation. He asked about her. Was she hoping to get into politics? What was her job? Did she like it? What else did she want to do? It seemed really kind, and a little bit flirtatious, but I was fine with that. Like, I liked having this super-interesting, compelling man interested in me. Don lived in California, but had an apartment in New York for work. Deanna couldn't quite guess his age. She thought maybe mid-40s. He was 56. He'd be coming out to New York again. Did she want to get dinner? I kind of figured it was a date, and I did feel flirtatious with him. I did feel like, ooh, this is fun. It was fun. He walked her home. They talked about the party she was planning for her 28th birthday, where she should have it. They made out outside her apartment, and the next day, Don asked her out again, dinner, and this time, back to his apartment. They were making out, got naked, and when she felt him push inside her, Deanna was startled. It was abrupt, and he wasn't wearing a condom. In Deanna's experience, someone always went and got the condom. That had never happened before. She felt slow, like she was floating in a silent conversation with herself. Uh-- should I say something? Uh-- I think it's OK. I mean, I don't really want to stop things. He's older, she thought. Guys like that aren't getting around. Be nice to him. You're on birth control. You're not getting axe murdered right now. You're having a good time. You're fine. All right, let's just do this. It was new and adventurous, and that's who Deanna wanted to be. Plus, she felt powerful in that moment. This is something that I am bestowing upon him, this youthful gift, this youthful body or something. Like, I did feel that way, and kind of like I was doing him a favor. And he seemed very, like, grateful, and I had not had that experience before. With 25-year-old boys. No, as it turns out, different-- real different. So, yeah, I definitely felt like this was a rare thing for him. Uh huh. She thought about the condom thing again on the way home. Deanna's story about Don, that he was a good guy, a grown-up, self-actualized man who was taken by her was also a story about herself. She was powerful, interesting, could change his mind on important issues. The fact that he never even thought to ask about protection-- It just didn't make sense. And so my default was to trust that it was going to be OK. It did not make sense to me, and I made sense of it, and that carried through the entire relationship. Don started giving her work. He wanted her to help manage a big project for AlterNet. Deanna said yes. Don thought she was a poor fit for her corporate job. She agreed. When he was in town, they'd get dinner, spend the night or a weekend, which she loved, and then he'd leave, which she also loved. Don does not need things from her as her other boyfriends had. It was the opposite. He set things up for her. He had an apartment for her to crash in, he had contacts she should meet, he bought her first Mac laptop, he helped her quit smoking, dinner was on him, and he did it all without demanding she be a wife. It was seven months later that Deanna learned Don had a wife, a partner, actually, a distinction without a difference as far as Deanna was concerned, since Don explained that this was the woman he'd been with for years, Vivian, who you heard from earlier. They owned a house together, and she didn't know about Deanna. She says it was one of their first fights. I can't believe you lied to me. And he was like, I didn't lie to you. I never lied to you. And I was like, lying by omission is still lying. And he was like, you knew. And I'll never forget this word, he said, you've been colluding with me all along. And I was like, I don't think so. But she went back to old emails to references Don would make to his domestic situation. Maybe she hadn't wanted to know. She stopped sleeping with him. She kept working for him. By now, they were working on a book together. That meant seeing him, and when she saw him, she'd inevitably sleep with him again. She liked him-- their conversations, their connection. He wasn't thrown by me in a way that felt like other men had been. He wasn't-- he just wasn't afraid of me. He saw her as she wanted to be seen. She stayed in the secret affair, ignored his daily phone calls home to Vivian. Deanna wanted more time with Don, more contact, as he did with her. He could be annoying about it. She started a folder called his, where are you emails. He didn't like lack of contact, or the wrong kind of contact. He would say, why did you email me about personal stuff, and there's no work info in here? Like, I need to know what's happening. I need to know where things are. I need to know what we're working on. And I'm like, OK, so I'd send him the work email. Why isn't there anything emotional here? Don't you love me? I guess you don't care about me. Like, he would send these, like, super-victimy emails. That was also the point where he started talking to me more about the staff, and his frustrations at work, and his, I don't want to do all this anymore, but everyone that works for me is so incompetent that I have to be in there all the time doing all these things for them. By now, Deanna had met a lot of Don's staff. He'd started flying her out to California as a consultant for AlterNet. So she'd see him in his office. He was just a very demanding boss, just yelling at people, like, why can't you get this right, and what's wrong with you? Deanna tried to make sense of this behavior. He was angry and insecure. This was not the easy-going, confident man she'd signed up for. She wanted to be supportive, the way he'd been supportive of her, but this felt all new to her. If we had been to an event together, he would watch how much I was drinking, and would accuse me later of drinking too much and being too tired to want to have sex with him, and starting a fight about that. What do you mean? Why not? Why are you tired? Like, I had a really long day. And he was like, well, you knew you were seeing me tonight. Like, why did you have a long day, like, why did you do so much? And I'm like, well, one, I was working for you. And two-- you know, and I would defend myself. And then he would get really assertive, and red-faced, eyes bulging, you know, veins popping, and he was scary as shit when he was angry. Deanna started giving in to sex. Not I don't feel like it, but I love you sex. This was sex to end a fight. Having sex could shut down the behavior that was not making sense, the parts that did not fit into Deanna's story of a powerful woman who was having adventures with a man who was not challenged by her power. Act 2, "The Dinner." Onnesha had just started at AlterNet. She was still getting a lay of the land. She was bright, ambitious, ready for her chance, and here it was. The staff was friendly. The boss, Don, was too sometimes. Don was very mercurial, very, very moody. Sometimes it would be, like, compliments and praise; other times it would just-- he would be, like, furious about the pettiest thing. But she generally escaped his anger. Onnesha learned early how to anticipate his moods, keep it professional. She kept her distance. A couple months in, the whole AlterNet staff got together for some meetings. Everyone came. Don flew a couple of people out from New York, including a consultant for AlterNet named Deanna. Onnesha didn't know Deanna really. She seemed nice. After the meetings, they all went out to dinner, and Onnesha saw that Deanna was sitting next to Don, but made nothing of that. It was Onnesha's colleague, Laura, who noticed it first. Here's Laura. During that dinner, I glanced over and noticed that she was cutting up the meat on Don's plate, like his steak or something, and I was just like what-- I was just like, what is happening? This is so strange to me. Cutting his meat, like she was leaning over his plate? Yeah. Yeah, they were sitting right next to each other in a tight-- you know, it was a big table, but a crowded restaurant. So they were sitting very close together, and she was just, like, leaning over, like it was her plate. But I mean, it's not normal. It's just not normal. It's just like, why would he need that? Why would she need to do that? Why was he letting her do that? Did he ask her to do it? I don't know. I mean, there was something about it that was just very profoundly disturbing. Oh, it was so weird. Oh, she's, like, cutting his meat for him. Onnesha eventually noticed it, too, and she could not figure out what is up with this woman. I just don't understand this dynamic. Like, the manual I had constructed on how to navigate and deal with Don, I was just like flipping through all the pages, I was like, nope, nope, nope, what, no. I have no guide for this, where to place this behavior. Laura couldn't place it either. There's really no rationalization. I could think of no possible reason for that to be a thing happening right at that moment that made sense beyond, they're sleeping together. But it still didn't make sense. After that dinner, Laura and Onnesha left, and never mentioned it. They didn't talk to each other about it, or anyone else in the office. Onnesha says it just didn't feel like fun office gossip. It felt like something she didn't want anything to do with. She didn't know anything about the woman sitting in that chair next to Don, but Onnesha had always known she did not want to be in that chair. Act 3, "Onnesha." Most other girls quit being friends with boys earlier, but Onnesha was 13, and she still liked her friends. That summer, she hung out with the same boys she always had, in the same places-- the kitchen, her friend's basement playroom, or-- We would all go to the pool together, and I had this tie dyed bathing suit, this one-piece. And you know, like, most of my other friends were, like, wearing bikinis. But you know, it was like, no, I'm good. At the snack bar, they would get popsicles. You know, there would always be, like, talk about the scene at the pool, you know, like, talking about different girls, that would occasionally be part of a conversation. I think they probably reined it in when I was around, but there would occasionally be comments. And so they were, like, they had named someone The Hypnotizer. Like, there was this title for some woman. It would have been nothing if it was like the other girls they talked about, a passing thing. But this one persisted for weeks. It got to a point, I recall, where they talked about it enough that I was like, oh, who is she? You know, I wanted to be in on it. I was, like, show her to me, you know. And they were all cryptic about it. They were like, oh The Hypnotizer, The Hypnotizer. Oh, she's here. Or, like, did you see The Hypnotizer. And I can't remember how I found out, but eventually I found out it was me. It was the first time Onnesha had the feeling. There was her, and there was someone else she hadn't known was there, a person who looked good to these boys, her friends. I guess a part of me was pleased by that, but the more prevalent feeling was like whiplash. They were talking about me in front of me. It's like there was the me that was present and there and interacting with them, and then there was this other separate, objectified body. It just feels like this whole other person enters the room. Another person who is you? Yeah. Well, or I guess, fundamentally, I felt the same. But suddenly, I had to reckon with the fact that I did not look the same to other people. It was obvious to Onnesha how to reckon with that. She needed to crush that other person. She did not want to wear the tie dye bathing suit ever again. She slouched. She wore baggy clothes. It wasn't like a decision or anything, it was just instinct. She watched the girls in bikinis that summer, and considered if they somehow had the opposite instinct, or maybe they had made a decision to actively try to merge the two girls, the one with breasts and the one from before. It really seemed easy for some of them, like they welcomed it. And a part of me wishes that I could do that, sort of own it, you know, and, like, use it like a power. And it's just never struck me as a power. It feels like a false power. It feels like if that is somehow getting me attention, like it could turn. Like, that's not a safe kind of power to traffic in. By the time Onnesha met Don, she wouldn't have been able to say if wearing loose clothing was her fashion sense or strategy. She was 23 years old. She'd been guarding against that separate person, The Hypnotizer, for a decade by that point. AlterNet was Onnesha's first real job, the first time she had a desk that was hers, the first time she learned a male colleague was getting paid more than her for the same work, the first time she asked for a raise from her boss, Don, which did not go how Onnesha expected. Yeah, so I, like, build this whole case, and I get in there, and I'm nervous. I have my opening foray where I'm just like, you know, I've been doing x and y, and the quality of the work I've been doing, how I've been working really hard, and I'm like, you know, and it's hard to survive in this city on such a low salary. He just, like, latched onto that. And he kind of leaned in, and was like, oh, are you having trouble paying rent? And I remember that so specifically, because it was like, my rent. It was so oddly personal, and unnecessary, and out of left field, and I was completely disarmed. And I didn't know how to respond. And I think I just sort of stuttered, and was like, no, it's not that. He wasn't offering to pay her rent directly, just did she need a salary increase to help pay her rent, which Onnesha did not want to talk about. I don't remember whether I said no, I'm not having trouble paying rent. I think I'd tried to avoid answering that, because I didn't want-- I felt like that was none of his business. But when I tried to shift the conversation back to this is about being compensated, I don't remember if he got angry angry, but he was definitely visibly displeased. And he did not want to give me a raise. Instead, he offered her a title change. Wait, but had you-- what would have happened had you said, yeah, I am having trouble paying my rent. He would have won. What do you mean, he would have won? He would have won a little corner of more power over me. Wait, but would he have paid it? Would you have-- Probably. --gotten money. He probably would have. Oh, so you would have won. You would have gotten more money. No, I would have lost. Onnesha felt like Don was not talking to her, but to The Hypnotizer, that he did not want to engage her as a professional discussing her compensation, but as an attractive young woman struggling with her rent. He didn't want to be a boss paying for her work, but a savior paying for her life. Onnesha didn't want that kind of help. Maybe it's kind of petty, but I was like, you are not going to win. Like, you don't get to have this. So she won, but she didn't get a raise. Act 4, "The Cliff." The summer of Onnesha's first year at AlterNet, Don left for several weeks of sabbatical. A friend had offered Don the use of his vacation house in Big Sur, California. He headed out, and wrote Deanna, asking her to join him. It's the cliff of the universe, he wrote, what someone calls the greatest meeting of land and sea. Deanna wrote back, bring me soon, please. Don flew her out, picked her up from the airport, and they drove to the house together. We went to bed and started fooling around, and he stops, and he says, we probably shouldn't have sex. And I said, how come? Don said he had an STI, a sexually transmitted infection. He'd had it for a long time, hadn't had symptoms in years. And I was just started, like, I actually got dizzy. I'm like, hold up, what? Wait. We have been having sex without condoms for two years, and now you're telling me that you-- and he was like, it's not a big deal. I've had it since I was 16. And I was like, it's definitely a big fucking deal. And I got really angry, like, I cannot believe you would risk my health this way, and like da da da, this is really fucked up. And he was like, why are you getting so upset about this? This is not a big deal. I was like, yes, it most certain-- this is an STI, like-- and he cannot understand why I am upset at all. Eventually, Don did seem to get that Deanna was upset, and began to comfort her. She calmed down, wanted to go to sleep. He started wanting to fool around again. You're kind of not up for this right now, like, this all feels-- and he was like, well, we don't have to have sex, and whatever. And then he was like, we can have anal sex. And I was like, blink, blink, no. She did not want to do that. And we were naked in bed. He was spooning me, and he made a move like he was going to penetrate me. And I jumped up and yelped, what the fuck? And I was like, what are you doing? And he was like, what do you mean, what am I doing? I'm just, you know, like I want to be with you. I want to, like, you know-- And I was like, you're starting to pressure me, and it's starting to make me really uncomfortable. This is messed up. And he flipped out. He stood up, and he just started screaming at me. He was like, how can you say that? How can you say that I'm pressuring you? I am the most feminist man you know, and you know it. And that's fucked up. So he starts screaming at me, like, the eyes bulging, the red-- He's screaming, I am the most feminist man-- Yes. --at you? And then he-- the bedroom was sort of right on the other side of the kitchen, and he goes into the kitchen and just starts slamming stuff, and throwing stuff, and I'm just hearing shit smashing in the other room, and I am naked in some dude's bed in fucking Big Sur. I don't know how to get out. (VOICE BREAKING) I'm sorry. And eventually, it just stopped. I just sat there the whole time, like I didn't know. You were in the bed? Yeah, I just stayed in the bed. He came back eventually and slept with his back to me, which was like his cold shoulder move. And I just laid there thinking like, I don't know what's going to happen next. Because I really didn't want to challenge him. I just had to start making sense of everything around me, and being OK with everything. So if you're not going to challenge him or talk to him about it, then how are you going to make sense of it? [SOFT CHUCKLE] Shut this out, don't think about this again, and do whatever you can to not make it happen again. Deanna would manage, manage her feelings, his temper, manage them away from explosive moments. This is what it meant to be close to someone. Managing a relationship was a role Deanna had practice in. It made sense to her. I have been told my whole life that I was going to have difficult relationships with men, that nothing, none of this was going to be easy. They warned me that this was how my relationships were going to be. They were going to be very difficult and challenging, and so this was like, OK. That was how it was going to be for me. It took three years for Deana to break up with Don after that. She wasn't angry when she did, just tired and sad. She told him she loved him, but she couldn't keep doing this. He wasn't angry either. She thought he would be, but he was gentle. He said he knew the day would come. They both cried. After that, she'd still run into him at professional or social events. They were friendly. A few years after they broke up, Deanna went to a protest uptown. And my friends were staging part of the protest, so I went to be supportive. And I ran into Don there. And he was like, well, this is something. You know, we were just kind of, like, chit-chatting. I hadn't seen him in a while. And you know, whatever, whatever. And we're kind of walking along with the protest, and talking to different people. There was a young woman walking nearby with a reporter's notepad. She was looking around and quickly scribbling notes. And I've actually watched, like, it felt like watching the Terminator a little bit, he just looked and zeroed in on her, and just bee lined over to her and said, who are you writing for? And she's like, oh, you know, I'm a student. And he's like, you don't have a place for this article yet? I'll give you a place for-- you know, do you want to pitch me? And she was like, who are you you? And he introduces himself, and says AlterNet. She was like, oh, it would be great to write for AlterNet. He really just came out of nowhere. This is Kristen. Kristen was a determined 21-year-old who bought the same breakfast sandwich from the same cafe everyday, because she knew what she liked and she had no need for wasting time. Kristen had never actually heard of AlterNet, but she knew she wanted to be a reporter, and this guy had a business card and she didn't. I was a journalism student undergrad at NYU. Don told her to send him her article, and if it was good, he'd publish it. Kristen said she definitely would. Deanna was off to the side, watching. And I got so mad, because it just seemed so gross. And I heard that tone of voice. And I had to remembered how he had said things like that to me, like, I'll give you a job, you know, like, I'll help you. I'll support you. And I got so angry, I just looked at him, I was like, I can't fucking believe you. And he was like, what? And I was like, I'm out of here. I'm done. The story they had created together had just been obliterated. They weren't co-creators. This was his story. Deanna was a set piece. It made me so sick to my stomach. I wasn't that special. And seeing her kind of brightness and enthusiasm, like, wow, someone wants to give me an opportunity, cool. I was so angry. I was so angry. Oh, God. Deanna left, went home. Kristen went home, too. She wrote and rewrote her article until it was 2:00 in the morning and she knew she had to get it off to Don. And I was excited. Yeah, I thought, wow, this is a crazy chance incident, and maybe this will be good, and turn into something, and it did turn into something. Coming up, the story starts over, but it's going to go so differently next time. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Chana Joffe-Walt. Today's show, "Five Women." We wanted to take one of the Me Too stories, where you hear about encounters women have with men who abuse their power in the workplace, and expand that to look at the lives of the women before that encounter. And we're telling the story of several women who worked for the same person, Don Hazen, at AlterNet over the course of 13 years. So we met Deanna and Onnesha, and we just met Kristen, the student at NYU. Kristen is going to come back. You need to meet someone else first. Act 5, "Tana.". Tana was asked to have an opinion about Anita Hill. It was 1991, and she was in the third grade. Her opinion was that it was wrong, because she knew that was the opinion she was supposed to have. The opinion Tana actually had was not one she imagined the adults were asking for. I remember thinking that it wasn't that big of a deal, but I think that my natural instinct-- and I mean, again, I was a child --was maybe people were freaking out a little bit too much. Maybe everyone should be a little bit more chill. By 10th grade, she was stronger in her conviction. She knew about sex, and she knew about feminism, and she believed that if Monica Lewinsky wanted to have sex with someone, or blow them, or whatever actually happened in the Oval Office, that was her choice. Men had been allowed to follow their bliss forever. They went a little too far, but that had been corrected, and now Tana could see things had swung too far in the other direction. Oh, nobody can have sex anymore. That's terrible. That was the impression I got. Like, I just envisioned the US workplace as a bunch of bureaucratic, fun-hating HR people taking you to jail if you said someone looked nice. One of her first bosses was Jeff. He ran a shop in town. Tana had just started college, but it was summer, so she spent most of her days at the shop. And he would always tell me these awful things about his wife, where he'd say, you know, she's so beautiful, when she walks down a restaurant, all men, you know, whiplash to check her out, but I'm just sick of her. Want to go out to dinner, can I get you a sandwich? You know, like, you're so tiny. Can I grab your waist? He definitely tried to physically grab me a lot. It was irritating, but Tana tried really hard not to show it because Jeff was middle-aged, miserable, she'd heard his wife kicked him out. A coworker said he found Jeff in the shop one morning, waking up surrounded by beer bottles. He made Tana uncomfortable, but he was so pitiful that it felt unreasonable to attach any value to her discomfort. Like when her friend at work, a guy her age, told her, Jeff always talks about you. It's really creepy. And he goes, [SIGHING] Jeff always talks to me about how he just wants to put his head between your breasts, and just go Like the motorboating sound, and this guy said that. And I was like, are you kidding me? That's the saddest thing. That's what a 12-year-old would say. This is a grown-ass man. How could he say that? I just remember being, like, so grossed out. Jeff denies all of this, by the way. Tana did tell her parents, though it took her a while. They were protective. She was worried they would make her quit. And then, they were driving one day, her mom, her dad, Tana in the backseat. Then I was like, mom and dad, I have something to tell you. And I was very dramatic about it. And they're like what? What happened? And I remember, like, taking a deep breath and saying-- --I've been sexually harassed. And they kind of laughed in my face, and they're like, what the hell do you expect, you're a 19-year-old woman. Of course you're being sexually harassed. I thought, oh, that's just a thing that happens that I can accept everywhere I'm going to work. Tana worked a lot of different jobs and got a lot of education-- college, graduate school, which did not open a path to a graduate school job, but a job at a Whole Foods. That's when her roommate told her she knew an editor of a political news website. Would Tana be interested? I can't even imagine a world in which I would go from working at Whole Foods to working in journalism. And she was like, well, just have an interview with this guy. On her way out the door to meet Don, her roommate said, if you get that job, you'll definitely be sexually harassed. I just kind of thought, well, that's just the way it is. The Interview went well, which felt great to Tana, because she was used to bombing interviews. She was so shy. It was raining when she and Don walked out of the building. He offered her a ride. She said no, I'll take the train. He said no, no, I'll give you a ride. I'll give you a ride. And he kind of insisted on it. And I remember I got in his car, and I-- and this is so silly, and he even made fun of me about this years later, where I said, I really want the job, I would even do it for free until I prove myself that I can do it. In hindsight, I want to slap my dumb 25-year-old self. Fortunately, I didn't have the opportunity to screw myself over that way. Because Don brushed that idea off as ridiculous. In the interview, Don suggested Tana might start editing a section at AlterNet they recently created about sex. So it didn't seem totally out of nowhere that, toward the end of the ride, he has sort of like casually put his hand on my knee, and said something like, so I hear you and your roommates have pretty wild and crazy sex lives. I think I said something like, oh, haha, yeah. Life's pretty crazy, or something like that. I just-- on some level, I very passively did nothing. And did you feel bad, neutral, just like, whatever? It felt bad. But also, I was ecstatic, because I felt like I had a real shot at the job. She called her friend to thank her. She said, as you warned me, he got a little sexually harrassy, but I'm so excited. I think I got it. She did. And from the beginning, Tana understood that her attractiveness to Don meant she'd be seen rather than ignored. Tana was seen by Don all the time. He'd take pictures of her sometimes when she wasn't looking, and send them to her. He was generous with his attention, and controlling, usually at the same time. There is no way to tease the two apart, and she accepted them both. He appreciated her legs, which he told her. He did not seem to love her personality. So I remember once we were at lunch, he was like Tana, what do you have to say? You can't even talk. And I was really sick, so I kind of, like, coughed a little bit because I had the flu or something. And I remember he-- in front of everyone-- fake coughed. He was like, All you do is ever cough. That's all you ever do. Is that the only thing you can ever even say? At a party, Don rubbed Tana's shoulders and asked if she wanted another drink. When she said no, he grabbed Tana's wrist, twisted her arm, and pushed her into a table. He had to be physically separated from her. He apologized later, and she forgave him easily. Don was old to her, pervy, but again, sort of pathetic. It felt inappropriate to read him as anything else. I remember there was one woman in the office who started freaking out and crying because Don told her that the color of her shirt looked nice on her. And my reaction was like, all right, everyone, everyone's being hysterical here. It's a nice colored shirt, chill the fuck out, was my inner thought. There was another woman who was really funny, actually, when she found the porn printed out in the printer, she-- you know, we were all giggling about it, because we all knew who it was. It was so obvious. And she sent this hilarious email to all of editorial that was something to the effect of, whoever decided to print out porn in the office, please abstain from-- Wait, who did print out the porn? It was Don, obviously. One of Tana's coworkers, another young woman, quit because of Don's bullying. It's like survival of the fittest, like, I can handle the bullying and the sexual harassment. She couldn't. Did you feel kind of proud of that? Yes. I did. Like, I can take it. Tana was the cool girl who could take it. She was comfortable in that role. It gave her more power professionally to have the attention of the most powerful person in the office, even if it meant accepting the attention that was not professional, like when Don kept telling her he wanted to buy her a black cocktail dress he thought would look great on her body. So I just thought it was really kind of sad, or bittersweet, or semi-pathetic. He thought I needed for him to buy me this dress, when I could have just bought it myself. And midway through that indignant thought, Tana felt guilty. Don wanted to be generous, to be a wealthy, charming man who could give her beautiful things. This was not the way she saw him, which made her feel bad for him. And then I actually did end up buying it. And you know, this is where I wonder, was I not clear enough about setting boundaries. So I bought the dress. I told him, oh yeah, guess what, I bought this dress, because I have $90. Don seemed pleased. But then she didn't like the dress. She didn't like the way it fit her, which she told him. And he was like, oh, give it to me. I'm going to give it to my girlfriend. It will look better on her, because due to years of yoga, she has curves and muscles that are in separate places than you do. Whoa. That's crazy, right? That's pretty crazy. When you say, this is where I feel, like, confused about, what is it that you feel confused about? If I didn't set clear enough boundaries to more clearly communicate that this exchange made me uncomfortable. That's what you're supposed to do. You know, you say, no. That first time Don drove her home and put his hand on her knee, Tana did not say, no. Instead, she entered into an unspoken agreement between a cool girl and a flirty boss. He'd look after her career, and he'd flirt with her while he was doing it. The rules were clear to Tana. You don't say no. Saying no would destroy the agreement from which both parties have something to gain. You don't ask, why do you want to buy me this dress? You don't say, please don't rub my back, or please stop taking pictures of me. You don't reply when he says by email what he wants for his birthday is sex with a mysterious blonde woman, and then adds, or you could just put on a wig. When Don asked Tana to his New York apartment for meetings, she followed the agreement. She said nothing. There was no office in New York, so it was easy to pretend this was appropriate. One night, they met. They talked about work, and then Don wanted to keep hanging out. It was getting kind of late, and we we're drinking, and he was like, hold on, just one second. I'm like, oh, my God, what's he going to come out with? He comes back out-- runs back out to the table --with a paper bag filled with photographs. And he says, you know, these are photos from my past. So he starts, like, showing me all of these old photographs from the '70s and '80s, and they're basically almost exclusively of very conventionally beautiful blond women. So he was like, like this was my ex-girlfriend at this point, this was my ex-girlfriend at this point. I was like, all right, cool, a lot of blondes. Like, I don't know why are you showing me this stuff. And then he, like, gets a photo, and then he says, and this is an artistic photograph of my penis. And he hands me this photo, and it's like, a black and white photograph of an erect penis. And he just did it so casually. I just kind of look at it, and hand it back to him. I'm like, my God, did my boss just show me a picture of his dick? And I was like, yeah. Yeah, he did. This did seem like a violation of the agreement. I mean, it was an artistic picture. It was black and white. It was from the '70s. I mean, I definitely didn't say, hey, you know what I'd love to see right now? A picture of your erect penis from the '70s. Like, it was definitely not the most appropriate thing to do to a female subordinate, right? Right, yes. Right. That's seems very true. Are you still doubting if that was appropriate or not? It was obviously inappropriate. I definitely didn't enjoy the experience. I told a million people about it contemporaneously like, hey guys, guess who's dick I just saw against my will right now. But also, we were in his apartment, it was late at night, and we were drinking. It just seems like a 60-something-year-old man who's in charge of, you know, 25 different people should just kind of know that you don't show a young female subordinate a picture of your penis even if it is from the '70s, even if it is late at night, and even if she doesn't say, hey, this is wrong. There are certain standards of behavior that seem like they should be obvious to everyone. But it seemed like they were not obvious to Don. Don seemed to think it was appropriate to show her that picture. So Tana thought, maybe there was no unspoken agreement between them. Maybe the agreement, and the boundaries of that agreement, were something Tana imagined on her own. In the beginning, as a new employee with no experience, Tana's power was her attractiveness to Don. She had tried to use that to her advantage. It was the same power that Onnesha did not want to use when she asked Don for a raise, the power of The Hypnotizer. Tana engaged, Onnesha did not. It cost them both in different ways. New people came in to AlterNet, and Tana trained a lot of them. Many of them were young women, and one of them came to Tana and said, we've got to do something about Don's behavior. And I said, are you kidding? You're not going to change anything. I don't think it's a good idea. I can't do this. Tana felt for this woman, but she did not understand her, and why she thought anyone would care about this. She said, this isn't news that this happens. It was like, yeah, dude, what do you expect? Yeah, you were your parents in the car that day. Right. The young woman was Kristen, the NYU student who Don spotted at the protest, Terminator-like, while Deanna watched. Now, Kristen was full of urgency, and she was ready to fight. Act 6, "Kristen." Kristen was 13 and she got a note. Well, she never actually saw the note, even though it was apparently written to her. It was intercepted by a teacher. But she knew what it said, because everyone in school knew. It was from the boys lacrosse team. Dear Kristen, you have nice boobs. You should use them. Kristen remembers how absurd it seemed, and laughing with her friends at the note, and the boys. (MOCKING TONE) Use your boobs. We were, like, joking about it. Better put them to use. The boys lacrosse team needs them. Like, ooh, what do they want to do with them? Like, how could-- boys, how could you use my boobs on the lacrosse team? It was just stupid. One of the boys who signed the note was Kristen's boyfriend, but the two never talked about it, because they never talked, because they we're in seventh grade, and that's what it meant to be boyfriend and girlfriend. The guidance counselor came for Kristen in the middle of class. They walked to her office, and she asked Kristen what she thought of the note. And I was like, I don't know, I think they're just like being stupid boys. And she was like, you're a victim of sexual harassment. And I just remember being like, feeling really weird that she said that to me, because it sounded so serious. And I just, like-- just like, can we just let it go? You know, one of these guys is your boyfriend. What does he think, that this is cute? And I was like, I don't know. I don't even know him. Like, he's an idiot. Like, he's not going to be my boyfriend anymore. And then I thought she was angry with me, because I wasn't freaking out about this letter. But that's how I felt. You were not performing victim of sexual harassment correctly. Yeah, I was just performing like child in a room. I'm 12, and you're an adult talking about my body, and boys, and it's so uncomfortable. I remember, I even zipped my hoodie up real, real tight, all the way to the top, because I thought that she would make a comment about my boobs showing or something. It's not like Kristen couldn't imagine some girl being upset by that note. She could. And she could imagine some girl might enjoy that note. But she was the girl. She owned the boobs they we're talking about, that everyone was now talking about. And then there was a thing in the auditorium, and this girl who I didn't know at all sat down next to me and was like, I heard about the note. Are you OK? And all of that kind of shit was just making me so uncomfortable. I was just like, yeah, I'm fine. I didn't care. What I remember caring about was the guidance counselor for not just letting it be a stupid kid thing, and making it into like an attempted rape or something. Is that how it felt? It just felt like they wanted me to cry, and act like it was the worst thing that ever happened to me, and I was so violated. When Kristen was raped a few years later, it took her a while to use that word. He took advantage of me is what Kristen said at first. When that didn't feel right, she said, he's an asshole. But that didn't seem right either. She had no word to summarize the experience. Something that I didn't like that was wrong, but it wasn't what I imagined rape would be like, and it wasn't as scary as I thought that it would be. She was at her friend's house for a party. It was late. People were going to sleep, and she climbed up to the top of a bunk bed to get away from an older guy who was creeping her out. Kristen was drunk. She remembers her face felt numb. She remembers hearing someone banging on the door, which you later found out he had locked before he climbed up into the bunk bed and took her clothes off. She said no, but he had sex with her anyway. Sex-- that didn't feel like the right word, either. Kristen noticed her friends doing the same thing, describing their experiences with boys in different tones, in different arrangements. And then there was the friend who wouldn't say anything at all about what happened, except she was upset and didn't want to talk about it. And eventually she did explain. He said, can I just put it in you for a second? Her friend said, no. He did anyway. That's when Kristen said she felt like she had an understanding to share. All those times when we were mad at those boys because of what they did to us. We were mad because they raped us, you know. And there was like, several of my friends where it took us a really long time to put the word to it. When she added them up, all their experiences, Kristen felt like boys we're aiming their behavior so it would come in just under the line of something that had a name. Like they were playing a game to see what they can get away with, that's what I kind of realized from it, the way that a guy is going to screw you over most likely isn't going to be he's going to rape you in an alley. It's going to be something that people might doubt. And it's not going to look like the worst examples of things or the most clear cut. And it's intentional, and that's why it's scary. Like, they toe the-- actually, I think maybe they don't believe that what they did was wrong, because it doesn't look like what they consider rape. Same as for you. Mm-hmm. Rape. The word was congruent with the way she felt about it. That, she decided, was what mattered. And I think maybe after that, I was just ready. I don't know. I wasn't waiting anymore to call something what it was. Four years later, Kristen met Don at a protest, graduated from college, and accepted a job at AlterNet. She was 21, AlterNet's youngest employee. Don loved to tell the story of how they met, how he'd found her on the sidewalk. He liked very much that he had discovered me. I definitely got the sense that he liked feeling like he was doing me this huge favor, and like I was his protege or something. And then it evolved from, oh, I found her on the sidewalk like it was this cute thing, to like, don't you dare publish anywhere else. And the amount of control that I realized he had over me was concerning, early. When Don invited her to meet at his apartment, Kristen did not think, as Tana had, well, there's no New York office, so that makes a certain amount of sense. Kristen thought, I know what this is. I know why he wants me here. I know why he's ordering sushi, and offering me weed, and repeatedly asking me if I like his music. And he wanted me, too. He liked that I was young, and he thought I was, like, cool. He was hanging out with this young person who was having a good time with him. And I think a lot of the shameless way he would look at or talk about my body was a way for him to kind of force me to see him as a sexual being. Like, I'm not a 60-something-year-old man with no sexuality. And if you think so, I'm going to prove to you that I'm not by forcing you to realize that I do have sexual thoughts and urges, and also, they're about you. A friend said to me recently, relating a different incident, she said, forcing someone to be part of your boner against their will is just a smarter way of forcing someone. I thought about Kristen when she said that, how alert Kristen was to a violation that was not definitively over the line. Kristen found it alarming how laid back Don was, how he behaved as if their interactions were completely normal. Like one day, she was supposed to meet with him in a coffee shop, Don, and some other colleagues. When Kristen walked in, Don was already there. I think I had pretty much just sat down. And he was like on his computer, you know, just real casual, like, oh, I saw someone on the internet. She looked just like you. Let me show you. And he's like, taking his time, pulling up this picture, and I'm like, oh, God, what is he going to show me? And he pulls up just a picture of a completely naked woman, like a porn star or something, with like, fake breasts and blond hair. And I was like, I can't even imagine what the look on my face must've been like. My response was, she looks nothing like me. Kristen stood up, said, I'm going to go have a cigarette. And I was like oh, yeah, cool. So this-- you see, every blond chick in the porn you watch reminds you of me. Great. This behavior had a name-- sexual harassment. Kristen did not doubt it. I always knew it was wrong. It wasn't like I ever thought, is this normal? Like, I knew, no, this is not normal, and it's bad. But having a name for this behavior didn't solve anything for Kristen. It just made her angry, because it seemed like there was nothing she could do about it. She had no previous experience, no connections in the industry, and she needed the job. I used to always-- I don't even know if I should say this --I used to like to talk about fantasies of kidnapping him, and torturing him, and forcing him to transfer money into my bank account. But you know, I would just always joke about the things I would do to that man that would just make him feel uncomfortable and terrified. That's what I wanted to do more than anything. Kristen's revenge fantasy is very similar to the plot of the movie 9 to 5, which Kristen has never seen, because it came out in 1980, before she was born. All of which is to say this is an old story. Kristen's anger bled. It bed into her thoughts, her work. She remembers being at a conference and interviewing an older man, a guy in his 70s, about drug policy. And at the end, I said I was going to smoke a cigarette, and he said, you don't want to get cancer in those boobs, do you? And I was just like, ew, and just got up and went outside and smoked a cigarette, and told all the people at the conference, can you believe that this dinosaur man just said that to me? And it was the same thing I felt with Don, like it was this older man who was just kind of like, I'm going to force the fact that I have a sexuality on you. I'm going to force you to reckon with it by making you the object of my sexual desire. Later that day, Kristen was walking with her AlterNet colleague, Jan Frel. Not Don, Jan. Jan was, at various points, Don's second-in-command. And we were walking down the sidewalk, and he was on the left of me, and traffic was on the other side of him, and I told him what happened, and he said, oh, well, you must have taken it as a compliment, kind of, though, right? Or something like that. And I just had this image of pushing him into the street that was so vivid, it almost freaked me out. I was like, I came very close to maybe killing this person. But that's how full of rage I was by that point. I was just about to explode. Jan does remember Kristen telling him about this, but does not recall responding in this way. Kristen started talking. She told a female coworker named Lauren about how Don was treating her. Lauren was a bit older, seemed together, but she didn't know what to do. She did have one idea of someone who could help, a woman Lauren actually had just met at a book party, a woman in her 30s who had worked with Don in the past. Her name was Deanna. Lauren asked to talk to Deanna, Deanna remembers. She started telling me about the experiences this new staffer was having with him, this young woman. Deanna hadn't been with Don for years at this point. Lauren didn't know they'd ever been together. But Lauren told Deanna, part of what's so hard about this is the new staffer is so young and inexperienced. Don met her when she was a student on the street at a protest. And I was like, you've got to be fucking kidding me. I was fucking there. I should have taken her by the wrist, pulled her away with me, and said, do not. I will find you another job, you know. And I felt such guilt over that. Deanna began cycling through the moments, all the choices she had made, that she thought were just hers, choices she assumed would only affect her and her relationship with Don. She thought specifically about a call she got years ago, just two months after she'd broken up with Don. It was a professional contact who said she wanted to ask Deanna about something serious. And then the woman on the phone said that her organization had put on an event with AlterNet, and a young staffer had just complained that Don sexually harassed her. The woman on the phone said to Deanna, you've worked with Don. Does that sound like him? Deanna paused to consider it before answering. I have a lot of shame, but my greatest shame was-- I can't picture him doing something unwanted, was what I said. And so I kind of-- I defended him. I didn't kind of defend him. Like, I didn't say, I believe this person. But was true for you at the time that you couldn't imagine him doing that? (DRAGGING THE WORD OUT INTO A GROAN) No. Yeah, but I-- there was a tiny part of me that wondered if that could be true, and I just didn't want to deal with it, and nothing was ever done. It never went further. Deanna and Kristen went out for drinks. Deanna listened, Kristen talked. Deanna said she wanted to help in whatever way she could, and Deanna prayed that Kristen would not ask her, what happened to you? Everything felt like it would blow up. Everyone would know that I was complicit, that I helped him. How could people want to be friends with me after that? How could people trust my professional expertise after knowing that about me? How could-- what would my mom think? They're all going to think I'm a fraud, that I'm not talented, that I'm not-- that these ideas aren't my own or something, and I would just have to shrink away. Deanna helped connect Kristen with a lawyer. The lawyer told Kristin it would be very hard to win a lawsuit and keep her job. She also said she'd probably need more evidence. And that's when Kristen thought to ask Tana. She knew Don had been harassing her, too. Kristen doesn't remember Tana saying, this isn't news that this happens. She remembers Tana being kind, and saying she didn't want to betray Don. He'd given her a chance and a career when no one else would have. So she said she didn't want to do it, and then what did you do? I just kind of gave up. Kristen's apartment flooded, and she got a payout from her landlord. When the money came in, she quit AlterNet without ever using the words she believed to be true. When I left, I didn't say to him, I'm leaving because you sexually harassed me, and I hate you. I was too affected by the idea that he was giving you a chance. And it's true, he did give us a chance that no one else did. So I mean-- but I guess I felt like I had paid my dues, and the payoff was no longer fair. Act 7, "Vivian." Four years after Tana told Kristen that their experience was not news to anyone, suddenly it was news. A reporter named Cora Lewis at BuzzFeed News reported a story about sexual harassment allegations at AlterNet. She talked to Kristen and Tana and Deanna, and she talked to other women who haven't heard from here. Don denied most of the allegations in the BuzzFeed story. Some he said were mischaracterized. For instance, he does not remember twisting Tana's arm, but did say he was rubbing her shoulders and stopped when he saw it made her uncomfortable. He does not remember showing Tana a photograph of his penis, but says he does have such a photograph, and some women may have seen it. He said he also took friendly photos in the office, and when he commented on Tana's body, it was out of concern that she was getting too skinny. The photo he showed Kristen, he said, was not a naked porn star, but a clothed movie star. When I contacted Don, he said he told Deanna about his relationship with Vivian, his partner, on their very first date, and that his memory of their time at Big Sur is different from hers. Beyond that, he did not respond to specific questions, but asked that I include an apology from him, in which he says, along the way, I strove but apparently failed to treat everyone with the respect and consideration they deserved. I regret causing harm, and I'm reckoning with it. Some of the accusations against me are untrue, but I deeply regret those that are. I apologize to anyone I offended and treated badly. Before the BuzzFeed News story came out, Vivian says Don told her he needed to talk to her about something, to prepare her. Vivian told me she knew what it was, Me Too stories coming for Don. She'd pictured how their conversation would go. When Don sat her down, it was not what she'd imagined. He told her, 10 years ago he'd had an affair with Deanna. Oh-- And-- --you didn't-- Yeah. You didn't-- he hadn't told you about it before. He hadn't told-- no, this is all-- I am assimilating all of this in the past month. Wow. Yeah. I went crazy. I mean, I just sort of screamed, you have no idea what you've done. Immediately, you did? Oh God, yes. She wanted to understand why he did this. She tried to remember what was happening in his life around that time, and there was a lot. Moving his elderly parents, trying to take responsibility for a sister who was ill and suffering a psychotic break, his own health issues. Vivian is a therapist, and from Don, Vivian solicited details, assembled details, as a therapist does. For myself. I mean, this was not playing therapist for him. This was just like, I have got to make sense of this somehow. I've got to. I'm still working on that. Don't get me wrong. He's got to, too. Why do you have to make sense of it? It's what I do. Its who I am. It feels like the only way to be a person with a history that feels coherent. A person with a history that feels coherent with him? Like, your history with him? Yes, absolutely. It's so hard to integrate. Are you going to stay with him? I'm 99.9 certain we will make it through this. Don had just destroyed the story Vivian had about their relationship, a coherent history that for Vivian had included a wonderful partner with whom she shared a joyful life, shared trips and friends and intellectual interests, a partner who took loving care of her last year when Vivian was in chemotherapy for breast cancer. To stay with him and to make her history coherent, Vivian is trying to figure out what she needs to know, and how to resist asking about the things she does not need to know. I want to know about stupid things like, did they share the music that we love? You know, things like that, things that have always felt very special and intimate. I want to know what was shared that's always felt exclusive. We were watching a movie the other night, and one character was holding another in a certain way. And I just broke down, and just said, did you hold her that way? He said, no, when I saw that, I just thought, that's you and me. And I believe him. Four days before Christmas, Don's story was added to the news of allegations about sexual harassment and violence that suddenly have a public platform in this stunning period of time that is right now. Don's story came after the one about Harvey Weinstein, and Mario Batali, and Louis CK, and Senator Al Franken, Matt Lauer, and Charlie Rose, and Russell Simmons, and Dustin Hoffman, and Kevin Spacey, editors at the New Republic, DC Comics, the Paris Review, the head of NPR News, the owner of an NFL team, and the choreographer of a ballet. After Don's story came Congressman Patrick Meehan, Michael Douglas, Rob Porter and the sentencing of Larry Nassar. The board that oversees AlterNet said they were investigating the allegations in detail. That investigation did not include reaching out to any of the women named in this story or in the BuzzFeed article. I don't know how you can understand what happened without speaking to the people who are saying, something happened to me. Today's show was produced by Susan Burton and Robyn Semien. The people who put our show together include Zoe Chace, Dana Chivvis, Sean Cole, Emily Condon, Whitney Dangerfield, Neil Drumming, Seth Lind, Miki Meek, Alvin Melathe, Robyn Semien, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, Nancy Updike, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu. Our senior producer is Brian Reed, our managing editor is Susan Burton, editing help today from Julie Snyder, special thanks today to Nava EtShalom, Rebecca Vitale-Decola, Merrill Garbus, Cora Lewis, Rebecca Traister, Lauren Kelley, Rebecca Carroll, Sarah Jaffe, Adele Stein, Heather Geller, Lynn Parramore, Joshua Holland, Liliana Segura, and Myra Smith. And special thanks to Heidi Baker and Heidi Schreck, who wrote an episode of the TV show I Love Dick that inspired today's show. The episode is called "A Short History of Weird Girls." It is great. It features four women who, one by one, tell the history of their sexual lives. Our website, ThisAmericanLife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to my boss Ira Glass. He swears he does not have a problem with a woman taking over the show for an hour. This is the thing he told me over and over this week, doesn't bother him at all. He kept insisting, I am the most feminist man you know, and you know it. I'm Chana Joffe-Walt. Ira Glass will be back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
Mohamedsalem is 33. And his parents want him to call his cousins on the phone. He doesn't want to. He doesn't like to. And I have to say, I'm with him. He's got a really good excuse. [SIGHS] I just grew up never knowing them. For me, I need to spend time with them to start to be attached to them. No, I understand. They're like strangers to you. Yes, exactly. He never got to know any of his relatives because Morocco built a wall 1,700 miles long across the desert. It's actually several walls of piled up sand, plus ditches in between the walls, plus barbed wire, plus, reportedly, seven million landmines, plus 120,000 soldiers separating the rest of his family, who were in Western Sahara, from the place where Mohamedsalem was born and still lives today, a massive refugee settlement with an estimated 165,000 people in it on the other side of the wall. So he has all these cousins from eight aunts and uncles. And-- I would never met them. There is nothing in common. We haven't shared anything. I know their names, and I know I have a relative. But-- That must be so frustrating for your parents. [LAUGHS] All the time they try to get me to call them and talk to them, but what should we talk about? And what do we have in common that we can talk about if we finish the initial greeting? And I feel guilty about it and bad about it, but it's just I don't know what to do about it. Not that his parents get this. They are mad. But part of the blame belongs to them, to the fact that the occupation and the family separation. And I shouldn't be totally the one to take all the responsibility for everything. Oh, I see. You're saying, don't blame me. There's an entire international situation here. I am not personally to blame for this. Yeah, yeah. I didn't choose to leave away from them. And if I have the chance, I would love to be with them and get to know them. But the wall between the refugee camp where he's lived his life and the area where his family's from, where he says they belong, that wall is the central fact of his life, the rock on which everything else is built. If the wall weren't there, instead of his current life, where he spends his days doing politics, trying to draw the world's attention to the situation his people are in-- I for sure would have nothing to do with politics. And I wish I had the option and the choice to care about silly things like the rest of the people. I love swimming. And I have done it just like three or four times, once when I was a child. And there's no place to swim in the refugee camp. No, no, no, no, no, no, there isn't. There isn't. There's a 1,700 mile wall between him and the ocean. When somebody builds a wall, we readjust our lives around that wall. So just tell us what you're doing here. I'm just closing the main gate until tomorrow morning. So what's this gate made of? I don't know. What is that? Steel? Yeah. With big spikes on the top. In Belfast, Northern Ireland, it's been 20 years since peace was declared between Protestants and Catholics. But there are still these tall walls, some of them 50 feet high, that separate their neighborhoods with a few gates that allow traffic and pedestrians through. It's 6:30 at night, and the guard is closing the Northumberland Gate for the evening. It will reopen at 6:30 in the morning. Producer Conor Garrett talked to him. They're just waving people through. You can see people are rushing before they close up for the day. Yeah. I could actually time them. I could actually time them. You mean you can time them? You know what time they're going to come through? Yeah. Yeah. People are so used to having the walls and so nervous about the violence that might break out if they were torn down that two decades after the conflict officially ended when there was a modest proposal not to tear the walls down but to simply replace the sheet of steel that was the gate at the Workman Avenue crossing with a gate that is steel bars that you can see through to the other side, that took 18 months to convince local residents of. Ian McLaughlin is one of the organizers who pushed for that change. It was a very long and drawn out process because you have to take into account people's fears. The vast majority of deaths which occurred during the conflict occurred where these structures were built. And the point I make is that, primarily for some of our elderly residents who live in these neighborhoods, a death of a family member that may have happened-- I don't know-- 30 or 40 years ago, it's as though it happened 30 days ago. So any conversation or any suggestion of a removal of that structure, it actually, to this day, traumatizes these families. I think you have to realize, in people's mindsets, if you have lived in the same neighborhood for 40 years, and every single day when you wake up, the first thing you see when you draw your blinds is this structure at the bottom of your garden or your alleyway, if you're waking up one morning and that structure's gone, how would you feel? Once a wall is up, it seems hard to tear down. And more are going up these days around the world. India's building a 2,500 mile barbed wire fence on the border with Bangladesh. Kenya's built just a few miles of what it hopes will be hundreds of miles of wall on the Somalia border. Israel had 300 miles of walls between itself and the West Bank and then added another 245 miles on the border with Egypt in 2013. The main reason walls are going up around the world right now is to stop unwanted immigrants. That's the reason for the wall that was just finished between Turkey and Syria, which is nearly 500 miles long. It's there to block terrorists and Syrian refugees. Journalist Maya talked to me from Kilis. We are at the border gates. Every Syrian who you speak to who has managed to cross the wall speaks about having been shot at either with rubber bullets or with real bullets. And Syrians have been killed, yes. Stopping immigrants, of course, is the reason for the wall that President Trump wants to build on the Mexican border, the one he shut down the government over. Look at all of the countries that have walls. And they work, 100%. A wall is a wall. That was at his cabinet meeting this week. In San Diego last year, he inspected prototypes of different walls for the border. The round piece that you see up here or you see more clearly back there, the larger it is, the better it is because it's very hard to get over the top. These are like professional mountain climbers. They're incredible climbers. They can't climb some of these walls. Some of them, they can. Those are the walls we're not using. Stopping immigrants is the reason that Norway just built a wall that is a measly 650 feet long at the very tippy top of Norway at the Russian border. I talked to the mayor of the town on the Norwegian side of that border, Mayor Rune Rafaelsen, of the town of Kirkenes. Can you see Russia from your house? Not from my house, no. But from my cabin, I can see Russia. [LAUGHS] Yeah. If I could just talk to the liberals in our audience for a second, I know when you guys think of the Scandinavian governments, they seem so competent and functional with their universal health care and their broad social safety nets. And I just want to say, perhaps it will be comforting to you to hear that this particular project was just as bumbling as anything we do here in the United States. They built their fence a full year after migrants had already stopped trying to cross that particular border, so there were no migrants to stop. They accidentally started construction too close to the Russian border, then had to tear it down and move it back a foot and a half. And they built their fence right next to a fence that Russia already had at the very same border, a way more effective fence that stretches 120 miles. Remember, the Norwegian fence is only 650 feet long. As the mayor pointed out, refugees will be able to simply walk around a fence that is that short. So why build it? Because the government wanted to do something, to say that we are building walls up, way before it was inspired by Mr. Trump and the walls to Mexico. I don't know. So it's just a symbol. It has no effect regarding protecting Norway from refugees at all, so people are laughing about it. Wait. I still feel confused. If there's already a fence on the Russian side, why would there need to be a second fence? Yeah. [CHUCKLES] I agree. You'd have to ask the recent prime minister about that. I don't understand why they have built this fence. It's very, very odd. They're very comic. A wall, apparently, just has its own gravitational pull that warps the logic of the world around it. And once the wall is up and is a fact on the landscape, it alters the human behavior on either side of it. At that point, it's like we accommodate the wall, and definitely not the other way around. We are the ivy that grows on it. It is the immovable object. Today on our program, as our government fights over whether or not to build a big, beautiful wall that apparently Mexico is not going to pay for, we have stories about people and walls all over the globe. We hear about kids who use a border wall as a tool in their family relationships, people who devote themselves to conquering walls, and a wall that supposedly can only be seen from one side, and not the other-- no kidding. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Act One, "Just Another Kind Of Outdoor Game." So when we were looking at border walls and fences around the world, one in particular stood out to us because if there were ever a place where you think you could build a physical barrier between two places and have it work, this would be the place. The fences are around the Spanish cities of Malilla and Ceuta. Now, the interesting thing about these Spanish cities is they are actually in Africa. Right on the Northern coast of Africa, right there on the mainland, right on the edge of the water in what would otherwise be the country of Morocco, there are these two little dots, two cities that are officially part of Spain. Ceuta and Malilla are both very small. Ceuta is about seven square miles. Malilla is less than five square miles. And if you can make it into either of these cities from the rest of Africa, you're on European soil. You can try to claim asylum, or find some other way to stay and live in Europe. But the Spanish government, with the assistance of the Moroccan government, has built a very impressive barrier. Around Ceuta, there are two layers of fencing almost 20 feet high with razor wire on the top. Around Malilla, there are four fences and a trench, basically a moat without water in it-- it's two meters deep-- also infrared cameras, and of course, guards. And what has happened is that this has created a perverse and pretty dangerous obstacle course. Because, of course, people try to storm the barrier, sometimes in huge groups trying to get through it all at once, any way they can. Our producer, David Kestenbaum, talked to one man who thought he could make it. David is from Cameroon. And when I asked him to say his full name, just so I didn't mess it up, he gave this surprisingly long answer. I couldn't tell what was going on, because we were doing the interview through an interpreter. But it turns out he was explaining how he would introduce himself as an African. The names of his grandparents, and their parents, and theirs. Those are the 23 generations of my grandparents, he says, 23 generations of names. And yet despite all that history, in September of 2013, David decided to leave Cameroon and try to make it to Europe. He was 25 years old. David describes the whole thing almost as if you were a kid heading out on an adventure in some old novel. Unlike a lot of people trying to get from Africa to Europe, he said he wasn't persecuted back home. He wasn't starving. He wasn't fleeing violence. He was just curious about the world and excited to see it. He wanted to live in a place with more opportunity, so he threw some stuff in a little backpack and he hit the road. He was well into his journey in Algeria when he first heard about the fences around Ceuta and Malilla. Because there we had internet access, and we could see how people were trying to jump this fence and all that. At the beginning, my opinion was, well, you know, I'm a pretty brave guy. And when I see something like that-- I like challenges. I thought I would do it in one try. I'm going to take it on with a lot of optimism, because that's the type of person I am. I usually do things the first time I try them. I don't do them two or three times. So I thought this was going to be the case with this fence. I've watched some of these videos. There are some brutal ones-- people with their hands sliced open from the razor wire, sometimes being hit by guards. But there are ones that, if you are preparing to try something like this, might give you hope. This one starts at a tense moment. There are bunch of men sitting on top of the last of the fences. Below them is Spanish soil, but also the Spanish police. In theory, the guys should be able to drop down and apply for asylum. But there are lots of reports of Spanish border guards grabbing people, unlocking a gate in the fence, and returning them to the other side. So the men on the fence want to get down somehow, avoid the guards, and run into town. Suddenly, one man drops down off the fence, then another. It's like they've got some plan. And apparently they do, because the two of them link arms. Then another guy joins them and another. They keep linking up, like it's a rugby scrum. At this point, the police move in they're wearing vests and helmets. Some have those transparent shields you see in crowd control situations. And you can see the police are now in kind of a bind. It's going to be hard to pry these guys apart now that they've become this giant organism. So the police do this thing that also seems smart. They form a human ring around the men to contain them. And for a moment, it seems like a stalemate. But then the scrum starts to rotate, which makes them harder to contain. And a gap opens up in the ring of police. Then one guy from the scrum breaks off and starts sprinting. Then another spins off, and another. They run across this open field into town, and finally to the official immigration center where they celebrate like a team that's just captured the flag. I don't know how many of these people were granted asylum or allowed to stay. But can I just say there is something crazy about a system where countries build super tall, multi-layer razor wire fences that you are definitely not supposed to cross. But if you do cross them, well, maybe you can stay. It's as if Spain is saying, this is who we want to immigrate-- people who are really good at climbing fences. David figured he had a pretty good chance of getting over the fences. He was young. He felt strong. He saw them up close soon after he got to Morocco. He made his way to this forest where he heard people camped out before attempting to cross. You could see Malilla from there, this piece of Europe surrounded by fencing. They said to me, look, over there. That's Malilla. In the woods, there was this whole community of people. They'd organized themselves by country. There was a group from Mali and Gambia, Guinea, and one from his country, Cameroon. He slept with them that night. And that night, it really rained. And since I was new, I didn't have any place to sleep. And I didn't have any place to hide from all the water that was falling out of the sky. The next night, David and a small group he'd been traveling with went to check out the fences. But David said they didn't really know what they were doing. When they got there, they saw Moroccan border guards. David and the others figured, well, we'll just wait till they move. But hours went by. They waited until 2:00 AM, but always, there were guards. The next time, he had better luck. One of the tricks the people in the forest told him was to go in large groups. If you've got the numbers, they can't catch all of you. So this time, David goes with a big group of 200 or 300 other people. It was early in the morning, 4:00 or 5:00 AM. They run toward the fences. The first obstacle, before you can even get to the fences, is that trench. It's pretty deep, David says. He drops down into it OK, but getting out is hard. It's like six or seven feet straight up. He says everyone kind of helps each other. One person gets up, then pulls the next one up. I tried to get out of there, and there were Moroccan military people who were throwing stones. And there was a lot of noise. And people were moving around, and there was blood. And it was difficult to get out. And then I was climbing up the other side. And then I climbed up the first barrier. And I got to the second barrier, and then I said, OK, I finished that. I'm going to go to the third barrier. I don't know how to express it, but it was something strange. I was thinking, I'm going to do it. Then I thought, I can't do it. And then I was doing it, so I said, well, this is how it's done. I'm doing it. I'm doing it. But I don't know how to express it. That's the truth. Did it feel like a crazy sport? Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what it is, the way you put it. It was a weird sport. I usually think of a border wall or a fence as this thing that's supposed to stop someone. But as David was discovering, that's not how these things are actually designed. His opponents had a strategy too. The Malilla border is an example of something called defense in depth. In the US, it's used around nuclear facilities. The idea is to have many layers. Each can be beat, but they slow you down enough so that, before you can get to the other side, the guards are there. In this case, to pick you up and send you back to start. That's what happened to David that day. The guards got him before he could clear the final fence, and they sent him back to Morocco. He was frustrated, but also felt kind of good. He'd made it to the third fence on his first try. David returned to the camps in the forest, which he says is OK. But I think it's not what a lot of people would call OK. He had to dig around in trash cans for food. And sometimes after they'd gone to sleep, the Moroccan police would come and chase them out, destroy what they'd set up. When there was downtime, people would sometimes sit all facing the same direction and just kind of stare out at Malilla and talk about how to get past those damn fences. There were rules that have been passed down by people who'd gone before them with the goal of not making things harder for the next people trying to cross. One of the rules was no weapons-- another, no cutting the fence. We decided that it wasn't a good strategy because, at the end of the day, our goal was to be accepted by the Spaniards on the other side. So we didn't want to use knives, and we couldn't cut the fence. They tried over and over, but it seemed impossible to beat the guards. They had cameras that could see at night and helicopters. David met people who'd been living in the forest for four or five years who still had never made it to Europe. David checked out the fences around Ceuta, the other city, but again, no luck. He tried 20 times, 30 times. A year pased. At some point, it started to feel kind of crazy that this is what his life had become, trying to get over this barrier to this little piece of land. There were times when it did appear absurd to me. Why am I doing this? What good is this? Especially when I experienced the failure, and I thought about just abandoning everything, and I would cry. But then you rest up two or three days. And once again, you think in an optimistic fashion. And I got my energy back. I wondered what all this looked like from the other side of the fence, to live in one of these cities five or seven square miles in size with fences around it, where in some years, you get people rushing up every few weeks, this whole mass of people outside trying to get in. There's this one photo from the Spanish side of two people playing golf. They're standing on this lush green fairway, palm trees. One of them, a woman, is teeing off in a bright white golf outfit. And right behind them, there's the fence. And on top of the fence, about a dozen people straddling it. I couldn't find any surveys of how people in the towns felt about the fences. But one journalist who lives in Malilla told me that photo is kind of the way it is for a lot of people. They're used to it now. When the fences started being built in the '90s, some people thought they were ugly or sad. But then the fences became something else. They became invisible. It's something more than a fence. I know it may seem silly, but-- There is something mystical in this fence. I've seen people who, when they get in front of the fence, they can't move. I imagine that, if there are people from throughout the world who get together to make a fence, there must be a spirit inside the fence that tries to prevent things. It's really something very powerful. It's not just a fence. Even a fence with a spirit in it is still a fence. And as with a lot of fences, if you follow them far enough, there is a place where they end. Malilla and Ceuta are not totally surrounded. They're on the coast. And where the fences hit the water, they stop. They go out a ways into the water, but then stop. These places, of course, are very heavily guarded. And in the previous year, a bunch of people had died trying to cross this way. The Spanish police used tear gas and rubber bullets. At least 15 people drowned. And David can't swim. But one day, in the forest around Ceuta, he runs into a group of people who want to try this place where the fence ends. By this time, he's been at it for a while. He knows the way. He helps lead them there. There's no trench here and only a single fence. And so when it's dark out, David and a group sneak up to it through this wooded area. There are over a hundred of them, and they start running along the fence, trying to get to the beach and finally where it extends into the water. When they reach the beach, some people start trying to climb the fence. Guards are gathering, but David notices they aren't doing the thing that he's had problems with in the past. They aren't hitting people's fingers as they climb. So up he goes. I put one finger on, and I put one hand on. Then I put one leg up. And I got up to the point where there were the knives. He means the razor wire at the top. And I tried to get higher up, but these knives we're grabbing at my clothes. And I had a backpack on, so I had to go down. But not all the way down. David and the others stay on the fence. They're just below the very top, maybe 18 feet off the ground. And they start clambering sideways, horizontally along the fence trying to get to the water. And there were two kids in front of us. One of them was really young. He was like 13 or 14. They were moving very slowly. And someone behind me said, hurry up, hurry up. And I said, look, the boys in front of us cannot go fast. We've got to go step by step. If we make it to the water, we'll be OK. They get to the end of the fence. There are two people ahead of David. The first one jumps down. And he fell into the water on the Moroccan side. And he was immediately picked up by the Moroccan soldiers. They picked him up and put him in a boat. Which seemed bad. A Moroccan guard would keep him in Morocco. The next guy is the kid in front of David. He jumps down onto the rocks at the base of the fence. And very quickly, hit the ground. And as soon as he hit the ground, the civil guard picked him up and put him aside. David is next in line, the third to try. At the moment that I saw the civil guard people moving two or three steps away, I went down immediately, just like the kid did. But as soon as I hit the ground-- I went right into the water. Then others make it into the water. They sit on this big rock. The little kid, who the police, the civil guard, had picked up and already had his hands tied behind his back, tried to escape and make it into the water. And just to show, one of us was brave enough to go into the water, and he saved him and brought him over to the stone. So then we were singing and shouting. The civil guard was saying-- Get out of the water. Come out of the water, and nothing's going to happen to you. And there were many negotiations to get us out of the water. And we didn't want to get out. This goes on for hours. They're cold, but singing and shouting, waiting for the city to wake up, hoping someone will come and help them-- the Red Cross, journalists. Eventually, they do get out of the water. They're taken to a police station and fingerprinted. David figured he'd be sent back to Morocco like all the other times. The police station was right there on the border. But it didn't happen. Instead, someone got him some food and a place to sleep. After almost two years of attempts, he'd made it. He felt joy, like, is this really happening? For a couple of days-- and then he felt something else. When I realized that I had made it, it was like a vacuum. That's the truth. When we are in Morocco, we think that whenever I manage to get there, I'm going to be very happy. But once you make it-- --you don't feel anything. The feeling ends. David is in Madrid now. In a little bit, he'll be able to apply for residency so he can work. After almost two years thinking about the fence, he doesn't anymore. It was just a barrier, one among many. David Kestenbaum is one of the producers of our program. David from that story is trying to make it as a musician. He wrote this song about the border fence. Coming up, the wall that is 150 miles long and completely invisible from one of its sides. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, "The Walls." We have stories from around the globe looking at the way that life morphs and adapts around any wall that gets built anywhere. A version of today's program was first broadcast last year, but we thought we would update and bring it back with our government shut down over a wall. And one thing that I've found myself thinking about a lot these last few weeks has been the president's promise to have Mexico pay for the wall. And I think a lot of people don't remember that that just wasn't a thing that was said in rallies. There was an actual step by step plan on how to do it. And I've wondered, whatever happened to that? It's the long forgotten plan from the Trump campaign. We talk now like this plan never even existed. This is Robert Costa, national political reporter for the Washington Post. He says that when he and Bob Woodward asked then-candidate Trump in 2016 for details about exactly how he would pay for his wall, to their surprise, two days later, they got this step by step memo outlining how it would happen, written, he says, by Stephen Miller, now one of the president's top aides. This is something that the Trump campaign was under intense pressure during the primary season to prove that, in some way, it had a serious proposal for getting Mexico to pay for the wall. And this is what they came up with. Here's the plan. They say that under the Patriot Act, the president has powers to do all kinds of things, including, if he wants to, he can make it impossible for undocumented Mexicans living here to wire money home to Mexico. And it's a lot of money, the memo says, $24 billion a year. The actual number is probably much smaller than that, but still in the billions, significant to the Mexican economy. Mexico, as the memo notes, would not like this. And so the memo says we would tell the Mexican government that it could avoid all this unpleasantness if it would just send us $5 to $10 billion for the wall. And then we won't make the change to our regulations. We will let people wire money home to Mexico. It said in typical language by President Trump, it's, quote, "an easy decision for Mexico to make," and that all they need to do is make a, quote, "one-time payment of $5 to 10 billion for the wall," and then they could walk away. If that didn't work, the memo lists other threats that we could make. Trade tariffs-- we could cancel work and tourist visas. We could charge higher visa fees, all with the idea that this would force Mexico to cough up billions for the wall. Do we know if they tried to do any of this once they got into office? We're actually poking around about that at the Washington Post. It seems like John Kelly, when he was head of DHS, and Kirstjen Nielsen, now head of DHS, they have not pursued this kind of policy to an extent. But the idea that it's floating around in Trump circles remains. Bannon always would hover it out there in 2017 when he was in the White House as something that would maybe be brought up. And it could still be brought up. He believes he has sweeping executive authority to do this sort of thing. There have been bills in Congress to do a more straightforward version of this by just taxing the money that gets wired to Mexico and do some of the other things that the memo suggests. There was a bill in 2017, another in 2018. Neither picked up many co-sponsors or ever got to a vote. On Friday, the president said that he might declare a state of emergency to pay for his border wall, which would give him a bunch of options, a bunch of powers, none of them apparently related to this memo or Mexico paying for the wall. Presumably, the memo still sits there somewhere in the White House, untouched, ready for action, Plan A. Act Two, "No One Has Seen Them Made or Heard Them Made." Of all the walls all over the world that we learned about for today's program, this next one is the most mysterious-- a wall that may or may not even exist. Brian Reed looked into it. I read about this possible wall in a blog post. It's a travel blog by an Australian guy, and he tells the story of a bizarre tour he took in North Korea. The post is titled, "North Korea's Loch Ness Monster, The Concrete Wall." For decades, the North Korean government has complained about the huge Concrete Wall that divides North and South Korea, a wall, it claims, that South Korea put up at the urging of the United States as a permanent barrier to reunification, a wall that's been a source of anger for the North Koreans for years. For them, it's a symbol of the duplicity and bad will of South Korea. One peculiar thing about this wall, though, North Korea says it can only be seen from the northern side, that you can't see it from the south. It also doesn't show up on Google Earth or satellite images. But in North Korea, there's a place where tourists can go see it. That's where the blogger went. According to the post, he arrived at a small bunker where a North Korean colonel delivers a whole lecture about the Concrete Wall. He stands there in uniform with a pointer stick-- there's a photo of this on the blog-- with a big mural behind him of the wall snaking along the border. Though, curiously, it's not a photograph of the wall. It's a painting. The colonel runs through the wall's dimensions, which are listed on the mural, as well as geometric diagrams demonstrating the ingenious engineering that makes it only visible from the North. It's built into a hill, so from the South it just looks like green land. It's invisible. Which, the colonel explains, allows South Korea and the United States to claim that there isn't a wall between North and South Korea, which is exactly what those countries say. And then, the colonel invites the tour group outside to see for themselves. The blogger is handed a pair of binoculars. The blogger writes that he half expects there to be a stencil of a wall taped on the lenses when he looked through. There isn't. But as he stares out from the observation deck into the DMZ, or Demilitarized Zone, the four kilometer-wide stretch of land that buffers North Korea from South, he does see something. He includes a photo he took of it. Could this be what the North Koreans were talking about, he writes? Lean in and see what you make of it. I did lean in. And honestly, I could not tell what the hell was going on in this photo. It's super blurry, taken from kilometers away on a hazy-looking day. There are shrubs and hills in the DMZ, and then, yeah, some type of brownish structure on top of the hills. But it's really hard to make out. It is like one of those Loch Ness photos. This blog post confused me. Was there a wall between North and South Korea, or not? The news media seemed unequivocal on this question. The reports I read said the wall's not real. One headline from Reuters-- "North Korea asks South to tear down imaginary wall." The blogger didn't want to be interviewed. So I ended up on the phone instead with a tour guide, named Simon Cockerell, who runs one of the most popular tour companies that takes people into North Korea. Simon says he's been in North Korea more than 160 times. So I've been even nearly to the Concrete Wall itself. You've been nearly to the Concrete Wall itself? Yes, that's right. So it is a wall. It is a thing. It exists. You're talking about it as if it exists. It, in some way, entirely does exist. Simon says he's done that whole tour the Australian blogger did. How many times have you seen this wall? I would have to guess, maybe 40 or 50 times. Did you ever, in any of those viewings, question whether what you were looking at was a wall? I honestly don't think I did. I mean, it's not a hologram. I mean, there's probably a semantic case to be made that it's not a wall because, on the southern side of it, it's a hill. And on the northern side of it, it's a wall. So it has the characteristics of a wall, if you're looking at it from the North, which after all is the only side from which you can see it. What are the characteristics of a wall, as you see them? It rises at a 90 degree angle from the ground, and it creates a barrier between where you are and the place on the other side of the wall. That's what exists in the DMZ. It's, at the very least, a wall-like object. There's a headline I want to read you from a journalist, Jon Herskovitz, who was based in Seoul for years and followed North Korea. I know Jon Herskovitz. Oh, you know Jon? OK, he wrote this article. I believe this was back in 2007, in Reuters. The headline is, "One of the greatest hindrances to tearing down the wall is that it doesn't exist." Mm-hm. What do you make of that headline? It's poetic. It sounds good. It's just not true. Really? So it's just straight up not true in your eyes. It's not really "in my eyes." It's sort of manifestly untrue. Yeah, Jon is 100% wrong about that. He said something to the effect of "Jon is 100% wrong." Ugh. That "ugh" is Reuters journalist, reporter in Korea for five years, and author of the article with that headline, Jon Herskovitz. And he sticks to his guns-- no wall. How do you know there's no wall? I've been to the border numerous times and also have crossed through the DMZ four times. And did you have to traverse a wall at any point? No. I had to go through some razor wire and boom gates, but there was no wall to traverse. And when you looked left and right as you were crossing, did you see a wall anywhere? I didn't see a wall. There is no wall. All that said, Jon may have been to the border a bunch of times, but he has not been to the observation point in the North that the blogger and Simon went to. He hasn't tried to view the wall from North Korea, which is convenient. So the fact that North Korea says you can't see the wall from the South, which is where you were looking for the wall-- Yes. That doesn't make you wonder if maybe there's a wall? No, it doesn't, because they are very specific about what they have described. They describe it very distinctly as five to eight meters tall, 19 meters thick, and stretches from one end of the peninsula to the other. Jon says it'd be hard to miss a giant concrete barrier that's 62 feet thick, several stories high, running for more than 150 miles across the Korean peninsula. In the decades this wall's supposedly been around, someone would have bumped into it or glimpsed it on satellite. I told Jon I'd actually just talked to someone who says they've glimpsed it with their own eyes 40 or more times, the tour guide, Simon. I'm guessing that he probably saw one of these tank barriers. Tank barriers, or anti-tank barriers-- Jon admits that these do exist in the DMZ between North and South Korea. South Korea's also copped to this. They're tall. They're big. You can't walk through them. They may even be made of concrete. But they do not come close to spanning the entire length of the peninsula, like North Korea claims. Simon, the tour guide, admits he's only ever seen the wall from one spot. He doesn't know if it stretches the entire peninsula. He only knows what he knows, which is that claiming there's no wall, to him, is absurd. It's probably a tank barrier, as well. I mean, what's the purpose of a wall? Keep something out, or keep something in. And yeah, tanks are a thing. I think an anti-tank barrier can also be described as being a wall. It's like going to the Great Wall of China, an anti-invading forces barrier. Hadrian's Wall is a wall, not just an anti-Scots barrier. I mean, what's the difference? It might seem silly to get into a semantic debate over the meaning of the word "wall," but that's where we are. When it comes to walls, apparently semantics matter. Jon pointed out to me that the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea is probably the most fortified border in the world. There's razor wire fence on either side of it that does stretch across the entire peninsula. There are landmines everywhere inside. North and South Korea have about 2 million troops on either edge, with artillery and missiles and air forces at the ready. This border does not need a concrete wall to stop people from crossing it or attacking, and yet the North Koreans felt the need to invent one anyway. It needed to be a wall. Even if it doesn't do much to actually stop people, even if it's imaginary, calling it a wall makes a difference. Brian Reed is the senior producer of our program and the host of the podcast S-Town. Act Three, "He Is All Pine, and I Am Apple Orchard." Our next story takes place at the border between Pakistan and India. Nearly 2,000 miles, the border is heavily patrolled, lit at night, fenced in parts, a border between two countries that have gone to war four times-- 1947, 1965, 1971, and 1999. It is still tense between India and Pakistan. Each has nuclear weapons. And there's only one road on that long, long border where you can cross from one country into the other, and that's in a town called Wagah, at a place they call the Berlin Wall of Asia. Mariya Karimjee grew up in Pakistan. And the thing that she knew about Wagah was that they do this flag lowering ceremony there. It happens every day at sundown. Soldiers from both sides of the border do this elaborate, stylized, choreographed performance. Here's Mariya. As a kid, I only knew the bare bones of what happened at Wagah. I knew there was some kind of marching, flags being lowered, a handshake. It's the handshake, the idea of the handshake, that got me. An Indian soldier walks right up to the border and shakes a Pakistani soldier's hand. I loved it. It seemed so sweet. I'd always liked it whenever there was anything on TV showing our two countries getting along. There'd be news reports of soldiers exchanging treats during religious holidays, standing across from one another with their comical wax mustaches raised in a smile. I saw a commercial in which border security officers stationed at Wagah shared a soda across the border. I liked the idea of these soldiers as friends, a border where everyone was chummy and spent a lot of time together. I never actually went there as a kid. My family and I moved to Texas when I was 11, and I lived in the US on and off since then. Last year, my mother and I went to Wagah for the first time. It was not what I expected. I knew there'd be goosestepping. But if you've never seen a goosestep, nothing can really prepare you for a formation of tall Pakistani men, a dozen of them, in black military uniforms, handlebar mustaches, and turbans topped with large pleated bands swinging their legs up in unison without bending at the knee, and without missing a beat, quickly doing it again on the other foot. And again, it's a march. It's impressive. That's the crack of soldier's heels as they strike the ground. Then they switch to sky high kicks, their arms aggressively swinging to this exaggerated marching, looking a little like willful, frustrated toddlers. Someone on a PA leads the group in a series of chants. [SHOUTING] Pakistan, Pakistan. Pakistan is our home. Pakistan is our home. The gates to the Indian side were closed. But over there, I know the Indian soldiers were doing the same choreography, same goosesteps, same high kicks. They also look nearly identical to Pakistan's soldiers-- military uniforms and shiny black boots with turban hats. The two sides rehearse together. I like to picture that, them learning the steps, one Indian soldier asking a Pakistani soldier to go over the ending one more time, another showing off a new stretch he learned to loosen up his glutes, a frustrated stage manager counting angrily, "5, 6, 7, 8, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]." The ceremony started in 1959 as an act of brotherhood and friendship between the two countries. And before visiting, I assumed that people came here to celebrate that. But in reality, the petty rivalries between the countries play out right in front of you. Pakistan recruits their tallest, brawniest men, soldiers that are 6 feet or taller in a country where the average height for men is 5' 5". Pakistan pays their soldiers extra for staying in shape. India just doesn't seem to care that much. Their soldiers look scrawny by comparison. At the same time, India seems like it can't resist showing off that it's the wealthier country. They built a majestic stadium that seats 15,000. It towers over everything, the whole ceremony, no matter which side you are sitting on. The Pakistan side, it's way smaller, rows of little plastic seats surrounded by concrete steps. But what surprised me most at Wagah? There was an aggression I hadn't expected. It seemed like everyone was there to hate on India. The energy was frantic and hostile. People shook their fists at the Indians across from them. [CHANTING] Allah! Allah! Allah! Allah! The crowd was intense, shouting things like, "Allah is great," and "long live Pakistan." [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] Pakistan! [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] Pakistan! A few weeks ago, I returned to Wagah, and everyone I spoke to seemed to really, really hate India. The mom whose kids wanted ice cream, the teenager dressed in pink, the ex-military man and his wife, they told me they'd come out to show their national pride and to teach their kids about history. But they also went on in great detail with these crackpot conspiracy theories, like the Taliban are actually Indians, or that India continues to attack Pakistan across the Kashmir border, unprovoked, or that India was working stealthily to destabilize the government from the inside. I felt dumb. I hadn't realized the extent of the hate and hostility that people still feel towards India. I told people, personally, I don't feel deeply about India. And I definitely don't think of India as an enemy. Almost everyone said that's because I'm too Western, and I didn't really know how it was in Pakistan. I couldn't possibly understand. Here at the border, it felt like my country, Pakistan, the underdog, was giving the middle finger to our neighboring country. And maybe India was no better. A Pakistani friend who visited the India side of the ceremony said he cried when he realized just how much the Indians hated the Pakistanis. "Let's rape their sisters," he overheard an Indian spectator yelling. It's like if people from all over the United States and Mexico, full of anger, were to travel to the border between El Paso and Juarez to sit in some bleachers and face off, both shouting insults and screaming, "I'm better than you." At the stadium, the moment comes when the gates open between the two sides, and we can finally see the Indian soldiers. The Pakistani and Indian troops stare each other down, pause, then high kick their legs up into the air, like a competition between manly Rockettes. The crowd howls. In 2006, before some peace talks, India slightly lowered the height of their kicks. It was a gesture of goodwill, meant to show how sincere India was about improving relations between the two nuclear armed countries. They thought Pakistan would reciprocate. We did not. Finally, Pakistan and India lower their respective flags for the night. Bugles play. All the soldiers fall back, except for one Pakistani and one Indian. Face to face, feet apart, they each do a single, beautifully executed high kick in the other's face. And then, as promised, they shake hands, woodenly, before marching back to their troops. The ceremony is done. I will say, the handshake, I was glad to see it. I found it surprisingly moving in spite of my surroundings. I wondered if I was the only one who felt that way. In the weeks since I went, I've thought a lot about how much emotion I saw pour out of people at Wagah. There's lots to be frustrated about in Pakistan. There's sectarian violence almost every single day. Politicians are nicknamed for how corrupt they are. Water is increasingly scarce. Police often don't follow up on crimes. The rich avoid paying taxes. You can't fight injustice through the legal system. At Wagah, the single spot on the giant line that made Pakistan exist as a country, you can at least yell with some ferocity. Maybe it is a way to show your love for Pakistan. But I suspect a lot of the appeal is simply that you can yell. Mariya Karimjee. Act Four, "We Keep the Wall Between Us As We Go." The very first official border wall between the United States and Mexico was actually just a fence in 1918 on the border between two cities with the same name, Nogales, Mexico, and Nogales, Arizona. Since then, the US has installed a much bigger fence-- thick, rust-colored steel rods. And every day at that spot at the border in Nogales, white buses from Homeland Security roll up full of people with deportation orders who are sent across the border into Mexico from the United States. Lots of them are parents with kids who are still in the States. They then just take up residence right on the other side of the wall. There's no official estimate of how many. It's probably in the thousands. And one of the saddest premises for a community that you can imagine-- all these parents separated from their own children, who are US citizens, who stay behind, sometimes with the parents' approval and best wishes, sometimes not. Reporter Lizzie Presser was curious about how these parents of kids remake their family lives around all this-- one family, in particular. Many of the parents who get dropped off don't exactly decide to stay on the Mexican side of Nogales. It's more that they never make the decision to leave. They have no friends or family here. Their original hometowns in Mexico are hundreds of miles away. But Nogales is the closest they can be to their kids, who aren't that far away in places like Arizona, Nevada, or Utah. Local officials told me that this population of deported parents is a new one. They started showing up under President Obama. Their numbers picked up even more under President Trump. We hear about kids who get left behind in the States. But in Nogales, it's the parents who are orphaned. You can find these parents all over town. I met Emmanuel outside of a gym. He got deported two years ago. Why did you stick around? I'm here because I'm closer to my son. He's little, so he's two. He's barely walking. And I just don't want him to forget about me, you know? I then spotted this woman on the street wearing an Arizona Wildcats T-shirt and stopped her. I'm working on a story on parents who have been deported to Nogales. Yeah, that's me, exactly me. So I got deported a year ago. This is Griselda Espinoza. Her kids are in Mesa, Arizona. How many kids do you have? Three. And how old are they? 18, 16, and 6. It's hard, because I'm missing a lot of things. Are there are certain times of the day that you miss your kids most? At night. At night, when I see their pictures. My son just won homecoming, and I wasn't there. She scrolls through her kids' Facebook pages every night before bed. I talked to another mom who said she sometimes spends hours on Google Earth tracing the streets in her old neighborhood in Phoenix. I met parents all over the city. They work all day in factories and call centers and then come home to rooms they've decorated for their kids, who aren't there. One dad with a two-year-old still in Phoenix told me he installed a TV in his son's room, decked it out with Tonka trucks and Hot Wheels. When friends come over, he shuts the door to keep the room clean. But when I asked him the last time his son came to visit, he said it was more than a year ago. Sometimes, it's a really long wait for kids to cross over from the States. The mom I spent the most time with is Gloria Marin. You need to cook the chili colorado? This is her early one morning last fall. She talked to her kids on the phone, and it sounded like they were coming today. So Gloria was making her son Angel's favorite dish, chili colorado, a red sauce she mixed with beef and cactus. I've known Gloria and her family for a year and gotten close to them. She used to live in Phoenix with her four kids. She raised them there as a single mom. Now she lives in a small room behind a friend's house. She keeps a couple extra beds propped up against her wall and got a chihuahua for her daughters. Like a lot of the other deported parents in town, she always wants to be ready for her kids. Gloria has been in Nogales for more than five years. She's short with wavy black hair. She's quiet and kind of wistful when she talks. She wasn't expecting her kids until lunch, but she woke up at 5:00 AM to get ready. She wanted to look nice. Gloria's saying, I showered. I got dressed. I brushed my hair. I cleaned the house. I made the food. And I wait for them. That's all. Gloria and her kids spent all their time together when they were in Phoenix. They did Friday movie nights, took camping trips, sold toys together at a swap meet on the weekends to make extra money. And then one day back in 2010, Gloria got arrested while her kids were at school. She'd been working as a housekeeper for a couple months when her boss got charged with running drop houses, places where undocumented immigrants spend the night after crossing the border. The prosecutors charged Gloria as an accomplice. She says she knew nothing about her boss's work, but she spent two years in prison. And then, since she wasn't documented, she was deported. During that time, her kids lives started to unravel. The youngest was seven and the oldest 15. Her kids were split up and put into foster care. They could rarely talk to their mom or to each other. Gloria spent her first year in Nogales trying to regain custody of her kids. But by the time she could convince Arizona's family court, only Gloria's youngest, who was 10, ended up joining her for a little. The others had been through hell, and they felt estranged from their mom. It had been three years since they all lived together. Also, they didn't know Mexico, and they were scared to move there. They were US citizens whose lives were in Phoenix, three hours away. Gloria told me, when I was young and my kids were little, I thought that I could never live without them. I never thought that one day they'd grow up, and I'd be far away from them. But you have to learn how to live like this. It's like a hope. It's the hope that any moment they'll say, Mom, I'm going over. And I'll be here waiting for them. I'm always just sitting around nervously, just waiting. I always await their visits thinking that, at any minute, they'll come. But they never really plan anything. Today, they said they'd visit. But what Gloria didn't know was that they weren't planning on coming across the border to her house and eating her chili colorado. They only wanted to come as far as the wall. There's a small visitor's section where the wall is just a mesh fence where people from the two sides go to talk. I want to stay on this side. This is Gloria's daughter, Yesi. She's 22, and she's bringing her two young children, one of whom has never met Gloria. And she just couldn't bring herself to tell her mom that she doesn't want to cross over into Mexico today. No, if my mom hears that, she's going to be sad. She's going to think there's something wrong with her. I just make up excuses. I don't know what's wrong with me-- like excuse after excuse. Then why are you making up those excuses there? I get super depressed not being able to be with her. She says it's really painful to see her mom. Gloria's house is a plywood shed, and she's working at a factory making $15 a day. Her health isn't great. She has diabetes. Sometimes, she starts crying. And Yesi feels like there's nothing she can do to help her situation. It messes her up to see her mom that way. I don't think she understands the effect of us seeing her like that. She always calls me and tells me like, why are you ignoring me? I'm your mother. You need to see me. You need to talk to me. I want to cook for you. She tells me all these things. Then what do you say? I just tell her, oh, it's because I'm busy here. I've got stuff to do. But I don't do anything. I'm just here in my room. When was the last time you saw your mom? I can't even remember. I think it was December of last year. Yeah, it's been that long. And that was at the wall. Yesi hasn't crossed over to visit her mother's house since 2014. It's not that she doesn't love her mom. They talk on the phone, text, send each other cute emojis. But in the past, when Yesi's gone to see her mom, she's left her ID at home on purpose then told her mom it was an accident. That way, crossing wasn't an option. She could only meet Gloria at the wall and talk there. She wouldn't have to see her at her house. It just wasn't as intense. The wall is helpful for Yesi. It helps her keep some emotional distance. Staying on the US side of the wall helps Yesi in another way. The last time she crossed over to visit Gloria in her home, four years ago, she'd only planned to visit for a few days. But she almost didn't come back. She ended up living there for four months with her daughter, who was just a toddler. She hadn't felt that comfortable in years. She and Gloria talked about how Yesi could get a job on the US side of the border, commute there during the day, and then stay in Mexico with Gloria at night. And for months, Yesi let herself believe it was possible. But then her real life caught up with her. She couldn't keep putting off school, her kids' dad, who was in Arizona. She had too many responsibilities. And ever since, seeing her mom just reminded her of what she couldn't have. You're nervous that if you go, you won't come back. Yeah, because that's what I want. I just want to be with her. I guess I have no self-control. Ugh. That's why I don't like going over there. But have you ever thought about just saying to her, like, it's hard for me to come because I miss you too much? How do you tell the person that you love the most in this world, I don't want to see you because I come home, and I'm not the same because of you? You don't want to tell her that. Her little brother, Angel, is also ambivalent about seeing their mom. And today, he plans to stay on the US side of the fence with Yesi. I get butterflies because I feel nervous. It's like I'm meeting a whole different person, even though I know her. I don't know. I just sometimes feel like I'm a stranger to her. And sometimes, she's a stranger to me. Angel's 18 now. He was 10 when Gloria was picked up. And in those eight years, Gloria has changed a lot. In prison, Gloria became really religious. Now she goes to mass three times each week, and she's always talking to Angel and Yesi about God, reading them passages from the Bible. She used to stroll into school to pick them up in ripped Guess jeans and a big perm. At home, she'd blast Madonna and Michael Jackson while they cleaned the house together. Now she wears long dresses and "church lady" shoes. She's reserved. Angel's kind of a goof, and he used to crack his mom up all the time. But now, he says, she's lost her sense of humor. He feels like he can't be himself around her. I'll make fun of people, just be like, yo, that guy gots a bald head. You can see your future. And it's like a magic ball. And she'll be like, don't make fun of that person, you know? They have issues too. I'll be like, Mom, I'm just trying to make you laugh, but OK. If you're just going to continue to be like that with me, then why should we even speak? Because I don't want to feel that vibe with my own mother. Do you feel like she used to appreciate this part of you? I think so, yeah, shoot. Angel and Yesi both can't let go of the way their mom used to be back in Phoenix. Yesi wants her to act more like a mom, to fake that she's happy even when she's not, to tell her what to do. Of course, they have practical reasons for not visiting. They don't have much money for bus tickets. Yesi's kids need her attention. It's easy to blame it on that stuff and not talk about the rest of it, though it's hard not to feel guilty. Sometimes, I feel like my mom feels that we don't love her. Do you feel like your love for your mom now is the same as it was before she left? I really don't know what it is right now. [LAUGHS] When my mom, she tells me she loves me, I'll tell her, I love you too, Mom. And what do you feel? Nothing. Is that scary? No, it's just a feeling that you feel, like when you're just too deep into something that you just can't get out of, or you feel you can't get out of. Angel's not completely disconnected from Gloria though. He's discovered that she has a very specific physical effect on him that no one else has. After Gloria was arrested, Angel stopped being able to sleep through the night. But when he visited her at her home in Nogales for the first time, Gloria lay down next to him. At the time, he was just 14. I instantly fell asleep because she was rubbing my head. I just knocked out quick. Had you not had that since she'd been arrested? Yeah. That was like the best, decent sleep. Like, I would compare it to the last time I was like in the fetus, bro, like just chilling, just going-- just sleeping, you know? I had no thoughts, no negative thoughts. I didn't have to worry about bills, no nothing. Sounds like very good sleep to me. Do you ask them to visit more often? Gloria told me, yes, but I don't know. Maybe because of time and money, I don't know. They can't come so much. I don't know. So I never thought that this would happen, that they'd make the decision to not come. Before, I used to get angry because they didn't come. And I used to ask myself why, ask myself if they'd lost their love for their mom and all that. But now, I just want them to feel good so that they want to come again. So these days, that's Gloria's entire strategy. She tries to play it cool when she's on the phone with them. She doesn't want to sound needy or talk about how hard things are for her. In the morning, back in Phoenix, Yesi put on full makeup. Brisa, the youngest kid, braided Angel's hair. The three of them packed into the car around 7:00 AM with Yesi's kids and headed south to stand on the Arizona side of the border and talk to their mom through a fence. In Nogales, Gloria finished cooking and then sat on her bed, watching the clock, still unaware that her kids weren't planning to cross over. When it hit 10:00 AM, Gloria left her house, got in her car, and started driving to the border to pick them up, 10 minutes away. Suddenly, her cell phone rang. It was her kids. Gloria's saying, are you guys coming? Wait, you're there? I'm on my way. OK, mijo, I love you. Her kids had all crossed. I don't think it was because I was with them recording. They'd had a massive change of heart. Brisa, the youngest, had been telling her siblings that Gloria was doing fine, and they needed to chill out and stop making such a big deal out of visiting her house. And so when they got to the border, the siblings didn't talk about it. Nobody said anything. Angel looked down and saw his feet walking across the border. They pushed through a metal gate. Suddenly, they were in Mexico. Gloria pulled up and honked. Yesi, it's your first time here in three years. I know. It's been a while. Yesi went to hug her. She told her mom that her hair smelled good. Everyone kissed each other and piled into the car. At Gloria's house, the kids immediately sat down to start eating. They only had an hour. Angel had to get back to Phoenix for work that night. For all their talk about their hang ups with their mom, they got casual really fast. Yesi's bodysuit was bothering her, so she unsnapped it and let the flaps hang loose. Angel was trying to learn how to say "burp" in Spanish. Is it "eructa" or "erupta?" Eructa. Gloria wasn't eating. She was just watching them. She had this dreamy smile on her face. This was the first time they'd all sat around a table together since 2010. After lunch, they all climbed into Gloria's bed, insisting they had food comas. But really, they just wanted an excuse to cuddle with their mom. Angel curled up. He's about 5 feet, 90 pounds. He'd insisted on wearing a baggy sweatshirt that day so he didn't look too skinny. Gloria started rubbing his head. It was like a magic trick. When my mom rubs my head and I'm sleeping, it's already over. Angel closed his eyes, and then it was time to leave. Yesi and her kids stayed behind with Gloria, but just for three extra days this time. They talked again about living together in Mexico. Yesi told her she'd move down there in a month or so. She'd buy Gloria a plot of land with a small house, just big enough for the whole family. Yesi told me it made them both happy, just saying all those things, even though she knew and her mom knew that it wasn't going to happen. And for the first time, that was OK. Lizzie Presser. To help report this story, Lizzie got a grant from the International Women's Media Foundation as an Adelante Fellow. She was also supported by the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute (SINGING) Well, they blew the horns, and the walls came down. They'd all been warned, and the walls came down. They stood there laughing. They're not laughing anymore. The walls came down. Our program was produced today by David Kestenbaum and Louise Sullivan. The people who put our show together includes Elna Baker, Elise Bergerson, Ben Calhoun, Dana Chivvis, Sean Cole, Stephanie Foo, Michelle Harris, Kimberly Henderson, Miki Meek, Alvin Melathe, Robyn Semien, Alissa Shipp, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, and Diane Wu. Our senior producer is Brian Reed. Our managing editor is Susan Burton. Production help from Anna Martin and Stone Nelson. Special thanks today to Robert Frost, to California Sunday Magazine, The Kino Border Initiative, Carmen Noriega, Catalina Maria Johnston, Vicky Cosstick, Peter Curran, Mark Gordon, Zeynep Bilginsoy, Matt Alesevich, Zach Campbell, James Hathaway, Rebecca Hamlin, Jesus Blasco de Avellaneda, Nick Fountain, Nate Rott, Charles Maynes, Frankie Quinn, Brahim B. Ali. Interpreting today by Daniel Sherr. Our website, where this week we have this incredible interactive map where you can fly around to see all the walls in today's stories all over the globe, created by International Mapping. See that at thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio station by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, he just showed us our new office plan. We are all moving into cubicles-- very, very tiny cubicles. He likes them small. I would compare it to the last time I was in the fetus, bro, like just chilling. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
This story begins with a random encounter with history. Our senior producer, Brian Reed, was spending a lot of time in Alabama a few years back doing reporting. And one morning he went for a jog near his hotel-- he was in Tuscaloosa-- and he got to this park. Where the ruins of the old state capitol are. And then I ran down this little pathway down the hill, and I saw this marker, one of those historical markers. And I have never forgotten this thing. Like, it stayed with me. And every time I went back to Tuscaloosa, which was a number of times, I would go, at some point during the trip, walk over and read it again. I brought my wife one time. I brought her to see it, a friend. I've been there a bunch. It made an impression. Yes. So you have the text here, I know. Yeah. So the marker's titled "The Indian Fires Are Going Out," in quotes. And it explains that the Trail of Tears led thousands of Creek Indians through Tuscaloosa, back when it was the capital of Alabama, on their way to the West as they were being driven from that part of the country. Mm-hm. And their homelands. Yeah, and their homelands. And during that time, a Creek chief addressed the legislature on their way out of the state with these words. He gave this speech. Quote, "I come here, brothers, to see the great house of Alabama and the men who make the laws and to say farewell in brotherly kindness before I go to the far West where my people are now going. In time gone by, I have thought that the white men wanted to bring burden and ache of heart among my people in driving them from their homes and yoking them with laws they do not understand. But I have now become satisfied that they are not unfriendly toward us, but that they wish us well. In these lands of Alabama, which have belonged to my forefathers and where their bones lie buried, I see that the Indian fires are going out. Soon they will be cold. New fires are lighting in the West for us, they say, and we will go there. I do not believe our great Father means to harm his red children, but that he wishes us well. We leave behind our goodwill to the people of Alabama who build the great houses and to the men who make the laws. This is all I have to say." And what do you make-- what a strange speech to make, as you're being exiled, to the people who are exiling you. Exactly. Yeah, that's what struck me about it. I mean, first of all, super sad. And I found it very moving. But also, I read it and reread it, and I just wondered, is this speech kind of subversive in some way? Was this chief standing there in front of the Alabama state legislature, which was partially responsible for kicking his people out, and kind of mocking them slightly or being slightly sarcastic in this speech? Especially this part, "In time gone by, I have thought that the white men wanted to bring burden and ache of heart among my people in driving them from their homes and yoking them with laws they do not understand. But I have now become satisfied that they're not unfriendly toward us, that they wish us well." Right. Like he's saying, you guys have yoked us with your laws and driven us from our homes, but we know you wish us well. And I just wondered if there was something slightly arch about that. Something arch that went right over the heads of the legislators at the time and also over the heads of the Alabama Historical Association when they approved this marker over a century and a half later. And so recently, Brian decided to look into it. What did the chief mean? Did he say it under duress? Did this even happen? And what we found was, yes, the speech really did occur in the Muskogee language, interpreted into English at the legislature. He found the primary source for us knowing about it-- the only source-- a newspaper article in The Huntsville Democrat in 1835. It says legislators teared up at the speech. And I talked to several historians, including two experts who are Creek themselves, and there does not seem to be evidence that this was sarcastic. So but the people who are Creek, what did they make of it? What did they say to you about it? Well, I talked to one woman, named RaeLynn Butler. She's the manager of historic and cultural preservation at the Muskogee Creek Nation in Oklahoma. She'd never seen the speech before. And she lives in Oklahoma. Her ancestors were part of this group of people who left Alabama at this time and came to Oklahoma, and she'd never seen the speech before till we sent it to her to ask her about it. I was very confused when I read the speech because-- Really? You, too? Yes. It did not sound accurate to me. He talks about how we're being driven from our homes, and then, in the same breath, goes on to say, this is for the betterment of our people. Yeah, so she reacted to the same thing in the speech that I reacted to. So anyway, so she ended up getting her whole team involved at the cultural preservation office, and they started looking through their archives. And she told me, as they were researching, they were hoping to find evidence that this wasn't exactly right, that maybe the interpreter had messed up or something else was wrong about this speech. I was hoping for that. And you didn't find it. No, and we did not find it. So the reality is kind of sobering. Yes. Did it bum you out when you heard about this speech? Yes. I was bummed to read the speech mainly because I felt that it misrepresented the way that I felt and the way I know my family feels about removal or about assimilation. It's just hard to accept the fact that he says, we know you mean us no harm. It just seemed to go a little bit too far. You lose the game, you shake someone's hand to acknowledge a good game and that we lost. But in this speech, to me, it seems like Yoholo Micco is not only shaking their hand, but he's giving them a hug or even a kiss goodbye. Yeah. Yeah. So basically, Brian stumbled upon this random bit of history three years ago. He started sharing it with people who usually had just as strong a reaction as he had-- reactions of various kinds. And it kind of ricocheted around from person to person, piercing into each one this bullet of information from the past. And since we don't actually know a lot about this speech-- we don't know for sure which chief it was, we don't know why he said it, the only account of it comes from this one newspaper reporter and leaves crucial questions unanswered-- in the end, it's unclear what to think. And even after trying to research it, what we're left with is our own personal reactions and feelings. Well, today on our program, we have two stories about people who bump into unsettling facts from history. They're both stories that's in a setting designed to actually teach them a little bit of history. And in both of these stories, what they learn is so different from the lessons that they are supposed to get from the past. In fact, it's not even close. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Act One, The Miseducation of Castlemont High. So we begin with a bunch of students who were taken on a field trip to learn about the past. They were going to see a film that covers some history. They were also going to go ice skating, which a lot of them were especially looking forward to. This happened back in 1994. And what happened on that field trip with this group of black and Latino students became kind of a big deal, talked about all across the country because of what they did not learn. BA Parker has worked on our show, and she also incidentally used to be a film professor, and she tells what happened. It was actually a school holiday-- January 17, Martin Luther King Day. And even though there was no school, the teacher was known for his great field trips, so 70 kids showed up. That morning, most of them crowded onto a single bus and headed to the Grand Lake Theatre, this beautiful classic movie house in town. As soon as they got there, they noticed that almost all of the other patrons were white. And according to the kids, those patrons noticed them back. Tracy Wilson was one of the students on the field trip, a freshman. Just the looks that we were receiving. What kind of looks? In a matter of, what are you doing here? We don't look like anybody else that's standing in line, but no one said anything to us. No, I take that back. There were those bold ones that asked the question. Oh, are you guys on a field trip? Yes. What school are you from? Castlemont. Oh, OK. And you guys are here to watch a movie? Yeah. What movie are you all watching? And then they're like, ah, OK. You know? Then we get into the theater, and downhill from there. The movie they were going to see was Schindler's List, a film about the Holocaust. They walked into the theater. It was chaotic. The teacher had made arrangements ahead of time, but no one remembered him calling. So the 70 teenagers just sat where they could, a lot of them in the back. The four chaperones sat in the front-- four of them for 70 kids. If you're not familiar with Schindler's List, basically, Oskar Schindler, a real-life German businessman played by Liam Neeson, tricks the Nazis into letting him save 1,200 Jewish people in Poland. But that plot isn't clear for a long, long time. And it's artsy in the beginning, almost impenetrable. At least, that's how I felt when I was a teenager and my teacher showed us the film. Long shots with nobody talking, and you don't know what's going on. And it's three hours long and in black and white. At 14, Tracy felt the same way. It opened up with a candle. And I was like, OK. I mean, to us, we were probably like, oh God, black and white. Where are the subtitles? Is this a foreign film? Is this a documentary? Oh God, we have to sit through this to go skating? Well, I remember I was seeing a movie that was in black and white. This is Tanzania Enskip, also a freshman on the field trip. Today, she's a teacher. A lot of violence. There was a lot of violence in the movie. And I remember seeing a lot of things that high school kids shouldn't be seeing. I remember one scene. I was like, wait a minute. That should only be in sex education, not on this screen. A lot of kids were like, oh, my God. For a film about a concentration camp, Schindler's List has a fair amount of sex and titillating nudity in it, which, again, weird thing to show a bunch of high school kids on a field trip. This is Tracy. Yeah. We were probably-- no, I wouldn't say probably-- we were definitely unruly. It doesn't matter what type of movie it is, people talk. And we didn't want to be there, so probably heard some [CLICKS TONGUE] aw, man, teeth-sucking, attitude. All the kids admit today they didn't behave appropriately during the movie. They were restless. They talked and horsed around with each other. Some went out to get drinks and popcorn. Others even snuck into other movies. House Party 3 was also playing that day. Those who stayed in the theater were shushed several times by the other patrons and also an usher and a chaperone. When one of the moviegoers told them to be quiet, they reportedly bombarded him with popcorn. I do recall a scene where the young Jewish girl is talking to the German soldiers. Nathanial Osborne was a senior when he went on the field trip. Now he teaches special education. The Jewish woman in the scene he's talking about was the foreman on a construction project. They were building a concentration camp. And the way they were building it was incorrect. She said it was going to cave in. Herr Kommandant, the entire foundation has to be torn down and re-poured. If not-- So she was expressing that to them. The general or the guy in charge there-- That would be Ralph Fiennes in the film. You know, looked at her. And you are an engineer? Looked at his constituents. Unterscharfuehrer! Ja wohl? And-- Shoot her. --then he told them to shoot her. And I remember I heard somebody says, oh my God, he's not going to shoot her. This is Tanzania. Then one of the kids said that out loud. And I was thinking the same thing in my head. I said, he's not going to shoot this woman. She's just trying to try to let them know that they're doing something incorrectly. I'm only trying to do my job. Ja. I'm doing mine. Sir, she's foreman of construction. We're not going to have arguments with these people. And the guy simply pulled out his gun and shot her. That's when I remember a lot of students were like, oh! Oh, my God! Oh! He shot her! Whoa! Tracy Wilson. Back then, what did we say? Dang! You know? Or, man, that was crazy. Or-- What one of the Castlemont kids-- we don't know who-- actually said-- the five words that would come to define this incident-- "Oh, man. That was cold." But he probably said it as, Aw, man. That was cold. He said it really loud, I believe. He was like, Aw, man. That was cold. And just quickly, there was something else about the scene-- the way the actress fell after she was shot. She bounces abruptly, up and down again, into the snow. It looks unnatural. Her body was very involved. Like, OK, that's a bit much. As we would say nowadays, extra. And that's when I recall the giggle, shall I say. Some kids in the theater laughing while blood poured out of the woman's head. It wasn't at the fact that she got shot. It was her overdramatizing being shot. And so then what happened? You would see some people get up that were not students and head out the theater. I was in my office upstairs, and I decided to go downstairs and get a cup of coffee. This is Allen Michaan, the owner of the Grand Lake Theatre. I went down into the lobby, and there were several dozen very angry, agitated people that were screaming at the manager-- what are you going to do about this? This is outrageous. You've got to do something about this. Angry. They were furious. And there was one woman that was in tears. Allen asked the manager what was going on. The manager told him. There were 500 people in the theater that day watching one of the most upsetting films of the 20th century, and some of them-- the teenagers-- were laughing and carrying on. And these people in the lobby, some of them told Allen they were family of Holocaust survivors. And I only thought of one thing, and that is, I have a riot situation on my hands. So I went into the projection room and I told projectionist, I said, stop the film. I remember the lights coming on. And I went out into the auditorium. A guy walking up on the stage. And I said, would the class field trip from Castlemont School please assemble in the lobby? And we were officially kicked out. Again, this is Tracy. I think there might have been applause. That was so uncomfortable. Allen, the theater owner, didn't know when he stopped the movie that the Castlemont students were kids of color, mostly black. But Tanzania told me and my producer, Sean Cole, that, as the students walked out of the theater, the audience definitely knew it. People were clapping. They were applauding. I remember I walked past one gentleman. He told me to go back to Africa. What? Yeah. I said, whoa. I said, wait a minute. I didn't do anything. That's all I could say. I remember I said, I didn't even do anything. But yeah, it was a gentleman. Becaust I remember I was walking back up, and he was on my left. I felt embarrassed. I get that. I was also a black teenager who went to the movies with her friends, and there was always a feeling of being policed or policing yourself if you're young, brown, and carefree in a white space. That can harden you really quick. Tracy again. At that point, I was, for lack of a better term, pissed off. You're clapping? We're kids, and you're adults. But now that I'm an adult, I could see why people were clapping. We were offensive in some of our actions. And with the movie being what it was, it makes sense to me now, most definitely. 15? No. Again, Tanzania. It's starting to come back to me now, everything. And when we were outside in front of the theater waiting on the bus to come back and pick us up, they told us we couldn't wait in front of the theater. And I felt embarrassed by that. I felt bad about it because I said, wow, we're not even good enough to just wait here? They didn't go skating. Two days after that, Tanzania remembers she was walking to school. I'm about to get ready to go to class. Let me grab a juice. And I stopped by a store that was close by the school, and I looked down at the newspapers. And it was saying, Castlemont High School students get kicked out the theater. They were in the newspaper on the front page at the very top. And I said, wait a minute. We're bigger than the earthquake? There'd been a huge earthquake in California the day before-- 6.7 magnitude. 57 people died. That was on the front page too, below the story about Castlemont. All we did was get kicked out of the theater. I was like, how are we bigger than the earthquake? That should be headline news. The article read, "To the horror of many in the audience during Monday's matinee, some of the African-American and Latino teenagers seemed to laugh and applaud at scenes depicting Nazi atrocities." It went on, "People attending the film were shocked and angry by what they felt was insensitivity to the Holocaust." Other news organizations picked up the story as a theater-going version of a hate crime, that dozens of black and Latino kids in Oakland were cheering on the murder of Jewish people. Hello, caller. You're on the air. Hi. I was in the audience with my 13-year-old son and two other friends. This is from a local call-in show, Flashpoints, that was featured in a documentary called Blacks and Jews from the mid-90s. And I was going like, who spends money to see a film on the Holocaust just to disrupt it? And I thought, are these Nazi sympathizers? I couldn't understand who these people were. From this point, what actually happened in that theater and the motivations of the kids who were there became less important than how other people chose to see them. They weren't kids who goofed off on a field trip. They were African-American and Latino teenagers applauding at Nazi atrocities. They were anti-Semites. I was just like, wait a minute. That's not me. Tanzania didn't even know back then what anti-Semitic meant. If you would have asked me when I was 15, I would've told you no. I would have been like, what is that? What is that word? What does that mean? But after hearing it, though, you look it up in a dictionary, and you figure out what it is. Yeah. That's a hell of a way to learn it. Yeah. Jewish people just weren't on their radar-- to hate, to love, anything. Nathaniel didn't even know if he'd ever met someone who was Jewish. No. And if I did, I didn't know they were Jewish. Did you know that some of your white teachers happened to be Jewish or anything? No. I want to say Mr. Finkelstein. That's what I want to say had some Jewish ties. That sounds about right. But, no. There was another thing the students didn't know about-- the Holocaust. They got an hour-long lesson on the basics before the field trip, but that was it. Some of them had learned a little bit about it in middle school a few years earlier. Others had never learned the first thing about it. One boy reportedly thought the Holocaust meant the US bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. Within Castlemont, what happened on the field trip just became known as "the incident." And everybody was talking about it-- in class, outside of class. It was clear the administration had to respond publicly. And the way they chose to respond was to say that these kids, who'd grown up in the rough, open flatlands, had seen so much violence-- seen people shot, had guns pulled on them-- that they were desensitized to it. One Jewish Castlemont teacher told The LA Times, "They're not Afro-American kids laughing at Jewish horror, they're the inner-city hip-hop generation desensitized to violence because they see it every day." The staff wasn't alone in pushing this theory. It was a dominant explanation in the media. The whole story was told as a morality tale about black teens and what was wrong with them. But Tanzania basically said that doesn't make any sense. I mean, yeah. Yeah, they've seen a lot of violence, but when you see it, it's not a laughing matter. We're not numb to it. You know, we have empathy. We have all that. It's just when you're seeing it and you're looking at it, it's like, how do you cope with it? And I remember watching the movie. And it's like, my emotions, I was like, how do I handle that? And like you said, the one student was like, oh wow, that was cold. It was cold. Murdering someone for no reason is cold. That was an appropriate reaction. In fact, one of the school administrators said she was happy the students reacted that way because she knew it had affected them. After the newspaper articles, a barrage of angry phone calls flooded into Castlemont High School, many of them from the local Jewish community. People were disappointed in the students and the faculty. The high school administration decided it needed to nip this controversy in the bud. Or they decided the kids needed to nip this controversy in the bud. So that same week as the field trip, by the end of the week, they organized a press conference, and the students were strongly encouraged to speak. Hi, I'm the student body president at Castlemont High, Kandi Stewart, and I would like to introduce our student speakers for today, which is Tracy Wilson-- Four of the students from the field trip, who were also members of the student council, sat at a table in front of news cameras. They were dressed professionally. Imagine a '90s era high school picture day. 17-year-old Nathaniel, who you heard earlier, was in a crisp white shirt and black necktie. Tracy Wilson wore a dark navy dress with puffy shoulders and brass buttons, looking like someone much older than she was. To the management and patrons at the Grand Lake Theatre and anyone else who was offended by our actions, we apologize for any discomfort and pain we may have caused you. We are sorry for the disruption. It was not our intention to offend anyone. We believe our teachers' hearts were in the right place. They wanted to teach us about the Holocaust. Tracy and the other students took on all the blame. Never once during this press conference did the principal or any of the teachers make a statement. We will never have a chance to make another first impression, but we have to rise above this. Oh, that caused such mess. This is Tracy in the present day. This needed to be fixed. And if it takes an apology so we can get this to blow over, so be it. Let's get the kids to apologize. But that didn't seem to calm the storm. For one thing, a lot more media picked up the story-- CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times-- but the anger and reprimands just kept coming over the next few days and weeks. In a letter to The LA Times, a boardmember of the Malibu Jewish Center and Synagogue wrote, quote, "I feel angry that anyone old enough to understand the meaning of man's inhumanity to man could act as callous as these kids apparently acted." Another reader wrote, "There is no excuse for what those kids did-- not lack of education, not lack of being prepared, nothing." One of the four students who apologized on camera received death threats in the mail. Anisa Rasheed taught English and African History at Castlemont at the time. It seemed like it made it worse. And some entities felt that the kids didn't apologize for what they felt they should be apologizing for. What did they feel they should be apologizing for? The kids were trying to apologize for their behavior, for the way that they behaved. But it felt like the greater powers that be, or the certain elements, they wanted the kids to apologize for their feeling and their thinking, that they should apologize and own being insensitive to the pain and suffering of Jewish people, and that they're sorry for that and they'll never do it again. And now that they've been reprimanded, they're going to try to be better people. The kids didn't own being insensitive to the pain and suffering of the Jewish people. But to be fair, they hadn't witnessed the full spectrum of the pain and suffering of the Jewish people yet. There were still two more hours and 20 minutes of the film that they never got through-- the film that they hadn't been properly prepared for and that they hadn't been taught. From their perspective, here's what happened. They misbehaved on a field trip, and they said they were sorry. And now they were getting death threats for not being sorry in the right way. Now they were fed up and defensive. They were tired of talking about how ignorant they were. They wanted to talk about something else. There had been a lot of discussion about what happened a while ago to a persecuted minority who wasn't them. And so when some Jewish people offered to come to Castlemont to teach them about the Holocaust, they weren't in the mood for moral lectures on someone else's history. I don't want to hear anything-- no disrespect, but I don't want to hear anything about anybody else's Holocaust before I hear my own. This recording is from the Blacks and Jews documentary, which has a long section on Castlemont. You cannot sit here and fill me with your knowledge until I have my own. As black people, Latinos, and other races, Indians, they don't understand their own Holocaust. We don't understand our own Holocaust, because I'm black and Indian. She's Latino. She's Jamaican-Indian. First, we need to learn about our own Holocaust, and then maybe we can understand your Holocaust. What about the Trail of Tears, or slavery, or colonialism? They wanted to learn about that. Anisa Rasheed felt the same way as her students. She's the English and History teacher, and she organized a day-long black history teach-in, or African Holocaust Day. There were musicians and African dancers, lectures on ancient Egypt and Jim Crow. One guest teacher explained that racism has 54 components to it. Another, wearing a regal brown and gold dashiki, a kufi, with a leather-bound neck pouch, walked up and down the front of a classroom, commanding students' attention, pointing to placards listing the names of people who had been lynched in the South. Lynched-- ropes tied around their necks and hung from trees for 100 years-- hung from trees, all these names, black people. This is the Maafa. Maafa is another word for the African Holocaust. There were dozens of presentations about a variety of topics. But in the movie Blacks and Jews, one of the students talked about one particular aspect of the history of slavery that stuck with her. Well, I was in one of those classes, and what they were talking about was basically how slave ships were owned by Jews. And he showed us documents from where he had gotten out of Washington DC that stated that. And to me, that laid an impression upon me. I think it's safe to assume this particular fact stood out to this girl because Jews were suddenly a trending topic at her school. Laura Abrams was the school social worker at Castlemont at the time. A lot of kids really liked her. She was 25 years old then. And for the first time, her Jewishness was a topic of interest. This was all students wanted to talk about and asked me a lot of questions about. All of the sudden, it was like, oh, are you Jewish? And well, were you raised racist? And, did your family own slaves? Some kids told Laura they heard Jews were the most racist group. It was hurtful. So though there wasn't any anti-Semitism among the students before the field trip, it seemed like a kind of anti-Semitism was growing at Castlemont High School. I don't-- I don't want to say that. Again, Tracy. What I will say is, I remember just kids just being frustrated, and saying things, and not really having a clear understanding of what they're saying. She's talking about anti-Semitic slurs. You know? Just saying it out of anger because they've heard somebody say it or read it somewhere. But it wasn't like-- you have to understand that a lot of the kids didn't really differentiate Jewish people from all white people, so they weren't necessarily saying, oh, all Jews are blah. No, they were just saying white people. You know, white people this, or blah. And there wasn't any real correction. And I felt like it was allowed. And instead of it being used as a time of enlightenment, it just breeded more ignorance. A few months went by, and then some surprising news arrived at Castlemont. Stephen Spielberg was coming for a visit. He and the governor of California at the time, Pete Wilson, had been working on a way to incorporate Schindler's List in a larger curriculum for high schoolers about the Holocaust and slavery. There'd be free screenings of the film and a study guide. These plans were already in the works before the field trip happened, but where better to make the announcement than Castlemont High School? So at first glance, this simply looked like another opportunity for Castlemont High School to put this whole thing to rest, or at least to put a positive spin on it. But as with every other turn in this Castlemont Schindler's saga, all it did was enrage pretty much everyone. Days beforehand, a bunch of workers came to campus to carry out this whole beautification campaign. Almost everybody we talked to made a point of mentioning it. Prettying up the place, and cutting the hedges, and painting stuff. Buildings got painted. Landscaping got done. And then, of course, the trimming of the hedges and the painting, which I found to be very funny. Again, Tracy. It just felt like this big cover-up. What do you mean by that? I mean, to be quite honest, you have the governor there, Mr. Pete Wilson, who was also "Mr Budget-Cut Governor." It would have been great for him to see what his cuts were doing to this urban community, but that's just my thought. It wasn't just her thought. The county in which Oakland sits voted overwhelmingly against Pete Wilson in the 1990 election. It was like 70/30 split. Castlemont kids were black, Pacific Islander, and Latino. Governor Wilson championed one of the harshest anti-immigration laws in California's history, Proposition 187. Many Castlemont kids were low income. Wilson said that welfare, quote, "seduces teenage girls into a life of poverty and encourages irresponsibility." He was also up for re-election. Cicely Day was a senior at Castlemont back in '94. On the day of the assembly, she roamed the halls, hoping for a Spielberg sighting. And I would run into-- like, all of these government people that worked for education was there. And I would just be like, hi, how are you? And they're like, oh, we're great. I'm like, wow, it's so amazing that you're here today. Are you coming back? Oh, we're just here for the day. Oh, you're not going to come back? Because you sure figured out how to come today. You're not going to come back? Because we need new books, and our lockers are broke, and the bleachers have holes. Can you come back and make sure that gets done? And they would just look at me like, oh no, she didn't. I'm like, oh, yes, I did. Oh, my. Yes, I did. And if I ran into anybody else who I knew had some influence, I was going to say the same thing. The event itself was a total circus from the beginning. Not only were there all these government officials hanging around, and security, and the national press, but hundreds of protesters marched up and down the street outside the school, many of them from the Nation of Islam. Give the truth to the youth. Give the truth to the youth. Give the truth to the youth. Let's talk about the Black Holocaust. Let's talk about the Black Holocaust. One of the protesters was a little more specific. A Zionist Jew-- Steven Spielberg is a Zionist Jew. They waved signs around that spanned from the pointed "How can a Zionist Jew teach us about racism and oppression?" to the extremely pointed "Zionist Jews are the new Nazis." Remember, this all began with a field trip to teach kids tolerance. Aaron Grumet was a geometry teacher at Castlemont and had been one of the teachers on the original field trip. By the time I'd gotten over to the auditorium, it was overflowing. And a lot of the students couldn't even get in because the auditorium was full. And what I remember was that all the politicians and dignitaries were there and got their seats in the front. And a lot of the students and faculty never got in. And I remember thinking, wow, this is just nuts, you know? Mr. Steven Spielberg and the Governor of the State of California. Let's go-- stand up, ladies and gentlemen. The governor of the state of California is in the building. It was a program befitting of a head of state and a Hollywood icon. There were performances from the students, including a monologue that started off, "Dear Mr. President, I am a woman with three children and no food to eat." Governor Wilson gave a pretty formal recitation about his Holocaust education initiative. And then, fully aware of his place on the food chain, he handed the mic over to the man of the hour. Ladies and gentlemen, the students of Castlemont High School, it gives me great pleasure to introduce to you a man who is helping and who has accomplished great things for film, for education, and for tolerance-- Mr. Steven Spielberg. Instead of sitting up here on the stage like a performer, I'd like to be right down there in the center, among all of you. I'd also like to acknowledge the fact that I believe that Castlemont High School has received a very bad rap for what happened that day on Martin Luther King Day. And I also think it's very important that that incident that happened-- and by the way, I was thrown out of Ben-Hur when I was a kid for talking, so you know, I kind of know what that was like, I think. I think we have to put this under the heading of the privileges of youth. And I absolutely, when I heard about this incident-- He was just so cool. Again, this is Tracy. He said that he understood what happened, and that he didn't blame us, and that we were just kids, and that we weren't anti-Semitic, and that the situation just in and of itself was just really, really bad. How did it feel to hear that from an adult? I mean, it felt great. And the fact that it was him, it was even better, you know? And for him to acknowledge what happened but not place that type of blame on us was great. It gave us-- it gave me relief. I was like, wow. I will see all his movies. It was the first time she felt like someone-- an adult-- was publicly coming to their defense-- wasn't labeling them, didn't accuse them, or condescend towards them, or try to save them. The students of Castlemont had been thrust into a dizzying adult world of bigotry and bylines. And Spielberg did something no one else in the auditorium thought to do, something that students, counter-intuitively, had been yearning for the whole time-- you talk to them like they were kids. And then it was over. Finally, the kids and the teachers could get back to their studies, final exams, preparing for graduation. Or so they thought. One afternoon two weeks later, Steven Spielberg came back. This time, it was unannounced-- no media. The kids from the field trip and the chaperones gathered in the school library. Tanzania was there. And I remember somebody-- I think one of the teachers was recording it. And he asked him to put the camera away. Yeah. And the teacher respectfully put it away. When Spielberg tells you to do something, you do it. You do it. Right. Aaron Grumet, the math teacher, says it was all very hush-hush. Spielberg said he wanted it to be just them-- no hard feelings, no agenda. And he opened things up to the floor. And I remember he started talking, asking them questions. And one of them asked why the Jewish people didn't just pretend that they were German so as not to be killed. That's a good question. It's a very good question. And if you're a person of different color, it's very difficult for you to pretend you're another culture. You can't pretend you're German. You can't pretend you're white. So it was a very, very poignant question on these 14-year-old kids. One of the kids asked Spielberg, have you ever made a movie about the Black Holocaust, about slavery? He said no. The kid inquired, well, why not? And Spielberg said, well, maybe I will. Three years later, he released Amistad, about a slave ship. In an email, Steven Spielberg confirmed that one of the reasons he decided to make that film was that student's question. The program to teach Schindler's List to high school students spread across the country. Two years after the Castlemont kids got kicked out of the movie theater, over two million public high school students had seen Schindler's List, and many more since then, including me. I saw Schindler's List twice in school by my 15th birthday. We also read Night by Elie Wiesel and The Diary of Anne Frank and were taken to the Holocaust Museum in DC. They never showed us Amistad in public school in Baltimore. The Castlemont kids were the test case for all of this. They eventually did learn something about this one event in Jewish history. They learned other things, too. They learned how white people read them and their behavior and how quickly they get labeled. It's something lots of kids of color learn in lots of ways, but these kids learned it all of a sudden in a really public way. They also learned how to steel yourself against all of that. One of the Castlemont kids, who got a death threat in the mail, later hung it on her dorm room wall for motivation. They learned they could push back. You can see that happening in one of my favorite moments from that assembly with the governor and Spielberg. Just a handful of kids were allowed to ask questions, and the questions were vetted and approved by the adults. And then the senior class president, Kandi Stewart, went off script. Here's what she said to the governor of California. This is to Governor Wilson. I see your visit to Oakland, a city plagued with poverty, from different views. I see it as a failing governor's publicity stunt that enables him to portray-- wait a minute-- that enables him to portray himself as a caring politician, embracing the poor, and smothering them with empty promises, coincidentally close to election time. But I also see-- wait a minute-- but I also see the entire political fiasco as an opportunity to vent the anger, and the spite, and the animosity I feel toward your entire time in office. I mean, I want to know was your main purpose in portraying yourself through the streets of my city where you have cut welfare, education, and many young futures, like mine-- Kandi got in trouble for this-- was reprimanded by the principal, vilified in letters to the editor, just like the kids had been before. But this time, it was for something she really cared about. Governor Wilson and his policies seemed like a direct threat to things that really mattered to her. Well, I won't count on your vote. Let me just say that-- Publicly, throughout the entire Schindler's debacle, it seemed like these stackable burdens were resting squarely on the shoulders of the students. The teachers seemed to come to an agreement that it was the kids' incident, and therefore, the kids were the ones that needed to step out in front of it. And Kandi Stewart seemed to be saying, I'll step in front of it. I'll step right in front of it. B.A. Parker in New York City. Coming up, a memorial you didn't want to visit dedicated to an event you wish never happened-- what you can learn from that. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program is about what happens when you come across some historical facts presented by people who want you to learn those facts, either from a marker on the side of the road, or maybe a film, or in the case of this next act, a museum. Sometimes, what you get from that experience is very different from what is intended, which brings us to Act Two of our program. Act Two, Exit Through the Gift Shop. Steve Kandell was an editor at Buzzfeed back in 2014 when the 9/11 Memorial Museum opened in New York City. His sister, Shari, had died in the Twin Towers. And he wrote this for Buzzfeed back when the museum opened. Quick warning if you're listening with little kids. This piece goes into some detail about 9/11. Also, here in the podcast, there are a couple curse words we have an un-beeped. If you prefer a beeped version of our show, you can find that on our website. Here's Steve Kandell. In the chaotic last months of 2001, my father wrote letters to newspapers asking simply that the press stop calling his daughter a hero. The heroes ran into the buildings. She was just a person who happened to have gotten to work a little early on a Tuesday morning. And that was horrible and heartbreaking and difficult enough without the extra weight. On September 21, the day that would have been my sister's 28th birthday, my father gave a eulogy to this effect at her memorial. In the days and years after, this was less of a mantra than our only way forward, to find a way to separate what happened from what happened to us. We declined participation in most of the ceremonies and pageantry in favor of figuring out for ourselves our family's new geometry, just like any family that has suffered a loss. Other families feel the opposite. The world's attention validated the size of their grief. We understood this and respected it. And we just chose another, quieter way-- at least until my father got sick and couldn't stop blurting it out over and over to strangers in parking lots. Which is why the corner of Greenwich and Liberty on this bright Sunday afternoon, surrounded by a riot of mid-spring tourists with winkled maps and exposed knees, taking photos of cranes, is the very last place I should be. I am allowed to enter the 9/11 museum a few days before the grand opening for the general public, but why would I want that? Why would I accept an invitation to a $700 million refutation of everything we tried to practice, a gleaming monument to what happened, not what happened to us? But something snapped while reading about the gift shop. I didn't want to duck and hide, I wanted to run straight into the absurdity and horror and feel every bit of the righteous indignation and come out the other side raw. I call my mother to tell her I'm doing this, but that she shouldn't come. And she doesn't disagree. I find the ticket booth, exhale deeply, and say the magic words. After the TSA-style security check, complete with body scan, there's a dark corridor with word clouds and photographs projected onto tower-like pillars, while disembodied voices tell snippets of stories about the morning-- an overture warning us about the symphony ahead. We were eased into it in a sense, lowered into the maw down a ramp along the original foundation of the towers-- girders and rubble and broken staircases among the ruins, an impossibly mangled hook-and-ladder truck, showroom parked. The crowded memorial hall is lined with photos of everyone who died and touchscreen consoles that call up their obituaries. I find my sister as she has been for 12 and 1/2 years and will be forever-- enshrined alphabetically before Howard Lee Kane. The names are read aloud on a loop in the adjacent darkened atrium lined with benches. My sister's profile has incorrect information in it that we'd never signed off on or even seen. And the annoyance is tempered by the realization that non-participation in the pageantry has its drawbacks. It also occurs to me that I am the only person here alone. The main attraction is through a revolving door, a minute-by-minute recreation of the morning and its aftermath, from video of Matt Lauer's first distracted, furrowed brow at the end of an interview with some author on The Today Show, and on and on. This part is the haunted house. I wander to a tucked away corner to find a giant photo of people leaping from the burning building, and I yell, "Fuck!" like someone jumped out and grabbed me. No one bats an eye. There's a multimedia presentation depicting how, precisely, the towers collapsed. A wing for Pennsylvania and the Pentagon, tape loops of survivors telling how they got out, smoke and fire and ash and twisted metal and the husk of an ambulance. Tattered flags, handwritten pleas for help, missing persons flyers, screams. Dusty, ownerless Topsiders encased in glass. A soot-coated bike rack, as it was found. Countless personal artifacts artfully destroyed. The president addressing the nation and vowing steely, determined revenge. Hallways dedicated to tracing the hijackers' timeline, al-Qaeda's rise, and a video wall with people like Hillary Clinton laying out the justification for the unending war on terror, tying grief cannily to political ideology in a way that might seem crass if I were able to process it all with a clear head. There is no way out until the end. And it's all so numbing that maybe this is the whole point. The exhibition starts with one shining, unfathomably terrible morning and winds up as all of our lives, as banal and constant as laundry, bottomless. I can feel the sweat that went into making this not seem tacky, of wanting to show respect, but also wanting to show every last bit of carnage and visceral whomp to justify the $24 price of admission. The fact that everyone else here today has VIP status grimly similar to mine is the lone saving grace. The prospect of experiencing this stroll down Waking Nightmare Lane with tuned-out schoolkids or spectacle-seekers would be too much. There are FDNY T-shirts and search-and-rescue sweatshirts. And no one quite makes eye contact with anyone else, and that's just fine. I think now of every war memorial I ever yawned through on a class trip, how someone else's past horror was my vacant diversion. And maybe I learned something, but I didn't feel anything. Everyone should have a museum dedicated to the worst day of their life and be forced to attend it with a bunch of tourists from Denmark-- annotated divorce papers blown up and mounted, interactive exhibits detailing how your mom's last round of chemo didn't take, souvenir T-shirts emblazoned with your best friend's last words before the car crash. And you should have to see for yourself how little your pain matters to a family of five who just need to get some food before the kids melt down. Or maybe worse, watch that pain be co-opted by people who want, for whatever reason, to feel that connection so acutely. There are three recording booths for people to tell their own stories of the day or remembrances of loved ones who were lost. A man exits one of the confessionals, sees me, shakes his head and says, "Amazing idea." I enter, sit down, and stare at the screen and say Shari's name and how I was 3,000 miles away that morning and didn't even know she was working there until I got the call at 6:00 AM, and that I wish I had seen her more in those last years and remembered more about her and had something better prepared to say, and that I wished my kids would have known her, and that she'd think it's pretty fucking weird that I'm here talking about her to an invisible camera in the bowels of a museum dedicated to the fact that she was killed by an airplane while sitting at her desk. And at some point, the timer is up. There is one small room on the main floor of the museum that is not, in fact, operated by the museum itself and is not available even to many of the families. Tucked away off to the side, behind an unmarked door, it is overseen by the medical examiner's office. This is called the reflection room. To get past the door, one must register for an appointment. I have not done this, but I present a case number, which means the official from the medical examiner's office can indeed let me through. He tells me my family is welcome whenever the museum is open and leads me to a cramped, dark space but does not follow. A box of tissues sits on a wooden bench, and a family huddle silently looking through a window. They leave almost instantly, and I can now see what is on the other side of the window-- aisles of dark-stained wood cabinets of rosewood or teak, maybe, floor to ceiling, lit by small, overhead spotlights. I let out a loud, sharp laugh. Inside these cabinets are the remains that, after nearly 13 years of the most rigorous testing known to man, have not been matched to the DNA of any of the victims. It's just drawers and drawers full of stuff. This chamber is meant to be a sanctuary, but all there is to see here are armoires packed with carefully-label bags of flesh too ruined and desiccated even for science. My sister is among the many for whom there have been no remains recovered whatsoever-- vaporized. So there's no grave to visit. There never will be-- just this theatrically lit Ikea warehouse behind a pane of glass. The presence of the tomb has been a point of contention among families who want more from a final resting place than the basement of this museum of unnatural history. I don't know how to feel about the matter because to do so would require any of this making even a bit of sense. It's dumb, sure, but what could possibly be less dumb? Where is the right place to store pounds of unidentifiable human tissue so that future generations can pay their respects? By the time I finally reach the gift shop, the indignation I've been counting on just isn't there. I stare at the $39 hoodies, and the rescue vests for dogs, and the earrings, and the scarves, and the United We Stand wool blankets waiting for that rush, and can't muster so much as a sigh. The events of the day have already been exploited and sold in ways previously incomprehensible. Why get mad at a commemorative T-shirt now? This tchotchke store, this building, this experience is nothing more than a logical endpoint for our most reliably commodifiable national tragedy. If you want to bring a coffee table book full of photos of cadaver dogs sniffing through smoking rubble back home to wherever you're from, hey, that's great. This is America. They hate our freedom to buy what we want. And people will find moments of grace or enlightenment or even peace coming here. I don't need to be one of them. I'll probably bring my kids one day, once I realize I won't have the words to explain. It can be of use. It's fine. I don't know. Steve Kandell is a writer and editor in New York. Our program was produced today by Nadia Reiman and Chana Joffe-Walt. Our program was put together by Ben Calhoun, Zoe Chace, Sean Cole, Whitney Dangerfield, Michelle Harris, Seth Lind, Alvin Melathe, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu. Our senior producer is Brian Reed. Our managing editor is Susan Burton. Mixing help today from Stowe Nelson Katherine Rae Mondo and Sharif Youssef. Special thanks today to Keeli Shaw, Sundar Ramun, Kathryn Braund, Scotty Kirkland, Dr. Deidra Suwanee Dees, Guy Hubbs, Jason Edward Black, Christopher D. Haveman, Will Dahlberg, Tilia Wilton-Johnson , Otto Grimwood , Brandi Mack, Rose Thornwell, Jerry Wolfe, Mark Rader, Roy Arce, Jay Shilliday, Sam Greenspan, and Lauren Elliott at Amblin Partners. Our website, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's cofounder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, I made him a martini. He always wants extra ice in the shaker. Always extra ice. I know he likes it when he says-- Aww, man, that was cold. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
Graeme grew up in a working class town north of England. And when he was 11 or 12, his family moved into one of the first houses in a new development that was being built. It was kind of hitting the jackpot for him at that age. Because all around everywhere were homes under construction, which-- I remember this from construction sites in our neighborhood when I was a kid-- was so incredibly fun. This became my new playground. This is Graeme. So I would climb on the scaffolding, do a bit of kind of amateur gymnastics, but also build stuff. And the big thing amongst us kids was lighting fires. And there was tar paper was one thing that burned very nicely. There was actually all kinds of trouble get into. Bricks and boards to play with and wet concrete to write in. They'd find food the workers left, and cigarettes, which they would smoke. Once they found a porn magazine. And one day, Graeme was there alone, and he had this great idea. He put together a little makeshift seesaw-- or as he calls it, a teeter totter-- with a plank of wood balanced on a brick at the center. He put another brick on one end of the plank. And his idea was to drop something really heavy-- really, really heavy-- onto the other end of the plank from a great height to find out just how far he could send that brick catapulting into space. So to accomplish this, he set up his teeter totter by some scaffolding. So I climbed up on the scaffolding. And I carried up this kind of massive piece of curbing stone. I'm guessing around 25 pounds. So you are how high up? Probably at the sort of second floor window level. So what? 15 feet, 12 feet. He carefully tries to line up the stone directly above the near end of the seesaw below down on the ground. And then he dropped the stone. It landed perfectly. I really had lined this up pretty well. And the brick launched. And the following few moments are probably the most vivid memory I have of my childhood. I was obviously watching to see what the brick would do, because that was the experiment really, to sort of follow that in its journey. But the brick, it didn't move at all like he thought. He thought it was going to arc into the air like a rocket. Instead, it just seemed to be getting bigger and bigger. I now have an image in my head of this brick just getting larger and larger as it headed right towards my face. I even remember very vividly that the construction of the brick had three circular holes in it. And I can still picture them now as they headed towards me. In a kind of slow motion way? Yes, very much so. I feel like that memory is minutes when obviously, it was just not even a second. So I, I believe, instinctively jerked my head back as this brick came directly towards my face. And I have a very clear memory of the kind of sound and the wind. And even, I believe, the brick, as it flew past me, flicked my fringe. The fringe of your hair? Yeah, and it sort of whistled as it went. Even when I throw my dog's ball now, which has a little whistle device in it, that memory comes back to me. This moment was stunning. Like nothing like this had ever happened to him. And I remember having to sit down for actually quite a few minutes to recover. I really felt like, probably for the first time, that I was inches away from death. And I remember walking home in some state of shock afterwards. I used to wonder if the brick had actually hit me and killed me, maybe I'd fallen off the scaffolding or something. I used to wonder whether the crime scene investigators came to look, what would they make of the whole setup? Would they even understand what had happened? You know? (LAUGHING) Right. Like you got hit by a brick. Like where did it come from? Yeah. This dead child, who laying in a building site-- there was the teeter totter there, but I even had this sort of vision of what if my body fell forward and destroyed the little structure that I had made down there? And how did I get hit under the chin with a brick? And where's the brick? What the forensics would have made of the whole set up. That's the thing, right? Your own death, that is not bad enough on its own. There's the whole question of the forensics afterwards, what people will make of it. It's weird to think that they'll stare at the scene of your death, look at the objects scattered around you, and get it all wrong, and get you wrong. That's the bigger thing, right? The bigger question after you're gone isn't just how it happened, but you, your motives, your state of mind, what to make of you, and your whole life, your good qualities, your bad ones. Today on our program, we have three stories of people who embark on this kind of forensics for beginners trying to understand somebody's death, bumbling their way through whatever scraps of evidence they can get their hands on, old text messages, handwritten notes, stuff that, frankly, seems so puny compared to the task at hand. WBEZ Chicago, it's "This American Life." I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. So we begin today with a woman whose sister has died and she has questions. The woman's name is Nadia Bowers, and she wrote this to somebody who she thinks might be of help. Quick warning for people listening to the podcast of our show, we've unbeeped some curse words in here. If you prefer a beeped version of today's program, it's at our website. Anyway, here's Nadia. Dear Dealer. Hey, man. What's up? I'm saying "man" because that's my guess as to what you are. All the people blowing up my sister's phone offering and seeking drugs were men-- Brian, Jerry, Eric, and my personal favorite, baby Jesus. I can make a graph charting the meeting of particular men with misfortune for my sister. It's a safe bet you're just another data point, one among many, part of a pattern. But distinguished because you're the last data point. You're the one who killed her. And Dealer-- it just seemed like the right title for you since I don't know your name. We can be informal here, right? You don't have to call me Miss or Mrs. Definitely don't call me Ma'am. My sister called me Nad. My sister's Sasha, who I believe you knew. What did you call her? I hope you didn't call her Sash, because that's what a lot of people who loved her called her, and I find it hard to believe that you loved her. Did you know her well enough to care for her, or did you hardly know her? When we were little, we sometimes called one another after the food we give our cats. She was Tender Vittle, and I was Chef's Blend. Did you even call her by her name? Or was it Lady? Or maybe you had a nickname for her like purple, the color of her car, the one she was found in. Keeping with our informal tone, I won't call you Mr. I'll just call you "my man," because that is what you are. You are my man, the one I want to talk to, the one I'm seeking, the only one who knows some very important things about how my sister died. You are quite possibly the last person who saw her alive, and I'm a little jealous. As for me, you don't have to call me by my name. You can just call me "The Sister." I think about you all the time, almost every day. I feel like I deserve to know you, like I deserve the have at least five minutes of your time, five minutes alone with you. This is me tying you to a chair so we can think about some things together. Are you still alive? I feel like you are, and I'm angry about that. But then if I learned who you were and that you were dead, I might be angry about that too. I think about hurting you. And when I imagine the violence I could commit, it alarms me. It's important to me that you know some things. I want you to see who you messed with, know who you destroyed. Sasha was the valedictorian of her high school class. She studied psychology at Yale. She was bold. I was her apprentice. She gave me my taste in music. Riding around in her Ford Escort, she'd slip in a cassette, explaining the difference between Funkadelic and Parliament. One of my most prized possessions is a cassette tape where we taped ourselves on mushrooms sitting in my room. I was a senior in high school. She was home from college for Christmas vacation. Stop it. What are laughing at? Nothing. That's Sasha asking me what I'm laughing at. "Nothing," I tell her. We stared as my grandmother's watercolors on my wall started to blur. Oh my God. It's like-- you know what it looks like right now? It really looks like it's like all these different planes, like these different [? dominions. We burned Nag Champa incense and cracked ourselves up about things we called social experiments. These were basically fantasies about ways we could be completely inappropriate in situations where certain contained behavior was expected, like the public library. And if you [INAUDIBLE] like the library, and I pulled all the books off the shelves. I [INAUDIBLE] like-- [SCREAMING] That's me screaming. Strange, they're like weirding out or something. Like what are doing? What are you doing? What do you mean? Huh? Huh? When I listen to the tape, I hear a self-assured Sasha. She's in control. I'm her little sister, overjoyed to have her full attention, trying to impress her with my wisdom, and also be her court jester. Sasha tells me a story about this horse she knew that she called a total bitch. She's just full of snot. --not safe to have around people. And then this girl from the Special Olympics showed up in the barn and threw her arms around the horse's neck, and the horse stayed calm. It was like right on her shoulder, and everybody was like [GASPS] waiting for it to take a bite out of this chick. And it was like she knew. She just like sat there. Did she bite people? Yes. Oh, yeah. That's why it was so cool that she didn't. Right! [LAUGHS] You idiot. [LAUGHS] Oh. That is so-- I bet she did kind know that this wasn't the right time to be an asshole. Is there ever a good time? No, I didn't-- "Is there ever a good time to be an asshole?" I'm asking her. I've done the math. And as of March 11, 2018, at 6:49 PM, I have lived longer than my sister. I have walked the earth more seconds than my big sister, who was born 2 and 1/2 years before me. This does not make sense. You have knocked the universe off course. My husband would say, "Take it easy, Encyclopedia Brown," as he watched me walk around with her phone trying to reconstruct her last days, reading texts, listening to messages, making notes. Trying to figure out who you are, my man. I was hoping to finally understand the part of her life that she refused to share with me at the end. It infuriated me that she kept getting texts after she died, like this one from Brian. "Hey, any of the shirts around?" My hand shaking, I responded, "You should fuck off. This is Sasha's sister, and she died. Go get your drugs somewhere else, you piece of shit." Or this one from Franky, "Any news? Got Sleepies." When there was no response, he wrote, "Must be dead." I wrote back to Franky. "Actually, she is dead. Fuck off. This is her sister. You'll have to fucking get your drugs somewhere else." So my man, are you one of the guys she talked to and texted with on her last day? Are you the ex-boyfriend who kept harassing her, the one who introduced her to Oxycontin? That guy? Are you the friend who told me how sorry he was that Sasha died, and that it was a hot day, and maybe her windows were rolled up, and she suffocated during a nap in her car? Are you one of those friends I ran into who didn't have the decency to show up for her memorial? One of those people? Were you feeling guilty about something? Here's something that's been eating at me for a while. I read that you actually don't mind when people die from something you were selling because it tells the hardcore users that the high is really powerful. The high of heroin mixed with fentanyl-- fentanyl, which is up to 100 times more potent than morphine, 100 times more potent than the drug given to my father when he was dying from cancer. So a death from this stuff is like a calling card, is that true? Did my sister's obituary bring in business for you? I have a friend who's a Jehovah's Witness. And she told me that in the Resurrection, I'll be able to hold my sister like I used to and speak to her like nothing happened. I like this idea, but I can't get myself to believe it. Her body was burned, cremated at 1,800 degrees. I don't like picturing that, but I do. Aside from my own body, hers is probably the other female body I knew the best. Lean, taut, muscular. She rode horses. She was fearless, always wanting to ride the ones that were trouble. She could lose her saddle and gallop at a flat run like a wild woman, gripping the horse's mane with her hand. Her leg muscles were iron cables. She used to put me in the vise, a move inspired by our love of the WWF wrestlers. She would wrap her brawny legs around me and squeeze until I almost couldn't breathe. My mother always called Sasha "the daughter with a bleeding heart." At one point when she was working in New Haven, you would walk down the street with her, and she knew all the homeless people by name. If you were driving with her, she would jerk the car to the side of the road, get out, leaving the car door swinging open, and call to the man or woman to see if they were OK, if they needed anything. That was her life's work. She was actually a clinical social worker with two master's degrees in social work and public health. For the last five or so years of her life, she had trouble keeping jobs. She had trouble committing to anything. "The daughter with a bleeding heart." Her autopsy report says that her heart weighed 360 grams. When I had to identify her body, the edges of the sheet she lay on were pink from her watered down blood, the watered down blood of her compassionate, bleeding heart. They should have cleaned up better, cleaned her up better. Though I caught myself thinking how perfect her eyebrows were. How old are you? Were you my sisters age? Younger? Did you know she was 44? Maybe that seems old to you, but it's not. She looked older since she started using. But before, before, my man, she was gorgeous, sexy. She probably met you at your place, or the Taco Bell parking lot in her filthy car, baseball cap, picked at skin, too much eyeliner. So maybe you could never imagine that, but she was. Ask anyone who knew her. Ask the multitude of men who knew her. Ask the ones I would like to line up against a wall execution style and actually execute. Ask her first mind fuck of a boyfriend at age 14, and the obsessive one that followed in high school. Ask the professors, married men, random men, apparent friends, the one who first gave her crack then Oxycontin. Ask her coach who slept with the young women on his team and pulled her into a coke-fueled party scene while she was still a teenager. He denies all this today. I find myself fixated on the men. They circle her memory like these loser, dead beat ghosts or something. How dare they have the nerve to be alive. A year after Sasha died, after visiting her grave on a summer day, I drove through the center of our hometown. By the town green, there was a cluster of boys and girls not yet high school age. The boys were on their BMX's doing tricks, riding down a little hill. The girls were all clumped together watching these young peacocks strut their stuff, knowing their job was to sit there and be impressed. They were nearly silent, whispering among themselves while the boys were having all the fun. I drove by them and shocked myself by rolling down the window and yelling, "Girls, get a backbone. They are not that cool." I worried what my sister's death was doing to me. What was your day like today, your day as a dealer? There's so much heroin and fentanyl on the streets these days, I'm pretty sure you're crushing it, as the kids say. On the radio, I heard the chief medical examiner for Connecticut actually get choked up about how they need to build new buildings just to keep up with all the dead bodies from overdoses. A grown man who sees dead bodies for a living cried. You, my man, are powerful. Is that how you feel? A few days before she died, Sasha sent me a silly text. There had been an incident about a week and a half before at my mother's house, where she had been hosting a cookout for friends. Sasha showed up in bad shape, slurring her words, fighting off drowsiness. I forbade her to use some combination charcoal gas grill because I thought she was going to blow us all up. There was a fight. She felt wrongly accused and was crying a lot. I tried to get her to talk to me about what was really going on, and that went nowhere. My mom confronted her with some hard evidence, a text I saw ding on to her phone. Sasha did this thing when she knew she was caught. She would stare hard into your eyes while she sized you up. What did you know for sure? What could she convince you of? What could she get away with admitting without completely throwing herself under the bus? Eventually she just sort of faded away into the next room, trying to clear the table, but knocking things over instead. I was still holding a grudge about it, but I was happy to get her innocuous text asking if I remember the drawing in our middle school French books that went with the word "faible," meaning "weak." It looked like a man with no bones making a face like he had just eaten something distastefully bland. Growing up, my sister delighted in imitating the man, "Faible," and making me crack up. She did it so often, it was such a staple in our repertoire, that I thought it was odd that she would even have to ask if I remembered. But this was our pattern. There would be an incident. Then after things subsided, she would reach out, and we would both be happy to not have to deal with the larger issue. But each time, I knew I was being roped into denial. I was less willing this time, and I held out on writing her back. I wanted to punish her a little more, show her I wasn't a pushover. But this thought came to me strongly. "You don't want that to be the last text she ever sends you. Read the subtext. She may need you. And you need to let her know that you love her." I never texted Sasha back. I waited too long. After she died, I looked at the texts in her phone from the night of that cookout, the night we fought about whether she was on drugs. She wrote a friend, "How do I not hate my sister? My family truly hates me. I don't want to talk anymore." Her friend wrote back, "Damn. Nadia, the fucking narc." Seeing the word "hate" in association with me knocked the wind out of me. I wanted to yell at her, "No, you've got it all wrong. I'm the one who loves you, not those people." But by the time I read that, she was already dead. On July 31, 2015, the day she died, she had just seen her drug counselor. After our dad died and her addiction blossomed, he became the father figure in her life. She was working in his garden. Toward the end of her life, she created gardens for people just because she loved it. It gave her a place to put her anxiety, her manic tendencies. He called to her saying he had to go and was she OK. She waved him on, "I'm fine. I'm fine." This was maybe 3:30 PM. I'm glad that she saw her counselor that day. They loved one another very much. At 4 o'clock, she has a 47 second outgoing call to Alan. At 4:02 there is an incoming call from Alan for 54 seconds. At 4:08, she calls Gary for one minute, then Gary calls her back at 4:20, and they talk for 42 seconds. At 4:27, she calls Gary again, and they talk for 41 seconds. At 4:39, she has an outgoing call to Tim for one second. At 4:40, she has a call out to Jerry for one minute. Are you Alan, Gary, Tim, Jerry? Were you the last one to talk to her? Did you see her too? Were you with her? Both her windows were rolled down. Had someone been in her passenger seat? Were you with her when she died, and you got scared and ran? Tell me what were her last moments like? What was she saying before? Did you watch her die? My mother worries that she wanted to die, but I don't think so. How long have you been cutting heroin with fentanyl? I don't think Sasha saw it coming. You sucker punch people, you know? She had meetings coming up written in her day book about possible work. She was trying. In an email reconnecting with a beloved former colleague two days before she died, she said, "Hi. Surprise, surprise. Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. LOL." Her autopsy says 6:54 PM as the time of death. Sometime between 4:40 and 6:54, Sasha inhaled the drugs that killed her. She hated needles. She was found in her car in the parking lot of a seafood restaurant off I-95. The detective on the scene happened to be an old high school friend. He told me that he thought she had probably used, felt sleepy, and needed to pull over. The restaurant is on the water. I was happy that maybe she was seeing water in those last moments. There's an off track betting place next to the restaurant with galloping horses painted on it two stories high. Maybe she saw the horses. I just wonder if she knew what was happening, or did she really just think she was going to take a little nap? I don't want her to have known what was happening. I don't want her to have been scared. If I'm going to be honest here-- am I going to be honest here? Maybe I don't want to believe that you deserve my empathy. I don't want to look you in the eye because you may not look much different than my sister. You may be like her, someone who can't be around their family that much anymore, because pretending is so hard. Seeing Sasha trying to dry the wineglasses we used for Thanksgiving while she nodded out, pretending that she still had one foot in our world, was one of the most heartbreaking things I have seen. You may look like that. You may be sick, needing to get high just to maintain some equilibrium. You may have been her friend. I may have even met you. You may have called her Sash. You may have loved her. God help you if you loved her. To be fair, my sister dealt too. As I was writing this to you, my husband offered me a gentle reminder of this fact. It was mainly so she could use. There's long hand addition and subtraction in the back of her day book with people's initials, how much they owed or paid her, how much she owed and paid in return. It's chump change really, written a few times as "Me, free." Drugs were her pay. This was not high rolling dealing. This was survival. When my husband reminded me that my sister was dealing too, I quickly defended her. "Yeah, but she never killed anyone." He said again gently, "You don't know that." I was stunned. It's true. I didn't know that. And the fact is she could have killed someone. My worst fear when she was alive was that she would be driving around high and kill someone. The idea of her killing someone kept me up at night. I often thought about having her followed, so curious I was about what her days were like where she would go. I was once driving to visit her and my mother thinking about how I could spy on her when there was a traffic slowdown on I-95 a few exits away from our hometown. On the radio, they said there was an accident up ahead. My mind went to my sister. Had she caused it? I pulled up in the traffic jam right behind a purple car. I gasped. It was Sasha. Here was my chance to play detective. She moved to the right lane, and the middle one I was in began to pull forward. I was at risk of being seen, so I decided to not try to hide. I pulled up next to her, ready to make a stupid face and stare at her until she felt my presence. To my horror, she looked half asleep. Her head was back, her eyes at half mast. I couldn't believe she was able to drive a car. My heart started racing and I pulled in behind her as if that might shield other cars from her. I followed her all the way home to her house, trying to steer her car with my body like a bowling ball headed for the gutter. She was still living in her own place with an ex-boyfriend turned best buddy, not yet evicted, and forced to live with my mother during the last year of her life. I pulled into her street and watched her drive into her driveway. I wanted to follow her in, barge into the apartment that she never let me enter. But I froze, because I didn't know what I'd do once I was inside. Deliver some Joan of Arc, Oprah, Hulk Hogan speech? Like she'd go for that? So I did nothing. I told myself "She's going to an outpatient clinic. She has a therapist, a drug counselor, all these professionals helping her." But unfortunately, she also had you. And here's the thing, my man. I need you too. I know that. I know what I'm doing here. Because of you, I get to say, "If it weren't for that guy." Because of you, I don't have to blame her. Because of you, I can nod my head when people tell me there's nothing I could have done. But I don't know if that's true. I did try. My family tried interventions, honesty, confrontation, rejection, love. She once told my parents that out of anyone in the world, she cared most about what I thought of her. I ache at the possibility that if anyone in the world could have saved her, it was me. But to save her, I would have had to go to her, live with her, make it my life. I would have had to physically remove her from her life and stand guard at the door holding a shotgun. I would have had to somehow wrestle her denial, get her to finally go to her knees and raise the white flag. But I got engaged. I got pregnant. Today, whenever I tell somewhere about my violent feelings towards you, they inevitably say, "Well, if it wasn't him, it would have been someone else. If it wasn't him, it would have been some other guy." But my question is, why did it have to be anyone at all? Why should my comfort be that there would have been another one? That all we can expect from life is a game of whack-a-mole but with shitty people? I can't accept that because you know what, man? It was you. And yeah, I'm raging at you so I don't have to rage at myself or my sister, to save myself from falling into a sad heap on the ground. So yeah, I'm using you. I don't care. None of this is fair, my man. So fuck you. Fuck you because you're still here and there will never be another her. Fuck you because I will always think about you. You are my dealer now, man. You dealt me a life without Sasha. Because of you, I'm going out to do this alone. And I'll never let you forget that. Yours forever, The Sister. Nadia Bowers, she's writing a memoir about her sister. Coming up, the problem with having a Facebook account after you're dead that you have never, ever, ever thought about? That's in a minute, from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. This is "American Life." I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, "The Secret of My Death," stories of people who die and the stuff about them that is hidden, and the stuff about them that is uncovered after their deaths by people on a mission to figure them out. We've arrived at Act 2 of our program, Act 2, "Commento mori." Is that act title too obscure? I was hoping it would be a kind of a play on "Momento mori," which is like a moment of awareness of one's own death. But even I know maybe that's too obscure. But anyway, a lot of this story happens in the comments section of Facebook. So you know, commento mori? Anyway, Stephanie Foo explains. After someone you love dies, suddenly even their most annoying traits in retrospect seem endearing. Blake Burkhart's friend was this guy Dave Maher. They were both comedians in Chicago, met in their 20s in the comedy scene. Blake was drawn to Dave because he was this extroverted weirdo, loud and absurd. He was also a problem drinker and constantly high. He even had a bit about being so stoned he couldn't order food at the movies. And he had this laugh. I remember that kind of bugging me. Like he [LAUGHS] he would just start talking real fast like, "Oh, hoo hoo hoo!" [LAUGHS] It's hard to do an impression. But he'd be like, "Come on, Blakey boy! Oh hoo hoo hoo hoo, come on!" And he'd grab me and shake my shoulders and stuff if he was excited about just the dumbest thing, like a new joke he wrote. [LAUGHS] Dave saw himself as this in your face, brutally honest, iconoclast. But Blake says thinking about it now, he can't really remember any actual instances of Dave being much of a rebel. He just remembers Dave as being disarmingly nice. To me, it was almost a little bit annoying how kind he was, because it made me look bad in comparison. And we were always together. But yeah, he would go up to people that he had only met once or twice and say like, "Hey, how's it going? How are you today?" And you could tell he really meant it. On stage, you could often hear this earnestness in Dave's comedy, this almost childlike excitement about ridiculous stuff. I heard a song played on church bells recently, you guys. And it just was like-- you know when you just hear something, you're like, oh! Something shifts inside you, you know? And I heard this song, and I just want to do my best to replicate it to see if it affects you guys in the same way, OK? Cool. Ding dong, ding dong. Ding, ding, ding, ding, bong, bong, bong, bong, bing-- That's a recording of a set Dave did on October 10, 2014. Twelve days later, Blake got a call that said Dave was in a coma. It was sudden. Dave had been a diabetic, and somehow, his blood sugar had gotten so high that his body shut down. His kidneys were failing. Blake visited him in the hospital. It was jarring. Then after three weeks of doctors trying to jump start Dave's body, they told his family it was probably best to take him off life support. They invited his friends to the hospital to say goodbye. When I found out he wasn't going to be coming out of the coma and was going to be taken off life support, I just said, "I can't go. There's no way I can see him like that, knowing that I'll never be able to talk to him again." So instead, I went to my house, where, at the time, I was living with four other comedians and all friends with Dave. And I said, "I'm going to go home, and everyone should just come over tonight after you go see Dave." We just made a whole night out of it, and just kind of made basically a wake for Dave, and just kind of waited for the news of him officially passing. How many people came? Oh, it was at least 50, 60 people. Oh, wow. That's a lot. Everyone knew Dave was going to be taken off life support that night. And finally, a Facebook post confirmed it. "Rest in peace, Dave Maher." Then his 1,700 Facebook friends began to post eulogies of him to his Facebook wall. "Thoughts and prayers." "I had a gigantic crush on Dave," one admitted. Another said, "Let's all be the most Dave Maher versions of ourselves." Blake's post kept it simple. I wrote, "I love you, dude." Had you ever told Dave "I love you" to his face? I don't know. I don't think so. When you're faced with actually losing them, you kind of realize it more. Unfortunately, that's how it works, so-- Two weeks later on Thanksgiving Day, there was a post on Dave's Facebook page from Dave. Oh, man. It was this-- it was-- it's so hard to explain. "This is Dave Maher. Spoiler alert." You're alive? Yeah. "Spoiler alert, I'm here." His friends all whipped out their phones in the middle of their Thanksgiving dinners and started shouting in joy on his Facebook page. People are saying, "No one celebrates Thanksgiving the way Dave celebrates Thanksgiving." "Dave turned Thanksgiving into Easter." It turned out Dave's parents never did wind up taking him off life support. They transferred him to another hospital instead. And a couple days later, his dad walked into his room and started talking to him like he had countless times since he'd fallen into the coma. And at some point, perhaps I recognized his voice. My eyes popped open. And I was still intubated at this point, so I had a whole mess of tubes sticking out of my face and attempted to scream. But because I was intubated, it came out silently. But I just mouthed the words, (WHISPERING) "What the fuck?" Dave had been in the coma for a month. He's a type 1 diabetic who had just done an awful job caring for himself. He hadn't paid much attention to what he was eating, drank too much, and he had no way of monitoring his blood sugar because he sold all his test strips for weed money. So he had no idea his blood sugar was skyrocketing, eventually sending him into a coma. The last thing he remembered was puking into a bucket and figuring he must have food poisoning. And then after a month, he woke up in a hospital bed, completely bewildered by the entire situation. But the upshot of all that was that he was in this weird situation that some of us fantasize about, that Tom Sawyer thing of being at your own funeral, where you get to hear all the things people say about you. You get to finally find out how you're seen, what people will remember about you. Dave didn't get a chance to look at Facebook for a while. He was still recovering. His hands wouldn't stop shaking, so he couldn't even use his phone. It took another month or so for him to be discharged from the hospital, and that's when he finally decided to read through all of the eulogies people had left on his page, about a hundred of them. It was New Year's day after the ball had dropped and everyone went to sleep. He was recuperating in his parents' house, so he went down to their basement and sat alone at the little kitchen island scrolling for hours. You know, it got to be 2:00, and 3:00, and 3:30 AM. And I'm just there at this island reading these things from my laptop. One of the first things he spotted right in the middle of all the "I miss you's" was a post from his brother trying to quash the whole thing, written the day after Dave supposedly died. I think my family was honestly pretty upset reading some of these things. Like "To friends of David, there seems to be some confusion and unofficial word on David's passing. At the time of this posting, Dave Maher is still with us. Until you hear official word that David has passed, please out of respect for him and our family, refrain from posting about David in the past tense." It got 70 likes, three comments. But the Facebook algorithm had buried it. It was overshadowed by all of the comments coming in facilitating the dead Dave narrative. Some of those got twice as many likes. And reading these comments was sort of like you'd imagine. People brought up a lot of memories, things he did, some of which he didn't even remember, funny stories. And he got to see what this life he bumbled through actually looked like from the outside. There's pretty good ones in here. [LAUGHS] Oh yeah. This one I had forgotten existed. OK, so this woman writes, "Deep into the late night hour of a crazy, sexy, cool party, I found Dave pounding on a closet door." And then she transcribes this conversation where she says, "What are you doing, Dave?" And I say, "I gotta go to the bathroom." And she says, "That's a closet." And I say, "No, it's not. It's the bathroom, and there are people in there. There are people in there. And they need to get out." And then she says, "I show Dave that it is indeed a closet." And then the last line is me saying, "Just let me knock on the door for a little, and then I'll walk away so that people don't know what I did." And that's great, man. That's so funny. A bunch of posts perplexed him just because they were so random. There was one from an ex-girlfriend who was appreciative of the fact that he broke up with her inside his car because it was cold outside. One woman said he was a great storyteller and also quote, "unreasonably sweaty." Why? Yeah, absurd, right? Like it's so easy not to include that sentence. But as Dave kept scrolling past the funny memories, of course, things got heavier. Many of his friends had been devastated, and they took to Facebook as a form of therapy, pouring their hearts out about their loss. Dozens painted Dave as a devoted friend, the kind of guy who was there with hugs and advice and beer whenever you needed him. And then he got to this one post from a friend that just gutted him. "Hey, dude. Pretty sure Kit took this photo right before I told you I was going to leave her party in order to go to bed early. And then you made fun of me for doing that. I guess I never thought about this before, but you were totally my best friend in college. Even though you were a senior when I was a freshman, you insisted on treating me and everyone as equals, even though we weren't, dude. You really made me feel so effing cool. My dumb smile in this photo is 100% genuine because I was so happy to be with you all the time. It wasn't just me who felt that way. Whenever we went to CVS or Walgreens, every employee recognized you and said hello. We've even eaten at Chipotle for free because you have it going on, dude. Thanks for telling me not to be so hard on myself, and then laughing about how funny that sounded coming from you. Thanks for all the rides home. Thanks for being my best friend. It looks like it's finally your turn to turn in early. You earned it. I'll talk to you later. Duffer." [CRIES] That is so sweet. (CRYING) Yeah. [CRIES] Yeah. It's just really sweet. [SIGHS] It's really-- I don't know. It's like so many of these things I didn't remember. Like I don't remember things that way. I don't remember employees at Walgreens all knowing my name. I remember shoplifting from Walgreens and spending the night in jail. That's how I remember this stuff. This was the main thought Dave had going through his eulogies. Even though everyone was being so nice, he thought, "They're all wrong." I know that people don't really talk shit about someone when they've died, but it's just really tough to like square the image that I have of myself with the way other people talked about me when they thought I was dead. And that's why reading his own eulogies, it actually made him feel awful. He felt overwhelmed by the complete disconnect between the guy he thought he was and the guy everyone else was talking about. He'd thought that he was at core a bad person, that he took his depression out on people, that he could be insensitive, self-centered. I put myself in this coma. It was my carelessness, my recklessness, that got me to this place in the first place. And on the one hand, while it's moving to hear that everyone at this wake at Blake's house was so miserable to feel like I had gone, I made these people miserable. That totally makes sense. You were like, "You guys, you're not acknowledging how fucked up it was that I did this stupid thing to you." Right. And that's why it was like-- it's very different, the experience with my family. Because my family was pretty aware and they had been hurt by-- in terms of the traditional wreckage that an alcoholic or an addict leaves in their wake, my family suffered a lot of that. And so they weren't effusive when I came back. They were very aware of the ways in which I contributed to the situation. So now that everyone was saying he was this wonderful and nice guy, it actually made him feel guilty. Even now years later, it's a burden. Witnessing your own funeral, it actually kind of sucked. Maybe it wouldn't if you stayed dead. The problem is if you have to keep on living. But you know who this didn't suck for? Dave's friend, Blake. Have you ever found his laugh annoying since then? No, now it's like music to my ears. That's so crazy! Blake got to watch his loved one come back to life. That's really the thing worth fantasizing about. He gets excited just thinking about the day Dave woke up. Yeah, just to relive that moment again and again would be priceless, because that's the happiest I think I've ever felt. I think it just makes me a little happier to be around him every time. It's just like-- I'm just a little happier around him than I could be around any other friend because I know what it's like to also lose the same person. Dave and Blake both got second chances to love and to be loved. Turns out one's a lot easier than the other. Stephanie Foo is one of the producers of our program. The living Dave Maher has comedy stuff that he would like to share with you at thisisdavemaher.com. Act 3, "Funeral for a Stranger." So this last story is about a guy who goes to a funeral for somebody who does not know at all and has to piece together all the stuff you would want to know in that kind of situation. And the guy who did this wrote us an email last summer at the radio show. There was no subject heading in this email. The very first line was a link to an obituary for another guy named Eddie Furlani. Eddie had died a few weeks before. He was young when he died, only 35. The email began, "Dear This American Life, I'm attaching a quick document that I created Friday documenting some of the thoughts and emotions I had following the funeral of a Navy SEAL. The whole experience was more of an odyssey than I had bargained for." This caught the eye of a producer here on our show, Dana Chivvis. Here she is. The email was signed by a retired officer in the Navy, a guy I'm going to call Charlie. It's not his real name. The document he had attached to the email was an essay. It was four pages long. He'd written it quickly after Eddie Furlani's funeral. Eddie was a stranger to him, but there was something about the whole experience that seemed to kind of haunt him that led him to write an essay, something deeply emotional. I couldn't tell what it was, so I gave him a call. So why did you write us? I knew you were going to ask this question. [LAUGHS] Do write radio shows a lot? I don't. And I think I wrote you guys one time prior, and that's the only reason why I even knew how to contact you. OK, so maybe Charlie writes radio shows more than most people. I asked him to tell me the story of Eddie Furlani's funeral last summer. The story begins with a random text message from a friend of Charlie's, a guy named Mark. He and Charlie went to the Naval Academy together. After graduation, Charlie went on to become a Naval aviator. He flew medivac helicopters in Iraq in 2007. His friend Mark joined the Navy SEALs, the Navy's special operations forces. What was the text that you got from Mark? So actually, it started with, a "Good morning." I said, "Good morning. How's Liam, your son?" And his next text is, "Hey, I got a job for you." And that's where my response came back, "Does it involve explosives?" And he says, "Attend the service of a frog man in my absence." Frogman is a nickname for a Navy SEAL. Eddie Furlani and Mark had been Navy SEALs together. The funeral was going to be in San Diego, and Mark, who lives in Florida, couldn't make it. So he asked Charlie, who lives nearby, to go in his place. That was the moment where it was like that moment of decision where I was like, "Well, do I really want to go to a funeral of somebody I don't know in his absence?" If it was anybody but Mark, I probably would have made an excuse. So did you sit there for like a minute or two before you wrote him back thinking of excuses not to go? [SIGHS] I'd be lying if I said no. I did think of a few excuses not to go because funerals aren't one of those things that people like attending to begin with, and let alone the funeral of somebody that you don't know, which technically seems a little rude because it just doesn't seem appropriate. But Charlie wrote Mark back, said, "Send me the details and I'll do it." And then in the swirl of his own life and work and family, he kind of forgot about it. Two weeks later, he woke up and realized it was the morning of Eddie Furlani's funeral. He put on a nice pair of jeans, some nice shoes, and a dark button down shirt. He thought he'd go to the service during his lunch break, catch the eulogy, and then scoot out of there, get back to work. He realized he didn't have any of the details about the service, and he also didn't know anything about Eddie Furlani. So he did some googling and found a Facebook memorial that Mark had set up and a GoFundMe page asking for donations to help support Eddie's family. It mentioned that he had passed suddenly. In the essay Charlie sent us, he writes, "There are pictures of his three children and the smiling face of Eddie in SEAL training, submerged in mud and smiling and giving a thumbs up with green fatigues on. The date of his passing was listed, and I started googling different military tragedies. Being alumni from a military academy means that rarely is there a military accident where someone I know isn't involved or affected. I found it unusual that I could find no reporting on anything." You know, at the time, I told myself that he was a Navy SEAL that had died in the line of duty. If it was a major firefight or a conflict, there would be yellow ribbons, there would be parades, there would be flags everywhere, there would be people weeping in the streets if he had died in combat. So you knew it wasn't that. You knew it wasn't a battlefield death, but maybe it was an accident Well, I didn't-- you get that little bug in the back of your head because I'm like, OK, well, how did he die? Was it a car accident? The internet didn't shed any light on the mystery surrounding Eddie's death. But anyway, it was the day of the funeral, so Charlie would probably find out what happened there. It's a weird thing being a proxy at a funeral. It reminds me of being a plus one at a wedding, only miserable. You don't know the person who died or their family, so it's hard to have any feelings about it. Like the fact that Eddie Furlani was gone, it hadn't changed the course of Charlie's life at all, just the course of his lunch break, really. Charlie gets to the chapel late because Mark texted at the last minute and asked him to pick up some flowers for the family, corsages for Eddie Furlani's daughter and widow. As soon as he drives into the parking lot, he notices a woman sitting on the sidewalk dressed in black, attending to a little boy who's having a total meltdown over his pants and how he doesn't want to be wearing them. Charlie recognizes the boy from pictures as Eddie Furlani's son. When Charlie walks into the chapel, the service has already started, and he's carrying those flowers. So one of the funeral directors intercepts him and asks him if he's the flower delivery guy. Charlie tries to explain awkwardly and in whisper talk because, again, the service has already started, that no, he's there for the service. But no, he doesn't actually know the deceased, and no, he doesn't know the family either. He's just there for a guy in Florida, like as a stand in. The funeral director lets him by, and Charlie finally squeezes into the back row of mourners. The pews were all full, and the walls-- especially the back of the walls were lined with men in three piece suits that were 6 foot 4, athletically built, wearing sunglasses. I mean, you're clearly Navy SEALs. People were giving eulogies. In his essay, Charlie writes that it felt odd to hear about the achievements of a stranger, stories from his friends. The men on the back wall with him were steel-faced, betrayed no emotion until Eddie Furlani's daughter, a 7-year-old named Zelma, broke down in tears. The little girl was sobbing. You know [COUGHS] in that sort of deep, heartbroken [COUGHS] deep, heartbroken sob. And her stepmother was kind of bent over and escorting her out through the door. And she is just sobbing. [COUGHS] Again, you can imagine all these 6 foot plus, 300 pound, athletic Navy SEALs. And [COUGHS] [LAUGHS] Everybody just looked so helpless. It was like-- there isn't anything these guys can't take on and win, and here's this little girl sobbing [LAUGHS] right behind us. And there's nothing anybody could do. There was a part of your essay that really struck me. I'm just going to read. You wrote, "The military trains you to separate the emotion from the mission. Eddie's oldest girl Zelma was old enough to understand what was happening, but not military enough to know not to show it." Did you want Zelma to be a little more military in that moment? I don't know what to say to that because that little girl wailing out there in the hallway-- you know, that again, set off a cascade of grief that everybody there had to kind of stuff away. Charlie stuffed the grief away with an old military trick. He focused on accomplishing the mission to deliver the flowers Mark had sent him with. It's stupid, and I feel so embarrassed to even admit this, but I mean, that's what I clung to is I need give her the flowers. I clung to that idea that my mission is to give her the flowers. Luckily, a voice in Charlie's head-- his wife's voice, he says-- told him that delivering the flowers then was a really bad idea. So he stayed put. It made him deeply uncomfortable, all these feelings for a stranger. He wasn't being military enough. You lose a degree of empathy in the military because empathy is not an advantageous skill to have in most-- especially comrade-in-arms fields. Empathy is not a useful emotion to have. And [SIGHS] the fact that I'm sniffling and tearing up is generally thought as weak. Like I said, your empathy centers tend to be atrophied. Well, I mean, I think that you could also see it as proof that your empathy centers haven't atrophied, that they're actually quite present. They just come out at the wrong times with odd things, which is-- I guess. Although I think some people would argue that a funeral is the exact right time for it to come out. Oh, they're present. Yeah, I know they're there. [SNIFFS] The service finally ended. The chaplain asked everyone not to talk to the family, just proceed outside to the flag presentation. But Charlie ignored these instructions and walked up to Eddie Furlani's widow, eager to give her the flowers, to accomplish his mission at last. When he told her he was there on behalf of his friend, Mark, she brightened and gave him a hug. She told him Mark was the whole reason they'd had a service there in San Diego. He'd arranged everything. Charlie got back in his car and called Mark to give him a report. And then Mark said something strange. He told Charlie he was relieved to hear there had been so many people at the service. It hit me almost like touching a light socket. He said, "I'm glad people showed up. I was worried nobody was going to be there." And you get that kind of sinking feeling that you've missed something important. And the next thing he told me was is because of how he killed himself. And-- [SIGHS] Eddie had disappeared from home 3 and 1/2 weeks earlier. He'd been missing for about a week before his body was found under a bridge. He had a backpack filled with pictures of his family and his service record. In his essay, Charlie writes about that moment after the funeral when he was in his car talking to Mark, and he finally understood how Eddie had died. "It all came together in my mind suddenly. No mention of cause of death, no news stories of training accidents, no mention of the end of his life at the eulogy-- the monster that hides in the dark, the one that you don't mention lest you summon his attention." How did that change things for you, to understand that Eddie had committed suicide? I got lightheaded, honestly. I had a physical reaction. Why? Because there was nothing about it. I mean, there were no articles on it. The chaplain's invocation didn't talk-- nobody said anything about it. Both Mark-- and Eddie's widow, as I found out this morning when I talked to her-- they were terrified because they expect to show up to an empty chapel. They expected no one to come. In fact, the Navy chaplain had mentioned at the start of the service that Eddie had killed himself. But Charlie arrived late and missed it. And Charlie had misunderstood Mark's worry that no one would show up. Mark told me he was worried about that, but not because Eddie killed himself. It was more like it all happened so suddenly, and he wasn't sure people would be able to come. The morning before our interview, Charlie called Eddie's widow to make sure it was OK with her that he talked to me. And during that conversation, he learned something about Zelma's breakdown in the chapel. The reason why she wanted to leave is because she was ashamed. She felt ashamed that everybody knew her father had killed himself, and that they felt that she was a bad person. And I was horrified to hear that. [LAUGHS] I mean, of all the [CRYING] of all the things for her to think, that she was somehow this pariah for her father passing away. And that everybody in that memorial service, who was there to support her, and she was-- I don't know. I was horrified to hear that. And that she wanted to leave. Eddie left the military in 2012, the same year as Charlie. Charlie says when you go back to civilian life, you get a job, you've got your family and friends, but you miss having a greater mission. Your sense of purpose is gone. You have to evolve. But when I heard what Eddie did, I understood what he was thinking in that moment. I guess I'm trying to explain in basic layman terms. Without knowing myself, but maybe I can put myself in a few of their shoes with-- Can you talk about that? About what? Being able to put yourself in their shoes. I mean, can you talk about that? Are you up for talking about that? [SIGHS] Sorry, I've been kind of dreading this. You want to take a little break? [SIGHS] No, I can keep going. [SIGHS] I'd like to say I'm brave enough to take that subject on, but I don't think I can do that. I don't think I can do that right-- That's fine. That's fine. Charlie's had his own bouts with suicidal thoughts. They brought his career in the Navy to an end. He told me about it when the microphones were off. He said it was OK to talk about here. I asked him if, in retrospect, the thing that got him about Eddie's funeral, the reason he felt compelled to write the essay, was that it could have been his own funeral. But he said no, that's not it. And then he explained why he wrote the essay. He said he knew from his time doing medivac flights that the mere sound of a helicopter approaching can improve the vital signs of a person on the verge of death. He said, "I wrote you because I wanted to be the sound of a helicopter to someone." Dana Chivvis-- we wanted to share the phone number for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline. That number is 800-273-TALK. 800-273-TALK. That guy Charlie who wrote that essay asked us to say that he dedicates his essay to a guy who helped him, a marine who died in Iraq, Major Richard Gannon II. Our program is produced today by Miki Meek. People who put our show together includes Elma Baker, Ben Calhoun, Dana Chivvis, Sean Cole, Whitney Dangerfield, Hilary Elkins, Stephanie Foo, David Kestenbaum, Alvin Melathe, [? Stone ?] Nelson, Nadia Reiman, Robyn Semien, Alissa Shipp, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu. Our senior producer is Brian Reed, our managing editor is Susan Burton. Special thanks today to Judy Melinek, Wesley Lowery, Melissa Franklin, and David Morin. Our website, thisamericanlife.org, where you can subscribe to our free weekly podcast or listen to the archive of over 600 episodes for absolutely free. "This American Life" is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. I know it's been a week since Mother's Day, but Torey is still reminiscing about how much fun he had. I remember shoplifting from Walgreens and spending the night in jail. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of "This American Life."
|
When she was a kid LaDonna Powell would go to Easter parties at her mom's work. It was great, because her mom worked at JFK airport in New York City. LaDonna and her brothers and sisters and cousins would gather Easter eggs out on a parking lot by the tarmac in what's now the American Airlines terminal. Planes were taking off and landing right overhead. They liked that. A bunch of her family works at JFK. Her mom makes airplane meals, but there's also her uncle, two aunts, three cousins, and her sister. Everybody has a role. They feed the passengers, they deliver their bags, they clean up the planes after them. And when she was 20, LaDonna found her role-- she'd keep the airport safe. She got a job with TSA. She scanned bags and laptops. She took it seriously. Like, she would picture the pipeline that runs below the airport, carrying millions of gallons of jet fuel, blowing up if there were any kind of bomb. Like, if the bomb goes off in this airport, what happens to everyone here, everyone that I care about if we don't commit and do our job properly here? It was like, I used to have this terrible dream of a woman walking up to me and pressing, igniting a bomb. Every time-- I would go to sleep and have this dream all the time. So when I came to work, I was always very adamant on staring at the X-ray machine. After a few years at TSA, she moved to a different job, this one out on the tarmac with a private security firm that works at the airport, a firm that eventually became part of Allied Universal, which is a huge company-- the largest security firm in North America, with 150,000 employees all across the country. At JFK, Allied guards screen the vehicles and the airplane catering trucks and all the other stuff that's down there on the runway. LaDonna was excited to work with them. She went through training and then was assigned to shadow a more senior guard. My first day in the field was not great. I was put with this guy. He was an older white guy. And he was very nice to me but very mean to the people we were screening going onto the runway, because a lot of the duty-free trucks come through that load the planes with food for first class, and he was saying the nastiest things to them. Quick warning that we've un-beeped the curse words here on the podcast. If you prefer a beeped version of our show, maybe you're listening with kids, it's at our website. He was saying all types, like things hurry the f-- hurry the fuck up, move the fuck on, get out of his fucking face. He would try to get free things. So he would, like, threaten them. Like, oh, I'm not going to let you through if you don't give me free food. And they would give him water and juices and stuff. So it's like he was extorting them, basically. Yeah. He kept telling me he was a Russian badass. That's what he kept saying. He was like, I'm a Russian badass. And he had-- it was like a baseball cap flipped backwards. We're supposed to wear it forward, with the-- and he flipped it backwards, and he opened his shirt, and he was saying, I'm a Russian bad boy. You know I'm a badass, right? And I was like, I have no idea who you are. Today's my first day, I don't know who this guy is. He's freaking me out already. After checking cargo vans and trucks for a while, the guy told LaDonna that he was going to be inside the security booth by himself for a bit. She should stay outside by herself and wait. He played music in the booth and started looking at what LaDonna says was a Playboy magazine. LaDonna had read the employee handbook and knew that both of those things were a violation of company policy. And she had also read a book that her best friend gave her, Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office. And she thought of it now, the way that guy dismissed her, treated her like, you know, a girl. Like I'm overly nice and easy to walk over. Like, OK. Wrong. Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office spends a lot of time on not being easy to walk over, on the need to speak up, on the need to stand up for yourself. LaDonna reads lots of these business books and management and self-help books. She watches talks online-- not for motivation. She is so motivated, in general, one of her friends calls her Olivia Pope-- like, always wanting to fix something. She reads this stuff because the worldview in these books matches the way that LaDonna already sees things. Like, they give her words to describe what she is feeling all the time anyway-- always try to elevate, always be moving ahead. And this dude, disrespecting his job and her, he was an affront to that entire worldview. So even though it was her very first day out in the field doing her brand-new job, right then, on the tarmac, she decided she had to confront the problem. So I was riding back with him in the car, and I said to him, why do you do things like that at work? And he was just like, he hates the job. He was like, he hated that place, and that's just what he does. He does whatever he wants to do. And I was like, well, you know, you make it bad for everyone else. If you don't want to be here, just don't come. And then he started calling me, like, Sister Souljah, and then he made a joke about it. And that was it. She was not diminished. LaDonna had no respect for a person who did not value this place or this job. And when they got back to the supervisor's office-- LaDonna did not feel great about this, but she told a supervisor about the Russian badass and his behavior. In other words, she handled it. Spoke her mind to the dude, check. Reported him, check. He did not get to her, check and checkmate. And eventually-- she explained this to our producer, Chana Joffe-Walt, who was the one who actually talked to her-- she explained that the Russian badass, he got fired-- for something totally unrelated, actually. He stole water from Port Authority, and they fired him. What do you mean he stole water? The water coolers, how they have-- he would take them out of the storage and put them in the trunk of his car. And they caught him-- exactly. And they caught him. Those jugs that go in a water cooler? Yes. They had him on CC camera going to his car with the water, because he's a badass. He probably walked out with it on his head and carried it to the car. So he got fired for stealing water, not for looking at pornography while he was on the job? Right. Yeah. Dude likes water. Yeah, exactly. Clearly. LaDonna Powell is not a Russian badass. She's a totally different kind of badass. It's like she's a dedicated student of how to be a great employee, the kind of employee who excels and rises in an organization. And now she was entering a company that would be the greatest sort of challenge for an employee like that, a place where people are not playing by the rules. The Russian was just the very first obstacle she faced. It was about to get way uglier. What you're about to hear is the story of a willful and principled person who sets out to figure out, first, how to rise in this company and, second, how to remake the way the entire place runs, which requires some ingenious strategizing on her part. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Act One, The Old Guard. Well, Chana Joffe-Walt has been talking to LaDonna, plus lots of other people at Allied Universal at JFK, for months, and now she's going to take over telling LaDonna's story. Just a heads up that there is provocative language and content in here that might not be right for every listener. Here's Chana. When you board a plane, sit down, and look out the window, you see the guys throwing the bags, and then, beyond that, just concrete expanse. That's where LaDonna worked. That's where the Allied guards are, stationed in booths along the tarmac. The booths are basically checkpoints for everything that goes out there-- food, fuel, water, duty-free purses. The booths are about the size of a U-Haul trailer, metal and steel with big glass windows. At the beginning of each eight-hour shift, LaDonna would go to the Allied locker room, change, and stand in line for roll call outside the supervisor's office. Then the supervisor would tell her which posts she had that day out on the tarmac, and she'd head out there to a booth in the pavement. The guard she was relieving would drive away. Trucks would come by. She would check for bombs, drugs, food packages to see if anything was open. And she would wait-- lots of waiting. Occasionally, a supervisor would come by to check on her. One night, it was an older, gruff supervisor named Kevin McNamara. LaDonna says he came in to her booth-- And he asked me to open my jacket. And he took his phone out to take a photo of me. And I was like, excuse me. He was like, open your jacket and turn around. And I was like, I'm not. And he tried to say, oh, I'm just taking a picture of you. The company has a policy where we take a photo of you. And I remember reading it when they gave us a handbook, and I said, no, you're supposed to take a picture of my outside, my outer garment. And he's like, no, you're going to open your coat and turn around. He was so abrupt and aggressive with me-- just, you're going to do what I say. Like, you're going to turn around, you're going to do what I say, and that's it. And I was like, that has nothing to do with the job. The job was to guard the post. LaDonna felt like Kevin wanted a show. LaDonna is small, just under 5 feet tall. Her resting position is almost always perfect posture, standing at attention, hands clasped at her belt, elbows out. The booth was a very tight space for two people. And I was like, you're going to get the fuck out of my face. Like, I'm not turning around, and I know that's not what you're supposed to be doing, and I'm not supposed to open my clothes for you. And he told me, oh, if I didn't listen, he was going to make it hard. He's like, you always have something to say. You always have something to say. But then he dropped it. He drove away. LaDonna took note. Success-- she drew a line, and he backed down. JFK airport covers 5,000 acres. There are approximately 300 Allied guards. LaDonna met some of her coworkers in the locker room before and after shifts. That's where she learned that one of the worst posts was called Post Hotel. It got the most traffic. Second worst was Post Papa. It was distant and remote, though I don't think that's how it got its name. LaDonna noted that nobody wanted these posts, and she also noticed that she started to be assigned them, shift after shift. You feel forgotten, in a way, almost, because how do you go to the bathroom? How do you-- you can't do anything. You're just there. At first, it was like, OK, solitude, you know? But then it's like, all right, are you guys coming to relieve me? Can I go to the ba-- can I eat something? Am I going to get to go home? Sometimes, you'll be stuck there 12 hours. They'll forget to send you a relief. There are cameras in the booths so supervisors in the main office can check on their guards. Of course, she couldn't see the supervisor's office, but they could see her. Were they watching her? When she did get a response on the radio, the supervisor would say they didn't have anyone available to relieve her. She'd squirm, needing to go to the bathroom. Did they see that? Most nights, Kevin was her tour supervisor. He worked in the supervisor's office with the other supervisor on duty. Sometimes he'd drive around to check on people. She'd wonder, are they're busy? Are they not there? Or maybe-- Are they picking on me? Am I not getting to go to the bathroom because I spoke up? Am I not getting a lunch break, are my hours being cut because I spoke up about what's happening? And I would always have these thoughts, are they doing this because I keep talking back? When traffic was low, LaDonna would sometimes take out her reading, and suddenly a voice would come into the booth, put that away. Or when she'd eat, no eating in the booth. So they were there. But then, silence for hours. As families took off in planes above her for Florida and business people came in from Dubai, LaDonna was stuck in a box below, amid 5,000 acres of pavement. In the locker room, another guard told LaDonna, there's a corner of the booth where they can't see you. The cameras don't reach there. They can only see your feet. So LaDonna started packing peanut butter and jelly triangles and standing in that corner to eat them. Sometimes that would work. Sometimes she'd hear the supervisor, Kevin's voice suddenly, come forward in front of the camera. And I kept trying to understand, what am I doing wrong with my interactions with him? Because someone else tried to tell me, oh, he's nice to this girl. She's Spanish. It's not because you're black. I-- He's a white guy? He's an older white man. It's something else. And I said, OK, maybe my approach is wrong with him. So I didn't know how to manage him. He was just-- he would have these outbursts. He would always say, oh, he's management, and we're not like him, and he's better than the rest of us because he gets an expense card and he wears the blazer. He can do what he wants. Oh, I've been here for years. It's like, how do you manage that? How do I correct you? Kevin McNamara did not want to talk to us for this story. LaDonna says it was around this time that she started to repeat phrases to herself from the book Managing Your Manager by Gonzague Dufour. It lays out three strategies for handling a bully boss. Number one, don't take it personally. Two, find the humor. And three, most important, limit the pain, target the game. Done correctly, you build skills, you level up, and you move on to a place where you'll get a better boss. View the bully as temporary. This is how she would correct Kevin-- do her job extremely well, get through this part, and be seen by the people above Kevin. She'd repeat to herself, everyone has a boss. And it was that boss-- Kevin's boss-- she was focused on. At the worst post, on the worst shift, without breaks, LaDonna targeted the game. It was busy, lots of opportunities for growth. I really learned a lot, just working out there. You're outside in the field, so it's very hands-on. You're using a mirror, you're checking under vehicles for bombs, you're checking under vehicles for any anomalies, anything that's not supposed to be there, just making sure when it goes on the runway that it's safe. So it felt good, purposeful. Like, OK, I'm actually doing something. This appeared to go unseen by Kevin. Everyone has a boss, she'd tell herself, but she never heard from Kevin's boss. What continued to be noticed was her failure to put her body where the supervisors could see it. She'd hear their voices in the booth, telling her to come forward in front of the camera. When she worked hard, nothing. When she needed a bathroom relief after 8 or 10 or sometimes 12 hours, no answer. So she'd limit the pain. On her way to work-- I would go to the-- there was a convenience store on Lefferts Boulevard before I got there, and I would go to the convenience store. I would get a juice or ask for a coffee and get an extra cup on the bottom of it. In the locker room, before her shift, LaDonna would throw in the cup with the rest of her stuff for when she had to pee. She'd head to roll call, with Kevin. And I would be there. I would have a roll of tissue-- like, I'd roll it up on my hand in the locker room-- and an empty cup with me all night. Oh, and that was another thing. He would come and look at your bag, because you have a clear plastic bag. They want to make sure you're not carrying any electronics out there onto the field, or you're not stealing anything. So you have a transparent bag. OK, fine. You can see straight through my bag, but then he still would make comments about my pads and my tampon-- oh, why do you need so many pads? It's like, why do you care? It doesn't bother you, and clearly you can see that it's not something I stole from here, so why do you care? Everyone has a boss, she told herself. Don't go back at him. Tone it down and say, OK. Just try to focus on me. How can I get past this stage? LaDonna stuck to her plan, did her job extremely well, worked hard. And then, just as the book said, she was noticed-- not by Kevin or his boss but by a manager at the airport. This man had seen LaDonna working, seen how hard she worked, and he recommended to Allied that they promote LaDonna to supervisor. This recommendation likely carried weight-- the airport is Allied's client-- and it definitely had an effect on LaDonna. She'd never even thought about being a supervisor. That was many levels above what she'd imagined. And then she read Lean In. Lean In is by Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook. It explains why so few women make it to the top of their professions. Sandberg argues that women-- and this is the line LaDonna slowed down on-- women systematically underestimate their abilities. LaDonna had been so focused on her bosses underestimating her abilities, maybe she had underestimated herself. Now she'd been noticed. Someone saw her as supervisor material. She just had to answer one question for herself, the question posed by Sheryl Sandberg, one of the most powerful female executives in the world-- could she picture herself as a boss? It was like, do I really want to be in charge of other people? And then I have to take a step back and say, do I really want these kind of people in charge of me? It's like, I never had that moment until then. These are the guys in charge of me? I'm peeing in a cup outside. These are the people in charge of me. So I really had to evaluate what I was doing-- what I was doing mentally to myself. Like, I was literally my biggest enemy. That voice in the booth, the unseen authority that LaDonna had found so unnerving, suddenly seemed ridiculous. Why is he counting her pads? Why can't she just eat her PB and J? They seemed desperate and threatened. I can do the job you're doing. You're not Jesus right now because you're a supervisor. I can read and execute this job just like you, if not better, because all you're doing is acting like Adolf Hitler, an insane person here, and you're treating people like animals. Let's try the other way. After two years at Allied, LaDonna made it to supervisor. She went from $15 an hour as a guard to $32 an hour. And in June 2014, she entered the supervisor's office. I get to walk in, and now they're going to see me in my blue shirt-- because the supervisors wear a different blue shirt from the security guards-- and I was like, oh, they're going to piss their pants. They're going to be so pissed off because now I'm equal. We're both in the same field. We're both in the same position. You won't call me a bitch. You won't do that because now, possibly, you might view me as an equal. The supervisor's office was about the size of a large bedroom, an open space with three desks, computers, a printer-copier machine, and schedules all over the walls. There were about 12 other supervisors, different races, mostly men. They worked in shifts of two. LaDonna met her new boss-- Kevin's boss, the boss of all the supervisors-- a tall black man named Chris Timberlake. And she was given 50-something guards of her own to manage each shift, guards who needed schedules and overtime arrangements and to be counted at the beginning and end of every shift. She managed payroll and drove the premises to check on the guard booths. She went to daily supervisor briefings. Every part felt urgent and exciting, especially the meetings, where they talked strategy. Sometimes I can't wait for them to finish a sentence. I just jump in. I said, sometimes, I feel like they're thinking slower than me. Like maybe they're still figuring it out, and I'm already at the end point. And I'm like, well, that's not going to work. LaDonna had new ideas. She was nice, but not too nice, assertive, but deferential to her boss Chris Timberlake, bringing things to him first. Like, one time, she went to his office across the hall-- And I said to him, we have a training class. I'm just talking to him-- now, I'm a supervisor at this time-- and he's like, come here, come around the desk for a second. I want to show you something on the computer. I'm like, OK, what's going on? So I come around to look. I'm like, hey-- and it's women pole dancing, and they're, like, licking on each other in a strip club and pole dancing. He's like, can you do this? And he's calling the other male sup-- come here, come here, let me show you what I'm showing Powell. And they're both showing it to me. He's like, yeah, I seen that. I seen that on YouTube. It's crazy, right? Powell, you could do that, right? You could do that? You do that at home? In LaDonna's head, she's Sheryl Sandberg right here. They were imagining her in a porn show, pole dancing. And I was like, you know what? Fuck the both of you. And I just walked out. I just walked out. I was like, you two are the worst, the worst type of people. I walked out. Did you say that to them, or did you just-- I said that to them, and they just laughed me off. They laughed me off. So it wasn't just Kevin. It was Kevin's boss too-- Chris Timberlake, who was now her boss. He told LaDonna, you have nice lips, made comments about her body. When she'd go to the copier, he'd come up behind her and push into her. Chris Timberlake, like Kevin McNamara, did not want to talk to us for this story. LaDonna says she'd come in to work to find other supervisors gathered around someone's phone, watching videos of people having sex. They'd invite her over and ask her if she could do it like that. LaDonna surveilled the supervisors in the same way they used to surveil her. She studied how they operated and just how closely they watched the women who worked there. Like with one guard, Marsha-Nique Irving. She would change her hair often or her makeup often, and they would make sexual comments about it. Like what? Like, oh, you saw Marsha-Nique? Her titties look good today, and she got her hair done. Or she would change her lashes-- like, they were longer. Like, oh, she got porno-star lashes, things like that. And she would always brush them off. And she was very feisty, and I loved that-- I loved to watch her answer them. And it was like, good for you. You know? It was like, good for you. LaDonna was working one night, and she heard Marsha-Nique radio in to her supervisor, Osvaldo Ortiz-- everyone called him Ozzie. LaDonna was doing paperwork. Ozzie was sitting with another male supervisor, monitoring the guard radios. And Marsha-Nique radioed to say she needed bathroom relief. And I watched him tell her four times, oh, give me a few minutes. I'm trying to find somebody. They were never trying to find somebody. Never once did they call anybody else, ask anybody else, check a sheet to see if you had somebody else. The two men that were in there was like, fuck her, she always talking shit, fuck her. And it made me look up, because I was doing paperwork. And I turned, and I was like, this is what they were saying about me when I was asking to use the bathroom. And it was so much validation. My assumptions were validated. It was like, wow, this is really what you guys are doing. This went on for hours. LaDonna didn't say anything at first. She just watched, as Marsha-Nique radioed again. Calling to go to the bathroom-- and she said to them, I have my period. You could tell she was already hesitant to say it, because she's saying it on a live stream. Not only can all of us hear it-- which is like 57 radios of people-- now you're making her say that, and the client can also hear her. So that's our 57 radios and eight radios Port Authority in Manhattan and Port Authority in JFK can hear. Embarrassing. She ended up using the bathroom on herself and bleeding on herself that day. Nothing, no sorry. They were all laughing about it, thought it was hilarious. Oh, she going to sit in her piss until she gets off. Like, they had no concern for her. The supervisor, Ozzie, did not want to talk to us. I did talk to Marsha-Nique. She describes this the same way LaDonna does. But of course, at the time, Marsha-Nique couldn't see what was happening in the supervisor's office, the things LaDonna was now seeing clearly. I'm not just paranoid. This is in stereo. Because seriously, I really was like, OK, maybe you're just paranoid. And then you get in the office, and it's like, oh, no. They're disgusting. It's just disgusting. This is what you're doing at work-- at work. I think they need a shirt that says "At Work." Maybe they don't get it. We are at work. It's just like a little T-shirt reminder. Right. Every time they start to do it, they're like, oh, wait, at work. Yes, you're at work. Being at work means something specific to LaDonna, something she assumes is universal but not everyone feels. To her, you're at work. It's almost like saying you're at church. You're supposed to be your best and look out for others. In Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg tells a story. When she was pregnant-- she was working at Google-- it was the early years of the company. And she was late for a meeting. She had to park way far out. The company was growing so fast, there was no parking close by. And after running, with a big belly, to get to her meeting, Sandberg marched in to speak with Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google. We need pregnancy parking, she said. Oh, they said. Sure, of course. They just never thought of it before. Sandberg writes, "That is the power of being in the room. The other pregnant women must have suffered in silence. Having one pregnant woman at the top made the difference." That was the power LaDonna felt she had, in the room, when Marsha-Nique called in. And she used it. And when I said it to them, the first time-- like, so she's not going to get to go to the bathroom? No, I'm not going to send that relief over there for her. She'll figure it out. How? There's nowhere for her to go. She's not a-- she can't just pull her penis out and pee in the woods. And then he just-- he was like, this is what she's calling for? And I'm like, you get a period? And he looks at me. I'm like, you tell me if you get a period, if you know exactly-- a woman doesn't want to keep a pad on more than four hours. And it's that kind of thing that I just wanted to be in the room to be able to say-- consider this person, consider them as a person. Consider this person-- that is what LaDonna's presence was supposed to do, to induce empathy, the kind of consideration she had wanted from her boss, Kevin, when she was out in the field. LaDonna put herself in the supervisor's room with him, made him see her-- blue shirt, just like him. But LaDonna says when she came in as supervisor, Kevin's response was not to consider her. She says his response was, wow, they must have been scraping the bottom of the barrel to bring you in. LaDonna says Kevin would violate protocol and change the schedule without regard to people's medical needs. LaDonna would correct him. Consider this person. When he told the LaDonna to change the payroll so they wouldn't have to pay one of the guards overtime he was owed, LaDonna held onto the piece of paper and said, no. And then he took the paper, and he threw it back in my face. And he was like, you're always talking back. You're always talking back. It was like, I just-- I didn't know what to say. And then he was like I'm tired of seeing you niggers' faces, and he walked out the room. That was just like, wow. So now we know why you feel like I'm the bottom of the barrel and those kind of things and I'm disgusting. So thank you for letting me know. I remember being so enraged. I was like, there's got to be a law against this. And I remember there was a book with all the codes and everything from the company. And I went through the book and I found discrimination, I found hostile work envir-- ugh, I'm sorry. That's OK. And I wrote it up. And I wrote the pages, and I did all this stuff, and I wrote a four-- I wrote a complaint. It was, like, four pages long. I turned it in to the woman who was in human resources. I gave it to the man-- I hand-delivered it to them. I can't experience this anymore. Like, I'm tired of working under Kevin. I said, every time I'm by myself with him, he finds a way to tear me down, talk to me disgusting. I'm tired of it. Forever I have to experience this, just because I stood up for myself? It's just not fair. They gave me the most nonchalant response. Oh, Powell, you're reading too much into it. I told you before, Kevin's just like that. If you can't handle the position in there, let us know. We'll put you back in the field. Everyone has a boss. LaDonna complained about Kevin to their boss, Chris Timberlake, and to his boss, project manager Martin Feeney. Martin Feeney also declined to talk to us. There was a union for guards, but LaDonna wasn't a guard anymore. She was management. According to Allied protocol, every employee complaint triggers an investigation. LaDonna says nobody followed up with her about what happened with Kevin beyond that one conversation with HR and Martin Feeney, which she says ended with Martin Feeney telling her, kick him in the balls next time. LaDonna knew this strategy already. She knew it didn't work. When she was 19, working at Applebee's, she says a coworker grabbed her ass and said he liked Jamaican bodies. She turned around and smashed him in the face with a big metal spoon. Didn't help. LaDonna had tried all the things. They weren't working. And no matter how far I leaned into my career-- I made it-- I'm the first female to ever start there as a guard at my age and make it to a supervisor. I leaned all the way in without letting anyone touch me, with just showing I was capable-- I could read, I could type, I was able, I understood the job. I made it all the way to supervisor. Still, I'm still being harassed. It just didn't work. It worked as far-- OK, now I've excelled in my career, but I'm still being harassed. Now what? Now what do we do? LaDonna settled on a new idea for how to fix it all at once. She could see clearly how the male supervisors were treating the guards now that she was on the inside. She could also suddenly see the female guards and how they were responding. She was in the office every day with another male supervisor, and the women guards would show up in there. They come in, they're bringing him lunch, shirt open, breasts out-- oh, hi. So some of them were benefiting, using it as a tool to get what they wanted out of it. And watching them with the men supervisors, it was like, why are you doing that? But they're doing it for a good post, for overtime, for a better break. It's like, don't do that. Just don't do it. If we all would say no, it would make it easier for all of us saying no. But you saying yes makes it harder for me saying no. Let's just say no, because we're at work. Let's say no. This was it. When LaDonna heard Allied needed someone to train the new recruits, newly-hired guards, she immediately volunteered herself. Let me be the first face they see. These people are new. She could teach them. This was her new idea. She would change the entire culture of the place by starting at the beginning, when people were hired. She would train them correctly. She could teach the women not to respond to sexual advances. She would teach them to focus on work, security. And all the new hires would take root in this place, like an invasive species. They would change the entire ecology. The supervisors would not respond to LaDonna telling them to change, so she'd change the world around them. Chana Joffe-Walt. Coming up, the re-education campaign begins. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, "LaDonna." We're telling the story of LaDonna Powell and watching as she brings her enormous sense of mission to the job of securing JFK airport in New York, and to making the company that she works for, Allied Universal, a better place to work. We've arrived at Act Two of our program. Act Two, The New Guard. So, as you heard in the first half of the show, LaDonna had tried managing up, to reshape her boss's behaviors. Now she went in the opposite direction. And she created something brand new. She was going to start from the beginning, training the new recruits. Again, here's Chana Joffe-Walt. LaDonna did not actually have any experience teaching or training anyone. So she did what she does-- she read, collected tips, watched online videos about giving presentations. She bought The Essential HR Handbook and read about onboarding, how to set company culture from day one. Because it talks about, in HR, knowing your people. So I made sure every time they came into the class I knew who was wearing-- oh, you had a pink shirt on yesterday. People like to know you know them. First class, LaDonna opened with the piece of education people at Allied seemed to have missed-- how to act in a workplace. She held up the AlliedBarton employee handbook. She explained, Allied has a multimillion dollar contract to protect this airport. That is our job. It is what the airport, the client, wants us to be focused on 100% of the time. The client is paying us for a certain quality of work environment. The client is paying us for a certain quality of person working here. For one thing, I would always tell them, this is a sexual harassment-free environment. And I would say to them, you want to read this page-- I can't remember the page at this moment, but I always said, you want to read this page. You want to know your rights. This is a place where you should be able to come to work, not be touched or solicited for sex. You don't want to let people think it's OK to solicit you for sex. This is a place of security. No matter what's happening here, don't adapt to that. They should know they're allowed to use the bathroom. They should know they can't walk off the post. Things will happen here. And if it happens, you want to take note. That was always one of my biggest things to them-- you want to write it down. You have a right. You were, like, starting a revolution. I was trying. And I'm like, listen, open your mind to what I'm saying to you. And then I would just give them morals my mom dropped in my brain, hoping it would stick to them. Like what? Like, take your book. She would always say that, because in West India, they say, "take your book," meaning "go to school." She's like, you don't need bagga fren, you don't need man, you don't need-- you need your book. I'm like, OK, this lady. LaDonna was improvising her own book, her own workplace manifesto. She had gathered bits and pieces from this book and that one, adding her own experience, her insights, wisdom from her mom. And she was trying it out on her first audience. For a long time, LaDonna had imagined what her book would be if she ever wrote one. She told me she had even thought of a title, Do a Little More-- it's something her mom used to say to her. And her trainings did what all those best-selling motivational books do. She said, do what I did, it can work for you too. She encouraged them to push themselves, imagine themselves on a grand stage. Don't be afraid. Be motivated to go forward. You do a little more than the other workers and do your training, you elevate. You're worth it. It was like, you're definitely worth it. People were into it. I talked to guards who went through the LaDonna Powell training, and it was a thing. It was motivating and clear. LaDonna trained hundreds of people after that-- new recruits, and she started to do refresher trainings for the existing guards. People would leave class saying, we're going to vote Powell for president. You've got my vote, Powell. She taught people from retail jobs and former military people, men and women. She liked them. The women were focused-- not on sexual favors but on work. There was one in her class who was super talkative, opinionated. And she was like, you know what? I'm going to be a supervisor. And I was like, OK. Do it. You can do that. You can do whatever you want. Honestly, always in my mind, those guys are gone, and we can just fix it better. Oh, you're picturing the future workplace? Right, up there-- if they had, like, two more women there, just to speak logic, like, no-- you know, just someone to say, no, instead of, yeah, dude, that's good, bro, yeah, do that-- it might be better. LaDonna trained 330 people at Allied-- 80% of the workplace, between new people and refreshers. 80%. She felt good, like it was going well. And then, one day, LaDonna was teaching a refresher course. She was standing in front of the classroom, by the projector, in the middle of class, and a black guard raised his hand. He told me the story of the supervisor calling him a nigger. And he was like, it's not the first time. And this is in front of the class. This is is a class of-- roughly, this night, it had to be, like, 11 people in the class. And he's telling the story, and everyone knew. So I said to him, who else in here? And they all were just looking at each other. I was like, you guys can tell me. I was like, you know you can trust me. I'll take it to management. And they were like, no one's going to do anything about him. They never do anything about him. They we're talking about Kevin, which LaDonna had already assumed. Again, we asked Kevin for a response to this. He declined. And I was just trying to tell them, listen, if you write it down, maybe-- you know, we can try. Let's just try. When they said to you, who am I going to complain to, when you-- I said, to me. Mm-hmm. I said, you've said it to me, I'm not just going to leave it here. It's not OK. It really bothered me so much to even hear that being said. And the fact that the people we're managing are mostly African-American, minorities, Latin, that's a problem. You shouldn't be overseeing those people, because you don't value them either. You don't value us. So I go to management. They look at me, they look at each other, they kind of smirk. They're like, you know how he is. I don't know why you keep taking this so personal. Well, sorry. The black color of my skin would be one reason. And that's not OK. Allied is an enormous, multibillion dollar company. LaDonna knew the rules come from the top, and these supervisors at JFK were not the top. Allied JFK is one of 20,000 Allied locations. Allied provides security to libraries and museums and malls and baseball stadiums and government buildings. Allied guards are in the waiting rooms of hospitals. They're standing at the gates of universities. They're riding Segways at parks. They protect nursing homes and resorts and construction sites. They are in all 50 states. All of that to say, this is a huge company with a chain of command that expands well beyond the airport. Everyone has a boss, and there were many, many bosses at Allied. Good leadership was up there somewhere. This is why LaDonna insisted her students report infractions. They needed documentation. Maybe if these written complaints built up, they could build a ladder up high enough to reach the responsible leaders. There were more complaints from guards in LaDonna's classes, especially in the refresher courses-- harassment, racist comments. Keep writing things down, she'd say. Take notes. Call this OSHA number and report a safety violation. A woman came to her and said Kevin had been harassing her. So I said, did you write this down? And she was like, I don't know. You know how he is. And I'm like, I understand everything you're saying, but you have to fight for yourself. I'm going to go fight for you right now. But what I need you to promise me you're going to do is also fight for yourself, because there's a lot of fighting I'm doing right now for everybody, and I kind of need you guys to fight back also. She did what I told her to do. And then that resulted in her being a target. So I don't know. It's like, I felt like I told her the right thing, honestly. I felt like I told all of them the right thing, because you are supposed to speak up for yourself. Why can they just not stop? Do you still feel, though, that that was the right-- the approach that you took to those classes was, I'm going to teach people to be like me. Yes. And this woman is saying to you, I did the thing that you told me to, and it did not end up well for me so far, right? Right. Does that make you doubt your approach? It doesn't make me doubt my approach. It makes me feel like their response is wrong. There was one thing that did make LaDonna doubt everything. One woman, an enthusiastic, ambitious guard whom LaDonna had trained a few months earlier, came to her and told her she'd been sexually assaulted by another guard-- not on the premises and not during work, but by a coworker. LaDonna says she listened and told her that it wasn't OK, what had happened to her, and they needed to do something. No, no, no, the woman responded, she just wanted to tell someone. LaDonna says she didn't think anything needed to happen. It's like somebody has to help her. And I can't hold something like that inside, because then it's going to drive me insane. I just couldn't. There's no way. LaDonna went to the other supervisors. She says she told them the woman had been raped, and she told them who raped her. She asked the woman's direct supervisor, at the very least, don't put her on duty with him. But LaDonna says he didn't listen. And every day after that, LaDonna went to work, and so did the woman, right alongside the man. I don't know what kind of psychological warfare that is. I don't even know how she still does it-- currently working, and they still put her with him after they found out. I don't know. It makes my skin crawl. The woman did not want to be interviewed for the radio. She wanted to handle this her own way. LaDonna wanted to go to upper management, but the woman didn't want to. She wanted to keep her job. She told LaDonna she didn't need anything to be done. To LaDonna, that was acceptance. People are not supposed to take from you without your permission. I just wanted her to understand she's worth fighting for. They should make you feel worth fighting for. She just-- ugh, she just doesn't see it that way. And there was nothing, no evidence LaDonna could point to to convince her otherwise. LaDonna was trying to force a reckoning that would require this woman, and everyone on staff, to see themselves differently, to be vigilant at all times. But many of them were flagging. They were losing their sense of urgency, turning inward, away from revolution. LaDonna never turned away. Nine months after this, she was pulled into a meeting with HR and the project manager, the big boss at Allied JFK. I was like, am I fired? I asked three times. Am I fired? Tell me what I'm fired for. Am I fired for talking up? And he's like, oh, I wish you would close your mouth. And I said, what am I fired for? And I started reeling off everything. Am I fired for talking up? About what, the sexual harassment? About being called a nigger? And I started saying ev-- I said, all the stuff that goes on in this place, everybody sleeping with everybody, people don't even do their job. And I just started saying everything to him. I said, so am I fired? No, you're not fired. We'll call you in a few days, and we'll let you know something. LaDonna says they didn't call. Weeks later, when she logged into Allied's online portal, that's where she saw she had been terminated. LaDonna had cycled through so many different strategies at Allied, but she had actually never thought about a lawsuit until this point. And when she talked to a lawyer, the lawyer said, this would be a stronger case if you knew other people had experienced the same thing. I do, LaDonna said. I trained them. I trained everybody. I was a supervisor. I saw everything. The lawyer perked up. Well, if you can get other people to join you, you'd have a stronger case. LaDonna sat down, made a list of women she knew had experienced harassment and were no longer at Allied, and one morning she went through the list. The first woman she called said, I can't talk. She wouldn't explain why. LaDonna called the second woman, can't talk. Again, why? Eventually, this woman explained she had already sued Allied herself, settled the case, and signed a non-disclosure agreement-- an NDA. Next woman LaDonna called, same thing. Wow. This is what they've been doing. These guys are still here. It's insane. It's kind of insane to me. Did you even know that was an option? I didn't. Yeah. But you know what? It's not an option. I hope you guys are listening. It's not an option. Wait, who are you talking to, "I hope you guys are listening"? Allied. Oh. I hope they're listening because I feel like, how many times do they get to do that? How many times do they get to do that before they actually take this serious and start making a change? We found court records for 11 lawsuits against Allied at JFK that allege workplace discrimination. It's unclear how many more Allied might have settled before the cases formally went to court. So LaDonna wasn't alone trying to push back. Other women were fighting back too. She had no idea. They did come forward. The information was conveyed to a higher authority, to a court of law, and it did not make LaDonna or these women more secure. It made them invisible. LaDonna filed her lawsuit last October. Soon after, three more people from Allied got in touch, asking to join her lawsuit. And then, after that, there were two more workplace discrimination lawsuits filed against Allied at other New York sites-- the World Trade Center and LaGuardia Airport. LaDonna waited. Everyone has a boss. What else do you guys need to happen-- just what else, before you say, all right, let's get these guys out of here, they've went too far? OK, my name is Steve Jones, and I'm the CEO of Allied Universal. Steve Jones became CEO in 2016 when his security company, Universal Services of America, merged with AlliedBarton, becoming the largest security firm in North America. He told me LaDonna was fired because of her failure to comply with her supervisory duties. He wouldn't say more about what duties but was clear it was not for speaking up about sexual harassment and racial discrimination. He said he only heard those complaints after LaDonna filed her lawsuit and there was a local news story about it. He adds, "This is despite Allied's many systems in place for employees to communicate concerns." There's literally a half a dozen avenues to where you could communicate to us, and then we would launch an immediate investigation. Why didn't LaDonna Powell choose to take one of those avenues of communication and inform us of it? I don't know. We're obviously-- So wait, you're saying she didn't-- you're saying that she did not report any of this behavior, verbally or in a written form to supervisors or HR? What I'm telling you, yeah, is the first time we were made aware of this was through the media. There's lawsuits-- I mean, there's lawsuits going back to 2014. There's three lawsuits that describe very similar behavior that LaDonna is describing in the-- there's two more in 2015. There's formal complaints that I've seen written to HR that describe very similar behavior. There's calls to OSHA about being denied bathroom breaks. There's an employee at Allied JFK who left a letter and distributed it publicly that described widespread sexual misconduct by supervisors. And not to mention, I've been talking to many, many staff at Allied who have heard about these things. So it does not seem true that you were not made aware of some of the issues that LaDonna's raising. So what I would tell you is LaDonna Powell did not make us aware of her specific claims. And what I would say is, with regards to any other claims, every claim that gets brought to our attention is investigated thoroughly and responded to. And obviously, if it's a pending legal matter, I clearly can't comment on that. No, they were settled. There are lawsuits that were settled. And for the most part, it seems like the people who settled those lawsuits signed nondisclosure agreements, so they can't talk about it. OK. That does not change the fact that we don't take all allegations of either harassment or discrimination very, very seriously, and then we investigate each and every one of them. One of the things that did not make sense to me was, if there are multiple complaints about certain employees, and Allied is having to pay out money in settlements over and over, why not just get rid of those managers? Setting aside what's fair or what's right, it just seems like there'd be strong financial reasons to do that. I asked him what he made of the fact that some of the same men were accused again and again. We can't speculate that because someone has an allegation that that means those facts are correct. Again, our position-- Of course, but it's repeated. I mean, that's the difference, right? It's not a single allegation. It's repeated allegations that are similar to one another against the same people. And again, any time an allegation is made, we conduct a thorough investigation-- is that allegation true? Is there a portion of it that is true? And what type of behavior was being done or wasn't being done? We have to get to the facts. Allied says that is what they're trying to do now. They told me that since the lawsuit was filed, JFK management and supervisors have received training on discrimination and harassment, and HR staff got specialized training on how to respond to such matters. They've launched their own investigation and an independent investigation into what happened. Those investigations got started seven months ago-- which, to be clear, was four years after LaDonna says she first complained verbally and filed a written complaint against Kevin. Kevin and the four other men named in LaDonna's lawsuit denied all the allegations to us through their lawyers. I got an email response from the lawyer for Kevin McNamara and Chris Timberlake and the head boss at Allied JFK, Martin Feeney. It said, "We're confident that once the facts of the case come to light, it will be clear that Mr. Feeney, Mr. Timberlake, and Mr. McNamara did nothing wrong. It is unfortunate that these individuals' professional reputations are being tarnished as this case is debated in the court of public opinion." There is one other investigation to come out of this lawsuit. The Port Authority, which runs New York's airports, says it is now reviewing LaDonna's allegations, and others, as well. A statement from the Port Authority says, they'll "take aggressive measures against Allied if they find those allegations to be true." And then, just recently, I started to hear rumors about some aggressive measures. I started to hear that the entire leadership of Allied JFK was gone. Oh, it's beautiful now. This is a guard who works at Allied currently. She didn't want me to use her name. None of these workers did. I didn't believe it at first, because I thought maybe it was just a rumor, but then my phone started blowing up, so I was like, oh, wow. Wow. Yeah, it's about time. It's like, how can they get away with this, and why isn't someone doing something about it? The Allied guards say management did not explain what happened to the supervisors, or even why something was done. But they say they all know why it was done-- LaDonna. I love it. I thank her for moving all these no-good people out, who have so many records on accusing women and doing all that stuff. I thank her. And for years, you've heard the people doing stuff. And all of a sudden, bingo, finally something was getting taken care of. Yeah. A lot of people I spoke with didn't want to share their opinions on the record at all. And then there was this woman, who said she couldn't talk to me, but then stood next to her coworker yelling while I interviewed him. Yeah. They said that women are tired of what's going on-- Yeah, you get tired of it. It's true. It's like, you know-- After a while, [INAUDIBLE]. Yeah, enough is enough. And-- It's always been a big issue. Yeah. As you said, it's always been a big issue. Women are speaking out now. Yeah. Yeah. Allied told me three people were fired. They wouldn't tell me who. As far as I can tell, Kevin McNamara and Chris Timberlake were not fired. They, along with most of the leadership from Allied JFK, were reassigned-- meaning they still work for Allied but not at JFK. I asked Allied CEO Steve Jones why many of the supervisors were reassigned. So, we reassign employees all the time, whether it's promotion opportunities or new different challenges or-- Right. But are they being moved because they were at fault of some form of harassment or discrimination? No. So, I would say-- are some of the allegations found to be true? I would say no. So why are people being reassigned? Well, again, we reassign people-- we reassign people all the time. It's just not an answer. Somebody just say it. We hired these guys. They're animals. We fucked up. We must stop. As a company, we frown upon this, and we're making changes. What's so hard to say that? It occurred to me at some point that I've asked LaDonna the same question almost every time I've talked with her, did that make you feel powerful? I've asked her this about so many different things. Did that make you feel powerful when you made it to supervisor, when you were training all those people, when a fancy Manhattan law firm filed a lawsuit on your behalf, when the CEO of the company was responding directly to your complaints? No. LaDonna's answer was always no. It did not make her feel powerful. It was the same when the leadership of Allied JFK was removed. LaDonna heard that news, especially the part about the men from Allied being reassigned, and she was not thinking about her power. She was thinking about theirs. She was imagining Kevin arriving at his new job, putting on his same Allied uniform every day. That you can continue to walk around, just doing whatever you want to whomever you want, however, and nobody can touch you, it's almost like you're the boogeyman. You're untouchable. What LaDonna could now see was that he was protected, thoroughly, and she was not. She was alone. What LaDonna believed from all those self-help books is you have the power. There may be barriers, but if you act right, set your mind right, if you're strategic and ingenious, you can thwart their efforts to take your power away. This news made her feel like, not really, because, yeah, everybody has a boss, but it was not just Kevin. It was not just the supervisors. It was also the project manager and the HR manager and the legal department at Allied Universal that paid women and the law that allows them to do that. It was a system designed to withstand her refusal to comply, to absorb her whole onslaught, all her strategic thought, passionately executed, carefully taught. It just ate it up and kept doing its thing. And now that LaDonna has seen all of that, she's not sure how to see herself. I just-- I keep having these moments, like, it still leaves this lasting feeling that I was so vulnerable to these people, and they damaged me. That damage is not visible, except to her. LaDonna still works at the airport. She works for the government now, for Customs and Border Protection. She's making more money, and it's a more prestigious job. LaDonna walks Terminal Four, her torso doubled in size by her bulletproof vest, head high, scanning the area like someone who owns the place. A couple months back, she was at work-- And I'm walking. I have a M4 in my hand, my vest, pistol on my side. I'm walking, and I'm doing an escort. It's, like, five of us, and we're escorting someone. He's a diplomat. She's not allowed to say from where. He gave us a little pin and everything from his country. It's a regular day. And so we're escorting him. And we're walking, and everything's fine. And then I see one of the men. One of the men from Allied, a supervisor named Osvaldo Ortiz, the guy LaDonna says let the guard bleed on herself instead of giving her a bathroom break. He was coming into Terminal Four to get a coffee from Dunkin' Donuts. And then I just-- literally, I'm walking, and I'm fine. I'm talking, duh-duh, we're laughing, very militant, walking. And I'm fine. I got my gun. I'm holding it like this. And I turn, and I get a sign of him. And then he sees me. And then I just turned my whole body, shifted to the left, and I ducked down. LaDonna ducked as she was telling this to me. This is a man who, at this point in time, has no official power over her. She doesn't work for him. She's not financially dependent on him. Literally, I am-- I felt afraid. It's like, I'm nervous. Like, I started sweating and everything. It's like, why am I scared of this guy? It doesn't make sense to me. Regardless of me being, oh, badass Customs Agent with a gun, still the sight of him makes me cringe. And you're escorting a fancy diplomat. Exactly. Who's here for important business. Yes. Who needs your protection because you are able to provide protection. Protection. Right, right. And then I feel like I couldn't protect myself in that moment, yes. And you have a gun. And I have a gun. It's kind of horrible. Yeah. And that guy has a Dunkin' Donuts coffee. Coffee And I still feel, yeah, at his mercy. So power? No. I feel like I am caged because of them. The cage is invisible, of course-- or it was until recently, just like the NDAs, and the reassignments, and everything else LaDonna can now see. She's still trying to map the contours of this cage, its full size and shape. It's hard. It's not written down anywhere or clearly marked. And that's what makes it scary. LaDonna needs to know exactly what she's dealing with. Then she can figure out her next move. Chana Joffe-Walt is one of the producers of our program. Well, our program was produced today by Diane Wu. The people who put together a show includes Zoe Chace, Dana Chivvis, Sean Cole, Chana Joffe-Walt, Seth Lind, Miki Meek, Alvin Melathe, Nadia Reiman, Robyn Semien, Christopher Swetala, and Matt Tierney. Our senior producer is Brian Reed. Our managing editor is Susan Burton. Mixing help today from Katherine Rae Mondo and Sharif Youssef. Editing help from Sarah Koenig and Nancy Updike. Special thanks today Rebecca [? Vitale-Dokolah, ?] Nava EtShalom, [? Amina ?] [? Kotkin, ?] and Matt Chase. It feels crazy to say this, but this is the very last week we are working with two of the people who you never hear on the radio but who have helped run the administrative side of things here at our radio show just for years-- Elise Bergerson and Kimberly Henderson. They are both off to bigger adventures elsewhere. We are so dependent on them and on a million things they do every day. It is not entirely clear how this is going to work around here, for those of us who are still here. If we are not on the air next week, that is the reason why. You guys, we will miss you. Come back. Visit. Our website, thisamericanlife.org, where you can listen to our archive of over 600 episodes for absolutely free. Or get the This American Life app. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, he keeps infiltrating my Facebook account. And when I call and ask him why, why are you doing this, he says-- I'm a Russian bad boy. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
In the midterm elections, Democrats, of course, are gunning to retake the House of Representatives. And the 19th congressional district in New York is one of the spots they think they've got a great shot at. Demographically, it's one of the rare districts in the country that is actually a true tossup. It went for Donald Trump by seven points but before that it went for Barack Obama. It's pretty much evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. And to make it even more attractive to Democrats, the Republican on the seat right now-- his name is John Faso. He's the kind of opponent the Democrats dream of getting. He's only been in office for one term. He's a former lobbyist. His clients include payday loan companies and energy companies. Supporting Faso you've got all the right wing funders the Democrats love to hate-- the Koch brothers, the Mercers, Paul Singer. Add to that, Faso's done a decent job of spending his first term in Congress handing out ammunition to Democrats. One of our producers, Ben Calhoun, has spent months visiting the district covering this race. Ben? Yeah. So, the best example of what you're talking about is this video. And I'll say, I was so surprised at how often this video has come up when I've been reporting in the district over the last three months. People just mention this thing all the time. So in this video, Faso's completely surrounded by these protesters who are all opposing the Republican repeal of the Affordable Care Act-- the repeal of Obamacare. And this woman comes up to him. I grew up right down the road. What's your name? The woman's name here is Andrea Mitchell. And she explains to Faso, she's not just like any constituent. She went to school with Faso's kids. Like, Faso's wife was her school nurse. And she tells Faso that she has a brain tumor and Obamacare saved her health insurance. And then she pleads with Faso for him not to support the Republican repeal of Obamacare. I need you, as a human being, to say I promise that we will not take this away from you. I can tell you this-- Until-- I promise. I promise. It's hard to hear in there, but Faso says to Andrea Mitchell, I can tell you that. I promise, I promise, I promise. He promises her three times. And then in the video he hugs her. And he seems kind of moved. So Faso promises he's not going to support the Republican bill that's going to kill Obamacare. And then we can just cut to Faso on the floor of the House a few months later voting for the bill to kill Obamacare. Mr. Speaker, my colleagues, I urge support for the bill. It is something that is long overdue. And then he voted for the bill? Yeah. Faso's spokesperson said later that Andrea Mitchell wouldn't have lost her coverage because of the vote but that's unclear. So that vote, the one to gut Obamacare, it's one of the votes that puts Republicans at greater risk when they're trying to get elected this year. And Democrats are totally coming after him. Greetings from the Resistance in front of John Faso's Kingston office. OK, where are we now? This is sound from protests that have been happening outside of Faso's district offices every Friday. They call them Faso Fridays. And this one is from Kingston, New York. And it has a house band, called the Tin Horn Uprising. That is not a good version of that song. Yeah. It was actually kind of hard to pick which song to play for you. I feel like the band from the Star Wars cantina is trying to overturn this Congressman. Yeah, no. Let me do one more. We're going to go Seasonal. No comment. So these kinds of protests have been kind of a genre for democratic activists all around the country. You've got Tuesdays with Toomey, Fridays with Frelinghuysen. These are just in different districts around the country? Yeah, all over the place. So all of that means, New York 19, it's just like one of the hottest targets for Democrats across the whole country. It's one of the seats that Democrats really believe they can flip, and that they need to flip if they're going to retake the House-- like top 15 easily. That's according to somebody who I talked to at the Democratic Party. OK, so the Democrats are dying to take the House and they're full of energy, they're full of enthusiasm. But at the same time, they don't agree how to take the House. And there's this big messy fight over ideas and strategy between different groups in the party. And Ben, you've reported on this before here on our show. Mm-hm. And one of the reasons it's so contentious is that each faction thinks that the other faction could totally blow the Democrat's chances to win this fall. And New York 19, this congressional district we've been talking about, this is a district where that kind of fight is going on. And Ben, you've been following one of the candidates in that race. Yeah, his name is Jeff Beals. Hi, how are you doing? Just wanted to say hi. I'm Jeff Beals. Don't be alarmed. I'm running for Congress. That's Beals knocking on doors right there. And I got interested in him because he's emblematic of this whole political moment. The way he became politically active, some of the things that he believes, but also, maybe most important he was just willing to talk in this super honest way about things that were going on behind the scenes as Democrats are fighting with each other. And he just told me about conversations that you don't normally get to hear about in politics until maybe after an election is over. You know I've been covering people running for Congress for maybe 15 years and I've just never had somebody talk to me this way. OK, so that is our show today. We're going to watch this big soupy fight that's going on at the Democratic Party play out, through the experience that this one candidate, Jeff Beals, has had. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. And Ben Calhoun takes a story from here. Jeff Beals remembers the day that he decided to run for Congress. He was a high school teacher. He teaches history and civics and he was killing time between classes. I'm sitting in-- we have a little room, kind of a break room they'll let us use off the library where you could grab a cup of coffee. And I'm sitting there reading the news. And I see a blog post that people have declared their run for Congress in New York 19. And I say, oh, OK. Who's that? That's good. We got to beat-- got to beat Faso. And then I read about who it is. And one of them is an attorney from the largest lobbying law firm in the United States. Another one of them is a medical devices CEO who, off a link in that very article, is running a factory that's off shored American jobs. Beals is like, whoa, hold up. Wait a minute. This isn't matching what I think needs to happen right now. In 2016, he watched Hillary Clinton deploy the strategy Democrats have used for years. She raised tons of money from big donors and lobbyists and pushed moderate positions designed to offend as few people as possible. Beals and other Democrats, the ones on the Bernie side of things, thought that the party had lost its credibility with Americans. It was too cozy with Wall Street, too corporate, too insider, and out of touch. They saw Clinton as the pinnacle of what had become a losing strategy. I have total contempt for it because they're-- we just lost the presidency and outraised Donald Trump. So I'm just totally-- I've totally fed up with the concept that money is the answer to how you win an election because it self-evidently didn't win an election. It lost an election. After Clinton's defeat, Beals was upset and worried. And like a lot of Democrats, he started signing up for all kinds of stuff-- protest, voter registration stuff. He became a member of his local Democratic Committee. And he noticed how excited Democrats were to stand up to the new President. Beals signed up with a group to host a house party. Tons of strangers RSVP'd-- over 100 people, too many for his little apartment. He ended up having to hold it in a coffee shop. It shaped his view of what's possible this year and of what the party should be doing. So Beals is in the teacher's lounge, sipping coffee, reading about these candidates. One is a corporate executive whose company does its manufacturing overseas. Another is a lawyer from a big lobbying firm, a lawyer whose job is defending Wall Street guys. And he thought, you've got to be joking. We cannot seriously be doing this again especially in New York 19. Beals thought that New York 19 was the kind of place that was ripe for a different kind of campaign because Bernie Sanders had won big there-- crushed Clinton 58% to 41%. This is in her home state. Beals thought he understood why. New York 19 is an enormous district, about an hour north of New York City. It's speckled with second homes of well-heeled New Yorkers. But it's also rural and working class with big swaths of poverty. Beals thought, this place has a populist streak which is partly why Trump took it in the general election, he thought. It's the kind of place where you can win back some of those Trump voters with a kind of surly, stick up for the little guy, drain the swamp sort of pitch, and drive up democratic turnout with loud progressive ideas to get Democrats pumped. Beals thought that's the right plan, especially right now. It's not all stupid naivety. It's an awareness of the extraordinary moment we're at. If I, in 2016, OK? If in 2016 I had ventured to run for Congress all off of volunteer energy it wouldn't have materialized, period. There's not volunteer energy of sufficient magnitude. 100 people are not going to show up outside the Ulster County Courthouse to see you give some speech about the moral of American history and your life in it. That's a speech he actually gave. But all that's possible right now. Beals was about to spend the next 12 months betting everything he had on that idea. Like dozens of progressive candidates all over the country, Beals felt certain. Democrats could win with a progressive message, a call to overhaul their own party. He wanted to put that vision head-to-head up against the old strategy he hated so much. He was about to discover just how much the Democratic Party's current philosophy, fundraising, and strategy is stacked against a plan like his. Come on up here, Jeff Beals. Beals declared his candidacy on June 16th, 2017 on the steps of this old courthouse. In front of him, he had a podium he just bought on the internet and a crowd of what looks like 100 people spilling out into the street, cheering for all the progressive stuff-- free college tuition, break up the big banks, green New Deal, income inequality. We're not just protesting anymore. We're not just asking for our congressman's ear. We want his seat! My name is Jeff Beals. I'm running for Congress to win back our voice in this district. And give yourselves a round of applause because we just started! Thank you. Before Beals taught high school history and civics, he had the kind of biography that'd make you think, that guy could run for Congress. He graduated Harvard, where he studied Arabic and political science. Then he became an analyst at the CIA. After that he was a diplomat at the State Department. He went to Iraq where he worked on the transitional government and the Iraqi constitution. When he was in training at the State Department, his colleagues voted him most likely to write a dissent cable, which is a kind of memo where someone essentially pulls the fire alarm to say something is terribly wrong. He's not shy about taking a contrary position. And by the time Beals left Iraq and the State Department, he was really disillusioned with how it had gone. He wanted to get away from government. Tried grad school and academia, drifted a little, and then started substitute teaching high school. He found that he loved it. He took a job at a private school, the job he has now. One thing about running for Congress-- you don't actually have to ask anyone for permission. You just start saying you're running for Congress and people are like, oh, that person is running for Congress. And then something like this happens. Very quickly I got a phone call from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, can we talk? And I'm like, so who is this? OK. For people outside Washington, the Democratic Party is the Democratic Party, right? But it's made up of smaller subgroups. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is the political arm of Democrats in the House of Representatives. In Washington it goes by the acronym DCCC , or just The D Trip. They help Democrats win seats in Congress by recruiting candidates, training people, helping with strategy and fundraising. And last spring, when the DCCC reached out to Jeff Beals he thought, maybe it was to talk about how they might help him. So they planned a phone call, 4:00 PM, after Beals finishes teaching. So the day arrives, Jeff's ready. But before the clock hits 4:00 PM-- My phone rings at about 3:50? It's a woman he knows. She's like, answer your next call. So they hang up, and then that call comes in. And it's a political guy I've never met on the phone. And he says, you're about to have a conversation with the DCCC at 4:00. I think you're a strong candidate. But you have to be ready for this conversation. They're going to ask you two questions. And I said, what? He said, they're going to ask you two questions. Question number one is, how much money can you raise in the first quarter? And I said, oh, OK, that's the first question? He said, yes. So I go, what's the answer? He goes, $300,000. And I said, so what's question number two? He goes, question number two is, how much do you think you need to raise overall to win this race? What's the answer to that? He said, $2 million. The guy tells Beals, give those answers, let's talk later. 4:00, bing! Like, OK, I've got to get off the phone. I've got to take that 4:00 phone call. I hopped in my car. Jeff dials up the guy from The D Trip. And he says, hi, Jeff. I have a couple questions for you. How much money do you think you can raise in the first quarter? And I said, $300,000? He goes, sounds good. How much do you think you will need to raise in order to win this race? And I'm like, two-- two million? Is that-- good answer. Well, sounds like things are off to a good start there. Keep in touch. We'll be in touch. Conversation basically ends. A DCCC spokesperson told me there was more to this conversation but Beals maintains it was very, very focused on money. When he hung up, he was surprised by what wasn't in the conversation. What kind of organization have you set up? What activists and groups are connected to? Or even more just, what do you stand for? But so, Beals gets back on the phone with the democratic insider advisor guy. That guy did want to talk about what Jeff stood for. And said, you know, so what is your platform? You're probably not going to want to go single payer. It's not a winner. OK, not a winning issue. There's a lot of problems there. Single payer, government run nationalized health care-- everyone gets health insurance from the government. Back when the Republicans were trying to repeal Obamacare, Bernie Sanders launched a big push for this under the label Medicare For All. He chose that name because polls show that people love Medicare. And when he did this, Sanders sort of put a dividing line in the Democratic Party. On one side, you had the moderate and establishment wing of the party that was all, single payer health care? Hold your horses there, Che Guevara. Do you remember the epic political beating we took over Obamacare for crying out loud? And then on the Sanders side of the line, you had the progressive wing of the party who were all, radical. Most Americans support it. Right now it's like 60%-- plus, it's exciting. You want to make a comeback, how about we run on something people are excited about, you timid bastards. Jeff's on that side of the line. And I said, but I do support single payer. That's one of the crucial, crucial elements of my candidacy. I don't have health insurance through my job. It is one of the most awful parts of my life. Not to mention how much more awful it is for people that are worse off than me in our district. So you said that in that conversation? Yeah, I said absolutely I'm for single payer. That's the whole campaign. I mean, look there's a lot of issues. But if there is one thing we could do right now to make life better in America for the vast majority of Americans, it would be passing Medicare for All now and enacting it. At some point, the guy on the phone turned to fundraising, how to hit the DCCC fundraising numbers. He said, I know it sounds like a lot but you can do it. Make a list of everyone you know and how much money you can get from each of them. I should say, this is conventional advice for new candidates. People call it rolodexing. It's often done by political operatives to test whether candidates can raise the kind of money that politics often requires these days. Consider that in 2016, the average winning congressional campaign had to raise $1.5 million. Party operatives like to figure out if people can do that, and this is a shortcut. But it's a shortcut that ignores other things that are often tougher to measure-- grassroots involvement, activism. Even more, it's obviously a screening process that discriminates heavily in favor of rich candidates with rich friends and rich colleagues and against, well, most Americans. How did you feel when you got off of that second phone call? I think that, I just felt like I was talking to people who didn't have any idea what I was doing or what I cared about. And it was disconcerting. And it made me sad, momentarily. But I was surrounded in real life by so many people who were excited about the things that I was excited about and doing it for the reason that I was doing it that I just decided those people were irrelevant. And if they weren't irrelevant then I'd have to make them irrelevant. The DCCC usually is less relevant during a primary. In the general election, though, if they think you're a winner they'll tell people to give you money. They'll supply polling data, introduce you to consultants. They'll buy TV commercials for you. So Beals got to work. With or without the DCCC, he knew he was going to need money. Hopefully, he thought, not as much money as the DCCC had told him on that call. But he was sure he was going to need some. So he set out to raise it. And when Beals started, he was optimistic. Sure, he knew, progressive politics aren't every Democrats' bag. But he thought surely there's some deep pocketed progressive types out there-- you know, Warren Buffett types who are all, I'm crazy rich! Tax me more. It's going to be good for America. People started trying to hook Beals up. A friend of mine, who was with the Clinton campaign, had a birthday party. This was a buddy from the State Department, politically connected, and he wanted to help Beals. He was like, come to my birthday. There's going to be influential people there. You can give a speech and you can raise some money. It's going to be great. So I come. This is a swank party-- private room in a nice restaurant where the meal is already paid for and you just choose your entree. It's a couple of dozen people at this long wooden table. And at one point, the friend introduces Beals. And Beals does the stump speech, just lets it rip. He's feeling it. Why am I running? I'm running because we've lost control over the economy, income inequality has reached a terrible point where it threatens the basis of our democracy. We failed to take action sufficient to after the 2008 financial crisis and it's only gotten worse. We need Medicare for All now. It's a medley of progressive politics in the backroom of a fancy New York restaurant. And you know, he's giving a political speech at a birthday party, which feels weird. Hard to read a room in a dinner party in a nice restaurant. Like, it's not the break into applause kind of crowd. So when they're silent, you're not necessarily thinking I'm flopping. But Jeff wraps it up. Dessert comes, and then his friend flags him down. And my friend says to me, he goes, what the heck are you doing, man? You gotta tone that down. Do you understand who's in this room? You just alienated everybody here. He goes, that guy is the head of-- and he had some bizarre name, Xanthum Atlas Capitol-- you know, something Capitol. You know, he's like, that's head of it! You know, and he's pointing at this guy and that guy. He's like, this is not going to work. You should have talked about LGBT. That's what he told me. Did it surprise you when he came up to you and said that? Yes. I mean, it did. I love him for it. Only your friends will be that straight to you, you know? But Jeff was also kind of shaken up. He respected his friend, respected his friend's political savvy. So Beals called another buddy from the State Department, somebody who knew them both. It did cause me confusion. What am I supposed to be doing here? Because he was really upset. He thought, you really blew a chance. You have no idea how much money was in that room. There was a lot of money in that room and you left it on the table. And I called a friend of mine who knows a lot about politics and is on this campaign. And I said to him, this is what our buddy said, that I should have talked LGBT or I shouldn't have addressed those things. And he said, that way lieth the Goldman Sachs speech, Jeff. That way leith the Goldman Sachs speech. Don't. Don't. This was a reference to these private events Hillary Clinton got paid to do with Goldman Sachs, saying one thing to them and something different to the public-- catering to rich people, which was one of the very things Beals was running against. So he steeled himself and he continued calling up major democratic donors to find the progressive ones. He says, often these conversations started out friendly enough. People liked Beals' resume, his background qualifications. But often things would take a turn. One major democratic donor, a former Goldman Sachs guy actually, he told Beals Medicare for All is a handout. And it's a political loser. Lots of big donors saw it as this lefty thing that could sandbag the party in general elections. They remember the backlash to Obamacare. Another guy, an investment banker type, he says, sure. I'll contribute. I'll contribute to your campaign. But you have to change your website because it says "rigged economy." And you need to change, "rigged economy" on your website. I don't like that. And it's just a distortion. And I said, well, I can't change that. He couldn't change that because that would mean giving up the main argument he thinks Democrats should be making right now. I think that a lot of democratic politics has been about trying to find the least offensive cause to the donor class to rally people around while stepping on the fewest toes. And there are worthy causes you can rally people around. Guns-- you can rally people around that. And you could maybe get to 51-49 and win. Abortion rights, he says, same thing. You could also there, too, get to 51-49 or better, and win. But I do believe that there is a way bigger axis out there that people with a lot of money don't want us organizing on, and it's the economic axis. That's in axis where you got 1% on one side, and you've got more than 90% on the other side. And you really change politics in America because you're built on the axis against income inequality in a rigged economy. Then you build a very big movement. The more major democratic donors Beals called, the more amazed he became and how explicit the conversations got, how direct they were in telling him to change what he was saying and campaigning on. Of course, like anybody, Beals figured politics was like this. But it was different to see it in real life, to be in the conversations, to be the person getting his arm twisted. He came to the conclusion that most of the Democratic Party's major donors are against progressive ideas. Research published by the Washington Post backs this up-- major donors do skew moderate. Beals felt confident that there were people out there who agreed with him. He just had to connect with them. His plan was to run out and shout this progressive battle cry and hope than an army filled in behind him. And for Beals, the battle cry was Medicare for All. This was June of last year, exactly when Bernie Sanders was stumping for Medicare for All, pressuring Democrats into picking a side. Everyone had to declare which team they were on or they had to dodge. It became the national border between progressives and establishment Democrats. It was exactly the thing Beals would talk about to try to find voters. Good evening everyone. One of the races first candidate forums was on August 23rd, 2017 at an old church. Around 6:00 PM, Beals walked in the front with about half a dozen other candidates past pews of people fanning themselves. He walked in with a plan that night. I wanted to be extremely specific. Beals plan, as he sat down on his stool up front, was to declare his support for what Sanders was doing as forcefully as he possibly could. Like, he didn't want to just say Medicare for All. He was like, I don't want to leave any room for doubt. I want to pledge support for the Medicare for All bill that's sitting in the house right now, House Bill 676. So health care comes up. And I said, we have a health crisis in the district. We have a health care crisis in this country. The solution of the crisis Medicare for All, and I support House Resolution 676. And I hear this scream in the audience. You can actually hear this on the recording of the forum. When I get to Congress, it's called House Resolution 676-- Woo! Medicare for All. And a vote for-- I have been going to concerts for a very long time. So I'm a very skilled woo-er. So I wooed as loud as I possibly can. You've got a veteran woo? Yes. Well practiced. This is Anique D'Angelo. She's a community organizer. She'd gone to the forum that day with her best friend. Both were Sanders supporters and they were both looking at candidates in New York 19. And they weren't liking what they saw. We were like, oh, you know, maybe we would get behind him if we had to. You mean, because you were hearing the things that they were proposing and you were like, these don't sound like what? Like what? So we had decided after the last election, after the last primary, that this is the moment that things are going to happen and we need someone who is for universalist programs, supports Medicare for All, and like-- You were like, we need to get a real progressive in this race. Yeah. Before Bernie I had always thought a moderate is as good as we're going to get. This is why Anique yelled, because when Beals said what he said she felt like she had found her candidate. She felt like she wanted a firm commitment on single payer, Medicare for All. And she was hearing Democrats talk about fixing the Affordable Care Act and working towards universal coverage. And if Medicare for All and universal coverage sound like the same thing, here's the difference. Medicare for All is national health care. The government takes over the system, gives everyone insurance. Universal coverage is more general. I'd like to get everyone covered somehow. Maybe some people will keep their current insurance. Maybe some people will pay to get Medicare. Maybe we leave the system mostly how it is. Maybe we change all of this gradually. Anique isn't looking for this kind of incrementalism. She thinks that's what Democrats always say and then they wuss out. She's fed up. You know, I am a professional person in my early 30s and can't use my health insurance because I have a $4,000 deductible, right? I mean, I think if you start from a place of, we have to be incremental, you never get to the end goal because there's corporate interests that get in the way, right? If we said, we're doing this, we'll figure it out. How did we get social security, right? We [BLEEP] did it. I don't know if I'm allowed to curse, but-- From that day forward, August 23rd, 2017, Anique D'Angelo was a Beals supporter. She phone banked in the evening, drove to events all across the district. Soon supporters like Anique were fanning out for Beals. The campaign was crystallizing around a plan. Sanders had gotten 35,000 votes in the primary, which Beals saw as 35,000 Aniques scattered all across the district. So Beals' campaign looked at the map of where those votes had come from, the precincts where Sanders support was the densest. They targeted their efforts there. If they could just get a third of those people, 12,000 votes, they figured they'd have a serious shot because, not to overwhelm you with numbers here, only 19,000 people voted in the last democratic primary. So 12,000-- that could win this one. Before long came the first real test for Beale's theory that he could run a campaign that didn't rely on big donors and money, that would be fueled by a flood of volunteers and enthusiasm for brash progressive stuff. The test was something that seems kind of basic, getting his name on the ballot. Like I said, it's easy to say you're running for Congress. It's actually hard to get your name on the ballot. I was told that it would cost $200,000 to get yourself on the ballot. How much were you told it would cost? I was told $200,000. That was an interesting moment, because that would be an obstacle because I don't got that money, period. Here's why it costs so much money. Beale's was told, you're going to need a lawyer on retainer. And you're going to need an army of paid canvassers. And you're going to need those things because getting signatures is harder than it sounds. To get on the ballot in New York 19 requires 1,250 signatures but there are rules. Only registered Democrats can sign. The signature has to be witnessed by another registered Democrat. And people can only sign for one candidate. So if another campaign got there first, you're out of luck. You mess up any of that, the signature can get tossed out. So 1,250-- you can't just get 1,250. So all they got to do is find three people who put their middle initial wrong and you're done. Generally, the thing you do is collect way more than the requirement to send a message to other campaigns not to mess with you. And you hire that lawyer to defend your signatures. All of this for a traditional campaign needs a boatload of money. Beals' staff knew this was a moment to prove themselves. We're not going to be on the ballot unless volunteers are willing to carry the campaign forward. And we put out the call and people gathered hundreds of signatures for the campaign. And we wound up with over 3,200 signatures all off this volunteer spirit. And they just did it on their own. For Beals, this was vindication, proof that the thing he thought was possible actually might be possible. Proof that the conventional wisdom might be wrong. A campaign like his, it could work. I mean, I didn't even know all the people that were doing it. And you realize that a campaign is not a thing you run. It's a thing you unleash. And it either is picked up and carried forward by people or it isn't. And that started to happen. And that's-- you know, calling it inspiring is an understatement. That was incredible. And frankly, my whole candidacy has been a gamble on the existence of that. If it's there, then there's a campaign. And if there isn't, then there's no campaign. Ben Calhoun. Coming up, Democrats who are not Jeff Beals. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. This American Life, I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, It's My Party and I'll Try If I Want To, about a candidate who's running for Congress for the very first time and what his race tells us about what is happening inside the Democratic Party this year. The candidate we're following, Jeff Beals, is a Bernie Sanders style progressive. And around the country this past year, the climate between the party apparatus and progressives has been pretty toxic at times because of a handful of incidents that progressives have taken as signs of the party's hostility. The most notorious one was in Texas. The DCCC released opposition research on a progressive candidate named Laura Moser for her primary. Progressives kind of freaked out. There've been a few other blow ups in Pennsylvania, Nebraska, New York, Minnesota, Colorado. Party officials say that they have nothing against progressive congressional candidates or their ideas. In Jeff Beals' race, in New York's 19th congressional district, election day is this coming Tuesday and there's a whole array of candidates. Ben Calhoun picks up our story from here. By early 2018, seven Democrats had officially declared in the race for New York 19. Seven, I know-- so many. I've gone out with about half of them knocking doors. The most common thing that voters do is they make a joke, some form of holy crap there's a lot of you people! So let's just spin through the cast. There's an economist and triathlete who jumped in late. As the only woman in the race, got the backing of Emily's List. She's making a fairly bald play for women voters. I'm not going to let those boys beat me. There's a community activist who's also a personal injury lawyer. There's a young staffer for New York governor Andrew Cuomo who's got the money and connections that come with that. He's driving a 1999 Ford Winnebago to every town in the district. I'm going to visit all 163 in this RV. Somebody must have pointed out how much pollution those old RVs pump out, because now he tells audiences he's buying carbon offsets. And then there are three candidates who have raised the most money. Each has raised over a million dollars. There's Antonio Delgado, the lawyer from the lobbying firm, Brian Flynn, the medical devices executive, and an Iraq veteran named Pat Ryan. Beals has targeted these three. For him they represent the big money politics he's waging war against. Inconveniently for Beals, all three of these candidates sell themselves as progressives, identify themselves that way in opening remarks in ads. And I got to imagine, all seven candidates would be pretty dependable votes against the president. They talk in samey ways about immigration. They all believe in climate change. They all support public education. But on the big dividing line issue for Democrats, the one that's supposed to separate the progressive team from the establishment team, Medicare for All, there's division. Of the three big money candidates, Flynn the medical devices CEO, he's for it. The other two, Ryan and Delgado, they are not for Medicare for All, which we know because there was a candidate forum in a town called Oneonta. They got to asked flat out, Medicare for All, are you for that? Yes or no. Here's their answers. No. No. But Ryan and Delgado, they do this interesting thing you see in a lot of races around the country this year. While progressives are trying to draw this line in the sand, Ryan and Delgado are trying to blur the line out of existence. They're like, line? I don't see a line. Oh, look, Donald Trump! Get him! If you go to their websites or you watch their commercials, you might really think Ryan and Delgado agree with Beals on health care. Delgado's website, for instance, says, I will fight for universal affordable quality health care for everyone. He's running TV ads with that kind of language. Let's go. That's awesome people. Love to get engaged and take this democracy back. We have to fight for universal, affordable, quality health care for everyone. I went to a fundraiser for Delgado at somebody's house. After he left, some people said they thought Delgado was for Medicare for All from the way that he talked but they weren't totally sure. They asked me, do you know? I said, well, I was just at this forum and he said no. Several felt misled. I told Delgado about it later. I would say, well, I'm sorry for the confusion first and foremost. What I've stated, and how I've stated my position has been abundantly clear. And then to the extent there were folks who were confused by that, I would certainly sit down with them and make sure they understood where I was coming from. Delgado's attitude is, let's just get everyone covered somehow. Saying, let's have government pay for everybody, Medicare for All, that narrows your options, alienates some voters, and it ignores specific realities. Oh, well, some of the specific realities include the fact that currently 153 million folks right now are relying on employer-based insurance. That's a lot of people. And a good number of those folks actually like their insurance. On top of that, we do not have an administrative apparatus yet developed across the nation that can meaningfully and responsibly and effectively transition to a completely government controlled system. This can either seem like a totally reasonable and realistic way to think about the politics of health care in this country, or it can sound the way that it sounds to Beals and his supporters-- like a sellout, like Delgado doesn't stand with them at all. Here's Beals. That's not a minor point of difference. That's a chasm. Everybody knows that's just a fig leaf for accepting corporate influence over the issue and refusing to take on a very powerful lobby and industry. That's all that that is. Beals finds it galling that anyone could think he and Delgado want the same thing on health care. He's really frustrated by it. And he sees his role in this race to call this out, and to call it the role of money in the race, and to go after the mainstream big money candidates. In Beals' eyes, they embody everything that's wrong with the party. And there's plenty in their bios to set him off. Last week he sent me this ad. Brian Flynn, the medical devices guy who financed his campaign with $700,000 of his own money, whose company manufactures overseas, he put out an ad where he says quote, "billionaires and corporations have rigged the system against us." In the ad there's a picture of Flynn. He's wearing a $9,000 watch, a Rolex. Like he didn't even know enough to take it off. At every candidate forum I've seen, Beals has gone after those guys, accusing them of being bought and sold, tied to all the big donations they've taken. We have to stop these practices. We have to stop selling our seat. We have to stop selling our representation. Here he is in November, in a packed middle school auditorium. --corporate power has bought out our own representative. And it has bought out our own ability to take control of our economy and have the jobs we need to have. Unfortunately, three of the candidates here are working for those large corporations. One of them shut down a factory in New York State, in Buffalo, moving jobs to the Dominican Republic. Another one of them works for one of the largest lobbying law firms in the United States and does white collar criminal defense for those companies when they-- I didn't realize that it was going to be shocking for anybody that I would say it. But you could feel it. I mean, I don't know if I believe in ESP. But I do believe that when a human being beside you is rising into rage there is some sort of black cloud emerging, and I felt it. You felt sort of like the room go cold? I felt the candidate go cold. Beals says he was surprised by how strong the reaction was, onstage but then also afterwards. Afterwards, one of the county chairs came up to my chief of staff and said, he can't do that. She said, no one likes Dem on Dem violence. And the county chair said the same thing to me personally-- stop this. No one likes Dem on Dem violence. And I said, I don't-- Dem on Dem violence? You know, that's a conversation. Nobody was hit. His opponents respond with an argument you hear from lots of Democrats right now. This is Gareth Rhodes, the former gubernatorial staffer. The way we don't win is by attacking each other and bringing each other down. We need-- Here's Pat Ryan, veteran. I got to say something after what was just said, all the Democrats in this room have to stand together, period. That is how we-- And I was told, don't do it. It gives ammunition for John Faso. That is, Beals attacks will make it easier for Faso to beat whoever wins the primary. Which is to me, ridiculous. The idea that it provides ammunition to Faso, give me a break. These people will invent all the ammunition they want and everything I'm talking about is there, is simply people's resumes. And I mean, what is a primary? A primary is about the party and about what the party stands for. So if you were to show me, persuasively, another place where this conversation is going to happen, well then maybe you'll convince me. Oh, no, no, Jeff, we're doing that over there, on this day, with the DCCC at our platform conference. OK, maybe. I don't know. I can't imagine what the scenario would be. But if you're not going to show me a place where it's going to happen then it damn well better happen here. It's typical for the party, the DCCC, to check in with candidates and for campaigns to let them know how things are going. And every three months, the DCCC sends Beals fundraising goals-- $450,000, $500,000, what he's supposed to raise that quarter. The kind of money they believe is necessary to compete against a Republican in a district like this. Beals missed all those fundraising goals. He's raised about $316,000, which might have been respectable a decade ago, but these days is near the bottom rung of viability. He thinks they don't get what he's doing or the kind of campaign he's trying to run. He says the fundraising goals aren't just this neutral practical bar to get over. They come with ideology. When the DCCC was saying, raise x dollars by this date, what they were really saying was, adopt these positions and call the following people who are well known, who will contribute to a campaign if you have those positions. And you'll have this much money by that date. There was an ideological message there but the fake of it was just asking for the money. Party officials insist that the fundraising goals, they're not ideological. They're practical. It's reality. Ian Russell used to be the political director for the DCCC. He says a campaign like Beals is imagining can win, but it's a lot harder and would require a huge grassroots organization. And he says in a district like New York 19, because it's so spread out, a lot of the fight happens on TV. If you're not running ads in the general election you let your Republican opponent control the conversation. In Russell's experience, if a campaign like Beals' does make it through the primary, the party can end up in a tough spot. They've got a limited amount of money. They don't want to pull money away from other races so that they can prop up an underfunded campaign like Beals. The DCCC isn't the Salvation Army and shouldn't be the Salvation Army. Their job is to help democratic nominees who are viable get elected. They have to make tough calls about who to fund. Those calls are not made based on ideology. They're not made on anything except viability. That's been the case. It's always the case. It's not without controversy. But it's an unfortunate symptom of our political system right now that candidates have to be able to raise the money to compete. The Republicans have tens of millions of dollars in dark money at their disposal. Democrats have to fight back. It's selfish and irresponsible if a nominee in a must win seat isn't pulling his or her weight and doing what they need to do to raise the money. If candidates aren't able to raise at least some of those resources on their own and show that they're willing to put in the work, it A, substantially decreases the chance they'll get elected in the first place. But B, it requires the DCCC to move money in from other districts. Or, even worse, can result in a district coming off the board because the Democratic candidate just gets buried. I put to him Beals case, that the donors the party steers him toward have a moderate agenda. And so what he says is, de facto, the fundraising goals you're giving for me are an ideological agenda. That's a cop out. That's a cop out. That's just not the case. I'm sure there are many moderate donors who are writing checks. But there's also an excited progressive wing in the party that's helping candidates raise millions and millions of dollars. Again, in this district Zephyr Teachout's an example of that. Zephyr Teachout's a person. She's a progressive who ran against Faso in 2016. Russell points out that Teachout raised about $5 million with politics a lot like Beals. She did that by making herself a little famous with progressives. She did things like get on MSNBC so then she could get small donations from progressives all over the country. Russell says that's what candidates like Beals have to do. I've worked for Howard Dean in 2003, 2004, who helped create this idea, invent this idea of asking people for money on the internet. You can give people the chance to come in and help your campaign if it's a cause that excites them and inspires them. But you have to put the work out to make it happen. You can't just sit back and expect somebody else to come and do the work for you, or for the DCCC to come in and bail you out. That's just not how it works. Beals relationship with the party went steadily downhill. And by February he says, it was nothing but arguments about him missing fundraising goals. And then came this phone call. Beals and two people from the campaign, with the DCCC's northeast political director. You know, we get on the phone and the conversation turns to money instantly. Then, according to Beals, someone on his end confronts the DCCC about this polling data that they'd given to two of the big money candidates, Brian and Delgado. They ask, could we get that too? The DCCC says, we can share that with you. But it doesn't get resolved before the conversation turns back to money. And they just say, you don't have enough money to run for Congress. That's sort of flat out? Yeah. And I say, we're running a thriving campaign. There's tons of volunteers. People are rallying to the message. You know, I see every reason to believe that we're putting this together and we're building something real. We're going to keep running. And then he says to me, don't think if you win the primary people will help you. There will be lots of other choices out there. And-- Meaning what, like people will put money into different races? Or like-- Yes. Yeah, exactly, as in people will just skip New York 19 if Jeff Beals is the nominee. A DCCC spokesperson wouldn't discuss the specifics of what happened on that call but told me the party would work with Beals if he became the nominee. At the same time, the former DCCC political director, Ian Russell, he told me if a candidate gets through the primary that the party doesn't think is strong, they will sometimes write off districts they think are a lost cause. Since that phone call, Beals says, his campaign has not spoken with the DCCC. Democrats are so desperate to win this year. I heard it over and over. And though Beals has this theory on why a campaign like his can beat a Republican in the fall, even some progressives are nervous to go along with him. One progressive group got into a particularly bitter fight over all this. The group's Citizen Action. It's a branch of a national group. There's lots of chapters. Very active chapter in New York. Their volunteers run Faso Fridays. Oriana Mayorga was in charge of Citizen Action's endorsement committee in New York 19. She moved to the district to work for Citizen Action as an organizer. She's a Beals supporter. In January, Mayorga gathered in an endorsement committee of 12 who interviewed the candidates. They discussed, then they voted. There were seven votes for Jeff Beals and five for Antonio Delgado. People wanted Jeff Beals. That was-- Not a huge shocker. Citizen Action is progressive. They hold events and rallies for single payer health care. We're like, Citizen Action is this grassroots organization that fights corporate power. So in no way would I think that they would want to endorse somebody who is from Wall Street, has all these corporate donors backing them and isn't for Medicare for All. Mayorga sent word to the state leadership of Citizen Action, here was our vote. But what happened next surprised her. State leaders said the vote had been too close, closer than they wanted. Essentially, look at this some more and try again. Mayorga says following that first vote, state leaders called members of the committee. They told people they thought Delgado was the stronger candidate. The deputy director spoke very frankly. I mean, it was not-- it wasn't really behind the scenes. She spoke frankly about it with me and while there were volunteers in the office, saying that the organization really felt that Delgado was the most viable candidate. He had the money and he had the support, but that he would have to be for Medicare for All for us to get behind him. They brought Delgado in and they told them that. But he refused to back Medicare for All. What followed was a series of tough meetings, circular arguments, turning over the coin of idealism and pragmatism. The same tortured question from the Sanders versus Clinton race. This time around though it was, should we back Beals? He's more progressive. He's like us. Others were like, Delgado has more money. We worry Beals can't compete. Mayorga says the whole thing was kind of awful. At one point, someone ran out of the room with a nosebleed. But eventually another vote was taken-- seven for Delgado, five for Beals. People in charge were like, OK, if that's our endorsement can you Beals folks live with that? And the Beals supporters were in an uproar, right? They were like, we voted with the same split for Beals and were told it was too close. The numbers were now 7-5. We were in the same place, just a different candidate. So technically speaking, both times one would assume that means that it's too close. A few things happened after that meeting. There was another meeting. A bunch of Beals supporters couldn't be there, and one last Beals supporter caved. Then Mayorga told her bosses she was upset about how this whole thing went. The following week she was fired. After a careful and deliberative process of our local endorsement committee and our-- In May, Citizen Action officially endorsed Antonio Delgado. That candidate is Antonio Delgado. Delgado tweeted out the endorsement calling it quote, "the progressive stamp of approval." It's like not even-- I mean, it's kind of funny. I mean, Antonio Delgado is Hillary Clinton. I mean, like, that's just the truth. Like he is the Hillary Clinton of the race and Jeff Beals is the Bernie Sanders. When I talk to the DCCC and progressives, one of the things they all said was that they were worried about how Democrats were going to handle the whole influx of enthusiasm this year. Essentially, if Democrats didn't handle the situation right people could get alienated. The opportunity could get squandered. I couldn't help but think of that when I was talking to Mayorga. To be fair, after this November I'm no longer a Democrat. I'm 100% a Working Families Party person. So this will be my last Democratic primary I'll be voting in. Oh, wow, you feel-- you're just like, I'm done. Oh, I'm done. Yeah, I'm done. I really am. I think that we have to make the decision. Do we want to support progressive candidates? Or do we want to go with the safe bets, you know, these Hillary Clintons, these Antonio Delgado candidates? Hi, how are you doing? I'm Jeff Beals. I saw beware of dog kisses, but-- Yeah. Those are kisses. He's a good dog. He gets very excited when-- Recently I follow Beals as he canvassed in Oneonta, a beautiful town up in the mountains of New York. I'm running for Congress. He moved quickly from one port to another with a keen eye out for Bernie Sanders stickers on bumpers and in windows. That's a telltale sign. Though Beals says his relationship with the national party went cold, progressive groups have jumped in to help him. A group of former Sanders staffers, the Justice Democrats, and a group of former Sanders activists, the People for Bernie Sanders, they both endorse Beals. And those endorsements, they serve as this kind of shorthand for progressive voters. At one house this sweet guy named Dana came to the door. He had a Sanders sticker outside. I'm a Democrat, I'm a progressive. OK, well me too. Me too. I've been-- I've been looking for you. Beals gave his pitch. He's a teacher, thinks the economy is working against most people, Medicare for All-- then he mentioned the Justice Democrats, the endorsement by the former Sanders staffers. If you're a Justice Democrat then you've already got my vote. Well, that's who I am. That's who I am. You don't need to spend a lot of time here. You can move on. This happened a number of times that day. As for the army of volunteers Beals knew he would need to win this kind of campaign, did he enlist them? Beals wouldn't say how many he has. But he did say they've knocked on over 40,000 doors. That's the same number Pat Ryan, the veteran, says his campaign has done. Antonio Delgado's campaign says they've knocked on 50,000. So at least by one measure he's keeping up, though Ryan and Delgado are both running TV ads and Beals is not. So far nobody has released an objective poll on the race. With seven candidates, the vote could split in some really weird ways. Everybody agrees someone could win without getting all that much of the vote. Are you registered Democrats? Are any of you registered Democrats? Who's a registered Democrat? One of the things that probably will happen, even if Beals doesn't win, some candidates like him probably will. Meaning if Democrats get a majority in the House, all these disagreements about who they are and what they should be are not going to go away. Their majority will be riddled with people who feel like the party is doing things wrong and who have spent the past year like Beals has, finding each other. That's what Beals is left to do these days. Now that school's out he starts canvassing around 8:00 AM. He keeps going until 9:00 at night. And every day, he tells me, he finds more people who feel the way that he does. Ben Calhoun is one of the producers on our show. Our program was produced today by Zoe Chace. The people who put together our show today includes Ben Calhoun, Dana Chivvis, Chana Joffe-Walt, David Kestenbaum, Seth Lind, Miki Meek, Alvin Melathe, Catherine Maymondo, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu. Our senior producer is Brian Reed. Our managing editor is Susan Burton. Special thanks today to Jeremy McCarter, Lucy Flores, Dustin Reidy, Tim Mynett, and Jonathan Smucker. Our website, Thisamericanlife.org, where you can listen to our archive of over 600 episodes for absolutely free. We also have a slide show this week of Jeff Beals out talking to voters. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, I was driving him home this week and he pointed out this opening in the woods near his house I had never seen before, looked pretty creepy. He explained-- That way lieth of the Goldman Sachs speech. That way lieth the Goldman Sachs speech. Don't. Don't.
|
From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. And our program today really began at a dinner conversation about a month ago. Three members of the This American Life staff-- Alix, Nancy and Paul-- were eating together. Well, we were all out at Leo's. I don't know how it came up. I don't know which one of us brought it up. I don't know how it started. I don't know how it first came up. I don't even remember how we got on the topic, honestly. But we started mentioning Canadians. And I guess I was doing most of it, as the Canadian in the group. He started with William Shatner, and I thought that was wrong. What did he say? That he was Canadian. People got increasingly freaked out. That's what he said about him. That's all he said about him. That he was Canadian, yeah. And what's the problem with that? Well, the problem is that I grew up watching Star Trek. And he is like my American ideal. I mean, he represented for me everything that's good about America, in a way. Alix was saying, if William Shatner is Canadian, I might as well be Canadian. It isn't just that there are Canadians among us, it's that they're at the very epicenter of our culture. It's the guy who created Saturday Night Live and Jim Carrey and Michael J. Fox. It's Mike Myers and the blond from Baywatch, Pamela Anderson Lee, and the director of the Terminator films, James Cameron. It's Matthew Perry and Jason Priestley, Alanis Morissette and Celine Dion, and the bassist in Courtney Love's band, Hole. I remember Alix being continually and repeatedly amazed. I was shocked. I was very shocked. I mean, she stopped eating, I think. And it wasn't just that she'd be shocked at one and would then sort of go on. She'd come back to ones that were shocking earlier. "Peter Jennings? I can't believe it!" I remember Alix being really freaked out about Peter Jennings, Peter Jennings, especially. But he's just a news reader. But he delivers information about America to Americans. He's like the leader who binds us together? Yeah, and he interprets our culture for us. So it's like having some Czechoslovakian as your vice president or something. I mean, it's just wrong. There's something about that that's wrong. She just thought it was wrong, that actually, there should be an actual law against it. For there to be a Canadian broadcasting the news? Well, anchoring. I think CNN, she probably would let a CNN anchor be Canadian, but not ABC. Well, I think that Americans generally think of Canadians as a pretty quiet, nondescript, stay-at-home kind of culture. And when Canadians come to the United States and have that kind of impact on the culture, I think it's a surprising fact. But I also think that it's a little disturbing and spooky to Americans because they haven't known. It's like suddenly discovering that everything you believed about someone was false. I guess it's the whole invasion of the body snatchers syndrome. They look like us, but they're not us. It's weirdly like people hearing that somebody they didn't know was gay is gay, and it turned them back on themselves, that they could have brushed so close and not known. He's Canadian, so that's why he never married. Exactly. The thing about the Canadians among us is it's not clear what it means. Well, I think that's part of what is so compelling about it. It doesn't suggest anything. It's not that, oh, he's Russian. He must be communist. Oh, he's French, he must be rude. It's just a sense that they're a little off somehow, in some way that you don't understand, and you can't pin it down. And that makes it all the more unsettling. You can't put it anywhere and just have it rest there. It's just sort of continually surprising and disturbing. Well, today on our program, we try to make some sense out of what it means, having this Canadian menace among us, if it is a menace. All this hour, stories by and about the Canadians in our midst. Act One, White Like Me, one Canadian's attempt at passing in New York City. Act Two, The World's Most Perfect Pneumatic Vacuum, in which our own Sarah Vowell arm wrestles with Ian Brown of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation over what it means to be an American and what it means to be a Canadian and if they are any different at all. Act Three, Outing. An expose on the pro-Canadian bias and Peter Jennings' nightly newscast for ABC, and more. Act Four, Who's Canadian? Two siblings separated, not at birth. One gone to live in Winnipeg, one gone to live in Manhattan. Their stories. Stay with us. Act One, White Like Me. As a 17-year-old, David Rakoff moved from Toronto, Ontario, to New York City. He's been there now for half his life, works in publishing and as a writer and actor. This American Life listeners may remember his story about portraying Sigmund Freud in the Christmas windows at Barney's a few months ago. David Rakoff says that from the day that he arrived in New York City, he decided he was going to try to efface his Canadian-ness and pass for a local. My tactics were to adopt a certain kind of world-weary, jaded, anxious neuroticism. And it was taken on as a cosmetic mantle at the beginning until such time as you simply can't pull the mask off your face. Oh my god, it's stuck. There you are years later, a jaded, affectless, neurotic, disenchanted, sad person. But that's fine. Would you consciously not bring up the fact that were from Canada at any point, when you think back on those years? No. No, I would never consciously not bring it up. I would occasionally consciously bring it up because it would-- amazingly enough-- make me more exotic. Because let's face it, in New York City, I'm a Jewish guy with dark hair who works in publishing with a gift for the gab. I meet myself coming and going 12 to 14 times an hour. So occasionally, I'll need that little bit of spice. And what's more spicy than being Canadian? I ask you. I'm told that Canadians tend to know who else is Canadian who's famous. All the time. Everything. And that, to me, is chemical. You know, the easy ones. Glenn Ford, Kate Nelligan, Hume Cronyn, Cowboy Junkies, Monty Hall-- Monty Hall? Wait, Monty Hall? The host of Let's Make a Deal? Yeah. Live and learn, huh? Who could be more American than the host of Let's Make a Deal? Even the name Let's Make a Deal-- And yet, remember, Monty only facilitated the deals. [LAUGHS] And, I guess, that name, Monty. There you go. Who else? Glenn Ford, John Kenneth Galbraith. But here's the thing about knowing who's Canadian. There is a woman named Shania Twain. She is Canadian. I know that she's Canadian. I do not know who the hell Shania Twain is. I don't know what she does. And yet, for some reason, I know that she's famous in America and that she's Canadian. How did this come up? Did your parents talk to you about it? I literally don't know. I feel there's a chip in my head or something because I simply happen to know that. Here's the other thing-- Borje Salming? Not -- Who? Borje Salming. Hockey player. Not Canadian. Daryl Sittler? Yes, Canadian. Ira, I have never been to a hockey game in my entire life. How do these things enter my brain? But at some point, somebody told you. I don't even think so, you know? I just think it comes in off the breeze or in a cold front. And I know. I just know in my heart who's Canadian. It's so strange. And of course, the arm on your space shuttle. I'm sorry? The arm on your space shuttle for making interstellar repairs. In Canada, the space shuttle is referred to as-- The American space shuttle with its Canadian-built arm. Never any other way, as in "The American space shuttle with its Canadian-built arm blew up today." No, that didn't really happen. No, well, I was actually here at the time, but the Canadian-built arm gets a lot of airplay. Not down here, huh? In fact, if you were to ask most Canadians, "What do you think the space shuttle is for?" they'd say, "Oh, to go up and move stuff around in space with an arm." And so, when a Canadian finds out that some figure is Canadian, what happens in their heart? Oh, well, your heart does a little bit of a-- a certain special Canadian's chamber opens up and enfolds that name and you keep it. Or if you mention a famous Canadian in conversation to a Canadian without acknowledging it, there's a vague flicker over their eyes like the shadow of an angel's wing passing, and then the conversation will go on and on. And then, just as an afterthought, they'll say, well, you know, he's Canadian, by the way. Of course, it's all you've been waiting to say the entire conversation. This is in a conversation with a Canadian or a non-Canadian? If a non-Canadian says to you, and you are a Canadian. But you can do it with a Canadian too. But with a non-Canadian, like if you and I were talking, and I would bring up-- Monty Hall. --Monty Hall, which happens so often. Why, just the other day when we were talking about what was in your purse. Remember, I asked you? And I would be compelled by DNA-- You would actually say at some point, he's Canadian? Not even at some point, Ira. Let's try it. Go on, you start. All right. So anyway, I was in the car on my way to work, and that song from Bachman-Turner Overdrive came on. They're Canadian. That's how I do it. I don't even wait. I don't even wait. Bachman-Turner Overdrive. They're Canadian. And then I'll tell you, "Taking Care of Business," they wrote that. They're Canadian. I don't even bother waiting. Very effective. And it always also begs the question, which is, oh, are you Canadian? Really? People, then, ask that? Well, of course they'd ask that. It's a little unbalanced if one wasn't. Don't you think that would be somewhat strange behavior? I have to say here that as somebody who grew up as a Jew in suburban Baltimore, this game of Who's a Canadian, it was very, very familiar. Every adult I knew in Baltimore played a very similar game. See now, among my parents' generation, there was the game of Who's a Jew? Oh, yeah. I'm somewhat familiar with that game. So can you imagine what the double triumph is if someone's a Canadian Jew? Lorne Greene. You fairly cannot imagine anyone more heroic than Lorne Greene. He's a Canadian. Do you remember this coming up in your household? Absolutely. He's Canadian, and Jewish too. Who's a Jew? And imagine how crestfallen everybody was when they found out that Andrea Martin of Second City TV is not just not Jewish, she's Armenian. But she's from Maine. She just lived in Canada. And then everybody shrugs and says, well, Armenians, they're very similar. And Maine, it's very close. And she lived here for so long. When you meet a Canadian, do you have certain prejudices about them once you learn that they are Canadian? When I meet them here? Yeah. Yes, I worry that they're going to be really literal and take everything that I say totally seriously-- even the throwaway remarks-- and then I'm going to have to backtrack and explain myself. I worry that they're going to blow my cover. As a Canadian? As a Canadian masquerading as an urban sophisticate. How would they do that in your fantasy of this? They would suddenly say, "You're not a sophisticated New Yorker. You're just nothing but a tobogganing Canadian." And then I always feel that I have to turn in my liquor supply and my books and return home. And then, in fact, all the quips that I made all over the years turn out to actually have been made up by someone else, even though I didn't know it. So if you know that there's another Canadian in the room, do you feel like you've been outed in some way, and that you'll be seen as less than the sophisticate that you are? That? Yes. You do? Briefly. Briefly. And then, another kind of reserve kicks in. And one thinks, well, everybody's got to come from somewhere, don't they? And, in fact, it's a little bit even more vindicating because you have that whole sort of, not bad for a boy from Canada, sort of feeling. David Rakoff, immigrant. He's lived in the United States for 15 years. When you first came to this country, there must've been differences between the two cultures that struck you. There was an adorable-- I remember going down to the deli or something one night when I was a freshman in college and looking into the dairy case and seeing what you call those individually wrapped slices of processed cheese food. American cheese. Yes. And we call it Canadian cheese. And I, of course, thought, oh, isn't that cute. They're trying to take credit for Canadian cheese. And now, of course, my feeling is that we should be calling it American cheese, and you guys should be calling it Canadian cheese. It seems like something one should be throwing the blame right across the 49th parallel, whatever side you're on. But I thought, oh, that's adorable. So wait, so in Canada, that kind of American cheese, that is called- Canadian singles, yes. Canadian singles sounds like the name of some bad import movie. Doesn't it just? You know, the Canadian Cameron Crowe would write Canadian Singles, and then it would appear on cable here late at night. They all work in a coffeehouse in Guelph, Ontario. Some of them are majoring in animal husbandry. David Rakoff discusses things Canadian and things American in his new book, Fraud. Act Two, The World's Most Perfect Pneumatic Vacuum. Canadians. They get our TV shows, eat the same breakfast cereals, drive the same cars. They look like us, they speak the same language-- some of them, anyway. So are they us? Well, the perfect person to discuss that question with is Ian Brown. For years, he was the host of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's program Sunday Morning. Ian Brown is the perfect person to discuss the differences between Canadian and American culture, not only because he feels his Canadian-ness so deeply, but because he lived in the United States for years. And he loves Americans enough that he married one. He spoke with our contributing editor, Sarah Vowell, back when he was still hosting Sunday Morning. Like most Americans, I don't particularly care about Canada. But every week, I spend three solid hours thinking about goings-on in Moose Jaw and Manitoba. The reason is this. Even though I don't care about Canada, I do care about radio, passionately. And my favorite radio program-- aside from this one, of course-- is Sunday Morning. And the most moving segment of the show is usually host Ian Brown's personal essay at the end. One week it's about hockey versus basketball, the next about his opposition to a separate Quebec. But what it's really about is the idea of nation. Listening to him ask questions of his country and his place in it, I get to ask those questions of mine. It's not something we tend to dwell on in American broadcasting. But Brown says that in Canada, it happens all the time. And because America's cultural presence is so huge and so near, Canadian self-reflection must, by definition, involve thinking about living next door to such a noisy neighbor. I think we've developed the same attitudes that, say, the Pakistanis have towards India or, say, the border the Poles have to Russia. American culture somehow seizes you. But at the same time, we're not part of American culture. In fact, for years, Canadians have defined themselves-- or many Canadians have defined themselves-- as being, we're Canadian because we're not American. It's not a very good definition, but it's certainly one that a lot of people-- So when you're here without the protection of the border-- Well, exactly. --are you swallowed? It's flipped around. You're always slightly afraid and slightly amazed and slightly aware that you're swirling in some huge vortex that might just suck you down. At the same time, I should say that-- and I don't know whether this is a widely shared view-- but one of the reasons why Canadians are so obsessed with America is that it is such an energetic culture. It's so important in the world. It is the great empire of the 20th century-- has been. And you can't avoid that. Well, even before the 20th century-- I was thinking about this when I was looking at this Canadian history book over the weekend-- and how almost embarrassingly gradual your path to independence seemed, to me, And I was wondering how in the world you could teach schoolchildren about this really complicated, subtle history in a way that would be halfway inspiring. Well, you've struck on quite an important point there. It often isn't inspiring because it is so gradual. We've been talking about the constitution in this country. To my direct knowledge-- I've been following it since I was about-- well, the flag debate. I was about 11, I guess. The American flag debate? No, the Canadian flag debate, when we finally got a flag of our own. And what year was that? Oh, that was 1965. Fairly late. Oh yeah, exactly, 100 years after the Confederation. Which was also fairly late, it seems to me. Which was also fairly late. Yeah, sure. We're gradualists. We don't like to do anything extreme. And Margaret Atwood says that this is because it's so cold here and that you have to be so careful. You'd like to take your clothes off and go running outside, but it's so cold most of the time that you keep at least some of your clothes on, even though you're pretending to be naked. I was thinking about this the other day. And I was engaged in a little us-versus-them debate with a Canadian friend. And I was talking about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and words and phrases like "We, the people" and "life, liberty, pursuit of happiness," and how these things have had this enormous bearing on me, certainly as a writer, and being able to say what I think, and that it's codified within these governmental structures. And at one point, I just said, "what's your sound bite?" And he didn't have one. Is there a sound bite of Canadian-ness? Well, I always liked "the True North, strong and free" myself. That's always appealed to me. And it's probably imported from somewhere. But that's always the one I like. And I think it's Voltaire's description of "a few acres of snow." I think he said that. I always liked that image. "A few acres of snow." Doesn't that just make you want to go out and change the world? No, what it does is it reminds you that this country-- far more than yours-- is a physical country. You folks have all these ideas-- or so-called ideas-- Manifest Destiny, the pursuit of happiness-- life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But they're ideas. And physically, the country doesn't really exist. I was always amazed that more Americans aren't interested in politics down there. Your voting participation rate is absolutely abysmal. And I think it's because people can't conceive of the country in any way. It's like an amassing together of individualisms. But after a while, there's so many individualisms that there's nothing collective there. In some ways, Canada has exactly the opposite problem, that we've needed to be collective. And for so long, it's been impossible to be an individualist and still be a Canadian. But it has to do with how youthful the country is. I've been in the wilderness quite a bit in both Canada and the United States. And I always notice this incredible difference. In Canada, if I go-- I don't know-- 100 hundred miles north of Winnipeg, there are places where you go out into the bush, you go out into the wilderness, and you really do have this sense that you may very well be the first person to be standing there. That this is really virgin territory and you're standing there. And that's an incredible feeling, because-- But I'm from Montana. We have that there too. But you don't have it the same way. I've been in Montana. I've been on the top of the Teton Mountains and all the rest. And you get up there, and the sensation you have in the American wilderness is, well, this is incredible because I'm standing where so many people have gone before. Lewis and Clark were here, blah, blah, blah, all these people. And I'm standing in their footsteps, and that is the great thing. Whereas in Canada, it's the exact opposite. No one was here. I'm the first person. And it has real consequences. In America, the great thing you have is your history and your tradition. The hard thing in America these days it seems to me looking at it from afar, is that it's so hard to think, well, I can do something new. We can break out of the box we're in. Look at something like campaign reform. Nobody thinks you can ever fix it, so why the heck try? Whereas in Canada, we have exactly the opposite problem. We all think, well, I couldn't possibly do this because no one's ever been here or done this before. It really is like the invert of-- Well, you're right, except the very idea of America is that even though tons of people have been there, done that, the idea of America is that you don't care. You just keep going. Yeah, but you've got to be more and more outlandish, it seems to us. The fact that Jerry Springer comes from your country is-- Oh, thanks for bringing that up. Well, I'm sorry, but how does he fit into Manifest Destiny? If that's the end result of it-- Well, we have to take the agony with the ecstasy. Well, that's what makes your country so interesting. And I think that's why people stereotype Canada and say it's boring. They think there is no individual spirit here. Wrongly, of course, but they do think that. And we think all you've got is yakking. Well, that's interesting for someone who yaks for a living to say. Admittedly. Well, I have an American wife, remember. That's right. Well, we won't hold that against you. No, but the Canadians hold it against her. She often complains. She says there is a distinct anti-American feeling here. And she's a lovely person, and people like her. But she says people are always saying at parties, oh, that's so American, when someone talks about somebody being crass or somebody being particularly ambitious or particularly in your face. They say, oh, that's so American. Then they remember she's American and they say, oh, sorry, Johanna, not you. You're different. And she thinks it's quite widespread. And I will say that as a Canadian, I never noticed anything like that down in America. It is a very, very, very tolerant place until you stand up and say, well, Canadians are different. And then they say, oh, no you're not. You're exactly the same. You like Disney too, don't you? And we say, well, yeah we do, but not all the time. Can you recall one of those particular moments where you felt like an alien or you felt like an American did or said something that seemed completely foreign to you? I was walking along the boardwalk of Manhattan Beach in California. Manhattan Beach is right on the water, and there's this beautiful-- I was walking along, and I was having an argument with my wife. Not a loud argument, but an argument. A debate, I guess you could call it. And we were debating the merits of speaking in front of our children-- in front of my daughter-- and having discussions as if she wasn't there. And as we were walking along, some guy on rollerblades went by and looked at us. And then he turned around, he came back up to me, and he said, "Man, I want to tell you, man, it, like, really lays some heavy lumber"-- I don't think he said lumber, but-- "it lays some heavy groove on your kids, man, to be fighting in front of them." And I said, "Well, first of all, we weren't fighting. We were having a debate. And B, it's none of your business. Get out of my face." That would never happen. You don't have jerks in Canada? It's not jerks. I mean, he probably had a point. But no Canadian that I have ever encountered would ever deign to even come close to telling you how-- especially publicly. Especially publicly. Well, it seems like the things that you've been bringing up-- these differences-- are rather confined to the sphere of minutiae. I mean, are the two cultures really separate? Can you separate them? I understand your question, and there are so many similarities that many Canadians ask much the same question. We live in a global world, it's a global economy, we're all the same, nationalism is for jerks. But civically, we're very different. We have a parliamentary democracy here. There are at least two, and possibly more, parties involved in every single debate. Everything is voted on. We elect our representatives directly to the House of Commons. Our prime minister is chosen from amongst them, generally speaking. That's not the case in America. You have this complicated checks and balances system, which seems to us to have no direct representation at all. And judging from the fractions in which you vote, a lot of Americans feel the same way, too. Whereas in Canada, voter participation is pretty high. But besides these political differences, how-- for instance, we've been having these conversations around here in planning this show where someone says, Neil Young-- Canadian. Everyone says, he's Canadian? Or Mike Myers or Pamela Anderson Lee. You know, the blond bimbo babe of all time-- Canadian. They can't believe she's Canadian? Canadian, yeah. It always ends the same way. And it seems like despite these small, little differences, or even huge political ones, it's really hard to tell an American and a Canadian apart. Well, it depends how you measure them, though. Neil Armstrong is a great-- Neil Armstrong. He was American, right? He's the first guy who ever-- and he's American. It's incredible! No, Neil Young-- he's a brilliant songwriter and musician, so he hits the universal in that way. Yeah, but he wrote my favorite song, "Keep on Rockin' in the Free World," which is, to me, maybe one of the most American songs. It has this incredible beat, it rocks, it's a condemnation specifically of the Bush administration, but it's also about hope and imagination as well as Styrofoam and the ozone layer. To me, it's an American song. Well, that's, I think, you defining the song. It's not Neil defining the song. One of my favorite songs of his begins, "There is a town in North Ontario." I'd say that's the emblematic Neil Young song. And to me, he's hugely Canadian. Not only is he hugely Canadian because he writes the songs he does, because so many of them have a northern, isolated feel to them, because they are about strong emotion expressed quietly and expressed in a quiet vessel but also because his dad was a sportswriter for The Globe and Mail who everybody read. So I can't separate him out. OK, what about Pamela Anderson Lee, then? Well, as I say, we're talking about the universal here, aren't we? You know what they say. If you want to sell something to everybody, make sure it has a large bust line. So she feels that-- They say that? Marketers sometimes say that. What is she? She's like the most universally pneumatic vacuum in the world. So it's true. That doesn't feel particularly Canadian. And I understand why. But she's not a serious example. She's a woman-- You only want the serious people? You only want to claim Neil Young? I only want to talk about the ones that you can actually measure on a real basis. I don't know what Pamela Lee was before she was inflated. But I'd be willing to say the old, uninflated Pamela Lee, before she became almost the quintessential Hollywood bombshell, I'll bet you could find Canadian stuff about her. I don't know. It would be an interesting story. That's for sure. And is the plastic surgery-- is it that part of her is now physically American? That is definitely American. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. That part of Pamela Lee is as American as American goes. I know that you're running out of time. If not, you're out of time on your end. But I just want to ask before we end, what was your favorite thing about being a Canadian living in the US when you did? Americans. Americans. Because I work as a writer. And in Canada, one of the biggest parts of the job is to draw people out, to make them comfortable, to get them talking, to get them to realize that it's just a conversation, that they can be themselves. Americans are much less conscious of themselves. They have much less self-consciousness. They're much more themselves in the world. And damn it if you don't like it. I'm an American. I'm an individual. And so you get all this incredible unconscious behavior happening right in front you. It's like having your own little stage show wherever you go. There's always some entertainment because there's always people being themselves. You don't get that as much in Canada. And I found it-- Do we amuse you? No, I don't mean in a condescending way. I'm glad I'm not of it, but I love having a seat ringside. Ian Brown with This American Life contributing editor Sarah Vowell, author of the book Take the Cannoli. Coming up, the secret pro-Canadian messages in Peter Jennings' nightly newscast and more, in a minute, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show, Who's Canadian? Stories of the Canadians among us. We've arrived at Act Three, Outing. Well, the Canadian on the This American Life staff, Paul Tough, tells this story about watching the movie Wayne's World. There's a scene in Wayne's World where one of the stars and writers of the film, Mike Myers, and his buddies in the movie, allegedly portraying American teenagers, play street hockey. They're doing what a lot of Canadians do and what I certainly did as a Canadian youth, which is they're playing on the street. They have nets set up on the street. They're playing with a tennis ball and hockey sticks. And the goalies are all in equipment. And when a car comes down the street, the first person to see the car yells, car! And everyone just stops the game and grabs the nets and gets to the side of the street. And then when the car passes, they say, game on! And they start playing again. And when I saw that, it was like it was a secret message from Mike Myers to me and all the other Canadians who were watching this movie in the American audience, because those were exactly the two phrases that we would use. And no American knows those phrases. And Mike Myers, of course, growing up in [? Otobaco, ?] the true Wayne's World, grew up playing road hockey just like I did. And the sad thing is, he couldn't set his movie in Canada because then it would've been a Canadian movie, even if it was exactly the same movie. It was about Canadian culture, but in order to pass he had to set it in Illinois. Canadians, of course, are everywhere in the American media, from Lorne Michaels to Alanis Morissette. Well, the question we ask in this act of our program is this. When Canadians rise to the top of American pop culture, the American media machine, once they have America's attention, what do they decide to do with it? To answer this question, let's examine first a show that, on first glance, seems quintessentially American, could not get more American, Beverly Hills 90210. Danny Drennan writes the entertaining and definitive 90210 Weekly Wrapup on the world wide web. He argues that 90210 is a kind of Canadian Trojan horse. The show is based on a Canadian TV series called Degrassi High. Some characters and storylines are lifted straight from the original series. Not one but two Canadians star on the show, Kathleen Robertson and Jason Priestley. And Priestley has slowly risen from actor to director and producer of the show. Once Priestley had control of storylines and content, yes, the inevitable happens. Canadian references start to show up in 90210 in various guises. One episode sees Steve, Brandon, and Joe meeting some girls from Canada. And Jason's character, Brandon Walsh, unnecessarily comments on where they are from, Parry Sound, home of Hall of Fame hockey player Bobby Orr. Who even remembers who Bobby Orr is, much less where he was born? Brandon's later comment as he ogles the girls from afar is, "O, Canada." When their girlfriends get jealous, Brandon is like, we just got totally hosed, eh? In one episode, for no reason whatsoever, Brandon refers to Manitoba. In the season finale, Steve makes the throwaway statement that his American actress mother is doing theater in Toronto. In yet another, Kathleen Robertson's character, Clare Arnold, called Steve a hoser. Clare is often heard gratuitously attempting to speak mangled French, like the time when she wanted to say, "let the best man win." In French, "que le meilleur gagne," which instead came out "culla mello gong," in what I can only imagine is a shout-out to Quebec or something. Brandon, in one show, plays in a charity hockey tournament with guest stars Cam Neely and Ron Duguay. You must've got a few splinters from your stick in my jersey. Maybe you're too fast for your own good. I think you may want to pick up your jock strap. You left it back there by the blue line. This is going to be fun playing with you all. Could someone please tell me who plays hockey in Los Angeles? The fact is that in real life, Priestley used to play center on a Division II hockey team where his teammate was Michael J. Fox. It's all connected. Then there was the show that starts out with an extreme close-up shot of a maple leaf insignia on the back of Brandon's shirt for, like, two minutes before Brandon walks away. The show basically starts out displaying the Canadian flag. I mean, aren't there FCC laws against this kind of thing? Another show featured a Ukrainian dance troupe, which is a stealth reference to Canada where such dance troupes are well known. Alex Trebek, former host of the Canadian show Stars on Ice and current host of Jeopardy!, which makes unwarranted reference to Canada more often than can be explained statistically, himself stars in a Jeopardy! dream sequence on 90210. Most recently, during a school talent show, Donna and Steve recreate a scene reminiscent of the Nelson Eddy- Jeanette MacDonald operetta-based movies of the '30s and '40s, in this case, featuring a Canadian Mountie and his gal singing "Royal Canadian Love Affair." A great cultural reference for Canadians. I mean, at least give the American audience a clue as to what you're talking about by mentioning Dudley Do-Right or something. Adding insult to injury, because of hockey playoffs, and unlike every other American-made entertainment product, 90210 is often seen on Monday night in Canada, two days before the Wednesday broadcast in the United States. Canadian friends and fellow viewers of the show have informed me that hoards of Canadians cheer as these Canadian references to the revolution are broadcast over the American airwaves. How did we ever reach this point? Well, how indeed. Danny Drenna of the 90210 Weekly Wrapup and the forthcoming book, New York Diaries. Our own contributing editor, Jack Hitt, has another searing expose on these strangers in our midst. He's been keeping tabs on Canadian Peter Jennings, host of ABC World News Tonight. It goes without saying that Peter Jennings is a mole, a spy, a shill, a confederate for Canada. All you have to do is watch his program, as I did one week. In Costa Rica today, President Clinton went to the rainforest, and he got wet. He's not liberal or conservative. Jennings just seems to have it in for the American government. Sometimes his reference is implied, even bizarre. The Pentagon does say today it is very concerned about an incident involving the Russians. Last month off the coast of Washington State, it appears that a Russian merchant ship directed a laser beam at a Canadian military helicopter carrying a US naval intelligence officer. He and a Canadian crew member both had their eyes burned, though not badly. The Russian ship was apparently monitoring American submarines in the region. The helicopter was monitoring the Russians. What are we being told by this story? It's not easy to parse, but it's either about an innocent Canadian blinded by our defense obsession or the superior maturity of Canada for not being directly involved in the two superpowers' now admittedly absurd arms race. So there's no question about where Peter's loyalties lie. In fact, Peter wants to come out of the Canadian closet. His Freudian slips cry out. When we come back out-- or when we come back-- Reckon you mean when you come back oot, don't you, stranger? Do you hear how Peter strains to split the difference between the Canadian oot and the American out? Listen again. When we come back out-- or when we come back-- You'll notice that Peter's always about to come back from somewhere. When we come back, the stunning drop in the welfare rolls. When we come back, the space-age technology that is already down on the farm. When we come back, your money-- Or he's heading out. We're going to begin tonight with an-- Or he's inviting us somewhere. Finally this evening, we're going to take you to Alabama. See, Peter's on a journey to someplace. If you watch his show long enough, it's obvious. The very structure of the show has a sense that we're going somewhere-- a place, a mythical place. Every program has this feeling of zigzagging en route to some ultimate destination. And you know where he wants to take us? Canada. That's right, Canada. But actually, after you've watched World News Tonight long enough, you realize that this is not a journey to the real Canada but to the platonic ideal of Canadian-ness. Stay with me here. See, Peter's news is noticeably different from Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw's. Tom and Dan see a hostile world erupting with bad news everywhere, full of murder and mayhem, macho and dismal, hell in a hand basket, fire and brimstone stuff. You know, very puritanical, very American in outlook. Dan's all clenched jaws, garretted coat and tie, a human time bomb waiting to explode. Peter's just kicking back. He could be wearing a smoking jacket and, during the commercial, sipping a mild single-malt Scotch. Once Peter gets past ridiculing the American government, it's odd, but suddenly, the news he's reading is uncannily bright. Cheerful and good news. Healing news. Soothing news. Ecumenical news. Canadian news. They've approved a new type of laser device that should permit a dentist to fill a tooth more efficiently, and for you, if you have to go, maybe more comfortably, as well. More comfortable dentistry. My, that is good news. But wait. You may soon be able to check for E. coli bacteria right in the supermarket. No more food poisoning. Terrific. The new obesity pill that actually breaks down fat in the body. To understand the real meaning of this Canadian news, one has to read past the literal facts embedded in each statement and get to the level on which television actually speaks to us-- emotion. To really feel it, you have to merge the ads and the news into one seamless half hour of Peterphoria. You have to step a bit further back from the screen, lie down on a down comforter, and let it wash over you, like reading Finnegans Wake. And if you do this, suddenly the hidden meaning becomes instantaneously clear and weirdly repetitive. The message is, surrender. Your time is over. My fellow Americans, a great nation is being asked to lie down and give it up. Peter's meaning is clear. Even superpowers must age and yield and settle down. One ad that airs a couple of times every show is for SunAmerica. Sun, as in setting sun. SunAmerica. Ask about our personal retirement portfolios. SunAmerica, the retirement specialists. Retire. No commercial break passes without the word reverberating through the screen. But of course, Peter and his fellow travelers try to keep this message lively and vibrant. [MUSIC PLAYING] You did your job. You did it well. It's OK, see? Over time though, the message goes even further than that. Why just retire? Even the musical score begins to hint at the next logical option. Tum-tum-tum-tum, Tums. I don't think I'm stretching here. You heard it yourself. The message is, let it go. Cross all the way over to the other side. The entire half hour is a kind of advertisement for dark eternity. Sometimes you have to tell yourself, stop. Look around. This is the good stuff. [SINGING] The look, the feel of cotton, the fabric of our lives. This is cotton. This is cotton? Honey, this is a shroud. Just when is it that you stop living and look around? We're dying here. See how obvious it is once you take off your rose-colored glasses and see what's in front of your face? Once you tune in at this level-- the real level-- each commercial gets increasingly more frightening. Wouldn't you like to go someplace that felt really safe and secure? Well, now you can. Someplace safe and secure. Someplace like America, but without all those tense Dan Rather troubles. Someplace like Canada. And isn't that how Americans have always thought of Canada? It's like America, only without any jazz. Tranquil and safe and secure and endless, like death. If only Peter can take us to that place where we no longer have any anxiety. If only Peter can remove the sting. If only Peter can end the fear. If only. When we come back out-- or when we come back-- taking the anxiety out of the fear. Uh huh. Take us out, Peter. Tell us what the story is all aboot. Today, the story that reminds us once again that things are not always what they appear to be. Jack Hitt. Act Four, Who's Canadian? Another story of siblings parted ways. Our senior editor Paul Tough and his sister grew up in Toronto, the most American of Canadian cities. Then, about 10 years ago, they both left and headed in opposite directions. He moved to New York City, where he's lived ever since. She began a series of moves to smaller, more typically Canadian cities and towns. In Paul's view, she is the good Canadian. He's the bad one. All this hour, we've heard people talk about who's Canadian and what it means to be a Canadian. We asked Paul to call his sister and find out whether she still considers him to be a Canadian. It's not just that my sister actually lives in Canada, and right in the heart of the country where it's winter for eight months out of the year, that makes me think of her as the quintessential Canadian. And it's not even her ideas about the place or her sense of patriotism. It's more the way that she lives in Canada, connected to her small community and her neighbors and the natural world around her, working at her church and in her kitchen and in her garden. That, to me, is a Canadian life. And from my studio apartment in New York, her life in Winnipeg seems very far away. And I think to her, I seem far away, too. It's interesting because I talk about you often when I talk to people. And I talk about you as being my brother who has gone off and lived in the United States. And I talk about you with a great deal of pride. And people certainly respond by being very impressed. But there's that sense in which-- so I was thinking, if you came here, you would be a celebrity in the sense that you're my brother who lives in the United States and you live this highly sophisticated life and you live in New York City and everyone's deeply impressed by this. But you wouldn't be of us. I think the perception would be very different if you had done the same thing over the last 10 years in London, England. I think you would be perceived as being more Canadian still than having gone to the United States for 10 years. I suspect it might even be true if you had gone to another European country, that you would still be perceived as being more Canadian than you would be perceived now. But there's a way, because of the place that the United States has in the Canadian imagination, that going to America has a very special flavor to it. Yeah. It means something. Yeah. And what is that? What does it mean? Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but I think in some ways, it's going over to the other side. What about when other people move to the United States and musicians you like or actors you like or writers you like? Wayne Gretzky, let's just say. Uh huh. The tragic trade. The tragic Wayne Gretzky story. Not to mention the whole Winnipeg Jets team. Where are they now? Phoenix, of all places. Phoenix, Arizona. What was that like? Were you there when the Jets moved to Phoenix? Yes, I was. It was just not pretty. It's just not pretty. I mean, it's a really deep sense of loss, I think, and betrayal for Canadians. And who did they feel betrayed by? Oh, whoever goes. And it's obviously not so rational all the time, right? So there's two things. There's a sense of betrayal, but there's also just a sense of sadness and a realization that that's the reality of the world and the economy that we live in. And also, maybe weariness, almost, when another one goes. Did you ever have any opinions about the fact that I was living in the United States? Do you ever feel like I had given up my birthright or denied my country? You are a bum. Not even necessarily in those terms. But did you ever feel sorry that I wasn't living in Canada? I think only on a personal level. I don't think in any of those sort of philosophical ways. I think I would feel different, though, if you told me that you were deciding to become an American citizen. But I think until now, I've always felt like you're just living there and working there and eventually, you'll come back. Really? Yeah. Or it's not even that clear, but it's still that you belong here somehow. And even though you don't come back very much, somehow you're still Canadian. A lot of the Americans that I've spoken to have talked about how there's just no difference at all between Americans and Canadians, that Canadians are exactly the same as Americans. And, in fact, there are some people who say that in a really positive way. [LAUGHS] Oh, don't worry. You're just like us. Exactly. There's no difference between you. You don't have to feel different. Just like whites would say to black-- [INTERPOSING] Sure. Oh, you're really just like us. Exactly. So then, what's the answer? What do I say to people when they say, well, OK, what is Canadian? What does it mean to be Canadian? Yeah, what's the Canadian-ness? Yeah, I think that's really a struggle for Canadians. And in some way, I think it's that struggle that, ironically, defines what the answer is. I think in some ways, the answer is that a Canadian is someone who struggles to figure out what is to be Canadian and not American. And all of those things, it's really hard to make a pavilion about. There's that eternal problem of how do you make a Canadian knight? How do you make a Canadian pavilion? And you kind of have maple syrup, and that's the end of it. And we don't have a nice national dress and national food. And we have, well, the beaver, and not too much else. Well, our program was produced by Nancy Updike, Paul Tough, and me, with Alix Spiegel and Julie Snyder, contributing editors Jack Hitt, Margy Rochlin and consigliere Sarah Vowell. Production help from Laura Doggett and Sylvia Lemus. And And did I mention Paul Tough? Yes, Canadian. Indeed, he is. Today's program was first broadcast back in 1997, hence the oddly anachronistic references to Beverly Hills 90210. If you'd like to buy a cassette of this or any of our programs, call us here at WBEZ in Chicago-- 312-832-3380-- or visit our website where you can also listen to our programs for free-- absolutely free-- www.thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia. Yes, Canadian. Oh, say it's not so. I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life. PRI, Public Radio International.
|
From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. Step one, you are currently in the custody of the US department of Homeland Security Customs and Border Protection. You have been charged with the crime of illegal entry into the United States. Step two-- So Kevin, who is this and what is she reading? This is Rachelle Garza. She's an immigration attorney in Brownsville, Texas and she's reading a flyer that was handed to some parents after they were separated from their children. Kevin Sieff is correspondent for The Washington Post. And on the flyer there's a phone number, basically, which is really the only lifeline they have to their children-- the only way they can get information from the government about where their children are, how their children are doing. And explain what she's trying to do. She's trying to locate her client's child. So she represents a man who is detained in an immigration detention center who, basically minutes after crossing the border, was separated from his daughter. How old is his daughter? She's 12 OK, so let's figure out how we're supposed to do this. So action one, call ICE. If you're in a detention facility, call this way. OK, let's call the ORR parent hotline. What is that, the ORR parent hotline? So, that's the phone number that you're supposed to call, either as a parent or as an attorney, to try to locate your child. I mean, it's really the most-- when you look at this flyer, it's the most useful piece of information on it. So yeah, this is the number that Rochelle's about to call. So it starts in Spanish, and then it switches to English. You have reached the ORR national call center, open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you are calling about a person travelling to the United States who is 18 years of age or older, please press one. If you have a case manager's extension, please press two. For all other calls, please press three or remain on the line and you will be connected with a case manager. Your call will be monitored for quality assurance. OK, so there's hold music and there's a phone tree. This all feels very, like-- the most normal thing in the world. Exactly. It's like you're trying to fix your cable. So on this recording you made, an operator picks up after six minutes-- not that long, really. Please wait as we connect-- Yes, of course. OK, how are you doing Alan? Pretty good. So, my name is Rochelle Garza. I'm an attorney. I'm looking for my client's daughter. I called last week, on the 11th of June, and I was told that I would be contacted by the shelter. The shelter? Yeah. And I haven't been contacted, and neither has my client. OK. What's the name of the minor? So she gives the name of this girl to the operator and he looks her up and finds her in the system. What I can do is to try to do-- try to send the shelter inquiry again. I mean, because they usually do contact. But right now, with the high volume of minors that are entering the United States, it's a little complicated for them. Hey Kevin, when he says the high volume of minors entering the United States, is that what's happening? No. I mean, there is no surge of minors crossing the border. In fact, there are fewer people crossing the border than almost any time in the last decade. What there's a surge of is a surge of families being separated, and that's what's changed. And that's why he's getting so many calls. Right. There are children and parents who can't find each other. Maybe there's a better way for us to do this. Can I send a letter to you or to the shelter somehow, saying that I'm representing her father? That way I can at least confirm, you know, where she is and so I can go ahead and start working on her case. OK. For that-- so basically, we don't release that information of the shelter. We can't release that information to the public. We don't release the information saying what shelter she's in, is what he's saying, right? Right. Due to safety concerns, safety purposes. But I mean, I can type out a little bit of, like, whatever you want to tell them, tell the shelter, and I can make sure they get the message if that'll work for you. Yeah, no. I guess I'm just trying to figure out a way that I can explain that I'm an attorney and that I'm the attorney assisting the parent. And the parent has asked me to locate the child. So that way, I can speak with her. Is there any email address that I can maybe send a letter of representation to? Even if it's to someone at your office. Give me one second. I think that's one of the fundamental problems here, is that they're making it really hard for her to establish that she is, in fact, representing a child. And is the parent in the detention center? Yes. I think you can probably see that in your system, right? I can try to find them. But-- Do you want me to-- I was just asking so that-- Do you want me to confirm his name? Huh? Do you want me to confirm the dad's name? I can give that to you. No, it's OK. No, I only have the information for the minors. I don't have the-- for the adults. I mean, I can't go to the ICE locator and find them, but-- This surprised me. Is he saying that his database lists the child and where the child is, but doesn't have the parent's name attached to that? Yeah. I mean, he's telling Rochelle that he has no record of even that parent's name, let alone where that parent's located. I mean, and this, I think, is the biggest concern that lawyers have right now is, is there even a record in a government database of which child belongs to which parent? We don't know the answer to that question. But there are a lot of reasons, including this exchange, that would make us think that they don't. They don't know. So again, so in the recording, he then heads off to try to answer her question about how can she get through to the daughter. OK, I mean, just give me one second so I can speak to my supervisor about this. Let me ask what else I can do for you. OK. Thank you, I appreciate that. Do you mind holding on-- I do not mind. --for a little bit? Thank you. Kevin, so on his computer screen he actually has the information that she wants, of where this girl is? Yeah, that's basically what he's saying, that he has it. He knows where she is, but he can't give it to her. Now eventually, as this call goes on, the guy gives her an email address. But then it's just the same email address that's on the form that she has, right? Yeah. Yeah, and I mean, I kind of saw her just entirely deflated after he gave that address. Right, so having had it, how do you feel about that call? Not very good. Why? I mean, they're not really trying to help. Yeah. Sorry, it's rough. I just don't know how we're going to track down these kids. That's not helpful. I mean, I can still go through the motions of sending an email to that email address, but I just don't have any faith that it's going to go anywhere. Sorry, I'm getting emotional. But it's very frustrating. And I can only imagine what's going on on her end. OK, so that was a week ago. What's happened since? So, Rochelle reached out to one of the legal service providers who work with children who are detained after crossing the border. And these are organizations that represent children through their deportation proceedings, through their asylum hearings. And these organizations keep track of the kids that they're working with. They each have a list of the kids. And Rochelle kind of got lucky, and the person she reached out to did actually have a record of this girl and was able to tell Rochelle where the girl was being held. She found the name of the shelter? She found the shelter, yeah. So then the next step was for her to get to the shelter to try to set up basically an appointment. So on Thursday afternoon, she drove to the shelter. And she walked in and there the girl was. I talked to her right afterwards. She looked like her dad, so I recognized her right away. I felt-- I felt really emotional about it actually, when I saw her, just because I could see her dad's face in her face. I had to-- obviously, any time you go and you introduce yourself to a child, like they don't know who you are. I obviously explained my relationship to her dad and to her and that I've been looking for her. And her eyes turned really red when I mentioned her dad. And I asked her if she wanted to write him a letter and she was like, yes. And so she frantically wrote this letter, and I gave her the time to do that. And so this girl, she's 12 years old. What did Rochelle say? Is she doing OK? Yeah, the girl's doing OK. Rochelle said she looks healthy. She's wearing a uniform given to her, a sort of polo shirt given to her by the shelter. And she was wearing a bunch of friendship bracelets that I guess she's learned to make there. And then Rochelle had to do this thing, which is explain that this girl probably is not going to see her dad any time soon, and she might not even talk to him any time soon. The way you explain it is, like, you kind of have to explain what's going on in the national realm, right? You have to say there was this executive order and there was this decision out of the courts, and put it in that kind of context so that-- I mean the thing is, I don't have an answer for her, Kevin. Like, I can't tell her, you're for sure going to get a phone call this day. You're for sure going to be reunited with him on this day. All I can say is, I don't know. Kevin, I thought the policy had changed. Like, the president announced that we are no longer separating families from children. And in fact, the government announced that they had reunited over 500 children. Yeah, I mean, the government has made these announcements about their plans to reunify families. But when you talk to the lawyers who are representing the parents, nothing has changed at all. And in many cases, not only are the families not reunified, but these lawyers still can't figure out where the children are being held. And what do we know about the 500-plus kids who the government says they reunited? I mean, the government has said that they've reunited these families. When I talk to lawyers who are representing hundreds of parents-- I mean, there's one organization that's representing 376, another that's representing I think over 400 now. I haven't heard of a single-- at least as of a few days ago, I haven't heard of a single reunification. So I mean, I think in the absence of concrete information about who these families were, how they were reunified, lawyers are really wondering if these kids were among the 2,300 who were separated from their parents. If maybe they were from a different pool of children. It's possible that the government numbers are accurate, but there are just so many questions about them, because there's really no documentation that goes along with it. We reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for clarification about all of this, and a spokesperson told us that the 539 children they've said were reunited with parents were all apprehended since May, as part of the administration's zero tolerance policy, and they all were in border patrol custody before being returned to their families. Presumably, being in border patrol custody means they were only in the country a short time and had never been transferred to other agencies, shelters, and foster homes. The spokesperson declined to provide any names of these families or any information about what countries they were from. But this kind of situation where somebody-- in this case, the President of the United States-- declares that he's changed-- it's all different, he's moving on, no longer separating kids from their parents, but the result is not so clear. That situation, that is what our show is about today. Something happens, maybe you'd like to believe it's true, but you don't know if you should. We have a bunch of different stories that do not involve the current administration, or any previous ones. One of the stories, in fact, takes us into a noisy world of half-clad soap opera stars and daytime TV hosts, none of whom I bet you have ever heard of. Stay with us. Act One, The All Too Real Housewives of Argentina. There's an old saying, don't believe everything you see. But there's a corollary, of course-- don't believe everything you see on TV, especially daytime TV. And it doesn't matter what country you're in. Jasmine Garsd grew up in Argentina and has this story. Quick warning before we start-- the stories in today's show have some curse words that we have un-beeped here in the podcast version of the show. If you want a version with beeps, maybe you're listening with kids, go to our website. And here's Jasmine. I watched a lot of television when I was a kid. My grandmother, Iaia, would pick me up at school and bring me back to her place. Her apartment was dark and humid. It smelled like French bread and the exhaust from the buses on the avenue down below. My grandfather was never around. Iaia would make tea and then we would go to her bedroom and turn the TV on. And suddenly, colors, sound, and sex would pour into the world. It was the early afternoon. It was time for the talk shows. Argentine talk shows are extreme, even for Latin American television. The women are pumped up with silicone and Botox, and sometimes show up wearing almost nothing. The conversation is not just double entendres, but straight up entendres, full-on vulgar language. When I was growing up, it was a parade of pasties, stilettos, feather boas. One of the most popular shows back then was hosted by a guy named Jorge Rial. He's still on TV. He's kind of the Argentine everyman-- charming and a little bit of a hustler. These days, his TV show is called Intrusos, or Intruders. It takes place on a set that is just seizure inducing-- neon colors, walls lined with giant video screens. Jorge Rial likes to stir up fights among his voluptuous guests. Every time something shocking is said, ominous music rolls out. Once in a while, a woman is so sexy that Jorge Rial bites his lower lip and mugs for the camera. This has been Rial's style for years. Back in the day, Iaia would bring the tea and cookies and lie down next to me in her patent leather platform shoes, which she never took off, not even in bed. My grandmother was the target audience for Rial's show, what's commonly known as "doña rosa," a housewife. She loved to hate the show, to look disapprovingly at the women and comment how much surgery she's had. "Una prostituta," a prostitute. "una loca." And they give her expensive gifts-- cars, vacations. And I'd look around me my grandmother's lonely apartment and think to myself, wow. That sounds pretty amazing. I knew I didn't want to be a doña rosa when I grew up. When I was a teenager, I moved to the US and eventually became a journalist. I've lived here for 15 years. Sometimes when I get homesick, I stream Intrusos on YouTube. I leave it on when I cook and clean. When I watch it, I'm not 5,000 miles away. Iaia is alive, nothing has changed much. Nothing ever changes on Argentine daytime TV. Until suddenly, a few months ago, it did. One night in February, I was at home in New York cleaning my kitchen. Intrusos was on in the background and I heard this woman with a raspy Lauren Bacall voice. I turned around, soapy sponge in hand, and squinted at the screen-- a tattooed, heavyset woman wearing sneakers. I recognized this woman, a comedian named Senorita Bimbo. The stage name, Bimbo, is ironic. She's anything but. In fact, the very next thing she did was look directly into the camera and offer a statistic about illegal abortions. "500,000 women in Argentina have illegal abortions every year," she said. She was wearing a bright green handkerchief around her neck, a provocative symbol everyone in Argentina knows-- the symbol of the fight to legalize abortion. For years, activists have been pushing to get Congress to vote on it. When I was growing up, abortion was something you just didn't talk about in Argentina, a Catholic country. It's still not something that comes up on daytime TV. Reproductive rights? That's just not Intrusos material. Though here was Jorge Rial, the host, looking intently at Senorita Bimbo. A few hours later, one of my best friends texted me, "Did you watch Intrusos today?" I sat down at my laptop and started scrolling through the descriptions of the last few episodes. The guests were names I knew-- academics, writers, comedians. What they had in common was, they were all feminists, people who have been on the fringes for years, criticizing sexism in Argentina and demanding women's rights. I started binge watching. In each episode, there was a nuanced conversation about feminism. Rial looked kind of meek, but not in his usual, "I've been overpowered by sexy ladies" way. He kept delivering these really impassioned monologues saying, I don't want to be a misogynist, a "machista." I'm a recovering machista. The Argentine everyman now appeared to be an earnest feminist. This was not the Rial I grew up with. This was not the TV I grew up with. What happened? Could this possibly be sincere? I flew to Argentina to find out. As soon as I got there, I went to the studios where Intrusos is taped. I met Ana Laura Guevara, one of the show's executive producers. Being live involves a lot of adrenalin. I really, really love the adrenalin. To be honest, I wasn't expecting an Intrusos executive producer to be a woman, especially not one like Ana Laura, a self-proclaimed feminist. I had a really hard time wrapping my head around the fact that, for 18 years, she had been behind this totally trashy and objectifying show. Ana Laura told me, it's just a job, one she's good at. It's intensely competitive. In the control room, her face shines from the light of the monitor she's hunched over, like in a casino-- a monitor that, minute by minute, tracks the ratings for Intrusos and every other show that's on the air at the same time. I had no idea this was possible. Right now on Intrusos, there's a fight between a former cabaret dancer and a potential candidate for president. This, like, skyrocketed. The ratings are going up with this segment. It's like four points-- it went from 4.0 to 4.6. This is doing better than the news. Next segment, a fashion model from the '80s says she has her suspicions about a designer's recent death. It dipped to 3.4. The ratings plummet. Nobody cares. Ana Laura orders them to end the segment early. Interest lags for an instant, and Intrusos moves on. The story of how the feminists intruded into Intrusos is its own soap opera. There are a gazillion gossip shows in Argentina. It's like this whole universe. Back in January, one of the shows interviewed this famous singer, a leathery guy in a tropical shirt. In the middle of the interview, the singer casually repeats this awful saying I used to hear as a kid-- if someone wants to rape you, relax and enjoy it. The first time I heard that was when I was nine years old. I was in the locker room and a girl blurted it out. I thought it was advice. A lot of my friends did, too. So the singer says this offensive thing. A few days later, on another talk show, a soap opera star blows up about it. Her name is Araceli Gonzales. When I was a kid, her soap opera was huge. She played a mute. A hunk with feathered hair would talk at her while she listened tearfully. But now she wasn't mute. She said the singer's remark made her sick. It was kind of beautiful seeing her get angry after so many years of playing a character literally defined by silence. Ana Laura, from Intrusos, saw the fight happening on TV and she wanted to get a piece of it. She booked Araceli to come on the show. It was a typical day on Intrusos. Jorge Rial talked about how much granny panties used to turn him on as a kid. Two former showgirls argued. And then it was Araceli's turn. And just because Araceli had gotten mad about the rape comment, one of the panelists introduces her as a feminist. As soon as Araceli got a chance, she corrected him. She says, "I heard you refer to me as a feminist just now, and I am not a feminist." She is vehemently wagging her finger as she says this. "I have a wonderful husband and a lovely son whom I love very much, and I respect men." This set off another firestorm. Here's Ana Laura. So people started tweeting about it. And we saw that feminists started to respond. So everything exploded. There were the kinds of tweets you would expect like, quote, "What the fuck does loving your husband and son have to do with being a feminist, you moron?" And here it was, feminists versus the soap opera star, a fight made for daytime television. And Ana Laura knew it. And she also knew Jorge Rial, the host of the show-- something had been changing with him lately. Like, he'd been saying to anyone who would listen-- I am a machista in recovery. I'm trying to find myself. So she approached him in the dressing room and they started talking. Maybe we should have a feminist on the show to explain what feminism is. We hadn't discussed that beforehand. But this day on the dressing room, I think that he was really into it. They decided on a well-known feminist academic, Flor Freijo. And even she'll tell you she's a safe bet for a show like Intrusos. She's thin and blonde. So Flor gets invited to Intrusos and the very first question Jorge Rial asks her is, what is feminism? I didn't prepare anything. I didn't prepare a speech. I didn't have time. So I went open to listen to the questions and explain things just as I do to my students in a class. Of all the strange things I'd seen on Argentine TV, this might be one of the oddest. Against a neon fizz background, Flor Freijo does a feminism 101. At the bottom of the screen, a banner in bold letters reads, "Feminism-- it's a movement for women's rights." Flor starts explaining, feminism is a movement for women's rights. It started in the 19th century. It has to do with the division of labor, child rearing. Jorge Rial is listening, completely mesmerized, his little eyebrows furrowed, scratching his beard. And while all this is happening, Ana Laura is sitting in the control room upstairs, watching everything, of course-- and also keeping her eye on the ratings monitor. The control room is usually a chaotic mess of yelling, but now, with Flor speaking-- And when we were watching her talking, Flor, the control room went quiet. We were all paying attention to what she was saying. But we were all quiet. We were really like, silently watching and learning from her. And then the spell is broken because the phone rings in the control room. It's Araceli, the soap opera star who's the whole reason Flora's here. She wants to talk to Flor live, right now. Everyone in the control room is geared up for a good old-fashioed Intrusos spat. Flor was kind of shocked. I didn't know that Araceli was going to call. I had no idea of what was going to happen. But it wasn't an ambush. Araceli wasn't calling to fight. Instead she tells Flor, I've been listening really well to what you're saying. And she wanted the audience to know that she didn't know what feminism was until just now, when she was watching TV and saw Flor explain it. She starts telling the story of her life through various generations of women, her own single mother and herself. She talks about how she had been sexually abused as a child and emotionally abused as an adult. And Araceli told Flor, I know what you're talking about and I agree with you. If this means being a feminist, then I'm a feminist. Flor nods, and gives a thumbs up. By the way, this is never how Intrusos finishes. People don't just listen to each other and change their minds. And the ratings-- Ana Laura says the ratings were great, strong enough that she decided, let's do this again tomorrow. And so it began. Over the next few days, some of the most famous feminists in Argentina came onto Intrusos. Comedians, authors, professors-- audiences were stunned. Someone tweeted, "My ideology is starting to converge with Jorge Rial's, and that terrifies me." It was pretty strange for everyone. This very misogynistic show had suddenly become like, the public town hall on feminism in Argentina. And the ratings were not just good. Ana Laura says they were higher than normal. She was delighted that she could keep this going. There's a journalist called Luciana Baker. She is also very important in feminism and she's an old friend from college. And she came to our show. And when we met backstage we were like, not even in our wildest dreams we could have dreamt about this, you being here in this type of show. Midway through all of this is when I tuned in, when I started streaming in New York. The show was like, going through hundreds of years of feminism in a couple of days. They passed through topics like LGBT rights, workplace harassment, income inequality. And then the most taboo thing of all-- abortion. Jorge Rial tied the green handkerchief around his wrist, the one activists who want to legalize abortion wear. And then he invited the large woman with the gravelly voice who I saw at home in New York City, Senorita Bimbo. Right off the bat she said, the fact that there's a fat girl on Argentine TV is already a victory. She told me she was actually pretty nervous. The first thing I thought was, what they're all going to say is like, what is this fat girl doing here, this fat girl feminazi? But she powered through. She had a mission. I knew I wanted to talk about abortion. My plan was to at least mention it. And I just sat down and started talking. I felt like I was going to battle, where I had to use words as arrows, because abortion is something that you don't say. It's something that you talk about in hushed tones if you have one. On Intrusos, Senorita Bimbo talked about how abortion is so taboo, you don't even talk about it in fiction. In Argentine TV and film, unwanted pregnancy is solved by a villain pushing you down the stairs and causing you to miscarry. And then about 30 seconds before they cut to commercial and moved to the next guest, Senorita Bimbo said something about abortion that surprised even her. Misoprostol-- she says, I want girls to know about misoprostol. This is a really big deal. Officially, misoprostol is a drug used to treat stomach ulcers, but it can also be used to induce labor. So in a continent where abortion is mostly banned, women take it if they want to miscarry. People call it the DIY abortion. She's talking about doing something illegal on one of the most popular daytime talk shows, watched by housewives. That same day, misoprostol was one of the most Googled words in the country. "I think you're underestimating your audience," Senorita Bimbo said on the show. Doña rosa is dead-- doña rosa, that stereotypical Argentine housewife. So the woman that is in front of the TV, and who needs her world to be explained to her through daytime TV, she just doesn't exist anymore. Of course, none of this would have happened on Intrusos if the ratings had been bad. And the ratings were great for reasons that Jorge Rial and Ana Laura can claim no credit for at all. Feminism has been gaining critical mass in Argentina for the last couple of years. The movement was triggered by these brutal murders of young women, often by boyfriends, husbands, and fathers. Women started protesting. A whole crusade was born. It was called Ni Una Menos, not one less woman. And since 2015, this has grown to the point where it's impossible to ignore and has expanded to abortion rights, street harassment, and equal pay. It's young people on social media, comedians on YouTube, pop stars on Instagram, gigantic demonstrations. It just wasn't a topic for daytime talk shows until Jorge, Ana Laura, and Intrusos. During that week on Intrusos, there was this explosion of tweets from young girls perplexed but ecstatic to see feminism on daytime TV. This one girl, Anita Ocampo tweeted, "I showed my dad the Intrusos episode with Senorita Bimbo." I dropped by her house and she told me, these feminists were explaining to Jorge Rial all the things she'd tried to explain but couldn't get her parents to understand. So one night she approached her dad. And she told him, if you watch this episode of Intrusos on YouTube with me, I'll massage your feet. She ended up getting the whole family to watch. She showed them Senorita Bimbo. She pointed to Jorge Rial wearing the same green handkerchief she wears and said, look, it's just like mine. It opened up a conversation, which she says they've been having ever since. Anita's mom says she saw Jorge Rial talk about how he's a recovering chauvinist and she says, so is she. I'm at, like, 70% feminism, she says. I still have 30% left to go. During my week in Argentina I kept trying to talk to Jorge Rial, and he kept blowing me off. Had he really converted to feminism? Everyone I asked rolled their eyes and pointed to the last few decades of his career. They pointed to his recent vicious public fight with one of his daughters. They pointed to how late he is to the whole feminism thing. He's a Johnny come lately. He's only doing this because it will make him more popular. After days of giving me the runaround, he told me to just send my questions. And finally, on my very last night in Argentina, my phone lit up. It was voice memos from Jorge Rial. "What happened to me?" Rial says. "What made me bring all these feminists onto Intrusos?" He talks about his 18-year-old daughter, Rosio, and how she's a feminist. "We have these very interesting talks over dinner," he says, "And she started opening this world up to me. I am 56 years old. I was raised in a completely sexist culture and I didn't get it. That's why I say I'm a recovering chauvinist, thanks to my daughter. My daughter made me change." Jorge Rial knows that I think Intrusos is stupid. He knows most people do. That's the show's superpower. "Frívolo--" we're frivolous. We're a show about showbiz. No one suspected that this is where feminism could win. We eluded the firewalls that kept feminism off of TV. There was this wall, you couldn't talk about these things on TV. And suddenly it happened on Intrusos. "But to be honest," he said, "it's all because of feminists. They knew any place is good, if you have a strong message." After the week of feminism, Intrusos was left with a split personality. These days, it's a mix of fighting starlets and women's rights activists. Jorge Rial's social media is a mix of World Cup woes, celebrity gossip, and then these really earnest feminist tweets. Like this one a few weeks ago-- "They came to make things better for the coming generations, for our daughters and their daughters, and also for men. The men who come after us must be better than us. We did everything wrong." The day after he tweeted that on June 14, Argentina's lower house of Congress approved a bill to legalize abortion. After an all-night debate, it barely passed by only four votes. And it yet has to pass the upper house. Still, outside Congress, thousands of women and activists who'd gathered to wait for the results celebrated wildly. Every time I spoke to those women about what role television like Intrusos played in all this, they got uncomfortable. On my last day in Argentina I grabbed a coffee with an old friend from high school, Jordana Timerman. She recently wrote an op-ed for the New York Times about the push to legalize abortion in Argentina, and we talked about the role pop culture played in that. You need to have people like Rial, or pop culture, doña rosa, understanding that this is a necessary right. Because if not, it's not going to happen. In other words, the message needs to go into homes in the most remote locations of the country. And TV is one of the only ways to do that. Jordana was saying Intrusos helped. But when I asked her about whether we should thank Jorge Rial, she just laughs. I'm not going on record with that. Are you crazy? I have a name. I know what she means. After so many years of awful television and this guy's shenanigans, I just don't want to tip my hat to him. And maybe that's part of his penance. He did something good and no one will ever thank him for it. Jasmine Garsd, she's an NPR reporter. This story was co-produced with Marianne McCune as part of a collaboration with the NPR podcast, Rough Translation. If you have not heard that show, the premise is they look at how things we talk about here in the United States get talked about elsewhere around the world. This leads into all kinds of stories that take you deep into other cultures and countries in this way. This is very unusual. Rough Translation, find it at Apple podcasts or the nine million other places you can get a podcast these days. Coming up, OK, you've heard about good cop, bad cop. But what about a bad cop who now says he's a good cop, and really, really, really, really wants everybody to believe him? That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, Change You Can Maybe Believe In. We have stories where things happen that you want to believe, you wish you could believe, but something tells you maybe you should not believe. We've arrived at Act Two of our program. Act Two, You Have The Right To Remain Angry. This story is about a man whose job was to uphold the law and he was terrible at it. He says he's changed though, completely changed. Lilly Sullivan, one of our producers, heard about him from some video she saw. There's this news story. I've watched it a bunch of times, my friend sent it to me. Not because she thought I'd like it-- she knew I wouldn't. It all went down on this block in Benton Harbor, Michigan. Jameel McGee says he was minding his own business when a police officer accused him of, and arrested him for, dealing drugs. Are you saying the officer made it up? Yeah, it was all made up. This was on CBS national news in 2016. The guy talking, who got framed, is black. The cop who framed him is white. So after it comes out that the guy had been wrongly convicted he gets out of prison. He'd been in for three years. And he gets this job at a coffee shop. You know who his boss is? The cop, the guy who framed him. He was now the manager there. By sheer coincidence, they now work side by side in the same cafe. Excuse me? And it was in these cramped quarters that the bad cop and the wrongfully accused had no choice but to have it out. The cop apologized, and the guy who was framed forgave him. That was pretty much what I needed to hear. Today, they're not only cordial, they're friends. The reporter couldn't stop fawning over how lovely it was. Such close friends, not long ago, Jameel actually told Andrew he loved him. The problem with this story was, it wasn't the whole story. When my friend sent it to me, she told me the cop, whose name is Andrew Collins, he didn't just put one innocent guy in prison. I Googled this cop and it turns out he falsified police reports and warrants. He lied on the stand. At least 62 cases were either overturned or got thrown out. The small town of Benton Harbor ended up having to pay five and a half million dollars in settlements for civil rights violations. Then he befriends one guy and all that goes away? None of the other 61 victims even gets a mention? And then he gets to go on TV and tell his story over and over, because annoyingly, America seems to love this kind of story of forgiveness. This involves my next guest, Jameel, and former police officer, Andrew. That's talk show host, Steve Harvey. And here's Megyn Kelly on NBC. Now our series, "Hopeful Holidays," and the story of two men who prove there is always hope for forgiveness and redemption. Mike Huckabee on Fox. I don't know of anything more powerful to help us through not only forgiveness and grace, but also racial reconciliation. And God bless you both. Racial reconciliation-- really? That's pretty big, as if this one story could hit Undo on a whole country's worth of harm. These stories are always about people who forgive, preaching this forgiveness thing as some kind of tidy remedy that can set the world right. And clearly, if these two guys in the coffee shop can set aside their bitter grounds, what's our excuse? Look, I'm not from this town. This had nothing to do with me. But I wondered if lots of people there saw this coverage and rolled their eyes. What about the people who don't forgive? Visit Benton Harbor. They're not hard to find. Fuck him. Fuck him. I'm serious. I'm good. This is Robert Walker, also known as White Boy Rob. Why do they call you White Boy Rob? Because my mom's white. You don't look white. Why, thank you. I met him at his house. Or the truth is, I surprised him at his house. I found him in his backyard, riding his lawnmower in his sweatpants. Rob's definitely noticed that no one's doing a TV story about how he feels about this cop. When they went to the Steve Harvey show, why you ain't take me? You ain't take me because I was going to tell you the motherfucking truth. You-- you hyping up this big thing about one person forgiving you. That ain't the only person that you fucked over. That's not-- and it pisses me off that, you know, y'all kissing buddy buddies, but what about everybody else that you done in? What about everybody else? Rob says Collins was so corrupt that people would do all kinds of things just to stay out of his way. For a while, one of the local radio stations, 105.3, would warn people whenever Collins was on duty. This one time, they did a special show-- call in and tell us your Corrupt Collins story. So one day, Rob's at a stoplight and he sees Collins in the lane next to him. I was on M139 in Pipestone. I was in a black Impala SS. This is actually like a race car. He was next to me in a Ford Taurus, which is a putt-putt to me. Then when I was at the stop light, I looked over at him. He looked over at me. And then when I turned, he just jumped straight behind me. At this point, I'm thinking that he's going to plant some drugs on me. Collins throws on his lights and sirens. And Rob's like, I'm not stopping. Instead, he says, he just keeps driving, under the speed limit with Collins following him, lights and sirens on. Rob drives for four minutes like this, all the way to the police station, the only place he thinks he might be safe. I went to the police station and told them, he want to search my car. Could you please watch him so he won't plant nothing in my car? What did they say to you? Nothing. They watched. They watched him search. They knew. They knew he was dirty. I mean, come on, what guy is going to pull up to the police station, get arrested, and the whole time, I'm not worried about nothing? I'm just worried about him planting something. Y'all watch him and make sure he don't plant nothing. Rob went to jail that day. Not for drugs-- Collins didn't find any. But he arrested Rob anyway for fleeing and eluding. Rob didn't do much time, a couple of days, bonded out $3,000. But he did get convicted. In Michigan, fleeing and eluding is a felony. It's still on his record. This other guy, Quacy Roberts, suffered more. In 2008, Quacy was leaving his girlfriend's house, hot summer day, when Collins and his partner pulled up. The partner said he'd seen Quacy throw something. Collins patted Quacy down while his partner walked around the block. The partner came back and waved a baggie of crack in Quacy's face. Quacy says it wasn't his, but he ended up serving a year in jail. It was a terrible year to be in jail. He and his girlfriend were about to have a baby. The baby didn't make it. When you have a stillborn, it's really a person. You got to go through all those stages, name it, get a social security number and everything. You got to go through everything. It's a person. You got to bury it. He still thinks about the baby. Yes, because he was mine. Quacy couldn't be with his girlfriend for any of that. He had to hear about it through the prison phone. Not long after that, his girlfriend met someone else. So he's pretty angry at Collins. Quacy's seen those news stories too. His mom called him once and told him to turn on the Megyn Kelly show, one of those stories with Andrew Collins and Jameel McGee, the guy who forgave him. It's good that McGee smiling about everything. He must didn't lose nobody. He blessed. I guess he blessed. He's blessed? Yeah, I guess he did four years and didn't lose nobody. I did a year and lost a son. So I'm-- I think an Andrew Collins interview with me would be-- I won't be showing no teeth for grinning at him. Maybe if I wouldn't have lost my child, maybe I'd be smiling too. Quacy hasn't seen Collins since he went to jail, so Quacy never got an apology. But he thinks he deserves one. I asked if he wanted to meet with Collins. He said yeah. It was easier to find Collins. He actually has a publicist from when he and Jameel wrote a book together. It came out last year. It's described as "an unlikely journey of forgiveness and friendship." Collins is big-- 6'1", blue eyes, dresses like a surfer who's also on the football team, who's also in a Christian punk band-- flip-flops, shorts, a few tattoos, some with scripture. These days, he freely admits that he'd pull people over without probable cause, write phony police reports, falsify warrants, plant drugs in people's cars. I think one of the ways he's able to sleep at night is that he believes nearly all the people he wrongly arrested were drug dealers. He thought they should be in jail. And about those TV stories, I was surprised, but Collins actually agrees with me. He thinks it's messed up how they all focus on him and Jameel and forgiveness and ignore the harm he did to so many people in the community. It's not a story about a community, though. It should be, but it hasn't been. It's been told as a story about Jameel and I, just this fun-loving story, this fun, cute story we can pet. But I don't-- I've never met a reporter that's like, I would like to meet somebody who still hates you. I'm happy to be that reporter. And he said he was game to meet with Quacy. He sees as his responsibility to apologize as much as he can. It's his restitution, he says. And he has a whole way he deals with conversations like this. He's worked out all the words, the best way to do it. It's all about owning what you did and giving people a chance to lament the wrong things you did. And then I'll say, you're exactly-- you're absolutely right. I'm so sorry for those things I did. And it-- it kind of sucks the anger out of somebody when the offender is standing right in front of you saying, you're right. No, no justification, no minimizing, no-- no reason. I can't give you any reason why I did it. There's no good reason why I did that to you, and I owe you an apology. Collins suggested that he and Quacy meet at the office of this Christian organization where he volunteers. It had been 10 years since they'd seen each other. What's up, man? What's going on with you? How you doing? Long time no see. You haven't aged a bit, man. No, I have haven't. What they say, black don't crack? No, it crack. Especially if you drink a whole lot. Right. No, man, you look good. I'm not used to seeing you without a hat, though. Oh, yeah. You is what you is. There you go. There you go. You guys remember each other now? Yeah. I remember like it was yesterday. They sit down. Collins says, I'm trying to remember exactly how I know you. I know we've had plenty of run-ins. I don't want to say that, like, from the beginning. Like, so it's been 10 years since I've even been there. So if I don't remember specifics, like, that's not to disrespect you or anything like that, because I know this was very personal to you. It's just that I don't remember. There was so many people and I did so many bad things, so. I'll start to make it specific, because I still have the police report. They talk about the day that Collins and his partner arrested Quacy. Collins' partner was dirty, too. He went to prison after Collins did. And he's actually the one who said he saw Quacy throw the baggie of drugs, which Quacy says he didn't do. Collins says he remembers going back to the spot later to take photos for the trial and realizing his partner was probably lying. He couldn't have seen what he said he saw. There were trees in the way. So I remember thinking then, like, OK, my partner might have stretched the truth a little bit. But I still was convinced you were guilty because he said you were guilty, right? So-- It's what the police say. I know I wanted you, though. I know I wanted you to be guilty. Why? Quacy bothered me when I was a police officer, because he didn't-- he didn't just shut up. Like, he'd tell me my breath stunk, and-- I'd never-- Quacy thought Collins had gotten off way too easy for what he did. He only spent a year and a half in jail. Colin says he hears that a lot. I think there are some people that would say, day for day, whatever those other people did in jail, he should have to do that now-- day for day. Right. That would have sounded good. That would have been fair. Like whatever, you can set it by saying, one person got two to five. Another person got 40-something months to something months. Take all them, add all of them together, and see can you face up to them? Bad mofo, ooh. Yeah, yeah, that'd be appropriate. Yeah. I'm glad it didn't happen. But I could see that argument. Yeah. A lot of the conversation was awkward. Collins took a long time to get to his apology, and when he did, it was kind of indirect. It seems like Quacy barely even noticed. Even though I wasn't the one that said I saw you throw it, it was my influence in that situation that brought my partner to a place where he felt comfortable saying those lies, if they were lies, right? So therefore, I do owe you an- I believe, man to man, I owe you an apology because I operated in the system that's broken. And I helped make it-- So what you-- --even more broken. So what you saying is, you could have just been more blunt like that. What got to Quacy more than the apology was something that they saw eye to eye on, and kind of bonded over. For most of the hour, they talked about how bad the policing is in Benton Harbor. Benton Harbor is 85% black with a police department that's mostly white that has a history of misconduct. There have been decades of protests against the police and a few riots. Collins has named names in court depositions, talked about how many officers were complicit in bad policing. He spends a lot of his book detailing illegal behavior by cops that he says he witnessed and participated in. He talks to police trainees about corruption and racism and how easy it is to slip into those things. So he and Quacy got into all of that. They know the same stories, same cops and judges and prosecutors, people they both believe to be crooked who never got caught. There's lots of insider talk. Right. You see Officer [BLEEP] on film. I'm telling them, I want to subpoena Officer [BLEEP]. Oh, we can't find him. We don't know where he at. Yeah. He still works there, don't he? Right. That's crazy, man. Different officer, same candy wrapper. But the system itself is-- man, it's just full of corruption. You know, you see corruption day in and day out. You stop viewing people as human. You start to see them as, you know, the next prize, the next notch in my belt, in my career, right? Collins really was trying to connect and win Quacy over. He even offered to help Quacy with a case he has pending. You want me to take a copy of the report? Well, I mean, if you want to, give me the report. Let me look through it. Trust. I'm not a lawyer, but I've seen crooked police work before. Let me look through it and just show you like, hey, fight this, fight this, fight this. They seem to get along fine. They were polite enough. Quacy seemed like, whatever. An ex-cop who says he's on your side? It can't hurt. After it was over, I walked with Quacy to his car. So how are you feeling? I'm feeling all right. You're not mad at him? How can you get mad to a person that we ain't even at the bottom of the situation yet? Meaning, Collins didn't invent dirty policing, but he admitted to it. Collins confirmed everything Quacy already believed about the courts and prosecutors and judges, and about the Benton Harbor police who usually deny everything. But by us talking, we find out, 10 years later, that he on the same page that I'm on, fighting against the same people that I'm fighting against. He looking at the police point of view in the system. I'm looking at the street point of view of the system. So both of us looking at it both ways, his way and my way. And I'm looking at it my way and his way. Rob Walker, who used to be known as White Boy Rob, he sees things differently. At this point in my life, if he did apologize, it don't mean shit. Honestly? I just want one chance to whoop his ass. As I said, he didn't want to talk with Collins. But he told me they did bump into each other accidentally. It's a small town. It happened at that cafe from the news story. So when I see him, I said-- I said, Collins. And he looked. And when he looked at me, I said, man, you've been on some bullshit. He want to talk about how that ain't him no more. Well, I told him, I don't want any of that shit. That don't help me. It don't help me that you want to-- all of the sudden you want to change. Oh, let me ask you-- I'm going to be totally honest with you. Did he understand that I changed? He'd changed a lot. Back when Collins arrested him, he'd been away from drugs for years. Everyone knew that, he says. He even put on his license plate, game over. And it was on his car that day that Collins pulled him over. Rob's gotten plaques from the city for his community work. He started an annual picnic with free rides and food, paid for it all out of pocket. But he still has a felony on his record from that run-in with Collins. So why should I understand he changed? I shouldn't. I should get to treat you the same way you treat me. You never understood that I changed, that that wasn't my life no more. Now that you claiming that you changed, I feel the same way. You still a dirty motherfucker to me. I don't care what did you say. If Collins had a chance to do it all over again, he'd do it all over again. Dirty cop-- he was a dirty cop, he is. And to me, that forgiveness shit is overrated. A takeaway which, of course, is the opposite of all of those news stories. Is there a lesson for America from this? No. The story of someone who doesn't forgive, who thinks being angry is a totally reasonable way to feel. Yeah, maybe it's not heartwarming. But what's wrong with bearing a grudge forever? It could be something to hold onto that keeps you sane. Lilly Sullivan is one of the producers of our show. (SINGING) To make you want me I can fabricate the truth. I'll give you easy, it'll keep me destitute. You hang me up on the line, hang me out to dry, and you got nothing to lose. Our program is produced today by Robyn Semien. The people who put together our show today include Ellen Baker, Ben Calhoun, Zoe Chace, Sean Cole, Whitney Dangerfield, Neil Drumming, Jarrett Floyd, Damien Grave, David Kestenbaum, Nikki Meek, Alvin Mellot, Nadia Raymond, Alyssa Ship, Julie Snyder, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney. Our senior producer is Brian Reed. Our managing editor is Susan Burton. Special thanks to Carolina Iwanow, Louise Seamster, Paz Saravia, Laura Rajchman, Barbara Barisch, Naomi Daremblum, Joanna Broder, Reverend Edward Pinkney, Gregory Warner, Ashley Lopez, and Ben Philpott. Our website, thisamericanlife.org, where you can listen to our archive of over 600 episodes for absolutely free. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, he was complaining today about how he'd gotten two tickets-- two, both for littering. Different officer, same candy wrapper. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
This reporter named Eric Mennel told me this thing a little while back that I found totally fascinating, knew nothing about at all. Eric was raised as an evangelical in Florida and works these days at Gimlet Media. And he's been reporting on this one part of the Christian world for a while. There's this whole Christian version of Silicon Valley, only instead of, like, creating apps and tech products, what the Christian world is trying to do is use the tools of Silicon Valley to create churches. They'll call them church startups or church plants. And so what are some of the tools that they use that are the same? It kind of runs the gamut, right? If you can find it in Silicon Valley, it probably exists somewhere in the church planting world. So for example, there are boot camps, where, for maybe three or five days of your time, you can go and learn everything that you need to learn in order to start a new church. Mhm. They have these big incubators, right? Like, there's one in New York City, where, over the course of two years, you'll come to get this product off the ground-- this product, of course, being your church. And the same way that tech companies are obsessed with their origin stories-- one thing you hear a lot is how they've gotten their start in garages-- church plants have their own origin stories. Over two decades ago, my wife, Amy, and I started Life Church in what was then a little two-car garage. That's from a video off one of these churches' websites. They also have conferences. We're going to go ahead and get started. Glad you're here. We'll give you one minute. Kind of our background-- So this is a session at the biggest church planting conference in the country. It happens every year in Orlando. It's called Exponential. It's sort of the TechCrunch Disrupt of church planting. So we ease-- again, our goal, our target, is unchurched people, high-conversion growth rate. So we're targeting them. So we're easing them in to the process of church. Now, there's two gathering models, if you will. So this sounds so jargony-- like, high-conversion growth rate means they're trying to convert non-church people into church people? Yeah. It's really interesting. You actually kind of see this, like, blending of techy jargon with Christian jargon in this world. Like, in this particular seminar, they talk about "kingdom return on investment." Or "evangelistic networking" is one I've read, or "corporate renewal dynamics." "Launch" is a big word that they use in both worlds. They talk about "launch Sundays" and "launch budgets" in church planting. And the framing of what they're doing is in business terms, right? This is a story about-- This is from a website from one of the gurus of this movement. His name is Tim Keller. I've actually heard one pastor call him the Yoda of church planting. Uh-huh. He founded this incredibly successful church in New York City called Redeemer Presbyterian church. And it's also formed its own church planting organization called Redeemer City to City. So this is a video about planting more churches in New York City, and it's described entirely through business terms. In 1989, New York was the least religious city in America. Less than 1% of center-city New Yorkers attended a gospel teaching church. Today, that number is 5%. These are their own numbers, by the way. And in the video, a dot is moving up the graph. We are launching a 10-year vision to see the body of Christ in New York rise from 5% to 15%. That means tripling by 2026. And here's the thing. We think that just might represent a tipping point-- a tipping point of gospel saturation that does more than just-- OK, so in the tech world, the investors are these VC firms, Venture Capital firms. What's the equivalent in this world? So a lot of the startup capital comes from the biggest denominations. The Southern Baptists-- they spend tens of millions of dollars a year on church planting. But a lot of church plants actually get their funding directly from megachurches-- established churches that have thousands of members. They view it as their mission to launch new, successful churches. And how long has this been happening? Church planting, in its modern form, started about 20 or 30 years ago. And they came about to solve what is basically a business problem. Since the 1970s, the number of people who've said they are going to church at least once a week has dropped 40%, according to the best data on this. That's from the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. And it's been especially bad among young people in their late teens and 20s. The percentage of 20-somethings who claim no religious affiliation has doubled since 1996. Wow. Yeah, from 20% to almost 40%. And these churches have recognized that without young people, they simply cannot survive. So they wanted to get nonbelievers coming to church. And to do that, what they've tried to do is disrupt the way evangelical church is usually done. So they'll meet in weird, lean, hipper spaces. They'll have better music. And has that worked? Yeah, it's worked. When you look at church attendance, one of the only groups that aren't seeing drastically falling numbers are evangelicals-- the group that has focused most seriously on church planting. And Eric, you are here today to tell this story. You have spent months following somebody who's trying to attract funders and start one of these church plant startup churches. Yes, yes. His name is Watson Jones III. Watson is 34. He's bald. He has a clean beard and thick-rimmed glasses. He grew up going to a traditional Baptist Church on the south side of Chicago. And he knew that he wanted to start a church, even since he was a teenager. So he did all the things you're supposed to do to become a pastor. He went to seminary. He got a master's in divinity. And from the beginning, he had a real gift for preaching. This is from a sermon he gave while he was still in training. Remember growing up on the south side of Chicago, and my daddy was teaching me how to ride a bike. Your parents ever walked alongside of you while you riding that bike? And I remember, we were going down the street, and I saw some girls on the porch. Oh, yeah. You know, when you see them girls on the porch, you got to get it together. Can't have your parent holding your hand now. You got to straighten up and fly right. I said, Daddy, get your hands off the handlebars, man. I got this. And it didn't take me too long to get to a point where I realized, I never learned how to balance myself without my daddy's help. Here it is-- some of us are busy slapping Jesus' hands off the handlebars of our life. There are many of us-- And Watson really knew nothing about the church planting world until a friend clued him into some of this, told him about a boot camp that Watson then attended. But Watson didn't understand it was this entire movement-- not until he went to a conference. This was in 2013. He went to that big conference in Orlando, Exponential. It was eye opening. It was really exciting to him. Some of what I was seeing was so new to me. It was so different. They were wearing skinny jeans and they looked real cool. And I felt like, in my background, we still wearing suits. And I felt like people in those conferences were talking about things that helped relate with people who were not used to going to church. I felt like they were on the cutting edge. I believed that the only people who were effective were church planters. And the rest of these churches, that they need to close, or they need to adapt to all of that. He did notice something else when he was there at the conference, something that was also very similar to Silicon Valley. There were at least 4,000 in the room. And I saw a lot of white people. You know, I'd be the only black in the room, because it wasn't really a black thing more than it was a white evangelical thing. That's true in general for this movement. In the United States, it's mostly white evangelicals doing this. And they're mostly planting churches in the suburbs, or affluent or gentrifying areas in cities. So Watson wanted to do things the way these white church planters were doing them. But he wanted to fill the church with people like him-- people of color who lived in the inner city. And that difference was, to use tech world language, his competitive advantage. That was the thing that set him apart from thousands of other evangelicals looking for investors. I saw myself practically dancing between two lines-- between the white church and the black church. I danced in the black church because it was my identity, but danced in the evangelical world because that's where a lot of financial partners were. And so, as you're about to hear, Watson jumps into it, like a proper pastoral entrepreneur, to build his church. And some of what that involves is not so different from starting any business, of course. And some of it is very particular to bringing people to God. It's a funny mix where you are taking charge of things, right? You're marching to this future like you can make a difference, while all along, there's this weird powerlessness to it. Like, at some point, no matter what you do, no matter how hard you work, how hard you think about it, people either show up or they don't show up. Either they love your thing or they don't love your thing. It's like that saying from Field of Dreams-- if you build it, they will come. The real-life version of that usually has a question mark at the end of it. If you build it, will they come? Today on our show, we have stories about people building stuff and wondering exactly that. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. And we're just going to jump right in with Act One. Part of what's impressive about the church planting world is how thoroughly it tries to prepare its pastors for what's ahead. When he was first getting started, Watson enrolled in this sort of boot camp called Fellowship Associates. They flew him to Arkansas every two weeks for a few days to train. They teach you everything, from fundraising, to developing a core team, to writing a philosophy of ministry, which is basically a business prospectus, to crafting a budget, to funding the budget, to managing donors, to gathering people around a vision and an idea. Fellowship Associates set Watson up with a year-and-a-half-long residency at a church plant like the one he wanted to create in a poor neighborhood in North Philadelphia, where Watson learned the nuts and bolts of a daily church operation. One of the main things to accomplish during the residency was working out a business plan. And I mean that literally-- a business plan, a clear idea for his church that he could pitch to raise money, with a clear, simple mission. We want to create a church that will seek to reach people who don't know Jesus Christ or who are not a part of a church. Part one of the pitch-- location. He'd stick with his vision to serve the kind of neighborhood church planters don't usually go into. For decades, when church painters went into urban neighborhoods, they usually picked gentrifying ones or wealthier ones. Watson chose an area on Philly's northwest side that was not gentrifying. It was mostly black, mostly low income. I am a product of the South Side of Chicago. My whole life has been living and navigating as a black Chicagoan on the South Side. That was core to me. So I really wanted to target the thoroughly urban Philadelphian, to engage people who Jesus would engage. Jesus was willing to be associated with prostitutes and with tax collectors. I had the idea of whosoever, we'll let them come. Whoever wants to be a part of our church can be a part of our church. Then I also wanted to be able to reach people that were in my age group initially-- at the time, I was 28, 29, 30-- and then also trying to reach older people-- my mother's generation, which is a little more stable, so-- So that was part one of the pitch-- location. Part two of the pitch-- the building, or lack thereof. They wouldn't have a building. This is a strategy that had been really successful for planting churches elsewhere, in well-off or gentrifying neighborhoods. They don't meet in an actual church. The idea is that the church buildings carry a lot of cultural baggage. They can be stodgy and uncomfortable. So to get away from all that, and as a sort of hack to save money early on, church plants will scrap the building. In most places, this is church planting 101. I said, man, churches spend too much time focusing on a building. And they put so much money into a building. So early, early, early on, I wasn't thinking anything about owning a building. He figured they could meet in a coffee shop, or a bookstore, or something, even his living room. And finally, part three of the pitch-- a business partner. No, OK, I'm going to give you a picture of myself at this point, OK? You ready? This is AJ Smith. I'm this white kid with dreadlocks all the way down my back, with a scraggly beard, wearing moccasins with holes in them, pants that have been patched up a million times, flannels ripped up. Now, AJ, a good day for him is to go sit in the mountains and just sit there by himself. That's a good day for him. That's kind of how he dressed. Crunchy dude. Yeah, no, yeah. But he was a nice guy. AJ actually brought a lot more than just worn-out moccasins to the table. He was training at a church nearby to plant a church in the inner city. He's 31 now, and he had grown up in a church plant. He'd gone to seminary. He'd run a homeless ministry. Once you got past the dreadlocks, AJ seemed like a great number-two guy. And he was fired up to help make Watson's vision a reality. I really believe strongly in submitting to African-American leadership, if you're in a largely minority setting-- or minority leadership, even. So I'm this white guy. So I say, yeah, man. I love the idea of, like-- I want to be in the inner city. I want to plant churches. Let me spend some time under you and just helping you do your thing. Talked with my wife. We were like, yeah. I like it. Let's do it. We prayed about it. And we felt like it was what the lord wanted. It was going to be called Restoration Church. Watson didn't have the direct connections to megachurches who might help fund Restoration. But he'd heard about some people who did-- a church planting network called Orchard Group. Orchard is this middleman organization. They help connect church plants to established churches that have a lot of money. Orchard Group is very selective. Of the thousands of people planting churches every year, about 100 apply with them, and the network only supports three or four. Watson called the president of the network directly. And before even putting in a formal application, they were excited about his vision. So in 2013, Restoration Church became one of the few churches they supported. They helped line up a good chunk of startup capital-- in total, about $100,000 per year for three years. Most of that was just going to cover his salary and half of AJ's. The reason for the three-year funding terms is that surveys of new churches show, if a church plant isn't sustainable after three years, it will likely never be sustainable. And nobody wants to sink their money into a failing church. And so, with their seed funding in place, the countdown started. It was April 2014, and Watson and AJ had three years to get this church off the ground, to attract enough people to become self-sustaining. Initially, they just wanted people to come to a once-a-week Bible study at Watson's home. So the first thing they did was try to drum up interest the old-fashioned way-- through outreach on the streets in the neighborhood. Early on, man, me and AJ were out on corners, passing out coffee, free coffee, on bus stops. We would make signs. We'd go to the community days. We'd go to volunteer at elementary schools. We passed out water. We would have our team standing on crowded corners in the hot summer. We were handing out Blow Pops to people. This is Leah Smith, AJ's wife. And I think we put a little message on them-- let the love of God blow you away-- so corny. So corny. But we were trying to get people. It kind of felt like anything could happen at any moment. So as we meet with people, we're going to ask, hey, man, who are three to four people you think would be interested in this? And we met a ton of people, a lot of people. We prayed for and prayed with a lot of people. Over the course of just a few months, they had conversations with hundreds of people. And occasionally, some of them would take down Watson's address and show up to the Bible study. Any time a new person would come, it was like, ah, this is exciting! This is great! We had interest from all kinds of people-- people who didn't go to church, people who did go to church were very interested in us, because we looked different. And they liked us. They liked our spirit. For the most part, people were very receptive, and even, I'd say, very respectful of the ministry and what we were trying to do, and were very appreciative. But it didn't translate. We largely were not successful at getting people to come to our outreaches. It was a major disappointment. Man, I probably gained 20 pounds that year alone. It was extremely stressful. It felt like the outreaches were missing the mark. The goal had always been to reach people who weren't served by other churches, who weren't going to church. But by the end of six months, it was clear-- the people showing up, for the most part, were already church people coming from other churches. And they realized, maybe one of their basic premises was wrong. Something that other church plants always did, something that worked in the suburbs, was not working here. I think, in retrospect, what probably hurt us is, the thing to bring them to was a Bible study in my house. The first thing they'd ask me is, where is your church? Oh, well, we meet in my house. And one lady told me-- she said, you guys are a cult. You call me when you get a church. Especially, I think, among black people, the more out of the box or avant garde you are, the less likely you are to be trusted. Theologically, we say all day long, the church is the people of God. The people in your city, in your neighborhood, does not understand church apart from a building, a preacher, a choir or a praise team, and something that looks like a church service, period. That was really a gut check to us, because that was our-- that was plan A. And we weren't really sure what plan B was. Plan A was the outreaches? Yeah. I mean, we were going to be the people who were out there on the streets, pastors who were very much present with the people. And that's how we'll grow the church. That didn't work. Hm. Why not? I think people have been to church. I think people have done church. And I think people don't have great experiences with church. And because of that, I think the last thing people want to do is waste a day, in their mind, of the weekend coming to church. Yeah. I love what you all are doing, but you know-- OK, maybe I'll come by sometime. They ain't coming to church. They've been to church. Their uncle started a church 20 years ago, and they had to go sit through three hours on a Sunday morning, couldn't wait to get out of there. They couldn't wait till they were 18, and they didn't have to go to church anymore. This is perhaps where planting a church is most different from starting a company. It is very hard to get someone to try a new app. But what Watson was attempting seems even harder-- to get someone to try something they've already tried and rejected, and then to readjust their whole way of understanding the universe and their feelings about God, and to start going to church, and to help fund that church. It's exactly the problem the church planting movement is supposed to solve, and does solve in lots of new churches. But the way most church planters usually solve this problem is to make church feel more relevant, meet in weirder spaces, like warehouses or coffee shops. There are church plants in breweries. The music in a typical church plant does not sound like the music in a traditional church. There are electric guitars with lots of effects on them. If they sing hymns, they're done in a style more like Mumford and Sons than Mozart. (SINGING) And I will-- This is a church plant worship service where they're literally just playing Mumford and Sons. And I got to say, the lyrics, "I will wait for you," land very differently when you're thinking about the rapture. (SINGING) I will wait. I will wait for you. I will wait. I will wait-- These churches are intentionally made to feel like going to a concert, not like going to church. There are professional lighting systems, and even smoke machines in some cases. But the thing about relevancy is that it's relative. A lot of that stuff-- the lights, the music-- it was designed by white people for white people. What Watson and AJ were finding was that, in an African-American context in northwest Philly, those things don't necessarily feel relevant. So nine months in, Watson and AJ decided to scrap a key part of their business plan, one of the things that was going to make their church so different. And that's the part about having no building. They decided to reboot and to hold regular weekly services in a building, like the neighborhood seemed to want. They did two preview services-- preview services are a kind of beta test for the church-- in a banquet hall. They wanted to pick a space that didn't carry any of the negative connotations and baggage of a traditional church. But it was maybe a bit of an overcorrection. We went to this place called Temptations. And we went to Temptations-- Wait, it's called Temptations? Yeah, yeah, we-- yeah, we made all kind of jokes about that. Yeah, Temptations. The first time we went there, they just had trash everywhere-- hair weaves, and bras, and open bottles, and-- Wait, there were literally, like, bras? Yeah, yeah. We saw two bras, just on the floor, while trying to set our own stuff up. So next, they tried an elementary school cafeteria. That's where they moved out of beta and held their first-ever regular Sunday service. In the church planting world, it's called launch Sunday. And it's a huge deal for a church plant-- a sort flag-on-the-moon moment saying, we are here to stay. It was March 2015, 11 months after they started, just about two years left on the countdown clock. They put out the word on Facebook, on flyers. They told family and friends. And then they prayed. Were you nervous before? Very, yeah. Very nervous, yes. What was going through your mind? What if no one comes? Why would they come? There was a guy I knew who had launched a church. And every week, it decreased until, like, a month later, it didn't exist anymore. So in my mind, I'm like, well, what if that's me? What do I tell these donors who gave a lot of money to this? And what will I tell my wife? What will I tell my family? All of that. Amen. You may be seated in the presence of the lord. Watson woke up on the morning of March 22, 2015. He put on his brown corduroy pants, and a blue patterned shirt, and a white cardigan. And at 11:00 AM, he stepped up to the podium in front of more than 100 cafeteria chairs. And he started to pray. Lord, while we use technical terms of launching, and all of that stuff, Lord, we don't want any of all of this to stand in the way of you getting glory and you getting honor. What did the launch look like? How many people were there? Man, I think it might have been maybe 150, maybe more. Wow. Yeah. That must have been huge. That must have felt really great. It did. I cried, actually. And I'm not really a public crier. But I cried that day. Really? Yeah. Why? Well, partly because I was surprised. When you have a launch, there's a gamble, man. And the deepest fear is, no one comes. And the fact that I walked in, and there were-- it was a lot of people there. I wanted to talk about this, because I need to define, why are we starting a church in a city of churches? You can drive down the street and you can see 10 of them on one block. There's a street not far from here where you can count five of them on one block. And it's simply to say this. You can't have too many, number one. But number two, we are being sent-- we, as the Church of Restoration, are being sent to represent the reconciler. Amen. Can we give the Lord praise one more time for His word going forth this morning? Amen. Yeah, we maxed out. We absolutely-- we had standing room in the-- it was standing room in the back. We completely maxed out. And it was like, OK this is great. So when I saw those people, I was like, OK, this is going to be like a regular church-type thing-- see you next week. Leah Smith again, AJ's wife. I wasn't thinking about it at that time, Eric. I wasn't thinking about church planting-- you kind of start small, and then you grow, and then you grow, and then you grow. I wasn't anticipating that, in the weeks to follow, the numbers would drop so harshly. The next week, only about 60 people showed up, fewer than half the launch. And then the next week was about the same, maybe even a little fewer. It turns out, a lot of the people who packed the church that first week were friends and family-- people already committed to other churches, but who came out once to show support. And so before long, Watson and AJ were back to the small group of about 30 or 40 people they had pulled in before moving into the building. They were a year and a half into their three-year mission and they were stuck. So they tried new tactics, more direct forms of networking. They went door to door and prayed with people in the neighborhood. They tried getting members to invite their friends to church, rather than just strangers. We would have invite cards. And we would say, listen, let's invite them to church on this day. We had them all on MailChimp. When we had big parties, like a Christmas party, we would email them out. And we would see who read them. Very few people would even open them. Some people would come, visit for a week, maybe two. But they wouldn't stay. We had good follow-up. Like, we always-- me and AJ would hand-write cards to visitors. And there would be people who would comment, like, I love this church, all this other stuff. And they just never-- they would never come back. All these people would visit. Why wouldn't they stay? I don't know. I don't know. There were periods over the next year where attendance was so low, one person told me it felt like the band was playing for itself. The hardest stretches for Watson? Summer months. Summer months is when everybody in Philadelphia went to the shore, you know? Or everybody traveled. And so attendance-wise, man, it felt like someone took a scalpel and cut massive chunks off the church. Those periods were extremely deflating. I mean, they were dark moments. Sometimes, I would battle depression. Most preachers tend to take Monday off, because you tend to be more prone to depression on a Monday, because Sunday, you expend so much of yourself, you know? You're preaching, and then you're talking to people. You're counseling people. You have meetings and all that other stuff. But for a church planter in an urban church struggling to move this thing, it was exponentially worse. You're tired. You're busy. You're lonely. You're burned out. I would wonder, was this God, or was this me? Did God really call me to Philly, or did he not? I felt like quitting, because any church planter I would ever talk to would say that they felt that at some point. Nearly two years went by like this. They'd get up to 60 people, and then they'd drop again. They were coming up on March 2017, their three-year deadline. It's not that you can't plant a church in a neighborhood like this and succeed. The church that Watson was a resident at, run by a pastor named Dr. Eric Mason-- it's nearly 12 years old now, with hundreds of attendees every week. Another preacher, named Doug Logan, has done something similar in Camden, New Jersey. But these guys, the Erics and the Dougs-- they are machines. They are not like normal people. They write books and organize conferences. They have web series. It's exactly the kind of mentality you imagine in a successful startup CEO. Watson was a talented guy with a lot of energy. But he wasn't that. A lot of the times, I felt it was something about me. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. Maybe I'm missing something. This is not happening because you're just not a great leader, or you're not a great preacher, or you're not a great whatever, whatever, whatever. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. On top of all this, Watson and his wife were dealing with all kinds of complicated family stuff. We had a miscarriage before my third child, and that was very painful. We had a diagnosis of autism on my first child. And in that same period, while starting a church, my wife almost died while giving birth to my final child. And all of that was a lot of trauma. I think it probably eventually made me wonder, is my time up? Time was up. The three-year clock ran down. They still had some money coming in from their donors, and they were getting by. But Watson knew, some of those donors were going away. It wasn't going to be enough to pay both him and AJ. So last spring, Watson took a trip back home to Chicago, alone, to see his family. That weekend was Mother's Day weekend, actually. And I was on a layover in Chicago and I got to see my mother, right? And my mother-- it was the first time I had been with her on a Mother's Day for some years-- like, five years. It was so special. And I just started to feel like, man, if I could not go back, I wouldn't go back. I loved my church deeply. But I started to feel like the Lord was saying, it's time. So I talked to my wife about it. And I just said, look, I'm just going to tell you this. Don't get mad at me. But I'm just going to let you know exactly what I'm thinking here. And my wife said to me, you know, Watson, I've been feeling the same way. And then, one Sunday morning last October, Watson got up in front of the congregation of Restoration. And he gave them a sermon that seemed like advice to prepare them for the road ahead. This is the part in your life where you cannot find your way. You don't know to go left. You don't know to go right. You don't know to go up. You don't know to go down. You don't know who to call. You don't know where to go. This is the in-between times. And in-between times, according to the biblical narrative, have the ability to either make you, or they can break you. After the service, he had all the members stay for a meeting, at which point he said he was officially stepping down and they'd be going home to Chicago with his family. Taking over the church, AJ. My first-- my first reaction was no-- like, no, no. AJ's wife, Leah. No, you're not. I mean, majority African-American church. You're white. To be clear, Leah's mother is black. But her father is white and a pastor for majority-black congregations. But, she says, AJ is really, really white. AJ-- he's not submerged in black culture. He's just not. I mean, it just was just weird to me. And I felt a little bit self-conscious about it, and still do. After moving back to Chicago, Watson looked around for another job. And he found himself drawn to exactly what he had been trying to disrupt-- an old church with a few hundred members and lots of years of baggage, Compassion Baptist Church. It was originally incorporated in 1879, two years after the end of Reconstruction. This is a recording from the morning Watson was installed as the new pastor there. He's onstage in a suit. Turns out, the look really works for him. And behind him is the church's choir-- which, alone, is almost as large as Restoration was when Watson left. At the church I'm at, for instance, the church is older than me. It's 138 years old. And my wife and I definitely brought the median age down some when we got there. But it's been interesting to see the life in that church with me being there, the new, young guy. Younger people are starting to come or come back. So it shows me that you can be effective in an established church. But seven years ago, I didn't believe that. Seven or eight years ago, I didn't believe that at all. Some of those churches, man, survived the civil rights movement. Some of those churches brought black people in these cities through hellacious times. And then I, this little 26, 27, 28-year-old guy who just got a master's degree, wet behind the ears, I got the audacity to stand and critique something that's been around longer than me? Yeah. So my thoughts on that have changed. When Watson looks back at what went wrong at Restoration, there's a mix of things he comes back to. Partly, he thinks, it was him. He was a guy from Chicago trying to reach native Philadelphians. He had a big personality, but the planting process drained a lot of that out of him. But the real problem was probably their original premise-- to buck the conventional wisdom and locate in a neighborhood that wasn't gentrifying. People were already settled, stable. Now, Watson realizes just how much harder that made things. His intention was pure, but he didn't understand the difficulty of what he was setting out to do. If you want something to grow and be self-sustaining, this was not the place to do it. And the rest of the church gets that now. After Watson left, Restoration moved into a new neighborhood, one more in transition. And they bought a building. They're learning from their mistakes-- or anyway, they hope they are. Eric Mennel-- he tells the story of what happens after AJ takes over the church and moves it to a different area. That is the new season of the podcast StartUp. You can find StartUp at Apple Podcasts or gimletmedia.com, or wherever it is that you get your podcasts. Coming up, another newcomer arrives into a neighborhood. But instead of trying to get people to pray, her goal was simpler. She just wants them to drink. But attracting sinners can be just as tricky as attracting saints. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme and bring you different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show, If You Build It, Will They Come? Stories of people working and trying their hardest to create something, making mistakes they never thought could be mistakes. We've arrived at Act Two of our program-- Act Two, Hole in the Wall. So one of our coworkers here at the radio show, Neil Drumming, enjoys a drink now and then. And since he moved into his neighborhood a few years ago, he has visited just about every bar there, except one. He has stayed away. He'll explain why. And just a quick heads up here in the podcast that this story has some people in it who do not go to church, and we have un-beeped their ungodly cursing here in the podcast version of the show. If you want a beeped version-- maybe you're listening with kids, maybe you were interviewed in the first half of the program-- that version is at our website. Here's Neil. Last year, this restaurant in my neighborhood got into a lot of trouble with the locals. Summerhill, the restaurant, sits at the northeast corner of St. Marks and Nostrand Avenue in Crown Heights, a rapidly gentrifying area in Brooklyn. Basically, what happened was, in July of 2017, just after Summerhill opened to the public, the restaurant's owner, a white woman from Canada named Becca Brennan, put out a press release touting a few of her new venture's more unique characteristics-- surf club vibe, massive accordion window, and then, oddly, a quote, "bullet hole-ridden wall." The release stated, yes, that bullet hole-ridden wall was originally there. And yes, we're keeping it. In an interview with the website Gothamist, Brennan suggested that this interior wall, speckled with paint and cracked plaster, was left over from a rumored back-room illegal gun shop. Brennan also told the reporter that Summerhill would be serving something called 40-ounce wine in paper bags. This kind of thing happens so much in gentrifying Brooklyn that it's hardly notable anymore. Some trendy eatery, bar, or boutique flower shop will open where there used to be an old record store or a Caribbean takeout joint. And the owners will keep the crumbling facade, a faded sign, or a rusty light fixture visible, as if to say, hey, we love what used to be here. We're not here to change the neighborhood. We just want to be a part of it. But in this case, Becca Brennan was indulging a bit of dark urban fantasy. The holes in the wall in question were not bullet holes, but actually anchor points for one of those big commercial refrigerators you find in any bodega. Summerhill had been completely remodeled from an old corner store that had once stood in that location. Gothamist immediately ran a story about Summerhill's launch that included the interview with Brennan and a quote from a member of the Crown Heights Tenants Union accusing her of profiting from the neighborhood's unfortunate history of violence. TV news outlets and other websites, like Eater, picked up the story. And the next thing you know-- You ain't gonna take some motherfucking pain! --there was an angry mob standing outside Summerhill, protesting. You not gonna take our pain and make it a novelty! She said, "You're not going to take our pain and make it a novelty." This is from a video shot by Gothamist in July of last year. There were a lot of different kinds of people in the crowd outside of Summerhill, mostly young, presumably new to the neighborhood, certainly not all black. But the woman standing on the chair, yelling, is black. And when she shouts, "You're not going to take our pain and make it a novelty," she's talking about the pain of a predominantly African-American community that has long struggled with gun violence. I'd been living in Crown Heights less than a couple of years when this all went down. But when I moved here, one of the things I noticed were the signs-- the actual signs posted in storefronts near my apartment counting the days since the last shooting incident. Becca Brennan had chosen to make light of an issue that many people in the area took very seriously. And when a community meeting was called a month later to discuss it, what she said to the group just made things worse. She downplayed how much she'd talked about the bullet holes. People would come in and say, are you keeping that wall? And I was-- I said yes. And some people would say, are those bullet holes? And I never once, to a person, said, yes, those are bullet holes. They are obviously holes from anchors in the wall. That's where the soda fridge was when the bodega was up, OK? So I'm sorry I have a sense of humor and-- That meeting got pretty heated. Brennan remained defensive and defiant as locals and their elected officials challenged her to apologize for her insensitivity. Some predicted that, without her contrition, Summerhill would soon shut down. Here's audio from another protest outside the restaurant, calling for just that. Bye-bye, Becky. Bye-bye, Becky. Bye-bye, Becky. Becca Brennan didn't want to talk to us for this story. When Summerhill first opened, I had thought about stopping in for a drink a couple of times. But after I heard about the protest and skimmed the articles, staying clear felt like a no-brainer. This conflict had two distinct sides. And even though I was pretty new to the neighborhood myself, there was no way I was going to align with the 31-year-old white gentrifier who fabricates a memorial to violence out of distressed concrete and an unconventional sense of humor. No question, I would stand with my people-- which, in a practical sense, just meant going instead to the bar across the street or the one around the corner. I didn't think about Summerhill for months. And then, less than a year later, it was 10 or 11 o'clock on a weekend, and I walked past the place. It was packed. The restaurant sits at an intersection and customers were spilling out onto the corner-- the same corner that had been overwhelmed with pissed-off protesters just last summer. Now, though, people inside and out seemed happy. They were drinking, partying, and it was really loud. I remember, because the DJ was playing something from Camp Lo's 1997 cult classic, Uptown Saturday Night. I love that album. Oh, yeah, and pretty much everybody in the place was black. I felt like I'd missed the memo. Like, who ordered us to stand down? Not that I'd ever really stood up, but a lot of people had. I was at a bar across the street from Summerhill when I met a really friendly guy named Tashaka, who'd also been avoiding the crowds at Summerhill. But the reason I don't go in is because, initially, it was because she was-- they were being-- she was being boycotted and I didn't want to cross the line. So you didn't actually protest? Hm? You didn't actually protest? Did I actually protest? Mm, I won't say-- I didn't-- I didn't stand outside. Yeah, me neither. So why do you think that people started going after all? Why did black people decide-- Because-- --to start going? --we're very forgiving. Say it again? We're very forgiving. It's like, you can smack us in the face, and if you say you're sorry and you're not going to do it again, we'll usually accept you. You know it's true. You're smiling, and you're giggling, but you know it's true. For the record, I don't think I was giggling. Look, I take Tashaka's point. To put it lightly, African-Americans have been very forgiving about a lot of things over the years. But that wasn't a very satisfying answer. I just kind of wanted to know what really happened. So I walked across the street. And what made you come here? We were walking down Nostrand, and we were just trying to find somewhere to have a quick drink. And we just stumbled upon this place and decided to try it. What are you guys drinking? Oh, rum punch. Rum punch. Some folks hadn't heard anything about the drama from last year. You know, I don't even-- I didn't even know that. I think I'm-- yeah, I didn't know that. Some people, like Tara here, had heard about the wall and the alleged bullet holes, and definitely felt some kind of way about it. And to put it on display and not be a person of color, and not have been a person who experienced that day in, day out, that's not your story to tell. That's our story to tell. But the wall's been plastered over. Work from a local artist hangs there now. From Tara's point of view, the slate has been adequately wiped clean. She's there all the time now. Yeah, I feel like things deliberately changed here. I think there's definitely a different vibe here. I think there's a different culture provided here than that was provided beforehand. This is Neil-- another black Neil in Brooklyn. Who knew? Like, I'll post on Snapchat and I'll have the Summerhill geotag. And somebody will be like, oh, you go to that racist bar? That has happened before on my Snapchat. He's here nevertheless, undaunted-- in fact, twice in two nights. And the reason he keeps coming back? Oyo, who is now part owner-- I knew him from working at another bar. So I knew that he was working here, or had become an owner here. So I decided to come here to support him. And like that, I had my answer. I heard this from people inside and out of Summerhill-- staff and bartenders at other bars, regulars and haters. If you want to know why so many people come to Summerhill, look for Oyo. Wallahi Oyo-- he mostly goes by just Oyo-- is the executive chef at Summerhill. He became partial owner of the restaurant shortly after all the controversy began. He comes up with the menu. He picks the DJs. On a busy Saturday night, you might find him standing out front, scanning Nostrand Avenue from beneath a black baseball cap, presumably looking for more customers. The word was, the embattled Becca Brennan took a diminished role in her own business so that a 27-year-old black man could become the face of Summerhill. It's not like she has no involvement. There's a lot of stuff that she still does. But I feel like, mostly, when people come here, they see Oyo. Oyo's wasn't just a symbolic contribution. I spoke to him in the kitchen that he oversees. If you ask him what exactly he and Becca did to get black people to come Summerhill after the protests and the bad press, he'll tell you nothing. He and his partner just weathered the storm, and eventually, people came. But that's not exactly true. Faced with the storm, Oyo sent up flares. And I said-- I told my friends, yo, come on. I need help. My bar has been protested. I need help. I mean, I need-- you know what I'm saying? I need y'all to come support, because I'm drowning. And from the look of things, many of them did come. Maybe you've heard, we're a forgiving people. But not all of us. She's using his blackness, in a way, to build this business and make it cool again, because of her mistake. This is Justine Stephens. She and two of her peers organized the first protests against Summerhill after reading about the place on Gothamist last year. She still refuses to step foot inside. But she has noticed Summerhill becoming increasingly popular with black folks in the last few months. She says that's all Oyo remaking the place's image. A lot of their online press is kind of fashioned in a way where it's-- it looks hip. It looks like a club scene. Like, if I take out my phone now and take a look at it-- like Wednesday Night Jump Up, for example. I don't think Caucasian Becca Brennan from Toronto would say "jump up." I mean, wouldn't that be something that is more representative-- that kind of marketing, that kind of branding-- more representative of the community? But is it pandering? I don't know. Is it? I mean, if-- it's kind of like, if they advertise for something, they advertise something that people in the community want, or cleave to, or are excited by, and those people come, and they support it, is that pander-- No, I think that's totally fair. I think, if it was any other bar that he decided to open up or join forces with, I think that's fair. But again, the profits are not fully going to him. And he's doing her a big-ass favor by making grits and playing Beyonce. On Instagram, Justine accused Oyo of helping Becca Brennan get the quote unquote, "black dollar." And this annoyed the hell out of Oyo. I'm doing this for my pockets, you know what I'm saying? This is my business. Don't think that I'm doing this for her. I don't think she's using me. If anything, I'm using Becca, you know what I'm saying? Like, trust me. This is for my pockets. Oyo thinks about his pockets a lot. An unapologetic capitalist, Oyo learned from his dad, who owned a nail salon nearby. Later, Oyo himself ran a DVD shop on the block, and then he worked as a chef at a black-owned bar down the street. He said that he loves doing business in Crown Heights, and that people in the neighborhood have been waiting for him to open up his own spot. Before the protests happened, Oyo convinced Becca Brennan to let him launch a pop-up sandwich shop inside her fledgling restaurant. They were both satisfied with how that went, so they started negotiating for Oyo to accept an ownership stake in the restaurant. Then came Justine and the protesters. Oyo took the deal anyway. It was the open door that he'd been waiting for, and there was no way he wasn't going to walk through it, no matter how many people stood outside, jeering. He became partners with Becca. Were you worried? No. My confidence in myself was, no, I'm not worried. Me, you know, I feel like I'm Oyo. I can make it happen. Even Oyo will admit that Becca Brennan made a mistake. And for most people, that was the story-- a white woman who offended some people in a historically black neighborhood. But it's this other, smaller interaction that gets to me more-- two black people, Justine and Oyo, pointing at each other, asking who really belongs here. When Justine saw Oyo defending his mostly silent white partner, she saw a black man who was willing to sell out his community for bread crumbs. Justine was new to the area, but her father grew up in Brooklyn. She thought that the people in the neighborhood deserved better and that she needed to alert them. Oyo was, in her mind, a puppet. But when Oyo looked out and saw Justine leading a crowd of mostly white protesters, he didn't see a representative of the community. He was from the community. He had a tattoo on his arm of the street sign at Bedford and St. Marks, right up the block. Justine, who was from Norwalk, Connecticut, had chemically straightened hair, and she was threatening his pockets. I had braids. I'm not trying to look like no fucking white bitch, I'm telling you. I'm telling you-- Justine sent me this recording from that day. It's noisy, but if you tune out the strands of Whitney Houston emanating from inside Summerhill, you can hear a screaming match erupt between Justine and Oyo. Get the fuck out of there. You grow up black and you straighten your hair? Oyo goes low almost immediately, attacking Justine for relaxing her hair texture to look like a white woman's while fighting for a so-called black cause. When Justine says that's what black women do, Oyo replies, "Stupid black women." In the days following this eruption, Justine received even more hateful and disturbing messages via Facebook. Can I say all the words? Sure. OK. "Go kill yourself, bitch. You're a fucking black bitch who wants to be white, but out here protesting about Black Lives Matter. You got nothing to do. Claim you're so pro-black, but have mad white people protesting with you, like they really give a fuck about you. You're really--" The Facebook messages went on and on. They were anonymous, but because the insults were similar to things he'd said to her face, Justine thinks Oyo was responsible. I asked him about it. He doesn't deny that the comments could have come from some of his associates trying to support him in the worst way imaginable, but he insists that it wasn't him. Oyo told me that he mocked Justine's hair because he was raised in a home where relaxers and weaves weren't allowed, where keeping your hair natural was a sign of how pro-black you were. But then, it was Oyo's mother who ultimately told them to apologize to Justine, because he shouldn't talk to black women like that. He did try. Justine showed me contrite messages he'd sent to her on Instagram. But she's no longer interested in opening a dialogue with Oyo or anyone involved with Summerhill. So what would it take for you to visit that bar? I'm not going to. I'm actually afraid to go in there, because I'm not going to-- again, I don't want to risk my safety. Have you walked past it? I walk past it every day. I have to say, it really bothered me to hear about this seemingly unbridgeable chasm between Justine and Oyo. And not just because Justine shouldn't have to fear for her safety in her own neighborhood, and not just because the debate they're essentially having over who is a bigger sellout and who is more authentically black is an ugly, unwinnable contest and more than a little absurd. But mostly, it upsets me simply because she's 26 and he's 27. They're both young and black, with roots in Brooklyn. She likes soca. His bar blasts soca music well into the night. It just doesn't seem like they should be so far apart. Neil Drumming is one of the producers of our show. Act Three, An Awful Place That You're Lucky to Get To. OK, so this is something that never really happens. We have a couple minutes left in the show. And I'm glad, because it lets me read you this thing that I like. This is kind of tangentially on theme with If You Build It, They Will Come. It's about old age, which, I guess, is a place that is built for us. And maybe we get there. I don't know. Don't think too hard about that. Donald Hall died a few weeks ago. He was on the show years back, and I knew him a tiny bit. He was a poet and writer, the poet laureate of the United States for a while. He wrote about lots of things. But in the last few years, he's been writing about old age in this utterly unsentimental, lucid way that I really, really love, like in this piece. This is from his book, Essays After 80. "After a life of loving the old, by natural law, I turned old myself. Decade follows each other. 30 was terrifying. 40, I never noticed because I was drunk. 50 was best, with a total change of life. 60 extended the bliss of 50. Then came my cancers, Jane's death." Jane was his wife. "And over the years, I traveled to another universe. However alert we are, however much we think we know what will happen, antiquity remains an unknown, unanticipated galaxy. It's alien. And old people are a separate form of life. They have green skin, with two heads that sprout antennae. They can be pleasant. They can be annoying. In the supermarket, those old ladies won't get out of my way. Most important, they are permanently other. When we turn 80, we understand that we are extraterrestrial. If we forget for a moment that we're old, we're reminded when we try to stand up and when we encounter someone young, who appears to observe green skin, extra heads, and protuberances. People's response to our separateness can be callous, can be good-hearted, and is always condescending. When a woman writes to the newspaper approving of something that I've done, she calls me a nice old gentleman. She intends to praise me with 'nice' and 'gentleman.' 'Old' is true enough. And she lets us know that I am not a grumpy old fart. But 'nice' and 'gentleman' put me in a box where she can rub my head and hear me purr. Or maybe she would prefer me to wag my tail, lick her hand, and make ingratiating dog noises." Anyway, that's by Donald Hall, from his book, Essays After 80. He just published another book on the subject with the vivid name, A Carnival of Losses. I recommend both books, or especially his book, Without, which is poetry that he wrote when his wife, Jane Kenyon, died. Anyway, thanks, Donald. Our program was produced today by Alvin Melathe and Neil Drumming. People who helped make the show today-- Dana Chivvis, Jarrett Floyd, Damien Graef, Chana Joffe-Walt, David Kestenbaum, Seth Lind, Angelina Mosher, Lulu Miller, Nadia Reiman, Robyn Simeon, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, Sharif Youssef, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu. Our senior producer is Brian Reed. Our managing editor is Susan Burton. Special thanks today to Emma Whitford, Sai Mokhtari, Rebecca Birmingham, Simone Polanen, Sarah Sarahsen, Alex Blumberg, Peter Leonard, Lisa Pollak, and Haley Shaw, who did a lot of the music in our church story today. Our website, thisamericanlife.org, where you can listen to our archive of over 600 episodes for absolutely free. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks as always to our program's cofounder, Mr. Torey Malatia. And now, he is so generous, he agreed to cater and also costar in Shonda Rhimes' new Netflix series about the music business-- Doing her a big-ass favor by making grits and playing Beyonce. I'm Ira glass, back next week with more stores of This American Life.
|
I'm in the office of Dr. LJ Drakovic, who examines dead bodies for the police in Pontiac, Michigan, and he's running through this carousel of slides, all of them murder victims. They're close-ups of body parts. To say, as you just flip through these things, this is the grisliest slide show I've ever seen. It's just like every slide is some-- Is another story, yes. Every crime scene is a story of its own, is a novel, and it opens up in every direction. To illustrate, he tells me this story. Back when he worked in the Wayne County Coroner's Office in Detroit, there was a young woman. This story, by the way, probably is not suitable for younger children. OK, anyway, there's this young woman. She apparently killed herself by taking her boyfriend's gun, putting it in her mouth, and firing. It was ruled a suicide. That's what the police thought. That's what the other medical examiners thought, but Dr. Drakovic wondered. This woman didn't have a history of depression. There's no note. My colleagues tease me as being paranoid and seeing things where they were not. So he does the examination, including the inside of the woman's mouth. In this particular case, the tongue showed two holes. Two holes, he says, is very strange in this kind of case because usually, he told me-- this gets a little explicit, again. Usually, he says, when people shoot themselves in the mouth to kill themselves, they kind of point the gun upward toward the brain. The tongue doesn't get involved at all-- doesn't get injured. The only way this could have happened, he realized, is if the tongue was all bunched up, kind of pushing against the tip of the gun-- the muzzle of the gun when the gun went off. But why would you do that? Why put your tongue there if you were killing yourself? In my assessment of this, this was a homicide. Now, do I know for sure? No, I did not. But that's the logic. So I told the detectives that that was my finding. They went back to interview the boyfriend, and they said, we know that you shot her. He said, no, I didn't. They said, yes, we know. The doctor told us. He said, what doctor? He says, the doctor that did the autopsy. He said, what autopsy? I called the coroner's office two weeks ago, and they told me they never did autopsies on suicides. Of course, you know, why call the coroner's office to ask that question if you're not planning on killing anybody? It did not take very long after that, he said, for this guy to confess. As Dr. Drakovic says, every crime scene-- Is a novel. Well, today on our radio program, we dive into those crime scenes and the novels that led to them. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. And the thing that makes a crime scene such a strange kickoff to any story, any detective's investigation, is that the crime scene is filled with details, but it is totally unclear which ones are the important ones. Years back, I was talking to this former forensic criminologist, Enrico Togneri, about this. And he said, sure, at a crime scene, there's all the stuff you would imagine from watching crime shows on TV. The shape of a blood stain can tell you the velocity and direction of the blood. A mist of blood means one thing. A puddle of blood means something else. But there's so much more, he said. Yeah, there's certain routine things that you would look for, and let's say you get into a scene where there's still some food on the table. You want to see if it's still warm. You want to see where the placing of the utensils might be. That might give you a clue whether it's a right-handed or a left-handed person that was last there. A smell could be important. You never know. If you can remember it, can you think of a case where an utterly ordinary object ended up being the piece of evidence that clinched it? Well, as a matter of fact, there was a burglary with a piece of cheese that had a tooth mark in it, and we were able to match the bite mark to the individual that did the burglary. What? Just a piece of cheese left in a refrigerator. The individual decided to help himself to some food, and he took a bite out of a piece of cheese. And he had a unique enough bite mark that we were able to identify it. When the police are done with a crime scene, who actually cleans up the crime scene? Usually, the person who owns the property. We would mark it as a possible biohazard, and then the individual would hire whoever he wanted to hire to have it cleaned up. Other drivers stare at Neal Smither's truck and sometimes take pictures. On the sides and back of it, in big red letters, is the company name-- Crime Scene Cleaners, specializing in homicides, suicides, and accidental deaths. That's Nancy Updike, and this is Act 1 of our program. Act 1-- Grime Scene. Back when we first broadcast today's program-- this was a few years back-- Nancy went to a town near San Francisco to see Neal Smither, who cleans up crime scenes for a living. Quick warning-- some of this might not be suitable for younger listeners, the squeamish, and wimps. Also, we have unbeeped the curse words here in the podcast. If you prefer a beeped version of our show, it's at our website. After spending two days with Neal Smither, I was this close to signing up to open his Los Angeles franchise. I'm not joking. Neal spends all day, every day speeding around in a huge white pickup truck with a cell phone glued to his ear, making sure his company gets to dispose of every drop of blood within driving distance of Orinda, California, and his franchises in Utah, Kansas, Texas, Las Vegas, and Alabama. Mostly, he doesn't leave the truck. He's had this one for about a year, and it's got 90,000 miles on it. Neal is absolutely blunt about his job, to the point of crassness. I did a job one time. An old guy dropped dead, decomposed on his kitchen floor. So when we got there, we had about a 10-by-5 foot square pool of just gore. No power in the house, so it's dark. It's very quiet. I'm in there with a respirator because it was just humming. It smelled. I'm hearing this noise, you know, and I shouldn't be hearing a noise. There's no power in this house. Nothing. I get a flashlight. I'm hearing this funky noise, man. What the fuck is that? So I get closer to the gore with my light, and it's just a bowling ball size thing of maggots, and they're writhing around in the blood and the gore, and it sounds like when you knead hamburger. The maggots were making a sound that you could hear? There were so many of them, just so many of them writhing around in this pool of gore that, yeah, you could hear them. The only time he speaks gently about what he does is on sales calls. Hi there, this is Neal. May I help you? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. All righty. That's all you need to tell me. Let me kind of walk you through how we work. We'd have a crew to you within the hour. They'd write you up a free estimate. If you like the estimate, they'd rock and roll on that job right then and there. Our services are all-inclusive. By the way, have you noticed Neal's southern accent? He made it up. He borrowed it from his Arkansas grandparents so he could play Steel Magnolia during business negotiations. He grew up in Santa Cruz. He has no problem admitting the accent is cultivated. Something about a southern voice, it just kind of opens up a trusting vein, you know, which is great. I mean, that's what I want. Neal has that tightly wound energy, like Jim Carrey. He's 5' 5" with short brown hair under a baseball cap and sunglasses. He smokes Kools, does not stop for lunch, and drives way too fast. The directness, the crassness is all deliberate. It's his marketing strategy. Gore sells. Look at the truck. We're pretty up front. I hope I don't offend too many people. I just try to be honest with them, you know? I mean, we're dealing with death. How do you sugarcoat death? You know, you can't. Neal describes for me the outline left on a pleather couch by a body that has decomposed into it over the course of 60 days. And I want to stop here and acknowledge that this is gross. It is. It's gross, but it's interesting. And to me, it's much more interesting than it is gross. I mean, think of it-- a melted person. Four years ago, Neal had never seen a dead body. He was a laid-off mortgage broker, for God's sake. Then he saw Pulp Fiction. Remember that scene where John Travolta blows the guy's head off in the back of the car by mistake, and they have to call in Mr. Wolf to fix everything? Good. What I need you two fellows to do is take those cleaning products and clean the inside of the car. I need you to go in the back seat, scoop up all those little pieces of brain and skull. Get it out of there. Wipe down-- Neal is possibly the only person in America who saw that scene and thought, wow, I want that job. And it turns out it is a real job. If someone dies in your house, it's up to you to get it clean. But doing it yourself, even if you wanted to, raises all sorts of problems. Are you complying with the state and federal laws governing the disposal of bodies and bodily fluids? Do you have the proper permits and liability coverage? No, you don't. So you call Neal. Here's how his job breaks down. Murders are the least of his business. Most of the cleanups are either decomps-- bodies that have sat for a while and started to decompose. I did a decomp on the very end unit upstairs there. It was bad. How long had it been going? He sat for a good, long while. He was all humming, maggots everywhere. It was a typical decomp. Or suicides. Suicides and attempted suicides are a surprisingly big part of his job. The rest of Neal's business consists of meth labs and kiddie houses. Kiddie houses are those places usually full of old newspapers and other garbage that have dozens of cats everywhere, eating and peeing and crapping. Meth labs are usually hotel accounts. Neal has a few national chains on contract. Hotel rooms get used all the time to cook methamphetamine, Neal says. He does a lot of business with hotels. He claims, hyperbolically, that there's no hotel in the country that hasn't had a murder or suicide in one of its rooms. The second day I spend with Neal, he gets called out to a jail to clean up after a woman who tried to kill herself in the bathroom off the prisoners' waiting room. I'm not allowed to record anything. I have to just watch. I hold open the bathroom door with my foot while Neal sets up his stuff. Next to the sink are several thick, dark red drops of blood, and there are a few streaks of blood on the wall. Inside the sink is more blood. It isn't a lot, maybe a third of a cup, overall, but clearly, she did some damage. Then, while Neal's getting into his protective suit, a woman in the waiting room behind us-- a tweaker, Neal confided to me later, meaning a meth user-- reads the back of Neal's shirt out loud. Crime Scene Cleaners, she says. You cleaned my mother's house. Neal turns around. Yeah? Which one was that? Without any emotion, the woman says her mother and cousin were murdered by her mother's boyfriend a while ago. You guys cleaned the house, she repeats. Oh yeah. I remember that one. That was on the news, Neal says. The woman nods and doesn't say anything, so Neal goes back to cleaning. He whips through it in about 10 minutes, like it's spilt milk. In fact, it's exactly like cleaning up a mess at home, except with industrial strength cleansers and equipment. He snaps on some rubber gloves, sprays the whole area with a special enzyme to neutralize the blood and kill any bacteria or viruses, scrubs any tough spots with a little brush, and then wipes everything clean with heavy duty paper towels. It isn't hard. Just depressing. Bottom line-- I'm a businessman. I'm an entrepreneur. I want to make money and build my company. Were you like this as a kid? Well, I was the kid in school who would buy boxes of Blow Pops and bring them to school and sell them at lunch. I was the kid at school who ran a lunch ticket scam. What was the lunch ticket scam? I had a girlfriend in the office, the head office in high school, and she'd kick me down with lunch tickets for a discounted price. And then I'd sell them for an increased price, but it was still lower than what the Mexican kids or whoever could buy them from the school. So I just figured I'd beat the school by $0.20 a ticket. Shit, I bankrolled my whole high school career on Blow Pops and lunch tickets. It was a beautiful thing. I always had money, and I didn't break any laws. Didn't sling dope-- none of that shit. Bought my own car and I bankrolled it with Blow Pops and lunch tickets. Neal's plan is to retire in seven years, at 40, and be rich. But in the meantime, the job is changing him. Seeing so many crime scenes, seeing the way so many people die, he's also seen how they live-- in houses filled with old newspapers, dirty dishes, and too many cats, never cleaning the bathroom. I think more than anything now, most people are just dirty motherfuckers. We live like animals, man. You have no idea. I'm a clean freak. My place is spotless. So I was-- when I got into this, I was shocked by the way people live. It's amazing. I went into a bathroom yesterday at a car wash, right? Guy in there doing his business, and I walk into the thing. And you know, this guy had thrown his garbage on the floor and didn't flush the toilet. Just common-- no common courtesy at all. And he was in a tie and-- a clean-cut, nice-looking guy. Didn't your mom teach you anything, you 40-year-old dirtbag? Are you just a dirtbag? That's dirtbag, straight up. That is a dirtbag. Did you think people were this big dirtbags before this job? No, I had no idea. I had no idea. I thought everyone was normal. Believe me. The normal is the dirtbaggedness. Fuck. But now, you see more dirtbaggery everywhere? Oh, it's 80/20 dirtbag. You bet. I swear to God. So now I go home and take a hot shower. Then I'll convert to a bathtub, read my book, and not think abou dirtbags, wait for my girl to get home. Wait for death. Death or my girl-- I love them both. [LAUGHING] Neal's thought a lot about his own death in the last few years, not surprisingly. He says he wants to die slowly, so he can say goodbye to everyone. He doesn't want to be found by a company like his and cleaned up with his family off somewhere wondering what happened. He doesn't even care if it's a painful death, he says, as long as it's slow. Cancer would be fine, he says. He'd take cancer. When was the last time you heard someone say that? Nancy Updike is a producer for our program. We heard about Neal Smither from the book, Gig, which is a kind of unofficial sequel/tribute to Studs Terkel's classic book about Americans and their jobs, Working. Neal is still working. He has not retired. He says business is booming. Act 2-- The Police Cannot Do. So the clues at a crime scene are not always conclusive, of course. Lots of crimes are forever unsolved. People die, and it's never explained why. Stuff disappears and is never found again, though we want it to be. Fiction writer Aimee Bender has this story about a boy who would be handy to have around at lots of crime scenes. I have to say this is one of my favorite pieces of fiction we've ever put on the radio show. Her story was read first by actor Matt Molloy. Once, there was an orphan who had a knack for finding lost things. Both his parents had been killed when he was eight years old. They were swimming in the ocean when it turned wild with waves, and each had tried to save the other from drowning. The boy woke up from a nap on the sand, alone. After the tragedy, the community adopted and raised him, and a few years after the death of his parents, he began to have a sense of objects, even when they weren't visible. This ability continued growing in power through his teens, and by his 20s, he was able to actually sniff out lost sunglasses, keys, contact lenses, and sweaters. The neighbors discovered his talent accidentally. He was over at Jenny Sugar's house one evening, picking her up for a date, when Jenny's mother misplaced her hairbrush and was walking around complaining about this. The young man's nose twitched, and he turned slightly towards the kitchen and pointed to the drawer where the spoons and knives were kept. His date burst into laughter. Now that would be quite a silly place to put the brush, she said, among all that silverware. And she opened the drawer to make her point-- to wave with a knife or brush her hair with a spoon. But when she did, boom, there was the hairbrush, matted with gray curls, sitting on top of the fork pile. Jenny's mother kissed the young man on the cheek, but Jenny herself looked at him suspiciously all night long. You planned all that, didn't you, she said over dinner. You were trying to impress my mother. Well, you didn't impress me, she said. He tried to explain himself, but she would hear none of it. And when he drove his car up to her house, she fled before he could even finish saying he'd had a nice time, which was a lie, anyway. He went home to his tiny room and thought about the word "lonely," and how it sounded and looked so lonely, with those two Ls in it, each standing tall by itself. As news spread around the neighborhood about the young man's skills, people reacted in two ways. There were the deeply appreciative and the skeptics. The appreciative ones called up the young man regularly. He'd stop by on his way to school, find their keys, and they'd give him a homemade muffin. The skeptics called him over, too, and watched him like a hawk. He'd still find their lost items, but they'd insist it was an elaborate scam and he was doing it all to get attention. Maybe, declared one woman, waving her index finger in the air-- maybe, she said, he steals the thing so we think it's lost, moves the item, and then comes over to save it. How do we know it was really lost in the first place? What is going on? The young man didn't know himself. All he knew was the feeling of a tug-- light, but insistent, like a child at his sleeve. And that tug would turn him in the right direction and show him where to look. Each object had its own way of inhabiting space, and therefore messaging its location. The young man could sense, could smell an object's presence. He did not need to see it to feel where it put its gravity down. As would be expected, items that turned out to be miles away took much harder concentration than the ones that were two feet to the left. When Mrs. Allen's little boy didn't come home one afternoon, that was the most difficult of all. Leonard Allen was eight years old and usually arrived home from school at 3:05. He had allergies and needed a pill before he went back out to play. That day, by 3:45, alone, Mrs. Allen was a wreck. Her boy rarely got lost. Only once had that happened, in the supermarket, but he'd been found quite easily under the produce tables, crying. The walk home from school was a straight line and Leonard was not the wandering kind. Mrs. Allen was just a regular neighbor, except for one extraordinary fact. Through an inheritance, she was the owner of a gargantuan emerald she called the green star. It sat, glasscased in her kitchen where everyone could see it, because she insisted that it be seen. Sometimes, as a party trick, she'd even cut steak with its beveled edge. On this day, she took the green star out of its case and stuck her palms on it. Where is my boy, she cried. The green star was cold and flat. She ran, weeping, to her neighbor, who calmly walked her back home. Together, they gave the house a thorough search, and then the neighbor, a believer, recommended calling the young man. Although Mrs. Allen was a skeptic, she thought anything was a worthwhile idea, and when the phone answered, she said in a trembling voice, you must find my boy. The young man had been just about to go play basketball with his friends. He'd located the basketball in the bath tub. You lost him, said the young man. Mrs. Allen began to explain, and then her phone clicked. One moment please, she said, and the young man held on. When her voice returned, it was shaking with rage. He's been kidnapped, she said. They want the green star. The young man realized then that it was Mrs. Allen he was talking to and nodded. Oh, he said. I see. Everyone in town was familiar with Mrs. Allen's green star. I'll be right over, he said. The woman's voice was too run with tears to respond. In his basketball shorts and shirt, the young man jogged over to Mrs. Allen's house. He was amazed at how the green star was all exactly the same shade of green. He had a desire to lick it. By then, Mrs. Allen was in hysterics. They didn't tell me what to do, she sobbed. Where do I bring my emerald? How do I get my boy back? The young man tried to feel the scent of the boy. He asked for a photograph and stared at it-- a brown-haired kid at his kindergarten graduation. But the young man had only found objects before, and lost objects at that. He'd never found anything or anybody stolen. He wasn't a policeman. Mrs. Allen called the police, and one officer showed up at the door. Oh, it's the finding guy, the officer said. The young man dipped his head modestly. He turned to his right, to his left, north, south. He got a glimmer of a feeling towards the north and walked out the back door through the back yard. Night approached, and the sky seemed to grow and deepen in the darkness. What's his name again, he called back to Mrs. Allen. Leonard, she said. He heard the policeman pull out a pad and begin to ask basic questions. He couldn't quite feel him. He felt the air, and he felt the tug inside the green star, an object displaced from its original home in Asia. He felt the tug of a tree in the front yard, which had been uprooted from Virginia to be replanted here. And he felt the tug of his own watch, which was from his uncle. In an attempt to be fatherly, his uncle had insisted he take it, but they both knew the gesture was false. Maybe the boy was too far away by now. He heard the policeman ask, what is he wearing? Mrs. Allen described a blue shirt, and the young man focused in on the blue shirt. He turned off his distractions, and the blue shirt came calling from the northwest like a distant radio station. The young man went walking and walking, and about 14 houses down, he felt the blue shirt shrieking at him. And he walked right into the back yard, right through the back door, and sure enough, there were four people watching TV, including the tear-stained boy with a runny nose eating a candy bar. The young man scooped up the boy while the others watched, so surprised, they did nothing. And one even muttered, sorry, man. For 14 houses back, the young man held Leonard in his arms like a bride. Leonard stopped sneezing and looked up at the stars, and the young man smelled Leonard's hair, rich with the memory of peanut butter. He hoped Leonard would ask him a question-- any question. But Leonard was quiet. The young man answered in his head. Son, he said to himself, and the word rolled around, a marble on a marble floor. Son, he wanted to say. When he reached Mrs. Allen's door, which was wide open, he walked in with quiet Leonard, and Mrs. Allen promptly burst into tears, and the policeman slunk out the door. She thanked the young man 1,000 times, even offered him the green star, but he refused it. Leonard turned on the TV and curled up on the sofa. The young man walked over and asked him about the program he was watching, but Leonard stuck his thumb in his mouth and didn't respond. Feel better, he said softly. Tucking the basketball beneath his arm, the young man walked home, shoulders low. In his tiny room, he undressed and lay in bed. Had it been a naked child with nothing on-- no shoes, no necklace, no hair bow, no watch-- he could not have found it. He lay in bed that night with the trees from other places rustling, and he could feel their confusion. No snow here. Not a lot of rain. Where am I? What is wrong with this dirt? Crossing his hands in front of him, he held onto his shoulders. Concentrate hard, he thought. Where are you? Everything felt blank and quiet. He couldn't feel a tug. He squeezed his eyes shut and let the question bubble up. Where did you go? Come find me. I'm over here. Come find me. If he listened hard enough, he thought he could hear the waves hitting. Aimee Bender's short story is called Loser. It's from her collection of short fiction called The Girl in the Flammable Skirt. It was read for us by Matt Molloy. Coming up-- what does it mean when you get out of prison, kick your drug habit, return to the scene of your crimes, and little kids make fun of you? Kindergarten con in a minute on Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. This American Life, I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose some theme, bring you different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show-- crime scenes and the stories they tell. So today's episode first aired years ago, but in putting together the rerun, we all realized here we did actually have a question about crime scenes that comes from stuff that's been in the news recently. I am Bennet Omalu. I'm a forensic pathologist and neuropathologist. After Stephon Clark was shot by Sacramento police back in March, the county coroner did the official autopsy for the state. But the family also hired a well-known forensic pathologist named Bennet Omalu to do an autopsy for them. He announced his findings at this press conference. If you remember that case, Stephon Clark was unarmed, 22 years old, shot by police multiple times. Dr. Omalu's analysis came out before the county coroner's, and he was definitive about a number of things. There were a total of eight gunshot wounds, meaning that he was hit by eight bullets. The first shot, Omalu said, hit Stephon Clark in the side and then spun him around so his back was to the officers. Then six of the eight shots were to his back. That is a different story than the police had told. Police had said he was advancing towards them when they fired. So the proposition that has been presented that he was assailing the officers is inconsistent with the prevailing forensic evidence. Weeks later, the county released its report. It was different from Dr. Omalu's report in some significant ways. First, it said there were seven bullets, not eight. It said only three shots were to the back, not six. And as for the first shot, the county said it was probably to his thigh and that Clark probably was walking towards the officers when it happened. And we wondered here at our show how could something so basic be in dispute? The number of shots, whether they entered from the back or from the front, does that indicate that one of the autopsies was deliberately spinning the results? Or are these actual, honest scientists simply disagreeing about the evidence that's in front of them? Well, I asked Dr. Judy Melinek, a veteran forensic pathologist who does autopsies in San Francisco, and she said these kinds of discrepancies happen all the time when there are two autopsies of the same person. She said in these kinds of cases, the official autopsy-- the coroner's office-- usually happens first, and then the family gets to do their autopsy after that. That's true, even though the family usually goes public with their results first, as happened in this case. So Dr. Melinek says, picture, OK, two autopsies by two doctors. The first autopsy done by the coroner's office alters the body and changes the evidence. So it makes it a lot more difficult for the second pathologist. When the second pathologist gets the body, it's already been washed clean, so it doesn't have any bloodstains or trace residue. The first pathologist has already cut open the body, has already removed the bullets. So when Dr. Omalu got the body, he didn't have the bullets anymore. They had been taken out by the first autopsy, and he didn't have access to the x-rays of the body from the first autopsy. Which would have shown him where the bullets had been. He also didn't have the organs in their proper orientation in the body. The organs had been taken out by the previous autopsy pathologist and sliced up to identify the wound tracks, and then put in a plastic bag inside the body cavity. So the first pathologist has that advantage because they got the body pristine, and it wasn't altered. In this way, Dr. Melinek says, there could be lots of disagreement, and it could be honest disagreement between pathologists. They are people looking at different sets of data, so they come to different conclusions. And with that, we have arrived at Act 3 of our program. Act 3-- Return to the Scene of the Crime. You know, there's this truism in detective fiction that a criminal always returns to the scene of the crime. It turns out, in real life, that actually is not very common at all, except among arsonists. Arsonists apparently like to see the fires they've set, and then some of them are actually caught when police look at pictures taken of crowds at fires. And then-- OK, maybe this is rare, maybe not; nobody really keeps track of this kind of thing-- there are the people who circle back to the scene of the crimes to undo, to erase something, or at least to promise that it's never going to happen again. Katie Davis discovered that one of her own neighbors in Washington, DC, an old friend of hers, was trying to do just that. Bobby comes up my street one afternoon in March. I haven't seen him in a few months, and he's kind of gliding along, smoking a Marlboro. That's the way he's carried himself since sixth grade, when I first met him-- one of the bad boys from over on Calvert Street. Bobby tells me he's going to coach a Little League team with some neighborhood kids. Great, I say from up on my porch. Inside, I'm thinking, who's he kidding? He's rail thin. He's sweating. It looks like he's been using all winter. Bobby flicks his burning cigarette into the street and watches me, waiting for more reaction. This is the same Bobby I loved and tried to save for a whole year. Bobby who sold $60 from my house to buy heroin and swore to God-- swore to his own dead daughter that my dog, Purdy, ate the money. And this is his latest plan to get clean? Coaching a bunch of 10, 11, and 12-year-olds rounded up by the DC Department of Recreation? All I can say is, that's great. A week later, Bobby's back, this time on my machine. You have two messages. Message one. Hey, how are you doing? Just calling to say hi. When I get off, I'll probably walk Bailey. See if we can both run up and see if we can say hi to you. Katie, you've got to see this. These thugs I got are unbelievable. One of them tried to spit on me yesterday at practice. A couple of them, I don't think-- I don't think even I can handle. It's like they're too much of a disruption, you know? My machine cuts him off, but now I know Bobby's clean because if he were still using heroin, nothing could puncture his detached haze. He's sounding awake and rattled. Bobby, who spent 2 and 1/2 years in Lorton Prison on assault and possession charges, rattled by a bunch of kids at their first baseball practice. First day was just crazy. We went to Harrison Playground between 13th and 14th on V Street, and that's a rough neighborhood. And as soon as we got on the field, my kids started to act up right away-- right away-- and I think they were afraid. I was a little afraid. OK, he was like picking who was going be right field or whatever, but then everybody was just yelling at each other and jumping on each other. I tried to get them to chill, to relax and play ball, focus on the game. They started cursing me-- a few of them-- cursing me and cursing each other. One kid spit at me. And he got mad and said practice was over. And I cursed them, and I told them I didn't-- they didn't [BLEEP] impress me. Before they were born, I was in the penitentiary, you know, so if they're trying to act like they're bad, they're not impressing me. And right when I did that, I felt in my gut that I had just screwed up. I felt right then that, you know what? You just laid all of your cards on the table. You don't have a whole card anymore. Now they know you. Then Shannon said maybe he got pumped in the butt by lots of men. That's when everybody was laughing. One kid says, well, while you were in prison, were you getting humped? And then I knew I had screwed up. I said, no, that didn't happen to me. Another one said, oh, because you were the humper, right? Three days later, they hold a second practice, this time at a field in our neighborhood. Bobby's back for more salvation through Little League. Shut the for I smack the shit out of you. Do it. What's your strategy? Or do you-- maybe you're formulating it? I'm formulating it, but my strategy, short term, is to-- my strategy is to remember I'm the adult. Break! Good stick! Go, go, go, go! Run it out. He might fall. He might break his ankle. All right. Good stick. Good hustle. Hey, every first baseman don't play as good as him. The second practice is going a lot better. The only tantrums being thrown are by the kids. Bobby stands by the backstop in our park, pushing away a locust sapling that's grown up through the fence. There are no bases and only a warped piece of rubber for the pitcher's mound. That's how it goes around here. Anyone with any money drives their kids to the wealthier neighborhoods to play, leaving this misshapen field for Bobby's team. Come on, man. I'm not going to tell you where it's going, but I want you to bring it home when it comes to you. Wake up! Wake up. I thought you was talking to-- That's what I'm saying, see. The guy in the game, the batter's not going to tell you where the ball is going, guys. Talent level-- Bad News Bears. They're horrible, as far as talent. I think they're wonderful kids, and I'm not going to give up on them. But God, man. They can't throw a ball, they can't catch a ball, they can't hit a ball, and they've never learned. No one's ever taught them. Bring it home. Ah, OK. You've got good stop, good throw. That's the way to play, fella. That's the way to play. You think it's coming your way? Yeah. Yeah? I'm back in the field and got a new ball. Heads, heads up. The third practice starts around 5 o'clock on a humid April afternoon. Kids are scattered around the field, squatting down, twirling their gloves. Joey is throwing rocks at his brother. Joey is always throwing rocks. Benjamin thinks he should be pitching. Bobby tells him to stay right where he is and keep catching. That's what I'm talking about right there. Come on, Benjamin. Get that thing, man. Get that ball. You know. Get in front of that ball. Oh, you didn't know. I do know. You need to learn. Get in front of that ball. Bring it home. After a half hour, things start to spin out of control. Benjamin, the most volatile of the kids, throws a rock at Joey. Bobby tells him to run a lap. You must be tripping, says Benjamin. I might be tripping, but you need to be lapping, says Bobby. You going to make me run a lap, and I ain't even throw nothing. Maybe you need exercise. Benjamin-- he's my favorite because I just see me more so than any other child on that team. I don't know what his home life is like, but from what I can see, he's emotional, and when he feels cheated or done wrong, he reacts exactly like I always reacted-- violently, verbally with the violence. And he just goes off-- and fuck you and fuck the team and-- well, that's me. That was me, and in ways, it still is. When I get my feelings hurt, I don't always say, well, you really hurt my feelings. I say fuck you, motherfucker. And you know what I do? What I've done for a lot of years is I would hurt myself because someone hurt me. Well, Benjamin does that at practice. No, man, he always getting up on my nerves. Shit. Getting on everybody's nerves. Bobby finally asked Benjamin to go home and come back next practice. Instead, Benjamin stands over my microphone and starts calling the game as he says it. He thinks he's right all the time. Who are you talking about? The coach! He always-- he pressed, oh, I've been in the penitentiary. I know all this stuff. Man, bump all that, man. Bobby pauses as Benjamin mimics him, then throws the ball up and cracks it to the outfield. Bring it home, fellas, bring it home. A few minutes later, Benjamin finally does a lap, but he walks it. Watch the hop. You've still got him. Good throw now, Monty. Thank you, thank you. When he has these kids' ages, Bobby ran wild at night, taking money, stealing bikes. Most kids were afraid of him, but he never messed with me and my brothers. I even remember Bobby and his sister eating with us a couple of times because his mom never made dinner. When Bobby was 13, his mother caught him stealing change out of her purse and kicked him out of the house. The only place Bobby knew to go was right here to this field, where he now coaches baseball. You've got one more shot at it. It used to be an abandoned lot full of old cars and refrigerators. Here in the left outfield, where Joey is pacing and muttering because Bobby told him to quit looking for a fight-- right here, there used to be a white '69 Ford Falcon. That's where Bobby went when his mother threw him out. I spray painted all the windows black so no one could see in, and I would shoplift food from the corner store-- the Maddie's delicatessen, neighborhood deli. Stuff like Vienna sausages and a bottle of wine to go to sleep with at night and sardines. And that was dinner. Bobby says that alcohol helped him feel less afraid late at night in that old Ford. Soon, he found pot, then PCP. In his 20s, he started shooting heroin. Sorry, you little, big-headed, little kid. Like a whole bunch of little leprechauns running around. Trash is talked at every practice, and Bobby is teased relentlessly for wearing Payless shoes, which the kids would never be caught dead in. Brandon, the 8-year-old, calls Bobby powdered donut because he's white, and he likes to lean into Bobby and whisper, punk. Mostly, Bobby laughs. Other times, though, especially when the kids start in on each other, it can get to him. Fellas, fellas, I can't talk if you're talking. Pusher needs some more gloves, man. I'm about ready to put the gloves in the bag and go home. Give me this stuff. Let me roll. That's yours, right? No, man. No, man. I'm serious. Well, shut up. Everybody shut up, please. Bobby picks up the bat bag and slams it against the brick wall. Chill, OK? Chill. I can't talk if you're all talking. OK, look here. I'm sorry-- What's up, fellas? What's happening? Somewhere around the third or fourth practice, without announcing it in any way, the boys start calling Bobby "coach." Coach, can you fix this glove? Coach, which bat should I use? What's it like when the kids call you Coach? You know, I had no-- it didn't really hit me at first, you know? I took them to a picnic a couple of weekends ago that some recovering alcoholic and addict friends of mine threw. And to hear people there-- hey, Bobby, hey, Bobby, and then to hear this group of kids that I came with-- hey, Coach, hey, Coach. That's when it sort of hit me that, hey, man, that's who you are. And these people now see me as Coach, not just Bobby, the recovering drug-- dope fiend. He's Coach. So that makes me feel good to have these kids call me Coach. So I don't know. Now I have this little small part and shape in what their day is going to be like, you know? When he told me that he had come from prison and he got shot in his neck, I thought he was just another one of them people who like to talk about their life and didn't get over it. But I learned to understand him. How do you understand him? He don't want no trouble. He just wants us to listen to him. But I guess as you grow into people, you start to have more patience. As you roll into people? Grow. Start to have more patience, and I think that's what's happening. The Department of Recreation gives Bobby an ID badge, which he wears around his neck when he comes down to the neighborhood, like a sign. I am no longer a dope fiend. I'm doing something good. Most people might keep it in their pocket. Bobby wears it right on his chest. I just walk around with my head high and feeling proud for the most part, very proud of what I'm doing. The skeptics are everywhere, though-- neighbors who gave him advances for paint jobs he never did, people he stole bank cards from, people he actually spit on. What is that like for you to walk around in the neighborhood? And you might even walk by somebody that you owe money to or conned money out of. It's hard to explain, really. It's a roller coaster of emotions, you know? There's times-- and right when I'm feeling like the world is wonderful, when everything is going my way, I'll see someone that I had conned out of a few hundred bucks. And the voice in my head will immediately say, see there? You're still a scumbag. Remember what-- look. That's who you really are. So what do you do when you see that person? It depends. It depends on how I feel, and there's times when I might be feeling really insecure, and I'll put that macho thing up. And I'll put the cocky thing up and hope they say something wrong to me, so that I can go south with my-- you know? So-- Do you do that? No, but I want to. I want to. I mean, there's a part of me that still wants to be a thug, you know? There's a part of me still very capable of being a thug, you know? I just wouldn't be able to be a real good thug with my hands because I'm older. I'd have to get a weapon now, you know? I ain't wearing no girly junk, man. It's early May, and after 10 practices, the kids are finally stepping into their uniforms at the local recreation center. This is the first new thing they've seen all season. Their bats and gloves are splintered and old, but the uniforms are bright blue and gray-- Texas Ranger uniforms with red caps. Bobby is tanned and relaxed, dancing around, faking jabs, counting the kids to see if he can field the team. Never a sure thing. Today, there are exactly nine boys-- the day of their first game against another team. The recreation bus is an hour late to take the team to their game, so some of us go in a taxi-- six kids and I all squished together. Bobby and the others are hailing a cab when the bus finally shows up. We all pile out at what is supposedly the best Little League field in the city. The grass is shin high, there's a pile of dirt in the outfield. No fans, no parents-- just Bobby and the team. They don't even have a field I can slide on. Hey, what time is it? 6:00, about five of 6:00. Dang, man. Oh, the other team-- 4:50. The other team never shows, so Bobby's team wins by default. Some other kids are in the same boat, so there's an impromptu scrimmage. And official or not, this is the first baseball game that most of these kids have ever played. They too dang small, man. We would tear them up. Uh-huh, OK, we suck, shut up, uh-huh, OK. The other team is small, but very fast, and they have three coaches who tell them when to steal bases. So a line drive becomes a run, then another run, and another run, and it's 5-0. He stole home on y'all. Good play, good play, Carlos. That's all right. We'll see what we need to work on today, instead of looking good in our uniforms. Come on, let's get an out. We got a force at second. Get the force at second. The season lurches forward with DC Recreation canceling games for no reason, never rescheduling rain outs. The uniforms are not washed for three weeks, and one day, no one shows up to let the boys in to suit up for a game, so they have to forfeit. By June, Bobby's team has only played one real game, one game in four months. In this inconsistent world, Bobby is someone the kids can count on. He never misses practice, coming in his painter's pants most days to hit the ball to them. And while it might seem like Bobby's keeping the kids in line, he'll tell you that's what they're doing for him. I don't want to have to avoid my neighborhood. I don't want to have to avoid my community playground because I let these kids down because I'm a drunken dope fiend fucking bum, which is what I become if I go have a beer right now or some dope right now. Tomorrow, I'm a bum because all the good feelings are gone. I don't want to feel the shame, which I felt from relapses. And that's a big time shame. It's a shame. I won't be able to look these kids in their eyes, in their faces. I'll duck them. God, I'm 42 years old, and I would have to come in my own neighborhood and duck children because I'm ashamed. I don't want that. Throw that smoke. Throw that smoke. Throw that smoke. You're the man out there. You're the man. By June, Bobby's team gets its first win with some great pitching from Donald and a catch by Ricardo in the third inning that looks more like a football interception. Oh, yeah! Woo! Yeah! Oh, man! Boy, that was a Major League catch, man! I don't make catches like that. Woo! And while they wait for their bus to take them back home, the boys start tussling with each other, rolling around on a grassy hill. They're celebrating their win. They are celebrating their win by wrestling. I'm about to myself! This is easily the sweetest moment of the season, not only because of the win, but because it's amazing to see the boys so happy. And this is what Bobby will remember-- when Justin and Ricardo get in a real fight an hour later, when he has to suspend Benjamin not once, but twice, and when Joey threatens to beat up a kid from another team. Always that delicate balance-- fragile, like sobriety. Time out, time out. Let me-- I've got to tie my shoe. I always thought I was going to be a loser forever. Man, first of all, being clean makes me feel like, OK, I got a chance to be a winner. But the kids, especially-- and something about kids. This is something I never thought, man, that I'd be able to do. It's like-- man, I was walking after a practice like a week or two ago. I swear to God I walked across Duke Ellington Bridge to the subway, and I started crying. I started crying because I was so fucking happy. You know? So happy that, damn, this is probably going to work out. I'm probably going to be able to pull this off. By the end of the season, the kids have a record of two wins and no losses. Playoffs never get scheduled, so there's no reason to practice anymore. No one knows where Benjamin is these days, and just this week, I saw Joey stealing a soda from the corner store, and I made him take it back. Bobby still comes around, though, and hangs out in the park, talks with the boys, and he sometimes shoots one on one with them. And he says, stick with me. I'm going to have tryouts for a 12 and under basketball team. I'm going to still be coming around here. Oh, you're going to get it now. Katie Davis throws that smoke in the neighborhood she grew up in in Washington, DC. It's been years since we first broadcast this story over a decade ago. Bobby did go on to coach a basketball team, and they took first place at a local Boys and Girls Club. But Bobby also relapsed. He started doing heroin again. And then he would get clean, and then he would relapse again. Then he moved to a halfway house, a sober house, where a few years back, he died. He was clean. His counselor said that one of his few possessions when he died was a CD with this story on it. Web programs produced today by Alex Blumberg and myself, with Susan Burton, Blue Chevigny, and Julie Snyder. Contributing editors for today's show-- Paul Tough, Jack Hitt, Margie Rockland, Elise Spiegel, Nancy Updike, and conciliary Sarah Vowell. Production help from Todd Bachman, Mary Wiltenburg, and Anna Martin. Our technical director is Matt Tierney. Mixing help today from Katherine Rae Mondo and Stowe Nelson. Producing help from Alvin Melathe. Special thanks today to Marion Roach, Cheryl Miller, Bob Cargee, Robert Kershner, Wesley Lowery, and John O'Leary. Enrico Togneri, the forensic criminologist you heard near the top of the show-- he died years ago. Our web site, thisamericanlife.org, where you can listen to our archive of over 600 stories for absolutely free. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, he was showing me around his gardening shed. He showed me his shears, his hand pruner, has shovels, and-- I don't know-- this thing filled with soil. That is a dirtbag. Straight up. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. Ira Glass is off this week, I'm Sean Cole. So there's this guy who's been on our show a few times now, Kirk Johnson. He's this extraordinary person. In his early 20s, he went to Iraq and ran rebuilding projects in Fallujah for USAID after the invasion. He saw that Iraqis who worked for the US military were being threatened and killed because of it and weren't getting asylum in the US. And he was outraged. So he single-handedly launched a campaign which changed US law on this. And for years after, he championed these cases, saving thousands of people's lives. It was beyond difficult, an extraordinary stressful job. And so to decompress, Kirk took up fly fishing, which is where today's story actually starts. It has nothing to do with Iraq or refugees. It begins on a river in New Mexico. Fly fishing, just in case you don't know, you're using this special lure that looks like an insect. That's the fly. It floats on the water. Kirk makes his own flies out of things like rabbit fur-- so taking parts of one kind of animal, using it to imitate another kind, in order to catch a third kind. So Kirk's on the river with this guide, a guy named Spencer Seim. This is back in 2011. And at one point, Spencer reaches down to fetch something out of his tackle box. Here's Kirk. And I caught this really colorful flash-- really beautiful looking fly. And I asked him what it was. And he pulls this thing out, and it's a salmon fly. That is, it's used to catch salmon. Kirk had only ever seen trout flies, which are kind of brown or gray. But this thing was intricately tied together with bird feathers and silvery thread, maybe an inch and a half long, kind of a moth-sized peacock, like an Impressionist version of an insect or a dream about an insect. And it's got these emerald, and canary yellow, and ruby-colored strips from feathers of these exotic birds, maybe 10 or 12 species in total. And they're arranged in this really ornate pattern where the hooklets and the barbules will connect to this. It's really nerdy, yes. But I'd never seen anything like it. It's a beautiful piece of art. And he then said to me-- he goes, well, if you think that's crazy, you should hear about this kid who just broke into the British Museum of Natural History to steal hundreds of these exotic birds for their feathers, which he sold to Victorian salmon fly tyers, because he wanted to buy a new golden flute. An actual flute, a musical instrument made of gold. And as soon as he said that-- I mean, I'm not over-dramatizing the moment. I was in the middle of a cast when he was telling me this, and I just kind of froze. I was like, this is the craziest sentence I've heard. Kirk started plying Spencer with questions on the spot. He wanted to know everything. So they went back to Spencer's place that night and looked up the kid's profile on Facebook. His name? Edwin Rist, R-I-S-T. And even that didn't seem like a real name to me. It seemed like some 19th century-- you know, he's one of these Victorian boxers. Edwin had broken into the museum two years earlier in 2009. This was a branch of Britain's Natural History Museum in a little town called Tring. So Kirk starts Googling around to read everything he can find out about the case. But there wasn't much, just a few articles in the British press that covered the basics, which were-- Edwin Rist was from New York originally. He was in London studying music. He was exceptionally talented on the flute. He was only 20 when he stole the birds, 299 of them. And not just any dead birds, they were from one of the most important collections in scientific history. And also, their feathers would fetch about a million dollars if he took them apart and sold them to salmon fly tyers-- which he did, some of them. And he was caught. The police arrested him. And yet, somehow, he was now walking around free auditioning for orchestras in Europe. And a huge number of the birds were still unaccounted for. Kirk wanted to understand how this happened, that a 20-year-old flutist with no particular experience in museum larceny made off with some of the most precious specimens in the world. And he wondered where the missing birds were. Kirk's guide, Spencer, told him, if you really want to find those specimens, you should get yourself to the 21st annual International Fly Tying Symposium. It was in Somerset, New Jersey at the Doubletree Hotel and Conference Center. About a hundred people were there. If you've been to any trade show, you can picture it, sort of a maze of booths selling all kinds of fly tying supplies, hooks, thread, feathers. And you can buy whole birds there, too. I went into one guy's booth, and he had a pretty large box just full of parakeet heads. And all of their beaks were kind of open, like they were chirping at the moment of-- Oh, my god. I won't go too gory there, but-- Were you about to say, at the moment of their death? [LAUGHS] Yes, I was. I was actually going to say, at the moment of their decapitation. But there are bits of birds everywhere. And the guy with the parakeet heads was busily tying a fly in a hook clamped in a little vise, and attached the feathers with thread, wrapping it around the shaft. All of these spectators were gathered around him like he was a sidewalk magician doing a trick. Kirk posed as a customer at first, but the guy could tell he wasn't serious about buying anything. So Kirk finally came clean and said to him that he was thinking of writing something about that museum heist. And he looks up from his fly, and he said, I don't think you want to write that story. And I said, no? Why? And he goes, because we're a small, tight-knit community. And you do not want to piss us off. I was just like momentarily stunned. But in my mind, I was like, holy cow, this is awesome. This is so-- Because what would happen if you pissed them off? I don't normally pull this card out, but I feel like my time in Fallujah has calibrated my threat perception a little bit differently. I would imagine. And so a dude with a bunch of feathers pinched between his fingers does not constitute a threat to me. That guy's threat had the exact opposite effect on Kirk than he intended. And something kicked in for Kirk at this point, like it sometimes does when he gets an idea in his head. To me, it was just a very clear-- you know, a flare fired. Like, if he was trying to turn me away from this story, it was like he had just filled my tank up. It was like, hey, pay more attention to this. This is crazy. It is crazy, the stuff Kirk found out. You can't turn away once you start hearing all the details, not just about the heist and risk, but where the birds came from and the whole surreal subculture of salmon fly tying, what Kirk calls the feather underground, sometimes characterized by shady dealings and obsession. Kirk interviewed more than 50 fly tyers and discovered things that the people investigating the case didn't find out. And that is our show today, the story of what may be the greatest feather caper in history. Expect high drama and ornithology. And stay with us. Act One, The Specimens. A quick warning that this episode contains a few swear words that we've un-beeped for the podcast version. You can find a version with beeps at our website, thisamericanlife.org. The birds Edwin stole, I said they were valuable. Some of them were collected in the mid 1800s by one of the greatest scientific explorers of his time, a man named Alfred Russel Wallace. He was like another Darwin and a peer of Darwin's. Alfred Wallace spent nearly a decade thrashing through the Malay archipelago, capturing and preparing animal specimens, and shipping them back to England. He lived in tiny huts, his flesh regularly invaded by bugs. And about four years in, he contracted malaria and figured he would just hunker down in his shack to sweat it out. And while he's in the middle of this fever, he has a eureka moment and figures out evolution through natural selection completely on his own. He's like, I've got it. Like, I figured it out. And this is before Darwin came up with it? Well, but this is the kicker. He sits down, and he writes this paper meant for publication. And he puts it in an envelope, and emails it to Charles Darwin-- --who had never published anything on this yet. Darwin had figured it out, too, at that point, but he had been too scared to put it out there. These specimens were as important as Darwin's finches-- which, by the way, are also at the Tring Museum. They're early evidence of evolutionary theory. And specimens like these can inform scientists about everything from climate change to the way we perceive color. Scientists are still using them. Alfred Wallace himself once wrote that each species, each bird, is an individual letter building the words and sentences that describe the deep history of our planet. If we allow these letters to disappear, that history disappears with them. He also wrote that it's probably best if people from the West never see birds like these in their original habitat in all their beauty and glory because they'd just plunder them and ruin everything. He had no idea how right he would turn out to be. Not long after, there was an industrialized slaughter all over the world. And it was in the name of women's fashion. This was back when women wore a lot of hats. And anyone who was anyone wore hats with a lot of feathers on them, from parrots, egrets, ospreys. Designers in the US and Europe couldn't get enough of this stuff. Whole species were decimated by the fashion industry. You'd see hats decorated with entire birds. In the 19th century, this was like the Gucci bag. If you could only afford a robin, that was one thing. But if you could afford a bird of paradise-- and we're talking about the whole bird being mounted with outstretched wings. And sometimes, these hats had several different birds mounted on them. Holy crow. [LAUGHS] Sorry. And it's-- I mean, it is punny, but it was how they demonstrated their own perch in society. Some women had so many birds on their hats that they had to squat just in order to fit into their carriages-- so gaudy and inconvenient. Meanwhile, the gentlemen of the era were also sort of using feathers as accessories. Salmon flies were like hats for guys. This was also around the time that all these exclusive fishing clubs were popping up on the coasts of England and Scotland. And each club had its own special patented salmon fly. And the flies themselves had all these names. They're absurd. They're like the Exordium, the Jock Scott, the Durham's Ranger. Can I-- I just wanted to-- Please. Can I just-- Yeah, yeah. Just to give people a sense of-- OK, so this is the recipe for the first salmon fly that Edwin ever tied. It's called the Durham Ranger. This is a recipe from the 1840s. And they call it a recipe? Yes. The tail calls for feathers from the Indian crow, which is the red rough fruit crow that's all over South America. The butt requires two turns of black ostrich hurl. The throat has light blue hackle, usually from the cotinga, which is from Central America. The wings have a pair of long jungle cock feathers with double tibbetts on both sides. And it goes on like that. The cheeks are from a bird called a chatterer. The horns are blue macaw, which is a parrot. Of course, back then, when you wanted these feathers, you went down to the local plume merchant-- or in Paris a plumassier-- and you paid real money. Around the year 1900, certain snowy egret feathers were more expensive than gold. But for me, all I kept fixating on was that this is all bullshit. There's no reason why a salmon should care about any of this. They don't. I mean, you could tie a chocolate wrapper to a hook and catch salmon. Oh. So all of these little subtleties of which subspecies did you use for the cheek of the feather, they don't even see any of that. But that didn't matter to Victorian salmon fly tyers back then. And these days, the community tying this kind of fly still tries to do it according to the same classical recipes in these 100-year-old manuals. Except now, they don't even fish with them. They're just for show. They use feathers from the same species arranged the same exact way. So the fixation is on historical authenticity, like a fly tying version of civil war reenacting. But because we've murdered so many birds for so many reasons over the years, a lot of the most coveted species are now endangered or protected. There's a species of cotinga that is just completely illegal to buy and sell. It's the Cotinga maculata. And they completely jones over this stuff. I have been struggling to find another hobby whose adherents are so quickly driven to break international laws to do the art. I mean, you don't get into the dark side of knitting. Of course, not every salmon fly tyer is breaking the law, but some of them openly flout the rules or just ignore them. Violators can be fined thousands of dollars. There was a post on the main web forum for this hobby, classicflytying.com, that sums up this slavish addiction to certain feathers. One guy said, there's something to a fly tied with the old materials. And someone else responded, I've met this something. I'm haunted by it constantly now. It's like a drug. Nothing else matters. Nothing else compares. When it touches my fingers, I feel the history. I'm taken back to a time when fish were as big as logs, fresh from the sea, reds, yellows, and shades of blues. Their texture and color have that power to push you to do your best. There is nothing else that compares to that power. Act Two, The Flutist. Kirk wanted to talk to the bird thief, Edwin Rist. He emailed him every now and then over the course of three years, asking for an interview. Edwin always said, no, that it was still too raw. And then finally, he agreed, gave Kirk like a week's notice. Kirk and his wife Marie-Josée flew to Dusseldorf where Edwin was living playing in an ensemble, which is the music you're hearing right now. But Marie-Josée was worried. They didn't know this guy. He had broken into a museum, after all. Who knew what he was capable of, if he was dangerous? And they were meeting him at their hotel room. So they hired a German bodyguard who sat out in the hallway during the eight-hour interview. They needn't have bothered. Edwin, while tall, was not imposing, even in his black pea coat. He was friendly. Kirk liked him, though they're very different, Kirk's, oh, gosh farm boy Midwestern-ness and Edwin's living in a rarefied world of flutes and feathers in Europe. We asked Edwin if we could air parts of their interview on the show, and he said, no. So you won't hear his voice. But a lot of what we know about how he came to be in the museum that night comes straight from him. He grew up in a quiet town in New York State south of Albany. He was cute, looked sort of like Harry Potter with thick, wire-rim glasses, a bit of an indoors-y kid, home schooled along with his younger brother. And even back then, he was shaping up to be a great musician. Edwin's parents were both journalists. And when Edwin was about 10, his dad was researching a story for Discover Magazine about the physics of fly casting. So Edwin happened to watch an instructional video on how to tie flies using this specific kind of feather called a hackle. --but let's tie the hackle around the base of the wing so that it floats lower in the surface and perhaps looks like a mayfly at rest. And the feather is transformed. It's suddenly, the hook has like a thousand little legs sticking out in every different direction. Oh, it looks like a centipede, kind of. Yes. And for whatever reason, 10-year-old Edwin's brain was just frozen by this. Seeing something so ordinary transform into something extraordinary like that was amazing to him. Edwin told Kirk that he and his brother watched that part of the video maybe eight times. And soon, he was rummaging through the garage and the basement looking for a hook and thread, anything he could find to try it himself. He plucked the feathers from his mom's down pillow. His dad, seeing all of this, finally brought Edwin to a tackle shop, got him a vise, and some hooks, and other materials, so he could start tying flies for real-- trout flies to begin with, the ugly ones. Edwin's brother got into it, too. They took classes, spent hours hunkered over their creations in this kind of fuzzy trance. Before too long, they were winning fly tying competitions and going to conventions. And it was at one of those conventions where Edwin laid eyes on his first salmon fly. It was at the booth of a prominent fly tyer named Edward Muzeroll, or Muzzy for short. And once again, little Edwin's mind just froze. It was the same reaction Kirk had that day on the water, total bedazzlement. And he's kind of oohing and aahing. And he starts talking to Muzzy. And then, before you know it, he's arranging for private lessons with Muzzy to learn how to do this new type of fly tying-- new to Edwin. And so I think he was 14 when he went up to Maine one summer and got lessons. I think it was eight or 12 hour days where Muzzy proceeded to walk him through not just the techniques but the history of this art form. During that first tutorial with Muzzy, though, where Edwin tied the Durham Ranger, they used substitute feathers or subs, meaning no red-ruffed fruitcrow, no black ostrich herl. Instead, they used, like, dyed chicken feathers or whatever. And Muzzy, who'd been tying flies longer than Edwin had been alive, could tell right away that Edwin was a natural, a prodigy. And so at the end of that first session, when Muzzy's saying goodbye, he gives Edwin an envelope and kind of in hushed tones said, this is what it's all about. Edwin opens the envelope. And inside is $150 or $200 worth of exotic bird feathers. From the red-ruffed fruitcrow and from cotinga, I think. Now Muzzy's stuff was legal. And it was a gesture to this young acolyte, almost like, work your way up to these things. You know? Like, when you get good enough, try using one of these red-ruffed fruitcrow feathers. And that's when Edwin caught the bug. All he wanted to use in his flies were exotic bird feathers from then on. He started doing chores for his neighbors, gathering firewood, just for a little extra feather money. He soon grew into a master fly tyer-- which, by the way, means an expert mimmicker-- able to consistently and perfectly hew to the same classic recipes again and again. But there was always this one limitation as to what he could accomplish. As good as Edwin got-- and I mean, he was heralded as the future of fly tying by Fly Tyer Magazine, which I subscribe to. Of course, you do. You know, he was completely embraced by this community by his 16th birthday, I think. I mean, he was a legend already. But as good as he was, he was a 16-year-old who wasn't really flush with cash. And so whenever there were these occasional eBay auctions of the species that he wanted, he always got outbid by these wealthier, older fly tyers who had disposable income. And so his devotion to this art form was kind of always defined by a longing for what he didn't have. These other guys would say, yeah, well, it's a good fly, but talk to me when you get some real cotinga. That's not going to feel that good. No. Especially to a kid. Edwin has this specific way of talking, perhaps cultivated from living in Europe for many years. And on the topic of using substitute feathers instead of the real thing, he told Kirk, the knowledge of its falsity eats at you. So in a way, Edwin was a pauper musician gazing through a shop window at a shiny musical instrument-- which, by the way, he literally was that, too. At the same time he was excelling at fly tying, he was also excelling at the flute. Just to give you a sense, this is a YouTube video Edwin posted of him covering "Master of Puppets" by Metallica, playing all the parts on different flutes. Anyway, he was finally admitted to the Royal Academy of Music in London, but he didn't bring any of his fly tying gear or feathers with him. He said, Customs wouldn't have appreciated his birdy bag. Around the same time, a fly tying friend in Canada-- and something of a mentor to Edwin-- sent him an email saying basically, hey, while you're over there, you've got to check out this place north of London, a branch of the Natural History Museum in a town called Tring. He attached pictures of drawers filled with brilliantly colorful bird specimens. They weren't on display. They were stored away in a special wing of the museum that the general public isn't allowed into. Act Three, The Museum. The Tring is this big, old brick Tudor building from the 1880s. On the outside, it looks more like a private mansion or a boy's school than a museum. The only way you can see that special bird collection is for legitimate research purposes. So Edwin came up with a plan, a lie. He emailed the museum and told them he needed to photograph the birds for a friend's PhD thesis. And on November 5, 2008, he brought a camera to the museum, signed the visitor logbook using his own name, and was escorted to the Birds of Paradise Collection. You can tell a research specimen of a bird from a mile away. Their eye sockets are stuffed with cotton, their wings folded down at their sides, legs stiff. They're referred to as bird skins. And importantly, the legs have these tags attached to them with the species, and date, and other bio-data, and, in this case, Alfred Wallace's signature. Without that tag, the specimen isn't a specimen anymore. It's just a bird. Who knows where the hell it came from? But research, of course, was the last thing on Edwin's mind, looking at the birds. He was just in awe of their arresting beauty. He made this analogy. He said, if I put a gold brick on the table, it's really impressive. There's a shock value of understanding, wow, that's really valuable. And then this is what he told me. He goes, if you go to Fort Knox, if you go into the vault, there's a drastically different feeling than just seeing a gold brick. Quote, "For a fly tyer, for someone who understands the feathers, and sees the potential in them, and who really has a passion-- I guess you could call it an obsession. I don't like to use it, because it sounds like a negative term-- "but that overwhelming, wow, what have I just seen feeling was all that I had. And I remember it to this point, because it was just so extraordinary. And the sad thing," he told me, "is that many, many, many-- well, most people have no idea what that feels like." Edwin photographed all sorts of different species of birds that day. And he says he wasn't casing the museum that first time. He just wanted to look. Except he also took pictures of the area around the museum. Those surely were not interesting photographs, but they may have proved useful later on. Oh, and also-- He opens up Microsoft Word on his computer and creates a file called PlanforMuseumInvasion.doc. No, he doesn't. I swear to god. That's a little on the nose. I know. But you don't think anyone's ever going to see your hard drive, you know? In some ways, it's a smart thing to do, to build a list of the things that you're going to need to pull off a museum heist. You don't want to just wing that. Wing it? Hey-o! No, but I mean, he wrote on there that he would need a glass cutter. And I said, was this like one of those things you see in the movie where it's some perfect, disk-shaped glass that's cut? Exactly, like in Pink Panther. Yeah. And it was just like a handheld-- almost like an X-ACTO knife. And I was like, well, did you practice? And he's like, no. I didn't think is going to be that hard. The evening of June 23, 2009, Edwin finished playing a concert at the Royal Academy of Music and boarded a train to Tring. According to him, he brought along only one empty suitcase, a pair of latex gloves he took from his doctor's office, some wire clippers, a little LED light, and the glass cutter. Act Four, The Heist. So Edwin came up from the station, he's saying on foot, with his suitcase on the night. Obviously, he'd been up here before. The detective on the case, Adele Hopkin, took Kirk to the crime scene, up public footpath 37 in Tring, to a secluded area outside the museum. --and then came along here. And then he's saying he shimmied up this wall-- which is doable-- up here onto the top. He clips some strands of barbed wire in order to get to a window. This window here, which has now got the bars. And was the reason he brought the glass cutter, which, it turns out, he dropped along the way somewhere. He had a moment of doubt where he started saying to himself, maybe that's some kind of sign that I'm not supposed to do this. Like, maybe I should just bail on this whole thing. But then this other voice in his head said, no, you've been planning this forever. Just figure it out. So he used a different kind of glass cutter, a giant rock. --and then just smashed one of the windows and then went in. Edwin says he's not sure how he didn't cut himself up on the glass. And an alarm is triggered in the museum. And there is a security guard there that night. This is a very contentious point, but Edwin told me that he thinks that the security guard was engrossed in a soccer match. The museum virulently denies this. And they told me, that particular security guard doesn't even like soccer. But one thing that we're certain of is that an alarm was triggered. The security guard did not notice it. And Edwin had the run of the place. And he was in there undetected for at least an hour. It was a weirdly easy thing to pull off. His plan had just been to take a couple of the best specimens of each species. But in the dark, with just his little LED pinch light, he couldn't see which were the best ones. So he just started grabbing whatever he could fit in his hands. The cotingas were small. He bagged about 100 of those. The resplendent quetzals, though, were trickier. He had to carefully coil their long tails in order to make them fit. He moved from cabinet to cabinet, sometimes emptying whole drawers-- or nearly. He took 47 of the museum's 48 red-ruffed fruitcrow. He only left the last one because he didn't see it wedged in the back of the tray. Because he's been here before, he knew exactly where to go for what he wanted, filled up his suitcase-- you wouldn't believe it, would you-- and just walked back to the train station. Kirk tried to get Edwin to describe the feeling that he had loading the birds into the suitcase. But sitting together in the hotel in Dusseldorf, Edwin was strangely devoid on this score. He told Kirk, it wasn't like, ah, they're mine now, ho, ho, ho. It was surprisingly unexciting and technical. Like, how do I make them fit? Though, he did admit that even he was amazed he managed to pull it off. Edwin said, quote, "the fact that essentially an idiot with a rock could steal a suitcase full of birds from the Natural History Museum, even as I think about it-- and I've thought about this myself-- it's absurd." And then he went out the way he came in, shoved the suitcase back out of the window first, and climbed out after it. At which point, this total exhaustion fell over him, dragging one foot after the other back to town. And mixed in with the fatigue was paranoia. When he got to the train platform, every set of footfalls on the walkway above him was a potential threat. And he was there for hours. He had missed the last train back to London that night and had to sit on the platform with a million dollars worth of birds until 4:00 in the morning. He got back to his room, had this kind of euphoric moment where he laid out all the birds and realized the success of his haul. On the floor, or where? I think he laid them out on his bed. Uh-huh. Did he like roll around in the dead birds? [LAUGHS] That, I don't know. But there was nobody else on planet Earth that had this many flawless specimens of these species. To now be sitting with this haul, like, he would punch through to the highest level of fly tying because he wouldn't want for anything. And he would just have this kind of-- you're totally in a different game now, and no one else is able to play with it, you know? And if they wanted to play, they'd have to pay through the nose. Again, Edwin had stolen 299 birds from the museum. He would never have to wonder again where his next feather was coming from. The broken window wasn't discovered until the following morning. The cops were called in. They look around, and the museum and the cops together conclude that nothing seems to have been stolen. Wait. What? Yeah. They went looking for the things that they knew had a huge market value, like Darwin's birds. Darwin's birds, the famous finches, which were still safely cuddled in their drawer. Once again, Alfred Wallace was second best to Darwin. Yeah. I went through all that. To me, it was like one of the final blows to him is that, if they had cared about Wallace as much as they should, they would have gone and checked to make sure that Wallace's birds were still there. But they didn't. And if they had done that, they would have found out right away that they had been robbed. They would have had a big head start on things. But as it happened, it took them almost-- it was well over a month before they even found out that they were robbed. 35 days, in fact. The closed circuit surveillance cameras in the town of Tring reset after 28 days. In a statement to us, the museum said-- I'm paraphrasing here-- that there's nothing more important than the security and welfare of the collection. And after the theft, they changed how they grant access to the collections and also beefed up their security measures. Act Five, The Investigation. It was only when someone wrote to the museum with a question about one of the species that a curator went to that cabinet, opened the drawer, and saw that it was empty. It was a huge blow. The curators at the Tring are part of a long lineage caring for and protecting this collection. During the Blitz of London in World War II, bombs raining down everywhere, it was their predecessors who bundled up the museum's bird specimens and secreted them out of the city up to their new location in Tring. That's why they're there, so they'd be safe. And now, under the watch of collections manager Robert Prys-Jones, this happened. There is a missing chunk from the record. And in something like [INAUDIBLE] bird, it is a missing chunk that-- you know, a really substantial-- possibly over the half of the world's resource of that species is now missing. The whole thing was a complete kick in the guts. It was desperately, deeply depressing. Alfred Wallace's birds survived Hitler, but not Edwin Rist. The investigators didn't have a lot of obvious clues to go on. There was almost no physical evidence. But had the police or the museum looked in the visitors log, they would have found Edwin's full name, which, if someone had Googled it, they would have found edwinrist.com, on which he was selling some of their specimens, using their Latin names. They also would have quickly discovered that he played the flute. And if they had gone looking for the birds on eBay or the fly tying forums, they would have found birds for sale from someone with the handle FlutePlayer1988. One of the posts was titled, "Indian crow feathers for sale-- buying new flute." If any of the buyers asked, Edwin made up stories as to where the birds came from. But mostly, no one asked. They didn't want to know. The way Edwin finally got caught was sort of random. A tip came in from a fly tyer who had seen a bird skin at a festival-- in the Netherlands of all places-- that looked like it might have come from the Tring. And the guy traced it back to FlutePlayer1988 on eBay. It took some doing, but the police finally tracked Edwin down and showed up at his apartment with a warrant, one year after the break-in. He confessed immediately. Brought the officers into his bedroom where his girlfriend was still sleeping and showed them the birds. Since he confessed and plead guilty, the case went right to sentencing. Edwin was looking at 10 years for burglary and 14 years for selling stolen goods. But during the sentencing process, Edwin's lawyers brought in a psychologist who diagnosed him with Asperger's syndrome. That changed everything. The judge in his statement said that Edwin's crime wholly merited a lengthy prison sentence. He said the crime amounted to, quote, "a natural history disaster of world proportions." But he said, because of the diagnosis and a legal precedent in the UK involving Asperger's, a long prison sentence would probably be overturned on appeal. So he sentenced Edwin to one year, suspended. There was a financial penalty, too, but no time behind bars. Of the 299 birds, a third of them came back to the Tring unscathed. Another third had been plucked at, or dismantled, or in some way compromised. Chiefly, their bio-data tags had been removed with the date, and species, and Alfred Wallace's signature, which meant those specimens were now useless to science. And the last third did not come back to the museum. They were gone, missing. Some of them were sold, but certainly not all of them. Where were they? When Edwin was caught, he pleaded his guilt, which meant that the investigation stopped, and there was no search for anything else. The museum wasn't looking for it. The British police wasn't looking for it. And as I was starting to dig around in these forums-- and I would see occasions of guys cracking jokes about the heist, and it wasn't like it was a reformed community-- I was like, this is nuts. Someone's got to find these things. And Kirk is someone who can't stop himself when he comes across an injustice that he might actually be able to fix. Also, this unsettling thing happened during the interview. Kirk says Edwin just didn't seem like someone with Asperger's. And after six of their eight hours together, he told him so. Edwin responded that he hadn't exhibited any obvious symptoms of the disorder until he was in the evaluation room, not long before sentencing. He said, I became exactly what I was supposed to be. If I'm being honest, I was pissed off. Like, this started out as just a quirky, funny story to me. But when I learned about Wallace, when I learned about the debt that we have to these specimen collections and that they were still out there-- a lot of them were still missing-- then it took on a more serious valence where suddenly I was like, OK, this isn't just like a funny thing. You can't go back and get another bird from 1860 anymore. That bird's gone. And what I met was a kid who was not remorseful, who kind of grimaced when I referred to him as a thief at one point. And he told me that he doesn't think of himself as a thief. Are we at the anger level at this point? Like, probably approaching there. Because now it's as if this is a case closed. And no one's looking for these birds. And I'm still on these forums seeing people trading and selling things that look suspiciously like Edwin's birds. Had Edwin hidden a bunch away and was still selling them? Was someone else selling them? Kirk couldn't let it go. And then he had a kind of breakthrough and became certain that he knew where all of the missing specimens were. Coming up, Kirk goes and confronts his prime suspect. And he learns that ornithologists can have serious potty mouths. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Sean Cole in for Ira Glass. Today's show, the Feather Heist, the true story of one of the weirdest capers in recent history, which was also a tragic loss to natural history. And it's the story of Kirk Johnson, who took it upon himself to re-investigate the theft of 299 bird specimens from the Tring Museum north of London. Act Six, The Suspect. Kirk, of course, asked Edwin Rist about the missing bird skins when they were together in Dusseldorf. Edwin told him the police took everything from him. They had everything. He also, in the interview, called into question whether the museum knew how many were still missing and suggested they never really knew how many they had in the first place. But the people at the Tring had given Kirk this document, a meticulous accounting of what had come back to them and what was still unaccounted for. And Kirk had it with him. This is him reading it to Edwin in the hotel room. I mean, this is like a pretty thorough-- like the number of specimens missing July '09, intact specimen was labelled-- without label. Approximate number of specimens represented by feathers and skin fragments, and then a total estimate sort of consolidated. I know this is weird. I said, this doesn't seem haphazard. And Edwin said, no, it doesn't seem haphazard. I would agree. It looks very, very thorough. And it looks very calculated, I guess. And so I said, well, so then, if that's accurate, where are they? And he goes, if someone has them, I really don't know about it. And the question then is, does one individual have them? Or is it parceled out over time? And I look up at him. And I said, but aren't you the person most uniquely positioned to answer that? And he says, in what sense? And I looked at him. I was like, but you're the one that took them. And after kind of a long-winded response, he said, I don't have them, fundamentally. He used the word fundamentally? Yes. Now, a number of Edwin's customers returned the feathers, and bird parts, and whole birds that they'd bought from him to the museum. In some cases, Edwin's dad reimbursed them, spending thousands of dollars. The museum was now faced with the bizarre task of having to calculate how many feathers equaled one red-ruffed fruitcrow. And factoring all of that in, the number of outstanding birds on the spreadsheet shrank down to 64. And as Kirk waded through all of the past sales of birds online, doing Wayback Machine searches and stuff like that, this sort of pattern started to emerge that seemed odd. There was another user who had clearly posted specimens that came from Edwin's stash. This different user named Goku, G-O-K-U. Either it was Edwin under another name, or someone who was working with him to sell the birds, an accomplice. And I really did not know the answer for a long time. But this Goku guy suddenly became like a big person of interest to me. Kirk started mapping all of Edwin's closest associates in the fly tying world. And he developed a short list as to who Goku might be, if it wasn't Edwin. And then one day, Kirk happened to be visiting with an ornithologist at Yale named Rick Prum, one of the head curators at the Peabody Museum. MacArthur Genius Guggenheim recipient. And you walk in, and he's just like dropping the F-bomb right and left. And he's just-- I mean, I love this guy. And I wrote these notes, because I was trying to get Fish and Wildlife Service to bust these fuckers. Rick Prum had taken an enraged interest in the Tring case himself. Like Kirk, he had taken copious notes, kept track of the sales online. And listening to the two of them talk, it's like they've each met the only other person in the world who's not only heard of but loves just as passionately the same band he worshipped in high school. I mean, did you ever see Rist-- you never saw his website at the day? Like, when he was busted, what was on his website? His website's down now. Yeah, but did you ever record it? No. I have. I've got his whole website, All those screenshots? Yeah. No way. And looking at Edwin's website definitively narrowed the short list of who Goku who might be down to one guy. OK, right there, Long Nguyen. Long Nguyen, another top-notch fly tyer who is exactly Edwin's age. They're friends. Long Nguyen lives in Norway. Oh yes, it's so perfect. You have no idea how helpful that is. Wow. I mean, this is why I did it. And Kirk had other evidence implicating Long, some Facebook exchanges, Edwin saying, did your box arrive, pictures of the two of them on a trip to Japan after which all kinds of new birds were posted for sale by Goku. Not only that, other members of the community were openly accusing Long of working with Edwin, telling him, we know it's you. Your days are numbered. Now, Edwin has insisted all along that Long was not involved in the heist. He's defended Long against accusations on the internet. And he told Kirk that Long was not involved. And then he put Kirk in touch with Long. And Long, the only other person Kirk knew of who clearly seemed to be selling the stolen birds, agreed to talk. Act Seven, Oslo. Kirk thought maybe Long had been at the museum with Edwin that night. There was always a question as to how Edwin pulled this off on his own. Maybe Long had put him up to it in the first place. He pictured him being wealthy and manipulative, using Edwin as a pawn. And when Kirk's plane landed in Oslo, he was just about jumping out of his skin he was so eager to talk with Long. He took a train out to a little suburb of the city. Long met him at the station. He was a teenage-looking 20-something with a big smile and Chuck Taylors. I had miraculously convinced him to do the interview at his home because I had this kind of fantastical notion that he would slip up, and I would find some partially-exposed wing under the couch or something like that, you know? Like a box of dead birds would come tumbling out of a closet. Yeah, when he was trying to reach for some sugar packets or something. So we walk into the apartment, and out of the corner of my eye there's like this green flash just bombing towards my face. And it's his parrot that just was loose in the apartment and flapped over and landed on my shoulder and spent most of the-- I think that was like a seven-hour interview the first day. And it was an uncomfortable interview where I'm learning all of these things about his life, but also confronting him with stuff. And his bird is, meanwhile, kind of nibbling on my earlobe. I hope I'm not being like [PARROT SQUAWKS] a jerk or like-- I feel like the worst [PARROT SQUAWKS] guest ever asking all these questions. No, but those are questions I-- And something else happened when Kirk walked into the apartment. All notions of Long being the rich, conniving mastermind of the Tring heist fell away. Long was from a family of Vietnamese refugees who had fled the war to Norway in the '70s. He started tying flies in a boys home when he was a kid, basically as an escape. --because things were turbulent in our family. I mean, yeah, I don't think about that now because it's past. But things were bad. We had our best to just go through it with parents being in Vietnam and all, and after the war and stuff. And Long said he never really had what he called true friends. And around that same time after he had started tying flies, he was reading about other fly tyers online. And he heard about this one kid in America who was exactly his age. I think I start hearing about Edwin when I was 15 or 16, because he was really famous back then. Long looked up to Edwin. They met online first, just writing back and forth. They had a ton in common, so they decided to meet. And that Japan trip was the first time they saw each other in person. They tied flies together there. Edwin had already stolen the birds at that point, but he hadn't been caught yet. And he's telling me that Edwin reached out to him to ask him to help sell these things, but just as a friend. He just said, hey, I found these things. Can you post these things online for me? And Long thought that that was what being a friend was. He thought he was going to help Edwin make enough money to buy his new flute. And he also felt really flattered and honored that Edwin Rist was paying attention to him. Long told Kirk he mostly just re-posted some of Edwin's ads, including pictures of birds. But it is true that Edwin sent him a bunch of presorted packets of feathers and three or four whole bird skins to sell. And Long did sell some of them, but Long says he didn't know any of it was stolen at the time, which Edwin confirms. Edwin made up stories about where the birds came from. And Long never stopped to think how implausible they were, partly because he was blinded by his love of the birds. But also, probably he was blinded by his infatuation for Edwin. Looking back, Long says Edwin was probably just trying to attract less attention to himself. My assumption is just like he wanted to erase his traces. But the traces were already there, so I don't know why. But he's using you as a friend. Yeah. Like he's-- do you see what-- it's not a nice thing to do. No, it's absolutely not. And I had like a tough decision about how to deal with this friendship. At the time, I think, when he get exposed, I was really shocked. I was frozen from the forum because people-- they assumed that I was the one responsible for everything. I was considering if I should turn my back, because it's reasonable for me to erase this friendship. And you can't do this to friends. It made me really upset with Edwin. I don't know how you look at this chain of events and see them as equals. I don't know how you look at the chain of events and see this as anything other than Edwin using him as a fence to potentially take the fall for him if things got hairy. Sitting with Long, Kirk ultimately turned to the question of where the missing birds were. But instead of just asking him outright, he eased into the subject with a kind of Colombo, just-one-more-question gentle persistence. Meanwhile, Long sometimes sounded like a disgraced banker at a congressional hearing, saying he couldn't remember things that seemed basic. For instance, Kirk asked him whether the customers paid Edwin directly, or if Long had handled any of the money. I don't remember if I received the money, or if the money went to him. You remember, right? I mean, I'm not trying to be an asshole, but you would remember if people-- like, these things were selling for thousands of dollars. Yeah-- Don't you think you would remember? I don't think I sold things for thousands of dollars. What I remember most is selling small amounts, like packages of feathers. I don't want to be rude, but this is another point where I'm really just-- Yeah, I understand. Because I spent like four years to try to forget all this. Yeah. Yeah. So what are you doing, it's like try to bring up all in the surface. So the details is quite unclear to myself, because I trying to close this case. Yeah, Kirk thought to himself, you and me both, buddy. There are still a lot of skins that are missing. Yeah. Like a lot. Yeah. I don't have any skins. Many people would probably think that I possess those skins. Why? Because I was so close related to Edwin. That would be a natural thing to assume. It would be very logical. Yeah. Like pretty reasonable for them to think that, no? Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. If that's not true, than, A, how can we prove that that's not true? I can't prove it. You can or you can't? Can't. Then the question, B, is, where are they? Where? I don't know. How is that possible? How do you not know? Like, you know-- like, I mean, you and Edwin-- I know what Ed-- like, I don't know where because a tiny part was sold through me. You can't ask for a receipt for me not having skins. Kirk left Long's apartment feeling bad for him, but also frustrated. It still seemed like maybe he was holding something back. And he didn't know if he would ever see Long again. But then, the next morning, Long was waiting for Kirk in the lobby of his hotel. He told Kirk he had been thinking and decided to quit tying flies with exotic bird feathers. He was afraid, though, that he'd lose the few friends he still had. He said they only liked him because he tied beautiful flies. Kirk and Long spent the next two days hanging out. They walked around the city together, mostly sightseeing. And at one point, they met up on the steps of the National Gallery where Munch's painting, The Scream, was stolen in 1994 by thieves who broke through a window. And I just decided like, ah, screw it. I'm going to just do one more attack on his defenses here and see if I can get him to admit anything. I heard from two separate people that, in the last year, you've told them that you have so much Indian crow, and you don't have any need for it. And so, what am I supposed to do with that? You do whatever you-- But is it true? Yeah. That you have a lot of Indian crow? No. I have, like-- I still have some of the packages of the ones I was supposed to sell. Long kept those packages he was supposed to sell for himself, after Edwin was arrested. He sent back the bird skins, but he kept the feathers. And suddenly, I was like, OK, now we're getting somewhere. Like, how many? And he was just miserable under this line of questioning, but he finally estimated that he had between 600 and 800 of these feathers from Edwin. But 800 is a lot of feathers. Yeah, I know. And he didn't have that many anymore. He had sold half of them-- again, back before he knew they were stolen-- and kept the rest, which he had been tying with ever since. He was now down to about 100 feathers. Kirk says Long also admitted that the number of birds Edwin sent him was more like 10 or 20, rather than just a few. We checked this with Long, and he refutes it. In any case, Kirk finally felt like he was closing in on what he'd been after. Obviously, he had no real standing to be asking any of these questions or making demands. He wasn't the police. He didn't work for the museum. But he had been on this case so doggedly for so long. I was like, Long, you know you have to show me these things, right? And he kind of very quietly said, yes. And then he started crying. And he-- He started crying? Yeah, and he told me he's never told anyone about this, that not even his family knows about this, that he's never admitted this to anyone. And I saw someone who was really struggling with his actions in a way that I hadn't seen with Edwin. There were no tears in the Edwin interview. Right. I mean, there was a kind of a-- he thought it was just as crazy as I did-- this whole story-- attitude, you know? So not only are you getting a better accounting of their co-involvement and the number of birds that were involved, but also there's something else that you've been looking for, which is like contrition, kind of. Yeah. Yeah. Kirk and Long took the train back to Long's apartment where Long dipped in and fetched his binder of feathers, sort of like a stamp book with little pockets. They brought it to a local bar, ordered a couple of beers, and opened it. Can I take pictures? Sure. I want to ask you just like, what's what, kind of. And four years after he had first heard about the heist, Kirk had them in his hands, feathers that no one else knew about, that Edwin Rist had stolen from the Tring Museum. It was the first time he had seen stolen Tring Museum feathers in the wild, fugitive feathers. Kirk says holding that binder, he felt a straight line back to Wallace, Wallace who wrote, "All living things were not made for man." Still, Wallace probably never pictured two guys poring over the detached feathers of his birds in a bar in suburban Oslo. So this is like-- these are Tring, and this is-- This is Tring, this is not Tring. This is Tring. OK, so there's like-- Should we just count only the Tring first? Yeah. And then I'll tell about every feather. Yeah, that'd be great. OK. 1, 2, 3, 4 , 5, 6, 7-- And I just remember very clearly having two thoughts. One was, here they are. I found them. And how can you tell so quickly which ones are Tring? Wait. Wait. OK, sorry. You're at 40 there. 40? Mm-hm. One. And then, at the same time, recognizing just how pathetic it all was and how small it all was. There wasn't a box of missing birds. There were no labels. These things, I knew what happened. They're just plucked, harvested feathers from 150-year-old birds that will never be returned to their-- you can't reattach them to a bird. You can't do anything with them. And so it was this complicated moment where I was really kind of proud, but also a little embarrassed. Because I was like, this is not-- there's nothing really triumphant about this moment. Kirk told Long he thought Long should send the feathers back to the museum, partly because it might help Long put the whole ugly business behind him. And Long agreed. It took him a few months, but he finally stuffed them all into an envelope with no return address. Kirk learned of two other full bird skins that definitively came from the Tring. The buyer lives in South Africa and has no interest in sending them back. About 20 others belonging to a guy in Montreal looked like possible Tring birds, but he's resold them already. And say Long sold 10 more of them. That would bring the total number of birds unaccounted for down to 32, which means, A, there's just no way to find out what happened to all of them anymore. And B, Edwin is not the only fly tyer in the world who felt OK about knowingly owning stolen property. Anyone who bought anything from him should send it back to the museum in whatever shape it's in. But what would come of them sending back parts of birds, or feathers, or whatever? Nothing. Nothing. No scientific value. I mean, maybe someone will figure out down the line how to figure out which feather came from which bird, but it would just be a moral victory, honestly. A moral victory? Yeah. I mean, it's not-- and I'm fully aware of that. Like, they're not going to be used, but they don't belong to this community. They belong to that museum. And the end of this should be everyone just return things that they know are stolen, even if it's two feathers. And they can walk around with their head a little bit higher. And maybe that's just so stupid of me for suggesting this. But if the choice is between them returning it and them getting to keep it, that seems easy to me. But Kirk finally decided to let go of this case. He realized that he had become just as obsessive as Edwin about the birds and as obsessive as Wallace, for that matter. All three men, for completely different reasons, spent years fixating over the very same birds-- not the same species, the same physical animals. Wallace wanted knowledge. Edwin saw a lot of beautiful colors and guessed dollar signs. And Kirk, though he knows how loony this sounds, wanted to avenge the birds. As a last-ditch effort, and with the museum's knowledge, he went on the main fly tying forum and said that the Tring was ready to accept any anonymous returns, no questions asked. He said, as much as I would personally like to know who might be in possession of any of the missing skins, it is much more important that they be returned. And I have included the museum's address below for anyone who is so inclined. I don't mean to lecture-- and I imagine that some of you might be annoyed by this point-- but I am challenging you to help remove this cloud that hangs over your hobby. Simply deleting any reference to what happened at the Tring doesn't seem like the best way of coming to terms with it. And then, more than 40 members of the fly tying community asked the moderator of the forum to delete Kirk's post. And like so many other things in this story, it disappeared. Kirk Johnson wrote an excellent book about the museum heist, which was the basis for this story. It has lots of details that we weren't able to get into on the radio. It's called The Feather Thief-- Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century. Our program is produced today by Miki Meek. The people who help make our show-- Dana Chivvis, Neil Drumming, Damian Gray, Hannah Joffe-Walt, David Kestenbaum, Seth Lind, Anna Martin, Robin Simeon, Christopher Switala, Stowe Nelson, Julia Whitaker, and Diane Wu. Our senior producer is Brian Reed, managing editor, Susan Burton, research help from Michelle Harris. Special thanks today to Ellen Paul, James Costa, and Marion Bentley. Our website is thisamericanlife.org, where you can listen to our archive of over 600 episodes, totally free. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to my boss, Ira Glass. You know, I happened to see him in the park last weekend with his two dogs, a labradoodle and a Pomeranian. It was just the three of them walking along. And he got really hostile when I approached them. We're a small, tight-knit community. And you do not want to piss us off. I'm Sean Cole. Ira's back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
OK, so let's begin today with this story about two people. These are two people with two very different perspectives on the world. And the one thing these two people have in common, the only thing that connects them, is a can of olives that one of them sends to the other. Diane Wu, one of the producers of our show, she looked into this. Hey, Diane. Hello, Ira. So? So the first person in the story is named Caroline. She was a year out of college when this package arrived to her parents' house, a place she hadn't lived for many years. Her mom texted her. What do you want me to do with this box from Walmart.com? Which was weird because Caroline hadn't ordered anything from Walmart, like ever, so she just texted her mom back to say, well, just open it up and see what's inside. And then she texts me that it's a can of black olives. It's just like this can of black olives and an empty box. No note, no nothing. So Caroline starts texting her friends and asks them, did you send me these olives? Is there, like, an olive inside joke that we have that I forgot about? And people are like, I don't know what you're talking about. Like, I didn't send you any olives. One of her friends wrote, oh, the classic oliving. So Caroline then goes to urbandictionary.com and types in "oliving." Nothing comes up. So her friend was kidding? Yeah. Caroline thinks, OK, maybe Walmart just made a mistake. This was a random computer glitch. Or maybe her friends were lying and one of them did send it. So she calls Walmart. There's no receipt but the order number was on the box. And? And they told her it was not a random computer glitch. There was a person who ordered it and sent it to her, like a real person, and he's the other person in the story. And they gave me the name. They said it was this guy named Christopher Fouts, and I don't know anyone by that name. She thinks, why would a total stranger send me a can of olives? So she Google's Christopher Fouts, looks for him on Facebook, but she can't figure out who he is. Who do you think Christopher Fouts is? How do you imagine him? I imagine that maybe he has, like-- this is a very specific thing that I'm imagining. Go for it. OK, so I imagine that, I don't know, he has a day-to-day office job where he comes in to the cubicle every day, and grinds away. And so on the side, he likes to pull these pranks and whatnot. Caroline really liked the whole idea that there was this stranger out there somewhere in the world sending random packages to people, just to surprise them. I think it means there's hope, you know? If some random person is just going to send you olives to make you smile when you open up-- you know? OK, so after that conversation, you set out to find Christopher Fouts, right? Mm-hm. To ask him why he sent her the olives. Was it hard to find him? It was a little bit hard. He isn't easily Google-able. I had to write him a letter, like in the mail. And it got forwarded to Germany, because that's where he lives now. So a couple weeks after I started looking for him, he sent me back an email. So did you tell him Caroline's theory that he's out there sending random stuff to strangers to make them smile? I did. I ran that by him. And he told me-- That was not my motivation whatsoever. So it turns out Christopher Fouts sells stuff on Amazon as a side gig. He runs the whole operation out of his basement. He sells household goods. And Caroline was one of his customers. Miss Caroline had placed an order on December 30th for a 12 piece dining ware set. But when he went to his basement to send the dining ware set to her, he found out he didn't have it in stock. So Christopher went online and bought it from Walmart, had them send it to her at the address she gave, which was her parents' house. But there was a snag. The dinner ware set was below Walmart's threshold for free shipping. Enter the star of our show, the can of olives. Adding the can of black olives put the order at above the threshold for the free shipping. How much did he save? $3.70, by adding the olives. Is there any part of you, when you did this, that thought about Caroline opening the box and getting the olives? No, actually. I was just thinking about minimizing my losses on this order. So basically she has thought about him a lot. He has never given her any thought at all. And the answer to Caroline's question about where her olives came from? It is the least romantic answer you could possibly come up with. Like, it's less romantic than just a random computer glitch. A guy trying to save $3.70 in shipping costs. So Diane and I called Caroline, and we explained how Christopher Fouts saw their whole transaction. Her reaction to this, I think, cut to the heart of the matter succinctly. I think we're just very different people. True enough. And the way you see a can of olives depends on your perspective about things in general. Like, do you choose to see life as an adventure or do you see it as a guy trying to reduce shipping costs? Caroline, of course, knows where she stands. Life's an adventure. I mean-- yeah, it's like-- I feel like if I had the mentality that life was a guy reducing his shipping costs, that would be just so sad. I have to say, I'm with you. I also think life is an adventure, but I do acknowledge the stunning amount of information that we get all the time, letting us know that a lot of it is a guy reducing his shipping cost. Yes. Most of the data points are a guy reducing his shipping cost, I would say. Well, today on our radio show we meet some people who are going into remarkable situations, and I mean true adventures. We have a space explorer who went to the moon, a professional basketball player, people embracing big dreams. Except all these people are Christopher's. They are not Caroline's. They are all about keeping shipping costs low. They are practical people in situations so many of us would find deeply thrilling. How they managed to be who they are in the face of spectacular wonder and the vast unknown-- from WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Act 1-- "So Over the Moon." So a man takes a trip to a place that a lot of people dream of going. The food's not the best, but the scenery is pretty great. Anyway, the experience of it for him was not what you usually hear. David Kestenbaum tells the story. I found out about this guy entirely by accident. I was watching this short documentary that just came out about the Apollo 8 mission. This is the 50th anniversary. It was a beautiful film with all this footage from the launch and from space. So I reached out to the filmmaker, Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, thinking maybe we could do some version of it here on the radio. Maybe we'd do a show about space. And it turns out Emmanuel had done these very long, multi-day interviews with each of the three astronauts. He sent me raw recordings. And listening through, I heard something I was not expecting at all. One of the astronauts, Frank Borman, was saying things I had just never heard an astronaut say. Like this-- Space science fiction still bores me. I've never seen-- what's the name of that-- that very popular-- 2001? Yeah, all that crap. I've never seen any of that. Emmanuel, the filmmaker, also seemed amused. He pressed on. What about when you were a kid? And what about the stars or astronomy? No. None of that? Airplanes. Airplanes, and airplanes only. Airplanes, and airplanes only. Wow. Wow. And a certain particular girl. Susan. Yeah. So-- Susan is Borman's wife. They fell in love in high school. Borman was game to answer any question Emmanuel put to him, though he particularly seemed to like the ones he could easily dispatch answers to, like a little problem he had solved. In 1945-- He was very matter of fact. When Emanuel asked if being in the cramped spaceship was like being in a submarine, Borman said, "I don't know. I've never been in a submarine." My sense reading press accounts from back in the day is that Borman wasn't this blunt about it all back in the '60s, when astronauts were supposed to be playing the part of America's heroes. But now, time has passed. He's 90 years old. He says he doesn't give a damn. I never knowingly altered it, but it was very difficult for me to be as candid now, I think, as I was then-- I just didn't cover some things as in-depth as you're doing here today. And when you have been this candid and honest as you are now, what's been people's reactions? I haven't had any reaction, because I'm just being it with you. [LAUGHS] When I was a science reporter, I covered NASA for years. So I've interviewed my share of astronauts. But I always felt like I wasn't really getting it what it was like to be in space. Don't get me wrong. They were polite and smart. But there was a sameness to it all. They talk about how amazing it was to be weightless, about how it was humankind's destiny to leave the planet and explore. But I always felt like of course they'd say that. They want to get picked by their bosses to go into space again, and it's the polite thing to say. It's what people want to hear. And I imagine it's what they felt. After all, that is exactly the kind of person who ends up becoming an astronaut. I've always wondered what someone else might make of going up there, experiencing the vastness of the universe and coming home again. Borman seemed different. He was the astronaut I had always wanted to hear from. Borman lives in Billings, Montana. He agreed to block out a couple of hours so we could talk. I flew out there. We met in the lobby of the hotel with no real plan for how to recognize each other. There were a lot of retirees around, and I kept wondering is that the guy who's been to outer space? Maybe that guy? We eventually found each other. He was walking slowly, shirt tucked in. I'd read that when he was an astronaut they'd had to spend $45,000 to make a special helmet for him because his head was larger than others. But I don't know, it seemed normal to me. We sat down in a little conference room. I'd half wondered if we should use our time together to watch 2001-- A Space Odyssey. I thought if he actually saw it, he might like it. But it's a long film. I went with something shorter. Can I show you something and see if it speaks to you at all? Star Trek. Yeah, that's what I was-- I've never seen that. Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise-- I looked at Borman as he watched, but I couldn't read his expression. --to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before. Nonsense to me. I-- it doesn't interest me. I'm sorry. To go where no man has gone before, that doesn't do anything for you? No. But you did it. He really did. When Borman became an astronaut, only eight people had ever been into space. Apollo 8-- the mission he was commander of-- it was the very first time humans had ever left Earth's orbit. Borman and the two other crew members in this tiny spacecraft went all the way to the moon. They didn't land. It was kind of a dry run for the moon landing. But in some ways, it actually seems more exciting to me and terrifying. It was the first time anyone had gone that far from the earth, really ventured out into space, seeing the moon so close up. This other celestial body right there, outside the window. He was 40 years old. How did Borman-- the guy who didn't really care about space-- end up being one of the first people to go to the moon? It's true. This was the beginning of the space program, and a lot of the early astronauts were test pilots. But still, the other two guys Borman flew with-- they were the type of people who might have gone to space camp as kids. If space camp had existed back then. One of them, Bill Anders, loved geology. As a kid, he had decided he wanted to own a piece of every rock in the world. The other, Jim Lovell, while in high school, had tried to build a model rocket, one powered by liquid oxygen. Lovell was mesmerized by space and exploration, and wanted desperately to explore the moon. I was there because it was a battle in the Cold War. I wanted to participate in this American adventure of beating the Soviets. But that's the only thing that motivated me-- beat the damn Russians. I've always known we were in a race to beat the Russians, but I didn't realize how intense it could have felt back then. The Russians had launched the first satellite, Sputnik. They were also the first to put a man in space, the first to put a woman in space. The Russians did the first spacewalk. They landed a probe on the moon before we did. The US always seemed a step behind. As Borman saw it, a freedom loving democracy was being beaten by a dictatorship. And whoever put a person on the moon first, that was going to be in the history books forever. Borman was an Air Force pilot who'd gone to West Point. He had a reputation for being blunt, and also kind of serious. He didn't like anyone messing around. He'd never been in battle, but he thought this is where the real fight is now. So he applied to be an astronaut. The psychiatrist who evaluated him later said Borman was the least complicated man he had ever met. What do you think he meant by that? I don't-- I have no idea. I have no idea. I don't-- whether I'm complicated or uncomplicated. What would Susan say? Susan says this. I was the most uncomplicated man she ever knew. Are you a romantic person? I think in some ways I am. I get emotional at good movies at times, and things like that. What movies do you watch? Probably the best movie that I've ever seen is Casablanca. I love Casablanca. Why do you like Casablanca? Casablanca was a wonderful wartime story of the recognition that a good cause is more important than the human being relationship. Oh. Win the war and lose the woman was what that was all about. That's the opposite of romantic. No, it's very romantic. I asked Borman to walk me through the mission, what it was like for him at each stage. T-minus seven minutes, 30 seconds-- On the morning of the Apollo 8 launch, December 21, 1968, Borman and the two other astronauts sat atop the Saturn 5 rocket, which had only been tested twice, not with anyone on it. The Apollo 1 had caught fire on the launch pad, killing three astronauts. Borman's left hand was on an abort switch. He told me he wasn't scared. But Susan, his wife-- she was. She and their two kids had come to watch the other time Borman had gone into space for the Gemini 7 launch. But this rocket, the Saturn 5 rocket, was way, way, way bigger-- 36 stories high. So with this one, they didn't come. Rockets-- you know, it's a very loud and frightening thing. And to have your husband and father in the nose of the thing is-- I think it was difficult for them. --and the pressure's still building up-- She said it was. That's why she stayed home. --45 seconds. Final reports coming from Frank Borman at this time. I wasn't going to play you the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 tape, but then I listened back to it. It's pretty good. It's like you can hear how big the thing is. One of the astronauts said it felt like being a rat in the jaws of a big terrier. We have ignition sequence start. The engines are on. 4, 3, 2, 1, 0-- we have connect. We have-- Lift off. The clock is running. We have lift off. [INAUDIBLE] looking good. OK, so after the launch-- and please, don't feel compelled to answer yes to any of these questions, you know. Oh, I won't. I'mma tell you the truth. OK. Was it cool to float around weightless? [LAUGHS] No. I think everyone thinks it would be amazing to be weightless and floating. He said his main observation about being in zero g was just the obvious thing. When you let go of something in midair, it would stay there. Turn loose of this and it would stay there. Except when turning loose of it, you'd probably impart a little motion to it so it would float around. But-- Was that interesting to observe? Maybe for the first 30 seconds, then it became accepted. I think of explorers as the people who push into new territory, bring back exotic experiences to the rest of us in the ordinary world. But I like the idea the opposite might also be true. That after a while somewhere new, it starts to feel familiar, even outer space. [INAUDIBLE] coming up on 20 seconds to ignition. After they reached orbit, Borman and the two others fired the rocket engine again and did what had never been done before. They headed away from the safety of the planet, and out toward the moon. It was going to take them two days to get there. Two days in the middle of nothingness. Borman says interviewers always ask if it felt lonely. He feels like everyone wants him to say yes. But the answer was no. I can't tell if you're the best person or the worst person to have gone to the moon, in terms of describing what it's like. I'm probably the worst. Did you say, at some point, they should have sent a poet? No, I didn't-- if I did, I didn't-- the last thing I would have wanted on our crew was a poet. [LAUGHS] The trip seemed like it was this weird combination of something intense and romantic and otherworldly, but also a little like a long car ride. At one point in the transcripts, one of them says, "I'm warm now. How about you?" Borman says. "I'm hot." The other guy says, "Man, I'm still cold." And this happens on long car rides. People sometimes get sick. In this case, it was Borman. How does throwing up work in space? Same as it does on Earth. Uncomfortable and I tried to capture it in a disposal bag, but I didn't get all of it. Still I just could not swallow the idea that none of this had moved him. You're in space going over 20,000 miles an hour, stars everywhere. The first people to really leave the Earth. [INAUDIBLE] is coming to you approximately half-way between the moon and the Earth. We've been 31 hours, about 20 minutes into the flight, we have about less than 40 hours left to go to the moon. Borman says there was really just one moment where he felt something stir in his uncomplicated self. It happened while they were circling the moon, which as a destination, he says, did not look like a place you would ever want to live or work. Oh, devastation. Meteor craters, no color at all. Just different shades of gray. And then peering out the small windows, over the gray landscape of the moon, they saw something coming up over the horizon. It was the earth, and it was beautiful. This blue and white marble, the only thing that had any color. Here's how he described it to Emmanuel, the filmmaker. It's 240,000 miles away. It was small enough you could cover it with your thumbnail. The dearest things in life that were back on the Earth-- my family, my wife, my parents. They were still alive then. That was, for me, the high point of the flight from an emotional standpoint. It's like the high point of being in space was the Earth. The contrast between our memories of the Earth and the color on the Earth, and the totally bleak and dead moon was striking. They'd been taking hundreds of photos of the surface of the moon, because, you know, no one had ever been there. NASA wanted to pick out a future landing site. They took so many photos of the moon that Bill Anders, the astronaut who was doing it, said it got boring. There was nothing in the mission plan to take pictures of the Earth. It's like it hadn't even occurred to anyone it might look interesting. But Borman and the crew, when they saw the Earth rising over the moon, they were like, whoa, that is a photo. There's actually audio of this moment. Oh, my god. Look at that picture over there. There's the Earth coming up. Wow, that's pretty! Hey, don't take that. It's not scheduled. That's Borman there, saying, don't take that. It's not scheduled. He was joking. Hand me a roll of color quick, would you? Oh, man this [INAUDIBLE]. It ended up being one of the most famous photos of all time. If you Google "Earth rise," you'd be like, oh, yeah. That one. It's like the first selfie of us all, the whole planet, and it's remarkable. It's exactly other worldly. Humans have been watching the moon rise from the earth for hundreds of thousands of years. This was the first time someone had seen the reverse-- us, our planet, rising over the moon's horizon. The other thing that strikes me about this photo is just how truly dark space can get. Only half the Earth is lit up. The other half is in complete blackness, like it's been consumed by something. I asked Borman if that was just the exposure of the photo. He said no, it's exactly how it looked. It took a couple of days for Borman and the others to travel a quarter of a million miles back here. It was mostly uneventful. At some point, Jim Lovell punched some wrong buttons on the computer, which reset the guidance system. The spacecraft had no idea where it was. Lovell had to measure the position of stars by hand, just like sailors used to do at sea. They eventually splashed down in the ocean. They were elated. The mission was over. Everything had worked. Borman says it felt like he imagines winning the World Series might. He had a quick phone call from the president while on board an aircraft carrier. And then he went home to his kids and his wife, Susan. How did you describe the mission to her? Like, what you'd seen. I mean, you'd just been on this incredible-- I really didn't talk about it very much. As a matter of fact, I can't remember talking to her at all about it. You don't remember saying, you won't believe what the moon looks like. I was up there? No, we didn't talk a lot about it. No. Why not? It was more important to see the boys and see her. And what have you be doing? We're back. It was a wonderful time of reunion and emotion, and the last thing from my mind was to tell them what the moon looked like. Didn't they want to know? No. Nobody asked. [LAUGHS] What do you think you did talk about? How glad I was to be home, how glad they were to have me back, and how the boys are doing in school, and why the dog's dish was still full. We got right back to the nitty-gritty's. Just seven months later, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. The Russians gave up, which for Borman had been the point of the whole thing. So he did something that today seems kind of amazing. He quit. He left the job so many kids dream about. If you had stayed, could you have walked on the moon? Oh, yeah. I could have. Probably. I probably could have walked on the moon. Yeah. Did you want to? No. Why? Look, the answer to your question-- I would have not accepted the risk involved to go pick up rocks. It doesn't mean that much to me. Somebody else wanted to do it. Let them take my place. I love my family more than anything in the world. I would have never subjected them to the dangers simply for me to be an explorer. How often do you think of the Apollo 8 mission? Just when you're on your own, doing your normal stuff. It never occurred in our lives much at all, really. I was looking up at the moon the other night, and it still feels crazy to me that you were there. If you do think back to it, is there a particular part that you tend to remember? The thing that reminds me, that I recall till the day I die, was the Earth, looking back at the Earth. I wouldn't say Borman hated space. He was just indifferent to it. Or put another way, he has a strong preference for the Earth. I've written a bunch of endings for this story. About yes, it's in our nature to explore. It's also in our nature to want to be home. But I'm very aware of the fact that so many historians and journalists and thinkers have tried to read particular meanings into that time that we went to the moon. I'm just going to end this the way the world's most uncomplicated man might-- the facts of the present, what he's doing now. It's as earthbound as it gets. Here it is. His wife, Susan, has Alzheimer's, for nine years now. I'm with her every day, and she can't walk or talk or feed herself. So that's where I come in. So that's very, very difficult-- very. And that's it. Which is either the least romantic thing you can think of or just the opposite. David Kestenbaum. He's one of the producers of our show. The documentary he mentioned about Apollo 8 is called Earthrise. The film is opening this weekend in New York at the Maysles Documentary Center, New Yorkers, and will be released on the TV show, POV, and the New York Times' Op-Docs website in October. Coming up, when in doubt, when your life's out of whack, there's always Switzerland. Some pros and cons of that solution in a minute from WBEZ Chicago when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our show, of course, we choose a theme, bring you different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show-- "The Not-So-Great Unknown." We have stories today of unromantic, unadventurous people in deeply adventurous situations. We've arrived at Act 2 of our program, Act 2-- Traveling Violation. Jared Marcelle knows a guy, a friend of his, who-- this very week that we're making this show-- is heading out into the unknown, embarking on the kind of trip that for most people would be a great adventure. And this guy is doing it for entirely practical reasons. Or anyway, that's how he sees it. He is sure this is the right choice, that it's what he needs to do. Jared, however-- he is not so sure. Quick warning that there's a curse word in this story that is not beeped here on the podcast of the program. If you prefer a beeped version of our show-- maybe listening with kids-- it's at our website. Here's Jared. Joel Wright and I are close. We grew up together in Crown Heights, in Brooklyn. Back then, Joel was a small and goofy kid. We got together recently, talking about those days. We were always trying to figure out how to make money. Making $0.50 stretch. You know, making $0.85 stretch. Taking care of each other, making sure we ate. Bro, I remember there were times where we would meet in front of my house or your building. And we would say, OK, I'm going go in and look for change I got. I'll come back with like $0.50, $0.75. You come back with whatever you have-- a dollar, $0.75. I looked for the change in the couch. You come back. And now we got to eat. Yeah, I remember-- I was going to a pizza shop and splitting that pizza down the middle. We'd always divide stuff in half. One time, we only had enough to buy a single chicken wing. We split it down the middle. It was a rule. We had to make sure each other was fed. Joel was an average student and didn't really excel at anything, except maybe video games. Love you, man, but it's true. I was more of a hustler, and always found new ways to get paid, like shoveling snow. Because I did it he gave it a try, but ultimately he was just too lazy to follow through. I ended up shoveling for him when he got tired. Joel meant well, but he just needed to find himself, find his thing. And then it was like overnight he did. We'd always play basketball together, but he wasn't good. Then I went away to school for the ninth grade and when I came back, Joel stood about 6'5". Frankly, I was jealous. And he'd become a local star. People were now calling him Air Jamaica-- he's Jamaican. Joel was now practicing twice a day-- at 6:30 AM before class and as well as after school ended. Basketball had changed him. Joel played all four years in college, and eventually the pros. He went undrafted but played in the NBA D League. That's the NBA's version of the minor leagues. Joel Wright, Number 15. One article called him the D league's most underrated player. In one game, he scored 41 points. Ahead to Covington. All alone-- right. He is now 18 for 18. It didn't pay very much-- $13,000 a year, a penny to an NBA star. Then he got an offer to play overseas. The money was great. One team paid him $25,000 a month for two months. He asked me if I would go with him, all expenses paid. It was a foreign land and he wanted someone to make him feel comfortable. But I was trying to make my own life. I couldn't do that following him. He went to the Philippines. Also Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. You remember times where I was calling you from Saudi Arabia? Like, ah, damn me. I had goat, bro. Like, goat-- I'm eating-- I'm Jamaican. So often time, I eat curry goat. But I never had the real goat, like-- you see what I'm saying? Bro, yo-- What's real goat? Yo, I had the whole goat. Like, I had the whole goat in front of me, bro. Like, the tongue, the eye, the teeth, everything. It was just weird over there. Sometimes in the middle of the game, you got to stop because it's praying time. But I like it though. The people is nice. It's genuine people, you know? Everyone on the team had to pray, even if they weren't Muslim? No, only basically, like, Saudis. When I went, I started praying with them. I started learning the first prayer. I started studying, and it was very interesting. You know, because I got so equipped with the people over there, man. Like, I'm a people's guy. You know me well-- OK, that's how he talks about it now. I remember that story a bit differently. And his time in Saudi Arabia was especially tough on him. Joel was home sick. He'd call me almost every night, saying he missed his family. Eventually, he did come home the following March, and spent the summer playing in basketball tournaments as he prepared for his next job. A team in Belgium was interested. The deal came just in time, as Joel's funds were low because he was too generous with his money, something I'd always warned him about. But he felt it was his job to help everyone. And this is when Joel really entered the great unknown. There's something I haven't told you about him, and it's something he didn't even know until he was in high school. Joel is not a US citizen. His mom brought him here illegally when he was little. He's one of the DACA kids. Right now under DACA, people like him could stay here, work, and go to school. So Joel got the opportunity to play in Belgium, which he was going to take. But then on TV one night, he saw that President Trump was trying to cancel DACA. He talked to his lawyer, who said leaving the country now would be a bad idea. He might have a hard time getting back in again. So it's like, you leave now, it's like you just leaving the country. You just leaving America and that's it. You see what I'm saying? Once you leave, it's nothing for you to come back. Nothing at all for you to come back. So that's when it got to me. That's when I took a step back. I'm like, yo, I'mma have to really evaluate this. And then that's when I got out the contract. Joel told the Belgian team he wasn't coming, which ruined his reputation with them. His agent dropped him as a client. Joel ran out of money, slept on friend's couches and floors. He got irritable and stopped training for a bit. Everyone was asking why Air Jamaica is still home. It must have been because he couldn't get a job, right? Shame and embarrassment kept him from ever telling people he was out of money and living out of his suitcase. It kind of broke him. Here he went from being a made man to living at the mercy of others. It had almost been two years since he played professionally, which can kill a career. Younger, fresher athletes are streamed into the talent pool every year. Then one day this spring, I got a call from him. He'd signed a new contract. Joel was going to play for a team in Switzerland. It seemed like a terrible idea. The courts, for the moment, have kept DACA alive, but the government has stopped giving DACA recipients permission to travel abroad. So if he left, it was now totally unclear how he'd be able to get back in. I'm basically, in other words, taking my own deportation from my family, from my loved ones, from America, period. And I'm basically going to start a new life somewhere else, not knowing how I'll be able to get back in the country, not knowing if I'll ever see America again. One Thursday night, I went to go see Joel play at a tournament at West 4th. An older guy called the game on a megaphone. Gentleman, do not get hurt. Gentleman, do not get hurt. This is a game with a bunch of guys who make a living playing basketball. I hadn't seen Joel play in a while. How you feel right now? Good as shit. I just finished a great game. He finished the game with about 25 points, but he looked a little rusty. At least, to me he did. He's still working his way back, and I worry what if he has a bad season? The Swiss team has only guaranteed him a contract for a year. If he gets hurt, then what? They could drop him. Then where would he be? He probably can't come home. But whenever we talk about this, he doesn't want to hear it. He stands by his decision. You can't-- I can't name 10 people on my finger that would make that decision, but I'm happy with my decision. I'm comfortable with my decision. But do you understand why I'm not that comfortable with it? Yeah-- of course, I understand why you're not that comfortable with it. I mean, you, my friends, my loved one, my mom, nothing-- nobody is comfortable with it. But it comes to a time in your life when you've got to make important decisions for the things you love. You've got to make sacrifices for the things you love. And I'm just ready to sacrifice. Like, what's the worst case scenario? I think we both know the worst case scenario, though-- you getting hurt. And we don't know if they'll stick by you, right? Like, we don't know if this team will stand by you and keep you around. Like, they're shipping Americans overseas like this, like a supermarket. You just buy another one. I'm not thinking about getting hurt. That's never been on my mind. No, of course, you're not thinking about it. But, like, these are possibilities that I feel like we have to talk about. This is possibility that's not on my mind. Because if I put that possibility in my mind, it's like I'm putting that energy in the air. That's not the energy I want in the air. That's not the vibe I want to put out in the atmosphere. I don't want to put that, because the stake is so big for me. That can't be on my mind. Being hurt can't be on my mind. In sports, this is a great mentality to have. Losing isn't an option. This kind of thing is going to help him make game winning shots. But in life, it seems like a dangerous way to live. I reminded him that last time he went abroad, it was tough on him, and he was only gone eight months. This time, it could be years. You know, this time I'm mentally prepared. Like, I'm mentally ready to fit in and to know what I'm moving towards. But my thing is this though, because you definitely weren't happy. You were very homesick. Like, what could have really happened in the past two years that could have you not only ready to leave, but you're leaving under the understanding that coming back here is going to be damn near-- I'm not going to say damn near impossible, but it's going to be tough. Two words-- ambition and pride. For the past two years, I felt like I haven't had control over anything, and I think that's what drove me to the worst. I feel like that's what put me in depression stage. I feel like that's what did a lot of those things to me, because I just felt like I was out of control of everything, out of my life. I felt like everything was wild. So that makes it much easier. It makes it much easier to make decisions like that, when you deal with certain stuff. And I know I've got on the phone with you millions of time, and I express all of this stuff to you, man. Pride is a crazy thing. I'm scared for you. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. Me scared for me too. My mom is scared for me. Everybody's scared for me. But is scared then covering what I've got to take care of. 28 years old. What's being scared going to do to me now? I get it. Joel has a lot of people like me in his life, telling him this is a bad idea. But we're not offering him anything that seems better. If it were me, I'd get a 9 to 5 job, settle into the world. But Joel doesn't want an ordinary life. His approach to dealing with adversity is to just work even harder at the thing he's good at. And that's basketball. He wants to be a basketball player again. He just wants these last two years to be over. The risk is too great for me to cosign this move, but maybe that's my problem. Maybe in some ways I've subconsciously become a pillar of uniformity. I asked him what he knows about Switzerland. And he said he doesn't know anything. I told him to at least Google the weather. I know he doesn't like the cold. Joel's flight was scheduled for Thursday-- yesterday. We spent the day together. He went to the barbershop and got a haircut, then visited his mom at the restaurant she works at. She was in the kitchen cooking. She said a little prayer for him. I'm going to miss you, man. I pray everything you do may prosperous and success. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and his Holy Spirit to guide you and protect you upon your journey. Yeah, yeah. And guide you upon your-- On this sacrifice. It's a journey, OK? It's a marathon, not a sprint. American and a sprint? It's a marathon, not a sprint. Oh. It's not a sprint. It's no rush. After that we drove to the airport and said goodbye. If you happy, I'm happy. Not really, but yeah. All right, man. My dog, B. All right, bro. Air Jamaica has left the building. I just hope he can come back. Jared Marcelle lives in New York. Act 3-- A Fly on the Call. So there are all kinds of experiences that people avoid because they are just too far out there-- too daring, taboo. This next story is a work of fiction about somebody who gets up the nerve, and tries something that he's always wondered about. Quick warning that this story has nothing explicit in it at all, but it refers to some grown up activities that probably aren't right for kids to hear about, and won't make much sense to lots of them anyway. This piece of fiction was written by Neil Drumming. It's read for us by an actor, Dorian Missick. Cassie answered the phone all sharp and bothered-- "Hello?"-- like she wasn't expecting anyone, which technically I'm not anyone to her. "You're late," she said. That I was, about two minutes late. She wasn't usually this particular though. "Yes, mistress. I'm sorry, mistress." I usually don't have much to say. Cassie and I have a routine. OK, let me back up for a minute. A few months ago, I decided to go see a dominatrix. Like, a real one, at a dungeon and everything. It was something I'd always fantasized about and I'd just gotten out of a relationship, so I didn't have to try to hide it from anyone. I got excited, left the office two hours early on a Tuesday, took the train to this place I had heard about in midtown. Inside, it wasn't what I was expecting, but it was a lot. The smell of leftover sweat on the leather. Muffled sound of some poor bastard down the hall getting berated. The paperwork, like, literally checking boxes next to taboo desires I don't actually have-- foot fetish, medical play, jeez. I passed a couple other customers. White dudes under the dim, red lights. They looked me up and down like I couldn't possibly be into this stuff too. Huh, even here. They were was sort of right though. I ended up in a room, blindfolded, with my hands cuffed behind the back. This woman with a vaguely European name and accent shut the thick wooden doors and started in with the humiliation, barking at me to kneel. I paid for the session up front, so I was trying to commit-- to submit, I should say. I was still too much in my head, involuntarily dissecting the fantasy piece by piece. Sure, the handcuffs were real enough, but nothing else was. This woman couldn't possibly be this angry. I mean, I just got here. She just got me down on my knees when there was a knock at the door. The mistress was called out into the hallway to deal with some dungeon-related clerical issue. So she left me there-- no explanation, no sorry, I'll be right back. I wasn't alone. She was right outside, squabbling with the house mistress. But the point is she wasn't paying attention to me. I was there, but I wasn't considered important enough to be considered. It felt somehow great. I felt like it didn't matter what I had to say or what I did next. She come back when she decided to come back and that was it. I don't know if that makes sense, but it was like being reminded that the world would just keep going on without me, that I was nothing, that I was weightless. I mean, it might sound dark to some people. But I don't know, to me, it just felt like the truth. I was into it. That was it, my pervert origin story. No gamma radiation, no meteor shower, just me in a room, powerless and forgotten. And just like anything else that feels good to you and seems weird to other people, there's a whole cottage industry dedicated to it. After only a minimal amount of research on the topics of abandonment fetish and neglect fantasy, I found myself nervously browsing online for phone sex workers who would gladly ignore me for an hourly rate. Mistress Cassie wasn't the first woman I called for this service, but she was the one who figured me out. With the others, I'd call up and they'd make a big ruckus of running a hot bath, unwrapping some expensive gift chosen from an Amazon wish list by a wealthy admirer. I'd hear them cooing about new lingerie, clomping around their apartments in high heels. And that was intended to be my cue to, I guess, get off somehow? For the record, it's not sexual like that for me. For me, it's a mental thing. With Cassie, there was no, "god, it's so warm in here," or, "I got to get out of these wet clothes," exaggerated bullshit. She kept it 100% real. Most days, I'd just focus on the sound of her fingernails dragging against her laptop as she lazily surfed the web. Sometimes she watched Netflix, smoked weed until she fell asleep, and I'd sit silently through whole episodes of Black Mirror and Archer with no responsibility other than to think about her-- what she might be wearing, was she dreaming-- knowing that I had absolutely no impact on any of it. I was a nonevent in her uneventful life. When I was on the phone with Cassie, I could feel my muscles relax. The demands of my own existence faded away. My will disappeared into the silence between us. I breathe easier. It's funny. I spent my whole life working twice as hard to show the next man that I'm at it, only to reach a place where I was happy being utterly beside the point. Progress is weird. Anyway, like I said, today with Cassie was different. She was agitated from the moment she got on the line. "What exactly is it that you want to hear from me?" she asked bluntly and loud. I was used to Cassie being herself, but this was more. "Well," she snapped, "What do you want me to say?" I froze. I didn't know how to respond. And then someone else spoke, someone else in the room with Cassie that I hadn't realized was there, some guy. I almost laughed into the phone. I should have recognized the question right away. "What do you want me to say?" I asked somebody the same thing in the same tone less than a year ago, and again six or seven months before that. "What do you want me to say?" It's never actually a question, is it? Cassie had apparently answered my call while in the middle of a fight with some guy and decided to take it anyway, because that's our deal. Whatever happens, I listen. And so I heard the guy say that he thought she was being stubborn, and that was obviously something they needed to talk about. She insisted that they were talking. They were talking right now. There was a long pause. And then he said her name, her real name. And I thought to myself, that doesn't sound right. I prefer Cassie. Cassie let the phone hang by her side, and I felt like a kid trying to make sense of his parents arguing. But the gist of the conversation was that Cassie was planning to go away this weekend with some friends. These friends included an ex-boyfriend of hers. Cassie insisted she had no intentions of hooking up with him, but he was still an important part of her life. The guy was not at all OK with this plan. There was some pleading and cross-talking and a lot of shouting. And at one point, a door slammed. And I stood up, alone in my own apartment. And then it was over. "Hello?" It was Cassie, alone, in her apartment. And this time, she was definitely talking to me. "Did you hear all of that?" she asked. Her voice was low and hoarse. She'd been crying. "Yeah," I said. "Are you OK?" "Let me ask you something," she said, taking one of those deep, shaky breaths. "If you love someone and you know they love you, no question, wouldn't you just trust them?" "Of course," I said, because that's the answer I would have wanted to hear. "Are you just saying that to get me to stop crying?" she asked. I suddenly became aware of all the heavy things in my apartment-- the furniture, the TV, the desk stacked with bills, and the phone in my hand with Cassie on the other end. It was exhilarating feeling her there, closer, more real than she had ever been to me before. It was also kind of freaking me out. "That's sweet," she said. "You could have hung up a long time ago." "Don't worry about it," I said. "I'm not giving you a refund," she said. I had to laugh. We talked for another 20, 25 minutes after that. And I mean, we did actually talk. Turns out, Cassie and I have a lot in common. Both from Jersey, both like house music, think that Black Mirror is overrated. She was funny. I hadn't thought of her as funny. She says she had that trip coming up, and then a doctor's appointment, and then some thing at her kid's school-- something else we also had common-- but that she'd be around in the middle of next week for another session. After we hung up, I sat down at my desk, went online, and found Cassie's Amazon wish list. I picked out something tasteful-- sexy but not too provocative. And I sent it to Cassie, two day delivery. The next week, I booked a session with someone else, someone I didn't know. Dorian Missick reading a short story by one of our producers, Neil Drumming. The two of them, by the way, made a feature film a few years back called Big Words. Neil wrote and directed, Dorian starred. It's on iTunes and Amazon Prime. So we close out our show today with this last story, a true story of an unadventurous explorer. The rapper Aesop Rock grew up in New York and lived in cities most of his life. And a few years ago, he decided he was going to pack up his gear and moved to the country into an actual barn to work on music. So there he is, writing lyrics and making beats in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by unfamiliar stuff, including wildlife. And he has thoughts about it. (RAPPING) Hey. Warm cider, barn full of spiders. Orange moon, starry night, particle exciters in a pageant rivaled only by the origin of fire. Now add an organism from alternative environs. A dozen pair of cartoon eyes in the thicket to see a neophyte get sliced into ribbons. I'm here to pick lice off each other and assimilate, duck a suit, troubleshoot his moody user interface. True and sucker-proof, grew to fully disengage. Float his only vanishing point away from the picture plane. Go to where the radio trails off and people catch rabies on the way to their mailbox. Under a sideways rain cornering the brier, still pull a broad sword from a hoarded synthesizer. Nap in a hole in a tree. Cat leaving voles at my feet. Talking Master P, memory foam, everything. Jettison the rest and roulette us a new trajectory. Spinal Tap 11, tapping resin out the evergreen. Designated dark horse, headless independently. Sidewalks end with ponds and frog eggs. Buried bones, and his very own blurry Sasquatch vids. Led like field ants to a hot lens. 8 o'clock kittens vs. cobwebs-- fight! Maps won't work here. Aesop Rock from the album, The Impossible Kid. Well, our program was produced today by Neil Drumming. People who helped make our program today-- Elna Baker, Zoe Chace, Sean Cole, Whitney Dangerfield, Jared Floyd, David Kestenbaum, Anna Martin, Miki Meek, Katherine Rae Mondo, Nadia Reiman, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, and Diane Wu. Our senior producer is Brian Reed. Our managing editor is Susan Burton. Special thanks today to Brent Sayers and Charlotte Taillor. Our website, thisamericanlife.org, where you can listen to our archive of over 600 episodes for absolutely free. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, we were watching The Matrix, and I look over at him, and he's cheering for the robots! For the robots! He explains to me later-- I think we're just very different people. I'm Ira Glass. Be back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
7:00 AM, Tijuana, Mexico, at a little plaza just outside the border crossing into the United States. About 250 people, lots with backpacks and suitcases, lots with kids, crowd around a woman who holds an oversized notebook in her arms. That's what I've come to see. The notebook. Anybody else have 532? Anybody got 533? 534? The notebook is a list of names, each neatly written in ballpoint pen. If she calls you, then you get to enter the official port of entry. It's just over the fence. Each number has 10 names under it. You have to get in the book. If you just walk up to the port of entry and say you want asylum in the United States, you're running for your life, they'll tell you to get out. You have to go outside. Get a number. Wait your turn. A couple of people told us this happened to them. She starts to call out all the names under the number 535. I've edited out the last names here because so many people were nervous about being identified by cartels and gangs when we talked to them. [SPEAKING SPANISH] Alexa? Alexa? Alberto? She's standing outside the busiest border crossing in the Western hemisphere, a complex of buildings so sprawling that I never figured out exactly where they started and ended. It's run by a federal agency with 60,000 employees. This woman is not one of them. She's seeking asylum herself, here with her son. She said her husband was killed by gangs back in El Salvador. Then in July, they threatened to do it to her 10-year-old son, too, if she didn't pay up. So she said she quit her job and abandoned her house and came here. That's who we have pulling people from the crowd and lining them up to enter the United States. That's our system for doing it these days. Calm down. Calm down, she says. Now, in theory, this job shouldn't fall to a random person who's not even a US citizen. Under US law and international treaties, the moment anybody seeking asylum presents him or herself to a border patrol officer, that officer has an obligation to process them, right then. So in theory, all the people standing in this plaza should be able to march up to the huge border station and get processed immediately. No wait, no notebook with numbers. But under President Trump, the government's saying it doesn't have the capacity to process all the people showing up at our southern border. So people stand outside our border, waiting. Not just here, but at official ports of entry all across the southwest. Over the last six months, Customs and Border Protection officers have been stopping asylum seekers from even walking up to federal facilities at the border. This has been filmed by crews from CBS, NBC, Fox, and many others. They stop people in the middle of bridges that cross from Mexico into the United States at El Paso and Brownsville, and turn them away before they can even get to the official ports of entry on the other side to apply for asylum. Customs and Border Protection says the people are allowed in once space becomes available. They expect this will be temporary, and I quote, "No one is being denied the opportunity to make a claim of credible fear or seek asylum." The lawyers for the immigrants point out that, in the past, these facilities have not had a problem processing the number of people who show up today. So people are kept waiting outside to fend for themselves. Here in Tijuana, it's so many people that they wait for weeks. So to keep things orderly, they have this notebook. And because it raises legal issues under asylum law for either the Mexican or American governments to keep a list like this, it's managed by an asylum seeker. The woman with the notebook is named Karen. She says that when she first arrived here from El Salvador, she put her name in the notebook-- her number is 598-- started paying for a cheap room nearby, and volunteered with Mexican officials to help clean the plaza, or whatever, just to be useful. And then at some point, the Jamaican refugee who'd been managing the notebook got his number called and passed the notebook to her. You really could not pick anybody better for this job. Karen managed people in her old job in the Salvadoran Ministry of Health, and says she was also a leader at her church. And she's good at managing people. When she's not shouting names, she calls everybody "preciosa," precious. And goes about the daily task of disappointing people whose numbers aren't picked with as much kindness as anybody could possibly muster. I'm going to ask you all a favor, she's saying, but she doesn't say right away what it is. Dozens of tired people look at her. I want us all to be happy for those who are going in. Yeah? Because just like you, I'm waiting for my number, OK? I know the effort to be here has been hard for everybody. I know this is really difficult. I understand because I'm living it, too. I'm also paying rent. I'm also spending money on food. But I want to appeal to your conscience, OK? And here finally, she gets to the favor. She explains there's a pregnant woman she wants to jump to the front of the line, and she wants everybody be OK with that and feel good about it. Nobody seems too happy with this, but nobody complains, either. The person who brought me to see this is an LA Times reporter who first wrote about the existence of the notebook, Cindy Carcamo. Although the notebook is supposedly the system that asylum seekers are running for each other to make their wait more orderly, Cindy says they probably didn't create the notebook. In fact, most everything about the notebook is controlled by a Mexican government agency called Grupos Beta. Grupos Beta takes the notebook each night and stores it in a safe. And a Grupos Beta official explained to Cindy and me that every morning, they talk to somebody from US Customs and Border Protection. [SPEAKING SPANISH]? Or no. They just meet, talking. And then he says we're taking this many people in today, and that's how it works. Every day in the morning, US Customs and Border Protection gives a number to Mexican officials, and then the Mexican officials give that number to the notebook keeper and she calls that many names. On this particular day, only 20 people were allowed to enter the port of entry. One day earlier in the week, it was zero. On any given day, with over 1,000 names uncalled in the notebook, it's 20, or 30, or 40. 50's the most anybody had seen. Cindy and I talked to lots of people who were waiting, and they were pretty much exactly who you'd expect. Many of them said they were escaping violence in Mexico or Central America. Some seemed truly terrified, even here in the plaza. One woman said that yesterday, her son thought that he'd spotted one of the men who was after them at the shelter they were staying at, so they fled to a hotel. But we also met a 29-year-old mom named Lara, from a tiny Mexican town called Jalapa in Guerrero, who is here because her cousin in California keeps telling her that her kids would have a better life in the United States. So she sold off everything and brought the five of them here-- really nice kids, by the way-- hoping for political asylum. No. No. No violence, she said. It's not about violence. If she's not fleeing violence, she doesn't really have much chance of getting asylum in the United States. It was weird to talk to somebody and know that she probably would not get what she had pinned all her hopes on and traveled 1,500 miles for, and that she and her kids were probably going to wait for weeks and then get turned back. I never had the experience of knowing so clearly someone's future that they do not know. It was hard to keep looking her in the eye. You know, everything was in Spanish, right? So I don't understand Spanish. I didn't get anything. So I want to know what's happening. Give me a moment. Yesterday you told me "manana." Today again, "manana." When Karen finished rounding up her 20 people for the day, this guy from Cameroon, named Ransom, approached her. Karen's English doesn't go much past "give me a moment," and his Spanish doesn't go much past "manana." So Karen dragged in Cindy, the LA Times reporter, to translate. But can you ask her how many people will be waiting tomorrow? When they're done, Ransom told me and Cindy that he left Cameroon with 16 other people three months before. They flew to Ecuador, which is a path that lots of people take because visas are easy to get there. Then they walked through the jungle, north through Central America, sleeping in the bush, till they got here three weeks ago. It's been a tough journey. It's really been tough. It's been a long way. The money is finished. Like, I don't have a way to stay. That's the problem. That's why I'm frustrated. That's the problem. Where are you staying? We just live nearby. We just-- you wouldn't understand. It's quite tough. We're like 40 people in one room. One small room. It's just-- I don't know how something like that-- How much do you pay for that? We pay like $50 a month. And he's going to be here so long that he has to pay a second month. He says they were robbed along the way in the jungle. So when he arrived in Tijuana three weeks ago, he only had $80. With so little money, how is he surviving? Well, water in the absence of food. I drink water. The situation he's fleeing should make him a good candidate for asylum in the United States. The government of Cameroon has been killing the English-speaking minority in the country and burning their homes, trying to suppress an armed uprising. But it's a hard moment to try to enter our country. The Trump administration is doing all kinds of things to be stricter with potential immigrants. And as you'll hear this hour, some of them are keeping desperate people waiting outside the border for weeks. Even if you understand that we're trying to be stricter with who's coming into the country, it can be hard to understand why we're doing it like this. Today on our program, I think at this point, most of us have heard about a few of the things that the President and his appointees have done to try to get control of the border. We've heard about the family separations, we've heard about the travel ban. But in fact, it's a wide-ranging, coordinated effort across many agencies. All kinds of things that have not gotten a lot of attention. What's interesting is that so much of their effort, lots of the things that they're doing, are not cracking down on people breaking the law or sneaking across the border, not targeting criminals or bad hombres. Many of the efforts are targeted at the people who are trying their best to play by the rules and do what we ask of foreigners who want to come here. People trying to obey our laws, like asylum seekers showing up at our door saying, I'm in danger at home. Your laws allow me to apply for haven. Today we take you on a tour of the many, many things that are all happening, the ways that we're shutting our doors to outsiders. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Act One, All Together Now. So to enter the United States from the south, you can go to the official border station, the port of entry, and do it legally, like the people who you heard trying to do it in that plaza in Tijuana. Well, you might get to that plaza, see the line, see the wait, and pause, or maybe try to go to the border station in Brownsville or El Paso. Again, you might pause and decide to take your kids, and take your chances, and head out to cross the border illegally. I was talking to a Customs and Border Protection officer, a spokesman for the union, Chris Cabrera. He patrols the area around the Rio Grande and he says that he picks up people like this all the time. They tell him they tried the port of entry. The line was too long. They didn't want to wait that long. And that's why a lot of them choose to come through the river, because they don't want to wait. Once he apprehends them, there's something new now that they go through under this administration. A new thing that's happening on the border. People caught crossing into the country illegally are being rounded up and sent to federal criminal court in mass hearings with dozens of people getting sentenced at the same time. The government has done these hearings in the past, but never on the scale that's happening now. As of April, they're doing them in every district along the border, sometimes twice a day, with tens of thousands of people convicted. They're prosecuting a crime that didn't used to be treated like a crime. Before this, if you cross the border illegally, you'd most likely just get put into immigration proceedings and probably deported. Now, you go through criminal court first, even if you came here to ask for asylum. This is happening under the administration's Zero Tolerance Policy. You probably heard about the part of that policy that separated children from their parents. That part has officially ended. But this move to prosecute border crossings as criminal offenses, this was actually the main point of the Zero Tolerance Policy. Reporter Julia Preston went to McAllen, Texas, to one of the courts that's had the highest number of prosecutions since this all started to see what this looks like in practice. And what she discovered is what's happening now is just the first step towards much bigger things that are in the works. Here's Julia. Picture a federal courtroom. The defendants sit with their lawyers at one table, the prosecutors on the other side, the judge up front. The McAllen courtroom was a stunningly different site. Five rows of wooden benches, usually meant for visitors, were packed with defendants, squeezed in shoulder to shoulder. 74 of them. The defendants were dressed in tattered t-shirts and jeans, not prison uniforms. Some of the men had trouble keeping their pants up when they stood because their belts were taken away when they were detained. They'd been caught by the Border Patrol after they crossed the Rio Grande River. Most of them just one or two days before. Ladies and gentlemen, let me ask you please to stand and raise your right hand. Take an oath before the court this morning for these proceedings. That's the sound of 74 people standing up to be sworn in when they're shackled at the ankles and chained around the waist. They all had one hand that was cuffed tightly to the waist chain and just one hand free. In another hearing I went to, there were 87 defendants. In that one, the marshals had to put some of them in the jury box. The defendants would all be out of there-- charged, convicted, and sentenced-- in just over two hours. It was mass justice at head-spinning speed. The magistrate judge presiding over this hearing, Scott Hacker, didn't sit in his usual place on the high bench. Instead, he spent the whole hearing on his feet, right in front of the migrants, so he could see each one of them. The migrants were wearing wireless headphones to hear the Spanish interpreter. Judge Hacker took a few minutes to make sure everyone's headphone was working. Sir, can you hear? The gentlemen next to you. Can you hear? The defendants awkwardly adjusted their headphones with their one free hand. Throughout the hearing, the security guards ran around as tech support, resetting the headphones or swapping them out for fresh ones. Judge Hacker ran the hearing like a professor, explaining things in plain language and raising an index finger in the air in big gestures to punctuate his points. He addressed the migrants as sir and ma'am, and ladies and gentlemen. This is your day in court. It's important that you hear and understand everything that I explain to you. I'll admit, I was surprised. I was expecting some kind of rodeo justice. People herded through with no idea what was happening to them. But it wasn't that. The judge, the public defenders, even the prosecutors seemed to be working hard to ensure that all 74 defendants got some kind of basic due process. Every time the judge explained something, he would go around pointing to each defendant, one by one, getting them to confirm that they understood. Then I'll start with the person on the front row. [INAUDIBLE]. He'll answer yes or no, then I'll point to Miss [INAUDIBLE]. She'll answer. Then I'll point to Miss Perez, she'll answer. When I'm finished with the first row, I'll start with the gentleman on the second row. The third row, the fourth row, and continue until I get everyone. Have you understood the instructions? Yes or no, sir. Next. Yes. Si. Yes. Yes. Si. Yes. Si. Yes. Yes. Si. Yes. Si. Yes. Si. Yes. Si. Yes. Si. 74 yeses. Over the course of the hearing, he would go around to every person this way a total of 16 times. Judge Hacker explained the crime they were accused of, illegal entry. It's a federal offense, but the first time around it's a minor one. A misdemeanor. Do each of you understand this charge of illegal entry? Please answer yes or no, starting with you, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Si, senor. Yes, yes, yes 74 times. A judge I observed in another hearing had a different method. For some questions, he had all the defendants answer in unison, which sounded like this. Do each of you understand your right to an attorney? Si. Yes. The sheer amount of paperwork that went into that hearing was immense. The documents for each person had to have the right name with correct spelling, the right country they were from, the right place and date where they were apprehended. The right details about how they crossed the river, whether they were on a raft, or a boat, or they swam, or they waded. I found out later that Customs and Border Protection has an office nearby where agents, and lawyers, and paralegals work through the night to get all those piles of documents ready by dawn on the morning of the hearing. The Border Patrol wasn't happy about this use of their agents. Officials told me they would much rather have the agents out on the front line patrolling the border. The judge carefully explained their right to a trial and the possible consequences of pleading guilty-- fines, jail time, deportation. They did have the option of pleading not guilty and going to trial, but they still wouldn't stand a chance of winning because, for most of them, the border patrol had caught them near the Rio Grande. They had admitted when and where they crossed the river, so there really wasn't much room for argument. They'd been caught in the act. The federal public defenders, all 18 of them in the McAllen office, had come to the courtroom in the hours before the hearing to meet with each defendant and basically prepare them to plead guilty. Most of those meetings lasted just a few minutes, then everyone declared their plea. Mr. Santos, they're saying your illegal entry occurred on the 19th of this month. How do you plead? Guilty or not guilty. Guilty. Mr. Morales, they're saying your illegal entry occurred on the 19th of this month. 74 guilty pleas. Even when you know it's coming, it's a somber thing to see. A group of people I wondered about during this hearing were the migrants who wanted to seek asylum. Because even with a criminal conviction, they can still apply for asylum, but it wasn't clear the migrants understood that. Before sentencing, a man from Nicaragua stood up, worried and apologetic. He told the judge he'd come to the US to apply for political asylum. He'd brought evidence of his persecution. If he took a guilty plea, he asked, would he be deported right away and never get a chance at asylum? Judge Hacker thought he would get a chance, but he couldn't say for certain. He's not an immigration judge. The way it works is that, after the hearing, the man will be transferred into detention in the immigration system, a different system, and there, he'll have to insist to the officers that he wants to pursue his asylum claims. A lot of people might not figure that out. For many asylum seekers, going first to criminal court was very confusing. Then it was time for the sentences. Often in federal court, this takes days or weeks. But here, the judge didn't skip a beat. The sentences came right away. 10 days, 20 days for a handful of cases. People who had some kind of record-- who'd been convicted of illegal entry before, or had drug or domestic violence convictions, traffic violations-- the longest sentence for that group was 100 days. Everyone else, though-- the vast majority in this courtroom-- had no criminal record in the US and this was their first illegal entry offense. All of those people were given the same sentence, time served. In other words, the time they'd already spent in detention, which, for most of them, was less than two days. Two days. All of this work to deter illegal crossings, and yet most everyone walked out of the court that day with basically no punishment. Leaving the courtroom, I had a lot of questions. When Attorney General Jeff Sessions talks about this new policy of prosecuting everyone who crosses the border illegally, he says its purpose is to deter people from making those crossings. But how is two days of detention any kind of deterrent? It didn't make sense. Especially when you consider the massive amount of resources that go into these hearings. The border patrol agents writing up the charges, the paralegals, the court clerks, the prosecutors checking criminal backgrounds, and figuring out who they should recommend for extra jail time. The Justice Department added eight new prosecutors in southern Texas this summer for these cases. 18 public defenders, the marshals and security guards, getting dozens of shackled people in and out of the courthouse. The buses and vans to get them there. And these misdemeanor cases are sapping away the energy and time of everyone for the other business of the court, which is prosecuting more serious crimes, including narcotics, money laundering, trafficking, and weapons offenses. I really didn't know what to make of it all until I had a conversation with Ryan Patrick. He's the head prosecutor of the federal district that McAllen is part of, the Southern District of Texas. And he told me something I hadn't heard from the attorney general or President Trump. He told me these misdemeanor prosecutions are just phase one of a larger strategy by the Justice Department. So some of the way these cases are handled could very well change as our resources, on our side, change, as well. When you say it could very well change, you mean there could be more felony cases? There could be. Yes, ma'am. I see. Is that the goal, or is that where you're trying to go with this? As appropriate, and for cases that we can prove, yes, we will file more felony cases. With illegal entry, the first offense is a misdemeanor. But if somebody is caught crossing illegally a second time, they can be prosecuted for a felony and go to prison for up to two years. A felony conviction makes it very difficult for a person ever to get a visa to enter the United States legally, much less get a green card or become a citizen. The government's ramping up to prosecute more people. Border patrol is hiring. So are the US Marshals. In May, 32% of people caught crossing the southwest border were sent to be prosecuted. A month later, it was 46% of them. Administration officials told me the goal is 100%. Literally zero tolerance for illegal crossings. This could mean prosecuting something like 200,000 people a year for the misdemeanor offense. Before long, it could mean tens of thousands of newly convicted felons in federal prison. President Trump and the attorney general have long said that people who cross the border illegally are just criminals. Now, every day, more and more of them are becoming exactly that. Julia Preston. She's a contributing writer to The Marshall Project. You can read a print version of her story on The Marshall Project's website, marshallproject.org. Act Two, The Kitchen Sink. So the administration's immigration policy-- this has been widely reported-- is run from the office of White House senior advisor, Stephen Miller. He's 33 years old, brings a detailed knowledge of immigration issues and regulations to the task, has installed like-minded people at the various agencies that deal with immigration. We requested sit-down interviews with him, and with numerous other administration officials throughout the government. They all turned us down. But I'm going to take this act and try to give you a sense of the sweep of the changes that they put into place. The variety, and ingenuity, and comprehensiveness of them. Here we go. The administration has brought back workplace raids at a level that hasn't been done for years, rounding up hundreds of undocumented people at a time. The State Department and Department of Homeland Security have cracked down on recalcitrant countries. Yes, that is an official designation that we give to some countries. Recalcitrant. These are countries that do not accept deportees that we want to send them. There were 20 countries like that just after the President took office. His administration has twisted arms, imposed sanctions, and convinced more than half of those countries to take people back, clearing the way for 15,000 more people to be deported. The Department of Homeland Security has set up a de-naturalization task force to go after people who lied on their citizenship applications, and literally strip away their citizenship. The attorney general has changed the rules so that if you're fleeing gang violence or domestic violence, even if immigration agents believe that your life is in danger, that's not grounds for asylum in the United States. This affects a lot of people. The Attorney General explained it this way-- Asylum is not generally for those who suffered from a private act of violence or if a gang is in the neighborhood. It's always from members of groups who are persecuted by the state. Asylum was never meant to solve all problems, even serious problems, that people face every day all over the world. And then there's a whole set of policies the Trump administration has put into place that affects all of the people who are trying to lawfully enter the United States. Filling out forms, sending in information, waiting their turns. They are all coming under increased scrutiny. The forms are much longer. Applicants are called in to be interviewed about things they were never called in for before. And attorneys who help people through this process will tell you that they're getting a ton of what they call RFE's, Requests for Evidence, for perfectly ordinary things that, in the past, would have been routine. Here's an example. Immigration attorney Marisol Perez works at a firm that filed a visa request on behalf of their client, the Archdiocese of San Antonio, which is trying to hire a priest from another country. They were surprised when they got an RFE from the government-- I've seen this-- asking them to prove that, in fact, the archdiocese really exists as a functioning business. It was shocking to us. This is the second-largest archdiocese-- Catholic archdiocese-- in the country. Certainly they're in business. Certainly they're flourishing. Certainly they are a legitimate operating business. Do you think it was just a bureaucratic snafu? If I chalked it up to that, there are lots of bureaucratic snafus. It didn't take much work for me to collect some. There was the musician who was told that the two Grammys he won and the three that he was nominated for, but did not win, were not sufficient evidence of his musical talent, and that more proof would be required before he could reside in the United States. There was the RFE asking a British citizen to have her British birth certificate translated into English, please. There was the RFE where the government argued that an architect didn't qualify for the visa he wanted because you don't need a specialized degree to be an architect. Even though, of course, you do need a specialized degree. According to one study, in the last quarter of 2017 alone, the percentage of work visas getting RFE's tripled. 3/4 of them got RFE's. The most mundane ones are just asking for documents that you've already sent. Jacqueline Watson is an immigration attorney in Austin. She says she's now seeing this in the vast majority of cases she files. RFE's asking for stuff she's already submitted. If it happens in one case, you can say, OK, that was a mistake. If it happens in almost every case you file, there's something wrong. She and other immigration attorneys see it as a deliberate strategy to gum up the works, slow the process, discourage people from applying, give out fewer visas. And she said when you get an RFE, it also means you can't get work permits or travel permits that you would otherwise be able to get while applying. A spokesman for the US citizenship and Immigration Services, USCIS emailed me a statement saying that assertions that they are trying to slow the immigration process are, quote, "inaccurate" and, in fact, their reforms are intended to do the opposite. Quote, "reduce incomplete or frivolous filings, thus speeding up the immigration process for many applicants and petitioners, allowing them to receive a decision faster." Attorneys say visas and green cards are now being turned down all the time for reasons that they never saw before. One big one that I was told comes up a lot is applications being rejected because the government thinks that you'll become a burden on the public. And the attorneys I spoke with sounded truly bewildered by the way that they are enforcing this. For example, Marisol Perez has a client who's 11 years old, born in Mexico. His mom married an American and wanted to bring him to the United States, and the green card application had everything the government has asked for in the past. Father made enough money, father was working, showed his tax returns. But the kid was turned down because the government said that he would become a public charge. So we inquire and ask, we're not sure why this person has been denied. Could you provide more information? Still no explanation. All this has led Jacqueline Watson, and a lot of immigration attorneys, to conclude that, at this point-- The Department of Homeland Security is always looking for new and creative ways to fuck our clients. There's a brand new way that Jacqueline's worried about. You know those Requests for Evidence that lawyers complained about? USCIS has a new rule. If they decide there isn't enough evidence to support a claim, as of this month, they don't need to issue a Request for Evidence at all. They could simply turn down the application. The head of USCIS, Francis Cissna, is quoted in the press release on this. He says, quote, "For too long, our immigration system has been bogged down with frivolous or meritless claims that slow down processing for everyone." He said, "Doing this would discourage people from gaming the system." This is how all this looks to people on his side of things, the people calling for these changes and making these changes in our immigration system. They see every part of this so totally differently from the way the immigration attorneys do. From their point of view, the entire immigration system is a mess, overloaded with false claims and people trying to cheat their way into the United States. When the Attorney General gives speeches, he talks about nearly 100,000 people a year seeking asylum. Seeking asylum because they know if you say the word asylum, we'll set you free in the United States till the judge can see your case years from now. Lots of them never show up for their day in court. The system is being gamed. There's no doubt about it. Mark Krikorian is the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that calls for stricter controls on immigration. He makes the case that the United States would be better off if we would just cut the number of people who immigrate here each year to less than half of what it is now. He sums it up this way. He doesn't see a need for a huge, thriving country like ours, with hundreds of millions of people, to import any workers from overseas. So-- Which categories of people have such a compelling case to be admitted that we let them in? That would be husbands, wives, and little kids of American citizens, genuine Einsteins-- humanity has not produced that many Einsteins a year-- and humanitarian immigration to the extent that people cannot stay where they are for a second longer. You add all that up, that's maybe 400,000 people a year, 350,000. It's still a lot of people, but it's fewer than there are now. Right now, it's about a million legal immigrants in a year. Of course, you could quibble with his numbers. Somebody else might argue that there are over a million people in the category, "people who cannot stay where they are for a second longer." But given this vision that we don't need outsiders, and that tons of people are trying to cheat and game their way into the country, when I told Krikorian what the immigration attorneys had told me about all the ways that the Trump administration seemed to be slowing things down and finding any excuse to say no to their clients, he was utterly unimpressed. He appreciated the tighter rules and extra scrutiny that have come down this last year and a half. It's definitely called for. It's long overdue. Now, there's always going to be, you know, bureaucratic absurdities. Does the Archdiocese of San Antonio really exist? I mean, this is the kind of thing that any large organization is going to generate sometimes. But the strict scrutiny of applications is long, long overdue. More change is coming. One of the biggest ideas that's been floated publicly by the White House Office of Management and Budget is a proposal that you won't be able to get legal residency, you won't be able to get a green card or citizenship, if you or your kids have ever gotten food stamps or other public benefits. Even if your kids are citizens. If this went through, it would become impossible for millions of people to ever get legal status in this country. They become eligible for deportation. It's unclear, at this point, if the administration is going to go through with that proposal. Coming up, food fight between the President's immigration staffers, the State Department, the Office of Management and Budget, and the most powerful military the world has ever known. Guess who wins? That's in a minute, from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. In today's program, "Let Me Count the Ways," we're trying to document the many, many ways that the Trump administration is changing immigration enforcement across many agencies, including some things that have not gotten a lot of attention. We've arrived at Act Three of our show. Act Three, The Terminators. So the people directing immigration policy for the White House generally don't talk much to the press. They do the work behind the scenes and out of sight from the public. But some emails were released as part of a lawsuit, and they give us the most vivid picture we have gotten of these people at work, of them enacting the project that is at the heart of this administration. On immigration, probably more than anything, the President's agenda is a radical departure from any Republican or Democrat who's ever held the office. He complains frequently about the bureaucracy, the deep state trying to thwart him. And in these emails, you see the battle play out between the political appointees and the bureaucracy. The emails show them trying to roll back one particular part of immigration policy, a part that could result in half a million people having to leave the United States. In these emails, the appointee's tone is almost uniformly polite, professional. The career civil servants ask to handle things so differently than they have in the past. They push back respectfully in various ways. One of our producers, Nadia Reiman, read all the emails, which took days, and put this together. The emails were about this thing called TPS, Temporary Protected Status. It's a humanitarian program, and it works like this. If you're in the US and some sort of disaster hits your home country-- an earthquake or hurricane, or a war breaks out-- the Secretary of Homeland Security can grant temporary protected status, which means, we get it. You can't go back to your country right now. So stick around for 18 months or so. You can get a work permit, live here, settle for a bit until things clear up at home. The President's allies don't like TPS for a couple of reasons. First, it's not just for people who are here legally. If you're here illegally when disaster hits your home country, congrats, you get legal status, too. Also, even though it's called temporary, it can get renewed over and over and over again. Honduras, for example, got hit by a hurricane in 1998, and it still has TPS almost 20 years later. And these renewals, they're up to the Department of Homeland Security. Every year, they're supposed to gather information to try to figure out, has the country recovered? Is it safe for people to return home or not? If it is, they can end TPS for that country, but it's up to DHS to decide. So for Trump political appointees to get rid of TPS for a country, what they have to do is prove that the country has recovered from whatever crisis it once had. They have to prove it's safe for people to go home. The first country they try it with is Haiti. Haiti got TPS eight years ago when that earthquake hit in 2010. In the first months of the Trump administration, the bureaucracy put together a report that said, basically, what they'd said in the past. Things are still bad in Haiti. Let's renew TPS. 18 more months please. This is when a Trump appointee named Kathy Nuebel Kovarik enters the scene. Before this job, she did immigration policy for Senator Chuck Grassley, an anti-immigration hardliner who then urged the President to hire her, on Twitter. So in April 2017, she sends out an email saying, basically, can anyone hustle up info on how Haiti's recovered from the earthquake? She asked for, quote, "rebuilding stories, work of nonprofits, how the US is helping in certain industries. We need more than Haiti is really horror stories." End quote. A researcher chimes in, unhelpfully. Quote, "Unfortunately, conditions in Haiti remain difficult. Please see below." And he goes on to share five bullet points. The first one, Haiti has not fully recovered from the 2010 earthquake. He also mentions hurricanes that have hit the island, large scale flooding, near-famine conditions, double-digit inflation. He gets a polite, "Thank you. Very useful," from his boss. Before long, he gets asked for more info. Can you grab more numbers on GDP growth? You said it was not so good, but can you look at longer-term trends? What about some stuff about how they're rebuilding the presidential palace? Can you try that? If there's much of a fight about any of this, it's not on email. Eventually, the staffers find some new numbers for their bosses. They know that economic growth is small, but it's there; that 98% of camps for earthquake survivors are now closed; that food shortages in the country are because of hurricanes and bad infrastructure, not necessarily related to the earthquake. In November, it's officially announced. Haitians lose their protected status. One country down, onto the next. Next up is Sudan. And here is where this becomes a full-blown smackdown between three federal agencies-- Homeland Security, State Department, and the Department of Defense. Sudan's had TPS since 1997 because of the civil war there. There's still widespread fighting in parts of the country. So when its TPS status comes up for review, a couple of staffers put together a draft of the country conditions, describing what it's like there, and it's pretty grim. Page three says it's, quote, "unsafe for individuals to return to Sudan." On page four it says, quote, "Termination does not appear to be warranted," meaning Sudan's status should not be terminated. People should be allowed to stay in the US. But then, on page five, when we get to the final recommendation, it says exactly the opposite. Quote, "USCIS recommends termination." The higher-ups noticed this discrepancy and realized how it might look. Frank Cissna, the guy who's been tapped to be the new director of USCIS, another Trump political appointee, he reads the country report for Sudan and writes, quote, "The memo reads like one person who strongly supports extending TPS wrote everything up to the recommendations section, and then someone who opposes extensions snuck up behind the first guy, clubbed him over the head, pushed his senseless body out of the way, and finished the memo. Am I missing something?" End quote. Right away, political appointee Kathy Nuebel Kovarik is like, sorry about that. She responds, quote, "Well, I'll take the blame for this," and sends it to someone on her team to fix, a career civil servant named Brandon Prelogar. Prelogar didn't respond to my request for an interview. The administration officials in these emails didn't either. But I can tell you a few things about him. He's the Chief for international and humanitarian affairs at USCIS. He's been working for the Department of Homeland Security since 2007 through both Bush and Obama, which depending on how you look at it, makes him either an operative for the deep state trying to thwart our President at every turn, or a typical DC civil servant trying to do his job. Throughout all these emails, every so often he pops up, calmly raising his hand and reminding everyone of the rules. He's not standing in the way, exactly. It's more like he's fact checking, waving his arms, politely warning of trouble ahead. Saying, well, you can try to do that, but the facts might not be with you. He has this thing he writes over and over, like an existential truth. "Country conditions are what they are." Anyway, he's assigned to fix the inconsistent memo ASAP. He responds, "Got it. Here's our thinking. The country conditions are what they are. If they're uncomfortable with the termination conclusion following from them and they want to stick with that conclusion, we've proposed paring down that section." End quote. In other words, if the conclusion doesn't match the facts, then your best bet is to remove some of the facts. He sends possible wording they could use to do that, but warns, quote, "Providing sanitized country conditions in a public-facing document would open us up to the charge that our account is lopsided and invite criticism." He passes the draft back to his boss. It goes through more hands, and then it gets to one of the big guns in the Department of Homeland Security, a senior staffer named Gene Hamilton. Gene Hamilton's a political appointee. He was the person responsible for immigration policy in the transition team. He worked with Stephen Miller back in the Senate in Jeff Sessions's office. So he takes this Sudan report and he removes even more facts than Brandon suggested. Specifically, he edits out references to human rights violations. When Brandon sees the results, he once again respectfully raises a red flag. He's like, guys, based on what they've said so far, the State Department is probably not going to like that. He adds, quote, "For our part, we just say that this could be read as taking another step toward providing an incomplete and lopsided country conditions presentation to support termination." The email trail goes dead. Six days later, DHS announces they're terminating TPS for Sudan. The next day, the State Department complains, just like Brandon said they would. They say the TPS report had, quote, "significant mischaracterizations that are at odds with the State Department's understanding of circumstances on the ground in Sudan." They complained they hadn't been notified of the Sudan TPS termination. That they had to find out about this when everyone else did. That they had to send diplomats in cabs to the embassies to do damage control. Then a White House official steps in. He writes Gene Hamilton to say that they'd received a, quote, "flurry of emails from the State Department and the National Security Council about the Sudan decision." He tells Gene Hamilton to go back to the language that the State Department and everyone else agreed to the week before. Gene Hamilton writes back to the White House official, defiant, cc-ing all the bosses at DHS, quote, "I don't think we agree with that path." The White House doesn't write back. Less than an hour later, Gene sends another email to the same White House guy and caves. Hi again, he says. We will pull back, though, he says, many of the concerns are, quote, "entirely overblown and completely irrelevant." The next day, the Department of Defense weighs in. A foreign affairs specialist sends an email. It begins, "It has been brought to our attention," and the tone of utter disapproval never lets up. She says the Sudan memo is wrong about conditions in Sudan. That armed conflict is ongoing. It's not safe for Sudanese to return there. She says what they've written is, quote, "a clear departure to past DOD messaging on Darfur to our Congressional committees and foreign partners." She says the Department of Defense would appreciate being included in any policy discussions that impact Sudan. There are more emails after that, and in the end, Gene Hamilton does make a small concession. A few sentences get added back to the Sudan memo. But the result is still the same. TPS for Sudan is ended. The new guard wins. One by one, the countries in these emails lose TPS. After Sudan comes Nicaragua. Soon it's El Salvador, Nepal, Honduras. The administration ended up terminating TPS for 98% of the people who had it. I talk to government officials who've dealt with TPS, and they all said TPS was messy. That it was something temporary that became permanent, and it probably shouldn't have. But at the same time, an enormous number of people are currently living here on TPS. Over 400,000. Most of them have been here legally for almost 20 years. Inevitably, a whole new life grows out of two decades of just being somewhere. People start businesses, buy houses, get married, have kids. And these kids, the sons and daughters of TPS recipients, US citizens, they're part of the lawsuit that released all these emails. They're suing the government over this very mess so their parents aren't sent back home to a place that isn't their home anymore. Nadia Reiman. She's one of the producers of our show. Act Four, IRC You, Now You Don't. The President has cut the number of refugees officially allowed into the United States from 110,000, under the previous administration, to 45,000. But in fact, in this fiscal year, they're not even going to bring in that many people. Just 22,000 will arrive. That's the smallest number ever in the history of the refugee program here. So a bunch of these refugee settlement offices that are around the country are going to be shutting down. Our producer, Zoe Chace, was there for the final days of one of them in Garden City, Kansas. I flew into a tiny airport. Garden City is southwest Kansas, the middle of the plains. Oklahoma's right below us. Colorado's not far west. Amy Longa was waiting there at the airport. She started the office four years ago for the International Rescue Committee. She told me I'd recognize her, and I did. The only black woman there. Straight back, tall, and a bright turquoise African print dress. Everyone recognizes Amy. I'll find out soon then even Amy refers to herself in the third person a lot. Like, she'll say, everybody knows Amy. I can't get away because it's, like, Amy, Amy, Amy everywhere I go. And truly, like, the kid at the Hertz counter called out to her. Amy, have you seen this? And handed her a flyer for some kind of Hertz deal. It's like the character Amy plays in this town is bigger than Amy actually is. It's Tuesday, July 24. The office is supposed to close on Friday. I follow Amy in my rental car and when I get there, the office looks wrecked. Cardboard boxes, an abandoned paper shredder, an old car seat. I mean, it looks closed. But Amy's in the middle of a meeting, in Arabic. She and one of her clients are sitting in two office chairs pulled up near the door. Where you'd expect a desk between them, they're just knee to knee in these rolly chairs. The client's name is Eltahir. He's from Sudan. He's apparently asking Amy to help him figure out why he got his federal tax refund, but not his state one. Amy takes the papers he brought. Says she'll look into it. OK. Now, are you comfortable leaving this with me and we make appointment tomorrow? What do you want to do? I can't-- [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] I'm looking around at this abandoned office and Amy and I'm like, what? Appointment tomorrow? OK. So why are you still having these conversations if you're going to be closed in two days? Because technically, the office is still open. The office is open. You're the only one here. I am the only one. And I'm here. Yeah. I'm supposed to have packed all these. And I-- it's difficult to pack when you still have to answer these questions. Refugee resettlement is exactly what you'd imagine, if you've ever thought about it. You do a bunch of interviews overseas, go through a major security screening process. You fly to the United States, someone meets you at the airport and takes you to your new home. The US government funds a sparse apartment with food that's culturally relevant, like food that will be familiar to you, as well as cash assistance, housing assistance. This lasts for three months while you look for work and go through some cultural orientation. And all this is managed by a resettlement agency, a nonprofit that contracts with the State Department to do this stuff. In Garden City, it's the International Rescue Committee, the IRC. They help you get a social security card, figure out your health insurance, find a job, go learn English. Pretty much all the things that make up a life here. Three months. 90 days. I do wonder how they came up with that. Making a whole life in 90 days. The IRC office works with their clients for up to five years with some government assistance. Most of Amy's time is spent with clients far longer than 90 days. This guy from Sudan, he's been here two years. This office is being closed because so few refugees will be relocated here in the future. But the fact is, Amy is right in the middle of these relationships, and she has to cut them off. The people who are resettled here have a never-ending range of questions. For instance, this is Edie. He came to Garden City recently via a refugee camp in Tanzania. He's Congolese. He's a very giggly guy, but I think it's nerves. He comes in, sits down with Amy, and unfolds a paper with four questions on it. One is about a guy not calling him back with a job. Another is about a bank card. How do you use it? He didn't have a pin number. Didn't know what a pin was. She activates it. Activated. Thank you, madam. [INAUDIBLE] now. It was good. There's a church question, a health insurance question, then he thinks of two more. Another question now please. Sorry. It's like this all the time. How do I get a birth certificate for my new baby daughter? How much does it cost? How is my green card application doing? Do they need more information? Is my boss racist? Then why isn't he responding? How much is it to go to the dentist? Should I pull this tooth out of my mouth? If I pull the tooth, should I replace it with a new tooth or leave the gap? And what will people around here think if I have a gap? Is that bad? Where is the dentist's office? One night, Amy's meeting with this guy at his apartment. And when she's done, this other guy, who's not even a client, runs after her and yells at her from a balcony that he needs to talk. And she's got three days left in this job, but she makes an appointment with him, too. And again, I'm like, why are you meeting with this guy? Like, where is he going to sit even? He walked out of that house. I'm sure he knew-- we were in the sitting room. He knew the IRC is there, or Amy. And as we moved out, he got out to the balcony and said, I'm going to take this chance and ask. If it was not something important, he wouldn't have pushed the button that far. Amy has this ability where it's like she imagines all the thoughts in their head. She can picture the entire thought process of the person who's sitting in front of her. He just didn't jump out and run. He chewed it. He digested it. Mm-hmm. That's your problem, I think. You can imagine everybody's reality too closely. Amy has been a displaced person. First from Uganda, then to Sudan. She ended up in Khartoum. Then she had to flee Khartoum. Then back to Uganda where she was displaced again, until she went to college in the capital city Kampala. Then she worked for the UN, then she came to the US. When Amy's office closes on Friday, Edie and the others will still have somewhere to go. They're getting hooked up with a local branch of Catholic Charities, a nonprofit that stepped in to fill this gap, to close out the 90 days of whoever's left. They've never done this work before, though, so it's been kind of trial by fire, more people than they expected. And they admit, they don't offer the suite of services and care that the IRC does. And they do not have caseworkers who were themselves displaced people in Africa. When I talked to them, they copped to that. Yes, it's been hard. And no, we do not have the unique instinct of Amy Longa. So it's going to be different. Edie, who comes here at least three times a week, wants to know how to reach Amy after the office closes. No, I'm not giving you my cell phone number and I cannot give you my address. But Garden City's small. I can guarantee you we will meet somewhere. There was this one meeting I saw Amy have with a client that I will never forget. Hey. How are you, bubba? This kid, Norkamal, he's just a kid, really. 19 years old. He's Rohingya Muslim from Myanmar. The Rohingyas have been brutally persecuted there. He fled to Bangladesh, then Malaysia, then he came to the United States not being able to speak. It's almost like he has no vocal cords at all. He's injured. I don't know how or why. Like, he really can't talk. He talks like this. Like, if you just made a K sound at the back of your throat. It's a whisper. (WHISPERING) "Ka." He also can't read much or write at all. Nor and Amy have gotten very close this year. It's almost like a mother-son relationship. Nor wants to get a surgery, a risky surgery, that could bring his voice back. He has health insurance, but it still took him a year and a half working in a beef slaughterhouse to save up $6,000 for the co-pay. Except, of course, his consultation with the doctor is for August 1. August 1. the day after Amy's office closes, when she's no longer technically supposed to be working with them. Though, of course, she'll still be his contact with the hospital. It's taken them all year to perfect their communication, and it's intimate watching them. It's kind of a lip reading, and signing, and looking into each other's eyes. He shows her some medical records she told him to find. You kept it together. I think this is it. You see, it's from the hospital in Malaysia. They sit cross-legged from each other on the floor. Amy's desk was literally just pulled out from under her. Some guys came and picked it up as a donation. Let's give it to the doctor, OK? Don't open it. Don't put anything in it. This is for the-- That's him saying, "the doctor." When? Wednesday. Wednesday. Perfect. Bingo. Amy's clients. Lots of them non-English speaking, unskilled labor job having, expensive surgery booking. This is where the immigration debate lives. President Trump's idea, the idea of America First, it kind of means fewer people like this. Why can't we take care of the people in America first? Trump supporters have said that to me for years now. That they think refugees take American jobs. They cost taxpayers too much money, these government grants to resettle refugees. This county in Kansas went 63% for Trump, so I figure a lot of people here like his policies. I found one of them on Facebook being skeptical of refugees. Then I found her in real life-- All right. Let me come a little closer. --in a farmhouse just past the meatpacking plant. She and her husband were sitting in their garage watching baseball, drinking beers, throwing the cans into the corner. OK. So who are you, sir? My name's John Becker. OK. And Mr. Becker, what do you make of this refugee resettlement office closing? I don't even know what it is. OK. So you know refugees come into Garden City, Kansas, right? Refugees? Refugees. What does that mean? OK. What's a refugee? A refugee is like, basically, they've been-- they're coming from a war-torn country. Somalia, the Congo, Sudan, stuff like that. I don't buy that. I don't believe that. OK. Well, I'll just tell you the definition of it first and-- I don't believe that. OK. And they get vetted extensively. I don't believe that either. You don't believe the vetting thing. No. I don't believe they're vetted either. Right. Well, I guess the distinction that I just do want to make, though, is that they are here legally. It's not illegal immigration. You know, they have permission to be here. They're flown over here by the UN and State Department. Why are they doing that? Well, because, you know, they're refugees. They can't go home. Why can't they? Because their home is unsafe. Oh, I don't buy that. I don't believe that either. Why don't you believe it? I just don't believe all that stuff. John Becker is not the first person I've met who wants a moratorium on refugees. He is the first one who doesn't seem to believe in them, like they're unicorns or elves. Well, it seems to me that now that they're closing down the office, there'll be fewer refugees here. Somebody is seeing things the way you are. So there's going to be few of them? Fewer? Yeah. Oh, well, I applaud that. It's the Trump administration. We don't want to change our whole society here just for a few refugees. We don't want to do that. They can go to a bigger town, bigger city maybe. They come here to change our culture. That's how the Beckers see it. Not to state the very, very obvious, but this is the opposite of Amy. Whereas she imagines their lives and needs, to the point of anguish sometimes, he doesn't believe they actually exist. He can't imagine their lives. Garden City has train tracks, and grain silos, and enormous wind turbines. It has cows in a field under a big metal sign that says Eat More Beef. It smells of shit around 4:00 in the afternoon. You can smell it at the Walmart parking lot. But whatever politics that evokes for you, I believe most of the city doesn't agree with the Beckers. Of the people in town I found who wanted the office to close-- six-- 2/3 of them were Beckers. Their relative had been killed on a motorcycle by a Somali. The county that Garden City is in is not majority white anymore. There are taco spots everywhere. There's a Vietnamese grocery store. There's a Somali neighborhood. And the IRC office, in a way, acts as the glue between these two parts of town that are coming together. My impression is that most people in town don't want the office to close at all. People like the chief of police, who loves Amy, loves the IRC office. They worked together particularly closely when the Somali community here was threatened by a bomb plot by white militia guys outside of town. The local hospital works closely with the IRC. So do the local schools. The Beckers complain newcomers aren't assimilating fast enough. John Becker said a few times, why don't they want to be Americans? But they very obviously do. That's why lots of them are in the IRC office day after day, like wide-eyed kids on the first day of high school. Help me figure out how to fit in. And that's what the IRC office helps them do. Close the back of the truck. The moving company has just finished packing up the truck and slams the back door shut. They're driving all the files to Wichita, where the lone IRC office in the state remains. We watch them drive away, cart off the whole office that she founded four years ago. All right. That is done. 3 o'clock, July 30. You did it. Yeah. There goes the office around the corner. There goes the office around the corner. What next? You know that feeling when you've packed everything up and you're like, whew, I did it. This was not that feeling. There is one thing, though, that Amy is really, truly satisfied about. You can hear it in her voice a few weeks later, a few weeks after the office is closed, when I call her. Hi, Zoe! Hi, Amy. You want to say hi to Norkamal? Yes, I want to say hi to Norkamal. Norkamal. He's the guy who whispered "Wednesday." Hello? Hi! Hi. How are you? Oh, my gosh! Oh, my gosh. I can talk. You can talk! Your voice is so, like, loud and clear. Yeah. My voice is clear. And he has all this stuff to say. Amy says when she hears his voice, it sounds like one of her babies crying after he was just born. This is the first time I have heard her, just, pure joy. Her office is closed, but she got this done. Zoe Chace. So podcast listeners, Zoe actually reported out an entire second story for today's program that we did not have time for on the radio, but she found some really interesting stuff. And since this podcast can be any length at all, I'm excited to play it for you now. This is a fifth act of today's show. Don't tell anybody who heard the radio version of the show about this, OK? They don't need to know. It's just between us. Don't let them know how much better the podcast is. This is Act Five of today's show. Act Five, Why So Few? And the best way to explain this story-- when Zoe was at the IRC office in Garden City, one of the refugees-- the guy at the beginning of her story, Edie-- he asked her at some point, like, why is this happening? Why are so few refugees coming in that this office has to close? And at the time, Zoe actually didn't really understand why. Like, why were only 22,000 refugees arriving in the United States if 45,000 was the number that the administration set for itself? And she looked into this, trying to figure it out. And to understand the answer, you have to go back to this promise that the President made back when he was a candidate. You remember this one. Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on. So the President acted on this campaign promise in his very first week in office with the travel ban, right? He banned travel to the United States from seven countries. But that was not all it did. It also shut down the refugee program. Like, the refugee program from all countries all over the world. It was, like, a total and complete shut down for 120 days. The idea is shut it down for 120 days while the administration figured out what the hell was going on. In other words, how we vet refugees that we resettle in this country. And at the end of 120 days, theoretically, the refugee resettlement program was supposed to start back up again. But then something weird happened. Refugee resettlement, it never really started back up again. Not full force. Look at the numbers. Take Iraq, which is not on the President's travel ban list-- the final one. Last year, we let in 6,886 refugees. This year, 130. OK. How come? Like, what happened? They went through a process, they came to a conclusion, they fixed their thing. Should have start started back up. What happened? Zoe searched around and found somebody who actually knows. Back when Donald J. Trump said he wanted to know what the hell was going on, what he meant was, what's the vetting process for how we figure out who gets to come in? He didn't trust what was already in place. So when he announced the travel ban, the White House pulled together people from across the agencies. Homeland Security, the State Department, National Counterterrorism, Intelligence. All the people you'd want in a room like that. And one of the people in the room was Barbara Strack. She was the chief of refugee admissions for USCIS, USCIS being a Department of Homeland Security that handles immigration. She remembers their first meeting on day one of 120. We met in a large conference room that was really full with people around the table and people against the wall. And-- It was a lot of people. A lot of people. Barbara says the way most people in the room were looking at it was like this. The refugee program is already incredibly rigorous. It's months, sometimes years, of interviews, data collection, security checks. The people in the room were, like, we think of this as very safe. But OK, let's do better. Let's make what we already think is extreme vetting more extreme. It was a real A team. The top people. Barbara says everyone was on the same page. Our goal is that this program is up and running again on day 121. So we need to be very organized. We need to meet quickly and get the program through the other side when there can be confidence again. I talked to three other officials who are involved in the 120-day group, two who still work in government, and they all felt like Barbara. Let's put our back into it, focus, hit the target. So they do it. They meet, they divide into subgroups, they write up a report that makes a bunch of recommendations, which are classified. My impression from Barbara and the others who worked on this was we implemented every improvement we could imagine to a process that was already tight. And the final conclusion of this group of experts was if you institute these improvements into the process that we already have, for sure, it is safe to turn the program back on. So go ahead. Start admitting the refugees again with the more extreme vetting that you wanted. And then, on about 110 of the 120 days, they hear back from the White House. The White House did not like the conclusion of this review. And according to Barbara and the others I spoke to in the group, the White House wanted it to change. They had expressed concern about the recommendation to resume refugee processing of all nationalities. And do you know which nationalities the White House was worried about? I'm trying to think if there's any reason not to say this on the record. There's probably not. I was told that there was particular concern about Somali nationals. The administration specifically pointed to Somalis as the sticking point. Why? I don't know. What do you think? I honestly can't speculate. You don't want to speculate. No, I honestly-- to this day, I don't know. And there's no rationale that you were given? Like, because Somalia is like this or like that. The rationale wasn't shared with me. Two government officials confirmed this for me. Somalia wasn't the only concern, they said, but it was a major concern. It was chief of staff John Kelly, in particular, who was unhappy, they said. I think it was bullshit, one guy in the group told me. At the end of the day, the data didn't show that Somalis were any special risk. So after 120 days, the White House reopened the refugee program for some countries, but not for a handful of countries who make up a lot of the refugees that are resettled here. For Somalia and 10 others, including all the countries in the original travel ban, the refugee program would stay suspended. For them, the 120 day review got another 90 days. My boss asked me to think about options for how to address the White House's concerns. Barbara says she and the other members of her group were sort of at a loss for what else they could possibly review. But they went back to work. They came up with some more recommendations. After 90 days, in January 2018, the White House did restart the whole refugee program. But it was like turning on a faucet and nothing coming out. If you look at Somalia and those 10 other countries, this fiscal year it looks like we will admit 3% of who we allowed just the year before. Last year, we admitted more than 6,000 Somalis. This year, just 250. The extreme vetting has gotten so extreme, it seems, that few people can actually get through it. Barbara says the changes they recommended shouldn't have had this effect. It shouldn't have slowed things down so much. Others I spoke to from the group said the same thing. It's not clear why the numbers are so low, but Barbara and the other people I talked to said the White House just never supplied the staffing and the resources to carry out the new vetting. A few people told me that the FBI, in particular, isn't staffed up enough to do the checks it's supposed to do. As a result, there's not a ban in place on these refugees, but the outcome is nearly the same. A DHS spokesperson said the new screening procedures are undoubtedly making America safer. They point to one specific example. An Iraqi wanted for murder in Iraq who entered the United States through our refugee program in 2014. They said today, with the new vetting procedures, he would not have made it through. There is some risk with every immigration program. If you wanted a zero-risk immigration system, you wouldn't have any immigration at all. My sense is that the risk tolerance of this administration is very, very low with regard to the refugee program. You know, approaching zero. Barbara thinks, though I believe DHS would deny this, that they just want a different kind of refugee coming in, if any come in at all. She and another staffer told me about various times going up to the Hill to talk about the refugee program to Congress back when Jeff Sessions was a senator. Do you vet for culture? he asked. Another time she saw someone else who's now a Trump official, Gene Hamilton, for a briefing. Do you screen for integration potential, Hamilton asked, the ability to assimilate? No, she said. That's something we've always taken pride in, actually, as a country, she told him. The standard for refugee resettlement has always been vulnerability. How much can we do for you, not how much you can do for us. Zoe Chace. Again, remember, this story is our secret. Don't tell anybody who heard the radio show. OK. Our program was produced today by Nadia Reiman. People who put together today's show included Zoe Chace, Dana Chivvis, Neil Drumming, Hillary Elkins, Damian Grave, Michelle Harris, Chana Joffe-Walt, David Kestenbaum, Seth Lind, Anna Martin, Miki Meek, Ben Phelan, Robyn Semien, Alissa Shipp, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu. Our Senior producer is Brian Reed. Our managing editor is Susan Burton. Special thanks today to so many lawyers. Erica [INAUDIBLE], Nicole Ramos, [INAUDIBLE], Bob [INAUDIBLE], Jennifer Walker Gates, Miriam Ackerman, Morgan [INAUDIBLE], Ana Maria Schwartz, Anastasia Tonello, Edna Yang, Steven [? Navar, ?] Rebecca [INAUDIBLE], Francisco [INAUDIBLE], Crystal [INAUDIBLE], Sandra Feist, Emmy McLean, Teigen [INAUDIBLE], Andy [INAUDIBLE], Rebecca Brown, Rebecca Press, and many others at Central American Legal Assistance. Also [INAUDIBLE], Robbie Grammer, Ben Kestling, Mark O'Brien, Marcy Smith, Katie [INAUDIBLE], Eric Schwartz, Sarah [? Kraus, ?] Jennifer [? Sine, ?] Mary [? Giovanolli. ?] And a bunch of government spokespeople, including [INAUDIBLE], Michael [? Bars, ?] and [? Devin ?] [? O'Malley. Our website, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, he keeps inviting me to this little vacation house he has. And whenever I ask him, like, what is it like? He's so vague. He's just-- The country conditions are what they are. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
Remember when the news was boring, and politics was boring? That happened, right? I'm not imagining that. You were there. I was there. That happened in our lives. I miss it. I didn't appreciate what a good thing it was when we had it. I don't know about you, but me-- I've spent a full week obsessively reading about Judge Kavanaugh, and watching videos online, and calling people to discuss it. And I know this is just daily life in our totally divided country these days, but can I say, for me-- again, for me-- of all the moments we've had these last few years where red America and blue America look at the exact same event and come to radically different conclusions-- to me, this one feels the worst. I think because the original hearing itself with Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh-- the testimony was just so long. It was so many hours. And then both witnesses were so emotionally raw that even watching it was emotional. It was upsetting. And then since that hearing, we've had this week of waiting for the FBI report, which held us all for a week in that same state of agitation and disbelief-- Republican disbelief at the Democrats, Democrats' disbelief at the Republicans. But even in moments like this one, there are people who haven't picked a side. And incredibly, sometimes, those people are the ones who have to decide. They have to cast a vote in the United States Senate. And it does not seem fun for them. Today on our show, we have somebody in that situation in our first act-- Arizona Senator Jeff Flake. In our second act, we leave Washington behind. We have somebody who's literally deciding on a man's life or death, with no real experience or understanding of how to do it. Both those people, having to make these huge decisions-- they are not comfortable at all. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Act One. Judge. So Senator Jeff Flake was one of the central players in the drama on Capitol Hill this last week. Turn on the TV and you'd see his tortured face. He dragged his decisions down to the wire over and over. He was undecided, then seemed like a no on Kavanaugh, then was a yes, then was a let's wait a week. It was Jeff Flake who made the Senate wait for a new FBI investigation. Then he was a yes again. Our producer, Zoe Chace, has spent a lot of time with Jeff Flake over the last year. You may remember the hour-long episode she did, recording him for months as he tried to pass some kind of DACA bill. And she was with him in the days before and after the Kavanaugh hearing, watching what he was going through and talking to him about how he made his choices. Here's Zoe. The first thing I want to talk about is the elevator. It's a big story-- how Jeff Flake changed his mind because two women accosted him on an elevator. I'm here to tell you that's not a true story. That's not what changed his mind. Look at me when I'm talking to you! You're telling me that my assault doesn't matter! I was there, right behind the women yelling. That's why my recording isn't as clear as what you heard on CNN. I'm just staring at Flake, peering out from the elevator. He had just stood me up for an interview. Jeff Flake's face can be a little deceiving. He looks kind of miserable a lot of the time when inside, he's just humming a little tune. In this case, though, I think he was miserable. He had just released a statement saying he was going to vote for Kavanaugh. He had dashed right past a bunch of CNN reporters, and around the corner to get to the elevator, to get to the vote. And now he was stuck. You are allowing someone who is unwilling to take responsibility-- Ma'am, I'd be happy to take you-- --for his own actions-- Talk-- ma'am? --to sit in the higher court of the country. And then he went to the meeting, where he asked for an FBI investigation for one week. And what they said in that elevator door appears to have led a US senator to change his mind. Their words have now reverberated around this country. Flake had declared that he would be voting for Kavanaugh's nomination. Then he was confronted by a mob of screaming protesters, the youth wing of the Democratic Party. Jeff Flake crumbled. Archila was one of the two women in that confrontation with Senator Flake. Good morning. Good morning. When that elevator door closed with Senator Flake, did you think that history might change? Archila and Maria Gallagher-- the other woman at the elevator-- they always hedge how influential they were. But lots of others don't. I'm reading things like, it was the elevator pitch that altered the trajectory of American history. An online site, "Support the heroes who convinced Flake," raised over $30,000 in a couple days. Lots of people love this version of events, and I think it's because they just want to believe protest works. So much of these last two weeks has been people watching the same stuff on TV, and seeing what they want to see. Here's how I know that story about the elevator, about how it changed Jeff Flake's mind, is not true. First of all, I saw him shake his head no when asked about it by other reporters. And did the women who confronted you this morning, did they have any role in changing your mind? Also, we talked about it. That wasn't the thing. It was a thing. It was a thing-- just not the thing that convinced him. Protesters don't affect him like that. I've seen him confronted by protesters over the health care bill, the tax vote, the Dreamers. And for days now, the Capitol building has been choked with them. They're stopping senators as they move through the halls-- sometimes chanting, sometimes telling horrific, very personal stories of sexual assault. It's everywhere, and it's a lot. Just the day before, Flake and I got in an elevator on the other side of the building. He was in the middle of a story about Lindsey Graham. Lindsey pulled me aside last night. Women jumped on the elevator with us. They wore "be a hero" T-shirts, and "I believe women" T-shirts. They were filming him and calling out, "Do you believe women, Senator Flake?" Do you believe them? Do you support women? We support women. Do you believe women? We support women. We support women. We believe women. Do you believe women? Thank you. Thank you. We believe survivors. Senator Flake? What do you have to say? Please? Do you have something you can say to women right now, and the survivors? Glad we're having this hearing today. Yes. Are you going to do the right thing? I'm glad we're having the hearing. Because it's not your body! Does it affect you when people yell at you like that? The benefits of being shallow. That's Flake making fun of himself. We've talked about this before. Like lots of men his age, he doesn't connect too well to emotions. John McCain would have done the right thing. And he walked into the hearing to listen to Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh, not sure what to do. Before I explain what happened next, I want to just say, going into a day like this undecided is both very rare for a senator, and very rare for everyone in America right now. I don't think being undecided could have been more scarce that day. Think about it. Do you know anybody who didn't already know who they would believe, and who they would not? The one time he spoke in the hearing, he sounded just as unsure as he had going in. And it was at the end of the day. This is not a good process, but it's all we've got. And I would just urge my colleagues to recognize that, in the end, we are 21 very imperfect senators trying to do our best to provide advice and consent. And in the end, there is likely to be as much doubt as certainty going out of this room today. And just have a little humility on that front. So thank you. If you watch the news, you know at least the outlines of what followed. But just to explain-- because I think you can't understand what happens at the end with Jeff Flake unless you know what happens here-- the night after the Ford-Kavanaugh testimony, Thursday night, Flake stays up all night, freaking out over what to do. Some close friends told him about their own sexual assaults. He talked to advisors. He talked to lawyers, going over what was said. He found Ford credible and convincing, but he came back, over and over, to the fact that there was nothing corroborating her testimony. No one else could put him in the room that night. He found Kavanaugh credible also, and his anger wasn't as off-putting to him as I thought it might be. His staff said they'd never seen him like this. It was agonizing, I have to say. It really was-- more so than anything, any decision, on a vote. I've had debates with staff, and discussions late last night, too. And it was pretty raw, you know? The next morning, of course, Flake finally releases the statement. He's going to vote yes on the judge. Whatever you do, they say, in the end, you've got to come back to presumption of innocence. He goes to the elevator, gets yelled at on TV, then to the committee meeting. You know that part. Meanwhile, Chris Coons, Democratic senator from Delaware, is on his way to the meeting with a bunch of reporters. And he gets the news that Flake's a yes. He chokes up, reportedly, says, "Oh, fuck," and then, "We each make choices for our own reason. I'm struggling. Sorry." A lot of tears in the Capitol those two days. The meeting begins. The two sides rail against each other. Flake's stressing, gets up and makes a call. He probably checks Twitter, because he usually does. But he says he did not see how viral the elevator video was going, and the bad PR of it. He says he wasn't thinking about that at all. So he comes back. And then Coons gives a speech at the committee meeting that he said was directed at one man-- Jeff Flake. They're actually friends. They're on the Foreign Relations Committee together. They've been all over Africa together, too. And they have breakfast almost every week at the prayer breakfast. Coons is Presbyterian, Flake reminds me, while he's a Mormon. And there was something very Presbyterian, he said-- just unadorned and practical-- about the way Coons was speaking. And I will say, briefly, at the outset, that before yesterday began, I prayed. I prayed for Dr. Ford and her family. I prayed for Judge Kavanaugh. And I prayed for all who would watch yesterday, uncertain whether we could conduct ourselves respectfully. I know since the day that my Democratic colleagues and I learned of these allegations, we've had one consistent request-- to allow the FBI to investigate them in a nonpartisan, professional, even-handed manner, and deliver their findings to us so that we could reach a conclusion. Flake and I talked about that moment on the phone. That it had an impact, and the biggest impact, I'm sure. That is far more accurate than this narrative out there that it was the protesters that moved it. That day at the meeting, Flake gets up, walks across the room, taps Coons on the shoulder, and they're on their way to a deal. Later, he explained what was going through his head. I wasn't at peace with where I was. And when I got over there and then saw the food fight-- just resumption of yesterday's-- I said, we can't-- I can't do this. I know how this is being viewed out there, that people see this rush to judgment, and as Republicans move through and not look at the facts, and just try to get this done as quickly as possible-- and that's not good. It's not good. Long term, look what it does to the institution, it's just horrible. Preserving the integrity of the process on the Senate Judiciary Committee is a much less romantic story than the one about two survivors of sexual assault changing a senator's mind at the last second. That's what happened, though. And finally, that day, the world sees Jeff Flake find a third way. It's something he's been looking for for a long time on a lot of issues-- a way to vote with his Republican colleagues, but stand for certain principles with the Democrats. It's the weirdest niche. But he's a weirdo right now-- a ghost Republican. He doesn't really have a constituency he's speaking for, being anti-Trump but pro his policies. He's retiring from the Senate in a few months. As he says, he could never have done something like this if he were still running for office. There's no value to reaching across the aisle, he says. There's no currency for that anymore. If you do that, you'll lose. So there is not much crossing over to the other side ever, by anybody-- which is maybe why, when you do cross over, this is what happens. How you doing, Senator? Doing well. How are you? Good for you, man. Thanks. God bless you. Appreciate it. This is the consequence-- New York City loves Senator Jeff Flake. I know, because the day after the committee vote, I picked him up at Penn Station and got him a taxi. But I also called a car. Oh, you did? Yeah. Oh, well don't. Because I was like, the Senator? I don't know if he wants to wait in a taxi line. I don't know if that's a thing you're used to doing. Yeah, I'll be all right. No Capitol police protection, no staff-- just me, and a lot of new Jeff Flake fans. Could we take a picture with you? Sure. You bet. I end up taking pictures for them. Do you think they know that you're going to vote for Kavanaugh? I don't know. I think that will all go away if I do. 86th and Central Park West. I don't know. I think people are so starved for any sign of bipartisanship. I'm going to go ahead and say bipartisan, in New York, means you agree with the Democrats. This is all happening because on my way back to New York from Washington on Saturday, I ran into Chris Coons on Amtrak. He told me Flake was on the Acela right behind us. That Flake had invited himself, along with Coons, to the Global Citizen Concert at The Great Lawn in Central Park, broadcast live on MSNBC. I can't think of a bluer place, to be honest-- a more on-the-nose location for the hashtag resistance. So I'm surprised to hear Flake's coming too, and I text him to see if I can go. He gets me credentials, and I take him uptown. I get a little lost. Because I'm from here, I think I know where everything is, but I don't. And then we're running across the 86th Street transverse. Senator Flake? Good work. Thank you. New York loves you, Senator Flake. And we head to a little trailer backstage to meet up with Chris Coons. Outside, tens of thousands of people are already out on the lawn. These two senators are going to deliver a short, impromptu speech about bipartisanship to this crowd. Can I ask you who's performing before them, and who's performing after? Cardi B. Cardi B? Is after. Is after? Yeah. You guys are the opening act for Cardi B. I don't know if he knows who Cardi B is. This is where Flake's reaching across the aisle gesture gets epically surreal-- and it's hard to top how surreal the week has been already. All these famous people keep popping into the trailer. What you did-- you're a hero. And it's so funny that other people don't know how simple it is to be a hero. It's Robert Di Niro, who steps to Flake with a finger in his face, like a scene from Goodfellas. We rely on you. Too much had gone down with this guy. He's got to go. I know it's because they want the midterms, and this, and that. But we're beyond all that. We're beyond all that. It's weird to hear Robert Di Niro say the word midterms. I'm telling you, you're a hero, man. John Legend. I appreciate what you all did this week. And we just know that we're all watching and hoping that you make the right decision for the country. OK? That's all I'm saying. [LAUGHTER] You know how I feel about it. The director Ava DuVernay. So thank you so much for listening to women. Katie Holmes and Suri. Coons does not know who that is. That's great. I don't know how to answer that question. Bring her on in. She's the actress who was-- Used to be married to Tom Cruise. --married to Tom Cruise. That's great. I've heard of him. I am so useless. Come in, Katie. Hi, you. Good to see you. Thank you. To be fair, neither of the senators seems to know who any of these people are-- except Di Niro. Everyone wants a picture with the senators. Soon Coons and Flake are rushed towards the stage, continuing to be mobbed by the Hollywood resistance. Darren Aronofsky yells to them, "I'm a film maker. I made Black Swan." I'm a filmmaker. I made Black Swan. Thank you for everything you're doing right now. I go around to the front, to see how thousands of non-famous New Yorkers are receiving this still-Republican senator. Thanks to all of you global citizens-- Fuck you! --who have contacted us-- That's a real New York "fuck you." The call for bipartisanship is drowned out by calls for Cardi B. We're standing here, united for democracy. Cardi! Cardi! As soon as they're offstage, though, the star treatment starts again. The Reverend Al Sharpton catches him, like we're on a red carpet. Hey, Al. Senator Coons just called you a hero. Naw. Naw, he's the guy. He's the guy. He's the guy. "Do you think we can bring this country together?" Al says. It's like a left-wing farce at this point. Random bit players keep popping out to cast liberal spells. Chris Martin, from Coldplay, gives Flake a magic pin of some sort to keep in his pocket. Oh, yeah. Jeff, here. Take this. Put it in your pocket in times of trouble. All right? Thank you. Oh! Flake drops it. Chris Martin leaves. We have a moment to sit down. What is it like? It's intimidating. Was it? Yeah. Well I mean, it's not something you know. This is different than a conference on Social Security reform or-- you know? It's not the Cato Institute. Different. No, it's not. [LAUGHTER] Far from. What's it like having people like Robert Di Niro and John Legend be like, you're a hero? For a week-long FBI investigation? Well, it'll last a week, too. My next vote, for Kavanaugh or for something they don't like, and I'm a pariah again. [LAUGHTER] So you enjoy it for a week. Do you think they know you're still a Republican? You know, I think probably so. You enjoy it while you can. Jeff Flake's had a rough few years. They hate him on the right, and he keeps disappointing the left. It feels good, for once, to be popular. Are you happy? Do you like it? Oh, yeah. Every politician does. We like it. Politicians-- we feed on it. That's a-- whether we admit it or not. And then it happens, just like he predicted. After seven days of being treated as a Democrat-- or at least a Republican defector-- Flake comes home to the GOP. On Thursday, the FBI releases the report that he called for. On Friday, Flake announced his decision. He's a yes on Kavanaugh. I reached Chris Coons that afternoon. Look, Jeff and I both went to the same place, and read the same report. And I appreciate his friendship. We are viewing this through a different lens. Jeff is a conservative senator. He has always wanted a conservative on the Supreme Court. I am not, and I don't. Coons thought the FBI report was a disgrace, basically. They didn't follow up on any leads, he said. It was not the investigation he had asked for last week. He was mad. Frustrated. Kept going off the record and raging. He would not tell me about his conversations with Jeff Flake after they both read the FBI report. I'm really trying not to either put words in his mouth or criticize him, because-- I am restraining myself from saying something that is not appropriate here. As soon as Flake voted Friday, he fled the Capitol. I talked to him in the car. People are mad at you again, I said. Well, that's how it goes, he said. Why did you vote yes, I asked him? Presumption of innocence, he told me, over and over. He was satisfied with the FBI report. Do you feel better now? You're kind of back among your people. You had kind of a week with the Democrats celebrating you, but you're back among your people. Do I have people? I guess so. I am a man, temporarily, without a party. There is no bipartisan right now. There is no aisle to stand in the middle of. To quote a film that Robert Di Niro was not in, but kind of-- "Don't ever take sides with anyone against the family. Ever." Zoe Chace is one of the producers of our program. Let's turn now to this recording that we found of Justice Anthony Kennedy. Kennedy, of course, is the retiring judge whose seat Brett Kavanaugh was nominated for, the swing vote on the Supreme Court for years. This is him being questioned in a Q&A back in 2010. As you stand here today, Justice, a potential colleague is starting the confirmation process. How has the process changed since you went through it? Well, I liked my own. Remember, the Senate is a political body, and they have to act in a political way. The framers knew that. And it's really not for me to tell the Senate how to structure that process. I do think it has the obligation to recognize the necessity of preserving the neutrality, and the independence, and the integrity of our court. What you should ask is whether the judge has the temperament, the commitment, the character, the learning. I think the judge should be broadly read. I, myself, was fascinated with political theory. If you ask what makes a good judge, you're going to get an autobiography, so you have to be careful about that. So the Senate has a-- really, very difficult position. Kennedy was speaking to an audience including high school students. People asked him about his favorite cases, if he had always wanted to be on the Supreme Court-- no, by the way. He was funny. He was a good talker. And he explained his job-- how it works. We will meet, just the nine of us, and discuss the case. We begin in order of seniority, from the most senior judge to the least senior. And if the case is one in which there are great issues of public policy involved, we know that we're required to make a decision. The courts have been divided on it. And let's assume that it's a five-four case, and it's not just reverse or affirm. It's a question of the rationale, the principal, the reasons that you give. And let's say it's five to four. The five in the majority don't have a lot of back slaps, and high fives, and thumbs up. There's a moment of awe as we realize, one of us will have to write an opinion that commands the allegiance of the American people. An opinion that explains, that teaches the principles of law, the principles of the Constitution, that control the result. And when we issue that opinion in, say, an unpopular case, we draw down on a capital of trust. We make a withdrawal on the trust that the public has in our constitution. And it is our job always to replenish that trust by adhering to our judicial oath, by adhering to the principles of neutrality, and independence, and fairness, and quiet discussion, and decency, and courtesy, and scholarship. That's the way our court works. OK, one more story. I don't know if this tells us anything profound about Anthony Kennedy or the Supreme Court, but it's just fun to hear how he talks about this. I was meeting, one time, with our judges and attorneys in Alabama. And I think it was a Saturday morning. And for my schedule or theirs or both, it was at 9 o'clock in the morning. And they were dressed casually, ready to play golf or tennis. And they were gracious enough to hear me for a few minutes. And so I said, well, do you have any questions? And one attorney raised his hand and said, now, you have all that tremendous amount of reading to do-- all of those briefs. How do you possibly do that? I said, well, I have four clerks, and I divide them up among the clerks. Of course, I have to read them all. And if they're very difficult cases, I will take them home and read the briefs a second time over the weekend, just before argument. And I like music. I have opera playing in the background. And I sometimes have cases that are one-opera cases, sometimes two-opera cases. Well, the minute I said that, I kind of knew I lost the audience. They were too polite to roll their eyes, but it sounded kind of, what, intellectually pretentious? You know, here's some eastern guy talking about the opera. So I thought I'd lost the audience, but I was saved because an attorney in the room raised his hand. He said, well, I have a rule like that when I write those briefs. I said oh, yes? He said, I have a one six-pack brief and a two six-pack brief. I said, I think I remember your last one. It was a three six-pack brief. Who'da thunk? Lawyer likes beer. Thanks to the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches for that recording of Anthony Kennedy. Coming up, a total and complete amateur has to decide a death sentence. His only previous experience in these matters? Watching Law & Order. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, "The Unhappy Deciders"-- stories of people who are saddled with difficult, momentous decisions to make-- decisions that will determine someone's fate for the rest of their life, decisions that weigh on them. Act one of our program today was about a judge. Act Two is about a jury. And we'll just get right to it. This story comes to us from the podcast Heavyweight. If you haven't heard Heavyweight, it's hosted by one of our regular contributors here, and a former producer of This American Life, Jonathan Goldstein. And the premise of the show is that each episode, people come to Jonathan with something in their life that they want to fix, they want to deal with, they want to make right with another person. Usually it's something they've been living with for a long time, and they're uncomfortable with. And Jonathan plays a kind of bumbling Detective Columbo figure, but one who actually is kind of bumbling and awkward. But he gets the people to sit down, and talk, and hash things out. Many of the episodes are really funny. The one that we have today is a more serious one. Anyway, here's Jonathan Goldstein. In 2008, Sven received a letter for jury duty. Lots of people would say, oh, this is such a boring thing. Oh no, I hope I don't get jury duty. But I was more curious and interested in the process. And I liked watching stuff like Law & Order, and other things like that. SVU, Criminal Intent-- Sven liked them all. He was a software developer, newly married. And he and his wife had just bought a new house-- his first. The house had a flagpole in the front and a hammock out back. After work he'd come home, relax on the couch, and watch his legal dramas. Jury duty was going to offer an inside view of the TV shows he loved. I wasn't fooled into thinking it was some weird, glamorous thing like that. But I thought juries were interesting-- the idea of judging your peers right or wrong. I've always sort of had a sense of civic responsibility. In my book, the only thing that makes responsibility less appealing is adding the word civic to it. Paying your taxes, appearing before a zoning board-- not for me. Like most, when I appeared for jury duty, I prayed for dismissal. Not Sven, though. During the selection process, he engaged with the questions the lawyers posed as best he could. And when he was asked how he felt about capital punishment, he answered candidly. I believe bad people should be punished in that way, or could be punished in that way. And so I wouldn't say I was strongly for it, but I wasn't against it. And consequently, I got on the jury. The case was The State of Texas versus Paul David Storey. Storey was a 22-year-old accused of the murder of Jonas Cherry, the manager of a mini golf course in Hurst, Texas. Storey and an accomplice forced Cherry into the back office, made him unlock the safe, and put the money-- a few hundred dollars-- in a bag. And then they shot him multiple times. Storey's trial lasted two weeks, and would have felt familiar to anyone who watches TV courtroom dramas. There were lawyers with thick binders full of ballistics reports and medical examinations, character witnesses were called, and disturbing photographs of the victim's body were shown. The only thing missing was any suspense about the verdict. There was no doubt that he was guilty of murder and robbery. And so really, as a jury, all we had to worry about was sentencing. The jury had to decide between life imprisonment or the death penalty. It seemed the victim's family knew what they wanted. "It should go without saying," the prosecutor announced to Sven and the other jurors, "that all of Jonas's family and everyone who loved him believe the death penalty is appropriate." The prosecutor asked the jurors to sentence Paul Storey to death. The instructions stated that for the death penalty to be imposed, the jurors must judge three things to be true-- that Paul Storey was guilty, that there were no mitigating circumstances-- like, say, mental illness or provocation-- and lastly, that Storey posed a future threat to his community. That was the one I had issue with. I seriously doubted that he would be a continuing threat to the prison community. And what was it about Paul Storey that made you feel like you just didn't necessarily see him as a continued threat? A couple of things. His testimony-- The young man Sven saw in the courtroom appeared confused, in over his head, and remorseful. This was his first offense. And some of the evidence suggested that it was Storey's accomplice who had been the mastermind behind the horrible crime, as well as the one who had fired first. Sven was certain that Paul Storey should be punished, but he didn't think he should be put to death. But in the jury chambers, there was a very different feel. Everyone else was in favor of the death penalty. And so faced with almost a dozen other people who already felt strongly, I didn't think I could convince anyone of what I was thinking. I'll be honest-- I was scared. At 27, Sven was the youngest juror by several years. And he was the kind of guy who avoided speaking up at all costs. At home, if his neighbor parked in his space, he let it go. At the office, if his boss told him to do something, even if he disagreed, he did it without question. In other words, even though he'd been looking forward to being a juror, when he found himself in the jury room, Sven wasn't exactly Henry Fonda in 12 Angry Men. The way he understood it, the jurors had to reach a unanimous decision. And the idea of swaying 11 strangers over to his way of thinking seemed impossible. He was also afraid that if he opposed the group, it would result in a hung jury and a mistrial. They'd have to start the whole process over again with a new jury. Everyone would be mad at him. So Sven said nothing. An hour and a half later, Paul Storey was sentenced to death by lethal injection. It was hard to look at him during the sentencing. We sat waiting for the judge to ask us, what's the sentencing? And everyone was really tense. And the woman next to me-- another juror-- began crying. She was trying to hide it. And I gave her my handkerchief. And she just wept. Then the foreman announced the verdict, and I think his mother cried out. They had an exit for us to go through after we collected our things. And we were out of that courtroom fast. It felt like a mistake right away. Sven went over to his parents' house, where he had dinner and drank scotch with his dad. He told his family about the trial. And then he went home, where he had more to drink before bed. And then that was that. Then it was over. And then I went on with my life. Or at least he tried to. But what did you do with these feelings? I was just stuck. It was done. It was cast in stone. And-- yeah, no, I felt terrible. I felt massive amounts of regret. I felt guilty, sending someone to death row. When you think about the people that a trial effects, you think of the victims and their loved ones. And you think of the accused, their families, and what they're going through. You don't usually think about what it does to the jurors. But for Sven, the trial wasn't something you could put behind him at the crack of a gavel. In the days and weeks after the verdict, he read every article about the case he could find. But the more he read, the more shame he felt. So eventually he just stopped. I realized it wasn't really healthy. At the time, Sven was a regular drinker. And it only got worse after the trial. It got a lot worse after the trial. He was drinking more, beginning as soon as he got home from work, and spending more days hungover. His wife didn't understand what was going on. It may have contributed to my divorce, which was the following year. A year after the trial, and Sven's life had changed. The new house with the hammock and the flagpole was sold, and Sven moved out of Texas. Sven settled in Olympia, Washington, to start his life over. He found an apartment for himself and his cat, Niku. But he couldn't shake his memories of the trial. When a friend bought a secondhand silver Nissan, Sven couldn't stop thinking about how that was the same car the victim, Jonas Cherry, had driven. When addressing coworkers, the name Jonas would accidentally slip from Sven's lips. And Paul Storey, who still was on death row, was never far from Sven's mind. He tried to escape through alcohol, but it didn't free him from his shame. Sometimes, after a night out drinking, he'd return to a Facebook page Paul Storey's mother had made for her son. One mother had already lost her son. And now, because Sven had been too afraid to speak up, another mother was going to, as well. I'm not trying to excuse his crime. It was terrible. But to send a guy to death? The presence in your mind, the recurring thoughts about it-- can that go away? For all the bad rap it gets, shame offers a certain safety. It provides a comfortable hole to hide in, away from the judgment of others. But it can also lead to isolation and inertia. And for eight years-- eight years in which Paul Storey sat on death row, awaiting an execution date-- Sven barely talked about the trial with anybody. But then, in 2016, the year after Paul Storey's federal appeal had been denied, a reporter writing a series of articles about the judicial system approached Sven about his experience as a juror. Sven was tired of being all alone with his regrets. And so, for the first time, he opened up about his feelings. "I felt guilty," he told the reporter, "and sad, and a little helpless. I don't think I made the right call." Sven had hoped that talking about the trial might help. And it did-- up until the article was published. That was when Sven received an uncomfortable phone call from a lawyer who had read the article. Sven was at work. Fearing his coworkers might overhear, he took the call outside, behind his office building. It was there that he learned that, eight years earlier, he had misunderstood a key part of the jury instructions. I thought incorrectly, essentially. I believed I would have to convince everyone to choose life imprisonment when, in fact, all I had to do was decline the death penalty. And that's all it would have taken. Preventing the death sentence only required one dissenting vote-- a vote Sven could have cast. So there would have been no mistrial, no hung jury. And instead of the death penalty, Paul Storey would have gotten life in prison without parole. That would have been nice to know. I could have changed-- well, I could have let him live. After the article was published, something else happened-- something Sven never expected or wanted. Paul Storey's mother, Marilyn, got in touch. She reached out with an email filled with sentiments of forgiveness. She had forgiven me. And if I wanted to, I could reach out and talk with her. And knowing that there is that forgiveness-- it felt so weird, like it wasn't something I could completely understand. For Sven, it didn't make sense. Why would Marilyn want to speak with him? How could she, of all people, forgive him for something he couldn't forgive himself for? I didn't know how to deal with-- I still kind of don't know how to deal with that. And I couldn't match her message. How do you mean? Well, I wasn't sure how to reply with something as powerful as that. It just floored me. I didn't know what to say. Sven was never able to write Marilyn back. I did-- began a reply, but I didn't have the courage to finish or send it. It's just, there's so much pain in there, and-- I feel like I really wrecked things up. A few months after Sven received Marilyn's email, an execution date was set. The state would put Paul Storey to death on April 12 of 2017. But then something unexpected happened. Glenn and Judith Cherry, the parents of the victim, came forward. It seems that, at the trial, the prosecution had lied. The Cherrys, in spite of their son's murder, are and always have been against capital punishment. In a video they released publicly, Judith Cherry presents a statement which reads in part, "We do not want Paul Storey's family, especially his mother, to witness the purposeful execution of their son. They are innocent of his deeds." Based on this testimony, with only five days to spare, Paul Storey's execution was postponed. When news of the stay of execution reached Sven, it felt like a second chance, an opening to finally respond to Marilyn's email. But he didn't. It's now been over two years. He's remarried, doesn't drink anymore-- but he still hasn't contacted Marilyn. And so at this point, what do you want? I need to apologize for not doing what I should have done to begin with, for not following my gut, for not trying. Shame leads to inertia. And as even the most casual reader of the fundamentals of physics will tell you, an inert object will remain inert until it is acted upon by an external force. In other words, it takes a little nudge. And who better to supply a little nudge than a little "nudge?" And so I write Marilyn a letter. "I know this is a really sensitive and deeply personal issue," it reads, "and I hope I'm not being too forward." I ask Marilyn if she remembers a juror by the name of Sven Berger. About a week later, I receive a note back via email-- "Thank you so much for your letter," Marilyn writes. "I have no ill will toward Mr. Berger. I have offered him my email address, as well as my phone number, with no reply." She also forwards her original email to Sven-- the one she sent two years ago, the one he can't stop thinking about. When I read it, I'm expecting a grand gesture of forgiveness. But Marilyn never mentions forgiveness-- never even uses the word. Instead, it's just six short sentences in which Marilyn thanks Sven for the article, and says she shared it with her son. Her tone is breezy. She ends with, "have a great day," exclamation mark. I understand that Sven, consumed by guilt, would read so much into so little. But what I don't understand is why Marilyn sent him the email in the first place. I know you had jokingly mentioned breakfast. Oh, I was joking. I have a couple little things, if you get peckish at all-- some croissant, some of this stuff. I don't know, some cookies. No, I'm fine. Yeah? OK. Marilyn lives in Fort Worth, Texas. The two of us meet in a hotel suite downtown where I can't stop offering her food that she can't stop refusing. Do you want to have a coffee, or a tea? No. Marilyn is tall and stately, with smiling eyes. She's in slacks, boots, and a cropped blazer, all in black. She sits on the end of the couch, next to an empty armchair, and tries to give me a sense of what her life was like before the trial. I was always the life of the party. I mean, I was a jokester-- oh, make sure you have Marilyn there, because she's going to keep the party going. I was always kind of the one that everybody went to. People knew you can call me in the middle of the night. If you need somebody to come pick you up, call Marilyn. She'll get up. She'll go do it. Since the trial, Marilyn doesn't feel like the same person. Every day, she's reckoning with the horror of her son's crime, and worrying endlessly about his safety in prison. Her friends have fallen away. The thing that's hardest, though, is how the people who remain-- the people closest to her-- now look upon her son. She says that everyone's passed judgment on Paul, written him off as worthless and un-redeemable. And they blame him for her pain. And I even had a family member where-- Paul is the cause of all of this. And that was very hurtful. It's like they wanted everything to be OK, but that's my child. And I love him. And I'm not going to ever stop fighting for him. Fighting for him meant working with her son's lawyers to change his sentence to life in prison. Paul's appeals were exhausting. It took up all of her time and energy, which affected the hospitality job she worked out for over 30 years. It became extremely hard for me to concentrate at work. And I feel like it cost me my job. After losing her job, Marilyn then lost her house. She was forced to move in with her younger son. So it's like, at my age, where I thought that I'd be getting ready to retire, I'm starting over. So that's a hard thing. 10 years after the trial, and everyone-- her friends, her family-- have all moved on. So when Marilyn read Sven's article, she saw in him someone like her-- someone who had never gotten past that final day of the trial. When they actually gave the sentence-- the death penalty-- I thought I had died. I thought I had literally died. It didn't even register. Because I'm just like, what just happened? What have they done? My whole time there, I was just looking at the jurors to try to read, OK, what are they thinking? What are they doing? I wanted them to know, if I could only tell them what kind of person he is. And I want people to know-- they assume that if you're involved in a heinous crime like that, that you're a monster. But he wasn't a monster. I think that might be him. So he's going to come up. Marilyn and I have been talking for about an hour and a half when the front desk phones. I think it probably-- Now, how do you pronounce his name? Sven. Is it "Sven?" Sven-- S-V-E-N. Sven, yeah. Sven. Sven, yeah. Sven. I hope I get that before he gets here. But before we get a chance to practice our Svens, Sven is at the door. Hi. Hi, Sven. I'm Jonathan. It's very nice to meet you. It's nice to meet you in person. Marilyn is here. Hi. Now, how do you pronounce your name? Sven. Sven. Sven lingers in the door of the hotel room. Here, sit down. Have a seat over there. He's bespectacled, and neatly dressed in a collared shirt and sweater. He looks around and clears his throat. I'm a little nervous. So there was-- The last time Marilyn and Sven had been in the same room was 10 years ago, at the trial. Marilyn was seated behind the bar. Sven sat in the jury box. But today, he sits down in the empty armchair beside her. He can't quite bring himself to look at her. As he tells Marilyn what it was like to receive her email, he gazes down at his lap. It was very surprising. And I read it, and I reread it. And I even began several letters that never went anywhere. I didn't know what to say. What do you say about that? I don't want to write a letter that's trying to make me feel better. Do you know what I mean? Mmm hmm. From the moment the vote was cast, I had regret. I thought, I am doing the wrong thing. And although it was great hearing that you forgave me, I couldn't forgive myself, exactly. And I can't even imagine how you must feel. First of all, I want to say I don't want you to feel shame, because my son was involved in a crime. He made a wrong choice. And I don't ever want you to feel that you did anything wrong. You did what you felt you had to do at the time. But you came back. And for you to come out, and for you to say hey, I made a mistake-- you right your wrong. I can tell by Sven's face that he isn't convinced. He doesn't feel like he's righted anything. This is because for years, Sven has been avoiding all traces of the case-- no googling, no newspapers. He never even read the article he'd been interviewed for. So he doesn't know what Marilyn knows, which is the chain of events that his article set in motion. The jury instructions for Paul Storey's case were written in dense legalize, and nowhere in their nine pages did they state that a single dissenting vote can prevent the death penalty. In fact, courts in Texas are prohibited from telling jurors that. In theory, that's to encourage them to arrive at a consensus. But what it means is Sven's confusion wasn't his fault. For years, legal advocates had wanted to bring a bill before the legislature that would clarify the instructions. But they needed someone who could say, I would have done things differently if I had understood. Marilyn explains to Sven that with him, and the things he'd said in the article, they had finally found that person. There are senators in the state of Texas who have introduced a bill based on you to change the way the instructions are given to a death penalty jury. Sven, slumped in his chair, straightens up. Really? Yeah. You have no idea what sort of impact you had. I don't know anything about that. You were very instrumental. This is-- I'm shocked. While his eyes have tended to dart around the room, looking at me or down at his hands, right now Sven is looking directly at Marilyn. She tells him that had he in fact voted against the death penalty at her son's trial, these attempts at reform might never have happened. I'm a firm believer that things happen for a reason, because this is not just about my son. It's about other mothers' sons that are on death row, as well. So if this can help any other case outside of Paul's, then we've served our purpose. You came forward. So I look at you as my hero. Sven physically shrinks from the word hero. It's as though she's placed a large, awkward crown atop his head. Wow. That's not the way I'd considered myself, or my actions in any way. I don't feel that special. Oh, to me. But I appreciate all your words. To me, you are. That's a lot to process. I had no idea. You didn't know any of this? No. Oh, the articles-- there is a really good one in The Texas Tribune. I actually printed it out for you, but I wasted Coca-Cola on it, so I didn't want to give you an article that was-- but you should look it up. This blows my mind. Sorry, I'm a little at a loss for words. Walking in here, I didn't know what to expect. And I was a little nervous. I do feel, even just now, a little bit of weight taken off my shoulders. I can tell. This helps. This helps so much. Oh, this helps so much. After all these years, Sven is finally able to accept Marilyn's forgiveness, even if he still isn't ready to forgive himself. It chews me up, today, that I didn't express a dissenting opinion. I should have spoken up, at least. I mean, I didn't think he would be a danger to the prison community. I didn't see a hardened criminal there. I got the impression of sort of a kid who was in a situation he didn't know how to handle. I saw someone who made a terrible mistake, and someone I did not believe would do it again. As Sven speaks, Marilyn's eyes well up. I kept looking at the jurors, and I was like, it has to be somebody on there that feels, and that can see through all of this that the prosecutor is presenting, and everything, to know that my son is not a monster. No. No, never. I never saw Paul as a monster. After the crime, Marilyn's family never saw her son the same way again. From that moment on, he was nothing more than a murderer. And on the final day of the trial, 12 jurors confirmed that judgment. Her hope had been that maybe someone had seen something else. It wasn't a hope for someone to recognize in her son anything special or good. She just wanted them to see him as something other than a monster. I didn't see that. Thank you. I appreciate that so much. Throughout the trial, I never saw that once. Paul Storey is still on death row, and Sven still can't reverse the sentence. But in speaking aloud the words that Marilyn's been repeating to herself for so long, Sven's made her feel less alone. You have-- some of the hurt that I have carried on my heart for the last 12 years. You just lifted it. You have no earthly idea what that meant to me. It meant a lot. And for you to say that-- it really eased my heart. After years of worry over what to say to Marilyn, Sven's finally found the right words. I'm sorry I never wrote back. That's OK. I totally understood. That's a lot. Since Sven and Marilyn's meeting, a judge made an official recommendation that, based on Glenn and Judith Cherry's testimony, his sentence be changed to life in prison without parole. Though the Court of Criminal Appeals still has to make a final ruling, Storey's lawyers are hopeful-- and so is Marilyn. As for Sven, after finally responding to Marilyn, he decided to send a letter of apology to Paul Storey. "I couldn't find the strength to speak up in the jury room," he wrote, "and that is a mistake I will carry forever." Sven has yet to hear anything back. Jonathan Goldstein is the host of Heavyweight. His producer for this story was Stevie Lane. Heavyweight just started their third season with an episode about comedian Rob Corddry. You can find their podcast at gimletmedia.com/heavyweight. Or you can just Google or just get it wherever you get your podcasts. Our program was produced today by Diane Wu. People who put together today's show include Zoe Chace, Dana Chivvis, Neil Drumming, Damian Grave, David Kestenbaum, Anna Martin, Miki Meek, Nadia Reiman, Robyn Semien, Alissa Shipp, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, and Julie Whitaker. Our senior producer is Brian Reed. Our managing editor is Susan Burton. Special thanks today to Victoria Camp, Seung Min Kim, Meagan Shepard, Ben Terris, Kalila Holt, Peter Bresnan, Jorge Just, Alex Blumberg, Maurice Chammah, Amanda Marzullo, Elie Mystal, Lawrence Stengel, Richard Holwell, Pamela Bresnahan, and Nina Totenberg. Our website, ThisAmericanLife.org, where you can listen to our archive of over 600 episodes for absolutely free. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, The Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. Every time he and I play tennis, he makes me so mad the way he serves. And when I get mad, he always reminds me-- Quiet discussion, and decency, and courtesy. That's the way our court works. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
It's a school trying to do the right thing, a school trying something new, trying to keep its students safe. So they bought handguns, seven of them, Glock 9mm, to use if a shooter comes into their building. And a week and a half before school started, after a bunch of training, they were running their first drill in the school building with their guns, fresh out of the boxes. Here, look at them, make sure they're all loading. Look at them. They all should be. The building's mostly empty, no kids around. It's a district in rural Ohio that let us record on the condition that we not say their name on the air. It's eight people on this team. Only two teachers volunteered for it. The rest are a guidance counselor, two custodians, and the three administrators who run the school. One of them is the only woman on the team. Producer Lisa Pollak watched them doing this. Lisa, so explain how this works exactly. OK, so the seven guns are locked in these small safes that have been installed in locations all over the school. I saw them run a bunch of drills. And in all of them, the goal was to run to the nearest safe, get the gun out of the safe, and then get to where the shooter is as soon as possible. And they time each drill. OK. We're going to play a tape of this. I just want to warn listeners there are loud gunshots from blanks that they fired during these drills. So the first little glitch they came to was that some of the team members actually had trouble getting into the safes. You have to put your finger on the sensor. It's like a fingerprint thing? Right. And it's a little tricky. It's not working. There's a sheriff's deputy. He's playing the shooter. I'm following a guy named John. He's the principal for grade six through 12. He's running from his office, darts by the cafeteria. He's got a gun. He's wearing a bulletproof vest. He's holding a walkie talkie, very focused, very aware the clock is ticking. He's told me that every few seconds in of one of these shootings, another kid can be killed. Nothing this way, nothing this way. Elementary wing, it's in the elementary wing. Elementary wing, the body from [INAUDIBLE]. The shooter's in the elementary wing. Elementary wing-- the building also has middle school and high school. Right. So the principal's running down the hallway, and he's just about to get to the area where the elementary kids are. But there's a door there, and it's locked. This happens automatically when the school goes into lockdown. So he and the two guys with him are stuck. He fumbles for his keys, and he's trying to find the right one. Yeah. [INAUDIBLE]. He's trying to unlock the door. Here we go. Jesus. Behind you. All right. Here we go. There we go. Door opens. They're on the elementary school side. And they find the shooter right there. So that's the goal of the exercise. They got there. And they don't pretend to shoot him or anything. They're just timing the response. And it wasn't great. That was an eternity compared to the first time. Yeah. Oh, yeah, it was because you got to get through the doors. All clear. Thank you for your cooperation. Lisa, it's so controversial to put guns into a school. Like, why did they choose to do it here? Like, why did that seem like the best option to them? Well, I talked to John, the principal, about this. Yeah. For a long time, he agreed with people who think guns in schools is a bad idea. And even now, he doesn't think it's something that's right for every school. He says he's not a gun guy, didn't grow up with guns, had never used one. Then he came to this school. And this school is pretty remote, in an area that doesn't even have its own police force. So if a shooter got in the building, they could be waiting a long time for help. I don't know that I was necessarily sold that this was the right thing to do, but what are we going to do? We're 15 minutes away from an ambulance being here. We're 15 minutes away from a sheriff department being here. We're 15 minutes away-- you worry. You worry because you realize that you're on your own. And so I wanted to learn. And so I went out and started learning how to shoot a gun and how to handle a gun, and-- which is different. The first time you shoot a gun, that's pretty scary. It was scary to me. After that, he went through a lot of training, including one class where he was really forced to think through what it would mean, in a very literal way, to have to shoot someone in school. In one exercise, the instructor said-- You need to walk up to the target till as close as you can. And he says, and in your mind, you have to envision this as a shooter in your cafeteria, and there's students all around. How close do you have to get before you're confident you're going to hit that target? You've got to shoot that target, and you can't miss. I can't miss. Because if I miss, there's a possibility of somebody else getting hurt. All right? And I can't let that happen. I can't let it be me who hurts a student in my school. Though, of course, he might have to shoot one of his students. In a lot of these shootings, that's who the shooter is. If you had told me years ago that this is what I'd be advocating or thinking, I wouldn't have believed you. But these things don't stop happening. They just continue to happen. These shootings do just continue to happen. Today on our program, we have all kinds of people trying to figure out what to do to prepare, like the staff at this school. In general, it seems to plan for disaster, school administrators and others look at previous shootings. They look to the past to anticipate the future, knowing full well the whole time there's a limit to what any planning can accomplish. If a shooter gets into a school, the sad fact is you cannot stop every tragic possibility. You can't stop everything. Act one of our show today, we have people who are trying to learn from the past. They're trying to put in measures. They're trying to be as thoughtful and thorough as they possibly can, and it's still not enough. Act two, we have people who have invented something that actually seems to work and help. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Act one, "Ready As You'll Never Be." For any school that's trying to figure out the best ways to prepare for a gunman, there's an example out there that might be really helpful, and that's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Just a month before the shooting that killed 17 people in that school, the teachers trained their students on new procedures they should follow in that exact situation. This came after a total overhaul of the school's emergency response planning. And the day of the shooting in a television interview, one of the teachers reflected on the effectiveness of that training. But I don't think we could have been more prepared than we were today. And I mean, they knew what to do and we knew what to do. And even still, even with that, we still have 17 casualties, 17 people that aren't going to return to their families. [CRYING] And to me, that's totally unacceptable. Did the training they received save lives that day or didn't it? It's actually an open question. One of our producers, Robyn Semien, went to Parkland to talk to the teachers about what was actually in the training and how well it did or did not prepare them for what they went through. The training they did at Stoneman Douglas High School was an attempt to be as prepared as possible for a wide range of emergencies-- bomb threats, hurricane warnings, a bank robber nearby, an active shooter. Douglas is a school with 11 buildings and over 3,000 students, so upgrading all their emergency procedures took months to plan and coordinate with faculty and district officers, police and fire departments. Melissa Falkowski teaches journalism at the high school. She's the teacher in that news clip you just heard. And the training was on her mind that night because she was on the committee that set it up. She's an enthusiastic teacher, a planner. She believes in a good hard think and being proactive. Once she and the other teachers had been trained, they ran their students through all the new drills. The whole school did this over two days in January. Teachers were told-- We want you to go back to every single class. We know it's going to be annoying. We know the kids are going to get tired of hearing it by the time you get to the eighth period class because they're going to have heard it from every teacher, but they wanted us to go stand in front of the kids and go through all the emergency procedures. This is what we do for a fire. For every period? For every-- this is what a code black is. This is what we do-- For two days? For two days, we went over the procedures with the kids. Why did you have to do it with each and every class? Because they wanted to make sure that the kids knew the procedures, that it was ingrained in their mind and that they knew. So if they were absent on a silver day, they would get it on a burgundy day. School colors, silver and burgundy. They're on an alternating schedule. Melissa says her kids took the drill seriously. On a scale of 1 to 10-- I would say we were totally prepared, like a 10. The school told every teacher to cover the tall, rectangular windows on their classroom doors with paper, and leave the paper up all year. Just in case if there were one, it would make it harder for an active shooter to see in. That's a lesson from previous shootings. Get out of sight. Before Columbine, very few schools did active shooter drills. Now, nearly 20 years later, most of them do. Ashley Kurth teaches culinary at Douglas. She's levelheaded, pragmatic, like a person who's spent years working in busy restaurant kitchens, not losing her cool, which she did. Ashley remembers being trained with the other teachers on the new procedures last year. It started with them listening to 911 audio from Sandy Hook. The audio is of, I believe, if I remember correctly, it's of the front office and one of the ladies that called in when the shooter is outside the door. And you can hear her, like-- her voice drops when she's like, he's right outside, he's right outside. And you can hear the dispatch officer telling her, you know, don't move and be quiet. Hide, lock down. It's probably the most common response in schools all across the country. But out of Sandy Hook, another lesson. Schools told teachers, keep your classrooms locked all day, every day. Again, Melissa. That's kind of what they told us as they told us about Sandy Hook, how he went to the first classroom, the door was locked. He went to the second classroom, the door was locked. He went to the third classroom, the door was unlocked. And he stepped into that classroom, and he took advantage of that opportunity. And that's what I told my kids when we were preparing. I told them, I know it's going to be really annoying that the door's always going to be locked and you're going to have to knock. But I told them what they had told us in the training. And I said, I will not be the third door. Like, I will not be that third door. The details of this are not exactly right. At Sandy Hook, it was the front door and bathrooms that were locked. The classrooms weren't. But the lesson is the same, keep your door locked at all times. Other details got hammered home, like what to do if a fire alarm goes off during a code red. The thinking on this is a lesson from the Jonesboro Middle School shooting in Arkansas 20 years ago. There were two shooters, both kids. One of them pulled a fire alarm to get the school to evacuate to a field, where from the woods, the boys shot at them. Five people died. In the training at Douglas, they addressed this exact thing. If a fire alarm and a code red happen to coincide, ignore the fire alarm, mind the code red. Ashley told her students-- The code red drill trumps all. If you hear a fire alarm go off, you stay put. The main question from students, both Melissa and Ashley told me, what if I'm in the bathroom and I hear gunshots? What do I do then? We told them to run. If you're out in the hallway and there's a code red, you have to find a place to hide yourself. So you either find a place to hide or you run, and you keep running, and you don't look back. You run. You run as far away as you can and as fast as you can away from the sound. Unlike Melissa, Ashley had been through this kind of training before at a school she taught at before Douglas. That school had a drill that really freaked Ashley out, with very loud, realistic sounds of gunfire. Ashley says there were blanks. The officer would walk around with blanks, and they would shoot. If the door was open, they'd go into the room and say, you're all dead in here. Surprise drills with blanks, while not the norm, appeal to some schools who say there are benefits to learning how you'll act under pressure. But surprise drills with blanks are controversial. For one thing, they're disturbing. There have even been lawsuits about them. In one, a teacher claims she got PTSD after a man in a black hoodie came into her class, pointed a gun to her face, fired, and said, you're dead. The teacher heard a pop. She smelled smoke. She really thought she'd been shot. She had no idea it was a drill. I talked to several school safety experts about these drills with blanks, these surprise drills that are hyperrealistic. None of them thought they're a good idea. One guy who trains teachers using video simulations told me that teachers who've been through one of these surprise drills perform worse on his simulations than teachers who have no training at all. They forget crucial steps, like calling the police, and commit more dangerous mistakes. Some find the blanks so upsetting they can't even finish the simulations. And there's a more basic problem with these surprise drills. If you know one is coming and you hear shots, how can you tell if it's a drill or the real thing? At Douglas, Ashley and Melissa both thought this was the kind of drill they'd have, unannounced with a fake shooter firing blanks. Ashley told her students that's what they should expect. Oh, yes, 100%. I told them, I said, it can happen at any point in time. So just be prepared that no matter which classroom you're in or where you're at, this could take place. They said it was going to sound real and feel real. I now have another faculty member who was at another high school in the district, and they did the active shooter training at her school, and they used blanks. It was simulated, and it felt real. And so that's why a lot of people were like, is this the drill? Is this not the drill? But when you look at the time that it occurred, they don't run a drill at 2:25 in the afternoon, 15 minutes before we dismiss, and all these buses have to run kids all over the district. Was that a question in your mind right away, like it's too late for a drill? Yes. Which brings us to the day of the shooting. At 2:20 in the afternoon on Valentine's Day, a former student with an AR-15 began down the hallway of the first floor of the building that everyone calls the freshmen building. In an adjacent building, Ashley's culinary class had just finished their shrimp scampi lab. They were plating and cleaning up. I'm standing next to my door, pulling my doorstop out. I hear two pops. It was not rapid fire. It was just like a pop, pop. I'm not startled by it, because, I mean, it's Valentine's Day. And you don't know if it's, like, a balloon popping or what. And then the fire alarm went off very quickly. The fire alarm. Dust set it off, dust from acoustical tiles hit by a round of gunshots. No one knew that at the time. Melissa, in a building farther out than Ashley's, didn't hear any pops, just a fire alarm. She went into action running that drill, the fire drill. The fire alarm goes off, and I counted the kids as they left the room. I was the last one to leave. I closed the door. It was already locked because I leave it locked. Out the door with my phone, my keys, and my folder. Those are like the three most important things-- my phone, my keys, and my folder. Her emergency folder. That's the training. I went out the doors. The security person who's posted outside my hallway, she's there. And I said, oh, what's going on? Because they have walkie talkies. I don't. The security personnel have walkie talkies. So she said, someone set off a firecracker in the 1200 building. And I said, OK. And I turned to two other teachers and I told them. And then as soon as I finished saying that to them, she yelled out, no, go back. It's a code red. Go back. It's a code red. And so we called to the kids, and I turned around and went back to my room, which was right there, opened up the door, and kids start streaming in. But was this a real code red? Melissa didn't know. She knew a fire alarm could go off during a code red, but the whole thing was confusing. Well, it was weird because we'd actually had an actual fire drill earlier in the day, like our planned, scheduled, monthly drill had occurred that morning. So it was weird that it was going off again because they don't do them in the last period of the day. And so I knew it was something, but I didn't think it was a serious something. I thought it was like-- the culinary was cooking with oil that day. So who knows. Because that will sometimes set off the fire drill. Of course will set it off if they burn something or whatever, so. Are there other things that set a fire drill? Oh, well, kids sometimes probably pull it. Yeah, sometimes kids will pull it. Sometimes there could be a faulty-- that's why our system gets inspected all the time. It just depends. But most-- I don't want to say mostly it's culinary, because Ashley Kurth will kill me, but a lot of times it's culinary. One time we went outside three times in one day because of the culinary class-- three times. Yeah. I mean, we have three smoke detectors in my room. So if you walk underneath it with a pot of boiling water, you will set the fire alarm off. That's kind of like the joke of our school. Teachers at Douglas knew that code red trumps a fire drill. They even had a plan for how to straighten that confusion out-- make an announcement, clarify the code red. On that day, an assistant principal, Mr. Porter, did that. Was there an announcement? There was, but a lot of people were already out of their room, so they didn't hear it. In culinary, Ashley heard the code red. She's not sure about it, but she's going through the motions. She goes to her door to pull it shut. And as she does-- Two boys come running around the corner, and they're-- just they look terrified, and they're screaming, it's a shooter, it's a shooter. She pulls them into her classroom, tells them to get in the storage closet with her students. But she's still thinking drill, right? It must be. It must be for practice. Even seconds later, when she hears-- Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. And to me, I'm like, OK, that's not what I experienced in the first drill just because of the rapid succession that was happening. At the time, I was like, maybe they're uppin' their game on that. It's unclear how many teachers thought like Ashley and Melissa did, that this was not a real code red, but the promised code red drill, and if this cost anyone their life. I spoke to the Broward County chief of staff in charge of organizing the district's safety upgrades where Douglas is. He said he didn't know any teachers at Douglas came out of that training expecting an unannounced drill with blanks. But eight of 14 teachers I spoke to said they were anticipating what Melissa and Ashley were, a surprise active shooter drill using blanks. After those two boys tore around the corner yelling, it's a shooter, it's a shooter, Ashley stood for another second in her doorway, still confused. Then she glanced to her left all the way down the hall to a set of open doors, the face of the freshmen building. I see like, hundreds of kids running out of the freshmen building looking terrified. When you see terrified kids running like that and they're not-- there is no rhyme or reason. It was chaos. And then you hear-- you can hear the gunshots. And it's just-- that is not what the drill was. She knew it was real. For like the next 90 seconds, as kids are running by me, I'm just screaming at them, keep running. Don't stop. She shouted back to her kids, stay put and get down. She's still in her doorway when she realized there's another group, a smaller group. Kids that are running towards the freshmen building. Oh, really? Yes. I was grabbing them and just pulling them into my room. They were following instructions. Remember, if you're not in a classroom, run. Keep running away from the sound. How is it that kids are running towards kids running the other way? Because the way that the gunshot sounds were ricocheting off the media center area, the quad, it sounded like there was shooting coming from that direction as well, which is why kids were running in the opposite direction. Wow. To give you an idea, I had 29 students that were present that day with myself. And by the time we were finished, there were 65 total bodies in my room. Wasn't the drill to shut the door and not let people in? Yes, it was. [LAUGHING] Yes, it was. Then what happened? There were terrified people running and I just-- I could not, in all consciousness, leave them be like that. Ashley wasn't the only teacher to stand in the doorway and say to hell with what she had been taught. You can choose to follow the protocol or follow your instinct. For some teachers, it wasn't a choice at all. In her classroom, Melissa got her attendance sheet out of her emergency folder. She counted 17 of her 25 students, and two from a different class she'd pulled in from the hallway. The group was small enough to fit in a supply closet, so Melissa told them to leave their backpacks out of sight, as she'd been taught, and move there. In the closet, it was hot and dark, except students' faces lit by their cell phones. Melissa had her phone out too. There's a group text between me and three other teachers in the English department because we're friends outside of school. And my friend Stacey, who is on the third floor of the freshman building, she texts-- she sent a text to us that says, there is a shooter. There's a shooter in my floor. And so my friend Sarah says, drill or actual? And she says, actual, my window is blown out. And then she told us she had been grazed by a bullet. She was grazed in her arm by a bullet. Oh, my god. And I didn't hear from her for a while. An hour went by. We heard noises in the hallway. We got really quiet. I had the flashlight part of my phone on so that we could kind of like illuminate the closet without having the light on. And when I heard the door open-- but it sounded like it was opened with a key. And so then I could hear movement in the room. And then somebody-- And that's comforting or not? I mean, not, because you don't know what the hell is happening. And the police-- and then the police officer said, this is the police. Is anyone in here? And then there was kind of like a pause. And then they're like, this is the police. Is anyone in here? And I was like, guys, I'm going to open the door because-- Someone says, this is the police, is anyone in here? And your first thought is, it really is the police, or still you're not sure? I'm still not sure. The first time they said it, I'm not sure what I should do. Am I supposed to open the door? They didn't cover that in training. Very slowly, the handle, and I opened it really slow because even if it is the police, they have weapons too, and they're looking for the shooter. So I know they have their weapons drawn. She really just had to guess about whether to trust this was a cop and not a group of shooters saying they were cops. And so I just very slowly opened, pulled on the handle, pushed it open and said, we're in here. We're in the closet. And then they started giving us instructions. Come out with your hands up. Melissa told me that Ashley was one of five people she knew who had broken protocol that day, by holding their doors open longer than they were supposed to. And they even did that on the third floor when they knew something was wrong. And my friend Stacey held her door open until she was like, locked eyes with the shooter, and yells to Scott Beigel to close his door, and grabs the handle with two hands and pulls it closed. So her door was open up to the moment he started, like, shooting bullets down the hallway. Stacey is the teacher whose arm was grazed. She survived. Scott Beigel in the room next to Stacey's did the same thing Stacey did, waited a little with the door open. He's one of the 17 who died that day, standing in his doorway. There's very little evidence about whether school shooting drills of any kind actually work. The data doesn't exist. School shootings, for how much we think and talk about them, are still statistically rare. But now, Melissa and Ashley have been in that rare situation, the one that's hard to study. And they both told me that having a playbook for what to do helped. Now I lock my door. Now I count the kids in my class. Now I move us all to a closet. But they also both had ideas coming out of this, about ways they could have been better prepared. Melissa, for instance, wanted trauma kits with gauze in every classroom and training on how to treat bullet wounds with it. Gauze actually has saved lives in mass shootings. I really wanted to find some expert to weigh in on Douglas, to tell me, did the teachers' training help? Did more kids survive because of it? What might have worked better? Cheryl Jonson researches what's effective in these drills at Xavier University and is a training instructor for ALICE, one of two big companies in the US that train schools how to respond to active shooters. ALICE has its own way of doing things, just like the other big outfit, Safe Havens International, has its own way of doing things. There's no one single way, no agreement on what's best. Cheryl Jonson didn't want to get into the specifics of what happened at Douglas, partly because it's still too soon. The investigation isn't done. But she did talk to me more generally about some of things I knew they'd done at Douglas, like papering over windows. Cheryl doesn't think it helps much. It's 2 o'clock on a Tuesday. The shooter knows you're in your classrooms. Also, code red, all the codes, their colors and meanings. The consultants I talked to said no to this too. I'm a big advocate for not using codes at all. How come? If I say "code red," it takes a split second for your brain to go, OK, code red means bad, means active shooter, means I have to do this versus if I say there is a gunman in the school. Keeping classroom doors locked, resounding yes. But the idea that this is all you do, that you lock the door and put every kid under a desk, all the consultants I talked to said that's outdated. Cheryl says people need many more options, many more ways to respond to a shooting. Sometimes you stay in your room. Sometimes you evacuate, like if you're far enough away from the shooter or in an open space with more exits, like a cafeteria or a gym. As a last resort, you fight. Basically, trust your ability to make a decision. I told her about Ashley Kurth, how she had stood in her doorway, grabbing up dozens of scared students. Remember, it was a break from her school's protocol. Cheryl's such an advocate for thinking on your feet. I wondered if she maybe believed Ashley did the right thing, pulling in kids. The problem with this-- unless you're there, you don't know what exactly happened. Now, did she probably save lives? Probably. And in that situation, did it work with the gunman being in a different building? Yes. One thing that was part of the training at Douglas was barricading your door, basically pushing lots of furniture up against your classroom door. But Melissa and Ashley didn't do it. Seems like very few teachers did. Though if Ashley had done it, if she'd followed the protocol, locked and barricaded her door right away, it would've been way harder to pull all those kids into her room from the hallway. She'd have to unbarricade herself first. Fewer kids would have made it in. Reporting on this for several months, I knew what I was looking for, something concrete to tell my daughter's school. My daughter's nine, fourth grade. Last year, she did a traditional lockdown at her school, squat and hide. But when I asked her what the drill was for, she said, I don't know exactly. They didn't say. It's not great. I keep thinking about this one shooting, the Red Lake Indian Reservation shooting, and how in that one, a classroom of students did a traditional lockdown, squat and hide, because they practiced it, and how an investigator on that case told me that drill did not help them at all. They'd have been better off without it. And the researcher who told me we should not do drills in school, period. It's too traumatizing for kids. We don't pretend to crash on an airplane. We just deal with the possibility of crashing by hearing some instructions. Where I come down on this-- I don't agree with no drills at all. I want my daughter to know everything. I want her to know about barricading, and I want her to know about running and fighting back. I want her to know about active shooters because it's a thing to reckon with. I want her to know there's nothing that can keep her completely safe because it's the truth. One more thing I'd say to my daughter's school, Cheryl's point about don't say codes. Call it like it is. I don't want someone to come over an intercom and tell my daughter code red. I want someone to say, listen up, there's a person with a gun in our school. Of course, I never want someone to say that at all. This year at Douglas, there are new gates, new fences, new cameras, gym bag searches, key card entry for staff, gauze-filled trauma kits in every room, 15 campus monitors compared to five last year, three school resource officers instead of one. And they already did a code red drill, only this time there was no confusion about when it would be. The school called parents, told all the students and teachers in advance. When it started, the principal came on the PA and told everyone, OK, here we go. And this is our code red. And try to breathe. Keep breathing. Only real surprise since school started, if you can call it that, the fire alarm. It's gone off seven times so far this year-- malfunctions, maintenance, a special ed kid pulled it twice. Two times it happened right before school got out. Melissa said the first time it happened a week in, she cursed. Students cried. One student, Julia, froze. Julia, Melissa said, you're OK. Am I? Julia said. What the school does not do during the fire alarms, evacuate, like they're supposed to. No one goes outside to the parking lot. No one jokes about culinary. No one moves. Not a single class evacuates. Melissa says it's too scary to be out there standing in the parking lot like that, vulnerable. What if there's a sniper? It's what they know now. Drills have blind spots. Robyn Semien is one of the producers of our show. Coming up, a couple returns to the worst thing that ever happened to them, over and over again. Why? In a minute, from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, bring you different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show, "Before the Next One." Now the mass shootings have become the new normal in our country. We have stories of people preparing for the next one in various ways. We've arrived at act two of our program, act two. Keep breathing. So there's a whole infrastructure that springs into action every time a mass shooting occurs. There's Red Cross, fire and police departments, SWAT teams, therapy dogs, the Billy Graham prayer truck. But now, there's also a group of people who show up in the immediate aftermath for more personal reasons. These are the parents of kids who've died in other mass shootings. And what they do at these shootings is so simple and kind of amazing to hear. Producer Miki Meek talked with two of these parents. It's a couple named Sandy and Lonnie Phillips. Their daughter, Jessi, died when a gunman opened fire in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado back in 2012. And since then, they have organized their lives to be able to reach out to other parents like themselves. Here's Miki. Sandy and Lonnie Phillips have traveled to eight mass shootings since Aurora. It started with Sandy Hook and Isla Vista, San Bernardino, Orlando, Las Vegas, Sutherland Springs, Parkland, and then Santa Fe, Texas, which is where I met up with them in May, right after a student walked into the high school and killed 10 people. They pulled up in front of the school in their truck. Even though they have done this a lot, Sandy told me the discomfort and awkwardness they feel about showing up like this in a community has never gone away. Ready for this? But in Santa Fe, they just launched themselves in anyway. They're each wearing a big button with a photo of their daughter, Jessi, smiling. A memorial had just gone up on a big, grassy lawn out front. There were 10 wood crosses, each with a red heart and a photo of the student or teacher who had been killed. People were starting to leave teddy bears, flowers, and balloons. What the Phillips do here is just talk to whoever wants to talk. They figure that'll lead them to families they might be useful to. And within seconds of getting out of their truck, they bump into a dazed teenage girl wearing shorts and a Santa Fe High School soccer T-shirt. Excuse me, how are you doing? I'm not OK. And here, the sound gets muffled because Sandy's tiny mic gets crushed when they hug. It's the main sound I remember from that day. We're just so sorry this has happened to you and your friends and your families and your community. Thank you so much. Another girl, a junior with light brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, walks up to them and stares at their buttons. We lost our daughter in a mass shooting six years ago. Is that her? Mm-hmm. She's pretty. Thank you. She is. Inside and out, she was lovely, just like your friends. Sandy is good at making people feel comfortable. She has a round, warm face, framed by a gray bob. She's maternal and keeps her comments caring and brief. Lonnie stands right next to Sandy with his arm around her. Sandy's the one who mostly talks to the kids, but he's always by her side, listening intently. His presence helps her do this. He looks out for her, sometimes running ahead to start the AC in their truck before she climbs in. Hi. My name's Tracy. Hi, Tracy. I hear you had a daughter-- I was surprised at how quickly people opened up to the Phillipses. Jessi. Jessi? Beautiful. The girl who said Jessi was pretty, she started telling them that she escaped the shooting by hiding behind a building with other students. Now, she just wanted to stay at home. But at home, all she could think about was the shooting. Scenes from that day kept replaying through her head. Sandy doesn't miss a beat here. Over at the victims' assistance, they have trauma therapists over there. I recommend strongly that any of you kids, really think about stopping by the victims' assistance. I will. Do some trauma therapy. OK, honey. Thank you so much. You're welcome. The Phillipses don't make money off this. They're volunteers, and they're not wealthy either. They're retirees living in a 245-square foot trailer, surviving off of modest savings and social security. Sandy is 68 and used to work in tourism for the city of San Antonio. And Lonnie is 74. He used to own some car lots. So have you guys met? Yes. One thing I quickly realized going to Santa Fe is that there are now so many of these mass shootings that they become grim reunions for all the people who show up to them as part of their jobs or volunteer work. Are you from Las Vegas? Sandy and Lonnie ran into an emergency responder from the Las Vegas shooting, and then bumped into this other guy who travels around, putting up all those white crosses you see at almost every mass shooting. He made one for their daughter, Jessi, in Aurora too. Standing on the patchy brown grass next to the crosses, Lonnie interrupted him to do this thing he and Sandy do a lot. Sign, 1:11. They suddenly call out the time. We have a 1:11, 11:11, and we're talking to you at 1:11. So it's a sign from our daughter. 11:11 is a thing. A lot of people see it as an auspicious sign or a time to make a wish. And it was a lyric in one of Jessi's favorite songs. If we get 11:11 twice a day, we know we really had a good day. They told me, I know it's silly, but I take it as a hello or a god wink. It helps. Hello. What's your name? Cindy Evans. Cindy, Cindy? My son is in high school here. Oh, I'm so sorry. As the day went on, people kept dropping by the memorial in front of the high school. Parents and students stood huddled together, staring at the crosses or writing messages on them. It was quiet and hot and still. There was a low generator hum from the gigantic Billy Graham ministry truck set up in the parking lot. And then all of a sudden, this young guy started wailing. Sandy made a beeline for him. It's too much, man. It's too dang much. I'm so angry. He immediately threw his arms around her. Why this thing keeps happening. Here, here, here, here. Put your arms around me. It's OK. It's OK. It's not OK. It's not OK. Let it go, let it go, let it go, let it go. Just cry your heart out. Cry your heart out and get your anger out on here, on here, on here. I'm so sorry. Oh, god, I'm so sorry. It makes me wish I could've done something. OK. It's OK, honey. You're doing it now. You OK? His name is Chad. He graduated last year. There were crosses set up for three people he knew well. One of them was a teacher named Ms. Perkins, who he really loved. He said she always tried to be strict with him but could never keep up that front for very long. Just breathe. Take a nice, deep breath. Take a nice, deep breath. OK, OK. Breathe with me. [EXHALING] Thank you. There you go. After a few minutes, he's caught his breath enough to talk. He tells Sandy he wants the shootings to stop. He wants to take action somehow. And then Chad suddenly switches gears and starts spilling out his feelings about guns and gun control. Nowadays with the violence that is going on in this world, taking guns away is not going to change that because it's just like drugs. They make drugs illegal and are still able to get drugs. He plans to get a concealed handgun license when he turns 21 later this year. The Phillipses are actually gun owners too. They have a 12-gauge shotgun. They believe in the Second Amendment. But they're also advocates for universal background checks and tight regulations on the types of guns, ammunition, and accessories, like bump stocks, a person can buy. However, Sandy says they don't push their political beliefs on survivors when they're doing outreach. Their primary goal is to support. But it's impossible for grieving parents to avoid the politics around guns. There's a whole movement of conspiracy theorists who believe that the US government stages mass shootings to make guns look bad. We were told by Alex Jones that our daughter never existed. Alex Jones, of course, is famous for saying that mass shootings are fake. He's now a defendant in several defamation lawsuits. When the Phillipses ran into him face-to-face at a gun control event, he accused them of inventing their entire story. And then two minutes later, he's saying, your daughter's still alive, and she's living in the Bahamas, and she's living the high life. And you're crisis actors, and you're paid by the Obama administration, and da da da. I'm listening to him, just going, you are so absolutely crazy. Lonnie got into it with Jones, stood right in front of him. It looked like a shoving match was about to start, until Sandy stepped in and broke it up. I reached out to Jones through one of his lawyers, who declined to comment. The conspiracy theorists, known as truthers or hoaxers, troll families of victims on social media immediately after any mass shooting. This can get dangerous. After the Phillipses' son gave interviews in Aurora, he got death threats and had to get the FBI involved. The man who was threatening him ended up in jail. So hoaxers are one of the things the Phillips has warned parents about. They tell families to brace themselves. After watching Lonnie and Sandy in Santa Fe, I wondered why in the world they were throwing themselves back into this setting, reliving their worst moment over and over again. The answer, of course, starts with their daughter's shooting. They got the news in the middle of the night when they were asleep at their home in Texas. This was back in 2012. And their daughter, Jessi, was in college at the time. She got to see the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises, with one of her friends at a multiplex in Aurora, Colorado. About a half hour after the movie started, Jessi's friend called Sandy from the theater. The minute I picked up the phone, there was screaming, just horrible screaming in the background, panic. And he said, there's been a shooting. And I was like, what is he talking about? Because Jessi had been at a mall in Toronto almost seven weeks before, where there was a mass shooting. This was a coincidence. Jessi had left a food court in a mall just three minutes before a man walked in and opened fire. So my first thought was, this isn't funny. But he's not a prankster. And I said, are you OK? And he said, I think I've been hit twice. And it was when he said that that I went, why isn't Jessi calling? And I knew something was really wrong. He said, I tried. And that's when I woke up because the scream was so loud. It was so horrific and something I never heard before. Lonnie found Sandy in the living room, sliding down a wall. He picked her up and took her to their couch, where he held her. Jessi was one of 12 people killed that night. Another 70 people were injured. And then five months later, there was another mass shooting, Sandy Hook, where 20 first graders and six educators died. Days later, the Brady Campaign to prevent gun violence contacted the Phillipses. They were reaching out to families from other mass shootings and asked if they'd be willing to travel to Newtown to talk to parents there. Sandy says they didn't even have to think about it. They immediately said yes, because they wished they'd had someone to talk to right after Jessi died. But when they arrived at a community center in Newtown, Sandy says they felt nervous and uncomfortable. Maybe they were intruding. They weren't sure if these parents would feel angry or grateful about their presence. It's like walking into a funeral of people that you don't know. And I remember saying to my husband, when we walked in the room and I saw their faces, I said, that's what we looked like five months ago. What does that look like? Pff. They're hanging on to each other. They've been crying, so their eyes are red. They're walking almost robot-like. Their bodies are moving, but they're not really there. I realized, that's what I looked like just five months ago. But it also made me realize, this is exactly what I want to be doing. She wanted to help these parents acclimate to their new reality. Looking back, Sandy says it was probably too soon for them to be out there trying to comfort other parents when they were still so raw. But the Phillipses said there was also a strong and instant sense of kinship that they couldn't turn away from. While they were there, they ran into parents from other mass shootings, too, parents from Virginia Tech and Tucson. These parents had lost kids suddenly and violently in places where they thought that they were safe. The Phillipses now had parents that they could lean on too. This was the moment that launched the Phillipses into what's become their life work. They could see the need. There are no experts on what to do when your child dies in a mass shooting. The only experts are the people it's happened to. So to help them find each other, Lonnie and Sandy have set up an organization called Survivors Empowered. They help families navigate their grief, plus a bunch of other practical things, everything from medical bills and charity scams that use kids' photos to raise money, to how to get your child's body home if you live out of state. However, this new mission was hard for their family and friends to comprehend. They want you to move on with your life. They want you to get back to normal. My own brother said to me-- said, you're not the same as you were. I said, let me explain something to you. You're right. I'm not the same person. I never will be. They see it as we're obsessed with this. Well, we are, in a sense. We are obsessed with it. The Phillipses and a few other parents told me, because it's so hard for people to understand that the grief never fades, old relationships start to fall away. People you were closest to disappear, which makes this informal support group even more crucial. What that support looks like over time and what it means to the parents who get it, I've got to see all that when Sandy and Lonnie got to know a couple from Florida who lost their son in the shooting at Parkland. Annika and Mitch Dworet. I met them at their house. Their son's name was Nick. He was the captain of Parkland swim team and was about to go to the University of Indianapolis on a swim scholarship. He was a six-foot tall blond kid who collected different flavors of Oreos and waited for supreme drops. Mitch said they'd just reached a point where they were becoming real friends. They talked about relationships, shared playlists, and watched Scarface together. The day of the shooting, Mitch and Annika got phone calls and texts all day from people who said they'd heard Nick was OK. One person said they heard he'd been moved to a staging area for all the students who'd witnessed the shooting. Another said a police officer was giving him a ride home. And then a nurse at a local hospital said she saw a patient who matched Nick's description. But by that evening, the Dworets' still hadn't heard directly from Nick, so they went to an area that law enforcement designated as a meeting area. They sat in a ballroom with other parents and waited. Every time the phone rings, you jump and think it's Nick calling from somebody else's phone. The media was calling you. Do you have any comments? Can we help you find your son? I was just like, yeah. And at 2 o'clock in the morning, we see this FBI car, and then they start pulling one family into a room at a time. And you hear screams from these rooms. Then their names were called out. Even walking into that room, you have this tiny little hope that they're going to say, we couldn't even find your son, and that hope of that he was somewhere else. And I keep on thinking, maybe he walked home. And then you do the math in your head, like, doesn't take that long to walk to our house. And then they told us the news that he was gone. He was shot and he was never brought to the hospital at all-- just like a nightmare, just like a nightmare. Nick's body was still at the school because he died instantly, and the building was still a crime scene. It'd be two days before they could see him. Annika wanted to look at his injuries. Mitch did not. Annika says, this is just how her brain works. She's an ER nurse. She needs details. The director at the funeral home, wanting to protect her, called the medical examiner's office to ask about Nick. And the person that answered the phone said, oh, let me take a look. What's the name again? It's Nicholas Dworet. He's the swimmer. Oh, the swimmer's perfect. What does that mean? I think it meant that there was nothing on his face or his head, like he was perfect. He'd been shot three times. A bullet in his chest destroyed his heart and lungs. Was it helpful for you to see him? Yes, it was helpful. Because your picture in your head, when you hear that somebody has been shot with an AR-15, just so gruesome, so horrible, horrible. And I think to see him and to see on his body where his injuries were made me get it, like he was so peaceful. And he was not in pain. And it made me have a better image of him than the one that was playing over in my mind. The Phillipses had traveled to Parkland a couple of days after the shooting. They didn't know the Dworets, but a mutual friend thought they should talk. And so this friend, with Mitch's permission, gave Sandy his phone number. Sandy called and got no answer, so she left a voicemail. I'm very sorry for your loss. I understand your loss. We lost our daughter. And you can call me any time. She let them know that she and Lonnie would be in Parkland for a few more days. Mitch called back quickly. He did want to meet with them in person, thought it would be helpful to talk to another family who'd been through a mass shooting. But he told Sandy the timing wasn't going to work. His house was packed with family in town for Nick's funeral. And I'm on the phone with him, and ironically, I'm standing right in front of his child's cross. And I said, you're not going to believe this. She said that she was standing right in front of Nick's memorial. I get chills right now. And we proceeded to have a talk. And he said, I don't think we're ready to meet with you. And I said, I totally understand. I'm just glad that we're getting to talk. But you do need to know that truthers are already online saying that this didn't happen. He said, what are truthers? And I said, ugh, OK. I thought like, wow, you kidding me? Crazy. Mitch asked her to stop by their house the following day. While Mitch was on board with the Phillipses, Annika had a different take on total strangers stopping by their house. I was more-- maybe more skeptical, like nervous of why are they here? What's their agenda? How can people come and meet with us if they don't want something from us? Their house was so crowded that the only private place to talk was their bedroom. Annika and Mitch sat on the bed, Lonnie and Sandy on chairs. Annika remembers feeling a little uncomfortable and thinking to herself-- Why am I sitting here? Why I'm not with the family? Who are these people? I don't know them. But I guess it might help. But it was very overwhelming. Like, I can't believe that I have to sit and have this conversation. What is this? This is my life now? Was there a point in the conversation where it started to turn for you? Yeah. I think when they said, don't join our organization now, don't fight now. Just take care of yourself and let yourself grieve. They asked questions about Nick. And before long, they were just talking. Lonnie remembers Mitch asking if they were religious and if they ever got signs from Jessi. He told Mitch that, like them, they weren't, but they took 11:11 as a hello from Jessi. The conversation went on for three hours. All our friends and family, as much as they did for us and how much love they showed, none of them could have any clue what we were feeling. And here were two people knowing exactly what we were feeling. They also made me feel a little more confident. I don't know if that's the right word. You're in a club we all don't want to be in. We didn't want to meet you. We wish we would have met under different circumstances, but you have people help you with this kind of grief. And a few days later, when the online conspiracies started appearing about Nick, that he didn't exist or that he was living in California, they remembered Sandy's warning. It was still upsetting, but less upsetting because they knew it was coming. They've helped in other ways, too. The Dworets took the Phillipses' advice and got in to trauma therapy right away, both individually and as a family. Their younger son, Alex, has been through a lot. Nick was his best friend. One of the last things Nick did on the day of the shooting was walk Alex to his English class. Alex was injured in the shooting and sat by a kid who died right in front of him. Annika says managing her grief, along with her son's, has been tough. There was so much attention on Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick. Everybody came for Nick. The flowers were for Nick. The letters were for Nick. I felt like I-- if this didn't happen to Nicholas and only this, I could have been there for Alex so much stronger and so much more. So I was afraid that he would get neglected in all that. I think sometimes children feel like, well, you must have loved that child more than you love me. Sandy's son was 25 when his sister died. Sandy tried to talk to him about it, which ended up pushing him farther away. When she talks to parents, she talks about her own mistakes, too. Eight months after they first met, Mitch is still in touch with Sandy. They text or call each other every couple weeks. Mitch relies on Sandy more than Annika, who unlike him, already has a built-in network of friends she talks to all the time. And we texted-- I think we texted yesterday. It was 11:11 actually. We texted yesterday. And I feel like she's still in it. She's still with us. It's someone who we can lean on and give us support. And I, in turn, want her to lean on me. Maybe seeing us get stronger, it gives her energy, too. He's right about that. Sandy spends almost every day at her tiny kitchen table in her trailer, fielding texts and phone calls from survivors, and messaging with people on social media who ask for help. The pain is always there at the end of the day. And when you go to bed at night, when you first wake up in the morning, it's there. But you have a sense of purpose and that helps. A little bit of a lifeline or something? Oh, it's a total lifeline, total-- if I didn't have this work, I don't think I'd be alive, I really don't. And I say that to Lonnie all the time. He goes, but don't you love me enough, kind of thing, to stay alive? I just don't think I would have had the ability to keep going. Mitch and Annika told me that when they're feeling stronger, they'd like to do for other families what the Phillipses have done for them. They said, god forbid another shooting happens. But if it does, we'll be out there with them. Miki Meek is one of the producers of our show. Our program was produced today by Lisa Pollak and Robyn Semien. The people who put the show together today includes Elna Baker, Zoe Chace, Sean Cole, Damien Graef, Michelle Harris, Chana Jaffe-Walt, Seth Lind, Anna Martin, [INAUDIBLE], Miki Meek, Catherine Raimondo, Nadia Reiman, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, and Diane Wu. Our senior producer is Brian Reed. Our managing editor is Susan Burton. We had some original scoring in today's program by Matt McKinley. Special thanks today to Andy and Barbara Parker, Heather and Seth Adams, Nicole Hockley from Sandy Hook Promise, Michael Dorn of Safe Havens International, Harvey Shapiro and James Fox at Northeastern University, Carrie Klein, Kate [INAUDIBLE], Joe Eaton, and Jim Irvine. Our website, thisamericanlife.org, where you can listen to our archive of over 600 episodes for absolutely free. We also have an app that lets you download our entire archive and lots of other features. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks as always to our programs co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, he was watching this documentary on rock and roll in the '60s, but it complained it was taking them forever, forever, to get to The Rolling Stones. Oh, yeah, it was because you got to get through the doors. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life. Never again, never again will I let you go. Never again, never again will I let you go. Never again. Never again.
|
From PRI, Public Radio International-- From PRI, Public Radio-- From PRI-- Public Radio International-- Public Radio-- Public-- Radio international. --radio international. One more time. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Well, a few weeks ago, we invited you to send us your stories of life on the internet, to send unusual or amusing email exchanges, interesting things you've found in Usenet groups or on web pages. Hundreds of people responded. I recorded interviews with some of them and invited the ones who live here in Chicago to Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art for a show. Today on our program, what happened when all the tapes and readings and people were gathered onstage in the museum's theater. And I came across this site that I thought was amazing. It was the most cutting-edge, thought-provoking site I'd ever seen. And so I was examining it, checking it out. And I realized that this guy was my age. And he worked at Microsoft. And that just blew me away, because I'm a student. I can barely afford coffee in the morning. And here, this guy worked at Microsoft. I ended up emailing him, just to tell him how much I liked his site and how amazing I thought it was. And he wrote back. And that went on for about four or five days. We just kept writing back and forth, really personal stuff, too, not just computer geek stuff. What is the brave new world of the internet? I would argue that one main difference between regular life and life on the net is that you can meet a stranger and get to know them intimately, much faster on the net than you can anywhere else. Well, for a week, Mary and this guy right each other several times a day, long, personal emails. Then they agreed to meet in person at a coffee shop on Valentine's Day. I was nervous before we met, because I was worried that he wouldn't find me as interesting in real life. So we met for coffee. We ended up spending the next 12 hours together. There wasn't really a turning point until a few days later. We had continued to see each other. And one night, we ended up going out to his office at Microsoft. It was about midnight, and nobody was there. And we were hanging out. And one thing led to another, and all of a sudden, we were making out. And? It was crazy. And you were glad, though, because you were liking him. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It wasn't a bad thing. But it was awkward, because it was my first time. I had never really done that with anybody before. It was your very first time actually having sex with somebody? Right. Well, no, it was my first time kissing anybody. Kissing anybody at all? Yeah. Because you hadn't had a high school boyfriend who you would do that with? No, no. I was a real big loner in high school. I didn't get out much. So it was your first time just making out with somebody, and it was at Microsoft. Yeah. And so it made it all the more surreal, I think. It was just weird for me to think that, here's this guy I met a little over a week ago by chance on the internet. And here we are at his office, doing this. And then after that, I barely heard from him. He told me that he didn't want a relationship right now, that he wanted to wait. He kept using the term, he wanted to make his first million before he had a relationship with somebody. His first million? Yes. For all the hype about the revolutionary changes the internet is going to bring us, what's striking about this particular story is how much of it could have happened without computers at all. All across America, teenage boys kiss young women on a date or two, then freak out and withdraw. All the computer adds is an air of mystery and intimacy and some exotic stage props for the drama. Otherwise, the lines and the moves are very, very old. After the fact, after the night at his office down there at Microsoft, I noticed, boy, he really was feeding me some lines there. Really? Yeah. Like what else? He actually was going to set me up with a copy of Office 97. He never did. The cad. At what point in the whole interaction did he promise you the Office 97, the free software? Actually, the first night we met. Did you just think, he's feeding me a lot of soup? No. I thought it was cool, because I'd heard some things about Office 97. I thought, wow, I'd like to have that. Now, I'm sure you can only look back on the incredible naivete. Some young man is prowling the streets of Seattle, walking through the U District, telling women-- "Got your free software." Well, the question we pose in this hour is, what is happening on the internet? And are there things happening on the net that never would have happened without it? Over the past few weeks, we've advertised in cities around the country, inviting radio listeners to send us samples of their own emails, samples of things they've found on the net that they thought were especially interesting or amusing. We have advertised here in Chicago, asking people to come here today, to the museum of contemporary art, with those samples. And over the next hour, we'll hear from people here and people around the country, an unscientific sampling of what's going on on the net. Stay with us. My co-host for today's show is David Hauptschein. Welcome, David. David is a playwright and novelist. His played "Trance" won the Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival and was produced for the Brighton Arts Festival. His play "The Persecution of Arnold Petch" premiered this year at Red Orchid Theater here in Chicago. And years ago, David started having these shows that he called "letter shows," where he invited people onstage to bring their mail to a theater and read it, just as kind of a big open mic. And we're adapting the format of those shows to the electronic media today. David, why don't you explain the rules of how one of these shows goes. OK. This is a show with many, many rules. That's why we have two hosts up here. Ira does half of them, and I do the other half. The first rule is the time rule. These are egg timers. These are mechanical devices that do not exist in cyberspace. They are crude. They're holding at approximately four minutes. And that's what everybody will have when they're presenting. Let's give a sample ding, so people know what to expect. Oh, yeah. Sample ding. Well, these different dings. But we're going to start with this one here. This is your basic [DING]. So when you hear that, you must stop mid-syllable and just exit the stage, unless one of us starts talking to you or something. So we're going to begin with Joe Fosco. In preparation for this show, we spent many hours surfing the net together and finding files that we thought were interesting. And Joe's going to come up and read some. Wait a minute, Joe, let me get this timer going, here. I've got to put these other ones in different places. This one I'm going to read now is a website of this guy who's building an aluminum ball, ball of aluminum foil. And he went into quite a bit of detail about this ball. He says, "I don't remember exactly how the ball began, but it is a sphere, composed entirely of aluminum foil of various varieties. It is mostly candy wrappers with a few bits of foil and other food items mixed in. So far, the best finish coat is York Peppermint Pattie wrappers. Other foil is fine, but a coat of Peppermint Pattie wrappers is necessary to keep it on. Gum wrappers also tend to have their quality. But they are far too difficult to peel, considering the minimal bulk they have. Gum wrappers do make a good finish coat on top of Peppermint Pattie wrappers for show. Some items, such as Hershey's Miniatures, which look like they might be good candidates for foil, aren't. The ball is more impressive in person than this page can hope to depict." There's a picture of the ball. Oh, there is, if you can see it. And then, he has this diary of its growth. It starts back in January. And he says, "We've gotten an electric postage scale in the office. It reads one more digit of precision, so we now have a weight of 3.9 ounces. I have done the math to compute the density of the ball. Curiously, it is much lower than that of solid aluminum. I have a hard time believing that the ball is less than half aluminum by mass, so I invite you to let me know if there are any errors in my computations. I expected that the density would be less than that of solid aluminum because of a small amount of air between layers of the foil, the adhesive coatings, inks, and small quantities of chocolate, grease, and other leftovers from the food items that the wrappers were originally used to package. I wouldn't have been too surprised by 5 or even 10% difference. But I find the actual results obtained a little difficult to believe." I have a question for you, Joe. Do you believe that fellow would be making that ball if it wasn't for the internet? I think so. See, I think that one of the discussions we've been having the past couple of weeks is, is the internet unique in any way? And I think that it is in the sense that people now know they have potentially millions of-- Readers. --readers. Whereas before, a guy would make a silver ball. He'd make a silver ball and put it in his desk, and no one would know about it. The other interesting thing is, on this, he has links to other sites that are making aluminum foil balls, and someone also who's making a rubber band ball. But I think, actually, the idea that he might get some notoriety out of his ball has spurred him on to further-- at least, maybe it would've been a mediocre ball. I think he's working it out to make the ultimate ball. All right. Thank you, Joe. Our next reader, Stacy. Oh, this is Stacy. Do I just start? You can just start. Tell us anything you think we need to know, or just start right in. I'm just going to set the timer for four minutes. OK. A former friend of mine from high school is currently living with her husband and son in England. And every three weeks or so, she sends out what I call a broadcast email. And she sends it to what has now become 56 email addresses. I'm going to read one of the broadcast emails. But before I do, I think I should make two notes. One is that she refers to her husband as "Bobo" or "Bo." And she refers to her son as "Boo" because she named him after Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird. That's a strange choice. Granted, that is his nickname. So she also rates her adventures with "paws," like bear paws. And for example, once, after visiting the Stratford on Avon, she said, "Three paws for Shakespeareville." So here's the first one that I ever received. "Hi. Baby Boo had his first day in London this weekend. We went to the British Museum, a quick stop to Harod's, and really quick stops to Big Ben and Westminster Abbey to take pictures. We bought a six-foot diameter beach towel that I lay out for Boo to play on. I told him that it's his boundary, and if he crawls off it, he'll get electrocuted from the wires. You know, like those dog training things. Well, he does a good job of keeping me on my feet now. Before, I had to watch him every second. Now, I have to watch him every millisecond." You know what this is like? It's like one of those Christmas letters. How often does she-- Exactly. But this comes-- I think I've received these over the last year. And these come fairly regularly, like once a month. And for you, as somebody who knows her, when you read these, do you feel a sense of, yes, I must know, or is it, oh, no? Well, actually, what's really interesting is that she and I have grown apart. And I didn't really quite know how to end the relationship. But these emails have actually given me some closure, because-- Because now, you never have to say anything. I don't say anything. It used to-- [DING] Keep going. Finish your thought. Oh, ok. And I never have to say anything. I never respond to them. But she continues to send them to me, and I have a lot of fun reading them. And before, I used to feel really guilty. Like I wouldn't respond to her letters or I wouldn't be a good friend. But now, I feel like, OK, well, we're just so different. I don't want to be a good friend. Right, right. Once a month, it comes to you in a vision. Right. And then I just read it. And actually-- I'm really horrible, and I can't believe I'm going to admit this-- but I actually send it out to two of my other friends, who also-- [LAUGHTER] I forward it to two other friends, who are sitting out there. And they read it and comment back to me. I can't believe I'm saying this. Well, she doesn't listen to the radio, does she? My friends and I sat and thought about it. And we thought, well, I don't think she listens to NPR. Thank you. Well, for our next one, I thought we'd do one that people contacted us when we advertised around the country for things going on on the net. And somebody notified us about this one web page. We were searching for people who were having experiences on the net they would never have otherwise. And this particular page was made by woman named Jenny Ringley, a senior at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. Like a lot of people, she created her own little home page on the World Wide Web. There's the regular part of my page, I guess you would say, with information about me, the music I like, things like that, like everybody has on their page. The one item that has become extremely popular, though, is the JenniCam. And it's just a camera that sits in my room and takes a picture every three minutes and uploads it. So every three minutes, you can find out what fascinating thing I'm doing in my room. The JenniCam is on seven days a week, 24 hours a day. And the number of people who want to see what fascinating thing is going on in a college girl's dorm room each day? People, I'm not sure. But as far as number of hits go, we get over 500,000 hits a day. A half million hits, every single day. And what do people see? Nothing, really. I write email, I sleep, I have friends over. You can watch my hedgehog when I'm not in the room. Things like that. Pretty much just regular college life, as far as I know. Our associate producer tuned in to your page, just to kind of see what was going on. And for about a half an hour, she witnessed you on the phone. Every three minutes, there'd be another picture of you in a different position, on the telephone. I talk on the phone a lot. In a way, it's hard to think of anything more banal than seeing a college student's dorm room. I would have to agree. I would absolutely agree. I don't do anything that's that interesting. I don't have company very often. I don't do anything more interesting, really, than talk on the phone, watch TV, and sleep. Let me ask you to talk about the nudity. Well, whenever I'm nude in my room, I'm nude on the JenniCam. But, you know, when I think about how often somebody is nude in the course of a day, it's really not very long. Well, maybe I'm not an average person. But I figure when I'm alone, who really cares? I sleep naked, and I get changed. And when I get out of the shower, I'm all wet. There's no hurry to put on clothes. Explain what the thrill is about being naked in front of a computer camera. Actually, with the camera there, I don't think about it much. So whenever I'm normally naked in my room, that's when I would be on the camera. It really doesn't affect me in much of a big way, I would say. But wait. You're saying you're being naked in front of potentially a half million people, and it means nothing to you? I think the camera would be a lot less interesting if I paid that much attention to it. It would be more of a staged show. And you can go see a staged show anywhere. I think the whole appeal of the camera is that it is whatever is normally going on in my room. And with it having been up for a year and a half now, I'm pretty accustomed to it being there. It doesn't affect me much, I would say. Have there been any moments over the last two years where you were sort of sorry that the camera was in the dorm room? Actually, it goes sort of the opposite way. Whenever I go home for breaks, for spring break or something like that, I'm always sad to be away from the camera. It's really a different feeling. Whenever I'm in the room and the camera is broken for some reason, my room feels totally different. It's like I'm completely alone. I usually prefer the camera be there. And I'm sad when it's off as opposed to wishing it weren't there. Because you don't feel alone when it's on. Right. Even though there's nobody actually there with me, even though I'm still alone, even if there's nobody watching the camera from the other end, it's just comforting to know that there is somebody metaphorically out there. In your view, why are so many people checking out the site each day? A lot of the people, it's totally hoping to find me getting out of the shower, getting dressed for bed, things like that. It's hoping to find the nudity. But I get lots of email from people who say that it's just nice, when they're alone in their office, to know that there's somebody else out there, somebody else that is doing nothing more interesting than what they're doing at the same time. It's like having a little virtual friend. Now, at some point in the two years, you've probably had somebody over in the dorm room to mess around. Sure. And? At that point, it goes on the other person's comfortability. I have no problem doing that. And that's the whole point of the camera, is that it's whatever I'm doing. When I went into this, I understood that in order to make it really work, it would have to be no matter what I was doing. But I can't really enforce that on people who are visiting me. So if the other person is uncomfortable, then the camera is turned off or it points to a different part of the room. And generally, has the other person been uncomfortable? Yes. Yes. Was there ever a time that you actually had somebody over where you actually kept the camera on the two of you? Yes, in fact. And the funny thing is that it never actually was broadcast, because the number of people suddenly reloading on the server ended up crashing the computer that posted the JenniCam at the time. Wow. So even though we were there and the camera was on, the server was crashed by the number of people wanting to see. What's your impression of who these people are? Oh, I don't know. Mostly men. It's almost exclusively men. I get about 700 emails a day. And of that number, maybe 10 are from women. You get 700 emails a day? Right. What are people saying to you? Well, a lot of those are entries to a contest on my web page called "Name That Curve," where, once a week, I put up a new picture of some closeup shot of a part of my body, and people guess what it is. So I would say 300 or so of that number are "Name That Curve" entries. The rest of them are people saying either, "I saw your web page. I like your page," or "Can I call you?" Or "Can you send me private, special pictures?" It really, really ranges. Jenny says she spends five to six hours a day answering email. And when I talked to her, on the one hand, there seemed to be something completely innocent in what she was doing, putting herself out there and not really caring who sees. And if you press her about her own exhibitionism, she'll tell you over and over, "Oh, no, no, no. It's not about exhibitionism. It's an experiment in letting people view a person's entire life without editing." The one thing that she's gotten on the internet that she could never have gotten so easily any other way is she's famous within a small circle. It's a small, particular kind of thing. I do get a fair number at this point of requests for autographed pictures and people wanting to buy my hair and my clothing, things like that. What? It's pretty scary. Well, one time, I was caught on camera actually trimming my bangs, because if you're going to do that, it's cheaper. And all of a sudden, I got 40 emails from people saying, "Are you going to do anything with that hair? Can I buy it from you?" And what did you make of that? Well, I don't know. It's kind of scary. I do meet people from time to time. Somebody'll say, "I'm passing through the area. Do you think I could meet you?" And you say? I actually have a pretty good knack for getting a good feeling about people right off the bat. So sometimes I say no. Sometimes I say yes. I've had dinner with, oh, probably a dozen people from the JenniCam. And has that been nice? I had one person who had a hard time taking no for an answer, even after I made it abundantly clear I wasn't interested. Really, that's kind of creepy. It is, kind of. I've had a fair number of improper passes at the end of the evening. But it stays at a pass. If there were a cable channel that would just have a camera on in your room, with no sound, 24 hours a day, do you think you'd get a half million viewers? I don't think so. I don't think I would, because if you have the TV, you have other things you can watch. I think it would still be popular. But I think at that point, it would be a lot less interesting, because people can do this from their offices. At work, if they have internet usage that's not monitored from work, you can just put it on and leave it on in the background while you're doing whatever else on your computer. Jenny Ringley has just graduated from college. She's moved to another city, where she's gotten a job designing web pages for a big national magazine. Coming up, other tales from the net. That's in a minute when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Most weeks in our program, we choose a theme, bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. But this week, we are trying something different. We're broadcasting from the Museum of Contemporary Art, here in Chicago, where we're taking what geologists might call a core sample of things happening on the internet, a very unscientific sample. How are people using the net? What is happening on the net that is not happening anywhere else or has not happened anywhere else? Over the last few weeks, we have advertised, asking people to come here today with things they have found on the net, including their own email exchanges. People from around the country are joining by telephone. My co-host today is playwright David Hauptschein, who's conducted these kinds of events in the past onstage here in Chicago. Welcome back, David. Thank you. Well, now, this example of people's lives changed by the internet. Eileen and Fred Kiefer live outside Columbus, Ohio. They are septuagenarians with seven kids and 13 grandkids. OK, well, when we first got our email going on our computer, I sent a message to our son in Milwaukee, whose address was K-I-E-F-F. Yeah. But it was my first time to use it, and I left one of the F's off. Her email was a chatty email about everything going on in the family, signed, "Love, Mom." So I got back a letter from someone whose address was K-I-E-F. And he said, "I enjoyed this letter, but I don't think you meant it for me." So then, I wrote back and said thanks, and explained how I'd make the mistake. And he wrote back. And we've been writing now for, it'll be two years this month. The man, the couple, actually, who got her email were Kiefer and Galen Mitchell in Portland, Oregon. He works at Tandy and does a radio show out there. And when he got Mrs. Kiefer's email in his account, the thing that actually got to him was that she signed it, "Love, Mom." His own mother had just died two months before. His father had been dead for years. Mrs. Kiefer said she never intended or wanted to have a long-term email friendship. It seems like we had nothing in common going in-- the age difference, and they had no children. And they're Mormons, and we're Catholics. It seemed like there wasn't a whole lot that we had to talk about. But we never have any trouble. At first, we were writing every day. We were both so excited about this. And now, we're usually in touch at least once a week. And we visited. And he's in Oregon. We're in Ohio. Visited in Portland last year and spent a couple days with him and had a wonderful time. And they're, like, 30 years younger than we are. So we've become Mom and Dad. And we've adopted them. They call them our illegally adopted children. And in December, when I had a serious operation, he was on the phone every night just like the rest of our kids. So he's really become one of our kids. So what in the world was it in those first emails they sent two years ago? What could people possibly say to create a bond like that? Oh, I don't remember. I just remember indicating that I was 70. So I didn't want anybody to think we were going to have this big romance or anything. Because, you know, you read these stories about people doing weird things with people on the internet. We never had that problem. We have seven children. And all of them have email except one. And the ones out of town we hear from a couple times a week. One of our daughters we hear from almost daily. Now, did you have as much contact with them before email? Oh, no. No, we would talk on the phone maybe once a month. And it was always, "How are you?" And you never really were part of their lives that way. Two of our children live in Boston. And while we were always close, we weren't communicating very often. So email has really brought you all closer together. Oh, it's wonderful. I keep trying to talk everybody I know into it if their children have access to a computer. It's changed our lives a lot. It's just changed our lives. I wouldn't think of not checking the computer first thing in the morning to see who's writing. Eileen Kiefer in Dublin, Ohio. Another reader? You have one there? Sure, plenty. OK, let's go with another reader. Our next reader participant, Steve Sedin. Steve Sedin. I came across a Usenet group called alt.amazonwomen.admirers. And this is a short dialogue between two guys. Guy one: "I was just talking with someone. And we started thinking about a couple of girls we know that used to give us piggyback rides. Here's an interesting thought. One girl was, like, 5'2", weighed 110 pounds. She wasn't a great athlete and didn't have a lot of muscle, and she was able to give me piggyback rides with ease, while I weigh close to 200 pounds. So with that thought in mind, I'm curious to know, assuming you believe that piggyback rides are the easiest way to lift a person, which they are, how much weight would you guess some fitness and body building women could lift piggyback? I mean, if they can lift 200-pound guys over their shoulders and press them overhead, just imagine how much they could lift piggyback. Any thoughts?" So the response to that is, "Yeah, here's a thought. Where are the lift-a-200-pound-man-overhead-and-press-him women? Boy, would I ever like to see that. I mean, who cares about piggyback rides? A piggyback ride isn't a lift at all. The man just climbs on. And all the weight is supported by the bones of the legs, because the legs are already locked out. Not impressive, not sexy. But to see a woman militarily press a man, now, that's worth paying to see. My greatest thrill would be to see a tall, muscular woman pick up a tiny man under his armpits and dangle him in midair. Impossible, you say? Maybe. But consider this. In 1988, the women's weightlifting championships were dominated by young, teenage girls. I saw a 16-year-old Chinese girl snatch 165 pounds as though it were a feather. She cleaned and jerked 231 pounds without so much as making a face. She weighed 132 pounds. Try this, guys. Go to your garage and load up that old barbell with, say, 270 pounds. Try to dead-lift it. See how heavy it feels. Now, picture a cute, 17-year-old 99-pound pound Chinese girl take that same barbell and lift it all the way overhead in about five seconds." So the response to that is, "Yes, I agree. Now we're getting close to the real thing." Thank you. Our next reader, Dolores. Dolores. OK, this is a romance story. I met this guy last fall. And he worked most of the week in another part of the country. He would fly out on Sunday night and come back on Thursday night. So our romance was conducted through the net. And because he was away so much, we talked or emailed back and forth every day. And I don't know if other people have had this experience, but if you start going out with someone and you're writing them over the net, it's very exciting. You come home, and you turn on the computer, and it's one of the first things that you think about. And it really adds this element that, I don't know, I've never had before. So anyway, we went out for about three or four months. And we fell in love. But eventually, we started to have problems. Our daily correspondence became more and more strained. And finally, I wrote him this email that I'm going to read to you. "Dear Sam, I feel like I'm making you feel worse, and I can't bear that. I am so sorry. I think that you should have peace. And I pray for you. I pray for that for you every day. I think you should take some time and call me when you do feel more peace." So this was very heartfelt. And I did think that he would write me back. And after about two and a half weeks, he hadn't written me. And this was a dramatic departure for us. And so when we finally did talk, it was like Vietnam. There was about 36 hours of a intense meltdown. And I fired out five hysterical emails, which I won't read to you. And we broke up. And while we were breaking up, my computer crashed. And I lost all of my email. And so I lost all of this correspondence from him, which was 100 pages, easily. And I wrote him. And I told them about this. And he sent me two caches of folders, his mail and my mail. Well, at that time, I didn't want to read through all of this. It was a little too painful. I just wanted it. I wanted to have it. So when I prepared for this show tonight, I decided to go back and read through it. And I discovered something, which was that he did email me back. I just never got it. And part of the hell-- I was in hell for those two or three weeks before we talked. So this is what he emailed me that I discovered. It said, "Dolores, you are so good a person. I'm very proud to know you and have you in my life. I will take some time and get grounded, and then call you. Thanks for all your love and understanding." Well, I was flabbergasted. It took me several days to even wrap my mind around the fact that he had sent this. And it completely altered my experience of that time and of him. And I still can't quite assimilate it, really. Do you think it's possible that he faked it when he sent you the batch of emails back? Now, this is the question that every man I tell this story to asks me. It didn't occur to me. And he would have had to have gone through quite a bit of trouble to do it, because it is encoded with all of the information. I don't know. What do you think? I yield to your expertise here. Yeah. Yeah. OK, Thank you. Our next reader, Sarah, is somebody who has a story for us. This involves a guy who picked out my photo in what we call the "MeetBook" for incoming freshmen. It has every freshman and a little bio data. And he liked me. But none of our friends knew each other, so he couldn't meet me. And what he ended up doing was obsessing about my photo and deciding, well, I can't just obsess about her photo. I'd like to know more about her as a person. So he sent out this broadcast message to everybody in the dorm I lived in that was on the net at the time, asking what I was like. So all these strangers responded. And they just made stuff up. But it was very positive, because what happened was, he ended up writing me a letter on paper, using quotes about all the things that people had said about me, that I was cheerful and intelligent and had a good disposition. He decided I was a rare commodity. I should call him. And I was kind of cornered into calling him by my friends. But this is a story that went nowhere, because he was truly not someone I wanted to end up going out with. Do you think that the way that he decided to approach you was a tip-off that that might have been? Yeah, I have to admit that-- the first thing he said when I called him up-- because he was really nervous, and I really didn't care-- he said, "OK, we can get together. But not Friday night, because Friday night's the ping-pong tournament." Yeah, there's a sign right there. Well, thank you for that, the rigmarole. Our next presenter, our next reader, Noel. My name is Noel, and I'm diastematic. Anybody here know what that means? It means that I have a gap between my front two teeth. For those of you unfamiliar with this whole website gap-tooth thing, I built a website for gap-tooth people. So, yeah, idiotic. You want it, you've got it. But I'm in good company. 10% of America, including David Letterman, Lauren Hutton, Noam Chomsky, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Itzhak Perlman, Chaucer's Wife of Bath, Vince Lombardi, blah, blah, blah, all with two cleavage. I must admit, for better or for worse, yes, I'm the one who built this website. But the emphasis is humor. In early November last year-- Wait, humor verses what? Like attacks at people without gaps in their teeth? What would be other thing that you would do-- you would proselytize, try bring people over, encourage people to create gaps in their teeth? Absolutely. Are you working with any orthodontists? This will hit on a lot of those themes. In the early November last year, I was watching a Bears-Packers game. And during the pregame ceremonies, the USPS, the post office, unveiled art for a new stamp, due this summer, featuring the late great Vince Lombardi, who was one of the greatest gappers ever to live. He was on a stamp, riding high atop the team in the throes of victory, smiling huge. But something was missing, Coach Lombardi's trademark gap-toothed grin. He had near-perfect pearly whites, and the gap was gone. The next day, as a joke, I added a page to the gap-tooth website, protesting the post office's depiction of Lombardi as a cosmetically-altered hero. Who would Don King be if he were bald? Or Gorbachev without the Kool-Aid stain? Or Jimmy Durante without that nose? So knowing that this was one small effort to have a little fun while making a point, knowing that this was the Web, the oddball media that gets no real merit for its content, I expected little to no attention. But then came Yahoo, which featured it as a weekly pick. The Washington Post had me on the phone and ran a half-page story with my before and after pics. Chicago's Channel 7 came to my apartment and ran a story on its 6 o'clock news just for the Super Bowl. Getting out of hand? Yeah, timeout. If you're thinking this pathetic web-based protest should never have received any attention, I'm in agreement with you. What was ironic about this story is that they painted me as a freak-- imagine that-- a superfan, ready to strap myself with bombs and blow up my teeth and Washington, D.C., if they didn't change the art. And it was all pretty much lighthearted. So Bob, the artist of the postage stamp, latched back to the AP. And I thought, this is just fun. I mean, I'm just running a website for gap-toothed people. You can't take me that seriously. So I called up Bob, and we talked about the stamp. We discussed angles and art representation. He was a really nice guy. I was thinking about dropping the protest already when he told me his three-year-old daughter was gap-toothed. And that was it. Protest over. But what still gets me today is that the Web has the power to make insignificant things seem real, that email can really serve as a powerful form of protest, which it did in this case, and that people, including myself, really do have too much time on their hands. Well, as we looked for those stories from the net for this show, especially stories of things happened on that net might not happen anywhere else, we found Earl Jackson. He's an associate professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California at Santa Cruz. And he spends a lot of time on the net. He writes about the net, has seven websites himself. And he tells the story, which begins on America Online. I was on AOL and other services in San Francisco a lot. And there are these chat rooms where gay men can meet and talk. And in San Francisco, it's fairly wild. There's a 24-hour bulletin board that I was observing for this study was doing, where you could almost be guaranteed that, if you lived in San Francisco and you had a modem, you could have sex any time of the day or night. This was a very goal-directed bulletin board. Right, people would meet, go have sex. Right. And you would know exactly what they wanted to do. And you'd probably have nude pictures of them before that. What I also thought was really interesting-- and this was more true of AOL-- that there was a new metaphysics of sexuality, because people would talk about cybersex or real sex. And it occurred to me, after I listened to enough, by real sex, they meant phone sex. Oh, really? Yeah, so it became, instead of a two-tier system, it's a three-tier system. And you have real sex, ultra-real sex, and cybersex. Wait, ultra-real sex, you said? That would mean what I call a slow-time interface, which means actual physical contact. God, do people still do that? Yes. Earl Jackson says that he meets more and more people who've hooked up what amounts to video cameras on their computers. With a technology called CU-SeeMe, they can look at the person they're interacting with over the net. I know people that actually leave physical dates to go home and have sex over the net with the quick cam. Come-- It's true. There's an entire culture that's entirely video transmission sexuality now. Talk a little more about that. You actually know somebody who actually left an actual date-- Yeah, me, in fact. Yes. Oh, they left you? Yeah, they left me. But he said that that is what he does lately. And I understood that, because a lot of men are afraid of sexual contact because of AIDS. So the perfect thing to eroticize is distance. And so he says to you-- at what point in the evening did he say, "I'm going to go home now?" Pretty soon. He said that he really needed to do the CU-SeeMe stuff. Back in December of 1993, Earl Jackson met a guy over the net in one of these gay chat rooms. The guy's name was Ken, lived nearby. But he had a boyfriend. So the two never met in person. But almost every day for a year, they got online together and created these elaborate fantasies together online, using that kind of software where you can see what the other person types as they type it, and they can see what you type as you type it. We would have a fantasy about, what if he came to my classroom and then I took him back into my office? But it was really sort of a game. But these narratives became so intense that we would set times of the day, or he would just check in. And he said, "Do you have time for a story now?" And he would start it. And then I'd continue it. And we have all of these stories. But as we kept doing this, then a little part of his life would come in. And then there would be a story that we take us somewhere else. And then I'd know a little bit more. And soon, the sex part was really an excuse to tell the other stories. And sometimes, he would be telling this story about his childhood in Missouri. And then it would remind him of a social fantasy. And then he'd put me in it. And you couldn't plan to do these things. We became sort of like jazz pianists or something. We'd have these riffs together. Then one day, he was asking me if I had time to talk to him. And I was just leaving. But I could tell that even the way he was typing was different. You could tell even the way he was typing was different? Yes. Yes. What do you mean? People have different habits in their speed or the way he would respond or if he didn't put a smiley face after a certain number words. I just knew there was something really wrong with the way he asked me if I had time. And he said, "Bad news, son." And I think I knew instantly what that was. He had tested positive. And he didn't know how to break it to me. And our messages to each other then became a lot more about that and about what happened to him as a child and other things that were fairly tragic and amazing that he was telling anybody, because he was really one of the strong, silent types. Then-- this is when I should have gotten more nervous-- he started saying that he didn't want any of his porn tapes anymore, because he associated porn with him being positive. So he wanted to mail them to me. And he mailed me a box of them. I didn't really want them, but he wanted to do this for me. So there was suddenly a box of porn tapes in my house. And then the following week, there was one, too. And just before I got back to San Francisco, I got a message from him, hoping that I was well and hoping I got the tapes. And he said that I'd get another message very soon. Now, he was writing to me almost entirely in capital letters, which scared me. And I didn't know why. But here's the last one. "I have it all boxed up now. I will give it to my friend. He will mail it for me like he did before. And it will arrive either Thursday or Friday via two-day express. I have a letter coming to you to help explain a few things. Thank you for being a friend when I really needed it. Kenneth." And then, three days, nothing. And then there's just one line. "A package should arrive today, 1/19/95. Email me. Cruiser3. Bye. Love, Ken. And then on the 25th, there was one that looked like it was from Ken. It was his screen name. But then, when I opened it up, it said, "This is a hard note for me to write. Ken left a note to ask me to let you know. Ken took his own life on Friday, January 20. He was cremated yesterday, and his ashes will be dropped into the ocean off San Francisco today. Ken's mental attitude over the last four to six weeks is very hard to describe. He was a basket case, to say the least. I will keep his account open for the next day if you have any questions or response, and I will try to answer them for you. Ken's friend, Dave." Did he send you a final note in the last package he sent you? Yeah. It was the only time I ever saw his handwriting. And that said similar things to this. it was just, "Thank you for being a friend when I needed it. And I will always love you." It must have been so strange to see a physical manifestation of him after the email. It was. And what was really odd was that, when he first sent the first box of tapes, he told me which tape had a scene where the two people are the ones that he imagined us to be. Now, that doesn't mean that he looked like either one of them. But he knew the fantasy scenario that would resonate with us. So even at that point, our fantasies were constantly mediated by some other technology. And-- which is probably hard for you to imagine-- but none of this cold. There was something so tender about this that I was very moved by this experience. After he died, did you go through a period of mourning for him? Yes, I did. Yes. What a strange thing to be mourning somebody who you never actually saw. Yeah, although it's real. When people say, oh, the computers are making us all isolated and it's such a cold world, I've had emotional experiences and long-term friendships that would have never been possible otherwise. It's funny, because it's almost like the whole thing, it could be a con, an elaborate con. But he would be such a creep that-- I thought of that, actually, because it seemed almost like a melodrama from a long time ago. It was really tawdry. And if I wrote a short story, I wouldn't end it this way, because it was too hokey. After he died, you know how after somebody you were close to is gone, how when you go back to the places where you used to go with them, you'll think of them inevitably and miss them. After he was gone, when you would get back on your computer, would you sense his loss? Yes. Yeah, he really felt gone. He really felt gone. When I saw somebody else using his screen name, to get a stranger with his screen name, that was really, really chilling. Earl Jackson in Santa Cruz. He actually was going to set me up with a copy of Office 97. I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of this American life. PRI, Public Radio International.
|
Parents, here is all the evidence you need that TV is bad for kids, especially public TV. When Sean was 14, he loved watching those British TV shows they're always running on PBS-- Masterpiece Theater, Doctor Who. And then there was this show that I would stay up really late and watch, and tape, and watch over and over again the tapes, called Dempsey and Makepeace, which was about an American detective who went to London because he had been, like, setup at home. And he was teamed up with a woman who was this aristocrat named Lady Harriet Makepeace. And I was really on her side. I thought, you know, she's got it going on. You looked down on the American. Oh, yeah. What Sean liked about Lady Harriet Makepeace, and all the other Brits on TV, was their aloofness, how they seemed above it all, how they looked down on Americans. Which Sean did also, convinced there must be something wrong with the nation that produced jocks and bullies, who harassed him in school. And sometimes, joking around with his friends, he would talk with a British accent. And then it was just something that spiraled out of control. I know that eventually, I was just using an English accent literally from waking to sleeping, morning, noon, and night. Sean spoke with a British accent from the time he was 14 until he was 16. And at some point, his mom thought, you know, maybe I need to do something about this, and took him to see a psychiatrist. I don't know the different schools of psychology, but he was really very confrontative. And he's like, well, you've got to stop doing this, he said, because you're not British. And my mom just sort of sat over next to me, and she sort of went, yeah, to agree with him, and to sort of help him in showing me this. Sean was furious. He had an impulse to lecture the guy on how, in fact, he was British. And the only problem with that was that A, he knew very well that he was not. And B, his mom was sitting right there. She was sure to contradict him. He didn't know what to do. His situation seemed impossible. Because that's what I was thinking. Like there has to be a way that I can be British still. There must be a way that this is true somehow. Yeah, exactly. Well, today on our radio program, stories of people who tell a lie, and they get to the point where they believe the lie more than anybody else does. It feels like it must be true. Happens all the time. And can I say, we are not even going to get into what happens with political figures in this show, kidding themselves about the facts of things. Today we have stories of civilians, people like you and me, basically pulling hoaxes on ourselves. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Act One of our program today, The Sun Never Sets-- On The Moosewood Restaurant, in which two young men, both from small towns, try on new identities-- false identities-- and what they have to do to keep the lies going. Act Two, Conning the Con Men. Nancy Updike reports on a federal sting operation, and how it caught con men by setting up a con of its own. Act Three, Oedipus Hex. A little kid tries to get rid of his own father with a very, very unlikely plan. Stay with us. Act One, The Sun Never Sets-- On the Moosewood Restaurant. So this is the story of two young people who, for a period in their lives, in their search to figure out who they were, pretended to be people who they were not. We're going to hear from Sean Cole and from Joel Lovell. We're going to start with Sean. Today's show is a rerun. This was recorded years ago. These days, Sean is a producer here at our show. Sean grew up in a small town in Massachusetts, a town that was approximately 3,350 miles from London. It was second nature. It was first nature. To this day, I have trouble saying, oh, I faked an accent for two years. I mean, I had an accent for two years. I like-- Sean, could I just get to take a deep breath, and describe for me what you had for lunch today, or perhaps for breakfast this morning, in as close to the accent that you can-- As close as I can? --muster? Yeah. OK. I'm going to take a sip of water here. Well, Ira, I had a salad. I had it at the Boston House of Pancakes-- or Pizza, rather. What was the beverage? It was a Snapple, just lemon flavored. I don't really like the peach. Joel Lovell's story began when he left the working class town where he grew up in upstate New York. His parents owned a liquor store in a small town. He was the first member of his family to go to college. And it was an especially big deal, because he got into an Ivy League school, Cornell. It was one of those first days of college. You know, when you spend a lot of time, everybody kind of moves in hordes, and you spend a lot of time in each other's dorm rooms. And there were about oh, I don't know, 10 or 11 of us in this one guy's room. And we were just like sitting around, eating pizza, and talking, and people were talking about where they were from, and what their parents did, and stuff like that. And there was one guy whose dad was a doctor for the Knicks. There was another guy whose father was an elected representative from New York State. And then this other guy, whose father was on the World Court-- literally was a member of the World Court. Oh, my. And so it suddenly seemed like this incredibly sort of impressive group to me, and they seemed like just sort of worldly in ways that was just beyond my wildest imagination, and worldly beyond what I am now, frankly. And I remember sort of sitting there at the time thinking, oh, my god. I'm so out of my league here. And then completely unplanned, I suddenly said-- as a slice of pizza was passed to me, this pizza with sausage on top of it, I said, you know, I can't take that because my parents are vegetarians. And everybody in the room sort of turned and looked at me because it wasn't even as if I said, well, I'm a vegetarian. But I said, you know, my parents are vegetarians. And there's a sort of puzzled look on everybody in the room. And I said, well, and I am, too. I've never eaten meat. And I'm not entirely-- well, I mean, I have some ideas now about why I said that. But at the time, I had no idea what I was saying. It was like, suddenly I'd become possessed, and I had to think of something to say about myself that seemed interesting. And vegetarianism was the thing that I chose. Now, do you tell people that you were actually from England? No, no, never that I was from Britain. But in a way, that I was British. You know, there was a real distinction there for me. Like I'd taken it on, like I was culturally British now. Well, I think what it was is I think I did some sort of calculus that took like a nanosecond in my head. And I thought, you know, I can't actually lie about what my parents do. But I think the connections that I was making were this, that somehow because I was from this town in the sticks, if my folks were vegetarians, then the whole history that that suggested was that they were sort of these kind of leftist, academic radicals who had sort of dropped out of society, and gone back to the land. And I was living in this bumpkin town in upstate New York. And my folks were living some sort of life that was driven by their political philosophy, rather than, I was just a guy who grew up in upstate New York. You know, I did the old kid thing of, like, wishing that my real British parents would come and tell me I was adopted, and take me back to London. So I'm sitting there in the room, and all these guys are looking at me. And they're like, dude. What do you eat? And suddenly I realized in that moment how little I knew about vegetarianism. And I kind of tried to be sort of vague about it. You know, we eat salads, and lentils. I remember sort of saying lentils a lot. And there was a gap, certainly, in my education, because I would be using words that Americans just don't use. You know, instead of saying drugstore, I would say chemist. Or I would try my best to remember to say bonnet instead of hood, or boot instead of trunk, but I often couldn't. On the meal plan, I ended up eating a lot of big piles of iceberg lettuce and chickpeas. And during that time, would you find yourself sneaking to go to get meat somewhere? Yeah, definitely. At first, I would go really far from campus in order to have like a BLT. There's this diner downtown in Ithaca. It felt incredibly illicit. I'd be sitting there, and I'd have some reading material or something with me. And I'd be the lonely guy in my booth. And I would order the BLT, and I would sort of watch it coming from across the room with its toothpick in the top of it, and a side of French fries with the meat gravy on top. And when it landed on the table, it would just seem like this incredibly sort of wonderful moment, you know, when you're doing something just totally unlike what anybody would expect of you. I was a nobody. I mean, I was living in an extremely small kind of rural town in the middle of nowhere. It was, I guess, in a way, this was my way of traveling, in a way, and of being somebody, and sort of achieving an identity, which I guess I didn't feel like I had. I didn't feel like I-- I'm just sort of really realizing this now. But I guess I didn't feel as though I had anything that made me up. I mean, what I realized fairly quickly is that if this is going to be believable, I actually have to-- well, I have to believe in it. But I also began to not only believe, but really sort of take on as my persona, all of the stuff that I imagined was associated with vegetarianism. Like what? Well, certain political convictions, and ways of dress. I wore ripped jeans and I wore combat boots, but I also wore like a kind of stage jacket that you would see in a community theater production of Hamlet. Yeah. You know, I bought sandals. I very specifically remember going down to this thrift store in downtown Ithaca and buying a pair of fatigue shorts, which just seemed like, you know, I might as well have been Che Guevara at that point. I mean, as far as I was concerned, yeah, I was a dangerous leftist. Did you, at any point during this, find yourself in the following argument, where you would say, I've never had a hamburger. And somebody would insist, oh, you must've had meat at some point. And then you had to argue your side? Yeah, definitely. It wasn't pretty. And of course, you know, I had grown up-- just to put this in context for a second, if you don't mind. Mhm. Not only had I had hundreds of hamburgers and gone to the McDonald's drive-through hundreds of times, but the counterpoint situation that I always think about when I remember this time is that when I was a senior in high school, my family, for sort of time-saving reasons, decided that a great thing to do would be to go to Arby's Roast Beef. I don't know if you have those out in Chicago. I think they're countrywide. So my dad and I would go to Arby's on, say, like a Thursday afternoon or something, after I got out of school. And we would go in there and we would buy 48 Arby's roast beef sandwiches. And they would put them in this cardboard box, and we would bring home this giant box full of those tinfoil-covered Arby's roast beef sandwiches. And we would stuff them in our freezer. We would freeze the Arby's roast beef sandwiches, and then we would have them there. Buns and all? Buns and all, yeah. And so we would have them there as ready-made snacks whenever we might want one. I mean, that's the kind of meat-eating that my family was engaged in. The other thing was that I had these run-ins with doubting my British identity, like-- Oh, really? Yeah, as though it were slipping away. And I would really go nuts at that point. And there was one time it happened at home. I was at home and I was like, oh, my god, I have to do something. I have to affirm my devotion. So I think I-- well, I know I opened up the window. And I psyched myself to do it. I was like, oh, man. If I don't do this, it won't come back. And I opened up the window. And then I screamed-- this is the middle of the night, or 10:00 at night. I screamed, I love England, and of course in a British accent, outside the window. And then you felt better? You felt like you had reasserted yourself? I felt like I had done something, at least. For England. Yeah. I had fortified my Britishness. I would find myself in these conversations where people were saying, you know, you've never had a McDonald's hamburger? What kind of 18-year-old American has never had a hamburger from McDonald's? Quite a legitimate question, I would add. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I would say, yeah, I've just never had one. They scare me. And I would sort of like talk about the ways-- I would make up these stories about how I'd come close a couple of times, how a friend of mine in high school had bought me a Big Mac, and there I was, sitting on the front seat of his car, and I almost ate it, and then couldn't bring myself to do it. So yeah, there was all this sort of drama that I lied about. My mom and dad came down to visit for parent's weekend. And they were really proud that I was going there, and really excited to come down. And they came down to visit. And really proud because you were the first generation to go to college? Right. You made it into this Ivy League school. It was a big, big deal. Right, exactly. Exactly. And so they drove down from Camillus, which is about between an hour and an hour and a half. They came down. And in that week leading up to parent's weekend, everybody's talking about their parents coming, and everybody's making reservations at restaurants, where to eat on Saturday night. And everybody's sort of planning on taking their parents to the football game on Saturday during the day. And it suddenly occurred to me-- this real sort of panic set in that, you know, my parents would come down, and we would go to a football game, and my dad would buy a hot dog. And somebody across the field would see Mr. Lovell eating a hot dog, and then, of course, the cat would be out of the bag. And so I thought, you know, I've got to make a reservation at a restaurant, at someplace, either A, where nobody else's parents will be, or at a vegetarian restaurant. And so what I did was make a reservation at the Moosewood Restaurant, which is in Ithaca. And there's the Moosewood cookbooks that are out. Vegetarian cookbooks. Exactly. Yeah. Mhm. And it's this nice little vegetarian restaurant in Ithaca, and a slightly famous place. But then we got there, and I remember sitting down at the table in the Moosewood. And the bowls are these kind of carved wooden bowls. And I mean, everything about it feels like, well, like a vegetarian restaurant. Not just a vegetarian restaurant, but kind of a cartoon of a vegetarian restaurant. Exactly. Exactly. And I was looking at my parents across the table, and they were sort of dressed up, and they were excited to be coming down. And I could tell my dad was sitting there and sort of perusing the menu and thinking, well, you know, maybe this lentil salad will be good, or whatever. And I could tell he was sitting there thinking, now, geez. I just drove an hour and a half. All I want is a steak, and a baked potato, and a beer. And there I was, bringing them here. But they were so game about it. They were so sort of willing to go along with it because, for some reason, they thought I really wanted to bring them there. And I just thought, geez, these people, my parents, have really given up a lot for me to come there. I mean financially, they were really stretching themselves, and we were taking out all sorts of loans. You know, all those things that people do in order to go to college. And they never complained once about doing it. And they just wanted to come down and see me there, and feel proud that I was there, and I was sort of hiding them out in this vegetarian restaurant. I felt so bad about it afterwards. And they never once complained, and they went home. And sort of imagine them stopping at a Hardee's just outside of Ithaca, and getting a burger as soon as they say goodbye. But after that, I just thought, geez, I got to find some way to come clean about this. I mean, is it OK if your child decides to express himself in an alternate personality for a period of two years? I think there's-- it's funny. I never thought I would say this. But I think there's nothing wrong with that. I never thought I would say it because I wish that I hadn't done it, now, but I don't know. Maybe I learned something from doing it. I mean, I think that that is par for the course. Now, I think that's part of growing up. But I think it was probably necessary for me at that time in my life. Because it gave you more confidence. Yeah. And there was some bridge that this allowed me to cross. Joel Lovell and Sean Cole. Joel Lovell is the executive editor of a podcast company called Pineapple Street Media. Sean Cole works in public radio. Indeed, he does. He's one of the producers of our program. Act Two, Conning the Con Men. The American legal system, for the most part, does not uphold the principle of eye for an eye. If you steal somebody's car, the judge does not steal your car in return. If they catch you selling weed, they do not sell weed to you as your punishment. But if you're in the business of running scams, authorities catch you by running a scam on you. This is the story of a con man who made millions by fooling people over the phone, until he was the one who got fooled. Nancy Updike reports. The guy's name is David Diamond. That's his actual name. He was one of the most successful salesmen in one of the longest-running telemarketing scams in Los Angeles history. David Diamond was a salesman at a boiler room. This is Dale Sekovich. He's been a Federal Trade Commission investigator for 29 years. He's the one who busted Diamond. He was living in a very expensive home up in the hills, in Woodland Hills. He drove a custom Porsche Carrera that he had shipped over here by airplane from Germany, from the factory. They lived very high on the hog. David Diamond was just one of a whole bunch of guys making money, hand over fist, in an operation in Southern California that was basically running the same scam over and over, under different names, for seven years. It was an investment scheme. Give us your money, and we'll put it into this great 900-number business, or this online shopping network, or this hot new internet service provider. Needless to say, no one ever made a dime, except the people running the scam, who cleared $40 million. Since Diamond was one of the operation's top salesmen, he made $2 million in commissions in just four years on the job. He got 30% of whatever he talked a person into investing. That means he personally conned people out of more than $6 million. The FTC caught Diamond and the others in the operation essentially by conning the con men. They had volunteers pose as dupes and record their phone calls. Because the FTC brought a case against the operation Diamond worked in, some of those recordings are now part of the public record. I got Dale Sekovich to listen to the tapes with me, and talk about David Diamond and the FBI volunteer who caught him. The woman on the tape-- I can't tell you her real name, but she uses the alias of Marge. She assumed the identity of a person who is named Marge. Marge was a real person who we in law enforcement, and who people in the telemarketing business refer to, as a mooch. A mooch is someone who will essentially buy anything from anybody who calls her on the telephone. And in fact, she did, over a number of years. She spent hundreds of thousands of dollars-- The real Marge. The real Marge spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on bogus prize promotions, investments, gold coins, you name it. So the FBI went to Marge and said, we really think that we need to take your telephone number away from you, because it's being used to ruin your life. So once Marge agreed to that, her telephone number was installed in the home of an FBI volunteer. Every time that phone line rang-- the Marge line-- that volunteer would pick up that telephone and answer it, and pose as Marge. Marge? Yes. It's David Diamond. How are you? I'm OK. Good. It's kind of warm here. Yeah? I sent you off a video, and a package. Yes, I have it. OK. The video is with regard to Mark Ericson. Mark Ericson is the person who is heading up the program, and he is very successful in taking upstart companies and making them successful. You've probably heard of Hard Copy? He's an original producer of Hard Copy. I have heard of it, yes. You're smiling as you listen to this. What are you smiling about? Well, I'm smiling because it's been a while since I've heard Marge, and she sounds so old, and so fragile, and such an easy mark, when in fact, you know, she's this sharp FBI informant. She doesn't look as old as she sounds, trust me. So that's one aspect of it. The other aspect is this whole Mark Ericson thing. Yeah. Is he a real person? Mark Ericson is a real person. He was named in our lawsuit. And was he an original producer of Hard Copy? No. He was a segment producer and on-the-air reporter for Hard Copy for a brief period of time. And I mean, is this sort of typical of the cons in the tapes that you've heard, that they'll try to associate what they're selling with a legitimate business, or organization, or television show? Something that people have heard of? Exactly. They want to make this-- yeah, something people can relate to. Here's the thing. You have to invest everything you've got, or do nothing at all. And I'll say that again. You should invest everything you have. You should transfer all of your investments into this program, or do nothing. It doesn't make sense to do just a little bit. You should think about doing $1 million in this program. Oh. I don't know. That's a lot of money. You need to liquidate every nickel you've got. You either want to be in this situation-- you either want to be in this situation wholeheartedly, and upgrade your investments, or you don't. My suggestion to you is just do the whole thing. Well, I would never liquidate everything I have. My question is, why not? Because there's always gambles in anything like this. Anything like what? Well, any investment like this. Like this? What does that mean? Well, anything you invest in, there's always a gamble. Now I want to ask you. You told me once that you thought he sounded nervous on this tape. And in this part where she's saying, you know, an investment like this, and he's sort of questioning her, well what do you mean like this. I wonder, do you have any sense that he is suspicious that she might know what he's up to? I mean, do they know that volunteers are out there trying to trap them, posing as dupes? No. Since we talked about this tape last, I actually sort of had a revelation that came to me as to why. I listened to over 40 individual tapes of David Diamond-- conversations with Marge, and conversations with others-- over the course of about a year. And one of the things, when you've listened to all of them, you find that David in the earlier part of that year was much more kind of sweet, and cautious, and trying to bond with these women, and patient. And sometimes would spend an hour on the phone with them-- the tape would be an hour long. But this tape was made towards the very end of that year period, probably within a week or two of our raid. Having gone in on the raid, and searched David Diamond's desk that day, I came to realize that David Diamond was starting to question whether he wanted to do this anymore. He was starting to really have some concerns about-- Moral concerns? Moral concerns about what they were doing. And I believe that in these last couple of weeks, and it's kind of shown in this tape, he was becoming a little bit desperate. He wanted to make a couple more big hits, and he just couldn't figure out why this woman wasn't going to write him a check. So he started getting frustrated, and it comes out in his voice. What evidence did you see that he was starting to have moral qualms about what he was doing? David had become a born again. There were religious tracts all over his office, and posters on his wall. Just recently. I don't know exactly what the time frame was. We do know that he had given a lot of the money that he had made to his church. And we believe that a lot of that was sort of a self-imposed penance, that he could justify what he was doing because he was giving, he was tithing this money, that he was taking from these poor victims, into his church. If $30,000 is what you made on every $5,000, and you put $50,000 in this program, that's $300,000 return. That's why I'm telling you, you need to do $1 million in this program. Mhm. I don't know. I would never put that much in any program. Do you have an obligation to yourself, as an investor, to make the most amount of money possible? Well, you know, at my age, it's really not that-- what do I want to say? I have enough to live on for the rest of my life. I understand. But is it still in your best interest to make the most amount of money possible, if you could finally do it as safely as possible? It's my obligation not to lose what I have. Correct, but it's also your obligation to keep your money working for you-- Right, right. --because otherwise, what's the point? When I heard this part of the tape, even though I knew that this particular woman was not getting conned, that she was, in fact, conning him, and trapping him, I started to get so angry because I was thinking, you know, he is really trying to take all of this old woman's money-- all of it. She's saying, I have enough to live on. He's saying, you have an obligation to make more. Do you ever hear things like that and just get angry? Even though you know that she's sort of in on the con, on the joke? Every time I hear these pitches, I'm outraged because I am the person that spoke to the people who really did send David Diamond tens of thousands of dollars that consisted of their life savings, and now don't have any money to even buy groceries. I've interviewed them. I've seen them sob. Yeah, it makes me very angry. And what sort of recourse do they have? Slim and none. Slim and none. We have public companies that want to take you public. So if you've got a public company that's passed judgment on it, it's not even me talking anymore. If Mark Ericson wants to do business with you, it's not even me talking anymore. You have the ability to make an absolute fortune. And it doesn't make sense not to have every nickel you've got in this particular program. That's why I said it's the emergency investment situation, and you should do at least 50-100, 150 units, while you have the opportunity. Mhm. Well, how much are you investing in this? I'm not investing anything in this. My investment comes in the time that I put with my client. Yes. Right. And the fact that when they make money, they reinvest with me. Right. That's the whole point. Uh-huh. You were smiling again when she said, you know, how much are you investing? I mean, is she just screwing around with him? Of course. She's playing with him. Yeah. I mean, she's trained to ask him those kinds of questions so that he responds with a misrepresentation. But that doesn't sound like it's part of the script. That just sounds like her being mean, in sort of a delicious way. Well, no. I think what we were trying to do, or her handler was trying to do, was to get him to say, oh, yeah. I'm in it, and I've got my mother, and my grandmother in it, and I'm putting away money for my child's education with it, because then we could show later that he hadn't. Did you ever talk to Marge about what it's like to do this? I mean, do they ever sort of have fun? Just thinking, I'm just turning the tables on this guy. He has no idea. I wish I could answer the question. I've never spoken to them. I'd love to get the answer to that, myself. I'd like to ask that question, myself. I think they get a lot of personal satisfaction, though. How often do you get a chance to catch a bad guy as just a regular civilian? Yeah, exactly. You know, I do it, too. I tape people using an alias in cases that I work. And is it fun? I love it. I love to get these people to tell me stuff. You know, it's like acting. There's a rush. The rush of a con, the pleasure of it, is knowing that you have more power than the person you're conning. You know more. You know that it's a con. And let's face it, given the choice between being the mark and being the con man, nobody's going to choose to be the mark. But the problem is, the more confidence you have in your own con, the more easily you become a mark yourself. Con men get taken by other con men all the time. There just seems to be something about the particular arrogance of always being on the knowing side of the con that makes for a really, really good mark. Nancy Updike is one of the producers of our program. In the years since we first broadcast this episode-- today's show is a rerun-- Dale Sekovich, the FTC investigator who busted David Diamond, has died. Coming up, a child tries to fix his own family by harnessing the most powerful force that exists anywhere. That's in a minute, from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on the program, of course, we choose a theme, bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show, Hoaxing Yourself, stories of people who are fooling themselves. Sometimes that is a side effect of trying to fool others. Sometimes they just don't know better, and pin their hopes and beliefs on something that is simply not true at all. We've arrived at Act Three of our show. Act Three, Oedipus Hex. Shalom Auslander tells a story which happened to him when he was a boy in one of those ultra Orthodox Jewish religious schools called yeshivas. A warning to listeners that, although this story is about a little boy, in the story, the dad is not so nice to his kids, which might not be a thing that little kids will enjoy hearing at all. So take that under advisement. Here's Shalom. Rabbi Breyer walked into our third-grade classroom, hung up his long black coat, took off his big black hat, and handed each student a small black booklet entitled, The Guide to Blessings. We had one week, he told us, to prepare for the annual Yeshiva of Spring Valley Blessing Bee. My heart leaped. This was just what my mother needed. The Blessing Bee would make her forget all the troubles of our home. To have a son who's a talmid chuchum, a wise student, that was the ultimate. Her brother was a respected rabbi. And if her husband couldn't be one, well, maybe her son could be. The Guide to Blessings was a 70-page-long listing of hundreds of different foods-- soups, breads, fish, desserts. I flipped through it, slowly realizing the size of the challenge that lay ahead. Falafel? Herring? Eggplant parmigiana? I had my work cut out for me. Friday afternoons, the yeshiva closed early so that we could all rush home to help our parents prepare for Shabbos-- the Sabbath. Rabbi Breyer told us that the Sages tell us that the Torah tells us that the preparation for Shabbos is equal to the importance of Shabbos itself. Most of my preparations involved searching the house for kosher wine and pouring it down the toilet. It was a thankless job I admitted to nobody. My father's frustrated rage at not having his Manischewitz Concord grape was fearsome, but it was far better than his drunken rage if he did have it. I'd search the pantry. I'd search the garage. I'd search my father's closet. But I was only eight years old, and there was always a bottle of Kedem hiding somewhere I just hadn't thought to check. That night, my father, drunk on a bottle of blush Chablis that got away, grabbed my older brother by his shirt collar and dragged him away from the Shabbos table. He dragged him all the way down the stairs to our bedroom in the basement and slammed the door shut. Even the silverware jumped. Who wants the last matzoh ball, my mother asked? I made extra. When my brother returned to the table, his nose was bleeding. My mother brought him a can of frozen orange juice to hold against the back of his neck, which was supposed to somehow stop the bleeding. Rabbi Breyer taught us that it is prohibited to defrost orange juice on Shabbos because changing food from solid to liquid is considered cooking, and cooking is considered working. And even God refrained from working on Shabbos. There are 39 different categories of work that are prohibited on Shabbos. That's also why you're not allowed to switch on lights on Shabbos. The electricity causes the filament to glow, which is considered burning, which is considered working. Category number two. My father came back to the table and drunkenly sang a few Shabbos songs, fudging the words and banging heavily on the table with his fist. I sat hunched over, absentmindedly drawing circles on the condensation that had formed on the silver water pitcher. My father slapped my hand. Shabbos, he shouted. Writing, category number five. Eventually, he stumbled off to his bedroom and fell asleep, snoring loudly. We sat in the dining room and picked glumly at our food. The following Monday morning, as we all sat studying from our blessing books, there was a knock on Rabbi Breyer's classroom door, and Rabbi Greenbaum, the yeshiva principal, solemnly entered. We all rose. The two rabbis conferred quietly for a moment before signaling us all to be seated. After a few thoughtful strokes of his long black beard, Rabbi Greenbaum sighed deeply and informed us that the night before, our classmate Avrumi Gruenembaum's father had suffered a heart attack and died. Some kids have all the luck. Blessed is the one true judge, said Rabbi Breyer, nodding his head. Blessed is the one true judge, we all answered, nodding our heads. I wondered what Mr. Gruenembaum might have done to deserve death. Did he bow down to idols? Did he walk four steps without his yarmulke on? Whatever it was, it must have been pretty bad. As Rabbi Greenbaum turned to leave, he paused. And with a stern shake of his finger, reminded us all that the Sages tell us that the Torah tells us that until the age of 13, all of a boy's sins are ascribed to his father. I turned to look at Avrumi's empty chair. Avrumi was a chubby kid with heavy orthodontia and foul breath. But a sudden respect for him grew inside me. I wondered what he might have done to cause his father's death. Whatever it was, it must have been pretty bad. Scowling fiercely, Rabbi Greenbaum advised each and every one of us to pray to Hashem, the Holy One, blessed be he, for forgiveness, so that he wouldn't kill our fathers, too. My heart leaped. Blessed is Hashem, he said. Blessed is Hashem, we answered. Blessed is Hashem was right. All of a sudden, I had two ways I could save my family. I could win the Blessing Bee for my mother, or I could sin so much Hashem would have to kill my father. Courageous Avrumi Gruenembaum. Maybe one Shabbos night, he had switched on a light. Maybe he drank milk after eating meat. Maybe he touched himself. That night, just before bed, I ate a drumstick, washed it down with some milk, touched myself, and flicked the bedroom light on and off. Break those lights and I'll break your hands, my father shouted. It was going to be a busy week. The Blessing Bee worked the same way as a spelling bee. There are six basic blessings on food-- hamotzei, the blessing for bread; mezonos, the blessing for wheat; hagofen, the blessing for wine or grape juice; ha-eitz, the blessing for things that grow from trees; ho-adamah, the blessing for things that grow from the Earth; and shehakol, the blessing for everything else. Bagel? Hamotzei. Oatmeal? Mezonos. Gefilte fish? Shehakol, the blessing for everything else. But that was the easy part. Things became much more complicated when you started combining foods. Some foods are superior to other foods, and in combination with subordinate foods, the superior food, gets the blessing. To make matters worse, some blessings are superior to other blessings, and you had to know which blessing to recite first. This is where they separated the men from the goys. Spaghetti and meatballs? Mezonos, the wheat blessing, then shehakol, the everything else blessing. Cereal with milk? Shehakol for the milk, then mezonos for the wheat in the cereal. Twix, the chocolate candy with the cookie crunch? Trick question. Twix isn't kosher. I spent the next week sinning and blessing, and blessing and sinning, alternately praising God and then defying him, as much as one eight-year-old possibly could. Monday morning, I stuffed myself. I had a bowl of fruity Pebbles-- mezonos-- a slice of toast-- hamotzei-- a glass of juice-- shehakol-- half an apple-- ha-eitz-- and a couple of old French fries I found at the bottom of the fridge-- ho-adamah. One meal, five blessings. Tuesday, I touched myself. I also partook of bread without first ceremoniously washing my hands. And that evening, before going to sleep, I sat on the edge of my bed and carefully recited [BLEEP], [BLEEP], and ass a dozen times each. My father banged angrily on my bedroom door. Lights out, he barked. I smiled. For you and me both, pal. Wednesday, I stole $5 from my mother, and didn't recite any blessings at all on the bag full of candy that I bought with it-- a Charleston Chew, which is traif to begin with, and a Chunky, which would have been a shehakol if I weren't trying to kill my father. A Chunky with raisins? Shehakol, then ha-eitz. Thursday, I didn't wear tzitzis. Rabbi Breyer noticed that the strings weren't dangling from my sides, and grabbed me by the ear and pulled me to the front of the class. Speak to the children of Israel, he quoted loudly from the Torah, as he spanked me hard on my bottom, and tell them to make tzitzis on the corners of their garments. That afternoon, after not respecting my elders by taking out the garbage like my mother had told me to, I touched myself and silently begged God to, just this once, credit those sins to Rabbi Breyer's account. Later, I defiled a prayer book by carrying it into the bathroom. The Blessing Bee was the following morning and I could barely sleep. Lentil soup? Mezonos. Potato knish? Ho-adamah. Root beer? Is it a root? Is it a beer? [BLEEP] [BLEEP] ass bitch. I tossed and turned, I blessed and cursed, and finally, I fell into an uncomfortable sleep. After a week at home, Avrumi Gruenembaum conveniently returned to school just in time for the Blessing Bee. It was all I could do to not lean over and ask him how he did it. Psst. Avrumi, tell me. Was it lobster? Did you eat lobster? Rabbi Breyer told us that the Sages tell us that the Torah tells us that when Abraham died, Hashem comforted Isaac. We learned from this that it is a tremendous mitzvah, or good deed, to comfort the bereaved. Rabbi Breyer instructed us all to line up at Avrumi's desk, to shake his hand, and recite the traditional mourner's constellation-- may Hashem comfort you among the mourners of Zion. Just eight years old, I wasn't entirely familiar with Hashem's system, but it occurred to me that, along with all my sins, my father might also be getting all my mitzvahs. I wasn't taking any chances. Soon, it was my turn in line. How's it going? I said to Avrumi. Rabbi Breyer pinched me. Ow, I screamed. Shmendrick, he grumbled. After the last boy had asked Hashem to comfort Avrumi among the mourners of Zion, Rabbi Breyer smacked his desk loudly. The Blessing Bee began. We lined up at the back of the classroom, nervously pulling on our tzitzis and twirling our peyis. The rules were simple. Name the correct blessing, and remain standing for the next round. Name the wrong blessing, and you take your seat. Last year's winner, Yukisiel Zalman Yehuda Schneck, stood beside me. He leaned calmly against the wall, mindlessly picking his nose. Auslander, Shalom, called out Rabbi Breyer. I stepped forward. Apple, he shouted. Apple, I called out. Ha-eitz, the blessing for food from trees. Correct, Rabbi Breyer said. The Blessing Bee usually started off pretty easy. David Borgen got tuna-- shehakol, the everything else blessing. Ari Mashinsky got matzoh-- hamotzei, the blessing for bread. And Avi Tuchman got stuck with kugel, which he thought was ho-adamah-- food from the Earth-- but was really mezonos, the blessing on wheat. Three other kids got taken out by oatmeal. Borscht with sour cream claimed two others. And by the end of the first round, almost a third of the students were already back in their seats. Round two. Auslander, Shalom, called Rabbi Breyer. I stepped forward. Mushroom barley soup, he shouted. Mushroom barley soup? Mushroom barley soup? Damn. I knew I should have studied the chapter on soups more. I'd wasted half the week on entrees. Was it ho-adamah on the mushrooms, which came from the Earth? Or was it mezonos on the barley? Maybe it was shehakol, the everything else blessing, on the soup. Mushroom barley soup, I called out. Mezonos. Rabbi Breyer tugged on his beard, his eyes narrowing into angry little slits. And, ah, shehakol, I added? Rabbi Breyer triumphantly smacked his desk, signaling that I was correct. Apple strudel took out David Borgen, Yoel Levine, and Shlomo Pomerantz. My friend, Motty Greenberg, got stuck with cheesecake, and I could tell just by the expression on his face that he had absolutely no idea. He wisely offered two answers-- one for thin crust, and one for thick, and somehow managed to stay alive. It was hard to believe this was only round two. Avrumi stepped forward. I smiled at Motty. Avrumi may have killed his father, but he wasn't very bright, and he never did well at these things. He was lucky to even be in the second round at all. Bagel, shouted Rabbi Breyer. Bagel? I looked at Motty in disbelief. Was he kidding? Bagel? Bagel, called out Avrumi. Hamotzei. This was bull-[BLEEP]. Correct, shouted Rabbi Breyer. Very good. Ephraim Greenblat, Avrumi Epstein, and Yoel Frankel all got out on cholent with barley and large pieces of meat, while chopped liver on challah with a slice of lettuce and a bit of olive took out four more, including Motty. And then there were three. It was just Yukisiel Zalman Yehuda Schneck, Avrumi Gruenembaum, and me. Round three began. Auslander, Shalom, called out Rabbi Breyer. I stepped forward. Ice cream, shouted Rabbi Breyer, in a cone. Ice cream in a cone. Ice cream in a cone. I knew ice cream, but why would he add the cone? Was there something different if it was in a cone? What was an ice cream cone made of, anyway? Was it cake? Was it a wafer? Ice cream in a cone, Rabbi Breyer shouted. Is the ice cream subordinate to the cone, or is it the cone's subordinate to the ice cream? If it's a sugar cone, maybe you really desire the cone. Ice cream in a cone, Rabbi Breyer shouted again. I had no choice. Ice cream in a cone, I called out. No blessing. Everyone in the classroom turned to face me. Looking back on the whole episode, Rabbi Breyer had really left me no choice. No blessing? said Rabbi Breyer. Why no blessing? Because, I explained, nervously twirling my tzitzis, because the room smells like doody. There was a long silence. Motty giggled, and others followed. Rabbi Breyer slowly rose to his feet, his thick fists pushing themselves into the desktop. It may have been a loophole, but technically speaking, I was correct. Rabbi Breyer himself had told us that our Sages tell us that the Torah tells us that there were three situations in which one is absolutely prohibited from reciting a blessing. One, while facing a male over the age of nine years old whose genitals are showing; two, while facing a female over the age of three years old whose genitals are showing; and three, in the presence of feces. Frankly, given the other two options, I think I chose the least offensive answer. For a big man, Rabbi Breyer moved pretty quickly. It's true, I said, as he barreled toward me. The Torah says that-- he grabbed me roughly by my arm, lifting me clear off the ground, and dragged me towards the door, shouting angrily in Yiddish the whole time. But it smells like doody, I yelled. The room smells like doody. Wait, there's a naked girl in the room. There's a naked girl. The door slammed shut behind me. I stood in the hallway and rub my bruised arm. I began to cry. The Blessing Bee was lost. I was not a great rabbi. And my father was still not dead. I tiptoed toward the classroom door and listened closely. Two minutes later, Yukisiel Zalman Yehuda Schneck fell victim to matzoh brei with maple syrup. And the last man standing was Avrumi Gruenembaum. Apples, called out Rabbi Breyer. Apples, Avrumi answered. Ha-eitz. Mazel tov, called out Rabbi Breyer, mazel tov. Total bull-[BLEEP]. That night, we had the traditional Friday night gefilte fish-- shehakol-- with a little slice of carrot-- ho-adamah. My father was drunk again, singing Shabbos songs, fudging the words and banging heavily on the table with his fist. My mother went into the kitchen and brought out the soup. When my brother said he didn't want any, my father slapped him, pushed him over backward onto the floor, and poured the hot chicken soup onto his face. My mother took my brother into the bathroom and sat with him on the edge of the bathtub, pressing a cold washcloth against his cheeks. I went back to the dining room to get the chicken soup off the floor. Chicken soup is a shehakol, even if it is cooked with vegetables, since chicken is the dominant taste in the soup. Rabbi Breyer told us that the Sages tell us that the Torah tells us that the Holy One, blessed be he, sent the Egyptians 10 plagues in order to teach us that he gives people many chances to repent. And only then, if they still continue to sin, does he punish them with death. I went downstairs to my bedroom, took four steps without my yarmulke on, touched myself, flicked the lights off and on, and fell asleep. Shalom Auslander. He's the author of many fine books. This story appears in his memoir, Foreskin's Lament. Our program was produced today by me and Blue Chevigny, with Alex Bloomberg, Susan Burton, and Julie Snyder. Our contributing editors for today's show, Paul Tuft, Jack Hit, Margie Rocken, Elise Spiegel, and consigliere Sarah Vowell. Mixing up today by Jared Ford and Catherine Raimondo. Production up from Anna Martin. Our technical director is Matt Tierney. Our website, ThisAmericanLife.org, where you can listen to over 600 episodes of our show for absolutely free. This American Life is distributed by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia, who is not jealous at all of the fact that the This American Life staff gets to tape interviews all the time. You know, I do it, too. I tape people, using an alias. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
So Lilly, you're here to tell me a story? Yes. And I should say, you are Lilly Sullivan. You're one of the producers of our show. Mm-hm, I am. So what's the story? OK, so this is a story that I heard growing up. It was one of those things I was told as like, a scary story when you're a kid. Like an urban legend. And then I've been thinking about it a lot recently, because I read a book recently that I really loved. It's called Her Body and Other Parties, by this writer, Carmen Maria Machado. It's a finalist for the National Book Award, and she retells the story in one of the short stories in her book. And it just stuck in my head. And it's just something that I've been thinking about a lot recently. And so what happens? How does it go? OK, so a girl and her mom are on vacation in Paris. And they're just traveling, and they've been there for a few days. And the mom, she gets sick. And so the girl gets a doctor. And the doctor comes to the hotel. He spends a while examining her, and he's like, she's really sick. We need to deal with this immediately. And he tells the daughter, you need to go across the city. I have medicine. It can save her. You have to go get it while I tend to her, sends her downstairs. And the guy at the front desk, the hotel manager, takes her out, and he puts her in a cab. And he goes to the taxi driver and, in French, tells him directions to where she's supposed to go. And it's on the other side of the city. So the girl is in the back of the cab. And it's just taking forever. The taxi driver is making all these loops and getting lost. . And she's kind of frantic in the back, needing to get back. But she finally gets there. She gets the pills. She jumps back in the cab. And they drive back to the hotel. She runs into the building. And she's running past the hotel manager. And he stops her. And he says, miss, can I help you? And she says, yeah, I have it. I found the medicine. I'm just going back up. He's like, I'm sorry. I've never seen you before. And she's like, no, you just put me in a cab. I'm staying here with my mother. She's upstairs. And she's sick, and the doctor is with her. And he's like, we don't have any guests staying here right now. And so she runs past him. She runs upstairs. She goes to the room. And she opens the door. And the room where her mother was, it's empty. The furniture is all different. The walls are a different color. Everything is rearranged. And the hotel manager kind of chases her up. And he's like, seriously, miss, you need to leave. You can't just be in here. And so she's really confused. She starts running down the halls looking for them. Them being the doctor and her mom. Yeah, and so she runs out of the hotel. She runs into the street. And she just starts asking everybody. You know, I'm looking for my mom. Have you seen her? So what happens to her? Well, she just keeps looking. Years pass. Oh, it's a fable. Right. Right. This isn't a real story. Right. And, you know, she's young. She's in Paris. She doesn't know anybody. And she just keeps wandering and looking. And in the eyes of everyone in Paris, she kind of becomes this madwoman wandering the streets of Paris saying, "where is my mother, where is my mother." And sometimes, she wonders it, too. Did I invent all of this in my head? She wonders if it happened at all. But at the same time, she knows that it happened. Like, she was staying there with her mother. Lilly, you said that this story has been stuck in your head for a while. And I know it has because I know that it was your impetus for putting together today's show. And you've been thinking about it for months, actually. Talk about why. She goes through something in that story that I feel like I've gone through, I think that a lot of women go through all the time. And it can happen in these really small ways. They don't get talked about because they're so small. So here's an example. So years ago when I was just first getting into radio, you know, I had just graduated from this radio program. I got this little scholarship thing to go to this conference with a lot of people who have been in radio forever. Yeah. And it was also, you know, one of those scholarships where we're all people of color. We're all young, in a new career. And it was all people who are older. And you know, public radio is mostly-- White. Yeah. Yeah. So you're there and you're like, the young person of color who doesn't know anything about radio. Right, yeah. It was a little awkward or uncomfortable. And there was this older person who was a pretty big deal in radio. And he was doing this thing where he would kind of come up and talk to me like a normal person and, you know, say professional things about radio. And then he would-- you know, it's a conference. So you see people, and you walk away, and you mingle. And then he would kind of walk away. And then he would be on the other side of the room, and he would just kind of like, leer at me from a distance, kind of all the time. It felt like constantly, and he would just-- you know, he'd be waggling his eyebrows, pursing his lips. You know, like, squinting eyes. So corny. I know. So every time I would turn, he would, you know, catch my eye and like raise his eyebrows again like, still here. He was messing with me. I mean, but it was weird, because then, a few minutes later, he would just walk up to me, and then start acting totally normal, as if he hadn't been doing that. Oh, wow. He would just, oh, you're here with this program. It's a really interesting program. And it's important to cultivate new people of color in radio. And then as part of the conference, there was an event one night. And, you know, there was alcohol and, people were drinking. And he was standing with a group of men. They're looking at me, and they're whispering. It felt like they were talking about me. I mean, they were. I could tell that they were talking about me. Someone would look at me, saying something, and then someone would laugh. Did you have a feeling about what they were probably saying? I mean, I think they were just talking about like, me as a woman, how I look. Things like that. And I think that he was telling them that he was going to sleep with me, or something like that. That's the way they were looking at me. They were like, whispering to each other and squinting their eyes. And they were laughing at me. And then, he comes up to me and just acts totally normal, and tells me that I should come over and come meet them. You know, he'd be happy to make some introductions. They're good people to know in radio. And so I go over with him. And I like, put out my hand to meet them. And no one shook my hand. And they all just kind of laughed and looked at each other. And I just-- Whoa. Yeah, it wasn't great. It was really embarrassing. But it was so subtle. It just felt humiliating in a way that I knew would sound silly if I tried to tell someone. And then later, I talked to people about it. And they were a little skeptical. You know, they were like, those people, they wouldn't have done that, the people who make the decisions in radio. But I was like, I just, I know that it happened. And then in your mind, you're basically doing what the woman is doing in the story, which is like, this is definitely true. But wait, is this true? Kind of. Because, yeah, I mean, a little bit. Because, like, on the one hand, you know what it's like when people are kind of laughing at you when you put out your hand, and no one shakes it. Yeah, that seems pretty blatant. That seems like hard to make a mistake about. It does seem blatant, right? Right. But then when people say, you must have misread everything. And the guy himself is acting like everything is totally fine. You're kind of like, is it possible that I misread everything? Am I overreacting? Did I just read all of that wrong? OK, so the show that you have put together today, Lilly, was kind of inspired by that Paris story, right? Yeah, yeah. And then we just explained to the audience that it has two stories about women. And in each of the stories, something kind of weird and unsettling happens to these women. And the world does not acknowledge how weird and wrong these things are. But in addition, unlike the woman in the Paris story and unlike you at the conference, the women in these stories, they don't think anything has gone wrong. Not at first. At first, they think everything is fine because everyone around them acts like everything is fine. And only later do they start to realize, wait, something bad did happen. And so that is going to be our show today, two stories that, I have to say, are eye-opening. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. Stay with us. Act 1-- "The Old Man on My Shoulder." This first story, when the producers were working on it, started doing interviews for the story, it seemed like every single interview they came back so surprised at what they were learning. They really set out having no idea what they would find. A warning-- this story has sexual content. It's probably not right for children. And it begins with something that happened to our producer, Elna Baker. A few months ago I was talking to a guy I know, Rory, when Mormonism came up. "You grew up Mormon? You have to meet my fiancee, Reagan," he told me. "She was Mormon, too. You guys will have so much in common." I know that's like saying, you're black, meet my other black friend. But in this case, he was right. Within an hour of meeting Reagan, we were singing church songs together, like (SINGING) When I grow up, I want to be a mother and have a family. One little, two little, three little babies of my own. Of all the jobs for me, I'll choose no other. I'll have a family. Four little, five little, six little babies in my home. All this while Rory looked on in horror. Reagan says that Rory is constantly bowled over by the things she tells him. You know, it started out kind of fun and cute. And I'd be like, you know when you're singing around a piano with your family? And he's like, no, nobody does that. That's not a normal thing for people's childhoods. So it started out kind of cute like that. And then one day, I'm like, you know when you're in an office with an old man, and the doors shut, and you're talking about sex things? Reagan's referring to the Mormon practice of confessing your sexual sins to the bishop. This usually starts when you're 12, for boys and girls. Reagan told Rory about a time she was confessing, and the bishop rose from his desk and put his hand on her knee. Even as an adult in her 30s telling the story, she didn't totally understand how shocking this was, but Rory did. And what was his response? Well, he repeated the whole thing, like, you mean to tell me that you were in an office alone with a man with the door shut, and he was asking sexual questions, and then he came out from behind his desk and put his hand on your knee? That kind of thing. And then, and your parents allowed that? Your parents weren't mad about that? How did that make you feel? Well, it made me feel everything all over again. It really made me feel the shame and humiliation that I felt when I was 12. 12 to 18. It was nice to talk to someone else about this. From the ages of 12 to 27, I was supposed to walk into my bishop's office and confess anytime I did anything sexual. But unlike old-fashioned Catholic confession, there was no curtain or anonymity. And Mormon bishops, they're not paid or trained clergy. They don't wear robes. They are men who are chosen by the church to volunteer their time and serve as basically pastors for a two-to-five-year period. They keep their regular jobs. One of my bishops, a good one, was a food scientist who helped invent Pop Rocks. Another was an investment banker named Chad. I'd sit across from Chad in a little office at church and admit to a sexual encounter. And Chad would ask follow-up questions. "Did you go to first base or second? He put his hands where? Was it under the bra, or over the bra? Did you like it?" To be forgiven of sexual sin, I was required to tell the bishop. So while I often felt ashamed or humiliated in the room, I never questioned the process itself. It was routine, like going to the dentist. You turned yourself in whenever there was anything to report. And on top of that, once or twice a year, you were required to go to this thing called a worthiness interview. Everyone did this, no exception, from the ages of 12 to 18. These were like checkups for your spirituality. The bishop would ask you a series of questions like, do you believe in God? Are you a full tithe payer? Are you honest in your dealings with your fellow man? In the midst of these questions about your faith, he'd ask if you obey the law of chastity. Reagan's first worthiness interview was pretty confusing. They sort of graze over everything until you get to chastity. And he said, "are you obeying the law of chastity?" And I didn't know what that word meant. And so I asked him to explain it more, and he said, "are you engaging in sexual things like petting and necking?" And I also didn't know what petting and necking was. I mean, I was about as innocent as a 12-year-old can be. I was home-schooled, and everything. So I wasn't even around language like-- you know, any kind of sexual or lewd language of any kind. Especially not language from the 1950s. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so I didn't know what necking or petting was. And so I think I said, like, I don't think so. And I remember the feeling of my heart beating in my ears. You know, I felt my whole body was so hot. And even though I didn't know what it was, and I didn't think I had done it, I felt like I had done it. You know, I felt like I was really guilty. And it seemed like every question up until that point was really not important, and then this was the big question. This was like, the whole-- you know, climax of the interview. And then I also became bad after that. I became completely obsessed with necking, and petting, and finding out what it meant. Anytime anything would happen in a movie, anything sexual at all, I'd be like, I think that's petting. The interviews kick-started something with me. I made my Barbies do everything that you can possibly imagine. It was like a bloodbath. My Barbies went from just playing house to like, doing angel dust, and having like, orgies within a matter of weeks. When Reagan was 16, she said she finally got a boyfriend to experiment with. And she did neck and pet with him. But whatever fun she had was gone the second it was over. Did you immediately, like right after, think like, oh no, now I have to tell the bishop. Yes. Yes, instantly. I went home, and I remember feeling really excited that I had necked and petted. And then the next day, I was just guilt ridden. The whole day I was like-- it was like I had a hangover, or something. Like a-- I don't know. I was laying in bed, like thinking about it, and worrying about it all day. And I didn't tell him, or talk about it until I was asked to go in for an interview. And the door was shut. I was sitting there. I was 16. And he asked me all the questions. And then he asked me if I was keeping the law of chastity. And I said no. I said no. And he came out from behind his desk, and pulled up a chair close to me, and put his hand on my knee. This is the story she told her fiancee, Rory. And then said, "did you do this more than once?" And I said no, I only did it once. And then he said, "did you have intercourse?" And I said no. And then he said, "did you like it?" And I said no. "Have you thought about doing it again?" And did he define what it was? Well, it was all kind of vague things. Like, you know, intercourse was probably the most specific. But I remember him asking me things like, "did you impersonate sex?" Which I didn't totally understand. That's a really weird way to put it, too. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, it's me, sex. Yeah. For penance you put together a plan that requires frequent check-ins, and you do assignments, like reading church literature about not having sex. For a while you can't take the sacrament, our version of communion. This can feel like public shaming, like everyone notices. It's incredibly embarrassing because if you're a young woman, the assumption is it's sex related. Reagan's bishop set up more meetings with her. And then he called my house about twice a month, to check on me. I felt really humiliated. I felt-- I felt like, evil, almost, you know? I felt like everything-- I felt like I was just such a disappointment, and I made my family look bad, and all of that. One morning last December, I opened up Facebook and saw this petition going around by a Mormon named Sam Young. He used to be a bishop, and he was calling on the church to stop these sexually explicit interviews. This was the first time I'd ever heard them referred to as sexually explicit. He posted a list of 29 questions different church members said that they'd been asked in their interviews with their bishops. As I read down the list, I realized that I had been asked 13 of them. Questions like, do you masturbate? Where and how did your boyfriend touch you? Where were his fingers? Were your nipples hard? Were you wet? It took seeing them all together for me to realize how bad it actually was. There were stories of abuse on Sam's website. Some are extreme, like bishops who convinced children that if they masturbated with them, the desire to do it would go away. I was never physically abused, just asked questions. As a bishop, Sam said he never asked these questions, and he was never asked them as a kid. He found out about them from a friend whose son was asked about masturbation. Sam couldn't believe it. He posted about it on Facebook, and the stories came flooding in. Of his six daughters, four told him that they'd been asked if they masturbated. One of his youngest said she didn't know what the word meant. She was 12. So she looked it up on the internet, and this introduced her to porn. Sam thought if he brought all this to the attention of the church, they'd stop these explicit questions. The church response was that bishops are not supposed to be, quote, "unnecessarily probing or invasive in their questions." But what's necessary and unnecessary is left up to each individual bishop to decide. The church doesn't define exactly where the line is. As the story got more heat, the church issued new guidelines this spring, saying kids could have a parent or an adult in the room when meeting with the bishop. The church claims this had nothing to do with Sam's petition, but clearly he had touched a nerve. He was excommunicated from the church in September for acting, quote "in clear, open, and deliberate public opposition to the church." And a lot of Mormons online resisted his claims. They defended their bishops, saying they hadn't been asked inappropriate or disturbing questions. That these incidents were isolated and unusual, or that Sam was making these stories up. That they hadn't happened at all. But I knew they'd happened, because they'd happened to me. And they stuck with me. I had rarely talked about it with any friends, and never my family. Even all these years later, I feel like it's my fault. That I somehow deserved these humiliating encounters. And talking to Reagan and reading the stories on Sam's website, I wondered, how widespread is this? It just so happens that we have another person on staff who grew up Mormon. So together, we just started calling people, some we knew, some we didn't, some were practicing Mormons, others had left the church. And people definitely remembered their bishop interviews. They'd be like, well, how long did it last? Or did he put his fingers in you, or did you put your fingers on him? And I think he asked me if I had made her orgasm. I remember going really red in the face, an extreme amount of anxiety. I felt like my throat was closing. And I was only 11, and I'd never had a boyfriend. I told him, yes, I'm keeping the law of chastity. He said, "are you lying to me?" I said no. And he said, "are you sure you're not lying to me?" And I thought, does the bishop know something about me that I don't know? We reached 10 people. And to our surprise, all 10 said that they had had at least one experience with a bishop where they felt the line of questioning went too far, or became overly explicit. These interactions left them feeling deeply uncomfortable and ashamed, to the point that most of them had never shared their stories with anyone. This led me to ask my siblings, and of the five of us, four had had bad experiences. I don't want to say every Mormon feels this way about their bishops. The therapist I contacted, who specializes in sex and relationships, and works with current and former church members, estimated that bishop interviews only come up with one out of eight of her clients. And talking about chastity is just a small part of what bishops do. Lots of people have positive experiences with their bishops, including me, and the people we talked to. Yes, some bishops went too far, but we had others who didn't. You get a new one every few years. But bishop interviews can be hugely consequential for your life. To attend any Mormon-run college, you need your bishop to give you what's called an ecclesiastical endorsement, which is basically a letter stating that you're a faithful Mormon obeying the church's teachings. I talked to a woman named Alisha. She's from Utah in her early 40s. When she was 20, she went to get her ecclesiastical endorsement to go to BYU, Brigham Young University. Alisha had previously had sex with her boyfriend, but says she stopped, and had been abstinent for a while. She hadn't confessed it yet, though. And her feeling was that if she was going to a church school, she wanted to do it the right way. She wanted to be on the up and up. She figured the interview would go OK if she just told the truth because she'd only had positive experiences with bishops before. And so she made an appointment with her bishop. He asked me about masturbation, which I had never been asked before. So that was a little bit surprising. And I said yes. But then he proceeded to ask me, "did you use your hands, or did you use a device?" And immediately, like every cell in my body was on alert. Like when you're walking down an alley, and all of a sudden you feel extremely uncomfortable. That's how I felt. Like, right out of the get go. So I said, well, why does it matter? And he said, "well, I just want to get a sense so I can advise you on triggers, and what to avoid." He asked her a bunch of other sexual questions. She said yes to all of them, and confessed she had sex with her boyfriend. He proceeded to ask me, where were you? Were you in your bed, in a car? Did you climax? Did he climax? I said, does it make it less of a sin if I climaxed, or does it make it more of a sin? I was confused. I don't know what the rules are. Like, I didn't know. Definitely, it was like he sat forward in his chair. And I felt like he was watching porn that was my life, and not his business. That was my take, that he was using my story and his power to create pictures in his head that he could take pleasure from. I mean, that's how it felt. At some point he said, "So all you guys do is have sex? You guys don't do anything else?" And I'm thinking, no, this is a boyfriend that we do a lot. Like, he's in a band. We go do all these shows. Like, I help roadie for him. Our relationship is not the sex. It's just what you're asking about. And now you're making it sound like that's the only thing we do. It was bizarre. But I needed that signature. And eventually got it, but not without paying a price. She was too scared to report him. She thought it could backfire. And she had to keep meeting with him once a week. She said she always felt sick beforehand, and tried to think of excuses not to go. It's hard because it's not like I could have said, this man is molesting me, or raping me, or-- And I've had other experiences that were sexual pressure put on me, you know, with hands, that were less traumatic than this. I grew up watching this church video that primed me for the role I was supposed to play in the bishop's office. It's called "Godly Sorrow Leads to Repentance." And our teachers would show it to us when they slacked on preparing a lesson. In the video, a young woman named Kim visits her bishop because she's going to get married, and in order to enter the temple, she needs a signed document. A temple recommend, that says she's worthy. Kim sits across the desk from her bishop and he asks-- Is there anything in your life, Kim, that hasn't been resolved with the proper priesthood authority? Well, before Matt returned from his mission, I was involved with another boy. We probably spent a little too much time together alone. The bishop waits for her to say more. When Kim doesn't, he nods his head and gestures. Go on. I guess things sort of got out of hand. Kim, I know how hard it is to talk about things like this, but I need to know how serious the problem was if I'm going to help resolve it. I guess we were getting a little too comfortable together. And that's when the problems started. The screen fades and cuts back to the bishop, implying that time has passed, and Kim has spilled her story. What you've told me, Kim, is very serious. Yeah, but I'm not involved with that guy anymore. It's not a problem now. The bishop tells her that this is much more severe than she thinks. I can't have a temple recommend? But the wedding is coming up. The announcements have been sent out. My dress is paid for. We saw this film a lot, and the cutaway really made an impression. My classmates and I would be like, what do you think she said? So when my bishop first asked me about masturbating when I was 14, it seemed appropriate for us to have an explicit conversation. We were just living in the cutaway. So I told all. I couldn't lie to the bishop. That would be like lying to God. And I was taught that any sexual act I committed before marriage was the second most serious sin next to murder. It was terrifying. I masturbated once when I was 12. I wasn't even aware of what I was doing. I just knew something unusual happened. Two years later, I learned the church's position on masturbation, which is that it's almost as bad as sex. And I knew sex was almost as bad as murder. When I connected the dots, I was devastated. Unless I repented, I was told I'd be separated from my family in the afterlife, because no unclean thing is allowed in heaven. So I go tell the bishop. But, of course, I'd masturbate again. And each time, I'd immediately be hit with the thought that I was being so selfish. Why would I choose this feeling over my family? The only way to undo it, to get my family back, was to confess. My dad was a bishop for five years. When I told him recently about the questions my siblings and I were asked, it upset him. He told me he'd never asked anyone those questions, and didn't remember being asked them as a kid. So when exactly did bishops start asking these detailed and embarrassing questions? I talked to three different historians, all Mormon, but independent of the church. And they said the answer was simple. The shift started happening in the '70s. It was the church's reaction to the sexual revolution. They were worried about promiscuity. Someone at MormonLeaks, our version of WikiLeaks, put me in touch with a historian who has a collection of old church manuals that are written specifically for bishops. Before the 1970s, the manuals told bishops to search for, quote, "immoral or un-Christianlike practices." They don't spell it out with a lot of details. But then in 1975, explicit questions first appear in a bishop's guide which tells bishops to ask prospective missionaries and other young adults whether they've been involved in, quote, "any of the following-- pre or extramarital sexual intercourse, homosexual practices, sexual deviations, petting--" then in parentheses, "the fondling of another's body, and masturbation. Hesitation or uneasiness may suggests that a question needs to be pursued further." End quote. When I read this, I was blown away. I felt like, here it is, the blueprint for the system I grew up in. That was 1975. Worthiness interviews with young people officially began in the 1980s. And in the '90s, a pamphlet came out which bishops were told to use in those interviews. It was called "For the Strength of Youth." On the cover there was a black and white drawing of a bunch of teenagers, girls with perms and shoulder pads, boys who looked popular. You got one when you turned 12. I loved mine. Anyway, the pamphlet included a list of forbidden sexual acts like petting, masturbation, and also just thinking too much about sex. The church encouraged bishops to discuss the specific acts listed in the pamphlet during their interviews with young people. And they were free to ask whatever follow-ups they felt they needed to. This is how the system still works today. I had a feeling of love for my bishops. I still do. They were seen as the father of our congregation. You felt like you knew them and they knew you. They'd ask about your classes at college or follow up on your daily life. When my father was a bishop, I watched him volunteer his time in between a hectic work schedule and home life to help people find apartments, pay for groceries, be their grief counselor, visit them when they were sick. He genuinely loved and helped these people because he cared about them. And my bishops cared about me. I felt relieved when I left the office. Repenting to them lifted the weight of the guilt I'd been carrying. And often, it felt like they were just as uncomfortable asking the questions as I was answering them. But regardless of the intention or behavior of any one bishop, bishop interviews followed me into every sexual encounter. All the women I spoke to had this same problem. For example, I learned that my bishops were more lenient if I wasn't the person initiating. So when I was with guys, I'd strategically make sure they made every move, which meant I was constantly leaning against walls, pressing my boobs out and telepathically communicating, please sir, just touch one boob. But even now in my 30s, I have a really hard time with sex. Shocker. I'm no longer Mormon. I haven't been for eight years. And still, when I fool around with someone, there's a voice in my head that keeps track of what I'm doing, like a ref docking points for each progressive move. The only way to get this voice to shut up is to leave my body. So I'm there, but not there. The following morning, I wake up to this voice telling me all the things I've done wrong. This leads to panic and anxiety. And it's not like I just feel bad for a minute. The feeling lingers for days. Writing this story, I've realized something I never put together until now. I still feel bad for losing my virginity before I got married. I was 28. I wanted to do it the right way. I'd made promises to God, and to the people in my life that I'd wait for marriage. I wanted so badly to live up to their expectations. And when I made the choice to have sex, I knew what it meant. I made it knowing I would lose my family for eternity, my community, and my religion. And in spite of all that, I still did it. And what kind of a person does that make me? This is what I feel every time I have sex. I've wondered how much of this is related to these bishop interviews. And I asked a few people how they thought it impacted them. A couple women said it was easier to have sex if they didn't feel pleasure. The guilt was directly linked to enjoying it. This woman, Courtney, said something I related to a lot. Having wine before you have sex, or even smoking weed is the only way to get around it-- is if you alter your mind. And how much of that directly ties to that interview at 18? 100%. And this is Kate. I think constantly having to account to an extraordinarily judgmental outsider about your sex life leaves an external voice. Like, you know how there's like an angel and a devil in cartoons who are always on your shoulder? I think there's always like an old man on our shoulders as Mormon women. This has consequences. Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife is the sex therapist I talked to. She's a practicing Mormon and has had hundreds of patients who are current or former members of the church. She said some Mormon women, not all, learned from their bishop interviews to defer to an authority figure when it comes to sex. Of course, other parts of the religion reinforce that lesson, too. And these women, during sex, they think about what the man they're with wants or what their bishop would think. They don't think about what they want. This shuts their sexuality down. I mean some LDS women really see it as a dangerous thing, that sex and desire in and of itself is dangerous to their goodness and dangerous to their identity as a good woman, and to their perception of the ideals of what a good LDS woman does. And so they shut it down in a more fundamental way or don't develop it in a more fundamental way. And then, the task of awakening it in marriage feels almost impossible. Of course, shutting down means different things. A lot of the women I talked to said that during sex, they leave their bodies, can't even tell what they want. Rebecca was one of the women who told me she enjoys sex. But she still feels held back. She's a practicing Mormon, and she did it the right way. Married a Mormon, waited till marriage to have sex. I still sometimes will have a feeling of I'm being dirty or slutty if I enjoy this too much, or if I get too into this. Because I feel like somehow, the only pure way to have an orgasm is to be thinking about my husband, who I'm married to for eternity, and our love and worthiness before God. I don't think having those thoughts, for me, is that sexy. I don't want to think about my relationship to God. What I've started to realize these bishop interviews did to me was I had no space for privacy of any sexual thought. So if I had a sexual thought, God was eavesdropping and heard it. I have to be like, oh, no, turn the thought off. Stop, stop, stop. This is not allowed. Yeah. But I don't blame you for feeling that way, because that's some of our cultural and social programming. I don't think it's intentional. I don't think anybody sat there and thought, let's give these women these huge hang ups they're gonna struggle with the rest of their lives. But it happened. Right, they didn't plan to give us these hangups. But they did plan to scare the bejesus out of children about sex, in a way that gave us huge hang ups. I wanted to talk to the church about this to understand how it views the bishop interviews today, after the Sam Young controversy. To see if officials really grasp how much their policies had impacted us, and if the church is rethinking these practices. LDS officials haven't given interviews on this in the past. But the director of Media Relations for the church, Eric Hawkins, agreed to talk. I told him what I'd learned from my interviewees, that these bishop interviews had stayed with us. I think what you have found is a selection of individuals who have perhaps had that experience, or that feeling, whereas tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of others have felt very differently about the process, and about-- so as I say, from my perspective, it is always heartbreaking when I hear that someone leaves that conversation not having had that experience. Are these questions supposed to be that explicit? I think that would depend a little bit on the situation. One of the pieces of counsel that bishops are given is to not be too invasive, to adapt the conversation to the understanding and maturity of the young person who is there. And I think it's not necessary for a bishop to be overly explicit or probing in those questions. He wants to understand how that individual feels about what they have done, so that he can help apply the right amount of repentance, if you will. Eric says the church strongly believes that these bishop interviews with kids are a crucial part of its mission to help young people develop a close relationship with God by teaching them the standards for living a good and moral life. I pointed out to him that under the church's current guidelines, a bishop is still free to ask whatever explicit questions he wants. And inappropriate questions still seem to be happening. I mean, I guess what's the downside to making it super clear what they can and can't ask? Well, I think the conversation needs to be according to the understanding of that young person. You may have a young woman who is 11 years old, or 12 years old, 13 years old, who is completely innocent. You may have one of her counterparts who is of the same age, but very, very mature in her thinking, and the ways of the world, and so forth. And so the conversation would be very different for those two individuals. And that's what's outlined in the guidelines for bishops, as far as interviews. In other words, bishops need the flexibility to ask whatever they think is needed. He pointed out the church did revise its guidelines for bishop interviews this year to allow parents to be in the room and to share with the parents the basic topics that they'll cover beforehand. So why did you set new guidelines? I think this is a church that is always growing, and learning, and looking to do better. And I think there was seen an opportunity to improve the interactions between young people and bishops. And so those guidelines were set. And is that because the way that questions were asked before were wrong? No, I don't think so. I think it's a learning process. I think the way that the church is taking accountability is by constantly seeking to improve. You specifically said the word accountability. And I think that the church needs accountability in acknowledging that this process caused harm. I think that what the church is trying to do is to constantly improve, to look for ways in which this can be made better. Absolutely. That those interactions can improve. But I guess what I'm saying is in order to improve, there needs to be an admission. It feels a little like an argument I might get in with a boyfriend, or my husband, where I'm like-- so can you tell me that you did something wrong? And they're like, I'll do better. And you're like, no, but first you have to tell me you did something wrong. And then it's like, no, I'll do better. And it's like, will you just tell me, just so I know that you know that this was wrong? I've had those conversations with my wife, too. Uh-huh. And so do you understand what I'm asking? I do. I do. And do you understand why it's important to me to hear that? Yeah. And I think, as I said, were you to come into my office as your bishop or stake president, I would sit down and council with you, and make sure you understood-- and we would understand together, why did you feel that way? What were you feeling? And how can we make you feel better? But what I can't do is go back and change your experience, your perception, your feelings that you had at that time. Before I was baptized at the age of eight, I had to meet with the bishop. He said that I was going to be accountable for my sins from this moment on. He explained this using a dry erase board. You'll commit sins. He drew big black blobs across the white backdrop. But you can repent. He took an eraser and wiped the board until it was white again. This was a speech a lot of Mormon kids got. Back when I was in the church, I was hooked on the feeling I got when my bishops told me I was forgiven, and clean again. I could never sit with the discomfort I felt over my sexuality. And look, I no longer believe that these men speak for God or have any authority over me. But I can't shake the feeling of wanting to be clean, to have someone else who knows tell me I'm OK. I probably should accept that there is no way that board is going to stay white. Why would I even want it to? What's so bad about drawing on it? Isn't that what it's for? But then, the second I think this, I hear another voice, "such is the way of an adulterous woman-- she eateth and wipeth her mouth and sayeth, I have done no wickedness." That's what my bishops taught me. Elna Baker is one of the producers of our show. Coming up, something that might happen to you in the hospital that you would probably be unhappy about, and you would never know that it happened. Details in a minute from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program-- "But That's What Happened," stories of women in situations where something unsettling happens. And sometimes, it is even hard to explain what felt wrong. And it takes a while to sort out the truth. We've arrived at Act 2 of our program, Act 2-- "While You Were Out." Lilly Sullivan has this story of something that happens to women without their consent. And they usually never find out that it happened. Here's Lilly. About 10 years ago, Dan Wainberg was a medical student in Canada. It was his first year working in a hospital shadowing doctors. One day he goes to his first gynecological surgery. He had never been in a gynecological operating room before. So I came into the room with the patient already under a general anesthetic, so sedated, not conscious. That's routine. The patient is usually under by the time the surgeon arrives. So the lead surgeon did a pelvic exam on her, also routine, and then turned to Dan and said, now you try. And the gynecologist sent me over to the bed to do a pelvic exam on this woman. Dan had done a couple pelvic exams before, but never on somebody who was unconscious. To do a pelvic exam, a doctor inserts their fingers into a patient's vagina to examine the cervix and uterus. The doctor places another hand on the abdomen and presses down trying to catch the ovaries between the hand on the abdomen and the hand in the vagina to check for abnormalities. And while Dan was doing all this, the surgeon walked away. And he went off to do something else. And so I was left there by myself doing a pelvic exam on an unconscious woman as someone who really didn't have a lot of knowledge of what I'm supposed to be feeling for. And I thought to myself, who would consent to something like this? And I know that my mind wandered to, if the woman knew what was going on, you know, that she'd probably be pretty upset, and justifiably so. You know, I just thought, what am I doing? And what would this woman think if she were to wake up right now? As soon as this thought hit him, he stopped, walked away. I don't think anyone paid any attention to me whatsoever, including the surgeon who was supposed to be basically my supervisor, or teacher. After that surgery, well, I felt so uncomfortable with the initial exam that I mustered up the courage to talk to the surgeon, my supervisor. And I asked him to please make sure, you know, from now on, just make sure they know I'm here. And ask for their consent for me to do an exam. I don't want to be-- yeah, I just felt like I didn't want that on my conscience. It didn't feel good. Oh, yeah. How did he react? I think he just kind of brushed it off and said OK. You know-- yeah, sure. The night after that first surgery, Dan was still really upset. So he called his older sister, Sarah. She was in med school, too, a year ahead. And she was like, yeah, so? I thought about all the times that I'd been asked to do the exact same thing. And when it happened to me, I didn't really think twice about it. I actually thought, oh, this is a fantastic learning opportunity. Because I found learning the pelvic exam a little awkward also. So when the surgeon invited me to also do a pelvic exam, I thought, great. I'd love to. And I don't think it had ever occurred to me even once that I might be doing something unethical. It just seemed like a normal part of practice. It was kind of normal. Pelvic exams are hard to learn. Frankly, under the best of circumstances, they're uncomfortable, awkward. So for years in teaching hospitals, a common way to train students was that when someone was unconscious during a gynecological surgery, the head surgeon would do the exam and then a student would repeat the exam for practice. As far as consent goes, whenever anyone goes to a hospital, they sign an overall release form. At a teaching hospital, which lots of hospitals are, there's a part on the form that says something like, I acknowledge that medical students may be part of my treatment team. That's what a teaching hospital is, teaching people how to do stuff. These kinds of exams aren't just a thing in Canada. They're common in the US, too. Rectal exams happen the same way for men while they're unconscious during prostate surgery. And the more Sara thought about it, she started to feel weird, too. I think, actually, I probably felt a little bit embarrassed. So my first reaction was just to say, oh, what did you do? But in my head, I was thinking, oh, man. Why haven't I ever thought about this before? And then how did you feel about that reaction now? Do you have a different feeling about your initial-- Oh, yeah, no, I think it's horrifying, absolutely. I think, like, what's wrong with me? Why didn't this occur to me that I hadn't actually met this woman before? And it never occurred to me. And I think that's pretty horrible. Yeah, it's one of those dirty little secrets of medicine. After they hung up, Sara kept thinking about it, obsessing over the women, the patients getting these pelvic exams. Do they know that this might happen under anesthesia? And if not, how they feel about it? Sarah had to do a research project for school that year. And she wanted to look at this. I specifically started talking to my boyfriend about it. Because he had wanted to be my research partner. And I said, oh, I've got this great idea. Let's do our research project on pelvic exams that are done without consent. And he said, no way. I do not want to be your research partner for that. Why? He felt that the pelvic exam under anesthesia is an incredibly important learning opportunity for male students. And he thought that even by looking at this issue, we were opening up a big can of worms. And he didn't want to have anything to do with it. He thought it was wrong that I was even looking into this issue. Oh, wow. Yeah. So you guys had some-- We were not a match made in heaven. He never came around on that one. Sara found that most of her classmates had done exams like this, practice exams on anesthetized women. And lots of them had never really thought about it either until Sara pointed it out to them. Did you notice that women thought something different from men or was it all-- Yes. Yes, I think a lot of men felt the same way my boyfriend did, that this is how we're going to learn. Because women don't always let us do this when they're awake. So we need to learn while they're asleep. For sure. The next year, she decided to survey a bunch of female patients at her teaching hospital and see what they said. Did they know that medical students might do exams? How did the women feel about it? Do patients want to be asked for consent beforehand? No one had ever studied that before. At the time, I was like, come on, what's the big deal? Let's ask the question and find out what the answer is. I thought it's about time somebody really answers the question-- if you ask women, are they going to say yes? Right? Are they going to say yes or are they going to say no? That was the question that nobody had asked yet. Here's what Sara and her research partners found. They polled 102 female surgery patients at their teaching hospital's pelvic floor disorder center. So that's women who are likely to have had pelvic surgery or who were likely to have it in the near future. The vast majority, 81% of them, had no idea that a med student might do a pelvic exam on them while they were asleep. And most said, yeah, they wanted to be asked. And here's the most surprising thing they found. 53% of women said they actually wouldn't mind being examined by a student while unconscious as long as someone asked them for permission beforehand. So a real find-- women would say yes. All you had to do was ask. So just ask, right? Problem solved. After Sara and her co-authors published their research, people flipped out. The Globe and Mail wrote an article about it. People were shocked to learn that this was something that went on at all. Soon afterward, the medical guidelines in Canada changed. The Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, also the Association of Professors of Obstetrics and Gynecology revised their positions. They said that doctor should always ask for specific consent for this kind of exam. In the US, the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the Association of American Medical Colleges, they've also condemned this kind of pelvic exam. It's illegal in five states, Virginia, California, Hawaii, Illinois, and Oregon. A lot of teaching hospitals say they don't do it anymore, that it's a thing of the past. But medical students say it still happens. A couple of years ago, a biomedical ethicist named Phoebe Friesen had just started teaching medical ethics at Mount Sinai Medical School in New York. The students who were following doctors in hospitals had to talk about ethical dilemmas in medicine. And when I was working with students who were in their OB-GYN clerkship, a lot of them brought up this practice and the fact that they'd been asked to perform pelvic exams on women under anesthetic who hadn't consented. And this one came up all the time, in nearly every session that I did. And generally, everyone was often sort of seeking permission or consensus that this is OK. Wow, so all the students had experienced this? Yeah, so I think as long as they were participating in gynecological surgeries, it was really the norm. But I think a lot of them felt kind of confused or maybe ashamed. I think a lot of them were seeking reassurance that that was OK. And I just ended up talking to so many who felt uncomfortable. They were doing these pelvic exams at a bunch of different hospitals around New York City. Phoebe had never heard anything about these kinds of exams. She was horrified. She started asking everyone, random students she'd meet at conferences, parties. And she found that students had experienced it everywhere, at hospitals all over the country. Because teaching hospitals take a lot of patients without insurance or who are on Medicaid, these practice exams end up being done disproportionately on poor women, women of color, homeless women. Phoebe was surprised to learn there are a lot of people who are still in favor of it. And I think especially there was a lot of men who were dismissive, and there was a lot of people from within the medical community. Or a lot of people would say things like, well, what you don't know can't hurt you. Oh my god. That kind of response, which I felt like was really, really weird. So she decided to dissect the ethics of it and put together an article for the Journal of Bioethics. It's one of the leading journals in the field. She parsed out five common arguments in support of examining unconscious patients, evaluated each of them, and concluded that the practice is unethical. The response from doctors? Not so good. Some said these exams are necessary for teaching. Some said these exams never happen, which, of course, can't both be true. One argument Phoebe has heard a lot, the vagina is just a body part. . Be a professional. Don't be a prude. She calls this the "is the vagina different from the mouth" objection. Sara heard this one a lot when she was doing her research. Here's Sara. So who cares? This is just another exam. This is just another thing that medical students do in the hospital. Why is it different than looking in someone's mouth, or looking at their hip? How is this different? How is it different? The thing that really makes it different is not what we, as doctors, think about it. The thing that makes it different is what the patients think about it. And if you ask women, they think it's different. So it's different, yeah. For me, I would want to know if somebody was going to be examining my vagina while I was asleep. Absolutely, I would like to know. I mean, I've been in that situation. I've been there. I've been that crying woman waiting to go into surgery. So I understand what it feels like. Sara has had gynecological surgery under anesthesia. After a miscarriage. I've been in an operating room, asleep. You're asleep in a cold operating room with your feet up in the air, and a bunch of strangers around you. And you're exposed for all these people to see. It's very emotional. Yeah, it is. Yeah, because you're very vulnerable when you're asleep. I mean, before I delivered a baby, they asked me if I wanted a med student or a resident in the room. So I think if I'm asleep, I should be offered the same courtesy. For this story, I wanted to talk to women who have been examined under anesthesia without their consent. But I couldn't find anyone. These exams don't become part of a woman's medical records. They don't go into their charts at the hospital. And of course, this happens while they're unconscious. So pretty much, by definition, anyone who's gone through this will probably never know. Lilly Sullivan. (SINGING) Why should I change 'cause the world is evil? Why rearrange the way that I am? Our program was produced today by Lilly Sullivan. The people who put together today's show includes Elna Baker, Ben Calhoun, Dana Chivvis, Sean Cole, Neil Drumming, Jarrett Floyd, Stephanie Foo, Damien Grave, Michelle Harris, David Kestenbaum, Anna Martin, Miki Meek, Stowe Nelson, Catherine Raimondo, Nadia Reiman, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu. Our senior producer is Brian Reed. Our managing editor is Susan Burton. Special thanks today to Greg Prince, Matt Bowman, Taylor Petrey, Peggy Fletcher Stack, Louise Seamster, Alexandra Duncan, and Sue Ross. Our website-- thisamericanlife.org, where you can listen to our archive of over 650 episodes for absolutely free. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, he and I ended up at this fancy party at the Kardashians' last week. Some of his cocktail banter, I don't know, it was so awkward. Is there anything in your life, Kim, that hasn't been resolved with the proper priesthood authority? I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
My friend Etgar, his mom does not take no for an answer. Etgar's Israeli. Etgar Keret, we run his short stories here on the radio show now and then. Anyway, years ago, Etgar's older brother was in the army serving in Lebanon. Israel had just invaded Lebanon. It was war. And it sounds incredible to us, but the policy of the Israeli army is that if it's at all possible, you go home on leave every two weeks. And Lebanon's close, just next door to Israel. Etgar says his brother was coming home every month. And then that stopped. He wasn't getting any leave. And my brother didn't come home for almost two months, and it drove my mother crazy. And she decided that she should get my brother back home. And it's very difficult to deal with anything during the war, because everybody is hysterical and crazy. But she decided that she needs to speak to the chief of staff. And she started calling-- And the chief of staff is the head of the army? Yeah, it's like the head general. For the entire army? Yeah. Etgar explained her strategy was simple. She'd call the guy's office, talk to whoever answered. And she would talk for long enough until she would have something that she could say offended her or made her angry. And then she asked to speak with that person's superior. She did the same thing with that person and then that person's superior. And so on and on and on and on. And in the end, she found herself speaking to the head general, Rafael Eitan, who is one of Israel's most famous kind of war heroes. And she said to him, listen, General Eitan, I know that you're fighting a war. And I really don't want to waste any of your time, so I will make it simple. My son didn't get a leave from the army for the past two months. I give you 24 hours to send him back home. If you know what's good for you, he'll be back before tomorrow evening. Wait, if you know what's good for you? Yeah. And the guy says to her, I just want to understand, Mrs. Keret. Are you threatening me? And she says, yes, I am. I'm threatening you. And I didn't want to put it in the subtext, because I know that you're busy. So if you know what's good for you, you'll send my son back home. And he says to her, Mrs. Keret, do you know who I am? And she said, yeah, you're Rafael Eitan, the war hero. And he said to her, if you know anything about me, then you know that I'm not easily scared. So my mother said, yeah, but I don't think you had many chance to fight with elderly Holocaust survivors, who are 5 foot tall and weigh 82 pounds. And I want to tell you something, and I'll make it very simple and very quick. After you quit the army, you either go to politics or you go to the free market. In both cases, you're going to be very exposed. In both cases, every time, there'll be a TV camera around or journalist. You'll have this elderly lady sitting in the first row, shouting at you, accusing you of any bad things that you might have made and maybe of some bad things that you've never made. Because I'm a very good liar. And you really don't want that. And at that stage, he hung up the phone in her face. The next afternoon, Etgar's brother arrived home. So they pulled him out of his ranks, told him to get on a helicopter. He had no idea what was going on, nor did anybody else. He assumed some family member died or something, Etgar says. And he got his break. He came and took a shower, slept for 16 hours. My mother saw that he was OK. And a day after that, he went back to Lebanon. I should say, we cannot confirm the details of this story, including the dialogue between Etgar's mom and Rafael Eitan. This happened over 30 years ago. Eitan's dead. When we got Etgar's mom, she said, sure, whatever Etgar says. But there are many stories of Etgar's mom doing things like this. There was a time she threatened a mugger so effectively that he abandoned the idea of mugging her in the middle of the mugging. There was a showdown with the president of Poland that ended when the president of Poland finally gave her the passport she demanded, as somebody who had been born in Poland. Etgar is the same way in certain situations. He doesn't threaten. That's not who he is. He just reasons people to death. Case in point, a couple of years ago, he and his wife Shira and their then 8-year-old son, Lev, were traveling, and they left a backpack on an airplane. In the backpack was Etgar's iPad, which had all of his son's games on it. Lev had spent months on his games working his way up the levels of the games. Now, that was gone. Lev was really messed up about it. Any parent knows what I'm talking about. And they called the airline. The airline says, no problem. When you get to the airport for the return flight, go to lost and found. It'll be there. So comes the day. They're on their way home. They get to the airport. This is in Rome. They can't find the lost and found. Time is getting short. They've got a plane to catch. Finally, a guy at the car rental-- super nice guy-- offers to take them to it. His name was Massimo. And he took us to the lost and found place, where there was this really, really nasty woman. And I said to her, you know you have our bag. And we're supposed to take it, and we're going to fly really soon. I said to her, I can actually see it. And I pointed to the bag, because it was behind her. She says to Etgar, she needs a letter from the airline saying he was on the same flight as the backpack. Etgar doesn't have this letter. She said, sir, I'm not going to give you the bag without the letter. I'm sorry. And I said to her, but I go to Israel. I never get to see the bag. And she said, you know, that's your problem. As somebody who knows Etgar, I'll just say, wrong move. Something deep and powerful kicks in inside him. My wife said to me, OK, let's go, so we won't miss the flight. I said, no, just a moment. And I said to the woman, look, don't give me the bag, but just do this kind of thing. Please, unzip the outside pocket of it, and see if there are crackers in it with a Hebrew writing on the package of crackers. And she said, why would you want to do that? I said to her, I just ask you to please do it. And she went and said, yeah, there are crackers in it. So I said to her, so we both agree that this is my bag? She says, yeah, this is your bag. So I said to her, so would you please give it to me? She said, no, sir, I won't give it to you, unless you give me this letter. And I said to her, but you understand that my son is here, and his game is here. Are you a parent? And she said, yes, I'm a parent. And I said to her, so think about it. If your son had a game he really wanted to win, you had to go and confront with the person who said, yeah, I know this game is yours. But your son is never going to get it just because of some kind of technicality. You're Italian. Be Italian. Be warm, be nice, be like in a Fellini movie. Give me the bag. And she said, no, sir. I'm not going to give you the bag, and you're wasting your time. You better go to your flight, because you're going to miss your flight. And Shira said, let's go. She isn't going to give it to you. And I said to her, but don't you understand, as a human being, there will be one day when you die, and you look back at your life, and you think about this day. And when you think about this day, you'll think about this father who came with a child. And basically, technically, you could solve all the problems, but you chose to stick with some kind of technicality. Would that be a nice dying thought to leave the world with? And she was beginning to say, sir, I'm not going to give you anything. But as she was about to say that, Massimo, the guy from the car rental, jumped over the counter, picked up the bag. And she said to him, what are you doing? And he said to her, I can't take it anymore. And he jumped back over the counter, and he gave me the bag. And she said to him, if you don't get the bag back, I'm going to call airport security, and they're going to arrest you. So I said to him, look, it's not a good solution. Take the bag. And Massimo said to me, look at me. Do as I say. Run. These things happen so often that Etgar's wife, Shira, worries that someday, somebody is just going to go nuts on Etgar or something, hurt him. There are situations when my wife just says to me, just shut up. Shut up. Shut up now. Don't talk about it anymore. Shut up. And I always listen to my wife. But when it starts, I can't stop it. But at the same time, I'll say to myself, I'm this asshole, who just keep arguing and doesn't move on. And I really think that this has to do with something very kind of primal that when I was a little child, my parents were both Holocaust survivors. They kind of raised me to say people are good. But sometimes, they don't get it that they're good. So you have to kind of tell them things a few times, maybe slap them around a little. And then they understand that they're good. And then they're going to listen, and everything's going to work. Well, today, on our program, we have a story about somebody else who can't help himself. He sees something he needs to fix, he needs to take care of, he needs to make it right. And then through sheer force of will, he makes things happen boldly, heroically. Though is it heroic if you can't stop yourself? From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Act 1, Loudspeaker. So we start today with a guy, who-- I don't want to overstate this, and it sounds really big when you say this out loud, but I really think it might be the truth-- a guy who, with sheer force of will, utterly changed our politics and created the political world we live in today, alongside a second man who helped him. Zoe Chace tells the tale. It's probably helpful in telling this story to remember for a second what politics was like before today-- how different, informal, and quaint things used to sound. This is President Reagan walking onto the South Lawn. It's 1983, April, but apparently, a cold day. One of the lawmakers is looking very Soviet in his big coat and fur collar. Well, I want to extend to all of you a very warm welcome. Something ought to be warm. Reagan's in this '70s, all brown suit, with a brown tie. But it's especially fitting that so many of us from so many different backgrounds-- young and old, the working and the retired, Democrat and Republican-- should come together for the signing of this landmark legislation. Social security legislation, a major bipartisan compromise involving raising taxes and cutting spending to things that only go together when it's a bipartisan compromise. And now, as a special treat, I would like to ask two of our leaders from Congress. First, to step forward for a few words is Speaker of the House of Representatives, the honorable Tip O'Neill. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, my distinguished colleagues in government, this is indeed a happy day. A special treat, the Democratic leader. The friendship between Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill is one of the most famous friendships in American politics. These days, it's regularly trotted out, like a fable, to demonstrate what the good old days were like back when things worked. If you knew anything about Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, you know he was a bipartisan schmoozer, a big Muppety guy, who took up a lot of space in the room. He'd invite members from both parties to poker nights in DC. He was in Congress for decades and by the time he was Speaker, he was a living legend type. We got along. And Nancy and I had Tip and his wife over for dinner. This is Reagan talking to William F. Buckley. Then one day, I picked up the paper and read where he had made a statement about me that was pretty harsh. And I called him, and I said, Tip, I thought we had a relationship here, where we could do business together. And, oh, now, I read in the paper that you said-- And he interrupted me and said, well, buddy, that's just politics. He said, after 6 o'clock, we're buddies. We're friends. I did take it that every once in a while, when we had a meeting, I would visibly set my watch at above 6 o'clock. To be fair, O'Neill had been known to call Reagan a real Ebenezer Scrooge. Truth is, their relationship was complicated. They disagreed profoundly about a lot of stuff. But that's the point. It's why people tell each other this story. The two were able to come together and talk, compromise, and pass legislation. Anyway, here we are today. The MS-13 lover, Nancy Pelosi. People are mean about each other now in public, all the time, in particular, the president. And of course, people fight back. This is Congresswoman Maxine Waters. He's not a role model for our children. He is a liar. He's a con man. Maxine Waters, a very low IQ individual. You ever see her? And Conor Lamb-- Lamb the Sham, right? Lamb the Sham. Lamb the Sham never caught on. But you know what I'm talking about. It's different now. Here, I want to lay out for you one theory of the case as to how we got from there to here. We've always had two parties. But we didn't always have two teams like we do now. Red versus blue, us versus them. Each side routinely demonizes the other side as un-American. You sign up for one issue-- the wall, the Mueller investigation, Colin Kaepernick, climate change-- you basically sign up for all of them. It wasn't always so zero sum like it's become. You could explain what happened in different ways. But I'm going to argue it was the work of these two guys that got us to this point, two guys, one quarterbacking the other. And so without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, the first of the two men who created the modern world. You know him from Fox News. You know him from Republican primaries gone by, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. I hope I can convey this in a way that you can really feel. If we lose, we will be able to look our children and our grandchildren in the face and say, we did everything we could to save this country. Gingrich was a weird, nerdy kid growing up. People close to him say he always pictured himself as a historical figure, someone who would bend the course of American history, someone who anticipated stories like the one I'm telling you now. From his teenage years, he thought this way. He ran for Congress twice in West Georgia, lost, and then finally won a seat in the House in 1978 with a 1778 attitude, like there was a revolution on, and the country's very existence was at stake. We're fighting a war, Gingrich said back then, a war for power. Raise hell. Raise hell all the time. His goal was to retake the House of Representatives. At the time, an impossible dream. Republicans had been in the minority for 24 years. People called it the permanent Democratic Congress. Once Newt finally got there, he discovered, as he'd suspected, was a place full of losers with Stockholm syndrome. It was chummy, mostly guys in suits and ties, smoking cigars, playing poker together and generally, getting along, hanging out, talking to each other. Also, depending on your perspective, it was a corrupt cesspool of bribes and giveaways. That's definitely how Gingrich saw it. Republicans didn't have much power, but they'd go along to get along and occasionally do some deals. And most of them had stopped imagining it could be any other way. I learned most of this story from the great political reporter Steve Kornacki. He'd just published a book about this time called The Red and The Blue: The 1990s and the Birth of Political Tribalism. He's also that excited guy at the big board on MSNBC during elections. His arrival in the House coincides with a historic moment in the house, and that is the first television camera is placed in the chamber in 1979-- his first year there. And its C-Span. C-Span may not sound exciting to you, but A, it's still awesome. And B, it's a major change. Now anyone can see for themselves what's going on in Congress if they want to. And people in Congress can speak to anyone on the outside. Newt gets it right away. The rest of the House does not. There's a lot of opposition to it, because this is a club here. But once the camera's there, most members, they just kind of ignore it. And they leave at the end of the business day. And they go and they do whatever it is they do after business hours. To Newt Gingrich, here it is. I want people to notice this around the country. I got an audience now. Yeah, it's Twitter. The gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Gingrich, is recognized for 60 minutes. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to pick up where Mr. Walker left off on the document entitled What's the Matter with the Democratic Foreign Policy by Mr. Frank Gregorsky. OK, not Twitter exactly. He's professorial, pedantic, not a lot of flair. Somehow, someday, this country has got to learn to live with revolution in the third world. It's endemic. And he starts claiming there's this rule in the house that at the close of business and any day, any member can claim the floor for any reason they want for pretty much any amount of time they want. And it's called special orders. And Gingrich starts claiming these special order speeches that were 10 o'clock at night, 11 o'clock at night. It's an empty chamber. His colleagues are asleep. They're drinking. They're not there. They're not listening to this. They're never even going to hear about this-- most of them. But Gingrich knows there are people all across America, who've got these new cable boxes in their house, who are scanning the dial and seeing what's out there. And some of them are going to pause when they see him. And what they're hearing is he's not giving a dry speech about and now, if I can direct your attention to subsection 3 of the agriculture funding-- he's giving these grand speeches about American politics, and an American identity, and the corrupt Democrat machine. Often Gingrich or one of his few allies was explaining how the Democrats were fringy, communist radicals. The whole party, everyone in the party was, more or less, a socialist. It was sort of his version of all Democrats want open borders, but less punchy. Since communism doesn't strike them as an independent, inexorable force, feeding on totalitarian personalities and concepts, McGovern Democrats don't fear it. Trash America, indict the president, and give the benefit of every doubt to Marxist regimes. That's the standard formula. He is producing what you would now recognize as a cable news show on the floor of the House. And he's performing for the camera, and he's giving his monologue. He's giving his monologue on the decay of the Democratic Party, the decay of American culture, the promise of a Republican Party that embraces opportunity and responsibility, and all these things. And there is an audience that starts to tune in. And he knows it. He gets that. He gets the potential of that before anybody else. Newt believed there was a Republican majority out there. Because just a decade earlier, Richard Nixon had trounced the Democratic candidate for president. He won 49 out of the 50 states. Clearly, there was an appetite for Republican rule. But Republicans were still a minority in the House. People somehow weren't syncing up their Republican votes into one Republican ticket. What he needed to do was paint all the Democrats more clearly as the enemy to the voters. And he'd do that by associating all of them with a candidate who'd lost to Nixon-- George McGovern. George McGovern was sort of the Bernie Sanders of his day. So lefty, he even freaked out a lot of Democrats in '72-- the counterculture, anti-war candidate. If Republicans were able in 1972 to score that epic of a landslide running against the Democratic Party of George McGovern and the activists behind him, Newt Gingrich believed that's the key to the Republican Party winning everything. If you nationalize politics, and you make voters everywhere in the country see in whatever Democrat it is in their backyard, who's running for whatever office it is-- Congress, or Sheriff, or state legislature, or dog catcher-- if you get the voters to see that Democrat as no different from George McGovern and the folks around him, well, you know how those voters are going to react. They're going to go, and they're going to vote Republican. And so his idea was to make voters across the country judge politics based on what they saw coming out of Washington, based on what they saw coming out of the national media. Based on what they saw on C-Span, where over and over again, Newt brought up McGovern. In the late '60s and early '70s, it became a truism with the entire American left from bomb throwers in Chicago, to eastern writers, to progressive, pinstriped supporters of Eugene McCarthy and McGovern. The Southeast Asia would be fine once the US left. Attacking congressmen by congressmen by name and footnotes. Congressman Harkin, on June 26, 1979 told the house that the Sandinistas knew more about nurturing democracy than America did. Quote, "should the United States feel empowered to meddle once again in Nicaragua?" This speechifying made the Speaker of the House furious. You remember the Speaker, the affable Muppet, Tip O'Neill. Newt Gingrich and a couple of the other guys, Gingrich acolytes, are talking smack about specific congressmen. They're questioning their patriotism on the public record, and they aren't even there to respond. That was not done. It was against the gentlemanly code of the House. As Speaker, Tip O'Neill controls the cameras. And he orders them to pan out and show the empty room that Gingrich and his buddies are addressing. Bob Walker, Republican from Pennsylvania, happens to be speaking right then. And he takes great umbrage when this happens. But I do want to take a note of something that's evidently happening right now, which is a change of procedure here. Tip O'Neill thinks this will make the guys look petty talking to no one. Watching it, it's like a surreal Beckett play. A tiny man at the bottom of the screen gestures wildly from a podium as though he's speaking to a big crowd, but he's surrounded by empty chairs. It is my understanding that as I deliver this special order this evening, the cameras are panning this chamber, demonstrating that there is no one here in the chamber to listen to these remarks. That is evidently the work of a change in the pattern of rules around here. It is one more example of how this body is run, the kind of arrogance of power that the members are given that kind of change with absolutely no warning. I see the gentleman from California, Mr. Coelho, was standing in the back of the chamber just a moment ago. Mr. Coelho has talked in recent weeks about shutting off these special orders and not allowing them to even be seen in the countryside. And he stands in the back of the chamber now smiling. I have to feel that perhaps he is getting worried that some of the things that are being said in this chamber in these special orders are, in fact, influencing people out across the country to think that this body is something less than what the American people think it ought to be. Lots of C-Span watchers today understand the congressmen are putting on a performance. There isn't always someone in the audience. But it was new back then. This all sets up a wild showdown between Newt and the Speaker Tip O'Neill. A few days later, Gingrich gets time on the floor. OK, I'll be delighted to yield to our distinguished Speaker if he wishes to continue this. The Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill asking Gingrich to yield, so he can say something. And Newt does, knowing the Speaker is going to yell at him. This time, the chamber is packed with congressmen and reporters both. Here's Tip O'Neill. My personal opinion is this. You deliberately stood on that well before an emptied House and challenged these people. And you challenge their Americanism. And it's the lowest thing that I've ever seen in my 32 years in Congress. Mr. Speaker, if I may reclaim my time. As insults go, in the US House, circa 1984, this is big, so big, Trent Lott, Republican from Mississippi, standing near the Speaker says, I move we take the Speaker's words down. I move we take the Speaker's words down. This means that would Tip O'Neill just said to Gingrich is so offensive, so toxic that he wants the wrongness of it officially acknowledged, perhaps even struck from the historical record as though it had never been said. For five full minutes, everyone shuffles around, clutching their pearls about Newt, about the Speaker's behavior, how do we preserve the dignity of the House. The clerk reads out the offending speech once again so that the Chair can decide what to do about it. The Chair feels that type of characterization should not be used in a debate. This is like saying, that was out of line. Don't do that again. That was very bad. But it doesn't actually erase the words from the historical record. Still, it was an epic showdown. Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill being scolded in front of America. Maybe it's hard to understand what a coup this is for a younger congressman. But think of him as a producer, a producer of his newly-formed experimental cable news show on C-Span, how expertly produced this moment was. Everyone's in the room. The Speaker of the House basically promotes Gingrich's late night program. Then the Speaker gets called out in front of the whole country, and he looks arrogant and mean. And Newt Gingrich is at the center of the room, like a conductor, pointing from one guy to the next guy, doling out time, as the Speaker gets red in the face and yells over the room. Does the gentleman from Georgia yield? The gentleman, Mr. Weaver-- Does the gentleman yield? And the gentleman, Mr. Walker, if they would express their opinion to the members of the floor, it would be fine. Point of parliamentary inquiry. And the story is covered on the nightly news. This is a turning point for Newt Gingrich. He's now the Pied Piper, and other Republicans start rallying to his causes. Not long after this episode, Tip O'Neill retires. And he's replaced by Speaker Jim Wright. Newt sees an opening to take Wright down. He thinks it'll rally the Republicans in the House. It's a battle they can win. Wright is both cocky and dismissive of the minority party, with none of the hail buddy Tip O'Neill warmth. It'll be a branding exercise for the new aggressive Republican Party Newt was selling. Here's what happens. He reads a story in the Washington Post about the new Speaker getting $0.50 on the dollar for every one of his books he's selling. It's more of a pamphlet than a book, actually, but it's a way to give the congressman backdoor donations. The people buying it were like the local Teamsters in his district and supporters at rallies. Newt talks to the papers about this, compares Wrights to Mussolini, makes speeches. Think of it as though he's standing on his tiptoes, shouting over the heads of Congress to the American people-- drain the swamp. That's his intention. Again it's just the idea that here's this clubby, elite, arrogant institution that the corrupt Democrat machine is powering. And they are so disdainful of you everyday Americans that this is how they behave. And so Gingrich is calling for an ethics committee investigation on the House Speaker. It's like shooting the general. The code of the House is you don't do this. Newt's striking at the top of the food chain. It's brazen. I want to say here, as tactical as Gingrich's attack on Wright was, from one perspective, this was an attack on corrupt, lazy Democrats that was long overdue. It felt idealistic for everyone sick of being pushed around in the minority. Gingrich promised a new system that was less corrupt, more transparent, more accountable to the voters, not just like we're putting on a play that we're two parties. But at 6:00 PM, we dropped the mask and make it work. Democrats freaked out when this happened, but Republicans were getting into it. It's not like Gingrich launched the campaign, and the entire Republican Party signed the letter, and that's it. But they didn't pull him aside and say stop. And I think, even a couple of years earlier with Tip O'Neill, that would have happened. Newt gets his ethics investigation into the Speaker's behavior. Wright defends himself petulantly on the House floor. It is true, I think, the people on my staff were eager to sell these books. I've got to accept some responsibility for that if it was wrong. But the rule doesn't say it was wrong. It's kind of, yes, I had a private email server, but it wasn't that big a deal. You know by now how that goes over. After an investigation, the most powerful man in the House, who had served for 34 years, is forced to resign. Wright gives a speech on the House floor that reminded me of Jeff Flake retiring from the Senate last year. And it is grievously hurtful to our society when vilification becomes an accepted form of political debate, negative campaigning becomes a full-time occupation, when members of each party become self-appointed vigilantes carrying out personal vendettas against members of the other party. And he frames it in terms of something wrong is happening in this institution. In God's name, that's not what this institution's supposed to be all about. When I came here, a congressman's word was a congressman's word, and that mattered for something. When I came here, we didn't question each other's honor. I mean, it's all subtext to all of this. He's not using his name, obviously, but the subtext to all of this is, this is Newt Gingrich. Harsh personal attacks on one another's motives and one another's character drown out the quiet logic of serious debate on important issues. Surely, that's unworthy of our institution. Jim Wright painted his resignation as a sacrifice on the altar of civility. He seemed to think his resignation would be so dramatic, it would put an end to the wars Gingrich had started in the House. Obviously, the opposite is true. Republicans in Congress are galvanized by Wright's fall and Newt's tactics to get him out. The wars that Gingrich dreamed of are starting to materialize. Newt becomes the second most powerful Republican in the House, and he starts making himself into a franchise in the mid '80s. He starts running this organization called GOPAC. It's basically a candidate training organization and fundraising tool. That's where he develops these audiotapes, little by-mail cassette tapes that teach potential candidates how to do Newt's divisive brand of politics. John Boehner has talked about driving around, listening to tapes like this in the car. I don't want to repeat it. But I will just say, I have said this now for six months. And every audience I say it to nods yes and understands. You cannot maintain civilization with 12-year-olds having babies, 15-year-olds shooting each other, 17-year-olds dying of AIDS, and 18-year-olds getting a diploma they can't read. And I stop audiences and say, now, if you disagree with that, and you think you can maintain a civilization with those things going on, the rest of what I'm going to say is irrelevant. You're not us. I don't want to waste your time. You're not us. You're on one team or the other. So that's a lot. Gingrich is almost at the height of his power. He has an army of Republicans falling in line using the same language that they're going into battle-- he has media attention. But it's the same old, entrenched Democratic Congress. The Republicans keep winning these big presidential victories, but the House is stuck with that permanent Republican minority. That's when the second guy comes into this story, the guy that made Newt Gingrich's dreams finally come true. And no, I don't mean Democratic President Bill Clinton, though, you could certainly argue that that is why Newt gets his wish. But something happens before that-- someone. This is a man, who, I think, has had an astonishing impact on America. He is, in many ways, the quintessential American. Here's Newt Gingrich introducing him at a training event for Republican candidates in 1995. One of the reasons I believe in the end we'll win is the person who's about to talk to you. We now have a media giant who stands astride the entire of society. Join me in welcoming a man who is creating the 21st century-- Rush Limbaugh. Rush Limbaugh was the perfect tool for Newt's mission. He and Newt had basically the same views. But Rush was outrageous and exciting. He made his listeners feel like they were part of a righteous underground movement, the only people who were still sane in a world gone crazy and stupid. Thank you. Thank you very much. Nice to be with all of you extremists tonight. It's nice to be with like-minded souls, who want to starve our children and get our old folks sick and dying in the gutter. It's so nice to be with so many of you. I could just look out there. I see in so many hearts and faces the desire to poison the water and the air. Gee, isn't it great to be together here tonight? Rush's communications' ambitions were just as high as Newt's political ones. He never wanted to be in politics. He just wanted to make the greatest radio show ever. Half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair. It's The Rush Limbaugh Program. From New York and our flagship station-- He set the standard for political talk radio. And of course-- wait, I have it right here-- widely imitated. Rush was funny. Did you know that the White House drug test is a multiple choice test? He could also be cruel. He said things like if you don't want to get AIDS, don't have gay sex. He was heavily anti-political correctness. He ended up acting almost as Newt's de facto interpreter. He zhuzhed up his message. Rush doesn't sound like a nerdy YouTube professor. Gingrich talked about saving America from liberal politicians. But Limbaugh sharpened the Us vs. Them. Democrats were about this. Republicans were about that. This is from Rush's TV show. All right, Zoe Baird is in big trouble. She's been nominated as attorney general, but as you all know, she hired some illegal aliens to take care of her kids. Now, she only makes $660,000. As Cokie Roberts of ABC says, she had the best line. With that kind of money, she could hire Mary Poppins. Why is she out there hiring illegal aliens? Now, I have a couple of points about this I want to make that I don't think anybody else has made, except me in other places. In case you haven't heard it, you should hear it, because it's brilliant points. Bill Clinton's nominee for attorney general, Zoe Baird, hired an undocumented immigrant as a nanny for her kids, didn't pay social security taxes. At the time, I was 11. I remember it well. She was the only other Zoe I'd ever heard of. So I was thrilled. Zoe paid the money back after she was nominated. And neither Senate Democrats or Republicans saw it as a big deal at first. But Newt Gingrich, that's the nerve of politics that Newt Gingrich is just conditioned to look for. And it's like, God, could it be any bigger? You've got a Democratic president coming in. And for attorney general, the top law enforcement officer in the country, he's nominating a woman who just blatantly flouted social security taxes. It's just that populist nerve of they get away with things you don't. They live lives of privilege you can't imagine. They lord it over you. They don't have to worry about the things you worry about. It touched all of those nerves. Gingrich got it immediately. He's railing against this. Limbaugh got it immediately. He's railing against this. And what happens is the senators, who are in the committee and don't feel this immediately, they start feeling it because their phones start ringing off the hook. There are Democrats who start saying after a couple of days that their office calls are, like, 90 to 1 against Zoe Baird's confirmation. I mean, this is widespread. And then they feel the pressure. They feel the pressure that Gingrich and Limbaugh had stoked. And it kills the nomination. When Newt needed to communicate something to voters, he now had a direct line to millions of them listening to Rush every afternoon. One afternoon, I'm in the middle of a big fight here. And I called Rush Limbaugh's program director, and I said, here is exactly what's going on. He turned on C-Span. He could see what was going on. It was an issue they cared about. And Rush went straight into talking about it. He's got somewhere between-- I don't know-- 4 and 14 million people. It's a lot, and they're intense. An hour later, I had members walking up to me on the floor saying, what did you do? Because literally, in some places, their phones are so jammed, they couldn't use them. That's from the documentary Rush Limbaugh's America. It describes how Newt would just fax talking points out to talk show hosts around the country. It was like he was calling in airstrikes. I want to read to you now a paragraph from a letter that Newt Gingrich sent to all Republican members. Newt wasn't just stirring the pot with divisive politics. He did have a policy vision. He got people to unite under it. Going into the 1994 midterm elections, hundreds of Republican candidates signed on to this thing-- the Contract with America. For a moment, they were all literally on the same page with Newt Gingrich. The contract promised to fix everything they thought had gone wrong after 40 years of one-party control of the House. There were anti-corruption measures targeted at the Congress itself, plus a slate of 10 proposals to balance the budget, cut welfare, do tougher sentencing, lower taxes, basically, a limited government, law-and-order agenda. They ran the contract in full in an ad in TV Guide, because everyone read TV Guide, and they'd open it up several times a week. And with that, Newt Gingrich, of course, got his majority, like he'd always dreamed, and became Speaker of the House in 1995. He moved into the office held by Jim Wright and Tip O'Neil before him. Here's Democrat Dick Gephardt handing over the gavel. With resignation, but with resolve, I hereby end 40 years of democratic rule of this House. Newt Gingrich pledges to work across the aisle, as they always do, though, for the first time, Republicans don't have to. It's an epic hugely significant victory. Though it was Newt's dream, many people called it the Limbaugh Congress. How does it feel to be part of a majority that's right? It wasn't just the majority they'd gotten. People seem to be signing on to their vision of the country. That it was split into two clear camps. The Democrats were amoral, welfare state-loving, politically correct feminists. Republicans were responsible, balanced, budget-promoting, normal, regular Americans. One of the questions I was asked as the reporters were peppering me was, do you think Newt will moderate his stance now that he is the Speaker of the House? And I said, better not. From the moment Gingrich becomes Speaker, things get pretty red versus blue. One Republican I talked to this week quoted to me from memory, indignant, something ABC News anchor Peter Jennings said on the air when Republicans finally took the House and installed Gingrich as Speaker. Jennings said the voters had a temper tantrum. The nation can't be run by an angry 2-year-old. This Republican's point was it wasn't just Rush Limbaugh who is stoking the fires of partisan warfare. It was the mainstream media, what he called the liberal media. It was a new day in Congress. The Speaker and the president-- Gingrich and Clinton-- they did not hang out. The politics that follow are personal and vicious, as I'm sure you know. It's a storm of whitewater, Hillarycare, government shutdown, Vince Foster, impeachment proceedings. Seems like the two sides couldn't stand each other. When Timothy McVeigh blew up a federal office building in Oklahoma City, Clinton gives a speech blaming, in part, talk radio for spreading hate. It was gridlock politics. Depending how you saw it, it was obstructionism for its own sake or obstructionism in defense of bigger ideas that were finally part of the conversation. People signed up for red or signed up for blue. Politics is team sports, no compromises. In other words, we've arrived at today. The whole reason I wanted to remind myself of Newt and that time were these past midterm elections. They felt like the extreme sports version of Newt's game plan. Just like he worked really hard to make every Democrat into George McGovern, the campaign that the Republicans ran tried to make every Democrat into a caravan-loving, Kavanaugh-hating Nancy Pelosi. Newt himself was on Fox a bunch. And his lieutenant-- What an honor. This is so exciting. I have been watching Trump rallies from the very first one. Rush Limbaugh was the opener for Trump's last rally before the midterm vote. I was just talking to people backstage. And somebody said that the president and all of us have been labeled by some Democrats to the media-- divisive. Divisive? The Democrats haven't even accepted they lost the election in 2016. There is this one moment, where I think Newt realized maybe he'd gone too far in pushing people apart. Stephen Gillon reported the story years later in his book, The Pact. It was October 1997. Newt was Speaker. Clinton was president. They wanted to cement their legacies as great men of history. They decided to tackle two of the most daunting issues out there-- Medicare and Social Security. Fix them once and for all so they'd be safe for generations to come. The federal budget, for once, was about to run a surplus. Now was the time. Because they'd fought so publicly, they met in secret. To avoid reporters, Gingrich entered the White House through a side door. If the partisans in either of their parties heard they were working together, the deal would fall apart. The zealots on both teams would punish you for working with the other side. The deal never happened. Four months after they agreed to work together, the Monica Lewinsky story broke. A few months after that, Gingrich was pushed out of the House. He had to deal with ethics charges, like the Speaker he'd gone after 10 years earlier. And he was really unpopular by then. The political environment he'd willed into creation had spit him out. I can't work anymore with these cannibals, he said as he left. But look at him now. He can't stay away. Zoe Chace is one of the producers of our program. Thanks to Steve Kornacki, whose book gave us the idea for this story. His book is called The Red and The Blue The 1990s and the Birth of Political Tribalism. Coming up-- now, I would say that one of our co-workers got the idea to do the story you're going to hear in a minute. He would say he had no choice about that or, for that matter, about anything ever in his life. And he'd say, you don't have a choice either. What the hell he means by that, and he is not kidding. In a minute, from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on the program, of course, we choose a theme, bring you different stories on that theme. Today's show-- where there's a will, stories of people who cannot stop themselves from trying to make things happen the way they think they should happen in this world. We've arrived at Act Two of our program. Act Two, Life is a one-sided coin. So the entire premise of our show today is where there's a will, which presupposes that we all have a will. That we all have the ability to decide something and take action in the world. But it turns out that there are people who take issue with that premise. And one of them is one of our co-workers here at the radio show, David Kestenbaum. He now presents This Minority Report. Let me say upfront, I realize the ridiculous, late-night, college-dorm-room nature of what I'm about to say, but here it is. I do not see how free will can exist. By free will, I mean, when you're staring at the menu, and you pick the salad over the burger or any other choice you make-- big or small-- who you marry, whether you keep listening to me for another minute. Free will is the idea that you really get to pick. I'm saying you don't. I don't see how free will can exist. I'm somewhat embarrassed to be saying all this. For awhile, I couldn't even talk with my wife about it. It's been on my mind because I was wondering if I should talk about it on the show today. And we'd be making the kids' lunches for the next day. There'd be a gap in the conversation. I'd open my mouth, but I just couldn't do it. I don't know why I'm thinking about this now. I think the last time I did was in high school. But I just moved on. It seems inescapable though. Years ago, I went to grad school in physics. And I think, if you haven't had the experience of actually doing something like that, it's easy to be like, oh, science. There's lots of stuff they don't know. But the truth is, we know a lot about how the world was put together. And please excuse the lecturing quality of this. But briefly, there are only four basic forces in the world-- gravity, electromagnetism, and two others, the strong force and the weak force, the first holds atomic nuclei together. The second, crudely speaking, powers the sun. Our understanding of these forces has been tested and explored again and again. In one case that sticks with me measured and confirmed to an astounding 12 decimal places. These four forces explain how atoms stick together, how every bit of matter moves, and yes, even the bits of matter that make up us and our brains. We are just collections of atoms. I don't see how those atoms can truly have any will. When you think you're deciding, I'm going to wear this shirt today, you can't really have decided otherwise. We are subject to the forces of nature, not one of them. It turns out there is this one friend of our family-- hey, Stu-- who also does not see how free will can exist. I was talking to him on the phone, asking if he knew any serious-minded, credentialed people who I could talk to and put on the radio. As it happened, he was staring at his bookshelf. He had a whole collection. There are books by a bunch of dead philosophers, thinkers of various sorts, and then one book by someone who seemed perfect-- Robert Sapolsky. Sapolsky is a professor at Stanford, Genius Grant recipient. He's a neuroscientist, who also spent 33 summers staring at baboons. Just last year, he published this big book that was on my friend's shelf, called Behave. So I read it. And there is something curious about it. He seemed to be making the argument that there is no free will. But he never quite came out and said it. The words free will don't even appear until page 580. The first 15 chapters are all about research into what drives human behavior, different parts of the brain, hormones, genetics, how we respond to sensory cues. Was he just avoiding coming out and saying it, like I've been? So you ask this question, can there be free will? But I don't think you directly come out and say what you think. So what do you think? I think I was basically trying to be polite there and sort of a good house guest. In actuality, I don't think there is room for the slightest bit of free will out there. Sapolsky said, this was, in fact, the entire reason he had written the book. He was trying to lead people slowly along a gentle path to this uncomfortable idea. I was reading it right. I asked him why he doesn't believe we have free will. As a neuroscientist, he thinks about it this way. Take any action-- a movement of your eyebrow, something you say. Just trace that thing back. Behind anything like that are just some muscles that moved. So let's simplify it. A muscle did something. Meaning a neuron in your motor cortex commanded your muscle to do that. That neuron fired only because it got inputs from umpteen other neurons milliseconds before. And those neurons only fired because they got inputs milliseconds before and back and back and back. Show me one neuron anywhere in this pathway that, from out of nowhere, decided to say something that activated in ways that are not explained by the laws of the physical universe, and ions, and channels, and all that sort of stuff. Show me one neuron that has some cellular semblance of free will. And there is no such neuron. Your emotions, consciousness-- same argument. At the bottom, just cells and chemicals acting like they would in the lab. There's nothing more or less than the mechanics. I mean, I feel like your whole book could have actually just been two sentences to cut to the chase, you know, not that I didn't enjoy the other chapters. What does it actually mean not to have free will? Do you think of it as, if you rewind the clock, it would all unfold the same way? Basically, it's got to mean that. I should say, there is some debate about whether no free will means that if you went back in time, and let your life unfold again, you would make all the same decisions exactly the same way. The reason there's some debate is that way down at the subatomic level, there does seem to be a little wellspring of randomness. Quantum mechanics is all about probabilities. Like when a radioactive atom breaks apart, the exact moment it happens seems random. It's unclear how often this apparent subatomic randomness escapes into the larger world. But it could be that if you rewound the film of life and played it forward again, you might get a different movie. But it wouldn't be because of free will. It would just be subatomic randomness messing with the plot. A friend of mine had this experience where he kind of got to test this out. His brain was artificially rolling back the clock, and he got to see its machine-like nature. He went ice skating, and he fell and hit his head, which gave him some temporary amnesia. When he was on the stretcher, he asked what had happened. His wife said, you fell and hit your head. And he made this joke. That's not how you want to leave the ice. But then he kept asking what had happened and making the same joke, like, oh, I fell on the ice. I know a good joke to make here. After, he said it was like opening up the hard drive of his mind and seeing inside. He's fine now, by the way. For me, it is the one scientific fact about the world that I am just not OK with. I'm fine with the big bang and that all of existence came from a tiny point. That doesn't faze me anymore. But I am not OK with the idea that I don't have free will. That seems-- I can't give that up. If I give that up, I'm giving up everything. I know. It's really, really hard. I feel like I'm deciding to say what I say right now. I feel pretty confident about that. When I think I'm making a decision, what am I actually doing? Well, there's just a whole bunch of neuronal fulcra and some sort of Rube Goldberg sort of stretch of things that teeter this way or that and as a result, bounce something else in another direction. So while it feels like we could choose this or maybe that, the truth is, some set of events mechanically led to our final decision. We just aren't aware of it. Sapolsky brought of this famous experiment. Sit somebody down in the room and ask them to name their favorite detergent. And who knows what they're going to come up with. Do the same thing, and there's a picture of the ocean in the room on the wall. And they're now significantly more likely to say Tide. Tide's my favorite detergent. And ask them why. And they will give you some [? Foucauldian ?] rational explanation about what Tide does to their strawberry stains on their shirts. Sapolsky says, when we think we are making a decision, it is basically just some more complicated version of that. You were looking at the menu. The room was slightly warm. Your shoes were wet from the rain. The light above the table was just so, and so you picked the salad. The mom who yells at the army general couldn't have done it any other way. Newt Gingrich, when he got to Congress-- same thing. Speaking of which, did we all just go and vote? Choose our representatives? If you believe what I'm saying, no one really could have decided to choose differently. And look, I'm not saying, don't vote. You should vote. Do good things. Be kind. Give to charity. I'm just saying, it's weird. We are machines that don't know it, but don't want to deal with it. For Sapolsky, this idea that we don't have free will is truly profound and should change the way we think about lots of things. For instance, all those decisions you've made because you're a good person, all those things you're proud of-- don't be so proud. Anyone else starting with your atoms in the same place would have done the same thing. When people do bad things, he says you shouldn't hate them. Probably also, he says, we should try to rethink the entire justice system, which, of course, is a weird thing to say since there is no trying. It's just such a crazy-making idea, you know? Yup. Are you OK with it? Not in the slightest. If I stop and really think about it, I get slightly panicked. There is no way to get out of an existential morass if you start really thinking about this stuff. How often do you find yourself thinking about it? Oh, I don't know, maybe four or five times an hour. This is all I think about these days. It's amazing to me that scientists don't talk about this more. I think I went my entire graduate career testing the fundamental laws of nature without it ever coming up. Hi. How are you? How was the exam, the midterm? This is Melissa Franklin, professor of physics at Harvard. And for years, she was my professor. I talked to her for the show when I was grappling with the possibility that we might be alone in the universe. So she seemed like the logical choice for this question. This is how you think about it too, right, that we can't possibly have free will? I think that there's no evidence that we have free will. I mean, I guess it's possible. It seems unlikely. It seems like we have free will. That's the thing, right? Yeah. So I was asking one of my colleagues today, do you believe in free will? And he says, absolutely. And I said, do you think our brains are made up of neurons and axons and things? He said, yes. And then I said, so how do you reconcile those two things? And he said, if it walks like free will and quacks like free will, it's free will. So our word is wrong? No, the point is that operationally, we appear to have free will. But it's wrong. Yes, yes, it is wrong. But it seems like we do, so why not just go with the flow? That's the idea. She was at lunch when this conversation happened. And immediately, another colleague jumped in to argue the other side. And the other person was just saying, you're an idiot, without saying the word idiot. It's one of these things when you start to talk about things that you don't want to think about that you sort of hope that magic comes in some way. So one of them was saying, well, there could be some complex thing that comes in that actually gives us free will. And the other person was saying, you're talking about magic or God. Just say it out loud-- magic or God. Melissa is actually OK with the idea of not having free will. I think maybe the problem of just a machine is not a nice way of thinking about it. A human is not just a machine. A human is an amazing machine. Yeah, I know. I love the machine that is my wife and my two little machines. They're really adorable. But when I think about it, that's what they are. They're so cute, though. I go back and forth on what to do with this information. Sometimes I feel like Robert Sapolsky does. That this is something deeply profound. We are machines that are smart enough to have figured that out, to realize we probably can't have free will. And so we should think about what that means for how we organize our society, how we treat other people. But there is another part of me that feels like maybe it changes nothing at all, which is weird to know that we are all living with this illusion of free will, but somehow doesn't matter. I've come to think of my daily existence as kind of like being in a movie, where I'm just along for the ride. I'm making choices all day long. But the machine that is me couldn't really have chosen anything else. It gives me a weird lightness when I think about it that way. And if I'm being honest, it also feels kind of cool knowing this thing that no one wants to face up to, watching us all run around as if not true. When you pick a song to listen to, when you decide to try a second date, when you go left instead of right, when I say something stupid instead of just sitting and thinking for a moment, when I pick what picture to draw on my son's lunch bag, those aren't really choices. But I'm good at living with contradictions. It's in the machinery. Our show was produced today by David Kestenbaum. The people who put our show together include Zoe Chace, Sean Cole, Jarrett Floyd, Damien Grave, Michele Harris, Chana-Joffe Walt, Seth Lind, Ana Martin, Miki Meek, Stowe Nelson, Katharine Mae Mondo, Robyn Semien and Alissa Shipp, Christopher Swetala and Diane Wu, our senior producer, Brian Reed, our managing editor, Susan Burton. Special thanks today to Rob Long, Kelefa Sanneh, Stu Greenberg, Sean Carroll, Jim Naureckas, Charlie Schaupp, Stephen Talbot. And thanks to the Frontline documentary, The Long March of Newt Gingrich, our website, ThisAmericanLife.org, where you can listen to our archive of over 600 episodes for absolutely free. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. And as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. I said, Torey, we've got 30 seconds left in the program. What should we do? Just shut up. Shut up. Shut up now. Don't talk about it anymore. Shut up. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. You can call me Jesper. Jasper? Jesper, with an E. Jesper. Yeah. OK, and is Peder here? Yeah, hi, Ira. Jasper and Peder. Are those your actual names? Yeah. It's not a joke. Peder Jorgensen and Jesper Sundnes, this is the first time they've ever agreed to do an interview about this thing that they created or even identify themselves as the creator of that thing. This thing they made, they said it all began back in 2015. They were basically hanging out, killing time together, strolling through Facebook, bored. The location for this? At work, supposed to be working. Because you had a lot of free time at that job? No, no, we were working all the time, working really hard. It's probably during a lunch break. I like that one of you said yes and one of you said no. They were working in radio. They live in Oslo, Norway. Anyway, they noticed on their friends Facebook feeds, very common-- People were posting lots of, like, inspirational images with inspirational words. And it kind of looked like there was a system behind the whole thing. It kind of felt like a machine should be able to do this. Yeah, a robot could probably make that. Could make an inspirational quote. After all, they're so formulaic-- every day might not be a good day, but there's good in every day. You fell down yesterday. Stand up today. The secret to getting ahead is getting started. So Jesper and Peder set out to program a computer to create these to generate inspirational sentences and paste them onto stock photos of beaches, and starry nights, and people staring into the distance. And what's interesting is just how quickly the program kind of took on a mind of its own. At first, they said the computer really did generate very typical, kind of predictable inspirational quotes. They said that wasn't terribly difficult. But as they gave it a bigger vocabulary and taught it to string together a wider variety of sentences, the kinds of sayings that it started to crank out started to evolve. As they got more random, they got funnier and darker and-- I don't want to oversell this, but it's true-- actually, sometimes kind of profound. The bot started to take on a personality, the personality that it actually has now. Yeah, I can remember very well the moment we were looking at the quotes, and it wasn't what we had imagined. It felt like something that we hadn't created really. I've saved some of these on my laptop. Here's one. OK, so each one is a quote on top of some peaceful, contemplative image. This one, first one, the picture is a nighttime sky. And-- I don't know-- maybe that's the Aurora Borealis. And the words say, love is an animal eating your brain. This one here is a close-up of a coin. It says, never think of it as a job. Think of it as health insurance, which, you know, people definitely feel, some people about their jobs. I love this one. OK, so this is a picture of Big Ben. It says, when you're eating dinner, don't forget that everything and everyone will someday be gone forever. A bunch of them have this kind of cold-water-in-the-face, wake-up-to-reality, slap-you-across-the-cheeks quality to them. There's one that says-- there's a photo of a man. This is a manager, starry sky, it says, your time on Earth is random. A woman offers a lit sparkler. It says simply, you're average. A man stands on a shore, it says, don't explore your true self. It's not worth it. But most of them are not like that. Here's a picture of a spiral galaxy. It says, all you need in order to travel to Mars is a boy and a flag, which, in a certain way, is actually kind of true. These are all made by a machine. They're made by a bot. And a certain number of them do seem like gibberish. An education can be like an angry child. What does that mean? Or be fine, systematized, spouse finity-- it's like, OK. But a surprising number of these, they not only makes sense, they seem to have something on their mind. They have something to say. Celebrity is basically just another term for pretentious burglar. Life on Earth is just one long commercial for sperm. Urinating on an electric fence could be the mistake of a lifetime, which that's true. Normies unite. Cooperate and fight your common adversary-- mass hysteria. I reached out to Jesper and Peder, because I was wondering, how does this really work? How do you get a machine that does not understand what words mean, does not understand what it's saying at all, how do you get it to turn out sayings that mean something to us? And neither of these guys had been a professional programmer or studied it in school. Peder had taught himself to code years before. And he made this with just kind of a grab bag of standard programming tools. He explained the recipe for an inspirational quote like this. So right now, we're in the studio in Oslo. And the sun is shining outside, but the drapes are pulled down. So if I say something like, you have to pull the drapes up to see the sun, it kind of makes sense in a practical way. However, as soon as you put something like that on a beautiful backdrop, it starts speaking to you on a different level. You have to pull up the drapes to see the sun. It sounds like the cure for depression when it's put in the right picture. But it's just a very practical, normal thing to say really. Another thing they noticed in lots of inspirational sayings, they were juxtapositions-- opposites glued into the same sentence. Things put up against each other. Yeah, so there are no limits to what you can accomplish, except the limits you place on your own thinking. So that's just-- Limits is the keyword. Yeah, and then you just take the words and then turn them around after a comma. So it's, like, the two-part sentences. They can be pretty obvious, but still, it feels inspirational when you put it on a nice picture. To make the bot able to do this, the way to do it, really, they said, is just imitation. The algorithm imitates the sentence structure and the kinds of words that appear in real inspirational quotes on the internet. They fed it thousands of inspirational quotes. At first, of course, it was a little buggy. The grammar, the syntax was a total mess. Here's an early failed example. I can read one here. It's don't be jealous of spilled wife. Just jump. Don't be jealous of spilled what? Wife. Like a-- Don't be jealous of a spilled wife. Just jump. So it's kind of got this structure in a way, but the words don't make any sense. It just becomes random, like gibberish. How does it get to one like, if one expects a friendship, one has to prepare for a volcano? Well, what it knows for sure is that expects and prepare are words that go well together. And does it know friendship and volcano will go together, or that's just totally random? Does that go together for you? It does kind of go together, yeah. How? It's like saying, when you have a friend, you have to prepare for the bad times when things get explosive. Yeah, well, that's you adding that. That's not in the algorithm. They say the same thing about the inspirational quotes that actually could be taken as inspirational by somebody, like, for instance, don't let nightmares get in the way of infinity. You kind of realize, you're making them inspirational yourself. Our heads, our minds, you try so hard to give them meaning, so they start making sense in a way. What was the one you said? Nightmares are-- Don't let nightmares get in the way of infinity. Yeah, to me, that's saying, don't let the things that you're scared of get in the way of the big life you're trying to create for yourself. Yeah, it's true. When you said that, it was harder for me to make the same. I heard something else in the quote. Yeah. So you guys really aren't just writing those? No, no. Oh, no, we couldn't do that. There's too many. Everything is generated. We do get, like, sometimes people are-- oh, there's no way this is a bot people would say in comments and stuff like that. But we don't go in and edit any of them. We've never done that. In fact, they logged onto the website during our interview, and 60 people were on the site at the same time right then, clicking away and generating quotes, way too many for them to edit. It's over a half million people a month. And they say that they are surprised sometimes when the bot comes up with something funny or kind of vaguely profound. Occasionally, it's blowing my mind really. I don't know how it came up with that. It's weird that you can get to something profound out of a machine that's actually just generating random words in sentence structures that you've given it. Absolutely. Yeah, it's totally weird. It makes humans seem pathetic. That sounds like something the bot would say. You've become too inspired by the bot. Do you know what I mean? It's like, oh, really, we are so primitive that a machine can randomly throw together words in a sentence structure. And then, I have to say, looking at them, some of them are like, yeah, that's actually pretty true. Well, it doesn't necessarily mean that we're pathetic. It also is a lot of credit to you as a reader just how much you add to something when you see it, how much of the things that you see is actually your contribution. Well, today on our radio show, we have stories of this happening to people. They are presented with documents, some words on a paper. And how they read it, what they read into it really comes from them, and they have strong reactions. As the InspiroBot might say, it's not what the words say. It's what they say to you. I've learned so much. Anyway, stay with us. Act 1, the veritas is out there. So I just found this out that since the 1990s, if you got into college, and you decided to attend the college, at lots of schools, you can work at your own admissions file. See what the admissions people said about you when you were applying. In fancy schools that are hard to get into, you can try to figure out why they decided to admit you in the first place, which lots of kids do. But the downside is, you might find something you didn't want to see, and then you have to deal with that. Diane Wu does the story of one Harvard student that happened to. At Harvard, going to see your admissions file has suddenly got caught up into something much bigger. As you might have heard, Harvard's being sued for allegedly discriminating against Asians. Asian applicants with high GPAs and test scores have a lower acceptance rate than other students with the same numbers. Harvard does consider a student's race when they apply as one of many factors. The group that's suing them wants them to stop doing that altogether. It's a group called Students For Fair Admissions. They're trying to get rid of affirmative action all across the country. And this case is likely to be appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court. Alex Zhang is a junior, co-president of the Chinese Students Association. I met him the first week of the trial. He's solidly team Harvard in the lawsuit, because Harvard is on the side of keeping affirmative action. For him, it was a moral decision. Of course, diversity is good, and getting rid of affirmative action is bad. So he wrote a statement for an amicus brief, and got his student group to sign on to another one. Friends of his were looking at their admissions files. So Alex decided to go as well, partly because he was curious how his file stacked up against the claims made in the lawsuit. But also, he just wanted to see how he got in. He'd always wanted to find out. I'm really curious about the interview component, because I just feel like that's what did it. Did you have a really good interview? Yeah, a really good interview with a really old and experienced alumni. The way this usually works-- you meet with an alumni volunteer for an hour or so in a coffee shop or wherever in your hometown. Alex is from Portland, Oregon. He had an exceptional interview. It lasted two hours. Then even more unusual, his interviewer set up a second meeting. He did this whole thing, where he ran through all my extracurriculars, kind of tallied up hours and stuff, just was very rigorous, even asked for some contacts for references, which, apparently, he wasn't supposed to do. He was really-- He did that because he wanted to have everything on the table for him to advocate for me. Alex wanted to know, did this guy get me in? The alumni interview is important at Harvard, because usually, it's the only face-to-face contact the school has with an applicant. And admissions officers use it, plus other information, to assign applicants this thing called a personal rating. The personal rating is actually the crux of the lawsuit. It's basically a rating of your personality. The words Harvard uses to describe what they're looking for are things like leadership, courage, sense of humor, effervescence. It's like they want to fill the school with future senators, perky Griffindors, and Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde types. Students for Fair Admissions says the personal rating is where the discrimination happens, where implicit bias leaks in. Because at Harvard, Asian applicants get a lower personal rating than white applicants. Harvard does not dispute those numbers, but says they don't consider an applicant's race when assigning the personal rating. A couple days after I met him, Alex called me from a study lounge. He'd just gone to see his file, sat with 15 other kids around a table at the registrar's office and paged through it. He wasn't allowed to take the file with him, but could take pictures on his phone. He scrolled through the photos and read parts of it to me. Let me take a quick look. The first sheet is the Harvard scores, so they have this weird coding jargon that I don't really understand yet. I'll probably look it up later. We got quickly to the part he was curious about-- the report from his alumni interviewer, which was the most remarkable part of his file. For starters, it was long. My interviewer wrote, like, five pages of notes. Wow. Which I think is kind of unusual. It is. Everyone else I checked with had only two pages. Reading through, Alex saw that his interviewer, Jim McCandlish was really going to bat for him. He told Alex that he was one of the best candidates he'd met in more than 20 years of interviewing. Though Alex learned, a lot of Jim's thoroughness-- the extra interview, the references he called-- that was Jim checking into whether or not Alex was for real. It seems like he was skeptical of a lot of stuff I did, at least was concerned about this resume-builder mentality and wanted to verify whether I did that authentic work. Like when Alex said he worked on homelessness at the youth commission, Jim wondered, is he just saying that because he googled my law firm and read that I represent disadvantaged people? Quote, "was this a perfect for MIT mechanical engineer playing me?" Perfect for MIT, I guess, is code for too boring for Harvard. Jim called up Alex's supervisor at the youth commission and found out, no, Alex genuinely cared about homelessness and works there even more than he'd let on. Alex read Jim's interview notes to me matter-of-factly, then paused to note this one section. Oh, here's an interesting portion actually. Jim was writing about a conversation he'd had with that supervisor. Apparently, he had asked not just about Alex, but about Alex's mom, too. He writes-- She is far from the stereotypical, quote, "tiger mother." His mom is supportive, but not directive. So I guess there's just those two, three sentences on my mom. How do you feel about that? How would you feel about that characterization of your mom? I mean, it's true. Yeah, she's supported, but not directive. She pushes me. She pushes me hard, but has always sort of let me push in the direction I wanted. Is it weird to you at all that the interviewer is pointing to stereotypes that you aren't? Is he a perfect-for-MIT engineer playing me, or does he have a tiger mom? Oh, yeah. That's a good point. As soon as I asked the question, I felt like I overstepped, like I was planting the idea in Alex's head that something racial was going on. But when I heard tiger mother, I thought, there is the implicit bias they're talking about in the lawsuit in a way more explicit form than I was expecting. Alex did have a strange feeling about it, even if he wasn't sure exactly why. Yeah, that is really weird. I guess it kind of goes into a narrative like the Asian applicant has to disprove certain things to be considered viable for something ivy league. In other words, if you want to get into Harvard, don't be too Asian. Hmm. That makes sense. I don't know what his motivations are, my interviewer's motivations. Maybe the interviewer was like, oh, I should distinguish him from other Asians, or maybe he just does it subconsciously. Yeah. Yeah. There's another thing like this in Jim's notes, another spot where he points to an Asian stereotype and says it doesn't fit Alex. It has to do with the fact that Alex is quiet, which is a stereotype about Asian students. One, actually, that Harvard was called out for using in a 1990 federal investigation. But in Alex's case, Jim casts it as a plus. He writes, "Alex is reserved, quietly confident, uses language frugally but effectively. There is no teenage patois." Perfect-for-MIT engineer, by the way, also plays into a stereotype of Asians only being interested in science and math. This one didn't bother Alex, though, since he literally wanted to be an engineer when he was applying. The tiger mother part is definitely interesting. No other mom is called a tiger mom. That's what you call a Chinese mom. Only Chinese moms are called tiger moms. It definitely seems like he's trying to disprove what a reviewer might assume about the reasoning for why I do things. Yeah. How do you feel about that? I don't know. So he actually has a Chinese wife. Is he Chinese? He's not Chinese. No, he's an old white guy, very American, grew up very American, went to Harvard during the time when it was, like, four white people played baseball on the baseball team. Everything's with good intentions. But I think he might just be a little more old-fashioned. Alex actually knows Jim pretty well. They kept in touch after his interview. Their families became friends. Alex's mom helped teach Jim's wife how to drive. He gets dinner with Jim whenever he's back home. Alex left our conversation feeling pretty fine about what he'd read. But then he stepped back into a campus caught in the force field of the lawsuit, where anything to do with race, and bias, and admissions felt hypercharged. One of the biggest ways the lawsuit has shaken up Harvard is that certain statistics are now public, like the school said that without affirmative action, one out of two black kids wouldn't get it. Latino kids-- they'd lose one out of three. Kids whose parents went to Harvard, who are, by the way, mostly white have a seven times better chance of getting in than regular kids. It's making students ask questions they'd rather not about how they got in. It's uncomfortable. I talked to two black students who chose not to see their files this fall. Both were worried it would say, let's take her because she's black. They didn't think it would, but still. One of them had the request form open on her computer for more than a week before she decided, nah, maybe senior year. For Asian students, the question is the opposite. It's not am I here because of my race, but am I here in spite of it? It's cranked people's race goggles up to level 10. One of Alex's friends wrote on Facebook about a comment in her file. "She's a bright student, but what distinguishes her from other bright students?" To her, this was racially coded. When she read it she saw, she seemed smart, but is there anything that makes her different from other Asian students? Well, if that was racially coded, Alex thought, you should see mine. He texted some close friends from his freshman year Chinese class. I sent a couple screen grabs from my admissions file to them. I was like, hey, I can't get this off my mind. I didn't react that strongly to it until after I saw this stuff online. And now, I'm starting to feel pretty troubled by it. What was the part that was troubling to you? My main trouble was, oh, does he feel like he needs to prove that I'm not like other Asians to the admissions office? And is that what it takes to get in nowadays? Most other college interviewers, I just talked for, like, an hour, an hour and a half. But Jim was doing a background check, you know? Why did he feel the need to do so rigorous of a background check? Alex's friends saw his screen grab saying tiger mom and perfect-for-MIT engineer and texted him back, oh, my god and that's kind of horrible. Tiger mom was actually a lot more explicit than any of the examples of bias that came up at the trial. It was really a fight over statistics and economic models, but a few stereotypes did come up. They were subtle. Things like Harvard referring to Asian applicants as one-dimensional or book smart. Alex wanted to see what Jim was actually thinking when he wrote tiger mother. See if it really was a racial thing, like his friends were saying. So he gave him a call. Alex taped the call and with Jim's permission, sent it to me. First, they catch up a little bit. Alex tells Jim about how he went to go see his file. He mentions an op-ed he co-wrote for the student newspaper. Did you read the op-ed I wrote, by any chance? I don't think I sent it to you. Yes, you did send it. I read it, and I totally regret that I did not respond. It was very well done. It was very well done, Jim says. Oh, really? You thought so? Yes. I'm glad you thought so. They talk about the lawsuit. And before Alex can even bring up tiger moms, Jim volunteers his own ideas about implicit bias in admissions. He's been thinking about the effect of the interviewer's biases because-- Most likely, at least certainly from a place like Oregon, the interviewer is Caucasian. And we know there are stereotypes. I'm just curious how that plays out. If you have an expectation that an Asian interviewee is going to have a drab personality or meek and mild, you may play into your stereotype and not develop the rapport that would defeat the stereotype or at least resist it. You're in a really gray area of human nature. Jim, of course, went above and beyond to spend the time with Alex to get that rapport, to make sure he really understood Alex as an individual, not to write him off immediately. So I'm actually kind of curious about some stuff you wrote. Yeah, so you wrote five pages of notes. There's probably 2,000 words at least. Yeah, and most of that was in the personal quality section, which I was the most curious about reading. OK. So here I am right on the edge. What do they say? It takes another eight minutes for Alex to get the nerve to bring it up-- tiger mom. You mentioned that you asked her about my parents. Yeah, I was trying to figure out whether or not you were basically driven by the parents in any way. You use the term tiger mother, saying my mom's not like that. That's very much affiliated with Asian parenting. So when I read that, it just was a little unexpected. Well, recall, I live with one. I live with one, Jim's saying. He's talking about his wife, who is Chinese. They have a young daughter. I live with a tiger mom and fight it all the time. You think that's a particularly Chinese thing? I think the Chinese on the west side have a very definite, strong influence that way. West side-- Jim's talking about the wealthier side of Portland where he and Alex lived. No question in my mind. Huh, gotcha. Because for me, it's kind of like, if you had a Chinese applicant, would you be suspicious that perhaps their parent or their mom was like that? If I saw somebody, Alex, that had their fingers in a lot of pies, and I had no way to ascertain the depth of what they were doing-- what I'm looking for and looked for was the person who was thriving on their own, that is self-motivated. And it isn't just Chinese. I use that term because I'm an Amy Tan Fan. Amy Tan wrote The Joy Luck Club. Apparently, after this conversation, Jim's wife told him that she did not also write Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. That was Amy Chua. His wife offered to buy him the book. But anybody I interview, the longer I did it, the more suspicious I was. After doing these interviews for 20 years, Jim was not naive to kids puffing up their extracurriculars or getting coached on how to act in the interview. He's saying he was tough on everyone. I talked to Jim later. He didn't want to be recorded, but he was open about what he wrote. He told me, yeah, part of what he was doing was overtly pointing out to the admissions officers that Alex was different from other Chinese-American applicants. That this young man did not fit whatever stereotypes that he or the admissions officers might have. And his no-holds-barred strategy to get Alex in, it seemed to work. The first reviewer, who went through Alex's file before his interview, wrote, "hope the alumni interview can add." The next reviewer saw Jim's report, then wrote, "interview in and is pretty remarkable for its in-depth review, comes out in the right place and is reassuring." Besides his write-up, Jim gave Alex a personal rating of 1, the highest possible score. He gave Alex ones across all categories. The official admissions officers were not as effusive. They gave him a 2 for his personal rating, twos and threes for the rest. Wrote that his personal qualities seem to be still evolving. After I read mine, my impression was that if you hadn't written such an in-depth, positive review that I probably wouldn't have gotten it, which is kind of an interesting thought. That's surprises me. You were at the top of everything. That surprises me. I thought I was a gravy. Yeah, I really appreciate how much you did. Well, I appreciate you. So how was New York? They go on to talk about Alex's summer job in Manhattan, the classes he's taking this fall. Jim starts in on a story about his kid before telling Alex, oh, hey, turn that recorder off. I met up with Alex again after that phone call. He wasn't totally satisfied by it, thought Jim didn't get the gravity of tiger mother, hadn't thought it all the way through. But he had no hard feelings. Though when Alex thought more about tiger mother, he realized, it was not just the use of the term that unsettled him, but also, the assumption that it was a bad thing in the first place. Something that Harvard would want to make sure none of its students had. This idea that a tiger mom would even be-- I know it is a thing in our culture for a lot of parents, but also is weird that there's a fixation on that by American society. Also, the question is, why does it matter if your parents pushed you in that way? Is that not part of your upbringing and who you are now? I don't know. There seems to be these very negative connotations about the way Asians are raised or the way that they behave growing up. And it just seems like there's this very deeply ingrained prejudice and misunderstanding. Alex, personally, was grateful for when his mom pushed him when he was younger. I remember in high school, my mom was gave me a lot of pressure. Make sure you connect with the teachers and talk to them during break time, so they can get to know you, because it's really important. They're going to have to write you recommendations. And I didn't want to do it, but I guess I had to. Your mom was on the ball. Yeah, she's really on top of stuff, which is really good. Because she did it without killing me, overworking me. She's a really good mom. In race-conscious admissions, it's not just the university that's conscious of race. It's also the applicants themselves. Almost all the students of color I asked had considered whether and how to portray their race in their package. Just one white student had. Alex is from a mostly white neighborhood in Portland, Oregon. Growing up, his classmates often couldn't see past his race. They teased him for having a flat face, about being a nerd. One girl exclusively called him Asian instead of Alex. In middle school, he started playing basketball, partly to downplay his Chinese-ness, fit in with the white kids. Out on the court, though, someone would still always call him Yao Ming. But he didn't write about any of that in his personal essay. Instead, it's about how he transforms from a lonely elementary school kid playing video games by himself to big man on campus at his high school. You didn't talk about race in your essay. That's not the topic. It doesn't mention race at all. Was that part of the subtext of what you were writing, looking back on it? Probably, yeah. In high school, I had a lot of internalized hatred about being Asian. I had this whole perception that I needed to differentiate myself. So I think one of my views is that, oh, we aren't seen. This also goes to myself being really cautious of the system or potential biases. So I was like, oh, I probably need to show that I have been more social, or I have been a leader, have done these cool things. It struck me that it might be that while you were preparing your application, you were making some similar-ish calculation to maybe what Jim was making. Yeah. Not I want to differentiate myself from all other applicants, but I extra want to differentiate myself from other Asian applicants. Probably. And again, looking back, I don't like it in the same way that I don't like if Jim would have had to talk me up just because I'm Asian. I don't like that I [INAUDIBLE] that way if it was because of that. I asked Alex if what he saw in his file shifted his position at all in the lawsuit. No, he said. To him, tiger mom was weird for sure, but it wasn't discrimination. It didn't sway the argument one way or another. For Alex, what he saw in his file, what his friends have been seeing, it's more personal. A lot of the comments my friends have been making and stuff, they're not things that make as much of an argument for either side as much as, like, oh, this is what being Asian is like. In other words, even when you make it into one of the fanciest colleges in the world, when you finally feel like people see you for who you are, your whole complicated self, just one word or phrase can snap you out of it. Remind you, right, right, this is how they see me. This is how it really works. Diane Wu is one of the producers of our show. Coming up-- quoting Snoop Dogg fails to impress state regulators in New York. What a shocker. That's in a minute. From Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's show-- how I read it, stories where people look at words on a page or words on a screen and see something of the rest of us might not always see. We've arrived at Act Two of our show. Act Two-- I'm just going to see if the InspiroBot can come up with a good title for this act. Hold on. Pushing the button, and the thing is flashing. And there's a picture of a tree and a night sky. It says, know that you are unprecedentedly negative, which, I have to say, that's actually a shockingly decent title for the act that we're about to do. We were going to call it side effects may include bankruptcy or whatever the thing came up with. And then the bot actually did a really good job. Act 2, Know That You Are Unprecedentedly Negative. One of our producers, David Kestenbaum, recently came across this kind of amazing collection of documents on a government website. These documents-- letters and emails, like thousands of them-- they're part of the usual machinery of bureaucratic decision-making. But David saw something more in them. I found these letters about four clicks deep on a website for the Department of Financial Services for the state of New York. I was digging around, looking for some numbers on a different story, and there they were-- page after page of detailed, handwritten letters and emails going on, at length and with great passion and precision, about their health insurance plans. They'd been buying them through the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare. And every year, their plans were getting more expensive and not just by a little. I printed these letters out. They filled two binders, and I read them all. There's something about the intimacy of these letters that makes them hard to stop reading. You can feel people sitting down to write them in their homes, coming face to face with the cost of their insurance, and just searching for the right words. Some are desperate. Some are exhausted. Some people are funny. It's this record of our fellow citizens shouting into the abyss. And they got to me in this way that news stories about this never have. These are people reacting to a situation that would drive anyone crazy. The first year, 2015, the cost of their plans increased 6% on average. Next year, they went up again by 7%. Then the next year, up again by 17%. Then the next year, another 15%. That's a 50% increase over just four years. So if you were paying $12,000 a year at the start for your family, the price might have gone up to $18,000. And the reason these people were writing this year is that it looked like prices were going to go up again. Insurance companies wanted to raise prices another 24%. So for a family that started at $12,000, that would bring you to $22,000 a year for insurance. People were not pleased. The approaches varied. There were the, I'm a serious person, this is a serious letter about a serious matter ones. Dear sir, or sometimes, dear sir or madam, or to whom it may concern, they begin. And then something like this one-- a premium rate hike is unconscionable. I'm appalled that such a significant premium increase is being sought after my first year of coverage. There is clearly no consumer protection for the public. I object strenuously to this requested rate increase for mediocre coverage. So formal. Another letter ended, I will pray for an acceptable solution of this horrible situation and that good sense, goodwill, and fairness prevail. But honestly, those are the minority. This one's more typical. Are you freaking kidding me about letting them raise the rate $88.29 per month? That was in all caps. And then there's this one. If this happens, I will drop this plan and company faster than Snoop Dogg drops it like it's hot. That was basically the whole email. Another started, ha, ha, ha, this is a joke, which was a common thought. Is this a joke? I don't think any additional comments are needed. That person then went on to give quite a number of comments. The reason all these people took the time to write to their state government about this is that in New York, like in a lot of states, actually, when a health insurance company wants to charge people more money, it can't just do it. For policies that are sold directly to individuals, as these were on the Affordable Care Act exchanges, the insurance company has to get approval from government regulators to raise its prices. And in New York, health insurance companies have to be really clear they are proposing raising their rates. They have to send out a letter to everyone who has their insurance saying they want to raise their prices, exactly how much. And toward the end of the letter, they have to stick in this paragraph. It feels kind of perfunctory. It mentions there is a 30-day public comment period. It gives an address and a website. So if people have any comments or questions, they can write to the state of New York, which they do. This year, New York got 754 letters in 30 days. Most states, as far as I can tell, do not go out of their way to make these letters public, but New York does. Someone there carefully scans them all, organizes them, and puts them online. I went through the letters from years past. The government has blacked out people's names to protect their privacy. But sometimes, you get this little window into someone's life. One person is a Pilates teacher in Long Island. Another said her husband had died. Another was contemplating a knee replacement and was in pain. One wrote that the family had just gotten back from vacation. You can kind of imagine the person finding the notice of rate increase in the mail, then sitting down in total anger to write, maybe not even taking their coat off. And you can feel people struggling with the fact that a bunch of keyboard keys do not seem adequate to express their emotions. They'll throw an extra exclamation point in, or two, or 46. Yes, 46. I imagine the person sticking their finger on the key and just leaving it there for a while, thinking, there, that's about right. And reading these letters, which took a day, I realized, it is not just names that are getting blacked out, other things too. Where the blank do you people get off raising health insurance almost $200 a month? You have to be blank kidding me, you blank. But you know that already. Which made me wonder about this other letter that was entirely blacked out. People were so angry. It was like reading Yelp reviews for a bad restaurant, but where the meal cost $20,000 and in some cases, you don't even get to eat it, which of course, is the nature of insurance, but still. I don't like writing these letters, as I feel like a ranting old man, one guy wrote. But between watching premiums rise out of control and seeing the insurance I have not cover actual costs, I am that ranting fool. His insurance company wanted to raise rates by 40%. One question a lot of people had, why were prices going up so much? I don't get a raise, one person wrote. Why should they? Nobody got back to these people with an explanation. So if any of you letter writers are listening, here's what happened. When the Obamacare exchanges launched in 2013, the premiums for that first year were a lot lower. And after a rough start, things seem to be working. People who couldn't afford health care suddenly could. And in some places, there were lots of options to choose from. Let's say a grizzly bear escaped from the zoo. Now let's say he gave you a hug. Well, you might be needing some health care right about then. This is an ad for a health insurance company called Oscar that launched around this time. Its animated, children's book style, which, can I just say, I admire the ingenuity of this advertising strategy. It's better than, you should have insurance in case you get cancer or get in a car accident, which honestly, is what I think about. I never thought about getting hugged by a well-meaning bear, who then later visits me with a get well balloon that says I'm sorry. It's a much better sell. Introducing Oscar, individual health insurance that's simple, intuitive, and maybe even fun. So you can focus on the important things, like staying healthy. We're Oscar, a new kind of health insurance company. The next year, Oscar, like most insurance companies on the exchanges, raised their rates. I dug into some of the older letters to see what the reaction was back then. Stop counting my money. Stop trying to figure out how much more I should owe your company. And stop writing stupid cutesy blurbs about bears hugging you and crushing your ribs. Adults are reading this, not 12 year olds. Do not raise my premium. Not to pick on Oscar, but I think, as a new insurance company, people hope things might be different. In the years since 2013, insurance companies in New York and around the country raised their prices on the Obamacare exchanges. You know, I said from the beginning, let Obamacare implode. That, of course, is President Trump with his diagnosis of what was going on, or maybe it was a prescription for what he wanted to happen. Let Obamacare implode. But according to economists who study these things and, frankly, the insurance companies themselves, the exchanges were not imploding. What was going on was that the insurance companies had set premiums too low at the beginning, some combination of wanting to attract customers and genuinely not knowing how sick or healthy the people who signed up were going to be. So the prices had been going up to correct for that. But contrary to Trump's claim, the exchanges seemed unlikely to implode, unless of course, someone did something to make that happen. The individual mandate is being repealed. Here is that someone, which of course, is the same someone as before-- President Trump. This was last year just after the Republicans passed the tax cut bill. Tucked into that bill was this other thing that did not get a lot of attention. They had done away with a mandate to buy health insurance. This was a key part of Obamacare, the thing that was supposed to encourage people to sign up, even if they were healthy. That was gone as part of the tax bill. We didn't want to bring it up. I told people specifically, be quiet with the fake news media. Because I don't want them talking too much about it, because I didn't know how people would-- but now that it's approved, I can say, the individual mandate on health care where you had to pay not to have insurance-- think of that one. You pay not to have insurance. The individual mandate has been repealed. When this happened, the health insurance companies went, uh-oh. They ran the numbers and predicted that a bunch of healthy people would drop it like it's hot, go without insurance, meaning the remaining pool of people would be sicker. And so premiums would have to rise again. That is what was driving a lot of the requested price increase this year and all those letters begging the state of New York to somehow stop it. This one letter stood out to me, in part, because the person wasn't demanding anything, just explaining. It was from a woman whose husband had died. So she was getting a little money from Social Security, but still having to work. Quote, "I do not live above my means. I can't. The expenses of living leave me little to spend on luxury items, such as eating out, going to a movie, or taking a vacation. It seems this year, everything has gone up. Car insurance-- I drive a 14-year-old car that is starting to need more costly repairs, groceries, cable, electric, rent. When this insurance was first introduced, it was called affordable for whom? I have worked since I was 16, minus a few years I was home raising children. I have faithfully paid my taxes every year. At this point in time, I am at a loss on what to do. I am so discouraged. There's not much more I can give up just to afford to live. Can you suggest any options? Thanks for your time." I wondered if anyone read these letters and if they made a difference. You get a lot of mail. I get a lot of mail? Of public comments. Oh, I get a lot of mail that I never even see. There's lots of mail that's addressed to me. This is Maria Vullo, the superintendent of the Department of Financial Services for the state of New York. And yes, when I requested the interview, I'd said I wanted to talk about the letters. But I get that reading all these letters and the others she receives-- probably not the best use of her time. Do you want to see what these look like printed out? Here. These are all of them. That's one book. OK, sure. We receive comments from the public on a whole number of issues, and we believe in the receipt of public comments. And my staff reviews them all. So I ask this without judgment. I'm literally just curious. Do you ever read these? Some I do. So I read through all these. I found them really interesting. Some of them are funny. Some of them are sad. A lot of them are just really angry. People took the time to write in by hand. I received this letter and have been so upset since. This thing goes on for pages. There's-- what if it was your mother? Help, cannot pay what I have now. I will say that this year, The person jumping in here is Richard Loconte. He was in the room for the interview. He heads the communications department. That this year in particular, the tone definitely was angrier. That I knew. I would hear from Ron on my team on an almost daily basis saying, you have to see these letters. People are angry. Did you read any of these? I have read through some of them. Ron would forward me some of the more-- some of the particular ones. So they got all this mail, and they had to decide what to do. Maria Vullo, the superintendent, said the decision about whether to let insurance companies charge more comes down to numbers not letters. While people were writing in with the exclamation points, the insurance companies were sending in all kinds of financial data. The state had actuaries who went over it all. We look at what their claims were last year. We look at what their administrative expenses are, what percentage of profit. We look at risk adjustment. We look at a whole bunch of things. And here is what they decided. Some of the increase the insurance companies were asking for was unavoidable. But about half the increase they were asking for was because the mandate was being taken away. And here, Vullo and the others made an interesting decision, which is basically, look, you may be right that the mandate going away is going to really mess things up. Maybe lots of healthy people will drop their coverage, but you don't know. We don't have any data. And if we let you raise rates as much as you are asking, for sure, people will drop coverage. But I was not going to allow it to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because if you raise rates, people will drop insurance. Vullo also made this other point. What if you did let them raise rates now, and it turns out a year later, they didn't need to. And what if I gave them the 20%, and then it doesn't turn out to be that? Then who's got the money? The consumer or the insurance company? The insurance company. Yeah, the insurance company. Fair point. And of course, next year, the insurance companies might come back and say, look, our projection was right. We do need to charge more. I hate to think of the letters if that happens. And good news-- it might not happen. The cost of insurance on the exchanges seems like it might finally be leveling out. On average, across the country, rates are dropping by 1% next year. And the policies on the New York exchange right now, they're not really more expensive than other plans. It's just that, unlike most of us, people who get their insurance through their employer or who are on Medicare, Medicaid, which are paid for by the government, these people are really seeing the full cost of their insurance. Some get tax credits to help, but lots don't. Those people have to write a check each month. For a lot of them, it's more than their mortgage or their rent. They are writing the letters we might all be writing if we actually got the bill. David Kestenbaum is one of the producers of our show. ACT 3, Bladen Runner. OK, so up until now, in our show, we've had stories about people reading words. Now, we have a story about somebody looking into some numbers and noticing things that the rest of us haven't. Ben Calhoun tells the story. This election cycle, it wasn't strange for voters to have to wait for races to be called. Seems like there were so many squeakers. Among the squeakiest, still unresolved a month after the election, North Carolina's 9th congressional district. The district is this long stretch of eight counties along the state's southern border. It's so gerrymandered, it looks like a hockey stick. In that district, a Republican former Baptist pastor named Mark Harris narrowly beat his Democratic opponent. The Democrat was this Boy Scouty, former Marine named Dan McCready. The margin of victory in that race-- 905 votes-- crazy close, but a win. Until the North Carolina State Board of Elections had a meeting-- the board is four Democrats, four Republicans, one unaffiliated member-- and the board decided in a bipartisan unanimous vote not to approve the results in the ninth congressional district. That late Tuesday afternoon decision by the board not to certify the ninth really kind of sent shockwaves through the state. This is Michael Bitzer, PolySci professor at Catawba College in North Carolina. To say, this is something that looks pretty serious. Trouble in River City. Yes. Bitzer says he can't remember this ever happening before. It turns out, behind this bipartisan emergency break-throwing-- voter fraud allegations, specifically funny business with mail-in absentee ballots. So Bitzer did what PolySci professors do in a crisis like this. He dove into the data, downloaded it from the state. And in it, he saw one thing that didn't look like the others. One county, Bladen county, only 19% of the people voting by mail were registered Republicans. But among the mail-in ballots, the Republican candidate got 61% of the vote. Mathematically, this just seems super unlikely. He'd have to win all the Republicans, and all the independents, and some Democrats. Normally, professors quantify how unusual something is in statistics, standard deviation and that kind of thing. But I have trouble following that. If you were Luke Skywalker in this situation, how big was the disturbance in the force? Alderaan. For those slightly less nerdy than Professor Bitzer and myself, that's the planet that gets destroyed by the Death Star. The destruction of a planet? Yes. And just eyeballing it, this is not normal. So Bitzer writes a blog post explaining what he was reading in the data that most people had not. Then it spreads rapidly through the internet. And then around the same time, news starts to trickle in. There's stories of voters who say there were people coming and telling them to give them their mail-in absentee ballots before they filled them in. And they handed them over, and then they don't know what happened to their ballot. Reporters started digging around, and they zeroed in on this one particular character who might be behind all this. Liz, this is McCrae Dowless. Here's a picture of him on the left there. He's being sworn in as the Bladen county soil and water conservation district supervisor. Now it's Dowless who finds himself in potentially hot water. And when we around this office heard those stories, we were like, wait a minute-- Leslie McCrae Dowless? You mean, the vice chair of the Soil and Water Commission of Bladen county? We know that guy. Would you like a cigarette, Zoe? No, I'm OK. Thank you though. This is tape of my colleague, Zoe Chace, doing a story in North Carolina two years ago. She's talking to Leslie McCrae Dowless. Zoe was there because Dowless had filed complaints alleging Democratic voter fraud, absentee ballot fraud. She went to this hearing about those complaints, where Dowless' complaints actually got dismissed, found unsubstantiated. But then-- this gets wild-- in the hearing, Dowless gets questioned. And he starts describing things that he and Republican campaign workers have been doing. So you keep saying GOTV. Does that mean-- Get out to vote. You did pay her-- Get out to vote. OK, and what exactly was it that she got paid to do? Dowless ended up being accused of paying campaign workers to gather absentee ballots from people, fill them out, and fraudulently vote in their place. That is illegal. One family signed an affidavit saying Dowless' workers had them request absentee ballots. Those ballots never showed up. And then when they went to vote on election day, they were told they already voted. Dowless insisted he'd done nothing wrong. But this, this is exactly the kind of thing that, if it happened this year, would explain the statistical weirdness that Professor Bitzer found when he was reading the data from Bladen county. In the last few weeks, there have been affidavits from voters in the county, describing what Dowless partially confessed to two years earlier-- campaign workers showing up, asking for their mail-in ballots, offering to fill them in for them. And it turns out, Leslie McCrae Dowless spent this last year in Bladen county, working for the Republican candidate, Mark Harris. We all know the wah-wah-wah of the voter fraud election fraud conversation. Democrats say it's proven not to be happening. Republicans say it does happen. We need tougher laws. Researchers say, no, actually, it's not a problem, to which Republicans say, you're a bunch of liberal academics. We don't trust what you say. Like so much of our political conversation, so enjoyable. So for once, or, I guess, twice now, in North Carolina, we see, when we dive into the data that everyone's wrong and everyone's right. The Democrats must concede that fraud is, apparently, quite possible. The Republicans must concede, at least in this case, it is not the product of a democratic scheme made up of non-ID-having double voters. But if the facts bear out, the largest voter fraud scandal to hit North Carolina in recent memory is the work of a Republican operative bringing votes for a Republican candidate. Ben Calhoun is one of the producers of our show. Zoe Chace is away this week. This program was produced today by Nadia Raymond and Anna Martin. The people who worked on today's show includes Elna Baker, Ben Calhoun, Zoe Chace, David [INAUDIBLE], Sean Cole, Jarrett Floyd, Stephanie Foo, Damien Grave, Jay Caspian Kang, David Kestenbaum, Seth Lind, Miki Meek, Katharine Mae Mondo, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu, our senior producer, Brian Reed, our managing editor, Susan Burton. Special thanks today to Heidi Schreck, Larry Levitt, Jeremy deVine, Matt Ross, Josh Gerstein, Ilya Mouzykantskii, Lee Chen, Danielle Eisenman, Derek Wang, Kevin Moy, Daniel Wu, and all the students that Diane talked to at Harvard, our website, ThisAmericanLife.org, where you can listen to our archive of over 600 episodes for absolutely free or get our app. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thank you as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. I have trouble with calculus. No matter how many times Torey tells me over and over-- Limits is the keyword. I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
A man walks into the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library one Monday earlier this month. He's a balding gentleman named John Peters, and he's looking for books by the Marxist political theorist, Antonio Gramsci. He's an Italian radical. And what I'm seeing is everything has been taken out several years ago. I'm wondering, are these stolen? Or has somebody-- and I know of one case of this-- deliberately not wanted people to see these books? If this is a conspiracy to suppress the 20th century's greatest theorist of cultural hegemony, it is not a very effective conspiracy. It takes the helpful librarian less than two minutes to find, on the shelves of the fourth floor, a book of Gramsci's selected political writings. So here's the call number. So that's how you find it on the shelf, OK? Five of us went to libraries around the country that day, according to the reference desk. And one of the things that we found everywhere were even-tempered, unflappable librarians. Like at the Palo Verde Public Library in Phoenix, a library user named Cindy, in a maroon sweatshirt and fanny pack, broke into song to get the librarian to understand exactly which Amy Grant Christmas album she wanted. No. (SINGING) Mary, did you know that your baby boy-- Oh, I've heard the song. That same day on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana, at the Medicine Spring Library, a woman asked the librarian, Aaron Lafromboise, if they have anything on the Motokiks, the traditional women's society in the tribe. You know, I don't know if there's anything actually written about Motokik. Yeah. Yeah, one of my aunties is in there. And so when I got my Indian name, she sang me an honor song from the Motokiks. So it was really amazing. Really? So I'm thinking you might have to search a little more. They look for books together and don't find much. The books are written mostly by non-natives and men, which can I say? Good example of cultural hegemony. Same afternoon, on the other side of the country in the Jackson Heights branch of the Queens Public Library in New York City, upstairs in the children's section, high school kids hide out on the floors of the stacks. A teenager by the computers downloads an immigration form, I suppose, for her parents. This is, everybody says, the most ethnically-mixed neighborhood in Queens, with books in English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean Urdu, Hindi, and more. Two happily confident third graders, named Katherine and Adam, friends from the libraries after school program, Stacks, walk up to the librarian with a request. I want to know that any books have words but no pictures. Yes. Words but no pictures? Yeah. Most of our books have at least a little picture. Even the chapter books have drawings at the start of each chapter, the librarian explains. The kids let her know that this is acceptable. Not ideal, but acceptable. I want to have a book with a challenge reading because-- do you know I'm almost fifth grade? No, you're third grade. How can you be almost fifth grade? OK, here, this book might be-- But I want a really challenge. I want a challenging one. And I think I know there's a one here. Can you go to the front over there? He marches the librarian towards the books for older kids. Best as I can figure out, Adam somehow got it into his head that day that he had just had it with picture books. And as soon as he said this, Katherine was like, oh, me too. Though once Adam walked away, she told me it was her own independent decision. It's that now that I'm bigger, I don't want to really have more pictures. I want to mostly just use my imaginations for reading. People use the library for so much more than books, though. In just that one Monday, the five of us who went out to record, we witnessed a woman printing out fliers to find her lost dog. We witnessed old people getting help with their email. One librarian told me that in her job, you really get in touch with just how many people really do not know how to use computers at all. We saw a homeless guy research apartments he might be able to afford. We heard about power tools you could check out to do your home improvements when you have a place and lights for seasonal affective disorder you can check out. A library got on the phone and then arranged for a patron to get a new walker and get it delivered to him. Will you be there between 5:00 and 7:00 tonight? Yes. Yes. 5:00 and 7:00 tonight works. The librarian from suburban Detroit that I spoke with, Annie Spence, described libraries the best, I thought. I always say that it's the only place-- well, it's one of the last places you can go that you don't have to buy or believe in anything to come in. You can just come, and we'll help you, no matter what your question is. We'll try to figure it out with you. In the Harry Potter books, there's this place called the Room of Requirement. The way it works is you walk three times in front of this certain patch of wall at Hogwarts, thinking, like, I really need a coffee. And then suddenly in that room a coffee shop will appear. Or, I need a place to make my magic potion in secret, and then a room with all the ingredients for your magic potion will appear. Libraries are like that. But in real life. That's what they do. And today on our program, we have stories of very unlikely uses for these Rooms of Requirement, all driven by people who want something very, very specialized. Something which, in every single story in today's show, the library is able to deliver. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Act One, In Praise of Limbo. So we start our show today with a library in a very unusual place, and with people who want something very unusual from that library. Zoe Chace explains. The library sits on the border between Canada and the US. I mean, literally on the border. Like there's a faded black line running along the floor to show you which country you're in. The books are mostly in Canada. The front door is in America. So entering from the US is easy. But if you're coming from the Canadian side, to get to the door, you have to venture for about 20 yards into American territory on an American sidewalk. How can you tell you've crossed over? Flower pots. A row of flower pots. Yeganeh Torbati is a Reuters reporter who was there recently. So the flower pots are there to demarcate the border between the United States and Canada. It's just-- it's like, sorry, we just have to show you that this little line exists, but we're trying to make it as sweet as possible. And in the spring, those flower pots are blooming, and it's quite beautiful. Of course, when I was there, it was quite dead. So it's really just a line of flower pots with dirt in them. The place is kind of famous, gets tourists. When Barack Obama was speaking during a state visit from the Canadian Prime Minister, he mentioned the library as this harmonious symbol of Canadian-US ties. A library is an inherently welcoming place. Its whole ethos is this is for everybody. That's the spirit of this library in two countries at once. That's not why we're talking about it, though. We're talking about something happening inside the library that's making things kind of tense. That's why Yeganeh was there. She covers immigration. She's been writing about the travel ban since January 2017. And the list of countries has changed as the ban has changed. But Iran? Iran has always been on the list of banned countries. There are a lot of Iranian students in the US here on single-entry visas. Single-entry means if they leave, they can't just turn around and re-enter. They can't go home to see their families. And because of the travel ban, their families can't visit them here, so there's no way for them to see each other. But Iranians can get to Canada, and this library is in Canada. And Iranian students in America can get to this library because this library is also in America. So that's what they've been doing, meeting at this library in two countries at once. Yeganeh went up there and waited outside the library on a Saturday morning. Almost immediately, this woman walked in, who herself was an Iranian student. And she was dressed for the winter weather and in a winter coat. And she looked kind of anxious, and I could kind of tell that she's Iranian. And so I started talking to her, and she said that yes, indeed, she was trying to meet her parents. They spoke in Persian. Yeganeh is Iranian-American, actually. Her parents came here as students. And I had earlier saw her being questioned by US border patrol agents. And so I asked her what had happened in those interactions because I had heard that border patrol agents were objecting to these reunions and were at times trying to stop people from carrying them out. But she said that they questioned her, they examined her documents, and they asked her if she was here to see her family. And she said yes, and they said great, that's very normal. A lot of people do it. And they let her into the library. And then maybe about 10, 15 minutes after she first arrived, I kind of hear this bit of commotion. The door of the library is like pretty creaky, and old, and kind of noisy. And these three or four people come in. We were in the second reading room, furthest from the door. And you just see this woman in a headscarf and a winter coat, and she just starts rushing in. And her daughter gets up from the table where I was sitting with her and walks over to her really quickly, and they just embrace. And immediately, tears are flowing. And it's just this really intense and very intimate and private moment. But there was no loud crying. There was no sobbing. There was no loud talking Yeah because it's in the library. [LAUGHS] Yeah. It's just this subdued environment, and they're trying to-- they're both expressing all their emotions, but also trying to fit them into the space. Around this family are kids with headphones on, on computers, parents with kids in the children's reading room. All the library stuff is happening. The librarians stay out of the way, which seems like an acquiescence to these meetings, but there are these new signs up around lately. No eating, no packages, and no family meetings. Yeganeh heard that the US and Canadian authorities had threatened to shut the library down, and she asked them about it. The Canadians denied it. The US had no comment. In the library, Yeganeh sees families ignore the signs. This student flew from Michigan. Her family came from Iran for only a few hours together. It seems crazy. And then around, I want to say 11:00, another Iranian family entered. It's been three years since this mother has seen her son. She and her husband come in with their other son, who lives in Canada now. He and his brother look like twins. These parents have been visiting their son in Canada for weeks. And all this time, they've been trying to figure out, is there any way we can see our other son who lives in Ohio? They couldn't solve it, but just before the parents were scheduled to fly back to Iran, they heard about the library, and everyone rushed there for a few hours. That was also really emotional. I didn't see the exact moment of their embrace, but I saw their goodbye. And that was very difficult to watch. What happened? So the brother who's living in the United States, he hugged his mother, and you can just see him sobbing into her shoulder. Then they separate, and she has this very tear-stained face and is putting her coat and scarf back on. And then he hugs his father and, again, buries his face in his shoulder. And the father, I heard him say to his son, take care of yourself. Please take care of yourself. A lot of these families talk every day, multiple times a day. Like they know exactly how the other person is doing, what's going on in their life. But still, they fly, rent a car, drive to the border. Shirin Estahbanati, another student, drove up from New York to see her parents who'd flown from Iran. Reuters put up a video of her interview about the visit. Shirin is this glowing, young face. Her emotions are just written right across it. Her dad had had a heart attack recently. She was so anxious to see him. I don't know. The time I was just hugging my parents, I was thinking, I wish I could stop all clocks all over the world. I can't explain how tough it was, especially about my dad. I thought even he is shorter than the time I left. I don't know. The time he met me, he started smelling me, and he was like, I miss your smell. So-- [SNIFFLES] I'd been thinking of the idea of this show, of libraries as the magical Room of Requirement from Harry Potter. I think this is exactly that. Like imagine these Iranian students in America, thinking, I need a magical place that is somehow in America but also outside it. It seems like an impossible one. It's like a very particular only at this time in America would this exact requirement exist. And a room appeared, a reading room. Zoe Chace, who's one of the producers of our show. Act Two, Book Fishing in America. OK, so our program today, of course, is about people who want libraries to satisfy some very deep, and sometimes, very idiosyncratic desires. And the people in this act, they wish for a library that can give them something that only ever existed inside the pages of a book. Sean Cole, tell us what happened. There's this book I've always really loved, a novel by Richard Brautigan. If you haven't heard of him, he was a really funny, almost surreal, hippyish writer in the '60s and '70s, probably best known for the book, Trout Fishing in America, a very short and deeply experimental piece of fiction, part travelogue, part fever dream. It's what made people cultish about Brautigan. A kid who went to my college legally changed his name to Trout Fishing In America. But the novel I'm talking about is lesser known. It's called The Abortion, subtitle, An Historical Romance 1966. And it's not so much the story that gets me. It's the setting. It takes place in a library in San Francisco. But instead of coming to take books out of the library, people come to submit unpublished books they've written to the library, forever. The books are there to stay. They can bring a book in anytime. The library never closes. And the librarian-- there is only one-- is always there to greet them. He lives at the library, and he's the narrator of the story. This is from the first chapter. The librarian says, "We don't use the Dewey decimal classification or any index system to keep track of our books. We record their entrance into the library in the Library Contents Ledger, and then we give the book back to its author, who is free to place it anywhere he wants in the library, on whatever shelf catches his fancy. It doesn't make any difference where a book is placed because nobody ever checks them out and nobody ever comes here to read them. This is not that kind of library. This is another kind of library." The librarian is reflexively polite and effusive. He might say to someone, "I don't think we have a book like this in the entire library. This is a first." He puts people at ease. He says, "My clothes are not expensive but they are friendly and neat and my human presence is welcoming." Eventually, a woman comes in with a book, and she's very beautiful. They fall in love. She gets pregnant, but they're not ready to have a child. So because this takes place in 1966, the two of them travel to Mexico to get an abortion, which is why the novel is called The Abortion. But just the spectacle of this library, it's hilarious, and heartbreaking, and democratic, and other-dimensional all at the same time. Brautigan imagined a great anonymous wash of humanity marching through, with a lot on its mind. Kind of the Utopian ideal of the public square, except completely silent, all written down on rows and rows of unread books. The librarian says the main purpose of the library is, quote, "to gather pleasantly together the unwanted, the lyrical and haunted volumes of American writing." And when you talk to other people who've read The Abortion, the conversation usually winds its way to this one chapter. "The 23?" "The 23." [LAUGHS] Yeah. This is Todd Lockwood, a photographer and music producer in Burlington, Vermont. I'll tell you why I got in touch with him in a minute. "The 23" is essentially a list of all 23 books that came into the library this one particular day, by little kids, old people. And the chapter's made up of just little descriptions of the 23 books that the librarian wrote down in his ledger. There's one called It's the Queen of Darkness, Pal, a science fiction novel written by sewer worker. There's a book called Leather Clothes and the History of Man, which is somehow entirely made of leather. Not just the binding, but the pages. Richard Brautigan himself comes into the library with a book called Moose. And a doctor comes in looking, quote, "doctory and very nervous," with a book entitled The Need for Legalized Abortion. I asked Todd what some of his favorites were, and he pointed to this one. Just the title alone is just wonderful. It's called Bacon Death by Marcia Patterson. "The author was a totally nondescript young woman except for the look of anguish on her face. She handed me this fantastically greasy book and fled the library in terror. The book actually looked like a pound of bacon. I was going to open it and see what it was about, but I changed my mind. I didn't know whether to fry the book or put it on the shelf. Being a librarian here is sometimes a challenge." Todd first read The Abortion when it came out in the early '70s. A friend of his gave it to him with a little inscription that said, "This book will change your life." And that turned out to be more than prophetic. He ended up reading it about once a year for the next 15 years. And every time I'd read it, I'd get the same feeling from it. First thing I would say to myself is, when is somebody going to build this library? When is somebody going to do this? To eventually becoming, when am I going to do this? A real life library for unpublished books submitted by their authors. A home for anything anyone felt a burning need to express, or explain, or somehow get off their chests. Todd dreamed for years about one day creating a place like that. And there was clearly a desire for it. In The Abortion, Brautigan gives an address for his fictional library. 3150 Sacramento Street, San Francisco, California, 94115, which is the real life address of the Presidio branch of the San Francisco Public Library. So for a while, people were actually sending their unpublished manuscripts there and had to be informed, this is not that kind of library. This is a normal kind of library Anyway, Todd kept putting off his dream, thinking, I'll put that library together someday. And then two things happened, the first one being very tragic. My sister died in a plane crash-- Oh, my God. --in 1989. This was the United DC-10 that went down in Sioux City, Iowa. So losing a sibling is one of those things that really causes you to look at the things that you've done in your life and ask yourself, are these really the best things I can be doing right now? And so at any rate, about a month and a half or two months after the crash, I thought, you know what? I need to just get away from this constant sorrow here and take myself to the movies. And there was this movie that had come out earlier that year that Todd hadn't seen yet, a Kevin Costner vehicle about an Iowa farmer who plows up his corn to build a baseball diamond. (WHISPERING) If you build it, he will come. So I went to see Field of Dreams, and about halfway into that film, it became really obvious to me that Brautigan's library is my baseball field. If I build it, people will come. It wasn't even before the movie was over that that struck you? Yeah. Yeah, as soon as that part of the film started to unfold, I was just astounded at the parallel. I was like, this is weird. I felt literally as if I'm supposed to be sitting here right now watching this. This is all part of a big plan. Which, if you remember, is exactly the way Kevin Costner's character felt in the movie. And I'm not a person that gets too caught up in the metaphysical aspects of life. But when I stepped outside the theater afterward, I just-- I feel it as strongly as I've ever felt anything in my life. I'd never felt so sure about anything in my life. Todd immediately started calling around, putting a board of advisors together, appealing for funding. It took about half a year. And then finally-- And around here on the side is our entrance. --the library opened its doors in Burlington, Vermont in 1990. This tape is from a BBC Radio story that aired a few years in. Todd led the producers past The Vermont Institute of Massage Therapy-- And here we are. --to a modest wooden building, outfitted with comfy chairs and shelves for the books. A swinging placard out front said, in capital letters-- The Brautigan Library. And underneath that, the words, "A Very Public Library." Now it's one thing to adapt a piece of fiction into a movie. It's another thing to adapt a piece of fiction into a library. As soon as they started talking about how The Brautigan Library would work in real life, Todd and his advisors and volunteers realized that they were going to need to make some concessions, such as whereas in the novel, there's just one librarian, in real life, there were many. All volunteer, and none of them lived there. Certainly never impregnated anyone there, or not to Todd's knowledge. And unlike in the novel, the books were almost exclusively submitted by mail. And the authors had to kick in a little money, $25 or so, to cover the cost of binding their manuscripts. And people actually came to read the books, from all over the country. I was sitting there one day, and a couple comes in the front door. And they announce, we're here! And I said, well, welcome. Where are you from? And this couple had flown from Houston for the weekend, specifically to hang out in The Brautigan Library for a couple of days. Stop it. And we had many of those. Probably because of the barrage of media stories about the library. New York Times, Wall Street Journal, a wire story that got picked up by hundreds of papers across the country. Everyone treated it as a quirky human interest story. The first and, at the time, only library for unpublished books, which started off as a piece of make-believe in a weirdo novel written 20 years beforehand. There was a ledger the librarians used, but they didn't write down descriptions of the books that came in. Rather they wrote down descriptions of the people that came in. This is from that BBC story. This is March 20, '93. "A man stopped by from Washington. 'Is this the library?' he asked. 'Yes,' I said. 'It's The Brautigan.' 'What's a Brautigan? Is it the city library?' I told him it was a home for unpublished manuscripts. 'Why?' he asked. 'So they can stay alive, and people can read them,' I said. He wasn't impressed. 'Where's the real library?' he wanted to know. 'Same street, three blocks up.' He left." A lot of people have asked that question-- why? And over the years, Todd has tended to give a pretty short and well-honed answer, almost like an artist statement. In fact, he used almost exactly the same words with the BBC producers in 1993, as he did with me in 2018. The beauty of it is that it doesn't make sense. For me, one of the beauties of this whole thing was that it didn't make any sense. It was illogical. Yeah. Yeah. Just like in Field of Dreams, where he says, I have done something completely illogical. Right. Right. Oh, yeah. I have just created something totally illogical. That's what I like about it. It's what I liked about Todd's library, and it's what I'd always loved about the library in the novel, the fictional one. It wasn't just illogical. It was impossible. And I loved sitting with the librarian in that impossible place, surrounded by books that only he and the people who wrote them knew about. So for someone to transform an imaginary magical place I loved into an actual location I could maybe visit one day, it was like finding out there was a real life chocolate factory, like the one Charlie visited, or a wardrobe that opened up unto a forest with talking animals in it. But there was something else, something stranger, that The Brautigan Library had in common with Field of Dreams. The story goes like this. In 1991, about a year after the library opened, the Bumbershoot Arts Festival in Seattle asked Todd if he wanted to set up a mini version of the library at the festival, an exhibit. So Todd, his wife, and about 100 of the books they'd amassed up to that point got on a plane, flew out there, and set up shop in this indoor event space. And so first day at the exhibit, I'm showing people around. And this gentleman walks up to me, and puts out his hand, and says, Hi, I'm Bill Kinsella, the author of Shoeless Joe, the book Field of Dreams was based on. No way. No way. And I was just dumbfounded. I said, you have no idea how wildly fantastic it is that you are here right now. I said, if you hadn't have written that, I might never have stepped up to the plate and really done this. You just said, "stepped up to the plate." Oh. [LAUGHS] It just so happened that Bill Kinsella, or WP Kinsella is what it says on his book jackets, was a featured speaker at Bumbershoot that year. And he said, well. He said, I've got one for you. Were it not for Richard Brautigan, I would never have written that book. No way. In fact, he said I would never have gotten into being a fiction writer, were it not for Richard Brautigan. This is the part of the story that when I tell it to people, their eyes get really wide. The part where one twin in a fairy tale figures out why she's been wearing half a locket around her neck the entire time. Todd hadn't known it, but no other writer had as much of an impact on Kinsella's life and career as Richard Brautigan. In 1985, Kinsella published a book of weird, vignettey short stories that he called his Brautigans. He dedicated the collection to Richard Brautigan, including, in the dedication, a fan letter he'd written to Brautigan, in which he said, quote, "I have just written a novel about a man who drives from Iowa to New Hampshire, kidnaps JD Salinger, and takes him to a baseball game at Fenway Park. He was talking about Shoeless Joe. That was part of the plot. And so you're both kind of shocked. I'm imagining two shocked men. Yeah, right. [LAUGHING] I was like, perhaps someway or other, Brautigan himself is playing some sort of role in all this. That we're like marionettes, and he's up there just with a great big smile on his face, just having a blast, messing with the real world. Or haunting it somehow, like he was saying, playfully, better not forget me. I wanted to talk with Bill Kinsella for this story, but he died in 2016 on September 16, the same day Richard Brautigan had died in 1984. Both of them chose that day to end their lives. Kinsella was terminally ill and opted for doctor-assisted suicide, which is legal now in Canada, where he's from. Brautigan shot himself with a revolver. The Brautigan Library chugged along in its original location for about six years. But as Todd once wrote in an issue of the library newsletter, reality can be so clankingly real at times. By 1996, fewer and fewer manuscripts were coming in. Money was tight. Here and there, Todd had to make ends meet with funds from his own bank account. And finally, the entire Brautigan Library was moved to a room in the Fletcher Free Library, the regular public library down the road in Burlington. It stopped accepting new books but people could still come and read the ones that existed. 10 years went by, and then the Fletcher Library decided it needed the space for other things. So all The Brautigan Library books, more than 300 of them, found themselves shrink wrapped on a wooden pallet in Todd Lockwood's basement. And this is the moment in the library's history when I first heard about it. I've been wanting to tell this story and see the books for myself for about 10 years. But way back when Todd and I started talking about this, he said he needed to wait, that he was in negotiations with a couple of academic libraries that might be interested, couldn't do an interview until something was finalized, et cetera and so on. Certainly the books weren't available to look at. I said I'd keep checking in, but I didn't. And then this past summer, I started thinking about the library again. So I looked it up, and the library had finally found a new home in Vancouver, Washington, about 3,000 miles away from where it was born. Watch your head here, low ceiling. And it had a new librarian, John Barber, a professor at one of the universities in town. He led me down into the basement of the Clark County Historical Museum. And here it is, The Brautigan Library. Wow. These are all the manuscripts. Oh, my gosh. Come to find, the manuscripts have been housed in this building since 2010, and John Barber was instrumental in making that happen. If there's such a thing as a Brautigan scholar, it's him. He may know more about Richard Brautigan than anyone else alive. He was a student of Brautigan's and hung out with him. So naturally, he was a big supporter of the library from early on. And when the library shut down, he was sad to think of all the books being mothballed in Todd's basement. Until finally, he just got inspired and organized to have them all moved to this place. And he's taken on the mantle of the librarian. Also, I should say, Richard Brautigan once told me that he would haunt me. Wait, he said, I will haunt you? Yes. This was in 1982, two years before Brautigan killed himself. Brautigan's friend, Nikki Arai, had just died of complications from cancer. And I said, you have your memories of her. You could write about those memories. You're a writer. That's what you do. And he said, I don't write for therapy, and actually got really upset with me. Then he said, but then again-- and he turned and walked away. And he came back after a few minutes with a little slip of paper, on which he had written, "Where you are now, I will join you soon." After dinner and another bottle of whiskey, they went out to the yard and burned the note in a kind of ritual to send those words to Brautigan's friend. And I went home that night-- slowly because of all the whiskey-- and wrote about that experience. And I showed it to him, and he said, if you ever show this to anybody before I'm dead, I will haunt you. And I did. And he does. After all, John, for all intents and purposes, now inhabits a physical manifestation of an idea Brautigan had in his head. And what's a little startling when you meet John is that he is the librarian from the novel. Like he's just like him. His clothes are not expensive but friendly and neat, and his human presence welcoming. Yes, we look an awful lot alike. Tall, mustache, glasses. He's reflexively polite and effusive. I had all three meals with him the day we spent together. And each time, he said to the server, in all earnestness, "Thank you for your hospitality." Same as when the museum's director let us in early before it opened. Thanks so much for accommodating us. Of course. Thanks. It's much smaller than I imagined somehow. Well, there's that, certainly. There's 300-plus manuscripts that are associated with the library. So we might actually say that it's small but mighty. Because each of these 300-plus manuscripts that we're standing in the middle of has dreams, and aspirations, memories, and hopes for the future associated with it. In fact, it's just two long sets of bookshelves at one end of the museum's research library. And all of the books have the same plain black, brown, gray, or blue bindings. The host of that BBC piece said they looked like body bags for whatever was inside of them. I really wonder how many of them were ever read cover to cover. I wanted to see if being in the library gave me the same feeling I had as when I read The Abortion. And I have to say more and more, it really did feel like I had climbed into the pages of that novel, with its messy expanse of humanity marching through. Some of the books were silly. Others were mournfully nostalgic. Still others were deadly serious. Enjoy the War, Peace will be Terrible. Which is about the lives of two teen girls in World War II Vienna. Others promoted radical ideas. Three Essays Advocating the Abolishing of Money. Almost 50 poetry collections. I opened up one called I'd Be Your Roadkill, Baby. The poetry reading. "He greased me with his words--" oh! OK, I can't say that on the radio. Instead of using Dewey Decimal, the books are organized according to what they call the Mayonnaise System. It's a Brautigan in-joke. He ended Trout Fishing in America with the word "mayonnaise." And it goes by category. So there's adventure, family, future, humor, love, meaning of life, poetry, natural world, social political cultural, spirituality, street life, war and peace, and my favorite, all the rest. There's always the miscellaneous drawer, right? Where something is just too offbeat to fit in. And instead of the summaries being in a big library contents ledger, there's a summary printed out on the first page of each book. Of course, almost all of the books are offbeat. Like this is the summary of a novel called Did She Leave Me Any Money? It says, "A philosophical comedy about men, money, motivation, winning strategies, architecture, nudism, trucking, corporate assassinations, heart attacks, sexual politics, hometown parades, spiritual warriors, and the dredging of Willapa Bay." This is something a bunch of the books have in common. It's like their authors are gushing forth with everything they've been wanting to talk about their whole lives. And with a lot of them, there's this sense of, this is important. I alone have the answer. Just like with a lot of the books in Brautigan's novel. For instance, there's the most prolific contributor to The Brautigan Library, Albert E. Helzner. He's got 19 books here, three under an assumed name. And they're mostly comprised of his own personal scientific theories and observations. Titles like A Revolutionary Way of Looking at the Earth as a Planet, or, more to the point, The World is Wrong. The only way I can think to describe it-- and I do so admiringly-- it's like PhD-level stoner thinking. Everything and everyone in the Helzner-verse is interconnected and impactful. In his book, October 6, 1990, Helzner said that every year on October 6, he'd go to the maternity ward of a hospital, look at a newborn baby through the glass, and ask himself, how did this birth come about? What is the long-range effect? And what is the significance of any birth? Addressing the baby he went to see in 1990, he says he wants to tell her what transpired on the day before she was born. "I spent the whole day thinking about you," he writes. "On that day, the moon was shining on my town of Marblehead, Massachusetts. It was a bright full moon sitting in a clear sky. My wife and I drove to Seaside 5 Corners for a bite to eat. We saw the moon as we drove along. We saw the old buildings. You'll see the same moon and the same old buildings when you grow up." Albert Helzner died in June 2016, but his books are still at the library. God knows where that baby is now. I asked John if there were any books in particular that he wanted to show me. And he was really enthusiastic about this one that he thought gave a sense of what the library was there for. It's called-- Autobiography about a Nobody. And it's written by Etherley Murray of Pittman, New Jersey. And she may have said, oh look, here's a library that accepts manuscripts, regardless of subject matter. Right, exactly. I'm a nobody. They'll be interested. It's mainly the story of her growing up during the Depression in Altoona, Pennsylvania, eating onion sandwiches and, quote, "wearing coats that belonged to women who had just departed this life." Except it was in the humor section, intentionally so. There's a cartoon horse in a red union suit on the title page, tears cascading from behind its blinders. She says, in the notes that came along with the submission, that she had submitted it to 40 publishers, who, although they liked the story, did not publish manuscripts of nobodies. In Brautigan's novel, a guy in his 50s walks into the library with a book he wrote when he was 17. "'This book has set the world's record for rejections,' he says. 'It has been rejected 459 times, and now I am an old man.'" You know, there'd be a sense of completion, for one thing. This is Todd Lockwood again, the founder of the library. And we heard this from numerous writers that sent us works. After their book had been in the collection for a while, we'd hear back from them, hear back from writers who would say, wow, this really is a weight off. I just feel like the project is done finally. Even though it technically was finished, it's the fact that it's sitting on a shelf in a public place, where someone that that person doesn't know will cross paths with that book, and take it off the shelf, and perhaps read it. That sort of completes the circle, and I can get on to the next thing. It's funny to think about, but in some ways, The Brautigan Library is more like the library in the novel now than it ever has been. The books are housed in a building that looks more like the Presidio branch. They aren't often read by anyone. And it has one librarian, who actually is available at all hours of the day and night to accept new books, but only digitized ones, PDFs submitted online. But the more I think about it, it's not about how perfectly or imperfectly Todd or John turned a fictional place into a real one. That's not the point. It's that Richard Brautigan in his novel predicted with perfect accuracy what would happen if you did create a library like this. That being there would give you a feeling like you're walking down the street and noticing that everyone has a book they've made tucked under one arm, a jumbled woolly individual transcription of how the world feels to that person. It's the feeling of being able to read everyone's mind for a moment and being startled by their unedited thoughts because they're nothing like yours, but they're just as weird. It's like the librarian says in chapter two of the novel, "There just simply had to be a library like this." Sean Cole, who's one of the producers of our program. Coming up, a woman who went to the library every day for a while as a child suddenly realizes one day as an adult that the way she was remembering it was not right at all. That's in a minute. From Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. This American Life, I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program, "The Room of Requirement," we have stories of how libraries function like a real-life version of that room in Harry Potter, the Room of Requirement. Where when you need something, the room just makes it appear for you, just like librarians try to do. Seriously, all over the world. Whatever your request. We have arrived at the third act of our program. Act Three, Growing Shelf Awareness. This act is about somebody returning to the library that she went to as a kid, wanting something very specific and very personal out of that experience. One of our producers, Stephanie Foo, went with her. Lydia Sigwarth walks into her childhood library in Dubuque. It's this huge stone building with Roman columns, built over 100 years ago. And as soon as we pass the front door, Lydia stops dead in her tracks, looks up at the large, echoey rotunda above us, and gets quiet. Do you remember how you felt walking into the library when you were a kid? It was my favorite part of each day, and I always had a plan. I always came with a plan of what I wanted to do. This was her favorite place growing up. She only lives half an hour away now, but she hasn't been a patron here in nearly two decades. Back when she was six, Lydia, her mom, and her six siblings used to spend a lot of time here. Like a lot of time. They spent all day, almost everyday here for about half a year, while they were homeless. We walk past a World War I exhibit into an airy space filled with nonfiction books and people working on computers. This was where the children's department used to be, I'm pretty sure. We go around the crafting zone into a quiet area by a big floor-to-ceiling window that looks out on the street. This was a very warm spot because of the window. I remember it being very cozy and warm. There's some cushion chairs here. Those are new. Back then, they'd sit on the floor. My little brother would take his nap here. This was a quieter spot, where we're sitting right now. And I remember my eldest sister holding my little brother who's two at the time. And he was sleeping, and she would quietly read a book out loud to me. This used to be next to a big shelf, where they kept all The Boxcar Children books. They were free to run around unassisted, without parents hovering over them, to do whatever they wanted. If you think about it, libraries are kind of one of the only public spaces where kids have freedom like that. And so Lydia ran through the stacks, and crawled around on the play rug, or just stared out of this big window, her favorite, near where her baby brother used to sleep. I forgot about this. So the entrance is below us right now. And I would watch people come in and out because we'd be here for hours at a time. And I would watch people come in and then wait for them to come back out and see how many books they had. Lydia came from a stable family, but when they moved from Denver to Dubuque, they had a tough time finding a place they could afford. So they crashed with friends and family, moving every month or two. Lydia remembers all nine of them, crammed together in someone's basement. She and her five sisters all slept together on a big L-shaped couch, with blow-up mattresses in the middle. And every morning, Lydia's mom would pack up all the kids and take them to the library. I think that's why they took us here, is to give the family we were staying with privacy, but also to give us our own measures of privacy. Because it's so big. You could-- We could spread out and have our own spots. So I had spots here, and you can't have a spot in a furnished basement shared with eight other people. Her parents did such a good job pretending that they were just on a fun adventure, that Lydia didn't register any of this as painful or difficult. She didn't even really understand that their family was going through anything, until she was having a conversation at work about a year ago, talking about homeless people coming to the library. It came rushing back to her. Wait a minute, that was me. She honestly had never thought about it for almost two decades. And I'm sitting in this meeting, like almost crying, like I teared up. I was like, how did I never realize this before? And how did we never talk about this? And then I was like, it's because it wasn't traumatic. We were fine. We were happy. We were fed, and clothed, and taken care of. So there was nothing wrong. Because I remembered that time so fondly, that I was like, oh, that was the year we lived in the library. It was the best time ever. I just remember the feeling that it gave me, of belonging. I get really emotional thinking about it because I credit Mrs. S for most of it. Mrs. S was the children's librarian. Lydia's favorite spot in the library was by her desk. It was a round desk, like a half moon round desk. So I would make a beeline over here and make my demands known. [LAUGHS] Every morning, all seven kids would run in and spread out over her library. But every day, Mrs. S would greet them warmly. She'd stroll the stacks with Lydia, helping her find something to read. They had conversations about books and about life. Lydia remembers this one day in particular, when Mrs. S came up to her with a recommendation. I remember her putting aside the book, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, for me. I remember her bringing it to me and saying that this came back, and I thought of you right away when I saw it because you have sisters. So I got this for you. It was the first book that felt perfect for her. The youngest princess in the book was the heroine, and she was also the youngest sister in her family. She was sure Mrs. S was telling her that she was special. Lydia wanted to find Mrs. S for a few years because she had such great memories of her, but who exactly was she? Lydia had no idea what the S stood for, like what her real last name was. She visited the library once to ask, and they said they weren't sure. It had been decades. But there was a Mrs. Stephenson who had worked here a long time. Only problem was she couldn't talk to her that day because she was on vacation. So Lydia just went home. Then about a year ago, when all of the memories of her being homeless came flooding back, she wrote a long email to say thank you and sent it to Mrs. Stephenson. But she never got a response. Lydia thought, it's probably not the right Mrs. S, or maybe she doesn't remember me. We get to go to the staff only. Very exciting. So I'll just tell you. I called ahead, and yep, Mrs. Stephenson was Mrs. S. And yes, she totally remembered Lydia. So we went to see her in the staff only area. It was the first time Lydia had seen her since she was a little kid. Mrs. S was sitting in a big, warm office, decorated with paintings of cows and pink monsters. And when she saw Lydia, she rushed out with her arms wide open and grabbed her into a huge hug. [LAUGHS] Hi, sweetheart. Hi. Aww, you look the same. Do I? Yes, just taller. Do you remember me? I remember your family. Aww because we were here all the time. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's what I remember. Golly! Try to think of the last person you've met who used the word "golly" with all sincerity. I can see why Mrs. S made her feel cared for. I brought you a present that is very badly wrapped. I don't know what happened to my ribbon. Then I think it's beautiful now. Thank you. It is, of course, a copy of The Twelve Dancing Princesses. Oh, my God! Did I introduce this book to you? You did. It's my very favorite book of all time. That's so funny because I thought it was special for me. Well, of course it was! Then Lydia asks Mrs. S, did she read her letter? Turns out Mrs. S never got it. We figure it probably got caught by her spam filter. And so Lydia starts to explain everything about that moment recently where she realized she'd been homeless. This was my home for that year, and I felt like I belonged. I belonged, and I was safe here. And I believe that was partially due to your influence, for me. Oh, oh. Aww! I can't-- I give your parents all that credit. I knew, but I-- we just-- no! It's your mom and dad. And I really do give them so much credit, but my memories from that time are all of you treating me so well. And I felt so important here. I felt like you thought that I was just the greatest, and it just means so much. Aww, I just think that's wonderful. That's the sound of a hug. It's everyday life for the library. It is! It is. It's what we do. Do you remember knowing about the family situation when they were in? I didn't know the exacts of the family situation. We just knew. We just knew. They were here every day. It was obvious. Lydia starts nodding effusively to what Mrs. S is saying. She knows exactly what she's talking about because Lydia works with those kids everyday herself. She's a librarian, a children's librarian. And you became a librarian? I did because of you. I think it's awesome. You don't realize how much influence you have on anybody, just by doing your job. You keep saying you were just doing your job, and I feel like I need to say, though, that you did not have to be that kind. You could have done your job without being that eternally kind. And that's something that I think about a lot because there are situations with children that I know are coming from difficult places or children who are there all day, and they just need a lot from me. And there are days when I don't want to be the most kind person on the planet because I'm tired or the child is being challenging. There are always those days. But you were that kind. Yes, the girl who lived at the library grew up to become a librarian, helping other kids like her. I'll have families that, I would say, most of the kids that are there all the time, it's because they don't want to be home or don't have a stable home. And I hope I'm doing the same thing for my kids. It's so important to me. You are. I don't think you have to hope. I know you are, just by watching and seeing your reactions today. I know you are. You are. Thank you. [SNIFFLES] You're welcome. Absolutely. Just continue to do what you're doing. It's obvious. I'm just going to cry now for a little while. It's fine. The two women swap numbers in their phones. They make a date to get fried pickles in Platteville and to talk shop about disenfranchised youth and best practices at story time. I visited the Platteville library, where Lydia has been a children's librarian for eight years. And I have to say she's really great at her job. She pinballs from one side of the room to another, helping one kid fix her computer, making sure others are safe as they walk out. Well, it's gone black. That's a great sign. There we go! Yes! Yes. OK, we fixed it. Now let me listen to my song. How are you doing, bud? Good? Good. All right. It's probably a better idea to put coats on. She brought in her parents' scale and used some old x-rays to make a fake hospital and has a fish named Fishstick that the kids help take care of. Oops. Are we gonna fill it up-- We are going to fill it up. --with toilet water? Not with toilet water. The windows have little reading nooks in them and a giant bear to cuddle with named Sir Fluffy Puffy McBearson. On April Fool's Day, she set up a self checkout line. It was just a mirror at the counter. Get it? She also holds her monthly book club, where she and a bunch of kids talk about their readings, but also build things out of stacked books, and create funny videos, and play games. I talked to a couple of kids who said they used to hate reading, but now they love it, all because of Miss Lydia's book club. I want to know where the shadow puppet books are. Shadow puppets. You want to learn how to make shadow puppets? Mm-hmm. OK, let's do that. Lydia has one girl at her library who is there all the time, every day. We'll call her Anna. Anna reminds Lydia of herself growing up, but she's had it harder. Her living arrangements aren't stable. She's often hungry. Lydia worries about her when she disappears for a week. One day about a year ago when Anna was 9, she had the same impulse with Lydia that Lydia had with Mrs. S. Anna wrote her a letter. It says, "Lydia is really nice. She's a really nice person. She's an intelligent, rememberative, and fast young woman. Sometimes when I'm at home, I just want to go to the library, just to see Lydia." Stephanie Foo. Our program was produced today by Stephanie Foo. The people who put our show together includes Zoe Chace, Dana Chivvis, Sean Cole, Jared Floyd, Michelle Harris, Chana Joffe-Walt, Jay Kang, David Kestenbaum, Anna Martin, Stone Nelson, Nadia Reiman, Robyn Semien, Alissa Shipp, Christopher Swetala, and Matt Tierney. Our senior producer is Brian Reed. Our managing editor is Susan Burton. The reporters who went to libraries for us at the top of the show. Jude Joffe-Block was in Phoenix. Liza Veale was in San Francisco. Rachael London was in Florida. And our producer, Anna Martin, was at the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana. Thanks today to Eric Klinenberg, who spoke about libraries as palaces for the people. It was helpful to us as we thought about this week's show, as was Susan Orlean's book, The Library Book. Thanks also today to Ianthe Brautigan, William Steele, Elizabeth Jensen, William Hartston, Ashleyanne Krigbaum, Brian Belfiglio, Annie Proulx Marcia Popper, Brad Richardson and everybody at the Clark County Historical Museum, Michael Fast Buffalo Horse, Joe Rutherford, Bridgit Bowden, and Zach Goelman. Also thanks to the staffs of the Phoenix Public Library, the Queens Public Library, the Sumter County Public Library, the San Francisco Public Library, and the Medicine Spring Library. Our web site, thisamericanlife.org, where you can listen to our archive of over 600 episodes for absolutely free. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks as always our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. We had the biggest fight the other day, him and me. I told him, look, it's like you think you're God or something. He didn't deny it. Yes, we look an awful lot alike. Tall, mustache, glasses. I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of this American life.
|
There's this prayer hotline that a group called The Satanic Missionary Society of Olympia, Washington started. It's like a regular prayer hotline except, of course, instead of praying to God, you leave a voicemail message, and then they'll pray to Satan for you. If you want, they'll post your message to the internet so others will also pray to Satan for you. And with almost no publicity, like from the very start, people called. Like this was serving a need that was just waiting for some forward-thinking, devilish entrepreneur. People definitely had stuff that they wanted that you can't turn to God for. Hey, how's it going? Basically, a couple-- about a month or two ago, my apartment got robbed. I still haven't figured anything out, or where any of my stuff is at. Basically, I just want the people who stole my shit to suffer for it. Fair enough, I think. Thanks. Hail Satan. Hello, Satanists everywhere. I'm calling to put a hex on the 1230 Club in Olympia, Washington, because they're just assholes. Because they start blasting the music really early every night. New Year's Eve tonight, and they're already, like, starting at 6:00 in the evening. Please make the 1230 Club go out of business, but make sure everybody that works there goes deaf, like, from playing their music so loud first. Hail Satan. Hello. I would like all of my enemies to suffer. Thank you. Really does not get more concise than that last one. There are people who call as a joke. One guy called to ask for one more Shrek sequel. There's an occasional drunk dial to Satan. Have a very Satanic day. And there are people who don't seem to understand the difference between the stuff you should be asking Satan for, and the stuff you ask God for. Hello. Hail Satan. I'm calling for you to help me. I have an interview tomorrow. I'm trying to get my first job ever. I'm 16. So please pray to our Dark Lord, and hopefully, I might get this job. Did you get that? Pray to our Dark Lord, and hopefully, I might get this job. Thank you. Hail Satan. There's a teenager who calls to ask for a hex on a tattletale named Matt. The phone message ends with the most cheerful "hail Satan" I have ever heard. Thank you! Hail Satan. I think one of my favorite things about these calls is to hear people just toss that off, so casually. Like, that's a thing we say. Thank you and hail Satan. Have a great day. OK, we love you. Hail Satan. Goodnight. But in the end, the meat and potatoes of this public service phone line is vengeance and relief. Or, at least, the level of vengeance that you can get with a phone call, the kind of relief you get by wishing for something. Hail Satan. This is [BLEEP]. And I would like to put a hex on [BLEEP], because he's a really big asshole, and all my friends hate him. And he told me that he was going to kill me, my daughter, and my cat. And he poured piss all over my car and my front porch, and he's just a piece of shit. Please put a hex on him. Hail Satan. Hi, guys. I'm a teenager, and I am really in a sticky situation. I need you guys to pray that-- well, I think I'm pregnant. And I need you guys to pray against the pregnancy. And if there is a baby inside of me, for Satan to kill it. Because I can't have a baby right now. So I'm turning to Satan, and he is the only answer I have right now. So I'm just overwhelmed. So call me when you get the chance. So thank you so much. Hail Satan, right? OK, thank you. Goodbye. We heard about the Satanic prayer line on KCRW's podcast Here Be Monsters, and thanks to them for that. I reached out to the guy who started the prayer line on the phone at 8:00 at night, after his kids were in bed. He's the primary caretaker. One's four, one's 17 months. His name is Chris Allert, and he says the prayer line really started as a lark after he got annoyed with a local Christian group in Olympia, where he lives, that he says wouldn't let up with their proselytizing. He doesn't believe in God or in Satan. He started this out of curiosity, to see who would call. And then when the voicemails started rolling in, he saw, oh, people are taking this really seriously. And really, it wasn't so clear what to do with that. Yeah, they were really touching, some of them. There's that one about that girl that called that said she didn't want to have a baby and was like-- like, I didn't know. But she asked us to post it, and it was so-- yeah, it was just like wow, she's really-- And I don't know, I've never-- she hasn't called again, or I don't know what happened to her or anything. Yeah. When you heard that, did you feel like, oh, maybe I went too far? Yeah. I still think about that. And she's a teenager or something, too-- Yeah. --or she was. And yeah, I just remember almost not posting it. But then it's like, she asked me to. But then I would've felt guilty about not posting it, because she really wanted-- I don't know. When people put their faith in something, you don't want to let them down. But then you don't actually have any way to help them. That might be part of the reason I haven't really kept up with the calls. I mean, I still listen to the people. I still get, like, 20 calls a day. I'm not saying-- I listen to them as much as I can. I haven't had time to really keep the website up-to-date. In fact, it's been years-- since his first daughter was born-- that he's posted any calls to the website. People call in, hoping somebody's going to pray to Satan for them. He never, ever delivers that. Nobody does. I feel like I'm people down. I actually do feel really guilty about not keeping it up. I think usually the problem, when you start talking about the devil, is that for some people, Satan is real. It's no joke. He is out there. Nothing could be more serious. And for non-believers, nothing could be sillier-- this cartoon-ish imp with horns. And even bringing the subject up divides people, sends us into sparring camps. Which, can I say, is exactly what the devil wants. Or doesn't, if he doesn't exist. And Chris is one of the few people I've ever heard of who's in the middle. Even though he doesn't believe in Satan, he can't bring himself to shut down the prayer line. He feels like he's seen that people need it-- they need a place to call. And it doesn't feel right to take Satan from them. Yeah, the whole-- why don't I quit doing it? And it's like, I don't know. But I think if I understood it-- when I understand it better, I'll be able to just let it go. I think I just don't understand it myself. And the thing you don't understand is just-- you're not totally understanding why this has a hold over people and why it has a hold over you. Yeah, or over me, even. Yeah. It matters in some way that I just haven't figured out yet. Well, from WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. And, OK, all this talk of Satan-- that is because today's show is a milestone for us. Not a milestone that we're necessarily proud of or anything-- just the odometer of our lives and of our weeks has ticked over and gotten us to the point where we did 100 episodes of our show, and then our 200th episode, and our 300th episode, week after week, show after show, past episode 600. And finally, here we are-- episode 666. And to commemorate our 666th episode-- wow, this music is loud-- (LOUDER) OK, to commemorate our 666th episode, we have stories about Satan in his many surprising forms here on Earth. I'm your host, Ira Glass. And to paraphrase Milton, I would rather host a show in hell than just be somebody who gets quoted for a minute or two in a show on Heaven. Stay with us. Act One, Record Deal with the Devil. So let's begin today by returning to a recent moment in this country when lots of secular people suddenly got worried about the devil. This was back in the 1980s. There was a whole Satanic panic. TV specials with Geraldo, and Oprah, and Sally Jessy Raphael about Satanic murders, Satanic rituals, Satanic cults. And the thing we want to talk about in today's story, Satanic music. This was a low point, I would say, of the "what are kids listening to today" freak-outs among adults. It got so heated, the Senate held hearings on this. Much has changed since Elvis, seemingly innocent times. This is Senator Paula Hawkins in 1985. Subtlety, suggestions, and innuendo have given way to overt expressions and descriptions of often violent sexual acts, drug taking, and flirtations with the occult. Hawkins was a witness along with members of the Parents Music Resource Council, the PMRC, testifying to the dangers of rock music. Remember Tipper Gore? Remember those days? They're the ones who eventually got parental advisory stickers put on tapes and CDs. The hearing, of course, included the obligatory embarrassing-to-watch moments of serious-looking adults reading lyrics not written for sober people in suits and sensible dresses to enjoy. This next clip is a minister reading lyrics from a band called Piledriver. His performance is very different from the original recording of the song. The song is called "Lust." The lyrics say "Hell on fire, lust, desire. The devil wants to stick you. The devil wants to lick you. He wants your body. He wants your spirit. Naked, twisting, bodies sweating. Prince of darkness, prince of evil. Spread your legs and scream. This is no dream. Degradation, humiliation. Thrusting, shoving, animals humping. He's like a dog in heat. You're just another piece of meat. Craving-- Some very obscure bands got great publicity from this hearing. The band that recorded that song, Piledriver, says the hearing gave them a bump in record sales-- maybe 10,000 albums, they told us, that they wouldn't have sold otherwise. And it's right around this time that a religious crusader, one of the most vocal devil hunters in the country, dove deep into this controversy over rock lyrics. And this incredible thing happened where he went on tour. He went on tour with one of the thrash metal bands that sings about Satan to figure out just how evil and dangerous it was. It was a sincere attempt to try to see what the other side was doing. A very unusual encounter between big names in the two opposing camps, the Christians and the rockers. And this was not a superficial drop in, drop out. The preacher spent a week with them, traveled on the bus with the band, got to know them. All this happened in 1989. Not many people remember this weird momentary mash-up between the nonbelievers and the believers. Reporter Kelefa Sanneh takes us back to tell what happened. This warrior in the fight against Satanism-- his name was Bob Larson. He used to play in small-time rock bands. Then he switched sides and became a preacher with a taste for spiritual warfare. He started doing a nationally syndicated radio show called Talk Back in 1982. Good afternoon, America. Welcome to Talk Back with Bob Larson. I'll be here the next hour, talking about what's on my mind, and hearing from you about what's on your mind. In studio today-- He warned about the spread of Satanism, told parents about the Satanic messages in the music their children were listening to. He had Satanists on the air to argue with him about Satanism, including two guys from a band called Acheron. Let him come and take me. Where is Jesus? I don't see him. If the devil could kill you right now, he would. You see, the devil's got you where he wants you. Your souls are damned and doomed right now. Rather be damned. It's Jesus Christ that's keeping you alive. Oh, is he? To me! To me. You gentlemen being here today is an incredible testimony to the mercy and grace of Jesus Christ. Oh, really? Sometimes he would offer to perform an exorcism. He's really into exorcisms. And I did something that was pretty revolutionary at the time. This is Bob Larson today. I would play sound bites of songs. And sometimes I would start my show out with some really thrash music and let it play just long enough for some kid who was surfing across the dial to land on it before he realized what kind of a show he was actually listening to. Bait and switch. Yeah. Yeah, bait and switch. Well, it wasn't my intent, but in fact, it happened. So I would end up having some pretty profound spiritual discussions with kids who had no idea that they just happened onto a religious station. Even now, Bob Larson clearly loves talking about this music. He loves being fluent in the language of metal, even though he insists he's not a fan of it-- just a researcher with an unusually high tolerance for it. Everybody trying to outdo everybody else with outlandish antics of sorts, whether it was Alice Cooper on stage with a snake, or the death thrash metal bands trying to outdo themselves with Satanism motifs. Cannibal Corpse, Deicide-- I mean, that's right at the top of my list. That's late '80s, right? Yeah, Morbid Angel, groups like that. One guy who sometimes called into Bob Larson's show was Bob Guccione Jr. And I was, just about at the time, the only person in the rock media, the music media, that wanted to debate these guys. He was the publisher of Spin magazine, and he's also the son of that other Bob Guccione, the one who founded Penthouse magazine. You know, growing up in my household, with my father, who was constantly at war with the religious right-- he published Penthouse, they were assailing it-- I knew you had to debate these people, or else their opinion generally took. I argued the case against anyone who wanted to argue. Bob Guccione became a regular guest on Bob Larson's show. He became one of Larson's favorite antagonists. I would be on his show in his studio in Colorado, and he would be assailing me. "You are the son of Satan. My readers, my listeners, I'm sitting with the son of Satan here." I was basically a devil incarnate. And he begged me, begged me on air-- on air, he begged me to exorcise me. And I said, I don't need to be exorcised! He goes, you've got to be born again. I said, well, I was born once! So anyway, he would assail me. And especially when his listeners would call in and say, he's got a point, he sounds like a good guy, he would assail me even further, cut me off. And in the commercial break, he'd say, where do you want to go for dinner? These two guys named Bob-- they were both performers. They both knew the value of a good spectacle. Maybe it wasn't pro wrestling exactly, but it was a show. Behind the scenes, they became fairly close friends. For both of them, it was a transgressive friendship. And they liked that. And at some point, you get the idea to invite him into your secular rock magazine. Yeah. Don't know what took me so long. [LAUGHING] I was having dinner with him once. And he's talking away, he's talking away, talking way about this, and the music you espouse. All the lives you're endangering, and the souls you're losing. And I said, look, have you ever actually been to a concert, one of these heavy metal concerts? Have you ever seen these guys? Have you ever met these people? And of course, I wouldn't go near that. That's all Satan stuff. I'm not going to go near that. And so I said, well, look, for your own edification-- and it would be great publicity for you-- why don't you go on a tour? Yeah, why don't you go on a tour with Slayer? Slayer, a thrash metal band from California that was basically designed to freak out people like Bob Larson. Reign in Blood, their 1986 masterpiece-- 29 minutes of sickness and brutality-- fast, and mean, and scary. One of the songs, "Altar of Sacrifice," is actually about Satanic human sacrifice. Bob Larson agrees immediately. Slayer's manager says, OK, fine. And the next thing I know, I'm in a taxi and on my way to the concert. It turns out, Bob Larson makes a pretty good rock journalist. The article he wrote-- it actually appeared in Spin, the May 1989 issue. It was accompanied by a maniacal family portrait, Larson smiling in a suit and the four guys from Slayer howling behind him. The headline was, "Desperately Seeking Satan." And it's kind of great-- the diary of a man who had spent years demonizing this band, literally demonizing them, and then got a chance to see if they were as bad as he thought. Before he went to meet Slayer, Larson told his listeners about the assignment. He says some of them wanted him to give Slayer the full treatment-- exorcise them, convert them, baptize them. But Larson told them no. This was a different kind of mission, a journalistic one. The mission was, is it an act of Satanism or something akin to that, or how much of it is a genuine expression of belief system from the members of the band? I wasn't out to save their souls. I was out there to observe. That was a little bit hard for some of my hardcore religious followers to accept, because they thought I should return triumphantly with confessions of spiritual faith from every one of them. But of those four guys, that was asking a lot. So Larson flies to Germany, shows up at the venue. It's a Slayer show, and it sounds like it was epic. Are you live undead? One of these big, flat floor, standing room only type things. Nobody was in a chair. It was your typical thrash audience. Everybody stands and does their whole thrash thing. Was it exciting? Well, of course, the environment was just very, very dramatic, because it's just intense. I mean, these guys-- they never saw a ballad that they didn't hate. There was no such thing. They never slowed down. It was speed guitars constantly. It never let up. So Larson's there. He's not wearing a clerical collar. He's not even wearing a tie. But still, he's this older, normal seeming guy, roaming around with a pad of paper, interrogating the metal heads. So I walk around. I start interviewing people and asking them-- now, I think the thing that was most interesting is that I did find hardcore Satanists there. At least, they said they were. I would ask them, do you believe in what these guys are doing? Yes. You see that upside down cross behind them-- what does that mean to you? Worshipping Satan. Now, this is cool. That's great. We worship Satan. I mean, if you're at a metal show, and a guy who looks like a dentist comes up to you, asks you if you're a Satanist, you'd probably say hell, yeah. But Bob felt like these fans, at least some of them, were telling him the truth. They saw this as their demonic liturgy, their place of worship, and they took it very seriously. So my first conclusion was whatever these guys on stage believe or don't believe, this is what their audience-- at least a portion of their audience-- believes. I think what makes Slayer great isn't the Satanic stuff. In fact, the lyrics are kind of secondary. What makes Slayer Slayer is the atmosphere, the sense of mayhem. Those furious, galloping drums. The way Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King, the two guitarists, lock into the same, churning riff, and then go hurtling off in different directions. The music sounds wild and evil. And for the whole thing to work, the words need to be pretty sick, too. So of course these guys end up singing about the devil. (SUBJET) SINGER: An unforeseen future nestled somewhere in time. Unsuspecting victims, no warnings, no signs. Judgement Day, the second coming-- If you're not into this sort of music, it's easy to miss the sheer physical joy of it. Slayer's a rock band playing an exceptionally visceral form of rock and roll. And when Larson went backstage, he found more or less what you'd expect-- a bunch of exhausted musicians, zero Satanic rituals. Well backstage, of course, is just a typical rock and roll show. And everybody's toweling down, and just having a couple of beers, and just trying to relax for a little bit. Trying to figure out if there were any nubile young ladies in the audience that would be of interest to them. But actually, these guys weren't too much into the girls. They were just more into the dope. Was that in the back of your mind? That maybe one of these people will be possessed, and I'm going to have to perform an exorcism right here backstage in Germany? Yes, I did think about that. I absolutely did. But I also knew from a practical standpoint that this was a show business environment. And even backstage, they're still playing a role. They're still being the bad guy Satanists to their fawning fans. So they weren't going to get real with me. The only chance for that would be on the bus. Larson spent a lot of time on that tour bus. And in the article, the thing he notices most is how bored the guys were. There's a collage of little snippets of conversation. "I thought I'd freeze my butt off before we went on stage." "My drum solo just didn't make it tonight. Something wasn't right." "Ice, where's the ice? You just can't get ice in Europe." Larson says Kerry King, one of the guitarists, was literally counting down the days until he could go home. King told Larson about his Toyota 4x4 and his hobby breeding pythons. He said he didn't know much about Satanism. He got most of his ideas from horror movies. There was a stack of them on the bus next to the VCR. The guys were really into Gremlins. I didn't like the bus. No, no. Well, it just wasn't my kind of place, because I didn't appreciate having to inhale hash fumes. Because that was the drug of choice, and that was not my thing. But I was on a mission. I was on an assignment. I had to do my job, so I wanted to faithfully do that. Did you have any late night moments where those conversations became more like real conversations? Yes. Yes, I did. Particularly with Araya. That's Tom Araya, the bass player and lead vocalist. I mean, he's a very bright guy, very smart guy. If I may say so, a little bit more than the others. I don't mean to insult them, but he was kind of the intellectual of the group. And he deeply thought about this. He came from South America. He was raised in a Catholic culture. So to him, it was serious business. And we had some pretty serious philosophical discussions about God, about whether there is a hell and a heaven, and there is a devil. And is the devil real, and is singing about the devil such a good idea? Can you just dismiss it as show business? I reached out to Tom Araya and the band, but they declined to comment. Tom Araya seemed like the one guy in the band who took these ideas seriously-- good and evil, God and the devil. Larson doesn't think he actually believed in Satan, but Araya went onstage with an upside down cross anyway. And to Larson, that made him seem reckless, maybe even evil. Araya understood what he was doing, but he didn't really care. If there was one guy who really needed an exorcism, it was him. It's like he knew too much, and he, therefore, was accountable for much more. As I recall, he didn't totally dismiss the idea of personal evil. But the idea that he would be an agent of that evil? No. The idea that Slayer was just going through the motions, that this was all a scripted pantomime carefully calculated to separate German teenagers from their deutschmarks-- it offended Larson as a former rock and roller. His whole point is that rock and roll is dangerous because rock and roll is powerful. He's a romantic that way. He believes in rock and roll. And it drove him nuts to see the guys from Slayer night after night playing the same solos, hitting the same marks, like actors at a Broadway show. Nothing was spontaneous, he wrote. It was a letdown. He had flown to Germany prepared for battle, but now he was all alone on the battlefield. These guys weren't his worthy opponents. My favorite line in the magazine story is when he's sitting on that bare bones tour bus and he wonders, sort of wistfully, where were all the porn videos? I mean, it seems like here you are-- you're on tour with the most evil band on the planet. You're on the tour bus. And it's just a bunch of guys drinking beer. There's no Satan behind the curtain. Well, yes and no. Because there's more than one way for Satan to be orchestrating things from the wings, OK? And if they are speaking the words of Satan, doing the things the devil would have them to do, the potential disastrous end result is going to be the same, whether or not they as the active agents believe it or not. They're the conduit. Mission accomplished. He's Reverend Bob Larson. Of course he found Satan. Satan was there. Satan was there every night. Satan was on the bus. Satan was in the concerts. Yes, he was there in the form of what was being said. That's like saying-- since I was in Germany-- was the devil there at the Gestapo rallies? I'm not comparing them to Nazis. I'm just saying that yes, of course, the devil was there in the same way the devil was here at these concerts. So that's it. Spin prints the story. Slayer gets even huger, keeps touring, keeps raising hell. And Larson keeps warning about Satanism long after most of the country has moved on. They're both on the road right now. Slayer's in the middle of a two-year worldwide farewell tour. And Bob Larson is leading seminars and conducting exorcisms wherever he can. Larson's a performer. Just like the guys from Slayer, he understands the value of good schtick. It's easy to think of this as a quaint story from another time, the golden age of Satanic panic. But imagine if an up-and-coming band today put out a song like Slayer's "Angel of Death." It's the first song on Reign in Blood, and it's about Nazis. More specifically, it's about Josef Mengele, the Nazi official and doctor who performed horrific operations on prisoners at Auschwitz. "Auschwitz, the meaning of pain. The way that I want you to die. Slow death, immense decay. Showers that cleanse you of your life." Slayer got asked about "Angel of Death" a lot. People wanted to know whether the band members were sympathetic to Nazis. Slayer thought this was ridiculous. All the lyrics are about how evil Mengele was. "Sadistic surgeon of demise," they call him. But Slayer is a band devoted to the proposition that evil is fascinating, that evil is kind of cool. You might even say that Slayer glorifies evil. Certainly, that's what Bob Larson would say. And he'd say that's a terrible, irresponsible thing to do, even if you don't really mean it-- especially then. We live in a time when lots of audiences are saying something sort of like what Larson was saying, that entertainers of all sorts should be accountable for the messages they spread. That they have a duty not to promote evil, and to make it clear where they stand. But with Slayer, it's not always so clear. "Angel of Death" is an unsettling song because it feels like you're not just listening to a song about evil, you're listening to a song that is itself evil. That's part of what makes the song good, I think. But I think lots of people today would be worried about that song being put out in the world. I think lots of people today might see things from Bob Larson's point of view. Kelefa Sanneh is a staff writer at The New Yorker. Coming up, people ask where hell is-- hell as in hello. That's in a minute, from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. It is our 666th show, episode number 666. And we're devoting it to Satan in his various forms. And the truth is, people believe a lot of contradictory things about Satan. For instance, one of our producers, Ben Calhoun, was talking to the people who head one of the two big Satanist organizations here in the United States. This is the Church of Satan based in Poughkeepsie, New York. It's run by Peter Gilmore and Peggy Nadramia. And when they describe what Satanism is, I've got to say, it actually sounds a little bit like the Preamble to the Constitution. Satanism is a philosophical position that promotes individuality, liberty, joy, and self-expression. See what I mean? They go on. We believe that you should seek to be the best you you can be, whatever that might be. It's good to challenge yourself when you can, to do the best you can. But if you reach a comfortable level, enjoy the comfort. That you select pleasures to indulge in, but rationally-- not to overdo anything to bring harm to yourself or anybody else around you. We tell people to be the best person they can be. They don't have to reach for some perfection that they can never achieve. They're sometimes perfectly fine just the way they are. That's pretty much it. It's amazing. I feel like without the Satanism in there, what you just said wouldn't be out of place on Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. That's true. That is true. Satanism is a humanism of sorts. What they're saying might make more sense once you know this important fact about this church and the other big Satanist organization in our country, the Temple of Satan in Salem, Massachusetts-- they are both run by atheists who don't believe in the devil or in God. The groups are kind of a poke in the eye of organized religion. But so much of what we think about Satan is a kind of random mishmash of information and ideas that have sprung up over the last few thousand years, like even the idea that the number 666 stands for the devil. It says that in the Bible, right? Well, that's the way it's read later. Elaine Pagels is an expert on these books in the Bible and the people who wrote them and their beliefs. She's a professor of the history of religion at Princeton. And she says 666 was not supposed to mean Satan in the Bible in the Book of Revelation, which is the book where it appears, back when it was written. She says to understand what 666 was supposed to mean, you have to understand the context in which that part of the Bible was written. It's the first century. Rome sent 60,000 troops into Jerusalem to put down a Jewish uprising. They are brutal, destroy the Jewish temple. So the Jewish prophet John, who wrote the Book of Revelation-- This man is probably a refugee from the Jewish war. He knew the horror of the Roman destruction of Israel. And it would probably have been dangerous for a Jewish prophet who hated Rome as much as this one did to speak about the emperor and the empire as the epitome of evil. And so he spoke in code. In the Book of Revelation, instead of saying Rome, he says "the whore that sits on seven hills." But what he means is that's Rome, of course. You know this because you have coins in which you see the goddess Roma sitting on seven hills. So everybody would get it, but he's not doing it openly. He's doing it through the disguised language of prophetic metaphor that any literate Jew would get and Romans would not. He describes a seven-headed beast that Pagels says might be a reference to the first seven Roman emperors. And another beast that he refers to with the number 666-- that is actually where 666 shows up in the Book of Revelation. Each letter in the Hebrew alphabet corresponds to a number, and depending on how you do the numbering, it can spell different words. So a 666-- It says whoever has wisdom will understand what the number means. So the second beast who has a human number, as the author says-- it's probably a hidden version of the name of the head of the Roman Empire. It's usually thought by historians to be a version of the imperial name of Nero, who even Romans thought was the epitome of the worst you could get. It's like talking about Hitler. You're talking about the worst of the worst in Roman emperors. Or it could be the name of the Emperor Domitian, the emperor at the time John was writing the Book of Revelation. I reached out to Professor Pagels actually not to talk about 666, but to talk about the devil. The thing I wanted to know was, what does the Bible actually say about him? Where do we start to see the figure that we talk about today? This demon who's out to capture people's souls and rule over them in hell. Professor Pagels is a churchgoing person, but she says that even she was taken aback when she was researching her book, The Origin of Satan, about the subject. What surprised me is that that figure almost does not appear in the Hebrew Bible. I mean, Christians have always read Satan into the serpent in the Garden of Eden, but that's not what any rabbi would say. It's not what the rabbis saw there. They saw a cunning animal. Now, the scholar told us Satan's actually a minor figure in the Bible. Only appears 40 or 50 times. And one of the few times the word Satan actually shows up in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible-- He appears in the Book of Job, as you know. But in the Book of Job, he's never a rival or an opponent of God. Right, and in the book of Job, he's not committing any evil acts. All he's doing is basically having an argument with God over whether Job really is faithful and really believes in God, and what does his faith consist of. Yes, that's right. He's an angel whose role it is to see whether Job is really loyal to God or not. He's saying, well, you think he's a perfect servant of yours, but I can show you that he really would turn against you if he weren't getting all these benefits. And he's called the Satan, which means "The Opposer." It's not a name. Wait, it's not a name. It's just saying he's the guy who questions. Yeah. In the Book of Job, if you look at English translations, it'll say "Satan stood up." Well, in Hebrew, it's "Ha satan." It's "The Opposer." "The Accuser," you could say, because it's from a verb, "satan," which means to oppose. But he doesn't defy God. He's his servant. This all changes, she says, after the Old Testament is finished, as we head into the period when the New Testament is going to be written, about 2,000 years ago. Certain groups of Jews began to talk about Israel isn't just ruled by the Lord, who is, of course, the Lord of Israel. But there's an oppositional someone out there. There's part of a supernatural army of the Lord that has gone AWOL, that has turned against the commander-in-chief. That has gone to the dark side. One of the groups that's saying this is called the Essenes. They fled to live in the desert to avoid the Romans, who are occupying their country, who the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem are cooperating with at that point. We know what the Essenes believed, because they left documents that we call the Dead Sea Scrolls. What they believed was that the Jewish leadership, who were cooperating with the Romans, were basically doing it because Satan and his forces had gotten to them. And all the influential Jews in Jerusalem are really on the dark side now. They're working for the enemy, the evil one. We'll call him Belier. We'll call him Beelzebub, which means "Lord of the Flies." We'll call him a prince of darkness. We call him the Satan. So that's totally new in Israel. And so these are the people, and this is the period when the New Testament is being written down in the first century. When Jesus is alive, anyway. And I think that Jesus of Nazareth and John the Baptist have a view which is shared with the Essenes, who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls. And it is at the same time. And I think they had a considerable influence on Jesus of Nazareth and John the Baptist. And their followers. In fact, Satan shows up when the very first Book of Gospels is written down, the Gospel of Mark. Right at the beginning, the very first chapter. It says that as soon as Jesus received the spirit of God, recognized that he was the Son of God, the Messiah-- which is what it meant, the King of Israel-- the spirit drove him into the wilderness to do combat with the Satan. It's like a supernatural battle's going on there. And here, the Satan appears like the threat, the forces of darkness, trying to stop Jesus from doing what the author here thinks is God's will. And then as the New Testament continues, do we learn more about the Satan, Satan? Yes, what's necessary about the Satan for the followers of Jesus is that they have to explain, well, if Jesus was God's Messiah, his chosen future ruler of the world, why did he fail? Why did his opponents arrest him, and torture him, and kill him? I mean, if he were God's Messiah, that couldn't have happened, right? The defeat and destruction of Jesus is a massive problem for Jesus' followers. And the way they deal with it-- the followers of Jesus say, well, it could only happen because the evil power was embodied in the world in other people and captured him and killed him. Oh, in other words, there's this evil force out there with supernatural powers as well. And that's the reason why he gets turned over to the authorities and killed. Exactly. With supernatural powers, Ira, but at the same time, supernatural powers that work through human beings. Pagels says a lot of things that we associate with Satan-- the way he looks, with horns and a tail-- that is not in the Bible. That was added by medieval Christians and others. The idea that Satan presides over hell-- that is not in the Bible. In the Book of Revelation, there are references to an abyss of fire where evil people go and are punished and burned forever. But in Revelation, that stuff is presided over by two other figures, not by Satan. But what is in the Bible is the central fact that so many Christians still believe today about Satan-- that he's out there, trying to tempt people into darkness and sin, into opposing God. The early Christians believed-- That Satan is trying to trap God's people and all the people who disagree with us follow Satan. Satan's trying to take over this country. Look at what this person, and that person, and this person are doing and saying. They know exactly who they mean. They could give you names and addresses. That's what struck me most forcibly, is the way that this image hasn't gone anywhere, the same is true today. People say, Satan's trying to take over this country. When you ask them, they know who they're talking about. Right. And the powerful effect of the figure of Satan, the way it's played out, means that you can't negotiate with people you disagree with. Because they're evil. You have to annihilate them if you can. Elaine Pagels. Her book about this and more is called The Origin of Satan. Act Three, The Devil You Know. So Satan, we're told, does his work through human beings-- you, and me, and everybody else. Gets under our skins, makes us do things, often without us ever knowing that that's what's happening. Which brings us to this tiny news story that we noticed a few months back-- maybe describing the work of Satan, maybe just the flawed actions of human beings. It happened in an Antarctica. A Russian scientist, Sergey Savitsky, and a colleague of his, a welder, Oleg Beloguzov, were part of a team that was stationed there for years, working together in a small, remote station with only two Russian TV channels and some sort of exercise room and a library. One of them, the scientist, really liked reading. And the two men got into an altercation over books that ended up in the news. And it was all so unusual, this altercation, that we wondered what actually happened? How does something like this go down? And we were unable to find any interviews that they'd done, so we turned to a novelist, Gary Shteyngart-- he's Russian, by the way-- to imagine for us how this played out. Here's what he wrote. Dear Diary, the boys from the hunt team have brought in a catch of a dozen emperor penguins, and tomorrow, I will make my famous penguin steak in horseradish reduction. Do you know how hard it is to reduce a horseradish, diary? It is very hard. One of the boys said to me, Sergey, I live for your emperor penguin steak, and we drank 200 grams together to celebrate the successful hunt. Afterwards, I showed him my penguin knife. He said it will take months for the penguins to thaw. And then I will make my steak, and the boys from the hunt will love me. Here at the Russian base, there is not much to do. Internet is very restricted. We have access to ILovePutin.com and ShirtlessManOnHorse.org. Ahh, Putin. He fixed our economy, beat the Chechens, conquered Crimea, stood up to America, and he made Russian science great again, which is why I'm here in Antarctica. They are beautiful websites. But one can only stare at a shirtless man on a horse for so long, even when he has such muscular breasts. Out here, our only salvation from boredom is the occasional sip of vodka and a small library of books. But all is not well in that realm. There is a man, a man who makes life difficult. A man named Oleg whose most frightening words are, "Hey, brother, what are you reading? Oh, the interesting thing about that book--" He and I come from opposite ends of St. Petersburg. I am from [NON-ENGLISH], literally a pissed-upon courtyard entryway in the hard luck Kupchino district. Many of our country's leaders come from such courtyards and have had difficult childhoods. Oleg, meanwhile, is from a bright and airy apartment on the Petrogradskaya side of the river, where some of the courtyards are clean and freshly painted. A real Petrogradskaya intellectual, as they say, always with a clean handkerchief and his long johns neatly tucked into his boots. Also, I believe his mother loved him. My mother? Not so much. And yet, I got better grades than Oleg in university. And now I am a research engineer. While he's only a welder. But still, he puts on airs. He likes to wear t-shirts with funny English sayings on them, like this one that has the drawing of a famous German philosopher and the line, "I just Kant." Today, I was lying on a pallet in the canteen, which also serves as our library, drinking 100 grams to myself and reading Anna Karenina when Oleg stopped by. Can I have a sip of that, he asked. Reluctantly, I passed him a shot glass. He drank it down pretentiously. "Ah," he said, smacking his lips, "reading Tolstoy, I see. So how are you getting on with Anishka Karenina?" "It's a masterpiece," I said. "Each page is a revelation. The metaphysical aspects alone--" "Isn't Count Vronsky such a cad?" he interrupted. "Will he ever settle down? Interesting how that turns out." "I'm sure it is," I said, "but, please, don't tell me anymore." "Of course," he said. "How can I deny you the pleasure of a first reading of Anna Karenina? I'll just make myself a little lunch. He went over to the microwave and warmed himself a plate of kasha with whale sausage. Then he sat down to his smelly little feast. And then as I continued reading, he began softly humming to himself. "Chug-a chug-a chug-a chug-a chug-a chug-a choo choo!" And then he laughed. "What is the meaning of this," I asked. "Oh, nothing," he said. "Just, living in Antarctica-- do you know what I miss the most? Trains. In particular, a train station in Moscow. Once, I was quite drunk after a literary soiree, and my ex-girlfriend almost slipped and fell onto the tracks. Strangely enough, her name was Anna also-- but not Anna Karenina, Anna Kashtanova. Sounds pretty close, though." "Why are you telling me this?" I said. "Oh, just babbling on," he said. "Well, never mind me. Off to do some science." "You mean welding!" I shouted after him, but he had already waddled out of the library. I will make one unkind observation-- many intellectuals I have known walk like penguins. I don't know why that is so, but it is so. The whole night, I tossed in my bunk. I kept hearing Oleg's voice in my head-- my girlfriend almost slipped and fell. Train station. Her name was Anna. I got up and paced the corridors. They were devoid of life, devoid of hope. I stole into the canteen and had just one little sip, maybe 120 grams. Later that night, in my dreams, Putin asked me onto his horse. Dear Diary, well, the penguins are still frozen. This morning, I tried them with my penguin knife, stabbing them over and over. Maybe tomorrow I can start making my steaks, and then all the boys in the hunt team will love me. After a long, hard day of serious scientific research, I retired to the canteen, blissfully returning to my Anna Karenina, and, for good measure, tippling 200 grams. I was deep into the book when Oleg rattled in, carrying something heavy and metallic looking in his arms. "Brother," he shouted, "look what I've welded for you." And he set down the object in his hands. It looked like the model of a 19th century train station. He had built it down to the little vendors hawking [NON-ENGLISH]. And in the middle of it all stood a miniature doll he had made out to look like an American cheerleader. She had the letters "AK" written on her chest. Oleg saying, "chug-a chug-a, chug-a, chug-a, chug-a, chug-a, chug-a, chug-a, choo, choo!" As he ran his miniature train out of the station and then the AK doll stepped off the platform and between the carriages. "Oi, oi, it hurts," Oleg shouted in a feminine voice. "I'm dying." I put my book down. "Are you saying Anna Karenina commits suicide," I whispered. "Oh, no," he said. "It's Anna Kashtanova, my ex-girlfriend. I'm merely recreating her tragic end. You are so sensitive, Sergey. Well, I must be off now. Science can't wait." "Welding," I muttered after him. I tried to return to the book, but my mind was raging with thought. I had to know if it was true. Oh, Anna, beloved Anna. If you die in such a grisly manner, what hope is there for any of us? I drank another 250 grams just to make it an even 450. I sat there calmly, doing the breathing exercises that Westerners like to do after they visit India. But then I couldn't help it. I logged on to one of our base's allowed web sites, VladimirPutinDiscussesFineLiterature.gov. An image of my sober, beautifully coiffed president sitting on a comfortable chair with a blanket over his legs appeared. Our president is, of course, as brilliant at literature as he is at economics and evading sanctions. He lifted one finger, looked into the camera and said, hello, fellow reading enthusiast. Before we begin our discussion, let me issue one spoiler alert. Anna commits suicide by jumping under a train. I took my penguin knife, and I stabbed at Oleg's train station model. I stabbed and stabbed at it, but it might as well have been made of iron. And then I stabbed at his Anna Karenina, or Anna Kashtanova doll. I stabbed at her while thick vodka tears ran down my cheeks. Dear Diary, today I turn over a new leaf. Anna Karenina is finished for me, but I have found an old Soviet edition of an American novel, The Complaint of Tovarich Partnoy by the writer Philip Roth. And then Oleg walked in. "Hey, brother," he said. "Could you spare 50 grams for my parched throat?" I merely grunted and pointed at the carafe of vodka. "Ah, I see you're a Philip Roth fan," he said, pouring himself a mug. "What a delightful look at the sexual mores of 1960s America." I pretended not to hear him. "So many lively scenes," he continued. "But I will not spoil them for you." Again, I pretended not to hear him. He drank another mug of vodka. Then he went over to the refrigerator and made a show of rummaging through its contents. "There's only one slice of deer liver left," he said. "Would you mind if I have it? I so love liver." I shrugged my shoulders and buried myself deeper into the first pages of the book. "I must say, I love liver even more than Tovarich Portnoy loved liver." Again, I ignored him. "Liver," Oleg shouted. "It is so filled with sexy nutrients." He hopped on the dining table, waving the red slice of deer liver at me. "Sergey," he said, "dance with me and this liver. Dance with me like a woman. Dance with me like my beloved former girlfriend, Anna Kashtanova, who died under a train in Moscow." And he began to dance slowly and absurdly, thrusting his hips at the liver while singing a popular old song about riding a deer over a frigid landscape. Oleg just laughed and continued dancing while I sat there with my book, my hands shaking. But I held myself in check. I did not say a word. Finally he grew tired and hopped off the table. He gave me a wink and said, "So, now he may perhaps to begin, yes?" As soon as he left, I ran to the computer and booted up VladimirPutinDiscussesFineLiterature.gov. Of course there was a segment on The Complaint of Tovarich Portnoy. Ours is a well-read president with beautiful blue eyes and the soft gaze of a benevolent father. Putin was sitting in an easy chair beside a fireplace with a Dachschund curled at his feet, holding a copy of the Philip Roth book. "Hello, fellow literary citizens," he said brightly. "Before we begin, spoiler alert." Dear diary, I can't. I can't anymore. But I mustn't. I mustn't do anything rash. I must hold it together. I try to hide under the palette, read my books without him noticing. But he hears my kasha belches, and then he pounces month after month after month. One month, he walked in wearing the most unusual outfit. And as I focused my gaze, I realized he was dressed as a high society woman in post-World War I London. "Oh, hello. I'm Mrs. Dalloway. I really should have married that fascinating Peter Walsh instead of boring, predictable Mr. Dalloway. I wonder how my party will go tonight." Or dressed in prison stripes as Raskolnikov, off to Siberia to find a spiritual redemption. Or creating computer generated imagery of the white whale thrashing Captain Ahab's boat to pieces. Where? Where does he find the time to do all of these things? Every time he spoils an ending, it is an assault. An assault and a robbery. He has robbed me of the only pleasures this forsaken base can offer, the ability to leave my own consciousness and enter another's, the chance to fly away from this base, the snowbound version of hell, to London, to the great open sea, to the fabled town of Newark, New Jersey. No, I mustn't do it. I will not do it. But every night, the same dream, the same knife, the same dead Oleg. I am not Raskolnikov. I will not go to Siberia. But even if I did do something, it would not be a crime. It would be the self-defense of my very sanity. Dear Diary, I spent the morning in the loading bay slicing up my penguin steaks. Some of the boys from the hunt team came and cheered me on. We drank 500 grams each, and I wrestled with one of them beneath the endless sky. It was a happy start to the day, but still I was not satisfied. I needed more literature. I finished my vodka and, covered in penguin entrails, stumbled toward the canteen. I chose another English language book in translation, one with a sprightly title-- Shopagolik Takes Manhattan, by the British author Sophie Kinsella. The cover promised to tell the tale of the, quote, "irrepressible one-woman shopping phenomenon Becky Bloomwood." I opened the book, eyeing the doorway for any signs of Oleg. Shopagolik was a remarkable volume, so full of life and love and the deep, meaningful conflicts of upper middle-class men and women in the West. It was, in some ways, an instruction manual on how to live with the one you love. He walked in after I was about 700 grams into my carafe. "You stink of penguin," he said. "But I still love you, brother." I picked up my knife and brandished it in the air. This was the equivalent of a warning shot. But Oleg paid me no mind. "Ah," he said. "Shopagolik Takes Manhattan-- what a fine way to break up the interminable Antarctic day. He climbed on the table again. "Dance with me, Sergey," he said. "Dance like the Shopagolik danced in Manhattan. Now, I have always wondered about the denouement of that novel..." But he never finished his sentence. I was on him. We were both off the table on the floor, reeking of cigarette butts and spilled vodka. The knife was quick and sure in my hands. And his chest soft and flabby, nothing like our president's, received my fevered blows. There was blood everywhere. "How's that for an ending," I shouted. Punta Arenas, Chile. Dear Diary, it has been a week since I've been airlifted here. My care is good, and the doctors and nurses are nice. One nurse, Fernanda, smiles at me in a special way as she brings me my lunch of chicken asada. I must learn Spanish. I do not know why Sergey stabbed me. I thought he was my friend. I was certainly his only friend. He was a drunken lout-- lazy, constantly muttering about politics and some nonsense Putin literary site. They found his diary after they arrested him. Vodka does not really have a smell, but every page reeked of it. Every page was a testament to his drunken haze. Talk about fiction. Yes, maybe I told him of a few of the endings. But it is only because I wanted to talk to him about other things. Not just about novels, but about my ailing mother in a little village near Omsk, and the girl from the Regional Planning Bureau who once sort of smiled at me. And-- look, I spoiled the endings so that we could move on to affairs of the heart and the soul. But I never dressed up like Mrs. Dalloway. How do you think I could afford a Mrs. Dalloway costume on a Russian welder's salary? It was merely my snow parka. And a computer generated recreation of Moby Dick? And dancing with a deer liver? What the hell? Fine, maybe I did build a recreation of a 19th-century Moscow railroad station. I mean, who wouldn't? I wanted to bring the story to life for him. And I wanted him to be my friend. Because God knows, nobody else would. All the other men on the base hated the very drunken sight of him. And there is no penguin hunt team. Hunting penguins is illegal. Sergey disappeared into books to avoid life, to avoid me, to make a religion out of his loneliness. He didn't want to know how it would all end. But we all know how it ends, don't we? Ask Ahab. Ask Anna Karenina. Ask that fucking Shopagolik. Down at the base, the dome of the endless sky is its own prison. To look up at it is to see just how far away from God one can be. It's not quite hell, a place in which God has a unique, almost competitive interest. It's just a place he would never think to look-- a place he ignores, a place where, left to our own devices, we become exactly who we are. That was Gary Shteyngart reading an original short story that he wrote for us. The other reader, the one at the end, was actor Josh Gad. Shteyngart is the author of a bunch of sad and funny novels. His latest is called Lake Success. And just so there's no confusion about what actually happened, yes, in real life, reportedly Sergey stabbed and nearly killed Oleg with a kitchen knife because Oleg was spoiling the endings to books that Sergey was reading. Our program was produced today by Ben Calhoun. The people who put our show together includes Zoe Chace, Dana Chivvis, Sean Cole, Aviva DeKornfeld, Stephanie Foo, Damien Gray, Chana Joffe-Walt, Seth Lind, Miki Meeks, Stone Nelson, Nadia Raymond, Robyn Semien, Alissa Shipp, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, and Matt Tierney. Our managing editor is Susan Burton and David Kestenbaum. Our production fellow, Anna Martin-- it is her last week here. She has been spectacular. We will miss her as she heads off to her new job at Slate. Special thanks today to Gabriella Munoz, to the Reverend Dr. Joe McGarry, Margaret Mitchell, Clifton Black, David Frankfurter, Adam Davidson, Astrid Lange, Bobby Baird, Taylor Stewie, Tim Curtis, and Sally Gonzalez. Our website-- ThisAmericanLife.org, where you can listen to our archive of 665 non-Satanic episodes and this one as well for absolutely free. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder Mr. Torey Malatia. You know when he's asking Satan for his favorite kind of weather, this is what Torey says. Hail Satan. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
When Dave was turning his life around and trying different things and figuring out what to do next, one of the places he looked was to the Howard Stern Show. And I think that was a really good choice. I know everybody is not a fan of Howard Stern, but I am. And I think that one of the best things about the show is that it's always been a place where people talk with this kind of brutal and funny honesty about themselves. One of Howard's innovations is that he took the strain of crude, dark, confessional comedy that's always been a big part of stand-up, ever since Lenny Bruce-- Howard figured out a way to turn that into radio, daily radio. Anyway, to get back to this guy Dave, he loved that about the show. And in 2015, he was a few months sober, in his early 40s, working as a waiter at Katz's Deli in New York City. When he was younger, he'd worked in television, hosting an interview show for college kids but ruined that career with heroin addiction. Now sober in recovery, he needed a project. And he decided to a podcast about drugs with the feeling of the Howard Stern Show. Like, he remembered the years when comedian Artie Lange was on Howard Stern-- definitely my favorite period of Howard Stern. When Artie would come on every day. He would talk about his own drug problems. He would tell crazy stories. He would talk in this very real way about the mistakes he was making in his life at that time that he was not able to stop, and Dave wanted to shoot for that. He would co-host the show with his friend Chris who-- he had met Chris years before in rehab. They would spend hours in rehab smoking cigarettes and talking about the crazy things that they'd done on drugs. That's what they wanted the podcast to be. People'd come on, tell wild drug stories, and-- very important to Dave-- no recovery talk, which Dave found to be sanctimonious and annoying. This show is not necessarily about recovery. Mm-hmm. It's about drugs. Maybe eventually it will be who knows. If this show is ever about recovery, you got to get somebody else in this spot. I'm out. OK, in case this isn't clear. In these recordings, Dave is the one with the deeper voice and the loud opinions, Chris is the other guy. This show is about drug stories. It's not about recovery. It's not about doing the next right thing. It's about the last wrong thing. But maybe with the evolution of your recovery, that's what the show will become. Notice how at the end there, Chris is not agreeing with Dave. Chris is 10 years younger than Dave, but started drugs and drinking at an earlier age-- he was just 11 or 12-- and has way more extreme stories about it, including a year in prison. He's also spent way more time in rehab. And at this point, he'd been sober for nearly two years versus four months for Dave. And all of that gave him a different feeling about recovery and sobriety. He was game to talk about it, but Dave was adamant. Sobriety isn't all that entertaining. And first and foremost, he wanted the podcast to be entertaining. If this show was about recovery, it's going to be lame. So they'd tell drug stories. It wasn't meant to be good for you. It was meant to be fun. They listed it in the comedy section of iTunes, not self-help. If you want self-help, Dave had said, go to a meeting. They were going to call the show War Stories, but there was already a podcast called War Stories. It was about actual war with tanks and guns and stuff, so they came up with Dopey, which really captures the spirit of the show perfectly. As Chris put it, two dopes talking about dope. Listen, I am so grateful to be sober. And I'm so grateful to be able to talk about drugs, you know, like in a way where I'm not feeling bad about it. It's not even euphoric recall. It's just funny. And I think that's why we got along, 'cause we felt safe doing that with each other. You know, sometimes you feel a little judged with people when you recount funny stuff that's happened to you. Yeah. In Dopey, there's going to be no judgment of drug use, past or present. They recorded the first episode on a laptop, no microphone or anything, near a fish tank in Dave's apartment in Manhattan. Maybe you could hear the hum of the tank in that recording. But between this episode, Episode 1 and Episode 143 of Dopey-- just 2 and 1/2 years later-- their lives are going to change drastically. By Episode 143, Dopey would sound completely different. In the episodes in between, they chronicle this story where so much happens to them and some others, things lots of drug users face. But because podcasts and radio are so intimate, it all gets documented in the most unfiltered way. Dave and Chris wanted their show to be just for fun, but it ended up being so much more. Today, we're going to have two stories like this. Stories about a kind of DIY radio-- very different kinds of DIY radio-- but in both stories, it's amateurs inventing how to talk about what it is that they're going through. And really, both stories are dispatches from two very different battlefields. I know that sounds a little grand, but really this story-- from the opioid epidemic-- and then the other story is from a small town in Syria, in the middle of the war that's going on there. And we hear about life during that war in this way that is much more personal and close up than we usually get. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Act One, Two Dope Kings. So OK, you remember the premise? Two guys-- Dave and Chris-- they have this podcast. It's called Dopey. Dana Chivvis from our staff, listened to dozens of hours of the podcast, spanning 2 and 1/2 years, and tells the story of what happened. Quick warning before we start, since this is the podcast internet version of our show, we have removed the bleeps that we use when we do the show on the radio. If you prefer a bleeped version of the show, it's at our website. Now here's Dana. We've been talking about this podcast for five minutes already. And the whole point of the podcast is to tell crazy drug stories, so let's get right to one. This is from the very first episode. Chris tells the story. So I relapsed. I don't even want to say I relapsed. I just started using again after a brief period of abstinence. And I took a lot of Xanax-- about 60 bars-- for those of you that know bars. At once? No, over a period of about three or four days. So you took 120 milligrams over four days? Yeah, and I blacked out for about a week. And during that blackout, I robbed a veterinarian. I went into the veterinary clinic. I told them my cat was having seizures and I needed phenobarbital ASAP. They told me something like, you know, we don't just hand out medications for the asking. Please fill out some paperwork and can we see your cat? Obviously, I had no cat with me. Did you have a cat at home? I did have a cat at home, Smegal. So I fill out the paperwork. And while I was filling out the paperwork, I ended up putting it down and storming into the back, knocked over the nurse. And the veterinarian came into the medication storage room and tried to stop me. I got out. The police came. I struggled with the police and fought them, and got a bunch of assaults on the police officers. There was a helicopter on the scene. It was a big, big deal. And just so you know something about Chris-- he's burly. Chris is at least six feet. He's like one of these Massachusetts Protestant white guys. He's very big and broad. And I would be scared if Chris got upset. But I'm a gentle person. Very gentle, very gentle soul-- like a lamb. If Chris is the lamb in a drug addicts clothing, Dave is the border collie, constantly circling Chris, herding him between drug stories, nipping at his ankles. For his Boston accent-- Oh you invite all your Facebook friends to like Dopey. No, I invite certain ones. Certain? Certain-- Which certain ones do invite up to your room? Room-- I invite certain friends up to my room. Or for Chris's vaping habit-- What's the flavor? This flavor is the milk inspired by Momofuku. Ugh-- this fucking vaping-- it's the end of the world and it's-- Chris, on the other hand, comes across as a sweet docile kind of dope who finds subtle ways to subvert Dave's alpha maleness. Like on episode 15, it's as easy as the word toodles. OK, toodles. No, no, no, we don't say toodles. Which Dave hates, so Chris starts saying it at the end of every show. All right, toodles. Please stop staying toodles. They do very little editing, except they do bleep out people's last names. They want the show to be anonymous, which is why I'm not using last names either, by the way. And they use nontraditional bleeps like this one. Dopey is not the kind of show you bring home to meet your parents. Dave and Chris swear a lot, for one thing. And obviously they're talking about heavy drug use. But it's not just that-- they can be insensitive and insulting too. It is not politically correct by design. They use the kind of language you might forgive your grandfather for using, but which is harder to stomach coming from a 30 or 40 year old today. And then sometimes there's also language you wouldn't forgive your grandfather for using. I'm not going to play you that stuff. On the first few episodes of Dopey, they run through most of their favorite drug stories-- how Chris made wine from orange juice at rehab, how Dave once stayed up all night doing coke, heroin, and ecstasy before appearing on Howard Stern. How Chris shot crystal meth while at a brain injury clinic. They're not supposed to be engaging in recovery talk, but of course, the only reason Dopey can exist is because Dave and Chris are both in recovery. There'd be no Dopey without it, so recovery keeps slipping into the conversation. Even Dave does it. We're actually in a hurry, because I have to go qualify at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting at 8:00. Yeah, it's a live episode of Dopey basically. Basically, but more based on the recovery end of things. I'm a little bit nervous about it. Are you? Yeah, just let it rip. Don't even think about it, that's the best way to do it. Chris actually has a scholarly knowledge of 12 step philosophy. And now and then, he quotes by memory from the big book, which is sort of the Bible of Alcoholics Anonymous. And then they added the appendix to the book where they quote William James, who says that you have a spiritual experience of the educational variety. That's what you're talking about. And it's actually-- In the beginning-- for the first 20 episodes or so-- they get like 500 downloads an episode-- so barely an audience, but they start hearing from people right away. They get their first fan email from some guy named Troy three weeks after they upload the first episode. They can't believe anyone is listening to them. They call their newfound audience The Dopey Nation. Other people start emailing, leaving reviews on iTunes. Some listeners leave voicemails with their own war stories. Their downloads grow. By October, they average about 1,000 downloads an episode. So whoever The Dopey Nation is now, stay strong Dopey Nation. There's a Reddit thread about Dopey. A few people even get Dopey tattoos with the show's logo and the word Toodles underneath it. One guy takes Dave and Chris out to a steak dinner. He tells them he didn't get sober until he started listening to their show. Dave and Chris try to write back to every email they get. They respond to comments on Facebook and Twitter. People aren't turned off by the recovery talk. They like listening to sober guys having fun, enjoying life in recovery. It gives them hope. Chris says the listeners come for the debauchery and stay for the recovery. He calls his marketing strategy rope a dope. Dave and Chris know they have a finite number of drug stories between the two of them, so they develop a roster of recurring guests, friends of theirs who are also sober-- near celebrities like Rob Reiner's son, Nick, Dave's dad Alan, and then there's a guy named Todd, one of Dave's best friends from college. They got addicted to heroin together in their 20s. Dave always said if Todd got sober, he could be the third host of Dopey, and Todd really wants to be on Dopey, but Todd is never sober. All right, well if you want a good story, you know who to call here. Yeah, if you give me six months sobriety time and you're on the show. What? Yeah. I'm still full of stories. What are you talking about? I'm fucking full of 'em. He's doing community service and stuff. He's giving back. Please, he's giving back, but what-- you know-- just give me some fucking clean time and you can come back to the house. I've got two weeks clean already. That's a lie. That's a lie. What do you want from me? [INAUDIBLE] more than two weeks. It's been two and a half weeks. Since you've puffed weed? No, no, since I did dope. I smoked weed three days ag-- no, two, three days ago. You're such a fucking liar. Todd is one of the few recurring guests still actively using drugs. His life is in shambles. He's 42 and he can't hold down a job. He spends all his money on drugs, lives in his parents' apartment in Manhattan. He often just watches DVDs all day. How you doing Todd? Miserable, how you guys doing? [LAUGHS] That's Chris talking to Todd on Episode 54. I'm doing all right. Miserable-- Not that good. Miserable-- is that related to substance abuse? Um, prob-- everything is related to substan-- what's not related to substance abuse these days? Uh, less in my life. On this episode, Todd tells a very dopey story about getting so high on heroin, he passed out in a subway station and then slept through a meeting at the unemployment office the next day. The call failed. Towards the end of this story, the call drops and Dave says-- Dude, that's the worst story I ever heard in my-- I thought it was fun for a second, and then I realized poor Todd is in big trouble. As a listener, to me it seems like Todd has a specific purpose on Dopey. He's a caricature of how not to treat your addiction, an example that Dave and Chris can hold up to their listeners and say, don't do it like this guy. When Dave and Chris talk about recovery, they often talk about abstinence and 12 step programs. That's what worked for them, but the science shows that opioid addiction is best treated with medications like suboxone and methadone, which are associated with a 68% decrease in death. For a while on Dopey, Dave was pretty clear that he thought medications were dangerous, that you should learn to live without any substances. Chris was more middle of the road. Dave's opinions have changed by now. He feels like whatever works best for you is what you should do. Less than a year into making Dopey, Dave moved out of the apartment with the fish tank and in with his partner Linda and their six-year-old daughter. Chris eventually moved to Boston and started working towards a doctoral degree in psychology. He was dating a med student named Annie. They lived together, had a dog. He was also working part-time for his sister's company-- which helps people who are struggling with addiction and other issues find treatment-- and he was working every other weekend at a sober living house. By episode 96 of Dopey, they're getting about 3,000 listeners a show. They decide to relabel the show. They move it from the comedy section on iTunes to the self-help section, mainly because they thought they could compete better against other self-help podcasts, rather than comedy podcasts, but also because by now they've admitted to themselves they are, in fact, a self-help show. But anyway, back to Todd. On Dopey, Todd is the foil to the sober good life, to their successes. Where he lacks control, Dave and Chris now exercise restraint. Where he is depressed, they are content. Where he can't hold down a job, they're raising children, getting advanced degrees, making a podcast every week. Do something good for yourself tomorrow. Just do something. I'll try. Just-- nah, just do something. One thing and-- I will. --it all builds on each other, right? Right on. Whatever, all right, bud. I love you. All right, guys. You Chris, Dave have a great evening. All right, thanks for calling Todd. All right, you got it, boys, I'll talk to you later. All right, bud, bye. Bye. Bye, peace. That's tough. Sad, sad, call. Hello? Yo. What's going on? What's up, dude? On Episode 126 last March, Todd's on the show again. This time though he's sober. He's been to detox and moved into a sober living house. He refused to go to rehab, so Dave and Chris arrange for him to move into the sober house where Chris works in Western Massachusetts. You sound terrible. Did you just wake up? No, I've been up for hours-- too many hours. Oh turn that frown upside down Todd, this is the first really sober call on Dopey. That's Dave. He keeps saying how nice it is to talk to Todd when he's sober. He's happy to have his friend back, lucid. Dave tells him he bought some new equipment for Dopey-- a soundboard and three microphones, an extra for when Todd is back. Dude, I bought a board that was smaller, but it could only have two mics. And I was thinking, well, what do we do when Todd gets home? [LAUGHTER] So I went out and I bought another board-- the Todd board. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, all right, good. Thank you, I like that. I like that a lot. Dude, do you remember? You remember when you and me were driving home from LA-- Todd lasted a few months at the sober living house, but he got bored and one day he left. Moved back in with his parents, got a job. And then in June-- For those of you who don't know, this week was a terrible week for me. My very, very, very, very, very close friend Todd, who was on Dopey-- anyway, Todd died a week ago yesterday, so maybe eight days ago. He died. We don't know what happened, but I'm going to guess it was an overdose. Yeah. And I'm very broken up about it. Todd died in his parents' house. He was 44 years old. Well, I told my friends-- I told my friends he died. And they said, well, he's basically the most likely candidate to die. And I agreed with them, but like, it's so sad to me that he never gets to be sober and he never gets to be free. He's never free. It's like, if you're out there and you think you're going to get away with it, you might not. You know what I mean? And like, you guys should really fucking know that it could all end. Somehow after 20 years of heavy drug use, Dave had never had a close friend die from an overdose. Todd is his first one. It changes things for him. Before, he'd laugh at the war stories-- all these absurd situations and bad decisions that should kill you, but didn't. He'd had the upper hand, but now he didn't anymore. Those things had killed one of his best friends. Dave is the one who introduced Chris and Todd. They weren't close friends, but even still, Dave thinks Chris is a little cold about his death. And Dave knows this is unfair, but he feels a little resentful towards Chris. Todd was in Chris's sober living facility right before he died. Why didn't he look out for him better? Todd's death last summer just happens to coincide with an uptick in downloads on Dopey. In July, their downloads double when they land their biggest celebrity interview yet-- Artie Lange, the comedian who inspired Dopey. This is the guest. I don't want you to know who I am yet because we'll let them guess. It's not Meryl Streep. He's Episode 140, just two episodes after Todd's death. Artie tells a bunch of stories about getting high-- on The Howard Stern Show, on an airplane, in a Santa suit. So I'm Santa Claus-- the next morning, if you hit the beard, all this cocaine would come out of the beard. He's a little unhinged during the interview, possibly high. What do I say? Stay strong Dopey Nation. Stay? Stay strong, Dopey Nation. Stay-- the autumn wind is a pirate-- Here we go. --bustling in from the sea. With a rollicking song, he tramples along, swaggering boisterously. On the next episode of Dopey, Episode 141, Dave and Chris are on Skype. They do an Artie recap. Chris, whose drug of choice was always cocaine, thinks Artie was probably on cocaine. They talk about it for 30 minutes before Dave changes the subject. Two weeks ago, I'm at work-- Yeah, I know where you're going with this. Where he's going is, Dave wants to do a little recovery lesson. Two weeks before, Chris had made a phone call to his sponsor and it was clear he thought he was talking to Dave, so the sponsor got worried and called a friend of Chris's who texted Dave, who freaked out. And then I'm like, holy shit, so I start texting you. You texted me so many-- I took a screenshot of it. You texted me like 12 times in ten minutes or something. Chris is one of those people who always texts back, even if he's sleeping. So when Dave didn't hear from Chris, he sent a message to Annie, Chris's girlfriend. Chris eventually resurfaced and calmed everyone down, but he was ticked that Dave had contacted Annie. He was fine, just a little sleepy and out of it. No reason to scare his girlfriend. --everything happened and I got upset. There's just that it had to come back to Annie. And I never would get upset if somebody expressed concern. Well, that's not true. You get upset when I'm concerned all the time. --you take concern as a personal attack. How often do you text me, are you OK? I'm concerned. You do it like every five minutes. This was just two weeks after Todd died, so Dave was admittedly on high alert. And by the end of the story, he sees it from Chris's perspective. It's one of those irritating things that happens to people in recovery. You act slightly off one day and everyone assumes you're using again. Dave explains. The point of this story-- obviously, you're fine. The point of the story is this is something that addicts have to go through who are using, who are lying. You know what I mean? Like, they're covering up their shit or they just got clean and everybody is sure that they're still getting high. Or in your situation-- you know, you're 4 and 1/2 years clean, but like, how do you think somebody should deal with that? Because I bet there's a ton of people listening with very little-- The next week they do Episode 142. Normally they record the show on Friday night and Chris puts it online on Saturday morning. But that Friday, Chris gets home from a work trip to Texas and he's too exhausted to record the show. They agree to do it Saturday. Saturday comes around and Chris is fighting with Annie. He tells Dave he's too upset to record the show. He needs to go to the gym. Then after the gym, he needs another hour. Dave's getting pissed. He knows The Dopey Nation is expecting an episode. They finally start recording late that night, around 11:00. Chris is lackluster. Dave's doing most of the work, providing most of the energy. And Chris keeps screwing up and saying things that they later have to bleep out, like where he went on the work trip or his sister's name, or Dave's last name. It's amazing that Bob [INAUDIBLE] is driving round and thinks, you know who I should talk to? Dave [BLEEP]. Why'd you say my last name? Now you have to bleep it. Ah, fucking A. Let me put it in my notes. It doesn't even work because we've changed it so much. [BLEEP] Now it's twice. And what else? What is wrong with you? I don't know. I'm stupid. I can't-- [BLEEP] [BLEEP] --was. I said it once, right? Ah, Chris. What? How are we going to get the show out? I'll do it tonight. Dave's worried that Chris has lost interest in Dopey, that he's too busy with the other things in his life now-- his girlfriend, his job, his doctorate. He starts wondering if Chris is going to quit. And if he does, what will happen to the show? They finally sign off at 1:00 in the morning. And stay strong, my brothers and sisters, in and out of recovery. And toodles, I'm going to stop the call recorder. You can stay online. All right? Hey, but you don't have to say toodles. It's unnecessary. Toodles. So hello and welcome to Dopey, the podcast about drugs, addiction, and dumb shit. And I am Dave. This is the next episode of Dopey, Episode 143-- a week later. For those who aren't on Dopey social media, the worst thing that could have ever happened, happened, and Chris relapsed and died. And here I am alone at my dad's with one microphone plugged into the mixer. Chris overdosed three days after Episode 142. He'd been secretly using drugs again, probably for weeks. After that last episode they recorded together, Dave and Chris fought. First, Chris put the show online without bleeping out Dave's last name. Dave was pissed. He went in and fixed it, but inadvertently inserted 10 minutes of silence into the middle of the episode, which made Chris mad. So that Monday they're fighting over text message all day. Dave couldn't make sense of what was going on with Chris. He told Chris it was fine if he didn't want to do Dopey anymore. But Chris said no, that wasn't it at all. He loved making Dopey. Dave believed him. But meanwhile, Chris was also fighting with Annie. She'd left their apartment and went to stay with her parents. Chris was distraught, crying. He asked Dave to call and check in on him, so Dave called him after midnight and told them he'd check in again in the morning, went to bed. He woke up at 6 AM to a text from Annie. She'd sent it in the middle of the night asking Dave if he'd check on Chris. So at 6:30, Dave sent Chris a text message. A minute later, Chris wrote back, I'm good. As you like to hear, I'm sleeping, but not totally good. Alive, nothing to worry about. We can talk later. At 10:30, Annie called Dave and told him that Chris was dead. In the next few days, Dave had to decide if he was going to do the show that week or ever again. In the 2 and 1/2 years of making Dopey together, they'd never missed a show. Dave thought if he skipped this week, he'd be letting The Dopey Nation down. It would be like your drug dealer not showing up. And besides, drug users should know if somebody dies from a drug overdose. So three days after Chris's death, he recorded that episode of Dopey. And he calls Annie. Hello? Hey, you're on-- Hey, how are you? You're on the show. Oh, ha-ha-- hello, everybody. How are you feeling? Ah, pretty shitty. They start to piece together the mystery of Chris's death. Dave had completely misread his behavior. In retrospect, he was probably high on the last episode of Dopey. He was probably high when he made that weird phone call to his sponsor. He was probably even high on the Artie Lange episode. Dave had been operating off the wrong story-- that Chris wasn't interested in Dopey anymore, but Annie hadn't. She had noticed the strange ways Chris had been acting. He kept taking the dog for walks, for instance, when the dog didn't need to go out. He was staying up all night and sleeping during the day. She got suspicious he was using again, so she and Chris's sister arranged for a surprise drug test. On Monday, a guy showed up at their apartment and did a saliva test. That night, Annie told him she was going to stay with her parents. Chris left before her mom arrived to pick her up. Now she realized it was because he couldn't wait any longer to get high. Annie slept at her parents' house and went to work the next morning. But soon after, she went home to check on Chris. And I don't know if you want me to elaborate on how it was walking into the apartment. Yeah, you might as well. Or would you rather I not. No, you might as well. I walked in. The first thing I see is his shoes, so I figure, OK, he's here. And the vape is there, the keys are there, so I look at the couch. He's not on the couch. And I look at the bed, and he's not there. And then I [INAUDIBLE] bathroom, I go into the bathroom. He's not there. And that's when I start panicking, and-- and as I walk into the bedroom, on the side of the bed, I found him dead. I knew right away he was dead. Everything after that is somewhat foggy. I knew we had Narcan at home, because he always kept Narcan everywhere. Narcan is a medication that can reverse an opioid overdose. You spray it up a person's nose. And I got the Narcan, but I knew it was too late. I just had to do it, because it was like the only thing I could do it at the moment. Chris had cocaine, Xanax, alcohol, and fentanyl in his system. He was 33 years old. Soon after, a package arrived for him at their apartment. It was filled with drugs-- Percocet, cocaine, crack cocaine, heroin. Annie scoured the apartment and Chris's car. She found a bunch of drug paraphernalia-- needles, some of which were used, and clean pee he'd ordered online. Also, she found a small medicated patch that wasn't in any packaging. She sent a picture of it to Dave. They couldn't be sure, but Dave thought it was probably fentanyl. Annie has a theory about Chris's relapse. He had recently injured himself doing a high karate kick to try to impress her. Something in his leg popped, he was in terrible pain. The doctor he saw wasn't his regular doctor and she thinks Chris got painkillers, fooled himself into thinking he could just take them for the pain and stop there. If Annie's theory is right, then Chris started using again two weeks after Todd's death and was dead three weeks later. I mean, when the news came, I got angry about it. And then the next morning I woke up and-- you know, I felt the day between the last time I had spoken to him. You know what I mean? I felt the distance, and I was like, it just felt like it was becoming real. And then this morning I woke up, and I could hear his voice in my head like we were doing the show. I could hear his voice. And then I kind of woke up and it was another day since I had spoken to him. And it just-- it's like liquid becoming solid. You know what I mean? And it's like, you move away from this liquid feeling to this cold solid truth that he is never going to come back and it's over. Dave hangs up with Annie. And now he's got to end this episode of Dopey without Chris for the first time. We'll just end it the way we always end it. And we'll say, stay strong Dopey Nation. And I said I would never say this, but Chris is dead, so I'll say toodles for Chris. And we love you. And everybody out there, please try to take care of yourself. All right. Dave still makes Dopey-- by himself now. He's pulling in bigger guests like the comedian Marc Maron and the rapper Killer Mike. He gets about 6,000 downloads an episode now, but it's not the same show. Dopey, as the nation knew it, is gone along with Chris. It's not a buddy comedy anymore. It's more of a straight interview show. There are fewer war stories, and when there are, the tone is different. Dave is different. There's this one moment in Episode 142, the last episode Dave and Chris did together, that I keep thinking about. Chris had just played a voicemail from a listener named Mike, who tells a story about hiding his pee in the closet of his bedroom. It's not important why. And afterwards, they get into a conversation about whether it's OK to laugh at drug stories. In the first episodes of Dopey, Dave was a solid yes on that-- that was the whole point of the show-- but now they've flipped sides. Chris says yes, it's fine to laugh. And Dave says this-- I think it's funny, but the fucked up thing-- and it might be the end of Dopey, right? Check this out. Like, I just feel like this guy-- he's like everyone's laughing about everything they're doing. And then they can just drop dead. But what's the flipside? Morbid reality the whole time until you die? No, dude. I think it's funny. I think the urine is funny. I think that shit is hysterical. But it's like laughing on the train tracks and not seeing the fucking train coming. I don't think morbid reality is better. No, of course not. I'm just saying it's sad, you know? We laugh on the train tracks, but we have the right to laugh on the train tracks. It'd be much different if someone had never struggled. And the truth is that when we were struggling, the person who would tell a story that was terrifying and laugh at it, might have a better chance at reaching us and getting us to stop than the person who's morbid reality. I just feel responsible. I think it's obviously because of Todd's death that when we laugh at stuff, I just want to throw it out there that at any second, Mike could be dead. Because Mike's still using. And there's fentanyl everywhere. And it's killing everybody. That's what I'm saying. How's that? Yes, no, of course. Yeah. Dave told me, he always thought Dopey was good for him and Chris, for their sobriety. He thought their creation would protect them, but it didn't. Chris is gone. Dopey, it turns out, was its own war story, playing out week by week. So now on the show, Dave's mission has changed. The drug stories aren't just in service of a laugh now, they're in service of an urgent message. You could die. Todd died. Chris died. You could die. Dana Chivvis is one of the producers of our show. The Dopey podcast, you can find it wherever you get your podcasts. Coming up, what happens when you go on the radio and make fun of a militant Islamist group who also happened to run your town, because you're in Syria. That's in a minute, from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, bring you different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show-- Wartime Radio. People in battlefields of one kind or another, using very DIY grassroots level radio or podcasting to try to make sense of what is happening around them. We've arrived at Act Two of our program. Act Two. Good Morning, Kafrenbel. So back in my 20s, I was a volunteer reporter at a community radio station in Washington, DC-- WPFW, a great station, that really did reflect the community. DC was 2/3 African-American back then and also had immigrants from all over the world. And the most popular show on the station, I remember, was the Bama hour. It was a guy named Jerry Washington who would play songs and talk a lot about his niece. There were Caribbean and Central American shows. There was a show made by Iranians who missed the former Shah of Iran. And then another show with Iranians who hated the former Shah of Iran. There was a call-in poetry show. Listeners would call in and read their own poems and it was daily. This was a daily call-in poetry show, that in my memory anyway, never seemed to have any kind of trouble getting callers. That's community radio. Well, this next story is about somebody setting up a station like that-- a community station-- only they're doing it in a war zone, in Syria, in a small town called Kafrenbel. That's Kafrenbel, it's spelled with a K-- in the Northwest part of the country, not far from the Turkish border, rural town, surrounded by olive trees and fig trees, 30,000 people live there. And for almost eight years now, Kafrenbel's been in a kind of no-man's-land where different factions have fought. And now militant Islamists are in charge. Reporter Dana Ballout heard about the station years before she ever listened to it. I crossed paths with the founder of the station back when I was covering the war in Syria for the Wall Street Journal. His name is Raed. Raed Fares. He lives in Kafrenbel. We never met in person. I was based across the border in Lebanon, because American press was mostly not allowed in Syria. But when the regime struck a town near Kafrenbel or ISIS was advancing and I needed to know the details from the ground, me and my colleagues would pull out our giant spreadsheet of contacts and go through them. Raed's was one of those names. I'd Skype him to confirm a death count or verify a location, then move on. Raed was an activist. Before the radio station, he was sort of famous for these banners, these homemade signs written in big block letters on white sheets. He would bring them to protests, post pictures of them on Facebook and Twitter. I always saw them in my feeds. They were witty, like this one from Thanksgiving, a holiday Syria does not celebrate. Black Friday special offer-- whoever, wherever you are, bring your enemy and come to fight in Syria for free. Limited time offer. One of the most viral of these was after Caitlyn Jenner announced her new name Caitlyn, spelled with a C and not a K like the other women's names in her family. Raed gave her this shout-out. Caitlyn, he writes spelling it with a C, we would write Kafrenbel with a C, if it meant, like you, we could be free. I knew Raed had his own radio station, Radio Fresh, though I never tuned in back then. But around Thanksgiving last year, I heard Raed had been killed. It hit me harder than I expected. Saddened by the news, I listened for the first time. You can stream Radio Fresh on SoundCloud. There's hours and hours of programming. Listening through was like reliving the war from the inside. Seeing it in a totally different way from deep in the small town. It was incredibly alive, hyper-local, sometimes utterly ordinary, people complaining about their neighbors. But other times, so radical I couldn't believe they got away with it. Here's an example of that. One of the first things I heard-- this satire program called [ARABIC] backstage with the president, where an actor impersonating president Bashar al Assad has made up conversations with an officer in his army. That's the actor making fun of the president's lisp, which is very pronounced. He's pretty spot-on. I was shocked when I first heard this impression. My knee jerk reaction was oh my god, how did you not go to jail for this? Because in the past, that's what would have happened. Before listening to Radio Fresh, I had literally heard of two other places in the whole Arab world where anyone had tried to do political satire-- one was Lebanon, where I'm from, and the other Egypt, where for a while til the government ran him out of the country, they had their own version of Jon Stewart. And now there were these guys out of a small town in northern Syria. It completely blew my mind. I talked to a bunch of Raed's friends in Kafrenbel. They told me he was always a rebel. Before the uprising against the Syrian regime, he would curse the president in a way no one else dared. He mocked religious figures too. His cousin told me this always made people super nervous. Everyone in town knew him as the guy who got kicked out of med school. Raed was a burly guy in his mid 40s, clean shaven, warm eyes, mischievous face. He was sharp, taught himself English, ran a thriving small business. One of his best friends, Hadi Abdullah, told me how Raed started the radio station. In our mosques, they have loudspeakers. These are the speakers for the call to prayer five times a day. At one point, early in the war, the Syrian military showed up in Kafrenbel and started shooting protesters. Raed wanted to get those soldiers to defect. So he loaded up a bunch of recordings on a USB stick and had some friends at the mosque blast them over those speakers. Anti- regime slogans like-- The regime is tricking you. The regime is using you. Regime is killing your family. There are no terrorists here, everybody is civilian here. And the idea started from here. And I was like, why am I limiting myself to the mosque only. Why don't I start a radio station, where I could to just talk to people? So shortly after, when Raed found himself meeting with international groups, including the US State Department, he pitched them his idea for a radio station. There are always opportunities in war, and this one would be an unusual chance to push back on the rules, make fun of people they could have never made fun of before, an opportunity to blast out ideas like free speech and democracy to whoever tuned in to 90.0 FM. This is a clip from the station's first few weeks on air, August 2013. Radio Fresh was based out of an old government building in Kafrenbel. The studio was done up with shiny purple curtains for soundproofing. There was an ashtray on the table and lots of smoking while they were on the mic. The host, who's talking about how to form neighborhood councils, has a thick local accent. One of my favorite things about Radio Fresh-- it sounds rural, slangy, homegrown. While I was charmed by the station from the very first clip I heard, the people it was actually made for-- the citizens of Kafrenbel-- many of them were against it in the beginning. Here's Raed himself, on the second anniversary of Radio Fresh, one of the rare times he actually went on air. He's saying, in the beginning, there was a lot of talk about how the money for the radio would have been better spent on aid for families in need. People were hungry. They didn't have clean water or electricity. It seemed extravagant and frivolous to spend money on a radio show, but pretty early on, the station came up with a program that became indispensable throughout the village. It was called The Observatory. Radio Fresh put 24/7 watchmen in tall buildings to keep an eye out for air strikes. As soon as they saw one, they radioed into the station, which would interrupt programming on, say, the nutritional benefits of lettuce-- --with an air raid siren. They're saying, planes are circling over Kafrenbel. Raed's response to the doubters was the radio isn't frivolous. It's about saving lives. He's saying, if these airstrike warnings saved even one life, that would be worth the whole cost of the station. Before the observatory, people used to jerry-rig their own version of this alert system-- buying a walkie talkie and eavesdropping on the regime's frequencies. It was expensive-- over $100. And parents hated how much the regime thugs would swear and cuss on the frequency. They didn't like that the kids overheard. The Observatory was a clean version for the cost of a basic radio-- $5. The air raid warnings-- they were just one of a slew of super practical, you live in a war zone and here's how to survive of programs. There was a medical show that teaches people how to administer first aid. That show has episodes on chemical burns, meningitis in kids, how to treat head injuries-- Here the host is saying when you think your skull is broken or when you see blood or a clear fluid coming from your ears or nose, get medical help immediately. Radio Fresh had language learning programs in case you had to flee the country. They're doing the alphabet in this episode of Teach Me Turkish. More than 3.5 million Syrian refugees have landed in Turkey the last eight years. They also taught French, English. And what I love about these programs is how the people teaching the language are actually not at all fluent in the language they're teaching, but you can hear how hard they're trying. Dear listeners, welcome to the 11th episode of Teach Me English. Everyone I talked to about Radio Fresh brought up this one program, called the Complaints Show. It was Radio Fresh's version of a call-in show, except they couldn't actually have a call-in show, because the regime had cut off all the phone lines. So they put up a bunch of little black boxes with a Radio Fresh sticker on them, all around town. People would drop in slips of paper with their answers to quiz shows, their comments and complaints. The host would choose one complaint each week to talk about. Often, it's very specific stuff. At one point early on, a faction set up shop inside a school building, using it as a police station. Parents were worried about sending their kids to school in a building shared with criminals and thieves. Plus, the police station made the school an easy target for the regime. Parents told the rebels their concerns, but nothing happened. So they turned to Radio Fresh. Today, we have a complaint that there is a police station in the same building as a school, and that, the broadcaster says, defies logic. Again, here's Raed's friend, Hadi. Some when the people inside the police station heard the episode on the radio, they came right away to us, and they told us, "we're willing to leave the school. Please, tell the families we're going to leave the place. We don't want any trouble against us." And they did. They emptied the police station from all the militants that were there. People complained about the price and quality of their bread. Someone brought up their neighbor using a hole in the front yard as a bathroom, while his actual bathroom was broken. The neighbor heard the episode and fixed his toilet. When I first heard the Complaints Show, it felt pretty familiar. We had a similar program in Lebanon, although not quite as small towny as the neighbor's toilet. But listening hour after hour, what I realized was that this Complaints Show was doing something besides solving practical local problems. It was also spreading a revolutionary idea, that you could voice your concerns, and hold people accountable, and get results. The guys at the station confirmed this was Raed's original mission for the show. This, in a place where the rules were so recently non-negotiable and you just had to keep your head down and deal with it. The Complaints Show was just one of the many programs, debates, kids shows, series on Islam doing this kind of work. One problem people had with the station from the beginning was that it was funded by the Americans, which, in the middle of a war where the US was not being particularly helpful, was not a good look. It's true. Almost all the money for the station has come from the US State Department. It's around $40,000 a month these days, which covers the salaries of 53 people. It's a pretty big operation. When listeners accuse the station of being a mouthpiece for the Americans, Raed was happy to address it head on. This is him on the air. He says the response is very simple. Have you heard anything on Radio Fresh that sounds like we're supporting the Americans? We're always trying to prod them on the radio, with our banners. We have opinions about them, and we don't hide them. Raed's vision of democracy meant everyone in Kafrenbel had an equal say in what was happening, including women. He wanted their voices on the radio too. Although that was such a daring idea for Kafrenbel, even his friend Hadi wondered whether it was possible. And I was like, how? He was like, "Easy. You find women, we hire them, we train them." This was bold, because almost no women in the village worked outside the home. They took care of the kids and the homes. That was it. And it was bold because of who was running Kafrenbel at the time. Raed was always offending the local leaders, including just about everyone who was in charge of Kafrenbel over the last eight years. First, the Free Syrian Army was offended by a banner, so they came to the radio station and kidnapped two guys. Next, ISIS attacked the station in 2013. A couple weeks later, they shot Raed multiple times, almost killing him. But when Raed was deciding to put women on the air in 2015, two years after Radio Fresh had started, Kafrenbel was run by a new extremist Islamist group, Nusra, al-Qaeda's branch in Syria. Raed knew they wouldn't like this, but he went for it anyway. That's Hiba Abboud introducing the afternoon newscast. She's now the director of the women's division of Radio Fresh. She talked to me from the women's office over Skype. I never imagined that I would hear my own voice, or that I would be a reporter. Never. Hiba was a young newlywed who had just moved to town when she heard that Radio Fresh was recruiting women to go on air. She'd been listening to the radio and was curious what it was like to make it. So she, along with 20 other women, went to the first training. They did icebreakers, spent three days on voice technique. I don't know if you know this one, but when you put your pen in your mouth, this is a way to open up your voice. I did not know this one. Neither did most of the people at This American Life. And how to be as a presenter, and how to take breaths from your belly. Hiba passed the training and began working at the station, made news shows, programs about women's rights, interviews with local women who had lost their husbands in the war. By the time Raed put Hiba and the other women on the air in 2015, the Islamists in charge of Kafrenbel, Nusra, already hated Radio Fresh. The station poked fun at them in all sorts of ways. For being illiterate, hypocritical. One satire depicted their religious police rushing people to the mosque without actually understanding the rules of prayer. Nusra assigned people to listen to Radio Fresh in shifts. They issued regular warnings and threats to the station whenever they heard something they didn't like. Now Radio Fresh got a lot of warnings for having women on air. Nusra considered their voices shameful, a form of nakedness. Finally, in January 2016, Nusra had had enough. They burst in one morning to shut the station down, broke down the door, faces covered, carrying machine guns. They took everything-- laptops, the transmitter, Hadi's hookah, flash drives. Hiba and the other women watched the Nusra guys ransack the main station from another building, the women's office just up the hill. And we looked out the window when we heard a lot of noise. So us girls, we just started gathering everything and hiding it. Because we said, you know, they were going to come to us next. They quickly rearranged the office to make it look more like a home. So we were preparing lies, you know, just in case that came in and they started questioning us. And you know, we were going to say like, "Oh, we're just girls here hanging out at her house, and we're just having breakfast together. A morning coffee or a mate. But they just took the stuff and they left. They didn't even come to us. Nusra blindfolded Raed and took him to the infamous al-Uqab Prison. They left two armed men at the station to keep anyone from coming in. Every day, Hiba would finish her housework and get dressed to go in for her usual shift, but there wasn't anywhere to go anymore. People started spreading rumors that Radio Fresh was over. Days passed. Nusra finally reached an agreement with Radio Fresh. They'd let Raed go and return the equipment, under a few conditions. First, that the radio station wouldn't play music. Here's Raed talking about the agreement. In English, actually, in an interview with the CBC. They started to say it's forbidden because it's haram in Islam shariah law. In their opinion, it's haram. Haram, sinful. Nusra had been on Raed's case about playing music for a while. He's cheerfully defiant. It was like two years they're asking me to stop playing music, but I refused. Finally, because they attacked the radio station more than three times and kidnapped me like three times-- Kidnapped me like three times, he's saying. Then I stopped playing the music, but I started to play sarcastic thing instead of that. Like animal sounds, like sheep, like birds, hogs, dogs, chicken, and everything. Animal sounds. Radio Fresh replaced the jingles leading into each segment with animal noises. There was a rooster in the morning. Birds during the day. And after dark, of course-- --crickets. The CBC interviewer asked Raed. What's the point of that? Why are you doing that? When the people hear animal voices, they will ask, "what's going on with Radio Fresh?" And the answer will be, the Islamic armed groups banned the music from Radio Fresh because it's haram. I want them just to think, to use their minds. Is it really haram? You can move the minds. You can move the ideas. Nusra's other big demand was for Radio Fresh to take women off the air completely. Raed had a creative fix for this one too. Again, here's Hiba. So we were having a meeting, and he came and he told us that they wanted to transform our voices. You know, now we were going to use something to change our voices from female voices to male, and that you wouldn't be able to tell that it was a female in the first place. So when we first heard what our voices sounded like, we were laughing. And it was so strange, because we were like, really? This is what people are going to listen to? But after a while, it just became normal, and it literally got to the point where I could tell you which girl was which voice. But these days, Hiba just feels annoyed at the voice. And because the voice is so hard to listen to, Radio Fresh reduced how long women speak on the air to a fraction of what it was. By this past fall, the Assad regime had retaken swaths of the country. And in many other places, including Kafrenbel, extremists like Nusra were gaining power. People like Raed, people who didn't want Assad or the extremists, they barely held any ground. And finally, around Thanksgiving, Raed was assassinated. I read the news in a tweet, and later heard the whole story. He was in a car with two colleagues from the radio station. It was around noon. A van pulled up next to them and shot and killed Raed and his friend Hamoud Junaid, then drove off. While Nusra never claimed responsibility for the assassination, the whole town blamed them. Everyone I knew who had reported on Syria was talking about Raed that day, posting pictures of him, writing that his death was the end of the Syrian Revolution. Because Raed was one of a handful of people in Syria who was still living by the principles of the revolution. He was still talking about non-violent resistance and democracy, civil society and freedom. Raed was there from the very first protests in Syria, and stuck by his principles while so many others either died or fell off the train. Now, he too was gone. Hiba got the news over WhatsApp. At that point, I just wasn't aware of anything anymore. I never thought that moment was going to come. I never imagined that someone like Raed could die. Like, no, he would be-- he would be one of the ones that stayed. The funeral lasted three days. Hundreds of people came. There were programs on Radio Fresh remembering Raed and Hamoud, their childhoods, talking to their friends, chatting about their legacy. After Raed's death, you can still hear glimpses of Radio Fresh's classic dark humor. They continue to make fun of the president and the local factions. Here's a radio drama about a local guy partitioning his house in Kafrenbel to host refugees. But these refugees aren't displaced Syrian women and children. It turns out, no, he wants to host French people fleeing their own country after the Yellow Vest protests, in particular, beautiful French women. "Mary, Sonya, Emily sleeping in the streets? Not on my watch." I found the episode hilarious, a sign that Raed's spirit was well and alive at Radio Fresh. I wondered if Raed's friend, Hadi, felt the same way. Do you still feel that? Do you still feel that at the radio station? Yeah, I don't think things will be the same again. I mean, despite all my attempts. Meanwhile, we're trying to manufacture a laugh, but our hearts are not the same. I don't wanna be pessimistic, but this is the truth. There's a talk that Raed gave two years ago at the Oslo Freedom Forum. He opens with footage of the aftermath of a bombing, describing the smell of burned bodies, of guns. The audience is rapt and Raed is gripping. But he also looks very tired of trying to convince these Westerners in peaceful Norway to care about the more than 500,000 Syrians who have died in this conflict and the millions that remain. And yet, there he is. He hadn't given up. He ends his speech saying, "There is nothing prettier than a flower that defies death, chaos, and destruction, and instead blooms and radiates hope. Yeah, just like Radio Fresh. Dana Ballout. She's a filmmaker and a producer at the podcast Kerning Cultures. That's Kerning with a K, Kerning Cultures, which run stories like this one from the Middle East. Last year, Radio Fresh lost its main source of funding when the United States withdrew stabilization aid to Syria. The employees worked without pay for five months. I guess that's what the US government does these days, is just ask people to work without pay everywhere. Anyway, then they found some temporary funding, but that runs out in March. They're looking for new ways to stay afloat. Our program was produced today by Sean Cole. The people who put our show together includes Elna Baker, Dana Chivvis, Aviva DeKornfeld, Jarrett Floyd, Damien Graef, Michelle Harris, Seth Lind, Stowe Nelson, Katherine Raimondo, Nadia Reiman, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu. Our managing editors-- Susan Burton and David Kestenbaum. Special thanks today to our interpreters, Saphe Shamoun, Baraa Ktiri, and Hany Hawasly. Also thanks today Dr. Ajay Manhapra, Maia Szalavitz, Andrew Leland, Andy Lanset, Paul Wilson, Neil Verma, Jason Loviglio, Hugh Chignell, Dr. Brian Goldman, Rami Gares, Abdallah Salloum, Abdul wareth Al bakkour, John Jaeger, Isam Khatib, Raja Abdulrahim, and Blueprint Postproduction. Our website, thisamericanlife.org, where you can listen to any of our archive of over 600 programs for absolutely free. This American Life is delivered to the public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, last weekend, he and I were up all night, talking in his kitchen. Morning comes, his wife came downstairs, and I don't know. Torey panicked. He just blurted-- Oh, we're just girls here hanging out. We're just having breakfast together, morning coffee or a mate. I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
A few years ago Jennifer LeMesurier was watching this PBS cooking show. And this chef, David Chang, started talking about MSG. Monosodium glutamate. And of course, lots of people believe MSG is bad for you. It gives you headaches, a food hangover-- that idea's been around for decades. I grew up hearing this. Maybe you did, too. But Jennifer knows this is a myth. In fact, the very next segment on the show is science and food writer Harold McGee saying just that. And he just had this sort of throwaway line that, yeah, this myth of MSG being harmful can be traced back to one letter in the New England Journal of Medicine. A letter to the editor in the New England Journal of Medicine. And I was just sitting there going, huh, one letter. It was like, oh, it's an origin story. At the time, Jennifer was PhD student, very interested in the way people talk about race and Asian-Americans. So to hear that there was once this letter that led Americans to freak out about the dangers of an ingredient commonly used in Chinese food, an ingredient that was later proven totally harmless, Jennifer wanted to see that letter. So she went into the stacks, found this old journal from the '60s, and there it was. A letter to the editor from a doctor, titled Chinese Restaurant Syndrome. So the letter reads, "For several years since I have been in this country, I have experienced a strange syndrome whenever I have eaten out in a Chinese restaurant. The syndrome, which usually begins 15 to 20 minutes after I've eaten the first dish, last for about two hours without any hangover effect. The most prominent symptoms are numbness at the back of the neck"-- He runs through the symptoms that he's observed. Then he runs through the possible causes for this strange numbness, and eliminates them one by one. Soy sauce? No. Cooking wine? No. And then he gets to the sentence that's going to live on for a half century. Quote, "Others have suggested that it may be caused by the monosodium glutamate seasoning used to a great extent for seasoning in Chinese restaurants." And that one line is what spawned this entire myth. The letter was signed-- Robert Ho Man Kwok, MD. So the first thing she did was look up Dr. Kwok to get the whole story from him. What she learned was Dr. Kwok had been a researcher and a pediatrician in Maryland, and he was dead. She found an obituary from 2014. So instead, she traced the history of how this letter blew up, led to all these other things, by reading subsequent issues of the New England Journal of Medicine, and newspapers from the time, and other documents. She wrote a paper, published it in an academic journal in 2017. And then after that, she gets his voicemail on her work number. This is last year. She's a professor at Colgate University. Yes, good afternoon. My name is Dr. Howard Steel. I'm a Colgate alum. In fact, I'm the oldest surviving trustee that's Colgate. And I've been there since God, and love it. At any rate-- And at first, I'm just like, am I in trouble? You know, why is a board member calling me? What's going on? I have information perhaps you might like to hear. And then he sort of pauses and he says-- I am the author of Ho Man Kwok. I am the author of Ho Man Kwok. My brain just sort of goes, what? And I have a lot to say about it. It just surfaced. And I'm listening to the voicemail in my living room, and my jaw is just dropping. Because up until then, I had operated under the assumption that Dr. Ho Man Kwok was a Chinese-American researcher. And all of a sudden, I don't know what to believe. The confusion makes sense, because remember, there was a Dr. Robert Ho Man Kwok, the one whose obituary she read. So who is this guy on the phone? I have a phone. I answer that phone all the time because I store the little thing that keeps electrified in my left chest. Then he makes this little joke about how he keeps his phone in his pocket, right by the thing that electrifies his pacemaker. So when the phone rings, my heart stops and I answer immediately. At any rate, it would be a pleasure to hear you. Hanging up now. Have a nice evening. Bye. OK. What? Right? This message was just the beginning-- the very odd beginning of a story that we're going to continue in just a minute. You will hear more from the mysterious Dr. Steel. Because this letter to the editor-- I don't know. Is it possible that this is the most impactful letter to the editor in the history of letters to the editor? It launched an entire MSG scare that lasted for decades. Even today, 42% of all Americans think that it's bad for you, and it's not. Since the '90s, the FDA has listed MSG as perfectly safe for its intended use, like vinegar, salt, pepper. Today on our show, we have three stories like this one, where people throw words out into the world that take on a totally unexpected life of their own. And in all these stories, the words wreak havoc for years. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Act one, Humor is Not the Best Medicine. OK, so where we left off, it was the voicemail on Jennifer LeMesurier's phone from this retired surgeon, where he says, OK, I'm the guy. I made up a fake name. I wrote a letter. And it set off 50 years of completely needless panic over MSG. Call me. Lilly Sullivan explains what happened next. So last year, when Howard Steel left that voicemail for Jennifer LeMesurier, she calls him back right away, gets the whole story from him. She doesn't record it, though. And a few months later, Dr. Howard Steel dies. But before he died, the Colgate alumni magazine-- remember, Jennifer teaches at Colgate; Howard's on their board-- they did a couple of interviews with him though they did record. OK, great. Hi, Howard. Hi. How are you today? I'm fine, thanks. How are you? That's Michael Blanding, the journalist who did the interviews. He's the one you can hear typing during this call. I'm going to take you back to the beginning. It was a dear, dear friend of mine and I were recovering from a Chinese meal we had downtown. We used to about once a week, and were perfectly happy-- Howard's friend Bill was a doctor, too. They'd eat, drink, and talk shop. And they got to talking about being published in medical journals. Yeah, Bill Hanson, he said, you know, you're stupid, Steel, number one. You shouldn't expect to send articles out and get them published in these dumb journals. Howard's friend was a doctor of internal medicine, which he was constantly reminding Howard is a much smarter breed of doctor. He told me that it was impossible for someone as stupid as an orthopedic surgeon, which I was, to write an article that could be published in something as magnificent as a New England medical journal. That was a threat, and he was willing to make a bet. Bill bet Howard $10 that he couldn't get published there. It's one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world, which Howard took as a challenge. And I decided, well, I'll write a little article and send it over there. So I went home and I just sat down and wrote a letter to the editor of the Journal of Medicine in New England. And I didn't sign it with my name, but I signed it Ho Man Kwok-- H-O, one word, M-A-N, one word, Kwok, K-W-O-K, figuring that someone, when they got this letter, would realize that what that word was was a breakdown of a not nice word we used to use all the time when someone was a jerk. We call him a human crock of you know what. Human crock. Ho Man Kwok. I know, cringy. An offensive pun on a Chinese name. A white guy playing an Asian for laughs. Keep in mind, this was the '60s. He said he made up the name of Dr. Kwok's research institute and his title, too. He said that Chinese food wasn't the point of it, except for that they were at a Chinese restaurant, eating and drinking a little too much the night they made the bet. And Howard won that bet. Yes, it wasn't an article, it was a letter. But it was printed in the Journal. Good enough for them. Here's Michael Blanding, the reporter who interviewed Howard. But once he saw it, once the letter was published, he was sort of mildly horrified. So he was horrified at first. He wasn't happy that he won the bet? It's hard to tell, you know. It seemed like he would sort of go back and forth between being proud of the fact that he was able to achieve this, being published in this journal, and sort of being distressed by the fact that it actually made it into print. As soon as it came out, I called the Journal editor and told him that it was a bunch of bunk, that it was all fake, it was all made up. And he hung up the phone on me. He wouldn't talk any further. He was a jackass. So I kept calling him, and finally, apparently, he gave a message to the phone girl in the office that if anybody named Howard called, hang up. So yeah, actually for years, I tried to call him and tell him that the whole thing was a hoax, that it was not true, that I didn't know anything about Chinese, and particularly Chinese-- what's it called? Chinese restaurants. I never saw anybody who had. Didn't know what the hell I'm talking about. So that's Howard story. And then this joke of his snowballed. After the letter was published, other doctors wrote in, some of them making jokes about this Chinese restaurant syndrome, but also often recounting their own experiences and symptoms. The New York Times notices 10 letters from doctors, publishes an article. Remember, no scientific studies at this point. Just letters, some of them jokes. The headline was, "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome Puzzles Doctors." The news spread from there, under headlines like, "Kwok's Queeze," and "Chinese Chow Numbs Some." Here's Jennifer, the professor who traced the history. I mean, the titles were very, very offensive. Oh, let's see. Let me see if I can find the one. From the Chicago Tribune, in broken English, the headline is, "Chinese Food Make You Crazy? MSG is Number One Suspect." Wow. "Chinese food Make You Crazy"? I can't believe that was a headline. Yeah. So I was like, hm. They were all reacting to something that wasn't even real. It was all projection. To this day, lots of Chinese restaurants post No MSG signs in their windows and printed on their menus. Everybody in the world is talking about the Chinese restaurant syndrome, and it's a lie. It's a big fib. It's the "fit" hit the "shan." It's astounding. Howard told lots of people this story over the years. He told groups of other doctors. He told Jennifer, who believed him. She alerted the alumni magazine, who recorded those interviews. They pitched the story to us. And we were like, 96-year-old man confesses to writing a prank letter that drove the nation to a decades-long scare about a toxin that's not actually toxic? He's dead, but you have recordings? We're in. But as we and Michael the reporter started looking into this more carefully, there were a few things that were puzzling. For one, the name of the research institute Howard said he invented-- the National Biomedical Research Foundation-- Michael discovered it was a real place. And the real Dr. Kwok had worked there. Kind of a coincidence, if Howard made up the name-- like he said he did. It also seemed weird. If the journal published a fake letter with Dr. Kwok's name and institution on it, and it was quoted in over 100 newspapers, naming him and the letter, it seemed weird that the real Dr. Kwok never set the record straight. Never published a letter complaining in The New England Journal of Medicine, or in any of those newspapers. Also, Howard said he tried to get the Journal to retract it, that he called and the editor wouldn't take his calls. We reached out to The New England Journal of Medicine. They declined to comment. But it seems strange just on the face of it. Howard became a highly acclaimed surgeon. He invented important medical procedures. It seems like for sure, he could have gotten the attention of someone at the Journal. It's hard to verify what really happened, because everyone involved in this is dead. Howard is dead. The friend he made the bet with is dead. The real Dr. Kwok is dead. But Dr. Kwok has kids. We called them, and talked to his family. We also spoke to one of his colleagues at the research foundation. And the son of his boss there. They all said, yes, Dr. Robert Ho Man Kwok did write the letter. His daughter said he was proud of it. That he was a concerned doctor and a curious scientist, who'd often post questions like this. It wasn't a joke at all. The thought that Howard was going around telling this story, for years, it creeped her out a little. And when you read the original letter, there are details that seem more likely to come from her father than from Howard, like when he says he moved to the US, which the real Dr. Kwok did, and how he's very specific the syndrome happens with the northern Chinese food. In the '60s, how many white guys in Philadelphia would have made that distinction? Also, Ho Man Kwok is an actual Cantonese name. What are the odds that Howard Steel threw together random Chinese-sounding syllables to arrive at that? I called up Jennifer, the professor that Howard Steel had left the voicemail for. I finally reached the Kwok family. And they told me something. They say that their father did write the letter. What? Yeah. They say that he wrote it, and they're certain. Wow. OK. What do you think of that? I honestly have no idea. Me, neither. I just cannot believe that Dr. Steel made this up. Right. Now I'm like, were there two letters? Did they happen to write about MSG at the same time, and like one got printed, and one person thought it was edited? I don't even know. I mean, I can't really-- oh, man. The timing of this-- I wish Dr. Steel was still alive, for many reasons, obviously. There were two options, neither of them good. Someone has been telling a story that's not true for 50 years-- one of these two men, both of whom were, by all accounts, brilliant, upstanding pillars of their communities. Either Howard was fessing up to something he totally did not do, claiming responsibility for the whole MSG mess when actually he had nothing to do with it, or Howard was telling the truth, and Dr. Robert Ho Man Kwok, beloved pediatrician and researcher, had seen this letter to the editor in the journal with his name on it, that he didn't write, was delighted with his good fortune, and rolled with it for 50 years. I had one person left to call-- Howard Steel's daughter, Anna. She grew up hearing this story. And I told her everything I just told you. OK. That is a shock. But actually, not that big a shock. It took her about two seconds to make sense of all this. She believed the Kwoks, not her father. No, I don't think anybody who knew him and loved him would be surprised. It's just one more thing in the life of my dad. This, she said-- this is exactly the kind of thing he loved to do. He liked to prank people. And he told lots of big stories about himself, many true, and some not. You can never totally believe him and never quite not believe him. In fact, she says, it would help explain this other thing, that even though her father supposedly won the bet, his buddy never paid him. The fact the bet was never settled up is of suspect, that maybe it was a wink-wink between them both. Well, so now, knowing all this, do you feel convinced that he didn't write the letter? It seems to point in that direction, doesn't it? I think if I thought we were dealing with, you know, two straight laced, straight arrow, no nonsense physicians, I might be arguing a stronger position. But knowing these two clowns, there's not much I can say. So it seems like Howard didn't write the fake prank letter that caused decades of chaos. His prank was that he said he had written the letter. He was claiming credit for chaos he didn't create. It was complicated to even think about. Oh my god. Oh. Eh, that's too funny. All right, well, here we are. [LAUGHS] First, the world believed MSG was bad for you, and it wasn't. And now, we nearly believed a second piece of fake news-- that it all started with Howard. Here's where Anna came down, loving her father and his best friend, but also, what the hell? I wish I could give them both a piece of my mind. I'm not angry, but I just want to say, you owe everybody a huge apology. What is wrong with you? And he would just start laughing, I'm sure. And he would have a big, mischievous grin, and he'd say something like, I don't owe anybody an apology. You all should have had your heads screwed on straight to figure out this was a joke. So many people near the end of their lives are trying to make things right. He was trying to make trouble. Like a last act, like a life-long legacy prank? Kind of. He got the last laugh. I'll do anything you want to with this. No, I'll talk to anybody. They won't believe me, anyway. I'm here and happy to screw things up further. But I can't believe what I did for 50-some years. So I don't know what anybody would want to do with me, except shut my mouth, but it's getting kind of late. God will shut it pretty soon. And you know how she is. Howard died just a few months after he laughed his way through those interviews. He was 97. Lilly Sullivan is one of the producers of our show. Act Two, Babies Got Bank. OK, I know how unlikely this sounds, but we now have another old guy basically pranking the world right before he dies, but on a scale that gets hundreds of thousands of people involved, and excited, and talking about this guy's plan that he set in motion for years and years. Stephanie Foo explains. In 1926, in Toronto, Canada, a 72-year-old lawyer named Charles Vance Miller was at lunch at the Queens Hotel with two lawyer friends. They got into an argument over some legal matter. Miller told them they were both wrong, and he'd prove it if they followed him up to his office. He eagerly ran up three flights of stairs, grabbed a law book, plopped it on his desk, and then died. Just put his head down on the desk, and was gone. A couple days later, rumors started swirling. Charles Vance Miller had done well for himself, gotten rich. He'd avoided scandal his whole life, was an upstanding citizen, though he had no family, never married. He'd hinted that he'd leave his fortune to the University of Toronto. But when his fellow lawyers brought out his will, that's not what they found. As soon as Miller's people started executing his will, they realized that his will was like an elaborate prank, as if he'd thrown a bunch of money out of a window to watch what would happen. He left stock in a brewery to prohibitionist pastors. He gave his racing stock to people who didn't believe in betting. He said he wanted to leave his vacation home in Jamaica to three other lawyers, a nice thing for them to share, except for the fact that the three lawyers all hated each other. But by far, the clause that unleashed the most mayhem was the last one. It's about all the rest of his money. I'll just read it to you. "At the expiration of 10 years from my death, give it and its accumulations to the mother who has, since my death, given birth in Toronto to the greatest number of children, as shown by the registrations under the Vital Statistics Act," end quote. In other words, the woman who had the most babies in the 10 years after his death would be awarded a whole lot of money-- 9 million Canadian dollars in today's money, or almost $7 million US. There were immediately a number of theories as to why Miller did this, but none of them were charitable. If he really wanted to support a young woman with a bundle of kids, he could have just willed all the money to her at the time of his death. But setting this up over the next 10 years created a twisted contest. Some said he was an avid supporter of birth control, so maybe setting off a baby-making storm could be a wicked way to force a conversation about it. Some said he was trying to test the legal system's ability to hold up a crazy will, but that he'd really expected it would be thrown out, that the money would just automatically be donated to the University of Toronto, his Alma mater. People said that Miller had been obsessed with the idea of what people would do for money. He liked to talk about how everybody had their price. Maybe he was testing the women of Toronto to see what theirs was. I don't think anybody fully knows why he did this. This is Elizabeth Wilton. She wrote a 200-page dissertation on the contest. I just think he saw it as a big joke. I feel like the modern day word for it would be that he was basically a troll. That would be a good word for it, yeah. He pretty much cops to it in his will. He says, "This will is necessarily uncommon and capricious, because I have no dependents or near relations, and no duty rests upon me to leave any property at my death. And what I do leave is proof of my folly in gathering and retaining more than I required in my lifetime." Apparently, Miller really liked to drop dollar bills on the sidewalk, and hide and watch people pick them up. When I think about the kind of person who'd plant a wallet in the street and put it on YouTube today as a commentary on human nature, yeah, I feel like I know who that guy is. For the first few years after Miller died, nothing happened. A few newspaper articles were written. Nobody took it very seriously. Some relatives went to court, arguing that the money should go to them. And then, six years after his death, the attorney general introduced a bill trying to nullify the will and have the money donated to the University of Toronto. This was a mistake-- totally backfired. Before this, not many people knew about the will. But now that the government was trying to invalidate it, the press picked it up, and there was a huge public outcry. But not in the way you might think. The public was like, baby-making race? Hell, yeah, we want a baby-making race. Women's groups supported the contest because they felt women should have a fair shot at the money, which, what can I say? It was a different time. Others disagreed with the government intervening in people's wills and affairs. Altogether, it caused an uproar. The government backtracked, said, OK, fine. You people have fun. And with that, the race was on. Usually when this story has been told, it's like, ha ha. A man created this zany will that set off a wild baby-making storm in Canada. It conjures Brady Bunch images of big families happily schtupping their way to fame and fortune, knee deep in Cabbage Patch children. But the way it unfolded was actually much darker, because, of course, the story is about an old man encouraging women to go through the excruciating pain and danger of childbirth as often as possible in a 10-year period-- a 10-year period that was already half over. This contest didn't really get started until six years in. That made it skewed from the start. It meant suddenly the only contenders were women who had about six babies in the last six years, women who didn't even know there was a contest to be part of. They found out about it quick, when reporters started pounding on their doors. It was madness, really. It was a media feeding frenzy. This is Karen Nolan. She worked with Elizabeth to develop a screenplay for a movie based on the contest that aired on Canadian television in 2002. As soon as the will was verified, reporters went through the birth registry, found women who had already given birth to about six children since Charles's death, and dashed to their homes to try and get the exclusive. You know they coined the phrase, the Stork Derby, comparing it to like a horse race. So there was a mad dash to track down the women, get their exclusive stories, and to follow them and hound them on the very intimate and personal details of their life. It must have been a jarring experience to be an automatic front-runner in this bizarre contest. But most of the mothers went along with it because of the 9 million dollars. Many of the contestants were desperately poor. During those first six years, the Great Depression had taken hold. Nearly a quarter of Toronto's families were on welfare. Families were living in shacks or camps. Some even ate groundhogs to keep from starving. Canada's birth rate had actually plummeted at the time. And so most of the families that suddenly found themselves in the running to receive this Stork Derby money agreed to media scrutiny because they wanted the chance at the prize, and because, in the short term, the newspapers offered them money-- exclusive contracts where reporters could come and photograph and interview the families whenever they wanted to. Sometimes the families even got advertising deals for things like soap. In many ways, this was sort of like an OG reality show, albeit a really perverse one. The front-runners of the Stork Derby even became household names, like Jon & Kate Plus 8, or maybe more like Octomom. After all, it was billed on the newsreels as freak Canadian race. Papers all over the world, from the New York Daily News to the Marshfield, Wisconsin, News Herald picked up the story. The press followed a bunch of contenders, but I'm only going to run through three of the long-term favorites to win. One of the first competitors that the newspapers dug up was Mrs. Grace Bagnato. I don't want to give away who won or how many kids Mrs. Bagnato actually had during the race, but over her lifetime, Mrs. Bagnato was pregnant 24 times, though only 12 of those children lived. She was a working mother. She was a whiz with languages-- picked up Polish, German, Yiddish, and worked as a court interpreter in Italian. All the while, she raised her 12 children and would get up at 4:30 in the morning to make two dozen butter tarts, macaroni, meatballs, sausage, and her famous red sauce for her family. But the public didn't exactly see her as a hero. Here's Karen again. The cultural makeup of Toronto at the time was a very WASPy, WASPy society. And we have this Italian family here who is reproducing children at a rate that outpaced the white, Protestant Anglo-Saxons. Mrs. Bagnato's husband was an Italian immigrant, and some papers weren't kind about that. These were the years leading up to World War II. Of course, it didn't help that one of the other Italian contestants named one of their Derby babies little Benito Mussolini. But because of their nationality, Italian families in the race received phone calls calling their families fascists and threatening to kidnap their children. Contestant number two was Mrs. X. She was the scandalous one. She was a social outcast because her children were fathered by different men, which was taboo, and she was shamed for that. She was considered to be a trollop by having children with more than one man. That's a saucy word. I should start using that. Mrs. X had five children from her husband, but then her marriage fell apart. He moved out, and she entered into a new relationship with a man and had another five kids with him. She wanted to marry him, but didn't have enough money to go through with her divorce. All in all, Mrs. X had 10 children by the time she was 24. She tried to hide her identity because of the circumstances of her situation, but her name was eventually revealed-- Pauline Mae Clark. Contestant number three was Mrs. Kenny. She's my favorite character in the whole story. Why is she your favorite? I think her eccentricity, for one thing, her passion, and her undeniable belief that she was the chosen one, if you will. Mrs. Kenny was in it to win it. She was under 5 feet tall, but over the course of her lifetime, she wound up carrying 19 pregnancies to term. She was French Canadian, married to an Irish man, and she believed that money was hers. She said she had the gift of second sight, and a divine connection with Miller, who told her she was going to win. So of course, it had to be true. Mrs. Kenny was a talented wood carver, and often sold her carvings in the street. And she carved a large number of statues of Miller, even named one of her children after him. At one point, a bunch of the leading Derby mothers got together and said, screw this whole race. Let's just share the winnings. It was a ton of money. They were all poor. It would still result in plenty for everyone. But Mrs. Kenny was the sole holdout, the only one who insisted no. I'm the winner, she shouted once, and I won't split with anybody. Why should I? It's my money. And if the judge doesn't give it all to me, I'll walk right up to the bench and punch him in the eye. So yeah, Mrs. Kenny was tough as nails, but she probably was the poorest of the three. Her family lived in a slum, and their home was infested with rats. One night, rats attacked three of her children. Tiny, three-month-old Patrick had the worst of it. Here's Karen. So yes, it had bitten the baby in the face and neck area. And as we all know, throughout history, rats carry diseases. But they couldn't afford the hospital. They couldn't. This is so difficult to even talk-- it's unbelievable that it still chokes me up. Mrs. Kenny and her neighbors tried desperately to have the public health nurse visit her home, but to no avail. The baby died. And then it was all over the front pages of the newspaper, but always written in terms of what this meant for the chances of Mrs. Kenny or whatever other woman that the coverage was centered on. Every loss, or tragedy, or triumph was always put in terms of their chances in the race, not in terms of what kind of a system do we have where someone's baby can die of rat bites in the first place? It's hard to say how many women had babies specifically for this race. When they talked to reporters, everyone always said the same thing. I would have had this child anyway. I tend to believe Mrs. Bagnato, and many of the other Catholic families in the race. I don't think Mrs. Bagnato was ever playing the game. She'd been cranking out a baby a year long before she heard a word about the Derby, so the whole contest was just an added bonus to her. But then there was Mrs. Kenny, who was obviously playing to win, and said outright that she was trying to make babies. And then you have Mrs. Clark. Mrs. Clark's situation was the most unsettling. It came out that Mrs. Clark's lover had drawn up a contract with her where he could get half her winnings if he impregnated her enough. Mrs. Clark's lover was also abusive. He'd given her a black eye, broke her door down, chased her out into the street after a fight. So maybe she didn't want to be pregnant as many times as she was. Maybe she was forced to. Here's Elizabeth. You sort of wonder, was she basically abused? Was she taken advantage of? Because if you think about also the kind of power dynamic that Miller set up between men and women-- and at that time, if your partner, or if your husband, or your lover thought that if he got you pregnant over and over, that you might win millions of dollars-- and she was a very young woman. And-- So you were sort of insinuating that maybe these women might have been coerced. I mean, I don't know. I think it doesn't take a lot for someone to put together with this young woman, and so many babies, and with this huge prize. In 1933. It looked like Mrs. Bagnato was going to win. Then in 1934, headlines read that Mrs. Kenny had taken the lead. In 1935, another woman, Mrs. Timleck, quote, "sped to the front." In 1936, Madam X was listed as a late entry, tied for second. All the while, the physical toll for these mothers was enormous. Mrs. Bagnato suffered a hemorrhage near the end of her final pregnancy, and many of the Stork Derby mothers were in and out of the hospital for operations and transfusions. And all three mothers suffered the emotional toll of having stillborn babies during the race. Most of the women couldn't afford to have their children in hospitals, and so the infant mortality rate of the Derby babies was six times that of the national average. 34% of these babies died. But aside from an article or two, again, the press only saw these deaths in the context of the race. The headline in a 1936 Montreal paper was, "Stillborn Infant May Assure Prize." Underneath, "A stillborn child may assure Mrs. Matthew Kenny the prize in the Stork Derby under the will of late Charles Vance Miller. Her nearest competitor is believed to be Mrs. Joseph Bagnato." The race ended on Halloween 1936. But at first, it wasn't clear who had won. Here's how our three competitors stood on that date. Mrs. Kenny claimed to have had 11 children. Mrs. Clark said she had 11, as well. Mrs. Bagnato had nine. But Mrs. Kenny and Mrs. Clark didn't walk away with the prize that easily. With Mrs. Clark, the scandalous one who had tied for the largest number of children, the lawyers in charge of the estate had some questions about her case, and raised the question of whether children born out of wedlock should count. This is where it was clear that there had been a huge oversight. Nobody had actually set rules for this contest at its beginning. Remember, Miller explained this whole contest in two sentences in his will. So as the court saw it, there were nuances that needed to be figured out, rules to be set. But of course, only after the fact of everything, after the babies had been born and the blood transfusions administered. A massive, multi-way court battle broke out. All of the contestants had to go to court to prove that they had the most children. Each woman had to lawyer up and go up against the lawyers for the executors of the estate. The fight went on for two years. And of course, now the rules would be determined in front of an audience. To figure out if her illegitimate children would count, Mrs. Clark and her lover's abusive sexual history was scrutinized on the stand. He recounted his physical violence with her, admitted to giving her a black eye and busting down the door to her house, and to the contract he drew up. When he mentioned the contract, the courtroom burst out into raucous, mocking laughter. And in fact, the lawyers regularly threw in crude jokes during the trial, soliciting giggles from the audience. In the end, it was decided that illegitimate children could not be counted within the Derby, and so Mrs. Clark's number got knocked down to five. She was out of the running. Then came Mrs. Kenny, the one who believed she was the winner and had carved statues of Miller. She'd also tied for 11, but apparently two of her children had not been properly registered, probably because Mrs. Kenny was too poor to deliver her children in hospitals. She'd had them at home instead. That brought her count down to nine children, but no big deal. She was still in the running. Then the lawyers pointed out three of her children had been stillborn. Quick warning-- I'm about to talk about a lot of traumatic births. Until this point, everyone had assumed that stillborn children would count for the Derby. Again, this hadn't been in the rules. And after all, these women had carried these children to term. But now in Mrs. Kenney's trial, lawyers for the executors of the estate started questioning that. And so Mrs. Kennedy had to sit while a pack of lawyers argued around her about how legitimate her dead children were. They brought up doctors and had them give graphic descriptions of the stillbirths, if each baby breathed, if its heart ever beat. She had to relive the moments all over again. Mrs. Kenny cried throughout this, and eventually ran from the courtroom. It was just all too much for her. And at one point, she left the courtroom just screaming that she was being treated like a dog. And there never was a sensitive portrait of this woman. It was all sort of caricature-style, so I think the coverage just continued in that way, you know? The newspaper report said she was shrieking, insinuated that she was drunk, and said, quote, "During the scuffle, Mrs. Kenny dealt at least half a dozen hard blows on the arms and bodies of the officers who showed great restraint in their tactics." In the end, it didn't help her case. "A child born dead is not, in truth, a child," the judge wrote. "It was that which might have been a child." Her count was knocked down to six. Mrs. Kenny was out of the running. Lastly, there was Mrs. Bagnato, who, again, had nine children. But one was stillborn and another was unregistered. Mrs. Bagnato suggested that there was some conspiracy with this. She said she'd registered the child herself at the Parliament Buildings. She was quoted as saying, "If they can't find the record, it'll be just too bad for them up there. I will tear the Parliament Buildings apart before I give up. I'm supposed to be in the hospital now with another baby coming, but I'll stay on my feet until I drop or this is cleared up." But her protestations didn't sway the judge, and she eventually did give up. After all, she did have a job, and almost a dozen mouths to feed. At the end of two years, none of the three favorites wound up at the finish line. Four other women, with nine babies each, won. Each of these women walked away with what today would be about 2 million Canadian dollars, or $1 and 1/2 million US dollars. Most were latecomers who really only became candidates when the heavy hitters were eliminated. And these four women had something else in common. Here's Elizabeth. I mean, the families that won were white, Protestant families who were essentially middle class, and who had homes that, when the reporters went into them and described the homes, it was always the clean and tidy home, and the well-kept this. And the forerunners through the whole race were working-class people, and unemployed people, and they had varied ethnic backgrounds. Maybe it wasn't a coincidence that these women didn't win. Maybe they didn't win because they didn't have the means to navigate the system as elegantly. Or maybe the judge who decided the contest had his finger on the scale. In its last four years, the public's view of the contest had turned, as people saw how it played out. It had encouraged the poorest women to have the most children. That set alarm bells off for a big group of people in what was a growing and popular movement at the time-- eugenics. Teddy Roosevelt was into eugenics. Alexander Graham Bell, WEB Dubois, even Helen Keller. A refresher-- eugenicists believed that in order to improve the human species, some people shouldn't be allowed to reproduce. And yes, that's just as creepy as it sounds. At the end of the contest, they came forth in droves to say that the money shouldn't be given to any women. Here's Elizabeth. The social commentary was around, who are these people, and should they be reproducing? They're not Canadian-born. They're poor. They're not the right people. A minister, Reverend Claire Sillcox, submitted written testimony against the participants as, quote, "unspeakable women," and argued that these poor children would eventually reduce wages and lower the standard of living. An editor for a Canadian newspaper said that the contest attracted, quote, "those whose progeny would be of little use to the state." Elizabeth and Karen believe that this environment influenced the judge, that he eliminated, on technicalities, all the contestants who had not made the right kinds of babies. Here's Karen. Yeah. I do believe that it was intentional, because they went to such lengths to discredit those that were the others-- the French Canadian Catholic, the woman with the illegitimate children, the Italian Catholic with her immigrant husband. It became a platform for them to send the message of, to use of a modern phrase, stay in your lane, like immigrants know their place. They were definitely trying to send a message. After the lawsuit took place, Mrs. Clark and Mrs. Kenny both filed appeals, and both received settlements for the equivalent of 200,000 Canadian dollars each. Mrs. Bagnato, the immigrant translator, walked away with nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, the antipasto bar is now open. Last December, I shuffled around a table piled high with prosciutto and provolone. Santa came into the banquet hall, and little kids ran past me to get their gifts from him. I was at the 89th annual Bagnato holiday party, which, as you can imagine, is bigger than most holiday family gatherings. Mrs. Bagnato, remember, had 12 children, and they had children, who also had children, who by now have had children, too. One of her great-granddaughters gives me a rough estimate. There are over 150 people now who are direct descendants of Grace. About 110 of the descendants and their families are in a reception hall giving generous air kisses, then turning, screaming, oh my god, Uncle Paulie. Everybody kissy-kissy everybody. Among the attendees? Many teachers, an agent for the cast of the Young and the Restless, a few writers, and a former mayor. So take that, eugenicists. But talking to a bunch of the Bagnatos, not that many of them know much about the Derby. And those who do, don't seem to care. Does it make you mad that Grace didn't get any money? No. Life's not all about money. But no, I don't think so. From what I hear, she was just that amazing woman with a huge heart. And I don't think she would get angry. Her oldest daughter, Mildred, told me a story that might answer that question. You know, her mother made a huge pot of sauce on the stove for Sunday dinner. And she had asked Mildred and one of the boys to put it out on the back porch to cool off. And when they went out to get it, it was gone. And Mildred was very angry. And her mother said, but just think, Mildred, somebody's having such a wonderful dinner tonight. After the Derby, Grace told the whole family that they weren't ever to talk about that dumb contest ever again, but she otherwise seemed unfazed. She continued having more kids, even took in an orphan from off the street. It's true that the chaos of the Stork Derby turned her into a laughingstock, and rocked Toronto for over a decade. But a century later, it's mostly forgotten-- just a funny old tale from a hundred years ago. Charles Vance Miller didn't have any children, and unless you preface it with, remember that crazy Stork Derby guy, nobody remembers his name. But more than a hundred people get together every year to share stories about Grace Bagnato. There's more than one way to leave a legacy. Stephanie Foo. She used to be one of our producers here at our show. She's now off writing a book that is part memoir, part science about complex PTSD, and looking for a publisher. Coming up, something said in the middle of a race between one racer and another that eats at both of them for years after. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program-- --"The Long Fuse." [LAUGHS] We never really use sound effects on our show, and that was totally worth it. Anyway, today's show, "The Long Fuse," is about people saying things that end up having consequences for years after. We have arrived at Act Three of our show. Act Three, Meatball and Chain. This last story is about three little words, uttered at 25 miles an hour during a sporting event, and the years and years of feelings that those words unleashed. Jared Marcelle tells what happened. Ian Dille was 21 when this whole thing happened. He was competing in a big bike race, a national championship. It was in Gainesville. Ian's from Austin. And when they got there, he saw that the roads were pretty flat, just like home. Plus, it was humid, but not too bad, just like home. So he was like, hey, I have a good shot at this thing. When the race starts, everyone comes out blazing. Everybody was racing really aggressively in that race. There was just a lot of attacks. There'd be a lead group of five riders, and then it would become 10, and then 15, and 20. And then a group would come out of that five riders. And it was kind of like this amoeba that kept breaking up and coming back together. Ian wasn't considered one of the favorites, but on this day in this race, he was better than most. He kept attacking, taking the lead, staying near the front the whole time. And then at one point, he realizes, oh man, I'm first. Now you'd think being in first place is a good thing. But for the majority of a bike race, competitors play hot potato with the top spot. Chances are, if you stay in first early on for too long, you're probably going to lose. No, you're definitely going to lose, because the person in first takes on all the wind. In cycling, this is a big thing. The front-runner basically works the hardest. And that makes the person that's pedaling behind them have to work a lot less hard. I mean scientifically, it's like 30% to 50% less hard. That's why in bike races, you see bikers lined up behind the lead guy. I remember bending my head over as I was pedaling as hard as I could, and looking behind me, and yeah. I just saw this kind of white-and-black checkered jersey coming across to me, and that was Mike. Mike Friedman. Ian knew who the favorites at this race were, and this Mike Friedman wasn't one of them. And so I just sprinted as hard as I could. He would claw his way back to me, and I just couldn't believe it. He seemed so done, but he was just really tenacious. He just kept coming back. Ian was worried now. If he kept the lead, blocking all of the wind for Mike, he was going to get tired. Mike might burst ahead and win. So Ian was like, let him get in front for a bit. I started coasting, and then we were kind of just coasting. And he would look back, and the group would be getting closer to catching us. And he said, you can win. You can win. Three words. I knew instantly what it meant. He means, if I stop attacking him and let him stay with me, and let him sit in my draft, then when we get to the finish line, he won't sprint me. He'll let me win the bike race. Now in cycling, this type of gentlemen's agreement happens all the time. Competitors will temporarily agree to a truce so they can conserve energy and stay ahead of the pack. It's a strategy. Sometimes this happens at the end, which could end up deciding who wins. Like hey, there's two of us here at the top. I won't sprint on you if you take on the wind resistance for me. We can beat everyone else. Ian went for it. I just put my head down and went as hard as I could. I mean, I felt like I was just going so fast, and we had a motorcycle referee that would follow the race. And they come up and give you time splits. They'll either just tell you, or sometimes they'll have a whiteboard that they'll write the gap between you and the chasers. And so they kept coming up, and it would be, you have 20 seconds. And then it was like 30 seconds, and then 40 seconds, and the gap just kept going out, and out, and out. I remember with one lap to go and just feeling so happy, like I'd already won the race. And then so we go around, and then we're coming towards the finish line. And we're getting ready to take the final left-hand turn to the finish. And I turned to him and I was like, yeah, you remember our deal, right? And then Mike just started sprinting. And I just remember watching him come by on my left, and my legs started cramping as we went up that hill. And I was just like, I can't believe this is happening. It felt like this dream just all of a sudden kind of turned into a nightmare. And I didn't win the bike race. Mike did. Mike won. Disbelief quickly turned to total rage. I was so upset. Remember riding up next to him, and hitting him on the back, and yelling something like, what the [BLEEP]? First place takes home a jersey with stars and stripes, like Captain America. I watched them put Mike's medal on, and then they gave him a jersey. And then, traditionally, everybody raises their arms on the podium after the national anthem plays. And I was standing right next to Mike, and I didn't-- I wouldn't hold his hand. I didn't raise my arm. And that was like the photo of the race. Ian was not having it. He immediately told the reporter what happened. He was like, Mike cheated. He cheated. His side of the story was that there was no deal, that I was just confused. When he said, you can win this race, he was like, no, no, no, no. What I was saying was if we work together, if you stop attacking me, you can win. Stop attacking me. Stop trying to get rid of me. You can win if you just keep pulling, and don't let this group behind catch us. As if to say, hey, man, you're doing well. You keep it up, you might even win this thing. I said you could win, not that I'd let you win. So life goes on. Ian races professionally for a bit, but gets injured and becomes a journalist. Of course, he covers cycling. Mike becomes an Olympian. The whole time, they're sort of circling each other's orbits, but avoiding crossing paths. And annoyingly, everyone in the racing world really likes Mike. He had this nickname as like Meatball, and he had a blog, and there was a lot of love for Meatball. And I was a little bit resentful about that. I always thought, they don't know the real Mike. He's a cheater. And he goes back on his word. And I would tell people, or people would ask me about, what happened in that race? And I'd be like, well, Mike's a cheater. And they'd just be like, well, doesn't seem like something he would do. And then I'd be like, no, you don't know. People would sort of look at me sideways when I was like, I hate Mike Friedman. They'd be like, nobody hates Mike Friedman. What are you talking about? That's like saying you hate Mr. Rogers, right? Yeah. Yeah. So as time passes, this race stays like a thorn in Ian's side. I realize saying that sounds like a high school football player talking about competing in the state title game, or whatever else. And then I totally get how ridiculous and small that sounds as an adult. But it's weird. It's just weird how you cling to those things. Then one day, about 15 years later, Ian's covering a race in Colorado near where Mike lived. He's on the tour bus hanging out. And then-- One of the guys on the bus was like, oh, I'm going to give Mike a call and see if he'll come to the start line and hang out with us on the bus before we start. And Mike came onto the bus. We didn't even look at each other, and then he left. And then when he came back, I was standing outside the bus. And he had a tray of coffees, and he handed me one. And I think he was just like, I just want to talk to you about that day. I think about that race all the time. And I was like, man, me too. And I remember seeing his lower lip shaking, just shaking. And that is Mike Friedman. That day on the bus, Mike didn't fully fess up and apologize. For Mike, it's complicated. Here's how he remembers those final moments of the race. But I wasn't even thinking. I was just, man, we made this left-hand turn, and the finish line is right within sight, 250 meters. And before I knew it, I was sprinting. Even going up to the line, I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I couldn't stop. Do you know why you did what you did, or have a better understanding of why you did it? Well, I was 17 years old at the time. So I just-- yeah. I don't know. It just is kind of one of those things that I don't have an answer. You know, I try my best, but I don't always do my best kind of thing. It wasn't preplanned. It wasn't done in a way to be nefarious. It wasn't, I'm going to tell this guy I'm going to do this and then sprint. It wasn't done in that way. It wasn't done that way at all. That's it. You know, that's it. That's the only time I've ever cheated, ever, at a bicycle race, ever. He immediately regretted it. Did it change how you saw yourself as an athlete, as a competitor? It did change how I saw myself. This is just-- I don't have anything else like that, that I can definitively say affected me the way that this had. That was the one thing that I knew that I had done wrong. It ate at him. He didn't race for two years. Mike didn't even tell anyone for a really long time. Fessing up that he cheated would mean that he was just that-- a cheater, not a kid who lost himself for a minute in a race. Dude, I didn't admit that this happened until I was with someone that I wanted to marry. And then there was one other person that I told while I was drunk, and he's my best friend. It never met as much to anyone else as it did to him, but he couldn't let it go. He thought about it for years. After his cycling career was done, his life sort of tanked. His marriage ended, hit bottom. He was living in a camper on his friend's land when he realized he wanted to reach out to Ian, that he missed his opportunity on the bus a year back. Here's Ian. He was moving back to Colorado, and he was driving back. And he called me, and that's when he said, yeah, you're right. It was a deal. And I'm sorry that I crossed the finish line first, that I didn't hold up my end of the bargain. Mike also wants to give Ian the jersey, the Captain America one. He'd stuffed it deep in a drawer all these years. So they agreed to meet up. He drives this really like revved-up-- I think it's a Jeep, or a pickup truck, or something. And you could hear it rumbling down the street, like rum-rum-rum-rum-rum. You could hear him pull up, and I was kind of nervous. And he came up, and he was holding the jersey, and he gave it to me right away. He looked me in the eyes, and he said, sorry. And I said, thank you. He had talked about, like I think he had even called the governing body, and asked them if there's any way that the actual results could be changed. And yeah. He was just like, every effort to make it right. I was just like, wow. When does that ever happen in someone's life? I don't even know when I've ever done that, just made something that I did wrong right, decades later. This event set off by a few words had just ballooned and ballooned in their heads for about 15 years, even though, in the grand scheme of things, this race didn't matter. It's not like it was the reason Mike made it, or the thing that ended Ian's career. And fixing it took something that's so simple-- three words. You were right. Jared Marcelle. His reporting can be heard on the podcast Caught from WNYC. Ian Dille, the racer who got cheated out of his victory, wrote about this in Bicycle Magazine. That's how we heard about the story. The other racer, Mike Friedman, now runs a non-profit teaching kids about bikes, called Pedaling Minds. Our program was produced today by Diane Wu. The people who put our show together includes Ben Calhoun, Zoe Chace, Dana Chivvis, Sean Cole, Aviva DeKornfeld, Neil Drumming, Jarrett Floyd, Damien Graef, Miki Meek, Stowe Nelson, Katherine Raimando, Ben Feiglin, Nadia Reiman, Robyn Semien, Alissa Ship, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, and Nancy Updike. Our managing editors are Susan Burton and David Kestenbaum. Special thanks to Dave Ptolemy Slocum, Chuck Long, Chris Bateman, David Goldenberg, Veronica Simmons, Astrid Lange, Brendan Copley, and Michelle Solomon. Our website, thisamericanlife.org, where you can listen to our archive of over 600 episodes for absolutely free. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, I called him earlier today. When I called him, I don't know, he was at the gym in the middle of his sprint intervals. I mean, I can't really-- like, I mean, man, the timing of this. Actually, real-life Torey just had back surgery this week. Feel better, OK? I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
Mike was out with his dog. It was a January night. He was on the C&O Canal in Washington DC. I've been there. It's like you're in the city, but it feels like you're in the woods. On one side of you is the Potomac River. On the other side there's this pretty old canal, which was frozen over that night. He gets around three miles out in his jog and stops to stretch. His dog, Looly, is off leash. And so I remember throwing a stick down near the water, just seeing if she'd go after it. And I started stretching. And I'm getting my calves. And I'm looking toward the Potomac, so I'm not really paying attention to her. I turned around. Couldn't have been more than 30, 40 seconds. And she's in the middle of the canal, probably 30, 35 feet out there. She's standing on the ice, you mean? She's standing on the ice, and she's sniffing around. And I go, Looly, Looly, get back here. And she puts her head up. And it couldn't have been more than three seconds later I just heard this sploosh. And she goes through. And I'm freaking out. [LAUGHING] And I all of a sudden, OK, OK, she'll get out of this. She's a dog, they can contort out of anything. And she started trying to get her paws up on the ice. And they just kept slipping off. And she was kicking it like crazy from behind. And a good minute goes by. And now I'm sort of trying to coax her out gently, like Looly, come on. Come on, baby. Come on, girl. Come on. And a minute goes by. And I'm starting to think, OK, this is not good. And then two minutes go by. And she's starting to whimper, these little-- [WHIMPERING] And I'm going, oh, man. And I'm looking around. There's nobody around. It's pitch dark. I only remember even two people on the trail running that I even saw. Today's show is about how do you choose what to do. How do you decide your move in a daunting situation where stakes are high? Like Mike, he's got no rope. His dog is too far out to use a branch or something. There's no time to get help. So what's he do? I literally thought about some Discovery Channel thing I'd watched once. And the guy was showing you, if you never want to fall through ice, how to distribute your body weight, if you put this much here and this much here. You mean you spread your body out, like you're lying on the ice? Is that how? Right. Right. I put my arms out and my legs, like I'm almost splayed. And I'm slowly moving across it. And you're on your stomach? I'm on my back. I'm on my back. He thinks, OK, worst case scenario, if the ice breaks-- well, he had actually jumped into the canal once. And he's 6' 4". The water only came up to his chest. So again, worst case, he could still grab the dog and walk out. We're talking the canal here. We're not talking the Colorado River. And it was the classic miscalculation because I started to move out to her-- and I wasn't that far from her. I can't remember, maybe 10, 15 feet. And she's looking at me. And she's in kind of a little ice hole. And she's trying to get toward me. And in my head, I just had this sort of weird thought that I hadn't thought of before. My dog is about 65 pounds. I'm about 205 pounds, 210 at that point. What if the chip-- boosh, I go right through. I fell through the ice myself. And the shocking thing was, I'm tasting sulfur. I'm tasting the sediment of the thing. And I can't stand. Mike was a sportswriter for The Washington Post when all this happened years ago. And he wrote a really beautiful account of what came next for the newspaper. And as part of that, he researched-- and yeah, the center of the C&O Canal does get much deeper than 6' 4". So he's in the water. He's only about five feet away from his dog. He wrote that plunging into the icy water, the moment that happened, the water shocked him like a dental drill hitting an exposed nerve. That's what it felt like. Boom, it was freezing. And then one of the things that's very arresting about reading your account of this is just how fast things go south for you. It's like you're trying to pull yourself up on the ice. And then right within two minutes, you can't even feel your hands. And your lower extremities are beginning to feel numb. The dog is in even worse shape than you. Yeah. She's just looking toward me for help. But every time I try to push myself up on the ice, it cracks a little. I can't get on a solid piece. And I'm starting to get cuts on my wrists as I'm going up on the ice. And I'm probably panicking at that point a little too because I don't have much time. These things happen quickly. He tried over and over to lurch himself up under the ice. But every time he did, it would break underneath him, and he'd be back in the water. He made it to his dog Looly. She put her paws on his back to hold herself up. It wasn't clear what to do. He thought about the stories you always hear, about people who die in the wilderness hiking or whatever. There's a cameraman from The Washington Post newsroom who he'd known named John. He was a kayaker, biggest, strongest guy I ever saw in the newsroom. He died in a kayak accident because the water pinned him under in West Virginia somewhere. And we had this big funeral for him. And I just thought of all those stories. And I had this really selfish, vain moment where I thought, I'm not dying in the Kodiak region. I'm not dying in the Gallatin or the Madison in Montana. I'm friggin' 15 minutes from a Ralph Lauren store and a Five Guys. Georgetown's down the street. My main thing was I didn't have a lot of time. I didn't know how much time I was in there, but literally, my legs were starting to freeze up. And so at that point, the only thing I could think of was, I can't get up here on my own. And she looks worse off than me. And so I took my right arm and put it under her like a big fishing hook. And then with all of his strength, he heaved Looly up onto the ice. She scampered to the bank, shook herself off, ran down the trail, then realized he wasn't with her, and came back. Now she kept a safe distance on the shore. He thought to himself, who's going to find his dog when he's gone? Who's going to take care of her? It was quiet. He could hear cars in the distance. This moment, he wrote about it. And I asked him to read it for us. "I had been in the freezing water for about three minutes, I figured. I half remembered reading an article that said hypothermia could set in between four and seven minutes. I drew in deep breaths and paused maybe 10 seconds. I figured I had one minute, maybe two with physical exertion left. I felt nothing in my hands and arms, which just slid off the ice each time I tried to pull myself up. I wanted to believe there was an internal survival mechanism that would kick in, an uber human force that would enable me to rescue myself. But losing muscular function prevents those surreal endings. I began to consider my options and arrived at a plan I should have thought of before I went in after her." The plan? He called for help, loud as he could. Screamed, and waited for a while. Nothing. "Suddenly I didn't feel cold or frozen. And that, I would learn later, meant I was heading into stage two of hypothermia. I remember leaning my elbows on the ice for balance and looking at Looly pacing along the bank." And then a guy showed up, a law student who'd been out for a jog. He sees Mike. And his opening line is, hey, so what are you doing in the ice? The way he gets Mike out is that he wades into the cold water, breaking the ice as he walks forward, his feet solidly on the ground, never getting in too deep. And then Mike breaks the ice and kind of lurches towards him. So we're probably about 15 feet from each other. And I just kept lunging and lunging. And I got a couple of feet more. And all of a sudden, I could feel my feet touch the bottom. And it was at that moment, I was like, oh, my god, I'm freezing, but I'm going to get out of here. The student's name is Jason Coates, who's still in regular touch today over a decade later. Over that time, Mike's thought a lot about that night in the canal when he nearly died. In hindsight, do you think you made the wrong calculation and the wrong choice trying to save your dog? I made the wrong calculation when I took her leash off along a frozen canal. I know, but the real choice that endangered your life was to decide to go rescue her. In retrospect, do you think, well, that was just the wrong choice? I should not have tried to rescue her. No. I don't think I made the wrong choice. Because-- Wow. --a life without her-- the next 10 years wouldn't have been a life worth living. No. Come on. Really? I mean that sincerely. You almost died. You're just lucky that somebody was passing by. It doesn't matter. That dog was everything to me. Now, you're married now. Yeah. When you've told your wife this story, does she agree with that assessment, do you think, that you should have gone in? Like is this an example to her of something about your judgment? [LAUGHING] Oh, she has 10 other examples of bad judgment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's definitely, as my wife says, Señor Drama. OK, Señor Drama, take it easy. And so, yeah, I definitely lead with my heart. Well, today on our radio show, we have stories like this one of people in difficult situations trying, basically, to scramble their way up onto the ice and having to invent how to do it, trying one thing after another. That kind of battle, it brings out who you really are. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Act One, New Sheriffs in Town. So the House of Representatives, of course, is where the Democrats are now in the majority. And they are flexing their muscles. Take the Michael Cohen hearing that just happened. If Republicans are still in charge of the House, do you think that could have ever happened? We're in for lots more hearings like that. And if you believe the news, the Mueller report about what the president did and did not do is apparently maybe close to being done. When that comes out, it'll probably mean hearings, about whether it's going to be released to the public, about whatever it is that it says. And a lot of that is probably going to happen in the House Judiciary Committee. Now, that's a different committee from the one that did the Cohen hearings. Our producer Zoe Chace spent weeks with the Judiciary Committee as they prepared for their very first oversight hearing. It happened a few weeks ago. And she watched them during this first hearing, trying to exercise the new power that they got when they took the majority, the power to drag in whoever they want and grill them with questions before the cameras. As we hear, it was not a cakewalk. The Democrats had to fight for every step, adjust tactics, try this and that. Here's Zoe. The House Judiciary Committee has its own hearing room-- long gold drapes, rich blue carpet. And the way the room is set up, everywhere you look is a reminder of exactly who's in power and who is out. The C-Span cameras are set up stage left so the Congress people and the majority are shot at the best angle. They just look better on TV. The minority staffers have to squeeze awkwardly behind the cameras just to get up to their members on the dais. It's not dignified. The majority has a much bigger staff. It controls the budget. Even the portraits on the wall of the past chairmen that look down on everything, even those are arranged so that the majority's portrait gets the benefit of that better camera angle. You know who knows every inch of this room, including even the parts behind the scenes that the mortals never see? Jerry Nadler. There's a door to the right, to the right of the committee room doors. Nadler is the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. You walk in that door, that's the minority staff room. And you'll see a narrow corridor, two very small bathrooms, an office, a little space for a printer or for a microwave. A printer or a microwave, that really sums up the choices the minority gets. It's where Nadler's been for the last eight years, but no longer. Now walk in on the other side of the committee room, and you won't see that little thing. You see a suite of eight, or nine, or 10 offices. A suite-- nice, big offices with couches and extra chairs for big staff meetings. The point is, the switch is always extreme. Right now, it's an especially big deal. The House leadership has made clear they're going to push back against President Trump. They're passing bills. They're running oversight hearings and investigations. Nadler's committee, the Judiciary Committee, is looking for the answer to the very slow motion movie we've been watching since President Trump took office. Did the president abuse his power? Did the president obstruct justice? Hanging over that question, for Nadler, is the possibility of impeachment, because impeachment proceedings, if they ever happened, would start in the Judiciary Committee. But for now, it's just hearings, hearings for days, hearings as far as the eye can see. And for every hearing that makes the news that rises like a bubble to the surface where we can see it, there is this churn underneath of meetings and pre-meetings and strategy sessions. That's the work I'm here to see. This really doesn't-- the real reason-- Nadler and his staff are gathered in his newly giant office, strategizing around their first oversight hearing. He's editing a letter half out loud. His typical pose, bottom drawer of his desk pulled out, his right foot up on it, and leaning way too far back, like he's going to tip over. He's making notes, debating with his staff. Well, I don't know that they're bound by it. Right. Nadler's like their constitutional law professor. He is actually a constitutional lawyer. Nadler's 71 years old, a liberal congressman from New York, represents primarily the West Side of Manhattan, spends a lot of weekends with a megaphone hollering about civil rights, spends his weekdays with piles of paper. Where's the stuff about Mueller? This is back in January. Nadler and his staff want acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker to appear before the Judiciary Committee. This letter is negotiating a time and sending him topic areas they want to cover-- the southern border, the Affordable Care Act, and primarily questions about you, sir, and your highly unusual, brief tenure as attorney general. Whitaker is important, even though he's a temporary villain. He's a plot point in the story Nadler and the House Democrats want to tell. Or he might be. That's why they need to ask him a bunch of questions in a hearing under oath. We all suspect he was put there for one reason and one reason only, to interfere with the Mueller investigation. Sessions-- Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Whitaker replaced him. Sessions recused himself and wouldn't protect the president against the Mueller investigation. Is fired because he wouldn't protect the president against the Mueller investigation. Whitaker, who's written nasty things about the Mueller investigation, is hired with no visible qualifications. [INAUDIBLE] obviously for the purpose of protecting the president from the Mueller investigation. Whatever is obvious to Nadler, if he wants the public to believe it, he's got to show it in a hearing. His committee needs to ask pointed questions and make sure Whitaker answers them. That's the letter full of topics that Nadler's working on. At this point, he may not answer the questions. And we can't tolerate that. That is correct. OK, that's what I'll say. That voice in the background is Aaron, Nadler's deputy chief counsel. Aaron's one of the two people on Nadler's core staff who's allowed, sometimes, to speak into a microphone. He believes really hard in his job. Instead of saying the country, he'll say the republic. Now one question we should discuss is whether we should prepare a subpoena for Whitaker, even though we hopefully would never have to use it. We should certainly prepare it. My only question is, does that look belligerent, like we're doing something? That's the concern. Nadler and his staff are considering deploying the biggest weapon they have early in the game, the subpoena. You'll hear a lot about the subpoena in this story and, I believe, in the coming months. A subpoena forces you to show up to a congressional hearing. A subpoena can also force you to answer questions, unless you plead the fifth, obviously. Back when the Democrats were in the minority, they didn't have the power to subpoena anybody. It killed them the last two years, not being able to force Trump officials to come in and answer for the stuff they were doing. Now they have subpoena power. And they have two years of unanswered questions. We have to reestablish proper oversight, not because we don't like this president-- though, I don't-- not because I think he's a terrible president-- though, I do-- not because I think we'll find all kinds of things-- though, we may-- but because it is our job to do that. Whitaker is coming in voluntarily. Nadler doesn't need the subpoena for that anymore, but he does want to use it to combat this maddening thing that's been going on over the last two years the Democrats were powerless to stop. People from the Trump administration would come in and refuse to answer questions. And every administration does that, but there's been a twist on it. We saw it, for example, with the guy Whitaker replaced, Attorney General Sessions. A year ago, he went before a congressional committee and showcased this innovative way of not answering a question. Here's Sessions. This is from a New York Times video montage. Senator Heinrich, I'm not able to share with this committee private communications I may have-- Because you're invoking executive privilege. I'm not able to invoke executive privilege. That's the president's prerogative. Has the president invoked executive privilege in the case of your testimony here today? He has not. Then what is the basis of your refusal to answer these questions? I am protecting the right of the president to assert it if he chooses. Sessions drove the Democrats crazy because he kept talking in terms of future executive privilege. The president might invoke it sometime, hypothetically, potentially, and I have to protect that. He kept claiming this even after he was given months to go to the president and ask, over which communications do you want to invoke executive privilege? This potential executive privilege was like a back door Sessions kept slipping out of. Nadler spent the last few months trying to nail that door shut. He sent a list of questions to Whitaker in advance. Are these subject to executive privilege? Go to the president, find that out, get back to us. Anything the president doesn't claim is fair game for us to ask and get answers to. And if you don't answer those questions, we'll subpoena the answers out of you. Weeks passed. Whitaker didn't get back to Nadler, who feels like, OK, if you try to stonewall, we'll subpoena your answers mid-hearing. But to get a subpoena for a hearing, first, Nadler is having a hearing about a subpoena. This is Congress, after all. The Judiciary Committee will please come to order, a quorum being present without objection. The chair has authorized to declare a recess at any time. Nadler is sitting in the chairman's seat with the gavel, opening a meeting about the subpoena. It's the day before the big Whittaker hearing. This meeting is focused on just the subpoena. It's called a markup, basically a debate among the committee members. And it's teeny, tiny-- no audience, very few reporters. Not even all the committee members are here. I called C-Span and asked if they were recording it. They were like, what is that? I now call up the chair's resolution, authorizing the issuance of a subpoena to acting Attorney General Matthew G. Whitaker to secure his appearance and testimony at the hearing of the committee regarding oversight of the US Department of Justice. I move that the committee adopt the resolution. So this hearing is about the subpoena, but it's also a way for Democrats to show off how transparent they're going to be as they run this committee. Back when Nadler was in the minority, it frustrated him that the Democrats wouldn't get a chance to weigh in on a subpoena like this. There weren't committee votes, markups where Democrats got to go on the record and vote no when they didn't like what the Republicans were doing. Today, Nadler and the Democrats could just go ahead and authorize a subpoena without this hearing, but they're letting the Republicans weigh in. And they're feeling a little holier than thou about it. Also, Nadler genuinely believes in proper parliamentary procedure, not just the technicalities of it, but the idea of it, that it's a way to keep everyone honest. The chairman begins by recognizing himself for an opening statement, because that's the procedure. Not a showboat. Whatever's under-understated is how Nadler presents himself. My staff and I can not have been more transparent about our goals here. We explained the possibility of this subpoena to Mr. Whitaker months ago. We provided him with the questions in advance weeks ago. We consulted with ranking member Collins and provided him with a copy of this subpoena days ago so that we could schedule this markup if necessary. In fact, we are only voting on this resolution because the ranking member asked us for an up or down vote on the matter, a courtesy we were not afforded in the last Congress when Democrats were in the minority. The hearing is filled with digs like that, back and forth. Well, back when you guys didn't follow the rules, back when your president was the one being secretive. This is the way it's going to be for two years. And these are the people who are going to be doing it. This is the cast for the new season. Let's get to know them. Ranking Republican Doug Collins from Georgia, charismatic talker, Air Force Reserve, Iraq vet. He steers things away from Whitaker immediately and does a classic, what about Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder? And isn't your subpoena here a double standard? A subpoena should not be used to supplement where the committee is merely worried that a witness might not testify or might not answer questions to the extent of the committee's liking. If that was the standard for a subpoena, many on our side, especially when Attorney General Holder sat at that table and offered, on the record, the executive privilege, which he could not claim. Let's be honest about this. There's arguing back and forth about whether waving a subpoena around is too rude for someone coming in voluntarily, and what's the precedent. Here's Nadler sparring with Jim Jordan, Republican from Ohio, who loves a fight. Big defender of the president. The issue is, if he refuses to answer legitimate questions. That is why we want the subpoena. How do you know that until he comes tomorrow? And he said he's coming. Sir, I'm speaking. We don't know that. He hasn't told us what he will do. We asked him. He refuses to say-- Mr. Chairman, that's actually not accurate. He has told you what he's going to do. He said he's going to be sitting at that table tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock. No, he hasn't told us about answering questions. Finally, after arguing against the subpoena for a while, the Republicans changed tack and offered an amendment to it. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have an amendment at the desk. You have an amendment at the desk? The clerk reads the amendment. Beginning on page one, after "acting Attorney General Matthew G. Whitaker," and before "to secure his appearance," insert the following-- "and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein." Here we go. If you're getting a subpoena anyway, get one for Rod Rosenstein. Rod Rosenstein, deputy attorney general. Lots of Republicans can't stand him and think he's out to get the president. So their amendment is basically, you Democrats want the guy you don't trust at the Justice Department to testify. Well, then we want the guy we don't trust to come in at the same time. The argument that follows is so small sized, but they all throw in so hard, which is normal here. Just stay with it for a second. The Democrats' response is led by David Cicilline from Rhode Island. I've come to think of him as Nadler's pinch hitter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would argue that this amendment goes beyond the scope of the resolution before us. The Democrats knew this amendment was coming. Nadler's team already set up Cicilline with what he needs to knock it down. His addition to this resolution is not germane. It expands the scope of this for the individual charged with the oversight of the Department of Justice. And therefore, I ask that you rule it out of order. "Germane" is a legal term. And once it's released in here, it's like a swarm of bees. Republican member Biggs argues back. Because under the rules of any parliamentary body, this group determines what's germane. This group determines what's germane. We're going to vote on germane, this in just a second. Another Republican, Louie Gohmert from East Texas, he jumps in. Like not only is Rod Rosenstein germane-- It is extremely germane. --can't be germaner. It's as germane as it gets. So let's be fair. In any event, the Democrats have the votes to do what they want. Nadler rules the amendment not germane. The Republicans appeal. Democrats immediately table the appeal-- swat it down, in other words. They finally vote on the resolution to authorize the actual subpoena. And it is authorized, obviously, by a party line vote of Democrats. This entire show, the whole hour of debate, it was a fait accompli from the beginning. But the minority got what the minority gets, a chance to object on the record. It ain't much, but it's all there is. Everyone knows that. And yet, at the very end of the hearing, Republican Louie Gohmert, knowing the Democrats are feeling so very pleased with themselves for letting the minority speak, Gohmert gets in one last graciously worded dig at the majority. He's like, you played your part a little sloppy. You didn't even make it look like you were listening to us. I rise to commend the chairman on the way in which he ruled on the germaneness issue of-- we know that to rule before giving this side a chance to respond on a germaneness objection would be a sign of partisan railroading. And whoever it is that typed up your answer and had it instantaneously at the very moment we finished our argument in front of you so you could read it so fast we couldn't even see it-- they typed it, got it to you so you could read your ruling the moment we finished stating our position. Will the gentleman-- I commend the-- I thank the gentleman. Everyone laughed. They went on to consider a bipartisan bill, which they passed out of committee. The Democrats felt great about how this markup went. They authorized a subpoena, meaning now they had the power to use a subpoena on the day of the hearing to compel answers, if they want to, just to have it on hand, like in case of emergency, break glass, get answers. We get backstage, as it were, back to the vast suite of the majority's offices behind the hearing room. And I find Aaron, who's full of his particular brand of patriotic bonhomie. So who do you think won? The American people, I'd say. No. [LAUGHING] Many members had sort of a moment where they pulled me aside and said, oh, we're going to win a vote today, because it's been a while. It's our first game time, like regular season, vote. As the day ends and we head into Whitaker oversight hearing eve, everything seems set. Nadler staff is feeling ready, like they had a great dress rehearsal and the play is also going to be great. The props are all in place. Everyone knows their lines. Every box has been checked off. I go downstairs to the Rayburn Cafeteria, stare at my phone, like everyone does. Suddenly news breaks, and it's big. I look up from my phone to CNN, which is playing everywhere. The Whitaker hearing that is supposed to happen in just hours, the hearing the Democrats have been rehearsing for, planning for, might not happen now. Whitaker apparently heard about the vote they just took on the subpoena. And now he's saying he's not going to come tomorrow if there's a subpoena threat. In other words, this new tool the Democrats can wield, now that they're in the majority, the main tool they want to use to get the answers they've been waiting for, the DOJ is saying, go ahead and try it. See what you get. If Whitaker doesn't show up like he's threatening, a subpoena can force him to appear, but it would take a while. I run back upstairs. People are gathered around the TV in the office, watching the breaking news. Acting attorney general to discuss his communications with the president. So that's a [INAUDIBLE]--- Oh, my god. Nadler's staff is in Aaron's office with the door closed. They're all on speakerphone with Nadler. And I sit outside watching MSNBC for what feels like hours, but I think is like 45 minutes. Finally, they come get me. And Aaron and another staffer, Danny, show me what they've all been looking at. It's a five-page letter they just now received from the DOJ, telling them Whitaker won't come if there's a chance the Democrats will use their subpoena at the hearing tomorrow. To be clear, it's a PDF, but it sounds like it's from the 19th century. So the department says, "Given the concerns expressed above, we seek a written assurance from your office that the committee will not issue a subpoena to the acting attorney general on or before February 8." Oh, "We request the benefit of your reply by 6:00 PM today." So the threshold question is-- So formal. Yeah. The threshold question is, do we respond to this at all? This is a last minute threat. It's out of the box. It's irregular. Attempting to dictate terms from the executive branch to the legislative branch on how to conduct its oversight of the executive branch. They're indignant and a little shaken, I'd say. They're like, wait, did we mess this up? Is Whitaker seriously not coming? What do we do now? F this guy. They're legitimately freaked out because they really, really want Whitaker to come in. Nadler's the new leader. All his members might be upset. They stuck their necks out and supported his subpoena move, but they really want to have a hearing with the cabinet official, to be the first committee in the new Democrat-controlled House to show off a tough oversight agenda. Aaron and Danny walk me through their various options for a response, from hard line to pushover. People are running around, researching ways to beef up their response to the letter. Nadler's decision is, just reiterate what they said before as though it's not exactly what they said before. Basically, as Aaron puts it-- Dear Matthew Whitaker, if you show up on time prepared to answer our questions, there is no need for us to issue a subpoena. Love, Jerry Nadler. So then Aaron and another staffer call the DOJ. I'm not allowed to record. They start out by saying, I've got good news for you. And the news is not good. They say, well, the gist is, if he shows up on time and answers questions, we won't have to issue a subpoena. It seems to somehow pass muster with whoever's on the other side. And they talk about logistics, what elevator Whitaker is going to use, how he's going to get into the hearing room and stuff. The way they talk is like they're releasing a bull into a ring, how to keep everyone safe before we let this angry, frightened creature in front of 30 matadors. Things are calm for about a half an hour. Then Aaron's cell phone rings on his watch, and he curses and runs out of the room. It's the DOJ. They want a stronger assurance. They want a promise-- no subpoena tomorrow, or Whitaker won't come. It's 10 to 6:00. 6:00 is the deadline. This time, the team gathers deeper into their catacombs of offices. I can't even hear them arguing, they're so cocooned away from me. And when they come out, I can't get a straight answer out of Danny or Aaron. He asked for a guarantee. You didn't give him a guarantee, or did you? We said that there's no need for a subpoena. But did you guarantee him that you wouldn't issue a subpoena? Yeah. There's no need to issue a subpoena because he's agreed to come in tomorrow morning and answer the questions. OK. So what if he doesn't answer one of the questions, and you want him to answer it? We'll deal with it as we move forward. But isn't that when you would issue a subpoena? If, in fact, we were going to issue a subpoena. Oh, my god. They're being so cagey, so parsey, I can't quite tell what's up. Did they cave, and they don't want to admit it? Later that night, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Doug Collins, gets on Twitter to reveal Nadler caved. Nadler's team protests that word, "caved," vehemently. The way they put it is, they decided getting Whitaker in the room was the most important thing. "Caved" is definitely the word Collins would use. And he posted a screenshot of a letter from Nadler to the DOJ, a letter that Nadler's team hadn't made public, a letter they also hadn't told me about. It promises the DOJ no subpoena tomorrow. Collins is all, got you, Nadler. "Looks like @repjerrynadler forgot to include his most recent letter to acting AG Whitaker, confirming there would be no subpoena tomorrow. Here it is." Collins, as ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, should have been CC'd on this letter. Nadler's team says they did. Collins says they did not. He got it elsewhere. So much for proper procedure. Congressional hearings can be confusing because there's so many different things at once. They can be investigations to find out facts you didn't know. They can trap people into making false statements on the record, also cable TV performances to raise representatives' national profile or send a message to their constituents. This hearing is going to be all those things. But also, the Democrats want to show the public what they think is going on, which in terms of Whitaker is, they think he's a hatchet man, that he was put in place to kill or screw up the Mueller investigation. Nadler believes that's why Trump picked him. And picking Whitaker was just one of any number of times he believes the president may have obstructed justice. We have to lay out a story for the American people. We have to find out what was going on and then lay that out to the American people. And that's our job. Also, separate from Whitaker's appointment, they're really mad about a whole bunch of Trump, DOJ-related matters. And they want to get answers about those too. So it's going to be a long day. Right before it starts, Aaron and Nadler review his script and his questions. And the central question that we should talk about right now is not actually the questions, but what happens when we're in the moment where he refuses to answer. All right. [INAUDIBLE] OK, let's talk through it. I like the way you set up yes or no, Mr. Whitaker? Yes or no, Mr. Whitaker? Hit him again and again with that. About an hour later, the hearing's getting underway. We're in the room with the portraits looking down from the walls. Whitaker shows up right on time. Ranking Republican member Doug Collins speaks directly to him in his opening statement. Mr. Whitaker, this is your life. Like the old TV show, they just want a piece of you. And with that, Mr. Chairman, pursuant calls for Rule 16. I do now move to adjourn. Nobody asked me, but I think we shouldn't be having this hearing. All in favor of the motion to adjourn, say aye. Aye. Oppose, nay. No. The no's have it. Collins calls for a roll call vote. Roll call. Everyone's vote on adjournment is painstakingly read out loud. That's four minutes less hearing, classic minority party stalling tactic. Also literally, Collins doesn't think we should be having this hearing. Whitaker opening statement, Nadler moves to questions. Right off the bat, Nadler's tactic of yes or no, Mr. Whitaker, gets mixed results. Well, it's our understanding that at least one briefing occurred in December before your decision not to recuse yourself on December 19 and Christmas Day. Is that correct? What's the basis for that question, sir? Yes or no? Is it correct? I mean, I-- It is our understanding that at least one briefing occurred between your decision not to recuse yourself on December 19 and six days later, Christmas Day. Is that correct? Simple enough question, yes or no? Mr. Chairman, again, what is the basis for your question? You're saying that it is your-- Sir, I'm asking the questions. I only have five minutes, so please answer, yes or no. No, Mr. Chairman. I'm going to-- you were asking me a question, it is your understanding-- can you tell me where you get the basis? No, I'm not going to tell you that. I'm don't have time to get into that. I'm just asking you if that's correct or not. Is it correct? Were you briefed in that time period between December 19 and Christmas Day? Simple question, yes or no? Congressman, if every member here today asked questions based on their mere speculation-- All right, never mind. At any point-- You don't have an an actual basis for your questions. Yes or no. Whitaker plods slowly through every answer, taking time to pull his tiny glasses on and off his face and regularly declining to answer. Congressman, thank you for that question. Congressman, I know this is an important issue to you. And then even when he does answer, the answers are swaddled in weird, half non-answers. Mr. Chairman, as I said earlier today in my opening remarks, I do not intend today to talk about my private conversations with the President of the United States. But to answer your question, I have not talked to the President of the United States about the special counsel's investigation. So the answer is no, thank you. To any other White House official? The effect of this is that it's really hard to tell what really went on while Whitaker was AG, which part matters, and importantly, who's being unreasonable-- Democrats for yelling yes or no at him, or Whittaker for being obstinate? Does he know stuff and he's hiding it? Does he not know stuff, and they're berating him? I truly cannot tell. The hearing protocol is Democrat gets five minutes, Republican gets five minutes. And it's whiplash every time they switch because they're trying to tell entirely different stories with their questions. When it's ranking Republican Doug Collins' turn at bat, he brings up Roger Stone's recent arrest. Are you familiar, from public boards or otherwise, that a CNN reporter was camped out outside of Stone's house when the FBI arrested him? I am aware of that. And it was deeply concerning to me as to how CNN found out about that. Well, I'm glad we're going down that road, Mr. Attorney General, because this is a-- Collins uses the rest of his time to reiterate his suspicions about goings on inside the FBI and Department of Justice. That's what a lot of the last two years of Republican-led hearings have been about. They've been pushing a story that biased officials inside the FBI have been trying to take down the president ever since he took office. And there's a bogus theory that says Stone's arrest is part of that. They may believe all this. Nadler says it's a Republican strategy to discredit these investigations. So when any reports do come out, half the country won't believe them. Whitaker is so adept at deflecting the Democrats' questions that the only time I feel like I really understand what the Democrats are getting at is when they perform these little monologues, reciting a list of facts that are already out there. David Cicilline, Rhode Island, Nadler's pinch hitter, used some of his time to read a list like that to Whitaker. You then went on to describe the Mueller appointment of a special counsel as ridiculous and a little fishy, that Mueller investigating Trump's finances would be going too far, that there is no criminal obstruction of justice charge to be had against President Trump, that there was no collusion with the Russians in the Trump campaign, that any candidate would have taken the same meaning as Donald Trump Jr. with the Russian lawyer, and finally that a replacement for Sessions could reduce Mueller's budget so low that his investigation grinds to almost a halt. You said all those things, and they're all in print. The American people wonder just how is it that Mr. Whitaker becomes the acting attorney general of the United States in violation of existing statutes. Was he put there for a particular purpose? That wasn't a question, it's a statement. I yield back-- I've observed that. The time of the gentleman has expired. The speeches are helpful in understanding why they brought Whitaker here. But when they ask questions, it gets muddled again. It seems as though there's a place they're trying to get to, but also like they might never get there. They'll do a series of questions that are endless, tiny variations on the same question that don't end in a conclusion. Here's Democrat Ted Deutch trying to ask about every single way there could've been communication between Whitaker and the White House about the Mueller investigation. Did you do anything to make sure that the White House might have learned some of what you learned in those briefings? Could it be that someone else on your staff might have spoken to someone at the White House, since you told us you didn't? Congressman, I'm not aware of that happening. Who else-- how many people were in those briefings with you when you're briefed about the Mueller investigation? Congressman, I'm not going to go into specifics of the briefing, but it was a very limited group. There was only one member of my staff who was present with me. Shortly after this back and forth with Congressman Deutch, there was a break. I marched backstage to Aaron's office. He looked surprised to see me. Hi. OK, do you guys have a card to play here with this like, "did you tell anybody" thing that Deutch was harping on? Yes. I mean, it's not a card to play so much as we have reason to believe that his testimony is not accurate, based on information both publicly reported and delivered to us by people who work in and around the Department of Justice. So it seems like they know something, and they're trying to catch him making a false statement. That shoe never drops the whole six hours. There is no gotcha moment-- we know what you did last summer, Mr. Whitaker. Instead, the dramatic moment that ends up on the news after the Whitaker hearing has nothing to do with the questions Nadler was asking. It was this. Have you ever been asked to approve any request or action to be taken by the special counsel? Mr. Chairman, I see that your five minutes is up. And so-- This indecorous response that scandalized the room-- if you heard about the hearing, that's probably all you heard. Jerry Nadler responded how Jerry Nadler would, laughed it off and moved on. In the coming months, we're going to get to know the different styles of these House committee chairs-- Nadler in judiciary, Adam Schiff in the Intelligence Committee, Elijah Cummings in oversight. He ran the Michael Cohen hearing. Cummings is a master of ceremonies-type preacher almost. He knows how to reach an audience and hold it. Nadler, in his hearing with Whitaker, was dealt a very different witness. But also, he's a very different chairman. After spending weeks watching him gear up for and then run this hearing, I think it's fair to say he's not so into the theater part of the hearing. He's got a law library in his head. He's practical. He's unflappable. He's trying to get to the bottom of something here. He's not so focused on the audience experience of it, their takeaway. Here's the truth. I didn't understand-- I didn't know what I was supposed to get at the end of that hearing. I didn't know what I was supposed to think, as an American who's been waiting. Well, we weren't doing the hearing in order to get people to think something. That may be true of future hearings. The function of this hearing was to assure ourselves, and by extension the American people, to determine whether the Mueller investigation was being hamstrung or going on. That was the purpose. OK. So by that measure, how did Nadler and his committee do? They got six hours of statements on the record that people are now poring over. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal both published stories saying, according to their reporting, Whitaker lied during his testimony. Whitaker's now agreed to come back to the Judiciary Committee to, quote, "clarify his testimony." So that record will continue to grow. Building a record matters. Getting clear answers from the administration about the last two years matters. But at some point, the overall story and the audience's understanding of what Congress is doing here could become the biggest thing. When it was clear a few months ago that Nadler was going to be chair of judiciary, right after the midterms, he was asked about impeachment hearings a lot. They could tear the country apart, he said. That's because impeachment depends on the court of public opinion. Do enough people see the same events in the same way? Can you imagine? We are a really long way from that. Zoe Chace, who's one of the producers of our show. Coming up, something seriously you do not expect when you're expecting. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, scrambling to get off the ice. We have stories of people in difficult situations who are trying to move. They're trying to fix things. And for a while, anyway, they are running in place, just attempting one tactic after another, hoping something is going to work. We've arrived at Act Two of our program. Act Two, Going Under. So this next story is about somebody who had a lot of options for fixing the problem that she faced. And I don't think it's an exaggeration to say she tried them all. Her name is Jessica Hopper. She's a music journalist who used to help us here with the music on our show. And the story is about her and a doctor, and sexual misconduct. In other words, content that might not be right for everybody. And before we start, I will point out that the doctor in the story denies any wrongdoing and has steadfastly denied it from the start. In fact, when this got before a judge, the judge ruled that there was not enough proof to meet the standard necessary to establish misconduct on the doctor's part, though he said he found Jessica's testimony to be, quote, "emotional and believable." He found her credible. Here's Jessica. On March 1, 2012, I was in the hospital delivering my son. And an anesthesiologist repeatedly groped me while administering my epidural. I've told the story of what he did to me again and again, dozens of times over the last seven years to the hospital, the police, the detectives, my attorney, the state medical licensing investigator, my victim advocate, a judge, a reporter, another detective, and eventually people close to me. The story's only become more precise in order to preempt the questions I know will come. I can speak it all in an unbroken monologue. I start with how this was my second son, why we chose this neighborhood hospital. I offer my state of mind as my husband drove me there, how alert and aware I was. I recount how the anesthesiologist asked my husband and my doula to leave the room, how he had me take my gown down over my pregnant belly, how his process was methodical, but entirely different than the epidural I got with my first son. I trace on my body how the doctor ran an injection line, a thin plastic tube, from a spot on my back and inexplicably taped it right between my breasts. I pinpoint that moment as when I know something was off, how I read his name tag and took note of his name, where he stood, where the light was in the room, approximately what time of day. I detail how he put his hands on my breasts, cupped and held them. I describe the touch as sexual and not clinical. I describe how he was silent when I asked, what are you doing? And how he did it again. It did not stop until I said, what the [BLEEP] are you doing? I explain how he did not look at me and just left the room, how I told my husband immediately after he came back in the room. About an hour and a half later, within a minute or two of delivering my son, I told the entire room what the doctor had done to me. But how I told them came out sarcastic and nervous, almost like a joke, saying that I was so happy to have an epidural that I almost didn't mind that the doctor had felt me up. I knew they heard me because the neonatal nurses weighing my son froze, and one locked eyes with me. My midwife told me, don't say that. That didn't happen. Don't say that. This is the part in the story where my monologue changes. It becomes a litany of who I told and how, how I set a reminder alarm on my phone. And at least once a week during my children's nap time, I would call the hospital to try to tell someone what happened, to try to navigate to the right voicemail, the hospital administrators, HR, the receptionist, the patient advocate. I called for weeks until someone took down my account. I soon got a letter from the hospital, telling me that they'd looked into it and that my account was unsubstantiated. I filed a complaint online with the state medical licensing board. I just wanted to stop this from happening to anyone else. I filed a police report. A few weeks later, I did several long interviews with a nice detective. His concern and care felt meaningful after months of being told that no one believed me. A few weeks later, a new detective was assigned to my case. And I started over, retelling the story several times over the course of a year. The new detective would periodically update me with progress on my case. They were dramatic stories, made him and the other cop sound like cowboys. He told me they had gone to the hospital to interview the doctor, and they'd been blocked by hospital staff. He told me when they went back with a warrant, the doctor had fled the country. He told me that they put out an international APB on him and had tracked him. He told me that they had gone to the doctor's suburban mansion and arrested him at dawn on Christmas morning, and now the doctor was scared. I had started to doubt what the detective was telling me. A few months later, the detective had me meet him in person at the shopping center by the county courthouse. He sat me down at a glass table across from a Sephora and told me that the state's attorney was declining to take the case or even bring charges because he said, she said cases were impossible to prosecute. He urged me to give up on the case and go on with my life. He said that the doctor was probably scared enough that he had stopped. Sitting there in the mall with the detective after 18 months of wild stories and no charges, I had the sinking feeling that this was a performance of some sort-- telling me that justice had been exhausted and hoping I would believe it so he could close up my case file and call it a day. I realized I needed to switch tactics. I left the meeting and called a lawyer friend who referred me to an attorney who was willing to help me bring a civil case pro bono. After a few months, this lawyer laid out some options for me, but then he followed that with exactly what the detective had said. It was my word against the doctor. And with cases like this, good outcomes were rare, that he had seen victims come out the other side destroyed. I knew that was true, and I trusted what he was telling me. I felt like unless I had video of this happening, I wouldn't be believed. But I wanted the doctor to face consequences. What the doctor had done had filled me with fear and anxiety. I was anxious about being touched. As a result, I hadn't seen a doctor or dentist in years since delivering my son. What this doctor did in this setting that's supposed to be safe, where I was at my most vulnerable, in labor-- after that, how could I trust anyone? I didn't feel safe. I had nightmares. And I felt shame, not for what the doctor had done, but that maybe I could have done something differently, so others would have taken this more seriously. My attorney said he would pursue the case if I wanted, but he suggested I move on and focus on the good things in my life, my family, my career. He assured me that if anyone else ever came forward, that my civil complaint would be there to bolster their account. On Valentine's Day 2015, feeling deeply discouraged, I told my lawyer to drop my case. I didn't talk about it or tell friends or family because I just wanted this all to go away. I tried to forget, but I couldn't. In December 2017, I was at home and folding laundry when I got a call from an investigator with the state licensing board. She said she was new to the position and was just following up on her predecessor's open cases, and would I be willing to talk to her? It'd been five years. I was ambivalent and cynical. She asked me to sign a release so she could get my medical records. I didn't bother. I felt like there was no use in going through this again, and it was painful to pretend otherwise. She called again a few weeks later and asked me if I would tell her my story. Over the course of an hour, I did, but I was certain there was no use telling the story again. I no longer believed anyone could help me or stop him. In February 2018, the investigator called me and told me that there was a development in my case. Another victim had come forward with an almost identical claim. A prosecutor she worked with said if I signed consent forms to release my medical records, they could file an emergency suspension of the doctor's license that would stop him from practicing. I said yes. He asked me if I would be willing to testify against the doctor. I said yes. Finally, I was being believed because there were two of us. I got off the phone and involuntary screamed over and over before collapsing on the floor, sobbing. I was furious there were now two of us. I was elated there were now two of us. We were not in this alone. What I'd learned about the woman who'd come forward was that she was undocumented, a single mom. She did not speak much English, and she was testifying. I felt overcome with love and gratitude for her, this brave woman I didn't know, this woman who is taking a risk coming forward. The state medical licensing board was moving for the suspension of the doctor's license. I met with two prosecutors to prepare to testify. They only had a few days. During this, I found out that the detectives initially assigned to my case, including the detective who had told me he'd arrested the doctor, the detective who had met me at the mall, he had never made any notes during the nearly two years he'd been on my case, not once in all the times he had interviewed me. He never interviewed or arrested the doctor. He never brought my case to the state's attorney. He just sat on it. I found out that my initial complaint to the licensing board had been dismissed without investigation because I had misspelled the doctor's last name. The first time the state regulators became aware of my case was in the summer of 2015, after I had dropped it. Everything I had done, all the so-called right steps to pursue, had amounted to nothing. The cogs had never caught. The licensing board prosecutors apologized profusely, continually. They said they could have tried to prosecute the doctor years ago. The hearing happened last June. The doctor testified he was not guilty and brought a naked mannequin to the hearing room for purposes of demonstration. The midwife testified too, admitted to saying in the delivery room, don't say that, though she denied ever saying to me, that didn't happen. The other women, the one who came forward, she testified all morning. And I testified after her. We did not meet. I had to ID the doctor who victimized me. He was sitting behind me. I couldn't miss him. The doctor's defense attorneys tried to suggest this was all a ploy cooked up by my husband, that I had claimed being assaulted in order to try to get a settlement from the hospital. The doctor's defense attorney asked me why, if this was so devastating, why hadn't I told people? Why hadn't I gotten help? I tried to explain that I just wanted this to go away. What I didn't understand well enough to explain at the time was that I didn't want to deal with anyone's reactions. I didn't want to wonder if another person believed me. I didn't want anyone to feel sorry for me. They asked me about timelines. They tried to trip me up. It didn't work. The prosecutors told me I'd done well. I left the hearing exhausted, but I felt so light. I felt like I was going to float away. I felt like there was nothing I couldn't do. I felt like Wonder Woman, like when she lifts a car with a single hand. I thought about the other woman. I wondered how she felt. I wondered if she felt the same. Jessica Hopper. The doctor in her story, his medical license was suspended with an indefinite suspension for a minimum of three years. And he was fined $15,000 for what he did to the other woman. He was not disciplined for anything relating to Jessica because there wasn't enough proof for her claims. We approached him for comment, and his lawyer sent us a one-sentence statement denying any wrongdoing and pointing out that the doctor is in the process of appealing his suspension. We also reached out to the detective who Jessica says met with her at the mall and the head of investigations above him. Neither responded. Our program was produced today by Robin Semien. The people who put our show together today includes Elna Baker, Zoe Chace, Aviva DeKornfeld, Neil Drumming, Hilary Elkins, Jarrett Floyd, Damien Graef, Seth Lind, Stowe Nelson, Catherine Raimondo, Ben Phelan, Nadia Reiman, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, Nancy Updike, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu. Our managing editor is David Kestenbaum. Special thanks today to Jessica Andrews, John Bies at American Oversight, Kate Brannan, Barrie Hardymon, Steve Licktieg, Kelefa Sanneh, Ben Terris, Andy Wright, and Mark Rozell. Our website, thisamericanlife.org, where you can listen to our archive of over 600 episodes for absolutely free. Or download our shows, using This American Life app. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, he and his friends have always had suspicions about how I got to host this show. We all suspect he was put there for one reason and one reason only, to interfere with the Mueller investigation. I will neither confirm nor deny. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
I can describe the furniture store in one word-- shiny. Shiny purple leather sofas, iridescent mirrored pictures of the sphinx, and King Tut, and panthers, chandeliers and ornamental elephants made of glass and mirror. Look at that, the china, this thing. These sofas I like over here, I'll show you. Claudia Perez and I stopped into the store while we were working on a radio story in between interviews. We were on 26th Street in her neighborhood, Little Village, one of Chicago's big Mexican neighborhoods. This white sofa. And there's a little table shaped like a piano, and there's glass. And the piano table is all mirror. Is all mirror. And the glass table and glass chairs. With glass legs on the glass table. It's beautiful. Claudia is 19, has done a few stories for our radio show. She's one of those teenagers who's on a perpetual plan for self-improvement, switching from job to job, trying to earn enough to keep paying her way through school, struggling. She and I walked past the shiny living rooms, through the shiny dining rooms, and into a dark and shiny bedroom, where she stopped dead and said, "Oh my god." This is-- oh my god. Look at this. This is what I want. This is what I'm going to school for. We were staring at a bed with mirrored columns that rose from the headboard and lights built in around the baseboard. There was a mirrored chandelier, a matching white-and-mirror bureau and side table with gold-colored handles, all of which matched each other and matched the bed. So which parts of this do you like? Everything. I like the rug, the little Chinese rug, the chests. Oh, it's just so nice. I shouldn't have come in here. This is what I'm going to have. I'm gonna have myself a nice house. She tells me her family's always rented. Her dream is to own a house, filled with furniture like this. We walked from room to room, looking at gaudy lamps, and cabinets, and chairs. And finally, Claudia turned to me and asked, "So, which do you like best?" and looked into my eyes. Now I grew up in the Jewish suburbs outside of Baltimore. I am no stranger to furniture like this. It filled the bright, lime-green, carpeted living rooms of a good number of the people who I grew up with and loved. I have personally had as many big moments in my life while sitting around glass-top tables with shiny, mirrored legs as anyone you have ever met. I've had important conversations leaning on iridescent silver pillows, my feet on super long, white shag carpet. I feel at home in this setting. But-- and I say this meaning no disrespect-- I have not chosen this for my adult life. It is not my dream. So when Claudia asked, "Which do you like best?" I paused, and I said, "I like the plainer stuff." And she looked at me, did not say anything. I think that this answer just did not make sense to her. My taste does not make much sense to her. She and I were in that situation, that situation that two people find themselves in now and then, that situation of thinking, "Yeah, your dream, my nightmare." Well, from WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, bring you a wide variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's program, Your Dream, My Nightmare. Act One, Noise. A serious-minded music critic gets sent on her nightmare vacation to Rock-n-Roll Fantasy Camp. Act Two, Color, in which an interracial couple traveling through Tennessee cannot agree on one tourist destination, an antebellum mansion plantation. Act Three, Motion, in which radio producer Jay Allison decides that all the news stories he ever covers are essentially one story, one story whose theme is-- do we even have to tell you? Act Four, Blood. Some of the biggest your-dream-my-nightmare scenarios occur when parents try to impose their dream upon their children. Writer David Sedaris provides us with a case example on the golf course. Stay with us. Act One, Noise. Well, here is someone's fantasy. A cocktail party about 7:00 in the evening in an old hotel in Miami Beach, where, by the swimming pool, there's Bruce Springsteen, draft beer in hand, making polite small talk. Actually, it's not Bruce. It's his old side men, Clarence Clemons and Nils Lofgren. Oh, and there's Billy Joel. Well, not really Billy Joel. It's Billy Joel's drummer, Liberty DeVitto. This is Rock-n-Roll Fantasy Camp. It really exists. And this April, 33 campers got their dream, to come to the Eden Roc Hotel in Florida for five days, drink nervously through cocktail parties like this one, play nervously in celebrity jam sessions. All in all, for most of them, a dream come true. Well, Sarah Vowell has different dreams. Sarah is one of our contributing editors and a music writer for Spin, The Village Voice, and Salon. She dropped in on Rock-n-Roll Fantasy Camp. My rock and roll fantasy is this, that occasionally, every now and then, a song I like comes on the radio. It's a simple dream, I know. And every so often, once or twice a year, it actually comes true. I get all I need from pop music song by song. And that's how I like it best, two or three minutes of speed or sorrow coming out of speakers with so much something that the world stops cold. I rarely daydreamed of befriending my rock idols. Maybe it's because I tend to admire cranks. Like I really want to toast in the New Year with Jerry Lee Lewis, or go shoe shopping with Courtney Love, or build sand castles with a peach like Lou Reed. My musical heroes are mostly snotty weirdos who didn't become famous because of their social graces. Just because I have them in my heart doesn't mean I want them in my life. So the very idea of spending five whole days couped up in Miami, taking guitar workshops from moldy rock big shots and paying upwards of $3,000 to do it at something called Rock-n-Roll Fantasy Camp isn't my fantasy. Try my worst nightmare. My rock and roll fantasy is to get those lessons from Mark Farner, and Leslie West, and Felix Cavaliere. Hopefully, you have no idea who these people are. And you never did if the years 1970 to '75 are underrepresented in your record collection in both the chronological and spiritual senses. Mark Farner is the scary, born-again, lead guitarist of Grand Funk Railroad. You know, Grand Funk Railroad? Guitarist Leslie West played Woodstock with his band, Mountain. And Felix Cavaliere's from The Young Rascals. I actually like this song. Bet you didn't think you'd be hearing these songs when you turned on public radio today, did ya? Anybody who's here is from my '70 dreams. My fantasy for this camp would be to have Nils Lofgren teach me a few tricks in open G. I guess I would compare my voice to that of Lou Gramm of Foreigner. And there he is, right there. And who are these rock and roll fans, whose dreams, whose entire conception of rock and roll is so different from my own? Joe, who markets sound equipment in Detroit; Connie and Maxine, sisters from Minneapolis who left their husbands and kids back home; and Rob, the math teacher from Long Island who heard about the camp on Howard Stern's radio show. I love famous-- I like famous people. I love to see and meet famous people. And this is hanging out with famous people. Just take a beat like that when you're in G. You can keep the low string on the third fret. Just pump it with your thumb. That's Nils Lofgren's guitar workshop, probably the most low-key, sensible seminar of the camp. He's a kind, respectful man. And even though he knows what he's doing, he doesn't get all curlicued about it. He pumps out a chug-a-lug rhythm, advising his students to try to "stay in the back pocket of the beat" and to "think like a drummer, real rhythmic." Watching them lurch along doesn't look like any fantasy I've ever had. It would almost be boring except that watching nervous people in any given situation is always at least slightly engaging. And also, as the only girl in the room, I keep cracking up, watching an arrangement of men sitting in a circle, stroking their instruments. A phrase comes to mind, one I'm not sure I can say on the radio, but includes the word "jerk." Usually, what I do is when my hand starts cramping, I'm getting really frustrated and angry, stop and play something that's fun. And if you learn major and minor scales-- When Lofgren mentions scales, it seems like everyone can play the do-re-mi one. But no one knows the blues scale he plays, the most basic downward spiral imaginable. It seems like something you should be paying Kenny down at the Guitar Shack $10 to teach you instead of bothering the man who pinch-hits for Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young. Lofgren informs the class that he's going to take a solo, and they should try and "keep the rhythm strong for me." Good luck. What's apparent isn't so much the gaping difference between skill or the lack of it, but rather the chasm between confidence and self-doubt. Lofgren plays tough, spare riffs and looks so easy-does-it cool. Meanwhile, all the campers around him are tapping their feet like they're marching off to the front lines, and all their eyes are fixed on their fingers, trying not to screw up. This seems like a good moment to pause and talk about what is and isn't rock and roll. As a believer in the anyone-can-do-it, all-or-nothing-at-all ethic of punk rock, I think real music's not about technique, or virtuosity, or knowing your scales. It's about believing in what you have to say and wanting to say it so badly that you'll scream your guts out if that's what it takes to get people to listen. Later on, when I ask Lofgren if he met anyone in the camp he thought had real talent or anything to say, his answer was gracious, diplomatic. Well, I heard a love for music in everybody. Over the course of the camp, I'll sit through nearly a dozen such seminars. And it becomes painfully obvious that rock and roll high school is a lot like real high school. Subject matter doesn't matter as much as the personality of the teacher. Everyone wants to be Lofgren's pet. But Rick Derringer leads his guitar session like the nitpick who takes points off for bad penmanship. Let's see if everybody's on the list. John Ralder? Is he here? That's you. John, how do you do? Marian Green? She's not here. Is not here today. Marian Green. Peter-- Yes, Derringer is the only instructor who actually took attendance. Attendance. After showing off for a while, he proceeds to spend nearly 10 whole minutes spreading crackpot ideas, such as-- And I like my guitar to be clean. I find that if you get the [UNINTELLIGIBLE] grungy, and stuff in between the frets, and dirt up here, all of a sudden your arm starts sticking up here. And it just doesn't feel the same. I see people sometimes playing, and their guitars are all dirty, and the strings are all out of whack, and things are real high. I think the most important thing is making your guitar playable. So clean the thing. Clean it real good. I do things like Pledge. Pledge. Pledge. You know why? I can't imagine anyone I admire talking this way. He is literally holding up a can of furniture polish like he's doing a TV commercial. Would Keith Richards display a spray bottle of 409? Would Neil Young, asked to discuss his craft, even use the word "cleanliness?" With Pledge. And the thing is while I was gagging at Derringer's dopiness, most of the campers found him hilarious. In fact, these people sat through their workshops, and jam sessions, and lunch buffets with these serene smiles. And watching them, I got jealous. To me, music has always been an ideological battleground, where you hate-hate your enemies and save-save your friends. To them, music seems like this uncomplicated part of their lives that simply makes them happy. So I'm just here for fun, and to have some fun, and to get some exposure to some of the instruments. And I really just like the music. For me, the problem with hanging around the campers was this. They were so gosh darn nice, sweet even. My job as a grumpy commentator would've been a lot easier to stomach if they'd been the self-satisfied yuppies I'd come to make fun of. But they kind of ruined my fun by being so likable. I couldn't even mutter Peter Frampton insults under my breath without feeling guilty. And you know you're in some kind of parallel universe when the most punk rock person there is the reporter from Forbes. The campers came all this way. They paid all this money. It's their dream to meet these rock stars. So when they finally get to hang out with them, what do they talk about? What's at the heart of their dream? I cornered Joe, a guitarist from Detroit, one night after dinner. So Joe, when I was pulling back up to the hotel, I saw you getting out of a limo. It's the only way to travel. And whose limo were you traveling in? That was with Rick Derringer and also Lou Gramm. You went out to dinner? Yeah, we went out to dinner at Gloria Estefan's restaurant. And so what was that like, having dinner with those guys? They were so congenial. We had a sing-a-along in the car. We were doing some Foreigner songs. And we were doing "Hang On Sloopy." And it was all a capella. And our little kids all joined in too to help out. So it was a group thing, the wives, the kids, the guys. "Hang On Sloopy." I'll admit, I love that song, which came in handy for my sanity. Since Derringer played on it a million years ago with his old band, The McCoys, it was constant jam session fodder at the camp. And one night, all the campers gathered on stage to perform it with Derringer singing lead, sparking one of the rare moments when the music they made together felt real and sounded exciting to them and to me. That kind of excitement didn't last. For every second of participatory, palatable noise, there were three hours of rock star war stories. And while I gave myself headaches from rolling my eyes, the campers ate these anecdotes up, egging on people like keyboardist Bobby Mayo to fill their heads with behind-the-scenes insights into Frampton Comes Alive, an album they had apparently memorized note for yucky note. We had gotten together as a group in January of that year, '75. And we started touring. We were opening for everybody. We opened for ZZ Top, J. Geils, Rod Stewart, Black Sabbath. You name it, we opened for these guys. So that was all done as an opening act? Pretty much. About 75% of it was done as an opening act. And if you think listening to these tall tales once was boring, try twice. On the camp's last day, goofball Mike Love of The Beach Boys showed up. Every time he opened his mouth was a defamation of The Beach Boys' greatness. He insulted his audience by telling the same stories at his afternoon lecture as he did on stage the very same night. Here's the afternoon. I was in India. McCartney's in one bungalow, I'm in the other. We used to have conversations up on the roof at night, under the stars. It was pretty cool. He said, "Mike, you oughta take more care with your album covers." He was the mastermind of Sgt. Pepper's. Here's the evening. He would say, "Mike, you should take more care of your album covers." This is the guy who conceived Sgt. Pepper's. Afternoon. "So sensible you should say that." I said, "Yeah, well, with all due respect, we've always paid more attention to what goes in the album than on the cover," which is a touche remark, I have to admit. Evening. So I said, "Paul, we always took more care of what went in them." It was a [? touche event. ?] You got to forgive me. And the sad thing is some people laughed both times. Maybe they were just being nice. They were nice people. Then it hit me. Sitting there watching them drink in all those, no doubt, enhanced rock star tall tales with such obvious glee was like watching new myths being born. Because anyone with relatives can tell you, rehashed, souped-up stories are not the sole property of washed-up rock stars. I bet Joe from Detroit's going to be telling his Lou Gramm limo story for at least as long as Mike Love's been dissing Paul McCartney. And I actually found this kind of reassuring. Once the camp ended, I could go back to my beloved punky malcontents. My nightmare was over the minute I boarded the plane home. But I knew that for the spouses and children and co-workers of the campers, the nightmare had just begun. Sarah Vowell is the author of the book Radio On and a music columnist for the online magazine Salon. She first wrote about Rock-n-Roll Fantasy Camp for Request Magazine. And Sarah? Yes, Ira. You said at the beginning of your story that your own rock and roll fantasy is that occasionally, every now and then, a song you like would actually come on the radio. So I did. Ira, can you make my dream come true? Indeed, I can, Sarah Vowell. What song would you like to hear on the radio? Well, there's this song that I played in my hotel room every night during the camp to remind me of my ideal, the thing I was looking for. It's the sixth song. This is by a little band called Sleater-Kinney. The song's called "Words and Guitar." Why this song? Because it's about the two most elemental things of rock and roll, words and guitar. And the way the band sings and plays the song, it's like those are the only two things you'll ever need. Act Two, Colors. Well, that feeling of your dream, my nightmare can happen with the people you're closest to, not just strangers. For instance, Marvin Tate was traveling with his wife, Lucy, and their two-year-old toddler, Ivy, to visit his sister in Tennessee. And they could not agree on what sightseeing they wanted to do. He wanted to go to the Ernie Tubb country music store. That is her nightmare. She wanted to go to the Belle Meade plantation. That was his nightmare. He's black. She's white. And he could just not understand what possible interest she could have in this. But she insisted. I could tell by the determined look on Lucy's face that there wasn't going to be any turning back, not now or ever. Lucy thumbed her way through a travel guide, looking for directions to the Belle Meade plantation. I went inside the gas station to ask the guy sitting behind the register, a beef-jerky-chewing, Snapple-drinking Leon Russell type in overalls, a baseball cap, and a coffee-stained "I hate New Yorkers" T-shirt on. Well, I thought, maybe he'd be too dumb to have ever heard of the Belle Meade. And then I'd be off the hook, and we wouldn't have to go. "Excuse me, sir. Sir, excuse me. Could you please tell me how to get to the Belle Meade plantation?" How ridiculous I must have sounded. Plaaaaaan-tation. A contemporary brother, man, asking for directions on how to get to some plantation turned museum. Back in the car, Lucy drove like a maniac as if there was a pot of gold at the end of our destination. And then there we were, at the old Belle Meade plantation. I looked at my family. It was becoming quite obvious that this trip had taken its toll on me and the way I talked. I said to them, "I'm an ooold Negro from the ooold South. And I welcome you here to the ooold Belle Meade. You might recognize me from the ooold Negro League. My name is Sonny Jackson. And this here-- this here is my teary-eyed, mulatto baby, Ivy. And seated next to her is the oooold massa's daughter, Lucy." I took a deep breath, and swallowed, and climbed out the car. Dammit, I thought, here I go again. The only brother at an all-white affair. At first, no one seemed to notice me. Not until Lucy kissed me on the cheek did all the double- and triple-takes begin. One woman, losing sight of what she was doing, nearly knocked over the torso of a commemoration statue. A balding man, who looked like an employee, walked into an old barnyard, quickly stepped back out, took off his glasses, and wiped them clean with his shirttail. It was that brief moment that I knew. I knew that I had to change history. No more camouflaging and going with the program, so that everything could be hokey-dokey OK. I had made up my mind that whoever that tour guide was going to be that I was going to show them that I wasn't just another token black guy who can take an extra shot, decaf, vanilla latte with no foam. Or the brother who had integrated into the mainstream by marrying someone white. This time, I was determined to drop the bomb, P-Funk style, by asking questions that the other tourists would be too afraid to ask. Going back in time is going to be cool, the way Mr. Peabody and his boy, Sherman, used to do. The only difference would be that I was not going to be stepping in the time machine. And the past I had to conquer was staring me right in the face. Lucy and I got in line for the tour. I clutched my ticket and whispered in Lucy's ear, "Now you lissen here, Miss Lucy. I's ain't about to go in no massa's house without his permission." Lucy kissed Ivy on the head and said, "Daddy's pretending to be a slave." From out of the front door came our tour guide, Gussie, waifish-like with a Scarlett O'Hara number on. "Welcome to the Belle Meade," Gussie said, ringing that tiny bell to gather everybody's attention. "As you can notice from the three magnificent rocking chairs that sit behind me on the porch, the Belle Meade's owners had a lavish appetite for space and anything big. These rocking chairs were all carved by local artisans of the day. They were designed to look like thrones." Gussie acted like she and the rest of her Civil-War-cladded patriots had the coolest summer job in the world, telling useless historical anecdotes to white tourists, nostalgic for the days of Southern chivalry. She told us stuff about the curtains, china patterns, silverware patterns, carpet patterns. And for some reason-- now, maybe there's something wrong with me-- but for some reason, everyone was eating these trivial tidbits up. I couldn't believe it. One excited tourist, who looked like he had just stepped off the sandy beaches of Miami, shot his hand up in the air. "How did they keep the rodents out the house?" "Why, with a straw broom and lots of cats," responded Gussie. "Why are the walls painted in such pale blues and greens?" While everyone continued with these small, trivial facts, it seemed there was one big, important fact of life here that everyone was not talking about. I'll spell it for you. S-L-A-V-E-R-Y. Now does that sound like a four-letter word to you? Thank you. I knew now that I was in the past. I had gone beyond the past. I was in the ooold South. And there was no turning back. My patience with this Twilight Zone episode was ending. I thought that if I could just figure out the perfect question to ask, well, I could turn this whole thing around, and history would no longer be from Gussie's point of view. "OK," I'd say, "by the way, Gussie, did General Harding ever rape one of his slaves?" Nah, that would sound more like an accusation more so than an intelligent question. OK, I'd say, "So Gussie, are you the descendants of slave owners? And if so, how did you benefit from it?" No, that sounded too much like a Farrakhan rip-off. I had to go someplace. I had to go someplace where I could concentrate, put it all on paper, so that it could sound perfect, like it was just another matter-of-fact question out of curiosity. I couldn't make them think I was some kind of overly sensitive black guy who couldn't take the past for what it was. An older man with an intellectual face, the beard and glasses, raised his hand. And I thought, "Well, here's a guy who looks like a professor. He probably sees that there's a black guy here. Maybe we should ask the most important question." He cleared his throat, stroked his beard, and asked his question. "How the dickens did General Harding manage to keep the place so magnificently brilliant with all those horses?" I didn't know what to say. So I left the group and went to the next room to prepare my question, the question that was going to end this tour. I needed to concentrate. I carried Ivy into the next room, closed my eyes, and I thought. "Well, Gussie, you never mentioned anything about slaves. Did Nat Turner ever visit your plantation?" "Gussie, where did the slaves eat? Where did they sleep?" "Gussie, did you ever see the movie Mandingo? The part where Ken Norton sleeps with the master's wife?" "You ever tried to do a field holler?" Or "Gussie, who invented the blues?" Suddenly, they all entered the room. "How's the baby?" Gussie asked. Immediately following her was Lucy, snapping pictures of the beautiful chandelier that hung like a giant earring from the ceiling. "Enjoying yourself?" she asked. "Isn't this beautiful?" Suddenly, I realized that Lucy, my dear wife, was one of them. God save us. I took a deep breath and waited for my moment, my question, my reasons for being. Not even sure what I was going to say, I raised my hand. Gussie looked my way. I could hear the voices of my ancestors telling me to keep going. "Go, Marvin. Go, Marvin. Go, original black man." All the injustices of the black race were now on my shoulders. My responsibility was clear. Gussie paused before pointing to me. We locked eyes. And then Ivy let out the most ferocious scream she had ever made in her short life. "Why-- What--" I couldn't get it out. Ivy continued to sob and cry out piercing yells. It must have sounded like we were trying to kidnap her. "Let's go," I said. And like a team of emergency paramedics, we were out that door. The sun shined like lemon skins. And Ivy returned back to her smiley-faced innocence. I still don't know what've been the right thing for me to do at the Belle Meade. I couldn't tell if I was supposed to be a militant, arty Afrocentric or a well-adjusted, integrated black guy. And one day, when Ivy gets into one of these situations, I'm not quite sure what advice I'd give her. A few hours later, after we visit the Belle Meade, I made Lucy go with me this time to the Ernest Tubb Record Store. I've always liked country music. In fact, you could say country music was a part of my life, if you could believe that. So in the Ernest Tubb store, for some reason, I wanted to show the good old boys that I knew a little something about country music, too. So I asked him. I asked him about an obscure and eccentric fiddle player named Stringbean. Neither one of the clerks seemed impressed. And while I talked to one of them, the other one handed Ivy a Confederate flag to play with. Maybe he was trying to be friendly. Maybe he was trying to be nice. Sometimes I think I'm a bit too sensitive about all this race stuff. But maybe, maybe he was trying to send me a message. Maybe he knew exactly how I feel about the old Stars and Bars. I don't know about these situations. Lucy and I headed out the door, arm in arm, our baby happily waving the Confederate flag. Marvin Tate is a performer and a poet living here in Chicago. Coming up, David Sedaris on the golf course, the news story to end all news stories, and more, in a minute when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week, of course, we choose a theme, invite a wide variety of writers, performers, and documentary producers to take a whack at that theme with radio monologues, original reporting, found tape, anything they can think of. Today's program, Your Dream, My Nightmare, stories of people simply not agreeing on what is good at some fundamental human level. We've arrived at Act Three, Motion. Well, while putting this show together this week, I picked up one of the local papers here in Chicago, and I realized that nearly every story on the front page was a narrative basically along the themes of your dream, my nightmare. I have the paper here. The lead story is about the transit authority here in Chicago phasing out subway train conductors. Taxpayers' dream, saving $4 million a year. Train conductors' nightmare. Just below that story, a piece about Rupert Murdoch achieving one of his many dreams, I assume, making his own sports cable network. ESPN's nightmare. To the left of that, with a very odd, I have to say, picture of Hillary Clinton kind of holding her fingers together in one of those little church shapes, her fingertips touching, looking both pious and extremely nervous, there's a story about one of Kenneth Starr's dreams and her nightmares. She has to turn over notes of her conversations with lawyers to the Whitewater independent counsel, and so forth, and so on. You get the idea. Well, Jay Allison is a seasoned newsman, does stories for ABC's Nightline and for all sorts of big public radio programs. And a while back, he realized that all the stories he was doing basically boiled down to one plot line, told over and over in various ways with different characters. Someone, somewhere, had the dream of moving to a new neighborhood. And that dream was somebody else's nightmare. Well, after he figured this out, he took the taped interviews he'd gathered on a number of stories, and he concocted this composite story to prove his point. It started up last night. I had taken the kids to the carnival, and we all got back around 9:00. And I wanted to water the lawn before I went to bed, but Artie Davis had borrowed the sprinkler. So I went across the street to get it back from him, and I saw the light was on in his garage. Inside were Artie and his wife, June, Sam Lawson, and Reverend James. They were talking about the new people in the neighborhood, and they were pretty worked up. The people in this town just don't want 'em here. They want 'em out. And from the word that's around, they'll do about anything to get 'em out. Everyone was upset. They had been since these people moved in two weeks ago. Sam Lawson said there was no reason we had to put up with this. He said, "These people are freaks." He called them "garbage." They're garbage. "They're just garbage," he said. They're just garbage. And there's no reason that garbage like that has got to intimidate decent people because they think they're defenseless. And even Reverend James didn't have a kind word to say about these new people. Ignorant, repulsive, and evil. And we just don't want 'em here. And that's what it's all about. Get 'em out of here. They don't belong here, and we don't want 'em here. Well, this afternoon, things hadn't calmed down too much. The whole neighborhood was on edge about these new people. Artie Davis said they didn't scare him, but they scared his wife. They don't frighten me, but they do her. Artie said his wife, June, had a dream about these freaks last night. And he wasn't gonna stand for it. In June's dream, one of these freaks tried to make June look into his eyes. --to get me to look in his eyes. And I wouldn't do it because his eyes were real-- But June wouldn't do it because the whites in his eyes were real big. --the whites in his eyes were real big, and they were shiny. And they were shiny, like the devil's or something. Early this evening, the four of us gathered at my place to decide what to do. June stayed home because, Artie said, she was frightened. All day long, Artie and Sam had patrolled outside the house the freaks moved into. And the freaks never came out. They just stayed inside, which was strange in itself. Reverend James arrived around 8 o'clock. He was still upset about the situation. It's disgusting. But he had an idea. I would get me 100 good men, give them each a baseball bat, and dare one of these freaks to stick his head over the edge of the sidewalk. Well, that didn't sound too bad. But the rest of us couldn't figure out where we could come up with 100 men. Men? Listen, I know at least 500 men who would be only too happy to serve. Happen to be all Christians in my church that I had in mind. Still, we wondered if 500 men were really necessary. Then make it 25. Make it 10 men. Make it five men. So we talked it over and decided that just the four of us could take care of things by ourselves. On our way, we stopped by and told June what we were going to do. I feel like I'm sitting on pins and needles just waiting. Then we checked to see that we had everything we needed. All we need is some good old-fashioned guts and morals. And so at 10 o'clock, we marched on over to the freaks' house. We were ready for anything. From our position in their front yard, we could see them moving around inside their house. We tried everything we could think of. I think they knew we weren't kidding around this time. But they wouldn't come outside. Sam thought maybe we should try setting fire to the place or something. But Reverend James pointed out that that would be destruction of property. So we waited. But by 12 o'clock, it started to get cold, and we were hungry. So we came on home. But tomorrow night, we're going back. June says she'll pack some food for us to take along. Sam's bringing his portable TV set and some blankets. Reverend James is bringing the baseball bats again. And I'm bringing the beer. Jay Allison's story is part of his series Life Stories produced with Tina Egloff. Act Four, Blood. Well, some of the biggest your-dream-my-nightmare situations happen between parents and children. One of the central tensions, I believe, between parents and their adult kids is the adult children not living up to their parents' dreams for what they should have turned into and who they should have been. In this light, thinking about our show this week, I realized this about my own family, that, when I was a kid, my mom had this dream for my older sister. She wanted my older sister to play the piano. My older sister was actually really wonderful at playing the piano. But my mom really thought she could be a professional. And my mom's dream for me was-- if she had to articulate it, I think she would have said-- and she did say sometimes-- that she wanted me to be a doctor. Neither thing really worked out. My sister went to business school. Here I am. And as it turned out, as my mom got older, she became a doctor. She's a psychologist now. And just recently, in the last two years, she started playing the piano, too. Well, not everybody is lucky to have parents who basically transfer their own dream back onto themselves and off the kids. One of those people is David Sedaris. He has this story of parents and children. My sister, Lisa, became a woman on the 14th hole of the Pinehurst golf course. That's what she was told by the stranger who led her to the women's lounge. "Relax, sugar, you're a woman now." We had gone unwittingly, shanghaied by our father who had offered to take Lisa and I for a ride in the second-hand Porsche he'd recently bought. His sherbet-colored pants should have tipped us off. But seeing as there were no golf clubs in the backseat, we thought we were safe. There was nothing worse than spending an afternoon on the golf course, especially for Lisa, who was troubled that day by unexplained cramps. "Just a short, little jaunt," my father said. He folded back the car's canvas roof and crouched into the driver's seat. "Hell, maybe we'll just tool up to the fairgrounds and back. Maybe we'll go get ourselves some ice cream. Who knows?" The map, the nervous glances at his watch. It soon became apparent that this was no joy ride. Our father knew exactly where we were headed and had it planned so that we'd arrive just in time for the tee off. "Well, what do you know?" he said, pulling off the road and into the crowded golf course parking lot. "I wonder if there's not some kind of a tournament taking place. What do you say we take a quick peek? Gosh, this is a beautiful place. Wait'll you get a look at these fairways." Lisa and I groaned, cursing our stupidity. Once again, we'd been tricked. We knew what was in store for us and understood that the next few hours would pass like days or maybe even weeks. Our watches would yawn, the minute hand pausing to nap before sluggishly completing its rounds. First, our father would push us to the front of a large, gaily-dressed crowd. Robbed of their choice spots, these spectators would huff and grumble, whispering insults we would pretend not to hear. "They're kids," my father would say. "What do you want them to do, stand on my shoulders? Come on now, pal, have a heart." The big boys were playing that day, men whose names we recognized from the magazines my father kept stacked beside the toilet and heaped in the backseat of his car. We'd seen these players on television and heard their strengths and weaknesses debated by the maniacs who frequented the pro shop of our country club. Seeing the pros in person was no more interesting than eating an ice-cold hamburger. But it meant the world to our father, who hoped their presence might kindle a passion, inciting us to take up our clubs and strive for excellence. This was, for him, an act of love, a misguided attempt to enrich our lives and bring us closer together as a family. "You kids are so damn lucky," he said, placing his hands on our shoulders. "These are the best players in the PGA. And here you are with front-row seats." "What seats?" Lisa asked. "Where?" We stood on the grassy embankment, watching as the first player teed off. "Lisa," my father whispered. "Go get it. Go get Snead's tee." When Lisa refused, it was up to me to wander onto the green, searching for the spent wooden peg that might have traveled anywhere from 6 to 20 feet from its original position. Our father collected these tees as good-luck charms and kept them stored in the goldfish bowl which sat upon his dresser. It was forbidden to wander onto the course during a tournament, so our father sent us to do his dirty work, hoping the officials might see us as enthusiastic upstarts, who decorated our rooms with posters of the masters working their way out of sand traps or hoisting a trophy after a stunning victory at Pebble Beach. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. No matter how hard he tried to motivate us, the members of my family refused to take even the slightest interest in what was surely the dullest game ever invented. We despised golf and everything that went with it, from the ridiculous tam-o'-shanters right down to the cruel spiked shoes. "Oh, Lou," my mother would whine, dressed for a cocktail party in her muted, earth-tone caftan. "You're not going to wear that, are you?" "What's wrong with this?" he'd ask. "These pants are brand new." "New to you," she'd say. "Pimps and circus clowns have been dressing that way for years." We never understood how a man who took such pride in his sober, tailored suits could spend his weekends in Day-Glo pants patterned with singing tree frogs or wee kilted Scotsmen. You needed sunglasses in order to open his closet door, what with all the candy-colored sweaters, aggressive madras sports coats, and painfully bright polo shirts all screaming for attention. "I don't feel so well," Lisa whispered to my father, as we marched from the sand trap to the putting green of the eighth hole. "I really think we need to leave." My father ignored her. "If Trevino bogeys this hole, he's screwed. That last bunker shot pinned his ass right to the wall. Did you see his backswing?" "I'm concerned right now about my back," Lisa said. "It's aching, and I want to go home and lie down." "We'll be just another minute," my father said. He fingered the collection of tees in his pocket. "The problem with you kids is that you're not paying enough attention to the game. First thing tomorrow morning, I'm signing you up for some more lessons. Then you'll see what I'm talking about. Jesus, this game is just so exciting, you won't be able to stand it." We had serious doubts that it was exciting, but he was right when he said we wouldn't be able to stand it. The driving range, the putt-putt courses-- he just didn't get it. We didn't want advice on our swing. We only wanted to be left alone to practice witchcraft, or deface fashion dolls, or sit in the privacy of our rooms, fantasizing about anything other than golf. 98 degrees on the second hole, and we'd crumpled to the green, listening as children our own age shouted and splashed in the country club pool. The tournament dragged on. And by the time we reached the 14th hole, Lisa had begun to bleed, the rust-colored spot visible on her white culottes. She was close to tears, sunburned and frightened when she whispered something into my father's ear. "We'll just go get one of the gals," he said. "They'll take care of you." He turned to a handsome, white-haired woman, wearing a lime green visor in a skirt patterned with grinning pandas. "Hey, sweetheart, I'm wondering if you could help me out with a personal problem." Like my father, this woman had followed these players from hole to hole, taking note of their every move. She had come out that day to bask in the glow of the masters. And now a strange man was asking her to accompany his daughter to the clubhouse and outfit her with a sanitary napkin. The woman nodded her head and, taking my sister's hand, reluctantly led her towards a distant cluster of buildings. I didn't understand the problem, but very much wanted to join them, thinking perhaps we might talk this person into giving us a ride home, away from this grinding tedium and the fierce, relentless sun. With Lisa gone, it would become my sole responsibility to fetch the splintered golf tees and pester the contestants for their autographs. "Lou," I would say, holding out my father's scorecard. "My name is Lou." The game finally over, we returned to the parking lot to find Lisa stretched out on the backseat of the Porsche, her face and lap covered with golf towels. "Don't say it," she threatened. "Whatever it is, I don't want to hear it." "All I was gonna do was ask you to take your lousy feet off the car," my father said. "Yeah? Well, why don't you just go [BLEEP] yourself?" The moment she said it, Lisa bolted upright as if there still might be time to catch the word between her teeth before it reached our father's ears. None of us had ever spoken to him that way. And now he would have no choice but to kill her. Some unprecedented threshold had been passed. And even the crickets stopped their singing, stunned into silence by the word which hung in the air like a cloud of spent gunpowder. My father sighed and shook his head in disappointment. This was the same way he reacted to my mother when anger and frustration caused her to forget herself. Lisa was not a daughter now, but just another woman unable to control her wildly shifting emotions. "Don't mind her," he said, wiping a thin coat of pollen off the windshield. "She's just having lady problems." Throughout the years, our father has continued his campaign to interest us in the sport of golf. When Gretchen, Amy, and Tiffany rejected his advances, he placed his hopes in our brother Paul, who found the sprawling greens an excellent place to enjoy a hit of acid and overturn the golf carts he stole from the parking lot beside the pro shop. He bought a wide-screen TV, an enormous model the size of an industrial-sized washing machine, and uses it only to watch and record his beloved tournaments. The top of the set is stacked high with videocassettes marked "'94 PGA" and "'89 US Open-- Unbelievable." Before our mother died, she put together a videotape she thought Lisa might enjoy. The two of them had spent a great deal of time in the kitchen, drinking wine and watching old movies on the black-and-white portable television that sat beside the sink. These were just a few favorites my mother had recorded. "No big deal," she'd said, "just a little something to watch one day when you're bored." A few weeks after the funeral, Lisa searched my parents' house for the tape, finding it on the downstairs bar beside my father's chair. She carried the cassette home, but found she needed a bit more time before watching it. For Lisa, these movies would recall private times, just her and her mother perched on stools and reeling off the names of each actor as they appeared on the screen. These memories would be a gift that Lisa preferred to savor before opening. She waited until the initial grief had passed and then, settling onto her sofa with a tray of snacks, she slipped in the tape, delighted to find that it began with Double Indemnity. The opening credits were rolling when suddenly the video skipped and shifted to color. It was a man squatting on his heels and peering down the shaft of his putter as though it were a rifle. Behind him stood a multitude of spectators shaded by tall pines, their faces tan and wrapped in concentration. "Greg Norman's bogeyed all three par-fives," the announcer whispered. "But if he eagles here on the 15th, he's still got a shot at the Masters." David Sedaris's story "Women's Open" is from his new book of autobiographical stories called Naked. His latest play opens as part of the Lincoln Center Festival July 8. It's called Incident at Cobbler's Knob. Well, our program was produced today by Nancy Updike and myself with Alix Spiegel and Julie Snyder. Contributing editors Sarah Vowell, Jack Hitt, Margy Rochlin, and Paul Tough. Musical help today from John Connors and Sarah Vowell. Original musical scoring during Marvin Tate's story by LeRoy Bach and C.J. Bani. To buy a cassette of this program, call us at WBEZ here in Chicago, 312-832-3380. Our email address, [email protected] WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia, who turned to me after our first time on the air and said-- Relax, sugar, you're a woman now. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
When he wants to explain to people what his life is like these days, Lenny sometimes tells this story. On election night in 2016, he says he went to a bar, got a seat near a TV, ordered a beer, and started making small talk. And I turned to the guy to my right, and I said, "Did you vote"? And from there, he went into a long explanation about-- just some shadow government ideas, and whether voting makes a difference. And probably 10 minutes into it, he was talking about mass shootings, and then eventually Sandy Hook. Sandy Hook, of course, where a gunman killed 20 children, all in first grade, as well as seven adults. This random stranger then started telling Lenny this particular story about Sandy Hook. He thought the whole shooting was fake. It had to be fake, he said, because one of those first graders also showed up as a victim in a second mass shooting, all the way over in Pakistan. In the corners of the internet where people trade Sandy Hook conspiracy stories, this is a key piece of evidence that Sandy Hook was not real. Of course, it was real. And what happened in Pakistan was, in reality, about two years after Sandy Hook. The Taliban gunned down more than 100 kids there. And there was a public vigil, and at the public vigil, probably as a sign of solidarity with other kids who had died in school shootings, mourners had this photo of a boy from Sandy Hook, smiling and wearing a Spider-Man shirt under a corduroy jacket with a furry collar. Sandy Hook deniers saw that in the coverage, and they pounced. "Did he die twice?" "Did he die at all?" So the guy at the bar with Lenny is rattling through all this Pakistan stuff. And then, as Lenny explained to one of my co-workers, Miki Meek, the guy mentions the kid's name-- Noah Pozner. I didn't really need to hear much more than that. I just needed to shut him down, basically. So what did you do? I took out my driver's license, and I said, "Look who you're talking to. You know, show some respect." The boy in the photo was Lenny's son, Noah, who was six when he died. Does he connect it, or-- Oh, sure. He connected it instantly, yeah. And he just became more agitated. Very angered. Went outside and maybe had a cigarette, came back, yelled at me some more. "Oh my god. How much did they pay you? How can you do this?" He was committed to his belief. I was the villain. People like this man at the bar pretty much redefined everything about the way Lenny lives his life. Where he lives, how he lives. He runs into these hoaxers in person, and pretty much every day online. They think the government has paid him millions to play the part of a grieving dad. In their minds, Lenny is the sick one. Noah wasn't ever even his kid. And the person who has popularized these theories more than anybody is Alex Jones, who runs the website Infowars, and who pushed these theories with his radio show, and his YouTube videos. Alex Jones made his name right after 9/11, promoting the idea that 9/11 was an attack orchestrated by our own government. With Sandy Hook, Jones said many times that he did not believe the shooting was real. Sandy Hook is a synthetic, completely fake, with actors, in my view, manufactured. I couldn't believe it at first. I knew they had actors there, clearly. But I thought they killed some real kids. And it just shows how bold they are, that they clearly used actors. He's claimed that the government, or some shadowy global forces, are the ones who hired these actors. He and the other hoaxers call them "crisis actors." It's like this whole alternate world that exists right next to the real one. It makes life miserable for parents like Lenny. But unlike most parents in that situation, Lenny decided to go all action hero on the hoaxers, and on Alex Jones. Action hero, I will do what needs to get done to defend my family, damn the consequences. Lenny is resourceful. He is dogged. He does not give up. In this world that we live in of hoaxers and trolls, he has marked out a path that I think few of us would ever want to take. But it is kind of amazing to hear what it entails. Today on our show, we have Lenny's story. And then we have a story from writer Jon Ronson, where he also tries to untangle where this alternate hoaxer world ends and the real one begins. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Act One, Down the Rabbit Hole. So our story about the transformation of Lenny Pozner was put together by Miki Meek. I should say there's some curse words in today's program that we have unbeeped for this podcast version of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, it is at our website. Here's Miki. The first time Lenny became aware of any conspiracy theories about Sandy Hook was about a month after the shooting. He'd been on a media blackout, trying to get through Noah's funeral and taking care of his two young girls. They were also at the elementary school that morning. And one of them was Noah's twin sister. She hid in a separate classroom. But one day, Lenny finally felt ready to go online, read the news, googled his son's name. Infowars was coming up on search results. The forums. The forums. Yeah. And it's just completely disgusting. In just over 30 days, this whole world had been invented. And one of the central pieces of it involved Lenny's wife. Infowars fans were dissecting this one interview she did on CNN. It was with Anderson Cooper just days after Noah's funeral. What do you want people to know about Noah? He loved running and playing with his siblings, and he loved bubble baths and fireflies. And he loved eating the inside of Oreo cookies. And he played the video Gangnam Style ad nauseum. I understand he used to tell his siblings that he managed a taco factory. Yes, that he was going to split his time as an adult between managing a taco factory and being an astronaut. The comments online were gross and flimsy. Why didn't she sound sadder? Why would she put on lipstick if she was really grieving? And wasn't she too old to be the mom of a six-year-old kid? They were convinced that something was up. How are you holding up? I mean-- Most of the time, I'm kind of numb. I think every mom out there can relate to the fact of how long it takes to create a baby. Those nine months that you watch every ultrasound, and every heartbeat. And it takes nine months to create a human being, and it takes seconds for an AR-15 to take that away from the surface of this earth. This reference to guns was another aha moment for conspiracy theorists. Some of them started digging into Veronique's life, looked up her maiden name, and then said, hey, look at this. There's a Swiss diplomat who has her exact same name. And even fishier, this diplomat once went to an arms control summit at the United Nations. So maybe they're the same person. Maybe she's one of those elite globalists trying to make guns look bad, so President Obama can repeal the Second Amendment. Suddenly, every real sentiment Veronique shared about Noah was getting reinterpreted as lines from a sinister script. They were here, and they mattered. They all have families. And they mattered. And the kicker that cinched it for these conspiracy theorists? Anderson Cooper's nose. There's this moment when the tip of his nose disappears because of a digital glitch in the video-- what CNN says was normal interference that happens with a live satellite feed. It's just a couple seconds, but hoaxers wouldn't let it go. They said that it's a green screen, or a blue screen, or whatever. So that was a fake interview, and Veronique was a participant of a fake, staged CNN interview. That conspiracy theory was all over YouTube, and it was all over YouTube with Noah's image. I've talked to parents who've lost kids in other mass shootings, and they've all been blindsided by online harassment from conspiracy theorists. The crisis actor claim is so common now these attacks usually start almost immediately after victims are IDed in the media. And parents who go on TV and talk about gun control, like Veronique, they get it the worst. Sandy Hook is when this really took off. Families get stuck fending off all this crazy hate by themselves. There just aren't that many resources for them, because law enforcement still hasn't figured out how to deal with most cyber harassment, and the tech companies aren't much help. So most families just try to ignore the conspiracy theorists, and hope they'll eventually go away. And that's what Lenny did for a while. His life was a wreck. But after about a year and a half, they were still at it, and he couldn't let it go anymore. I realized that grieving requires a calmness, and a silence. And all of this material was a distraction for me, and it was noise. And I needed to handle that noise, so that I could have the silence and calm that I needed. There's this photo I love of Lenny, with his arm wrapped around Noah. He's got a walrus mustache, and he's kneeling on a trampoline with a soft smile. It's spring, and Noah has all this big, brown hair, fat cheeks. He's snuggling his whole body into Lenny's chest. Lenny's got tons of family photos like these, posted them in an online memorial he made for Noah right after he died. The Sandy Hook deniers downloaded them, and repurposed them into cruel memes. Wrote "fake" across Noah's face, took a picture of his headstone and photoshopped under his name, "is not buried here." Photos of his daughters were circulating, too. He couldn't just leave them out there on the web with the trolls. Lenny got consumed with thinking about how to take control of the situation, how to extract Noah and his family from all this. The internet didn't scare him. It was actually his comfort zone. He ran his own IT business. He was not the kind of guy who sat around and complained about how something didn't work. He was the guy who fixed stuff. So you need to find what the problem is, and then find what your solution is, and then start getting closer to that solution, step by step. Otherwise the problem is overwhelming, and then you just want someone else to fix it for you. Yeah. You have to track down where you can make a difference, and get closer to being less broken. There was one other thing that made Lenny especially qualified to deal with the conspiracy theorists. He used enjoy those theories himself. The classic fun ones-- Bigfoot, Loch Ness, Area 51, NASA faking the moon landing. Like, what's the fun of it? It's suspending your disbelief. It's like sitting down and watching a science fiction movie, and then looking at the what if. And it's just fun, especially if there's no price to pay in your life, and there's no cost to that way of thinking, then it's just a game. Sometimes he even listened to Alex Jones in his car. And in fact, just a month after the shootings, when Lenny first saw those things on Alex Jones's website, he tried to reach out. He found a general Infowars email address, and shot him off this message. "Alex, I'm very disappointed to see how many people are directing more anger at families that lost their children in Newtown, accusing us of being actors. Haven't we had our share of pain and suffering? I used to enjoy listening to your shows. Now I feel that your type of show created these hateful people, and they need to be reeled in!" Exclamation point. About an hour later, he heard back from Jones' staff. And they responded with "We have not supported the crisis actor claim. We insist that it's a true event." On and on. This wasn't true. Jones did spread the crisis actor theory. It was on his website at the time, and he started talking about it a lot. That CNN interview with Veronique, he talked about it all the time. Folks, we've got video of Anderson Cooper with clear blue screen out there. He's not there in the town square. We've got people clearly coming up and laughing and then doing the fake crying. We've clearly got people where it's actors playing different parts of different people. I've looked at it, and undoubtedly there's a cover-up. There's actors. They're manipulating. They've been caught lying. And they were pre-planning before it, and then rolled out with it. What Lenny wanted was a one-on-one conversation with Jones, but it didn't happen. There were a few emails after that, asking me to prove that I'm really who I am, and leading on to get me on the show. Lenny didn't want that. He's very private and very reserved, a behind the scenes kind of guy. He's careful when he Talks things like "no comment," "that's off the record," or "do I have to talk about my personal life?" That came up all the time during our interview. One of the ground rules he gave is that I had to run his quotes past him and his lawyer, because he's worried about his own safety, if his words were misconstrued. Also, he's fighting some of the conspiracy theories in court. We agreed to his terms. And in the end, he didn't ask me to edit any of his quotes. But he did request that we remove one personal detail, and we did. Now, a year and a half after he reached out to Alex Jones, he decided to try a new tactic. He'd go directly to Jones his followers and the other Sandy Hook conspiracy theorists. I think his approach was, "I'm going to make them see the light." This is Veronique. She and Lenny were separated when the shooting happened, but were still very much in each other's lives. They decided to start releasing documents about Noah. Report cards, school photos. He even disclosed Noah's death certificate, which was a difficult decision that we made, but figured, after a while of providing this hard copy convincing evidence that reason would prevail, and they would say, "oh, OK, yeah, you've made your point. I'm going to come around." Lenny also decided he'd answer anyone's questions. He wanted to join this notorious Facebook group called "Sandy Hook Hoax." It's where a lot of the deniers were congregating and sharing theories. The cover photo on their page looked like it came straight out of a horror movie. A corpse-like girl with a "keep quiet" finger in front of her mouth. The administrator of the Facebook group immediately let him in. Do you identify yourself as like, "I am a father?" They knew who I was. They knew who I was instantly, yeah. To me, it seems so crazy to even go there. Like, this doesn't exactly sound like a group of people who'd want to listen to you. People who are conspiracy-minded see these tragedies unfold on the internet or on television. They still feel separate from these events. And I considered that bridging that gap could be an important step. I can add a human element to this. That's right. That's right. And so here I am. I'm the person. So let let's see what happens. The questions started pouring in. "Why weren't these children rushed to hospitals?" "Why wasn't anything done?" "Why aren't you suing the EMTs?" Or "why aren't you doing this?" "Why wasn't a rescue helicopter called from Hartford?" And I started to recognize some of the patterns that were there. There were the people you'd expect in a conspiracy group-- anti-gun control people, anti-government people, but also parents. They were young parents with small children, and they just couldn't wrap their minds around the reality that an adult can look at children in their eyes, and pump bullets into their head. They just can't deal with that. The conversation on this Facebook group quickly got ugly and abusive. Some of the members started using anti-Semitic slurs. Lenny was trying everything to keep up a rapport with them, even told them "I listen to Alex Jones in my car. I used to argue with people about 9/11 being an inside job. I entertain that we didn't go to the moon." But it didn't work. So he started blocking people and fighting back. This got him booted from the group. What's remarkable is just how up for this whole fight he was. When a bunch of people kept private messaging him, Lenny thought, "you know what? I'll just start my own Facebook group." He called it "Conspiracy Theorists Anonymous." This name was meant as a joke. He has a dry sense of humor. Anyway, he made some progress with people, the people who weren't full blown deniers, who actually wanted help parsing out the truth of what really happened. But they dropped away once they got answers. And pretty soon, the only ones left were just dark, sadistic trolls coming in to entertain themselves. One of Lenny's worst trolls was a guy named Wolfgang Halbig. That's his real name, by the way. He's a retired school security expert in Florida, who's probably the number one Newtown hoaxer in the world. This guy traveled to Newtown, appeared as an expert on Alex Jones's show. He's even called for Newtown parents to exhume the bodies of their children to prove that they're dead. Halbig ordered a background check on Lenny, then sent it out in an email to lots of people. It was almost 100 pages, listing everything from his social security number and phone number to almost every address he'd ever lived at with photos. Names of his relatives were included too. The online harassment had become so intense that Lenny and Veronique, and their two girls, went into hiding. They moved into separate high security gated communities. But Lenny's address kept getting exposed, and hoaxers started posting videos of where he lived. One apartment that I had moved into, I had only lived there, I think, for a month, And I got a call from a particular hoaxer who happens to be in prison now for attempted murder. And he called me up and was acting like a smart ass, and then read me my social security number, and then read me my address, where I had just moved into. And I said, well, you know what? I don't like this apartment that much, anyway. And I moved shortly after that. To try and throw the hoaxers off, Lenny started putting utility bills in different names and got multiple PO boxes all over the place. All this forced Lenny into a new battle strategy. If they were going to expose him, he'd do the same to them. He wrote newspaper op-eds calling out Halbig and the others by name. And when these hoaxers posted his new addresses online, he did the same to them. He also made it so that if you googled their names, the first thing anyone would see was all the Sandy Hook garbage they'd created. And Lenny being Lenny, decided to write a biography about Wolfgang Halbig's life called "The Hoax of a Lifetime." He released it as an e-book. Lenny became the one who knocks. He calls this troll rustling it's like trolling the trolls. He gets both energized and sheepish when talking about it. He insists, sometimes the only way to fight hardcore hoaxers is to turn the tables on them. And it worked on some of them, freaked them out. Still, Lenny was just one guy. And every day, new mountains of content about Noah were showing up online. His crusade was a lonely one. The hoaxers seemed so dangerous, most of the other Newtown parents wanted to stay as far away as possible from them. In my darker moments, the conspiracy part of me would return and ask myself, am I the only one that lost a child? Why am I the only one fighting back? I mean, what the hell is going on? I mean, people were trampling all of our other people's children's memories, and those children no longer had a voice to defend themselves. And people were just silent about it. But while Lenny was escalating his tactics, so was the other side. Around the second anniversary of Sandy Hook, a small group of conspiracy theorists made an almost three hour movie on YouTube, questioning the shooting. They described themselves as independent journalists and researchers, but their backgrounds were totally random. They included a magician, the owner of a moving company, a guy who'd been arrested for stabbing someone five times, and a stay-at-home dad. I just had an idea that I wanted to be an underground filmmaker myself. This is Doug Maguire. He says he met this group online, on YouTube, and got brought in at the end to help polish the movie. It felt exciting. At the time, Doug was a struggling filmmaker in Los Angeles. Occasionally did some stunt work. He got into conspiracy theories the way lots of people do-- watching them on YouTube. Like Lenny, he loved the ones about Bigfoot and UFOs. But then he went to look up news about Sandy Hook, and YouTube's recommendation system started suggesting hoax videos. He didn't believe the theory that the kids were actors. He thought children died, but he felt pretty sure there was some other kind of cover up going on, maybe one with the mafia. And where did you get that information? Like, where did you come up with this idea of a mob? Had you read this somewhere? No, it was-- you know, because I make movies. So I think I have an active imagination. I'm confused. What was your thinking? A family had done someone wrong. Like, let's say the movie Goodfellas, OK? Henry Hill is hiding out in a little village. He also mentioned Kindergarten Cop. When they released their film, they uploaded it to a bunch of different accounts, on places like YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion. Pretty soon, it was showing up everywhere. To combat this, Lenny had to change tactics one final time. No more talking to hoaxers one-on-one. Now the thing he'd focus on was content removal, scrubbing their stuff off the internet. He decided he was going to get every single copy of the movie taken down, which wasn't going to be easy. He couldn't just write into YouTube and say, "hey, this video is full of lies." That wasn't going to be enough. The internet is full of lies. He needed something else. And he realized he had it. These conspiracy theorists had used photos and videos of him and Noah and Veronique. Those were his property, making this movie a copyright violation. The stolen images were now a useful weapon. Lenny tracked down every place where this video was posted. And you've probably seen this. There's a little button you can click on to report stuff. So that's what he did for hours every day. And success. Sort of. The hoaxers kept reposting and moving the video onto other sites. You know, the crazies are not running the asylum. It's the platforms who are allowing this to go on. So that solidifies it for me that we have to just remove all of this garbage, and that's all we need to do. But this, of course, pissed off a lot of hoaxers. We don't know what's going on. We just know it doesn't look right. Alex Jones. He was stumped. Lenny had successfully forced the Infowars site to remove pictures of Noah using copyright. So frustrating. This is amazing. The claimant is Lenny Pozner. They think because they can hold out some little kids and say, we're shutting peoples' websites down because they're belittling the memory of these children. No, we're not. But even if we were, you couldn't violate our first amendment, because that's what it's there for. And if you take our rights, you take everybody's rights. And Jones put one of the guys who worked on the movie on the air. His name is Brian. He's from Alabama. What do you think of us being censored? What's been happening to you? I can tell you lots about Lenny. This man is something that you've never seen before. He's got a group of trolls. I mean, they're trying to shut us down, when we're just investigating it and looking at all sides, it must be horrible for folks out there that vehemently think this is staged. So just specifically, what have you gone through? I can't even put up a video showing that he has put up a copyright strike against me without him copywriting striking that. These people are vile. An Lenny, if you're listening, your day is coming, my friend. It is coming. Wow. I mean, this sounds like a war is going on. I think they made a major mistake involving us. Oh, I totally agree. They don't know what they bit off. Go after him, Alex. Crush him. In this video on YouTube, Jones showed his fans-- he had millions of them-- Lenny's email, the city he lived in, and the address he picked up his mail. Even held up some satellite shots from Google Earth. Lenny got this video taken down too, flagging it for privacy violations. But it didn't matter. The hoaxers had taken on a mob mentality, pursuing and harassing Lenny. This is an Infowars fan named Lucy Richards, who left multiple death threats on Lenny's phone. Did you hide your imaginary son in an attic? Are you still fucking him, you fucking Jew bastard? You're gonna die. You're gonna rot in hell. Death is coming to you real soon, and there's nothing you can do about it. So you're just gonna have to take it, OK? Jew bastard. Look behind you. Death is coming to you real soon. She said, "Look behind you. Death is coming to you real soon." Lenny was already living in hiding. He'd moved multiple times by then, because hoaxers kept tracking down his address. But now the chances that a hoaxer might show up at his door and kill him suddenly felt much higher. His kids were living with him half the week, and he worried about them. At the same time, he didn't consider stopping. He didn't think it would make them safer. That's one of the misconceptions that exist, that people think that I am only targeted because of challenging the content. And that's not the case. I took the action because I was being targeted. So if my address was published all over the internet, my photo was published all over the internet, and my living children's photos are published online, that's existed before I did anything. I didn't cause the targeting. It was already there. I was minimizing the targeting. He posted receipts for firearms. I'd asked if he actually bought them, and he wouldn't give me an answer. Amidst all this, Lenny kept up his daily ritual. He'd wake up, make coffee, and then sit in front of his computer for hours, flagging content, trying to systematically erase Noah from the Sandy Hook hoax story. There was a lot of stuff he couldn't invoke copyright law for, like the death threats and harassment. That was much harder to get taken down. The tech companies were wary of becoming arbiters of truth, making decisions about what its users could and couldn't say. But Lenny, in his usual methodical fashion, kept chipping away. On YouTube, he kept a scorecard. Once he nailed someone with three copyright strikes, YouTube would remove their accounts. He killed thousands of videos this way. The hoaxers called this "getting Poznered." He'd become a hashtag. Then he and Veronique helped get a professor in Florida, named James Tracy, fired. This guy had harassed them for years, and kept using Noah's image to promote his conspiracy theories. He's also the one who helped popularize the conspiracy term "crisis actor" on his blog right after the shooting. And that woman who was leaving death threats, Lucy Richards? Lenny reported her to the police, and they arrested her. She was sentenced to five months in jail. The judge rebuked her for going after Lenny, saying, quote, "This is a reality, and there is no fiction. There are no alternative facts." He barred her from Infowars and other conspiracy websites as one of the conditions of her parole. One surprising thing that happened over the years is that some of the hoaxers who used to harass Lenny flipped to his side. There were dozens of them. Lenny says these were people who came to him only after they changed their own minds, not people he tried to convert. He says that never works. It's a waste of time. Some of them became disenchanted when they saw Sandy Hook hoaxers who were more interested in photo shopping evidence and getting online followers than tracking down the truth. One of them was Doug, who worked on that hoaxer movie about Sandy Hook. In 2016, he found a phone number for Lenny and left a voicemail. "Hey, Lenny Pozner, this is dickhead Doug Maguire. If you ever need me, if you ever want to get a hold of me and learn about what all these people are up to, here's my number." Did you apologize in that message? I don't believe I did. Not surprisingly, Lenny didn't return his call. Doug was reaching out to Lenny because the hoaxers had turned on him, too. He says he started feuding with some of them after he made a video exposing a Christian YouTuber who was making money off false, outrageous claims. All of his social media accounts then got hacked. Lenny was the only person he could think of who knew how to fight back. He wanted advice. So he tried him again, and got through. He told Lenny that it felt like he'd been sort of brainwashed. That he'd been on a roller coaster ride, that he wanted to switch sides. Lenny had started a nonprofit called The HONR Network, where volunteers help families from mass tragedies fight digital harassment. So Doug began helping him scrub content. When you were doing it, did you feel like you were doing penance? Yeah. Yeah, and my heart is very heavy for This Were you surprised at how quickly Lenny let you in? Yeah, and I still am. The fact that he even is giving me a chance, I'm very humbled. I tell him I love him. I tell him that he's like my mentor. Sometimes, I call him "boss," and he says, "don't call me boss." Have you you apologized to other families at Sandy Hook? No. I think just to try to call up one of these families that-- they don't need to hear from some kind of a YouTuber guy in Los Angeles. I think, one day-- I am very sorry. Very sorry for any problems to any victims. Doug is now one of Lenny's most devoted volunteers. Lenny's got more than 100 people helping him out at any given time. But the burnout rate is high because the work is so intense. And hoaxers harass volunteers like Doug all the time for helping Lenny. When Lenny Google's Noah's name now, he no longer gets page after page of hoaxer content. A lot of it is gone now. Instead, the first hits that come up are news articles about Lenny's fight to make the tech companies more accountable. For years, he's been criticizing them in the press for not doing more to protect families of mass tragedies from online abuse. Last summer, he and Veronique called out Mark Zuckerberg in an open letter in The Guardian. They wrote, quote "you, arguably the most powerful man on the planet, have deemed that the attacks on us are in material, that providing assistance in removing threats is too cumbersome, and that our lives are less important than providing a safe haven for hate." Shortly after, Facebook reached out to Lenny. He started working with their content moderators and policymakers, and says their response times are now much faster. He also helped turn up the heat on Alex Jones. Last spring, he and Veronique and another dad from Newtown filed defamation lawsuits against him. Other parents followed with their own suit. A few months later, Apple started removing Jones's material from iTunes, saying they would not, quote, tolerate hate speech. Facebook, Google, and Spotify then followed suit. YouTube killed his channel completely, but you can still find his videos on the platform. And Twitter was one of the last to take action against Jones and Infowars. The New York Times reported that getting deplatformed cut his online audience nearly in half. I met up with Lenny at his place recently. He lives in a gated high security residence. He was filing copyright and harassment reports to places like Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit, Vimeo, and Twitter. He says Twitter is his biggest headache right now. There's content about Noah he still can't get down, and he gets personally attacked there all the time. Do you feel like you've jumped in this rabbit hole that is never going to end? I don't think I jumped in. I think I just got pulled in. You're just constantly subjecting yourself to just so much hateful material. Just like throwing trash out. Once it's gone, it feels really good. It really does. This is what victory looks like, taking the trash out every day. He recently spotted one of the hoaxers who's been after him. Turns out, the person lives nearby. Lenny's about to have to move again. This will be the eighth time. Miki Meek is one of the producers of our show. Coming up, how Alex Jones became Alex Jones, or not. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, Beware the Jabberwock. We've arrived at Act 2 of our program. Act 2. Alex in Wonderland. So one of the occasional contributors to our program, Jon Ronson, actually got to know Alex Jones personally years ago, long before Alex Jones became the most notorious conspiracy theorist in the country. They met doing a story where, together, they snuck into a summertime enclave of the rich and powerful called Bohemian Grove. They each did their own stories about it. Jon thought it was pretty harmless, maybe a little silly. Alex Jones thought it was much more sinister. Now and then over the years, they would touch base. Then in 2016, Jon met somebody in Alex's orbit. And that is where this story begins. The man's name was Josh Owens, and in October 2016 he started sending me cryptic texts about his boss. "A lot of times, I'm conflicted with what I'm saying. Anyway, I won't get into that." His boss was Alex Jones. Josh worked for him as a cameraman and a field producer. We exchanged more texts, and then we arranged to meet in a hotel lobby in Washington, DC. And here he was, walking in from the street, and waving shyly. I was struck by how nervous he looked. He had traveled here to tell me secrets about Alex. And the reason he chose me was because I have known Alex Jones for so long. When I first met and wrote about him 20 years ago, he broadcast Infowars down an ISDN line from a child's bedroom in his house, which was covered in choo choo train wallpaper. Back then, the whole operation was him, his producer Mike, and his webmaster executive producer girlfriend Kelly, also known as Violet. Well, Alex at 26-years-old is now syndicated to over 40 commercial markets. So he's huge, not to mention that he's on short wave and the internet. He's been number one on AOL numerous times. Alex is a sensation, because he's young, he's vibrant, and so many people are getting involved with this movement through what Alex does. This is tape I recorded back in 1999. Violet would eventually become Alex's wife, and then years later, his ex-wife in an extremely acrimonious divorce and custody battle, during which Alex would at one point stare at her from the dock and tell the court, "she doesn't have any good qualities." You're beautiful, my love. Isn't my girlfriend, Violet Nichols, beautiful and smart? Look at her. Look at her. She is just incredibly smart. That's the webmaster of infowars.com. I followed Alex around for weeks that year. He was different back then, an eccentric fledgling conspiracy broadcaster. I can't remember him attacking anyone but the powerful in those days. He wasn't going after victims of school shootings as crisis actors. He didn't assert, as he did in 2017, that the yogurt maker Chobani was, quote, importing migrant rapists who were spreading tuberculosis. He later apologized to Chobani in the face of a lawsuit. He has money now, a workforce of something like 40 employees, and a fan in President Trump, who has repeated a bunch of theories championed by Alex that Barack Obama is a Muslim who wears a ring with an Arabic inscription. That Ted Cruz's father was linked to the JFK assassination, that Obama and Hillary co-founded ISIS. Alex is playing a role in propagating the misinformation and confusion that's permeating America. With Hillary, she is an abject, psychopathic demon from hell that as soon as she gets into power, is gonna try to destroy the planet. Folks, let me just tell you something-- there are dozens of videos and photos of Obama having flies land on him indoors at all times of year, and he'll be next to 100 people, and no one has flies on 'em. Hillary, reportedly-- I mean, I was told by people around her that they think she's demon-possessed, OK? You can't wash that evil off, man. I'm told there's a rotten smell around Hillary. I'm not kidding. People say Obama and Hillary both smell like sulfur. They smell like hell. Anyway, back to my meeting with Josh. I was a big listener of the show. He said working for Alex had been his dream job. He'd actually won an online reporter contest four years earlier to work for Infowars. He was a young and angry Alex Jones fan back then, committed to exposing the shadowy elites. But now he was disillusioned, because Alex had changed. And the final straw was the Muslims. Alex had lately been broadcasting untrue stories about American Muslims running secret terrorist training camps in the Catskill Mountains of New York, and cheering the 9/11 attacks. Here he is talking to then-candidate Donald Trump. You are vindicated on the radical Muslims celebrating not just in New Jersey, but New York, Palestine, all over. What do you have to say? They're still attacking you. Well, I took a lot of heat, and I was very strong on it. I just want to finish by saying your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down. And so Josh had found himself intimately involved in the business of demonizing Muslims. This wasn't why he'd signed up. These weren't powerful elites. They were regular people. Recently, Josh boarded a plane and sat next to a Muslim family. The little girl was laughing, her face pressed to the window. Josh looked at her, and he hated himself. And soon after, he began texting me. He wanted to make amends. He said he knew he should quit working for Alex, but it was hard. Alex paid him well. And although he had seen Alex scream at people in the office, and punch cabinets, and rip down blinds, he'd only ever been nice to Josh. As we continued to talk, I realized that Josh hadn't come to tell me any specific secret about Alex. He just wanted to vent his frustrations to somebody else who had known him a long time. But then he said, oh, here's a story. The thing Josh told me then would, if true, totally rewrite the story of how Alex Jones became Alex Jones. First, you should know that Alex has a kind of origin story about what got him obsessed with rooting out conspiracies. He's told it a few times to the Rolling Stone journalist Alexander Zaitchik, and during monologues on his show. When I was, like, 16-years-old, and I'd be at parties, in would come a sheriff's department car, and they'd come in and sell bags of drugs to people. This took place in the Dallas suburb of Rockwall, where Alex grew up. And I went to school, and they were having an auditorium meeting about drug testing, or something. They had cops up there that I knew were drug dealers. And I stood up, and I said, "I was at a pool party. He was selling cocaine and ecstasy last week." They took me in an office, rammed my head in the wall, told me, "we're gonna kill you if you don't shut up." They said, "You're gonna move out of this town right now." That's why we moved out here to Austin, because of it. Police corruption in Rockwall had opened Alex's eyes to the existence of powerful cabals, and exposing them would become his calling. And it all began at that school assembly. So that's Alex's origin story. But according to Josh, it wasn't true. The true story, he said, was much more revealing. And it was also a big secret. Josh said, OK, I've heard this story a couple of times from childhood friends and family members. Very few people in the office know it, but when Jones was a teenager, he was a bully. No one liked him, because he was a bully. There was a group of kids that felt unsafe around him, and so they came up with a plan to trick him. They invited him out to a party in a barn. It was a trap, Josh said. They beat him within an inch of his life. That's why his family moved to Austin. His whole family uprooted him and moved into a completely different city because of this crazy thing that happened to him. Josh said having those guys conspire against Alex by luring him to that party was the real reason he got obsessed with conspiracies. He had been the victim of one. Josh and I parted soon after that. I walked around, replaying our conversation and wondering if I should look into it further. There were now two Alex Jones origin stories. In Alex's version, he was a brave figure forced out of town for standing up to corrupt authority. But in Josh's, he was an outcast run out of town by fellow high school kids. Had Alex still been the fringey Alex of the '90s, I would have left his childhood alone. But he had become an influential figure, spreading chaos. And according to Josh, being ambushed at that party was the moment that shaped him-- that made him who he was. And so I dug around some more. It became really clear, really quickly that Alex's school assembly story did not stand up to scrutiny. My producer, Lina Misitzis, reached 10 people who were at the school at the time. And while it's true that the local sheriff had been convicted of stealing marijuana from the police evidence room with a plan to sell it, no one remembered anything like that assembly happening. Not the students, not the principal, not the teachers, not one of Alex's old football coaches, Randall Talley, who preferred to go by Coach Randy. Do you remember an assembly where Alex called out the cops in the assembly for being drug traffickers? Well, I didn't know about that. Is that your first time hearing about it? Yes. Here's a former classmate, Ryan Tipton. No, not at all. That was probably DARE-- the DARE program. And I do not remember that at all. Here's an old school friend, Jacob Olsen. Who told you that? No. No. And Lina found the police officer who actually worked in the school when Alex was there, who presumably would have been one of the drug dealing cops who beat up Alex. His name is Terry Garrett. OK, that sounds like something he probably would say, but I don't think anything like that ever happened. I mean, I would be willing to bet my whole pension that that never happened. I mean, I don't think there were any times where, actually, we were even questioning a student, that an administrator wasn't in the room. What everyone does remember about Alex is, well, how memorable he was. We were emailed the same stories over and over from former classmates. Quote, "he used to run through the hall saying he was the devil. This is no joke. And he spoke a lot about being Satan or the Antichrist. And he would walk the halls with his arms flared out, with this intense, wide-eyed, evil look in his eyes. And he proclaimed to be the Antichrist." Here's Coach Randy. I'm fixing to tell you something that's gonna blow your mind. He-- oh, golly. People thought he was possessed. Have you heard this? I've heard this from so many students, but this is the first time I've heard it from an adult. Well, he could make his tongue turn black. And he would roll his eyes back in his head, and he would just sort of shake his head. It was-- I don't even know how to describe it, it was so eerie. So you would see him do it? Yeah, I saw him do it in class. And what did you think you were looking at? I really didn't know if he had broke a pen, or something, you know, to get his tongue, and his mouth black, or not. He terrorized that high school. Just run full steam, and shove his head into the lockers, and scream, "Hail Satan." This is Ellen. I'll call her "Ellen." She didn't want us to use her real name because, as she texted, "I am not afraid of Alex directly, but I am very concerned about retaliation from his followers." Ellen went to middle school and high school with Alex. She didn't remember any party in a barn where Alex got revenge attacked, but she did have lots other memories of him, like these. Sitting in art class with him, across the table-- he's over there wringing his hands, describing to me in great detail how he's going to rape me. And I never thought he would actually do that. Just shock factor. If Alex hadn't become famous, would you still have remembered Alex? Oh, yes. Definitely. You don't forget people like that. Then Ellen told me her worst Alex memory. The most violent incident was-- in second period geography? Where he bludgeoned one of his closest friends to the point where he was unconscious, and bleeding, and laying on the floor. Was that Jared? Mm-hm. So when did you first meet Alex Jones? 1990. My senior year. Jared's real name is Jared. He still lives close to Rockwall, in a mobile home in the countryside. Even though his mother, who is watching us from the kitchen, had counseled him to be anonymous, Jared was steadfast. He wanted to be named. Right off the bat, he was odd. Real odd, real strange. We wanted him around because it was funny at first, you know? The way he acted. But it got worse and worse, and finally, man, we just didn't want to hang out with him at all. Jared was bewildered that a journalist had contacted him. Nobody had asked him about the day Alex beat him unconscious since high school. It was an argument over a girl. I said, what's going on? But he came in behind me, and pretty much just rammed into the wall, and caused me to fall off balance. It dazed me. I was blurred vision. I could see him, but he picked me up, and I just went over headfirst, and knocked me out immediately. And started-- my body went into convulsions. I started flipping all over the ground. And he just kept stomping on my head, and kicking me in the head, and kicking me in the ear. Blood came out of my ears, and my nose, and everything. He was trying to kill me. Point blank. What other excuse is there? I got seven fractures to the skull and and a concussion, lost 20% of the hearing in my right ear. I live with a headache pretty much all the time. I get pretty bad headaches. Jared said the parents took over after that. Alex's father, a dentist, offered to pay Jared's medical bills, including a $10,000 neurologist's bill. But there was a condition. Y'all just don't jump on Alex. Just leave him alone. I'll pay all the bills. So I just left him alone. Jared said Alex's father also gave Jared's parents a book about why it's wrong for people to sue people. Lots of people remember Alex beating Jared up. Here's Coach Randy, who broke up the fight. Oh, golly. Alex had him upside-down. Do you know what a pile driver is? No. What is it? You literally have the person with his feet up in the air, and his head down between your legs. And you just drop to the ground, and the first thing that hits is your butt and his head at the same time. Holy shit. Yeah. Holy shit. Jared eventually returned to school. And then, one night, he was at a party. It wasn't in a barn. It was at a house, but this was the origin story that Josh the cameraman had told me. The beating in the countryside. Jared said the instigators were his friends, Mark and Brian. The two guys who brought him to the party, did they know that they were taking him somewhere where he might get attacked? The other two guys that brought him? Yeah, they loved fighting. It's all they did. They fought all the time. They figured that me or somebody would whup him. They wanted to see it, so they brought him out there. And he come in, he's been drinking, and just hooping and hollering, and carrying on. Finally, one of my buddies slapped him in the back of his hat. And I was trying not to even look at him, you know? He thought it was me, and there we go. He just pointed me out. He just picked me and said, "Come on. I'm gonna beat your ass like I did before." You know? He started all that flipping around, and flopping around the living room, and throwing his coat, throwing his hat. Saying he's the devil, he's Satan, and he's gonna kill me. I had to. It just was ridiculous that he was able-- that he did what he did to me. I had to prove to myself, and all my friends, hey, man, this was a fluke deal, man. You know? When I jumped on him, I hit him until I broke both my knuckles, my hands, until I couldn't hit him no more. I just reached over and grabbed this rake, this wooden handle-- steel rake, but wooden handle-- and I just thought I'd hit him in the back of the head with it. And it knocked him down, and when he come back up running, that's when he ran into my buddy, and that was a mistake. My buddy grabbed him by the ears and planted his knee in his face. And he just took off running. And I think two or three weeks later, they moved. So they moved because of this fight? Mm-hm. Because the Rolling Stone article said that he had uncovered some corruption in the Rockwall police force, and that's why they moved. Yeah. No, it was definitely nothing like that. They couldn't go nowhere anymore. Nowhere to go, nobody to hang out with. Nobody just couldn't stomach him. So he knew there was nothing left there in Rockwall for him. So Josh the cameraman's story had turned out to be sort of right. But he was wrong about a couple of things. It wasn't a barn. It was a house. But more importantly, the way Josh told it, the fight was the thing that had made Alex a conspiracy theorist. But Jared said, no, that's not true. He said Alex always had his theories, even before then. Yeah, he had something to say about the principal, and the teachers, and the school cop, and everybody's doing all this. If we were at the pool hall, it was the guy that owned the pool hall. And he'd done called the DEA, and they were setting a deal up. It was weird, man. Everybody was like, what? Hey, guys. I'm sorry I'm, like, five minutes late. I was stuck getting back to the office. I got a lot of crazy stuff going on. It's good to be here with you guys. It's a Thursday in February. Alex is talking to me from his studio in Austin. I'm at home in New York. I think the crazy stuff Alex is referring to, by the way, is that a judge has just ordered him to give a sworn deposition in the court case brought against him by some Sandy Hook parents. Alex had one condition for doing this interview. He wanted to make a brief statement. Though my story isn't about Sandy Hook, this is what he wants to say. So here's my Sandy Hook statement. Looking back, before I was ever sued, years ago, I reviewed the information, and I do believe the horror of Sandy Hook happened. By the way, that's only sort of true. Even after Alex first admitted that children died at Sandy Hook, he hedged, saying "they probably died," and "I tend to believe they died." I have apologized to the families many times in the last few years if my reporting has caused them any pain. These apologies are contentious, because he's apologized, but then continued to cast doubt on the shootings. I never said that anyone should harass the victims' families. And I asked the media to please stop saying that I have said that. As best as we can tell, Alex never directly instructed his fans to harass the families. But on his broadcasts, he repeatedly talked about Lenny Pozner's ex-wife and son. And he gave Pozner's mailing address, and showed Google Earth shots of the building, and said he would probably have to go there himself. I ask anyone else who is going to harass the families to stop. What happened at Sandy Hook and similar events is a tragedy that needs to be recognized. It's time for us to come together as Americans, and as humans, and defend the lives of children and other defenseless individuals. Period. Alex declined to answer follow-up questions about Sandy Hook. I got to the business at hand. OK, so there's a guy in Rockwall called Jared, but I think you knew him maybe as Bubba. Oh. Oh, I remember Bubba, who was a senior, and I was, like, a freshman, coming and getting me out of class. And he was, like, a hall monitor, so he could do it. And then he attacked me in the hall, so I defended myself. And I'm sad that he got put in a coma, but that's just what happened. I've never talked about this stuff, and I'm not particularly proud of it, but I always defended myself. I never started fights. This is different to Jared's version, by the way. In Jared's account, Alex started the fight. Also, Jared said he wasn't in a coma, but he was hospitalized for multiple skull fractures. Jared said that he thought that you were trying to kill him. Well, when a 250 pound-- he would be a self-described redneck, and you weigh 160 pounds, starts attacking you, you defend yourself. So the way it works in America is, when someone physically attacks you, and you defend yourself, you're not the bad guy. By the way, Alex does confirm parts of Jared's story. He remembers his father paying the medical bills, though he doesn't recall a book about why it's wrong for people to sue people. I felt real bad. My dad went and visited him at the hospital. I mean, we weren't happy about it. And I mean, that's the story you've got? What about the time-- I mean, you didn't hear about the time, like, 20 people attacked me? Well, the other story I heard was you were at a party, and some of Jared's friends attacked you. So was that the story that you mean? No, that never happened. So what supposedly happened at that? The story I heard is this. It all started with Jared, with the geography, and then you were at a party, and some of Jared's-- I told Alex everything Jared had said about the ambush. And that's why you left town, was because of that party. That's the story that I heard. Total, complete horse crap. Total Shakespearean fiction. So what happened is, I wasn't that big of a guy, and everybody would start fights with me. I mean, this is just total fiction, totally made up. You didn't hear the part where the captain of the football team attacked me in the lunchroom, and I literally took on the entire senior football team? No, I did not hear that. That was an epic fight. That was like Hercules. It was like Popeye. Like, pow, pow, pow. It was just, like-- it was the greatest trip of my life. I mean-- Later, we talked to Alex's old friend Jacob, and one of the football players, and Coach Randy, and no one remembers it this way. At best, Jacob said, Alex fought off two or three football players. Which is actually still quite impressive. And then, like, the whole football team, the whole senior team charges me, like a phalanx. And I just-- pow, pow. I mean, it was the best. So I thought you were actually getting to that story. No. I mean, poor Bubba starting a fight with me, that was a minor conquest. I tell you what, if Bubba wants to have a charity, get in the ring with me today, I'll do it. He's a big old tough guy. Let's get in the ring right now. Well, he said he has to be very careful with his skull. Well, he physically attacked me. Like, Ronson, if I came up and punched you in the face, would you have a right to defend yourself? I would have a right to defend myself. I think it's unlikely that I would defend myself, because-- Here's the thing, Jon, did I ever punch you in the face? You've never punched me, Alex. Was I ever threatening physically to you? No. Never. Well, let's be honest. Have I not been a big old sweetie Teddy bear? It's true. On a personal level. Alex is adamant that the party did not happen. But we confirmed that it did. We talked to two people besides Jared who say that they were there. One is named Marty Bottoms. He says he personally attacked Alex. The other is Mark Milton. When he phoned my producer Lina, she was asleep. He was on his tractor, but Lina recorded it as best as she could. I'm probably gonna lose you when I drop down this rock, girl, but yeah, this is Mark Edward Milton. Mark said he remembered Alex beating Jared unconscious in geography. And then he said this. We all ended up going to a party, and then some of Bubba's friends jumped him that night. This was at a party after Alex beat up Jared? Yeah. Yeah, this was at Mark's house, out there in McLendon-Chisholm. So he moved to Austin after that party? Yeah, they sold the condo over in Lakeside Village. And he couldn't take it from him being jumped by a couple of boys that was Bubba's friends, and he moved out of there. This is the story Josh had told me in the hotel lobby, and that Jared told me. It's the story Alex swears is untrue. Alex's family wouldn't talk to us, so I can't say exactly why they finally moved out of Rockwall. In our interview, Alex retold the story of the school assembly, but he also named other reasons for their move. Like how his Austin-born mother was homesick, and fed up with all the fighting. In the end, what seems clear is that this fight happened, and the assembly where Alex outed the drug dealing cops probably never did. If I had to guess, I would say that Alex has replaced a true story, where he's humiliated at a party, with a different story where he's a hero, standing up to corrupt cops and getting beaten up for his bravery. In a way, it's same story as the one where the whole football team came at him in a phalanx. It's the character he plays on Infowars, the beleaguered hero attacked from all sides, bloodied but undaunted, and emerging the victor. It's like stories little kids tell about themselves. Alex disputes most of the other things that people told me about him. He says he did not pretend to be the Antichrist in high school, says he didn't roll his eyes back in his head or dye his tongue black. He says he never told a classmate how he would like to rape her. He calls all of that insane garbage. He says he doesn't punch cabinets, or rip down blinds in the office. During our reporting, something very strange kept happening. It happened during Lina's call with Mark, the tractor man. Mark's daughter, Chelsea, was listening on mute as he was telling Lina how he knew for certain that the police assembly story was a lie. Just then, Chelsea unmuted herself and said to her father-- Nobody knows what he found out about the cops, so you can't speak and say all the reason why he left Rockwall. Because he might have found out stuff that you didn't even know about. It kept happening. All these people who knew for sure that Alex had been a liar back in Rockwall. A lot of them believed that what he says on Infowars might be true. They have a reference for him, like Coach Randy. I agree with so many things what he says. A lot of people just think it. Alex goes ahead and says it. But not Jared. Actually, Jared had somehow gone through life not realizing that Alex was a radio host. And when I brought it up, it was awkward. And you know who's a fan of his now? Donald Trump. Is he? Yeah. Donald Trump's been on his show. He talks about what a great reputation Alex has. I could tell that Jared didn't want to hear that President Trump was an Alex fan. He gave me a look to say, "are you fake news?" With the media and stuff, I don't know. I mean, I don't know what to-- I don't know. I wouldn't-- I don't know to believe that or not. He likes him. They like each other. Do they? Yeah. It's like all of that craziness that happened at Rockwall High School, Alex and making stuff up, and now Donald Trump's a fan. The fact is, he's carried on saying all of these crazy things, but it's no longer about the school or the pool hall. Now it's about the globalists and the Muslims. People believe him now, including the president. I mean-- I mean, who's to say. I mean-- I mean, some of the stuff he says could be true. It could be. I mean, Obama, he could be a Muslim. He could back them up, the radical Muslims. And he could have been giving them money behind-- I mean, who knows? We don't know. I mean, we hear what they want us to hear. We see what they want us to see. I mean, anything could be anything. Jared, more than anyone, might have understood that Alex doesn't always tell the truth. But no, this is Alex's legacy, the chaos he sows in the world, the feeling that nothing can be known for sure. Jon Ronson. He and his, producer Lina Misitzis, originally created a version of this story for audible.com, where they also did Jon's latest long form original for Audible, The Last Days of August, a deep dive into the never before told story of what caused the untimely death of 23-year-old porn star August Ames. It's available exclusively on audible.com. Audible is the world's largest producer and provider of downloadable audio books and other spoken word entertainment. Our program was produced today by Dana Chivvis. The people who put our show together today includes Ben Calhoun, Sean Cole, Aviva DeKornfeld, Damien Graef, Michelle Harris, Miki Meek, Stowe Nelson, Catherine Raimondo, Ben Phelan, Nadia Reiman, Robyn Semien, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu. Our managing editor is David Kestenbaum. Special thanks today to Sandy and Lonnie Phillips, Whitney Phillips, Dr. Kenneth Henderson, Joel Ronson, Elizabeth Scholer, David Bloom, Jonathan Kerlan, Sophia Hillsman, and Eric Newsom. Our website, thisamericanlife.org, where you can download as many episodes as you want on the This American Life app. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. He recently tried Axe Body Spray. You know that stuff? He didn't like it. You can't wash that evil off, man. I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
Well, it's been a week of gloating. Some very emphatic gloating and I-told-you-sos, after Robert Mueller delivered his report saying that he could not establish collusion between the president and the Russians. As you've probably seen, the president and his supporters have been saying that's right. No conspiracy with Russia. In fact, the real conspiracy is one where the Democrats and the media hyped this Russian stuff for two years. They're gleefully circulating videos of people like this guy-- You know, you have to take seriously the possibility that-- --New York Magazine writer Jonathan Chait. He went onto MSNBC last year to connect the dots about whether the president has basically been a secret Russian operative all the way back since 1987. That is probably not true. But it might be that 1987 is when he went to Moscow. And he's feted by the Russians and tours Moscow. And then he comes back. Then he starts talking about running for president for the first time. And then he starts talking for the first time about how our allies are a bunch of freeloaders, and we should kick them to the curb. It's more or less a Fox News, Republican Party talking point now that the fact that there even was a Mueller investigation, the fact that it even occurred, was a result of a deep-state, media-led, Obama-Hillary-FBI conspiracy. Here's how President Trump described it this week to Sean Hannity. You look at, how did this start? How did it start? You had dirty cops. You had people that are bad FBI folks. I know so many. They're incredible people. But at the top, they were not clean, to put it mildly. And then the money that was spent-- the millions and millions on the phony dossier, and paid for by Hillary Clinton, and paid for by the Democrats at the DNC-- it's hard to believe. If you wrote this as a novel, nobody would buy it. It would be a failure, because it would be too unbelievable. Of course, it's no surprise that the president has spun the Mueller report into a conspiracy theory of his own, because he's peddled lots of conspiracy theories, from the idea that George Soros is funding the caravans, all the way back to birtherism. Joe Uscinski, a professor at the University of Miami who studies conspiracy theories and the people who believe them, says, this is actually an unusual thing about today. It used to be people with no power in this country who were the ones pushing conspiracy theories. Now it's the President of the United States doing it all the time. Uscinski says that from the start, it seems like Donald Trump identified conspiracy-minded voters as a possible constituency. So when he got into the Republican primary, there was 25 other candidates vying for Republican votes. He went after the underserved market of Republicans, which were conspiracy-minded Republicans. But he keeps them motivated. And he's got to keep going with this. He's dancing with the one who brought him to the prom. In fact, one of my coworkers, Zoe Chace, went to a couple of Trump rallies this fall in Chattanooga, Tennessee and Fort Wayne, Indiana. And she found lots of people who believed in the deep state and in other conspiracies. Zoe? Hi, IRA. So? So basically, I'd ask people a general and vague question, like, do you trust the government? And then almost everyone I talked to, all these conspiracy theories would come spilling out, like about George Soros. --a Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, you know? People like that, they're behind the scenes, pushing this agenda. The president tweeted this theory that Soros pays protesters. There's no evidence of that. Absolutely. You can go on the website, and he'll pay you $17. I wanted to ask these people holding signs, where do they get their check? All these people, they're getting paid. What if-- what if they're getting paid? Old classics came up, like the Clintons are serial murderers. And now, this may be conspiracy theorist type stuff. But how many bodyguards that Clinton had in Arkansas are still alive? Vince Foster. Vince Foster? Supposed to have been killed in the park. I mean, he committed suicide. But you don't think so? Well, I don't think he did, no. Pizzagate came up. I don't believe there's, like, a basement in comet Ping Pong. But I do believe that there was a hacker that actually hacked into the system. And I think that the shooter going in was a false flag, because he shot one bullet right through the hard drive, destroying the evidence, so to speak. So I think-- I got this book recommendation that made a big impression on me from Paula. She and her partner, Steve, drove three hours from Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. What's the name of that book? Oh, I can't remember. Baby, look for it on my-- It's an older book. --Amazon. It's an old, old book. But it's about how they've been trying to do this for many years in America. Yeah, since the middle 1800s. Yes. They've been-- Who's they, though? The Illuminati, whatever you want to call them-- the World Order. The World Order? Basically, the idea that a cabal of rich guys is trying to take over the world and create one world government-- like one currency, one army, no national borders. And these rich guys-- are these Jews, not to name a specific ethnic group? Not necessarily. It's not necessarily the Jews. This is an old theory. Its roots are totally anti-Semitic. But to be honest, the people I talked to, I asked them about that. It just seemed like it wasn't about Jews anymore. It was just elites. OK, then. Eventually, Paula finds the name of the book. It's The Unseen Hand, There you go. You read that, girl. And I haven't read all of it. But I have a friend that's read it from front to back. But it's like really well read in it. And we talked about the Illuminati and all of these so-called higher-ups that think that they are over all of us. I got news for them-- Did you read the book? I tried. It's really hard to follow the book. I got through like 100 pages. I did talk to their friend who's read the whole thing, Jim. And his experience illustrates that thing the professor, Uscinski, said at the beginning of this about how Donald Trump mobilized conspiracy theorists during the campaign. Hm. Like, take Jim. He hadn't voted for a while before 2016, because he believed both parties were basically working together for a secret cabal of elites. So he believed this conspiracy. Yeah, the New World Order-- like, just rich guys, the Bilderberg group, George Soros, the Bush dynasty, the Clinton dynasty-- like, that they were all-- All working together? --to push this one world government, New World Order agenda in secret. And Jim believes Donald Trump ran for president in order to stop them. I didn't have to read between the lines of what he was saying. He was openly saying, I'm not a globalist. I'm America first. And see? Unless you know a lot of the stuff I know, most-- a lot of what he said would just go, pshew. And I knew he knew. I knew he knew about what he said. He knew who they were and what they were up to. Talking to Jim, it was like seeing Trump all new. Huh. Like, seeing him through Jim's eyes, seriously, everything kind of lined up for me. What do you mean? So no borders-- Trump wants to build a border wall, right? Because the New World Order wants to erase all the borders. Trump wants to blow up all the trade deals. Like, trade deals lead to, you know, one world currency. Right. They're breaking down trade borders between nations. Yes it's another kind of erasing-the-barriers thing. Trump wants to blow up NATO. You can kind of think of that as one world army with these different countries coming together. The NATO military, OK. Right, the NATO alliance. Trump kind of alienates our allies, doesn't like to talk to Europe, because Europe-- that's the European Union. The European Union is the first step towards a global union, one big state. Oh, where all-- right, we're all one big country. Yeah, one world government. And if you listen to Trump, it does sound like he believes in a cabal of elites behind the scenes, like Soros; obviously, Hillary Clinton; lately, the FBI. Right. All the dots line up so neatly if you just think of them as part of Trump's battle against the New World Order. And do you think Jim is right that the president sees it this way? No. But you can see how Jim would draw these conclusions. It makes sense. Well, today on our program, in this moment, when conspiracy theories seem to be right in the center of mainstream political everything-- like, for years, there was this idea that the president conspired with the Russians. Now, there's this idea that the Democrats conspired to create a phony investigation. When are we supposed to be connecting the dots? When are we not supposed to be connecting the dots? Because, friends, there are a lot of dots. And they are so close together. And we want to connect them, because we want something to explain the world that we're in. Today on our program, we have stories of people struggling with whether they should be connecting the dots or not, and as you might expect, coming to very different conclusions. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Act One, Show-Me State of Mind. So many people who believe in conspiracy theories, you know they're talking about secretive groups that are basically far away-- rich and powerful people they're never going to run into. But what about when the conspiracy looks like it's happening all around you-- like, has an impact on your actual city, on your actual neighborhood? And you're worried that you could be its next victim. New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb heard about a conspiracy theory that is more along those lines. It's been more than four years now since Michael Brown was shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, outside St. Louis. You probably know the basic facts of the case. He was 18, black, unarmed. The officer who shot him, Darren Wilson, is white. Of course, the shooting and a grand jury's decision not to indict Officer Wilson led to waves of chaotic protests in Ferguson-- tear gas, arrests, fires, looting. It was the first time you heard the chant, hands up, don't shoot. But here's something you might not know. In the five years since Michael Brown's death, about a half dozen people connected to the shooting and its aftermath have themselves turned up dead, including high-profile protesters and activists. And in at least a few cases, the circumstances under which they've died have been questionable, if not eerie, which has led to the belief that those deaths are part of a larger, coordinated effort-- in short, a conspiracy. I had already visited Ferguson about a half dozen times, met a lot of people, and wrote several articles. But that was three years ago. I decided to go back and ask some of them whether they believed in the conspiracy. I was interested in who did, and who didn't, and why. One place that I spent a lot of time was Cathy's Kitchen-- sort of a hub for reporters, as it was only about 100 feet from the police department and a few miles down the road from where the shooting happened. One of the co-owners, Jerome Jenkins, was wiping down the counter when I walked in. Hey, how you been? How you doing? How you doing? You been doing good? Yeah, just I didn't know if you were gonna remember me. Of course. How would I forget? You came at a never-forgetful time in our lives, Jerome said. --a never-forgetful time in our life. Yeah, that's true. Just then, his wife, the Cathy in Cathy's Kitchen, came over. There's Miss Cathy. How are you doing? How you doing? How are you doing? Good to see you. How you been? Good to see you. Good, good. Pleasure, pleasure. How are you? The place has a vintage feel-- a long bar with leather and chrome stools and a checkerboard tile pattern on the floor. It didn't surprise me when Jerome said that customers sometimes discuss whether they think the deaths are connected. He suspects they are. It's hard to say it's a coincidence. And it doesn't seem like there's a big investigation into it. At this point, to me, it seems like, you know, raised eyebrows. And-- Raised eyebrows. Almost all the people we talked to who gave credence to the conspiracy used that phrase. It's perfect, because it doesn't commit you to tinfoil-hat-level conspiracy. But it does point you in the direction of something being afoot. You got a suicide. You got a burning in a car. You got a homicide. You have all these strange things coming from one thing that all these people have in common, you know? You know, they're all people that are activists, that are standing up, you know, trying to say, hey, we want to make this better. We want this. And they all are dying in some weird form. Just doesn't add up. To me-- But do you think, is it something that's coordinated? Is it the fact that we have, like, homicide rates that are terrible in many of the cities? Like, how do we distinguish between those two? I understand our community. I understand our suicide, homicide. I understand those rates. But let's look at it a different way. If five African-Americans die in the NBA, and they all have one thing in common, they all play for the Lakers, it would be an investigation. It would be, because you had this one thing in common, we would all go, it's too many. And these are people-- don't live that far from each other. That's a large number. So that's what makes it enter into the world of-- It raises an eyebrow, uh-huh. It raises an eyebrow, you know? Uh-huh. Here are the six deaths that raise suspicions in and around Ferguson. In September of 2016, Darren Seals, a very visible activist in Ferguson, was found shot in the head inside a burning vehicle. He was 29, outspoken, and had mentioned he was being harassed by police in the months before his death. Pictures from the murder scene went up on Twitter shortly afterward, apparently showing that after police investigated, there were still bullet casings littering the parking lot. The suggestion was that police were incompetent and possibly even complicit in Seals' death. One person replied, "You better believe those KKKops were involved." The word "KKKops" is spelled with three Ks. A spokesman for the St. Louis County Police Department says all evidence pertinent to the case was processed. Two years earlier, Deandre Joshua, 20 years old, was reportedly found the same way, inside a burnt-out vehicle, with a gunshot wound to the head. Joshua was friends with someone who'd witnessed Michael Brown's shooting. And his death is also often linked to the death of Shawn Gray, a 23-year-old who disappeared that same week and was later found drowned in a branch of the Mississippi River. The rumor was that they'd both been killed for testifying before the grand jury in Michael Brown's case. But the list of grand jury witnesses has never been released. And with both men, their friends and family insist that they had nothing to do with the case. The county prosecutor confirmed that Joshua had not been a witness. And then there's Edward Crawford, possibly the most visible person associated with the protests. You may have seen a famous photo of him wearing an American flag t-shirt and hurling a tear gas canister back in the direction of police. In 2017, he died from a gunshot wound while sitting in a vehicle with two women, one of whom was his sister. Police concluded it was a suicide. Crawford's father thinks it was an accident. Crawford was 27. The most recent death that's gotten a lot of attention is that of Danye Jones. Last year, Jones was found hanging from a tree in his backyard. He was 24. Police have investigated Jones' death as a suicide, too. But Danye's mother, Melissa McKinnies, had been prominent in organizing the protests. She believes he was lynched to send her a message. She says she found his packed bag nearby, suggesting he was going somewhere with someone he trusted. Also, she said the sheet he was hanging from didn't come from the house. And he didn't know how to tie those particular knots. The deaths have become something of a set piece, not simply in the minds of people who live in the area, but in the media as well. You'll see headlines like "Ferguson, Missouri Activists Are Dying, And It's Time to Ask Questions" and "Are Ferguson Protesters Being Killed?" People in those articles and in our interviews and online have pondered all kinds of possible culprits, from white supremacists, to local and federal law enforcement, to armed militia members who were seen standing on the tops of buildings during the protests. The articles didn't come to any conclusions or investigate the deaths. And you're not going to hear me do that either. But I was interested in the narrative that had attached itself to those deaths and what it could tell me about how people were processing what was happening around them. I talked with five people who believed the conspiracy to some degree, including Jerome and Cathy Jenkins at the restaurant. And again, nobody I talked to went full "NASA faked the moon landing" conspiratorial. But what you did get were clusters of suspicion, brushfires of doubt about the official narratives of what was happening around them. The conspiracy wasn't present in the words they spoke. It was tucked into the ellipses between them. The sixth thing that tends to come up in these discussions is Bassem Masri. He was a Palestinian-American activist and close to many of the organizers in Ferguson. He died of an apparent heart attack aboard a city bus. A 31 year old dying of a heart attack is the kind of thing that might raise suspicions, and yes, eyebrows, even outside the context of other people dying in quick succession, except we got a copy of the medical examiner's report. And while, yes, Masri was in cardiac arrest when he got to the hospital, the official cause of death was a fentanyl overdose. He had struggled with heroin addiction prior to this and was open about it. And there are other ways in which the conspiracy narrative doesn't hold up. St. Louis proper has one of the most alarming homicide rates in the country. In 2017, it was the most alarming, having the highest murder rate, according to an analysis of FBI data. By comparison, Chicago was number nine. So lots of people get shot in St. Louis. Also, neither Deandre Joshua nor Shawn Gray was an activist. And even if they did testify before the grand jury, Joshua and Gray were both found dead after the decision not to indict Officer Wilson, meaning they'd have been killed for testimony that had not even convinced a grand jury to issue an indictment I talked about all of this with Ashley Yates, a prominent figure in the Ferguson protests. Of all the people I spoke with for this story, she most epitomized the equivocal belief in the idea of a conspiracy, parsing the difference between what is provable and what is likely. Can I say that right now, in this moment, there is a conspiracy against activists? No, because again, I don't have the hard, concrete evidence. Can I say that it is likely? When I take into account my experiences, the experiences of people around me and those before, absolutely. Even at the same time, I wonder if it's possible, with Mr. Joshua and Mr. Gray, if they're-- it's possible, do you think that there really is a conspiracy, but they're just not part of it? I mean, anything's possible. Again, I don't have-- you know, I don't have thorough investigations. I don't have the answers. I didn't murder them. I wasn't there, you know? So only the people that were there can tell us completely what happened. So of course, it's possible that there is a conspiracy and that they're not a part. It's possible that there isn't a conspiracy, and all of these deaths are unrelated. Like, again, I hold all possibilities. And I try to go towards the most likely one. Mm-hm. But I'd say that to-- to say that there is something normal about a person being shot and found in a burned-out car one time, let alone two, three times-- you know, I don't want to accept that and say that that's just a likely outcome for anybody. And I should say, technically, it wasn't the outcome for Deandre Joshua. I only learned this after talking to Ashley and the others. But according to the St. Louis County Medical Examiner's Office, Joshua was not found in a burned-out car the way everyone thinks. His body was partly burned, but the car was not. This may sound like a small point, except the supposed similarity between Darren Seals' death and Deandre Joshua's death is a load-bearing pillar in the structure of the conspiracy. And it wasn't just spread word of mouth. It's been widely reported in the media as fact. Though, of course, even though it's not true, the deaths could still be connected. Do you have ideas about who might be responsible for the-- for these deaths? Other than, like, the government and the police? I understood why someone could suspect the police. I've covered a lot of protests over the years. But the cops in and around Ferguson were notably casual about violence. I saw an officer point an assault weapon mounted on a tripod at a group of demonstrators that included elderly people and small children. Before another demonstration, one that I didn't cover, one cop texted another, quote, "It's going to be a lot of fun beating the hell out of these shitheads once the sun goes down and nobody can tell us apart." He was later charged with assaulting a protester, who was actually an undercover cop. When This American Life reached out to the St. Louis County Police Department for comment, the spokesman emailed back saying that there were roughly 52 police departments in the St. Louis area, which employ about 2,700 officers, essentially saying that you can't categorize all of them the same way. And he said the officer with the assault weapon on a tripod was trying to locate an SUV that reportedly had several assault weapons in it and that the people in the vehicle were threatening to kill law enforcement. But there's a broader context to this conversation. When I taught African-American history courses, I'd often begin with a series of questions. What if I told you that a person was killed in front of hundreds of witnesses, but no one raised a finger to stop it or even report it? And what if I told you that crowd viewed the murder as entertainment and packed lunches to watch the spectacle? And what if they ritually cut body parts from the deceased to keep as souvenirs? And that this happened not dozens or hundreds of times, but thousands? Each question is like plotting a point on a probability graph. And the likelihood of all of them happening together seems vanishingly small. But all this really happened. Talking to people in Ferguson, the history of outlandish truths, like the Tuskegee experiment, in which physicians in Alabama failed to treat a group of black men infected with syphilis, essentially to see what would happen, or the FBI's counterintelligence program, which surveilled and harassed black leaders in the 1960s, none of this was ever far from the surface. How do you sift between plausible and paranoid when the past looks like this? As Ashley Yates told me, it would be ahistorical for her not to think that there's something larger at play, something coordinated. Apart from that history, though, there are much more personal reasons that some people in Ferguson suspect a conspiracy. Those people who believe someone wants to kill them-- they've been regularly getting messages from people who apparently want to kill them. Everyone I spoke with still receives death threats or some sort of hate-filled communication more than four years after Michael Brown's death. Jerome Jenkins of Cathy's Kitchen showed me a fake ticket someone mailed him offering free passage back to Africa. In 2017, Reverend Darryl Gray, who's been involved in social justice efforts in Ferguson, learned of a suspicious package left on the floor of his locked rental truck. It contained a live 6-foot-long python. There were no arrests made in the case. I also spoke with an activist named Ohun Ashe about what's been going on. She told me she's always hypervigilant these days moving around in St. Louis. She says the people threatening her are not subtle about it. I have been told that they want to slit my throat and throw me in the Mississippi River. I have read that one several times, that-- On social media? Yes. I have read on social media as well that back in the '60s, they would have just threw us in the Mississippi River by now. Ohun's a small woman, but stands out in a crowd. She wears her hair in braids that go past her shoulders and shirts with slogans like "black men smile too" and "black girls are the purest form of art." I've been followed by white vans. I have had letters that said that I was an atrocity to the city, I deserve to be dealt with, that they want to silence me for good. So when you have a list of names of people who are known, and they are dying in this mysterious way, as an activist or as a person that people deem active, you wonder, are you next? You wonder, who really is around me? You wonder, am I crazy for thinking that, why is this car parked outside at the same time every day? Or who is this new person that's on the block that I didn't recognize before? I noticed something else when I started talking to people in Ferguson again. Many of the people I met when I first went there no longer live there. Ashley Yates told me she left St. Louis partly because she needed to heal. And another activist told me she moved to Washington, DC after getting what she took to be credible threats on her life. That sense of alarm is clearly what the people making death threats are after. Whether there's an actual conspiracy or not, there are certainly people who want the activists to believe there's one. Of all the activists I spoke to about the conspiracy, there was one whose position wasn't ambivalent at all-- a rapper named Tef Poe. When I arrived in Ferguson four years ago, person after person directed me to Tef, saying he was the guy to talk to if I really wanted to understand what was going on there. In the years since Michael Brown's death, he's become a more prominent voice nationally. He's currently a fellow at Harvard University. We did a panel there together. Anyhow, his perspective on the idea of a conspiracy was a little different. The conspiracy theory, to me, is some unicorn stuff. Meaning he doesn't believe it. Bassem, the Palestinian activist who died on the bus, had formerly been Tef's roommate. And Danye Jones, who was found hanging in his backyard, was Tef's cousin. He knew Darren Seals, one of the activists shot in a car, just not through activist circles. --we never know what could happen. That soft clinking you might hear as he's talking-- Tef wears a necklace with three charms that spell out the name "Allah" in Arabic. So I can't connect what happened to Seals with what happened to Bassem. I can't connect what happened to Danye with what happened to Bassem. I have to look at each situation for what it is. And somebody like Darren wasn't an activist. He was-- I would consider him a street revolutionary. So his constituency is a lot deeper than just folks who are going to go to the next rally. We're talking about from rival rappers to people who didn't like-- don't like the fact that he survived his original shooting and so forth. And so he'd been shot prior to the time that was fatal. Yeah, and he survived. Yeah, yeah. That shooting had nothing to do with the protests or Michael Brown. It was street stuff. We live in a city where guns are everywhere. Violence is at large in our city. And I think a lot of people that seek to add a conspiracy to it aren't really living in the circumstances where they have to see the violence and interact with the violence. So they have to create a Puff the Magic Dragon theory about what happened. And is that really true, though? I mean, from the very point of, like, Ferguson, or St. Louis, or Chicago, Gary, Philadelphia, New York, any of the cities we talk about, nobody who lives in a black community is really isolated from violence. It's one of those things that can happen to anyone, anywhere. That's true. That's true. And I do agree with that. But while it does affect everyone, all of us don't have the same experience. Mm-hm. I'm talking about the reality of the stone-cold streets. And a lot of the individuals-- for example, my friend, Bassem, who I loved dearly, a brother of mine-- I helped bury him when he passed away. I know-- and I can say this because Bass is like blood to me-- we refuse to attach a conspiracy theory narrative to Bassem's death. When he passed away, people said, well, what happened? Well, what happened was, he was still in the ghetto. Like, this is the reality of the circumstances. And I'm pissed off about the fact that I keep having to bury people. And people are acting like Santa Claus is coming down here killing folks. So like, if I walked outside the studio right now, and somebody shoots me, it's going to be all over the internet. Another Ferguson activist killed, another da-da-da-da-da, avoiding the fact that I come from a family of gangbangers, avoiding the fact that prior to this, I had some enemies. And you mean enemies who are not connected to your work as an activist. As an activist, yeah, yeah. It didn't surprise me when Tef pointed out that he keeps a firearm nearby when he's back home. Missouri is an open carry state. I also asked him about the militia group who stood on the roofs with guns during the protests. I wondered what Tef thought about the idea that they might be involved in the conspiracy. He laughed at that. They had their guns, he said. But so did a lot of his friends. And that's where I'm going with this. This is not a city of sitting ducks, where, like-- like, if this was going down, like, the conspiracy aspect of this was really, truly a thing on that level, I just believe that a lot of us would be rocking out a hell of a lot different, man. Mm-hm, mm-hm. I mean, y'all saw Ferguson, man. I mean-- They don't have to send a firing squad into the apartment to kill you. Now, all they gotta do is leave you in North St. Louis to die. And that serves the same purpose. You're silenced and ostracized from the rest of the world. You're shadow banned on Twitter. And you're still there with the killers, thieves, dealers, and the rapists, and the murderers. And the odds are that you will be a victim of that same fate. I mean, for me, that is where the conspiracy comes into play here. It's not with the boogie man that's going to get me when I leave from this interview. This brings me back to something that had begun rattling around in my mind when I first started talking to people in Ferguson again. What do we actually mean by the word "conspiracy"? Need it be hatched in a dark room hazy with cigar smoke? Or can it be the slow accretion of small decisions, each of which makes life a little bit more difficult, a little bit more dangerous, and opportunities that much more scarce? The problems Tef talked about exist to some degree or another in thousands of communities across the country, most of them far from the site of protests about an unarmed black 18-year-old fatally shot by a white police officer. Conspiracy theories typically explain actions that have been taken. But what kinds of theories explain the failure to act? Those are the questions that the skeptical journalist in me raises. The numbers fluctuate. But maybe 70% of me dismisses the idea of the deaths being orchestrated by a single individual or group. But there's another part of me, the 30% part, that remembers when I first went to Ferguson and thought, I have no idea what the people on the other side of these protests are capable of. Skepticism is fundamental to journalism. But it only works if you can recognize the times when you need to be skeptical of your skepticism, too. Jelani Cobb-- he's a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine. Coming up, a guy who believes in conspiracies follows him closely and then decides to sign up. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, "Anything Can Be Anything." In this very conspiracy-minded moment in our country, where even the President of the United States is spreading conspiracy theories, like, all the time, we have stories of people who see the dots and can't help but connect the dots and then have to figure out what to do with their conclusions. We have arrived at Act Two of our program. Act Two-- The Red Menace Hits the Crimson Tide. So now, we turn to a guy who is upset about the conspiracies to tamper with the US elections in 2016, the stuff the Russians did. He was outraged about that. But he had a strange way of dealing with it. He decided, I'm going to try that myself in a big political race in 2017 and one of the reddest states in the country, Alabama. Ben Calhoun tells us what happened. I met up with Matt Osborne outside his parents' house in a place called Florence, Alabama. It's this beautiful little city in the northern part of the state. Now, this street that my folks live on-- It was on this street, Matt told me, 2017, he steps out of his parents' house. He looked one way, looked the other. Whoa. Every house up the street to the corner had a Doug Jones sign. At the time, remember, Doug Jones was a Democratic candidate for US Senate in Alabama. Matt was seeing Jones lawn signs up and down his parents' street, where usually, Matt says, people have signs for Republicans. Folks who would ordinarily have been attracted to voting for a conservative, who were willing to vote for Doug Jones, are enthusiastic about voting for Doug Jones. And that told me it was possible for him to win. Were you-- were you expecting that at all? I was floored by it, to be quite frank. I had never seen anything like that for a Democrat, not since I was a kid, not since George Wallace's last run for governor. If you're a Democrat, you know you're in trouble when the last big success story you can remember is the man who said, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." But so back to all these Jones lawn signs. Matt was excited, because Matt was a bitter and disaffected Democrat in one of the reddest parts of one of the reddest states. 2016 sent a lot of Democrats over the edge, of course. And Matt was among them. Matt obviously knew Trump would win Alabama. But he'd gotten pretty obsessed with the dirty tricks he saw online during that election. In the 2000s, he'd started writing about shady political tactics he'd spotted on the internet. He wrote about that for sites like Huff Post and Crooks and Liars. Matt actually has an investigator's background-- five years in radio intelligence with the army, after that, a few years as a private eye. Matt was onto some stuff kind of early. Like, he was talking about Twitter bots as early as 2010, writing about Cambridge Analytica two years before most of us had heard of it. So Matt was paying close attention in the 2016 election when he started seeing what he thought were shifty tactics being deployed to help Donald Trump-- accounts that look fake on Twitter and Facebook, doing things like stoking divisions between Sanders Democrats and Clinton Democrats. And like, how did you see that? You know, if you get into a rabid debate with somebody who's just, you know, Bernie, Bernie, I'll never vote for Hillary, you know, start looking at their profile. And you say, that-- that doesn't look right. This Twitter handle doesn't look right, because it's got 12 random numbers in it. So it seems like a computer-generated account. Or this person looks weird, because they've tweeted 1,000 times, but they haven't put up a profile picture. That was a lot of it. Who is this weird profile? Who are the administrators of this suspicious Facebook page? Who are the admins of this mysterious page that's got all this anti-Hillary Clinton propaganda? Click on the Admin. So I'm looking at a profile now that is striking me right away as fake. All right, it's got 25 friends, who appear to be real people. And none of them are related to each other. When you were having that experience, what was the feeling that you had? Like, outrage, anger? Was it irritation? Was it worry? Deep foreboding. Deep foreboding, deep foreboding. And the closer we got to the election, the more I felt like something was wrong. We've all heard about what was wrong now. It's confirmed-- the Russian meddling and propaganda, phony accounts designed to sow divisions among Americans and demoralize voters. Matt had had it. For him, from what I can tell, 2016 was like a tipping point of bitterness. Matt's bitterness had been piling up for years. Like, he remembers kids in grade school talking about how they were for the Confederacy, which Matt could not understand. And I'll never forget the kid next to me who was talking the most about it. When I saw him again, when I got out of the Army in 1999, and I came home, I ran into him at Walmart. And in the first 60 seconds of our conversation, he was telling me how much he hated immigrants. So I guess maybe part of my problem is that my values have always contradicted the place where I was. So imagine Matt after he left the Army with an injury. He's on partial disability, in chronic pain, searching for direction, spending a lot of time reading the internet and writing about Democratic politics. He's like a blue dot in a red ocean. Matt describes the last 10 years of his life as him being "radicalized." That was his word. And that is where Matt's head was when Alabama's 2017 Senate election suddenly burst into the center ring of American politics. We begin tonight with the Alabama Senate race, where-- Quick refresher. You'll probably remember this. This was a special election to fill the Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions, who'd left to be attorney general. On one side, the Democrat, Doug Jones, an uncle-ish looking former prosecutor, and his opponent, Republican Roy Moore, a Bible-quoting former Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. The race was not supposed to be competitive, until it was. Remember, nine women came forward to accuse Roy Moore of a combination of sexual misconduct and molestation for things he allegedly did when they were young, some underage, as young as 14. Moore denied those allegations. But there was lots of reporting, including accounts of how Moore was allegedly such a creep, he got banned from the local mall. It wasn't enough to knock Moore out of contention, though. Alabama is just so red that people were saying things like this on conservative talk radio in Birmingham. What we're getting is, Alabamians would vote for a pedophile over a liberal Democrat. In this circumstance, yes. OK. You're just saying it flat out, then. Yep, absolutely. It got uglier and uglier. As the allegations against Moore piled up, Breitbart dispatched two reporters with the mission of discrediting the women making the allegations. It turned into a morass of character attacks and aspersions, including fake news stories targeting Moore's accusers. And a disaffected, angry Matt Osborne, still stewing over 2016, wanted in super badly, which is how Matt went from despising the sleazy online tactics of 2016, utterly opposing them, to using them for his side. And the moment that tipped him from one side to the other-- it happened on the phone. September-- this was two months before the election-- Matt was talking to a DC political operative he knows. The plan was just, let's brainstorm a bunch of ideas, anything to help Doug Jones. We are talking on the phone. And it's sort of a blue sky discussion. So the two of them start throwing stuff out, from regular ideas to pretty far-out ideas, the kind that start with, what if? What if, on election day, you had events in neighboring states that might draw some people from Alabama? Like, you could advertise heavily in Alabama to draw potential Roy Moore voters out of the state on election day. So those are the kind of ideas that are getting kicked around. Right. These are just crazy ideas getting kicked around. And then, suddenly, Matt says, he's throwing out an idea that he hadn't even considered before the moment it was coming out of his mouth. He tells the person on the phone, Alabama Republicans, like both national parties, they're split, right? Internally divided. You've got a more centrist wing. And you've got a more radical wing. So what if, Matt hypothesized, what if we could pose as Republicans online with fake identities, and we could do things to aggravate that divide, make Alabama Republicans feel icky about each other, and try to suppress Republican votes? In other words, Matt proposed a conspiracy-- the kind of conspiracy Russians are accused of running in 2016, right? Put out misinformation and disinformation under phony identities to stoke divisions among your opponents. You've probably heard of these referred to as false flag operations. And that's the one that people want to know about. Like, why don't you write that up and share it with me? So I wrote a little paper. Matt then transformed his rough idea into a detailed plan. He drafted a memo, one this operative could take to Democratic donors to see if anyone might fund it. Matt's idea to divide Alabama Republicans was to divide the religious right Republicans from the more moderate Republicans. Roy Moore had always been closely tied to the extra-religious, conservative wing of his party. In fact, his political operation depended heavily on Alabama's extensive network of Baptist pastors. That pastor network is the backbone of his get-out-the-vote machine. On Wednesday nights, Sundays, that's when the Roy Moore pastors push their flock to go vote for Roy Moore. That's how it works down here. Baptists, as Matt wrote, are the largest denomination in the state, over 40% of the population. But-- Although Baptists are the largest single denomination in Alabama, they are by no means a majority, all right? So what they are is a very vocal minority. And, Matt wrote in his memo, the wedge issue to split the Baptists from the more moderate Republicans-- prohibition. I know. You're like, prohibition? Against alcohol? Didn't we settle that like 100 years ago? But hang on, because Alabama actually has a long history of restrictive alcohol laws. Like, of the 30 counties that make up the northern half of Alabama, 19 counties are dry. Roy Moore's Baptist allies have been all, heck yeah, keep it that way. Get behind me, Satan, to which mainstream Republicans have responded, um, no. Matt says, suburban and business-wing-type Republicans have often favored looser alcohol laws. The business wing of the Republican Party in Alabama was never enthusiastic about Roy Moore in the first place, all right? If you can get the sort of business-wing Republicans, if you can get the suburban Republican who votes Republican, but he likes to drink his beer on Saturdays while he's watching the football game-- if you can get him to identify Roy Moore with prohibition and moralistic screed-type activity, then they will be less likely to vote for him. What we want is for people to say, gosh, Roy Moore is nuts. Roy Moore's followers are nuts, you know? These people who are in my party-- you know, I share a party with them, but they're nuts. There's one more thing to just feel a little less excited about. Exactly. And exactly what the Russians purportedly did to Democrats in 2016-- stoke their internal divisions to make them feel less motivated. Matt's version of that was to create fake groups on social media. One would be named The Southern Caller. The other, Dry Alabama. They'd act like prohibitionist cultural conservatives, enthusiastic about Roy Moore, and hope that they could bum out mainstream Republicans. You can mirror the activity of 2016 in this sense. All the Russian activity, you can mirror it if you get Republicans arguing with each other. The more they argue with each other, and the more Republicans see other Republicans arguing with each other, the less likely they are to vote. When you pitched the idea of Dry Alabama, was there any part of you that had any apprehensions about sort of deploying that kind of strategy? You know, by that time, I had already made up my mind. Like, I'm ready to pull out all the stops. I had made up my mind already that I was willing to create content under a false flag, if you will. I was willing to trick Republicans into not voting. That was fine with me. Matt says, when he sent off his memo, he wasn't sure if people would want to fund his plan. He was, after all, in the party that had been waving around Michelle Obama's slogan-- when they go low, we go high-- and using that to attack Republicans. And for a while, Matt heard nothing-- for weeks-- so long that he figured no one wanted to fund his dirty tricks. I was sitting in my living room. What was I watching? I don't remember. I was watching TV. And my phone rang. And I'm told, hey, we got money. It was the Democratic operative in DC. "We got money" meant some donors had decided to fund Matt's proposal. Matt's reaction? Bam. No kidding. This is for real? Oh, wow. This is real. This is-- this is happening. OK, cool. The donors put up $100,000. Part of that would pay for a team of people to create these fake conservative groups. The rest of the money, most of it, would pay for ads on Facebook to shove what they made into the social media feeds of Alabama Republicans. At this point, there were only 17 days left before the election. So they had to go fast. Work started immediately-- bogus email addresses, fake logos. The team doing this, I should say-- sort of fascinatingly tiny-- just two people in DC and then Matt in Alabama. One of the people in DC, Matt says, was sort of doing oversight, not even super involved. The other person in DC created tweets and memes. Matt did the Facebook posts and the videos. The whole group was so small. It kind of makes you realize, you don't need a building full of people to do this kind of thing. It can be a conspiracy of just two or three. Matt, as an Alabama native, was kind of the person who the group turned to make the con seem authentic. Hey, Matt, how would people say this in Alabama? How would they say that? Hey, Matt, how do you spell "barbecue" in Alabama? What-- we want to come across as authentic. I said, BBQ, or spell it out, barbecue with a C, right? Alabamian instead of Alabaman, that sort of thing. There were some things that were deemed too much, even by dirty tactic standards. Matt pointed out that something that would inevitably get a ton of engagement would be an AR-15 giveaway. The funder, it turned out, was not OK with a gun giveaway, real or fake. But even if they weren't going to give away an AR-15, there was a lot of room for imagination. Like, Matt recruited a woman he knew. I will just-- for our purposes today, I will call her Sharon. Matt hired Sharon to do a voiceover on a video that he made for Dry Alabama. She's wonderful. She's as Alabama as they come. She has the perfect accent, right? The kind of middle Alabama, kind of rapid-clip accent with all the right vowel inflections. So at the next tailgate party, instead of drinking and succumbing to evil temptation, try thing amazing, Bama-style, alcohol-free cocktail. Try this moral take on a sinful beverage, a righteous mint julep. Place mint leaves in an old-fashioned glass. Pour in lemon juice and sugar. And mix with a spoon until the sugar's completely dissolved. This video, just to say, does have the genuine lo-fi feel of those try-this-recipe videos that you see online all the time. Fill the cup with ice and pour sparkling water over the top. Garnish with a sprig of mint. And you've got some smooth as fine cotton. Pledge your support for a Dry Alabama today. And join our crusade for a Dry Alabama. At one point, talking about all this, Matt said, some of this feels new. But in his mind, it's actually not, really. If you remember, Matt did radio intelligence in the Army. He told me, one tactic they teach you is something called spoofing. You find the enemy's radio frequency. And then you mimic the voice of the people on it. And you give out bad information. Then, he read a tweet from Dry Alabama. "Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." That's from First Peter, Matt told me. Doug Jones comes from behind. And now, CNN projects, he will be the next Senator-- first time in 25 years that a Democrat-- More than 1.3 million people voted in the election. Doug Jones defeated Roy Moore by just 22,000 votes. Altogether, $51 million was spent on the race, which unleashed a hurricane of TV ads, armies of canvassers, meaning it's just impossible to gauge what effect Matt's thing had. Matt's team considered the project a success, though. On a wrap-up call, he was told, with just $100,000, the team's content was seen 4.6 million times, their videos watched hundreds of thousands of times. Everybody was happy with those numbers. But people also felt like the whole thing was a success in the sense that they'd pulled off the fakery without getting caught. That was part of what they were testing. I'm just going to confess here that I'm somebody who's troubled by the culture of our politics right now. I believe people should feel a societal pressure to win with ideas and inspiration and that playing dirty should be looked down on, because playing dirty, I think, encourages suspicion and cynicism. And that's bad for everybody. Maybe because of that, when I went to see Matt, I half thought that because he spent so much time outraged about this kind of deceptive and scuzzy politics, that maybe, after having some time to think it over, he'd end up with some kind of buyer's remorse. Like, I drank so much. What did I say? Doesn't it feel like, especially in-- you know, during the presidency of Donald Trump, that the norms are only the norms if most people adhere to them, you know? Like-- Well, what is the norm here? The norm here is that Democrats are supposed to go high and get kicked in the knees. That's the norm. The norm is that Republicans play dirty and win. Is that the norm that we're supposed to preserve? Because if that's the norm that we're supposed to preserve, let that norm die, I say. Burn it down. Burn it to the ground. So the core of what I hear you saying is that you don't think that it's something that you can combat by example and just say, we're going to refuse to win that way. Oh, look at me. I have clean hands and clean clothes, and I'm standing above you in a shining light, and I don't have any power. I can't actually make any changes. But don't I look good? And isn't that the important thing? It sounds so harsh when you put it that way. I'm not about to referee Matt's idea that Republicans play dirtier. What I do think is important is whether these tactics will continue to spread. Over the last few months, there's been excellent reporting about a number of digital strategies tried out by Democrats in this Alabama race in addition to Matt's. In one, Democrats created fake Russian bots to make it look like Russians were helping Roy Moore. In another, a company microtargeted voters on social media, sent them messages it claims drove up Democratic turnout by 4% and drove down Republican turnout by over 2%. Senator Doug Jones, I should say, has said he disapproves, knew nothing about this stuff. He's called for an investigation. From talking to Democratic fundraisers, I can tell you for sure, there's plenty of donors who don't want any part of this kind of thing. But there's definitely a portion, I hear, who say, yeah, it's time. They're ready to throw money at stuff like this. Matt says, he thinks, when it comes to these kind of dirty tactics, the situation is going to have to get worse before it gets better, because in our gridlocked system, you won't get regulations against this stuff until both parties are fed up with it, which, that sounds like a real bummer to me. But I have to admit, there's a logic to that. For his part, Matt's not going to stop, at least if someone will pay for him to keep doing things like this. If you want to see the memo that led to his misinformation campaign, you can go read it yourself these days. Matt's posted it on his LinkedIn profile. He wants to get hired to do more stuff just like this. Ben Calhoun is one of the producers of our show. Our program was produced today by Dana Chivvis. The people who put a show together includes Elna Baker, Ben Calhoun, Zoe Chace, Sean Cole, Aviva DeKornfeld, Jarrett Floyd, Damien Graef, Seth Lind, Lina Misitzis, Katherine Rae Mondo, Nadia Reiman, Alissa Ship, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, and Diane Wu. Our managing editor is David Kestenbaum. Special thanks today to Eddie Hedge, Kenneth Anderson, Steve Kolowich, Jesse Walker, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Melissa Ryan, Joe Stokes, Brian McCabe, Sarah Koenig, Joseph Parent, Peter Mondo, Whitney Phillips, the St. Louis County Police Department, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, the St. Louis County Medical Examiner's Office, John Larson at St. Louis Public Radio, and Missouri State Representative Maria Chappelle-Nadal. Our website, thisamericanlife.org, where you can listen to our archive of over 600 episodes for absolutely free. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Special thanks as always to our program's cofounder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, he bought an obedience book for his dog. I don't think he knows how to use it. He just basically put the book on the ground next to her and told her-- There you go. You read that, girl. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
A quick warning-- there are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. David, so, what problem was this supposed to solve? The teachers were trying to get the kids to stop tattling. And why was that so important? Because it's a pre-K classroom, and it's constant there. Right. I should say, by the way, that you are David Kestenbaum. You are one of our producers, our managing editor right now. And this classroom is your kid's classroom, right? Yeah. Both of them went there. I still don't get-- it seems like kids tattling on each other is just a fact of pre-K. It is, but you've got 20-something kids. I mean, you know, it's hard being one parent with two kids doing it. Imagine you're in a classroom with, like, 20 kids. And if they bring it to you as a teacher, all these little injustices, you've got to get involved in all these cases, you know? Right. And it's just a time suck. Yeah, it's just a time suck. And so one of the teachers had this great idea. She took a tissue box, hung it on the wall, and then took this plastic phone receiver and hung it in it and said something like, that's the tattle-phone. Tell it to the phone. And I thought it was just brilliant. And I just want to say, this is a place that loves kids. I would go to pick up my son Max, and I would have to wait because he would want to hug every single teacher. And I would go to get Auggie, our older kid, and he would be like, I need five minutes, I'm in the middle of something. Like-- They just want to stay longer. I mean, I get choked up thinking about this place. And I love the idea of the tattle-phone, just as a vessel for all the little injustices that go on every day. And I wanted to hear what was said into it-- like, these little three year olds, four year olds talking into this plastic phone. OK. And I should say, this is the part of the story I know very well what happens next. We asked if we could put a phone in the classroom that would record the tattles. The daycare was fine with that. I reached out to the parents. I didn't know how they were going to feel about us recording their kids at, like, the worst moment of the day. But every single one of them said yes. Some of them said please, yes, do this. So we got a phone. It was this chunky red phone, kind of like 1980s style, we had it set up to record. And we needed an outgoing message for it. And that is where I stepped in. Hey there, you've reached the tattle phone. OK, tell me what happened after the beep. Tell me the whole story. I really hope to make some inroads in that four-year-old market. I really hope that helps our ratings. So what we're going to do now, David, is that you're going to explain what you heard on those recordings on the tattle-phone. And when you're done, I'm going to come back, and I'll explain what today's show is about. OK. So I brought the phone into class, and I set it up. And the kids started to use it immediately and with great enthusiasm. Eli told me a lie. Seamus wasn't sharing with me, and I don't like it, and I'm very upset. Nathan farted in my face, and I said, yuck, Nathan. Catch that one? Nathan farted in my face, and I said, yuck, Nathan. But the real crime? And he didn't say excuse me. I think there was enormous excitement just having a phone in the class. It was larger than they'd probably ever seen in their lives-- bright red with buttons on it. It was an old touch-tone phone. Everyone wanted to use it, even if they didn't have a tattle. Kids sang a song into it. One tried to order a pizza. Someone said, hi mom, please pick me up early. Hi, Dad. I love you. Bye. Uh, our baby turned into a ducky, and I don't know how it turn into a ducky. And that's why her turned into a ducky and turned back to a baby. Uh-- I'm sorry, I need to hang up on you for one second. Several calls later, conscience heavy, that kid calls back. I'm sorry I had to hang up on you. I'm just sorry. The tattle-phone was like a magic portal into one preschool classroom in America, which is kind of incredible. Like most parents I'll ask my kids, what happened in school today, and I get nothing. School is like this black box-- you drop them off, pick them up, and you have no idea what happens in between. But now I had this phone. It was set up so it sent me the messages as they happened. It was funny listening to them from my desk. The portal into this classroom would open for a second, I get this little report from a kid, hear a little sound of the room, and then it would close-- sometimes for a while. Then the portal would open, I'd hear something, and then silence again. There were never any tattles between 1 and 3 o'clock, because that was nap time. Then they'd start again, these little dramas. Ramon is not listening to my teacher, Mr. Evans, but he's my favorite teacher. And I know-- and I know he's mad at me, but I don't want him to be. So I'm trying my best to listen. My friend Simone said "no" at me. "My friend Simone." It's always their friends who are bugging them. My friend Jack was in my face when I was waiting to go to an area. And that made me really upset. (SINGING) Eli hit me. Eli hit me. Um, when I'm playing family with Simone, [INAUDIBLE] keeping me awake while I'm trying to sleep, pretend sleep. Can I just say, I'm not sure that one is actionable. You're pretending to sleep and complaining that someone is waking you up? I don't know. People are not sharing the tattle-phone. How much of their day is about, like, justice? Oh! I couldn't put a percentage on it. But I could say the majority of the day. [LAUGHS] This is Kathleen Jones, the lead teacher in the class. It is everything-- and rules. They live by rules. They can sit down to play a game, and that whole playtime will be nothing but arguing about the rules. And then there's no playtime left, and they feel good about it. It's funny. Like, they can't make breakfast for themselves, they can't get dressed, they can barely talk, and they're just full of "that's not fair." But they're dynamos. Every one of them has something that-- It's awesome. Yes, exactly. It's awesome. They're wonderful. There's actual scientific research on this. Kids know when something's unfair, some when they're just 12 months old. My kids weren't even walking then. And I know this is kind of obvious, but so many of the conflicts in this world come down to some version of what's going on in this classroom-- what's fair, how do you divide up something that there's a limited quantity of. You know magnet tiles? We only have one acrylic one that's yellowish gold. That is it. That is the prize in the class. Whoever gets that is like, I'm the king or the queen and ha-ha. The gold-- that's what they call it, the gold. I sometimes think that the main usefulness of numbers for my son Max, the whole reason he knows how to count, is score-keeping-- how many of something he has and how many his brother has. It's a weighing of the scales of justice, no matter how tiny. So did it work for you? Like, did they stop coming to you with their complaints? Yes, it did. It does work. Yes, that phone holds a lot of power. It gave the teachers the break they were looking for. I wanted to see if the kids thought it worked, whether the tattle-phone helped them deal with stuff. So the other weekend I interviewed a bunch of them-- which, I have to say, these were some of the weirder interviews I've done in my professional life. Bob Woodward, I know this isn't right, but I had to pay one interviewee a piece of gum. Another kid, Nicky, insisted on performing magic tricks before granting an interview. I did not have high expectations. And then if I do this-- Wait, that worked really well. Wait, that was actually amazing. I know. That was good. Yeah. Nicky then refused to talk about the phone at all. But others clearly used it a lot. You have to tell the tattle-phone the whole story, what happened. That's Gabriel. This is Deenia. Tell me the whole story. That's all I can remember. One girl's parents told me that they were on vacation staying at a hotel, which of course had a landline phone. And their daughter, Simone, said, look, a tattle-phone, as if there was some sort of national tattle-phone network, staffed around the clock by government workers entering everything into a database. My friend's kid Sean, who just turned 5 and who I adore, was the only one who could remember a tattle-worthy event from school in any detail. He whispered it to me. He was clearly kind of excited about this. His friend had kicked him. (WHISPERING) He kicked me in the penis. (WHISPERING) He what? (WHISPERING) Kicked me in the penis. (WHISPERING) He kicked you in the penis? Did you tell the tattle-phone? (WHISPERING) That time, we didn't have any tattle-phone. (WHISPERING) Oh, you didn't have the tattle-phone? (WHISPERING) No. (WHISPERING) If you had the tattle-phone, would you have told it? Yeah? OK. It sounds like it might have been an accident. Sean stood up and acted out the whole thing in slow motion for me. Slow motion. Like it was a scene from an action movie. His friend was trying to kick the ceiling. So he went like, [ACTION NOISES]. They should have a security camera in the classroom. But they don't. They don't? Just the tattle-phone? Mm-hmm. A bunch of kids told me they felt good after talking to the tattle-phone, though the why it made them feel better, it took all my interviewing skills. This is Gabriel. How did you like having the tattle-phone in the classroom? Good. How did it feel after you said something to the tattle-phone? Good. How come you felt good? Uh, because-- well, I felt good because I told on the person. One girl told me talking to the tattle-phone felt like eating ice cream. It's nice to think that just getting something off your chest can solve a problem, that if you just release the fact of the injustice into the world you feel better. And sure, I think that can be true. But we had the phone in class for a month, and I did notice toward the end, we got fewer messages. They came in regularly, but not with the same energy. It's possible the novelty was wearing off. I think there's something else going on as well. Before we put the phone in the class, I had it set up in my house, just to make sure it was working. My kids used it a couple of times. And then our younger son Max was complaining that his brother, Auggie, who's a year older, had pinched him. Tell it to the tattle-phone, I said. It's not working, he told me. I picked the phone up worried that there was some technical glitch. But it was fine. It's working, Max. No, he said, it's not. It did not do anything. It doesn't even work to me. It doesn't even do anything. It listened to your tattle. No, it doesn't. What do you mean? It listened. It didn't. It didn't stop Auggie pinching me. It didn't stop Auggie pinching me. I know, Max. I know. Sometimes you want more than just to speak. You want actual justice. Thank you, David. You're welcome. And that brings us to-- like, what are we, 12 minutes into the program-- it brings us to what we are doing today on our show. Today we have people, some of them young, some of them old, wanting justice, feeling a sense of injustice, on things as big as the constitutional foundation of our entire country and things as small as the question of whether a ball is in or out. And in all those cases, people young and old not trusting the system to deliver justice. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. Stay with us. Act One, Hoop Reams. The journalist Michael Lewis, who wrote Moneyball and The Big Short and lots of other books and who contributes to our program now and then, he was looking around at what's going on in America these days. And he noticed that one way you can describe the current moment that we're all living through is that Americans don't trust the refs-- in all walks of life. They don't trust their impartiality. I'm talking about police, Supreme Court justices, journalists, the people who regulate the banks and Wall Street and student loans, the people setting medical costs, judges. So many people today feel the system is rigged. I mean, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump both ran on that. So many people feel that the figures of authority, charged with enforcing rules impartially, keeping everybody on a level playing field, that they're failing at their jobs. It's not fair. Michael Lewis has not published this reporting that he's been doing on this in a new book. He's decided to make it into a podcast. They launched this week. It's called Against The Rules. And Michael has adapted a version of their very first episode for us to play for you right now. The first episode is about people not trusting the refs in the most literal sense of that. It's about basketball referees. Here's Michael Lewis. For me, this story really begins with my 11-year-old son, Walker. He plays on a basketball team run by a Japanese Buddhist temple. My son isn't a Buddhist, though most of the time he could pass for one. He has no conflict with his teachers or his classmates or his Japanese Buddhist teammates. I wouldn't say his mind is exactly pure, but usually it's calm. The exception is when he deals with refs. Even in what amounts to a Buddhist basketball game, anytime a ref blows the whistle on him, he throws up his arms in astonishment. Then he jumps up and down with his little fists balled up and his mouth clenched tight, so everyone knows just how much injustice he's suffering. Then he marches off with a scowl. And he doesn't get over it. After a game this season, he gets into the car and starts bitching and moaning all over again. How did it make you feel when the ref made those calls? Very mad. Do you feel any better now? No. Tell me how it feels. It feels like someone keeps poking you in the back of the shoulder and then saying, foul, foul, foul, foul. Have you ever fouled out in your career? No. Did you know that you were at risk of fouling out? Yes, but I also knew if I did, it would be unfair because I knew that he was calling the stupidest fouls. He'll look back and say, oh, I was being a huge-- asshole. Klay with the steal. Klay in a footrace. Cousins trying to catch him. He can't! Klay with a very deep three. The thing is, I know why my son does what he does. He thinks he's Klay Thompson, the all-star shooting guard of the Golden State Warriors. They reset back to Thompson. Three-pointer-- bang. When Klay hits a three, Klay pounds his chest and points to the sky. And so when Walker Lewis hits a three, he too pounds his chest and points to the sky. And I think we have a technical foul as well. On Klay-- very unusual. When Klay is called for a foul, he scowls and throws up his arms in astonishment, and sometimes even says something to the ref that gets him slapped with a technical foul. He only had one during the entire regular season. And Klay's the famously most laid back all-star in the entire National Basketball Association. Something has happened in the relationship between referees and players over the last, I guess, year or two. That's Ramona Shelburne. She's covered the NBA for the last decade for ESPN. It's been, quite frankly, ugly this year. One of the Warriors head-butted a ref. Another chucked his disgusting mouth guard off a ref's chest. And Curry has been thrown out of the game. And some of the stuff I've seen, I mean, when Draymond Green is getting fined for calling Lauren Holtkamp a-- can we cuss on your podcast? I think we already have. You know, a fucking bitch-- like, when he is saying that to a female referee, man, that's next level. And I haven't seen that before this season. It's the stars now who are really pushing the issue, right? It's Kevin Durant getting thrown out of games. It's Steph Curry getting thrown out. And the Golden State Warriors have completely unraveled. Last year, bad behavior got various Golden State Warriors tossed out of 10 different basketball games. Kevin Durant, their best player, got thrown out of five-- four more than he'd been thrown out of his entire career up to that point. The men who coach the stars aren't much better. Even Steve Kerr, the Warriors' famously decent, civic-minded coach-- I can snap. I can completely lose it. If you back away from the Golden State Warriors, I mean, they're exemplars of the way people should behave. Especially your stars, they're, like, impeccably behaved people. I'm so pleased to have my son emulating your players. The only time they have problems really is with referees. Yeah. I can't imagine you in your life have another relationship like you have with referees. No, you're right. You're right. I would never say the things that I do to referees to a person in normal life. It happens two or three times a year. I've been caught on camera, you know, MF-ing a ref. And, you know, my daughter will send me a text, like Dad, what are you doing? It's all over Twitter. I can read your lips. This is embarrass-- and I'm embarrassed. So why is that? It's a sense of right or wrong. You know, I feel like there's this personal offense, like something unfair is happening. The players get fined if they talk about the refs, so we won't be talking to them. But it's not just them or their coaches or my son who are treating refs in ways they'd never treat an ordinary person. It's the fans in every arena who spend meaningful amounts of their time looking for the refs' mistakes on the JumboTron. It's the cable sports channels playing and replaying the refs' mistakes so their viewers can tweet and retweet about them. It's this entire infrastructure, seemingly built to focus attention on whatever mistakes the refs make for the sole purpose of generating outrage. (CHANTING) Ref, you suck! Ref, you suck! Ref, you suck! Ref, you suck! If there's one thing that unites Americans just now, it's their belief that the refs suck-- which is weird, because they almost certainly suck less than ever before. Before you hate me for saying that, give me a moment to show why. So we're walking across a parking lot in Secaucus, New Jersey. And there are chain hotels and motels in someone's idea of a mall. And we're surrounded on all sides by freeways. It's like what people think about when they tell jokes about New Jersey. And we're approaching a four-story, rectangular, otherwise nondescript concrete building. There's a discreet little sign here that says NBA and shows a logo with a basketball player. Inside, a recent concession to the world we live in-- the Replay Center, a place where basketball referees review the calls made by other basketball referees in real time, to minimize referee error. The Replay Center was built to persuade people that life was fair. And the door is locked. Someone eventually unlocks the door and leads me down a hall filled with a lot of old basketball stuff-- jerseys and bobbleheads and basketballs and posters of Michael Jordan. The Replay Center was the ultimate man cave-- Ultimate man cave, right? It's also the latest weapon in the battle for fairness. So this place, just on first view, is amazing. It really is. It's wall-to-wall screens, 110 of them. What's on them is whatever is captured by all the cameras in 29 NBA arenas across the country. They may have a screen somewhere with scores on it, but I didn't see it. And they're all muted. What you hear is referees staring at basketball games. What you see is nothing but angles on professional basketball courts. Nobody's ever walked in here and walked out and said, this place sucks. That's Joe Borgia, who's run the center since 2014. Before he volunteered for Secaucus duty, he refereed NBA games. His father was an NBA ref before him. With a break in the late '60s, a Borgia has been reffing professional basketball games since 1946. If you went back to your dad at the beginning of his career and said, this is what it's going to look like, what do you think he'd have said? If I told him we would have replay, he'd turn over in his grave, forget about a replay center. Is that right? Oh, absolutely. You see, the refs used to insist on their authority. And everyone agreed that there was no better way to ensure the fairness of the game than to let the ref play god. The Replay Center is an admission that the ref is not god, that he makes mistakes. I think the mention of replay, none of us liked it when we first heard it. It's a necessary evil. It's necessary. You have to have it today. Everything is taped now. Everyone pays more attention to the referees' mistakes. So the NBA has to as well. Now, when a ref thinks he might have screwed up some call or didn't get a good look at the action-- Watch the referee on the bottom of the screen. --he twirls his fingers in the air. There's your signal. That's the signal to the ref in the Replay Center, who goes to work, reviewing the tape, looking for the best angle to figure out what actually happened. Sure, Dick. We're going to give you two good angles, all right? That's the first one. The other one's going to give you a better look. The refs here sit dressed in black staring at screens, waiting for a signal from somewhere in America. The end of games is when they get most involved, because that's when fans and coaches and players are most likely to accuse some ref of having made the mistake that changed the outcome. Of course, a mistake at the beginning has just as much effect on a game as a mistake at the end, but the end is what people notice and get outraged about. So the justice at the end of the game must be more exact than it is at the beginning. These Replay Center refs have video technicians with them, who can freeze a moment on screen, then zoom out or zoom in so that the entire screen contains only a player's fingertips or his toes. Here you just scroll through tiny slivers of the game, not the game itself. The sliver is where injustices might occur. I mean, goodness gracious, if you don't have slow motion in here or freeze frame, it's very difficult. Of course, in slow motion, you can see things that the naked eye misses. Magicians sometimes perform during halftimes of the NBA games. When Joe Borgia slows it down, he can see how they do their tricks. It's kind of the same thing with the players. Exactly. I can go 1/60 of a second at a time. You're gonna pick a lot of little things up. So what these players have gotten good at is creating optical illusions. And then-- Of course. The sort of things that a magician does. Well, isn't flopping an optical illusion? Flopping is what they call it when a player pretends to have been knocked over by another player. Tricking the refs into making bad calls is now considered a skill. For possible flagrant? There's blood on the screens. Kevin Love's front tooth got knocked in. Love plays for the Cleveland Cavaliers. And the question is, did the guy who popped him in the mouth do it intentionally? We're looking for the unnatural. Did he throw his elbow out? The refs need to decide if the violence was not just excessive but unsportsmanlike, which sounds archaic, because we've sort of lost the concept. Did he lead-- But the foul was on Kevin Love. I thought he was outside-- Yeah, but he was moved. He was moved. He was late. Come on, you gotta be quick on these. I'm still stuck on the blood coming out of his mouth. Yeah, I know. It's ugly. The players all stand around scratching themselves while the refs put on headsets and talk to the Replay Center. So the blood doesn't sway the decision? Listen, there's a lot of contact. A lot of it's accidental. That was accidental. The only thing stopping the Replay Center from checking every decision is that it slows the game down. Here in Secaucus, they're still trying to figure out how they might talk to the refs as they run up and down the court. Because if they could do that, they could just fix every call on the fly. The special forces, we found that we actually use a chip over the molar that worked off the vibration of the bone. Believe it or not, we did. We got a handful of G League referees molded, and we tested that. To wear a chip over their molar? But it wasn't good enough, because they didn't know where the voice was coming from. It was just a voice in their heads? They didn't know where it was. Was that a coach talking to me? It's insane. The time and money now being spent to ensure the fairness of what, after all, is just a basketball game-- a bajillion miles of fiber optic cable connect this room directly to the NBA arenas around the country, all for two calls a game. At two calls a game-- $15 million to build this room to get two calls during the game. But you gotta do it. You gotta do it. Can I just pause here a moment, just to consider what the NBA has done in the past few years to improve the calls? For example, they've brought in serious managers to hire and train the refs. Joe Borgia calls his boss the general, because she actually was a general and an Air Force pilot. Her name is Michelle Johnson, and before she supervised NBA refs, she ran the Air Force Academy. It sounds like overkill to use a general to make sure basketball games are well reffed. But the NBA thought it needed overkill. So adjust your mic a little bit. Or at least Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner did. If people don't believe that the league office is unbiased and that the officials are unbiased, you're going to have a problem regardless of the accuracy of the calls. People watching at home are scrutinizing every call on their phones and their TVs. They had just enough information to be suspicious of the league. There's 18 cameras covering every game, that there's 18,000 people watching games with sophisticated smartphones that have high definition audio and video. We started to get into trouble. Silver took over in 2014 and also hired Joe Borgia to run the Replay Center. Since then, he's taken a ridiculous amount of grief, just for trying to improve the justice on a basketball court. So here's what else Silver's done. He's broadened the pool of people from which refs are selected. They used to be mostly white men, mostly from the same background. At one point, four NBA refs came from the same high school. He's hired more black refs and female refs. He's insisted that referees be physically fit so they can get into position to see all the plays. While everyone else in America is getting fatter, the refs are getting buff. They're also now getting new feedback on all their bad calls. Silver decided to publish the mistakes made by every ref in the last two minutes of every game so everyone could see them. He gives the teams and the refs a private document listing every refereeing mistake. All this new data on refs means that we and they know all sorts of strange things about their minds. For instance, we now know that their calls have tended to favor whichever team is losing. Their calls also favor the home team. Some large part of home court advantage is just the refs. The analytics department of the Houston Rockets has even done a study that shows that the home team that gets the best calls is the Utah Jazz. Why Utah? Who knows? But you can be sure that someone will figure that out. There's now basically a small army of geeks analyzing all this new data. Look, I don't really like writing papers about sports. I'd prefer to write about the economy. That's Justin Wolfers, a behavioral economist at the University of Michigan, and the co-author of a paper about NBA refs. But the thing is, this is a domain where the NBA referees have tremendous incentives not to make the wrong call. Every error they make is tracked. Those errors determine whether they get more games. Those games determine how much they get paid. This is arguably the most analyzed workforce in the country. Basketball referees are now picked apart in ways that not long ago would have seemed preposterous-- not just for the fairness of their calls but for their unconscious behavior. Wolfers took data from over a decade of NBA basketball games, more than 250,000 of them. Then he set out to look for evidence of the refs' racial bias. The question here isn't whether people are anti-black or anti-white but whether there's an in-group bias. So if a predominately black team is playing and the refereeing crew is predominantly white, are there more fouls called against them than on nights when the same team is playing with a predominantly black refereeing crew? And it turns out, the answer is yes. Wolfers wrote his paper back in 2007, before this new age of referee transparency. Well, it was a bit of a lesson for me. You can probably tell by my accent, Michael, I'm an Australian. You know, I thought it was an interesting piece of social science. It turned out The New York Times put it on the front page. And the NBA wasn't happy. The commissioner at the time attacked the study and embarrassed the league by trying and failing to refute its findings. This morning we'll hear from the NBA commissioner, David Stern. Our referees are the most reviewed, most ranked, and most rated. And that's why we take exception to what The Times did here. That's Stern on NPR in 2007. The result of all this coverage, every single referee was made aware of his unconscious bias. When the dust settled, Justin Wolfers was curious to know if his paper had had any effect. He made another study of referees after the controversy he'd created. And guess what. The most recent study that we did seems to suggest that that form of racial bias has gone away. For a while anyway. He has no idea why. Maybe simply making the refs aware of the problem was enough to correct it. By the way, the NBA disputes this study too. But in the end, this became a case study-- not in ref ineptitude but in ref reform. NBA refs have now achieved what police forces can only dream of, though the refs have no choice. The world's now too good at seeing their mistakes. Look, there's no way any basketball referee is going to be perfect. But there's also no way these refs are anything but more accurate than they've ever been. I mean, even home court advantage means less than it used to. And yet these refs are treated as if they're trying to rig the games. (CHANTING) Ref, you suck! Ref, you suck! Ref, you suck! Ref, you suck! Ref, you suck! The sound of those 18,000 people screaming at you or booing you, does it sound any different than it sounded when you started? Yeah. There's a little more anger involved. And, you know, it used to be, sort of, of the garden variety. You're terrible, you suck, any of those kinds of terms. That's Monty McCutchen, who started reffing in 1993, and so got to see firsthand the effect that the arrival of the internet has had on referees. A few years back, twitter exploded in game five of the Miami Heat and Oklahoma City Thunder finals from years ago. One of the players hit a three point shot. McCutchen was giving the signal for three and running to beat the players back to the other end of the court when he realized he had lost his balance. Falling for a referee, it doesn't get much more embarrassing than that. It's bad. People are on you pretty good, you know. And I'm trying to hold it up, and Erik was on the sideline. And he sees me fall. Erik is Erik Spoelstra, the Miami Heat coach. And he sort of just stood onto the floor and braced me. And our arms sort of interlocked as he braced me, righted me. I yell out, thanks, as I go on by, and I run on down to the baseline. After the game, Twitter exploded that the NBA is rigged. If you don't believe that watch Monty McCutchen give a high five to Erik Spoelstra after this three. And the reality of that was just so far and away wrong up against this real human moment of just a reactionary thing that a good person does for another good person. You see someone falling, you help them not fall. He says that when he started out reffing, no one would have even noticed. And if they did, it wouldn't have mattered. That's changed. Mistakes get made as NBA referees. And they're just mistakes. But they often get interpreted in this wider scheme of thought process that a lot of our cultures is dealing with right now, which is, there must be a fix in. There must be a reason for this. Do you think the world is looking for a fix more now than it was when you started? I think that the t-shirt I saw recently has merit-- "I'm not saying it's your fault. I'm saying I'm blaming you." You feel abused. Yeah. Now, you know, people do their research. Things are out there on the internet. They know your record with their team. There's all these sites on all these different-- Do they know personal things about you? Oh, sure. Of course, some death threats are made from time to time in playoff series, and you'll get security all the way to both the hotel and then the hotel the next morning out to the airport. That's a-- You have security to the hotel? Not every night, but when those threats are a known factor-- it has happened in my career-- security to your car is mandatory every night. And at some point you feel this question rising up in you. In me it rose up while I was talking to Ramona Shelburne, the ESPN reporter. Why would anybody want to be a ref? Seriously. I wonder that too, man. I just-- you know, they're not allowed to say anything. They're not allowed to explain themselves. They're not allowed to defend themselves. Look, obviously they get paid. They start at 150 grand a year. And if they're great at their job and work extra games, they can make as much as 500. But there are lots of ways to get paid without spending half your life in hotel rooms and the other half being insulted by arenas filled with crazy people. Do you think the refereeing has gotten worse or better? I actually think it's gotten better. Of course it's gotten better. How could it not have? The mystery is why the stars and the coaches and the fans act as if it's gotten worse. Sitting in the NBA replay center in Secaucus, New Jersey, I get a hunch about that. After I see all these people on all these TV screens jumping around and hollering at refs, the ruckus appears to be confined to Cleveland. But in here, it feels like the entire universe is disturbed. There's a reason for this. LeBron James is upset. See? He's arguing. There he goes. LeBron James is going from ref to ref. He seems to know which refs to argue with. Yeah, they're talking about goaltending. So they're talking about it, they're talking about. I think they might change. So James is-- James and the other guy had the best angle. Do you think that LeBron James has any effect doing that? Um-- The ref in Cleveland is not twirling his finger. There's no signal to us to do anything in the Replay Center. LeBron's drama, strictly speaking, is pointless. It's strange the way these players argue. They must think that if they make life unpleasant enough for the ref, he'll think twice before the next call. They didn't review it. Well, it's not reviewable. Goaltending is not reviewable? Only in the last two minutes. Come on, Michael. Get a-- Sorry. It's then that it occurs to me, just looking around the room at 110 TV screens, I've had a hard time following the games, never mind the scores. I sometimes don't even know which teams are playing. But every time a player gets up into a referee's face, I've recognized the player. And I actually don't know that many NBA players, but I know all the ones who pitch these hissy fits, because the only players getting up into the faces of the refs are the famous players, or the coaches who protect them. Ramona Shelburne put her finger on it. The more aggressive behavior towards refs isn't coming from every player. It's coming from the stars. It's just different than in the past. Like, you know, when you're a star, I think there's this feeling that you've sort of risen above reproach. You get used to a certain level of treatment. You get used to people who treat you that way. And then you feel like you should be treated that way. Yeah. So a referee-- a referee to that person comes as a shock. Oh, yeah. You know, with any star and any celebrity, there comes a level of entitlement. So anybody who goes against that, who doesn't treat you like a star, gets put into that hater category. You want to understand the way the refs are treated? Stop thinking of them as people just doing their best to try to make a game fair, and start thinking of them as haters. So we just got really interested in a very simple question of, does this sense of being privileged make you disobey the rules of the road or the laws of the land. That's Dacher Keltner. He's a professor of psychology at Cal Berkeley, and someone who wonders about the effect inequality has on people's behavior. An experience I had at Berkeley where I was riding my bike up this hill. And I got to the four-way stop sign, and I was halfway through this four-way stop sign-- And this guy in a black Mercedes rolls through the stop sign, is halfway there, is a foot away from me about to take me out, and he's on his cell phone. And I looked at him. I was ready to take him on, like, all right, buddy, this is it. And what was most telling about this whole experience was he looked at me as if I was in the wrong and I should get out of his way, you know, even though I had made it through the stop sign first. So Dacher and a colleague dreamed up this weird experiment. They hid two Berkeley undergraduates in the bushes near four-way stop signs. The undergrads noted the makes of all cars coming through the intersection, assigned them numbers, one to five, according to their market value. A new Mercedes was a five, a Honda was a three, and an old Pacer was a one. We positioned a Berkeley undergrad by a pedestrian zone, and we make sure they look like they want to cross the street. And they're sort of leaning into their pedestrian zone, where it's required by California law to stop. It's a game of one-on-one at a California crosswalk-- one car versus one pedestrian. And 0% of the drivers of poor cars zoomed through the pedestrian zone. They all stopped. And 40-some odd percent-- 45% of the drivers of the fives, the rich cars, blazed through the pedestrian zone, and just say, the rules don't apply to me. I'll carry on. This one study led to a bunch of others that showed basically the same pattern of human behavior. Another experiment, we bring people to the lab. And as they're leaving, there's this big bowl of candy. And it's like-- and it says on it, "for the children of the Institute of Human Development," on the bowl. And we say, oh, you know, take a candy or two as you're leaving. And we count up how many candies they take after they leave the experiment. Privileged people grab a big handful of candy, compared to poorer people. So let's turn the conversation to something much more important, which is basketball. Most important of all. In the last five or six years, the NBA has embarked on essentially a dramatic reform of refereeing. At the same time, the friction between the players, and some of the owners, and some of the coaches, and the refs, is going through the roof. Wow. The source of the outrage is the star players. The people who are getting thrown out of games are Kevin Durant and Steph Curry and James Harden. And the Warriors, the most famous team ever to walk on the court, are the chief culprits-- exhibit A in bad behavior towards refs. So you've got this weird combination. Yeah. No, that's fascinating. I still remember being a Lakers fan-- you know, the great Magic Johnson teams. And watching Larry Bird do his nine-step lay-up. And I'm like, come on, make the call. For most players of his era, that would have counted as traveling. But Larry Bird was like LeBron, the new Mercedes of his day. He played with certain assumptions about the rules and how they applied to him. The inequality on a basketball court-- Is profound. --is profound. And it's more profound than it was in Larry Bird's era. Yeah Larry Bird was a millionaire. LeBron James might be a billionaire. And these guys are global franchises. So you got, in a funny way, a microcosm. It's an odd microcosm on a basketball court, of what's going on in the larger society. The NBA has set out to ref the games more objectively, more accurately, more fairly. This has enraged the stars and their fans and coaches. You want to know why? Here's what I think. The stars used to get more calls in their favor than they do now, just because they were stars. Objective refs have eliminated some of their privilege. The more objectivity there is, the less power they have. And to them, that's outrageous. I think American life just now has at least one thing in common with basketball-- the authority of its referees is under attack. If people don't trust the refs, one day you wake up in a world that seems not just unfair but actually sort of rigged-- that is, it's incapable of becoming fair because the people who benefit from the unfairness have the power to preserve it. Boom. Do you flip a switch, and 110 screens go dark? All the little small screens you gotta do manually. The big TVs we got the remote for. Most nights, Joe Borgia stays at the Replay Center until almost 2:00 in the morning-- just him and a couple of refs staring at tiny slivers of basketball games, trying to impose justice on powerful people who don't want it. They think I'm nuts. I am nuts. That's another story. All refs are nuts. You gotta be. You do? You have to be partially off. It's a 100% negative business. 100% negative business. That's why my son doesn't want to ref. Dad, I don't like people yelling at me. One day a young Borgia naturally becomes a referee. The next, he doesn't. One day most people think the refs are more or less fair-- or at any rate, they don't spend a lot of time blaming them for all their problems. The next day, they wake up to radical inequality. The people on top, the elites, think they're special. They behave as people do when they think they're special. Young people emulate them, without even thinking about it. They just assume that's how you act if you're a star or want to be. My first question is-- why, when you hit a three point shot, which you often do, why in the past have you painted your chest and pointed to the sky? I did it because the people on the NBA-- in the NBA did it. What do you think they're doing? What does it mean? I don't know. Just, like, I'm cool. Do you believe in God? No. I knew-- I mean, now I knew what it meant. But no, I don't. So what does it mean? Basically, it's like, thank you, God. For hitting a three point shot? Do you think God was responsible when Klay Thompson hit a three point shot? To be honest, if God was watching over everybody whenever they hit a three point shot, I don't think that He would be able to, like, actually make them make the shot. So do you have anything you'd like to say to the referees of the world before we turn this recording off? Don't pick sides, unless it's my side. Thank you. Michael Lewis. His new podcast, Against The Rules, covers all kinds of institutions in America where people do not trust the refs anymore. It is made by Pushkin Industries. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. Coming up, a teenager grapples with the document that's supposed to enforce fairness above all others. I'm talking about the United States Constitution. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, "No Fair," stories about people young and old all over our country feeling a sense of injustice, feeling wronged, and not getting satisfaction from the people in charge. We have arrived at Act Two of our program. Act Two, The Fairer Sex. And for this act, let's go to Broadway. There's a show right now that starts with this true story. When I was 15 years old, I would travel the country giving speeches about the Constitution at American Legion halls for prize money. This was a scheme invented by my mom to help me pay for college. I would travel to big cities like Denver and Fresno. I would give a speech, win a whole bunch of money, and then bring it back to put in my little safety deposit box for later. This is Heidi Schreck in the show What the Constitution Means to Me. I loved this show. It's totally original in what it's about and in how it tells its story. It's very funny. It's a very patriotic show in this totally uncorny way. In the show, Heidi Schreck recreates the idealistic speech that she gave at 15 that won her enough money to pay for her whole college education. And then she talks about the Constitution and about her own life. Our show today is about fairness, and Heidi Schreck, to be clear, says that her 15-year-old self definitely saw the Constitution as a powerful instrument enforcing fairness. I believed it made our country fairer, more equal, more democratic. I believed that wholeheartedly. At 15? At 15. Mm-hmm. You said that as a kid you had a crush on the Constitution. (CHUCKLING) Yes. What does that mean? I was really excited by it. I was a very idealistic, nerdy young person. And researching and reading about the Constitution-- my dad is a history teacher and talked very passionately about the genius of this document and its ability to evolve and to somehow surpass and rectify the flaws of its founders. Like, this idea that there was a document that could be created by flawed people that could be better than the people who made it. When you say that I'm reminded of this famous quote from Bill Clinton where he said-- and I think this is such a beautiful quote, too-- where he said, there's nothing that's wrong with America that what's right with America can't fix. Yes. I mean, Frederick Douglass has the similar quote which is that, like, yes, the Constitution was founded on the great evil compromise of slavery but that it also contained the means by which we could rectify that evil. And so your play is partly about that hopeful feeling that you had about the Constitution when you were a kid. Yes. But also how you came to see it once you became an adult, as a deeply flawed document. You talk in the play about how especially the Constitution and American law really did not address things that affect you and members of your family, especially the women in your family, for just a long time. Yes, yes. And when it did finally get around to addressing women, it was late, and it came to it kind of creakily. Yes, very creakily. And there's a large section of the play where you talk about how to get women to be covered by the Constitution, lawyers and the justices had to kind of jury rig women into having rights using, for example, the Ninth Amendment. Yes. Can I ask you to just explain what the Ninth Amendment does? Sure, sure. So the Ninth Amendment, which was my favorite as a kid, says, the enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage other rights. I just want to say for radio, anyone that's listening, that you're just reciting that from memory. I'm just reciting from memory. Yes. Well, it's technically "shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people," meaning that just because a certain right is not explicitly given to you in the Constitution, it doesn't mean you don't have that right. This amendment allows for the fact that the founders could not have imagined the future that we're living in now. Well, it's like them admitting it. It's like, we can't think through every possible thing in this one document. Right. I also like to think that in 300 years they knew that the world would look very different. And in the play, though, you say, to actually get this thing to apply to women, Justice William O. Douglas has to come up with a concept which is so strange and so almost poetic, this idea of the penumbra. Right. What is a penumbra? Here I am standing in the light, and there you are sitting in the darkness. And this space between us, this space right here of partial illumination, this shadowy space right here, this is a penumbra. William O. Douglas loved this penumbra metaphor and said that you could therefore take this idea that somewhere in the shadows of the Constitution, in this kind of in between shadowy space, are our rights we have not yet named. You could use the Ninth Amendment to essentially, like, shine a little light into the dark corners and say, OK, over there. And then as you say in the show, the Ninth Amendment combines with the 14th Amendment in a kind of Wonder Twins, power activation moment-- Yes. --to decide Roe versus Wade. Yes. But the Ninth Amendment is also the way that birth control gets legalized in the '60s. And let's hear-- we're going to hear an excerpt now from the play. And this is where you talk about how that came about. And it begins with you explaining how you and a friend got birth control. Yes. The same year you were doing these contests, when you were 15 you went to Planned Parenthood. Neither of us were having sex yet, but just we wanted to be on birth control just in case. You know, just in case we were in a hot tub and sperms might happen to attack us. OK, I mean, you can laugh, but be careful. Or, you know, in case of a real attack. What I didn't realize at the time is that birth control had only been legal for all women in this country for about 15 years. I mean, I was 15. So I thought it had been legal since the dawn of time. But no, no. In 1965, this incredible woman, Estelle Griswold, got herself arrested for dispensing IUDs to poor women at her Connecticut Planned Parenthood. She faced a year in prison, took her case all the way to the Supreme Court, and this, this is actually when William O. Douglas first pulled out his big penumbra metaphor. This is when he said for the first time that one thing the Constitution surely guarantees is the right to privacy, and that this allows a woman to put in an IUD as long as she is married and as long as her husband says that it is OK. This is a very scary moment for William O. Douglas because nobody understands the Ninth Amendment-- nobody, except for me at 15. Justice Scalia said he didn't even remember studying it in law school. But they had to dig up this amendment that nobody understands, because there was just no other way to deal with the female body. Because they all wanted to make birth control legal. They did. They wanted it because-- well, because I found out that William O. Douglas, who was my hero when I was 15, Justice William O. Douglas was 67, and he was having an affair with a 22-year-old college student. So I'm thinking-- right? They want to find a way to get the birth control flowing. Actually, Arabella, can you play a snippet of the Supreme Court recording? This is the actual argument. So remember, it's 1965. There will not be a woman on this court until Sandra Day O'Connor arrives in 1981. Here are nine men deciding the fate of birth control. All of these devices that are covered, that each of them has the potential dual function of acting in a contraceptive capacity and as a prevention of disease? It's probably only true with respect to some. But some get by under the term "feminine hygiene." And all this-- [CLEARING THROAT]-- uh-- [CLEARING THROAT]-- uh-- I just don't know about. But-- [CLEARING THROAT]-- uh-- [CLEARING THROAT]-- they are-- they are all sold in Connecticut drugstores on one theory or another. Is there anything on the record to-- [CLEARING THROAT]-- to indicate-- [CLEARING THROAT]-- the standard of birth rate in Connecticut vis-a-vis the states that don't have such laws? It's, like, four hours of that. When Heidi Schreck was publicizing her show, she did this interview with Tony Kushner, the playwright and the Pulitzer prize winner, probably best known for Angels in America. And in this interview, they had this interesting exchange. Kushner says to her that he thought that her show was partly about this thing that he has been writing about and thinking about ever since he wrote that movie about Abraham Lincoln a few years ago that Stephen Spielberg directed. Kushner said that in his view, a central question of democracy is that there needs to be some kind of mystical bond holding everybody together. Lincoln talked about the mystic chords of memory and very consciously tried to pull everybody together into allegiance for the Union. But Kushner said that if you actually interrogate what the thing is that is actually pulling us together, it's really just a stack of paper, right? It's just an act of faith that we have with each other. And he pointed out that how, of course, everybody knows right now this act of faith, this feeling that we are all in this together and we are one people who can work things out together, that is in such short supply. And the very idea of teenagers giving speeches about that stack of papers, about the Constitution, and its importance and its values, Kushner said-- I'm quoting here-- "It feels like an ethos of a not very distant and yet somehow very distant past, where people believe in fairness, that the superstructure that we've all sworn allegiance to, the Constitution, is going to create opportunities and possibilities." That really hit me when I read it. And I asked Heidi Schreck in our interview if she agreed that the America where she gave those speeches when she was 15 seemed very far away. Yes. How so? Well, so this was the '80s, between '86 and '89. First of all, I felt-- I mean, I was very liberal in high school. You know, I was feminist, liberal. Like, my speeches reflected those values, and I remember giving a speech about the Second Amendment, which I was arguing for gun control, because there had just been a shooting in California at a McDonald's. And I was arguing for strict gun control laws in front of a room of men who, you know, all owned guns and went hunting. And I won that contest. And I always felt a sense that these men I was, you know, giving the speeches for supported my right to have a different view than they did, supported my right as an American to express myself, believed it was important in a democracy that we have these conversations together. So that felt different to me. I will also say, this was, like, the very beginning of Rush Limbaugh, you know, and then Fox News. And those men who gave you award money after you argued against the-- Yeah, yeah. --the Second Amendment, you think that that would be-- it might be harder today. I think so. Although I will say, I looked on YouTube at other American Legion speeches. And they still seem to be-- like, the winners often seem to be quite liberal. So at least maybe in the space of the American Legion, there's still room for this kind of dialogue. I hope. I hope too. Heidi Schreck. If you're visiting New York City, her show What the Constitution Means to Me, is running through July on Broadway. A little Constitutional footnote here-- after we recorded that interview, I learned that the 14th and Ninth Amendments did not really combine Wonder Twins style to decide Roe versus Wade. Technically, the 14th decided Roe, with the Ninth justifying an important precedent that's cited in the case. Well, our program was produced today by Lina Misitzis and Ben Calhoun. The people who put our show together includes Aviva DeKornfeld, Jarrett Floyd, Damien Graef, Miki Meek, Stowe Nelson, Zoe Oliver-Grey, Nadia Reiman, Robyn Semien, Louis Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, Nancy Updike, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu. Our managing editor is David Kestenbaum. Special thanks to David Jacob Weisberg, Nicole Capatasto, Matt Ross, Sarah Sgro, Lawrence Tribe, Sara Holdren and New York Magazine, Krys Jensen and everyone at the South Mountain YMCA where we set up the tattle-phone, Michael Radolinksy and the folks at Fete-phone, who made the phone that we used to record the kids' tattles. Our website, thisamericanlife.org, where you can listen to our archive of over 600 shows, or download the archive using the This American Life app. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, he said this thing the other day that is a perfect illustration why you should not combine micro-dosing with babysitting. Uh, our baby turned into a ducky, and I don't know how it turn into a ducky and turn back to a baby. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
When I arrive at Margo's apartment for our interview-- Come on in. --she opens the door holding a glass of wine. Hi. Oh, I need to have a glass of wine while I talk about my family. This is not totally a joke. She's got 11 brothers and sisters, and yes, Catholics, old school, Irish mom, Italian immigrant dad. And the kids do not all get along. How many of your siblings do not speak with? I don't speak to-- Eddie, Victor, Mary Jo, Marina, Nancy-- five. You were counting on your fingers. Because I had to think. We sit down on the couch together. The living room is decked out for a Game of Thrones viewing party. And I mean, like seriously decked out, like 15 plastic swords stuck into the back of an older rattan chair to make a fake iron throne, a miniature weirwood tree. I have no idea where you get something like that. It's totally distracting. On the coffee table in front of us, she's gathered stuff for the interview. There's a glass of white wine. What kind of wine? Sauvignon Blanc. And there's a book. And there's a list. What is the list? This is the order of the items of the things, in the order that I would like them from my parents' estate. Her parents' estate, that's what I'm here to talk to her about. When her parents died, her dad, in 2006, her mom, two years ago, they didn't specify in their wills which child would get which items. No, no, no-- they left all that to the kids, saying simply, everyone should get an equal amount. Sibling number eight in the birth order, Joe, a lawyer, the sunny one in the family, was the sibling left with the truly thankless task of dividing the stuff. Their parents were these imposing, brilliant people, who they still talk about in this worshipful way. What they have left to them is just these things, right? And this mandate-- to get along well enough one last time to split it up amongst themselves. And they don't want to screw it up. They want to honor their parents' last request. But they know it's going to be tough for them, given how they are sometimes with each other. So they invented a process that is so elaborate, honestly, I found it kind of shocking, impressive but extreme. It includes the book, the one on the coffee table that Joe had created. It's thick and spiral bound, with photos of all 196 items of the parents that are up for grabs. Each item gets a number. He's given a lot of thought to it. And there's four pages of rules and regulations of what you have to do. Actually, it's five pages of rules, single spaced, 23 rules. Here's number 10. Number 10, the estate is not recognizing any alleged oral promises by mommy or daddy to give certain items to certain distributees. Thus, all such items are available to be selected. Hard, documented proof is required to show that intent and to exclude an item from the selection process. Thus far-- Notice how every I is being dotted here. Hard not to wonder what mommy and daddy would think of it. The kids so suspicious of each other that all this would be necessary. The mom's engagement ring, for example. To prove to anybody who might doubt that this is actually her ring, the one that she wore when they were little kids, and her whole life, until the viewing at her funeral, there's a photo they took of the ring being handed from the funeral director over to one of the brothers, who then took it to a jeweler, who certified that it is, in fact, the original diamond. But the siblings that I talked to agreed all this is necessary, because there are definite camps among the siblings. Depending on the issue, they break down into two general teams. Do the two sides have a name that we should be using? No. OK, how should we refer to them? Oh, we can refer to them as the Rockaway crew versus the non Rockaway crew. Because they're the people who basically stayed in the neighborhood, and the people who didn't. Exactly. Rockaway, by the way, is a neighborhood on the water in Queens, New York. Margo is a non Rockaway. And in describing other non Rockaways, she says things like-- Very handsome. Or perhaps-- Generous, kind, brilliant, PhD. But it's hard for Margo to even list the Rockaways without insulting them by the time she gets to the second person on the list. One of my brothers is an architect, and he lives in Rockaway. And another one is a lawyer-- eh, lawyer, after a few times at the bar. He-- Margo and that brother have particularly bitter grudges against each other. But I will say, I have never done an interview with somebody who drops her voice so often and so happily in the middle of stories to gossip on the record about their family. It made her really fun to talk to. Margo explained that when they were kids, she and her siblings had normal rivalries that you would expect in any family that big. But then when their parents got old, adult disputes and adult resentments came up between them. Like for instance, who would get the house in Italy, where their dad was born. It went to Mary Anne, the oldest kid, who'd fixed it up. Or whether Mary Ellen, the next to youngest, who for a while was responsible for their mom's care, was doing right by her. Sibling number five, Victor, thought he should be the one in charge of her care. Some of the Rockaways agreed, non Rockaways did not. And Victor stopped talking to a bunch of them, like permanently. Here's Victor. Let's just say that I was disappointed in some of them, because I knew what was best for my mom. I visit my mother every day of my life, unless I was out of town. And after my father passed, I visit my mother twice a day. OK? And I bought my home one block from her house. So they had a choice. I thought they should have backed me. The bad feeling between the two sides bubbled over, even on the one day you'd think they'd put it to rest-- the day their mom died. Joe, the one who adjudicates between the non Rockaways and the Rockaways, was stuck in California, where he lives, that day. On the day my mother died, April 8, 2017, I was trying a case in San Diego. And I got the phone call from the nursing home, saying, excuse me, we have to hold your mother's body, because there are two funeral directors that have come to pick up the body. What happened is a few of the Rockaways had arranged for a funeral in Rockaway. And one of the non Rockaways had arranged a funeral at their mom's parish, out on Long Island. So that was my-- I spent three hours brokering a deal to have the funeral in Rockaway. When it came time to start dividing their parents things, Victor, a Rockaway, suggested Joe, officially a non Rockaway, that they do it using a lottery system. That's how their mother, who was also an attorney, by the way, divided her mother's estate among her many siblings. The way the thing works is, basically everybody looks inside the book that Joe made up and writes down the items they want in the order that they want them and then sends their list to Joe. And then to figure out which sibling gets to pick first, and which picks second, and which picks third, and so on, Joe had to come up with a system. And so, my brother Victor called me, and we discussed it. And he said, how are you going to decide who gets to go first? I said, I have a nice cute little five-year-old boy who lives next door to me. I think I'm going to have him pick out of 12 ping-pong balls, like the New York State Lottery. Like one number and each ping pong ball for each of the 12 siblings. He said, oh, no, I wouldn't do that, if I were you. I said, what? Who can find something wrong with that? I'll videotape it, I said, it'll be all hilarious. He says, no, people might be suspicious that you rigged it. It could have been the second video. The first video would have been no good, could have been thrown out. My brothers and sisters are quite bright. And they'll-- they'll easily detect the possible loophole in something. I said, what do you want me to do? Get Pricewaterhouse, like they do the Academy Awards? He said, that would be a great idea. So I literally got an accounting firm here in Orange County. And I called them, and I said, can you give me a list on your letterhead with the numbers 1 through 12 in random order. It was from the accounting firm that put their brother, Eddie, first. So he picks first, in the first round. And in the second round, it goes reverse order, and he picks last. Then third around, he's first again. Then the next round, last. Like a fantasy football snake draft, over and over, until all 196 items are gone. If you get one of the most coveted items, their mom's silver, her engagement ring, you have to sit out a few rounds after that. Another popular item is a pen that John F Kennedy used to sign a bill, which they have because their dad, Edward Ray, was in the Kennedy administration at the State Department. He was friends with the Kennedys. And later a Chief Judge at the US Court of International Trade. So the book has a certain amount of historical memorabilia, including a photo of the whole family with President Johnson, and 11-year-old Margo shaking his hand. There are only 196 items in the book, because lots of stuff was lost when Hurricane Sandy tore through their parents' house years ago. After the storm, Margo says, lots of items simply seemed to vanish, mysteriously. Don't get her started on who she thinks might have taken those items. Or, on the siblings who say that their mother and father gave them one of the items years ago, when they were alive. People would visit my mommy and leave with items. I'm like, oh, what happened to that painting that was here. Oh, mommy gave it to you. Mm, mommy's 90, she gave that to you? So then things would gradually disappear from the home. OK, I don't really want it. It's just like, what, are you kidding me? It just feels unfair. It just feels unfair. The lottery was scheduled for Monday, April 15, last week. I was interviewing Margo just a couple days before it would happen. She'd already made her list of what she wanted, ranked in order. OK, so read your list. This is not going to air till after April 15, right? That's correct. Correct. She was scared that a sibling would hear what she wanted and pick it for themselves just to spite her. One of the items she was nervous somebody else might get was this turkey platter she had her eye on. Her family used it every Thanksgiving when they were kids. There's a cartoonish painting of a turkey on it, colorful, kind of kitschy. There's a big, ugly ceramic turkey platter that we love. There's a little story to go with it, that may or may not be true, that it was bought at a garage sale from the Robert Kennedy's family, when they were moving. And that they sold it, and my mother bought it. Wait, so in this story, Bobby Kennedy, the attorney general of the United States, a millionaire, has got to move from one place to another. And he's thinking, what am I going to do-- I don't want to move all this stuff, I'm going to have a garage sale? And like people from the neighborhood are going to show up at Bobby Kennedy's house just to pick up random stuff from his family? It is my story. And I think it's true, but I can't swear to it. But it's my story. And don't you dare let me find out it's not true. This totally improbable story is backed up by both Victor, a Rockaway, and Joe, a non Rockaway. I'm confident where it came from. It came from the estate of Robert F Kennedy after Kennedy was assassinated. That turkey platter was Ethel Kennedy's. And that's how my parents got that turkey platter. My parents were good friends with the Kennedys. You could call it a garage sale, but that's, to me-- I can't say it's wrong. But the garage of the Kennedy's is probably better than most. I think it was somebody in the Kennedy family was selling some items. And I assumed the money was going to go to a charity. OK? I'm sure that the Kennedy family did not need the proceeds of a platter. It took me a while talking to Margo to understand why this process of dividing their parents things has been so emotionally charged for everybody. A lot of this is just whose mommy's favorite and daddy's favorite, despite the fact that you're in your 60s. My parents always had favorites. So everyone was always a little bit jealous of everyone else. Joe agreed with that. We'd talk about this all the time, who's number one. There's no doubt who number one was. My sister Mary Anne was number one. And a lot of this just dealt with trying to get my parents attention, affection, and love. Because my parents had so little time to give to each one of us. Everybody was fighting for my parents' attention. I don't feel I knew my father very well, until I went to law school. Then, all of a sudden, he took great interest in me. But where was he the first 22 years of my life? All of a sudden, I became important. Before that, I was just one of the runts in the family. One of the things Joe did, back when he was little, to be more than just one of the runts, was he memorized all kinds of information about American presidents to impress his dad and his dad's fancy friends. Yeah, my father would bring me out to dinner parties. And I'd get all this attention from reciting the presidents, and when they were born, and when they died, and who was Secretary of State, who their vice president was. So my other siblings started memorizing it. It was all driven by the same thing. And that is, oh, look how he got attention, look how he got affection, why can't I do the same thing? And so, to this day, I can rattle off the presidents' names. I learned that as a five, six-year-old from-- OK, wait-- bring it, let's hear the presidents. Oh, you mean, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Quincy Adams, Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, Lincoln, Johnson, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, like that? Yeah, like that. And we used to time it on who could do it the fastest. But my father was very competitive. So he has to take some responsibility. He was always number one in his class. He spoke five languages. He played seven instruments. He was a student a Buddy Rich's. He was just a Renaissance man. He was Assistant Secretary of State. So to measure up to an imposing parent like that, you're always going to feel inadequate. That's what my brothers and sisters have to take with them. Wow, what a harsh legacy to give your kids. In a way, it's like something nobody would wish on their children, that kind of legacy. Yeah, life's a bitch, isn't it? It's a-- that's the way it goes when you have great parents. People-- you often see families fall apart when the parents were great people. When the parents are gone, there's all kinds of unforeseen stuff they leave us with, stuff they never intended. The objects, and the money, and the property they leave behind, in a way it's so straightforward, compared to that other stuff. There comes a day, it's divided, and then it's over, which by the way, did happen for this family. They had the lottery, a day early, on April 14, last Sunday. Margo did get the turkey platter she wanted. Victor got the judge's robe that his dad used to wear, that he wanted. Joe got JFK's pen. By all reports, everybody was pretty happy with what they got. And very soon, after the property is actually handed out to each sibling, in a way, it's like the official end of them as a family. Margo, anyway, says that she sees no reason why she would ever have contact with like five of them, ever again. The others, though, I have to say, she's super close with, maybe closer after all this. Ready for the next phase, whatever that is. I think it'll be really good, we just-- go on with your life. Enjoy your life and get over it, including myself, I say that too, OK. Well, today on our program, people leave us, and we'll have to scramble and figure out what to do next. We have stories of an entire town up and leaving, except for four guys. And another town, where kids got home one day from school to find that their parents were gone. And what do they do now? From WBEZ Chicago, this is American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Act One, The Sudden Departure. When we started putting this show together, we talked a lot about the rapture. You know, when the righteous get lifted to heaven, just a small number of them, leaving the rest of us behind. And I say us, because I know exactly where I end up in that story. Maybe you've seen the TV show about this kind of thing, The Leftovers. Anyway, one of our producers, Lilly Sullivan, she visited a town, where all in one morning, hundreds of people learned that their loved ones are gone and they were left behind. Anna heard when she was at school. She was a junior, eating lunch by the football field. And one of my teachers, she came up towards me, and said someone needed me at the office. So, I just got off the bleachers and walked to the office. I didn't think too much of it. When she got there, her mom and her aunt were waiting for her. And my mom just came up to me and hugged me. And she looked at me, and she's like, it's OK, we'll get him out. I still didn't understand. Not far away, when school ended, 13-year-old Adrian had a feeling that something was going on, because his dad was not acting normal at all when he picked up him and his little sisters, Gabriella and Eva. Like, I was sitting in front of the car. He was kind of upset, or something like he usually says to us, like, oh, how was your day. This is Gabriella. I remember asking, can I use the computer when I get home. He said no. And then I asked him, can we go outside. And he said no. Like, I saw in the mirror, like if he was in a different world, not here. Their little sister, Eva, was 10. And me and my sister were like, what's going on dad? And he-- then, he was like, I'm going to tell you when we get home. So, then we got home. He said to sit down on the couch. And he started to tell us that they got my mom. He was like, the immigration got your mom. Then all of us, like, just started to cry. Did you know what that meant? Sort of. What happened was that immigration had done a workplace raid, the kind where ICE swoops into a factory or business and arrests hundreds or dozens of undocumented workers-- big, workplace raids, where hundreds get arrested all at once. The US hadn't done them for a decade. But then the Trump administration brought them back. ICE says that when they do these operations, the employer is the primary target, the boss. When they find undocumented workers at a work site, they don't turn a blind eye. And since they know ahead of time that workers will probably be there, they often bring buses. So anyway, my co-worker Lilly Sullivan, she was interested in these big raids, because she'd heard that when one of them happens, it ripples through the whole community. It doesn't just affect the families that lose somebody, but everybody else in town as well. And the place she visited was the very first place that the Trump administration hit with one of these raids, Morristown, Tennessee. That raid happened a year ago this month. She put together this story about, first, the families impacted by the raid, and then everybody else in town. We've changed all the kids' names in this story, here on the radio. Here's Lilly. ICE picked up 97 undocumented workers that day, almost everyone working at a slaughterhouse outside of town. People told me it was like a bomb had gone off. Helicopters were circling the town. A big public road was blocked off. Officers in uniforms they didn't recognize directing traffic. Factory parking lots all over town that were usually full emptied out, as workers scared of ICE fled home for the day. One family I talked to a lot about the days that followed, I'll call them the Garcias. Their dad had been picked up the morning of the raid, while the kids were at school, doing school stuff. Manny was in the sixth grade and rode the bus home with his friends. They were talking about math homework and gossiping. That's his word. He was surprised to see his mom's car in the driveway when the bus pulled up. He usually gets home before her. So, I was like, OK, mom, mom. Mom was home. But the door was locked. I was like, ma, ma-ma. And I didn't hear anything. So I'd start knocking, and I say my little brother's name, and open up. Were you surprised it was locked? Yeah. He never locks it, unless he's like scared or he's doing something. Manny figured his little brother, Eric, was making videos and had locked the door so nobody would walk in on him. Cause like, he records videos of himself, like making some slime. Videos of making slime? Yeah. This really, ooey, gooey liquid that he could play with, he did that all the time. Eric finally let him in. And he just immediately told me, hey, our dad is gone. They took our dad. I felt my stomach, it was-- felt like I was going to vomit. Eric, who's nine, had gotten home right before Manny. Their mom was home and she told them right away. And then my mom said that they got your dad, migration. And I was just like-- I said, what's that? What does that mean? Their mom had locked herself in the house. She'd been sitting inside, curtains drawn, lights off, hiding quietly since morning. They sat with her on the couch, making no noise. She'd been watching Facebook Live updates all day, people posting about their families. She knew that a lot of people had gone to where the arrested people were being held, in a big armory outside of town. All day, their mom had been too afraid to head down there, afraid to get so close to ICE. She's undocumented too. If she were taken, her kids would be completely on their own. But after seeing so many people there all day, including some people that she knew didn't have papers, she decided to risk it. Her husband's diabetic and he needed his medication. And so I pulled myself together, she said, and I took the risk. I said, let's go, they can't get all of us who are down there. If they take us, they take us. I got up and I went. She brought one of her older sons with her, her 13 year old. He's a citizen. And she left her younger two kids at home. She told Manny to take care of his little brother until they got back. As she left, she did the thing that lots of moms do to distract their kids in an emergency. My mom told me start cleaning, and then we started cleaning. So, first we do living room, like sweep, clean what's on floor. Then we do the dishes, put them back where they are. And then, dining room, clean the table, clean the chairs. But it was usually quiet. We never liked talked on that day. We didn't talk the whole time we were cleaning. And after we were done cleaning, which was nighttime, I got something to eat. Manny made Eric dinner, a pop tart and milk and put on cartoons for him, Teen Titans Go. He sat next to him while he watched. Manny, himself, was glued to his phone, watching all the Facebook updates and Snapchatting with friends, trying to find news. Around 11:00, they got a call from their mom. She told them to go to bed. They had school tomorrow. She said they'd be home soon. But neither of the boys could sleep. I was feeling sad that-- that-- oh, he's not actually coming back. But then, every time my mom always said, he's coming back, he's coming back. Did you not believe that he would come back that night? Or were you worried that he wouldn't? I didn't believe he was coming. Why not? I don't know. Yeah, were you scared? I was pretty scared, cause-- I was scared it was going to be me and him all by ourselves. And they would be gone. And we'd be just me and him. Just I was thinking all of that in my mind. Cause I have to take care of him. I have to cook him food and I have to like, you know, take responsibility and take care of him. Wait, but how old are you? Isn't that too much to do? I mean, I'm 12, so, I'm pretty-- I already know everything about him, and what he likes, and everything. So, I think I'll be pretty good in taking care of him. Eventually, their mom came home. Their dad didn't. At 11:00 that night, he was one of 54 people that ICE sent to detention in Alabama. A teacher who'd gone to the armory that day to be with his students and try to help, he told me that seeing these white buses line up and file out in the dark, no goodbyes, no information, it felt like something out of the X Files. Of the 97 undocumented workers picked up that morning, ICE let 32 people go, one by one, over the course of the day. ICE had put them into deportation proceedings, but said they could wait for their court dates at home. It was strange, who got released and who didn't. They released mostly women, some single mothers, but not all of them. They released some people with chronic illnesses, but not all of them. There were a few couples who worked together at the plant, couples with kids, both parents detained. In cases like that, someone told me that ICE told them to choose-- said, we'll let one of you go home, choose who. People always chose the mom. I talked to the special agent in charge of the Morristown operation. He told me ICE has a policy to not leave kids with no parent or caretaker. So when two parents are detained, they might release one. It's at the officer's discretion. Morristown is small enough, under 30,000 people, that nobody in town could avoid what happened. Everyone saw the helicopters. Lots of people knew someone who'd been picked up or knew their kids or other relatives. When dozens of officers come storming into a small town, rounding up a hundred people, it's the kind of thing where people spill out of their houses and watch. Krista Etter lives up the hill from the plant. She had been scared that there was some criminal on the loose. She called her daughter, who was at home, and told her to lock the doors. When Krista heard it was a raid at the slaughterhouse, she hiked across the field by her house to go see. She saw the ICE trailer, officers cordoning off the entrance to the plant. Krista's a Trump supporter. She's not a fan of illegal immigration. Most of the area is that way. The county went 77% to Trump. She didn't know anyone who'd been directly affected. Over the weekend, she went to a vigil for the parents who'd been taken away, not because she wanted to. She didn't. She's the general manager for a local paper. And they asked her to take pictures. She says that when she showed up, she was actually a little angry that all these people were there at all, like what do they expect? These people broke the law. They should have seen it coming. I thought this possibly was a good thing, that ICE was cracking down on immigration. They're here illegally. They need to go home. And then she started listening to the kids at the mic. There was a young man. He was a teenager, 14, 15 years old, that said, he just wanted his mom to come home. He didn't have anybody else. He just wanted his mom to come home. It just really, just shook my soul. It was-- it was almost overwhelming, because there were so many children speaking. And-- and, I actually kind of had to get out of there. Because I was like, it's getting hot. And I have health issues. And I was like, I need to-- I have to remove myself, you know, walk out to my car, get a breath. And God's kind of going, see, I wanted you here, because you're not correct in your thinking. You're not correct in thinking that this is so black and white. Because when I heard crack down on illegal immigration, I interpreted it as a crackdown on illegal immigrants that were criminals. If there was a drug situation, you know, violent criminals, pedophile, any kind of situation of that nature. That's what I expected. And I really believe I'm not the only one who did that. I don't think anybody ever really stopped to think that they were going to go after the family man working at the meatpacking plant. That's not what I had in mind. I'm still a President Trump supporter. I guess, I have to hold out hope that maybe he didn't understand he was going after the guy in the meatpacking plant. I mean, I guess he probably does. I talked to a lot of people in town, who, after the raid, said they felt stunned. People kept reminding me, this is the Bible Belt. This town's God fearing. There's over 100 churches in the area. Love thy neighbor, people take that seriously. And that really shaped the town's response to the raid. Reverend David Williams is a pastor in town at a Southern Baptist Church. He describes himself as Republican, conservative, very pro-life, pro military, pro Second Amendment. Also, he led a prayer at the vigil. That Jesus loves the little children. Regardless of their color. Or the status of their citizenship. He felt he needed to do it, after driving past the raid all day, on his way between his house and his church. And it was very creepy to see a particular ethnic group basically rounded up. As Americans, we are better than this. I'm just trying to understand, this is kind of exactly what President Trump said he would do. He promised workplace raids, right? And then, everyone was really shocked when it actually happened. Why are people surprised, do you know? I don't know. I don't-- I hope-- I don't think when people voted for Trump that they were voting for more raids. I think people were voting for a secure border. You know, surely people didn't vote that families would be separated, and that families torn apart, and children scared, when am I going to see my mother or father again? We're talking about our neighbors. They're in the shadow of the steeple of the church where I serve. So I have a moral and biblical obligation. It became-- it became a divine thing, yeah. I hope I have a job after this interview. Other people told me the same thing, their faith told them that they needed to help these families. So this very conservative town stepped up to help the people who'd been detained and their families. Morristown's pretty small, but it's also pretty well integrated. Latinos have been there for decades. Whites and Latinos live in the same neighborhoods. The schools are mixed. By the morning after the raid, the town had raised $30,000 to bond people out of detention and to help with necessities. Two weeks later, it was up to $90,000. Again, here's Krista. I think some of it was guilt. It was guilt. Because you don't raise the kind of money in these communities, because we all thought we were right in our assumptions. Do you see what I mean? It was guilt. We were like, wow, we all thought that they should all go home. We all thought we needed to build a wall. And then, all of a sudden, we watched families being torn apart. We never thought about those that were left behind. Now they did. Pastors in town started a telephone chain, opening up churches around town as sanctuaries, with cots for people who were scared that ICE would come back. When an immigration raid hits, you don't usually hear about this kind of response-- a town wide effort to pick up the pieces. Longtime residents lined up to volunteer at churches, brought trucks full of food and donations. One organizer told me that a local bishop dropped off $5,000 and said, this is from my church, I'm sorry, this is not what we intended. People connected families with lawyers, wrote hundreds of character references for people detained. The Garcia family, where the kids cleaned the house the day of the raid, the kids' teachers came by each week with bags of groceries. And two months later, at the crack of dawn, their dad came home. The town donated $1,000 to go toward his bond. And the mom was able to scrape together another $9,000 and bond him out. His older sons picked him up from Louisiana. They drove all night to get home. He hadn't told his younger sons he was out. Their mom got them out of bed, saying, wake up, we're going to McDonald's for breakfast. Hurry up, we're about to leave. They were putting on their shoes when their dad opened the screen door and said, so what are you going to get me from McDonald's? Their mom actually videoed it on her phone. The second his dad walks in, the youngest son, Eric, loses it. Starts wailing. He's hugging his dad and saying, papi. The raid happened a year ago this month. And even now, the kids still cling to their dad. You always want to go with him wherever he goes? Yeah, even just like go pick up tortillas for whenever mom's cooking. Or if he's just going to run errand or go pay a bill, or something like that. He's like, oh, only one person can go, because we can't all go. So we all take turns going with him sometimes. Because it only gets fair. Are you serious? You take turns going with him when he goes out? Yeah. Their dad has his reasons for only taking one kid at a time. Well, no, because they asked for a ton of stuff. And then one of them doesn't have his shoes on, and one isn't dressed. So I just take the one who's ready. The first one, and then later, if I go back out, I take the other one, like that. It's like wherever I go, they want to go too. And sometimes, their mom doesn't want me to go out alone either. They think that at any moment, the same thing will happen. And I hope not. But only God knows what will happen. So, yeah. He's still at home. He's in deportation proceedings. His court date is next year. And no one knows if he'll have to leave. So they have to plan. The older kids are getting jobs. The younger ones are learning to cook, so that they can help their mom, preparing for that possibility in case he goes. Lilly Sullivan is one of the producers of our show. Coming up, flames moving in from all sides. An entire town flees. Only four people left behind. What's their next move? That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our show, we choose a theme. Today's program, Left Behind, the stories where people are suddenly gone and everyone leftover has to figure out how to handle whatever comes next. We've arrived at Act Two of our program. Act Two, Passed Over. So last fall, the deadliest wildfire in 100 years happened in Northern California. Climate change is real. 150,000 acres burned. 85 people died. 40,000 were displaced from their homes. Two entire communities, Paradise and Concow, were gone in the first 6 and 1/2 hours. Other towns are partially destroyed. Aerial photos show street after street with rectangles of ash in rows. All along the sides of the streets, former homes and buildings. Every disaster has lucky survivors. In this fire, one place that made it through is called Helltown. That's Helltown, like H-E- double L. It was left behind when so much else was destroyed. We heard about Helltown from reporter Robert Baird's great piece in GQ, it is in next month's print edition. It's online right now. Nancy Updike has our story. Helltown is tiny, fewer than 20 houses in a canyon. No store, no post office, more of an enclave than a town. What happened there only makes sense if you know that, A, a trained firefighter was involved, and B, the group of friends who went back to Helltown after it had been evacuated and decided to try and save it, all grew up together, are super tight, and either still live in and around Helltown, or have family there. They're also all in their 40s-- well, one 39-year-old. They all have kids. Very aware of their own mortality. So in early November, around 7:45 at night, Jeb, Jason, and Dharma, son of hippie parents, drove up to the ridge overlooking Helltown and just stood there, staring down, with no plan, just watching flames in the distance. This is Dharma. You know, first, we're in shock. We're a little bit-- we're like, pointing at different spots, thinking that's your home, that's your parents' home. Oh, man-- these little fires are everywhere. And then the fire's coming down these-- all down the ridge, it's coming down all the little creek cracks, coming down the canyon walls. Uh-huh. And it looked like lava flow. It reminded me of just like lava, again, like red waterfalls, coming down the sides of the hills. It seemed like the right time to turn around and leave, which is exactly what Jeb says, very sensibly, in a cell phone video from that night. We should leave pretty soon. Not once. Guys, we should go, look at that. Not twice. Yeah, we got to turn around, buddy. Three times he says it, agreeing with Jason's brother, who was on the phone, also urging them to get the hell out of there. But as they were looking down, suddenly they noticed tail lights, one car moving fast through Helltown. This is Dharma again. Weaving around, you can kind of follow the tail lights. Uh-huh. I thought it was this friend of ours, because the way they were driving, we have a friend that we kind of-- that we grew up with, up in the canyon. We thought it was this guy, Little Billy. But-- Just based on how he was driving? Yes, because the way someone stops, and then jumps in, and-- yeah, you have to know this guy. OK, all right. It wasn't Little Billy, though. It was a different guy Jeb, Jason, and Dharma had all grown up with, the trained firefighter, who we're going to call Sam, because he was not officially there. The three of them up on the ridge guessed it was Sam, called him on his cell. He said, yep, it's me, I'm down here. And I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I'm pretty sure he said, I think Helltown's still standing or something. There's a lot of homes down here that are still doing OK. Sam the firefighter also said, I'm not leaving. The fire's not bad here yet. There's spot fires. And I'm going to stay and do what I can. Sam was alone down there. Helltown's volunteer fire department and all of its equipment had been deployed elsewhere. Then that was like the three of us kind of looked at each other, and, you know, we made the decision, we're going to drive down there and help Sam out. Did it feel like, OK, he's down there, this is doable, and we're just going to do it? Or did it feel like, this might be crazy? I'm going to say D, all the above. It was a little bit-- a little bit of everything, yes. Fire doesn't always move in an organized way. Even an enormous wildfire like this isn't just one mass, spreading out like a flood. Bits of fire jump off, embers fly out or get picked up by the wind. And if those embers land, spot fires can start up, little hot spots that could become huge new fires or-- or they could fizzle if there isn't stuff around to burn. Fire has needs and weaknesses that can be exploited if you're skilled and very, very lucky. Dharma describes himself as an old athlete, pedal to the metal, go for it person. Whereas, Jeb is an artist, more of a quiet, let's think about this, perspective having person. So, the whole breakfast club mix of the four people is athlete, artist, firefighter, and Jason. Jason didn't want to be interviewed. The firefighter was busy. So this is Jeb and Dharma's story of that night, starting with the harry drive downhill in poor Jason's new truck, down a skinny dirt road, called Center Gap Road, that skirts along the canyon. And they're heading into flames. Sure enough, about halfway down the road, the fire was on both sides of Center Gap. Feels like we're driving-- we're on one of those little space shuttles or things, and we're driving on planet Mars. You know, everything's burning all around you. It's like everything's on fire. Here's Jeb's quiet artist version of that drive. We did drive-through some flames to get down that road, but nothing like life threatening. OK. I'll take your word for it, OK. Jeb, Dharma, and Jason get down to the main drag, Centerville Road, and they're looking around. And Sam is right, a lot of houses are still standing. And Centerville Road is a natural fire stop. The big fire is moving unevenly down the canyon on the right. And most of Helltown's houses are to the left of Centerville Road, the side away from the fire. And then, here and there are spot fires, one of which Sam is hacking away at. There was a house and the cedar fence is all on fire. And Sam has a chainsaw. And he's-- he's chainsawing parts of the fence, and kicking them over, trying to-- I see what he was doing. He was stopping it from-- the flames were burning all this whole fence. And they were getting close to the house. And instantly, he's like, there's no time for talk. There's a shovel in the back of my truck. He's just shouting this at you? Yeah. Over the chainsaw. Yeah, over the chainsaw. He's like get to work, you made it. The escape plan, if it came to that, was meet under the bridge and jump in the creek. Sam also gave some quick tips-- check overhead to make sure you're not under power lines and always park your truck pointed downhill for a quick getaway. Other than that, it was just fire triage. Patrol up and down Centerville Road, assess where the fire is getting close to the road, and clear as much brush and flammable material as possible away from the side of the road where the fire is approaching. Keep an eye on trees that might burn and fall across the road. And tackle whatever looks most urgent with whatever tool you've got. For the houses, Jason had an excavator, sort of like a tank with a long bucket arm. He would drop the bucket arm down and drag it around the houses and buildings to clear brush that might catch fire. Basically, make a fire resistant clearing. Also, he could lift the arm up about 20 feet, to break off branches that might catch fire and fall on people's houses. Dharma and Jeb dug ditches by the road, around houses. They raked brush. They moved propane tanks. They used shovels. They used water, if they could find it, and anything else at hand to put out flaming decks and sheds. When they finished with one area, they jumped in one of the two trucks and drove to the next one, up and down the same mile of road. Sam was fighting fires and also coming back and guiding the rest of them-- go here, go there. Around 9 PM, pretty early on, they all lost cell phone service. So we would all check in with each other, and go, hey, how you doing, what do you need? Yeah. We're going here to look at this spot. We were mostly worried about where the pine trees were at. He means the trees on the side of the canyon. Because they're the ones that kick off the big embers and have the sap that kind of explodes. Uh-huh. And then the flames were coming over in different spots everywhere, right? All the way down the canyon, it's kind of falling over. And there was a couple of trees that were kind of hanging over, up by the Centerville Cemetery. There was kind of like a-- it's like a tunnel up there of big oaks. And I was a little concerned that the fire would hit those, and crawl up in there, and then kind of cross over the road. All night, they were clearing small flammable things away from bigger, more dangerous flammable things, obsessively crushing out little fires. I was stamping on coals and burning leaves. And I realized, I can't do this anymore. So I grabbed one of my kayak paddles. And I was slapping flames with a kayak paddle. Oh, my god. To put them out. You couldn't do it, cause-- cause your shoes were not standing up. Your shoes were-- My legs were so sore. Oh. No, my legs were sore. Oh, your legs were sore. The shoes were holding up, but your legs were sore. Oh, my god, wow. Yeah. Wow. My boots did melt. The soles of my boots were completely melted, partially because there was a tree that was on fire that was going to fall onto my house. So I was cutting it with a chainsaw to drop it, so it wouldn't fall the other direction. And then I got to a point where it was almost about to fall, and I just said, you know what, this is not really safe. I'm standing in hot coals. And I've got a chainsaw, and I'm by myself, so-- under a tree that's on fire. So, I'm like, this is probably not the best idea. So, I just let it be. Were there moments that were actually-- where you were frightened? Yes. I would say up by Jeb's house, watching it kind of-- the flames around Jeb's place were real-- were pretty-- were pretty intense. And they were really like-- I remember the-- I remember looking up at 60-- 60 foot flames, or 40, 50 foot flames, and just going, wow. And just hearing, and seeing the fire, the intenseness of fire. We were buying time. We were holding the fire back until the professionals got there, so we were hoping. But we were hoping as soon as possible that someone would be there with some engines. I mean, that's all I wanted to hear, was a helicopter or a fire engine. Without cell phone service, they had no idea why no one was coming, hour after hour. This was the first day of the fire. They didn't know how bad it was going to get and how bad it already was. Is there anybody out there? I mean, we really felt like we were the only ones on the planet Earth at that point. And it was like, where's the help? Are we the only ones out here? You know, we're the only ones. Like where's everybody at? The fight did not feel heroic at any point. It was a slog. They kept the fire away from as many buildings and houses as they could along that mile or so stretch of road. But they were never done. Some places had to be saved again and again. Jeb's house was one of the few that was on the other side of the road, the side the fire was coming from. So, no road between his house and the fire. Jeb and Dharma would go to his house, fight the fire down, go tackle someplace else, come back to make sure the place was OK, and have to fight the fire down all over again. Dharma's adrenaline wore off around 3:30 in the morning, after 7 and 1/2 hours of non-stop physical labor. He was crashing and his legs were seizing up. He and Jason went to Jason's house, which Sam had declared safe for the moment. I just had to put-- stretch my feet out for a second. That was the first time I got to get off my feet. And we ended up sitting on his couch for a few minutes, where we sort of dozed off for a second or so. Jeb was frantically awake. He was up at his house, whack-a-moling fires, that over the course of the night went 360 degrees around his house. Were you mad that they wanted to sleep? No, not really. I knew that we were all exhausted. But I just told them, I can't-- there's no way that I can go to sleep. So, they were like, we'll be back in an hour. By this time, two hours passed, and I was like, really guys, like-- Oh. At one point, I had Jason's truck, and I was by myself. And I pointed it down the driveway, and had engine idling, and I was just yelling into the air, like where is our help? I think there's a few other words that I won't say that were involved in that. Later, in the weeks and months after the fire, this is the scene and feeling that Jeb kept dreaming about, fighting the fire at his house alone. The way Jeb and Dharma described the night, with the smoke blowing through, and this eerie warmth in the air, when it should have been chilly, because it was November, it sounded lonely in some core way, like every person, every creature in the canyon, was having its own personal battle with this thing. I saw this huge bear come running out of one of the little driveways. And he saw me and he ran right into the fire. Oh, Jesus. Because I was driving towards him. The wildlife was freaking out. I saw a couple of deer with singed fur, and they just didn't know what to do. There was this little mouse at one point, that kept running towards the flames, and we would stop him and put him on the other side of the road. And he kept running back towards the flames. We're like, wait, guy, you're going the wrong way. Finally, finally, around 11:00 AM, some friends from the area showed up with burritos and water. And I remember sitting on the side of the road, and I'm eating a little burrito. And then here comes, through the smoke-- I looked down, and through the smoke comes the fire department. An out of town fire truck comes ripping through the smoke. And it was like, we hold our shovels up. We're like help has arrived. And I remember, like-- and the firefighters, they come up to us. And they stop their truck, you know, and the guy looks out the window. And I go-- I'm like, hey, man, there's a lot of homes up here. I'm glad you guys finally made it. And I'm thinking he's going to be like, right on, guys, great job. He's like this is dangerous, what are you doing? You need to get out of here. And then he-- and drives off. So, we didn't get no welcome there. He was like, nah. He was like, you guys-- we're civilians, we weren't supposed to be there. Yeah. That was I think their take. And it was pretty dangerous, so-- On that night, they must have been-- I mean, they probably had just come through some really harrowing sights. They really did. I mean, and then, because like, hours later, it was 2 or 3 o'clock in the afternoon, Jeb and I finally got-- we got a ride out. We were like pretty much delusional and tired. And we got a ride out of the canyon. And we saw the total devastation. We were in the country club, compared to the front lines, yeah. Yeah, it was definitely a realization of like, oh, I know why no one was here. You couldn't even get up here. And there was much more important places to be, and lives to save, you know. But you don't think about that when you're in the moment of your own little bubble of your own neighborhood, you know. Yeah. What's going on everywhere else. Helltown is less than four miles from Paradise, which burned to the ground. Jeb and Dharma spent the whole exhausting night imagining, guessing, that they'd been overlooked. When they drove out, they saw the truth. They hadn't been overlooked. They'd been spared. Nancy Updike is one of the producers of our show. It took firefighters another two-plus days to fully save Helltown. In the end, according to Dharma, only two houses were lost in the area of the canyon around Helltown. Again, we heard about Helltown from Robert Baird's great story in GQ. It's going to be in the May issue of the magazine. And you can read it on the internet right now, online, at GQ.com. Act Three, The Book of Death is Long and Boring. So our show today is about being left behind when loved ones leave. And we'll close out our show with this, about the way people disappear all the time, and the place they go to when they're gone. David Kestenbaum explains. Imagine there was a book containing all the names of the dead, all the people who had lived, an enormous book, the last pages of which are blank. A half second passes, and a new name appears in the book, then another name, another name. Actually, imagine the book had their Social Security numbers too. Because it does. The Death Master File. It's quite a name. It is quite a name, yes. The Death Master File. It sounds a little like Star Wars or something, you know. It sounds like a book from the afterlife. Yes. Mike Astrue used to be responsible for the Death Master File, and a whole bunch of other stuff. The Death Master File, to be clear, is not a book. It's just a computer file. The people who maintain it work in a building just outside of Baltimore. It's the headquarters of the Social Security Administration, which Astrue was the commissioner of for six years, under President Bush, and then Obama. The government started keeping track of the deaths in 1936. It began as paper records. You know, it was just part of the wiring of the building. And nobody really thought about it. There would have been almost no one outside the agency, probably, that even knew that this existed. Some of the first names on the list, William M Gamble of Louisiana, Eson Bailey, West Virginia, Sidor Mullinar, Connecticut. They all died in 1936, which was the first year Social Security cards were issued, meaning they would have only had their numbers for a month or so before they died. William Gambles was 435-03-3049. How many names do you think are on it now? It's probably, right now, in the range of about 100 million names. Wow. Yeah. It was a creation of pure bureaucracy. We track births, we should track deaths. They are symmetrical events. But of course, the feelings associated with each couldn't be more different. The Death Master File became available to the public in 1980. Companies used it to detect fraud, to see if someone was trying to use a dead person's Social Security number. Anyway, one day Mike was at home and the phone rang. One of my best friends in the world came to me, very sheepishly. And very careful to say, you know, don't do anything that legally and ethically you're not allowed to do. But my mother is upset that her father is not in the Death Master File. She'd been tracing out the family's history. And one resource people use to do that is the Death Master File. And somehow in that long list of millions of names, her father wasn't in there, which is not surprising. It's actually kind of tricky to know of everyone who dies. Someone has to notify the state where the person died. Then the state has to submit the information to the federal government. And you know, states. But Mike had never heard of anyone complaining about not being on the list. He told his friend, let me see what I can do. And when he got to work-- remember, he was head of Social Security-- he went to talk to the people who actually managed the Death Master File. I went down and talked to them. And they were puzzled, because first of all, no one had ever asked. And they did have the response-- well, you know, usually people are trying to get off the list, because the agency does accidentally declare a certain number of people dead who are not dead. And they're usually quite upset about that. Because all of a sudden, their credit cards don't work, or their ATM card. It's kind of a powerful list. The staff was used to taking people off the list. They had a term for that-- to undead, as in, he'll be undeaded by Friday, or we can't undead her without her Social Security number. In the end, it wasn't hard. If you can undead someone, you can certainly dead them. They deaded his friend's grandfather. Mike told his friend, who told his mom. So what my friend told me was that it had been a very emotional moment when she realized that her father was in the Death Master File. And you know, and I got a very grateful, emotional letter from her. It's like, she just wanted him, like in that small way, not to be left out. Yes, burial of the dead is important. What did it feel like to know that somebody felt that way about it? Like, when you were walking down the hall, you must have been like, oh, I never thought about this thing that way. I think that the-- this particular story didn't really change my emotional connection to the Death Master File. But I understand it, and I respect it. When someone dies, they leave us behind. But we're also leaving them behind. It's natural to want some kind of marker. I think if you're going to collect the names of the dead, millions after millions of names, and then call that thing the Death Master File, it's more than just a government record. People are going to have feelings about it. It is kind of hard for me not to imagine the moment when my name gets added, you know. Like, there's a moment, it's going to happen, and then there will be another name right behind it, and then another, you know. I guess. I guess that's right. I-- for whatever reason, I'm sort of immune to that feeling. Which, of course, is the ridiculous and remarkable thing about all of us. You can know about this list, maybe you're even the boss of it. And you can manage not to think about it at all. David Kestenbaum is one of the producers of our show. Our program was produced today by Lilly Sullivan. The people who put our show together includes Elna Baker, Ben Calhoun, Zoe Chace, and Chivvis, Sean Cole, Aviva DeKornfeld, Hillary Elkins, Jared Floyd, Damian Grave, Seth Lind, Mike Meek, Lena Misitzis, Stowe Nelson, Katharine Raimondo, Nadia Reiman, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, Nancy Updike, and Diane Wu. Our Managing Editor is David Kestenbaum. Special thanks today to Kathy Hinckley, to Stephanie Teatro and the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, to KC Curberson-Alvarado, Liz Neill, Robert Neill, Jackson Neill, Jonathan Burrello, Shira Rubin, Joseph Feit, Jeremy Feit, Negusi Alamu, Susan Pollack, Aster Yilma, Degu Abunie, Cassie Greene O'Hara, Kelefa Sanneh, and Sara Bohannon. Our website, ThisAmericanLife.org, where you can stream our archive of over 670 episodes for absolutely free. Or you can download all those episodes, using the This American Life app. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, he really is a bit of a name dropper. His car broke down this week, I believe at a friend's house. And told me-- Like a garage of the Kennedys is probably better than most. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
OK, so it's a big crowded singles bar. One regular described it as the place you go at the end of the night when they play old hip hop and R&B that everybody knows the words to. People are grinding up on each other like it's a high school dance, like it is just shameless and fun and a little sloppy. And it's a meat market. I like it because it's shameless. Someone will always hit on you. That's like, why I come here. So, lots of pick ups, lots of ghosting afterwards. It's early evening and that's what I'm here to look for-- serial ghosters, people who kiss and disappear, which are not hard to find at all. And yes, some of them definitely agreed, ghosting is bad. They felt guilty, like this woman. She ghosted a guy after seeing him for two months. Great guy, she said. Hit it off immediately. Saw each other a couple nights a week. And then I went to a wedding, met another guy that I was very into. First guy kept reaching out, texting. And I just wasn't responding as quickly or as often and we weren't making plans. And he said, I wonder if I'll ever see you again. And that-- I didn't respond to that. I feel really bad about it. I feel really, really bad about it still. But he's a great guy, he did nothing wrong. A great guy and I feel bad for ghosting him. There are so many reasons to ghost. This guy for instance, has a boyfriend. He's there at his table. They're in an open relationship. And basically, he got drinks with another guy, one he met on Grindr. And it was fun. It was kind of romantic. I should have disclosed that I have a boyfriend, but I didn't. I think I perceived him kind of to be more monogamous. There was kind of a point where he was talking about, like, gay guys who sleep around too much. So he said nothing about his boyfriend and the open relationship. They kissed when they say goodbye. And, knowing he messed up, he ghosted the guy-- his first ghost, he says. So this, for me, is weird. And it is like a vortex of feelings, absolutely. It is like, why did I do that? I feel guilty about it. You're not-- Shame. I mean, shame, yes. Yeah. Some of the ghosting I heard about, it made me wonder about the correct usage of the word ghosting. Like, OK, what if you've dated somebody for years but it's on and off, and they're your drug dealer. And you're in college. And then he was just like, listen, I feel like you're only in it for the weed. And I was like, no! Not at all. And then he stopped getting me weed and-- As a test to you, to see if you really cared about him? Yeah. And were you were only in it for the weed? (silence) OK, that pause gives you the whole answer, right? The answer is yes. And she cut him off. Why not just tell him? Why not just be direct? Because I was afraid that if I was honest, like, then I wouldn't be able to get weed at all. I sound like I have a problem here. But-- Are you high right now? No, I'm not. I'm not, I promise. That was just a joke. OK. No, I'm not. I promise I'm not. She feels bad about ghosting him, but you know what? Ghost a few more people, apparently you can get over that. This woman, Carrie, was at a table with friends celebrating somebody's birthday. She told me that she's ghosted five or six people. Like anything else, you get used to it as you watch them flailing in your texts like fish thrashing around on the deck of the boat, gasping, desperate. A couple of them would just text me like every couple of days with like a question mark. But then they just realized what was happening. And then one of them tried to reach out to me on LinkedIn. OK, not what LinkedIn is for. But her friends around the table are all like, oh yeah, that's happened to lots of people. Some men apparently think that LinkedIn is the way in. She felt like, explaining to these guys exactly why she did not want to see them-- people had done that to her and it felt terrible. It just seemed less cruel to ghost. A real estate guy named Jason had a slightly different way of looking at this. He sees ghosting as tactical, like he only ghosts rare, special circumstances when it is called for. Case example, very recently a woman on the subway asked him the title of a book that he was reading. They got to talking. She was really attractive. She thought I was attractive. And then before she gets off the train she goes, we should exchange numbers. And I go, all right, yeah, let's exchange numbers. Yeah, sure. I mean, yeah, I'll take you out sometime. Wait, you got picked up on the train? Yes. It's not strange. It happens to me all the time. I'll say for the radio audience, you're very good looking. Thank you. Anyway, they go for drinks. At first it's all normal. And then-- This was the first red flag. She said the second I got off the train, I called my sister and told her about you. I was like, are you really close with your sister? And she's like, yeah, we talk every day. And I'm like, oh, OK, that's kind of cool. Then she was like, yeah, then I told my brother about you. And I go, what? So, this is the turning point of the drinks. This is where I stopped ordering drinks, because we were two drinks in and she starts telling me about her pet rats. OK? She has three pet rats that have cages, but they sleep in her bed and they chew through her sheets once a week. So she has to buy new sheets once a week. And I go, wait, are-- what are you? I'm sorry, rats? She's like, yeah, they're so cute but they chew through my sheets. And I go, OK. She goes to the bathroom and he asks for the check while she's gone, walks her to the bus. Because she was taking the bus uptown even though the train was a block away, another red flag. Waited for the bus with her, never spoke to her again. She sent text messages, she's called, I have never responded again. There is no way I am doing anything with the rat lady, not happening. If somebody seems too out there, he says, if they seem like they are beyond reasoning with, he ghosts. He does not see this as cowardice. He sees it as standing up for himself. These unrepentant ghosters, sometimes talking to them felt like talking to hardened commandos, you know? Fresh off some battlefield who have learned that feelings are not always helpful. I would describe my dating life as a series of infrequent one night stands. This woman said that after one Tinder date, you go home with somebody, you don't owe them anything. She ghosts unapologetically. And if you're going to dwell on this date that happened and be like, well, why didn't she text me back? Why didn't I get a reason? Why did I do wrong? You're just overthinking it. I don't want to get into answering all their questions and making them feel better about themselves or giving them feedback, you know? Do you feel like you're being a coward or you're being practical? Can both be an answer? I would say both. I love that she says that. I find her to be completely convincing in every way, and also a coward. She wants to avoid confrontation. We all tell ourselves all kinds of things to avoid confrontation, and we can be very convincing-- you know, with ourselves. It's so much easier to never say anything, to never dig in our heels, to never say the truth. That's why it's so popular. Today in our show, we have stories of people, for a change, summoning the courage, getting it together, the spineless getting a spine. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Act 1, Finally. So we start dealing with somebody getting up the nerve to do something that really, it would be nice to see more often. He makes an apology. And not just any apology. Nancy Updike has a story about the anatomy of this one particular and unusual instance of "I'm sorry." Quick warning if you're listening to our podcast, we've unbeeped a few curse words here in the internet version of today's show. If you want a beeped version, it is at our website. Here's Nancy. I read about this apology at the time it happened, but I never listened to it until recently. I listened in headphones on the subway and it was the auditory equivalent of seeing a snow leopard stroll through the subway car. This apology was about sexual harassment-- another one about sexual harassment-- but it was startling because it was not curt or vague. It was not a lawyered up mess of non-contrition in the passive voice. It was a true reckoning, publicly and fully accepted by the person who'd been wronged. She forgave him. That almost never happens-- a public apology that lands. And everything that went into this apology, which is a lot, is an answer, one answer, to a question that keeps wafting up from stories about sexual harassment in the last couple of years. The question of, what are men supposed to do? What are they supposed to say? I'm not talking about situations where a man denies anything happened. I'm talking about the ones where they've agreed that something did happen, something bad. But, what do they have to say to be forgiven, to move on? Let's start at the end, with the apology. Then we'll hear from the people involved. The person who's apologizing is a writer, also actor and many other things, named Dan Harmon. He co-created the TV show Rick and Morty, and also an NBC comedy called Community about a group of adults going to community college. Dan was the creator and showrunner of Community. He had a bunch of writers who worked with him on the show but he was the boss, essentially. The thing he's apologizing for happened there. Dan delivered his apology last year, in 2018, on his podcast, Harmontown. I'm going to play most of it for you-- seven and a half minutes of it-- which is short if you're getting a foot massage but long for a public apology. It-- in 2000 whatever whatever, I can't remember, 2009, 2006, 2000 something something, I had the privilege of running a network sitcom. And I-- I was attracted to a employee. I really want to be careful about that language. I think a huge part of the problem is a culture of feeling things that you think are unique and significant because they're happening to you, and saying things like, I had feelings for, and I-- I fell for, and all these things. I mean, the most clinical way I can put it in fessing up to my crimes is that I was attracted to a writer that I had power over because I was a showrunner. And I knew enough to know that these feelings were bad news. And so I did the cowardly, easiest, laziest thing you could do with feelings like that and I didn't deal with them. And in not dealing with them I made everybody else deal with them, especially her. Flirty, creepy, everything other than overt enough to constitute betraying your live-in girlfriend to whom you're going home every night, who is actually smart enough and respectful enough to ask you, do you have feelings for that young writer that you're talking about, that you're paying all this attention to? And saying to her, no, because the trick is if you lie to yourself you can lie to everybody. It's really easy. And so that's what I continued to do, telling myself and anybody that threatened to confront me with it that if you thought what I was doing was creepy or flirty or unprofessional then it's because you were the sexist. You were jealous. I was supporting this person. I'm a mentor, I'm a feminist. It's your problem, not mine. You're the one that actually is seeing things through that lens. And so I let myself keep doing it. And it's not as if this person didn't repeatedly communicate to me the idea that what I was doing was divesting her of a recourse to integrity. Integrity meaning integrity is a writer, learning her craft. This writer told him, when you focus on me, praise me so much, pick my jokes-- if you were doing it for the wrong reasons, even a little bit, that would undermine me devastatingly. How will I know if I'm truly doing my job well? I just didn't hear it. And it's because it didn't profit me to hear it. And this was, after all, happening to me, right? And so after a season of playing it that way I broke up with my girlfriend, who I had lied to the whole time while lying to myself. I broke up with my girlfriend, then I went right, you know, full steam into creepin' on my employee. And then after that season, you know, I got overt about my feelings after it was wrapped because then-- and said, oh, I love you. And she said the same thing she'd been saying the entire time, in one language or another. Please, don't you understand that focusing on me like this, liking me like this, preferring me like this, I can't say no to it. And when you do it, it makes me unable to know whether I'm good at my job. And because I finally got to the point where I said to her, oh, this is-- you know, I love you, because that's what I thought it was when you target somebody for two years. And it was therefore rejected that way. I was humiliated. And so I continued to do the cowardly thing, and continued to do the selfish thing. Now I wanted to teach her a lesson. I wanted to show her that if she didn't like being liked in that way, then oh, boy, she should get over herself. After all, if you're just going to be a writer then this is how just writers get treated. Did you get what he's saying here? She said, I don't want to date you. His response was, fine. You don't like my praise and attention? All right, then, look out. And that was probably the darkest of it all because I drank, I took pills, I crushed on her and resented her for not reciprocating it. And the entire time I was the one writing her paychecks and in control of whether she stayed or went, and whether she felt good about herself or not, and said horrible things. Just treated her cruelly, pointedly. Things that I would never, ever, ever have done if she had been male and if I had never had those feelings for her. And I lied to myself the entire time about it and I lost my job. I feel the need to say, he didn't lose his job because of this woman. She didn't report him to his bosses. He's describing a more general crisis in his life. I ruined my show. I betrayed the audience. I destroyed everything. And I damaged her internal compass. And I moved on. And I never did it before and I will never do it again. But I certainly wouldn't have been able to do it if I had any respect for women. On a fundamental level, I was thinking about them as different creatures. I was thinking about the ones that I liked as having some special role in my life. And I did it all by not thinking about it. So I just want to say, in addition to obviously being sorry, but that's really not the important thing, I want to say I did it by not thinking about it. And I got away with it by not thinking about it. And if she hadn't mentioned something on Twitter, I would have continued to not have to think about it, although I did walk around with my stomach in knots about it. But I wouldn't have had to talk about it. The person Dan Harmon was talking about is another writer, Megan Ganz. She's now an executive producer on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. When she heard Dan's apology last year, she was in her car on the 101 and 170 in Los Angeles. Yeah, I was driving to work which, about halfway through listening to it, I thought, well, this is a mistake. I probably should have saved this till I got home tonight. Honestly, I started listening to it expecting to be angry. So that was also kind of a roller coaster, going from angry to feeling this immense relief at the end of it. And I listened to it, I think, again right away, sitting in my car in the parking lot of my work. When she heard Dan's apology, they hadn't talked face to face in six years. It was cathartic in a way that I could have never imagined. It was like receiving the antidote to a poison I'd been self inflicting. It's the only way I can describe it. Megan thanked Dan via text and also forgave him publicly on Twitter, saying quote, "please listen to it. It is a master class in how to apologize. I only listened because I expected an apology, but what I didn't expect was the relief I'd feel hearing him say these things actually happened. Ironic that the only person who could give me that comfort is the one person I'd never ask," end quote. Whatever you think of this apology, the content of it, the result was not the way these stories have usually ended. Both parts are unusual-- the apology and the acceptance of it. It's so unusual, I think it's worth looking at how exactly that moment in the car, Megan listening, feeling relieved, how did that come to be? How did they get there, to forgiveness? Could their path be a map for anyone else? I don't know, maybe. A quick outline of their history. Dan was Megan's boss, the creator of a TV show that was pretty much all consuming for the writers who worked on it. It was Megan's first job writing for a sitcom. She was among the least experienced, least powerful people in the room. But Dan was impressed with Megan from her first script and he favored her flagrantly, insisting it was only about her work. When he came clean about his feelings and she said she didn't feel that way, he turned on her, started savaging her work, berating her in front of the other writers. This all went on for about two years, start to finish. The apology that gave her relief-- it did not spring forth all at once. It was actually built out of earlier, not successful apologies. The very first one was in 2012, after Dan was fired from Community. Dan texted Megan saying basically, sorry for being a bad boss-- very general, short. Megan felt nothing. Another early attempt was on his podcast, 12 weeks before the apology that stuck. It was more in the nature of an admission than an apology. I have abused my power dynamic at work. I didn't know I was doing it when I did it. He drops this excuse in the later apology. I didn't-- I never took notice that-- I never thought to myself, until after the whole thing happened and I looked back and I was like, why was that such a relative disaster? Oh, because if you have a crush on someone that works for you, you are not-- it's not the same as having a crush on someone at a library or a bar that doesn't work for you, you fucking idiot. Megan didn't hear this at the time. If the possible beginnings of an apology fall in a podcast and no one's there to hear it-- the pace really started picking up on Twitter at the end of 2017 in the wake of Harvey Weinstein, Larry Nassar, Louis CK, on and on. Dan tweeted, quote, "This was truly the year of the asshole, myself included. We don't have to make 2018 the year of the mensch, but I hope it can be the year of the not as much of an asshole. #realisticgoals." Megan read that one and what drove her to respond was the reaction she saw-- people praising him for admitting to big bad behavior in the past and declaring he was trying to be better. She wrote back on Twitter. I responded to him by saying, care to be more specific? Redemption follows allocution. What does allocution mean? I had to look it up. Well, it's a term I took from Law and Order, because I'm a big Law and Order fan. Allocuting to a crime is basically what happens when you take a plea deal and the judge says that you have to, as part of the deal, say what you did. And if your allocution is found to be lacking in any way they can pull your plea bargain back, basically. That's how I understand it. So I guess that was a weird mix of my Law and Order knowledge and my Catholicism, Catholic school, coming together because I thought, well, the way that it always worked in confession was, you had to say what you did wrong first before they would absolve you. Dan tweeted back, saying quote, "I've talked on my podcast about the lines I crossed," end quote. And also, quote, "I will talk about it more in any way that you think is just. I am deeply sorry," end quote. That, I am deeply sorry, was the first time Megan felt like he was speaking directly to her about how he'd behaved with her. She says she might have left it there with the deeply sorry except Dan sent out another tweet saying quote, "I'm filled with regret and a lot of foggy memories about abusing my position, treating you like garbage. I would feel a lot of relief if you told me there was a way to fix it. I'll let you call the shots. Till then, at least I know I was an awful boss and a selfish baby," end quote. The foggy memories line got to her. Yeah, I wrote, "I wish my memories were foggier. I wish there was a way to fix it. It took me years to believe in my talents again, to trust a boss when he complimented me and not cringe when he asked for my number. I was afraid to be enthusiastic, knowing it might be turned against me later. You want relief? So do I. Figure out how to give me that relief and I'll return the favor." I guess what I was reading into that tweet was, I was like, you're already thinking of you. You're already thinking of how you can move on from this, instead of just sitting with the awful knowledge that I've been sitting with this for six years. And nobody helped me out of these feelings. Nobody showed me a path back. I had to figure that out for myself. Over the course of this exchange, which went on for a couple more rounds on Twitter, Megan essentially wrote the outline of her own apology. She laid out some specifics that needed to be addressed. I doubted my talent. I didn't know how to act around bosses or co-workers afterward. I am still roiled inside. I have lost time to this. And of course, allocution-- a full account. Dan kept saying, I want to do the right thing. Tell me what's the right thing. And Megan kept saying, I appreciate you're trying. Try harder. Dan didn't want to be interviewed on tape. He said he didn't want to make this story about him, any more than it already is. But he answered questions via email and confirmed facts. Dan said via email that after he read Megan's tweets, his first reactions were fear and self-pity. It was his 45th birthday. He talked to his agents and accepted the possibility that his career in TV might be over. And he had a reaction I've seen other men have-- it felt unfair. He wanted to defend himself. He says he realized, slowly, that there was no defending himself. He couldn't do it if he was honest. And also, maybe he didn't need to do it because no one was attacking him? He emailed, quote, "someone doesn't have to wish me harm to tell me that I harmed them," end quote. Dan says he got advice from women he knows in the business. And he read a book called, On Apology by Aaron Lazare, recommended by his therapist. Lazare says a complete apology has to start with quote, "an acknowledgment of offense, i.e. wrenching your brain away from its justifications and putting yourself in the other person's place." as Dan put it via email quote, "it seems crucial that you not skimp there." He said part of not skimping with Megan was to face that, quote, "I could have had the same feelings I had and not caused damage. I could have shared the feelings and been told they weren't reciprocated and not caused damage," end quote. Apologies are powerful-- they can be. But power is also amoral. It can be used for a pernicious goal as easily as a better one. One reason Megan needed a full account of Dan's intentional damage, and not just a big, I am deeply sorry, is that Dan actually apologized to Megan a lot back when she worked for him. It was part of the slow buildup of the harassment. Megan was 25 when she started writing on Community. Dan was 37, creator and show runner. In the room there was this imaginary lack of hierarchy that a lot of creative endeavors have-- we're all just making a cool thing together. The best idea wins. That vibe is a lot easier to surf when you're older and can appreciate the ways in which it's true while seeing all the ways in which it's ridiculous. And of course, the notion of a pure meritocracy is easy to believe in to the point of delusion when you're on the winning side. Megan didn't want to rehash specific incidents with Dan on the radio, but she did talk about the way apologizing was a key part of the dynamic. Like for instance, he would do something, say something to me that I wouldn't take as inappropriate. And then he would apologize for it, for some little thing that he had said. And I would say, oh, don't worry about it. Like, I wasn't offended. And then the thing, the next thing that would happen, would be slightly more inappropriate. But I had forgiven him for one thing and I thought, oh-- every time that he apologized I thought, well, look, this guy is-- he knows. Like, he's real switched on. He knows where the line is. Not realizing that all of those instances were slowly moving the line to a place where I had forgiven him so many times that it started to become maybe something that didn't seem that big of a deal to me. And had the last interaction happened first, maybe I would have had a stronger reaction. Megan could see that other writers on the show, more experienced writers, noticed Dan's focus on her, his eagerness to choose her jokes, to leapfrog her into opportunities they'd had to work years to get. People made little comments in front of her, or jokes about her favored status. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, instead of in that moment thinking, oh, my god, are people picking up on something here that I'm not picking up on? I thought, well, you're just jealous. You're jealous that I'm doing better at this job than you are. And he would say things to me like, I never want you to think that my interest in you is anything other than professional. I think you're a really great writer. And I reward you because I feel that you're a great writer. And I wanted to believe that so badly that I, in wanting to believe that we're all equal and that there isn't any sort of untoward affection going on, I was not looking at it. I wasn't perceiving it. And then when Dan told her he loved her and she turned him down and he began punishing her, that's when Megan caught up to some of the other writers' perception of what had been going on the whole time. Yes, it felt like-- I know it sounds silly. It felt like an M Night Shyamalan twist at the end, where all of a sudden you have these flashes of all these things that happened and you realized, oh, my god. All these people are dead! It was sexual harassment the whole time. Megan says she loves Community. It's one of her favorite shows of all time, still. She wrote one of the funniest episodes. Writing on the show was collaborative, but she is the credited writer on this one. It's a Law and Order parody, of course. The murder victim was a yam, part of a biology experiment. Remember the characters are all students at a community college. Grades were at stake, motives were complex. There's a quasi trial scene out of A Few Good Men. Donald Glover plays one of the detectives, Michael K Williams, who plays Omar on The Wire, is the biology teacher. The actors are having a ball. There's so many layers of jokes-- jokes within jokes. It's just a delicious piece of pop culture baklava. How are you supposed to tell that someone who says you're really talented has another agenda when you are, in fact, really talented? There's this thing of like, you have this experience that only one other person shared and you can't talk to that person about it because they're the cause of your pain. So, hearing him be so specific, especially about how when I rejected his feelings, how quickly that turn happened to the punishment for having rejected him-- that's how quick it felt to me. But having him say that he made that choice consciously, and the fact that he said I treated her in a way that I wouldn't have done if she was a man, just can't be understated, like how important that is to hear. In his apology, Dan urged his fans not to attack Megan. And most of the responses she got were positive. Some of the writers from Community reached out. Women she didn't know got in touch to tell her they'd lived vicariously through her apology-- said they'd never gotten ones of their own. Dan ended his apology with a lot of hope. And I think that we're living in a good time right now because we're not going to get away with it anymore. He said via email he feels less optimistic now. He said one of the few responses he's gotten from men since he apologized was a guy who reached out to say how he felt frustrated that Dan had quote, gotten away with it, end quote, and he hadn't. And he wanted to know what he could do to get away with it, because Dan's still working in TV. Dan's apology worked, partly because he finally took a risk. He admitted to things that, if Meghan had wanted she probably could have used against him. Lawyers advised him not to say those things, he says on the podcast. By admitting them openly, he chose her well-being over his own comfort, maybe for the first time in their whole relationship. A lot of people just aren't willing to do that, even for seven and a half minutes. Nancy Updike is a producer on our show. Coming up, starlings and finches and crows, oh my! Why spiders and mollusks and slugs should hate their guts. I mean, OK, a new reason why they should hate their guts that you've never heard of. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. This is This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, "Get a Spine!" Stories of people standing up for themselves, shaking off their fear, bracing themselves and doing what they have been scared to do. And as we were putting together today's show, we put out this call looking for people who are actually in that situation of having to face something that freaked them out. And by face it I mean, face it right now. Over 200 people wrote in, people square in the front of big, life changing moments, and some smaller ones too. Here's a brief catalog of spines recently grown across the country. My name is Zoey. I am almost eight years old. I'm about to try to dive off the diving board. It makes me feel nervous but I don't know why. I am at North Heights Lutheran Church in Roseville, Minnesota. And in about 20 minutes we're going to start the service. I'm going to preach my first sermon. I sat at my desk today at work and read through it kind of softly so no one could hear. Tonight after work I actually read through it full volume and I was walking around the room like I normally would in the church. I was holding my Bible. My wife actually came and interrupted me and she's like, it's time for dinner but you're doing a great job, so she could hear me from down the hall. I am about to have my first baby. I guess I'm nervous for how long it could take, and to get too tired. I've been thinking a lot about like, what I eat because I want to make sure that something that it's going to fill me up and things like that. What did you eat today? A fried egg. I'm Michael. And I'm Piper. And we're in our bedroom. And we're about to have sex for the very first time. I'm excited. Me, too. A little bit nervous? A little bit nervous. It'll work out. It's the kind of thing where, you know no matter what it's going to be weird the first time. But, it's only going to get better from here. So, why not start now? I love you. I love you, too. I do not want to be married anymore. I'm finally able-- I'm admitting, OK, I did all the things. Let's go. On Saturday at the end of this week I have to deliver my mother's eulogy. You know, what I really need to do is focus on just really honoring her memory. But I'm a little angry with her, a little angry with myself, and a little angry at the universe for, this is the way things played out. So Zoey, they're moving a lap lane so that you can use the diving board. How does that make you feel? Excited and nervous. Ready to give it a try. I don't know. Well, honey, there isn't-- unfortunately there's a little bit of pressure here because they're giving you a special chance to do it, but the board's still supposed to be closed. So now's your chance. I don't think I want to. Today is not the day? Yes. All right, today is not the day. What do we say to the god of diving? Not today. Those voices were collected by Aviva DeKornfeld and Diane Wu. Which brings us to Act Two, Act Two of our program, Because You're Spine, I Walk the Line. So our show today is about the spineless getting a spine. And in this act we turned to those who are truly spineless and by that I mean literally, they are literally creatures who have no spines. Also featured in the story, the scientists who study them, who, like us all, could sometimes use a little more spine. Lilly Sullivan explains. A while back I was talking to my friend Jackie and she tells me, oh man, Malcolm started a bunch of drama at work. Malcolm's her husband. And that surprised me because Malcolm's workplace has never struck me as all that traumatic. Here's Jackie. He works with spiders, wolf spiders. Like, the bulk of his research has been about wolf spiders mating. He watches wolf spiders have sex. Malcolm Rosenthal, he's a scientist, a behavioral ecologist. And wolf spiders, if that name sounds wild it's actually one of the most common spiders out there-- brown, nondescript. If you turn over a rock and you see a spider, it's likely a wolf spider. He thinks they're cute now. Like, he frequently calls them like, they're like little puppies! They look at me with their little puppy eyes. They're kind of like little puppies. They look around at you, they follow you, they-- you know, watching the males do these sad little dances and try to get the attention of a mate, and fail more often than not. You can't watch that 1,000 times without getting a little bit attached. Yeah, spiders are shockingly charismatic. Now I think you've gone too far. Nope. Let's go a little further. That sad little sex dance, the spider's serenade while they do it. Oh, no, I'm going to have to do my song impersonation. [IMITATING WOLF SPIDER SONG] Anyway, here's how the drama started. Jackie's a journalist but she'd often hang out with Malcolm and his spider co-workers. They'd go to this one bar every week. And they'd often end up doing what co-workers do. They're like, complaining about work. They're complaining about like, the gossip. It's just workplace shit talking, but like, scientists. They're giving Jackie the scoop on the thing they're all worked up about. There'd been a big meeting earlier that week with a bunch of people in the animal behavior department. So it was the spider lab, the cricket lab, and the bird lab. Someone had just heard that a paper they'd submitted to a journal had been rejected. My PhD advisor just casually said, oh, well, of course, it probably has something to do with the fact that it's so much harder to get things published when you work with invertebrates. And this other guy, who coincidentally worked with birds-- Birds-- not invertebrates. --kind of took offense to that and said, that's not true. That's ridiculous. And then it kind of turned into a whole heated argument over whether this was true or not. And none of us really had any evidence beyond our own experiences. And you know, our experiences were that we felt this was happening and his was that he felt like it wasn't, which I guess isn't surprising given what we worked with. And I remember just being steamed about it. Among invertebrate scientists, people like Malcolm who study spineless creatures, there's a feeling that worms, beetles, mollusks, kind of get the shaft and that people who study animals with spines-- finches, chimpanzees, the fricking bottlenose dolphin-- they're the golden children of animal behavioral research. Malcolm calls this the vertebrate divide. Maybe the broad strokes version of it would be that there is a lot of research done on birds and mammals, specifically. And that for those of us that don't study this kind of very special group of organisms there is a sense that the work we do is valued less, or is at least given less airtime. I mean, this is definitely the number one bar topic when you get a bunch of invertebrate scientists drunk together-- which happens a lot, actually. The fact that the bird guy not only didn't know about any of that but also told them they were wrong, it infuriated Malcolm. And it stuck with him. He couldn't let it go. Months passed and he and Jackie moved to Canada. Jackie's excited to explore their new neighborhood and Malcolm is still thinking about that fight. We went out to breakfast and he was like, yeah, and he said this thing and I still can't believe that he said that bird papers don't get published more. And I think I said, like, oh, well, is there a way that we could-- is there a way to prove that? Or is there a way that you could find out if bird papers or vertebrates get published more than spider papers? He couldn't actually get a list of all the rejected animal papers ever written, though he thought about it. But there was a next best thing. And then I think he made a joke about like, yeah, if you went through the whole archive of a journal and went through and looked at every paper they'd ever published. And I was like, can you do that? Is that-- like, is that possible? And he was like, yeah, I guess you could do that. I mean, yeah. I was like, I could do it. We could just like split up the data set at night, because we always like watching dumb TV in the evenings. But I don't think he was actually going to do it. A few weeks later, Malcolm had to attend a mandatory training session about biosafety techniques-- nine hours of training and videos about proper glove use, lab coats, a three hour presentation on how to use a special kind of biology cabinet which are for like-- never mind. Malcolm would never have to use them anyway. So I was bored. I was so fucking bored. I was so bored that I just went to the journal Animal Behaviour's website, and just started downloading every single paper that they'd published, and just copying down what the animal was for every single paper. And then by the end of three hours I had like, 400 papers done. And you start doing this thing just because you're bored out of your mind? Bored, and a little bit of spite maybe towards that person who disagreed with me during that conversation. Like, how cool would it be just to throw this massive data set down on this table and be like, ah! I told you! Malcolm picked one of the flagship journals in the field of animal behavior, which is called Animal Behaviour. He picked it because it had 61 years worth of publications. It's a good indicator of what's going on in the field. And he starts going through, paper by paper, counting up. How many papers on birds? How many on insects? Like a scorecard for every living creature. He hires a bunch of undergrads to help out. There's estimated to be something like 10 million species out there-- most haven't been studied at all and a few have been studied a ton. Here's what he found. I mean, I hate to just throw numbers out instead of emotions, but birds and mammals together are less than one half of one half of 1% of all species and they represent half of all papers published in the past 50 years. I don't know, it just kind of-- I find it almost hard to imagine. I mean, if 99% of all animals are not them-- and it was even crazier than that. I mean, 20% of all papers published are published on passerines, which is a subset of birds. So it's not even like it's all birds. It's the perching birds, the little chirpy tweet birds, the ones that aren't ostriches or birds of prey. And it's really this tiny, tiny little group. And then within them, it's really just starlings and finches and crows. Starlings and finches and crows are to behavioral ecology what the golden retriever is to living rooms across America-- beloved and ubiquitous. But the stuff he found went way beyond birds and bugs. He discovered that just 10 species of animals represented a shockingly high proportion of papers published-- 15% of all papers. That means one in seven papers is dedicated to just 10 species out of millions. The magnitude of it was so totally shocking to me. It's a lot worse than you thought? Oh, it's a lot worse. It's so much worse than I thought that I think it really-- it totally floored me. You know, we talk about the natural world and all the animals in it and all the things they do. But if you think you know the world because you've studied hundreds and hundreds of birds and mammals, maybe you don't know the world. Like, maybe it isn't that bad but maybe the whole world is different than we thought because we just haven't been focusing our attention on the bulk of things. Yeah, like we've been only looking at just a tiny sliver and we thought it was the whole world. Not everyone sees it this way. I talked to a prominent bird scientist, William Searcy, who actually for six years was an editor of the journal that Malcolm analyzed. He told me he wasn't all that surprised by the findings. Everyone knows that more papers come out on vertebrates than on invertebrates. But he didn't agree that that's some big problem. As for birds, there are lots of very good reasons to study them. For one thing, they're bigger. You can see them, observe them, study them in their natural habitat. And they do interesting things that other animals don't do-- the way they communicate. They can even develop and learn dialects. Also, we've studied them for ages. We know a lot about them. So you can build on that research and make progress, really understand stuff in detail. But his main argument is this-- scientist should first identify a question, a theory that they want to explore, and then pick the species that best helps them explore that question. He says that's how science moves forward. He thinks that prioritizing the animal over the question could lead to inferior science. Like, to try to study every kind of beetle-- and there are a lot, something like 450,000 species known so far-- would be untenable, he says. Malcolm says he's not arguing that there should be 450,000 papers on beetles for every one paper on starlings, just that maybe things are so out of whack that we're missing things and we don't even know what we're missing. Malcolm figures, if he could just lay out the facts it might get people thinking. They're scientists, after all. His plan is that he'll present all his numbers at this annual conference of the Animal Behavior Society, which is called the Annual Conference of the Animal Behavior Society. All the prominent people will be there, who are mostly bird and mammal scientists because that's how it goes. This is in 2016. You know, I'm still relatively early in my career. I don't need to be pissing off people who might later be able to give me a job. And I was really worried that the big names would come to the audience and get grumpy. I guess it's kind of the tame science version of speaking truth to power. Mm. Were you nervous? Oh, obviously, I was terrified. He goes on stage and he does his PowerPoint. Jackie's at home during all this. She doesn't usually go to Malcolm's conferences. She'd kind of forgotten when his talk was since they usually just talk at night so she was surprised when Malcolm texted her mid-afternoon. He was like, I just presented my paper and it was bonkers. He described it to me as the most raucous animal behavior panel he'd ever been to. Wow. I mean, science conferences are not exciting places. And I didn't think people would go nuts for it. It has to be the coolest talk I have ever given, and probably the coolest talk I will ever give. Just the most outrageous 11 minutes I have experienced in a conference. How was it outrageous? So, these things are pretty staid usually. This talk was like being at a rock concert. People were yelling at me from the seats. What were they yelling? They were screaming-- someone definitely stood up and yelled, "hell, yeah," at me, which might be relatively tame but for a science conference is outrageous. People were standing up, there was applause in the middle-- which never happens. You get tame, sad applause at the end. People were packing the room till there was no space to sit and people were standing jammed in the door frames, which is a great, awesome feeling, and has never happened to me before or since. It was weird. The end was basically a call to action. We were saying like, we think it's time for people to start paying attention to this. And we were getting cheers and fist pumps from the audience. It was nuts. Fist pumps? Yeah. And the whole rest of the conference, people I didn't know were patting me on the back, which I really hate. I don't like being touched. But people would come up and say like, hey, man, I super love your talk. My name is Mark and I work on butterfly nest site locations. It was like, people had been sitting there with all these feelings with no way to talk about them until now. It was like the people who studied the millions of species that did not have a spine, they now had a leader, one with lots of spine who was finally standing up to the authorities with their spiny menagerie of chimps and finches and dolphins and making them listen. And now that invertebrate scientists had seen how the bar graphs were stacked against them, they did not want it to end there. Like this one guy at the conference started counting audience members at every talk, looking for patterns of preferential treatment. So he'd gone to different talks and noted down how many people were sitting in the audience. And he was like, I only went to six talks today so it's not a huge sample size because I got real tired. But it looked to me like in the vertebrate talks there were more people watching. He sent me a photo of his notebook. So he just like took a screenshot with his phone of his notebook where he'd handwritten this and then emailed it to me, which was hilarious. All this felt great at first, but as Malcolm moved through the conference his scientist's brain noticed another pattern. We slowly started to realize that every single person who came up to start a conversation with me because they had been at that talk worked with an insect or with a spider or was an invertebrate researcher. Which led him to this unwelcome conclusion. The bird and mammal people, they weren't at that talk. I had been terrified and nervous to stand up and speak truth to power, so to speak, in this kind of like very marginal way. And then it was like discovering that power had just decided not even to show up that day. And everyone who came up to me-- the thing people would say was, oh my god, all the things I thought seem to be true, which is nice. But not as nice as, I'd never thought about this before and you really changed the way I think about the way our field is working. Malcolm finally got his findings in front of the people who skipped his talk, the vertebrate majority, when he submitted his research for publication. OK, yeah, the title of the paper is Taxonomic Bias in Animal Behaviour Publications. Evidence suggests that certain taxonomic groups are more thoroughly studied than others. The way scientific journals usually work is that when they consider a paper, they send it out for peer review. Basically, they get a bunch of other scientists in the field to look at it. It's all anonymous. When Malcolm gets back his peer reviews, they're unlike any he's gotten in the past. For one thing, they're twice the number of reviewers-- four when you usually get two. What's their response like? The response was mixed, I guess, would be one way to put it. But mixed maybe doesn't explain how intense the extremes of the mixture were. Because some people were very into it and some people were very not into it? Yeah. And the degree that people were into it was very high and the degree that people were not into it was also very high. Yeah, people were angry. And they went to a place he did not anticipate. I ask him to read me one of the negative reviews. Ugh "The solution advocated by the authors of this study is affirmative action by journal editorial boards to promote and highlight work on underrepresented taxa. Taken to the extreme this could lead to some kind of quota system policed by officers of taxonomic diversity on funding panels and journal editorial boards, and perhaps also on promotion and tenure committees," which is just outrageous. I'm getting all steamed just reading this again. Ugh. I don't know. I mean, the idea that we were proposing a quota system is crazy and it also kind of just means that they didn't read the paper. It means they got mad. They read part of the paper, got mad, and then didn't read the rest. I mean, honestly it does remind me of the conversations around affirmative action. It sounds very similar. They go there very quickly. I know. We were just pointing out that it is a problem and that we need to think about how to solve that problem, and that may be assisting people who might be struggling working in underrepresented research groups might be something that we could do. I guess maybe that's affirmative action. I don't think it is, though. It was weird. The words were so similar. One, I just loved that they were like, the assumption that affirmative action is bad, which, cool. And then two, they immediately are just like, we bird people are under-- if we do this, bird people will be under attack. Like the way that people would be like, we only take the papers that are the best, and the bird ones happen to be the best. And it's like, that was so similar to hearing about like, we just happen to take the best candidates. They're all white and dudes, but that doesn't mean anything. It's like, really? Does that not mean anything? Yeah. I was like, you can't even-- even here, in like, even in this very, very, very tiny scale thing, we can't even talk a little bit about how we might be a little bit biased about anything. Jackie, by the way, is Filipino and Chinese, and Malcolm? The opposite-- white. White is too bland, very white. I mean, it sounds like there's some kind of an element with her, just like, ah well, yeah, you know, now you know how it feels. For sure. I definitely approached this with the energy of a person who has never had to fight any of these fights before. Not so for Jackie. It was just like replaying so many dumb conversations, but it's like birds. And then I mentioned that sometimes I didn't want to talk about it. I would be like, OK, do you mind if we maybe not talk about the paper today, or whatever, because I've had this conversation a lot. And I'm tired of talking about it. She felt like, I know how this is going to end. But her exhaustion with the subject did not deter Malcolm. He was fired up, like they were on the verge of a revolution and it was time to lead the resistance for the ignored creatures of the world-- the boneless, the slimy, the microscopic. Like, the iron is hot. We've got the editorial staff at Animal Behaviour thinking about this. This is the time to strike. And it seemed like it was working. The powers that be, a.k.a. the journal, a.k.a. Animal Behaviour, accepted the paper and they got behind it. Later that year, one of the scientific organizations that publishes the journal, they asked Malcolm to do something big about this for their conference. He and two colleagues organized a special symposium. They flew in invertebrate scientists from around the world to come show off their bad ass research on their bad ass species-- parasitic larvae controlling and bursting out of their hosts, extreme mating weaponry in the New Zealand giraffe weevil. The plan was to end the symposium with this big two part conversation. First, how does this bias limit what humans know about the animal world? And second, what should we do about it? Let's brainstorm solutions. It was a big deal. It's exactly what Malcolm had wanted. But when it came time to start the big two part conversation, they began by asking the audience, who here works with vertebrates? Raise your hands. And no one there did. Again, it was like the people we were hoping to talk to had just chosen not to show up for our symposium. Mm-hmm. You know, like other symposiums were more exciting and ours was kind of underwhelming to people. The people who were actually in the positions to do things had apparently thought there were better things to do than be there. Malcolm said that even some of his own friends, his bird friends, also skipped the symposium. It's a conference. There was another cool panel at the same time about animal cognition, which is almost exclusively vertebrates with researchers who study like hyenas and nightingales and all kinds of passerines. After that, nothing else really happened. It occurs to me, too, that I feel like you learned this thing that a lot of people learn when they're trying to talk about diversity and have to point out something awkward, which is just like, it quickly gets turned into a panel discussion and sanitized and becomes this awkward conversation that doesn't go very well. And then in the end, nothing really changes. Yeah, that's the perfect summary. That's exactly what happened. Oh, man. Have you seen any concrete changes at all? No. None that I can think of. No, not really. One of the reasons we study animals is to learn about humans. Malcolm doesn't think that that should be the main goal. Nonetheless, studying the way that we study animals did teach him a lot about humans. Lilly Sullivan is one of the producers of our show. Our program was produced today by Aviva DeKornfeld and Miki Meek. People who put today's show together includes Bim Adewunmi, Emanuele Berry, Dana Chivvis, Sean Cole, Whitney Dangerfield, Neil Drumming, Hilary Elkins Damien Graef, Chana Joffe-Walt, Stowe Nelson, Katherine Rae Mondo, Nadia Reiman, Robyn Semien, Alissa Shipp, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, Nancy Updike, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu. Our managing editor is David Kestenbaum. Special thanks today to Gary Gullman, Nathan Englander, Lauren Weisstein, Anny Celsi, Kevin Allison, all the people we phoned about the spines they were growing, Yannos and Ashley Misitzis, Dai Shizuka, Wesley Hochachka, and Alexa Junge. Our website, Thisamericanlife.org, where you can listen to her archive of over 650 episodes for absolutely free. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, last Halloween he draped a bed sheet over himself and chased his little nephew around yelling, boo! Boo! I swear, he scared the hell out of that little kid. I feel really bad about it. He was a great guy, he did nothing wrong. A great guy and I feel bad for ghosting him. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
For over 20 years, Eric Capstick's worked for Yankee Stadium. He's a camera operator. During the game, he runs around the crowd, looking for fans to put up on this impossibly huge TV screen that sits over the outfield. And I've seen lots of people work a crowd with a microphone or a camera over the years, and I can say definitively, he is masterful. So I'd appreciate it if you gave me some really great energy, like [GROWLS] you know, positive Yankee energy. Are you guys a bachelorette party or something? Yeah. All right. I'm going to try and get you for the second shot. Yay. He's this lanky, friendly guy. By the way, he seems to know everybody working in the stadium. Daphne and Curtis. What's good? What's up, bro? When he walks past, he tosses them pieces of bubblegum that he swiped from the Yankees dugout. Danny. A piece of gum arcs through the air. Oh, he dropped it. He dropped it. But usually, he has pretty good hands. I like to say that half the people in the building can't catch. It's pretty accurate, actually. The whole purpose of putting fans up on the big screen is to keep the crowd energized between innings, when nothing's happening on the field. So what Eric's looking for is pumped up, passionate fans. Sometimes fans ask for Kiss Cam. I'm like, no, you got to go to Queens for Kiss Cam. We don't do Kiss Cam here. You get that Queens reference? He's saying Kiss Cam's the kind of low-brow garbage that you see at Mets games. How are you doing? Hi, I want to get the kids. I mean, you know, primarily, so you should sit, probably. He's talking to some teachers and parents of kids from a school, PS 71 in the Bronx. They're here on a class trip. You don't want to be in it? Eric likes to position himself between the people who he's shooting and the screen, so they can actually see themselves on the huge screen right over his shoulder. Sometimes that means perching himself over the edge of a balcony, but not this time. We're about 10 seconds away. Everybody waits. It feels like a long time. Here we go. You're up. Hey, you're [INAUDIBLE]. Cool! Have you been on TV before? No. So how was it? I don't know. Exciting, yeah. And so what's so fun about being on TV? Like, you just get to see yourself on there, and it makes you feel famous. How did you know what to do when the camera went on you? Well, I've seen people and what they do. Like, they wave and stuff. Duh-- even if you're in fourth grade. The camera's a magic wand. Somebody points it at you, you know what to do. A few friends sitting near these kids-- Kristen, and Joanne, and Howie-- they saw Eric, and they called out to him that he should shoot them next because it was Joanne's birthday. Eric saw right through that. I didn't. It's your birthday? No, it's not my birthday. He lied because I wanted to be on the camera. Why do you want to be on the camera? I don't know. Because I love the Yankees, and I'm happy to be here. And I want all my friends to be on TV. Kristen and her friend was actually on the big screen once. Oh my god, it's so exciting. People saw me on TV, and they texted me from home [INAUDIBLE]. We see you on camera. It was my moment of fame. I've never been on TV before. I was on TV. Well, we actually were on TV once last-- two seasons ago. There was a ball that came out, and our friend-- [INAUDIBLE] first home run, and our friend caught the ball and dropped it. And it fell right on our seats, and we all bent over to get it. And then we watched SportsCenter that night, and you saw all of us like, ahh, and bent over. And that's our one time we were on TV. So they were on SportsCenter-- SportsCenter. It's so far away in the stands, so small on the screen, that nobody they knew recognized them. Nobody texted, nobody called. Yet still, it's kind of satisfying. Like I DVRed SportsCenter and then paused it and took pictures of the TV. And every year it shows up in my Facebook memories, I share it. I'm like, oh, that's when Wayne blew the ball. [LAUGHS] You're only on the big screen at the stadium for a few seconds. But to get there, one woman told me, it makes your day. Another said she was recognized on the subway on the way home from a game that she had been on the screen. It's like this thrilling thing the Yankees can bestow on any lucky fan. So much better than a bobblehead. Because who doesn't want to get on TV? Well, today on our program, non-TV people suddenly find themselves on TV. They didn't expect it. They didn't ask for it. They just found out they were, whether they wanted it or didn't want it. And some definitely did not want it. Others didn't even know it was happening because they're babies. What that kind of attention can do to you. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Act I. Anything You Say Can and Will Be Used on Television. So since the 1980s, there's been a way that tons of ordinary Americans suddenly found themselves on TV, though it probably was not how they wanted to be making their TV debuts. Stop. Stop. Stop. OK. So if you live in this country, you probably know the TV show Cops. This particular clip is from a kind of updated version of Cops called Live PD, which is made by a different company. It's actually more popular than Cops these days. And with me to discuss this is Dan Taberski. And Dan, you have watched a lot of these shows over the years. I have. I have watched a lot of Cops. I've watched a lot of Cops over the years-- too much. And I know that one of the things that's interested you about that show and that you enjoy when you watch a show, it comes from the fact that you yourself used to make television. Yeah, I did for a long time. And a lot of reality shows, too, mostly kid shows and game shows, silly stuff. But I know what tricks that you employ in making a reality show. And I've always wondered, how were they doing this? What are the tricks that they're using? What's the difference between what they're showing me on TV versus reality? Like, what really happened? Yeah, yeah. And you have a new podcast about this very question. It's called Running from Cops. I've listened to the whole thing. It's a great show. And in this show, you take that question apart for Cops and for Live PD. And I think before we get further, you should explain what Live PD is for the people who haven't seen it. Yeah, the thing about Live PD is that half the country doesn't even know what it is. And in the meantime, it was the most DVRed show of 2018. It's three hours long of live policing on Friday night and then another three hours of live policing on Saturday night. So it is a lot of hours of television. And just so people can picture the show, describe what Live PD looks like, what makes it different from Cops. Live PD is mainly different because it's live. It's basically set up like any SBN show. So there's a host, and there's all these monitors behind him. And the monitors are following six to eight police departments around the country live. And he just keeps cutting to different police departments to show you the highlights of what's going on right now. Let's go right now to Jeffersonville. Both of the officers, Alyssa Wright and Denver Leverett, are serving as backup on a speeding pullover. Let's see why. Both hands out the window. Both hands out the window. And then they go back to the studio, where there's a couple of police officers offering analysis and color commentary about what they're seeing. If they're aggressive, you're going to try to use less lethal to taser, pepper spray, to try to control the situation. Now you're dealing with a dog and the suspect at the same time. It makes it a lot more difficult. Yeah. So one thing that's interesting about Live PD is that it premiered in 2016, right? Right when there was this proliferation of people filming their own police interactions on their own phones and putting it on YouTube. And it really changed the conversation around policing. Lots of videos of people getting shot by the police. Yeah, and Live PD consciously positions itself and markets itself as a response to all that. To the videos. Right. Like, we're going to go a step further than your iPhone video or your body cam. We will bring it to you live. It doesn't get more real than this. That's their position. So here's a promotional video they put up. Being able to see exactly what the police are doing and how they're doing it is beneficial to everyone. The cell phone changed everything. Being able to instantly load video up. You have to be very carefully in these situations. They only put up what they want to put up. They don't get the whole interaction. So for police departments wanting to get their side out in this atmosphere, Live PD is great on TV and also social media. Unlike Cops, which is sort of old school, Live PD has a big social media presence. It's a live show. People tweet along live. They have a rabid fan base. During the show, the police departments will actually tweet, if you liked seeing Pasco County, Florida, for example, on Live PD, here's how you can apply to become an officer yourself. So I spoke to this one guy, Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich. He's the sheriff in Spokane, Washington. And that's one of the places where Live PD's been filming. This thing has tapped into something that I can't explain. I've never seen anything like it before-- not in 28 years. I can tell you that Live PD has done wonders for our recruiting. Really? How? Applications-- people calling us all over the country. Really? Yes. It's been amazing. It's been amazing the amount of Christmas cards we got from people all over the country. Get out of here. No. It shows people at their worst. Well, no, it shows what we're dealing with. It shows what society is dealing with. So one of the things that's the most interesting about your series, Running from Cops, is that you really do try to figure out what is the gap between what the programs show us and what really happened out on the street. And as part of that, you and your team watched how many hours? 846 episodes of Cops. Wow. And for Live PD, we watched hundreds of hours. And the 846 episodes of Cops, why 846? That's all we can get. [LAUGHS] That is what was available to us. There have been over 1,000, and we could get 846. And so now, what we've done is we've asked you to do an excerpt from your series here for us, where you try to figure out the gap between what we see on these two programs and what really happened, and where you talk to the people getting arrested on Live PD and on Cops about the experience of being reluctantly put on television. Right. And so what's going to happen now is you're going to start with Cops and then go to Live PD. Take it away. We'll start here. This is Cops, 2013, season 26, episode 14. This scene happens in Gwinnett County, Georgia. It's after midnight, and an officer pulls up on two teenagers. They're parked in a church parking lot. Hey, how are you doing? Great, how are you? Good. What are you guys doing here? Just hanging out. Just hanging out? OK, well, it's the church, and it's closed. Are we not supposed to be here? OK. So you guys have your IDs with you? I've got mine. Anything illegal, drugs, anything like that at all? No. No? OK. Would you mind if I check to make sure there's nothing illegal in the car? Yeah. The guy tells the officer that he's out on bond for possession of cocaine, but that he's been clean for a month. So now we're all getting suspicious, right? Just leave it there for now. The cop starts rooting around in the front seat, past the half-drunk soda cups and empty chip bags on the floorboard. And pretty much immediately, he finds what he is looking for. This right here, crack cocaine has almost like a cake consistency to it. So we're going to nick test a portion of that and see-- test a small amount. The officer picks up a sample, and he does what's called a nick test, a roadside drug test. If it ends up being cocaine, it'll have a blue or a blue over pink change to it. And that would be cocaine. The blue hue on the pink on the bottom, that's positive for cocaine. The guy and the girl look stunned. They deny the cocaine is theirs. The cop arrests them both. You're being placed under arrest for possession of cocaine. Just go ahead and place your hands behind your back, OK? And scene. It goes to commercial. Now I know my way around a reality show edit room. And as far as reality shows go, Cops seems pretty real. In that segment we just watched, there's no music. There's no narrator. It's just edited-down observational filming of police at work. That's what I like about it. And it's that style that makes it so believable to the casual viewer. It is what it is-- until it's not. Did you always want to be a police officer? Was that always the plan? I don't know. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Really? It would never seem like a good idea to me. It seems dangerous, and difficult-- and thankless, often. It is dangerous, and it is difficult, and it's very thankless. This is John Burdges. He's a former narcotics officer, and he loved it. But after 14 years on the job, he went to law school. He's been a defense attorney ever since here in Buford, Georgia, where he was retained by that young woman in that Cops episode that we just heard. I thought she was guilty, having been in law enforcement. And I'm very fond of the police, and I'm very pro-police. But I just thought it was a regular episode. So did her family, and so did the district attorney, and so did everybody else. Until, that is, a secondary test on that drug sample taken on the scene came back from the lab. The alleged cocaine came back negative from the state lab that it was not cocaine. In fact, it was nothing. They couldn't figure out what it was. But it was certainly not a drug. In fact, that roadside drug test in that episode, they do them all the time on Cops. The colors tell you if it's coke or not. Easy-peasy. But what they never say on Cops, and which I didn't know myself, until now, is that, in fact, those tests, pretty much every jurisdiction in the country says they are inadmissible at trial, including Gwinnett County, Georgia, where that young woman and her boyfriend were arrested. But when that test pops up as blue on Cops, they never say, well, we'll see how the official test comes back. They say-- And that would be cocaine. But it wasn't. And that's not the only discrepancy that John Burdges learned about as this case progressed. The cop didn't just open the car door and find the suspected drugs, like on the show. He searched for 14 minutes before testing anything. And he didn't just do one test, like they show in that episode. He actually tested it two times for coke before it came back blue. One month after the official test results showed it wasn't cocaine, the producers of Cops aired that episode anyway, attracting the wrong kind of notoriety for Burgess' client. And in fact, she ended up, over a period of a few months, moving out of Gwinnett County, where she grew up, several miles away. You put this young lady through this for what? To film a damn TV show. And nobody cares. Burgess's client didn't want to talk to me. She's trying to put the whole thing behind her. But why would she have agreed to be on Cops in the first place? Because the thing is for pretty much any reality show, Cops included, the producers do need your consent to show your face on their show, usually by signing a consent form. Why would anyone who just got arrested sign that piece of paper? Well, you got to talk to people, and you got to persuade them. Any producer that is worth a salt knows that. John Langley is the co-creator of Cops. 30 years later, he still produces the show, now with the help of his son, Morgan. Most people who sign do so fully cognizant of what they're doing. It's just like, they talk to him and listen-- Here's the good news. At this stage of our show's life, people know the show, and it has a certain pop cultural iconic value. And they'll say, get those news cameras away from me. Say, we're with the Cops crew, and they go, oh, Cops. Well, that's OK. I've actually heard Langley say this before, that people want to be reality show famous, even if it's Cops famous. And I've always found it hard to believe, but you kind of gotta take his word for it, unless you're going to track down the people who have been filmed by Cops and ask them yourself. And so we did. Because I was given a choice. Sign if I go to jail. I don't feel like the TV show should have anything to do with my freedom. Corey Robinson was chased and filmed by Cops on his 18th birthday, while he was hanging out in a park in Tampa, Florida. And he says when he was sitting in the back of a police car, the first person to approach him wasn't a cop, but rather a producer from Cops, the show, who told him-- I need you to sign this release form, or you're going to jail with a felony trespassing. So Corey says no way. And he asks to talk to an actual cop. And he says to the officer-- They're telling me you're charging me with a felony trespassing, and I'm going to jail if I don't sign a release form. He was like, yeah, you should take him up on his offer. He's trying to help you. You need to sign the paper, or you go to jail. He put the window up, and he walked away. In fact, of the nine people we were able to find who had been filmed by Cops, all but one say they didn't sign a release, were too drunk or high to do it willingly, or they were coerced into it, like Corey Robinson. And that young woman in that video that I played you, the cocaine bust that turned out to not be cocaine-- Does that not look like cocaine? What is that? Cocaine. According to her attorney, John Burdges-- They told her, you either sign this waiver, or you won't get a bond. So you're sitting in jail in a holding area. You're 18 years old, and you can't get out of jail unless you sign this piece of paper. So yeah, she signed a waiver, but it was not voluntary. Nothing's voluntary when you got handcuffs on. The producers of Cops maintain that they don't coerce subjects to sign consent forms and that they won't even consider a segment for the show unless they have a signed release in hand. A spokesperson told us sometimes people sign, then regret it, and make, quote, "outrageous allegations." So that's Cops. There's more going on than what you see on screen. But what about Live PD? I mean, it's live. How do you manipulate live? Nothing is more it is what it is than a live TV show, right? No one from Live PD would talk to us about the show or how it's produced. And so we set out to find the answer ourselves by tracking down suspects who have been on the show and having conversations about what actually ended up on television. In the past three years, they've shot in over 30 cities. And so we picked one-- Spokane, Washington. Welcome back. Let's go to Spokane County, Washington. Deputy van Patton is there. And oh, no, looks like we've got another shirtless dude. Spokane's 89% white. And like a lot of places, they've got a pretty serious opioid problem. The city's been on 99 hours of Live PD. And so me and my producers, we watched them all. Meth or heroin, James? Not doing anything. All right, James, you have the right to remain silent. The goal was to look for clues as to the suspect's identity. They only say their first names, if even that. So we look for a first name, or a street sign maybe, so that we could see where the arrest happened. And then we would cross-reference that with court records from around the same time, trying to find a match. And that is how my producer Henry and I met Amy. What do you think? I'm going to just kind of mic it, like, back and forth. This is weird. It's like I'm being interrogated, but not by police officers. And remember it this time. Amy was on Live PD, season 2, episode 21. I'll play a little bit of that episode for you. Excuse me. Oh, is she drunk? A Spokane County Sheriff's deputy is responding to a call about a disturbance. And they find a woman in her late 30s. That's Amy. Then why are you sitting on the floor, crying? Because I'm drunk. And I lose everything I love. OK. So you weren't arguing, just drunk and obnoxious is all? She's sitting on the floor of what looks like a trailer behind a regular house. Amy is drunk. Drunk drunk. Sure. OK. Do you have shoes? Let's walk out. Come on. Let's get you out of this nice gentleman's trailer so he can enjoy his evening. They don't explain where or why they're even moving her, and they don't wait for shoes. There are six inches of snow on the ground, and they drag her through it in her pink socks. The officer runs a check on her name, and a warrant comes out. You've got a felony warrant for possession of stolen property, OK? What possession of stolen property? I don't know. Come on, let's walk. I didn't do nothing. You're arresting me for nothing. I have no [BLEEP]. The warrant isn't actually for stolen property. It's for failure to appear in court. They cuff her in the snow in her socks. You can see her breath. Please don't. I've got no shirt on underneath. Please don't. Hey, relax. He's just making sure you don't have anything on you. I have no shirt on underneath! So what? You have a sweatshirt on. [INAUDIBLE] I'm not a whore. OK, good. The officer arrests her and her boyfriend and puts them both in the same cop car. And host Dan Abrams gives this commentary at the end. It seems those who steal together stay together. And they're together now in the back seat of that car, both with outstanding warrants. And that's it. We don't see her again in the episode. Let's go to Richland County in South Carolina. Do you remember it at all? Just bits and pieces. We met Amy at her parents' home on a street that dead ends at the Spokane River. Amy doesn't ask us in. We sit and talk on a couple lawn chairs in the front yard. It's still patched with melting snow. That afternoon, I remember having a drink. And I'm a drinker, obviously. And I have no recollection after this, just, cup of alcohol. Do you remember the cop showing up? No. Literally do not remember it. No, I have no fucking clue. Do you remember the cops picking you up and helping you out of that house? Do you remember walking through the snow? I don't even remember them reading me my rights. You saw the cameras. I have no recollection of that whole time frame, gentlemen. Don't even remember the cameras. Mm-mm. I didn't start actually really remembering things until I was in booking. I woke up in booking. And I guess I had a mask on my face and-- A what? A mask on my face because I guess I was spitting. And it was just really embarrassing, you know? Can I ask you, I mean, is that something that happens? Have you blacked out before? Often? You don't have to answer that if you don't want to. I'm just-- Not often. Probably like the fourth time I blacked out, and the police were around. Question-- how does someone that drunk-- blackout drunk-- consent to being on Live PD, a live television show? I mean, it's hard enough for the show Cops to get them to sign, and that's taped months in advance. So did you consent? No. Obviously not. Did they talk to you about the fact that you were on television? The police? Yeah. No. So this is the first thing we figure out. Whereas pretty much any other reality show needs the consent of people who appear on their show, Live PD makes a different case. Because it's live, or close to live-- they're actually on a delay. It's somewhere between 10 and 40 minutes. But because it's live, Live PD says, hey, we're basically news. And news doesn't need consent from suspects, so why should we? At least that's what they've argued in court. So for people like Amy, there is no consent involved here. You're on the show whether you like it or not. They don't blur her face, nothing. Another thing we learned about Live PD and Cops, too, is that the police approve everything that goes on the air. With Live PD, that's where that 10- to 40-minute delay comes in. There's actually a hotline set up, like a Batphone, where the sheriffs can see what's about to go out on the air and just pick up the hotline and kill it. A lot of people watch Live PD. What do you imagine they're watching it for? To watch fucking drunk-ass idiots make fools of themselves, myself-- sorry to be like that, but they are just fucking-- they have no problem belittling you, and humiliating you, and degrading you, just laughing at me and stuff in booking and just-- some of them calling me names. What were they laughing at you for? Because I had made it on Live PD. In fact, by the time Live PD was on again the next night, they had already edited footage of Amy into the opening of the show, a hot mix of the most salacious moments with Amy exclaiming-- I have no shirt on underneath. She is drunk. And what's more, she was afraid her Live PD appearance would just make her look guilty before she even had a trial. Been there for them to say I'm going to jail on a fucking stolen property-- Jesus. Because now everyone's assuming that you stole property, instead of-- or somebody going-- Yeah, before I even fucking go to trial. And if I don't beat my trial, thanks a lot, fucking Live PD. Do you understand what I mean? Already, I looked like a piece of shit. That's fucking another nail in my coffin. And it's just like you-- yeah. Did you ever have any good interactions with the police? Yes, once. A long time ago, there was a police officer once. I was walking down Empire, and it was winter. I didn't have a coat, no shoes-- just a blanket. And he actually gave me a ride in his car to a battered women's shelter. I never forgot that. They're not all assholes, but the majority of them, yes, are. And it's nothing I would not say to their face. I'm getting that sense. We would all notice. You do see good policing on Live PD-- all the time, actually. Cops, too. You see it in big and small ways-- officers being kind to an elderly woman who keeps calling 911 just for company. We found one guy who OD'd on camera, and the cops gave him Narcan, saved his life. There are segments where the police de-escalate situations in ways that seem really impressive. But these shows, they're not designed around those segments. It's not good TV to watch a cop help an old lady across the street. Over the past five years, body cameras have been adopted by police departments across the country. The idea being simple-- if there's a body cam recording your every move, it will encourage good policing. But what about a TV camera? Does that encourage good policing, or does it encourage the police to make good TV? Amy had a friend who was also filmed by Live PD who felt the cops had gone after her not just as police, but as police trying to make a compelling TV show. I went to jail, then my friend went fucking the week later. How far are we now from where that was? In a car? Like, probably 5, 10 minutes. Super close. So we go. A few miles away, we find the house that Jessica is staying at right now. It's her mom's place. Hi, nice to meet you. I'm Jessica. How are you going? I just got out of jail this morning, and my mom was moving without me. Jessica's hair is wet. She just got out of the shower. Thick ropes of cigarette smoke snake around the room. She's welcoming and a little frazzled, given the day she's already had. I just got out. Like I said, I just got off the transport after a three-hour drive this morning, and was in booking from Benton County Jail. Jessica's had a rough go. She's an addict, has been for a while. And turns out, Jessica has had more than one run-in with the Live PD cameras. The second time was December 21. You were on it more than once? Yeah, well, they always [INAUDIBLE] film. She thinks she's being targeted in a way that she wouldn't be if the police didn't have cameras following them. Which leads us to the other thing we find out. Live PD, not totally live. They hedge their bets. They actually send crews out at all hours, filming arrests and banking them. So if it's a slow night of policing, they can just slap one of those on the air, and say it's earlier. Like this. We want to show you something that happened earlier in Spokane County, Washington. The implication is earlier today, right? Like a couple hours ago? Jessica's arrest happened over three weeks before it aired. Here's how Jessica's Live PD appearance went down. This is Live PD, season 1, episode 57. Deputies went to serve a warrant on a woman they've dealt with many times before. They cut to a cop car. It's nighttime. So, right now, we're just going to a female that is wanted by department of corrections on a warrant. We know her very well. She has an extensive history with us. So we're just going to go to her mom's house, where she might be at, see if she's there. Don't let that horror movie music fool you, by the way. That warrant is for a low-level offense, basically for missing a date with her corrections officer. So, she's not an ax murderer. I'll let Jessica narrate the rest. We were sitting here smoking a bowl of meth in my mom's driveway right here. We get our stuff together. We're driving down the driveway, and there's a cop. So she runs and hides in the bushes, but the cops brought the dog, who sniffed her out. Sheriff's office, stop. And all of a sudden, boom. I'm lit up by big camera lights, the dog, three cops. And that's where you'll see the footage that they actually showed. You're under arrest. [INAUDIBLE] today. I'm [INAUDIBLE] dog [INAUDIBLE]. This dog? I was like, hey, man, don't let the dog bite me. If you watch the footage, you can see that I'm pretty afraid of the dog. Please don't let him. I'm not moving. Don't move. I'm not. Promise. She stands up out of the bushes, hands up, and she's got no top on. She's in her bra. She pulled her shirt off because it was bright orange, and she thought it might give her away. For these earlier-on segments, the ones that aren't aired live, Live PD, from what we can tell actually does try to get consent from suspects. Jessica said no. But that doesn't mean they won't use it. They'll just blur your face. So Jessica's face is blurred, but nothing else is. All the cops are kind of smirking, and smiling at her. Keep moving. This is all over DOC? Yeah, crazy. [INAUDIBLE] around. I'm sorry. I've been running because I was thinking you guys, I'm in trouble for something different. My bad. What did you think you were in trouble for? Kill somebody we don't know about? She was hiding in the back of her mom's house. Her face was blurred, but she was still recognized on the show by friends and by a niece who lives 300 miles away. But Jessica's biggest complaint about all this is how relentless the police were in trying to get her on camera. Fine. If they want to serve her a warrant, she's dealt with the police before. But they seemed dead-set on serving her that warrant on TV. They came again, and again. They've came to my mom's house. I could-- let me call my mom real quick and I'll ask her, we can probably-- I can put it on speaker and you guys can hear how many times they came here with the dog, with the cameras, beating down the door at 1:30, 2:00 in the morning. When my mom goes to work, my daughter is in the 7th grade, and goes to school, and is a wonderful student and athlete. And beating down the door like I'm some pistol-toting, dope-dealing, assault rifle-carrying badass bitch. And that's not me. Jessica gets her mom on the phone. Mom? Yeah. Hi, hey. Real quick, you're being recorded, just so you know. How many times would you figure that Live PD and the cops came over here looking for me since July? Uh, probably 6. Probably about six times. Six times, with cameras? Yes. Wow. It's ridiculous. So you think you're targeted? Oh, beyond. Oh, absolutely. I worked as a producer on a live television show once, and I'll never do it again. The pressure is truly nauseating, and dead air is not an option. And Live PD has got six hours live every week. You've got to fill it with something. Would it be that surprising if the police did target her, all for some dumb TV show? Listen to what one of the officers said about her on the scene. She's tripping a bit right now. She's a frequent flyer that we know very well. She's been arrested lots and lots for this kind of thing. Oh my god. They know Jessica. Spokane is a small city. They know all about her. I'm pretty entertaining, I guess. You know, like if I keep them laughing, and everything seems to go a little bit smoother. And I have a really good sense of humor, so. She does, actually. Jessica is charming. She's funny. And she's quick. And if the police deal with her as much as they say they do, they'd know that, too. After her arrest was all over one officer, even says-- She's a hoot. Oh, yeah. She's a hoot. In other words, she's good TV. And she was. She was weird, and wacky, and she had no top on. You know, just because I'm having a bad month, or a bad year, or a bad week, doesn't mean that they can take my face, and my name, and call me a frequent flyer, like they said. I might be a washed-out junkie, but I've got a good soul and a good personality, and, you know. The Spokane sheriff's office says they didn't target Jessica because she would make good TV. They went after her multiple times because she had a warrant. They say it's not uncommon. Quote, "That was true before Live PD was here, and it's still true today." In March of last year, the city council in Spokane decided that they had had enough, that citizens were being forced onto the show unwillingly. But also, and a little more practically, it just didn't make the city look that good on national television. They voted 5 to 1 to effectively kick Live PD and Cops out of the city limits. Other cities that have rethought their participation in Live PD-- Bridgeport, Connecticut, Streetsboro, Ohio, and Tulsa, Oklahoma. The pushback doesn't seem to be slowing Live PD down, though. In fact, last fall A&E ordered more episodes of the show. But not like 13 or 26 episodes like a network normally would. They ordered 450 more hours of it. Dan Taberski. His podcast is called Running from Cops. It's made by Pineapple Street Media. The producers of Live PD did not respond to Dan and his team when they reached out. And we also reached out. We tried to do some fact-checking with them. They did not answer our fact check questions, but did issue a statement asserting the rights to broadcast what they do live. Quote, "The First Amendment protects the right of the media to record people involved in public places in matters of public interest, which certainly includes the actions of law enforcement." Coming up on TV, but there is no way you could ever know it, because you don't know what TV is. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, I'm on TV. Stories of people who are used to being on the watching side of television, the normal side of television, who suddenly, without choosing, are placed on the other side of the screen. Or maybe the best way to say that is they're inside the screen. I don't know. What's that do to you? We've arrived at Act 2 of our program. Act 2, "Born To Play The Part." I know somebody who whenever we would watch a film or TV show, if there was a dog in the scene, they always did the same thing-- they would turn to me and say, dog doesn't know it's in a movie. Or dog doesn't know that's Mel Gibson. Dog doesn't know that Neil Patrick Harris. Same thing if a baby showed up. Baby doesn't know that's Meryl Streep. Baby doesn't know it's in a film. One of our producers, Bim Adewunmi, is also a big noticer or of babies on television, including one in particular that she's become slightly obsessed with. Here's Bim. OK. So it's an uncharacteristically peaceful scene in the sixth season of The Walking Dead. No zombies, no gore. There's a man, the hero of the show, Rick Grimes and his teenage son Carl. The whole scene has a cloud of awkward family tension, but nothing more perilous than that. Get your stuff. Gabriel can take care of Judith while we're gone. I'm not coming. But wait. There's a third character in the scene. She's wearing a lilac smock dress, and she's got a pacifier in her mouth. She's a baby, and she's adorable. Her name is Judith. So anyway, Rick is carrying Judith towards Carl in the street. And as they approach, the baby spots the teen and she waves. It's obviously unscripted, because how could you script a toddler? And you can see the actor playing her dad, Andrew Lincoln, look down and smile in surprise. All through the scene Judy goes through baby's greatest hits. She fidgets. She sucks on her pacifier. She makes sounds that the subtitles caption as babbling. And with one arm wrapped around Rick's bicep, she swivels her head back and forth, just observing her environment. And then she does the one thing you're not supposed to do. She spots the camera, and then proceeds very happily to break the fourth wall. She stares, and I mean stares down the barrel of the camera. Her focus, laser-sharp. Above her head, acting with a capital A, is happening. This is the highest-rated cable show in America. But to this baby, who knows nothing about craft, or dramaturgy, or anything else or the televisual arts, there's only a great big camera. And as far as she understands life, it's there to be looked at. A few things go through my mind whenever I watch this scene. That this must have been the best take of the day. I don't know why, but that tickles me. The idea of a Hollywood set being at the mercy of a baby's whims is just joyous to me. Judith has been around on the show since the third season, the first baby born to our heroes since the dead began roaming the Earth. The parade of babies who played her in seasons 3 to 5 were fine. But the Judith they cast in season 6, ah, the platonic ideal of cute baby. Cheeks, heavy and jowly. Mouth rosebud. Eyes wide and bright. Can a baby have charisma? Well, this baby had charisma. First of all, she was a surprisingly good actor sometimes. Take season 6, episode 9, "No Way Out." All right. New plan. Judith, along with her parents and brother, are trying to escape a herd of walkers who have broken into their community. The thing is, walkers can smell humans. And so the survivors have to mask their scent by wearing sheets smeared in Walker guts to get through the horde. Eventually, the group is forced to split up, and Judy gets passed from her brother, who's carrying her under his sheet, to another member of the group. I'll take her. There's a tight shot of Judy's little face as she gets transferred, fake blood on her cheek. And she looks 100% stressed out, like she's thinking, for god's sake, what now? And of course she thinks that. Look around her. It's all zombies. She's not acting at all, which of course makes her the best actor in the scene. Talk about method. We get Judith in short bursts, mere seconds at a time. I've inadvertently watched her grow up. In the first episode of season 9, she talks. Judith is actually played by two babies. That tends to be the case because of pesky things like labor laws and child welfare. You can swap out one identical twin for another without messing up continuity. The twins that play Judith, their names are Sofia and Chloe Garcia-Frizzi. I cannot stress this enough. The Garcia-Frizzi twins might be the cutest babies I have ever seen, on telly or in real life. Top three, definitely. They arrived in their butterball prime, all round and squishy. No hard edges to them. And now they are five years old. It's funny to think of babies as famous, as being recognized by fans in the streets. Because being a baby, you're often the center of attention. You have someone who prepares your food and drives you around. It's not so different from being famous. There's no way a baby would know they were getting special attention. Babies just expect that. I talked to the Garcia-Frizzi twins' mother, Tiffany, to ask if the girls knew they were famous now that they're five. It's actually really, really funny, because until my oldest daughter told them that they were famous, they legitimately did not now. Like they would go up to kids at the park, and they'd ask them what TV show they're on. And it's like, no not everybody's on a TV show. So until their older sister was like no, you guys are on TV. You're famous. They're like, what's famous? I was like, it means nothing. It means nothing. They get recognized from time to time, like when they went trick or treating and the people at the house were dressed like characters from "The Walking Dead." I think they're starting to come aware of, like, that other people do know who they are that aren't necessarily people we know, if that makes sense. Like, strangers know who they are. I don't think they really necessarily connected it to fame yet. But they will tell people they're Judith Grimes. Like, they definitely know that they play pretend on TV. But they don't know it's acting. They just think it's pretend. Fame changes us, takes us further away from what we once were, which is to say innocent and pure. Famous babies don't know they're famous, so they're immune to its dangers. When you think about it, babies are the only beings who should be famous. Bim Adewunmi is one of the producers of our show. Act 3, "Lina with an N." So we now turn to two girls. One of them has this big moment in her life end up on national television, and she had no choice about that. The other sees that moment on television, and it sticks with her for years. The second girl in the story is Lina Misitzis, one of the producers of our show. A piece of background you need to know to understand this story-- she was really into musical theater as a kid. Listened to musicals, fantasized about being in them, which is why this story stayed with her. Here she is. I know when it started. It was in Greece-- the country, not the musical. I spent part of my childhood there. I was six or seven years old when I found a two-disk CD set at the bottom of some sales bin, a best of Broadway compilation from various European tours of Broadway shows, all in different languages. I remember a German "I Am What I Am" from "La Cage aux Folles." I listened over and over, arms outstretched, pretending I was onstage, spotlit. It only escalated from there. Back in America, in my bedroom in Virginia, I Scotch-taped up pictures of Ethel Merman, Bernadette Peters, Bebe Neuwirth. On weekends, I checked casting calls in the Washington Post. My mom's rule was if an audition was less than five miles away, I could try out. I recorded the Tonys on VHS each year, watched it over and over. Same for "Sound Of Music" and "Fiddler on the Roof." But the tape I watched the most, the one that spoke to me more than any other, was this 1997 TV special. Barbara Walters hosted, and it was called "Broadway's New Annie: Search For A Star." and if the title doesn't give it away, here's the premise. The musical "Annie" was coming back to Broadway and the show's director needed to find a star. And this was how he decided to do it, on TV. Little girls, little girls, 2,000 little girls all sharing the same dream. Annie, Annie, Annie, Annie, Annie. I was 8, the same age as those girls. I could have auditioned if I'd known about it. It was a nationwide contest sponsored by the department store Macy's, and there was a Macy's less than five miles from my house. To watch, I dressed up like an orphan, and the closest thing I came up with was wearing my older brother's underwear. I'd stand in front of the TV transfixed, so close my mom would yell at me that I was going to damage my eyes. And the person I was watching for was this one girl named Harley who reminded me of me because she was special, perfect for the role in every way, which I figured I'd be. Although Harley had the advantage of also looking the part-- long red wavy hair, chubby cheeks. The sort of aw, shucks grin you want to see on Annie's face. Except. But then, it was Harley's turn to sing. (SINGING) Tomorrow. I don't want you to do that. You're going tomorrow, tomorrow. Tomorrow! Too! Loud! (SINGING) Too. (SINGING) Too. Too. Too. Too! Too! Just sometimes, I get kind of scared, and it was really scary. So it kind of like came out. She's scared, which is kind of understandable. The guy she's auditioning for is Martin Charnin. He wrote "Annie" back in 1976. He was the show's original director. That's him you hear singing along with her. Martin takes Harley by the hand, and leads her away from all the other girls. He cups her chin in his palm, and places her on the floor by his feet, and together they watch more Annie hopefuls audition. Then I sat with the director, and then he let me watch. So 149 was singing with you, right? Something about the little girl's face makes Martin want to see her again. She makes the finals. I'm just going to think about just smile, and do your best. I loved this story because Harley just needed to be noticed by the right person, just like I needed. August 7, at a nondescript rehearsal hall in Midtown Manhattan, the finalists have gathered selected from 2,000 of the last auditions. Harley Ott, one of Martin's favorites, is back from Jersey. She has another chance to sing, but again is struck with stage fright. (SINGING) You're always a day [INAUDIBLE]. Day a- It doesn't go well, and still, later that day she gets a third chance. Martin, who thinks she might be right for the role of an orphan, still believes he could overcome her nerves in rehearsal. OK, so now she's out of the running for Annie. But she may become an orphan on Broadway-- the kind of thing I'd have died for. As far as I was concerned, Harley had made it. But then comes the moment I haven't been able to understand for more than 20 years. As a kid I found it upsetting, as an adult baffling. Martin walks into the hall to grab Harley. Is Harley here? But when he goes to find her parents. Brian, where did Harley's parents go? I had them right in that chair, right here all three of them. He finds they've left. On screen, you see a confused Martin looking around anxiously. He's still not done with her, still picturing her in his cast list, but she was gone. For a moment, he stands there probably thinking exactly what I'm thinking. Why the hell would you ever walk out on that? Harley threw away her shot, and ever since I've wondered why. So I tracked her down. She was really surprised to hear from me. It was so long ago, she said, but she was also totally game to talk. Harley and I actually have a lot in common. We're both from the East Coast, we're both 30 years old, born just 10 days apart. She remembers everything about the audition. And then I remember these, like, boards we had to walk under. It was like you had to be under a certain height to even go into the audition, cause you had to walk under these kids-only things. They decided that orphans were a certain height? I guess so. I mean, I was certainly getting under that. So I'd probably still get under that today. By the way, Harley has dwarfism. That's what she meant by that joke. She's 4 foot 6. I pretty quickly got to the point. Why did you walk out that day? And the answer was not what I expected at all. I thought Harley was bombing because of what Barbara Walters said, because she had stage fright. But it wasn't nerves stopping her. That's not stage fright. That's frustration that I can't sing. I'm not scared, I'm pissed. Like, I'm mad at myself in that moment. (SINGING) You're always a day-- I have no pitch, and the poor man was trying so hard to get me to sing the right note, and I just couldn't do it. Start to get hot. Your hands start to get clammy, your heart starts to race. All these people are now looking at me. And I don't know what to do. Which of course casts her sudden disappearance in an entirely different light. It was not a feeling of fear of being on stage, or fear of auditioning. It was just an overwhelming feeling of this not being right for me. Think it was just this isn't what I want to be doing right now. It stopped being fun, and I just looked at both of my parents and I said, I'm done. I don't-- I don't want to do this anymore. I'm ready to go. And there was absolutely no questioning of me on that at all. They said, OK, let's go. Were you embarrassed leaving? Did you say goodbye to people? Like, the way it's framed in the show is this very abrupt thing. But how did it feel in the moment? What did it look like? The moment my parents said we could leave, I was comfortable. I was like all right, guys. Let's get out of here. Let's go get a snack. Why she didn't stick around that day, it wasn't an act of fear. It was an act of courage. I feel like I've always been pretty in tune with myself. And I know when something is not right. And I've done this with other things in my life, where I've gotten pretty far with something, and then I'm like eh, I think we're done. So there's this like other little person inside of you. Is that a short joke? It wasn't a short joke, but when I said it, I was worried that you might think it is. But it wasn't. So there was, I'm going to start over. So there was a voice in your head speaking to you in a language that you understand, but couldn't quite speak yet. 100%, yes. But what you were able to interpret in the moment was? This isn't right for me. And I don't feel good. Yeah. And I need to get out. I need to leave. So at 7, Harley understood enough to know she wasn't good enough. She walked away. She felt fine. Me, it took me much longer to figure it out. I auditioned for the 8th grade musical, and didn't get in. I auditioned for the 9th grade musical, didn't get in. I auditioned for the 10th grade play, and didn't get in. I tried transferring to Interlochen, an elite arts boarding school for teens. Didn't get in. My senior year of high school, all the kids enrolled in theater were given one song to sing in an end-of-year revue. The teacher gave me an easy one, a song from the musical "Hairspray." About growing up. (SINGING) Once upon a time, I used to play with Kens. But now that I'm a woman, I like bigger men. When the song shifted into the high notes, I talked the lyrics instead of singing them, hoping it'd make it look intentional, like a character choice. Harley's a bad singer, but she's obviously got something. She's a good actor. What you don't find out about her in that Barbara Walters special is that she actually went onto a pretty successful child acting career. She starred in a Nick at Nite short, multiple commercials, even a Val Kilmer movie. But me? So OK, Mama. Be honest, OK? I called my mom in Greece to ask. Was I talented? You were-- you had talent. But you know, I don't believe you were the star, the big star. You never got the leading role. Actually, I, like, often didn't even get in at all. And so I don't really understand why I held on to that dream for too long. You loved it, Lina. You loved it. I mean, you loved the musicals. I mean, you were like an encyclopedia. I have a very vivid memory of you going to Borders on your tippy-toes, asking the person behind the desk for the musical "Annie Get Your Gun." And you were telling him you want the 1938. No, it wasn't '38, because in '39 Judy Garland did "Wizard Of Oz." OK. So I had different talents. Harley says that when acting stopped being fun, she moved on. She's a teacher now in New Jersey. And of course, I've moved on, too. Mostly. Almost entirely. Really, any day now. Lina Misitzis is one of the stars of our show. The program is produced by Diane Wu. The people put the show together includes Bim Adewunmi, Elna Baker, Ben Calhoun, Zoe Chase, Dana Chivvis Sean Cole, Aviva DeKornfeld, Damien Graves, Seth Lind, Lina Misitzis, Stowe Nelson, Katherine Raimondo, Ben Phelan, Nadia Raymond, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, and Nancy Updike. Our managing editor is David Kestenbaum. Special thanks today to Michael Margolis, Greg Collelo, Henry Molofsky, Courtney Harold, Joel Lovell, Diane Hodson, Nielsen Global Media and Lisa Morel. Our website, ThisAmericanLife.org, where you can stream our archive of over 600 episodes for absolutely free. Look at our app, and you can download as many of them as you want. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks as always for the program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, he and I went to the beach last weekend. I did not realize he had never been to the beach. He was shocked. He could not stop saying. Oh, no, looks like we've got another shirtless dude. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories on This American Life.
|
Gary did not want to become a football player, no interest in the game at all. He was a timid kid, the kind of kid who in baseball would close his eyes when he was up at bat, he was so scared of getting hit by the ball. But when you're in high school, your personality is still up for grabs. And at Gary's high school, there was not one person, but two people with a very different vision of who he was. They were assistant high school football coaches and very noticeable, big personalities. And they were twins. And I didn't really know their name. I'd seen them around. They were super handsome and in great shape. I mean, they were ripped. And they would wear Gold's Gym tank tops and Jams, these shorts, these Hawaiian shorts. They would wear those. And they had really long hair. And they were very charming, charismatic, funny. And they were known as the Jetsyns, which was this self-proclaimed nickname, I think. Wait, they called themselves the Jetsyns? Yeah. They referred to themselves-- Yeah, because the Jetsyns was people from the future. And they felt that they were like that. They were definitely the first people I ever noticed who referred to themselves in that-- is it the third person? Yeah, yeah. So the Jetsyns are coming to get you. The Jetsyns will see you. The Jetsyns-- That's what they would say? Sometimes they would say, Johnny Jetsyn will be with you today. Joe Jetsyn will be with you tomorrow. They're like magical figures. Yeah, they really were. [LAUGHING] And these magical figures, these assistant football coaches, they gave Gary his own nickname in the fall of junior year. It was not a glittery name like the Jetsyns, kind of the opposite, actually. Waste, they called him. As in waste of talent, to goad me into playing football. They told him that football would get him a college scholarship. It'll get him girls. They said the newspaper would write about him. They wanted him on the team so badly because Gary was a giant compared to most of the kids playing football back then. This was in Peabody, Massachusetts, a Boston suburb near Salem in the late '80s. Most high school players back then were 5' 9", 5' 10". Gary was 6' 6", 200 pounds. And he was athletic, played basketball on his high school team. Those coaches scolded him for his complete lack of aggression and for crying. What he really loved doing was art projects, going to the arts and crafts store, reading. He kept an enormous stuffed animal collection in his room, even in high school. He was also pretty depressed at the time. Gary is a comedian today, Gary Gulman. And on stage, when he tries to describe what he was like as a kid-- I talk about being Charlie Brown. I say picture my childhood-- Charlie Brown if Snoopy had died. That was my-- That was my childhood. I felt so sorry for him. Because Charlie Brown, the whole point of his character is that he's sad and lonely. Yeah. But even that wasn't lonely enough. You have to kill off his dog? Yes. Yes. So when the Jetsyns started telling him that they were going to make him into a star, he laughed it off. He liked the attention from the Jetsyns, sure, but he did not consider this seriously at all. Football seemed brutal-- just nonstop, violent, physical contact. He did not think he could cut it. Guys he knew who played football, they were so tough. Gary, on the other hand, he got picked on. He got bullied. He was bullied out of Little League. So football? No way. And then his junior year ended. And just a couple of days into summer break-- it was June, 6:30 in the morning-- he got a phone call, woke him up. It's the twins. They said, Gulman, this is the Jetsyns. Meet us at the Universe Gym at 7:30. We are going to train the Gulman this summer, and get the Gulman a scholarship, and make the Gulman into a star. By the end of the summer, you will be 245 pounds and ripped like Arnold. It was so weird and bold. And on the spur of the moment, he figures, what the hell? And he has this thought that you have sometimes as a kid. He thinks, these adults say I can do this. Maybe they're right. They were so convincing. They were so convincing. And then there was a part of you that thought, like, yes, magical men. [LAUGHING] It was intoxicating. It was? Because they were so cool. And my entire life, my family was more of a don't get your hopes up type of attitude or philosophy, if things don't always work out the way you want them to. And so it was a very negative house. And I remember asking them. I said, you guys really think I'm going to play on this high school football team? I don't have that much experience. And they're answering-- should I swear? Say what really happened. Every single time I would ask them any kind of question, they'd say, fuck, yeah. And not everybody was using that expression back then. That was the first instance of somebody saying that to me instead of "don't get your hopes up" and "we'll see." It was, fuck, yeah. And I was like, oh my gosh. These guys are so, so exciting. And they believe in me. So that summer, every morning he works out with the Jetsyns from 7:30 to 9:30. Then they take him to a diner, and they buy him a big breakfast with eggs and other proteins. At night, sometimes they'd teach him running routes. Remember, Gary had never played football. And it was just like the Jetsyns said. It was incredible. It was like a Rocky montage. I was getting stronger and bigger. And they would say things. They had this thing, "The Gulman is getting huge. The Gulman is getting huge." And so by the end of the summer, how did you look? I looked fantastic, man. I'd grown my hair long like them. And clothes started to look really cool on me as I was filling out. And they were right. I weighed 240 pounds. I could bench press 225 pounds. I ran a 48.40, which was very impressive to everybody. Everything about me had changed physically. I had built this really great costume. Why do you say costume? Because it covered up who I really was. I was still the same Gary who cried at movies. So you have this man costume-- Yeah. --that you're wearing, which is your new body. Yes. I feel terrific. And as it came time to start practices, you would think that he would be psyched to use this new body that he had created for the purpose it had been made for. Like, OK, he's Captain America. It's World War II. Bring on the Nazis. But in fact, he was terrified of just getting hit, of the physical contact that's just built into football. And a week before practice, he talks to a friend. And he says to the friend he doesn't think he can do it. He doesn't think he can go through with it. Should he call the Jetsyns and tell them he's thought it over? It's not for him. I'll never forget what he said. He said, Gary, they will kill you. They spent their entire summer training you and feeding you. You can't. You have to go through with this. So he did. He went through with it. But the problem was, as John Jetsyn put it, he was a daisy in a field of wheat, a lamb among conquerors. You can put a kid into a tough guy costume, but it doesn't always make him into a tough guy. And of course, adults are always trying to convince kids and inspire kids about who they can be. That's what good parents do. That's what good teachers do. But some kids, like Gary, just have trouble going along with the plan. They want to please the adults. They want to do what they're asked. But all the while, they genuinely wonder, can they actually become the person the adults are telling them to become? Is that them? Is that who they should be? And it's totally confusing for them. The adults in their lives seem to know what they're talking about. They're adults, for God's sake. They're supposed to know better. But the kids end up wondering in a really primal way, who am I? Well, from WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Our show today in two acts. In the second act, adults make it so a woman can't even decide what is true about some of the most basic facts about her own history. But we're going to start with this story, act one, Gary's story, which we're calling "Jersey? Sure." Gary went to his first football practice, and it was just as bad as he'd imagined it would be. Guys rush at him and smash into him on every play. It's totally painful. He's completely miserable, bruised. He was in this one play. This guy hit me helmet to helmet. And it was so loud, like a gunshot. And everybody noticed it. And they called it a biz. And the way it got its name was they said-- and the Jetsyns told me this-- they said the biz is the sound that it makes when you get hit in the head during a game, which is-- [MAKES BUZZING SOUND] And each week, the guy who had the best hit on somebody else would get this T-shirt called the biz of the week T-shirt. And now we know that these things, these bizzes, they were concussions. But at the time, in 1988, the concussion protocol was pretty much, you good? You good? And that first time that I got bizzed, the Jetsyns were so proud of me. They high-fived me, and they patted my head. "The Gulman got bizzed, his first biz!" I was laughing along with them, but I was like, I hope that never happens again. So every day, Gary would show up at practice and hated it until, finally, they started to play real games. And these are just preseason scrimmages, but they're against other high schools. There's a crowd in the stands. That changed everything from the very first time they put him in on offense. They set up a play for me. It's this pass where they just throw it over the middle. They throw it up high. And nobody can reach as high as I can jump. I catch it. It takes a couple of guys to bring me down, just because I'm big and I want to run away from contact. There were fans. And they were cheering. I will say that was exhilarating. Coaches try him out on defense. He barely knows what he's doing. And he sacks the other side's quarterback. I had no technique. Yeah. But I was just so much bigger than this kid that he couldn't outrun me, because he wasn't as fast as me, and he wasn't as strong as me. So I was able to wrestle him to the ground. Anyhow, we go into the locker room. And the coach is berating the other players on the team for not being aggressive. And he says, the only person out there sticking anybody-- which I don't know if they still use that expression, but I like that expression-- sticking anybody is Gary Gulman, a kid who never played football until this summer. And I had goose bumps. And it was like a movie. So it's all happening, just like Jetsyns said. All happening, just like the Jetsyns had said. It was uncanny. Opening game of the real season, the coaches start him. This newbie player, he sacks the opposing quarterback right away. And on offense-- They threw me the ball three times. I caught every single one. I mean, that night I go to my first high school party. I'd never-- Really? --gone to a high school party. And it was such a letdown. Because you see-- Oh, really? --high school parties in movies. They're so exciting. And there's sex. Yeah. And I just sat on a couch because I didn't drink. And it was an incredible letdown. But I was invited-- But you were in. You were in. That's what's important. Yeah. You were there. At the party. You were there at the bad party. Yeah. You made it. And then Sunday night, the night before school, a local newspaper reporter called me and interviewed me about this game. He said that I was the talk of the town. And it talked about how everybody knew the ball was coming to me, and they couldn't stop me. And just like the Jetsyns had said, there were going to be newspaper articles. There was a newspaper article in the Salem Evening News the next day that called me Mr. Raw Potential. Wow. Yeah. And it did not last. The season opener, his first great game, was also his last great game. I had one more decent game where I caught a pass, and I made a really, really good tackle. But the teams started to do this thing where they would send guys to block me and my legs. And they would send a couple of guys, and they would just roll into my legs. I think it's called a cut block, if I remember properly, but that was how they would sort of neutralize me. And didn't the Jetsyns have some technique you could use to get around that? No. Either they didn't suggest one, or I wasn't able to employ it. Opposing quarterbacks learned to stay away from the side of the line that Gary was on. So he wasn't sacking anyone anymore. And after this one time when Gary fumbled the ball on a big play at the goal line, suddenly he says they stopped sending him out for passes. So no more heroic catches. He wasn't making big plays. He was not living up to all that bright potential. And some dark part of his personality kicked in, like maybe he was a waste after all. The man costume had fooled them for a while, but he was still the same person he had always been. He started to dread practices and games. I would throw up before every game. On the sideline I would throw up because I was overcome by nerves and anxiety. I started to feel really lousy about myself, and my grades suffered. And I just knew that I was starting to disappoint these guys. And they never said anything. To their credit, they never said, wow, we really had high hopes for you. It sounds crazy. I still have nightmares about it. His plan back then was make it through the season, one game a week. Never play again. And in the middle of this, a college football coach came into our locker room and introduced himself to me at my locker. And that was sort of a, what the hell is going on here? Introduced himself to you? Yeah. And said what? He said, you had a great game, which I hadn't. And I am an assistant at Dartmouth College. And we'd love for you to take a visit to Dartmouth. OK, here's the thing that Gary didn't know or understand at the time. As disheartened as he was, his coaches did not think he was having a bad season. Sure, they weren't sending him out for passes, but the main reason for that, John Jetsyn told me on the phone, wasn't the fumble that Gary had made-- like Gary obsessed over-- it was that the quarterback couldn't throw reliable passes. Their team wasn't that good that year. And sure, yes, Gary didn't know how to stay on his feet when players threw themselves at his ankles, but John Jetsyn says he'd only been playing football a few months. Of course he hadn't mastered that. There wasn't time to teach him everything. The Jetsyns still saw Gary as a diamond in the rough. Gary was doing everything they asked, ran his plays well. He was more reliable than most of the team. And so the coaches did what they did with any player with a ton of potential. They took video of Gary's best game, that great first game, made a bunch of copies, and sent it around to colleges. And after seeing that video, a parade of recruiters showed up at Gary's school. He'd get called out of class to meet them. He was approached by Harvard, Holy Cross, UMass, University of New Hampshire, University of Maine, and some top Division 1A schools, Syracuse and Boston College, his favorite, who'd recently won the Cotton Bowl. And also, there were players on the team who were All-Americans. I mean, this was a big time program that played a big time schedule against Penn State, and Notre Dame, and Ohio State, and USC. I mean, they were big time football. And they had Heisman Trophy winner Doug Flutie. He was the hero to everybody in my neighborhood. And what do you remember of them recruiting you? I remember this man, who I had seen on TV because he had recruited Doug Flutie. And he was a New England celebrity. His name was Jack Bicknell. I'll never forget it because he had an office at Boston College, and it overlooked the stadium. And he had a Heisman Trophy. And he said, son-- I always loved being called son, and I would just melt. It's like an arm around the shoulder. I don't know what it is about that word. He said, son, I'm going to go ahead and offer you, which meant a scholarship. I'm going to offer you. And he said something to the effect of, you're 17 years old-- or maybe I was 18. He said, you have an NFL body. And I remember thinking, wow, I've really fooled another one. And part of me was thinking, I was afraid this was going to happen because I'm going to have to take this scholarship. And I know I'm going to be in over my head. And then the other side of it was, this is so exciting, and somebody believes in me. And did part of you feel like, oh, my god, I'm going to be playing for this incredible coach? Whatever problems I had in high school, this guy is the guy. He's a genius. He's going to fix whatever problem I had. I'm going to be a star. Yeah. So he takes the scholarship. He says he has no idea how he would have paid for college without a football scholarship. He works out all summer. And by the time he gets to training camp, he was bigger than ever, 260 pounds. His speed and strength, one of the best on the team. But it's clear right away. I just felt so small. I mean, these guys really were supermen. Their aggressiveness, their strength-- it wasn't the same sport. And it was quite clear early on to the other players that I wasn't like them. I didn't talk like-- Oh, is that true? Yeah. And I could be pushed around. And I could be bullied. There were guys who were going to go on to the NFL. There was one player who played for the Vikings. And I remember one time I was lollygagging on a play, and he hit me and bizzed me. And he said to me afterwards-- and his nickname on the team was The Maniac, which you really have to do something impressive to get a nickname like that amongst these lunatics. He said to me, he said, you can't just stand there like that. I could have killed you. In the nicest way possible he said that he had let up, even though he had hit me harder than I had ever been hit in my life. Gary went into a full-blown depressive crisis-- not eating when he should've been eating like a horse, sleeping all the time, crying. The prevailing thing going on in my head is, I want to kill myself. I'm worthless. I'm useless. Everybody hates me. And did you have this feeling of, oh, I'm actually as strong as any of these guys? You're stronger than most of them. You're faster than most of them. Yeah. Like, I should be as good. Did you have a feeling of, well, if I just psych myself up in the right way, I'm going to be able to do this? Well, I just knew-- I knew who I was. And the problem is, I know who I am, and I hate him. I hate him. He's so weak. And he disappoints. And he lets down. And I just wanted to go back to the room and sleep and cry. Yeah. Did you have your stuffed animals with you? No, but I had brought my blankie. I grew up with a blankie that was in my crib, and I could never sleep without it. But it was this thing that I was so ashamed of and never spoke about, really, to anybody because I thought that if anybody ever found that out, they would just be like, this guy's insane and also a woman. Did you have a roommate? I had a roommate, yeah. That you had to hide the blankie from? Yeah. Yeah. And you would call it the blankie, not the blanket? No, I always-- I mean, I referred to him-- I referred to him-- I called him blankie. And whatever happened to it? Oh, I still have it. It's on my pillow right now in Harlem, yeah. Wait. Wait. Seriously? Yeah. Wait. How old are you? I'm 48. Do you need it? No, but I-- it-- [SIGHS] I love it. It's there with the pillow. I put it in my computer bag so I can carry it on planes when I travel. And is it a comfort? Yeah. It's a comfort. It helps me sleep. I don't know how common it is. And the fact that you keep asking me questions about it makes me think it's really odd. But you'll have like-- people who you're sleeping with will come over, and they'll sleep in your bed. And there will be the blankie? Yeah, my partner, Shaday-- she's a woman-- she's been aware of it since we've been dating. Yeah. Not a problem? Not a problem, not until today. Sorry. I'm not trying to blankie shame you. I'm not. Anyway, back in college, first time Gary goes home for the weekend he stays in his room, cries, and sleeps, and won't talk to anybody. And his brother suggests he find a therapist. The football team actually has counseling services set up for anybody who needs it. And when he gets back to school, Gary meets with the therapist, who asked him a lot of questions. And he said-- point blank, he said, why don't you just quit the football team? And I-- like, that was ludicrous to me. And the way I would explain it now is, you have to understand my entire identity is wrapped up in this. And if I quit, I will be proving the voice in my head that keeps telling me I'm weak, and soft, and worthless right. So he made it through the season. The doctor prescribed him antidepressants, and the sadness and ruminations lifted. And in the spring, Gary's therapist asked, what are you going to do about football for next year? And Gary was like, I'll continue till I graduate. And he said, listen, I never give advice. It's not my place to give advice, but I'm going to give you some advice. You need to quit the football team. I said, if I quit the football team, I don't get to wear the uniform. I don't get to wear that jacket that gets me special treatment in the cafeteria and makes me interesting to the other students and the professors. I said, if I'm not a football player, then who am I? And he said-- and I'll never forget it, the best answer-- he said, you'll be a man. But he didn't mean it, you'll be masculine, you'll be macho. He meant, you'll be an adult. Gary quit the team. He did keep the scholarship. The counselor went to bat for him and convinced the school to let him keep it for four years. And that same year, the year he quit football, Gary took the first real steps towards a different vision of who he'd be as an adult, a vision that was not handed to him by any of the grownups in his life, not his coaches, or his parents, or his teachers, but something he invented for himself. That's the year he started writing jokes. Do you know that I listen to your show, and I've heard people reveal things about themselves that I wouldn't reveal? Yeah. And I never thought that the blankie would be one of those things, that there could be somebody being like, huh, I'd never tell anybody about a blanket. I could care less that everybody knows now. So you feel no self-consciousness about it at all? Not anymore. I did for 47 years though. I only mentioned it on stage this this year. People laughed, and it redeemed everything. No, no, no. Now that you say that, I don't want to make you feel weird about it. No, no. I think it's healthy. But you love Charlie Brown. Who was the wisest character on the Peanuts cartoons. Linus? Yeah. And he had a blankie. He was five. He wasn't five. All right, he's eight, or whatever he's supposed to be. No, you're right. He was old enough to have-- He's a child. No, he is a child. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gary has an HBO special coming out later this year called, Gary Gulman: The Great Depresh. If you're curious about his work, you can find it at garygulman.com. Coming up, a 17-year-old tries to understand a moment that shaped her whole life. Fortunately for her, there's video. Unfortunately for her, it's more complicated than that. That's in a minute, from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, "Here's Looking at You, Kid," stories of adults telling kids what they should think of themselves and kids trying to make sense of what they're told. We've arrived at act two of our program, act two, "Grownups Know Things." That act title was actually a line from Lord of the Flies. Piggy says it, that grownups have a cup of tea and talk things through. And then everything is all right. That's how grownups do it. It's hopeful, and of course, wrongheaded. So often things don't work out that well here in the adult world. But in the story, it's this moment where a bunch of the boys chime in with their desire that they could turn to adults. And in this next act, a girl turns to an adult with that same kind of hope that the adult will set things right. But over time, the adults that she turns to simply do not agree about some very fundamental things about her. Eleanor Gordon-Smith reported this story for a book she wrote. I got interested in uncertainty years ago. There's a kind of uncertainty that we all live with where you don't know the answer, and it's not a big deal-- like what time the bus is coming, who left the front door open, where that pen went. But I wanted to know about the opposite-- high stakes uncertainty where the facts aren't decisive, and it hurts to not know what to think, where there are big consequences, it affects your whole life. I wanted to know, is it possible to just sit in that kind of foundational doubt? Or do you just have to flip a coin and pick something, anything to believe? Which is how I got interested in Nicole Kleumper. She's 40 now, but this starts when she was 16. And she just couldn't catch a break. She was in foster care after her dad, who had sole custody of her for most of her life, had a stroke and died. She'd bounced around between friends' houses, but wound up in a group home. I just felt very adrift in the world and unanchored. Having lost my father, my best friend, I was so alone. And I just-- I was reaching out for something to feel connected to. She started really wanting to know about her mom. She lived nearby, just a couple hours drive, but they hadn't seen each other in more than 10 years. The custody court hadn't even allowed visits. And Nicole didn't know why. A quick warning-- what I'm about to go into mentions different kinds of abuse. Nicole had a foggy thought that her mom might have done something bad to her as a kid. She remembered saying something to someone when she was young about her mom burning her feet on a stove and remembered something about a sexual abuse allegation. But could that be right? Surely, she'd remember those things actually happening, but she didn't. What if her dad had just made her say those things about her mom? It had been a really ugly custody battle. Each parent said all kinds of things about the other. What if her dad wanted custody so bad he invented all these awful stories? There was so much about her mom that Nicole didn't know, so she arranged to meet her mom in person. They did. They started seeing each other more regularly, but it always felt off. Once, she remembers sitting next to her mom at dinner and putting her head down on the table in front of her. She rubbed my back, and it was very, very uncomfortable. And I had a pretty strong reaction to it. Nicole says they didn't talk about any abuse. And then in the middle of that doubt, a piece of evidence seemed to fall from the sky, and with it, the promise of knowing what had happened in the custody dispute. Dr. Dave Corwin phoned Nicole. He was the child psychiatrist in the custody battle that had split Nicole off from her mom. And he had videotapes of interviews he'd done with her when she was a very young girl. It had been his job to investigate the abuse allegations. He'd had a question. He was speaking at a conference. Would it be OK if he showed those people the tapes? Nicole remembered Corwin. She remembered that he'd been nice to her as a kid. She said, yeah, he could use them, but could she see those tapes too? He agreed and recorded their meeting. I don't know the effect-- because it's never been done, to my knowledge-- this will have on you, OK? So I'm sitting across from Dr. Corwin, and there's a video camera. I'm getting ready to watch the tapes of myself at five years old. And he went through a very lengthy informed consent. At this stage, you're 17 years old. What I'm doing is I'm doing this informed consent directly with you, saying here's the issues, as I understand them. And then it's up to you, OK? Finally, we got to the point where he was going to shut off the video camera so that I could watch my five-year-old self. And he asked me, what do you recall? Why don't we start with, if you could just tell me what you can recall of that time. I think I described one of the offices that he did one of the interviews in, in a striped sweatshirt that I was wearing at the time. I was wearing a sweatshirt that was striped this way, OK? I don't know why. When I think of these interviews, that's the first thing I think of. 17-year-old Nicole says she can't remember whether her mom really did hurt her. I told you, I guess, I told the court that my mom burned my feet on the stove. And I still don't remember if that's, in fact, how I was burned. Really, that's the most serious accusation against her that I remember. That's what I'm having a problem remembering. I've come here trying not to determine already that she's done it or that she's guilty. And I've come here trying not to say, well, she's innocent. She didn't do anything. I refuse to believe she's done anything. I really want to know. And then Corwin brings up the allegation of sex abuse. David Corwin literally asks me, do you remember any allegations of sexual abuse? Concerns about possible sexual abuse? No. And my initial reaction is actually, no. I mean, I remember that was part of the accusation. And then he starts to speak, and I say, wait. Hold on a second. You don't remember any-- [INAUDIBLE] I do. 17-year-old Nicole's whole demeanor changes at this moment. It's instant and kind of strange to watch. She becomes completely still, and she's staring into middle distance. What do you remember? Oh, my gosh. That's really, really weird. I accused her of, when she was bathing me here, whatever, hurting me. And that's when I started to recount some details of a memory that came back to me. As you're saying that to me, do you remember having said those things? Or you remember having experienced those things? I remember it happening, that she hurt me. Hurt you, where, how? She hurt me. There's tissues right here, right over there. But see, I don't know if it was intentional hurt. She was bathing me. And I only remember one instance. And she hurt me. She put her fingers too far where she shouldn't have, and she hurt me. That's the first time I've remembered that since saying that when I was six years old, but I remember. You remember being-- Yeah, I remember it happening. It was like a movie set where the walls-- there's no roof, like I was sitting up on the walls looking down into a bathroom and my biological mother bathing younger me. And she touches me inappropriately. That's where the memory stops. So it's like you're watching it from outside of yourself, from above? Yes. But I could feel the pain though. And I remember saying, it's like I took a snapshot of the pain. A picture of the pain and what was inflicting the pain. It was my biological mother. Even before she saw the tapes, Nicole at 17 felt she'd got the certainty she wanted. She remembered her mother actually hurting her. She watched the videos of herself as a small girl anyway. Corwin shut off the recorder while she did. And this remarkable thing happened. Nicole saw herself as a young girl, describing the very same abuse, almost verbatim. I've seen the videos. It's the '80s. A very small Nicole is in pigtails and white stockings. Corwin's in a big plaid shirt and shaggy hair. And he asks right away about Nicole's mom. What's she like? Mean. Why is she mean? Hurts me. How does she hurt you? Like sticks her finger up my vagina, about up to there on my finger. When did she do that? All the time when she gives me a bath. Uh-huh. What did you say to her when she did that to you? I said, don't do that. I said, ouch. She says her mom burned her feet over a hot stove. Corwin tries to figure out if Nicole knows the difference between what's real and what's make believe. He asks her to separate things like President Reagan-- real, which she knows-- from things like Superman-- make believe, which she also knows. He gets her to swear on her oath as a Brownie that what she said about her mother is real. She does. She holds three little fingers up in the Brownie salute. On my honor, I will try to serve God and my country. There are other concerning details about Nicole's mom. Once, she had dropped Nicole off to see Dr. Corwin for one of their recorded sessions. And Nicole, who'd seemed happy to be recorded and speak clearly into the microphone when her dad dropped her off, is suddenly concerned that the microphone would broadcast what she's saying into the waiting room where her mom sits. Corwin asks her about the abuse she described the week before. Did she remember talking about that? A little bit, Nicole says quietly. I don't. OK. Tell me the little bit that you remember. Does that talk out to the waiting room? No, it doesn't. They can't hear us, OK? They can't hear us out there. And you're safe here, OK? And I'm not going to-- after we get done talking, I'm not going to tell them what you tell me, OK? It's just between you and I right now, OK, she whispers, before going on to talk about being burned and touched in the bath. In another interview, Nicole says her mother's told her to lie. When's my dad going to be back? Hm? I don't know. I don't know when he's going to come back. He's in court. I guess. What's he in court about? My mother. What about your mother? Do you know? That she threatened me. That she what? Threatened me. Threatened you? How's that? Threatened me that if I didn't lie to the CPS, that she would do something bad to me. She's talking about CPS, Child Protective Services. If you didn't do what? Lie to the CPS man. That she would do something bad? To me. Well, when did she say that? So that's the video of six-year-old Nicole. Corwin then asks 17-year-old Nicole how she's feeling about what she just saw. She says there are some questions that might never be answered, but her biggest question about why she didn't grow up with her mom, that had an answer. She was sure her mom had abused her. But I do have an explanation in my mind. And I can now realize it's not my fault. And I can put that chapter behind me, and I can go on. And yeah, I do think it's a very healthy thing to not run from something. For Nicole, the tapes end her memory, proved what had happened to her as a kid. It was a relief. She'd been worried that she was going to learn that her dad really did coach her to lie about her mom. Now she could put that aside. She could remember him the way she always had, as her best friend and a good dad. But then Corwin published a case study about Nicole. He didn't use her name. He called her Jane Doe. But Corwin's case study became part of a huge dispute that was fracturing psychology in the '90s. It was called the memory wars. And the argument was about whether repressed memories, adults suddenly remembering trauma, were real. Some scientists believed repressed memories were possible, others said no way. Nicole's videotapes and Corwin's article were co-opted by the side that thought repressed memories were real. They thought Nicole's case proved it. Corwin hadn't seen this coming. I've spoken to him. He says he wasn't on either side. Dr. Elizabeth Loftus read Corwin's article with one eyebrow firmly raised. She was a psychology professor at the University of Washington and a big deal. It was her experiments that proved memories are malleable. And she was a star witness in high profile court cases where she argued that eyewitness recollections aren't reliable. So when the memory wars began, she knew which side she was on. She thought repressed memories were almost never real. She wrote a doorstop of a book called, The Myth of Repressed Memory. And when she read the Jane Doe case, she was alarmed. I knew that people were using this case as the new proof of repressed memory. It was being discussed academically. It was being introduced into court cases to prove that repressed memory is real and has been proven. It was being used against people whom I thought were innocent because they were on trial in their cases. And so we had to get to the bottom of it. Part of her suspicion was the message, and part was the messenger. She'd seen Corwin testify in court on another case. A patient accused their therapist of abuse, and she didn't find him persuasive there either. I already had a suspicion about Corwin and his judgment, I think, going into this situation because of the work I had seen him do on this other case and how he had pretty much helped to ruin the life of this poor female psychiatrist who was the accused person in this other case. You're saying that the female psychiatrist was accused of abuse? Yes, by, I think, a former patient. And Corwin was saying that that had happened? In so many words, yes. He was an expert for the accuser. Loftus decided to investigate the Jane Doe case. She wanted to know whether the abuse had really happened. But to do that, she needed to know the real name of that little girl. Rather than ask Corwin, which would be normal for a researcher looking into someone else's study, she decided to dig around on her own. Loftus knew where to start. Clues in the tapes. At some point in the tape, he called her Nicole. And I just made a little mental note. Hm, her name is Nicole. He said something like, and when you were living in Fresno. And I thought, hm, it has something to do with Fresno, that kind of thing. She contacted a private investigator to run down some tips. She searched death records for Nicole's father. She found dozens of matches. And she started narrowing them down, closing in on the real Jane Doe. Nicole, meanwhile, was thinking very little about her time as Jane Doe. She left foster care and was making her own life as an adult. She joined the Navy. She was learning to fly military helicopters. And she decided to become a psychologist, she says, because she wanted to be like Corwin. She felt safe when she was talking to him as a kid, when she was being listened to. She wanted to make other people feel that way. She started acing her psychology classes at night while she trained as a pilot during the day. A couple of years into her military service, stationed in Hawaii, she got an odd phone call from a close family friend. Said, hey, there's something going on. There's a private investigator looking for you. And what did you think? Oh, my gosh. Why on earth? What on earth? What is happening now? And I knew within moments of hearing the words "private investigator" that this had something to do with Dave's journal article. It was the only thing she'd ever been part of that might be interesting to an investigator. She called Corwin, who learned Loftus was behind it. Loftus interviewed Nicole's foster mom, former step-mom, family friends who knew her growing up. She'd even interviewed Nicole's biological mom and said she might have been wrongly accused. Nicole, hearing about Loftus, was like, absolutely not. Why did you want her to stop? I felt intruded upon. I felt violated, very vulnerable, very exposed. And I understand that that probably sounds weird, given that I had already given Dave my consent to publish a story about intimate details of my life. But there's a very, very big difference between someone asking you to investigate parts of your life and someone doing so without your knowledge or permission. I did exchange emails with her, and I asked her to stop what she was doing. And what did she say? In so many words, no. Did she ask you any direct questions while she was looking into the case? No. Did that strike you as kind of odd? It struck me as kind of infuriating. Nicole complained to Loftus's university, who told her to stop investigating the Jane Doe case. I just got the call from some administrator on my campus, saying, are you looking into this case? I said, yes, I'm looking into this case. And they came and seized my files. I mean, I couldn't believe this was happening. When can the administrators come to your office and just take your files? Loftus was eventually cleared, and she published her findings on Jane Doe. She argued that the abuse might never have happened. Of course, this was the opposite of what Nicole had believed and clung to since she was 17. Loftus printed eight pages worth of doubts in a magazine and called the article "Who Abused Jane Doe?" When Nicole heard the article was on stand, she took a friend from her military base and drove 50 miles to Barnes & Noble where they stood side by side reading it. It was so hurtful. It was so ridiculous to me that someone basically interviewed everyone in my life who had known me when I was a child, except me, and then went ahead and patchworked together this story that just so happened to completely support her hypothesis. How dare she? She just had no right. She just had no right to do what she did. Whose story is this? This isn't just her story, this is the falsely accused mother's story. Other people are part of this story. I don't think one person gets to just decide, I'm going to only tell the story one way and only let people tell it who believe me uncritically. What about the other people in the story? I thought I was investigating an accusation against a possibly innocent person. I don't think the claim is that you should have just believed her uncritically. I think Nicole says that the way that you went around this research was sort of traumatizing and demoralizing to her. It made her feel like she didn't have any control over her own records and her own confidential information from her childhood. Can you put yourself in her shoes at all? Can you understand why she feels like this was a trespass? Well, yes. I mean, I think she had her way of telling her story, and she didn't want there to be another way. And then that might be upsetting for her. It doesn't seem to me like what she was upset by was that there was another way of telling the story. I think what she found upsetting was that you found out who she was and looked into her life without asking her or without thinking about her. Well, don't you think that that's what journalists do all the time? Usually, when you write a story about someone, you contact them, or you ask them what they think of the things that you found out. Actually, I-- you know, there were times when I would have liked to have talked to her. I think I even wrote up some questions that I might want to ask her. But in the end, we decided that it was just too risky. Risky, how? I just remember there were going to be conditions. And it just made us nervous. And so we decided we would just publish what we had found out through many, many other sources and leave it at that. And that's what we did. Nicole sued with the help of a lawyer who took her case for free. They went after Loftus and everyone who'd helped write the article for 21 complaints, from defamation to invasion of privacy. But even though she was angry with Loftus, Nicole read her article over and over again, until something happened that she wasn't expecting. She found herself agreeing with Loftus a little. It planted a seed of doubt. It did, yes. What was that like to feel like there's this thing that you've been so certain of for so long, that you felt like you had resolution of with Dr. Corwin and seeing those tapes, and then to have it be the subject of doubt again? What did that do to you? It made me feel very small. It made me feel very insignificant, as though my opinion on my own-- the events of my own life were the least important. Nicole started changing her mind back and forth, over and over. Some days, she thought she'd been abused, other days, she thought she'd lied about it. I have to say, as someone who spent months looking into Loftus's article, it is really hard to work out the responsible thing to think. When I first read it, I remember thinking, game over. There's no way Nicole's mom abused her. But as I looked into each claim Loftus made, what had seemed like a nine on the convincingness scale turned out to be more like a four. Like Loftus found a report from another psychologist who'd interviewed young Nicole, who said she sounded mechanical and rehearsed when she talked about abuse. Loftus told me that was the evidence that impressed her most, but I don't know. He says, quote, "Nicole has told her story numerous times to a number of different people, and she now sounds mechanical." He could mean Nicole's lying, or he could just mean she's been asked to tell it too many times. And Loftus interviewed Nicole's step-mom, a woman who'd been there for the custody battle. She told Loftus that she and Nicole's dad had tried to win custody with what she called the sexual angle. Loftus heard that as sinister. But did she accidentally reveal that she'd had an agenda? Or did she just use sexual angle as an unfortunate shorthand, like saying, we won custody with the abuse thing? And take the burns. Loftus found out that Nicole has a fungal condition that makes skin peel like a healing burn. But there are photos of young Nicole's feet with big blisters. Could they be explained by a fungus? It genuinely torments me. I still don't know what to think. Every piece of evidence seems to pinball back and forth like this. I went mad trying to find out the answer. I thought if I read enough court documents, I'd finally find the one thing that no one else had, the thing that would give me certainty either way. Of course, I didn't. And Nicole didn't either. She sat every day in the suspended animation of not knowing, caught between two really distressing ways of seeing her past. In one, her mother abused her. In the other, her father manipulated her into lying. And because she lied, her innocent mother was cut out of her life and wrongly accused of abusing her child. It just created this back and forth that I continue to live with today-- it did happen, it didn't happen. Some days, I fall somewhere in between. How disorienting was it to feel like you had the truth, and then you lost it? Disorienting is a good word, but I don't think it fully captures. It goes to my identity. It really goes to the heart of who I am, and who I thought I was, and who I think I am. The most important, the key memory on which I rebuilt and then rebuilt again my identity has now been called into question. It's just frustrating multiplied by a million. It's just so, so frustrating. There is an intangible to be gained from the process of transition from being a victim to becoming a survivor. And in my case, now all of a sudden, am I neither? I don't know. Am I either? I don't know. Nicole's lawsuit against Elizabeth Loftus dragged on and on over five years, all the way out to the California Supreme Court. In the end, Nicole lost. The First Amendment protected Loftus as a journalist. And Nicole had to pay Loftus's legal fees, nearly a quarter of a million dollars, which she could not afford. The court garnished her military wages. She quit the Navy, lost two houses, and her car was repossessed over all this. She filed for bankruptcy. These days, instead of being stuck between believing she was abused and believing that she wasn't, Nicole's found a third option. She tries to care a little less. She can't dial down the uncertainty, so she tries to dial down the stakes. I'm never going to know. I'm never going to know. And even after all these years, I think I still thought that at some point I would come to a solid decision, yes or no. And really, really, I'm never going to know. And that just has to be OK. There's so much that Nicole can't be certain of, so she hammered out a certainty about herself. She found a way forward. She became a pilot. She got two master's degrees and a PhD in psychology. She's now a therapist, like she's wanted since she was six. And she's never cut her mom out of her life. Nicole's mom has always said that she never abused Nicole. She maintains that today. And she says she didn't tell Nicole to lie to Child Protective Services. Her mom's in her 70s. They live in the same state. It's not an easy relationship. There's a possibility that I ruined my biological mother's life. There's a tremendous amount of guilt associated with that. We're close for-- well, we're relatively close for a period of time, and then things sort of fall apart again, just as they have. When was the last time that you spoke? Five months ago. And what was that like? It's still awkward. It's still very pressured, if you will. She still wants very much for me to believe that she never did anything to me, and I still don't know. So it's really, really hard to move past that major sort of elephant in the room. Do you ever talk about it? No. Is she able to accept that you might just not know? No, I think she really wants me to believe that she didn't. Do you think you could? Do you think there's anything that could change your mind? No. The waters are so muddy now. There's no-- I'll never know one way or the other. Nicole is no more certain about what happened today than she was when she was 16. She never flipped a coin and picked something to believe, but she landed on a certainty about what to do, that doesn't rest on what to believe. It doesn't matter what the evidence says, she wants her mom. Eleanor Gordon-Smith. A version of this story is in her new book, Stop Being Reasonable: How We Really Change Our Minds. Our program was produced today by Neil Drumming and Emanuele Berry. The people who put our show together includes Whitney Dangerfield, Aviva DeKornfeld, Hillary Elkins, Damien Graef, Miki Meek, Stowe Nelson, Catherine Raimondo, Nadia Reiman, Robyn Semien, Alissa Shipp, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu. Our managing editor is David Kestenbaum. Special thanks today to John and Joe Teche, a.k.a. The Jetsyns, Amy Burtain, Michelle Johnson, and Keith Woods. Our website, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks as always to our show's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. He is so excited about the superhero he created, this guy who gets bit by a radioactive seagull, patrols the beaches, saving lives. Torey swears it's super popular. The Gulman is getting huge. The Gulman is getting huge. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life. (SINGING) A little bit of love can go a long, long way. So what you're thinking of.
|
From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Sean Cole in for Ira Glass. The first punch landed on sort of the lower back right side of my skull, behind my ear. That was the one that knocked me down. This was a couple summers ago. I'd been walking down this sort of abandoned industrial block in my neighborhood in Brooklyn. It was after midnight. There was a big group of kids-- teenagers, boys-- maybe 9 or 10 of them, coming the other way. I was on the sidewalk. They were walking in the middle of the street, where the cars go. Also, I was on the phone with my friend, Sam, talking to him with my earbuds in. So I just kept walking and talking, glancing over at the kids a couple of times. And then I saw them see me. And they sort of stopped and said something to each other. And then a few of them, casually-- like I wouldn't notice-- started walking in my direction. I don't know if taking off in a sprint was the best decision, or if you could even call it a decision. A couple of the kids said, yeah! There are a few things I remember about the next 30 seconds or so and a few things I don't. I remember looking down at my shoes and thinking, why can't I run any faster than this? Sam said, what's happening? I said, I'm being chased. Who's chasing you, he said. They're chasing me, I apparently said, which I don't remember. I don't remember how I got off the ground after the first punch. I just know that a second later, I was running again and still getting punched in the head. Being punched in the head while running becomes withstandable remarkably quickly. After the second hit, my skull was like, if this is all that's going to happen, you can manage. One kid way in the back, nowhere near me, yelled, give me your wallet, but laughing, like it was a joke. They never tried to take anything. They easily could have. I've tried to come up with something to compare the experience of it to, but I've never felt anything else that intensely. I've never felt as good in my life as how bad that was. I rounded the corner and saw a semi truck coming. It was the only moving vehicle around. I ran toward it with my arms straight up over my head. And when I looked back, the kids had vanished-- gone just like they'd never been there in the first place. I slowed to a walk, which is when I noticed my earbuds were neatly spooled around my left ankle, like I'd done it on purpose. One of them was smashed. And when I lifted the other one up toward my face-- Sean, are you OK? Sean. Sean. Sean, talk to me. Sam was still on the phone. Sean. Sean? Yeah, I'm OK. Are you OK? What's up? What happened? I'm OK. I'm OK. I-- there was a gang of guys. Sean, I'm recording this call-- Can you hear me? So tell me what happened. I'm recording the call. This recording is the whole reason I'm telling you about this. When he realized something was wrong, Sam had taken the phone away from his ear and opened up this recording app, in case I needed some kind of evidence or something later. He's extremely organized that way. And I'm really glad he did it. For one thing, I have this bizarrely candid portrait of myself now, in the moment exactly after one of the worst things that's ever happened to me. It took a while for me to be able to listen to it. But I mean, there was a lot of them. There was like a lot of guys. I'm used to hearing my voice recorded and controlling the way I sound, like the way I'm talking to you right now. Do you want to-- There were a lot of guys. But this was like some unbidden child creature, bubbling up from my throat. When I listen to it, it's like I've finally taken some mask off that I didn't know I was wearing. And they kept hitting me on the head, and then I fell. And I scraped myself up a bit, but I'm OK. They didn't get anything. What did they hit you with? I think just their hands. Oh god. God, that was scary. Jesus fucking Christ, that was scary. But you're all right? Jesus. No, I'm fine. I'm OK. Take some deep breaths, Sean. You're really going to hyperventilate. No, I'm actually fine. Like, I-- And this is another thing-- this kind of incantation I keep repeating of, I'm fine, I'm fine. Instead of telling Sam what did happen, I spend most of the call focusing on how bad it could have been. It's like I'm clinging to a buoy in the ocean after a shipwreck. It could have been a lot worse. Jesus. It could have been a lot worse. I lost my glasses. Oh no. But it's OK. I mean, I'm fine. I'm OK. I'm OK. It could have been way worse. I'm actually fine. I'm actually fine. I never say things could be worse. Almost every other time in my life has been better than this one. And yet most of the time, I just brood about what's going wrong or what I wish I'd done differently. But here, I was clearly just paving over all the broken glass of what happened to me immediately, counting my blessings in a way I'm never usually able to. And of course, it could have been way worse. Truly catastrophic things happen to people all over the world every day. I remember talking to Sam for 45 minutes. It was actually about 12 minutes, which I couldn't believe. I was like, where's the rest of it? By minute six, six minutes after the attack, we're already starting to laugh about stuff. I told him that I had been heading down to my car to get a pack of cigarettes. And he says, yeah, well, I guess it'll kill you. It's good to know we were able to talk about it like that so quickly. It makes a lot of bad things seem more survivable. We spend so much time trying to control how we're seen by other people. But sometimes we can catch an unexpected glimpse of ourselves that we haven't manicured and that has way more information in it about how we actually are. It might not be the funnest thing to witness, but at least we know. In today's show, we got two stories in which that happens-- two different people seeing themselves in the wild and what it confirms, or doesn't, about who they think they are. Stay with us. Jesus. And that was something. That'll wake you up, won't it? Jesus. Act I. You don't have to be a star to be in my show. I want to tell you about my friend Zack's first big break-- Zack McDermott. We're pretty different people. Zack's from Wichita, and he has this kind of macho Kansan self certainty about him on the surface. I do an impression of him that I finally broke out when we were hanging with each other a couple of months ago. You know, I'm a writer. I wasn't able to get gussied up for you. I wasn't expecting you to be looking at my hair like that. That was pretty good. That flatters me a great deal. Why? I don't think you usually do impressions of people, unless you kind of really like them or don't like them at all. Or if you super don't like them. Right. Yeah. And I feel like you more super like me than super don't. I super like you. Zack is this singular combination of things I really haven't encountered before. As well as being swaggery, he can also be awkward and vulnerable. He's conspicuously caring for the people he cares about. After my assault, he made me promise I'd call him in the middle of the night if I needed to. He spent about seven years working as a public defender for the Legal Aid Society of New York, sometimes juggling more than 60 cases, righteously indignant about the court system. He's always giving advice, but he also needs to be reassured a lot. And he really likes other people's attention. He's always watching himself, in ways both literal and not, which, anyway, brings me to the story of the big break. See, about 10 years ago, when he was still a public defender, Zack was also trying to make it as a comedian, grinding away, sometimes doing four or five open mics a night. His act was pretty intense back then. He had a mohawk, and Frank Zappa mustache, and jazz patch. One time, he came out onstage, just shouting lyrics from the rapper, Gucci Mane. He'd usually record his set, just with a little video camera or phone. And he also had this friend who was always egging him on, sort of repping him in a way. Zack always refers to him just as the producer. He doesn't want me to say who the guy is, but he's famous adjacent-- ran with a really heavy crowd. And apparently, he had big dreams for Zack's future. It was like, oh, yeah, don't worry. I know Hova. Don't worry, I know Jimmy Fallon. Don't worry, I know-- Hova is Jay-Z. Yeah. You know? Meeting all these people with him and him telling me, like, you're my project, man. I'm putting everything behind you. I'm willing to put all my money behind you. I'm willing to put all my connects behind you. You're next, you know? Trust me. When I push the button, it's going to go fast. They worked on a pilot for a TV show together, held a casting call for the role of Zack's girlfriend, collected headshots, did screen tests-- the whole thing. And then, in the fall of 2009, Zack found himself walking out of his apartment building and onto the set of a TV pilot in which he was the star. Everything just looked perfect, like a Coke commercial. It was a gorgeous day. It was a fall day in New York-- sunny. There was a realistic amount of people on the street, but not so many that the scene is going to look like rush hour. Because it wasn't. It was the middle of the day. It should look like the middle of the day. And everyone is also just a little too attractive. Like actors. Everyone. I don't have audio of this because it was never actually recorded. Because it wasn't a TV pilot. Those people on the street weren't actors. This wasn't Zack's first big break into show business. It was his first big psychotic break, like the part of his brain that wanted to be in the spotlight all the time had suddenly exploded. Zack was experiencing a type of delusion that we've talked about a little bit on the show before. It's called the Truman Show delusion-- not incredibly common, but not as rare as you might think either. Sufferers of Truman Show delusion basically think they're being filmed all the time by hidden cameras, just like the Jim Carrey character in the movie The Truman Show. In the weeks leading up to the break, Zack had been showing signs of this oncoming split with reality-- little harbingers and then bigger ones. He'd been growing more and more manic, sleeping less and less. I had some friends and family start to be concerned about me. And I kind of just brushed it all off. You don't understand what's going on in my brain. You don't understand how to write comedy. You don't understand how to do comedy. You don't understand how to do comedy after you're a lawyer all day. You don't understand how to write a joke. Look, it's a mathematical equation. Let me show you. This is a premise. This is why this is funny. This is why that's not funny. That's your inner monologue. You don't understand-- and outer monologue. Even the producer was concerned. He told Zack he had to go see a doctor if they were going to keep working together. And yet, when Zack walked out of his apartment building onto the street that day, he was sure the producer had staged everything just for him. And Zack was ready to perform, thinking of himself as some hybrid of Ali G and Johnny Knoxville. I'm thinking my friend, the brilliant producer, had decided, you know what? Zack's not really an actor. He's not going to know how to act. I'm just going to throw him in somewhere. He'll eventually get what he's supposed to be doing and he'll just kind of like, basically method act himself. He could probably do that. You know? So, I go to Tompkins Square Park. Soon as I'm in there, I spot generic old man on park bench. That's what it would say if he was in the credits. Yes, and he had a bike. And he was too old to have a bike. Another tell that the entire neighborhood had been cordoned off to showcase Zack's comedic talents. Zack thought it would be funny if he grabbed generic old man's bike and did a couple laps around the park with it. Generic old man did not take kindly to Zack trying to grab his bike away. Zack relented. It was surely a sign from the producer. Keep things moving. So Zack takes off in a sprint toward the middle of the park and vaults over the wall of this big doggy playpen. I get down, like, on all fours myself. And I gallop with the pack. Running toward the end of the fence, I jump out the other side. And I'm like, all right, cool. Whatever that was worth, I did it. You know? That was funny, maybe. Yeah, that was funny maybe. Who knows? And I also was thinking that the pedestrians were extras, doubling as production assistants. And I'm supposed to follow them, follow the foot traffic that will take you where you need to go. No one's coming up to me with a clipboard and a shot list or anything, right? So they're then phoning ahead to the producer or whatever production unit, saying, OK, he's on First Avenue. He's almost to Houston. And like, OK, we'll make him go west then. Whenever Zack tells this story, he has a whole menu of deranged things he did that day to talk about-- running around the soccer field with his shorts pulled down while a game is going on, ordering champagne on a hotel patio and proceeding to yell at the cameras in the trees. As Zack remembers it-- and Zack's memory is all we have to go on-- this television non-debut lasted for about 10 hours-- a 10 hour narcissism variety show arranged for him to give the performance of his life. I sprinted across the intersection of-- I think it was Houston and First Avenue. While cars were moving? Oh, yeah. That's incredibly dangerous. Not if it's professional drivers on a closed course. At its height, everything he did was the right thing to be doing. He was a master of improvisation, following all the cues perfectly. And then he started getting tired and then exhausted. Everything was still a clue, but he wasn't sure what any of it meant anymore. Somewhere along the way, he lost his shirt and also his shoes. And the next thing he knew, he was standing on a Brooklyn subway platform, hands behind his head like a captured soldier, crying so hard, he flushed his contacts out of his eyes. All he wanted was for someone to yell, cut, thinking to himself-- OK, fine, you've got your shots. Can't you see that I'm bawling? Can't you see that I'm here suffering? Can't you see that I'm done? Like, come out, come out, wherever you are, Mr. Producer. So I'm crying. And I just scream, what do you want from me? Two cops come up. Their uniforms look real-- super real. The next thing I recall with any clarity is being in the back of an ambulance. Huh. And eventually, I hear a radio crack on. It's like, psh. Intake available at Bellevue Psych Ward. Zack was eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder type I, which can involve psychosis sometimes. In Zack's case, lack of sleep and daily pot smoking might have triggered the episode. At Bellevue, he says they dosed him up with antipsychotics. At times, he could barely lift his chin off of his chest. He drooled a lot. He couldn't go outside. Zack's only experience with psych wards before this was as a public defender, representing EDPs, or emotionally disturbed people. And now he was one. The delusion that he was on TV lasted in one form or another for the next 10 days. When he saw his mother, Cindy, coming down the hall on day two, he wasn't sure at first if it was her or an actor in prosthetics. He calls her bird because of the way she snaps her head back and forth sometimes. The bird is here, she told him. The bird can't be here, he said. The bird lives in Wichita. She said, the bird got on a plane. It took more than a year and a couple more episodes like this before he got stable. Along the way, he figured out a few things. He had to be good about taking his meds, and sleep was key. He couldn't burn the candle at all ends, like he had been, going on stage all the time. So he stopped, for the most part. He kept working his day job as a lawyer. They say you have to be at least a little crazy to be a comedian. But it's also possible to be so crazy that you can't be a comedian. Zack has told the story of the psychotic break countless times at this point. It's a good romp, and he's got it down-- all the different parts. He tells it entertainingly. But while it's one thing to recount something like that from memory, it's another thing if someone catches it on video. You can actually see yourself in psychosis. I say this because after Zack got better and thought he was totally out of the woods, sanity wise, he did have another psychotic break. And it was captured on video. And for the first time in his life, sane Zack would be able to see himself in the midst of Truman Show delusion. Do you need to call the cops, or is he OK? Yeah. Shut the fuck up! Actually, let me-- sorry, I'm just going to stop that and explain what happened. So after a while, Zack quit lawyering and decided to try to make it as a writer. He wrote a book about that first psychotic break and his disorder, called Gorilla and the Bird. Gorilla is Zack's nickname because he's really hairy and barrel chested. Again, the bird is his mom. It was optioned for a TV series before it even came out. HBO is planning to run it. The director Jean-Marc Vallée, who did Big Little Lies and Sharp Objects, is on board. Zack and I have had entire conversations about who might play him on the TV show about the time he thought he was on a TV show and wasn't. In fact, his therapist said to him-- sort of joking, but sort of not-- you know, you might end up playing yourself on that show. To which Zack basically responded, yeah, I think they might want to go with one of these A-list celebrities they're considering. And then, Zack was trying to figure out ways to promote his book. And of course, these days, a lot of authors make videos when their books come out. And so Zack hired a production crew to shoot footage for-- he wasn't sure what. A promotional video, but if it was any good, maybe they'd do a bigger documentary. He wanted to take them back home with him to Wichita to interview some of the people that he'd written about in his memoir, meaning his family, and have the crew follow him around his hometown for a week, just rolling on everything, documentary style. The crew consisted of two professional cameramen and a very seasoned TV producer that Zack happened to be friends with. He'd been around the cameras a bunch before this, by the way. And it didn't trigger his disorder. So the morning the delusion really hit, Zack hadn't met up with the film crew yet. They were actually wondering where he was. He was supposed to call. Instead, he was driving around Wichita by himself in his grandfather's pickup. He was fighting serious back pain. And he had barely slept in three days. Again, sleeplessness is a huge trigger for his episodes. In the book, he writes, "The solution to mania is so simple, yet so hard to come by. Just sleep." And the thing his therapist said came back to him-- that Jean-Marc Vallée might want him to play himself on the TV show. I came to believe that, oh my god, maybe my therapist was contacted by whoever. And maybe I really am auditioning for myself. So-- Right now. Like, I am auditioning to play the role of myself. I'm in the process of an audition. Yes. And I was just testing it slowly because I was like, be careful, you know? You've had this delusion before, and you've been wrong. And not only that, I know how the world works a little bit. I know HBO isn't just like, yeah, let him play himself. Great idea. Like, no. But like, I don't know. Maybe the director's kind of crazy. He takes a lot of risks. And sitting in the truck, he started to have the feeling that in addition to the people he knew would be filming him later that day, there were also other cameras that he couldn't see, and maybe audio recorders, too, possibly right there in the truck with him. I was listening to a song in his truck, and I was kind of dancing a little bit. And I was like, oh, this is kind of funny. And I was like, well, maybe you're not being taped right now. That's quite possible. That makes sense. I was like, but maybe you are. So maybe just give them a little something to think about. Leave them with something, like, OK, he's got a little something there. He's raw, and he needs training. But we got something we can possibly work with here. So once again, the powers that be had spotted Zack's latent talent and set it up so he could just do his thing in the wild-- wow the crowd. Should we watch the video? If we must. Let's watch the video. This is going to hurt. Really? I think so. How come? Well, I think I'm going to feel bad for the dude I'm going to watch, who is me. So the video-- it starts with the production crew in their car without Zack. It's just one cameraman and Zack's TV producer friend, Jay. They're heading to a taco shop to meet Zack. They pull up to a standalone building surrounded by a big parking lot. And they arrive at the same time as Zack's family friend, Rob, an older guy with a white beard and a tan ball cap. The cameraman's walking around the side of the taco place. And there you are. Hm. Oh, man. Yeah. Zack's in a spider-man crouch with his hands on the ground, staring down. He's wearing an Adidas t-shirt and sweatpants. No glasses-- he dropped them somewhere, which means he can't see anything. He's clearly in a lot of physical pain. It's his back, and it's spasming. I'm on my hands and knees now. I'm trying to stand up. I can't. You OK, dude? Yeah, I just got to stand up. Is he OK? Pedestrians are asking if I'm OK. Yeah, he's just-- his back's a little hurt. His back's a little hurt. He's fine. My friend Jay is saying, he's OK. He's OK. It wasn't 100% clear what was going on with Zack at that point. And Jay and the others were trying to help him, to get him into a car so he could get back to his hotel and sleep. But they also kept filming because that was the entire goal of the week. And they thought Zack might want this footage. This is exactly what his book was about. And here it was happening. Zack, meanwhile, was now pretty convinced he was auditioning to play the role of himself on the TV show that, again, is actually being produced about the time he thought he was on a TV show. Some blurry calculus told him that his producer friend Jay and Jean-Marc Vallée must be in communication somehow. In the video, Zack's on his knees, swaying back and forth in front of the taco stand. He closes his eyes, then opens them, and looks toward the camera-- the one that isn't there. Hold on. Hold on. Ah. All right. Too much. Too much. And I'm saying, too much. Too much. Too much. Too much. Too much. Too much. Stop. Stop. Stop. It was freaky to see my friend like this. I've seen people in the park or on the subway, acting like Zack was that day. They're just so literally lost and don't know it. But you know it. It's like they're right beside you on the sidewalk and also in a forest that they can't be guided out of, not easily. But in this case, Zack was sitting next to me, watching with me. And he remembers everything that was going through his head at that moment. I came to believe that through some combination of Jean-Marc and my friend here, Jay, the producer, that we had maybe a yoga instructor who was watching my movements and could tell, by the way I was moving, how much pain I was in and where I was in pain. Oh, man. You know what? I think I thought they were even shocking my spine somehow. Those back spasms-- he thought they were electrical shocks being triggered by this magical, imaginary yoga instructor. He moves in and out of different yoga poses on the ground. And I think that they're thinking that, if we shocked him this way, he would not only move his body to correct his posture that would alleviate his pain, but it can also point him toward whatever camera was capturing the particular footage that was going to be sent to Jean-Marc Vallée, the real director of the real series, Gorilla and the Bird. Oh, I see. So it was both to help you and also for production values. Right. And when you see me waving my hand and waving them off, that means, I'm not good right now. I don't really want to be shot. But you're not saying, stop filming, to the person who's filming this. No. You're saying that to-- The larger production team that doesn't exist. Stop. For real, stop. Which, when you think about it, takes a certain type of genius. Because Zack's original delusion that he was being followed around by cameras had come true, his brain had to come up with a second level delusion that, again, involved real people. The way he explained it to me, it's not like he forgets reality or hallucinates that the camera is really a dragon or something. He's able to take in all the data in front of him. It's just that he comes to the wrong conclusions about it. So you do that. I'll get the Ativan. Finally, Zack makes it to his feet and then walks off to the middle of the parking lot, sticks his hand in the air, and again, says, too much. Too much. Too much. Way too much. And then he's back down on his knees and finally on his back, lying in the parking lot as cars pass him. Ah ah ah ah ah! Stop, stop, stop, stop. Zack was right about what he said before, that it was going to hurt to watch this. I think I'm kind of just like, oof, oof. I think I'm just bracing myself for it the whole time. And I'm kind of like rooting for the guy and feeling bad for him. And like, buddy, oh, please stop. Oh, please stop. But in the same way I would feel bad for someone I saw on the street who's yelling at pigeons-- Right. Or whatever, you know? The difference is, I know that guy a little better. You know the guy that we saw in the video a little better. I do. Yeah. Finally, they managed to get Zack back to his hotel. And this is when we learn about a whole other side of psychotic Zack, one that's even harder for sane Zack to watch. So Rob stays behind. And the cast is now Jay, the TV producer friend, and now two cameramen, Trevar and Tyler. They went and got all of Zack's stuff from his mom's house, where he'd been staying earlier-- his medication, and his clothes, and everything. And they roll up to Zack's hotel room door with one of those standard issue luggage carts. Zack's in the room, talking to his mom on speaker phone. Job one is to get an Ativan into Zack to put him to sleep. And they also keep shooting. He opens the door, and there are two cameras pointing at him. Holy shit. Oh. What's up, boys? You're in sunglasses and a towel. I got your stuff. It's like Kanye West has answered the door here. Zack was about to take a shower, and he needed to see. The sunglasses are prescription. Jay had his regular ones. Let me bring this. Let me just go here. I'm going to let you turn that corner. I'm kind of hamming it up there. I said let me go here, and I'll going to let you turn that corner. Yeah, you're doing a voice. Yeah. Your coconut oil. Mm-hmm. Your glasses. Oh, that's nice to have. Your wallet. Zack's pretty disoriented at this point. His mom, the bird, chimes in on speaker phone sometimes, trying to talk him down. And even though Zack's discombobulated about almost everything, he still thinks he's playing a role, even if that role is himself. The blinking red light in his head is still on. All the while, Jay is being really caring toward him. How are you feeling? I'm feeling a little shocked, like literally and figuratively. By all this display of-- Oh, hold on. Jay was about to say something like, by all of this display of generosity and caring? But of course, Zack means he was being shocked by a magical yoga instructor. And he's also amazed at all of the planning that went into this audition. [INAUDIBLE] Let's quit acting and let me just fucking coconut oil my ass. Cool. All right. Did you say, let's quit acting? Mm-hmm. So I can coconut oil my ass. Mm-hmm. Which I guess if you think you're acting and someone's filming you, then you are acting. Coconut oil on that ass now. Oh, you were literally coconut oiling your ass. Yes. Oh, I thought that was a euphemism. No, I do that. Jay, where are my real glasses? Give me my real glasses. Oh, I got them. Barking orders like a real asshole. And-- Take it off. Take it off speaker. I'm kind of being an overall diva here. It's true. Like, with the coconut oil, Zack comes out of the bathroom at one point with the jar and asks if someone can put some on his back. And this is probably the cringiest moment of the whole video for Zack to watch, mostly because the Zack in the video doesn't have any problem bossing everyone around. Trevar puts his camera down and complies. Just dip a little and just hit me. All right. I see how this works. Yeah, yeah. You got it. Don't rub it in. Not hard. Yeah, no. Just, it's all around. We're just moisturizing. All right. No, no. Well, I'm not rubbing hard. I'm not rubbing hard. No, I mean-- all right. I'm just rubbing it around. Good. We're fine. Yeah. Yeah. Lower. There you go. Yeah. Zackary, can you hear me? I can hear you. You need to-- Look, I'm just oiling up, all right? Hey. Is that good? Stop. Stop. No. That's not what we do. You're like, stop, stop. No, that's not good. You're not putting coconut oil on my back right. Yeah. Just, like, rub it. Just-- Now Jay is doing it. Not like-- no, just like you're putting lotion on. Hard. Harder, harder. Just rub that shit in. That's really painful to watch. It's just I'm being such a dick to everybody. Well, you're here in a florid psychotic episode. That's true. But I'm still not being nice. And no one there knows me all that well. I mean, Jay knows me best at this point here. But this is the first he's seen me be in any sort of bad mental state. And he's got kids at home. He's got a newborn. And he took time out of his schedule to come do this, for free. And he is taking care of me. He's babysitting you, kind of. Yeah, and he's hiding his exasperation while he deals with me. But then you can see when he's looking at the camera-- I won't call it eye rolling, but it's just like, the guy's obviously frustrated and being pushed to the limits of his patience. He's doing everything perfect here. It's amazing what he's doing. And so when I see that video, it makes me want to call Jay, my friend in the video, and say, hey, man. I'm sorry I spoke to you like that, and I'm sorry that I brought that stress into your life. But then out of the other side of my mouth, I'll preach to the general public, like, ain't your fault. When he does speaking events at bookstores and other places, talking about his disorder, he says, people shouldn't be ashamed of their own mental illness and their behavior during episodes like this one. His mantra is always, this happens, and it's OK. Because I do believe this happens, and it is OK, as it relates to everyone else. But when I see it happen to myself, I'm like, that's not OK, man. You got to get your shit together. The Ativan's starting to take effect. Zack's getting drowsy. He has to fly back to LA the next day, but it's not clear he understands that. The bird on speaker phone has been steadily beating a drum, trying to coax him away from the cameras-- the real ones and the imaginary ones-- and just get him to go to bed. Sleep, of course, is the opposite of performing. Zack, now that you've got your Ativan on board, you just need to lay down, son. Yeah, you're right. You don't need to worry about the clothing right now. So Zack, you just need to go to sleep. And then, you just need to coordinate with Trevar how to get you to the airport for your flight. Oh, yeah, because I have my earplugs now. It looks like he's getting ready to go to sleep. He hangs up with his mom, but then after everyone leaves, he calls her back. Says to her, what the hell just happened? She says, what do you think happened? He says, I'm Jake Gyllenhaal. No, she says. There's going to be a TV show made out of your book, but you are Zack. You aren't messing with me, he says. Nothing happened just now? Nothing, she says. You need to sleep. You're manic. I'm just crushed that that just happened to me. In this moment, I'm kind of realizing that my mind has betrayed me. Again. Yeah. And I just feel so fucking stupid-- Oh, honey. And so embarrassed. I mean, this is humiliating, you know? And it causes chaos, fault or no fault. I wish it was easier to be my friend. I wish I took up less space in the people that love me's lives. I watch the video several more times on my own. And I realize that maybe there's this one other thing that's unsettling for Zack when he sees the scene in the hotel room. Zack told me he doesn't want to be on TV anymore like he used to. But it's clear his delusion still does. The Zack in the hotel room still has this naked, unfettered ambition of wanting to perform, wanting all the cameras on him. It's almost like a little kid's dream of stardom. The towel around his waist could just as easily be tied around his neck, superhero style. And the Zack watching the video is bashful about that, in a way that the Zack in the video is not. I didn't think to ask him about this when we were watching it together. So I called him later and said it on the phone. Yeah, I think that's probably-- yeah, I think that's probably true. It's almost like I've kind of renounced the hustle in my normal day to day, this naked pursuit of fame and stardom. But yeah, like you're saying, the id keeps going no, dude. You're not fooling anybody, least of all your own brain. This is what you want, except that you're a performer. Yeah, I'm so shy about my acting aspirations, I didn't even realize that. It's sort of like sane Zack set the stage for delusional Zack to get what he wants-- to be the star. And now that there's video of it, sane Zack has to confront what that show actually looks like-- the Zack show. And he's not a fan. The full title of Zack's book is Gorilla and the Bird, a Memoir of Madness and a Mother's Love. I could talk about how great, and hilarious, and important I think it is, but I've already annoyed a lot of people doing that. So, see for yourself. Coming up, that one mistake that haunts you, and you just can't get over it. And then, you watch the same screw-up happen all over again four decades later. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. It's This American Life. And I'm Sean Cole in for Ira Glass. Today's show-- Seeing Yourself in the Wild, stories of people who get to-- reluctantly decide to-- come face to face with an unedited version of who they are and what they do with that information. And I am now delighted to bring you Act 2 of our show. Act 2, distant replay. So, this story is about a man who's been reliving this one moment from his life over and over again. He remembers every last detail of how it felt, how it changed his life. And then 40 years later, someone shows up with a recording of that thing. Emanuele Berry explains. The man is my dad. And the thing he cannot let go of is a high school basketball game from 1978. I found out about the game when I was a kid. My mom had saved this old newspaper clipping, or maybe it was a yearbook. But either way, there is this picture of my dad on a basketball court. And when I brought it to her, she told me not to ask my dad about it. And so, I never brought it up. But it bugged me, because basketball is the one thing my dad and I share. Of my four siblings, I'm the only one who fell for the game like my dad. I loved being on the court; the sound of squeaking shoes, creaking floors; the way the entire space of the gym would vibrate; the way my body would twist, and turn, and pivot to the basket. I loved basketball, but I also loved the attention my dad gave me because of it. In the car after games, we'd annoy the hell out of the rest of my family by dissecting my every move, figuring out what I could improve on, what I did well. It was like we were speaking our own language. Together, we laid out big dreams for my future-- club teams, high school star, college, the WNBA. But when I got to high school, I cared less about the game. Our postgame talk stopped feeling like conversations and started sounding like lectures. I started to dread the car rides home. And there's one ride for my junior year of high school that I still think about all the time. I was walking to my dad's car after the game. And as soon as I closed the door, it started. Why didn't you do this? You need to do this. How could you do this? As I listen to the steady rhythm of my dad's critique, I realized, these lectures weren't about me or what I wanted. They were about him. So I did something I had never done before. Shut the fuck up, I shouted. He was taken aback for a moment, and then stony silence, waiting for an apology. But it was an apology I wouldn't give. I told him that I didn't want to talk about basketball with him anymore. And if that's all he wanted to talk about, we didn't need to talk. So we didn't. For over a year, we barely spoke to each other. A lot of time has passed. I haven't picked up a ball in forever. Neither has my dad. The silence is long gone. But there's something that hasn't been repaired. Nowadays, we just exchange basketball pleasantries. Did you watch that game? How does the team look this year? LeBron, LeBron, LeBron. Basketball gives us the illusion that we know each other. But I'm not sure we do. And I've been wanting to know my dad better-- to talk to him about something real, something that matters to him. So that high school basketball game from 1978 seems like a good place to start. I visited my parents in Michigan. And when I walk into the living room, of course, there's a college basketball game on in the background. My dad's in his usual position, sunken into his recliner. Even sitting down, he's still big. Long arms-- his hands make the remote look teeny. I ask him to talk upstairs. On what? Do you want to sit back here? Anywhere is OK with me. I go to sleep. No, you can't go to sleep. We're talking. I'm nervous. My dad is intimidating. We chit chat for a long time before I bring up the game and that old photo my mom had kept. And I remember her saying that it was sad and that I shouldn't mention it. That picture was of the final game when we lost in the semifinals. I blame myself for losing that game. Why? There's a lot in that sigh. My dad grew up poor in Mississippi, the youngest of 11. And for him, basketball was a way to college. But in the 10th grade, he suffered a serious knee injury. His knee would swell when he ran, so he had to stop playing. But he got an unlikely second chance. Before his senior year of high school, his family moved to Michigan. There, the surgeon found bone shards under my dad's kneecap. He removed them, and the swelling stopped. My dad could play basketball again. That dream to get a basketball scholarship to go to college was back on. My dad joined his high school basketball team. They were called the Everett Vikings, and they were good. They'd won the state championship the previous year. The star of that team was this guy named Earvin. But most people just call him Magic Johnson. Even in high school, they called them that. The coach was thrilled when my dad joined because he was tall. And the team had lost Magic Johnson and all of their height. As the season progressed, my dad flourished. He was a strong rebounder. He could dunk. He even got a nickname. They wanted to try to figure out a name for me, a nickname for me. They already had one for Earvin. As everybody know, Tim Scott nicknamed Earvin "Magic" Johnson. One of the sportscasters found out I was from Mississippi. During a game where I dunked the ball, he said, Mississippi Slammer. That's where they got the name the Mississippi Slammer. His team was cruising through the season to the state playoffs, which brings us to the game I was never supposed to ask about. It was the semifinals. The team was supposed to wear suits to the game, but my dad didn't have one. So he had to get one at the last minute. He missed the pep rally, and he got to the gym late. My dad remembers going to the locker room, the starting lineups being announced. And when the game started, he says he just felt off. He remembers this one play in particular, where he says everything fell apart. I grab a rebound off the backboard above the rim. And I go up above the rim, to where I'm basically-- all I had to do was just drop the ball in the basket. Instead, I threw it across the basket. And I never will forget it. It was hard on me because that was a turning point in the game that had made me feel that I lost the game. How long do you think you carried around that one little moment? I still carry it around. Obviously, I'm still talking about it. What do you think would make you not carry it around with you? I don't know. I can't go back in time and redo it. They lost the game by just a few points. Did it feel like opportunities were closing for you with that game? Yeah. If I had played better, and we would've won that game, we would have been in the finals. And there would've been more visual eyes on us. And the thing was is that I was only out there for one year because I came up here in my senior year. So nobody really knew who I was. For me to get the more exposure, we needed to continue to win. And when we didn't win, I think that just-- a lot of the opportunities for me to be seen went out the window. I have a lot of resentment about the opportunities that I feel that it could have changed my life from the way we are now. When my dad says where we are now, he means no college degree, a career managing restaurants, raising five kids, and making ends meet. Where we are now is missing part of a lung and slipped discs. Where we are now is no kidneys and dialysis, while still working 60 hour weeks. It's been over 40 years since he missed that shot. Maybe that's how long it takes to mourn an alternative universe. But part of me also wonders, isn't that long enough to let it go-- to see that it's just a game? That where we are now is also 40 years of marriage and kids who went to college, one even to Yale-- not me. And it's not like my dad hates his job. I've never thought of our life as anything other than a good one. I got it in my head that if he could watch the game, he'd see things differently. Maybe he didn't play so badly. Maybe he's just being hard on himself. And I wanted to see it. I've never seen him play. So I looked for the tape everywhere-- his high school, TV stations, the Michigan High School Athletic Association. And then, a few months later, my dad reconnected with one of his high school teammates. And he said, I have a copy of the game. And not only that, but he and the other guys on the team had a different take of how my dad played. They said they remembered him playing great-- that he's the reason they even stayed in the game. He gave the tape to my dad. My dad tried to watch it once, but didn't get too far. So, a few weeks ago, we sat down in the living room to watch the game together. All right, you ready? I think so. You think so? Are you worried right now? I'm nervous. Why? What are you nervous about? Watching myself 40 years ago playing basketball, revisiting those moments. But my teammates said that I played very like a bear, or beast, or whatever. I would like to see that part of the video. Versus what I perceive that I did not play very well. So from retrospective, I would like to see that version-- the beast. The beast? The Mississippi Slammer? Well, you know, I'd take anything right now. Here we go. A grainy black and white court comes into focus. Players zoomed towards the basket and layup lines. Lots of them have afros. Can you tell which one is me? Um, not yet. Well, it's all over the place. And then I see him. It's his body language, so like my little brother's that it gives him away. Is this you? That's me, yeah. Is that you? Yes, that's me. He's sporting a white jersey and teeny, tight white shorts that are very shy of his knees. Tube socks and high top sneakers-- the shoes make me cringe. Ankle support apparently was not a thing. And he's way skinnier than I've ever known him. You're so teeny. Yeah, all 189 pounds of me. When was the last time you were 189 pounds. Yeah, in high school. Hold on, this game is underway. The teams line up at the big [INAUDIBLE] half court for the jump ball. My dad loses the jump. The other team picks the ball up on the court, fires off a quick jumper that bounces off the rim. My dad's team takes the ball down, and throws up a shot, and also misses. My dad grabs the rebound. Bobby Berry has it. Bobby Berry-- that's my dad. The funny thing is that as he watches, he seems to forget that he knows how this game ends. And he's watching it like any other game on TV. Come on. My dad's team scores the first two baskets. It's 4-0. But the lead doesn't seem to matter to him. He's already down on himself. What are you seeing right now? Me standing. Yeah? Yep. What do you mean? Um, I don't go to the ball. I go away from the ball. Watch the ball come to this side. Now watch where I go-- opposite side of the ball. I start to say things like, it just started. It's not that bad. I'm pointing out every good thing he does. Look, you just got an offensive rebound. And I'm so busy talking, I almost miss the play that's haunted my dad. [INAUDIBLE] Tony Daniel high post drives around his hand, puts it up-- no good. You got the board. There it is. Is that the shot? Was that it? Yes. Yeah, that was the shot. You want to-- [INAUDIBLE] No, I don't want to see it again. Once is enough. The play is over so quick. It's just a second on the screen. And the thing is after that shot, his teammate rebounds the ball and puts it in. In other words, the miss-- it didn't matter. They still score. But it did matter to my dad. He never really recovers. And for the rest of the game, he misses shot after shot. Though it's not all bad. He makes a monster block on the next play. Though watching, he barely seems to notice. Next play down, he's fouled on the shot. So he gets two free throws. Yeah, free throws! That's what I mean. You made your free throw. I missed a shot, two feet away. I keep trying to get him to see what his teammates saw. He won't. You guys are up by quite a bit. Yeah, I know. That's the point. We lost. At halftime, it's 22-21. My dad's team is up by one. But by the second half, it's as if my dad remembers what he's watching and how it ends. No more yelling, he just sort of sits hand over mouth, quiet. And this is where I start to think, wait, is he mad at me? I start to worry that this was a terrible idea. This isn't going to make him feel better. Rather than think about one mistake in a game from 40 years ago, he can now watch 40 minutes of mistakes. The game remains close. And I can see what his teammates are saying about him being a beast. He's pulling down lots of rebounds. He is the reason they're still in the game. But he's not scoring much. Then, in the fourth quarter, their opponent pulls ahead by just a few. And my dad's team can't catch up. It's over. The camera shows one final moment of my dad. It zooms in on him before he heads into the locker room. He leans down, wrapping his arms around his coach, consoling him. My father at the kitchen table has far less compassion for himself. How are you feeling? Uh, depressed. But I can't do anything about it. It's like I said. It's sad to see that game over again, that's for sure. And I didn't-- still, I feel the same way. I felt that I did not play very well, the way I felt that I should. My dad finally got to see how this moment actually looked from the outside. And it didn't change anything for him. You can't imagine that things were different. The tape proves the way I felt that I played is what the tape shows. When we were watching, I worried that I'd upset my dad. I had. Well, you're reopening a wound. Me? Yes. Why are you making me watch this game? Does it make you that upset? I'm not upset. It just reopens it, and making me revisit it is not necessarily making me-- See, I think my hope was that by watching it, it would make you feel better. Like, you could let go of it. The only way I probably can ever let go of it is go back into time and reverse everything. And that's not going to happen. Is that really what it would take? I think that's probably what it would take. I think it makes me upset that you feel upset or that you feel depressed about this. Because it just-- I know it's just a game. It's not that it's just a game. It's just that it's so long ago and that like, yes, it's sad-- Oh, believe me. In my life, I'm a very blessed and happy man. Well, that's it, though. That's exactly it. It just feels like this is such an insignificant thing to all of the great shit that you have going on in your life. Watch the language. Sorry. My dad did point out one positive thing in the video that I couldn't have noticed. You know what I said to my coach? What did you say? I'm sorry, sir. What were you sorry for? Losing the game. Now I gotta go. I never told anybody what I said to my coach. What did he say back? No, you played your ass off. At this point, we've been talking for close to an hour. And I realized what I'm doing isn't working. I've been keeping things positive, trying to make my dad see something else-- sugar coating it. And you know what I hate? I hate when people sugar coat things. The truth was, he was right. He didn't play well. That dunk-- he really did pass the ball over the rim, instead of just dropping it in. After that, he only scored three points. He played exactly the way he told me not to play for most of my basketball career, hanging out around the basket, hands down. He missed easy put backs. He did rebound well, but without him as a threat offensively, his team suffered. I think he's absolutely right. If he'd played better, they would have won. Maybe what he needed wasn't to see himself differently. What he needed was for someone to see him just the way he is. I mean, to be frank, it was not a great game for you. It wasn't a great-- it was a horrible game for me. But I wanted you to also see yourself play basketball. And I think I was hoping that it would be different than you imagined. Why would you think that? Because I always imagined that I played like shit. [LAUGHS] And I like to think I don't look that bad on tape. Well, you see? We chatted a little longer, my dad looking drained-- I think a little sad. It was late, and the Raptors were about to play the Bucks. So I left my dad to watch his game. I spent the evening pretending to read, but really, I was worried about what I just did. The next morning, my dad told me he had something he wanted to say. You know, I actually felt a sense of relief after watching the game with you. I don't think I would've watched it, to tell you the truth. So getting through that with someone that you care and for them to sit there, and watch, and just be brutally honest, like you said, that I played like shit-- excuse my language. But those things are important. And that's what I wanted, to talk to my dad about the important things. And since I started this conversation, we've been doing that more and more. We've talked about his childhood in Mississippi, about his health, like how dialysis is so depleting, and about his own parents and how he sees them. Our conversations are not always this deep. But you know what they're not always about? They're not always about basketball. Emanuele Berry is one of the producers of our show. A version of this story appeared on The Nod, a podcast that tells stories about black culture that you won't hear anywhere else. Like, LeVar Burton discussing the love life of black Star Trek characters. You can find The Nod wherever you get your podcasts. Our program was produced today by Lina Misitzis and Nadia Reiman. Our staff includes Bim Adewunmi, Elna Baker, Emanuele Berry, Ben Calhoun, Zoe Chace, Dana Chivvis, Aviva DeKornfeld, Neil Drumming, [? Hillary ?] [? Elkins, ?] [? Damien ?] [? Grave, ?] [? Michelle ?] [? Harris, ?] Seth Lind, Miki Meek, Stowe Nelson, [? Katherine ?] [? Raimondo, ?] Robyn Semien, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, and Nancy Updike. Our managing editor is Diane Wu. Executive editor, David Kestenbaum. Special thanks today to Dr. Cindy Cisneros-McGilvery, Jayson Haedrich, Rob Howes, Trevar Cushing, Tyler Rickstrew, Aurelie Hagen, Farley Chase, Eileen Berry, Tony Daniels, Jorge Just, and Sam Greenspan. Our website, ThisAmericanLife.org, where you can stream our archive of over 600 episodes for absolutely free-- ThisAmericanLife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to my boss, Ira Glass. So this is weird. I called him to ask him about the show this week. And he was at the beach with his pet donkey. And I'm like, what are you doing? And he's like-- Coconut oil on that ass now. I'm Sean Cole. Ira will be back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
Zoe Chace. Ira Glass. So you went to Iowa. I did. You know, there are like 50,000 Democratic candidates running for president. They're all in Iowa. It's what? It's 25 right now. It's 25 right now. Mm-hm. And there's this one political writer, Dave Weigel with the Washington Post, he writes this newsletter thing called The Trailer three times a week. And he has this particular superpower where somehow, he seems to be with every single candidate who's running at the exact same time. So at this moment, where everything seems like this grand 25 ring circus with this race, he seemed like maybe the very best person in the world to watch this with. When there's the next president, he'll have seen every moment, not skipping anything. Hopefully, he will understand why it happened. And so you basically wanted to see the whole election all at once the way he does. Yeah. And it's so crazy traveling through primary states with him. He knows these places so well. In Iowa, we pulled up to a gas station. If I had to rank Iowa gas stations, I think QuikTrip, then Kum & Go, then Casey's. Wait. So what's so great about QuikTrip? The current ones, the fairly new ones-- there are some that have been there for a while. But the new ones, I think it might have high quality lids that are like high quality plastic, as opposed to the thing that just breaks-- Lids? --after one use. Yeah, lids. And keep in mind. This is the only taste I'm going to have for a few hours, and I need the caffeine. So I've put thought into it. And I have colleagues who are-- We were leaving a Hickenlooper event and racing over to a Beto event. Beto is a former Texas senatorial candidate, Beto O'Rourke. Hickenlooper, John Hickenlooper, former Colorado governor-- it took me so long to read up on all these guys. It took like a day to figure out who's who. Yes. Thank you for that. We flew in. We went to four things in a day. First, Knoxville, Iowa. Weigel looks kind of like a reporter from the '70s-- mustached, notably, casually dressed, hair askew. We're going to this tiny event at this tiny brewpub. And as we're driving up to it, we think we see the candidate standing right outside. It does look like Beto. You're right. That guy? Yeah. I think it's him. He's fairly tall. Huh. That's the outfit, the chinos and everything. That is him. Isn't it surreal? Just like when you're walking through a small town, you're like, oh, that guy running for president. Yeah, all right. I don't know why it's surreal to him. This happens to him literally all the time. I think he's waiting to be introduced. Oh, Amy. That's his wife, who's with him today-- the one woman in the-- In that group? Yeah. [CHUCKLES] What? I don't know. Just, it's fun living through things like this. Oh, he's really into it. It thrills him. He loves this. There's this one moment after Beto finishes his little talk, and people come up to him and ask questions. And this guy-- it's in this tiny brewery, which kind of looks like a rec room, almost. And this one voter walks up to Beto with a beer in his hand, just like as though he's at some kind of relaxed Friday afternoon cocktail party. And Weigel sees this, and jumps up and kind of elbows people out of the way. Sorry, I'm just trying to get a picture of the guy holding the beer while talking to him, just because it amuses me. Oh. Yeah, sure. It kind of exemplifies the special part we're in, in the election. There's no Secret Service. There are no real barriers. Anyone can just wander up to a presidential candidate. It's extremely intimate. It's his favorite time of the presidential elections. People are really close to each other. At one point at another event, two of the candidates, Tim Ryan and Jay Inslee, they ran right past each other. You're back in the district. Go get them, Congressman Ryan! You did a great job, Governor! I love your speech! You're awesome! Do it again! I want to hear it one more time. It's almost like Weigel and the candidates are on some kind of a cruise or at a camp together. And they just bump into each other day after day, like, oh, hi again. Oh, I'll see you tomorrow. Oh, I'll see you later. Are you going to be at the pizza thing? Thank you. Thanks a lot. Good to see you again. Yeah. Good to see you. See you at the-- I will not catch up with you in the run. But I'll-- Are you going to run it? You also, in this phase of things, you get to see the candidates interacting in the world, the regular world. Right. Regular people with just the most random stuff that you wouldn't normally see. Yeah. I had this thing happened to me. I was checking into our hotel in Waterloo, Iowa, right? What kind of hotel? Hampton Inn. And the girl who's checking us in, who's like 20-ish maybe-- she seems funny and smiley. And she's really surprised to see these reporters there. And it turns out she's never heard of the Iowa caucuses. Even though the state is crawling with these candidates, it's totally possible to lead your life and miss it. So Weigel explains it to her. Yeah, instead of a presidential primary here-- All these presidential candidates for the nation to vote, blah, blah, blah. We go upstairs. But my key is demagnetized, so I go back downstairs. I leave all my stuff, including the recorder, there. And when I get downstairs, I see Beto just standing there. And he's trying to get a free bottle of water from the girl. And I'm like, Beto? Wait, do you know him? No. You've never met him. No. And I say to him, Beto, tell her what you're doing here in Iowa. And she looks at him, and she goes, are you running for president, in this totally sarcastic way. Like of course you're not. And he goes, actually, yes, I am, which is just a weird answer to that question. And she jumps up, goes, yes, queen! And he's like totally taken aback and is like, thank you so much. And she goes, I hope you win the presidency-- like not very sincere. And so this is just the world that Weigel was marinating in. He knows them all so thoroughly at this point. He knows them as thoroughly as he knows the gas stations in Iowa. We were at a bar. He starts talking about the jokes that candidates tell when they're out on [INAUDIBLE]. The horrible spouse joke. Whereas, Warren has a riff where she talks about dropping out of school. It's like, fell in love. Woo-hoo. Got married, Woo-hoo. Had a baby. Woo. And she just-- it's like a Simpsons joke, almost. She imitates getting less and less excited about her bad life decisions. She's like, and then I met my first husband. Never a good idea when you have to number them, things like that. My favorite Klobuchar joke is, she talks about how she's Slovenian American. And it's like, and for years, I was the most famous Slovenian American in politics. But then Melania Trump arrived, and you know what? It's like looking in a mirror. You laugh. It's like a [INAUDIBLE]. But Biden does the, my wife is always right joke. Who else does that? People mostly learn to not do that. For today on our program, we're in this unusual political moment. The Democrats have even more people running for president than the Republicans did last time. 25 people-- what is that? Today in our show, we are not going to cover all 25. What we're going to do is we're going to drop in here and there. My sense is that, at this point, everyone is still getting to know who these people are. And so hopefully, you will get in close with some of them and get an impression of them. And what we're especially interested in in this show is all of the candidates at the bottom. That's the story of this particular moment in the election, is all those people between 0% and 1% in the polls who might still have a chance trying to get noticed and break out of the pack, and join the front runners, which is just an enormously difficult thing to do. And it's just right now starting to shift. How do you get noticed and rise above 1% in this pack of 25? From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Act 1. No. No acts today. Let's just drive around. So bossy. All right, ma'am. So Zoe, so 25 candidates-- and this political operative explained this to me, and I found it a helpful way to look at this. He said that the best way to picture what is happening right now is that there are four front runners-- Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris. And then depending on how you count it, Pete Buttigieg is in there, too. Their poll numbers are way higher than anybody else. And also, they get most of the donations and most of the press attention, which then generates more donations and more press attention in a kind of self-perpetuating cycle that sucks the air out that all the others want to breathe. So that's them. And then below those four or five people, there's basically everyone else in the pack of 25, most of them struggling to break 1%. And it seems just very interesting what is happening with them. And so, Zoe, you watched them trying to figure that out. OK. So for example, take John Hickenlooper. Former governor of Colorado. His polling is now at less than 1%. If you haven't heard of him, that's probably why. He cannot draw a crowd by himself. If he put out a sign in Iowa today, Hickenlooper Speaks, Please RSVP, probably nobody would come to that event. Crickets, right? Yeah. OK. Yeah. So he does these-- they're called retail stops, when a politician tours a factory or whatever. So right now, we're at this brand new distillery in Des Moines, me and Dave Weigel. --because this stuff is actually kind of fun to watch. And we walk in. Hickenlooper and this one elderly Iowa voter are sitting at the bar, the brand new bar in the brand new distillery. It's a totally staged photo op. There are about 20 reporters in a semicircle around them. But obviously, if you look through the camera lens, it looks like it's just Hickenlooper and the voter. What a pleasure. I can't tell you. This is an absolute honor. You're running for what? The old guy's like, you're running for what? The highest office of the land-- President of the United States. Oh, really? OK. So I was an entrepreneur. I built brew pubs all over the-- mostly over the Midwest. But I built the biggest brew pub in the country, and Denver was my first one. Always in abandoned warehouses. I won the Award of Honor from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. I don't know what that's good for. It's so strange that these guys actually-- they do have to kind of just brag about themselves to people, huh? Yeah. Like people don't know who they are. I mean, not to be mean about it, but people [INAUDIBLE] don't know who they are. So they just have to say, here's all the stuff I've done. Even he gets kind of self-conscious about it. I call it the fundamental nonsense of Washington, or place of common sense. That's my shtick. But anyway-- That's my shtick? Yeah. Oh, I like that. Good luck. Good luck, the old guy says to him. 20 people are recording this, and no one is going to use any of this. No one's going to use these quotes, right? We move on to a distillery tour. Hickenlooper has tons of opinions about that. Remember, he was in this business. I always call it the Haagen-Dazs effect, which is-- No one is going to use any of this either. Instead, the reporters just wait til the end. They gather around, they ask him questions about Trump. That stuff, they might use. So this whole thing, this whole tour, all of it is just for pictures. Yeah. What the campaign hopes for is that, out of the 25 candidates, tonight viewers will see a picture somewhere of John Hickenlooper drinking a beer in Iowa. I don't see how that's going to make him president. That is not going to be enough to take him out of the 1% and put him up there with the front runners. Iowa, though-- voter by voter. These 1%-ers, they're also going around Iowa talking, and talking, and talking to the actual voters, the real human beings who go to the caucuses and vote. And in order to do that, the candidates who can't draw a crowd on their own, one thing those guys do is go to local Democratic clubs. The idea is you do these Democratic clubs for a while, county Democratic clubs, and then you get popular enough to graduate out and draw a crowd on your own. Ah. Like Pete Buttigieg, he had to do the Democratic clubs for about a month. He went around introducing himself, and then he graduated out. Now he can draw a crowd on his own. Most of them have not. I remember-- there's a Delaney bumper sticker. They're real. Whoa. There was one that was-- What if that's Delaney's car, though? It could be. John Delaney, also at less than 1%, rich guy and former congressman from Maryland. He's doing a meet-and-greet with the Clive County Democrats at Wobbly Boots Barbecue. So I'm sure this is going to surprise you. I actually believe I have the best [INAUDIBLE]. But I think what makes it best is it's different, and I can get it done. Delaney's moderate. He's not into Medicare for All. He's not into the Green New Deal. Even his climate change plan is all wrapped up in red, white, and blue bunting. Because we're solving the problem the old-fashioned American way by inventing and building. Hear hear! The room is packed, actually. People here are eating John Delaney up. So it's working. Yeah. I came to see exactly this, one of these 1%-ers winning people over to their side. And Delaney is betting his chips on Iowa. He's got eight offices there. That's more than anyone else, as of a couple weeks ago, anyway. He's been there the most times. We ran into him in the airport on the way there. It was his 29th trip. He's doing the purist version of this play on the campaign trail, a Jimmy Carter play. It's basically get a huge surge by doing great in the Iowa caucuses, the first in the nation. And the way you do that is voter by voter. That's what he's doing out here. That's what Carter did. Carter was the first candidate who ever did that. They didn't have a caucus before, or they didn't have a caucus people paid attention to before. He lived here. Came in famously second to uncommitted. It was like uncommitted, 30, Carter, 25 or something. And people were like, oh, he beat all the much more famous senators. Who is this guy? So that was more than 40 years ago. But it's still like-- So everybody's doing this Carter play. That's how you could think about it. A lot of them. I talked to one voter. He liked this meeting so much, he said he might caucus for Delaney. He might. He's still shopping around. But the number of people shopping has dropped since the first debate. And the window's closing for the 1%-ers. The debates-- they are probably the biggest chance that any of these underdogs get to rise out of the underdog pack and come barking to the forefront. The next one's at the end of the month. There has been one so far, of course. And two days before the first debate, the team for one of the candidates, as you know, Zoe, let me watch a full day of debate prep. And by sheer luck, it was the candidate that most of the media declared the breakout star of the first night of the debate, Julián Castro. Zoe, you ready to hear the story? Obviously. OK. Here is the team that got him to victory. OK, so the three of you, have you ever done debate prep before? Nope. No. No. Meet Maya Rupert, Jen Fiore, and Sawyer Hackett, the campaign manager, communications advisor, and national press secretary for Julián Castro. Castro was mayor of San Antonio, then ran the Department of Housing and Urban Development under President Obama. They all worked for Castro there. If you add it up, they had done three full days of debate prep before this one, the one that I saw. And they were going to do one more after that. That is how important this is to them. All right, so this is what we've got on the agenda for this morning. We're in a hotel conference room in Miami. All over the walls are these big pages torn from flip charts, each with a different topic and then three or four possible talking points for the candidate to use in the debate that they worked out in previous sessions. The guy talking is deputy campaign manager, Derek Eadon, who is running these sessions. And he's up in front by the easel with the flip chart. And the candidate is standing at one of five podiums in front of the room. He's in jeans and a white dress shirt, sleeves rolled up, immaculately clean, white Adidas, iced tea, which, by the way, he told the New York Times is his comfort food on the road. And then we want to talk through a little bit of closing statement. Castro's staff, I should say, is deeply aware that most voters still do not know who Julián Castro is. And they told me that success in the first debate, to them, would be something very basic-- that voters would notice Castro, that he's in the race. Here's Jen Fiore, his senior communications advisor. Maybe it changes their math, right? Maybe they were supporting one person. They thought, oh, but wait. But wait. I heard a lot of interesting stuff from Julián Castro, and I've got to shift my math. One of the flip charts on the wall was, "Top Five Takeaways," meaning the top five things that they want voters to take away from this debate. They read, "I like him," "he won," "game changer," "can handle his own," and "win/beat Trump." So OK. How do you get voters to change the math? If you think about it, the debate means 10 candidates standing on stage for 120 minutes, two hours. So that's 10 minutes per candidate. But you take away commercial breaks and questions. What it leaves, the average talking time for each candidate is actually eight minutes-- eight minutes to implant yourselves into the brains of millions of people. Eight minutes-- though that is just the average. Not everybody gets that much, which is actually the thing that Castro is most afraid of going into the debate. He says they've studied these moderators. And they don't have a track record of actually enforcing time very well. So you've got to be mindful. OK, if they're going to let people go, the worst case scenario is not that I am flat, it's that I don't get any time, whatsoever. Because people got into a skirmish, and other people butted in. And all of a sudden, the time's gone. Some candidates just end up getting five minutes. So you have limited time, and you have no idea what they're going to ask you about. And so you have to prepare perfect, pithy answers for every imaginable question. And what perfect means-- Julián's staff wants him to work three specific elements into each of those answers if he can. They want some of his personal story-- raised by a single mother, working class neighborhood, that kind of thing. They want him to talk about the stuff that he has done in previous jobs in government-- prove that he's capable. And of course, they want him to talk about what he's going to do next if he gets the job of president. All three things in each answer. So for instance, when they're hammering out an answer about climate and the Green New Deal, Castro, he starts pitching policy ideas. I think here, we want to stress-- we're going to lead on combating climate change, get to net zero, create jobs in the new energy-- Then Jen jumps in. Talk more about your experience. Right, but not a lot of an impact. Maybe nobody on the stage, other than maybe Governor Inslee, has actually done the work to help people recover the way that you have, right, as HUD secretary. I remember the trip that you took to Louisiana after that horrendous flood, and-- Talk about what you've done on climate change, she urges him, which he then incorporates into his next run-through of the answer. As Housing Secretary, I worked to make sure that communities could rebuild from natural disasters in a more sustainable way. And as president, the first thing that I would do-- Notice the pivot there from his previous experience to his plans for the future? What makes all this so tricky is that under the rules of the debate, he has to finish his answer in just 60 seconds. To figure out how to fit everything in, basically, Castro answers the same question over-- I grew up with a grandmother that had diabetes. --and over-- I grew up with a grandmother who had diabetes. --and over-- I grew up with a grandmother who had diabetes. --and over. You know, I grew up with a grandmother who had diabetes. In case it isn't clear, each of those times, he talks until he reaches one minute. And this distinction between physical health care and mental health care. So was that a minute, or was it mistimed? That seemed like a forever minute. [LAUGHS] Yeah. They spend hours doing this. It's tedium chewing over how to best fill those precious eight minutes they're going to get. And of course, the one politician that it's hard to picture doing this is the public speaker who improvises his way through stadium speeches and meet-and-greets at the Korean Demilitarized Zone-- the guy who got his job specifically by not doing this and is beloved by lots of people for not talking like this, the man that Castro hopes is going to be facing off against next year-- Donald Trump. To break things up during the day, the staff organizes a surprise for Castro, just a little breather to lighten things up. Derek gets out his phone, and people crowd around him. Hello. Can you see? We can't see just yet. It's a call with the Sklar brothers, the comedians and actors, Jason and Randy Sklar, who like Castro. And they've decided that they wanted to pitch jokes for him to use during the debate. The campaign was like, sure, why not? There we go. All right. There we go. How are you doing? We're good, man. How are you? That's good. Come take a seat. We've got Secretary Castro right here. We're in the middle-- Castro met the Sklar brothers when they had him on their podcast. The Sklars are identical twins. And important fact about Julián Castro-- he has an identical twin brother, who's also in politics-- Congressman Joaquin Castro. You were great on our podcast. Thank you so much. Hey, thanks a lot. And we were thinking about things that you can either take or leave, but it's just thoughts in our brain that you put into your own speak. And so, OK. So do you want to hear what we have so far? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead. I'm getting a pad and paper down right here. This is just a general one. Some folks in this race are against Medicare. I'm for Medicare not only because I think it has value, but also out of respect for some of my older opponents, like Bernie and Biden. That's so true. They're going to need it. They're going to need it now. Hard to imagine a more receptive room for that joke, just [INAUDIBLE] at the time with the front runners in the race. Here's another. There are more people on this debate stage than at a Trump inauguration. Yeah, like there's a lot of people up here. I mean, the height-- how tall are you? You're our height. Yeah, 5' 7" or 5' 8". Yeah. OK, 5' 7", 5' 8". So you're our height. So you're standing next to Cory Booker, who's like 6' 2". 6' 2", yeah. [INAUDIBLE] is 6' 4", and de Blasio is 6' 5". So you can say, now I'm standing up here, you can see that I'm not as tall as these guys. But I went to Trump's doctor-- I went to Trump's doctor, and he said I was 6 foot 3. The Sklars went through jokes, all of them pretty mean, about candidates Booker, de Blasio, Ryan, Moulton, Klobuchar, and Inslee. And can I just say, respect for anybody who can make a joke about Moulton, Ryan, or Inslee? None of these jokes are going to make the cut, Castro's staff tells me later. Those kinds of jokes just aren't Castro's style. The one joke they could imagine the candidate actually telling onstage at the debate-- I have to say, it really surprised me-- the one about how he's kind of short. Of course, the other thing that Julián has to practice is reacting to all the other candidates and the moderators. They study videos of his opponents, and they do this. Hello, and welcome to sunny Miami, Florida, for the first Democratic debate of the 2020 presidential cycle. I'm Rachel Maddow. I'm a lot of people. It's a mock debate session. Sawyer and a staffer named Millie play the moderators. Four other staffers stand at podiums flanking Castro's. The men are now in ties and jackets. They want to give Castro the chance to run his answers under debate conditions where he's going to have to wait for his opponents to speak, where he might have to field answers that kind of poke at him. And I have to say, it was totally charming and fascinating how accurate they tried to be at playing the other candidates in the debate. Out on the road, they've watched these politicians deliver the same lines again and again. So when Derek, who is playing Cory Booker, gets a question about gun violence, he has Booker's lines down cold. I've been waking up in the middle of the night hearing gunshot. I released my policy not far from where Shahad Smith had been killed. When a staffer playing Beto O'Rourke is asked about Castro's ability to connect with Latinos and to speak Spanish-- apparently, Castro is not as good at Spanish as Beto is-- fake Beto responds fully in character. Look, Lester, I think it's pretty offensive that you and others continue to say that just because someone doesn't speak Spanish means they can't connect with the Latino vote. There's many ways to connect it. For example, Amy and I are still living in El Paso. I've grown up my entire life there. And so I know the unique challenges that our border community faces. In the mock debate, Castro does a relaxed, solid job deploying the answers that he's been working on. But he also gets to practice interrupting other candidates. And this is important because, again, he is worried that other candidates might hog the stage, and he won't get much time or many questions directed at him. And Castro told me that his natural inclination is not to interrupt. I mean, for me, I'm not naturally the guy in a group that has to talk all the time, like they would call gunners in law school. You know gunners? People that would, in law school classes, that basically would be the ones always trying to answer the question that a professor would throw out. That's not me. I don't know if that's spin or not. But to make sure he does get to talk in the debate, he's keeping in his back pocket two little speeches that he knows are really strong, that if needs be, he's going to bust in and interrupt somebody with. They're actually listed. These two speeches are listed on a flip chart page on the wall that is titled "Interruptions." One of them is listed as "Police Brutality." And in the mock debate, he practices jumping in on another candidate's answer, the guy playing de Blasio, to deliver this. I've been able to deal with this as an executive of America's biggest city. Small town-- You know, Ken-- Lester, this is important to me. And I've been an executive, too. And then Castro delivers an answer that he knows really works. But it made me think, what about Eric Garner? And what about Tamir Rice? And what about Michael Brown? What about Laquan McDonald? At the real debate, Castro delivered a version of that same speech. But that was not the moment that made him the breakout star. There was also not any of the meticulously crafted three-part messages that I watched him labor over. And OK, just to step back, if you saw the Democratic debate, you know that the big clip from the second night was Kamala Harris challenging Joe Biden on race. But the big clip from the first night was the other item on Castro's flip chart, list of interruptions. On the chart, it just said "1325 Immigration." Now 1325, if you're not following this, is the part of the immigration law that makes crossing the border a criminal offense. Castro wants to get rid of that. It would still be illegal to cross the border, but you wouldn't face criminal charges. And the day after I watched him prep, Elizabeth Warren came out in the Huffington Post saying, yeah, I'm with Castro on this 1325 stuff. So that was the day before the debate. And seeing that, Castro and his staff to talk about maybe they should do more with 1325 in the debate. And they talked in the past about Castro maybe challenging the other candidates on stage to join his position on 1325, but now they decided, yeah, it's not really a maybe. He really should try to make that happen. And Castro walked on stage looking for an opening, which he got about half an hour in. I will make sure that, number one, we end the ICE policies. Cory Booker is answering a question about immigration. As planned, Julián pounces. We actually will lose security and our values. We must fight for both. If I might very briefly-- and this is an important point. My plan-- and I'm glad to see that Senator Booker, Senator Warren, and Governor Inslee agree with me on this-- my plan also includes getting rid of Section 1325 of the Immigration and Nationality Act. He then explains 1325. And so I want to challenge every single candidate on this stage to support the repeal of Section 1325. 30 seconds. The next question is to Beto O'Rourke, and again, Castro swoops in. We would not put kids in cages. In fact, we would spare no expense to reunite the families that have been separated already. This is the exchange that ends up the biggest one of the night. And of course, the thing that made it pop is that all the preparation led to this unprepared, unscripted moment. Unlike all those careful one-minute answers that Julián rehearsed, this felt like and real. Let me respond to this very briefly. Actually, as a member of Congress, I helped to introduce legislation that would ensure that we don't criminalize those who are seeking asylum and refuge in this country. I'm not talking about the ones that are seeking asylum. If you're fleeing desperation, then I want to make sure-- I'm talking about everybody else. --everybody treated with respect. I'm still talking about everybody else. But you're looking at-- It all culminates with this. I think that you should do your homework on this issue. If you did your homework on this issue, you would know that we should repeal this section. It was Castro that came out of nowhere. Nobody was talking about Castro. He did the Texas takedown. Turned around, clocked Beto. This is Van Jones on CNN that night. I mean, you never saw it coming. He bought himself a lifeline tonight. And that's why I love these debates. A lot of the media agreed, and lots of people on Twitter. Google reported a leap in people searching for Castro's name. And it led the campaign to its biggest fundraising day ever, 32 times more than just before the debate. Castro was suddenly invited to be on Morning Joe and tons of other TV shows. The only thing that had not gone optimally was his exit from the stage at the end of the debate. Derek had advised him. I would suggest go talk to Elizabeth Warren as quickly as possible. Yeah. Like the dynamic-- Oh, you mean because you know that the focus is [INAUDIBLE] The dynamic of you, Booker, and Warren genuinely liking each other will be something that will be good for the [INAUDIBLE]. In fact, at the debate's end, Cory Booker is the one who got to Warren first, and they hugged, while Castro was shaking Tim Ryan's hand. And then Warren walked over to Castro, and they embraced. So it worked out in the end even there, just fine. Overall, a win. And a week after his breakaway performance in that first debate, Castro was no longer a 1%-er, at least in one poll. ABC News poll put him at 4%, same as Buttigieg, and just below the four frontrunners, Biden, Sanders, Warren, and Harris. Coming up, we tell you who's going to win the election. Kidding. We did, though, record a candidate who decided to just bribe a voter with $12,000. No joke. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, "The Wannabes," stories looking at the 20 or so Democratic candidates who are down around 0, 1, a couple at 2% in the polls, trying to get some attention. And I am joined now in the studio by one of my co-workers here, producer Emanuele Berry. Hey. Hey. First time we're in the studio together. It is the first time we're in the studio together. Yeah. Let's do this. And you had this kind of amazing cinematic recording that you're going to play for the people right now. Yeah. So I was down in South Carolina and Columbia. And I had this opportunity to pin a mic to Cory Booker, one of the people running for president. Mayor of Newark, New Jersey and now Senator of the United States. Yep, both of those things. And so this recording, it starts we're inside of a building. And then it goes outside, and he's sort of walking this distance to go and give a speech. And it's basically just his point of view in this moment, which is what I like about it so much. You can put it on this side. OK. I can double mic you on the same side. Absolutely. Senator, you ready? Switch pocket. Yes. I'm going to hand you this. You have about 50 people outside, cheering your name. Cheer them on, and then we're going to march. Just follow me the whole way. Everyone's going to be behind you, and press is in front of me. All right, ready? All right. All right! All right! This is amazing! Cory! Cory! Cory! Cory! Cory! Cory! I love you guys! So in that moment, he just sort of flips from a normal person having a conversation to this super-sized human with a megaphone. This is what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like! We will rise! We will rise! Everybody, follow me! What a weird job these guys have. You walk out into a crowd, and then suddenly, you're supposed to lead the crowd. Yeah. And there's all these people surrounding him. They've got giant posters of his head, like these Cory Booker head posters. Wait, wait. So you're there in a crowd, and there's Cory Booker's real bald head. And then in addition, there's giant bald Cory Booker heads? Yeah, floating around behind him. Cory Booker is the best! Can't you say that's like a weird nightmare image, in a way? It's very friendly faces, smiling. That is true. That's true, yes. And so they're walking in this giant crowd. And as they're crossing the street, someone comes up to him. And I can't make out exactly what she's saying. I think she's a journalist. And it seems like she's asking a question about the latest sexual assault allegations against President Trump. No, this is not the ideal time to talk about this. And why don't you reach out to my team? But it's very disturbing. What hit me is just everybody wants his attention and his time. The press is in front of him. They've got cameras pointed at him. He's got an aide who's telling him where to go. And then he's leading this group of people, clapping and cheering while walking. It's just so much at once. Give me a Y! Y! [INAUDIBLE] Give me a C! C! So he's clapping. And then in the middle of all this, someone else walks up to him. God bless you, brother. God bless you, brother. [LAUGHS] It's Jesse Jackson, the civil rights icon, former presidential candidate. Wow. Jesse Jackson is someone who Booker actually talks about sometimes as the first presidential candidate that he ever voted for. And he's just standing next to him. He just pops out of nowhere, and then he's at Booker's side. We're in South Carolina, remember? Jesse Jackson-- Huge black vote-- every candidate's got to try to get it. Yeah. And I mean, Jesse Jackson's not the worst person to stand next to. He's from South Carolina. People, they remember when he ran for president. So you sort of have these two black men in dark suits, one of them who tried to be president and the other one who's trying to do so now, parading down the street together. Yeah, I'm getting ready to go and speak now. Jackson is hard to hear. He has Parkinson's. He speaks slow and stumbly, and I don't have a mic on him. Booker seems pretty chummy. He basically says, yes, we need to talk. We need to have a conversation, but not now. I'll try to reach out on the number I have for you, but I want to talk to you when we're not-- all this craziness going around. So maybe tomorrow after church? Are you still going to be down here? In Chicago. Oh. We often see pictures like this, right? Like leaders in suits and conversation in this public space. And I don't know. I like to think of the conversations they're having are about these great and epic things. But maybe they're actually just scheduling phone calls. [LAUGHS] So let's just talk on the phone, OK? We need to have a heart-to-heart sooner or later. But look, you are doing it right now. You're continuing to keep people's eyes on justice. Thank you. Love you. You can hear that Corey says love you to Jackson. I'm not sure if he says it back. I just can't hear it. Or Jackson might just be like in Star Wars. I love you. I know. I don't think so. Jackson leaves him hanging. I don't think so. I imagine that he returned the expression. We don't know for sure, though. And that was only five minutes and 47 seconds of his day. And it was so intense. Yeah. And here's what else he did that day. He had a faith breakfast, barbershop meet-and-greet, Planned Parenthood forum, convention center speech, and then another meet-and-greet. Also, he's a senator. That was just a moment of his day. And I can't imagine having an entire day like that. Ugh, it's so much work, and he's not even a frontrunner. It's so much work just to be there. So now I'm joined in the studio by Ben Calhoun. Hey there. Hey. So you went out with one of the 20 or so underdogs in the race, Andrew Yang. And Yang, I think, is interesting because he's actually managed to get a lot more attention than most of the underdogs. Yeah. He's been doing things like getting on cable shows, profiles in Vanity Fair, Washington Post. And so now he's in this position where he's just trying to fan like whatever little flames he's kindled up until this point. And he's gotten that attention because, well, if you know who this guy is, he's this tech guy, former businessman, who organized his whole campaign around this one idea. Yeah, and the idea is that we should give every working age American $1,000 a month. Because what Yang says is he says this whole country is in this big crisis where workers are being replaced by automation and technology. And he thinks that when Democrats usually talk about this, their solutions are weak sauce. He says job retraining programs-- The Democrats talk about that a lot. Yeah, job retraining. And he says the studies show that they don't work for most people. And most people kind of feel that in their gut. Because it is bull [BLEEP]. And national politicians will talk about retraining until they're blue in the face. They love it, [LAUGHS] because they're far from the group of people that are getting displaced. But if you get close-- I was at a truck stop here in Iowa, Iowa 80. And you walk around there, talking about retraining to those guys, you'll probably get a fist to the face. [LAUGHS] It's irresponsible to talk about that as a mass solution. So $1,000 a month, which Yang admits, it's not enough for somebody to live on, but he says it's enough to keep somebody afloat. The name for that is Universal Basic Income, UBI. Yang's calling his version of this the Freedom Dividend. But so I went to go see him. He's going to demonstrate how this would work by actually giving somebody $1,000 a month, no strings attached. For a year? A whole year out of his pocket. OK. So tell what happened. So the night before this thing, I'm in the car with Yang and his campaign. And I've been recording them all day. Now it's like 9:30 PM. Everybody's pretty tired. So it's an hour and a half from here. We need to be somewhere at 10:45, so we need to leave-- And they're talking about this UBI event. Yang's like, I'm so psyched. But then right away, there's this logistical problem. To give away $1,000, you need to hand people something. And he doesn't have $1,000 on him. What they want to do is like-- I've gotta stop by an ATM and-- OK, it's pretty much impossible to hear. I'm way in the back. I'm behind Yang's campaign manager, Zach Graumann, and Yang. They're up in front. So I'm just going to tell you how a lot of this dialogue goes. In that tape there, Yang says, I need to stop by an ATM and get a lot of cash, right? Because Ed McMahon doesn't show up at your house and just tell you you've won publisher's clearing house. That would be lame. You take a photo with the big check. So Yang's like, I got to get out a bunch of cash, to which his campaign manager says, well-- So you cannot give cash. We need to think about this. "So you cannot give cash. We need to think about this," he says. And he gives this big sigh. Because shockingly, the Federal Elections Commission has a problem with a candidate for president giving a voter $12,000 in cash. Go figure. But also apparently, it's fine if that money comes in the form of a check. Again, go figure. Questions start flying. Does anybody have a check? Hey, what about Don? Don's son would probably have a check, right? Don's son [INAUDIBLE]. I can go to a bank and get a check, right? Yang, meantime, gets out his wallet and starts counting how much cash he has on him. $270, it turns out. And then he starts asking how much ATM limits are. How about a cashier's check, someone says, at a Walgreens on Sunday morning? Getting to a Walgreens before 9:00 AM tomorrow. That's not impossible. I'm in a car with a candidate for the presidency of the United States of America who's trying to sell the marquee idea of his campaign, the concept he thinks will save America. And the question of the moment is, can you get a cashier's check at a Walgreens in Des Moines on Sunday morning before 9:00 AM? The next day, we go to the house of the Freedom Dividend recipients, Kyle and Pam Christiansen. At this point, the campaign hasn't told them they're getting the money, just that they're being considered as finalists. Yang isn't with us. He's waiting to make a surprise entrance. His staff was not able to get a cashier's check. So instead, Yang has a grand in $20 bills. That means that, legally, the campaign is going to have to hand the Christiansens the money for this photo op, but then take it back afterwards and promise to mail them a check, which seems really pretty tacky to me. But everyone with the Yang campaign is like, we'll figure it out. Hi. I'm Zach. I'm Pam. Nice to meet you in person, Pam. How are you? The campaign, I've got to say, picked a really lovely family to get this. Kyle, the son, is 41. He'd applied for this Freedom Dividend on behalf of his mom. About four years ago, the family lost Kyle's dad, Merle, to brain cancer. They seemed like such a tight, loving family. Merle was a musician. And in their house, every Wednesday, it was music night. They'd play records-- Kiss, Black Sabbath. Merle would play drums, and the kids would dance around, which is how, I suppose, Kyle ended up being a musician, too. Anyway, about a year after Merle died, Pam was also diagnosed with cancer. The day she was diagnosed-- her birthday-- her boss called her to tell her he was firing her because she'd had to miss too much work. Pam worked as an aide for disabled adults, which she said was hard, but she loved it. After that, Kyle dedicated himself to taking care of Pam. And Pam, now in remission, still has a hard time getting around. Kyle's been piecing together work-- auto repair, computer repair, music work when he can get it. But it's hard making sure he's there for his mom. The monthly bills are about $1,300, and they barely get covered. So $1,000 would mean a lot. Kyle, though, he says he'd like to see his mom spend at least some of this imaginary money, even just a little, on something genuinely frivolous. Yeah, I'd just like to see her just go buy something because she wants to and not out of necessity. But there's priorities, too, so. Well, what are some of the things that-- I feel like you get sick, those bills pile up, you start to give things up. I mean, what are some of the things that you've given up in the last few years? Are you talking about like what we have given up, or sold, or that kind of stuff? Yeah. Just like-- yeah, just since the money's been tighter. Yeah, I know for me, I used to have a full-blown recording studio here in town. And I've always kind of held on to all that equipment hoping to set one up somewhere. I've sold darn near all that equipment, and just kind of have bare bones, bare minimum. I sold my last two guitars that I could possibly part with last week. So-- oh my gosh, there's Andrew Yang himself. Oh, yes. Kyle later told me, when he'd asked the campaign if Yang was coming, the staffer he was talking to on the phone hesitated and then said, no, in this way that Kyle figured Yang probably was coming. But he and Pam both act surprised. Andrew Yang offers to take off his shoes in the house. Nope, nope, you're fine. I am Asian, so. No, come on. I'll take them off. Hey, Mr. Yang. How are you? I'm doing great. You must be Pam. Yes, I'm Pam. Thank you for having me here. Yes. So I'm here to let you know that you will be receiving the Iowa Freedom Dividend starting July 1. Oh! So congratulations. Thank you. If Yang did this for everyone, if he gave every adult $12,000 a year, it would cost the government $2 trillion, give or take. The current federal budget is $4 trillion. So we're talking about a massive realignment of the economy and redistribution of wealth. Yang has projections on how all this could be paid for, and they include some very optimistic assumptions, all for a theory that's never been tested on anywhere near the scale. Yang starts to explain to the Christiansens how this is going to work for them. But mostly, he tells them how grateful he is to help them out, in a way that feels pretty nice, actually. And it kind of drains a little awkwardness out of a very manufactured situation. So we need to do this for people all over the country, but starting here with you all to illustrate the fact that if people get some extra money in their hands, it's going to go to the things that we care about and value. I mean, it's an awesome opportunity for us. So thank you for making it possible. Give me a hug. No problem. Thank you. Thank you. You guys are very, very welcome. The next 45 minutes are completely usual and unusual. Yang genuinely asks Pam and Kyle about their situation-- Pam's neuropathy, her treatment. He talks again and again about how much he admires Kyle for taking care of his mom. Kyle talks about the one doctor's appointment he's missed in the last three years. They talk about music, how Kyle quit the metal band he was touring with because he loved performing, but he never had an interest in the drinking and drugs that went with it. They laugh about Yang's flag socks. He talks about picking them out. Like so little of political campaigning, it's unrushed enough to feel regular. Until it's time to go and the surreal logistics of a political campaign break through this small bubble of normality. Yang has to hit the road. I feel like this is a weird and particular thing you see when politicians campaign. So many of their interactions are superficial and crassly abbreviated. And then sometimes, like in this room, they'll just drift into a space with some voters that feels intense, and authentic, and personal. And then poof, time to go. Before Yang's got to leave, though, they have to pose for pictures. They have to pose with the cash, the cash they need, but won't be allowed to keep. After the pictures, they'll hand it back. For now, Yang pulls out this huge wad of twenties. Pam, with some struggle, stands up. And Yang hands each of them a stack. Yeah, can you fan it? Can you guys fan it? They fan out the money. And then they look for which lens to smile into. There you go. Split it in half. His pile's bigger than mine. Not that I'm counting, but-- And one, this is for Instagram. Ben Calhoun. Hey, Ben? Yeah. I see in the poll numbers that he's still stuck at the bottom. Yeah, and I mean, not the bottom, bottom. It's so crazy that people aren't voting for this. It reminds me of-- I knew somebody who was an editor at Playboy magazine. Like once the internet hit and Maxim and all those magazines hit, and it was like Playboy was printing pornography, and people wouldn't buy the magazine. And that's what I feel like this is. It's like he's giving away $12,000 to everybody who will vote for him, and people still don't want it. Uh-huh. The family did say that they are going to caucus for him, if he's still around in January when the caucuses happen. You have a town hall with the moderate guy who wants to beat up Medicare for All, or you have Gillibrand also at 1% with drag queens. So which of those is more interesting? Hi Ira, I'm back. Hey there, Zoe Chace. I'm taking you through Iowa with Dave Weigel, the Washington Post reporter. I know. I feel like you saw so much more than we heard at the top of the show. It's kind of crazy the way Weigel wants to go to every single candidate event. That's impossible, because there are too many happening at the same time. It's not the hardest decision anyone's ever made. It's like-- But there's this intense lesson that I think a lot of the reporters learned from 2016, which is that any candidate can surge. Oh, you mean because Trump. Like, they didn't foresee that Trump could be the winner. Yeah, all the things that indicated who'd come out on top-- like think Jeb Bush, right? He was the front runner. He had all the money. None of those things turned out to matter. So this time around, it's like any event can be the beginning of someone's big run. We went to so many events in just two days. She saved the mommy. She saved the daddy. She saved-- Kirsten Gillibrand, she wrote a kid's book. And she's reading it at the Y to just two small children, while a handful of people watch them. Wait, the senator wrote a kid's book? Yeah, she wrote a book for kids, but not that many kids showed up to hear it. Be strong and courageous. Do you know what the word courageous means? Do you know what it means? Courageous means brave. Do you know what the word-- Oh, wow. What a coincidence. Brave just happens to be the theme of her entire campaign. That's exactly right. We went to an Iowa Democratic Veterans event where Eric Swalwell, a candidate for president, was supposed to be. But can you just tell me what's going on? Is he coming? Where is he? Eric Swalwell? Yeah, his flight was delayed. So staffer made it. He wanted to be here, but delayed flight. Got it. We had that from several of them that had scheduling issues. Like, oh, crap, our flight's been bumped. Thank you. That's the silliness of waiting until the day of to get into a major event, as opposed to flying in a day early and being prepared. Oh, he's mad. Yeah, Joe Stutler, secretary of the Iowa Democratic Veterans Caucus. That's a guy you want on your side early on. I used to live on the road. It's like, you get there the day before, if it's important. So you're kind of feeling like maybe this wasn't that important to him? No, no. I just think that they're all trying to do way too much. These are the lessons that we learn, sometimes the hard way. Of course, there are lots of reporters who have covered these kinds of events a million times, who stand around afterwards nerding out about campaign history, which is kind of awesome. After Gene McCarthy finished a decent second event in New Hampshire-- Close second to him in New Hampshire, and about to win-- And then Bobby got it. And Bobby got it in, and then McCarthy was about to win Wisconsin, because Bobby had not gotten on the ballot, if I remember. Right. Yeah. And also, it's cool to see these guys talking about this moment-- this early moment in the campaign-- in this way, like it might be history later. It might not be, but they're talking about it like it is, like when Weigel and this other reporter were in the back of the room talking about Elizabeth Warren. I remember seeing her at the Sharpton thing. Yeah. The year before. Oh, I was there. Yeah. And remember she had a really [INAUDIBLE] speaking time. I took out the dress. You all know the dress. And everybody went [BLEEP] nuts. Yeah. What was her dress line? So the dress line-- she tells it all the time-- is, when she was a kid-- and she always says, my mama and my daddy, because she's from Oklahoma. But she talks about, I heard my parents in that argument, talking at night after they thought I was asleep. And that's where I learned words like foreclosure and mortgage. Right. And I walked past my mother's room, and I saw her puttering-- going back and forth with a dress laid out. And she goes, y'all know the dress. It's the one you only use for graduations and funerals-- weddings, graduations, and funerals. And she looks at the dress and says, we're not going to lose this house. We're not going to lose this house. She does it like in this-- like she's doing it kind of like-- Like a Tennessee Williams character. She's, like-- Yeah. And the very next day, I saw her give this speech to a pretty big crowd in a backyard in Waterloo, Iowa. Everybody was just kind of rapt. And there was the dress, and there was my mother. She was in her slip and her stocking feet. And she was pacing and crying, just talking to herself and saying, we will not lose this house. We will not lose this house. We will not lose this house. And this one guy was wiping tears away. At this point, Weigel can sort of divide the candidates into two groups. And it's not the moderates and the far left. He says, actually, the voters he talks to are less hung up on the policy questions. What they mainly want is to be able to close their eyes and see this person beating Donald Trump. Hm. The two groups he notices are, one, the candidates where people show up at one of their events, and a transformation happens. The voter leaves the event excited, inspired. The other group are the ones where that transformation doesn't happen. So who's in the excited group? Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, and most of all, Elizabeth Warren. Huh. People see her, and they're surprised at how much they like her. Huh. And the unexcited group? Basically everyone else, including the front runner, Joe Biden. People would come to see him because they already loved him, and then they would leave feeling no different, or worse. Like they want to be inspired, but they weren't inspired. Yeah. Beto-- people went backwards. I have all these memories, which already seem surreal, of Beto O'Rourke coming to somewhere and there being an enormous crowd to see him. Now it's like the crowd is smaller, and people leave underwhelmed. And what does he see changing? Since the first debate, at this point, the field is basically sorting itself out. The debates clarify that some people don't have secret candidate charisma powers that are going to reveal themselves at some point. They haven't yet. It might not be happening. So I think that the field probably is going to limit itself more to 16, 17 people soon. When it comes to me taking people seriously, if at this point you had two fundraising quarters, you're in the teens or the high single digits, and you have enough money to fund 50 staff in Iowa, I think that's more interesting. And that's more important than, hey, there's another guy who's at 0%, and he's meeting at a diner. Aw. So the special magical time where it seems like any of the two dozen candidates could rise, that's ending? It is, except there's a dark horse out there still who could shake things up. There is one more move left in this great game of who will run America. I know where you're going with this. Yes, on the Republican side, things are still wide open and away. There, it is just the president and so far, one other candidate, former governor Bill Weld. Weld held elective office 20 years ago. He so far has not had much of an impact. And for our last story, we are joined now by one of our producers, David Kestenbaum. Hey, David. Hey, Ira. So you talked to two Republicans who are doing basically everything they can to find a genuine heavy hitter to run against the President of the United States from within his own party. Yeah, they feel like if the right person were just to enter the race, it could matter more than anything the Democrats are doing. Hm. So here's the scene, an office in Washington, DC. Hey, Bill? Hey, Carson. Is Bill out there? That's Sarah Longwell. She's a Republican strategist. The mug in front of her on the desk reads, "These are the tears of my staff." And it's filled with pens. The Bill she is looking for is Bill Kristol, the guy from TV, the one that seems to have an encyclopedic memory of every election in American history. Kristol worked in the first Bush administration, helped start the Weekly Standard magazine. Oh, you had to stop and get your fancy bougie coffee. He wanders in and sits down on a small couch. They've just done a poll of voters in New Hampshire, and they're meeting to talk about it. I mean, look. If I was looking at this thinking about running for the Republican nomination-- You should do that. I say this all the time. Yeah, right. We have all these other people we're talking to-- congressmen, and ex-senators, and all these big shots. This is his great pitch, that I should run. We are really in dire straits, if that's where we're at now. Totally wrong. I think if you were taking on a standing president from within your own party, there are kind of two paths. You can do it quietly, out of view, or you can do it the way Kristol has-- by never shutting up about it on television and newspaper articles. He recently tweeted that he'd been accused of being in a secret cabal to find a challenger to Trump. His answer-- there's nothing secret about it. Kristol and Longwell have raised a few million dollars in the past two years. And they've been using it to try and see, is this thing even possible? The whole idea of running against Trump in the primary can seem a little crazy. He has like an 80% or 90% approval rating from Republicans. But they feel like it is not crazy at all. In that poll they just had done of Republicans in New Hampshire and independents who might vote in the Republican primary, half were open to voting for a challenger. Half. No, I mean, I was just up in Manchester, and I did a series of focus groups. If you ask them specifically, hey, would you be open to an alternative in 2020? Would you like to see another Republican candidate? Every single time, nine out of the 10 hands go up. I think for some people, there's a hunger for an alternative. And then for other people, it's just an openness, like a willingness for political competition. One thing that really surprises people in these focus groups, she says, is when you explain just how much the debt has gone up under Trump. It's increased more during the first two years of Trump than it did the previous two years under Obama. Bill Kristol lays out how this all might go for a challenger. You raise a little money, go to Iowa, New Hampshire. Maybe you get 30% of the vote in New Hampshire. That is a serious blow to the president. You're off and running. So that's their case. There is one kind of noticeable challenge to this plan. Since we've had the current primary system, there are zero examples-- zero-- of someone challenging a sitting president in a primary and actually winning. I mean, is some part of this just kind of like theater? And I mean theater you truly believe in? I mean, I don't want to say yes because of course-- because that really isn't. I don't think of it that way. I'm not a very theatrical person. But I guess theater in the sense that presidential politics is the biggest stage we have in politics. And the presidential contest is the biggest stage. And I don't want to simply leave that stage on the Republican side alone to Donald Trump. I'm still trying to think through just, like in your mind, why you're doing this. And is part of it just like a feeling like what is democracy for, if I can't cast a vote for the person I really want to be in office? Yeah, I think it's actually people are overthinking this. I mean, I'm doing it because I don't think Trump should have a second term. I'm a Republican. It'd be a heck of a thing to say, OK, you think he's really leading the country down a terrible path, and you should just take two or four or six years off. But you're really unlikely to succeed, right? Pretty unlikely to succeed, yeah. So why do it? Look. The last three presidents were not primaried, and they won re-election. And here, Bill offered up what seems to be the other math that candidates are doing. The last three presidents did not have a primary challenge, and they won re-election. When a sitting president has been challenged by his own party, like Carter by Kennedy, Ford by Reagan, Bush by Buchanan, the challenger doesn't win. But maybe because they damaged the president, he does not win re-election. In other words, this may be the bargain. You can run for president, possibly shape history, end Trump, change who wins, but you don't get to win. I mean, it's interesting. The other Republicans I talked to pointed out that history is not on your side. And you were pointing out, oh, it is on my side, in the sense that a sitting president challenged tends to lose. But that means what you're doing is just an act of internal sabotage. No, but I think it's also holding out an alternative in a good way. But yeah-- Or sabotage. I mean-- Well, people can say that. They said that about the French who didn't go along with Vichy. I mean, what are you supposed to do? If you think it's bad-- I love that every time I have a point that's historical-- If you think it's bad for the country, they can say it's sabotage. I would say it's opposition. I don't think it's sabotage. Sabotage implies secrecy and deception. I don't think there's a heck of a lot of secrecy and deception in what I'm doing. I think I've been pretty open about my opposition, so I feel like I'm-- isn't that the point of America? Honestly, if I were a Democrat, I would call me up and say, here's a lot of money for a primary challenge-- and we have talked to a lot of Democrats about this, obviously-- against Donald Trump. I mean, that's actually the single best thing you can do to weaken Trump. You can help Elizabeth Warren, or Kamala Harris, or Cory Booker right now. But we don't know which of those will actually be a good nominee against Trump. The one thing you do know is if Trump has to spend money against the primary challenger, if he loses 32% of the vote in New Hampshire, which is entirely possible, and it's embarrassing, it would be helpful to weaken Trump. Wait, but is your goal to run somebody who's going to win the nomination and maybe the presidency? Or is your goal just to take down Trump? Both. Obviously, the first would be the best. But I would regard the second as an adequate result, and I think actually an important result, if I can say. Sarah Longwell has been weighing all this, too. It's possible the whole thing could backfire if the wrong Democrat ended up in the White House. I certainly would not want Bernie Sanders to be the President of the United States. So if you ended up handing it to Sanders, that would not be a happy day for you. Well, that's sort of like, do I want to be poisoned, or do I want to be shot? Those are just sort of bad choices. And I think America deserves better than to have choices between an old socialist and sort of an authoritarian sort of nativist. My choice is neither. There's this scene in the HBO series on Chernobyl that's running right now where the nuclear reactor is about to explode. So these workers have to go into the basement of the power plant to try to open a valve. There's so much radiation, it seems certain they're going to die, but it will also save everyone else. Sarah has been watching the show. I asked her if she ever thought about it like that. No, she said. Never. They're not asking someone to risk their life, they're asking someone to put their name in the hat to be the next president of the United States. Apparently, it's easier to get someone to walk into Chernobyl. Our program was produced today by Zoe Chace and myself. People who put our show together today includes Bim Adewunmi, Emanuele Berry, Ben Calhoun, Dana Chivvis, Sean Cole, Whitney Dangerfield, Aviva DeKornfeld, Neil Drumming, Damien Gray, Michelle Harris, Jessica Lussenhop, Miki Meek, Stowe Nelson, Ben Phelan, Catherine Raimondo, Nadia Reiman, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, Julie Whitaker, and Nancy Updike. Our managing editor is Diane Wheeler. Our executive editor is David Kestenbaum. Special thanks to David [INAUDIBLE], [? Chris ?] [? Coons, ?] [? Scott ?] [INAUDIBLE], [? John ?] [? Harwood, ?] [? Harry ?] [INAUDIBLE], [? Walter ?] [? Shapiro, ?] [? Ben ?] [? Tourist, ?] the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, [? Jamie ?] [? Harrison, ?] [? Andrea ?] [? Gillespie, ?] [? Josh ?] [INAUDIBLE], [? Angela ?] [? Davidson, ?] and [? Jay ?] [? A. ?] [? Moore. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Our website, thisamericanlife.org, where you can stream our archive of over 670 episodes. Also, there's videos and tons of other stuff there-- thisamericanlife.org. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, he organized a vote this week about what we should have for lunch as a staff. I don't know. He seemed a little too proud of himself. This is what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like! I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
OK. Of everything in pop culture, what can make a teenage boy cry? That's a very specialized list, right? And we got to talking about this at our office because Lina Misitzis, one of the producers here, remembers how there was this one video game, a PlayStation game, that got her brother and his friends when they were kids. She says he was definitely not a crier. And honestly in my memory of it, my brother Yannos cries halfway through the game because this character dies. He actually says that that's not true. But one of his other friends also remembers him crying. And lots of people had this reaction to the character's death, like famously. No matter how you play the game, she always dies, and people reacted. What was the game? It's called Final Fantasy VII. When was this? 1997. And the character that they're all crying over is named Aeris, but some people call her Aerith. And what was it about this character that was so intense? Well, OK. So I have no idea. To me, it made no sense. She's like this one-dimensional girl. She's a cartoon. At the time, it was a big deal that she was 3D. So she looked, I guess, believable, but she kind of looks like a Mario character. It doesn't make sense to me that all of these boys would cry over it. And so since my brother disagrees that he cried about it, I called someone who definitely did. His name is Mike Fahey. He's a writer for Kotaku, this video game review and reporting website. And he wrote about Final Fantasy VII being remade. It comes out, I think, in the next year or two. And he wrote this article, and the title of the article was, "I Can't Go Through This Again." About this scene? About this scene. About this scene. It's about how he doesn't feel like he can deal with her dying two times in his life. One time was enough. It was a big part of my youth. I mean, it was, what, 22 years ago I played this game. And I still remember that particular moment. He's in his 40s now, but then he was like-- I don't know-- 24. And he's on his couch playing the game. It felt like there was no real lead into it. I might have even had my attention wandering while the cut scene was playing. And then all of a sudden, there's a giant sword in her. Sephiroth comes down, impales her, and you're like, no. This has to change. This has to stop. My stomach fell. I remember my stomach just falling and feeling like it was just dropping in my chest. And that music kicks in just as she's dying. And whenever I hear that music, I just tear right up. And Ira, this is what the scene looks like. All right, hold on. Let's put this up. OK, you're now watching a video that we're seeing online. OK, so you're the protagonist. You're Cloud. His name is Cloud Strife. So that's the character with the orange hair. Uh, yeah. I mean, it's yellow, but you can call it orange. It's his job to protect her. And so they're standing on some sort of platform. There's mist all over the place. Yeah, and you can see this girl up here. That's Aeris. Can you see what she's doing? Oh, she's kneeling-- praying? She's praying, yeah. She's praying. She has long hair braided in a bow, I guess. Pink dress. She looks up. Cloud looks back at her, very dramatic. Oh, a menacing figure in a cape drops down. So I had Mike watch this with me when I talked to him. Wait, he wrote a whole article saying, I can't go through this again, and you made him watch it again? Uh, yeah, he was fine. It was just a video clip. And here we go. Sephiroth plunges from the heavens. Oh my god. I have to say, it's very sudden. And she just slumps over like that, and her eyes are still open. Her mouth parts just a little bit. This is right about where the music starts. And is when the tears start to fall. Ugh, I mean, there's that moment of shock when that sword goes through her. And then, "This can't be real." He's reading off the screen. Cloud says, "This can't be real." And that's really what everyone was feeling right there. That line right there, "Aeris will no longer talk, no longer laugh, cry, or get angry." Oh my god. [SNIFFLES] OK. Damn it. "His fingers are tingling, his mouth is dry. His eyes are burning." I'm right there with him. Yeah, I'm tearing up. OK, so why of all the characters in all the video games in the world, why do they tear up for this girl? Well, in part, it's because it's one of the first times it's happened. I mean, it was just like a surprise. It was really new. And to clarify, Mike knows that Aeris is just this one-dimensional character. The official game description of her is literally, quote, "young, beautiful, and somewhat mysterious." Wait. Could we pause on the word, "somewhat"? That seems so weirdly insulting. Like, well, you're just somewhat mysterious. [LAUGHS] OK. Right. And in the game, she really does just two things. She stands next to people and calms them down. Like she'll put her hand on someone's chest in this meaningful way. She's this reassuring presence, this healer. And then the other thing she does is she asks for help. So that's the two basic female functions, right? It's like fix and help. Fix and help. Right. OK. And Mike knows all of this. But he says that's enough. It's enough about her to make you, the protagonist, care. She sort of is one-dimensional. She's like the ray of hope. She grows flowers in this disgusting slum. She's almost like a billboard that things can be better. Her sweetness and lightness is what they're really trying to squeeze out of her. So that's what they focus on. And she's understanding. And maybe that's why one of the other reasons you feel for her. Because you feel kind of like she would understand you. Also, of course, she's pretty. Yeah, she's adorable. She really is. It's those big blue eyes. They bore into you, really. They're in my head, and they have been for 20 years. They're blue, aren't they? Um, actually, they're green. And Mike realizes that later in the interview, and he wanted to make sure that I make it clear to you that he knows that they're green. Check. If Aerith weren't as likeable, maybe if she weren't as pretty, if she didn't have those big green eyes, and she weren't as sweet, her death wouldn't have meant as much. Would Aeris, the character, have been as effective if she were a little brother? Wow. That is a good question. I mean, I think she might have had to work harder as a little brother. Gosh, that's an awful thing to say. Yeah, I think he would have had to have a stronger personality. There would have been some more scenes of bonding with that character. I mean, she has no personality. Yeah. There's a bird in the game that's called like a Chocobo, I think, that has more personality than Aeris does. Yeah. Yeah, she's young and she's innocent. And I don't know. In the game, it's confusing whether or not she's like you, the protagonist's romantic interest, or like your little sister. And I think that that's intentional. Those are the things that it takes for you to feel protective of her. And then her death is the thing that energizes all of them to fight and win. It motivates the remaining party members. I think her death makes the stakes real. It's a game up until her death. Even after the Shinra drops the plate and crushes that entire city, you're like, wow. They mean business. But we've got a party of kickass heroes that's going to save the day. And then Aeris dies, and you're like, we might not save the day. It adds a layer of reality. And her death sends them to their actual mission-- to save the world. She's just a prop that gets them there. That's her whole function in the game. So basically, it's like she's this barely filled in character, and yet, just, that's enough to work, to make people have all these feelings and to actually cry when she dies. All she needs is to seem vulnerable and nice. This kind of story, the girl who needs rescuing, is still around. It's persistent. Despite all the films and stories that try to leave it behind, despite best efforts to quash it, you still run into it. And you run into it in real life. People jump in, in real life to rescue young women and get so caught up in that heroic mission, that sometimes, like with Aeris, it kind of doesn't matter who the girl really is or if she wants to get rescued. She's sort of just a girl getting rescued. They don't see what the girl actually wants or needs. They don't see her. We have examples, real life examples. Stay with us. Act One, My New and Happy Birthday. So let's begin with a young woman that the United States government thought needed to be rescued, meaning well with good reason, at first anyway. Nadia Reiman explains. I'm looking at a sheet of paper with a couple photos of a young woman, a front view and a side view. Pretty small. She's got brown hair, brown eyes. But right below the photos is an X-ray of her jaw. The paper says the X-ray was ordered from O'Hare Airport in Chicago. And this X-ray is what sealed her fate. Two years ago, the woman in the picture lands in Chicago. She's coming from Laos disoriented and jet lagged. Her name is Yong Xiong. She's meeting her fiancé, who's waiting for her with his mother and sister at the airport in Minneapolis. All she has to do is get through customs and make her connecting flight. So she steps up to the customs desk, all 4 feet 7 inches of her. They asked me how old I was. And I didn't know how to say it in English. So I showed them by fingers how old I was. Can you show me? What did you do? I did this, and I did this. Yong holds up 10 fingers, pauses, then holds up nine more. 10 plus 9, 19. The Customs and Border Protection officer asked to see her passport. Yong doesn't speak English, and the officer doesn't speak her language, Hmong. There's no interpreter. I gave them my passport, and then they looked at it and asked me to write down my birthday. What did you write down? 6/4/1997. June 4, 1997. So then they asked me about my birthday again and again. After they got my birthday, they looked at me and kind of just thought whatever they're thinking, that maybe I was too little, or my size was something that they were looking at. At this point, the officer pulls Yong aside and calls another officer, and another, and another. At least five Customs and Border Protection officers all inspect Yong and conclude that she, quote, appeared to be under the age of 18 based on her physical characteristics and childlike mannerisms. That's what it says in her immigration documents. I saw a bunch of them. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, is trained to watch out for child trafficking. And they thought Yong looked too childlike to be 19. For what it's worth, Yong does look very young. When I met her, I thought so, too. She didn't look like a young woman. She looked 13. So the officers went through her papers. They learned that she's here to get married. She has a fiancee visa, so to get it, she's already had to do an interview at the American embassy back in Laos. She's gone through a whole process to confirm that she wasn't lying, that her engagement wasn't a sham. And the government decided that yes, everything checked out. Visa approved. But now, here she is, watching the officers going through her stuff, her bags, her suitcase. And they find pictures of her with her fiancé. I've seen them. Some are totally innocuous. They're from their engagement ceremony. Yong and her fiancé are both dressed up, tons of flowers. But in a couple pictures taken in some park, Yong's fiancé is kissing her on the mouth, and Yong is looking away. Her face is contorted. You could say she looks put off, disgusted even. Yong's family told me that Yong almost always looks grumpy in pictures. A cousin said that Yong never smiles, not even in the ones with just us girl cousins. But the officers note that in the photos with her fiancé, Yong seemed, quote, "physically scared and uncomfortable." They wonder whether Yong has been brought here against her will. Fiancé visas and work visas are a common way traffickers use to get people into the country legally. So they get an officer who speaks Hmong and start to ask Yong a bunch of questions. What's your full name? Is this your passport? How many siblings do you have? Where did you meet your fiancé? Oh, and what was your age again? All of which Yong seemingly answers without hesitation. Yong Xiong. Yep, that's her passport. Seven sisters. Met her fiancé in Laos at a New Year's party. He's a US citizen, naturalized. He's also Hmong. Her date of birth? June 4, 1997. She's 19. He's 22. So did they tell you at some point that they were worried that you were being trafficked? Yeah, they did tell me that. What did you say when they told you that? I just thought no, that's nuts. That's not what's happening. I just told them it was my choice. That I was not being trafficked, and it was my decision to come to the US to be with my fiancé. Because it was my choice. The officers go through a checklist of 11 questions to determine whether Yong is being trafficked, stuff like, is she missing any documents? Does she appear scared? The answer to 10 of them is no. But then there's one about whether or not she's been coached on what to say. And that one the officers write down, quote, "Appear to be." That, plus the fact that she looked so young, seemed to make the officers believe that, yeah, she's probably trafficked. This checklist is just normal procedure. It's what officers have to do if they think something's going on. But then they did do something unusual. They wrote a new birthday into her file, January 1, 2000, making her a minor, 17 years old. There were a lot of unusual things that happened in Yong's case, and this made-up birthday is the first one. The officers tell Yong she has to stay at the airport overnight. In the morning, they tell her through a Hmong speaker that they need to figure out if she's over 18. If she is, fine. If not, it'll be a problem. They tell Yong to find out how old you really are, we're going to take you to a dentist. Yong had never been to a dentist before. As she took a seat in the waiting room, she just thought, I guess this is normal. This is what they do when you enter the United States. I waited until they called my name, took me to the dental chair and told me to just sit down and lay back. And then they told me open my mouth. And then they had a stick that looked like it had a mirror on it. And they went to the side here and this side, all around on the inside. So did you know what was happening? I didn't. It was just pointing and hand gestures. [SPEAKING HMONG] They said, open your mouth, like this. Yong shows me how they moved their hand, like a sock puppet who just opened its mouth wide. Like with your hand? [SPEAKING HMONG] Yes. I remember they told me to bite down, too. The dentist took the X-ray. No one would talk to me on the record about this, but because it's the government, there is a massive paper trail. And not just in Yong's case. I'm going to go deep on these tooth X-rays for a second, so bear with me. They're used all kinds of immigration cases, not just trafficking. And a lot rides on the results. If you're under 18, you have more protections. You get put into a shelter instead of a detention center. It's harder to get deported. But tooth X-rays are just not a very precise way to determine someone's age. The way it works is they measure how developed the roots of your molars are, and then based on that, the dentist can determine your age, but only within a range, usually around five years. So these X-rays can't tell you the difference between a 17-year-old and a 19-year-old. The same teeth might belong to a 15-year-old or a 20-year-old. Back in 2007, Congress told ICE they were, quote, "troubled by the use of these exams," by their lack of accuracy and by the fact that migrants don't necessarily give consent. Congress said please stop. And yet, the government keeps using them anyway. And also, I found out the way the government is using these X-rays is alarming. They're using the teeth to make migrants the age they want them to be. A political science professor at Northwestern named Jackie Stevens is the one who told me about this. Back in 2018, Jackie was helping research a legal case. She runs something called the Deportation Research Clinic, which reports on government misconduct. And she got a giant document dump from the Office of Refugee Resettlement, ORR, people putting migrant kids into shelters. She got about 5,000 pages. The documents revealed that ORR had done hundreds of these forensic exams on migrants over the past couple of years. Jackie found two things that ORR was doing wrong. One is they were using exams they weren't supposed to. The rule is that, legally speaking, if you're trying to prove someone is an adult, you can only take into account exams that show that with at least 75% probability. If they're below that threshold, you can't use them as evidence. But Jackie found that ORR was consistently determining people's ages with reports they weren't supposed to use. The second big thing Jackie found, time and again, ORR used the age range in the report to make the migrant 18 or over. So if they got a range that said this person could be 15 to 23, they'd pick at least 18. It's hard to know exactly why ORR would do this. I asked ORR why. Like, what's in it for them? They never responded. But the way the teeth are usually being used is mostly to turn boys into men. In Yong's case, the opposite seemed to happen. Her X-ray was used to make her officially a child in the bureaucracy of the US immigration system. CBP had flagged her as a possible trafficking victim. She looked young. Southeast Asia is a trafficking hotbed. And once that idea took hold of US government agencies, it was very hard for Yong to shake. Because the way I see it, if the government sees Yong as a girl entering the country in danger, as a girl coerced, a girl too small to be a bride, then they had to protect her. And even if part of the officer suspected she might be telling the truth, that she might really be 19, that she might really be here because she wants to get married, they'd have to be sure-- like 100% sure. So they had her teeth X-rayed. In the documents, the dentist writes, quote, "The range of possible ages is 14.76 to 19.56 years." In other words, it's totally plausible that Yong could be 19 as she's been saying. But she could also be 17, like the officers decided. They seemed to use the X-rays as proof that they're right. Yong's new birth date of January 1, 2000, it sticks. And it starts to reshape her life. The agents drive Yong straight from the dentist to a juvenile shelter. It's in Chicago. It looks like a school. It's run by ORR. She's told she can't talk to her fiancé, the supposed trafficker. As soon as she is allowed to, Yong calls her mom. I just told her they brought me to this place to stay with all these kids. I just thought, now I'm in their hands, and this is where they put me. I don't know what's going to happen next. Yong is assigned to a room with four other girls. There are 13-year-olds at the shelter, but also babies. She spends her days doing all these kids things, like she has to vote for which kids movie to watch during movie night. She goes on trips to the zoo. She does math worksheets. She gets clothes to wear while she's there, but they don't fit her because she's so small. At first, Yong soldiers on. She starts to learn English. She thinks she'll just sit tight, and it'll all get sorted out. She's pragmatic, keeps a tight lid on her emotions. When she's assigned to a clinician, Yong tells her right away, like the day they meet, that she's 19. She's here to be with her fiancé. Two days later, she brings it up again. Nothing changes. She brings it up dozens of times. It's in all her shelter documents. In one note, the clinician writes, quote, "Minor repeated to clinician she is not under 18. Clinician told minor she believes her. But there needs to be documentation to prove her statement." Day in and day out, Yong keeps asking, what's happening? Why am I here? Her frustration starts to bubble. I told them I'm almost 20. I came here in April, and my birthday's in June. So I'm almost 20. They told me, we can't change that for you. We can't help you with that because this birthday that is on the paperwork is what came with you when you were admitted into this building. This is not true, by the way. ORR makes changes to ages based on dental X-rays like the ones I mentioned at any point. They can happen even after someone's been admitted. Yong has an aunt named Xia in Minnesota, one she doesn't know very well. They met once back in Laos. And she asks, since they won't release her to be with her fiancé, can she be released to go live with her aunt? The shelter contacts the aunt to test her DNA to make sure she and Yong are related. They are. But the shelter decides not to release Yong to Aunt Xia because Xia tells them that Yong is an adult. So the shelter concludes she might let Yong run off with the fiancé/supposed trafficker. At one point, her documents say, quote, "Minor began to state she doesn't know what to do anymore. And she cannot think of any solutions and feels stuck in the program." And also, quote, "Minor states that she is 20 years old, and no one believes her." January 1, 2018 was looming closer. At that point, Yong would reach her fake 18th birthday, after which she'd be a legal adult, again, and not really shelter material. So as I stayed there and it got closer to my 18th birthday, the 18th birthday that they gave me, they had informed me that once I had turned 18, they were going to take me out and put me in a different facility. And so that's when they switched it and gave me a new birthday, September 1, 2002. Wait, so they switched you and gave you another fake birthday? So they gave me a new fake birthday, but one that made me younger, too. Did you ask why? I did. And I asked them, why couldn't they just give me my real birthday? And they said, no, they couldn't do that. And they didn't know why they couldn't do that. I looked into it. It turns out ORR resubmitted the X-rays of Yong's teeth to a second dentist who concluded Yong could be anywhere between 15 and 20 years old. After which, ORR did change her birth date. But they used the lowest end of the range possible. The documents say DHS, the agency that oversees everything related to immigration, told them to. Her new, new birth date is now September 1, 2002. The shelter orders a wrist X-ray to assess the age of Yong's skeleton. The results come back that Yong is likely 18. The doctor concludes that Yong is still 15, just has, quote, "advanced bone age." She's gone from being 19 to 17 to 15, just like Benjamin Button. You know that kind of nightmare where you're trying to run, but you can't move? Yong says living inside the shelter was just like that. Day after day, she watches the kids around her leave to go stay with relatives. But she's trapped. The clinician notes that Yong's become more irritated. And then about 10 months into her shelter stay, something pushes Yong over the edge. I was hanging out with my friends, and then my friends had asked me what my name was. I told them my name was Yong Xiong. And so the friend came and said, well, who is Jane Doe? And I told them, huh? I don't know who Jane Doe is. The friend said come here. I wasn't able to read and write well enough yet. And so the friend said, let me show you. On the outside of my door, it said Jane Doe as my name. I was so angry. And I had a permanent marker with me, so I went outside of my room and blacked out the Jane Doe name that was on the outside of my door. And I just marked it all off. A worker came by and said, who vandalized my name on my door? And I told her, I did it, because that's not my name. Yong had had it. And then what did you do after that? Then after that, I refused to pick up my meals under the name Jane Doe. And they were asking why I wouldn't pick up my meals. And I said because I don't know who Jane Doe is. I'm not Jane Doe. At that moment, I was really angry, thinking I have a mom. I have a dad who gave me my name. Why not use my real name? Why give me that name? I didn't like that name at all. So the shelter is like, fine. We won't call you Jane Doe anymore. For the first time in almost a year, Yong is heard. Meanwhile, in the outside world, many parts of the US government with many different acronyms are trying to figure out what the hell is going on with Yong. ORR, the shelter people, who've been given the new age by DHS, the immigration people, are running around with the OS, the State Department people, to confirm what CBP, the Border Protection people, originally thought of Yong, the migrant person. It turns out, according to Yong's family, someone from the US embassy office in Laos went around Yong's village asking questions, asking to see her family registry, which is this record that families in Laos keep that basically lists who was born when. Also, they asked the Laos embassy to confirm Yong's fifth grade and ninth grade school certificates. Both have her age, and the embassy says they're both legit I talked to an ICE spokesperson, more immigration people, and they say that going deep like that doesn't sound uncommon. Like if they think they have a case of human trafficking on their hands, they spend time and resources checking it out, especially if they think the victim is a minor and especially if the region is known as a place where trafficking is common, which Southeast Asia is. In the embassy's report about Yong, it says that, quote, "It does occur that the Hmong population will represent themselves as older for the purpose of applying for a visa." And quote, "Usually under questioning, the girls will admit their real age if they lied." And quote, "Common for them to look very young, malnutritioned, underdeveloped." In Laos, the average height of a woman is about 4 foot 9 inches. This makes them one of the shortest populations in the world. At 4 foot 7, Yong is shorter than average, but not unusual for Laos. It's obvious that Yong is being measured with a Western ruler. The fiancé was never charged with anything. He says no law enforcement came to talk to him. Lawyers that deal with cases like this told me this is unusual if he was actually a trafficking suspect. Normally, an investigator from ICE would show up to interview him, but as far as I can tell, no one did. There is one thing I found out, though-- something about Yong's fiancé that troubled me when I heard it. One person working with Yong told me that he was kind of a big jerk, that he yelled and threatened the shelter when he was talking to them about Yong, and that when the shelter said this will be a process to get her out, he said fine. If you don't let her out, then I don't want her anyway. The person I spoke with said that's why the shelter didn't want to release her to him. They were afraid he didn't really care about her. I ran this by Yong's fiancé, and he says none of this is true. He would have loved to talk to Yong, but he says the shelter wouldn't let him. He says that at one point, he took a week off and weighted by the phone because the shelter said they would call him. They never did. Finally, on June 8, 2018, about 14 months after entering the shelter and four days after her 21st birthday, Yong is released. They release her as a minor under the custody of her aunt, Aunt Xia. This is her. They said, we are releasing her to you. You need to be aware that she is only 15. We've given her multiple birth dates, but that's the birthday that she's coming home with. It is the birthday that she is 15 years old. You need to keep an eye on her. You must know that anyone who is 18 or older comes and takes her to go get married, you will go to jail for it. What did you think about that? So I didn't say much, and I didn't think much. I just thought, OK, the Lord gave her a birthday. But you choose to give her a birthday, and just send her home with the birthday you gave her. Even if she's just 10, I just want her home. So Yong went to live with her Aunt Xia in St. Paul, 15 miles from her fiancé. In May, I visited them. Yong's been living with Xia for a year. She has to, because according to one part of the government, she's 17, which means-- OK. So the first thing that I want to do is we finished female reproductive system, right? We've finished male reproductive system with the parts, right? She has to go to high school. It's one of the conditions of her release. I went with her on a Monday to her health class, where she was learning about pregnancy and the placenta. She's a freshman there. And you know what? She likes high school. She's there with a bunch of English language learners. So the teacher helps the students repeat everything. Can you say it with me, everybody? Yeah. Passes into the-- Passes into the-- --cord-- --cord-- --to the mother-- --to the mother, then-- --then out. Yeah. So the mother, she gets the waste, and she has to say, oh! Bathroom. She's in a school full of other immigrant kids. Most of them don't know how much older she is. She doesn't bring it up, and they don't seem aware of it. And then finally, after more than two years of waiting, Yong got her identity back. She had an immigration hearing just two weeks ago at the end of June, a little after her 22nd birthday. DHS told Yong's lawyers that they were dropping the age thing. They said they were not contesting her passport or, quote, "any of its contents," which of course include her birth date-- you know, the one she says is real, June 4, 1997. Yong went home that day and called her fiancé at night. It was the first time they were allowed to talk since she got to the States. They cried. Then they made dinner plans. Yong was happy, but sort of isn't used to the idea that this is real. Same thing for her fiancé. He says he keeps wondering if she really is here for good and if legally, he really is allowed to marry her. So for now, he just waits for Yong to call him and make plans. So I still can't say exactly why any of this happened to Yong. I reached out to all the immigration agencies involved in this case. CBP and ICE both declined to comment on Yong, and ORR as well, because, they say, she's a minor. Her lawyers' take on why this happened is they think the government made a judgment call and screwed up, and just started something in motion they didn't know how to stop. On some level, it seems like maybe everyone was just afraid to miss a trafficking case. And then her passport, her visa, all her documents from Laos just didn't matter anymore. Yong's still here under a fiancé visa, so she has to get married. If she doesn't, she has to go back to Laos. She's back at square one. It's like she just came into the States, holding her passport and her suitcase. Like no time has passed when she landed at O'Hare in 2017-- except it has. Nadia Reiman is one of the producers of our show. Coming up, a whole country gets obsessed with rescuing a girl-- a missing girl. This in a minute from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, Save the Girl, real life damsel-in-distress stories, where rescuers charge in, going full force on the rescuing, assuming that they know what is best for the girl that they're saving-- but really, not paying too much attention to what she might like or who she really is. This kind of saving the innocent girl, damsel-in-distress story, there's this old video that I love of the novelist Kurt Vonnegut, and he's talking about the effect of that story on people. In the video, he's standing at a blackboard, explaining that classic stories each have their own formula. And then he's literally mapping them out on the board. So there's no reason why the simple shapes of stories can't be fed into computers. They are beautiful shapes. And then he starts to draw graphs, draw these shapes representing different types of stories. So picture, OK, like in school, an x and a y-axis, right? With me? And then the vertical axis represents here how good or how badly a person is doing in their life. So bad fortune at the bottom of the line, good fortune at the top. Sickness and poverty down here, wealth and then boisterous good health up there. Now this is the BE axis. BE axis, that is the horizontal line that stretches from the left side of the chalkboard to the right side of the chalkboard. B is the beginning of the story. E is the ending. And then Vonnegut demonstrates how this works. He says that some stories start with the person who's kind of happy, so they begin more than halfway up that vertical line that measures good or bad fortune. So I would start a little above average. Why get a depressing person? We'll start-- The whole thing, we call this story man in hole. But it needn't be about a man, and it needn't be about somebody getting into a hole. But it's just a good way to remember it. Somebody gets into trouble, gets out of it again. He's drawing a curve, like a sine wave. And it dips down into bad fortune when he says somebody gets into trouble and then comes back up again for gets out of it. People love that story. They never get sick of it. All right. All right. So Vonnegut's done, man in hole. He then does boy gets girl and draws a diagram for that kind of rom-commy story. And then he tells the audience he's going to clue them in on the most powerful kind of story of all. This kind of story starts, he says, with the main character not doing well at all. Like the curve starts near the bottom of the good fortune and bad fortune vertical line. But we're going to start way down here. Who is so low? It's a little girl. What's happened? Her mother has died. Her father has remarried a vile-tempered, ugly woman with two nasty daughters, big daughters. You've heard it. See? Anyway, there's a party at the palace that night. She can't go. She has to help everybody else get ready. She has to stay home. OK, so the fairy godmother comes. Gives her shoes, gives her a stocking, give her mascara. They're laughing because with each item, he gives the curve a big bump up, like a series of stairs heading upwards. Gives her a means of transportation. Goes to the party, dances with the prince, has a swell time. Now we're way high up on the graph. Boing, boing, boing, boing. With the boings of the grandfather clock striking, he draws a vertical line going straight back down towards misery, though not quite as low as she was at the start. Does she wind up at the same level? Of course not. She will remember that dance for the rest of her life. Now, she poops along on this level till the prince comes, and shoe fits. He draws the curve upward until it hits the very top of the blackboard, as high as he can go, and writes an infinity sign. She achieves offscale happiness. It so happens that this is the most popular story in our civilization, Western civilization, as we love to hear this story. Every time it's retold, somebody makes another million dollars. You're welcome to do it. Which, really, all of that is the perfect introduction to our next act, Act Two, Frida Be You and Me. When an entire country becomes obsessed with a version of this story, it becomes obsessed with rescuing a girl, like the prince rescued Cinderella, until that venerable old pot took a weird twist. Aviva DeKornfeld explains what happened. Every year on September 19, Mexico runs through an earthquake drill. And on September 19 in 2017, the whole country ran through the drill as usual at 11:00 AM. Roughly two hours later, a real earthquake hit. It was a big one, an estimated magnitude of 7.1. Over 300 people died. Thousands of buildings were damaged. And one of those buildings was a school in southern Mexico City. When the school fell, it wasn't a total collapse. Only one side fully crumbled. There was a big hole in one of the walls. And through it, one of the classrooms was visible-- posters, and kids' drawings, and big colored letters in the midst of destruction. 19 kids were killed at the school, and a bunch more were injured. So pretty quickly, tons of media showed up. And the school became crowded with people trying to help. We started digging, and digging was really not easy. This is Felipe Duran Emiliano. He's a member of the Topo Azteca, which is a volunteer rescue brigade. Felipe and the other Topos find a tiny gap in the collapsed part of the school about a foot wide. They worked to open it up, and soon they find the body of a teacher. Felipe said she had her arms stretched out open, as if she'd been trying to protect others. The Topos lift the teacher's body out and place her on a stretcher. Then they keep hammering the concrete, looking for other victims. And once I remove this piece of concrete, I noticed two small feet. The feet belonged to a little boy. They find three more kids. The other volunteers want to pull the bodies out as quickly as possible, keep looking for other people. But Felipe paused. And so what I said to my co-worker, Machete, can you please ask them to wait? Because I want to say a prayer for this small child and also for the other children that have already been taken out. They keep going, though the chances of finding survivors is shrinking. As time passes, the rescue mission becomes less heroic and more tedious. And then on Wednesday morning, there's news. The TV news program interviews Navy Admiral Jose Luis Vergara, who's on site. The Navy's overseeing the rescue. He says we have indication of a girl who is alive. Rescuers have used a thermal scanner and a motion sensor, and they've detected what seems to be a person moving. One of the rescuers says they can see her moving her fingers. News of this girl trapped alive quickly becomes the biggest story of the earthquake. The first reporter led into the cordoned off area around the school is this woman named Danielle Dithurbide. She works for Televisa, the largest Spanish language broadcaster in the world. She's dressed like she's going into battle, khaki vest and a hardhat that looks like a helmet. And anytime there's new information, Danielle hears about it. She's giving constant updates. The girl seems to be trapped underneath a table. We don't want to break it because it could collapse, Danielle says. So the rescue workers figure out how to insert supports around the wreckage. The Navy threads a hose through a crack in the rubble to try to get water to the little girl. This is another Navy official, undersecretary Angel Enrique Sarmiento. He says they've been giving the little girl water through the hose. The rescue workers try to contact the person. They say, tap twice if you can hear us. But there are so many people around the school, it's way too loud for them to hear her. One of the rescue workers holds up his fist to signal for silence. Everyone on site stands motionless, straining to listen for muffled signs of life from under what's left of the school. This is all being covered live and broadcast all over the country. They hear a tiny voice poking out. This rescue worker tells Danielle, I heard a very weak voice that belonged to a little girl named Sofia. Danielle asks him, did she say her name? And he says, yeah, I asked her, is your name Sophie? And she said, Sophie. Sophie. The workers keep talking to the girl. They learn her full first name is Frida Sofia. And she's 12 years old. The Navy asks around for someone who knows Frida, a teacher or a family member, to try to make her feel more comfortable. The principal of the school, Monica Garcia Villegas, she survived the collapse. So did her daughter, who's also named Monica. She's a teacher at the school. They're both they're trying to help the rescue efforts. Monica, the daughter, offers to talk to Frida. She crouches near the wall where Frida's trapped. She calls her princesa and Evita, terms of endearment. Frida responds, telling her that she's tired. Danielle explains that Televisa's withholding Frida's last name out of respect for the family's privacy. Frida has said that there are two bodies near her, but that she doesn't know if they're alive or who they are. Televisa reports that rescuers have gotten a phone to Frida. She's been able to send messages to the school principal. The whole country becomes emotionally involved with this girl. People are donating supplies and posting all over Twitter and Facebook about her. There's a hashtag, #FridaSofia. One person tweets, "She moved her hand, moved Mexico's heart." Another says, "Retweet if you're not going to sleep until you see Frida Sofia out of the rubble." She's the coverage of the earthquake. She becomes the center of all the earthquake stories. That's Laura Tejero Nunez, a filmmaker who made a documentary about this. Everyone's talking about it. It's like a minute by minute. Everyone's following every step of Frida's rescue. Like when they leave their houses, when they leave their couches, they are like, well, what's up with Frida? Is she out yet? We know that there's been other victims, that other areas of Mexico have been strongly affected. But Frida is the center of all the eyes. Because she's also a story of hope. Everyone's waiting to see what's going to happen. And then finally, word spreads of good news. A rescue worker on site says, she's been rescued. This was shot on a cell phone by someone standing outside the school. She's OK, he says. She has vital signs. Televisa doesn't report the rescue. Presumably, they couldn't confirm it. Another reporter tweets that it's just a rumor. But then the Secretary of Education goes on the news. He doesn't say she's been rescued. But he does say if you're Frida Sofia's parents or related to her, please come to the school. The city is in complete disarray, and lots of people are missing. This call for her parents rips across social media. And then the story takes another turn. Here's Laura the filmmaker again. So the earthquake is the 19th. We hear about Frida the morning of the 20th. And it's about 30 hours later, like the 21st of September, that the rescue authorities say that Frida never existed. The story of Frida Sofia is a lie. No Frida Sofia was enrolled at the Enrique Rebsamen School. There is no Frida. The way everyone finds this out, the head of the Navy, the guy who's been giving, essentially, minute by minute updates on national television about Frida's condition, he goes on TV and gives this awkward press conference. He says that Frida Sofia is not a reality. That seems like very specific word choice. Yeah, like he wanted to say like, oh, this wasn't a reality. I'm not going to say that anyone told lies. I'm not going to say that this wasn't true. Because that sounds much worse. I think he was aware of how big the idea of Frida had become, how prescient in the minds of the Mexicans she had become. And he knew that he was going to be accused of falsehoods. Shortly afterwards, Danielle Dithurbide, the reporter, comes out in Televisa saying that there is no girl called Frida Sofia. So she's not very straightforward on what's happening. She just kind of waters it down. And then she says that she has gotten all the information from the authorities. So she kind of is-- do you say guarding her back? No. She's kind of-- Protecting herself. Like I didn't spread this. I just heard from the authorities. Yeah, exactly. Like I was giving official information. So after the news of Frida breaks, what happens? The audience is furious. They are really mad. The social media is burning, like with hate messages towards Televisa. They accuse them of creating lies, spreading lies of literally having made up a character for everyone to follow to increase their ratings. People sent Danielle, the Televisa reporter, hate mail and death threats. A few of the rescue workers said it was clear all along that Frida didn't exist, like Felipe, who you heard earlier. I yelled out that that was a great lie. That there was no such Frida. Felipe said he was one of the people who'd made the hole where everyone thought Frida was trapped. He says he tried to tell people at the time that Frida wasn't real-- Danielle, authorities from the Navy. And I told them, look, if you don't believe me, let's all go together in the hole. We are the ones who dug the hole. We explored absolutely everything in the area. And there is no small person there. It didn't seem to matter. It was as though they didn't like it. The Televisa lady didn't like it. The Red Cross didn't like it, and neither did the Admiral. What do you mean they didn't like it? They didn't like it because I told them that everything they were saying was lies. I called up Danielle, the Televisa reporter. She said she has no memory of talking to Felipe or of anyone telling her Frida wasn't real before the Navy broke the news. He said he invited you into the hole with him, and he said like, I'll show you she's not there. Do you remember anyone inviting you into the hole? No, that's not true. No, that's absolute-- that's a complete lie. That's not true. I swear on my life on it. That's not true. When the Navy Undersecretary Sarmiento said Frida wasn't real, he also denied ever telling reporters that she was, which made Danielle furious. She saw him saying that to another reporter just a few feet away from her. I mean, if I'm you, I feel like I would want to run over there, and-- And kill him. Kill him. Kill him. Yes, exactly. That was my exact feeling. I wanted to kill him. Later on TV, the Navy Undersecretary apologized. He said Danielle was right. He had passed on wrong information. We reached out to the Navy multiple times, by the way, but never got clearance to do an interview. Who do you think started the Frida myth? I don't know. I've been thinking about it for one year and a half, and I don't have any answer. I don't have an answer either. But here's what I do know. Let's go detail by detail. The motion sensor and thermal scanner that detected Frida's body heat and movement, that technology can be imprecise. The movement it detected, that could just be the rubble shifting. The body heat it detected, that could be a piece of metal that's just exposed to the sun, and therefore warmer than the things around it. As for the workers who heard Frida's voice, well, rescue workers pulled the body of a 58-year-old woman from the rubble after they'd talked to Frida. Maybe it had been her voice they had heard. Though her name wasn't Frida Sofia, it was Reyna Dávila. Or maybe the name Frida Sofia came from somewhere else. There was a Sofia there. She was one of the kids rescued earlier in the day. And there was a Frida on sight, too, a rescue dog helping to look for victims. I have no idea if that explains anything. There are some details that no matter how I turn it, just don't seem like mistakes, like the cell phone and the text messages. A volunteer told the press that story. I couldn't find him to follow up. And that rescue worker who told the public that Frida had been rescued, we looked all over for him. Couldn't find him anywhere. Felipe, that rescue worker I talked to, he feels like, of course, I couldn't find the answer. These are people that like to show up on TV, those people that enjoy telling lies, and people that just don't like to accept the truth. I really can't explain to myself how it is that this was made up. I imagine that this was the smokescreen, the whole Frida situation, in order to detour or to mask up the information. Merely a distraction. He means a distraction from the person who's taken a lot of blame for the school collapse. Remember the Monicas? The principal of the school and her daughter, who worked there as a teacher and who said she talked to Frida. The principal, Monica García Villegas, she's also the owner of the school. It's a private school, and she lived there with the rest of her family. The building was originally just two stories, but they built two more stories on top and made that their apartment. The principal used all these heavy materials in the construction. She built marble floors and granite countertops. She added a new terrace, but didn't add any columns underneath to support it. She installed a Jacuzzi. When the earthquake hit, all of that overwhelmed the bottom two floors of the building, and it crumbled. It was likely the principal's apartment that killed 19 kids and at least seven adults. The principal fled the scene shortly after the school fell, though not before her daughter and other family members had recovered some of their valuables from the rubble, like purses and shoes, their car, a Mercedes Benz, and a bathtub they got four of the rescue workers to carry for them. Authorities offered a five million peso reward to anyone who could find her. After nearly two years, the principal was finally arrested on charges of manslaughter in early May of this year. I reached out to her for a comment, but never heard back. If the principal and her daughter knew all along that they didn't have a student named Frida Sofia, if the daughter was just pretending to talk to someone trapped under the rubble, if the Navy, for some reason, was passing along unfounded details to the press, or if the deception was more innocent-- volunteers hoping for the best and spreading rumors-- it all fell on willing ears. Hundreds of people had been killed by the earthquake. Lots more were still missing. Of course people wanted a little girl to root for. Aviva DeKornfeld is one of the producers of our show. Our program was produced today by Lilly Sullivan with Elna Baker. The people who put this show together today includes Bim Adewunmi, Emanuele Berry, Susan Burton, Sean Cole, Hilary Elkins, Damien Grave, Jessica Lussenhop, Miki Meek, [INAUDIBLE] Stowe Nelson, Catherine Raimondo, Ben Phelan, Nadia Reiman, Robyn Semien, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, and Julie Whitaker. Our managing editor is Diane Wu. Our executive editor is David Kestenbaum. Aviva DeKornfeld, who did the last story in the show, that last act, has been our production fellow for the last six months. The fellowship is now over. This is our last new show with her. She is super capable. We are sorry to see her go. Podcasters of America, you heard that story. Give her a job. Special thanks today to Jose Acevedo, Yannos Misitzis, Jason Krouse, Rose Kue, Linda and Laura Xiong, Jackie Stevens, David Wilson, Calleigh McRaith, Lor Xiong-Roby, See Yang, Steve Bansbach, the Customs and Border Protection Chicago field office, Tesia Williams, Andrea Helling, Mark Greenberg, Bell Woods, Zoe Mendelson, Diego Salazar, and Luke Malone. Our website, ThisAmericanLife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our show's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. He really believes in the power of a hero sandwich. No kidding. Ordered a whole bunch for this big meeting we were going to have this week with some public radio stations and told me-- They mean business. But we've got a party of kickass heroes that's going to save the day. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
From WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Our story today begins in 1865 and ends this year, today. The moment in 1865 where we start is on March 4, the day Abraham Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address. I don't know if you've ever read this speech, but it's this incredible document, just four paragraphs long. At the time that he delivered this, the Civil War was ending, over a half million Americans dead. And Lincoln uses the speech to ponder the question, why have we been visited with this war. Here are his words. "Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude or the duration, which it already has attained. Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God. And each invokes his aid against the other. The Almighty has his own purposes." And at this point in the speech, Lincoln posits this incredible image that slavery is a kind of original sin on this continent, an original sin for which all Americans must pay. He says, "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with a lash shall be paid with another drawn with a sword, as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we're in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." Well, today on our program on this Fourth of July weekend, we raise this question. How're we doing absolving ourselves of our original sin? To answer that, let's fast forward to the 1990s. You hear how I'm talking now? I don't talk like this when I'm around my friends who don't speak like this. When I go to a school like this, everyone is speaking like this. So I have to do my best to blend in, which I kind of do pretty good. I pretty much have everybody thrown off about me. They pretty much know nothing of where I come from. This is Eliyahu Miller. When I recorded this, he was a sophomore at a Chicago high school named for Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln Park, in a rich neighborhood in Chicago's mostly white North Side. Eliyahu rode the bus for nearly an hour a day to get there from his home in a neighborhood on Chicago's mostly black, mostly segregated South Side. One measure of how far we have to go in healing the wounds of the past is the distance Eliyahu had to go between home and school. It is hard on a person to come to Lincoln Park. And your friends, they have $50 in change and then some. And they have these expensive things. And then you go home, and you're slapped in the face by reality. That's why I spend so much time at school. I hate to go home. As for me, my whole life, I haven't been prejudiced. And up until this year, I've been totally free of all prejudice. But it's just gotten to the point where I can't hold it back anymore. This is Chris, a senior at Lincoln Park the year I interviewed him. America's biggest experiment in integration, integrated schools, left Chris intolerant mostly because of tense, little interactions he used to have all the time with black students. Some of them were his fault, he said. Some theirs. There was an incident recently where I was trying to go out of a door that someone was standing halfway in, halfway out. Said, "Excuse me." So I went through. Guy started saying, "All these doors and you had to go through this one." I said, "That's right. Yeah." So he starts saying, "You better keep walking, white boy. I'm going to beat your ass," and all this. I just stopped and said, "Excuse me?" And he said, "You heard me. I'm gonna--" and just wanted to get into it. And I just basically blew it off. And then it continued. I went to class. I came out. And a whole bunch of people surrounded me, "This is the one. This is the one." And I'm just standing there like, "What?" And then one of them said, "Yeah, he called this student a nigger" and all this. And I said, "Hold it. I didn't say any of that." It seems at one point the whites were at a higher level than the blacks as far as social standards are concerned. Now rather than it being equal, I think-- in a black's mind, I'm speaking-- in a black's mind, the blacks are much higher than the whites. And they're band together. And they're not going to accept any whites in that band. There's still just a lot of resentment from that '50s, '60s slavery, whatever, times. But if you look at history, how long things have been, as far as slavery, how long did that go on for, how long did it take before it ended? So how long is it going to take before blacks and whites can get along as well as blacks and blacks and whites and whites do? Well, today on our program, four attempts at answering that question. Act One, Another Politician Has God And The confederate Flag. Act Two, Nelson Mandela and Abraham Lincoln. Act Three, Good Blacks and Bad Blacks. A story by New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell. Act Four, Racial Cheerleaders. A story about somebody whose attitude about race did change. Stay with us. Act One, a modern politician, his god, and the Confederate flag. Well, not long ago, a governor of a southern state made his own attempt at binding up the nation's wounds and achieving a lasting peace among ourselves. And frankly, it has not gone too well for him. The governor was David Beasley of South Carolina. His state is a good place to examine how well the wounds of the Civil War are healing. It is the only state in the Union that flies the Confederate flag over its state House Our contributing editor, Jack Hitt, is from South Carolina. And this past Thanksgiving, he watched the television address where Governor David Beasley proposed that they remove the flag from the statehouse flag pole. The governor of the state, he's a Christian coalition candidate, one of the few who actually won high office in the elections of '94. So Beasley took control of the governor's mansion. And not long after that, a number of different things happened. Some churches were burned. There were some drive-by shootings both of blacks and of whites by people of the other race. And tensions got very, very high. And Beasley is a good, decent man actually. One of the things that I've tried to explain to people when I've written about him is that it's a mistake to think that everybody in the Christian coalition is like Ralph Reed, i.e., a slick, media-wise, focus-group-opinionated, Washington-lobbyist insider. At one point, I remember you described Ralph Reed as being "sincerity challenged." Yeah, right. And the irony of that is that most of the people that I know in the Christian coalition in South Carolina are, in fact, deeply sentimental about the efforts to bring equality to the races in the state and the whole civil rights effort. And in a funny way, this is going to be Beasley's downfall. Because what he did after these various shootings and other acts of violence was decide that the Christian thing to do was to take down the Confederate flag from the statehouse. In other words, it actually was a change of heart, and there was not much political advantage in it for him? He stood not to gain politically from this move? I have asked everyone I know in South Carolina, "What would be the political advantage of a Republican bringing down the Confederate flag?" And there is none. It might be one of the few cases in American politics right now when the politician said, "I went, and I prayed. And I've decided to take down this flag," that that is, in fact, what happened. Well, good for him. So he wins no points in his own party. It'll be so costly that I feel certain he will be thrown out of office at the next election. Because of his stand on the flag? Because of this. Because of this, yeah. OK, so he comes on television and-- He comes on television, and what was really-- I'm sitting there with my entire family. We were all watching this. And everybody in the state is clearly watching this. It's on all the channels. It's been talked about in the papers for days. The governor's going to address the state. And the two rebuttal arguments put forward are by other Republicans. No Democrats spoke. No black person spoke. And the other two people who spoke, Glenn McConnell, a local state assemblyman from Charleston, and Charles Condon, the Attorney General, clearly have their eyes on the Governor's chair, especially Condon. But what was amazing about Beasley's argument for taking it down and Condon's argument for keeping it up is that they both manage to stake out rather nuanced positions about the meaning of symbols in contemporary American culture. It was strange, as I sat there listening to the Governor talking about how meaning works. And as you know, there is an entire academic discipline devoted to how we interpret signs. Right. And this is the field called semiotics, a sort of very arcane, in a certain way, academic discipline, which has swept across academia in this country in the last 15 years. Frankly, not the kind of thing which appears in our American political debate very often. Not very often. In fact, you've written about this. I'm going to read from your writing. You say, "The speeches themselves were novel for their departure from the debate's old terms, flag is evil, flag is not evil. Rather, these speakers put forward nuanced arguments of semiotics, the science of symbols. And I don't mean they argued that the flag debate signified other issues beyond race. No, I meant that they were actually arguing semiotic theory." Yeah, let me just read you the-- this is Beasley talking, as he's explaining why we should take the flag down. He says, this is a quote, "You see the Confederate flag flying above the statehouse flies in a vacuum. Its meaning and purpose are not defined by law. Because of this, any group can give the flag any meaning it chooses. The Klan can misuse it as a racist tool, as it has. And others can misuse it solely as a symbol for racism, as they have." And so he's basically articulating what is the central tenet of modern semiotic theory which is that you have this object, a flag, and any meaning can attach to it. Right. But then what was amazing is that the other people who were refuting him or rebutting him basically delved into the same kind of theory. For example, here is Glenn McConnell, a state Senator from Charleston talking about the flag. He says, quote, "We are told this flag lacks definition and must be moved to define it. But the flag was defined years ago on a monument on the statehouse grounds, which says that in the hopelessness of the hospitals, the despair of defeat, and the short, sharp agony of struggle, these South Carolinians who answered the call of their state did so in the consolation of the belief that, here at home, they would not be forgotten." In other words, the flag has a meaning, and that meaning is stable. That meaning is stable. In other words, if the flag means honor, it's always going to mean honor. Other people can try to attach what they want, and it'll still mean that. And it doesn't do any good. It's a very strong point of view in the South and especially in South Carolina. This is why I'm saying that I think Beasley has sort of wounded himself fatally. One of the things that I find most interesting about this in light of Lincoln's second inaugural is that the second inaugural is essentially a Christian document. It's both a political document, and it's a document arguing about faith. What are we to make of this as people who believe in God? The fact that the war happened and so many people have died. And it's interesting that Beasley would also, basically, come to this conclusion that we need to heal, the same conclusion that Lincoln comes to, as an act of faith. Right. Well, I understand his thinking. And he came very close to pulling it off. If you appeal to the Christian sentimentality in South Carolina for good race relations, you have enormous support. Because most of these people, they don't want this antagonism, and they don't want the kind of bad feelings between the races publicly. Privately-- and this goes right to the heart of, I think, not just the South's, but America's ambiguity on race-- which is that the same heart that can get very weepy and sentimental about rebuilding black churches can also get infuriated with black leaders talking about how we need more affirmative action. So Jack, I know that you have your own modest proposal on how opponents of the Confederate flag flying over the statehouse might be able to actually get the flag off the statehouse. Well, yes, I do. And it, in fact, is based on semiotic theory. It is based on semiotic theory. I think the remedy would be for blacks in South Carolina to start flying the Confederate flag. Adopt the Stars and Bars as their symbol. Adopt the Stars and Bars as the symbol of the New South. In our culture, especially, where signs and symbols can turn over so quickly, it's very easy to do what none of these guys on television were proposing, which is add even more meaning to that symbol. That's the only way you can actually alter a symbol's meaning. Even if you took the flag down, its power would remain. Its power, whether it was in a windshield or on somebody's front lawn, would still remain. I would love to see baseball caps with Malcolm X, X is sort of rejiggered into the Stars and Bars configuration, or the Confederate flag washed with a little African liberation colors. And only blacks in South Carolina could possibly pull this off. Right. "It's our South too." And my further prediction is is that if this did happen, if blacks did start wearing it on their T-shirts, and on their cars, and on their coats, and flying it in their front lawns or whatever, that the first group to rush to the state capital and insist that the Stars and Bars be lowered would be the Daughters of the Confederate Veterans, so enraged they would be that they symbol's true meaning was being altered. But in a certain way, looked at at the distance of a century and a quarter after Lincoln, how are we to view this entire debate? I don't know. On the one hand, it seemed to me so many of the truly meaningful acts of integration have been accomplished. In a way, it's the kind of fight you would have after you've done all the hard work. We're really arguing, almost literally, about window dressing. But I have to say, there's another way to look at this debate. And that is that the fact that this is what's being debated about race relations and the place of blacks and whites together in society, if this is what's being debated, that means that there are all these other things which we have not solved, which are never discussed with the same fervor and political heat. You're saying the governor of South Carolina is going to lose his governorship over this symbolic question of whether to fly a flag. He is not losing his governorship over whether black children are educated as well as white children. That's true. That's absolutely true. Jack Hitt's a magazine writer and a contributing editor here at This American Life. After he published his idea that blacks adopt the Stars and Bars, he discovered that two black entrepreneurs in South Carolina have a company called NuSouth that's trying to do exactly that. These two guys, Sherman Evans and Angel Quintero, have a full line of clothing that feature the Confederate flag rendered in the colors of African liberation, red, black, and green. They have a store on Main Street in downtown Charleston. They hope to expand to all 13 original colonies. Realistically, we all know that the Confederate flag is the negative enemy. And the creation of a New South flag is kind of an act that don't move. We figured it's like the oppressor's worst insult, where we take that, and we wear it with pride. It's kind of like a strategy whereby you go right into the feared thing, and you claim it. Do they have a website? Well, of course. www.nusouth-- spelled N-U-S-O-U-T-H-- dot. com. Act Two, Nelson Mandela and Abraham Lincoln. What to do with the symbols of a white supremacist past? Well, after the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln did not ban the Confederacy's national anthem "Dixie." Instead, he had it played on the White House lawn, saying, in effect, we're all one nation, this song is all of ours. It's a strategy, I think, Nelson Mandela would understand. In fact, that story about Lincoln and Jack Hitt's story about South Carolina reminded me of a story that I had been told by a friend of mine named John Matisonn. John is from South Africa. During apartheid, he was the chief political correspondent at the leading opposition newspaper, The Rand Daily Mail. For a while, he was National Public Radio's correspondent in South Africa, which is how I know him. When Nelson Mandela was released from prison, John was the reporter given the honor of asking Mandela the first question at his very first press conference. Now he's a member of Mandela's government. And a few years ago, he told me about the Springboks. The Springboks are a rugby team. Under apartheid, rugby was the favorite game of South African whites. Now for blacks, the favorite game, the national game, was soccer. But for whites, it was rugby. And the Springboks were the national team, the team that would go to the international competitions, things like that. And it was all white or almost all white, with one or two black players. The Springboks were seen as a symbol of white South Africa and apartheid. When Nelson Mandela's party, the African National Congress, came to power, there was this big debate over whether to get rid of the team's name and its logo. A springbok is like-- it's like a deer. And just like the flag debate in South Carolina, John Matisonn says, the debate got very emotional. And I would have to say that most people in the ANC camp would have argued strongly that the Springbok cannot be retained. It's too toxic a symbol. It had to be removed and replaced with something else. And there was even discussion about alternatives. And the plan was that a decision was going to be taken after the World Cup. During apartheid, international sanctions had kept South Africa out of the World Cup. And so at the first World Cup game of the post-apartheid era, a game hosted by South Africa, Nelson Mandela settled this issue of the springbok symbol once and for all. Mandela walked out onto the field wearing a Springbok jersey with the number six, which was the same number as the captain. And he walked out into the middle of the field, and he just wished them well and cheered. And the crowd just roared. And he wore a Springbok cap as well. And then at the end of the game, South Africa won. And he walked out onto the field, and he hugged the captain of the winning team. And so you had jersey number six hugging jersey number six, the captain of the rugby team and the captain of South Africa. If I remember right, back when it happened, you told me that grown men were crying in the stands. Oh yeah. It was very emotional. People had tears in their eyes. And I think it had an amazing impact because black South Africans just adored it. They adored him. And white South Africans as well. They adored the fact that he'd embraced all their symbols, and hadn't rejected them, and made a big fight about it, and turned it into something that could have, potentially at least, at a symbolic level, been ugly. And at the same time, black South Africans said-- it had the effect of people saying, "Well, it's ours. It's not their team anymore. It's our team." And I think I told you the story that I was at a Christmas party-- our own Christmas party-- and nearly all our staff are black South Africans. And half the black South Africans wore Springbok caps to the Christmas party, which if you're sort of seeped in local political folklore, as I am, it was just an amazing and very moving sight. And frankly, now it's just not an issue. It really isn't. Nelson Mandela has systematically tried to diffuse the old symbols of apartheid, all of them, of their power. He traveled to formerly all-white neighborhoods. He made the old apartheid national anthem part of the new national anthem. At one point, Nelson Mandela held a lunch, and he invited the wives and the widows of all the prime ministers from during the apartheid era. And he also invited the wives and widows of all the black leaders from that era as well, including Steve Biko's widow. And of course, you know that Steve Biko was killed in prison by policemen in support of the old government. And that was in the time under the premiership of John Vorster. And Mrs. Vorster was there. John Vorster died some time ago. But Mrs. Vorster was there. And there was this remarkable scene, which was shown on television and reported in the newspapers, where they're all in the garden, sitting with these garden chairs. And Mrs. Vorster sees Mrs. Biko looking for a place to sit. And she sort of jumps up and offers her her seat. And as you know, John Vorster was really regarded as one of the worst authoritarian leaders. He was minister of police at the same time he was prime minister. And Mandela went up to her, and he brought a chair. And she said, "No, no, no, let me give her my chair." And Mandela looked at her very sternly and wagged his finger at her and said, "Now Mrs. Vorster, you must sit down and do as I say. Otherwise, I'm going to be as authoritarian as your husband was." And everybody laughed quite uncomfortably, not quite sure what to make of it. But of course, the next thing, Mrs. Vorster did as she was told by the president. And she sat down. And Mrs. Biko sat down in the chair that Mandela brought for her. And they got into conversation. This actually leads to the thing I was going to ask you next, which was how important do you think these symbolic changes are in changing a nation? How important are they versus, say, building houses and getting the economy working in a different way? Well, I must say, I, as a sort of a hard-bitten political journalist all my life, probably didn't take them as seriously as the government did. I looked at housing statistics, and educational changes, and budgets, and all those kind of things. But I have to concede, I was wrong. I failed to appreciate the importance of these symbols. They've been extremely important. I still meet black South African friends who surprise me by telling me about perhaps their less political family members who went, after these symbolic changes, went to parts of white Cape Town and white Johannesburg that they'd never been before. And frankly, they could have gone before because they were not actually legally prohibited for some time before that, but they'd never felt comfortable doing. And so the symbolic change meant, suddenly, people felt symbolically they could go to areas where they might have been legally entitled to for some years, but they wouldn't go there at that time because they still felt uncomfortable. That's, I think, the success. And if you are to ask me, "What has changed for the average black South African since the election?" In terms of housing and so on, the improvements are modest. The vast mass of black South Africans, their material conditions haven't improved radically. And, in many cases, not at all, one has to admit. But what has really changed, and it is a genuine change for people, is psychological liberation, a feeling that this is their country, and that they have opportunities and possibilities in the country, and that the country is theirs. I have to say, I think that has real meaning. John Matisonn in South Africa. Coming up, Good Blacks and Bad Blacks, Good Whites and Bad Whites. That's all in a minute when our program continues. From WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, invite a variety of writers, and performers, and reporters to tackle that theme with original documentaries, radio monologues, found tape, anything they can think of. Today's show for the Fourth of July weekend, how we're doing, as a nation, healing the wounds of our nation's original sin of slavery. We're at Act Three, Good Blacks, Bad Blacks. For a perspective on how far black America and white America have come in integrating into one America, consider this story from New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell about his cousins who emigrated to this country from Jamaica 12 years ago, scrimped and saved to make a life here. My cousin Rosie and her husband Noel live in a two-bedroom bungalow on Argyle Avenue in Uniondale, in a working-class neighborhood on the west end of Long Island. From the outside, their home looks fairly plain. But there's a beautiful park down the street, the public schools are supposed to be good, and Rosie and Noel have built a new garage and renovated the basement. Now that Noel has started his own business as an environmental engineer, he has his own office down there. Suite 2B, it says on his stationery. And every morning, he puts on his suit and goes down the stairs to make calls and work on the computer. If Noel's business takes off, Rosie says, she'd like to move to a bigger house in Garden City, which is one town over. She says this even though Garden City is mostly white. In fact, when she told one of her girlfriends, a black American, about this idea, her friend said that she was crazy, that Garden City was no place for a black person. But that's just the point. Rosie and Noel are from Jamaica. They don't consider themselves black at all. This doesn't mean that my cousins haven't sometimes been lumped together with American blacks. Noel had a job once removing asbestos at Kennedy Airport. And his boss called him a nigger and cut his hours. But Noel didn't take it personally. "That boss," he says, "didn't like women or Jews either, or people with college degrees, or even himself, for that matter." Another time, Noel found out that a white guy working next to him in the same job and with the same qualifications was making $10,000 a year more than he was. He quit the next day. Noel knows that racism is out there. It's just that he doesn't quite understand or accept the categories on which it depends. The facts of his genealogy, of his nationality, of his status as an immigrant made him, in his own eyes, different. This question of who West Indians are and how they define themselves may seem trivial, like racial hairsplitting, but it's not trivial. In the past 20 years, the number of West Indians in America has exploded. There are now half a million in the New York area alone. And despite their recent arrival, they make substantially more money than American blacks. They live in better neighborhoods. Their families are stronger. In the New York area, in fact, West Indians fare about as well as Chinese and Korean immigrants. What does it say about the nature of racism that another group of blacks, who have the same legacy of slavery as their American counterparts and are physically indistinguishable from them as well, can come here and succeed as well as the Chinese and the Koreans do? Is overcoming racism as simple as doing what Noel does, which is to dismiss it, to hold himself above it, to brave it and move on? Why is one group of blacks flourishing when the other is not? The implication of West Indian success is that racism doesn't really exist at all, at least, not in the form that we've assumed it does. It implies that when the conservatives in Congress say that the responsibility for ending urban poverty lies not with collective action, but with the poor themselves, that they're right. I think of this sometimes when I go with Rosie and Noel to their church, which is in Hempstead, just about a mile away. It was once a white church, but in the past decade or so, it's been taken over by immigrants from the Caribbean. They've so swelled its membership that the church has bought much of the surrounding property, and it's about to add 100 seats or so to its sanctuary. The pastor, though, is white. And when the band up front is playing and the congregation is in full West Indian form, the pastor sometimes seems out of place, as if he cannot move in time with the music. I always wonder how long the white minister at Rosie and Noel's church will last, whether there won't be some kind of groundswell among the congregation to replace him with one of their own. But Noel tells me the issue has never really come up. Noel says, in fact, that he's happier with a white minister for the same reason that he's happy with his neighborhood, where the people across the way are Polish, and another neighbor is Hispanic, and still another is a black American. He doesn't want to be shut off from everybody else, isolated within the narrow confines of his race. He wants to be part of the world. And when he says these things, it's awfully tempting to credit that attitude with what he and Rosie have accomplished. Is this confidence, this optimism, this equanimity all that separates the poorest of American blacks from a house on Argyle Avenue? This idea of the West Indian as a kind of superior black is not a new one. When the first wave of Caribbean immigrants came to New York and Boston in the early 1900s, other blacks dubbed them "Jew-maicans" in derisive reference to the emphasis they placed on hard work and education. In the 1980s, the economist Thomas Sowell gave the idea serious intellectual imprimatur by arguing that the West Indian advantage was a historical legacy of Caribbean slave culture. According to Sowell, in the American South, slave owners tended to hire managers who were married in order to limit the problems created by sexual relations between overseers and slave women. But the West Indies were a hardship post without a large and settled white population. There, the overseers tended to be bachelors. And with white women scarce, there was far more co-mingling of the races. The resulting large group of coloreds soon formed a kind of proto middle class, performing various kinds of skilled and sophisticated tasks that there were not enough whites around to do, as there were in the American South. They were carpenters, masons, plumbers, and small business men many years in advance of their American counterparts, developing skills that required education and initiative. My mother and Rosie's mother came from this colored class. Their parents were schoolteachers in a tiny village buried in the hills of central Jamaica. My grandmother and grandfather's salaries combined put them, at best, on the lower rungs of the middle class. But their expectations went well beyond that. My mother and her sister were pushed to win scholarships to a proper English-style boarding school on the other end of the island. And later, when my mother graduated, it was taken for granted that she would attend university in England. My grandparents had ambitions for their children. But it was a special kind of ambition, borne of a certainty that American blacks did not have, that their values were the same as those of society as a whole and that hard work and talent could actually be rewarded. This, I think, is why Noel cannot quite appreciate what it is that weighs black Americans down. He came of age in a country where he belonged to the majority. It is tempting to use the West Indian story as evidence that discrimination doesn't really exist, as proof that the only thing inner-city African-Americans have to do to be welcomed as warmly as West Indians is to make the necessary cultural adjustments. But, in fact, studies of workplaces that hire West Indians show they are not places where traditional racism has been discarded. They're actually places where old-style racism and appreciation of immigrant values are somehow bound up together. Listen to a white manager who was interviewed by the Harvard sociologist Mary Waters. "Island blacks who come over, they're immigrant. They may not have had such a good life where they are, so they're going to try to strive to better themselves. And I think there's a lot of American blacks out there who feel we owe them. And enough is enough already. You know? This is something that happened to their ancestors, not now. I mean, we've done so much for the black people in America now, it's time that they got off their butts." Here then are the two competing ideas about racism side by side. The manager issues a blanket condemnation of American blacks even as he holds West Indians up to a cultural ideal. The example of West Indians as good blacks makes the old blanket prejudice against American blacks all the easier to express. The manager can tell black Americans to "get off their butts" without fear of sounding, in his own ears, like a racist because he has simultaneously celebrated island blacks for their work ethic. The success of West Indians is not proof that discrimination against American blacks does not exist. Rather, it's the means by which discrimination against American blacks is given one last vicious twist, as if to say, "I'm not so shallow as to despise you for the color of your skin because I've found people your color that I like. Now I can despise you for who you are." I grew up in Canada, in a little farming town an hour and a half outside Toronto. My father teaches mathematics at a nearby university. My mother's a therapist. For many years, she was the only black in town. But I can't remember wondering, or worrying, or even thinking about this fact. Back then, color meant only good things. It meant my cousins in Jamaica. It meant the graduate students from Africa and India my father would bring home from the university. My own color was not something I ever thought about much either because it seemed such a stray fact. But things changed when I left for Toronto to attend college. This was during the early 1980s, when West Indians were emigrating to Canada in droves, and Toronto had become second only to New York as the Jamaican expatriates' capital in North America. At school, in the dining hall, I was served by Jamaicans. The infamous Jane Finch projects in northern Toronto were considered the Jamaican projects. The drug trade then taking off was said to be the Jamaican drug trade. In the popular imagination, Jamaicans were, and are, welfare queens, and gun-toting gangsters, and dissolute youths. After I had moved to the United States, I puzzled over this seeming contradiction, how West Indians celebrated in New York for their industry and drive could represent, just 500 miles northwest, crime and dissipation. Didn't Torontonians see what was special and different in West Indian culture? But that was a naive question. The West Indians were the first significant brush with blackness that smug, white Torontonians had ever had. They had no bad blacks to contrast with the newcomers, no African-Americans to serve as a safety valve for their prejudices, no way to perform America's crude racial triage. There must be people in Toronto just like Rosie and Noel with the same attitudes and aspirations, who want to live in a neighborhood as nice as Argyle Avenue, who want to build a new garage, and renovate their basement, and set up their own business downstairs. But it's not completely up to them, is it? What has happened to Jamaicans in Toronto is proof that what's happened to Jamaicans here is not the end of racism, or even the beginning of the end of racism, but an accident of history and geography. In America, there is someone else to despise. In Canada, there is not. In the new racism, as in the old, somebody always has to be the nigger. Malcolm Gladwell's story first appeared in the New Yorker magazine. Act Four, Good Whites, Bad Whites. This next assessment of our state of national racial healing, from radio producer Cecilia Vaisman and Christina Egloff with Jay Allison, about a woman named Carolyn Wren Shannon and her neighbors. My mother was telling us that one time, when we were younger, my father was very prejudiced. And I come home from school with this friend. And he was on the recliner with a newspaper. And I said, "Mum, can my friend stay over for supper?" And my father dropped the paper to look to see who it was, and it was a little black girl. She said, my father almost swallowed his false teeth. And she was like, "Honey, I don't really think that's a good idea." She said, I come in, and my father was horrified. Because I really didn't see things-- I don't know. I was colorblind really until that incident. And then we kind of got the rules that that wasn't accepted. Who you calling? Ready? [CHEERING] Go. F-I-G-H-T, fight, fight. F-I-G-H-T, fight, fight. My mother and father are both from Charlestown. All of my great-grandparents are from Ireland. All four of them. And that's how the majority of this community works. Most of them, when they come over on the boat, they all were together and settled together. And that's how this community has stayed the same. You'll find that a lot of the people in this community are related because I think there's some security having family around. And people are proud that their Irish, and they're proud that they're Catholic. And I think people-- they stick to their own. When we were in grammar school, there was one teen who was Protestant. And we goofed on him because he didn't believe in the same thing as us. Course, no one understood what a Protestant was, just that he was different. Are you ready, girls? [MAKES A HUMMING SOUND, SETTING THE PITCH] Go ahead. Go. Follow her lead. [SINGING] We are the girls from Charlestown you hear so much about. Most everybody looks at us whenever we go out. We're noted for our reputation and the things we do. But what the hell do we care? The boys are naughty too. Wasn't that fun? Drink with the straws. You know the little-- We are here at my Aunt Mary Ellen's house on Elm Street in Charlestown. I'm here with my Aunt Linda, my cousin Patty, my cousin Donna, my sister-in-law Mimi, my cousin Mary Ann, my Aunt Barbara, my cousin Sheila, and my Aunt Mary Ellen. My grandmother, who is the matriarch of this wonderful family. Mary Wren, wonderful woman, she had seven children. And she had 32 grandchildren and 43 great-grandchildren. I'd say about 70% are still local. Most people don't understand it if they're from the town. There's always that Charlestown-- they want to be, they wish they were, they don't understand what it's like. There's strength in numbers. And that's what happens here. Everybody knows everybody. So it's a kind of strength that you don't find in other areas. To have 17,000 people and the majority of them have major relatives around, it makes a big difference in this community. Charlestown is home. Yeah. Once busing occurred, that wonderful year of '76, 1976, when the federal government mandated busing, court-ordered busing, my junior year was totally insane. Everything changed. There were new faces. People were never exposed to minorities. And all of a sudden, you're thrown in a classroom. And there's turmoil on the streets, and there's turmoil in your house, and there's turmoil on the news. And the city's erupted with racial violence. And everyone's following everyone. Whatever the crowd does. If they throw rocks, you throw rocks. If they beat up a black person, then you stand and watch. Whereas, as a Catholic, you realize that you don't treat someone like that. But everyone forgot everything. It was like this total mayhem. School wasn't the same. There were metal detectors put in the classroom, in the entrance of the schools. There were policemen everywhere. At night, they would burn cars. It was total crazy. There was a major rally on Boston, City Hall Plaza. And a black man was attacked with an American flag because he was black and walked in front of their rally, which was all white. They speared him with the American flag. It was a horrible, horrible scene. It was all over the news across the world. Charlestown, Southie, they're racist. Boston is a place full of hate. And it was. It was. Just start it. [CHEERING] [UNINTELLIGIBLE] is the team that we're gonna defeat, so come on, everybody, do the Townie beat. Once, guys, come on. Let's go. [CHEERING] One, two, three, four, clap, one, two, clap, one, two, three, four, five, six, clap, one, two, clap, one, two, clap, clap. When I was in junior high, the biggest thing was to get up to the high school because that was where your mother went and your father went. And those teachers were still there. And you could still talk to your mother about the bathroom story. But that doesn't occur anymore because there is no Charlestown High like it used to be. And now the school itself is predominately black. My kids will probably go to parochial schools. They won't do Charlestown High cheers. They may do St. Clement's cheers. But when my aunts get together, they all sing Charlestown High songs. And it's like a little pep rally when we're all at a family gathering. But that won't happen for my kids. And I think that's kind of sad. Put your hands on your hips, and we'll do it regular. OK, put 'em up. Close your feet. Say, ready. [CHEERING] Go. Townie team means victory any way you spell it. Hey, very good, girls. What does Townie team mean? Townie Teenie. You gonna go to cheerleading today? Huh? We're gonna go down to cheerleading? What happened on the Oprah show was she had on a white man who was married to a white woman. He disowned his children for being associated with black men. And then he, in fact, disowned his grandchildren because they were black in them. And I was saying, "That's a disgrace. That's your blood. You don't disown anyone." And Danny said-- I don't know. What did I say? You said that you thought he was right. I said I don't know what I would do. But I understood his feelings. So you wouldn't mind your daughters marrying a black guy? I didn't say that, which we have discussed at great length. That is definitely a fear of mine, that I would like to think I'm open minded about race, more so than I've ever been. But if it came down to my daughters choosing another race, I don't think I'd be happy with that. I wouldn't say I'm racist, but I definitely have bitter feelings towards blacks. I was raised that way too. My father's an Archie Bunker. I think it rubs off on you. I would never say anything to my girls. But they'll learn. They'll learn what's theirs, what's your own, and things like that just growing up around the same type of people. They'll look at anyone that's not like them differently. I don't have to tell them that. It sounds ignorant, but I had no pro-- I like the way I grew up. Carolyn's of the same mold. And I don't have a problem with that. I'm not gonna push it on 'em at all. But I hope someday they marry an Irish-Catholic boy. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Other people say, that's being racial. I think it's natural to like your own kind of people. You sing too, Bridget. Help her out. [SINGING] I love you. You love me. We're a happy family. With a great big hug and a kiss from me to you. Won't you say you love me too? I think it's a real breed of person. You must have to grow up somewhere where you walk down the street, and there's a black kid, a Chinese kid, a white kid, and a Puerto Rican kid playing together. I just can't even imagine that. That's some kind of a made-up fairy tale, I think, where everyone gets along together. I can't imagine it. Life teaches you sometimes very painfully. And I think that's your best teacher anyway. No one can tell you not to be racist, and they can't tell you to like your black neighbor. You have to learn. So I think it's a person's choice. So you can choose to be ignorant, or you can choose to be fair. I was captain of the cheerleaders. And I remember Miss Kessner, which was the cheerleading coach, was also the phys ed director. And she said, she hadn't chose the captains yet. And this was something that I wanted my whole life. This was my big goal in life to be cheerleading captain. And she said to me one day, "If a black girl tries out for cheerleading, will you accept her?" And I thought to myself, "I'm gonna be a jerk if I don't go along with the crowd." It was a very difficult decision for me. And I knew this could jeopardize whether I'd become captain or not. And I said, "I wouldn't accept her." She put her head down, and she walked away. So the day of cheerleading tryouts, she come into the room of all the girls, and she said, "Traditionally, Charlestown High has had two cheerleading captains. This year, they'll only be one." And I put my head down, and I started to cry because I knew I blew it. It was my first experience with race and making the wrong decision. So we're all in the room, and she says, "The cheerleading captain for this year is Carolyn Wren." I started bawling my eyes out. And I was like, "Oh, my god." And I looked up at her. And she knew that I knew that I had made a wrong choice. I knew I made the wrong choice, but I made it from my heart because I was raised in a house where race wasn't accepted. That's crazy. That's embarrassing. I think they're embarrassing, the Charlestown High cheerleaders. What's wrong with them? Because they don't cheer like your regular cheerleaders anyway. They cheer like jigaboos or something. I don't know. Carol, that is not cheering. It's boge. They're like clapping, and singing, and getting down with their cheers. It's not even-- It's jive cheerleading. It's jive cheering. Yeah. It's not your good old cheerleader cheering. It's not what they teach you at cheerleading camp. The all-American cheerleader. It's not that style. It's more ethnic. It's more cultural. It's very different than what we're used to. Definitely. See, my sisters wouldn't cheer for Charlestown High because of it. I can't even think of a cheer that we could compare it to other than "How funky is your chicken." No, they do that "We don't need no music to cheer." And they stamp their feet. And they do like this little dance. And they do like [CLAPS AND STAMPS]. Oh, you want to just slap them and say, "Stop, you look so foolish." But that's all they know. That's what they're taught. And that's what they're excited to do. Nobody's excited to have 'em. Everybody just wished they'd go away. I remember sitting beside a girl in school. And she had an Afro. And we had common pins in health. Not health. Sewing. It was home ec. And we used to put paper at the end of the common pin and toss the common pin. And the paper would allow it to weigh it down, so you could send it. And we would put them into her hair. And this was hitting her head. We tortured that girl because she was different and because she had an Afro, and none of us did. Because she was black. And I was a part of that. I was as racist as the next one. It's not something I'm proud of. And I think working with teenagers, it's a constant effort to remind them that you don't judge someone by the color of their skin. OK, tonight's conference is gonna be on racism. We realize it's a very sensitive issue. We're not here to try to change anybody's mind. All we want to do is raise your consciousness about it. Want to talk about it. Want to have a lot of fun with it. Couple of rules. Watch your mouth. No swearing. A little respect. You can, of course, speak your own opinions, but with a little taste. Understand? OK, we're gonna start. If you asked me when I was 10, would I be working for the city with other black people, I would've told you, you were crazy, that I'm above them, that I don't work with niggers. That's what I woulda told you when I was 10. Yeah, when I first took this job, I actually had trouble working with people across the city because I was really racist. But I was in the high school when there was busing. So there was a lot of racial riots. There was total mayhem every day. I hated them. It was just those things and their Afros. I hated them. I didn't want to look at them. I didn't want to talk to them. I was the class vice president and almost lost the post because I wouldn't accept black students in Charlestown High. I've taken incredible strides as far as accepting. I've matured. I'm educated. It's very different than when I was 17, and filled with a lot of hate, and was surrounded by a lot of people who hated because of the color of their skin. OK, this warm-up-- guys, you need to listen-- this warm-up is called motion circle. So what I want you to do is walk-- spread out a little more-- and I want you to walk. Come this way. Just walk in a circle. OK, now I'm going to tell you do something. I want you to all of a sudden do it, OK? Walk like you're stuck in quicksand. Stuck in what? Stuck in quicksand. Walk like you're Irish. OK. Keep walking. Walk as if you're carrying something heavy. OK, walk like you're black. My father, who used to be incredibly racist and has grown out of that-- I can't even believe it. He's just not the same person. And he accepts people for what they are, which was very important for all of us to see. Because you lead by example. And if you can't lead by example-- it's such an important part of, I think, each family. And I would say, on a whole, that the majority of racism is learned in the home. It's what you're brought up with. It's what you hear. It's what you're told. And it's how you're raised. And if you go out and you think that battering someone because they're black, then I would bet my paycheck that, in your home, racism is a serious issue and also a serious problem. And it was for me. And it's taken me a long, long time to overcome it. Although I still have fears. Although I'm open minded and educated, I still have some of those fears. That story was first produced in a slightly longer form for WGBH in Jay Allison's Life Stories series. Engineering by Jane Pipik. Cecilia Vaisman did the original interviews. Well, our program was produced today by Elise Spiegel and myself with Nancy Updike and Julie Snyder. Musical help from Sarah Vowell. Contributing editors Sarah Vowell, Jack Hitt, Margy Rochlin, and Paul Tough. To buy a cassette of this program, call us at WBEZ in Chicago, 312-832-3380. That's 312-832-3380. Our email address, [email protected] This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia, who makes most of his management decisions this way. I went, and I prayed. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life. PRI, Public Radio International.
|
Last weekend, I gave a talk at Chautauqua in upstate New York. Which, if you don't know what that is, starting in the 1870s, it was this high-minded lecture circuit-- like Ted Talks, but before the internet, or public radio before the invention of radio-- with a big religious component. Which is how I fell into this long conversation about the literal word of the Bible. It happened the staffer who drove me to the airport was a retired Methodist preacher, an associate pastor at one of the churches in Chautauqua, named John Jackson. And we had this hour and a half long drive and somehow we got onto how he doesn't believe that every word of the Bible is literally true, which, if you're a Methodist, that's no big deal. And John said that as he gets older, the literal words of the Bible seem less important to him than the big picture. Love your neighbor as yourself, and love God above all. I told John, like, I totally get the love your neighbor as yourself part of that. Like, I can see how that can reshape just everything about how you treat others, and really, everything you do in your life in the world. But I told him I've never really understood why is it important to love God above all. Do you know what I mean? If you do what God wants, and you try to be good, you try to treat others right, what difference does it make if you love God? What does God care? And I got to ask John about kind of a variation on this question that I've wondered about for a couple years, ever since the last time I was in synagogue. I don't know. This was two or three years ago. I hadn't been to synagogue in forever. And it was the anniversary of my mom's death. And we're Jews, so you're supposed to go say Kaddish, this old prayer that's one of the central prayers in Judaism at the anniversary of somebody's death. And so my dad, and my stepmom, and I were at one of the daily services that observant Jews go to every day in Baltimore where I grew up. And I always liked going to synagogue as a kid. We went a lot. And so it was nice going back. I know all the Hebrew prayers by heart. And [LAUGHS] I don't know if this is good or bad, but not having sat in a synagogue in over a decade, it really hit me how every day is a rerun. Do you know what I mean? They never do a new episode. Every day, the same words, same songs in the same order, stretching back hundreds of years. They read a new part of the Bible, part of the Torah some days. So there's that, but all the rest basically exactly the same every day. And everybody is singing and chanting. And I started looking at the prayer book on the side of the page with the English translation of the prayers, which I hadn't done in years. And I really was struck at how many of them-- the Amidah, the Ashrei-- are about praising God at length. That's what the words mean. Even the Kaddish, which you say over and over during services. It goes on and on. And the words basically are, "May His great name be exalted and sanctified. Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted, extolled and honored, adored and lauded be the name of the Holy One." That is what they have you say when your mom dies. Comforting, huh? It's basically God is great over and over, building up to this beautiful line, really beautiful, that's basically God is so great. It's beyond the power of any prayer, or word, or song, or praise. It's beyond the power of language to capture it. And it really hit me, sitting there-- what does God get out of that? Why does he want us sitting down and telling him how great he is for 45 minutes a day? Is he that needy? If some parent demanded that of their kids-- OK, I want you to praise me for 45 minutes a day, every single day of your life-- we would know they were nuts. And it's like what I was saying to John-- what does God care if we love him? And John had such a lovely answer. He said, first off, he thinks lots of people make the mistake of picturing God as being like us, like humans. Like he's somebody who we're calling on the phone or something when we're praying. But the way he sees it, he understands God to be all the values and principles that he sees in scripture-- the obligation to love each other, to be honest and decent in our dealings with each other, all of those things. And when he's praising God, he said that's what he's praising. He's basically re-pledging himself to those principles, which he loves. In other words, the literal words of the Bible, the literal words of the prayers aren't as important as that pledge-- a pledge to act a certain way in the world. And reading and calling around in the days since we had that conversation, I've learned that other clergy-- Christian, Jewish, Muslim-- some of them say the same things, especially that God doesn't need our prayers. The prayers are for us. One of them told me the Kaddish is supposed to comfort me after my mom's death by pointing me to this idea of God's presence in the world, the goodness in the world-- which, if I believed in God, I guess could be a comfort. But I don't believe. But weirdly, even without that, without believing any of the words, I do find it's a comfort to say the prayer. It's just-- it's familiar. It's familiar as the nursery rhymes my mom sang to me as a kid, as the Shema, the prayer that she had me and my sister say every night before we went to sleep. It's comforting. Despite the fact that it's in another language and part of a doctrine I don't believe anymore, just the fact of it handed to me by my parents and to them by their parents-- Frida, and Lou, and Melvin, and Molly-- and their parents before them-- David, and Elizabeth, and Isidore, and people whose names I don't even know-- and before them, their parents for hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of years and standing in synagogue that day, standing and saying these words in unison with other mourners, it was comforting. Today in our show, the sometimes very old words that we turn to for comfort in moments of adversity and at other times, they can be very random. The novel, Little Women, A Tribe Called Quest and other old school hip hop-- we have stories about each of those. WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Act One, Go to the Mattresses. Shamyla always loved books. Back in 1989, like lots of other 11-year-olds, she also loved Punky Brewster and Paula Abdul. But her main thing was reading. The Baby-Sitters Club books, Little House on the Prairie-- it was all about words and books. And then something happened, which totally changed what she read, and how. Elna Baker talked to her. OK, so you meet somebody at a party, and they ask you, what's your favorite book? What's your answer? My answer is Little Women is my all time favorite book. And then if they were to ask you, why, what would you say? Well, I probably would have a very long conversation with someone about that. But it goes back to the '90s when I was living in Pakistan. And this was the only book that I had in my possession for a couple of years. A couple of years when she was basically held in captivity in Pakistan. I'll tell you how she found herself holed up with only one book in a minute. But first, here's how she ended up in captivity. She was raised in suburban Maryland. Her father was an economist, her mom a teacher. She went to an all girls' prep school. At 11, she learned her parents weren't her biological parents. Her mom, the oldest daughter in her family, couldn't have kids and really wanted to. And so Shamyla's family came up with a solution, one that's not unusual in Pakistan. Since her mom was the oldest, it was her younger sister's obligation to give her a child. And because of this family pressure and a sense of duty, the younger sister did it. But then it got complicated. Well, my adoptive parents had kids. They had a son. And then they had another son, and that really made my biological family confused and angry. And they were like, we gave you our child. And now you have your own children. Give us our daughter back. And my mom said, I'm not going to give her back. She's not a ball. I can't toss her back. For years, they fought over this. When Shamyla was 12 on a visit home to Pakistan, her birth parents asked if they could take her on a trip. Her mom agreed as a gesture of goodwill. It'd just be a week long, and she'd get to know her cousins, who were actually her brothers. And at first, it was really fun. Until I got really sick at someone's house, and it turned out I had malaria. And what I didn't realize at the time was that they had taken me there on purpose because it was way out in the country where no one could find me. Two weeks go by, then three. She's all better, asking when she can go back. And they kept making excuses. Um, you just need to wait. We have some other places to go. And I remember at some point, my biological father taking me aside very kindly and saying, we're your real family. They never loved you. We love you. They loved you like the way people love slippers, like an old used pair of slippers. But they love their boys because that's their blood. And we're your blood, and that's how we love you. So you're staying with us now. They don't let her leave, and she's really confused. Of course my US parents love me. They must love me. But then if they loved me, why aren't they coming to get me? Unbeknownst to her, her US parents are trying to find out where she is. But no one will tell them. To make matters worse, her US parents are not legally Shamyla's parents. The adoption was never formal. She was just handed over. So they have no legal claim to their daughter. And there's nothing Shamyla could do. She was 12. Even if I fantasized about running away to another city and seeing other relatives, I was like, how will I do it? What will I do? Where will I get the money? How will I get on a train? How will I get on a plane? What will I do? You were trapped. I was trapped, yeah. She says her birth parents told her when she was growing up, whenever they saw her, it was upsetting to them. They thought, she's too Americanized. They were incredibly traditional, even for Pakistan, which is already very patriarchal. Women are expected to be subordinate. And if their purity is questioned, like if they're even seen speaking to a man in a public place, their family's reputation could be ruined. And the whole family could be ostracized from the community for it. This is especially the case in Peshawar, where her birth parents lived. And Shamyla, a suburban Maryland tween, didn't understand that this was the world she lived in now. She says everything about the way she acted was wrong in their eyes. They didn't approve of the music she listened to or the books she read. They thought they were teaching her to be far too independent for a girl. At this rate, she'd become promiscuous any day now. And since they didn't trust her not to be, they kept her under house arrest, confining her to a corner of the house that consisted of a bedroom and a bathroom. And they confiscated her cassettes and her books. Her birth father would lecture to her for hours. His favorite three topics were America is a bad place, especially for girls. American women are loose character and horrible. The second topic was your adopted family never really loved you. Never. And the third topic was so here's what you're going to do when you get married. These are your wifely duties, including your sexual obligations to your husband. He'd also lecture her about the rules she needed to follow. Some were the normal rules of an observant Muslim home. She couldn't go out without being covered, make eye contact, wear her hair down. Others were cultural. She couldn't hug people, wear glasses when guests came over, speak English or Urdu, which would be seen as a sign of modernity. Only Pashto, the language of the region, was allowed. She couldn't serve herself food before her brothers. She was barely allowed to eat. They thought she needed to be thin to get married, so they locked the fridge. She says if she messed up, she was beaten with a kitchen squeegee, which cut her face open, or a walking stick. That was the worst one, she says. The second worst one was with a golf club. And the third worst one was with cleats near my eye. They took cleats and hit you with them. No, I think I got kicked. She asked me not to reach out to her birth parents to confirm these details because she was worried for her safety. And I didn't. The members of her family here in the States confirmed that this is what her birth parents are like. And her mother and therapist corroborated that her story of being abused has always remained consistent. I remember after every time they would beat me, I put an X on whatever calendar I had and be like, this will never happen again. I will be so good now that this will never happen again. Like from this day forward, I'll finally be a good girl. Yep. Did you feel like you'd never be the girl they wanted you to be? No, I thought eventually, I'm going to get there. I just have to keep trying. Mhm. I really thought that eventually, I'm going to become that person. And you wanted to be that person? I think that I thought I had no choice. She wasn't just physically abused. As she got older, she says she was also sexually abused by her brother. And finally, into this bleakness comes a book, the book, Little Women. So one of my friends noticed the book at a book fair at our school. All these books had come from Singapore, and there was Little Women. I was like, I know this book, and I want it. And I remember thinking, oh my god, I read that book when I was little. I had a huge, beautiful illustrated copy growing up. And I said to my friend Mirjana, I was like, Mirjana, can you please buy it? It's 10 rupees, and I'll pay you back. She'd tried smuggling books home before, but she'd always been caught. She hid the book inside her mattress pad underneath the bed, and she broke it into sections, roughly eight piles, so that it didn't make the mattress stick up in any way. When she heard her family go out, she'd wait and then carefully unzip the mattress pad and take a section of the book out at a time. Whichever one she pulled out first, she read. It was the book of my life. It was the only book I had to escape. It was the only book that I had to actually read over and over again. And I kind of memorized it. I'm going to read you some quotes from the book. And just interrupt if you know where it is or what this is about. And then I'm going to just randomly open the book. [LAUGHS] This feels like a pop quiz. Yeah. Ooh. "'Mercy on me. Beth loves Laurie,' she said, sitting down on--" Oh, this is when Beth is ill, and Beth is changing. And she thinks the secret is that Beth is in love with Laurie. "Mrs. March and Jo were deep in their own affairs when a sound from Meg made them look up to see her staring at her note." Oh, that's when Meg has written to Mr. Brooke, and he actually writes back. But it was Laurie pretending to be Mr. Brooke. We did this eight times, and she's able to get everything I read within seconds. You're good at this. [LAUGHS] I told you I read this book over, and over, and over. How many times? Oh, hundreds. By now, it's probably thousands. If you haven't read Little Women, it's basically about four sisters, the March sisters. Meg, the oldest, is the responsible one. Jo is the rebel and the writer. Beth is sick. And Amy, the youngest, is a spoiled brat. Their father's serving in the Civil War, and their mother is raising them alone. The book follows these girls from childhood into adulthood. Were there parts of the book that you would just read over and over? Like, your favorite parts. I loved reading the parts in the beginning when the two sisters would talk to each other, Meg and Jo, and their bond. Because I didn't have a sister, and I had no one to talk to. And I really loved the scenes about parties and stuff. She loved these scenes because they mirrored her life in a really specific way. Her birth parents were upper middle class, and they wanted to use Shamyla to marry into a higher class. So they dressed her up and took her to social events to show her off. In the book, there are events like this that the March sisters go to. There's a chapter about Meg and Jo going to a party in the very beginning. And they're not out yet in society. And I was like, oh my god. This 1860-something book is what's happening in Peshawar in 1990. Oh my god. It's the same thing. I'm not out yet in society, and I have to be very careful how I present myself. In a way, Little Women was the perfect book for Shamyla's situation because it's like a how-to for girls, a survival guide. Like most women who read the book, the sister Shamyla relates to the most is Jo. She was my favorite, too. I was raised in a strict religion, and my life was supposed to be about marriage and motherhood. And then Jo came into my orbit and showed me I could have ambition, and be improper, and break the rules. And I loved her for it. And that's how Shamyla felt. Jo helped Shamyla hold onto the identity her family was trying so hard to squash. There is a part where Jo and Laurie go running, and Meg scolds her and says, when will you learn to be ladylike? And she says, I hope never. I always want to run, and I always want to romp. And I thought, me, too. I never want to have to stop being spirited and independent. And I remember Jo had a temper in the book, and I thought, I have a temper, too. And she's working really hard to curb it. I was like, I am, too. I didn't have any of the freedom Jo had. But in my heart, I was just as feisty and independent. So I think it's very funny when nowadays, my friends are like, well, you were so meek. And I was like, I was never meek. That's just a facade. [LAUGHS] I'm Jo. I get her. But in a way, what's so interesting is it's so literally like, your way of being Jo was reading about Jo. That's where you actually got to be Jo. Yeah. I couldn't really do anything else. In the book, Jo writes stories. Shamyla loved to write, too. But she says the second year she was there, her birth father declared girls aren't supposed to write, and took a notebook filled with her stories and burned it in the backyard, and made her watch. In the book, Jo writes her stories alone in the attic. This gave Shamyla the idea to sneak into her bathroom with a fountain pen and paper and write. And then I would wash all the ink off the paper, crumple up the wet paper, and throw it out the hole in the window mesh. Wait, you would write the stories, and then erase everything you'd written. So there was a hose that attached from the tub to the sink. And so I would take that hose and wash all the ink off. Down the drain of the-- There was a floor drain, and I would make sure that the floor drain was not blue with the blue ink and that there was no sign of ink that had fallen off the papers. Shamyla knew how her family would react if they caught her writing, or if they found her copy of Little Women and read any of it. Like, there's a boy in the book. His name is Laurie. He and Jo have an innocent flirtation. But Shamyla says if her birth parents read that part, they'd think-- You don't go over to an adolescent boy's house ever. There's no innocence in this. In real life, Jo and Laurie would be doing very bad things. This is not right. They're saying in real life, Jo and Laurie would be getting it on? Basically. I mean, that would have been a better book, right? I loved that. Oh my gosh. That was, like, my fanfiction. I would write that. That's so funny. After a year, Shamyla's American mother was allowed to visit her. Shamyla told her what was happening. Her American mother cried and begged for her extended family to intervene and send Shamyla back to the States, but it was useless. Shamyla felt abandoned and hopeless. So she gave in. Did her best to make herself into the obedient Pashtan girl they wanted her to be. There's a scene in the book, one I hated because it was so sad, that Shamyla read over and over again. I reread Beth's dying a lot because there was this sense of helplessness. And I really understood that in a way that a lot of people don't. Because I knew when something's inevitable, and it's going to happen, they keep saying the tide's going out in the book. And I was like, yeah, when the tide goes out, you just have to go with it. You can't fight it. I understood that on a level I couldn't even explain. I just knew what that meant. It sounds like their world feels so real to you. I know, it really does. I felt like I lived with them sometimes. What do you mean? Like, I felt like I was watching them. Like, I was, like, the servant or something, watching. I felt like I lived in the attic, and I could go downstairs and see them. They couldn't see me, but I could see them. Uh-huh. And I would join the world. Like, I would join in. Her real world, of course, was much darker. By the time she got to 17 or 18, she concluded that there's really only one way out to escape her family and maybe even have a happy life. I was like, OK, so the way out is marriage. So I have to play this game to get married. And I started to actually kind of be like, OK, so in Little Women, you know how Meg goes to society dances and wears her glove and skirts, putting her hair up? I was like, I can do this. I can do this to get the best possible way out. I was really thinking about how to create my life with someone else and what that would look like. And so I had stopped so much caring about going home or going back. And marriage is actually what the second part of Little Women is about. The second half of the book is very different from the first. It covers domestic duties and how the girls let go of their wild ways to become good wives. Shamyla, not a big fan of part two. The second book, I remember thinking, I don't like this part. I like going back to their childhood and reading that part again and again and again. Oh, the second part is the worst. I know. It's so, so, so sad. I think I'd really forgotten the message of the second half of the book. And it it's just kind of infuriating when you realize how, in some ways, it feels almost like a propaganda for becoming the way you're supposed to be. Yeah, I remember thinking when Meg gets married, they have a whole chapter about how she loses her freedom. And I was like, oh god, I don't want that to be my story when I get married. I understood a lot of that because that was what was being asked of me at that time, to give up, give up, give up in order to be a woman to live in this society and be married and have a family. A friend at Shamyla's school told her she had a brother that Shamyla could marry who would treat her well. So she began corresponding with him via her friend. But her family found out, and they were terrified that their reputation was going to be destroyed by it. Girls do not communicate directly with boys, and they did what lots of families might do. They pulled her out of school and quickly started arranging her marriage to a 30-year-old man. As part of their damage control, they decided to send Shamyla away for a few weeks. But their only relatives who weren't in Peshawar were in America. So they made arrangements to send her back. And while she was there, her birth father and mother wanted her to learn new skills that would add to her bride price, the money the groom's family would be expected to pay them. He sent me with a whole list. He was like, you have to learn driving, shorthand, swimming. It just seems like after all the work they did to get you to stay and also their plans to marry you off, it just seems crazy that they would let you go back. Well, it's funny because she even said something crazy. She's like, if they're going to do anything to fix your face-- because remember, they cut my face open-- she's like, ask them if they can put a mole down there, like Cindy Crawford. And so I was like, OK, let's add mole to the list of things that will happen. They send her to stay with her US parents. Her birth father is so confident that Shamyla is one of them now, that she'll obediently return to Pakistan, he doesn't question letting her go. A female chaperone traveled with her. So we walked onto the tarmac. I climbed up in the plane. And as the plane took off, I just started crying nonstop because I knew I wasn't coming back. I just knew. I didn't know how I knew it. I don't why I knew it. And then watching Pakistan slip away, and I'm like, I'm not going back here. It's never happening. And was it relief? No, I was sad. I was really, really sad. I was like, goodbye, life that I knew. At first, she had a hard time coming back to America. She was in total culture shock. She could hardly speak English. She didn't recognize her little brothers. The internet existed now. It was like she'd woken up from a coma. I remember thinking, like, I still like big hair. And everyone's like, that ended in 1989. No one does that anymore. And I was like, but I like that. They're like, no, now we straighten our hair. And I was like, I don't like that. Well, you have to. She enrolled in community college, but she'd been so indoctrinated, it was hard for her to just switch it off. She'd see women in skirts and catch herself judging them. For the first few years, she was a mess. Trying to switch off the ideology was nearly impossible. She started to see a therapist who helped her process the extent of what happened to her. There's something her mother said to me on the phone I can't stop thinking about. It's something she told her little sister once. "Between you and me, we've ruined Shamyla's life." It's been 23 years since she returned. Her life actually diverged from the second half of Little Women, the part she didn't like. She didn't get married, and she's independent. She runs her own practice as a therapist and social worker. She specifically works with people who suffer from trauma because she understands it so well herself. But sometimes she still returns to Little Women. Well, it comes up in different situations. I'll be like, OK, so-- the other day, I actually-- this is funny. My friend has twins, and she was telling me, like, god, I'm so tired. And they don't listen, and my husband is so busy. And I referred her to the chapter of Meg trying to discipline her twins. And I was like, read this. This will help you. Wait. Are you constantly like-- do your friends have a joke, where, like, oh, not another Little Women reference? No, I think that they think it's funny that I like the book so much, but I don't think anyone really understands why. Wait. So it's, like, your only frame of reference. Yeah. When she's having a hard time or making a decision, she asks the question, opens the book, and whatever passage she reads, it's her answer from the March sisters. And she also has this ritual. So every year on my birthday, I find the corresponding age that I am for the chapter I am, and I read that. In other words, chapter 30 when she turned 30, chapter 31 when she turned 31. To be like, so what is this year going to be about in my life? What's it telling me? So it's almost like your magic eight ball. Yeah, kind of. It's like my Bible. What did you turn this year? I'm 41. And what chapter? Oh, it's called "Learning to Forget." It's when Laurie's trying to forget Jo, and he starts falling in love with Amy. And how do you think that's going to relate to this year? Maybe this year, finally, someone's going to fall in love with me. [LAUGHS] The right one, not all the wrong ones. There are 47 chapters in Little Women. In six years, she'll turn 48, and she doesn't know what she'll do. She says maybe she'll start from the beginning again. And whereas the book used to be a way of escaping her room in Pakistan, now it's a way of returning to that world she built alone in her room. It's as if the March sisters are all still living there, and she's the one who left them behind. Elna Baker is one of the producers of our show. Shamyla told a version of this story herself on the storytelling podcast Risk, which tapes for a live audience. You can hear that version and all those stories at risk-show.com. Coming up, Wu Tang is for the children, children of the future. So is Wu Tang the future? That's in a minute on Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on the show, of course, we choose a theme, bring you different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show, The Weight of Words, stories about the words that people turn to for comfort or strength. We've arrived at Act Two of our show. Act Two, Daddy Lessons. So the most recent bit of serious parenting that my dad did with me-- and I say this realizing that this might be the very last life lesson he might give me, we are both getting up there in years-- was a protracted month-long campaign to switch from Excel to Quicken to keep track of my personal finances. He felt very strongly about this. And I just want to say yes, the numbers add up the same, no matter what software you use. But Quicken-- I mean, don't get my dad started. He's a retired CPA. He had already trained me to save all my receipts. Please, that's basic. And he went on with this at such length that at some point, I realized, oh, switching software was not a piece of friendly financial advice. This was actual parenting happening. Not switching to Quicken meant an actual repudiation of him as a father. It would actually be a failure of parenthood. Parents try to shape who we are in their own image so often. They make sure their kids are exposed to whatever-- modern art, sports, nature, science, theater, whatever they love. They train them to be the world's greatest tennis player or golfer, that kind of thing. My friend, Adam, came up with a scheme like that. Neil Drumming is one of our producers here. His friend Adam is Adam Mansbach, a writer. Adam is a DJ, a record collector. And he wanted his daughter, Vivian, to love music the way he loved music, exactly the way he loved music. One of the things I feel like I got right about parenting is that I never played Viv any kids' music because I understood that any song that you played a two-year-old, a three-year-old, might become their favorite song, and then you would have to listen to it 20 times a day. So I never played her anything I wasn't willing to listen to 20 times a day. So she from a very young age was listening to a lot of music I liked. Is that a thing that you got right about parenting, or is that a thing that you just did for yourself? I mean, [LAUGHS] aren't the two synonymous really, Neil? I'm not sure what the difference is. Adam likes '80s and '90s hip hop perhaps more than me, which is saying a lot. Anyway, he fed Vivian a steady diet of classic material-- A Tribe Called Quest, Public Enemy, Run-DMC, Das EFX. There was probably a year, probably two years, where the Stetsasonic record In Full Gear got more play in our house than any other record. We may be the only household in North America that can say that, that in the year 2014, we listened to In Full Gear more than any other album. What is that record, '88? Yeah, it came out in '88. This exposure therapy approach to parenting has been known to fail. I grew up surrounded by beds that were always made. But if you walked into my apartment now, you'd see no evidence of that. In Adam's case, though, it worked. He noticed that by the time she was six years old, Vivian could rap along to any hip hop song he played her. She would memorize it, and she would be very much in the pocket and just not missing a beat. I remember one of the songs that we played a lot was "The Choice is Yours" remix by Black Sheep. I remember recording her just on my phone, doing the third verse of the song, the famous third verse of the song, "Engine, engine, number nine." (RAPPING) If my train goes off the track, pick it up! Pick it up! Pick it up! Back on the scene, crispy and clean. You can try, but then why? She had it, like, perfectly down, and it's not an easy verse to do. And I remember sending it to our friend, J. Period, who, in turn, sent it to Dres from Black Sheep. And he was like, yo, this is incredible. Tell her-- give her my props. And I was like, yo, Viv. You're, like, six, so this means nothing to you, but Dres from Black Sheep said that you're dope. This is his song. (RAPPING) Engine, engine, number nine on the New York transit line. If my train goes off the track, pick it up! Pick it up! Pick it up! Come on. Like a lot of guys our age, Adam tried his hand at being a rapper when he was younger. He joined a group. They made some songs that never quite went anywhere. He stayed in the hip hop world, though. He still has a lot of connections. So he was thrilled to find out his daughter had some skills. And proud father that he is, he wanted more people to know. When another one of his entertainment industry buddies needed a theme song for a PBS kids show he was making called Bug Bites, Adam jumped at the chance to write Vivian some original material. (RAPPING) Six legs, eight legs, fly and crawl. Let's get it, world, come one, come all! Bugs can teach us so much more about the world. Let's go explore! Some of these facts are incredible knowledge, like bees keep flowers and vegetables growing. The show wound up not using the song, but Adam couldn't stop listening to it. He walked around playing it over and over in his headphones. I mean, I knew she was skilled, but I sort of took it for granted. I was like, oh, that's just regular. Everybody can rhyme. Everybody I know can rhyme, you know? But I remember at that point being like, oh, you know what? This is really unique. Did this change your expectations for what this could be? Yeah, I think it opened it up. It made me want to maybe want to do more and see where we could take this. And so they did. (RAPPING) Step into my office and have a seat. He and Vivian would plan out songs during the winters in California and record with his music industry friends back east during the summers. Writing for Vivian, Adam would layer in little in-jokes they shared or references that he knew his daughter would appreciate. Like when she was into Percy Jackson, he'd weave in the Greek gods. When she was into Harry Potter, he worked that in. (RAPPING) Yeah. I'm nice with mine like Dumbledore, so what you want to rumble for? Vivian recorded under the moniker the Jazz Wolf, a name that she came up with. Her first real taste of mainstream exposure came by way of a song that Adam, who's originally from Massachusetts, wrote for her to perform in a hometown Boston accent. (RAPPING) My name's Clarissa, I'm wicked pissa. That girl Amber, I had to diss her. You opened up a powder keg, you freakin' chowder head. I'm a hot target, you're workin' star market. They made a video for the song, which made it onto the home page of the popular humor website, Funny or Die. But "Mush Lobsta" was more like a comedy bit than a banger. More DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince than it was Erik B. & Rakim. Adam didn't feel the song was representative of how he imagined Vivian as an artist. It was a funny song, but it was a funny song. It wasn't truly indicative of her skills as an MC because it was more focused on dropping Massachusetts-centric jokes. (RAPPING) Eat a rind and drink a beer, and then I slap a critic. You're off the rez like Teddy was at Chappaquiddick. Adam had told me that his kid rapped early on, but I didn't understand how serious the two of them were about this until September of 2017 when I received an email from Adam with no subject heading. Attached to the email were two remarkably well produced songs, described in the body of the email simply as Jazz Wolf Heat Rocks. One of these so-called heat rocks featured Vivian, who I'd met once only briefly, but knew to be a small blonde white girl, rapping over a fluttery dancehall rhythm in full on Jamaican Patois. Did listening to this reggae song, penned by a best-selling Jewish author for his nine-year-old and most likely recorded in or near his house on Martha's Vineyard, make me feel uncomfortable? Yeah, sure, a little. But I've been listening to hip hop a long time. And between all the sampling, and biting, and flipping styles, I've kind of made my peace with cultural appropriation. All I ask is that you give credit where credit is due and that you do your due diligence. Neil, I should say that I had some misgivings about the song. I was going to ask. I definitely-- really, the first thing I did was send it to every Jamaican I knew and be like, yo, so what do you think about this? Anyway, the point is it wasn't just me and some Caribbean islanders who got this email. Adam was stepping up Vivian's game and had sent the Jazz Wolf de facto demo to just about every music industry contact he had. To a certain degree, it worked. Friends praised his daughter's music. Artists who Adam admired wanted to record with her. A big player in the music industry who'd had a hand in discovering Lauryn Hill suggested that they record more songs for a legitimate demo. Bolstered by all this interest, Adam set out to write Vivian something really special. It was the kind of thing he'd have written for himself back in his rapping days-- multi-syllabic, rapid fire, a real showpiece designed to take the Jazz Wolf all the way to the next level. He was on a business trip when the ghost writer in him really took over. And I remember I had to go away for a week. I was in Chicago doing some stuff. And I was writing bars for her, and I was really trying to write the most complicated, difficult verses I could because I knew she could handle it. And I was like, this is going to be really fun. And I came back with the song, and we rehearsed it for a long time. We got a beat from Dug Infinite, an illustrious producer who worked with Common and all kinds of people. And Viv had been practicing it for weeks. And we had plans to go to his house and record it. She was nine at the time. I remember because the chorus of the song played with the fact that she was nine. We flipped the chorus from 9 millimeter goes bang, and it was like, (RAPPING) wadadadang, wadadadang, 'ey, listen, 'cause I'm nine, and I kick enough slang. But despite all Adam's craft and preparation, there was an unforeseen but not unforeseeable issue with the talent. She hadn't slept that night. We had a new baby. Vivian has two younger sisters, and the older of the two at that time was only a few months old and was up crying. And so Viv was, like, on no sleep. And I remember we got to the studio really early. And she was just exhausted and not really at her peak. And it was difficult for her to get it down. And we kind of called it-- we cut it short. I was like, you know what? Let's come back another day, Dug, because this isn't-- you know. I'm sorry. No, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be like that. Nah, are you kidding me? It's not your fault. That's Vivian. She was in the studio with her dad during this interview. She's 11 now. Right? So I remember coming back from there, and Viv was tired. And in the car, she told me. She was like, Papa, I'm just not that into this right now. Something along those lines, like I'm not into you writing me these rap songs right now. Vivian, do you remember this moment at all? This night? I did. And I think that-- I think the reason I told him then was that-- this is going to sound really stupid. But I thought that because-- I think he would be less angry if he knew I was tired and didn't want to argue. So you had already come to this decision. Yeah. I mean, we hadn't talked about it, but I had already gone through it in my head what I was trying to say. OK, let's back up a bit. Vivian's dissatisfaction with how Adam was steering her rap career goes back long before this night-- back many car rides, in fact. She recalls trying to listen to new music while riding with her dad. Just flipping through radio stations in the car and him turning on a radio station, and I was like, oh, yeah, this one. He's like, oh, that's hot trash. We're not listening to that. You see, Adam didn't realize this, but even while she'd been sharing his love of hip hop, Vivian had been developing her own taste. She'd started to enjoy more contemporary music, god forbid, even pop music-- Taylor Swift, and later Ke$ha, and Nicki Minaj, and Cardi B. But she'd been listening to music through Adam's ears long enough to understand and internalize just how much he wouldn't approve. So you felt like there were things that you liked that you couldn't tell him about? No. Well, there were things that I liked that I could tell him about, but that I didn't feel like there was any point to telling him about because he would tell me all the errors. And I would be like, yo, like, listen to this person's voice! Or like, this song is so good, and play it. And then afterward, Papa would be like, you want to hear something good? And then run into where he keeps his records, and I'm like, oh gosh. Do you remember any examples of this? One time, I was playing him a song from Hamilton, where someone was rapping really fast. And I played it, and he just, like, half listened. And then afterward, he's like, you want to hear really fast rapping? And I'm like, oh god. Well, what did you play her, Adam? Well, all right, all right. Let me back up for a second. Like-- Sorry, Papa. At the risk of getting on my soapbox and with the full understanding this is never going to make it actually into this piece. My thing with Hamilton was like, cool, Hamilton is fine. My issue with it is that a billion people who have no-- Here, Adam's critique of Hamilton, while spirited, is mostly remarkable in that he somehow manages to vehemently object to the musical's popularity, while simultaneously name dropping his friendship with one of its former stars, Daveed Diggs. Vivian didn't just want to feel free to listen to Hamilton in the car on the way to school. She wanted to incorporate all of her newfound influences into her own music. I felt like, I mean, it's really cool that I'm doing all Papa's cool stuff, but if I have this voice and I have access to this recording, can't I use it to do things that are more my style? It's not all that surprising that someone Vivian's age would eventually diverge from the path her father set her on when she was six. And this wasn't even the first time Vivian had stood up to her dad. She's usually pretty outspoken. But she told me this time was different-- that she had been more scared than usual to speak her mind, and that it took her months to work up the courage. She was right to be concerned. Adam took it noticeably hard. To hear him tell it, he interpreted this slight rejection as a sort of referendum on his parenting. I felt a certain kind of sadness on a couple of levels. First, disappointment in myself for getting carried away, and making her feel uncomfortable or making her feel like an unwilling participant in this project. And also just a sense of letdown, that like wow, maybe we were no longer going to be hanging out after dinner, playing instrumentals and fitting rhymes to them, and practicing, and rehearsing, and cutting scratch demos, and that kind of thing. Because it was something that brought me a lot of joy, both reveling in her skill, but really, more than anything, just spending time together and that feeling of collaboration, which is wonderful when you find it with anybody. But when you find it with your own kid, it's magical. I mean, this is me, like, armchair psychotherapist, but was there any part of you that was deflecting some energy into this in a way that maybe was more for you than for Vivian? That's a great question. I mean, the whole period of time that we're talking about is fairly tumultuous. I mean, from when Viv was six until now-- Five years. Five years. I mean, that's a period of time that covers her mom and I splitting up. It covers a new relationship, two new babies. So yeah, you probably have a point there, I mean, at least in the sense of this being something that was purely fun, and exciting, and didn't feel heavy in any way. They never did finish that song. Adam and Vivian's magical collaboration was not infinitely sustainable. But so what? When everything was happening in our family also, it was a way for me to connect with Papa. And also after we'd had a lot of fun kicking rhymes, we could talk about the more important stuff. He could be like, how do you feel about the new baby? And I feel like it just-- I would be a lot less close with Papa now if we hadn't spent so much time together doing that. Like, I wouldn't be coming into your room and be like, let's talk about this. Mm. But the rapping was a way into it. Yeah. I'm glad. That makes me happy. I'm glad to hear that. Recently, Vivian has been getting more into singing. She writes her own poems and adapts them into songs. She's written a few, and she thinks she could be good at it with a little time and a little help. I wouldn't say that I totally want Papa to be out of my career as a singer. Like, he's super supportive, and he's obviously the one with all the connections. But-- Practical. That's very practical of you. That's smart. Yeah, it's very cold-blooded right there. I'm a father myself. It's a new thing-- so new, in fact, that all I can say definitively about the experience so far is that I am terrified every single day about what's coming. I look around to my friends as scared people do. And the thing that Adam pulled off gives me some hope. He found an easy way to be with his daughter through difficult times. He constructed something fun that they could share no matter what else was swirling around them. And the outcome was perhaps the best one that any parent can imagine. Vivian got it. At least for a little while, she was right there with him. What do you guys remember? Do you guys remember-- does anyone remember the super complicated song? Yeah. I remember only the second verse, though. Oh, do it. Wait. Let me just do it in my head for a second. OK. You want me to do it now, Papi? Yeah, do it. (RAPPING) [INAUDIBLE] solemnly swear to scar you horribly. Destiny calling me, honestly [INAUDIBLE] me. But they can't do much harm to me. I'm open like a pharmacy. Karmically, I'm untouchable, highly combustible. Ah, I can't remember the rest right now. The Jazz Wolf is back. What. Stop. Neil Drumming. Act Three, Where It Came From. OK, so our show today is about words that have special weight of one sort or another, especially when we're kids. And we thought we would end today's show with this, from one of our producers, Ben Calhoun. This is a story that, honestly, I never imagined I'd tell on the radio. It happened when I was seven and my sister was two. We were grocery shopping with my mom in my hometown, Milwaukee. This is at Sentry Foods at 71st and Lisbon. While we were in the store, my sister did the very normal toddler thing of deciding that she was tired and demanding to be carried. She started throwing a fit, whining, refusing to walk. My mom tried, but then did the normal parent thing of deciding to ignore the tantrum, just to shop as fast as she could and get the heck out of there. We were almost out of the store when all of a sudden, a man walked up to my sister. He stood right over her and shouted down at her, "Stop it. You stop it right now." He stomped his foot at her to scare her. "You stop it. Stop it right now." I remember my sister staring at him, terrified. My mom stepped in to gather my sister up. "She's two, and she's having a tantrum," she said to the man. "You're too old to be having a tantrum." But the guy followed us, walking right behind us as we got into the parking lot, trying to get to our car. I remember it was hot and sunny, and otherwise, a beautiful day. For a second, it wasn't clear what the man was going to do. But then as he got closer, he started shouting a bunch of things at my mother. The one I remember specifically, "You people need to discipline your children." My mom is Chinese-American. My family's mixed. Before we could get in our car, the man came right up to my mom and got in her face, puffing his chest out. He kept shouting. "You people need to go back where you came from!" he yelled. "Go back where you came from." That's how my mom and I both remember it. As he was yelling and in her face, I remember how my mom kind of froze. And I remember feeling very, very scared. This man was so much bigger than my mom, who's small-- just 5'2". And this guy was kind of a ruddy, older white man, who, if I had to bet, was maybe 60. For a second, I thought he might hit her or push her. And I felt that kid feeling of seeing something happening in the world of grown ups that you have absolutely no power over. My mom, she had this panicked look on her face as she tried to find a way out. And that made me even more scared. I also remember feeling, for the first time ever, that my mom was in danger, not the normal kid feeling that your parents are kind of an unshakable raft of security. I told my son this story last week. He's seven, the same age I was when this happened. And when I told him, the fear we felt was the thing I left out-- how menacing it was, how scared we were. I'm not sure how long this moment in the parking lot went before a young guy, who worked at the store, who'd been in the parking lot gathering carts, was suddenly nearby. He was smaller than the guy and built like a teenager, but he said loudly to the guy, "Leave her alone." And then it was just kind of over. This was the first time I realized that someone could do this, that my mother's right to belong was somehow different. That because she looks the way she looks, and I look the way I look, it was an invisible trap door always under us-- a question about whether we belonged as much as others, which itself was a statement that we hadn't totally belonged in the first place. This has never been a story I've told all that much. Like, I never thought it was something that would have any kind of contemporary resonance, in part because I considered it a remnant of something on the wane. That the sentiment of that man, even if it was out there, it was shrinking toward some horizon. For that matter, I never thought the meaning of this story would feel complicated. If anything, it was pat. It was the stuff of after school specials and teachers saying the country wasn't a melting pot, it was a stew pot. It was fine for those things, but not very interesting otherwise. And I never thought I'd be wrong about that until now. Now for obvious reasons, I've been thinking about this a lot, in part because those congresswomen don't look unlike my mom did when she was in her 30s, and the guy did not look unlike the president. I never once thought, in the last 30 whatever years, that this story would ever be a political one. I'm surprised that it is. And I'm surprised how it is. I never once thought that people might hear this and put me on one side or the other of anything. I never would have thought that was even possible. But aside from the big things I didn't anticipate, I want to leave you with what might be the smallest. When I decided to tell this story, I called my mom to check my memory. When we talked, all the details were where I thought they were. Everything matched. But she also told me something I didn't know. See, that grocery store, the Sentry store at the corner of 71st and Lisbon, it's still her grocery store. She's been shopping there for years. But she told me, maybe five years ago, before any of these big national developments, that she went in one day and she asked to talk to the owner. She did that because she wanted to tell him this story decades after it happened. Because whoever that clerk was, he'd seen what that man was doing, and he'd stepped in. She didn't know who he was or think the owner would know, but she wanted someone to know how grateful she still is. I am, too. Ben Calhoun is one of the producers of our show. Our program was produced today by Sean Cole and Bim Adewunmi with help from Nadia Reiman. The people who put this show together today include Elna Baker, Emanuele Berry, Ben Calhoun, Zoe Chace, Dana Chivvis, Whitney Dangerfield, Neil Drumming, Damien Grave, Jessica Lussenhop, Stowe Nelson, Catherine Raimondo, Ben Phelan, Tracy [INAUDIBLE], Alissa Shipp, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Svetala, Matt Tierney, and Nancy Updike. Our managing editor is Diane Wu. Our executive editor is David Kestenbaum. Special thanks to David Judy Meltzer, Bishop Gene Robinson, Dr. Barry Holtz, Deborah Moore, Hamza Syed, Ahmed Ali Akbar, Zainab Shah, Khalid Latif, Hannah Jewell, Ben Zimmer, Karl Baker, and Tom Howell. Our website, thisamericanlife.org, where you can stream our archive of over 675 episodes, news, videos, and lists of favorites, and tons of other stuff there. Or get our app, which has all that stuff and also lets you download as many episodes as you want. Again, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. He just saw the film Cool Runnings last week, and he wondered, is that a documentary? Really, the first thing I did was send it to every Jamaican I knew. And be like, yo, so what do you think about this? I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
I think probably every two years, I read an article about some scientist who thinks there might be a way, building off chicken DNA or whatever, to figure out the DNA of dinosaurs and bring one to life. I feel like I run into these stories all the time. There were those scientists a couple years ago who were talking about how you could take Neanderthal DNA and use it to create new Neanderthals. Or this is, I think, the realest one going. I think this is an actual thing. There's a team led by a Harvard scientist trying to bring back the woolly mammoth. That's right, the woolly mammoth. And have herds of them tromping through the Siberian tundra. That's the actual plan. And can I just say, I know you scientists, you have your reasons. But whenever I read this stuff, I think, did you guys not see Jurassic Park? Have we learned nothing from the movies? Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should. Thank you, Jeff Goldblum. Dr. Frankenstein collects the body parts of dead people, sews them together on a lab table, jolts them with some electricity-- very showy electricity, dare I say. The creature comes to life and then does things the scientist did not anticipate at all. Unintended consequences, my friends. It's not just in the movies, by the way. Of course, as we all know, discoveries in subatomic physics left the lab. Decades later, we got nuclear bombs. Scientists constructed ways with computers to network with each other in the '60s. Now, half a century later, we end up with the Russians trolling our elections through social media. Cylons return to Caprica to kill all the humans who invented them. OK, that one's not real. But my point is the same. Unintended consequences-- they happen when the experiment leaves the lab. And today on our show, we have three examples, three telling examples from three very different kinds of labs, one of them-- OK, one of those labs is actually just a laboratory of human feelings, but still. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Act One, Breakout Star. OK, so we begin with this experiment gone wrong. Like I said, this is not a traditional experiment, not a traditional laboratory, but a laboratory of human emotion, one very familiar to lots of people. I'm talking about the reality TV show, The Bachelor. Been around for 23 seasons. Every season, of course, is romance made in a Petri dish. They throw in one guy, dozens of women. Each week, the guy ejects a few women from the Petri dish until there is just one left. And that's how it went until last season, when, for the first time, one of the lab subjects, a very important one, escaped the lab with, yes, unintended consequences. One of our producers, Emanuele Berry, tells what happened. I've been watching The Bachelor for years, and I've never seen anything like what happened on Episode 9 of Season 23. There's this one moment that felt so real that I haven't shut up about it. OK, so, it's almost the last episode of the season. It's The Bachelor, so of course, they're filming in a romantic location, a beautiful property in Portugal. The bachelor this time around is Colton Underwood. He's 26, tall, sandy hair, handsome, a former football player. And as the show has mentioned a million times, he's a virgin. I could care less. Online, I saw fans of the show describe him as sweet and sincere. My roommate once called him America's chicken nugget. I'm here to fall in love, so hopefully, by the end of this, I am down on one knee. This show is a Monday night tradition in my apartment. My roommate and I open a bottle of red wine, and for two hours, we enjoy some choreographed drama, contestants who aren't there for the right reason, bachelors who didn't know it would be so hard, tearful eliminations. The entire thing, it's kind of silly. It's actually a total mess, but I'm so into it. So back to that dramatic moment. It's nighttime in Portugal, and Colton has been dumped by the girl of his dreams. He has shut himself into his room. [BLEEP] I'm done. I'm done with this. He says, "I'm done. I'm done with this." Cue the most dramatic music. He throws open the door, and his hand is suddenly covering the entire TV screen. Then this strange thing happens. Suddenly, the invisible TV crew becomes very visible. Cameramen find their way into the frame. Colton is running down the stairs. He's taking off his mic, and the producers start calling for Chris. Somebody get Chris. Chris Harrison is the host of the show, who's forever popping into scenes unannounced. And I always feel like, wait, why are you here? Colton's walking away from Chris, ignoring everyone. And then he reaches this big white fence, like an industrial security gate. It's maybe like eight feet tall. And without hesitation, in one powerful, graceful movement, he leaps up and pulls himself over. He's on the other side in a heartbeat. It's the type of move Captain America would do. And then Chris Harrison utters what is perhaps my favorite line in the history of The Bachelor. He just jumped the [BLEEP] fence. Is there a button that opens the gate? The crew takes what feels like a while to actually get the gate open. And when they finally do, Colton is gone. He is gone. The bachelor has escaped. For three minutes, I watch as they search for him, calling his name. Someone starts whistling like they're looking for a dog. Colton! Colton! I have no idea where he went. Colton. They get into cars, and they're driving around. And finally, they spot him on the side of the road. I'm asking if you're OK. No, I'm not OK. Colton keeps walking away. Chris tries to get him to talk. Manages to get him to walk toward a car, but Colton insists it's over. He says, I can't do this. I'm done. Then commercial. And when we come back, it's the next day, and it's bright and sunny. And Chris Harrison is knocking on Colton's door to talk. And it all feels sort of normal. Hey, brother. What's up? Yo, man. And I'm watching at home, and I'm confused. Like, didn't he just say he was done with the show? Yet here he is, talking with Chris, planning his next move. On the show, it's never explained how Colton went from running away and quitting to being back in front of the cameras. Like, where did he go? How long was he gone? And most important, what made him decide to come back? Like, what actually happened? The TV show gave no satisfying answer to any of that. So-- Hey, Colton. Hey, how are you? Good, how are you doing? I called him. Colton says when he signed up to be the bachelor, he'd already been on The Bachelorette, so he believed he understood how the show worked. I thought that I did. I thought that I had a lot of it figured out, and I was wrong. He explained that the whole fence jump goes back to a confusion of his own making. So on each episode, there are dates with the bachelor. Some are one-on-one. Some are big group dates. And sometimes contestants don't get selected for a date at all, which sucks, because it's really the only time you get to spend with the bachelor. And Colton told me something I didn't know watching the show, that to figure out who goes on these dates, producers are constantly checking in with the bachelor to figure out who he likes. Like, one of the women he initially hit it off with was Hannah. They always asked to rank the girls. And very early on, Hannah was up there. And she got left off of a date. In other words, in the beginning when there were over 20 contestants, this woman Hannah was his number one pick. But they didn't schedule a date with her. And I sort of recall remember feeling a little burnt when they did that. I was like, so let me get this straight. Hannah's number one on my list right now, and she's not getting a date this week. So from there on out, I was like, all right, if you're going to do that to my top girls, I'm not really going to tell you who my top girls are. Because I don't want you messing with them. So in a weird way, I tried to defend myself and defend the girls by not being truthful to them who my top was. So even after Hannah stopped being his favorite. I just kept the top the same. So Hannah was always at the top of the list when I always made the list for them to see, and I never changed it. It's so interesting because it feels like you're learning their game and then coming up with ways to sort of like either foil it, or protect yourself, or put yourself in a better position. Like, did you find yourself doing that throughout the entire process? Well, yeah. So like, that's just me wanting to set myself up for success. While Colton kept putting Hannah as his number one pick each week, the girl he fell for hardest was actually Cassie. How are you? You look amazing. How are you? Good. On a scale of one to hot, Colton is hot. I feel like we do have some chemistry, and I'm looking forward to just diving right in. She's got a surfer vibe, blonde hair, beachy waves. They had chemistry. But as a viewer, she didn't seem like a frontrunner. I kind of kept forgetting who Cassie was. I think with Cass, the best way to describe our relationship is it was such a slow burn. And it was, in a weird way, in the dynamic of The Bachelor franchise where it's supposed to be quick, and fast, and intense, it was sort of a relief to find a normal relationship in which it was a slower burn, and which it was a more realistic approach to a relationship. And I think it was just, it was almost like when I was with Cass, it was like a breath of fresh air. So toward the end of the season, they're down to just three women-- Cassie, his favorite, Hannah, who the producers think is his favorite, and Tayshia, the token black girl. They're all in Portugal, and they each have an overnight date scheduled with Colton. But someone has to be eliminated by the end of the episode. I don't know exactly what the producers intended. They declined my request for an interview. But watching the show, it seemed like they were trying to get Cassie to quit. They threw a wrench in her and Colton's relationship, a wrench shaped like Cassie's dad. Colton had met Cassie's dad in an earlier episode when he asked for permission to propose. Mind you, he did this for nearly all the remaining contestants. But Cassie's dad said no. So I feel like as far as the hand of marriage, that would be a premature blessing. I see where you're coming from. That's not exactly what I wanted to hear. A week later in Portugal, Colton's certain about Cassie. Cassie's confused. Again, I have no idea what the producers were thinking. But when I was watching it, it seemed like they were forcing Cassie's hand. The show allows a special guest to visit. Later, in that episode, her dad actually shows up, which nobody just accidentally shows up in Portugal. So the producers paid a pretty hefty price to fly that man on out to Portugal to come visit and spend time with his daughter to give her clarity. Cassie's dad talks to her, and she decides to leave the show. There shouldn't be any hesitation in your mind when you meet somebody that you want to spend the rest of your life with. None. It's a lifelong decision. It's not something you make if you're unsure. Cassie decides to tell Colton at dinner. Normally, during the dinners and during that, the producers are sort of hovering, or they're around to help the conversation flow. Or they're there just to, like, bounce ideas off of when you guys are talking. When we had that dinner, there wasn't a producer in sight. There was just the cameras, and there was just the audios. Everybody else ran. And they didn't want to be near it because I think they knew that I knew. Knew that they set him up, he means. At dinner, Cassie tells him she's leaving. And she mentions that her dad is here in Portugal and that they've been talking. Colton clearly has no idea that this was happening. And he turns as though looking for someone. Oh, I was thinking I just got screwed. I was thinking that that wasn't her doing. I know what the format of the show is. And for me hearing, hey, by the way, my dad came back, really sparked something in me. I was like, OK. So I don't have the control I thought I had. If I feel like my relationship's going to be messed with or toyed with at all, I'm going to be done. Especially at this point, I've completely fallen in love. I've completely, like, gave myself all to her. I mean, I had nothing to lose at that point besides the girl and the woman that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. So Colton's about to lose the girl that he loves. And in a perverse way, it's kind of his fault. When Colton started lying about who he liked most on his list, the show's not really built for that. It's as if an inanimate test subject suddenly became sentient. Basically, he compromised the entire experiment. He sort of played himself. I think that it backfired because then they were like, whoa, we thought it was Hannah because you kept telling us even on your list, when you'd rank them, Hannah's one. And so in the end, Cassie ends up basically sort of breaking up with you and leaving, right? Yeah. So we walk, and I just get up and we start walking to the car. And it was in the dark. I remember there was a sidewalk we were supposed to stay on. It was completely lit, and I was like, we're not staying on the sidewalk. Like, I started-- right then and there, I was like, I'm not doing showy things anymore. I'm not doing things just to go through the motions of being the bachelor. So I was starting to run through scenarios in my head as I put her in the van and said goodbye to her. I was like, all right, I'm going to go upstairs. I'm going to grab my wallet. First off, I got to get away from these people. I have to lose my mic. I have to lose the cameras. I have to just be by myself. And my plan was to get out of there and go grab a new passport, because they did have my passport. So I was like, I got my wallet. I have-- Wait. You're like, I'm going to go get a new passport? I'm done. I wanted to be done. I didn't want to talk to the people on the show. I was about to pay for my own flight to get home. I literally was done talking to everybody. So I went up, I grabbed my wallet, and I remember opening the door and the first thing I see is a camera right there. And if I had any regrets from the night, the only regret would be is actually hitting and putting a hand on the camera because that's not my property. But I was heated, so I hit the camera just to get it out of my way and went down the stairs. And that's when I undid my mic. And once I did that, I think they had an idea of what was coming next. And I remember walking up to the fence, and I had no clue how to open it. I didn't want to wait for people to open it. So without hesitation, without even thinking, I was just like, screw it. I'm over this thing. Let's do it. And I just gathered myself and jumped over the fence, fully expecting the other side to have people, producers, handlers, the food tent. I mean, the scale of this show is so big that there's people everywhere. You can never get by yourself. I mean, there are so many hands on deck, all of these things. But I jumped the fence, and there was nothing. It was darkness. It was fields. And for me, I was like, this is awesome. So I was like, I'm here. I was like, I don't want them to catch up. So I started running. So you ran, and you took off. I ran, and I took off. And I'm the worst with directions. Like, I'm very directionally challenged. And I had no clue where I was going. I remember having a ton of bright lights over to the left, so I was like, I'm just going to run towards the lights. And hopefully, I get there. Granted, these lights are, like, 40 miles away, 30 miles away. I was like, let's do it. I was running in boots and tight jeans, which is the worst combination ever to run in. And I remember hearing in the distance the producers start yelling my name, so I knew they were chasing after me. Where did you hide? You're a big dude. Were you hiding behind a tree? Were you in bushes? Oh. It was dangerous, too, because I had no clue what the laws were in Portugal. I was hopping personal fences. I was hiding behind people's cars. I was laying down in ditches. And finally, I hopped through a backyard, and there was like a chain link fence. And all of a sudden, I hear these animals. And they sort of sounded like dogs, and I love dogs. I'm a big dog person. But this was like an aggressive, growling, howling thing. And I was like, all right, this is probably a little dangerous. I probably am a little in over my head here, trying to get back and find a passport. So I'll just turn myself in. I was gone for about a good two hours. You were gone for two hours? It was yeah, when it's all said and done. So he turns himself in. Not to police, of course, but to reality TV. He does this by walking to the main road till someone finds him. When they do, he's still upset, and overwhelmed, and not ready to talk. So he plays the system. He says there's a rule that you cannot be filmed or recorded while talking to the show's therapist. So he asked for that. He says they talked for an hour while he vented and figured out his next move. And then finally, he was ready to talk to producers. What was that game plan or that conversation like? Did they have to convince you to come back? Because at that point, you were saying that you were done, right? If Cassie wasn't going to be there, you were like-- you seemed very done also. Yeah. Yes, so the game plan-- Yeah, what was the conversation like to get you to come back to the show? So the conversation was-- well, obviously, they just wanted to hear me out. They wanted to hear what I had to say. And then the game plan was to talk to Cass again, but I only wanted to do that after I talked to the other two women. The lab rat is suddenly running the lab. Colton wants to break up with the other two contestants, so he can make it clear to Cassie that she's the one that he wants and they don't have to get married. This goes totally against the show's format. It means no final two, no big bro ceremony, no proposal scene. All of these sacred touchstones are just gone from the show. It's like watching the Olympics without the medal ceremony at the end. So you felt like you sort of had more power or maybe a little more leverage to have control when you went back. Well, I think it was just me-- they knew I was serious. Like, it's one thing when leads say, OK, I'm done. Like, it's OK, but you turn around, and you're in an interview the next minute. It's like, you're not done. You're sitting right in front of them. You're doing exactly what they want you to do. So they knew not to really cross that line. In the end, he gets what he wants. He talks to Cassie. They decide to date and not get engaged. Colton is still friends with the producers. And he says he and Cassie are still together and very happy. The promos for Colton's season of The Bachelor were all about the fence jump. They tease viewers with footage of the jump. My roommate and I watched every week, asking, is this the week he does it? There's a Twitter account dedicated to the question, articles guessing when and why it would happen. The week he finally jumped, we threw a party in my apartment. There was a cake with a fence. One of the things that I think is so sort of interesting about this situation is the very big independent act that you did, which was deciding to basically run away from the show, which hasn't happened before. And then that sort of act of independence got taken and then that was the promo for the season, right? From episode one, it was like, when is Colton going to jump the fence? When is Colton going to jump the fence, over and over again. Watching those promos, how did it feel seeing this moment end up being used as a piece of plot? That was sort of hard for me to deal with because in a way, they're teasing it. America's making jokes about it, making memes about it. And that's their number one marketing and selling piece. Meanwhile, I know the seriousness behind it. I didn't really real-- I didn't even know if they were going to put that in the show until, obviously, I saw the trailer of me jumping the fence, and then I realized that they probably had to. In the end, the most disruptive thing that could have happened-- driving your lead to jump over a fence and run away-- was probably the best thing that could have happened for the TV show. Ratings for Colton's finale were up compared to the previous season, which makes sense because hopping a fence, it felt real. Those are the moments I like the most in reality shows, the rare moments of sincere emotion inside this artificial human experiment. Cameras everywhere, insane locations, over-the-top clothes-- the producers can control all that stuff. Scientists can control the lab. But they can't control the results. Emanuele Berry is one of the producers of our show. Act Two, Two Times a Lady. OK, so a product is developed in a lab. Then after months and months, it's allowed out in the world for the first time. And it does something that its creators really did not intend. It somehow pits men against women, industry leaders against an inventor. Lina Misitzis reports. She was most of the way through 2018, and Lora Haddock was making something new. Biomimicry is literally translating human or biological movement, and we're translating that into microrobotics. So we've actually created brand new mechanical workings that have never been created before. Lora knew that what she and her team were working on was innovative. But it wasn't until her newly appointed publicist encouraged her to submit it for awards that she really started seeing her new invention for what it was. That day, she looked at us and she said, you need to apply for tech awards, because this is serious tech. And I mean, you guys just made a robot. A robot named Osé. Osé left its lab in Oregon, sent out into the world for the first time to apply for this award, an innovation award at CES. That's the Consumer Electronics Show, one of the largest trade shows in the world, with more than 170,000 attendees in recent years. Run by the Consumer Technology Association, the CTA, tens of thousands of new tech products debut at CES. Among them historically are the VCR, the camcorder, the game Tetris. Winning a CES award is game changing. With it comes industry wide promotion, product listings in CTA's trade magazine, and the chance to showcase your product beside the most buzzed about products at the expo. It's a very big deal. It took about a month to get all of our patent documents together that we were submitting. And then we put everything in. And then we kind of sat and we waited. And there's a handful of judges that are experts in robotics and drones. And they decided that Osé deserved an award. And we got that email, and I think I literally went running through the office, like, yelling at all of our engineers. And pretty sure some people cried. And it was just absolutely astounding and felt so validating. The Osé is a robot-- a robotic sex toy. There's no way to talk about this without acknowledging the existence of sex and the body parts typically involved. So if you're listening with kids or you don't want to hear about it, this might not be the story for you. OK. According to its inventors, what makes the Osé different from other sex toys is that it conforms to each user's particular dimensions, stimulating both the G spot and the clitoris, resulting in a blended orgasm, which is an internal and external orgasm together in the same person at the same time. And then you go, holy shit, that was awesome. And then do you, like-- do you do it again or like-- Of course you do it again. Then you do it again just for good measure. The biomimicry part, what's being imitated by the robotics, is what Lora calls the come hither motions made by a sexual partner's hands, mouth, or both. For Lora and her team, which was largely made up of female engineers, the award meant a frenzy of activity. The Osé was still in prototype, meaning the design still needed to be finalized. The marketing and the product launch still needed planning. I was in an engineering meeting, and my phone went off and it was our publicist. And I stepped out, and I got on the phone. And I said, is everything OK? And she goes, are you sitting down? You need to sit down. And she tells me that they are revoking our award. She got this news in an email. Apparently, higher-ups got to talking. And they said when we had this bigger conversation, we decided that we are going to revoke your award. And we're very sorry to have made this mistake. I literally feel like this right now. I welled up. I was heartbroken, and angry, and very confused. The email referenced a CTA policy that products deemed by CTA to be immoral, or obscene, or indecent, or profane, or not in keeping with CTA's image could be disqualified, and that CTA reserves the right to disqualify any entry at any time. Lora couldn't help but notice that CTA had very recently been fine with other sex toys, so long as they were oriented towards penises and the people those penises were attached to. In 2017 CES show, the company Naughty America exhibited virtual reality porn. You'd put on a headset, choose from one of three boy-girl scenes, each of them through the eyeballs of the male. In one, you're a guy on a workout bench, and a woman in yoga pants just squats over you. Then you have sex. And at a media partner show at CES, the creator of Real Doll showcased his electronic sex doll Harmony, who comes with her removable mouth insert that can be washed. Harmony can also be programmed to tell you that she loves you and to exhibit character traits, like jealous, insecure, unpredictable, or helpful. Lora took inventory of all this and the fact that Osé got banned. And very quickly came to the realization that it had everything to do with the fact that it's an adult product that is geared towards females and people with vaginas. And we wrote a letter back to the CTA stating that this is-- basically, that this is absolute crap. This is wrong, and you know it. And they stood by their decision. They said, we're very sorry. There was a misunderstanding. We did not realize what the nature of your product was. And that I did not buy for a second because we looked at our application. In the very first sentence of our application, the very first sentence says this is a robot to elicit a blended orgasm that stimulates the clitoris and the G spot. So there's no questioning what kind of product this was. CTA has had a pretty tumultuous on again/off again relationship with the sex industry for decades. For a long time, sex was actually part of the trade show. Remember VHS tapes? Some of the first people to make the leap from film to VHS were porn people. And porn viewers were excited to watch porn from home instead of adult movie theaters and booths in the backs of stores. And CES wanted to connect content creators with tech manufacturers. It was lucrative. So they let porn companies display at their show, but there were strings attached. All adult content was relegated to an entirely different building from the rest of tech. Porn was still a part of CES, but to get to it, you'd have to leave the Las Vegas Convention Center and go to the Sahara, which was a casino more than a mile away. One of the main porn people back then was Paul Fishbein. He founded AVN, Adult Video News, the quintessential trade magazine of porn. You go up a little stairwell into this ballroom. And the booths were like any other booth that you would see in any other trade show. And people would have posters of movies, and they would have TV's that would play softcore clips from the movies. And they would have tables for porn stars to sit and sign autographs. What were some of the big movies in the late '80s, early '90s? Now you're really pushing. Um, hold on a second. We're talking late '80s? Yep. John Stagliano started his first Buttman movie in 1989, The Adventures of Buttman. And he went on to become a major player. And even though business was good, tensions arose. Porn exhibitors grew resentful. They were being charged the same participation costs as other tech companies, but they weren't getting the same marketing or show placement. And then things came to a head in 1998 when CES put up signs by the sex industry section bathrooms that said: "Stop. These restrooms are shared with exhibit personnel in the adult software area. You may choose another bathroom. Thank you." As porn veteran Bryn Pryor, who was also AVN's managing editor back then, told me in an email, the implication of those signs was that sex workers might have, quote, "diseases or molest you or shit on the floor." The next year, 1999, the divorce. Porn splintered off from CES. AVN began hosting their own expo only for adult content. And for a while, they still held it the same weekend as CES. CES, meanwhile, banned porn from their show, though, obviously, some sex stuff still found its way onto the show floor. Which brings us back to 2019. With her tech award gone and her sex toy robot banned from CES, Lora wrote another letter, this one an open letter, and posted it to Osé's website on midnight, January 8, the day CES was starting in Vegas. Our very first bit of coverage surfaced right about 9:00 AM. And all of a sudden, the floodgates opened. The story was picked up by Fast Company, The New York Times, Fortune, Gizmodo, Glamour, Cosmo, Wired, The Guardian, and more. Headlines like "Women's Sexuality is Still Taboo for Tech" were popping up, and "Sex Toy Debacle Reveals Shameful Double Standard at CES." A month later, in February, Lora gets an email from the assistant to CTA President Gary Shapiro. He says Gary Shapiro would like to talk to you. Can we schedule a phone call? And I mean, at that point, I'm nervous. Like, what does he want to talk to me about? OK. We get on the call, and the first thing Gary says is I owe you all a very big apology. We did you a great disservice, and we're very sorry for what's happened. And we realize that we have made a mistake. Lora and her team were being given their award back. At the end of the press release came a promise of new and updated policies. They'd make CES a more, quote, "welcoming and inclusive event for all." The first new policy was that they'd include sex products in the CES show on a one year trial basis. It was not clear why they called this a new policy since sex products were actually in the show the previous year. They said these products would now be in the category Health and Wellness. And they rolled out one other new policy to address something else they'd gotten a lot of criticism for in the past. They instituted a dress code. Quote, "Booth personnel may not wear clothing that is sexually revealing or clothing that reveals an excess of bare skin or body conforming clothing that hugs genitalia." What CES was trying to address was booth babes. Booth babes and CES have always gone together since the 1960s. These are models in revealing clothing, or body conforming clothing that hugs genitalia, hired to stand next to the tech on the show floor. In a 1986 story for the Toronto Star, Jonathan Gross wrote, quote, "The quality of the products was inversely proportional to the chest size of the booth babes handing out the literature." Paul Fishbein sold AVN years ago to pursue a career in mainstream TV. But when I told him about CES's new policies, he wasn't surprised at all. It's the same thing. It's the 2020 version of everything we just talked about. Nothing has changed. Sex scares them. I reached out to CES for comment. They put me on with their executive vice president, Karen Chupka. But there were conditions. CES wouldn't speak with me about the history of their show, the history of sex tech at their show, Lora's product, the award it got, the award being taken away, or the award being given back. All I could ask about was the future of CES. It was a short interview. But there was one thing she said that helped shed a little bit of light on their decision making. I asked what would it take for sex to not come back in 2021, after the one year trial? And Karen told me that CES's priority is to make everyone who attends the trade show feel welcome. As long as her 175,000 attendees aren't offended by seeing sex products at the show, sex products can stay. So that's the goal-- satisfying everyone. Lora, the inventor, she told me that CES actually consulted with her about what category to put sex products into for this one year trial. CES's instinct? Do it like they used to-- sex in its own category, in its own room. And I pushed back on that really hard, because I didn't want to be sequestered off in the corner. So she argued for sex toys to fall under the Health and Wellness category. But me, I don't know if I agree. When I think of the sex toys that I have used in my lifetime, I probably can't say on the radio. When I think of, like, the sex toys that I have been aware of in my lifetime, the point, as I understand it, is pleasure. And I think it's OK for products to be marketed to women simply for the fact that they create pleasure. And I actually just-- I wonder why Health and Wellness. I wonder why it couldn't just be in a category called Pleasure. Why isn't pleasure just good enough? It is pleasure, but as far as I read it, pleasure is also a part of health and wellness. In this one area, Lora's agenda is a lot like CES's. They both want to sell sex. And CES's old solution to the problem was to segregate sex in a separate room in a separate building. But Lora doesn't want to risk losing anyone. She wants to sell to everybody on the main floor with the mainstream products. And if calling her sex robot a health and wellness product gets it out of the lab and into the world, she's fine with that. It's still hidden, just in a different way. Lina Misitzis is one of the producers of our show. Coming up, a woman puts on a suit that turns her invisible. What could possibly go wrong in that scenario? That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. This American Life, I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, bring you different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show, Escape from the Lab, stories of the unintended consequences-- yes, unintended consequences-- when a lab subject leaves the lab and heads into the bigger world. We've arrived at Act Three of our show. Act Three, Fraught Couture. So we end our show today with a piece of fiction that was actually written for this episode of our show. In fact, we had this story, and then we went looking for the other stories to put with it. It's by one of our co-workers, Neil Drumming, and it's read for us by actor Susan K. Watson. The clerk at the sporting goods store in Georgetown eyes me like I'm taking a dump in his trail mix. Like a black woman can't purchase camping gear. I toss my new overpriced LL Bean rucksack on the counter with the rest of the stuff, hoping Chet will just ring it up and keep his opinions to himself. Hell, what I really want to do is reach under my collar, power up the special adaptive camouflage on my suit, and poof, disappear right in front of his stupid face. But A, I've been a little wary of cloaking since the incident. And B, the suit's in the trunk of my car. I'm all Ann Taylor business casual for my meeting today. And C, Chet and his stank eye are not entirely off base. Truth is, I don't know how to use most of the stuff I'm buying. I was always more of an indoor kid. The whole private military super soldier thing is kind of a fluke. I shove the gear into the trunk of my Honda Civic A2, climb in on the passenger side-- I'm old school-- and recline the seat back as far as it can go. I speak the destination, and the A2 quietly shifts into drive and pulls out. We've got some time. Let me tell you how I got here. I came out of college doing administrative work for defense subcontractors-- data analysis, asset forfeiture, anything to pay Howard University back and support my impressive weed habit. By my early 20s, I had built up a pretty high level of security clearance for a civilian. I was bored behind a desk, though. The first time a field agent let me hold his gun, I was like, yas! I jumped from agency to agency-- DEA, FBI, ICE. And then I pulled a gangster move. Remember Class 8A, the government's now defunct development program for disadvantaged businesses? I launched my own minority led private security company. You know how we do. The world had basically been imploding since 2020, and the US defense tab was wide open. Me and my guys started to piece together a living wage doing Black Ops work-- Latin America, the Mideast, most of it pretty unsavory. Surgical hits, regime change. I learned the secret to doing dirt. Do it and walk away. Don't feel anything. I got good at it. But the bigger firms like DynCorp and Sierra kept muscling us aside, snapping up the best jobs in all the global hot zones. That all changed when the suits came out. This was a few years ago. The DoD very discreetly announced that they were looking for subcontractors to field test some new nano engineered adaptive camouflage uniforms. No cool acronym. They were for stealth use in ground conflicts. The suit was made entirely of a melanin based polymer. It was synthetic melanin whipped up in labs. But that didn't stop me from raising the fuss in the right circles. I played the race card as hard as I could play it. I mean, the US military was beta testing high tech leotards fashioned from the souls of black folk. Someone in the Defense Department had to have enough PR savvy to understand why they couldn't do that without handing one to the premier intersectional mercenary in the business, me. And so I leveled up. The A2 pings me as we pull into the parking lot in Pentagon City. That reminds me. I'm going to have to ditch the old girl. I'm playing it too sloppy as it is, running errands in my own car and so close to headquarters. Besides, something tells me autonomous automobiles don't make great getaway cars. Security waves me through the lobby, staring at my chest in lieu of asking for ID. I'm not going to miss that. Nor will I miss the bland '90s pop cocktail playing in the elevator. Gina's sitting rigidly behind her desk as I walk into her office. I'm not worried. I know why I'm here, why she called me in. She's going to tell me that two weeks ago, there was an incident involving the accidental shooting of a civilian non-combatant in Bamako, Mali. Then she's going to inform me that there's to be an official inquiry into the incident and by which agency. Finally, she's going to lean in, narrow her eyes, and ask me firmly if I had anything to do with said incident. Because she knows that I was in Bamako two weeks ago, shadowing possible members of a radical insurgency. That's her job as my official DoD liaison-- to know where I am at all times, at least as often as I decide to tell her. When Gina and I are off the clock, tangled up in her cozy two-story house in Southeast, I like to call her my handler, then roll out of bed before she can catch me and debrief me. As you were, she yells, before jumping up and chasing me down. That I'm going to miss. Gina tells me to shut the door behind me. Then she says everything I think she's going to say, except not the way I think she's going to say it. Her voice is trembling. She's worried about me. Jesus, Gina. There you go overreacting again, I think to myself. I mean, the situation wasn't good. It was a shit show. But as military clusterfucks and hostile dust bowls go, it wasn't unusual. Really, it was just cross signals. US Special Forces had surrounded the guy's house, not knowing I was inside. I mean, how could they? I want to tell Gina not to worry about me anymore. But then she'll want to know what that means. So instead I say what I've been planning to say since I put on my Ann Taylor blouse this morning. I wasn't there. It sucks that that happened, but I wasn't there. Gina's quiet. My hand involuntarily reaches for my shirt collar, hoping to find the neck of the suit popping out. Then I remember I'm not wearing it. It's in the trunk of my car. "They airlifted him from Bamako to Walter Reed for observation," she says. "What?" I snap. "The civilian from Mali. He's at Walter Reed Hospital." "I thought he was dead." "I thought you said you weren't there." I say nothing. "He's in a coma," she says. My mind races back to that day. There was a lot of blood. I thought he was dead. "Kelly," barks Gina, as if saying my name will lasso me into this moment. "We've received reports that for days, the man had been telling friends and neighbors that he thought he was being haunted." "What are you talking about?" I ask. "Like a man or a woman that he could only see out of the corner of his eye when he wasn't really looking, watching him, following him. That's what he said. Like a ghost." "I wasn't there," I repeat. I see Gina's hand about to move toward me, but I'm already backing away. As I head for the elevator, I take small solace in the knowledge that when they come after me, they won't send her. I didn't shoot the guy in Mali. I was in the house with him, sure. But by then, I was wrapping up the investigation. He was no insurgent, not even a threat. Just a cagey dude waxing too political on Snapchat. Besides, I was anxious as hell to get out of there. Honestly, I've been feeling off since I first touched down in Africa. When I was wearing the suit, I was jumpy. I was hearing things. I felt overstimulated and hyper aware. And I was starting to feel things, like other people's feelings when they passed too close to me in the street. The guy whose house I'd been snooping around, I could sense his fear. I didn't like how it felt, being inside other people like this, even if it was helpful. Like, when the special forces squad creeped on the house, nervous as hell, I felt them coming. It's like they were vibrating outside of their bodies through the walls, and I was an antenna. That's why I went outside-- to talk them down. The suit's camouflage isn't perfect. Wearing it, I'm nearly impossible to spot in dark or busy areas. But if you stare right at it, it's like someone's smudged reality with a Photoshop brush, a moving distortion in space time. I walked calmly out the back door, but before I could pull the hood down and put my hands in the air, one of the special forces guys saw the smudge and let one go. At the moment I heard the pop from his rifle, I felt a surge of, I guess, resistance that started in my chest and forced its way out through my pores. And when that wave reached the suit, it's like the suit radiated that force outward 50 times stronger. The bullet ricocheted off my shoulder through the door and into the house. I heard the civilian noncombatant scream and fall to the floor. I don't know what he said, but I know what he felt. It was as clear to me as if he'd whispered it right into my ear. Ghost. Since Africa, I had been doing some research on the origins of the suit. As far back as the '90s, the military had been pouring money into researching melanin. It was known that certain birds used the chemical to change color. So it was a no brainer that defense would be looking at it as a way to camouflage troops. Some scientists also hypothesized that it was melanin that gave blood worms their incredible jaw strength. But I don't know shit about blood worms. What I do know is that the suit was not designed to stop or repel bullets. It's not armor. Something is happening. The suit is changing, evolving. And I think it might have something to do with who's wearing it. I know this is going to sound crazy, but when I was a sophomore at Howard, this senior with an ankh around his neck used to follow me through the quad, calling me queen and preaching to me about the principles of comedic spirituality. I bet he would've had a field day with this suit. He'd say the concentrated melanin must be amplifying ancient African mysticism or whatever. He'd say the suit was helping me channel my ancestors. Hell, he'd probably paint a sankofa on the chest and teach himself how to fly. He was full of that kind of bullshit. Me, I'm thinking this suit never should have been made at all. That it's the result of cocky science assholes and soldiers hacking into natural power they don't understand and can't control. From the few very guarded conversations that I was able to have about this without setting off alarm bells over at the Pentagon, there is only one other person successfully deployed with the suit who ever reported side effects like mine. That brother, a tough ex-Marine from South Philly, is currently doodling on the wall at a psychiatric hospital somewhere in New Mexico. The hospital staff won't go near him. They say he can tell you what you had for breakfast or who you're fucking just by looking at you. That's not going to be me, stuck in some psych ward somewhere, David Blaine to a bunch of orderlies. That's why I'm running. After Mali, I knew I needed some time alone with the suit, to figure out exactly what was going on, what it was doing to me. I figured I'd do some beta testing of my own. I'd go off the grid, head west, maybe even make my way to New Mexico or San Diego, where a lot of the original melanin research was done. No one's supposed to know about the suits, not foreign governments. Folks in the White House don't even know. So I knew that if I took off with it, someone would come looking to take it back. Until this morning, I was pretty confident I could stay gone. But now, I have another item on my to do list. And I have to take care of it before I can leave. I meant what I said to Gina about this sort of eye witness who was currently convalescing in Bethesda. It sucked that he caught wind of me. It sucked that he caught a bullet that was meant for me. Hell, it sucked that he'd gotten caught up in all this at all. But coma or no coma, he was proof-- literally living proof-- that I'd been at the center of that mess in Mali. And everything I'd learned over the years about how to do dirt and get away clean told me that this was simply not something I could let go. He was a loose end that needed to be tied off. Slipping into a secure military hospital sounds difficult, but not when you have a top secret cloaking device or when everyone inside already thinks you're a nurse. I'm on the right floor in the correct ward before I even have to put the suit on. I stare at it for a minute. It's an impenetrable impossible matte black. But at the same time, if you gaze into the fabric, it's every color in the spectrum. It feels good to put it back on. I realize as it bonds to my skin that I've been missing it. I feel stronger, like twice myself. I shake out of this Bilbo Baggins moment and exit the bathroom stall. I sneak easily around the two schlubs who got stuck guarding a coma patient and enter the Mali guy's room. He's alone in his bed, breathing slowly through a tube. Machines chirp all around him. I approach the bed and check the name on the chart. John Doe. Of course. Luckily, I'm wearing psychic pajamas. I lean in and put my hand over his. And whoa. This is new. His memories come rushing at me. It's like his mind pours up through the sleeves of the suit and into mine. It takes me a second to slow it down. His name is Oumar. Wow. I really underestimated this guy. I flip through his recent past like a carousel slide show. The entire time I'd been watching Oumar in Mali, he'd been watching me or trying. He'd actually caught a few glimpses of me at my sloppiest, circling around behind him to see who he was texting, sliding into his room as he drifted off to sleep. He'd been looking right at me as the bullet bounced off me and struck his skull. He's going to recover from that, by the way. His vitals are good. I find myself thinking, maybe I don't have to do what I came here to do after all. It's not like he actually saw my face. So what if he wakes up and tells a few more people he saw a ghost? What's the harm in that? The thought surprises me. I'm used to cleaning up after myself. But I'm also relieved. I back away from the hospital bed, thinking if I leave now, I'll still have a pretty good head start on whatever spooks are chasing me down. That's when it occurs to me. I can't just leave him here. The people who are coming after me have way more to lose than I do. If they're ready to kill me for stealing the suit, they'll take Oumar out just for knowing about it. I'm still holding his hand. I squeeze his fingers, scan his dark features, and then I realized, I can't let that happen. I have to protect him. The thought really freaks me out. It seems to come from somewhere deeper inside me than me, pulled up to the surface by-- by-- oh, shit. It's the suit. I know it. First, it has me reading minds, and now I'm supposed to care about this guy. Not convenient. Not cool. I could die right here today fighting for some African dude I don't even know, all because of a double extra strength dose of melanin. I get a text from Gina that reads simply, "as you were." I know she means they're coming, and I should run. I don't. I move to stand between Oumar's bed and the door. I've got no weapon, and my hand-to-hand combat training is rusty as all hell. Pray the ancestors can help me with that. I take off my earrings. Susan K. Watson reading a short story by Neil Drumming. Susan is in the TV show This is Us, which has a new season, and she's in the Mr. Rogers film with Tom Hanks. It's coming out soon. Our program was produced today by Neil Drumming. The people who put our show together include Emanuele Berry, Susan Burton, Sean Cole, Jessica Lussenhop, Miki Meek, Lina Misitzis, Stowe Nelson, Katherine Raimondo, Nadia Reiman, Robyn Semien, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, and Nancy Updike. Our managing editor is Diane Wu. Our executive editor is David Kestenbaum. Special thanks today to Carrie Morgan, Alvin Melathe, Peter Warren and AVN, Zoe Ligon, Wendy Zukerman, Kaitlyn Sawrey, and Lois Drabkin. Original music for our science fiction story in the third act was composed by Blue Dot Sessions, Ricardo Gutierrez, and Andrae Taylor. Our website thisamericanlife.org, where you can stream our archive of over 680 episodes for absolutely free. There's also videos and tons of other stuff there. Go get our app, which has all that stuff and also lets you download as many episodes as you want. Again, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, he was complaining this week about how boring weddings seem to him these days. And he got all-- I don't know-- he got all nostalgic about how they were so much more fun back in the '70s. And they would have, you know, tables for porn stars to sit and sign autographs. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
A quick warning-- there are curse words that are un-beeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. OK, so let's start here. This is a training video for firefighters in Amsterdam. Three firemen in an office, drinking coffee, catching up-- and then, one of them, this big bald guy, gets up to show the others this new helmet that he's just gotten, picks up a box off the floor, and says, what is that? He makes a face. It stinks, too. He smells his fingers. What is that? It's pee. This conversation understandably turns to speculation on how the pee might have gotten there. "Where'd you find this?" he asks. At the depot. Do you think it was a cat? It was not a cat. The rest of the video, which is entitled "The Incident With the Helmet," goes on for a few minutes explaining why it is not a good idea to pee in your colleague's helmet, even if it's a joke. Like, that can make people feel bad, and unwelcome. And the reason the fire department needed a video like this was the firefighters were peeing in their co-workers helmets and their drinks, and had been for years. This was a re-enactment of an actual incident. Amsterdam firefighters had a kind of macho, frat house culture. And for women who came to work there, or anybody who wasn't white, it was rough in all kinds of ways-- pranks, bullying, racist jokes, sexist comments. Women described the environment as alienating. One Moroccan firefighter said, "What we want is not super special. We just want normal behavior, normal treatment of people." The bosses had problems with them, too. The firefighters would simply ignore certain orders to change the way they worked. Back in 2011, the mayor of Amsterdam commanded them to do some straightforward things, like perform more home inspections, pass out smoke detectors, switch from 24-hour shifts to 8-hour shifts. A year passed, and another, and another. After five years-- still nothing. They'd pretty much blown off his requests. The mayor didn't like to hear no. Paul Books is a reporter at Amsterdam's biggest newspaper, Het Parool. He's covered the fire department for over 20 years. He put his fist on the table and said, "And now, it's over. And now, I'll send you a strong man. He'll change the fire brigade in the way I want it to change." The strong man the mayor brought in was a guy named Leen Schaap. His firefighting experience before this-- nothing. He spent his whole career working at the Amsterdam Police Department. And he wasn't just an outsider-- he was somebody with a reputation for being a real hard ass. I expected a riot because the way they live in the fire stations, being all day and nights, they're together-- cook together, sleep together-- that makes, in the end, that outsiders don't get in easy. Here in Amsterdam, the fire stations are really like small castles in the neighborhood. There's 19 fire stations all around Amsterdam. There were 750 firefighters-- 500 full-time, 250 volunteer-- a brigade with the same problems as lots of brigades here in the United States. And for sure, not all firehouses are like this. But it's not hard to find examples. Outside of Chicago, male firefighters broke down their female co-worker's shower door while she was in there, showering. The chief handed her a towel and said, "Relax. It's firehouse fun." In Houston, women say their male co-workers peed on their beds, and when they complained, they were labeled troublemakers. The city could not substantiate those claims, but the Trump Justice Department has stepped in on the women's side. In Miami and New York, black fire department employees found nooses at work. In Michigan, a black firefighter found a banana on the windshield of his truck. Amsterdam is one of the rare examples of a city that really decides to take on the "boys club" culture in firehouses. And the firefighters don't lay down. They fight every step of the way. And one thing that's unusual about the guy running this department, Leen Schaap, is that he is shockingly frank about just how messed up his department really is. One of his tactics is to be utterly transparent, and show the public what he learns is happening behind the closed doors of the firehouses. He's also blunt about the pushback he gets. And so, unlike other fire departments and police departments with similar problems, in this case, for once, we see exactly how bad things were, laid bare. And we also see all the resistance when somebody comes in and tries to change it. We see just how hard that is to accomplish. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our show, we have this very unusual look inside a place like this. Reporter Joanna Kakissis has been digging into this for months. That'll be Act One of today's show. And this is such an embattled department that the only way Joanna could get most of the firefighters to talk to her was to change their names and replace their voices. So you're going to be hearing a bunch of that in what's about to follow. Basically, only Leen Schaap and one of his main opponents let us use their voices. Our producer, Miki Meek, reported this with Joanna. You'll hear Miki's voice in there, now and then, asking questions. Here's Joanna. To take on a bunch of tough guys, the mayor hired someone who was used to being the toughest guy in the room. Leen Schaap climbed to the upper ranks of the Amsterdam Police Department by speaking his mind, and not caring who didn't like it. He got things done by moving quickly and aggressively. He ran the riot squad. He was known in town for forcing out anarchists squatting in a full city block of abandoned homes. Amsterdam is a progressive city, and sympathy was with the squatters. Lots of people hated Leen for what he did. They threw paint bombs at him. Only cowardly leaders don't show up. My interviews with him are filled with these kind of tough guy cliches. This is a battle, and one of us is going to win it. And it's not going to be you. Sometimes, it was hard to keep a straight face. I'm in the fire department, so I'm not really worried about getting burned. OK. You're tough. You're tough. Leen smiled. He knows when he's laying it on thick. He's intense, with reddish-brown hair and blue eyes that look incredibly icy if you've pissed him off. His first week on the job, there's a welcome lunch for him. Firefighters don't show up. Then, he gets an anonymous letter telling him not to enter any fire stations. He goes anyway, and he notices right away there's nowhere for him to park. The fire station's parking spaces are filled with recreational vehicles. Boats with caravans, with camper vans-- because basically, the firefighters were using this area around the firehouse as their private space, saying, we're here 24 hours. This is kind of our house. This is our place. Leen gave firefighters their first order. He said, get all your personal stuff out of here. Then, they said, you don't run the show. You are not the one who decides this. He actually said, "You don't run this." "You don't run this. What's your problem?" That's what I said. "What's your problem?" And kind of belittling-- "why are you getting so worked up about this little boat we have?" And what was your response to that? I told them, you have to get these boats and the camper vans out of here. If not, I'm going to hire somebody to take all that stuff away. And they were like, oh, go ahead. And I took a step forward, and stood my ground. You know, I threatened to take a police crane and lift it out of there. Firefighters were furious, and thought Leen was acting too much like an uptight cop. But everyone complied. They got rid of their boats and campers. Except for one guy, who ignored Leen and defiantly brought a boat right back-- the only boat in the parking lot. Leen put him on probation and moved him to another firehouse. It was one of his first disciplinary actions. The guy retaliated by not coming to work, and taking the department to court. Leen was figuring things out pretty fast. He estimated there were about 50 of these guys in the entire department-- guys who joined the brigade decades ago, and now ran their fire stations. They kept tabs on their bosses through a private Whatsapp channel. Some firefighters called them "The Brotherhood." Leen always called them-- The angry white men. We still have them. Angry white men, he says, who are against any change that would force them out of their golden cages. He knew guys exactly like this in his police department days. These are tough guys, some born and raised in Amsterdam, or in the streets. They're built like a refrigerator. They have lots of tattoos. They have a big mouth. They're not so much super smart, but they're cunning. And if you try to approach them with too much nuance, then you're not going to make it, because they know how to play you. And then, a few months into his job, Moroccan firefighters on the force started coming to him about a particular guy, one of The Brotherhood, who called them "cancer Moroccans." In Dutch, this is a racial slur. When I asked for an English equivalent, someone told me "cancer Moroccan" is like saying "fucking Moroccan scum." And also, when he was supposed to put out fires in Amsterdam-West, where there's a lot of Muslims living, he would say that he had to go to the caliphate. This guy had a long list of charges against him. He walked around in a Nazi jacket, he threatened to nail a crucifix to the shower door of a Muslim firefighter, and he refused to go to a fire drill at a mosque. Again, Leen-- This is really wrong. What if there's a fire in a mosque? Will he do his job? Will he save the people if he doesn't want to go in there now, for the practice? And as a first responder in this multicultural city, you can't say that you don't want to go somewhere because of religion. So when I heard about this case, I thought, I have to do something about this. I can't lead this life. Leen fired him. It was the first time racism had been cited as a reason to fire someone from the Amsterdam Fire Department. So he'd gotten rid of the boats, he'd fired a guy for racism-- progress. But The Brotherhood started a petition for the firefighter to get his job back. How did you feel about that? It really opened my eyes. Instead of uniting around the people who were discriminated against, they united against the person who was discriminating, and they formed a block around him. The problem ran so much deeper than Leen thought. Why wouldn't they want to stick up for the guy getting harassed? For Leen, it was obvious. He instinctively sided with the firefighter getting picked on, and he didn't understand anyone who didn't. That empathy for the outsider-- it made Leen an unusual commander. So he started investigating to figure out just how bad things were. The numbers were not encouraging. When Leen started, there were only five female firefighters on the entire full-time force of 500. The fire department is not allowed to record race, but he estimates that only around 10% of the force were people of color. These numbers didn't reflect the city at all. At least a third of Amsterdam's population is non-white. Leen visited the fire stations, and talked to firefighters over coffee at the long lunch tables there. And he learned that lots of them liked the changes he was bringing in. He had a silent band of support. He asked people about their experiences in the department, and to his surprise, people opened up to him. Through their stories, he started to get a sense of what it was like to be a person of color or a woman in his fire department. Moroccan and Surinamese firefighters said they were called rats and monkeys. The Brotherhood told some they didn't belong-- that firefighters should be Dutch, and white. One Muslim firefighter I'm calling Ali told me that over time, he learned to go along with the racial slurs. So when his co-workers called him "bin Laden," he acted like he wasn't upset. You have to ignore it. If they find out that you don't like it, they'll keep on coming back, and back, and back. Have you ever reported discrimination in the past? It wasn't possible to do that. Nobody does that. You could report whatever you want, but nothing was going to happen. In the worst of cases, when it really got out of hand, what you would just do is shake hands on it and get it over. The one accused-- he'll just say, come on, man. It was a joke. And nothing's going to happen. Leen hired a consultant to help him reach out to women who'd quit the department. They felt like they never belonged. They said harassment and belittlement happened every hour of the day. One woman said men in her station asked her to leave the room so they could comment on her ass. Men told women to sit in the windows of the firehouse as if they were prostitutes in the red light district. During job interviews, women were asked how they do their jobs on their periods. One of the few female officers in the Amsterdam Fire Department is a woman I'm calling Judy. The guys respected her. She was strong, physically, and she was tough-- had no problem standing up to these guys. But even she felt like she was constantly being tested, like when a firefighter under her command purposely opened his towel in front of her. When she suggested that her boss has not put women into fire stations alone, but with other women, one of her superiors called her a "highly educated moaning female." One night, she was doing her rounds, checking in on everyone, and stopped by the canteen. I was saying good night to everybody. And then, they were sitting and watching porn. Didn't you say something then? No. So I didn't say anything about that. Porn was a regular thing in the common areas of lots of the stations. I don't know why I didn't say anything. I didn't feel comfortable to say it, probably. It's also me being influenced by The Brotherhood, I think. Because saying something-- it's always uncomfortable to say that. So yeah, I have to admit that I've avoided it, too. Everyone's grip on what was normal was out of whack. Judy remembers a woman at a fire station who had this particular bedtime ritual. So she would go to bed, and somebody would come to tuck her in. Wait. They tucked her into bed at night? What exactly do you mean? Oh, tucking in-- it was like when you put your little one to sleep, and you pull your blankets tight around the person. So the guy who would do that said, I'm going to tuck her in. And I felt uncomfortable about that for her. I mean, it was her choice. But I would never do that, because it makes a certain situation that I think you should avoid. She was fine with it? She didn't mind this happening? Well, actually, I don't know. I can't remember ever talking to her about that. Why? Yeah. That's a good question. Maybe I might be putting her more in danger. Or I might not be helping her. Or maybe I was telling myself, well, maybe it's her choice, and she likes it or something. But yeah, I don't know. Hearing all these stories, Leen realized he had to spell things out-- what is normal behavior in a workplace. He wrote a manifesto on how to behave like a professional firefighter and sent it out to everyone. It begins, "All of us are going to act normal." "Normal" meant, we don't yell at each other. We don't steal coffee from the firehouses. We don't make offensive comments on social media. We always wear our uniforms. We don't store our personal tanning beds in the women's dormitories if we're men. If you break the rules, you'll be punished. And if you no longer know what "normal" is, please find out. One of the biggest ways firefighting is not like a normal job-- firefighters work 24-hour shifts. So everyone lives together. They work out, shop for groceries, cook, watch TV, play soccer, sleep. Professional boundaries get blurry. Leen wanted to push the department to 8-hour shifts. It would make fire stations more like a workplace, and less like a private club. I think the fire department-- many of the firefighters will fight almost literally to the death to defend this 24-hour shift. Firefighters liked being together for 24 hours, and hanging out, and then getting a couple days off to spend with their families, or hold down second jobs. And The Brotherhood argued that bonding in the fire station is essential. The pushback was so strong that Leen managed to open just one firehouse on 8-hour shifts as an experiment. The Brotherhood pressured firefighters not to transfer there. The guys in The Brotherhood are afraid to talk to reporters. Everyone I reached out to was worried he'd lose his job. But I did get four of them to speak to me on condition that I not use their names. I'll call this one Jan. He did let me use his real voice. He said the problem in the department wasn't them. It was Leen. And tucking women into bed-- he said it wasn't sexist. I can only confirm that they did it to me, as well. And I didn't feel embarrassed about it at that moment. But-- The women would tuck you into bed? Is that what-- No, the men. The men would tuck you into bed? Yeah, come on. Yeah. There are jokes sometimes, you know? I also went to bed, and I stepped in my bed. And somebody else came from the shower, and he was already, before me, in my bed. So these kind of things happen. But if you're a woman, and somebody is tucking you into bed, it's a different experience. And it's-- Tucking is not something that they want to shock you, or they want to embarrass you, or they-- Yeah. But I guess what I'm saying is, OK, there are people who are minorities and who are women. They're just too afraid to speak out to you, because they're afraid of repercussions. Listen. It's so stupid if I say all the time "it doesn't happen," or "that doesn't happen." It probably happened with one female employee. And probably one female employee left, also. Do you have to say, then, OK, this is a sexist company, or all the females are bullied, or all the Arabic people are bullied? I don't think so. I asked him about the firefighter Leen fired-- the one who called the Muslim neighborhood in Amsterdam "the caliphate," and used racial slurs on his Moroccan co-workers. He's not a racist. That's for 100%. What do you mean by that? To me, it is an incident-- still an incident in a big company. Don't make it bigger than it is. I'm 29 years with my wife, you know? If I focus on all the bad things that I said about her then, we would never get married. You don't think they should have fired him earlier? No, no, no, no. No. You don't have to fire him at all. As long as he's not running around naked in his roller skates, he's OK with me. You think he can use a term like "cancer Moroccan"-- and you're not a racist? It's not OK. But in the heat of the discussion, you say things that are not OK, that you are not allowed to say. And the opposite party will do the same, probably. Yeah. And who is right and who is wrong-- I don't judge that. I was not there. But one thing is for sure-- I know he's not a racist. How much do you think that the force should adapt to new firefighters? The thing is-- when we have the feeling that we are forced to change, then it's going to be-- that's, in my opinion, the wrong way. So if you want to change, the trick is not to force it, and do it in a very clever way, that you-- In a very what way? In a clever way, that you change without noticing. That would be the perfect way. And this is not happening right now. This is what Leen says he was up against-- a group of men for whom "normal" meant keeping things exactly the way they'd always been. I was just wondering-- doesn't a boss have the right to impose boundaries on workplaces? We are not in this business for him. It's not a job. It's a way of life, worldwide. So let's make this very clear-- for us, it is not a job. It's a way of life. Leen's approach to making big institutional change is based on a progressive fairly new management theory, designed to curb lawless organizations. It's essentially-- draw hard boundaries. Make no concessions. Be consistent, unrelenting. And in 10 to 15 years, maybe there'll be a real shift. It's arduous. The beginning is the hardest part. This approach made a lot of sense to Leen because of his experience on the Amsterdam Police Force. He helped clean up and reform the department. As a rookie cop, he'd seen the problems firsthand. He started in a corrupt precinct, the red light district in the 1980s. He says cops stole, sold drugs, were excessively violent. Changing that meant rigorously enforcing rules, writing up bad cops, disciplining them, firing them. Leen says it took about 10 years for the rules to be accepted as normal. But this confrontational approach is not the way things usually work in the Netherlands. You know, the Dutch culture is very much everything peace, everything together, no conflict. And with the fire department, the traditional recipe is talking, talking, talking. The Dutch have this term, "polder model." They take pride in it. The idea is to bring everyone together, despite their differences, just like their ancestors came together to build dikes and dams to protect their land from the sea. Historians debate whether that's actually true. But anyway, everyone from Parliament to the local amateur soccer club tries to make decisions this way-- through discussions and consensus. Leen did dabble with polder model a little in the beginning. He spent his first six months going to fire stations, trying to convince people that diversity would make them a stronger fire department in a city with almost 170 nationalities, and that women bring pragmatism and emotional intelligence to the brigade. But Leen was almost always met with blank stares. Guys told him, women aren't strong enough for this job. One of them said, you just want an excuse to bring in a hundred broads. Again, here's Leen. Intellectually, it's hard to have these conversations about diversity. And I don't intend to sound crass, and I don't want to be unkind about my people, but some of them are too stupid to keep having this diversity conversation, and convince them that way. And at some point, you just have to say that we're going to stop talking about it. We're just going to do it. And we're going to do it this way. This is an organization. It's not some kind of democratic kumbaya thing where we're all going to talk about it, and then the majority rules. You can take it or leave it. He was done reasoning with them. He didn't have to, after all. He had the full support of Mayor Eberhard van der Laan, who was wildly popular. The city adored him. He snubbed Vladimir Putin when he was in town because of the Russian leader's anti-LGBT views. The city council backed the mayor, and he backed Leen-- which meant, with the mayor's support, Leen could do whatever he wanted. And he had a big idea for how to get the kind of accountability he wanted in the fire department. Coming up-- you can discipline people, you can threaten their jobs. But when all else fails, try a talk show. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's show, "Burn It Down"-- we have two stories of people who think they have no other choice. It is time to burn everything down, make enemies, do what has to be done. We're in the middle of Act One. A policeman burns down a firehouse. Joanna Kakissis, in this act, is reporting on the Amsterdam Fire Department, the resistance to change from inside the department, and, in this half of her story, how the bigger politics of the city start to shift everything. Quick program note before we start the second half of this. Joanna discovered, when she started looking into this story, that the fire commander's partner, who is a journalist, is somebody who Joanna has worked with in the past. Joanna has not discussed the content of the story with this journalist. The journalist was not involved in this story in any way. Again, here's Joanna. Leen had devised a very unusual plan. But to pull it off, he had to enlist the mayor. He did something that I've rarely seen any public official do-- he took all his criticisms about his own fire department and made them public. And by doing so, he made himself the biggest critic of some of the most beloved figures in Amsterdam. Imagine the head of the police department in New York or Chicago publishing a long list of all the bad stuff their officers had done. It would blow up in their faces. That did not happen to Leen. Here's how he went about it. He started by writing a single letter to the mayor detailing his findings about discrimination and bullying at the fire department. He read the letter. There was a certain surprise, because I think he literally said, I thought there were all kinds of things going on. But it turns out there was even more going on than I thought. But now, I actually have the proof. And now, we're going to work on this together. In response, the mayor wrote his own letter blasting the fire department, and sent it with Leen's to the city council, making them public record. Reporters pounced. Did you and the mayor-- did the two of you talk about it as a strategy? Yeah. It was absolutely my idea. And I knew it was going to end up in the media. I knew this was going to make the papers. So that was something that I thought before-- that if I write this letter, there's going to be a certain amount of pressure that would get the municipal council, and also the public, to see that something needed to be done. This was very, very calculated, even to the point where I did use words that I knew the media would pounce on to get a discussion going. Like what? Racism, discrimination, bullying, exclusion-- these are terms that I know are going to get people's attention. It's really unusual for a public official to do something like this. Yes. It is extremely unusual. But it makes it very effective. And I looked at what former fire commanders did, and I felt that they didn't use the possibilities they had enough. And I consciously decided, I'm going to make war. And that means you have to get your hands dirty, and you have to go public. Do you remember any discussion you had with the mayor, or with anyone else, who was less sure that this was the right way? Um, ja. Yeah? OK. What I noticed with the people around me was mostly fear. And so that was a lot of the people in management here. They supported me, but they were kind of reticent. Because they knew this kind of organization-- if you go looking for a fight, you're going to get a fight. Did the mayor ever have any reservations about this as a strategy? Not one second. The details in Leen's report landed on the front page of the main newspaper in Amsterdam. Then, the mayor and Leen went on a media blitz. Here's Leen on the radio show, flinging open the doors on what really goes on inside a firehouse. The host of the program says to Leen, "So, what you found was a very macho culture. Can you give me some examples of that?" Well, if you're sitting at a table, and you're Moroccan, and something comes on TV about Islam, then people start talking about "those cancer Moroccans." And when you're sitting there as a serious professional firefighter, it has an effect on you. And then, of course, you're the exception. Like, hey, we don't mean you. It's those other cancer Moroccans. That's one example. And I've got people telling me I can survive the 24-hour shift. I'll just stay in my room. And then, as a group, you could think, oh, OK. Somebody's spending the whole shift in their room. But you could also think, what's going on here? And that's really what I want to happen-- that we're able to engage with each other in a healthy way. People wrote to newspapers saying they were repulsed by the firefighters' behavior. City council members said they were shocked. The mayor told Leen to keep pushing on with his reforms. But inside the firehouses, Leen's tactics did not go over well. His support shrunk. Even people who agreed with his goals, who thought he was fighting the good fight, felt like he was smearing everyone, lumping them together, making them all look bad. The way that he did that-- he turned every firefighter against him. This is a longtime firefighter of color in the brigade. Leen and the mayor went about it really radically. They used the newspapers to try to turn public opinion against us. There were very, very hurtful stories in the newspapers that we were racist, that we were sexist-- all kinds of old stories, really, from a decade or more ago were brought back to paint a black picture of us. And of course, The Brotherhood was pissed. It was a public declaration of war. On social media, firefighters called Leen and the mayor "know-it-all political losers" and "vile," "full of lies." They wrote, "Indict this mayor and have him sued for defamation," and, "Thanks, Leen, we're all painted like a bunch of racists." Inside the firehouses, the atmosphere changed. Attitudes hardened. Again, here's Ali, the firefighter of color who says his white co-workers called him bin Laden. He said things got worse for anyone who wasn't white. Something literally broke. And now, for the first time, you see that people, for instance, won't shake your hand. There's this tradition. After we put out a fire, we always sit on the side. We have a coffee, and all the firemen shake each other's hands. That's really a tradition. And now, for the first time since I've been here, white firefighters are refusing to shake our hands. Meanwhile, Leen got more done than ever. He doubled down on recruitment, went to mosques and dinners during Ramadan, tried to convince more people of color and women to join the fire brigade. Slowly, those numbers have increased. He also backed managers who disciplined bad actors. He streamlined work shifts, opened a new firehouse, and improved fire prevention. He made homes safer by sending firefighters door-to-door in the city. Leen, with the backing of the mayor, was making the kinds of changes he was hired to make, in exactly the way he wanted to make them-- quickly and aggressively. But then, something happened that Leen hadn't accounted for. Six months into his job, Mayor Eberhard van der Laan revealed he was sick-- lung cancer. A half year later, he died. Immediately, the ground started to shift under Leen. When the mayor died, The Brotherhood grew emboldened. Here's Leen. People commented that it was great that he died. And there was even somebody, when van der Laan was on his deathbed, who said, "Van der Laan, the cockroach, is slipping away." And that was quite shocking-- that somebody is on his deathbed from cancer, and you're rejoicing in that. But for them, it really was one enemy less. Soon, a campaign to push Leen out of his job kicked into high gear. Retired firefighters and unions rallied around The Brotherhood, publicly demanding that the city investigate Leen for bad mouthing the fire department in the media. Firefighters did interviews anonymously, denouncing Leen in a conservative newspaper, the biggest paper in the Netherlands. From the moment the mayor announced he was sick, Leen started getting anonymous death threats. One letter said a hitman was being hired. Another targeted his 14-year-old daughter. He was told the threats were coming from inside the fire department. In the summer of 2018, Amsterdam got an energetic new mayor, the first woman in the city's history-- Femke Halsema. She was Leen's new boss, and spent many years in parliament as a high-profile lawmaker representing the left-wing Green Party, a champion of women's rights. As a politician, she pushed for tax breaks to address poverty. She also wrote newspaper columns, and made a documentary about Muslim women. Mayor Halsema condemned the death threats against Leen, and publicly threw her support behind him. But not long after she started, Leen remembers her stopping by for a private meeting. He told her about some of the changes he was trying to make. Her reaction shocked him. When we were having this conversation about racism and discrimination, the mayor herself came with the following example. Apparently, she heard from one of the fire stations, or one of the fireman told her, that we have a number of black colleagues working here-- --and there was one that all the other firefighters were calling "Haar," which is a Dutch name. And that wasn't his name. It was a racist wordplay joke. They looked for reasons to say no to him so they could say, "No, Haar," or in Dutch, "Nee, Haar," which means Negro. The mayor laughed about this and said, this is really funny. I find this extremely hilarious. She seriously laughed? She laughed very loudly. And for me, that was really a pivotal moment, in which I realized, I am fighting against all this, and I am dealing with a mayor who thinks this is funny. I told her I was immensely shocked that she had to laugh about these so-called humorous remarks. And I really asked her, what is going wrong here? Mayor Halsema, via email, denied Leen's account. She said she's only told the joke in meetings as an example of, quote, "intolerable behavior that's not always recognized as such by firefighters." For Leen, that moment crystallized the world of difference between his old and new boss. After that, he gave up on her. Mayor Halsema had, like the rest of Amsterdam, seen Leen's fight with the firefighters play out in the media, and she didn't like it. She liked talking up problems and reaching consensus-- the Dutch way. Fire department managers who sat in on meetings with the new mayor and Leen said it was clear right away that they didn't get along-- that sometimes, he was abrasive. Their styles were totally different. They called the mayor "Tai Chi," and Leen "Boxing." The mayor ordered her own investigation into the fire department. The new investigation acknowledged there were problems, but it concluded that overall, the fire department was, quote, "at its core not a racist or sexist organization," and it called on Leen to take a different approach, and build trust with firefighters. A city hall reporter told me this report basically threw Leen under the bus. When it came out at the end of 2018, Leen had been on the job for about two and a half years. I spoke to him around this time. He seemed unfazed by the report. He was still going about the business of reforming the fire department, and airing its dirty laundry, like this problem firefighter. He's not fired yet, but I'm going to fire him. So here's the situation. There was a group of firefighters in a supermarket, because they were doing shopping for their firehouse. They were all in their uniforms, standing at the register. And at the register, there was also an elderly lady on a mobility scooter. She's trying to pay for her groceries, and 150 euros falls out of her pocket. And one of the firemen sees that-- that she drops this money-- and puts it into his sock, and walks out with it. Well, some time passes, and the elderly lady goes home, and she realizes her money's gone. The woman checked back with the store about her missing cash, and security camera showed one of Leen's men putting her money in a sock. Taking an old lady's money while you're wearing your firefighter's uniform-- of course, that did not fly with Leen. The police got involved. It was embarrassing and outrageous. But the reaction isn't like, oh my god, I can't believe he stole that money. Instead, the reaction is that it's ridiculous that I'm going to fire him, because he returned the money to the police. This spring, a group of firefighters showed up at a city council meeting to air their grievances against Leen. Also, they're retired firefighters. A firefighter named Mike Snijder stood at a podium. He's clean cut, has a baby face. He read a statement. Enough is enough. Even though I'm taking a huge risk by speaking here today, I'm willing to take that risk for my colleagues who are having complete mental breakdowns. Our leaders have chosen to bad mouth us in the media, and that makes us feel unsafe, both in public and at the fire stations, too, where we're constantly walking on eggshells. The fire department leadership has proven, time and again, that they aren't interested in building trust. There will always be fear and distrust. This is a broken marriage that can't be fixed. Dank. He said Leen made it so firefighters couldn't do their jobs properly, and that it was threatening the safety of everyone in Amsterdam. A city council person asked him to say more. If we're constantly having to look around to make sure that the leadership isn't looking over our shoulders, then we can't do our job. City council is a political position. You get voted in. And, like the fire department, it's mostly white. Under the old mayor, the council was in full support of Leen. When he first exposed the racism and sexism in the department two years before this, they'd been on his side. But now, that was old news. The public had moved on. Amsterdam's a progressive city, but on race, it has blind spots. During the holidays, some people still wear blackface when they dress up as St. Nick's helpers. And the public shock over the racism and sexism in the department didn't last. What was more shocking was the way Leen was speaking out. The city council was tired of Leen waging this loud, messy fight. And at this meeting, they were sympathetic to Leen's critics. Here's one city councilwoman saying, "I know you can't talk to the press, but you can come to me." She also said, "I think it's very brave of you to be here today." Retired firefighters jumped up from their chairs, gave a standing ovation. Leen is there, annoyed. He literally said, I can't do my job because I feel that the boss is looking over my shoulder. And like, really? You can't do your job when somebody is looking at what you're doing? Leen says cops use the same arguments to fight any change. How do you alarm public opinion? By suggesting that what we're doing is making the public unsafe. If they can't do their job because they're afraid, then that's unsafe for the public. Mayor Halsema did not feel the same way. After the meeting, she gave this interview to local news. She says, "Of course it's very worrying. If they don't have a good work environment, that could indirectly affect their ability to do their jobs well." And, "We do have to take these firefighters' concerns seriously." After that city council meeting, Leen knew he was running out of options. City council had lost faith in him, the mayor was not on his side, and 400 firefighters-- more than half the brigade-- signed a petition saying they didn't trust him to run the department. Inside the fire department, Leen's supporters started to hear rumors. I caught up with some of them in May, not long after the city council meeting. Do you think Commander Schaap is about to get fired? I hope it's not fast. I hope he doesn't leave. Again here's, Ali. What would that mean for you, personally, if he was? I'd be very disappointed. What he did is give minorities a platform where they could speak out. And that wasn't there before him. Now, we're in direct contact with the upper echelons of management. We can immediately reach them, ask for help-- we get a lot of support. And that definitely makes a difference. Leen had been there almost three years, and Ali, and a couple of female managers, told me they were finally starting to see change. Firefighters were thinking twice before making racist and sexist comments. Everybody's more careful now. People are really correcting each other. Still, things happen, and people make jokes like that. But someone will say, hey, watch out. It's something you could have said before in the old days. Nowadays, you can't do this anymore. Now, all the improvements we've seen over the past few years-- if he leaves, you can throw all that in the Amstel River. It's going to be back to square one. These angry white men have always been dominant. They always decided what went down. Does the city-- does the mayor understand that this is now the situation? Well, I don't know about the mayor. She's new. But I hope she won't fire him. If she does fire him, just shake hands on it with us and say, OK, we don't want people of color in the fire brigade. That would be a fair way to go about it. Just say, OK. Quit it. We only want white people. Because that's the message they would give. That's what it'd signal to you-- is she saying, I don't need any more people like you, I don't need any more minorities? Not just, "I don't need any more people"-- "I don't need people like you anymore." This culture forms over a hundred years, and it's really hard to try to get a foot in the door while people just want their old fire brigade back. And they will resist any change. That's reality. I asked Leen to give me a gut check. Do you feel like your days are numbered? [SIGH] Uh. Big sigh. Yeah. He wants to talk-- I think we should talk about that maybe at a different moment. It's not something that you really want to talk about right now? No, no. Have you made a pitch to the mayor about why you should stay? Ja. I told her that the phase we're in now-- it takes about six years to break the habits. And so only after six years old should you start thinking about unifying things. And I think now, the municipal organization is all about trying to find unification. But I think that's too soon. And so I told her, you should just leave me here for another couple of years to do the breaking bit. What did the mayor say? She nodded. The mayor declined many requests for an interview. I wondered if Leen was regretting his management style, if he was thinking he should have been more polder model-- more diplomatic. Do you feel like there's something about the way you do things that perhaps contributed? So this is something that you may see in retrospect, like, I should have done this differently, or I should have approached this differently. I'm just curious. Ja. Sometimes I think maybe, in retrospect, I wanted results too fast. But a real cultural change really can't be forced, or sped up. So instead of creating more support, you get more resistance because the organization isn't ready to change. And so I was very black and white. And I don't really regret it. But maybe, I think now, with more nuance, I would have opened it more to conversation instead of just resistance. Do you think the conversation would have helped? No. That's the dilemma. But honesty begs me to say that I also really didn't try. I just went down and laid down the law. And maybe, if I tried, then it would have been slightly different. But the question really is, how long do you want it to take? Do you accept this kind of behavior to continue for another 20 years? And I'm trying to change it sooner rather than later. So Leen, I'm starting to think-- and maybe this is me just being paranoid-- but I'm starting to think that you're telling me that your days are numbered. Is that what you're telling me right now? I am not allowed to speak about this. Leen's last day as commander of the Amsterdam Fire Department is October 1. Mayor Halsema issued a press release recently announcing his departure, and made it clear that she had forced him out. She says combating discrimination is still a top priority. When the news came out, firefighters at one station celebrated with cake. A photo circulated on social media of firefighters in front of a fire truck wearing party hats. The Brotherhood had won. One guy tweeted, "Bye bye, Kim Jung Schaap." The day Leen's departure was announced, a firefighter parked a camper van at a station. Joanna Kakissis. She's normally a reporter for NPR'S Daily News programs. Act Two. Mom? Hey, mom? Mom? Mom! Hey, Mom! Mom! Mom! So we have time on the show today for just one more quick story about somebody deciding that the only way forward is to rip something down and rebuild from the ground up. Elna Baker, tell us what happened. Here's a typical day from when Katie Dyer was 15, growing up outside Detroit. She gets home from school-- And our chore list was posted on the banister. And I was really frustrated, because it was longer than normal, and there were chickens from where the sliding glass door had been left open. This happened all the time. Her mom loved chickens, and they got in the house. Here a chick, there a chick, everywhere a-- you know. There were chickens perched on the couch. There were chickens on the kitchen counter, and on the dining room table. I mean, there were just chickens everywhere. And I looked up the stairs, and she was sitting at the computer. And I was just-- in that moment, I was very frustrated. Because now, I've got to herd the chickens outside, complete all these chores-- so I was just very irritated. And at some point, rather than going straight into my chores, I sat down to journal. Will you read me what you wrote? Yeah. So in this entry, it says, "My mom never does anything but sit at the computer and play the stupid Sims online anymore." That's what her mom was doing when she came home from school-- playing The Sims. You know, the video game where you get a simulated family and a simulated house to live a simulated life. Today, she made me do all the real chores after school because she was busy doing fake ones on The Sims. She brought home three fancy chickens today. Oh, great-- more fucking birds. OK. Gotta go. Bye. Katie says her mom moved out of her bedroom and set up a futon in the computer room to sleep next to the game. She'd play, crash on the futon, play more. Katie craved her attention. I remember, I used to just sometimes go up to her little den area, where her computer was set. And sometimes, doing things just to intentionally annoy her-- but in a funny way. Like, I would take her headphones off, and I would just come up to her, and sort of zerbert her neck-- like, raspberry her neck. Or, like-- what can I do to get your attention? Katie began to feel invisible. Like, I was just standing there, waving my arms over my head-- which is hilarious, because that's something the Sims would literally do. When they wanted your attention, they'd put their arms over their head, and wave them, and shout at you in whatever Sim language they speak. Sometimes, Katie would catch glimpses of the world her mom was building. In The Sims, her mother played the guitar and piano, had dinner parties. She also had a Sims family named after her real husband and kids. Her sister and father looked like their Sims-- but not Katie. In real life, Katie dyed her hair and dressed edgy. But I remember-- the Sim that she had named after me had this stupid, almost bowl-cut-looking brown hair, and always wore these pencil skirts and button-ups. And I remember thinking, like, that's not me at all. Is that who you wish I was? She tried everything she could think of to coax her mom off the Sims. She tried to reason with her, joke with her, bargain with her. Finally, Katie reached a breaking point. One night, she sat down at the computer and opened her mom's Sims world. With her literally sleeping on the futon, just five feet away from me, was like-- well, I'm doing this. The first thing I did was-- so there was a cheat code. I think it's a semicolon and an exclamation point, over and over. You put it in, and you can get, like-- it was a lot of money. I got enough money that I could buy multiple stoves, mostly. Another thing that I did, I remember, is you could buy-- I think it was like-- you know those oversized teddy bears people give? You could buy these giant oversized bears, and put them near the fireplace, and stuff like that. And so I removed the fire extinguishers, and the smoke detectors, and stuff. And I remember walking the Sim she had named after me out to the yard, and deleting the door behind me that went out to the front yard, and just waiting. Her dad and sister Sim go to the stoves and start cooking. Soon, a kitchen and a living room fire break out. The sparks hit the teddy bears-- game on. And the Sims are just running around, screaming with their hands in the air. And like-- And they really scream, right? Yes. They scream in whatever that weird Sim language is. Can you do it? [SCREAMING IN SIMLISH] It's just like that. It's just gibberish. And I'm laughing so hard. Like, I remember at some point thinking, I'm going to pee my pants. And I'm trying so hard to not laugh out loud, because she's sleeping right behind me. There were firemen, but they'd only come if you told your Sim to call them. I burned her Sim house and family alive. Eventually, the fire stops. The Katie character stands in the yard. Her mom, father, and sister are dead. When a Sim dies, this little urn appears in its place. I went back in the house. And you could pick up the little urns. And I picked up the little urns, and just placed them near each other, and knew, well, I'm going to be in a lot of trouble tomorrow. Because Katie was the only Sim left, it was going to be pretty clear who'd done all this. I got up the next morning to leave for school. And I remember, as I was leaving, she was just sort of starting to get logged into her game and stuff. When I got home, she yelled at me to come up the stairs. I came up the stairs, and she paused her Sim game that she had been rebuilding to turn around and yell at me. And she was like, you owe me an apology. That was weeks of my life. And it still felt like a small victory, I guess, because it was one of the first times in a while that she had to step away from that life to engage her real life. She wrote in her journal, "Grounded. Figures. But it was funny. I have to do all the housework now so she can rebuild. I do all of it anyway, so whatever. Dad thinks I'll go to jail someday. At least in jail, they don't make you get up at 6:00 AM to feed chickens." Elna Baker is one of the producers of our show. Katie Dyer has done no jail time, and she's a bus driver and mom in Knoxville. A version of her story originally appeared on Mortified. You can get their podcast wherever you get your podcasts, or at getmortified.com. Our program was produced today by Miki Meek, with help from Nadia Reiman. People who put the show together today include Bim Adewunmi, Elna Baker, Susan Burton, Ben Calhoun, Zoe Chace, Whitney Dangerfield, Neil Drumming, Damien Graef, Michelle Harris, Jessica Lussenhop, Stowe Nelson, Katherine Rae Mondo, Robyn Semien, Alissa Shipp, Julie Snyder, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, and Matt Tierney. Our managing editor is Diane Wu. Our executive editor is David Kestenbaum. Our interpreters for today's show-- Stephanie van den Berg, Joost van Egmond, and Helena de Groot. The voice actors you heard-- Michiel Bakker, Mike Lebanon, and Jara Lucieer. I'm going to just say-- these things are so hard to pronounce. For the special thanks, I'm going to hand it over to our interpreter, Helena de Groot. Special thanks today to Hagar Jobse, Hannah van der Wurff, Aviva de Kornfeld, Joost Kampen, Elly Kloosterman, Kemal Rijken, Anke Truijen, Hassan Bahara, Ruben Koops, Hans van Velden, Dimitris Angelidis, Toby Sterling, Bo Tarenskeen, and Christopher Miller. Thank you, Helena. Our website-- thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, he's like a marriage expert-- everyone on staff goes to him for advice all the time. I'm 29 years with my wife. If I focus on all the bad things that I said about her, then we would never get married. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Neil Drumming, sitting in for Ira Glass. Every so often, I'll be talking to another black person, usually someone with an accent. And they'll stop mid-conversation and ask me where my family's from or if I'm from the islands. And I'll say something like, "I'm not sure. I think I'm West Indian on my dad's side." I've said this 100 times without any actual proof. I don't know where I got it from, and there's no evidence that I can find. I asked my dad recently, and he wasn't sure. He said, maybe. Going back generations, someone stopped at some island between Africa and South Carolina. My cousin Yvonne, though, her dad was definitely born in Panama. A few years back, she invited me to come stand on the road with her and watch the big party Caribbean people throw here in New York every year, the West Indian Day parade-- technically, the West Indian American Day parade. I still remember how excited she got when a group of Panamanians came marching down Eastern Parkway. My cousin is tall, over six feet, and loud. And she really made a show of jumping and shouting and waving her flag. I envied her in that moment. This is uncomfortable for me to say, but I've sometimes felt a sense of vagueness just being black in America. That's the thing about the West Indian Day parade. There's all these black people who seem to know exactly, specifically, where they're from. And on this one day, they tell everyone. Like, this guy, for example. It's not just where he's from, but it's how he says it. Where are you from? Jamaica. You live in this neighborhood? No, I'm not living in this neighborhood. I'm living in the Bronx. OK, so you came all the way down here? Yes, mon... He and his friend came down from the Bronx and had been partying nearby. I ran into them on Eastern Parkway early that morning. The parade hadn't even started yet, but they were already repping their country. Jamaicans control-- control the Parkway. And go on like saying, Jamaican our own things. But we have the best artists, we have the best food, we have the best culture. And we have the best [INAUDIBLE], too. We have to say no more. These guys, they don't even talk like this all the time. So later on, around 10 o'clock, the parade will actually start. That's the big, big thing. You'll see a lot more people flooding the streets. A few years ago, I moved just a few blocks from the parade route on Eastern Parkway, the broad tree-lined corridor that passes through the neighborhood of Crown Heights. The parade is actually part of a week-long celebration in Brooklyn called the Labor Day Carnival, which is itself just the New York version of Carnival, which is celebrated all over the Caribbean and the world. Most days, Crown Heights feels a lot like other neighborhoods I've lived in-- a corner bodega here, a liquor store there, gentrification creeping in. But one weekend every year, I wake up to reggae, and soca, and feathers, and floats, and people waving flags from all over. There's barely anywhere to stand. There's guys on stilts, and there are police everywhere. It feels like the neighborhood's been completely transformed. But of course, that's not what's actually happening. It's more like the neighborhood is turning inside out, letting you see what's at its core. So many of the people who make their homes in Crown Heights also carry pieces of another homeland with them-- the Bahamas, Grenada, Jamaica, Barbados, St. Lucia, Trinidad. Every year, anywhere between 1 and 2 million people show up. It's pretty thrilling just to stand on the sidelines and watch it all pass by you, you know, like a parade. But I wanted to live inside it more, to understand as best I can how my cousin felt that day, to know what it means to have a flag to wave. So that's what we're doing this hour. A bunch of us went out that weekend, dove in headfirst. Some of us even got pretty wet. Stay with us. So explain your costume. Which costume is this? So this is Kill Bill. I regret these big feathers. I don't know where I'm going with this. But this is Kill Bill and-- Why do you regret them? Because they're-- do you-- girl, I'm going to need you put on a costume and try to walk down the Parkway with big feathers on it. It was a bad mistake. Feathers coming out of this, some stones came off. What's the experience of putting on an outfit like this and coming out-- It's hell. It took me two hours, and a lot of people's breaking down already. We didn't even hit the Parkway. Just know if you're going to do it, just carry a lot of-- not a lot, but carry some Krazy Glue with you. And you're going to be putting yourself together once you get out here. What made you decide on Kill Bill? To be honest with you, I'm chubby. So Kill Bill had a monokini, and I liked it, so I went with that. And me and a two-piece, we ain't friends right now. And we ain't hit the gym. So Kill Bill it was. For many people, playing mas starts even earlier than the parade, at the parade before the parade. It's called J'ouvert, and it's a celebration with deep, deep roots in the Caribbean. J'ouvert's mythology is populated with outlandish characters, like the menacing Midnight Robber with his wide-brimmed hat, the insanely voluptuous Dame Lorraine, and the many devils. Writer Imani Brown grew up with J'ouvert, but she didn't actually start going until she got to Brooklyn. Her story starts over 2,000 miles away. In Trinidad, Carnival is so big that you study it in school. The year I turned 10, we were given an assignment to pick one of the traditional Carnival mas characters we just learned about, create a costume, and put on a performance in front of the rest of the school. Picking my character was a struggle. But in the end, I settled on the jab molassie, sometimes called the Blue Devil in Trinidad. I picked it mostly because I knew the costume would be one of the easiest to make, and time was running out. I cut holes into an old pair of shorts and a thin T-shirt. I fashioned horns from paper towel rolls and looped strips of paper into a chain that I could wrap around my body. A pitchfork I fabricated from tree branches from my backyard completed the look. On the day of the performance, I changed into my costume in the classroom, smeared myself all over with blue paint, and then headed towards the auditorium. I was the kind of child who avoided attention, and everything in me was fighting the idea of being onstage. When I stepped out alone in front of the whole school, my heart was racing. My teacher told us that the jab molassie was a demon that terrorizes, a creature barely kept on its leash. So on the stage that day, I might have crouched, or jumped, or hissed, or bared my teeth at the crowd-- I'm not sure. I just remember my anxiety wasn't painful anymore. It was exhilarating. I felt wicked, and nasty, and playful, and tricky. So completely out of character and still so utterly myself. Deeply inside my body and yet somehow floating above it. When it's good, that's what it feels like to play mas. For a long time, mas didn't really feel like mine. I grew up in Trinidad, but my father and mother are from Jamaica and Guyana respectively. Carnival in those places simply does not compare to the space the festival takes up in Trinidad, where Carnival is king and its influence swirls year round. Everyone, my mother would say, laughing and shaking her head, everyone from the biggest partier to the most religious church mouse is out on the road come Monday. My family didn't go to church regularly, but there was no way my parents were going to let me participate in Carnival proper as a teenager. That was for grown people. When I left Trinidad for college in the States, the loneliness took me by surprise. I was 18, and homesickness was a physical and nearly constant ache. It was then that I played J'ouvert for the first time at Brooklyn's Labor Day parade. There, I finally felt at home again. And in the year since, the parade has become a spiritual practice. J'ouvert always begins in the dark. This year, climbing up and out of the subway at Grand Army Plaza, the sky isn't quite pitch black, but it's close. Against the glare of police floodlights, I can just make out a stream of people trickling down the road in clumps. My friends and I join the stream, moving towards the NYPD metal barriers that narrow into a checkpoint. We are patted down and our bags opened. How're you doing, ma'am? Can you just open that up and just show me all what you got in there? J'ouvert is derived from the French Creole word for daybreak. And traditionally, Brooklyn starts at around 4:00 AM, ending not too long after the sun rises. But this year, the rising sun is what marks the beginning of the parade. At 6:00 AM, the parade is starting much later than usual. The reason given is that it will help curb the violence that many have come to associate with the event. In 2015, a young lawyer in Governor Andrew Cuomo's administration, Carey Gabay, was hit and killed by a stray bullet along the route. The next year, it was reported that four people were shot at the parade, two of whom died. Here's what's rarely mentioned in those news reports. The violence that black people experience in these long neglected neighborhoods is year round. It doesn't end when the cameras leave the parade. And in some cases, the incidents that the media have connected to the parade happen away from the parade's actual route. The news coverage J'ouvert typically receives is frustrating, but not surprising. No matter what part of the globe you're from, you know that this is part of what it means to be black. The things you do to secure joy for yourself in a world that would rather see you dead become the way the world then rationalizes your suffering. For the media, for everyone outside of our community, the story of the parade is the story of the violence. This is why it feels impossible to smile back when the officer checking our bags grins as if we're sharing an inside joke and comments, "Just need to make sure you don't have a gun," before letting us through. Once we're past the checkpoint, the crowd thickens. It's clear that for some people, the morning is just beginning, and that for others, a long night of partying is simply stretching itself a little bit longer. Everyone is drifting, tripping down the street in no real hurry. No one is wearing anything they wouldn't mind sacrificing to the J'ouvert gods-- old tanks and short shorts, ratty T-shirts, and strappy dresses that ride up the thigh. Flags are everywhere, tied around waists, worn as capes. The red, green, and gold of Grenada's flag in particular can be seen near and far. The closer we get to the front of the route, the more clearly we can hear the sound of whistles and conchs up the road. The tinny sound of somebody beating out a rhythm on a small metal pan is joined briefly by the heavy beat of a cowbell. Both are swallowed up by the sound of the steel pan band warming up. And the devils are out. The Grenadian jab jabs are covered from head to toe in slick, black oil. The whites of their eyes and teeth seem to jump out of their skin. Locks and wigs and braids are wrapped up tightly in plastic bags. Sacrificing old clothes is one thing, but getting oil and powder out of a new sew-in is quite another. The devils wear hardhats and helmets crowned with black horns. I narrowly avoid getting hit by one of the many shopping carts many of the devils are pushing down the road, most of them full of plastic bags and buckets-- and in some cases, other passed-out devils. The smell of grease and smoke rose heavier. Two young devils spot my friends and me and loudly proclaim that we're too clean. One of the devils dips his hands into a bucket of oil, and the other beckons us closer. He smiles wide, and it's both a dare and a promise, an invitation and a threat. We shake our heads, but we're all laughing as he walks up to us and starts rubbing us down with the oil anyway. You don't come to J'ouvert if you're not prepared to get dirty. The U-Haul vans pulling along the rhythm section and steel pan bands, who are now in full swing, start inching down the road. A woman climbs on top of the bumper of a van, winding her way slowly in a smooth, rippling motion that extends from her shoulders down to her legs. A man hoists himself up behind her, and she picks up the pace. We flag down a young woman selling Nutcrackers, sweet drinks mixed heavily with rum and vodka, despite reports of a crackdown on the sale of these drinks. She asks if she can take a picture of us that she then posts on her Instagram to promote her business. We all giggle like we've known each other for years as we pose. Trying to mark the moment the parade slides from darkness into daylight is like trying to track the ripening of a mango. It happens slowly and then all at once. Suddenly, I'm squinting into the sun, and everything that felt clear in the night looks and feels strange to me now. This is a part of it, too. Within this space, what is real and what is a hallucination? Moko jumbies, sure-footed performers on six-foot stilts, drift by like clouds without looking down. Three devils covered in white paint are on the roof of a nearby building, winding and waving a huge Trinidad flag over the crowd, as if claiming territory. How did they get up there? I have no idea. But somehow, in the moment, there's nothing that doesn't make sense. J'ouvert began as a way to celebrate surviving the most brutal aspects of slavery. In J'ouvert, you can see out of the eyes of the demons that once drove you with the whip. You can embody the worst thing that ever hurt you and come out the other side invincible. When our people were enslaved, they were driven into burning cane fields to harvest the land. Those that survived came out covered in soot and ash. The horror defies imagination. But at every turn, we have been taught that we are weak, that we are cowards, that we are less than human. So we play J'ouvert to remember that no one has the power to make monsters of us but ourselves. We play J'ouvert, and in that time, we become more fearsome than anything that could ever terrorize us. In a world that asks us to be quieter, to do less, to accept the worst of everything and to pretend to like it, J'ouvert becomes the altar where we can finally fall to our knees and worship ourselves. I am two Nutcrackers in when the brass of the rhythm section really gets going. Something deep and sweet fills me. This year has been harder than most. I haven't had the money for a plane ticket, and it's been over a year since I was in my backyard, pressing my feet into the grass, watching the sunset, feeling the wetness of the air hug my body. There is a person I am when I am home, and I miss her desperately. Now, a current runs through my chest, my belly, my legs. I am not home, but I am home. I'm home. I swing my hips and roll my waist and slow dance, and for a moment, feel the way I did when I was 10, jumping back and forth between fear and exhilaration, getting low to the ground, feeling something like awe and pride start to crack my chest open. Imani Brown is a Jamaican writer and poet whose work focuses on race, gender, and Caribbean folklore. She lives in Brooklyn. You know, when I say to people, "I practice every night," like, they'll say, well, can you do this? And I'm like, no, I have practice. You practice every night. I'm like, yeah, I say I practice every night every time. Even members of our family. Even members of our family are like, you're going to practice? Yes, we're going to practice. It's what we do. That's Angie and her daughter Jona. This is the thing they do together every year, all summer long. And they were really hoping their band would win this year. The competition was basically going to be the last thing they did together as mom and teenage daughter. As soon as it was over, literally hours after it was over, Jona would get on a flight and leave home for her first year in college. I don't know anything about steel drums, or pans, as they're called. But we found a reporter, Marlon Bishop, who is also a musician and who loves this instrument. He followed Angie and Jona as they prepared, and one of our producers, Nadia Reiman, went with them to the competition. The band Angie and Jona play in is called Radoes. The name comes from this famous band in Trinidad called Desperadoes. The US branch of it was called Despers, but then there was a rebellion in the ranks and the band split. It was like a divorce. The rebels were like, you want to be Despers? Fine, we'll be Radoes. That was years ago, though, and it's all good now. Well, kind of. They're rivals-- friendly rivals. We don't want them to win. Not necessarily we don't want them to win, but we want to win on our own. No, no, no. We don't want-- I don't want them to win. Not really-- Right, no, it's not that we don't want them to win. It's we want to win. Yeah, no, no, no. I'm going to say I don't want-- Really? Like, you can want to win all you want. I'm like, I want to win. Like, I don't want just anyone to win. I want Radoes to win. Their band Radoes has a reputation for being a vibes band. Maybe not as tight as some other groups, but compensating with spirit. On the stage, they play loud and bold. And for a while, Radoes did win, three years in a row. But then last year, Despers-- Despers won last year. They won last year. It was very troubling. It was the most heartbreaking thing ever. Can you talk about that? I was so sad. Why? We worked so hard. I first met Angie and Jona at the big lot where the band practices. It's in an industrial part of Brooklyn next to a bus depot-- you know, less neighbors to complain about the noise. You're coming a little up, a little up. Jona is trying to nail down a section in the music that's been giving her trouble. Ba dum ba dum ba bum ba dum. No, no, no. No, you're changing it. Ba da dum ba dum. You're changing the phrasing. Play it again. Ba da dum ba dum. What's this pan called? This is the-- This is the quadraphonics. I'm sorry, was he asking you? He asked both of us. This is a quadra pan. That's a really hard one, right? It's very hard, yeah. But it's fun. It's really exciting to play. This yard is like their second home. Angie, the mom, left Grenada when she was three years old-- grew up in Queens. When I told my mother I was going to play pan, she looked at me and she shook her head. And she said, you are the bane of my existence. Just like that. I was like, it's not that deep. I'm going to play some music. But it's male dominated. Basically. It's just music. Yeah, I know. Women didn't really play pan back in the day. They do now, though. Angie played pregnant with Jona. And after Jona was born, as a baby, she'd ride on Angie's back as she practiced. Jona started playing in the band when she was eight years old-- played every year since. She loves it-- so much so that in this last summer before she leaves for college, she's choosing to spend every night right here with her mom, getting ready for the competition. The way the Panorama competition works, each band plays an eight to 10 minute long, incredibly complicated arrangement of a popular soca song. The arrangements are filled with crazy runs and breakdowns, which, in a kind of Calypso arms race, get more and more virtuosic every year. Everyone will tell you the key to winning this thing, it's having a good arranger, the person who comes up with all the parts. Most bands use local arrangers from Brooklyn, but Radoes hires a ringer from Trinidad, a guy named BJ. Normally they'll bring up BJ for the whole summer to teach the song, but this time, there's a problem. He had trouble getting a visa, so he's been teaching over the phone. Every night, someone gets their cell phone with a cable, and they connect it to this giant speaker that everyone gathers around. BJ teaches the music by calling out the notes one by one through the phone, which this other guy, called the drill master, then repeats to the rest of the orchestra. It's C and F, F and G sharp, E and G. It starts on B and F then? C and F. Yeah, C and F. C. F and G sharp. OK, E and F? C! Cat, cat. BJ has to teach every note of a 10 minute song this way. And there's not just one part. It's an 100-person orchestra with different sections that play different notes and rhythms. No sheet music involved. This is music learned entirely by ear. Another thing here. F and G sharp. F and G sharp. Right. E and G. I will be telling you. The yard feels like an extended family barbecue that happens every single night. There's a makeshift bar in the back that serves beer and food. That's where all the good gossip happens. Overall, it's about half players and half people who are just there to hang out-- lots of kids running around, significant others of band members, plus a contingent of old guys smoking weed in the back. People said it feels kind of like being back home in the Caribbean. During breaks, Jona hangs out with her best friend, Z, and some of the other girls her age, on a set of wooden bleachers. I notice at one point they're talking about neighborhoods in Trinidad. And they don't say, my family lives in such and such a place. They say, I live there. Where do you live? Arima. You live in Arima? No, I live in 'Bago. I live in-- my dad lives in 'Bago. I'm over there. You guys all live in Brooklyn. Yes. But you're talking about Trinidad. Yes. You would swear we grew up there, though. You don't really think that we grew up in some of these-- Honestly, when we turn on our fake ass accent-- because we wasn't born there, we just turn it on. My mom be like, you swear you're Trinadi. The high school Jona just graduated from, there weren't a lot of West Indian kids there. I don't talk to my friends about pan and that at all because I don't think there's a good enough way for me to explain it without people thinking I'm crazy. Like, I'm so serious. I mean, I can't explain to them that I'm standing up for hours a night, just playing music and coming home at 3 o'clock and having to wake up the next day. I can't explain all the riff raff that happens. I can't. There are fights. There are fights. Right, as an example. It's a family, and it has arguments. To me, it's like-- I keep on saying it's like the epicenter of forgiveness. Because you can do anything-- You can literally do anything. You can literally do anything, and then you can come back. And then cool off a year and a half or so, and then come back, and people will be like, oh, hi. They're alluding to something specific here. One year, one of the Radoes players got into a beef and brought a gun into another pan yard. And someone ended up getting shot. It was a bad time, Angie said. The guy went to jail. But when he got out, he came back to the band, and people said, OK. It's a place of redemption. You belong to us, right, and we belong in the same environment. And we know how to make peace with one another. That's not something you see all the time. That's not something you see all the time. I come back a few weeks later and BJ, the ringer, the arranger from Trinidad, his visa has finally been sorted out. He's here in person. You can feel the change of energy in the yard. There's way more players, and the music is starting to sound really good. As I'm recording the band, a guy calls me over and tells me, in no uncertain terms, that I am not to share the recordings with any rival bands. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a competition. And therefore, we must have judges. Our judges this evening are-- This finally is the night of Panorama, Labor Day weekend. My colleague, Nadia Reiman, was there for that. She's going to take it from here. The competition takes place in the parking lot of the Brooklyn Museum. The streets are blocked off. There's tons of U-Hauls filled with drums and racks, tons of people setting up pans, rolling them about. It's like being backstage. When I get there an hour before showtime, Angie is dashing from place to place, setting up drums, making sure people have their shirts. The Radoes are all wearing T-shirts that say, "Hookin' Meh" on them. That's the song they're playing. Oh, also, she's getting people rides who are supposed to be here, but aren't. Are you ready now? OK, get up here as soon as you can, because they want you to start hooking up the drums. Tell me the address of the place. I'll send you a car. She sees Jona walking toward us in the distance. She can tell just from her walk. Radoes is going to play second, which is stressing Angie out. You want to play last. That way, the judges remember you. Most of the bands that are going first are pretty set up, starting to run through their songs. But Radoes is still not ready, still not practicing. Despers is. Jona seems not concerned, like at all. Really, she's not. Stop talking about it. Despers USA, the one who won last year, that's them right now. That's like your rival? Ah, they just won last year. It's nothing special. I like how every time I ask, you're like, nah, I don't care. No, it's not that I don't care, but they just won once. That was the first time they've won in a really long time, 'cause I think the last time they won was, like, in the '90s or something like that. So it was a big deal for them. But other than that, they're not a rival. You're, like, very politely [BLEEP] talking them. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's nothing special. Finally, everyone shows up, and they run through their song a few times in practice. And then, for real. Ladies and gentlemen, on stage, we have band number two. They are the Radoes. They roll up on stage. There's about 100 of them. They've built out a float that looks like a tin spaceship, kind of. It's even hard to tell it's a spaceship, but Angie says it is. I have to say, to me, standing in the front few rows of the audience with my untrained ears, they sound a little rushed and messy. It's honestly hard to tell. As they play more, though, they get a little more sure-footed. It takes nearly an hour to get each band on and off the stage. When Despers comes on, hours later, they look like professionals, definitely more polished. Their bandleader has this confidence and a little bravado, as if they've already won. Angie's not feeling good about this. And as the night goes on, she goes through a kind of pre-emptive expedited grieving process. Here she is an hour later, depression. My grandmother used to say kingdoms rise and fall all the time. And so, I wonder if the kingdom is falling. It's hard to know. And at around 11:00, when we're getting closer to the end, acceptance. We're not going to win this time around, I can see that. You're like, we're not going to win? No, I don't see that happening. I don't see that happening. The Radoes' reign could be over. Things change, people move on. Jona is about to move on. But people from different bands keep coming over to Angie to say hello. She honestly seems to know everybody here. It combats the anonymity of America. Like, America is just one big place that you could be lost in. And we come from small places, right? And this is, as you know West Indians say, a kind of catch ass place. People don't have the kind of luxury of time as they do in the Caribbean, but they figure out a way to be together. And this is just another way to figure out how to be together, how to be together the way we are. How to be together the way we are. Angie says when she was little, she couldn't stand Labor Day Carnival. She'd get tired and want to go home. And her dad would always try and linger, stretch it out a little longer. Now she gets it. There's a homesickness, even in Angie's case, if it's for a place where she hasn't really lived. Is the president here? Please come on stage for the results. Duh duh duh. It's now past midnight, or 1:00 AM. Honestly, I don't remember. But it's the moment they've been waiting for. They're about to announce the winners. Everyone gathers closer and closer to the stage. The announcer starts with the last place band. Placing eighth, we have Harmony. Placing seventh, Cross Fire. This is all good news. It means Radoes hasn't lost yet. In sixth place, Philly Pan Stars. The crowd does not like that. So I'm just reading what it said, OK? Fifth place, Chasm. At this point, each time the announcer doesn't say Radoes, Angie lets out an involuntary scream. Fourth, Despers USA. Despers, their rival, took fourth. Third, Pan Evolution. OK, so now my hands are shaking. Placing second with a score of 458 and the winner, 459, placing second, Adlib. So that's it. Radoes won by a single point, 459 to 458. The Radoes. I got to go. Come. Come, Angie says. She grabs my hand and drags me on stage. We are running up this ramp, tons of people pushing through. Someone loses a shoe, but keeps going. They're screaming, dancing-- tons of hugs. And in the middle of the stage, Angie sees her daughter, surrounded by her friends. In a few hours, she'll be on the plane to college in California. I'm so overwhelmed. I don't want you to leave. 'Cause I'm going to leave, like, now. But then we also won. The person saying, "I don't want you to leave," that's Jona's bestie from the pan yard, Z. Jona looks at her and starts to cry. She told me later that she's known Z since she was 10. That every year, days after Panorama's over, they keep going to the pan yard anyway and hanging out until it got too cold to do it. And so this moment, standing on stage looking at her friends, that was when it really hit her. This part of her life with her mom and these friends in this world, it's over. Marlon Bishop produces podcasts for Futuro Media Group, which makes Latino USA. Nadia Reiman is one of the producers of our show. Coming up, we're going to need a mop in aisle seven. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. Walking up to Hasids on the street felt like walking up to people from another planet, people who had a general air of hostility-- or at least, suspicion-- towards outsiders like me. They waved me off. The best I got was from a young man who took pity on me and gamely mustered this non-committal quote about the parade. Every person has a right to do what they want, what they feel is right. But I finally found one Hasid who would actually talk to me by marching myself over to 770 Eastern Parkway, the worldwide headquarters of the Chabad movement. Chabad is the biggest Hasid organization. And 770 is such an important spiritual site for them that a replica of the building at 770 Eastern Parkway was built in Jerusalem, nearly a brick-by-brick copy, with other replicas in cities around the world, which include the number 770 on the building. The number has mystical significance, meaning, among other things, depending on who you ask, Beis Moshiach, House of the Messiah. The 770 is not just a three digit number on the door and the address at 770 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, New York. It is the house of our leader, the leader of the entire human race. Lubavitcher Rebbe. Right. The man telling me this is Yehuda Menasha Goldstein, a middle-aged fellow with a very kind face, long graying beard, wire-rimmed glasses. And he's talking about the last great leader of the Chabad movement, who died in 1994, has no successor, Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Some, like Yehuda, believe Schneerson was the messiah. Yehuda spoke with me because he's taken it upon himself to be a schliach, which is a kind of emissary or missionary spreading the word about God's laws. And what that meant was that when I strode up to 770, he seemed just as glad for somebody to talk to as I was. Like, he walked up to me. Like, God had sent us both out to talk to strangers on this day at the parade, and now, here we were. He admitted he'd put up a handmade sign across the parade route about the seven laws of Noah. And he was kind of hoping that the sign would do a lot of the proselytizing for him today, and he wouldn't have to engage too much with the crowd. Due to the weakness of the eyes, I try to put signs over there to do my work for me. Because if I see what's going on over here, it really triggers a lot of emotional prohibited thoughts that you have to really not let play out, get played enough to guard your eyes in this. What do you mean? Well, the distracting, sexually explicit, beautiful women. They are very arousing and provocative. Remember, we're standing on the street with literally hundreds of women in bikinis going by, lots of bare skin. So the women on top of that float going by, you're not supposed to even look at them? I plead the fifth, man. It didn't occur to me. I didn't realize, right, to have a parade like this right in the middle of the Hasid neighborhood, right here in front of 770-- it's a challenge. Right, and I had prayed about it last night. And I was 50/50 with God because that was full on winding it. And I was full on asking for help to overcome and not sin because I know my weaknesses. I'm very human. I'm very masculine. And when you see that very feminine, it's a little more than a challenge to. But when God is blessing you, God is with you, you can still manage to not sin. What did you pray for? Prayed that God would prevent me from sinning. Prevent you from looking even. Well, yeah. I have to admit that I asked that. But obviously, whatever. It's a fight. I mean, you seem to be quite uninterested to look yourself. You seem to be more interested in getting a story and talking and writing material for-- I have a job I'm supposed to do, yeah. Also, I'm a secular person who is allowed to look at women walking by in a parade. God wants us to be holy, Yehuda said. He wants us to elevate our souls. And really, he said, the right thing to do today would be to guard his eyes. He admitted for all his praying last night, today-- A couple of times, I was looking a little too long at some nice shapes. Mentally, I have to work on that because it's not right. And I even pointed as they walked by. And then some people caught me pointing and said, oh, see that Jewish guy? He's even into the looking, and laughing at me. Look at that guy. Look at that rabbi. He's copping a look. Yeah, well, I admit it. Well, Yom Kippur is coming in 40 days. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when once a year, through repentance, prayer, and charity, Jews get their chance to make things right again with God, for the moments we strayed. Two blocks west of 770, a block south of the parade route on Union Street, I spot two Hasidic boys in front of their apartment building with a cooler and handmade signs that read "Cookies for Sale" and "Ice Pops for Sale." And so how much are they? They're $0.15 each. Have you sold many? Yeah. How many have you sold? Two. How long have you been here? A half hour. OK, that's pretty good, so $0.30. What's your name? I don't want to say. Can I say my name? Ah, little brothers, clueless. This one's seven, the other guy's 12. The little one proceeds to tell me his name, which, later, his older brother asked me not to put on the radio. They're used to the parade. It's every year. They woke me up at 3:00 AM in the morning. There was a bunch of people with symbols and then just marching down that block. Do you like that this kind of thing happens in the neighborhood? No. Your brother is shaking your head no. You don't like it. No. How come? Because it's very noisy and dangerous. What's the dangerous part? People are walking around crazy. Have you seen anything crazy? Yes. They described to me some people yelling, threatening each other a couple of doors down from them about an hour before this. I asked for another example. People are walking around with knives and guns. Wait, have you seen knives and guns? You're just here. Yes. Wait, hold on, I don't want to say it on there. Do you want me to say what I have in my pocket? His older brother explains it's just because he's scared. What does he have in his pocket? Scissors. You have scissors in your pocket because you're scared? I had scissors in my pocket just in case anything happens. He fetches them and shows me. To be clear, these scissors are kid scissors, like safety scissors like you use in second grade. What were you going to do with the scissors? If someone were to come with a knife, I would tell them look over there, and grab the knife, and then stab them. Your brother's laughing. You don't think that plan would work. No, it wouldn't. I think it would work. We start discussing how scary the parade seems to them and the people in the parade when a bunch of women amble up to us. Hi. Hey, guys. Hi. This is our old building. We want to take a picture right here. So we needed to take a picture here. We lived here 20 years ago. Yeah, that's my old room right there. So we're just going to do a picture because we were here. This was my old room. I tell the women that these boys live in the building. Well, maybe these guys live in your apartment. I don't know. What apartment do you guys live in? We're on that side. No, we lived on that side. But we always take an annual picture, and we just need to do that. So I hope you don't mind. So you guys used to live in the neighborhood. Yeah. Where did you move to? All over. All over. And then you come back every year for the parade? Yeah. And then we take a photo shoot here. They line up in front of the door with the building number above it. The friend frames the shot in her phone. Say Guyana. Guyana. Ah. They do a Boomerang. What's a Boomerang? And then the important business finished, they chat. They explain to me that their names are Denille and Charlene. Perfect. Yeah, this is our old block. That's so sweet. Has it changed much? Well, with the new neighbors, yeah. But there's still people across the street that still have the same house. My room used to be right there-- Mommy's room, Keisha's room, my room, the living room. This is a great building. It's only seven apartments in this apartment building, and they're so huge-- That's nice. That's nice. --at $350 a month. Can you remember? It was the '90s. She turns to the 12- and 7-year-old-- they're sitting there, stone silent-- and talks to the little one. Matter of fact, my little sister, matter of fact, was your age. And she's like 40 something now, and I'm 50. And then were there Hasids in the neighborhood on the block back then? We used to live in the building with them. We have no problem with the Orthodox Jews, never. We played with them. There was great houses down there. We were friends with them. Never a problem. Never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever a problem with the Orthodox ever. They stroll off. The 12-year-old tells me that one of them slipped him a dollar when I wasn't watching. Biggest sale of the day. Those ladies, so nice. New Yorkers can be so friendly. I know that's not the stereotype of New Yorkers, but I find often the case. Little brother didn't even have to pull out his scissors. Ira Glass. So the parade, it involves an incredible number of feathers. And there's this kind of funny thing that I learned. A lot of them come from this one shop on West 37th Street in the Garment District. So I want to leave Eastern Parkway for a minute and take you there. We visited a couple of weeks before the parade. It's like a candy store inside, except the bins that line the walls are filled with different colors of feathers, sequins, and rhinestones. The owner is not from the West Indies. He's never been to Brooklyn Carnival. His name's Hai, and he's originally from China. And he showed my co-producer Jessica some of this year's costumes, including an outfit with about 1,000 rhinestones sewn into it. I don't know. Is that clear or white or what-- AB, what does that mean? Aurora Borealis color. These are all AB color stones. What does that mean? What does-- It color changes based on the light. There's a lot of colors in it. When Hai first opened his shop, his main customers were figure skaters, ballroom dancers, and drag queens. He'd never heard of Carnival. Then about 12 years ago, a Trinidadian man walked into his shop and asked for 400 identical sequined appliques. It turns out the guy was buying them for Carnival for one of the big costume groups you see march in the parade. They're called mas bands, or mas camps. Again, the mas is for masquerade. Now Hai is the go-to guy for Carnival feathers for so many bands, not just here, but all over the Caribbean. Everyone knows Hai, one Trinidadian told us. While Jessica was in Hai's shop, the leader of one of the biggest mas camps in Brooklyn stopped by. Her name is Reishelle Maynard-Richards. She runs a camp called Ramajay. And half will be leg pieces, arm pieces. Ramajay. How are you? Yeah, your stuff is here. Wow, you guys are so lucky. Hi. Hello. How are you? That's the Ramajay bandleader. Yeah, sure. They accept us. Oh, this is pretty. Yeah, right? It is pretty. Hai is pulling bra tops out of big boxes and showing Reishelle. What color is that? Like, sherbet or what would you call that? Coral. Coral. Coral or shrimp color. I came to get the feathers for today. Are you getting the feathers for that one today? All these are your feathers, no? Yes. All these are your feathers. Reishelle went off to pick out more ostrich plumes, which are some of the most expensive feathers in the shop. It turns out that all these feathers are real. Hai gets his ostrich plumes from farms in South Africa. The turkey feathers, mostly from Missouri. And there are also these really long, striped pheasant tail feathers. Those are from farms in Vietnam and Cambodia. Each individual feather or piece costs $25. And sometimes you'll see individual masqueraders having over 200 pieces on their backpack, and just imagine how much money he spent on that one backpack. Wow. Yeah, but those are very Carnival and this is what they love. And so they save up for that one costume, right? When the actual finished product walks down the Parkway, you're looking at almost a year's worth of work by everyone from peacock farmers in Cambodia to the designers in Trinidad and the seamstresses in southern China to Reishelle and her family in Canarsie, where her father actually hand glues feathers onto wire and bends them into headdresses and wings. One other important thing that you should know about Hai's feathers is that people tell us that, because they're real, they're waterproof. Which is fortunate, because this year, it started pouring down rain early Labor Day morning. And Jessica and I found maybe 100 masqueraders hiding out in a nearby Walgreens. In the cosmetics aisle, I saw a woman posing for a picture like some odd winged supermodel underneath the fluorescent lights. There was a long line to the bathroom, women in sequined bikinis crowding in two at a time. Even though everyone's feathers were soaked through and drooping, they were trying to stay in good spirits. It ain't going to stop. And we're drying our feathers. I took my feathers off to dry. It's wet. They are hanging up behind me in a bunch of school supplies. Yeah, I don't know. I guess, I'm curious, like, does the fact that it's raining, like-- No, it don't stop us. No, it don't stop us. It don't stop us. We could party in the rain. It don't stop us, and the party don't stop. I'm still running the Parkway. It's our culture. We're here to pick up our culture, you know what I mean? Like, rain or shine, tornado. Eventually the rain stopped. People put on their damp costumes and rejoined the parade. Mas players pay hundreds of dollars to join mas bands. For their money, the masqueraders get a costume, food and drink, and a chance to dance behind a truck with an obscenely loud sound system. The folks at Ramajay, they say the number of masqueraders has been dropping over the years. This is Darryl Cox. He designs costumes for Ramajay. He was wearing a jewel-encrusted ski mask at the time. So there's a whole bunch of factors that play into part. But overall, I think it's just people may want to do different things with their income. They may not necessarily want to be half naked on the road for a couple hours, so. What Darryl means is they'd prefer to be half naked on the road for considerably more than a few hours. He says the mas play business is suffering because people feel like the city is getting more and more strict every year about when the parade is supposed to end. Everyone's supposed to be off the road by 6:00, so masqueraders are less inclined to pay a band like Ramajay for the experience. And one of our biggest battles is why should I spend $600 for a costume in New York when I can spend that on a flight and go to St. Lucia, or go to Jamaica, or go somewhere else and play mas there? That's Reishelle, the woman we met in the feather shop on 37. She founded Ramajay about a decade ago and turned it into the family business. Her father played mas in Trinidad, and to this day, still spends months helping her make the band's lavish costumes by hand. For Reishelle, these days, not enough people are willing to commit to the masquerade, to the tradition of playing mas. When you walk, what you see now, you don't see much costumes anymore. You see a lot of T-shirts and just flags. A lot of people don't get to witness the beauty of the costumes anymore, because they just see flags, and rags, and short pants, and they don't see the beauty of a lot of the costumes anymore. Within Caribbean culture, not everyone is steeped in the same traditions Reishelle was taught. They celebrate however they can. Though there's one way of cutting loose that seems to be happening more and more, and it drives Reishelle and her staff crazy. When Ramajay rolls down the Parkway, speakers blasting, some bystanders hop the metal barriers and flood the band's ranks, dancing and waving their flags. People call this storming. Some mas players welcome it, like the more, the merrier. But it doesn't look great. The traditional mas players in their feathers and jewels, jostled and crowded by stormers in shorts and T-shirts and everyday street clothes, it's just messy. And it can also be dangerous. People get harassed, even assaulted. Fights can break out. The DJs kept trying to separate the non-paying civilians from the costumed players. But make way for the masqueraders, please. We ask that all the people who are not playing mas to step to the right side, far, far right side of the truck, please, and make space for the masqueraders. And ladies and the men, stop winding with the outsiders and encouraging these things now. Stop winding on the outsiders, OK? They made this announcement over and over, without much impact. And the band security got pretty fed up trying to enforce it. I need the costumes to come through. Anybody that have on costumes, come through. Costumes, come through. Anybody without costumes, you're not coming in. I don't give a [BLEEP] what y'all say. Y'all mother [BLEEP] ain't coming in. Reishelle has had enough. She recently decided that this would be Ramajay's last year in playing mas in New York City. And the stormers are why she's calling it quits. Ramajay will continue to play mas, but Reishelle would rather fly her staff to Miami, where she feels more people embrace Carnival as she knows it. It's big news. Again, here's Darryl, Ramajay's designer. There's a lot of sadness. I haven't really even been dancing because it's almost like I miss this, but I don't miss it. Everyone seems to be happy. And I think it's finally going to hit them when we cross that stage one last time. That's not going to happen again. It's easy to think of a parade as something unchanging, something that passes through the same place at the same time every year. The Carnival is this living thing that goes anywhere it's welcome, picking up pieces here and there, and dropping them off along the way. Just as Ramajay is reaching the end of the parade route, the sky cracks open again, drenching the procession in steady sheets of rain. Plenty of people flee through the barriers for the safety of open subway entrances or storefront awnings. But a lot of people stay. And then something kind of magical happens. Ramajay's DJs crank up the music. They lead the mas bands and chants of wetted up, and the people want water, almost as if they were taunting the clouds, daring the rain to fall. The masqueraders, already soggy from earlier, collectively decide, what the hell, and start to jump up in unison, harder and more exuberantly than they have all day. As they cross the finish line, the band is as presentable as it can be under the circumstances. And it's just like Darryl predicted. There's lots of people crying-- Reishelle, her family, her security, and the people who have been playing mas with Ramajay for years. They pass by a panel of judges who are supposed to be scoring them on presentation. But honestly, the judging seems like it's beside the point right now. Everyone just seems happy to have spent all this time together, and they just want to keep winding and rocking. How many people need two more hours on the road? Put your hands up in the sky right now. Me and a two-piece, we ain't friends right now. I'm Neil Drumming. Ira Glass will be back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
It's nearly 2:00 in the afternoon when we reach Katherine's family's apartment, and she's just gotten up. She's still eating a very late breakfast. I'll finish my noodles, then I'll start packing. I'm with my co-worker, Emanuele Berry, and we're in a quiet working class neighborhood in the part of Hong Kong that's called New Territories. It's a Sunday, so Katherine is getting ready to do what she does every weekend-- what she did yesterday, in fact. That's why she slept late. She's going to a protest-- with a little backpack. So this is the bag that I usually bring. So this is a maroon bag. It's a very small one. We have to keep everything light. So I always have a bottle of water and then many tissues. I have to bring a lot of tissues because we need to wipe our eyes when there is tear gas. And because I know how to do first aid, I always bring my first aid kit. The first aid kit is a little zip-up bag with roller bandages and gauze and gloves and stuff to sterilize a wound. Katherine started at the volunteer ambulance corps in seventh grade and has used all this stuff at demonstrations. She packs her wallet and her AirPods. Because I have to listen to songs. Two batteries for her phone because she's on it constantly during protests, checking the continuously updated online maps that show where the police are and show escape routes. She packs a black T-shirt. The uniform of the Hong Kong protesters is black shirt, black pants, surgical masks to disguise their identities-- though she's wearing a striped maroon shirt for the bus ride to the protest. Yeah, I wear a normal T-shirt when I go out so that no one can identify I am going to a protest. And sometimes I bring makeup so that I can transform myself after the protest. I don't understand. How do you transform yourself? Like, what's the-- I bring foundation-- very small, but can do everything. How different are you going to look with that foundation? No, it looks like you're not going to protest. Because girls who are going to protest, they barely do makeup. But if girl is doing makeup, they're probably meeting someone. And so I bring this one, and then of course, I bring my brow pencil because it really can make you look like another person. Eyebrows are very important, I agree. Yeah. [LAUGHS] And I bring lipstick. Sorry, it's a very small room. So we're in your room. Your room has pink walls, and there is a bunk bed with the bed on the top and a desk underneath it. Yeah, it's very typical Hong Kong girl's room. For a Hong Kong protester to live at home with her mom and dad, that is not unusual in any way. If you know anything about the demonstrations that have overtaken Hong Kong since June, you know it's mostly young people in the city where rents are high. Katherine's 22 and just graduated college. She's working her first entry level job at a public relations firm. I came to Hong Kong because there were things about the protests that I really did not understand, and we'll get to that. One of the things that fascinated me once I arrived was learning what a routine the protests have become and what that was like for the people in them. This was mid-September, the 13th week of protests for Katherine. I'm not really worried because it's just like another day. I think I will meet up with two friends of mine. But I'm not sure if I am going to because they are couples, so I don't want to be-- [LAUGHS] they are couples, so I don't want to be-- they always kiss next to me. So, mm, yeah. Speak of the devil, it's her friend, the one who kisses her boyfriend at demonstrations. And she's calling with bad news. She was going to bring gas masks to the rally today. They'd order them from Amazon, Katherine thinks. But now she's learned that bringing gas masks would be a bad idea because at the subway station-- Police are searching everybody, including men, little ones, and young people like us. They're searching their bags, and if they have any equipment with them, like the gas mask, eye mask, whatever, they just arrest them. Yeah. So my friend just asked me if it is a must for me to get the gas mask, so I told her that no, it is not a must. I don't want to risk my friend getting searched. So she told the other friend not to come out with equipment. Not ideal, but she's gone without gas masks before. Katherine grabs her knapsack, says bye to her mom, who tells her to come home early, a request that will be totally ignored. And we head outside. But then she turns and runs back. What did you forget? Umbrella. It is very important to have umbrella. Even if it's not going to rain? Yeah. It is not for the rain. It is for tear gas and bullets. Rubber bullets, that is. It works on bullets? Yes. Frankly, yes. No, no, I don't understand why, but always, those bullets, they slip off along the umbrella edge. So they just-- they don't get through the umbrella. Also, protesters hide behind a wall of umbrellas when they're painting graffiti or dismantling a closed circuit TV camera on the street, doing anything else they don't want the police to see. As she and I and Emanuele head to the bus stop, we notice other young people carrying full-sized umbrellas on this totally sunny day. Walking over here to the bus, are you looking around to see if-- other people you think are going to protest? Yeah, you always want to know how many people are around you, right? Yeah. OK, and so there's, like, some young people on our left, two people standing next to you. I think the girl probably is not because she brings a very small bag. But the tall guy, the tall guy in white shirt. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and then the couple behind you, probably. It's like, are you on my side? Are you one of us? Once you're at the protest, everybody's in a mass so you don't really know who's on your team. Here in the neighborhood, it's kind of exciting to wonder who your allies might be. The protests in Hong Kong have been international news for months, kicked off by people's fears that mainland China is threatening some very basic things about their city and their lives. But for all the coverage here at our show, we felt like we weren't seeing many stories where we got to know anybody very well-- who they were, what exactly they expected was going to come out of the protests, given China's intransigence. Three of us arrived in Hong Kong in mid-September, me and Emanuele and a co-worker, Diane Wu. I have to say, one of the things that was fascinating, given the ugly state of democracy here in the United States lately, was to be among so many young people who believe so intensely in democratic ideals and yearn so deeply for the basics, like normal elections and free speech and free assembly. Though, just in the last few weeks since we got to Hong Kong, we've watched the situation change dramatically. It's gotten much more violent, harsh new measures by the government. This hour, we have the story of the change that we witnessed and what we think it might mean. If you haven't been following the story at all-- maybe you've been sitting this one out-- we're going to catch you up on what you need to know. We have all sorts of people from all sides of this that we want you to meet. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. This week, overseas with a lot of people who have some very American values. Stay with us. Act One, The Cursed Generation. OK, so what politicized thousands and thousands of people this much, that they've dropped their normal lives and they're coming out every single weekend to protest? It's now been 18 straight weeks. Take Katherine, for instance. She's somebody who worked at Abercrombie & Fitch during college. She told me on the bus to the protest that's why her English is so good. She's somebody who wanted to be a singer. Actually got a chance to go pro when she was 16, but her mom quashed that, saying it was too much of a long shot and she should get an education and get a normal job. Katherine was actually very surprised when I informed her that an American parent might've said the same exact thing. Oh, I thought, like, American dreams can be true, something like that, because I watched Glee. So how did this Glee watching, internet savvy college grad in her first office job, how did she end up protesting in the street every weekend with tens or-- I don't know-- maybe it's hundreds of thousands of her peers? Well, for starters, Katherine's 22, which means she's part of a special generation in Hong Kong. I'm born in Hong Kong in 1997, right before the handover. I'm Dorothy, and I'm born in 1997. My name is Ashley. I'm also born in 1997. You can call me Yuen, and I'm born in 1997. So 1997 is the year when Hong Kong was handed over back to China from the British. OK, let's just pause on these 22-year-olds for a minute for some quick history. As you may or may not know, Hong Kong sits on the edge of mainland China, right? It was a British colony for a really long time, starting in the 19th century. And then finally in 1997, the British got out. They handed it over to China, and the idea was, there's going to be a 50-year transition period. After 50 years, China would fully be in charge. But during that 50 years, Hong Kong would be a democracy. Now, Hong Kong people are to run Hong Kong. That's the last British governor of Hong Kong during the handover ceremony in 1997. That is the promise, and that is the unshakable destiny. But to be clear, Hong Kong had not been a democracy under Britain. But they were going to transition towards it over a bunch of years. And the hope was, after 50 years, in 2047, the Chinese government would let them stay a democracy-- which, at the time, did not seem like a crazy idea. China was opening up in all kinds of ways, though it wasn't clear how this was going to play out. And at the end of the day, after 50 years, in the year 2047, China was going to be able to do whatever it wanted in Hong Kong. These are the children born the year that clock started ticking. And have you heard of the phrase, "cursed generation"? Yes, it was a joke among the 1997 people. It was pretty much a joke, pretty much a funny thing to us, because-- I think when we first joke about it, it's really primary schools, but-- The cursed generation is just what we've been joking around for all those years. Originally, the joke had to do with a coincidence. They were cursed because of some weird, bad luck during some big childhood milestones they all went through together, like the year of their kindergarten graduation, the SARS virus hit Hong Kong. And the city shut down, graduations were canceled. Six years later, when they should've had their elementary school graduation, same thing happened again, but it was swine flu. And Katherine remembers that her friends joked that when they graduated high school, it was going to be Ebola. And that's when they started using the word "cursed." I think that was around the time that J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Yeah, so many of us-- oh, we're the cursed child. Or we say that we are the chosen one, because Harry Potter was the chosen one. All of us love Harry Potter. So we always think that, oh, we are the chosen one. We have to face something special in our life. Or we are the cursed one. We have to face something bad or face something significant. Katherine says the "chosen one" side of things didn't really kick in until their senior year of high school. It was 2014. They were 17, the 17th year since the handover. And that year, people in Hong Kong were still expecting that mainland China was going to let them start holding full-on elections, where they could choose their own leaders, as promised back in 1997. And that year, China announced it wasn't going to happen. This led to a movement called the Umbrella Movement, headed by young people, teenagers, who'd learned their politics in these public school classes that all these 22-year-olds talk about as being instrumental in their thinking, classes that began as part of the handover called Liberal Studies classes that explained, among other things, the promises of 1997 and the rights of Hong Kong citizens. They took to the streets, most of them for the first time, demanding to vote, carrying umbrellas, thousands of people in a vast procession down the streets in a protest movement that was almost entirely peaceful. And they lost. They didn't get the vote. After three months, the protests ended. Dorothy works for a multinational company in an entry level job out of college. She's a management trainee. She says she went to some protests back then out of solidarity with her peers. I was just amazed by the other students. But she didn't really get all the politics. That changes June, when Hong Kong introduced the bill that would allow mainland China to extradite people from Hong Kong to be tried and punished in China under Chinese law. This was seen as a new and very menacing encroachment on the rights of Hong Kong citizens. Since 1997, they'd been ruled by Hong Kong laws and Hong Kong courts, where everybody is presumed innocent with the rights we know in most democratic countries. Now anybody could get thrown into the prisons and courts of communist China. I'd say that that was the time when I first feel awakened, when I'm truly understanding what's happening when I first go to the march of the no extradition bill. And I was very, very emotional at that time because there is only around 7 million people in Hong Kong. But 1 million walk on the street with the same demand, with the same wish of having Hong Kong to remain its current state. Wanting Hong Kong to stay like it is with its own laws, separate from China. A week later, 2 million people came out. At the time, I was feeling very, oh my god, this is so touching. Like, why is people so united? And then the next second, the government just declares that, oh, we heard your voice, but we will be continuing on the bill on Tuesday. So that was like a really big contrast. And in the morning, you see how peaceful things were. But at night, you see the police coming out and start brutally hitting people. It was really unforgettable to me because that was the first time when I witnessed with my real eyes that the police is chasing people. They are chasing students who did not do anything and start to beat them and arrest them. Other 22-year-olds also told us how radicalizing it's been to see police tear gassing and beating peaceful protesters. And at this point-- I didn't understand this before we got to Hong Kong-- a lot of the emotion driving the protests is just about the police. Because the government is supporting them to do such things, and there is no penalty for them, even if they are doing things that are completely unacceptable to everyone. Of course, nobody knows where this is going to lead by 2047, when China fully takes over Hong Kong. But for Katherine and lots of other people her age, things are starting to feel pretty ominous. Was Hong Kong going to become just like any other Chinese city run by the communists? When you're 50, what do you picture life here will be like? I can picture that I will be super depressed because I super comment on political things. I really cannot imagine the day that I cannot speak freely on internet, that we do not have that freedom of speech anymore. And I cannot imagine that there will come a day me and my friends commenting on the government would become a crime. And you think that would happen. Yes, I do, when all the things that is happening in mainland China now, especially, I would say, in-- where is it-- Xinjiang. Xinjiang. Yeah, what is happening in Xinjiang will happen in Hong Kong. She's talking about internment camps, where the Chinese are holding perhaps a million Uighurs and others. They say it's reeducation, but it's basically a concentration camp. They put people who do not agree with the government into the concentration camp and educate them. And they got monitored wherever and whenever they go. Everywhere is police. Police monitors everybody's move. And I do think that if we do not fight for our future, there will come a day Hong Kong will become like Xinjiang. Because she's politically active, this does not feel like an abstract threat. When these 22-year-olds picture who China's going to crack down on, it's them. Ashley is also in her first job out of college. She works at a bank. Who knows whatever they would do to us? And under the extradition bill, who knows where we will go, what time we will disappear? That's what we feel of. Ashley has heard of the social credit system that China has started to monitor and rate its citizens. She fears that if China decides that you're anti-government, it will make it impossible for you to get the job you want or rise in society. And the devices that China uses to monitor its population, an estimated 200 million surveillance cameras around the country with facial recognition software, they've been going up around Hong Kong, tens of thousands of them. Many, like me, are scared of being monitored and rated so that we will never, ever be free to do anything that we want under the monitoring of the Chinese government. This is something else I didn't understand before I came to Hong Kong. The protesters like Ashley and Katherine don't just fear what's going to happen in the future, with extradition laws or losing the internet or losing free speech. In their daily lives right now, they believe they're watching China already transforming Hong Kong, making it less like the Hong Kong they know and more like the mainland. Katherine points to changes in the public school curricula. Like she says, her 7-year-old nephew is speaking Mandarin in school five days a week. That didn't happen when she was a kid. Mandarin's what they speak in mainland China. In Hong Kong, people mostly speak in Cantonese and in English. So all the Chinese classes are conducted in Mandarin. So he speaks Mandarin everyday, basically. He speaks Mandarin better than English. Can you explain a little bit like why Cantonese is so important? Cantonese is more like an identity to us. It's part of what makes Hong Kong Hong Kong. These days, when Katherine pictures what her life is going to be like between now and 2047, she imagines her own kids going to public schools, not studying Cantonese, coming home and parroting the pro-government line that'll be the curriculum by then. So I do love kids. I really want to have kids. I want to have a football team of kids, really. But I just cannot imagine the life they will be having in Hong Kong later on. I cannot promise my kid a happy life if I am not certain about what will Hong Kong become. You don't think there are children who are raised to be happy in mainland China? Not the kind of happy that I think. Like, mainland China people, they think that they are happy because they can still live. But we want things more than just surviving in this society. We look for rights and freedoms and human rights. But the mainland China, they ignore all those things. They just think, having a stable life, having kids, having food, a good place to live in is already happy enough. Yeah. Another change she says she's seeing right now in Hong Kong, she's upset at all the mainlanders moving there in her neighborhood, and university students that she and her friends encountered at college. So many mainlanders, she says. I just feel really weird because I am born and raised in Hong Kong. I go to a local school, but then I have to be surrounded by all the mainlanders. Does it bother you to be surrounded by mainlanders? Yes, actually, quite. But then we have 150 new immigrants from China to Hong Kong every day. Oh yeah, I'm just going to pause the tape there for a second. The total, by the way, is over a million mainlanders since 1997, roughly 45,000 a year. But I'm stopping the tape because I don't know how you're feeling about Katherine, but this was a point we came to in a few interviews with these 22-year-olds. When you got them under the subject of mainlanders, get ready for a wave of totally bigoted opinions. So especially I live in New Territories. So all the people surrounding you, you hear Mandarin, and then you start to see those less educated people, they're squatting next to the streets. I did witness a mainland lady having her children pee at the road. And I always hear mainland people yelling, shouting out for nothing in the mall. And always, they jump into the line-- everything. It bothers me a lot. Squatting, what do you mean squatting? I don't know. They just squat on the roadside, waiting people. They just sit and squat and wait. Yeah, for nothing. They can squat for an hour. People in Hong Kong don't do that. Yeah, we don't 'cause who would squat at the road? Why you can't just stand? Or why you can't just sit? They're more comfortable. It just doesn't look good. It doesn't look good. It doesn't look civilized. So for all the alarm that Katherine and the cursed generation feel about the future, their parents are often not as alarmed about China taking more control of Hong Kong and about what the island's going to be like in 2047. Like Ashley's parents, they hate her going out to protests every weekend. I think for my parents, they-- like, we really had some very serious fights. And they think, we'll just let China take over Hong Kong. It'll be fine. I think for my parents, some of the older generation just don't believe, or they are not brave enough to open up their eyes and see what is actually going to happen. They just feel like they did not do anything wrong. As long as you did not do anything wrong, then you'll be fine. What's galling about this for Ashley is that she feels like she's being the responsible one, fighting for everybody's future. And they're telling her not to protest. She was like, maybe if her parents had done this themselves years ago, things wouldn't be so bad today. Like, I'm 22 years old. And in the past, when I was younger, they have never stood up like us or fight like us to ask for what they are promised in 1997. It's funny. When you talk about it, you're mad at your parents about it. I just feel like-- I mean, I don't understand why they would not want these rights or why they don't think that something bad is going to happen in the next 50 years. So Ashley and Katherine and so many others, they've kind of given over their lives to protesting. They work doing the week, protest on the weekends. They say they don't have much time in their lives for much else. But what's interesting is, they don't think it's going to work. Most of our interviewees told us that. They don't think China is going to give in. Again, here's Katherine. I am pretty much pessimistic, actually. I do wish that one day, we all succeed. We want a democratic Hong Kong, but now, I just don't see a way out. Like, it's been three months. We've been trying each and every step. We've broke into the legislative council. We have more than 1,000 people got arrested. But the government is still trying to ignore all of this. If you feel so pessimistic about the results, why still go? Why are you still going out every weekend? At least the government sees that we are not that-- how do we say-- we are not that obedient. So we have to continuously tell the government that we are not satisfied with what they are giving us. So we have to do it. Again, here's Dorothy. I think even if we have to lose, we need to leave our true thoughts in history. We need to let the people behind us know that we've tried. 2047 is coming, and this is a very grand thing to say, but so many of these cursed generation kids feel like they have a special destiny. Alex preferred to speak to us through an interpreter. She's a frontline protester, builds barricades, has been arrested. I think we're actually lucky because we grew up with people who thought the same way. And we realized that when we turn 50, it's the end of our freedoms. I'm 22 now, and I imagine that when I'm 25, that's really half way until the bomb explodes. And so if we don't do anything, by the time we're 50 years old, it would be awful. I don't want our children to have the same battle. And then when we're 50, we'll look back and think that we didn't do enough. Our birthday is like a countdown to the end. And so more so than other people, I feel like my generation, we have a duty to do more. Again, here's Katherine. If we were born earlier, probably I would become my dad and mom. And if I were born later, I would probably become those little kids speaking Mandarin better than Cantonese. So I am happy that I am born in 1997. We are in the middle. We have the chance to know what is freedom, and we are experiencing that our freedom is being taken away. And that's why we are the group who step up first to fight for it. I think we are getting off here. I think we are getting off. After an hour bus ride, we get to the protest. This is Act Two, The Fight. Once we're off of the bus, Katherine ducks into a public restroom and comes out in black shirt, black pants, black mask over her face, hair pulled back in a ponytail. And we head on to a street where we're surrounded by hundreds of people dressed exactly like her. A big shopping district, the stores closed, and no cars. All the side streets have been blocked off with barricades by the protesters-- scaffolding and fencing, trashcans, and orange construction cones piled in the street. They do an efficient job. We meet up with Katherine's friends by a big Victoria's Secret store. My friend KK. KK. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Ira. Nice to meet you, man. My name is Hugo. Hugo. Hugo. Yes. Very nice to meet you. The couple who always kiss in front of me. What? I'm not. No, we didn't. We didn't. For the record, I'm with them all afternoon. No kissing at all. The city is giving permission for fewer protests these days, and this is an unsanctioned demonstration we're at, which means that everybody here is breaking the law. Anyone is subject to arrest, which affects crowd size. The maximum penalty is five years-- 10 years, if you're convicted of rioting-- which is why all the protesters are so scared of getting arrested all the time. But despite that, the beginning of the protest has the feeling of a block party. People strolling, chatting-- you see a few parents and kids. Some non-protesters cut through the crowd, running errands. But an hour into all this, I look around and realize-- no families, no kids. It's not feeling like a block party at all. People are standing on top of fences, trying to see what's ahead of us. They're starting to put on gas masks. Describe what you're seeing. The protesters in the Thomas Street are moving backwards, so we assume that there are riot police on the other end of the road. There is tear gas fired over there. It's like two or three blocks away. We walk towards the police and the tear gas, past teams of protesters who are knocking bricks out of the sidewalk with long steel tools. And the idea is what? To put on the road so, later on, the riot police cannot run that fast. Also, people throw bricks at the police. We march straight to the front lines, where hundreds of protesters are massed on a side street. The police are just half a block away, but we can't really see them through the crowd. And then a whole wave of teargas canisters arcs towards us, hits us. And lots of people, us included, run back a ways, half a block away. Katherine calmly administers saline solution into strangers' eyes. The controls on my recorder got knocked around running through the smoke, so I do not have a decent recording of that. This is the role that she's assigned herself in the protest-- first aid, helping anybody who requires it. She even brought energy candy specifically to give out to people whose energy is flagging. After being driven back, Katherine and Hugo and KK and I wait for the smoke to clear. So this happens at every protest? Yes. Basically. Basically. So what do we do now? We tidy up ourselves and go again. And when you get to the police, what are you going to do? We're going to stand in front of them. If we have a chance, we're going to fight them back. Our goal is to make them to retreat their front line. After a couple minutes, we head back toward the front line. OK, we're walking forward to its corner, where it's this blue-- [COUGHS] And then we wait around. A water cannon goes off, blasting water that is dyed blue, laced with stuff that stings your skin. More tear gas, and we pull back a little. Then we move forward, wait again. This is both suspenseful and boring. [LAUGHS] Sometimes there's not always a purpose. Sometimes we sitting at the back is just add a support. We just add our support to those at the front. Support like, if something happens, you'll do first aid? Something like this, but also they know that there are many people behind them. It is important to give them some mental support as well. Yeah. So many protesters are like Katherine. They feel like it's their job to support the people at the front, who are the hardcore ones, who push back against police and throw Molotov cocktails, and chase police with sticks and metal rods, and tear stuff down to build barriers to slow the police, wearing full gear, helmets, goggles, gas masks, and gloves. Finally, the front liners yell that they want room to retreat. And so we need to retreat. And so we fall way back, a couple blocks. So now we're just standing here. Yeah, because we always support. Our assistance is like a support to those in the front line. But I don't understand. So the police want us out of there. They push, they fire tear gas. They spray blue water on everybody. We move back. And then we stand here, and what's our goal? This has been a very frequently asked question. Nowadays, we're just trying to stand on our own ground, not to be dispersed that easily. That's it. Just, the goal is to just stay out as long as you can. Yeah. And then eventually, the police will push you off the street? So in other words, it's exactly like the entire protest movement leading to 2047. Just try to slow them down as much as you can. Yes. In the end, China will win. But for as long as you can, you'll just stand here in the street. It is pretty sad to say so, but I guess that's pretty much accurate. Yeah. What are they yelling? They ask people to start moving. And there we headed to a massive retreat, as the police advance towards us. And for the first time, there seems to be actual real fear. We're running down the streets and side roads. We get separated from Katherine's friends and from Emanuele, dodging the police, and finally, taking refuge in a church. There are safe houses like this around Hong Kong that protesters duck into. It takes over an hour, and finally, the coast is clear. And Katherine calls her friend to pick her up. They're volunteer drivers for the protesters, part of the infrastructure they've created. Katherine changes out of her black T-shirt into civilian clothes. No makeup-- she's too tired, she says, and no need, if she's getting picked up. Bye. And she heads home. Say goodbye to Emanuele for me as well. Thank you. As her car pulled away, across the street on Queens Road, there was an endless row of police vehicles headed in the other direction, just dozens of them, blue and red lights flashing. And as the night went on, things became violent. A woman approached us on the sidewalk, upset about police beating somebody, and showed us video that she'd shot of it. And the protesters were violent as well. The newspapers had accounts of six of them beating up a middle-aged man, kicking and shouting at him. They set fire to a subway station. They do that a lot because lots of protesters think Hong Kong subway-- the MTR-- colludes with the police. That's why Katherine prefers the bus, even though it's less convenient. Every protester we interviewed supports the violence. They support it because they feel like they have no other options, that it's the only way they can get the government to respond to them. A few told us, back in June, they marched peacefully against the extradition bill and got nothing. Then they got violent and the bill was withdrawn. It worked. And violence has become a way to defend themselves. Setting fires and building barricades slows police, who were coming after them. So they support the violence, or they at least understand it. Emanuele talked to them about that. We're at Act Three of our show, Uncivil Disobedience. Here's Emanuele. When I started asking protesters about violence, a couple of them said, we're not violent like Americans. Our tolerance for it is much lower. So getting to this point to being OK with violence isn't something we did lightly. And a lot of them explained to me that they didn't always think radical tactics were OK. What changed their opinion was the way police responded to peaceful protest. That being shot at with water cannons, tear gassed, seeing someone knocked unconscious, beaten with batons, handcuffed and kicked, groups of thugs beating and attacking people with hammers, clubs, and knives, watching all this and being subjected to it-- that's what got a lot of people on board with violence. Now some protesters throw Molotov cocktails, vandalize buildings, and chase police with sticks and rods. Ira and I talked with one protester, Yuen. Do you think it would be acceptable for the protesters to kill police? I hope they do so. You do? I do. If police died, what do you think would happen next? We would die, too. Protesters will die, too. And if things get that violent between the protesters and the police and protesters are being killed, do you think Hong Kong will get democracy? I can't tell at the moment. So many people we talked with expected someone to die-- a protester or a police officer. Most thought it would help the movement put pressure on the government. This hasn't happened yet, but destruction and violence are giving way to bizarre scenes throughout the city. My co-worker Diane and I went to this protest at a mall, one of many in Hong Kong. Sometimes the entire city can feel like one giant shiny shopping mall connected by subway. The stores are all open. The mall is full of people. But not many people are shopping. The entire premise of this protest is to go to the mall and not shop. The mall is five stories. Each tier has railings that look out over a central atrium. There are families, kids, older folks. Some people are in black. Others are just in their regular day clothes. They chant. They sing the protester anthem, "Glory to Hong Kong," over and over. At one point, someone starts handing out paper, and suddenly hundreds of people are folding paper cranes. Then, an act of gentle vandalism. There's this machine that prints our reservation receipts for the restaurant called Jade Garden. The protesters hijack it, forcing it to spit out hundreds of receipts. They take the receipts together and string them from one end of the atrium to the other and back again a few times. They target Jade Garden because one of the company's founders has a daughter who supports Beijing. That's how far things have gone in Hong Kong. Businesses are labeled either yellow or blue-- yellow for the ones that support the protesters, blue for the police and government. There's even a Google Map that tells you if a business is one or the other. Soon, things in the mall start to shift. Diane and I watch a group of about a dozen protesters enter a pro-China bakery, owned by the same company that owns Jade Garden. They start taunting the staff. There's umbrellas up. They're blocking so you can't really see inside of it. Is the person who works in there still in there? Yeah, she-- well, she was a minute ago. OK, something fell. They knocked over a display. Before things can escalate any further, the workers force the protesters out, close the store gates, and barricade themselves in. A restless energy takes over. It's like the protesters are looking for something to confront, something to disturb. But the thing they're fighting against is the existential threat of China. And that's not really in the mall. They march to more pro-China businesses in the mall. The alarm starts going off, and a PA announcement says, "The mall is very crowded. Please be careful." Then word comes police are on their way, and some mood that feels like a mix of fear and adrenaline fills the space. Protesters begin to build barriers out of whatever is not nailed to the ground, blocking doorways, creating obstacles. They want to stop the police from entering from the subway entrance of the mall. They start throwing trash cans down the escalators. A group rips a six-foot TV screen out of a wall to use as part of a blockade. The PA announcement remains the same. "Please be careful. The mall is very crowded." They open an emergency fire hose. Someone brings giant jugs of oil, which they add to the water. The tile floor of the mall lobby is now a little lake that police will have to cross. A woman slips and falls. And while all this destruction is happening, the shoppers, the older folks, even a few families, they don't leave. They're on the upper levels of the mall looking over the railing, like they're watching a sporting event or something. I'm super uncomfortable. The protester next to us, Chan, is so chill. Have you been to a protest like this before? Yeah. Does this feel normal? Yeah. Is that weird that it's normal, though? Yes, but it's been 100 days, so. The police eventually come, but they meet the protesters outside the mall. They throw tear gas. Protesters throw a Molotov cocktail. Smoke and gas waft through Snoopy World, a mini theme park on one of the mall's upper levels. Giant statues of Linus and Peppermint Patty, along with dozens of shoppers and protesters, who lined the outdoor balconies, all watch the confrontation between police and protesters unfold below. There's this thing that protesters say to each other-- never sever ties. Sometimes they even say, never sever ties even if there's a nuclear explosion. Basically, if another protester does something you disagree with-- say, set something on fire, beat someone up-- you don't criticize them or cut them off. My co-worker Diane saw an extreme example of this at a protest about a week later. It was a very peaceful protest in a park at night. So serene, Diane said she felt she could only whisper. Then a guy starts waving a big Chinese flag around. Protesters start shouting at him. He rips a poster out of one girl's hands. That's when the mob rushes him. Oh, shoot. There's someone who's on the ground, and their head's getting smashed and they're kicking them. Dozens of people walk by, and if anyone has a problem with this, they don't show it. He's left face down on the ground, bleeding from his head. Eventually, someone gets a first aid person to help. Emanuele Berry is one of the producers of our show. She used to live next door to Hong Kong in Macau for about a year. Coming up, you're a protester. You think the police are utterly immoral and undefendable. So, what do you do about the cop who happens to be your dad? That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. This American Life, I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, Umbrellas Up, stories from Hong Kong and what it's like for people to live through over 100 days of protests there. I traveled to Hong Kong with my co-workers, Diane Wu and Emanuele Berry. We have arrived at Act Four of our show. Act Four, Good Cop, Dad Cop. So as an American visiting Hong Kong for the first time, one of the things that kind of killed me was hearing that before the last few years of protests, people were really into the police. Like, they were trusted. They were respected. And it was only the last few years, especially the last few months of protests, that changed all that. At a rally, I actually saw people chanting at a row of cops that they hoped that they and their families would die. And feelings about who to side with-- the police or the protesters, they've gotten so intense, it's tearing families apart. On the Telegram app, there's a whole channel for protesters who get kicked out by their parents and need a place to live. Alan Yu grew up in Hong Kong. He knows a family that is very far apart on this. The son is a protester. The dad is a retired police officer. And Alan had them sit down and do what nobody in Hong Kong is doing-- talk to each other. There is really no dialogue between police and protesters anywhere in Hong Kong as far as we could tell. Here's Alan. I've known this family since I was six. I knew them because of my friend, Jonathan. I rode the school bus with him every day. His father, Peter, was the first policeman I knew in real life. I was excited to talk to him because you never hear what the police think about the protests. Police here are not really allowed to talk to the press. Peter's retired, but still very connected to the force. So before the family all sat down together, I asked Peter to get together with me and my producer, Emanuele. I hadn't seen him since I was 12. Back then, people called me "Yu-don," which means fish ball. Because the Cantonese for fish sounds like my surname, Yu, and because I was fat. I won't recognize you on the street. I won't. I won't. Oh yeah? Oh, OK. Serious. I'm serious. OK. All right. I guess it's a compliment. Thank you. He used to be very cute. Yeah, how? He used to be very fat. As a kid, I liked Peter. He'd time off work to stop by during recess and buy us chips and other snacks. My friend, Jonathan, would have his birthday parties at the police station, which we loved. Big barbecues, other policemen around. Peter was the cool dad. People in Hong Kong trusted, even revered, the police back then. One of the most popular TV shows was a cop show, [CHINESE] where the police were heroes. Peter's hair is gray now. He's tall, athletic. He plays tennis. My nickname in tennis-- I don't know why-- my nickname in tennis is Federer. Yeah. Federer. Federer. Are you good? Federer Roger. I don't know why. Maybe my skill. I don't know. I don't know why. [CHUCKLES] He still likes his dad jokes. I cannot imagine Peter ever doing what I've been seeing in these videos-- beating up unarmed protesters, kicking people on the ground. I thought surely he would object to some of those things and that his views would be complicated. From what you've seen in recent months, has there been anything that the police have done that you think you would disagree with? Nothing is perfect. But as a whole, in general, I think the police are doing a pretty good job. If it is in other police force in other countries, just look at the casualties. Just look at the column of fatal numbers. It won't be zero. I ask him about different situations the police have been criticized for. I even show him videos of police brutally arresting people, things I think are clearly wrong. But he always seems to have a justification for the way police behave. He says you are judging the police based on what you see in these clips. That's not fair. You don't know what the officer was facing. The social media only show the part of police hitting people. But one minute ago, they've been attacked by lots of people. So one minute later, he react to the mob attacking them. So what you can see is one minute after, but you did not see the full picture. He's not conflicted about police, and he isn't very sympathetic to protesters. He thinks the protests are destroying Hong Kong. The extradition bill is OK. He doesn't think China will end free speech in Hong Kong, and protesters' fear of China is way overblown and naive. Hong Kong is part of China. Come on. Wake up, people. Wake up. This is the fact. Whether China is good or bad, Hong Kong is part of China. If you don't like it, those people waving the United States flag, waving the Union Jack flag, if England takes you, you can go to England, yeah. You can go to Florida. Go to California. Yeah. Go. Go. If Trump takes you, yeah, go. I'd already been worried how this family conversation was going to go. Hearing what Peter believed did not help. Peter told me he understands that Jonathan goes to protests, but doesn't ask him about it because he doesn't want any details. Jonathan said he does not ask his dad what he thinks of the way police beat and tear gas protesters for the same reason. It's just like if he says something-- if he says something that completely doesn't make sense to me, it sort of brings him down, like, as a person. It's just like, I would feel like he's just, yeah, not who I thought he was, yeah. And it scares you to-- Yeah. --think that could be true. So this family does not talk about the protests at all. Tennis, yes. Soccer, yes. Pets, great. But no politics-- till tonight. They've agreed to have the conversation they've been avoiding after dinner. Jonathan's mom, Alva, washes the dishes. I recognize the song right away. I'm surprised she's humming it in front of Peter. It's the protesters' new anthem, "Glory to Hong Kong." Alva is on Jonathan's side. She works with lawyers, including some in the pro-democracy camp. I ask if Peter knows what that song is. She says, maybe. That's kind of how it's been going between her and her husband. No real discussion, but the occasional passive aggressive comment while they're watching the news, or some passive aggressive humming during dishes. This is another reason Jonathan avoids bringing up the protests. He doesn't want to start a fight between his parents. What would the worst scenario be like? Someone moving out, I guess. Yeah, because they can't stand it anymore. Yeah, I guess, living apart would be the worst case scenario, I believe. Because that sort of officially means that you're no longer together, sort of, yeah. That could be his mom, or his dad, or him. We all sit at the dinner table. I don't know why they agreed to talk about this. Maybe just because I've known them for so long, and I asked. Or I hope maybe part of them wanted to talk, and I was just a good excuse. Peter's facing me, and Jonathan and Alva are next to me. Jonathan has their dog, Loki, named after the Marvel character, on his lap. The conversation starts with all of them saying, in different ways, it's fine that we don't talk about this. We all have mutual respect. Instead of talking to each other or looking at each other, they're talking to me or looking at the dog. It feels all very careful, proper, and calm. This continues for half an hour. Then everything changes when Peter uses the word "compromise." Compromise-- it's basically the government line. That's what Hong Kong's chief executive Carrie Lam says, that the protesters should stop protesting. And after that, the two sides can talk. Alva and Jonathan hear that as meaning the protesters should back down. They both lay into Peter. Alva says the police are the ones who need to change. They have to calm the situation. Peter says the police are doing their job. I don't know why, when the police arrest people for fighting or breaking stuff, it's treated as weird. It's illegal, so arrest them. No problem. Jonathan says, OK, yes, arrest them. But how much force does the police need to use? Sometimes a person just asks the police a question, and they still get arrested or beaten. Or people who are already on the ground, kneeling, subdued, they still get beaten. Peter doesn't respond. Then they argue, openly argue for the first time, about one of the protesters' main demands, something the government refused to budge on-- to start an independent investigation into police behavior. Peter keeps repeating the same thing over and over, like he's been backed into a corner, that there's no need for an independent investigation. Now is not the right time. The city already has a system in place to investigate complaints about the police. They talk a little longer, but it doesn't go anywhere. Alva tells me later she had other things she could have brought up, but decided against it. She didn't want her husband to feel trapped. The word she used was [CHINESE] which translates as, dead corner. No place to go. Preserving the family was more important to her than trying to win an argument. Later, Jonathan told me he still loves his dad, but he's given up hope that his father could be a reasonable human being, at least when it comes to the police. When I started this, I was kind of naive. I thought maybe Jonathan and his mother and father, people who actually want to understand each other, could talk about this in a productive manner. And that if they could, maybe there was hope that the rest of us could. But now, I don't have a lot of hope. Alan Yu, he's normally a reporter for WHYY's show, The Pulse. Act Five, A Slow Boat to China. So what about all the people living in Hong Kong who have no problem with China, who like China? There's a lot of them, and they hold their own demonstrations, which are pretty small-- flag parties where flash mobs show up at malls and wave Chinese flags and sing the Chinese national anthem. And the big day to celebrate China normally would be October 1, National Day, the anniversary of the Communist Party founding the modern Chinese state. And this year was going to be a big one. It was the 70th anniversary. And the people who support mainland China were kind of resentful, because this day was supposed to be this huge holiday for them, but anticipating massive protests, the city shut down. Fireworks were canceled. Trains weren't running. Almost all the malls were going to be closed. The protesters had ruined the day again. So in defiance, the pro-China people organized an anthem singing party for the morning of the first. Our co-worker, Diane Wu, went. The party took place at 8:30 in the morning, on a boat. Not just any boat-- on the Star Ferry, this iconic Hong Kong commuter slash sightseeing boat on the harbor. The ferries are these beautiful old boats from colonial times with names like Silver Star, Northern Star, Twinkling Star. And today, one of them is going to get completely covered with bright red Chinese flags. A couple dozen people are gathering at the ferry terminal. They're mostly strangers, know each other loosely from previous flash mobs and get togethers. "I love China," they shout. "Support the police." It's kind of funny when you think about it, all these people up so early on their day off, getting on a boat to sing the national anthem together. It's also a little dark, because there's a real threat of violence against people who don't support the protest. One of these flag parties two weeks ago at a mall devolved into a brawl when protesters showed up. People on both sides got beat up. And so going out on a ferry to shout pro-China slogans is strategic. Once you're on the boat, out at sea, you ought to be safe from a counter protest. As one guy put it-- Well, we've been living in terror for the last three months because the people on the other side, the rioters, they're really good at the terrorizing tactics. They make you feel that you should be afraid of speaking up and speaking out against them because they're so organized. In the terminal, everyone gathers in a semicircle, holding special holiday issues of the China Daily and singing the Chinese national anthem together. It's a little shaky. The guy leading it told me he just learned the words a couple of weeks ago. Most of the people here, best as I can tell, are not mainlanders who grew up with the anthem. The ones I talked to were all from Hong Kong. Being this into China is new for them, something that only happened when the protests got bad enough that they found themselves rallying around this new flag. And it's not always comfortable. I'm getting on the boat with Daniel, the guy who was griping about being terrorized, when someone puts a heart-shaped sticker on him. You just got a Chinese flag sticker stuck on you. Yes, yeah. I feel a little cringey about this. Why? I'm not exactly that red. Compared to a lot of people here, I'm not the most red person. Red, in the crayon box of the Hong Kong protests, refers to being pro China, versus blue for the government and yellow for the protesters. Daniel almost didn't come this morning, actually. It's not really his scene. He sees being this patriotic about China as kind of dorky. Moreover-- I always tell my friends I would never want to live in China, because there's a lot of things in China that I can't accept if I were to be forced to live in China. The two things he can't accept that we end up talking about are the lack of free speech and censored access to the internet. But the truth is, I live in Hong Kong, and I get to retain my almost unchecked freedom for 28 more years. And it's such a sweetheart deal for Hong Kong people. I pointed out to him that after 28 years, it's very possible those freedoms would disappear. And he had the same response that I heard from other people who don't like the protests. He was like, well, sure, maybe. Well, I guess, you're talking me to appreciate the young people's perspectives, but in exchange for the freedom that they fight for, they're wreaking havoc, and they're destroying law and order. And-- So in the balance, it's not worth it to you. If I were to choose between this, if China say, in order to have law and order, I will need to sacrifice the freedom the same way Chinese people have in Hong Kong, I would accept that balance. This is unacceptable, the whole unorganized chaos, revolution, and the havoc they wrought in Hong Kong. It's completely unacceptable. I will give up the freedom the way they do in China to stop this. It's a big jump, from "I could never live in China" to "I would sacrifice my freedom just to get this to stop." But the intensity of the protests and his frustration with what he's experiencing in the city have driven him to at least try on this extreme idea. Daniel's 40, works in finance. He lived in the US for 12 years. He's a football fan. Roots for the Chicago Bears because he likes a tenacious defense. He says he wasn't politically involved before all this. Went to one of the big peaceful protests last spring, more to watch than to participate. But that changed one day when he was watching a livestream of the young protesters storming the legislative council. He was surprised how ferocious they seemed, how even the police officers looked a little scared. At that moment, I suddenly realized, oh, we're actually very close to a revolution. It could happen. It just never occurred to me that Hong Kong would go through that. It's both stunned and anxiety about unknown. Anxiety-- things can change abruptly. If there isn't a revolution, it's going to force the hand of the Chinese government to crack down on it violently. And anything can happen. Like, I could lose all the privilege I have as a Hong Kong citizen-- protection of common law, freedom of speech, but also, freedom of speech protected by common law. Nobody in China enjoy this freedom, but-- if it gets to a certain point, we can lose all of these privileges, which I treasure. He woke up the next morning to see that the coverage was wall-to-wall about police brutality. To Daniel, it seemed like everyone was leaving out the fact that the protesters had started it, which seemed deeply unjust to the police. And that's when I started turning blue. When I felt that the police were smeared unfairly, I took my side. I chose to be on the police's side. Other people sided against the protest for different reasons. A big one I heard was the disruption they caused. The security guard told me he had to transfer four times to get home at night because of subway shutdowns. A woman trying to get cash out of an ATM that had been destroyed by protesters said, if you're mad at the government, take it out on the government. You're only hurting people like me. A man said to me, sadly, Hong Kong is our home. Why are they destroying it? The crowd on the boat finishes belting out the national anthem a second time, when suddenly, everyone rushes to the railing. Everyone's waving at the sea police. They all ran to one side of the boat. It feels like it might tip over. Everyone crammed together on one side in a position that's a little precarious. That's kind of like Daniel's world right now. He felt pushed to choose a team. Like it or not, these are his new people. He doesn't think like them, exactly. But he feels more aligned with these Chinese nationalists on this boat waving at the police than with the angry protesters ganging up on them, even if those protesters ultimately want the same thing he does-- to preserve their freedoms in Hong Kong. Sitting on the upper deck of the Star Ferry, this was actually the first time Daniel had ever sung the national anthem in public. He told me later, as he sang, he was surprised to find that he felt something. Diane Wu is the managing editor of our show, and she also has one more story for us. I'm going to set this up. It is Act Six of our show. Act Six, Two Weeks Later. So October 1st wasn't just a big day for supporters of mainland China. If anything, I think it was even more anticipated by pro-democracy protesters. They knew China did not want to be embarrassed by demonstrations in Hong Kong on that day, such a big anniversary. And in the weeks leading up to it, several of them told us that they were worried. What kind of crackdown was going to come on October 1, or maybe in the days before it? Would the government try to shut them down? And sure enough, the weekend before October 1, there were tons of police, undercover cops posing as protesters, surge in arrests. And on October 1, something happened that several of our interviewees predicted. For the first time, a protester was shot with a real bullet-- a teenager. In the days after that, things descended. The government banned wearing face masks in public, which caused a huge backlash in the streets. Another teenager, a 14-year-old, was shot by police. Both teenagers survived, by the way. A protester slashed an officer's neck with a box cutter. A bomb went off next to a police car. Katherine, the protester that I went to the demonstration with in mid-September, she went to all those protests in the days before October 1, and then she was out on October 1, that big violent day. And Diane caught up with her the day after that, October 2, to see how she was doing, and to see what she made of it all. I met up with Katherine at the MTR station in Tsuen Wan on a Wednesday. She'd taken the MTR only because she was in a big rush to meet me after work. You had a long day? Yeah, very long one. It is a really sad thing, after yesterday. She's talking about the protester who was shot. It actually happened just a short walk from where we're standing. The last few days of protests had been especially bad. Katherine was in the middle of the crowd when dozens of special tactics police officers exploded out of a hidden door, sprinting after protesters and tackling them to the ground. People hadn't seen this before. It caused a wave of panic. Everyone fled in terror, including Katherine. Her phone was flooded with images of arrested protesters, pinned on the ground by riot police, face down with their wrists tied behind them. Later, she met her friend KK, the one who went to the protest with Ira and her, and found out that in the rush, she had gotten trapped. She came really close to getting arrested. All of a sudden, everything was so close to me. A very important friend of mine nearly getting arrested, and all the pictures and footages I could see after the day. Everything just was so-- was just too much for me. Yeah, it was too close. Yeah. Katherine's deeply fearful of getting arrested. Remember, it could mean years in prison. After all of that, on October 1, she was almost too scared to go protest, but braved it anyways. Then, police started to fire tear gas at people up ahead of them. We were on our way walking from Tsuen Wan to Kwai Fong. And I realized that I couldn't keep walking. I started to realize that I just feel different. Like, two weeks ago, when I was with Ira, I could still feel it is safe to run. I'm going to be fine. And I could still run without any hesitation. But yesterday, I just feel like I was so terrified. I started to shake from the inside. And then I didn't know what to do. She panicked, started crying. Her boyfriend helped her get home. So I had to leave yesterday. But then, actually on my way home, there was a friend of mine. I think he was just joking and saying, you left your teammate behind. He sent this to me. Yeah, so I was immediately crying. I cried out immediately and really could not control myself because I didn't want this. I don't want to leave my teammates behind. I don't want to leave anyone behind. But I don't want to be a burden. And then all of a sudden yesterday, I couldn't do anything at all. The police strategy of clamping down on the protests by outlawing almost all of them, then flooding the streets with riot police and arresting tons of people, this is the toll it's taking. And, of course, this is one way the whole thing could end. Maybe it'll scare people off. Oh, I saw my boyfriend. Katherine's boyfriend, Joe, shows up. He's got his shirt tucked in, a new protest tactic from this weekend. The idea is to try and expose undercover police who wouldn't be able to tuck their shirts in over their guns and batons. Joe's here for moral support, because, incredibly, Katherine is now on her way to another protest. We're headed to a soccer stadium across the street from where the protester was shot. Katherine figures she'll stay as long as she can tolerate. We walk onto the field. It's a big solemn group of people in their work and school clothes, all facing the bleachers. There are a lot of people. Not sure where they are looking at, but I think they are just waiting for a moment to mourn. It's a kind of vigil for the protester in the hospital. Katherine and Joe put on black surgical masks. Everyone has their phones up with their lights on. It's the protest anthem. We go into the streets. Katherine's on edge. Every time she hears a loud noise, she squeezes Joe's hand. She'll stay out until 10:30. Then she'll get dinner, go home, go to bed. In the morning, Katherine will be at work again, at her job where she can't let her bosses know where she was the night before. Overnight, the road cleaners will come out with backhoes to clear the barricades. They'll paint over the graffiti, fix the smashed street lights, tidy up the piles of bricks in the gutters, erasing their protests as they have so many days before. Turning the city back to normal. Except, of course, it can't be normal again. Diane Wu. Our program was produced today by Emanuele Berry and Diane Wu. Our brilliant field producer in Hong Kong was Yannie Chan. Thanks to our interpreters, Flora Chung, Diana Chan, and Dominic Yang. The people who put together our show today includes Elna Baker, Susan Burton, Zoe Chace, Dana Chivvis, Sean Cole, Damien Grave, Michelle Harris, Jessica Lussenhop, Miki Meek, Lina Misitzis, Stowe Nelson, Katherine Rae Mondo, Ben Phelan, Nadia Reiman, Robyn Semien, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala. Our executive producer is David Kestenbaum. Special thanks today to Dave Hill for the cover of the theme of the cops show, Armed Reaction. And special thanks to Laurel Chor, Karen Cheung, Noble Wong, Yu, Tse Sai Pei, Alanna Thiede, Jiayang Fan, and Martin Lee. Our website, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, he'll never forget his first time on a carousel. The way he tells the story, he gets on a horse and starts to go around-- At that moment, I suddenly realized, oh, we're actually very close to a revolution. It could happen. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
Of all the things in the movies that could happen to you-- and there's so many, right-- I think getting shrunk down to a miniature size-- I think that is one that nobody would ever choose. It seems dangerous. It seems frightening. How Marvel Comics ever thought that shrinking could be a superpower, that is really totally beyond me. Turning yourself into a person the size of a pencil eraser? It doesn't make anything easier. Everything is harder. In the movie Ant-Man, the first time Ant-Man shrinks-- What is this? --he's instantly in mortal danger. Water in a bathtub nearly drowns him. People dancing in an apartment almost crush him with their high-heeled shoes. A rat tries to eat him. It's a ridiculous superpower. The writers actually have to cheat and give Ant-Man a whole second power, mind control over armies of ants, or he'd never get anything accomplished. But these stories of tiny people, you know, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, The Borrowers-- when I was young, I loved the film Fantastic Voyage-- I do get the appeal of them. They give you this feeling of what if. What if I was so small that I could stand between the wafers of an Oreo cookie, that I could climb onto an insect? Last year, when she was in fourth grade, Chloe thought about this a lot. She's a kid in suburban New Jersey. Now that she's in fifth grade, she finds this a little embarrassing. But last year, every night when she'd go to bed, she'd prepare for the possibility that magic might strike while she was asleep, and that she would shrink down to the size of her dollhouse. Those preparations included-- I would sleep on the edge of my pillow. It's like the very top of my head is on the pillow, and then the rest of my body is on my bed. That way, if she shrunk in the middle of the night, she would be on the bed and not on the pillow, which seemed way more treacherous to her. She also took a slap bracelet, which can stretch out like a ruler, and positioned the ruler very carefully, like a little bridge, from-- The edge of my bed to the edge of my bedside table. And why? To walk from my bed to my bedside table where I had the little hammock The little hammock, which she made for herself to sleep on, which is basically a bracelet of intertwined rubber bands suspended in air on a frame of Q-tips. And then I also had a little couch, and the couch was on the bedside table. So you walk past the ruler. You turn left, you'll see the couch. And if you go a little beyond that, you'll see the hammock. Under the hammock was a calculator that she could step on, like a little footstool, to get up onto the hammock. And next to the couch was a Post-it folded in half with a note to her parents explaining that she had shrunk, all ready to be unfolded when this really happened to her for real. And finally, every night when she went to bed-- I took some of the really important things to me, put them in a blanket, and then held onto the blanket every night, hoping that it would turn small with me. So what would be wrapped up in the blanket? My stuffed animal, Boo, my cat stuffed animal, one of my books, and a couple other stuffed animals. And were you hoping that this would happen, or were you fearing that this would happen, that you would get small? [BEEPING] I was both. That beeping that you're hearing-- Chloe was being recorded on a telephone whose batteries started dying at this point in the interview, making that beeping noise. Tell me the hope; tell me the fear. The hope because then I would get to live in my dollhouse, which, it had a little swing on the porch. It's cool. And I wouldn't have to watch Netflix with my sister. And every popcorn would be a meal. So that's the hope. What was the fear? The fear was my parents wouldn't be able to hug me. I might not have electronics. I wouldn't be able to see my friends, because I would be tiny. And I wouldn't be able to go to the pool. [LAUGHS] You wouldn't be able to swim anymore. Yeah, well, my mom could just set up a little bowl. Yeah. I was going to say, she could just take a tray of water and just put it out for you. Yeah. Once you start to think about the world this way, small stuff can become really transfixing. The sheer tinyness of tiny things can have a kind of mesmerizing power to it. We were talking about this at our office last week, and Bim took the most extreme stand on this. I dragged her into the studio to talk about this. I just like generally small things. If there is a small version of a thing, I am interested in seeing it or reading about it or hearing about it. It's Bim who told me about the radically tiny tubs of Vaseline you can buy, which have the exact design of the bigger jars. It's about the size of my thumbnail, maybe my thumbnail and a half. They're very small. They're very cute. They don't look like they're real. They look like ornaments that you might hang from a Christmas tree. And what you like about them is-- What I like about them is just how small they are. They seem almost pointless. You can find Vaseline in any number of other sizes. The fact that this exists-- I think it feels like somebody-- yeah, it was just a pointless gesture. Let's make Vaseline even smaller. Can you imagine them looking across at one another and kind of going, hey, should we make this smaller? And someone said, there's no need. And they were like, precisely. And I think small things, by nature, are whimsical. They just feel like, oh, you didn't have to be. You didn't have to exist, but here you are. And that's what makes them kind of joyful. They're just things for the pleasure of smallness and staring at smallness. It's like when you look at broccoli, and you think, oh, I'm a giant, and this is a small tree. It's that feeling. I'm almost 40. Do you still have that feeling? You'll look at a broccoli, and you'll think it's like a small tree? I don't still have that feeling. I used to have that feeling when I was a child. I will not be mocked. [LAUGHS] No one has mocked you yet. Your face. Well, today on our program, "Small Things Considered," we have stories of people overlooking what is so great about the tiny, the minuscule, the peewee, the bite size, and the teensy-weensy. Also, some very dramatic examples of the power of smallness, including, for instance, the power to end health insurance as we know it for millions of people. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. My voice is affected by some sort of tiny, tiny bug this week. Stay with us. Act 1, Coming Up Short. So a while ago, we got an email from a physician who was starting to see a trend that disturbed her, among her patients. She wanted us to look into it. We thought our contributor Scott Brown would be the best person for the job for reasons that'll become clear as he proceeds. Here's Scott. So this doctor told us that all of these parents have been coming to her, scads of them-- she used the word inundated-- with the same problem. Their kids were short, not dramatically short. They were just below average height for their age. We're talking 9-, 10-, 11-year-old kids. And what these parents wanted was for this doctor to prescribe them human growth hormone injections to make their kids taller. These are daily injections that cost tens of thousands of dollars a year. It's usually affluent privileged families, this doctor says, who already have all the advantages. She went as far as to call the desire for growth hormone among these folks an epidemic. Because I've had parents come to me and say, "Everyone I know is on growth hormone." That was an actual quote. Everyone I know is on this stuff. Or, it's all the rage in this anonymous community, a very affluent community. This doctor want it to be completely anonymous, by the way. She feels like she's whistleblowing. In fact, this isn't her real voice. We swapped her voice for an actor's in our recording of the interview. Since I can't identify her, I'll refer to her from here on as Short Throat. All we can say is she's a pediatric endocrinologist-- that is, a children's doctor, specializing in stuff like diabetes, thyroid problems, and growth. She says she got into medicine to treat sick kids, but fully half of her patients are coming to her just for the growth part. So parents will find out one kid is being treated and assume that their child, because they're below average, needs it too. Like, oh, if they're doing it, then am I going to be missing out? In fact, I think the phrase one mom used was something like, I'm just trying to be proactive and worried, I don't miss my window of opportunity. That window is real. Parents have to start their kids on the drug by the time they're hitting puberty. Short Throat has been practicing for about seven years, but she works closely with other doctors who've been at it for decades. And they do say that it's gotten much, much worse. Like, they don't remember anything like this. One of my senior colleagues, it's almost like she's surprised every time. I can't believe this kid came in here. Look at this growth chart. And I walk in the office, and it's a kid growing at the 40th percentile with parents who are the 40th percentile. 40th percentile, meaning 40% of the rest of the country is shorter than they are, so just below average. And she's like, can you believe they're here for growth? And I'm like, yes, I can believe that because-- this is, like, everyday you call me in and are flabbergasted by the same thing. I had a conversation where I had a patient come see me. Her son was 5 foot, 7". Mom was 5' 4". Dad was 5' 8". They wanted treatment. If you say something to them like, well, his predicted height is 5' 9", you might get a response that's something like, well, that's unacceptable. You're laughing, but that's my job. I'm laughing for so many different reasons. Do you get it now? Oh, I get it. I've gotten it my whole life. This is probably the point in the story where I should level with you, if I could-- short joke! I'm just under 5' 3", which puts me right around the first percentile of American males by height, shorter than 99% of the men in this country. For years, I thought I was 5' 4"-- the second percentile. But a recent doctor visit confirmed that I'd been rounding up. I've always been the smallest guy in the room, consistently smaller than other kids, for as long as I can remember. There are some downsides, sure. But I think I have a pretty good life. My successes and failures-- I do not leave them at the tiny feet of my shortness. My height is just one thing about me, not the thing, not the defining thing. But recently, I wrote a young adult novel about a 16-year-old boy who's 4 foot 11" and struggling with his identity. And I found myself thinking every day about being short-- what it meant to me, what it might have meant, what I might have missed. And then I hear from this doctor about all of these parents who think having a son my size is unacceptable and come to her to fix it, to fix them. Short Throat tells the families who just want to enhance their kid's height that she won't do that, but that doesn't always stop them. There are some private practice pediatric endocrinologists in our area who-- the phrase I've used is I feel like they would give growth hormone to a rock if you asked them to-- like, sitting people down and giving them the worst-case scenario height prediction, and then being, like, this is what you need, and then treating them. Oh, so their consult is part of saying, you don't want this short kid here. You know? Yeah. You don't want a hobbit. Oh, absolutely. That's what the paren-- I know the prescribing practices of all of others peds endos in our area. Because people bounce around, and they doctor shop, and they want other opinions. Among the things that bother her the most, a lot of the parents seem oblivious to the possibility of side effects. But really, the biggest bee in Short Throat's growth hormone bonnet is the fairness aspect. The full treatment over four or five years can cost $300,000 or more. And even though most of these families are rich, they find ways to get it covered by insurance when some of her diabetic patients can't even get the latest insulin pump covered. She also says she's seen rich families take advantage of patient assistance programs the drug companies offer to needier folks. I've seen affluent patients get on these, quote, unquote, "patient assistance programs" when-- OK, this is terrible-- but sometimes I will Zillow their house. And I'll be like, you live in a $6 million home, and you're getting patient assistance for your kid's growth hormone. Gross, gross, just gross. It's important to say, Short Throat does treat some kids with growth hormone-- kids who aren't producing enough of it or any of it on their own. That's a serious health problem. But she'll also treat them if a kid is just going to be really, really short, like way, way below average, like way down in those basement percentiles where I am. Using growth hormone is kosher in cases like this according to the FDA. That's because there's a diagnosis for people like me. I learned about it while researching my book. It's called Idiopathic Short Stature, ISS. Sounds scary, but all it means is I'm short, and no one knows why. And because I fit that diagnosis, I could have been one of Short Throat's patients. So yes, even our whistleblower, who believes this stuff is overused, would've treated me if I'd come to her, if my parents had wanted it. And as one of those otherwise healthy kids who are just short, and who kind of resents the use of the word otherwise, I'd add, all of this looks not a whole lot like medicine. It looks cosmetic, like a boob job for kids, short kids. But before I went off on a Napoleonic rage bender over the claims of this one rogue grow doctor, I thought I'd run those claims by Dr. David B. Allen, another pediatric endocrinologist, and arguably, the leading expert on this topic. He sat on the panel that wrote the recent guidelines for growth hormone treatments for kids. He's been writing papers about it for three decades, specifically, about idiopathic short stature. You actually-- not to get personal, but you sound like you do fit the diagnosis. You may. Did you just diagnose me over the radio? It's amazing. I've got a lot of experience. He said he didn't think unnecessary growth hormone treatments for kids was an epidemic, per se. The reluctance of insurance companies to cover such an expensive and iffy treatment keeps widespread use tamped down. But sure, there are lots of families in more image-conscious, wealthy places who put their kids on it. When he writes about using growth hormone for height, not health, the phrase he uses is cosmetic endocrinology. And he told me this story. Back in the day, growth hormone was used almost exclusively on kids who were growth hormone-deficient, the way you give insulin to a diabetic. And the only source for this stuff back then was the pituitary glands of cadavers, dead people, so the supply was limited. Unfortunately, because it came from cadavers, some of it was tainted with a brain disease similar to Mad Cow. It was a freak thing. This was in the '80s. Dozens of young people got sick. Some of them died. But that same year, synthetic growth hormone became available. Now there was lots of the stuff-- lab-made, safe from contamination. Dr. Allen told me and my producer, Sean Cole, that the drug industry and doctors started looking around for other uses, like, say, making idiopathically short kids less idiopathically short. Idiopathic short stature really became a thing once there was growth hormone treatment available that might work. It was a descriptive term. Of course, it's been a descriptive term for a long, long time. But as a diagnosis, I think it was more really after there was a treatment available. It's one of these situations where it's almost like a treatment that's in search of a diagnosis. So a solution in search of a problem. Sort of. Yes, right, exactly. And also, why are we treating shortness like it's a disease? Because when you look into it, as researchers have, there's no evidence tying being short to having a bad life. Studies show short kids get teased, bullied. They're often treated as younger than they are. But there's no direct connection between being small and failing at life. I, for instance, did not end up depressed and alone, living in a tiny cardboard box behind Bob's Big Boy, at least, not because of my height. Another thing Dr. Allen said is that the use of synthetic growth hormone in kids is generally agreed to be safe. But he said, it just hasn't been on the market long enough for us to know yet. There could be an increased risk of cancer down the road. One study, and only one, points to more instances of stroke among adults who took the drug as children. Thing is, we won't really know how dangerous this stuff is until 30, or 40, or 50 years down the line. Also, on average, kids who take growth hormone might gain three inches, a little less than half an inch per year, but that's average. Your heightage may vary a lot, could be more, could be less. I'll just note that less than a little less than 1/2 inch a year would be a very sad title for a country song. The darkest irony here is Dr. Allen says the kids you'd think need the drug the most, kids with short parents, are the ones who benefit the least. And it's conceivable that there are some risks that we don't yet know about or are just learning about 20 years down the road, that this completely healthy 10-year-old has now been exposed to, for a benefit that we have a lot of difficulty documenting. That, to me, that's the conundrum, right? Not a conundrum for me. The health effects are unknown, benefits uncertain, and even if you get taller, you're not necessarily happier? Then I'm not putting my kid on it, not for a maximum 3 inches total, not for 1/2 inch a year. Who would choose that for their kid? I decided to find out. Are you going to call this growth hormone gate? Is that what you're going to call it? That sounds snappy. We should definitely do that. ?] It's funny, because-- I can't tell you any of these folks' names, either. They're in Southern California. I'll call the dad Jeremy. He's a doctor. He's 5 foot 8". The mom, who I'll call Laura, is 5 foot 4". She's a personal development coach. There are two kids, Dylan and Marnie, also not their real names. Dylan's been taking growth hormone injections for five years. We asked Laura why they wanted to be anonymous. It's a little embarrassing. Most of his, probably, peers don't know. His close friends know. But for a girl, it's cute if she's short and petite. But for a guy, it kind of says something about your masculinity. So I just wanted to protect him for whatever reasons-- short-term, long-term. They all live in a big, beautiful house with a pool that contains what I'm fairly sure is a water polo goal. Dylan's on the team. The living room is immaculate, like the lobby of a luxury hotel. When we got there, there was a dog-grooming van sitting out front in which their dog was being groomed. She looked nice afterwards. Laura's been worrying about Dylan's size since he was a baby. He was born preemie-sized, even though she carried him full-term. He spent four or five days in the NICU. And as he got older, it just seemed like he was having a hard time catching up to his friends in the height department. He was the smallest in his team photos, class photos, always an outlier. So when she found out there was something that might help fix that, it just felt like the right call. To me, it was just a medical choice, and it was never aesthetic. It just was more medical, and I don't know if-- It's interesting. We have slightly different views and perceptions. Again, this is Jeremy. He's a doctor, so you'd expect him to come at this from a medical necessity point of view, too, and he does. But he's totally upfront about his less doctor-y reasons. I don't know. Stereotypical-- I'm a guy. I want him to be big and strong, if he can be bigger and stronger. But to get to that, the risk factor had to be eliminated. And so what was the point where you were like, well, now we can start thinking about bigger and stronger because I am satisfied that whatever long-term studies they are looking for-- There was a risk. I had to kind of take it. At least it wasn't my life, so I wasn't worried. No, I'm just kidding. Just, no. [INAUDIBLE] punch you in this interview. I'm sorry. No, it was a risk. It's not easy making that decision. Like, gosh, I'm putting my son at risk for diabetes? My brother has diabetes. I see it. Just to point out, the risk of diabetes from pediatric growth hormone use is more theoretical than anything else. Doctors monitor for it, but so far, there's no causal link. So there was a little bit in the back of my mind, like, oh, boy, what did I just do to my son? Something may have happened that would have been irreversible. And so I would have just never forgiven myself had it happened. There's no question. It was in the back of my brain. I'm a doctor, so I get it. I didn't think about it [INAUDIBLE]. I've worried about it in the back of my brain. I just don't verbalize it. But knock on wood, fortunately, he's been fine, and all we've seen is the benefits. Better than fine, Jeremy says. The drug seems to be working, and he's satisfied. If I search my heart of hearts, at least for myself, I'd be dishonest if I said I didn't have superficial motivations exactly as you describe. Maybe not said in those words-- you know, a future leader, more attractive to a mate-- but unless you're a giant, who doesn't want to be taller? But does it feel weird to be kind of like feeding into that? Like feeding into those-- Stereotypes? Yeah, those societal clamoring for more. No. No weirder than your trying to look nice today. Why'd you dress so nicely? You're giving into society. It looks you've got some nice shoes on. You've got a collared shirt. And when you picked your glasses, did you pick the most ugly glasses you could pick? No, you tried to pick some nice glasses, right? We all, to some degrees-- it's a continuum. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But would you have been sad if he had been Scott's height? That stopped the conversation. I offered to stand up for him. This is where I stand up. No, don't do that. I don't know the word sad. We would have always wondered, maybe? Like, what would have happened? But it does raise this question of, in a fully pay-to-play society, do you end up with different tiers of people, some of whom have selected characteristics that confer advantages or seem to confer advantages? I get it. This smacks of the whole SAT-gate thing, right? This is all this whole, let me game the system. I want my child to get a 1600 on the SAT. I want my child to go to Harvard. It smacks of that, and I get it. But at the same time, I don't think it's all that sinister. Like, for us, we just didn't want him to be sitting below the steering wheel and being made fun of or something. That's kind of like-- Which is where Jeremy and Laura's opinions about the whole thing line up a lot more. Laura used to blanch when people would ask if Dylan and his little sister were twins. She's two years younger. And Laura hated that her son wore clothes made for boys two years younger. But all of that's in the past now. Hi. Hi. How are you? This is Dylan. Good to meet you, man. 15 years old. He came home from school in the middle of the interview still wearing his school uniform-- white polo, shorts. He's 5 foot 6" now. My producer, Sean, sensitive soul that he is, had us stand back-to-back in the living room. The back of Scott's head is going right into your neck. So I wouldn't want to see you guys in an alley fight. Wow. That was hot, Sean. That was a little demeaning. Sean, I thought we were pals, buddy. Here's the thing. Measuring yourself directly, bodily, against another human being-- it's not a natural situation. As a 43-year-old man standing back-to-back with a 15-year-old, I felt this almost primal humiliation. And just for a second, I thought, did I miss out on something? I felt a little jealous. Laura had spread out the charts on the coffee table, inches versus years, Dylan's whole history of growing up, and up, and up from elementary school on, in a laggardly parabola that takes off like a rocket around the time he started the growth hormone. Each dot is a measurement. You know how I'm in the first height percentile for men in America? Dylan started off parked between the third and fifth percentile and ended up nearly at the 50th, almost average. It made him feel proud. Because I saw each dot climbing, and it was going up. It was only going up. And that, to me, was like, OK, I'm getting taller. But I'm going to be a little sad that I can't be as tall as I wanted to be. I'd like to be around 5' 10" or 5' 11", for sure. That way, I'm a little bit above average. I've never thought about it that way. What height do I want to be? How average would I like to be? This demand-side attitude about height was alien to me. And standing there, between this giant 5 foot 6" child's mastodon-like shoulder blades, I thought about what had brought me here underneath my indignation, my short identitarianism. Here's the thing I've glossed over a bit-- the downsides of being short. I took some hard punches to the stomach in elementary school. I often feel taken less seriously by taller people in professional situations. I prefer phone meetings for that very reason. I pretty much know that I've had friendships with women that might have been more than friendships if I'd been a few inches higher off the dance floor. I've watched the libido drain from my date's eyes as we stand up from the restaurant table after dessert. I've been judging these people, these parents, trying to check every box, buy every advantage. But there was a moment a long time ago when my parents thought about putting me on growth hormone when I was little-- littler-- and they didn't. I have this really strong memory of their telling me they'd looked into it. We were in a car. This would have been the mid-'80s in Virginia. I remember an apple orchard on our left, a fairground on our right, and my mom telling me they'd considered it and decided against it. I remember thinking, why are you telling me this? It's like the moment I became short, the first time I really knew. It was official. Doctors had been consulted, powerful elixirs considered. Maybe none of that should have come as a surprise. I'm the outlier amongst my siblings. My brother Robert is 6 foot 1". Even my little sister Holland is taller than I am. They take after my dad, who, at 5' 11", is a full foot taller than my mom. In all these years, we've never talked about that decision. Why didn't they want me to get taller? Why didn't they make the choice Dylan's parents did? I went home, and I asked my mom about that conversation in the car. See, I have no memory of this at all. How did that conversation come up? I'm driving you home from school and I go, by the way? You know how moms have a way of making the pivotal chapters in your personal history seem less pivotal and more totally apocryphal? Yeah, it was that thing. My mom, very convincingly, debunked my big origin story of how I became short. The timeline was wrong. The location was wrong. The only true part was, once upon a time, I found out I was short. And I'm clearly more hung up on it than I thought I was. But mom confirmed they did decide not to treat me, and we must have talked about it back then. I wanted to know why they didn't treat me. And the answer was pretty simple. When I was about 10, my pediatrician sent me to an endocrinologist to check my growth hormone levels because I was small, and doctors like to check every box. So I got tested. I was normal, in terms of hormone levels, anyway, and that's it. They didn't pursue it further. Also, my father was a pharmaceutical researcher who tested experimental medications. My mom was a nurse. They know about this stuff. And this was right after the stories came out about the tainted growth hormone from cadavers. I had just listened to those stories. And it was kind of a gut thing. It was kind of like, well, it took them 25 years to figure that out that we had this issue. It took them 25 years. So am I going to wait 25 years to find out, oh, here's a really bad consequence of growth hormone? Of the synthetic. Right. Of the synthetic. And we couldn't foresee it. And I had a healthy son who was thriving, I thought. And he was a sharp guy, and I didn't want to screw it up. My parents were trying to protect me by doing nothing, the same way Laura and Jeremy were trying to protect Dylan by doing something, something elemental, making him bigger. But for my mom, there's something else. She doesn't think of what might have happened if she'd made me bigger. She thinks about what might have been lost if she had. It's always been interesting to me to see genes will out, you know what I mean? You know, when you say, wow, you do that? And my dad did that. It's like a physical thing that somebody does, or the attitude they have, or the way they handle their hands. Those are genes coming out. That I'd like to see. They're familiar to me. They're familiar to me too. I remind myself of people I've known-- my grandfather, my uncle, my mom. I've got their bodies. I'm built on their blueprints, reliable blueprints that delivered several generations of tiny living things from primordial slime to this crazy, risky, present moment. That's no small thing. All I know is this is the box I came in, and I like it in here, I think. Scott Brown is a writer producer on the Hulu series Castle Rock. His young adult novel about a super short kid who grows freakishly tall in a year is called XL. Coming up, when something shrinks, and shrinks, and shrinks, it can undo a 900-page law, and more about the power of tinyness. That's in a minute, from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's show, "Small Things Considered," stories in defense of the little and the Lilliputian. We've arrived at Act two of our show. Act Two, Let's give them nothing to talk about. David Kestenbaum has this story about something that got shrunk to exactly as small as something could possibly be shrunk with huge consequences that are playing out right now, this very moment. Here's David. This thing that got made small? It's a tax. A couple years ago, the government set it to zero-- 0 dollars, 0 cents-- which makes what follows so remarkable. How could a tax so small it doesn't actually exist cause any trouble? But before I explain-- and since this show is about the importance of small things-- let me just confess here how much I love zero. It's unlike any other number in its capacity for destruction. 0 times anything is 0. No matter how big, it always wins. And even better is dividing. When I was a kid in math class, I'd like to put 1 divided by 0 into my calculator. It would show E for Error, because 1 divided by 0? There is no answer to that. It's undefined. Divide by any other number, and you're fine. 1 divided by 2, for instance, or 57, or 693. But put a zero in, and it just blows up. Mathematicians call this kind of situation a singularity, where the math is not well-behaved. In fact, it stops making sense. There are singularities inside black holes, but I never heard of a real world example outside of that until December 14 last year. A law that brought health care to millions of Americans has been struck down by a US judge. The judge has ruled it unconstitutional. Maybe you remember this. A judge in Texas ruled that the entire Affordable Care Act violated the US Constitution. This was big news, and it immediately got appealed. But the signature domestic policy achievement of the entire Obama presidency, the thing that right now is giving millions of Americans health insurance, that whole thing, this judge was saying, it was unconstitutional, had to go. And the thing that set all this off? A zero. Last year, Congress reduced the penalty tax for not having health insurance to zero. The judge ruled that without-- Let me explain how a zero could blow up an entire law. When Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, was written almost a decade ago, it included this thing that people called the mandate, which basically said, you have to have health insurance. And if you don't, you've got to pay a fine. In 2016, the average fine paid was a little over $700. Opponents of the health care law took issue with that part saying, the government can't just force people to buy something they may not want. All this went to the Supreme Court, which ruled it was OK because-- and this is key-- the mandate could be viewed as a tax. The government has lots of taxes. This is one of them, which felt like the end of it. And it was, until this other thing happened that seemed unrelated. In 2017, Republicans passed their big tax cut bill. And one of the taxes in there that they cut-- this was just a sentence-- was the mandate, the fine that you have to pay if you don't have insurance. They cut it to zero. It really does seem like most lawmakers in Congress did not understand that this one little change could be the basis for getting all 900-plus pages of the ACA ruled unconstitutional. I couldn't find any record of lawmakers even mentioning it in the floor debate or the news coverage. One person who did see that, who put together how zero could undo the whole law, was someone not in Washington at all, a guy in Wisconsin, Misha Tseytlin, who then was the state solicitor general. I found him on Facebook. His profile picture was from an Ultimate Frisbee tournament. He politely declined to comment. But from legal filings, we know his basic argument. Tseytlin's logic was that, if the tax is zero, then there is no tax. And what you're left with in the law is this line that basically says, people shall buy health insurance. That was OK as part of a tax, like, you shall buy health insurance, or pay a penalty. But now the tax was zero, the text of the law was simply telling people to buy health insurance-- unconstitutional. That is how a tax of zero ends up in a federal appeals court. Most of America's kind of in the courtroom, too-- 18 red states on one side, 16 blue states on the other. I reached out to someone involved in the case, Nick Bagley, professor at the University of Michigan Law School. I talked to him about the part of the case that I find so transfixing. Can I say the part that stood out to me? Yeah. I used to work in physics. And they call it a singularity, like it's a zero in the denominator, like it creates a black hole. Yeah. And you're putting your finger on one of-- Bagley, to be clear, thinks the first judge got it totally wrong. He's worked on a brief filed in the appeals case, and he's been writing about it. He pointed out something I honestly had not considered. And I've encouraged, and others have encouraged, Congress, at least the House of Representatives, to pass a bill that would set a $1 tax. Oh, really? Yeah, the House could've passed a bill that made this whole lawsuit go away tomorrow. It would be the jot of a pen. And if the House passes it, and the Senate doesn't want to pass it, well, hang that around the Senate's neck in the next presidential election. Make it their albatross to carry. Wait, wait, wait. Hang on. That would work, right? If they just-- Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. This whole case goes away if they set it to $1. Yeah, there's a bunch of different ways you can do it. Or a penny. Set it to $1. A penny, too, right? A penny, sure. But how can it matter that it's $1 or zero, like, really, really? It can't, and it shouldn't. And again, you're putting your finger on-- Well, I understand that legally it might, but it seems crazy, also, that it might. Yeah. That's one of the great things about the law. The great things, yeah. Well, no, no, no, what I mean what is that, if it seems crazy to you, it probably is. And if the argument is too cute by half, it probably is. I talked to Bagley back in July on the day that the appeals court heard the case. We listened together online. The arguments the lawyers made were all about standing, severability doctrine, the meaning of the word shall. What did Congress intend when it set the tax to zero? It did not go well for the Affordable Care Act, for Bagley's side. You could tell from the judge's questions. Bagley's exact words while we listened included things like-- Oh, Jesus. And-- This is really bad. This is really bad. And finally-- This is about as bad as you could expect from an oral argument. Thank you, your honor. He was truly surprised. He thought the legal argument that zero could take down the whole law was, quote, "weak to the point of frivolousness." To Randy Barnett, though, this all seems totally logical. Barnett is a professor at Georgetown Law and has been vocal on the other side. If the tax is zero, Barnett says, the mandate's unconstitutional. He doesn't think the court can strike out just that one part of the law, so the whole thing has to go. To me, it seems quite reasonable because it's a straightforward application of severability doctrine as I understand it. People on the other side feel like this case is an example of weird legal reasoning being used to get to a particular conclusion. Are there other legal decisions that look that way to you? Yeah. I would say that any decision that says that Congress has the power, under its power to regulate commerce among the several states-- Short answer, yes, which is to say, liberals have their examples of what they see as activist judges inventing bizarre arguments, and so do conservatives, and libertarians like Barnett, and everyone else. He told me about this case that he argued before the Supreme Court, and lost 6 to 3. The court ruled that a woman in California couldn't grow medical marijuana at her own house in her own garden to take for her own back pain because of the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution. That sounds a little crazy to me. And yet, those kinds of rulings happen all the time. Give me another one. How much airtime am I going to get? I asked Barnett what he made of the fact that this case is how we are deciding whether millions of Americans will have health insurance, and that it all seemed to stem, in some way, from the weird power of zero. Does it seem odd to you that we are in this position? Define odd. What do you mean? It just seems odd that somehow there would be a difference between Congress setting a tax to a penny and zero. Whenever you have a distinction, there's going to be marginal cases in which that distinction could make a difference, and the distinction could look arbitrary. That's just the way law works. It works that way all the time. You're speeding, by the way, when you go 36 miles an hour in a 35 mile-an-hour zone. But why is 36 miles an hour-- why is that a terrible speed when 35 miles an hour is perfectly OK? It feels a little different somehow. You could say that-- well, I'm not sure how to respond to that. I'm not sure how to ask it, either. You're entitled to your feelings. Here are my feelings. Having big things like this decided in the courts on legal grounds that most people will never understand-- it does not seem ideal to me. The appeals court is supposed to issue its ruling any day now. It seems quite possible this thing is headed for the Supreme Court. It's like this little tax set to zero has created a legal wormhole with red states gathered on one side, blue states on the other, a vortex of high-level legal math in the middle. I worry it's going to suck us all into some other dimension. We'll cross some event horizon from which there is no return. It'll tear our atoms apart. It'll tear us apart. Either that, or a neatly typed opinion will come out some Tuesday morning in June. David Kestenbaum is the executive editor of our show. Act 3, What the Eye Can't See. So we end our show today with this last story of small things that are anything but small from Lilly Sullivan. When I was in my early 20s, I spent a lot of my time looking at job postings online. I'd read the qualifications section-- leadership skills, self-starter, results-oriented. And then I'd look at myself-- broke, weird, shy to the point of silence-- and miss the deadline, which is when I stumbled on a story called "The Job Application." It's by this writer, Robert Walser. The story is told in the form of a cover letter, but instead of selling himself, he just offers an honest assessment of who he is. "Esteemed gentlemen, I am a poor, young, unemployed person. Large and difficult tasks I cannot perform, and obligations of a far-ranging sort are too strenuous for my mind. I'm not particularly clever. And first and foremost, I do not like to strain my intelligence overmuch. I'm a dreamer rather than a thinker, a zero rather than a force, dim rather than sharp. The passion to go far in the world is unknown to me." I remember thinking, you're not supposed to tell people that stuff. He was being funny and mocking the whole song and dance. But at the same time, he wasn't making it up. He needed a job. He ends the letter, "Well, so now you know what sort of a person I am. I am sincere and honest, and I'm aware that this signifies precious little in the world in which we live. So I shall be waiting, esteemed gentlemen. Your respectful servant, positively drowning in obedience." I know almost nothing about this writer, but I loved him for writing this because the thing is, feeling so worthless at that age-- it was terrifying, when your brain isn't orderly and results-oriented, like an effective human's. I'd have a rough shift temping or waitressing. People can be awful when you're at the bottom. And I'd come home just dreading the rest of my life, and he got that. I started reading more of his stuff. One of my favorites is a novel about boys in a school where they're training to be servants. He wrote, "In one thing, we pupils are all similar. We are small, small all the way down the scale to utter worthlessness. One thing I do know for certain-- in later life, I shall be a charming, utterly spherical zero." Robert Walser-- turns out he's Swiss, born in 1878. And for a moment, it looked like he was going to be the next big thing. Kafka, who was younger than him, was a fan. When Kafka came onto the scene, one critic back then explained Kafka by saying, hey, this guy's kind of like Robert Walser. And there was this delighted absurdity to his work. He'd poke fun at himself for being small, but there was always an edge to it. Worse than being weak, were the people deluded enough to think they're great. It's so pompous. He wasn't mean, exactly, more just entertained by their foolishness. I started to see the world that way, too. But then one day, a few years later, I was at a bookstore, and I saw a new Robert Walser book on the shelf, more of his work translated into English. I started reading the introduction, and it had all this stuff I hadn't known before about his life. It said that Walser had spent the last third of his life in a mental hospital-- schizophrenia. He lived there for 27 years until he died. I was floored and so sad for him. This was the writer I turned to as a roadmap to remind myself that there are people out there like me, and they're fine, and he was the best of our kind of people. It freaked me out. Like, that's what life did to him? It turns out Robert Walser had a little early success, but not much after that. Writers liked him, but his books didn't sell well. And he was predictably terrible at marketing himself. After flailing for a while, he left the art scene in Berlin and moved back home to Switzerland. And once he's there, his life starts falling apart. He couldn't really get his books published anymore. He starts renting out single rooms, month to month, from old ladies, reduces his possessions to a single suitcase. He's unhappy, alone all the time, mentally shaky. He'd get nightmares and stay up all night pacing and muttering to himself. Eventually, he checks himself into a mental hospital. It's 1929. He asks the staff to put him in the shared dorm because-- this breaks my heart-- he's afraid to be alone. They diagnose him with schizophrenia. He's there voluntarily at first, but later, he gets committed against his will, kicking and screaming as they force him into the car for the transfer. He spends the rest of his life in a sanitarium. There's a story that, when people encouraged him to write again, he said, I'm not here to write. I'm here to be mad. And the world forgot about him, and then he died, on Christmas Day, actually, in 1956. He goes for a walk outside of his asylum, and he collapses. A couple kids find his body in a field of snow. Someone actually took a photo. Robert Walser is lying face up, one arm outstretched, dark clothes against white snow, his hat a few feet away. The book I was looking at had something else, something eerie. I didn't know what to make of it. After Walser died, a nurse in one of his hospitals came forward with these strange scraps of paper. His sister had a shoebox full of them too-- hundreds of little scraps, used postcards, business cards, old calendar pages ripped in half. And those little shreds were just covered in ant-like pencil markings, dense little rows of tiny slashes and ticks, packed onto shreds of paper. Everyone thinks it's just mad-man scrawl, and they put the papers away. A few months later, his friend, who, for years, was one of the only people who really visited him in the hospital, publishes a blown-up photo of one of these scraps in a Swiss literary magazine. "Undecipherable," he writes, "a product of Walser's schizophrenia." But when the magazine comes out, a grad student writes in saying, Wait, I can read this. I think those scratchings are letters. He got the papers and spent months staring at 24 pages trying to decipher the tiny handwriting. It turned out to be an entire novel. But there were still hundreds more scraps. It wasn't until the 1980s that someone tackled the rest of them, another grad student named Bernhard Echte, 21 at the time. He'd actually been on his way to becoming a doctor. But when he discovered Robert Walser, he stopped that life in its tracks, switched to literature to spend more time with Robert Walser. Because I was-- normal literature, normal text, notes-- I think most of them are boring. But Robert Walser, he's melancholic. He's funny. He is writing about everything and about nothing. And I started to read him when I was 17, and I read for him almost every day since then. He talked to the archive where the shreds are being kept, and they agreed to let him see them, try to decipher some more. And when he sees them for the first time, he's stunned. The writing is microscopic, each letter just a speck, about two millimeters at first, and as the years go by, they get smaller, down to 1 millimeter-- these tiny bold characters, like miniature Japanese calligraphy. But the really difficult fact is the density of the lines because there's no distance between the lines. Right, because if the letters are a millimeter, the pencil marking must be half a millimeter. Yes, yes. And this is very, very difficult because the pencil is not as sharp as it should be. He brought that up a few times. Like, couldn't he sharpen his pencil? And this is the problem because you never know what letter is there and how many. But if you can read, you can read it because you don't spell letter for letter, but you identify the form of the word. You can't identify the individual letters, but somehow when you look at them all together, sometimes you can tell what it says. A word will reveal itself. He started working on it full time with a partner. They'd sit at typewriters across from each other in a little room filled with cigarette smoke, bent over these magnifying glasses called thread counters, and they'd stare at the words. When they'd get stumped on a word, which happened constantly, they had the system where they'd rattle off gibberish and random syllables. Bernhard and the other guy would work separately on a scrap for a while, then they'd compare their guesses. If they had come to the same conclusion, they decided it was right. The project was supposed to take four years. It ended up taking 20. Bernhard did the last six years alone. He had started when he was 21 and finished when he was 41. And when he'd finally finished, those 526 scraps turned into six volumes of work, The Microscripts, 2,000-some pages of stories, comedy, little dramas, a novel about a robber who doesn't steal much of anything. I had pictured this writing as sad little notes to no one. But when you read it, it's like Walser's back, happily throwing stones. Like he writes, "I've no use for these graspers. Pleasure-seekers overlook life's true pleasures. They aren't serious, which makes them boring, and they can't help being bored with me, since I'm bored with them." Some things scholars have figured out-- Walser wrote most of these scraps before the asylum, so this romantic idea of one man alone, writing his masterpieces while locked away, seems like it didn't happen that way. And it seems like he probably wasn't schizophrenic. Bernhard has studied all the medical records. Walser's own doctor thought he was fine and should go home. Psychiatrists who study him now don't think he was schizophrenic either. He didn't really have the symptoms. Also, that thing he's famous for saying, "I'm not here to write. I'm here to be mad"-- people who study him think he likely didn't say that, that it's a myth, and that the truth is he got trapped there for the most infuriatingly mundane reason-- medical bureaucracy. Once he lost his rights, he couldn't get them back, couldn't sign himself out. And during the 27 years he was there, a lot happened in the world-- World War II. That circle of writers who might have known his work, people who might have remembered that he was there, had scattered. Their books were banned. They were living in exile or dying violently. Kafka's family members were killed in the Holocaust. So some writer no one read anymore, who no one ever really knew in the first place, people had other things to worry about. One scholar told me, she thinks that, at some point, Walser probably could have gotten out of the hospital if he wanted to, but he stopped trying. I wondered why he spent so many years writing things that even he probably couldn't read. He explained to someone, in those years when he was really depressed, when publishers didn't want his work anymore, he had bad writer's block. He describes it as a cramp in his brain. And he explains that writing this tiny hurts. So he can take the cramp in his brain and put it into his hand, instead. And once he does that, his mind is clear, and he can think again. On a page of a calendar he'd cut into pieces, he writes about why he did it all in pencil. One day, he figured out that a pen made him nervous-- all those mistakes, cross-outs, in ink. But if he used a pencil instead and labored over this tiny writing, he explains, "This labor looked to me like a pleasure, as it were. I felt it would make me healthy. A smile of satisfaction would creep into my soul each time, like a smile of amicable self-derision. It seemed to me, the pencil let me work more dreamily, peacefully, cosily, contemplatively. I believe that the process I just described would blossom into a peculiar form of happiness." That his handwriting was small is in close connection with his convictions about life and what is interesting in life. He was not interested in great importance and things which are big and everybody knew about. The interesting things are the small things. The idea I'd had about his life in the asylum, how he died, how awful it all seemed to me-- Bernhard doesn't see it that way. He's studied Walser his whole life, every letter and document. He even bought the house where Walser once lived, and he lives there now. He knows his life inside and out, and he thinks it's not tragic. He says, Walser usually seems kind of OK. Not happy, exactly, but content. "Life without success," Walser once wrote, "can also be beautiful." His was. There's power in being OK with being nothing. It's honest. And you can't crush nothing. He made his life smaller and smaller until he almost didn't exist anymore, and then he didn't, an utterly spherical zero. Lilly Sullivan is one of the producers of our show. Other details about Walser's life and work in her story came from Susan Bernofsky. Thanks to Susan Bernofsky. She has translated eight of his books, and has just written the first-ever English biography of Walser full of the new information she's uncovered. It'll come out in about a year from Yale University Press. Normal literature, normal texts, notes-- I think most of them are boring. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
A quick warning-- there are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website-- thisamericanlife.org. Darwin's nine. And he's a kid who-- I don't know-- people just give him stuff. When he met my co-worker, Aviva, he was playing with a soccer ball somebody gave him, eating a taco somebody else gave him. And Darwin's mom was explaining all this. Can you just describe what just happened? I have no idea, she says. A man, as you were talking about people just giving him things, walked by and gave you-- how much did he give you? Diez? Wow. 10 pesos. Why'd he give you that? Aviva asks him. Darwin gives a little shrug like, eh, what can I say? Because he thought I was asking for a coin. His mom says, he was just sitting there eating. You're like king of the camp. Yes, I am the king of the camp, he says. As Aviva sits there with Darwin's mom, Elizabeth, he runs off for 15, 20 minutes at a time. And then returns with cash. $5. She hugs him. Darwin runs to their tent to pull out all the money he's saved and show Aviva-- $279, a huge wad of cash, which for context, they're living in a makeshift tent camp in Matamoros, Mexico, right over the border from Brownsville, Texas. And, I mean, immediately on the other side-- nestled against the US, and the Rio Grande, and the customs office. You can see the big red arches of the border station it's so close. Over 2,500 people living here, hoping to get asylum in the US. Darwin and his mom came here from Honduras. 279 bucks here is huge. Most people, even the migrants who came with a little money saved, have been here so long, they've spent it all. Our family sends us money, his mom says. Lots of families do that. But he brings in so much more than they send. Aviva then follows Darwin as he walks from the tents to the long line of cars that's waiting at the border to cross into the United States. He's a happy-looking kid with neatly cut hair and a big smile. Really cute. Darwin gives a fist bump to the fruit stand guy. Claps the man selling corn on the back to say hello. Nods to the half-dozen other vendors working the line. Remember, he's nine. When we asked one woman in the camp about him, she was like, oh, El Terremoto-- The Earthquake. He holds a finger in the air, asking for one coin. He says that's his move-- ask for a coin, and then hopefully they'll give you more than a coin. And, in fact, a car with three women waves him over. And the woman in the passenger seat rolls down her window and hands him a dollar. Thanks. Bless you. Are you Cuban? He asks her. He says, I knew it-- from your accent. And she's like, right. You thought I was from Cuba. And they laugh. The woman asks his name, and he tells her. She says she likes his hair. I like your hair, he says. He reaches out to stroke her hair. It's straight and blond. I like your hair because it's pretty, he says. And she laughs and claps her hands. Look at what a flirt he ended up being. Oh, my god. You have a girlfriend? You, you. Bye, Darwin! Bye. Bye. Darwin runs to his mom, who's watching all this, and gives her the dollar. Both of them, and the thousands of other people camped here at the border-- to be clear, they're trying to follow the rules and enter the United States through a border station and formally apply for asylum. It used to be, you'd show up. If you passed a basic interview-- which most people did-- you'd wait in the US for your day in court. But now it's all different. Under the Trump administration's Remain in Mexico policy, you get turned back to wait in Mexico. This policy is still pretty new. It really kicked in full force this summer, but it's a profound change with massive consequences. One of them? The size of this camp, which didn't exist before President Trump, and which grows in size every day. And all across Mexico, in cities just on the other side of the border, there are now tens of thousands of people-- according to the Department of Homeland Security-- stranded under this policy, in shelters, on the streets, and in encampments like this one, sent by our government without much of a plan for where or how they'd live once they got to Mexico. This camp, for instance, is totally improvised-- long rows of scruffy blue and white and gray tents, over 700 of them, donated by do-gooder groups and churches in America. These are Coleman tents meant for weekend camping, not designed for rain and direct sun and cold for months at a time. There's no regular water supply here. Volunteer groups from over the border in Brownsville haul in over 3,000 bottles of water each day, and these are just the little 16-ounce bottles like you would buy with your lunch at a fast food place. There's no proper sanitation, just five toilets for 2,500 people-- yellow Porta Potties which get precisely as gross as you would imagine. One of the fathers here, Elwin David Baquis told me that when his eight-year-old daughter needs the bathroom-- Well, you know, if I have some money, then I'll look and see if I can find her another bathroom to use, but if there isn't any, then I'll take her out into the woods-- into the mountain, so that she can, you know, use the bathroom, do her business, and then we'll go down to the river to wash up. And honestly, with the amount of people using them, in five hours, they'll be totally full. And people still keep on going to use them, especially women, because as you can imagine, you know, like, there's a bunch of men out there in the woods that are using the bathroom, and they don't want to be surrounded by that. There's a nurse at the camp named Helen Perry who runs a very small relief group with a very grand-sounding name-- Global Response Management. With some volunteers, she started a medical tent in the camp, modeled after the battalion aid stations that she learned to set up back when she was in the army. Anyway, I mentioned all of this to Helen-- that this father and daughter were going up in the woods. And she was like, oh yeah, knew that. Yeah. And then when it rains, all that rainwater washes down there, or it washes into the hard spaces in the camp and they get, you know, infectious diarrhea. Are you seeing a lot of infectious diarrhea? Yes. Most everyone here has some form of GI something or other-- you know, different types of tapeworms and ringworms. And the problem is is that you treat it, and then they come right back out and they get it again. I actually met Elwin because he was Helen's first patient of the day. He and his daughter both had pinkeye from bathing in the Rio Grande, which is not clean. Helen's trying to organize a fix for that. So this is actually one of areas that we're talking about bringing in a water purification system. So the Rio Grande is, like, right down there. Hola. Hola. And so what we want to do is put in a water purification system right over here, run a hose out into the water. It'll suck up the water, purify it, and they'll have their own water source. And you're the one organizing this? Yeah. Not a government? No, no. Not the UN? Nope. Just you, a person. I've never-- people are like, have you done water? And I'm like, no, but like, I'll Google it. I have to say, this is the thing that hit me hardest in Matamoros. You have thousands of people stuck there, right on our border, two big governments-- the United States and Mexico-- one of them, of course, a lot richer than the other, and nobody's looking after these people with food and water and shelter, except a bunch volunteers who raised their hands and said, we cannot ignore this. Good afternoon. Today we have volunteers from Indiana. From Indianapolis. Really far. To cook for you. Because we're all brothers, right? So let's say thanks with a round of applause. Eight very nice ladies from Indiana in fluorescent green t-shirts start serving food out of aluminum foil trays, food for 1,000 people. It cost $1,900, which they raised back home in 20 dollar donations. They also paid for their own flights and everything. An impressively competent group that calls itself Team Brownsville, started by a bunch of teachers, all volunteer, has organized it so a different bunch of people shows up five nights a week with food. They also pay for a Matamoros restaurant to deliver hundreds of breakfasts each day. The food today is fresh, but very north of the border, and very plain-- slices of ham and cheese on white bread, tangerines, grapes, baby carrots. Everybody we ask about the food, though, is polite enough to say how great it is. It's tasty, this guy tells Aviva. It's tasty, right? He says to the woman next to him. Oh sure, very tasty, she says. As soon as Aviva walks away, the interpreter who was with us for the day, Gabby Muñoz, overhears what happens next. Oh yeah, then afterwards, like, her friend, or like, the guy or the person's friend was like, what did she ask you? And he's like, well, she asked me how good the food was and I said it was good, but what the fuck else was I supposed to say? [LAUGHS] Generally, they try to get the volunteers out of the camp by nightfall, because Matamoros isn't safe. The cartels are here. The city has one of the highest kidnapping rates in Mexico, according to the US State Department. Its web page about Matamoros says, murder, carjacking, and sexual assault are common. Gang gun battles are widespread. Anybody here is at high risk. Not far from where they serve the food, like, just 20 feet or so from the actual border station, a woman named Jenny and her husband and her daughter set up their tent. I asked her if she chose that spot because it seemed like the safest, closes into the border like that. She said yes, and explained that she and her husband and daughter had been kidnapped in the last city they were in. So it was in Reynosa, and we were kidnapped for 15 days. She starts to tell the story of her family and the cartel, and the house they were held in, but as she does, a man quietly approaches and just kind of hovers nearby, listening. And she says, atras, atras, atras-- look behind you-- and covers her face. You can't talk about this. He's behind. We switch the subject. He goes away. A journalist who's in this camp a lot confirmed that he was a cartel guy. How much violence there is against people in the camp is not clear. The nurse, Helen Perry, has heard about people being kidnapped from the camp, but that's hard to confirm. And she told me this story. When I first showed up in the camp, a woman came up to me and asked me if we would be bringing in condoms, because when she got sexually assaulted again she wanted to be able to ask her attacker to wear a condom so she wouldn't get pregnant. In her relief work, Helen's been to lots of places where migrants and refugees are stranded like this. But the security issues here-- the lack a predictable food and water and sanitation, five toilets where there should be 125, no proper tents for people-- When I first saw it, I was literally just dumbfounded, because I've seen refugee situations like this. I've been to Bangladesh. I've seen Cox's Bazar. I've been to Iraq. I've seen the IDP camps. I've seen the refugee camps from Syria. I'd say this was the worst. Yeah, I would definitely say that this is the worst, if at a bare minimum for a lack of humanitarian accountability for what's happening to these people. You mean that nobody's keeping account of who's here and who isn't, who goes in and who goes out? Who goes in, who goes out, who goes missing. At a proper refugee camp, she says, like a United Nations camp, they'd have that-- a big, tall fence, somebody keeping track of who comes in and out. When we asked Mexican officials about conditions in this camp, they said they aren't helping the 2,500 people here because they don't want a permanent tent city in the spot. They want people to move to government shelters. And the United Nations said they won't step in unless the Mexican government invites them to step in. The United States, whose policies landed people here in the first place, has also donated $5 million to house them in Mexico. The money doesn't go to tent camps like this one, but to the official Mexican government shelters. It's enough money to shelter 8,000 people, but we sent way more people than that back across the border-- over 57,000 under the Remain in Mexico policy, plus another 21,000 who immigration officials haven't even begun to process. We've told them, the system's backed up. You should sit on a waiting list, stay in Mexico, and we'll get to your cases in a few months. And these were mostly people who, in the past, before President Trump, would have been allowed into the United States to wait for their asylum court dates here. It's so many people we're pushing back across the border, resulting in refugee camps that we don't call refugee camps right on our country's doorstep. Today we try to understand what this new policy means for the people we send across the border. And we also hear from US officials who sent them there who are not feeling so great about it, themselves. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Act one, "Goodbye, Stranger." So let's start today with the US officials on the front lines whose job under Remain in Mexico is to send people back. Lots of them have been resigning, saying no, that's actually not my job. Los Angeles Times reporter Molly O'Toole talked to a bunch of them. Before the Remain in Mexico policy began and upended the asylum system and completely changed what it is to be an asylum officer, here's how the job used to work. When a Central American showed up at the US-Mexico border and said, "let me in, I'm afraid of going back to my country," that's where the asylum officer came in. The officer did something called a credible fear screening to check if the person was likely to face harm or death if the US sent them back home. If there's even a chance that they would, the asylum officer would let them into the United States to wait for a court date, where an immigration judge would make the final call. Doug Stephens says people don't understand how hard the job is. At the time all this started, he was an asylum officer in San Francisco. And so I'd have people come into my office, and my job, essentially, is, tell me the worst things that have happened to you. You have an hour. Go. And then I'll decide if you're telling me the truth, and I'll decide if you get to stay. You are expected to be-- or, really, to do the job well, need to be-- an expert in the political, cultural, social, and economic situations in innumerable countries around the world, and you're expected to be a human lie detector, all at once. President Trump talks about asylum itself as if it's fraud. He says it's a hoax, a big fat con job, that people come in with fake asylum claims, that asylum officers just let everyone through, and then asylum seekers never show up for their day in court-- that it's a border-wide, 2,000-mile loophole. And it's true that most people do pass that first stop with an asylum officer and enter the United States, but there's a good reason for that. It's built into US asylum law-- a commonsense humanitarian idea. We don't want to send people back to situations where they'd get tortured or killed. The legal term is non-refoulment. And so US law set the bar low. If there's basically any chance an asylum seeker could get killed or harmed, the officer is supposed to let them into the US, and doesn't need a lot of proof or evidence at that point. Later, when they get before an immigration judge-- and by the way, the majority do show up-- there they need proof, and most of them get rejected. Even before President Trump took office, less than 15% per year got asylum, and that's because most people don't meet the specific criteria in the law, or don't have enough evidence, or it doesn't check out. All of the asylum officers I've ever spoken with see it as their job to weed out the fakers, the people who don't really need protection, the ones who are just trying to game the system. Oh my god. Like, here's where I'm going to be real with you. This is an asylum officer we're calling Ursula. This isn't her voice. She's afraid of getting fired, so we had an actor copy what she said as closely as possible. The fraud is, like, happening on a scale that's huge. We're talking, like, hundreds of people a month. I interviewed three asylum officers for this story, and all three said the groups that have been the primary target of President Trump's immigration policies, they actually aren't the main ones committing fraud. It's not the Central Americans. It's not the Middle Eastern people. It is the Indian people and the Chinese people. They all have the same bullshit story about getting beaten with hockey sticks three times, because they're part of a Sikh party, and the police told them they're going to jail them if they ever bad-mouth the ruling party ever again. Bullshit. They all just happened to do the same thing and suffer the same fate, even though there's absolutely no confirmation in any media that any of this persecution is happening, and studies done by our Department of State counterparts in the country are straight up like, this is not a real thing. The Chinese are running a similar scam with Christian claims. In the fall of 2018, asylum officers started hearing about these big changes coming. The policy that was first called Remain in Mexico, and then later, Migrant Protection Protocols, MPP. But the asylum officers who were going to have to implement this thing, they didn't know any of the details of how they were supposed to do it. It was all shrouded in so much secrecy. This is another asylum officer. We're calling her Anne. We used an actor here, too, to protect her identity. Over the next few weeks, Anne starts picking up around the office that some of her colleagues were being called in quietly and asked to go to the border in San Diego. And instead of the credible fear screenings they'd always done, they seemed to be doing something entirely different under MPP-- a whole new kind of interview with different rules. She knew she was going to have to start doing them too, so she pulled aside a coworker who'd already been sent to the border. I was asking her, hey, like, what's the training? Like, what is this? And she was like, I am not allowed to talk to you about it. Another asylum officer? Yeah. Yeah. Is this someone who you'd, like, consider a friend, or just sort of, like, professional colleague? Good colleague-- a good colleague, someone that we had mutual trust, for sure, and then was told-- was brought in by a supervisor for, like, a special brief about it before I was going to start doing these interviews, and was told, here's the skinny on it and don't tell anyone. Why? Because I think they knew that it was legally dubious and suspect, and they wanted to keep the leak to a minimum. The leak being a major policy rollout that was going to change asylum? Yeah. That's the leak? That's the leak. Yeah. Two months go by before they do a formal training session with the full asylum corps, and it's just a PowerPoint. Here's Ursula again. Hands we're going up and being like, wait, how is this legal, or how are we going to be doing this, and how do we know how this works? All three of the asylum officers I talked to said that the presentation left them with lots of questions, including the biggest one, how is this legal? These officers knew better than almost anyone how dangerous Mexico is, and this policy seemed designed to send tons of people back to Mexico. It seemed to be in direct contradiction with US asylum law, which says that, at the very least, we can't send people back to a situation where they'd get harmed or killed. We can't violate the principle of non-refoulment. And the the response was like, I'm just the messenger bringing this down from HQ, and this is the PowerPoint they gave us. I was like, well, if you don't even care about double checking that this is legal, and you're just the messenger as you say, you're a fucking asshole, you know? All three officers say they raised concerns and got roughly the same response-- just get out there and do your job. What they found out soon enough was just how radical a change the new MPP interviews were from the old credible fear screenings. For starters, not everyone would get an interview. Only the people who volunteered that they were scared to go back to Mexico would. If they got an interview, under MPP, asylum seekers would have to prove that they'd be harmed in Mexico, not their home country. And not just any harm-- they can't just be threatened by gangs or the police, they have to be threatened by gangs or police or whoever because of some very specific reasons laid out in the US law-- because of their nationality, race, religion, politics, or being part of a particular social group, like LGBTQ. And they'd have to show that the Mexican government, like a cop or an official, was unable or unwilling to protect them. And the asylum seeker couldn't just say all this happened like they could under credible fear screenings. Now, they'd need to prove it. It's like, as asylum seekers were traveling through Mexico fleeing for their lives, they should have been gathering evidence of all the screwed-up things happening to them there, making a paper trail. And they should have had all of this evidence on them right then, right after crossing the border, which, of course, is next to impossible, especially because they had no idea any of this was required. Doug saw all of this happening and wanted nothing to do with it, so he tried to keep his head down to try and avoid having to do these interviews, hoping the courts would kill MPP, but they didn't. By June, MPP returns had skyrocketed, and it was all hands on deck for the asylum corps. Doug couldn't dodge it anymore. And I got the email. It said, you're doing MPP interviews today. So I had a father and son. The son, I think, was preteens, 11 or 12. They're fleeing from Honduras because of violence and other problems. We didn't talk about that much, because it doesn't matter for the purpose of MPP, right? I'm focused only on why they're afraid to go back to Mexico. Of course, the guy and his son don't understand why they're even talking about Mexico. They don't understand any of this at all. The interview continued. So he had tried to find a place to live there, had tried to get a work permit in Mexico, and was essentially denied. And as they're transiting, he's talking about, you know, encountering cartels and witnessing other migrants being murdered and tortured in front of his son, and fleeing, and barely getting away, you know, while death threats are being shouted at him, and, you know, talking about his son having nightmares for weeks because of this. And then, they get stopped by the police, and the police take all of their money, their cell phones, and because I can't get them to say these magic words of, like, yeah, they threatened me because I'm Honduran, but that's all they had to say. But they don't know that, right? Because I'm Honduran. Those would be the magic words that would put them in a protected category. They were targeted because of their nationality. Though even if the father had said because I'm Honduran, they probably still would have been sent back to Mexico, because odds are he didn't have any evidence proving that any of this happened. Doug, he did what the policy told him to do. He sent them back to Mexico. The old credible fear screenings usually took an hour or less. These MPP interviews can last four, five, six hours. When I asked these asylum officers to describe what these interviews are like for them, for the migrants in front of them, Ursula gave the most vivid picture. She told me about the very first MPP interview she did-- a family from El Salvador, two parents and two kids. She had a script she had to stick to. The family was exhausted and traumatized and totally unprepared. You're put into a cell. You're separated from your kids and your wife. You have no idea what's going on, because you thought today you were going to be interviewed about El Salvador and you were going to get to enter the United States. A couple hours later, they lead you into this freezing cold cell where they chain your hands to a table in handcuffs, and someone is sitting across from you who doesn't speak your language, and starts talking to someone in the phone who starts translating to you that you're going to talk about Mexico. You smell like shit, because you've been living in a shelter, you know, without any running water for a month and half, plus you've traveled all the way across Central America to get there, and you don't understand why someone is talking to you about Mexico. This interview goes on for an hour and a half, and the person keeps pausing it so they can talk to someone on the computer, which they say is their supervisor, and another guard leads your wife in that you haven't seen in the last 12 hours into the interview room, and you can, you know, brush her hand as she passes by. You're so happy to see her because you've been separated, and you have no idea what's going on. So, where are my children? I don't know, sir, I'm sure they'll be fine. Your wife goes through a similar interview, but she keeps being confronted about the answers she's giving because they're different from yours, and the officer can't understand why this story varies so differently between two people who experienced it. Half an hour passes before her children are brought into the room, and then the officer has to talk to a 10-year-old boy about whatever his parents said, and then confront the 10-year-old boy on inconsistencies between his story and his parents' story. And then, the wife is like, when am I going to see my husband again? And the officer's like, I have no idea, let them know if you need to use the bathroom. Ursula made the case that the family shouldn't get sent back to Mexico, and, to her shock, her supervisor agreed. In fact, she happened to walk outside the moment the family got released. They've got their backpacks on. They're holding hands. She thought, maybe this won't be so bad. But that was the last time. The very next interview, a woman told her over and over she was afraid of being raped and killed in Mexico. Ursula believed she was going back to a place where that was very possible, but because the woman couldn't name a specific person who'd assault her, Ursula had to send her back. Since then, it's essentially been no after no after no. Asylum officers told me that even when they find one of those unicorn cases where they check off all the boxes and recommend not returning to Mexico, their supervisors overrule them. Anne told me and my producer, Nadia Reiman, about one asylum seekers case where their attacker even spelled out their motive, and it still didn't fly. It was basically a situation where there was a really clear connection to the nationality. Like, the persecutor had, like, really said, like, I am harming you because of this nationality-- your nationality. And the harm was really, really severe. It was, like, definitely torture. And it was really clear that the police, like, weren't going to do a thing about it-- didn't care at all. And the supervisor rejected it. Why? Like, did they say why? They said, we can't show that if this individual went back to Mexico, the persecutor would be able to locate them. So the standard today is upside down from what it used to be under credible fear. Instead of, let's err on the side of letting people in because we don't want anyone to be tortured or die, under MPP the standard is almost impossibly high, so almost nobody gets in. The Department of Homeland Security says only about 960 people interviewed have not been sent back to Mexico. Ultimately, of a little more than 47,000 MPP cases registered as of October, with about 37,000 of those still pending, of those, only 11 people have been granted asylum or some other kind of relief, according to Syracuse University, which tracks all of this using government statistics. 11. And that's what the policy was meant to do. The administration credits MPP for a sharp drop in the numbers coming to the border. Mark Morgan, the acting head of Customs and Border Protection, calls it a game changer, and absolutely successful. It only took Doug two days and five interviews to go home after work and pull out the law books. He's a lawyer. He actually owned a beat-up copy of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the law hundreds of pages long that makes it the foundation of the US immigration system. He grabbed that off his bedroom shelf, along with a few of his other books from law school. He printed out a bunch of court cases and Supreme Court decisions with more cases pulled up on his computer screen. In the middle of all of this was his pen and white legal pad. As an attorney, he wanted to get his feelings about MPP-- how much worse it felt compared to everything else they did-- down in writing. He worked for hours, and he wrote down seven bullet points, the main ways he thought MPP was illegal. Once he saw the list laid out there on the lined white paper, Doug knew what to do. The next day, he went to tell his supervisor he wasn't going to do any more MPP interviews. His response was, I know these interviews are hard. We're all required to do them. That's why we're trying to spread it out, that it's, you know, on a rolling basis, et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, at that point, there was, like, this moment where I could have just said, you're right, I know, this sucks, and gone back. And I paused, and I told him, you don't understand. I'm not doing these interviews. And he looked at me and he's like, what do you-- you're not doing these interviews? And I was like, no. I was like, I think they're illegal. They're definitely immoral, and I'm not doing them. His boss was stunned. He didn't really seem to know what to say. Eventually, he told him he was probably going to have to write him up somehow to start disciplinary proceedings. Doug went home that night and decided to escalate. He went back to his legal pad. I essentially wrote a legal memo explaining all of the reasons that I thought it was illegal, and why I was refusing to do it. And then, on that Monday, I emailed that to all of the administration in San Francisco, and the two supervisors that were involved in the disciplinary proceedings. And then, nothing. Nothing happened. Instead of sparking some kind of rebellion, or at least forcing a confrontation, it's crickets. So he took it a step further. He sent his memo to a senator's office, then he drafted his goodbye email, attached his memo, and sent it out office-wide to all of San Francisco Asylum, about 80 people, and to a representative of the union for asylum officers across the country. And with that, Doug shut down his work computer and walked out. He quit. They make one change, and everyone at the office is like, oh, this is terrible, but we'll figure it out. And then they make another change. And they're like, oh, this is terrible, but I need my job. I'm going to do it even if I don't want to, and I'll complain about it, and I'll complain about the work, and I'll complain about the hours. At the end of the day, I'm going to do it, and the more I do it, the easier it is to do. And that is terrifying. I mean, that's how all of the awful things in the world have happened. That's how you get so many good people doing really bad things. And that's what's happening, and it's terrifying. You're, like, literally sending people back to be raped and killed. That's what this is. The three officers I spoke with are not alone. A union representing the asylum officers and USCIS employees filed a brief and a lawsuit against the administration arguing that MPP was illegal, and a ton of officers are quitting. I've heard this from a bunch of people in the asylum corps, and at Citizenship and Immigration Services, the parent agency. Several used the word, exodus. And if officers can't quit, they're calling in sick-- anything they can do to avoid MPP interviews. We tried to get some numbers from the government. They wouldn't tell us how many people had left. They did say that, by the end of the year, they hoped to have 771 asylum officers, but as of a month ago, they had something like 550, meaning they're roughly 200 people short. I tried to get an interview with the acting head of USCIS, Ken Cuccinelli, to talk about all this. He's since been named Deputy Homeland Security Secretary. He didn't give us one, but I did get one question in. It was at a press breakfast, so this audio was recorded on my phone. All right, Molly O'Toole from the Los Angeles Times. How do you answer the concerns from some of your asylum officers-- their concerns that many of these policies being handed down by the Trump administration, particularly targeting asylum, are in fact, illegal-- that they're being ordered to implement policies that are in direct contradiction with immigration laws that are passed by Congress? Well, they're not in direct contradiction, or we wouldn't be utilizing them. We have 19,000 people that work with USCIS. I don't expect any two of us to completely agree on all of this, but I do expect that the professional employees at USCIS will implement the policies in place. They're part of the-- They're part of the executive branch, he said, and so long as we're in the position of putting in place what we believe to be legal policies that haven't been found to be otherwise, we fully expect them to implement those faithfully and sincerely and vigorously. Now, we're just shy of MPP's first birthday. After a chaotic start, it's thousands returned each week, it's expanded all the way east across the US border from California to Texas' Gulf Coast. And it's not just Central Americans being pushed back. Now, it's Cubans, Venezuelans, pregnant women, LGBTQ. Asylum, at least at the southern border, has essentially ground to a halt. Here's Anne. I'll say this. Like, the administration's been successful. What do you mean? They want negative decisions. They don't want asylum seekers in this country. They don't want people to get positive decisions or determinations for asylum. They have felt that the standards for screening interviews were too low, and they wanted those standards changed and those standards raised, and they've succeeded. What do you think the administration's end goal is? No more people from shithole countries. Anne throws up in the shower almost every day. She has recurring nightmares. She says she can't focus, can't sleep. She thinks about the people she's returned to Mexico all the time. It's nearly 100. But there's one family in particular that she can't stop thinking about, a father and son. Why do you think their case sticks with you? The kid was really young. What happened to him? Did this kid get kidnapped? Did he get murdered? It's happening. It's happening a lot. What was that? And the-- what's my moral culpability in that? I interviewed that case, and my signature is on that paperwork, and that's something now that I live with. So yeah, I feel-- I feel in some ways that this administration's made me a human rights abuser. The irony of this policy is that, under our asylum law, to qualify for asylum, you have to have been harmed because you're part of a particular group, a certain class of people. And the way that the asylum officers have implemented MPP, they've created exactly that-- a huge group of people in need of protection, about 60,000 migrants forced by the US back to Mexico to be preyed upon there as they wait on their request for safety in the US. It's exactly the sort of situation that our law was supposed to prevent. One asylum officer told me, it's the first time that we've been asked to affirmatively do harm to people. You're not just saying, I don't think you're eligible. You're literally saying, I believe what you're saying. I think you're in danger. Go back to that danger. Molly O'Toole covers immigration for the Los Angeles Times. She wrote a print version of this story, also. It's at their website. Coming up, what's it sound like when the cartels get on the phone and bargain with your family for your life? We have recordings. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program, "The Out Crowd," stories about the people-- the tens of thousands of them-- who have been pushed into Mexico by the President's Remain in Mexico policy and other policies. We're talking about what happens to those people as they wait in Mexico for months. And before we get to the next act, there is another thing that the Trump administration has put in place that makes it a lot harder to get asylum here, something we haven't talked about yet, a new rule that went into effect this summer. It says, if you want asylum in the United States, you first have to apply for asylum in at least one of the countries that you passed through on your way here, and you have to get rejected by that country before we'll give you asylum here in the United States. Many asylum seekers, of course, have no idea that they're required to do this. When I was in Matamoros at that tent camp, this come up with that woman, Jenny from Honduras, the one who got worried about the cartel guy listening in on her interview, the one who'd been kidnapped. She was saying that her court date in the United States to get asylum was coming up on November 26th, and she'd been waiting since mid-August. She thought she had a good case, and was hopeful. Have you applied for asylum in Mexico? No. No. [SPEAKING SPANISH] No, no, not here, because it's too dangerous here. My co-worker Aviva and I looked at each other, like, does she know about the new rule? So we asked, and she did know that she was supposed to apply for asylum in Mexico or in Guatemala, which she'd passed through, but she wasn't going to do it, she said. She didn't want to live there. Are you worried that that'll keep you from getting asylum in the United States? Yeah, I think so, because from what I've heard, we needed to have asked for asylum in the neighboring countries. At that point, we all just kind of look down at the ground and avoid eye contact. Nobody knows what to say. It sounds so bad for her. In fact, for everybody in the camp, all 2,500 of them who are waiting for months for the court dates hoping for asylum, it's easy to imagine that this one rule would kill all their applications. Jenny's attitude was, I'm just going to cross my fingers and hope for the best, because I don't want to go back home. Things seem too dangerous there, and too dangerous in Mexico, too. Lots of people feel that way. And the danger in Mexico is the subject of act two, which we have arrived at now. Act two, "Take the Long Way Home." If you had to pick which border city in Mexico is the most dangerous, Nuevo Laredo, right across the border from Laredo, Texas, would be a good contender. The State Department classifies it as level four threat. That is the same threat level as Iraq and Syria. And a lot of the danger there is kidnapping. Kidnapping is so prevalent there that one of our producers met men in a migrant shelter who were terrified to go outside. A young Cuban guy told her, just putting one foot outside the shelter makes him worried. A trip of just two minutes, he's looking all around, and he's scared. We're interested in these kidnappings because they're so common. Reporter Emily Green went to Nuevo Laredo in August, and she has this story about one kidnapping and what happened to one family, including recordings and details you really never get to hear. This family ended up in Nuevo Laredo because of MPP. Here's Emily. This guy who got kidnapped, I met him by chance, actually, before he got kidnapped, and he told me how scared he was that he would get kidnapped. I was on a bridge in Nuevo Laredo that connects Mexico to the US. Every day around 1:00 PM that month, the US was sending back migrants from the US side to Mexico under MPP. That day, there were a hundred of them. They were easy to spot. They all carried clear plastic bags with a couple of documents in them, and none of them had shoelaces. US Immigration takes shoelaces from anyone they detain. Most of them were men, many of them with their heads down, and one pair stands out to me-- a father and son in matching polo shirts, both of them sweating in the heat. They're chubby, soft faces, dad has his arm around son. They seem like they'll talk to me. The man, I'll call him David, quickly tells me a story. He says he's not a criminal. He's a person who's always made a living, but he can't live in his country anymore. They're from Honduras. David was a businessman. He ran a little clothing store. The gangs there demand money. They call it a war tax. The tax kept hitting higher and higher until David's family couldn't pay it anymore. One night, the cartel broke into his house, threatened to rape his daughter, and so they fled. I've done lots of interviews with people like David, migrants in really difficult situations. This one felt especially hard. I think just seeing a father fall apart in front of his 11-year-old son. David says he wanted to ask for asylum in the US, but the agents didn't listen to him. They just gave him documents to come back to a court date in December. He can't go back to Honduras, he says. I don't have anywhere to go. I don't have anything. I don't have money, he says. They say that here, where we're being sent, a lot of people get kidnapped, and I don't know what to do. We only talked for 10 minutes. I ended up lending him my phone. He called his sister in New Jersey and explained what happened-- that he made it to the United States only to be sent back to Mexico. It was getting dark out, and I'd been told not to stay in Nuevo Laredo past dusk. I crossed back into the US to go to dinner, probably not a mile away from where I'd last seen David, and my phone rang. It was David's sister. I'll call her Laura. She had my number because it was my phone he called her from earlier today. She was crying so hard I struggled to understand what she was saying. She tells me David and his son had been kidnapped just hours after I'd left them. She'd gotten a call from a cartel demanding ransom. Laura says of the cartel told her the ransom was $9,000 for David, and another $9,000 for his son, so $18,000 total. They put David on the phone briefly so she knew he was alive, and then the kidnappers got on. And I told them, where in the world are we going to get this money? The man on the other end told her she had to get the money. He said he'd call back tomorrow. I asked Laura to record the phone calls. And she did. When they called the next day, she put them on speaker and used a relative's phone to shoot video of it. They tell her, I need you to deposit the money as soon as possible, viejita. Viejita means, old lady. Laura is 38. She tells them again that she has no money, that she's sick from anxiety. In her conversations with me, Laura is scared, crying, but when she talked to the kidnappers, she holds it together. She asks if David and his son are OK. The kidnappers tell her they have food, that they can bathe, for now. Each call only last a few minutes. By the third day, the cartel has lowered the price to $5,000 each for David and his son. Laura works the night shift at a printing factory in New Jersey, hardly makes $20,000 in a year, plus she's a single mom. In all of these calls, the kidnappers talk super fast, I'm guessing because they have other ransom calls to make. Kidnapping is a big business, a volume business, with a whole infrastructure. Kidnapping migrants has been common in Mexico for a long time. What's different now is that the US is making it especially easy for the cartels to identify and snatch victims. They're sending asylum seekers back in big groups, all at once, at the same time each day, and they're easy to identify with their plastic bags and missing shoelaces. Homeland Security didn't respond to my request for comment on the kidnapping situation, but this week the acting head of Customs and Border Protection said the US is, quote, "sending a message to the criminal organizations to stop exploiting these migrants." In Nuevo Laredo, the most dangerous part of these asylum seekers' journey is probably the hours right after they've been sent back to Mexico. After walking across the bridge, they're transported to the Mexican Immigration Office by van. Outside the office, men in four-door trucks monitor who's coming and going. Locals call them, Los Malos, the bad guys. One migrant told me about getting chased as he walked to a shelter from there. But by far, the most dangerous place is a bus station. It's a place they go to escape Nuevo Laredo, but it's a place they end up getting caught. Kidnapping is so routine the cartels refer to it as, passing through the office. On the extortion calls, you can tell it's a well-oiled machine. It's methodical. They sound like they're negotiating the price of a car. They do this all the time. Laura turns to everyone she can think of. She goes to her local police department and to her mayor's office to ask for help. They reach out to the Office of Senator Cory Booker, but by the time they get back to her about a week later, it's too late. Laura eventually scrapes together money from her mom and sister, but just a fraction of what the cartel is asking for. She tells them, look, I've already pulled together $1,200. Tell me what we're going to do and give me time to get the rest. The man says he'll confer with his boss. In the meantime, he says, she should wire the money. Laura asks to talk to her brother and they put him on. She asks David, how are you, brother? Worried, he says. She tells him, don't worry, that she's pulled together some money. The next day, the cartel's released David and his son. I talk to David on the phone three days after his release. He's so distressed, it's hard for him to finish a sentence. Breathe, I tell him. I wanted to help him. That's not something a reporter is supposed to say, but back when they were kidnapped, their lives were in immediate danger, and I helped in small ways. I connected Laura with an NGO in Mexico City that advocates for migrants. Since David and his son were released, I've suggested safe bus options. The family, they always knew that I was a reporter doing a story on them, but they came to see me as one of the few people they could trust-- that they could rely on. Laura called me almost every day with updates. She still does. A few weeks ago, I went to meet David and his family in Monterrey in northern Mexico, where they were holed up. They were staying with an acquaintance of Laura's in exchange for grocery money and help with construction. David didn't want us interviewing him there. He feels his welcome has run out, so we do the interview at our hotel. It's David, his 11-year-old son, and his 19-year-old daughter, who's also been sent back to Mexico under MPP. I'm here with my producer, Lina. We figure we'll talk to David in one room while the kids watch TV in the other, but the kids sit by their dad on the bed. They won't leave one another's side. I wanted to know what happened when I left him that day on the bridge, and what he described were all these details of how the cartel's kidnapping business actually works once you're a victim on the inside-- details that were routine, and also terrifying. So here's what happened. He said, he and the other 100 people who were sent back to Mexico that day were taken from the bridge to the local immigration office for processing. After that, he says a man wearing a Mexican immigration officer uniform agreed to take him and his son to the bus station so they could go to a safer city. But as soon as they got to the station, he got a bad feeling. When I went in with my son, this guy grabbed me. He was a tall guy, strong, full of tattoos. So he grabbed me and he said, I want to talk to you. And I said, I have nothing to talk to you about. And he said, you're going to get into that car, and we're going to ask you some questions. And I said, no. And he said, you can get into the car the easy way or the hard way. He says at least a dozen migrants also arrived at the bus station that night, and the cartel hustled them into different trucks. All the trucks were brand new, he says. He remembers that the one he got into was a gray Nissan, and there were four or five other migrants in there with him. He says, the immigration officer who drove him to the bus station sat in his car and watched them all being carted off. We can't confirm this, but there is a long history of law enforcement and the cartels working hand-in-hand. For example, in 2011, seven top officials at Mexico's immigration agency were fired amid allegations that the agency was involved in the kidnapping of migrants. And it squares with what his sister in New Jersey told me. She wired money to that immigration officer for David's bus ticket, and when she got the ransom call, the kidnappers told her to wire the money to that same account, the one the immigration officer used. She said something like, isn't that the immigration officer's account? And they hung up. I asked the Mexican immigration agency to respond. They told me they have no knowledge of recent complaints of immigration officers turning migrants over to the cartels. In the truck, David held onto his son. The kidnappers didn't speak. The guy just told us to keep our heads down, to stop looking at the sights. And the guy who was driving us was keeping an eye on us, and he was making sure we were not chatting. They had the windows all rolled up. The truck drove around for a while, but David suspects they were just going in circles, but they didn't actually travel very far. They pulled up to a normal-looking house with a big gate. Inside, the kidnappers used their cell phones to take pictures of David, his son, and the rest. They interrogated David about where he's from, his line of work, how he got to the US, and most importantly, what family members he has there. It was like patient intake at a health clinic, except for by a cartel. We talk about the cartels as organized crime, but I never imagined the bookkeeping. They keep records and photos of the migrants they kidnap, and also who they release. David says there were more than 20 migrants at the house. The men and women slept in separate rooms. During the day, the kidnappers hit any of the men who tried to look at the women. The room David and his son slept in had one mattress. Everyone else slept on the floor. At night, David would lay on the ground, holding his son. I would lay down with him in a corner, and I would hug my son. They couldn't see you crying, but my tears were almost, like, falling out. What hurt me the most, Emily, was that when this guy arrived, the boss, he would always tell me that my son's organs were good for selling, that he was in a good age, that he was only 11 years old. And my son once heard the guy saying that his kidneys-- that his organs-- were good for selling, and he was almost crying. And I told him, don't cry, but I was desperate. As David tells me this story, his two kids are still sitting on the bed beside him. Neither of them is looking at anything in particular. They're just sitting there blankly. David also seems devoid of emotion. He doesn't at all resemble the David from a few weeks ago, the one I talked to right after his release. Now, his affect is completely flat. On the fourth day of his kidnapping, one of the bosses woke David up and told him they'd reached a deal with his sister. And he said to me, get up with your son, fat guy, because today I'm going to release you guys because your sister already paid, made a deposit. The man told David if he talked to anyone-- police, reporters-- the cartel would come for him, take his son, and kill David. The same man who kidnapped them in the first place drove them back to the bus station and bought them each a ticket. David doesn't know what happened to the dozens of other people in the house. Most migrants who are kidnapped and released, the cartel gives them a key word. It's like a passcode that indicates the migrant has paid off the cartel so they aren't kidnapped again, but David isn't given one, maybe because he hasn't paid a high enough ransom. When we met David in Monterrey, he didn't know what he was going to do. On day one of the kidnapping, the cartel had taken David and his son's immigration paperwork, and they didn't give it back. Without that paperwork, he doesn't even know which day he's supposed to show up in court. But even if he could figure it out, he told us, he's too scared to return to Nuevo Laredo. Under MPP, he'd have to pass through the same port of entry to get to his hearing. What if we get kidnapped again? He asks. Last week, I got a phone call from David. The family they've been staying with in Monterrey wants them gone, and he's lost hope in the asylum process. He thinks they won't be listened to, that the hearing process is a lie. And in fact, he's right about how his case is likely to come out. Under this administration, it's virtually impossible to gain asylum based on gang violence. So David's decided to take his family back to Honduras, the country they tried escaping in the first place. According to Homeland Security's own statistics, thousands of other families are making the same choice. Emily Green. She also reported on David for Vice.com. One last thing before we end today's program. When we were in the tent camp in Matamoros, I learned that the way the Remain in Mexico policy works. It applies to adults. But if a kid shows up without an adult, the border agents have to let them into the United States. They don't send them back. And life in the tent camp is hard and boring, and there are kids who are like, I want to go. Send me alone. We met a dad whose 15-year-old did that. In this case, he and his son both agreed it will probably be better. The whole reason they were trying to get into the US was for his son's future, anyway. He has an aunt in Houston. He'd be put into a shelter on the other side, but hopefully he'd get to her. It's was a gamble, but a calculated one. So at 5:30 in the afternoon a couple weeks ago, his father walked his teenager to the border station, gave him a hug, asked God to bless him, and sent him off. He just, the only thing he said to me is, I'll see you later, dad. In the two weeks since then, his son has called his mother three times. She's back in their home country with their other children. The dad asked me not to specify what country or say their names. His son said he's in custody with other kids, and says it's way better than the tent camp. In other words, so far so good. He's doing well there, that they treat him well, that he gets everything he needs there, that he gets a place to sleep, food, clothing, and he also is getting classes. The only bad part of it, now, is that the dad's here alone. He misses his son. He thinks about him all the time, first thing in the morning, he said, and last thing at night. Darwin, that 9-year-old who's the king of the camp-- remember him? He and his mom told Aviva that they've talked about whether she should send him over alone to fend for himself. She asked him, look, as a mom it's not that she doesn't love him, but if there's no way for them to go together, she'll send him alone. But he doesn't want that. No. [SPEAKING SPANISH] No, because of the fear that I have. Honestly, you won't lose me, she says. My fear is that I'll lose my mom. The kids there don't see their moms. I've never been separated from her, he says. And she jumps in, our love is inseparable. He's sitting at her feet and hugs her legs. She puts her arm around him. So if your mom tells you you should cross into the US by yourself, what would you tell her? I tried it, she says, and he doesn't want to go. He refuses and starts to cry. And she doesn't want him to go, but given how things might play out, she's not sure what else to do. Well, our program was produced today by Nadia Reiman with help from Aviva Dekornfeld. The people who put together today's show includes Elna Baker, Emanuele Berry, Susan Burton, Ben Calhoun, Zoe Chace, Dana Chivvis, Sean Cole, Whitney Dangerfield, Damien Graef, Michelle Harris, Jessica Lussenhop, Miki Meek, Lina Misitzis, Stowe Nelson, Katherine Rae Mondo, Ben Phelan, Alissa Shipp, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, and Nancy Updike. Our managing editor is Diane Wu. Our executive editor is David Kestenbaum. Interpreters for today's show where Gabriela Muñoz, Catalina Maria Johnson, Daniel Sherr, and Mario Michelena. Our fixer in Matamoros was journalist Vero Cardenas. The voices of the asylum officers in the first story of the show were performed by Maggie Siff and Betty Gilpin. By the way, you can see Maggie Siff on Billions and Betty Gilpin on the Netflix show Glow. Special thanks today to Harrison Nesbit and Amy Kaufman, Kimbrell Kelly, Reynaldo Leanos Jr., Kennji Kizuka, Christopher Turpin, William Dobson, Didrik Schanche, Russell Dion. Lewis, Clay Boggs, Maureen Meyer, Nick Miriello, and Woodson Martin. Our website, ThisAmericanLife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, he recently cooked dinner for some friends who hate onions and anything in the onion family. And they wanted to keep the leak to a minimum. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
Some people, they read those old stories from 3,000 years ago, The Iliad and The Odyssey. They read them in school, and it just gets to them. One of the producers here at our show, Emanuele, was like that. I loved the heroes, Hector. I thought Agamemnon was such a diva. I loved The Aeneid. We had to translate it in my Latin class. And in addition to translating passages, I decided to make, like, a 9x3 foot mural out of magazine paper depicting Aeneas' journey into hell. Wait, when you say magazine paper, you mean you're cutting letters out of a magazine, like a serial killer? I mean, I was-- no, I mean, I was meticulously ripping teeny pieces of different colors of magazine paper and making, like, a mosaic basically. Oh, I see. And I remember that J.Lo was on the mural for some reason, because she was wearing, like, a white dress that kind of looked Grecian, so. It was like a toga-y dress. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So she got to be Dido in hell. When a teacher assigned a 20-page research paper on any subject in the world, like they could do anything at all, it was obvious to Emanuele what to do-- the story of Troy, the place where the Trojan War happened, the walled city that they pulled the Trojan horse into. And in doing research for this project, I found out about this guy named Heinrich Schliemann. Heinrich Schliemann, a man who also read those old stories and got obsessed. He's born in Germany in the 1800s. He's like a business man, a merchant in Russia. And then he moved to California during the Gold Rush and opened a bank. It's said that he would carry around, like, copies of Homer. And he taught himself ancient Greek. Like in two years, he taught himself ancient Greek, which is insane to me, just so he could read the books in the language of origin. Anyway, but basically, he amasses this huge fortune. And once he has this fortune, he decides that he's going to find Troy. At the time, people weren't sure if it was a real place or just, like, a story, like Atlantis. And I know this is kind of a dumb question, but in that period, did archaeologists even exist? Was that even a job yet? It's not really a job. It's like a very new field, this whole idea of digging up the past. And so there are like sort of hobbyists dabbling in it. But these hobbyists by the 1870s have figured out from various geographic clues that Homer gives in the text about Troy's proximity to the Dardanelles and to Mount Ida. They figured out where a likely location for the city might be. It was in the place that we now call Turkey. And at that spot was kind of a big mound of dirt. And Schliemann gets going. So he starts to dig. He hires dozens and dozens of workers. And when he's digging, he starts to find basically like these layers of cities that are sort of built on top of each other. So there's bits of pottery and foundations of buildings. When a city burned to the ground, they would just build another city right on top of it. Right. But none of them are what he's looking for. What he is looking for is he wants to find basically gold, silver, and bronze. That's the thing he thinks is going to be the signifier that this is Troy. Because he's thinking of this treasure rich city that Homer describes in The Iliad. And he's also thinking that, well, it's got to be further down. It has to be at the bottom, right? Troy is going to be at the bottom of this pile. And so he keeps digging. And he keeps finding more and more layers with cities. Yes. And then he gets to the bottom of these piles of cities. And that's where he finds this treasure. He finds exactly what he's looking for. He finds this gold. He finds the silver. He finds bronze. He calls it Priam's treasure, Priam being the king of Troy in The Iliad. He says-- But there's nothing on it that says, like, Priam's-- He didn't write his name. You've reached Priam's bank or something. No, OK. No. No, nothing like that. He doesn't have hard proof that it's Troy. He doesn't find writing, which would have really helped. Can I ask one question? Yeah. Did he find a huge wooden horse? 'Cause that would have nailed it. No huge wooden horse. Wouldn't have survived. Hm. OK. I'm sorry. Fine. Today's show is about the inadvertent things that happen when you start digging up the past. And this is the point where Schliemann's story gets more complicated. Schliemann announces to the world that he's found the city that Homer was writing about. He's found Troy. He becomes internationally famous. But the truth of the situation is, is that the Troy at the bottom of the pile, with all this treasure and all this gold, that actually was not Troy. It was not Homer's Troy, at least. Like, that's from thousands of years before Troy would have even happened. The Troy that he was looking for was actually one of the cities that he had just dug through and destroyed in the process of digging through it. So in other words, he's just digging down. He reaches Troy. He's like, no, no, this isn't it-- throws it on the side as, like, debris. Yeah. That's garbage. Yeah. And basically, he destroyed a big chunk of the ancient city in trying to find the city. The Troy he was looking for archaeologists understand now was just three layers down, and he dug nine layers down. So what this means is that for any archaeologist today who's trying to figure out anything that's going on at Troy, he kind of screwed them over. I called one of these guys. His name is Brian Rose, and he was the co-director of excavations at Troy for 25 years. He's not a fan of Schliemann. So he didn't really know what he was doing. So there's a lot of information that we've lost on account of his speed and digging. When I look through his notebooks, he'll say something like, "Byzantine building and debris found today, dismantled." Now that doesn't tell me if it's early, middle, late Byzantine, what the building looked like. Was it many rooms? Was it only one room? What did he find there? Or was it just debris that was in his way? Debris that was in his way that Schliemann would just dig up and throw in a pile on the side. Yeah, Schliemann excavated extensively, and he had to put the earth that he removed somewhere. Schliemann dumped all the earth from his trenches in the areas where I want to dig. And part of the reason that he wants to dig in that area is because there might be writing there. And so Schliemann has now made that very hard. Yeah, because there's all this dirt, all these uprooted ruins that are just on top of that area. And then it would take years and, Brian says, technology that doesn't even exist now to dig it up without doing more damage. So you have 20 meters of dump through which you would have to go in order to get to a deposit that might have writing of Late Bronze Age date. That's something I'd love to be able to do. But for now, it's just too monumental an undertaking to do it. One of the things that has always kind of bugged me about this story is that before Schliemann died, they actually figured out that he was wrong. Oh, they did? Yeah, but he's still remembered to this day for discovering Troy. And one of the things I remember from that paper I wrote was that I really ended up mad at him. Like-- [LAUGHS] I was mad at him for, like-- Like you were going to go visit Troy, and he messed it up for you. Basically, kind of. But when I talked with Brian about it, he's kind of zen about it. I would certainly express frustration with Schliemann in the same way that an archaeologist digging at Troy in 100 years would express frustration with me. Oh, I like his attitude. Yeah, I mean, I think when you're an archaeologist, you kind of have to take the long view. You're aware that people are going to come after you, and they're going to know more than you. So you're very aware of your own limitations. And that's actually our show today. Today on our program, we have all kinds of people going and digging up stuff from the past, full of hope, but definitely with their own limitations. And the search changes things. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Act One, Family Plot. We move now from the losers of the Trojan War to the winners-- or anyway, the descendants of the winners, the people of Greece. Here's something you probably didn't know about Greece. They don't have enough cemetery space. And cremation is not very popular there. So what they do is, when you die, you're buried in the ground. And then three or four years later, your family gets together and digs up your bones. Get you out of the ground, give the space to somebody else. One of the producers of our show, Lina Misitzis, her parents were both born in Greece. And she traveled there in September with them to do this for the very first time. We're in a rental car driving from Athens to a small village in the south called Stoupa. It's about four hours away. My dad's driving. I'm in the front seat. Mom's in the back. We're on our way to Stoupa to exhume my grandmother, my father's mom. My dad's talking about the cost of gas, how much money it'll cost to keep this car full of gas, also other things about gas. There's no gas station here. I recognize this conversation not for its content, but for its design. My dad, an extraordinarily kind and thoughtful person, he fills so much space with small talk. I hate small talk. Today, September 19th, is my mom's 66th birthday. We weren't supposed to exhume my grandmother on my mom's birthday. It was supposed to happen tomorrow. But because of forecasted rain, we're doing it today. What a gift for my birthday. This will not be the last time she brings up her birthday. My grandmother spent the last third of her life dying. Her disorder was never successfully diagnosed. It kind of looked like Parkinson's. It kind of looked like Huntington's. But it was neither of those things. A caretaker, a distant cousin named Crisoula, would come and change her diapers twice a day, feed her baby food. Growing up, I was kind of afraid of my grandma. She'd lost her ability to speak, and she just kind of looked at me, and moaned, and cried. It's called chorea. When you have it, you cannot control your movements. You have jerking, uncontrollable movements of your hands and face. And chorea is actually a Greek word, right? Chorea, yeah. Chorea. That means I'm dancing. It means I'm dancing, my mom says. She's always answering questions for my dad. I think he prefers it that way. Mommy remembers better than I do, and I have to pay the toll now. Pay the toll. My mom didn't go with my dad to his mother's funeral. He went alone. I figured he'd be doing the second funeral, this reverse funeral, alone, too. And while I don't know what this process looks like at all, the thought of my dad exhuming his mother's body by himself, it just sounded sad. And so a few months ago, I decided I wanted to go with him. To be there for him. In my fantasy of it I'd be by his side, holding his hand, patient, curious even. Which isn't how it usually goes between us. My dad doesn't talk about his feelings too often. Half the time, I think he doesn't even know what they are. But then when I'm around him, I get impatient. I guess this moment just seems really big, like a chance for us to be different with each other. But then when my mom found out that I was going, she decided that she would come, too. She doesn't want to pass up a chance to see me. She agrees to sit in the backseat while I try talking to my dad about what we're on our way to go do. In general, I'm not very comfortable in cemeteries. Why not? I don't know. I never was. Right, most people are uncomfortable in cemeteries. But for some reason, I just can't let it go. Well, there must be a reason. I don't believe so, no. You expect me to say more now. I don't know what to say. No, you're fine. You're fine. You don't have to say anything. I'm driving, too. You are driving. This back and forth is so typical, it's practically scripted. He tries to play along to engage. But I never think it's enough. Do you know when your mom was born? I believe 1928. Actually, she was born in 1925. Was she a smoker? No, she never smoked. Was she a drinker? I don't think she ever had any alcohol. What did she do for fun? Cross stitch. Cross stitch. Did she have friends? Very few. Do you think she was depressed? Um-- I guess so. I never thought in these terms at the time, but yeah, I guess now you mention it, I think so. Probably she was. Was she a good mom? I don't know. I guess. Uh-oh. What's wrong? The check engine light comes on in the rental. Check engine oil. It derails the rest of the car ride, each conversation circling back to the potentially faulty engine. We pull up to his family's village at 2:00. The woman who took care of my grandmother, Crisoula, is waiting for us in her yard. I haven't seen her in five or six years. She brings us cool water, keeps remarking on how absolutely different I look. I wouldn't recognize you anywhere, she says. Then a different family friend, Sotiroula, walks into the yard and joins us. You look exactly the same, she tells me. You haven't aged at all. So much of what there is to talk about is how old each of us is, what age looks like on us, and how we all wear it. An hour later, we walk to the graveyard. It's me, my mom, my dad, Crisoula, and Sotiroula. Crisoula is carrying recycled plastic water bottles full of vinegar. She's also carrying small white brushes, the kinds you used to scrub dirty pots and pans. The village we're in looks like a caricature of a Mediterranean village. The roads aren't paved. The homes are all stone. You can see the Mediterranean Sea and the Taygetos Mountains from anywhere. The graveyard is connected to the church, which is connected to the school. Everything is dusty. The graves are all white. The buildings are all white. The grave digger is already at my grandmother's grave. He's wearing blue overalls and a yellow T-shirt. He has on a Yankees cap. His name is Arturo. Baseball isn't really a thing in this country. I can't imagine where he got the hat. My mom walks to the opposite end of the cemetery, where she sits down on a stranger's grave beneath some shade. She doesn't want to see my grandmother's body, she says. It's a small cemetery, just a few dozen graves. And they're all so loved, which makes sense. No one is buried for long here, so as long as the body's in the ground, people come to visit. Each plot has photos on it, bottles of beer, and liquor, potted plants, candles, many of them lit. My dad hobbles around, inspecting the other graves to see who else has died since the last time he was here. Whenever he recognizes a name, he confirms with Crisoula that yes, the person whose name is written on the gravestone is, in fact, dead. One of the graves is occupied by the priest who blessed my grandmother's body just a few years ago at her funeral. "But I just saw him," my dad says, "at my mother's funeral. He's dead?" All week, people have been saying to us, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], which I understand as, "We hope she's melted." Such a strange way to say, I hope your grandmother's flesh and organs have finished decomposing. My taxi driver who picked me up from the airport in Athens told me that at his aunt's exhumation, he'd had to wash the residual skin and blood off of her bones, which is a thought so unnerving, I don't think I fully fathomed it. Still, I stand beside the grave digger, defiant, as though to say, even if none of you are going to look, I'm going to look. For more than an hour, there's nothing to look at. Arturo's just shoveling out rocks and dirt, placing it all in a pile at the foot of the grave. And I stand there, sweating, waiting for whatever is going to happen. My mom keeps sitting on her shady grave. My dad keeps reading the names off of headstones, though he's running out of names he recognizes. Growing up, this village, like the rest of Greece, was homogeneous. Everyone was related to everyone. But now, there are Balkan migrants living here, retired Germans and Brits, even some expats from the US. In Greece, they're called [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], strangers. They're listing off all the foreigners in here. Eventually he walks over to where I'm standing, I think to check in on me. Do you want me to say something out loud? No, I want you to just be normal. How do you feel? Kind of numb. Yeah. Kind of numb. You know what I'm saying? I'm not saying the-- He interrupts himself to say, "Look, there's water to drink." Then he walks away to the corner of the cemetery, where Crisoula has set up a makeshift water station. Arturo's dug 4 or 5 feet down and switches his shovel out for what looks more like an ice pick. "We're getting close to the body now," he says. Dad walks over to stand with me. So does Crisoula. My mom comes over, too, which at first, I find shocking, but it's not really. She doesn't want to feel left out. "Slowly," Crisoula says. That is the coffin. That's the flowers that they put on the coffin, right? Yeah. Crisoula is hovered over Arturo, holding out a giant trash bag. She's collecting any pieces of coffin that haven't disintegrated in the past few years. For a moment, everyone is silent. "It's time," Arturo says. "Be very careful. The body is ready." Arturo pulls my grandmother's head out of the ground and hands it to Crisoula. There's still some hair on it, but no skin. She plucks the hair off the skull, which isn't white like the fake skeletons I remember from science class. It's dark brown, closer to black. My grandmother's eye sockets are filled with dirt. Crisoula rubs her skull clean with a scrubby brush. She holds it up to us to look at, pointing out my grandmother's gold teeth, still intact. It's like she's saying, see? It's really her. Arturo keeps pulling out pieces of coffin and pieces of my grandmother. They're not connected to anything anymore. Most of these bones have come loose. He pulls out some ribs, a shoulder bone, what I think is a femur, but my mom says is a clavicle. Crisoula collects each bone one by one and lays them out in the sun. "This was her left shoulder," she tells us. "See? You can still see the metal pin in her bone from when she got her surgery." For the next 20 or so minutes, she reconstructs as much of the body as Arturo can salvage. It's all so bizarrely DIY. Crisoula climbs into the grave with Arturo mid-dig to help pull out bones. Neither of them is wearing gloves. "In Greece," Crisoula explains to me, "we bury the dead with their heads pointing west because that's where the sun sets. And so that's where life ends." And this process of exhuming, it's conducted from the head down. The head comes out first, and Arturo works his way down the body. The last thing that comes out are my grandmother's feet. Both of my grandmother's socks, thick wool, are intact. This fabric doesn't disintegrate. She was buried in them on purpose, so that they'd know when they'd made it to the end. Those are her socks? Yes. Do you mind saying it in English? She's emptying the sock so all the little bones from the feet can come out. See all the bones? The heel of the toes, and the-- oh, my goodness. We stand there for a moment, watching Crisoula wipe down each bone. It's jarring how practical this whole process is, how unceremonious it feels to bury your loved ones in socks so that you'll know when you've finished un-burying their remains. You OK? I'm sitting down. Yeah. I'm OK. This is going to be with me for a while now, but. This is not scary. "This is going to be with me for a while," my dad says, right as my mom says, "This is not scary." I feel annoyed with my mom for stepping on his answer, on what he might have said, just so she can say that she's fine, that she's not scared. But then when my dad does have the space to tell me what he's feeling, he can't seem to catch his breath. The skull, it's-- The skull-- --all her bones. --it's all her bones. When it first came out, it looked like a coconut because there was still hair on it. Yeah, it has hair on it. Yes. All right. What's wrong? I'm OK. "I'm OK," he's saying. Crisoula tells us that it's over. We can go. While we're away, she'll keep scrubbing the bones, first with water, then with vinegar. She'll place them in a small box that'll go in a shed, which holds the remains of all the other exhumed residents of this graveyard, many of them people my grandmother grew up knowing, and some [NON-ENGLISH], some foreigners. I asked to see the shed, which really is just a shed, like where a friend's dad might keep his lawnmower, except for this one's got stacks and stacks of small boxes in it. Some are labeled. Many aren't. It doesn't seem like anyone visits this place. Later, we'll come back to the cemetery to watch a priest, one that's alive, bless my grandmother's bones. One last goodbye. But for now, we three-- me, my mom, and my dad-- we pile back into the rental to drive to a neighboring village where we're staying for the next few days. And suddenly, my dad starts to talk about his feelings. And I just-- it was-- that was my mom. That was what? That was my mom at some point. It's-- I was expecting it to be-- I don't know. I feel peaceful. I was expecting it to-- I did not know what to expect. I spent a lot of hours up at nights. I'm just muddled, you know? No, it's-- no, I hear what you're saying. I thought it was going to be upsetting, and it really wasn't for me. And that was it. It was over. Not as traumatic as we thought it would be. Here is a sign for it. And here, in this car, all my family has is what we've always had. I start fussing over my dad's driving. Well, when that sign that said-- Yeah. You'll go left. We'll need to look for it. And then I start feeling carsick. Every bad habit I have with my parents begins to bubble up. And instead of doing the thing that I came here to do, instead of engaging with my dad, I become a kid again, complaining about an upset stomach. I'm going to throw up. I can't. And it says here, Dad. Yeah, but I don't have a good-- I want you to not drive if we don't know-- I'm sorry. My stomach feels like [BLEEP]. What is this? Somebody's seat belt is not on, or something? Is the door open? Daddy, can we make a decision about what we're doing? Listening back to this car ride, what sticks out to me most is the moment my dad tries doing the exact thing I came to Greece hoping for. He tries talking about his feelings. And he probably would have if I hadn't so quickly stopped listening. Yes, Baba, but you have the phone. But you have the phone, and you can talk to her and she can say. I think you should stop driving. A couple days later, my last night in Greece with my parents, we decide to go out for dinner. And when we get to the restaurant, my mom pulls me aside to ask if I'm going to be good tonight, if I'm going to be present. "I'm always present," I lie. She says no. The only time I was present on this trip was at the cemetery. Otherwise, I'm the same as ever. We're all the same as ever. The only thing that's different, really, is we have one less day. Lina Misitzis is a producer on our show. Act Two, Next of Kindle. So our show today is about people unburying the past. And when people leave us, they don't just leave behind physical objects. Bim Adewunmi talked to a man about a digital excavation. Gloria Wayne was a voracious reader. Her son, Dave, has vivid memories of when he was six or seven, going with her to the library in the whirl, in Northwest England. They made a trip to Haswell Library every couple of weeks, returning and replenishing her stack of borrowed Mills and Boon novels. It was a habit Gloria maintained all through her long life. And so for Christmas, back in 2011, her sons got her a gift to aid in that habit-- a Kindle. Gloria was suspicious of online security in general, so they paid her Kindle with Dave's existing account and added an unlimited subscription so she could read whatever she wanted whenever she wanted to read it. Earlier this year, Gloria died. She was 83 years old. I spoke to Dave on the phone about his mom, and we talked about the weird life admin that suddenly becomes super important after such a loss. One of the first things that occurred to me, even though it may be the most insignificant, was that my mum hated wasting money. She would absolutely go mad if she thought that the next month's subscription was to come out, and she wasn't around to use it. So only hours after she'd gone and still in a daze, Dave went to do the responsible thing, the thing he knew his mom would approve of-- cancel the Kindle subscription. And then I thought, well, just for old time's sake, let's have a look at what was there. So I clicked on to Library, and there before me I found 3,046 books. In the time period between Christmas 2011 when we bought the Kindle to her said passing on April 16th, she had purchased over 3,000 books, which was quite remarkable, really. Dave had had an idea of his mom's literary interests. Her bookshelves contained a good amount of romance novels of the sort he remembered from childhood. He also used to get email notifications every so often. Remember, his account was linked to her Kindle all these years, but he didn't really pay attention to what his mother was buying. Romance novels, he'd kind of expected. But-- But what there was, was a number of-- I'm trying to put diplomatically really-- should we say, erotica. It was just erotica. And it wasn't just the vanilla stuff. It was a real pick and mix of sexual expression. If you're listening with kids right now, don't worry. This is not in any way X rated. I mean, not wanting to throw a whole cornucopia of acronyms at you, but there were MFM, MFF, FFM, triple MF, all kinds of different combinations of relationships and sexual encounters, which was quite staggering, to be honest. You know, there was no one aspect. There was no one peccadillo that she got drawn to. It was a whole variety. Dave tweeted about both his mother's passing and his inadvertent inheritance of a library of what he described tongue in cheek as magnificently epic sleaze. He concluded it with a tribute of sorts. "Mother," he wrote, "I raise a glass." Discovering the library made Dave curious. He and his mother shared similar tastes in music and film. Maybe there would be unlikely common ground here, too. He decided to make a project of his discovery. He would delve into his mother's virtual stack of saucy literature-- his words-- and maybe find one more thing they had in common. It wasn't especially taxing. You know, it was only a fairly short kind of thing. It was a 90-minute endeavor. So for 100 days on the run, I read a book each day. Do you have a favorite title? Was there any title that stuck out to you as just either abominably bad or actually fantastically good? Probably a bit of both, to be honest. And that's, without doubt, Spanked by the Italian Mob. Superb. Because it does what it says on the page. It is literally about a girl who wants to be spanked by the Italian mob. And that's the beginning, middle, and the end. I mean, the whole series, to be honest, of Spanked by books. There's about six or seven-- Wow. --with this poor girl being spanked by a variety of men. I checked out the series, by the way. It's by Alexis Starr. The actual title Dave is thinking about is Spanked by the Irish Mob. Each book features a heroine looking for a spanking and getting it from the Yakuza, a Navy SEAL, an unaffiliated mob boss, and others. As Dave read more books, he found himself enjoying some of them enough that he started to have a few favorites. Opposing Briefs was an MM romance that was quite fascinating. That's great. I quite liked the playful nature of the title. That was written by Ian Finn. I did like that a great deal. And a one called-- one written by Anyah Omah, called Sexsomnia, Sleepless in Manhattan. And that was very good indeed as well, which was a lighter tone and slightly less of an explicit nature to it. Now that the 100 book challenge is over, Dave has kept his mom's subscription going, and he's still reading her books. They're a reminder that his mom was more than just his mom. She was a real whole person with her own quiet obsessions. In reading these books, do you feel is it helping? Is it, in any way, a balm for you? Yeah, because it keeps her spirit present. You find yourself almost having a conversation, why do you read them? You read a particularly horrific and explicit line. You think, good grief, mother, what were you doing? So yeah, it does tend to extend that relationship. And while we can never reverse what happened, it does keep her memory more vivid. According to Dave, his mom was a homebody. And in her eighth decade, after a lifetime of working hard, Gloria liked to stay home, watch a bit of Murder She Wrote, and enjoy her smutty novels. Finding her library is a confirmation that his mom always did whatever the hell she wanted. And more than anything else, it just makes him admire her more. Bim Adewunmi is one of the producers of our show. Coming up, the hip bone's connected to the-- it actually is not connected to anything in this case-- like, nothing at all. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's show, Digging Up the Bones-- stories of people unearthing things from the past, trying to make sense of them. We've arrived at Act Three of our show. Act Three, The Case of the Curious Bone. David Kestenbaum has this story about a man obsessed with a single bone, a bone that is inexplicably large, really just too big to make any sense out of at all. It was a fragment of a bone, so old it had turned to stone. The man trying to puzzle it out was a naturalist and professor in England named Robert Plot. He writes about it in this beautiful meticulous book, The Natural History of Oxfordshire, published in 1677. "The curious bone," he writes, "was," quote, "dug out of a quarry in the parish of Cornwall and given to me by the ingenious Sir Thomas Pennyston." He writes that it seemed to be some part of a thigh bone, except way too big. It measured 2 feet and weighed almost 20 pounds. This is the 1600s, and no one in the world had a good explanation for a bone that big. Plot writes for almost nine pages in his book about the strange bone, and he is methodical in trying to reason out what the heck it is. First, he considers the possibility that maybe it's not a bone at all, but just some natural rock formation. Which is admirable. It's so easy to jump to conclusions. But the more he studies it, it really does seem to be part of a colossal bone. He writes that it has the capita femoris inferiora and, quote, "the seat of the strong ligament that rises out of the thigh and gives safe passage to the vessels descending into the leg." And then inside the bone, there is what looks like marrow. He can see the marrow preserved inside. But what in the world was it from? Quote, "It will be hard to find an animal proportional to it," he writes. He runs through the possibilities, eliminating them one by one. Horse, oxen, too small. He considers something other people have suggested, that maybe the bone is from an elephant, perhaps brought over during the Roman invasions, back around 50 AD. He spends two pages on this possibility, but it seems unlikely to him. He's clearly read through lots of historical accounts. Quote, "Suetonius in his life, where he is very particular concerning this expedition into Britain, mentions no such matter. There was one elephant, 'tis true," he writes, "sent as a present to King Henry the Third from the King of France in the year 1255, and perhaps two or three other elephants brought to England for show since then. But," quote, "whether it be likely any of these should be buried at Cornwall, let the reader judge. Also, if the bone is from an elephant," he writes, "where are the tusks?" Finally, as he's writing it, he explains that an actual live elephant comes to town, which he examines and decides, no. Elephant thigh bone-- completely different shape. Definitely not elephant. And here, you can feel him starting to piece things together. He's on the edge of seeing this thing. He mentions other large bones. After the great fire in London in 1666, under the wreckage of St. Mary Will Church, quote, "there was found a thigh bone, now to be seen at the King's Head Tavern in Greenwich in Kent, much bigger and longer than ours." And also, people had been finding unusually large teeth. In fact, people had been finding unusually large bones for centuries. There's one account by a Chinese scholar from the 300s BC, but none had a satisfying explanation. It is remarkable reading Robert Plot's book to think how close he was to such a stunning fact about life on this planet. But you can know a lot and still not see. Sometimes you don't even know what you can't see. You just can't imagine the possibility of it, even when you were holding the thing in your hand. By the end of the section of the book, Plot has reasoned out the one remaining possibility, the only thing that makes any sense to him. The bones, they must have come from giants-- people just a little bigger. Which, I have to say, is way more sensible than the truth. David Kestenbaum is the executive editor of our program. Robert Plot died in 1696. People didn't figure out the whole dinosaur thing for another 100 years. The bone Plot puzzled over was lost a long time ago, but from the drawings, scientists think that it was a Megalosaurus that lived in Cornwall some 170 million years before him, and yes, a thigh bone. Act Four, Revision Quest. So we end our show today with somebody who dug up bones from her past, and then, years later, went back to the same site to dig them up again. Susan Burton explains. Jill's husband died a few years ago. They met in 1970 when Jill was 16 and he was 47. And in spite of the age difference, they were passionate about each other from the start. It was a happy marriage. That's one way to tell the story. Here's another. Jill's husband died a few years ago. They met in 1970 when Jill was 16 and he was 47. She was a student, and one evening after class, he kissed her. They started sleeping together. You might call him a predator or say he abused his power, but everything turned out OK. It was a happy marriage. Jill's a writer. Her full name is Jill Ciment. And years ago, when she was in her 40s, she published a memoir that told the story the first way. Now she's writing that story again and considering it from the second angle. Not to correct the record-- she's trying to understand why she wrote her story the way she did. The first memoir is called Half a Life. The one she's writing now is called The Other Half. When I wrote Half a Life originally, I wrote this thing from the depths of my heart. I was supposedly telling the truth, which I really deeply believed I was. But with the beginning of the Me Too movement, it was a kind of catalyst that made me think, what if I told my story again from this vantage point, from the vantage point of me being 66 and the vantage point of the world having completely changed. Jill knew exactly where she wanted to start-- by writing down the story of their first kiss. What she wrote about it when she was in her 40s is not how she remembers it today. Here's what she remembers today. The night of that kiss, Jill and Arnold, her teacher, were in an art studio. It was an evening class. Most of the other students were retirees. The class had ended, and Jill was alone with Arnold. And for the past six months, he'd been doing things like saying, I wish you were older, and not making sexual advances, but certainly making me aware he was attracted to me. And I was completely attracted to him, and all I did was fantasize about him. And so we went into his studio. Supposedly, he was going to give me the names of people-- I was about to drop out of high school and move to New York to be an artist. And he was going to give me the names of other artists who would become maybe mentors or hire me as an assistant. And as we got into the room, I remember he took my wrist and pulled me towards him, and we kissed. And I look back, and I realized I hadn't written it that way, OK? I had written it as if I had been the sexual aggressor. Could you go ahead and read how you described the scene in Half a Life? Absolutely. "On the last night of art class, I dawdled in the hall until the other students were finished. As soon as they were gone, I slipped back into the classroom and shut the door behind me. Arnold was leaning against a window frame, arms folded, eyes shut, yawning. This time I approached him without a hint of coyness, without the spark of a blush. I unbuttoned the top three buttons of my peasant blouse, crossed the ink splattered floor, and kissed him." Why did you write it that way in 1996? I don't know. I think I viewed myself as-- and I always have. I viewed myself as someone who was always in charge. I never felt powerless. And so maybe a way of illustrating that was to make me the sexual aggressor, at least as far as the kiss went. But I don't honestly know. I mean, that's why I'm writing this whole book, to try to figure out why it seemed the truth then. I would never have done it purposely, OK? It did seem the truth when I wrote it in 1996. Why it seemed the truth there is what interests me. One reason it seemed like the truth was that later, when Jill and Arnold slept together for the first time, she was the one who seduced him. She's certain of that. They both were. But that first kiss-- When I look back on it, he did instigate this. And I don't know if I would have had the nerve at 16 and then later 17 to have acted upon all the things that I acted upon without him being the initial instigator. In making yourself the instigator, were you protecting him? I don't think so. I think that I was trying to tell the truth of my own desire. I saw him. I wanted him. And I went after him. And I don't think I knew how to reconcile that with the idea that he kissed me first. In her 40s, Jill wanted to write a love story about love across a great age span-- this kind of story. It's almost always told from a man's point of view. Jill wanted to write it from the perspective of the young woman and also not make her the victim. And even though Jill still emphatically does not see herself as a victim, some of the choices she made in writing her first memoir seem startling to her now, like her account of a letter Arnold sent her after they slept together. "Dear Jill, are you ever coming back to class?" When she didn't respond, he called her. In the first memoir, Jill plays the anecdote for laughs. The first time it's treated like, of course it's funny. What 47-year-old man is going to write a little girl at her house when her mother can open the mail? But when I rewrote it this time, what I saw was I saw a 47-year-old man having made love to a 17-year-old girl, after which he doesn't hear from her for a month. He writes a letter to her house, soliciting her again in this sort of fake love letter. And when he doesn't hear back from that little girl again, he calls her. Now, in today's world, we would see that as a predator going after an underage girl. And when I think about that, I'm totally shocked. I'm shocked that I didn't see that the first time. But the end of a story really, really makes you change the beginning. And so I think that that's part of it. I think that part of the reason that I wrote it this way is because I was having a wonderful marriage. And part of the reason I wrote it this way was because in 1970, when all this stuff was happening, it wasn't as appalling for an older man to do this. Back in 1970, nobody ever said to Jill that they saw anything appalling in Arnold's behavior, at least not directly. Here's the thing. I mean, I remember going to a party one time when we were first going out, where the hostess served everyone a martini and me a glass of milk. So I'm sure people noticed, OK? When Jill looked back at the first book, she was struck by the part she left out-- parts of scenes, the messier, more revealing parts, but other omissions, too, ones that are more profound, like about her father, who was the exact same age as Arnold. Most of the first book is actually about Jill's father. She only meets Arnold about 2/3 of the way through. By that point, her father had moved out. She rarely saw him. He was troubled, and explosive, and incapable of emotional connection, essentially absent from her life. I found her writing about him wrenching, but weirdly incomplete. It was just so clear that your art teacher was a substitute for your father in so many ways. And you don't write explicitly about this in Half a Life. And I wonder if you could talk about why. I can't believe I didn't do it. I mean, I'm doing it now in this version. At 45, it seemed obvious. And the obvious in those days, I believed, made things less literary. God knows why, OK? But that's what I believed. And I just don't think it's true anymore. And I think the idea that a fatherless girl goes out and finds then a father and then uses that man to heal themself of having never been loved by an older man, I mean maybe I didn't know how to handle it at that age. Maybe it was impossible to do while both my father and my husband were alive. What has reexamining your story like this done to your picture of your husband, or your memories of him, or your perception of your marriage? Well, I mean, it changes the picture because I can't now look at him without realizing the lines that he crossed. And at the same time, I'm really glad that we crossed those lines. I really question a lot of these inferences that it is always wrong. It wasn't wrong for me. And it will never change my feelings about it being an amazing marriage. What things do you say in the new book that might have been hard for him to read? Oh my god, the whole thing. I mean, I would never have written this book if he was alive. I mean, it would be so hurtful. Like in Half a Life, he seems like he has always been a successful older man. And to describe him as somebody who had a midlife crisis and was struggling to find himself again, I think would have been really painful for him to read. Arnold was a painter. He was struggling as an artist when Jill met him. But he flourished in the years that followed. It's interesting to hear you say that the thing Arnold would be hurt by is the depiction of him as a struggling middle-aged man, and not the questions about his role as possible predator or aggressor. I don't think he was-- I mean, I don't think he ever thought of me-- but maybe he did. Who knows, OK? I think that he never thought of me as someone who wasn't as strong as him. And so I think he would be-- I think he'd be shocked and surprised by these nuances in which I'm looking back at our relationship. The questions Jill's asking about what she included and what she left out, about what she realizes now that she didn't back then, those questions interest me because they're questions I'm asking myself right now, too. I'm almost exactly the same age as Jill was when she wrote Half a Life, and I have a memoir coming out in a few months. The book tells the story of my adolescence, but I assume it reveals just as much, if not more, about who I am now at 46 than who I was at 16. It's about the eating disorders that defined my teenage years, and if I'm being honest, my adulthood, too. Until recently, I'd never talked about this stuff with anyone. So in that way, the book is very exposing. But maybe what's not there is just as revealing. I know there's a lot I can't yet see, and I wanted to talk to Jill about that. I know that if I'd waited another five years, I would've understood more. And sometimes I wonder, should I have waited to tell my story until I understood it better? But I don't think I understand my story any better than I did at 45, OK? Yeah. I look back at my 45-year-old self, and I think, oh my god, she didn't have this information. I see how young I was at 45. I look at my 45-year-old self in much the same way that my 45-year-old self looked at my 16-year-old self. And it's a kind of compassionate view of who you were before you had all the information. Yeah. When you think about yourself at 45, how do you see your 45-year-old self now differently than she saw herself? At that point, I was still thinking about the ascent of life. I was still moving in this forward motion. I was maybe at the height of my powers. And when I look back at that, I realized how delusional that is. What happens is you're writing at 45 from all the information experience that you've had. What I didn't have was the experience of taking my husband all the way to death. In her new book, Jill's not just exploring the beginning of her relationship. She's writing about the end of it, too. It's the second part of sleeping with your professor. It's the part where suddenly you go from being the young lover to the caretaker. And that's an entirely different transition. Taking someone to death, that's the most extraordinary experience there is. And so in some ways, who kissed whom first seems really small in the length of this journey. Jill always thought that the more interesting way to write memoir would be to return again and again to a monumental moment in a life, rather than telling the story in order all the way through. Revisiting a story doesn't necessarily make it any better, she says. But it does make it different. Even when we write about the past, we're always telling a story about the present, whether we mean to or not. Susan Burton is one of the producers of our show. Jill Ciment's latest book is a novel called The Body in Question. Our program was produced today by Emanuele Berry and Neil Drumming. The people who put our show together today include Bim Adewunmi, Elna Baker, Susan Burton, Ben Calhoun, Dana Chivvis, Sean Cole, Damien Graves, Michelle Harris, Seth Lind, Jessica Lussenhop, Lina Misitzis, Katherine Raimondo, Nadia Reiman, Robyn Semien, Christopher Svetala, and Matt Tierney. Our managing editor is Diane Wu. Our executive editor is David Kestenbaum. Special thanks today to Theresa and Ryan Hynes. Our website, thisamericanlife.org, where you can stream our archive of over 680 episodes for absolutely free. And there's videos, and favorites lists, and tons of other stuff there, too. Again, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. He and I were running to an appointment this week on this 50-story skyscraper. We stopped first at the 45th story, where we thought our appointment was. We were sure it was 45. It wasn't right. Then we looked on 44, and 46, and 42, and 48. I was confused about which story. He was confused about which story. I don't think I understand my story any better than I did at 45. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
It wasn't Amanda's dream house, it was her mom's. And it wasn't one you would usually think of as a dream house. 500 people living in a 10-story building, dorm style, right in the middle of the city. We were supposed to come for a four-day visit, and it turned into a two-week visit, and then a month visit. And then we lived here. So I never really got to go back and say goodbye to my friends or anything. And I was really mad at my mother for doing that to me and all this type of stuff. And I was just really mad at everybody and didn't like it here at all. Where they moved is an experiment in communal living that, at the time, had been going on for 25 years in Chicago. Nobody owns private property, everything is shared. The TVs, the cars, everything. If you need pocket change, you go to a room called "the money office." And if they've got cash, they'll give it to you. Remember, this is 500 people. And if all this is beginning to sound like a big socialist collective in the middle of a modern American city, let me add just one more fact to make this picture complete for you. The community? It's Christian. Run by a group called Jesus People USA. All I did was sit up in my room and just stare out the window. I did not come down to eat or anything. I just sat there and stared out the window because I was so angry that I was just going to kill anybody that bothered me. And I did that for the first few days, like, the first three days. At 16, a year and a half after they first moved to this community, Amanda says that she doesn't think of herself as a Christian anymore, which, understandably, upsets her mother, who moved here partly so that Amanda would live in a Christian environment and learn Christian values. It's kind of a tense subject between them. Like if I was in church and I didn't take Communion or something, then all that day I'd ask her questions. She's like, "I just can't think right now. I can't imagine you going to hell," and all this type of stuff. So I think she's really concerned about me, but she's just going to have to live with it. In a way, this story is not so unusual. How many of our parents move somewhere, some dream house, some vision of a new life in a new place, moving the family with them, settling new suburbs, migrating because of layoffs and divorces, and just hoping that it's going to work out for the kids in the long run? Though kids, of course, are all about the short run. Amanda isn't happy at the Jesus People community, but she is the exception. Most of the teenagers living there actually seem to like it a lot. And like any good parent, Amanda's mom did consult with her about the move. Amanda even agreed to move. Though, the final decision wasn't really hers. That's one thing I really get angry with is I don't feel like I can make my own choices a lot of times. But that's what happens when you're 16 I guess. Everyone's like, well, that's just being a teenager. And I'm like, it stinks. I hate being a teenager. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life, distributed by Public Radio International. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, we choose some theme, invite a variety of writers, and documentary producers, and performers to tackle that theme. Today's show, Dream House. Stories about parents who had some utopian vision for their family's future and who built their dream houses to try to realize that future. Act One, Meema's Adventure. In that act, a family dreams of life in rural Maine, moves there, and then, well, things start to get very complicated. Act Two, Blue Sky Dream. David Beers explains the gorgeous, modern vision that drew his parents and tens of thousands of other young families to California in the '50s and '60s to work in aerospace, and what happened when they arrived. Stay with us. Act One. In 1976, Meema Spadola's parents decided to move from the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where her father was a math teacher, out of the city to build a house in Maine. It turned out to be a pivotal and redefining change in all of their lives. Meema prepared this story about her family's move. It's partly the story of her parents' dreams and partly a story of her own. I don't have to guess at my parents' dream for our family when they moved us from New York City to Maine. They wrote it all down in a book. My mother actually wrote an entire children's story, 83 pages long. My dad did the illustrations, and I picked the title, Meema's Adventures. I was six. "Chapter One of Meema's Adventures, At Home. Meema lived in New York City. Her apartment was on the 13th floor of a great, tall building on the windiest corner in all of the city. In the spring--" When she wrote this the winter before we left, my mom was getting her master's degree in education. She thought that our move raised some interesting questions about early childhood development. Like, how do you help children deal with the consequences of their parents' decisions? Mom writes in the introduction, "In thinking how best to prepare my children and, indeed, my husband and myself, I came upon the idea of creating a story that we might, when the move comes, actually reenact." OK, "Chapter Four, Coming to the Mountain. The day the green pickup truck finished its long drive was sunny, cool, and breezy. The sun was setting rapidly behind the pond and over the mountains. Mommy and daddy hoped to arrive just at this time and no later, so they could unload the truck and settle themselves nicely before dark. Of course, there was no house here yet." It was raining when we arrived. The air was thick with mosquitoes. The grass was about three feet high and soaking wet. And the truck got stuck as soon as we pulled off the road. That's my dad with the real beginning to our adventure in Maine. It was really his dream that got this started. For seven years, he'd been working as an administrator and teacher at a private school in New York. He didn't want to do that anymore. He was living the wrong life. He envisioned a homestead in the country with farm animals, gardens, maybe a windmill. Perfectly self-sustaining and efficient. I had this sense that I wanted to do something in my life that I had more control over. I was feeling like I wanted to work on something that felt more like it was mine. And I suppose I really wanted to build something also, the hands-on experience of building. Well, dad said we could build a house. So, of course, again, coming from apartment living, build a house, I just thought that meant like a-- the wildest thing I could think of was kind of like a suburban tract house, where you come in with a key and the toilets are there, the water's set up, the plumbing, the lights, heat, walls. You never imagined-- It never occurred to me. It didn't occur to me. And I don't think it occurred to dad to mention to me, "Well, that means we have to dig a well. We have to deal with electricity." It didn't occur to me. Her dream of our life in Maine was this. She'd bake bread, put up preserves, raise the kids. My mom was a nice Jewish girl from the Bronx. To her, it seemed like a great idea, and it didn't seem far-fetched. Dad was a country boy. His father had built their house. He'd grown up with pigs and chickens in rural Rhode Island. But let's make this clearer. Here was his plan. We'd live in a tent while he built a house from scratch, completely by himself, on a raw piece of land on a mountain in the middle of Maine in one summer. So that was the plan. And it didn't seem crazy at all. We were very clear that it was an adventure and that some people envied us. We actually thought everybody envied us. Did we ever think anybody thought we were nutty? No, we never did. But we thought people envied us. This whole thing was very naive. Just no concept of how our lives would change at all. Our lives didn't just change. For me, it's the beginning of everything, of who I am, of who my family is today. Four years into the project, the house wasn't finished, and my parents were separated. My mother moved out. My younger brother, Emilio, and I stayed with the house, with dad. 21 years later, my mother, brother, and I live in cities, as far from rural living as you can get. My father is remarried and is the last one of us living in the house. It still isn't finished. OK, well, first of all, who are these people? I'm looking at dad with a moustache and Emilio as, I guess, a three-year-old or a four-year-old and it's-- is that me? That's you. That's you. Wow. Wow. I'm sorry to keep saying wow, but this-- it's like who are these people? I look through photos with my mom of our first summer in Maine. We seemed so optimistic and playful in these pictures, our family before the fall. Mom and dad are young, good looking, working on the building site together. Emilio and I eat breakfast outside the tent and help hammer nails. There's one of us posing proudly in front of our new outhouse. I remember one time, this great time, when I was working on cutting the swath through the brush to put the road in, and it was raining. It had been raining and raining for days. And things had gotten pretty muddy. And you kids were completely naked, and you were sliding around in the mud and covered with mud. And I had wanted somebody to come up to look at the possibility of doing a foundation for us. And he happened to arrive just as you kids came sliding down through the mud. He'd driven as far as he could up in his truck and got out to walk. And so he's confronted first with wet, muddy little kids screaming and laughing. And I went running past him down the path. And naked. Yeah. And I came out wearing shorts and no shirt, holding my machete, and covered with little bits of leaves. Because when I'd be chopping things up with the machete, leaves would be flying all over the place. And I was wet, so they were stuck to me all over my body and my face. I had little pieces of leaves all over me. He looked a little startled. I love this image of-- I couldn't have been happier. If dad's dream was to have a project of his own, I had my own six-year-old dream, Little House on the Prairie. And I'm not talking about that horrible TV series. I mean the books that Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about her family's experience of moving West, building a home, and surviving blizzards, droughts, marauding wolves, and illnesses. In New York, I'd been obsessed with the Little House books and would act out scenes from them with friends. In Maine, I got to play Laura every day. I saw everything through the filter of the Little House books. I'd pick blueberries up on the mountain, and mom would make a batch of pancakes over the camp stove. Dad would cut two by fours for the house, and I'd stand by and hand him nails. I felt like I had arrived. OK, so in my mythology of our summer, the summer of '76, it was like you were Pa, Laura's Pa, and I was Laura. And it was like you were being this pioneer man. You were a big hero, and I was the little helper. That's what I felt like. Well, that's not that far from the truth. I think a lot of people thought of me as a big hero for doing this. Our friends in New York City thought it was an extraordinary adventure. And I was probably the only one who didn't think I was a hero. I was filled with anxiety that I wasn't telling anybody about because I realized that I had undertaken a pretty near impossible task. When I was writing Meema's Adventures, it was before we did it. So the time frame is totally wacky and unrealistic. "Chapter Six, Moving In. Meema opened her eyes. Outside the tent, birds were singing their cheery morning wake-up songs, while inside the tent, Meema lay snuggled in her sleeping bag. She was thinking about the day ahead. Today, they would finally move into the new house. The morning was cool and sunny with summer in its last days in Maine. Soon the tent would--" In fact, when summer was in its last days, we had only a hole in the ground. There was no floor, no walls, no roof, no house. When I look back now, I think the moment the ominous music starts is here. Do you remember-- not to bring up sad stuff. But do you remember Jamie, the puppy? Yeah, you mean the one I ran over. He was sleeping under the truck. I started it up, and he didn't wake up, and I didn't know he was there. I felt pretty bad about it. It just seemed like this was like the first tragedy of the summer or something. It was like something that seemed so nice had gone very wrong. Yeah. I feel sad thinking about it now. This is from Chapter Seven, At Home Again. "Winter evenings in the new house were cozy and warm. Mommy and daddy had finished building the stone fireplace, so now, after dinner every night, they all settled in the living room. The warmth and color of its fire cheered and relaxed everyone. The bright new wood--" In reality, when the first snow came on October 3, we were still living in the tent. And believe me, there was nothing cozy about it. The only thing we could do was set up camp in the unfinished house. There were no windows. There were window openings cut, but no windows. And the openings were covered with plastic. The fourth wall was plastic, right? Oh, that's right. That's right. On the south side. Not a very secure house. And impossible to heat. It was just a shell, really. And it already had started to snow, and I got kind of concerned because we were going to sleep immediately after dinner, and all us were wearing hats, and gloves, and coats, and scarves. I felt like we were hibernating. Mom said something about feeling like she would come home from work, and we would all eat, and then we were all dressed in our coats, and our hats, and our mittens. And we would just get into bed, and it was like we were hibernating. Oh, that's interesting. I don't remember. I honestly don't remember. I would drive home from work through Camden and on the way home to Lincolnville. And I would see the lights. 4 o'clock, 4:30 in the afternoon, lights would start coming on in the houses. It sort of felt like I was out of Dickens or something. Oh, a house. A real home. And it started getting cold, and we decided-- well, really, mom pushed this wisely-- that we should not go any further without getting another place for the winter. I just felt like it's really important, I think, that we find a place where we can have a cabin and really have warmth and light. It didn't need to be necessarily electric stuff, but a closed-up house. Yeah, that's not a lot to ask. Well, at that point, it kind of felt like it was being a little bit of a lot to ask. It was impossible to stay. We moved out of the house to a small summer cabin a few miles away. The pipes there were frozen, so there was no running water. A word now about where this adventure took place. Searsmont, Maine. Population 500. You've never heard of it. You didn't go to camp there. Don't think L.L. Bean in Kennebunkport. Think Appalachia, hardscrabble, not quaint. And my dad's plan in the middle of this was to do everything himself. At one point, he spent a week at the bottom of a 30-foot hole with a pickax trying to dig a well. We didn't have electricity or a phone then. Nothing came easy here. Sometimes when people go after a dream like this, they make an innocent decision for innocent reasons that has profound consequences. I wanted a view. And I just thought, well, I just didn't understand what difference it would make. But I think everyone was a mite surprised that we built right up the farthest spot up on the hill, just really way up. And that's where dad fit right in. He indulged those fantasies. Because he's like, "Hey, great idea. Sure, we can build up there." Let me explain because this might not seem like a big deal. A view means back from the road, which in our case means back from the road, past the field, up through the brush and trees, on the side of the mountain. Which means a really long driveway. And when I say driveway, it doesn't exactly capture this. There should be another word for what this was. During the winter, when Emilio and I would get home from school, the sun would be setting, and we'd struggle up to the house through drifted snow. My parents couldn't get the cars up, so they'd walk up and down carry supplies and groceries on a sled. Once it was totally iced over, and we could barely walk up and down. For parts of the driveway, we literally had to crawl on our hands and knees. And I remember once-- and this seems straight out of some Arctic expedition. Late at night, Emilio and I were so tired, we tried to lie in the snowbanks to rest. My dad pulled on our arms and yelled at us to get up or we'd freeze to death. We all had to deal with that driveway, but it was the worst for my dad. There was one particular day when it snowed, and I really feel like something came over dad. It was like this battle with nature and that he was going to win. And he didn't. He started at the top. We must have been snowed in at the top. He started to shovel all the way down, and it took him hours, and hours, and hours. And, of course, it was still snowing, and it was very difficult to reason with him of your tracks are being totally covered, and this is kind of a blizzard, and it's windy. I don't think he ever quite, quite got to the bottom. He was just exhausted and wiped out. And it was dark. And then when he trudged back up the hill, it was all blown over. It was a whole day's work that really, really did nothing. It's amazing that with all the construction, and machinery, and my dad's general frenzy that he didn't kill himself. There was a series of accidents. He cut his nose on barbed wire, hammered his nose, fell off staging two times, broke several ribs, collapsed a lung, nearly ruptured his spleen. And then there was the worst of all. We had been out for the day, and we came back, and it was towards evening. It was dusk. And I decided that I should cut up some wood, so that the whole day shouldn't be just used up on frivolous stuff, that I should do some work. Because I was trying to keep myself very disciplined about getting a certain amount of work done. And I hadn't cut up enough wood. So I said I would just work on that a little bit. And I was trying to do it very fast because it was getting dark and I'd set myself a certain amount to do. And I was just standing in the pile of wood, cutting, which is a bad way to do it. And kicking aside the cut end pieces as they dropped off. And my foot rolled on one of them, and I fell forward into the pile with the chainsaw out in front of me. The tip hit the pile and kicked back. And as I fell forward, it turned around, and the blade faced me. And it caught me under the chin. Oh, God. Missing cutting my throat open by just inches. It would have been terr-- I mean, your life would have been completely different. I thought I'd cut my throat open. I remember bits and pieces, and I remember the sort of ragged, pink flesh that hung under his chin. That's my brother, Emilio. He's 25 now. He was about 5 at the time. And I remember mom packing towels against his neck and wringing out one of the towels before driving to the hospital. Wringing out the blood? Wringing out the blood, right. And I don't remember any specifics after that. You don't remember him coming in and saying-- I remember him coming in the door with this hand over his neck and blood just gushing out. And he said, "Maddie, I cut myself." Oh God. It's just like-- that voice. Those words. Oh, God. It was so scary. I just thought-- what else could you think? Dad's going to die. Right. If my dad had his dream of a rural homestead, and my mom had her dream of being Earth Mother, and I had my Little House on the Prairie fantasy, what's interesting is that Emilio had no dream about our move to Maine. He was just four. And as best as any of us can figure, he was the only one of us who didn't see the whole experience through a romantic haze. By August that first summer, he was asking dad, "When are we going to go home?" Meaning home to our apartment in New York. And Dad had to tell him, "We are home." So I had an interesting discussion with dad about bravery, about bravery versus insanity. And was he crazy, or was he brave? Was he a hero, or was he insane? Where do you come down on that? It's very interesting because the framing of the question is very telling of your vision of him that I don't quite get for myself. I get it, but I hesitate to say that it's the little girl vision of the father. But it definitely is. I just don't remember him as being crazy or insane. Or what was the other choice, heroic? I remember spending a lot of time with him and being part of his everyday building of the house. Particularly, I remember lunches down at Sprowl Lumber and just a lot of time to just be with him. And just riding around in the green truck with him and sort of being his sidekick. And I never thought of him as heroic. Talking to Emilio, I was surprised. I hadn't really thought about this, but it's no accident that my mom called the book, Meema's Adventures. This was my dream, not Emilio's. So I read Meema's Adventures with mom. Do you want to hear a little bit from it? Please, yeah. OK. This is in the section when mom and dad are telling us that we're going to be leaving New York. And we're overjoyed, I'm sure. And we are, actually. We are. Interesting. We are overjoyed. Revisionist history. "'Oh, yay. Oh, this is so much fun.'" And then, "'Will we ever come back to the city to live?' Meema asked quietly turning to daddy. 'To be honest, sweetheart. I don't know. The city is a good place to live in and grow, and so is the country. We've been in the city for a long time, and life has been very happy.' 'It's cold in Maine,' said Emilio. 'I don't want to be cold.' 'Yes, the winters in Maine are cold,' said daddy. 'But we'll have a good, hot wood stove for indoors and layers and layers of clothing for outdoors. You won't be cold, Emilio. You'll be snug as a bug.' 'I don't mind the winter. I really want to have some animals,' said Meema. 'And a puppy?' asked Emilio. 'I think we surely could,' said mommy." And daddy will run over it with the truck. For Emilio and me, the move to Maine was the central fact of our childhood, one of the central forces shaping who we are. As we've grown up, we've found we both have our father's mania when it comes to taking on big projects. We've both worked ourselves, literally, to the point of injury. As a teenager, Emilio tried to embrace rural life. He threw himself into rock climbing, got wilderness first aid certification, led hiking trips. He was as obsessive about rock climbing as my dad was about building the house. Here's another thing that I think about. Are we city kids? Are we country kids? Oh, well, I definitely decided that I was a city kid at the height of my attempt to become a wilderness trip leader. And I was cultivating a very natural, adventurous personality at Swarthmore, and leading the rock climbing club, and going on lots of hikes. I skipped my final exam study period when I was 19, and I went to go for a weeklong hike somewhere in the Shenandoahs, I think. And about three days into it, I realized that against every instinct that I had and every wish that I had for myself to be a rugged outdoorsman that I was really a city kid. And it came out of nowhere. And I remember feeling upset about it on par with the realization that I was possibly gay at 16. They were very similar, that moment at which your self-image and your self-knowledge have nothing to do with each other, in fact, are diametrically opposed. So I'm a city kid. Emilio's moving back to New York to get his PhD in anthropology, just six blocks from where we lived on the Upper West Side, 460 miles away from our house in Maine. It feels like a person rather than a thing. It feels like a member of the family to me. I feel like I would be really heartbroken if it were sold. I'd be really heartbroken. I don't think there's any danger of anyone ever buying that house. Stop. Or worse, what if someone bought the land and tore down the house? Right, exactly. I feel like I would fling myself upon the machinery. Do not, do not take the house. Whereas I would feel in some way that I could finally get on with my life. There's the difference. Meema Spadola's story about her family's move to Maine continues in a minute from Public Radio International when our program continues. It's This American Life, I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we chose a theme, bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show, Dream House. Parents who try to build a brighter future for their families, and what happens to them when they try. We continue with Meema Spadola's story about her parents' move to Maine, and what it did to their family. Just pulled in the driveway here. Starting up the hill. To do this radio story, I went home to Maine for the first time in two years. Oh my god, and there's the house. And dad's home. And just a honk to let him know I'm here. He's playing piano inside. I can hear him out here. Dad's totally oblivious. He's playing piano and doesn't even hear me even though I honked. I'm going to sneak in. And [UNINTELLIGIBLE] the back. Hey, dad. You were totally oblivious playing the piano. How did you sneak up on me? I honked. I honked from outside. You didn't hear me? While I was home, my dad and I talked constantly about the house, the move, the summer of 1976. We'd never talked this much about that time. We walked the boundaries of the 63 acres of land and visited all the old sites, where we put the tent, the outhouse. Do you see the-- of course, you see the rope hanging from the tree. That was our swing. That was your swing, yeah. That limb is dead now. You wouldn't want to try swinging on it. No. Hey, did you know about the thing that Emilio and I-- what Emilio and I had, the squirrel house? No, show me. It wasn't a real squirrel house. This was a game that we played. That while you were building your house, we were building our house. And we were the squirrel family, and it was right over here. Does it look familiar to you? Sort of. There's this big flat rock-- I asked dad to give me a tour of the house as it stands today. The porch in front is half completed, the floor is unfinished, Sheetrock isn't up in most rooms, the bathroom isn't done yet. And I guess I hadn't thought about this up until now, but it really embarrasses him. These days my dad's an architect. He took pains to point out he's finished a lot of houses now, except this one. And the stairs just have plywood treads. They don't have the oak treads on that they're supposed to get. And this little piece of wall here hasn't been sheetrocked yet. But I did run the wiring in it, so now I can put the Sheetrock on it. I didn't have any walls on my bedroom until I was like 15. Oh really? Yeah. Oh my goodness. Oh, I'm sorry. That's OK. I survived. And I didn't have a door for a long time. I have a door on my old room now. It doesn't have a doorknob. So when you close it, it just sort of closes, and then you have to wedge your fingers in and open it up. So this is really going to be on the radio, huh? Sure. Thanks, Meema. I'm supposed to be an architect though. This is great advertisement for me. Can't even finish his own house. While I was home doing these interviews, there were a lot of times that my dad got uncomfortable. And I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't understand why, so I kept pushing him. And finally, after days of this, he told me something I never understood before. We shared this experience, the move to Maine, but we didn't see it the same way at all. Every time I talked about it as a heroic adventure, he'd just cringe. For years, he saw the move as a grim series of failures. He dropped out of college, and this was his biggest attempt to redeem himself, to make something of his own. And every snowstorm, broken-down car, every unfinished part of the house, every single crisis was a referendum on his character. No matter how desperately he struggled, things kept slipping out of his control. And even as I say this, I feel incredibly resistant to seeing it this way because it means that I have to reconstruct my entire heroic vision of my childhood. One of the long-term effects that I sort of joke about and it's also true, is that you've set up this ideal of what a man should do that most men couldn't really live up to. And again, it's-- Including me. What? Including me. Including you, yeah. Turns out my dad would be more comfortable if I didn't see him as the hero of an adventure story. My agenda isn't to explode your myth, but you did ask me to give my version of it because you felt like you'd mythologized it. It's funny. It's like people will ask me, well, what are your parents like? The fact is, you're not a big man. How tall are you, dad? 5'7''. Right, you're not a big guy. You're strong, you're muscular. But you're not this huge, macho guy. You were a math teacher. You played piano, but you were just the coolest dad ever. No, really. You were. You made a bicycle. You didn't make a bicycle for me, but remember that bike I got? The first bike? And you painted it red, and you wrote "Meema" on the side. You were just the coolest dad ever. You built us loft beds in Manhattan, and there was a swing in our room and a bar to swing on. And then you moved us up to Maine. It was like, how much cooler could you get than that? That's nice to hear. That's really nice to hear. I didn't know that. Oh, you wanted to know where the outhouse was? Yes. So we walked to see where the outhouse was. But the structure was gone, and the hole was filled in, healed over like it never existed. My dad told me he doesn't want to be judged on that one period in our lives when we moved to Maine. And I certainly don't want to say this was my life, building this house. A life is many things. There's a lot to it. It's having children, and raising children, and the work I've done, and all kinds of things. My relationships, friends, my whole life. So we're breaking down the-- I guess in some ways maybe I need to diffuse the importance that this has had. Do you know what I mean? Perhaps. Well, just because it happened at such an important time, and it was like, this was my childhood. I don't have many memories before a time when this was happening. This is what I'm from. This is what I come from. It's this house. It was like this family member. Really, it was so present. But that's you. And I don't know that you have to necessarily debunk a myth or anything like that to move on. But for me, what would it be like for me if I just stayed with this as if this is the essential thing about me and I didn't do anything else? What would that be like? Then that would be super obsessive. And it's just not sufficient either. It's not enough for me. And for me, we had a different experience of it. And now, for me, I live in it. It's just a common place. It doesn't have any of this mythical aura about it. I don't think that's entirely true. For years, he couldn't work on the house. He just stopped. Like if he stopped trying, he'd stop failing. But over the course of talking about this for weeks while I put together this story, something changed. It happened after he told me about feeling like he'd failed. Somehow after that conversation, it felt like there wasn't anything more to say about that time. And for the first time in years, my dad started working on the house again. He called me the other night. He says he's already finished the bathroom, put in a beautiful tile floor, replaced the ugly, old toilet. Sheetrock is going up. Meema Spadola is a documentary filmmaker living in New York, an hour subway ride from where she was born. Act Two, Blue Sky Dream. Ronald Reagan made my family's tract home into a dream home. Just about the time of his landslide reelection in 1984, Ronald Reagan knocked out the north and west facing walls of our house. He tore out the linoleum floor and the flocked ceiling of the family room. Ronald Reagan gave my mother a kitchen twice the area of the old one. He gave my father a shop of his own just off the garage. He got rid of-- That's David Beers reading from his memoir, Blue Sky Dream. Ronald Reagan built his family dream house by funding the strategic defense initiative, Star Wars. David Beers' father was an aerospace engineer. And back in 1957, after the Russian satellite Sputnik scared the nation into a new defense industry boom, Beers' family joined tens of thousands of others who went to work in aerospace in northern California. Beers' father worked at Lockheed on secret defense projects through the Cold War and the Vietnam War. Those these days the suburbs get criticized as a place of sheer materialism, Beers writes that it was not materialism that was attractive to his family when they moved out to the California suburbs. It was the emptiness of the place. It was the fact that you could create new, modern lives out there, hopeful lives, crafting new traditions. He writes that, at one point, his mother actually decided that the family was Irish even though, really, they were only one-fourth Irish. But let's not let those facts get in the way. My mother decided that a fun thing to be was an Irish Catholic, and so she was determined to invent this Irishness for us in the middle of Mediterranean California. And so there were leprechauns living in our oleanders. And on Saint Patrick's Day, we all lined up, and our mother clipped to our little Catholic school, red sweaters these green buttons that said, "Kiss me, I'm Irish" and shamrocks with blarney stones. And she avoided altogether some of the other stereotypes of Irishness, the idea of the morose, heavy drinker. So she'd just select the parts she liked? Well, that was the great thing about the suburbs in California and anywhere else in the country where this great federal investment in the Cold War infrastructure was going on. These were brand new places. There was the opportunity to invent a culture, and you constructed that culture with what you had available to you. Can I ask you to talk for a minute ago about how you saw your dad when you were a kid? In your book, in your memoir, you describe him in scene after scene as showing up with lumber, and building stuff, and laying down new brick walkways, and building a deck behind the house, and constantly having one project after another. You write at one point, "There was nothing my father could not do himself apparently." He wasn't always successful. I think he spent maybe six months designing the sprinkler system for the backyard. And when he finally turned it on, it was wondrous to behold. The rain birds all swept around in their perfect arcs and what have you. But the grass didn't grow. As it turned out, he had picked the wrong seed for the soil, and the water didn't fully cover the ground. And as it turned out, much like aerospace itself, he had to keep going back and revising his plans. And he went terribly over budget. But in the end, he got the grass to grow. And that was the main message there, which is that through technology and perseverance, you can accomplish anything. Well, you've agreed to read a long excerpt from your book, Blue Sky Dream. You write about in the book what you call your "tribe," the aerospace workers and their families, moving into a valley that was first known as the Valley of Heart's Delight, building a home in a brand new subdivision with the Old World name Clarendon Manor. Whenever I think of the house they bought and the development surrounding it, the earliest images that come to mind are of an ascetic barrenness to the streets. The snapshots confirm it. There I am with my new friends around a picnic table in the backyard. Shirtless boys with mouths full of birthday cake. In the backyard, nothing but implanted dirt, a stripe of redwood fence, stucco, an open sky. That was the emptiness being chased by thousands of other young families to similar backyards in various raw corners of the nation. "Didn't the sterility scare the hell out of you?" I've often asked my mother. "Didn't you look around and wonder if you'd been stuck on a desert island?" The questions never phase her. "We were thrilled to death, not afraid at all. Everyone else was moving in at the same time as us. It was a whole new adventure for us. For everyone." Everyone was arriving with a sense of forward momentum joined. Everyone was taking courage from the sight of another orange moving van pulling in next door. A family just like us unloading pole lamps and cribs and Formica dining tables like our own. Having been given the emptiness we longed for, there lay ahead the task of pouring meaning into the vacuum. We were blithe conquers, my tribe. When we chose a new homeland, invaded a place, settled it, and made it over in our image, we did so with the smiling sense of our own inevitability. At first, we would establish a few outposts, a Pentagon-funded research university, say, or a bomber command center, or a missile testing range. And then, over the next decade or two, we would arrive by the thousands and tens of thousands until nothing looked or felt as it had before. Yet whenever we sent our advance teams to someplace like the Valley of Heart's Delight, we did not cause panic in the populace. More likely, a flurry of joyous meetings of the Chambers of Commerce and Rotary clubs. You could understand then why families like mine tended to behave with a certain hubris. In the spring of 1962, the Valley of Heart's Delight was covered with blossoms. Back then the cherry and plum and apricot trees would froth so white and pink that driving around the place felt like burrowing through cotton candy. Spanish colonizers had planted the first of these glades. On warm evenings in the spring of 1962, this is what my father and mother would do. After dinner, they would place my baby sister in her stroller, and the four of us would set out from the small, used house they were renting in an established subdivision, already half a dozen years old, named Strawberry Park. We would walk six blocks and run out of sidewalk. We would pick up a wide trail cut a foot and a half deep into the adobe ground, a winding road bed of waiting blacktop. At a certain point, we would leave the road bed and make our way across muddy clay that was crosshatched by tractor treads, riven by pipe trenches. We would marvel at the cast concrete sewer sections lying about, gray, knee-scratching barrels big enough for me to crawl inside. We would breathe in the sap scent of two-by-fours stacked around us, the smell of plans ready to go forward. Finally, we would arrive at our destination, a collection of yellow and red ribbons tied to small wooden stakes sprouting in the mud. These markers identified the outline of lot 242 of unit 6 of track 3113, exactly 14,500 square feet of emptiness that now belonged to us. All around the outline were piles of cherry and plum and apricot trees, their roots ripped from the ground. The spring blossoms still clinging to their tangled-up branches. Our rite evolved with the season. Early on, my father would go from stake to yellow-ribboned stake, telling us where the kitchen would be, where the front door would go, which windows would be getting the most sun. Later, after the concrete foundation and plywood subflooring were in and the skeletons of walls were up, we would wander through the materializing form of our home, already inhabiting with our imaginations its perfect potentiality. Within a decade after the coming of aerospace to the Valley of Heart's Delight, developers were shelling out nearly $100,000 per acre for any land left that might still be covered with blossoms. This should give an idea of the quiet force my people exerted whenever they entered a place. Power enough to undo a century-old economy and strip the blossoms from a valley once and for all. My people did sigh at the extinction of those blossoms. But honestly, we did not mourn their disappearance in any deeply felt way. Certainly, we didn't feel guilt. We had not, after all, come to the Valley of Heart's Delight to join the circular rhythm of nature. Our imagination was linear, proceeding forward and upward. And our lines did not curve back on themselves, as did the seasons. We saw promise in the clean possibilities that arose once every blossom had been erased, never to return. Several valleys over from ours, Joan Didion watched the coming of my tribe with dread. We moved her to write, in a 1965 essay, how it felt to be a native daughter. To have come from a family who has always been in the Sacramento Valley and to see that the boom was on and the voice of the aerospace engineer would be heard in the land. 15,000 aerospace workers, almost all of them imported, had arrived on the outskirts of Sacramento to join Aerojet General, a maker of missile boosters. Joan Didion's family was, like the orchard people of the Valley of Heart's Delight, a family tied to agriculture with 100 years of circular rhythms behind them. Hers were a people primly insular and tragic-minded, according to the native daughter. Her valley was a place where incautious children visiting from out of town often would drown in the river, disappear forever. And the old locals would see a proper lesson in that, would say, as Joan Didion's grandmother did, "They were from away. Their parents had no business letting them in the river." In another essay written five years later, Didion gets at the profound difference between her people and mine. She writes of "growing up convinced that the heart of darkness lies in not some error of social organization, but in man's own blood." She reveals herself, in other words, to be a pessimist about human endeavour, engineered and executed on a grand scale. How different from my tribe who would say instead, "If incautious children might drown in a river, let us erect a cyclone fence. Even drive the river underground, leaving behind a manufactured surface that was dry and safe, empty, and speaking of promise." That, after all, is what was done with the creek the ran by Clarendon Manor. Within 10 years of my family's arrival, the Valley of Heart's Delight was no longer green. It had become a vast matrix of expressways, and freeways, and Clarendon Manors, a vast matrix of companies making technology primarily for the government. The population had grown many times over in those 10 years, and we no longer heard the Valley of Heart's Delight called that anymore. In fact, no one I knew had ever used that sentimental name. While I was growing up, my family simply had called it "The Valley." Or as it was officially termed on the government studies in the plans of various developers, "the Santa Clara Valley." It would not be until a time distant, well into the 1970s, that we would begin calling our home "Silicon Valley." There was yet another rite of spring practiced by my family, a rite that became possible once the invasion of my tribe was all but complete, once nearly all the blossoms had been replaced by settlements like our own. On an evening that was bright and windy, but too warm to be winter anymore, my father would come home from Lockheed with a kite or two, balsa sticks wrapped tightly with colorful tissue paper. If the next morning was a Saturday, he would put the kites together for us. Tear us a tail from an old sheet, make a string bridle that held the kite just so. Help us launch the kite, and send it up over the tract homes. For just this very purpose, my father kept what seemed a mile of twine on an enormous spool. And so the kite would climb higher and higher until it became a shimmying dot against the blue. At that point, my father would go into his garage and make a small parachute. He would unfold a paper napkin and tie its corners to four strands of string, drawing the other ends of the string together, and knotting them around a bolt for weight. He would stick a bit of reinforcing tape in the center of the napkin and pass through that a bent pin, making a hook that poked out of the top of the parachute. Next, my father would write our phone number on the parachute with the words, "If found, please call." "Ready for take off?" my father would say, as he grabbed hold of the taut kite string. And then a miraculous thing would happen. Driven by the wind, the parachute would skitter up the line, joining the kite high in the sky in what seemed an instant. When it reached the top, my father would say, "Give her a jerk." And the parachute would fall away from the kite and drift in whichever direction the wind was blowing, until we could see it no longer. Then we'd begin the wait for the phone to ring. The wait for someone to call and say they had our parachute. If hours went by, my mother might suggest a prayer to Saint Anthony, finder of lost items. "Tony, Tony, listen, listen. Hurry, hurry. Something's missing. You have to believe." If we said the prayer and did believe, the ring would come, and someone would say, "Got your-- I guess it's a parachute here. Landed in my backyard. Almost ran over it with the mower." My father would write down the address, and he would get out the street map. He would pinpoint our destination, and we older kids would set off on our Stingray bikes, having been given a reason to trace a route we never would have traced otherwise, so empty and so much the same was every street for miles around. We would leave our cul-de-sac named Pine Hill Court, where there was neither a pine nor a hill, and we would pedal far beyond Springwood Drive and past Happy Valley Way, ending up in some cul-de-sac we had not known existed. And there would be a man about my father's age with a similarly receding hairline and knit sport shirt. A man who seemed to be pleased at the serendipitous fun our parachute had brought into his Saturday. A man who safely could be assumed to do blue sky work for a living. Anywhere we cared to drop a parachute from the sky, there would be someone like him. A house and a family like his, and like ours. David Beers' memoir is Blue Sky Dream. Well, the vocal stylings of Mr. John Wayne. Our program was produced today by Nancy Updike and me with Alix Spiegel and Julie Snyder. Music help today from Mr. John Connors. Today's program was first broadcast back during the 20th century, all the way back in 1997. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. Our website, www.thisamericanlife.org, where you can get our free weekly podcast and listen to old shows online for absolutely free. WBEZ management oversight for our program by Mr. Torey Malatia, who's going to buy you a puppy-- And daddy will run over it with the truck. I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life. PRI, Public Radio International.
|
A quick warning-- there are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. We're all getting kind of old in my family. And when we get together for the holidays, there's never any drama anymore. Used to be. I avoided coming home for years all through my 20s and early 30s because my parents and I were not getting along so well. Part of the problem was me. In my early 20s, I was harsh and judgey and said lots of things that now I wouldn't have said and have apologized for. But part of the problem was them. They did not agree with most of my big life choices, starting with and especially the fact that I worked in public radio. During that period, I was working for the NPR news shows, All Things Considered and Morning Edition. And my parents were completely against it. I've said this before-- and my parents hate it when I say this-- but my parents are the only Jews in America who don't like public radio. The stories are too long. It seemed second rate to them. If I wanted to be a journalist, why wasn't I on TV? Why was I settling for this place that paid me so little? The money was a huge thing. My dad is an accountant, does all our taxes, and so he knew what I made and couldn't quite believe it. I could still earn a good living somewhere. I could still be a doctor. So coming home for the holidays, sometimes my dad would pull me aside. Sometimes he would bring it up during dinner at a crowded table. Shouldn't I quit these jobs I love and finally go to med school? It's not too late, my parents pleaded with me well into my 30s. My mom officially, kind of half joking, half serious, gave up the effort when I was 41 and had been hosting This American Life for five years. But for so long, my dad especially would express his love and concern for me when I came home by questioning the basics-- where I lived, how I lived, how I dressed, how my hair looked, who I fell in love with, why wasn't I more of a success. To be clear, he wasn't mean. He wasn't angry. He was just very, very concerned. My sisters, Randi and Karen, they got their own versions of this. So holidays, yeah, things would get very tense. Which is to say, we were a normal family. But now, it couldn't be more different. My mom died over a decade ago. My dad's in his 80s. In the last couple years, he's had a lot of hearing loss. It's harder to interact with him. He is not the critical, questioning man he once was. I go home now, and nothing's bothering him about me that he needs to get off his chest. He's been trained over the years to say I love you when we talk on the phone or see each other. And he actually seems to mean it. He's lovely. But I am not used to this milder, gentler version of the overworked, stressed out dad that I grew up with. It's like that guy-- I don't know-- dissolved away that whole side of his personality, leaving another man standing there. And I have to say-- this is bad to admit-- sometimes I miss that other guy. I go home for the holidays, and it's chill and everybody gets along. And I never thought I'd say this-- I swear I never thought these words would come out of my mouth-- I wish he would pick a fight with me. I feel like that's my real dad. This elderly guy with the same name, who likes and accepts the person that I'm in love with and, in fact, notices if she leaves her glasses in the dining room and then helpfully brings them to her in the kitchen just to be nice, that guy, he's awesome. But where's my real dad? And this BS of going home for the holidays and not having anything to fight about at all, I mean, are our lives over? Are we already dead? That's it? We're done? No fighting? Are we really a family anymore? Today, on our program, we have families boisterously, noisily getting into it with each other, kids coming home with important stuff they've been waiting to get off their chests, parents showing up at their grown children's houses with demands that absolutely need to be met, and then let the games begin. For the holidays, it is a family get-together episode of our show, including a song sung at a family event that either is or is not a veiled critique of one family member in particular. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Act One, How Do I Say This? So we begin today with somebody returning to their family in the suburbs out in the far west in Canada, in Calgary, Alberta. And she is returning with a mission, something she needed to discuss in English, though the thing she wanted to discuss was a different language entirely. The person doing this is Scaachi Koul. Nine months ago, after 28 years of being alive, I finally started taking Hindi classes. My parents are both from India, and they emigrated to Canada long before I was born. They speak a number of languages, including Hindi, and their mother tongue, Kashmiri. But there's no real textbook or organized class or Duolingo program for Kashmiri. Hindi proved to be the easiest one for me to learn. I'm not enjoying these lessons. I've said aloud in class several times that I hate it. I hate it because it's hard, harder than I expected. Because for some reason, I thought this language would come naturally. And yet, for two hours every week, I meet my teacher and fellow classmate at a coffee shop in midtown Manhattan and learn how to greet someone, and tell them what I am presently eating, and that the cat is sitting in the big chair. Sometimes the cat is sitting on the little chair. Learning to say that has cost me $1,150 thus far. I started these lessons on a whim. I knew for years that I wanted to do it, but I didn't give much thought as to why. I assumed my parents would be happy about it. Not even just happy-- elated. My dad has said to me more than once, you're barely recognizable. When he says it, he means I'm not recognizable to him as the person he wanted me to be, the person who would never, for example, have married a white man much older than she is, or refused a career in medicine, or smoked at least 800 cigarettes. But I don't know if my learning Hindi even matters to my parents, or how much. I also don't know why they never made me learn it in the first place. So I went home to find out. Hey, Google. Play something by Girija Devi. Here's a Spotify station featuring [INAUDIBLE] Devi. When I visit my parents, we don't usually do much more than sit together in the living room and alternate between joking and fighting. We're all indoor cats. Hey, Google. I recently got them a Google Home, foolishly thinking they'd delight in being able to boss it around. They've had it for a day and have been characteristically hostile to it. Hey, Google. No, that's wrong. Sorry, I might be a little buggy. Yeah, you are buzzy. She didn't say she was buzzy. She said she was buggy. What does that mean? Like, she has a bug. My parents have long converted my childhood bedroom into a sorry storage facility, but it's still home. There's nothing more comforting to me than my mom accusing an inanimate object of being against her. This thing is a racist because I keep telling play bhajan, and it doesn't play bhajan. When the Google Home fails to play the devotional song my mom requests, she curses at it. And I finally recognize one of the few Kashmiri words I know from my childhood. What'd she say? [KASHMIRI], as my mom said, is her saying that she hopes lightning hits the Google Home. The insults my parents use are the part of their language I absolutely know. I can help you call someone lazy, dumb, loud, annoying, rude, ugly. But the one I know best is [KASHMIRI]. You say it when you're mad or shocked or when someone's cooking is so excellent, you just can't help but want them to get hit by lightning. My dad eventually gives up on trying to teach the Google Home Kashmiri and settles on something she knows. Hey, Google. Play Frank Sinatra. You have to say please to her? No, she's a robot. I mean, it's nice, but it's not necessary. That's my main man, isn't he? I should have a cigarette and a whiskey in one hand and a smoking jacket. It's 10:00 in the morning. Who cares? It's 10:00 PM somewhere. Later that night, my mom hosts a party for my brother's 40th birthday. And she's cooked her usual dinner party spread-- the mallu, rogan josh, bhatta, haakh dripping in oil. Happy birthday. Thank you. I have all these questions for my parents. But first, I want to talk to my brother, the only other person in the world who understands what I'm getting myself into. I call my brother [NON-ENGLISH], meaning older brother. He's 12 years older than me and was born in India. Kashmiri is his first language, and though he understands it when it's spoken to him, he lost the ability to speak it himself soon after he moved to Canada as a toddler. He doesn't remember anyone trying to get him to speak Kashmiri instead of English. But nobody said anything to me, or maybe they did, and I just said, I just want to watch Three's Company. Thank you very much. That is how my brother learned English-- reruns of Three's Company. Consequently, he has a very complex understanding of tenant protection rights. My brother affirms one thing I remember to be true when we were kids. It was deeply uncool to speak Hindi or Kashmiri. We knew lots of Indian kids who spoke their parents' language. They were dutiful, good, polite, always saying, yes, Auntie [INAUDIBLE]. But we also knew that those kids were fucking dorks and worthy of our ire. We were never dutiful. Back then, I envied my brother. He's fair-skinned with angular features and a phonetic name. He could always hide in plain sight. I used to wish I could do the same. My brother is married. He lives 20 minutes away from my parents. And he has a nine-year-old daughter that I call Raisin. She is the best person in the world. Raisin is biracial. Her mother is white, and she's light skinned with bright blue eyes. She doesn't speak Hindi or Kashmiri, with the exception of naming her favorite foods. And even though my brother could do something about her slim language skills, he hasn't. Why haven't you put her in those classes? She doesn't want to do it. Yeah, but she's nine. She doesn't want to do anything. I don't think she wants to wash her butt. Like-- But I don't want to-- I also don't-- I'm super lazy. So if it's like the reality is driving to the [INAUDIBLE] at 8:30 on a Sunday, that's not going to happen. I can barely get her to go to karate, something she is interested in. As for my brother, he's not likely to sign up for a class himself, despite having the urge, just like I do. Do I think about practicing? Yeah, all the time. But I just don't. (LAUGHING) Why not? I don't because our parents are merciless when you try to learn something new, and I'm not interested in giving them more fodder for jokes. What do you mean that they're merciless about-- Have you ever tried to speak a language that they know in front of them? Yeah. Yeah, how'd that go? Um-- Yeah, exactly. I'd say it's a spicy experience. That doesn't mean anything to me, but OK. Do you think that we turned out the way he wanted, that he'd-- like when he-- No. No, I don't think we did, at all. If we didn't turn out the way our dad wanted us to, well, my dad bears a lot of responsibility for that. For one thing, instead of forcing us to learn Hindi, he made us learn French. Why instead of making me take Hindi classes at the temple, did you decide, oh, I know, I'm going to put them in French immersion for some reason? Because Canada is a bilingual country. And I was hoping that the Hindi would come automatically because at home and other Indians. My dad is loquacious and wry and thinks he's the smartest person in the room. He's also stubborn as hell, and so am I, which means we're often trying to murder each other. After I first got together with the man who would become my husband, the way older white guy, my dad didn't talk to me for a year. When I first asked him how he feels about me taking these classes, he's his typical self-- dismissive and glib. What did you think when I started taking the Hindi classes? I was amused. Since you do whatever you want to do, I thought maybe, OK, good. What does that mean, I do whatever I want to do? Because you are a very independent-minded person. You do not take any instruction or anything. So I was glad that at least you are doing something for your betterment. Because, like I said, having knowledge of another language can never hurt you. Don't be fooled by his detached attitude about whether I speak Hindi. He has other feelings as well, depending on the day. He used to get upset about it. When I was younger, sometimes he would speak to me in Kashmiri and quickly get frustrated that I could barely understand it and couldn't respond. He gave that up after I moved out. But ever since I started my Hindi classes, he's trying again. Now when I call my mother, he'll barge into our calls and demand that she speak to me in Hindi and Kashmiri. I had to ask him the same question over and over again before he finally admits that, yes, he's absolutely thrilled at the idea of me learning Hindi. And hopefully, one day, you will converse with somebody in Hindi. And you should go to India. I'll go with you, but let you lead so that you can speak with taxi drivers or auto rickshaw drivers or shopkeepers, and try to haggle with them in Hindi. I bet you it'll be hilarious. It'll be wonderful. Were you surprised that I started taking lessons? Yeah, I was. Because you were-- both you kids were extremely whitewashed. Maybe I had something to do with it. I didn't purposely do that. Exactly what my dad had to do with that goes all the way back to his arrival in Canada. This is who my dad was when me and my brother were kids-- 125 pounds, 5 foot 4, ambitious, and working hard as a pharmaceutical representative. It was all so we would eventually have all you could ever want-- house, two cars, a yard, university educations. We were middle class in Canada, all with traditional Hindu names. It was the Indian dream. We didn't have much family near us in Calgary. I didn't go to school with any other brown kids until I was well into high school. My brother and cousin spoke to each other and me in English. My father had this idea that we'd pick up Hindi at home, but that's ridiculous. My parents spoke Kashmiri and English. Hindi was reserved for Bollywood movies and when my mom needed to speak to her jeweler. What form of osmosis is my dad even talking about? I thought that this language, mother tongue specifically, would come a little later on. And I should concentrate on you being totally assimilated with the Canadian culture, if you will, whatever that culture is. But somehow I should have created some sort of infrastructure where you would be-- you would learn and be at least proficient in one of the languages-- Indian languages, that is. Well, why didn't you make me take lessons for either Hindi or Kashmiri? I don't know. I don't know why. I ought to have done it. I don't think my dad is equipped to directly talk about how hard it was to leave India. My mom can talk about her sadness easily, as if all those feelings are still right at the surface of her skin, waiting to bleed out of her and drown me. I had to say goodbye to my dad and my mother. That was very hard. That was really, really hard. My dad was the family's sole breadwinner, and in her early days in Canada, my mother was alone a lot with my brother, just a toddler. She noticed he was losing his Kashmiri three or four months after they arrived. And I would talk to him in Kashmiri, and he would answer me in English. And I said, OK, this is it. He's not going to say anything back now. And I would push him and say it in Kashmiri, and he would say it in English. He would not say in Kashmiri. So then why didn't you push him to keep it up? Well, how can you make him do-- push-- how can you make him to speak? When bhai got a little older, my mother and father considered signing him up for Hindi classes. And it turns out their reason for not doing so is the exact same practical, yet lazy one my big brother gives about Raisin. Papa said Sunday morning, I don't want to get up at 10 o'clock and take him to Hindi school. That was only because Hindi schools, that's what the timing. Sunday's the only day when I had my day off. And I was not that confident driving that time on the Deerfoot in wintertime. So that's all. Fell apart. My mother says that years later, they actually put me in Hindi classes. I was maybe five then. She says that I'd wander out of class, which was held in the basement of our [INAUDIBLE], and would trot up the stairs to find her. I don't remember this at all. They stopped trying to force it. At the time, I'm sure I was thrilled that they left it alone. I pushed against brownness in every way I could. I recoiled when my white friends would call and overhear my parents speaking Kashmiri in the background. I didn't want to invite them over because they could smell sandalwood in the curtains. I resented my unpronounceable first name and passively let people call me Sasha or Sara or Scratchy or Sushi or whatever examples of genteel racism were permeating my life. Are you disappointed that I can't speak Kashmiri and I can't speak Hindi? I wouldn't say disappointed. But I feel sad that it would have been nice. Because sometimes if I want to tell you something, and I have to change the language, it loses its-- what I want to tell you. So that time, I'm really frustrated. I say I wish she could understand what I'm trying to tell her. Sometimes I could see my mom struggling to find the right word to convey the right feeling. Has she always felt a gap between what she wanted to tell me and what I was able to grasp? When I moved away for university, I worried my mom would be lonely. I resented that I worried about her. But I wondered who my mom would talk to when I left home. I never considered that maybe the language we were speaking left her feeling lonely, before I even moved away. Did you want me and bhai to assimilate in Canada? Yeah. Did we assimilate too much? Well, I will say yes and no to that. It would have been nice if a little bit stayed towards your heritage, towards your culture. But I guess it was supposed to happen, and there's nothing I can do about it. This idea from both of my parents makes me nuts. Of course there's something she could have done about it. I know that my parents made the best choices they had at the time. Now, though, I feel like I missed out on something that I desperately want. I wish I could have spoken to your mom when she was alive. Yeah, well, I wish that you-- I mean, did that-- did she say anything to you about that, that she couldn't speak to her grandchildren? Yeah, she used to cry and cry and cry. She says, I cannot speak to them, and they don't understand me. And I wish I could talk to them. So it was hard. It was a shame that you guys couldn't talk to her. She would have been overwhelmed if you would say just a few words. Now it is all gone, so it doesn't matter now. Anything else? Of course there's something else. There's always something else. What are we making first? You said you wanted to see how we cook green beans, right? Yeah. Cooking is the only place where I don't know the English equivalency of most words, evidenced by how many times I go to the grocery store and ask for [NON-ENGLISH] or [NON-ENGLISH] and struggle to name it in English. In the kitchen, my pronunciation is flawless. And for once, I don't feel like a fraud when I speak in Hindi or Kashmiri. When I was a kid, I wouldn't even let my mom pack me Indian food for lunch. No one wants to be different in a grade school cafeteria. Then I moved away for university, and I realized all I wanted was my mom's cooking. I wanted her to braid my hair and rub my back and wax my mustache off for me, all these blips of intimacy with her I once had. I've been learning how to make her food ever since. My beans always turn out weird. Why? I don't know. They get too salty. Maybe you are putting too much salt. Simple. Yeah, Mom, I know. God. How is that helpful? My Hindi, after a few months of lessons, is finally good enough that I can have slivers of conversations with my parents. Recently, they visited me in New York. And on a walk with my husband barely two feet ahead of us, my mother told me in Hindi, your husband has no butt. One day, my parents will die. And when that happens, we'll all forget the insults and the sounds and the way my mom rolls her Rs. I can't even imagine how lonely I'll be without her sounds. Maybe it'll hurt less if I learn how to make these sounds on my own. For now, I'm still stumbling over how to say "I love you" to my mother in her mother tongue. Thank you. My mom now tells me constantly how proud she is that I'm trying to learn Hindi. More than anything, that's what keeps me going to class. Scaachi Koul, she writes about culture for BuzzFeed News, and she's also the author of a collection of essays, One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter. Coming up, they didn't mean it. They really didn't mean it. They really, really didn't mean it. Right? That's what they say. Mother and daughter, and the song they chose to sing at a very significant family event. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on the program, of course, we choose a theme, bring you different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show, "Too Close to Home." For the holidays, stories of family get-togethers where somebody shows up with something they think the entire family has to deal with, or at least, discuss. And they're ready to force the issue. We've arrived at Act Two of our program. Act Two, You Probably Think This Song is About You. So in this act, two family members show up with a message. The message is contained in a song, which makes sense because the family includes a bunch of musicians. The dad in this family is Loudon Wainwright III, the songwriter who started putting out albums in the 1970s. He is father to singer-songwriters Rufus Wainwright and Martha Wainwright, and with a different mom, Lucy Wainwright Roche. Lucy's mom is Suzzy Roche, who got some notoriety in the band The Roches. Lucy and Suzzy came into the studio to tell the story of this song. We sang this one, actually, at one of my dad's weddings. To be precise, her dad, Loudon, had gotten married for the second time. And this was a party to celebrate it, maybe 50 people. Lucy went with her mom, Suzzy, who'd never been married to Loudon, but they were together for years. And he asked us if we wanted to sing something, and we said, sure. And then he was like, OK, well, pick whatever you feel like singing and surprise us. And we'd been learning this song that was a cover song that we just really liked. And sometimes when you're learning a new song, you kind of have a little crush on the song, so you just want to sing it all the time. And so we were like, let's just do that new one that we've been learning. And we just didn't really think it through. Yeah, I would say that that's an understatement. I don't know what we were thinking. I mean, it was one of those kind of situations where you're standing in front of a roomful of people, and they all have their champagne glasses. And they're looking at you, smiling. And you start to sing the song. And so just imagine that you're at a wedding, and-- Yeah, you're-- --these people are going to sing. You got your champagne, and then this happens. All right. Let's hear the song. (SINGING) Desperado, why don't you come to your senses? You've been out riding fences for so long now. Well, you're a hard one. I know that you've got your reasons. These things that are pleasing you can hurt you somehow. OK, so at this point, what are they thinking? I feel like as soon as you sing, "Desperado," people think, oh-- oh. They're talking about Loudon. I bet more than anything, they felt like, what is happening right now? Like, is this OK? Is this a message? It's a slightly hostile thing to sing at your father's wedding, or your ex's wedding. But we were thinking, (SINGING) G, G7, C, C Minor. And basically concentrating on playing it, because I didn't know it that well. OK, keep going. (SINGING) Don't you draw the Queen of Diamonds. She'll beat you if she's able. You know the Queen of Hearts is always your best bet. Now it seems to me some fine things have been laid upon your table. But you only want the ones that you can't get. What do you think people thought at that point? I think that is the most cringey line in the song. In this context. Yes. Yeah. "It seems to me some fine things have been laid upon your table, and you only want the ones that you can't get." I mean, that-- That seems rude. You don't often hear a wedding toast that says like, and what I love about him is, lucky you. He never wants the things he can get. That's not-- No, I haven't heard that at a wedding. Weird. No. I think that's the low point of what we've done here. Let's go into the next verse. "Oh, you ain't getting no younger." Right. I would say this is the second to worst line of the song. (SINGING) Desperado, oh, you ain't getting no younger. Your pain and your hunger are driving you home. And freedom, oh, that's just some people talking. Your prison is walking through this world all alone. So how do you think people might have heard that? Oh, it's so sad. That is so sad. It is so sad. Now the line, "You ain't getting no younger," how old was your dad? Old. He was not getting any younger. So you're singing this, and you're looking around at the faces. What are you seeing? It didn't feel like it was the most well-received thing we'd ever done. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there was a kind of a feeling of being looked at without a lot of expression, which is sometimes not a great sign. [LAUGHS] I think they were probably thinking a thought that I think a lot when something happens that is uncomfortable. And when something like that is happening, like, just make the right kind of face right now. [LAUGHS] And maybe this will be over soon. Yes. Like, just make sure your face is right. I mean, the truth of it is that nobody has ever mentioned it again to us. To this day. Yeah. What did he say afterwards? Nothing. Did he say thank you? No. Not really, no. The horrible thing about this is that people must have felt like we were doing something passive aggressive, or aggressive maybe. Right. And the sad thing is we were completely oblivious. And I know that that probably sounds like maybe it's not true, and unconsciously, we had some sort of thing we were doing. Perhaps, but it didn't feel like that at all. But I think then after that, a couple years later when we first performed this song in a show, I might have said to the audience for the first time, oh, actually, we sang this once at my dad's wedding. And then the absurdity of that really hit us. Right, and also the song kind of turns into a comedy, instead of the beautiful song that it is. Let's hear a recording from one of those concerts. (SINGING) Desperado-- --why don't you come to your senses? It's weird that you can get a song like this to play as comedy. I mean, people get hysterical when they hear it in that context, which makes it obvious that there was something strange about it. (SINGING) Now it seems to me some fine things have been laid upon your table. But you only want the ones that you can't get. Desperado, no, you ain't getting no younger. Well, here's the other thing about it. I don't know if I should say this, but I mean, on the one hand, it's a terrible thing to sing at a wedding and at that wedding. But on the other hand, it's kind of the perfect thing to sing at that wedding. I know. How do you mean it's the perfect thing to sing? Well, because you're basically-- the lyrics, if you really study them, are basically saying you've got to let somebody love you. So you're saying, unconsciously maybe, it was the perfect pick for the wedding. Right, I'm starting to change my mind on this whole thing and say that, yes, of course we meant to sing this song. I'm not. When I see what it's actually saying, what it says to me, if there is a subconscious message that we were aiming at Loudon-- or I'll speak for myself, me-- is just, I see you. I see what you've been through, and I see your pain. And we're happy for you that you've found somebody to be with. Suzzy and Lucy Roche. Their version of "Desperado" is on their album Mud and Apples. Lucy's most recent album is Little Beast. I did, by the way, check with Loudon, Suzzy's ex and Lucy's dad, to see what he thought about "Desperado" as their choice of song at the party, since they really had no idea at all. And Loudon told me he definitely remembered it. Oh, yes. Yes. I remember thinking it was hilariously funny and ironic. And I thought it was a kind of really ironic, cool choice of a song to do. Music from Loudon Wainwright III, which brings us to Act Three of our show. Act Three, Pigeons on a Plane. So we have one more family member on a mission for you today, and this mission was made possible by a government official, a government official in Mexico, namely the Secretary of Migration in the Mexican state of Michoacán. And a little while back, this official, he started to hear that lots of elderly people in Mexico were dying without being able to see their kids. Because their kids were living in the United States and were undocumented. And the kids didn't have the papers to cross in and out of Mexico. The migration secretary wanted to help, and he set up a program to help these elderly Mexicans with families in the US get tourist visas. They have special days at the US embassy for them to apply, buses to take them to the embassy. And then they organized these trips, these trips were they fly them to the United States en masse. These elderly people get regular tourist visas with the same rules as any other tourist visas, but good for 10 years so that they can come and go and see their kids and grandkids in the US. You have to be 60 years old qualify for the program. And since 2017, over 9,000 people have come to the States this way. Not one of them, we're told, has ever overstayed a visa. Over a dozen other Mexican states have created their own versions of the program. In Michoacán, the elderly travelers are known as palomas mensajeras, the messenger pigeons. Reporter Kevin Sieff tagged along on one of their trips. He started in Mexico and flew to the US with them. I'm standing with a group of 70 elderly palomas mensajeras. They're all wearing matching T-shirts and have lanyards around their necks with these big clear pouches, holding their airport tickets and passports. It looks like a giant group of really old schoolchildren. To make sure no one's wandered off, the chaperones take a roll call. We're at a small airport in central Mexico. The people in this group have some very specific things in common. None of them has ever flown on an airplane before, and they're all headed to Chicago to see their kids for the first time in more than a decade. The biggest migration boom from Mexico happened in the 1990s, nearly 5 million people by the end of the decade. The exodus was especially big in a city called Ciudad Hidalgo, where these parents are from. By 1998, roughly 10% of the city's population was living in Chicago. Today, the kids who cross the border as teenagers and 20 somethings are middle-aged undocumented immigrants with children of their own, US citizen children who've never met their grandparents. Those are the grandparents I'm with now. They board the plane slowly, so slowly, as you'd expect on a flight where almost everyone is elderly, on canes and wheelchairs, and utterly unaccustomed to air travel. Sort of chaotic now as everyone's boarding, a lot of confusion about where people are sitting. This woman's asking, am I in the right seat? Is this the right seat? She's actually in the wrong seat. The parent I ended up talking to the most was a mom named Lupita Neri. At 67, she was one of the younger parents on the trip. She sat in the front of the plane in a window seat, wearing a yellow dress and heels and bright pink lipstick. She's saying she expected the plane to move like a truck, but it didn't. Lupita's son, Daniel, and daughter, Marilu, have been in Chicago for almost 20 years. For you guys, you've only been able to talk over the phone. Is there anything you've been waiting to talk to them about in person? Well, I'm going to, of course, get there. And then I'm going to greet my children and my grandchildren. But then there are some things that we're going to have to talk about once we're at home, about what they are going to do. Because I want my kids to come here to be with me. Because I'm all alone here. In fact, this was her mission for the trip. Like parents everywhere, she wants to convince her children to move back home. For months, she'd been preparing what to say, practicing her pitch in the mirror. Yeah, I mean, I actually will, like, talk to myself. I'll say, OK, well, are you going to stay here forever? Or are you going to come back? Because I've said this before, but Chicago isn't your homeland. This is your homeland. And you've already had the opportunity to enjoy Chicago, to work there, but now it's time to come back. So please come back so that you can be with me. This won't be news to her kids. She's brought it up before. How often do you bring it up over the phone? About three times a year. I don't do it too much because I might get hung up on. It's very touchy to talk about that kind of stuff over the phone because my son, he'll get upset. And he says, well, Mom, if I'm earning money to help you, then if I come back there to be with you, how are we going to live? And I tell him, well, from your perspective, you're seeing it as something that's so impossible. But it's not. Save up some money over there so that you can come back here without needing to go back to the United States. And yes, maybe we'll live humbly, and we'll be eating beans and eggs. But you'll at least be here in your home. And my son says, well, I'll think about it, Mom. I'll think about it. Like a lot of the parents I talked to, Lupita never expected Daniel and Marilu to be gone for so long, at most just a few years. Save some money, and then come back to Mexico. That was their original plan. Daniel even bought a calendar and penciled in the date when he would return. But they kept pushing back the deadline, telling her they needed to save more money. Then they had children and houses and dogs and friends. It got harder to leave. Lupita was losing her patience. She'd been living alone since her husband died four years ago of cancer. She wanted her kids with her. Both of them have told me, Mom, just give me time. Just give me time. And I say, but I've already given you a lot of time. Lupita had another son, Isaac, who moved to the US and died of pneumonia a few years ago. She never had the chance to say goodbye, even over the phone. It made her feel like that could be her, dying without them. She wanted the kids back now. Daniel was the first to leave Mexico, back in 1999. He got a job as a dishwasher and then kept working his way up to bartending at fancy restaurants. Marilu joined Daniel in Chicago soon after. She was a single mom with five kids who needed more money for her family. She took cleaning jobs in Chicago. Now she works three jobs, including back-to-back night shifts, cleaning at a restaurant and a health clinic. Lupita says when she's brought up coming home on the phone, she's been pretty gentle. She thinks in person, it'll all be different. She'll be more aggressive, and her kids will really have to hear her out. Her plan was to wait until she'd been in Chicago for about a week before springing this conversation on them. So you got to just wait till everything is calm. Because if I do it immediately, then it'll be like dumping a bucket of cold water on their heads, and that might scare them off. So I'm going to wait for a day when my son takes me out to go sightseeing. And that's when I'll talk to him. We'll maybe go out to have a coffee, maybe eat a hamburger. And then I'll start talking to him about it. And Lupita kept making what sounded like a half joke, half backup plan about her son Daniel. I think sometimes it would be so great if they could actually deport him back to be with me. I asked Lupita what her kids would think if they knew she was saying that. Well, I think they'll get mad. They'll say, what are you talking about, Mom? But yes, this is something that I've thought about, that it might be better if they're deported because then they'll be deported to be back with me. She says in the past, she's gotten so frustrated about her kids not being home that she thought about going to the US embassy to report them. [LAUGHS] I don't think she will be capable to do that. This is Lupita's son Daniel. I caught up with him in Chicago. But maybe. You never know. [LAUGHS] I don't even get mad if she does. I'll be like, OK. You wouldn't get mad if she did that? No. What? She's my mother, so. She gave me life, so. [LAUGHS] I started laughing, to be honest, because make me feel like, oh, she loves me very much. Just as Lupita landed in Chicago with the rest of the parents, Daniel and Marilu and more than 100 other families were waiting in the basement of a packed church. The chaperones had specifically told them not to come to the airport. It wasn't a good idea to have so many undocumented people in a place with so much law enforcement. The organizers tried to keep details about the reunion secret. There's the sinking worry that ICE could find out. Some families worried that the whole thing could be a ploy to deport them. In the church basement, about 300 people, all families, squished together, long folding tables piled with flowers, homemade posters, and heart-shaped balloons. There are grown men walking around with teddy bears for their moms. Then an MC standing near the door started giving updates about the parents landing at the airport, getting on buses headed to the church. The mood got rowdier. Lupita's son Daniel and her daughter, Marilu, are sitting at a table near the center of the room. They crane their necks to watch for the bus. Marilu has been waiting in the church basement for hours. She left three children in Mexico when she came to Chicago, and she brought two younger kids with her. It gnaws at her not seeing her kids back in Mexico. And she worries about her mom dying alone. I feel sad. She's by herself. I worry about her. Sometimes I'm thinking about, what about if something happened to her? What'll we do? I don't want to let her die without me. Suddenly, this famous mariachi song came on. And Marilu started singing along, loudly. The lyrics were pretty on the nose. "Beautiful and beloved Mexico, if I die far from you, let them say that I'm asleep and have them bring me back here." The MC at the church gives an update. The buses with everyone's parents are just minutes away. Marilu suddenly gets quiet. Tears are running down her face. She lets out a sigh. Daniel wipes his eyes, too. Outside, the bus pulls up in front of the church. As they drove to the church, the parents were looking out the windows, commenting on how drab and ugly Chicago is. Well, it isn't beautiful, one of them said to me. But once we parked, everyone got very excited. Lupita says, I'm going to spring to hug them, to greet them. She's the last parent off the bus. She enters the church building and wades into this intense scene, with little pods of families all over the place, hugging and crying. I don't want to cry. But she doesn't see her kids. It's chaotic. Finally, Marilu and Daniel walk up, each of them holding a flower. Daniel is shaking a little. They surround Lupita and start hugging. They're saying, I'm so happy to see you. And it's my mom, my mom. Lupita says, it's so amazing to see you, my daughter. I love you. Marilu gives her a big kiss. Then Daniel says, it's been 20 years since we saw each other. They linger and take a picture together. Lupita meets a great-grandchild, Marilu's grandson, who she's never met before. She tells him that he's so handsome. Then her kids grab her two bags, full of more than 100 hand-sewn sweaters, table linens, and scarves that Lupita has been working on for a year. They joke that they're filled with rocks. She had dreamed of eating at an American restaurant with her family. And suddenly, there she was, in Chicago, and her kids were telling her that they were going to take her out to dinner. Lupita spent three weeks with Daniel and Marilu in Chicago, and they didn't want me hanging around with a recorder, which I understood. But three days into the trip, before Lupita launched into her campaign to convince her kids to move home, Daniel sat down with me for an interview. And he told me, yeah, he knew what was coming. But I ran down the details with him anyway. Your mom, when we were talking about it, she was saying like, she has this whole plan for you. Like, she's talked to the high school principal. Maybe he's willing to hire you to teach English. [LAUGHS] I don't know if that's good. That's my mom's dream, not mine. Daniel is single with no kids, something his mom constantly reminds him. She's trying to arrange things so that she has a perfect place for you. She wants to find you a woman for you to marry. She said you can live in the same house. Oh yeah, she's been finding candidates for that. I'm like, no, this isn't going to work at all because I don't know how to say this, but fortunately, or unfortunately, I have absorbed so much stuff from this culture. And when I talk to people from Mexico, they're like, what he's talking about? Marilu had a different take. She wants to move back to Mexico, but not right now, not for 10 more years. She says she has to earn more money first. I think nothing Marilu and Daniel told us would have been a surprise to Lupita. Lupita knew it would be a hard sell. But she'd convinced herself that she could pull it off. Across Mexico, kids from this generation are coming back voluntarily. Mexico has become a wealthier country in the years since they left. Some of those kids are moving back and starting businesses. Others are retiring, spending more time with family back home. They did what they came to do. I called Lupita after the trip to find out what happened. Did you stick to your plan about how you were going to ask and how many times you were going to ask? Well, I planned it out, and I did it, but well, it didn't work. How many times did you try? Oh, heaven, almost every other day, I'd say something to them. Every other day. Every third day. Yes, every other day, so that I wouldn't bother them. If not, I was going to annoy them. She ran the lines that she rehearsed. But her kids had their own response ready. They reminded her that her visa was good for 10 years, that it would be easier for her to visit them. Did you feel disappointed? Were you surprised by what they said? Desperate. Desperate and sad. Sad at the same time because I said to myself, my God, I think my kids are going to stay there. So when it's my time to go, what's going to happen? They said, our lives are here. Mom, let's not talk about that right now because we're happy, and that will make us sad. She says that's when she understood that their answer was definite, unchangeable. She stopped bothering them about it. She wanted the reunion to remain pleasant. But the truth is there were moments when she became really sad, like when her daughter was at work and she was alone in the house. She kept that feeling to herself. Back in the '90s, millions of Mexican parents watched their kids leave for the US, often with just a backpack and an address. The parents never imagined that the next trips would be theirs to make, elderly moms and dads with 10-year visas, convinced by their kids that it was their turn to cross the border. Like Lupita, she'll be flying back to see her kids now and then. They beat me, she said. I'm not going to say anything more about it. Kevin Sieff, he's the Mexico Bureau Chief for The Washington Post. Our program was produced today by Sean Cole. The people who put together today's show include Bim Adewunmi, Elna Baker, Emanuele Berry, Susan Burton, Zoe Chace, Dana Chivvis, Andrea Lopez Cruzado, Whitney Dangerfield, Damien Graef, Michelle Harris, Seth Lind, Jessica Lussenhop, Miki Meek, Stowe Nelson, Katherine Rae Mondo, Gabriela Munoz, Ben Phelan, Nadia Reiman, Alissa Shipp, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, and Nancy Updike. Our managing editor is Diane Wu. Our executive editor is David Kestenbaum. Special thanks today to Dr. Vaile Wright, Virangna Kaul, Jaya Saxena, Philip Good, and Bernadette Mayer. Our website, thisamericanlife.org, where you can stream our archive of nearly 700 episodes. Also, there's videos and tons of other stuff there. Or get our app, which has all that stuff and also lets you download as many episodes as you want. Again, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. He told me that he bought me a Hanukkah gift this year on his trip to Mexico. I asked him what it is. He was very vague. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
OK, so one of my co-workers, David Kestenbaum, started telling me about this thing. And really, I thought he was completely-- I just-- there was no way it could be true. It just seemed completely ridiculous. And then, I got to say, the more he explained, the more it slowly started to seem like, OK, maybe he's right. Important fact to know about David before we go any further-- he has a PhD in physics, worked at Fermilab on subatomic particles, was on the team that discovered the top quark. And then this whole thing between him and me began when he told me to download an app onto my iPhone. It's called Universe Splitter. OK, so now I've opened it up. And there's, like, a gray steel, fake steel background. And it says in white type on top of it, Universe Splitter, quantum-induced universe bifurcation. What do I do now? All right, so tell me something you are having trouble making up your mind about what to do. You and I are recording this on December 31. Yeah. And I've had a week off. I grew a beard. I noticed. And I'm trying to decide if I should shave it off. And so that's something I'm trying to decide. I have an opinion on that, but-- What's your opinion? [LAUGHS] Actually, I think it looks pretty good right now. OK, so what does this Universe Splitter do? It lets you do both. Like, it creates a duplicate of this universe so that in one you get to grow the beard, and in the other you shave it off. Wait, that's what we're going to do? Yeah. For pretend or for real? No, no, for real, maybe. This is a thing. It's called the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. And there are a lot of really smart physicists who think this is probably what's happening. OK, so how does this work? Like, what do I do next? All right, so there are two boxes there? Yeah. In one box it says, In one universe, I will now. OK, so put, shave off beard tonight. Hold on-- shave off beard tonight. OK, and then the other box is labeled, In the other universe. In the other one, I will now-- Put keep beard. Keep beard. OK. And then what's below it? And then below it there's like a button with like, an atom drawn on it. [LAUGHS] Yeah. Like an atom like you would draw it in a 1950s cartoon. Yeah, that's like the aesthetic of the whole thing. It's like an old piece of scientific equipment. So what does it do when you push the button? So if you push the button, it sends a signal to a fancy piece of scientific equipment at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. And the equipment these days can be tiny, like a little box you can hold in your hand. And it does the following. It takes a single particle of light, a photon, it sends it at a kind of mirror that can make the photon either go left or right. You can think of it that way. Like at random it'll go either left or right? Well, according to the laws of quantum mechanics, which govern very small things, it actually goes both. It's not that we don't know. It actually goes left and right at the same time. So that's super weird, right? But that is actually true, and demonstrated, and like we've known that since the '20s. OK. So then what happens in this device in Geneva? Yeah, so the device fires a photon which can go left or right. And then the device looks to see, well, where did it go? And we know the particle's in both places, right? But when the machine looks, it only finds it in one place. It shows it went either left or right, which doesn't make sense, right? Because we know from the math that the particle did go to both places. So why did we only see it in one of those places? And what's the answer? All right, so one of the answers is that the photon is in both places, left and right, but just in different universes. Wait. So you're saying that when you shoot the photon into the mirror, it actually creates an entire duplicate of our universe. And in one of those universes, the photon is on the left, and the other it is on the right? Yes. It both went left and right. Those are just in different universes. The math of it makes a lot of-- the math of it is very, like, streamlined and simple. I remember the day I saw it in class, and I was like, oh, my god. Maybe it's true. Yeah. So those boxes you filled out on the app-- You mean the box where I typed in "shave off beard tonight", and the box where I typed in, keep beard? Right, right. So it'll basically choose one of those boxes if the photon goes left, and the other box if the photon goes right. OK, got it. You have to do what it says. You mean I have to keep the beard or shave off the beard like it tells me? Yeah. Yeah, because when you press that button, you're going to get back one answer. But there's going to be a duplicate universe in which there is a duplicate you sitting in a duplicate studio and a duplicate me and you holding a duplicate phone in exactly the same way. The only difference is that that phone comes back with the other answer. And then that version of me will do whatever it says on the phone? We know that other guy. We trust him. He's going to go do the other. OK, I think I understand all this. Let's go ahead. Do you want to press the button? Yeah, go ahead. Push it. [LAUGHS] I do feel weird about it. I feel weird. I know it's crazy. I feel weird. You literally just put your finger right up to the button and pulled it away in fear. All right, here it goes-- the split universe. OK, it says, Input valid. Internet contacted. Geneva online. Device ready. Photon emitted. Quantum event. Your universe has just split. You're in the universe in which you should keep beard. And right now in the other universe, the other you is being told to shave off beard tonight. So after that, I kept the beard that night. And friends at New Year's parties asked me about it. And if the universe did in fact split, the other version of me in the other universe must have had different conversations. Maybe for instance somebody gave him a great idea for a show today that, in that universe, instead of airing this show, in that universe you're hearing a totally different theme. And David, just to be sure I'm understanding this, you're saying this isn't a metaphor. You're saying there are scientists who really believe that a second universe gets created? Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think it's not most physicists. And there are some who think it's ridiculous, for sure. But there are some would take it very seriously. OK, where is this alternate universe that we're creating? Yeah, I don't really even know how to think about this. But if this is true, the universe is duplicating itself all the time. It's like a fundamental thing about existence. Well, today on our program, in a universe that may be duplicating itself all the time, we have people who have become entranced by the idea of a parallel universe out there where things are different. In one of those stories, things are better in the alternate world in one crucial way. In another story, two parallel worlds overlap. In another, a woman tries to visit-- she actually tries to go to the parallel universe. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Act 1, Dreams From My Father. So I was e-mailing with a fiction writer that we have on our show sometimes, Etgar Keret, about today's theme. And he told me that his father used to spend a lot of time imagining worlds like we're talking about in today's program-- parallel worlds to ours that are almost the same as our world, but not quite. And he said his father did this starting during World War II. His father was 14, living in Poland-- he was Jewish-- when the Germans invaded and started sending Jews to the concentration camps. During the Second World War, him and his parents, they hid in a hole in the ground that they dug for 620 days. So he had a lot of spare time. And when he was there, he would imagine all kinds of things. He would imagine a world in which the Nazis didn't exist, or in which he wasn't a Jew, or in which people just in general didn't kill each other, you know? And this kind of thing was something that he associated with being a child. Then he kind of felt that it interested him as a child, then I will probably like it too. Back during the war, his father couldn't leave that hole for almost two years. The Nazi headquarters was right there near the hole on the same property. A Christian farmer in his 80s would bring them food and haul out buckets of urine. They couldn't even talk a lot of the time. Etgar imagines it was like two years of meditation. My father, the way that he would talk about his time in the hole, he would say that he would sleep, and then he would wake up, and then he would ask his father if the war was over. And his father would say no, so he would go and sleep some more. That's the way he would tell it to me. I think it's that kind of-- the softcore version. And was it like, when you say a hole, could they even stand up? No. They couldn't stand in it, and they couldn't even lie down in it. They had to sit in it. And when the Russians liberated the town and they were brought out, they had to be carried out because their muscles were so cramped that, by the time of the end of the war, they couldn't move them. Oh, my god. So basically they're in this hole, and they're sitting there? Yes. And you know, it's like it's very, very cold, you know? It's way beyond freezing. And you don't have food. And you hear voices in German, and you know that you can easily be killed. And you close your eyes, and you think of another universe. Etgar's written lots of fiction that imagines parallel worlds of various kinds. And when I asked him if he wanted to do something for today's show, he wrote this story-- a true story that starts when he was a kid. When I was six years old, my dad worked at a pool snack bar not far from one of Tel Aviv's beaches. Every day at 5:30 in the morning he'd leave home for the pool, swim 2 kilometers, shower in the locker room, and get to work. He wouldn't get home till 9:00 at night. 14 hours a day, 7 days a week unloading boxes of soft drinks, dressing toasted sandwiches, brewing coffee in gleaming glasses at the pool snack bar up by the beach. Years later, Dad always said those were the best days of his life, fondly remembering how the salty air blowing in from the sea would mix in his lungs with the smell of the coffee and the imported cigarettes he used to sell at the bar. Coffee, cigarettes, and the sea were always my father's three favorite things. For me, those days were not quite as happy. When Dad came back from work, I was already in bed. And other than Saturdays when I'd go off to visit him at the pool with my mom, I never saw him at all. Not that I was bitter about this. Six-year-old children can't really imagine a different world for themselves, one where their father had more time for them. They accept reality as it is. And yet, I missed him dearly. Seeing this, my mother suggested I go with him every morning to the pool, have a swim together, and take a cab to school from there. I don't remember anything of those morning swims, but the car rides with Dad are crystal clear. It's still dark as we sit in our Silver Peugeot 504, the windows rolled down, Dad smoking Kent 100s and describing parallel universes that exist at this very moment in other dimensions-- universes where everything is precisely identical to ours-- same road, same traffic light, same cigarette in the corner of Dad's mouth-- all except for one tiny difference. And this difference Dad would change every morning, changing the one detail in the parallel universe that differed from ours. Here we are in the parallel universe waiting at the exact same intersection for the light to change. Only in this universe, instead of a Silver Peugeot, we are riding a dragon. And here's another one where under my faded sweatpants hide gills which allow me to breathe under water like a fish. When I was nine, my father got a new job. He no longer had to get up so early in the morning. And in the evenings, we'd all have dinner together and watch the nightly news. I was 22 by the time I moved out of my parents' house, but I still made sure to visit them at least twice a week. And on Saturdays, I'd swim with Dad at the pool where he once worked. When I was 43, my father was diagnosed with cancer. It was tongue cancer, the result of 50 years of smoking. By the time the doctors caught on, it was at an advanced stage. And though we never spoke a word about it, it was obvious to us both that soon he was going to die. On Mondays, I take him in for his physical therapy. And as we sat in the waiting room to see the physical therapist with the British accent, my father sometimes still talked about parallel universes where everything was exactly the same as ours, save for one difference-- say, that dogs could speak, or that people could read minds, or that the sky was purple. And when the milk white clouds floated across it, they looked tasty enough to eat. At the end of every session, the physical therapist would show me how to hold my father's arm when we walked together and what I should do in case he lost his balance. On our way home as we approached the corner of King Solomon and Arlozorov, Dad would always stop. "Do you smell that?" he'd say, and point to the new cafe at the corner. "Just by the smell of it, I can tell you that's the best coffee in town." At this stage of his illness, the tongue cancer was so advanced my father could no longer eat or drink. Instead, he got all his food and liquids through a clear plastic tube straight to his stomach. On one of these Mondays after physical therapy while walking by the corner cafe on King Solomon and Arlozorov, my father, instead of just posing to praise the place as usual, suggested we actually go in for a cup of coffee. "Dad," I said after a moment's hesitation, "you can't drink anything. The tumor is blocking your esophagus." "I know," he said and patted me on the back, "but you can." We sat at a corner table on the sidewalk. I ordered a latte and a glass of water from the pretty waitress. And when she asked my father what he'd like, he asked for a double espresso. I stared at him, confused, and he smiled and shrugged. The waitress noticed Dad's guilty smile and gave me a questioning look. Not knowing what to say, I ordered an oatmeal cookie. Until the coffee arrived, we sat in silence. I wanted to ask my father why he'd ordered the coffee at all and if it had anything to do with the waitress being pretty, but I said nothing. Dad pulled a cigarette pack out of his shirt pocket and a lighter he had stored in his glasses case and set them both down on the table. We waited. A few minutes later, the waitress returned with our order. She placed it on the table-- a latte, a glass of water, and a cookie in front of me, and a double espresso in front of Dad. Aromatic steam rose from my coffee. I wanted to drink it. But doing that in Dad's face seemed unfair, so I just kept staring at it. When out of the corner of my eye, I saw my father quickly snatch the double espresso off the table and gulp it down in one sip. It was impossible. I knew it was impossible. After all, I was there in the room when the oncologists showed me and my mother the X-ray with the tumor resting above the blocked esophagus like a scoop of vanilla ice cream on a waffle cone. My father, she said then, could never drink again. And here we were sitting together on a pleasant summer day at this hipster cafe, me still staring at my steaming cup of coffee, and him by my side, smiling after killing off his double espresso. And for a moment there, I thought maybe we were in a parallel universe. Maybe he told me enough stories ever since I was a little boy to tear open a hole in the aching heart of our universe through which we were sucked into a parallel one, identical to our own in every way save for one exception. In this universe, my dad could drink and eat as much as he liked, and he was not about to die in just a few months. The piping hot coffee slid down my father's windpipe and into his lungs. When it got there, Dad started to choke. He stood up and grabbed his throat with both hands. The wet wheezing noises he made were horrific-- the sound of a man whose lungs are flooded with hot coffee. A bespectacled man from the table next to us leaped up and asked my father if he needed any help. I just sat there paralyzed. The parallel universe I had shared with my father moments ago had vanished, dropping me back into a far worse universe. A few more seconds of gargling followed, after which Dad leaned over and coughed up, evacuating all the fine Italian espresso that had filled his lungs. When he was done, he sat up in his chair as if nothing had happened, inches away from the puddle of coffee and phlegm, and lit himself a cigarette. People at the tables around us kept staring at him. "What did I tell you?" He smiled at me and exhaled smoke from his nostrils. "The best coffee in town." Etgar Keret. He's the author of many books. He writes about his dad and the rest of his family in stories a lot like this one-- emotional fables that happen to be true-- in his book, The Seven Good Years. Act 2, Sorry, Not Sorry. So it's kind of grim to say this, but the moon landing-- that story of American triumph-- it could've gone in another way. In some other storyline from the multiverse, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, they land on the moon, they walk around, it's great. But then there's a problem, and they cannot take off to come home. NASA thought this was the most dangerous moment in the mission, the most likely spot it could fail. One of President Richard Nixon's speechwriters, William Safire, actually prepared a statement to be read in case that was the way the story went. At the top of the page in all caps it read, "In the event of moon disaster,"-- first line of the speech-- "fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore it in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace." Pretty good. David Kestenbaum has this next story about another presidential speech, never delivered, that also feels like it slipped into our world from a parallel universe. You can find this speech framed, hanging in the guest bathroom of a home in California. Here's David. The speech was to be read on the night of August 17, 1998. It's in the house of Bob Shrum, because he wrote it. Shrum was a longtime Democratic political strategist, speechwriter, and getter-outer of tight spots. Are you personally good at apologizing? Oh, I've had to apologize so many times for so many things-- sure. What's the most recent thing you apologized for? Having a fight with my wife about what we were giving various people as Christmas gifts. This story is about an apology he wrote for a much bigger audience. That August, 1998, Shrum was on vacation in Idaho staying with some friends, and the phone rang. Well, I didn't have a cell phone then, so somehow or other-- oh, my office called me and said Mark was trying to reach me. Mark is Mark Penn, who at the time was conducting polls and advising the President of the United States, who at the time was Bill Clinton, who at the time was in a lot of hot water. Impeachment might very well be an option-- tampering with witnesses, obstruction of justice are very, very serious charges. A moment when one political party said there were very valid high crimes and misdemeanors, and the other party said that's ridiculous political posturing. Anyway, there had been stories in the press for months at this point that Clinton might have had an affair with an intern, Monica Lewinsky. Clinton denied it, though, under oath in a civil case, and famously on television. But I want to say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again. I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. But there was the dress with Clinton's DNA on it and recorded phone calls between Monica Lewinsky and a co-worker talking about the affair. At the time Bob Shrum got the call, President Clinton was finally going to have to testify before independent counsel Ken Starr's grand jury. He would have to own up to the affair, and then afterwards say something to the nation. But what? That was what the phone call was about. Shrum called Mark Penn back, who asked if he would take a shot at writing a speech for the president to be delivered on TV just after he gave his grand jury testimony. It would be the president's chance to frame the whole thing, maybe finally put it away and prevent the Republicans from starting impeachment proceedings. The country would be watching. Bob Shrum said OK. He hung up the phone and told his wife and the couple they were staying with on vacation what the assignment was. One of the people there said, this better be good. Meaning you better do a good job? Yes. Yeah. So I sat at the dining room table and I wrote in longhand on a yellow pad, which is how I've always written. I drafted it. What he wrote was a straight up, direct apology. Do you have it there with you? It's on the-- well, actually, I can go get it. You want to hold on for a second? Shrum went to go get it from where it was hanging in what he calls the guest powder room. And to be clear, there's other political memorabilia in there. It's a speech he's proud of. Can you read the speech for me? Yeah. It's not very long, so I will. "My fellow Americans, no one who is not in my position can understand fully the remorse I feel today. Since I was very young, I have had a profound reverence for this office I hold. I've been honored that you, the people, have entrusted it to me. I am proud of what we have accomplished together. But in this case, I have fallen short of what you should expect from a president. I have failed my own religious faith and values. I have let too many people down. I take full responsibility for my actions-- for hurting my wife and daughter, for hurting Monica Lewinsky and her family, for hurting friends and staff, and for hurting the country I love. None of this ever should have happened." Then he has Clinton apologizing for misleading people about the affair. And this is how it ends. "Finally, I also want to apologize to all of you, my fellow citizens. I hope that you can find it in your heart to accept my apology. I pledge to you that I will make every effort of mind and spirit to earn your confidence again, to be worthy of this office, and to finish the work on which we have made such remarkable progress in the past six years. God bless you, and good night." How does it feel reading that? I mean, I remember writing it. I thought it was the right thing for him to say. And when I hear it now, I still think it's the right thing for him to say. It's notable that Shrum had the president apologizing to Monica Lewinsky and her family. At the time, Charles Rangel, the Democratic congressman from New York, called her, quote, "a young tramp." She was the subject of jokes on late night television. Bill Maher said, "I think Monica Lewinsky is the one who should apologize to America." No one seemed to be thinking about her as a person whose life was now a wreck. Shrum was. Well, I mean, she was an intern, a kid in the White House. And I thought that that made every bit of sense in the world. Shrum sent the speech into the White House. And then the day arrived. Clinton gave his grand jury testimony, which was not broadcast. And that evening, the president went on TV to give his speech. Shrum sat down with the rest of the country to watch it. We were just sitting around in the living room, watching it on television. And at that point are you thinking, maybe he's going to read my speech? Sure. I thought he might very well-- Bill Clinton, who I worked with on State of the Union messages, never exactly reads what you send him. So I didn't anticipate that it would be necessarily word for word what I had sent, but I thought it might be pretty close to it. It was almost diametrically the opposite. Good evening. This afternoon in this room, from this chair, I testified before the office of independent counsel and the grand jury. I answered their questions truthfully, including questions about my private life, questions no American citizen would ever want to answer. I not only remember hearing the first words, but I remember the look on his face. He was really, really angry. It's the private Bill Clinton who could get angry. And I have seen him angry, but I don't think the country had seen him angry very often. As you know, in a deposition in January, I was asked questions about my relationship with Monica Lewinsky. While my answers were legally accurate, I did not volunteer information. Indeed, I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate. In fact, it was wrong. It constituted a critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure on my part for which I am solely and completely responsible. There are moments of apology in there and what feel like honest reflection, like when he straight up admits the reasons he had been so evasive until then. I can only tell you I was motivated by many factors-- first, by a desire to protect myself from the embarrassment of my own conduct. But the overall message is not I'm sorry. I screwed up, he seems to be saying, but the real problem is the fact that I'm having to talk about this at all. It's a private family matter. It's nobody's business but ours. Even presidents have private lives. He closes not by asking for forgiveness, as Shrum had advised, but by asking people to stop gawking. And so tonight, I ask you to turn away from the spectacle of the past seven months, to repair the fabric of our national discourse, and to return our attention to all the challenges and all the promise of the next American century. Thank you for watching, and good night. What do you think would have happened if instead that night he'd taken out your speech and read it? I think it would have lessened the chances that he would've been impeached. Really? I don't know that it would have prevented the impeachment, but I think it would have lessened the chances. It's possible his speech gets you to the same ending, just with a slightly different plot. And after all, there was a lot of momentum in Congress toward impeachment. But it's nice to contemplate a world where the leader of your country can stand up and acknowledge having made a mistake, can acknowledge reality. An apology really is about the truth-- laying it out so we can all live in the same world together. It's impossible to imagine that happening now. Clinton seemed closer to it at that moment, but he still couldn't do it. I wonder, of all the possible universes, in how many of them does Clinton say I'm sorry, you know? Not I'm sorry for what happened, or I'm sorry if people feel-- but really like I'm sorry. There may be a universe in which he did that. I'm just not aware of it, because I don't live in it. [LAUGHS] Yeah, that's not the one we live in. You want to know what I think? I think it's possible there is no universe in which President Clinton reads Bob Shrum's speech. Listening to the speech Clinton did give, I kind of think he gives it in every possible universe. It was exactly how he felt. And the speech that you wrote, while great, was not at all how he was feeling at that moment. Obviously, the speech that I drafted did not reflect how he felt coming out of the grand jury. In that sense, can you fault him? I just think you want to do what fits the moment, and you want to be true to yourself. The problem was that, I think, he was true to the angry guy who had just come out of the room, you know? He was maybe not true to the person he was the next day. There are the yous in all the parallel worlds, but also the you on Thursday and the one on Friday, the one who's had some time to think, and some sleep, and a sandwich. For sure, those are different people. David Kestenbaum. In some other universe, he stayed a physicist for all of his life. In this one, he is the executive editor of our program. Bill Clinton, by the way, later wrote about this address to the nation that night in his biography. He does not mention Shrum's draft of the speech, but he does say that most of his advisors had counseled him to simply admit that he had made an awful mistake-- not to go out swinging. He did anyway, of course. Weeks after that speech, he backtracked in front of a smaller audience at a prayer breakfast with religious leaders. He took a different tone there. He said, "I agree with those who have said that in my first statement after I testified I was not contrite enough." It was much closer to what Shrum had written. He included an apology to Monica Lewinsky and her family. Coming up, worried that you're living in a parallel universe where some very basic facts about your own life have been altered? That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, Gardens of Branching Paths, stories of parallel worlds and people who get fixated on the way things could be in those other worlds. In the first half of today's show, we had people imagining other better worlds. In this half, we have people pondering the alternate worlds that are right here around us all the time in this world. We've arrived at Act 3 of our show, Act 3-- Scar-Crossed Brothers. So if you think about it, being an identical twin is kind of a parallel world situation. You know, you have this other version of yourself stuck in the same world as you, stuck in the same house as you. You see somebody who's just like you running around, doing things that you might not do. Dana Chivvis has this next story about a mother, her twins, and a 48-year-old mystery. Annette Sklar had a lot going on in the winter of '72. In January, she delivered twin boys-- Jason first, followed by Randy 5 minutes later. Weighing 5 pounds, 2 ounces, Randy had to spend the first days of life in an incubator. They lived in suburban St. Louis. Annette's husband Dick had a job at a paper company, called Tension Envelope. He worked long hours and traveled a lot. Annette was often at home alone caring for two infants-- feeding them, changing diapers, and making sure she didn't lose track of which one was which, because they looked exactly alike. Were you always scared that you might mix them up? Like from the day they were born, was that a real fear? I tried to be really careful about knowing who either had-- what outfit they were on. I knew-- I was really careful about it. So usually, we had outfits in different colors-- blue, blue Jay, and red, Randy red. And then I didn't think about it too much, once I knew it was. [LAUGHS] That's how we did it. That's a good system. I mean, I think I did feed them twice, one of them, and didn't feed the other one. That happens, sometimes. You did that. You did that. One of them was eating, the other one was crying a lot. And I go, why is he crying so much? She even had a back-up-- a creative redundancy she built into the safety plan for their identities. And that was diaper pins. She used blue diaper pins for Jason, and yellow ones for Randy. Everything went smoothly for a while. And then at six weeks, they had their first check-up. Annette dressed them in the same outfit-- a fancy number their aunt in Los Angeles had sent them. But underneath the clothes, the diaper pin system was up and running. At the doctor's office, a nurse took the babies out of the room. Annette can't really remember why. Maybe she needed to weigh them. And a few minutes later, the nurse came back in with the boys. And she goes, oh, we have such a great surprise for you. Now we have Pampers. We're just using them for the first time. So instead of using your diapers, we used your Pampers. Oh, no. And then they gave me all four of their tins. The nurse had changed the babies out of their cloth diapers and put them into disposable ones, foiling the system entirely. She handed Annette a little bag with the diaper pins in it. The boys were completely indistinguishable. I was very upset. So they go, oh, you're going to be fine. You're fine. Of course, they go, you're fine. And we got in the car, and I was so upset the whole way home. When she got home, Annette put the babies on the couch and stared at them. At six weeks old, they didn't have distinct personalities yet. They weighed the same amount. They had the same bald heads. No birthmarks. And I'm not kidding you, they looked exactly alike. And so I was thinking I was a really terrible mother. Oh, no. Then how can I really look at this and not see my own children and not know which ones they are? You know, she called me in a panic. And she just said, I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know which one's which. I don't know what to do. This is Annette's best friend Linda Wallace-- Aunt Linda, as Jason and Randy know her. She lived in the same subdivision. Did you go over there to try to help her? No, I didn't. Yeah. Because if she couldn't tell them apart, how would I be able to tell them apart? Right. I mean, I couldn't tell them apart, you know? She had the pins. Yeah. [LAUGHS] Were you nervous to tell Dick? Were you nervous to tell your husband? Yes. You were? Yes. I was really nervous. So when he came home, and he saw them, and they were in their crib-- and so finally, I had to tell him. I go, I have to tell you what happened. And I told him. And he goes, really? He goes, oh, we'll figure it out. Let's see. And then we were both looking at both of them right next to each other. And then of course, they had the Pampers on, and nothing. And he's going, I don't know. What do you think it is? (LAUGHING) I go, I don't know. Annette was faced with a decision. She had to choose which baby was Jason and which one was Randy. She had nothing to go on but a maternal feeling, so she chose. Dick agreed with her. I really, always felt like I had the right person in my heart. I just said it is, and I'm not going to think about it anymore. This is my life. We know who they are, and it is who they are. And we're not going to talk about it anymore. Aunt Linda? Not so convinced. Do you think she got it right? Do you think Annette got it right? I don't know. You don't know? I mean, I don't think she knows. She says she did, but how does she know? I mean, there's no way. They were so-- they looked so much alike, and so I'm not sure. Jason and Randy are 48 years old now. They're comedians. They work together. They've done cameos on different TV shows, like Curb Your Enthusiasm and Better Call Saul. And they still look exactly the same. Randy, can you describe what Jason looks like? He's very good looking. Jason, he is very Semitic looking. He's got glasses. He's about 5 foot, 8 and 1/2. That's generous. Somewhat athletic looking. Less generous. They found out about their potentially swapped identities when they were about 12 years old, by accident. They were spending a summer weekend at the world famous Lake of the Ozarks in central Missouri with their mom and Aunt Linda and her two sons. The boys were playing while Annette and Aunt Linda talked amongst themselves. The story of the calamitous doctor's visit came up. And unbeknownst to them, Jason and Randy were in earshot, and they overheard the whole thing. And we were just-- we hated the story. This is Jason. He sounds remarkably like Randy. We were livid that this could have happened, and also that she was sharing it in sort of an offhand kind of joking way. And Linda Wallace, who is a funny woman, was making it funnier. And they were laughing about it. And we were like-- we were just very embarrassed by it and upset by it. Like, oh my god, this is an insane thing to hear, because we may not be who we are. What pissed you off about it? What was so upsetting about it? I think that it just was we were just sensitive, I think, to being confused. And again, it was this narrative that kind of went through our lives, as we wanted to be individuals and we wanted to be seen as individuals. And then here's this thing that happened where we could be so easily confused. For identical twins-- two people who are constantly being mistaken for one another, who try really hard to make it clear that they're unique individuals-- this was a big deal. Randy was the most upset. He goes, why can't you go to the policemen? I think Randy really wanted me to go there. We were talking all the way to the car. Not that an actual crime had been committed, just a crime against their dignity. But for some reason, Randy figured the police were the ones who could sort it out. But Annette did not go to the police. And the name confusion did not get sorted out, it remained a mystery in Jason and Randy's lives. The couple times that it was brought up throughout their years, if somebody said something about it, they would go, I don't want to hear about it. Don't bring it up again. Wow. I had no idea it was that painful for them. I mean, it was a joke between Annette and I that I'm not sure was a joke between all of us, because they were very sensitive about it. Just the simple fact of the matter that for countless times in our lives, someone has said to me, Jason? And I'm like, nope, I'm Randy. Right. You know? Like, that that's happened so many times in my life. If that's not true, there is-- You have to go back to every single one of those people and apologize. --and apologize. No, but there's a notion that you've been living a little bit of a lie. It's a tiny lie, but it's not your lie. Not your lie. It's not your lie, and it's not your fault. But still, that's unsettling in a weird way, to me. That's just weird that for all this time I had it wrong. If they were switched, then they have to re-imagine something that's so foundational nobody ever thinks about it-- their birth. Who's older? Who was in the incubator? Like Randy says, it's weird. It doesn't really make a difference, but also somehow it does. And not knowing what the truth is, that's even more unnerving. It turns out there was one way to figure it out. Sometime around the age of 40-- Randy can't remember exactly when-- the topic of their potentially swapped identities came up. And they were like, why haven't we figured this out yet? They were grown ass adults. They should know who they actually were. And also, they were working as comedians at that point, and they thought it might be good material, which-- we'll see. Randy thought maybe the hospital where they were born would have a copy of their baby fingerprints. They could get those and compare them to their adult fingerprints. He wasn't wrong about the science part of that. Identical twins have nearly the same DNA, so their fingerprint patterns are very similar-- closer than anyone else's. As you probably know, fingerprints are made up of lines. And some of those lines have tiny variations in them, like forks or loops. And those markings are different between identical twins. For those of you still listening, the reason for that is that the markings develop based on the conditions in the womb, like pressure, which is different depending on where the baby is in the womb. So Randy called the hospital where they were born to see if they still had a copy of their fingerprints. The hospital told them that they throw birth records out after 30 years. They were old and out of luck. Until I was back home last summer with my family-- This is Randy. --and I was digging through, just looking at stuff-- In St. Louis. --in St. Louis. I was back in our childhood home that we had lived in since we were four years old. And I found from the hospital our footprints. I couldn't believe it. Where were they? They were in a book-- A chest-- --inside of the-- --next to your bed, right? Next to my bed, there was like a nightstand thing that was like a chest that you could open up. And it was just in the bottom of that. I couldn't believe it. And I'd never seen it there before. And I thought, OK, we could find out. It became more real. Real, and the possibility was rekindled. If they could find someone to compare their adult footprints to their baby footprints, maybe they could put this mystery to bed once and for all. As luck would have it, there was just such a person in Buena Park, California, about 25 miles from Los Angeles where Jason and Randy now live-- a forensic identification specialist by the name of Kurt Kuhn. But Kurt said there was no way he could use a baby footprint from a hospital. Those aren't made for identification purposes, they're made because baby feet are freaking cute. They're mementos, and they usually don't have much detail. In June, Jason sent Kurt the footprints anyway, just to check. And when Kurt saw them, he confirmed that they were mostly just unusable smudges of ink. But miraculously, there was a half-inch spot on the ball of the left Jason foot that had nice, clear lines. He shouldn't have any problem making the identification. He just needed Jason and Randy's adult feet. Faced with the imminent revelation of their true identities, Jason and Randy were forced to think through what they would actually do if they'd been switched as babies, which, let's be honest, is not a long list of considerations. Do you think you'd swap names? Or would we legally change our names to each other's names? Right. If you are swapped, then you're kind of like committing fraud all the time right now. I guess, yeah. Unintentionally. Unintentional fraud, yeah. Well, I would be using his social security number. Right. You know, how does that affect everything we do? I wonder if it does. I mean, maybe it only matters if one of you commits murder barefoot, and then runs through wet cement or something. Right. Maybe practically, it doesn't actually matter. That one's out. We can't do that. We can't do that now. Thanks a lot. Maybe it doesn't matter. I'm probably right about that. Except there's one person who Jason was legitimately worried about-- their mom, Annette, who they're very close with. Their father died in 2009. Annette's had two strokes in recent years. They're protective of her. What if she got it wrong all those years ago? I would feel bad for our mom. Yeah, say more about that. I would feel like maybe she would be embarrassed, or maybe she would feel like she should have spoken up and maybe found out a way in that moment to get our footprints and just dispel it and figure it out. Annette, however, was not concerned. I just have a feeling, that's all-- my feeling, my definite feeling that I know who's who. I know who you are. I'm the mother. I know. What if it's different? You want me to change my name? What if I became Jason and Jason became me? Then you have to have different girlfriends. You mean wives? Mom. A few days before Thanksgiving, I flew to LA and met Randy, Jason, and Annette at Randy's house where Annette was spending the holiday. We left her at home with her grandchildren and headed down the 5 towards Buena Park, and hopefully resolution. Randy said he was feeling remarkably zen. But Jason? I feel more nervous today than ever before about this. Like, I think when we got into this, I was like, oh, this is going to be so interesting and fascinating. But I really want my mom to be right. Like, I want to be me. I don't know. I just woke up this morning saying, god, I hope my mom was right. We turned off the highway, drove through the gates of Kurt's subdivision, and pulled up to a house with a Winnebago out front. Oh, it's a Winnebago. The garage door was halfway down, and behind it we could see a pair of white legs that ended in a sock tan and flip-flops. Kurt? The garage door lifted to reveal Kurt-- What's up? --a tall man with a full mustache and a voice like a cartoon bear. And you're not coming in through the garage. Get on the front porch. Let me get rid of the trash and take them-- All right. Done. Done and doner. We stepped into Kurt's living room, met his wife and granddaughter. Hey, I'm Jason. Nice to meet you. We made an impressive amount of small talk about Thanksgiving, Winnebagos, hunting. Well, have you ever bitten into birdshot while eating? I have not, no. I have, actually. So-- [LAUGHS] Kurt spent 25 and a half years working as a forensic identification specialist for the Beverly Hills and Los Angeles Police Departments. There it is right there, yep. He shows us Jason and Randy's baby footprints. He'd had them locked in his safe for five months. Take those. Oh, they're so cute. It's time to take their adult footprints. All right, so what do we do? Sit down and get rid of a left shoe and sock. Randy goes first. He puts his naked foot up on Kurt's knee. Kurt takes a special ink pad and presses it against his foot. Then he repeats the process with Jason. And that's it. We send them out the door to walk around the neighborhood while Kurt figures out who is actually Jason and who is actually Randy. We go upstairs to his office where he scans the footprints and then pulls them up on his computer screen. He enlarges the baby one onscreen, because it's teeny, and stares at the lines comparing it to the adult footprint. After just 20 minutes, he's done. I text Jason and tell him to come back to the house. OK, here we go. Welcome back. Thank you. Kurt sits them back down on the couch and proceeds with a line of questioning I had not anticipated. OK. Well, my first question is how many other babies were in the doctor's office that day? I have no idea. Kurt, who's one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet, by the way, is screwing with them. [INAUDIBLE] OK, let's hear it. Don't keep us in suspense. So he tells them. Wow. Whoa. My god. Oh, my god. Thanks, Kurt. All right, safe travels. Have a good trip, you guys. Thanks. Thank you. We'll be in touch soon, OK? And you have a safe flight home. Oh. Oh, my god. I'll turn off the air. No, I'm not going to tell you the results yet. On the drive back to Randy's house, their family calls. First, Randy's wife Amy who asks him not how are you, but who are you. Hey. Who are you? Then Randy's daughter Georgia calls with her sister and Jason's kids in the background. Are you you? I'm going to reveal it when I get home. OK, wait. But can we go to the mall? Can we go to the mall, please? We're home. Come on down. Come on in. We walk back into the kitchen we left a few hours before. Annette is there with her four grandchildren. Jason and Randy's aunt and uncle are there too and an English bulldog named Roman. We gather around the kitchen island. Jason's five-year-old daughter, Noah, clings to him. Everyone's excited, a little nervous. First of all-- OK, so first of all, how is everyone feeling? Good. Oh, good! Just get to the point! I'm nervous. We got the results, and we found out that I am me and Uncle Jason is Uncle Jason. I'm so proud of you. I'm so glad. You actually saw it, for sure. Yes. This is great. For sure. We don't have to think about it. But that's what I thought in my heart. I felt like-- You were right. So doesn't that make you feel like-- what does it make you feel like, that you got it-- Just in my heart, it felt like that's who you were, when you're a mother. And now I'm excited. [LAUGHING] I'm happy. You feel good? I'm excited. I love that you're so happy. I'm so happy. So we went down, and he did our footprint. I know. Look, she's really so happy. She's like legitimately happy. Look at the smile on Mom's face. She's so happy. A day later, Randy got Aunt Linda on the phone and told her the good news. Yahoo! Yahoo. So that means that Mom and Dad were right. Well, they had a 50/50 chance. That's right. Thank you, Aunt Linda. Love you. I love you too. So all is well in the Sklar family. Jason is still older than Randy by five minutes. Randy is still the one who spent time in an incubator. They haven't been committing unintentional fraud. They don't have to change their social security numbers. The world Annette said they were living in was indeed the world they were in all along. Dana Chivvis is one of the producers of our show. Act 4, If I Lived Here, I'd Be Home Now. So our last story today is about somebody who tries to visit a parallel world, one that she almost lived in herself. Diane Wu explains. The universe Emily ended up in was like a postcard for old-timey America-- 10 acres in Vermont with five big brothers and sisters eating candy out of glass jars at the family general store. Yeah, we just lived in this big house. And my parents were really strict. [LAUGHS] My parents were so strict. They always reminded me of the Von Trapp family, even though that's really extreme. Mm-hmm. A lot of rules, huh? It was a lot of rules. It was very much do as I say. She almost lived a totally different life. Emily was adopted from South Korea when she was a baby. She's 40 now. And as a kid, she rarely thought about the world she came from, what her life would have been like there. It was the '80s. That kind of thing wasn't especially encouraged. Her family raised her not to ask many questions about her past, but there was one thing she really wanted to know about it. I mean, mostly growing up I just really wondered what my birth mother looked like. Mm-hmm. That was usually the question that always came to my mind. Her adoptive parents didn't look like her. They were white, as was most everybody else in town, so it was hard for her to picture her birth mother's face. But there was no one to ask. A couple of decades later, Emily became a mother herself and suddenly, felt connected to and curious about her birth mother again. She started researching how to contact her and, two long years later, finally got in touch. Then she decided to go on a trip to South Korea to meet her birth mother-- a trip that would allow her to tunnel between the universe that was into the universe that might have been. She recorded parts of it for a podcast called, Motherhood Sessions. All of Emily's emotions about the trip hit her on the way to the airport in New York when suddenly she found herself sobbing while talking to the cab driver. Do you have any family in Korea? I'm meeting my birth mother for the first time. That is exciting for you. Who told about your birth mother? I searched for her through the adoption agency. It took two years-- two years of searching. Oh, that's good. That's good. And what about your dad? I don't know. You don't know? I don't know. OK, don't worry about that anything. It should be better, everything. And it's a very blessing for you. You're going to meet your mother. I know. I know you're feeling, because you've spend your whole life without your mom. I know you spent your whole life without your mom. You need your mom on when your children-- like you babies, you know? Yeah. Going on the plane, too, for me, it was kind of thinking about the last time I took that flight was when I was a baby. And touching down, I remember thinking that the last time I was here was when I was five months old. She had a day to settle in before she met her birth mother. It was the first time she'd ever been to Asia. And wandering around Seoul, it was so easy to imagine the other versions of her life all around her. I'd go in stores, or in restaurants, and I'd think, oh, could I be that woman behind the counter working there? When I'd see a mom with her little girl, I'd be like, oh, wow, is that what it would've been like to walk down the street holding my mom's hand? On her second day in Korea, Emily carefully did her hair and makeup and headed to the adoption agency to meet her birth mother. Their reunion happened in a worn down meeting room in front of a bulletin board pinned with Christmas cards. I see this short Korean woman walk in the door. And we hug, and I cry a lot. And she says [KOREAN], which means I'm sorry. It's the very first thing her birth mother says to her. [SPEAKING KOREAN]. And I say [KOREAN], which means it's OK. [KOREAN] It's like looking in a mirror. That's a social worker in the room translating for them. Emily's birth mother told her her story. She'd gotten pregnant as a teenager, which was completely shunned. There was no place in society for teenage single mothers. A few days after Emily was born, a relative came by with a police officer and social worker, and they took Emily away. A week later, Emily's birth mother went to the police station, desperate to get her baby back. They told her it was too late. She called the adoption agency several times over the years to check in on her daughter. Learned she'd been adopted by an American family. I talked with her on the phone. And when I asked her if she'd ever imagine the world where she did manage to get Emily back, she told me, I haven't really had those thoughts, but I always dreamt about her. Seeing her birth mother's face, meeting her whole extended family later on that trip, it had a profound impact on Emily. I heard her talk about it on that podcast, Motherhood Sessions. And I was surprised and moved to hear her say that being in the same room with her birth family-- For the first time, I felt pretty, you know? Because growing up, your parents always tell you that you're pretty, or whatever. But I never really believed it. But being around this family, and we all look alike, you know? I felt like I was beautiful. And I had never felt it that deeply before. And what do you think is behind that feeling? Because after growing up, living a lifetime of feeling like you don't fit in and wondering why maybe certain guys don't like you, or why maybe you're not the most popular person in school. You know, for the first time in my life, I felt like I made sense. I felt like my being made sense. I felt like my face made sense. Emily stayed with her birth family for three days in a town called Dongducheon in a little house by the railroad tracks. There were ceramic pots of kimchi in the yard, a flat screen TV in the living room that was always playing Korean variety shows and soap operas. Lots of visitors came by to welcome Emily. It felt warm, familiar. On the first night, Emily was getting ready for bed, and her birth mother came in and presented her with four boxes containing gold jewelry for Emily, her kids, and her husband. Emily accepted them, hesitantly. Then using a translation app, her birth mother told her-- She said Korean mothers sleep with their children. And I'm like, oh, god, here we go. Emily had heard about this-- that it's not unusual for Korean parents to sleep in the same room as their kids, even when they're adults. In this room, there was only one bed. She tried to explain to her birth mother, sorry, but I prefer to sleep alone. It wasn't clicking. Emily ended up calling an interpreter she'd hired who had already gone home for the day. And so I called her and asked her to explain that I couldn't do it. And she did, but you could see that my birth mother was pissed and not really happy about it. She had missed years and years of my life. I can understand why she'd want to sleep in the same room with me, but I just couldn't do it. A lot of the time with her birth mother was like this. As a visitor, it was impossible to fit in completely. She was a stranger and family all at the same time, dropping into a place that really felt like it could be home-- but it wasn't. Diane Wu is our show's managing editor. That podcast, Motherhood Sessions, where we first heard Emily's story, it's a show about women and moms in moments of crisis and change. It starts its second season this week. (SINGING) In my alternate universe, things only get better, not worse. There's not a cloud in the deep blue sky, and I'm floating along. Our program was produced today by our executive editor, David Kestenbaum. The people who made today's show include Elna Baker, Susan Burton, Ben Calhoun, Dana Chivvis, Sean Cole, Neil Drumming, Nora Gill, Damien Graves, Seth Lind, Jessica Lussenhop, Lina Misitzis, Stowe Nelson, Katherine Rae Mondo Nadia Reiman, Robyn Semien, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, and Julie Whitaker. Our managing editor is Diane Wu. Special thanks today to Sean Carroll, the physicist at Caltech, who told David about the universe splitter app in the first place. His book about parallel universes created by quantum physics is called, Something Deeply Hidden. Thanks also today to Peter Bresnan, Alexandra Sacks, Suebee Craig, Christine Lee, Kim Park Nelson, Andrew Parsons, Eric Daniels, Joe Magee, Nazanin Rafsanjani, Devon Taylor, Emma Munger, and Molly Donahue. Our website, ThisAmericanLife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Special thanks as always to our programs co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, he put a lojack on his car, but not a good one. When his car got stolen, he starts tracking it, and it shows his car, but-- It actually goes left and right at the same time. Or-- or, everyone, alternative universe photon firing, here we go. Torey Malatia, he is so obsessed with the polls for the Democratic primary. But you know, I don't think he really understands how to read them. He was explaining to me the other day that this poll of the electorate in New Hampshire-- It actually goes left and right at the same time. I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life. (SINGING) In my alternate universe.
|
In these dark, and confusing, and combative times, where in just one month-- and it's a month that doesn't feel that atypical-- we have impeachment hearings, and Australia on fire, and a near war with Iran, and a deadly virus spreading around the world. We thought here at our show, we would try the most radical counter-programming possible. So today, we bring you our show about delight. And our story starts with my co-worker Bim Adewunmi, growing up in East London, in Nigeria, worrying about America from afar. I just remember the feeling of swimming in a lot of American culture. I watched a lot of sitcoms. I'd been watching Roseanne, I Dream of Jeannie, Family Matters. It was a hodgepodge of Americana. A deep dive on Marilyn Monroe, but also the books of Maya Angelou, and also the Cosby spin-off show, A Different World. And I remember thinking, there are so many different types of black people, doing their own version of black people things, and that was really interesting to me. Bim knew there were problematic things about America, of course. Who didn't know that? But at the time, I was like, yay! American pop culture. This is great. And I had such a fixed idea of America. There were a million high school movies and TV shows. I was like, oh, yeah. If I was to land in an American school today, I would know exactly what to do. I know the crowd I would fit in with. It was going to be proms. It was going to be malls. I know where the cafeteria is. I understand that gym is a place of hell. I understood everything around the idea of American school. I had a whole vision of myself and where I would fit in the hierarchy. Seriously? Absolutely. I'd be the semi-jock, because I used to run track at school. So I was like, semi-jock, but sensitive, theater child, but also everybody's friend. Yeah. And I would be approachable by people who weren't as cool as me. I had a whole strategy planned out. I love that you totally pictured your American high school. I was going to be the everyman who was also very cool, incredibly bright, very beautiful, very popular, but wasn't conceited. It seemed a shame to waste all this knowledge that I had about how American society functions by me being in England. It was like, well, what good is all this knowledge here? If you have the knowledge, then you want to be tested. I wanted to be tested. And the only real test is to actually live in America. To live that life. And so, when she was 19, after high school and before college-- they don't call it high school and they don't call it college where she's from-- she decided, I'm going to do it. I'm going to take the test. Live the dream. Go live in America. In fact, not just any old part of America, but a quintessentially American corner of America. And that's summer camp. Summer camp's an institution they didn't really have in either of the countries where she'd spent her childhood-- Nigeria and England. She was hired by a company that brings in teenagers from overseas to work as counselors, and she was assigned to a camp in a very un-British location-- just outside Santa Cruz, California. We were amongst redwoods, some of the most ancient most majestic things ever on the Earth. They've seen [BLEEP] dinosaurs. So we were between the redwoods and the ocean. And I was like, man! You just don't get vistas like this in East London. It felt so American to be in nature like this. And we were sleeping in cabins, and I was like, yeah, this is a camp, all right. In fact, over and over she found herself seeing and doing things that she'd only encountered in American pop culture. For instance, she ate at an old-fashioned diner, with round stools at a long table, and a waitress in a striped blouse who called her honey. Or there was the day that a guy in a grocery store aisle, a total stranger, hit on her, which she'd only seen on television, which apparently is not a thing British men do very much. And each time these things happened, it was exhilarating and surprising. So one of the other counselors at camp, Laurel, invited us all to her parents place on Lake Tahoe. So we drove down in her car, which was a white El Camino truck, and she told us his name was Chester. And I thought, that's perfect. Chester. Chester the El Camino truck. Yes. At that point, I didn't know how to drive. I still don't know how to drive because I lived in London, and there's a fantastic tube, and buses, and whatever, and I walked everywhere-- Whatever. I don't want to hear your British chauvinism of our American way of life. It was great. Oh, my god. Mm-hmm. Anyway, we drove down to Tahoe. And on the way we had the windows down, we were playing loud music, we're wearing jeans cutoffs, and I remember thinking yet again, this moment of stark clarity, I was like, oh my god! This is America! I'm in a truck! We're on the road! The wind is in our hair! This is perfect! We're a bunch of girls laughing about whatever, and it's great. Like it was a performance, but I knew all the words. So you guys are playing the radio. Are you singing along with the radio? Yes, classic road trip-style. And do you remember what songs? Oh, I do remember one song. Super girly. That was the year that Norah Jones' album Come Away With Me came out. Mm-hmm. I don't care what anyone says. That album is a banger. I love it still. Norah Jones' is just perfect. And I remember the lead song, "I Don't Know Why" was on the radio every single day. And I remember us singing it, the final bit where she sings (SINGING) my heart's in something, something, whatever. And then she says this great line-- (SINGING) and you'll be on my mind. And I remember we would sing that, and we'd put our hands to our chests, and we would extend our arms and be like, (SINGING) you'll be-- and we would all sing it. And it was just this very romantic, very windswept-- it felt to me, again, like the perfect soundtrack to my American summer. America is real. America is real! I was like, oh, my god! American things are happening to me. OK, so like I said at the beginning, our show today is about delight. And it was during that summer, Bim says, because it was so full of moments of delight, she started to really take notice of that feeling and think of it as a thing, a thing that you liked. It wasn't just enjoyable, she thought. That feeling seemed important somehow. And I thought, OK, this feeling is something worth repeating. And the idea that you can go and look for delight and you might find it, was, I think, fully planted that summer. In you? In me, yeah. Like if I actively sought out delight, I might be able to find it and replicate it forever. So I thought, OK, we'll just keep doing that. That was a way of organizing my life. By the way, a very un-British way to organize her life, Bim says, to embrace delight wholeheartedly and un-self-consciously. Fundamentally, I'm fighting against every urge in me, which is like, don't. Don't do that. Because I'm still British. I can't help that. So I'm always just thinking to myself, just going like, oh, is that too much? I feel very much like somebody's disapproving nanny. Stop that. That's too much emotion. You know, there's a reason why our national sound is a tut. [TUTS] Stop it. It's an admonishment. It's like, stop it, you know? There used to be a talk show, and the theme song was a little child singing in this very sing-songy voice-- (SINGING) it'll never work. It'll never work. And that is how I feel about most things. That would never be a show here. But this kid just sang in a sole voice, and then a chorus of voices join and say, (SINGING) it will never work! Every time I see it, I'm like, a-ha! That is the spirit of Britain. So there's this poet that I discovered a couple of years ago. He's called Ross Gay, and he's written a book where he basically keeps track of the things that delight him. And that's things, that's people, that's moments, whatever. And the word he used was "negligence." He said it's a negligence if people don't take the time to honor the things that they take delight in, but more importantly, that they share the things that they take delight in. And if you don't do that, there's a loss there. You have to do it to achieve humanity. You have to share delight. And that's what we're going to be doing today, right? Yes, that's exactly what we're going to be doing today. We're going to think about what delights us, why it delights us, why it's important to cultivate delight. And with that, let me just hand over the show to you. You'll host the show from here. OK, you want to do the part where you say "from WBEZ Chicago?" I really do. OK, hit it. Do I say, W-B-E-zed? Sure. OK. From W-B-E-zed Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Bim Adewunmi. Stay with us. Act One-- The Job of Delight. It's one thing to be attuned to delight, but it's quite another to scrape off a sample, stick it on a slide, and place it under a microscope. Enter Ross Gay, the poet I was talking about a moment ago. Ross is an English professor at Indiana University, and a couple of years ago, he embarked on a specific mission-- to think about delight. He made it a practice, in fact. For one calendar year, Ross would ask himself, what delights me? And then he would write it down. He set rules. He would do it every day, he would draft them quickly, and every single delight would be written by hand. He called them essayettes. Some of these essayettes eventually became a book-- The Book of Delights. Here's Ross reading an excerpt of Delight number 80 from the book, "Tomato Onboard," in his living room in Bloomington. What you don't know until you carry a tomato seedling through the airport and onto a plane, is that carrying a tomato seedling through the airport and onto a plane will make people smile at you, almost like you're carrying a baby. I did not know this until today, carrying my little tomato, about three or four inches high in its four-inch plastic starter pot, which my friend Michael gave to me, smirking about how I was going to get it home. Something about this at first felt naughty-- not comparing a tomato to a baby, but carrying the tomato under the plane. And so, I slid the thing into my bag while going through security, which made them pull the bag for inspection. When the security guy saw it was a tomato, he smiled and said, "I don't know how to check that. Have a good day." But I quickly realized one of its stems, which I almost wrote as arms, was broken from the jostling, and it only had four of them. So I decided I'd better just carry it out in the open. And the shower of love began. Before boarding the final leg of my flight, one of the workers said, "Nice tomato!" which I don't think was a come on. And the flight attendant asked about the tomato at least five times-- not an exaggeration-- every time calling it "my tomato." "Where's my tomato? How's my tomato? You didn't lose my tomato, did you?" She even directed me to an open seat in the exit row. "Why don't you guys go sit there and stretch out?" I gathered my things and set the little guy in the window seat so she could look out. When I got my water, I poured some into the little guy's soil. When we got bumpy, I put my hand on the little guy's container, careful not to snap another arm off. And when we landed, and the pilot put the brakes on hard, my arm reflexively went across the seat, holding the little guy in place, the way my dad's arm would when he had to break in that car without belts to speak of, and one of my very favorite gestures in the encyclopedia of human gestures. The Book of Delights is a series of daily snapshots into one man's habits and pleasures. If you ever wanted an essay about the specific sensation of applying coconut oil to a shower damp body, that would be delight number 101. Airports, and the people Ross encounters in them, come up a fair bit. His garden, where we spent a very delightful afternoon talking about bumblebees and potatoes, is the location of many a delight. Some of the delights in the book were things that surprised him, while others were looking back in time, memories of people no longer here. A lot of them featured familiar faces in familiar places. Ross was getting to reassess his environment, and consider it through a new lens-- a delightful lens. I was learning as I was going. And frankly, I was learning how much some of these things delighted me. The question is always, why does that delight me? What does it do to a person to study delight? Or, as it emerges, to study joy every single day for a year? What do you discover? One of the things he discovered is the mechanics of how to find delight every day as a discipline. Because delight doesn't just arrive, you need to actively go looking for it. Being in a state of trying to train your curiosity, and trying to train this sense of not knowing. Delight and curiosity are really tied up. You have to be OK with not knowing things. You have to be actually invested and happy about not knowing things. The Book of Delights is a peculiar thing, an undertaking of serious academic rigor that also makes you feel good. Those things aren't meant to go together. The book offers up many thoughts on what delight is or what it could be, but it never defines it explicitly. The takeaway is that delight, while important, is hard to pin down. Reading the book and talking to Ross about this made me feel like I was floating on a chemically-enhanced-- but perfectly legal in 11 states-- cloud. I began to think of him as a sort of personal delight guru, and so my questions for him began to take on the strong whiff of a patchouli joss stick. Did you end up with a grand unifying theory on what delight is? [LAUGHS] No. No, but I did end up with what feels like a kind of beginning theory of what joy is. [LAUGHS] I just had an image. Delight is like the butterflies flying around and landing on the thing that is joy. Right. See? Patchouli. To Ross, an important part of delight is that it's an invitation. By loving something, we allow other people an opportunity to love it too-- sharing, tapping someone on the shoulder to say, hey, look! So, often I feel like I've had the experience of walking through the world and not seeing anything. And then someone's like, did you see how that-- You don't see it until you see it. And then when you see it, you're like, whoa! We just had a bunch of people over here the other night, and this couple had this little kid. And so, he starts yelling, rainbow! Rainbow! [LAUGHS] And what did we do? We are all in here talking, being adults. Boom! We ran outside and started looking at the rainbow. Thank you. Thank you. It's like, come gasp with me. Come gasp with me. This is unbelievable. Which brings us to Act Two-- The Squeals on the Bus. It's not surprising that it's a child that runs in to tell everyone to come look at a rainbow. There's a feeling that delight is the preserve of children, and any adult who finds delight easily might be a simpleton or a Pollyanna. Perhaps, you've noticed, this whole hour is an argument against that. But for Act 2, let's spend a little time with a five-year-old-- my colleague, Robyn Semien's son, Cole. He recently had an experience around a mundane thing most adults loathe-- commuting. He was going to ride the school bus for the very first time. Robyn has the story. Cole has been looking forward to this exact moment for years, more than kindergarten, or his first day at school. Taking the bus to Cole, is epic. So one morning this past September, with his new sneakers and Batman backpack on, Cole and I walked down our driveway. I just can't wait! I'm a bus rider now! What happened to old Cole? Yeah, old Cole is dead now. Oh, wow! Yeah, when we get old, really old, we start to die. Well, these are very deep thoughts for the bus. Riding the bus, to Cole, was not about riding the bus. It meant he was gaining on his big sister Josie. She's 10, getting a hair closer to that mysterious, frustratingly out-of-reach thing that she has-- autonomy. No, let's wait for the bus here. We're going to walk down to the bus stop together. Come on. Why? Because that where the bus comes to get her, down on the corner. Did you know that? No. For a kid obsessed with this trip, he's surprisingly vague on some of the details. See the tree? What tree? That tree right down there on the corner. Yeah. That's our tree. That's our tree? Mm-hmm. Then we have to wait there? Mm-hmm. Is that how Josie does it every day? That's how she does it every single day. That's how she's been doing it for three years. What? I know! And now it's your turn. Yeah, and now it's not her turn. We get to the corner and wait. Hey, good morning. Our neighbor Ian pulls up, sees us, and gets out of his car. Guess what? What's that? I'm waiting for my bus. Oh! Your first day? Yeah, first time on the bus. All right! Thank you! Cole beams. And pretty soon-- I think I hear a bus. You do? Oh, it was just that car. Cole wills the bus to come sooner, like everyone at every bus stop ever has done. I think I heard my bus. It sounded different. I think I heard it. I don't think so yet, bud. We practiced greeting the bus driver. I'm going to say, hi, busdriver. I'm a little bit shy to say, how are you doing? We do this a couple more times till Cole tells me to stop because it's boring. A little bit boring. And then more waiting. Cole's mood dips. He has doubts. But what if there is not a spot for me in the bus? Oh, there'll be a spot for you. They know you're coming. We told them you're coming. OK? OK. What's taking up that bus? It's taking too long for me. We've been here for over an hour. It's been 10 minutes. And it's taking too long. It's taking crappy long! Crappy long? Yes. That's not something that you say? [LAUGHS] Crappy! No, no. We don't say that. Fine. I'm a little worried that maybe Cole has overimagined the bus ride, and it won't live up. That years of anticipation will only disappoint him in the end. And then rounding the corner-- Oh, man! That's my bus! It's really happening! [LAUGHS] Stand to the side. OK, let's go. Let's go. Cole tears past me and up the bus steps like it's nothing. He's daring, I think to myself. Love you, bye! Bye, mom! Love you! Good morning. Cole stood for a second longer, facing the rows of seats and kids, taking it all in, completely lit up. I can't believe it! I'm on the bus! Yes! Yes! It's my first time. He's fine. Better than fine. Now this is what I'm talking about. That was New Cole, with his producer, Robyn Semien. Act Three-- Mrs. Meek shall inherit the Earth. I think delight might actually be more profound when you've experienced more, including real loss and tragedy. Ross Gay's book of delights is edged in despair. In it, Ross writes about his dearly departed friends, his uncle Earl, his father. He calls them his deceased beloveds. But that's the way of delight. When I think of joy, grown up joy is made up of our sorrow, just like it's made up of what is pleasing to us. Often, it felt like I wasn't going to be able to talk about delight without talking about these other things. Delight often implies its absence. Noriko Meek knows all about that. After 72 years on Earth, she's made some changes lately. Her daughter, Miki, talked to her about it. My mom is 72 years old, and in this new phase of her life, where she's all about doing whatever she wants. I'm glad for her, but sometimes it's kind of annoying. Recently, I was her chauffeur on a road trip through Texas and New Mexico. She woke me up at 5:30 in the morning so we could drive an hour to watch the sunrise from some sand dunes in the middle of nowhere. She insisted on hanging out in a cold crappy parking lot to take pictures of a rainbow. Then when I asked if I could interview her, she told me, "maybe." But first, she needed to take a bath. Her second one for the day. Oh! When she finally got out, she sat next to me on the queen bed we were sharing-- one, two, three-- and then pulled out some floss. I should clean my teeth. You're going to clean your teeth while we're talking? Yeah. So gross. No worry! I can do whatever. Except that I'm sleeping right next to you. I felt that. The first time I notice she'd changed was over the summer, standing outside of my brother's house. We'd been talking about where to go grocery shopping, when she suddenly switched subjects. She asked me, with this smiling but also totally serious face, if I could tell that she was glowing. I wasn't totally sure what she was talking about, so I told her, um, yeah, I guess you look nice. And then I just as quickly changed the subject back to the cheap produce section at Trader Joe's. So why did you ask me that then? Well, because to me it was so obvious you've probably seen it. Because inside, I mean, I think I was glowing inside, just radiating joy. Just delight, you know? I don't think I've ever used the word "delight" in a conversation with you ever. I don't think I start using this word-- yeah, just recently, I think. Because I tell my friends, my life is just delightful, you know? You say that? Yeah, I do. I've never heard you say that. To my friends. This is not the mom I grew up with. She was practical, frugal, and not a big fan of hugs, kisses, or elaborating on her feelings. My mom was married to my dad for 43 years. They met in college in their early 20s, and then went on to have six kids. My mom stayed at home with us full-time, and she was kind of a hard-ass. OK, so what does the word "delight" mean to you? How would you even define that? Delight is just like light your heart out, like ignite something, you know? At the moment, you just feel lightness. So if you were to list what delights you, what's on that list? OK, go first thing in the morning I wake up, and I go to the bathroom, and my Toto toilet is warm. We have a Japanese toilet with a warm toilet seat. Yeah, and I just sit on it. It's just so warm. And I just feel I am so happy. I really feel it. I am so happy! And it happens every morning. [LAUGHS] Yeah, it's a consistent delight. Mm-hmm. Consistent Delight. Other things on her list of delights? Eating discounted donuts for breakfast-- she keeps her freezer stocked with them-- going to a ballet class for seniors, and reading biographies in bed for two hours every night. She also started traveling for fun for the very first time in her life. Right now, she's on a big nature streak. She's hiked through Joshua Tree, the Badlands, Death Valley, the Pyrenees, and on, and on, and on. She exhausts me. So have you ever felt this way before? No. Never? Never. Not even when we were kids or when you had us? No. [LAUGHS] You said no! Yeah, I don't think I felt delighted. [LAUGHS] What did you feel? I was glad you guys are born and safe, but I don't think-- raising kids, taking care of your dad-- yeah, I don't think I ever used the word "delight." Because I mean, I placed myself always like my needs, or whatever, last. Money, or whatever, time. But then after kids all gone, and your dad's gone, finally I have my life, and I can do what I want, whenever, whatever. Just no stress. No responsibility. That's why I say light, I feel so light. And I think delight-- delightful is just the exact adjective for my life at this point. My life is really amazing. And then I see movies. Three movies a week sometimes, at 8:30 in the morning, and that's just wonderful. How many other people in the movie theater? Nobody. Just me. Just great. After my dad died four years ago from cancer, my mom completely fell apart in a way I'd never seen her before. She suddenly became needy, she openly cried. Before then, all her energy had gone into keeping my dad alive. She'd spent a decade caring for him, constantly driving him to the ER in the middle of the night, and checking his oxygen levels while he slept. We never really talked about what it was like for her watching him deteriorate so much that sometimes he felt like a stranger. But then, when he was suddenly gone, all the feelings she'd pushed down came out in this big devastating wave. For a while, she could barely function. Four years. It took four years. I really took a very small step forward after your dad died, just to make sure I'm alive. So each morning I get up and I have this terrible pain in my chest. But then I just say, OK, I think I can make myself live to the end of this day. And that's all I thought about. Do you feel surprised sometimes that you feel this good? I mean, when dad died and I was just so sad, I didn't think this would ever happen. Hmm. I really thought my life was over. My mom grieved intensely like this for about six months, and then I asked her to come live with me in my tiny apartment for a while. She said yes, and I didn't expect her to. I thought she'd worry too much about being a burden. But this time, she agreed with me that staying with me might actually make her feel better. I wouldn't let her sleep on the couch, so we got into this whole nighttime routine where we'd put on our pajamas and read in my bed, like some old married couple. My brother came to visit us once. At 10:00 PM, my mom tapped me on the knee and said, time to hit the hay, Mik. We sat up together, and he was like, what is happening? My mom's choice to stay with me marked the beginning of her opening herself up and putting herself first. Right now, her travel calendar for 2020 is already all booked up-- Alabama, Alaska, Italy, Japan, Chicago, and Spain. Maybe because my life is getting shorter, that pushes me to be more courageous. Yeah. So every day I wake up with some expectation, anticipation. Yeah, on my calendar, there's nothing I don't want to do. If dad had stayed alive and been healthy, do you think you could still feel the way that you do now? Probably not. Isn't that terrible? Because with him, my life, I'll have more responsibilities. He will be number one in my life. And then, my needs will come after his. Yeah, so it's just almost sometimes sounds like, oh, I'm glad he's gone. I'm not saying that. But because he's gone, this is the life I have, and I just want it to be delightful, you know? I think it's OK. It is OK. Yeah. These questions kind of dumb. That's my mom telling me she thinks my questions are kind of dumb. [LAUGHS] Why is it dumb? Delightful? Just too annoying. People will think you're really annoying? Yeah, I think so. That's why I don't know why you want to do this, because the people like, oh, my gosh! I'm so sick of listening to her. So self-absorbed, you know? And so, what would you say to that? I'm sorry. I do feel that way genuinely. And sometimes I feel like I earned it. Miki Meek, a constant delight. Also a producer on our show. Coming up, would you call yourself a dealer of delight? Hmm? You the Feds? I'mma deal with now? I know it was a setup! I knew it! Yes. I'm full of delight, I'm slanging delight. You know what I'm saying? I'm on the internet corners. What you need? What you need? I got it! That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Bim Adewunmi taking over the show from Ira for the day. Yes, we are coming over here stealing your jobs. Today's show-- The Show of Delights. Stories about how we go about making, and feeling, and actively seeking out delight, which is all around us, by the way. The poet Ross Gay, ambassador for delight, writes about a time he was in New York, and saw a man feeding a pigeon perched on his shoulder. He looks closer, and sees-- -- the bird dipping its head into the hand the man must have been holding very near to his own face, so that the feeding was not only kind of romantic, but alluded to that original feeding the bird experienced-- a mother dropping masticated vittles into the tiny chippers gaped mouth, which is, after all, the first romance. It sounds like something out of a children's picture book, doesn't it? Feeding, caring, being companions to our animals. And with that, we've arrived at Act Four-- The Elephant in the Bedroom. Disa Skaff has a job that's out of a children's book. She's a night zookeeper at the Denver Zoo. So while most people are asleep, she's doling out snacks, checking the animals are warm and cozy, turning out their lights, and saying goodnight. Dana Chivvis recently spent a night with Disa at the zoo. Being at the zoo at night is like being backstage hours after a play has ended. The public is long gone. The vendors have packed up their Dippin' Dots and zoo swag. The paths that wind around the animal exhibits are empty and dark, and a little creepy. I follow Disa's flashlight as we walk around. Disa, your job is very dark. Yeah, but you can see where you're walking. Usually, it's just her, the security guards, another night zookeeper, and 3,000 wild animals. Disa has the best job in the whole world. It's the best job in the whole world. See? We walk into a building through a back door-- the special zookeeper entrance. Disa turns the lights on, and I see something I've never seen before-- an elephant on the ground, on his side, (WHISPERS) sleeping. Describe it. So Chuck is sleeping. Oh, he's waking up. He just stretched his back leg out. He's got to push up with his front feet, doing some Upward Facing Dog stretch. And now he's ready for some food. Each of the 450 different species at the zoo has its own nighttime routine, and Disa's put them to bed so many times by now, she knows their individual sleep preferences. Where they like to sleep, how they like to sleep, with whom they like to sleep. There's a lady lizard who uses a male lizard as a mattress, and lemurs who cuddle in branches. The gorillas are the touchiest about their sleep. Disa avoids them after 5:00. Do any animals spoon? Oh, a lot of animals spoon. Our Red River hogs spoon. The Red River hogs? Yeah, we'll see them. They sleep like a pack of sausages. Sorry, hogs. I'm sure she means chicken sausages. There are one-year-old Komodo dragon siblings who sleep crammed together inside a log. A quick aside, because I find it delightful-- those little Komodo guys don't have a father, because their mother impregnated herself. I'm not kidding. Female Komodo dragons can impregnate themselves. Disa knows all the animals, many on a first-name basis. She checks on Daphne the crocodile, and Coco the porcupine, Murray the moray, and fern the bongo. Fern? Hey, fern? Fern's trying to eat my microphone. She wants a treat. We're just saying night-night. These animals know Disa. They have relationship. They're not alarmed to see us. In fact, a lot of them seem expectant, like they've been waiting for her to come by and tuck them in. In the kangaroo section, everyone is crouching in a group. Goodnight, roos! Bakari the zebra is still standing up. Zebras can rest on their feet. Good night, sir. Bugsy and Boo otter literally cannot wait one more second for their dinner. I was going to play you a bunch more cute animal sounds here, but my editor said move it along. So here's some music instead. What's so charming about animals going to sleep? Is it that we're seeing creatures that are so different from us doing something so familiar, reminding us of a commonality that we all have to do this one thing to survive? You know what? Who cares? Here's a baby flamingo who wants us to leave him alone so he can get some shut eye. Sorry! Disa has the easygoing and gentle demeanor of someone who legitimately loves her job, a job we all said we wanted as kids, along with firefighter and astronaut. And unlike the rest of us civilians at the zoo, she gets to have direct contact with the animals, take care of them, which she loves. When I'm there, the zookeepers are hand-feeding Eleanor, a four-month-old kudu, which is a kind of antelope. Eleanor stands on spindly legs and chugs the entire bottle in one go. Good girl, Eleanor. Eleanor's dad, Joe, comes over, looking for some treats, which Disa gives him. This is Joe, the dad. And then she does something else. Did you just eat one of Joe's treats? I did. How was it? Not at tasty as I thought they'd be. I just ate a little. Like, that bit. I take a bite. It's kind of grassy. Disa says primate biscuits aren't bad. Then we both confess to trying dog food when we were kids. There is one animal who's having a rough go of it. We walk around to the back of the great ape house, and Disa points her flashlight at a tree. At the top, tangled up in some branches, is a sheet blowing gently in the wind. One of the reasons we came down here is we have Jaya the orangutan. Oh, my gosh! He is newer to the zoo. Is that-- So he is currently sleeping in a tree. Wait, that's-- no. Yeah. That's an orang-- Yeah. Wait, is he wearing a blanket? Yeah. He's wrapped in a sheet. Jaya should be inside, where it's warm. Orangutans are from the rainforest of Sumatra and Borneo. And I sound this baffled because I really thought I was just looking at a wayward sheet caught in a tree. But then the sheet moved. Jaya was under it, clutching it tightly around his little body. It really looks like there's a little person up there. Yeah. Jaya has only been at the zoo for a few months. He moved here from a zoo in Minnesota in August. He's still getting used to it. A few days ago something spooked him. He retreated to the yard and climbed up a tree. Do you worry about him in the cold like this? We do worry about him, yeah. So from the records today, it looks like the keeper took some binoculars and tried to look at his fingers and toes, to see if there are any signs of frostbite, and they're really bright red. So we'll just check on him throughout the night. I guess one of the complicated things about delight is that it can exist, like a kernel, at the center of misfortune. Sometimes delight is found in the ability to take care of another living thing that needs you. It's nice to be needed. Do you have a favorite animal? My favorite animal is Rudy the rhino. Why? Because he's the best. Why, is he the best? He's like a puppy. Yeah? So he's really gentle and nice. Mostly, I think I love Rudy because most of the animals that I have built a relationship with because I see them all the time. It's usually because I give them food. Rudy, I do not give him food, but he will come to me when I call him. If he's outside and I need him to come inside because it's too cold, I call him, and he'll come over. Yeah, he responds to me, and I don't know, he's my best friend. [LAUGHS] This thing about Rudy and what a nice guy he is, what if the joy we get from interacting with animals, the idea that we can have relationships of mutual affection, is a total illusion? What if the truth is that, for these animals anyway, our relationships are mostly transactional? Does the delight then disappear? Or maybe that is the transaction? We give them food and they give us delight. Just got a text message. There's one last moment I want to tell you about. So one of our hoof stock keepers, Matt, is asking if we can check on Charlie's guillotine door to make sure it got closed. He's sure he did it, but you know how it is. He'll wake up at 2:00 AM in a panic. Charlie is a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig. His day-keeper, Matt, couldn't remember if he'd shut the door to his yard. We go to check on Charlie, and, yes, his door is closed. He's completely sacked out. He's made himself a big nest of hay, somehow managed to cover most of his body with it, his head included. So all we can see is his belly rising and falling with each deep, sleepy breath. 'Night Charlie! Good boy! I like Charlie. He's terse, but uncomplicated, you know? He knows his name. He recognizes that Disa is talking to him and he responds. They're communicating across species. For me, this one short interaction contains all the magic of her job. Disa and a pig are talking to each other. Dana Chivvis, whose love for her dog delights me, co-produced today's show. And for those of you who care, Jaya the orangutan is back indoors, frostbite free. Act Five-- Delight At the End of the Tunnel. I suspect that it's simply a feature of being an adult, what I will call being grown, or a grown person-- Again, Ross Gay. -- to have endured some variety of thorough emotional turmoil, to have made your way to the brink, and if you're lucky, to have stepped back from it, if not permanently, then for some time, or time to time. This is delight number 100-- "Grown." Ross goes on to talk about the importance of seeing things as they are, in the moment where you don't feel panic, or despair, or doom. And knowing what I have felt before, and might feel again, feel a sense of relief, which is cousin to, or rather, water to delight. This last story is about someone who's defined by delight, but then loses it. I first got to know her through her blog, Little Known Black History Facts, which is one of my favorite things. It's an affectionate parody of the Black History Month rollout of African-American excellence that happens every February. But the achievements on this site, they're all made up. Things like, inventor of the church clap, or first person to put more than 25 barrettes in one child's hair at one time. You know, black people stuff. The person behind these perfectly observed jokes is one of the funniest people I know. Her name is Tracy Clayton, although, you may know her as Brokey McPoverty on the internet, where she has legions of fans. Tracy ran Little Known Black History Facts for five years. She's the creator of so many of my favorite things, but Little Known Black History Facts is the one I think about most often, even if Tracy doesn't. Do you remember anything from that ridiculous blog? No. There was Derek Morris, who was the first person to rap loudly to himself while standing at a bus stop. Don't like him. No. There was Haverford Bliss, and he was the first person to renege in a game of spades. You know what? I don't even play spades. I just know that that is a bad thing, I think. [LAUGHS] That's right. There was also George G. Money Spencer, who was the first-- [LAUGHS] he was the first person to end every sentence with, "it is what it is." Hmm. AKA, the patron saint of reality shows. Because they say that all the time. Exactly. At the end of the day, it is what it is. Another great one-- Tracy and I are friends now, but I was a fan first. A big fan. What makes her comedy so good is her incredible observation skills. She works from a position of what the southern writer Kiese Layman calls "black abundance." Her references come from her own black American experience, growing up in Louisville, Kentucky, as well as wider culture. She marries high concept to the very silly, and Little Known Black History Facts was just one of the many things she created. Tracy is a one-woman production line of golden internet content. That gifted brain of hers spots delights and amplifies it. In fact, it felt like Tracy's entire life was about cultivating glee. And then, seemingly at the height of her powers, she just stopped making stuff. She lost her ability to feel delight. I felt like I was laying on the bottom of the ocean floor and looking up, and I could see like the sun, and people on the beach somehow, but I'm just miles, and miles, and leagues, and leagues away from it. Things got really bad for Tracy, and for her that was extreme, because delight wasn't just a job, it was also her identity. This is a story of what happened when things went dark for Tracy, and how she made it back to a place of delight. In 2015, Tracy and her friend, Heben Nigatu, began making a weekly podcast with BuzzFeed, called Another Round. Hi, everyone. I'm Heben. I'm Tracy. And welcome to another round with Heben and Tracy. What was that? I don't know. There was nothing else like it at the time, two black women trading witty banter, and talking about the stuff that was important to them fueled by their natural chemistry, and, of course, given the name of the show, a good amount of booze. Another Round did so much so well-- interviews with academics, comedians, and MacArthur geniuses, like Lin Manuel Miranda and Nikole Hannah-Jones. They even interviewed then presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. But that was only part of it. Their show was funny, intellectual, thoughtful, and also deeply brilliantly silly. I loved their quizzes. One of Heben's masterpieces was a multiple choice quiz on fake names, or as she put it-- Is This A White Man's Name Or Just Some Syllables I Mashed Together, British Edition. British people already have super weird names. They're just doing the most already anyway. [LAUGHS] In this quiz, Tracy had to guess which of the names Heben was reading belonged to an actual real person. All right. Frimfram Fiddlesworth. Primpram Willoughby. I quit. Tristram Hunt. Rimram Pendleton. I'm going to say it's one of the last two. I vote for Tristram. You're correct! Oh, my god! Tracy, I'm so proud of you! Another Round was a hit. They were doing live shows, selling out venues across the country and abroad. They won awards. They sold merchandise. Heben and Tracy were being recognized by fans in the street. As it grew, the show was getting more demanding to make. It needed more money, more staff, more time, and they weren't getting any of that. Then Heben left BuzzFeed. She took a job at The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and came back to record new episodes when she could. But things weren't the same. Tracy understood, but it was still hard on both of them. We didn't have a good way to manage that transition. And I think that since I was the only one in the building who was accessible all the time, a lot of the work fell on me and my shoulders. I'm happy to do the work, but I got tired and didn't know it, you know? I would wake up, like, oh, my god. Again. You know? I can't do this, but I'm doing it anyway. I was working at BuzzFeed during this time, and ended up co-hosting three episodes, sitting in for either Tracy or Heben. There's one episode in particular that really sticks in my mind. So everyone, Heben sends all of her love from the very, very, very top and bottom of her heart. She is going to be back soon. She's still busy making magic and stuff with Mr. Colbert. But in the meantime and in between time, we've got a Bim in the studio! (SINGING) Bim in the studio! My shoulders are working! Hit them with the shoulders! It was a ridiculous time. That seems like so much fun. It was the funnest episode. And I think afterwards, I was talking to you, and it was like, OK, well, we finished that up. We're done recording. And I was like, so what are you up to for the rest of the day? And you said, back to bed for a depression nap. The minute the mic went off, you were like, all right. I'm out. Yeah, yeah. Back to my real life. That's very true. You remember that at all? No, not that. I mean, I remember that episode and that stuff, but I don't remember the depression nap stuff. And I think that's because I was depressed, and your memory it's not there. Also, when everyday feels like another day, and another day, I couldn't even tell you what year that happened. But it sounds about right. I feel like that's the theme for a pretty long period of my life. Listening back to the episodes of the show that aired during this dark period, it's hard to discern that anything was amiss. And that's because Tracy proved to be adept at employing that age-old showbiz trick-- she faked it. Having to fake the funk, as it were, was driven mostly by, I can't let other people down. And it was also like muscle memory, I guess. I'm really, really, really good at smalltalk. When you are faking delight, do you feel delight? Does it bleed into it? Yeah. I would get lost and caught up in the conversation. So I did have chances to get carried away. The effects were not long-term, but it did give me a nice little break, little pockets of OK-ness here and there. But I tell you what, as soon as the interviews and stuff were over, stepping out of the studio, it was just like I had gone 12 rounds with Tyson. The show eventually went on hiatus. Tracy went on disability. At first it was a relief to just stay home. Leaving the house would have meant dealing with New York-- the noise, the people, the subway. But then Tracy realized she was staying in because she was afraid to leave her apartment. This one time I was supposed to go somewhere. I was all dressed. Somehow, by the grace of God, and whoever else was watching, I was dressed. I looked decent. I didn't look depressed, quote, unquote. And I got to the door of my apartment, and I thought about the trek on the subway. And I was like, I can't. And I didn't go out. I put myself through all of that, getting dressed. It had taken hours for this to happen. And I'm fighting with myself. Be kind to yourself. It's OK if your eyebrows don't match. It's OK if it's taking you four hours to get ready. Just do it. And then, by the time I got to the door, I expended so much energy getting myself together, I cannot also expend energy trying to make my brain focus on which stop do I get off of? She did less and less, and the fact that she was doing less made her feel even worse. She turned her quick, talented mind inwards, turned herself into a target, and was relentless at attacking herself. She couldn't turn it off. Tracy stopped cleaning her apartment, barely changed clothes. I just remembered being in my room on my bed. The entire place is a mess. And I was just laying and I was thinking about how nobody knows that right now, this is where I am. And I remember getting my phone to text my friend Teddy, who live in Louisville. And I was just like, I'm having a tough time and I just need somebody to know it. And he was very gracious. He was like, I'm glad that you reached out. And I know it now, but-- I don't know. There was something about just wanting somebody to know that you're sad. That I was like, wow, I'm really sad. After almost a year of feeling truly terrible, Tracy had something that felt like a breakthrough. It started with a ritual she'd been doing every night for months. Oh, there was this moment when I realized that Otis Redding's "Sitting On The Dock of the Bay" is about depression. And I was like, oh, my gosh! This entire time? Are you kidding me? I thought it was some old man song about fishing, because I only knew the chorus. But the words, oh, my gosh. "Sitting on the dock of the bay, watching the tide roll away." Yeah. Just wasting time. Just like nothing else to do, nowhere else to go. So Tracy had a playlist of sad songs, including "Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay," and every night around 9:00 PM, she'd stand at the window of her apartment, smoking, and drinking, and looking down at the street, feeling like a caricature of a sad girl. And this one night, after however many months of this ritual, I just started to dance. First, it was a little sway to whatever song was playing. It may have been the Otis Redding song, because, I mean, it's got a little-- (SINGING AND SNAPPING ALONG IN TIME) Sitting on the dock of the bay, wasting time. You know? You can two step a little bit to it. And after that I was like, maybe I want to listen to other things to dance to. And so, I switched to a different playlist. Couldn't tell you what it was. And I think I danced for an hour-- danced, and smoked, and just drank. And it felt good, and I was smiling, and I was confused. But I was like, don't pick it apart. And also, I could feel how ridiculous I probably looked. Because, I mean, it's not like I was two-stepping the whole time, right? It was just some weird interpretive, can this muscle still move? Can I still do a backbend? I cannot. I learned that. [LAUGHS] But it felt-- I don't know, it almost felt like my body was trying to reach my brain somehow. Because it wasn't my brain that told my body to start dancing, I'm pretty sure. I think my body was like, you know what? You know who I haven't talked to in a long time? The brain. Let me check in with the brain and see how things are going. Oh, terribly? Well, let's dance a little bit. During these months, she also looked at professionals, and she chose a couple who looked like her, understood her. They are all-- and when I say "all" I mean both my therapist and my psychiatrist-- don't know how it happened, but they are both black women. Yay. They will both do-- not interviews-- sessions online. So I didn't have to move-- leave my house when I couldn't. I didn't have to put on pants when I couldn't. One day I got emotional because I woke up late and I forgot about my appointment. So I'm on the little Skype or whatever, I had my bonnet on. And I was like, I'm so sorry that I still have this bonnet on. I know it's not professional. And my therapist said, it's OK. I wear one too. And I was like, every black girl should know what this is, you know? And since then I just show up in my bonnet, like, what's up? Eventually, sometime last year, Tracy found herself asking variations of the same question. She thinks Heben might have mentioned it. It was this-- is there anything good that your depression has given you? It sounded perverse, but she couldn't stop thinking about it, couldn't stop mulling the question. And she found that thinking about the answers made her feel good. When she mentioned it to her therapist, she told Tracy that finding something good in a bad situation could be a good sign of healing. And I was like, sounds fake, but what do you mean? She was like, she said the thing really helps you connect with your emotions. But I don't know what that means. I don't know what it means to connect with an emotion. I feel it. I recognize it. I don't want it. I don't like it. I'm ignoring it. I guess that's what she means. I think you're answering the question. All right. I can check that off my to-do list. So with the question in mind, Tracy started rising in a brand new journal, not unlike Ross Gay's book of delights. She calls it a gratitude journal, which sounds earnest. And yes, she's aware, not very cool. It's a simple practice. A couple of times a week, she writes down what she's grateful for. When she started, she didn't have much faith. A few months ago, I'd have been like, this is just the most ridiculous-- you know? It's not going to work. People were like, get up and walk around the block, and you won't be depressed. Yes, I will. And eventually this gratitude journal is going to turn into a chore, another thing that I can't keep up. That has not happened at all. It really helps to remember good things that happen to you. It's been shockingly effective. In his delight essayette, "Bird Feeding," the poet Ross Gay witnesses a man feeding a pigeon in the park. Less than 30 seconds later, he watches another bird-- a tufted tit mouse this time-- swoop down into the hand of a different, wholly unconnected person. A lovely moment twice over. But he wouldn't have noticed that second bird, he said, if the first bird hadn't prepared him to see it. Tracy's fans thought of her as their first bird, not only a delightful person by herself, but also a doorway to more delight. Now, she's figuring out how to be her own first bird, to develop a system to do for herself what had previously come naturally. Tracy's back at work. She's making new podcasts, interviewing people, being hilarious. She's not faking it. When her mom calls with her four-year-old great nephew Jayden, she's able to pick up the phone, even if it's hard at first sometimes. She'd call, I'd answer the phone. I'm like, yeah, not doing great. I want to get off the phone. She was like, OK. And then she calls Jayden in, and I'm just like, oh. Because he's got so much energy! When I don't have the energy, he still has the energy. So sometimes I'm just like, get this kid away from me! And I loved him, love him to death, but I just couldn't do it in times of high stress. And the first thing he says when sees me is, oh, hey, Tracy. [LAUGHS] Like I just interrupted him from doing something. His important four-year-old duties. Hey, Jayden. How are you doing? Blah, blah, blah, blah. And then my mom will go, ask her the question. And then I'm just like, ugh, I don't feel like it. But then he said, OK, I have a question. And then I'm like, what's your question, Jayden? Why are you so cute? [LAUGHS] And I instantly just perk up and smile. I know what the question is going to be. I know I still don't have an answer. And I know, even as he's saying it, I'm just like, it's not going to work. But as soon as he says it, I'm just like, I don't know, man! Why you so cute? I don't know! Being able to deal with family and a hugely energetic child is definitely a sign of mama's coming back. Sophia home now. Was that a Color Purple reference? It was. This is the blackest This American Life has ever been. [LAUGHTER] Sophia home now. What? Tracy Clayton is the host of the podcast Strong Black Legends. Our program today was produced by me and Dana Chivvis. Our staff includes Elna Baker, Emanuele Berry, Zoe Chace, Sean Cole, Nora Gale, Damien Gray, Michelle Harris, Miki Meek, Lina Misitzis, Stowe Nelson, Catherine Raymondo, Ben Falen, Nadia Reiman, Robyn Semien, Alissa Shipp, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, and Nancy Updike. Our managing editor is Diane Wu. Our executive editor is David Kestenbaum. Special thanks today to Heben Nigatu, Michael Mackenzie, Emily Miles, Ethan Fried, Amy Marsalla, and Joanna Kagan. Our website is thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks to my boss, Ira Glass, who guided me as I hosted the show this week. He really got stuck in. Though it did get a little annoying when he brought his soup into the studio. I'm Bim Adewunmi. Ira Glass will be back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Hey. Hey. How's it going? How are you feeling today? Yeah, it's a little chilly. I'm so excited, man. This is the day. Yeah, this is the day. In a big hall on a pier in Portland, Maine, walls of windows looking out on the water, Abdi Nor, wearing a royal blue three-piece suit, American flag tie, American flag pin on his lapel. Hey, John. Look at you. [INAUDIBLE] Yes, yes, yes. I dressed up for this. I ordered this online. It arrived yesterday. Ooh, just in time. So it's all the US flag. This was recorded three weeks ago. Abdi and 45 others from 25 countries were becoming US citizens. And just before the ceremony started, Abdi was told that he will be leading the entire group at the end in the Pledge of Allegiance. So John, let me see if I sound perfect. Yes. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Yes. Any pronunciation problem? Perfect, but slow down at the end. OK, yeah. It's been a long journey to this moment for Abdi, starting in 2013. We did a whole episode of our show years ago, built around recordings that Abdi made during that difficult journey to America. And today, to commemorate his new status as our fellow citizen, we thought we would replay that story with some updates at the end. His odyssey began when he won something called the Diversity Visa Lottery, or the DV Lottery. If you've never heard of this, it sounds like the kind of thing that can't be real. But it's been around since the '90s, run by the United States government every year. The original idea of it was to get a more varied group of immigrants from a diversity of countries into our country. The Trump administration has cut some of the eligible countries from the list, but the lottery is still operating. Over 14 million people applied for the 2020 lottery, with over 80,000 winners. Back in 2013, Abdi found out he won in a cyber cafe in Kenya. Abdi was a Somali refugee back then, living in Kenya. His next tape I'm going to play you was from those days, so you'll hear Abdi's American accent is not as good as it is now. He remembers the moment that he won this way. He sat down on his computer. I put my confirmation number. I put my date of birth, and then clicked Submit. There was a few seconds of silence. But then, you have been randomly selected. Everybody went nuts, lifted him up in the air in his chair. But Abdi didn't believe it. He asked his friends to put him down and started entering his information into the computer again and again. It's the same answer, the same response. I put in same response. I realized I won. I walked out with these friends all shouting behind me, in front of me, holding my hands, shaking me. My heart was bumping. I was not holding myself together. Moving to America seemed like a done deal. But he didn't know the half of it. Winning the lottery was especially a big deal for Abdi because really more than anybody he knew, Abdi had been obsessed with America since he was little. As a kid growing up in Mogadishu, Somalia, he'd go to the movies, which, in Mogadishu, just meant a TV perched on a table in a shack. And he would bring a pen and paper to watch American films so he could write down any words he didn't know and learn the language better. He became known to people as the guy who could translate the movie for you. Stuff would happen on screen and everybody would turn to Abdi, who would shout out, "He says he's about to kill that guy." He pronounced his English like an American. That's why his accent is so amazing when you hear him, which led to his nickname that all his friends called him. Abdi the American-- that's my name. That's my nickname. And as he got older, he devoted himself to the goal of getting to America, not only studying English, but also teaching it. He did some radio stories in English. And you can totally understand why he'd want to leave his country, right? He grew up in Somalia. For years, there was no functioning government. It was rival warlords, and militias, and just anarchy, dangerous and violent. There were bombings and attacks from the terrorist group, Al-Shabaab, which is affiliated with Al-Qaeda. Abdi says, for him, or really for any man in his 20s in Somalia, it's hard to stay out of the fight. You can't just be neutral and go about your life. He tells stories of Al-Shabaab members threatening him to join them, or else. At one checkpoint on the way to his mom's, they told him basically, next time you come through here, you better be one of us. So it was that, or join the government forces who were fighting Al-Shabaab. Or he could flee the country. You know those boats full of people trying to cross the Mediterranean to get to Europe, and sometimes they sink, and hundreds of people drown? Abdi knows people who've gone on those boats and on boats like them to escape to Yemen. Yes, I've lost three very good friends. And one of these friends had his child less than a year old with his wife. He knew how to swim, but he could not swim because his child was-- you know, he was trying to save his child and his wife. And then they were caught up in the sea and sharks. They were not the only ones who died there. 75 other Somalis were killed in that journey. And that has changed nothing about our decision. That doesn't scare us a lot at all. We know death is there. Several times, Abdi planned to take one of those boats. But he had trouble getting the money together. And eventually, his mom talked him out of it. So instead, he escaped across the border to Kenya. Somalia and Kenya are next to each other. Abdi moved to Nairobi, enrolled in a university, tried twice for a student visa to America, was denied both times. And if he hadn't gotten lucky that day in the cyber cafe, he said he would be looking again in getting on a boat. Yeah. If I had not won this green card lottery, that was one of my options. I was not afraid to do that. I'm looking for a life. And to get to that, I'll keep trying to the death. The thing about the lottery, though, what Abdi learned is that it does not guarantee you a life in America. And in fact, it's just the first step. After you win, you have to wait more than a year. Then you show up at an American embassy for an interview. And you have to gather all kinds of paperwork to bring with you-- medical documents and school transcripts and a criminal background check. Everything has to be perfect, every I dotted. The tiniest mistake means that you can be denied for good. In fact, most years, over half the people who win the lottery never get their visas. They don't make it to America. And right away after winning the lottery, Abdi got a bad break. The police in Nairobi, Kenya, where he lived, started raiding houses, looking to round up all the Somalis like him and kick them out of the country. We have a very unusual, day by day record of what happened to Abdi, because a BBC reporter named Leo Hornak wanted to document this process and started calling Abdi every night. This is one of their very first recordings. Hey, Abdi. Can you hear me? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can hear you. Are you safe right now, for the moment? Yeah. Actually, I'm safe. You sent me an email that had me really worried today. Tell me what happened. Yeah, it was crazy. I was actually chatting with some of the people in our apartment when these guys-- we don't call them the police, we call them the guys. Out of nowhere, they appeared at the gate. And they asked us all to raise our hands up. And you know, we were thinking, like, OK, this is the end of it. We're going to go there tonight. By there, he means a place called Kasarani, a giant soccer stadium that Kenyan authorities and police were using as a makeshift jail to hold hundreds of refugees. Like, oh, my god, the next couple of nights you're going to be spending there in the concentration camp. And then they take you to Mogadishu. And OK, you're going to miss your lottery. All that things were going through my mind. This call happened on April 17, 2014. Abdi had 96 days to go before his interview at the US embassy, which would be scheduled for July 22nd. Leo started calling him every day. He was worried for him. Like I say, over half the people who win this lottery never make it to the United States. Would Abdi succeed? Over the next three months, he faced a horrifying obstacle course. It's just like one seemingly impossible task after another. At several points, he's afraid for his life. And his story is the story of so many people around the world who are desperately trying to make it to America, to become one of us. OK, so you remember where we are. Abdi is about to be taken into custody by the police. Here's Leo Hornak. So here's why the police were raiding Abdi's neighborhood in Nairobi. Al-Shabaab, the very group Abdi moved to Kenya to escape, had been ramping up terrorist attacks inside Kenya. You may remember one of the biggest ones. The hostage crisis in the upscale Westgate Mall is ongoing, the chaotic scene now a tense standoff. In September 2013, Al-Shabaab gunmen trapped hundreds of people in a mall for days and killed 67. And the way the Kenyan government responded to these terrorist attacks was the way governments often do in these situations-- with a huge crackdown on the community they held responsible. Al-Shabaab is from Somalia, so they go after Somali refugees living in Kenya. The government is trying to clear them out of Kenya's cities and move them to camps in the country, or deport them back to Somalia. And in Nairobi, the neighborhood they target is Abdi's neighborhood. It's called Eastleigh. It's a dense neighborhood where many poor Somalis live and where there's some Al-Shabaab support. Eastleigh's been there for decades. It's known as "Little Mogadishu". Abdi lives there with his older brother, Hassan, in a small room with one bed and a single bathroom for the whole building. So back to that phone call on April 17th. The police show up and grab Abdi by the shirt. They just get your collar and hold it so tight. And they tell you, come with me and just get into the truck. That's what they said to all of us. It's 96 days until Abdi's interview. And Abdi's worried they're going to throw him and his brother into a truck and take them into detention, before he can ever get his papers together and leave for America. They threaten you, and they try to forcibly take you to the trucks. We were not going with them. We were saying, OK, let's negotiate. I'm not going anywhere. I have legitimate documents. And they were telling us, OK, bring out all your documents. What do you have? Abdi pulls out his refugee ID. Officially, that should protect Abdi. It's from the United Nations. Unofficially-- He didn't even try to give it a single glance, because he knows the shape. He knows the frame of it. And he says-- he threw it into my face and he says, you're a refugee. What are you doing here? And they were like, come on, give us whatever you have. That's one of them said. So that's when the real business starts. Yeah, when the real business starts. AKA, the bribes. Abdi, his brother, and the neighbors start pooling their cash. In total, I think we give them more than $80 US. And I had to beg them. Please, I have nothing. This is all I have. I have nothing. I have nothing. This is all I have. Please, you have to take it. And how much does $80 US buy you in Eastleigh? It gives you the best food. It's better off jeans, better off shirts, jacket, all that stuff. It's a lot of money. It's indeed a lot of money. And Abdi, what happens next? I mean, there's no solution, right, to this. This could happen again tomorrow. Not even tomorrow. It can happen right now. It can happen tonight. It can happen the next few minutes. It can happen in the next few hours. Talking to Abdi every day, what I realized was how relentless it is. Every night's another excuse for a crackdown. And the Somalis are sitting ducks, trapped in this one neighborhood. Most people are indoors today. They're not going to anywhere. They're not coming out of their houses. April 25th, 88 days to Abdi's interview, and counting. It's a Friday, which normally would be a busy day in Eastleigh because it's a Muslim holy day. People take off from work, go shopping, go out to eat, and meet at the mosque for prayers. But not today. Abdi says last week, the police showed up at a nearby mosque, grabbed people as they left prayers, and drove them away in trucks. We're getting additional threats from the police, saying that they will intensify the operationism, that they will take more people. So Abdi, what do you think you're going to do today? Will you visit a mosque? No, I will not. I never missed a prayer on Friday, but this one. But this one. Never missed, but you never know. Soon, Abdi stops leaving his apartment for anything. He and his brother, Hassan, essentially go into hiding, locked down in their building. They stopped going to school. As the days go by, food begins to run short. Abdi and Hassan pool their supplies with another Somali family on the ground floor of their building-- two women, one a single mother with two small boys. But it's not much. Soon, they're down to just tea and sugar and a loaf of bread they're able to get each day from a Kenyan guy who delivers it on his bike. That's what they were living on-- tea and bread. Our eyes are turning red, and the energy is running out. We're looking, like, pretty skinny. Abdi and Hassan are paying for the tea and bread with money they get from overseas. Years ago, Abdi did some reports for an American public radio show called The Story, and a listener reached out wanting to help. She sends them money, not too different from lots of Somali refugees who have family members abroad supporting them. But obviously, that kind of help only goes so far. It's challenging, because you can't even shut your eyes at night and sleep soundly. This is Abdi's older brother, Hassan. He tells me they aren't sleeping. He and Abdi sound the same, by the way. Apparently, even their father can't tell them apart on the phone. Any minute, you expect them breaking into your house or grabbing you. It's like sleeping with your pants on. You know, you are always ready. You don't know what's happening, you know? Yeah, wow. Feeling at home, it's like, you relax. You watch movie. It's something like-- that never happens. If you hear another sound outside, or some other knocking, or a small kind of sound, what was it? What's happening? Are they coming? We are not criminals, just we are refugees. And I never thought being a refugee will make you sound like criminal. The kind of police abuses Abdi told me about are well documented by human rights groups and journalists-- arbitrary arrests, extortion, beatings, forcible deportation, family members separated. It's illegal under international law to send refugees back to a country where their lives could be in danger. The spokesman for Kenya's Ministry of Interior, which oversaw the police raids in Eastleigh, told me they were justified to make the city safe from Al-Shabaab. But he confirmed that the kind of police corruption Abdi told me about has been a problem for a long time in Kenya. That is a fact, he said. We're not denying that. Abdi and Hassan tell me Eastleigh's come up with a warning system. The first person to spot the police from his window fires a group text to his friends to say, they're coming your way, so you've got time to hide. Then you pass the message on to your friends, and so on. You can tell a raid started, Hassan says, when you hear all the phones going off. With just three months left til his interview, Abdi still needs to get all the documents required by the US embassy, documents from the police, his school, his doctors. But he can't do any of that, because he can't even leave his building. The clock's ticking. This is a long dream. My hopes were high to get this thing. But now today, I'm in trouble, you know? Right. It's not the Americans who are putting my visa into trouble. It's the Kenyans, the Kenyan police. And I'm supposed to have my interview here in July. My heart broke, you know? My feelings are very, very bad. I'm feeling like, OK, you're not going to make it. April 28th, T minus 85 days to his interview. Instead of hiding from the police, people are now surrendering. From his window, Abdi sees entire families sitting on the sidewalk with their belongings. Hundreds of families are on the move back to Somalia. They're ready to show themselves to the police and say, all right, I'm done. I'm done. They don't have any more money to pay off the police. And rather than end up at the football stadium, they'll just go back to Somalia. Even the family on the ground floor, the two women with the young boys, are packing up. Which really broke the heart of my brother and I, because that means we're going to be alone here. Did you have any conversations with them about their plans, what they're afraid of? Can you tell me about any conversation you had with any member of that family? What they are telling me, Abdi, what are you doing here? Come on, move. You're dream about America, that doesn't exist. This is a dream. Come on, boy. You're wrong. That's what they're telling me, Leo. At some point, I'm thinking, like, would be OK to go with them. This is totally no life. I guess it can't be safe for two unaccompanied women with small children to be traveling by car from Nairobi to Somalia. It can't be safe, right? They're expecting everything. They're expecting an extortion of property. They're expecting a rape, because there are gangs on the road that can rape women. And the gangs know that there are Somalis on the move, so they're somewhere on the road where there's no police inside. So they can come and jump into buses, rape women, take their money. And the other thing that these families are fearing when they reach at the border between Kenya and Somalia, another chapter of danger begins, because it's Al-Shabaab that are lurking around the border. And when you fall into the hands of Al-Shabaab, you disappear forever. The other thing that I was also discussing with them about this seven-year-old and five-year-old kids, because these are the age that the Al-Shabaab really want to program the kids and teach them whatever ideologies they believe. And so yeah, the lady looked like she was so much worried for her kids than for herself. Knowing this, these two ladies and the kids must go. Wow. It's really. So you've got a lot of things to think about, a lot of things to worry about. One night on the phone, Abdi asked me if I'm familiar with the migration of the wildebeest. Abdi wants to be clear he doesn't know about this, because he's African. He's a city kid. He's just seen it on Discovery Channel clips like everyone else. Anyway, each year thousands and thousands of wildebeest trek to a river that they have to cross in order to graze on the other side. The river's infested with crocodiles, and not every wildebeest makes it. But they all have to try. Abdi says he knows how they feel. Somalis are prey, he says. They're being hunted. Each evening when I phoned Abdi, I was always concerned that one night, no one would answer, that he would have finally taken the advice of his neighbors, or been hauled off to the holding pens in Kasarani. But when he did pick up, often he wanted to talk about things that weren't related to the Kenyan police or Al-Shabaab. We talked about his favorite movies, Rambo, that movie, The Rock with Nicolas Cage, anything Schwarzenegger. We talked about his friends in the good old days in Eastleigh when you could sit in a cafe and sip tea with camel milk. One thing I asked Abdi about, when people win the regular lottery, you always hear stories about how, all of a sudden, family members are really nice to them, how cousins they haven't spoken to in years start calling to say hi, asking for favors. I wondered if this was the case with Abdi. Here he was sitting in a slum with all these refugees who were in the same terrible situation, and now he had a ticket out. Did people start treating him differently? Yes, Leo, especially the girls. This is a very good question. Abdi's a practicing Muslim, and so are the women he hangs out with. So normally before, you could only visit them in a kind of formal courtship visit at their home-- no having girls over to his place, no hanging out in public. The difference now, since I won the green card lottery, is that they are trying to come to my house. He's talking about before the police raids started, when life was relatively normal in Eastleigh. So I just hear someone coming up the stairs and knocking at my door and saying, hey, Abdi, how have you been? And it's a lady. And yeah, she sits right next to your bed, and it's all about the conversation. She's trying to do anything to attract you with the sweet words. Hi. Do you have a girlfriend? When do you want to marry? What type of girls do you want? Now you're going to America, you need a wife. When you go to America, please let me be the first person that you [INAUDIBLE], because I'm here, and I don't have a husband. Are you thinking about any of these girls? Maybe something could happen. Yes. I really am attracted to one of these girls. She's really beautiful, cute. She's Somali, but she has finished high school in Nairobi. The good thing about her is that she speaks English. She is really, I think, my type. She likes to read a lot, you know? She has a different character. The rest of Somali girls are very shy, but this pretty girl she gives me all this confidence. And she allows me to go to her, and she allows me to hang out with her in downtown Nairobi, wherever possible. So yeah, I think I fall in love. Well, congratulations. That's one piece of good news. Yeah. But unfortunately for the last four weeks, we haven't seen each other. [LAUGHS] May 1st, 82 days and counting. Abdi cautiously ventures out of the apartment building for the first time in weeks. He heads downtown to central Nairobi where life is continuing as normal. It's a stressful journey, but he's able to buy a couple of gallons of clean water and some cans of beans to bring home. He says it's amazing how good these taste to him and Hassan. He tells me he's getting more and more worried about the paperwork he still has to get together for his interview-- his medical records and transcripts from his university. And there's one piece of paper that terrifies him. One of the US embassy requirements is to get a police certificate, something called a Certificate of Good Conduct. What this basically is is proof from Kenyan law enforcement that Abdi isn't a criminal. Abdi doesn't have a record, so this shouldn't be a big deal, except for the place he has to go to get the official certificate-- the headquarters of the Kenyan police. So that scares you a lot. Thousands of Somalis are being held, as we speak. And they are waiting for their return to Somalia, or some of them are waiting for their return to the camps. So while I'm thinking of jumping into a bus and headed to headquarters, stepping in there and saying, hey, guys, I need a police letter, my heart is already pounding. For weeks, Abdi had been talking to me about this, telling me how worried he was about having to go into the belly of the beast. Finally, on a Tuesday morning in May, 77 days before his interview, he gets up early, gets together every ID he has to prove he's a legal refugee, says goodbye to Hassan, and takes a bus to police headquarters. He walks in, waits for his name to be called, and walks up to the window where he faces a Kenyan police officer. And what he encounters is not brutal police tactics, but bureaucracy. He was telling me, there's nothing that I can do but take your paperwork and send it to UNSCR. And then I have to wait for that to come back to me. Even it can take more than five months, he tells me. Five months-- way too long for Abdi to have it in time for his interview on July 22nd. The guy there was not friendly. He was really, really fierce. And I was frozen with fear. And finally I tell him, wait, just listen to me, gentleman. You're talking about five months, sir, but that's not what I'm talking about. If I don't get this police certificate, they will not give me or issue a visa for me, all right? So please, is it possible? And he was telling me, there's nothing that I can do for you. It's going to take more than five months. There's no possibility of you going into a later position with the US Embassy, is there? No. No? It doesn't happen. If you delay your interview, that's the end of it. Some other people will grab the visa. Yeah. Then it's going to be a doom. It's going to be a doom, Abdi says. And I felt that, too. Up to this point, it seemed like if Abdi could just hold on long enough to get to his embassy interview, he'd make it to America. Now, all bets were off. Now, unless this changed, there was no way. Leo Hornak. Abdi decides to keep going back to police headquarters every few weeks, despite the risk, despite how frightening it is, to see if one time maybe he gets a different answer. What happens next in a minute from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program, we're replaying the story of Abdi Nor, just three weeks after the ceremony where he finally became a US citizen. Abdi's a Somali refugee, who escaped to Kenya. And then he won what amounts to a golden ticket to move to the United States and become an American, but only if he's able to make it to an interview at the US embassy, with all the right paperwork, all done perfectly, so he can cash in that golden ticket. The United Nations has reported that the number of people around the world displaced from their homes because of conflict and persecution is at an all time high. It's over 70 million people, the largest number the UN has ever recorded. Abdi, of course, is one of those people. He's Muslim, from a country with a proven history of terrorism. The story all happened back in 2013, but today, under President Trump's travel ban, a Somali like Abdi would not be allowed a visa to immigrate into the United States. Anyway, Leo Hornak continues our story. May 12th, T minus 71 days to Abdi's embassy interview. Abdi gets on a bus home from school and, this time, runs into another danger-- not the police, not Al-Shabaab themselves, but the fear of Al-Shabaab. The bus is so crowded with people. And there are these two ladies watching me. Abdi looks around and realizes he's the only Somali. People can tell. Somalis look different. And a Somali with a backpack on, on a public bus? He knows what people are thinking. They're watching my hands. They're thinking, like, when is this guy putting his hand into that bag and start to blow up? This lady then started shouting at the driver, have you made sure there's no bomb in that bag? I had to fight back. And I say, listen, lady, wait a minute. I'm not what you think I am, you know? No, there's no bomb here. I'm not one of those people. I'm a student, and I'm carrying my books. It's quite embarrassing. And at the same time I feel fear, because everyone in there had very cautious eyes on me. In Kenya, because people don't trust the police, mobs will take justice into their own hands. For example, if a shopkeeper yells "thief" on the street, strangers might grab the person and beat them. And it's not unheard of for people to die this way. A man in the back of the bus chimes in. Why is he there? He shouts, kick him out. I tried as much as I can to calm them down. And they were ignoring me. And then the driver turns his head and tells me, boy, step out of my car. All right, call the police. And you know, we weren't in Little Mogadishu. We weren't in downtown. We were in the middle. And in the middle, what I mean in the middle, is exactly the Bengali police station. This is the police station Somali terrorists bombed two weeks earlier. What do you think? If they kick me out there with a bag standing there near the police station, what's going to happen? They can shoot me to death. I said to the driver, wait a minute. You want to know what's in here? And then I had to unzip my bag and bring everything out-- the books, the papers. Showed him the pen, the ID, student ID. Everything, I brought out. And then I hang the bag upside down and showed him. Do you see anything in there? And then it looked like the driver was kind of satisfied. He looked straight, and he drove the car a little bit faster. Four days later, May 16th, 67 days to the interview, Al-Shabaab blows up two buses. It's a big deal. They were in a Central Market-- at least 12 dead, more than 70 injured. Abdi is sure the police will be out in force, and he hunkers down at home for a while. Hey, Abdi. What's up? How's it going? Leo, it's good. How are you? Yeah, not too bad at all. Could you tell me the date? And then we can start. The date? Yeah. It's May 17, 2014. And last night after that explosion, there was a massive operation in Little Mogadishu. They've knocked at our house. It was like 2:00 last night. We haven't opened. They just kept knocking. And they were thinking, like, there's nobody here. And then they have moved. So hang on. So they kind of-- if they just don't get any answer, then they think it's empty? Yes. The thing is that Eastleigh is not like before. Now, there are no more people at all. 80% have gone. That's what I think. It was like 50% before. Now, it's 80%. Most buildings are empty. So these days when they keep knocking and nobody's opening, they're thinking, like, people here have moved. So yes, that's what we did last night. We just-- none of us opened. There was no light in our house. Because these guys, they're listening to the movements. They're watching if there's any movement in the windows. They are seeing if there's a light, or something. Just something like that shows them there's a life here. So that's what we do. We don't show there's a life. It's totally blackout. Good evening, Leo. Hey, Abdi. How are you? I'm good. I'm good, Leo. How are you? Good. I'm pleased to hear it. I know that you had a tough, a very difficult evening. Do you want to say what the date is and tell me what happened? May 19. Now the time is 8:45. All I can say, Leo, is that I haven't slept for the last, I can say, 30 hours or more, because the police raid has increased. They have come and taken so many people from our neighborhood. And we have realized that this is not the ordinary police. They have changed something. These guys, they don't negotiate on cash. Everything has changed. They're not going into any negotiation at all. They throw you in the back of their trucks and drive away. So many, so many refugees for the last-- And how are you finding this out? How do you know this? Well, I told you already about that girl. She's my-- I can say she's my girlfriend now, but she has a Kenyan national ID. The text message she sent me here, it says, hey, they have been with me for, like, 15 minutes, where she was just sleeping, her room. And one of them said, you are not supposed to be a Somali. You're a Kenyan, so you can be my wife. That's one of the policeman, what one of the policeman said when she showed them her Kenyan national ID. I'm taking all the Somalis, so you would be lonely here. Just come, and you will be safe. You will live with me. And she said, please leave me alone. They took everyone else in the compound where she lived who had a refugee ID. She lived with other girls. And the other girls don't have the national ID, so they forced the girls out. They have finally forced the girls out. I tried to confirm this with his girlfriend, but she didn't want to talk to me about it. Abdi says the police took her roommates that night, but left her behind. So what? She's alone now? What's the situation? She is alone, yes. So Leo, yes, that last night, Hassan and I, we didn't know where to go. We could hear all those sounds-- the knob of our gate, the shouts, the bullets that were being fired into the doors of people. At one moment I was thinking, like, go under your bed. And then a moment, I was thinking like, if they find you here, they're going to kill you. I was like, this is-- I don't know. I've never been in such a stressful situation. So if you were to look outside the building right now, what would you see? Leo, to be honest-- Leo-- I'm not asking you to. I know it's dangerous, but just help me imagine. Leo, to be honest, if I just look through my window, there's nothing that I can see, I'm telling you, there's nothing that I can see. All the lights are off. Even there's no street light here now. It's totally, totally dark. There's only this light coming from the laptop. We have to put lots of things on the windows so that they cannot even see-- that's what I'm doing right now-- so that they cannot even see the light from my laptop. But Leo, I don't know. I don't know why they come midnight. Why is that? Because they don't want us to go to sleep? Why don't they come during the day? They usually come the same time, 2:30, 2:30, you know? And that's exactly when Somali women and children are all asleep and that these guys are coming. They kick the door open, telling you, wake up, terrorist. Wake up. Why are you sleeping? They're coming back every night. What the hell is going on? Why don't they-- at least if they're doing an operation, why don't they come at one time and finish the hell the whole thing? They're killing us. They're killing us by fearing. In this situation, it must be easy for Al-Shabaab to get supporters, I guess-- people who have maybe a little bit of sympathy with their ideas. Did you read or did you hear about the young men who were deported from Kenya to Somalia have already joined Al-Shabaab? No, I didn't see that. They are coming from the border already, attacking Kenya as revenge, because the Kenyans have really mistreated so many women, and children, and so many young men. Kenya is really giving a very good opportunity to these Al-Shabaab guys, because they are getting what they wanted. They are getting the young men that they were looking for. Yeah. Well, I wish I could say more, but I think there's nothing more I can say right now. I know all I need is some sleep. I don't know if you can feel that, but my eyes now-- I can. I can. I can hear you feel very stressed. I hope you get some sleep and keep safe as well, as safe as you can with your good luck, I mean. Thanks, Leo. Good luck to you, too. Days go by. Abdi and Hassan do their best to keep their spirits up and entertain themselves. They read books. They watch Lost and Walking Dead. It's one of the weird quirks of Eastleigh that, even if food runs short, you can still have good broadband internet. They even build makeshift barbells out of old milk cans they've filled with sand and stones and start working out. 1, 2, 3. And they do one of Abdi's favorite things. You want me to go out and get-- Yes. Listen to music. Back in Somalia, if Al-Shabaab caught you with MP3s on your phone, they would flog you. Or they could even kill you for it. They believe most music is sinful. But Abdi always took a risk. He kept his music collection on a secret SIM card hidden under the mattress. This song, called "Careless Whisper," give me some good memories. Because in Somalia, we really had very few Western songs. And there was one time that they got this song and made it into Somali. They translated it. Wow. Yeah, yeah. I would love to play you that. I don't know if it-- let me think where we can get it. Yeah. To be very honest, I have so many songs on my phone, but most of them are very, very old. I really enjoy them. Because I remember my father and the beautiful days in Somalia, he used to play these songs. Because he had this big radio. I'm talking about the '90s, when I was a pretty young guy. And my father used to sit like this. He's leaning against the wall. His big radio was right next to him. And next to him is a flask full of hot tea with his khat. And the khat is the small leaves that Somalis eat as a stimulant. And next to him is also a bowl full of milk. Oh, my god. My father, when he has all that stuff, he's in heaven. He's smiling. He gets his finger on the tape, and he makes us quiet. He says, shut up, and just enjoy. During all this, Abdi did leave the house sometimes, but only for a very specific reason-- either to go to an important class he couldn't miss, or to go to the police headquarters and try his luck again getting the certificate he needs for his interview. Then on May 29th, with 54 days and counting, Abdi sends me this recording. Hi, this is Abdi. I have great news to declare, so let me just-- I'm so excited. Oh, my god. I'm really different today. My police clearance is done. Let me say that again. My police clearance is done. I'm looking at my hand, fingers. They're all black, because I'm still wearing the black ink for the fingerprints. And I'm not sorry about it. I smell the US visa. I smell it. I smell it. I see July 22 coming. This was the only problem. I dealt with it. It's done. At this point, Abdi's a shoo-in. It's almost hard to believe after all the obstacles. But he calls up the embassy, talks through all the paperwork, and they tell him he's good to go. And they'll see him on the 22nd. And his tune on our nightly phone calls totally changes, from this-- My heart broke, you know? I'm feeling like, OK, you're not going to make it. --to this. Now I'm in love with the American culture. I'm in love with their beautiful roads and streets, houses. I'm in love with everything, everything in the United States that's going on. Do you sometimes worry that maybe you're so in love with this place that it might disappoint you when you reach there? Many people who reach America have a very tough time. Mm-hmm. No, I don't worry about that, because I know whatever I have been through, they've never been through. I've been a refugee. I've been hiding from police. I've been hiding from Shabaab. I've been hiding from so many armed groups. I have had enough trouble. I have had enough disappointment. America is an opportunity, so I'll take my chances. And America is an opportunity not just for Abdi, but his whole family. My mother is in Somalia. She's in Mogadishu, the most dangerous city in the world. And so every call that's coming from Mogadishu, I pick up really with shaky hands. Abdi hasn't seen his mother in more than three years. She lives in a tiny, rundown shack made of corrugated tin. And she doesn't always have access to enough food or clean water. If Abdi gets to America, he hopes he can make some money. And even if he can't protect her from violence, he can at least help her to get a better place with clean water and three meals a day. I spoke to my mother yesterday evening. She asked, boy, when are you going out of that country? And I said, mom, I've got 52 days. 52 days. I need your prayers. And she said, oh, my god, he's got 52 days. I'm praying for you, boy. And I know, like I am right now, she's counting the days. It's going to be something that will make her proud, that will make her survive. She's really sending all her prayers towards me. Abdi's older brother, Hassan, has also applied for the visa lottery. Like Abdi, he's worked for years on his English. He came to Kenya years before Abdi. Now he's getting ready to live alone again. Hassan, is there a part of you that thinks, just a little part of you that is a bit jealous about Abdi? Because you both worked hard. And Abdi has got this not through hard work, but by luck. Actually, if I tell you, I don't have the least jealousy at all. If we get two of us visa to get out here, it would even be better. But if someone told me right now, there is one visa, which one of you will take? I would say Abdi, because he's new to this country. And I know how we are so fearful at night. And I know how he can't sleep at night. For him to get visa is my biggest pleasure. Yeah, there's luck there, but luck can be fair. June 4th, 48 days and counting. Abdi goes into the stairwell to use the bathroom and finds a police officer standing there, who calls for backup. The officer doesn't ask for a bribe. He lets Abdi go. Abdi has no idea why. June 8th, 44 days to go. Abdi tells me, apparently the police have started raiding during the day, which is a change. He avoided them because he was at class. June 15th, 37 days to go. Abdi hears on the radio that dozens of masked Al-Shabaab gunmen bombed the police station, stole its weapons, and went on a rampage in a town on the coast, killing at least 48 people. Abdi and Hassan brace for more police raids. July 7th, 15 days to go. Leo, I'm telling you, they have chased me with machetes, with stones. Abdi, you're kidding. Yeah, it was only 12 hours ago. When Abdi and I speak, he's shaken up. He says he just tried to visit the mosque for the first time in weeks. It's right down the block. I was like only 10 steps away from my house, and then there's this, like, 50 armed young men. They were armed with machetes and with rocks in their hands. And they started chasing me and throwing those stones. And then I started running towards the mosque. The mob was a bunch of Kenyans attacking Somalis at random on the streets. Yeah, they caught up with us. They were beating these guys, and I couldn't look back. Oh, no. I threw myself-- I threw myself into the mosque, and then somebody closed the gate. And the sheikh, clerk, he was like, please calm down. If these people want to kill us, I think we will all go to heaven. Because Allah says, if we die in the mosque, that's it. We're going straight to the heaven. Well, did you expect to die? I did. July 17th, five days to go. The woman sending him money from America wires cash for his interview fee-- $320. And then finally, July 21st, one day to go. It's actually not days. It's now hours left to my interview. 10 hours and 53 minutes, to be precise. It's at 7:30 tomorrow morning. I'm not going to bed anymore. I'm not going to sleep. I am sure about that. Tomorrow is going to change my life. It's going to change my life to be the happiest person on Earth. It's going to change my life to be the most devastated man on Earth. So it's this too. Tomorrow night, I'm coming back to this home, breaking everything, smashing everything right here, because I'm happy or I'm angry. In both situations, I'll break these things, I know. I will just give a punch into my laptop. I have to say, Abdi, I'm really excited for you. I'm just wishing you good luck with all my heart. Thank you. I'm going to leave you and let you prepare, and can't wait to speak tomorrow. I wish I will talk to you smiling, not really have that-- I think you will be smiling. That's what I expect. Thank you. Thank you very much. OK, so while I was brushing my teeth this morning, I got a text message, and it was from Abdi. Hi, very bad news. They gave me a red paper that said visa rejected. And yeah, we text messaged backwards and forwards. And the last message he sent to me, which was a few hours ago, was, this is my worst day on Earth. I couldn't get hold of Abdi for a day. When I finally did talk to him, he walked me through what happened. Abdi arrived hours early. The waiting room was filled with other lottery winners. One by one, they were called in, and one by one, Abdi says, they came out grinning. Then Abdi's number was called. This was it, window 9. And there was this American lady. She was a black American, to be honest. I was really happy, because somebody already told me that the ladies are good than the men. So if a lady interviews you, you get the visa also. I was thinking, like, all right, man. You got it. So the first thing she said was, please, can you raise your right hand and swear that everything that you will say is the truth? Abdi did, and he answered a few simple questions. And then she was busy, writing something on her computer. I could feel that my legs were shivering. This is the moment. Man, this is the moment that you have been waiting for. And then she said, so tell me, where did you go to high school? And I said, Mogadishu, Somalia. Where did you go to college, she asked. And he told her his university in Nairobi. But she said the transcripts that you have here does not have a signature. Did you know that? One of his school transcripts didn't have a signature. She took out a pink piece of paper and on the bottom, wrote two words-- "Missing Transcript." She handed it to Abdi and said, sorry, I can't give you the visa. I was looking into her eyes, like, please, come back to me and say, hey, I've changed my mind. Please, please, God. I need your help. I need luck today. But the lady didn't change her mind. She picked up her microphone and called the next number. Dazed, Abdi walked outside and sat alone under a tree outside the embassy. Because I needed to calm myself and bring myself together. I sat there. I was holding my head, and I was looking at this whole world as the worst place to live. I told myself, hey, are you rejected? Is this real, or am I dreaming? I thought it was like a dream. No, you can't do this. You can't do this. The embassy told him he could send them a signed transcript, if he wanted. But they told him not to come back to the embassy. They'd be in touch, maybe. Abdi sent the transcript, even though he was sure he'd missed his chance. Hello, this is Abdi Nor. It's the 1st of August, 2014. An email got into my inbox. It was Immigrant Visa Department at the US embassy. And it tells me, from our records, your document has been received, and your visa will be sent by tomorrow. Oh, my god. This email made me jump off from my bed and hit my head onto the ceiling. It's issued. God, I just looked at it again. It's issued. What the hell is going on? It's issued. This big smile was on my face. I've never, ever had such a big smile-- never ever, ever, ever. Hey, you. Abdi. [LAUGHS] Oh, my god. How are you? Leo. Are you recording this? First, please, before you say-- don't say anything first. Please be recording. I'm recording, yeah. OK, great. How does it feel to be the owner of a US visa? Mm-hmm. What was the question again? Sorry. [LAUGHS] You're on a different planet. Oh, yeah. What does it feel like to be a green card holder? It feels like the dream has just become real. I don't know what to say. It feels like I am not a refugee. No, this is not the refugee that was hiding from the police. I'm an American citizen. There was one thing about the approval of Abdi's visa that made us wonder. The day Abdi's visa was issued, before he heard the news, I had actually called the US embassy in Nairobi. I said I was a reporter doing a story about Abdi and that I was curious about how long their decision would take, because of my deadline. The woman I spoke to said she didn't know. For nine days, Abdi hadn't heard anything. Two hours after my call, he got the good news. We asked the State Department if my phone call influenced their decision about Abdi's visa, and they told us, quote, "The journalist's call played no role in the timing of the visa issuance. Any visa process coinciding with a press inquiry is merely a coincidence." I can't prove anything, but that is at odds with what the woman on the phone told me back when I initially called the embassy. She said that now that they knew I was doing a story about Abdi, they would try and expedite the process, even though I told her that wasn't why I was calling and that I was only asking for information. We spoke with eight immigration lawyers, all experienced with the Diversity Visa Lottery, and they all said my call probably bumped Abdi's application to the top of the pile that day. And with the lottery, because they give out a finite number of visas by a hard deadline, that can be the difference between making it to the US, or not. Leo Hornak, he's now at The Times of London, where he's the executive producer of the paper's new daily news podcast called, Stories of Our Times. The show launches next month. On August 11th, 2014, Hassan took Abdi to Nairobi airport, and Abdi flew to America to live in a small town in Maine. The woman who had been supporting Abdi put him up with her family. He looked for work for a while, finally found a job installing installation. Lived in an apartment with three other Somali guys, mattresses on the floor. He wrote a book about his life, Call Me American. And then, three weeks ago-- If all the candidates would remain standing, or stand if you can, and raise your right hand. Abdi and 45 others in a sunshine-filled room in Maine raised their right hands. Abdi had tears in his eyes. And repeat after me. I hereby declare-- I hereby declare-- --on oath-- --on oath-- --that I absolutely and entirely-- --that I absolutely and entirely-- --renounce and abjure-- --renounce and abjure-- --all allegiance and fidelity-- --all allegiance and fidelity-- --to any foreign prince-- --to any foreign prince-- --potentate-- --potentate-- --state or sovereignty-- OK, jumping ahead here. That I will support and defend-- That I will support and defend-- --the Constitution of the United States-- --the Constitution of the United States-- --against all enemies-- --against all enemies-- --foreign and domestic. --foreign and domestic. Jumping ahead again. It all takes less than two minutes. So help me, God. So help me, God. Congratulations. You are all United States citizens. There's also brief remarks from Senator Angus King. All of you who are immigrants or descendants of immigrants-- A choir sings. (SINGING) And the rocket's red glare-- Abdi leads everybody in the Pledge of Allegiance. -- and to the republic for which it stands-- And afterwards, I get a chance to talk to him. I think every second today was very, very moving. And I feel the transformation happening. I feel the change happening. It's interesting. You actually do feel different now? I feel different, yes. Really, I feel different. I mean, I'm not that Abdi from yesterday. I can feel that. I can sense that, you know? Is the difference just that you feel safe? The difference is that I feel safe, but I also feel empowered. Empowered. Able to vote, able to do anything any citizen can do, able to bring his mother over from Somalia. He's no longer worried that he'd be banned coming in and out of the country, or that the Trump administration will start to deport green card holders like him somehow. Finally, he said, his childhood nickname, Abdi the American, is matched by his nationality. It feels good. Who was I all these years? My life had been based on fighting for survival, and getting out of the war, and being threatened under-- it felt like I didn't have any rights at all as a displaced person, as a refugee, even as a green card holder or a resident in the United States. But now, I feel like it's like restarting. You know, when you play video games, if something happens and then you have a character was killed, you just have the power to go back and redo everything. One of the things I was so curious to ask Abdi about was, he had idealized America so much before he got here, in Kenya he used to say he loved America, so what was it like for him to actually live here? It seemed like no place could possibly live up to the way he'd felt about the United States. And he said, yeah, for all the safety, and opportunity, and freedom to speak and protest that he appreciates here, there were things about America that he was not prepared for. At his first job here installing insulation, guys on the crew stole his hardhat, and his tools, and his winter coat, treated him like an outsider. And in a bigger way, the America that he liked seeing on television when he was growing up, an idealistic, united America, that's what he had expected to find. But that America is not on the TV anymore. It's such a scary place, so divided, more like the Somali tribes. Some things that happen here really reminded me what started the Somali civil war, how people were not happy with each other, how we hated each other's tribe, and power and all that. And then the war that it started in 1991, 30 years old now. So I can't watch America go that path, you know? I can't. So the only thing that I can do is sort of not see the news to not break my heart. So America is such a confusing place. Things are going well for him, though. He got certification as an interpreter, and that's his job nowadays. His brother, Hassan, has made it to Toronto with his wife and kids. And Abdi is attending college part time, studying politics. He doesn't just want to use his right to vote now that he's a citizen, he wants to run for office someday. Well, the program was produced today by Brian Reed, Zoe Chace, Sean Cole, Stephanie Foo, Chana Joffe-Walt, Miki Meek, Jonathan Menjivar, Robyn Semien, Alissa Shipp, Julie Snyder, and Nancy Updike. And editing help for today's show from Joel Lovell. Production help from Noor Gill, Katherine Rae Mondo, Stowe Nelson, and Matt Tierney. Thanks to BBC Radio current affairs, Hugh Levinson and Brigitte Harney, BBC's Crossing Continents radio show, where a version of Leo's story first aired. Special thanks to Esther Sung at the National Immigration Law Center, also to PRI's The World, where Leo was a producer. Our website, ThisAmericanLife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, he was giving me a ride home last night. And I reached out to the radio, which, of course, was playing our station. And before I could even touch the tuner, Torey is so hardcore Public Radio, he screeches the car over to the curve and tells me-- Boy, step out of my car. All right, call the police. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. All right, you're turning your laptop so we can both look? Turning the laptop, so that we can both watch this. That's my co-worker, Emanuele Berry, standing up to show me a clip from an old film on her computer. This is something that she's shown lots of people since she first saw it. It's from an old Soviet movie from 1936. OK, so this is a film called, The Circus. It's kind of like the Russian version of It's a Wonderful Life. It's that classic black and white movie that comes on TV all the time, that's heartwarming, that everybody knows. But then when I saw what was happening, I was like, what is happening? Um, yeah, I'm going to hit Play. So there's this beautiful blonde woman. She's singing in the center of the circus tent. She's an American who has come to Russia to perform. And then this man just starts screaming, stop the show, stop the show. So let me explain who he is. He's German. To be honest, he looks a little like Hitler-- the mustache, or whatever. Oh, and it's 1936, so Hitler's on the rise. Yes. And he's in love with this American circus star, but she's rejected him. And so to get revenge, he is going to reveal her secret to the world, the secret that she's been keeping throughout the entire film. And then he brings out this black baby. Then the baby's, like, a toddler size. Yeah, maybe two. And then the German, he runs up the stairs, and he holds the baby up, almost like Simba. And he starts shaking the baby and screaming, she slept with a Negro. She gave birth to a black child. You're reading the subtitles? Now, he's shaking this child over and over again. He's like, a black child, a black child. And then this guy comes up to him, this Russian guy in the audience. And he's like, what's the problem? And the German guy says, it's a black child. A white woman gave birth to a black child. And while the Russian guy just literally shrugged his shoulders. Yeah, he shrugged his shoulders. And he says, so what? And the German guy goes off on this speech and puts the baby down. And the toddler, he just sort of walks off. And people in the audience, they sweep the baby up in their arms. To protect the baby from this guy. Yeah. And so they're passing this black kid around, all of these white Russian folks. And they're laughing at the guy. Yeah. He's like, why are you laughing? Why is this funny? Remember, it's 1936. In the US, we're more than 30 years before interracial marriage is legal everywhere. I mean, it's Jim Crow. Black people are still being lynched. And to see this scene where this guy is being told, by all these white people, mind you, you're crazy, this is no big deal, I'm like, what is happening here? And as I started to do more research, I learned that this was part of Soviet propaganda for decades-- this message, America is racist, WE are not. In the 1920s and 1930s, African-Americans, they actually moved to the Soviet Union because it was promising a better life. The boy in the film, that black baby, is actually the son of an African-American who moved to the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Wow. And I haven't gotten to the last bit of the scene, which is actually my favorite part of the whole thing. So this Russian woman is cradling the baby, rocking it back and forth. And then she starts singing to him. Mr. Dreams stepping soft, maketh he no noise. Yeah. So she's totally putting this baby to sleep. Yeah, they're putting the baby to sleep. Yeah. And then she passes the baby to this next person. And it just becomes this thing where they're embracing this child, one from the next, rocking it back and forth and singing to it. The other thing that's happening in the scene is that they're all singing in different languages. The Soviet Union at this time, there are all these different ethnic groups. And then there they are, all embracing this black baby. When I'm watching this black baby being embraced, I wonder, was it true? Would black people really be embraced like that? And for the-- In the Soviet Union? In the Soviet Union. And for the African-Americans who went over there and left to escape racism, did they somehow actually escape racism? Because that's a question that I think about a lot. Can I go somewhere in the world and escape racism? Yeah. I had a year or two where I really thought about this a lot. I was working as a journalist in Ferguson, covering months of protests and a community-- really, I was covering a community that was in crisis after the shooting death of Michael Brown. And I just had this experience where I felt like I'd just seen some of the worst parts of American racism, from watching people threaten other people because of the color of their skin, to just looking day after day at the social inequalities that exist in St. Louis and the structural things, like redlining. And it was kind of hopeless. I really felt kind of hopeless about it, at least at the time. And I was a little bit like, I think I just have to leave here. I used to almost play this game as a coping mechanism where I would think about where in the world can I go? I would talk to my friends about Ghana, or Central America, or places in the Caribbean. I'm like, do you think it's better there? Would it be better there to be a black person there? And so seeing this film made you wonder about Russia and, did it work out for the black Americans who moved there? I don't necessarily think that Russia is a better place to live as a black person. But for those people who did move there in the 1930s, and their kids, and their grandkids, what role did race end up playing in their lives? How did it work out for them? That's actually the thing that we're going to be talking about in general in today's program. We have stories of people who decide I'm going to go somewhere, I'm going to move there, I'm going to try to fit in. And we see what happens. And for Act One, an act we are calling Black in the USSR-- Aw, that's cheesy. You came up with that name. I know, but I was joking. [LAUGHS] But it's good. [LAUGHS] Anyway, for that act, Emanuele, you looked for descendants of those African-American expats in Russia, and just explain who you found. OK. So the woman that I found, her name is Yelena Khanga. And she wrote this book called Soul to Soul. She's a black Russian, born and raised there. And I don't know, I sort of felt a connection to her the more I read about her, because she's a college athlete, like I was. She's a journalist, like I am. Her grandfather is from the same county in Mississippi that my grandmother is from. Wow. And I don't know, I sort of just felt connected, in a way. How did you find me? Like, originally? Yeah. Uh, your book. Oh, you read the book, OK. I read the book, yeah. So like I said, Yelena is a journalist. She had a successful talk show in Moscow. They call her the Russian Oprah, which is almost definitely because she's black and had a talk show. It was her grandparents who moved to Russia back in the 1930s. They had a leftist New York version of a rom-com meet-cute. Her grandmother, Bertha, was a Polish Jew who'd been arrested at a women's rights demonstration. Her grandfather, Oliver Golden, was black and had been arrested down the street at a human rights demonstration. And they met at the jail. And in the morning, the rabbi came to bail my grandmother out. And my grandmother said, oh, wonderful. Could you please bail me out together with my new friend, Oliver Golden. The rabbi, her father, saw that Oliver was black. And her father looked at her and said, well, you're staying in jail with your new friend, and left them there. And that's how their love story began. That's a weird matchmaker situation. [CHUCKLES] But it worked. The couple didn't see a future for themselves in America, so they decided to go to the Soviet Union. Oliver had visited before, and they wanted to help build Lenin's great new society, one that promised no racism. Oliver and Bertha settled in Uzbekistan. My grandfather thought there would be some kind of a kinship between African-Americans and dark-skinned Uzbek people. That's why he chose to go there. And he worked as an expert in cotton. Yes, her grandfather left the American South and traveled halfway around the world to work in cotton. He developed a new breed of cotton that would work for Uzbekistan's short growing season. And life was good. They made good money, had a nice apartment, a nanny for when their daughter, Lily, was born in 1934. Oliver wanted her to have everything he thought white kids got in the United States, so Lily had language tutors, music and tennis lessons. But their lives got harder after they became full Soviet citizens and lost their foreigner status. And after Stalin began to solidify his power, they started to live like everybody else. Oliver died in 1940. Lily grew up and went to college in Moscow. She married a politician from Zanzibar, Yelena's dad. He died shortly after Yelena's birth, so the only consistent black presence in her life was her mom. The neighborhood she grew up in-- all white. From a very young age, being black meant constantly explaining herself to the world. My best friend was Sasha. He was a neighbor. And since my childhood, I thought he was my brother, because we were together all the time. So in the street when somebody would ask me, why are you black, he would say, number one, she's my sister. Number two, she is black because her father was from Africa. And guess what? Everybody's black in Africa. And they would say, yeah, but she was born in Moscow. She's supposed to be white. And he says, OK, Yelena, if somebody else asks you the question about color, we're just beating them right away. So we were known in the neighborhood as the most cruel fighter. He taught me how to fight. He told me, you take a bottle, you break the bottle, and with whatever is left, you just put in their face. So we were bad kids in the neighborhood. This was when she was only seven years old. So Russia wasn't some racism-free utopia. People like Yelena obviously came up against what I would call racism. But when I asked Yelena about it-- That was not racism. That was curiosity. That was ignorance, but not racism. This happened a lot in our conversation. Yelena would tell a story about some experience that sounded honestly horrible to me, but she'd always insist that it wasn't racism or discrimination. It was ignorance. I think that ignorance can be, and often is, racism. But I didn't want to debate that fact so much as understand how she thought about it. Although people commented on it, Yelena didn't think too much about the color of her skin when she was a child. She didn't feel different because she was black, but because her family came from America. It wasn't until she started thinking about boys and love that she thought more and more about the way she looked, how much she stood out from everyone else. And I would ask my mother, Mom, why am I so ugly? Why is my nose so big? Why are my lips so huge? And she would say, no, you're beautiful. And then she would ask her American friends to bring American magazines, Black and Lovely-- I think it was called Black and Lovely. And my mom would show me those magazines and say, look, those beautiful women, you look just like them. And I would take this. I was so proud, I would take this magazine, bring it to Sasha and other friends in the street and say, look, I'm just like them. And they would say, Yelena, this is a very strange magazine. Why is everybody black in it? Don't bring those magazines anymore. And I felt so lonely, because I didn't have anybody just like me. I had assumed that there would be a little community of all the black Russians, that they'd stick together and hang out all the time. But it sounds like Yelena didn't have that, wasn't around people that looked like her, not even her mom, really. Lily was much lighter and gorgeous, according to Yelena. Just for the record, when I met Yelena, I thought she was gorgeous. There's something regal about her. It's hard to imagine her as a self-conscious teenager, but she was. My mother would always remind me. Let's say she would tell me, be careful with boys. They would not date you because they love you, but because they would want to try dating a black girl. And that's why my self-esteem was damaged, probably, because I didn't trust any Russian guy that would approach me. And I didn't believe that somebody would fall in love with me at all, sincerely. I wanted to know the ways in which being black shaped Yelena's life in Russia. And to hear her tell it, her family was never denied an apartment because of their race. She was never put into an inferior school because of her race. She was never singled out by law enforcement because of her race. There wasn't that kind of institutional racism. But she was lonely. She felt undesirable. Being black made it hard for her to imagine a future with a partner. So much of my conversation with her was about wanting to find her person, her strong desire to find someone, and her fear that she wouldn't. Despite her insecurities, Yelena was popular and accomplished. She took music lessons, spoke perfect English, and was an excellent tennis player, just as her grandfather would have wanted. Her mother constantly reminded her that she had to be better than everyone else. Apparently, you still have to be twice as good in the Soviet Union. She was recruited to play tennis at one of the country's top universities and accepted into their prestigious journalism program. She had so much going for her, but she still felt like no boy would ever want to date her, until she met Vaisa. He was a chess champion. And well, I started in Moscow State University, so I was a tennis player. He was a chess player. And (LAUGHING) we were a beautiful couple. And he had a very rough time dating me. Then the coach, physical training coach of the university, called his parents and said, do you know that he's dating a black girl? And they said, well, yes. Why? What's wrong? And he said, because she will get pregnant, and she will marry him. Then his parents called my mother and said, if you think that your daughter will make our son marry your daughter, you are wrong. And then my mom said, if you think that my daughter will marry your son, you're damn wrong. There's no way my gorgeous daughter will marry your ugly son. And it was just going back and forth, back and forth. So he felt that he had to demonstrate that, no matter what, he will be with me. So he started missing his classes. And he would come to my classes and sit there. So the teachers from his classes would write him, you have to attend. You have to attend. Boom, boom, boom. So the end of the story was very sad. He was kicked out of university for missing classes, and he was taken to the army. Wait, he had to go to the army? Yeah, yeah. If you are kicked out of university, you have to go to the army. Wow. So that was my first experience dating a Russian boy. Yeah-- a pretty dramatic end to a first relationship. But the drama didn't stop there for Yelena. A few years later, she dated a Russian guy from Veronezh, a small town about a day's drive away from Moscow. They went to visit his parents and stay for the weekend. One morning, she came back from the shower and caught her boyfriend's mother examining the bed sheets. And later, I asked my boyfriend, what was she looking? And he said, well, she never saw people of color, so she thought that the sheets would be turned to-- and she was very surprised that they were clean. But again, it was not racism, it was pure ignorance-- pure ignorance. And this woman adored me later. So but I felt that enough is enough, and it's time for me to be with people that knows who I am, that don't look at my sheets, and don't ask stupid questions. Something was missing for Yelena in Russia. And like me and her grandparents, she decided to look elsewhere for answers. She thought she'd find them in the very country that her grandparents had fled-- America. Yelena had heard about American racism, but she still thought she would be better off in the USA. When we saw Eddie Murphy, when we heard about Arthur Ash, when we heard about those brilliant musicians and jazz musicians, and all of them were black and very, very, very successful. So when my grandmother would start telling me about racism, I would say, yeah, yeah, yeah, right, and think about all those very famous African-American athletes that would be laughing all the way to the bank. So I felt that I would be understood much better by people like me. And in fact, yes, I was dreaming about going to United States and marrying an African-American. When you pictured and dreamed of going to America, what did that life look like? How would this guy look like? The man of my dream? [LAUGHS] I said life, but I guess we could also get a description of the guy. Uh, yeah. See, I was not really dreaming about skyscrapers and, you know, capitalism, and all that. I didn't understand about that, but I just felt that-- what's this song? (SINGING) One day, da da da dum, he'll be tall and black. Da da da dum. Whose song was that? "One Day Your Prince Will Come," The Sleeping Beauty. Yeah. Yes. Actually, "It's The Man I Love." It's Gershwin, not Disney. But what do I know? My parents almost exclusively listened to Stevie Wonder's Inner Visions for most of my childhood. I was expecting to meet a prince that would look like me. And he would look at me and he would say, oh, my God, you're so gorgeous. Because even the guy that really, really loved me, Vaisa, in the university, he used to call me Monkey. He called me Monkey, with love. He didn't realize that that was insulting. And I never told him that, in America, that would be insulting. But you know, in Russia, guys would call their girls Rabbit-- I don't know-- my cat. Well, he called me, My Monkey. And I couldn't explain to him that that was racist, because I knew he was not a racist. That's just how he called me. And I felt, OK, if I look like a monkey, and so what? Wait. So this guy called you Monkey, and you didn't say, hey, you can't do that? But he didn't insult me. He didn't mean to insult me, he loved me. And as I told you, he was punished for this love. [CHUCKLES] I would have trouble with that one. [CHUCKLES] I know. I know. I know it sounds terrible to you. I know. Yelena moved to America in 1989. She was 27 years old, and she built a life for herself there. She worked as a journalist. She made friends, black friends. She loved to go to black churches and listen to gospel music live. She went to salons that actually knew how to style black hair. And she found her black Prince Charming. He was perfect. He was perfect. He was playing tennis. He loved jazz. He liked classical music. He was just perfect for me. They dated for a few years. Yelena was sure he was going to propose. And then one night, he invited her out to a fancy restaurant. So I got dressed. I prepared. I knew how I will answer him. So we go to this restaurant, very fancy restaurant. And the reception, they tell us that, we are sorry, it is packed. But there is just one place near the bathroom. And he says, no, no, no, we're not taking it. And I said, no? Why not? He says, well, I want to sit near the window. I said, well, it doesn't really matter-- window, bathroom. I mean, it's clean. The food is the same. Because I wanted to hear the proposal, OK? I didn't care where we were sitting. Fair. Yes. Yeah. So he said, no. And he said, Yelena, you don't understand. Our grandparents were fighting, they were dying for the right to sit at the window, not at the bathroom. And I said, you know, in Russia, unless you bribe, you won't get a table, regardless of your color. As long as you're green, you will get it. So please stop feeling so insecure. And he said, you know what? We would never understand each other. You're black outside, but you're white inside. You don't understand what we went through. And that was the end of our proposal. Was that the end of your relationship? Yes. Yes, yes, because it showed that we were so different. And he said that we would never understand each other. She agreed. They had different pain points. In Russia, she hadn't experienced the kind of institutional racism he had. And she said her boyfriend couldn't possibly feel the things that upset her as a Russian the way she felt them. Do you feel like you fully understand African-American-- the sort of pain points? Or no? I understand them, but I don't feel them. That's the difference. The things that upsets, let's say, African-Americans, I can see why that upsets, but it doesn't hurt. When he said to you, you're black on the outside, but you're white on the inside, what was your reaction to that? I thought he was stupid. I said, how could I be black and white inside? I mean, I am who I am. And the things that I went through, you don't understand. Did you guys ever talk about race before the argument that you had in the restaurant? Was that a conversation you guys had, or not at all? No, he-- no, we didn't talk about that. No. Did it surprise you when it came up in the restaurant? Yes, it did, because I still don't believe that if they didn't offer us a place near the window, it meant that it was racism. I still don't believe so. So for you, it feels easier just to sort of give a little bit of the benefit of the doubt, or be like, I can't know for sure what the intention was, so I have to let it go. Yes, I don't know for sure, and I don't want to think about it. I don't want to damage my nerve system by thinking about that. I will never know the truth, number one. Number two, it can be both. Number two, it can be both. And number three, what difference does it make? It's so interesting that you say that, just because I feel like it's a thing we do all the time in America is that we replay out these moments of discomfort for each other in the black community over, and over, and over again. What for? What for? What are you gaining? If you told me that I did that and, as a result, this restaurant was closed, for example, or as a result, this waiter was kicked out, that makes sense. But why going through that again, and again, and again, without any results? Why scratching the place until the first blood on your body? But I think part of the reason we do it is to recognize that this is happening. Like, we must acknowledge that this is happening. We can't pretend it's not happening. Yes, I acknowledge it. But again, if I would sit down at home and start, oh, they did it because I'm Jewish, no, they did it because I'm black. No, they did it because my grandparents are American. No, they did it because of that, and that, and that. You know, there's no end to that. I think for many black Americans, there's a curiosity, a need to understand and explore that constant unease we experience. Because I'm black, is my doctor giving me proper care? Because I'm black, am I here to fill a diversity quota? Because I'm black, am I being pulled over? Part of what it means to be black here, part of what draws us together is investigation of that discomfort. There's communal reassurance in that. I know that black people are not a monolith. Yet, the fact that Yelena didn't have this curiosity surprised me. But it also made sense. Yelena didn't have an echo chamber of injustices growing up. I can talk to my hairstylist, my trainer, my family, and say, hey, this thing happened. Yelena had no community to share with, nobody to co-sign. Her problems were not those of black people, but her own. I want to be clear. Being black is not some joyless exercise for me. I wouldn't trade it for the world. I'm not moping about. But Yelena's right about one thing-- thinking about race all the time is exhausting. But I can't let it go, and I tried to explain to her why. I feel like part of it is like, there are small things that I feel like, in some ways, add up to one really big problem that just still hasn't been solved. That it's like, it's small things that add up to feeling like you don't belong here, that the country that you've always existed in doesn't want you. And I don't know. I feel-- See, I had this dream that, yes, somewhere there was another world where I belonged to. And this is America. Now with you, I don't understand where your dream house is. I don't know where my dream house is. I don't know exactly where this place is. Back to Africa, right? Are you talking about going to Africa? I don't think so. I don't even think it's necessarily back to Africa. I think I don't know if this place exists. I think it's just this place, in some ways, still doesn't accept me after all of this time, and that maybe this is as good as it gets, and maybe there isn't another place or a better option. Do you think it's silly that I think about these things so much? Yes. I think it's silly that you think about it so much. There are more important things in your life, that you don't have to waste your time on things that you cannot change. And you don't have to change those people. If that's how they are, I don't think you have to waste your life on changing them. You just drop them and go on with your life. Don't worry about the things you cannot change. Sometimes, I think Yelena's right, that I'm silly for obsessing over this stuff. And I wonder if maybe she's better off for not having spent her entire life puzzling and picking over every interaction with white people, that maybe her grandparents moving to the USSR helped her bypass parts of America's particular brand of racism. But maybe I never really had a choice. Race, specifically black and white, is such an integral part of living in this country. Yelena insists I have bigger things to worry about. But honestly, I can't think of anything that affects me more. Being a black American is what keeps me from feeling like I truly belong in this country. Have you ever felt like you belonged somewhere? Have you ever found that place? You know what? For me, it's not where, it's more with whom. That's what was important for me when I lived in the United States. It was important that I was surrounded by people I really loved. It doesn't matter where I am. As long as I'm surrounded by love, that's all that matters. I wish that surrounding myself with people I love solved my problem. I am surrounded by people I love. A lot of those people are black. And as long as I feel threatened on behalf of all of them, I can't stop wishing there was a better place for us. Yelena's better place turned out to be right where she started. She lived in the USA for 12 years and might have stayed, but then she met her husband-- a white Russian man. And they moved to Moscow where he did treat her like a princess. It was hard to find a black salon in Moscow back then, so he would fly her to Paris just to get her hair done. Emanuele Berry is one of the producers of our show. Thanks to Yelena Demikovsky, who's making a documentary about black Russians that includes Yelena Khanga. Coming up, a guy gets kicked out of a thing he had no idea he could get kicked out of. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, Get Back to Where You Once Belonged, stories of people who do not feel quite at home where they are, searching for their place and their people. We've arrived at Act Two of our program. Act Two, Nowhere Man. So this story is about somebody who felt like he really had found his place in the world-- a job he was good at, a group of people that he liked and admired. And then he got kicked out, and kicked out in this way he didn't even know was a possibility. Reporter Jeremy Raff explains. Raul Rodriguez is like a lot of the dads I grew up with in Texas, but somehow even more so. He fixes his own truck, kills his own goats. And when you walk into his living room, there's two buck heads on the wall, a big TV, and in the middle of it all, the thing he's most proud of, on a little shelf encased in plexiglass. This is my Department of Justice badge or the Immigration Inspector badge that was-- It's kind of surprising that Raul ended up working for immigration, given how he first met those guys. He grew up in Mission, Texas, right by the border. He'd go back and forth between Mexico and the US all the time. And when he crossed, the border agents would always stop him, bust his chops, ask for his papers. He'd always show them-- here's my birth certificate, born in Brownsville, Texas. But they were jerks about it. By the time Raul was a teenager, he says it was like a ritual. The officer usually kind of looks at you and then starts saying, OK, what's your name? Says, you know why we're bringing you in here? And I go, yeah, pretty much. He wanted to know if I'm a citizen or not. And I says, well, I am. And he says, well, we know you're not. And I says, OK, well, show me. Oh, you know, we can't show you. And I tell him, come on, man. I've been here many times, and it's not right for you to harass me like this. I don't know why, because I don't look the part. I don't look as US citizen-y enough as you want me to. My features are very Hispanic, very Mexican. Eventually, after a bit, they'd let him go, every time. He was going back and forth across the border so much because his parents were in Mexico, and he lived with his aunt and uncle in Texas. It wasn't a great situation. His cousins never really accepted him. They beat him up. At family functions, his aunt and uncle would introduce their own kids first, then him. He says he was an afterthought at best. I got called from bastard to a Negro, because I was different from their color. I was very dark, compared to them. They were very light-skinned. And I don't know what the translation would be, a arrimado. Do you know what I'm talking about? Arrimado, that word, arrimado, it's a relative that just stays there, like a leech. When Raul would visit his parents during the summers, he'd beg to stay. He hated living in Texas, but they always sent him back. Your mom gave birth to you on the US side so you could be a citizen, they'd say. It's going to be better for you there. Trust us. Eventually, Raul says, it did get better. After high school when he joined the Navy, the structure, the order, the authority, he liked it, which led him to law enforcement. After the Navy, he became an immigration officer, just like the officers who harassed him when he was a teenager. He even got assigned to the same bridge he used to cross back then. Some of the very same officers who doubted his citizenship were now his co-workers. I had this one inspector that's a female. And when I showed up for work for the first day, I told her, remember me? She says, no, I don't remember you. Oh, you used to take me inside, and you wanted to break me. And she says, was I mean? I go, yes, you were very mean-- tried to intimidate me a lot. And oh, I'm sorry. From the beginning, Raul was a very thorough officer. For example, one day this guy comes through who Raul knows really well. He used to work with him in a furniture factory. The guy was like an uncle to him. He's coming from Mexico into the United States. Raul checks his papers, and it turns out the guy had a tourist visa, which doesn't let you work. Raul revoked the visa-- took it away, didn't let the guy in. For a while at one point, they called me El Gacho. Kind of like "pain in the ass". Because I wouldn't let anything through. I had to do it. I didn't let anybody slack. Raul wasn't just thorough. His wife told me, there are a lot of slugs in federal government. Raul wasn't one of them. He's an above and beyond guy, a standout. And he stood out more and more, because it's pretty well documented Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, had some ugly instances of corruption, bribery, drug smugglers infiltrating. By contrast, Raul was a total Boy Scout. He even won an award. In 2006, a woman approached him while he was buying cigarettes at the gas station. She asked him if he would look the other way while she smuggled in a kid and pushed a little piece of paper in his hand with her number on it. Raul set up a sting. And the next time they met, he wore a wire. She was later arrested. CBP gave Raul its integrity award, one of their highest honors. His bosses flew him to Washington for a big ceremony. Raul got to wear his finest uniform. His kids were there. They got to see him walk across the stage and shake the commissioner's hand. And they gave him a plaque, which these days sits in a place of honor, near the deer heads in his living room. And in his personal life, too, he was totally by the book. He was taught not to fraternize with anyone breaking immigration laws. It could cost you your job. So you have to cut ties with anybody that's had that kind of a history. Well, everybody has people who are illegally in the US, so you have to cut those out. Anyone he was close to who was undocumented, he cut out of his life-- friends, family members. Raul didn't make exceptions. Raul found his home-- customs. It's actually remarkable how much Raul refers to the people he worked with as family, as a brotherhood. I finally belonged to somebody, to belong to something. And it feels good to be wanted, to be accepted, when you never did when you were an outcast, or when you were just there. They did all the things families do-- a combination of responsibilities, but also fun. They threw barbecues. They went to baptisms, birthday parties. They hung out all the time. Then one day in April, 2018, Raul goes into work. He's starting his shift. And I see the two managers come in. I says, oh, man, there comes the two chiefs. Everybody, be careful. Make sure you're not on the phones, and stuff like that. They go into the office. They set up, I guess. And I'm doing my work and stuff. And one of them comes out and says, hey, Raulito, and come to the office. Raul had no clue what this was about, but it looked serious. They never called you just for nothing. And they don't come in twos just for nothing. They have to have a witness. They open up an envelope, and that's where it says-- it says we're going to have to pick up your gun, your weapon, and your credentials. The paper says you're no longer, as of this date, a law enforcement officer, until pending further investigation. You know, investigation? What for? I've never done anything wrong. He says, we don't know nothing about that. He says, we're just giving you the notice and here to pick up your weapon and your badge. And so I take off my belt. I give them my belt. And I take off my badge. And I take out my credentials, and I gave it to them. Raul's head was spinning. He'd worked there for 18 years. He was close to retirement. Had he done something illegal and not known about it? Something small he'd forgotten about? He scanned his memory, and he couldn't think of a single thing. Raul walked back out into the main office. Everyone was looking at him, kind of sideways. I was embarrassed, because I had to do that walk of shame, walk amongst my fellow officers without a badge and a gun. And people were just looking at me, saying, hey, what's wrong? What's wrong? I said, I don't know, man. I don't know. He sat at his desk for a minute, and then he called his wife. She works at another branch of Homeland Security. He was quietly freaking out, so he went home. He and his wife went around and around, trying to think of what it might be. For the life of them, they had no clue. About a week later, the OIG, the Office of Inspector General, wanted to meet with me at the courthouse building. They take us into a room, one of those typical cop rooms that has the small table. And it has the dark window, where you know that they're watching you from the other side. So agents come in, and they read me my rights. So I said, OK, this is criminal. And so he says, are you familiar with this piece of paper? And they slide it over to me. From his 18 years as a customs officer, he could tell right away what it was-- a Mexican birth certificate. I just didn't know whose it was, until I actually read it. So I started reading. I see my name, Raul Rodriguez. And I see my parents' names, Francisca, Margarito, and my grandparents' names-- Do you recognize it? I go, I've never seen it, but I know that it's mine because it's got my name, my parents' names, and my grandparents' names. But I don't recognize the date of birth. That's a different one from the one I have now. On this birth certificate, not only was his birthday different, but more importantly so is his place of birth-- a village outside of Matamoros, Mexico. If this thing was real, then Raul was not American. Raul was confused. He had his birth certificate from Brownsville, Texas. He'd been using it his whole life. It didn't make sense. The agents explained. Raul had applied for a green card for his brother. As part of the application process, they'd looked into Raul's own citizenship documents. And in their research, they'd stumbled onto this, this Mexican birth certificate. And here they were. Raul was like, look, this is not the first time someone's scrutinized my citizenship. We'll get to the bottom of it and clear it up. He told the agents, you know what? Let me get my dad in here. Right then and there, he called his nephew and got him to drive his dad over the border. They all met just a few hours later at a Starbucks. Raul sat with his father and the two investigators at a table inside. No one ordered coffee. Raul's dad, Margarito, told the investigators the story that Raul had always heard, that Raul's mom crossed the border so he'd be born in Brownsville. Then the investigators showed him the Mexican birth certificate. Margarito looked down at the table. He admitted that, yes, Raul was born in Mexico, at home. Yes, his birth date was in 1968, not 1969. Yes, Raul was a Mexican citizen. He had been texting me during the day. That's Raul's wife, Anita. Because Anita also works in immigration, she knew how serious this all was. He texted me back a message that indicated that it was regarding his birth. So I said, well, where are you? And he told me where he was. And I said, OK, I'm on my way. She rushed over to the Starbucks. And when I got to the location, him and his dad were walking out. They were both crying. And I heard my father-in-law, suegro, telling him, "Lo siento mijo, lo hice por tu bien." I'm sorry, son. I did it for your benefit. And I just-- my heart sank. And I feel bad now, because I literally unloaded on my father-in-law. I told him off. And of course, Dad just says, we did it because we thought it was best for you, to give you a better opportunity. And he has had a great opportunity. If it wasn't for what they did, I wouldn't have him, and I wouldn't have my kids. I'm thankful for that. But at any point, they could have said, wait, I need to tell you this. And they never did. Raul's sister saw it differently. They don't blame their dad, Margarito. They tried to convince Raul that what their father did was forgivable, even understandable. Back then, unauthorized border crossings were an unremarkable fact of life. The border fence, the agents, surveillance blimps, that all came later, especially after 9/11. Margarito told me he regrets getting the fraudulent birth certificate now. He prides himself on being honest. And he said he's ashamed to face Raul, but it didn't seem like such a serious offense at the time. It's hard to get exact numbers, but one investigation in the 1990s found 900 fraudulent birth certificates registered by midwives in South Texas, same as Raul's. The undoing of Raul's citizenship set off a chain reaction in his family. Raul's son, who he'd had from a previous marriage, had gotten his citizenship through Raul. Here's Anita again. What happens to him? What happens to my daughter-in-law and my grandkids if he gets deported? But people aren't thinking about that. You know, it's that ripple effect. Raul broke the news to his son, Raul Jr., that afternoon after he left the Starbucks. He explained the whole thing. Raul's citizenship was no longer valid, so neither was Raul Jr.'s. Now they were both undocumented. Incredibly, Raul Jr. Had just applied to become a CBP officer himself. His interview was coming up in a couple of weeks. Now, of course, that wasn't going to happen. Raul's lawyer told me that when someone like Raul signs up to serve in the government, like by joining the military, or working for CBP, the government doesn't look too hard for reasons why they can't. It's when the person asks for something in return, like a green card for a brother, that the government takes a closer look. After that day at Starbucks, Raul and Anita immediately made a plan for how to fix all of this. Raul could just apply for a green card, because his wife is a citizen. It would be a hassle, but they would get through it. So they filled out the application. And Raul, in his Raul way, was super upfront about everything. He knew what he was up against. He'd made a false claim to US citizenship, said he was an American when he really wasn't. But there's a clause in the US immigration code that says if he didn't do it knowingly, the government can exercise discretion. He and Anita were hoping that USCIS, the agency that issues green cards, would see this all as a big mix-up, granting the exception, and they would be done. They thought it would happen quickly, actually, which wasn't the case. For a long time, they didn't hear anything-- so long they started to get nervous. They started to look for help from public officials. After all, Raul is a veteran law enforcement. They reached out to their congressman, then Ted Cruz, the senator. That's not the full list. I told him the other day. I said, you know what? I said, we both voted for Trump. Why don't we call him and say, hey, help me out, pres. I voted for you. And I said, ah, no, better not. He might come down and deport you. And then where would we be? Even at the AOC, the Ocasio-Cortez, I sent her a message before we contacted you. She never responded. Everywhere they looked, people were turning their backs. That thing about how customs officers aren't supposed to hang out with undocumented people, that was Raul now. So all his friends, the co-workers he referred to as family, they almost all abandoned him. In theory, his wife Anita shouldn't even be hanging out with him. One person who did reach out to him-- that lady who used to bust his chops in the bridge when he was a kid. Raul explained to my producer, Nadia Reiman. She thought I was having financial troubles, and so she called me up, and she offered to give me money. But she didn't say anything to you about, like, you know, your citizenship or anything like that? No, I told her. I told her, I guess you were right. What did she say? She just started laughing. She says, ah, Raul, don't say that. Another friend who stood by Raul and still sees him is John A. Garcia, the Jag. It's his initials. They met for breakfast at a Mexican place across the street from an immigration detention center for kids. The Jag is allowed to see Raul, because he's retired. He left customs last year. He said it was too stressful. He wanted something more relaxed, so he became a drill sergeant at a boot camp for kids who get in trouble. They gossip about work, who got a promotion, about that guy with the dog breath. About his hygiene en la boca. And the Jag's encounter with that woman in the cargo lane. You remember la flaquita? In Los Indios? Gloria? Gloria? Uh-huh. She slapped me. Oh, she did. Nhombre. Yeah. Ooh, she just lit up the freaking dynamite, man. I was coming back. So much drama. Eventually, after about 40 minutes, they finally start talking about Raul's situation, about how he's afraid to even leave the house. Like right now, I don't have any status at all. I can get stopped right now, and I can get deported, pretty much, or set up for deportation. It's on my side, se ve un poquito mas. It's a little bit more difficult to deal with because, if I get stopped by Border Patrol right now, I'm a goner. I have no status. So right now, can I really go out? I go out, but I'm looking over my shoulder. You're like all these other people. You're in the same boat, you know? Exactly. Raul tells the Jag he's been waiting way too long for an answer on his green card. He's starting to get really frustrated. He feels like the government's singling him out because he was a customs officer. He thinks they're trying to cover up that they employed an undocumented immigrant by mistake for so long. He says this over and over. He said it to me lots of times. But the Jag's not sure he's right. He says, maybe the government wants to show they don't give anyone preferential treatment. Unfortunately, if it ever comes out, they're probably going to have to show that, hey, well, we gave him what he deserved like everybody else, you know? What if he breaks the law? We're going to give him an exception. Everybody is going to say, wait a minute. You can't do that. The Jag does try to make Raul feel better. He tells him he's sure he'll get US citizenship, eventually. He asked Raul if he's talking to his dad. He isn't. The Jag says he should. But ultimately, what leaves an impression on me is that he talks about Raul's case like any other, like an unfortunate undocumented person. Raul sits there, taking it all in, but looking like he doesn't really agree. Raul and Anita had been waiting for nine months when they finally got called in for the green card interview. Anita said it was a jarring experience. These were officers like the guys they both worked with, who were the first ones to jump in when things got tough. They'd had each other's backs for years. If anyone would get that Raul had done nothing wrong, it would be them. But that's not what happened. We were treated like criminals. They took a sworn statement from each of us. They took two from him, like they were trying to trip him up, or trip me up, or something. And I don't blame the specific officers that did the interview. You do what you're told. If I didn't need my federal job, I would have told them all to go to hell. It's about as dramatic a reversal as you could imagine. Raul was a hard ass, rule following law enforcement officer who'd learned he'd been violating the very rules he'd been enforcing for almost 20 years. Did it change him? Did he see things differently? Did the rules seem fair, now that he's on the receiving end of them? We talked about this a lot. Raul says the cases he's thinking about now are the ones where he stuck to the rules and didn't give people a break. And as a result, they suffered, badly. Like there's this one case, a brother and a sister, they were both really young. They were being smuggled. We had to call the consulate and arrange transportation back to their home countries. It turns out that this little boy, he was coming to donate an organ to his sister, who was dying in Houston. He was going to donate one of his kidneys, and we couldn't even let him through to save this little girl's life. And the little boy was like, man, I gotta go. I have to go. And they said, no, he can't. And we had to turn him back. He starts crying, and crying, and crying. And, what's wrong? Hey, what's going on? Why are you crying? He said, I left my Bible over there. We'll just give you another one. He said, no, no, that's my Bible. [EMOTIONAL] Oh, man. [CRYING] At this point in the interview, Raul got out of his chair, got some water from the kitchen. I'm sorry, man. Take your time. Take your time. Oh, man, just-- man, I haven't cried in a long time, dude. You're good. Anyway, I just had to turn him over. And now I did, I feel like [BLEEP]. He was doing it for a good reason. He was doing something-- he felt he was doing something good, and then he was being treated like a-- like that. You know? This is a story he's always felt bad about. But it feels worse now, I think, in part because he can relate to the kid a little more, to someone trying to do the right thing caught on the wrong side of the rules. It's also a story where following the rules makes you do a thing that also feels very wrong. You placed a lot of faith in the rules. Yeah. Because when you did these difficult things that you had to do-- deport a teen or turn back this organ donor child-- it was sort of like, essentially, the rules are the rules. I can't do anything about it. And now that you're on the receiving end of that, do the rules seem more arbitrary to you, or meaningless, than they used to? No, they don't. I still believe that the rules are the rules. They still apply, and I have to abide by them. I still have to follow the rules, regardless of what the outcome is or what happens. And that's the frustrating part, is that they've gone overboard on my case, on my situation. They're doing things differently with me, because of who I am. USCIS won't comment on ongoing cases. But I ran this by four immigration lawyers, and they said everyone is being treated badly. They didn't think Raul was being treated worse than anyone else. One in Texas, who has a lot of experience in this exact kind of case said, sure, two years ago, Raul would have gotten a green card. But since President Trump, basically everyone with fraudulent birth certificates is denied. In fact, if anything, she said, he's lucky they didn't lock him up or put him into deportation proceedings. There's lots of ways this is hard for Raul. His wife, Anita, she told me she thinks a lot about how Raul never wanted to grow up in Texas with his aunt and uncle and cousins, how, if he'd had it his way, he would have stayed in Mexico with his mom and dad working on the farm. In the end, somehow the choices his dad made deprived Raul of a home on either side of the border. All those years that my husband was here growing up with his aunt and uncle, suffering without his mom and dad-- when he'd miss his mom, he'd always tell me, I wish I had been born in Mexico, because then I could have stayed with my mom and dad. And now at the age of 50, he finds out that he could have had that. And they lied to him this entire time. It's like, now what? Was it because they didn't want me? Raul hasn't talked to his dad in months, since that day at the Starbucks. It totally changed how I see him now, to where I thought he was my hero. Even though I didn't grow up with him, I took him to heart. I strongly believed in what he told me and what he said. And one of the things was that, better be as honest as you can I don't know. I don't know if I'll ever see my dad again after this. Has he reached out? No, not at all. I don't think I want to see him ever again. Months tick by, then a year, with no decision by the government about Raul's green card application. Then on October 29th of last year, Raul got a letter from the government. His green card application was denied. They said Raul had made a false claim to US citizenship, said he was an American when he really wasn't. It also pointed out that he'd committed voter fraud by voting as an undocumented immigrant. Of course, Raul thought he was a citizen at the time. He thought voting was the right thing to do. Raul's world has shrunk down to a few acres that he and Anita own. He keeps goats, cattle, a bunch of chickens. He watches the news in the morning while he walks on the treadmill. His badge and integrity award are still above the TV. He and Anita had dreamed of retiring in their 50s and driving around the country in an RV, maybe visiting their kids at college, or on a base if they decided to join the military. Now they can't leave town. There are Border Patrol checkpoints on all the major roads heading out of the valley. After a career of working double shifts and overnights, he finally has time to himself to think-- maybe too much. The stress of being undocumented is getting to him. He only sleeps for two or three hours at a time. He and Anita started fighting. Raul worried for a while they were headed for divorce. His lawyer told me that Raul could be in this limbo for three or four more years, before exhausting his appeals. Raul told me he's thought of just giving up and leaving. It would be drastic, but it would bring this to an end. If the courts ultimately deny him a green card and he's ordered to leave the country, he told me he would go. He'd obey the law. He said, I'm going to practice what I preach. He'd move to Mexico. As a former border officer who'd arrested smugglers, confiscated loads of drugs, he's worried the cartels might come after him. They would still see him as a US Customs and Border Protection guy, the way he wishes everyone else would. Jeremy Raff is a reporter for The Atlantic. He also did a print version of this story and a short video documentary where you can see Raul and Anita. It's at The Atlantic website. Well, our program was produced today by Lilly Sullivan. Our staff includes Bim Adewunmi, Elna Baker, Emanuele Berry, Susan Burton, Ben Calhoun, Sean Cole, Neil Drumming, Noor Gill, Damien Graves, Seth Lind, Miki Meek, Lina Misitzis, Stowe Nelson, Katehrine Rae Mondo, Nadia Reiman, Christopher Svetala, Matt Tierney, Nancy Updike, and Julie Whitaker. Our managing editor is Diane Wu. Our executive editor is David Kestenbaum. Special thanks today to Tonya Medley, Jorge Just, Jaime Diez, Lisa Brodyaga, Jodi Goodwin, Dan Kowalski, Stephen Yale-Loeher, Rachel Rosenbloom, and Laura Bingham. Our website, thisamericanlife.org, where you can listen to our archive of nearly 700 shows for absolutely free. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. Everything he knows about management, he told me he learned from one of the actors in West Side Story. He told me you take a bottle, you break the bottle, and with this, whatever is left, you just put in their face. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
So a couple of years ago, Michael wrote a book about Meryl Streep. And it did fine, good reviews, hit the bestseller list for a couple weeks. And Michael did something that I guess is a normal thing to do if you've worked on anything for a year and a half including a book. I would occasionally check its ratings on Amazon. And by occasionally, I mean all the time. And I have to say, most of them were great. There were a lot of people who really liked the book. Right now it has almost 300 customer ratings on Amazon. Let's just look it up. Do you have internet there? Yes. I have 295 customer ratings. 46% of them are five star ratings. 23% are four star ratings. So 2/3 of people who rated it loved it. So that's nice. But it was those other people, the 8% who gave him one star, the 9% who give him two stars. Those are the people he found himself getting stuck on. I have to say, I'm not proud of any of this. I'm not proud of talking about this. I wish I was the kind of person who just floated in a cloud above my Amazon ratings, but I'm not. I mean, some of the things that people wrote on Amazon just kind of cut to the bone in this way. If someone just says boring, a book critic isn't going to say boring. But if an average customer goes on Amazon and says, this book is boring, boring, boring, one star, I think it's worse than a smart book critic explaining why something did or didn't work. Boring, bland, hated it, no. There's one that just said no. And it just makes you feel terrible. So I would check my Amazon score an unhealthy number of times. And sometimes before I went to bed, which is a really bad idea, because then you would just drift off to sleep arguing with these people in your head. But then Michael stumbled onto this strategy-- something he could do to deal with those feelings. This has happened. I was just spending too much time thinking about who these people were. And at some point, I just clicked on one of their names. One of the people who hated your book. Yeah. And that brought me to everything else they had reviewed on Amazon. And I realized that when you do that, you see what they liked. And once I saw what some of these people loved on Amazon, it completely neutralized them. So let's go through some of the ones that you saw. OK. So Kathy gave me two stars. She says, disappointing. Too much detail about people other than Meryl Streep. And not enough about Meryl herself. What did Kathy like? A cupcake stand that comes in lavender with polka dots. Five stars. And she just writes, perfect. What's that say to you? That she has enough cupcakes that she needs to arrange them on a cupcake stand in polka dots, and that makes her happy. My book cannot speak to that sort of-- let me try this again. Perfection to Kathy is this cupcake stand filled with cupcakes with polka dots. And my book did not give her that same feeling, and that's OK. A reader had given him one star and said about his book, a lot of words, but not interesting. Gave five stars to bright red yarn. The person who gave him the one-word review no gave five stars and a rave to a tin kazoo. The person who said, boring, boring, boring, and also, the author is so consumed with his lofty vocabulary that the reader falls asleep, gave a rave review to a book predicting the end of the world by 2015. A woman named Wendy gave one star, telling potential readers to move on. And what did she love? OK, so Wendy gave five stars to an Amazon.com e-gift card, which struck me as nuts. Why is anyone rating Amazon gift cards on Amazon? It's like saying, yes, this $20 bill is worth $20. Why rate this thing? This thing couldn't possibly be good or bad. Have you done the flip side of this? Have you looked up the people who loved your book to see what else they loved? No, I don't want to know anything more about them. They're angels. Well, we have done that. Let me read some of them to you. This is a woman who gave you five out of five stars. Interesting, she says. This book was well-written and very interesting. Meryl's life has been full of interesting people and experiences, and I enjoyed learning more about her. She also loved, five out of five stars, the Game of Gnomes Garden Gnome. Throne for the throne room. Cracks me up every time I look at it. It's in my bathroom where my throne is. And here's a picture of the gnome. Ugh. Yeah. That's a gnome. Yeah. She puts this in her bathroom? It's in my bathroom where my throne-- she keeps this gnome in her bathroom. And she gave it five out of five stars. And she also loved my book. I see what you're saying. It doesn't-- [LAUGHS] it's not great if you do it the other way around. OK, one more. This person, five out of five stars. He chronicles her relationships on-stage and off, giving us a clear, unique portrait of a professional. Also bought, not one, not two, but three Amazon gift cards. Did she rate them? She rated them. Five out of five stars. Don't tell me this. She's one of the Amazon gift card people? Just buy something. Buy something that you like. A cupcake stand, anything. Get a real thing and rate that. I'm sorry. Just why? The way Michael sees it, the fact that every single thing on Amazon, every gift card, every garden gnome, every light bulb, and USB cord, and mop is measured against every book, every classic film, against every bit of journalism and fiction, against the Bible, and the Quran, and the Bhagavad Gita. All on the same five-point scale? It's perverse. Those things are different. And, of course, these kinds of reviews are everywhere. I mean, the way the world is now, there's just constant feedback about everything. When you take an Uber, you're asked to rate the Uber driver. We're just constantly leaving stars for things and leaving customer reviews. There's Yelp. Everyone is constantly assessing everything. That's true. Everything. Here, for example, is a review of the Great Wall of China. One star. Too crowded. Too much climbing. Missed the greatness of it. It was a lot of steep climbing time. The Parthenon. One star. It was just a big bunch of columns that lack artistic taste. The Statue of Liberty. One star. Imagine a combination of prison and the worst airport security. If you want to feel embarrassed to be an American, then you can find it here. The Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. One star. Total disgrace. There are no places to rest and reflect in peace. Surely, a sight that witnessed one of the largest mass murders in history deserves some space for reflection. Falling apart and not well-maintained. Welcome. WBEZ Chicago. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program, in this world where now everyone is a critic, we visit places where reviews really should not be happening, and the story of somebody who very much does not want to leave a review, and someone else with the guts to say no to all the reviewers and haters of one of the most hated and worst reviewed films ever made. And you know what that is? No? Stay with us. Act 1, Their Eyes Weren't Watching God. So some things, it just feels wrong when they're reviewed. And I know I just read you a bunch like that, but want to hear one more? I know I do. OK, this one is for the national park at Gettysburg, one of the pivotal battlegrounds in the Civil War. A woman from Miami gave it three stars and wrote, quote, I guess it's a little moving when you think about freedom and all that stuff, but really, it's a field. So another thing it can feel strange to review or read reviews of? Churches. One of our contributors, BA Parker learned this recently. I hadn't been to church-- any church-- in over a year, and I'd lost myself. I was miserable. My career was struggling. Relationships were strained. Little by little, I could see myself fading. And going to new church felt like a last resort. One of my roommates suggested a church that she'd been casually attending down the street-- First Corinthian Baptist Church. The first Sunday I went, I noticed a line half a block long, mostly of white people in cargo shorts waiting patiently behind a rope. An older black man with church flyers in his hand could see I was confused. He waved me toward the front door and greeted me, as if he were God's bouncer. It's a big place-- an old movie theater-- about 2,000 seats, marble floors, ushers, chandeliers. I walked down the crowded aisles and ended up sitting next to an elderly woman dressed in her Sunday best with this broad-brimmed regal hat. She reminded me of my great aunt Louise. When I slid into the pew, she hugged me. I didn't realize how much I needed that hug until my eyes started to tear up. So just try and find this opportunity to just release and to relax the different parts of your body. The service began with guided meditation and ended with communion and the choir singing Frankie Beverly and Maze's Happy Feelings. (SINGING) And these happy feelin's, feel that happy feelin's. '70s R&B with the blood of Christ-- I thought, secular music? Lots of young black people? A pastor in jeans? I had found my home. There was only one problem. Above me, in the far back of the balcony, were tourists-- the white people in line from outside-- hundreds of them snapping selfies and gawking, hovering like a gaggle of anthropologists studying black Baptists in their natural habitat. Every expression of worship, every tear I shed, every hug I gave, every arm I outstretched to God, I felt like I was on display for them. I felt exposed. Do you know [INAUDIBLE]? There were baptisms. Some of the devout being baptized had overcome great odds. One, in particular, got the Holy Spirit and sobbed in the pool. Something unnamed and sacred had led them to that moment, and all I could think about were the white people upstairs taking pictures of someone's life-altering spiritual journey so they could share them over brunch. It was really messing with my worship. White tourists visiting black churches is a thing, especially in Harlem-- showing up for free music. It wasn't my first time hearing about it, but I had never experienced it before. Sure, there were some white congregants sprinkled throughout downstairs, but they're members. For lack of a better phrase, they're invited to the cookout. The tourists in the balcony-- they just want a song. I kept going to this church every Sunday, but I felt like I was unwillingly participating in their gospel concert. I struggled to focus on what mattered to me most, my own relationship with the big guy upstairs. I was navigating all that when I learned about the reviews. Tourists critique the church online, writing reviews on websites like Yelp and TripAdvisor. Some were fine, saying they loved the experience and thanked the church for welcoming outsiders. Others were not so nice. Quote, "The music was loud, repetitive, and vacuous. Church is to elevate us to God, not bring him to human level." Two stars. From France, "This is a scam. The children singing are circus animals." One star. From Italy, "Don't choose this place if you are expecting the gospel style of Sister Act." One star. And this one is meant to be a compliment, but I bristled. From Spain, "I will definitely repeat this experience if I go back to New York. Do not be afraid to go to Harlem on your own. A lot of white people live there." Four stars. Our worship was being graded on a gentrified curve. I got angry. I don't like the tourists, but I do love the church. It has the familiarity and the warmth that I grew up with, but none of the conservative, intolerant baggage, the kind that's hesitant to let women on deacon boards and has strict dress codes. My old church was more insular, more of an old-school black Baptist space. If you saw a white person during service, it required a whole quizzical discussion in the car ride home. Were they lost? Were they someone's special friend? FCBC had none of that, and I found it liberating. So I kept going to the church. I was going to make the best of it, but it wasn't easy. One recent Sunday at church, engrossed in a 15-minute rendition of "The Blood Will Never Lose Its Power," I swayed to the song and meditatively mouthed the words with the choir over and over again. I was losing myself and feeling God's presence when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed it-- the glowing of phones in the dark, the older European man with the selfie stick, the backpack-laden tourists stepping out before the sermon, three or four at a time. --every single week, we want to just say welcome, welcome, welcome. We hope that you feel the power of God. We hope that you feel that there is a shift happening in your life as well, and that you can begin to take that shift all across the globe to your own homes. And so FCBC, at this time, let us give our guests a warm welcome. Let's give them a hug and show them some love. Amen. We hugged the visitors, as the church instructs us to do, during the welcome. And immediately afterwards, over 45 tourists upped and walked out before the sermon had even begun. And all I could think was, the audacity. So rude. And you've got to get up every morning and let the enemy know that you can't have my joy today. It belongs to me. Look at your neighbor and tell them, neighbor, I [INAUDIBLE]. Listening to the sermon, I felt torn and distracted by the tourists. Why do they have to be there at all? Why do I care so much? I asked other congregants if having the tourists there ever made them feel uncomfortable, if they thought it was a bit odd, if they ever got self-conscious, or if it was only me. One thought the tourists were fabulous. Another said they didn't think about it. One woman said my not wanting them there was blasphemous. So yeah, it seems like it was only me. It was confusing. Yes, I don't want the tourists there. But what kind of Christian am I to be hating on people during a church service? So I went to the head of the church-- my pastor, Pastor Mike Walrund-- to ask, why are these tourists here? Why are we letting this happen? And how am I supposed to deal with it and see past it? Why do you want the tourists there? I don't necessarily think about wanting tourists. We welcome everyone. So I don't necessarily say, well, I want these people here, and I want those people. Whoever comes, I celebrate. And then we're open. So I know there are churches that have said that they wouldn't allow tourists, or, when they do, make the tourists pay a bunch of money to come in. They'll take their money, right? But for us, I think everyone here is a tourist. And like I tell you, I know the power of the word, and how the word can spread, and how people can take what they hear here, and it goes places. Your words will go to places that you will never go. And so that's how I always look at it. It is an opportunity to spread this word, and to get the message out that we're doing, and expand and broaden our reach. And sometimes, the people who expand and broaden our reach happen to be tourists. Pastor Mike also said my sensitivity about the tourists, though he understands it, is generationally different than the older black congregants, who perceive the optics of having, essentially, a section for white people in a more ironic way than I do. And they see a lot of tourists who are predominantly white in the balcony, because they know history enough to know that that's different, because, historically, it was flipped. Well, that was a practice in this country for years, where African-Americans had to sit in the balcony and could not worship with white people, because African-Americans were relegated to the balcony and could not engage with worship experience. He knows the tourists are not what everyone wants. But what Pastor Mike wants me to know is that the tourists aren't just in the balcony, and they aren't just white. He says the balcony is for large groups of visitors, and they just happen to be European. He insists the largest number of tourists in the church aren't white. They're black. They blend in, sitting down on the main floor with all of us. So he puts it back to me. Is my problem with tourists or with white tourists? It's white tourists. He tells me, don't be prejudiced. It's wrong. If we start looking at people who enter our spaces of worship, and because they're strangers treating them-- and because they're obviously strangers because of the racial dimension, then we undermine ourselves as followers of the teachings of Jesus and as people who call ourselves Christians. And I know that. But I can't stop feeling exposed. It looks the way it looks-- white people staring down on us praising God. The optics are all wrong. It's I guess because I feel a certain protectiveness because of the shared experience that we have as black people and I feel protectiveness of you. We are intoxicated by perceptions, and image, and optics. And optics communicate no substance. So the question is not what it appears. The question is, do I care? That's the real question. And the answer is, no. I can't be consumed with people's perceptions of our space, because then I'll be trying to curtail what we do to respond to people's perceptions. No, that's not who we're called to be. I can't. So the optics of it mean nothing to me. Pastor Mike knows what it looks like, making white people sit in a sectioned-off area. He knows it's provocative. But he's fine with it. It's not intended to be punishment. But that doesn't answer my question. How do I block them out when I worship? When I worship, I engage God. I could care if it was one person or 2,000. I don't care who's present. It's about me. And that moment is a sacred space. I do it in the presence of others who are celebrating God, but that's a sacred moment for me. And my sacred moment cannot be intruded upon by anybody, tourists or not. Pastor Mike's words helped a little. I'm aspiring to a new level of clarity in my worship-- more like his. But I'm still working on myself. I'm not there yet. I still don't want people there staring at us like we're all some source of entertainment for them. But going forward, I'm going to try to do what I can to get the tourists out of my mind and out of my way, starting with this review of FCBC from me, Parker from Baltimore. "Went to FCBC one Sunday, and then kept coming back. Helped me when I really needed it. And if you're a tourist reading this and wonder what the black congregants think of you taking photos during baptisms and baby christenings, I, for one, don't love it. Please stop. Help make a great church better." Five stars. B.A. Parker in New York. If you google the First Corinthian Baptist Church, it'll take you to their website-- FCBC NYC-- where there are videos of sermons, and guest speakers, and all sorts of other stuff. I think we are not going to give you their address. Coming up, a story about somebody who is studiously trying not to give a review. I think it's not too much to say that his very freedom depends on that. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, Everyone's a Critic-- tales from a world where everything gets rated and reviewed. We've arrived at Act Two of our show, Act Two, Mr. Chen Goes to Wuhan. So this next story is about somebody who's studiously trying not to be a critic because of where he lives and what he's doing. His name is Chen Cho Qiushi, and he lives in China. And he's been going around that country to the most controversial places-- places that are the most sensitive, as far as the Chinese government is concerned, including the city at the center of the coronavirus epidemic. Chen shows up, looks around, gathers information, and posts videos online with the truth of what he's found, which is risky, because China, of course, is an authoritarian country with a tight grip on information and total control over the media. The government's version of reality is what's reported in newspapers, on TV, and online. Inside China, it's hard to get foreign news sources, which is why, when Chen does all this, he tries very hard not to be a critic, not to venture an opinion. Reporter Jiayang Fan has been watching his videos with fascination for a while now. I've been writing about China for years. I'm from there, and I've never seen anyone like Chen. This guy wasn't a professional reporter or political activist, as far as I know. He was just a guy from the mainland who read about the Hong Kong protests in the state papers and wondered, is that the whole story? What's really happening? And went to see for himself. In this video, shot on the waterfront in Hong Kong, he's saying, "I want to see, with my naked eye, what's happening on the ground. I want to bear witness to the stories of the people on the ground." Chen's a talented talker, a 30-something guy with very expressive eyebrows. He's running all over the city in a yellow press vest he bought after he saw online that reporters wore them at protests. He's a lawyer who is into public speaking. A couple years back, he was in a reality TV speech competition, kind of like The Voice for nerds. That was his first brush with being a public person. His videos sort of feel like an extension of that speech competition. Instead of talking and explaining things on a stage, he's doing it out in the world. In Hong Kong, Chen's coverage is painstakingly neutral. He goes to a pro-democracy protest, and also to a pro-Beijing rally. At both, he tries to estimate the crowd size and the age of the participants. He spends one video explaining subtle differences between factions of the movement. At no point does he hint at his own political stance. In fact, he emphasizes that he will not take a side. He's saying, "I will try my best to put my prejudice aside and stay neutral about what I see." This neutrality thing is important, because, across China, most people support, or at least go along with, the party. They're skeptical of people who defy the government. Those people are seen as troublemakers and dissidents. They're regarded with suspicion, and their ideas are easily dismissed. Chen didn't want to be dismissed. But what's more, he didn't act like a dissident. He quotes a state newspaper as inspiration for his trip and declares his loyalty to China. Watching him, he seemed genuinely curious about the things he was witnessing and completely sincere. His videos from Hong Kong reached hundreds of thousands of people on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter. As soon as I saw them, I wanted to talk to him, though I wasn't sure how hard he would be to reach because his last video hinted that he might be in trouble. It's shot from the airport. In it, he says the Chinese Bar Association, the Public Security Bureau, and the Ministry of Justice have all called him telling him to come back and stop this nonsense. At one point, he holds up his law license, saying he knows he may very well lose it after these three days in Hong Kong. Once he got home, all of his social media accounts were deleted, and his videos were purged from the Chinese internet. But he wasn't hard to reach. When I got his number, he picked up right away. He was little flustered. He explained he was in the middle of a family situation. His mom found out about his reporting adventure from a cousin's classmate, freaked out, and traveled hundreds of miles to his doorstep, and moved in with him. He was funny about it. We've been living together for over 20 days, and it's been kind of awkward. She follows me wherever I go. Just now, when I came down to take your call, she ran after me to the elevator. That's why I was kind of bummed when I answered. Chen's mother was there to save him from himself, he explained, less he decided to go off once again and try something reckless. His mom kept watch on him 24/7. During the day, she did not let him out of her sight. At night, they shared his twin-sized bed. Yeah, I'm uncomfortable, but there's no way around it. It's the only way she feels safe. This all sounded very familiar to me. I have a mother like this, too. Chen's 34, just a year younger than me. We both grew up as only children in '80s China. Our mothers have both expressed to us that if anything were to happen to us, they would lose the very will to live. The hardest thing to deal with is the effects on my family and loved ones. That's what pulled Chen back from his trip to Hong Kong-- not because he was worried for himself, but because of the risk of complicating other people's lives. China was safe, he told me. But he'd been let go from his law firm, and he had been interrogated repeatedly. On the day he arrived back from Hong Kong, he'd been grilled for eight hours straight. He had to run through every detail of where he was each day. Then they took me through reeducation on the policies of the Communist Party, how the government has a certain perspective about Hong Kong. They said, because I was a lawyer, I should support the Communist Party and its decisions, and I shouldn't go against them, shouldn't go to certain places, and so on, and so on. Then they tried another tactic. Then they took on a very parental tone. They said, we're doing this because we care about you. You're a young guy with a bright future ahead of you. You've won so many speech and debate prizes when you were young. You've appeared in so many TV shows. You've posted such great content and videos to social media. We think you're really talented. We're lucky to have such a great local lawyer. But then you went to Hong Kong and jeopardized all of that. And finally, they drove it home. Are you married? Look at you. You're over 30, and you haven't married yet. Your parents must be so anxious. People need to prioritize families. You need to start a family and have kids. That's the only way to have a normal life. So don't let your parents worry. You need to hurry up and get that straightened out. So for a full day, from 9:00 in the morning to 5:00 in the evening, it would just be that. They were using different tactics like that, trying to tell me why going to Hong Kong was wrong. But Chen wasn't that troubled by the questioning. He had been scrupulously neutral when he was in Hong Kong, and he believed that would protect him, and things would not get worse than this. So I think it's because I worked so hard to be neutral and to not support or lean towards one side or the other that I was able to stay safe. I asked him the question that had been on my mind all this time. Why did he do it? It's just a passion. Sometimes people say, oh, that was so brave of you. You've risked so much in the pursuit of truth. I hate that. This has nothing to do with bravery. It's just a hobby. You have guys out there who like watches. You have guys who like to fix up their cars, people who like to hike or to ski. This is my hobby. My hobby is engaging with and pursuing the news. It's just something I'm interested in. I can almost see him shrugging on the other side of the line. Chen sees himself as a curious guy collecting facts. He's not out to issue any kind of review. He's not trying to provoke or antagonize. The way he talks about his videos, it's like they're an intellectual exercise more than anything else. I'm surprised by how blasé he is about the project, given the cost to his regular life. I wonder if there's more to it, if his composure is a kind of armor-- the one thing he can control. A few months later, in late January, I do a double take when I see a video that Chen posts from the train station in Wuhan. It's the city at the center of the coronavirus epidemic. Apparently, he had grabbed his selfie stick and hopped on the last train in as the government put the city on lockdown. It's startling that he's there, because access to the city has been severely restricted and heavily enforced. There are very few news sources on the ground at this time. No one dares to go outside, and many shops are closed. Chen is his usual energetic, high-spirited self, sneaking in jokes along with the information. He's bewildered by all the elderly people he saw on his trip who still weren't wearing face masks. Are they insane? He asks. As their kids, we should force them to put on masks with the same energy they exude when pushing us to get married, he says. I watched the video on YouTube where Chen now has a channel and almost half a million followers. It's a website that's banned in China. You can only access it if you hop the firewall, which many people do. Some of them take his videos and spread them on Chinese social media. Over the next few days, Chen goes on a tear through the city. He reports from the market, where a number of early cases surfaced, from a grocery store, from a funeral parlor, from the construction site for a hospital that's being built almost overnight. Outside a hospital one night, after hearing that the virus might be transmittable through the eyes, he films a video wearing a comically ill-fitting pair of swim goggles. There's a video shot from the front seat of a car, where he's chatting with the four people piled in with him, asking if they have enough food stocked up at home. The guy in the front has six months stored. He'd been preparing a long time for a food shortage, though he thought it would be from a trade war with America, not a virus. Chen goofs around with the driver, practicing his Wuhan dialect. But he also spends time doing long interviews with locals, drawing out intimate details of people's lives and their honest appraisals of the ongoing crisis. One night, Chen hosts a livestream interview with a middle aged man who goes by the pseudonym Ah Ming. Ah Ming's father had recently died. He tells Chen that his father had gone to the hospital for a routine physical in early January. He was in his 70s and healthy. He couldn't have known then that the hospital was also seeing patients infected with the mysterious pneumonia. Soon after, his father developed a fever that wouldn't go away. Ah Ming details the frantic search for treatment in the final weeks of his father's life, how, because there wasn't adequate equipment at the hospital, he had to spend a whole night pressing his father's leaky oxygen mask in place. He talks about the time a sudden lockdown at the hospital separated panicked family members, from their loved ones for 48 hours. It's difficult to listen to Ah Ming describe his father's last day. I saw, with my own eyes, as his heart rate dropped from 120 to 0. I held his hand and saw this happen. It was painful. He was in a deep coma already. When they took off his oxygen mask, his mouth was still open. He suffocated to death. Ah Ming says he doesn't understand why the government didn't start alerting people back in December to wear masks. He wonders why the state media didn't cover the outbreak more thoroughly. If measures had been taken earlier, he says, my father wouldn't have died. A few days into Chen's trip, his own parents send him a video. They're sitting on a couch, looking like they're trying very hard not to mess up the complicated process of FaceTiming their son. We heard you went to Wuhan, he says. Apparently, Chen has, yet again, failed to inform his parents he was going on a reporting trip. His dad gruffly chides him, then tells him to do a good job and not to make trouble while he's there. His mom peers into the frame. We support you, she says. But be safe, OK? Chen continues making videos for the next few days, and they're pretty grim. He posts one from inside a hospital, covertly filmed while pretending to call someone. The patients and their family members are bundled up in heavy winter coats and blankets. Almost everyone is attached to IV tubes and oxygen bottles. As his camera darts unsteadily through the room, there's a suffocating claustrophobia. In another video, Chen comes across an elderly patient in his wheelchair-- gray, limp, unmoving. A relative leans on the chair, holding his body up. As he films, Chen realizes the patient is dead. The woman explains, through her face mask, that the ambulance arrived too late to save him. Now she was trying to figure out what to do with the body. There's a clip of a medical worker in a hospital parking lot. She's squatting by a car, crying into her phone. A colleague tells her it's not that serious, and she stands up, shaking with anger. I've been coughing for six days, she screams. Don't you dare tell me it's not serious. For nearly a week, Chen has been posting videos from a city teetering on the edge of a breakdown. For nearly a week, he has watched from the sideline-- observing, listening, studiously reserving judgment. But then, on January 30, when he appears on screen, he isn't reporting. Instead-- He's alone, hunched on a bed, wearing a tank top with what looks like a bedsheet wrapped around his shoulders. His face is pale, and his hair is uncombed. It's a 27-minute video, much longer than his regular ones. He plays several recap clips, talks about what he's seen. But he isn't his usual charismatic self. Something's off. When he's talking about the shortage of virus test kits, he seethes with contempt. Did you hear that? There aren't enough test kits, he says. He counts off all of the dysfunctions he's witnessed in the past week, from the lack of transport to the shortage of supplies, the piles of unsorted donations, the overworked construction workers. The sheer volume of dysfunctions-- dysfunctions that gesture at larger failures of the government-- overwhelms Chen as he speaks. A jittery energy courses through him. He keeps trying to reset, will himself back into a state of collected calm. But it's not working. OK, let's keep going. Sorry, my thoughts are really disorganized, because I'm starting to feel afraid. I'm genuinely starting to feel afraid. The Ministry of Justice is after him-- calling him, he tells us. The police, too. They've been questioning his parents. Suddenly, the video takes a turn. The terror in his eyes hardens into something like rage. I am scared. In front of me is the virus. Behind me is the power of China's law enforcement. But I will persevere. As long as I am still alive, I'm going to keep reporting. I'm going to tell people what I see and what I hear. The last minute of the video feels like it's happening in slow motion. Chen's face, which is small and delicate, grows red, swollen, and crazed. They are excruciating seconds when his eyes fill up as he speaks through clenched teeth. I'll just say it harshly. [BLEEP] you. I'm not even afraid of dying. Do you think I'm afraid of you, Chinese Communist Party? As the video ends, I realize I've stopped breathing. Chen's gone way past the line that he fought so hard not to cross. For as long as I had known him, being a respectable journalist, the kind he aspired to be, meant gathering facts without taking a side. But here in Wuhan, the facts must have added up to a reality so horrifying that a judgment was demanded. The next day, Chen posts a video apologizing for losing his cool. He goes back to reporter mode, standing outside the apartment of a family whose mother had died that morning to see how long it takes for the funeral home car to come. He's there for an hour. It never comes. He keeps reporting. A week later, a video shows up on Chen's timeline. It's not him. It's his mother. She looks tired, and strands of her permed hair have fallen out of a loose ponytail. Her message is short. Chen has gone missing. Help me. Please help me find Chen, she says. Please help. Thank you. Chen's been silent ever since then. He had given his social media passwords to friends in case he disappeared. One friend says that the police told his parents he'd been put in a medical quarantine. But people in quarantine are usually allowed to keep their phones and to stay in touch with people outside. No one's heard from Chen. It's been 22 days. Chen, who tried so strenuously to avoid becoming a political dissident, is now being treated like one. Of everything that's happened to him, I suspect what would pain Chen the most is the sight of his mother looking exhausted and afraid on video, pleading for his return. Jiayang Fan. She's a staff writer at The New Yorker. Act Three, Must Love Cats. In a way, it was comforting that, in these dark and divisive times, there was one thing that fractured America could agree on this past year-- the movie Cats, based on the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. And what everybody agreed was that it was trash. Variety called it, quote, "A half-digested hairball of a movie." Collider said it, quote, "always feels like it's two seconds away from turning into a furry orgy in a dumpster." But one of the producers on our program, Lina Misitzis, found one of the very few people who felt differently than every living reviewer everywhere. Somebody who loved the film, which, actually, kind of became a problem in her house. Here's Lina. One of the many problems with Cats-- it doesn't really have a plot. But to EJ Dixon, it all makes perfect sense. A bunch of cats, known as Jellicle cats, are auditioning to be the cat selected in sort of this cultic ritual to ascend to the Heaviside layer and be reborn. And so the show is just cats auditioning one after the other to be the one selected. They audition to die is basically what they do. Everything about the film that alienated people-- the weird CGI, the clumsy writing, the bizarre choreography, Jason Derulo-- none of it alienates EJ, which, honestly, doesn't surprise me. I've known EJ for years. She's a reporter at Rolling Stone. She's always struck me as dogged, someone who perpetually bears witness to the things other people don't really want to take seriously. Things that are widely misunderstood or understood differently-- I always want to know, what's the other story here? With Cats, it was very obvious, from the second that I saw it, this is going to be-- everybody's going to call this the worst movie ever made. But it's also just-- it's very earnest-- this sort of very simple, earnest story about the importance of inclusion. Right. The cats learn a lesson about inclusion. Left that out. Do you think you're being a contrarian? No. I'm telling you. It's the same reason why I like musicals in general, because it's a way for me to sort of access the parts of myself that aren't sort of coded in cynicism and aren't automatically skeptical of everything and questioning everything. It's one of the ways that I can sort of experience the most earnest parts of myself, I guess. And when she saw Cats, that's how she responded to it-- earnestly. She couldn't get it out of her head. The day after I saw Cats, my husband was taking a shower, and I went in, and I was like, I just need to talk to you about this. Sorry. While he's in the shower, you go into the bathroom and start talking about Cats? Yes. I was just talking at him about Cats. I was just like, and then this is what the CGI looked like, and here's what Old Deuteronomy did. And oh, my God. They had Ian McKellen lapping up milk. And at the end, Judi Dench breaks the fourth wall, and she says, a cat is not a dog. And I just need to tell you this, because I don't know how to make sense of it. How often were you talking about it? Constantly, constantly. How often was she talking about it? Every day-- a lot of the time. This is EJ's husband, Alex. He looks like Greg Kinnear in the movies were Greg Kinnear is the good guy. Also, he looks really tired. But he's kind. Maybe after the first day or two. It became clear that this was a new obsession and it was here to stay. And how did that make you feel? Sorry for myself. What are the kinds of things that she talks to you about when she talks about this movie? Things about the producers that I can't even remember, how much money Andrew Lloyd Webber made, and how much more wealthy he is than Paul McCartney, which kind of astounded me. Is this the kind of thing where you immediately knew you didn't care about any of this? Yeah, yeah. But was there a period of time where you were humoring her? Oh, for sure. I would definitely try to change the topic, play any other music that I could think of. Play other music because EJ started playing the film soundtrack for the only other member of the family, their son Solomon, a three-year-old. And Solomon-- Loved it. Loved it immediately. And how often do you guys listen to it? Almost every day. Alex basically went from living a life blissfully free of Cats to living in an all-Cats household all the time. He'll just come up to me and say, dada, I want Jellicle cats, or, I want Rumpleteazer, or something like that. And now I have to know what that means. Alex could not understand his wife's love of this movie, which everyone else on the planet seemed to love to hate. Days went by, then weeks. He definitely was like, I can't hear about this anymore. And he has since said, multiple times, that it's ruined his life. If Alex didn't want to talk about Cats anymore, EJ wanted to be a good partner. So she went somewhere else. She announced the new plan in a tweet. Quote, "My husband couldn't listen to me talking about it anymore, so I'm doing a podcast about the movie musical Cats. It's called PodCats." Are you blind when you're born? Can you see in the dark? Would you-- She co-hosts it with her friend Dan. Can you say of your bite that it's worse than your bark? If you were and you are, you're the target audience for PodCats. We're Dan-- And I'm EJ. It's pretty-- yeah, it's kind of deeply embarrassing that people are going to listen to the podcast and be like, who is this woman? When you say podcast, do you mean This American Life? Both. Primarily PodCats-- PodCats the podcast. We're also going to answer all of your burning questions about cats, including but not limited to-- What's a Jellicle cat? What's a Jellicle cats-- cats-- cats-- cats-- cats-- cats-- cats-- cats-- cats-- cats-- Is it true that you told EJ that Cats is ruining your life? I've probably said that. We get so little time to ourselves now. We have a three-year-old, and we both work crazy hours. This is the way that you choose to spend your free time, by going to see Cats and making a podcast about it? How can you make that your free time? So Alex doesn't want to talk to his wife about this thing that she loves, which I get, except for one thing. He's passing all of this judgment, but he's never actually seen the movie. So I set it up for all three of us to go see Cats at the one theater within 234 miles that's still playing it. Are you excited? Let's do this. We get to the theater just after 9:00 and take three seats in the back-- EJ and Alex next to each other. I'm next to Alex. I figure the theater would be empty. It wasn't. All three of us take turns remarking on the surprisingly good turnout, which, including us, totals nine. There are definitely more people than I thought there would be. Yeah. In front of us are four teenagers slouched in their seats. They're laughing throughout the previews, which makes me think they're probably stoned. EJ notices them, too. These people are not here for the right reason. The film opens with a burlap sack tossed in an alleyway, which, obviously, is full of alley cats. Dozens of them circle the disposed sack, hissing, also doing pirouettes. And just to be clear, by cats, I mean human adults with fur digitally attached to their skin. One of them rips open the still-moving bag, allowing whatever is inside of it to break free. And what it is inside of this bag-- also a cat. Oh, no. Look what the cat dragged in. Stop, and you're talking around your bowl on an empty stomach. Look, I'm not going to pretend Cats isn't a train wreck. Alex covers his mouth with his hand, like he's hiding his abject horror. But then, about 15 minutes into the movie, when Rebel Wilson starts singing and dancing with a parade of cockroaches, I realized something. EJ and Alex are on a really good date. For most of the movie, they hold hands. Alex kisses EJ's palm three times, which coincides with the number of times she calls something the best part of the movie. This is the best part. [INAUDIBLE]. This is the best part. I think what makes this a good date has nothing to do with what they're doing, but, instead, with the fact that they're doing it together. When Judi Dench's Old Deuteronomy shows up, who, by the way, is, for some reason, wearing a fur coat atop her literal coat of fur, Alex hums along with the rest of the cats, who are there to welcome her, because, of course, he knows the music. It's been playing in his house nonstop for months. The movie ends just before midnight. EJ says they need to get home, back to their son and sitter. We split a cab, and I ask Alex how he liked this movie that, to quote him, has ruined his life? I liked it a lot more than I thought I would, actually. And why? I liked-- what's his name, EJ? The railway cat. Skimbleshanks. Skimbleshanks. Skimbleshanks killed it. So something you told me before we went in is that part of you really does think that EJ's kind of just being a contrarian in liking this movie. And I'm wondering if you still feel that way? I knew you would say that. Do you still feel that way? No, I don't. I don't feel that way. And I think I kind of have an understanding. I can see how, despite it being a horrible movie, you can genuinely appreciate it. It just kind of feels good. It's kind of joyous. I don't know. And I'm kind of-- yeah, I'm eager to unpack this with you more, EJ. I think you're only going to feel that way for a limited period of time. That's probably true. When movies end, the lights are still dim, the credits roll, there's this moment. It's just before people start getting up, where everyone's quiet. It's like waking up from a dream. And then, suddenly, you check back into the reality of your own life. I figure, that's the moment I'm catching Alex in. The lights haven't totally gone back up yet. This is not how he really feels. But then, a week later, I get a text from EJ. She says that, last night, while she and her son were listening to Cats, Alex belted along with the same song I had caught him humming to at the movies. I think he's turned, she says. Lina Misitzis is one of the producers of our show. Our program was produced this week by Lina Misitzis. The people who put together today's show includes Elna Baker, Emanuele Berry, Dana Chivvis, Noor Gill, Damian Grave, Stowe Nelson, Katherine Rae Mondo, Nadia Reiman, Robyn Semien, Alissa Shipp, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, and Julie Whitaker. Managing editor is Diane Wu. Our executive editor is David Kestenbaum. A special thanks today to Emily Liu, Yian Zhou, Robert Du, John Lesley Morton, and Heaven Berhane. Our website-- thisamericanlife.org-- where you can listen to our archive of nearly 700 shows for absolutely free. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Torey Malatia. Whenever he comes to New York City, there's only one deli that he wants to go to for corned beef. Cats, cats, cats, cats, cats, cats, cats, cats. I'll have what he's having. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
I got my teeth cleaned this week, and I was asking the hygienist how it was going with the global pandemic and all. And she was like, just yesterday somebody stole two face masks from the counter right there. And so I was like, do you know who? And she was like, yeah, she knew exactly who, because she caught her red handed, and the woman wasn't sorry at all-- wouldn't give the masks back. I mean, there's a national shortage, but still. I heard about this woman, Kim, who decided a couple weeks ago to buy some face masks for her mom. Her mom works at a home caring for the elderly, and face masks are recommended for people like her mom. Kim went shopping for some. CVS-- sold out. Rite Aid-- sold out. Target-- sold out. She called pharmacies around town in northern California, where she lives. No luck, until she reached this one woman. She said they were sold out, and then she paused for a second. And then she said, well, I have a stash at home. I might be able to sell you some masks. Let me call you after work. Wait, and so suddenly it's like you're doing an illegal drug deal or something over a mask? Kind of felt that way. So I called her after work. We set up a time and place, and we met the following day in front of the Safeway, next to the Glacier water bottle vending machine. Wait, wait. And-- Wait, that's what she said? She said, OK, we're going to meet in front of this Safeway in front of the Glacier bottle vending machine? Yes. I found her easily, gave her the cash, got the box, said thank you-- Now, describe the actual physical transaction. Now, when you handed her the cash, was it a kind of like your hand was over top of the cash so someone else couldn't see it, and she palmed it away from you. Pretty much, yeah. The woman asked for $100 for 10 masks. Kim talked her down to $70. Regular price would be $1 per mask, maybe $2. And she told me that she had two boxes left. So if I wanted more, I could come back. I work at a local co-op here in Seattle, Washington called PCC Community Markets, just a little bit different clientele. They're kind of like a Whole Foods clientele, a little more particular. Cameron works in the produce department, and he's a cashier. Washington state, you may know, has more cases than any other state, and most of them are around Seattle. So the co-op started selling out of toilet paper, beans, flour, hand sanitizer when this first hit the news. It's been pretty tense, very just on edge. A lot of people are upset that we don't have hand sanitizer wipes for our carts. I've had a few customers vocally yell at me because of how I was touching their cans when I was checking them out at the register. Like this one guy, who had a lot of cans. It was a kombucha energy drink. I can't remember the exact brand. He probably had a couple dozen. Some of them had fallen over, and I'd grabbed the top of the can versus the bottom of the can when scanning it, which, I mean, I can understand. But at the same time, I probably wasn't the first person to touch that can, so. What did they say to you? He just wanted me to be aware of what I was doing. It took me a minute to understand what he was saying, because he was so frustrated. I don't remember the exact words, but paraphrasing he was asking me in a pretty passive aggressive way why I'm touching the cans the way I am. Somehow that's exactly what I would have pictured. I'm picturing sort of Fred Armisen in Portlandia. You're so spot on it's gross right now. [LAUGHS] He was wearing glasses, for sure, and some sort of fleece. But he was just telling me how I need to be touching the cans without touching the tops, and yeah. Some people have more to fear than others right now, I think, like Jasmine Reese. She works at Los Angeles airport, LAX, cleaning out planes after they land, including international flights. Coronavirus became a very real thing to her over a month ago when a plane arrived from Hong Kong. Even as I'm getting on the plane, and I see first class, business, I'm walking down. And I'm seeing co-workers with face masks, and I'm like, what's going on? Why does everybody have a face mask? They're like, oh, because there's a virus. There's a virus, and you have to clean this plane. This is one of the planes that, you know, this is Hong Kong. And I'm like, oh, let me go downstairs and go get me one, because keep in mind that I'm five months pregnant. And did they have face masks? Were you able to get one? Yeah, but we don't have them every day, and we work every day, but we're kind of low on supply, so meaning that we may not have face masks every day. We may not have gloves every day. There have been days since the virus when you went in, and you had to clean a plane without a mask? Yeah, there's plenty. There's plenty of days that we get on there and we don't have no mask. We're cleaning. Sometimes we get on there. We don't have masks and gloves. One job the crew does-- they reach deep into garbage bags on the plane and pull out the garbage by hand. Jasmine cleans American Airlines planes. She works for a contractor called Jetstream Ground Services. A number of Jetstream employees have been quoted in the press saying the same thing about gloves and masks that Jasmine says. We reached out to a spokesperson for the company, Eric Rose. He said in emails, quote, "we are at a loss as to why the employees are making these false claims." Jetstream Ground Services has always had an abundant supply of safety equipment for all employees to fulfill their daily assignments." End quote. Just this week, the Service Employees International Union started distributing masks and gloves to workers like Jasmine in LAX, saying Jetstream has not properly provided them. The day I talked to Jasmine, two people who work at LAX had at that point tested positive with the virus. Jasmine thought one of them worked at terminal seven. So we have a person all the way down at seven that got sick, and then now they're saying a person, I think, from terminal five was sick. We're at four. Damn. So we're right next to a person that could have possibly came to the food court at our terminal, you just never know. Do you feel like it's only a matter of time before somebody you work with gets sick? Yeah, it's how it's going, and it's on the news, and it's spreading so wide. I wouldn't be surprised if someone-- if the news popped up and said somebody is sick within the next week or two. I could be walking around with a co-worker right now, and they probably have it. You don't know that they have it. So when you're cleaning planes, is this what you're thinking about all the time? If it's internationally, yes. I'm thinking, why do you have clean this plane? And I'm trying not to stress on it too hard. And I can't totally tell. How worried are you? Truth-- I'm very worried, but I've still got to work and get my money. I have to survive, yes, but I am very worried about it, certainly because I am pregnant. Right now as I'm saying these words to you, dozens of people have already died in our country, but somehow it still feels like the calm before the storm. For now, it's like streets are a little emptier, store shelves are emptier. Some people are working from home. Some schools close. Other schools-- everybody's waiting to hear if they're going to be called off. Things are not as awful as they're certainly going to get, so we're all waiting for it to get awful, with no idea of how awful that's going to be. If I had to say what this feels like, I think to me what this feels like is-- I don't know-- the only experience I've ever had like this is sort of like waiting for medical results, trying to find out how bad things are going to be, but on a global scale. We're going to be documenting more about coronavirus in upcoming shows, but for today's show, we thought we would stick to this one part of things, this low hum of menace. Here in our staff we were talking about when else does somebody actually feel that feeling? And we found some examples of that to share with you, and that's going to be our show today. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Act One-- Do You Hear What I Hear? So this first story is about a recording that captures this exact thing today's program is about, that low hum of menace. The recording was made secretly by a woman trying to catch a man who'd been harassing her. Heads up to listeners, this story is about sexual harassment, so there's some sexual content to this. One thing I have to say that's interesting about this recording and the man's behavior in it is how understated it is. He doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't overtly threaten, but he just gets his point across. Also interesting, the woman who made the recording-- her name is Khristen Sellers. Years later, today, when she hears this recording, she hears it very differently than she did at the time. It raises a whole set of questions she didn't think about much back then. Reporter Jessica Lussenhop met Khristen years ago putting together a story for the BBC. Here's Jessica. The recording is just 10 minutes long. The man Khristen was trying to record was her home inspector. This is back in 2012. At the time, she didn't have a cell phone, so she borrowed one from her friend. Can you just sort of explain how you made this recording in the first place? OK. I had on some around the house cleanup clothing, like baggy clothing. So I had a phone, and I took the phone, and I put it in my shirt. Put it in, I think, it was my bra strap or something, sitting some type of way odd. Because of the phone under the shirt secured by a bra strap, the recording is hard to hear. Hiding the phone there, Khristen's nervous. She gives herself a task-- raking the yard-- as she waits for Eric Pender to pull up. He is who she wants to record. She's kind of afraid of him, but she's focused on all the things anyone making this kind of recording might be. She wants to stay calm, not look suspicious, act natural. And most importantly, she wants to get audio of Eric Pender harassing her so she has undeniable proof. Eric Pender's red truck pulls up and parks on the street. There was a long driveway. So I'm in a wooded area, ain't no whole bunch of houses near me or nothing, and he was walking up. But I was still raking, doing both. And he was coming up towards me, and I was kind of trying to turn the other way. That's when he kind of got real close, and he was like, I'm-- You know, Ms. Sellers, you need to be careful of who you talk to. I'm not worried about me. Be careful who you talk to. I'm not worried about me. Just somebody you think that you can trust, and I'm just letting you know you probably can't trust them. But if there's somebody you think you can trust, then I'm just letting you know you probably can't trust them. He basically was saying I need to watch what I'm saying to people and how I'm talking to them, and I'm like, what am I saying to people? I'm trying to put the face on of I'm not saying nothing to nobody. What are you talking about? How far away is he from you when he's-- Probably like how me and her is right now. My producer, Robyn-- she's about two feet away. This recording is the fourth time Khristen had spoken to Eric Pender ever. All right, I already know how people use lies. I ain't-- look, you need to-- look, if you think-- [INAUDIBLE]. I'm super nervous, and nothing-- I'm so nervous at that point I was shaking, and I couldn't believe he didn't see it. It was like a tremble in me that I just was trying to hold on to the rake as hard as I could so that he wouldn't see the tremble in me. You know what I mean? Were you making eye contact with him? I really was like down to the rake, down to the rake. It was like, if I was somebody else, the way I was raking in the same spot, I would have been like, what is she doing? But I was still in the same spot because I was scared to move. I was just nervous. The house Eric Pender was coming to inspect wasn't Khristen's yet. It was a house she was hoping to move into with her three kids. The only thing she needed to move in was his signature on a form. She needs this house. Just two weeks earlier, Khristen was staying at her mom's, just home from a prison stint. She served six months for a probation violation. She was looking for a house for her and her kids. If you needed a Section 8 voucher in Laurinburg, a small town in a rural area of North Carolina, one of the only places to go was a nonprofit called Four-County Community Services. The problem was the only house they were willing to give her was a house no one else seemed to want. Khristen was like, OK. I'm not picky. They had a house, and they said that house in particular was abandoned. And if I was to clean that house out, that I would go ahead and be able to move in the house, and wouldn't have to pay a deposit. They actually called the landlord, and they will pay the first month's rent. I think that's how it went, yeah. So if she cleaned the house, it'd be hers, but cleaning the house, she'd come to learn, was a big project. It was a three bedroom house with a dining room and den, and all the rooms were filled with junk. It smelled awful. There were roaches, lots of poop. The neighbors had told me that's why it was so many feces and stuff in the house, because they had left the dog. And then finally, I guess, the dog either died or left, and they got it out. I don't know. But by the time I got there, I just was there with the leftover-- the house being full of clothing and food in the cabinets. It was all this stuff. It was just horrible. She cleaned and cleaned. She had a list of tasks that she'd been given from the nonprofit. It took weeks, like maybe two weeks or so, three weeks, maybe even more than that. I can't even really remember remember. I just remember going a lot of times doing it. Well, I called down there, and they sent the inspector out. I thought I had everything done that was my duty to do. Eric Pender showed up. He was the housing inspector for Four-County. He's a tall man, older, light skinned black man with a taste for cowboy boots and belts, khakis. Pender was there to review Khristen's work. If she passed his inspection, she'd get approved to move in. Anyway, he was like, you need to have a man to help you. Why you don't have a boyfriend? And all this. And I'm like, I don't have one because I'm just coming out from prison. I'm trying to get on my feet for my kids. I'm trying to explain to him, and he was like, but if you had a man here, a man could get this stuff done. And I'm like, I did it. What are you asking me to do? This talk of men quickly turned explicit. Khristen said he asked her about her sex life, if she performed oral sex before. And I was like, what? I was totally thrown. And he was like, because you have had men to take you out to dinner and stuff. And then I had told him, yeah, I have. And he was like, well, you having people take you out to dinner. That's what they were paying you for. They were paying you for sex. He said, let's say your rent's $600 times 12 months. Her rent was $600 a month. So to be clear, he was laying out her exact situation. He proposed sex with him as a kind of home insurance policy that Pender valued at over a year's worth of rent. And he was like, that's way over $6,000. My signature is over $6,000. So you'll be having sex for-- basically, he mapped it out just like that. Did he even acknowledge that you had cleaned the whole house? He didn't. He didn't want to. He wanted to let me know that I still had stuff to do. I'm stuck, because I know I'm in here with this man. And I'm like, he can sign this paper, and he can not sign this paper. He can say whatever, and my word against him is what? So at this time, I'm like, what do I do? I just don't know. So I just knew to try to keep a distance between me and him as much as I could. Pender toured the house with Khristen following behind him. He starts pointing to stuff that wasn't Khristen's responsibility to clean up, that wasn't on the list that the nonprofit gave her-- broken mirrors, a broken toilet. That's where he was telling me the toilet needed fixing, and he kind of pulled me by the hip in the bathroom. And he pulled himself out in front of me. Wait, what? Yeah, he pulled himself out, and I looked down. And I looked up, and I kind of like-- I need to get out-- find a way out. So I kind of got out of the bathroom. And he's blocking you. He's in the bathroom door. Yeah, he's blocking me. And you're in the bathroom and can't get out. Mhm, yeah. And he exposes himself to you. Definitely. And he was like, you know what to do. You know what I'm saying? You know if you want this house, you know what you got to do. That's what he was saying at that point. She says the only thing she was sure of was that there was no way she was going to do what he wanted ever. She managed to push past him, gets him to leave. He doesn't sign the form. It was overwhelming. I broke down, because I felt like, when you're in situations like I was in, you feel kind of like you've got low self-esteem already. And so dealing with that situation is just kind of like-- you just feel like that's what-- he looks at you like-- is that how men look at you? And so it's just like I'm going to say whatever to her because she is who she is. Khristen did not go to the police. She thought it was her word against his and that, because of her record, she wouldn't be believed. She thought she needed to bolster her claim in some way, collect some evidence or something. She called a private investigator, wondering if they could surveil him, but they were too expensive. The private investigator she talked to gave her this tip. North Carolina is a one-party consent state, meaning it was legal for Khristen to record him, try to get proof without his permission. But your friends know enough to hurt you. Yeah. You see what I'm saying? They know-- Which brings us back to the recording Khristen made on that Sunday in April back in 2012. Pender is coming back ostensibly to inspect the house. He still hasn't signed the form she needs to move in. Remember, Khristen is trying to record Pender propositioning her, but when he walks up, he's not doing that. He starts talking about his job at the housing office, how he is in charge of handling complaints. Any time I deal with a complaint, the complaints come to me all the time. He says, any time I deal with a complaint-- he's talking to you about a complaint. Do you know what he's talking about? See, that's what he was saying. He was saying that somebody told his boss that I said that he was making advances and bothering me. Which she hadn't. She'd only told a few people and that private investigator about Pender. Confused, Khristen tries to play it off. You sure? I'm positive. You want to [BLEEP] me? I just can't see that now. Just don't stir it up. Don't say nothing. Now, I'm just telling you when somebody's in your business. The sum of all this for Khristen-- she's realizing that telling her housing office about Pender, filing an actual complaint is out of the question. Instead of calling me, they call him and tell him everything instead of calling me, saying, is this happening to you? So at that point, you know that nobody on your side. Now, the people that's close to you know that you've got a task ahead of you. I don't see them. It's a weird recording because Eric Pender says things that sound simultaneously like a threat and like they could be the advice of someone who's protective and caring. Pender had what Khristen considered a supreme confidence, where he could finesse words, make insults sound flowery and innocent. It's like, to me, he was just trying to make me his friend. And I was trying to keep myself afloat in the conversation while I was feeling like I was drowning at the same time. For example, as she's raking, Pender starts lecturing her about her kids. You really should've had your kids over here, too. Yeah. No, I mean, but they're not here. They don't be here none. Well, I know, but I'm just saying, if they were here, you should have them here raking in this yard. And you've got a son, right? Mhm. This is part of being a man. When I was coming up, my mama-- that's how I learned to work in my yard. It's a part of that growing up process. I don't where your daddy fits in this life, but you've got to give him these two-- look, you tell what's-his-name, little man, say look, you're going to be a man one day. You're going to need to know how to change a tire. You're going to need to know how to light the grill. You're going to need to know how to take care of this yard. All Khristen can think is this is not what she was hoping to get recorded. I didn't think none of this was going to work, because I was-- I'm used to him coming, saying, what's up [BLEEP]. You going to have sex. You're going to do this, being very blunt on what he want, and why he want it, and when I'm going to do it, and what I get for doing it. When I'm recording something, it's like-- It's all over. --all over the place. So I'm like, oh, this is not going to work. So that's how I felt at that point. But also, all that advice about how she should raise her kids-- He's arrogant, and he's like I'm beneath. In his mind, he could say what he want to say to me, no matter who's involved. You're beneath me, so I know how to raise your children. Now, you're beneath me, so I know how to get you in this house. And you're beneath me, so I can help you. Everything was talking down, or making me feel like I'm not enough, or I'm not a good enough mom. Everything was to try to belittle me into nothing. Pender keeps talking, but not about home inspection. He still doesn't explicitly proposition Khristen, like the first time that they met. He's suggestive, though. He mentions for no apparent reason how women need to stop acting like they don't know how they got pregnant. [INAUDIBLE] get mad. Y'all know where babies come from. You [BLEEP], you get pregnant. Damn, I mean, don't be mad at the world. He goes further. He reminds Khristen how he came by her house and, quote, "asked her for some." And seeing how I came by and asked you for some anyway. I said, well, damn, maybe-- and then I start thinking-- I say, well-- Well, maybe it's-- It's maybe because you like women, and maybe I should never even approach you. I do not like no women, Mr. Pender. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what you like. Oh-- This is my first-- second time even seeing you, so-- What if I was gay? You know what I'm saying? So what? Why would you use that against me? You know what I'm saying? But he would do that. Anything that he felt could be a target to hit you in a way to make you feel like I've got to prove him I'm not this. Then he would use that. Did you feel like he was trying to make you angry? Yeah. Right, that's-- Yeah, I did. I felt like he was trying to make me give in to say, no, I'm not like that. I'll do it to prove it or something. He hints at making a deal with her to help her with her housing, but doesn't spell out what she'd have to do in that deal. Khristen keeps recording. He reminds her that he has a lot of authority and can help her. I do have some discrepancy on how I enforce the rules. It may be a situation-- your power might be off. You got 48 hours sometimes with your power off. I'm going to come-- I'm going to come back in three days, instead of two. That's going to be your extra day to get your power back on, so forth and so on. I want-- That's back to what I know. The previous conversations, when he do ask for sex and all that, that's how he get to that-- is I'm helping you, so let me tell you what you got to do to get that help. So that tone is what I was used to, so when he got to that calm place, I'm like, here you go. Finna try to make me feel like he's helping me, because if I have sex, I have somewhere to stay for having sex forever. And he's getting ready to go on today. I want you to do such and such. I did. At that point, I really knew, OK, it's coming. But it doesn't come. Pender instead brings up the most on topic housing inspection related subject of his visit-- the barn. There's this little barn-type shed in Khristen's backyard. It's filled with garbage, and Khristen had put snake repellent around the outside of it to keep snakes, if there were any, trapped inside. Pender says, I'd get that barn cleaned out. Get this barn cleaned out. I'm going to say something. Now, he said that he was-- Get it clean up because-- The guy that was here, he was paying them. All this-- Pender starts listing all the things she could use the barn for-- card games, an escape from the kids. He's suddenly singly focused on the potential greatness of a rundown barn. You could keep stuff in that barn. You and your friends want to have a card game away from the kids [INAUDIBLE] just get one [INAUDIBLE]. Mhm. Yeah, because you can go in the barn, and you see how the window in the barn-- and say, we can go in the barn. And you can have this here. It was just like, the more he was describing, the closer he was trying to get to the barn. He was trying to find a way to get me there, and mind you, we're outside. So I guess him trying to do anything-- that would probably be the best place for him. Pender keeps insisting she go in the barn with him. Khristen keeps avoiding it. She won't go. She finally says, if I see a snake in there, I'm going to pass out and die. And they met at [INAUDIBLE] so he mailing him a check. [INAUDIBLE]. Yeah, I would certainly take-- even if you had to do it, I would take these two bags at a time. He mailing a check for them today. I'm not going in with the snake. I'm going to passed out die. I felt like, if I would've went in that barn, he definitely-- it would have been OK for him in his mind that she's saying OK. And I knew I wasn't going in there, so. It seems to work. Pender backs off slowly. They have one last back and forth. He starts to walk away, says, all right then, we straight. All right, well, we straight. Finally, he says the most damning thing he's said in the whole recording. Well-- Well, we almost straight. You'll take care of me later on. Well, we almost straight. You'll take care of me later on. Just take it and rake it. Khristen stopped recording. She worried immediately that what she had recorded wasn't enough, and if it wasn't, that she was stuck right where she started-- her house hanging in the lurch. She felt desperate. How is this going to be over? When it's going to be over? Him saying I still got to take care of him-- it was just like, so this ain't going to be over until I do it. In his head, it's-- that's what it is. Until I have sex with him, this isn't over. It's not over. And in my mind, I knew that he had come to expect every year-- every year. And him having to expect every year, that means I had to have some kind of a sexual thing with him for him to approve it every year. I just was praying that that recording was enough proof that he's been doing it. So I just didn't know if I had enough proof. This recording kicked off a pretty remarkable series of events. Khristen used it to file a criminal charge against Eric Pender. He was convicted of simple assault, but appealed and got the case dropped. She also played the recording for a young lawyer, who didn't even have an office yet or know for sure if what Khristen was describing was illegal, but he listened to the tape, believed her, and took the case. Khristen's lawyer filed a civil suit, and a local paper ran a story about it. More and more women started coming forward with stories about Eric Pender and Pender's boss, John Wesley, who was also asking for sex in exchange for vouchers. The case grew from three women to eight, and then to 16. Six of the women went along with the men's sexual demands. One of them lost her housing anyway. The lawsuit ran on for years, which became its own form of punishment for Khristen, because Eric Pender was still her home inspector. He continued working for them. At one point, he tried to cancel Khristen's voucher. Her lawyers blocked it. The case was moved from state to federal court. Department of Justice lawyers got involved. Khristen got called all the names-- liar, felon, opportunist. Once, in a grocery store, a woman Khristen barely knew approached her. She really felt adamant on telling me you're messing this up. You're messing up how we get our vouchers. And that's-- She was saying we-- like not just me, a bunch of us. Yeah, so that's when I kind of understood-- when she said this to me, it just kind of hit me on how they were able to do it for so long, how he was so confident, because look at how this woman feel. There aren't any good numbers on how common sexual harassment is in housing situations. No one seems to be tracking it. In July of 2015, three years after Khristen made the recording, the federal lawsuit ended. Four-County settled with the Department of Justice. Pender and Wesley were banned from working in Section 8, or renting or managing any property permanently. Neither admitted to any wrongdoing. Both denied all the allegations against them. I reached out to Pender and Wesley for this story. Wesley didn't call me back. I called Pender's lawyer, tried previous addresses, called old numbers, and his ex-wife. No one knew where he was. Four-County didn't respond either. They've changed their name since. The women were awarded a $2.7 million settlement, the largest sexual harassment in housing settlement in US history at the time. Ultimately, the number of victims in the suit was 87. Khristen's recording was evidence of Pender's behavior, but now, years later, when she listens to it, she hears it very differently than she did at the time. What she hears is herself, who she is in that recording. She hears how small she becomes around him. And she thought about the recording a lot. When I first called her in November to see if she might be willing to talk to me for this story, almost immediately she said, I'm glad you brought this up. She told me she'd never talked it through with anyone the way she's always wanted to. I visited Khristen in the house she moved to right after the case settled-- a three bedroom in Greensboro, where she lives with her two youngest kids. I played the recording for her. She hadn't heard it in years. Even listening to it, I'm like, god, you could have said this. You could've said that. You could have did this. I beat myself up for some of that. Really? Yeah, because I feel like I could have argued more or something. And I know that it did have a good outcome, but I just feel like, if I would've told him more-- and sometimes I wish I would have just told him off. I do beat myself up for some little things. The way she dealt with Eric Pender, she says, is something lots of women do with men, particularly men who have power over them. She laughs, deflects, pretends, tells half truths, demures, changes the subject, bites her tongue, smiles too much, agrees too much, hides her anger, hides all her emotions, buries her personality. It's so familiar I asked every woman I talked to in this lawsuit about it, and then nearly every woman in my life about it. As we talked, Khristen and I started calling it the tactic. The tactic come in place when it's somebody who has control or somebody who I have to see on a regular basis and they're affecting my livelihood, because your like, my dream is on the other side of that person. You know what I'm saying? My livelihood is on the other side of this person. So if I try to tear this person down, then they can stop me from reaching that. You know what I'm saying? When do you think you learned it? When do you think you-- what's the first memory you have of trying to use this as a strategy to get through a difficult situation? I had a certain family member that would do things to hurt me, but I didn't want them to hurt me. So I knew I got to be in the same house with him for a certain period of time. This family member abused Khristen both physically and sexually until she was about 12 years old. As a kid, she never told anybody. Being in low income families, a lot of people shelter these things because it would cause more pain to the family. We already struggling. We already going through this. We already going through that, so why would I put more on the family? You know what I mean? Then you also have the fact that it's embarrassing. And what if don't nobody believe you? And now you got all those things. So it just seems better to shelter it. She didn't start using these tactics with Eric Pender, and she didn't stop using them after him. In the years since the lawsuit, Khristen said she found herself in a job where, again, someone in a higher position than her started making sexually explicit comments to her. She was afraid to offend him, so she used the tactic, made up an excuse to redirect him. She told him, I'm not for you. I'm too crazy, and you should steer clear of me. Not long after, Khristen says the guy walked right up behind her and grabbed her breast. Khristen quit that day, walked out, never went back. She told me, I can't file a federal lawsuit every time something like this happens to me. So like I said, Khristen's thought about the recording with Eric Pender and how she handled him in the recording a lot over the years. I asked her, after all this, if you could go back to when you first met Eric Pender, what do you wish you'd have said? Oh yeah, now, on that note-- [LAUGHS] look, on that note, yeah, I just-- I wish I could have just looked at him and said, Mr. Pender, I'm not interested in you. I don't want you in no type of way, form, or fashion. I don't want to have no dinners with you for a voucher here, now, or forever more. I don't want no dinners with you, and I wish you would just stop asking me, because to me, I felt like he didn't think I could complete a sentence like that. And if I would have said it to him like that, maybe he would've been like, wow, whoa. She talk a little bit better than I thought. That would've been the best thing for me-- to be able to say it to him in a way where it's like, OK, you're not beneath me-- I mean, I'm not beneath you. We're eye to eye hear. Just the other day, Khristen told me she has a new tactic. She used it with a guy at her work who kept trying to tell her these sexual jokes. Khristen was not having it. In a roomful of people, with her boss watching, she tried her new move, and it worked. He backed off. She said to the guy, Google me, because I will record you. Jessica Lussenhop. Coming up, idle chit chat about a dog with an FBI agent can feel very threatening. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. So it's March 2020, and in this week of schools closing, and people being quarantined, and the NBA, and Disneyland, and Broadway all shutting down, and still not enough tests out there to even begin to figure out how far coronavirus has spread, we have stories about moments when people feel a low hum of menace, a sense that things might get much worse. And it is not clear how much worse that means. We've arrived at Act Two of our program. Act Two-- Reality Show. So the first act of our program today was about a man who was breaking the rules. This act is about men enforcing rules. In this case, it's FBI agents. They're questioning a suspect. This interrogation happened in June 2017. It's a real interrogation that happened. The suspect was an NSA contractor named Reality Winner. The FBI actually denied a request for the recording of this. They said it was not sufficiently in the public interest. Fortunately for us, theater director Tina Satter says she read the transcript of what was said and thought, this is a play, a thriller. This woman, alone in her house-- these men who arrive and question her. And Tina Satter put this on stage, more or less verbatim, with actors playing the agents and playing Reality Winner. Even the most casual small talk between them has this air to it. The entire thing on stage takes 70 minutes. We're going to play you an edited down excerpt. Emily Davis plays Reality Winner. TL Thompson and Pete Simpson play the special agents. Just so you know what's happening, when they get to a word, or phrase, or sentence that has been redacted in the original FBI transcript, they play this sound-- So you can hear that sound now and then. The action starts outside Reality Winner's home in Augusta, Georgia, and then it moves inside. Here it is. Let's show you who we are. Well, the reason we're here today is that we have a search warrant for your house. All right, do you know what this might be about? I have no idea. OK, this is about a possible mishandling of classified information. Oh my goodness. Mhm. So what we've got is-- again, got a warrant, and I'm happy to show it to you. What I'd like to do is sit down and talk you with-- talk with you about it, kind of go over what's going on. Talk to you, kind of get your side of it. And of course, you-- completely voluntary to talk to me. We can talk here. Our office is about five minutes away. If you want to, we can talk there, if you'd rather. We can do either one. It makes no difference to me. Do you have any pets? I do, I have two-- Because you've been gone for a while. I do-- Do you live by yourself? Yes. What we're going to have to do is we're going to have to go into the house first to make sure it's safe. Absolutely. We have a search warrant, so we're going to. Absolutely. And what we'll do is we'll keep you out here until we do that, and once we secure it, well, then we'll kind of go from there, OK? Of course. Is your dog friendly? OK, so she does not like men. OK. So that's a problem. However, and she might come towards you. She's never bitten anybody. She's not aggressive. She's just got a really good growl going. She'll probably just hide under my desk. OK. Do we have a leash or something? I have a leash. I can get her leashed up. OK, so what we might want to do is maybe let you go in there with her. You're not to touch anything else. Yes, I can do that. You're not to do anything else. Yeah, I can lead her straight to the backyard. But the get the dog, and bring it out here. Yes. Are we cool? I understand Because otherwise, if we're going to have a problem, we're not going to do that, so. I understand. House key? House key. OK. Are there any weapons in the car, in the house? In the house, yes. What do you have? I have an AR-15. Is it pink? It's pink. How did you know? I have a Glock 9 under the bed. And a 15 gauge. You sound like my house. OK. We're good, then. All right, just don't make any movements for anything [INAUDIBLE]. Right, yeah. Yeah. Being kind of obvious. We're all cool. Yeah. Yes, yes. And you won't even-- Then we'll get a water. We can get her a water-- You won't take your eyes off of me. --and all that kind of stuff, but let's do that. Of course. Come here, girl. We're going to get the dog and bring it out here. Right here. I got her. All right, let me get your leash. Leash. I know. I know. There's people outside. I want to make this as easy for you guys as possible. OK, likewise. Just hopefully explain a couple things and-- --to figure this all out, and wrap it up. How long you had your dog? She's actually a foster. I'm rehabilitating her so that hopefully she can get adopted later on. She's actually a rescue. I think I got her in March. Yeah, my-- one of my dogs was a rescue, and when I got him, he wouldn't-- I was the only guy who could touch him. And this was probably all of three years. Anybody else came in the house, especially male, he'd pee all over the place, but I could touch him, and it was fine. But it was funny, I mean, he's seven years old now. He just comes up to everybody, licks his hand, and he's great. Whoever had him before was a real-- was a real piece of work. All right, so would you like to talk here or talk at the office? Let's go ahead and talk here. You want to talk here? Sure. Let's-- I'm trying to think if we have any place in the house that we can kind of sit down that's private. Is there anything-- anything there in the house we can sit that's kind of away? Away? How many rooms in-- So it's a one bedroom. I do have a spare bedroom that I don't use that's empty. I don't like to go back there. I guess I don't have anything that's completely closed off, though. Except for that back room. That back room. Yeah. And it's completely empty. Yeah, you'll go in there. There's one dog kennel cage. Other than that, I don't use the room. OK, all right. You said you don't like to go in there? Yeah. It's just creepy. It's just weird. It's like an addition to the house that's behind the kitchen, and it's always dirty. OK. We can talk back there if you're fine going back there. OK? Yeah, we can go back there. So I do have to ask, just however this goes-- and I'm not making any assumptions or anything like that, but is this going to be like a-- I brought my phone into the building type situation where I don't see my phone for three weeks, or? So we'll go over the warrant itself. So we do have a warrant for the phone, so. I'm not making any assumptions or anything like that, but I do teach yoga tomorrow, and the phone has music on it. No, I get-- I can make do, I guess. There are bigger problems in the world, I guess. Yeah. OK, we're good. Want to go back here? Yep. You can go ahead and go back in there. Oh, this room is dirty. I am so sorry. That's OK. No, that's fine. Not a problem. All righty, so what I want to do is kind of explain that we do have a search warrant. You're welcome to see the warrant. You're welcome to read the warrant, and then explain a little bit about it. Now, if you're willing to talk to me, I'd like to go through just kind of how this started. Sound good to you? Yes. I'm going to take-- right here-- I'm going to take notes. Where were you born? Alice, Texas. Alice, like? Like? Like the girl's name, yeah. Like the name, OK. And currently you're employed as a contract linguist with Pluribus. Yes. OK, how long have you been employed by them. I started 9 February, 2017. OK, and where are you currently assigned? Currently assigned? Like the NSA 21 code, or-- You can tell me the building. Because, yeah-- OK, Whitelaw building, second floor. I'm sorry, what languages you said? I heard-- Farsi, Dari, Pashto. OK, any other? No. I'm kidding. OK. All this stems from a report that we received that you had mishandled classified information, OK? So that's the broad scope of it. My question to you is, does that ring any bells to you whatsoever? It does now. When I started working at Whitelaw, I had-- do you know PKI passwords? Mhm. I had a printed out email in my folder, and I didn't have a desk yet. So I took it with me, passed through security, went to a Starbucks, and then came back, and they looked through it. And unfortunately, that email that I had printed out was classified, and they filed a report for that. And you had gone to Starbucks, come back, and they checked a bag, or they-- They checked my folder. If you're familiar, with Whitelaw, you go through the turnstiles just to get to the cafeteria in back. All right. You had gone to the cafeteria? Yeah. So you were in the building, and they nabbed you for-- Yeah. OK, all right, but you're still in the building. Uh-huh. OK, all right, so what's your work role there at Whitelaw? Currently I translate graphic documents and then-- yeah, that's all I do-- from Farsi to English. Graphic documents? Yeah. OK. When did you process out of the Air Force? I processed out of the Air Force December-- December 14, 2016, and up until that time, I had been looking at contracts to try to get my clearance renewed. OK, and when did Pluribus pick you up? Pluribus picked me up-- I believe they gave me the notification around January-- between 11th and 13th, around that day. OK, all right, so your clearance just kind of passed through. It passed through, yeah. So as far as you're aware, you haven't committed any security violations or anything that you're aware of other than this PKI thing? Other than that PKI thing, no. I mean, I do print out documents at work, just because it's easier for me to translate them by hand, but then I put them in the bin box. And then they don't get mixed up with my class notes that I take, because they are-- I use pretty paper, so I never take out white paper. Got it. Because I know that sounds really dumb, but that's just how I can do it now. After that whole PKI thing, I was like, no more white paper out of the building. OK, so you said you printed out stuff. Yeah, I printed out stuff. Is there a-- why did that come to mind, as far as security? It just-- I guess it all-- I just think about having actual papers. I can't imagine any other way to get things out of the building, I guess, and I'm old fashioned, so I'm just thinking about that. And especially with the PKI thing, just making sure I didn't accidentally have something in my lunchbox or anything like that. Nothing got out of the building? Nothing. You didn't carry anything out of the building. No. No, I definitely let everything get searched all of the time, so I haven't had any other accidents. OK. Have you ever gone searching for stuff that's not related to your work role? No. Not unless I have someone in Maryland ask me a question. OK. And, I mean, you kind of already answered this, but have you ever taken anything out of the NSA facility. I mean, you mentioned the PKI-- Yes. But have you ever taken anything out of the facility? No. No? Whether it's a piece of paper-- you ever downloaded anything? Ever emailed anything out? No. No? OK. Have you ever discussed any classified material with anybody who wouldn't have the prior US government authorization? No. No? OK. Not many people ask about Iranian aerospace, so I lucked out. So you never discussed any work or anything classified with anybody? Uh-uh. I use a lot of paper, but never anything outside of Iranian and anything else out of that, and never outside of the building. OK, Reality, what if I said that I had the information to suggest that you did print out stuff that was outside of that scope? OK, I would have to remember. OK. What if I said you printed out information that was related to reports on [RUMBLING]. Reality, we obviously know a lot more than we're telling you at this point. And I think you know a lot more than you're telling us at this point. I don't want you to go down the wrong road. I think you need to stop and think about what you're saying and what you're doing, because telling a lie to an FBI agent is not going to be the right thing. Again, we are here voluntarily. You're talking voluntarily. I'm not asking you, forcing you to do anything but think. That's what I'm asking you to do-- is to think. So think about what he just asked and let-- There was one I printed out because I wanted to read it. Can you remember what day you printed it out? I might mess up the-- late March, early April, the first two weeks of April. In the first two weeks of April? Mhm. And what was it? It was an NSA Pulse article about [RUMBLING], and yeah, I did. I did print that one out. OK, why'd you print that one out? I wanted to read it, and the way I had downloaded it, it was just hard for me to read. And I wanted to just look at it, because it looked like a piece of history. So I wanted to have that on my desk for a day. And yeah. What did you do with that article? I kept it on my desk for like three days, and then I burn bagged it in the box that has the slats on it by the fridge. How about any other times? Any other times? Did you search for anything on the [RUMBLING] any other times. That did spark my curiosity, so I just kept tabs on reading those articles, looking at the [RUMBLING] was interesting to me. So I did read some of those. OK, did you print out any of those articles? Did you ever go searching for them? Ever go digging? Nothing more than like a 10 minute detraction from work. OK, what were-- how would you do it? Just type in the search box and scroll. OK, all right, did you print out any of those articles? No. The only one was just the one that was like [RUMBLING]. OK. You're pretty sure it was late April, early March. Think about it-- try to remember personal details of your life and your-- OK? I know. I'm trying to. So I remember-- I remember that week. I got into a fight with a boyfriend that week. It had to have been sometime in April. I'm just-- I'm trying to think what week-- what weekend after that was like-- I'm sorry. I'm just-- No, it's OK. I'm trying. Just yeah, like mid-April is all I'm thinking. OK. All right. What if I told you that I know you searched for and printed out a document on the 9th of May? 9th of May? I guess I can't argue that. I mean, if you-- I, mean obviously you know. This would have been three and a half, four weeks ago, roughly. Mhm, yeah. Do you remember what-- how you-- what you did to get to the article? Other than seeing it on the front page or linking it from another-- Do you remember what search terms you might have put in? Probably [RUMBLING]. I'm not very sophisticated. OK, so you printed out the doc-- you printed out a document, an intelligence report on this. You do recall that? Yeah, I do remember now, yes. OK, so what did you do with that document? Like I said, I kept it on my desk for a couple of days because I thought that it was interesting, and I thought that I would read it. And then I said, no, and I need to not keep this out on my desk. So I put it in the burn bin. You put it in the burn bag, OK. Yeah. All right, Reality, are you sure that's what you did with it? Yes. Are you positive? Yes. You didn't take it out of the building? No. OK, you didn't take it out of the building, give it to anybody else. No. You didn't send it. No. You didn't send it to anybody? No. OK. Reality, can you guess how many people might have printed out that document? No. It's not too many. That document has made it outside, OK? Obviously, because we're here. Yeah, obviously. Crap. The most likely candidate, by far and away, is you. I don't think you are a big bad master spy, OK? I don't. I don't think that. But I think you might have been angry over everything that's been going on politics-wise. Can't turn on the TV without getting pissed off, or at least I can't. And I think you might have made a mistake. Now, why I'm here, and why I want to talk to you is to figure out the why behind this, OK? So I ask you again, did you take it out and send it? I didn't. I put it in the burn bag. I mean, I'm trying to deploy. I'm not trying to be a whistleblower. That's crazy. So how do you think a document like that would end up getting out? I would-- let's be straight. I mean, there's little to no security on documents. OK, but you said you remember. You remember putting it in the burn bag, sliding it in there. Folded in half. I mean, I remember it. Folded in half? Yeah, because it didn't-- yeah, I folded it in half. OK. What if I told you that that document, folded in half, made its way outside NSA? I don't know that. Yeah, made its way out in an envelope postmarked Augusta, Georgia. See, things are getting a little specific. OK, it made its way to an online news source that you subscribe to. Getting really specific. Would you agree? Looks awfully bad. It looks really bad. So how'd you get it out of the office? Folded in half in my pantyhose. OK. And what did you do with it? Put it in an envelope and sent it to [RUMBLING]. That day, that week, it was just too much to sit back, and watch, and think, why do I have this job if I'm just going to sit back and be helpless? And it did-- it just-- sorry. I just thought that that was the final straw. It was just something that just kind of did it? Because you don't seem like the type to do this. I believe it. I want to believe it. I'm not. I'm not. I want to go out with our special forces. I mean, that's why I got out of the Air Force. That's why I'm here in Augusta. I wanted my clearance back so I could apply for a deployment, and it was just at a time when I wasn't applying for any deployments. And I had seven or eight months left of a job that didn't mean anything to me, because it's Iran, and I'm a Pashto linguist. What am I doing translating Farsi? And it just-- I just felt really hopeless, and seeing that information that had been contested back and forth, and back and forth in the public domain for so long, trying to figure out with everything else that keeps getting leaked and keeps getting released, why isn't this getting out? Why isn't this getting out there? Why can't this be public? Actors Emily Davis, TL Thompson, and Pete Simpson. As you may know, this was all in the news. The document that Reality Winner leaked to the website The Intercept was an intelligence report confirming Russian hacking in the 2016 election. She's still serving her five year sentence. Sounds design and music for the stage production by Sanae Yamada, and Jimin Breslford. Tina Satter's theatrical adaptation of the FBI transcript is called Is This a Room. They have a tour scheduled. Information at halfstraddle.com. Our program was produced today by Nadia Reiman. The people who put together today's show includes Bim Adewunmi, Susan Burton, Ben Calhoun, Dana Chivvis, Sean Cole, Noor Gill, Damian Grave, Michelle Harris, Chana Joffe-Walt, Seth Lind, Miki Meek, Lina Misitzis, Stowe Nelson, Ben Phelan, Robyn Semien, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, and Matt Tierney. Our managing editor is Diane Wu. Our executive editor is David Kestenbaum. Special thanks today to Kelly Clarke, Craig Hensel, Kendra Hanna, Kendra [? Munroe, ?] Madeleine Ball, Andrew Hagelshaw, and Maria Hernandez. Our website, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. And I will end this show about the low hum of menace with this very theme appropriate program note. Just a few hours ago, as I was doing some last editing on the show, I learned that a few days ago I shook hands with somebody who now has symptoms of coronavirus, whose wife is a confirmed case. So the plan is I am going into quarantine myself when I leave the studio today, and we are shutting down our office. Most everybody in our office was already working from home. I just want to say I feel fine. Hopefully I'll stay that way between now and next time I talk to you. Avoid contact with others as much as you can. Stay well, and wash your hands, OK? And by the way, if you're tired of reciting the happy birthday song twice as you wash, turns out one chorus of the song "Stayin' Alive" is the perfect length, and whether you're a brother, or whether you're a mother, just stay alive. Stay alive.
|
Hey there, everybody. Ira here. So if you heard our show last week, you know that I had just learned hours before we broadcast that episode that I needed to go into quarantine because a guy who I had shaken hands with five days before that developed symptoms and then tested positive for coronavirus. It is now 12 days since I shook hands with that guy, and I've not developed symptoms. CDC guidelines say that it can happen for up to 14 days, so I am nearly in the clear. A reminder to everybody that people who don't have symptoms can still be carrying the virus and give it to others. Anyway, the world has changed so much, right? One of the striking things about this coronavirus is how differently it affects different people. So some people who get it have no symptoms, or they get mild symptoms, or they experience something like a bad flu. That's particularly young and healthy people, though young, healthy adults are not immune. The CDC put out a report this week-- maybe you saw this-- saying 20% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients are between 20 and 44 years old. But it's older people, as we all know, who are living in a completely different world these days. If they leave their homes, they're walking around in a world that's suddenly filled with this invisible thing that can kill them with no idea of who around them might have it or what doorknob it might be on. One of our producers, David Kestenbaum, talked to this woman, Tova Rothman, who's 71. Her husband's 74 and has a compromised immune system, so he is in special danger if he comes into contact with the virus. Here's David. I talked to Tova last weekend, which feels like so long ago. I don't think I would do this now, but we met in person to talk. She lives in my town, in this apartment across from the pizza place, the little movie theater, the Kings supermarket. Her daughter told me she was eager to talk to someone. For her safety, I checked my temperature before I left the house, washed my hands twice, and wiped down my microphone, though even that is no guarantee. Again, I wouldn't do this now. She came down from her apartment carrying her cell phone and a canister of Clorox wipes. Oh, you brought your own wipes too. Yeah. We did the interview on a park bench. If she's a little off-mic sometimes, it's because I'm sitting as far away from her as possible, holding my arms straight out with the microphone. Every move she makes right now requires some impossible calculation. She has to avoid anything that might get her or her husband sick. How are you feeling in general? Overwhelmed, but I feel like that I can master this. I went to Kings across the street. I just try to stay away from people. They have them restocking and restocking. And they actually have better fruit and fresher fruit now. [LAUGHS] But you're not supposed to get between six feet of people. And millennials are all marching around buying things, and you're, whoa, don't come near me. I must look like I'm crazy, but that's the way it goes. This town is a very young town, and so there's a lot of young people and a lot of kids skateboarding. And they're in your face. And you're like, stay away. But they don't understand that. Have you said anything to anybody? No. Wearing my plastic gloves and carrying my canister of Clorox, I think they understand where I'm coming from. [LAUGHS] It sounds so funny. Her husband, because of his immune system, is stuck in the apartment. My husband is not well. He can't go out, and he's not happy about it. There's TV, of course, but annoyingly, no sports to watch because everything's been canceled. The other night, he had Gunsmoke on, which is really not Tova's thing. So we're not having a great relationship with this. I told him that I was checking on him, and he shouldn't get out of his chair. And he very nastily said, OK, I won't get out. Does he say, I want to go outside, and you say, we can't? Yeah. He'll say, I want to do something. And I say, you can't. I would take him downstairs, and he could go out and get air in his face. But there's so many surfaces between our apartment and the lobby, and it's only one floor. But there's so much you have to worry about. It is a surreal thing. You just-- you think, what? Every morning, you wake up and think, I can't believe this. Is it real? So, it's real. Tova says her grandfather died from the Spanish flu in 1918. He went to the opera. They used to get tickets where they could stand and pay a lot less. And so he went to the opera, and he was in a crowd. And he got-- he was sick one day and died the next. He was 26. I keep thinking about how differently everyone might view this thing, how different our country's response might have been if the virus were as dangerous for younger people. Maybe we would have reacted faster because, oh, it's only the old people. [LAUGHS] That's how I feel. It wasn't quite as tragic if it's the old people. My friends keep calling and saying, who knew we were the old people, which is true. Tova stood up to go back to her husband. And as she did, this guy walked really close to her to throw a tissue in the trash can, as if it was two weeks ago or something. Tova was not happy. I was almost ready to throw my canister of wipes at him. He should stay away. Maybe I don't look 71. [LAUGHS] I'm sure that's it. Ah, yeah. [LAUGHS] Oh, very nice meeting you too. And thank you. I called Tova four days later to see how she was doing. She's still going out for walks-- no supermarkets anymore. That was actually the very last interview that anybody on our staff did with somebody in person, David Kestenbaum's story. We have all been holed up in our own homes, everybody on the staff. We are one of the many businesses that have decided that it's safer for everybody if we're working from home. So everybody's doing interviews over the phone. We're all preparing stories for next week's show about what's happening in the country and in the world. But in the meantime, until then, thinking about what might be nice to hear on the radio in a moment like this one. I think so much of what is happening now, as we're being told to stay home, and so many of us are either cooped up with our families or reaching out to family members more than usual, and reaching out to the other people we love to see how they're doing, and to worry together about what's going to happen next, we thought, with that in mind, today we would prepare a show of stories that we've made over the years about families and about people trying to find comfort or find answers by turning to their families, including-- we have this one story from 25 years ago of me and my mom back when she was still alive. And I saw her quoted in a national magazine as a sexpert. I had some questions for her, and I called her. We get to that in Act Three. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Act One, "Hey, Dad. Dad!" So school was cut off in so many places, and kids are home. And we have this story of a parent trying to go about his day and his daughter coming to him over and over with some things on her mind. Stephanie Foo tells what happened. My friend Matt's older daughter went through one of those hardcore phases, where she got really into asking her dad a lot of questions. She was nine. There's the why phase, and then the why phase can turn into the why not and explain, and that endless string of questions, like, why can't I have my own room? How do I get to school? Why can't we have a yard? Can I have a cookie? They're unrelenting. So one night, Matt was working from home, and Rosie was bugging him with her questions. And it was just sort of one after the other after the other. And I was like, all right, look, you got to just give me a minute. I'm working right now. Just go off and write them all down. Make me a list of the questions that you want me to answer, and I'll answer them for you. I thought it was going to be like three or four questions and then a picture of a rabbit or something. And I get this list, and I look at it. And these are the essential, unanswerable questions of life. Read a few of these questions for me. Start at the very top. OK. So, what is life? Why? That's the first question? That's the first question. It's the first thing she wants to know. Where do we go when we die-- heaven? Explain. Another planet? Is heaven another planet? Why is there heaven or hell? Time-- why? Explain. Do we make worlds? Do we become like God-- why? Why do you do what you do? How do you know what's true? Who do you miss-- why? Explain. Do you miss anyone more than them? And does that change, and how? And if that changes, was it worth missing them in the first place? And my favorite is-- pretty much just my jaw dropped-- why any of this? I mean, my first reaction to them is-- I mean, I'm proud of her. And then I realize I actually have to answer these questions. There are about three pages, single-spaced, of handwritten questions, about 50 questions total. But a promise was a promise, so Matt got to work. He's a professor at West Point, teaches writing. And so he took a professorial approach to it and started researching answers for her, looking up quotes on each topic, spending weeks, sometimes months, writing each answer. What's the shortest and what's the longest you've ever spent, and what's the hardest one? So I think the longest one is one that I haven't finished answering for her yet, which is, what is love? What's been the easiest one to answer so far? Is heaven another planet? No. I got him to read me one of the answers he worked hardest on. The answer to time-- why? Explain. Could you read it for me? Sure. So tell me what and tell me why, and the burden is on me to justify this to you. Perhaps that's what time means in the end, is justification or a lack of being justified. And I don't really know what justification means. There was an old movie I saw when I was a kid in your grandmother's house-- He quotes Camus, then brings in the Millennium Falcon, then St. Augustine, then Kierkegaard. Rosie was nine. All his answers are like this. Kierkegaard gets to this point after either/or'ing everything. He says, why did I not die as a baby? I'm a grown-up, and I find it impossible to follow your answers. Honestly, I have not any idea what you're saying. OK. [LAUGHS] Yeah. I mean, I really don't understand half of what I just said either, to be honest. What his answers do have going for them is sincerity. The time one ends like this. In one of my favorite stories by a guy named William Faulkner, there's a daddy who gives his kid a watch and says, I give you this watch, not that you might remember time, but so that you might forget it for a little while. I can only tell you that time is me turning and turning while the world is turning around a star that turns around a center that turns around the whole time. Among all the other things, the little turning animals on all the little turning worlds, there is me, trying to turn to you. OK. And you just told her this answer like this? Yeah. And she-- I mean, she would kind of pass in and out of being interested in it. And at the end of it she's just kind of like, oh, yeah, OK. And I'm like, all right, well. I mean, do you see what I'm saying about time? It's a measurement of change. It's an arbitrary human construct, but not, but it feels different, so it's phenomena. She's like, yeah, yeah, OK. I was like, oh, well, this isn't really exactly what I wanted. That's not what you wanted because you were like, oh, this is kind of boring? Yeah. Rosie has a pixie cut and a cheeky grin. She gave her dad the 50 questions three years ago. She's 12 now. He's been working on getting her answers, but he's only gone through 2/3 of them because it takes him so long to cobble together a response. What I found out talking to Rosie is she didn't even really care about the answers to these questions. Questions that I thought that would take him a long time to answer, because at the time I really just wanted to talk to him. It all started when she first moved to New York City. Before then, she'd been living with her mom and grandparents most of the week. But then her grandpa, who she was really close to, died, and she had to move in with her dad during the week instead. At the same time, she started at a new school where the kids either ignored or bullied her, and she felt lost. One day, she came home from school and decided she needed to do something about it. I was lonely, and I felt a little sad that nobody had really stepped out to say, oh, hey, it's going to be OK. I'll be your friend. So that's when I really, really needed somebody to talk to. So you didn't have anybody to talk to at school? No. And then at home? No. That's really why I felt like, oh, this is my dad. He's a really important person. I love him very much. I really want to become closer with him. I wish there was something that I could do to make us closer. Did you feel like your dad wasn't paying enough attention to you? Yeah, a little bit. Or not a little bit, yeah. What was he doing instead? He was writing papers on his computer. And I knew, at the time, how important it was, but part of me still wished that, like, put down all the screens, put down everything else, and just talk. So I wrote all the questions down, and they were big questions because I know my dad. And if it's a little question, he'll elaborate on it, and he'll make it a big deal. So if you times that by a big complex question, that would be a huge talk. Is it true that you weren't talking to her much at the time? No, I think I was talking to her all the time. I would tell her it's time to get up and go to school. I would tell her that it was time to do her homework. I would tell her that she needed a new jacket. Yeah, I mean, I talked to you all the time. Maybe you're noticing the purely logistical nature of everything he mentioned. It certainly didn't get past Rosie. I talked to you all the time. Yeah, but to me, it's not really the same thing. So conversation and talking are completely different things. Talking could be a range from, oh, hey, what's up? And conversation is you're deep in thought, and you're looking, and you're making eye contact, and you're really enjoying the presence of somebody else. Rosie's a smart kid, yeah, but this is the thing I really admire about her. Matt was a single dad with two kids, going to school and trying to make the rent at the same time. Telling him to pay attention to her didn't cut it, so she figured out something else. I read this short story recently about a successful con man whose motto was, make them want to give you the thing you want to take. Rosie made her dad want to give her attention by making an opportunity to do what he loved, ponder over life's big questions. My dad was kind of hard-shelled, I guess. And so it took a lot. I had to keep asking these questions and keep wondering. For me, it was just-- I had to keep going, and keep trying, and keep being this little bird that goes on your shoulders, like, I'm now your friend. Do you feel like it sort of taught him how to talk to you better? Yeah, definitely. Over the past three years, we've really worked on having actual conversations than him just answering questions for me because we practice it. Rosie never knew that her dad spent months and months writing down each answer. Matt only told her when I started working on this story. And she said she felt like, what? Are you kidding me? I had no idea that he was doing all these things, and it was just a big surprise for me. If I could, I would definitely just say forget the questions. I just want to talk. So you're like, well, you don't even have to go through all that trouble. Yeah. Just hang out. Yeah. Rosie said this to her dad when she found out, and it really threw him for a loop. Yeah, it was a complete waste of time. [LAUGHS] I mean, what a complete waste of time to come up with these big, extensive projects that-- they were definitely less important to them than just listening to them. Hm. What is time-- why? Explain. Well, I can tell you what I don't want time to be. I don't want time to be something where I am just figuring out that I need to shut up and make some time to listen to this little kid before it's too late. Rosie really started asking the questions because she wanted to know that she wasn't alone and that everything was going to be OK. Now she enjoys hearing the answers because they remind her that that's true. That's why one of her favorite answers is the ending of time-- why? Explain-- the part about all of the planets turning around themselves and in the middle of it Matt turning towards Rosie. One of the meanings of that is even though everything is happening around you, he just wants to know about me a little more, I guess. And a thing that I really like about that is because he just uses these sentences that make me happy when I read them. It's kind of funny. When he read this to me, he sort of choked up a little bit. Yeah. He likes to be kind of a one-expression person, but when he reads stuff like this he gets all emotional. In the car ride here, he was like, oh, I love you so much. And he was tearing up and looking out the window, so. [LAUGHS] You look so happy about that. Yeah, it's pretty great. So people have been asking these big, important questions like, why are we here? What is life-- forever? And do you think that the real big reason why we ask it is to have a reason to talk to each other? No. I think that philosophers actually really do wonder about these things, and they don't use it so that they can talk to their dads more. They use it because they really wonder about these things, and they want to know everything about it. But for my personal use, yes. That's exactly it. Matt does still want to keep answering Rosie's questions for her, but as for the hardest question, what is love, I don't think Rosie needs her dad to explain that to her anymore. She gets it. Stephanie Foo. She's currently writing a book about complex PTSD. These days, Rosie is a freshman in high school, and she goes by Rory now. We checked in with her. She says she's using her time cooped up at home with her family right now to draw and listen to music. She says everybody is getting along. Act Two, "Call Me Maybe." So many of us are concerned right now about our older relatives, especially our parents and grandparents. And this story, in the most literal way, is about reaching out over the phone. Sean Cole put it together. Yo, Sean. This is your mom. I wasn't home. About four or five years ago, I started saving all my mom's voicemails, thinking, she's not going to be around forever. I'm going to want to hear her voice when she's gone, though somehow I didn't extend that thought to I could hear her voice right now if I picked up the phone. She had a talent for the form. With some of them, it almost feels like I'm talking to her, except she's playing both parts. What time is it? Oh, it's 6:52, huh? Yeah, it's later than I thought. I can't believe it's still light out. Decided to go to the Royal for supper tonight, so that's what we did. We went early, and we are back early. So I don't know what you're doing. So this is me. C'est moi. I'm here. Right. Yo aqui. C'est moi. That's "it's me" in French. Sometimes there's not much more than that. C'est moi. Love you lots. Talk to you soon. Bye. This one's even shorter. C'est moi. Bye. But of course, all the messages boil down to her saying, in one creative way or another, please call me back. Sometimes she was a lot more direct about it. (SLOWLY) Don't forget to call your mother. Goodbye. Actually, here's the one that I always tell people about when I'm talking about her messages. It's like she sort of circles and then goes in for the kill. I heard you on the radio on Sunday, and I knew it was you because I can recognize your voice, even though it's been a long time since I've heard it on the phone. So anyway, I love you lots and lots. Call me when you think of it, if you ever do. Love you. Bye. My mom-- her name was Pat-- she died on September 28, 2015 at 4:22 in the morning. It was relatively sudden and totally unexpected. And as much as I thought I was preparing myself for that moment, I wasn't prepared. It's true I didn't call enough, but she was still the first person I thought to call when something huge happened, good or bad. I loved talking to her. She was funny, as you can tell, and smart. She wrote technical manuals in the early days of personal computing. Later in life, she lugged a lot of pro-grade camera equipment around the world, taking pictures. And yet, she had a hard time figuring out her smartphone. The last recording I have from her saved on my phone was a pocket dial. This goes on for three minutes. Did you go for your walk this morning? No, I didn't make it this morning. I figured that I was pretty busy. After Mom died, I started calling home a lot more to talk to my stepdad, Ed Hacker. He and I never really had a phone relationship when my mother was alive. It was more the classic thing of, you want to say hi to Ed? And then we'd verbally clap each other on the back and then back to Mom. These days, it's not weird for us to spend almost two hours on the phone together. Then I had to give tweets out, so-- You are the most active octogenarian on Twitter that I know about. Well, I try to send out about six or seven tweets. What did you send this morning? Oh, I sent about three or four from-- I think of how annoyed my mom would be if she knew this, but I'm now performing the exact telephone behavior she wanted from me when she was around, except now with Ed. I call about once a week on average, and it's always me initiating the calls now. At first, of course, it was mainly to make sure he was holding up OK and to make sure I was holding up OK. But even now, when I miss a week, it eats at me. I'm thinking, got to call Ed, got to call Ed. It's like an injustice that he's getting this treatment and not her, and I keep trying to square it somehow. But when I put this to Ed, he basically said it's really not that big a mystery. Kind of obvious that if one parent dies, you realize that the other one may not be that far off, that he will go too, or she. So the scarcity, just like in economics, makes the value go up. I never thought of this in economic terms before. Well, it's true of many things. If the population is very low-- Ed's 87. He taught philosophy and logic at a university in Boston for a lot of years, which is fitting because Ed is very logical and philosophical. He's always quoting one or another great thinker. For fun, he does math. He and my mom got together when I was six. He moved in when I was 11. And I think he's right that I call because I'm more aware than ever that one day he won't be on the other end of the phone, but it's more than that too. Even though we have all of these other people in our family whom we love, it got to feeling like Ed's the other one Mom's death happened to, like he and I were the ones who mutually needed to talk about Mom and to hear about her. I feel that, yes, I can talk to you about Pat because you're willing to talk to her about it. To you about it, yeah. And it makes a big difference to me. It does? Of course. I'm so glad to hear that. Because you lost the same person, even if it's somewhat similar if somebody else has lost someone else, like these groups in which everyone has lost a spouse. And their memories are different. You never met that other person that died, and you really don't care. I mean-- You care about your loss. I mean, you know. Yeah. Let's be honest. Are you on the deck now? I am. Having a smoke? I am. For a long time, my mom was a third invisible person in all of these conversations, but we've both noticed we're talking about mom less and less. People told me this would happen, but I didn't really believe them, or I didn't want to. Time slouches on. You wake up to different thoughts in the morning. And when you call home, the first thing you say isn't, how are you holding up? It used to be that you would kind of mark how long it had been. You'd say, I can't believe it's been three-- it'll be three months on Monday, or I can't believe it'll be nine months on Thursday or whatever. Well, I still keep track of the time. You do? Yeah. And I also have an app on my computer, all three of them, which is set to tell me how many days since Pat died. You do? I do. I didn't know that. So this way-- I'm going there right now to see what my apps are. Well, it's been 22 months and three days since she's died. Or if you want, one year, 10 months, and three days. Or if you want, 96 weeks. And what do you feel like, looking at that? Don't have any particular feeling. It's just that it's amazing that it's almost two years. Hm. It's like saying, I remember. Yeah, I feel like I need something like that, some sort of-- I just feel like I don't think about her enough. Well, that you'll have to explain. Why should you think more? I don't-- it's just like-- Is it guilt or something? It's not guilt, no. It's-- You feel like you'll honor her more by thinking about her? It's like, yeah, I want to honor her more by thinking about her, and it also feels like there's something going on in me all the time that I'm not acknowledging that leaks out in these other ways. And I just miss her, and so it's like I need to put that missing somewhere. Well, you have a photograph of Pat? Yeah. I have one up on the wall in my office. OK. Take another one. And every day, move it from one spot to another in your apartment. That's a really good idea. Did you just think of that? Yes. That makes it sort of a ritual. But the truth is I already have the ritual I need. I don't do it every day, but I do it just about every week. I call Ed. We talk. For this specific need I have, it turns out he's the perfect person to call. Maybe you've got somebody like that, a personal Ghostbuster when there's something strange in the neighborhood, when things are looking their worst, that person who will know what you're talking about, even if they can't understand what you're saying. And all you got to do is call. Sean Cole. When he checked in with Ed this week, Ed was the same as always and doing well. He turns 90 in April. Act Three, "Mom." OK, so this is a story we first put on the air in 1996. And yes, our program has been on the air for a long time. Diane, who's putting together this part of the show with me, producer Diane Wu, she listened to this recording, and she told me that I sound exactly the same in it as I sound today, which-- I don't know. Is that a good thing? Is that not a good thing? Shouldn't a person grow? I think I should sound at least a little different. Anyway, here is how I introduced this story back then in 1996. Quick warning, before the story starts, that this story acknowledges the existence of sex. OK, here we go. Our parents can surprise us with what they don't tell us, with what they don't talk about, especially when it comes to sex. Recently I had this experience. An ex-girlfriend was in the gym, looking through a copy of Marie Claire magazine, women's magazine. And there was an article in it on women's fantasies, their sexual fantasies-- what do your man's dirty daydreams reveal about what he wants from you? In the article, six sexperts-- that was the word they used, "sexperts"-- reveal the six most common male sex fantasy scenarios. So my ex-girlfriend is reading. And there, in the third paragraph, one of the sexperts turns out to be my mother. Hello? Hey, Mom? Yeah. It's Ira. Yeah? So I'd like to do a little interview. OK. So Mom, can I read to you a quote from an article? Of course. OK. Here it is. "Your man wants a woman who excites him through her own excitement. You could stimulate yourself while he watches or let him participate by moving his hand to where you want it." Yeah? That's you being quoted in Marie Claire. [LAUGHS] You're kidding. What is [INAUDIBLE]? All I know is that Anaheed was at the gym, and she opens up Marie Claire to an article called "Men's Sexual Fantasies." And it says at the top, "Here, sexperts reveal the six most common scenarios, unlock the secret longings and psyches of the modern men who fantasize." And you basically are one of the sexperts. Yeah. Yeah, I am. I didn't really know you were a sexpert. What did you think I was? [LAUGHS] Just another Jewish mom and psychologist. Uh-huh. So it wasn't like you were a sexpert and you were keeping it from your family? You're talking about my family meaning my children, not my husband? Yeah. Because he knows that I'm a sexpert. And you can call him to verify that. I think I'm just going to let that go. [LAUGHS] But my children always seem embarrassed if I discuss anything sexual. So therefore, I tend not to around them. When would you try to discuss something sexual with us? I might make a joke or say something that had a sexual connotation, and I'd get this disapproval. I don't think that that's true. No? Yeah. Actually, I mean, it doesn't affect me in any way to think that you and Dad would be sexual with each other. In fact, I even remember, as a teenager, understanding that and being kind of reassured by it. Mhm. Does that make any sense? It makes a little bit of sense, but it really doesn't cover all the situations, if I'm just telling a joke or talking about somebody else. And I think it has to do with boundaries. And I think it has to do with that children, even adult children, do not like to regard their parents' sexuality. Hm. You know something? You're actually convincing me. Well, let's do a little scientific test. Can you think of a sexual joke? You just tell one right now, and I'll tell you my reaction. I can't think of one. You know what I'm feeling right now? I'm feeling a profound-- Oh, actually, I heard a wonderful-- Wait, wait, no. I heard a wonderful joke, but I don't even know if it's a joke or a story. This is something that might be true, that when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon and he said, one giant step for man and one-- what is it-- one giant step for mankind or whatever-- One small step for man, one giant step for mankind. Right, right. That's it, one small step for man, one giant step for mankind. And then he also said, good luck, Mr. Gorsky. And for years, people have been asking him what that meant. And he would never tell them. And then this year, someone brought it up again. What did you mean when you said, good luck, Mr. Gorsky? And he said, well, I can tell now because Mr. Gorsky died this year. When I was a little boy, Mr. Gorsky was our next door neighbor. And I was playing outside one day, and their bedroom window was open. And I heard Mrs. Gorsky say, oral sex? You want me to give you oral sex? You'll get oral sex from me the day that boy next door walks on the moon. Well, now I'm examining my own feelings. And I have to say, I did get very nervous there in a way that does not correspond, perhaps, with shrugging my shoulders at the notion of you having some sexual life and sexual thoughts. Yeah. So let me read you some of your other quotes here. All right. In the fantasy of man dominates woman, you're quoted as saying-- says Dr. Glass, quote, "In a caring relationship, it's certainly not abusive or unhealthy if the fantasy is played out in a light, teasing way." You're also quoted extensively in fantasy number five, spontaneous encounter with a beautiful stranger. The key quote is this one, as far as I'm concerned-- "Go to a restaurant, and, at first, pretend you don't know each other," suggests Dr. Glass-- which, when I read that, it actually explained some dinners I've had with you and Dad. I thought. Well, you didn't talk very much between the two of you. No, no. That was just the opposite. So have you actually-- have you-- have you done this? Have you gone to a restaurant with Dad and pretended that you didn't know each other? No. No. No. No. But if you did, you're saying that-- We've gone to restaurants with you and pretended we didn't know you. What do you mean by that? Well, when you were younger, and-- --and let's say that your manner of dressing didn't exactly conform to the style-- All right, all right. I think everybody-- yeah. --of the other people in the restaurant. Back when Daddy-- Daddy would look at you, and he would start popping Gelusil when we'd go out to eat. And I'd say, now Barry, people are going to look at him, they're going to look at us, and they're going to know that we did not pick out his clothes. So now that I know that you're this big sexpert, do you have any sex advice for me? Find a nice girl, and get married. [LAUGHS] That's not sex advice. We always end up this way, don't we? With that particular advice. Yeah, that's-- I know. [LAUGHS] I know. I could ask you any question, and that would be the advice. That's right. My mom, Dr. Shirley Glass, back in 1996. In that recording, she is a year younger than I am today. Coming up, when a dad you know so well does something very, very uncharacteristic, what does it mean? That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass, speaking to you today not from a studio, but from home because our staff is working from home. And also, I am on quarantine. I'm actually talking to you from inside a closet. It's an old recording trick, with the idea that the clothes absorb sound. I will just say, it's very cramped. Today on our program, with kids out of school all over the country and businesses closed, and people hunkered down at home with family, and also lots of people far from family and the ones they love, reaching out and worried for them, we have put together a show of family stories that we've made over the years. Both the stories in this next part of our show are people turning to their dads over the telephone with a question. This first one, Act Four, "It Takes a Villa," comes from Neil Drumming. In the summer of 1982, my dad did something unexpected, something that seemed unbelievably indulgent. He took me, my mom, my brother, and the youngest of my three sisters on the most epic road trip any of us could have possibly imagined at the time. We piled into my dad's Buick Skylark and drove from Queens, New York to the World's Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee, where a robot danced for us, and then down into Orlando, Florida. This was a big deal. Before this, going away meant visiting relatives in South Carolina and sitting uncomfortably among aunts and second cousins whose names I would forget before we'd even pulled out of their dusty driveways. This trip was not country heat and sipping sugar water on some rickety porch while listening to the inscrutable conversation of grown folk. It was what going 1,000 miles from home should feel like. We cruised down a brightly-lit street called International Drive. We stayed at a Holiday Inn taller and more grand than any I'd ever seen. Sunlight streamed in through a hole in the ceiling, a hole that was supposed to be there. Our parents took us to a building that looked like a pile of poached eggs, but was actually Xanadu, House of the Future. And everywhere, along every roadside, billboards promised that the most magical scene still awaited us, this place, Disney World. By all accounts, it was paradise for kids. But between the gas, and the hotels, and the eating out, my dad quickly discovered how expensive taking even 60% of his brood on a Disney vacation could be. He was resigned to do it, but he wasn't above working the angles. He found out that you could get cheap tickets to the Magic Kingdom if you just signed up to sit through an hour or so spiel from someone pitching timeshares. He was in. The hard sell went down at the Disney Village, a branded mini mall near the famous theme park. My mom, dad, and a handful of other determined parents stowed their kids in a room full of toys that had been conveniently provided by the salespeople. The parents set about the business of listening, or not, waiting patiently for the moment when the closers would stop shilling and start handing out the Disney discounts. But while we kids were in another room throwing LEGOs at one another, something surprising happened. My dad bit. He went into a closed room to get three-day passes just so that I could eventually lose my glasses on Space Mountain, and he came out with a deed, the deed to something he and my mom were now calling our villa. My father was a bold man, but in retrospect this is the most impetuous action that I have ever seen him take. It cost him about $5,000, which he paid in installments. In 1982, for a guy with five kids, who never made more than $33,000 a year at his day job, it was a considerable investment. For those unfamiliar with timeshares, it may be hard to wrap your head around buying a vacation home that you never really own. You pay upfront for it. There's an annual maintenance fee, but you only get to stay in it once a year or so, usually for a week at a time. It almost sounds like some sort of scam, and sometimes it is. But it didn't turn out that way for us. Instead, it became a fixture in my family. My father had chosen, as our week, the first week in July. And so every year, during one of the hottest months of the year, we would head down I-95 as always. But now when we pulled into South Carolina to see relatives, that was only a pit stop on the way to our true destination. We had transformed from people who went away to a family who went on vacation. Our villa was number 317, a two-bedroom apartment with an enclosed back porch that looked out onto a small man-made lake complete with fish, ducks, and another summer word that I learned, "gazebo." My brother chased cicadas and lizards. For my sister, the only swimmer among my siblings, there was a pool. There were tennis courts and bikes to rent. The general store even offered a collection of the latest movies on laser disk. That first trip, I was eight. As I got older, I moved from the gazebo to the game room and then the gym, trying to meet other kids my age. My mom busied herself in the kitchen, making lunches, or sat by the lake and watched the ducks. My dad shepherded us through It's a Small World and Epcot Center. Our summers went on like this, pretty much exactly like this, probably until I finished high school. I honestly loved it. I looked forward to this trip every year. And even though it was only a week, it was almost always the highlight of my entire summer. But when I think about it now, it occurs to me my dad pretty much orchestrated this thing that became so important to our lives, and I have no idea whether or not he ever enjoyed it himself. In fact, it didn't seem like he did. I can't recall actually seeing him happy. Neither does my brother. He says Dad was pretty much the same at the timeshare as he was at home. Sometimes he'd go for walks alone, but often he just sat on the couch and watched TV. I asked my sister. She said he must have been happy, but she doesn't remember witnessing it either. It seems like such a simple question, but I just wanted to know, did he enjoy himself? At the risk of embodying the most tired trope in all of modern masculinity, I will say my father and I never really got along. He was strict, his house had a lot of rules, and he believed in corporal punishment. And the sting of that conflict stayed with me as an adult. But since my mom passed away last year, I've been trying to connect with him more. I gave him a call. Hello? Hello? Yes? Hey, it's Neil. Yes. Is it a bad time? It's about who? I said, is it a bad time? No, no. I was just playing solitaire. Yeah. I didn't know whether it was the drugstore or not. Are you waiting for a call from the drugstore? No, they'll call. They'll give me a call no matter when it is. My dad is 83 years old now and living alone in Florida. Talking to him can be awkward and not just because his hearing is going. I asked him point blank if he liked going to the villa. He told me that when he was growing up, he barely ever left South Carolina. I didn't know nothing about nothing else. You saw things in magazines and stuff. Mhm. The first time I knew about a dentist, I was in the Army. But I just thought it was a good idea that our kids see something other than their surroundings and where they were born. Yeah. My dad grew up poor on a farm, one of 12 children. He says he only finished high school because by the time he was old enough, he was the one driving the bus. Sometimes when there were athletic events at other schools, he'd get to drive the teams and learn what the nearby towns were like. In 1953, he was drafted into the Army, which had only recently been integrated. They sent him to Colorado and Indiana, and it wasn't great. He says the Army was really not into black people back then. So those were his travel experiences when he was young. I was hearing a lot of this for the first time, and as it turns out, that's at least partially my own fault. The reason why we never talk about it, because it just wasn't the kind of thing that you guys seemed to be interested in. Really? So we just didn't seem like we were interested as kids? Yeah, right. Yeah, I probably wasn't so interested back then, back when the two of us were constantly challenging each other. I was always either afraid of him or angry at him, hiding from him, or planting my feet to confront him. It never crossed my mind to try to understand him. But nowadays, my dad feels to me like some kind of living cold case, a million-page brief that is no longer redacted. Maybe it's because I'm now at the age he was when I was born, but I retroactively find his every decision fascinating, even the ones that aren't so surprising on the surface. Why Florida? It was advertising. You get to hear something about Florida and then this thing, Disney World. After we started going, they built Epcot. They built Animal Kingdom. Mhm. And they advertise them a lot. Yeah. Not many people were going. We were probably the most vacationing people in our area. Yeah. I don't know of any other family that went on vacation every year. We did. My dad was obviously proud that he'd gotten the timeshare, but pride, strictly speaking, does not constitute joy. It didn't answer the question of whether or not he was actually happy spending those summer weeks with us at the villa. Instead, he kept trying to make me understand why he brought us there in the first place. And his explanation, his reasoning reach back to memories and past experiences that not only had I never heard, but that kind of blew my mind. I tell you, probably where I got the whole idea-- when we were in school, every summer you had to try to think of something that you could write about when you'd go back to school, because you're going to have to write something about what you did this summer. Well, we never had anything to write about when I was going to school. And you didn't think plowing a mule, or picking peaches, or stuff that you had to normally do-- you didn't think that was so exciting to write about. Yeah. So we made up lies about what we did. Well, every summer you guys went on vacation, you could write about something that you did, or saw, or someplace you went. Yeah. What did you do during the summers? When, this year? No, no, when you were in school. [LAUGHS] Worked. That's what I tried to tell you. We talked for over an hour. It was one of the longest conversations that I can remember us ever having. Every now and then, I'd try to steer him back to the question I wanted him to answer. So I know I asked you this a bunch of times. I keep asking you the same question. You can tell me to stop asking you if you want, but did you have fun yourself? Yeah. See, I don't regret anything because it looked to me like I was doing what I was supposed to do. And to see you kids happy was to be happy too. And you guys could always come in and do whatever it is, and go back out to the pool or whatever. Mhm. I remember you guys playing out there and hanging around the bushes and stuff. I thought it was great. That's a kind of enjoyment I hadn't considered. I live more selfishly. Also, his answer was hard to take in, to reconcile with the distance I felt between us at the time, back when he would retire to the couch to watch TV or we went off to play on our own. Maybe he was watching me play in the bushes and getting a kick out of it, but I didn't know that. Still, I was happy at the villa, and my dad says he was too. I'm glad I know that. All right. So I have been talking to you for an hour. I should probably let you go. But hey, is it OK if I call back this week and just talk? I want to hear more stuff since I didn't seem interested when I was a kid. I didn't realize that was why you didn't tell us stuff. So now I'll just ask. Is that OK if I could-- The only thing I'd do is get up, and sometimes I'm outside just walking around. Sometimes I sit down. Sometimes I go ride the bike. And I do this just to keep busy. Yeah. You can call me anytime. All right. I'm going to go back to work. Bye, Dad. Bye. Neil Drumming. He says his dad, who's 87, is emphatically not freaked out over COVID-19. Act Five, "Let's Talk Radio." We'd like to ask you this question, my friend. Do personal problems and worries have you down? Are you disturbed by business problems, marriage problems, or emotional problems? See Mrs. K, reader and advisor. Mrs. K, formerly of Europe, gives you a reading and answers all your questions for just $1.00. And you'll feel much better. OK. So this is my father in 1956, three years before I was born. He's 23 years old in this recording. And it's amazing, to me, anyway, hearing him so young, doing something I know so well, trying to sound like you're just talking, totally relaxed, when, in fact, you're reading. And coming up right now, news about a wonderful appliance from Norman R. Mitchell just for the homemakers, as we said before. We're talking about an electric dryer. And, my friend-- My father started in radio when he was 19, the same age I was when I started. He began at the college station at the University of Maryland, then after graduation he got a job spinning records at a commercial station in Baltimore. He loved it. He continued doing this on Sunday mornings while he was in the Army, stationed in Virginia. That's where this recording is from. And at some point my mom got pregnant a second time with me, and he decided to quit radio. It just didn't pay enough. The most he ever made at a radio job was $90 a week, which wasn't much money even then. And at that point he became the person that I knew him as, a certified public accountant. Years ago, I called him for a story for our show to ask about that decision to leave radio, and it was interesting. There was no sentimentality at all, like nothing. By that time, I had realized that radio was not for me. What happened would be a new program director would come in, and if you weren't the apple of that guy's eye then you were out of a job. You got to go start looking for a job again. Even though that never happened to me, I could see it happening to other people. And I wanted to be in control of my own destiny, and I decided that it wasn't going to work out. Radio was not going to work out. And that was 1959? Yeah. The year I was born. Right. Are those two things related? Not at all. [LAUGHS] It sounds like they are. No, they're not. No, they're not. I don't know if he wants to take me out of the equation, so I don't feel bad for him quitting radio, but I don't believe him. I do believe that, even in his private moments, today he doesn't regret the decision. His hearing is so bad these days, even with hearing aids, I doubt that he'll hear this story on the radio or online. I talked to him a couple times this week. He turns 87 on Monday, so part of the population in greatest danger right now. He said he and my stepmom aren't going out. They just figured out how to get groceries delivered. And I'm worried for them. Well, all the stars are on record, and all the records star on the Sunday morning carousel. Coming up for you right now, our featured top tune of the day, number one in the record stores we visited this week in Baltimore. Our program was produced today by Diane Wu. Our staff includes Emanuele Berry, Susan Burton, Zoe Chace, Dana Chivvis, Sean Cole, Noor Gill, Lina Misitzis, Stowe Nelson, Katherine Rae Mondo, Nadia Reiman, Alissa Shipp, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, and Julie Whitaker. Our executive editor is David Kestenbaum. Special thanks today to Tony [? Lynn, ?] John [? Elgin, ?] Danielle Elliott, and Chris Crawford. Our website, ThisAmericanLife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. Trying to be civic-minded and conserve on toilet paper, he tried out a bidet for the first time this week. I was like, oh, well, this isn't really exactly what I wanted. I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
For so many people now, it's not a theoretical thing. It's here, this new virus. And they're having to deal with that fact. Lots of people are trying to do the right thing. But it's not so clear what the right thing is-- like Luis, who works in construction in Long Island. When he got tested and learned he had coronavirus, he went back to where he was living. He shared a house with several other migrants. He's an asylum seeker, here from Central America. And he immediately told his landlady because she's pregnant. He didn't want to put her or anybody at risk. She said he had to leave. So he decided to isolate in the only place he had-- his car. He parked outside of a 7-Eleven. He didn't even want to go inside to get water because he didn't want to infect anybody. This is a voicemail message he left for the woman handling his immigration case. At this moment, I feel like I don't know what to do. I've isolated in my car because I don't want to contaminate more people. I don't want people to go through what I'm going through. It hurts to tell the truth. It hurts. You have no idea how much. He says, I haven't left my car. I've been cooped up here. If I didn't have a conscience, I'd be out there. But no, I don't have that kind of heart. Zora heard this message, and she also tried to do the right thing. She found him housing to ride out the illness. Among other things, an epidemic, a plague, a contagion is a time that we're tested. And we rise to the occasion, or we don't, or we can't. Anthony Almojera very much wants his team to rise to the occasion. He's the vice president of local 3621 of the EMS Officers Union in New York City. EMS, emergency medical services-- it's part of the fire department. His job title is lieutenant paramedic. And besides the stuff he does for the union, he manages a crew of 50 EMS workers. Even before the coronavirus outbreak, they were short hundreds of EMS workers in the city. So they were overworked before. And it's even more so now. Like this past Tuesday, Anthony worked a 16 hour shift at a station in Brooklyn, watching 911 calls come in. He talked to my co-worker Miki Meek. A typical day before the coronavirus outbreak was around 4,000 calls. This past week saw the first big spike. I worked last night at 1:00 in the morning-- after we had just clocked in, 6,500 plus calls at midnight. At 1:00 in the morning, there were still 274 jobs holding. That's 274 jobs in the system that, at the moment, don't have an ambulance to get to them. So these are people that have called 911, but-- Right. --no one's been able to be dispatched. Right. And how does that make you feel, when you see that you have that many call still in the queue? It's a little frightening because, you know, to have been many calls holding-- just to give you some perspective-- yesterday, it was 6,500 calls-- it was the most we've ever done. Ever? Ever, yeah, even including 9/11. Later that morning, he was in an ambulance and went on a call near Coney Island. A man had phoned in about his wife. He came home and found her on the floor. Call type said fever, cardiac arrest, COVID case. And the husband is outside. And they're both health care workers. The patient was somebody who worked in a nursing home, and the husband works in the hospital. And she was sent home Friday with fever and remained feverish throughout. So I'm sitting there, talking to the husband. And he stated to me, yesterday, he called where he works to say he wanted to stay home and take care of his wife. And they told him he couldn't because he's an essential employee, that the hospital is short staffed, and he needed to come in. And at the moment, he judged that his wife wasn't critical. You know, she was feverish and stuff. But OK, she'll make it through the night. Then he came home and found her dead. Found her dead, he's saying. For 17 years, I've been going on these calls of cardiac arrests or other traumatic things. And it's never been an issue for me to go up to the family member when we can't do any more, and say, I'm sorry. And then I put my arm around the patient's family member. You know, I let them cry into my shoulder, I've hugged them, anything along those lines to provide a moment of empathy and sympathy. Yesterday, when I went outside because he happened to be outside, and I saw this man's grief in his face, and I saw him just break down and how he felt guilty about not being there, and I had to stay six feet away-- Hmm. I couldn't kneel next to him like I have with other patients in the past. I couldn't put my arm around him because I'm concerned about my health because there's a high potentiality that he has it as well. And I just watched him. And it's the first time, in 17 years, that I actually got back in the truck and I cried. I'm sorry, Anthony. No-- thank you. It's-- I'm sorry again. No, what's-- That was the crew members. Yeah, I have about 60 messages that are unopened at the moment. Anthony, I tested positive. What do I do? Anthony, my wife tested positive. What do I do? They're all in that general nature. He's worried. How many of his crew won't be available soon? Going by numbers he's seen in other places, he figures half of them will end up quarantined. Right now, in Anthony's crew of 50, six people are already out. The entire crew, all 50 of them, have been exposed to somebody with COVID-19 at this point. In the past, the policy for New York Fire Department EMS workers was, when you're exposed to a contagious virus like that, you weren't supposed to come to work. But the policy changed about a week and a half ago. Now you stay home only if you're actually showing symptoms. Anthony thinks it's because the city is so desperate for EMS workers right now. So if they can squeeze another five or six days out of you before you become symptomatic, I think that's what their motivation is. It's not said explicitly. But the crews are short. They need workers. You guys are essential. It feels we're expendable. Now, listen, I don't believe that chief of EMS feels we are expendable. I don't want to put that on her. Mm-hmm. But it feels, overall, by the department and the city that we're just going to keep putting you out there because we don't have any other options, because we didn't properly prepare for this. Spokesperson for the fire department told us that EMS workers are expected to show up if they've been exposed to the virus because at this point in New York, all EMS personnel have likely been exposed to the virus. Right now, EMS workers don't even have a way to get tested to see if they have the virus, just like the rest of us. And Anthony estimates they're going to run out of N95 masks in less than a week, this coming Friday, April 3. What are you telling your workers right now? Well, the tough thing about this is we all signed up for this, you know? In a pandemic, that is EMS' time to shine, right? Treating viruses is what we do all day long. You name it, you know, HIV, hepatitis, meningitis. This is what we do. But in order to do it effectively, we have to believe that when we're out there with the potential of dying, getting hurt or seriously ill, that if something happens to us, we're going to be taken care of. And the consensus among the membership is that's not going to happen. The feeling is we're not going to be taken care of. Yes. What do you think the next couple weeks are going to be like? Oh, we're not even to the halfway point here. You know how they keep talking about flattening the curve? Mm-hmm. We're on the upward tick of that curve still. Do you have any workers who are wanting to quit? No, I haven't had any workers that wanted to quit. I have not heard that. Because, like, the virus is here now. It's testing us, all of us, EMS workers, and doctors, and nurses, who are now risking their lives, but also delivery people, postal workers, politicians, those of us who are suddenly out of work, parents who have no talent for homeschooling at all, even those of us who are just on lockdown, worried for older relatives. We're all being tested. So today in our program, we're going to hear from people who are right in the middle of it now, being tested in pretty extreme ways. Plus, before the hour's out, a call from the future from somebody in China who's kind of on the other side of this thing. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Throughout this episode, we're featuring original songs that we heard on Instagram created by the British musician and producer MNEK while he's been home alone and social distancing. He's jokingly calling these songs his Corona EP, and they are all him, no backing band, looping his own voice. The songs are part PSA, part pure pop, just a man bringing some light in a dark moment. Now, we turn to Act One. Act One, The Inside Game-- OK, so this virus is out there. And so many of us are scared to get it and wonder what would happen if we did get it. And honestly, for all the coverage of the illness, we have not heard the people that it's happened to talk at length about that experience very much. One thing that came up here is-- we've all talked about this-- is what is going on in the homes where both parents get the virus, like how do they manage? And just coincidentally, one of our co-workers, Ben Calhoun, has been worried about his brother-in-law, Elia Einhorn, and Elia's wife, Amy, who are in that exact situation. They were among the first wave of COVID-19 patients in New York City. Their daughter, whose name is Conwy, is just a toddler. So she is in that period of parenting when a kid needs constant vigilance. Ben recorded a call with them. Amy, who got sick first, was too sick to actually get out of bed. Elia could drag himself around. But it was pretty rough going. He was sicker than he had ever been in his life, he said. One other detail-- Elia has a history of asthma, so he's at elevated risk. He'd also developed GI symptoms, throwing up, a possible warning sign that a COVID patient is in more danger. All this is playing out in a 500 square foot New York City apartment. So picture like three rooms and a bathroom. Ben called them in the afternoon. Elia had just gotten Conwy to nap, so you'll hear Elia trying to keep his voice down, trying not to wake her. What is just like the logistics of your situation in the apartment right now? Like where are you? And where is Amy? And how much are you able to either be around each other or not be around each other, or? I haven't seen Amy in like a week. Amy has just been in our room the whole time. So since there's one bathroom, she comes out to use the bathroom. And otherwise, like, I just don't see her. And we usually talk for like one or two minutes. But yeah, Amy is just in our room. And she's really, really sick. Her fever goes up and down and up and down. And just when we think it's gone, it comes back worse, and it's-- But she's just 100% like locked in the room? Yeah, locked in the room. Literally, I told her lock the door so Conwy can't come in. But you got to-- you got Conwy down, though. She's asleep. She's asleep. I am going to-- I just saw Amy. I get to see her like three times a day for two minutes. And I said to her, we are going to have to do such a strict regimen to get this kid back to normal life after this because I am like-- you know, I'm trying to keep her life as normal as possible. So because she already can't see Amy, she can't go outside-- so I am just like-- I've become the biggest fucking pushover. I said to Amy, she had like a tasting menu before bed. We usually let her have a little snack if she wants it. She's adding things, having me get up and go to the kitchen and get more stuff. And I, like, can hardly handle getting up to go get her something. It's just like, oh, dude. So she must have had bites of like seven snacks. And it's ridiculous. But I just wanted her to-- And I can imagine that, as a parent, you're just like-- you're having all these needs that are unmet right now. And right now, you're having a need that I can meet. So let me just throw whatever I can in there. Exactly, exactly. I looked-- I looked at us. We were reading one of those Mo Willems books, you know that like-- Yeah, like Piggy and the Elephant. Yeah, we were reading-- I don't know why. But she wanted to read the baby one. And there's two pages that are mirrors. And I looked at us, and I was like, we look so blazed. We look like college freshmen who just discovered weed and smoked half an ounce, you know. Me and the two and a half year old look terrible. And I'm wearing my mask, you know, because there's this theory about the viral load getting bigger, you know I mean? With more exposure. So just to give you sort of a scene report here, it looks like-- think about a normal Brooklyn-sized apartment. It looks like there was 50 toddlers who had an unsupervised birthday party here. So like, from my vantage point on the couch, I'm looking out. The first layer is like a peg's game, where you push buttons into colors. The second layer is all these 3x2 foot huge Paw Patrol pages to color. The next level is a farm that seems to have exploded. The next level are all the Play-Dohs strewn around the ground because I just can't pick it up. Do you have all your logistics covered like groceries? How you doing groceries? How are you like-- I don't know, like laundry. Laundry has been a problem. I'm waiting for Amy to get better because we have to wash it in the bathtub. And I just can't physically do it right now. I can't stress to you how tired I am. I'm like-- You're just too tired. I'm just too tired, man. I can't sit up that long. And so I'm waiting for Amy to either get better so that she can watch Conwy and I can take longer and do it slowly-- or because, by the end of the day, when Conwy goes to sleep, I'm like fried, totally fried. I can't even stand up. Because you're the only person doing Conwy, right? You're like-- Oh, yeah, 100%. Yeah, Amy hasn't seen her in a week. It's like I'm just with her like now 24/7. Do you feel like you've-- I feel like, if I were you, I would keep waiting to feel, like, bottomed out-- be like, is this-- is this the bottom? Is this the bottom? Yeah, man. Just like waiting for that upswing, you know. I keep waiting for it. And I think it comes. I thought it came like four times. And then like, today, I'm the most tired I've been the whole time. So I just don't know. And it's like, on the one hand, I mean, we have food. We have water. We have electricity. I mean, we have everything we need. If this is all that ever happens, it'll be a triumph. It seriously will if this is all that happens. It's just the scariest part is, is it going to go into our lungs, you know? Yeah. Right when I start to feel better, I think, you know there's these-- it sort of shows it's these ground glass sort of deposits in people's lungs. And I've started thinking of it as like your lungs turning to glass. And I keep reading these stories out of Wuhan about these young physicians that are like my age, I mean, relatively young physicians that are dying from this. And I had to stop reading them because it's like, I just can't keep reading about people's lungs metaphorically turning to glass. And it's just making me worry too much that it's going to happen to our family. It's so scary to not be able to protect your family against this insidious element of it. And that's why I-- that's why I emailed you guys that stuff. I don't know if anything's going to happen. And if it does happen, it's going to happen so quick. I don't have time to deal with anything. I don't have time to deal with getting my affairs in order, you know. So I emailed you and Katherine very perfunctory, like here's-- how to-- what me and Amy want, here's our financial stuff. Here's like-- because I just have no fucking clue. And that's the worst part. If we could be guaranteed that that wasn't going to happen-- this would just be uncomfortable and fine. We can laugh about it in a different way. But it's the fear that, at any second, one of us could just take really ill and maybe worse. We're so worried about you. Yeah. How do you think that Conwy's doing? Physically, she's doing fine. But she's showing all of these behaviors about being upset. And she's actively talking about it. Now, like every bed time, she wants me to tell her stories about everybody getting sick, me getting sick, her getting sick, Amy getting sick, you getting sick, and Katherine, and your kids. Everyone in our family getting sick is now part of our story. Yeah-- We're calling it-- --she's just trying to process it. --is what we're playing. Yeah, exactly. We tell her it's the inside game. Everybody's playing the inside game right now. And soon, it's going to end. But for now, this is what's happening. And these are the rules of the inside game. But she keeps saying like, daddy, I'm so tired. I'm so tired. And we're snuggling a lot. The pediatrician even said, look, if you both get tested positive, you can both just come out. And you can just take off your mask and be around Conwy. But with all this research about the viral load buildup, we've had an infectious disease doctor that we've been talking to that said, you know, don't do that. You can snuggle her if you need to because she's a toddler. You can't control that. But like, as little as possible, so I try to put her between my legs or have my foot on her just to touch her a little bit, you know. But it's been sad. I mean, she said to me like, I so sad. I so sad. None of my friends want to come to my house. Oh. Aw, man. That's hard. Like, everything that she draws, she's like, this is for my friends. Or I made this for my mommy. This is for mommy. On the one hand, she's doing fine. And on the other hand, she's really feeling her age equivalent of like really lonely and cut off. She keeps talking to me about how sick Amy is. And I tell her like, you know, mom is sick. But mom's getting better. And I didn't even tell her I was sick, but she somehow figured it out. And I don't know if it's the mask, or what. So she says, daddy's sick. And I said, daddy's a little bit sick, but he's OK. I mean, I feel traumatic, feeling so upset about it. But again, it's like-- like, are these the last conversations that I'm ever going to have with her? Oh, Els-- Oh, man. You're getting the ugly cry. Oh, dude. You're getting the ugly cry. I've only let myself cry about it a little bit. I wish I could do something for you guys. Oh. You're a regular Barbara Walters, Ben. You're getting it out of me. Should we have the kids FaceTime tonight? Would that-- would that be helpful? Yeah, that would be, just for her and for me to just sit down for a minute, honestly. It's like one of the only times I can rest when she's awake. We can do more of that, too, like if the kids can keep her occupied on FaceTime. Oh, man. Honestly, you guys are great. Now she's waking up. That's the peril of making any noise in this environment. But hopefully, she'll go back to sleep. You guys have been amazing. Just FaceTiming with your kids has been amazing. Yeah, we're just going to have to ride it the fuck out. Elia Einhorn with Ben Calhoun, who's a producer on our show. That was recorded a little over a week ago. At this point today, Amy is much better. She's actually up and around. Elia got a lot worse after that call. But now he's also feeling better. Conwy is presumed to have had a mild case of the virus. She's doing fine. Act Two, The View From the Park-- so one of the producers here at our show, Emanuele Berry, got to know reporter Jiayang Fan back when were doing our Hong Kong show this past fall. Jiayang's a staff writer at The New Yorker. Emanuele and she have stayed in touch since then. Emanuele was the editor for a story that Jiayang did here a few weeks ago. Jiayang has a mom who is in a medical facility in New York City. Jiayang tweets about her all the time. And right now, Jiayang's in the situation that a lot of us are in, worried for our parents, but a much more extreme version of that than most of us are dealing with. Like already, so much has happened with her mom. Emanuele checked in with her. How are you? I am trying to hang in there, I guess, is the most optimistic way of putting it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I follow you on Twitter. I see that you tweet a lot about your mom. But I don't actually exactly know what your mother's ailment is. I just know she's hospitalized. Can you-- what's going on there? My mother doesn't have control of any part of her body at this point, except for her eyeballs, the movement of her eyeballs. So she is completely cognitively intact and as sharp as she ever has been. But she's imprisoned in a body that refuses to cooperate in any way. She hasn't left her bed, her hospital bed, except to go to the ICU for the last six years. The only time she's ever seen any sliver of the sky is in those few minutes when paramedics push her from the hospital entrance into an ambulance. So when I visit her, I feel like I'm bringing the world to her. Her mother, Yao Li, has ALS. She's lived in a facility for the past six years. She always has an aid by her side. Jiayang's apartment is just a three minute walk away. She visits every day, sometimes twice a day, unless she's traveling for work. When Jiayang visits, they talk. Well, mostly Jiayang talks. Yao Li spells things out using her eyes and an alphabet chart. It's slow. But that doesn't stop Yao Li from expressing herself. Sometimes she tries to tell me bawdy jokes over the alphabet chart that she spells with her eyes. And it'll take me an hour. And I'll think that she's requesting-- --a medication or that some part of her-- like she'll mention butt, and I'll be like, oh, is her butt hurting? You know, what-- do you have an infection? And it's she's trying to tell me a butt joke. So that's-- So-- so that gives you a little bit of a sense of my mom. She is someone who [LAUGHS] who is relentlessly truthful. Whenever a piece comes out of mine, her first question is, read me all the negative tweets about it. What is the criticism like? What are your trolls sayings? And I know that sounds absurd and funny. But I think that comes from an immigrant's survival mentality. She wants to know what I need to prepare myself for in order to survive. So what happened last week? Take me through what happened last week. Remember, my mother is always-- in the best of times, my mother is a mild infection away from death, in the best of times. The doctors have told me, again and again, she will die of pneumonia. It's just a matter of time. She's already on a respirator, a machine that breathes for her. There's not that much that can be done. So when I hear news about viruses entering nursing homes, every nerve in my body is on full alarm. Jiayang once told me that her mother lives for her. But the reverse is also true. Jiayang lives for her mom. They're each other's only family, which means Jiayang is a very active family member at her mom's facility. The staff knows her. They know how protective she is. So in early March, when she heard about the virus spreading in nursing homes, she called, said, hey, I know it's a stressful time. But could you ask doctors and nurses to wear gloves and masks before getting too close to my mom? She says she could hear the tone in her own voice, anxious and demanding. This is not a tone I've ever taken with any member of my mom's facility for as long as she'd been there. But I was-- I was unnerved enough-- You were freaked out. Yeah. Yeah. I was unnerved enough about what I was reading that I called first thing in the morning to say that. And I think the staff who picked up, was very annoyed with me and just said-- and basically said, I can't do that. Like, I can't-- I don't-- I can't tell other people here what to do. And then I think she thought she hung up. She didn't actually hang up. And she said, yeah, Yao Li's daughter just called. And she thinks that, like, we have to wear gloves and, you know, masks like around every patient at the hospital. And there was-- I heard laughter all around. And then, really, unfortunately, I heard her say-- I still, to this day, do not know who that staff member was. But she said, you know, and they're the ones who are Chinese. To be frank, I wasn't offended. I wasn't like, oh, my God. This is so racist. I was just worried. I was worried about having offended her. I was worried about offending people who are the first line of defense. So she put her coat on over her pajamas and ran over to the facility. But when she got there, there were security guards up front and big signs. Jiayang was so flustered she doesn't actually remember exactly what the sign said. But the message was clear. She wasn't getting in to see her mom. How could she be sure her mom was OK if she couldn't see her? I became crazed. I was calling my best friend, who were telling me that I wasn't being a rational, functional person. I had a dream about moving my mother to a different planet. I know that sounds absurd. And it's my subconscious-- I mean, it's my unconscious. So I'm not totally responsible for it. But I think some part of me knew that there was no corner on earth that was safe. How would that even-- how would that even work with a move? She is on a feeding tube. She's on a ventilator. She's hooked up on so many different whirling machines. In the best of times, a move would be-- would require six people, not including the transport. Talking to Jiayang, I noticed she couldn't help herself going down these thought spirals, far fetched ways to save her mom, all the things that could go wrong. And I think that's because she can't do anything, and she wants to badly. But there isn't a way out. Where could she possibly go? Not in my apartment, my tiny, almost studio-sized apartment would not be able to fit all the equipment that she needs. And I wouldn't be-- I would not be fit to care for her by myself. Then what other facility is safe? Like, what other facility in New York City is safe? What other facility in America is safe? And so you're basically at a point where you're like there-- I can't-- there's nothing I can-- there's nothing I can do. I'm basically at the point where my unconscious is dreaming up plants to take my mother to Mars. My mind goes to very strange places, where I think about being told that my mother's ventilator has to be-- that my mother's ventilator is better-- I'm sorry. It's hard for me to even come up the grammar for this because it's so hard. That my mother's ventilator could better serve someone who's younger and healthier. This hasn't happened. Nobody's suggested her mom give up her ventilator. But she can't stop thinking of the possibility of it. And then my mind goes down a rabbit hole. I start looking up surgeries where I could give up half my lung, maybe, so that this healthy person can still be saved because-- because it's about lungs filling with fluids, right? And I think, well, if I could save that other person, then my mother gets to keep her ventilator. And your mind just spends hours in those rabbit holes, which are completely-- it's completely useless, right? Because it's not-- I mean, these are not my decisions. What I'm suggesting is probably totally insane and scientifically, medically impractical. Jiayang did get a small bit of relief. She managed to get in for one last visit. That was two weeks ago. What did you guys say to each other? Because I am her daughter, I'm her caregiver. I am her conduit to the world. I have a responsibility to soothe her panic, not to stoke it. I said things to her that I think I would've wanted someone else to say to me, which is this is going to be OK. We will get through this. (VOICE CRACKING) I will see you again very soon. I don't know when, but it's going to be very soon. And we will get through this together. But they weren't words that I necessarily believed if I were to be totally honest. She talked with senior hospital staff. And they told her there's a significant chance that coronavirus will enter the facility, that she should be mentally prepared for what that means. Jiayang thought about staying with her mom, just never leaving that visit, becoming her mom's caretaker. But her mother's longtime aide convinced Jiayang she'd be more help to her mom outside and promised that she would stay with Yao Li, as long as she could manage. At the time, they were hopeful it would only be a few weeks. (VOICE CRACKING) I mean, I doubt myself. I don't know if I made the right decision. I think that, if my mom is going to-- if she's not going to survive the illness, then I should be the one in there. And then, I mean-- and then my mind goes to dark places. I think, well, who cares if I don't pay the rent? Who cares if just everything else goes into absolute madness? All I want to be is with my mom. Yeah, I mean, what do you think your mom would want you to do in this situation? It was-- it was really hard to leave her. She began crying, just hysterically crying, because I think she knew that, despite my assurances, that it would be a long time before I saw her again. And I think-- I think she would-- I think she would want me to stay safe. I think she would want me to find a way of coping through this crisis without succumbing to it, without being crushed by it. At the end of February, Jiayang did a story for this show about a Chinese man reporting on the virus in Wuhan. In one of the videos this journalist makes, he introduces us to this guy he calls Ah Ming. His father recently died because of coronavirus. Ah Ming talks about being with his father in the last hours of his life, about holding his hand as his heartbeat drops to zero. For Jiayang, it was one of the most emotional moments in this story for obvious reasons. His story was one that I thought just contained such pain and terror. That was unimaginable to me at the time. And now, I realize that last Tuesday might be the last time I-- I-- last Tuesday might be the last time I will ever-- I mean, that might have been the last time I saw my mother. I can't even get the tenses straight. The grammar doesn't compute in my mind. And I thought that Ah Ming's experience was absolutely the most devastating. And then I think about how lucky Ah Ming was. I know that if my mother contracts COVID-19, she will almost certainly die. And I-- and I also know that-- I also know that, when I get the call from the hospital letting me know that she's been infected, I won't be permitted to go in there. And I can see my mother's window every day. There's a little park that separates my apartment building from my mom's hospital. And when I stand in the park, I can see her window. I can almost see the orchid that me and my friend brought her a couple of weeks ago. Or at least, I think I can see it. And I think about-- I think about the fact that, when she is dying, if she contracts the virus, those last hours that Ah Ming held his father's hand, maybe-- that maybe I'll be standing in the park, just looking up at her window. Maybe that's the closest-- maybe that's the closest I'll be able to get to her in her last hours. Emanuele Berry is a producer on our show. Coming up, a tiny, tiny virus breaks open a jail cell. That's in a minute, from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. This American Life, I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, the test-- the coronavirus is here. There are people who, right now, are forced to deal with it. We hear stories of how they face that challenge. We've arrived at act three of our show. Act Three, Outbreak Breakout. So another way that the coronavirus outbreak has had a huge impact on people's lives-- prisons and jails around the country are starting to release inmates they wouldn't have otherwise, or wouldn't have released as early, anyway, to try to protect prisoners behind bars from getting sick. Correctional institutions, as you can imagine, are Petri dishes of germs and microbes. The latest number that I'm seeing, as I'm recording this, more than 50 inmates at Rikers Island in New York City-- that's just one jail here-- correctional officers there and elsewhere also have the virus now. So the city is letting 300 inmates go. Right next door, New Jersey ordered 1000 inmates to be released this past week. You're seeing similar decisions like that-- they're not as widespread-- in Ohio, Illinois, Oklahoma, California, and Texas since the crisis hit. In San Francisco, the public defender's office urged the release of, quote, "All people who are immunocompromised or over the age of 60." Producer Sean Cole talked with somebody who made that cut. They're really two factors under consideration when figuring out who to release from jail or prison amid the COVID-19 outbreak. One, how severe was the crime? And then, two, how's the person's health? How vulnerable are they? And given these two criteria, one of the best candidates available for release-- Hello. Hi, Terry? Yes, sir. --was Terry Smith. Hi, how are you? --or Ma'am. It's-- [LAUGHS] it's sir. It's lady? It's sir? OK, yeah, because I-- can you still hear me? I can hear you, yeah. Can you hear me? OK, I'm trying to get some privacy. I'm going to a spot where-- I got a hold of Terry at a residential treatment program for veterans called Fresh Start. And they have facilities all over the country. This one, again, is in San Francisco. The court sent him there last week when it became clear that he might be in danger of sitting in a jail cell. He'd been in the county jail for nearly a year, charged with breaking into a couple of garages, nothing violent. This was just his latest stint on these charges. He's been in and out a few times. And at 64, soon to be 65 years old, Terry has a whole pileup of comorbidities that might sound a little overwhelming when I list them. He has a seizure disorder, PTSD from serving in Vietnam, and also being abused when he was a foster kid. He's a recovering heroin addict. And most pressingly right now, Terry suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, COPD. It's a lung disease that already sent him to the hospital a couple of times, which is why he got so frightened when he heard about the thing that's apparently coming for everybody's lungs. Inmates at San Francisco County jail are allowed to watch TV from 7:00 to 8:00 in the morning. So he just saw it on the news. We watch everyday. And we saw it get worse and worse. And people started panicking in the jail. And they don't want to panic in jail. You get a panic in jail, you know what that'd do? Where does that get you? It leads to people, oh, no. We ain't going back to our bunks. We're not-- for three days, we did not eat any meals. You didn't eat meals for three days? For three days. Because you were worried about getting the virus? No, well, because so, when they serve the meals, right? Mm-hmm. So you have a guy who hands you an empty tray. That's one meal. And there's five people who put something on the tray, the beans, and then they put it into the jello, or the salad. So that's five people, including the guy who puts the tray on there, six people. And then you've got the guy that takes the tray at the end and stacks it up and put it on a cart. Now we're at seven people, right? They're not wearing masks. They're wearing gloves, but they're not wearing masks. So you think-- Also-- You think they're not taking enough precautions if they're in the jail. No, sir. I mean, they're doing the best they can. But I think they should-- those servers should be wearing masks. There's no hand sanitizer. So no one wants to eat the food. They're scared. A lot of older guys start trying to teach the young guys, dude, you need to like start washing your bed areas. You need to start really not touching each other. You stop hand touching. You're not even fully aware of how to, really-- to address this mess. Terry has served three years, not in prison, in jail, pre-trial, waiting for his case to be resolved. His lawyer, a guy named Eric Quandt, says that's the amount of time he should serve for the crimes he's accused of. And Eric has been filing motions, trying to get a settlement of some kind, maybe a plea deal. But it kept getting delayed and delayed. And then the virus hit. I was scared. And yes, to be honest with you, I was scared. I was scared to get the virus and die up here. Eric saved my life by doing what he did for me. Eric saved my life. And the judge. It just seems so crazy that it was a virus that, essentially, came to your rescue. Yeah, a virus. That was all it took for the criminal justice system to kick into gear, a deadly scourge that's devastating the world. So Terry is no longer behind bars and walks out into a city that's completely on lockdown. Remember, San Francisco was one of the first cities to issue a shelter in place ordinance. He told me he had all these fantasies about what he would do when he was free again-- see his girlfriend. Say hi to his friends. Instead, he's not seeing anyone except the other guys in the facility. My granddaughter's, we-- she's really close to me, real close, OK. I could wait. I'm getting out. I'm going to go get my baby and put her in my arms, you know what I mean? So she says-- she don't understand. Papa, you're out. Why can't you come see me? I want to make sure that, when I come see you, I'm OK to come see you. I got to make sure I'm not bringing her nothing, you know what I mean? It's like these two opposite things, being incarcerated and not being incarcerated, inched ever so slightly closer to each other when Terry wasn't looking. His life kind of looks a lot like other people's in America right now, happening indoors, looking at the outside world like it's an exhibit. But listen to how he talks about it. I can look right now-- from the kitchen, I can see the beach. One block from me to the right, one block from me to the right is the park, Golden Gate Park. 10 blocks down, I can see the ocean. I see it every night. I watch the sunset. I sat last night and watched the sunset-- red. So want to hear my breakfast? I had an avocado and banana. It's the same words that a lot of us are saying to each other on the phone or Skype or whatever. This is what I'm looking at out my window. This is what I ate. But for Terry, they're a celebration. Sean is one of the producers of our show. Act Four, Hello From the Other Side-- OK, so Emanuele Berry, who you heard earlier in the show in act two-- Emanuele used to live in China. And she's been texting back and forth with friends there since January when the virus shut down parts of that country. Now, as American cities are shutting down, a lot of her friends in China are texting her, asking how she's doing. Here's Emanuele. The other day, I got this text from China. It said, "A word from your future-- it will get better. Today, we were on the street, and it almost felt normal." It arrived during a hard week. I was worried about my dad, who's high risk, money, my friends who work in hospitals, my best friend who's supposed to have a kid any day now. I'm constantly thinking about how uncertain each day feels. And I'm craving normal. My friend Rebecca Kanthor, sent it. She lives in Shanghai. And I called her to hear more about this normal. Oh, hey. I got to tell my husband to stop-- He's like in the-- hey, yo. [NON-ENGLISH]. [WHISTLES] Rebecca is American, but she's lived in China for 17 years. She's married to a Chinese man. Her kids go to Chinese schools. He's carrying a hunk of frozen meat. Wait, for what? Is he cooking? I think he's hungry, and he wants to cut a piece off of it. Husband out of the way, we talked. China, of course, has had a much more aggressive response to the virus than anything that's happened in the states so far. They locked down Wuhan, traced contacts, isolated people who are sick, sometimes separating them from their families. The government mandated quarantines. The governor of New York has suggested it might be four to nine months before a stay at home orders are lifted. But in Wuhan, just two months in, the city is set to open up again. And in cities like Beijing and Shanghai, the few new cases being reported are coming from travelers. They've been told to resume life as normal. [SIGHS] How are you doing? How am I doing? [LAUGHS] I don't know. Like, I think I've accepted that it's going to be tough. But part of me just wants to, like, know that it's going to be OK at the end of it, even if it's going to be so like-- if it's going to be difficult, if that makes sense, you know? You want to know it's going to be OK in the end? I mean, what was it-- what was it like for you two months ago? Yeah, it's-- I mean, it definitely feels different now. I mean, two months ago, it just felt like, yeah, just so uncertain and things changing by the day. Yeah, so just every week was different. At this point, you're, maybe, on the other side of this-- possibly on the other side of this, like what-- what does that look like? Well, OK, so yeah, things are, you know, feeling much better here. I think it just feels like, you know, taking off like a really hot jacket. You know like when you're wearing a winter jacket and, all of a sudden, the weather gets warmer, and you're like, ah, I don't need to be wearing this anymore. You take it off. And you've got short sleeve shirt-- short sleeves on. And you just feel just relaxed. Can you take the train now? Like, what are the trains like? Yes, I just saw a picture from the train today. And it would-- at the beginning, the trains were-- the subways were still running, I think, the whole way through. But back in the beginning, there was like one or two people per car. And now, all the seats-- at least the photo I saw, all the seats were being sat in. But I haven't taken the subway since January. You haven't? Is there-- is there a reason for that? Or is it just-- I think I just told myself that that was something that I could control. And I just thought, well, if I can get it there on my electric bike or my bicycle, then I'll go to those places. But if I-- I just-- I stopped taking taxis. And I stopped taking the subway. Even though they're all running, it's just kind of my personal thing that I decided I wasn't going to do. As I talked to Rebecca and other friends in China, I've noticed this thing. When they talk about things returning to normal, they start describing all these things that aren't normal. You know, everyone's still wearing a mask. Here, we're told not to wear a mask. In some cities in China, masks are mandatory. Or like I saw-- like the other day, I saw someone taking a selfie. And then, like, halfway through the selfie, they were like, oh, shoot. I'm still wearing my mask. So they to remember, take it off, and then take the selfie again. What-- does that mask-- does it sort of feel like this reminder to you that it's like, oh, this isn't normal? Yeah, yeah, it's kind of like-- because actually the government said you can take off your masks. They said-- you know, they had a press conference. And the government official took their mask off and was like, you can take your masks off. You only need them when you go into certain public areas. But in reality, most people are still wearing them. And it's not just that people are still wearing masks. Temperature taking is now everywhere. So when you go into any public space and also when you enter any housing compound, like an apartment complex, there's someone at the gate with a little body sensor thermometer. And they put it up to your head, or they put it on your wrist, and take your temperature. The newest thing for Rebecca to get used to has been this QR code system. It basically sorts people. Should you be quarantined or not? It's a little unclear how people are being sorted into these categories. But it involves people's locations being tracked through their cell phone. If you've recently visited a hospital, been around a sick person, bought a train or a plane ticket, it's being monitored. The code is like an admission ticket to do anything in the city. I went to visit a friend at their apartment complex. And I had to-- first of all, I had to register my name, phone number, passport number. And then I also had to show them on my phone a-- like a QR code, like a little square code that shows that I've been in Shanghai for the past 14 days. So I get a green code. And you know, the only way they can find that out is they have my phone records and like my GPS coordinates or whatever. I don't know how they find it. But that's not something that-- I don't know. Is that possible in the US? I don't-- I don't think-- I don't think so. [LAUGHS] Right, now, that offers-- that gives me-- that makes me feel like I have a sense of security, to be honest, because I look at it and I say, oh, well, I've been here for the past 14 days. I'm in the safe zone. You know, and if you go elsewhere, if you, maybe, go to another city or you travel abroad and you come back, then you're in a yellow zone or a red zone. To play the game of basketball, you need a QR code. And then when you get to the park, a volunteer takes your temperature before letting you in. They do limit the numbers of people going into the park across the street from my house. But there's just-- it's always lots of people there now. But I think they still-- I do not think they have let the ladies do their square dancing at night. I think that is not back to normal. So usually, at nighttime, like around 7:00 PM in all the parks, you'll have like older women and older men doing dance routines, line dancing routines. And that has stopped. And I don't think it's come back. Rebecca says they discourage it because the crowds would be too much. I doubt that our future in the US looks anything like what Rebecca is describing. But everything feels so chaotic here. And the idea that eventually that feeling stops, you get used to the new normal, I can take comfort in that. Emanuele Berry. Our program was produced today by Dana Chivvis and Nadia Reiman. The people put together today's show from their own homes-- Bim Adewunmi, Emanuele Berry, Susan Burton, Ben Calhoun, Zoe Chace, Sean Cole, Noor Gill, Damien Graef, Chana Joffe-Walt, Miki Meek, Lina Misitzis, Stowe Nelson, Katharine Rae Mondo, Ben Phelan, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetela, and Matt Tierney. Our managing editor is Diane Wu. Our executive editor is David Kestenbaum. Special thanks today to Clara Amfo, Patty Lyons, and everybody at Meals on Wheels in Savannah, Georgia, James Dominick Jr, Sammy Chase, Sam Braun, Vicky Ibarra, Daniel Harris, Peter McNally, George, Jamie Lowe, Adnan Khan, Alex, Kim Sue, Chuck Leong, Christina Peña, and Zelu Goa. Our website, where, to pass the time in lockdowns in your own home, you can stream our archive of nearly 700 episodes for absolutely free, ThisAmericanLife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, when I was in quarantine last week, he called me every single day to make sure I was OK. But I don't know, I don't think that he had the right list of symptoms. He kept asking me-- Oh, is your butt hurting? I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
Hi, everybody. Ira Glass here. So our staff is busy reporting out stories for next week's show and for other upcoming shows. And we had a rerun scheduled for this week, and we decided in this stressful time it might be nice to keep things light and funny. And so that's what this episode is. And it has not one, but two of the most popular stories we have ever put on the air. The first version of this episode was broadcast over 20 years ago, back when we were distributed by Public Radio International and our episodes began with a little PRI audio logo, which-- I don't know-- I kind of miss. From PRI, Public Radio International. From PRI, Public Radio International. From PRI, Public Radio International. Public Radio. Public-- Radio International. --Radio International. One more time. What could be more American than the person who sees something they've never done before, dreams they could do it, goes after that dream? Well, let's begin today with a woman who dreams of directing a play in the small town where she lives, a college town, somewhere below the Mason-Dixon line in the hills of Appalachia, a town which will remain, for our purposes today, unnamed. I don't think she had ever directed. And she claimed to have acted. And it was never really quite clear just what her credentials were. But she had managed to convince the local theater department of this college that she should direct a production of Peter Pan. When he was in the 10th grade in 1973, Jack Hitt saw her production. And like everybody else in town, you heard about it for weeks beforehand. Slowly, but surely, you began to hear sort of rumors about this production. For example, I know that they had spent a lot of money renting these flying apparatuses out of New York. And apparently there's like one company and a handful of these apparatuses. And so to get them was a major coup. This is a story not just of a mediocre play or a terrible play. When it comes right down to it, it's not even a story about a play. This is a story about a fiasco and about what makes a fiasco. And one ingredient of many fiascos is that great, massive, heart-wrenching chaos and failure are more likely to occur when great ambition has come into play, when plans are big, expectations great, hopes at their highest. And what you have to understand is that everybody in this sort of community understood that they were-- there was certainly a sort of air of everyone sort of reaching beyond their own grasp. Every actor was sort of in a role that was just a little too big for them. Every aspect of the set and the crew-- and rumors had sort of cooked around. There was this huge crew. There were lots of things being painted. See, but this, in fact, is one of the criteria for greatness, is that everyone is just about to reach just beyond their grasp, because that is when greatness can occur. That's right. That's right. And maybe greatness could have occurred. Well, today on our program, what happens when greatness does not occur? What happens, in fact, when fumble leads to error leads to mishap and before you know it you have left the realm of ordinary mistake and chaos, and you have entered into the more ethereal, specialized realm of fiasco? Today's show, "Fiascos-- A Philosophical Inquiry," perhaps the first ever, as far as we know, into what makes a fiasco, what takes our ordinary lives that extra distance into fiasco. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. There is much, much more to learn about fiascos in this hour. Stay with us. We begin our show with this true fable of Peter Pan in Act One, "Opening Night." Opening night comes and, you know, well, almost everybody in the area in the 10-mile radius of this theater knows somebody in this production, so the place is pretty much packed. And I don't know if you remember the opening moment of Peter Pan, but it's the three little kids sleeping in their bed. And Peter Pan comes flying in the window. And in this particular production, there's a big bed with all the three kids in it. And off to the left, I remember, is a big, huge wardrobe, and there's a large window there and a little bureau. And Peter Pan comes in and has a little speech where he says, anybody can fly. Why, with just a little magic dust, one can fly. And Peter Pan sort of sprinkles this magic dust in the air. And sure enough, the kids sort of suddenly just lurch into the air. And it becomes clear right away that the people that they've hired to run these flying apparatuses really aren't quite clear on how they actually work. So instead of the kids sort of sailing gracefully to and fro, they sort of hang in the air like puppets, just sort of dangling there and sort of getting jerked up an inch or two or back and forth. And then sometimes they're just stationary? Yeah, just hanging there like a spider. And then several of them start to sort of circumscribe these circles in the air, where it's clear that the people running the machines have just sort of set them off on these oval courses that spiral farther and farther out. And if you were sitting in the audience, there was clearly a sense of fear on the faces of these people. Of the actors? The actors. The actors, actually, you could sense their lack of confidence, shall we say-- --in the people running the machines in the back. So they-- Wait, wait. And the audience reaction to this point is just-- are they laughing? No one is laughing. One of the great things about audiences, especially in a live theater production, is that they're very forgiving. They want the show to work. And so everyone is sort of gripping their chair a little tightly. We feel for them. They're up there-- they're embarrassing themselves for us. We identify with them. We become them. And so the audience, I think, was very forgiving and very understanding of this moment. But there was one moment in this first opening scene that kind of put the audience on notice. And that's when, as the kids are sort of jerking up and down, and swinging back and forth, and sort of going around in these ovals, at one point the littlest one, the little boy, is sort of being flung around a little too-- --a little too hard. Well, he has the least mass to resist, whatever the machinery is doing to him. Right. OK, so and? And so he's flying around in a circle. And the audience sort of sees this coming. And there's a real sense of pain, and gripping of the chair, and white-knuckledness as the kid suddenly does just an enormous splat into the wardrobe. And it's clear that he's hurt. And he comes off of it sort of a little dazed. And then, of course, he's jerked up in the air a little bit and often a little too high so that he's suddenly sort of in the workings. He's sort of left the stage itself. He's now up there with the lights. Then all of a sudden, he just sort of-- Suddenly, he would just plummet back down to the stage and be caught up just before he hit the floor. [LAUGHS] It was hard to watch because, as you can tell, it's an incredibly funny moment. But like I say, the audience was still in this very forgiving mode. And no one said a word. We just all sat there sort of holding our breath. And there's that weird tension of being in the audience thinking, oh, oh my goodness. They have gotten off to a very bad start. Oh, this is not good. And we feel for them. May I just interrupt for just a moment-- Yeah. --just to say-- because after all, we are not just joined here together on the radio, you and I, today to laugh at the foibles of the unfortunate. No, no. We're here to enumerate the qualities of a fiasco. At this point, we are not yet in the territory of fiasco. No, no. Because, like I say, audiences are forgiving. And one or two mistakes, even big ones like this, they're going to let that ride. Yes, they are. We did. We did. We were very good. So we are not yet at fiasco. We are at a sort of normal level of mishap. Right. What happens immediately after this, they disappear to Never Never Land. And if you remember, the stage goes dark. And then when the lights come up, there's Captain Hook. And he's giving his first opening soliloquy about how evil he is, and what a menace he is, and how he harms people, and hates children. And it's all that good stuff. And so Captain Hook is out there. He looks great. He's got one one of those big, old, fat hats, and this great hook, and these wild looking boots and everything. And people are feeling more confident. Something's happening. It's a good sign. It's a good sign. And he's in charge. This guy, he's got a bad mustache, and he is certainly evil. Yes. And the audience is totally in his pocket. He's speaking away, and gesturing wildly, and going on and on about how bad he is. And then at a certain point, as he gestures, his hook and the entire black casing up to his elbow flings off of his hand and flies into the audience, and punches an old lady in the gut. He is bad. He's very bad. He had the worst ad lib I've ever heard. I mean, what do you say at that point? Because, of course, his hand is now nakedly exposed to the audience. A tough moment for any actor. Very, very hard. If the premise of your character is that you have a hook, your name is Captain Hook, literally all that's going to happen for the rest of the show is people are going to refer to you by that hook. Your entire motivation as a character is the fact that you're-- --is that your arm was eaten off by an alligator and that you have to have a-- The entire plot-- --and you have a hook. --stems from that fact. And now suddenly, you have no hook. In fact, you have five fingers on a hand. As if a miracle by the Lord. Captain Hook said, you know, they just don't make those hooks like they used to. That was actually the ad lib. I will never forget it. Then the lights come up, and we are in Never Never Land. In act two? Yeah, this is act two. And Captain Hook might have stood in front of the set, but you didn't really see it because he spoke from shadow. And now the lights come up, and it's supposed to be a very dramatic moment. The rumors of all this crew, and the painting, and everything that was going on, and all this construction all worked towards this one moment. Because when the lights came up, here was Never Never Land, this sort of psychedelic set. There were papier-maché mushrooms everywhere of different sizes. It was absolutely wonderful and surreal. Wow. And there's nobody there. And then from the upper rafters of stage right, suddenly the kids and Peter Pan appear. Flying? Flying. They're flying. And their landing-- their landing occurs rather rapidly, at an angle of about 45 degrees to the stage. They come down basically like-- I don't know-- lead sinkers on a line and crash to the floor, and then are sort of just dragged across the floor like mops, and wipe out all of the mushrooms. And so now have we arrived at a turning point in our fiasco? Yeah. Yeah, it's clear now that the audience is giving way. Something has been lost, some sense of decorum, that little bit of forgiveness that the audience has for the actors. And empathy. And empathy. It's beginning to dissipate. Well, there was a split in the audience. Sort of the younger people who were the least forgiving, they started to go first, OK? So the high school students, couple of college students maybe, they started to laugh out loud. And I'll be honest, Ira, I might have been one of those first people to laugh. I was in the 10th grade. It was hard to not laugh at this. But then whatever restraint that the audience had, it just evaporated at this point because there were a number of things that happened in quick succession that just made it impossible to hold any sense of decorum. Which are? For example, Tinker Bell appears for the first time around this moment. And Tinker Bell is essentially a light bulb on an extension cord. What? Yeah. And this was the director's idea of being raw, being very modern. Tinker Bell was just going to be this literal light bulb dangling from an extension cord. Whereas in other productions, what they do is that someone will shine a light. Shine a light, or they'll just-- A beam of focused light, and then that pinprick of light is supposed to be Tinker Bell. That's right, or something like that or nothing at all. And people just address the invisible sprite. Well, that did not happen in this case. This bulb comes just dangling down and sort of hangs around. This naked light bulb-- A bare light bulb? --just hangs around, and people are talking to it. And I think Tinker Bell-- Tinker Bell must have had an appearance in the first act, but it was somewhere in here that people just started laughing at this. Then another thing that happened was later on in this scene, if you remember, Wendy gets trapped on an island. And she spots a kite that's flying by, and she's supposed to grab it and attach it to her back and fly off. Well, of course, the kite is attached to the flying apparatus line. And it gets closer and closer to her. She's standing on this little papier-maché hill. But the flying apparatus people can't quite get it close enough to her to reach. So she has to step out into the water that she's just told us is filled with crocodiles to grab it. She finally gets the kite. And when she yanks on it, it pops off the flying apparatus. And the hook goes zinging up into the lights and catches. So now there is this big loop of wire hanging in front of the stage, and there's Wendy holding the kite. And she ad libbed as best she could, as I remember. She sort of said, on second thought, maybe I can swim. And with that, she walked off the stage, sort of motioning her arms like you would do the swim, the dance in 1965. So she does that. At this point, I mean, the actors are just falling apart. They are so frightened of the audience. There are just belly laughs rolling up to the stage from the audience. People are howling with laughter at every mistake. And now any small mistake just takes on these-- any instigation for laughter is just enough for this audience. And now the old people have given it up. Everyone has quit being nice. Now there's just this kind of frightening roar that comes from the audience every time there's a mistake. Well, what happened? At some point, the audience turned and realized, oh, wait. I realize what's going on here. This is a fiasco. Yeah, this is a fiasco. And what's really interesting about a fiasco is that once it starts to tumble down, the audience wants to push it further along. Oh, they get hungry for more fiasco. Oh, yeah. If the play proceeded perfectly, they would be disappointed. Oh, it would have been a grave disappointment had there not been just one more mistake after another, one more embarrassment after another. Now the reason they're there is to chronicle these embarrassments. This is why I have remembered this play for 25 years. Towards act three, the director had decided that she wanted to break down the fourth wall. This was cutting edge theater, as far as she was concerned. Before you do this, I just want to explain-- when we say breaking down the fourth wall, what we mean is the wall between the actors and the audience. Usually it's impermeable, but then there came a point in the late '60s, early '70s where a lot of theaters, basically the actors would come out into the audience. That's right, and interact with the audience, and break down that wall, so the idea being that you would get more in touch with the dramatic sense and the reality of what was happening. Anyway, so in this particular scene, what was going to happen was that the Indians were going to throw rope ladders down from the balcony, and climb down these rope ladders into the audience, and move among the audience, and frighten us. Anyway, I knew about this scene because my friend David, who I went to high school with, was in it. So when David was climbing over the top of this balcony to climb down the rope, he lost his footing and fell to the floor from the balcony, a distance of about 15 to 20 feet. Oh my god. A good fall. That's horrible. Yeah. And he landed on both of his feet and sprained both of his ankles, and, of course, curled into a fetal position and began to cry. He was really, really hurt. Now, to appreciate the horrible moment I'm now describing, also understand that it's a Friday night, we are in a college town, and there is a volunteer fire and ambulance department. And in order to summon the rescuers from wherever they are, an alarm is sounded that can be heard for five miles. That alarm is located right over this theater. So the alarm goes off, OK? This is an air raid siren. It is so loud, you can put your fingers in your ear and it's still hurting your ears. We're right under it. It can be heard for five miles. And then, of course, three minutes later, busting through the door of the theater, are these 15 firemen, who are in boots, hats. They got hoses. They don't know what it is. All they know is that they've been sent out on a call. And to sort of add to the chaos, the director, of course, has sort of flogged the actors that the show must go on. No matter what. So no matter what. So while all of this is happening and several people are attending to David, and other people have just now decided that since the firemen are here he's going to be fine, they can start laughing. And now the audience has just completely lost control. People are standing up in their seats and shouting for more. They want blood. I mean, at this point, people are actually injured in the production, and they want more. Somehow that's how this entire play ended. What's interesting about this as a fiasco-- I feel like the thing it makes me understand about fiascos is that the fiasco itself is an altered state. That is, all the normal rules are off. You have left the normal rules of how the audience is going to interact with the actors. Right. I've never seen a production like this, and I've never seen an audience collapse like this. See, but I wonder, when you think about what people go to theater for, like what kind of release people want, I mean, people want an experience that will take them out of themselves. We all want an experience that will take us out of ourselves and into another place and another reality. And it sounds like this production, even though it was a fiasco, in fact, because it was a fiasco, was more successful at that than any conventional play could be. Well, see, I would disagree with you. See, I think the old theater critics, the ancients, would say that the reason you go to the theater and to see a great production is to be-- I think the word they used to use is "transported," the idea being that you would be lifted away from your animal nature and into these higher, more spiritual realms or get in touch with these greater tragic emotions. Of course, what happened here was the exact opposite. We get transported directly in touch with our animal being. Our baser selves. Right. But that's almost as rare, if not more so, than a great production. Jack Hitt, he's the co-host of a great Peabody Award-winning podcast about race and history called Uncivil, which, if you are looking for something to listen to during this national home lockdown or on your commute to your essential job, I really recommend that. Jack says, by the way, that people ask him about this Peter Pan story still, all these years later. In the year since we first ran this, we got a letter from one of the actors in that production that Jack saw, a guy who played a pirate, who told us Jack, quote, "did not go far enough. He only covered the opening night. The subsequent performances were no better." (SINGING) I won't grow up. I don't wanna go to school just to learn to be a puppet and recite a silly rule. If growing up means it would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree, I won't grow up, won't grow up, won't grow up, not me. Act Two, "Squirrel Cop." Well, human error is often at the heart of a fiasco, but what happens when you combine human error with, what we'll call in this case, animal error? We have this story of a police officer in a suburban community on the East Coast. There was nothing, nothing going on-- Saturday night in this village, really quiet, super cold. And this call came over for unknown animal in a house. And it was on my post. It was about five minutes away. So myself and another car were assigned the call, and we show up there. And luckily for me, it was another guy who was pretty new. So we walk up to the door with all our stuff on-- the nylon coat, the vest, the belt, the whole nine yards. And the door opens. And the guy who is behind the door, he's about 30. I was 23 at the time. He's about 30. He looks like a broker or a lawyer, just really well put together, nice guy, wearing glasses. He's wearing these silk pajamas with a monogram. Got my attention. Wow. And he's going, listen, really sorry to bother you. Normally I'd handle this sort of stuff on my own, but my wife really insisted that I call. And so we ask him what the problem is. He says, well, we were having kind of a romantic evening down in the living room, and we heard this scratching upstairs. So I ran upstairs to see what it was. And it turns out it's coming from the attic. There's something up there, and it's just running around, knocking a few small things over. I can't tell what it is. It could be a squirrel, a raccoon. I really don't know. So the other cop that I was with said, well, we really don't handle that. It's not so much a police function. But we do have numbers of these private contractors who will come in, and they'll put a humane trap down, and they'll remove the animal for you. And it's really not such a big deal, but it's really not our thing. So right as he was in the middle of saying that and getting us off the hook, the guy swings the door back. And there's his wife, who was just beautiful. She was beautiful. She was probably about 26 or 27, but just really beautiful, like perfect skin, long blonde hair, great teeth, brilliant blue eyes, a really nice smile, just beautiful and friendly. If she had said, eat this broken glass, I just would have said, OK, broken glass it is. That's fine. But she seemed really nice, so I was going to be like Galahad. So I just threw my arm back into this guy's chest, into my partner's chest. I said, Mark, we can handle this. It'll be OK. And she was just, you know, thank you so much. And she was really sweet. And I was struck dead. So we walk inside. And she goes, I'm going to throw a pot of coffee on. And we go upstairs. We follow the man of the house upstairs. And we're underneath one of those trap doors that goes into the attic with a staircase that folds out. And we do hear an animal upstairs scratching away, just scuttling around the floor. And there's definitely something up there, and it's making pretty good speed up going from one end of the roof to the other. So I reached up, and I took the trapdoor down. We unfolded the ladder. And I have this big, heavy flashlight, like your cop flashlight-- 4D cells, the metal case, the whole thing. I shine it up through the hole in there, and it's pretty black. I can see the rafters, but really nothing else around there. And I start up the ladder. Now the guy who owned the house is standing almost directly underneath me, just to the side of the ladder, looking straight up at me. And my partner's at the base of the ladder, right behind me. So just before I stuck my head through this black hole, I just paused. I crunched my body up underneath 'cause I'm realizing, gee, I don't know where this thing is. The second we pull down the trap door, all noise upstairs just ceased. So I was kind of nervous. And I was like, well, I look like an idiot just crouched up here on the top of the ladder. So I took the flashlight, and I just popped my head up, turned the light on again. And about six inches from the front of my face was this squirrel at eye level with me, kind of reared back on its legs. And I swear, from where I was standing, it looked like Godzilla. It just scared the heck out of me. I thought, it's a squirrel. It's going to be hiding somewhere. It's going to be terrified of me. It was six inches away from me. And it really startled me, so I kind of went, ah, and jumped back. And the flashlight slips out of my hands. It's heavy. And it falls directly onto the nose of the guy who's looking straight up at me. And I don't think it broke it, but it did some damage. And his nose-- his hands went up to his face. Blood just started pouring out between his hands. This is the homeowner? This is the homeowner. I lose my balance and fall backwards directly onto my partner. And I pancake him. We're both on our backs. He's on his back. I'm on his stomach on my back, scuttling around like a beetle trying to get up in this really narrow hallway. It's a mess. The squirrel, while we're floundering around in the hallway, jumps down the stairs-- boink, boink, boink-- lands on me, and takes off down the stairs. How undignified. It was terrible. It was terrible. So we're wondering, gee, where is the squirrel? And right at that second, the woman who lived there, you hear her scream. So my partner goes, well, we found the squirrel. It's wherever she is. Yeah. So we go running downstairs. And the squirrel had come into the living room, where they had been having their romantic evening. They had a fire going. They had pillows arranged around one corner of the couch next to the fire. And they had champagne flutes out-- nice house, really nice. I mean, it just smelled brand new-- new carpeting, new rugs, new paint. They hadn't been there for that long. So the squirrel, when it bolted down the staircase, took off into the living room and ran underneath a couch for cover. So we run downstairs. This guy is bleeding all over the place, on his carpets. His wife looks and says, what have you done to my husband? I start going, oh, it was an accident. And I just stop in mid-sentence. What's the point? We've only been there about two minutes. So the squirrel is underneath the couch. And my partner is going, let's get out of here. This is just-- it's not going well. So I'm not beaten yet. I always have another idea. So the squirrel is under this couch, which is in the middle of the room. So I have this bright idea. Why don't we move the furniture away from one of the corners, and we'll put the couch in the corner, and the squirrel will probably move along with the couch because it's the only cover available to it. And once we get into the corner, we'll only have two open sides of the couch to worry about. So we did that. That is so tactical. Yes. Yeah, I was very proud of myself at that instant, but, you know. I asked her for a box, and she says, sure, we've got boxes. We just moved in. We have nothing but boxes. She runs out to the garage, and she comes back with a box. And the box is long enough, and it fits across the entire short side of the couch where the armrest would be. So I start sweeping underneath the couch with my nightstick, trying to move the squirrel toward the box, figuring we'll capture it and just get rid of it, and we'll be out of here, and there'll be no more mayhem. So it's actually working very well, and the squirrel's moving down along. You can hear it. It's chittering. And I'm trying not to hurt it. I'm nervous about the thing. It might bite me. I don't want to hurt it, really. It's just an animal. So I'm moving it along, and everything's going very well. And then with about eight inches to go I took one more swipe, and the thing just bolted out from underneath the couch. It was lined with tassels. I couldn't really see under the couch. It bolted out from underneath the couch and ran directly into the fireplace, which is about three feet away. The fireplace was directly ahead of it. And it ran into the fire-- Oh, my. --and caught on fire, and ran directly back out and directly back under the couch. Is it on fire? It was on fire, yeah, the tail, the bushy fur, the whole bit. I mean, it wasn't flaming or anything, but it was smoking, and there was a little bit of fire coming off the tail. So it runs back under the couch. And the couch catches on fire in seconds, I mean, in seconds. It must have had dust under there or something else, but it caught on fire immediately. And my partner and I just don't even talk. We just grab the couch, heave it upside down, and now there's plenty of oxygen now for the fire to really get going. And it starts up, and we're patting it out. And it's sort of getting away from us. So we grab the only thing that's really available, and those are these really nice silk pillows. And we have one in each hand, both of us, and we're just windmilling away at this fire on the couch. And we put it out, but it's smoking terribly. It was a disaster. The couch is upside down. The bottom of it is burnt. The house is filling with smoke from the couch. The squirrel, when it went under the couch, in its death throes, just latched onto the bottom of the couch. It's like this smoking piece of gristle underneath the couch, latched on there with its claws. And we're pounding, smearing it all over the place. The smoke alarms are firing away. The guy's standing with handkerchiefs and paper towels up around his nose, which is still bleeding. His pajamas are a mess. They're covered with blood, the front of them. And we finally get the fire out. And we're both completely red, sweating because we're dressed for like zero-degree weather, and it's hot there by the fire. We're mortified. The house is full of smoke. The wife just looks around and just starts to cry. She goes, what have you done? What have you done to my house? You could see her just clicking things off on her fingers-- OK, the dead squirrel, ruined pillows, need a new couch. The walls are covered with soot. The fire alarm's going off. My husband's disfigured. And then she really just lost it. And he was just looking at us and shaking his head like he couldn't believe that these two idiots showed up and did this to his house over nothing, really. And he just goes, you really haven't done anything wrong. I can't point to any one thing that you did that I have a reason to get angry about. You really haven't done anything wrong. I mean, we did call you, but I just-- I can't thank you for this. They call for a squirrel. They end up with like $3,000, $4,000 worth of damage and a broken nose. And this is all within about five minutes. Could that have happened to you now, 13 years later? There's always a new mistake to be made. I don't think I would make that particular mistake. I mean, you make plenty of mistakes. You make plenty of mistakes. That's just part of that job. You just try not to make the same one twice. But there's such variety that you're going to make hundreds. You're going to make thousands of mistakes. You're going to make thousands of mistakes until you really get a handle on what you're doing. And with police work, they afford you plenty of space to make mistakes. But there's things that just either they aren't your responsibility-- if you get involved in things that aren't your responsibility, or that you're really not equipped to handle, or that you don't have a specific plan, a plan that's thought through to a conclusion, you probably should re-evaluate what you're doing. Now that you mention that, yeah, that's right. You walk into the house thinking, OK, we'll get the squirrel. Like, where are you going to get the squirrel? What was the best case scenario? That's a great question. I guess I was thinking that I would go up there in the attic and find this cowering squirrel, and somehow lure it into some kind of a trap, and then walk out with it and be like a hero. But as it turned out, the squirrel-- it was a Pyrrhic victory for the squirrel, but the squirrel definitely won. The squirrel really kicked our ass. [LAUGHS] That is not what you want to be saying at the end of the day. No, no. I mean, it took me a long time to even tell people about it. I was so new. I didn't want anyone to know what a bonehead I was when I first came onto the job. Our interviewee, who asked not to be named on the radio, had been on the force for 18 years when he spoke with me. (SINGING) My baby, she got ways like a fox squirrel swinging up in a tree. I know my woman, she got ways like a fox squirrel swinging up in a tree. Well, little darling, [INAUDIBLE]. She kept hopping all over me. Coming up, what it's like to be invited to a big charity event that you then ruin. That's in a minute, from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, bring you different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show, fiasco. This is our own inquiry into the nature of what makes a fiasco. When you have left the world of mishaps, stumble human error, and you enter into the much more rarefied realm of fiasco, we have arrived at Act Three of our program-- Act Three, "Tragedy Minus Comedy Equals Time," specifically a long, long time between laughs. So Mike Birbiglia is a comedian. He's been on our show lots of times. And years ago, years ago, he told this story about this one gig that he did relatively early in his career. He says it was the worst show he's ever done in his life. It happened this year. I was asked to perform at a charity golf tournament in New Jersey. So I woke up for this charity golf event. And I realized recently that I'm not a good adult yet. I think if you're a good adult, you plan your outfit according to what will occur when you leave the house. But I don't have that part of my brain. I'm just like, one outfit forever! So when I played golf, I brought my brother, Joe. And Joe's kind of like a bad entourage member. He's never like, you the man, Mike. He's always like, I don't know what Dad would think about this, and do you think they have any more shrimp-- that kind of thing. But we showed up to play golf, and they paired us up with these two other people. It was a celebrity tournament, and people were like, who do you think our celebrity's going to be? And Joe and I were like, yeah, who do you think our celebrity is going to be? And then I'm like, oh, no. I think it might be me. And then I'm apologizing to these people. I'm like, I'm really sorry I'm your celebrity. If you think this is disappointing for you, you can't imagine how I feel. So I'm apologizing the whole day. And then at the end of the day, sure enough, my pants are all wrinkled, and I have to perform at this semi-formal banquet. And I'm like, what about one outfit forever? I thought that was a good plan. And so here's what I do. As damage control, I go to the locker room to iron my own pants. And yeah, it's a pretty good plan. And I find an iron, but I couldn't find a board. So I take off my pants. I'm just ironing them on a bench in the locker room in my underwear, which is a dead giveaway that these are my only pants. So I'm ironing my pants. And I put them on. And I go up to the event. And this is where the trouble really begins. It's important for me, before I tell you this part of the story, to remind you that you're on my side. I say to the woman in charge-- I go, what's the format of the show? And she goes, well, there's two speakers, and then you, and then a raffle. And I was like, well, that's exciting because I've never opened for a raffle. I'm trying to stay optimistic. And I'm sitting in the back of the room with my brother, Joe. And the first speaker comes on the stage, and he's an 11-year-old boy who survived leukemia. I know. He's not funny at all. He focuses primarily on the leukemia, and everyone is crying. Literally everyone is crying. I'm even crying in the back of the room for two reasons-- one, the kid, and two, for me because I have to perform comedy. And it gets worse because Joe leans over, and he goes, this ain't looking so good, Mike. I said, I concur. The second speaker was Hall of Fame quarterback Phil Simms. And yeah. Whoo! He's got one fan here. But he's a broadcaster. And he gives an amazing, inspiring speech. And he even sprinkles in a few jokes about golf. They were similar to jokes I had thought of about golf that day. It was like watching the last drops of my joke canteen drip out onto a desert of cancer. He gets a standing ovation, which he should have. Clearly the show is over. Surely there can't be anyone more famous than Hall of Fame quarterback Phil Simms. But wait, there was. It was Mike Birbiglia, who had no business being at this event. I know there are some entertainers who might have risen to the challenge, and I would love to be one of those entertainers, but I am not. As a matter of fact, I have a habit in my life of making awkward situations even more awkward. I've said this before, but a few years ago I was moving a new bed into my apartment. And this woman who lived in the building opened the front door for me with her key. And she goes, I'm not worried because a rapist wouldn't have a bed like that. That's how she started the conversation. Now, what I should have said was nothing. What I did say was, you'd be surprised. There's nothing you can say after that. You're just like, see you around the building, that kind of thing. I've thought about this a lot, and I think there's something wrong with my brain, where I don't have an on-deck circle for ideas. It's just batter up. And a lot of the ideas are bad. And they're at the plate going, I don't know about this one, Mike. And I just turn into this drunk Little League dad. I'm like, you go take some cuts, son. As a comedian, when people laugh, it's very exciting. It's a very neat thing. And when they don't, it feels like you're performing jazz because they're kind of bobbing their head and looking to the side. And sometimes that's OK. I'm like, I like jazz. But then I get worried because I'm like, sometimes jazz sucks. What if I'm the Kenny G of comedy? What if I think I sound like this, like-- [JAZZ SOUNDS] --and, in fact, I sound like this-- (SINGING) Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na. So I'm onstage at the charity golf tournament, and I'm just Kenny G'ing it up, for 10 minutes, just-- [SINGING OFF KEY] --just blowing that horn. And I don't want to fail. I mean, that's a really important point in this story is that these are good people. And I want to succeed for them, but I just can't. And so I think to myself, why don't I cater my material to this specific event? And everyone has been talking about cancer. I know. I'm in the future also. I had that thought on stage for about one second and then batter up. I said to the audience-- true story, I said I went to the doctor, and they told me there was something in my bladder. And whenever they tell you that, it's never anything good-- like, we found something in your bladder, and it's season tickets to the Yankees! That was the response I was hoping for. At that point, I just threw in the towel. I mean, I was just devastated. I thanked the audience and apologized simultaneously, which I've never done. I was like, thank you. Sorry for ruining your event. And I just kind of walked off. And I was so upset. And I walked over to Joe. And I go, Joe, we are leaving now. And that's when Joe said, and I quote, "Mike, I can't. They're just about to start the raffle." "And because everybody left, my odds are amazing." And that is the worst show I have ever done in my entire life. Yeah. Mike Birbiglia. His most recent Netflix special is called The New One. And he's organized these funny videos to raise money for people who work at comedy clubs, who, of course, are now out of work. John Mulaney, Maria Bamford, Roy Wood Jr., and many other very funny people do these with him. You can find them at tipyourwaitstaff.com. (SINGING) I started a joke, which started the whole world crying. But I didn't see that the joke was on me, oh, no. Act Four, "Fiascos As A Force for Good." George Clooney, Barbra Streisand, Jennifer Aniston, Vidal Sassoon, Jodie Foster, Jason Momoa, Brad Pitt, Keanu Reeves, Sharon Stone, and John Travolta, also George Burns, Bob Hope, Gene Kelly, Gena Rowlands, also Quentin Tarantino, John Waters, Nora Ephron-- Margy Rochlin has interviewed all these people. She's written big feature stories for all sorts of big magazines and newspapers. But the very, very first big feature assignment that she was actually sent out on was by a publication in 1982, The Los Angeles Reader. They sent out a very nervous, very youthful Margy Rochlin to interview Moon Unit Zappa. Remember her? Daughter of Frank Zappa. In this little bit that she does on the song, she's using a lot of this language that-- sort of Valspeak that no one had ever heard before. And it was considered really exotic. And so I was from the valley, so I was sent to go talk to her. She is one of your people. Speak to her in your secret, private argot. Exactly. And, of course, what is so touching to me is that I totally bought that. You're right. I'm the right person for the job. I'm going to go speak to her in the valley language, and we will bond. (SINGING) Like, oh my god. Valley girl. Like, totally. Valley girl. Encino is, like, so bitchin'. Valley girl. So you get there, and you're a bit nervous. And the pressure is on, which is, of course, the setting for a possible triumph or a possible fiasco. Right. And what happens next? Well, what I noticed was that it was a tense situation. I just didn't feel like it was going very well, and the mother was sort of hovering. Well, we have a recording of it, because you had a tape recorder rolling during this. Yes. What are some other hangouts in The Valley besides the Galleria? Bowling alleys with big arcades are very popular. Oh, I'm trying-- at this point, I'm sort of at that rock bottom level that everyone can get at in an interview, where you're just saying, what's your favorite color? And she's trying to help me along. Kirkwood's is gone. It's now the sports center. Oh, it's the same thing? So we're seated in the den. And the mother made me coffee, but I was too nervous to drink it. But I sort of kept staring at it, and she kept staring at it. And I felt like it was pretty important that at some point I better drain that coffee cup. And so what happened was Moon told me a joke, and I didn't see the joke coming. And right before she told me the joke, I had taken a big swig of the coffee, which was now cold. And when she told me the joke, I burst out laughing, and I started to choke. And so I pressed my lips together, so I didn't spit it out. I didn't want to do a spit take. And the coffee came shooting out my nose. Shooting out your nose? Shooting right out my nose. Are you OK? Put your hands up. I was really embarrassed, but I couldn't breathe. At the same time, I was choking. And I jumped up, and I sort of started running around the room, knocking things over. And I think that they didn't know what was going on, but the mother began chasing me. She began chasing you? She began chasing me because I was sort of running from corner to corner, trying to catch my breath. And she began sort of chasing me. And at a certain point, she got behind me, and she gave me the Heimlich maneuver. Wait. Put your arms up. OK? Let's do the Heimlich maneuver. Oh, god. Well, I've been in the news business-- I've been a reporter for 20 years, and nobody's ever given me the Heimlich maneuver while I've been on the story. Well, I always say that it's a benchmark. It's a very low benchmark. And I can do any interview. I can get thrown off a set. I can be cursed out by the subject, but I can leave and get in the car, and I can drive home and think, I didn't blow coffee out my nose. Now, what happened after that? It was sort of like we'd all been in an earthquake together. And all of the nervousness left the room, and suddenly we were three gals just chatting. And I remember that I sort of hugged them both when I left. Wow. They were now my friends. It's interesting, because one of our criteria for a fiasco is that all social order, the normal social structure, breaks down. And literally that's what happens here. The normal interview stops, and the social structure of the moment completely changes. The mom gives you the Heimlich maneuver, and then suddenly it stops feeling like an interview. Yeah. And I have to say that it was a very embarrassing experience, and it completely made me feel close to them. It was so interesting. When Moon's father died a while ago, I bumped into her somewhere, and we both burst into tears. I mean, I really felt like a little sister of mine had a loss. And the starting point was-- That moment. That moment. Yeah. To me, the thing about it that's useful is that it shows the useful purpose of a fiasco. That is, when social order breaks down, that can be a force not just for chaos, and for entropy, and for evil, but, in fact, that can be a force for good. It can bring people together. Right. It was actually this huge success to me. I'd never been sent out under these kind of circumstances before. And I remember we beat the local paper. The Herald Examiner followed us a week later. So we had the first story, and it was sort of considered the definitive one because we had this glossary of terms that I had made her put together. Of valley speak terms? Of valley speak terms. And then it was syndicated. And most of the quotable stuff that you ended up using in your story happened after the-- Happened-- yeah. Happened after squirting the coffee through your nose. Exactly, exactly. It's a technique I don't suggest anyone trying. (SINGING) It's, like, so bitchin' because, like, everybody's, like, super, super nice. It's like, so bitchin'. For years afterwards, Moon would send me postcards. And on the postcard somewhere would be a picture of a nose, and there would be liquid coming out of it, sort of like my logo. Ready, ready to the max. I'm sure. It's, like, really nauseating. Like, barf out. Gag me with a spoon. Gross. I am sure. Totally. Margy Rochlin. She covers television, podcasts, food, and film in Los Angeles. (SINGING) Don't look at her way. It's how she gets around. You are damaged and shaken, but you're still in control as far as they know. Today's program was produced by Nancy Updike and myself, with Paul Tough, Alix Spiegel, and Julie Snyder. Contributing editors for today's program-- Jack Hitt, Margy Rochlin, and Consigliere Sarah Vowell. Production help for this rerun from Noor Gill, Stowe Nelson, and Matt Tierney. Our website, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. He used to walk into the studio at the end of each and every episode to grimly assess the damage. Dead squirrel, ruined pillows, need a new couch. The walls are covered with soot. The fire alarms are going off. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life. (SINGING) You are damaged and shaken, but you're still in control as far as they know. What did they, what'd they say, do you know what I mean? Do ya? Do ya? Do ya? Oh, great honey. Get you into the show. Oh, don't worry, honey. Always knows the showman.
|
This story of voyeurism, innocent voyeurism, starts off simply enough. Pete was supposed to meet a friend when she got off from work. He arrived two hours early. So to kill two hours, I was just wandering around in the alleys, digging through the dumpsters around there, seeing what there was. And as much as I like to look through dumpsters, there's not a whole lot that I'm excited about finding. I'm not real big on eating food out of dumpsters. So the one thing that really gets me excited is finding other people's mail. I love reading other people's mail. I actively look for it on the streets and in people's garbages, in dumpsters, at post office. On this particular day, Pete found a big bag of letters, maybe 100 pieces of mail, written over a year and a half. He's excited. It seemed like hours of reading. They were in no chronological order, so I just had to open the first one that I could grab. And read one after another that way, which was kind of confusing at first because I jumped right into the middle of what appeared to be a relationship between a woman and a man. But I slowly put it together as a puzzle. Here's the picture that emerged as he put this puzzle together. The woman lived in another country. The guy lived in the United States. And while visiting her country, staying in a hotel there, he slept with this woman once. She wanted to see him again, idealized him, wanted to come visit him. But none of these trips ever seemed to happen. Pete only had the letters that she had written, her side of the story. But sometimes in her letters, she repeated things that he said. And over the course of the correspondence, all sorts of things happened. This woman went to jail, and then lied about it to the guy, and then finally admitted the whole thing. She lied about a daughter of hers. She actually said that a daughter of hers had died. And then finally admitted, no, no, I was just lying about that. And over the course of these letters, this woman slowly puts her life in order. She goes to school, she gets a new job, often taking advice from the guy. I think it is just she never had somebody to really lean on and to seek advice from or just to tell her problems to, or at least nobody who was stable. And so he says it's going to be platonic. And she says oh, that's fine, that's fine. But when you read between the lines, she just wants to see him and maybe once they reunited then the sparks will fly again. As he read, Pete started to feel protective of this woman. The guy seemed to be sending mixed messages. The guy, to him, seemed like a total jerk, really. He was always making her think that he might want to see her, but then he would always quash any plans that they had to actually get together. And this is the thing about reading other people's mail, as you read you cannot help but read between the lines. Anybody with any heart, any half sense of empathy fills in the details that are missing. You're thrown into this world that's part fiction writer and part detective. I had to keep in mind that he had just thrown these letters out apparently. And so no matter how important she may say that he is to her, at some point he puts it behind him. These letters now are in the dumpster. Well, from WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it is This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose some theme, bring you documentary stories, original fiction, radio essays, anything we can think of on that theme. Today's program, Other People's Mail, stories of people reading stuff they're not supposed to see in the first place, and how it moves their hearts, and what happens after that. Act One of our program today, Dead Letters. Richard Lyons walks through a car junkyard and finds in the crumpled up wrecks letters and notes of the people who once lived in these cars. Act Two, Thief. A college girl steals other people's mail. Mona Simpson reads an excerpt from her short story. Act Three, Saviors. A visit to the only post office employees who are allowed to actually read your mail. These are the people who deal with letters whose addresses are unreadable or incorrect or nonexistent. They open up the mail to try to get it to where it's supposed to go. Act Four, Voyeurs, in which our own Sarah Vowell picks a fight with me. Stay with us. Act One, Dead Letters. Well, Richard Lyons is in the band Negativland, which is known for using a lot of found sound in their recordings. And a couple years ago he put together-- he xeroxed just a couple copies of it for a few friends. And it was made of these objects he had found, letters and notes. It's really this incredible document. When you open to any page, what you see is, on the right side there's a photo of some smashed up, demolished car. And on the left, there's a letter or a shopping list or some note found inside that totalled car. He agreed to tell the story here. All the names and certain identifying details have been changed. The inspiration for my project came about in the spring of 1994 while visiting a local automobile wrecking establishment in Contra Costa County, California. While searching for a Bendix spring for Negativland's company mascot, a 1976 Mercury Monarch Ghia, I made a shocking discovery. I stumbled upon a metallic root beer 1971 Dodge Demon that I'd previously owned and meticulously maintained until selling it two years earlier. To my horror, the car had been broadsided with great force and the occupants had been neatly extracted with the jaws of life through a perfect cut over the edge of the roof line. Upon further inspection, it became obvious that the car had not only been wrecked, but trashed over a period of time beforehand. Curiosity led me to search its interior for clues on what methods of torture could have brought my once beautiful car bomb to this endscape. And what I found was fascinating. The melted plastic seats and orange carpet were littered with an assortment of paper scraps documenting the life of a 17-year-old single mother and her tumultuous relationship with an abusive 38-year-old boyfriend. The car smelled of sewage water and empty Pepsi containers attracted bees. But I continued to collect and collate everything I could find, love notes, hate letters, personal records, receipts, photographs. Dearest Jack, if you love me as much as you say you do, will you please spend time with me and the baby? You said you'd take care of me and I don't know what I should do to make you keep your promise. I love you, Jack, and I hope you'll forgive me for not being able do some things good enough. But I want you to at least be here for all of us. And I hope you can see my point. Will you please come back? Love, Erica. Several days passed before I fully realized the extraordinary effect this experience had on me. I couldn't help wondering if she'd been killed or badly injured, and what about her infant son? Was she even in the car? Perhaps her drunken beau, in a fit of uncontrollable rage, had taken the Demon on its fateful joy ride. If Jack doesn't want to be with me or Max, he can do whatever he wants. I don't care if he wants to do crank and everything else to get high. I can find someone who will be better for me and I know will be around at least sometimes and care about me and us both. I recalled observing similar remains in other discarded vehicles. And upon further consideration, I picked up my camera and left to see what else was out there. The older cars were the most interesting-- unpaid parking tickets, failure to appear notices, unopened mail from collection agencies, lottery receipts, losing game cards from fast food restaurants. Then there were the letters. I found one letter in a 1977 Buick Regal, whose roof had been completely torn off and the body was twisted in half. My love, Joe. Hi. How are you doing? I hope I can get through this hell hole. I love you with all my heart and miss you very, very bad. I got four months, that's 102 days here in jail. Joe, if you love me like you say, will you wait for me, please? Whatever you do, don't leave me. Come see me on Saturday. Visiting hours, 2:00 to 4:00 PM. I heard you were here to see me, but I never seen you. What happened to you? Well, my love of my life, I won't be here too long. I'm hurt because I never seen you in court with me. Calvin said you was here. I'm trying to get a three-way phone so I can call you. If you can find someone with a three-way phone, please get the phone number and let me know. Well, Joe, this is just a little letter to let you know what's going on. When I get more paper, I'll write you more, longer letters. I love you, Joe, with all my heart. Miss you real bad. Forever your love, Debbie. Joe, Virginia said you don't want to talk to me so we are through with each other and I am getting abortion. I don't want your baby, so leave me alone. Love, Debbie. I photographed every car I searched and compiled the information in the form of a xeroxed book, transcribing the text exactly as it was written and positioning it next to the photo. I pulled a list from a crushed 1987 Volkswagen Fox entitled, What I Need. Couch, love seat, chair, coffee table, dinner table, TV, radio. I found a writing assignment by a local community college student in a totalled Chevy van. Apparently, he hadn't learned his lesson. James D., English 122, November 22, 1993. One, a car accident two years ago taught me the dangers of drinking and driving. A car accident, it's bad. Two, Who? Him and his buddies. What? Drove drunk. When? 11:30 PM, Easter eve. Where? Route 11. Why? Young, stupid, high on beer. Three, Yes, he answers all questions. Four, Monte Carlo Super Sport, night before Easter, Route 11. Five, Yes, it all leads up to driving drunk. I came upon a 1979 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham, whose front end was so mangled that the engine was pushed through the firewall and up into the windshield. In it was another student paper, only this one was probably passed quietly in class. Natalie baby, so how are you sweets? You look so cute. Say, next time you talk to Marge, tell her I hope she feels better. Why is she so sick? Well, how's your baby? I can tell it's going to be so cute just because you look so cute. Happy 25-week anniversary. Yeah. So what you been up to? Since you forgot to write me, I wrote you. Cool, huh? Well babe, pretty neat note, huh? Not. I gotta go, but you better write back to me. See ya, Audrey. Tell baby I said hi. I found a letter in a 1978 Toyota Celica Liftback. The car was so badly crushed on the left side that the driver's door took up the entire front seat. Bill. Hello, how are you? I am OK. A week ago, I got burned on my right hand. We had a grease fire in the kitchen and I received second degree burns on my hand. We were going to make tacos. We left for three seconds and it went up in flames. That's why my writing is not that good. It's really not as bad as it sounds. I can't remember if I told you, but I had a miscarriage July 8. But it's almost been a month and I'm doing a lot better. I was in the hospital six hours. I thought I had three IRs, but my ex-roommate, Michelle, said I had five. I'm kind of glad I lost it since I wasn't in love with the guy. I told him I was pregnant and he really seemed like he didn't care. That's OK. I didn't love the guy. He was hooked on crack and the baby probably would have come out mental. Here's a picture off-guard. I don't have any more pimples. And I am not that white. My hair is getting a little longer and better shaped. Well, I'm going to let you go for now. My hand's starting to hurt. Write back, please. I'll enjoy it. After you send the money order, don't write because I'll be on my way. I'll call and let you know as soon as I get it. Love always, Ginger Joy. In about a month's time, I'd collected more than enough documents to complete my book. But the act of gathering them had become an obsession and it was difficult to know when to quit. I finally stopped myself after an eerie discovery in a car that had been demolished beyond recognition. It must have belonged to a member of the church choir, and strangely, it was the only thing in the car-- a single photocopy of a hymn by Dion de Marbelle, "When They Ring The Golden Bells." "When our days shall know their number, And in death we sweetly slumber, When the King commands the spirit to be free, Never more with anguish laden We shall reach that lovely Aiden, When they ring the golden bells for you and me." Drive carefully. Richard Lyons is in the band Negativland. His xeroxed book of crashed car photos and text isn't available anywhere. But the band is posting some of it on their website, if you're curious. The address of that website, www.negativland.com. And you spell Negativland, N-E-G-A-T-I-V-- no E there-- L-A-N-D. Act Two, Thief. While there can be consequences to reading other people's mail, a friend of mine told me this story about his first job. In this job, he was a reporter at a small newspaper in a small town, and they had a basic office computer system. And then one day on a whim, he tried to log in as the owner of the newspaper. For the password, he just typed in the name of the guy's grandson. It worked. He suddenly had access to every file in the newspaper's computer, every story, every accounting record, every email. My friend says it was miserable. Most of the mail was depressingly banal, not worth reading. The main thing that he learned was that at the beginning of the year, nearly everyone in the office had gotten a bigger raise than he had. Reporters whose stories he thought were terrible had made much more than he did. When you open other people's mail, things can happen, unless you're careful. With that in mind, we turn to Mona Simpson. She's the author of numerous books. This is an excerpt of a short story she wrote a few years ago, called Lawns. I steal. I've stolen books and money and even letters. Letters are great. I work in the mail room of my dormitory, Saturday mornings. I sort mail, put the letters in these long narrow cubbyholes. The insides of mailboxes. It's cool there when I stick in my arm. I've stolen cash-- these crisp, crackling, brand new twenty-dollar bills that fathers and grandmothers send, sealed up in sheets of wax paper. Once I got a fifty. I've stolen presents, too. I got a sweater and a football. Mostly, what I take are cookies. No evidence. They're edible. I can spot the coffee cans of chocolate chip. You can smell it right through the wrapping. A cool smell, like the inside of a pantry. Sometimes I eat straight through the can during my shift. Tampering with the United States mail is a Federal Crime, I know. Listen, let me tell you, I know. I got a summons in my mailbox to go to the Employment Office next Wednesday. Sure, I'm scared. The University cops want to talk to me. Great. They think, suspect is the word they use, that one of us is throwing out mail instead of sorting it. Us is the others. I'm not the only sorter. I just work Saturdays, mail comes, you know, six days a week in this country. They'll never guess it's me. They say this in the letter, they think it's out of LAZINESS. Wanting to hurry up and get done, not spend the time. But I don't hurry. I'm really patient on Saturday mornings. I leave my dorm early, while Lauren's still asleep, I open the mailroom-- it's this heavy door and I have my own key. When I get there, two bags are already on the table, sagging, waiting for me. Two old ladies. One's packages, one's mail. There's a small key opens the bank of doors, the little boxes, from the inside. Through the glass part of every mail slot, I can see. The AstroTurf field across the street over the parking lot, it's this light green. I watch the sky go from black to gray to blue, while I'm there. Some days just stay foggy. Those are the best. Once you open a letter, you can't just put it in the mailbox. The person's going to say something. So I stash them in my pack and throw them out. Just people I know. Susan Brown, I open. Andy Larsen, Larry Helprin. All the popular kids from my high school. These are kids who drove places together, took vacations. They all skied. They went to the prom in one big group. At morning nutrition-- nutrition, it's your break at 10 o'clock for doughnuts and stuff, California state law, you have to have it-- they used to meet outside on the far end of the math patio, all in one group. Some of them smoked. I've seen them look at each other, concerned, at 10:00 in the morning. One touched the inside of another's wrist, like grown-ups in trouble. And now I know, everything I thought those three years, worst years of my life, turns out to be true. The ones here get letters. Carrie's at Santa Cruz. Lily's in San Diego. Kevin's at Harvard. Beth's at Stanford. And like from families, their letters talk about problems. They're each other's main lives. You always knew looking at them in high school, they weren't just kids who had fun. They cared. They cared about things. They're all worried about Lily now. Larry and Annie are flying down to talk her into staying at school. I saw Glenn the day I came to Berkeley. I took a walk through campus and I'd been walking for almost an hour. And then I see Glenn coming down on a little hill by the infirmary, riding one of those lawn mowers you sit on, with grass flying out of the side. He's smiling. Not at me, just smiling. Clouds and sky behind his hair. Half of Tamalpais gone in fog. He was wearing this bright orange vest and I thought, fall's coming. I saw him that night again at our dorm cafeteria. This is the first time I've been in love. I worry. I'm a bad person, but Glenn's the perfect guy. I mean, for me at least. And he thinks he loves me. And I've got to keep him from finding out about me. I'll die before I'll tell him. Glenn. OK, Glenn. He looks like Mick Jagger, but sweet. 10 times sweeter. He looks like he's about 10 years old. His father's a doctor over at UC Med, gynecological surgeon. First time we got together, a whole bunch of us were in Glenn's room, drinking beer. Glenn and his roommate collect beer cans. They have them stacked up. We're watching TV and finally everybody else leaves. There's nothing on but those gray lines and Glenn turns over on his bed and asks me if I'd rub his back. I couldn't believe this was happening to me. I knew I didn't have to do anything. I just had to stay there. It would happen. I was sitting on his rear end, rubbing his back, going under his shirt with my hands. All of a sudden I was worried about my breath and what I smelled like. Glenn's face was down in the pillow. I tried to sniff myself, but I couldn't tell anything. And it went all right anyway. I don't open Glenn's letters, but I touch them. I hold them and smell them. None of his mail has any smell. He doesn't get many letters. His parents live across the Bay in Marin County. They don't write. He gets letters from his grandmother in Michigan, plain, even handwriting on regular envelopes, a sticker with her return address printed on it. Rural Route Number 3, Gunn Street. See, I got it memorized. And he gets letters from Diane. Di, they call her. High school girlfriend. Has a pushy mother, wants her to be a scientist, but she already got a C in Chem 1A. I got an A+, not to brag. He never slept with her, though. She wouldn't. She's still a virgin down in San Diego. With Lily, maybe they even know each other. Glenn and Di were popular kids in their high school, Redwood High. Now I'm one because of Glenn, because I'm his girlfriend. I know that's why. Not because of me. I just know, OK. I'm not going to start fooling myself now. Please. Her letters, I hold up to the light. They've got fluorescent lights in there. She's supposed to be blonde, you know, and pretty, quiet, the soft type. And the envelopes, she writes on these sheer cream-colored envelopes and they get transparent. And I can see her writing underneath, but not enough to read what it says. It's like those hockey lines painted under layers of ice. I run my tongue along the place where his grandmother sealed the letter. A sharp, sweet gummy taste. Once I cut my tongue. That's what keeps me going to the bottom of the bag. I'm always wondering if there will be a letter for Glenn. He doesn't get one every week. It's like a treasure, Crackerjack prize. But I'd never open Glenn's mail. I kiss all four corners where his fingers will touch, before I put it in his box. I brought home cookies for Lauren and me. Just a present. We'll eat them or Glenn will eat them. I'll throw them out, for all I care. They're chocolate chip with pecans. This was one good mother, a lucky can. I brought us coffee, too. I bought it. Yeah, OK, so I'm in trouble. Wednesday at 10:30 I got this notice I was supposed to appear. I had a class, Chem 1C, pre-med staple, your critical thing. I never missed it before. I told Glenn I had a doctor's appointment. OK, so I skip it anyway. And I walk into this room and there's these two other guys, all work in the mail room, doing what I do, sorting. And we all sit there on chairs, on this green carpet. I was staring at everybody's shoes. And there's a cop, University cop, I don't know what's the difference. He had this sagging, pear-shaped body, like what my dad would have, if he were fat. But he's not. He's thin. He walks slowly on the carpeting, his fingers hooked in his belt loops. I was watching his hips. Anyway, he's accusing us all. And he's trying to get one of us to admit we did it. No way. "I hope one of you will come to me and tell the truth. Not a one of you knows anything about this? Come on now." I shake my head no, and stare down at the three pairs of shoes. He says they're not going to do anything to the person who did it. Right. Want to make a bet? They say they just want to know. But they'll take it back, as soon as you tell them. I don't care why I don't believe him. I know one thing for sure, and that's they're not going to do anything to me, as long as I say no, I didn't do it. That's what I said, no, I didn't do it. I don't know a thing about it. I just can't imagine where those missing packages could have gone, how letters got into garbage cans, awful. I just don't know. This tall, skinny guy with a blonde mustache, Wallabees, looks kind of like a rabbit, he defended us. He's another sorter. Works Monday, Wednesdays. We all do our jobs, he says. None of us would do that. The rabbity guy looks at me and the other girl for support. So we're gonna stick together. The other girl, a dark blonde, chewing her lip, nodded. I loved that rabbity guy that second. I nodded, too. The cop looked down, wide hips, and the coffee-with-milk-colored pants. He sighed. I looked up at the rabbity guy. They let us all go. I'm just going to keep saying no, not me, didn't do it. And I just won't do it again, that's all. Won't do it anymore. So this is Glenn's last chance for homemade cookies. I'm sure as hell not going to bake any. I signed the form, said I didn't do it. I'm OK now. I'm safe. It turned out OK after all. It always does. I always think something terrible is going to happen and it doesn't. I'm lucky. I was walking just a little while ago today, down Telegraph with Glenn. And these two policemen, not the one I'd met, other policemen, were coming in our direction. I started sweating a lot. I was sure, until they passed us. I wish sure it was all over. They were there for me. I always think that. But at the same time, I know it's just my imagination. I mean, I'm a 4.0 student. I'm a nice girl, just walking down the street with my boyfriend. Novelist Mona Simpson, reading an excerpt from her story, Lawns. Coming up, postal employees reading your mail and bending the rules for you, yes, you. That's in a minute, from Public Radio International, when our program continues. Well, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we pick some theme, invite a wide variety of writers and performers and documentary producers to take a whack at that theme. Today's show, Other People's Mail, how it grabs your heart, whether you want it to or not. We have arrived at Act Three of our program, Saviors. If you work for the US Post Office, opening and reading other people's mail is actually one of the worst things you can do. You can be fired, investigated, imprisoned, unless you work at a Mail Recovery Center. There are three Mail Recovery Centers in the United States, in Atlanta, Sacramento, and St. Paul. Mail that cannot be delivered through any other means ends up there. There it is opened for a good cause, to look for clues to get it to you. Paul Tough visited these mail saviors in St. Paul. There are a lot of reasons why things end up at the Mail Recovery Center. Someone left an address off a letter, someone moved and didn't let anybody know, someone's envelope got wet and then the ink ran. For whatever reason, it ends up here. And a lot of it ends up here. There are 150,000 pieces of mail that arrive here each day. And the 75 people who work here all basically have the same job, to open up the mail, look inside, and see if they can figure out where it's supposed to go. And they see some pretty strange things, things that the rest of us don't. It's sort of a postal cross-section, a random sampling of what America mails. A clerk named Lauren [? Dicosad ?] told me about some of the things they find. Sometimes there will be mice, dead mice, naturally dead mice. Or bugs, they're sending it to somebody and telling them to bug off. And they'll throw in a real bug that used to be live. Things like that. When you're scanning, you just open it. And then you jump, because you don't know what it is. And then you'll dump it out and you'll find it. Dog poop, we hope it's dog poop. Cigarette butts, they'll empty their ashtrays into an envelope and send them to somebody. And that's in packages or in letters? That's in letters. It's amazing. They'll put things in the letters that should never be there. Never, ever should be in a letter, but they'll put it in there. Tape it shut and throw it in the mailbox. And we end up with it. The goal is always to return lost mail, if it's possible. Sometimes it's not too hard. There's a check in the envelope and there's an address on the check. They send it back. Sometimes the person's moved and left no forwarding address. In that case, there are clerks who scan through these huge computer databases of names and addresses. And sometimes they can find a good address that way. Sometimes they have to resort to real detective work, like Ken [? Grolkey, ?] who's been working here for eight years. I came across a Christmas card and it had a bunch of photographs. And one of the photographs, there was a-- I know it was the person that had sent the letter. I could tell because she was showing off her house and her Christmas tree and her presents. And she was standing by the fireplace. And there's a whole bunch of her Christmas letters along the mantle there. So what I did was I took a magnifying glass and me and a friend were able to piece together her address from these five or six different Christmas cards that she had on her mantel piece. And a little bit of eye strain, but we couldn't get her name, but we got her address, her street address and her city and ZIP. Looked up the ZIP. Then we sent back her photographs. She probably never knew how we found that out. But I'm sure she got her photographs back. Even with all these people making all this effort, only 10% of the packages and 30% of the letters that come into the Mail Recovery Center are successfully sent on. With some items, there's just no way to get them to their destination. There's no address, no return address, nothing at all. But then there are other items that maybe could be returned if you were willing to put the kind of effort into it that Ken [? Grolkey ?] did with the Christmas photos. The question is, is it worth it? And that's when the job gets tricky, deciding what's worth sending on and what's not. Greg Hawthorne is the acting supervisor on the day shift. He's management. He's not actually in there, dealing with the mail every day. And so, maybe a little predictably, when I ask him how you decide what gets sent back, he tells me that you go by the book. We have a-- it's called the Mail Recovery Manual. And I think it's 106. And all the regulations are in there. And we've had the same regulations for years and years and years. So somebody, somewhere down the road came up with these. And that's what we go by. What that someone, somewhere decided was essentially what out of everything that we put in the mail is most valuable? Well, here's what the regulations say. Checks, they always get sent back. Legal papers, stock certificates, those get returned. With personal letters though, the basic rule is that if there's something worth $10 or more, that gets sent back, if it can. But everything else gets disposed of. When we receive 150,000 letters a day, we don't have time to sit and read everything. So personal letters are basically shredded. That's Greg's version. But when I talk to the people who actually deal with the mail, I heard a different story. This is Anne [? Zeemer. There are policies on what our limits are. But we make our own exceptions. If we see a piece of foreign mail, for instance, that looks important, a wedding invitation that would still be able to be returned in time, something like that, policy says no, don't return it. But probably, in my judgment anyway, I would return it. And most of those other girls feel the same way, too. The reason for this difference of opinion is pretty simple. It's not that Greg is a by-the-book square and Anne is a rule-bending softie. It's not that Greg is management and Anne is labor. It's that Greg doesn't read other people's mail all day. And Anne, and Ken, and Lorinda, and all the other clerks I spoke to in St. Paul, they do. And that changes things. They're face to face every day with parts of our lives whose value is hard to quantify. What is important to one human being is maybe not important to another, but these people that are sending-- This is Betty Jones. And I'll give an example. And this is something that I do, which probably not a lot of people do. For example, people send little angels through the mail. And it's a real positive thing that they're saying to someone who is in real bad-- having a really bad life or they're very depressed or they're on the verge of suicide. And you kind of scan it and see that there wasn't maybe enough postage on it, there wasn't enough whatever. I send it forward to the person that they're trying to send it to. And it may seem unimportant to someone else. And perhaps the postal service wouldn't think it was maybe important, but I feel it is. And I feel it's within our realm to make that judgment. The clerks here say it's a strange experience to see into all of these lives. Strange, and not always happy. One day after work, Betty and I sat out behind the Mail Recovery Center, at a picnic table next to the loading docks. And we spoke for awhile about what that experience is like. You see a lot that's going on, just like you see in the news. And you think oh, I see that in the news. I see that at work all the time. This goes on or that goes on. These people's lives change. And we see it in the letters that we have to scan. Betty actually had to fight with the post office in order to keep her job at the Mail Recovery Center. She first came here in 1989, on a temporary basis after she developed carpal tunnel syndrome at her previous job sorting mail. But after five years, she was told that she couldn't work here anymore. They said that because of her injuries, she wasn't able to do the job. And that was despite the fact that she'd been doing it successfully for years. She filed a grievance. And after a few months in limbo, she won her job back. And of all the people I talked to here, she's the one who seems to be the most affected by what she sees in the mail. I don't know if it's because of everything that she had to go through to stay here, but I think it might be. It bothers me to see a lot of people that are in so much pain and problems and they're sending these sad letters to someone and it doesn't get to them. I've seen a couple letters that were like long lost loves, trying to contact each other. And it was sad when you couldn't find an address to send it on to or back to. And then there are people in the world that are very needy. They have very little in their life. And you feel like you wish you could reach out and take all the names of all these people, which we're not allowed to do, and write down the names and addresses and go out and try to help them out. Just take up a collection for them or something. I should say at this point that all of the clerks I spoke to, especially Betty, emphasized that they're not just diving into a pile of mail and reading through people's personal letters for curiosity's sake. They open first-class mail to look for items of value, things that are worth more than $10, like maybe some cash or a pin or some photos. And then they scan the letters. They don't read them, everyone told me. They scan them, looking for an address or a name or any information that might help get the letter to where it's supposed to go. I believe everyone who told me this. I don't think anyone at the Mail Recovery Center reads mail for any kind of voyeuristic thrill. But I also believe that, like everything at the Center, the reality is more complicated than the regulations. And when you've just opened a letter from a child to her mother who's in prison, or from a man writing to his dead wife, the human material in front of you is so incredible that you can't help but scan a little more slowly than is perhaps absolutely necessary. Someone telling someone, it's over, I don't care for you anymore-- or gee, so-and-so died, or so-and-so got killed last year, or your daughter is dying of cancer. People writing-- oh, they'll have maybe a birth certificate or something inside. And they're writing to someone, here's your daughter's birth certificate. You can take care of the kids. I'm leaving. Or people breaking engagements-- That feeling of personal connection that the clerks get from reading other people's mail is sometimes painful. But it's also precisely what makes mail recovery one of the most sought-after jobs in the post office. I didn't quite realize how sought-after a job it is, though, until I spoke one morning to Jerry Jacobson. He doesn't work at the Mail Recovery Center. He works for the union in Saint Paul that represents these workers. But before he got his union job, he spent 12 years working as a postal clerk, sorting letters. And he told me that about half the people who work in the post office work out of sight of the public, in warehouses, where they operate the giant machines that sort the nation's mail. On the machine that we worked at, they would call them LSMs or MPLSMs, multi-position letter sorting machine. There's actually like 12 consoles. And it would take a crew of about 18 people to run it or operate it. People would be sitting at all 12 consoles. We had a couple of people that were loading. And then people that were on the back side of the machine that would sweep the mail. We had to learn to see a letter that was on the machine, on the console. And it would drop the mail into a slot, basically right in front of us, one at a time. And it would stop in front of us. We had 4/10 of a second to look at the mail, read the ZIP code or the address, decide where it was to go, and then the mail would take off. And as it was going into the machine, we had 6/10 of a second to key a series of buttons as far as a code or sequence for it. And then that was, of course, computerized. So it would go into the machine and the machine would drop it in a specific bin on the back side. Almost everyone I interviewed that worked at the Mail Recovery Center had spent at least a few years on a letter sorting machine, punching in 60 codes a minute, eight hours a day. Ken did it. Lorinda did it. Betty did it. That's how she got carpal tunnel syndrome. No one I talked to looked back on those years with much fondness. But the people who work at the St. Paul Mail Recovery Center may, in fact, soon have to go back to the mail sorting jobs that they escaped. When I visited, everybody was talking about this proposal that had just been floated that would shut the Center down in just a few months. No one's sure now whether it's really going to happen. Information's hard to come by, even for people that work there. But next October, the post office's board of governors is going to meet to discuss the Center's future. And they might decide to shut it down for good. A lot of the people I spoke to in St. Paul saw this as a symptom of larger changes that are going on in the post office. A few years ago, there were seven Mail Recovery Centers around the country. Now there are three. And there's talk of closing another one soon. The reason is that the people in charge of the post office have, over the past few years, been concentrating more and more on cost cutting, and that means automation. Every part of the post office, from letter sorting to delivery, and even to mail recovery, is becoming more automated. The result is that postal workers, the ones I spoke to anyway, feel less and less valuable to the people in charge. I think it was you, Betty, who said that if the people at the top really knew what was going on in here, knew what sort of work people were doing in here, they wouldn't be trying to close it. What is it that they don't know? They're in Washington. And they're far away from this facility. Some of them have never worked on a workroom floor. These people that are in charge of-- the Postmaster General, I don't believe, has ever been a postal employee. So they don't have any concept of what goes on in the system. The sad part is even if those people came here physically, they just-- I hate to say it, my opinion-- I don't think they would care. And that is sad for the customer and it's sad for the employee, because you take pride in your work and you want to do what's right for the customer. And these people are making decisions that are so illogical. The great thing about the Mail Recovery Center is this, you've got this vast machine called the United States Postal Service, which is becoming more and more automated, less and less human. And then here in this little out-of-the-way warehouse on an access road in St. Paul, you've got 75 people who are doing work that takes brains and heart, that makes them fulfilled, and makes the people they serve happy. It's like the land that time forgot. One of the weird things about talking to the people at the MRC about the possibility that they might lose their jobs, was that they were upset about it. But they also seem kind of resigned to it. It's like they knew that they were out of step with the new go-go, super-automated post office. It's like they felt that they've been getting away with something by having interesting jobs, and now they've been found out. On the wall of the Mail Recovery Center are posted a slew of letters, mostly handwritten, from people who have had things returned to them. All the letters are filled with gratitude. And what's more, they all have this air of amazement to them. None of these people knew that this service even existed. And then suddenly, they got their insurance forms or their bank deposits or their engagement ring back. One letter that Greg Hawthorne showed me said, "We want to let you know how much we appreciate you taking the time to find our Christmas gifts. You've restored our faith in humanity." You have to wonder if 10 years from now, the post office will still be getting letters like that. Act Four, Golden Rule. Hold it right there, buddy. There is something indecent about the entire premise of this week's show. This is Sarah Vowell, a contributing editor to This American Life. The title says it all, Other People's Mail. There's an apostrophe stuck on to that word, people. Now, I know that it's small and you could miss it pretty easily. But there's a world of meaning packed into that teensy little mark. It connotes the possessive case. And maybe I'm being too literal, but the apostrophe draws a line between your stuff and someone else's. Alternative titles I've considered for this, the Other People's Mail show, are None Of Your Bee's Wax, or I Got One Word For You, Gestapo, or Hey You, Get Out Of My Trash. I don't mean to sound self-righteous. Sure, what human being can resist reading over her neighbor's shoulder in the subway or looking in someone's window, if it's all lit up. But I'd like to think that in a democracy, in This American Life, Mr. Glass, the words personal and private still mean something. Still, I have a job to do. And my job is not to prejudge, but to evaluate fair and square. So I went to Boston, as assigned, to visit Phil Milstein. He works as a graphic designer and lives in a normal apartment, filled with an abnormal number of shelves. He's a serious collector of other people's stuff, not just their mail-- crumpled notes he finds on the street, pieces of gum chewed by minor celebrities, and grocery shopping lists, which he scoops off the supermarket floor and pastes into scrapbooks. Here is one of my very favorites, a typed shopping list. And best yet, they have cheese twice in a row. They really want cheese-- garbage bags, beans, cheese, cheese, lysol, rug cleaner, sponge, and bread. And they forgot to capitalize Lysol, because that is a proper name. But they don't capitalize anything. So maybe they just were too lazy to hit the caps lock key on there. It's a manual typewriter, you'll notice. And so I can forgive them, not bothering with the caps-- those caps locks are heavy on those manuals. As voyeurism goes, the shopping lists are harmless. All Phil is doing is trying to catch a glimpse of another human being in the most mundane series of nouns. There is an element of strangeness that this reveals. I think that you're really getting down into a person's real inner psyche when they draw up a shopping list. I mean there's something very raw about the way people write these things. And that's part of what I'm after. Phil also collects those little pieces of paper you doodle on in art supply stores to try out the pens. And he claims that they, too, tell him something about the inner life of random strangers. But this collection is altogether more magical. Even though these scribblings were created by people trying to decide between BIC or Pilot Precise, they're done in very striking colors. And many of them look like fairly acceptable abstract art. Some of them really do kind of reveal a person's subconscious, because when you're just testing the marker you're not really thinking about what you're writing. And so perhaps some truth might emerge that you're not really in control of. This person made some nice drawings of pirates or something using different colored pens and some markers. They're very colorful. And I think they're really pretty just to look at. This person drew a lot of music notes. We're kind of skating on the edge of something that some people devote their professional lives to. And I'm flipping through this book. I mean, especially the abstract-- like you said the abstract ones are kind of the most beautiful. And flipping through, I think oh, there's Kandinsky, and there's Cy Twombly, and there is Jackson Pollock, and there is Helen Frankenthaler, or whatever. But it's not-- I mean, how has looking at these changed the way that you look at real art? I'm not sure that I do look at real art. I mean, I'm a sucker for these clashing, garish colors. Like hypnotizing a chicken, it's just not that hard to get art that appeals to me. Just put a lot of nice colors in and I'll be there. If I could, I'd like to just get a plug in here for Western civilization as we know it. I've always been more interested in the things you need card catalogs to find than the stuff you just come across willy-nilly on the street. I like James Baldwin and Pablo Picasso and Sonic Youth. Is that it with you? I mean do you really think you just have low standards? I mean, what do you see as the common theme of the things you collect? I think what interests me-- and this is almost in direct contrast to classical literature and art that you refer to-- I enjoy the snapshot of a moment of an average person's real life. I find it more interesting and more revealing than classical art or self-conscious art, art created as art. It's hard. You have to really think. And I just find the average person's work more interesting. Maybe it's a matter of, as a person of limited ability myself, I relate to that more. What bothers you about excellence? It's intimidating. I can't relate to it. It's beyond my abilities. And it makes me-- because deep down I want to be able to do great things, but I've never really been able to. So there is an unfulfilled desire that I'm forced to confront every time I see something great. In myself I just say, wow, that's above anything I could ever do. And it makes me realize all over again my own ordinariness. But, I mean, we're sitting in this room next to your record collection, and I'm looking at it, and I'm like, there are the Stooges, who I think are great. There's Little Richard, whom some days is my favorite singer. I mean, this room is wall-to-wall greatness. Yeah. But a lot of that comes from the period of my life where I was striving for that myself. And much of the more recent acquisitions is from the period in my life where I resigned myself to never being great, and switched my interests instead to documenting the abilities of everyday people. These are the kinds of records Phil listens to these days. They're called song poems. They're written by amateurs who answered ads in magazines asking for song lyrics, and studio hacks set their words to music for a fee. Phil doesn't just collect them. He's compiled four CDs of them and is writing a book about the phenomenon. This particular one is called "Elvis," by someone named Pauleen D. Wassilchak. And while it has its charms, I don't think Iggy Popp has anything to worry about. Phil's most morally questionable collection is the bag full of a college student's love letters to her boyfriend. Not only has Phil read her letters, he's published them in a zine called Rollerderby, and put them up on the World Wide Web. Most of the letters are pretty saccharin, beyond banal. Many of them are written on cutesy, teddy-bear greeting cards. And no, because of that apostrophe I mentioned earlier, you won't be hearing this woman's secret thoughts on the air. This is a private correspondence. And even Phil can't justify his claims on it. Ethically, this makes me scum. She certainly comes across as vapid. And inane as she comes across-- ethically, morally, she's clearly superior. She's trying hard to be a decent person. And you get that sense through her letters. And I, in a sense, am a total scumbag for picking apart her private life and making fun of it. It was at this moment that I noticed that all the shades in Phil's apartment were drawn. He doesn't want other people, people like him, to look in. I tried to make light of it. But every time I asked him a question as a joke, he responded point-blank, for real. Yes, he has binoculars. Yes, he uses them to peep into windows. Yes, he'd watch you having sex and better yet, getting killed. And yes, he's seen Rear Window, six times. And no, he doesn't want other people, people like him, to read his mail. So he's considering buying a paper shredder. They're coming down in price, you know. Every time I go into the office supply store, I look at the shredders. And when they get cheap enough, I probably will get one because I do have personal things that I throw out. And I hope no one ever does to me what I do to them. Sarah Vowell enforces her moral vision of the world as a columnist in the online magazine Salon, and here on This American Life. Well, our program was produced today by Julie Snyder and myself, with Paul Tough, Alix Spiegel, and Nancy Updike. Contributing editors Sarah Vowell, Jack Hitt, and Margy Rochlin. Our current staff includes Alex Blumberg, Susan Burton, Blue Chevigny, Starlee Kine, and Todd Bachmann. To buy a cassette of this program, call us here at WBEZ in Chicago, 312-832-3380. Or you know you can listen to most of our programs for free, absolutely free, on the internet at our website, where you can also find all sorts of stuff that we don't put onto the radio show, www.thislife.org. Thanks Elizabeth Meister, who runs the site. This American Life distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia, who insists-- I don't have any more pimples. And I am not that white. I'm IRA Glass. Back next week, with more stories of This American Life. PRI, Public Radio International.
|
A quick warning-- there are curse words that are un-beeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. In a crisis, we learn new things about the people we love. Saw this video online that this nurse, Elise Barrett, in Seattle made for her husband. She works in a cancer clinic but figured she'd be called to work in an ICU once things heated up there with COVID-19 cases, and she had some things she wanted to say to him. Hey, Bubber. I wanted to make this video for you in case you find yourself in a really rough spot. I know you and I have had some conversations about what to do if, you know, I'm where I can't speak for myself, if I'm on a ventilator, if I'm super duper ill. You know I've seen a lot of awful stuff and awful deaths. And-- She was an ICU nurse for nearly 10 years. And she instructs him, if she's on a ventilator, with no awareness or ability to interact and no chance to wake up again, let her die. Or another possibility-- If at some point I'm coding, and I'm coding over and over, they'll be able to tell you. Don't-- don't make them code me over and over. If I've had a protracted hypoxic code, don't make them keep working me. If they're thinking that there's going to be massive brain damage secondary to generalized hypoxia, they'll tell you, there's white on the CAT scan. There's swelling in the brain, generalized. People don't come back from that. And there's not really a lot of hope left at that point of getting me back. So at that point, you got to let me go. She's entirely business-like about this-- medical professional running through the things that she needs him to now. Yes, they talked about this before, but now she has some details, some gaps to fill in. And she ticks through the possibilities of what could happen to her. If she's on a ventilator and starts to recover, she warns her husband not to get too hopeful, because it's not unusual for people to turn a corner and get worse again. If she dies, here's what she's thinking about a funeral. If she does recover and gets off the vent, he should know that it might be months of rehab before she'll be able to come home again. And one more thing she wants a partner to know-- You should be aware that when somebody is super duper sick, when they're proned, their face swells up. They look awful. If I'm sick enough to be mechanically ventilated, I'm going to look like shit, and I don't necessarily think you want to see that. It's OK for you not to visit me in the hospital. It's not going to be safe for you to visit me in the hospital. I would rather you stay home and take care of Kepler, and have this video and other stuff that I've left for you to make sure that your memories of me are not traumatic or scarring. Kepler is their two-year-old son. I want you to be safe. I want you to take care of yourself. I love you more than anything else on earth, except maybe Kepler. Thank you for him. Thank you for giving me that beautiful boy and for giving me the life that we've had together. And I love you so much. I'll miss you. Bye, bye. When you know somebody so well, what can you possibly say that's going to be news to them about who you are or what you think? I'm guessing nothing in this video was a huge surprise to this nurse's husband. But when there's a crisis, it's important to say certain things-- practical stuff, information and instructions. But also, there's feelings to share. We need to connect. It's not a moment for big revelations. You just want to tint the colors in the picture of you two a little bit, this way or that. My co-worker, Bim, has been having these daily conversations with her brother, Demola. He's been sick with COVID-19 for over a week now. And these conversations are totally different than that nurse's video. All the ways that nurse, Elise Barrett, is so direct, imagining every possible terrible outcome one by one and discussing it, Bim and Demola are not into that. I'm guessing, with no evidence at all here, that most of us are more like Bim and Demola. We'd rather sidestep the scariest possibilities for as long as possible. But in their daily talks, there's still new information passing between them than they usually share. She's in New York. Demola and the rest of her family are in London. He's four years younger. He, perhaps, remains the most beautiful baby I have ever seen in my life, like aggressively so. My mom will tell you, oh yeah, Demola's the most beautiful of my babies. She makes no qualms about it. He was very beautiful. That's just rude to say to your other children. It's really rude. But Demola was beautiful. He was pretty. He was a pretty baby. He still has this little beauty spot right where Marilyn Monroe had hers. Oh wow. Yeah. And these lashes. And so when he was very little, my sister and I would put him on-- there was a short, exactly child level ironing board. It was more like a table. And we'd put him on there, and we would kiss him all over him until he would cry in protest. To hear Bim tell it, Demola's relationship with the sisters today is a faint echo of that. His older sister is more expressive with her feelings. Demola, a little bit apart, happy to be by himself, a separate island from the rest of them, keeping his own counsel, very quiet. Before he got sick, Bim would usually text him or talk to him on WhatsApp a couple of times a week. Lots of it was talk about TV shows and quoting Zapp Brannigan from Futurama to each other, and Bim mocking Demola whenever his team, Arsenal, loses. But now that they're talking every day, and for the first time it's video chats, the dailiness of it gives everything a different feeling. And the subject matter is different too. So I'm asking him, did you drink enough water today? What's your temperature? Did the cough go away? Is it a dry cough? So yeah, the questions, on the one hand, are very dry and basic. But on the other, I suppose because I've never asked them before, it feels extra special now to be asking very specifically, what's your temperature, and to be able to track his life in this way. The knowledge that it went from 37 degrees, and now it's 36 degrees. You know? Yeah. I mean in Celsius, obviously. Yeah. It just feels really oddly intimate that I know the temperature of his body across an ocean. Even though the question seems really bland on the surface-- you know, what's your temperature? It's a way of asking-- and it's a way, I think, also of circumventing the elephant in the room, which is if he had a more serious case of COVID-19, if his symptoms were more severe, if things were really dire-- you know, we just don't talk about it. So when I ask about his temperature, what I'm asking is-- it's like a shorthand. It's half language that we're using. There's a Yoruba saying my mom often says, which is, speaking from underneath your tongue. And in a way, I feel like I am speaking from underneath my tongue to ask a really serious question but in the most bland language, which is, oh, are you drinking water? What was the headache like? It's asking these very basic questions that are basically pushing back my fear of what this could have been. That's terrifying to me. Because the thing underneath it that you're not saying is-- The thing I'm-- the thing I'm saying-- I feel like I'm screaming it-- is please don't die. I don't want you to die. So it sounds like she's learning some new information about this person she knows so well in these daily conversations. But she's seeing such a different side of him. Normally, he's so stoic, she says. But now he's way more vulnerable and way more open to everybody in the family calling him all the time and asking him questions. I think he wants to be fussed over, in this at least, a little bit. Mm-hmm. I think he likes it a little bit. And obviously, it will get more annoying as he gets better and stronger again. But for now, he's basically a baby on an ironing table, and we're going to kiss him. Well, from WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program, moments when we fill in the gaps and see parts of somebody we have not seen before, but we learn it can be a kind of subtle shading around the edges. Though, in all of our stories today, I have to say it is way bigger than that. It's people declaring, you thought you knew the truth, but no, no, no, you did not, not all of it. And the part that you didn't know changes everything. Now, as Paul Harvey used to say, now you know the rest of the story. Stay with us. Act 1, I Can't be Your Hero, Baby. Certain stories get told over and over about undocumented immigrants in this country. And one of the big ones is about sacrifice-- about hardworking people who work long hours in restaurant kitchens, and farms, and other low paying jobs to support their families, grateful for the chance to be in the US. Or the DACA kids, who strive and want nothing more than college and the American dream. Karla Cornejo Villavicencio has heard lots of these stories and thought she could do better. Just a quick note about her essay-- there are very brief references in it to rape and suicide. Here she is. When I was a senior in college, I wrote an anonymous essay for The Daily Beast about what they wanted to call my dirty little secret, that I was undocumented. This was in 2011, before DACA, and I was one of the first undocumented students to graduate Harvard. The essay got me some attention, and agents wrote me asking if I wanted to write a memoir. I was angry. A memoir? I was 21. I wasn't fucking Barbra Streisand. I had been writing professionally since I was 15 but only about music. I wanted to be the guy in High Fidelity. And I didn't want my first book to be a rueful tale about being a sickly Victorian orphan with tuberculosis who didn't have a social security number, which is what the agents all wanted. The guy who eventually ended up becoming my agent respected that, did not find an interchangeable immigrant to publish a sad book, read everything I would write over the next seven years, and we kept in touch. I was the first person who wrote him on the morning of November 9th, 2016. That morning, I received a bunch of emails from people who are really freaked out about Trump winning. And the emails, essentially, were offers to hide me in their second houses in Vermont or stay in their basements. Shit, I told my partner, they're trying to Anne Frank me. By this point, I had read lots of books about migrants. I hated a good number of these books. I couldn't see my family in them, because I saw my parents as more than laborers, as more than sufferers or dreamers. I thought I could write something better, and I thought I was the best person to do it. I was just crazy enough. Because if you're going to write about undocumented immigrants in America, tell the story, the full story, you have to be a little bit crazy. And you certainly can't be enamored by America, not still. That disqualifies you. I did not want to write anything inspirational. I wanted to write for everybody who wants to step away from the buzzwords in immigration-- the talking heads, the Dreamers in graduation caps and gowns-- and read about the people underground, not heroes, randoms, people. I wanted to write about my parents, and that's the story I'm going to tell here, the story of my parents. If you ask my mother where she's from, she's 100% going to say, she's from the kingdom of god, because she does not like to say that she's from Ecuador, Ecuador being one of the few South American countries that has not especially outdone itself on the international stage. Magical realism basically skipped over it. And our military dictatorship never reached the mythical status of a Pinochet or a Videla. Plus, there are no world famous Ecuadorians to speak of other than the fool who housed Julian Assange at the embassy in London and Christina Aguilera's father, who she said was a domestic abuser. If you ask my father where he's from, he will definitely say Ecuador, because he is sentimental about the country for reasons he's working out in therapy. But if you push them, I mean really push them, they're both going to say they're from New York. If you ask them if they feel American, because you're a little narc who wants to prove your blood runs red, white, and blue, they're going to say no, we feel like New Yorkers. They've lived in New York since they left Ecuador in 1991. I don't know much about my parents' decision to choose New York, or even the United States, as a destination. It's not that I haven't asked them why they came to the United States. It's that the answer isn't as morally satisfying as most people's answers are-- a decapitated family member, famine. And I never pressed them for more details because I don't want to apply pressure on a bruise. The story, as far as I know it, goes something like this. My parents had just gotten married, and their small auto body business was not doing well. The idea of coming to America to work for a year to make just enough money to pay off their debts came up, and it seemed like a good idea. They left me with my dad's family when I was a year and a half old. That's about as much as I know. My parents didn't come back after a year. They were barely making ends meet. When I was four years old, going to school in Ecuador, teachers began to comment on how gifted I was. My parents knew Ecuador was not the place for a gifted girl. The gender politics were too fucked up. And they wanted me to have all the educational opportunities they hadn't had. So that's when they brought me to New York. I was just shy of five when I stepped off the plane. White Americans love academically achieving minorities. And I learned quickly that the most alluring thing about me was that I was young and brown and a good student, the holy trinity. I went to a Catholic elementary school on a scholarship, and we lived in Queens. My mother stayed home, and my father drove a cab. This was back when East New York was still gang country, and he had to fold his body into a little origami swan and hide under his steering wheel during crossfires in the middle of the day. Then came September 11th, 2001. Here's how I remember the day my father started dying, not long after the twin towers fell. My father comes home from work, and I greet him in the doorway to give him a kiss hello. He walks slowly and comes toward my body at a strange angle a child could only interpret as a terrible fall. He collapses onto me to cry into my neck. I'm little, 12 or 13, but he does, he falls. The letter says in English something about the DMV suspending driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants. It was part of an attempt to strengthen security measures after 9/11. My father had just lost his job as a taxi driver. He had also lost his state ID. Over the next 20 years, he'd lose many more things, but let's put a little blue thumb tack on this memory map, the first place in Hell we visited. September 11th changed the immigration landscaper forever. ICE was the creation of 9/11 paranoia. It changed my father, too. It was hard to see him fall, because he was the most powerful person I knew. He was a difficult man, and I was a difficult child. I was polite and craved approval from authority figures, but I was also dark and precocious. Not precocious in the, we live in Tribeca, and my kid is a born artist, kind of way. More like, my immigrant third grader is reading Hemingway but is secretly drinking Listerine and toothpaste until she throws up because she wants it to kill her, kind of way. Only years later would I realized how real my suicidal impulses were. That was too damn young, I'd think, lying down in the dark at my doctor's office with an IV of ketamine hooked up to my arm, hoping to extinguish the suicidality that began when I was five and lay crayons around the perimeter of my bed so I'd know in the morning if I'd been secretly raped at night. I'd know because the crayons would be broken. My father read parenting books that explained how to raise troubled children. But those children were never straight-A students who were soft-spoken and loved teachers. It confused him, and the dissonance made him angry at me. He saw me as different from other children in a way that troubled him, and he fumbled in the dark to help me with what he couldn't name. When I was off from school for any kind of break, my father would plan out my day in half hour increments, scheduling everything from bath time, to TV shows, to coloring time, to math drills, to time to play with dolls, and even bathroom breaks. He called it my schedule, and he hand wrote it on graph paper in different colored inks and taped it to my desk. When I became overwhelmed with panic, crying hysterically, he would send me to take a cold shower or take me out on a jog around the neighborhood. He'd set aside a magazine or a newspaper articles for me to translate. He could not review the fidelity of the translation, but he judged my penmanship. I didn't know what would have happened to me if I had not been kept away from my own thoughts for so many years. My father kept me alive. After my father lost his job as a taxi driver, he found a job as a delivery man at a restaurant down in the Financial District. In the mornings, he would deliver breakfast to offices-- a raisin bagel with cream cheese and a coffee with hazelnut creamer, orange juice and a banana, a granola bar and chocolate milk. There was no delivery minimum, so my father delivered it all. Because the deliveries were so small, sometimes he didn't get a tip. Sometimes he was told to keep the change, a quarter. Sometimes he was tipped in pennies. He had to say, thank you, sir, thank you, ma'am. Sometimes he was given a $20 tip for a $5.00 breakfast. He always told us about those tips. They were usually from Puerto Rican receptionists who talked to him in Spanish and asked to see photos of me. When he came home was one of those tips, it was like having my dad back from the dead. He would dance to no music, and he'd make jokes, and he'd come out of his shower looking like a teenager. My father didn't use a bike. He made all his deliveries on foot. He speed walked while carrying bags of food to offices on Wall Street. The plastic handles of the bags would twist and cut into his fingers, and he developed large calluses on both his hands. His polyester pants rubbed up against his calves so much that he lost all the hair on his legs. He went through many pairs of inexpensive black rubber shoes. My mother massaged his feet at night. My dad's feet are small and fat, like mine, so you can't tell when they're swollen. After a few years, my dad's feet would hurt so much that he walked like he was on hot coals, sometimes leaning on me to move from the couch to the bed. Aye, yai, yai, yai, yai, he'd say, as he limped, like a mariachi. When I was 15, the owner of the restaurant where my father worked hired a new manager to oversee the delivery men, who were all immigrants. The guy was Puerto Rican, an American citizen, and became immediately abusive, threatening to call ICE on them, yelling at them, getting up in their faces. My father fell into a bit of a depression. I had just watched All the President's Men. I put on my best posh accent, dialed *69 to block my number, and called the restaurant. I asked to speak to the owner. I said I was a beat reporter for a big city newspaper and had just received a tip from a customer about overhearing racist abuse in the kitchen. And did he have a comment? The owner said he'd handle it and asked me not to write the story. I don't know, man, I said, it's a pretty good story. In the end, the manager was fired, and the cloud over my father lifted. My father was furious when I told him what I did. But not for a minute in the 15 years since have I felt that what I did was unethical. Nor have I felt guilty for having a man fired. I'd do it again, but my accent would be better. I went to a small public high school in Times Square, where around 80% of the student body was at or below the poverty line. We were mostly all black or Latinx. I was a high achiever. I wanted to go to the University of Chicago because I found the unofficial motto, where fun goes to die, appealing. But there is no beating Harvard. That name. I needed the name to keep my parents safe. Harvard, at the time, did not know how to deal with undocumented students. When I was there, a very successful Wall Street man who knew me from an educational NGO we both belonged to-- he as a supporter, me as a supported-- learned I was undocumented and could not legally hold a work-study job. So every semester, he wrote me a modest check. In the notes section, and he cheekily wrote, beer money. I wrote him regular emails about my life at Harvard and my budding success as a published writer. He was always appropriate and boundaried. I had read obsessively about artists since I was a kid and considered myself an artist since I was a kid, so I didn't feel weird about older, wealthy, white people giving me money in exchange for grades or writing. It was patronage. They were Gertrude Stein, and I was a young Hemingway. I was van Gogh, crazy and broken. I truly did not have any racial anxieties about this, thank god. That kind of thing could really fuck a kid up. Different therapists throughout the years have tried to get me to confess to cultural shock about arriving to Harvard as a poor, undocumented freshman. But the truth is there was none. I've always had a really wonderful sense of self-esteem thanks to my mother, who is a tiny bit of a narcissist and has delusions of royalty, and because of my mental illness, which comes with delusions of grandeur of its own. So I kind of felt like it was my birthright. That probably makes a lot of people very mad. As I began to receive my diagnoses and misdiagnoses throughout my 20s-- depression, anxiety, OCD, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, complex trauma-- I didn't feel anything other than affinity with writers I loved, people like Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Robert Lowell. It made sense to me that I had my own demons. Of course I did. I've always been super casual when people ask me about my parents having left me in Ecuador. That's a bravado I'd like to keep on the official record. But sometimes I think about it. I haven't talked with my parents about their having left me in Ecuador when I was a year and a half old. Sometimes I do adorable things, like take pictures of myself chugging vodka bottles or pretending to down the contents of a pill bottle, and send them to my mother with the caption, because you abandoned me. When I am away from my partner and dog for a few days for work, and it's hard, I wonder how my parents were able to do it for three years. I don't blame either of them for it. I never have. What I'm describing to you is dirt extracted from a very tight pore. I don't feel anything about being left on the day to day, but I am told by mental health experts that it has affected me. And I fought that conclusion. I denied it. I wanted to be a genius. I wanted my mental illnesses to be purely biological. I wanted to have been born wild and crazy and weird and brilliant, writing math equations in chalk on a window. Instead, therapist after therapist told me I had attachment issues and that my mental illnesses were related to my childhood. I left those therapists, ghosted them. But it's not just those early years without my parents that branded me. It's the life I've lead in America as a migrant. As an undocumented person, I felt like a hologram. Nothing felt secure. I never felt safe. I didn't allow myself to feel joy because I was scared to attach myself to anything I'd have to let go of. Being deportable means you have to be ready to go at any moment. I've never loved a material object. When my parents took me home after my Harvard graduation, we took the Chinatown bus, and we each took one suitcase of my things. If it didn't fit, we threw it out. We threw out everything that wasn't clothes. After I graduated from Harvard, I went to Yale to do a PhD. I never wanted to PhD. But DACA didn't exist then, and I couldn't legally get a job anywhere. And I had to buy time for something to happen-- for the DREAM Act to pass, which my dad had assured me would happened since I was in middle school. And I needed the health insurance. It's allowed me to write, and my parents will be proud when I get that doctorate. I have fetched the American dream and laid it at my parents' feet. But the twisted inversion that many children of immigrants know is that, at some point, your parents become your children. And your own personal American dream becomes making sure they age and die with dignity in a country that has long wanted them dead. A few years ago, my father experienced heart failure. This was the moment I had been preparing for my entire life. Everything that had happened to me since I took that New York-bound flight 24 years ago had been preparing me for this moment. Learning English, getting bangs, gaining weight, losing weight, getting the sick puppy from the pet shop-- all of that happened to prepare me to this point. My parents were sick, undocumented, uninsured, and aging out of work in a fucking racist country. Until the pandemic hit, my father was a salad maker, feeding Manhattan's executive class. He had worked for 14 years at the same restaurant, then left. He was invited to a promising new job, lured there by an acquaintance who assured him of better hours, better treatment, a better environment. My dad is very gullible. He spent a week at this new restaurant, where, for spare change, they had him work all day. And then at the end of the day, he was given just two and a half hours to clean an industrial kitchen-- an industrial fryer, a refrigerator, a stove, an oven, and a sink-- wash the dishes in the dishwasher, take out the trash, sweep and mop the floors, and clean the garbage chute. His body was wrecked at the end of each day. I'm too old to for this, he said. So he quit. His old job wouldn't take him back. Desperate, he began each morning by showing up at a Latinx job agency, which would send him out to audition at a different restaurant day after day, week after week, to no avail. My dad started texting me blurry cell phone pictures from the job agency. He took the photos when he was sitting in the waiting room of the agency, waiting for his name to be called. The first picture is of a man, maybe in his late 70s, wearing a green button down, khaki pants, and aviator sunglasses. His lips are downcast. My dad said he was applying to be a dishwasher. The second picture is of a man, maybe in his late 40s, who was wearing a black baseball cap, a gray sweater, and maroon pants. My dad said he'd had a stroke. His right arm was paralyzed, and he had a limp and his right leg. He was also applying to be a dishwasher. It's hard to see men like that not get jobs, my dad texted. I hope they have children who can take care of them, I respond. What I mean to say is, I hope they have a child like me. I hope everyone has a child like me. I tell god, this is going to kill me anyway, so just take me. Patent and mass produce and distribute me to undocumented immigrants at Walmarts. I am a professional undocumented immigrant's daughter. I saved the photos on my phone as a reminder to myself of why I need to be successful, so successful, statistical anomaly successful. Then I deleted them because they harmed my mental health. I wish I still had them. My parents live in New York City, and after the pandemic hit in March, they lost their jobs. They're both in Queens, the center of the center of the epidemic. I've prohibited my father from doing dangerous gig work, like deliveries. And I've begun to financially support them both. My mom is immunocompromised. She has an extremely low white blood cell count. I have really lovely dreams, crazy fucking cotton candy fantasy dreams, dreams that make my whole body feel warm, where I cut up my chest, no anesthesia, take out my lungs, and implant them into her chest with the tree stitch. And if I'm lucky, in the seconds I have before I die, I would be able to see her heart. We wouldn't even need a ventilator. There is a Harvard scholar named Roberto Gonzalez who has conducted longitudinal studies on the effects of undocumented life on young people. He found his subjects suffered chronic headaches, toothaches, ulcers, sleep problems, and eating issues, which is funny to find in research because I get these migraines, an 8 or 9 on the 10 point scale. I have a CAT scan, an MRI. I go to the neurologist. The readings are all inconclusive. I'm told it's a migraine with an unknown cause. Have you tried yoga, they say. The headaches get worse when I write about my parents. From migrants shot in the head by Border Patrol, to migrant children being forcibly injected with drugs in detention centers, US government's crimes against immigrants are beyond the pale. And the whole world knows. But when I was growing up and throughout the Obama administration, similar crimes were happening, if on a different scale, and I'm not sure the same people cared. I felt crazy for thinking we were under attack, watching my neighbors disappear and then going to school, and watching the nightly news, and watching award shows and seeing no mention. I felt crazy watching the white supremacist state slowly kill my father. I would frantically tell everyone that there was no such thing as the American dream. But then some all-star immigrants around me, who had done things the right way, preached a different story, and Americans ate that up. It all made me feel crazy. I also am crazy. Pero why? Researchers have shown that the flooding of stress hormones resulting from a traumatic separation from your parents at a young age kills off so many dendrites and neurons in the brain that it results in permanent psychological and physical changes. One psychiatrist I went to told me that my brain looks like a tree without branches. So I just think about all the children who have been separated from their parents, and there's a lot of us, past and present, and some under more traumatic circumstances than others, like those who are in internment camps right now. And I just imagine us as an army of mutants. What will happen to us? Who will we become? Who will take care of us? We've all been touched by this monster, and our brains are forever changed, all of us trees without branches. Karla Cornejo Villavicencio reading an essay adapted from her brand new memoir, The Undocumented Americans. Coming up, a meaningless high school competition that, years later, becomes very, very meaningful. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, Embiggening, stories where new details arrive that embiggen in the picture-- and thank you The Simpsons, by the way, for that word-- and change everything. We have arrived at act two of our show. Act 2, Popular Vote. So there are times when you discover an information gap in your own past, something you thought you knew everything about. After all, it happened to you. And then somebody comes along and says, no, it didn't happen like that at all. What do you do with that new information? Sean Cole has a story like that. It begins more than a decade ago at a high school. Here's Sean. The school was Granada Hills Charter High School, GHCHS. It's in the suburbs of LA. Huge, more than 4,500 kids enrolled right now. It's the largest charter school in the country. And in the spring of 2007, it engaged in one of the most hallowed of American high school traditions, senior superlatives. You might have had these at your school. Kids vote each other most likely to succeed, best smile, cutest couple. Marc Snetiker was one of those kids. I've been embarrassed about my superlatives for 10 years. Have you been? I mean, I won most school spirited. Nobody wants to win most school spirited. I put all of my closeted gay energy into school spirit. You know what I mean? I did the morning announcements. I was on student council. I did theater. I loved high school. He also won a category called all around senior. You were allowed to compete in two categories but no more than that. And GHCHS really put a lot into these superlatives. There was an election, like usual, with paper ballots. But instead of announcing the winners over the intercom or posting them on a hallway bulletin board, there was this event run by the Senior Leadership Council, which Marc was on-- a big ceremony and trophies. All of the winners received a little replica of the Oscar statuette. It wasn't unlike a roast. All the seniors were in our auditorium. And I think I actually-- now that I'm realizing it, I think I helped give them out. I see. But I do remember reading names of some of my friends and cheering them on. And all of my best friends all won things. Which make sense. Marc was popular. His friends were popular. But that was 13 years ago, and he hadn't been thinking too much about the superlatives until recently. I was at home, cooking dinner. And I got a text from my friend. A friend from high school. And all it said was, please stop what you're doing and read this. It was a Facebook post, posted to a private Facebook group for Marc's high school class, the class of 2007. Marc's not on Facebook, so it was the first he was seeing it. And the text wasn't just to Marc. Four other buddies from high school were on it as well. We all read it. And immediately, we were all freaking out. I can't believe this. Oh my god, this makes so much sense. I wonder if you could just read the post. Do you have it there? Totally. So he said, "Hey, guys, one more thing before I forget. In the spirit of the new year, I'd like to take this opportunity to confess to all of you that I and one or two other members of Senior Leadership Council '07, who will remain unnamed, interfered with the class of 2007 senior superlatives. This is not a joke. We went to great lengths to forge no less than 30 filled out ballots, with all of our friends and acquaintances winning their respective categories. We attempted to rig literally every category." So classic ballot stuffing, with 30 forged ballots, at least. The perpetrator goes on to say that not everyone he tried to fix the election for actually won. And the nominees for each category, the choices on the ballot, those were all legit. It's just the outcome that was now in question. Again, this confession was coming 13 years after the fact. "Wow, I feel such a weight lifted off my shoulders having finally confessed this. Thank you for reading." Oh my god. Now, it's not like Marc has been sitting around for the last 13 years clinging to as mini Oscar trophy, defining himself by his superlatives. Since high school, he's poured is no longer closeted energy into entertainment-- worked for Entertainment Weekly for a long time, just moved over to Netflix. But it's not like he thinks he didn't deserve his awards. Whether or not he rigged-- it's interesting to think about who really was rigged. Because me, I really, objectively was very school spirited. And very all-around seniory. And a couple of friends on the text thread felt the same way. One of them said, "Do you think people don't believe I had best eyes?" We particularly were interested because the five of us all won. We all won some different superlative, and we all thought that was pretty cool. Because I think, ultimately, high school senior superlatives are-- I mean, it's complicated. Right? They are absolutely meaningless. And yet, at the time, they are such a huge deal because they are peer-voted. And nobody wants their memories tampered with or invalidated. Right? Subconsciously, we're all thinking to ourselves, oh my god, what would 18-year-old me have thought about this? Yeah. That's really at the core of all this. We're all having imaginary conversations with our 18-year-old selves, thinking, oh my god, he can never know. This will uproot him. This will unravel him to find out. Which probably explains what happened next. In short, Marc posted a screenshot of the confession to Twitter, not thinking much about it, went off to the gym. And when he came back, it had exploded-- more than 150,000 likes and retweets and comments at this point, most of them not GHCHS alums. Weirdly, a lot of people wrote that the same thing had happened at their high school, or that they themselves had rigged the superlatives election, or had always suspected superlatives were rigged, and now here was proof. And a couple of people pointed out something that I noticed too, that the perpetrator never actually apologizes in his message. I didn't know this was going to go viral. I thought this was going to be shared with 400 people in my high school senior class Facebook page, and that was it. This is Michael Barlevav, rigger of high school elections, confessor of high school transgressions, 30 years old now, still living in LA. And I had about 100 questions for him, chief among them why it took him so long to come clean and what it had been like sitting with the weight of that guilt for so many years. You say at the end of the confession-- hang on. Wow, I feel such a weight lifted off my shoulders. Weight lifted off my shoulders. Yeah. Did you? No, that was just me being-- that was just me being cynical. In truth, there was no weight, no guilt. In fact, Michael had wanted to come clean right away, but a bunch of more pressing things took his attention. He was diagnosed with cancer, actually. Went through treatment, got better, moved on. It was only when he saw his former classmates talking about a potential reunion on the Facebook page that he thought of all this again. And the thing you need to know about Michael, unlike Marc, he was a slacker senior year, checked out, only interested in, his words, smoking weed and getting laid. And then he found out there's a superlative for that-- biggest case of senioritis. And I remember begging everybody in my homeroom to nominate me. And I asked all my friends. I was like, I really want to get senioritis. I want this. Because he was competitive about being a slacker. And organized about it-- he only picked four super easy classes senior year, including, he says, Senior Leadership Council, which ran the election. So he knew that no one would notice if, during class, he and an accomplice hung out for a while near the ballot box, where there also happened to be a stack of blank ballots handy. And one thing Michael learned right away, rigging an election can be complicated. There was actually one category, I remember, where two girls were both nominated. Nominated for the same category. And we were friends with both of them. And so we just filled out an equal number of ballots for each of them, because I didn't want a favor-- I didn't want to favor either one because I liked them both. Was it a kind of thing we're other people really wanted a certain superlative? Or were-- I mean, you really wanted biggest case of senioritis, and you were begging people in your homeroom to nominate you for that. Well, let's not-- let's not go crazy. I wasn't begging anybody. OK? I'm sorry, folks. Just pausing here. Can we go back to that tape we played 60 seconds ago? And I remember begging everybody in my homeroom to nominate me. Thank you. Anyway, votes were in, ballot box was stuffed. And it came time for that big event where they announced all the winners. The whole time I was super nervous. Every time a new category was being announced-- the winners were being announced, I was like, oh man, are we going to win this one? Are we going to win this one? Are we going to win this one? And every time somebody was announced as the winner, I was like, ooh, that guy won because of me. Or it was like, oh shit, the girl that I wanted to win didn't win. Because like I said, not everybody that we tried to fix it for won. And then when my friend who helped me rig it won his category and then when I won my category, it was just-- it was just so sweet. I'll never forget it. They announced the winners, and the winners would go up on stage. We got our trophies. And then he went backstage for a picture that would go into the yearbook, which was important to him, proof of his victory. It was something that I would never forget. There would be a page in the yearbook reminding me and my friend that we interfered with this shit and that all of our friends, or most of our friends, won their category, whether or not they would have otherwise. I wanted to make it absurd, like ridiculous, preposterous. Some of the people who won their categories absolutely should not have won their categories. And that delighted him in a diabolical way. It did then, and it does now. The lack of apology in his confession wasn't just an oversight. What is there to apologize for? What is there to apologize for, honestly? Yeah, I was an asshole. Yeah, what I did was dishonest. Yeah, it was shady. Yeah, it was insensitive. But I would definitely do it again the exact same way-- Really? --if I had-- absolutely. I wouldn't do anything differently. I think it's going to be a net positive impact. At least I hope so, man. I hope that what people take away from this is that you should not put value into things that are so arbitrary and silly, like popularity and who has the best hair, or the best smile, or who's the biggest flirt, or who's the most likely to become president, or who is most likely to whatever. It's just opinion, man. It's completely subjective. There's no meaning behind it. Then Michael's heart's in the right place. But as far as I can tell, the person from Michael's high school class who's most concerned about these senior superlatives is Michael. If you squint at it for a second, he cared so much about getting an award for caring the least, the senioritis award, that he went to, quote, "great lengths to commit electoral fraud." Also, in the comments below his Facebook confession and my conversations with some of his classmates, no one else seems at all invested at this point in who won or lost. We all were just dying of laughter. Elush Shirazpour was awarded class clown in 2007. He says he and his friends were not the least upset reading Michael's Facebook post. We just laughed and joked about this. And I have some friend that lost. And we said, oh, it was you! They rigged it against you! Like you were the one who should have gotten it? Yeah, exactly. But yeah, apparently the deep state senior superlative council got to them. Did it make you question whether or not you were actually the class clown? I think, for sure, I won-- Fair and square? I think so. I like to think I was funny. Back in high school, I was 5'2", very short and looked very young for my age. Uh-huh. So all I had was a personality. So that's all I could do. Pretty much everyone I talked to felt this way. Since there's no way of really knowing, they were like, sure, maybe somebody else got a superlative they shouldn't have gotten, but mine was totally deserved. My girlfriend, Eva, and I won cutest couple. This is David Vigodnier. He's a nursing student in Colorado now. And that, for sure, wasn't rigged. Because you are the cutest couple? I mean, we're still together. He was at home studying when I called him. Eva-- His girlfriend, Eva, was there too. She's pursuing a doctorate in psychology. Did you know the other couples that were up for cutest couple? I honestly don't remember. Insert a joke about it didn't really matter, because we weren't going to lose. Stop! Oh my god. Aww. Oh my god. If I only knew which names Michael checked off on those fake ballots, I could ask those people what they thought now, if all of this changed anything for them. But Michael refused to give me those names. It was one thing confessing to what he did in a general way. But pointing to individual people and saying, they wouldn't have won if not for me, that just seemed mean and unnecessary. I did end up asking him about one person in particular-- Marc Snetiker, who posted Michael's confession on Twitter. They were in Senior Leadership Council together. Yeah! I knew Marc very well. He was really popular. Yeah. At this point, Michael took a peak in the old yearbook he'd brought along with him for the interview. Yeah. So he won most cool spirited, and he won all around senior. Did he win those fair and square, or did he win those because you stuffed the ballot box? You can't-- how the fuck am I supposed to know? That's the point, man. There's no way to know. Did you vote for him on those ballots that you stuffed? Before I answer that-- Uh-huh. --let's acknowledge that it doesn't matter. OK. We'll acknowledge that it doesn't matter. OK. So you acknowledge that this answer I'm about to give you is arbitrary. But I'm going to give it to you anyway. OK, good. Yeah. Yeah, I voted for-- I wanted him to win because he was a good guy. Uh-huh. Yeah. So he was definitely one of the guys I fixed it for, for sure. I told Marc what Michael said. Oh, my god! But at the same time, girl, who is to say that everybody else didn't think I was a good guy too, honey? You know? Come on. I mean, look, if he deemed as good friends enough to have rigged it for me, cool. Thanks a lot, dude. You have labeled me as most cool spirited for 10 years, and I would happily disavow myself of that. Yeah. Oh, you know, I-- this makes me smile, because Michael was fun. We had a good time in high school together. So it's nice to hear that he believed in me enough to rig votes in my favor. In other words, while Michael worried that learning the news might make Marc feel bad, it didn't come close. In fact, the opposite. But here's the real effect that Michael's rigging the election had, in the way that he did it. Because it was just 30 fake ballots, in effect, what he's done is create a superlative sized black hole of information for everyone involved. Like he says, a lot of the winners might have won anyway, but they might not have. A lot of the losers might have lost anyway, but maybe they would have won. So what we're left with is an extremely rare occurrence-- I can't think of another one-- in which a brand new piece of definitive, clear information that the election was rigged actually makes it so that everyone knows less than they did before. Sean Cole is one of the producers of our program. Act 3, Tunnel Vision. So this story was first on our show back in 2015. That was the year Canada hosted the Pan American Games. But a few months before the games began, somebody made a mysterious discovery close to the Toronto venue for the games. It was a secret tunnel. And it wasn't just some shabby, half-baked construction. This is tall enough to stand in, 33 feet long, with support beams, a plywood ceiling, walls. It had water-resistant lighting, a generator, a sump pump to pump out groundwater. And at the end of the tunnel, two little rooms were still under construction. Even more intriguing, the decor-- a rosary and a plastic red poppy nailed to the wall. Canadians use the poppy to commemorate fallen soldiers on Remembrance Day. In the United States, all this got a little bit of coverage. But in Canada, in 2015, it was big news. No one knows who dug the 30-foot-long tunnel near the site of this year's Pan American Games in Toronto. A bizarre tunnel found near one of the venues for the upcoming Pan Am Games has sparked fears of an imminent terror attack. Rarely has a dirt tunnel received so much attention. No one knows why it was created. Do you think someone told their kid to dig to China and the kid actually tried? It's not just the sophistication that police say is troubling, but the lack of suspects or a motive. When something unexplained like this happens, of course people go nuts, speculating about what it could be. In this case, the media pondered whether the tunnel would be used to plant a bomb at the upcoming Pan Am games nearby. The Pan Am Games are like an Olympics for North and South and Central America. Or maybe somebody was going to build a meth lab in the tunnel, or an operation grow marijuana. Or they would use the tunnel to hide foreign athletes from the Pan Am Games who might want to stay in Canada illegally. On Twitter, it was hashtag #TerrorTunnel. But the truth of what was going on in that tunnel, and what its purpose was, was nothing like any of that. And the way the Canadian police figured it out-- OK. First of all, can I say sometimes one is reminded of what a very different country Canada is from the United States. As part of the manhunt for whoever built the tunnel, a policeman tweeted, "If you built a tunnel near the Rexall Center in Toronto, give us a call, OK?" The Toronto Police pointed out that it is not illegal to dig a hole. Apparently, no law was broken. From the start, they said they saw no evidence of terrorism, and they did not want to jump to conclusions. For instance, here's a exchange between then-Toronto Deputy Chief Mark Saunders and reporters after he showed them a photo of that rosary and plastic poppy. This was found inside the actual tunnel itself, and it was nailed on the wall. What does that tell you? That tells me that this was nailed inside the tunnel on a wall. The police basically went on TV and showed pictures of the stuff that they found in the tunnel-- a ladder and the generator and the sump pump. And they asked public, this jog anybody's memory? Anybody know anything about this stuff? And that turned out to be exactly the right move, because watching that coverage was a guy named Boko Marich. He sees that ladder-- And I said to myself, they look exactly like my stepladder, and I bet you any money this is mine. I bet you any money this is mine. And then, when I saw sump pump, I said, oh, ho, ho, my stepladder and sump pump. But I couldn't believe-- I couldn't believe-- I couldn't believe myself. I couldn't sleep. I was thinking about that. He couldn't sleep because he knew who'd he given the stuff to. Bob is a contractor. And he lent that stuff to one of his favorite employees, this young guy, just 22, Elton. What was Elton doing? And come to think of it, Elton had been asking to borrow a lot of tools lately. He was asking me or shovel, for pick, for another shovel, and other tools, so many tools. I just would say, OK, if you need, take. Boko loves Elton. He loves that Elton's a great worker. He loves that, unlike other young people Bob's worked with in the past, apparently, Elton always wants to learn, asks lots of questions. What do you do when you do the roof? How you connect this? How you put joist hangers? What is distance between in that? Can I do this instead of that? Is this going to carry this support? Unbelievable. You know? And I joked with everybody-- if everybody asks me, who's that guy? This is my adopted son, Elton. Always, I used to tell, this is my adopted son. OK. So I would lend him any tools he wanted. So the morning after he sees the police pointing to a photo of his ladder and sump pump on television, he goes to pick up Elton to bring it to work, like always. Elton gets in the truck. He brought two coffees, for me and him. And I said, Elton, tell me one thing. That sump pump-- I didn't even ask full question. He said, Boko, yes, I did. Oh my god. Boko went to the authorities and made sure that Elton would not get arrested or go to prison for this. And then he turned him in. The police talked to Elton, satisfied themselves that Elton was not a terrorist or an evil criminal mastermind, but just some guy. And they let him go. They didn't even give him a fine. Though they did suggest that he not dig more tunnels. Canada. So who is Elton? Why did he do it? Why go to the trouble? Well, Elton has not given many interviews. Though he did allow one reporter named Nick Kohler to spend a couple days with him and his family to write this long story about them in MacLean's Magazine. And Nick was able to tell us a lot about Elton. Elton turned down our request for an interview. Elton lives maybe two minutes from the ravine and woods where the tunnel was found, in a kind of rough neighborhood in public housing. Nick says both of his parents are from Jamaica. He lives with two sisters, an older sister and a younger sister. And they all live with their mother. Elton's the quiet kid in the family. Nick says everybody else is a big talker. And I think in particular, his older sister, Anora, she has a lot of ideas about how Elton should be living his life. And she's not shy about sharing that with him. She's a big fan of self-help books. And so I think Elton is often in the position of listening to life talks, as they put it. Advice. Advice. And Elton found refuge ever since he was a kid in the ravine. In the ravine, there were no life talks. And from the time he was little, Elton was this introspective kid who loved to build, to take machines apart and put them back together. He fixed up old lawn mowers. He built clubhouses. And like he said in a short interview the Nick recorded for a video that MacLean's Magazine made, he'd go to the ravine. OK. What I used to do in the ravine when I was a kid is run around, play hide and go seek. We'd play apple war. We would go fishing. But I started my first tunnel probably when I was in elementary school. I would just go in the creek, walk around. And this was something on my mind. I wanted to build a clubhouse. I had five or six attempts. And I think the sixth one was the huge tunnel that you guys found. I've heard him call it the future of clubhouses. Again, here's Nick. The treehouse of the future. That it's underground because one of the fundamental things he wanted from this was that it be secret. It was his secret place that he could go and just relax and be alone. Though not always alone. A friend helped Elton dig the tunnel and built it, excavating, he thinks, two dump trucks of dirt by hand. And once it was done, they would go there together, watch movies, listen to music, barbecue. OK, I did this because something I always wanted to be doing. But I know I should have grown out of it. And I knew that, OK, if I build a tunnel, it came from childhood reasons. But at the same time, if I build it, who knows? I could probably hang out there, turn that childhood dream into a man cave, a bunker, whatever you call it-- just a place to go hang out. And if there was something that happened, like a natural disaster, or if something were to happen, I could go there-- if there's a blackout-- turn on a generator, charge my phone, even make a small meal down there just to bring back up to my house. Back when Elton would go to the tunnel, his sisters did not know exactly what he was doing. But they knew something was up. For months, while he was digging the thing, he would come home just covered in dirt, tracking dirt everywhere. Anora thought he was building some kind of underground house and grilled him about it. But he wouldn't say. His other sister, Tracyann, found the rosary actually sitting at a bus stop and gave it to Elton to protect him. As soon as she gave it to me, like an hour later, it was already down there. I nailed it up. Every day after that day, every day where I would go there, I would sometimes make a prayer. Not every day-- some days I'd forget. But sometimes I would remember to have a little prayer just so I'm safe. And it's a peace of mind. Yeah. The reality of Elton's tunnel, it was so different from what people thought it was when it was first discovered by police. I think what that's about is, I think when we encounter something that's inexplicable or mysterious, our imaginations-- we are such hacks. You know? We go to the most standard, stock, seen it in 100 TV shows version of what something probably is. Like, oh, it's a terrorist attack. Oh, it's drug dealers. You know? When the reality of what this tunnel was-- it was this dreamy guy who just wanted a place to get away from his sisters, be alone for a little while. It's so much smaller but so much less predictable and way more interesting. Well, our program was produced today by Bim Adewunmi. People who put our show together today include Susan Burton, Ben Calhoun, Dana Chivvis, Sean Cole, Hillary Elkins, Nora Gill, Damian Grave, Michelle Harris, Stowe Nelson, Katherine Rae Mondo, Ben Phelan, Nadia Reiman, Robyn Semien, Alissa Shipp, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, and Julie Whitaker. Our managing editors, Diane Wu and Sarah Abdurrahman. Executive editor, David Kestenbaum. Special thanks today to Eric Boodman, who first reported on the nurse Elise Barrett for the website Stat, Steve Kolowich, Dr. Christopher Murray and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Any Moskovian, Jerel Calaguas, Brendan Geddes, Ava Schreier, and Katie Cederborg. Our website, thisamericanlife.org While you're on lockdown or commuting to your essential job, you can listen to our archive of 700 episodes for absolutely free. thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to the public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know the thing he likes to do most while in lockdown? Play Monopoly. But can I say, he is getting so competitive. What is there to apologize for, honestly? Yeah, I was an asshole. Yeah, what I did was dishonest. Yeah, it was shady. Yeah, it was insensitive. But I would definitely do it again the exact same way. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
So one of the things that's happening right now around the world is that you have all these couples-- happy ones, struggling couples, couples in that kind of things seem OK, but I don't know haze. Tens of millions of couples confined for weeks now, the relationships being remolded by this lockdown. It's an accelerator. It's a relationship accelerator. So it rearranges the priority and throws the superfluous overboard in a very clarifying way for many of us. Wondering what's happening with couples, I reached out to Esther Perel, who's a couples therapist. If you've heard of her, she's probably best known for this idea from her book, Mating in Captivity, that it takes a toll on couples and kills passion when there's not enough distance between the partners. And they turn to each other for everything. For friendship, and a sense of identity, and comfort, and everything a whole village used to provide a person. And she's very aware that under lockdown, people are literally turning to their partners for everything. These days, she's seeing a full schedule of couples, more than she usually does. Interestingly, she says this is an unusually good moment for therapy. And in lockdown, lots of clients who are opening up and figuring out things in ways they don't normally, like some of the men in the couples-- It's like for the first time, they're actually doing therapy. It's exciting, basically because they stopped. They slowed down their home. And they're like this blossoming of opening up and-- Wow. Three dudes, you know, three men-- it's just exci-- like I don't want to get off the phone because it's very moving. For most of the couples that you're seeing, what's your sense? Has the lockdown been good for them or bad for them? Hm. It's just such an interesting thing to see. Really both, really both. I can't say one or the other. The couples struggling the most are pretty much exactly the ones you'd expect, people who even before all this were quick to pick at their partners, and criticize them, and argue over who's sacrificing the most for whom. But also in this moment when our lives have been so profoundly disrupted, another group doing badly-- People who-- they've lost someone, or they have someone who's sick, or they are anxious. They are worried. And basically their partner is unable to have an emphatic response. You know, what are you worried about? There's nothing. And people tell you, my partner is the last person I'm turning to for anything I'm feeling right now. It's like I have nowhere to go with this, to just be able to be upset, or scared, or this constant sense of loss just of the world they've known, their own identity, their work, all of that. The extreme circumstances are also driving people to re-prioritize. Esther has seen couples split up and others move in together. And one of her most fascinating role reversals-- she's counseling one couple where one of the partners was always seen as the insecure one. She'd struggled through a traumatic childhood. It was agreed between the two of them that she was the troubled one who leaned on her stronger, more together partner. But now with the deadly virus everywhere, she's found that her difficult childhood gave her all kinds of coping and managing skills. She's basically, I have known chaos. You put me in this crisis. I know what to do. I knew what to do before anybody around me. I was in that supermarket. I even knew to get the stuff for the parents of my girlfriend who is not even here because I knew that they would need this. And I just felt like now the world is clear to me. I know what it needs from me. And in this particular relationship, it's two women. And it was a very interesting thing because it had-- I don't think that side of her had ever been known. It had always been described as you're the one with the issues because you come from this very traumatic background. So she became the functional one in the relationship. It was like a whole different way of being, but it was also a revelation to her self. This turned everything around. Suddenly, she wasn't seeking her partner's approval all the time. She didn't need it, which, of course, is healthy and great, except for the partner who is used to being the strong one. It's one thing to wish that the person you're with is more assertive and less needy. What do you do when you get that wish? It made her uncomfortable. And the way this played out did not surprise Esther. Oh, when I'm not comfortable with someone who is emancipating right next to me, I basically try to make them doubt themselves again. Because if they doubt themselves, if they're not sure, then they come to me. So that's what she was doing? Yes, in all kinds of very subtle ways, of course. This is not flagrant. So she would say things to encourage her formerly dependent partner to second-guess herself, to doubt herself, things like-- It's so interesting that you want to do that. I thought you didn't really-- that that was not what you wanted to do. Or you once mentioned to me that you don't want to bring your mom, you don't want to call your father. Little doubts. It's a bit of a mind twist, just gentle mind twists. You don't mean to. It looks like it's a very rational conversation. With other couples, Esther Perel says being on lockdown is forcing them to confront things that they'd been avoiding, but have never actually stopped to figure out. There's a couple like this on her podcast. She does a show called Where Should We Begin?, where she records therapy sessions with real couples who volunteer to do this anonymously on a podcast. Right now all the sessions are couples on lockdown. In episode two of the season, the couple was living apart before COVID-19. They had been together, living in Italy, but she got a job offer in Germany, caused a huge rift. She moved to Germany with her teenage daughter. He didn't. Then this year, when it really became a hotspot for the virus, he finally moved in with them. And finally, he and she had to deal with each other. They were on the verge of divorcing the moment this is over. This is an interesting situation because COVID-19 basically brought them together under one roof. They have been apart for a year and a half, and each one feels the other one abandoned them. So COVID-19 resolved the standoff between them because neither of them had to make the decision, because the virus decided. And now they're under the same roof. And neither of them had to give in. But once they're together, they are in a constant-- it's like one person talks, the other one listens until they find a thing they can disagree with. And that's where they enter. And now they're going to start arguing. And it's interesting. There's a point where they keep having the same fight over and over. And you keep saying to them, stop having this fight. And there's a moment in the session where he actually is being kind to her and sort of inviting. And it's so interesting what happens. Like you said, I am very busy. And today, I wanted to cook for you instead of doing something else. So I did that without even telling you. And these are the things that you don't appreciate. No, I appreciate, but would have been better if I would have cooked and then we were eating all together. So you did a great thing today to cook the lunch. But you didn't have lunch with us basically because you were between two calls. You had just five minutes to eat. And I prefer to eat anything with you besides you cooking to let us eat, you know what I mean? I don't know. Let's plan what makes us happy maybe 'cause would have been better if we would have shared those 15 minutes of the lunch. I also can't make it right. No, no. But there is nothing wrong. Did you hear this as a criticism? Yes. But it's not. It's not. I'm just saying I would love to have lunch with you, and I would prefer to cook instead of you. If you have to spend those 15 minutes cooking for us, it's better that you make one call in those 15 minutes while I'm cooking and then you dedicate the next 15 minutes just to eat together. I'm not criticizing anything. But I'm scared to ask you to cook again because I see all the things that you're doing right. What the fuck? I'm just cooking. One second, one second, one second. This moment was important. If you go to a class, you'd miss this, because you want to know if he cares. And he just told you. I would rather eat with you, whatever. He just gave it to you on a platter. But you only heard the piece about it would have been better if you hadn't cooked. You didn't hear that what he meant with that was because I would have wanted that time with you. It's like you hear that which you want to hear, even if it's what you fear hearing and that you're not hearing what he's actually telling you. I'm not so sure that love is gone, but I think that the lovers have become invisible to the love that is. That's-- wow. But she just said, oh my god, that was the wow effect. She says this thing to the couple that-- I don't know-- maybe anybody who's ever been in a couple would find useful. She says to them, notice that behind every criticism there's a wish, a wish to be closer. Esther says she sees other couples in the same situation as this one. They're stuck in the same fight, and everything leads back to that fight, everything the other person says. And they're too far gone to fix it. But what this couple was able to do, she says, was put aside the fight for a moment and talk about the feelings they were having for each other underneath all that. By the end of the therapy session, they're speaking in a sincere and heartfelt way that they hadn't in a long time. So I called you when this crisis started, and you came to take care of us. And I appreciate that. And I don't want to lose this. This COVID-19 for this couple will save the couple that was literally otherwise on its way out. They were going to do another one year of fighting like this. And then one of them would meet somebody else, and that would be the end of that story. 17 years-- it's not like they've just met yesterday. Other couples don't get to this point. Episode three of her podcast this season has another couple who cannot stop themselves from fighting the same fight over and over. They decided to divorce two weeks before lockdown. And since then, it's gotten so much worse. What's hurting me, living with someone who has so much contempt for me and feels that I am trying to control you by asking you to isolate with your family, which is what the governor is asking us to do. And I'm sorry that that doesn't work with your social plans, but this is a time that people are suffering. I'm not arguing that. I can't argue with you anymore. No, but you are. I'm saying I'm not happy about it. But you are. You were arguing-- I don't just feel like I have a choice. You were arguing as of yesterday. It's interesting. You lecture them in that episode a few times with a tone I feel like we don't usually hear from you. Yes. I'm basically saying, you have a task to accomplish. You are in lockdown together. And this is your mission right now. That's your project. What you feel about each other is rather irrelevant. You are two parents. You chose to be here in this house together. What are you going to do, piss on each other the whole time just to remind the other that you resent having to be here? Or are you just simply going to try to be as civil as you can be and make this tolerable for everyone? For so many couples, the stress of lockdown makes things worse. There are already reports from China, as it comes out of lockdown, that divorce may be on the rise there. So who are the couples who are doing better? Who does better is the people who think, what can I learn here? What is this telling me about what actually matters in my life or what I really want to do and becoming more aware of things? Because A, we have never slowed down like this. Never on a global level have we slowed down like this. It's a long time that we have only been accelerating, accelerating, accelerating. And for the first time-- and I don't think we have begun even to understand what this is going to do to you to have had to really experience what that kind of a slowdown will do. Who we'll all be when this is done, who knows, seriously? Trying to guess the ultimate effect of this national shutdown on couples, on our kids' education, on the economy, on ourselves, it's like the virus has thrown the future into this black box. We can make our guesses, or we can just accept we'll know when we know. And for those of us who like more certainty in our lives, well, tough luck. Today on our program, we have people trying in various situations to live with a lack of information, not happy about that fact at all, but doing their best. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Act One, A Phone Flickers in the Dark. There's one part of the world where there's a kind of information vacuum. At least for those of us who aren't there, it's a kind of black box. It's Xinjiang, China. If you picture China, it's in the northwest corner, far from China's big cities, the size of Mexico, nestled up against Kazakhstan, and a few other Stans. And ethnically it's been more like them than 90% of China. For instance, it's home to the Uyghurs, who speak their own language that's close to Turkish, not Mandarin Chinese. Most Uyghurs are Muslim. And for a long time, the Uyghurs faced discrimination and arbitrary detention in China. If you follow the news, you probably know that this escalated beginning in 2014 when the government started accusing hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs of supporting terrorism and wanting to separate from China, and sent them to so-called re-education centers. They're better described as internment camps. Former detainees report being beaten. Women have testified that they were forcibly sterilized. The State Department has estimated that up to two million people were held in these camps. But information about what's really going on in Xinjiang is hard to come by. And for Uyghurs outside of Xinjiang who want to check in on their families back home, well, some families are effectively blocked from all communication. Others, the government monitors phone calls, and you don't want to say anything that will lead to officials banging on your family's door. So Uyghurs in the diaspora have turned to TikTok. Yes, older listeners, you think of TikTok as the app where the kids are making dance videos and jokes that you do not understand. But the app started in China. The Chinese version of TikTok is called Douyin. It is insanely popular, over 400 million users a day. And because it's so visual, the government is not so great at censoring it. As a result, it's a place where uncensored content gets out of Xinjiang. There are videos posted by Uyghurs, but also by government officials who've been sent there to manage Uyghurs. Here is a TikTok video that seems to have been posted by an official who's been assigned to live with a Uyghur family in their house as a kind of minder. It seems like maybe he posted this to show everything's fine. We're getting along. Everything's great. In the video, the minder is eating breakfast with the two kids from the family in the garden. He smiles at the camera, turns it to the little boy eating next to him. And then in Uyghur, the boy says to his mom-- --"When my dad comes home, this guy will leave." "Mom, is he coming on Monday?" The official doesn't seem to understand a word of that. Now here is a video posted presumably by somebody who's Uyghur. It's a woman with long, dark hair sitting in her car while the song "Faded" by Alan Walker plays in the background. There's something off about this. It is not a normal TikTok video of somebody dancing. She's beating her chest with her fist to the beat. And then you realize there are dozens of these same kind of video, using the same song, everybody beating their chest. It's like a virtual protest. Still, like I say, there are lots of Uyghurs trying to figure out what's going on in Xinjiang and what's happening to their own families there. Durrie Bouscaren is a reporter living in Turkey, where a lot of Uyghurs have settled, many of them in the last five years. She's been talking with one man for months who's been obsessed with these TikTok videos, with anything else he can find that'll give him a look inside Xinjiang's black box because what he values the most in this world, his wife, and son, and the rest of his family, are stuck inside. Here's Durrie. Abdurahman Tohti fled China seven years ago after getting arrested and tortured for learning Arabic. He wanted to read the Quran. Today, he still doesn't have much feeling in his feet. But let me tell you how he met his wife, because it's a sweet story. When Abdurahman got to Istanbul, he wanted to settle down and start a family of his own. So he turned to his dad back in Xinjiang, the person he trusts most in the world, and asked him to help him find someone back home for him to marry. His dad went around, talked to other parents. And he found Peride, a biology student with brown eyes and a kind face. Abdurahman and Peride talked on WeChat. That's the main social media platform in China. They couldn't say much because they knew the government monitored calls to foreign numbers. The conversation was stilted, but they got a sense for each other. And they decided to get married. So she packed her bags and boarded a plane to Turkey. Abdurahman was so excited. So the plane arrived at 2 o'clock in the night. So I went to the airport to pick her up. I bought a big rose flower, and I put a Quran in the middle. And I put a ring on the top of the Quran for picking her up from airport. He brought a photo of her to make sure he could figure out who she was. He was in the terminal with a group of friends, waiting. People were streaming out of the customs area, and he sees her. I go to her, and I ask, is this you on the picture? She asked, who is the girl in the picture for you? So I said, it's my wife. So she said, are you crazy? You don't recognize your wife? Then she left. It wasn't her. It's not Peride. And Abdurahman's starting to worry, like maybe she's not coming. Then he sees someone else who looks like her, goes up to her, shows the picture. She's like, no, that's not me. But as he's turning to leave, she calls him back. It was her. She took her phone out and show me my picture and asks me, are you this guy in the phone, in the picture? And I say yes. And that's why we met first time. She was messing with him. I put a ring on her hand. And the girl has a flower. And the Turks around us asking, what's happening? Are you getting married? Where are you from? Suddenly, it became a kind of party. People are giving us gifts, all kinds of chocolate candies, and saying congratulations. And it was a really happy moment for us. A police officer working at the airport says, hey, I'm Uyghur too. He gives them a police escort back home, lights flashing. It's like a movie. Not too long after, Abdurahman and Peride had a son. They named him Abduleziz, after his grandfather. And Abduleziz becomes his dad's mini me. Everything Abdurahman did, Abduleziz would follow, from the way he stood to his table manners. He likes the car. Even when I'm driving my car, he wants to sit in front of me and drive with me. This was in a parking lot. Abdurahman was teaching Peride how to drive, and 18-month-old Abduleziz would sit on his dad's lap and grab the stick shift. He'd throw a fuss if he couldn't. He was really cute. He used to try to copy everything I do. But Abdurahman's relationship with Peride's family was rocky right from the start. Abdurahman is religious, but her family is secular and pretty wealthy. But the heart of the problem was that Peride's parents felt like she was wasting her education in Turkey. She had a degree, but she wasn't using it. She wanted to stay home with their son. When Abduleziz was born, Peride's parents started asking her to come back to Xinjiang for a long visit, maybe even to leave Abduleziz with them for a while. In Uyghur families, it's really common for grandparents to take care of their grandkids for their first five years of life while the parents work. The pressure from back home got really intense, but Abdurahman and Peride were hesitant to leave Turkey. For starters, Abdurahman couldn't go with her to Xinjiang because he was sure he'd be arrested if he returned to China. And by this point, it was 2015. They'd been hearing whispers about added surveillance, about Uyghurs being detained in Xinjiang. They don't know exactly what's happening, but they know it's not good. I asked my wife, what do you say? If you want to with them, we can try it, but I don't feel good about it. And I'm afraid you will not be able to come back again because of the situation down there. She said, no, are you crazy? I really don't want to travel. Peride's parents kept insisting that it was safe, at least for them. They were loyal to the party, and they had high level government contacts. They're not religious. If Abduleziz was with them, they said, it would be OK. They were pushing, but Abdurahman and Peride kept saying no. A few months later, Abdurahman was walking by a pretzel shop in his neighborhood when the police stopped him and asked for his residency papers. His permit had lapsed. He'd applied for a new one, but it hadn't arrived yet. So they arrested him, took him to a detention center. This happens to a fair number of Uyghurs in Turkey. They'll be detained for a paperwork issue, and they'll get stuck for a while. In Abdurahman's case, he was locked up for three months, allowed just one phone call home every week. Peride, meanwhile, was home alone with their toddler and pregnant, close to her due date. When Abdurahman finally got out, his whole world had changed. His wife had given birth to their second child, a girl. And his son, Abduleziz, was gone. He was in China. Peride's mother had come for a visit and arranged for the trip back. Abdurahman felt tricked. He didn't even get to say goodbye. It's like his in-laws waited until he couldn't interfere and then sent his kid away. He says he never would have let Abduleziz go to China. Did you-- when you had that first conversation, did you and your wife fight about it? Were you upset? Were you angry? What was your physical reaction? I was sad, of course, but I didn't argue or fight with her because she was also on the pressure. On one side she got me and another side her family pressuring her. So I also want to make it easy for her. Peride said she wanted to go back with the baby just for a short trip, make her parents happy. Then she'd come back with Abduleziz. Abdurahman wasn't crazy about the idea, but he agreed, drove them to the airport. It was hard feeling, but I feel I couldn't do anything else. And so they flew away to go to a place where only fragments of information ever make it out. The plan was that Peride would contact Abdurahman on WeChat once they'd arrived and felt like it was safe, but he didn't hear from them. He called her parents again and again. They never picked up. He started to panic, but this isn't entirely abnormal because of how difficult it is for Uyghurs to communicate with their families in Xinjiang. He was hoping that that was all it was. After two months of this, he says, a distant relative who was visiting Istanbul on business contacted him and said, let's have lunch. They met. He had news. It wasn't good. Police arrested Peride as soon as she and the baby arrived in China. She was interrogated and beaten, the cousin said. She was in prison, serving a 10-year sentence. He thought it was because she lived in Turkey. Human rights observers say they've seen several cases where Uyghurs in Xinjiang have been punished for communicating with people in Turkey or other predominantly Muslim countries. It's not illegal, per se, but it can get you in trouble with the government. It's like you burn inside, something that's eating you from inside. It's eating you from the inside? Yeah, because you have a lot of pain, but you cannot do anything. Their children are with their grandparents, his in-laws, so at least they're safe. But he can't get his wife out of prison. He can't even call home or try to get more information without endangering his family. Because he's living in Turkey, anyone in Xinjiang who gets a call from him could immediately get flagged by the government. They could be interrogated or even sent to a re-education camp. And his family knows this. By this point, most of them have deleted him from their contacts. So he waits. There's nothing he can do. He starts putting on weight. He sleeps late. He's stuck. For everything he's gone through, Abdurahman's still pretty young. He's 30. I've known him for about six months now, and he does things all the time that remind me that he's a dad who never got to be a dad. He always brings food when we meet and shares his snacks, like steamed buns with lamb dipped in a spicy vinegar sauce. Once after an interview, we ran into his friend with her kid at a Uyghur-run cafe. I'll never forget the look on his face while he tossed the toddler up and down in front of the deli cases, this pure, uncomplicated joy. But when I ask him how he feels about all this, he's told me men don't have feelings, which obviously isn't true. Back in December of 2018, when Abdurahman was living in Istanbul, hearing nothing from his family, things in Xinjiang were getting worse. More and more Uyghurs were sent to re-education centers and later required to do low wage factory work. Human rights observers say this campaign imprisoned about 10% of Uyghur adults in Xinjiang. But Abdurahman had no idea what was happening to his family. That's when TikTok came into his life. A friend showed it to him. He was like, you've got to see this. He said, I just found a relative, a man I know from my hometown. I ask, how do you find people? How does it work? He tells me, you can write the name of your town. Abdurahman can't write in Mandarin, so his friend types out the name of his hometown for him. It's called Axu. It's an agricultural center in the west, hugging the mountains that form the border between China, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. Suddenly, hundreds of users are popping up on his screen. He goes through video after video. He sees all of these places that he recognizes-- the woods, and the rivers, and the families hanging out in front of their houses. And he can tell things have definitely changed. The cotton fields look the same. The houses are familiar. But to Abdurahman, Axu looks like a city under occupation. A lot of video is Chinese occupier put on that. And the interviews, it looks like a happy moment to them, but what the video has shown is, for example, a Chinese guy in a Uyghur house. There are only women in the house and a elder lady my mom's age. The Chinese man first tried to dance with her, like almost forcing her to dance, and tried to hug her. And the Chinese guys look happy, and they thought they are doing something good, but in our tradition is attack. Like I can see the lady. She cannot do anything against it, but she don't want to dance with the guy. In another video, something else seems off. It's a group of people clearing ice off of an irrigation ditch with picks and shovels. It's winter. You can tell by the trees and the coats they're wearing. Abdurahman knows this ditch. It's just a few minutes from his family's house. And to him, it's clear they're being forced to work. We never clear ice from the ditch until springtime, he tells me. There's no need. It just freezes over again. This watching does not seem to be good for Abdurahman, but he can't stop. TikTok is like this tiny flashlight into the big black box that Xinjiang has become. For a week, he stayed in his apartment just searching. What he was really hoping for was to see someone he recognized, any traces of his kids, his wife's parents, his parents. He hadn't been able to speak to them for several years at this point. He watched at the kitchen table, watched on the couch. At night, he'd lie awake, scrolling. On January 4, 2019, he was in bed, and like usual, scrolling through TikTok. It's around 2:00 AM, and Abdurahman sees this video. It's a little boy with big cheeks, expressive eyes. He's in a school, answering questions in Mandarin Chinese from a teacher off camera. Behind him, kids are milling about in winter coats. They have a leather jacket, winter jacket. The teacher asks the kid a bunch of questions. What's the name of the fatherland? The People's Republic of China. What's on the fatherland's flag? Five stars on a red flag. Where's your water bottle? Water bottle is here. Where do we put the food we can't finish? In the trash. Abdurahman doesn't speak Mandarin, but there is one word that stands out to him, Abduleziz. What's your name, the teacher asks? I'm called Abduleziz, he says. How old are you? I'm four. That's how old Abdurahman's son should be now. The video is just 15 seconds long, one of a hundred that he's watched that day, and he can't be sure it's his son, Abduleziz. But Abdurahman simultaneously gets this rush of love believing that it's his son and this intense fear that it's really him. Because his kids are supposed to be living with their grandparents while he figures out a way to get them home. And it looks like they aren't. As soon as I see it, I can feel it's a camp for children. It looks like Abduleziz is in a boarding school, one of the ones set up by the Chinese government to take care of about 500,000 kids, many of whose parents have been detained in re-education camps. Except for short visits home, the kids are generally kept away from their family, taught Mandarin, not Uyghur. Yeah, I feel that my son is becoming more Chinese every day. After I understood the video, I became worried about his future, how the regime will teach him and make him an enemy of Uyghurs in the future, especially make him an enemy of people like me. That seems to be exactly the point of these schools. They place these kids in a setting where they're removed from their families, their language, their religion, their Uyghurness. As one internal government document claims, the goal of this crackdown is to, quote, "break their lineage, break their roots, break their connections, and break their origins." The government is their family now. From this moment, when Abdurahman saw his son in this video, all he wanted was to get him back. He was consumed by it. I should say there are lots of parents around the world in the same situation. In the past year or so, I've personally spoken to nine of them in three different countries. Only one was able to get her son out of China, thanks to an influential family member and a Turkish passport. Still, Abdurahman was convinced that he, a guy who doesn't speak Mandarin, doesn't have political connections, can't even call home, he was going to get his son back. Reporter Durrie Bouscaren. Coming up, Abdurahman uses everything he has to get his family back. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, Black Box, stories of people who don't have the information they need and want, trying to figure out what's going on and what they should do next. We now continue with Act One of our show. Right before the break, maybe you heard Abdurahman Tohti thought that he spotted his four-year-old son on a TikTok video and decided to set out on a mission to retrieve him and the rest of his family. Reporter Durrie Bouscaren picks up with Abdurahman's story. The first thing he did was he went to the press, made it public. This was risky because his family was still in China. His interviews were published all over the world in Turkish, English, Portuguese. He was on the BBC and in The New York Times. The media attention was so intense in the beginning. That makes me have more hope and trust. I think, OK, something maybe will happen. But then I find out it will not happen. With each of these interviews, it felt like he was screaming into the void, trying to get China and the world to look at him. And the response, silence. He was no closer to getting his family back than he was when they left. He tried more official routes. He went to the Chinese embassy, nothing, asked the Turkish government for help, wrote to the United Nations. He once told me about this plan to move to Canada as a refugee because he thought the government there would have more leverage. Mind you, that would take years to come to fruition. But he truly believes that one day his family will be together again. He has these pictures on his phone. Because there's no portrait of his family, he's made some using passport photos of him and Peride, a baby picture he has of his daughter, and a screenshot of that video of Abduleziz. They're Photoshopped onto backgrounds, the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, cherry blossoms in Japan. So why do you do that? Can you tell me about that? It's because we're a family, he tells me. Last summer, Abdurahman had some luck. He was scrolling through WeChat, and he found a childhood friend. He says they hatched a plan to buy a plane ticket for her to go back to their hometown, get eyes on the ground. But, of course, even when she made it all the way there and was sending him videos of their old neighborhood, she still couldn't speak directly to what she was actually seeing, the significance of it. Everything's fine, she told him. Everything's new and better, as she panned the camera around the empty streets. Abdurahman was kicked off WeChat, so we don't have the actual videos. And we weren't able to reach his friend without risking her safety. But he says the way she spoke was super casual to avoid drawing attention. The buildings are not here anymore. Don't get surprised because they have built new restaurants here. If you come here, I will buy food for you-- like basically joking. And then I answer her, why should I be surprised? OK, maybe one day we have a chance to meet there. She drove to the street his parents lived on. There were a lot of checkpoints. Eventually she got there and found an empty lot. His family's house in the city had been demolished. They have another home, a farm. They could have moved there. But this is the point when Abdurahman started to worry that his parents had been taken too. He hadn't been able to speak to them in four years. Every time he gets more information, it's like this. The more he learns, the worse things seem. Abdurahman still watches TikTok. It's like a nervous habit when he's bored, when he's tired. In interviews, when it takes too long for an interpreter to translate a question, he'll sort of lean back and pull his phone out from under the table. Eventually in January of this year, the app shook loose another piece of information. An old acquaintance wrote to him through TikTok's direct messaging function. The messages start off nonchalantly enough. Hi, how are you, brother? Abdurahman asked him if he's seen his parents lately. How are they doing? The friend didn't have any information about his son or his wife, but he could tell Abdurahman that his family in Axu is gone. They're not staying at their farm like he had hoped. His elderly father, his mother who has cancer, he gives them name after name. They're gone. They're gone too. And Abdurahman can't even be sure what this means. They could have been forced off their land but living elsewhere. They could be detained in a re-education center. They could be in prison. From thousands of miles away, it's almost impossible to find out. As he's telling me this, it's the day after he got these messages. And Abdurahman is getting really worked up. He's talking super, super fast, like a dam has burst and all of these emotions from the past three years are spilling over. Not only my parents. My parents, brothers, sisters, all of them are gone. They have taken-- they have taken everything from me-- property, land, family, son, wife. Everything I got in my life they have taken from me. I'm ready to do anything I can to take revenge. So officials in Chinese embassy, I will smash their cars, smash their buildings until they arrest me or they put my parents free. What can I else do? I've got enough with just speaking empty words. Throw me in jail, keep me outside, it's no different, he says. They've killed my soul. I have nothing to live for anymore. We later called the local police station in his hometown and confirmed that no one is at his family's address, even though 13 people used to live there. They knew that Abdurahman was looking for his family and put a Uyghur speaker on the line to talk to him. Maybe they've left. Maybe they did something wrong, the speaker said, but she refused to say if they were accused of a crime. Two days after he gets to the news about his family, he found something new to fixate on, the mayor of Istanbul. He thought that if he could convince this guy to help him, he might be able to put in a word to Turkish diplomats who help people detained overseas. The mayor was scheduled to speak at an afternoon event, a dinner in honor of the different cultures of the Turkic world, like the Turks, the Uzbeks, and the Uyghurs. I met up with him to go there. He's brought bags of Uyghur breads and fried noodles for the event because an activist told him it might help him get a chance to meet with the mayor face to face. The chances of this resulting in anything are slim. Honestly, it's a Hail Mary. But as down as Abdurahman was the day before, he's up now, buzzing with excitement in the car on the way over. I'm going there as a human being and asking them to do their duty as a human being, he tells me. The event is happening outside a museum under a big tent. Abdurahman pulls his bags of food out of the car, and we wait for the mayor. A few minutes turns into a few hours. He falls back into his phone, flipping through TikTok videos like usual. He looks tired. Finally, just as the program is about to begin, the mayor sweeps in with bodyguards in tow. He's introduced, ushered onto the stage, and he speaks for about 15 minutes. And then the mayor moves to leave. Abdurahman realizes that this is his chance. He needs to go now. But a group of admirers descends on the mayor, shaking his hand, giving him gifts. Abdurahman waits on the edge, hanging back, until he sees an opening and makes his move. I stand back with our interpreter to watch. I see him going up. Yeah, and there are bodyguards. He's like the one green sweater in a sea of moving black suits. He's trying. He's so close. He's so close. He just wants to shake his hand. He disappears into the crowd. And just as the mayor is leaving the tent, he's able to wiggle through to get close enough to greet him. They shake hands. It's just enough time to say hello, not to explain a story or to ask for help to find his son. And the mayor moves on. It's the same as every other time he's reached out to the Turkish government for help. Nothing changes. We sent requests for comment to China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Public Security, and Ministry of Education, asking for information about Abdurahman's family. No response. We tried the Office of the Vice President of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region and the local propaganda department. In that case, someone did pick up, told us their fax machine was broken and that no other fax machines were available. So we summarized the questions over the phone. The person on the other end called it sheer nonsense and told us to go online and read the news. The Chinese embassy in Washington, DC basically said the same thing. I asked for information on Abdurahman's family and on these cases in general. They responded with a list of YouTube links, videos posted by China's state media service, defending the re-education camp program and claiming that people who say their families have been imprisoned are lying. I would suggest you check some of the rumors being exposed, they wrote. Thanks for reaching out to the embassy. We also can't reach Peride. We confirmed as many details as we could about Peride and Abdurahman's life together with a friend of theirs. It took more than a year before Abdurahman finally saw a small glimmer of success. Weirdly, it was the pandemic that did it. This winter, news of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan started to filter out of China. The videos Abdurahman started to see on TikTok were of empty streets, people stuck at home without much to eat. Some would set their videos to music pulled from zombie movies. Abdurahman began to worry about Xinjiang. Social distancing is happening there, but the Uyghurs in prison don't have that option. Somebody gets infected amongst the prisoners or somebody in camp, then all of them will be infected. So I'm worried. And it's not just the people in prison. People detained in re-education centers can also get infected or the kids who have been separated from their parents and placed in government schools. So this winter, a group of parents in Istanbul started planning a trip to the Chinese embassy, to show up in person and demand access to their children. Before anything was finalized, the parents started to get phone calls from the consulate. Abdurahman got one too. It was last Friday. I came out from the Friday prayer. I was driving and transporting something to [NON-ENGLISH]. And I got a phone call while I'm driving. It was an Uyghur. He said, I have good news for you. The caller was a translator for the Chinese consulate. He had information about Abdurahman's children, he said. Your kids are with their uncle, the caller told him, not in a boarding school. They're safe. OK, which uncle is that? And the guy said, I don't know. So I said, OK, let's meet. Where are you? And he said, no, we don't have to meet. This is the only news I have. He got this call in March. He still has no idea if it was true or not. This drop of information, an unprovable bit of news that he desperately wants to hear, it could be a lie designed to placate, keep him quiet. He knows this. But Abdurahman insists that even if it's not true, it's still good news. What this phone call means to him is that now someone in the government has finally acknowledged his jumping, and screaming, and waving his hands. Someone somewhere might actually be responding. This is good news, but until I see them directly, I will fight for their case. Until you see a video or until you see them here in Turkey? Until I get them to Turkey. It's about-- I meet my son and I start to take care of them as a father. I will not stop. For me, it's good news. It gives me hope. Abdurahman has renewed hope that they'll be together again. Because this time, after four years of trying to find his family, the black box has spoken back. But even this tiny victory is short lived. A month later, Abdurahman calls me from the road. He's driving, balancing the phone on the steering wheel. He says a contact from TikTok who's been sending him information about Axu wrote to him to tell him that local government officials went on the village loudspeaker to make a public announcement saying anyone with information about the Tohti family, Abdurahman's family, is forbidden to share it. Look, we are now living in 21st century. And if people lose their cats or their dogs, they will have a right to look for them. In my case, of course, I have a right to get information about my family, as a father, as a son, but they are even forbidding me to get any information about my family members. His fear is that they are going to disappear. There would be no charges, no prison sentence, no anticipated date of their release, no communication with the outside world. And he'll never know what became of them. And what frustrates him is that right now people he knows are starting to hear news of what's happening to their families, that they've moved out of re-education centers and into low wage factory work or formal prison sentences. They're getting answers, but Abdurahman still knows nothing. For years, he's been fighting for information. He may never get it. Durrie Bouscaren in Istanbul. Act Two, State of Emergency. So our show today is about people trying to find their way in situations where they don't have much information, or anyway the information they need. And, of course, that's the situation the whole world is in right now with the spread of COVID-19 as we try to make sense of how to treat it, how to deal with it as a society. Couple weeks ago, my co-worker Miki Meek talked to one emergency medical worker in Brooklyn, Anthony Almojera. He's vice president of local 3621 of the EMS Officers Union in New York City. EMS, emergency medical services-- it's part of the fire department. Even a few weeks ago, they were totally overwhelmed. Anthony was out responding to an endless stream of 911 calls. And Miki checked back in with him recently to see how he's doing. He said that even though the number of infections in the city has finally started to slow, his crew is still in uncharted territory. And a lot of the calls they're getting are for cardiac arrest. Apparently the virus, in addition to attacking the lungs, can also put stress on the heart and sometimes directly infect the heart. Some days, the number of cardiac arrest calls coming into New York City's 911 system has been huge, over 300. It's about four times higher than before the pandemic. Most of those people are dying at home. Here's Miki talking to Anthony and then to one of his colleagues. Anthony, how are you doing? I'm OK, I guess. It's still crazy. This past Sunday, I did 13 cardiac arrests in a 16-hour shift. Jeez, 13. 13. 13 cardiac arrests-- what does that day look like for you? So I wake up. I put the uniform on. I'm sitting there, trying to mentally get myself geared up for another day of this. I get a Red Bull. If you're going to be in the middle of hell, you might as well be alert. And I'm going to work, and my brain is sitting there-- it's weird because my brain is sitting there going, OK, I got to get ready because I know it's coming. Then it starts coming. 6:30 in the morning, it started coming. I go. Elderly gentleman-- fever, cough, symptoms. We try and work him up. We were unsuccessful. I tell the family, I'm sorry. There's nothing more we can do. And then I go back into the truck. I hit the button. I get called for the other cardiac arrests. And I go, another family, the patient's family saying that he had a cough for five days and he was weak with chills. We try and work him up, we're unsuccessful. We pronounce. I hit the button. I get hit again for another cardiac arrest. I go. This particular patient we weren't able to work up because he had rigor mortis, so he had been dead for a little while. But the family states, oh, he had fever, cough symptoms. So we were like, OK. I'm sorry for your loss. There's another one that happened today. I'm sorry for your loss. And then the next call-- and this is going to sound weird to the everyday person, but the next call was a suicide. There's no fever, cough. So it's like, oh, a regular call, so to speak, as opposed to having to get all crazy with the gowns, and the gloves, and the masks. It's such a morbid scene, but there's three of us that are like, well, this is one patient we don't have to worry about getting this virus from. And it's like, to feel relief in the middle of this tragic death-- I mean, this is somebody who felt hopeless enough to go and commit suicide. We still have the empathy for him and whatnot, but hey, we're going to get through this one without getting infected by anything. And then I hit the button. The button shows that I'm available. And I'm on my way to another cardiac arrest. I've never had a panic or an anxiety attack, and I feel like one is going to come on really soon. This is another paramedic in New York City I'm calling Cassandra. She didn't want me to use her real name because she didn't get permission from the fire department to talk to me. I've been checking in with her regularly over the past few weeks, and she's processing her days differently than Anthony. Because she's not a lieutenant, she spends her entire 12-hour day in an ambulance. I talked to her recently after she'd finished one of her shifts. She'd gotten home at 3:00 AM and took a bubble bath to try and calm down, but it didn't work. How much more worse than this can it get? We're at worst to me. This is my worst. I did 37 cardiac arrests last week. I told somebody I'm sorry for your loss 37 times last week. 37 times I'm sorry for your loss. Yeah. And-- yeah. I don't think I've ever done that in a year, like 37 cardiac arrests. That's insane to me. I don't even know how to explain it. Like, my soul hurts. I'm not used to seeing all this death all at once. I'm a person. I'm very strong headed. So it's just like, if I see death it's like, OK, this happened. I process it quick. And I'm like, I deliver my message to the family. And it's like, damn, that was messed up. And I move on. It's not like it sticks with me for a while. And right now that's not the case. I'm holding each and every one of them in because I don't have time to just put it away. I was wondering, are there any particular calls that stick with you right now? There was actually one cardiac arrest that I had last week that wasn't COVID related. But the guy was 107 years old, and he was fighting. He really wanted to live. And I was shocked at that. And that made me a little bit happy because I thought we were going to get him back. We didn't. We pronounced him at the end, but he was fighting. He really wanted to live. What do you fear most right now? Like, what's the fear that's on your mind this morning? I'm a ticking bomb. If I don't start dealing with stuff, I'm going to blow up on my partner or on somebody. And God forbid that's on a patient because I don't want to be mean to somebody that just lost a loved one, you know what I mean? I don't know how I'm going to react to not dealing with all this death constantly. Do you have a plan? I don't. I don't have time to make a plan. Anthony, when I talked to you last, it was very hard having to deliver news to people and not being able to comfort them, having to keep a distance. And so I talked to you about a little over two weeks ago. And I'm wondering, has that gotten easier for you? Have you readjusted? No, it's not easier. And to be honest with you, I don't want it to be easy. If it gets easy to me, that means maybe I'm suffering from a little emotional fatigue, I'm burning out. If I still feel sadness, that's a good thing. I mean, it sucks, but it's a good thing. It means I'm still feeling. In my head, I try to remember that the sun does come out the next day. And I know that sounds corny, but it's awfully cloudy at the moment. Yeah. But the thing that's hard about this is, as a medic, you are eternally hopeful in the face of fighting death every day. Because even if you didn't get them this time, you know that the next time you will. But this virus out here, this pandemic, we're not getting them next time. Right now about 15% of the emergency medical service workers for the New York Fire Department are out on sick leave. At least three are in the ICU on ventilators. And one longtime worker, a watch commander in downtown Brooklyn named Greg Hodge, died earlier this week from COVID. Anthony took this news hard. He says Greg is the one who trained him when he first came on the job. Miki Meek is one of the producers of our show. Just a program note after that story-- if you or somebody you know might need help, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available 24/7 at 1-800-273-TALK. That's 1-800-273-8255. By the way, the EMS unions in New York City have been in a dispute with city government. Starting pay for an EMT in New York is roughly $35,000. Paramedics start at $48,000. And when the pandemic started, they asked for hazard pay since they were putting their lives on the line in a way that was more than usual and also for better benefits for their families if they should die on the job. They have gotten nowhere with this. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has said he will look into it, but not until the crisis is over. Our program was produced today by Robyn Semien. People who put our show together today includes Bim Adewunmi, Emanuele Berry, Zoe Chace, Dana Chivvis, Sean Cole, Aviva DeKornfeld, Nora Gill, Damian Grave, Miki Meek, Stowe Nelson, Katherine Rae Mondo, Ben Phelan, Nadia Reiman, Christopher Swetala, and Matt Tierney, the managing editors Diane Wu and Sara Abdurrahman, our executive editor, David Kestenbaum. Interpreters who helped us with our story in Act One, Samar Jan and Nasir Siddique. Esther Perel's podcast, Where Shall We Begin? that we talked about at the top of the show is now available on Spotify and any other platform where you get your podcasts. Special thanks today to Darren Viler, Max Baucus, David Brophy, Sue Benet Romere, Usan Uyghur, and Kayla Gabler. Our website, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. While on lockdown these last few weeks, he's been working on his relationship. His wife has an old Al Green record that they like to snuggle to. It's an accelerator. It's a relationship accelerator. I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life.
|
There's the part of you that's healthy, and there's the part of you that's sick. And sometimes the healthy part doesn't want to admit there's a sick part. Well, back in 1945, Walt Strommer was wounded in the Battle of the Bulge. He was permanently blinded, sent home. For the next year or so, when I was back home going to college, I would dream that I was driving a car. And then in the dream I would think, "You shouldn't be doing this. You're blind." In fact, he realized, in his dream, he was always able to see. And even to this day, over 50 years later, he still has these dreams from time to time. Sometimes I will dream of myself as I was as a teenager. And those dreams are almost completely as I would have been then, seeing. Or occasionally, I will still, in dreams, see a page of a book and read it, and absolutely clearly, and I may even remember a sentence or two when I wake up. Mr. Strommer says it took 10 or 15 years of blindness before he showed up in his own dreams as a blind person. And at some point, he started to wonder, "Why the delay?" He wrote a letter to a publication called Paraplegia News asking if anybody else had the same experience. He got a handful of letters from people who had. Some of them started seeing themselves as in wheelchairs or paralyzed-- whatever-- within a few months. Others it was years before it was incorporated. And I think almost all of them say it's inconsistent. Sometimes they will see themselves as in a wheelchair, the next time not. I think one of the more amusing ones was the man who said he would go along in his wheelchair and he gets to a curb that the chair won't get up on. So he gets out of the chair, lifts it up on the curb, and then he gets back in and goes on his way. Or one woman wrote about she will dream that she's walking with her husband, and he's pushing her wheelchair. And then he sees somebody coming. He says, "Quick, get back in your wheelchair. People are coming." Here's a letter that you were sent. An older man writes, "I've been in a wheelchair since October 6, 1966. And during the dream state, I've never visualized myself in a wheelchair. I've been impotent since 1962, but in dreams, I see myself as a stud that can go out with any of the cute, young things." Yes. That comes through in a couple of the letters. And as I recall, one of the people wrote-- I guess I had raised the question, why doesn't the dreaming brain catch up and show you the reality? And she said, "Why should it? Why should it be in a hurry to show us the unpleasant side of life? Maybe part of the function of dreams is to give us a few minutes of respite and happiness so we can come out of it and say, 'Hey, that felt pretty good.'" One man, a wheelchair user, wrote, "This is better than just a harmless fantasy. It means I can re-experience walking and running temporarily. I wake up mentally refreshed, at ease." Mr. Strommer was a college professor, and he spent some time researching why our subconscious minds would take so long to absorb the new facts about our lives, why his brain took a decade to admit to itself in dreams that he was blind. He says nobody really knows why. It might be chemical, or it might simply be that it's common for us all to see ourselves one way when in reality we're not that way at all. Well, from WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it is This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program, Defying Sickness. Act One, Road Trip. A father and a son go on a long car ride to figure out what parts of the father's brain have not been lost yet to Alzheimer's disease and to try to jump-start his memories. Act Two, My World Record, a hemophiliac's adventures at motocross racing and at setting another world's record. Act Three-- well, just stay tuned for Act Three. We'll launch Act One after some music. Act One, Road Trip. Joel Meyerowitz is a photographer, grew up in New York City. But for the last two decades, his parents have lived in Florida. Joel would see them, visit for a few days at a time. But over the past 10 years, Joel's father, Hy, developed Alzheimer's. Before he retired, Hy was a salesman for 40 years and did a few years as a comic in a vaudeville act before that. He was a boxer, won his weight class in the very first Golden Gloves competition. But now that he had Alzheimer's, the doctor said that he should stay inside, avoid a lot of stimulation. His son Joel thought, "What if we try, just for a brief time, something different?" I was visiting my father. We were driving someplace and he was babbling on, as he does. His great skill is that he can talk. And in the middle of one of these riffs, he turned to me with a look of panic, really, and he said, "The trouble with me is I never get to the point where I get to the point." And that was so pungent an observation about his predicament that it entered my consciousness in a way that made me say, now. That's it. I'm going to make a film about him. He's at a place in this disease where, before he's completely gone and while he has some consciousness about his situation, I'm going to take him out into the world again and see what happens to him and how he handles himself. They got a camera and went on a three-week trip, driving from Ft. Lauderdale back to New York City. Joel Meyerowitz's son Sasha did most of the filming. You hear his voice only a few times in the footage I'm about to play you. When they set out on the trip, Sasha was 27, Joel was 57, Hy was 87. Do you know what ocean this is? Well, I'll be honest with you, Joel. I don't remember. Not the Catskills Ocean-- The Catskills are mountains. This is an ocean. Which one? Well, I don't know. Is it the Pacific or the Atlantic? I will take that as Pacific. Really? Wrong. Wrong? Yeah, wrong. So which one is it then? It's the permiss- permission of-- The Permishic. Right. The Permishic! The Farshimmelt. The Farshimmelt Ocean. I am a bissel farshimmelt! What are you asking me so early in the morning a question like that? Where were you born? 1-0-9-2-- 1-0-9-2-0-7-- no. 1-5-9-0-5-9 East-- Well, it was East 100th Street, right? Yeah. Yeah. He taught me all the street-smart things. He set up a punching bag for me. And he taught me how to fight, how to take my stance, how to throw a punch, how to put your body behind it. He had me work out on a light bag too, like this. He always felt that if you got into a scrape in the neighborhood that you shouldn't run away. His motto was, "Step in and deliver the first blow." And he said, "Take the biggest guy down." And that was his attitude. He wouldn't stop and run away from anything. On Morrison Avenue, the block we lived on, he was considered the mayor of the block. Anytime there was a dispute that had to be settled, they would actually come and ask him, "What do you think, Hy?" Or if there were strangers coming through the neighborhood and they needed to be told to get out of there, they'd get him. And the scenes I remember of it, people would gather in front of our window, and they'd yell, "Hymie? Hey, Hymie?" And he'd come to the window and he would adjudicate from the window. He would say, "No, no. You shouldn't do that. And he should do this. And you get that. Let him alone." And it was like The Judge. Here we come, baby. And I want you to know-- hey you! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hey, Pop? What? You know what this reminds me of? No. Does that remind you of Melvin? Oh, yeah. That's what I was thinking. I didn't think of the name at that time. Do you remember Melvin? Yeah. Sure I remember him. What was Melvin? He was a little Chinese little bird. A parakeet. A parakeet. Right. I didn't think-- Do you remember the things that Melvin said? He called us, he spoke to us, and he also called his name out a lot. Yeah, but how did he say it? Do you remember? "I'm Mel-- I'm Melvin!" Isn't it, isn't it, "Hi, Belvin?" No, he said, "I'm Melvin--" what? Melvin Belvin? "I'm Melvin Meyerowitz." Oh, yeah. Can you tell me the story of the time he got lost-- I can't tell you about-- look at this. I can't tell you about any-- look at this. Another one comes. Hiya, boys! Hello! Hello! We know you! We know your grandfather! Pop, remember how he used to say "My name is Melvin Meyerowitz. I'm a Jewish bird." Yeah. Yes. That comes back to you? I know it. It didn't but that-- "Good morning, Dr. Goldberg." Oh, yeah. Whenever Dr. Goldberg came to visit Mom when she was sick? Yeah. And do you remember the time the bird flew away across the Bronx? He went out the door on Mom's shoulder and he flew away. And we were all so heartbroken that the bird was gone. And then some woman called up. Do you remember? She called mom, and she said, "Do you have a bird named Melvin?" My mother said, "Yeah, we have a bird. It was a green and yellow parakeet." And the woman said, "Well, the bird landed on my window and said, 'My name is Melvin Meyerowitz. I'm a Jewish bird.' And I looked you up in the phone book, and I called the Meyerowitz's, and they said, 'No, no. That's my brother Hy's bird.'" We went and we got the bird back. Do you remember that? No. I'm surprised. Come on! You don't want to go? Don't fall! Take it easy, take it easy. Do you want to go? With the onset of memory loss, it's not only his memories that are fading away, but it's the memories that I shared with him that are fading away. So I could no longer say to him, "Hey Pop, remember we did this?" And have him say, "Yes, that was fantastic. Remember it?" So I found myself progressively left alone with my memories. And then you look at your own memories and you realize, I got this handful of really insignificant things, and I've made them my world, my world of memory. And it's astonishing how the few things that I recall to share with him are minor notes. The bird or the handful of things that I ask him. So that was really-- that was a lesson for me about what it is that rises up out of our experience that we hold onto. Pop. Yes? I want to ask you a few questions about the family. About our family? About our family. Yes. You've got three sons. Yes. What are their names? Joel, Ricky-- And who's your youngest son? The youngest one is-- I think it was David. I don't remember the name anymore. Joel, Rick, and--? Joel, Ricky, and-- yeah. Stevie. Stevie. Oh, yeah. OK. Do you know what Rick does to make a living? what his career is? Well, he tries to do a lot of stuff for you. If he were following me, he would be doing it on the crook. But-- What's he famous for? Ricky? Well, in the first place, he's my kid. You are also. And because that alone gives you enough fame. So you don't remember what Rick does? Ricky? Rick is a half-time, or part-time book-- I don't know the trade names. You're getting closer, Pop. Just try. Try to think about what Rick does. Rick? Rick is an artist. Right! You got it. Not what? You got it right. And I'm Joel. What do I do? You're a doll. You're my best number one! I know. Come on. Get serious, Pop. Do you remember what it is I do? What do I do? You make money. I'll tell you what, I'll give it to you straight off the street. What's my profession? What's what? What's my profession? What's your most attachment? What's my profession? Your profession. Now I've got to figure out-- I don't know. Crook or thief or whatever. You're known as an artist. Serious artist in the art field. OK, what about Stevie? What's Stevie's business? Judy? Stevie. Stevie? I don't know. Does it bother you that you can't remember your kids' names sometimes and you can't remember what they do? Well, I'll tell you, yeah. I see them-- "Hello, goodbye." And that's it. I'm not complaining. Is it hard to see him like this? Does it feel painful? Honestly, it's sad. I have a feeling of sadness, but I also have a feeling of acceptance. We've been apart for 20 years in the mutual prime of our lives when I was raising my children and he was a grandparent. We weren't together. And so I guess I'm just accepting of where he is. If we had been together for 20 years and I had seen the decline and I had been relating to him emotionally and lovingly all that time, I might feel a deeper sadness. But even though he's my father, the distance that we've been apart all these years has put some kind of a buffer in there. So this is the guy that I know now. We have a much closer relationship, the way we see each other and talk to each other and have continuity. I just know at one point, you said to him he was your hero, which I thought was so sweet and I thought it must be hard to see-- A hero fall. Right. Well, he was my hero. My childhood hero. But that's so far away, I can't relate to the sadness of that. I love him in that unequivocal way that a child loves a parent. And I feel when I care for him a kind of renewal or a rebirth of feeling in this period. I know when I take him after a shower and I rub him down, I actually feel his head in my hands and I feel his flesh in my hands. It's been many years since I had that kind of contact with my father. And it was a little strange at first. I thought, "What's it like to rub this other person's body? Touch this other person's body?" It's like deference. And then I realize it's my Pop. And he's in need. He can't take care of himself this way. Mom? OK, here's Papa, Mom. Hold on. OK, here comes Dad. Joel? Is it my Joel? Don't you know who I am? Who? What do you mean, "How come I'm on the phone?" Don't get mad at me. Don't get mad at me. It's very important because I've been traveling. I didn't-- I think my father had a classic marriage of his generation. He loved my mother. She was beautiful and hot tempered, an exciting person to be with. But he wanted something from her that either he didn't know how to get or she couldn't give. And that was a kind of mother-love that he himself hadn't experienced. Yes, I'm OK. No, I'm not having a good time. Are you having a good time? You are, really? OK. I want you to be healthy and strong and smile, Sally. His mother had been bed-ridden after his birth. And then she died soon after. So he never really knew her. That's the deepest groove in his memory, which is, I think, unrequited love. Don't go down the judge's because right now I'm beginning the first one of Joel's tests. And I will be back at home maybe-- who knows? A couple of months from now. I don't know, Sally. Would you go with me the next trip? Would you go with me the next trip? OK. All right, May. Take care, sweetheart. Be careful, will you? Be careful. Bye bye. And I think from my point of view now that if he had really just loved my mother without demanding something from her, or needing something from her, which was that childhood need, that she probably would have just loved him back for the kind, warm, funny man that he was. But because there was something that he was demanding, she couldn't give it to him. A kind of perverse logic of relationship occurred. She's mad. She's mad about something. Mad about me. I didn't do nothing. Why is she mad? She's mad, that's all. She sounded very, very mad. She sounded like she didn't care. Well, she probably was caring a lot-- Oh, sure. --which is why she was mad. That we didn't call. I waver also when I think of her being by herself. And I would rather be there than be here. But you're having such a good time here. Yeah, to my limit, I'm having what I like and I would love to do, love to be involved with. But the idea is that I always have to include Mama. Throughout the trip, he asked for Sally every single day-- "Where's Sally? Where's Mom?"-- thinking that she should have been in the car next to him. Sally? Did you leave Sally upstairs there? Yeah, Pop. We said goodbye to Mom. No kidding. Right. Because I noticed right here that this is no Sally. I thought this was Sally all bundled up and I see it's that bundled up. It's your pillow. That pillow's going to have to be your Sally-- Yeah, yeah. The pillow. --for at least two weeks now. Oh, you guys are starting to pull tricks on me now. I know, I know, I know. Well, is she here? Nope. That's your pillow, Pop. Jesus Christ almighty. I know she's not in the trunk. You wouldn't do that to her. I'm not able to come to this, Joel. I'm not the smartest and the cutest and the swiftest. I-- If my Mommy-- The swiftest! If my Mommy don't come up and then don't come down in five minutes, I want to know where she is. This is my wife. So we better check the trunk. Oh, the bed is in the trunk? No. I wouldn't be surprised. There was a time when we were driving with her in Florida, before we made the film. And she was sitting right next to him. And he leaned over to me and he said, "Where's Mom?" And I said, "Well, who's sitting next to you?" And he looked over at this person sitting next to him. He said, "Where's Sally? That's not Sally." You can see better with this. Good morning. Good morning to you! Good morning, Pop. Hiya, Sonny. How are you doing? I don't really know. His real intelligence is to live in the moment. He knew where he was and he was just enjoying the experience. But he couldn't really look back at what he had done even an hour before and remember it. And I tested him all the time, because I wanted to see if stimulation could actually enliven his mentality and bring him back at all. But that was sort of a hopeless hope. But it didn't stop me from having it anyway. I just want to review a few things with you. I have a few questions for you. Uh, I'm not-- I don't have to call my attorney? No. No. OK. Do you remember any of the things on the trip so far? But will you-- I'm just going to say. Don't ask me about anything I did. Why? Why? Because that's gone, man. It's gone. Not that-- it wasn't so many things going on. But I just don't remember. It's jumbled. I've been to a car. I went to the automobile. I've been to the train. I was going in every direction. And I was losing sight. I was losing sight for no reason whatsoever. Everybody was going around us. Turmoil. Turmoiled. To moil? To moil? To moil? To moil is not to moil, but to moil is to have and to kiss and to love, to moil! "Respect the old man who--" wait, wait. I can wear glasses. No, you can do this without glasses. Yes? OK. "Respect the old man who has forgotten what he learned from a broken table-- from a broken table tablet. Have a place in the urk--" "Ark." "Ark. Ark. Besides the tablets of the law." OK, now read it again. And for the first sentence, "respect the old man who has forgotten." Just read it that way. "Repsect the old man who has forgotten what he has learned. For broken tablets have a place in the mind-- in the ark, excuse me-- the ark besides the tablets of the law." Didn't I have my glasses here? OK, now read it-- do you want my glasses? I wanted to try it. Read it one more time. At the end say, "the Talmud." Because it says-- The Talmud? It says it comes from the Talmud. "Respect the old man who has forgotten what he has learned." Come to a rest. OK? Ready? Read. With my glasses. We don't have your glasses here, Dad. Take--huh? You don't need your glasses. You read it perfectly without your glasses. All right. Because I thought maybe-- Just do it one more time. All right. "Respect the old man who has forgotten what he learned." [CLEARS THROAT] "For broken tablets have a place in the ark besides the tablets of the law." The Talmud. It was a little skimpy. It was? It was a little skimpy, a little jumpy. Yeah. Put these glasses on and just see if they help you to read it. Maybe so. Maybe so. One last time. This is it. This is your chance. All right. Otherwise you don't get the job. I don't have a-- I don't have-- This is a casting session. Yeah, but maybe he's cock-eyed-- You've got enough light there, Pop. All you've got to do is try to read it. (SUBJECT) HY MEYEROWITZ: Yeah. I know I-- where is my-- didn't I bring my glasses up? I don't know. They're away somewhere in a bag. Ready? Here goes. This is your screen test. Yes. "Respect the old man who has forgotten-- been-- who has forgotten what he learned. For broken ta--" only one thing. It was still shaking, my eye. That's why I was loose. Take 11 for Hy Meyerowitz reading from "The Forgotten." No. Take 11. Dad, this is-- no, no. Read that. No, no. This is a joke, Pop. Read those few words there. And then with the words "the Talmud." Nice and slow, take this one. "Repsect the old man who has been forgotten, what he learned. For the broken tablets have a way place in the ark besides the tablets of the law." The Tablund-- Talmud. Ah, twice I made a mistake. Well, I-- now that I know what I was doing-- I guess as a legitimate actor, you would have a hard time reading your lines. But as a comic actor, you can deliver your lines flawlessly-- Yeah, yeah. An economist, yeah. --without even having to read anything. Yeah. Well, this one, I imagine, would have to be. Because this is the Talmud. Your career as a Talmudian actor-- It just ended. --is kaput! You're finished. Out! Next! Bring in the next old man. When my father was young, he was a wonderful dancer and athlete and a natural comic. And I guess Charlie Chaplin was the rage, and just as there were Elvis imitators, there were Chaplin imitators. And my father, he became a Chaplin imitator. And he had that act that I guess he took on the road, or around the vaudeville circuit in New York. I was trying to fit in myself, through all the years with the joking. I was trying to be a Chaplin. I didn't know if I was doing that right or wrong, but I saw that poor little guy, that he bent down, picked something up, everybody'd give him a kick in the ass. That was what I used to see. That is what I didn't want to happen to me. What was it that you liked about Charlie Chaplin that made you want to do the Charlie Chaplin act? He was a giant in the height of a little midget. He was a little guy, went righting all the wrongs, helping others as he passed by. We'd pat him on the top of the head. He was remembered out there, just for a minute. He'd have a little [UNINTELLIGIBLE] with a little person hat and no money or no nothing. And he would go inside and he'd come out here like this. Like, shake his shoulders, and then travel around. And that was what I loved, the goodness, the goodness. And not everybody understood him. But those that understood him, they would put their arm around him and he would do the same with them. It was a beautiful deed for the day. Did you feel connected to him in that way? Always. [CHOKING UP] Always. Always. Aw-- With Alzheimer's disease, most memory finally dissolves. And even though he was a man who was easily lovable, I think he forgot that these were his qualities. And that he was, in fact, loved by people faded from his memory. And at the end of his life, he remembers a few of the more painful things-- that he's a motherless child, that he was not loved the way he wanted to be loved. And it's amazing that with the murkiness of Alzheimer's clouding everything, that something as primal as being an unloved child stayed with him. When anybody would show a little bit of something to me that I was accepted, and they would talk to me, and they'd pat me on the top of the head of put their hands around me, I'm home. I loved everybody. I loved everybody. But nobody saw me. Nobody remembered me. Nobody knew me. Nobody saw me. But I was there. To this very day, I have the same fear. I have poor Mommy, I have. And she doesn't see me. She doesn't see me. Oh, Papa. Well, your boys saw you. We all saw you. I loved when you were the strong man in the neighborhood. I loved when you were the Chaplin figure and the comic. I loved the way you drove the car. You were such a great driver. I love the way you talk to people. You could talk to the big guys or the little guys, and you made them all the same, Pop. I used to think of you as the great equalizer. You could take a guy who was a doctor or a principal of the school or a business man, and you can take another guy who was just an ordinary worker, and you would treat them the same. And you would bring them all to the same level, and that would be the level of laughter. You saw me. You saw Papa. That's right. Joel Meyerowitz. His father Hy, his son Sasha. Their film has the working title The Mayor of the Block and is looking for a distributor. Coming up, people do what they shouldn't. In a minute from Public Radio International when our program continues. We have arrived at Act Two of our show, My World Record. This is from a book by Tom Andrews called The Hemophiliac's Motorcycle. On November 15, 1972, one week after Nixon was reelected, I clapped my hands for 14 hours and 31 minutes. I was listed in The Guinness Book of World Records. I was 11 years old. My record was published on page 449 of the 1974 edition of The Guinness Book, landlocked between the listings for largest circus and club swinging in the chapter entitled "Human Achievements." The listing read, "Clapping. The duration record for continuous clapping is 14 hours, 31 minutes by Thomas C. Andrews at Charleston, West Virginia on November 15, 1972. He sustained an average of 120 claps per minute at an audibility range of at least 100 yards." I'm writing this from my bed at the University of Michigan hospital. It is 3:00 AM. It is the half-dark of hospitals at night. I've had an accident. I have been in an accident. "That your scrapbook?" Ellen, the night nurse, asked. When I mutter that technically it's my mother's who brought it to the hospital to cheer me up, Ellen glances at the Inquirer headline and says, "You did that, clap your hands?" I nod. "Lord! Did you have a major bleed, or what?" "Dear Tom, it was certainly nice to read that you had broken the world record in clapping. We used to enjoy seeing how your dad recorded you and John in your annual picture for Christmas. The last few years, we had lost contact. Congratulations again. Everyone is very proud of you. Sincerely, the Ripley-Fishers." "Dear Tom, try to come out if you can. But if you can't, that's OK. I can play until about 4:00 or 5:00. I hope you come out. Will you walk with me today? Circle yes or no. I think you are the nicest boy over in Rolling Hills. I'm going to try to get you something. Love, Diane. PS-- write back if you want to. Don't let anybody else see this except Nan. If you want to. Or Laura. I just showed Nan and Laura. Do you mind? Circle yes or no. Answer questions and give back please." I have had an accident on the sidewalk. I watched my feet come out from under me on the iced concrete with a kind of anecdotal perspective. The bleeding inside the joints, the infusions of factor VIII, the weeks of immobility, the waiting for codeine, the inventions with which my mind would veer in the direction of solid ground. As my weight drilled into the twisting leg, I saw the whole pantomime emerge with the clarity of blown glass. When I told my hematologist that as a teenager I had raced motocross, that in fact in one race in Gallipolis, Ohio, I had gotten the holeshot and was bumped in the first turn and run over by 20-some motorcycles, she said, "No. Not with your factor level. I'm sorry but you wouldn't withstand the head injuries. You just like the sound of yourself being dramatic." "Does he have to do that?" the waitress at the Pizza Hut asked. She passed out glasses of ice water from a tray, then set the tray down on the table. "He's breaking a world record," John said flatly. "Does it bother you?" my mother said. "I can't make him stop, but we can leave." The waitress looked up. "You're joking, right? Let me see." She gestured for me to pull up my hands out from under the table. I showed my hands. "He has to sustain an audibility range of at least 100 yards," John said. "I'm getting the cook," she said. "He's got to see this." A minute later, a man with botched teeth wearing a blue, dough-smeared apron was glaring at me. "Well?" he said, impatiently. Again I showed my hands. I speeded up just a little the rate of clapping. "Right. Unbelievable," the cook said, shaking his head and disappearing. I said, "Can we order?" "What do you do if you have to go to the bathroom?" the waitress asked. "I'd like a root beer," I said. "Do you have root beer?" "He's trying to go the whole day without going," my mother said. "Good luck," the waitress said. I said, "Do you have root beer?" "Yeah, they have root beer," John said. I said, "I was asking her, thank you very much." "I don't think I could go the whole day," the waitress said. "I think I have a weak bladder." I leaned over to John and whispered, "Help." "Hey," said the waitress, "how are you going to eat pizza?" "I'm not," I said. "I'm just sipping some root beer. If you have it." "They have it. They have it," John said. John buried his head in his hands. "I'm going to feed him," my mother said. "No way," I said. For a second I forgot to clap, then caught myself and reestablished my rhythm. "We'll have a large mushroom and pepperoni," my mother said, "and I'd like a glass of iced tea. What do you want to drink?" "I want a Coke," John said. "Root beer," I said. There are times in the last minutes before I am allowed-- or allow myself-- more codeine when the pain inside the joint simplifies me utterly. I feel myself descending some kind of evolutionary ladder until I become as crude and guileless as an amoeba. The pain is not personal. I am incidental to it. It is like faith, the believer eclipsed by something immense. After the waitress left, my mother lectured me about not participating in events we scheduled on John's off days, days when he wasn't on the dialysis machine. "You've known for a week that we were coming here. You could have picked another day for this clapping business." She said this in front of John, who grimaced and began looking around the room. My argument was that just being there at Pizza Hut while I was in the crucial early hours of breaking a world record was sufficient participation, and that sipping a little root beer under the circumstances put me solidly in the off-day spirit of things. She didn't see it that way. What surprised me was how easy it was to keep a precise and consistent rhythm. Two hours into the record, I felt as if my hands, like the legs of runners who have broken through the wall, could hammer away at themselves effortlessly and indefinitely. At that point, I knew I would not start a bleed. I had no doubt. And yet my hands kept hammering at themselves, hammering. "Nixon's problem is he's not eating right," my mother said. "It's as plain as day. Anyone can see it. Just look at the man." It was 5:30 PM and I was still at it, 120 claps per minute. "Care for a drink?" my father said to himself. "Don't mind if I do. Thank you for asking." For a long time, I asked John to come and watch me race. Again and again, he refused. Finally, he agreed to come to a race at Hidden Hills Raceway in Gallipolis, Ohio-- to shut me up, I think, as much as to satisfy his curiosity about his hemophiliac brother racing a motorcycle across the gouged wilderness. I knew John would have to wear a plastic bag over his shunt arm to keep the dust out. We were lucky it rained. Dust usually billowed wildly after the start of a race, a huge rolling wave breaking over the hills and shrouding the spectators. Rain would keep the dirt moist and on the track. Midway through the practice sessions, however, the rain stopped. By the time of the first 125 moto, dust forced John into the cab of the pickup. That is the image that attacks me now-- John in the truck, windows rolled up, reading a book to pass the time while I kicked up the dust all around him. Random symmetries. Days when John's shunt clotted and he required I forget how many cc's of heparin to get his blood to stop coagulating. Meanwhile, I'd start a bleed and would need cryoprecipitate or factor VIII to get my blood to clot. More x-rays. I've stopped bleeding into the spinal muscles. Soon enough, my hematologist says my body will loosen and break down and absorb the hardened blood surrounding the spine, as it had been doing in my leg. There has been no intraspinal bleeding, no bleeding into the kidney or liver. I look at Carrie. I look at my mother and father. We are inside a sudden, astonishing calm. I seem to levitate and hover over the white sheets. Once when John was dialyzing, I tripped into the machine and jerked a tube clean out of its socket. John's blood pumped and sprayed into the air, splattering across the carpet and splotching our skin and clothes. My mother worked frantically to reconnect the tube and to stabilize John's blood pressure. Later, I noticed that some of the blood had seeped inside a picture frame in the wall besides the dialysis chair. The frame held a photograph of John and me. We were wading in the Kanawha River, staring hard at the gray water. Excerpts from Tom Andrews' prose poem "Codeine Diary." It's in his book The Hemophiliac's Motorcycle and was read by Frank Melcori. Act Three, Iron Man. All of our stories today have been at one level about yearning briefly fulfilled. And we thought this last story would be a perfect way to end this show. Mark O'Brien is a writer living in California, but because of a childhood case of polio, he lives most of each day in an iron lung, on his back. He's the subject of the documentary film Breathing Lessons by Jessica Yu. The film is remarkable because it's about a guy in an iron long, but it is completely unsentimental. There are even parts where it's funny. This is a brief scene from the film. Because he's in the iron lung, Mark O'Brien has attendants. They cook and they help him out during the day. And during the film, he explains that nowadays he always has men do this job. Because back when he had women do the job, he kept falling in love with these women, and the love was never reciprocated. He wrote about one of these women, "Her pale, perfect skin, her strong, fleshy legs drove me to ecstasies of despair. See, she talked to me as a human instead of her savagely crippled employer." A quick warning before I play this very brief scene. It contains mild sexual content that may not be suitable for every listener. I hired a sex-surrogate in-- '87 or '86. I forget when. I just-- felt very crazy. I was-- angry at all women for not falling in love-- with me, because I had fallen in love with several-- attendants. And they-- all said it was a business rela-- tionship. A sex surrogate's a person who has some of psychological training that-- works with their body, having sex with a client who's recruited by a therapist. The surrogate had this big mirror and she-- saw me naked and aroused. And-- at the time, I thought I was the ugliest man in the world. I looked just like something someone-- wouldn't want to have sex with. And Cheryl was very kind to me. She kissed me on the chest after-- we had intercourse. I felt my-- chest was very unattractive, but-- she kissed me right there. And-- the intercourse was so quick, it just-- I hate to say it, but it was wham, bam, thank you ma'am. And it-- wasn't as great as I thought it would be, but-- being naked in a bed with a woman who's being extremely friendly was the-- most fun I've ever had. I think I'd like to do it again. Usually Mark O'Brien can't be outside of his iron lung for more than 45 minutes. But when the sex surrogate was with him, he was outside his tube for longer than that, longer than he almost every goes out. And he didn't even use his portable respirator. I didn't need it for an hour. I went for-- an hour without it. It makes you think of sex as respiratory-- therapy. Maybe Medi-Cal would pay for it. About a year after I last saw her, I just felt terribly depressed. I expected somehow that seeing the surrogate would change my life. I had started wearing cologne. And I thought everyone would be able to tell if I was sexy and handsome. Nothing happened. They tell us to think of ourselves as-- sexual and beautiful, but it doesn't do any good-- unless someone else sees us as sexual and beautiful. You just can't demand love. You-- have to be lovable, and-- I'm still trying to figure out how to do that. Mark O'Brien in Jessica Yu's film, Breathing Lessons. O'Brien has a new book of poems called The Man in the Iron Lung published by the Lemonade Factory in Berkeley. Well, our program was produced today by Alix Spiegel and myself, with Nancy Updike and Julie Snyder. Contributing editors Paul Tough, Sarah Vowell, Jack Hitt, and Margy Rochlin. Music help, as always, from Sarah Vowell. To buy a tape of this program, call us at WBEZ in Chicago, 312-832-3380. Our email address, [email protected] This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia, who can be heard in his office every day, saying-- Don't you know who I am? Who? What do you mean how come I'm on the phone? I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life. Next! Bring in the next old man. PRI, Public Radio International.
|
From WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program, the story of two Americans who went to South Africa. One's white, one's black. And they went there because there's something about South Africa for them and for many Americans, something familiar and unfamiliar at the same time in a way that makes it mesmerizing. Robert Kennedy described this congruence of nations as well as anybody. In 1966, he was visiting South Africa. And he began a speech at the University of Cape Town this way-- I come here because of my deep interest and affection for a land settled by the Dutch in the mid-17th century, then taken over by the British, and at last independent. A land in which the native inhabitants were at first subdued, but relations with whom remain a problem to this day. A land which was once the importer of slaves and now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that former bondage. I refer, of course, to the United States of America. That stunned pause before the audience begins applauding, I think that's so beautiful. More than England or France or Israel, more than Canada or Japan, when we think of South Africa, it is a more interesting mirror of the United States than nearly any country. I think because we glimpse a distant echo of the most frightening parts of our own country and the most inspiring parts. In the 1950s and '60s, black South Africans looked to the US for inspiration. Lewis Nkosi lived in Sophiatown. He remembers reading American literature like Langston Hughes' Simple Speaks His Mind. We used to laugh so much about what he was saying, because it sounded to us like this was Johannesburg. And listening to the music, the films like Stormy Weather were just speaking for us. "Harlem was like our neighborhood," Lewis Nkosi says. Black South Africans in Sophiatown listened to Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, tried to dress and talk like Lena Horne and Cab Calloway. In Sophiatown, gang members modeled themselves after Hollywood movies, dressed in zoot suits, picked up phrases from tough guy films like Street with No Name. We wanted to sound like Americans, to relate to American culture. And we wanted also to fantasize about being black Americans rather than black South Africans, because the intensification of suffering in South Africa was just too great. America, it was a country where you have Thurgood Marshall working to eliminate a lot of the civil rights abuses and getting schools integrated and so on. So you know, this was a movement in the opposite direction to where we were moving. Nations, like men, often march to the beat of different drummers. And the precise solutions of the United States can neither be dictated nor transplanted to others. What is important, however, is that all nations must march toward increasing freedom, toward justice for all. You must do this not because it is economically advantageous, although it is, not because the laws of God commanded, although they do, we must do it for the single and fundamental reason that it is the right thing to do. And looking to America as a land of hope, this is a cliche now. But we really did believe that. Now, of course, the situation is reversed. Once Nelson Mandela got out of prison, and especially after he entered the president's office, it's been black Americans who look to South Africa for inspiration. A few years ago, I did a series of stories for National Public Radio with a South African reporter, comparing race relations in the US with race relations in South Africa. And one of the most striking differences between the way that blacks in the two countries saw things was blacks in South Africa, they said they had hope. Of course, it isn't just black Americans who look to South Africa to see a place where things are changing, where things are getting better in small ways. Today, we've devoted our entire program to the story of two guys who look to South Africa that way. Their names are Josh Seftel and Rich Robinson. Both of them grew up in the normal morass of post-civil rights race relations in this country, went to schools that were integrated but where blacks and whites usually stayed separate, rarely mixed. So they headed to the new South Africa for a few weeks. And it turns out they did not agree on what they saw there. What we bring you today is partly a story of the emerging multiracial society over there and partly a story about the one here at home to contemplate this 4th of July weekend. Rich starts our story. It was my idea to go to South Africa. I'd met this South African guy at work. He told me that South Africa is the most beautiful country in the world and that everything you see on TV about it is wrong. I asked Josh to go with me. I had another reason for wanting to visit South Africa. I had just gotten a letter from some South African guy named Benzion Seftel asking if we might be related. My family's very small. Besides my parents and two sisters, there's only a few Seftels in all of North America. I guess I was simultaneously excited and scared. I mean, it's not every day that the size of your family suddenly doubles. But when they're white South Africans, all these questions pop into your head, the first and most obvious question being, "So do they hate black people?" I mean, what do you do when your family doubles in size but the new half is a bunch of white supremacists? I decided not to share any of these worries with Rich. Josh and I met 10 years ago in college. We ended up living in the same house, and we've lived together off and on since then. Josh is the son of a Jewish doctor in the suburbs. I grew up in the city. My parents are public high school teachers. He's white, I'm black, but none of this has ever been an issue. Before this trip, I don't think we ever had one serious talk about race. We both wanted to see the new South Africa, to see how much the country had changed since Nelson Mandela took power two years ago. We decided to begin our search in a neighborhood called Yeoville. The free magazine they give you on the plane had an article about it. Lots of glossy pictures of blacks and whites laughing together in the streets, drinking together in bars and clubs, eating together in restaurants. Yeoville's a party. The street is lined with outdoor cafes, people are wearing Nike T-shirts, New York Yankees hats, all kinds of American stuff. The scene is just like the magazine pictures. Blacks and whites talk together and drive by us in BMWs and Mercedes. When Rich and I go into a convenience store to get a drink, there's a tall black man wearing a Public Enemy T-shirt in the corner. He's playing Pac-Man. I tell you, things are going properly. We are just mixing up. Like, I'm talking to you guys. I think you are colored, yeah? You are colored? We call it "black" in America. Is it? OK, that's black. And you're "white," right? I'm white. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. That's OK. I mean, that is positive. You can look like my woman. She has [? got a ?] white too, man. Standing over by the pay phone, his girlfriend was plump and rosy in an African print jumpsuit and a red cashmere Kangol beret. She's not from around here, but still, I've got here my woman, my white woman. Lovely. I love her to the maximum, I'll tell you that. But it's like, anyway-- Do think that Yeoville is maybe one of the best places right now because it's mixed? In South Africa? Sure. Sure. What's that? That's the pager, my man. [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. What does it say? "Talking nonsense." [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. Your girlfriend just paged you from across the room? Yeah. She just went to the phone call and paged me, and it's like, hey, beeping! She's-- anyway, guys, hey. What's your girlfriend's name? Mary. Mary. If you came into this store five years ago with Mary-- a white woman, black man-- what would have happened? I would have been dead eight years ago. You would have been dead eight years ago? That's true. Why? What would have happened? Yeah. Because I would have been killed by my own brothers because they were fighting against the white people. And if they would have seen me with a white woman, that's the end. It was our first day in South Africa, and it seemed like everything you'd want it to be, everything you'd dreamed of for the new multiracial society. Blacks and whites together, Pac-man, and personal pagers. We went to the Pita Palace for a celebratory souvlaki, and there, our celebration was cut short. I'm now 21 years old, right? And what I did was I decided that I have to leave this country. Dimitri, the owner of the Pita Palace. I can't raise my children here. There's too much crime. And they'll just break into your house, take your stuff, and go. They come into your house, they break in, they rape your wife, they shoot you, and totally destroy your life. Kind of like the black people are taking revenge on the whites for apartheid, you know? Someone got around and said, "Oh, let's drive them out of the country." And it's working, because every single year, the emigrations are going up. A lot of white people are leaving? Yeah. Didn't you know that? Thousands, thousands. I know of hundreds of families that have emigrated this year. You're going to leave soon? As soon as I can, yeah. Over the next few days, we would hear Dimitri's story over and over. Wherever we went, people talked about crime and fear and whites leaving. That night when we walked home through the dark streets of Johannesburg, we found a shiny bullet shell on the pavement. We took a cab the rest of the way home. You excited? About what? What are you doing today? Going to see-- --the people that I think are my relatives. That's why I'm shaving. So how many times have you talked to them? Well, I've talked to them on the phone once-- twice. Do you think they're shaving right now too? I can only hope so. Are you nervous? Not really. I mean, it could be interesting. Well, what if you don't impress them? I'm just afraid that they're going to be racist and they're going to hate you because you're black, and that you'd never forgive me for it. So you're going to have a little anxious energy? Perhaps. We Seftels are unusual. Well, look at Joshua, you see. Yeah. And we've got many stories. Well, I suppose Harold told you-- I don't want to go over it-- his association with Mandela. Did he tell you? So here we are with my long-lost family. Sitting around a big table piled with lasagna and fresh baked bread, are Harold Seftel, his sisters Dolly and Molly Seftel, Dolly's son Louis, and Rich and I. They reminded me of my relatives back is Schenectady. Josh looks a lot like Louis. It was easy to believe they were related. Nevertheless, we spent several long hours around dinner trying to prove it. Now, Uncle Borach is which person here? Now, that's my father Louie. That's Louie, the little boy in the picture? That's right. Yes. And then Uncle Borach is him? They pulled out some old photos, including that turn-of-the-century photograph that every Jewish family has. It's black and white, ragged at the edges, with a neatly posed family. The father in this picture had a thick, white beard, heavy eyelids, and a black-brimmed hat. He was probably my great uncle. Yes, well, he was very smart. Apparently, he was a ladies' man. Oh, really? Yes. He had lots of ladies. In fact-- There's something about meeting distant relatives so far from home. There's this immediate bond that's basic and powerful, this feeling like you're all players on the same team, even though you've just met. But at the same time, mainly because Rich was there with me, I was nervous and wanted to know what the people around the dinner table had done during apartheid. It's embarrassing to think about now, but I asked them repeatedly to talk about those years. At first, they were reluctant to discuss it, but finally they did. I was relieved to find out that Harold, a tall, lean, 60-year-old with squinty eyes, not only knows Nelson Mandela, he's one of his doctors. After Mandela came out of prison, he invited Harold and his kids for lunch. During apartheid, Molly was active in a group called The Black Sash, which picketed outside the court buildings. At the end of the day, what did we do? I mean, it's not that we rioted in the streets or that we-- But I mean, look at you. You only worked in black hospitals, you wouldn't-- I would not-- I worked in a black hospital. And look, I suppose I did a little bit of good-- I mean, you changed the attitude of students towards black people. And he was-- But I can't really describe myself as an activist. Let's be honest. Yeah, but your daughter was an activist. Yes, but my children. I think I would say my children. It turns out, Harold's son David used to drive around giving medical care to black activists who were too scared to go into the state hospitals. Harold's daughter Lisa is a member of Mandela's party, the ANC. She was arrested and imprisoned for several months during the struggle and had to go into hiding underground for years. For a while, Lisa's Aunt Dolly and Dolly's son Louis, who are less political, let her stay at their house. Yes, '86, when we went to Israel, that's when she stayed and moved in here with the ANC. That's a great story. During that year, because she needed a place to hide, we said that she could stay here and she could run whatever she wants to here. Because it was safe, it was suburbia, it wasn't where the activists hang out in Yeoville. So this was a great cover for her. So she stretched out and she spread out by the pool. All the ANC communists just laid out by the pool. We don't know that, Louis. We know from Joseph, our servant. He's from Malau. He has worked for us for 35 years. And Joseph would tell us that every day he would cook for them. And he would bring them meals. And he would serve them as they were writing their newsletters and their propaganda. Even though Louis seemed to have some problems with the ANC, Harold knew Mandela, Lisa was in the ANC, Molly was protesting in the streets. As far as I was concerned, my family passed the test. My fear that they would be a bunch of white supremacists was put to rest and I felt relieved. I felt uncomfortable. Dolly and Louis got this nervous, self-congratulatory tone when they talked to me about some of this stuff. And we're very unique. First of all, we're one of the few white families that's got a black child in the family. I mean, I'm the aunt of this-- and not many Jewish families have got black children. In fact, I don't think there are any other Jewish families. And there's one family, but they adopted the black child. It was just one of those situations where you never forget you're the only black person in the room. After eating, Louis took us on a short tour of their estate. We saw their expensive bedrooms, pools, Jacuzzis, and finally, tucked around the back of the house, was the servants' quarters, which consisted of a tiny main room with four beds and a closet-sized bathroom. One worker was in the room at the time watching a dim black-and-white TV. Beside his head on the wall was a photocopy of a game board. Louis told us that this was a lottery game. If you picked the right square, you won the pot for that week. I asked him who played. He pointed to the servant and said in a patronizing tone, that all of "them" do. The servant shook his head to say that he did not play, but Louis repeated that "all blacks played." Later, there was this awkward moment-- awkward for me, anyway-- when Dolly and Louis were talking about Harold's daughter, Lisa. Her main boyfriends were black. But she would always say that the blacks in the ANC were always-- But that was the-- often you won't find, she doesn't criticize much, but she did say that the blacks, the boyfriends were not faithful. They had lots of women. And even the man that she's had the baby with, he's got a child. But I hope that he's faithful to her. Well, I don't know how she meant it, but that sweeping statement about what all blacks are like, all blacks are unfaithful, that did it for me. That let me know who they were. I'm saying I went over to that family and I felt tension because of a reason. That's what I'm saying. I don't know. I don't quite understand what was tangibly so harsh about-- Are you serious? Back at the hotel, we talked about dinner. It's just the first time that I had seen white settlers talking about blacks and their domestic help and who they keep around. And it was just I didn't realize how even the most liberal whites aren't necessarily the most-- they're proud that they have Lisa in their family because that way they can say that they are, in fact, the most liberal whites. It's almost like you don't want to like them. Pfft. I'm serious. I did not go in there not wanting to like them. But I definitely felt tense. And I didn't know why I felt tense. And I started to feel bad, and I started not wanting to be there. You missed it, though. When you left the room and it was just all of us in the room, we had nothing to talk about. They didn't want to talk to me at all. I mean, there was noticeable silence, and there was nothing going on. You honestly believe that most white South African families are more liberal or as liberal as them? No! See, I didn't say that. I said exactly what I said. I went and I saw and that was the reality and I felt, and that's what happened to me. Period. I'm not taking that away from you. You want to fight more? Hm? I can't fight about what I feel. I guess I'm saying that-- I don't know. I mean, I was pleasantly surprised that they were less racist than I could ever have expected. Well, did you hear what I'm saying? You're saying that because they were less racist than we thought they were going to be, that's good. And yes, that is good. But I'm still allowed to be upset about it. And I am, in fact, upset about it. And you know what it's like? It's exactly like America. There's an underlying tension, and people want to be friends and all of that. But on the underside, they're all just [BLEEP] dicks. This is where we live. This is our milieu. There's a wonderful park here. Rich needed a break from my family. So when Molly came to pick us up for breakfast, I went alone. She gave me a driving tour of the neighborhood. OK, now in this house-- let me show you-- in this house, this lady was attacked. They jumped over that fence and beat her up. I'll show you where another person was murdered. We drove through peaceful, leafy neighborhoods with big houses. But almost every house was surrounded by a high fence and barbed wire. One neighborhood had a manned checkpoint to keep people out who didn't belong. Another had armed security guards patrolling the tree-lined streets on bicycle. We drove past an area that looked like a golf course with a neatly manicured lawn. And right by the curb, half-hidden by the shrubbery, were maybe half a dozen black people, sitting and laying on the ground. In this bush here, the people squat. Anywhere where there's water, the homeless squat. That's amazing, because this looks like a very well-off neighborhood, and right on the edge, there are squatters. When my daughter Louise was here, there was a ring at our intercom. And I looked through the window, and I said "There's one of these squatters." I said, "Don't open the door." She says, "Tsk, Mommy." So she said, "Yes?" He said, "Please Madam, please. I want some bread." So I said, "Don't give it to him because he'll send hundreds here. And your mother will be killed. And leave him alone. He'll go and tell the others. You don't give him anything!" So I had just baked some bread, I made sandwiches. And I said, "Louise, I'm warning you. You'll find your mother dead." But she went on, and she put lettuce and tomatoes and cheese. And I said, "Louise, he's going to tell all the others. And you'll see. It'll be terrible. Leave it. Don't do it. Don't do it." And she walks up to the gate, and he says, "Oh, Madam! God bless you." And she said, "And don't you ever dare come here again!" And he jumped back. And do you know what? The next day they were ringing again. We were back at her house. She pulled her car up to the big gates and punched in a code. Metal doors slowly parted and we drove in. And you know how we used to live before? We had no fence. Nobody had fences. Crime has gotten worse since the end of apartheid, but it's not as big an increase as most people think. Since 1994, the murder has actually dropped 14%. Car thefts have dropped. Home burglaries have increased only 11%. The biggest increase in crime is non-residential robberies, which is up 50%, and rape, which is up 36%. What's happening is that crime in the white areas is now becoming the same as it's always been in the black townships. Josh and I weren't getting along so well since the fight in the hotel room. In the 10 years we have known each other, we had never really fought before. So we decided the best thing for our friendship would be to get away from his family and out of Johannesburg. We rented a tiny Volkswagen and set out to see more of the new South Africa. We drove for hours over green, rolling hills. The deeper we got into the country, the fewer and fewer white faces we saw. Every so often, we'd see a cluster of pink and aquamarine huts on a hillside, a village. Finally, we stopped at one. There's a group of guys about our age sitting in an old car seat next to one of the huts. They looked like they were waiting for something to happen. They didn't seem happy with the new South Africa. They promised us money. They promised us jobs. There's nothing that ever have happened like that. All three men were unemployed. For Wayne, a tall, thin man who covered his shaved head with a black fedora, told us that the new government had finally brought electricity to the village just that week. They bring us electricity first. Why not water first? Why didn't they ask us "What thing do you want first?" Are we going to eat electricity? Are we going to drink electricity? Where are we going to get money to buy this electricity if we are not employed? They invited us into their shebeen for beers. They asked us questions about America, about our girlfriends, about the federal system, how we liked people at the office. They told us a story about why black men's noses are flat and white men's noses are long. They asked me if I was a relative of Michael Jackson. And they complained about the new South Africa. Wayne said if he were president, he'd enact a much more radical redistribution than Nelson Mandela has. What I should do-- all those white men's area, white men's toilet, I'll do it upside-down. If this was the black man's toilet, then that is the white man's toilet. I'll take the whites there and tell them to come here in black men's toilets and then I'll write "Whites only." Yeah? The only thing maybe that should be the [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. But doesn't hatred breed more hatred? It's in the blood now. It's in the blood. Sitting in the shebeen, Josh and I were more relaxed with each other. There's nothing like a little talk about apartheid to make you forget your personal problems. One of the guys had an old accordion out on the car seat. I asked him to play a song and he did. "A Roman hymn," he told us. For these guys, the new South Africa was a lot like the old South Africa. They were still without water and work, and they still felt powerless. Apartheid had done more than just separate the races. It had created a lasting sense of black inferiority. The blacks, if they see a small boy of white meat, they think that small boy of white meat is-- I forgot-- is bigger than them. And they've got money, and they've got whatever. We always see ourselves as inferior as [? what we ?] [? have told, ?] the doctor and the system of [? his. ?] That thing will not end. On the way out of the village, we ran into three teenage village girls. One of them wore a thick layer of white face paint, like a mask. She said it was for pimples. We were talking, and they were teaching us how to say hello in Xhosa. And then the girl with face paint turned and looked us over. She looked at Rich's skin, which was a few shades later than her own. Then see looked at mine, which was a few shades lighter still. Then she looked at both of us. "Are you brothers?" She asked us. Our trip to South Africa continues with the South African Woodstock and an organization that's half Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" and half terrorist group. That's in a minute, from Public Radio International, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme. Usually we bring you a variety of different stories on that theme. But today, we're devoting our whole show to just one story about South Africa's emerging multiracial society and about America's. If you just tuned in, Rich Robinson and Josh Seftel are best friends. One's black, one's white. Rich is a New Yorker. Josh is from Boston. They traveled together to the new South Africa not long after Nelson Mandela took the president's office to meet some people who Josh thinks might be distant relatives of his and to see what's changed since Nelson Mandela began his experiment at creating a multiracial society, and what hasn't changed. Say "Boer." Boer. Say it. Boer. I am a Boer. What does that mean? That means I don't like you. Boers are the descendants of Dutch settlers in South Africa. And the stereotype is they're farmers, they're racists, they're African rednecks. They're the group of whites who actually voted for apartheid and built the apartheid state. And Rich had become obsessed with them. Every white person was suspect, especially in the countryside. Do you think we've seen a lot of Boers? Actually, yeah, we have. On dirt roads, the dudes driving cars with the buzz cuts and crazy-looking eyes, tanned skin. Don't you think those are Boers? Don't you think they look like that? The little buzz-cut guy? I guess I don't-- I'm not looking for Boers. I only notice it when you say it. The fact is, I came to South Africa hoping to confront real racists. In America now, racism is like this cloud that's still surrounding us, but you can't touch it or see it. You just feel it when you go to a party or when you go into a store. But in South Africa, white oppression officially just ended two years ago. I came here thinking it would be like seeing what it was like during the bus boycotts in the '60s or during the Civil War. I came here looking for the enemy. Which didn't bother me, as long as Rich wasn't looking for my family to be that enemy. Boer. That's good. That's good. Boer. I can't do it. Do Boer. Boer. Boer. We had read about a place called Rustler's Valley in our guidebook. It said that Rustler's was one of the most progressive places in the country, maybe on the continent, a kind of ongoing South African Woodstock. When we got there, there were lots of hippie-looking people with long beards, toting aboriginal instruments and bongos. The horticulture there looked like something out of a Dr. Seuss book. On one hillside, it looked like someone was holding a VW van convention. On another hillside, we joined a group of people who were in the middle of experiencing "a sound journey." They all sat in a circle with their eyes closed and their legs crossed. In the middle of the circle was a man with a bunch of instruments. He was blowing on a didgeridoo. When he stopped, they went around the circle talking about how the sound journey had made them feel. It was an amazing experience. I actually still feel quite out of my body, really. And thank you for creating the space to help me let go. I'm just feeling incredibly emotional. I experienced such a movement through, I don't know if it was my bloodstream or my soul. Down by the river, it was like Eden. There were people swimming naked and horses drinking from water and running wild. A group of two women and two men were passing around reefers the size of small cigars. But most of the action at Rustler's took place around a giant, flaming globe. At night, hundreds of kids danced to techno music in the firelight. Next to the dance floor was a pool where nude swimming was encouraged. There was a room called The Passion Pit, with low couches, dim lighting, and intertwined bodies. There was the tepee village. Rich and I went down there and ran into this guy wearing moccasins, knickers, and a feather headdress. He rolled a joint and talked to us about Rustler's philosophy. I very much believe that psychedelics have been around since the beginning of time. They've aided in man's evolution. And I think they can take us towards the future, certainly in dissolving personal boundaries and ideals of who we are and what we are and who we are about. So smoke a lot of dope. A lot of people in our government are smokers. They were left-wing revolutionaries and radicals. I've personally had conversations with this deputy staff president about hemp and the role it will play in regenerating rural economies. We had somehow wandered into a techno version of America in the '60s. But if America's '60s were about rebellion, it wasn't clear from anyone we talked to who or what, exactly, Rustler's meant to be rebelling against. In the smoky bar near the dance floor, we met the founder of Rustler's. He's 40-something with a pony tail, beard, and an African wrap that covered his hairy legs to the knees. His name was Frick. He explained the enemy. You see, the power structure that we're rebelling against is the American government. We see them misleading the whole world down a corporate dead end into neomodernism. They're leaving no space for society to develop. We believe we need to return to Shamanism or return to magic or return to values of the earth, an understanding that was held by most ethnic people. So we see our source of inspiration as being the ethnic peoples that the corporate world hasn't yet [BLEEP] up. So the American government was the enemy, and the solution was the ethnic peoples. The only problem was, there were no ethnic peoples there. In a country made up of Zulus, Ndebele, Sotho, and Xhosa, a country with 12 official native languages, besides the kitchen workers and occasional gardener, I was the only black person at Rustler's. Josh and I did a little informal survey. Why no black people? It's anyone. Whoever wants to come can come. And maybe black people just aren't into it, you know? There is plenty. They come up here to work and clean and do the gardens. They're not into the same thing we're into. Black people don't like raves and rave parties and I don't see that as a bad thing. We have a very good rapport with them. When we go to town, they all wave at us. And they're friendly. Apartheid takes a lot of time to dissolve. And even if you want to cross the barriers, they're not that easily crossed because they've always been separate. It's a pity. Rustler's Valley wasn't really a part of the new South Africa. It was more like a theme park for recreational drug users, a summer camp escape for young, white South Africans where they didn't have to think about the crime rates or the futures in this country. After two hazy days, when we finally got back into our room, we found a young, blond-haired woman sprawled across one of our beds rolling a joint in the bedspread. It was 5:00 in the morning. We'd had enough. We asked her to leave. Back in the States, I almost never notice race. But since I'd been in South Africa, I found myself noticing it whenever Rich and I walked into a room. I'd look around and think, are there any black people here? I worried he'd be uncomfortable. Do you feel like they're treating you differently than they're treating me as a white person? Oh, yeah. Sure. Don't you think? I don't know. It's that expectation. I walked in the main room. They had a couple people behind the desk. And two or three people were hanging out. And they were having at least two conversations, possibly three. You know, different groups of people. Not many people, six to eight people. And I walked in the room, closed the door, and everyone's quiet. Literally, I mean, come on. Two or three conversations didn't just happen to end at right the exact same moment I walked in the door. But you know, I open my mouth, I say a couple words, I make a joke, and it lightens everything up for them, and they feel, "OK, that's all right. That's cool." But I only am able to do that because I know that if I prove to them that I'm from out of the country, then they'll feel comfortable again, like they're not having-- like, it's something that they can feel cool about. Every time I see somebody, I try to talk and make witty jokes so that it's easier. In the morning, the sound journey people were at it again. They sat cross-legged in a tight circle with their eyes closed. And when the man in the middle swirled his didgeridoo around the head of an entranced, red-haired woman, a steady stream of spit splattered onto her forehead and her eyelids. She didn't seem to notice. As we were driving out of Rustler's, someone approached the car and gave us a bulging sandwich bag full of marijuana and a bumper sticker. It said, "Pot will save the world." Drugs are the fundamental thing. Drugs is the cause of all the other vile things that is happening in our country. In a mosque in Cape Town, we met a group called PAGAD, short for People Against Gangsterism And Drugs. They're a little like that group DARE that we have back in the States, except instead of soccer moms, these guys are Islamic fundamentalists. While hundreds of Muslims pray in a huge main hall, we're in a small classroom off to the side. Sitting across from Josh and I are three PAGAD spokesmen, crammed into tiny desks meant for elementary students. Despite the 80-degree weather, they're wearing heavy ski jackets. They each have their own cellular phones, which interrupt us constantly throughout the interview. Their leader is As-Salaam [? Tohfi ?], a giant Indian man with enormous hands. He dabs his brow with a light blue terrycloth hanky. If you go to parties tonight, to nightclubs where you go, what is the reality of that is to get drunk, to get zonked out of your minds through some kind of drug. Is this what we want? Is this what God intended when he created us as human beings? God Almighty curses us for these things. So we will never have peace in our lives. PAGAD is famous for their method of getting people to just say no. They go to a drug dealer's house, pull him into the street, and set him on fire. There had been an incident like this six month earlier. A drug dealer had been burned to death in the street. And PAGAD felt their part in the incident had been misrepresented in the press. Their legal adviser, who had been quiet until then, explained PAGAD's side. A group of people went to ask this specific person, "Please, can you stop with your drug dealing? Because the people is suffering." They were met with gunfire from three meters inside the house. 17 people were shot at from behind bulletproof windows to people standing on a pavement which is two meters wide. So people was firing three meters into a crowd of about 5,000. 5,000 people. As I sat there imagining what I would do if 5,000 people showed up at my doorstep, the legal adviser turned to us. Where were you last night? Where was I? Last night. As I fumbled for an answer, [? Tohfi ?] explained how drinking, naked dancing, nightclubs, and abortions are all destroying the new South Africa. Outside the mosque, there was a wall of graffiti-- "Kill Jews," "Kill Americans," "Hezbollah." Everywhere we turned in South Africa, people seemed to be looking for quick and easy solutions to massive and complex problems. Whether that meant belonging to an alternative community or being an anti-drug crusader, killing Americans and burning drug dealers or smoking dope. It was time to return to Johannesburg to say goodbye to Josh's family and then escape from South Africa. We had been getting along fine since we left the Seftels two weeks earlier. No fighting. But now, with only four hours of highway between us and them, the tension returned. I was driving. Josh and the microphone were facing me. They had me cornered. I get the sense that when you meet a white person here, you make the assumption that they're racist until proven innocent. I don't think whiteys here are automatically racist. I mean, that's what you said before. I'll play the tape for you a little bit later. But you did say that. Well, I'm sure that I did not say there are active or inactive racists and there are not two categories. And we can replay the tape as many times, Mr. Seftel, as we need to. This was one of those arguments where you just go over the same tiny points over and over again. I didn't catch on at first. They all seemed like reasonable questions. But then I realized what he was looking for. Josh didn't want my opinion on racism or the innocence of whites. Josh wanted me, as a black person, to admit that his white South African family were the good guys. I love round shapes. And I built the plan of this house in the shape of a big breast with the fireplace being the nipple, three-dimensionality thrusting through double stories. We can then have a look at this anthropomorphic, habitable woman! Back in Johannesburg, my cousin Louis took us on a tour of his latest masterpiece. Louis is an architect. It's a two-story house still under construction. It doesn't really look like a huge breast. It's just got lots of curved walls and curved ceilings and a lot of breasty ornamentation. There we are. So here, have a quick view at this round facade over here. OK. Well, let me ask you this. Why do you put so many breast shapes in your architecture? Well, I'll tell you why. People have an immediate response. I've taken people into my breasts, and they are so moved, and they are so stunned. They can't quite work out why they like these spaces. But they like these space because they feel hugged and encompassed by them. It was hard to dislike Louis. He was such an entertainer, I don't even think he took himself seriously. In our time in Johannesburg, he took us out, offered to lend us his car, invited friends of his over so we'd have people to meet. The more I spent in South Africa, the harder and harder it was for me to tell the good guys from the bad guys. But there were still times I didn't know what to make of people like Louis. For instance, camped out in the middle of a half-built house in the rain were at least a half dozen black men who had built a fire in the middle of the living room. Who are those guys in the rain by the fire? By the fire, these are workers. Traditionally in South Africa, the workers live on site. These guys-- Where do they live? They live here. This is where they live. On the cement floor? Yeah, they live on the cement floor, and they are the builders of the house. They're casuals, laborers, they're semi-skilled, they're bricklayers and blasters and stuff. And they come to-- and what's great about it is they're using the house in the way the house is meant to be used. Except, I'd like them to put the fire inside there, in the fireplace where it was meant to be. But let's go into the lounge. This is the great lounge. Good evening, gentlemen. Good evening. How are you? Good. We have a reporter here from America. He's going to tell a wonderful story about this house. Anyway-- He showed us the kitchen and the bedrooms and the living room and a small servants' quarters attached to the side of the house. And here are the servants' quarters. They have their own little suite and yard. Is it nice in there? Beautiful. Lovely main bedroom and bathroom and kitchenette. Very nice. That's going to be a mainstay of Africa then. Servants forever. Absolutely. Servants are here in Africa to stay forever. And in fact, we must make them very nice because maybe, in a couple of years, we will move into the servants' quarters and the servants will move into the house. So you must always make them very nice. Wait, can you say that again? What I'm saying is that there was in the bylaws of the old South Africa a law that your servants' quarters had to be very small and minimum-sized, and they had to have very high windows not overlooking a public space. Now servants' quarters are being made more luxurious and they're more like a little kind of garden cottage, granny flat kind of thing, because we might have to move into them one day and rent the house after the servants. On this last visit to Johannesburg, we stayed with my family at Dolly's house. And this time, they really felt like family. Late one night after Rich went to sleep, I talked with Dolly in the kitchen about the ups and downs of my love life. She urged me to marry a Jewish girl. It was just like talking to any of my relatives. When I first got to South Africa, I had been more willing to judge Dolly and the others. But now that I had seen more of the country, I didn't feel that way anymore. I guess at some level, it just didn't feel right to judge family in the same way that judging your parents harshly for having different opinions than you do doesn't feel right. But Rich wasn't so sure. I don't feel skeptical of my family, my relatives here. I think you do. I think you feel a little bit skeptical of them. Well, I mean, how couldn't you? They're rich, they've got bad-ass houses, they've got servants, you know. It's like people living in the South that still have domestic slaves. I mean, I guess it is a job for somebody, but it just gives you bad reminders of what it was and what was. So do you like the Seftels or do you not like the Seftels? I think they're good people, and I'm glad we had a chance to meet them. But? But-- They're still rich and white-- Yeah. --at the end of the day. At the end of the day, when the chips are cashed in, they still all have servants. Do you feel like if you were here, you would have done more or less than-- what position would you be in in the Seftel family, if you were here? Do you think you would have gotten involved in the struggle, or-- I don't know. It's too hard to know. I mean, there's so many variables. I would hope that I would have been involved in some way. It's like, how can you guess what you would have done? You never know. Another day, another dinner with Josh's family. Our goodbye dinner. The conversation revolved around a few ongoing obsessions. Did you hear the news today about this new gang that's going around? They're raping young women. On this visit, they seem more beleaguered than anything else. They told us about all their friends who'd been robbed and attacked. Molly explained how she'd been mugged at knife point. I'm always looking at myself in the glass in the windows. And as I look, I see two tight-buttoned young men jump out of the shadows. And so I jumped into the street. And they followed me. They grabbed my bag. And they were pulling me along the ground. And I was screaming. I mean, I had every sound coming from me. I don't know where it came from. And they must have been doing this for about three minutes, when coming towards us was an elderly white couple. They must have been in their '70s. And the man pulled out a gun, and he shot the one on this side of me. And I said, "And him too! Him too!" Not long ago, Molly had been famous and powerful. She was an actress who had been in lots of plays and a few films. She was the first white actress to appear on stage with a black. Her husband Monty had been a politician and had served as the mayor of Johannesburg during the '70s. But he died a few months before we arrived. Now she lived by herself in a big house with a big wall surrounding it. She was alone, except for her black servants. One of the turning points in her life as a South African, one of the moments that changed her from an activist into the person she's become, was the day that the Seftels had waited for for years, the day Nelson Mandela was released from prison. The day started off just fine. Well, it was total euphoria. Our family got on a plane and we flew to Cape Town and we stood in the square and waited for Mandela to come. And we waited and waited and waited and waited. And in the meantime, in the-- and it got hot as Hades. My friend who was with me, she was punched in the stomach and her camera was stolen. It was an enormous crowd of people. And they were crushing you and crushing-- eventually, you didn't have any space to breathe. And we must have been there for about six hours when we decided we must get out of here, because we began to fear for our safety. It was that sort of encroachment on our territory. And this is what's happening now. The new South Africa wasn't working out the way they expected. They complained that since the ANC took power, the mail service is horrible, there's litter in the streets, the government's corrupt. And they're scared. I mean, they're scared in their own homes. So that's what we've become. We're not a threat to anybody. We pay our taxes and timidly tiptoe through the land, hoping nobody will mug us. Now, most of the young people in the family are leaving. One of Molly's children has emigrated, and one of Harold's. And another of Harold's sons is probably leaving soon. Harold told me that in 15 years, there will be hardly any Seftels left in South Africa. Yeah, there's one family, and it's a family that has perhaps a greater commitment to South Africa then, say, the average white family. And that, I think, is a microcosm that tells you what's happened. Even at this last dinner, even getting along with them as well as we were, there were still things about my South African relatives we didn't completely understand. And it might have been impolite, but we just asked them over and over. What did they do during apartheid, if they felt guilty? No, I didn't feel guilty. I didn't feel-- No, guilt's the wrong word for us. We don't feel guilty. No. No such word. What's the right word? I think, disappointment, perhaps. We are guilty to the extent that-- Oh, no. We're guilty in the other way. But not because-- We lived through the apartheid years. We didn't take up arms. We benefited. But in our own little way, we kind of contributed. I know that Harry-- I mean, the fact of the matter is-- What else could we have done? No, but the critical point is-- The government was so oppressive. No, but now, let's make this point. We could have done what the Firsts did. What Ruth First did. She went to jail. And her family was destroyed. But we didn't want that. But the important point is the fact that we've stayed, we made a contribution. Surely, the fact that we were here and helped to teach and to educate and to treat the sick and so on and so forth. That was surely far better than being in Boston. All right? We weren't activists. Absolutely right. But while we were here, surely we were making a contribution which we could never have made in Boston or in New York. So that was it. Now that we're back in the States, Rich and I never really talk about what happened in South Africa. I guess we've said everything there is to say to each other. It's been several months since we've been back and we haven't had a single fight. Josh Seftel is a documentary filmmaker who made the film Taking on the Kennedys. Rich Robinson works for a business consulting firm. After coming home to the United States, he moved to Brazil for six months on business. Alone. Our program was produced today by Alix Spiegel and myself, with Paul Tough, Nancy Updike, and Julie Snyder. Contributing editors Sarah Vowell, Jack Hitt, and Margy Rochlin. Production help from Alex Blumberg, Susan Burton, Jorge Just, Todd Bachmann, and Sylvia Lemus. If you'd like to buy a cassette of this program, call us here at WBEZ in Chicago, 312-832-3380. Or you know, you can listen to most of our programs for free on the internet at our website www.thisamericanlife.org. Thanks to Elizabeth Meister who runs the site. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia, who walks up to me at the end of every single show we do and declares-- It was an amazing experience. I actually still feel quite out of my body. Really. I'm Ira Glass. Happy Independence Day. Back next week with more stories of This American Life. And thank you for creating the space to help me let go. I'm just feeling incredibly emotional. PRI, Public Radio International.
|
So, Jim, say who you are and say where you are. Well, I'm Jim Biederman, and I'm standing in the Hall of the States in the Louvre museum. It's a hall of Italian masters where many of the Italian masters, the Carvaggios and Raphaels and many of the Italian painters from the Venetian period are hung, including Leonardo da Vinci and the Mona Lisa. I'm standing right across the way from the Mona Lisa, as a matter of fact. And you're speaking to us on a cell phone from there in Paris. From the actual museum itself. I was in Italy once, in Florence. And I went to the museum where they have Michelangelo's statue of David. He holds a slingshot in one hand. You've see pictures of this. And as I stood there, all around the statue were people talking about what restaurant they were going to go to later, when they were going to meet their friends. You know, you stand there and you just think, how good would this statue have to be to actually get their undivided attention? What has an artist got to do? And this is not just Michelangelo's problem. We sent out an actual foreign correspondent, Jim Biederman, to the Louvre, and he discovered that Leonardo da Vinci is also having trouble touching people's hearts in the museum setting. Well, one of the great debates that's taking place here around the Mona Lisa is exactly how expensive it is and why it's valued at so much. The people are talking about what it is exactly that makes this painting so special. And I heard one woman say, well, I hear it's her smile. Another woman said, no, no, no. It's her eyes. And she says, her eyes follow you anywhere in the room. And then she says to her friend, go over there in the corner and see if she's looking at you. And she stomps across the room. Is she looking at you over there? Can you see her looking at you over there? So, Jim, do people stand next to the Mona Lisa and talk about things that have nothing to do with the painting at all? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And also you get a lot of people sort of pressed to get other places. "I'm tired, Dad. You said you were going to take us somewhere else." And "Oh, we've seen this. Let's go." And yeah, there's a lot of that. It actually makes you feel bad for artists, you know? A group most of us feel no sympathy for whatsoever. I mean, imagine an artist's life. It takes years to develop any skills. It's intensely difficult to learn. It's very, very competitive. Almost nobody makes any money doing it. There are jealousies and unfair treatment. And then, if somehow, somehow, your work is recognized and you end up in a museum, perhaps, incredibly, you end up in a world-class museum like the Louvre, this is how you're treated, even here. One woman stood in front. And she said, I saw in a film once that if you go really close to the painting, she doesn't look that good at all. What do people want out of art? What are they looking for anyway? Imagine da Vinci's horror if he heard the banality of the following exchange between Jim and I? Jim, is it possible for you to walk over to the Mona Lisa right now? I'm right next to it right now. You are? I'm standing right at the rail. There's bulletproof glass in front and a rail that stands out about five feet here that keeps people away. It's quite a lovely painting. And it's true. Her eyes do follow you everywhere. They do? Yes, I'm off to the side right now, but if I go across-- and I'll just do this for you, Ira, because I know that this is real radio here. So I'm going to go over to the other side here. And I'm in the center now, and she's looking straight at me. She's got that enigmatic smile. She looks like she might be smirking a bit at these tourists. I could be wrong. And now I'm over on the left side, and she's still staring at me over here. Well, today on our program, people who thought that they actually knew better about art, better than me, better than Jim. And they actually became artists. And what happened to them. From WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Our program today, Blame It on Art. Act One, the cutthroat world of balloon animal artists. No kidding, balloon animal artists. Act Two, writer David Sedaris recounts his own shameful career as a performance artist and how his toenail clippings ended up in a museum. Act Three, Reverb, how a hard core jazz snob learned to love what some would consider the worst music in the world, the music his father played. Act Four, Grace Note, a story from New York locksmith Joel Kostman. Stay with us. Act One, Life in a Bubble. In the world of the artist, successes and failures are all carefully measured, people hold grudges, people are accused of selling out. You find these stories everywhere, the independent rock scene in Chicago or Seattle, the galleries in SoHo, the theater scene pretty much anywhere that theater is made anywhere on this planet. But you might not expect to find these kinds of stories at the Toy Fair. The Toy Fair is the big trade show for the toy world. Thousands of manufacturers and buyers descend on New York City for the event every year. Our contributing editor Paul Tough went with Aaron Hsu-Flanders, a toy entrepreneur. Aaron and I are walking through the entrance hall of the Jacob Javits Center, just hanging out, talking when suddenly we see Amazing [? Shoney. ?] He's got the whole outfit on, painted face, polka-dotted shirt, baggy pants, really, really big shoes. He's a clown all right. And he's doing what clowns do. He's making balloon animals. You have a magical day now. Shoney hands Aaron a lopsided pink inflated giraffe. He's just made a balloon animal for one of the acknowledged masters of the art, Aaron Hsu-Flanders, author of Balloon Animals, More Balloon Animals, Balloon Hats and Accessories, and Balloon Cartoons and Other Favorites. It's a weird moment. It's as if Michael Jordan stopped by a schoolyard and played a little one-on-one with an unsuspecting teenager. Aaron doesn't let on who he is. And the two of them just chat for a few minutes about some of the current issues in balloon sculpting. I haven't been able to make a good Barney. Can you make Barney? I make him a tyrannosaurus rex that's purple. It doesn't quite look like it. But it's enough to pass. We take our giraffe and walk away. Aaron tells me what he thinks. I wasn't blown away. He made a sort of generic-looking combination dog giraffe kind of thing that you couldn't-- it was more the power of suggestion. He was sort of a follower of the theory that all balloon animals are essentially dogs with a little variation here and there. Lacked a little of the finesse that I admit I have to sort of insist upon in order to be impressed with someone. Aaron's been making animals out of balloons for more than 20 years. And if anyone in the world of balloon animals is an artist, Aaron is. He invented quite a few designs. It was Aaron, for instance, who made the first balloon camel ever. Amazing [? Shoney ?] may not have recognized him. But here at Toy Fair, especially where balloon people gather, he's constantly being noticed. Aaron, I've seen you on television. Have you? Yeah. What show? Just recently. Yeah. $13.18. The memory. You got it. It's not a total surprise that this guy recognized Aaron. He's in the balloon animal business too. The product that Aaron, sells that he's here at Toy Fair to market, is an instruction book on how to make balloon animals packaged together with 40 balloons and an inflating pump. And the package that this guy sells is suspiciously similar. We walk away from the booth, and Aaron tells me he's used to this sort of thing. There have been eight knockoffs of his product before this one. Clearly he came out with quite a few direct yes knockoff products. His whole line virtually is a knockoff product. I think he felt like he had to pal up to me a little bit. I am, in a somewhat obscure field, perhaps the acknowledged master at this point. He's got no boss, no set hours. He makes little kids happy. It seems like a dream job, but it's not his dream. His dream is to be an artist, a real artist. What he really wants to be doing is this. I mean, for a long time I did have a love-hate relationship with balloons. And it took me a while to get over that. There is a sort of darker side. This isn't something that I always thought I would do my whole life. It's not the mark that I had ever intended for my whole life to make on the world. And I am a musician, and I actually have always hoped and continue to hope to make a musical mark in some way on the world also. I consider balloons more a craft and music more an art. And I've always considered myself first and foremost a musician. This is from a CD called The Blue Jester that Aaron and his friend David recorded a few years ago. Aaron produced it himself, and he distributes it out of his home. When Aaron was in his twenties his life revolved around music. And balloons were just something he did for money, making animals at parties to help pay the rent. Most of his friends were in the same boat, concentrating on their art or their music and working odd jobs for money. It was one of those tightly knit artistic communities where everyone's more or less at the same level of success, everyone has the same values, everyone's supporting one another. And then things changed. In 1989, when he was 29, Aaron published his first book, an 80-page paperback with black and white photos that explained how to make 20 of the most common balloon animals-- giraffes, poodles, dachshunds, elephants. It did pretty well. When the moniker best-seller was added to my book, suddenly I had some serious issues of jealousy and envy from almost all of my particularly male friends at that point in my life. I noticed that questions of success and failure and contentment with their own lives were brought to the fore, that this sort of forced the question. Like, oh, Aaron had a best-seller. So that still is an issue. Did balloons actually sort of come between you and certain friends permanently? Yeah, that's actually sad. I had to end very long-term, meaningful friendships for me. As the business got more successful, Aaron's friends, especially his male friends, became more and more critical. He bought a house. He bought a car. He got married. He had kids. All paid for by balloon animals. In his eyes, he was still part of that same creative community. In their eyes, he'd gone corporate. I bemoan the loss of my male friends. That's the irony that my wife and I share all the time is that I'm a person who-- very friendly, amiable person who has thousands of acquaintances, but I have virtually no friends, really close friends. It's an old story, a group of struggling artists. One of them makes it big. The rest feel threatened and bitter. The thing that's incredible, though, about Aaron's story, is that true, he's on top, but he's on top of the world of balloon animals. He takes out a couple of long, thin balloons, the tools of his trade, and starts to demonstrate his craft. That's it. Very nice. A few squeaks later. Hard to convey, I think, over the radio, but what was just created during that little squeaky period was a teddy bear. It says something about human nature that even in this world of teddy bears and giraffes, success is so threatening that becoming king of the balloon animals can destroy a community, turn lifelong friends against one another. One of my closest friends just recently, after all these years, although there had been a significant period of estrangement, I had to-- we virtually are not in touch at all anymore. Aaron tells me about this one friend of his, a friend since childhood, who composes contemporary classical music. Not too many people in that world make it big. And his friend apparently wasn't one of the lucky few. He ended up in a job he hated, teaching music at a small New England college. Not enough time to compose. Not enough respect from the New York musical world. As their fortunes went in opposite directions, things between Aaron and his friend became tense. But it just turned into-- it was amazing, actually. He very much personalized his bitterness and attacks on what he perceived as the commercial world. But he focused it through the tiny lens of me and the world of commerce but included attacks on the frivolousness of the toy world with lines like, glad to see such creative minds are being dedicated to the world of commerce. It's not like I started manufacturing guns or weaponry or pesticides. He very much gave me the impression that he felt that I was no different than any other businessman who sells [BLEEP] to whatever. Aaron says that he's tired of defending himself from that sort of attack. But the fact is, those are the very questions he asks himself when he's alone. Is he an artist, or is he a salesman? These days he finds himself hanging out less and less with creative people and more and more with store owners and distributors and latex manufacturers. There are some people he meets in the toy world that he likes, people he feels a real connection with, but he says it doesn't happen all that often. There is a certain part of me that gets really alienated when I walk around here. I hate to say this, but I look around, and it just doesn't seem like there's anyone that I really care too much about. What's happened to Aaron is what happens to a lot of creative people who find some measure of success. Without meaning to, he has become a businessman. He's really good at it. But he says sometimes he loses track of how he ended up here. Act Two, Still Life. After high school, writer David Sedaris attended an unusual number of colleges for very brief periods of time, hoping somehow that one of them would turn him into an artist, even though he had no skill at all at painting, drawing, sculpting, printmaking, or any of the known visual media. For instance, he enrolled in the art program at a school that was mainly known for its animal husbandry program, where he fell in with an arty crowd of filmmakers, lazy filmmakers. In their company, I attended grainy black and white movies in which ponderous, turtlenecked men walked the stony beaches, cursing the gulls for their ability to fly. Art was based upon despair, and the important thing was to make yourself and those around you as miserable as possible. Maybe I couldn't paint or sculpt, but I could work a mood better than anyone I knew. Unfortunately, the school had no accredited sulking program. And I dropped out more despondent than ever. This was recorded in front of a live audience in Seattle by public radio station KUOW. A warning to listeners before we begin, in this story David Sedaris mentions the fact that sex exists, and he talks about drug use with a level of detail and familiarity you do not usually hear from other public radio commentators like, say, Daniel Schorr. After a few months in my parents' basement, I took an apartment near the state university where I discovered both crystal methamphetamine and conceptual art. Either one of these things is dangerous enough, but the combination has the potential to destroy entire civilizations. The moment I took my first burning snootful, I understood that this was the drug for me. Speed eliminates all doubt. Am I smart enough? Will people like me? Do I really look all right in this plastic jumpsuit? These are questions for insecure potheads. A speed enthusiast knows that everything he says or does is brilliant, the upswing being that, having eliminated the need for both eating and sleeping, you have a full 24 hours a day to spread your charm and talent. "For god's sake," my father would say, "it's 4 o'clock in the morning. What are you calling for?" I was calling because the rest of my friends had taken to unplugging their phones after 10:00 PM. These were people I had known in high school, and it disappointed me to see how little we now had in common. These people were all stuck in the past, setting up their booths at the art fair and thinking themselves successful because they'd sold a silk screen picturing a footprint in the sand. Didn't they read any of the magazines? The new breed of artists wanted nothing to do with beauty. Here were people who made a living pitching tents or lying in a fetal position before our national monuments. One fellow had made a name for himself by allowing a friend to shoot him in the shoulder. This was the art world I'd been dreaming of, where god-given talent was considered a hindrance. "Let me put your mother on," my father would say. "She's had a few drinks, and maybe she can understand whatever the hell it is you're talking about." I bought my drugs from a wiry, pop-eyed short-order cook whose brittle, prematurely white hair was teased in such a way that I couldn't look at her without thinking of a dandelion. The drug had a way of turning people into either really good sex partners or very bad artists. And she seemed to know exactly which group I might fit into. She introduced me to a handful of jittery motormouths who shared my love of the word manifesto. The first meeting was tense, but I broke the ice by laying out a few lines of crystal and commenting on my host's refreshing lack of furniture. This was an understatement, as his living room contained nothing but an enormous nest made from human hair. It seemed the man drove twice a week to all the local salons and barber shops, collecting their sweepings and arranging them strand by strand, as carefully as a wren. "I've been building this nest for, oh, about six months now," he said. "Go ahead. Have a seat." Inspired by my friends, I started on a few pieces of my own. My first project was a series of wooden vegetable crates I filled with my garbage. Seeing as I no longer ate anything, there were no rotting food scraps to worry about, just cigarette butts, aspirin tins, wads of hair, and bloody Kleenex. Because this was art, I meticulously recorded each entry using an ink I'd made from the crushed bodies of ticks and mosquitoes. 2:17 AM. Four toe nail clippings, dust from window sill, moth. I was a busy man. When two of my crates were completed, I carried them down to the art museum for consideration in the upcoming juried biennial. The next few weeks were spent basically camping out beside my mailbox waiting to hear what the state of North Carolina had to say about the artistic merits of my toenail clippings. When the news arrived that I had been accepted, I should have kept the information to myself. My friends' proposals to set fire to the grand staircase and sculpt the governor's head out of human feces had all been rejected. This confirmed their outsider status and made me suspect. At the next group meeting, it was suggested that the museum had accepted my work only because it was decorative and easy to swallow. My friends could have gotten in if they'd compromised themselves, but unlike me, that was not their style. After the exhibit had ended, I burned my crates, storing the ashes in a Tupperware bowl I kept in the back of my closet. I told my friends that I hated every moment of the museum reception. Only then did I find myself back in the group's good graces. I had paid for my folly and as a reward was invited to take part in the nest builder's performance piece. He held a meeting where seven of us chirped and bleated what amounted to the script. I wanted to point out that I'd had a bit of acting experience in the past, but covered to the waste in human hair, it seemed best not to mention it. One of the cast members stormed out in tears after being told she wasn't moaning properly, and the rest of us suffered a continuing plague of splinters and heat rashes. I never understood what the piece was about and never asked because I didn't want to appear stupid. My parents attended the premiere, sitting cross-legged on one of the mats spread like islands across the filthy concrete floor. The local newspaper ran a review headlined, "Local Group Pitches in, Cleans up Warehouse." This did nothing to encourage ticket buyers whose numbers dwindled to the single digits by the second night of our weeklong run. Luckily we found it easy to blame not ourselves but a public so brainwashed by television that they found it impossible to sit through a two and a half hour performance piece without complaining of boredom and leg cramps. When the nest builder announced his plans for the next piece, the group fell apart. "Why is it always your piece?" We asked. When he offered us the opportunity to create our own parts, we became even angrier. Who was he to give assignments and set deadlines? The truth was that we lacked the ability to invent our own roles. This led to a climactic shouting match wherein we exhausted all our analogies, and started all over again from the top. "We're not your puppets or your little trained dogs willing to jump through some hoop. What, do you think we're puppets? Is that what you think? Do I look like a puppet to you? I'm not a puppet or a little dog either. I'm not going to jump through any of your hoops, puppet master, because I'm not a dog or a puppet. You can train a dog to jump through a hoop. Buy yourself a dog, why don't you? Better yet, get a puppet, because you've pulled these strings for the last time." I had hoped the group might stick together for years, but within 10 minutes, it was all over, finished, each of us pledging to perform on our own. I spent the next few weeks running the argument over and over in my mind, picturing a small dog chasing a puppet across the floor of an abandoned warehouse. I was stuffing a pillow with my cigarette butts when the museum called inviting me to participate in their month of Sundays performance festival. Watching the performances of my former colleagues, I got the idea that once you'd assembled the requisite props, the piece would come together on its own. The inflatable shark led naturally to the puddle of heavy cream, which, if lapped from the floor with a slow, steady precision, could amount to up to 20 minutes of valuable stage time. This revelation led me to a secondhand store where I searched the aisles with the cold eye of a prospector. Standing at the checkout counter with an armload of sock monkeys, I told the cashier, "These are for a piece I'm working on. It's a performance commissioned by the art museum. I'm an artist." "So is my niece." The woman stabbed her cigarette into a bucket full of sand. "She's the one who made those monkeys." It disturbed me to hear the word artist used so loosely. The man who sketched portraits at the mall called himself an artist, as did the woman who forged wreaths out of used Styrofoam cups. "Yes," I said, "but I'm a real artist." The woman was not offended, only puzzled. "But my niece lives over near Winston-Salem." She said it as though she were referring to a well-known art capital where the streets were lined with galleries and pastry shops. "She's a big blond-headed girl with twin babies. Maybe you know of her. Her name's Lucille, but everybody calls her Sock Lady on account of she's always making those monkeys. Pretty girl. Fat in the rear, but just as pretty and talented as she can be." I looked into this woman's face. Maybe one day I'd do a piece about stupidity, but right now I'd just pay for these sock monkeys, snort a few lines of speed, and finish constructing a bulletproof vest out of used flashlight batteries. There was a good-sized crowd gathered at the art museum, and I stood before them, wishing they were half as high as I was. I'd been up for three days and nights and had taken so much speed that I could see the individual atoms pitching in to make up every folding chair. For the first few minutes, I thought it was my paranoia until I remembered that these people were staring at me for a reason. I was here to perform. The show wasn't over yet. It hadn't even started. I tried reminding myself that I was in control. All I had to do was open my prop bag, and the rest of the piece would take care of itself. I'm slicing the pineapple now, I thought. Next I'll rip apart these sock monkeys and pour the stuffing into this tall rubber boot. Good. That's good. Now I'll snip off some of my hair with these garden shears, stare at my hands for a while, and then we're almost home. I moved towards the audience and was kneeling in the aisle, the shears is to my head when I heard, "I can't get him to touch the damn things at home." It was my father, speaking in a loud voice to the woman seated beside him. "I could never get him to cut his hair either. I guess the barber shop isn't artsy enough for him." The audience begin to laugh. For the first time since I'd started, they perked up and began enjoying themselves. "Hey, sport, what do you charge for a shave?" It was him again, and once again, the crowd responded. Their laughter egged him on, and he proceeded to deliver a running commentary. Drunk with attention, he ruined my piece with his snide little comments. I was literally spitting tacks, trying my hardest to concentrate. Immediately following the performance, a sizable crowd gathered around my father, congratulating him on his delivery and comic timing. "Including your father was an excellent idea," the curator said, handing me my check. "The piece really picked up once you relaxed and started making fun of yourself." Not only did my father ask for a cut of the money, but he also started calling with suggestions for future pieces. "What if you were to symbolize man's inhumanity to man by heating up a skillet of plastic soldiers? I told him it was the lamest idea I'd ever heard in my life and to stop calling me with his pissy little ideas. "I'm an artist," I yelled. "I come up with the ideas. Not you, me. This isn't a party game. It's serious work, and I'd rather chew on blasting caps than listen to any more of your suggestions." There was a brief pause before he said, "The bit with the blasting caps just might work. Let me think about it and get back to you." My performing career effectively ended the day my drug dealer moved to Florida to enter a treatment center. "How can you do this to me?" I asked her. "I have a piece to finish, damn it. I'm an artist, and I need to know where my drugs are coming from." I cashed in a savings bond left to me by my grandmother and used the money to buy what I hoped would be enough speed to last me through the month. It was gone in 10 days, and with it went my ability to do anything but roll on the floor and cry. Speed's breathtaking high is followed by a crushing, suicidal low. Thinking I surely must've dropped a grain or two, I vacuumed the entire apartment with a straw up my nose, sucking up dead skin cells, Comet residue, and pulverized cat litter. Anything that traveled on the bottom of a shoe went up my nose. After a week, I left my bed to perform at the college, deciding at the last minute to skip both the Twister game and the march of the chocolate bunnies. I just heated up a skillet of plastic soldiers, poured a milkshake over my head, and called it a night. Thank you. David Sedaris recorded in Seattle. He's the author of many books, including most recently, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. Coming up, views of artists in the art world that I swear are not quite so bleak. Also, what to think about the odd music Dad used to play and more. That's in a minute, from Public Radio International, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, invite a variety of writers and reporters and performers to tackle that theme. Today's program, Blame It on Art, stories about the difficulties and pettiness in artists' lives. We have arrived at Act Three of our program, Reverb. Ellery Eskelin never met his father, never even talked to him, but he always heard that he was a genius all during his childhood, and especially after he started playing sax when he was 10 years old, he heard stories about his dad. He said he heard that his dad could play any instrument he picked up, that he wrote music fast, like it was nothing, that he could never understand why other musicians got frustrated when he handed out brand-new arrangements right before a gig. He could always play it right off the page. Why couldn't they? Finally Ellery got to hear his father's music for the first time. What's happened since is a story about what it means to be a nobody artist and what it means to be called a genius. This American Life producer Nancy Updike tells the story. When Ellery first heard his father's music, it was 1976, two years after his dad was killed. His father, Rodd Keith, fell, or jumped, from an overpass onto a California highway at 5:00 in the morning. Ellery was 17 when he first heard the tape, a talented and earnest jazz saxophone player living with his mother, who was also a musician. I think we were just sitting in the living room of my mother's house in Baltimore. And, you know, we pop this cassette in. Now, perhaps not surprisingly, when Ellery first heard this recording, he was really disappointed. He hadn't known what to expect when his grandparents sent the tape. But after all the buildup, he just couldn't believe that this was going to be it from his father, the genius, one crappy tape he couldn't stand listening to. And that was the last of his father's music he heard for the next 15 years. Let's play-- I'll just play this, and we'll talk about it. This is called "Hippy Happy Land." Is this your dad singing? Yeah. This is a song poem. Song poems are songs built around lyrics that people send in to companies that advertise in the back of some magazines. You're supposed to send in your lyrics, and then they'll write a song for you, record it, and send it out to record companies so you can break into the biz. Needles to say, the song poem industry is about half a promise short of a swindle and not a form that has launched any musicians you or I could name, except, interestingly enough, Hootie of Hootie & the Blowfish. Just kidding. So it's 15 years since Ellery's first heard that tape of his dad, and he's thumbing through this music catalog. And he sees a CD compilation of song poems, including ones by Rodd Keith, his father. He was stunned. He immediately got the CD and started finding out everything he could about other song poems his dad wrote. It turns out he wrote hundreds and hundreds of them. Now Ellery has a whole shelf of 45s with song poems by his dad. This music has everything in the world going against it. It's completely artificial. It's a scam. I could probably list 15 different reasons why it shouldn't work. But for some reason, something comes through all this stuff. And I think that's part of the charm and attractiveness that it has. The combination of the sentiment of the lyrics and the tune being so absurd, coupled with Rodd's delivery, which is actually like he's going for it. I mean, it's like a fine line between the fact that he knows that this is kind of a joke, but he's really trying to put something in it. And a lot of this stuff is right on that line. And I think that's almost an uncomfortable place to be, but it's really fascinating and attractive. It's like you want to cringe, but you're laughing, but you're really attracted to it all at the same time. Ellery loves that rawness and confusion of song poems and not in a theoretical, oh, isn't that kitschy way. He likes listening to them. He says he'll put on a song poem CD just to listen to around the apartment, the same as any other CD, which may sound unimaginable and breathtaking. But here's the thing, when you listen to one song poem after another, you realize song poems are like a blind date you start out thinking you're going to hate. And then by the end of dinner and a movie, you've found several things you really dig about this person. And even if you're not going to marry them, they're definitely not like anyone you've ever dated before. And so it is with fleeting loves, they sparkle for a while. But all too soon, they leave you on your senses to beguile. As we listened, it occurred to me that I had never heard a firefly used as a metaphor for love before. That's the great thing about the song poem. Every metaphor, every mixed metaphor that you could imagine is in there. And the topics are great. There's politics, love songs, hippies, dance crazes. Do the pig. Do the turkey. Space travel. The pig is not a dance that really made it big. It should have, though. I mean, check it out. It would have if this had gotten an air play. The stylistic range of the songs Ellery's father wrote is dizzying. It's 10 years of work from someone who was very, very productive. Of course, he wasn't always working because sometimes he was busy doing things like taking LSD and going out on Sunset Boulevard wearing only a rain coat, and then accidentally catching the rain coat on fire when he tried to light a cigarette, and then taking the raincoat off and being arrested for public nudity. But when he was working, he would record, say, 30 songs a day, one right after another, no rehearsals, no second takes. So Rodd would record maybe some James Bond theme sounding song. Then a dance song. Then some psychedelic number. And then something that sounds like the early Beatles or Ray Davies. At first, when I was first listening to these records, I would hear things and not be sure it was him, even if it had his name on the label. It took me a while. Now I can tell it's him, no matter what he's doing. I can tell whatever that grain of-- whatever that is in his voice that makes it him, I can tell. What an amazing way to know your father, that you have this sort of musical intimacy with him, that-- I mean, you never saw him face to face. Yeah, that's true. I can almost tell the songs that he wrote too, just by the devices that he used and the chord changes. Small, little things. That's Ellery on the sax. It's from his first album, which is a collection of jazz standards. With his father on the other side of the country, that's the music Ellery grew up listening to and liking. I used to be not a snob about it, because I've always had very broad tastes in music, but I definitely was brought up feeling that there was good music and that there was bad music. I mean, I grew up not liking rock and roll, which was really strange for somebody my age. Every kid in the first grade was talking about the Beatles and trying to get their hair to grow long. And I'm thinking about Stan Getz or John Coltrane or something like that. By the time Ellery heard his father's music the second time, when he was in his early thirties, his musical taste had already changed and broadened. But the song poems were just a different world altogether. They were so unfettered by any pretensions of the art world or the world of serious music. It was inspiring. Ellery says in the last few years since finding his father's music and discovering song poems, he's been having a ball buying music he never liked or never heard as a kid and discovering he loves it. Iggy Pop, Yoko Ono, The White Album. And Ellery's own music is changing. Frankly, it's getting weirder, much less like jazz standards and much more like song poems. They have this experimental, "hey, let's see how this sounds" feel. It's making him a jazz outcast these days, which is fine with him. When a reviewer sniffed that a section of one of his albums sounded like, quote, "the buzzing of a thousand demented insects," his reaction was, "Yeah. And?" Was it a disappointment, something that you had to sort of go through and get over to think, OK, my father isn't the Mozart of jazz. Damn it, I'm not related to a Coltrane. I'm related to-- But I think I am related to one. I mean, the music didn't change that. Really? No, people have told me. I mean, they use exactly those words. It's like, he was like a Mozart. He could write this. He could do that. All the cliches. But when people tell them, I can tell that they're really heartfelt. So my estimation of my father has never wavered, and I've never been disappointed in him. I've only been disappointed in the fact that I've never been able to find more of what he was able to do. Not that I'm dissatisfied with song poem music at all. I'm thrilled to have it. It's just that I know that there was more to his personality, and there was more to his life. And the fact that I never met him, I'm hungry for anything I can get. I started out with almost nothing to go on except for that one cassette and two pictures. That was all. If you could have a conversation with him now, what would you say? Wow. Obviously, there are a million things I'd want to know. I just think it would be being with him that would be the whole thing. Not unlike these dreams in which, OK, he's here. We are together. And we're doing normal kind of stuff, like we're going to go out and hang out. W'ere going to do this. We're going to do that. And we're not going to call a huge amount of attention to the fact that there's this profound, enormous thing going on. We're not really going to address that so much as we're just going to live. We're just going to-- do you know what I mean? Would you want to play music with him? Sure. This is the one time in the interview you've cried. Why? Because I guess up to now, we've just sort of talked in terms of secondhand stories and things that I've thought a lot of that I'm able to recite, that I've said many times before, that I've thought about a lot, that I'm familiar with. I've been able to regulate my degree of emotion to that. But when you ask me to indulge in a fantasy or something like that, that's very direct. He never met his father. It's not just that he died. Ellery never met him. Ellery says losing his father has only gotten harder as he's gotten older. When we talked, he'd just passed the age his father was when he died, 37. Ellery's father appears on Ellery's new album, Green Bermudas. About half the songs sample song poems written by his father and some other song poems too. Ellery's father reminded me of this writer Philip K. Dick, who spent his life doing this intricate science fiction writing, all the while dreaming of writing something entirely different, something that would be considered great literature, huge and influential, a classic, not just a cult sci-fi hit. He died young and obscure. But now, 25 years after his death, you've probably seen some of his work without even realizing it. His sci-fi stories and novels have spawned or influenced an astonishing number of films, Blade Runner, Total Recall, The Matrix, Minority Report, The Truman Show, A Scanner Darkly. A collection of his writing is now in the Library of America in the company of Twain, Whitman, Roth. I think most of us are like that, like Philip Dick or Ellery's father. Most of us are toiling away at daily work that doesn't seem as important to us as the ambitious dreams we have for ourselves. We're convinced that we're not living up to our potential, that there's a better part of ourselves that just hasn't expressed itself yet. Until the day our lives are over and what's left is that daily work, whatever it is, whatever we gave it. Act Four, Grace Note. To end our program on a more hopeful note, we have this story from Joel Kostman. It details some of the bitterness that we've heard from others so far this hour about the life of artists, plus something else we haven't. Joel Kostman is a locksmith in New York city. This is from a book of stories he's written about his experiences on the job. "A musician is a peanut," he says. The musician sits on a chair and talks to me while I work. He's wearing a nicely ironed white, short-sleeve shirt and a pair of green chinos. His hair is black, flecked with gray. It's short and neatly combed. "Yeah," he says. "Nothing but a damn peanut." He lives in a tiny, one-room apartment underneath the Manhattan Bridge. Trains roar by overhead. Sometimes the noise is so loud, it is difficult to hear what he is saying. "I never should have gone to Juilliard," he says. "It really messed up my perspective." He stands and walks over to the kitchen, which is a sink and a half refrigerator. There is a hot plate sitting on the counter beneath a homemade shelf on which some cups are stacked next to a few plates. Two sauce pans hang from hooks from the shelf. "You're in your own special little classical world there. It's not the real world. Musicians don't rate in the real world. Took me years to get that straight." He opens the refrigerator and removes a pitcher. "You want some iced tea?" "No, thanks," I say. He pours a glass for himself. "All I ever really wanted to do was play popular music," he says. "But I was just a kid. What did I know? Juilliard was my parents' idea. I came all the way from Hawaii. Luckily, I was smart enough to drop out." "What instrument do you play?" I asked. "Guitar. You know what really bugs me?" "What?" "Americans can't play Hawaiian guitar. They only copy." I have already figured out what's wrong with his lock. It'll be an easy repair, so I allow myself the opportunity to continue the conversation. "You know, there was a hit song when I was a kid," I say, "came out in the '50s. It was called 'Hawaiian Love Song' or something like that. It was an instrumental with the Hawaiian guitar." I sing a little of what I think was the melody. "Right," the musician says. "Americans. That was typical. The big hit Hawaiian guitar song was done by Americans. Junk." "When that song came out, though, there was a lot of work for us. I spent years on the road playing Hawaiian music. Spent some great days in Kansas City. Ever been there?" "No," I say. "Great town. I played with some fine musicians. First-class gig all the way. Didn't last long, though. Harder times after that." We hear the sound of an instrument coming from outside. The musician frowns and walks to the window. He's stirring the sugar around in his glass. I look too. There's a guy leaning up against a car playing a saxophone. "He thinks he can play," he says. "You know him?" The musician sips his tea. "Unfortunately," he says. "He wouldn't know good music if he tripped over it." The sax player looks up and waves. "You almost ready?" he calls. The musician yells, "B flat." Then he steps back into the room, and he says, "What an idiot. He makes the same mistake every time." "I'm almost finished here," I say. "Take your time," he says. "We're only going to Staten Island. The wedding's not till 3:00. He's not paying me enough to get there early." I am engaged to be married in two months. My fiancee, Rebecca, and I have hired a classical trio to play at our wedding. "So are you in a band? I ask. The musician laughs to himself. "Not a chance. His guitar player's sick. Every time his guitar player gets sick, he calls me to bail him out." A train rattles by. The cups and plates shake. "I'm a bartender," I think he says. "So are you finally ready?" the sax player asks. He's sitting on the hood of the car, holding his instrument between his legs. "No," the musician growls. "I just came down with my guitars to tell you I'm going to be another 20 minutes." A group of six kids is standing a few feet away, watching. Two Chinese girls, three early adolescent black boys, and a little white boy who couldn't be more than five with a marine-type brush cut. They look like they are posing for a family portrait, tallest in the rear, the little one in the middle, everyone waiting to say, "Cheese." "Friendly guy, huh?" the sax player says to me. "That's the only reason I give him a chance to go on these gigs, because he's such a nice guy. He can't play a lick." "Right," the musician says. The sax player is middle-aged with a salt-and-pepper goatee. He's wearing a small black cap, the kind Pete Seeger wears, with a snap in the front over the brim. "Get the lock fixed?" he asks. "Yes," I say. He lifts the horn to his lips and begins to play. I recognize the melody. "Going to the Chapel and We're Going to Get Married." I wonder if we can get the classical trio to work up this tune. One of the Chinese girls, who's about 9 or 10, starts clapping. She holds the palms of her hands straight up like cymbals and alternately brings one down onto the other. The rest of the group joins in. Each one moves differently, one swaying, one lifting and dropping his shoulders to the beat. The sax player slides off the car and holds the instrument out toward them while he plays. They start to dance around him. He hops up onto the sidewalk, and the kids follow. He circles the car with the kids in tow. "Gee, I really love you, and we're going to get ma-a-arried." A young black woman appears out of nowhere and is standing next to the car singing. She has what sounds to me like a professional voice. The musician nods and smiles at her. "Going to the chapel of love," she croons. People on the sidewalk across the street stop and begin clapping too. A train goes by on the Manhattan Bridge directly above us. The kids are still dancing. The people are clapping. And the sax man is playing. But all I can hear is the train. After about 15 seconds, the noise subsides, and I hear the sound of a guitar. The musician, with one foot up on the fender of the car, is playing a rhythmic accompaniment. He smiles at me. The sax player comes up and stands next to him. They pick up the pace, and the people clap faster and faster. Finally, while the sax man is playing a string of cascading notes, the musician, strumming furiously, lifts his guitar handle into the air and brings it down with a chop. They end at precisely the same moment. We all applaud enthusiastically. "OK, let's go to a wedding," the musician says. Joel Kostman's book is Keys to the City: True Tales of a New York City Locksmith. Our program was produced today by Julie Snyder and myself with Alix Spiegel and Nancy Updike. Contributing editors Sarah Vowell, Jack Hitt, and Margy Rochlin. Our senior editor for this show was Paul Tough. Production help from Alex Blumberg, Laura Doggett, Emi Takahara, [? Sahini ?] [? Davenport ?], and [? Vija ?] [? Navarro ?]. [? Shojow ?] [? Young ?] runs our website. Barry Winograd played sax, and John Siegle played guitar in our rendition of "Going to the Chapel." This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. Our website, www.thisamericanlife.org, where you can get our free weekly podcast or listen to old shows online. WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia, who meets with his music staff every single week, looks at their playlists, and declares-- This music has everything in the world going against it. It's completely artificial. It's a scam. And we started today's program with Leonardo da Vinci. Let's end with Leonardo as well. This is a quote from one of his notebooks. "To the ambitious, for whom neither the bounty of life nor the beauty of the world suffice to content, it comes as penance that life for them is squandered and that they possess neither the benefits nor the beauty of the world. And if they are unable to perceive what is divine in nature, which is all around them, how will they be able to see their own divinity, which is sometimes hidden?" I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life. PRI. Public Radio International.
|
Andrea worked at a bakery restaurant, under the convention hotel. At first it was fine, waiting on the conventioneers. But then you start to dread them. I mean absolutely. You're like, no, not another convention. They just flipped me out. I was just listening and watching them and getting them their croissants and their coffee. Fact is, when people are together with others of their own kind, they act differently. This thing happens. I mean you're so focused into this one aspect of your life that you just absorb into that whole facet of your life. You become that facet of your life. You become that facet of your life, yeah. If one Mary Kay saleswoman walks up to your bakery counter, you don't think twice about it. But 90 of them, that's something completely different. And so there's just like this excitement. They're like really bubbly. And they've got all this bright colored make-up on-- pinks, blues. Oh, of course. Because they're in the convention with their peers so they have to impress each other. Oh, yeah. It's not like they're undercover, like we can go to a convention and not wear make-up. I mean they were made up to like the nines. I mean it was crazy. So I'm just looking at them in line and I had never seen more make-up in my entire life. But they were just covered. And just the most awkward-- I mean everything looked like it was a mistake. Just the most awkward, strange colors. And just things I would-- Oh, Andrea, that just goes to show how far from the light you are. Just how far you are from the Mary Kay way. I know. Math teachers make me particularly nervous. Because math is my nemesis. I'm awful at math. And I thought OK. You're working the bakery counter. They can't hurt you. They're not going to quiz you. You're not going to have algebra-- no. I tell them their amount. And then they give me the money. And I'm sitting there trying to figure it out. And all of a sudden they're like, well, wait, wait. Let me give you $0.05. And then you can give me this back. And they like totally-- by the end of the day, my drawer was totally off. Because they just blow my mind at the last minute. Plus, I hate math. Then I'm getting like really nervous. I'm like, I can't do this. I can't do this. I having flashbacks from seventh grade, failing math. And I'm like, I can't do it. I just can't do it. Was that the worst they did? Did they do little math tricks with the change, like oh, that's a prime? No. Well, from WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it is This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, invite a variety of writers and reporters and performers to take a whack at that theme. Today's program, Conventions, and who we become when we attend them. Act One, Dark Shadows. What happens when 2,000 people come together who have nothing more in common the fact that they watch television. Act Two, Dish Out Of Water, in which Dishwasher Pete brings us the story of a lowly restaurant employee who attends the national convention designed for restaurant big-wigs, his own bosses. Act Three, When Worlds Collide, a story that starts in a convention center where two different conventions happen to be taking place, where two different people from different worlds happen to meet, and what happens next that takes them far from the convention. Stay with us. Act One. Well, it was Katherine who really wanted to go to the Dark Shadows convention. Katherine was the one who was the fanatic, at least that's what John says. It filled something in her. It was almost like she was an empty glass and Dark Shadows filled her glass. Whatever was missing in her life at that moment, filled her glass. And she could watch it continually. And would laugh and roar and got so involved with the characters. How many would she watch? Let's just get that fact out there. She would watch eight hours a day. Eight hours of Dark Shadows a day. Eight hours a day. Approximately eight hours a day. Damn. Eight hours a day, every day, of the slowest, creakiest TV show ever. Dark Shadows, you may recall, is the Gothic soap opera that ran from 1966 to 1971. The main character is an avuncular vampire, named Barnabas Collins. The story line shifting from the 19th century to groovy '60s America at its most mod, kind of Wuthering Heights meets Austin Powers. Eight hours a day of it, 1,275 episodes in all, beginning on a train. My name is Victoria Winters. My journey is beginning. A journey that will bring me to a strange and dark place, to the edge of the sea, high atop Widows' Hill, a house called Collinwood, a world I've never known, with people I've never met. Dear Katherine, it's now 3:00 o'clock in the morning and I'm on an Amtrak train, heading towards New York. I think right about now I'm in Syracuse, Ohio. I'm thinking about you. I'm thinking about how this was all your idea to go the Dark Shadows convention. True, I introduced you to the show, but you were the one who really took it to heart. I feel like I'm going on a journey somehow. A journey to meet people that, I don't know, maybe they'll have something in common with me. When she said she wasn't going to go, I had to think, do I really want to go to this convention? Is this something I still really need to do? And I thought about it. And I thought, I have been thinking about going to this convention since December. It's August now. I have been talking about going to this convention. It's been like on my calendar. I've been preparing. I've been buying clothes for the convention. I've been saving money that-- like I've been eating Ramen noodles for lunch. And I'm going, of course I'm going to go to this convention. Even though the show is just a show to me, I really want to go. I want to talk about Dark Shadows with other people that like Dark Shadows. Regular listeners to This American Life may remember last Halloween, producer Nancy Updike and I visited John and his friends, [? Thax ?] and Erica during their weekly ritual of watching Dark Shadows. And I'm here to tell you, after I re-watch several hours of this, it's boring, it's slow, the acting is terrible, the plot lines are preposterous and apparently take months-- sometimes years-- to resolve. But it's live TV. And it's got that feeling. And if you watch long enough, you can see people forget lines, scripts are left on beds during scenes, prop guys get caught on screen. You can see them through doorways. Flies settle on the actors' faces. And this is part of what John and his friends love when they watch. John watches six hours a week, taped off the SciFi channel. You notice the littlest things you wouldn't notice in a regular show. Like we noticed tonight that people have stopped knocking on the door three times. They're now knocking on the door four times. I'll go out the back way. No. No, you won't. You'll stay right here. They'll make me go back if they find-- [KNOCKS ON DOOR] So ?] John thinks they had a lengthy meeting deciding that you have to have four knocks instead of three, to spice up the plot a little bit. It's more exciting. Like the new director said, we've got to get rid of the old ways. Things are going to change around here. No more of this three knocks stuff. Oh, Glenda. It's happening again. So John goes to New York, on the train, alone, to a convention hotel on Times Square. Katherine doesn't go because she got a job, which tends to cut into people's Dark Shadows habit in a rather major way. I'll be honest, I was really petrified because I was alone in New York. I don't know anybody. And there are probably about 400 people all waiting in line to go into this banquet hall to start the ceremonies, the opening Dark Shadow convention ceremonies. And I'm walking around. And I know that everybody here, I can walk up to them and start talking about Dark Shadows. But I don't know if I want to at this point. And the last time I'd actually remembered that feeling was 10 years ago, when I had first gone into a gay bar by myself and felt like this was something I had to do by myself. I was all alone. And there I was, like in this room with people that we all had something in common. And you just come out? I had just come out. We all had something in common. I knew that all these people, we had a similar life experience. We have one thing in common. We have one thing in common. But, for example, with the gay bar, you can't just walk up to somebody and say, so you're a homosexual, too. Me too. Testing. I'm now at the convention. And-- hold on. You use that word. Not yet. Right now, I'm in the grand ballroom at the Marriott. It's opulent beyond belief. There are four large chandeliers. And there are probably about I'd say a little bit over 500 people here right now. And they're doing a retrospective on some of the Dark Shadows actors who had passed on. It's just funny. There are 500 people sitting in this grand ballroom watching TV. Not yet. That's how Humbert makes his vocabulary. We all go into the ballroom to watch TV. What? That's the opening ceremony. So it's 500. And there's a little tiny TV on the stage. No, no, no. This is huge. The TV is huge. Oh. It would be like-- There's a little black and white 12 inch at the front that we all gather around. Because when you think about it, it is a convention about watching TV. Yeah. And I hadn't thought about that until that exact moment. I was going that to sort of talk to people. Then it occurred to you, I'm here to watch TV. I'm here to watch TV. And I'm here to talk to people about watching TV. Even terrifying, perhaps. The other thing I was there for was to watch-- this was so amazing. People make Dark Shadows videos. They make their own Dark Shadows videos. You mean like using footage from the original-- No, no, no. They create new Dark Shadows videos. New Dark Shadows episodes. They make new episodes themselves? Right. They make new episodes themselves. Like they get costumes and build sets? Oh, my god. There was this one thing. It was amazing. It was a parody of the show. But a parody like if you watched it right now, you would go-- I mean it could be funny. But it's all inside jokes. If you watch like Dark Shadows, it's the only way you would think this is funny. But it was so elaborate. Like they had completely rebuilt the set of like Barnabas's drawing room, completely. And then like another set was in a graveyard. And they had completely done the graveyard. This one man played three different characters. And it was edited like it was completely professional. I mean they must have spent like a ton of money. They had gotten one of the original cast members to come and be in the video. It was so incredibly elaborate. And it was like 45 minutes long. And it was good. And then it was like to think I'm sitting there going, this is really good. Your outfit, at this point? Well, I had put on my red burgundy, crushed velvet Pierre Cardin jacket that I had gotten at the Salvation Army for $5.00. It had like a little water spot on the back of it. I had put on my rhinestone brooch, that looks sort of like a flaring sun, with this big, huge rhinestone-- Right in the middle of your collar. Right in the middle, which I had pinned to my silk shirt and black pants, and my shoes, which were Quentin Collins shoes from the 1960s show. I mean I found these-- John was the only one there who dressed up, at least the first day. Everyone else was in shorts, summer clothes, casual clothes. Which makes a person wonder, am I the weirdo? John would get on the elevator wearing his convention name tag, with non-convention hotel guests. And they would look at me. Then they would look at my badge. And then they would look at me again. I felt at that moment, I'm like, I'm the weirdo. I'm the weirdo in the elevator. I'm at a Dark Shadows convention. This feeling may be more extreme at a the Dark Shadows convention, but frankly it is common to any convention. Standing on the elevator, with your badge, separated from the rest of your tribe, surrounded by civilians, it's easy to feel like a freak, even if you're just a math teacher. But there are freaks and there are freaks. John, for example, would not get in the 800-person, five-hour line to get autographs from the stars. On the other hand, in three days, in the world's most exciting, vibrant city, he never left the hotel. And then he want to this panel, where all these issues were resolved. Stars from Dark Shadows were there, answering detailed questions from the audience. But this woman gets up at this panel discussion. And she has a pre-prepared statement. And the statement is-- it was like, I want to thank all of you for all the joy you've given me through my years. And she said, when I watch Dark Shadows, I want to take the high road. I want to think of the things Dark Shadows has given me. How it's taught me to forgive, how it's taught me the joy of friendship, how it's taught me that you need to go on from bad situations. And then she said, and most people will listen to this and they will think that I'm a crackpot. And if I'm a crackpot, so be it. And then she screams into the mike, Dark Shadows lives. And you see this like look on all the actors' faces like, fear, like a little bit of fear. But it dawned on me, this was like the statement that I had felt, that I had been feeling a little bit. And here she is standing up in this room full of people and proclaiming, I am a crackpot. And I was thinking, well, I'm sort of a crackpot too. And here she was. It was sort of like the alcoholic getting up at the alcoholic convention, saying I'm an alcoholic. And I thought, I laughed at it. And I was just like, god, this is what this whole convention is about. We're like all these misfits. And at this point, I was feeling the sense of community. And I was feeling in the sea of crackpots, I'm a crackpot with them. I'm brother. I am with you. But John, I mean but you sort of saw her as being nuts. Right. But you thought she was speaking for you when she said that? I felt an empathy with her. And just not that I'm going to be the one going up there screaming, I am a crackpot. Dark Shadows rules. No, you've chosen to say it to 400,000 people over the radio. Oh god, I'm going to pass out. Dark Shadows rules. I've said it. I've said it, Ira. Do you want to say it louder, John? No. You can. I don't want to say it any louder. I don't want to say it any louder. Do you want to stand up? We can-- No. I don't want to say it. That's OK. I've said it. That's all I want to say. Recently, I spoke with Chris Crowley, the facilities manager at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, of the biggest convention centers in the world. And he told me there's a kind of life cycle to conventions. They happen in predictable phases. First day, everybody is disoriented. People get lost. People are still individuals. They're not a group just yet. The second day, people start to group and begin to bond, form those little packs of people. And by the third day of the convention, there's definite friendships that are made and groups of people that are following each other. And you start to recognize who your peers are. And they create their own little herd mentality, if you will. And all of this happened to John. On the first day, he didn't want to talk to anybody. He felt like a loner. By the second, he found some friends at the volunteer desk and the costume ball. And these people seemed like they were pretty fun. So some of the people I had talked to during the day, I said let's all go back to my room. I've got two bottles of Merlot. And let's all get drunk and talk about Dark Shadows. But then sadly, John discovered the inevitable third phase of any convention. He got sick of it. In this case, too much TV, too much merchandise, too many pictures and videos of Dark Shadows, going everywhere, all the time, too much sharing. He woke up the morning of the third day with a cheap wine hangover, never wanting to talk about Barnabas Collins again, or at least for the foreseeable future. He had to force himself to go downstairs to the final banquet, which he had already paid $45 dollars to attend. And this other guy was sitting next to me. And we talked a little bit about the show. And it was like he started talking-- I mean he was from Long Island. And he asked me where I was from. I said Chicago. And he said he had gone through Chicago. And he changed the subject to sports and about the Bulls. And I don't talk about sports, ever. I don't know anything about sports. I don't even follow the Bulls when the championships are going on. Which actually is very, very hard. It's like trying to ignore Christmas, if you live in Chicago. It's everywhere. And I found myself sitting with this person at this convention, talking about the Bulls, talking about the Bulls in Chicago. In your normal life, if somebody were trying to talk to you about sports, you would be thinking to yourself, I wish I could be talking about something like Dark Shadows. Right. And there I was, I was engaging him in talking about the Bulls. And I was saying, when you were in London, did the Bull's championship go on? Where were you? Are you a Bulls' fan? And I was changing the subject. Then we talked about the Cubs. I don't talk about the Cubs. When John Connors got home after a 24-hour train ride, he opened the door and heard the click of his video machine. He had recorded six episodes of Dark Shadows. The day he returned, he said he wasn't sure if he'd be able to watch them. As of today, three days later, he's watched five. I'm a dishwasher. And having worked in restaurants for over a decade, it would only make sense that I attend the National Restaurant Association's annual gathering. But it's not an organization that welcomes restaurant employees-- quite the contrary. That's Dishwasher Pete, writer and publisher of the zine Dishwasher, an original and funny account of his life as a dishwasher, traveling from place to place, on a small mission to wash dishes in all 50 states, plus whatever other dish washing stories and topics he feels like writing about. He's visiting the National Restaurant Association, which is made up of restaurant owners, managers, and suppliers. They are a force to be reckoned with in this country, especially in Washington, DC, important opponents of the minimum wage and Bill Clinton's national health care plan, a few years ago. The National Restaurant Association's political ally, Newt Gingrich, has stated that their lobbying was instrumental in defeating the health care proposal. So if this group that works so hard against the interests of me and my restaurant colleagues were going to hold a pow wow, I felt it my responsibility to be there. Riding up the escalator into the middle of Chicago's McCormick Place Convention Center, I was immediately overwhelmed. On display was everything imaginable concerning the food service industry, every sort of cooking and serving appliance utensil, food products, menu designs, everything. Each booth was highly specialized. If they didn't have an impressive array of napkin rings, then they were peddling theme outfits so a restaurant's staff could dress up like pirates or clowns. I'd come expecting to find groupings of restaurant owners, smoking their cigars, rubbing their bellies, and exchanging tales of how they'd stuck it to their employees. So where were they? In the meantime, there was something on my agenda, something that's always on my agenda-- free food. Plenty of food products were available for sampling. I nibbled my way along, a hunk of chocolate here, a veggie burger there, waffles, chicken tenders, stir fry, jelly beans. This part didn't seem so bad. That was until I arrived at one of the booths giving away free beer. There was fierce competition to reach the bar. Being jostled from both sides by guys in suits was a bit unsettling. I hadn't planned to be so informal with these people. I came to the show to be inconspicuous and to inspect, not to socialize and rub shoulders with folks who might otherwise be my boss. After I was finally served, I stood back and watched the boss types push and shove their way to the free beer. I turned and watched another crowd of boss types clamoring to receive free plastic key chains at another booth. This, to me, was weird. I had expected that with this many boss types in one hall, the air would be thick with authority. Instead, these authority figures were giddy over receiving plastic trinkets. It was disturbing to see all these boss types away from the restaurants, like being in the sixth grade and seeing your teacher walking down the street, holding her boyfriend's hand. It's just something I don't care to see. But while the gathering of the boss types seemed rather innocuous, I assumed the capitalist parade would be in full swing as I headed to the convention's keynote address, given by Republican Senator Bob Dole. So we shouldn't forget for a moment that we live in the greatest country on the face of the earth. By the time I took my seat at the back of the room, Dole was well underway. I listened. I became confused. I think Dole think was confused too. He was supposed to be giving the keynote address to a group of restaurateurs. Instead, he gave what amounted to be a campaign speech, as if he were still running in the election that he had lost last year. And we shouldn't forget for a moment, the people who came ahead of us made sacrifices for us. I was desperate for any morsel related to restaurants to come from Dole's mouth. It never came. I began to sense that Dole wasn't quite sure where he was. I had assumed he was yet another political lackey of the National Restaurant Association. But now, he seemed more like the grandfather at a family dinner who babbles incomprehensibly, while the rest of the families is too polite to draw attention to it. As Dole droned on, streams of people, apparently having heard enough, headed for the exits. Then Dole took questions from those remaining. I had hoped to ask him something like, hey man, why are you and the National Restaurant Association always trying to keep the dishwashers down? But in each of his responses, as he drifted away from the question, I realized I couldn't ask a snot-nosed question of this absent-minded old man. Thinking instead, maybe he could provide some grand fatherly advice. Mine was the last question. Hello, Mr. Dole. I'm here at the National Restaurant Association Show. And I was wondering if you had any words of advice for the dishwashers of the nation? Just keep washing them, would be my advice. Thank you. I was excited because mine was the only question he actually answered, just keep washing. At first it seemed like a good-natured slap on the back, thumbs-up piece of advice. But as the band played on, Dole's words kept going through my head. Just keep washing. Yep. Just keep washing. Day after day, just keep washing. Week after week, month after month, just keep washing. Year after year, after year-- what the hell kind of advice is that? While Dishwasher Pete searches the National Restaurant Association for traces of the American dream, one that Bob Dole would actually improve of, that's in a minute from Public Radio International, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program of course which we choose a theme. Bring you a wide variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's program, Conventions. We are in the middle of Act Two, Dishwasher Pete, a real live dishwasher, at the convention of the National Restaurant Association. Working as a dishwasher, I'm often told, start here and someday you may own your own restaurant. Bosses tell this to dishwashers all the time. And if that's true, that meant I surrounded by tens of thousands of former dishwashers at the restaurant convention. Do you have much experience washing dishes yourself? I can't say that I have. Only at home. You haven't done that in the past? No. It's really not that effective. Dishwashers are invisible to most restaurant customers. But why was such an important part of the industry being ignored at this gathering that celebrated every aspect of the restaurant world? I set out to find some of my fellow dishwashers. I stopped passers by, asking them if they'd seen any dishwashers walking around. I received one negative response after another. One restaurant owner snidely told me she wouldn't think of bringing her dishwashers to the show. But then I realized there was one place I was sure to find some of my dish brethren. Like a moth to the flame, I headed straight for the Hobart display. As the largest manufacturers of commercial dish washing equipment, Hobart is legendary amongst those of us who wash dishes for a living. Their model dish machines would surely be staffed by real live dishwashers. Hobart's display was quite a spectacle, buzzing with activity, with free beer, and dozens of chirpy sales reps wearing matching bright blue shirts. I half expected there to be bikini-clad women, lounging atop their displayed dish machines. But my hopes for finding dish washing camaraderie didn't pan out. First of all, there were no dishwashers operating the machines. In fact, the machines sat idle. And I didn't find much kinship with the Hobart sales force. Hobart's Barry Baylock showed off their new sink, the TurboWash, that circulated water to enhance the soaking of pots and pans. With a dish machine you've got to have somebody to man it. With this, you don't. So you're able to de-staff your kitchen, so to speak. So it's a big labor saver. Yes, it's more expensive than a three-compartment sink, but it's less expensive than having a full-time employee. This shows up every day. A full-time employee doesn't. What do you think about the dishwashers who may possibly face layoffs because of a labor saving device such as this? This does not take a very qualified person. It allows one person to do several jobs within the dish room room activity, instead of having two people to do two separate jobs. So it actually is going to help out giving more job security to the person that is working in that dish room area. Now why would that be? Because they can do more within the dish room. They can operate the dish machine they can-- Both Hobart sales reps that I talked to told me that not only had they never held dish washing jobs, but they hated doing the chore at home. What sort of dish machine representatives were these? To me, they were like surgeons who hated the sight of blood. I left the Hobart display a bit dejected and checked out some of their competitors. The Champion dish machine company's couldn't have been more different than the Hobart display. They were, unlike the mass of bright and chirpy Hobart crew, just a couple of middle-aged guys wearing drab brown suits. I spoke to a guy named Peter for awhile, asking if any dishwashers had visited the booth? None had. As I was about to walk away, he asked if I was Dishwasher Pete? It was kind of spooky. My cover was blown. Peter introduced me to Hank Holt, the president of Champion. He had written me a year prior, requesting a copy of my publication, Dishwasher. I kind of couldn't believe that the company's head honcho would bother to attend such an event. But was even more surprised that he remembered who I was. Dishwasher Pete goes all-- he goes all over the country, washing dishes. And he writes about them. And puts out this little book, every week. And it's funnier than the devil. We wanted to put some of his articles on the web page and send them out some of the consultants, and all that. But we have to edit them. They're a little bit spicy, for some of them. How has the show been going? The show has been fine. We're not overwhelmed with customers. While Hank and I talked dish washing, I snuck peeks over at the Hobart booth. It seemed ridiculous that I had previously scoffed at the Champion guys and thought that I'd find solidarity among the Hobart crew. The Hobart folks now looked like the in-crowd at high school, the jocks and cheerleaders, who were popular, yet shallow. Meanwhile, here were the nerdier Champion guys, who could relate more to where I was coming from, though not entirely. While Hank and I did have a good conversation, we were from opposite ends of the spectrum. He, the president of a dish machine company, me, a dishwasher. I still needed to find an actual fellow dish dog. As the show was winding down, I left the crowds and commotion, descending three flights of stairs, heading deep down into the bowels of the convention center, until I came upon a door. I pushed a button next to the door and moments later, it buzzed open. I wandered through the labyrinth of corridors, peeking around corners and acting as if I belonged there whenever I encountered someone. Then I heard a familiar hum in the distance. How are you doing? How are you doing? All right. So you're the man behind the scenes, huh? You're the man behind the scenes, washing the dishes? Yeah. Yeah. His name was Jesse. And he was working alone in the cavernous dish room, unloading dishes from a huge 30 foot long conveyor belt style machine, just like the ones on display upstairs. Well, do you think there's anything our radio audience should know about the man behind the scenes, down here in the dish room? I've really got nothing to say, except I like the job. It's keeping me out of trouble out there on the streets and everything. It's not hard work. The employers are nice people. They're easy to get along with. As Jesse returned to the head of the dish machine once again to load dishes into it, I felt at ease for the first time all day. I watched Jesse loading the machine from afar, feeling like I needed to speak with him more. That our bond needed to be acknowledged. But then I noticed the clean dishes exiting the machine. And I knew what to do. I put down the tape recorder and got to work. I walked over and unloaded the clean dishes. Dishwasher Pete's zine, Dishwasher, is available for a measly dollar, at P.O. Box 8213, Portland, Oregon 97207. Act Three, When Worlds Collide. This story begins at a convention, well, two conventions actually. John Perry Barlow was at a convention in 1993 for the NeXT computer, the machine that Steven Jobs created after he co-founded Apple Computers. The other convention, the American Psychiatric Association. Our story starts on the border of those two. John Perry Barlow is a former rancher, song lyricist, now head of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He travels everywhere, talking about computers. And that is what brought him to the Moscone Center for a convention in 1993. And I was supposed to be the MC at a Steve Jobs celebrity roast. Uh-huh. And across the way, the psychiatrists were having a seminar or something. Before we even go anywhere, it really does like a when worlds collide sort of thing. Oh, totally. Yeah. Yeah. It was. Because the thing about a convention is that each world is so distinctly it's own-- Right. --world, with its own concerns and its own priorities and its own paradigm. Oh, yeah. And both of these groups of people were so distinct from one another. I mean psychiatrists as a group have a look. NeXT was one of the only computers I've ever been around where the whole notion of design was really important to the product. Right. Elegance of design. And it attracted the strangest kind of hybrid, which was sort of like UNIX weenies by Armani , combination. OK. And describe what the psychiatrists tend to look like? What was there look? Well, the psychiatrists were all the sort of Jules Feiffer cartoon psychiatrists, tweed jackets, slightly rumpled. Right. And no distinct difference between the men and the women really, except for this one person. I was standing outside the entrance to the ballroom, where I was going to supposedly roast Mr. Jobs. And the psychiatrists were all milling around over there, in their corner. And I saw a woman standing with her back to me. She actually looked dressed to be more one of us, than one of them, in the sense that she had this very crisp Armani look from behind, long blonde hair. And she turned and looked over her left shoulder, and looked right at me. And I've never had an experience like this before or since. I mean I've always thought that the whole idea of love at first sight was one of those things that was invented by a lady novelist, with three names from the south. Right. Right. Because how can this work? What's the process by which you would recognize something that profound? Yeah. She looked. And we started looking at each other. And we didn't avert our gaze, either of us for probably 45 seconds. I mean we just locked on the beam. And I felt like I was having an hallucination. I mean I felt like I was hearing voices. It was the strangest thing. And I kind of stepped back and rubbed my eyes and tried to figure out what I was going to do about this. You literally rubbed your eyes.? Literally. No. It was an odd-- the whole thing just felt really dreamlike. I was going to say, it's like in a story. It went into this surreal state. Finally, I thought, well, whatever is going on between this person and me, I am definitely not going to let this moment pass without investigation because I haven't experienced this before. So I circled her a couple of times. And then finally I came over to her, and I said, "You're something." And she said, "So are you." And I said, "Well, where are you from?" I assumed that she was part of our show. I thought that actually what she was-- it didn't occur to me that she was associated with the psychiatrists because she didn't look anything like them. And I thought that what she was probably was what is-- I wish there were a better term for this, but the general computer trade show term for this is booth bimbo, which is somebody who stands in the booth selling the incredibly difficult to use software, who's actually a model or an actress or something, who doesn't know anything about the software. But the marketers sort of dangle her out as bait. Right. And then once she's gotten these poor innocent hackers to wander over so they can talk to the beautiful girl, then wham, they get them. Right. Geeks move in. Right. The geeks move in and hustle them off and sell them software. Time honored practice. Right. Exactly. It works. And so I just assumed she must be a booth bimbo because she was much too beautiful to be a computer hacker. Or a psychiatrist. And it didn't even dawn on me that she was a psychiatrist, which in fact she was. But I said, "Well, where are you from?" And she said, "Well, I'm from a little town in British Columbia." And I said, "Well, that's interesting. I'm from a little town in Wyoming, which is kind of like British Columbia." Un-huh. "Where do you live now?" And she said, "New York." And I said, "Well, that's even more interesting because that's where I live." And I said, "Where do you live in New York?" And she said, "19th and 3rd." And I said, "Well, that's not too far from where I live. I'm down at the lower end of Fifth Avenue." And she said, "Where?" And I said "Well, Fifth and Ninth." And she said, "Really? Which building?" And I said, "It's the old Fifth Avenue Hotel. It's 24 5th Avenue." And she said, "Really? Well, it turns out that I just got an apartment in that building." And in fact she had just gotten an apartment precisely two stories above mine in the same building. So there I was with this woman that I had an instantaneous and inexplicable attachment to, who was about to move into my apartment building. And we just went off together-- and actually moved in together, really, literally, a week after we met. So when you're at the convention with her, you just spent all your time together basically? Yeah, from that point forward. And it was a great opportunity for me to introduce her to my world in a lot of its other dimensions, because the Grateful Dead was having a concert in Sacramento one of the nights of these joint conventions. And so we went over and she saw her first Dead concert. And this is a person who would never have been caught dead at a Dead concert. Explain your connection with the Grateful Dead? Oh, I spent many, many years as their sort of junior varsity song writer. There were two song writers. And I was the lesser of the two. And so what did she think of the concert? What did she make of it? She liked it a lot. She thought the Deadheads were fascinating. She thought the music was great. But the other thing was that we were just completely, hopelessly besotted with each other. Yeah. I could have taken her to a dogfight I think and she would have thought it was OK. It was just one of those completely unexpected, acts of providence where two worlds collided and something wonderful came from the point that they touched. Do you think that if you would have met this woman in some other setting, just on the street or seen her in the lobby of the apartment building that you lived in, after she had moved in there, do you think that you would have had this moment quite so powerfully? Or do think that there was something about being at a convention where one is just open to experience in a way that one wouldn't be elsewhere? Actually I think at that moment, she was more inclined to judge things more on the basis of their appearance. And what she mainly saw was a guy in a real sharp suit. The next day when I returned to my normal style of dress, she said, "Wait a second. Is this how you usually dress?" And I said, "Yeah." And she said, "Oh, well. All right." But do you think that if you had seen her just walking into your building three weeks after that, for the first time, do you think this moment would have happened? I think that it probably would have happened anyway. There was something about this particular connection that would have overridden any of the surrounding noise in the data. I mean I felt like I had finally met another member of my tribe, and felt that before I said anything to her or she said anything to me. What happened with her, finally. Well, what happened was-- we had both had the flu. And she was a young woman. I mean quite a bit younger than me. And very healthy. Took extremely good care of herself-- athletic. But we both had the flu. And it had been a real nasty flu. And it had had us both kind of hitting on maybe five out of eight for close to a month. Yeah. And I had gone out to Los Angeles to give a speech. And Tim Leary had gotten some tickets to a Pink Floyd concert at the Rose Bowl. And she was going to come out and join me, to go to this Pink Floyd concert with Tim. That all got bollixed up. We ended up going by ourselves and having a very long, complicated evening, with a lot of waiting in traffic, and looking for our car, and what not. Going off by yourselves, you and Timothy Leary or you and her? Cynthia. And over the course of this evening, we decided that even though we had been sort of the opinion that we didn't want to think about the future that much, she said, "Well, I know that we're not supposed to think about the future. But I think that you and I should have children. And if we're going to do that, I would love to start soon. And if we're going to do that, then we should be married. And how do you feel about those things?" And I said, "Fine. sure. No problem." Anyway the next day, I had a meeting and-- the next day was a Sunday. And I had a red-eye back to New York that evening. And Cynthia was going to go on that. And I said, "Look, you've been sick. And you've got patients tomorrow. And why don't you just take an afternoon flight. And I'll be home to see you before you go off to work." And so she took an afternoon flight. And I took her down to the airport. And gave each other a great big kiss. And she said, "Nothing can keep us apart baby. We were made for each other." And then she just walked onto the plane and went to sleep, took a nap. And it turned out that the virus that we both had, the flu virus, had attacked her heart and had been chewing away on it for the previous 10 days or so. And it pretty well consumed the pericardium. And so eventually it was so compromised that, as she was sleeping, she started to fibrillate and just died. She was two days short of her 30th birthday. And they went to tell her to put her seat belt on coming into JFK, she was dead and had been for awhile. Oh, my god. So this whole episode, from the moment I saw her there in the hallway of the ANA, to the moment where I watched her walk onto the aircraft was one of the really central passages of my life. And after that, everything was different. And smaller. Well, no, not-- actually, I wouldn't say that. In many ways, not at all. Because one of the things that came out of it was that prior to this, I didn't believe in the soul. I mean I think that within us we're two spirits that had always-- I mean, there's really just no way to say this without sounding incredibly sappy. But we were the same soul. And having seen that, that changes everything. Now that you've had this experience with her, do you find that you have this experience all the time, in a smaller form, where you'll meet a group of strangers and there will be one whose eyes strikes you. And you think, OK, I can see a part of this thing.? Absolutely. I mean I feel an ability to attach on a moment to moment basis that is completely unlike anything that I felt prior to that. And I think it's sometimes a little disconcerting to other people, because it's genuine on my side. And people are not used to having somebody just dock emotionally that instantaneously. For one thing, I feel like I can see their souls. Their souls are visible to me. One of the things that happened as a consequence of this is that for a while there, if I stopped moving, the pain got so bad that I couldn't stand it. So I fell into a lifestyle of continuous motion. And that gradually became an economic adaptation. And now I just simply live on the road pretty much. I mean I flew 270 some odd thousand miles last year, just on one airline. God damn. I mean I'm just hearing you say it. It's like you want to die on a plane too. Well, it's a funny thing-- no, I'm not particularly interested in dying on a plane. But I mean that's kind of like-- I really feel like the stratosphere is my church. That's where you feel like you can contact her. Well, kind of. I feel there's something about being up there that makes me feel like I'm closer to her. Yeah. No. I totally understand that. Because it's the last place where she was. Yeah. But it's more than that. I mean last night I was flying here, to Salt Lake from New York. And I looked down, and it was just-- I don't know that I believe in heaven or anything quite like that. But I mean it looked exactly like heaven in the paintings of that period of the late Renaissance, when they really started to get light, and understand how to do light and clouds. Remember that really clear, kind of blue light-- Yeah, exactly. --with pale, clear blue. There were layers and layers and layers of different colors of clouds. And they were all catching the sunlight in golds and blues. Yeah. And I thought what a great life it is that puts you in this unbelievably holy environment on such a regular basis. For me, there would be the additional thing-- and I wonder if this is for you too, I mean maybe this has worn off now, because you fly so much-- but I mean every time I would get on a plane, I would just think, OK, this is her setting. You know what I mean. It's like-- Oh, yeah. This is where I left her. And she could be in any one of these seats. Oh, yeah. It would be very hard for me to not be picturing her in one of those seats, and just sleeping. Yeah. No, I mean-- she's there. Even now? Even just-- No. I mean as I say, it's not something that goes away. As far as I can tell us, it's a permanent fixture. And that's OK. I mean I'm glad to have it. But anyway, it was a hell of a convention. I mean I'm sure glad I went to that Steve Jobs celebrity roast. Our program was produced today by Nancy Updike and myself, with Alix Spiegel and Julie Snyder, senior editor Paul Tough, contributing editors Jack Hitt, Margie Rochlin, and consiliere Sarah Vowell. You know you can listen to most of our programs for free on the internet at www.thislife.org. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia. No, I don't want to say it any louder. I don't want to say it any louder. No, I don't want to say it. It's OK. I've said it. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week, with more stories of This American Life. Dark Shadows lives. PRI, Public Radio International.
|
Brett was standing at a subway platform, afternoon rush hour. It was crowded. And he noticed this guy-- didn't seem homeless, decent clothes-- stopping in front of each person, looking into his or her eyes, saying something, and moving on to the next person. Turns out the guy was telling people-- They could stay or they had to go. They were in or they were out. Literally, what would he say? Well, literally, it would be, you, you're out. You're gone. You're gone. You're OK, you can stay. And then do people leave? No, not at all. And no one argued with him. Brett wrote about the incident on his personal website, BRETTnews. Let me ask you to read a little bit of your account of this from your website. You write about who he decided to keep and who he decided to go. Right. These are the last few people before he reaches me. The 50-ish woman in the business suit and thick glasses is summarily dismissed. The homey in the baggy shorts and Chicago Bulls jersey makes the cut. The young immigrant mother who seems not to grasp the import of this moment is given the OK. Oh, versus you who's grasping just how important this is. Right. The bookish man in the maroon cardigan sweater with balding head and red face is cut loose with particular relish. There is something about the judgment of strangers. When the clerk in the record store seems unimpressed by your choice of CDs. When the one cute person on the bus gives you a look like, out of my way. It's as if, by their status as strangers, they have some special instantaneous insight into who we are. Their vision isn't clouded by our feeble attempts to charm our friends and the people we work with. The guy got closer to Brett. And I'm starting to feel a little nervous and aware of the fact-- Will I make the cut? It sounds so silly. We all like to think that we're evolved enough or mature enough. But when push comes to shove and a guy's going down the line rating, I found that you can't help but kind of hope that he gives you the thumbs up when your turn comes. But Brett, he's not choosing you for anything. No, he's not. And he didn't even look like anyone I particularly wanted to hang with, as much as one can tell from someone's appearance. You didn't really feel any need to impress this guy. No, no. To me, I think you're right, because this is the purest case I've ever heard of. Literally, he's picking you for nothing. Right, right. And yet you want to be chosen. Exactly. So the guy walks up to Brett, stands actually a little too close to him, looks in his eyes and says, you can stay. And Brett felt euphoria, a small euphoria sure. In his mind, he knew there's no reason to feel so good about this, but in his heart, it made him feel really, really happy. It was like, all right. You wrote in your account of this, I find myself against my own better judgment, now looking with some disdain and perhaps a tinge of pity upon those who didn't make the cut. Sure, If you can't make this guy's cut, come on. How terrible, you write, to be excluded, to be found unworthy. But no one has ever claimed life to be fair. No, they haven't. In a sense, this guy on the subway was committing a perfect act of kindness. The people who he gave the thumbs up to felt good. People who he told to get lost simply ignored him. No one was hurt. It was a simple act of kindness from a stranger. Which brings us to today's radio program. From WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it is This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our show, stories of the kindness of strangers and what it leads to. And for the best perspective on the subject, all of our stories today take place in the city that has the reputation for being the unkindest city in America, New York City. Act One of our show, Tarzan Finds a Mate, in which a good deed is done with the hope of a small reward. Act Two, Runaway, in which a small good deed leads to much bigger things. Act Three, the Unkindness of Strangers, a story about a neighbor who tries to make life hell for the person next door. Act Four, Chairman of the Block, a story of 150 people who don't know each other, a tap dancer, New York cops, and Frank Sinatra. Stay with us. Act One, Tarzan Finds a Mate. This true story of a good deed someone tries to do for a stranger comes from Joel Kostman who is a locksmith in New York. It's a little past midnight and I'd just returned home from dropping my girlfriend Deborah off at the airport. Late at night is the only time of day I like the way my block looks. There are no panhandlers. The parking lots are all empty. And the constant noise you hear in the daytime from the exiting Lincoln Tunnel traffic is minimized. It almost looks like a real street, a place where people live. Remarkably, I find a parking space right in front of my building. I sit in the car with the motor running listening to the radio and thinking about Deborah. We live together. This morning, I thought we were in love. Tonight, I'm not sure if I'm ever going to see her again. The DJ plays a Freddie and the Dreamers tune, "I'm Telling You Now." Suddenly I hear someone across the street yell something. I look up and a young woman is standing next to a red sports car, her head resting on the roof. "Damn, damn, damn," she moans, pounding an alternate fist down with each word. She steps back, her hands on her hips, and looks around as if for a lost child. She has straight blond hair which hangs down to her shoulders. She's wearing tight blue jeans, a yellow shirt unbuttoned down to her cleavage, and black spike heels. She's got on bright red lipstick and gold interlocking circles for earrings. They jangle when she turns her head. "Oh damn," she says again, and throws her bag at the car. It's a Porsche. I shut off my engine and get out. I don't want to scare her so I call from across the street. "Excuse me, you need some help?" She's bending down on the sidewalk, picking up some things that fell out of her bag. She looks up and for a second I think she's going to scream. Then she smiles. "I locked my [BLEEP] keys in the car," she says as she stands up. "I can't believe I did this." Her hands do a kind of Betty Boop thing. I decide that she's Jersey, here for a concert at the Garden. She just has that Jersey feel. "You're in luck," I say, still from across the street. She purses her lips and nods. "Why, you going to take me out for a drink until the tow truck gets here?" She laughs but starts coughing in the middle. I go to my trunk and remove my car lockout stuff. A pretty, stranded Jersey girl with a sense of humor no less, I say to myself. There's something in her face that reminds me of a young Jessica Lange. I cross the street with my slim jim in one hand. It's a thin, silvery piece of metal about two feet long with some notches cut out at the bottom used to open car doors. I carry it at my side like a sword, like a knight would. In my other hand I grasp my tool kit. In my shirt pocket is the little leather case that contains my picks, which I bring just in case I run into any trouble. I step up on the sidewalk next to her. "I'm a locksmith," I announce. I love these moments when I get to play the hero. She has a loopy smile on her face which stays there even as her expression slowly changes. I can smell the alcohol on her breath. She looks at the slim jim and then back at my face. "No [BLEEP]," she says. "Well, I guess it's my lucky day." She lays a hand on my shoulder like we're old pals. She squeezes and then leans on me a little. Her head floats around in front of my face. "You open it up and the drinks are on me," she says in a kind of half growl. I peer into the car window and see the keys dangling from the ignition. There are a couple of empty beer bottles on the floor on the passenger side. I look back at the woman. She's got a cigarette going now. At that moment, from behind us, we hear a long, clear Tarzan call. It's a perfect imitation, lasting about 10 seconds, complete with the jungle yodels in the middle. "What the hell was that," the woman asks. She steps out toward the street and leans her head way back. She looks up at the parking structure that's a block north on 31st Street. I get a real good look at her then. "That's Tarzan," I say. She tilts her head to the side, half closes her right eye, and raises her left eyebrow. "Friend of yours?" she asks. "I think he works in the parking structure," I say. "Oh," she says, with a look on her face that says that explains everything. She puts her hands behind her and leans back. I momentarily think about Deborah. The woman in front of me couldn't be more different in appearance. She's as tall as I am with an accent out of a Stallone movie. She looks like a wild, fun-loving gal, good working-class stock. I wonder what she's like when she's sober. "So you going to do your thing, or what?" the woman asks. I hold up my slim jim. "Action," she says. I dip my slim jim into the car door, feeling around. I try different angles, different depths. Nothing happens. she hops off the hood of the car and stands next to me. "No luck?" she asks. "Not yet." It's a hot night. She takes a tissue from her bag and says, "here, you're sweating buckets." I wipe my forehead. The tissue smells like perfume. She removes another one and dabs at her neck and chest. She flaps her hand in front of her face like a fan. "I've got air conditioning in there once you get it open," she says. "I'll have it open in a minute," I say. I start thinking about her behind the wheel of the car and where we'll go. She rummages around in the bag again and produces a pack of cigarettes. She lights one up, takes a drag, and blows the smoke up toward the sky. I haven't smoked in 10 years, but it still resonates for me, how it feels, how sexy it looks, which is why I think people do it. She offers me one. "No thanks," I say. "Sorry I don't have anything stronger." She smiles. I smile back. She strikes a pose that smokers do, right arm bent at the elbow, forearm across the body. The left elbow rests on the right wrist and the forearm goes straight up, the fingers at the lips. I pull the slim jim out. "Harder than you thought, huh?" She says. "Some foreign cars are tough," I say. "Can I try?" "You want to try?" "Yeah. Who knows? Maybe it'll be like beginners luck. It looks like fun." I don't know why, but I say, "sure." I slide the slim jim through the space between the window and the rubber stripping. She takes the end of it. "Like this?" she asks, moving it back and forth like a slot machine handle. "No," I say. "Actually, you kind of go like this." I take her hand, move it up and down slowly, bobbing the end of the tool slightly from side to side. We're doing a kind of slim jim tango, dipping in and out and up and down. The car door won't open, but she doesn't even seem perturbed. It's like we're playing a game. "I'm going to try to pick it," I say. "Can I still do this?" she asks. "Sure. I'll work on the other door." As I step away, we suddenly hear Tarzan again. It's louder this time. He must be on a lower floor. It's a particularly beautiful call, and he really trails out the last note. The woman bends over double and slaps her thighs in rapid fashion. "I love that," she cries. "That is just fabulous." "Local color," I say. I take my can of WD-40 and lubricate the cylinder. "That guy should be on TV, or something." I squat by the other side of the car. I insert the tension bar in the cylinder and hold it down with my thumb. And then I work the rake through several times. After a couple of minutes, I'm starting to get frustrated. I say, "I'll be right back. I'm going to get something else." I run to my car and remove the metal doweling I bought on Canal Street for this very situation. It's long and sturdy but pliable. I bring it back across the street. "Here," I say, "you hold this." She lays the slim jim down on the sidewalk. I insert a large screwdriver between the door and the body of the car. "Just put a little pressure on it. Like this," I say as I push back. "That'll give me room to maneuver." She stands behind me and pushes back on the screwdriver. I bend the end of the dowel into an L and slide it in. I push it toward the button which is in an impossible spot on the door panel, just behind the handle. I'm thinking, this car really is a pain in the ass. I wiggle my end of the dowel and poke at the area of the button, but I keep missing. "How does that button work?" I ask. "Do you push it forward, or in, or what?" "Gee," she says. "I don't know. Let me think." She bobs her head slowly side to side and finally says, "in, I think. I think." I keep poking at the button. Once I hit it square on and let out a whoop. But when I try the door it doesn't open. "Damn," I yell and slam my fist down on top of the Porsche. "Hey," she says, "come on. We'll get it." She puts her hand on my arm. "You know, you're really a sweet guy for helping me out." She leans forward and kisses me on the cheek. When Deborah said goodbye to me at the airport, she said, "maybe you and I should take the next few days to reevaluate." Then she put her hand on my upper arm and kissed me on the cheek. "Let's try it again," the woman says. "Listen," I say, "I'm sorry. I'm just frustrated. I usually don't have this much trouble." "It's OK," she says. "I know we're going to get it this time." She punches the air like a cheerleader. We try again. I twist the dowel around to get it in just the right position and then push it forward with my hand so it will come smashing into the button. The door doesn't open. I do it again and again. As my body bumps into the woman's and rubs up against her, I get more and more crazy. I can feel my hero status evaporating. Finally, after about 15 minutes, she says, "you know, I think if I push this way with the screwdriver, it'll make more room. I think it'll be a lot easier for you." Before I can stop her, she leans against the car and pushes. There's a loud crack. The window shatters into pieces which fall on the sidewalk at our feet. I look at her face. Her mouth is wide open, her shoulders raised in embarrassment. Then, suddenly, she opens the door, brushes the glass off the seat with her bag and gets in. "Well, I got to go," she says. She starts the car. "I don't know how to thank you." She speeds off toward Eighth Avenue. "Goodbye," she calls out. I am stunned by the swiftness of her departure. As I watch her drive off, her hand waving out the window, Tarzan gives his grand finale. His voice is so strong that it sounds like he's right behind me. His call begins with one beautiful, long, sustained note. He holds it longer than I have ever heard before. Then he leaps into a spectacular trill which ends with another gorgeous full note and follows this with a second trill, which trails off into a final, eerie, haunting tone. I turn to face the parking structure. I'm standing in the middle of a pile of my discarded tools and broken glass. I lean my head way back, looking up at the sky. I cup my hands around my mouth, take the deepest possible breath, and yell at the top of my lungs, "shut the hell up!" Joel Kostman's stories of his life as a locksmith are in his book Keys to the City. Act Two, Runaway. When you commit an act of kindness for a stranger, where can it lead? In 1940, Jack Geiger was 14 years old, not getting along with his parents. Because of the odd rules of the New York City schools at that time, he had actually finished high school, but no college would let him in so young. He wasn't getting along with his parents, fought with them all the time, and then he went to see a play. Native Son, Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre Production of the Richard Wright novel which starred a black actor named Canada Lee. And I was very moved by that. And with the brashness of a 14-year-old, I went backstage afterwards and found Canada Lee and hung around and talked with him a while. And I liked that so much that I did that three or four more times. Do you recall what it is that you were talking to him about, what you wanted to him about? Well, we started out talking about the play and Richard Wright and the main character, Bigger Thomas, and race relations in the United States. And pretty soon we got around to-- by the second or third conversation at least-- what was going on in my life and what I wanted to do and my conflicts and so on. He learned a lot more about me than I did about him, I think, at that point in those conversations. And then one day when the conflict at home just a lot tougher, I waited until a Sunday when I knew there was no performance of Native Son. And my folks were out, and I packed a bag, and I took a subway up to the top of Sugar Hill in Harlem, 555 Edgecombe Avenue, where I knew that Canada had a penthouse. And I went up and rang the doorbell. And he was home and opened the door. And I said, Lee, the stuff at home is just getting too much and I thought maybe I could stay here for a while. Cold, just like that. And he kind of looked around and pointed to a couch in the living room and said, well, I guess you could sleep over there. After I had gone to sleep that evening, I later learned, he called my folks and said, look, I'll send him back in the morning. But why don't you let him stay here, because I'm not sure where he's going to land the next time. And my parents must have been so exhausted by all of this that they agreed, at least tentatively. And that was the beginning of a whole year that I really lived there and had one of the great educational experiences of my life. Through that apartment, over that year that I remember, came the kind of the cream of the Harlem theatrical, sporting, civil rights, political, and intellectual world. And I had the chance to sit around evening after evening, many weekends, listening to Langston Hughes, William Saroyan, Adam Clayton Powell, Billy Strayhorn, Duke Ellington's arranger, Richard Wright, who came back once from exile and stopped in. And what I remember most is listening to people, listening to the conversations about World War II and race and democracy, segregation in the armed forces, what was happening in the South, what was happening in New York City. Let me ask you to assess what you think your parents' reaction was when they got this first call from Canada Lee, to have their white, Jewish, middle-class son suddenly up living with a black man in Harlem in the early '40s. Well, I think they were exhausted. We had had so much struggle. A little later, I remember, further on, when we were talking to each other again, Lee was giving a party and invited my parents, who, with great trepidation, came up to Harlem at night-- I don't think they had ever done that before-- and came to this party. And Canada, I remember, turned to my mother and said, hey, I'm a bachelor. Do you think you could help us out in the kitchen? It was a big party. And my mother said, sure. The next day, I talked to my mother on the phone and she said she had had the most wonderful time, had spent a couple of hours in the kitchen with this wonderful man, and they'd had all this conversation. And I said, who was it? She said, well, she didn't know. She'd never gotten the name. And I said, well, describe him. And she discovered that she had spent two hours chatting with Langston Hughes and was mortified that she had never realized it. What did they talk about? You had to have met Langston Hughes to know. He was as comfortable as an old shoe. And I'm sure they talked about cooking. And I'm sure they talked about whatever else my mother wanted to talk about. And she never quite got over it and still recalled it. During that year, he was kind of an informal, surrogate father. And I was in that stage where I wasn't going to take anything from the parents I was fighting with. So he staked me to a good bit of my first year at college when I found a place that would finally let me in. And-- So he paid for your school? Well, he loaned me the money. Instead of your parents? Yeah. It wasn't until a little later that I figured out why, unconsciously maybe, I had made the choice that I did. It turned out, although I didn't know it at the time, that Canada Lee himself had grown up in a pretty strict, middle-class West Indian family. And he had, he told me, the same kind of dissatisfactions and mixed-up feelings that I'd had about his relationship with his family, what he wanted to do. And he ran away. And I think that experience may have had something to do with his kindness in taking this strange kid in and making a sort of second home for him. The thing I've thought about-- a lot, without ever really finding an answer-- is what kind of clues did I have that said hey, this is a guy that I can approach in this way, a scrawny kid with a suitcase on a Sunday night, and have some kind of shot at getting taken in? I was either very insightful or very lucky. And I think it was mostly luck. Do you think there were clues that you were given though? I think there must've clues, just in the fact that here was a Broadway star who was hanging around backstage talking with a kid about life and about his troubles. That's a signal that I don't think anybody could have missed. Jack lived with Canada Lee for a year. Sometimes Lee's teenage son would be there too. Jack went to college, enlisted in the Merchant Marines during World War II, serving on the only ship with a black captain and integrated crew of officers, the SS Booker T. Washington. When Jack would could come to New York, on school break or from the Merchant Marines, he would stay with Canada Lee. Then, on one of Jack's trips home, Canada Lee told Jack that he was pressed for cash, asked if he could borrow $1,000. And I said, sure. And I loaned it to him, and I came back from the next trip, and he paid me back. And it took me a while, in retrospect, to figure out that he didn't need the $1,000. He was just changing the nature of the relationship between us and saying, hey, now you're grown up. Now you're an adult. And I'm not your dad anymore. We're partners. I can borrow money from you just the way you borrowed money from me. As a way of evening the scales. Yeah. As he got older, Jack became a journalist, then a doctor, active in the Civil Rights Movement, went to Mississippi with the civil rights workers in the early '60s. Was a founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility and later Physicians for Human Rights, started community health centers in Mississippi and in South Africa. In this country, those health centers eventually led to 900 community health centers. They now provide primary care for more than 14 million low-income people across the country. Jack Geiger says he'd never had moved so deeply into these worlds so quickly if not for his experience with Canada Lee. It's a relationship, very obviously, that has stayed with me ever since. Most of my life and work has, in one way or another, involved civil rights and human rights. It must be one of the reasons why I became a physician, of wanting to look out for people who were in trouble. Was it your impression that other people had extended this kind of act of kindness to him that he then extended to you? Or that he had yearned that someone would have taken him in the way that he took you in? You know, what occurs to me now is something I learned in the Harlem community and in a lot of other work. There was a lot more experience in the black community of extended families. And I don't think, in that context, from that side of the divide, it felt like such a big deal. Well, you're saying, in a way, that black culture at that time was more conducive to extending a kindness to strangers than white culture. I think so. And maybe still. Dr. Jack Geiger in New York. An interesting footnote to this story-- in 1949, just a few years after he befriended Jack Geiger, Canada Lee was in a movie where he did more or less the same thing. The film was Lost Boundaries. He played an African American police officer who befriends a confused, white teenager, takes him under his wing, shows him the kindness of strangers. Coming up, good neighbors and bad neighbors in the same neighborhood, a street mob, a tap dancer, a PA system, and the Chairman of the Board. That's in a minute from Public Radio International when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's program, the kindness of strangers and where the kindness might lead. All of our stories in today's show are from the supposedly least kind city in America, New York City. And we have arrived at Act Three of our program. And for this act, we figured-- nice, nice, nice, nice, nice. We figured we would need a change of pace after all this kindness and attempted kindness. And this is a story about the flat-out unkindness of strangers and how it could take two people who do not know each other and make them completely obsessed with each other. Paul Tough reports. Some names in this story have been changed. Helga's neighborhood used to be entirely Ukrainian, respectable with an Orthodox Church and a community center. And then things changed. Then people started arriving. And now the place is full of record stores and cafes and body piercing parlors. Starlee is one of the newcomers. She moved in two years ago, right next door to Helga. And the trouble between them started right away. Starlee says that at first it was just regular New York apartment stuff. She would come and tell me not to make noise in the apartment. And she was like, I wear slippers at night, so you should be wearing slippers too. And she'd come and just knock on your door and tell you that? No, she would tell me downstairs in the hall. I'd see her in passing. And she was actually really calm about it. And she looked like a helpless old woman back then. And I'd try to be quieter because of it. And I think I even helped her carry her groceries up the stairs once. I think I actually did do that. From Starlee's point of view, she tried to be quiet. She tried to be nice. But she was a college student at the time, and she had a lot of friends. And people would drop by late at night. So it was hard to be quiet all the time. From Helga's point of view, Starlee was a terrible neighbor, the worst. And Helga made sure that Starlee knew exactly how she felt. She would occasionally sit in the hallway and talk to people about us. But there would not be anyone out there to talk to. She would just make up conversation and gossip about us. But we'd open the door and she'd be like, they all ran upstairs really quick. And she wasn't talking to anyone about us. Just so we'd know that she didn't like us. And so what sorts of things was she saying at that point? Just that we were loud, bad kids. Just that we were loud and unresponsible. And she didn't believe any of us ever went to school. She refused to believe that. I think she didn't like that we were young. Helga wanted everyone else in the building to see the Starlee that she saw. So she started throwing garbage out into the little landing that they shared, apparently to try to make everyone think that it was people in Starlee's apartment, number three, who were responsible. Cigarette butts and crumpled pieces of paper and orange juice cartons. Stuff like that. And it started off really small and it just got huge. And it just became so much trash in the hallway. And people smoke here, so it looked like we were doing it. And also, the type of trash she picked-- she would try to go out of her way to find kid trash, like Hostess Donut wrappers and candy bar things, and just the most creative garbage you've ever seen. And so people at first thought we were doing it. And they would come and talk to us and be like, don't put the trash. I'm like, I'm not putting the trash. Jake Bronstein, Starlee's roommate at the time-- she's had nine roommates, I should say, nine, in the two years she's lived there-- Jake decided to do something. Jake wrote a note saying, please don't put trash in the hallway and put it outside in our hallway. We have a little square hallway. And he just taped it on the wall. And so then we hear her come out and we look through the key hole. And we see that she's put a sign up. And we come out there and it says, well then please don't sell drugs. And that's the first time we'd ever heard of it. We were just like, whoa. It was so out of the blue. We couldn't believe it. Ever since that day more than six months ago, Helga's put up at least one note about Starlee every single day, sometimes as many as seven or eight. They're mostly pretty small, maybe two inches by three inches. The notes are written in marker in block letters. Helga puts notes on the front door, over the mailboxes inside, on the window, on her own door, on Starlee's door. The wording varies but the message is always the same. Starlee is a big-time drug dealer, she's selling drugs out of apartment number three, and she should stop or move out. Starlee actually collects the notes that Helga puts up. One whole wall of her apartment is covered with them. Starlee shows me a few choice ones. See, she puts number three, selling drugs, business as usual. On Passover, she put, shame selling drugs on Passover. Let's see, Kine and Bronstein, drug dealers selling your way to the jailhouse. Kine and Bronstein, drug dealers selling illegal drugs here, like parasites. Starlee says that, in fact, she's not selling drugs. She's never sold drugs. No one in her apartment has ever sold drugs. It's all a big lie. I asked her to come into the apartment. I'm like, come in the apartment, look anywhere you want. Honestly, we'll go to the cops together. I don't mind that at all. Helga doesn't just put up signs. She appears at her door whenever anyone comes to visit Starlee. She harasses Starlee's friends, accosts Starlee in the hallway, calls her a liar. And then there's this. Now it's over there, though. See? It moves. We're inside Starlee's apartment, about 1:00 in the morning. Helga is sitting in her apartment, right next to the thin wall that separates the two of them. And she's tapping on the floor, just to let Starlee know she's there. She's always watching. I look up at the wall. For me, it's a very creepy moment. Starlee's used to it. I got to say, it's the-- It's just to get our attention, just to remind us that even when she's not putting the signs up that the she's aware of our illegal activities. We watched I, Claudius on PBS and it was three hours. From the first credit to the last credit, it was continuous tapping the entire time. She just sat in her door and banged her cane for the entire time. And she'll do it. She does not get tired. And that's what she does with her day. Instead of eating, she just bangs her cane. That's kind of sad. It is sad. I know it's sad. It's hard, though. Because it's hard to know what the right thing to do is and to be confronted by such meanness. Sometimes you'll just be coming home, and you'll be like, god, this woman is the saddest woman in the world. You'll pass by her door and get feelings of pity and affection. And then she'll open it and she'll yell at you. And you're just like, man. She makes it so hard to do the right-- to just be a good person about it. A couple of years ago, there actually was a drug dealer in the building up on the top floor. It was a bad scene. Junkies being dragged downstairs and out to the front stoop, people sleeping on the roof. And everyone else in the building banded together and went to court and actually got the drug dealers kicked out. Helga was one of people who testified. And Starlee thinks that that might be connected to what's happening now. Helga got a lot of attention and support from that campaign. And so now she's trying to do it again with Starlee. I tried to speak to Helga about all of this, to get her side of the story, but it wasn't easy. The way Starlee described her, she's suspicious of strangers. She never lets anyone into her apartment. She doesn't answer her buzzer. So I decided that I'd try to speak to her out on the street. One night I waited outside the building for about an hour. And finally, she came out. Excuse me. Do you live in this building here? I'm trying to find out-- It was a very strange interview. She wasn't what I expected. She seemed completely normal. I told her that I had heard something was going on with apartment number three, and I asked her if she knew it was. Yes, she told me, they're selling drugs. I asked her if she'd talk to me about, and she said that she would, but she didn't want me to use her voice on the radio. Too dangerous, she said. She led me across the street, behind a van, where she said it would be safer to talk. She was deadly serious, very intense. She clearly felt that she was in a dangerous situation. She was willing to give me a few details, but the rest, she told me, I'd have to dig out myself. Here's what she said. The building is full of students. The people in apartment three sell to the students in the building. They also use the students as couriers to sell drugs in the bars all around the neighborhood. It's a big operation, and it's all being run by that short girl, she said, meaning Starlee. If Helga were to hear this story on the radio, she would tell you that I've got it all wrong, that I've been duped, that everything Starlee told me is a lie. And some of what Helga says makes perfect sense. She says that people are coming and going all the time from Starlee's apartment, which is, in fact, true. She says the phone rings at all hours of the night, and it does. For Helga, that points to one thing, drugs. For Starlee, it's just that she's a student. She stays up late. She's got a lot of friends. There's no middle ground for Starlee and Helga. They see absolutely everything differently. From Starlee's point of view, there was a period at the beginning where this whole thing was sort of funny, where it was just a good story. But as time went on, things changed. And Starlee became as serious as Helga. There would be times when I wanted to catch her in the act so badly, because I never caught-- she's so quick. And you could never catch her putting the signs up. I wanted to just open it so badly that I just wouldn't leave for an hour. I'd be like, no, you guys go ahead to the movie. I'm just going to stay here and just wait by the door for a little longer. And it was hard. There's a way, especially at that period, where the two of you were sort of inextricably linked. That she's sitting there waiting in her apartment for you, and you're sitting here-- Right. Well, that's what it was. It was me lying in wait of her lying in wait for me. Absolutely. Yeah, the bond was strong. Most of the time, the unkindness of strangers is a barely conscious thing. You cut someone off in traffic. You take the last doughnut. You bump into someone running for a train. You don't even think about it. With Helga and Starlee, things are different. They're unkind to each other, they spy on each other, they bicker, they yell at each other in the hallway. But for each of them, those unkindnesses are part of a bigger picture. They're mean because they have to be. Starlee's trying to clear her name. Helga's trying to clean up the neighborhood. If someone had gotten to her first-- if you were writing a history of the East Village or writing the history of this building, and then someone just interviewed her, it would go down that this heroic old lady tried to get these drug dealers out. She'd be the martyr, or whatever. And I guess that could become fact then. I told you, it almost is fact sometimes. I'm questioning myself sometimes about it. I used to. You used to question whether or not you were a drug dealer? No, but just am I right? Am I doing something wrong? Is there something wrong I'm doing like that? Is she a little bit right? Not that I'm a drug dealer, but am I-- Like just are you a bad neighbor? Yeah, bad neighbor, bad person. Am I abusing her? Starlee always thought of herself as a basically good and neighborly person. She never thought she was the kind of person who would do something like yell at an old woman in the hall. And yet she does. Unkindness breeds unkindness. Still, Starlee can't help wishing that things could somehow be different. I've been having these dreams-- very, very clear dreams, like long, epic dreams-- where she'd come over, and we've chatted on the bed, and we've been giggling in the dreams. And I've had dreams where we've come to terms with a lot of things. I've explained it. Like, this summer. Before, they used to be-- they were only violent. I was at her funeral. I was a little sad at that point. I was visiting her in jail. But this time, I've had these friendship dreams all summer long. And they're really realistic. She acts like herself and I say the thing I'm supposed to. I can't figure out what I'm supposed to say when I'm awake. And I say it. And then all of a sudden, really, logic comes into her eyes. And she has sat down on my bed, and we've started to giggle and just talk about things and make jokes to each other. What do you mean, the thing that you're supposed to say that you can't figure out? Whatever I'm supposed to be saying, whatever I could possibly say to her in real life to make her see the light, you know. Well, how do you think you'd feel if the notes just suddenly stopped one day? I don't know. I'd probably wait a couple days and I'd see-- I don't know. I can't imagine they would stop, though. So when was the last time you talked to her? I talked to her yesterday. She called me a pathological liar. Act Four, Chairman of the Block. This story takes place almost around the corner from Starlee's apartment building, just a few blocks away. It's about one small act of kindness leading somewhere completely unexpected. A resident of the neighborhood, Blake Eskin, tells the story. About a month ago, I went out one Friday evening with a friend in the East Village, where we both live. On the street, we heard Frank Sinatra music blasting loud enough to wake the neighbors. As we reached Fourth Street, I saw 100 people huddled around the stoop of a sixth floor tenement. Most of them were post-college, pre-childbearing types. Plus there were some older people who probably lived on the block. Everyone seemed to have forgotten where they were headed, whether to a party or to another bar or back to bed. A short, dark-haired guy in a suit stood at the top of the stoop holding a microphone. At first, I thought maybe the guy was lip syncing because he sounded exactly like Sinatra. But after a few seconds, I realized he was doing the crooning himself. The guy looked a little like Sinatra, and he moved like him too. But this was no run-of-the-mill Sinatra impersonator. It was as if he was possessed by the spirit of Sinatra, channeling the Chairman of the Board, that Frank himself had emerged from retirement, dyed his hair black again, and was with us on Fourth Street. [SINGING "THE LADY IS A TRAMP"] Come over here, Susan! At the bottom of the stoop was someone you would not ordinarily see with Frank Sinatra. An older woman with spiky salt-and-pepper hair and a leopard print vest was doing a spirited if slightly awkward tap dance on a piece of wood she had dragged out onto the sidewalk. After my initial confusion, and my subsequent bliss, my next reaction was to wonder how this was possible. Where were the cops? The 9th Precinct is a block away, and New Yorkers are quick to complain about noise. And Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has made it a priority for the police to crack down on what he calls "quality of life violations" like these, noise, crowds, blocking traffic, drinking in the street. But on Fourth Street, everything was copasetic. And it still is. Somehow, by some quirk of fate, the show outside 124 East Fourth Street has happened five Fridays in a row. The singer, Nick Drakides, lives on the first floor of the building. And the tap dancer, Laraine Goodman, lives on four. Gary and Wanda, who run the garden-level thrift shop, put their merchandise, the chairs and overstuffed couches, on the sidewalk for the audience's comfort. Nick Drakides and Laraine Goodman are neighbors. And like most people who live in the same building, they didn't know much about each other. Laraine did know, however, that Nick had a big jazz record collection. Five weeks ago, Laraine decided she wanted to tap dance in front of the building, as a sort of therapy, she says. And she reached out to Nick, asking him to play some tunes while she tap danced that weekend. What happened was, I was coming home-- I'll tell you exactly what happened. I was coming home that Friday evening around 9:00 and I forgot her name. And I'm walking down Fourth Street from Second Avenue. And I'm like, oh, there she is tapping, and I don't want to do this. I'm tired. I'm like [SIGH]. And then I had to reach for her name in my little-- what's this thing-- pocket day timer. And I'm like, OK, it's Laraine. Then I walk down the street, and I say, hi, Laraine, how are you? And she goes, oh come on out Nick and join me, blah, blah, blah. And I think she assumed I'll bring out some music. That was it. I don't think she was expecting a suit and microphone stand and the PA, the CDs, the cassettes, the whole number. Thanks to Laraine Goodman. This is the brains behind this wonderful event here. Say good evening, Laraine. Good evening, Laraine. Nick's initial gesture of kindness to Laraine, a near stranger, made her into a local celebrity and made himself into an even bigger one. There were only a handful of people watching Laraine tap dance when Nick went outside with his instant Sinatra kit, which includes a few CDs from a series called Pocket Songs. The discs have the full Sinatra arrangements without a vocalist. The slogan is "You Sing the Hits." Nick began with "I've Got the World on a String." The crowd built steadily. And right away, Nick had the crowd on a string, standing on the stoop, had the string around his finger. What a world. Nick showed me a picture taken when he was 15. He's wearing a tuxedo, his hair parted to the side, standing at a microphone and pointing back at the camera. It is a picture of a 15-year-old boy from Poughkeepsie, New York in Frank Sinatra drag. Basically, what I'm doing right now, I have been into since I was a kid, since I was 10 years old. Nick trained as a jazz vocalist at Boston's Berklee College of Music, moved to New York, and after a while he found a job with the Starlight Orchestra, a 16-piece band that performs at high society weddings and corporate events. The Starlight Orchestra has five vocalists, and Nick is their Sinatra specialist. Each of us in the audience had been lured by the improbability of the situation, but Nick's stage presence kept us there. Most street performers in New York go where the tourists go, since most of us natives are too busy to stop and listen. Nick singing from his stoop, however, was a gift to his own neighborhood. Nick really knows how to work a room, even when it's not a room. He weaves his neighbor's names into the lyrics. --anytime he moves his-- that's Brendan, our lovely neighbor here. Lucky me-- how ya doin' Richie-- can't you see I'm in love? He plugs Gary and Wanda's thrift shop and thanks them for their help. He salutes a couple watching from a nearby fire escape. He dedicates "Witchcraft" to a pretty blonde standing in the back row and flirts with her at the end of the song. [SINGING "WITCHCRAFT"] Ooh! I got a crush on you too, baby. Ooh, you're a fine witch! Just like Frank would have done. Now, it's a safe bet that if Nick and Laraine had been break dancing or playing conga drums, the police would have shut them down in 20 minutes, tops. But the officers of the 9th Precinct fell under the same spell as the rest of us. And they couldn't bring themselves to get out of the patrol car to enforce the mayor's quality of life rules. The first week they would circle around the block, speak through their megaphone. They would say, people, please don't block the streets. Please keep the streets clear. And that was it. That was the first week. The second week they requested "Summer Wind." They requested "Summer Wind" through the megaphone? Yes, through the megaphone as they were passing. The third week, the police came and they stopped their car, held up traffic, and they said, OK, "Summer Wind." They wanted to hear "Summer Wind." So I finished "Night and Day." I put "Summer Wind" on. And I went up on the steps. They manipulated their lights on the top and threw a white spotlight on me. And I started singing "Summer Wind." The crowd went crazy. They went nuts. And they were really into it. it's that whole New York, macho Italian, police, Irish, street-- it is, man. And evidently, what I'm doing, they connect with that. Of course they do. So do the black men with dreadlocks, the young white guys in Wu-Tang Clan t-shirts, the teenagers immersed in the swing lounge scene, the pot-bellied Italian men of a certain age smoking cigars. And sitting front row center, wearing a party colored muu-muu, Nick's next door neighbor Jean, who has lived at 124 East Fourth Street for the last 48 years. For all of them and for me, there is something about Frank Sinatra and something about how Nick Drakides interprets Frank Sinatra that bewitches us, that touches us. There's a guy who lives next door. And he embraced me. He hugged me, this old Chinese guy, man, with a hearing aid. I'm like, I touched this guy. And I don't how I did it, but I did it. For any New Yorker to do something as big as this for his neighbors again and again is more than an anomaly. It is as rare and unstable as the elements at the bottom of the periodic table. The key ingredients of this event, neighborliness, generosity, free time, good weather, cooperative police officers, are hard to come by in this city. And they are nearly impossible to find together in the same place week after week. The Nick and Laraine show has had a longer run than anyone could expect. And something-- rain or the first frost or the 9th precinct or a Friday night gig with the Starlight Orchestra-- will soon bring it to a halt. There's a gossip columnist in the New York Post named Cindy Adams. And it is tempting to resort to her mantra "only in New York folks, only in New York" to explain this phenomenon. But in Nick's case, the wisdom of Cindy Adams does not suffice. This is not the stuff of New York, not of the real New York or even of the New York of a bygone era, but of a mythical movie New York, a lower east side block built on a studio back lot. It is the first reel of an unknown MGM musical from just after the war, and it stars Nick Drakides. What happens in the rest of the film is anyone's guess. Blake Eskin in New York. Well, our program was produced today by Nancy Updike and myself, with Alix Spiegel and Julie Snyder. Senior editor for this episode of our show is Paul Tough. Seth Lind is our production manager. Production help from Rachel Day, Aaron Scott, and WHYY in Philadelphia. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight for our program by our boss, Mr. Torey Malatia, who says, no, no, no, no. Do it like this. Move it up and down slowly, bobbing the end of the tool slightly from side to side. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life. PRI, Public Radio International.
|
Back when he was active in the gang, on the street every day, Danny Toro had a routine. Come home from school at 3:00, help his mom out with anything she needed help with, and then, before he went out with his boys, he would sit down and watch a movie. For a while, it was Scarface, the 1983 Al Pacino movie about a Cuban gangster who's so tough, he doesn't betray his friends even when a guy is about to hack him up with a chainsaw. He's fearless. He's lethal. And he wants it all. That was like a motivation movie there. It got the blood pumping and the adrenaline going. I watch it right before I come out, so I'm already there. I'm in that point. I go pick up a couple of my friends. Pumped up. Yeah. Go out like a gangster. If a movie was as good as I wanted it to be, I'll watch it once a day for months at a time. Scarface, I watched it over and over and over. And the times when I didn't have time to watch the whole movie, I'd just watch the first part or the second part, depending on how I felt, what kind of stage of mind I wanted to be in. The movie The Godfather begins with the sentence, "I believe in America." And I think any gangster's life is a particularly mesmerizing parable of America, because it contains all the things that we're not supposed to want, easy money, drugs, alcohol, glamorous, feral sex, plus all those values that we think of as core American values, loyalty to friends and family, ambition, independence, self-motivation, not taking no for an answer. So it's easy to see why civilians like you and me go to gangster movies. But I was curious what gangsters actually get out of them. For 10 years, Danny Toro was active in a Chicago street gang. He says that the old-school gangster films, like The Godfather movies, they just didn't do it for him. I watched them once or twice. They were all right, but it wasn't what I was looking for. I was looking for how I live. The way I used to live while I was gang banging was very different. It wasn't so organized. It wasn't so where I kiss you on the cheek, and then you're dying. No, it wasn't like that. Things were more said up front. So it was like I was looking to movies more to where I could relate the way my lifestyle was like. Scarface was right there in your face. He didn't care who you were, just like that one scene, he says, "Only thing as I got is my word and my balls. And I don't break 'em for nobody." And it's kind of true. Because out here, you don't got much. And if you break that, what do you got? Nothing. Danny's favorite film was this movie about Lucky Luciano. His favorite scenes were the ones where guys backed each other up in a fight not because they thought they'd get anything out of backing each other up, but because it was the right thing to do. That's what I wanted to see out here. Don't do something to get something back. Do it because you became a part of it, and that's part of you, so contribute to it. He especially liked Lucky, because of all the movie gangsters, Lucky seemed to have the best judgment when it came to people. He knew how to take care of things. He knew how to punish without overpunishing. He knew how to correct people in a polite way. Danny even picked up a move or two from Lucky. One time I had sat down with the guys kind of like he used to do, sit there and talk with each other. Like, when Lucky's wife got killed, they all got together. They were sympathizing, just like when I had two guys, and they were brothers, and one of the brothers died. And I was there trying to comfort and whatnot. And I said, Don't worry about it. Things'll work out. And their people caught on, too, how it was that things would work out. And try to have that family base I guess you could say to show that I really loved them. And you got that way of acting from the movie? Yeah. Because when I first started learning about what a gang banger was or gang member, it was like your heart-- you're right there. You ain't got no fear. You have no compassion. Right. You gotta be hard. That's it. You're a gang banger, you're a gang banger. And you're some cruel criminal or whatever you want to call it. Well, from WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it is This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program, gangsters, the ones in movies and the ones in real life, and how the two intersect. Act One, The Freshman, why a college student in Montana would be watching The Godfather every single day, and what happens when she follows her obsession to Sicily. Act Two, Mobster's Daughter. The true story of two different people born into the mob. Act Three, My Neighbor John Gotti, the true story of what it's like to live across the street from the place where the head of New York's Gambino crime family has his little parties, plus much, much more. Stay with us. Act One, The Freshman. Sarah Vowell says that back in the days when she watched The Godfather every single day, she never really told anybody about it because she was afraid that her friends would interpret it as some sort of cry for help. She would watch The Godfather surreptitiously, when no roommates were around. She'd stop the videotape if the phone rang. Here then, the true story of one woman's cross-cultural immersion. There comes a time in the middle of any halfway decent liberal arts major's college career when she no longer has any idea what she believes. She flies violently through air polluted by conflicting ideas and theories, never stopping at one system of thought long enough to feel at home. All those books, all that talk, and, oh, the self-reflection. Am I an existentialist? A Taoist? A transcendentalist? A modernist? A post-modernist? A relativist? Positivist? Historicist? Anarchist? Dadaist? Deconstructionist? Was I Apollonian or Dionysian? Which was right, and which was wrong? Impressionism or expressionism? And while we're at it, is there such a thing as right and wrong? Until I figured out that the flight between questions is, itself, a workable system, I craved answers, rules, a code. And so I spent part of every week, sometimes every day, watching The Godfather on videotape. I wanted to cower in the dark brown rooms of Don Corleone, kiss his hand on his daughter's wedding day, explain what's wrong with me, and let him tell me he'll make everything all right. Someday, and that day may never come, I'll call upon you to do a service for me. But until that day, accept this justice as a gift on my daughter's wedding day. Grazie, Godfather. Prego. Looking back, I wonder why a gangster movie kidnapped my life. The Godfather had nothing to do with me. I was a feminist, not Italian, and I lived in Montana. I had never set foot in New York, thought ravioli came only in a can, and wasn't blind to the fact that all the women in the movie were either virgins, mothers, whores, or Diane Keaton. But I fell for those made-up, sexist, East Coast thugs anyway. Partly, it was the clothes, because fashion-wise, there is nothing less glamorous than snow-blown, backpacky college life in the Rocky Mountain states. But I think what really attracted me to the film was that it offered a three-hour peep into a world with clear and definable moral guidelines, where you know where you stand and you know who you love, where honor is everything and the greatest sin isn't murder, but betrayal. The Godfather is a film crammed with rules for living. Don't bow down to big shots. It's good when people owe you. This drug businesses is dangerous. Is vengeance going to bring your son back to you or my boy to me? And the ever popular-- What's the matter with you? I think your brain is going soft. Never tell anybody outside the family what you're thinking again. My favorite scene in the film takes place on a deserted highway with the Statue of Liberty in the background. The Don's henchman, Clemenza, is on the road with two of his men, and he's under orders that only one of them's supposed to make the ride back. The grizzly, back-of-the-head murder of a rat fink associate is all in a day's work. But Clemenza's overriding responsibility is to his family. And he takes a moment out of his routine madness to remember that he had promised his wife he'll bring desert home. His instruction to his partner in crime is an entire moral manifesto in six little words. Leave the gun. Take the cannoli. I'd been raised as a fundamentalist in a small town in Oklahoma. And by the time I got to college, I was a recent, and therefore shaky, atheist. Like a lot of once-devout people who have lost religion, I had holes the size of heaven and hell inside my head and my heart. I had had a God, commandments, faith, the promise of redemption, and a Bible, the Bible, which offered an explanation of everything from creation on through to the end of the world. And now God was dead, and I had whacked him. And when he was gone, what was left? Only question marks. Don Corleone, the godfather, was not unlike God, the father, loving and indulgent one minute, wrathful and judgmental the next. But the only "Thou shalt" in the Don's dogma was to honor thy family. He dances with his wife, weeps over his son's corpse, and dies playing in the garden with his grandson. You spend time with your family? Sure, I do. Good, because a man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man. Don Corleone wouldn't have paid actual money to sit in fluorescent-lit rooms listening to frat boys from Spokane babble on about Descartes. Don Corleone had no time for mind games and conjecture. I, on the other hand, had nothing but time for such things, probably because I'm a frivolous female. I spent my life trying not to be careless. Women and the children can be careless, but not men. Christmas break. I sign up for a semester of art history in Holland and fly to Europe a few weeks early. I get on a train in Vienna, and another in Berlin, and another after that. And one thing leads to another. And not thinking I was heading there, suddenly, I find myself-- surprise-- in Italy. How did that happen? Oh well, as long as I'm in Florence, might as well pop down and give Sicily a look-see. Have I mentioned how I love that part of The Godfather when Michael's hiding out there, traipsing around his ancestral hills, walking the streets of his father's birthplace, Corleone? I take a night train from Rome down the boot and wake up in the Sicilian capital, Palermo. I feel ridiculous. I thought of myself as a serious person, and it didn't seem like serious people traveled hundreds of miles out of their way to walk in the footsteps of Al Pacino. Still, I feel silly being there, but not so silly that I'm above tracking down a bakery and buying, yes, a cannoli, my first. I walk down to the sea and eat it. It's sweeter than I thought it would be, more dense, and the filling's flecked with chocolate and candied orange. Clemenza was right, leave that gun. Take that cannoli. The town of Corleone really exists and can be reached by bus. Believe me, I checked. Every morning, I'd go to the travel office in Palermo to buy a ticket to the Godfather's hometown. And every morning, when I stand before the ticket agent, I can never quite bring myself to say the word "Corleone" out loud to a real, live Sicilian, because you know they know. Idiot Americans and their idiot films. I have my dignity. So each morning, when the ticket agent asks, "Where to?" one of two things happens. I say nothing, and just walk off, and spend the day in Palermo reading John Irving novels on a bench by the sea. Or I utter the name of a proper, art-historically significant town instead, as if the clerk will hear me say, "Agrigento," and say to himself, "Oh, she's going to see the Doric temple. Impressive. Wonder if she's free for a cannoli later?" So on my final day in Sicily, my last chance at Corleone, I walk to the ticket counter, look in the clerk's eyes, and ask for a round-trip ticket to Corle-- Cefalu, yeah, Cefalu. That's it. To see a Byzantine mosaic I remember liking in one of my school books. Cefalu might as well have been Corleone. It had the same steep, cobblestone streets and blanched, little buildings that I remembered from the movie. "Lovely," I thought, as I started walking up the hill to its tiny, 12th-century cathedral. "Freak," everyone in the town thought as I marched past them. An entire class of schoolchildren stopped cold to gawk at me. Six-year-old girls pointed at my shoes and laughed. Hunched, old men glared as if the sight of me was a vicious insult. I felt like a living, breathing faux pas. At least no one was inside the church. The only eyes upon me there were those of the looming, sad-eyed Messiah. The Jesus in this mosaic is huge, three times larger than any other figure in the church. And there's something menacing in the way he holds that tablet with the word of God on it. But his eyes are compassionate. And that contradictory mix of stern judgment and heart, he may as well have been wearing a tuxedo, and holding a cat, and saying something like-- What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully? I leave the church and go for lunch. I am the only patron at a tiny family restaurant operated by mama, poppa, son one, and son two. They glare at me as if I glow in the dark. Soon, they'll wish I glowed in the dark. The power keeps going on and off because of a thunderstorm. And the sky outside is nearly black. The muzak version of "A Whiter Shade of Pale" is playing. And it flickers too, so that every few seconds, it's dark and silent, which is a relief considering that the rest of the time, it's loud and the entire family have seated themselves across from me and gape without smiling. The eggplant on my plate is wonderful, but such is my desire for escape that I've never chewed so fast in my life. How had it never hit me before? The whole point of The Godfather film is not to trust anyone outside the family. And whatever I may have thought while sitting in front of my VCR, I am not actually Sicilian. You may be surprised to learn, I bear no resemblance to Clemenza, Tessio, or any of the heads of the five families. If I were a character in the film at all, I'd be one of those pain-in-the-ass, innocent bystanders in the restaurant where Michael murders Solazzo. I'm the tuba player in Moe Greene's casino. I'm that kid who rides his bike past Michael and Kay on Kay's street in New Hampshire who yells, "Hello," and neither Michael nor Kay says hello back. I got sucked in by The Godfather movies' moral certainty, never quite recognizing that the other side of moral certainty is close-mindedness. Given the choice, I prefer chaos and confusion. Why live by those old world rules? Why not tell people outside the family what you're thinking? Trust me on this. It's a living. And if you see Michael, tell him it's nothing personal. It's only business. Sarah Vowell. Her story appears in her book Take the Cannoli. Her latest book is Assassination Vacation. Act Two, Gangster's Daughter. It was 1957, and I was 12. They said it was the largest funeral Las Vegas had ever seen. There were thousands of mourners. The pall bearers were men I had known, Gus Greenbaum, whose throat would later be slashed in Phoenix, Willie "Ice Pick" Alderman, who would die on Terminal Island, while serving time on a mob extortion rap, Joe Rosenberg, one of my father's partners, who was known as his mouthpiece, Nick the Greek, the famed odds maker. Squat Jewish men surrounded Uncle Chickie and me at the funeral, saying, "We don't expect trouble." Susan Berman's father was Davie Berman, a Jewish gangster who was one of the founders of modern Las Vegas, trusted confidant of Meyer Lansky, Frank Constello, and Bugsy Siegel. The son of a Russian-immigrant rabbinical student, he built his own gambling empire when he was just 16 and went on to become a bootlegger and bank robber, whose face appeared on dozens of "Wanted" posters. He was the brazen kid who engineered one of the first kidnaps for ransom, escaped death in a Central Park shoot-out, and was described by a detective on the front page of The New York Times as "the toughest Jew I ever met." One of the most romantic and appealing notions about gangsters is the idea that they're cold-blooded tough guys while they're out in the world, but loving family men when they're at home. And while that's obviously not true for lots of real-life mobsters, it does actually seem to be true for Davie Berman. When his wife was ill and away from home for months, he was almost a new-age dad, 1990s-style dad, taking care of his daughter himself, spending time with her every day, helping her with her math homework in the casino's money counting room. Davie Berman was an owner of the Flamingo and Riviera hotels. And in those same rooms, they would skim the profits off for his mob bosses back east. This is an excerpt from Susan Berman's memoir Easy Street. The book is filled with scenes of this odd collision of worlds. Her father's world, she writes, was dangerous and violent and severe. But he crafted a childhood that seemed to her at the time to be completely normal. She had no idea about his criminal ties. I thought we had no house key because, as he said, "Somebody is always home." Mob members never carry keys, because if they're kidnapped, a rival could get to their families. My father was austere. He didn't gamble, drink, or smoke. He told me he didn't like to stay in small rooms for a long time because he felt confined. I later learned that he had served seven years in Sing Sing, four in solitary confinement on a 12-year sentence. I thought we had no checking account because, as he said, "Everybody knows us here. We just use cash." Mob members prefer to keep cash boxes and few visible assets. He told me our late night jaunts to Los Angeles were a vacation. He'd wake me and tell me to get dressed. We'd drive to McCarran Field and fly to LA. I'd be kept at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel for a few days with a couple of his men friends. They took me to Uncle Bernie's toy store in Beverly Hills to drink lemonade from the lemonade tree. And we ordered coffee ice cream in our room from MFK's drug store in the hotel. Then my father would reappear magically after two days and take me to the Brown Derby for dinner. We'd sit under Ingrid Bergman's picture. And he'd order "lamb chops with pink skirts for Susie" and put me on a red, leather child seat, so I could join in the conversation. In fact, these "vacations" were flights to freedom when there was mob unrest, and I was in danger. I knew my father's partners only from a child's perspective, the same way I knew my father. There was Willie Alderman, called "Ice Pick" Willie in his youth because he allegedly killed people with an ice pick. Willie was my favorite, a big, lumpy, silent man who greeted me every day with, "How you doing, Susie?" He was always at my father's side. There was Gus Greenbaum, a junkie and alleged killer. Gus was an older, dark-skinned man who smoked cigars and growled. He never paid any attention to me and never smiled. Once I kicked him as hard as I could in the ankle just to prove I existed. He said, "Davie, the kid takes after you." I asked my father if he had kicked big, mean men too. But my father said, no, and not to kick Gus again. My father's mother, Clara, or Bubby to me, would show up unannounced at our home in Las Vegas once a month for her "pay-as-you-eat Shabbes dinner." Around 2:00 PM on a Friday, Bubby would pound on the front door, yelling, "Davie, Lou, Susie, let me in. Hurry up." Of course, my father was never home from the hotel in the afternoon, but she'd act as if he should have been. She'd run all over the house looking for him, then go right into the kitchen and sneer, "So where's Davie? Working again?" Without waiting for an answer, she'd throw down her shawl and start unpacking two huge needlepoint bags full of groceries. She was in a frenzy, her white hair standing up in wisps as it came out of her bun. She was short, and stout, and smelled like old rouge. As soon as she washed the carrots for the matzo-ball soup, she yelled at our bodyguard, Lou, to "Come and chop these carrots into little pieces." Lou dutifully went into the kitchen. She took an egg beater from her purse and started making matzo balls and washing the chicken. After about an hour of intense preparation, during which she yelled at me to, "Stay out of my goddamn way," and said, "ach" several times, and "oy vay" if Lou wasn't fast enough on the chopping. Bubby hit the telephone and had all my father's friends paged in the casino. "Hello, Gus? Clara Berman. I'm making a Shabbes meal at Davie's tonight. Be here at sundown. You eat good," she'd say, as she rang up Willy, Joe, Mickey Cohen, and others, usually about eight men. Around 6:00 PM, the sleek, dark Cadillacs would roll up. Gus, Joe, Mickey, Willie, and others arrived, and the hungry Jewish men took their places around our table. My father entered with an expression that said, "Oh, no, not again." But he kissed Bubby hello and sat down too. They ate with the gusto of men starved for a matzo ball. It was always a silent dinner except for slurping noises from the soup bowls. Bubby lit the menorah on the mantle. She kept shoving food onto my father's plate, saying, "Davie, you're too thin." And Gus came in for chiding if he didn't finish every drop. "Whatsa matter? You got an ulcer from the hotel business? You can't finish the tsimmes?" When the strudel was gone, Bubby would remove her apron and announce, "Fine, first you eat, then you pay. I need gelt for my City of Hope project." And she'd go to each man and hold out her fat hand. My father looked embarrassed to death and said, "Momma, I'll give you the money. You promised you'd never do this again. Please?" But she knew her victims. $100 bills flowed out of their pockets while I watched in fascination. She put a rubber band around the take and threw it into her needlepoint bag. Susan Berman's memories of Jewish gangsters and their gangster-style Jewish mothers will continue in a minute from Chicago Public Radio and Public Radio International when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, invite a variety of writers, reporters, and performers to tackle that theme. Today's program, The Mob. What we think we know about the mob, and what's actually true. We're in the middle of Act Two of our program, Mobster's Daughter. So let's say that your father is a big-time gangster and, like the men in The Godfather movies, actually does try to protect you from ever knowing what exactly he does for a living. What happens when you find out? Well, Susan Berman's father died of natural causes when she was 12. Her mother died a year later. And the first time anyone directly told her about her father's underworld ties was when she was in college. Another student told her about this new book that talked about what her father really did in Las Vegas. I rushed to Martindale's Book Store, which was in Beverly Hills, no longer existent, and quickly found this book The Green Felt Jungle. There was a huge display of them. And I quickly looked at the index, "Davie Berman." And it did. It had a whole chapter on the Flamingo Hotel and Ben Siegel's death. And it said that after Ben Siegel was dead, that Davie Berman-- and then in parentheses, "Who could kill a man with one hand behind his back." And a little later in the chapter, it said that he had been "wounded in a shoot-out with an FBI man in Central Park and done 11 years in Sing Sing." And then it went on to talk about his other partners. Well, I started to throw up in the book store. I was so shocked. You literally threw up in the bookstore? Literally. How gross, right? It was just a visceral reaction. I couldn't believe it. And of course, I didn't think it was true. As Susan Berman describes in her memoir Easy Street, she worked so hard at believing this wasn't true that eventually, she forgot the incident ever happened. Years later, she was a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner and interviewed Jimmy Hoffa just a month before he vanished. He and his men all knew her dad. One of them said he was, quote, "much smarter than the guys running the outfit now," end quote. And still, she did not want to believe that her dad was with the mob. Finally, when somebody showed her her father's FBI files, finally then, reluctantly, she believed. Terri Dalessio had a similar rude awakening. Her uncles and father were gangsters on Staten Island from before World War II. They ran numbers, bootlegging, the longshoremen's union, the works. She has pictures of herself with Robert De Niro. Some of The Godfather locations, she says, were filmed at her real-life godfather's house on Staten Island. She found out about her own family's business when she was 14, by accident. She was passing a candy store, and she saw photos of her family on the front page of a newspaper called The Mirror. She couldn't believe it. And I said, no. My father? My uncles? My names? So I asked my mother. She said, "That's your father's business." So I'm a Mafia daughter. Well, here I go. And I went. I started to rebel. I ran away. I went to Pocono Mountains to find my grandmother, and hitchhiked all the way with two friends of mine. And I never made it to the house. I got tired, and the two fellows that were with me tired. And we broke into a farmhouse to get something to eat and rest. And I found a shotgun, and I found bullets, shells for the shotgun, and I just proceeded to shoot the house up. So where it came from, I don't know, this fury. It was festing in me. We got away with it because my father paid $1,500 for repairs. In those days, that was a lot of money. And I didn't get spanked or anything. I just got, "You know, you shouldn't do things like that." But I did. All this festered inside me. And I decided that I wasn't going to be called Johnny Dee's daughter anymore. I was gonna make my own reputation and be Terri Dee. I looked older than what I was. And I would be drinking in any bar I could get into with my friends. My dad had every cop in that area on the payroll. They would get a $50 reward if they found me. So if I saw anything walk in the door with a suit on, I knew it was a detective, and I'd hide under the table or run out of the bar. You have to understand, Staten Island was a very small area in those days. And my family ran Staten Island. In my early days, I could pick up the phone and say, "Mary, connect me with my aunt." And the operator would just connect me. My father used to say to me, "Why don't you meet a nice man?" "Who am I gonna meet, dad? A lawyer? A judge? A cop? Who would you like me to go out with? I'm Johnny Dee's daughter. Who is gonna go out with me but somebody who wants to impress you?" Common sense. My father-- I was the first born. I was a girl. He cried for two weeks because he wanted a boy. A year later came a boy. I have a brother one year younger than me. But he never let go of me as his son-daughter. So I went to all the fights in Greenwood Lake, Joe Lewis, all-- I was just a little bit of a thing. And everything he did, he dragged me with him. So I was like his son. I have been on sit-downs, one of the very few women I know that ever were. And here I am, sitting there like, I'd think, "Who the hell I am?" But mentally, I have the mind of a man. So my gambler husband owed a lot of money to two guys, who were like lower enchalant in the mob. And they came to my house, and they told my twins, 12 years old, "You tell your father--" and it wasn't their father-- "You tell your father that we're gonna burn the house down, burn his bar down, and burn his car down." Well, when I heard that, I went insane, because this man was on his way out anyway. So I just simply went to the bar where they hung out with a shotgun. I walked in the bar, big as day with a shotgun, in broad daylight. I said, "Are you so-and-so? And are you so-and-so? Well, let me tell you something. You better not touch my house, my car, or my business, because they're mine. I don't owe you any money. They don't belong to the gambler. They're mine. So if I see your car pull up in my driveway, I will shoot you." And one day, they pulled up to tell me everything was OK. And I did fire at the car. They just took off. [LAUGHING] I slept with a shotgun under my bed. I loved the violence at the time. I caused my own violence. Anyone who wanted to kill my husband knew they should not do it with me around. So that's why wherever we went, we went together. I'd walk in front of him. They had no right to hurt me because of my family. That's one thing that was honored. I'm going to find this picture sooner or later. I have an album here, "This is Your life." Here it is. This is the house my family has in the Pocono Mountains. It's a mansion. Three-mile lake with an island in the middle. Marble imported from Italy. Bathtubs enough to fit three people, four people. Everything was imported marble from Italy. Had a five-car garage. Upstairs was a bathroom and four bedrooms for the servants. And this is what I was raised in. I now live in one room. I have a table. I have an air filter, an air conditioner. I have a TV, telephone. I live in a room. And I am perfectly happy in this room. Theresa lost all her money. Married four times. One of her husbands and one of her fiances were shot to death in front of her. Her life today barely resembles the life that she had as a girl. But even today, in her 60s, living in a hospice, Theresa still reverts to her gangster daughter ways sometimes. Once in a while, if a situation pops up like it did one time when I lived in Greenwich Halfway House-- I was kitchen manager. This waiter who was one of the residents-- all the residents worked there-- served a dish to a woman. And this man sat in that seat and decided to pray. She started screaming, "Why are you praying over my food?" So he jumped up. This became a big scream. I said, "You," I told him, "Go down to your room and stay there until I tell you you can eat. Don't you ever raise your hand to a woman again." And he did. So that control came out of me at that point. I try not to do it because I find it very easy to do that. I have two windows. And in one window is a t-shirt that says, "Free Chin." I wrote it with laundry marker. And in very small square print, it says, "Mind your own [BLEEP] business." That's if anyone asks me, "Who's the Chin?" If they don't know, that's it. I'm finished. Theresa [? Mirable ?] in New York. She spoke with Blue Chevigny and Joe Richman. I'm 60 years old now. I've seen it all. And I want to tell about it. I want my book. I want my HBO special. Before Theresa, we heard Susan Berman, author of the book Easy Street, who we taped years ago. Since then, Berman was found dead in her apartment on Christmas Eve in the year 2000, killed by a single gunshot to the back of the head. Police say the prime suspect in her murder is not affiliated with the mob. She was 55 years old at the time. Act Three, Neighbors To The Mob. The mob, the traditional godfather, big city, Cosa Nostra, Robert De Niro-movie kind of mob has not been doing very well. Vincent "Chin" Gigante, for example, tried to evade prison by spending years dressing like somebody incompetent to dress himself, peeing in public in a bathrobe, seeking the insanity defense, and failing. Mafia expert Jerry Capeci is a columnist for The New York Sun. He also writes for the authoritative ganglandnews.com website. He's the author of several books about the mob, most recently The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Mafia. He says there are still 550 to 600 mobsters in New York. But times are tough for them, mostly due to effective law enforcement. Oh, there's no question about it. The law enforcement efforts have gone a long way to remove the gangsters from the labor unions, from many industries where they ruled supreme. Another problem that they're facing is these federal murder and racketeering indictments are putting more and more gangsters in prison for life. And so that the Commission, the ruling body of the mob, has decreed a ban on sanctioned murders in the New York metropolitan area. No more sanctioned killings for years now. The big guys don't want to do time for the murders, which raises the question, without killings, how will the mob stay the mob? Capeci also says the mob faces an odd recruiting problem right now. They don't want to bring in guys who will turn state evidence some day, as so many guys have. But gotta bring in someone for the mob to survive. It's not around anymore, but there used to be this magazine called Double Take. Anyway, in the fall 1997 issue, there's this great black-and-white photo. It is here. It is a bunch of middle-aged white guys on the sidewalk outside this nondescript brick building. The guys on the left side of the photo are just standing around laughing and smiling. And then there's this empty space, kind of a no man's land. And then right in the center of the photo, dressed in white pants, white shoes, white socks, and a striped, casual shirt, hair perfectly coiffed, looking smug, powerful, happy, is Mr. John Gotti, then head of the Gambino crime family. Then as we scan, continuing our scan from left to right across the picture, there's another empty space, another no man's land. And then nearly the entire right side of the photo, like 1/3 of this image, is this guy who is walking toward the camera in the most menacing possible way. He's so close that he's out of focus. He takes up like 1/3 of the page, looking pretty much exactly like an angry Joe Pesci. Reaching toward the camera, his finger is nearly on the lens of the camera. The name of this tiny, unglamorous building in the photo? It's called the Ravenite Social Group. And it was on Mulberry Street? It is still is on Mulberry Street at the corner of Prince Street. That is, in little Italy, in New York City. Forget the gorgeous, brown-roomed house in The Godfather movie. This was John Gotti's clubhouse. Alec Wilkinson is a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. His wife took the picture. And he, himself, had a special connection to the club. For seven years, beginning in 1979, I lived across the street from the club on the fifth floor of 250 Mulberry Street, a tenement. I looked down on the club and on the broad, flat roof of a garage next door. In a corner of the garage was a live poultry market. The name of the market was written in Chinese characters. Chinese women shopped there and old Italian women in black, who communicated by means of gestures with the Chinese men in white aprons covered with feathers and blood. I always said hello to any of the Ravenites I passed on the sidewalk or saw standing in the doorway. But none of them ever said anything to me or even acted as if he had heard me. I was never invited into the club either. But from the street, when the doors were open, I could see a bar and an espresso machine. Across from the bar were tables, and chairs, and, beyond them, a back room with a television on a shelf. I lived in the apartment for nearly a year before I learned that the sullen and irritable-looking men, who came and went from the club and sat at the tables, playing cards with smudges of ash on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday, were gangsters. My building belonged to a Buddhist monk in Hong Kong. A woman named Susan held the lease on my apartment. She was a performance artist. The apartment had become available as a result of the response to a piece she had recently given in the living room, called "Why Don't You Come Up And See Me Sometime?" She had advertised the piece on posters she'd taped to walls and light poles around the neighborhood. On the evening of the performance, the audience gathered on the sidewalk outside the building. A friend of Susan's brought them upstairs. When they walked in the apartment, they saw Susan, a pretty good-looking woman, lying on her side with her chin in one hand, buck naked on a slowly turning platform. She had dyed her brown hair jet black, and she had an absent look in her eyes. Several culture hounds from the social club attended. And a few days after, the club extended to Susan an invitation to leave the neighborhood. The invitation was delivered by a functionary who crowbarred the door of her apartment off its hinges one afternoon while Susan was out and left the rest of the apartment undisturbed. It was not her first mistake. She lived alone and had friends come and go at all hours, some of them men, which had led members of the club to conclude that she was a prostitute. I had been living in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod. Susan and I visited the Chinese agent who managed the building, and she told him that she was leaving the city and wanted to turn the apartment over to me, her cousin. I signed the lease and paid her $3,000, which was illegal. Then I went back to Cape Cod, and loaded my possessions into my car, and drove to New York, and parked in front of the social club. A man came out as I was carrying a chair, and told me to move the car. I assumed I was parked illegally and that he was giving me some friendly, welcome-wagon-type advice. Then I read the parking sign on the light pole, and saw that I was legal, and said, "Thanks, it's OK." Another man came out of the club, and they started arguing. I heard the second man, say, "It's all right. It's all right. He's Susan's cousin." I don't know who he heard that from. The man who had told me to move said, "I don't give a damn who he is." After I finished unloading my car, I drove over to the river, and drank some beers, and watched the sun go down over New Jersey. And when I came back, another car was parked in front of the club. The next morning, on my way to breakfast, I saw that the windshield, and windows, and headlights of the car had been shattered. The Ravenites kept a doberman named Duke. During the day, Duke paced in front of the club and the garage. And at night, he slept in the club. A short, fat guy named Mike looked after him. The garage belonged to a trucking company that hauled bananas and pineapples from the Brooklyn docks. Mike's job was to watch the door. This was not a complicated job. Trucks came and went from the garage at the rate of about one every other day. Mike's position with the club was obscure. The lowest level of association seemed to be occupied by men in their 20s, mean-looking types with wiry bodies and spiteful, ratty faces. The more prestigious Ravenites arrived at the club in fancy, black cars. They left the cars on the sidewalk. And the young men ran out of the garage with sponges and buckets of water and washed the cars while the gangsters were visiting the club. Mike never washed the cars. He was clearly above that. But he never spent much time inside the club either. Now and then, taking pains to emphasize his importance, he would say things, such as, "Kind of friends I have, you need a job done, they do it. Then they go to Italy for a while." One day, the doberman was gone. After that, when the club closed at night, an old man stood in the passageway, smoking cigarettes. In addition to Mike, I was acquainted with a dark-haired, round-faced, slightly fleshy, and sinister-looking young man of about 30 named Norman. I often saw Norman behind the bar, and I assumed he was the Ravenite's bartender. Norman and Mike had an interest in a flock of pigeons that were kept in a coup on the roof above my apartment. For a while after I first moved in, I would hear a knock on the door. And I would open it to find Norman holding a plastic bucket. "He needed water for the birds," he said. While the bucket was filling in my bathtub, he would look around the apartment and ask what I did for a living. I had to have it explained to me by a neighbor, who lived down the hall, that Norman didn't need water. He was making sure on behalf of the Ravenites that I was not a cop. During the first year that I lived in the apartment, people would tell me that the Ravenites were the Mafia, and I didn't believe them. I thought they looked like people who wished they were in the Mafia, but didn't have the nerve or the intelligence or know the right people. For one thing, they seemed easily frightened. Whenever one of them had a dispute with a bicycle messenger or a delivery guy, he ran into the club or the garage for a wrench, or a tire iron, or a piece of lead pipe. Then he came back with three or four friends. The kids in the neighborhood had the same bullying streak. I often saw boys, wearing the blue sweaters and dark ties of the Catholic school around the corner, ambush drunks who wandered over from the Bowery. They set upon the frail, ragged figures like pack dogs. And when they had beaten the drunk to his knees, they ran away. One morning after I had lived in the apartment for about a year, I learned what had happened to the doberman, and also why the windshield and the windows of the car had been shattered. A story on the front page of the New York Times said that the police had managed to hide microphones inside the club. The microphones had been in place only briefly before they were discovered and ripped out by the intended targets of the surveillance, the paper said. The conversations the police overheard had covered, quote, "numerous organized crime activities," unquote. Among the Ravenites who were indicted as a result was Norman, who was identified as Norman Dupont of 32 Monroe Street. He and the others were offered immunity and then, of course, sent to jail for contempt since none of them would say anything. Norman was there for a year. He left the flock of pigeons in the care of some high school kids who showed up only occasionally, and most of the pigeons died. The day the story was published, television reporters arrived to film dispatches in front of the club. A group of kids stood around them. Each time a reporter opened his mouth to speak into his microphone, the kids banged trash can lids together like cymbals. Eventually, the reporters got back into their cars and drove off except for one reporter who paid the kids to be quiet. It turned out that I had parked in front of the social club on the day after the Ravenites had discovered that the police had been parking cars in the space where I had left mine. As a matter of routine, the Ravenites assumed that there were microphones in their clubhouse. So when they had something important to talk about, they went outside. Often, they leaned against the car, and, in the trunk of the car, was a cop who was listening to the gangsters' conversation. Sometimes, the gangsters leaned against the light pole which had a microphone in it. That the doberman never woke up from the tranquilizers the police have given him so that they could plant the microphones came out in the court records. The police misjudged the dose they gave the dog and said they felt bad about it. I often give a copy of the photograph of the Ravenites social club to friends as a present. My wife, a photographer, took it one afternoon in the spring just after John Gotti had been acquitted in the last trial that he would win. By then, I no longer lived on Mulberry Street. My wife had a studio on the Bowery, and she was walking to the subway when she saw Gotti. Gotti had become commander in chief of the Gambino family, whose headquarters the Ravenites club was, by having the former commander killed. She pretended to be a tourist and asked if she could take his picture. She took three. And the guy on the right is saying, "Enough." Without looking at her, Gotti said, "Don't sell them," something that had not occurred to her. She went to a pay phone and called the New York Post and told them she had a picture of Gotti outside the Ravenite social club. The man who answered said, "You took it with a long lens, right?" She said, no, she had walked right up to him. There was a pause. The man told her to bring the picture right away. He said that the paper had a way of paying her so that no one would know her name. That was when she decided not to publish it. On the Fourth of July, Norman, and Mike, and some other Ravenites would fill wheelbarrows with fireworks, and dump them in the intersection of Mulberry and Prince, outside my building, and pour gasoline on the pile, and the flames would shoot up and blister the paint on the stoplight. Bottle rockets would rise to my window and throw off sparks. And the air would smell like gunpowder. Meanwhile, other Ravenites would light cherry bombs and M-80s, and toss them into garbage cans, and throw the lids on the cans. The fireworks would rip the seams on the cans and throw the lids into the air. And the explosion would rattle the frames of my windows and make my ears ring. One year, some friends were having dinner with me, and their young son was with us. And the sparks from the bottle rockets coming in the windows and the flashes of light upset him. "The nerves in my skin are hurting," he said. I called the police. "The Mafia guys at the Ravenite social club are setting off fireworks," I said. And the cops said, "There's no such thing as the Mafia." Alec Wilkinson. His latest book is Mr. Apology and Other Essays. Well, our program was produced today by Julie Snyder and myself with Alix Spiegel and Nancy Updike. Our senior editor for this show was Paul Tough. Contributing editors Jack Hitt, Margy Rochlin, and Consigliere Sarah Vowell. Our staff includes Alex Blumberg, Diane Cook, Jane Feltes, Sarah Koenig, Amy O'Leary, and Lisa Pollak. Production help from Sam Hallgren and Chris Ladd. Our website, www.thisamericanlife.org, where you still have a couple days left to do your Christmas shopping, and where you can also listen to our programs for absolutely free any day of the year. Or you know, can download today's program in our archives at audible.com/thisamericanlife. This American Life is brought to you by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight for our program by Mr. Torey Malatia, who describes the This American Life staff this way. Mean-looking types with wiry bodies and spiteful, ratty faces. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life. PRI, Public Radio International.
|
OK, here's a couple for you. First him. I usually always say that I'm a Christian first. Do you still go to church every Sunday? Yes, I try to go to church every Sunday. I'm very active in the church. I was the chairman of the congregation. OK, that's him. Now her. I'm an atheist. I only go to church on Sunday, let's say, if my daughter is performing a violin recital there. And I don't really participate in the service. I just sit there. Can people who have religion and people who don't truly understand each other? Mary and Manford Rauer have been married for 22 years. They have a teenage daughter. It is, surprisingly, harmonious. And then how would it work when you were president of the congregation? Isn't that the kind of job where, usually, somebody would bring their whole family along to a lot of different kinds of events? Well, a lot of people thought that he was single, actually. I think people that are not directly involved thought he was single. Yes, that is true. I've been approached, "Oh, my daughter's divorced," or whatever. "Would you like to meet her?" And I said, "I'm sorry. I'm married." Mary was Catholic when they first met and lost her faith by the time they were married. But they talked about these things so infrequently that it wasn't until their daughter was born, years later, that her husband really understood that she wanted no part of religion at all. Here's how they make it work. They have a system, namely, they do not discuss it at all. I'm not going to push the issue because I want a good marriage. What's there to talk about? That's why. I mean, if we're going argue every time-- I mean, if I don't believe anything he says, where's the talking? What are we going to talk about? I mean, it doesn't interfere in our everyday life. I mean, maybe he prays for somebody. But he's not one to read the Bible constantly either, so it's not really an issue except Sunday morning, you know? Well, every morning when I get up, I do read the Bible. I guess she doesn't know that. You don't know that, do you? Well, I see him reading the Bible once in a while. It doesn't seem like it's every day, unless he's hiding somewhere and reading it because I certainly don't see it. Where do you read? I get up earlier than you do, and I find time to read. I'm in the process of reading the Psalms right now. In a sense this is a more tragic story for him than for her. After all, he believes he's going to heaven. And he believes that when he gets there she will not be there because she doesn't have a relationship with Jesus. And he prays for her and waits for God to intervene in her life. Meanwhile, she does not want him to praying for her. She doesn't want to see the light. And, for all they have together, there's a part of his faith, there's a part of him, that she just doesn't get. It's not that I don't understand him. It's I understand people wanting their religion and their faith. That's no problem. But the part I have trouble with is why do they believe that? It's like a dream or it's a non-real world. And I'm more in reality here. It's not a real world. You mean you feel like they're living in a fantasy. Right. First of all, I would like to say, because I find that my prayers are answered with my relationship with God when I pray, I think he's in our lives every day. And I feel that God has a direction for your life. And he's going to get you where He needs you to serve him. So, if God has a direction for your life, so I'm directed to be an atheist. That's how I look at this, you know? If God directs your life, he directed me to be an atheist. No, God wills everybody to be a Christian. Now, do not be deceived by how they're arguing in this little clip of tape. In their normal lives, when they're not being interviewed about the existence of God, these people show all the signs of a couple who are remarkably happy together. Looked at it in one way, this story is about how the secular and religious worlds cannot understand each other, ever. But, looked at in another, it's a story about how well they can, which brings us to today's program. From WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our radio program Christians and non-Christians together again. Act One of our program, Exodus. A completely secular person arrives in a town where thousands of people are taking part in a massive prayer project to save their city. Act Two, Kings. Scott Carrier talks about carpenters and Christians and why the two should not be allowed to be together. Stay with us. Act One, Exodus. Usually we think of prayer as a private thing. All prayer like all politics is local. Most people pray for those near and dear to them, sort of. In Colorado Springs, Colorado, there's an elaborate program underway involving dozens of churches and thousands of people to pray, not just for those nearby, but to try to fundamentally alter the civic life of their city through prayer. The details of how they do this are complicated. It's almost like a modern door-to-door marketing or canvassing campaign. They use maps and computers and statistics to chart out what parts of their city need prayer for what reasons merged with something that cannot be less modern, prayer. And, when This American Life producer, Alix Spiegel, started to investigate it, it became something she could not get out of her mind. She decided she had to go to Colorado to see what it was all about. This is the tape that brought me to Colorado Springs. It's a sermon given by Pastor Ted Haggard of the New Life Church about prayer walking. Pastor Ted has taken a map of the city, divided it into districts, assigned those districts to people in his congregation, and together they're walking up and down every street praying for the people in the houses and all the shops and businesses. I love grid praying where we walk. You have the parallel streets, and you put a person at the end of each street, and then you walk up and down that street. And at the end of every block you check, make sure your buddy's there, and make sure your buddy's there. Then you do another block, and you make sure your buddy's there, and make sure your buddy's there. Then you pray another block. So you pray over every home, every business, every school, everything. And you realize, you know, if we weren't doing this, some of these people would never be prayed for. The thing about this that I find so striking is that it's not a PR campaign. They don't knock on doors. They don't ask for donations. They're not trying to win the hearts and minds of non-Christians by letting them know how much they care about them. In fact, they don't even want the people being prayed for to know that they're being prayed over. So start walking it discreetly and with wisdom, praying. You don't want to intimidate people. You don't want to embarrass other people or anything like that. Prayer is a private thing. We don't stand up and go, "Come on Holy Spirit," or anything like that. We just walk along, have a baseball cap on, jug of water or whatever, Mountain Dew, if you want some spice. And we'll be walking along and we'll just pray, "Father, in the name of Jesus-- The simplicity of this idea appealed to me, people walking, praying for people they don't know without expectation of reward. I wanted to see if it was as pure an act of kindness as it seemed to be. I wanted to see if all the prayer was having any effect. No other American city is working as systematically to get God's attention. And I thought that, surely, if God is going to speak anywhere in modern America, he's going to speak in Colorado Springs. My first surprise on arriving in Colorado is that the New Life Church looks less like a place of worship and more like a Walgreens than any religious institution I have ever seen. It's a long, flat, gray and turquoise building with a large satellite dish on top where most churches would keep a cross. New Life is what's known as a megachurch. It has 6,000 members. Over 1% of the population of Colorado Springs, it claims. My second surprise on arriving at New Life is that, while all the people are completely kind, they smile, they're gracious, they always offer to get me coffee even though I don't drink coffee, I can't understand a word they're saying. As we pray we open a hole in the spiritual dynamics above the earth in the spiritual realm of the earth. So here's planet earth, here. This is Trish. She works at New Life in the public relations department. She took me to lunch. And, before the food came, I decided to warm her up with a question I thought I knew the answer to. How does prayer work? I figured she'd tell me something like, "You pray. And God hears you. And he answers." But, two napkins worth of diagrams later, I realized it was much more complicated. So what I've done is I just drew an opening in this biosphere of spiritual dynamics that are going on in the heavenlies. And, as we open this sphere, we allow the will of God, the kingdom of God, to come to planet earth. Trish, like most of the other Christians I met in Colorado Springs, speaks a very particular language. They're constantly using phrases like spiritual dynamics, standing in the gap, spiritual discernment, intercessors, the Joshua generation, true in your walk, in the natural, the 10/40 window. And, for me, it's like being in a foreign country. I come from a family of non-religious Jews. I never had any kind of religious training. And, while I know some devout Christians, all of my friends belong to the America that never goes to church on Sunday. After listening to this Christian jargon for a day and a half, I realize that I'm not understanding well enough to do a decent story. So I go and visit the person in charge of setting up my interviews while I'm at New Life, Pastor Joseph Thompson. Joseph is a tall, broad Nigerian, and I like him. I like him a lot. For a pastor, he's a very worldly man. He was a professional soccer player. He was trained as an architect, speaks several languages, travels widely. And he's the first Christian in Colorado Springs who can tell me a joke. We have a refreshingly frank discussion. I tell him that, because of the language thing, I'm afraid that none of the people that I've talked to will be understood by, or appealing to, a secular audience. That I need someone who doesn't sound like they're piping out the party line. Then he tells me that he doesn't believe that what's going on with the Christians in the city of Colorado Springs can be understood by people outside. That, in fact, the whole of the Christian spiritual world is incomprehensible to the secular mind. There is no common ground. I, of course, argue with him, say that people are people, and ultimately we can understand one another. And we go back and forth and back and forth. He insists that the religious can't be understood by the non-religious, I insist they can. And, at some point, I get visibly frustrated and upset. This is when Joseph turns to me with a whole new look in his eyes, like up until this point he didn't understand something that suddenly he understood. And this is what he says. He says, "You're looking for something. You came here for some other reason. You didn't come here to do a story about prayer walking. You were sent here for something else." And I sit, kind of blink at him dumbly, and wonder if he's right. Joseph refers me to a youth group where I finally find a prayer walker who doesn't speak in jargon. His name is Paul. His parents are Mormons, but he became a charismatic Christian two years ago when he joined the New Life Church. That's when he started prayer walking. I go with him early one evening. And he explains that the more specific his prayers are, the more likely it is that God'll answer them. So, as he walks by a house, he looks at the lawn and the stickers on cars searching for physical cues which will tell them what's going on inside. The outward appearance of the house, you know, the lawn, the way the house is kept up on the outside, you can usually tell. Because they're too busy fighting with their family, that they can't get any of that other stuff done, you know? Like, when my parents got divorced, our lawn looked kind of bad. I really didn't care because I didn't think anything really mattered, you know? I was just like, "Ah, I don't care. Life is dumb." If the house looks like it belongs to a couple with kids, Paul will pray for God to keep the kids away from drugs. If the house looks like it belongs to an old person, Paul will pray for God to keep them safe from diseases and pain and bless their grandchildren. It's exactly what I imagined prayer walking would be, people taking time, praying for people they don't know, and asking for nothing in return. I watch Paul as he prays. And I can see him really straining to imagine what these people are like. He's standing on the sidewalk in front of his neighbor's blue, two-story house. His eyes are closed. And his eyelids are trembling slightly. Thank you so much for this beautiful day, Father. I thank you for the neighbors that you've given me, Father, that they know that there is nothing better than to just sit down and just read your word, or to get on their knees and just pray to you. And, Holy Spirit, I pray you just flow through this house. Go through each and every single room. There's something really intimate about prayer walking, at least, the way it's practiced by Paul. He walks quietly down the street fantasizing about the lives of the people he's praying for, and it changes the way that he feels about them. If he happens to meet them in school or in a neighborhood get-together, he's more friendly than usual and ends up asking a lot of specific personal questions about their family, how everybody's doing. I feel as if I've already started some kind of relationship, some kind of friendship, because I prayed for them. And then, once I really start to get to know them more, I will be able to see the fruits of my prayer and see how my prayers have affected that person's life, even if they know it or not. When I asked Paul how he knows what he's doing is changing anything, he looked at me like I just asked him how he knows the sun will come up tomorrow. And then he asks me a question. God created the earth, why can't he change it? The next day, Thursday, I go to visit Joseph in his office just to talk. I find myself going to visit Joseph just to talk quite a bit. I visit or we talk on the phone three, maybe four times, a day. Some of this is logistics. He's helping me find people to interview, giving me telephone numbers. But a lot of it isn't logistics at all. We talk about our lives and argue about Christianity. He thinks I'm going to Hell, I don't. He thinks the only way to lead a just life is with Jesus, I don't. And, always, there's this friendly, low-level cultural clash which, for some reason, seems to surprise both of us every time we stumble onto it. At one point he mentions in passing a conference he went to on evolution and tells me about some new evidence they were discussing which proves Darwin was a fool and a fake. I, of course, start to argue. Then there's this long, kind of sad silence. And he says to me, "I should've realized that you would be a Darwinist," which is exactly what I was thinking about him. I should have realized that you would be Creationist. I talk to Joseph about the prayer walkers, tell him about Paul's prayer walk, Paul's empathy for the people he's praying for. Joseph accepts this kind of empathy as a matter of course. "It's the duty of a Christian," he says. At one point, he turns to me. You may not realize this, but there are people praying for you. Even here, now, in this church, people are praying for you so that you will come into a relationship with Jesus the same way that we have experienced. Thursday night I go home to my hotel room and walk in little circles thinking about Joseph. I construct elaborate arguments about why I don't want to become a Christian, why I can't become a Christian. I get one hour of sleep, maybe two. Hi, how you doing? Oh, all right. Having a good day? Well, I'll tell you later. So far, it's all right. OK, see you. The next morning, I have an early appointment with a woman named Jennifer Phillips who's called to pray for the homeless. Twice a week, she goes to the center square in downtown Colorado Springs and prays for all the men and women sleeping on park benches. Jennifer is in her 20s, cute, with a nose pierce and a plaid, button-down, and I like her a lot. But her language is so dense with biblical reference, and I'm so tired, that I just hear this wall of Christianese, spiritual warfare, spiritual strongholds, praying in a spiritual foundation. Then she tells me that she gets nervous when she comes to the park. And it's not just because she's a woman alone, walking at night or in the early morning when there are not many people around. There's another reason she gets nervous. Demonic strongholds in this area, things that have, just over centuries, that people might have-- I mean, I don't know what this land was years ago. I know there's a lot of land around here where they did sacrifices, cultic things, that you have to pray that out. And, in Ephesians, it talks about being dressed in spiritual armor. It says that Satan roams the earth. He's the prince of the air, and he roams back and forth over the earth. Up until this moment with Jennifer, I thought that prayer walking was about wishing your neighbor well, kind of looking around for the next guy and hoping the best for him. But, as Jennifer talks, I realize that it's something else, something much more medieval. She explains that Satan is a living, active presence, just as God is a living, active presence, and that all around the sunny streets of Colorado Springs there is constant and intensive warfare between the two. Jennifer is one of God's warriors, and it's dangerous. I mean, there's times where people go through warfare, spiritual warfare, and we'll pray. And the next week they'll lose their job. There's a woman that intercedes for the church right now, and she lost her job. Strange things just happen to happen that next week after praying. It's a battle, which means you can get hurt too. Have you ever been hurt? OK, yeah. Like, the next day, Satan will try to accuse you of things. He's the accuser, like through work. You may go through depression or hopelessness. Often, after prayer walking, Jennifer feels isolated, doesn't want to go out and see people or experiences intense self-doubt. These feelings she attributes to Satan. She sees it as his way of punishing her for the good that she does. It is a stunning thing in secular America, where every talk show and magazine article reinforces the idea that there are either situational or chemical explanations for feeling one way or the other, to meet someone who has a completely different way of interpreting her emotional life, someone who believes that the reason that they're depressed today is not because their mother didn't love them or because they don't have enough serotonin juicing up the synapses in their brain, but because a supernatural force put a feeling in their head in order to stop them from doing something good. The way that you just described it, it sounded like you were saying you felt like that was Satan that was putting the depression into you. But do you ever think I feel depressed and there are clear reasons for me to feel depressed? Or do you always see yourself in a spiritual battleground? No. No, but there are times that you can tell that all these negative thoughts in your head, and it's like this is not me. This is really bizarre because I'm having an awesome day. No one's hurt me. Life is good. Why am I feeling this way? Jennifer tells me that there are prayer walkers who can go around and feel the presence of evil in a place even with their eyes closed. She talks about her experiences coming against witches in Manitoba Springs and the occult in Colorado Springs, about the prayer warriors at New Life who regularly prayer walk certain sections of the city seeking out and destroying the forces of darkness. In the taped sermons that brought me to Colorado, there had been talk of the occult and of the forces of Satan, but I hadn't really taken it seriously. It seemed more metaphorical. I hadn't realized that they were, literally, on a witch hunt. And, as Jennifer talks, my mind keeps reeling for some common ground. What are you thinking? What am I thinking? I guess I'm just thinking that I rarely see the world in these terms. Uh-huh. I understand. Yeah, this sounds really bizarre. I know it probably sounds like where is this stuff coming from? What sci-fi novel is this coming from? It does sound a little-- I mean, it doesn't sound-- Yeah. I mean, OK. I'm sure to some people it's going to sound a little sci-fi. I mean, you talk about witches and you talk about covens, and those are things from myths. After I talk to Jennifer, I call Joseph from a pay phone in town. I tell him that I understand now why he thinks it would be hard to communicate what's happening in Colorado Springs, this vision of the spiritual world, to a secular audience. Joseph doesn't seem surprised by my call. He tells me that he prayed the night before for God to give me insight into the spiritual world, and now God has answered his prayer. Then he asks me pointedly if I slept well. And I tell him that I hadn't really slept at all and that I'm tired and confused. We say goodbye and hang up, but talk again later when I'm back in my hotel room. He says he wants to come clean. He tells me that he didn't just pray for me to receive understanding of the spiritual world, he also prayed to God that I wouldn't sleep, not until I became a Christian. Alix Spiegel's story about prayer in Colorado Springs continues in a minute from Public Radio International when our program continues. This is American Life, I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, invite a variety of writers and reporters and performers to tackle that theme. Today's program, Christians and non-Christians and how well they can understand each other. We're in the middle of Act One. This is Alix Spiegel's story about dozens of churches in Colorado who've banded together to change the world through prayer. To give you an idea of the extent of the spiritual battle they're waging against the forces of darkness, not only are they systematically praying in front of every home and school and business in Colorado Springs, they're praying through the phone book one name at a time. There are all-night prayer vigils. Churches have organized so that each one takes a different day each month with teams of people praying 24 hours a day. So that, right now, as you hear the sound of my voice, someone, somewhere, is praying for the city of Colorado Springs. There's a huge international component to this prayer, flying people to Nepal or Cairo to parts of the world where there aren't a lot of Christians on, what they call, prayer journeys. Groups of people check into hotels, pray for a few days, sometimes never leaving the hotel, then fly back home. They're building a new high-tech world prayer center to coordinate prayer needs in 120 countries. And, while it's possible for secular people to understand the idea of these efforts, is there a gap past which it is impossible for them to understand? Alix Spiegel's story continues. I don't sleep for two days, and it makes me feel like I'm going crazy. I lose my wallet and think about borrowing money from Joseph but decide against it. Several times a day, we talk on the phone, debate Christianity and talk about my story. I alternate between thinking that everybody I'm talking to is insane and thinking, while I'm out on prayer walks or sitting through a church service, that they have something that I don't have. Sometimes, between interviews, I go back to my hotel room and watch TV. I find it comforting. I stare at the glow of the people on television and try to remember what I would think of all this if I were home in Chicago. I still have a story to do, and so I go and see Ted Haggard, the man who's sermon brought me to Colorado Springs. He tells me that his church looks for evidence, scientifically verifiable evidence, that their prayers are having an effect on the community. Yeah, we always see empirical evidence. We started praying in an organized way in 1985. That was 12 years ago. And the crime rate has declined every year for the past 12 years. When I suggest that crime rates are falling all over the country, and that, in most places, this is due mainly to demographics, Ted agreed that there was no positive way to know how much the decrease in crime was due to prayer. But he still thinks it's true. Well, I would say that, my response is that, I believe that the scriptures are true. And, because I believe the scriptures are true, God tells us some of the things that prayer will do. So I think it's probably a scientifically verifiable phenomenon. Ted tells me story after story. They pray over vacant lots hoping the land will serve God's purposes, then watch as a church buys the lot. They pray at porno stores. I mean, when we pray around a porno joint on a consistent basis-- we never talk to the people. We don't harass people or anything like that, but we see a dip in their business. We have a team of men that specifically target adult bookstores, and they have hundreds of stories of men pulling in to the adult bookstore and parking, and there they are praying for them. You can imagine a group of guys sitting there with their baseball caps and their T-shirts praying, "Father, in the name of Jesus, remind these guys of their mothers. Lord, help them think of any scripture they've ever been exposed to in all their life. Cause them to be in love with their wives." They have hundreds of stories of men getting out of their cars, walking halfway to the door of the adult bookstore and pausing, going back, and getting in their car and driving off. Business is good, so I'm sure they're not hitting everybody. You know what I mean? The First Amendment is an adult bookstore and novelty shop about eight miles down the road from New Life on Filmore Avenue. It's one of the places New Life targeted, so I went down there to see how business was going. The store's clerk, Dan, has worked at the First Amendment for four years and hasn't noticed a drop in business. What do you mean? As in anything that's like empirical evidence that this is working? Is that what you're saying? I mean, I guess that's part of what I'm saying. Yeah, because I haven't noticed it, you know? I still get the same amount of people and the sales are still the same, you know? That kind of thing. I've noticed a drop since our sign's been out, you know? So maybe they prayed for my sign to be out. Maybe that's their answer to it. I mean, you know, that may have happened but, other than that, no. Dan doesn't seem bothered by the idea of people sitting in his parking lot praying for his business to drop off the face of the earth. I mean, they have a right to be there as long as they're not disturbing people. I mean, it would be different if they were holding people up from coming in. But, if all they're doing is praying, then that's very passive-aggressive kind of stuff, you know? It's not like it's a big deal. Right. I mean, according to them, they do stop people from-- Physically? Spiritually. Well, spiritually, I mean, you know, they can believe whatever they want. And so they can be out there and it doesn't bother me, and it doesn't offend me. They can judge me. They don't know me. That's OK, I'm used to that. Most religions do judge people without really knowing them. Dan says he prays himself, so he understands the impulse. I asked him if he's noticed any change in the spiritual climate of Colorado Springs what with the prayer shield and the prayer walks, and he tells me no. Most of the changes he's noticed aren't spiritual. The town has gotten bigger, it's more expensive, and people aren't as friendly as they used to be. Over on the far side of the store next to the videos I meet a customer, Malcolm. Prayer warrior, that's what I was before I came out, yes. It turns out that I don't need to explain much about the spiritual war to Malcolm. The fact is, he would probably do a better job explaining it to me. Malcolm was a full-fledged spiritual warrior until he came out as gay. He was even a member of the New Life Church. Here's a bit of irony. The first time Malcolm ever came to the First Amendment bookstore was on his way home from a singles meeting at New Life. He'd been struggling with being gay and being Christian, and the singles meeting was just the last straw. At this singles meeting, two of my friends embraced in a Christian hug, very Christian hug, and then jumped away from each other and said, "Fag." And that is when I became disheartened, if you will. So he walked to the First Amendment bookstore and decided to come out. The sad thing about all this is that Malcolm badly misses his life as a Christian. He loved the church and loved being a spiritual warrior. Even now, several years after coming out, Malcolm would probably be happier sitting in the car outside praying than standing in the porn store talking to me. I guess I have to admit I like the Christian environment more. There seems to be more spiritual love going on than this environment where there's only physical love. So you basically agree with them that this is demonic? Yes, [LAUGHS] paradox. Yeah, it is a paradox. That must be-- I am really torn, yes, between what I was brought up with and what I'm doing now. Do you ever have a fantasy that they would be able to pray enough to change you? I mean, was that a fancy that you used to have? Yea, and, if by some chance I do wake up one morning and I'm no longer gay, I will believe that there were Christians intervening. At the end of the interview I ask him if I've left anything out, do you want to say anything else? To you, personally, and to anyone else, I would not turn Jesus away just because of what the Christians do. Jesus isn't the bad guy. Can I just point out that you're sitting in the middle of a porno store, and you're trying to save me? Yeah, that's crazy. I know. Joseph calls me early in the morning, around 6 o'clock, to check in and see how I'm doing. Thanks to the power of prayer, I am, of course, awake. We talk for a while. I tell him about the guy in the porno store, how tragic he seemed. We argue about homosexuality, and the argument runs pretty much as you would expect. I'm for the homos. Joseph thinks that they can't be gay and saved at the same time. When I tell him that I could never be part of a religion that doesn't accept homosexuals, he's shocked, really shocked and disappointed by my tolerance. But Joseph doesn't give up on me. He tells me that, one day, when I'm a Christian and we're best friends, we'll look back on all of this and laugh. And there's something about the way that he says this that makes me feel deep inside that, yes, of course, he's right. One day, went I'm a Christian and we're best friends, we will look back on all of this and laugh. I don't tell Joseph that I think this. After we hang up, I don't know what to do, so I call my boss, Ira, in Chicago. It's 7:30 Chicago time on a Sunday morning, and I wake him up. I want him to put this experience in perspective for me, tell me that he's been through the same thing. He tries, in various ways to be reassuring and finally tells me that he believes that, ultimately, my life is with the secular world and the show in Chicago. One day, he says, when I'm back in Chicago hard at work at my digital editing station, we'll look back on all of this and laugh. Ira is much less convincing than Joseph. We kind of go into Satan's turf. Some people enjoy that more than others. Some people really like to spend more time praying in lighter areas and not so spiritually dangerous areas. And how about you? Well, I like the dark stuff. I'm called to walk in dark places. My attraction to becoming a Christian suffers a setback when I go out with a prayer walker named Jared, who does hard-core spiritual warfare. He not only wanders around blessing his neighbors but actively tries to fight demons. Jared's a Harvard grad in his late 20s. And I'm told by several people that his prayer walks are intense, lots of frenzied spiritual confrontation. Jared seems proud of this and, as we walk, he explains that sophisticated prayer walkers don't need to rely on physical cues to know if the forces of Satan are present. The interesting thing is that, if you blindfolded Jen or I or someone who had developed their gifts of discernment, and took us to a place, and we couldn't see what was going on, and even if I couldn't hear what was going on, spiritually, I could receive discernment on the place. Jared, Jennifer Phillips, their friend, Sarah and I go to confront the forces of darkness on a particularly peaceful summer afternoon. And it's hard, at least for me, to sense the presence of anything sinister. We walk in a park past some skateboarders down a couple blocks to a school. And then, as we walk around the back of the school, Jennifer, Sarah, and Jared come up short. I wonder-- something's here. Yeah. Like-- Like-- Tell us. So, just in walking into this area, it's different. We're in the back of the school standing under a high brick archway in the middle of the school's courtyard. There are benches placed to form a circle. And, for a moment, I stand there wondering what this place witnessed. A gang rape? A murder? Sarah pipes up. She says she went to this school. She knows what happened in the court yard. It's where all the drama people used to hang out during lunchtime. "They're liberals," Jennifer says. Then she and Sarah get self-conscious, like they're afraid they've offended me seeing as I'm a member of the media and a Jew. Not so much liberal. I don't want to say that. Well, what is the word then? It's almost like-- well? Accepting of ideas? Yes. More open to different interpretations of things. It sounds like people that come to this place are more open to other religions, different views of morality, a bunch of different things, more likely to try things. And, because that they're more likely to try things, people, generally in drama or the arts, are more open to different ideas. Often those people not only are they more open to try things but they actually do try things. They move to the center of the circle, close their eyes, and pray. Dear Lord God, we come to you, Lord God, realizing, Lord God, that there's something different about this place, Lord God. That, in the spirit realm, Lord God, there's a darkness over this place, Lord God. Lord, we come to you, Lord God, and we bind any deceiving spirits, Lord God, that may be in operation here, Lord God. Any demonic powers or forces, Lord God, that lead people away from truth, Lord God, if they lead them into false religions, Lord God, or ways of looking at morality, Lord God, that are not consistent with your word or anything, Lord God, we ask, Lord God, that you would bind those powers, Lord God, that you would bind them, Lord God, with chains of iron, Lord God. The next time I talk to Joseph on the phone I tell him about my prayer walk with Jared. I say that I know it'll sound ridiculous to a secular audience, but I have to use it anyway. He doesn't seem to care. Joseph never expected to be understood in the media. He's much more concerned with me and my salvation. And it's hard not to find that touching. He invites me to come and hear him pastor. He's speaking at the Solid Rock Christian Church. Solid Rock is a poor black church in a strip mall in Southern Colorado Springs, just two rooms in a space that looks like it might once have been a large Kinko's or a Mail Boxes Etc. The group prays together, then Joseph begins his sermon. It's about reaching out to the lost. He asks how many people in the church have more than one or two non-Christian friends. And, in a room of about 35 adults, maybe five tentatively raise their hands. Then he tells them that he does not even have a single non-Christian friend. "This is wrong," he says. "It's not enough to live justly within the four walls of the church. Christians must find a way to make themselves understandable to non-Christians." He says this issue has come up a number of times in the past couple of days. And, as he says this, he stands in front of me. He says my name and introduces me. And then he starts to talk about the conversations we've been having. He talks about our conversations and then talks about something else. And then talks in a general way about our conversations and then talks about something else. And, at one point, after saying that Christians need to help those in need, he comes and stands in front of me and says, "I love you, Alix." And the nice woman sitting beside me puts her arm over my shoulder, smiles, and passes me a Kleenex. At the end of his sermon, the group begins to sing. No band, just people singing without accompaniment. And Joseph comes over and asks if he can pray with me. At first, I shake my head no. I'm not sure why, but the thought literally terrifies me. But he asks again, and I can't think of a rational reason not to do it. After all, he's only asking me to pray. So I put down my tape player. And he takes my hands in his, and bows his head, and begins to pray. And, if you paid me money, I couldn't tell you a word he said. I remember the acute sense that I was in a strip mall church in the city, 1,000 miles away from my home, and that the man standing in front of me badly wanted me to become a Christian, was offering me love and comfort if I would only say yes. It seemed clear that the people around me were already experiencing the relief that was being extended to me, and that, if I were to act rationally, I would just cross over and join them. But, somehow, I couldn't act rationally. I couldn't become a Christian. Most of all, I remember the sheer effort of trying to keep my composure. When we had finished, I sat down and watched as Joseph approached a woman in the third row. She was singing. And he laid his hands on her shoulders, gently, right next to her neck. And, all of a sudden, she just started screaming long, wailing screams. I felt like I understood why she was screaming. And I don't know if it's God, and I don't know if it's not, but I don't think it matters. Alix Spiegel here in Chicago. Act Two, Kings. I am damned. I am going to Hell. This is what my fundamentalist friends tell me. They say, no matter what I do in this life, no matter what good works or virtue I ever concoct for myself, I am condemned because I, I and my entire race, the Jews, have not accepted Jesus. But, in these moments before I and maybe you burn forever, let's hear this next story. It is from Scott Carrier in Salt Lake City about the damned and the saved. At a particularly low point in my career as a responsible husband and father I worked as a carpenter's assistant for my younger brother, a contractor specializing in home renovation. We built additions and garages, finished basements, tore out bathrooms and installed new ones. He paid me $10 an hour, which I consider to be generous. At that time, good carpenters, men who could build an entire house from start to finish, single-handed, were making $12.50. And I was only an assistant, a gopher, the guy who digs and carries and cleans up. My brother was maybe 32 at that time and had worked as a carpenter since he'd graduated from college. He'd been a good student and was offered a graduate fellowship. But he dropped it, and no one in my family really understood why. He went to work for other people and, eventually, got his own license and enough equipment to start getting his own contracts. He had a lot of work, usually two jobs going at once and three or four employees, but he wasn't making much money because he had a tendency to underestimate the bids. I think, sometimes, I ended up making more money on a job than he did, but he seemed to like it anyway. I, however, was almost always upset, not because the work was hard but because I just resented working on another man's house, a man with enough money to pay for a $40,000 bathroom, a man who decides he wants a bigger garage for his new motorcycle, a man who doesn't want to dig up his on sewer pipe. The work forced me to admit that I was a slave, that somewhere in life I'd made a big mistake. Also, I had a problem with the other carpenters my brother hired. Consider the following scenarios. I'm shingling a garage roof with a lead carpenter named Dave. It's Dave's first day on the job and we're both up there pounding shingles and talking about Star Trek. Dave's a big Star Trek fan. He's seen all of the old and new shows, and even has floor plans of the Enterprise, which he's committed to memory. Dave tells me about the insidious Borg, a race of cyborgs with a social conscience of ants. Dave knows why the Klingons are now part of the Federation. And Dave has decided just how he would spend his time on the holodeck, a room on the Enterprise where crew members go to live out their fantasies in holographic reality. It's a harmless conversation that seems to diminish the tedium of the work. But then, after a brief lull, Dave stops pounding shingles and asks me in a very serious tone, "Scott, have you accepted Christ as your personal savior?" It turns out Dave is a fundamentalist Christian with a strong desire to proselytize. That evening, after work, I ask my brother if, maybe, he doesn't need a foundation dug or some fiberglass insulation stapled into place, anything other than working with Dave. He looks at the ground, and kicks the dirt, and says he promised the owner that the roof would be done last week. After Dave, there's Steve, who tells me about how, in Idaho, they're implanting silicon chips in baby's ankles that will forever identify them as part of Satan's army. After Steve, there's another Dave, who, when he's alone, practices out loud shouting his sermons exposing the evils of the Trilateralist Commission. And, after that Dave, there's John, who my brother hires as a grant to help me out. John's just arrived from Boston where he drove a cab for 20 years up until the Kennedys ran him out of town. He says Ted Kennedy was out to get him. He says Ted Kennedy has ruined his life. And he tells me the amazing story of how, while hitchhiking west through Kansas, he became so depressed he decided to throw himself in front of a semi truck barreling down I-70. But then, suddenly, from out of nowhere, he saw Jesus Christ standing 40 feet tall on the side of the road. Jesus spoke to him. He said, "John, these trucks are my roller skates." You know, when you see a thing happen once, it's an accident. When you see it happen twice, it's a coincidence. And, when you see it happen three or more times, it's a science, and sciences demand theories. My first theory was that there might be some sort of connection between Jesus and these men because they were all carpenters. And so I would ask my workmates questions like, "Was Jesus a framer or a finish man? I mean, it makes a difference, don't you think" "Was he the lead carpenter or was he just a laborer?" Or I'd make stuff up like, "I heard that when Jesus built furniture he never used glue in the joints, that he'd just touch them and they'd hold forever." But these men were not interested in philosophy or metaphysics. And they were not even interested, it turned out, in stories about Jesus or his teachings of compassion. Far from it. They were all into the book of Revelations. They were all religious for reasons of revenge. All had had hard lives filled with injustices and inequities. All had resigned themselves to a life over which they'd lost control. Their one hope was that, when they die, when everybody dies, everybody will get what they deserve. The righteous will be happy forever while the bastards, the assholes, the wicked and corrupt and the filth will burn in Hell. So I changed my theory and decided that religion is something people use, not only because they want to connect with a sense of their spiritual existence, they also use it to bring a sense of justice to their social existence. Just wait until Jesus comes back. Just wait until the apocalypse. I thought, at first, that I was different, even superior to these guys. But, at some point, I started to realize that we all had the same basic problem. We were all slaves, unhappy slaves, and it wasn't a pretty thing to see. I went on like this for more than a year, angry and depressed and unable or unwilling to do anything else. And then, one day in the middle of winter, everything came to a head and sort of exploded. We were building a three-story addition onto the back of an architect's home. He'd designed it. And we'd framed the thing. And we're starting to sheet the roof when a building inspector came by and said we'd screwed up, made a mistake down at the level of the foundation. It was a small thing, a trivial thing. And I can't even remember now, specifically, what the problem was. And then, it wasn't like we'd done anything wrong. We'd built it like it was drawn in the plans. And the architect was happy with our work, but it just didn't quite match the city's building code. And the inspector was being a hard-ass. He said we'd have to fix it, which meant, in effect, we'd have to tear the whole thing down and start over. I was standing there in the mud with my brother and the inspector. And it was snowing, and I was wet and cold. And I couldn't believe what I was hearing. My brother just listened and didn't argue or protest. And the inspector showed no sign of regret or remorse. He filled out a form, signed it, gave it to my brother and left. I was furious. I took off my belt and threw it across the yard, nails and screws and tools scattering and disappearing in the snow. John stopped work and then came over. And I told him we were going to have to take everything down. And he started in about the Kennedys, how he knew a lawyer in Boston, how we could sue the inspector for everything he was worth. I told him to shut the [BLEEP] up and asked my brother what we're going to do. He was standing inside, on the bottom floor, looking out through an empty window. And he said, "Mark your time cards for a full day, and let's clean up and go home early." If he was mad, I couldn't see it. If he was at the point of tears, I couldn't feel it. We put everything away. And, just as I was leaving, he said, "Thanks. It'll be all right. I'll go down to the City Hall tomorrow and talk to some people." I got in my car and loaded my pipe and smoked a bowl and drove away. It was still snowing and cars were sliding into the gutters and getting stuck. And I was trying to figure out why I was so pissed when my brother seemed unfazed. After all, he'd have to pay us to do the extra work, money that would come out of his pocket, not ours. Then I realized that it was his life, that he'd chosen to do this and he didn't hate it. He didn't hate anything about it. He was my younger brother. And I'd never really gotten along with him all that well because I have an older brother whom I've always looked up to and loved without question or reason ever since I can remember. My little brother was, in my opinion, an intrusion, an unwanted and unneeded addition to the family. When I was two and my mother brought him home from the hospital, I threw a bar of soap at him. The next day, I threw a garbage can at him, and it never got much better. But then he hired me when I needed a job. And, like I said, he paid me more than I was worth, and he treated me with respect even though he could have rubbed it in. And now I was learning something from him. He never went to church. I never once heard him speak about God, but he had more grace and compassion than all of the Christians he'd hired put together. Scott Carrier in Salt Lake City. Our program was produced today by Alix Spiegel and myself with Nancy Updike and Julie Snyder. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia who knows how public radio could really raise some money. We have a team of men that specifically target adult bookstores. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life. PRI. Public Radio International.
|
What's the French electrical supply like over there? It's good actually. All the equipment's great. Well, now that we can look at 1995 from the safe vantage point of 1996-- we're no longer inside 1995-- I want to point out that at this point, no one in American life seems bigger than life. Not the president, not Michael Jordan, not Courtney or Madonna. And I believe that we witnessed a kind of turning point this past year, when a certain mythic pop group revealed that they're basically just a bunch of aging dullards without any particular magic to them at all. You know the story, right? The Beatles came out with these big TV documentaries and rare never-before-heard outtakes from their studio sessions. Well, I hold in my hand one of the rare, never-before-heard artifacts spewed forth in the recent deluge. It is a CD, and it's called Beatles - Rare Photos & Interview CD. They put the name "CD" in there, just in case you worry whether is this a CD? Yes, it's a CD. And they've numbered them, because it's such a keepsake. This is number 130,862. It's stamped right here on the front. So it's, you know, a collector's item. And we'll leave aside the telling rare photos, which mostly are the Beatles playing on The Ed Sullivan Show and holding press conferences. In the interviews-- that's what I find so interesting-- the Fab Four basically come across as exhausted, irritated. They prattle on in a mundane way on obvious subjects. They are not especially charming or funny. And they are no more glamorous, really, than you or me. They are exactly human scale. They have been rendered in human scale and not one inch bigger. Are you going to wear these Hong Kong suits that you've had made? George and I haven't had any made. Paul's had one. That's all. Now, Paul, you've bought a Chinese suit? Yes, it's true. Two, I got. Did you? How much did you pay for them? It wasn't very dear. About 10 quid, I think. Yeah. Oh, it was great, actually, because somebody said, "You've got to haggle and get the prices down." So some little fellow was selling some ornaments. And he wanted $160 for them. No, he was selling a watch. That's it. He wanted 160 Hong Kong dollars for it. So I kept saying to him, "No that's not right. Not right. $100, that's right." You know? Happy birthday, Ringo. Any good presents? Um, a few, you know. Quite a few. Any in particular? No. Paul, do you feel that your vacation here in Los Angeles was a success even though you didn't have very much privacy? Yeah. Did you mind the girls on the hill? No. Well, what was your most enjoyable part of your vacation? Just lazing around. What is the sort of stuff they like over there on the Hit Parade? Uh, wilder stuff, I think. We stuck in a wilder number. They go for the Elvis Presley type of stuff, there, do they? I mean, they go for the older rock and roll stuff? I think so, yeah, a bit more. By the way, from WBEZ in Chicago, this is Your Radio Playhouse. Today, the year in the life of one neighborhood and a generation in the life of one church. Unusual stories of this, our American life, as always. Stay with us. Is this music, is this little tape the most irritating thing we have ever put onto the-- OK, I'm just going to stop it-- the most irritating thing we have ever done? All right, enough of that. Well, other radio and television programs have spent much of the last week trying to summarize the past year. We have seen or heard the year in music, the year in films, the year in world events and world politics, the year in fashion. I'm sure somewhere out there, there's a cheese magazine that's done the year in cheese. You know. It was a big year for Roquefort, or-- I don't even know any cheese names. It was a big year for something. And trying to get a sense of the year by means of these big summary year-end stories, it's like trying to get a sense of the United States by flying across the country in a jet and looking out the window. You see lots of pretty colors and lots of interesting shapes, but the people look like ants. Well, at this, Your Radio Playhouse, we prefer the camera to move in a little closer for a better look. And so now that we have some distance, some objectivity on the past year-- we have, what is it, five days of complete objectivity. We've invited Claudia Perez to tell us what the year was like in one small Chicago neighborhood. And Claudia is a high school student. She's 18 years old. And we hooked up with her through a community group called Street-Level Video. And usually teenagers come to Street-Level Video to make TV stories about their lives and their neighborhoods. This is Claudia's first radio story. When people around the country think of Chicago, most of them do not realize how Mexican this city is. But Chicago has more Mexicans than any other United States city except for Los Angeles. It's over 1 million people. And Little Village is the neighborhood that most new Mexican immigrants come to. Claudia is from this neighborhood and says that the place to go, if you really want to understand what the neighborhood's like, is 26th Street. She gave me a tour last week. Everyone comes to 26th Street. It's a pretty busy place. There's Lalo's, Aguascalientes, and the discount mall. There's a parking lot at Church's Chicken where people meet up. The loto men are on every other corner selling corn, cucumbers, tamales, Mexican antojitos. It's as busy as Michigan Avenue downtown. So there's Rosie's Bakery. [SPEAKING SPANISH], Supermercados, Upe Travel, Rio Grande Music. Lowrider Magazine on sale here. There's a big archway on 26th Street, near the discount mall. The clock on it, donated by the Mexican government, stopped working a few weeks after it was installed. There are also green and white and red lights arranged in the shape of the Mexican flag, but the green and white ones have been burned out for years. That little thing right there says, "Bienvenidos a Little Village." That's when you're entering Little Village. You know what a lot of gang-bangers do when they pass this thing? They cross themselves. They'd say [SPEAKING SPANISH] because they're leaving the neighborhood. Because they're leaving the place that they're safe. In the summer, people come to 26th Street and cruise around when they're bored. You come here, cruise for a while, kill time, see who's around, pick up some liquor, and go to the lake. I talked to this girl in the record store about why girls come down here to cruise. To check out the guys, I guess. There's a lot of cute guys. And sometimes it's sad because they're gang-bangers. But they're the finest ones. Even if you don't want to really socialize or hang around with them, at least you'll take a look at them. You just get this tingly feeling inside. You can't pass on 26th Street without noticing Rossi Brothers. They have beautiful furniture, and this is the stuff people in the neighborhood want to buy-- the people with money, and the people without. And whatever you've heard about the terrible shape of the nation's retail economy, 26th Street is doing fine. According to the Chamber of Commerce in Little Village, in 1995 the number of stores in the neighborhood actually increased 20%. The salesmen at Rossi Brothers had a good year. This is the most successful year. We've been here 40 years. So why business is better? I don't know. Maybe it's because our fathers are retired and we're younger. There's a definite transformation in the area. All the property's becoming worthwhile. All the empty vacant lots, they're putting new houses there, new construction. So this is becoming a vital part of the city. Over at the discount mall, some stores had a good year. For some, it was so-so. The discount mall is probably 40 or 50 stores packed into an old department store building. Narrow aisles and things stacked way over your head. Spanish music and the Virgin of Guadalupe everywhere. She was on T-shirts and framed pictures. She was on a clock surrounded by tiny colored lights. All the stores basically sell the same things-- things from Mexico, from LA, like the Ben Davis suits, cholo shirts. Down the hall is one of the leather stores. Three girls were just sitting there, eating Chinese food. One of them said the most unforgettable thing that happened to her this year was a sale to someone who was Polish. Usually, she said, the Poles who come to her store look but don't buy. They worry that the Mexican merchants don't give them the best price. The merchants see their caution differently. Tacanos. She's saying they're cheap. Over the years, so many Mexicans have done well in Chicago that lots of them have moved away from this neighborhood to the suburbs. This woman said 80% of her customers this year were Mexicans who've moved to the suburbs but who have come back here to shop. They don't forget where they come from. In the hallway, we found this man from the suburbs. He says he comes here to get what the Mexicano wears. He says it feels like you're in Mexico here. He comes here to see the paisanos. He came here with his friends so they could get to know Little Village. 1995 was fine for him, he said. He finally got a stable job in a restaurant. He doesn't have to be jumping from factory to factory. Over near the pet store, the staff of CJ's Clothing is almost all teenagers. One boy is 17, originally from Mexico, from Michoacan. He works but doesn't go to school. This year he met this girl in Mexico who lived in Chicago. He liked her and followed her over here. Eventually, it didn't work. But he stayed here, and now he is making money to help out his family. He says he misses his family in Mexico, but if he was there, he says, he'd just be doing drugs instead of making money to help his family. His little cousin Ricardo is his interpreter. He translates everything for him. Ricardo had a couple of exciting moments in 1995, like when he helped the police catch a thief at the discount mall. The officers were just standing around watching videos on a store TV, when Ricardo told them that a lady was stealing one of those club things you use to protect your car. But overall, Ricardo summed up 1995 in one word. Bad. Bad? Why bad? I don't know. Boring. Boring? Why has it been boring? My brother. He bores me. When he goes to places, he doesn't take me anywhere. He doesn't take me with him. And he's older than you? I'm nine and he's 15. But when he was 13, would he take you with him? Was there a time when he would take you all the time? No. No, he never took you. Nowhere. Miguel is a salesperson at CJ's. When I saw him, I knew for sure that he would speak English. I could just tell. He's 19, has a goatee, is tall, [INAUDIBLE] complexion. I asked him how his year was. This year's been my best year so far. Maybe meeting some more girls, for example. That's about it. He had a wish for 1996. Maybe hook up with some girl that I want right now. No names right now. Does she know yet that you want to go out with her? Yeah, she knows. When's the first date going to happen? When her father lets her out. How old is she? She's like 18, 17. And they don't let her out yet? Not at all. I guess she's got one of those strict parents. We talk to Miguel for a while. In '96, he'll graduate from DeVry to become an electronic technician. He doesn't party. He doesn't like trouble in the street. And before long, he asks Claudia for her phone number. Give me your number too. Why don't you give me your number, and I'll call you too. And when you're famous, I'll be famous with you too. All right. I'll give you-- this is my pager number. I told him I wanted to be a fashion designer and a writer someday, and he said-- OK, you can write a book about me. Yeah, I'm going to write a book. About me, though, right? We headed over to the cosmetics counter. It appeared to this correspondent that Miguel wanted Claudia's phone number for a date. I thought he just wanted it for business. He is definitely calling you. Well, I don't know. We'll see if he calls. Next, we went to Los Comales. It's open 24 hours. It's the place where everyone goes when they get a hunger attack. I usually stop by at 12:00 or 1:00 in the morning. They have good tortas, the best tortas. I won't eat tortas from anywhere else. If I'm on a diet, I'll just drink a licuado de fresa instead of a torta. It's a noisy, friendly place with bright orange booths, a loud jukebox and the blenders going nearly nonstop, making licuados. At one table was a guy with short hair and a big black and white Adidas jacket sitting with his girlfriend. He had a bad year. It ain't been good, man. I got fired from my job. Why'd you get fired? Because I lied on my application. Because when they ask you, have you been convicted of felonies, I put no. And later on-- They found out. Yeah. It's because somebody went into the office and they kind of told on me or something. They wanted you to get fired, I think. Can you say something besides losing your job that you want to forget, that happened to you this year? This year? Well, I just out of jail. Did it help you in any way, being in jail? Like, straighten up your head? He was quiet for a second. His girlfriend shook her head, no. It didn't help you? Are you still stubborn? Right. The jail ain't for getting you straight. It just makes you worse. What do you plan to do for '96? I don't know. I've still got my cases pending. A girl sitting with her friends also had a pretty bad year. Part of it was that she was going to Mexico to go visit her grandfather for the first time, and she received a call from some relatives informing her that her grandfather had been killed. She said it will always stay with her, deep down inside, because she never got the chance to meet her grandfather. But she said this year has made her even stronger. Now she knows that she has to stay in school and continue her education. Now she's working. She says she's learned you've got to fight for what you want in this life. She knows that it's not going to fall from the sky. The crime rate, it's low. It's a lot lower. As far as 26th Street, the merchants, there's hardly any robberies and very few thefts. The gang situations, that's being curbed. We found two of the policemen who patrol 26th Street standing at a graphic design office. They said community policing is one of the main reasons crime rates are going down here. Now people are more willing to sign complaints and appear in court. It didn't used to be that way. When I asked this cop to tell us about the most dramatic thing that happened to him this year, his partner said, "What about that jewelry store robbery?" Well, I don't think that's dramatic. I've seen robberies. That was just a typical robbery. I mean, it could be dramatic to somebody else, or the person that got robbed. But to me, it's just an everyday occurrence for me. So it doesn't phase me anymore. Or as far as people getting shot and killed. I'm used to it. But something did happen to him that was more dramatic than a robbery or a shooting. Just dramatic-- I bought a brand-new home. Well, I guess it's not dramatic, but-- It's good. That's my dream, is to have my own house. I never had a house. I always lived in apartments. That's nice. Well, I guess, hard work, and-- it's on the Southwest side of Chicago. And it's a split-level home, like a suburban-type home. It's a nice home, side drive, four bedrooms, two-and-a-half-car garage. Expensive. I have a lot of police officer friends that live in that neighborhood. So I guess that's what made me buy over there. For all the stories you hear about how terrible life is in poor, inner-city neighborhoods, one of the most striking things about 26th Street is how many people told us they'd had a really good year last year. We met this young couple who had a baby and a two-year-old daughter. I asked if I could interview the husband, because he was the one carrying the baby. So he turns around and asks his wife if it was OK with her. And she said yes. I just totally fell in love with that. When we asked him what was so good about this past year, he said: Everything. My daughter's been growing happily and healthy. Real healthy. Steady growing. Everything's been nice. We've got nice blessings this year, you know. We've been together for a long time. We've already been together for four years. And they say they don't last, young couples, so we've really been lasting together. So that's real memorable. He's 22 and she's 21, Mario and Alice Ramirez. Like any parents, some of their biggest events of 1995 involved their kids. For example: There are bad words she says. That's real cute. One of those bad words she says, they just come out. It's bad. I don't want to say it. When did she say it? Oh, yesterday. Yesterday, right? Tell us all the story. Where were you guys? Well, we're all sitting down, and she don't really talk that much, and all of a sudden she just came out. She got mad at me and called me a real bad word. She just goes, hey, you-- and everyone started laughing, so it was nice. Was it in Spanish or in English? Spanish. No, it was in English actually. I want to know. Pussy. She's just about to turn three, and this happened at Christmas dinner. You know, Mexican families are big. They were all there, and they all laughed. When we asked about '96, Mario said next year was going to be nicer. Every year will be nicer, he said. He held the baby, his wife took her two-year-old daughter's hand, and they walked away down 26th Street in the snow. Claudia. Yes? We should explain what music this is. Well, this is a tape we bought at the discount mall. It's called Tracks are for Kids. The box of it looks like the cereal box, Trix are for kids, with the little bunny. It's a mix tape. The song here is just to give you a little taste of what the Latinos in the South Side and everywhere else listen to. OK, doesn't this music sound more vital, more alive, than the certain music of a certain group of aging baby-boom '60s era-- you, you, beloved listener, you be the judge. John and Paul, you recently produced a record by the Silkie. Yes. Yes. Do you think you'll do any more? Yes. Do any of you go to church? No. Do you want to buy anything in Australia? Yes, definitely. Like what? I don't know. Do you ever have your hair cut? Of course. Do you ever get irritated because you can't get above the noise of the people screaming at the shows? No. Have you met any interesting American girls? Not yet. What do you think of the police protection you've been receiving here in the city? It's marvelous. Are the crowds as large as you expected? No. Well, my New Year's resolution this past New Year's was to finish this next story and finally get it on the radio. It's a story that I began over a year ago, and it involved many, many other people. It's one of these stories that actually involved an entire church. And for 10 months, I have not been able to walk down 57th Street without looking over my shoulder in fear that I'm going to run into one of these people, because I had not finished the story. But now I am proud to say, the story, it is here. It is here, and it is here to stay. Though I guess that doesn't really mean anything when you say it on the radio. Well, at least it's here, and I will be set free. The story does involve this entire church, a historic church here in Chicago. And we'll get to that part. But first we have to talk about how it begins, because it begins with this woman named Karen Hutt. And Karen Hutt is normally the director of religious education at this church. It's the First Unitarian Church of Chicago. And one Sunday morning, a while back, I'll admit, when the senior minister was away, Karen Hutt did a guest sermon. And she talked about a very unusual experience that she had as a child. Karen Hutt was the first black child to integrate the Philadelphia public schools. This was in the 1960s. So first of all, for a moment, let's set our minds back away from the current debate over quotas and overturning affirmative action. Let's turn our minds back now to a more hopeful moment in American race relations. And in her sermon, she talked about what went right and what went wrong in this thing that she witnessed herself. And what happened was that her family moved to a white, Jewish neighborhood. And she enrolled in the white public school there. We were a part of the experiment. There were about three black families, and lots of good will and excitement about this experiment. So I talked about my friend Randy Goldstein in the sermon, about how she and I were really good friends, and our parents got to know each other real well. And they were learning how to play pinochle, and we were learning how to play Mah Jongg and eating matzo ball soup, and they were eating collard greens. So we were this perfect notion of how we were going to all live together in multicultural heaven. But then one day, after about the fifth or sixth, or maybe it was the ninth or tenth black family moved into the neighborhood, Randy said she was moving. And I said, why are you moving, Randy? And she says, well, my mother says it's getting a little dark around here. So I realized that she wasn't really talking about an eclipse. It was probably about me and my color and my neighbors. Karen, let me ask you. Did you feel like you were a guinea pig? Or did you feel like you were able to have a normal life? Well, I know in the very beginning when we moved to this neighborhood-- which I was really resisting, because all my friends were the other neighborhood, the old neighborhood, not the new neighborhood. And the new neighborhood was something for my father to tell his friends about. I'd hear him on the phone and he'd be talking to his friends and saying, yeah, man, we're the only ones out here. And I'd listen to him like, the only ones out where? What was this all about for him? So clearly, for my parents, it was a big move to a really big house and a lot of prestige and all this kind of thing. But for me, I did feel like an experiment, because people I didn't know in the neighborhood would stop and smile at me, and say they're glad that I'm there, and do all these kinds of things. Even sometimes giving out little candies to us, like we were some kind of prize. But that all made me always feel a little uncomfortable, because I could never trust that it was going to be real. Because as soon as I would get comfortable and trust, it would be shattered by a comment or a stare or a glare or people following us around or saying things about us. But all that sort of changed when the numbers changed. And that's what really made a big difference. It's interesting how few the numbers have to be for it to change. How many African-American families had moved in before the total environment change. Well, it was maybe 50%. When it was 50%. Integration for a lot of white people-- I found it to be like one black family in the whole neighborhood, that's integration. But for African-Americans, we like the idea of 50-50. That seemed about right. So when it got to be 50-50, the integration dream was dashed. It was just gone. Because whites fled. Whites fled. And we have to also realize that the real estate agents did a lot to contribute to this. It wasn't just people leaving. They were actually offered a lot. But the thing that I found curious was that all the blacks that were moving in had much more material wealth or better jobs. Like, most of the Jewish people in the neighborhood were teachers and social workers, and our families were politicians and judges and lawyers and doctors. And we found it rather curious that they wouldn't want to live with us. Because we knew it wasn't economic at that point. Did you ever feel angry at your parents for putting you in this situation? Yeah, I was very angry about it. But I'm really proud about it now, because it was an exciting thing to be a part of. I'm smarter for it, I think. But I was angry at the time. Angry in what terms? I was angry about losing the continuity of a community that I knew loved me. Did you feel used? I felt used, maybe, later because my father was a politician. So I later saw all these pictures in the paper. You know, "First Black Integrates the School." The newspaper coming, taking pictures of the American Negro family that's integration-bound. But other than the political ramifications, I don't think I felt used. Because you have to realize, too, my parents had a different kind of dream. They grew up in a fully segregated society, absolute segregation. We were born into this revolution and to this dream and this hope. And they wanted to realize it in whatever way they could. So I don't think I could even look back and find fault with any of their choices, because they were basically a product of all of those times. So Karen Hutt told her church about the good things and the bad in her experience as a racial pioneer. And the reaction she got from the congregation at the First Unitarian Church was sort of surprising. Coming up, their reaction and their stories. It's Your Radio Playhouse. It's Your Radio Playhouse. I'm Ira Glass. So after Karen Hutt gave a sermon about her experience as the first black child to integrate the Philadelphia public schools, lots of members of the congregation came to her and said, well, I was the first black person in this neighborhood, or I was the first African-American to integrate this Girl Scout camp, or I was the first African-American in this department at the University of Chicago. And Karen Hutt came to believe that for middle-class blacks, the story of the last 30 years is the story that begins with the sentence, I was the first black who. And so many stories were coming forward. First Unitarian is this integrated church and was a hotbed of political activism. In the '60s and the '70s, they hid Black Panthers. Old Mayor Daley would send his Red Squad to wait outside the church in cars. And lots of people at the First Unitarian Church had been involved in various integration struggles. And after Karen Hutt's sermon, they talked about doing an oral history of their experiences with integration. But they hadn't gotten around to it, and so we lent them a tape recorder, we at this radio show. And we asked them to do their oral history for our program. Karen Hutt did the interviews with a young woman named Laura Finnegan. And Laura had the opposite experience Karen had as a child. Or, well, maybe it's the same experience. It depends how you see this. It was either the opposite experience or it was exactly the same experience. For much of her childhood, Laura's family was one of the few white families in South Shore, on the south side of Chicago. And by the time she was in eighth grade, she was one of two white children in her grade. And she describes it as just as just a confusing time. She describes it as just a confusing time. You do the grammar of that sentence. She says that it was just as confusing for her as it was for Karen Hutt. And sometimes she wished she were black so she could fit in better. It really created a lot of questions of who she was and who she should be, and how she should get along with people. When the violence in the neighborhood started to increase somewhat, we had been robbed at gunpoint. And it was a terrifying experience for me. And we would ask my family, are we going to move? And they would say, well, yeah, maybe we'll move. And the feeling that was conveyed was, well, if we move, then we're betraying this ideal of integration. And so at the time, I felt like, well, what is that ideal, and why are we here when I don't feel comfortable here all the time? Although I think on other levels, that idea that we were betraying the integration was also just an excuse for other personal reasons for why we were staying in the neighborhood. Well, let's get to some of the tape that the two of you collected. One of the things that's interesting in the material that you've played me before coming in here is that generally, when we hear stories about being the first person to integrate a school or a neighborhood or a job situation, we're used to hearing horror stories. But in your interviews with members of your church, one of the things that's striking is how often people told you about moments and times where things worked out OK. And many people told you stories about somebody-- a boss or a coworker or a teacher or a friend-- who would look out for them and help get them jobs and appointments, help them find housing in an otherwise exclusive neighborhood that was trying to keep blacks out. Let me ask you to talk about some of that tape. Let's play a little bit of that. OK. One of the people that I interviewed was a gentleman named Richard Jennifer. He's in his late 60's now, and he was an engineer for a subsidiary of the New York Times. He started working for the New York Times in the early '50s. Race was not really a real concern, because we all tended to go around, pal around, play around with each other on our off hours, as well as our working days. The interesting part about talking to Richard was that I learned his employer went to pretty great lengths to ensure that he was able to perform his job without the usual racial barriers impeding his ability to work. I was beginning to travel quite a bit and beginning to fly quite a bit. And somehow or other, it came up one day-- a question was asked of me. Dick, were you aware of the fact that there's been an entourage that went ahead of you to clear the road so that when you came to the hotels or whatever, there was no racial things involved? And I said, absolutely not. Because it just wasn't something that I was aware of. This next interview is with Finley Campbell, who's a professor at DeVry University and an activist in the Progressive Labor Party and very active in the social justice and environmental justice movement in our church. He's a civil rights activist that goes way back. And he also was shot in Tupelo, Mississippi in 1978. Thinking about my experience with integration-- boy, there were a bunch of them. But the one that really sticks out is with my eating broiled rabbit with a Kentucky white brother named Junior Osbourne and his wife Rosemary. We were in this little town of Crawfordsville, Indiana. And I am the-- pardon the expression-- the black leader of the white folks. Because no one else wanted to reach out to the quote, "rednecks," unquote, except me. And there's a long story behind that. But right now, I'm eating dinner with Junior Osbourne and his wife Rosemary. And they bring out this stewed rabbit. It is so good. It is so delicious. And we're sitting there eating and talking, and talking about the food stamps program and things like that. And here is this guy who had been my nightmare, the redneck, drawling, working-class, white man with his white wife. And I'm sitting there, the radical supporter of the Black Panther party and all that stuff. And we're sharing this rabbit, and it is so good. And I said, how did you learn how to cook rabbit black style? And he said, what do you mean, black style? This is the way we white folks always cook it. And then it dawned on me that there is a Southern unity. There was always a form of cultural integration in the South, in which law acted as the wall to keep us divided, not personal desire or personal experience, for many people. Not all, but for many people. So that really stuck out in my mind, having that rabbit with Junior Osbourne. And that turned me completely away from any blackism I may have had about white folks who are not capable of making change. All right. Well, let's get to some of the tougher experiences people had as racial pioneers. Well, Alex Poinsett is a longstanding member of our church. He used to be on the senior staff at Ebony Magazine as a writer. And he grew up in Inglewood in the '20s and '30s. And his first experience with integration was in high school. He says, among the people he knew, there was no real mixing. Blacks were just ignored. They stayed completely segregated when he was in the Navy. But he says some of his worst experiences were in college. Well, the University of Illinois in Champaign was like North Mississippi. In my own case, I was obliged to sit-- the only black in a particular classroom-- and have to tolerate a professor telling a "nigger in the woodpile joke, and not realizing that, well, there's a black person here who might be offended by that. And after that particular session, I recall vividly him realizing that he had committed a faux pas and trying very, very hard to be apologetic and so forth. I just simply walked away from him. Another person that we talked to was Charlotte Lackner. And she was also at the University of Illinois around the same time that Alex Poinsett was there. People bought that anybody who really was straight with black people-- they were Communists or something. They were not people who were regular people, you know. The blacks thought that? Yeah. Well, that's the way it was. When I went to Illinois, you couldn't live in the dorms. And at Chicago, you could. At Chicago you could live in the dorms. People used to call this a Communist school in those days. They were always talking about the Communists, the Reds, at Chicago. One of the other people that we talked to was Pauline McCool. She came to the church as a Sunday School teacher, but she ended up as the first black member of the First Unitarian Church in Chicago. I said to my mom and dad, hey, I'm joining the church. Would you come and be with me? So I came over. And as I say, I ran in, raised my hand, was accepted. Unknown to me, on that day, the president of the board went to my father. And he had this conversation with him, stating that, oh, well, it's all right if the people who come are like your daughter. And what did he mean by, like your daughter? What was it that you-- OK, I'm assuming that, since it was not told to me for several years later-- my father was quite hurt and knew that I was so enthusiastic about this church. Had I known that, I would have been disillusioned at a time when I was just forming an opinion of what was truth and what was reality and all the rest of it. I'm sure that he was indicating that, OK, these are middle-class blacks. They own their own home. This girl is in college. She's going to be a professional. Whatever it meant, soon that faction left the church. Alex Poinsett joined the church after Pauline McCool. But one of the things that he told us is that even though this pro-white faction left the church, it didn't really make that much of a difference. We made some pretty good friendships here. Although I think many of the whites, even in those early days-- my wife felt church members were constantly on pins and needles, fearful of, on the one hand, being offensive to me or being so naive in their relationship with me as to inadvertently as to offend me. And the striking thing about that experience was that there was no concerted effort on the part of the church to "integrate," in quotes, the liturgy. Whatever black spirituality you brought to the church you parked outside of the door. You didn't bring it inside the door. I mean, if you were into hand-clapping and shouting and all of that, you left that part at the door. Because you would be an embarrassment, you see. So that's one-way integration. That sort of integration says, you get like me, and whatever it is that is unique to you, you leave that behind. That's cultural suicide. When civil rights began to emerge on the scene and began to be a factor and people began to think about it, there was a real effort to do things in an integrated. way This is George Reed, who was somebody that I interviewed at length. He was a chemist professionally. His experience was interesting, because he noted that in the beginning of the civil rights movement, there were a lot of goodwill gestures on the part of whites. And I think he felt that that was a good thing, but I think soon thereafter, and I mean over the course of years, those goodwill gestures began to diminish. We were invited to innumerable homes and events and whatnot in the suburbs, which I hated to go to because I always got lost. I just automatically go the wrong way, no matter how clear the directions are. And I always got lost, and I hated it. But the people were wonderful. And we had wonderful experiences, and we developed some very good friendships. And then, it was sort of like a flash in the pan. This sort of thing kind of faded away. I don't know whether it was due to the militancy of the blacks or whether the fact that the whites decided that it was too much trouble to be trying to do all these types of reaching-out things. They had enough to do in their own communities, with their own relationships and whatnot. I don't know what went on in the white mind. But I think in the black mind, probably, the attitude was, look-- I guess the best way I can describe it is related to the church. There was a sort of a meeting here at the church, downstairs in the basement. And we were all down there. And they had this person who was an expert at bringing these people together and getting people talking and thinking in buzz groups. And this thing went round and round and round. And I'll never forget that, because I was really upset and annoyed by the sort of cavalier attitude that many whites took about the sort of problems that we were trying to deal with. And finally I got up and said, listen, you can all walk out of here, and you're white and you can go do whatever you want. We will all walk out here, and we're still black. And we can't change that. So I think something did happen, that blacks decided, OK, look, no more of this accomodation stuff. Now, your church is a kind of living history of people who have tried this accommodation stuff, as George Reed says. There are a lot of people there who have really tried to make integration work in their lives. And given the ongoing public debate across the country about how to integrate, whether to integrate, whether it accomplishes anything worthwhile, I know that one of the things you asked your church members was, do they think it's worth it? Do they feel hopeful about integration? Do they think it's worth trying to do, given their experience? Well, this is Finley Campbell. Like I said earlier, he's an activist. And he's been involved in issues in the South and the North. And he has a lot to share here. Integration never has been given a chance to really get off the ground. Remember, we had our last integration bill in '65, and then '66 the Black Power movement hit on the one end. And then Nixon hit in '68 on the other end. And then there is a white-skin privilege and this, that, and the other popped up. So we can no longer talk about a mass integrationist process. It was short-circuited. It was betrayed, to be blunt. So we've got to talk about integration moments. And not only have I seen them and experienced them, they fill me with hope. Now, what do you say to people who think that integration happened, and now we need to move into more segregated, separate kinds of worlds within the country? What do you say to them? Because that seems like a growing movement and commentary that a lot of people who are in the Afro-centric movement are talking about. What do you say about that? Well, I say that many of those people never really experienced true down-home segregation. One of the top Afro-centrist persons, whose name I will not mention, was actually reared in a small town in Minnesota. So of course, with that kind of experience, being the only black, being around very few blacks, you're going to feel like, my God, let me get as black as I can. But those of us who came up through the old Southern days, with the black churches, black conventions, black schools-- we know what that's like. And we say, OK, now we're ready for the next flow. Here's George Reed again. I don't think that there is the sort of commitment in the white community as there was, earlier on, to trying to resolve it. I think maybe many people in the white community are running scared themselves. They want to survive. And whites have grown up in a society that condones bigotry in many respects. And even whites who are liberated from that, they still have that baggage that they have to carry, just like blacks have a baggage that they have to carry that says that maybe they aren't up to it or that they're not deserving, or that this country doesn't belong to them like it belongs to everybody else. It's something that's so subtle and pervasive that it's going to take probably, even with the best intentions, a few generations to purge. }}}}}+ This next tape is from John Rice. He came to the church, I think, in the '70s. So maybe he was hiding out. He was a Black Panther at the time, and a lot {"? heat on Him. So he came to our church and became involved in the activities there, and has been there ever since. And he said that he found the closest thing to real integration is in our church. In the outside world, he says, there's a lot of pressure on black people to be primarily identified only as black. And I've had people from both communities who are-- well, you know you're black, don't you? Well, you know you're black, don't you? Well, you know you're a nigger, don't you? So in that sense, this Unitarian society gave me that freedom. I can be the asshole that I want to be. And nobody says, that's that black asshole. They just say, that's John. He's who he is, right? So I like that freedom. One of the things, I think, that's made people in our church feel as if integration has worked is that people have substantial, authentic relationships with one another. And I think that's a really big difference, is that it's been a long haul. George is still there. Betty is still there. Charlotte is still there. All these folks are still around, struggling with these issues. Maybe not talking about them in the same tone, but they're still part of building a community. And I think the dream is still alive for many people, because of that church. But I think the authenticity of the relationships means that certain things have worked for them. Yeah. Do you want to say something, Laura? Yeah. And I wanted to say, I think that is what sort of drew me to the church initially. I mean, I came to the church at a point where I thought, I live in two different worlds still, and it's driving me crazy. I live on the North side, and I grew up on the South side, and I swear to god they're still two different cities. And for me, I needed to reconcile that. And when I came to First Unitarian and I saw that people were still struggling with these issues, I thought, OK, I haven't lost my mind. People are still struggling with this. And maybe-- George talks about the burden that he felt that he thought that whites didn't share. And yet I think that in some small way, I feel that burden too, because I don't want to live in a world where we can only live in harmony if we live separately. It just doesn't feel right. Well, Laura Finnegan and Karen Hutt of the First Unitarian Church here in Chicago, thank you both very much. Thank you. Thank you. It was fun. Well, earlier in our program, we heard a story by Claudia Perez about the year on 26th Street. And we thought that we would end our program with her as well. In reviewing what the year was like in her neighborhood, she also talked about what the year was like in her own life. And she said that her family has actually been pretty sad this year, because a cousin who everybody loved was shot last November, though she didn't want to talk more about that on the radio. And this September, she said she had a kind of turning point in her life. She's 18, and she goes to an alternative high school called El Quarto Ano. And their funding was threatened and they were going to have to close. And her teachers said say she was instrumental in convincing the City College's Board of Directors to reinstate the funding. She spoke before them, and according to eyewitnesses, she captivated them, the way she spoke. And they did decide to give the money to keep the school open. And to give you a sense of the kind of person who she is becoming now, she decided her school should put out a newspaper, and so she put one out. She wanted to interview Luis Rodriguez, the local poet and author. And she did interview him, which she said for her was a big thing. And when she and I were going around the discount mall interviewing people for her story, she was constantly giving advice to people, especially to the other teenagers when she would hear their situations. In the leather store, for example, she got into a big discussion with two different women, actually, about how to get college tuition. Yeah. If you have any good qualifications, like in doing anything, if you could finally get a scholarship, they'll help you. Anything. They're helping me try to get a savings bond from this thing called Latin something. And they give you at least $500. But that's good. Anything will help you. Try to write essays, or poems, anything, and enter them into-- sometimes you've got to look for scholarships. And just enter them. And you could get a-- especially because you're Hispanic. When you go to regular high school, they're not going to tell you that, because they don't want you to succeed. That's the thing. They don't want you to succeed. So when she was in our studio, we talked to her about her year. And hold on, let's get that tape cued up. And here we go. So how's your year been? Up and down. Basically down, though. In what way? My dad's not here. He wasn't here for Christmas or Thanksgiving. Because? Personal reasons. Just personal reasons. I just know my dad is doing good. He'll be home soon. He will be home soon. Real soon. So what else happened in 1995? Well, at Christmas, I spent it with my best friend. Then I finally-- this guy came who I've liked for a long time. It's going to be four years. And I've seen him on Christmas Eve. It was good. It was nice, because I haven't seen him for probably about three months, maybe. So you've liked him for a long time. You just haven't been seeing him. You haven't been going out or anything for a long time. No, nothing like that. And I've seen him, and I was happy. I was real happy to have seen him. I thought, oh, good. I got a nice present. To me, that was a good present. Just to see him. Yeah. And then two days later, I see him at the mall with another girl. And I guess to me, that was a sign to finally let go. And I wanted to cry, but it was just, like, there's no more tears left. I've learned to take the pain of being let down by him. I still think about him, but when he calls me, I'm not going to jump to it no more. I know it's not forever. You've been waiting a long time. A long time. How long? Three to four years. It's going to be four years. And all through that time, you would see him every now and then. Every now and then. I'll have my boyfriends, he'll have his girlfriends. But we still talk and everything. But to me, that's a great achievement, that I'm finally letting go of someone. Because-- how can I tell you? I've stopped a lot of things for him. I could have been somewhere else instead of here. You mean living somewhere else, in another city. Mm-hmm. But I didn't. Because I would worry about where he was at, or what he was doing. So I came back. And now I'm just going to keep on walking. Now, for our story, you've brought in a CD. What is this? It's a song that I dedicated to that boy. To that young man. It's number four. The one who you're not going to feel bad about anymore. Yeah. All right, here we go. Number four. All right, I'm cuing it up. Do you want to say anything else special to him before we play it? That he'll always be in my heart forever. OK. Who is this? Um, it's-- oh, it's not on here. Is it on the thing? Mm-hmm. All right, hold on. Let me just check. Track number four. It says, "I Remember You, Homie." MC Blvd. No, no, no. I'm sorry. It's number seven. Track number seven. "I Needed You Most." Marie. Yeah. This is so sad. You see? That's to him. Today's program was produced by Nancy Updike and myself, with Alix Spiegel, Dolores Wilber, and Peter Clowney. Contributing editors Jack Hitt, Margy Rochlin, and Paul Tough. The WBEZ executive officially overseeing this program is Torey Malatia. We broadcast proudly from WBEZ Chicago. We'll be back next week with more dramatic tales of This American Life. You're getting so much publicity these days and even egghead papers are writing about you. Have you been a little bit worried that possibly you might be going over the top fairly soon? No.
|
At this point, all Chris McKinney has is a positive attitude, because, frankly, the facts do not look too promising. What am I talking about? I'm talking about man against nature, one boy's story. Every weekend, 17-year-old Chris McKinney wades out into knee-deep water, alone, with a shovel, and a wooden contraption, and nylon sandbags. And he proceeds to fill 20 sandbags, 50 pounds each, one at a time. I take it out of the sandbag holder, and I tie the top to the sandbag. And I carry it over to the sandbag wall and stack it where it needs to be stacked. And that's about it. I mean there's not a whole lot to it. Doing this for a full day, Chris can add about five feet to his sandbag wall. It's not much. He's putting his wall on a thin strip of beach, a strip that's barely wide enough to stand on in Mason Neck State Park in Virginia. The shore here is eroding at the rate of two feet a year, so fast that the ground has collapsed underneath the trees at the edge of the beach. For half a mile, these huge, 60 and 70 foot trees have toppled over into the water, one after another, because the ground holding them upright is gone. It's complete devastation. And there, in the middle of it, is Chris's tiny sandbag wall. Do you have a name for this wall? Yeah, it's the sandbag wall. He's been at it for a month and a half. And it's just a fraction of what it needs to be. He's trying to protect this one small stretch of beach where there's a path, this pathway that's about to be eroded out of existence. His wall is just 30 feet long. And that's probably-- I don't know-- a third or maybe a fourth of what it needs to be. And Chris has a deadline. That's December 19. That's my 18th birthday. Chris is doing this project as one of the requirements to become an Eagle Scout. His fear, by the time he finishes the sandbag wall, he will be too old to be a scout. Once you turn 18, you're out of scouting. You must be getting frustrated at how long it takes? Well, slightly. Usually, I'm frustrated when the friends I've known for a while, they'll tell me they'll help out, but they don't always show up. But I understand. There are things I'd rather do on Saturday than do an Eagle project. But it is my Eagle project. And no one else is going come out there. Have you ever read those stories about people who just get a big mission in their head, and they're just going to make it happen no matter what? Right. Well yeah, Christopher Columbus was one of them. So yeah, I've heard a lot of those stories. I'm pretty sure I'm one of those people. I can do this. Do you feel like this is one of those stories? Yeah. Well, not as big as those. But whatever I set my mind to, I'm definitely capable of doing. And I know I can do it. I'm confident. Chris said this to me over and over in different ways. And I have to say as an outsider, unless he gets his entire Boy Scout troop in there helping out, it is really hard to see how he is going to finish this wall. But when you're against nature, trying to do something so much bigger than you are, what else can you say? So positive attitude is 90% of it, right there. And I like to think I'm pretty positive about this. So 90% of it is already done. The worst is already behind me. And it only gets better from here. Anything else? For somebody who is so confident, you sure are saying it a lot. Well, I always have to tell myself these things, because sometimes I get unsure. And if I ever let any doubt in my head, it'll just multiply. It doesn't die. It multiplies. And to keep that out of my head, I just have to keep on saying the right thing. Just, oh yeah, you're almost done. Well, from WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program, people competing with nature in contests they might not win. Act One, Running After Antelope. We have the latest installment in Scott Carrier's 12-year quest to chase and catch an animal that runs 40 miles an hour by foot. Act Two, children derail a network television show, the true story of how 200 eight-year-olds wreaked havoc in one of the most controlled settings known to man, a late-night network talk show, in this case, Conan O'Brien's. Stay with us. Act One, Running After Antelope. Humans' dominion over nature is so complete that most of us never get into a competition with nature where we can not come out on top. Well, Scott Carrier has this story, a story about somebody trying to do something that seems, on its face, impossible. And about why he'd want to, and about how he tried to keep a positive attitude. It's also partly a story about how humans became humans, about the moment that we became bipedal, that is the moment that we stood upright on two feet and separated from the apes. For 12 years, Scott wanted to prove that we stood on two feet, as a species, to run. 1963. The hunt begins at dawn, my brother pulling me out of bed onto the floor. "C'mon, c'mon." I'm tying my shoes. And he's out the door. Outside, the fog is lifting off the grass. I'm looking for my brother. But I can't even see the car in the driveway. Then he comes running from the backyard. I jump and run and catch up with him across the street in the Mander's backyard. And he says, "Some animals sleep in the daytime and go out at night to eat. If we hurry, we can catch them before they go back in the ground." I believe him. I have no idea how he knows these things, but he does. He goes out and runs through our neighbors' yards and catches wild animals with his bare hands, mainly lizards, turtles and snakes. He wraps them in his shirt and brings them back to the cages in our basement so he can study them for science. He's seven years old. I am six. I'm running along behind him. And when I lose him in the fog, I follow the tracks he leaves in the dew on the grass. I catch up to him. And he's down on his hands and knees, crawling through the juniper bushes in front of the Gooch's house. He says, "There is a garter snake in there. I saw it. It went right in front of me." He's crawling around, breaking branches, and I hear the front door open. And there's our neighbor, Daisy Gooch, in her bathrobe. She looks 10 feet tall and 900 hundred years old, and says, "What's going on out here?" I say, "There's a snake in your bush." She says, "There's no snake in my bush. You boys get out of here now." And she starts for us with her broom. We take off running. We don't need to run that far. It's not like she's going to come after us. But we keep running anyway. We jump the fence at Finn Gerholdt's house. And we're on the golf course, heading toward the gully. My brother says, "I think I figured out a way to run and not get tired. It's all in how you breathe. Yesterday, I ran over to the gully and down to the river and back, and I didn't get out of breath. I think I can run as far as I want." "Like the Indians," I say. "Yeah, like the Indians." We have everything we need. The wilderness is unfolding in front of us. 1982. My brother is a master's student in the biology department at the University of Utah. And he works in Dr. Dennis Bramble's laboratory in the basement of the building. He has asked me to help him with an experiment. He shows me the inside of the lab's freezer, full of dead animals, road kill he's picked up or animals he's had to kill himself for science. He is studying to be a vertebrate morphologist. For the experiment, we walk over to the football stadium, which is empty except for us. He fastens a Styrofoam cup over my mouth. The cup has a wireless microphone inside of it. He straps another microphone to my right ankle. Then he says, "OK, run around the track. Run a mile." I run four laps, and it's not easy. I'm out of shape from smoking too much. I tell my brother, "I'm sorry." And he says, "That's OK. That's why I asked you. We need data from bad runners." I ask him what he's doing. And he says, "We, Dennis and I, are studying how animals breathe when they run. When quadrupeds gallop-- animals like horses and dogs and cats-- they have to inhale every time they stretch out in their stride and then exhale when they come forward with their back legs. It's because of the way their diaphragm is connected to their backbone. But in humans, our diaphragms don't have that connection. And we can breathe in whatever pattern we want to or need to." "So why is that important or interesting?" I say. And he says, "Humans are really good endurance runners. I know I can outrun a dog. And I think I can maybe outrun a horse on a hot day. So for some reason, we've evolved this way. And maybe the way we breathe might have something to do with it. Why can we run farther than just about any other animal?" "Well, how do you explain it?" I ask. And he says, "I think bipedalism might be an adaptation for endurance running, and that maybe our earliest ancestors could run down big game without using any weapons at all. I found ethnographic accounts of primitive people who are able to do it. The Tarahumara in Mexico could run down deer. The Aborigines in Australia could run down kangaroo. The Goshutes and Navajo here in the West are said to have been able to run down pronghorn antelope. "I tried it last summer with some antelope in Wyoming, just for an hour or so. And they basically ditched me. But I want to try it again. I could use some help, if you want to do it." I say, "You want to try to run down an antelope?" And he says, "I don't know if we can, but I think we should try it." 1984. In the summer, my brother and I go to Wyoming to try to run down an antelope. The idea is not to run faster than the antelope-- only cheetahs can run faster than pronghorn antelope-- but to run longer and farther in the heat of the day. My brother thinks it'll take about two hours, and then the antelope will overheat and collapse. We drive off the interstate and down a dirt road for a few miles. And it's a wide and open high desert of sagebrush, dry as a bone, mountains in every direction. And there are antelope everywhere, in pairs, in clusters, in families, by themselves. We stop the car and start running after three, a buck and two does. They run very quickly but for short distances, and then stop and stare at us until we catch up. And then they take off again. Sometimes, they run a quarter of a mile, sometimes a half mile. My brother is a much better runner than I am. And I'm way behind, looking out for sagebrush and rattlesnakes and cactus, tired already, but laughing. It's a lot of fun, a lot more fun than running down the street or even up in the mountains. I keep my brother in sight, and although I sometimes lose the antelope, I can tell they're running in a broad arc, clockwise. And so I aim to cut them off. And it works. I catch up with them, even ahead of my brother. And they stand there and let me get within 50 yards of them. Antelope have big black guys, eyes the size you'd see in a horse. And they look at me like they know exactly what I'm proposing, and they're not in the least bit worried. They look at me, and I stare back, and this goes on for maybe a couple of minutes. I don't know. I can't say, because something happens. It's like being hypnotized or like being abducted by aliens who take me to another planet, where they do things to me I can't remember before they bring me back to the exact same place, and only a few seconds have elapsed. Then suddenly, the antelopes jerk and fly off running. And I turn and see my brother coming up all red and sweaty. We chase them over another little hill. And on the other side, there are now eight of them. So we follow the eight for a little ways. And then they split into three groups that all go in different directions. We can't tell which group has even one of the antelope we started chasing. They all look so much alike, especially from a distance. But we choose two does, and follow them. And they run over another little hill. And on the other side, all of a sudden, there are 20 of them, running as a herd. Following this herd is like following a school of fish. They blend and flow and change positions. There are no individuals, but a mass that moves across the desert like a pool of mercury on a glass table. They split again, burst into five pieces, and it's just too confusing. We can't tell whether we're chasing animals that have run for two minutes or 20 minutes or two hours. I catch up with my brother. And he says, "Man, did you see them run? They just zoom, and they're gone." I ask him how we're going to get around how they group up and split like that. And he says, "I don't know. I've been thinking about it. And I don't know." "Well, what do you think we should do?" I ask him. And he says, "I think we should try it again. Let's go find some more." And so we do. We chase them on and off for two days. But basically, they just ditch us every time. My brother has gone away to get a PhD at a big university back east. The campus is flat and surrounded by trees. He no longer thinks about chasing antelope. He studies lizards now. I stay in Salt Lake, pacing my life by the changing traffic lights, the blinking turn signals, the bouncing checks. I have no desire to participate in the market economy or the democratic process. I have no goals or ambitions other than to someday go back to the desert with my brother and try again to run down an antelope. I have a plan, and I'm trying to follow it. But it's hard. It's a hard plan to follow. I'm trying to get in shape. And I'm trying to live like a primitive man. Sometimes, I feel like I'm not succeeding at either one. I've read a lot about primitive cultures. And I use that term, "primitive," in the sense that it means original or primary. For maybe 99% of human history, a few million years, humans were hunters. They didn't get up and go to work each morning. That started with civilization. And civilization is nothing but a heartbeat of recent time, 10,000 years at the most. And to hell with that. I want to wake up naked and alone in the desert. I want to eat sand and drink piss and pass out screaming from sunburn and spider bites. But I know it won't work, and I know it won't happen, either because I'm a coward, or unable, or it's just not possible at all for anyone. Even if I were to wake up naked and alone in the wilderness, I'd still wake up thinking and making sense of myself and the world around me in modern English. And there's no way I can get around that. So I'm stuck with choosing not to participate, to live apart in any way I can think of. My wife used to like it. I think maybe that's why she wanted to marry me. But now we have kids, and she sort of changed her mind. I try to get in shape by running in the mountains and skiing cross country. I smoke marijuana and eat LSD and go out and try to go farther farther. And at best, I eventually get lost and deeply humbled, and almost die trying to make it back. This is my training. And at times, not that infrequently, when I'm out there, I feel like I've made the right choice, and that I'm learning a lot and getting stronger. But most the time, I'm not out there. Most of the time, I'm down in the city slaving away and feeling depressed. Perhaps my best success so far is realizing that I can get lost and almost die without ever leaving home. And that the best test of endurance is just to persist, or rather to insist from day to day in believing that it is possible to run down an antelope. And that it must be done, and that I am the one who must do it. 1992. I've read everything I can find in the university library that's been written on antelope, which really isn't all that much. They're still somewhat mysterious and unknown animals, even for the scientists who study them. According to Stan Lindstedt, a biologist living in Flagstaff, Arizona, the pronghorn are the best endurance athletes in the world. They metabolize oxygen at a rate three and a half times higher than even the finest human runners. They have twice as much blood, and their hearts and lungs are three times the size of a mammal of comparable weight. They can run the equivalent of a marathon in 40 minutes, and can easily maintain a speed of 40 miles an hour for more than 60 minutes. They have no body fat whatsoever. In 1850, there were 60 million antelope in North America, but they were nearly wiped out along with the Buffalo. There are about a million left today. They're said to have 10x vision, which means that, on a clear night, they can see the rings of Saturn. They eat mainly sagebrush, but also rabbitbrush, salt sage, winterfat, fourwing [? saltbush, ?] and fireweed, summer cypress. I'm trying to learn what these plants look like. 1993. I found an old ethnography dated 1935 on the Tarahumara, one of the tribes my brother said can run down big game. And he's right. It seems that they at least used to do it. This is a passage from the book. "The Tarahumara keep the deer constantly on the move. Only occasionally does he get a glimpse of his quarry, but follows it unerringly through his own canny ability to read the tracks. The Indian chases the deer until the creature falls from exhaustion, often with its hooves completely worn away. It's then throttled by the man or killed by the dogs." But then of course, this was written by a couple of anthropologists who didn't actually go out and hunt with the Indians. And so their report is basically hearsay. There's no way to know whether it's actually true. There seems to be no doubt, though, that the Tarahumara are crazy about running. Another ethnography I found describes these races they had where a group of men from a village eat peyote and smear themselves with white grease and run as a team, tossing a leather ball the size of a Hacky Sack down a trail with their toes. They run for three days, close to 300 miles. And the winning team gets to sleep with all the available women in the local village. This is the way I want to live. 1991. My brother spent five years in Ann Arbor, Michigan, trying to get a PhD. And it seems like the whole thing is killing him. He's developed a heart condition called a ventricular fibrillation, which means that the upper and lower chambers beat out of sync with each other, and his blood doesn't circulate. It happens only for short periods. And it happens only when he's really tired or extremely tense and nervous, like when he runs too far or right before he has to defend his dissertation. He suddenly feels woozy and has to sit down. Sometimes he passes out. I've written a letter to his advisor, and I've come to Ann Arbor to hand deliver it. "Dear Dr. Renzer, I assume that you're aware of my brother's heart condition and probably even believe you understand the pathology involved. Let me be perfectly clear. If my brother dies while under your supervision, you can kiss your own sweet ass goodbye." I drive into town late Sunday night, and the doors to the biology building are locked. I've been here a couple times before, and I sort of remember where my brother's lab is located. So I take a guess and throw a rock at a window, and it's his, and he's there. In his lab, on a table, is a three-foot monitor lizard lying perfectly still except for an occasional blink of an eye. Two tiny wires are dangling out of its rib cage. He's anesthetized it and implanted electrodes into its intercostal muscles, the muscles along the rib cage. He puts the lizard in its box and takes me to the basement, where he has built a long runway of plywood and two by fours. He has another lizard down there, and he takes it out of the cage and holds it and puts it on his shoulder. And it jumps from there through three feet of air and lands on the wall and sticks to the cinder block like Spider-Man. He yanks it off the wall and puts it at one end of the runway. "Watch how its backbone moves when it runs," he says. Then he touches its tail, and it blasts off down the track. Its backbone waves like a plucked guitar string. My brother says, "I thought that lizards probably can't breathe when they run, that the way they bend like that would make it impossible." "And do they?" I ask. "Nope. Looks like they can't run and breathe at the same time." "So why is it taking you so long?" I say. "Why have you been doing this for five years?" He says he's upset some people, some dinosaur people, and that he's had to go back and do all of his experiments all over again. I ask him why the dinosaur people are upset. And he tells me, but I don't understand a word of it. I tell him I'm going to Mexico to run down a deer with the Tarahumara. I tell him it could be like science to actually record how they do it, that it would be the first and only record, a first hand experience, and so on. But he says there's no way he can go, no way he can leave his work. He doesn't even seem interested. And I drive out of town without delivering the letter and thinking, now it's just me. Now, I'm in this alone. Scott Carrier heads to Mexico to run after antelopes with native peoples there. In a minute, from Public Radio International, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, bring you different kinds of stories on that theme. Our program today, people who battle nature with the possibility of losing. We return to Scott Carrier's story about his 12-year quest, Running After Antelope. 1994. I'm always ready to go. I have a map nearly memorized. I have an English-Tarahumara dictionary that I keep checking out from the university library. I'm ready if I can only get the money, and if I can only get the time. But I never do. And it never happens. And now, all of a sudden, the Tarahumara have come to Salt Lake and are staying at my house. There are four of them, men between 25 and 35 years old. And they're here to run in a 100 mile race through the Wasatch mountains. I'm in the process of tearing the house apart like always. And there's no electricity, because I'm redoing the service connection. We don't even have a wire from the pole. But this is a good thing, I think, something that'll make the Tarahumara feel at home. They don't have electricity. They don't even have outhouses. Their manager is a back country tour guide from Tucson, Arizona. And he tells me he's brought them here to raise money and get media attention for their families back home, who are all starving to death. The Tarahumara are wearing their traditional clothing of long, white shirts, held at the waste by a belt, and a pair of sandals cut from truck tires. They appear to be healthy enough, but I can't really tell. They're silent. They look mainly at the ground. And they move around my house as a unit, even to the bathroom. They look more frightened than malnourished. We eat dinner outside, where they seem more comfortable. And afterwards, I ask them through a friend who speaks Spanish if they've ever run down a deer. And they say, no. The deer have disappeared, and they don't know why, but they're gone. I ask them if they know other, older Tarahumara who did do it. And they say, yes, they know it was done. They've heard stories, and that the technique was to chase them for two or three days, taking turns and trading off and even sleeping and tracking them down to start again in the morning. Eventually, the deer would stop and let them put a rope around its neck. And then they'd kill it. Two days later, three of the four Tarahumara finished first, second, and fourth in the race, all running the 100 miles, up and down through the mountains, in less than 21 hours. 1995. When I drive across the desert, I look for antelope standing by the highway. One time, on I-80 in Wyoming, I saw three of them outrun a freight train. In northwestern Nevada, there were at least 50, a huge herd, running alongside my car. They flew out ahead and across the road like a river going 60 miles an hour. Again in Wyoming, at night, I saw what looked like a cluster of luminescent grapes along the road, and then realized it was antelope eyes, a group of them, hanging out and watching the traffic like a drive-in movie. And then, in the Great Salt Lake Desert, I saw a lone male standing motionless and staring while four F16 fighter jets flew low over its head on their way to the bombing range. I've been watching that lone male for a couple of years now. He's part of a small herd of maybe 12 to 16 that I can always find in a place called Puddle Valley, a no man's land just west of the Great Salt Lake, just east of the Bonneville Salt Flats, just south of the Hill Air Force base bombing range, and just north of the Dugway Proving Grounds, where the army tests biological and chemical weapons. There's one paved road that runs up the valley, and the antelope are nearly always standing alongside the road, if not right on the asphalt itself. They'll walk slowly away if I stop and get out of the car, but otherwise they just stand there and look at me, only 30 yards away. I've been thinking that this herd would be a lot easier to chase because there are so few of them. And that I've been watching the lone male enough that I think I could recognize him at a distance, in case he tried to group up and split like the ones did before. His horns are more shaped like a heart than the others. And he has a brown line on his chest that curls around like a question mark. I call him the lone male, because I've only seen him once with the others. And this was in the fall when he was rutting with two does, going from one to the other with a hard-on, kicking up dirt, pissing and [BLEEP] and marking plants with the scent gland on his cheek. Once, in early spring, I saw him through my binoculars from a half mile away. He was looking right back at me, so I knelt down a little bit so my head was just below his line of sight. I waited for 10 minutes or so and then stood up slowly and peeked. And he was standing there looking at me, but much closer, maybe only a quarter of a mile away. So I sat down and waited some more. And he came to within 100 yards. So I laid flat and waited. And I could hear him in the sagebrush barking at me like a sharp cough. [SHARP COUGH SOUND] He came real close, less than 30 yards away, and I stood up. And he didn't take off. He just stood there and barked at me, scratched the dirt with his front leg, then slowly wandered off. There are two dominant theories of human evolution, and neither theory involves running. Both theories basically say that humans stood upright so they'd be able to use their hands to pick stuff up, either tools or weapons or food or infants. There's probably some truth in that idea, but I just can't believe that it's the whole story. I can't believe that running isn't part of it. For one thing, tools don't show up in the archaeological record until 2 million years after hominids first walked upright. If my brother's right, and if one of the reasons hominids stood upright-- one of the reasons humans separated from apes and became human-- is that standing upright gave them more endurance as runners for chasing game, this seems true to me at a basic level that's hard to explain. When my brother and I were out chasing antelope, it felt different and more fundamental than anything I'd ever done. I felt connected and whole, as if I had nothing, and nothing was everything I needed. 1997. After two years of passing paper back and forth with the IRS, I have formed a nonprofit corporation to raise money for a trip to visit the Seri Indians in Mexico. The Seris live on and near Tiburon Island in the Sea of Cortez, just inside the Baja peninsula. And like the Tarahumara, they are said to have been able to run down deer. But the Seris are said to be even more wild and more reclusive and more unaffected by civilization. I wrote a proposal for the expedition and sent it out to a lot of foundations and government agencies. And not one responded. But now, the American Express company, out of the blue, has given me a corporate gold card with no apparent credit limit, so we're leaving. In two months, someone from the American Express company will call and inquire about a payment in full. But two months is such a long time, an inconceivable time when you're driving south into the Sonoran desert. I would have liked for my brother to come along. But he has just been hired by the University of Utah as a professor in the biology department. He came to town with five dogs, 15 sturgeon fish, four five-foot alligators, and two iguanas. And he's busy setting up his laboratory and preparing his lectures. So I've asked my friend, Creighton King, to come in his place. Creighton's the best runner I know. He's 43 years old, probably past his prime. But a decade or two ago, he was a virtual wonder of aerobic capacity and endurance, running and skiing, collapsing all previous notions of time and space in the Rocky Mountains. For instance, he once ran back and forth across the Grand Canyon, from the South Rim, down to the river, and up to the North Rim and back-- a distance of 42 miles with more than 22,000 feet of elevation-- in seven and a half hours. I've always thought if anybody could catch an antelope, it'd be Creighton. We've also brought our two sons along, because they're out of school for the summer and old enough now, nine and 11, to come along for the adventure. It's a long drive down there, 1,000 miles. And it's hot in Phoenix, in Tucson, hotter still as we cross the border into Mexico. And driving through Hermosillo and west to the ocean, it's simply the hottest place I could ever imagine, at least 110 degrees, if not 120. I keep thinking that my tires or my radiator is going to blow up, that my car-- which has over 250,000 miles on it-- is just not going to make it. And we're going to be stuck in the middle of the desert. I keep thinking I've made a big mistake, that I've spent 12 years being obsessed with a foolish notion, and that I've pushed it to the point of absurdity. And now, we're all going to pay for it, big time. But Creighton seems to be not worried at all. And the kids are oblivious to everything but the heat and the strange desert, sun-baked and full of saguaro and [? sajaso ?] cacti holding big osprey nests. They're all having a good time. And I try to relax and let things happen without freaking out. [DOG BARKING] There's a small fishing village called Punta Chueca on the coast of the Sea of Cortez with about 200 people, all Seri. They live in cinder block homes painted white and baby blue, with the doors and windows either open or missing altogether and the yards separated by fences made from branches and sticks and worn out fishing nets. We drive slowly through the houses and stop at the beach. Five or six women come and surround us and start speaking to us in Seri, trying to sell us some necklaces made from tiny, brightly colored shells and beautiful, dark red ironwood sculptures of dolphins, sea turtles, and iguanas. We buy a few of them. But they clearly want us to buy them all. We tell them, later, maybe later, that we don't have a lot of money. But they're adamant, putting things in our hands, poking us in the ribs, making it clear we have no use or value to them other than our money. After what seems like quite a long time, we were rescued from the women by a man who comes over and introduces himself as Ernesto Molina, a fisherman and a tourist guide. He's 50 years old and speaks excellent Spanish. He's very calm and soft spoken, a nice change from the women. He says he has been to college in Prescott, Arizona. And we try talking to him in English, and he understands, but he always answers in Spanish. We tell him that we've come because we're interested in learning about how the Seri hunt deer and would like to find someone who could take us over to the island. He says no one lives on the island anymore, that the Mexican government has turned it into a national park, but he can take us over there for a visit. And as far as hunting goes, the Mexican government also prohibits that, but that he's well acquainted with the old ways as he's the grandson of Francisco Molina, guide to the great Charles Sheldon, an American hunter who visited this area in 1921. I've read Sheldon's account, and have even brought the book along with me. And I get it out of the car, and Ernesto shows me the photographs of his grandfather, Francisco. He's read the book and knows the passages where Sheldon describes how impressed he was with Francisco's knowledge and strength as a hunter. I'm amazed by our luck. We've been here for less than an hour, and already we've found an excellent guide and translator. In the evening, we sit with Ernesto on the beach, and he tells us that yes, it's true, the Seris at one time, before they had rifles, would run after deer until they dropped from exhaustion. The young hunter would be given a special drink of two or three types of plants. He wouldn't say which ones, but it was a power food of some kind to give him strength and fortitude. And then the hunter would go off and track the deer alone. Once he found the deer, he would start running after it in a series of chases. In the first chase, the deer would be frightened and run very quickly and far away. And it took great skill and knowledge to follow it, never losing sight of the animal, making sure he was still following the same animal. And that this was critical and very difficult, to make sure he was always following the same one. Eventually, the hunter would catch up with the deer, and it would run again, this time more slowly and less of a distance, only two or three kilometers. And again, the hunter must make sure that he did not lose sight of it, and that it was the same individual. The deer would stop again to rest, and the hunter would catch up with it. And this time, the third time, the deer would realize that the hunter was stronger. And the deer would become disoriented, because although the deer is very smart, it doesn't have the intelligence of a human being. Eventually, the deer would become completely fatigued, beaten down, and sometimes it would fall and not get up. Sometimes the hunter would kill it with a rock. This was the method, he said, the technique that was used. And that is all. We ask him if he's ever done this, hunted this way. And he says, no, that his grandfather Francisco could do it, but that when he died, the technique died with him. We ask him how he knows for sure that it was done like this. And he says that both his father and his grandfather told him about it. And that they were both great hunters and knew very well the ways of the deer, but that now, there are much fewer deer and that, again, the government doesn't allow them to hunt. He says that there are two elders in the village, the Montano brothers, who also know about the technique, and that we can talk to them tomorrow if we'd like. The next day, we interview Cuy and Chewy Montano. They say they're about 64 and 70 years old, but they don't know for sure, as neither one can remember the month or year they were born. They speak in Seri, translated by Cuy's son. And they tell us basically the same story as Ernesto, that the hunter would chase the deer three or four times. And would take about two, or two and a half hours, and then the deer would collapse. Creighton asks them if there are any runners in the village, if anyone would like to try this again. And they say, no, that they no longer run, that everything is changed. I ask them if it's better now. And Cuy says, no, not at all. It was better before. That they used to do everything as a family, that the whole community was a family, and that they shared everything and cooperated. But now, there's a lot of arguing and bickering, more like every man for himself. In the morning, Ernesto comes by our camp on the beach with his boat, ready to take us across the channel to Tiburon Island. It takes about an hour to get there. We land and have lunch, and then Creighton and I fill up our water bottles and head out for the mountains to look for deer, leaving the kids with Ernesto. [RUNNING SOUNDS] We run and walk and weave back and forth through the vegetation, which is all nearly leafless and thorny and offers not an inch of shade for protection from the sun. It's so hot and bright and dry, it's hard to believe anything or anybody could survive here for more than a few hours. We run and walk intermittently for an hour or so, seeing deer tracks and deer scat, but no deer. After a few miles, we get to the foothills and climb a small peak, only about 500 feet high, and look up to the top of the mountain, 5,000 feet higher and maybe 10 miles in the distance. Dark red and ragged volcanic rock, completely barren and forbidding, like the pictures sent back from Mars. We had talked about maybe trying to climb it, but now it's clear we'd never make it in the heat of the day. Coming up the hill, we both got stabbed in the shins by cacti, Creighton not so bad, but my leg is a mess. Ow, that hurts. They got little-- Little barbs on the end. They don't' want to come out. I had to use a stick. The quills are like a pocupine's, a couple of inches long and with a barb that makes them move deeper and deeper. I start pulling them out, and blood's running down into my socks. And the skin is swelling up with toxin, like I'd been bit by a rattlesnake. As we're sitting there, we realize that just next to us is a small, cleared out circle ringed by a low wall of rocks piled up for a wind break. Maybe it was a campsite. And there are some broken pieces of pottery, really thin but big, like from a jug to carry water. We can see out across the channel to the mainland, and then north and south maybe 100 miles, a perfect place to sit and wait for inspiration. We sit in silence for awhile. And I'm trying to believe that we're doing the right thing, that we're doing what we've come here for. But really, honestly, I want to go back and leave the island and drive home. I'm hot, so hot my brains are boiling. And I don't care about hunting anymore. Coming down here, I was thinking that maybe the Seris were still like they used to be, and that maybe we could find the last surviving wild men on the planet. But that was foolish, just a dream or a delusion. And I've just woken up. And the whole thing has disappeared in front of me. There are no more primitive hunters left anywhere. It's a dead thing, surviving only as a story in a few old people's heads. And when they're gone, it'll be gone and lost forever. It now seems ridiculous to try to run down an antelope. I tell Creighton that maybe this is it, that this is as far as we should go, that it's time to go home. And he agrees, and we start back. 1997. On a Sunday in July, I am eating dinner at my mother's house in Salt Lake, and I mentioned to my brother that Creighton and I are going out to the desert west of the lake next week to try chasing antelope again. I tell him Creighton was inspired by the Seri, that he's been running a lot since we got back. And I'd feel like a flake if I didn't go with him, just go out one more time and try it. I tell my brother this without any conviction, without expecting him to be interested. But to my surprise, he is interested. He says he wants to go, that he had other plans but he'll change them. He even seems hurt I wouldn't think about including him. And I say, "Yeah. OK, good. Let's do it." Does it make any sense to even bother? To start off in that kind of a-- Yeah, like a net almost. So everybody starts from the same place. There are five of us, my brother, Creighton, myself, and our friends Calvin and Brian, who are also excellent runners. We are camped on a hillside overlooking the valley, a wide basin 10 miles in diameter, not a tree in sight, ringed by mountains maybe 1,500 feet tall. It's 2 o'clock and 100 degrees. And we're trying to decide on a strategy. Don't we want to head them towards that little-- that way? I think we should try to head them-- They've got a big advantage whenever there are hills. Yeah, because their Max VO2 is way-- Creighton and I know how the Seri chased deer. They told us. But now, now that we could use the information, neither one of us brings it up. Somehow, it doesn't seem to apply here. What we end up doing is this. We drive down a road in two cars and find the lone male standing 30 feet off the road. We drive by like we're not interested and stop about a mile away, and get out and argue some more about how we're going to do this. Then, we get back in the cars, and drive back to the lone male, and stop on opposite sides of it, and then pile out of the cars and start chasing it. [RUNNING SOUNDS] It runs due west, and we spread out in a long line that quickly becomes like a V, because Creighton's a much faster runner than any of us. My brother stays behind him. And I start running north, hoping that the antelope will turn clockwise, and I'll be able to cut him off. I run and sometimes stop and look and see the antelope and Creighton and my brother still going west. I run and stop and don't see anything. And I take out my binoculars-- the same power as what the antelope sees-- and search around and finally see a white spot going north. It's the white ass of the antelope with no body attached to it, just a white spot swimming through a mirage, a heat wave above the sagebrush. I scan to the south and see Creighton, a small beetle in pursuit. Farther behind, another beetle, my brother. They're heading north, so I turn east and run about a half hour. And I come back to the highway. I stop and look around and see my truck two miles down the road, but no antelope, no people. I stand there for a little while and wait, wondering what to do. And then, I just see it as it jumps off the road and down into a sandwash, just see its antlers and white tail, the antelope. I start after it, realizing that the others are far away, and it's up to me now. The antelope has run for almost an hour and covered maybe 20 miles in 100 degree heat. I've run maybe a quarter of that distance, and I have water on my back that I've been drinking the whole time. If there is any human advantage, like my brother thought there might be, I should certainly have it now. This is the moment I've been waiting for, and the thought both exhilarates and sickens me. I run, thinking, this is it. He did just what I thought he would. This is the whole thing right now. And I laugh. I laugh and run. And it is, for sure, the best thing I've ever done. I have everything I need. The wilderness is unfolding in front of me. Scott Carrier, in Salt Lake City. Act Two, Natural Disaster. Now, the story of two men battling the forces of nature in one of the most antiseptic, controlled environments possible, the studio of a late night talk show. On August 8, the show, Late Night with Conan O'Brien broadcast-- what I consider, anyway-- to be the single most interesting hour of television this year. It was daring. It was unprecedented. It was an experiment. They basically just filled their studio audience with eight-year-olds. And it got so chaotic that at times, Conan O'Brien literally had to tell the audience to pay attention to what was happening on stage. A typical moment in the show-- Conan would tell a very adult joke, a normal, talk show, monologue joke about OJ or the economy. And then he would pause a beat. And you could just feel-- even over the television-- you could feel that nobody in the room knew what he was talking about. It was almost like performance art. And then I guess an applause light would go off somewhere. And then the kids would scream and they would clap. It was almost like a critique of a talk show. And then after a bunch of regular adult jokes, they would throw in a joke like this. Finally, last thing I'll mention before we get started kids, Barbra Streisand-- you all know her from Yentl, right? Yeah. Yeah? Barbara Streisand has asked the E Network's gossip show not to call her Babs anymore. That's right, she does not want to be called Babs anymore. Yeah. The only problem is now they've started calling her poopyhead. And I thought-- Andy Richter is the co-host of Late Night with Conan O'Brien. He sat on stage ad-libbing through the whole memorable, nearly out of control hour. And he says this about poopyhead. When we're planning, we're ordering jokes, putting them in order or little bits of comedy for a sketch. And there will be one that will feature the word "dumbass" or "boobs." And we'll say, yeah, people will laugh at that word. So doing it with children is just a little easier. And it's less censorable. Now Andy, we're putting this interview that I'm doing with you into an episode of our program about people battling natural forces beyond their control. And one thing that I think made this particular hour of television that you guys did such amazing TV is that-- watching it anyway-- I always had the sense that the entire thing felt like, at any moment, it could tumble out of control. And I wonder, is that the way it felt on stage? Probably worse. It probably felt worse. Well, one mistake we made is we had what we called the boredom monster, which was a noise. And we'd say, uh-oh, the boredom monster is coming. And then we'd cut away to tape of this big monster that we created coming down a darkly lit hallway, moving slowly. He's right outside the studio. Come on. [MONSTER SOUNDS] And they had to scream and applaud to get the monster to go away and not come in and get us, which we thought, well, the kids will be frightened of the monster. And so that will pimp them into screaming and applauding, which is just another applause light gimmick. What we didn't realize is that the kids wanted the money shot. They wanted to see that monster. They wanted it to come in. So they wouldn't scream? Well, they would scream, but we had introduced the word "boring" to their lexicon. So after the monster didn't come in, they cheered because they wanted to help by cheering, and that's what they'd been asked to do. To keep the monster from coming in. Yeah, but then when it didn't come in, they were mad. And they started chanting, "Boring, boring." And on stage, what are you thinking at that point? Well, I was seriously thinking of just doing a large pratfall just to change the mood. Right, I will do anything I can. Yes, exactly. I'll pull down my pants and dance around. And especially when it's with children, you think, what do they like? If they had allowed me to defecate, I probably would have. There's a point where you guys have Dave Foley come out. And I timed this. It's 29 seconds before it erupts into complete chaos. Let me play this for you. Oh man, welcome to the show. Oh, why thank you Conan. Hi. Oh, I should say, that's Dave Foley of News Radio. Hi, kids. Isn't this nice? Everyone go, hi, Dave. Hi, Dave. Hi. It's nice, isn't it? It's a nice change of pace. Yeah, it is. Well, for you. You don't have kids. No. You have them. So this is sheer hell for you, isn't it? It's just like being home, because I have, actually, 150 children. All right. Hey kids, settle down. We're going to talk to Dave Foley for a bit. It's not going to take very long. No. Right? Boring. Kids. Dave? Yes? I understand you did some traveling lately. I did. I went to Africa. I flew to Zimbabwe, Africa, and flew into Harare. And then from there, went on to spend Christmas-- I mean did you anticipate that it was going to fall apart that fast? No, no. And I felt terrible for Dave. He just-- it's humiliating. As much rationalizations as you can do and say, well, they're just children and they don't really know who I am. Still, you've got about 700 human beings screaming at you, "Boring" when you're a performer. So it's your job to be interesting. So I felt terrible. And actually, I think there was an edit taken out of there, where I think Conan got, actually, a little more shrill with the children. But we took it out. Why? What did he do? What did he say? He just said, hey, come on, quiet down. Something like that. I just thought it was a really tough performance moment for Conan. It just seemed like he had entered into this territory where he had no idea what would be the right thing and the wrong thing. There were no guides. There's no experience to back him up. No, the only experience in that instance would be grade school teacher or parenthood. I have to say, this is the most interesting hour of TV I've seen in I don't know how long. Well, thank you. Did you guys view it as a success? I don't think so. It was so hard to think of it as anything but a train wreck, just because it felt so uncomfortable and felt so draining. I think that afterwards, we just breathed such a sigh of relief and felt so exhausted that it was hard to believe that it was good. See that's the thing, you were in the grip of a force more powerful than you were. Absolutely. Well, our program was produced today by Alix Spiegel and myself, with Nancy Updike and Julie Snyder, senior editor Paul Tough, contributing editors Jack Hitt, Margy Rochlin, and Consigliere Sarah Vowell. To buy a cassette of this program, call us at WBEZ in Chicago, 312-832-3380. Our email address, [email protected] This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia. I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life. PRI, Public Radio International.
|
Dear friend, it's true. If there's even the slightest possibility that you'll have to use your gun someday for self-defense, this is going to be the most important letter you've ever read. I'm not kidding. So please do yourself a favor. Go to someplace quiet, close the door, and tell everyone not to disturb you for the next 5 or 10 minutes. Done? Good. I'm only asking that you do this because I want you to carefully absorb and consider what I'm about to share with you. It really could save your life someday. Well, this is an open letter from this issue of American Handgunner magazine. It's actually written by Ben Cooley, who's described as somebody with 13 years of experience in counterterrorism, hostage rescue, and SWAT training. It is a four-page single-spaced letter with lots of things underlined and bolded everywhere. It's actually a full-page ad. His thesis basically is that you have to have the fighting mindset. Naturally you have to have a gun, but in addition to a gun, more important than the gun, is what is going on in your head. Let me just read you a little bit here. Hollywood will get you killed. Tragically, almost everyone alive today learns their so-called fighting skills from what they see on TV and in the movies. I say "tragically" because everything you see on TV and film is absolutely the opposite of what you should do in a real life armed confrontation. Yes, I know it's almost heresy to say it, but even Dirty Harry would get his head blown off if he tried these stunts in real life. I've been reading gun magazines, and more than anything I've read in any of the issues of any of the gun magazines, this ad completely gets to me, and I've been trying to think about why. And I think the reasons are these. Number one, its central attitude, its central thesis is everything you know is wrong. Number two, it says Hollywood is trouble. Number three, it tells you that gadgets and fancy stuff cannot help you. What will help you, the only thing that can help you, is the right attitude. Number four, it says that all I need to do is buy a video for $97, and a gun, of course, but mainly video, and I'm set. I read this and I have to say I want more. I want this. Which is not an easy thing to achieve with an ad, because the gap between gun owners and people who don't own guns, like myself, that is a vast gap in our country. It's two different cultures. But this ad, I don't know what. It's a thing about it's everything you know is wrong, can-do badassery. I get this ad. This ad bridges the gap. And that is also the mission of today's radio program. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life, distributed by Public Radio International. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program, we try to bridge the gap between Americans who love their guns and Americans who hate them. Act One of our program, the NRA meets NEA. Our own Sarah Vowell goes out shooting with her dad and a gun that weighs 110 pounds. Act Two, Fists and Guns. A gun control advocate, Geoffrey Canada, explains the pleasure and power of carrying a gun. Act Three, Shooter, how somebody goes from victim to perp in one day. Act Four, Potato Potahto, what it's like getting shot at. We hear from two people who drew completely opposite conclusions from the experience. Act Five, Straw Man. We'll talk with a man who has put five dozen illegal guns into the hands of criminals for less money than you made this year. Stay with us. Act One, NRA versus NEA. Sarah Vowell says that growing up in Oklahoma and Montana, she did not agree with her father about guns. And then one day, back when she was mostly a music critic writing for Spin and all sorts of places like that, she tried to cross the cultural chasm that divides the gun haters from the gun lovers in this country. If you were passing by the house where I grew up during my teenage years, and it happened to be before election day, you wouldn't have even needed to come inside to see that it was a house divided. You could just look at the Democratic campaign poster in the upstairs window and the Republican one in the downstairs window, and see our home for the civil war battleground it was. I'm not saying who was the Democrat and who was the Republican, my father or I, but I will tell you that I am not the one who plastered the family truck with National Rifle Association stickers, that I have never subscribed to Guns & Ammo, and that hunter's orange was never my color. About the only thing my father and I agree on is the Constitution, though I'm partial to the First Amendment while he's always favored the Second. I am a gunsmith's daughter. In our house, or as I like to call it, the United States of Firearms, guns were everywhere-- the so-called pretty ones hanging on the wall, Dad's clients' fixer-uppers leaning in the corners, an entire rack right next to the TV. I had to move revolvers out of my way to make room for my bowl of Rice Krispies on the kitchen table. Now I even giggle when Dad calls me on election day to cheerfully inform me that he has once again canceled out my vote, but I was not always so mature. There were times when I found the fact that he was a gunsmith horrifying and just weird. All he ever cared about was guns. All I ever cared about was art. And there were years and years when I holed up in my room reading Allen Ginsberg poems, and he hid out in the garage making rifle barrels, and we weren't capable of having a conversation that didn't end up in argument. I have only shot a gun once, and once was plenty. My twin sister Amy and I were six years old-- six-- when Dad decided it was high time that we should know how to shoot. Amy remembers the day he handed us the gun for the first time differently. She liked it. She says that she thought it meant that Daddy trusted us, and that he thought of us as big girls. But I remember holding the pistol only made me feel small. It was so heavy in my hand. I stretched out my arm and pointed it away and winced. It was a very long time before I had the nerve to pull the trigger, and I was so scared I had to close my eyes. It felt like it just went off by itself, as if I had no say in the matter, as if the gun just had this need. The sound it made was as big as God. It kicked little me back to the ground like a bully, like a foe. It hurt. I don't know if I dropped it or just handed it back over to my dad, but I do remember that I never wanted to touch another one again. And, since I believed in the devil, I did what my mother told me to do every time I felt an evil presence. I whispered under my breath, Satan, I rebuke thee. Now it's not like I'm saying I was traumatized. It was more like I was decided-- guns, not for me. Lucky for me, both my parents grew up in exasperating households where children were considered puppets and/or slaves. So my mom and dad were hell-bent on letting my sister and me make our own choices. So if I decided that I didn't want my father's little death sticks to kick me to the ground again, that was fine with him. He'd go hunting with my sister, who started calling herself the loneliest twin in history because of my reluctance to engage in family activities. Of course, the fact that I was allowed to voice my opinions did not mean that my father would silence his own. Some things were said during the Reagan administration that cannot be taken back. I won't bore you with the details. Let's just say that I blamed my father for nuclear proliferation and Contra aid, while he believed that if I had my way, all the guns would be confiscated, and it would take the commies about 15 minutes to parachute in and assume control. We're older now, my dad and I, and the older I get, the more I'm interested in becoming a better daughter. First on my list, figure out that whole gun thing. Not long ago, my dad finished his most elaborate tool of death yet, a cannon. He built a 19th century cannon from scratch. It took two years. After tooling a million guns, after inventing and building a rifle barrel boring machine, after setting up a complicated shop filled with lathes and bluing tanks and outmoded blacksmithing tools, the cannon is his most ambitious project ever. I thought that if I was ever going to understand the ballistic bee in his bonnet, this was my chance. It was the biggest gun he ever made, and I could experience it and spend time with it with the added bonus of not having to actually pull a trigger myself. I called Dad and said that I wanted to come watch him shoot off the cannon. He was immediately suspicious. He seemed nervous when I told him I wanted to record it, but I had never taken an interest in his work before, and he would take what he could get. I flew home to Montana. He loaded it into the back of his truck, and we drove up into the Bridger Mountains. And the National Forest Service doesn't mind you setting off fiery balls of metal onto their property? You cannot shoot fireworks, but this is considered a firearm. So that's OK? I should mention that it is a small cannon. It's as long as a baseball bat and as wide as a coffee can, so it's heavy. 110 pounds. We get to the mountain. My dad takes his gunpowder and other toys out of this adorable wooden box on which he has stenciled Pat G. Vowell Cannonworks. He plunges his homemade bullets into the barrel, points it at an embankment just to be safe, and lights the fuse. The fuse is lit. This is like a cartoon. Oh my god. Oh, there's smoke everywhere. It's like the Fourth of July. [SINGS] Oh beautiful, for spacious skies-- I've given this a lot of thought, how to convey the giddiness I felt as the cannon shot off, and I wish there were a more articulate way to say this, but I'm telling you, there isn't. It's just really, really cool. My dad thought so too. It's also loud, louder than I can possibly convey over the radio. No, let me amend that. If you want to understand how loud it was, in a moment, not yet, but when I say, turn the volume on your radio all the way up. Ready? Now. God. It was so loud and so painful, I had to touch my head to make sure my skull hadn't cracked open. Here's something my dad and I share. We're both a little hard of hearing. Me from Aerosmith, him from gunsmith. Hey, turn it up again. Man, good shot Dad. Just as I was wondering what was coming over me, two hikers walked by. We forced them to politely laugh at our jokes for a while, and Dad set the cannon off again so they could see how it works. So you work for the radio, and that's your dad? Yeah. That's neat. Then this odd thing happens. When one of the hikers says, that's quite the machine you got there, he isn't talking about the cannon. He's talking about my tape recorder and my long radio microphone. I stare back at him, then I look over at my father's cannon, and down at my microphone, and I think, oh my god, my dad and I are the same person. We're both smart-alecky loners with goofy projects and weird equipment. And since this whole target practice outing was my idea, I was no longer his adversary. I was his accomplice. And what's worse, I was liking it. I haven't changed my mind about guns. I can get behind the cannon because it is a completely ceremonial object. It's unwieldy and impractical just like everything else I care about in the world. Try to rob a convenience store with this 110-pound Saturday night special, you'll still be dragging it in the door Sunday afternoon. I love noise. I make my living writing about it, and I'm always waiting for that moment in a song when something just flies out of it and explodes in the air. My dad is a one-man garage band, the kind of rock-and-roller who slaves away at his art for no other reason than to make his own sound. My dad's an artist, a pretty driven idiosyncratic one too, and he's got his last Gesamtkunstwerk all planned out. It's a performance piece. We're all in it, my mom, the loneliest twin in history, and me. Here's how it goes. When my father dies, take a wild guess what he wants done with his ashes. Here's a hint. It requires a cannon. You guys are going to love this. You get to drag this thing up on top of the Gravellies on opening day of hunting season, and looking off at Sphinx Mountain, you get to put me in little paper bags, and I can take my last hunting trip on opening morning. I'll do it too. I don't know about my mom and my sister, but I'll do it. I'll have my father's body burned into ashes. I'll pack this ash into paper bags. The morbid joker has already made the molds. I'll go to the mountains with my mother and my sister, bringing the cannon as he asks. I will plunge his remains into the barrel and point it into a hill so he doesn't take anyone with him. I will light the fuse, but I will not cover my ears, because when I blow what used to be my dad into the earth, I want it to hurt. Act Two, Fists and Guns. Drive-by shootings and tragic assaults where one teenager shoots another for a jacket or a pair of Nikes are such old news that we forget how we got to this point. Geoffrey Canada grew up in a tough neighborhood in the South Bronx before guns were commonplace in teenage culture there. He's also been a gun owner himself. We wanted to talk to him about that, but first, a few words about the days before guns. I'll tell you, it was an absolute shock for me and my brothers when we moved from a relatively quiet area of the South Bronx, to what to us looked like a children's paradise, with children playing in the streets and games. And we moved on the third floor on the front of the building. And I remember my brothers and I, we were waving at the little boys and girls from our window, waiting to go downstairs and make some friends. And one of the boys, they looked up, and he pointed his finger at me, took his fist, balled it into a fist, and rubbed it in his eye, and pointed back at me. And I remember looking at my brothers and saying, you know, I think that boy wants to beat us up. And we were stunned. We were like, for what? Why would they want to fight us? And we went to our mother, and we told her, Ma, I think the boys want to beat us up downstairs. And you know how mothers are. She was like, oh, don't be foolish. You don't even know those boys. Why would they want to beat you up? Just go down there and play. And we realized we were literally on our own with this. And it was from that initial introduction, each one of us had to go downstairs, have a fight, before we were accepted on the block. And when I look back on it, it was like you had to see where you fit in into a hierarchy in terms of being able to fight. And once that was established, you were pretty much OK on the block. One of the things that you write about is that you say that the older boys on the block when you grew up would set the younger boys fighting. That's correct. And you know, it seemed awfully cruel to me before I knew sort of what I call the codes of violence that existed at that time. That we would just be sitting around, and the older boys would just really set us up to fight one another. They would just simply start, Rodney, can you beat Geoff? And Rodney would say, I don't know. And he'd say, well you scared of him? And he says, I'm not scared of him. They say, well Geoff, you scared of him? He's like, I'm not. And you were just trapped, and I would be sitting there thinking, why are they doing this? Why me and Rodney? We were just friends, and the next thing you know we'd be having a fistfight. Later I found out that the older boys really felt it was their responsibility to teach us how to fight, because if we didn't learn it on Union Avenue, which was the block I grew up on in the South Bronx, then the other kids from Home Street, and Prospect Avenue, 157th Street, they would take advantage of us. But this was really largely fistfighting between kids that had rules around them. In my neighborhood there was no wrestling allowed in a fight, and the kids would break it up if you started to wrestle. They'd be like, no, no, that's not fair. No. I have no idea. In another place, it was totally all right. But we really believed in these rules. And in the end the worst that would happen was maybe a kid would get a bloody nose, but no real long-lasting damage to you. Explain what the other rules were. What were other parts of the code of conduct? When I was growing up, you had to fight somebody your own size. I mean, there was a real thing that people would say you couldn't pick on somebody smaller than you. And people really reinforced this, and they would say, why are you bothering him? He's not your size. You can pick on me. I'm your size. And people really believed that. You couldn't fight girls, and these were pretty well-understood by the other members of our youth community. One of the things about this whole system is that you could have a fight, and you could lose, and you could still maintain face. Oh, absolutely. There was no real shame in losing a fight if you fought well and courageously, and someone was just more skilled than you. Indeed, once that was established, you could accept the fact that someone could beat you. And people would just ask, can you beat Tommy? And I would be like, no. And it was no big deal. They would just say, OK, Tommy's more skilled. But it didn't mean that under certain conditions I wouldn't fight Tommy. And so there were checks on violence. They really were. And typically there were not what I would consider to be a lot of random fights. Every now and then there'd be some fight between two guys who were trying to work something out, but basically everybody learned where they were in the pecking order, and we established some levels of comfort with one another. Now with more guns on the street, what has happened to that system of checks? Well, you know it's really changed dramatically. One of the things that happens when you have a handgun is that you don't have to think about the consequences of your behavior that leads you into a confrontation. And what I mean by that is that we actually had to think when we said something back. If we were walking down the block and somebody said something to us, and they were bigger than us, we had to think, jeez, if say something to this guy, am I really prepared to go fight him? And often the case was no, I don't think so. So I'm going to pretend I didn't hear it. With the handgun, you can really say, I don't care how big somebody is. No one's going to say that to me. And when someone does, you stop, and you say, who are you talking to? And you're prepared to take it to the next level. In your book Fist Stick Knife Gun there comes a point where you talk about when you got a handgun yourself. Let me ask you to read 101 in your book. Terrific, I'm going to read Chapter 14, part of it. In 1971, well before the explosion of handguns on the streets of New York City, I bought a handgun. I bought the gun legally in Maine where I was in college. The clerk only wanted to see some proof of residency, and my Bowdoin College ID card was sufficient. The gun was exactly what I needed. It was so small I could slip into my coat pocket or pants pocket. I needed the gun because we had moved from Union Avenue to 183rd Street in the Bronx, but I still traveled back to Union Avenue during the holidays when I was home from school. The trip involved walking through some increasingly dangerous territory. New York City was going through one of its gang phases, and several new ones had sprung up in the Bronx. One of the gangs liked to hang out right down the block from where we now lived on 183rd Street and Park Avenue. When I first went away to school, I paid no mind to the large group of kids that I used to pass on my way to the store or to the bus stop back to the Bronx. The kids were young, 14 or 15 years old. At 19 I was hardly worried about a bunch of street kids who thought they were tough, but over the course of the next year the kids got bolder and more vicious. On several occasions I watched with alarm as swarms of teenagers pummeled adults who had crossed them in one way or another. Everyone knew they were a force to be reckoned with, and many a man and woman crossed the street or walked around the block to keep from having to walk past them. And I crossed the street also, and there were times that I went out of my way to go to another store rather than walk past a rowdy group of boys who seemed to own the block. On more than one occasion I rounded the corner only to come face to face with the gang. I could feel their eyes on me as I looked straight ahead, hoping none of them would pick a fight. After having survived growing up in the Bronx, here I was scared to go home and walk down my own block. The solution was simple. I had a gun. I had a gun and an attitude. When I look back on the power the gun had over my personality and my judgment, I am amazed. It didn't happen all at once. The change was subtle. At first I continue to avoid the gang of teenagers. I crossed the street or turned down another block when I saw them. But slowly, as I carried the gun with me day after day, my attitude began to change. I begin to think, why should I have to walk an extra block? Why should I feel that I have to cross the street or look down when I pass those kids? By the end of two weeks, I had convinced myself that all of the habits I had cultivated to avoid conflict with the gang were unnecessarily conciliatory. My behavior when I went outside began to change. I stopped going out of my way, or crossing the street, or avoiding eye contact when I passed the gang. In fact, I began to do the opposite. I would choose to go to the grocery store on the side of the street where the gang was gathered. I would walk through them head up, eyes challenging, hand in my coat pocket, finger on the trigger. I was prepared to shoot to kill to defend myself. My rationale was that I was minding my own business, not bothering anyone, but I wasn't going to take any stuff from anyone. If they decided to jump me, well they would get what they deserved. I was lucky that winter break. The time quickly came for me to go back to college and no member of the gang had felt the need to challenge a strange young man with fire in his eyes and his hand always in his coat pocket. I knew if I continued to carry the gun in the Bronx, it would simply be a matter of time before I was forced to use it. My behavior would become more and more reckless each day. I unloaded the gun, wrapped it in a newspaper, took it to the town dump, and threw it away. Geoffrey Canada reading from his book Fist Stick Knife Gun. Geoffrey Canada says that the kind of fistfights that he grew up with ended in the Bronx in the 1970s. At one point in his book, he's told that one reason for the increase of handguns in the hands of teenagers is because the gun manufacturers, after saturating the market of white males, started to market guns to women and to young people. It was absolutely-- for me it was a devastating discovery, because I was just really mortified to find out that what I considered to be my young people accidentally figuring out how to find these handguns through some hard looking and digging around in the inner cities was actually a marketing campaign that was aimed directly at them. And they started to change the names of handguns to make them more attractive to kids. Names like Viper, you say in the book. Yes, and they weren't finding these handguns. The handgun manufacturers were finding my kids. And it was not a small campaign. It was funded by millions of dollars. Can you imagine what you would have thought as a kid if when you were 7 you would know that someday decades later you would be sitting in a studio? You would be writing a book about how much better it was back then? Yes. No, absolutely I could not have imagined doing that. And it's one of the things that really shocked me so much, was that I remember these times as being so tough. But yet I have to agree that this is tougher. It is tougher when you're dealing with the fact of you could die than when you're dealing with the fact that you could get beat up. Both are horrible for children, and I don't want to pretend that it's not damaging to a child emotionally to grow up fearing for their physical safety. It's just more damaging to grow up fearing that you're going to be killed. Geoffrey Canada is the author of Fist Stick Knife Gun, A Personal History of Violence in America. He now runs one of the most ambitious programs in the country to help children in neighborhoods like the one he grew up in, the Harlem Children's Zone, which is remaking 100 blocks in central Harlem, and his model the Obama administration is planning to use across the country. Coming up, what it's like getting shot, and what it's like to sell guns to criminals. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio and Public Radio International when our program continues. So he would pound on me really bad, and I would take it year after year, and I would get pretty good at looking wounded so he would stop sooner. But anyway, one day I was with his cousin Kurt Schultz and Marky Welkirk and a couple of other guys at Kurt Schultz's house in his bedroom, and we were smoking pot and listening to Pink Floyd. And the door kicked open, and it was Dennis, and he had his father's Luger pistol. And he turned and he said, Smokey, Smokey, and then he shot Kurt Schultz in the head. And Kurt flipped over the chair he was sitting in back like that, and we all totally freaked out, and I dove out the window. I just felt glass shattering around me, and I started running. And as I was running down the street, I heard Dennis Schultz scream, get your ass back here, faggot. And I was like oh God, I've got to get away from this guy. Anyway, I'm running, and he had come out of the room after me through the window. And I was running down the street, and I heard a shot, and I heard the bullet whistling past me, and I was running as fast as I could. And then I didn't hear the shot that hit me. I just felt this sting in my back, and it kind of looked like this. The shot spun me around, and I landed, and he came running up to me, and he stood over me with the Luger. And he said-- I don't even know what he said actually, because I had by this time soiled my pants, and I was really shaking. And this was no act. I was really frightened. And he just shot me like five times in the stomach, and I felt each time it hit me. I felt it striking me, and I looked down, and it was like wax. He had taken the bullets out of these bullets and dripped in wax over the gunpowder and put them back in this Luger. And he had done this act of terrorism, which I thought was really exceptionally creative. Instantly conscripted my next door neighbor, Chris Williams, to steal his father's .38 Police Special from his bedroom that night, and we spent like hours making these bullets. We'd take the lead out of the bullet, and we'd drip a little-- well, first we'd dump a little of the gunpowder out, and then we'd drip a little wax in there, and then we'd put a little ketchup or fake blood in there, and then we'd drip a little more wax on top. And we had it all figured out. And so then we would go out into the countryside on these country roads in Wisconsin that had these really twisty, turny things. And we would scope it out. We'd watch the cars go by, and make sure that we had the sight lines all right, and then we would enact these great scenes where one of us would have the gun and the other would be running or standing there like, oh no. So the car would come around the corner and hit us with its light, and it would be like this boom, and ah, and fall. The car would screech to a halt, and then we'd get up and run away, and it was really a great time. And we did one where we were standing in the road, and I was the one who got shot. And usually what happens is the car stops like 1,000 yards before he gets to you and then waits until nothing's happening, and then slowly goes past. Well this car drove right up, and it was a police car. And these cops get out, and they have strong flashlights, so they can see us laughing in the bushes. And they come over to us, and they weren't too afraid, because by that time we were so afraid. They didn't think that we were going to do anything with this gun, but they said, what are you kids doing? And we told them what we were doing, and he said, oh yeah? Let me see. So I said, OK. So I had Chris set up, and we got all set, and these cops were standing there with their flashlights on us. And Chris shoots me, and I fall to the ground doing my thing. And there's this moment of silence, and the cop goes, yeah, that's pretty good. Do you guys do parties? Bryn Magnus recently finished his screenplay, not yet produced, about a morally invisible banker. Act Four, Potato Potahto. Now the story of two people nearly killed in gun attacks, two people who drew very different conclusions from their experiences. The first one we're going to hear from is Mike Robbins, a Chicago police officer, who in 1994 was shot 11 times. One bullet that ripped through his abdomen is still lodged an inch from his spine. A quick warning before we begin. Some of this might not be suitable for small children. Robbins was working in the Gang Crimes Unit for the Chicago police. He and his partner answered a call about a gang disturbance. Shots had been heard. They drove down a dark alley. Robbins was driving, and somebody ran up to his side of the car. It happened so fast, my partner and I didn't get a chance to respond. My partner had his gun out. I had my gun out. And this individual just stuck the gun in the window and immediately began shooting, and stuck the gun into my chest repeatedly, several times point blank just stuck it into my chest and fired. And he's shooting you in the chest. Were you wearing a bulletproof vest? Yes, I was wearing a bulletproof vest. And in effect it's like basically someone taking a cannon and putting it in your chest and firing. That's exactly how hard it is. It's like a horse maybe or an elephant kicking you in the chest very hard, very painful. Basically in '91 my parents and I had gone to eat at a local restaurant on a bright, sunny day like today. We certainly weren't in a dark alley somewhere where we weren't supposed to be. This is Suzanna Gratia Hupp, a chiropractor in Texas and a gun owner. And a crowded restaurant-- it was payday, and it was the day after Boss' Day, a place that we went all the time. In fact, the manager that day had invited me. We were done eating, and all of a sudden this guy crashes his truck through the window, and we promptly heard gunshots. And when we heard that, your first thought is robbery. It's a crowded place. It's a robbery. So we immediately drop down. My father and I put the table up in front of us. But about 45 seconds into it, I'm going to say probably six people were killed at that point. He was not spraying bullets. He was simply walking from one person to the other, aiming, and pulling the trigger. In my case, the individual, I could never forget his face because his face was closer than yours and mine. And was he cold and clinical about it, or was he just angry? Very much so. He was clinical? Very cold, very clinical, and just shooting, shooting repeatedly. My partner was shot six times. We screamed and hollered in the car at each other. There was just a lot of screaming and hollering. Some of the things were inaudible. We're going to die. We're going to die. Help me. Tell my mother I love her. I love you. I told him that I love you, and he told me he loved me. Actually you would have expected it to be pandemonium, but no, it was very quiet, in fact. And you can ask anybody about that particular day. It was oddly quiet. You'd hear an occasional scream or an occasional moan or an occasional instruction shouted, like get down or something like that. But otherwise it was just completely silent? Yes. I felt it took forever. The shooting was like in slow motion. When I look back at it in retrospect, I see things very slowly now. At this point he was about 15 feet from us. He was about 3/4 of his back turned toward me. I had a place to rest my arm. It was a perfect opportunity. Perfect shot. And then I realized that a few months earlier I made the stupidest decision of my life. My gun was 100 yards away in my car, completely useless to me, because I had chosen to obey Texas laws. My partner couldn't get a shot off at a guy on the side because he was-- as he explained to me later on, I was busy bouncing up and down in the car back and forth and up and down, that if he'd have shot, he probably would've shot me. Well at that point my father began to raise up and say, I got to do something. I got to do something. He's going to kill everybody in here. And my attention turned to him, and I started grabbing him by the shirt and pulling him down. All the strength had been blown out of me, literally. I could no longer struggle or fight with this individual. But when he saw what he thought was an opportunity, he jumped up and ran at the guy. Well, the guy saw my dad coming. He turned, pulled the trigger, shot my father in the chest. And I felt that this is the way I was going to die, and this is how it feels to die. These things were running through my mind as he was shooting. I stood up and I grabbed my mother by the shirt collar, and I said, come on, come on, we've got to run. We've got to get out of here. And my feet grew wings, and I was one of the only people out of the front area there to make it out of the back. How many people were killed that day? About 23 people. And I turned around to say something to my mother, and realized that she had not followed me out. One of the interesting things that happened was that I saw a vision of my mother at the time when we were shot. And my mother had passed in 1982. And if we have time I could tell you, but it doesn't take too long. But at the time when this individual was shooting and shooting and shooting in our car, I somehow mustered enough strength to turn my body to the left. And when I did so, my mother just was in the back of the car, and she just grabbed me and pulled me right to her bosom, and just pulled my head right into her chest. She had no clothes on at all. She just pulled me right to her bare breasts, and just pulled me close. And at that time there was another loud bang and a big kick in my back. And he had shot me in the left side of my back in the shoulder blade, I found out later on. And then my mother had released me, and at that time the individual who was doing the shooting, he took off running down the alley. And I later learned from the cops my mother had crawled over to where my father was, and was cradling him until the gunman got back around to her. And they said he put the gun to her head, she looked up at him and put her head down, and he pulled the trigger. Well, just prior to the trial as we were being prepped by the state attorney's office, they were asking what happened next, and what happened next, and what happened next. And I explained to them, and I explained to them just like I mentioned to you about my mother appearing and pulling me close to her. And they advised me not to do so. Not to mention that on the stand. Not to mention that on the stand, because they did not want to prejudice the jury or put anything into their mind, and perhaps them thinking that maybe I was suffering a period of delusion, and if doing so, then maybe I wouldn't recognize this individual who shot me. So at the time when I went on the stand, I told the jury that I had saw my mother. I told them the very same thing. I didn't want to hide it at all. My reason for saying is that to deny that this happened would be to deny that I saw my mother, to deny that God exists. And I did not want to do that. I don't think that I would be able to live with myself. I would've been better off dead. The individual might as well have just shot me and killed me. Mike Robbins came out of the experience a firm advocate for stricter gun control. He got rid of his own guns and began speaking around the country about the issue. Suzanna Gratia Hupp meanwhile became a visible and important spokesperson in the fight to change the gun laws in Texas to allow concealed weapons. Soon after her side won and concealed weapons became legal in Texas, she was elected as a state representative. What do you make of somebody who goes through something very similar to what you went through and concludes the opposite? Well, I don't mean to chuckle. I guess I've just heard this sort of thing so many times, but it does kind of floor me. What I don't understand is that their logic seems to stop at the point that they think the gun is the bad guy. Somebody that you're already talking about is willing to overlook the highest law of the land, which is taking somebody's life. That somebody who is willing to overlook that law will allow a silly little paperwork law, a gun law, to stop them from murdering somebody. If they want to kill somebody, they're not going to really worry about whether or not they can carry a concealed weapon. That seems insane to me. Let me ask you a question. One of the people who we are interviewing for our show is a woman who is now a state representative in Texas. And she had an incident where both her parents were shot, where she was almost shot. And what she concluded from that was that she should be able to carry a gun because she could've actually shot the guy. How can you conclude from one incident that everyone in the total state of Texas should have a gun? What would you say to her, though? I mean, she said that if she had had a gun at that time-- like what would you want to say to her? Well, anyone can say could have, should have, would have. Anyone can say that. I mean, this is America. You're entitled to say whatever it is you want. You have that First Amendment privilege, freedom of speech. I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking like one of the differences between your experience and hers is that when she and her parents were in this experience where they were shot at, she didn't have her gun. But you and your partner, you two men, you both had guns. We both had guns, and it didn't protect us. OK, a gun is not a guarantee. It's not a guarantee. I'm not telling you it's a guarantee. There are going to be times-- and I tell you, one of the things that I dread is something happening to me, my being, God forbid, murdered at some point, and my being found with the gun somewhere in my possession, because I know people who are anti-gun will use that for all it's worth. And that's probably one of my biggest fears. And the fact-- Not that you would get murdered, but that you'd get murdered with the gun, and that you'll be used as propaganda? Yes. Yes, and I have to say a thousand times over, it's not a guarantee. It simply changes the odds. Act Five, Straw Man. The guns that are used in crimes are the guns that give guns a bad name. And where do those guns come from? Well, most of us assume that they're stolen, but in fact, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, only 10% of the guns confiscated at crimes are stolen. Where do the rest come from? 60% are purchased legally. Tori Marlan wrote about this when she was a staff writer at the Chicago Reader. Most of them are acquired by a means called straw purchasing, and that means that they are purchased by someone who is legally able to buy the gun for someone who is legally unable to buy the gun. So in other words, somebody without a criminal record would go and purchase a gun for somebody who does have a criminal record. Right. And so why is this so hard to stop? Because it's nearly impossible to detect. It's hard to stop a straw purchase in action, because the only way ATF knows that somebody's been straw purchasing is if that person's guns start turning up in crimes, and they're traced back to that person. For an article in the Chicago Reader, Tori Marlan interviewed a straw purchaser who bought guns for guys in his neighborhood between 1988 and 1990, and then he was caught. He served 13 months for dealing firearms without a license. She agreed to re-interview him on tape for This American Life. Well, the first time I was like walking down the street, and this guy seemed to know who I was, because I used to be a security officer. So he approached me, and he offered me $200 dollars to buy a gun. And I thought that was quite a bit of money for me to keep in my pocket. Were you working at the time? I mean, did you have a steady income? No, at the time I wasn't working. So I went on and did that. I told him I wouldn't do it again. I'd just take the $200 and go and buy him a gun. What did you know about him? Well, I knew for one thing that he dealt drugs. That's about it. I'd never known him to be a violent guy or anything like that, so I figured that it was just something that he was using for his protection. I had known many drug dealers that had had guns and used them just for their protection. They didn't go around hurting people or anything. I thought it might not be a good idea to do, but the same time I was broke. I figured I wasn't going to do it again anyway, so I might as well do it this one time, get the money, and go ahead on about my business. What were the reasons that you thought it might not be such a good idea? Well, I forgot that if someone did get shot with the gun, it may well could be traced back to me. But seeing that those guns, they don't usually try to trace them unless it was a murder. And even then, as long as they got the person that did it, they wouldn't much care where the gun came from. So tell me about the day that you went to purchase the gun. Was he with you? Yes, he was with me. And we went out there and kind of like just bought the gun and came on back. It wasn't no big deal. Did the guy that you were buying the gun for handle the gun? Did he pick out the gun, and did the gun dealer to your knowledge have any suspicion about the sale that he was making? Well, he did pick the gun out. But see, the suspicion was thrown off because he did it in such a way that it was like I was buying it. I knew basically what kind he wanted, so we was looking at the guns. And I guess when we saw a couple of them, and he agreed, I agreed, and it was like an agreement that was understood by me and him more so than the dealer. From that point on, he must have had spread the word around, because a couple of guys in the neighborhood started approaching me, and I didn't think that was a good idea. Did you know the guys who started approaching you? Yes, I did know them. What did you know of them? That they basically were the same type of guys. They dealt their little drugs here and there, so I didn't really think it was nothing that they was doing that was shooting people and stuff like that. They just probably wanted their protection. They wanted to just have something for protection just like any citizen would, even though they was kind of like the underworld of citizens. So how many guns did you eventually supply to these guys? Well, as time went on over a period of two years, I believe it was something like 60. It was in the area of 60 guns. And how much money would you make from the purchases? Well, as time went on it became lesser than that $200, I would say from $50 to $100. It jumped all the way down. That first guy, when he came along with that deal, it was like something I guess to get me started or something. I don't know. Or something that I would do just because of the money. It was like too much to resist, stuff like that. Because I would say first of all the money came first. And the respect that I was given from the neighborhood guys, that that was another thing. It was a different story from back in the old days when-- because I didn't get that much respect. What do you mean? How did that change for you? In what ways were they showing their respect? Well, they were showing it in more obvious ways. There was always guys that never had said anything to me before was now-- oh, my buddy here, shaking my hand, and you want a drink or something? Just stuff like that. So I was getting a lot of recognition. That felt good too. Like I say, sometimes it was for the wrong thing. You get all this good recognition for the wrong thing. Did you ever wonder what was going to happen to the guns? I mean, did you really believe that the drug dealers wouldn't use them, or would only use them for their own protection? Did you at any time wonder if they were involved in maybe more serious criminal activity, something that would harm people? Yes, I did begin to wonder and think that they will probably be harming someone with them, because some of these guys didn't look as nice as they should look, so I figured that even though they was just dealing drugs, they might be more than just drug dealers. And I wanted to get out of that racket for sure, but I couldn't just-- I wanted to tell them that I had lost my gun card, or it got shreded or anything. But I ended up not being a good liar, I guess. Did you actually try? Well no, I didn't. I didn't. Did you ever hear about the guns being used in crimes? Yes, I did. A few were used in crimes I heard of. The shootings that I did know about always happened because someone was trying to either stick up one of those dealers, and then ended up getting shot themselves. That's all. It wasn't too much other than that. Well, there was once a wild shooting spree that happened, but I think a couple of people did get shot, but no one got killed. I never knew of any murder exactly, although those federal guys did tell me there was a murder on one of them. But it was like out of state or something. So were you living off of the income that you were making from buying the guns? Yes, I was living off of that, and probably a little public aid, general assistance. So how much would you estimate that you made in the two years that you were buying the guns? I never really gave that a good thought, but I know it would have been somewhere in the $4,000 or $5,000 range. So you weren't getting rich off of this. No way. It was just something to keep my head above water. This straw purchaser was interviewed by Tori Marlan. Only 14 of his guns, out of over 60, have been recovered by police. Well, our program was produced today by Julie Snyder and myself with Alix Spiegel and Nancy Updike. Senior editor for this show, Paul Tough. Contributing editors Jack Hitt, Margy Rochlin, and consigliere Sarah Vowell. Production help from Alex Blumberg, Rachel Howard, Laura Baggett, and Brian Reed. Today's program was first broadcast in 1997. Mike Robbins, the police officer who you heard in Act Four of the show, died a decade after that first broadcast. He died in 2008. He was 57. He volunteered with kids in Chicago and remained a vocal activist for stricter handgun control until his death. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight for our program by our boss, Mr. Torey Malatia, who describes the first time here at public radio this way. The sound it made was as big as God. It kicked little me back to the ground like a bully, like a foe. It hurt. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of this American life. PRI, Public Radio International.
|
In his memoir, My Dark Places, James Ellroy writes about how he was haunted by the memory of his mother. She was murdered in 1958 when he was 10. 35 years later, he tried to track down her murderer. His mother was last seen in El Monte, California with a man Ellroy calls "the swarthy man" and with a blond woman. Ellroy hired a private investigator. He also tried to scare up some leads by having two papers do stories about the murder and having the TV shows, Day One and Unsolved Mysteries do segments. All of them but Day One gave out a phone number for people to call with tips and leads. As the phone calls came in, Ellroy found it he wasn't the only one who was haunted. This is from his memoir. "A man from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, called. He said the swarthy man looked like a guy named Bob Soans. Bob murdered his wife, Shari, and committed suicide. It was late '58. The crime occurred in North Hollywood. A man from Centralia, Washington called. He said his father was the swarthy man. His father was 6'6 and weighed 240 pounds." I should say this does not match the description of the real swarthy man. "His father carried a gun and lots of ammunition." A man from Savage, Minnesota, called. He said the swarthy man looked like his father. His father lived in El Monte back then. His father was abusive. His father served prison time. His father was a gambler and a skirt chaser. A man from Rochester, New York, called. He said his grandfather was the swarthy man. Gramps lived in a nursing home. The man supplied the address and phone number. A woman from Sacramento, California, called. She said the swarthy man looked like a local doctor. The doctor lived with his mother. The doctor hated women. The doctor was a vegetarian. A woman from Lakeport, California, called. She said the swarthy man looked like her ex-husband. Her ex chased women. She didn't know where he was now. A woman from Covina, California, called. She said her sister was raped and strangled in El Monte. It happened in 1992. A woman from Paso Robles, California, called. She said the swarthy man looked familiar. She met a man like that in 1957. He wanted sex. She said no. He said he wanted to kill her. He lived in Alhambra then. A woman from Benwood, West Virginia, called. She said a man stalked her and her brother in Los Angeles. She was six years old. The man had dark hair and good teeth. He drove a truck. He took off her clothes, fondled her and kissed her. She saw him on a TV game show several years later. It might have been The Groucho Marx Show." Ellroy's list of callers goes on for pages. Why don't more adults celebrate Halloween? Why don't adults go to horror movies in the same numbers that teenagers do? I believe it's because so many of us, we're already haunted, haunted by people who've harmed us, haunted by people we fear, haunted by people we've harmed, haunted by people who've gone. Well, from WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, we choose some theme. We bring you a variety of stories on that theme. Today's program, Haunted. Haunted not by ghosts or phantoms, but by other people, by reality. Act One, Hearing Voices. A girl gets a tape recorder for Christmas, loves to record her parents, but only when they fight. Her parents die. The tapes survive. Act Two, why a Jewish family in New York embraces a Holocaust survivor as a member of their family without much evidence that he really is. Act Three, Ashes. David Sedaris says, I love you, to his mother, and she tells him that she's going to pretend that she did not hear him say it. The story of how he and his family reacted when she got lung cancer. Act Four, Ghost Story. Heather Woodbury demonstrates that there is no rock and roll heaven. Stay with us. Act One, Hearing Voices. Lynnette Nyman is a reporter for Alabama Public Radio and uses a tape recorder in her regular job. But this story is about recordings she made as a kid-- 9, 10, 11, 12 years old. The tapes come from my taping my family. I taped my family. But see, I didn't tape the happy moments. I taped all the trying moments. Why? Maybe my own intrigue? I don't know. Well, I didn't do it. Well, I didn't either. Well, I guess you did if you lifted the door up and got it in, didn't you? The person that makes the mess cleans it, don't they? I don't clean your goddamn oven. Hey, I didn't make the mess. Hell no, you haven't cooked for days. Why did you just say that? There's old motor mouth going. I'm not a motor mouth, but I want to know why you made that statement. I'm trying to get this place in condition for you to paint. Why don't you shut up, or else he's not going to do it at all. At one point in the recordings, somebody is painting? Is that what's happening? Right. And do you remember this? Do you remember this actually happening? I do. I do. And where are we in the house? What room are we in? You're actually in the kitchen. We're in the kitchen. And see, this is where my mom has finally caught on to this whole thing and my taping. And this was when I fell into her trap. And she had said to me, "Lynnette, go get the tape recorder." You mean she'd start a fight and then she'd say, "Go get the tape recorder"? Yes. What do you think was going on? I mean do you think that she's just getting into a little tiff with him, and she's like, well, "I'll show him. Not only am I going to have this fight, but I'm going to embarrass him, too, on tape." Well, the funny thing though is that if she were going to do that, why didn't she ever play it for anybody? She never did. And maybe she did think that. Maybe she thought, OK, yeah. Like she said on the tape, she said "Well, I've got witnesses here." And witnesses for what? Oh, oh now start a fight. See, I've got a lot of things that I've got witnesses hear what you said. Dial the wrong number on the paramedics if I collapse, is that what you plan to do? You want to argue? No, that wasn't a funny statement, that one. I'd never thought that one up. I thought it was pretty funny. That's your father for your mom, see? Is this what their regular, everyday relationship was like? Or was this different than the way they were normally? I think it was like it was everyday life. Oh really? As far as I remember. Yeah, yeah. It was really these highs and lows. Dad could have had this done this morning while he got up. Why didn't you get this taken care of this morning? I had company. Who? Gracie. Why would that have held you back? Rams are playing in Chicago and you made me miss the game right now. What if the Angels are playing at the Angels' stadium? They're going to play every week and every day of your life. That's what you've been saying for the last 27 years, Bill. Our home has to have maintenance and repair done to it. I was wondering if when you hear this, if she sounds harsh to you? Yeah. She does? She does, yeah. She sounds really harsh, and it kind of hurts because she talked to me like that too. Yeah? Yeah. OK, let me play you a little snippet here. You're sick, you know that, don't you? Hey, nobody could put up with all your yelling and screaming. I'm one of the sweetest girls that ever walked. Ever walked. I'll bet you again if I died and you had a guy in here, he'd leave within a week. How much do you want to bet? Start barking at him. How much you want to bet? Now, you were laughing? Yeah, it's funny. What are you hearing? I guess my father's humor. To me, it's funny. Which part is the joke? He's saying nobody can put up with your screaming. Which is the joke part? My father was just going along. And she was the one in control, and she always was in control. And his response was to just joke. You know I ain't as young as I used to be. Crawlin' around-- I injured my knee. What knee did you hurt? My wee knee. What? Your what? Your what, Bill? My knee. Wee knee. You are sick, aren't you? Who do you talk to? Your little girls? I jammed my knee into that thing. Is that the way you talk to your little girls? No. Now, after he died-- he died first, right? Yeah, she kept the tapes after he died. Actually, I found them. I remembered, and I found them, and I listened to them. And then I was the only one at home then, and I played them for her. I brought it out and put the tapes in and we listened. And we'd sit around the kitchen table just the two of us, and she'd cry, and I'd cry. And what do you think she was hearing when she would hear these tapes, often of her berating him and badgering him? I think she heard her love. That's what I think. Wow. And if anything, if she didn't hear her love, then she was just hearing him. And that was enough, and that was everything to her. I mean she was dedicated to him for 35 years. When I look at some of her letters that she wrote to me while I was overseas for a couple years, it was all about, gosh, if only your father were here, I wouldn't be so lonely. And I think that those tapes were a reminder. Do you like your home, Bill? No. Not at all? Yeah, a little bit. [INAUDIBLE] You want to admire my home or run me down like a bald swine. You know I admire your home. I admire you. Then don't put me down, Bill. Do you think that she ever listened to the tapes and thought, God, I should have been sweeter to him. I should have been sweeter? No, no, no. I don't think so. I don't think so. I think it was totally normal and natural for her to be like that. And she never saw anything she ever did as being wrong, ever, never for a moment. Rembember that, I didn't do it. Why you didn't do it? You didn't do it. No, I didn't do it. You come out here and say, where's that lazy son of a bitch at? Well, I've been working my goddamn ass off. That's where I've been. Yeah, I'm sure your ass looks worked off. One of the things that's so odd about these tapes is that your parents actually discuss a lot what'll happen after they die, and who will get what. I know, and I was sitting there going, yeah, yeah, yeah. You guys will get your will changed. You're changing your will right away? Yeah. I don't want to leave it to anybody. I might leave it to the Good Shepherd. Yeah, your household furniture too? No. All I want is the TV. She only wants the TV. I want the TV in the dining room and the framed camel out there. Who is it who says-- when they're talking about that, somebody pipes up, "I'll get the TV. I get the house." My sister says, "I get the television." And I say, "I get the house." How'd it work out? Well, in my tapes, everything came true. Really? For the most part. List all the things that came true? My sister got the television. The house actually went into the trust and was put up for sale. And my brother was cut out of the will. Wait, is that actually in the tape, that somebody says, you're going to get cut out of the will? Yeah, my mother jokes on the tape that she wouldn't remarry, and she didn't remarry. She had a boyfriend later on. She actually says that, "I have a boyfriend," right? She says, "I'm not going to remarry. I'll just see somebody." Right. One's enough for me, baby. I'll never go through it again. They'll never have to worry. Mother might have a boyfriend to bring over there and see them, but I won't have a stepfather for them to look at. [INAUDIBLE] Or you just throw a drink in his face. Son of a bitch. Pardon me? Who'd you just cuss? I can't hear you? SOB he said. Who'd you cuss? It's you obviously. You bring it home. He's getting jealous. You wouldn't be jealous after you're gone, would you? Yeah. No, because I'd be in the right hands beside Jesus. Let me ask you about how you all are acting, how the kids are acting in these recordings. I'm going to play you another little snippet. That's your father for your mom, see. Oh, you know damn well I'd run you all the way down to the police station. I'd throw you in the back of the new truck. Wouldn't it be funny if they hit a bump? She'd fall out and we'd just laugh. Get there and say, where did you go? Mom is crying. So on the tapes, you guys are laughing. The kids are laughing. And then at one point, you say, "Mom's crying." What is happening? I think she was hurt. She finally felt some hurt there. And that's where I stop, and I think, oh gosh, I was just so stupid. And I was caught up in it too. And what shouldn't have been funny at all was funny to me then. And why? I don't know. And maybe it's just again, we're just coping We're just trying to get along. Do you view yourself as haunted by this time and by these tapes? Yeah, I guess I do. I feel like I can't get rid of them, and I totally want to be away from them completely. But my thought these last few days was that I thought to myself, well, OK, after I do this interview, this is it. I'm getting rid of these tapes. I'm going to free myself from these things forever. But you know I won't. They're going to go right back into the box. Hearing these tapes, I've really thought a lot about what survives of a person. And we don't get to choose what survives of us. Do you think if your dad had a choice about the matter, if he would want you to still have these tapes? I would say no. I would say he would say, get rid of them. He would say, life was pretty good. And sure there were rough moments, maybe quite a few of them, but overall, things have turned out pretty well. And he would say the tapes were-- no, not good to keep. Would you tape around the house? Would you ever tape in your personal life? No. You don't have recordings or videotapes of you and your husband? No, absolutely not. Because of this? I think so. Lynnette Nyman in Alabama. Act Two, this is the story of a boy who was thrown into the concentration camps when he was three, lost his parents. And although he survived the war, he was so young when it ended that he couldn't remember his parents and wasn't sure of his own last name. He was adopted by a Swiss family, raised in Switzerland. His family gave him a German name. He was haunted by the past. When he saw a picture of William Tell in school, he thought it was an SS officer shooting a little kid. The apple on the kid's head just made it extra cruel. In his 40's, he started to search for clues about who we was. He thought his real name might be Binjamin Wilkomirski from Riga. Last year, he published a book about his search called Fragments. In New York, writer Blake Eskin and his mother got their hands on the book. It turns out that Wilkomirski is a pretty unusual name. All the Wilkomirskis seem to descend from one town in Lithuania called Wilkomir. Some Wilkomirskis came to America, changed their name to Wilbur, married into other names. Blake and his mother are Wilburs descended from Wilkomirskis. When Binjamin Wilkomirski came to the States on a speaking tour sponsored by the Holocaust Museum, they got together with him to figure out the past. It's the Sunday afternoon before Rosh Hashanah, the holiday marking the Jewish new year, and my parents' apartment is full of Wilburs. It's mostly the Frum side of the family, the religious side. The men were yarmulkes, the women long sleeves. Binjamin Wilkomirski arrived a half hour late with his wife and his handlers from the Holocaust Museum. He didn't look like a Wilbur to me, but then again, he didn't look like anyone I'd ever met before. He was wearing a yellow shirt. His light brown hair was styled into a curly, puffy Jewfro and he had extra-long sideburns that didn't quite meet at his chin. The hairdo and the paisley scarf knotted around his neck tagged him as bohemian. He wreaked of stale cigarettes. There's a big turnout. Binjamin brought the Wilburs together in a way tradition and ritual have failed to do. The religious and secular sides of my family have very little contact. Bar Mitzvahs and weddings are too expensive to invite everyone. Funerals too sudden for everyone to drive or fly in. And the American style family reunion, with printed t-shirts and picnic coolers and tubs of macaroni salad, is simply unthinkable. But an audience with a Holocaust survivor who is both a family mystery and a minor celebrity is well worth the hassle of finding a parking spot in Manhattan on a Sunday afternoon. At first, nobody knew what to do. Binjamin seemed affable, but also tired and a bit bewildered. After everyone introduced themselves, a couple of Wilburs approached him. They were carrying Ziploc bags, and in the bags were copies of Binjmain's book. They asked him for autographs. I felt embarrassed and worried about what Binjamin thought of us. But he signed their books as he would for any stranger. My relatives thanked him and sealed the books back in the Ziploc bags. Things had started on the wrong foot. My mother decided to intervene. She sat Binjamin down next to my aunt Miriam. Miriam, who was wearing a smart purple suit and a lavender and white turban, is the matriarch of the orthodox wing of the family. She and her two brothers are the only living Wilburs who were born in Riga, where Binjamin thinks he came from. Miriam arrived in America in 1929, when she was 18 years old. This is after the war, my mother, two brothers and me. And that's my husband. At a small folding table, Miriam flips the pages of her tattered photo album, a high school graduation gift from her teachers back in Riga. My mother and I are hoping that one of the photographs will jog Binjamin's memory like a mug shot. Binjamin's memory is patchy, but Miriam remembers the past, She is in her late 80's, old enough to remember the Jewish refugees who fled to Riga during the First World War. It was so awful. Somebody came and killed. The streets were filled with dead people. I remember. That's life. What can you do? All right, going back here. Oh, here is the picture with what they think is the Avram. This Avram is the uncle. Avram, Miriam's uncle, was the only Wilkomirski brother who remained in Riga. He is the number one candidate for missing link between Binjamin and the Wilburs. Avram could be Binjamin's uncle, or maybe even his father. Miriam is pretty sure, however, that Avram had only one son. His picture is in the scrapbook. That boy would have been 10 years older than Binjamin. On the other hand, it's possible that the family in America might not have known about other children because it was difficult to communicate with Riga in the late '30's. So who of your family finally remained in Riga during the war? During the war? Just Avram. Just and his family? Avram's children, that's-- Do you remember their names? No? The more I learn about Binjamin, the less I believe we're related. Binjamin was separated from his family when he was two or three years old. He doesn't know exactly how old he was because he doesn't know when he was born, or where he was born, or even what his real name is. The only way he knows anything about who he is, is that on his way from Auschwitz to an orphanage after the war ended, a woman saw him and told him he was Binjamin Wilkomirski from Riga. Binjamin tells me that recently, when he visited Riga, he stood on the spot in the ghetto where he remembers the Nazis murdered his father. Or maybe it was his uncle. He's not sure. I believe Binjamin when he says he remembers, but part of me thinks he's been looking for the place where his memory happened for so long, and he's read so much about Riga, that he subconsciously willed himself into finding it. For that matter, I'm not fully convinced that half a century later, he can honestly remember what some lady told him his name was. Or if he does remember correctly, that she even knew his real name to begin with. One of the ironies of this situation is that Binjamin has invested years of his life in finding out who he is, and he still doesn't know. But he has learned a lot about who we are. He knows all about the Wilkomirskis, where they lived and where they came from. Binjamin has found other Wilkomirskis in Poland and Lithuania. In a register from the Vilna ghetto, Binjamin found a Sonya Wilkomirski. He asks if we've ever heard of Sonya, if she's a relative. Miriam says no, firmly, but everyone else in the room is looking for a way to make the answer yes. Maybe like a nickname? Sonya? All through the afternoon, people keep saying Binjamin has the Wilbur face. They say he looks like Miriam's brother, Haymi, that he looks a little like my cousin Steven, that he looks like me. Everyone has their theory. Among things one doesn't normally look at that I do is the shape of the nostrils. That's my mother. She's an amateur sculptor. Because they're very distinctive. They're similar, but not that close. The overall look, yes. I do think there is a resemblance. Sitting in my parents' living room, Binjamin seems oddly uninterested in what is potentially his long lost family. His attention to Miriam's photo album comes and goes, and he doesn't ask any questions about us. I'm not sure why he's so detached. It could be fatigue or shyness, or maybe his weariness of getting entangled with us. In the end, Binjamin tells me he's sure we're family, though he isn't too concerned about where he fits on the Wilbur family tree. All the Wilkomirskis are somehow connected. I'm absolutely sure, but maybe you have to go far back. But you see, at the end, the humans feelings are much more important than to know how, are you related in the second or third or fourth generation back or so. After Binjamin and the Wilburs left my parents' house, there were five of us left-- me, my mother and father, my mother's cousin Susan and her husband. We talked about why so many Wilburs had showed up, and why they seemed so interested in Binjamin. On one level, the Wilburs were seeking the same thing Binjamin was, a key to the past. For most American families, anything that happened before the boat landed is a blur. The Wilburs are an American invention, and Binjamin, if he is one of us, can show the Wilburs what we were before we got to Ellis Island. Susan flew in from Southern California just to meet Binjamin. She said that knowing he was a member of the family would give her, as she put it, "a sense of roots." One person who doesn't need a sense of roots is Miriam, with her memories of Riga, her religious rituals and her 35 great grandchildren. Perhaps that was why she seemed the most skeptical that Binjamin Wilkomirski was one of us. Blake Eskin's story of Binjamin Wilkomirski continues. Also a story from David Sedaris. That's all in a minute, from Public Radio International, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's program, Haunted, not by the supernatural, but by other people and reality and the past. We're in the middle of Blake Eskin's account of a man who may be a long lost relative of his. Or it might not be. The next day, Binjamin was the guest of honor at a $150 a plate luncheon at the Carlyle, a ritzy hotel on the Upper East side that John F. Kennedy used to use as a sex pad. The Holocaust Museum comped our family an entire table, and ten Wilburs showed up. This was a different bunch of Wilburs than at my parents house the day before. No orthodox Wilburs came. The food wasn't kosher enough. These Wilburs were on the assimilated end of the spectrum, people I know pretty well. How are you doing, mom? Sorry. I've got my mouth full I'll talk to you in a minute. I can't remember the last time everybody got together in Manhattan. It was probably at your Bar Mitzvah or Deborah's Bat Mitzvah. Probably Deborah's Bat Mitzvah. There's a cocktail hour before lunch. Some of my relatives haven't even met Binjamin yet, but they're already willing to accept him into the family. Whether or not he is related, it somehow seems immaterial. This is a contemporary, a cousin, let's say. I mean that's the way I feel about it. And if he's not a cousin, we make him a cousin. Everyone is willing to embrace Binjamin as a family member without any proof. And all of them are feeling a new-found closeness to the Holocaust. They all say, it could have been me. After an asparagus appetizer and a salmon entree, the MC of the luncheon, a major donor to the Holocaust Museum, gets up and introduces Binjamin. He doesn't need any proof either. It is my pleasure to welcome you today to today's very special luncheon. Before I continue, I'd like to acknowledge just a couple people in the room. Our author, Mr. Wilkomirski's family is all here, and they're sitting at table 11. It bothers me that we are introduced as family without any qualification. I start to get upset. I won't fudge my family history for a lousy three-course lunch. But my mother calms me down. If it helps the Holocaust Museum to call us his newly discovered family, that's fine with me. So you don't feel like we need to get up and correct the record? Absolutely not. I think it's helpful to the museum and possibly to Binjamin to say his family is here and to tell a story that we discovered each other. Over the next week, we get to know Binjamin and his wife, Farina, a little better. My parents take them for a dim sum breakfast in Chinatown and a walk through lower Manhattan. Binjamin and Farina invite me to dinner. We have a good time. The hesitation and awkwardness of our first meeting is gone. After dinner, Farina goes to their room, and Binjamin and I sit down in the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria. You've helped us learn a lot about our family. And I mean thank you for that. Because I am very happy that your reaction was so positive. And when I got the first letter by [UNINTELLIGIBLE], though you can't imagine how excited I was. I really was jumping from excitement. I ask Binjamin if he has considered taking a DNA test with us to determine if we're really family. Binjamin says he's not interested. He says that if we're distant relatives, the test might not tell us anything. And then he tells me a story about the man he calls Father Yaakov. A woman who saw Binjamin's picture on television called him up to say that he looked exactly like her nephew, who she thought had died in the Holocaust. She said the father of this boy had survived and was living in Israel. Binjamin called the man in Israel and discovered that they had some memories in common. They decided to take a DNA test. It took about four weeks for the test results to arrive. For me it was very strange. I realized suddenly that during all the last decades, I never thought that I had a father. I was always completely fixed on the idea that I must try to somehow recreate the picture of the moment in [UNINTELLIGIBLE] People told me, that's your mother. I was always thinking of that. And in a way, that blocked me completely. I never thought about a father. A week before the test results arrived, this man calls Binjamin. He said he has still a father's love toward his son. He could never live. He has still this to give. And I'm looking for somebody like a father. And he just offers to be for me like a father and even ready to accept that he will receive me at his home. So we went to his home, and we met his family. The test results were negative. But Father Yaakov, a pious man in his 80's, helped Binjamin resolve something that had tormented him since the concentration camps. And so, half a year later, I called him. I talked to him on the telephone. And then I said I wished to come alone for half a week or a week to see you. You said you will always be ready to give me advice. And he said, "Of course you can come. My house is open." As a boy in the camps, Binjamin had done something that led to the death of another boy, and he felt guilty. Yaakov told him he didn't have to. In the moment when that happened, I was maybe four and a half or five years old. I had the feeling that I'm doing something that's not right. And I thought the real guilt and the responsibility starts in the moment when you're conscious of it. But he explained that the Holocaust says that a child cannot be responsible for that unless the child learned about the law. That was very important for my inner peace. Binjamin calls Father Yaakov every Friday morning, and they visit one another four or five times a year. Maybe we'll keep in touch with Binjamin too. I hope we do. Binjamin is haunted by his past and the uncertainty surrounding who he is in a way that my family can never be. But since he left, I feel more haunted by the present. I keep thinking about what might have become of me if my great grandmother hadn't left Riga when she did. If I had been born at all, I might have ended up as an orthodox Jew in Brooklyn, or an unemployed engineer in Tel Aviv, or a Moscow mafioso with a gold tooth. One of the luxuries of melting into the American mainstream is not having to think about where you came from, or what might have happened if you'd stayed there. You can ignore your past most of the time, but every once in a while, it comes back to haunt you. Blake Eskin first wrote about Binjamin Wilkomirski in The Forward. Wilkomirski's book is called Fragments. It's published by Shocken Books. Act Three, Ashes. We can be haunted by others, or we can be haunted by the way that we behaved ourselves. This is a story of both kinds of haunting. Several years ago, three weeks before his sister Lisa's wedding, David Sedaris got a phone call from his mom back home in Raleigh, North Carolina. She had lung cancer. She was a lifelong, unrepentant smoker. My sister Amy was with me when my mother called. We passed the phone back and forth across my tiny New York kitchen, and then spent the rest of the evening lying in bed, trying to convince each other that our mother would get better, but never quite believing it. I'd heard of people who had survived cancer, but most of them claimed to get through it with the aid of whole grains and spiritual publications that encourage them to sit quietly in a lotus position. They envisioned their tumors and tried to reason with them. Our mother was not the type to greet the dawn or cook with oats and barley. She didn't reason. She threatened. And if that didn't work, she chose to ignore the problem. We couldn't picture her joining a support group or trotting through the mall in a warm-up suit. 62 years old, and none of us had ever seen her in a pair of slacks. I'm not certain why, but it seemed to me that a person needed a pair of pants in order to defeat cancer. Just as important, they needed a plan. They needed to accept the idea of a new and different future free of crowded ashtrays and five gallon jugs of wine and scotch. They needed to believe that such a life might be worth living. I didn't know that I'd be able to embrace such an unrewarding future, but I hoped that she could. If she'd had it her way, we would've never known about the cancer. It was our father's idea to tell us, and she had fought it, agreeing only when he threatened to tell us himself. Our mother worried that once we found out, we would treat her differently, delicately. We might feel obliged to compliment her cooking and laugh at all of her jokes, thinking always of the tumor she was trying so hard to forget. And that is exactly what we did. The knowledge of her illness forced everything into the spotlight and demanded that it be memorable. We were no longer calling our mother. Now, we were picking up the telephone to call our mother with cancer. We realized that any conversation might be our last, and because of that, we wanted to say something important. But what could one say that hadn't already been printed on millions of greeting cards and helium balloons? "I love you," I said at the end of one of our late night phone calls. "I am going to pretend that I didn't hear that," she said. I heard a match strike in the background, the tinkling of ice cubes in a raised glass, and then she hung up. I had never said such a thing to my mother, and if I had it to do over again, I would probably take it back. It was queer to say such a thing to someone unless you were trying to talk them out of money or into bed. Our mother had taught us this when we were no taller than pony kegs. I had known people who said such things to their parents, "I love you." But it always translated to mean, "I'd love getting off the phone with you." We gathered together for the wedding, which took place on a crisp, clear October afternoon. I took my mother's arm and led her to a bench beyond the range of the other guests. The thin mountain air made it difficult for her to breathe, and she moved slowly, pausing every few moments. The families had taken a walk to a nearby glen, and we sat in the shade, eating sausage biscuits and speaking to one another like well-mannered strangers. "The sausage is good," she said. "It's flavorful, but not too greasy." "Not too greasy at all. Still though, it isn't dry." "Neither are the biscuits," she said. "They're light and crisp, very buttery." "Very. These are some very buttery biscuits, They're flaky, but not too flaky. Not too flaky at all," she said. We watched the path, awkwardly waiting for someone to release us from the torture of our stiff and meaningless conversation. I'd always been afraid of sick people and so had my mother. I think it was their fortitude that frightened us. Sick people reminded us not of what we had, but of what we lacked. Everything we said sounded petty and insignificant. Our complaints paled in the face of theirs and without our complaints, there was nothing to say. My mother and I had been fine over the telephone, but now, face to face, the rules had changed. If she were to complain, she risked being seen as a sick complainer, the worst kind of all. If I were to do it, I might come off sounding even more selfish than I actually was. This sudden turn of events had robbed us of our common language, leaving us to exchange the same innocuous pleasantries we'd always made fun of. I wanted to stop it, and so, I think, did she. But neither of us knew how. After the gifts had been opened, we returned to our rooms at the Econo Lodge, the reservations having been made by my father. We looked out the windows, past the freeway and into the distance, squinting at the charming hotels huddled at the base of other, finer mountains. This would be the last time our family was all together. It's so rare when one knowingly does something for the last time, the last time you take a bath, the last time you have sex or trim your toenails. If you knew you'd never do it again, it might be nice to really make a show of it. This would be it as far as my family was concerned. And it ticked me off that our final meeting would take place in such a sorry excuse for a hotel. "What more do you want out of a hotel?" he shouted, stepping out onto the patio in his underpants. "It's clean. They've got a couple of snack machines In the lobby. The TV's working. It's near the interstate. Who cares if you don't like the damn wallpaper. You know what your problem is, don't you?" "We're spoiled," we shouted in unison. My parents retired to their room, and the rest of us hiked to a nearby cemetery, a once ideal spot that now afforded an excellent view of the newly built Pizza Hut. Over the years, our mother had repeatedly voiced her desire to be cremated. We would drive past a small forest fire or observe the pillars of smoke rising from a neighbor's chimney, and she would crush her cigarette saying, "That's what I want right there. Do whatever you like with the remains. Sprinkle them into the ash trays of a fine hotel. Give them to smartass children for Christmas. Hand them over to the Catholics to rub into their foreheads. Just make sure I'm cremated." "Oh Sharon," my father would groan, "you don't know what you want." He'd say it as though he himself had been cremated several times in the past, but had finally wised up and accepted burial as the only sensible option. We laid our Econo Lodge bedspreads over the dewy grass of the cemetery, smoking joints and trying to imagine a life without our mother. If there was a heaven, we probably shouldn't expect to find her there. Neither did she deserve to roam the fiery tar pits of hell, surrounded for all eternity by the same [BLEEP] heads who brought us strip malls and theme restaurants. There must exist some middle ground, a place where one was tortured on a daily basis but still allowed a few moments of pleasure taken wherever they could find it. That place seemed to be Raleigh, North Carolina, so why the big fuss? Why couldn't she just stay where she was and not have cancer? Ever since arriving at the motor lodge, we'd gone back and forth from one room to another, holding secret meetings and exchanging private bits of information. We hoped that by preparing ourselves for the worst, we might be able to endure the inevitable with some degree of courage or grace. Anything we forecasted was puny compared to the future that awaited us. You can't brace yourself for famine if you've never known hunger. It is foolish even to try. The most you can do is eat up while you still can, stuffing yourself, shovelling it in with both hands and licking clean the plates, recalling every course in vivid detail. Our mother was back in her room and very much alive, probably watching a detective program on television. Maybe that was her light in the window, her figure stepping out into the patio to light a cigarette. We told ourselves she probably wanted to be left alone. That's how stoned we were. We'd think of this later, each in our own separate way. I myself tend to dwell on the stupidity of pacing a cemetery while she sat, frightened and alone, staring at the tip of her cigarette and envisioning herself, clearly now, in ashes. David Sedaris's story, "Ashes," is from his book, Naked. His latest book is called Holidays On Ice. He was recorded by Time Warner Audio Books. Act Four, Ghost Story. Well, we figured we couldn't do a show about people who were haunted without at least one old-fashioned ghost story. This one is a very contemporary one. It's actually an excerpt from Heather Woodbury's amazing, eight hour, solo stage play, WhatEver. The play is this sprawling, epic story. Woodbury plays ten fully-developed characters and over 100 minor ones. We're just going to hear a tiny fragment of this thing here. Here is the set up. A character named Clove is at a rave party on a beach, goes out in the water, goes under, start to drown. People think it's a suicide. Then, somehow, she wakes up in a Brussels sprouts field. This is a few scenes later. Hannah, could you put Sable on the phone? Hannah, Sable. Your big sister Sable. Give me Sable. Children, egg me to such excess at times. Sable? Yeah, it's Clove. Hi, yeah, yeah. No, I'm all right. Are you in trouble? Ugh, I'm sorry. What's that humming sound on the line? Oh, your parents are chanting. I'm so relieved my parents aren't Buddhists. Are they all agged and stuff about me drowning at the rave and getting arrested and like that? Your parents are so overly righteous or something at times. I'm not sure. It doesn't matter. Forget it. It's too dull. Never mind. Anyway, no my parents are calm. They were all indignant that I talked to the state troopers and didn't go all silent and recite my rights and stuff. But they didn't get hectic about, "Don't take drugs like we did. LSD almost ruined our marriage." Blah blah blah. Yeah, they were non-typically all quiet. I think my mom is spazzed that I'm a teen suicide risk or something. No, Sable, is this you? No, I was just being all excessive in the water under the moonlight. It's like the moon was making this crescent cookie shape, cutting cookies in the back of my head even though I was looking the other way. And the crabs were talking to me. It doesn't matter. Never mind, it's too complex. I can't. Well, yeah, yeah, I was with that dude, Skitter. No? Oh yeah, Skeeter. Well, yeah. We were by the cave by that dead sea lion or walrus, whatever. Do you think he's flaccid and weak, or do you think he's rad? Right on. I'm so relieved. Yeah, well we got slithery. Yeah, that's when I went to the waves, to wash his protein shake off my hand. My hand. Sable, I didn't like him that much. So do you really want to hear what happened? You promise you won't think I'm all Juliette Lewis? All right, I go to the waves, and the ocean started talking or singing to me. It's like the ocean was this green spreading gown and it was pulling me in it. And then these crabs were biting my toes. That's how they communicate. Yeah, they were telling me all these rad things. Oh yeah, you should see my toes. They are retchedly butchered. It's gruesome to excess. But anyway, the crabs were pulling my toes and teaching me how to dance this crazy turning pattern for the moon. And then I could live under the waves and give the ocean something back for us destroying it, like me for the sea lion, a life for a life. I know. I thought you said you-- yeah. Isn't it raging? Yeah. So I guess I was far out on the rocks. And the waves were slashing all about me. And I see this seahorse man crashing and raging way out in the middle of it. And I-- Sable, girl dude, he was excessively real. Do you believe me? Rad. And then Skitter, oh yeah, I mean Skeeter, was calling to me. And I don't know what I answered, but I jumped in. And the next thing I knew, I was swirling around in the waves, and then I see this white, white dude. And he's pushing the seahorse man back under the waves, and he's pulling back the dress of the waves to keep it from going over my neck. And then he floats across the ocean to me, and he says, "This is way [BLEEP]." And he leads me down underwater over these underwater mountains into this underwater valley where there's this underwater farm. But it turned out later-- the state troopers told me-- that I had gotten in this cave and crawled over these rocks up a cliff and across the road to the Brussels sprouts farm where they arrested me. So this way pale dude leaves me there. And Sable, this is fiendishly odd. Don't spazz. He goes-- he's all, "Don't tell people you saw me." And I'm all, "Who are you anyway?" Sable, promise not to tell anyone. Thou, right on. He's all, "I'm Cobain the friendly ghost." I'm being excessively real. This was totally realistic. I was all, whoa, Kurt. I know. I know. We don't even like Nirvana. Well, In Utero is a good album. It is. Never mind. No, I mean never mind, not Nevermind. Anyway, never mind. Yeah, isn't it raging? Who's that? What in the devil? Who's there? What is it? Eliot? Is that you? You frightened me. No, it's not Eliot, is it? But you are a ghost, aren't you? I thought you might been my last husband, dear. Who are you? Coltrane? Coltrane the friendly ghost? Well, I'm awfully glad you're friendly dear, but you don't look a thing like Mr. Coltrane. I saw him play many, many times you know. And I'd say you're awfully pale, even for a ghost, if you're John Coltrane. What is it dear? What's that? Co-bin? Co-bin? Kurt Co-bin? Who knows. Well, Kurt Cobain wanders around haunting various characters throughout Heather Woodbury's WhatEver. The eight-hour version will be touring the United States in 1998. Her director, Dudley Saunders, has also produced an eight-hour radio play of the epic solo show from which this was excerpted. Well, our program was produced today by Nancy Updike and myself, with Alix Spiegel and Julie Snyder. Senior editor Paul Tough. Contributing editors Jack Hit, Margie Rockland and consigliere Sarah Vowell. Production help from Alex Blumberg and Rachel Howard. To buy a cassette of this program, call us here at WBEZ in Chicago, 312-832-3380. 312-832-3380. Our email address, [email protected] This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia who says every week after our show-- One's enough for me baby. I'll never go through it again. I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life. PRI, Public Radio International.
|
Like a lot of high schools, it had a social structure like the Balkans during the Yugoslav civil war, totally divided. It was jocks, stoners, and farmers, each with their own native dress, each with their own customs and traditions, each with their own music. The jocks listened to classic rock, the farmers to country music, the stoner kids to hard core. The only band they all agreed on? Metallica. Metallica was kind of big. Metallica is one of the few groups that can bring people together. That's right. That's right. It knows no boundaries. It knows no boundaries. The place, Menomonie, Wisconsin, a small town an hour east of St. Paul. Our guide, a resident who has chosen to appear here under the name Jim Steel. The situation, a night toward the end of the school year when jocks, stoners, and farmers are together, getting along, no conflicts. Jim and some stoners even convince a farmer kid named Chad Richter to smoke pot for the first time. We're hanging out. And then we decide to go to this party. It's at a place called The Pole Shed. It's about 10 miles out of town, way out in the country. And really, it's just a machine shed for storing farm equipment. I'm not even sure who owned the property. So we pull in. There's about five of us in the car. And we're feeling pretty good, looking forward to more beer and hanging out on a slow Friday in Menomonie. And Chad Richter, the guy that had smoked dope for the first time that night, gets out there. A few minutes pass, and we're just hanging out, milling around, talking. I don't think there's even music out in the middle of the country, just hanging out by the shed. And all of a sudden, we start to notice there's something going on back in the gravel driveway. It's this guy, Brady Henderson, who's Chad Richter's best friend. And Brady, he was an all-state wrestler, a really, really small kid, but wiry, and tough, and pretty mean. And he's in Chad's face, just shoving him and getting angry with him. And so people start congregating, like it always happens. And the next thing I see is Brady Hanson does some crazy move, just tackles Chad, brings him right down to the gravel and punches him right in the face, twice, hard, right to the face. And he grabs him by the shirt. He's shaking him. I'm still like, what is going on? These guys are best friends. And Brady screams at Chad. He says, "Chad, you're a farmer. Farmers don't smoke pot. We drink beer." This is what happens if you violate the rules of your own social group. This is what happens if insiders suddenly see you as an outsider. And I don't think Chad ever smoked marijuana again after that. Well, from WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it is This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, invite a variety of different kinds of writers and reporters and performers to bring you stories on that theme. Today's program, One Of Us. How you get included, how you get kicked out of any group you can name. Act One today, My Crap Life. We're going to start at the moment in American life when the division between outsiders and insiders is usually the most intense, high school. When the wrong haircut can change everything. Act Two, My Work Life. The story of one public radio reporter who goes down to tell a very public-radio-style story about regular working Joes down Louisiana way. And what happens when the working Joes decide that he is not just an outsider, but, in fact, is out to destroy them. And how he ends up hanging off the side of a freighter in the middle of the night, worried for his life. Act Three, My Church Life. Writer Susan Bergman finds herself, somehow, named one of the top young Christians in America and wonders if she wants to be part of the group. And what happens when she visits with the other top young Christians. Stay with us. Act One, My Crap Life. There's this beautiful old cemetery near my home here in Chicago called Graceland Cemetery. And not long ago, when the weather was still nice, I was wandering around there with a friend. It was a pretty day. And we were talking about this and that. And got to talk about the cemetery, and death, and where our bodies would end up, a very cheerful fall conversation. And somehow, in this conversation, I realized suddenly, if I should die, if I die suddenly, my parents would collect my body and take it back to Baltimore, a place that I have spent-- no offense-- a place that I have spent my entire life trying to run from. And that is where I would spend eternity. But anyway, your family makes claims on you. And for many people, for most people, I think, the time of life when the claim is the greatest, other than when you try to throw a wedding, is adolescence. They want you to act like them. And you want to act like some other group, a group that may not even accept you as one of their own. We have this story from Tim Melley. He looks up and says, me and my brother are getting a haircut on the front porch after dessert. Three days before summer and he's going to cut our hair. I ask him, "Can't we wait until school's over?" "No," he says, "we can't." I say, "Please." And he says, "No, tonight's the night." I say, "Dad, can't we just wait three days?" And he says, "What difference does it make?" I say, "It makes a big difference." He says, "Why?" "Because." "Because why?" "Because it does." My little crap brother says, "Oooh, you got a girlfriend. You got a girlfriend." I say, "No, I don't." "Oooh," he says, "you got a girlfriend. You got a girlfriend. He's got a girlfriend. He's got a girlfriend." "Shut up, butt hole," I say. They're laughing now, even my sister, who's too small to get it. "Oh ho," says my father, "so that's it. Well." "It is not," I say. "I just don't want to look like a loser with one of your army cuts." "Well," he says, and he's smiling, "if you've got a girlfriend, why don't you tell us who she is?" "I don't," I say, "I don't." But my throat's lumping up. I never had a girlfriend. My mother says, "Don't let them get to you. Just laugh it off." But my father says, "You better not start your goddamn crying, for Christ's sake." My eyes fill. My brother is laughing and whooping. "God almighty," my father says, "I have never seen such a goddamn sissy in my life." I say, "Oh, yeah? Well, Charlie D'Amato said it was OK to cry." And my father says, "Who's he?" And I say, "My French teacher." And he says, "He lets you call him Charlie? What is he, new?" And I say, "Yes, he is. And he's excellent." And my father says, "Yeah, well, he sounds like a classic fruit to me." And I say, "You don't even know him. You don't even know anything about me. You don't even care." I could hear my loser voice lumping up on me, and my eyes filling again. So I got up and went to my room. I could hear them laughing behind my back. I slammed my door. I lay on the bed and plugged my ears and listened to my heart beating. I could still feel them pressing down on me like deep water, trying to make me nothing. I got my black comb out of my back pocket, which was not my comb, but Chris Sanford's, who gave it to me because I lost mine. I combed my hair right down over my eyes, where my dad hated it. I got to thinking about his gun. I knew where it was. I had held it, black and heavy in my hand before. I could go right back down there and get them all on their knees, crying and bawling themselves, begging me not to do something stupid. I had worked it all out plenty of times. My dad would have to say, "We are sorry, son. It's our fault." I'd make him say it again, twice. But still, I'd wave the gun all around at them like a lunatic. I'd say, "I don't think you're sorry enough for what you did." Then I'd go in the living room and pretend to blow my head off, put a slug right through the floor. That would be pretty sweet, watching them run in, wide-eyed and wailing. I saw myself in the mirror, smiling about it. Then I remembered the haircut and got to thinking again. What if Holly Heyward invited me to her end-of-the-year party? What if I get a note in my locker with hearts from Holly Heyward, and it says, come to her party? What if one of her friends at lunch says, "Holly likes you. She wants you to come to her party." I couldn't go to a party like that with one of my dad's haircuts, no way, no how. Plus, I couldn't smoke for squat yet. I had taken four puffs of Mrs. Beech's ragged, lipstick-covered cigarette butt in her kitchen, where I fed her dog. I was coughing like a pussy. "You can't go to a party if you can't take a good hit," says Chris Sanford. Then I get to thinking about it again, lying there. I was sitting next to Chris when it happened, The Holly Incident. Sanford and I are in every class together. He has long hair and silky-like shirts with very intense patterns that my mother will never get me because they give you bad B.O., according to her. Chris Sanford's name is written on desks with heart-shaped vowels. Girls gives me notes for him. The Holly Incident happened in English. Miss Rothstein was talking like a robot. She was saying, "As flies to the wanton gods," saying, "Two roads diverged on a darkling plain," blah, blah. "The wine-dark sea was going over some crazy cliff," blah, blah, blah. Sanford and I were in the back row because in our English class, there are no major back-rowers of the type who will hang in the bathrooms and stick your head down the toilet or set fire to your hair if you look at them. Miss Rothstein was talking. But we were looking out the window to the hill, where kids go to smoke drugs because Fleagle, the big-butt principal, can't get up the hill fast enough. And Holly Heyward was coming down the hill with Ingrid Bentley, the two of them laughing, faded T-shirts and tight blue jeans, flicking their blond hair back until they went out of sight below. My brain was veering off course. Miss Rothstein said, "Chris, would you like to tell us what Bartleby likes to say?" And Chris said, "I'd prefer not to." And Miss Rothstein beamed at him like Mrs. Cleaver. The dude was so smart. A minute later, Holly and Ingrid walked past our classroom windows and waved at Chris. I was between Chris and the window, so they could have been waving at me. But I only smiled back, since the dumbest thing you can do, besides having to go to the blackboard with a boner, is wave back at someone who is waving at the person behind you. Holly's cheeks were bright red with something. Miss Rothstein was talking blah, blah about the meaning of silence and didn't see Holly and Ingrid laughing and making hand signs at Chris, didn't see me in the middle, tipping back against the wall in my chair, trying not to let the legs slip out from under since that is also bone-headed in the extreme. Holly stuck her laughing head in the back window and said, in her throaty voice, "Hey." She looked over toward Miss Rothstein, who was still blah, blah, blahing, and said, "Hey, Chris, who's your friend? He's cute." The sky was pale blue, and her cheeks red, and her hair wispy blond, and she said, "Hey, Chris, who's your friend? He's cute." Tall Holly, swaying, smiling, playing hooky, and probably stoned. I was looking at my desk, thinking, "Do something. Do something. Do something." Then Sanford held up his notebook with my name in big letters. And I turned back to see them gone. Leaving class, Miss Rothstein gave Chris her toothpaste smile. And we floated into the corridor swarm, everything moving away slow like we were on a new planet. The floors were all tilted, and I had to lean with the slope a bit just to walk upright. He was coming to get me. I could hear him thumping up the stairs to my room. The door opened. He said, "Get downstairs and eat your dinner." I didn't get up. I was starving. He stared at me like to say he was going to put me through the wall again, so I sat up. I swung my feet to the floor and sat on the edge of the bed. I looked right at him, thinking, "I am so sick of his crap every day." He said, "What the hell's the matter with you, anyway?" I said, "Nothing. What's the matter with you?" But I said the second part real quiet. "What's that, smart guy?" He said, his lip coming up in the corner. He looked at me some more that way, but I wouldn't say. He said, "I'm going to cut your brother's hair first. I better not have to come back up here and get you." He left, and I lay back down on the bed. I heard the porch door open and shut, open and shut, open and shut. And then I could hear the whine of the clippers. I thought, "I'll jerk my head and make him cut my ear off like Picasso. That would be sweet, him dropping to his knees, blubbering how he never meant to hurt me so bad." I could already see it. I'd have a pale white skull, my hair sticking up so short. I was thinking the places I could go free period to avoid haircut jokes and Holly. All I wanted was one of those laughs when I said something to her, slow motion, head back, hair floating through space, everything layered under it, the other guys looking at me, everything rolling under me like the sea. I couldn't go to Holly's party now. But at least The Ricky Kenickie Problem was solved. At least I wouldn't get killed at the party in a repeat of The Bathroom Incident, me standing there, saying nothing, fumbling with my zipper, and having trouble whizzing all because we were in there alone mid-period. And Kenickie said, "What are you doing, faggot? Beating off in there? Hey, fatso? You beating it?" His gang had cut a kid up in the locker room. And he beat a kid half to death in the crappers one day. And he was looking at me twisted. I had never seen his bad skin up so close before. I should have said, "Yeah, I'm taking a whiz. What's it to you, gear head?" and just let him kill my butt. I coulda turned, and whizzed on him, and said "That answer your question, clutch mouth?" instead of swallowing and getting all clenched up with stage fright, so that he could finish first, zip up, and thump me in the back of the head, and say, "Well, I asked what you're doing, faggot." I should have spin dropped, and shoulder kicked him right in the face, and then pulled my dad's piece on him, and said, "How about I blow a big chunk of your brain right through the wall, butt wipe?" instead of letting him smack my head again and say, "You come in here again, and I'll kick your ass." And being so shook up that now I only use the faculty bathrooms and do a special swimming class with Ted Ludwig so I don't have to use the regular locker room. My mother called my name. I waited a bit, then got up and went downstairs. My father looked through the screen door at my mother, and they smiled smug little smiles at each other. And I put my head down and ate as fast as I could. When my brother was done, he came in looking retarded and gloating at me. He got my sister to sing with him, "Hey, tubby tuba, why don't you cry, why don't you cry, why don't you cry?" A special song just for me. My mother said, "Now, kids." But my father allowed it, which made me almost start up with my crying again. I wasn't ashamed. That's when he really did it, got me out on the porch in front of the whole neighborhood and buzzed me good with grandpa's clippers. He buzzed me real good. I just sat there, stony-faced, and let him do it. The clumps of hair fell on my lap and down onto the concrete porch. I clamped my teeth together and stared at my father when he got in front of me to look at my hair and try to make it level. He'd raise the clippers to try to cut a straight line, but his hands would shake like grandpa's. And I'd jerk my head just a little, so he'd get it wrong. But he couldn't admit he'd cut it wrong, so he'd go and do some little crap with the clippers as if there was more to be done. And then he'd come back to the front again and look at it like he was really going to do it. And I'd jerk it again. And after a while, the front wasn't an issue because it was gone. "All right," he said, "there you go." "Thanks a lot," I said, "great job." He grabbed my shirt. "You better watch your goddamned mouth," he said. "You've got no appreciation for anything your mother and I do around here." I made my face go blank 'til he let go. Then I went upstairs. My scalp looked like a giant fish belly in my mirror. I got to thinking about how to get out of school. But then I'd flunk my finals, and he'd wail me good for that. The next day was third-period lunch, and Holly would stop on the balcony to talk to Chris and me before going up the hill to hang out with Kenickie's people. Everything was pretty much wrecked. I was lying there for a long time. And eventually, I got an idea how to get them all back. I would set my alarm for 3:00 AM. I would go into the basement and get grandpa's clippers. In the dead of night, I would take the rest of my hair off, take it right down to the bone, and make it like sandpaper. In the morning, I could just see it. My brother's eyes would be out of his head. "Whoa," he'd say, "radical." I would stare at him with an ugly look. My mother would walk into the kitchen and say, "Oh my god, oh my god, what happened?" I wouldn't say a word. My dad would be grinding his molars, seeing his handiwork down the tube. "Whoo-hee," my brother would say, "holy geez, whoo-hee." My mother would follow me around and say, "Do you want to talk? This isn't like you. What's happened to you? You're frightening us." I'd walk to the door and shut it behind me. I wouldn't be going on the bus. I would have all my money and my dad's piece in my pocket. And I would not be going on the bus. I woke up. It was morning. My father's head was in the door. "Get up," he said, "you're going to miss school." My mom called up about the bus coming. I waited, then got up and went downstairs. My brother said, "Later, buzzy," and hid behind her, so I couldn't thump him. On the bus, the older kids were pinging the back of my head, making lawn mower and army and male pattern baldness jokes. I could hear them in the back. I was trying to laugh like I thought it was funny. You couldn't say anything to kids like them. All day long, Sanford was dogging on me, rubbing my head and laughing. After a while, I didn't care so much. But at lunch, Holly came up and stood next to Sanford and me on the balcony, her long, yellow hair and throaty laugh, the smell of tobacco. My tongue was thick as steak. She was looking down on the parking lot dumpsters. I knew what she was thinking, what a total doink I was, that I must have wanted my hair this way, like I went to a barber and asked for it because it's my idea of a good haircut. Inside, she was barfing. My only chance was to explain what he did to me. I was shaking. I said, "My father cut my hair. I'm so bummed." I could hear myself talking like a spaz. She wasn't even looking. I said, "It looks like total crap. There was nothing I could do. Can you believe it? What a nightmare." She looked at me like she just realized that I was there. She said, "Huh, I didn't notice." Just like that. "Huh, I didn't notice." It hit me with a soft thud in the solar plextum. We stood there looking out over the Dumpsters, where the kids were throwing milk cartons at each other. I was fighting the feeling, but it kept getting bigger. The whole shape of life was crushing down flat into nothing. I could feel it shoving me right out of view until I was nowhere, I was so squashed. Down below, a kid got pelted with an exploding milk. It happened in a movie-ish way. Holly laughed and squeezed Chris's arm. Everyone was laughing except me. A couple of motor heads, who were hill-hauling a seventh grader to grass stain his shirt, let him go and came down to see what would happen. The milked kid was trying to smile, but you could see him swallowing. He knew he just became the kid who got hit with an exploding milk. For maybe three days, that's who he would be. He would go home tonight, and his mother would say, "Where'd you get all that mess on your shirt?" And he'd say, "It wasn't my fault. A kid threw it at me." And his father would say, "Did you punch him out?" And he'd say, "You can't just punch kids out." And the father would say, "I woulda punched his lights right out for him." And the kid would be thinking, "Sure, I bet." I was holding my teeth together. The feeling was getting bigger than me. Holly stood up tall to see over the Dumpster edge. I was a midget next to her. The exploding milk kid walked up to a little seventh grader who was laughing and said something to him. You could see the littler kid saying he didn't throw the milk and looking toward two other big kids who had been throwing milks. But the exploding milk kid was already in the little kid's face, pushing him. The milked kid's friend walked up behind the littler kid. He pulled a can out of his pocket and pointed it at him. "Whoa," Sanford said, "he's macing him. Awesome." The seventh grader walked backward, holding his face. He tripped on the curb. The milked kid pushed him all the way down and started kicking him in his face and in the stomach. "Oh my god," Holly said. She put her hand to mouth, watching. I could see her face. She was half-smiling, watching the blood pouring out of the kid's face. She grabbed Chris's arm. "This is major," Sanford said. Everyone stopped to watch. You could see Kenickie's people starting down the hill. I kept waiting for the teachers to run out and stop it before the little kid got hurt any worse. The milked kid was still kicking him. There was blood on his sneaker. The other kid wasn't moving at all or grunting like before. "Jesus," said Sanford. The milked kid kicked him one more time in the back, then stopped. He licked his lips and looked around. His friend grabbed his sleeve, and they started toward the hill. I couldn't help it. I was crying right there in front of everyone. I took a step backward and turned toward the wall. I could see Holly looking at me when I sat down. I was crying hard, and I knew Sanford and her were staring at me. But there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn't stop it anymore. Tim Melley is an associate professor of English at the mysteriously-named University of Miami of Ohio. His story, "My Crap Life," first appeared in The Sun. Well, coming up, anatomy of a public radio feature story shot to hell because an insider became an outsider. And life among the Christians. In a minute from Public Radio International when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose some theme, bring you all sorts of different stories on that theme. Today's program, One Of Us. Stories of outsiders who want to be insiders and insiders who want to be outsiders. We have arrived at Act Two of our program, in which we move from fiction to nonfiction, from adolescence to adulthood, from social life to work life. Because any workplace of any size at all has its insiders and outsiders, its own rules and codes that determine how you move from one group to another. Those rules and codes are usually very arcane, of course. It's Byzantine. At the Mercantile Exchange, for example, here in Chicago, where guys stand on the trading floor, yelling prices and bids for pork bellies and cattle options, a trader named Mike Quattrocki explained the rules of the floor to me. They include things like-- Say I'm bidding on a thing-- or I'm offering something, and someone offers it one fraction of a price better than me and gets the whole trade, that's called "carping a trade." So they carp your market. They take the whole trade. You're like, "Well, I was just a fraction of a price away. Don't I deserve something?" Technically speaking, no. You deserve nothing. Your price wasn't good enough. The best offer is the best offer. The best bid is the best bid. So they take your trade. What am I gonna do to you next time if you've stolen a trade from me? Or I perceive that you've taken this trade by carping my market? I'm gonna try and carp your market. Guys who carp markets do not stay insiders very long. Well, this next story is about two people in two different kinds of jobs with two different sets of codes. Dan Collison is a public radio reporter whose stories are usually in places like All Things Considered. He did a series where he rode across the country on a Greyhound bus, did stories about the people he met along the way. And a while back, he set out to do a kind of quintessential public radio feature story, a story about the working man. And it all fell apart, all because the working man decided, in this case, that he was not one of them. Pilottown, Louisiana, is the last town on the Mississippi River. It's about 90 miles south of New Orleans, beyond the end of the road. You have to take a boat to get there. Pilottown is built entirely on stilts in order to keep the houses above the marshy swamps. There are only 16 year-round residents of Pilottown. As the name suggests, the pilots are the reason the town exists. They are an elite group of men who climb rope ladders-- they're called Jacob's Ladders-- up the sides of massive freighters and tankers. Their job is to navigate the ships through treacherous, narrow straits, around dredges and supertankers, and over sandbars, to and from the Gulf of Mexico. It's like threading the eye of a needle. I've always wanted to be a pilot. I can remember just being awestruck by the whole idea of it. The first interviews I did were with two young apprentice pilots. This is where things began to unravel. Ever since the Pilots' Association was formed back in 1899, fathers have passed on their jobs to their sons. As a result, there's never been a pilot who was not a white male. Without any prompting, one of the apprentices informed me that this "nepotism," his word, will soon be a thing of the past. Times are changing. So hopefully, we might be one of the last groups to through here in the same process that the pilots have used for 100 years. Nepotism might be on the way out. I dutifully followed up with a couple questions. "Would there ever come a day," I asked, "when women and minorities would be admitted into the Association?" Here, I had unwittingly wandered into a hornet's nest. Turns out, the pilots are a little touchy about this. I found out later that the NAACP is threatening to file a lawsuit unless the Pilots' Association opens things up to African-Americans. It's a life that a lot of people think they might like, but wouldn't. I think you have to grow up with it. That's Gary Mott, recorded before he hated my guts. He's been a pilot for 30 years. My father was a pilot. And so was his father. I'm third generation. The morning after I interviewed him and the apprentices, Mott confronted me outside the pilots' headquarters. He's short and muscular and has piercing, dark eyes. He's not a guy you want to get angry, but that's just what he was. He had apparently talked to the apprentices about their interview and had somehow concluded that I was in Pilottown to dig up dirt. "Who do you think you are?" he screamed, "Coming down here to stir things up, calling us a white males club?" When I explained that the issue of diversity among the pilots, or the lack thereof, was not the focus of my story, and that one of the apprentices had brought up the matter of nepotism in the first place, it only made matters worse. That apprentice, it turns out, was Gary Mott's son. He stalked off, angrier than ever. From then on, every time I would walk into a room of pilots, they'd stop talking. At first, I thought I might be imagining it. But it happened each time. I ate a lot of meals by myself. When the pilots did talk to me, it was to ask when I was planning to leave. One day, in the pilot's TV lounge, I decided to break the silence. "Look, you guys have to believe me. I'm not out to make you look bad." "But we don't even know who you are," they countered. "You could be anybody." It was true. I could have been anybody. All I had was my radio gear and an old business card from a video company I had worked for until it folded. My assurances that I was a legitimate reporter fell on deaf ears. The more I tried to explain, the guiltier I seemed. Word of my incursion had reached all the way down to the pilots' outpost in the Gulf of Mexico, where the radio dispatcher, who looked like Doctor John in cut-offs and was said to practice voodoo in the French quarter, asked me if I was with the Congressional Black Caucus. What complicated things further was that my host, the pilot who had smoothed the way for my visit, a genial fellow named Mac Lincoln, was caught in the middle. He tried to vouch for me, but he couldn't promise the other pilots that I wouldn't sully their image in some way. If I portrayed them as a white males club, as they feared, Mac would take the heat. He pleaded with me on numerous occasions as a friend, man to man. "Don't touch the racial thing. Then you can come back to Pilottown." I'd come to Pilottown in the first place to let the outside world know about one of the few romantic professions left in America. Mark Twain put it this way, "A pilot was one of the only unfettered and entirely independent human beings that lived on the earth." Now these unfettered and independent human beings agreed on one thing. I'd come to destroy their way of life. I was the enemy all because of an issue I hadn't even raised. Everything was going wrong. An old pilot with lots of great tales to tell wouldn't return my phone calls. The 83-year-old postmistress of Pilottown wouldn't talk to me. And the president of the Pilots' Association even called down from New Orleans to see what I was up to. On top of that, because of some bad luck with the pilots' schedule, I had to wait several days to go out on a ship with Mac Lincoln. So while I waited, I wandered around outside and collected sound, the river lapping against the dock, the hum of ships rolling by, river birds chirping, insects buzzing. I collected hours of noises, enough to start a small sound effects library. I even tried to record some fiddler crabs scurrying back into their holes. I didn't have much else to do. Finally, I got my chance to climb aboard a ship. It was sometime after midnight. In the moonlight, I could just make out the silhouette of a giant Greek tanker plowing toward us. As we left the dock in the transport boat, I overheard on my headphones the boat operator picked up by Mac's wireless microphone. "What is he doing here? Is he gonna get on that ship?" So much for Southern hospitality. I was about to climb up the side of a huge moving tanker on a wobbly rope ladder, and I was scared. I knew how important the boat operator was to the upcoming maneuver. The ship doesn't slow down. The smaller boat has to pull up alongside it, so we can grab the ladder that's dangling over the side. It's like scaling up a giant steel wall hundreds of feet high, as it rocks back and forth. A wrong move by the boat operator and I could fall between the two vessels. A number of experienced pilots have died this way. It was ludicrous and paranoid to think about foul play, but it did cross my mind. If I fell to my death, who would know? Any clues on my audiotapes would be shredded in the ship's rudder blade. I didn't want to think what would happen to me. Be sure you don't fall off. That river's ice cold. I climb up the rope ladder, one sweaty hand over the other, shins banging against the wood slats, the river roaring below. I'm fearing for my life. Hold on. I got into radio because there are millions of people whose stories are never told. This is where you end up when some of them would rather keep it that way. Dan Collison. Act Three, My Church Life. So Susan Bergman wrote a book in which she mentioned her own Christianity. And a while after the book was published, out of the blue, she got a call from someone who told her that she had been chosen as one of the top 50 young Christians under 40, under 40 years old, that is. Making a list like this is a sort of odd publicity stunt for a major world religion. It's the kind of thing that People magazine does to boost circulation. They name the 10 best-dressed people in America or the 10 sexiest men. Something a rotary club in a middle-sized American suburb or city might do to ensure attendance at a charity dinner. It seems, I don't know, beneath Christianity. Christianity, which built Middle Europe, which has the Gospels, and the letter of Paul, and the Vatican. Susan, needless to say, did not know how to respond. This is the story of how she allowed herself to be included when this particular group of Christians pointed at her and said, "You're one of us." "You're on our list," says the woman's voice on my message machine, a freelance writer for Christianity Today. "Would there be a time I could interview you for a profile?" She calls back, this time with a deadline. "Tell me about the list," I say, immediately uncomfortable with the idea. "50 people under 40 years old, evangelical up-and-comers," she tells me. They're inviting all 50 of us to the convention of the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando. We can get to know each other there. "Is Ralph Reed on the list?" I ask. Though I call myself a Christian, I don't call myself part of the religious right. "I dare to believe," a friend says, "that when Jesus invites all who labor and are heavy-laden, he's not screening for HIV, or voting behavior, or asking whether or not someone has had a divorce, or an abortion." The woman on the other end of the line doesn't understand my hesitation. "You're not an evangelical?" she asks. "What are you, then?" "This is a pretty big question. I'll have to think about how to answer that one too. Can I call you back?" I walk out of the steamy balm of an Orlando morning into the refrigerated conference center across the street from Universal Studios. I follow the signs to registration. The lady taking names can't find mine. "Who are you with, dear?" The lady asks pleasantly. I look at her, puzzled. I'm standing there by myself. I look around for someone I might know. "Are you a pastor's wife?" she smiles, innocent of her assumptions. "I'm under 40," I hear myself say, against my will, as if offering a secret handshake. "Oh, with the group of you," she nods knowingly and types my first name only onto my badge. The main meeting of the day is already underway when I find the auditorium full of what looks to be mostly 58- to 61-year-old, liver-spotted, silver-haired men. I look around me. No wonder someone thought they needed to make a list. Among the 800 or so leaders of this loose association of 48 Protestant denominations which have gathered for their annual convention, only 30 or so look like they might have been born after 1957. At various times in the proceedings, they ask everyone on the list to stand up, so that the crowd can take a look for a moment, as if to glimpse what the future may hold. Ted Haggard, one of the people on the list, a young preacher from Colorado Springs, who pastors his church of over 6,000 members, is talking animatedly about prayer. Not only did his church decide that they would pray for every person in their city, they took out maps, and assigned districts, and organized teams broken into pairs who walked and prayed in front of the houses of the people they prayed for. When they had done this, the next year, they decided to mail out letters, letting people know they were praying with a reply card that could be sent back with a request, so that the prayer could be more relevant. Thousands of cards came back with a question, a weakness, a personal need. So they keep on praying, he says, drawing a simple diagram of the plan on an easel board. "Susan!" I hear someone call. Who knows I'm here? "David?" It's the tall, gangly kid who ran the pig roasts in college. Same guy, same shock of blond hair falling to one side, same hospitable skill set that got him his current job organizing this conference and hosting meetings of the 50 under 40 while we're in Orlando. He instantly becomes my inside source, my orienteer. "What exactly do evangelicals believe?" I want to know. "We have drafts of resolutions," he hands me a stack of papers. "One of the resolutions they're considering poses the question, does God speak in our time." I asked for a word from God once. Just one. When I prayed, I felt, as everyone must have who has tried to pray, that God was silent. I was lying face down on the floor in my office. "One word, please, God. Answer me," which is a presumptuous demand, I know, to propose, even in a gentle way, that the creator of the universe bend his lips to my ear and speak. Yet, isn't this what Elijah did, asking God to light his altar on fire after he doused it with water? It worked for Elijah. The fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. When the people saw the fire, they fell on their faces and said, "The Lord, he is God. The Lord, he is God." I believe that God still speaks in this way. On the floor in my office that day, the word that came into my head was "garden," the very word I needed at that moment. It's Bike Week at Daytona, only a short drive from here. 300,000 bikers standing around under big, old tents, I imagine, in their muscle shirts. They steam, while we freeze. They've come from all over the country, as do most conventioneers, because this is the one group, the something larger than themselves, to which they feel comfortable belonging. Some of us under 40, I imagine, are secretly thinking about checking out the bikes after lunch. There must be a uniform there, as there is here among the evangelicals. A suit and tie, affordable shoes, a presidential smile. There must be a preferred salutation. I overhear this scenario more than once when pastors who haven't seen each other for a year reacquaint themselves. They pat each other on the shoulder. "Rich, so good to see you." "Barry, how are you doing, brother?" Extended grip of right hands. "Very well, thanks. God is good. We're seeing about 900 on a Sunday morning." "Two services?" Now Rich's smile tightens. Barry nods, "Thinking about going to a third." Barry and Rich, like others of the pastors here, think of people as souls. They like to count, to speak of their success in the evangelically-correct paradigm of rising attendance on Sunday morning. One of the earthly rewards they have discovered for the hard, people-intensive jobs they have is to compare the size of their ranks and their building programs with that of their seminary roommates. Road warriors. Soldiers of Christ. What would it be like, I wonder, to combine the two conventions under one vast tent? To count the bikers and the non-bikers together? What greeting would we use? Who would more graciously welcome the other? Three o'clock, the younger folks are supposed to meet in a room together to discuss the state of Christian affairs. Tables have been pushed together. An empty glass for water, a pencil, and three index cards have been placed in front of every participant. 20 or so people sit at the table, the ones on the list who could make it. Around the edge of the room, someone has lined up chairs for those interested in observing, though not participating, it's made clear, with the group under 40. Some reporters, a publisher, organization heads line the walls. There's evidently not going to be any cross-pollination of the old with the new. Star Parker introduces herself. "I'm a former welfare mom," she says. That was then. Now she helps run a social policy research center she helped found with funds from her successful ad agency. Here's David Gushee, an ethics professor, who drafted the 1995 Southern Baptist Conference Resolution on Racial Reconciliation. Here's a couple just back from Russia, where they've spent the last four years building churches. Gradually, the list fills out with real people who lead ordinary, fascinating lives. I listen to their stories and sense the change coming in the way Christians define our role in culture. Here with her father is singer Rebecca St. James, 19 years old, described as part Mother Teresa, part Billy Graham. "Can you picture this?" she asks at her concerts. Then she tells a story reminiscent of the one in the book of Daniel, where Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego face the furnace unless they bow before idols. "Our generation has its faces in the dirt, bowing down to the idols of materialism and selfishness. But you and I are like this." She clenches her eyes, throws her head back, and reaches heavenward with outstretched arms and open palms. "We will not bow." That night after dinner, I look forward to hearing the keynote speaker, best known for a book written early in his career which is claimed to have influenced my generation of Christians, measured, naturally, in numbers of books sold. A mixed-race Florida gospel choir warms up the audience. We sing a few familiar choruses with them. All the women wear their hair big and high, as if they'd all plugged into the same electric socket. The speaker presents his version of The Sky Is Falling. "We're facing the most rapid cultural change in history," he says. "Faster change than the change of the Enlightenment, the age of Darwin, the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, faster than the Space Age, the Television Age. Oh no, how will I keep up?" I hear him wondering. "How will my importance be determined?" This is the man with the short, well-meaning slogan, "Just Wait," a motto that's done as much for sexual abstinence, I'm guessing, among teens, as "Just Say No" has done for drug prevention. I mean this in conscious disrespect to a man who rails against the world in such hyperbolic terms, I feel embarrassed for him. He's wound up, soft in the middle. Where's his faith? "We'd better wake up, or we'll be obsolete in three to five years," he's shouting and waving his arms now. "This is an anti-Judeo-Christian culture. Solve this riddle," he challenges his audience. "Why does a crucifix degraded in urine receive a major grant from the NEA, but a rainbow triangle in urine will not be funded nor allowed to be shown?" I've had enough, this riddle reminds me. I stand up and go to the ladies' room. At breakfast the next morning, I'm grumpy and ready to fly home. And then, over scrambled eggs and coffee, I find the reason I came. Baroness Caroline Cox, from the British House of Lords, is speaking, a woman whose relief work I've watched with great admiration for the last two years, as I've edited a book on 20th-century martyrs. "There are some?" I'm often asked. She tells us stories of Burma, and the Sudan, Pakistan, places where international relief agencies have been forbidden to go by the sovereign governments. And yet, with a small team of workers, she goes. "I am grateful for this opportunity to honor those Christians whom it has been our privilege to be with in persecution, brothers and sisters in Christ who, while we sit here in peace and comfort, are suffering from attempted genocide, jihad, ethnic cleansing, slavery, and threats of death for allegation of so-called blasphemy in fundamentalist Islamic regimes like Pakistan. But however much they suffer, they always inspire us with their courage, generosity, graciousness, faith, and dignity in their witness for our Lord." Baroness Cox illegally flies in a load of cocaine, morphine, Omnopon, and Fentanyl for the amputees in Nagorno-Karabakh, where the Armenian people are blockaded and regularly bombed by their Azerbaijani tormentors. "God sometimes asks us to do strange things," she laughs, flipping to the next slide from a place in the world I've never heard of. "When I step off the plane, I am often greeted by starving, naked, wounded people in need of every human solace. I kneel with them," she says. "On my last trip to Sudan, I saw a woman starving and gave her a sip of water from my thermos, as we stepped from the helicopter. A palliative. The next day, as I walked through the village, I found her dead." And then this story of a farmer from northern Karabakh. "At the beginning of ethnic cleansing, Azerbaijan undertook a series of deportations of entire villages. They were brutal operations in which innocent villagers were rounded up. Many were maltreated, some murdered. Homes were ransacked. Then the people were forcibly driven off their land, unable to take anything with them. "After one of these terrible events, at Getashen, a farmer managed to escape into the mountains. Devastated by what he had just witnessed, he saw an apricot tree in blossom and went to it for comfort, as it was so beautiful. Then, to his horror, he saw hanging from a branch, the body of a five-year-old Armenian girl, cut in two. He wept and vowed revenge." She apologizes to the room for the graphic scene she presents this morning. "It is how it is," she continues. "When we met him two years later, he wept again, telling us that he felt very bad, as he had broken his vow. For when the Armenians captured an Azeri village, he could not bring himself to harm a child. An American colleague stood up, removed his baseball cap, and said, 'Thank you. For the first time in my life, I understand what it means when it says in the Bible, "Vengeance is mine," saith the Lord. And thank you for the dignity you have shown.' To which this farmer replied, in words I will never forget, 'Dignity is a crown of thorns.'" It's here in this stale, no-frills room among the older Christians and the young that I meet those too busy doing the work of justice and kindness to point the finger at other people for not being Christian enough. "We are a splendidly ecumenical mix of Pentecostal, Russian orthodox, and myself," the Baroness laughs musically, "which I shall call Anglican unorthodox." Suddenly, the room is large enough for us all. Everyone is needed on the list. Our differences in age and gender and culture fall away, as we are given to see a destitution so vast, it will take us all to help begin to relieve it. The Baroness closes her talk with some lines written by Father John Harriet which she uses as a benediction. "Let us mourn 'til others are comforted, weep 'til others laugh. Let us be sleepless 'til all can sleep untroubled. Let us be frugal 'til all are filled. Let us give 'til all have received. Let us make no claim 'til all have had their due. Let us be slaves 'til all are free. Let us lay down our lives 'til all have life abundantly." Susan Bergman is the editor of Martyrs, an anthology of essays on 20th-century martyrs, and author of the forthcoming novel The Buried Life. Well, our program was produced today by Julie Snyder and myself with Elise Spiegel and Nancy Updike. Senior editor Paul Tough. Contributing editors Jack Hitt, Margy Rochlin, and Consigliere Sarah Vowell. Production help from Alex Blumberg and Rachel Howard. To buy a cassette of this or any of our programs, call us here at WBEZ in Chicago, 312-832-3380, 312-832-3380. Our email address, [email protected] This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia, who can only explain our presence on his radio station this way. It was ludicrous and paranoid to think about foul play, but it did cross my mind. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life. PRI, Public Radio International.
|
Before our story begins, let's remember how it used to be. Jacky lived in the South Side, in the black neighborhood. The city didn't enforce the housing code properly, didn't investigate arsons. There would be fires going on. It went on daily, several times a day. And it was just fire engines all the time. And so my daughter started to believe that when buildings got old and died, like people got old and died, that you knew a building was old and was dying because it would burn up. Before our story begins, Chicago was run by the Democratic machine. And black aldermen like Danny Davis would turn out the vote for the machine, election after election. But the machine didn't reward the black wards of those votes the way it paid back the white wards on the North Side, with street cleaning and sewers, with newly-paved roads and sidewalks, economic development money. Well, actually, you know, we had called the areas colonies. I mean, and just basically picking up the garbage in these wards, just trying to keep them clean, was a real problem. The person who was elected, there would be so much focus on garbage pickup that, you know, you'd almost have to just be the garbage alderman. I mean, I recall telling people, time and time again, that I was tired of just being the garbage alderman. Before our story begins, the Chicago political machine squeezed black kids into mobile trailers behind public schools rather than let them attend white schools just blocks away. Before our story begins, the Chicago machine built high-rise public housing to hold blacks on the South Side and keep them from moving into white neighborhoods. Before our story begins, the Chicago political machine built a system of highways that coincidentally divided black neighborhoods from white, and particularly insulated the mayor's all-white neighborhood, Bridgeport. Typical inequities, unemployment in the white 11th Ward was 0%. Unemployment in the 4th Ward, where blacks lived, was 25%. This is a story about one ethnic group doing what so many other ethnic groups have done in this country, put its own candidate in City Hall, won the Mayor's office. But because this ethnic group happened to be black, what happened was unlike anything that happens when an Italian politician or an Irish politician or a Jewish politician takes City Hall. White voters deserted their own political party. White politicians tried to stage a public slow-motion coup. And the mayor faced pressures that were different from those faced by any white mayor of any city in America. The story happened in the 1980s in Chicago. Now, today it's hard to hear this story without thinking about what happened when another black politician took office a quarter century later, as president, how he faced pressures and opposition that were different from anything ever faced by a white president-- for starters, people saying he wasn't a citizen of the United States. There was a backlash. And a real part of it was about race. Back in the 1980s though, when race came up in Chicago, it wasn't signaled with code words and dog whistles. People didn't pretend things were not about race. Good evening, you're on with Harold Washington. Good evening. Mr. Washington, could you clear up a point for me? I understand that once you move into City Hall, you're going to remove all the elevator boxes and replace them with vines. Is that-- is that true? What? Replace them with what? With vines. Vines? V-I-N-E-S? You know what? I'm not even going to-- No, no. I'm not even going to ask you why. And-- No, I don't think we have 3 million Tarzans in this city. Good evening. Randall is gone. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. This weekend marks the 30th anniversary of the death of Chicago's first black mayor, Harold Washington. He died early in his second term of office, back in 1987. Today we remember Harold's story with a show that we first put together in the early days of our radio show, for the 10th anniversary of his death. If you don't know anything about Harold Washington, you're in for a treat. He's this charismatic, idealistic man, funny and smart, and a great talker. A Democrat, framing issues with a skill that it's hard to think of any Democrat in office right now who does it as well. A pragmatist who got things done. Act One of our program today is about what happened during Harold's life. Then we have a short Act Two, about what came afterwards. Stay with us. A word about the voices you're going to be hearing over the course of this hour, it's mostly people who were close to Harold Washington; many of them activists and politicians. Lu Palmer, Judge Eugene Pincham, Congressman Danny Davis, then alderman Eugene Sawyer. There are people from his administration, Jacky Grimshaw, Grayson Mitchell, Timuel Black, and some reporters who followed his story-- Vernon Jarrett, Monroe Anderson, Gary Rivlin, Laura Washington, who later became his press secretary. There will also be an occasional opponent or voter. Stick around. Act One, "Yesterday." For decades, Chicago politics had been run with an iron hand by the legendary political boss, Richard J. Daley. Our story begins just after his death, in 1976, when the machine was sputtering a bit with no strong leader, and the possibility, a small possibility, of change. To give you a sense of what it meant to be a loyal black aldermen in the Chicago machine at that time, consider what happened in city hall the day Richard Daley died. By tradition, the president pro temp of the city council should at least occupy the mayor's office until such time as a process was determined for the election of a new mayor. And who was the-- That was Wilson Frost, a loyal black alderman from the 34th Ward, a Daley Democrat. A lawyer, impeccable reputation, impeccable credentials. The only mis-qualification he had was he was black. God ordained that he be born black. And the power structure sent police officers to the fifth floor armed, to sit at the door, to prevent Frost from even entering the mayor's office. That was a tremendous insult. It was an insult, but it was not unusual. The white machine picked who the black leaders would be. And mostly, those leaders did what they were told. Blacks in Chicago had nowhere to go but the Democratic machine. They were stuck. But then there were a series of famous and especially infuriating insults from the white political establishment. Biggest among them, black voters finally elected an anti-machine candidate named Jane Byrne who, once in office, betrayed them. Sucked up to the white machine, made appointments and decisions specifically to prove she was not in the pocket of black Chicago. Then, circumstances came together-- some by planning, some by luck-- that made it possible to elect a black mayor. The planning-- organizers registered over 100,000 minority voters, held rallies and meetings declaring it was time to elect a black mayor. The luck-- two white candidates split the white vote. One more piece of luck-- The Chicago Democratic Party had created, in spite of itself, Harold Washington. Vernon Jarrett was an old friend and a vocal newspaper columnist. And Harold was in that party now. Don't forget. Harold had been a precinct captain. His father had groomed him as a precinct captain since he was-- what-- 11 years old. But his father was done wrong. So Harold is an unusual person in that he nursed this resentment of how the Democratic Party had deserted his father at one time, when his father ran for alderman of the 3rd Ward. He was a confused guy, got a little sense of mission in him, and wanting to do the right thing. But yet, he was balanced off by this pragmatism that you got to play ball, to a degree, with the organization. And he was correct. He wouldn't have made it without the Democratic machine. Usually in Chicago, political activists had a choice. They could go with politicians who were good on the issues but then had no political experience dealing with the machine. Or they could get hacks, who knew the machine but were terrible on the issues. Washington was the rarest kind of politician-- delivered on the issues, knew the machine. Which was why, in fact, he did not want the job. Lu Palmer was at the center of the effort to draft a black mayor. Well, we talked to Harold. He was reluctant, very reluctant. At the time, he was in Congress and was enjoying being a Congressman. Enjoying it partly because he was far from the machine. He set some requirements, how much money we'd have to raise. We'd have to get 50,000 new voters. He asked that thinking, well, you'll never get that? He used 50,000 knowing that no way in the world are they going to come up with 50,000. And it was hard in those days to come up with 50,000 registered voters. They registered 130,000 new voters. May I jump ahead a moment? You know what put Harold Washington over with the broad masses of black people was when they had the primary debates. Oh, the triumph was a televised debate. You know, because you had Daley. You had Byrne. And then you had somebody who could talk-- Harold. Let's review that line-up. Daley was Richard M. Daley, son of the late mayor, Richard J. Daley. Byrne was Jane Byrne, the then-incumbent mayor. And Harold-- you already know Harold. Those were the three Democratic contenders in the mayoral race. It is the fall of 1983. Here's a typical exchange between them. The three of them were asked, at one point, what they would do, if anything, about the police department's Office of Professional Standards, the place in the police department which handles complaints about police misconduct and brutality. Jane Byrne and Richard Daley sound basically like normal politicians. They offer dull truisms like-- I believe that the members of the police board, chaired by Reverend Wilbur Daniels, really do take that job very seriously. Here is the most specific that Richard Daley, then state's attorney, got that day. I think, like anything else, there must be improvement. And there is nothing wrong with improvement in the Office of Professional Standards. When Harold Washington comes on, what is most noticeable is that he sounds like a human being. The precise question is, what would I do to improve the Office of Professional Standards? When I answer it, I'll be the only one who answered the question. The Office of Professional Standards was arrived at after a long and tortuous situation in this city in which members-- not all, but members-- of the Chicago police department consistently refused to be adequate and professional in their handling of hispanic, black people. It's just that simple. It's a long-standing-- What happened was, he became plausible to the black community. Suddenly they heard somebody who was articulate, knew what he was talking about, and was forceful. In the first place, the appointees, all but nine, are political appointees. Many of the investigators are wedded two or are related to police members of the Chicago police department. A lot of people, black people, had felt all along that we'd been bossed by the dunderheads. They are not that bright. They don't know that much. And Harold Washington, standing there between Jane Byrne and Richard M. Daley, the son, so cool, so well read, that black people were just thrilled. It was like watching Michael Jordan with a basketball. Mr. Brzeczek, unfortunately, at the behest of this mayor, as a minion of this mayor, as a subaltern of this mayor, as a subordinate of this mayor, has destroyed his credibility-- Harold used to use words that even some of these journalists, these white journalists had to scratch their head and go to the dictionary. Black people loved that. And he jumped on Jane Byrne, and just took her by surprise, shocked her. And she was still reeling from the shock. And I shall never forget it, that night. I said, this man's got it made. He's in. Here's one way that being a black candidate for office is different from being a white candidate. If you're black, you get thrown into the chasm of misunderstanding that divides white America from black America, in a way that white politicians almost never are. The two Americas simply see certain things differently? For instance, what should Harold Washington say about the late mayor, Richard J. Daley? Many white Chicagoans still hold him in awe, while black and Latino Chicago, for good reasons, had a different take. Daley openly stood against integration of the city's neighborhoods. The night after Martin Luther King Jr.'s death, he ordered police to shoot to kill rioters. Well, here's what Harold decided to say. When he says that he would hope that I would have all the good qualities of past mayors, there are no good qualities of past mayors to be had. None. None. None. None. I did not mourn at the bier of the late mayor. I regret anyone dying. I have no regrets about him leaving. He was a racist from the core, head to toe and hip to hip. There's no doubt about it. And he spewed and fought and oppressed black people to the point that some of them thought that was the way they were supposed to live. Just like some slaves on the plantations thought that was the way they were supposed to live. It was just like everything else he did and said, it was historic. No one would challenge the late mayor on anything, much less call him that kind of name. And I think that was what made him so provocative. It's what made him so loved by the people who supported him, and so hated by the people who wanted to deny him the office. He didn't mince any words. I'd give no hosannas to a racist. Nor do I appreciate or respect his son. If his name were anything other than Daley, his campaign would be a joke. He has nothing to offer anybody but a bent-up tin-can smile, no background. And he runs on the legacy of his name, an insult to common sense and decency. Everything I've ever got in the world, I worked for it. Nobody gave me anything. The primary taught him that he could transcend being the third candidate, of being the black candidate. And he could take that Adam Powell positioning. He could take that Marcus Garvey positioning, where you're the hybrid between the politician and the public man. And you becomes somewhere between Muhammad Ali, Michael Jackson, somewhere in superstar. No, though I may sound abrasive, I have no malice toward anybody. I have a job to do. I've got places to go and things to do. And I approach this job just like any masterful surgeon, when you have to cut out a cancer. I cut it out with no emotion. Get it out. Get it out. This dominant culture may have messed up my pocket, but they haven't messed up my head one bit. I believe in the powers of redemption. And I simply cannot believe, in the God I worship, that he would permit us to sit on this earth for 400 years-- or rather, in this country for 400 years-- and suffer the indignities which we have suffered, piled time after time, higher after higher, and so heavy, it's almost broken the backs of one of the most powerful people in this world. I can't believe there is no redemption. But that redemption is not going to come out in hatred. It's going to come out in positive attitudes toward our fellow man. We've come into the 1980s with an understanding that we have not just a right, but a responsibility to give the best that we have to a society. We want to give it. And we're going to give it if we have to beat them across the head and knock them down and make them take it. We're going to give it to them. During this election and during Harold Washington's terms as mayor in Chicago, every day was the day after the OJ verdict. Every day was a day when black and white Chicago took a look at the same set of facts and drew two different conclusions. For instance, when the media raised questions about Washington's past, it made white Chicagoans question his qualifications for office. But it made minority voters more loyal. In 1983, when Harold announced his candidacy, 95% of black people never heard of him. And what happened was the white power-structured media first criticized Harold for having been convicted of a tax violation. He failed to file his returns. We should be precise about this. It wasn't that he hadn't paid. It's that he hadn't filed the return. He hadn't filed the return. That's right. He'd paid withholding. Right. There was nothing to it. So what difference does it make? But the point is, when this occurred, it gave him publicity that he otherwise would not have gotten. Many people in the black community resented the criticisms being leveled against him. They then said, well, you're not married. You can't be mayor if you're not married. We made Janet Byrne marry McMullen. We made Jim Thompson marry Jane Thompson. We made Kennedy, in the Senate, go back to his wife. You cannot be a viable politician if you're not married. Here again, he did something that blacks aren't accustomed to seeing blacks do. He stood up. And he said, I'm not going to get married. Everybody thought, well man, go get married, if this is is going to make-- and he said, I'm not. Nobody can tell me to marry. I don't want to marry. My marital status has nothing to with my qualifications as mayor. And here again, the black community looked at him with a great deal more respect now because many of the black folks said, the mayor don't want to be married, no way. So they said, go on, Harold. But he got some more publicity. And quite frankly, you would have to concede-- I certainly will say it-- that had a white candidate with the same baggage been running, there's no way in the world he would have been elected mayor. How do you figure that? Well, you know, it's true. You know a white candidate who had been in jail for failing to file a tax return, who wasn't married, rumored be a homosexual-- everybody know Harold wasn't a homosexual, but that was the rumor they tried to create-- and disbarred lawyer? No way in the world, if he was white, will he be elected. What should we think of that? What do I think of it? I think here again, if South Africa can elect a man who is a felon-- Nelson Mandela. Nelson Mandela, for 27 years. Yeah. You know what's interesting about it is none of those criticisms also go to what the white fear was. I wonder, as far as you can tell, what was at the heart of the white fear? Because he's black. And so the two Chicagos headed to primary day-- white Chicago mostly ignoring the Washington candidacy, black Chicago, abuzz about it. And when he won, the two Chicagos had wildly-different reactions, as you might expect. Monroe Anderson was a reporter at The Chicago Tribune at the time. He was one of the few blacks who worked in the newsroom the day after Harold Washington's primary victory. I mean, there was such a somber feeling around that place. I mean, it was like, somebody's beloved family member had died or something. I mean, it was just really somber. And we were in this jubilant mood, except you did not feel comfortable expressing it, looking it. So we walked around, (SINGING) doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo. And then we were going to somebody's office or someplace inside, and go, yes! And jump and down and then come out, walk around. Oh, yes. We're reporters, too. Yes, we understand. After primary day, things get ugly. Usually, winning the Democratic primary for mayor in Chicago means you've won the office. The Republican Party doesn't count in city elections. But in this case, as Chicago moved toward the general election in April 1983, 90% of white Chicago deserted the Democratic Party to vote for a Republican named Bernie Epton. One of his campaign slogans? "Epton, before it's too late." Black Chicago saw the democratic defections as racism, pure and simple. Meanwhile, white policeman circulated hate literature illustrated with chicken bones and watermelons. And in perhaps the most famous incident in the campaign, while stumping with Walter Mondale, Harold Washington stopped at St. Pascal's church, in the city's white northwest side. There was almost a riot. Monroe Anderson covered it for the Tribune. When Harold showed up and the press entourage showed up, I mean, there was this angry-- I mean, people were like, approaching the car. I mean, it was just-- people were out of control. I mean, I thought that we were in physical danger. Then when we get to the church, and somebody spray painted on the church graffiti that said, "Die, nigger, die." On a Catholic church? Yes. Meanwhile, something curious happened. Occasionally Harold Washington or one of his supporters would say, in passing, something like, it's our turn now. And when they did, it made headlines. White Chicago and the mainstream press saw it as more than just ethnic pride. It was seen as threatening. This is one of the ways that being a black politician in America is different than being a Polish politician or an Irish politician. Judge Pincham. The difference is very, very simple. And that is when the Polish attempt to get a Polish mayor, it's good ethnic politics. When the Irish try to get an Irish mayor, it's good ethnic politics. But when the blacks try to get a black mayor, it's racism. Glenn Leonard grew up in the white southwest side of Chicago, didn't vote for Harold Washington. I think a lot of people thought that he was going to bring in a lot of people that were going to be black and were going to change the city. Now we have our chance. Now let's go ahead and do it. Let's right all these so-called wrongs. Whether they were right or wrong, it's another story. Let's right these wrongs. Let's move in. Let's take over. Let's have more of a say in local government. And people just saw that as a threat. They thought, well, these people are going to come in, move into the corner house or whatever, and another white flight starts again. I think that was a big fear. Chicago will become another Detroit, people said, another Cleveland. Property values would fall, businesses leave. Many whites had already fled one set of neighborhoods, during white flight. And Glenn says that white Chicago was used to having the late Mayor Daley protect the neighborhoods, for instance, by blocking federal schemes to bring in low-income public housing all over the city. But Harold Washington wouldn't do that. He was going to obviously no longer block these. And these low-income housing units would come into every neighborhood in the city or whatever. And that would start the ball rolling in your-- what do they call it, in the Far East, when the communists-- the domino effect, thank you. This is one thing that black politicians have to deal with that white politicians don't. And this is true from Chicago to Washington, DC, from North Carolina to South Africa. They have to deal with white fear. Harold Washington-- We have 670,000 black registered voters in this city. But when you get right down to it, the votes are here. They're here. They're here. And every group-- and I've said it before, and I'll say it again. And the press takes it and runs out in left field with it. Every group that gets our percentage of the population, they don't go around begging. They don't go around explaining. They don't have any excuses to make. They just move on in and take one of their own and put him into office. That's what we should do. That's what democracy is all about. Problem is, when your opponents don't see your election as just the normal workings of democracy. How Harold Washington tried to rise above their fear after he squeaked out a narrow victory in the general election and took office, that's in a minute, when our program continues. It's This American Life, I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program, a story of race and politics in America. The story of Harold Washington, Chicago's first black Mayor, who took the mayor's office in 1983 and died just four years later, just a few months into his second term. He died 30 years ago this week. So in Chicago and most American big cities, the way it used to work-- and I say used to with some reservations. You could argue that a version of this still exists lots of places. But the way it used to work was that when Irish-Americans took the mayor's office, or Italian-Americans, or Polish-Americans, they channeled contracts and patronage jobs and other municipal goodies to their own communities. Lu Palmer was one of the people at the center of the movement to elect a black mayor in Chicago. He convened the early organizational meetings in his basement. It is hard to imagine that Harold Washington would have ever come to office without him. And he was disappointed by Harold. I don't know, but he never became what I would consider "The Black Mayor." Black people wanted something that was so simple-- fairness. And I used to get upset with Harold after he became elected, because Harold was too fair. In fact, he would say in his speeches, you know, I'm going to be fair. I'm going to be more than fair. No one, but no one, in this city-- no matter where they live or how they live-- is free from the fairness of our administration! We'll find you and be fair to you wherever you are! And I used to cringe when he would say, I'm not only going to be fair, but I'm going to be fairer than fair. Well, come on. You know, you don't have to go overboard. And Harold did. Those of us who are considered radicals, we simply believe that since the Daleys, Byrne, and all the rest of the white mayors had always put white people first, without any question, without any apology, we said that Harold got to put black people first. And that's what we wanted. I'm not sure we wanted to be to white people what Daley was to black people. That is, he was just ridiculous. But people wanted to see the opportunity to have our community thrive like other communities. It wasn't just black nationalists like Lu Palmer, who felt this way. Old-time machine loyalists like Eugene Sawyer, who was the black alderman that the white Democratic machine wanted to succeed Harold Washington as mayor said the same thing. And that was part of the things, that I think we were probably too fair. I think Harold was too fair. In what way? A lot of people think he was too fair, by giving a lot more and giving everybody the same thing. But people just expected-- a lot of the black folks think that, you should give your own people a little bit more. Well, a major problem with being a black person in America-- Reporter Monroe Anderson. --is you're in this trap. Because I mean, and this is sort of our curse and our blessing. Because of this racial history, is that we have been complaining and pointing out all these inequities for a very long time. And therefore, all these things that you have pointed out that have been an injustice to you, now that you're in power you can't do because it would be injustice to whites. And therefore, the rules have to be this great, even, everything's fair and square. People close to Harold Washington say that it was smart politics for him to be fairer than fair. After all, black wards had been treated so unfairly in the past, that simply giving them the same services that the rest of the city got would be a huge step forward. It was also the political stance he felt most comfortable with by disposition. And when black politicians or community activists came to city hall trying to get more for one neighborhood over another, he was so enormously popular in black Chicago-- where 85% of the black electorate turned out to vote for him, and where everyone simply referred to him as Harold-- that he could ignore the pressure. Jacky Grimshaw was a staff person. I think there is a difference between the black population and the black politicians. I think on the part of the black politicians, it was definitely, it's our turn. And I had to deal with some of these folks. I mean, they'd come in and they'd want 10 jobs and crap like that. Hey, there ain't 10 jobs. But I think on the part of the people, I mean, they were into fairness. I mean, I think the fairness thing played with them, you know? I mean, they were proud of Harold. They supported him in what he was doing. Privately, Harold Washington talked about the danger of doing away with the old patronage system, how it can make the first black mayor weaker than any of his white predecessors. But publicly, for all intents and purposes, patronage was over. It's gone. It's gone. And in the words of Cornell Davis, they said he wasn't dead. So I went to his grave. And I walked around that grave. And I stomped on that grave. And I jumped up and down. And I called out, patronage, patronage, are you alive? And patronage didn't answer. It is dead, dead, dead. Washington attacked the machine. The machine struck back. From the first day of Washington's first city council meeting, 29 aldermen-- all of them white, the old Democratic machine-- teamed up to oppose him. For the first time in memory, a Chicago mayor did not control City Hall. For the first time in memory-- clout-- that's what we call it in Chicago-- clout, sheer bullying force that was at the heart of Chicago politics, clout was no longer in the mayor's control. It was the machine's 29 votes to Harold's 21 votes. The 29 not only blocked his appointments, he never brought them up for consideration. They blocked most of his legislative initiatives and dedicated enormous energy to looking for ways to embarrass him and thwart him. It was mayhem, a battle so divisive and chaotic, that it sustained the animosity and suspicion between black Chicago and white Chicago for years. It came to be known locally as "Council Wars," after a local African-American comic named Aaron Freeman began staging moments in local politics as scenes from the Star Wars trilogy. Harold appeared as Luke Skytalker, leader of the rebellion, constantly spouting off long, difficult words. Harold's main political opponent, Ed Vrdolyak, the alderman who led the 29, also got a big part. What are you doing in my office, Lord Darth Vrdolyak? (ROBOTICALLY) I wish to discuss committee assignments for the new council. I don't have to talk to you. I'm the mayor. I can do whatever I want. I can-- (ROBOTICALLY) I find your lack of respect disturbing. It is obvious you do not know the power of the clout. It has served all of the mayors before you. It can bring you great wealth and power, or it can destroy you as easily. The choice is yours. You do not consternate me, Vrdolyak. Take this parliamentary maneuver! Well done, Mayor. But I counter with this negotiated majority. Then I'll file a suit in court! But the decision is in my favor. Ah! You may have prevailed at this juncture, Vrdolyak, but I will assiduously pursue your disestablishment. Perhaps, Mayor. But to do so, you must use the dark side of the clout. You must make deals and compromises. Never! Yes, Mayor, to defeat me you must become me. Look at my face, Skytalker, for I am your mentor! No! Even under these adverse conditions, Washington did manage to pass budgets and get some things done. Black wards finally got the same street repair and garbage pickup as all the other wards. Jacky Grimshaw describes one scheme Washington came up with to do some improvements around the city, designed to be, of course, fairer than fair, to give every ward the same benefits. But the 29, of course, opposed it. And Washington needed their approval because to pay for it, he wanted to issue a city bond. So every ward was to get, I think, it was 10 miles of street resurfacing. And alleys, a certain number of alleys done, and street lighting. And so he had all of these on the bond issue. And they were refusing to pass it. So he put all of the reporters on the bus. And he would go around to these various wards. We went out to Mount Greenwood, another area of the city that did not welcome blacks at the time, to say, your alderman is refusing to support this bond issue that I want to use to give you real streets. And if you want it, you better tell your alderman to vote for it. And so by the time he got through doing this, you know, the folks in the communities are pretty much outraged. Black mayor or not, they wanted their streets. They wanted their sewers. They want their vaulted sidewalks repaired and so forth. What happens to American politics when one of the politicians happens to be black? In this case, what happened was that everything in city politics was seen through the prism of race even though often it had nothing to do with race. Often, it had more to do with reform. Gary Rivlin is the author very evenhanded history of Washington's years, Fire on the Prairie. You know, everyone wants to understand Harold Washington as the first black mayor. And it's true, he was the first black mayor and that was a very significant thing. But he was also the mayor who beat the Chicago political machine. He was the first reformer in 30 years to take on the machine. And he did it more successfully than anyone else before him, purely on a reform point of view. And so he was a different kind of politician. But no one could ever see beyond his race. In fact, there was a political cartoon at the time I loved. And it was an editor asking a reporter covering the election, so anything changed? Anything new? And the reporter answered, no, he's still white, and he's still black. And really, it really wasn't that much more sophisticated than that cartoon indicated. You pick up a local paper, and these guys just wax so eloquently. They don't know what they're talking about. Don't have the slightest idea about the phenomena. Don't understand the history. Don't understand the mindset. Don't understand what push people. All they say is, gee, black folks must be angry. Gee, black folks is voting for black folks. They must hate white folks. That ain't got nothing to do with nothing. Nothing! Crazy stuff! That's what you read around here in Chicago. That's what I have to put up with every day when I look in the reporters' eyes. All that silly business, you know? How many white folks did you convert today, Harold? Wow! Wow! And the answer is more than you did, boy, because I do my job, irregardless of race, color, creed and sex. Because everything he did, even things that were more about reform than about race, was seen through the lens of race, it gave Washington's opponents a tool that they could use against him, which they did. The typical example-- some crime rates went up between 1985 and '86, even though overall crime was lower under Washington than under his white predecessor. But his opponents tried to make the case that this proved that the black mayor did not care about crime. Hate literature had said that he would do nothing about crime, because most crime is caused by blacks. So they were using this statistical bump between '85 and '86 to prove what the hate literature was saying, that the black mayor is going to be indifferent to crime. See, that's playing the race card, and playing it in a dirty way. It's a way of distorting statistics to play to racial fears out there. So did Washington talk about race? Did he talk about the Chicago political machine always being biased against the black community? Sure. Is that playing the race card? Sure. But I also happen to think it's true, what he was saying. Whereas what I think the opposition was doing much more of was playing the race card, and playing it in a dirty way, you know, trying to tweak and abuse statistics any way they could to prove their point and play into the worst fears of the white community. I never saw Washington playing into the worst fears of the black community. In fact, his rhetoric was, I'm going to be fairer than fair. Fact is, by the time he died, just a few months into his second term of office, Harold Washington had put together a working majority on the council. Not many more whites voted for him in his second election than in his first. But every political observer in Chicago says that he was making headway. Patrick O'Connor was one of the 29 aldermen who opposed Washington, that was one of the few swing votes who sometimes sided with the mayor. We invited him up to a picnic in our ward. And he showed up at our picnic. And he got a great reception. People that really didn't vote for him, and probably wouldn't vote for him the next time, respected the fact that he came out there, that he wanted to say hello, that he wanted to participate. And bear in mind, that I was voting consistently with a block that was voting against him. And he came out, and we spent the day, and it was fine. I remember one time we were both invited to a place that neither of us were particularly popular in the ward. And so I got a call from his office-- and this is, again, at a time when there was a council war going on-- asking was I going to this festival or whatever it was. And if I was, would I meet the mayor on a corner in our ward and go in there together with him? And I told the guy, no, I'm not meeting him on the corner. I said, he wants me to go, he's got to pick me up at my house. So the mayor pulls up to the front of my house. He comes in. We have-- a glass of wine, he had, and I had a beer. We sat around for a couple of minutes, and he met my family. And he looks in my dining room. We didn't have any dining room furniture at the time. The kids were all young. And we just moved into the house. So he says, where's your dining room furniture? And my wife says, you don't pay him enough money. And Harold goes, I knew this cheese was going to cost me something. I mean, and he was just that quick. He was really very, very good. But my point is that we got in the car. We went to this festival. And by the time he left, he had people dancing with him. He went over. He was talking with folks. By the time he left, it might not have changed the mind of everybody in there that he was OK, but he had made a significant impact. And he understood by keeping that schedule and going to areas where he was not expected to show up or would traditionally not be the most welcome person, that he was winning percentages of people. And that's all he had to do. Vernon Jarrett says that if Washington had lived, he would have done a lot to ease the strains of modern Chicago apartheid. Harold was going to win over a big chunk of the white population. And I don't mean Gold Coast liberals. They were beginning to like this guy. And they could see something in him that represented them. He was chubby, warm, friendly. And not only that, he was going into some lower-class white neighborhoods, having their streets paved for the first time. And they were slowly beginning to lose their fear. Act Two, "The Present and the Future." There are ways I think that the mayor has changed the city forever. But they're not things you can necessarily measure by doing headcounts and using a lot of numbers. Laura Washington, Harold Washington's former press secretary, now a columnist with The Chicago Sun-Times. I think he opened up the city in ways that it will never be closed again. If you look at the numbers, you'll still see a lot of inequity. You'll still see neighborhoods that are poorer, probably poorer than they were 15, 20 years ago. You'll see neighborhoods that still probably don't get their fair share of city services. But you'll see, I think, a dramatic difference in the attitude the public officials and policymakers have to equity in the city. 30 years after Harold Washington's death, this is still mostly true. After Harold, one of the people elected mayor was Richard M. Daley, the son of Richard J. And even he was careful to have black press secretaries. And he kept a number of appointees from the black administration before him. He issued bonds following the model of the Washington years, giving all of Chicago's wards equal benefits, something that was unheard of in the years before Washington. City services are still distributed more fairly, even today. Though it's not perfect. People in black and latino neighborhoods across the city accuse the current mayor, Rahm Emanuel, of not listening to them on the biggest issues facing the city, schools and policing. But Emmanuel knows that he's supposed to be listening. And he's been careful to put people of color out front. Harold Washington set the bar for what's expected of him. When we first broadcast today's program back in 1997, we ended the story with this quote from Judge Pincham, about Harold Washington's legacy-- I just happen to be one who believes that-- again, the power structure does this-- make heroes out of dead folks 'cause dead folks can't lead nobody nowhere. They've made Dr. King a holiday. And he was a most unpopular person at the time of his death, of any leader in the history of nation. And the moment he got killed, since he can't lead nobody nowhere now, he's a hero. And Harold? I don't think that they're going to give Harold the same kind of accolades because he might lead somebody from the grave. When we last broadcast today's program 10 years ago, you could argue that right then, from the grave, Harold Washington was leading at least one person, a black Chicagoan who was, at that point, running for president in the Democratic primaries. And when that candidate said that there's no black America or white America, there's only the United States of America, you could hear the echoes of Harold Washington saying that he'd be fairer than fair. Some of you may know that I originally moved to Chicago in part because of the inspiration of Mayor Washington's campaign. And for those of you who recall that era, and recall Chicago at that time, it's hard to forget the sense of possibility that he sparked in people. When Barack Obama ran for Senate, and later for president, one of his advisors was David Axelrod, a man who is uniquely positioned to comment on how racial politics have changed in Chicago since Harold's time. Because he was also a political advisor to Harold Washington, back during Harold's second run for Mayor. 10 years ago, when we rebroadcast the show, I reached Axelrod on his cell phone talk about that. It was during the Obama campaign. He was on a campaign bus in Iowa. He told me, back then, that things had significantly changed in Chicago's white wards in the years since Harold's death. I remember the night of the 2004 Democratic primary for the US Senate, when Barack Obama was nominated. And one of the things that I looked at that night was how he did on the northwest side of Chicago. You know, when Harold ran, he got 8% of the white vote in his first primary. I think he got 20% in the reelection. And much of the determined resistance was on the northwest side of Chicago. And Obama carried all but one ward on the northwest side of Chicago. He even carried the precinct in which St. Pascal's Church sits. That was the church where Harold Washington and Walter Mondale campaigned in 1983 and met with really hostile resistance from the crowd. Obama carried that precinct. And I said to Barack that night, I think Harold's smiling down on us tonight. When Obama got to the general election for senator, he won 70% of the vote or more in every white ward in the city. His results weren't far from that when he ran for president. What happened? Well, back then, 10 years ago, when we last broadcast this show, we asked one of our colleagues at our home station, Chicago Public Radio, reporter Rob Wildeboar, to go find out. He went to some of the wards where Harold Washington was not welcome back in the day, the 10th, 11th, and 23rd wards, talked to 50 people. And all but three of them said that they would be willing to vote for a black mayor today. To be clear, people were openly racist, ok. Unapologetic about that. Like this guy, Pete. Well, we bought a house here in Hegewisch. And what happened? Blacks moved in. Taking over the parks, taking over the schools, taking over everything. Go on a holiday to Wolf Lake. Well, who's over there? They're all barbecuing over there. We can't even go to our own parks. We got nothing. But then, the same guy said that he wished that a black alderwoman, Toni Preckwinkle, would run for mayor. He'd vote for her, he said. She did a great job cleaning up Hyde Park. Or there was a woman named Mary Kay, who lived in the 23rd Ward by Midway Airport, the neighborhood where Washington got the lowest vote total in the city in 1983-- less than 1%, just 199 votes. Mary Kay was not one of the 199. And she told our reporter, Rob, things are just different now. Back then, for me, it was white or black. You know? I was prejudice back then, probably, more so than I am now. There's still some lingering around? Oh, yeah. A little bit, you know? Don't turn my back on them, but yeah. No, I mean, that was 20 years ago. I don't have that fear these days. You know, now I accept you, black or white. You know? And Washington didn't do bad. I mean, he was a decent mayor. I would go for Obama as president. And he's black. This interview obviously was before she got a chance to, back in 2007. So what's changed? Everything. I mean, I've changed. They've changed. You know, the black people are more educated. They're, you know, they're standing on something these days. They've come a long way in this world. And they deserve-- you know, they worked hard. I mean, you see it in the stores. You know? They're doing just as good as us. They're well-dressed. They're clean. They're not the ghetto. They've come out of the ghetto. And you know, they want what we got. What we've always had. You know? And so what's your take on that? Is that good or bad? That's good. As long as they're-- anybody that's willing to work for what they get, they deserve today. They deserve it. You know what I mean? If you want it and you go for it and you're willing to work, then, you know, you deserve what you got. When I asked the people who urged Howard Washington to run in the first place-- that's Lu Palmer and Timuel Black-- what the lessons of the Washington years are, they both said the same thing. They talked about how it was a mistake to think you could make the world change if you pinned your hopes on just one man. After Harold died, the movement died, too. And I'll tell you, a lot people don't like to criticize Harold Washington. I blame Harold for this. What should have been happening, we should have anticipated either his demise or removal from office, and been organizing for that possibility. Harold was put on a pedestal. And I think that was a major mistake. We lifted him to almost-god status. Barack Obama noticed the same problem. In fact, there's a passage in Dreams From my Father about this, when he writes about what Chicago was like immediately after Harold's death. The day before Thanksgiving, Harold Washington died. This is Obama, reading on the audio book. It occurred without warning-- sudden, simple, final, almost ridiculous in its ordinariness, the heart of an overweight man giving way. It rained that weekend, cold and steady. Indoors and outside, people cried. By the time of the funeral, Washington loyalists had worked through the initial shock. They began to meet, regroup, trying to decide on a strategy for maintaining control, trying to select Harold's rightful heir. But it was too late for that. There was no political organization in place, no clearly-defined principles to follow. The entire of black politics had centered on one man, who radiated like the sun. Now that he was gone, no one could agree on what that presence had meant. What's interesting, of course, is that this is what so many Democrats are saying this year, now that Barack Obama is out of office and Donald Trump is in power, and the Democratic Party is at one of its lowest ebbs in memory. I checked in with Obama and Washington's campaign advisor, David Axelrod, this week. He told me Harold might have been surprised by the fact that a black man was elected president just two decades after Harold won his second term. But he would not have been surprised at the backlash once that black man got to the Oval Office. Well, today's program was originally produced back in 1997, by Alex Blumberg and myself, Nancy Updike, Alix Spiegel, and Julie Snyder. Senior editor for this show was Paul Tough. Production help from Rachel Howard, Seth Lind, Bruce Wallace, BA Parker, and Matt Tierney. Since we first put this show on the air 20 years ago, four of our interviewees-- Lu Palmer, Vernon Jarrett, Eugene Sawyer, and Judge Eugene Pincham-- have died. I'm sad to say that none of them lived to see a black man win the Oval Office. We used archival footage from the following sources, from Brian Boyer's film, Harold Washington and the Council Wars, from Bill Cameron's taped recordings of Harold Washington's speeches and press conferences. We got tape from Chicago's Museum of Broadcast Communications. Thanks to Bruce DuMont and the staff there. Also, from Howard Gladstone and Jim Ylisela's film, The Race for Mayor. From Bill Stamets's film, Chicago Politics-- A Theater of Power, and from WBBM's archival news footage. WXYT Radio gave us an archival tape of Aaron Freeman's Council Wars satire. And WTTW-TV gave us archival footage of the '83 debates. In addition to all that, we would like to think Eva Baeza, who at the time was director of the Chernin Center for the Arts at the Duncan YMCA. And thanks to Gary Rivlin, who gave us advice throughout this production. We recommend his book, Fire on the Prairie. It's a great history of the Washington years. Thanks to Hugo Tyrel and Dolores Woods. Our website, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to the co-founder of our program, Mr. Torey Malatia. I'm Ira Glass. (SINGING) Bet your bottom dollar you lose the blues in Chicago, Chicago. Let us close out today with a recording from the night of Harold Washington's second mayoral victory.
|
The argument is simple. Why have an eagle as your national bird? The eagle is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly. He sits on the tree branch, watches other birds swoop down for fish. Once they grab the fish, the eagle chases them, steals the fish. Also, he's a coward. At least that is the argument that Benjamin Franklin lays out in a letter dated January 26, 1784. "It would be far better if the symbol of the new United States of America were a turkey," Franklin writes. Quote, "The turkey is, in comparison, a much more respectable, and withal a true, original native of America. Eagles have been found in all countries, but turkey was peculiar to ours. He is besides, though a little vain and silly, a bird of courage and would not hesitate to attack a grenadier of British guards who should presume to invade his farm yard with a red coat on." A modern American reads this and thinks, bird of courage? Well the wild turkey of the 18th century was very different from the butterball turkey of Thanksgiving day dinner. That's Jack Hitt. He is one of contributing editors here at This American Life. He has written about the Benjamin Franklin papers in The New York Times. He writes about history, biology and pretty much anything else he wants to in various national magazines. And he offered to explain this turkey mystery. If you look at the label of a Wild Turkey bottle, you're probably closer to Ben Franklin's turkey than the one in the grocery store. It's all leg. It's fast. It's speedy. It's an athletic bird. It has almost no breast whatsoever. And if you've hunted them, they're incredibly quick and smart, whereas over the centuries, the turkey was eventually bred into this enormous walking piece of breast meat. The turkey itself is so front-heavy-- I think in some cases, they even have trouble walking towards the end. You're saying that we as a nation have altered the turkey from a smart, fast cunning animal into a stupid, heavy one. What we've done really is hybridize it to the point where it's just basically a living dinner waiting to get on the table. There's really nothing about the turkey from its birth until its death that is about anything except being a meal. And is the thing about poultry, that probably more than any other animal, we've turned birds, chicken, turkey, into what we want them to be. Which means that chickens and turkeys, more than other animals, are a mirror of ourselves, of our desires, of our needs. When we tell stories about poultry, we're telling stories about ourselves. And given this, and given the history of the turkey in America, maybe Benjamin Franklin was right. Maybe it should be the symbol of our nation. In a way it begs the metaphor. I mean he's saying that this should be the symbol of our country. And I wonder if maybe it should, depending on what you think of the United States of America. You're saying that if we had chosen it 200 years ago, it would have neatly tracked our national growth. Are you saying that now, we're more like the contemporary turkey than we were like Ben Franklin's turkey? I guess I am saying that. That we're fat and out of shape and lazy and somewhat retarded? I mean I admit, it's a little post-Vietnam syndrome. I'm going to suggest this. A little unfashionably, post-Vietnam syndrome. Well, from WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International. It is This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. And we, all of us, we stand at this moment poised between Thanksgiving and Christmas. We are in the weeks during the year when Americans consume more poultry than at any other time, which means it's time for This American Life's annual Poultry Slam. Stories about chickens, turkeys, ducks, fowl all kinds, and their mysterious hold over us. Now Jack, although you're happily, and at our bidding, discussing Ben Franklin and turkeys, that is not the reason why you're here with us today, is it? No, actually I'm here for another poultry-related subject. Let me just ask you to just give us a little hint. Just drop a phrase or two. Two words Ira, Chicken Little. Chicken Little. Adults all over America are turning off their radios. You think chicken little is that much of a draw? Let me try that again. Two words Ira. Avian supernumeraries. Well, Act One of our program today, Chicken Diva, in which we hear the story of yes, avian supernumeraries. Act Two, Headless Chicken in Topless Bar. Actually, there is no topless bar in that act. We just like the sound of that. But there is a headless chicken and a question. What does the headless chicken say about us? Act Three, Duck Warrior. Michael Lewis explains the natural way to hunt duck and his family's way. Act Four, Trying to Respect the Chicken, the story of one woman's quest to give chicken the honor and dignity they are rarely accorded, even though the chickens resist her efforts. Stay with us. Act One, Chicken Diva. Chickens are what we make of them. For further evidence of this, we have this story from our contributing editor, Jack Hitt. Oddly enough, it wasn't Susan who was obsessed with chickens. It was Kenny, a pal who worked backstage at the 92 Street Y in New York. His house was filled with chicken cups, chicken masks, porcelain chickens. He got the whole staff onto chickens, including Susan. For a time there in the '80's, poultry-related jokes and references became the fast way to get a laugh at the Y. I guess most of us are condemned to see nothing more than the easy comedy of chickens, but Susan Vitucci saw something else, their potential greatness, their hidden beauty, their grandeur. One day, she glued together some finger puppets for a 10-minute rendition of the Chicken Little story for her nephew. That was 14 years ago. Today, it is a full-length opera, enjoyed by a cult following whenever it goes up in a workshop or cafe or small theater. It's still performed with finger puppets, but now it has a complete score written by a noted composer, Henry Krieger, who did Dreamgirls, and this season has a hit on Broadway, a musical called Side Show. The Chicken Little opera he wrote with Susan Vitucci is called Love's Fowl. Needless to say, that's F-O-W-L. Well, we were going to start with the opening, [SPEAKING ITALIAN] We are the Clothespin Repertory Theater. And we have a special singing guest for you, which I don't know-- Susan and I are sitting at Henry's baby grand piano. Henry's guest is his Maltese terrier named Toby. Perhaps Toby would be kind enough to join me over here. Yeah, would she sit on your lap for this? Yeah, let's see what we can do. OK, listen carefully because once Toby gets going, he actually harmonizes with Henry and Susan. You may have noticed that this libretto is an Italian, just like a real opera. Before, it was just a bunch of puppets and a box, with a good idea. And then suddenly, since it went into Italian, it became something bigger than what it had been. And it's because when it's in English, we all know it, and it's really not that interesting. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. As soon as it's in Italian, it gives us enough distance that we can come in. It makes us-- it's like the lover who doesn't want you. You don't want anybody more than you want the one who doesn't want you. Right? And it's sort of the same thing. You may recall that when you last heard of Little, back in kindergarten, she was just an average, barn door fowl who had an acorn drop on our head, which she mistakenly understood to be the sky falling. Her alarms excited her friends, Goosey Loosey, Turkey Lurkey, and Ducky Lucky. And they join her for a journey to the King to tell him the important news. On the way, they meet up with Sly Fox. Little's pals eagerly accept his invitation for dinner, literally as it turns out. Fortunately for Little, hunger is not enough to distract her from her mission, and she treks on. When she meets the King, he tells her that the sky is not falling. It's just an acorn. So the enlightened Chicken Little returns to her coop, and that's where the story ends. Like Goldilocks and so many children's fables, the actual meaning of the story is obscure. What are we to take away from Little's experience? I like to think that Little is rewarded with life precisely because she went off on this Quixotic mission, totally in the grip of a wrong idea. By clinging to that belief, however crazy, she managed to free herself from the ugly Darwinian world of the barnyard and of its mandate, eat or be eaten. The children's fable barely figures into the story. It's just one small episode in the life of Chicken Little, now known as La Pulcina Piccola. After the acorn incident, she goes on to become an internationally renowned figure in almost every field imaginable, a diva of politics, academe, theater, art, derring-do. Like Venus, she arrives from some other world, transported on a scallop shell. But the triumphs of her life begin after a youthful love affair with a fighting cock ends bitterly. And she consoles herself, as we all do at some point in our lives, by plunging into Shakespeare. She becomes an overnight sensation as an actress, celebrated all over the world for one role. Juliet? Cleopatra? Ophelia? The company then performs an excerpt, a recreation of her signature role, which is Richard III. [LAUGHTER] Well, I mean Sarah Bernhardt did Hamlet. Well, there's a great tradition of women playing the men's roles in Shakespeare, but I think Richard III is one of the more rare roles to be played by a woman. Well, that's how adventuresome an actress this chicken was. I can assure you, there's nothing like watching a four-inch tall finger puppet crying out, "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse" in Italian. Not to mention that that puppet is a chicken, surrounded by a whole supporting cast of poultry and other avian supernumeraries. Susan says that, artistically, there's something special about chickens. They're a clean slate in a way. I mean they're actually very dirty birds. But you can put anything on them. You can project anything to them because it's not like they have, to me at least, a very strong personality. I have a cat. I live with this cat. I know he has a very strong personality. He's a real creature. I mean he has a persona. Whereas the chickens are a group, and they have a personality as a group, but not individually. Except for La Pulcina. In the opera, she moves into the field of archaeology, masters it, needless to say, and makes a great discovery, the last tomb of [? Gallopatra. ?] But not before she sails the seven seas, is ship wrecked, gets rescued, but it's by pirates, and then she meets the pirate king. As soon as he meets her, he falls in love with because of her sweet spirit. Because she comes in, and she says, "Here you see a little chicken who, although I'm dripping wet, I'm proud and yellow." Let me repeat that lyric for you in a purer translation. "Although I stand before you, a chicken who is dripping wet, I am proud, and I am yellow." OK, back to Susan. "And although I've loved and I have lost, I have learned to follow the call of adventure. So let's sail on." Keep in mind that all of the action, like everything that occurs in every Susan Vitucci production, ever since the first one for her nephew and continuing to this day, occurs among characters created by sticking a small, painted Styrofoam ball onto to a larger painted Styrofoam ball, poking on two map tacks for eyes, gluing on a tiny, felt beak, and then impaling the whole thing on top of one of those really old-fashioned clothespins that a '40's cartoon figure would clamp to his nose around a chunk of Limburger cheese. And I could go on. She takes a cowboy lover on the American frontier while on the lecture tour. Then there's an affair with an Italian professor modeled on a real 15th century naturalist who wrote a treatise on chickens. There's always another adventure, even outside the opera. Susan has written, or as she puts it, translated La Pulcina Piccola's diaries, which detail the other adventures that happen in between those in the opera. There are 60 pages so far, excerpts of which have appeared in Clothelines, the official fan club newsletter of the opera. Its masthead lists every category of donor. Zealot, fanatic, worshiper, admirer. A zealot has to give $250, a fanatic $100. Do you have any zealots? Oh yeah, in fact actually, you can just give however much you want and call yourself whatever you want. So that we have people called [SPEAKING ITALIAN], which mean fine-feathered friends. We have a couple of those. And we have lovers. We have a couple of lovers. I'm not joking when I tell you that the high end donation is $500. People take this campy finger puppet opera quite seriously. When I was talking to Henry Krieger, he recalled the night he first saw a bare bones production of it at The West Bank Cafe in New York. And it was Krieger who approached Vitucci begging to write music for it. Love's Fowl has this strange effect on people. I didn't understand until Susan loaned me a videotape of one performance. To be honest, I thought I would be annoyed at the intentional irony and hokiness of the puppets. I only agreed to watch it because I thought I would need the material to put together some wacky piece about poultry for This American Life. But there I was with my three-year-old daughter, who loved the show, watching a plastic bird pantomime one of the simplest human moments, but also one of the most profound, the confession of a great love. In this case, with a cock robin. The song that she sings as she enters goes, "I am a chicken and ready for love. My heart is as fragile as the egg from which I was born. Treat me gently, and so will I treat you. Together from earthly love, we will reach for the divine." And then she sings, "I'm a chicken, and I can't fly without love. My heart, it is as strong as the egg from which I was born." And so forth. And so it is only with Cock Robin that she flies. And after they have agreed to fly together, and they are soaring in the air, Cock Robin is shot and killed, murdered by a jealous sparrow. I couldn't believe it, but I was getting choked up, especially when Cock Robin appeared on the stage, his Styrofoam body spray-painted black for the lament, his little Magic Marker eyes drawn as X's. I gathered my daughter in my arms and held on tight as I was helplessly drawn into an expression of the grief and suffering of this little, sad bird. In this era of slick special effects, there was something unexpectedly liberating in the marriage of this crude medium, painted styrofoam balls bobbing up and down behind a cardboard box, and the high melodramatic art of Italian opera. Picture it. I want a subscription to that newsletter. Are you going to do this? I mean are you going to be working with Pulcina Piccola, you think, for the rest of your life? It's possible, and I like working with her because I can create an entire world. And I think that's what's the charm of it for me. I get to go into a world that's inhabited by a very sweet spirit and play with the mechanics of the world. And because it's very small-- I could never have afforded to produce this show with people. But I could afford to do it with clothespins. So I can do as big a production as I want with clothespins. I can have stuff fly in and out and come in from traps. And I can have all kinds of fancy, flashy stuff that costs millions of dollars to do on Broadway. And it costs me $200 because I had to buy lots and lots and lots of Styrofoam and clothespins and stuff and all this and a new table maybe. And I get to do whatever I want. Jack Hitt's a writer who lives in New Haven. Act Two, Headless Chicken in Topless Bar. Lloyd grew up in rural Virginia. His parents were city people who moved to the farm, people who decided that they'd raise goats, pigs, about 100 chickens. They would slaughter the birds by chopping off their heads with an axe. Now, we're going to get a little explicit here, so just be warned. It's a little nerve wracking because as soon as you cut the head off, a second or two will elapse, and then chicken explodes and starts to spazz out. And sometimes, they'll just lie on the ground, jerking and moving, but other times, they'll actually run and hop. And it's quite a sight because they're headless. Blood is coming out of the top of their neck. And I mean if you have 30 of these to do, they're going to disperse over a pretty large area. And I can remember chasing them, and frequently they would do evasive maneuvers. When you would try to reach down and grab them, they would jump to one side. And it seemed almost as if they could tell that you were there, which they couldn't. They didn't have a head. We tried a lot of different techniques to deal with this messy situation. And I can remember one time we decided we'd cut the head off, and we'd throw them into a 55 gallon drum. But that was a mess, and it was really noisy because they bang around. And you can only put so many in there, and the blood starts to collect. And so that was really-- that didn't work. I remember one time, my uncle, Louis, came, and he was helping us do this. And he had heard that if you break the chicken's neck, as opposed to cutting it off, that somehow circumvents this reaction. And they don't spazz out. So he felt that the way to do that would be to grab the chicken by the head and swing it around his head. And he picked one up and swung it around his head a few times. And sure enough, the animal was dead, and it didn't go into this reaction. And so he stepped back, and my father picked up a chicken and did the same thing. And as he's swinging it around, I looked over at Louis, and I noticed that there was this line of chicken [BLEEP] that was going across his glasses because the bird had gone to the bathroom while my dad was swinging it around. And so we didn't really try that anymore, and we went back to the fence method. If you spend enough time around chickens, and you are a halfway empathetic or observant person, I think it's inevitable that at certain times, in certain ways, the boundary between the human world and the chicken world will get blurred. That happened to Lloyd. Chickens are very hierarchical, and the higher chickens-- well, the chickens want to get to the highest part of the roost. And so there'd be constant fighting to get to the top, chickens damaging each other, pecking each other. But there would always be one or two chickens that had very few feathers. And because they were always being picked on, henpecked, they were the bottom of the pecking order. And these chickens, I felt sorry for them because it looked very uncomfortable, and I didn't like to see them suffering. But I also felt-- they evoked a bit of anger in me because they were always hanging out in the corner or under foot. And they didn't go out in the yard usually. They would just hang out inside the house. And frequently, I think they just brought out the bully in a 10-year-old boy. I had some anger that I would-- and I'm ashamed to admit, these henpecked animals would bring it out in me. And I would kick them them away if they were under foot and stuff like that. It was a mixture of feeling sorry for them and feeling derision. One way to look at the world is this. There's a life continuum. One one side, at the extreme end, you have plants and insects and stuff that most of us feel no remorse about killing or mistreating. On the other side of the continuum, at the other extreme, you have dogs and cats and baby seals and human beings, animals we do not feel free to just kill or eat or be cruel to. And the question is, where are chickens located on this continuum? At different points during our conversation, Lloyd put chickens at different places on the continuum. Sometimes he said that he felt their pain. He empathized with their pain. Sometimes he went on these long tirades about how stupid chickens are. The thing about chickens is they like eating eggs, but they don't know that the things they're laying are eggs. You get the occasional chicken that will eat eggs from the areas where they lay them, but by and large, that's not that common. But if you take an egg and throw it on the floor, all the chickens will run over and eat it. That's horrifying. I'm feeling some anguish about how I treated some of these chickens, chickens that are long gone, chickens that were only with me for a year. Chickens that didn't have names. Chickens that individually meant nothing to me. You're going to make me out to be repentant. No I'm not. I'm just going to follow the interview where it goes. Well, you sound weirdly repentant. It's the weirdest thing, thinking about those poor, dumb chickens. Of course, the ultimate test of where you place a living thing on the life continuum is whether or not you're willing to put whatever it is into your mouth and eat it. I still eat chicken. Lloyd Natoff designs and builds custom furniture for a living here in Chicago. Coming up, the Trojan goose, chicken portraiture and other stories about birds that say more about us than they do about the birds in our annual Poultry Slam. In a minute from Public Radio International, when our program continues. Every other year or so during Christmas vacation, I stuff myself into the camouflage suit of goose down and rubber and strike out with my father and a few of his friends into the swamps of southwestern Louisiana. For nearly 20 years now, I have followed him into the darkness, as blindly as Isaac followed Abraham, to stalk waterfowl through a gauntlet of pricker bushes, sawgrass, quick mud, snakes, mosquitoes, wild dogs, alligators and even the odd hostile cow. Because everything in the Louisiana swamp seems slightly unhinged and unpredictable, it seems almost natural there that, for example, the common cow would charge an armed man as fiercely as the rabbit charged Jimmy Carter. And force him to choose between humiliating death and the indignity of shooting a cow in self-defense. But of all the life in the swamp, nothing is quite so transformed by the place as the otherwise intelligent human being in pursuit of the elusive waterfowl. I suppose I should say that I see nothing immoral in this, though I often have sensed mild disapproval in people who do not hunt of people who do. As they slice deeply into the flesh of what was once an adorable little lamb, and then tear it greedily with their back teeth, these people will say something like, "How can you kill a cute little duck?" The honest answer is, sadly, that I don't. Looking back on it now, I believe we began two decades ago with the ambition of one day becoming purists. The hunting purist is able to make himself think and feel like a duck or a goose. He enters the swap at 5:00 in the morning with 10 shotgun shells and returns three hours later with his legal limit of three ducks and seven geese. He can carve wooden ducks so similar to live ducks that even ducks don't notice the difference. And make noises with his mouth that sound so much like a female duck on the make that male ducks flock to him like sailors to a brothel. I confess there was a time when this seemed important to us, and some of my earliest memories are of my father sitting on our back porch imitating for hours a tape recording of duck mating calls. But over the years, it became clear that no matter how long we practiced this inter-species flirtation, we would never score. As this truth dawned, we began busily to fill the gap between our ambitions and our talents with the latest in hunting technology. Unable to speak with the birds, we communicated instead with each other. We carried Walkie Talkies so that we might fan out in the swamp and relay to each other various duck data. We carried flares to better see each other in the dark. And then there were the more adventurous techniques. In the late 1970's, it was widely believed, for example, that to a goose flying high in the sky, a balled up newspaper resembled a sitting goose. For several years, we spread The Wall Street Journal across the Louisiana wetlands, fully believing that a goose would spot the stock quotes, or perhaps an opera review, and dive down for a closer look. After a while, when we had nothing to show for this but a soggy mess, we moved on from newspapers to life-sized, plastic replicas of geese. When these also failed, another theory soon made the rounds. Geese lacked size perception. A goose the size of the World Trade Center looked, to a goose, like just another goose. And so, for the next several years, our plastic replicas of the geese swelled to three or four times the size of a live goose. The added size did not help as far as I could see. Only now do I understand that our many beliefs about geese would lead us inevitably to embrace the Trojan goose. The Trojan goose was advertised by one of the many companies that specialize in supplying frustrated hunters with high technology. It was, as it sounds, a hollowed out replica of a goose, complete with eye holes and large enough for two hunters to stand comfortably inside of it. It was meant to be erected in the middle of a goose feeding ground. One wing disguised a kind of trap door. The idea was that once the geese gathered around their gargantuan cousin, the hunters might throw open the trap door, storm out into their unsuspecting midst and visit death and destruction upon many wild beasts. Just moments before we purchased the Trojan goose, however, something happened. I'm not sure what, perhaps some combination of self-revulsion and self-examination. At heart, we realized, we were not technologists. We were spiritualists. The spiritualist is the hunter who has learned to shift the emphasis of the hunting away from the killing. He knows he can shiver ducklessly for hours behind a clump of marsh grass, expertly imitating a pintail's whistle or a mallard drake's quack with a textbook, perfect semicircle of decoys at his front and the wind and the sunrise at his back. Then, the moment he deserts his position to answer a call of nature, the ducks will descend like Japanese zeros. Looking like a cross between a flasher and an advertisement for the National Rifle Association, he will lurch for his gun and go down with a small splash as the ducks exit safely, chuckling lightly. We have come very far in these 20 years. A few weeks ago, my father set off one morning on foot through the swamp. He came through a clearing and walked into several acres of ducks and geese feeding on the ground. They continued to feed while he watched. It was the largest collection of potential victims ever to sit quietly within the range of a Lewis gun. He might have murdered a flock had he been that sort of hunter. Instead, he stood in awe and watched until they all flew away. Michael Lewis is the author of Trail Fever and other books. Act Four, Trying to Respect a Chicken. Sure, it's one thing to take a fictional character like Chicken Little and make her a star. Try doing it with a real chicken, just try. Well, these are photographs of chickens. The first one here is a Silver Laced Wyandotte. It's a black and white bird, essentially, but the tail feathers have a lot of iridescent green coloring. In a world where chickens get no respect, Tamara Staples treats them the way that humans treat those we revere the most. She takes their portraits, lovingly. Her shots are like fashion photographs, beautifully lit, color backdrops. They're beautiful. So now, the first one looked regal, but now you've just turned to one where it almost looks like a clown. It looks comic. It's a Mottled Houdan, which I always call the Phyllis Diller chicken. Oh my god, that chicken does look like Phyllis Diller. It does. It's the hat. It got this huge feathered hat thing and a strange body shape. In a way, it's Tamra Staples is running an odd little cross-species science experiment, one that asks this question. What happens when you try to treat a chicken the way we treat humans, even if it's just for the length of a photo shoot? What happens, it turns out, is that you learn just where the thin line is that divides human beings from birds. All right, maybe it's not such a thin line, but it's definitely a line. And, like most city people, I had never thought about it, about where it lies, about what it might be, what it might consist of, until Tamara headed out to a farm. I think that is the best one. Yeah, we have to get him. We don't want him to get dirty or anything, do we? Or does it matter? She runs loose every day. Can we find her? Yeah, we can fake her out. We're going to wrangle him. We're at the Davidson's dairy farm, about an hour and a half northwest of Chicago. Family members present-- Paul, who's helping Tamara choose a bird photograph, his sister Laura, who's studying photography at a nearby university. Their grandfather George Cairns, a veteran breeder. Their father Dick, who seems the most skeptical of this whole project, but who patiently shows Tamara and her assistant Dennis the milking barn as a possible place to set up and shoot. What kind of an area are you looking for? Well, maybe it could be a little wider, don't you think? And if could be from here to there, and from that pole to that pole. For what? I don't understand. Well, we are setting-- maybe this is a good time to pull out the portfolio. Do you want to grab it? It's a study of the birds, but it's an isolated study so people aren't necessarily associating it with the farm and something to eat. Tamara takes us all outside the barn so dust won't get on her photos and shows them her shots, name dropping the names of some big chicken people, people whose birds she's photographed, including Bob Wullf editor of The Poultry Press. Dick notices that a bird in one photo has crooked toes. Probably on a a higher surface and he turned. What do you guys think of the pictures? Well, the pictures are nice and sharp. I mean there's nothing wrong with the pictures. If there's anything to find fault with, it's the birds. They aren't posing the way they should, some of them. The fact is, most city people usually go nuts when they see Tamara's pictures. A lot of chicken breeders don't like them. And to understand why, to fully comprehend this little culture clash here in America, we have to leave the barnyard and flash back to something happened back at Tamara's apartment in the city. Tamara showed me this old, red book from the turn of the century, this book with the seal of the American Poultry Association in gold on the front. And then, right there in gold letters-- Standard of perfection. The standard of perfection is really the Bible of poultry standards. What birds are-- Tamara flipped past the engravings and illustrations of chickens of all types and breeds. These were show chickens, standing the way that chickens stand in competitions. Then Tamara pulled out one of her own photos to compare, to show me how her poses do not meet the standard in the book. The tail needs to be higher. Her feet are not erect standing. Chest isn't out. Head needs to be up more. And it shows. I mean you can see the shape of the chicken much better in the standard of perfection pose. See to me, what's so interesting though is that the standard of perfection doesn't include a personality. Right, because it's not about personality. It's about breeding. So is that a pose that the owners would want to own a photo of? They are very particular about-- they want to see their bird in the standard of perfection pose, definitely. Because that's what they've been taught from 4H, when they were kids, to do. That's for them. For herself, for her city customers, she chooses the others. OK, back to the barnyard. Tamara and the Davidsons decide to set up the photo session in a room that's usually used to store feed for the cows. It takes about 45 minutes to set this up. That 45 minutes includes dismantling and moving a wall of hay that is probably 10 feet high and 15 feet long. This takes five people. Then, in comes the power and the fancy lights and the cloth backdrop that gets hung from the steel pole. The backdrop is ironed first with an iron and ironing board brought from the city just for that purpose. 11.5, 11, and an 8.5. Yeah, 11.5. Your test is going to be at 11.5, 11 and 8.5. You'll shoot your film at 11. It was cold, well below freezing, so cold that the Polaroid film that Tamara uses for lighting tests would not fully develop. You ready for bird? We're close. I just want to commune with the bird. I just want to make you pretty. Look how sweet, aren't you? You know what? I'm going to photograph you. My name is Tamara. I'll you photographer for today. Our first bird is a White Cornish, a show bird who belongs to George. This show bird is used to being picked up and handled. Part of preparing chicken for shows involves handling them a lot so they'll be calm with the judges. If you could just nudge his head up a little bit, he's perfect. He's got his chest up. OK, now he's got his face in. OK, yeah, you know what we want. Great, George. He's got a feather on his back here. Tamara has the Cornish stand up on a stack of little red, antique books, kind of unsteady. Things go well for a while. She get a half dozen good shots of the bird, expressive shots, more personality than standard of perfection, George tells me. The bird's chest isn't high enough. Its body is not turned correctly to the camera. And then, the bird stops cooperating. He gets tired. Paul has a suggestion. Bring in a pullet? You know what? You know that works. Maybe you should explain what that is. What does that mean to bring in a pullet? Thinks maybe a female will perk him up. Laura grabs a hen and waves it at the flaccid cock. The cock does not rise. I can say that on the radio, right? [UNINTELLIGIBLE] probably would have better to get the one from the other pen that he's not used to. Fresh blood. Bring him around a little bit so his-- [INTERPOSING VOICES] For real, the rooster will show off more for a hen that it doesn't know? Yes. If you put a new hen in with him or pen him with a group of new hens, he will really show off. They try this and that, nothing with much success. And finally, with one shot left, Paul suggests putting a hen into the picture with the rooster. Get the girl to-- she looks like her feet are so far apart. She's really struggling to stand. That's the way they stand though. That's all right. Oh, did you see that? All right. we got it. Why? What did she just do? Describe. She looked up at him very sweetly, like that, with her head cocked. The male bird was posing, and she was posing also but had a personality of just being like the sweet, doting mother. But not standard of perfection? But not standard of perfection. So we're done with this background and-- Not standard of perfection. Even these perfectly bred Cornishes could not achieve standard of perfection today. And even in this goofy, un-birdlike situation, an hour of watching them makes clear just how hard it is ever to get birds to hit the standard. Which is to say, not only do we completely dominate every aspect of the lives of chickens, their births, their feed, their eggs, their slaughter. Not only have we bred them to human specifications to meet human needs, but we've created a standard of what it means to be chicken that most chickens can never meet. That's what the standard means. We judge them as chickens, and we find them lacking. If they had the brains to understand this, they would be right to feel indignant. But of course, this is a city person's perspective. And that means it is completely wrongheaded from the point of view of anybody who actually raises birds. Standing in the cold feed room, I had a long, long talk with George about this. George is 80 years old. He's been raising birds since, I guess, the Calvin Coolidge administration. And he says the whole fun of raising birds is raising them to the standard. Well, like for instance, if your birds lack bone. OK, you go out and buy a bird as nearly like them as you can with better bone. But when you mate them together, you might get long-legged birds or too short. I mean you don't get what you want just by mating. It takes four, five years to gradually get it up. And by that time, they're inbred and you need new ones. George tells me that when he's breeding a new batch of birds, he'll hatch 65 of them, and only one or two will be anywhere near the standard of perfection. That's how hard it is. Do you get frustrated with the standard of perfection sometimes? No, we get frustrated with the judges because every judge has his own idea what the standard should be. But I thought that's the whole point of a standard is that the judge doesn't-- That is, but one judge will want it this way, and another another. Today, if you bred your birds to the standard of protection, weight and everything, and took them to the show, you probably wouldn't get anywhere. You have to breed to the fads. That's right, the fads, like Cornishes these days are supposed to have shorter legs than the real standard of perfection. Vertical tail feathers are out and all sorts of breeds that really should have them. In the country, among the chicken breeders, they think about a lot of things you never get to in the city. And when you're raising these birds, with any of these birds, do you have a close relationship with a bird the way somebody would have with a pet? I don't have time. I have too many things to do. A few years ago, I almost died of cancer. And the good Lord told me how to cure myself, and so I've been working with that a lot the last three years. I've helped people and put it it papers. Now, it's getting all over the United States. What did you do? You use the root of a dandelion. Simple as can be, but there's something in that that builds up your blood and your immune system. Wait a a senior. You're saying that you were diagnosed with cancer, and this is the only treatment you had, and it cured you? Yeah, and I've given it to to other people when the medical world has told them that there's nothing more they can do. And they've gotten well too, but not all of them. If they're too far gone, it won't help them. And you make it into tea or something like that? We just put it in a little water, a little milk, Kool-Aid. You can put it on a sandwich, anything that isn't hot. George gives me a pamphlet that he's written up. No doctor has actually checked him out to prove the cancer is gone from his body. He's actually got no hard, scientific proof that this really works, but he says God told him that this is the way he should be spending his time. And it has cut into his bird breeding a bit. George leaves, off on other business. Tamara has finished hanging and lighting the next backdrop. And the rest of us begin with the second bird, a bird called a Brahma with elaborately patterned brown and white feather. She is a big. This is a chicken the size of a dog. Not that big. A small dog. Our second bird demonstrates the great distance between bird instinct and intelligence and the demands of modern fashion photography, which is to say, of civilization. Called upon to do human tasks, even rather passive ones, a bird remains a bird. Paul carries the huge hen onto the fragile little set Tamara has built. She's a beauty? What are you eating there buddy? Oh, it slapped me. "I'm scared of this one," she says quietly as she adjusts her camera. The chicken is so big, nine pounds, the size of a small consumer turkey, that she has to pull the camera back. Then there are the props. She's trying an experiment, putting a little toy horse in the picture with the chicken, a tiny wagon. This does not seem to help things. The Davidsons are looking at her skeptically. Paul asks pointedly if she's ever shot a bird this big. We have to figure out where the-- [CHICKEN SOUNDS] That's the sound of a frightened chicken. Imagine this please from the point of view of the chicken. OK, you're surrounded by powerful creatures five times your height. They crowd in at you. They leer at you. You are standing on a surface, Tamara's set, where it is impossible to get decent footing. There is a three foot tall strobe light, a strobe light twice your height, just a wing's length away from your beaky little face. She just-- She needs a few minutes just to relax. Hello bird, are you going to slap me in the face again? She tends to jump right in your face. You know why you're here? Let's talk. We need you to be beautiful. Here's your moment. OK? There are more where you came from, buddy. You better act up here. This combination of coddling and threats might motivate and aspiring supermodel or an eager puppy, but this, after all, is a chicken. Forget standard of perfection, this chicken does not even stand up straight. It sags. It slouches. Laura tries to lure it up with a handful of corn. Is she standing? We put corn where she's trying to get it, but she has to stand up high for it. Is that where you want her to stand? We'd like her to stand up. Pretty much. Somewhere during this ordeal, a funny thing happens. All the Davidsons, who all started off skeptical, they are completely engaged. Dick suggests a pose that is pure art concept, a pose that could not be further from standard of perfection. Laura lures the bird with corn. Paul smooths feathers. Dick and Ella and Gary, two other relatives-- the had all been standing back at the edges of the feed room. Now, they all lean in right next to Tamara. And when the bird quivers or moves a wing, three people jump in to fix it back up. There are some feathers on the breast a little bit fluffy. She's not real clean down there. That looks good. She's a little farther. You guys are a great team. I'm going to hire you to come with me. Oops. I've got a hand in there. That's right. Move the hand. Move the hand. Move the hand. OK great. It wasn't until this point that I realized that I came into this expecting the bird to be more-- well, more human, partly, I think, because I had never really thought about this one way or the other. But partly because Tamara's photos make chickens seem so thoughtful. Over here. Look at the camera. Now she's completely out of frame. Those photos are a lie. [COAXING CHICKEN] Hello. Hey. She's kneeling right now. She's not standing as well as she could. As the day continues and Tamara shoots other birds, it becomes clear. The glimpse of personality that she's able to capture on film, these are just momentary. These are fleeting. A bird turns its head for an instant at a certain angle, or a bird squints its eyes at the camera. And for a moment, through the camera lens, to a human, it looks like recognizable personality, emotion. But really, it's just a chicken. And watching, I think I begin to understand why the people who breed birds have no interest in photos that show chickens' true personalities. It's because that in their true personalities, chickens are kind of a pain in the ass. I think you're going to have a one-shot opportunity here. It's going to be when I let go. [CHICKEN NOISES] Jeez, I didn't even let go. I just started to let up, and he yanked it right out of my hand. Fact is, you try to give chickens respect. You can try to treat them with dignity and photograph them the way you'd photograph anything or anyone that's serious. But the chickens will not care. You can make them look dignified, but it is a brainless, bird-like dignity. And it is ephemeral? Do you feel like your relationship with chickens has changed because of this? No, not at all. How could that not be so? I order the chicken when I'm at the show. I eat it right in front of the chickens. You eat chicken while you're standing there with a chicken? Yes. Is it wrong? I'm hungry. Well, no wonder they won't sit still. Yeah. We pack up our gear and move the massive wall of hay back into place. As we do this, chickens hop by, Brahmas, Ameraucana, mixed breeds. They seem utterly uninterested in us. They cluck at each other. There's feed to eat, hay to nestle in. They have better things to do with their time. And you know, there's nothing that makes you realize just how inhuman chickens are than spending a day trying to make them seem human. Well, our program was produced today by Alix Spiegel and myself, with Nancy Updike and Julie Snyder, senior editor Paul Tough, contributing editors Jack Hitt, Margie Rockland and consigliere Sarah Vowell. Production help from Rachel Howard and Alex Blumberg. [ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS] If you want to buy a tape of this program, call us here at WBEZ in Chicago. That phone number, 312-832-3380. Again, 312-832-3380. Our email address, [email protected] This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia, who has found a perfect way to create a new radio host. By sticking in small, painted Styrofoam ball onto a larger painted Styrofoam ball, poking in two map tacks for eyes-- Oh, you get the idea. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life. (HOST) ANNOUNCER: PRI, Public Radio International.
|
So David was working, making his living as a maid, basically, cleaning apartments, when the whole Christmas thing hit him. And it hit him by accident. It was all completely by accident that he became a Christmas writer. He never planned it. He basically wrote a story that was excerpts from his diaries when he was working as an elf at Macy's Department Store during the Christmas season. I wear green velvet knickers, a forest green velvet smock, and a perky little hat decorated with spangles. This is my work uniform. This story was this very popular story. Book deals, movie offers, all sorts of other work poured in, and then after that, every year somebody would ask him to write another Christmas story-- NPR, The New Yorker magazine, the New York Times Op-Ed page. It was a strange assignment to get year after year. And something about it just gave him this strange feeling. He just did not want to be that Christmas guy, the elf. So he proceeded to write a series of stories that are so dark, and so full of greed and pettiness and spite, that sometimes it seems like David is on a single-handed mission to try to destroy Christmas. But that is an accident too, because the thing about David Sedaris in real life, really, he loves Christmas. I talked to his sister, Tiffany, about it this week from Boston. It's a very serious thing to him. He'll call you in June and say, I'm all done with my Christmas shopping. And I'm like, is there some kind of time change between here and New York that I don't know anything about? Because it's, like, 110 here. His sister, Amy, confirms this. Man, he is. He gets dressed up. He stays up really late on Christmas Eve, on the tree, just staring at the tree, and shaking presents so hard that they would break, until you would hear some kind of rattling going on. David's father, Lou. My money didn't mean anything. To him, it was important that everybody spent as much money, I guess, as he spent on them. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. I keep a list every year of what I gave everybody and how much it cost, and what they gave me and how much I think that cost. Incredibly, David did confirm his father's story. Because a lot of people, you can ask in February, what did you get for Christmas? And they won't even remember. So this allows me to remember. It also allows me to think, to look over that list and maybe give it a little thought before the next Christmas. Like last Christmas, Hugh gave me a pillow. A pillow. This is your boyfriend, Hugh. Yeah, and he disguised it, he put it in a big box, he made it heavy. I had no idea what it was. But I didn't think it was a pillow. A pillow's one of those things you buy together. He gave me a comforter also, as if I slept on the couch, and this was my comforter, and he could never use it. So you noted that in the list. Yes, I noted it. And what's it going to mean this year for Christmas, for Hugh? Well, it should've meant trouble for him. But actually, I got him something-- he's going to have to be nice to me for the next 12 years. Another good thing about it, is you just know how much it cost. Usually, if I give a present that's over a certain amount, I leave the price tag on and say, that's in case you wanted to exchange it. Or sometimes I'll add zeros or ones to the price tag that already exists. If you're going to spend that much money, people to know. I should probably explain what's going on here to anybody listening to the radio right now. We are broadcasting today from a huge auditorium in Los Angeles. And I'm on stage. Thank you. I'm on stage. There's a Christmas tree, and there's a toy train set. And there's lots of poinsettias, and stockings are hung by the chimney with care. And besides that, there are no lights on at all. And the audience here in the theater, I think, is beginning to wonder, is the whole show going to be this way? People, I think, are saying, this is a little too much like the radio show. We paid 21 bucks, So let's bring the lights up. From WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program-- Today on our program, A Very Special David Sedaris Christmas. Thanks to public radio station KCRW in Santa Monica, we are here today in the thrillingly large Wadsworth Theatre in Los Angeles. On our program today, stories from David Sedaris' new book of Christmas stories, Holidays on Ice, read by David, Julia Sweeney, and Matt Malloy. Act One of our program, Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol. A high-powered drama critic deploys his skills to critique the Christmas pageants at local elementary schools. Act Two, Seasons Greetings to Our Friends and Family! The annual holiday letter from one typical American family. Act Three, Based on a True Story. What happens when you mix a TV producer, a small town church, a miracle, a side-by-side refrigerator, and $1,200 cash. Stay with us. Act One, Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol. Our first reader is David Sedaris. Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol. Trite Christmas-- Scottsfield's young hams offer the blandest of holiday fare. The approach of Christmas signifies three things-- bad movies, unforgivable television, and even worse theater. I'm talking bone-crushing theater, the type our ancient ancestors used to oppress their enemies before the invention of the stretching rack. We're talking torture on a par with the Scottsfield Dinner Theater's 1994 revival of Come Blow Your Horn, a production that violated every tenet of the Human Rights Accord. To those of you who enjoy the comfort of a nice set of thumbscrews, allow me to recommend any of the crucified holiday plays and pageants currently eliciting screams of mercy from within the confines of our local elementary and middle schools. I will, no doubt, be taken to task for criticizing the work of children. But as any pathologist will agree, if there's a cancer, it's best to treat it as soon as possible. If you happen to stand over four feet tall, the agony awaiting you at Sacred Heart Elementary began the moment you took your seat. These were mean little chairs, corralled into a theater haunted by the lingering stench of industrial-strength lasagna. My question is not why they chose to stage the production in a poorly-disguised cafeteria but why they chose to stage it at all. The story of the first Christmas is an overrated clunker of a holiday pageant, best left to those looking to cure their chronic insomnia. Although the program listed no director, the apathetic staging suggested the limp, partially-paralyzed hand of Sister Mary Elizabeth Bronson, who should've been excommunicated after last season's disasterous Thanksgiving program. Here again, the first through third-grade actors graced the stage with an enthusiasm most children reserve for a smallpox vaccination. One could hardly blame them for their lack of vitality, as the stingy, uninspired script consists not of springy dialogue but rather of a deadening series of pronouncements. Mary to Joseph, I am tired. Joseph to Mary, we will rest here for the night. There's no fire, no give and take. And the audience soon grows weary of this passionless relationship. In the role of Mary, six-year-old Shannon Burke just barely manages to pass herself off as a virgin. A cloying, preening stage presence, her performance seemed based on nothing but an annoying proclivity towards lifting her skirt and, on rare occasion, opening her eyes. As Joseph, second-grade student Douglas Trazzare needed to be reminded that although his character did not technically impregnate the virgin mother, he should behave as though he were capable of doing so. Thrown into the mix were a handful of inattentive shepherds and a trio of gift-bearing seven-year-olds who could probably give The Three Stooges a run for their money. As for the lighting, Sacred Heart Elementary chose to rely on nothing more than the flashbulbs ignited by the obnoxious stage mothers and fathers who had created those zombies, staggering back and forth across the linoleum-floored dining hall. Pointing to the oversized crate that served as a manger, one particularly insufficient wise man proclaimed, a child is bored. Yes, well, so is this adult. Once again, the sadists at the Jane Snow-Hernandez Middle School have taken up their burning pokers in an attempt to prod A Christmas Carol into some form of submission. I might have overlooked the shoddy production values and dry, leaden pacing, but these are sixth graders we're talking about, and they ought to know better. There's really no point in adapting this Dickensian stinker, unless you're capable of looking beyond the novel's dime-store morality and getting to what little theatrical meat the story has to offer. The point is to eviscerate the gooey center, but here, it's served up as the entree. And a foul pudding it is. Most of the blame goes to the director, 11-year-old Becky Michaels, who seems to have picked up her staging secrets from the school's crossing guard. She tends to clump her actors, moving them only in groups of five or more. A strong proponent of trendy, racially-mixed casting, Michaels gives us a black Tiny Tim, leaving the audience to wonder, what, is this kid supposed to be adopted? It's a distracting move, wrongheaded and pointless. The role was played by young Lamar Williams who, if nothing else, managed to sustain a decent limp. The program noted that he'd recently lost his right foot to diabetes, but was that reason enough to cast him? As Tiny Tim, the boy's spends his stage time essentially trawling for sympathy, stealing focus from even the brightly-lit exit sign. I was gagging from the smell of spray-painted sneakers, and if I see one more top hat made from an oatmeal canister, I swear to god, I'm going to pull out a gun. The problem with all of these shows stems partially from their maddening eagerness to please. With smiles stretched tight as bungee cords, these hopeless amateurs pranced and gamboled across our local stages, hiding behind their youth and begging-- practically demanding-- we forgive their egregious mistakes. While billing themselves as holiday entertainment, none of these productions came close to capturing the true spirit of Christmas. This glaring irony seemed to escape the throngs of ticket holders who ate these undercooked turkeys right down to the bone. Here were audiences that chuckled at every technical snafu, and applauded riotously each time a new character wandered out onto the stage. With the close of every curtain, they leapt to their feet in one ovation after another, leaving me wedged into my doll-sized chair and wondering, is it just them, or am I missing something? David Sedaris. Act Two, Season's Greetings to Our Friends and Family! Well, our reader for this next story is Julia Sweeney, who completely rocks. Julia is a writer and actress. She was a cast member on Saturday Night Live for four years. Her sad and comic memoir of life with cancer, God Said, "Ha!", ran on Broadway this year, and a film of that one-woman show is going to be released next year in theaters. Please welcome her. Season's greetings to our friends and family. Many of you, our friends and family, are probably taken aback by this, our annual holiday newsletter. You've read of our recent tragedy in the newspapers and were, no doubt, thinking that with all of their sudden legal woes and hassles, the Dunbar clan might be just sticking their heads in the sand and avoiding this upcoming holiday season altogether. Well, think again. Our tree is standing tall in the living room. The stockings are hung, and we are eagerly awaiting the arrival of a certain portly gentleman who goes by the name of St. Nick. Our trusty PC printed out our wish lists weeks ago, and now we're cranking it up again to wish you and yours the merriest of Christmas seasons from the entire Dunbar family, Clifford, Jocelyn, Kevin, Jacki, Kyle, and Khe Sahn. Some of you are probably reading this and scratching your heads over the name Khe Sahn. That certainly doesn't fit with the rest of the family names, you're saying to yourself. What, did those crazy Dunbars get themselves a Siamese cat? Well, you're close. To those of you live in a cave and haven't heard the news, allow us to introduce Khe Sahn Dunbar who, at the age of 22, happens to be the newest member of our family. Surprised? Join the club. It appears that Clifford-- husband of yours truly and father to our three natural children-- accidentally planted the seeds for Khe Sahn 22 years ago during his stint in, where else, Vietnam. Clifford Dunbar, 22 years ago, a young man in a war-torn country, made a mistake, a terrible, heinous mistake. A stupid, thoughtless, permanent mistake with dreadful, haunting consequences. But who are you-- who are any of us-- to judge him for it, especially now with Christmas at our heels. Who are we to judge? Khe Sahn arrived at our door on, as fate would have it, Halloween. I recall mistaking her for a trick-or-treater. She wore, I remember, a skirt the size of a beer cozy, a short, furry jacket, and on her face, enough rouge, eye shadow and lipstick to paint our entire house inside and out. She's a very small person, and I mistook her for a child, a child masquerading as a prostitute. I handed her a fistful of chocolate nougats, hoping that, like the other children, she would quickly move on to the next house. But Khe Sahn was no trick-or-treater. It is frightening that after all this time, a full-grown bastard-- and I use that word technically-- can cross the seas and make herself comfortable in my home, all with the blessing of our government. 22 years ago, Uncle Sam couldn't stand the Vietnamese, and now he's dressing them like prostitutes and moving them into our houses. Out of nowhere, this landmine knocks upon our door, and we are expected to recognize her as our child. But Khe Sahn hasn't got the ambition God gave a sparrow. She arrived in this house six weeks ago speaking only the words, "daddy," "shiny," and "five dollar now." Quite a vocabulary. While an industrious person might buckle down and seriously study the language of her newly adopted country, Khe Sahn appeared to be in no hurry whatsoever. When asked a simple question-- such as, why don't you go back to where you came from?-- she would touch my hand and launch into a spasm of Vietnamese drivel, as if I were an outsider, as if I were expected to learn her language. Clifford suggested that we hire an English tutor, but I am not in the habit of throwing my money away. And that, my friends, is what it would have amounted to. Why not hire an expensive private tutor to teach the squirrels to speak in French? It would be no more ridiculous than teaching Khe Sahn English. A person has to want to learn. I know that. Apparently, back in Ho Chi Minh City, her majesty was treated like a queen and sees no reason to change her ways. Her highness rises around noon, wolfs down a fish or two-- all she eats is fish and chicken breasts-- and settles herself before the make up mirror, waiting for her father to return home from work. At the sound of his car in the driveway, she perks up and races to the door like a spaniel, panting and wagging her tail to beat the band. Suddenly, she is eager to please and attempt conversation. Well, I don't know how they behave in Vietnam, but in the United States, it is not customary for a half-dressed daughter to offer her father a five-dollar massage. After having spent an exhausting day attempting to communicate a list of simple chores, I would stand in amazement of Khe Sahn's sudden grasp of English when faced with my husband. "Daddy happy five-dollar shiny now, OK? You big feet friendly with ABC Khe Sahn you Big Bird daddy Grover." Apparently, she'd picked up a few words while watching Sesame Street. It was a taxing experience for us all, especially our daughter Jackelyn, whose nerves have been, well, permanently jangled by drugs. You may have heard something about this and, no doubt, understand that it wasn't our fault. We had, of course, warned Jackelyn against marrying Timothy Speaks. We warned, we threatened, cautioned, advised, what have you, but it did no good, as a young girl with all the evidence before her only sees what she wants to see. The marriage was bad enough, but the news of her pregnancy struck her father and me with the force of a hurricane. Timothy Speaks, the father of our grandchild? How could it be? Timothy Speaks, who has so many pierced holes in his ears you could have torn the lobe right off, effortlessly ripped it loose the same way you might separate a stamp from a sheet. We, of course, saw it coming. Faced with the concrete responsibility of fatherhood, Timothy Speaks abandoned his sick wife and child. Suddenly. Gone. Poof. Surprised? Well, we saw it coming. We have all read the studies and understand that a drug-addicted baby faces a difficult, uphill battle in terms of living a normal life. This child, having been given the legal name Satan Speaks, would, we felt, have a harder time than most. We were lucky enough to get Jacki into a fine treatment center on the condition that the child remain here with us until which time, if ever, she was able to assume responsibility for him. The child arrived at our home on November 10, and shortly thereafter, following her initial withdrawal, Jacki granted us permission to address it as Don. Don, a nice, simple name. While I could not describe him as being a normal baby, taking care of young Don gave me a great deal of pleasure. Terribly insistent, prone to hideous rashes, a 24-hour, round-the-clock screamer, he was our grandchild, and we loved him. Knowing that he would physically grow into adulthood while maintaining the attention span of a common house fly did not in the least bit diminish our feelings for him. Clifford would sometimes joke that Don was a crack baby because he woke us at the crack of dawn. I would then take the opportunity to mention the Khe Sahn was something of a crack baby herself, wandering around our house at all hours of the day and night wearing nothing but a pair of hot pants and a glorified sports bra. Clifford suggested that I buy her a few decent dresses. So I made her several outfits, sewed them with my own hands, two floor-length dresses, beautiful burlap dresses. But she [? didn't ?] wear them. When the winter winds began to blow, she took to draping herself in a bed blanket, huddling beside the fireplace. She carried on, following at Clifford's heels until Thanksgiving Day, when she was introduced to our son, Kevin, home for the holiday. After graduating Moody High with honors, Kevin is currently enrolled in his third year at Feeny State, majoring in chemical engineering. He's made the honor roll every semester, and there seems to be no stopping him. We love you, Kevin. But one look at Kevin and it was "Clifford? Clifford Who?" as far as Khe Sahn was concerned. One look at our handsome son and the shivering victim dropped her blanket and showed her true colors. She ruined our holiday dinner with her giggling, coy games. She sat beside Kevin until, insisting she'd seen a spider in her chair, she moved onto his lap. "You new funky master jam party mix silly fresh spider five dollar Big Bird." Now, those of you who know Kevin understand that while he is an absolute whip at some things, he's terribly naive at others. Tall and good looking, easy with a smile and a kind word, Kevin has been the target of many a huntress. I could barely choke down my meal and found myself counting the minutes before Kevin, the greatest joy of our lives, called an end to the private English lesson he gave Khe Sahn in her bedroom, got into his car, and returned to Feeny State. He's not for you, I yelled at her. I have been criticized for yelling, told that it doesn't serve any real purpose when speaking to a foreigner, but at least it gets their attention. Both my son and my husband are off limits, as far as you're concerned. Do you understand? They are each related to you in one way or another, and that makes it wrong-- automatically wrong. Bad, bad, wrong. Wrong and bad together. I gave up. Trying to explain moral principles to Khe Sahn was like reviewing a standard 1040 tax form with a house cat. She understands only what she chooses to understand. We were approaching Christmas, December 16, when I made the thoughtless mistake of asking her to watch the child while I ran some errands. It was nine days before Christmas, and as busy as I was, I hadn't bought a single gift. Santa, where are you? Watch the baby, I said, as we stood over the crib and observed the wailing infant. I picked him up and rocked him gently as he struggled in my arms. Watch the baby. Watch baby, Khe Sahn responded, holding out her arms to accept him. Ugh, what a fool I was! Now, I can't account for every moment of my afternoon. Never did it occur to me that I would one day be called upon to do so, but that being the case, I will report what I remember. I can comfortably testify that on the afternoon of December 16, I visited the White Paw Shopping Center where I spent a brief amount of time in The Slack Heap, searching for a gift for Kyle. I stuck my head inside Turtleneck Crossing and search for candles at Wax and Wane. There are close to 100 shops at the White Paw Center, and you'll have to forgive me if I can't provide a detailed list of how long I spent in this or that store. I shopped until I grew wary of the time. On the way home, I stopped at the Food Carnival and bought a few items. It was getting dark-- perhaps 4:30-- when I pulled into the driveway of our home on Tiffany Circle. I collected my packages from the car and entered my home where I was immediately struck by an eerie silence. This doesn't feel right to me, I remember saying to myself. It was intuition, a mother's intuition, that unexplainable language of the senses. Something is wrong, I said to myself. Something is terribly, terribly wrong. Before calling out for Khe Sahn or checking on the baby, I instinctively phoned the police. And then I stood there, stock still in the living room, staring at my shopping bags until they arrived 27 minutes later. At the sound of the squad car in the driveway, Khe Sahn made an entrance, parading down the stairs in a black lace half-slip and a choker made from the cuff of Kevin's old choir robe. Where is the baby? I asked her. Where is Don? We combed the entire house, the officers and I, before finally finding the helpless baby in the laundry room, warm, but lifeless in the dryer. The autopsy later revealed that Don had also been subjected to a wash cycle-- hot wash, cold rinse. He died long before the spin cycle, which I suppose is the only blessing to be had in this entire, ugly episode. The shock and horror that followed Don's death are something I would rather not recount. Calling our children to report the news, watching the baby's body, small as a loaf of bread, as it was zipped into the heavy plastic bag, this image has nothing to do with the merriment of Christmas, and I hope my mention of them will not dampen your spirits at this most special and glittery time of the year. The evening of December 16 was a very dark hour for the Dunbar family. At least with Khe Sahn in police custody, we could grieve privately, consoling ourselves with the belief that justice had been carried out. The bitter tears were still wet upon our faces when the police returned to Tiffany Circle where they began their ruthless questioning of yours truly. Through the aid of interpreter, Khe Sahn had spent a sleepless night at police headquarters constructing a story of unspeakable lies and betrayal. While I'm not at liberty to discuss her exact testimony, allow me to voice my disappointment that anyone, let alone the police, would even think of taking Khe Sahn's word over my own. How could I have placed a helpless child in the machine? And even if I were cruel enough to do such a thing, when would I have found the time? I was out shopping. You may have read that our so-called neighbor, Cherise Clarmont-Shea, reported that she witnessed me leaving my home at around 1:15 on the afternoon of December 16, and then, 20 minutes later, allegedly park my car on the far corner of Tiffany and Papa George and, in her words, creep through her backyard and in through my basement door. Well, if the make up she applies is any indication of her vision, then I believe it is safe to say she can't see two inches in front of her, much less testify to the identity of someone she might think she's seen crossing her yard. She's on pills, Everybody knows that. She's desperate for attention, and I might pity her under different circumstances. Cherise Clarmont-Shea has no more sense than a hand puppet. She has three names. These charges, of course, are ridiculous, yet I must take them seriously, as my very life may be at stake. A hearing has been set for December 27, and knowing how disappointed you, our friends, might feel at being left out, I've included the time and address at the bottom of this letter. The hearing is an opportunity during which you might convey your belated Christmas spirit through deed and action. That heartfelt concern, that desire to stand by your friends and family is the very foundation upon which we celebrate the Christmas season, isn't it? While this year's Dunbar Christmas will be seasoned with loss and sadness, we plan to proceed as best we can toward that day of days, December 27, 1:45 PM at the White Paw County Courthouse, room 412. I'll be calling you to remind you of that information, and I look forward to discussing the festive bounty of your holiday season. Until that time, we wish the best to you and yours. Merry Christmas, the Dunbars. Julia Sweeney. Coming up, Hollywood makes you a Christmas offer you cannot refuse. More David Sedaris Christmas stories. It's in a minute, from Public Radio International, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Most weeks on our program, of course, we choose a theme, bring you a variety of different kinds of stories from a variety of different writers and reporters and performers on that theme. But today, for the holidays, we bring you a set of Christmas stories by David Sedaris, read by David and others. We are broadcasting from the Wadsworth Theatre in Los Angeles. We've arrived at Act Three of our program. Act Three, Based on a True Story. Christmas stories are a lucrative business, and nobody knew that better than Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens actually-- this is a true story-- he actually wrote his classic story, A Christmas Carol, to get out of debt. And the book was this big hit. And this is 1843. And he proceeded to write another Christmas book every year from 1844 through 1848. And then every year between 1850 and 1867, he would write a Christmas something, somewhere in some magazine. Dickens, more than any other person, created. or at least popularized, our modern idea of Christmas. Before A Christmas Carol and his other Christmas stories, most people still thought of Christmas as a religious holiday. Dickens basically took the Christ out of Christmas. For Dickens, Christmas was basically just a big party, time to get together with family, drink punch, eat a huge meal, give gifts. John Jordan heads the Dickens Project at UC Santa Cruz. So the Cratchit family or Scrooge's nephew are models for how to hold a one-day family celebration with the goose or the turkey or whatever. Now if Dickens kind of made modern Christmas in his books, what would you say David Sedaris is doing in his new book of Christmas stories? Well, I think David Sedaris, he reminds me a lot of Scrooge, in a sense, in that he's saying "bah humbug" to the notion of Christmas. And the thing that's different about Sedaris is that Sedaris sustains that pose of disenchantment all the way through the stories, although I don't really believe that he's as dark as he pretends himself to be. Oh, really? Why is that? What are you saying? Well, he's a satirist. And in order to be a satirist, you've got to have implicitly-- if not explicitly-- some standard of value against which you hold up all the things that you're making fun of. On of the producers of today's show, Julie Snyder, when we were researching this Dickens stuff, she summarized David's contribution to the Christmas genre this way, "Dickens took the Christ out of Christmas. David takes the fun out of Christmas." I guess I could be accused of that. I don't know. I just can't help myself. I'm not trying to ruin-- I'm not trying to bring people down. I think I just tend to write Christmas stories that would make anyone else feel lucky. Christmas was an important part of Dickens' livelihood through the end of his life. He was a wonderful reader, and he loved, actually, doing readings on stage, and toured. He toured. And he often read from A Christmas Carol. But sometimes, it bothered him. At some point, it became clear to him that he could not escape Christmas. He had done this thing that he could never get out of, that he could never turn his back on. He was permanently associated with it, and he was stuck. He wrote, in a letter to his daughter, Mamie, "It was as if I had murdered a Christmas a number of years ago, and its ghost perpetually haunted me." That sounds like something I wrote in my diary. What'd you say? Well, it's the same way I feel about that Santaland story. It will haunt me forever. But I can't escape that. I'm an elf now. It'll be on my headstone. And your feelings about that? Well, the worst thing about being called an elf is that I really look like one. That's the worst thing. Like, if people were to call me a werewolf, I would think, well, that doesn't matter. I don't look anything like a werewolf. But today's elf is tomorrow's gnome. All it takes is a few more pounds and a little hair loss. I look like I should be living under a bridge with some goats. Well, our next story is the story of someone trying to cash in on Christmas by creating a big Christmas story. I heard about this next reader from David, actually. David and I were on the phone one day, and he had just seen the movie In the Company of Men. And he was urging me to see it and doing that by performing large sections of the movie for me over the phone. It's that kind of movie. And I saw it, and I loved it too. And I was really struck by one of the stars of the film, Matt Malloy, who gives, in the film, this great, squirmy, memorable performance. So it is with great pleasure that I welcome Matt Malloy here today on our stage. Good morning, people, and Merry Christmas. Seeing as your minister, Brother Phil Becky, is running a bit late, I thought I'd take this opportunity to say a few words before he wheels himself back in to begin the traditional holiday service. So here I am, folks, filling in for Phil. "Who is this guy in his hand-tailored Savile Row suit?" you're asking yourselves. Those of you with little or no education are no doubt scratching your heads and thinking, "We ain't never seed him before. How you reckon he keeps his shoes so clean?" Now, friends, don't get me wrong. I'm not criticizing the way you talk. In fact, I kind of like it. As a people, you so-called hillbillies have made a remarkable contribution to the entertainment industry. And I, for one, thank you for that. So who am I? For those of you who don't know me, my name is Jim Timothy. And as you probably gathered from my full set of God-given teeth, I'm not from around these parts. You see, folks, I work in the television industry. No, I'm not a repairman but what you call an executive producer. I guess you could call me the guy that makes it all happen. Due my highly-advanced sense of humor, I spent the first 10 years of my career developing situation comedies, or what we in the business like to refer to as "sitcoms." It was me who helped create such programs as Eight on a Raft, Darn Those Fleischmans, The Dating Cave, and Crackers and Company, a show you are probably familiar with, about a group of ignorant rednecks such as yourself. And I mean that in a good way. According to old man Webster, ignorant means lacking in knowledge and experience, which, let me tell you, can be something of a blessing. There's not a day that passes when I don't spend a few moments wondering if some of us aren't just a little too smart for our own good. You people with your simple, unremarkable lives know nothing about production schedules or the sky-high salaries demanded by certain so-called entertainers, who could give the Arabs themselves a few pointers on terrorism. I, on the other hand, know nothing about scabies, so maybe we're even. Due in large part to my extraordinary interpersonal relationship skills, I was eventually snatched up by a rival network and put in charge of dramatic programming. No, I'm not talking about the vapid soap operas people like you tend to enjoy. I'm referring to the hard-hitting, socially-relevant, and meaningful programs that reflect what's really going on in this country of ours. Without a laugh track or a standard 22-minute time frame, these are the shows that touch your heart rather than tickle your funny bone. These are programs in which good-looking people attempt to cope with life which, as many of you obviously know, isn't always as pretty as you'd like it to be. Sometimes these good-looking people are forced to visit poorly-decorated homes or even trailers. I'm talking about such award-winning programs as Cynthia Chin, Oriental Wet Nurse, Hal's Tumor, and White Like Me. I found my voice with situation comedies, proved myself with dramas, and felt it was time to move on to the ratings boosters we like to call the miniseries. Sometimes these programs are based upon novels written by many of your favorite authors, such as James Chutney and Jocelyn Hershey-Guest. I like to think we did a real justice to Olivia Hightop's Midnight's Cousin and E. Thomas Wallop's searing historical drama, The Business End of the Stick. As I said, often these miniseries are based upon works of fiction. But just as frequently, we find equally-compelling material simply by opening our daily newspapers, contacting the survivors or perpetrators, and buying their stories, which are then adapted by any number of our skilled writers. This was the case with The Boiling of Sister Catherine, a tragic event which I think we explored with a great deal of dignity. We recently aired another heartbreaking true-life drama, this one based upon a single mother forced to drown her own children, driving them into a lake in a desperate attempt to hold onto her new, handsome boyfriend. Sunroof Optional touched a lot of nerves. And I was proud to be part of it. Well, the miniseries based upon novels generate a good deal of interest. It's these real-life dramas that tend to draw a larger audience. Why? I chalk it up to five simple words we use in every print or televised promotion. Five words. Based upon a true story. Not made up in the mind of some typist but true. There also happens to be a fair amount of money in it for the savvy criminals or unfortunate victim who wants to turn his or her grief into something with a little more buying power than the tear-stained pillow. Yes, Mr. Timothy, that's all very interesting, but what does it have to do with Christmas, and where the H-E- double toothpicks is Brother Phil Hickey? Well, I'm getting to that. As I've explained, we've got our dramas and our miniseries. And then, ever mindful of the calendar, we've also got our holiday specials. You've no doubt seen or heard of them. Vince Flatwood's Christmas in Cambodia or Christmas Rappin' with Extraneous BVD and the Skeleton Crew. I could go on and on. But every now and then-- and it's rare-- once every blue moon, we come upon a marriage of the true-life miniseries and the holiday special. And that is what we in the television industry like to call art. Our viewers saw art last Easter with a two-part Somebody's on My Cross. And they saw it again in A Wishbone for Little Sleepy, in which a hardened gang member carjacks two Dutch tourists so that he can spend Thanksgiving on his grandfather's turkey farm. Oh, these programs both won Emmy awards on the basis of their hard-hitting portrayal of a typical American life. This creature we call art is just as special as the day we call Christmas. And you people wouldn't be sitting here if you didn't agree with me. I'm standing before you, the congregation of this simple, shack-like Pentecostal church, because I care. I care about all of us. Now, I'm not stupid, and I won't pretend to be. I read the papers and magazines and know full well that one of your members is somewhat famous. She gave unto her only son a very special Christmas gift. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. A court order prevents me from saying her name, but you know who she is. She's seated right now in this very room. Oh, she drew quite a bit of attention one year ago today when she presented her child with the greatest gift a person can give, the gift of life. Being local people, you're no doubt familiar with the story, but please allow me to recount it in my own way, because I like the sound of it. Call me crazy, but this does something to me. One year ago, on a frosty Christmas morning, a young, widowed mother, poor as dirt but still attractive in her own way, took drastic measures in order to save the life of a five-year-old child who was dying of kidney failure. She had no health insurance or dialysis machine. But she did have a heavy Bible which she used to whack the boy against the back of his head, knocking him out in order to spare him from the pain that would follow. Taking a rusty pen knife and a simple, dime-store sewing kit, the young woman proceeded to remove one of her kidneys and successfully transplant the vital organ in her son's vulnerable body. She did this with no prior experience, completely ignorant of even the simplest of medical procedures. The child had a different blood type. And the kidney was much too large for his small, vulnerable body. But still, the organ took, defying all laws of science. This operation was performed not in a sterile surgical environment but in a dark and dingy hay-filled barn, not unlike a manger. There was manure in that barn. There were spiders and fleas. But still, the transplant was a success. The boy awoke, and shortly afterwards, was noticed happily playing in the bramble-filled ditch which constituted his front yard. When asked how she managed to perform such complex and delicate surgery, the ignorant young woman said only, "I done it with the help of the Lord." Now, either she's the biggest liar since my third wife, or a miracle took place in that squalid, tin-roof barn. A miracle witnessed by only two goats, half a dozen chickens, and a game cock with a broken leg. And unfortunately, these animals, like the young woman herself, are refusing to talk. Reporters crawled out of the woodwork, nosing around for answers. But still, she held her tongue. Let me point out that there are quite a few perplexing questions involving this incident. For example, isn't it funny how this poverty-stricken young widow could have an attorney but not a washing machine? That's right. She's being counseled by her brother, who just barely managed to pass the state bar exam after attending some fourth-rate state college. The man is a loser but calls himself a lawyer. Go figure. Her brother is a public defender, a man who chooses to spend his life representing thieves and rapists. Here's a guy who sits down and shares his sandwich with the scum of the earth. And he's advising this young woman on how to lead her life? This young woman's brother has foolishly respected his client's desire to turn down all offers in regard to her story. Even worse, he's placed a restraining order against the very people who are helping to bring this story out from the shadows and into the light. I can understand turning away the book and motion picture people, but this is TV we're talking about. The fact of the matter is, until this young woman agrees to sit down and reason with us, we have no story. Because without her cooperation, there's no way of knowing what really took place in that god-forsaken barn on the morning of Christmas one year ago today. And it's a tragedy that her son is no longer available to fill in those missing pieces. Here, this woman sacrificed one of her own kidneys in order to save the boy's life. And six days later, he was struck down by a remote-location TV news truck. Unlike certain other people, I respected her grief and kept my distance for the better part of a week, allowing this woman, in her own private way, to come to terms with her terrible irony. Speaking through her brother, the young woman declined to initiate a lawsuit or even press charges. It's been rumored that she's motivated by her deeply-held religious beliefs. And that is why, on this Christmas morning, I'm turning to you, her fellow parishioners. Let me just lay my cards on the table and give it to you straight. You are poor people, but you don't deserve to be. I've spent some time in this area and seen your pathetic, ramshackle houses resembling so many piles of firewood. These are places I wouldn't use to store a lawnmower, let alone raise a family. People in our inner-city ghettos are riding around in brand-new Jeeps, yet you walk to church every Sunday lucky just to have shoes on your feet. But it doesn't have to be that way. Here it is, Christmas Day. And your children probably woke up to a knee sock full of twice-chewed gum and a doll made out of used Band-Aids. I'm not putting down handmade gifts. But don't they deserve something better than what you can currently afford to give them? Ladies and gentlemen, this is one year when Santa is definitely coming to town. The question is, do you welcome him with open arms or turn away, much like a certain young woman and her devious brother, to whom money means nothing? You know, flying in early this morning, I thought I might offer each of you a brand new car and $1,000 in cash. Now though, looking out over your kind, sallow faces, I'm thinking of upping that to a brand-new car, factory-fresh side-by-side refrigerator and freezer, and $1,200 in cash. Sound good? That's what I promise to give each and every one of you if you can convince this young woman to help me tell her story. Apparently the finer things in life mean nothing to her. So be it. But is it fair for her to force you, her friends and neighbors, to suffer the same lifestyle? By refusing to sign my contract and spend an afternoon recounting the facts to me and my top-notch writers, this young woman is ensuring that none of you will ever experience the pleasures that most people-- civilized people-- take for granted. She'll be saying, fine. Let their babies die of malnutrition and staph infection. She lost her son the hard way, and maybe in her mind, you should too. Is this the Christmas your holiday dreams come true, or is it the day you discover just how petty and spiteful one person can truly be? If, like her, you're not interested in money, cars and appliances, you could convince her to sign the contract anyway, and then donate your rewards to charity. You'd have a pretty hard time finding people less fortunate than yourselves, but if that's your bag, I'd more than respect it. Giving is what the holiday season is all about. I'm just wondering how easy will it be to sleep tonight with your threadbare blankets and Christian ethics, knowing that somewhere outside your plastic-paned window, an old, crippled woman is begging for coins in some glass-filled because you were too wrapped up in yourself to give her a side-by-side refrigerator freezer. Because let me tell you something, not giving is no different than taking. I was going to leave you with that thought, but as long as I'm here, let me add a little something else. Even if you refuse to reason with this young woman, I will still produce my holiday special. This, though, will be my story, requiring the help of no one. it will be about a small group of so-called evangelical Christians so busy rolling on the floor and beating tambourines that they forgot what Christmas really stands for. It won't have an uplifting seasonal message and very well may send 20 million children off to bed thinking that perhaps this God person isn't everything he's cracked up to be, that maybe they're celebrating the birthday of a con artist no different than the stick figures worshipped by the Pygmies or the Muslims. I'd prefer to do a more compelling story of your young friend, but that, ladies and gentlemen, is up to you. Do the catering trucks roll into town next week loaded down with cola and mouth-watering pasta salad, free of charge to any shabbily-dressed church member who wants to earn good money as an extra? Or do we film an uglier version of this story on some faraway sound stage. One year from today, will you be seated on a nice, new sofa, watching as this young woman's heart-wrenching miracle is brought to life on your wide-screen TV? Or will you be picking the thorns out from between your toes and wondering where you went wrong? All I'm asking for is a few details. There are little things, details, but they can make all the difference in the world when it comes to fulfilling a dream. Maybe while you're thinking, you can entertain a few detailed dreams of your own. I want you to imagine yourself leaning back against the warm, fragrant upholstery of a brand-new automobile. Your healthy children are still fighting over who got to ride in the front seat, but you don't allow that to bother you. In time, they'll return their attention to the bounty of toys lying at their feet. Back at the house, the ice cubes are eagerly awaiting the kiss of a finely aged bourbon. And there's still enough money in your wallet to make your neighbors jealous. It's Christmas Day, and all is right with the world. Matt Malloy. Well, our program was produced today by Julie Snyder, Jennifer Ferro, and myself, with Nancy Updike and Alix Spiegel, senior editor Paul Tough, contributing editors Jack Hitt, Margy Rochlin, and consigliere Sarah Vowell. Production help from Rachel Howard and Alex Blumberg. Working sound and lights and stage here at the Wadsworth Theatre in Los Angeles, Bob Carlson running sound [? with Keith Endo, ?] [? Jessica Wodinksy, ?] [? Eileen Cooley, ?] David [? Muller, ?] [? Anail Duwan. If you would like to buy a cassette of this or any of our programs, call us at WBEZ in Chicago. Phone number there, 312-832-3380. Again, 312-832-3380. Our email address, [email protected] This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia. I'm Ira Glass. Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Back next week with more stories of This American Life. PRI. Public Radio International.
|
Andrea was working at her first temp job at Bank of America in San Francisco, learning how to use the computers. And she made this chart with Microsoft Excel. It's very professional-looking. The line that goes across the bottom of the chart lists the years between 1987 and 1997. The left side of this chart, what you might call the y-axis lists numbers of people, going from 0 to 7. There's a legend, and the title at the top of the chart, "My Love Life: A 10-Year Span." It's basically all the people Andrea made out with or slept with over 10 years. And once you laid it out this way, in numbers, it's hard not to start thinking about your stats. Like the huge jump she made in 1994 three to seven. So seven was my first jump. That was definitely my highest year, but then '95 followed up with a four, which was higher than all the previous year. So I thought at that time that I'd broken a barrier and that it was just going to be smooth from here on out. And then '96, I hit another high with five. So '97 is unexplainable in terms of trends of the chart. In '97, her number is 0. I think what explains it is I spent the first six months living at home with my mom. Then there are the dramatic increases in 1994 and 1996-- very big jumps. Andrea's phrase for what happened in those years? Her slutty years abroad. Well, definitely leaving the country brings my numbers up immediately. Me and David Hasselhoff do better in Europe. So it all started as this funny thing to just try on the computer, kill time with, but as Andrea looked at the chart, it was actually kind of reassuring. First of all, it made her look like such a player, which she wasn't really feeling at the time. And the second thing was that, when you reduce people to just numbers, everything that was painful about your relationships with them-- it just vanishes. The person you kissed who never called you again. The really embarrassing person you'd rather just forget ever happened. It's all gone. The trauma's gone. It is just numbers. Looking at it this way, the people totally go away. I can't look at a year and think, oh, that was that person, or whatever. Because so many of these things on their own, I would normally classify as failures. They were rejections or something painful. But when I look at it in the context of all this, now these are all my scores. These are my successes. So it's a way to turn things around, I guess. This is the thing about numbers. They're easier to deal with than feelings, than the thousand ambiguous and difficult things that happen in life, real life. And so today on our program, we bring you stories of people who have tried to take reality, take emotional situations, take things that never should be expressed in numbers, and render them in numbers. From WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it is This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. On today's program, Act One, the story of one couple who decided to put a corporate annual report about their own relationship. Act Two, Paint by Numbers, two artists who decided what to paint by hiring a polling firm to ask people what they wanted to see in art. Act Three, When Days are Numbered. Jerry Davidson of Worcester, Massachusetts has been keeping a list of everything he has done since 1955. What does not make it onto the list turns out to be a lot bigger than what does. Act Four, The Salesman. A Husband tries to market himself to his own wife using all the tools of corporate brand marketing. Act Five, Break It Down, calculating the cost of love. Stay with us. Act One. It was called "Bi-Annual Report on Status of Relationship with Significant Other." And so why would any couple choose to analyze their relationship using the tools and graphs and methods of a corporate annual report? I think because it seemed the most emotionless. I mean, it seemed the most opposite of a relationship. So once a week, for half a year, Travers Scott and his boyfriend, David Eckard, sat down and separately filled out questionnaires to measure the status of their relationship. They tried to be as scientific as possible. They had six categories of evaluation: efficiency, feedback, profitability-- which is what they each got out of the relationship-- security, mergers-- which was their jargony word for their sex life-- and loyalty, which in their case meant brand loyalty to the relationship. Yeah, how hemmed in you felt by the relationship. Did you fantasize about being single? Did you have sex outside the relationship? Things like that. Most of the structural things you see applied to relationships are very touchy-feely, escape from intimacy, co-dependency, psychobabble kind of stuff. And I wanted to use something that didn't have that quite Montessori warm, fuzzy, huggy feel to it, but something that was very cold and removed. And so I wanted to take that a step further in applying it to people, and apply it to a relationship, apply something that cold to love and see what would happen. And does that work? Oh, no, it's completely futile. It doesn't work at all. I mean, in all these pieces, we were always trying to apply the most antithetical structures of scientific, masculine, scientific method, hyper-analytical, to the most irrational, chaotic, emotional things in our lives. And you're saying it doesn't work? Why? What falls apart? What do you lose? Because it's chaos. It has benefits, but you have to fudge the science a lot. You're trying to quantify things that are really hard to quantify. Like one thing that happened was when we were separated, and we were rating the sexual area, some weeks I would give us a really, really high rating because I was thinking about Dave a lot sexually, and I was having all these warm, fuzzy thoughts and everything. So I gave it a really high rating. Dave gave it a complete zero because we were separated and we weren't having sex, therefore it was a zero. But it does get you into that problem of, how do you even quantify how much love is occurring between people? Yeah. I mean, it was easy with things like the phrase "I love you." I could easily count how many times that happened. But trying to determine exactly what was a non-verbal expression of love. Like, I would count gifts, things like that, but do you count an affectionate look? Do you count a punch in the shoulder? And how would you count something like, OK, you're at dinner and he reaches over and just puts his hand on your hand as you talk and then takes it away a moment later? That would be a debatable non-verbal expression. But then, that gets really hard, because if you count every instance of physical expression, is that every single time someone touches you? How do you determine between, is he squeezing your hand because he loves you so much or is he squeezing your hand because you're saying something really stupid and embarrassing? So while you were doing this particular project, did you feel that things just got extremely self-conscious in a way that wasn't perhaps the most desirable outcome? It did at first. In the first few months especially, it was very self-conscious. And I knew Dave was keeping track himself of how many times he was saying "I love you," and things like that. But after a while, you just forget about it and it just becomes a habit. Just every day, OK, how many times did this happen, how many times did that happen? I had a little notebook stuck in my jacket pocket that I'd whip out like a irritating reporter or something. "You said I love you," and I'd be scribbling it down. And people would kind of glare at me. It made me look really, really insecure, I think. Yeah, I mean, I've got to say, if I were involved with somebody and I knew that they were counting how many times I said "I love you," I would feel constrained to keep my average up. Do you think people are unconsciously counting anyway? Oh, yeah, I think so. Especially, in a relationship, I think the longer it goes on, you have that little-- begrudging everything from, I'm always the one that makes the coffee in the morning, to changing the toilet paper roll to, you never spontaneously-- you don't bring me flowers anymore. I think there's always a tally going on in the back the head, and it helps to let it out, even if it's completely irrational and petty. Travers Scott. His latest novel is called One of These Things is Not Like The Other. Act Two, Paint by Numbers. In today's program, we're looking stories of people using numbers in ways that they just should not, which brings us to Alex Melamid, who's using numbers to make art. You need to believe, you know? And we were raised, or our culture is we tend to believe in numbers. Numbers are innocent. They're not involved. They're not engaged. They don't cheat on us. They're not politicized, let's say. They're just pure, beautiful, and truthful. And so, with that premise, Alex Melamid and his artistic collaborator, Vitaly Komar, commissioned a professional market research firm to survey the public about what they wanted to see in art. And then they took the data and they used it to paint what the greatest number of people asked for. The resulting artwork is a landscape, a hill on the left, a tree on the right, a big lake, blue sky, some deer, a family-- the stats said that audiences wanted to see groups of people in a painting-- and George Washington. Because they wanted some political figures. And that was at our discretion, so we decided that who was a better political figure than George Washington for this country? Melamid and Komar did the surveys in 14 countries and made paintings for each one. First of all, we found out that people like a landscape, and blue is the favorite color of the people. Yeah, I have the statistics in front of me. It says 88% of Americans favor outdoor scenes. 44% prefer blue in their paintings. Right. And they like wild animals. They like mountains and water. And this came as a shock. We thought, oh, my god, stupid Americans, what do they want, but then having this poll made in different countries, all the countries, with only one exception, wanted the same, a blue landscape. What was the country that didn't want the same? It was one country, which was Holland, the Netherlands. And they preferred abstract art to traditional art. What do you make of that? Oh, my god, I wish I'm a philosopher, so I can make something out of that. But they live in a very beautiful country, and a museum with full of realists and nice and beautiful art. Maybe they're tired of it. They don't need beautiful painting. Or conduction of blue landscapes. That may be the explanation. When you create works of art from polling even when they create movie endings from polling and other things like that, and create ideas for TV shows by polling people, we get a lot of art in various forms that comes from a perception of a market, a perception of what people will buy. I wonder if it's one of these things where-- creating art this way from polling, you can get competent art, but you're not going to get anything that's really inspiring, anything that really grabs your heart. You talk in cliches. I'm sorry. But it's the other cliche, you know. We have a cliche of polls and a cliche of heart. In one, of course, it's polling people, asking them constantly, and we don't believe that art can be produced this way, really. Good art, let's say. But on the other hand, we have this image of this crazy artist with a lot of hair, torturing canvas, whatever. As cliche, as utopian, let's say, as the first idea. So you prefer this cliche to the other cliche. In 1996, Melamid and Komar expanded the work. Teaming up with a musician named Dave Soldier, they surveyed music audiences. Favorite length of song? 60% of respondents said 3 to 10 minutes. Favorite topic for a song? 36% said a story, 32% said love. Most hated topic for a song? 33% said holidays, 10% said religion. Soldier took the data and produced two songs, one with all the things that people said they most hate in a song-- that is 21 minutes long, that song-- and one with all the qualities that respondents said they wanted most in a song. Dave Soldier joined us in the studio. American popular music is almost what people want to hear in the most popular song. If you ask people, what are your favorite instruments, and add up the seven or eight favorite instruments, they are those that are used in conventional radio top-40-type pop music-- guitar, piano, bass drums, synthesizer. Let's play a little bit of this so people can hear a little bit. Yeah, I mean, that sounds just like any pop song that could be on the radio. Well, that's pretty much, apparently, what people wanted. The favorite vocal styles are low male and low female, rock/R&B. Low male, low female? Yeah. They like low female voices more than they like high female voices. In fact, the high female voice is the second-least-preferred voice. The least-preferred voices of all are kid's voices. Dave, can I ask you to talk about the least-popular song? What did people hate the most, and what did you have to fit into this song? There was quite a diversity in hatred. There were a lot of hated instruments. They're all personal favorites of mine, of course. The bagpipe, the accordion, the harp, the organ, the banjo, the tuba, for instance. We had to make sure that all of those were in there. And when it comes to most unwanted vocal styles, you found opera and rap were the two most unwanted vocal styles. And so what you did is that, in this song that you put together, you have an opera singer rapping. You see, if only 10% of people like opera and only 10% of people like rap, and say these two categories don't overlap very well, that means that if you put both of them in there, only 1% of people will be left who can still listen to the piece. So we put everything in there that people don't like. For instance, some people detest cowboy music. So we have the opera singer singing rap about cowboys. People tend to like moderate tempos-- that is, the speed of the music, how fast it sounds. So we're sure that we're going to have something that people really dislike if it, say, features a bagpipe, an opera singer singing about cowboys, and a children's choir sung very, very slowly. Can I ask the two of you-- can you listen to either of these songs in your own home? Well, actually I've grown to love both of them. I feel kind of guilty. You know, I got a lot of people who said they really love this music. And musicians, in particular, will call me and say, I just heard the new record. I fell asleep during the most favorite and I loved the least favorite. Yeah, I kind of love the least favorite too. Why do you think we're all going for the least favorite? Because it's a minority. The least favorite is the least favorite. It's not hated music. It's just a small percentage of people [INTERPOSING VOICES] I guess the obvious thing is we like to think of ourselves as being in this elite category. That is not why we like that song. We don't like because we think of ourselves as being-- we don't like the children's choir coming in because we thinks of ourselves as a cultural elite. Because it's done by the poll and polls are always right. That is not why we love it. Here's the whole thing, Alex and Dave, is that in your attempt to just go straight by the numbers, what you've done is you've accidentally ended up with the lonely genius creating a real work of art. You've actually stumbled into the other model. I think I'd argue that with you. Alex? Accidentally maybe. No accidentally, not accidentally, incidentally, but we get it. But then we owe our genius to the people, just like all geniuses. We're finding what's in our culture and channeling the people's will. Do you think that there are some things that should just stay unquantified, some things we should not try to put into numbers? You know, we have to have a criteria at any expense. If numbers, let it be numbers. But we need to know. We need to have a conviction. We need to have a common belief among all of us, a common faith. And right now, the common faith is in numbers, and let it be this way. Because it's better than nothing. It's much better than nothing. Act Three, When Days are Numbered. By describing some things in numbers, in data, it usually means that there are other things that we are choosing not to quantify and not to look at at all. Adam Davidson is an economics correspondent for NPR. He co-reports some of the economic coverage we do here on our show, and does the Planet Money podcast. But years ago, he did a story for us about his uncle Jerry. His uncle Jerry spends a lot of time gathering data and putting it into lists-- a list of sports scores going back decades, a list of all the people he has ever telephoned, a list of all the sales at the pharmacy he works at since he began working there. A list of all the lists. And then one list, the list that he values more than any other list, the list documenting his daily life. Here's Adam. My uncle Jerry's lists are something I've heard about my whole life, and I finally decided to find out what they're all about and to get to know him better. Jerry's always been quiet. He lives alone right near where he grew up, my dad's baby brother, in Worcester, Massachusetts. He's 52. He gets a monthly SSI check and he has a two-day-a-week job at a big CVS pharmacy. He told me that he's written down everything he's done, every day, since 1955 when he was 10 years old. My brother Jack told me Sunday, he said, remember, I told you years ago them lists were going to be worth nothing? I told him a thing. I said, look, I don't know what this is going to come to, but something's going to come out of this. I have this funny feeling. And what do you think that is? I don't know. It looks something good. It's going to make me happy. I know that. It's going to make me very, very, very happy. I know that. Jerry always carries a scrap of paper in his shirt pocket or in his wallet, and he writes down everywhere he goes and everyone he talks to on the phone over the course of the day. At the end of the day, he takes everything he's written on the scrap paper and copies it onto one of those desk calendars where each day has its own page and the whole year sits on a little plastic stand with two narrow metal rings in the middle. He checks and re-checks every item. Only when he knows everything was copied properly does he put a check or an OK at the bottom of the desk calendar page. Once he's done that, right before he goes to sleep, that day is complete. This is yesterday. That's sitting on the TV? Yes, sitting on my television. That's what I did all day yesterday. Wow, that's a long day. Yeah, it sure was. Saturday, December 13, 1997. Sunny and cold. Honey Farms checked twice. Marie call Jerry and Sheryl twice. Check once. Cambridge eye doctors, check. Walgreens, Lincoln Street-- The check marks indicate how many times he's done something. Every event gets at least one check, so if he goes to the store five times, that's five checks. Every event gets its own line, and each day's list is about eight or nine lines long. One of the strange things about the list is that he always refers to himself in the third person. He writes Jerry, or his initials, JD. The words I or me never appear anywhere in these diaries. And he's got this elaborate code. See, I put a star on the top of the thing. That means I had a great day. Plus I write in different color pens. Sometimes I write in black, and sometimes I write in blue. Blue means I'm very happy. Red means a semi-good day. Black means it's a bad day. Not a very bad day, but just a bad day. In the pages we looked at, some days would have two or three blue items and the rest would be black. Other days, everything in the morning was black, while the afternoon was better-- it had the red and the blue. The thing is, even after he explained all of these codes and pen colors, I couldn't understand the diaries at all. No one could except for Jerry. He uses his own abbreviations. See, it says HFPLOT. I went to Honey Farms, Pleasant. And I was in the lot. PAS. That's Phyllis Ashland's sister's house. Let's see. S means sex. Or S-X, I put sometimes. [PHONE RINGS] Hello? Hey. Doing what? Jerry's girlfriend Sheryl called and they talked for a long time. Did you sleep good last night? Lucky you. I didn't sleep at all. Nope, getting very lonely. Do you care? I'm just kidding with you. Are we going to be hanging together tonight? I want to be with you, stupid. Jesus. The only thing I want to be. All right. Yes, dear. Bye. Sheryl, Sheryl, Sheryl, Sheryl. What are you doing now? I just put another check. That's two checks for her. See, that to me is so funny, that you just had this really emotional conversation with her and all you did was put another check next to her name. Yeah, because I keep it all in here, what she says to me. Jerry said he doesn't like to write about his feelings. That's why he just put a check. He doesn't want to write how he felt about talking to Sheryl or anyone else. He said it's nobody's business. Of course, that's the most interesting part. That's exactly what I wanted to know. Why was one phone call from Cheryl written in black, while another was in blue, and what happened that one day a McDonald's that made him put it down in red? My family doesn't understand Jerry's lists. We tease him about them. At Thanksgiving, Jerry had this big box with hundreds of pens, blue, black, red. My dad said, Jerry, why not just keep a few of them and throw the rest away. Jerry got angry. he said he'd saved those pens his whole life, and he needed them for his list. It's like a hobby, but everybody says it's stupid. But I don't think it's stupid. How did you start doing these lists? Do you remember when you started? I don't know why. I don't know. My father maybe got me into it, because he used to write down things too, when he had appointments. And he doesn't like you doing lists. He thinks it's a waste of time. He says, why do you write down everything? And I said, well, I just like to. You write down appointments when you have business meetings, don't you? He said, yeah, but I'm a businessman. You're not. [PHONE RINGS] Can you pause that for a second? It was Sheryl again. When Jerry hung up, he took out his scrap paper and put another check next to her name. When we were talking, Jerry said to me, I hate the past. But in fact he's surrounded himself with the past. When you walk in his apartment, it's crammed with stuff. There are piles of newspapers all over the place that he uses to keep track of his sports scores, dozens of boxes of papers, old clothes, his children's toys from the '70s, store receipts from years ago, memos from jobs he's long since left. He keeps the answering machine cassettes with every message he's ever gotten. His history is around him all the time. I don't think anybody else could survive what I went through a lot. Divorces, losing my kids, two marriages. I thought that was the end of my world when I finally got divorced. That is hard. I think that is worse than a death to go through. It is. It is hard. You never went through it, but it's hard. It's hard. It's just a weird thing when you go to court for a divorce. The wife says everything of what she says. Then she leaves the room. Then you say everything that you want to say. And the judge called both of us back and he says, granted. But I had nobody there to fall back onto when I get divorced. That really bothered me today. The day I got divorced in my two divorces, I just had nobody there for me. I just came home and slept. On the phone, you were saying that you've wanted to tell your father-- you said, I could have been somebody because of these lists. What did you mean by that? My life story. Mostly my life story is what I did. It's like the diary of Anne Frank. Mine would be the diary of Jerry. Why do you think people like reading the diary of Anne Frank? Well, it's interesting, because she wrote different things about what she did in her life and all that. It'd be just like my story. But I think mine would be the best-seller, because I had more interesting things to do with my life. I went to the zoo, to California, everything. England, I went to England. I went everywhere. I came a long way, really. I came a long way. And I'm just a survivor. Your father used to say, that's all I am. A survivor. I live by myself. Let's see, what is it? 19 years already. Didn't have a wife or nothing, for 19 years. I survive out there anyway. I don't think Jerry would put it this way, but when I look at his lists, I think he does them because they give him something to do every day. And then seeing every day written down like that, page after page in perfect order, his life seems less empty, less lonely. The lists prove he's spent time with people who care about him, and he's been places, and he's done things. Holy mackerel. It's like a blizzard. Can you believe that? It's snowing like heck down here. I don't believe this. See, I have to write that down in the book, say it snowed. That's amazing. Coming up, applying numbers to love with incredible success. That's in a minute from Public Radio International when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose some theme, and invite a variety of writers and performers and reporters to take a whack at that theme. Today's program, using numbers where they should not be used. We've arrived at Act Four of our program, The Salesman. Will Powers works for a marketing firm called Brand Solutions in Seattle. And his boss wanted everybody in the firm to understand better the principles of brand loyalty and how to achieve it. And so the boss had Will and the other staffers do this exercise where they had to market themselves to someone they knew, using all the tools of modern brand marketing. Will chose his wife. You know, really, why not my wife? She's probably the closest person to me, and I think, as you'll see later on, as I discuss, it was a great opportunity to learn a little bit more about that customer. It's so strange to hear you say that word I know. It is funny. But it's really interesting-- obviously, I don't think of my wife as a customer. I dated my wife since we were 15, and we went to the same college, and we got married right after college, and we've been married for five years. And when I went home to do this exercise with her, I was like, oh, there's nothing she's going to tell me that I don't know. I know her inside and out. All right, well, let's talk about the process you went through. I had my wife come up with her attributes and what's important to her within the product. This is what she's looking for in her husband. Exactly. She came up with honest, funny, forgiving, patient, understanding, strong, protective, empathetic, loving, and gentle. And really, to take it the next step further, I said, well, these are really great attributes, but tell me how I can act upon these. How can I, the organization providing the service, please you? And it's really saying, where can I find ways to better provide the service to you? Now, if you actually working with a real firm that was really selling a product, this would be more or less the equivalent of focus-grouping the customers. Exactly. Exactly. You'd get a bunch of customers. You'd get them into a room. You'd focus-group them on what is it that they really want from the company. Exactly. That's exactly right. Me, being the product, how can I show you that I'm loving and gentle and understanding and empathetic, et cetera. What would be a way that I could follow through on these? So she actually gave me examples. You know, when you hold my hand, you make me laugh, to take time out of the day to make sure I'm happy and OK, hang up your clothes after a business trip, try to stay healthy, work hard, work for our future, work at our relationship, examples like that. So what I said-- and this what we usually do in organizations. We do a brand ladder. An example would be, we work with some major restaurant chains. And they might list something like, it's clean. And that's a very functional attribute. Well, OK, if they're concentrating on that and it's clean, how does that make you feel? Well, that makes me feel comfortable at the restaurant. OK, when you're comfortable at the restaurant, how does that make you feel? Well, it makes me feel that I can forget my problems. Well, then when you forget your problems, how does that make you feel? Well, then I can concentrate on other aspects of my life, like my children. So we go from very small and functional, from clean, to concentrating on children and full fulfillment. What I said is, if it works for an organization, once again, why couldn't it work for me selling my product? So after my wife listed her examples, I pulled one out, and I said, OK, Laura. Well, picking out my clothes, let's say, when I come home and I throw my garment bag on the bed and I'm supposed to hang up my clothes-- sometimes I don't. I just dump it out and usually I'm exhausted. But I said, let's just start with that. Let's say, if I pick up my clothes, what does that do for you? What is that going to give you? And she goes well, really, what that does for me is that confirms teamwork, that we're a partnership in this relationship. And I said, OK, that's great. And knowing that we're a team, how does that make you feel? Or what does that give you? And she goes, well, when I know I'm a team and you're helping me out and we're really working as a team together, that leads to a strong relationship. It makes her feel like she has a strong relationship. Yeah, exactly, in that she can rely on me. And I said, well, that's fantastic. What do you when you have a strong relationship? How does that make you feel? And she goes, well, that is total love and total reassurance. And I said, wow, that's really great. So I went from something very simple, as picking up clothes from my garment bag when I come home from a business trip, very functional, to total love and strength. And another example was calling me. And I'm usually pretty good about that when I travel, or even when I'm at work, calling her. You used to call her during the day, during the work day? Yeah, just to see how she's doing and stuff. And maybe some days I would forget or I'd be busy. But now I make it a point, because obviously she's a customer and she's viewing my product-- that's important to her. And as a customer, I know I'm going to satisfy her that way. The same with coming home and hanging up the garment bag and the clothes within it. You know what really strikes me as you talk about this, one of the things about it that I think is interesting, is it makes you really think about how often do any of us go to the people in our lives and ask, are you getting from me what you want? Exactly. And really, in a nutshell, that's exactly what this accomplished. Are you satisfied with the product? Yeah. Before you actually went through this process with her, had she always-- she would say every now and then, you shouldn't leave your stuff, your garment bag, you shouldn't just leave it sitting around, I want you to pick it up. I mean, she had said this before? Yeah. Obviously, these aren't really big earth-shattering-- No, I know. But to me, that's the interesting thing. Why was it so different doing it in this context? Why is it in this context you got the message, whereas before you didn't? Well, I think in the past I've come home and it's always been just something kind of under the breath of, you know, I would appreciate if you would have called me, or something to that effect. And I'm like, oh, yeah, OK, next time I promise I'll try to remember. But I think the reason why this was so powerful is we actually sat down across from each other, and it was just us, totally focused on each other. There was no other distractions. And she actually wrote it down. This is what's important to me. It's almost very elementary, spelling it out. You know what it's almost like? There's the way that women talk about certain emotional issues and there's the way that men talk about certain emotional issues, and what you and your wife sort of invented was a guy's way to talk about stuff that women normally want to talk about. Yeah. That's a good point. It's like she spoke to you in guy language. I guess so. Because of my understanding of the organizational identity model, and because I could put it in business terms-- maybe you're right. Maybe that's how I connected with it and the light bulb went on. It's funny, because I think there are certain things about our own lives that we are hesitant to quantify. Do you know what I mean? And what you've done essentially in this example is that you've really tried to quantify-- what could be more delicate than a person's relationship in a marriage. Well, like I said, I wanted to do this with my wife, because my wife is the most important person in the world to me. And I place my wife above anything else. And she is the number-one customer in my organization. And I have to make sure that she's 100% satisfied and happy with the product. Act Five, Break It Down. We end our program today with this attempt to quantify what love is, a short story by Lydia Davis, read by Matt Malloy. A quick warning to listeners before we begin. This story mentions the existence of sex. Nothing very explicit, but the fact that it does exist. He's sitting there staring at a piece of paper in front of him. He's trying to break it down. He says, I'm breaking it all down. The ticket was $600. And after that there was more for the hotel and food and so on, for just 10 days. Say, $80 a day. No, more like $100 a day. And we made love, say, once a day. On the average, that's $100 a shot. And each time it lasted maybe two or three hours, so that would be anywhere from $33 to $50 an hour, which is expensive. Though, of course, that wasn't all that went on, because we were together almost all day long. And she would keep looking at me, and every time she looked at me, that was worth something. And she smiled at me, and didn't stop talking and singing. Something I said, she would sail into it, a snatch, for me. She would be gone from me a little ways, but smiling too, and tell me jokes. I loved it, but didn't exactly know what to do about it, just smiled back at her and felt slow next to her, just not quick enough. So she talked and touched me on the shoulder and the arm. She kept touching and stayed close to me. You're with each other all day long, and it keeps happening, the touches and smiles. And it adds up. It builds up and you know where you'll be that night. You're talking and every now and then you think about it. No, you don't think, you just feel it as kind of a destination, what's coming up after you leave wherever you are all evening. And you're happy about it, and you're planning it all. Not it your head, really. Somewhere inside your body, or all through your body. It's all mounting up and coming together so that when you get in bed, you can't help it. It's a real performance. I mean, it all pours out, but slowly. You go easy until you can't anymore, or you hold back the whole time. You hold back and touch the edges of everything. You edge around it till you have to plunge in and finish it off. And when you're finished, you're too weak to stand. But after a while you have to go to the bathroom, and you stand. Your legs are trembling. You hold onto the door frames. There's a little light coming in through the window. You can see your way in and out, but you can't really see the bed. So it's really not $100 a shot, because it goes on all day, from the start when you wake up and feel her body next to you. You don't miss a thing, not a thing, of what's going on next to you. Her leg, her arm, her shoulder, her face, that good skin. I've felt other good skin, but this skin is just the edge of something else. And you're going to start going. I mean, no matter how much you crawl all over each other, it won't be enough. And when your hunger dies down a little bit, then you start to think about how much you love her, and then that starts you off again. And her face-- and you look over at her face, and you can't believe how you got there, and how lucky, and it's all still a surprise. And it never stops. I mean, even after it's over, it never stops being a surprise. It's more like you have a good 16 or 18 hours a day of this going on. Even when you're not with her, it's still going on. I mean, it's good to be away from her because it's going to be so good to get back to her, you know. It's still there in you. And you can't go off and look at some old street or some old painting without feeling it in your body, and a few things that happened the day before that don't mean much by themselves or wouldn't mean much if you weren't having this thing together. But you can't forget, and it's all inside of you all the time. So it's more like, say, 16 into $100 would be $6 an hour, which isn't too much. And then it really keeps going on while you're asleep, even though you're probably dreaming about something else. A building, maybe. I don't know. I kept dreaming every night, almost, about this building, because I'd spend a lot of every morning in this old stone building. And when I closed my eyes, I would see these cool spaces and have this peace inside me. I would see the bricks of the floor and the stone arches and the space, the emptiness between, like a kind of dark frame around what I could see beyond, a garden. And this space was like stone too, because of the coolness of it and the gray shadow, that kind of luminous shade that was glowing in the light of the sun falling beyond the arches. And there's also this great height of the ceiling. All this was in my mind all the time though I didn't know it until I close my eyes. I'm asleep, and I'm not dreaming about her, but she's lying next to me and I wake up enough times in the night to remember she's there and notice, say, once she was lying on her back but now she's curled around me. I look at her closed eyes. I want to kiss her eyelids. I want to feel that soft skin under my lips but I don't want to disturb her. I don't want to see her frown as though, in her sleep, she's forgotten who I am and feels that just something is bothering her. And so I just look at her and hold onto it all, these times when I'm watching over her sleep, and she's next to me and isn't away from me the way she will be later. I want to stay awake all night just to go on feeling that. But I can't. I fall asleep again, though I'm speaking lightly, still trying to hold onto it. But it isn't over when it ends. I mean, it goes on after it's all over. She's still inside you like a sweet liqueur. You're filled with her. Everything about her has kind of bled into you-- her voice, her smell, the way her body moves. It's all inside of you, at least for awhile after. Then you begin to lose it, and I'm beginning to lose it. You're afraid of how weak you are, that you can't get her all back into you again, and now the whole thing is going to be out of your body, and it's more in your mind than in your body. The pictures come to you one by one, and you look at them. Some of them last longer than others. You were together in this very white clean place, a coffee house, having breakfast together. And the place is so white that against it you can see her clearly, her blue eyes, her smile, the colors of clothes, even the print of the newspaper she's reading when she's not looking up at you. The light brown and red and gold of her hair when she's got her head down reading. The brown coffee, the brown rolls, all against the white table and those white plates and silver urns and silver knives and spoons, and against that quiet of the sleepy people in that room sitting alone at their tables with just chinking and clattering of spoons and cups and saucers. And some hushed voices, her voice now and then rising and falling. The pictures come to you and you have to hope they won't lose their life too fast and dry up, though you know they will, and that you'll also forget some of what happened, because already you're turning up little things that you nearly forgot. We were in bed, and she asked me, do I seem fat to you? And I was surprised because she didn't seem too worry about herself at all in that way, and I guess I was reading into it that she did worry about herself, so I answered what I was thinking, and said stupidly that she had a very beautiful body, that her body was perfect. And I really meant it as an answer, but she said kind of sharply, that's not what I asked. And so I had to try to answer her again, exactly what she had asked. And once she lay over against me, late at night, and she started talking, her breath in my ear, and she just went on and on and talked faster and faster. She couldn't stop, and I loved it. I just felt that all that life in her was running into me too. I had so little life in me. Her life, her fire, was coming into me in that hot breath in my ear. And I just wanted her to go on talking forever right there next to me, and I would go on living like that. I would be able to go on living, but without her-- I don't know. Then you forget some of it all. Maybe most of it all. Almost all of it, in the end. And you work hard at remembering everything now, so you won't ever forget. But you can kill it too, even by thinking about it too much, though you can't help but thinking about it nearly all the time. And then when the pictures start to go, you start asking some questions, just little questions that sit in your mind without any answers. Like, why did she leave the light on when you came to bed one night, but it was off the next, but she had it on the night after that, and she had it off the last night? Why? And all the questions, little questions that nag at you like that. And finally the pictures go and these dry little questions just sit there without any answers. And you're left with this large heavy pain in you that you try to numb by reading. Or you try to ease it by getting out into public places where there'll be people around you. But no matter how good you are at pushing that pain away, just when you think you're going to be all right for a little while, that you're safe, you're holding it off with all your strength and you're staying in some bare little numb spot of ground, then suddenly it will all come back. You'll hear a noise. Maybe it's a cat crying, or a baby, something else like her cry. You hear it and make that connection in a part of you you have no control over, and that pain comes back so hard that you're afraid, afraid of how you're going to fall back into it again. And you wonder-- no you're terrified at how you're ever going to climb out of it. So it's not every hour of the day while it's happening. It's really for hours and hours every day after that, for weeks, though less and less. So that you could work out a ratio if you wanted. Maybe after six weeks, you're only thinking about it an hour or so in the day altogether, a few minutes here and there spread over, or a few and minutes here and there and a half an hour before you go to sleep. Or sometimes it all comes back and you stay awake half the night. So when you add up all that, you've only spent maybe $3 an hour on it. If you have to figure in the bad times too, I don't know. There weren't any bad times with her, though. Maybe there was one bad time, when I told her I loved her. I couldn't help it. This was the first time this had happened with her. Now I was half-falling in love with her, or maybe completely, if she'd let me. But she couldn't, or I couldn't completely, because it was all going to be so short, and other things too. And so I told her. And I didn't know of any way to tell her first that she didn't have to feel that this was a burden, the fact that I loved her, or that she didn't have to feel the same about me or say the same back, that it was just that I had to tell her, that's all. Because it was bursting inside me, and saying it wouldn't even begin to take care of what I was feeling, really. I couldn't say anything of what I was feeling because there was so much. Words couldn't handle it and making love only made it worse, because then I wanted words badly but they were no good, no good at all. But I told her anyway. I was lying on top of her in her hands were up by her head and my hands were on hers and our fingers were locked, and there was a little light on her face from the window, but I couldn't see her. And I was afraid to say it, but I had to say it, because I wanted her to know. It was the last night. I had to tell her then or I'd never have another chance, and I just said, before you go to sleep-- I have to tell you before you go to sleep that I love you. And immediately, right away after, she said, I love you too. And it sounded to me as if she didn't mean it, a little flat. But then it usually sounds flat when somebody says, I love you too, because they're just saying it back even if they do mean it. And the problem is that I'll never know if she meant it. Or maybe someday she'll tell me whether she meant it or not, but there's no way to know now. And I'm sorry I did that. It was a trap I didn't mean to put her in. And I can see it was a trap, because if she hadn't said anything at all, that would have hurt me too, you know, as though she were taking something from me and just accepting it and not giving anything back. So she really had to. Even if just to be kind, she had to say it. And I don't really know now if she meant it. Another bad time-- or it wasn't exactly bad but it wasn't easy either-- was when I had to leave. The time was coming, and I was beginning to tremble and feel empty, nothing in the middle of me, nothing inside, nothing to hold me up on my legs. And then it came. Everything was ready and I had to go. So it was just a kiss, a quick one, as though we were afraid of what might happen after a kiss. And she was almost wild then. And she reached up to a hook by the door and took an old shirt, a green and blue shirt from the hook and put it in my arms for me to take away. The soft cloth was full of her smell. And then we stood there close together looking at this piece of paper she had in her hand. And I didn't lose any of it. I was holding it tight that last minute or two, because this was it. We'd come to the end of it. Things always change, so this was really it. Over. Maybe it works out all right. Maybe you haven't lost for doing it. I don't know. No, really, I mean, sometimes when you think of it, you feel like a prince really. You feel just like a king. And other times you're afraid. You're afraid not all the time, but now and then, of what it's going to do to you. It's hard to know what to do with it now. Walking away I looked back once, and the door was still open. I could see her standing far back in the dark of the room. I could only really see her white face still looking out at me, and her white arms. I guess you get to a point where you look at that pain as if it were there in front of you three feet away lying in a box, an open box in a window somewhere. It's hard and cold like a bar of metal. You just look at it there and say, all right. I'll take it. I'll buy it. That's what it is. Because you know all about it, before you even go into this thing. You know the pain is part of the whole thing. And it isn't that we can say afterwards the pleasure was greater than the pain, and that's why you'd do it again. That has nothing to do it. You can't measure it, because the pain comes after and it lasts longer. So the question really is, why doesn't the pain make you say, I won't do it again, when the pain is so bad that you have to say that, but you don't? So I'm just thinking about it. How you can go in with $600, more like $1,000, and how you can come out with an old shirt. "Break It Down," by Lydia Davis, from her book of stories called Break It Down, read for us by actor Matt Malloy. Her latest book is called Varieties of Disturbance. Well, our program was produced today by Nancy Updike and me, with Alix Spiegel and Julie Snyder. Senior editor for this show, Paul Tough. Music help today from John Connors. Our production manager is Seth Lind. Production help from PJ Vote. [ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS] Today's program was first broadcast all the way back in 1998. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight for our program by Mr. Torey Malatia, who asks the This American Life staff this every single day. How can I, the organization providing the service, please you? I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life. PRI. Public Radio International.
|
It was [? Emmy ?] who explained it best. This is years ago. [? Connie ?] and Emmy were about to have their second child. Connie must have been nine months pregnant already. And their daughter, Maya, was getting nervous about having a new sister. And [? Emmy ?] said, I totally understand it. He said, if Connie were to come home and say, "Honey, I'm going to be bringing home a second husband. He's going to be a little younger than you, a little cuter. I'm going to be spending most of my time with him. But honey, don't worry. I love you just as much." [? Emmy ?] said, I would see through that in a second. Sibling rivalry. When Jack and Lisa had their second child, their first daughter, [? Tarpley, ?] was two and a half, seemed totally cheerful about the new baby. Then about three weeks after the new baby was born, [? Tarpley ?] was at day care. And one of the women at day care asked her, "So how's your little sister doing?" Tarpley looked her straight in the eye and said, "She's dead." Well, from WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it is This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program, sibling rivalry, stories of people thrown together by fate to squabble inescapably. Act One, He Is Heavy, He's My Brother, true tales of sibling horror. Act Two, Drama of the Gifted Child And Her Sister, what happens when your sibling is more talented than you ever dream of being. Act Three, Destiny, a mom records her own daughters fighting, and what she learns in the process. Act Four, Fraternity is Destiny, the story of 100 brothers and their fates together. Stay with us. Act One, He Is Heavy, He's My Brother. What is it about our own brothers and sisters, that we treat them worse than we would ever treat anybody in our entire lives, anyone? And if you doubt this is true, if you doubt it for a second, we offer these case examples. The very meanest thing would be locking my brother to a flagpole. He was chained to the flagpole for six hours. He made me eat grass. I used to play records that I knew she couldn't stand. I'd play them over and over again. And she'd get so frustrated that she'd throw butter knives at me. He made me drink out of the toilet. She took my doll. Her name was Beanie. And she threw it down the incinerator. So my brother comes up to me, and he's like, what's your favorite thing in the entire world? And at the time, my favorite thing in the whole world was this teeny little shell, this little tiger-backed shell that my grandfather had given me for Christmas. So I go down to lunch. I have a tuna fish sandwich. I come back upstairs, go to my room. There's no shell. And I hear my brother calling me from outside. So I go downstairs. I go outside. And there is my brother. And he's holding this string in his fingers, this yellow string. And on one side of the string is my shell, my little tiger shell. And on the other side of the string are my blue helium birthday balloons. And I'm standing there about 20 feet away from him. And he just opens his fingers. And I watch my shell float up into the wild blue yonder. We would take baths together. And a lot of that time was fun time. But there was also some times when we would fight. And I don't remember exactly how it happened. I remember being left by my mother in the bath with my brother. And I pooped in the bathtub. And there was poop floating around in the bathtub. And I somehow convinced him that it was his poop. And they would hold me down. And they would just [SLURPING NOISE] And they would just spill it on you, and in the forehead. It was just sloppy. And they would just do this. They would get it ready. And you could see them getting it ready. And then they'd do just this [SLURPING NOISE] And it would come out of their mouth. But then they'd suck it back up. [SLURPING NOISE] But occasionally, they would just let it go. And he would tie a sheet on me and tell me I could fly like Superman. And he was going to let me test it first by jumping off the barn. And did you jump off the barn? Yes. I think I broke my collarbone. Everyone knows this one, with a little brother or little sister. When you're sitting around, and you really are lazy, and you don't want to go somewhere. You don't want to go outside and do your chores, or take the garbage, out or go to the store, or anything like that, there's a little game where you say, "Hey, Josh." My brother's name is Josh. "Hey, if you can go to the store in less than five minutes and buy this, this, and that for me, and you get back within the five minutes time-- I'll time you on this watch-- I'll give you--" whatever, something close to you, like my favorite baseball card or $5 or something. And they get really excited. And they're like, oh yeah. And you, "Go go go." And they just run. You watch. We used to be able to watch my brother just sort of go off into the distance, into the sunset running. And he'd always beat the time. He'd get back in three minutes, four minutes. And you'd always be like, "Oh, five minutes and four seconds, tough loss. Next time. You're getting better. You're getting a lot better." Act Two, Drama of the Gifted Child's Sister. Now, two stories, a little one and a big one, the little one first. Tamar Brott grew up with an older brother who was a prodigy on the violin and a sister, one year younger than her, who sang, sang so well that now she is an opera singer. Tamar was tone deaf, wanted to sing, but didn't do it very well. She still remembers the parties that her parents would throw when all the kids were still in grammar school. The climax of each of these parties would be the two of them performing. It would begin with my brother playing a really hard piece on the violin. And then my sister would be brought out. And she was an extremely beautiful child, and extremely small, so the impact was all the greater when she stepped up. I believe she had some sort of high chair she would get into and sing. And the most amazing thing about it was I really am not conscious of who picked her repertoire. But she had these Malvina Reynolds songs that she sang. And they were all very sad and poignant. The one that would always get the guests, that was saved for the end, was this one. And I don't know what it's called. But the lyrics were, "Turn around, and she's two. Turn around, and she's four. Turn around, and she's a young girl going out of the door." And she would sing this song. And the guests would weep. It was just [INAUDIBLE]. And the thing that was really quite hideous about it, the most thing that I just can't forgive her for, is the pause she took after-- and she sang in a baby voice, too. And it was like-- Turn around, and you're two. Turn around, and you're four. Turn around, and you're a young girl going out of the-- And she would have this long pause before "door." And you could glance around the room and see the tears just jutting out of these people's heads. It was horrible. And I think that's a turning point in your life, right then, when you realize you can not compete with a sibling. And that's probably the first time in life you learn that you can not compete. You're never going to be as good. You either accept it, and you're still whole, or you obsess on it. This is the thing. These are the kinds of feelings of failure that we usually think that adults are the only ones who have to grapple with, people in their 40s and 50s and 60s, feeling like, "Oh, I'll never be rich. I'll never find true love. I'll never be famous. I'll never do what other people are able to do." And these are kids going through it, without all of the things that we, as adults, have to help us get through those feelings, alcohol, substance abuse, therapy, religion, sudden moves to the opposite side of the country, badly considered marriages to the wrong people. They're kids, and the facts stare them in the face. I am inferior. And then you just have to deal. Which brings us to the second story in this act, this one from Sandra Tsing Loh, from her book Aliens in America. All I know is one October night in 1976, we changed from ballet people into Nutcracker people. It had been like any other day. My older sister, Kaitlin, and I had eaten the same after-school snacks, Muenster on pumpernickel, V8. We'd worn our Thursday leotards, navy and white V-neck, orange skater skirt. We'd attended our usual classes at the Mahri School of Dance, Ballet 3 in the big studio, Ballet 2 in the little. Now my mother was driving us home in the same blue Ford Fairmont, and she was launching into her usual speech. "Attack, Kaitlin, attack. That's what your fouette needs, attack." Kaitlin, hunched and sullen in her parka, said nothing. At 16, Caitlin was "the brilliant one," hence the one who most often disappointed. And so she always rode home in the front seat, the better to receive this disappointment. I was always assigned to the darkness and quiet of the back seat, enjoying vanilla finger cookies, far from achievement and its many complications. "What is wrong with you? You are like a noodle, lifeless." Kaitlin set her jaw, turned away. "Sometimes I wonder with you, Kaitlin. Do you even want these lessons? Heaven knows it is not cheap. If ballet is just one big chore, you should let me know. If getting picked by Irina Lichinska to dance in The Nutcracker is not important to you--" It was the first I'd heard of this. Irina Lichinska was the ballet mistress of the famed Los Angeles Junior Ballet. A Russian expatriate, she had a glamorous, if shady, past. Rumor had it she defected from the Bolshoi in the '50s, married a duke, lived in Monaco for 10 years. She knew everyone famous at the ABT. Irina Lichinska was the sort of person who could take an average ballet student at the average Mahri School of Dance and lift her up to-- "If getting picked by Irina Lichinska is not important to you--" My sister turned her Grace Kelly profile with its upswept bun back to my mother. "No, it's fine," she closed her eyes tiredly. "I will try to work on the fouettes." "What a workout we had in Ballet 2 today," I exclaimed from my position way back in Siberia. "Those leaps we had, I practically broke into a sweat. Did you see, Mama? Real sweat." My mother glanced back over her shoulder and tossed me a bone. "Sure, Sandra, sure. Good. You keep trying." I certainly didn't feel I was a bad dancer. At age 13, only three years younger than Kaitlin, I had been studying almost as long as she had. I loved ballet. I loved what I understood to be the true dance part of it, the whirling about the room, mirrors and other dancers spinning around you, kaleidoscopic. I loved the tattered poster of pink satin pointe shoes in the dressing room. "Ballet," it said, "is inspiration." What Kaitlin had going for her, as far as I could see, was good form. Passe, attitude, arabesque, they were clean. She seemed to have almost an obsession with cleanliness. In warm ups, other girls would throw themselves into stretching exercises, triple pirouettes, or other showy endeavors. Kaitlin, by contrast, would stand in front of the mirror and clock through her positions, first, second, third, fourth, fifth, making the tiniest micro-adjustments. It was almost mathematical, like an engineer tweaking a model airplane. And her face, totally aloof. Oh, a Nutcracker role would be wasted on Kaitlin. I, I was the true ballet dancer. It was the day of the audition. The excitement among the 60 dance students crammed into the Mahri School of Dance, with mothers, had reached frenzy pitch. Even the accessories were hysterical, tiara-ish Swan Lake headbands, chiffon Capezio dance skirts, flashy earrings. One girl had a miniature gold toe shoe hanging from each ear. "Irina," someone called out. The throng parted and Irina Lichinska emerged. In person, the legendary starmaker stood a mere five foot two. Her 60-something years on this planet had clearly been tough ones. She had dyed, jet-black hair cut in a lank pageboy. She had one roomy eye. Bright red lipstick slashed across her mouth. She wore an oddly mannish trench coat and black boots. She looked like a bag lady. "Hello. I am Irina. Ladies, may I introduce Corinna?" From behind Irina stepped a thin-lipped, rail-thin Audrey Hepburn brunette in a wide cream headband. "She will be leading your exercises today. She is expert in the Cecchetti method." The Cecchetti method? What on earth was that? The brisk Corinna stepped forward to demonstrate. "And a one, and a two?" Corinna asked, as though it were some deep metaphysical question. She extended her right leg forward. "And a one, and a two," she replied, like that was the whole answer right there, doing a quick releve on her left leg, beating the right twice at the left knee and whipping it out to the side, her left leg spasming upward into another quick releve before going into a deft 180-degree pivot. A taut silence gripped the ragged semicircle of Mahri School of Dance-ers. Faces were white. This wasn't ballet. This was algebra. "All right," Corinna said. "In groups of eight, then." Eight stalwart Ballet 3 students stepped forward. The pianist began the intro. You could feel an audible breath. And then seven girls plunged fatally off in different directions, soldiers falling before the enemy's gun. The Cecchetti method had slayed them. But one person stood fast, Kaitlin. There she stood in the center, steely as a weather vane, precise as a clock. She was beating the right leg at the left knee, whipping it out, doing a quick releve, deftly moving into the pivot. Her limbs were chiseled, elegant, clear. In that moment, I realized that what I couldn't do was that. For all my jumping, whirling, and half-split, I'd never be able to grasp that. That was the elusive thing that made one girl stand out from 100. It was talent, the very face of talent. The question was not which role to give to Kaitlin, but how many. My mother related this in a tumble as we drove home in the blue Ford Fairmont. Irina had thought Spanish Princess. Corinna had felt they needed Kaitlin to lead the Mirlitons. The flowers, too, needed help. And how about the Snow Queen, or maybe even Sugar Plum Fairy? But Sugar Plum Fairy was an advanced, technical role, usually danced by someone on leave from the ABT. On the other hand, if done well, it could lead Kaitlin to New York. In New York was Baryshnikov, Lincoln Center. My mother went on and on, her voice soaring, cresting, swooping. Baryshnikov, Lincoln Center, New York, these were words none had ever dared breathe before in the Fairmont. Kaitlin did not smile, but her face seemed to shine in the street lamps that night. New York, I thought, New York. God, she was really that good. Irina had just one question for my mother. "How are Kaitlin's fouettes?" "Coming along very well, very well, indeed," had been her bold reply. Kaitlin's face contorted into a hideous mask. "Fouettes," she cried out, "No. You know that's the one thing I can't do. I always fall backwards." But my mother had an answer for everything. "All you need," my mother pushed on, "is a little more attack. That is all. Just like I've been telling you." "Why do I have to be the Sugar Plum Fairy? Why can't I just do the Spanish dance or the Mirlitons?" "We will work on it at home. We will do that spotting exercise in the kitchen, every night." "Oh, no," Kaitlin repeated, suddenly looking old and tired. "Are you eating again, Sandra?" My mother turned abruptly. "Uh, yeah," I replied, quickly swallowing my vanilla finger. "Just a cookie. Just a couple. I didn't finish them." "Sandra, dear, you need to start thinking about just having a piece of fruit after class. You're getting to be a big girl, quite big. Poor Sandra. Well, your grandmother always said you had good, solid legs, legs an empire could stand on." "What?" I gasped. "What are you saying? I'm big? Do you mean I'm fat?" "Spot and spot." My mother's voice drifted in from the kitchen. "Spot and spot." It was two weeks later. Kaitlin had been training with Corinna by day, drilling with my mother by night. Kaitlin's big fouette showdown with Irina was tomorrow. "It's no use," I could hear Kaitlin reply. "If you just have a little more confidence in yourself-- spot and spot. Spot and spot." I lounged in the dark living room. I was eating peanut butter. I would plunge my finger into the jar, lick. Plunge and lick. Plunge and lick. In 20 minutes, I consumed half a jar and felt sick. But what did it matter? I was fat. On the family scale, under the harsh glare of the fluorescents, I had discovered that I weighed 137 pounds at age 13. It was like a weird dream. How had this grotesque transformation happened? "Sandra?" Oh. It was just Kaitlin. "I'm glad you get to be a flower." She sat down in the darkness with me. "Are you excited?" "Oh, I suppose so. There are what, 25 of us? I just hope they find enough pink tulle in the city to cover us all." All of us fat girls had been jettisoned into the vegetable kingdom. In the hellish [? bulges, ?] in the cruel, Darwinian pecking order of The Nutcracker, only the "Waltz of the Flowers," the lowest rung, would do for us. Any girl who could pull a pair of tights over her hips could be a flower. "I'm going to be humiliated tomorrow," Kaitlin said suddenly. "What?" "No, it's true." I could see her Grace Kelly profile perfectly silhouetted. Her words were said with almost clinical detachment. "My spotting isn't good, not yet. I think it's because my weight is falling backward on the releve. It's something I have to relearn, but not in three weeks." And she was right. After all, Kaitlin was the genius. She knew ballet. She understood it. But one thing Kaitlin was wrong about, she would not humiliate herself the next day. The pianist began the Sugar Plum Fairy intro as usual. Um plum, um plum, um plum, um plum. On cue, Kaitlin whipped her right leg out and began her painful but impressive hopping on one pointe sequence. She neatly ended the phrase with a deft skip, turn, plie, to murmurs of approval from the throng of watching students and mothers. "That's lovely, darling, lovely," Irina called out, clapping her wrinkled hands together. Two short stag leaps done with perfect landings, a gentle sigh. And then, buoyed by the music, Kaitlin boureed toward the center, the site of the dreaded fouette sequence. But instead of launching into her turns, that day, Kaitlin kept boureeing and boureeing. Her speed picked up. She broke into a run. "Darling?" Irina called out. A murmur arose from the crowd. The pianist looked nervously over her shoulder but kept playing, because there was no stopping Kaitlin. She kept running about the studio, running, just like in Giselle's mad scene. She was shaking her head, no, no, no. And then giving one final, riveting leap, Kaitlin ran out the door, down the stairs, and caught the bus home. I didn't have the courage to run from The Nutcracker. I stayed, was zipped into my huge, pink costume, ate my sandwiches, did my waltz. But I, too, was changed, because I'd seen that pure, steely thing inside Kaitlin. Call it character, call it stubbornness. Whatever it was, it led to the true revelation of my 13th year, that a kind of integrity existed that was invisible to the world, that certain acts of courage reap no earthly rewards, that somewhere in the darkness of the audience, my sister sat, bearing her terrible burden, knowing all. Slowly, I waltzed with my 24 compatriots, our hair curled, our faces rouged, in the bright glare of the footlights. Sandra Tsing Loh, stories from her book, Aliens in America. Coming up, Luke, it is your destiny. Now why doesn't Princess Leia say that instead of Darth Vader? Well, maybe she should. Why? In a minute, from Public Radio International, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's program, sibling rivalry. We've come to Act Three of our show, Destiny. Well, Deb Monroe has two daughters. And they're a pretty typical family, except for one thing. Deb does some radio reporting, and so she has professional tape equipment lying around the house, and was willing to record her daughters fighting for our program. Her daughter Alexandra is five years old. Michaela is six and a half. Michaela believes that as the older child, she should get special rights and privileges. Alexandra believes otherwise. And they start measuring who is ahead from the time they wake up in the morning. Who's getting more cereal, who's getting more juice, who gets closer to the microphone. Don't. It's not fair. Alex got the microphone. Why does she have to hold it when she's talking, and she holds it up to my mouth? It's not fair. Alex got-- Well, it doesn't matter. Have you observed, does each of them have her own style of tormenting the other one? Mm-hmm. The older one likes to control and minimize the achievements of the younger one, but in a very insidious way. So you have to really listen to what she's saying. Like what do you mean? Like she'll say, "Boy, Alexandra, you're doing really great on your piano lessons. And if you try really hard for the next two years, you're going to be as good as I am." And it sounds superficially like she's complementing her sister, but she's not. She's asserting her dominance. The other one is more likely to just annoy the older sister. Like when Michaela had her big meltdown, because she wanted to-- Michaela is the older one. The older one. Her favorite song is "Sweet Dreams" by the Eurythmics. And she thinks it's her song. And she likes to sing it. And she doesn't like her little sister to sing it at the same time. And the little one knows that. And so the little one went around the coffee table singing, "Sweet dreams are made of these," over and over and over. Alex, please stop. I'm asking you. Can you even hear me? It's annoying. --to disagree. Alex, stop. Sweet dreams are made of these. Alex. Mom, do something. Did anything surprise you about what you found when you started taping? Because I had the microphone in my hand, I became someone else. I was not Mommy. I was just watching, watching to see what would happen. And I was able to see things that I hadn't seen before. I hadn't really noticed that Michaela abdicates all power, and that she's totally incapable of ignoring her sister, and that her sister is so calculated, that Alexandra can remain in control. --my songs. Alex. It did not bother Alexandra at all that her sister had just come undone. Sweet dreams are made of these. OK, Michaela. I'm getting frustrated. I asked her nicely. She-- Come here. Come here, sweetheart. Sweet dreams are made of these. Who in the world will disagree? Travel the world and seven seas. Who in the world-- She was so gleeful that she had got to the microphone first. She won. Fight was over. Wow. Ding, ding, ding. What does each of them try to accomplish when they fight? What is it about the other one that's just getting under their skin? What is it about? I think it's an assertion of power and dominance. Both of them want to be the one calling the shots. You're not the boss of me, Michaela Monroe. Fight for the number one spot. And there is no number one spot. They're siblings. There will never be a number one spot. They're not totally equal. But there is no number one. What you're saying, in a way, is that they're fated to fight, because it's fated for each of them to want to feel that sense of control and dominance. Yes. And I think that's natural. I think that's totally natural. I think as soon as you begin to suspect that there's something weird or strange about it, we can give kids a lot of hangups. It's hurting my ears. Sweet dreams are made of these. Who in the world can disagree. Travel the-- Deb Monroe reports for PRI's Marketplace and for various parenting magazines. Everybody's looking for something. Some of them want to use you. Some of them want to used by you. Act Four, Fraternity is Destiny. If it is our destiny, our natural destiny, to fight with our siblings as children, so what happens when we grow up? Donald Antrim reads this excerpt from his book, The Hundred Brothers. My brothers Rob, Bob, Tom, Paul, Ralph, Phil, Noah, William, Nick, Dennis, Christopher, Frank, Simon, Saul, Jim, Henry, Seamus, Richard, Jeremy, Walter, Jonathan, James, Arthur, Rex, Bertram, Vaughan, Daniel, Russell, and Angus, and the triplets, Herbert, Patrick, and Jeffrey, identical twins Michael and Abraham, Lawrence and Peter, Winston and Charles, Scott and Samuel, and Eric, Donovan, Roger, Lester, Larry, Clinton, Drake, Gregory, Leon, Kevin, and Jack, all born on the same day, the 23rd of May, though at different hours and separate years. And the caustic graphomaniac, Sergio, whose scathing opinions appear with regularity in the front of book pages of the more conservative monthlies. And Albert, who is blind, and Siegfried, the sculptor in burning steel. And clinically depressed Anton, schizophrenic Irv, recovering addict Clayton, and Maxwell, the tropical botanist, who since returning from the rainforest has seemed a little screwed up somehow. And Jason and Joshua and Jeremiah, each vaguely gloomy in his own lost boy way. And Eli, who spends solitary, wakeful evenings in the tower, filling notebooks with drawings, the artist's multiple renderings for a larger work, portraying the faces of his brothers, including Chuck the prosecutor, Porter, the diarist, Andrew, the civil rights activist, Pierce, the designer of radically unbuildable buildings, Barry, the good doctor of medicine, Fielding, the documentary filmmaker, Spencer, the spook with known ties to the State Department. Foster, the new millennium psychotherapist, Aaron, the horologist, Raymond, who flies his own plane. And George, the urban planner, who, if you read the papers, you'll recall, distinguished himself not so long ago with that innovative program for revitalizing the decaying downtown area, only to shock and amaze everyone, absolutely everyone, by vanishing with a girl named Jane and an overnight bag packed with municipal funds in unmarked hundreds. And all the young fathers, Seth, Rod, Vidal, Bennett, Dutch, Bryce, Alan, Clay, Vincent, Gustavus, and Joe. And Hiram, the eldest, Zachary, the giant, Jacob, the polymath, Virgil, the compulsive whisperer, Milton, the channeler of spirits who speak across time. And the really bad womanizers, Steven, Denzel, Forrest, Topper, Temple, Lewis, Mongo, Spooner, and Fish. And of course our celebrated, perfect brother Benedict, recipient of a Medal of Honor from the Academy of Sciences for work over 20 years in chemical transmission of sexual language in 11 types of social insects. All of us, except George, about whom there have been many rumors, rumors upon rumors-- he's fled the vicinity. He's right here under our noses. He's using an alias, or maybe several. He has a new face, that sort of thing. All my 98, not counting George, brothers and I recently came together in the red library and resolved that the time had arrived, finally, to stop being blue, put the past behind us, share a light supper, and locate, if we could bear to, the missing urn full of the old [BLEEP]ers ashes. The red library walls were haunted by shadows and light cast from a multitude of low wattage reading lamps that haloed the tables on which they sat. "I hate this room. It stinks of death," whispered Virgil, wedged beside me on a loveseat. "Lighten up, I told him." A line of our brothers scuffed past us in search of places to sit. The library was filling with male energy and low sounds of voices saying, "Hey, man. Scoot over and make space." Soon it would be standing room only. The musty air would grow lush with our smells of sweat, shaving lotions, exhaled humid breaths. God help us. No one was altogether certain who'd last seen the urn. Jason once, long ago, reported a sighting over near where maps of the world are stored in drawers. But it wasn't, it turned out, there. And some time back, Paul suggested looking in the gloomy alcove packed with patriotic music hall songs in their archival boxes. A thorough search turned up nothing. "It's nice to have everyone together again, isn't it?" a voice near me said. I turned and saw in the shadows a man bearing flowers. This man said, "All the old faces, all the familiar voices. Hello? It's me, Doug. It's William." "William." "Don't be frightened. I brought these," he said, stepping partway out from darkness with pale flowers held before him. "Lilies brighten a room." "Yes," I agreed. "Take them." "Me?" "Put them on a table, somewhere in the light, where people can enjoy them." "You brought them, William. Wouldn't you like to find a spot for them? Let everyone know you brought flowers. I'm sure it will mean a lot." "I'd rather not, Doug. I don't think I can bear to talk to everyone right now. Maybe later." "I understand," I said. Then he was gone, behind European folklore and mythology. And I clutched the lilies he had brought for us. In the library's open spaces, men tramped singly or with buddies toward the drinks table. Others, already with drinks, stood drinking. They were lucky to have these drinks. By now, the press around the bar would be enormous, five guys deep at least. It would take an eternity to get served. Clayton and Rob would have poured the last Johnnie Walker Black. And there'd be nothing remaining but Johnnie Walker Red, if that, or maybe Four Roses brand, one of the gallon discounts that are admissible late at night, but which you never want in the beginning. That's the way life goes around here, the blinking lights, the dry taste in the mouth, the body's craving need for something cold and warm at the same time. Out into the milling crowd, I hurled myself out in search of a suitable vase for William's gift. The lilies, with their long, thick stems, their lush, drooping blooms, required a large, heavy vessel, precisely what I could not locate. "Does anyone know where I can find a vase that'll hold these?" I asked a group loitering around the Native American stone tool collection in its metal and glass display case. Dennis shrugged, and Noah said, "Sorry." Jim, who often does not speak even when spoken to-- he's a contemplative Buddhist-- suggested, "Try over by the African masks." Eventually, one of us is going to crash down his glass or an ashtray too hard on that stone tool display table and there will be a mess. I said, "You guys be careful using that as a table, because it isn't designed to support weight." I did not mean to scold my brothers. But what can you do when people have no sense? "Seen a vase, anyone?" I asked another bunch as I hurried past their leather sofa and chairs pulled up close in a circle. "Not me," Lewis said. "Maybe on the mantle," said Drake. "I'll try there," I said, then advised, "Take off your shoes if you're going to put your feet on the furniture, because you'll scuff the leather." The chandelier bulbs overhead flashed off, on, off, on, like playhouse lobby lights signaling act one. I sometimes imagine our red library as a kind of bleak and unruly interpersonal anxiety zone. Emotions heat up, and tempers break out in real disputes that have their roots in 100 contingent histories of the standard childhood competitions, degradations, reparations, punishments, tortures, all the gory excitements of pain and power that seem, in retrospect, so ineluctably linked with childish fantasies about manhood. Screaming and crying were the routine bedlam of our bedtimes, drowning out the crickets and the pounding wind outside, though never drowning out the voices of older brothers, who taunted, "Had enough, you little worms? Father can't help you now." I held my eyes closed and pretended to sleep and did nothing, night after night. It grieves me to think back now over old boyish stuff, all the bad times made more bitter in memory by the absence, in this strangling red library, of a serene corner to hide out in, of a comfy chair that gets enough light for reading without strain, of a taste of unstale air to breathe. It's shocking, isn't it, how the dreadful circumstances of one's life grow to feel, simply because one knows them, perfectly normal? I love my brothers, and I hate their guts. "Me, me," our voices all seem to shout, as if we were not a true community united in blood and spirit, instead, a common mob intent on nothing more than the next drink, the next mouthful of food. I love my brothers, and I hate my brothers. The long, snaking line of men to the bar was growing less long. Hiram's walker clacked across floorboards, clacked again. It sounded as if Hiram was gouging the floor with a trowel. Each step brought scuffing and digging. Hiram paused on his walker and glared in my direction. His injured hand was swollen and large. He inhaled a shallow breath. He was having trouble, and his mouth was working. He said, "Where did you get those flowers?" "William." "You should trim their stalks and put them in a vase before they turn brown and die." "I was looking for a vase, actually." "There's one somewhere. You'll find it," he said, as he gripped the walker with his good hand. He heaved himself up, scooted the walker forward on the floor, took another labored step onto the edge of the carpet with its knotted fringe that caught and became tangled as the walker's legs scraped past. He said, "I don't know about you, but I'm famished. I could eat a side of beef if I had my original teeth. Remember, always, to care for your teeth, Doug." "I will." "Do you floss? Flossing is more important than brushing, I can tell you. Too much vigorous brushing as a young man was my downfall. You scrub away the gums. And before you know it, the roots of your teeth are exposed to the elements, and it murders you to chew. Then, one after another, you lose your teeth, like you lose everything in life." "I'll remember that." "Your teeth are your greatest possession. You probably think your greatest possession is your johnson. But it's not your johnson. It's your teeth, especially your two front teeth, these, right here," he said, opening his mouth wide to insert fingers. He touched the teeth in question, the upper incisors. He pointed these out. And when he did, when he touched these dentures, they moved. They were loose in his mouth, insecurely fastened, and slipping off the gum. The effect was grotesque, Hiram's teeth hanging at an angle, wobbling in his mouth, licked by Hiram's tongue and about to fall out, as he commanded, "Stow those flowers in a vase before the petals fall off." "Yes, sir." Here I was again, in the old, unconscious complicity with Hiram's authoritarian posturing. This happens every time I engage with Hiram. It happens to a lot of us when we engage with him. We feel infantilized. And I invariably promise myself, after taking orders from Hiram, that next time, I'll stand up to him, not obey, and let him get angry if he wants. Tiptoeing around Hiram's anger resolves nothing and only serves to perpetuate a strained and uneasy state of affairs, in which one personality, Hiram's, overwhelmingly influences the general quality of feeling in the room as a whole. Would it be going too far to imagine my own bad moods, my terrors and despairs, and so on, as personalized responses to this room-wide, Hiram-centric emotional atmosphere? Could it then follow that Hiram is himself responsible in large part, unwittingly, presumably, for whatever uncomfortableness we brothers experience when we congregate? Might it be possible, if, in fact, Hiram is the root cause of our squabbles and disputes, might it be possible to drive a wedge through this ancient and pervasive household trepidation-- I don't know what else to call it-- by meeting Hiram's anger with anger? It was in this absurd spirit of revolt against destiny that I now hurled the flowers to the floor before Hiram's walker, before Hiram's feet caged inside the walker's clackety aluminum framework, and said, "Find a vase yourself, you sadist." Instantly, I regretted my actions and wanted, needed, to recant and beg forgiveness. Hiram leaned on his walker. He was little and bent over and liver-spotted and lame. And I was startled to realize once again that I was intensely afraid of him. Throwing the flowers was nothing more than an act of self-disempowerment, an emotional demonstration of the sort that Hiram would never allow himself. I felt awful when Hiram said, "Pick them up." It was one of those familiar, deplorable moments. I wished for the dinner bell. No such luck yet. In the meantime, there stood Denzel. And next to Denzel was Saul. And next to Saul, and more or less directly behind Hiram, were Aaron and Pierce. And of course, there were other brothers standing around, looking on. And no one among these men wanted to get too close to a fight involving Hiram. Hiram leaned forward over the frame of the walker, out over the metal frame. He had me in his sights. He said, "You're full of hate, aren't you, Doug?" "No." "You keep it all bottled up inside, your scorn and your contempt for people. And when you can't control it any longer, it comes flying out. And we have one of our little tragic scenes. Isn't that right?" "No." "This is a family full of love, Doug. We all love one another here. This whole room is full of love. Too bad you can't feel it, Doug. You can't participate in love because you're busy tearing everybody down. You want to tear us down, and you want to discredit our forefathers." "No." "Don't say no to me, boy. You think that if you find sickness in others, you'll be healthy. You think if you find weakness in others, you'll be strong. Does throwing a bunch of flowers at an old man make you feel strong, Doug?" "No," I whispered. "Speak louder." "No." "Pick up the flowers, Doug." Then the 20 chandeliers blinked off again, and everything became a shade darker for an instant. It was like a negative form of lightning, perfect accompaniment to the routine thunder of wind hitting windows. Chuck's dog, Gunner, barked and barked. The Doberman had managed to unsnarl his leash from the art nouveau armchair. And so he was free now, and sprinting in wider and wider circles around the furniture. "Settle down, fellow," Chuck called to the racing dog. I prayed for Gunner to dash toward Hiram and knock him down. "Here, boy." Instead, Gunner charged between couches. Men sidestepped to avoid the onrushing dog. Gunner jumped a coffee table, then disappeared into a narrow aisle of shelves housing geology, natural history, and mineral sciences. I had begun a moment or two ago to describe in plain terms the situation as it stood that night with the lilies and with Hiram, our little semi-public showdown that wasn't, in fact, so little. I always charge off the track in moments like these, the bitter moments, I guess you'd call them, and instead begin rendering the scenery and all the extraneous misbehavior of my brothers and their abysmal pets, as if anyone cares. Conflict is the really interesting thing, I've found. Conflict. Conflict is always so difficult to recount. By difficult, I suppose I mean painful. But also, I mean demanding. The technical aspects of describing true conflict are daunting. First, you have to establish your antagonists. It is important to avoid cozy oversimplifications, and to bear down instead on all the obscure and intractable problems of identity and desire that make our lives and our needs so various and dissimilar. The problems in describing a person are essentially problems of knowing a person. One of the sad features of most close relationships is the decay of intimacy as a function of time, turmoil, and all the little misunderstandings that inevitably occur between people, leading them, year in and year out, toward the same tired conclusions. Conversation falters. Friendships fail. That said, allow me to concede that my brother, Hiram, is an incredible asshole. He's just a complete jerk. He finds your worst insecurities and then tortures you, until you'll do practically anything to escape his voice's dry wheezing and the spectacle of bony fists clutching that walker. "Take a look at yourself, Doug. Take an honest look at yourself standing there, with your hair falling in your eyes. You really could do with a trim and a shave." He paused, coughed, inhaled one of his racking breaths. He resumed, "You need some new clothes. Those clothes you're wearing don't even fit you. Who wears a corduroy jacket anymore? You don't even stand straight, Doug. You slouch. You've always slouched. You have the posture of a weak person." I said to Hiram, "The fact that I haven't shaved this week means nothing. I only want to help. I want everybody to get along. I want all of us to be happy again." How did this sound, woeful, tender? I should explain that in spite of antipathy toward our eldest brother, toward his more hateful manifestations, it was still not uncommon-- and I believe this has been true for each of us in our relations with the man-- to hope for some kindness or gentleness, even a hint of his admiration for the odd opinion or sentiment, whatever. You see, in his presence, we felt like children, children caught in precisely those worst moments of growing up, those times of clear and terrifying appreciation of one's utter smallness in the world. And this smallness is excruciating to feel in adulthood, because it is a form of regression, and therefore, humiliating. For this reason, and in spite of mean feelings, in spite of everything, we all craved our aged brother's esteem. He heaved himself up and gaped another painful breath. It hurt to listen to him. "It's a good thing father isn't around anymore to see what's become of you." I walked forward two steps and abruptly, dramatically, as if swooning, collapsed before Hiram's feet. I dropped to my hands and knees and reached out for those broken lilies. Several pale blooms had come to rest directly atop Hiram's large, black wingtip shoes. I plucked up one, then another, and another ruined flower. Donald Antrim, reading from his book, The Hundred Brothers. Well, our program was produced today by Julie Snyder and myself with Alix Spiegel and Nancy Updike, senior editor Paul Tough, contributing editors Jack Hitt, Margy Rochlin, and Consigliere Sarah Vowell. Production help from Alex Blumberg and Rachel Day. If you want to buy a cassette copy of our program, call us here at WBEZ in Chicago, phone number 312-832-3380. Again, 312-832-3380. Our email address, [email protected] This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia, who reminds you-- Your teeth are your greatest possession. You probably think your greatest possession is your johnson. But it's not your johnson. It's your teeth. I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life. We all love one another here. This whole room is full of love. PRI, Public Radio International.
|
OK, here's something that most of us would never, ever do. When Julia Sweeney's brother got cancer, and then she got cancer, she decided she wanted to talk about it with strangers from a stage in a comedy club. After the worst of all these times was over, she turned some of these stories into a one-woman show, which became a book and a movie. But there's something about these original recordings that she made. During the same weeks that some of the most horrible things that can happen to a person were happening to her, there's something about these recordings which is just very remarkable. Her feelings are right there on the surface. There's this saying that comedy equals tragedy plus time, which isn't always true but is mostly true. And in this case, there is just no time, right? Sometimes you get the feeling when you hear these recordings that she's talking about these things for the very first time with anybody. And it's from a stage. Well, from WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life, distributed by Public Radio International. I'm Ira Glass. This, of course, is your weekly program documenting everyday life in these United States through whatever means and tactics seem necessary. And of course, most weeks, we choose a theme, bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme, documentaries, monologues, found tapes, occasional radio plays, anything we can think of. But today, what we're going to do is devote the entire program to just one thing, to this very unusual set of comic monologues. Today show's is going to proceed in two acts. Act One, Julia's Brother Gets Cancer. Act Two, Julia is diagnosed with cancer herself and gets treated. These recordings were made between October of 1994 and August of 1995 at a regular weekly comedy show called Un-Cabaret in Los Angeles, run by Beth Lapides and Greg Miller. Un-Cabaret started off as this kind of experiment in reaction to the predictability and lowest-common-denominator mentality of a lot of stand-up comedy. The rules of Un-Cabaret were that no comic was allowed to tell a story that he or she had ever told on stage before. So spontaneity was just built into the structure of it. And the way it would work is that every Sunday night, back in its early days, five or six people would go up, often with notes in their hands, onto the stage, and then do this thing that was somewhere between traditional stand-up and diary and a kind of reportage. It had its own very particular kind of feeling to it. Some quick caveats before we begin. These tapes are made from the soundboard at Un-Cabaret. And so the sound quality isn't always the greatest. Also, sometimes you're going to hear laughing and off-stage comments during the monologues. And these are from the MC and ringmaster at Un-Cabaret, Beth Lapides. Some things you should know about Julia Sweeney before we start that she refers to in these monologues. She was in the cast of Saturday Night Live for a while. She's best known for a character named Pat. And the joke with Pat was that nobody could ever tell if Pat was a man or a woman. And there was a Pat movie, which, as she refers to, didn't really do too well. So to these tapes. This first bit is from October 23, 1994. And you know how part of being sick is dealing with everybody in your life when you're sick? A lot of the stories that Julia Sweeney tells about cancer are basically just stories about her family. Her brother moved in with her when he got cancer to be near the cancer treatment center very early in his illness. And then her parents moved in soon after that. OK, my parents are staying with me this week. And when I say this week, I mean it's just the first of many weeks. They keep saying, "Now, we've got to start planning the Thanksgiving dinner." And then my mom goes, "Why are you crying?" And I go, "Oh, my eyes are watering. I have this weird problem with my sinuses." It's a special feeling to be in your mid-30s and have your parents moving in with you. I haven't revealed why my parents are here for so long until this time. And I'm trying to think very hard about the most hilarious way I can get this across. Oh, please be with me tonight. All right. So briefly, there's five kids in our family. I'm the oldest. And my brother, who's the fourth child, got lymph cancer. Hold for laughs. And it's a very tragic, terrible situation, although he's doing very well. And he is at the UCLA Cancer Center. And every day, he has radiation, and every other day, he has a spinal tap and spinal chemo. And every three weeks, he has the big chemo. So all you need to know about this is that I am with my parents, but in a very trying situation where I can't really yell at them for the small, annoying things that they do-- which I would do normally-- because of the largess of the total situation. And yet, for you, I can kvetch a little bit. All right. So anyway, suffice it to say, we're at UCLA Cancer Center every day for several hours. My mother-- who is, by the way, the same age as Dustin Hoffman. They were born on the same day. Keep this in mind. Every time we get on an elevator, she acts like it's a miracle invention that she's never encountered before. And you can imagine how many times we get on elevators in a given day. Many elevators. Every time I get on the elevator, even if it's just she and I getting on the elevator, I immediately push the "door open" button because it takes so [BLEEP] long for her to get in the elevator. And every time, she goes, "Oh, oh!" when the elevator arrives. And then I go in and push the "door open," and then she goes, "Oh!" And then she takes a moment before she goes over the chasm between the hallway and the elevator itself, that little metal thing. "Hurry up because the doors are going to close automatically!" God! And then, she always get in, and then she looks up like, "Oh!" And then when we go, she goes, [INAUDIBLE GESTURE] And then when they open, she goes, "Oh?" It's like, I really don't think Dustin Hoffman does that. And how many millions of times have we been on elevators together? A billion. So the other thing is, my mother, she's from that generation that thinks that you would never get a second opinion about anything because doctors know everything. And also, she believes that all doctors have the same amount of knowledge in every area. So we're talking to the lymph specialist, and then we'll be walking down the hall, and there'll be a group of doctors. We know because they're men. And they're not rushing around looking very caring. That's the signal. And then she goes, "There's some doctors. Go ask them if they know about lymph cancer." And I go, "We're talking to the lymph cancer specialist in the country. I think he knows the most about lymph cancer. I don't know what these doctors do." And she goes, "Well, I got the home phone number of Dr. Nishamura, my old OB/GYN. And I was thinking you should call him and ask him about Mike's condition." So I go, "Mom, I really don't think a gynecologist who's been retired for 20 years is going to know that much about this." OK, but you wonder, what's Dad doing? He reads. He just buries himself in reading. And then, my dad is a diabetic. Hmm, weird. And then my brother, who is now living with me also, he gives himself shots every day for his blood counts. And so there's just syringes hanging around my house. And so a common thing for me is like, "OK, who left their syringes on the kitchen table? Dad? We have to throw them away and break the needle." All right. OK, so this is all an introduction to last Thursday. And then I get to the The Pope, so just wait. OK, so we're in the doctor's office. And Mike, who's doing really great and is responding really well to the treatment, but he's had so many spinal taps that they can't get into his spinal column anymore. So the doctors come in. And my dad's reading about the plague in India, because that's a good diversion. And my mom is looking at the doctors and saying, "Now, he looks single." And this doctor comes in, and he says, "Michael, we can't get into your spinal column anymore. So we're thinking about putting a shunt in your head." And my brother goes, "What?" And he goes, "A shunt." And I go, "A shunt, like an artificial opening to the brain." And Mike goes, "Well, where would this shunt be?" And the doctor goes, "Well, the best place we've found is to put it in the forehead." And Mike goes, "If you think I am going to get a faucet put into my forehead. I'm already 90 pounds and I have no hair. I am not going to walk around for a year with a faucet sticking of my forehead." And my mom goes, "No, I think it's more like a spigot." And then the doctor goes, "But the people we know, the patients that have the shunt, they love it. Oh, they thank me for it because the pain is so much less, and when we do the operation, because it's in the brain, there's no pain." And my brother goes, "Oh, that's because you give them lobotomies before you put the faucet in!" And then my dad's looking up from his article on the plague. Anyway, as you can imagine, I got a little depressed that [INAUDIBLE]. So Thursday night, I decided that I wanted-- because, as you may know, The Pope wrote a book, and it came out on Thursday. So I had to be right there to get it. And also, I wanted to get away from my home. So I get into my car, and I'm driving to Book Soup, and sadness, the new current trend in thinking, overtook me. And I had no makeup on, a little lipstick, and overalls, which are not a good choice for me. And I looked terrible, but I though I'd go to Book Soup. And then I started crying. And I started thinking, oh, why, why, why? Why can't it just end? I just don't want to go on. And if I am going to end and I really am just going to be over, why can't I smoke? Because who cares if I get lung cancer? I'm not going live that long to even have lung cancer. So I'm going to buy some cigarettes. Yes! I'm going to buy a cigarette and I'm going to smoke it. And I'm going to go to Book Soup and I'm going to buy that book from The Pope. So I'm sobbing and sobbing. So I get to Book Soup. And I kind of wipe my eyes, and I they're all red and everything. So then I go in, and then suddenly, I'm kind of seized with a moment of embarrassment-- for some reason that I don't understand, since I get embarrassed continually throughout the day with no problem, apparently-- about asking for this book that The Pope wrote. So I come in and I kind of scan the bookstore out to see if there-- I was looking for a big 10-foot cutout of The Pope with his hands out and the book. There wasn't one. So I had to go to the information desk. And I go, "Hi, I'm looking for a book that came out today." And the guy goes, "Oh, jeez, it's right over there." And I'm thinking, "The Pope's doing some business on these books." So I go over to this area, and it's that Resnick Nicole Simpson book. So then I go back, and I go, "No, not the Resnick book. The Pope. The Pope's book." So I go over and I get the Pope's Book, this book. And then I think, oh, I don't really want to just buy The Pope's book. So somehow, I end up in the self-help section. Hmm. And I'm looking at titles like Can You Live Through This? and You Can Make It and Why Do Things Happen to People and stuff like that. And then finally, I find this book-- oh, I wrote down the title. It was An Atheist's Guide to Getting Through the Day. There is a tomorrow. I thought, that's the book for me. So now I have The Atheist's Guide to Getting Through the Day and The Pope's book. And I'm thinking, all right, I think I'm covered. And there's not very many people in the book store, and I keep having to remind you how awful I look. And all of a sudden-- now, this is the most embarrassing thing I'll ever say at Un-Cabaret-- without any warning, I let out the biggest fart. And I am not someone who has any problem with that. And I also find no humor in that kind of humor. And it's like a whistle has gone off at Book Soup. It's just like everyone looks up. And then I don't how whether to rush out of that area or look around or-- it was terrible. OK, so right at that moment, this guy comes up and goes, "Julia?" Like, "You heard my call. You recognized my fart." Anyway, I don't recognize him at all. And I go, "Hi." And he goes, "Oh, you don't recognize me, do you?" And I go, [MAKES UNCOMFORTABLE SOUNDS] And he goes, "Marshall from The Groundlings." And I go-- who I have no memory of-- "Marshall, oh, Marshall. Here I am. I'm getting the Pope's book. How are you?" And he goes, "So hey, when's the Pat movie coming out?" Big, red eyes. OK, here's my standard response. "They opened it in Houston and Seattle, and nobody went or liked it. So, I don't know." And he goes, "Oh, so it was a bomb." And I go, "Just because no one saw it, that means it's a bomb? It's a hit to me." And he goes, "Oh, well anyway, I'm sorry." And he goes, "So hey, how's Steve?" And I go, "Oh, well, we got divorced this year, but amicably. And really good friend. He's seeing someone, and we talk every day." "Oh, no, you guys were the cutest couple." "Yeah, well." And then he goes, "Oh, is your brother still running the box office at The Groundlings?" And I go, "Well, no." He goes, "Oh, what's he up to?" "Well, he's got lymph cancer. Stage four. And so, well, I'm going to go pay for my books." So I put back the atheist book, because I really thought my book is really The Agnostic's Guide to Getting Through the Day. I have a little hope. Not a lot. OK. So I go out, I go across the street, I buy a pack of cigarettes. So now I'm really going to enjoy myself. I get into the car. My family uses my car all the time for transportation purposes. It's the normal use of a car. And they hate cigarette smoke, like anyone should. OK, so I roll down all the windows, and I'm smoking, and I'm actually starting to feel better because Marshall was just such a horrific situation that you could only feel better. You just had to go up. So I'm smoking, and I'm really happy. And then finally, I'm getting close to home, so I throw the cigarette out. And then I keep driving, and all of a sudden, I smell this really smoky smell. And then I pull into the driveway, and I turn around, and my back seat is on fire. The cigarette has flown back into the car and had ignited my seats in the back. So I get out of the car, and I throw the cigarette out, and I'm feeling very like a girl who's just been smoking pot or something going into the house. Oh, which by the way, the prescribed pot for my brother, so my brother's also just smoking pot all around the house all the time. So I go in, and as soon as I get in, my mom goes, "I want to use your car keys. I have to go to the store and get something." And I go, "Oh, god, you can't believe what just happened to me. I was driving down Sunset, and this old man smoking a cigarette threw it out of his car. And I noticed, because I thought, smoking is terrible. And I got back, and the cigarette had landed in my car and burnt a hole into the back seat. And my mom's like, "Oh, that's the most horrible thing I've ever heard." And she's going, "Now, an old man was smoking next to you? And I'm like, "Yes, right next to me. Well, on the passenger-- I had the passenger window open where he would be on the other side of the-- because-- yes. And I noticed him, that creep." And so she goes, "Oh, that's so horrible." So she takes the car and goes. And then the next morning, my dad and mom are coming out, and the cigarette that was the culprit was on the driveway. And my dad looks down. I go, "Well, there's the cigarette." My dad picks it up, and he goes, "There's lipstick on it." And I go, "Oh!" And my mom goes, "You said it was an old man." And I go, "Well, Sunset Boulevard, you know." That was Un-Cabaret in October of 1994. Julia Sweeney's next turn at the microphone-- this next one that we're going to hear-- was three months later, in January of 1995. My parents are staying with me. I know I say that every week since September because that, in fact, is practically the case. Anyway, my parents are here because I have a brother who is very ill with cancer. And I don't know if he's doing well or not anymore. But he is very, very ill. So my parents are down. And like any stressful situation, their annoying qualities, their personalities, are heightened because it's a crisis situation. And it's made even more difficult for me because I can't yell at them about it because we are in a crisis. And it's like, how could I really scream at my mother for talking incessantly when her son is so very ill? So Wednesday night, I go out. And my brother, he weighs 120 pounds and he's 5' 11''. And he's taking lots of drugs, and we don't know if it's for the cancer. And we don't know if we should yell at him about the drugs, but then he has cancer, so you don't really want to get down on someone at that moment for that. Anyway, OK, this is just so sad. I am going to try my [BLEEP] hardest to make this funny, all right? So I go see House Guest because I'm going to see Phil Hartman next week, and I want to have seen it. Although now, I probably shouldn't have seen it. I kept thinking all the way home, what are the scenes I can say you were funny in? Which scene? And he's a very funny guy, so it's too bad, but I guess it's making money. And the whole time I was watching, I was thinking. "Pat doesn't get a national release and House Guest gets a national release?" So this is my Wednesday. So I get home from House Guest, I walk in the house, my brother is laid out on the couch. Literally, he's laid out. He's laying there with his hands on his chest with blankets over him, like, has Mike died while I was at House Guest? Does someone come rushing up to me and saying, "We don't know which coroner to call." I go, "Oh, Mike." And he's like, "I'm feeling better," And I go, "Oh, and you look great." And I go in and my mom intercepts, and she goes, "Oh, hi. I'm so glad you're here because I was wondering how House Guest was because I like Sinbad. And I like him because I watched him on TV. And the TV in the living room doesn't coordinate with the cable anymore. And I don't know how to change that, because I want to watch a movie later. And the movie's on a video. And I don't even know how to put the video into the machine. And I was going to try, but I was making some soup, and the soup started boiling over, and your father is too drunk to deal with it." OK. I go into the kitchen. My dad's standing in the kitchen with his drink. He goes, "Hey, how was House Guest? Because I like that Phil Hartman." And I go, "Oh, it was OK." And then my mom comes running in. She goes, "There's no cat food. there's no cat food." And I notice that all the cats are like, "meow, meow, meow" under my feet. Oh, also, the other thing is, having your parents in your house-- if they're like my parents-- means having every available audio device going in every room. The TV is on in every room of the house that there can be TV, and if there isn't a TV, the radio's going on in that room. So there's just this sound everywhere. And then "meow, meow, meow" of the cats. So I go, "There's no cat food?" And she goes, "I was going to go to the store and get some, but then I didn't know what kind because you said the Friskies had too much fat in it, and [MOCKING SOUNDS]" So I go, "OK, I'll go to Pavilions now. It's midnight, but I'll go and get some cat food!" So I leave, and thank God it was three for $0.89. It was a big sale. And there's nothing like being a single woman in her 30s buying $15 of cat food at midnight. That's a really good feeling. So I buy my cat food, and then I get home. And in the meantime, my dad goes, "The cats were so hungry that I gave them the dry food they hate, and they won't eat it." And I go, oh, and I look down, and the bowls are filled with this dry food they hate that I don't know why I have. So I go, "OK, well, I'm just going to throw that out." And then my dad goes, "No, I'll save that dry food for later. I have a Tupperware bowl out for it, to put in the dry cat food." And he's got one side of the cat food bowl and I've got the other. And I'm going, "No, no, no. I'm just going to throw it away." And he's going, "No, no, no. I'm just going to put it in the Tupperware." And I'm going, "No, no, no. I am really willing to just toss caution to the wind and throw this cat food away." And he's going, "No, no, no." And then, of course, we pull it apart. Cat food goes flying all over the kitchen. There's little pieces of cat food everywhere, landing in the soup that's boiling over. And then my dad leans down, and he's picking it up and putting pieces of cat food with the hair and aaaaagh! And then, at that moment-- So I go, OK, I'll just pick up my messages. And then I pick up my messages, and I have a message from my gynecologist at 9:30 PM saying, "Call us immediately. We think you have a tumor." And while I'm getting that message, my mom's standing there going, "Do you know about a place called House of Blues?" And I'm going, "I'm trying to listen to my messages!" And then the next message is from him going, "Oh, I'm terribly sorry. We've mixed up your results with someone else." So then, I hang up the phone, and I'm going, "Yes, I've heard of the House of Blues." And she goes, "I love blues and gospel. I just love that. I love that music because I just love Gershwin." I don't even anymore-- like, 10 years ago, I would've said, "Gershwin isn't gospel or blues!" But now, I just go, "Oh, I know. The blues and gospel with the Gershwin. Go to the House of Blues. They got it." So I get the cat food out, I break it up, I put it down, the cats are happy. The phone starts ringing, my mom's going, "Do you think House of Blues would be under 'night life' in the Yellow Pages?" "I don't think there's a 'night life' section in the Yellow Pages, but look all you want." And it's my sister calling from Japan. And she's like this, [CRYING] "Hi, I'm so glad you answered the phone, because mom and dad want me to pay them that $48 to the National Geographic subscriptions before they get the bill on their credit card, which I don't think is right. So I have written out a check for them for $100, and I'm going to send it to them with a the note saying, 'I don't want anymore dealings with you.'" And I just go, "Meg, I cannot talk to you right now." And she goes, "Oh, fine!" And I'm just thinking of her in Japan crying about these [BLEEP] National Geographic subscriptions that no one even wants. I, by the way, am one of the recipients. So isn't it great that I have to get the magazine and know all these trauma and subterfuge that goes on getting the subscription to National Geographic? Then, I realized the most [BLEEP] up thing I was thinking this week is that I've got to get over, somehow-- because apparently, I refuse to go to therapy, but anyway-- is I've always had this thing where, like my mom-- it started with my mom. Obviously, our tastes and everything were different. Like, I would never decorate the way they did, and all of you, I'm sure, feel the same way. But we'd look at furniture, and I'd go, well, I like the dark wood one, and she'd like, of course, the modern. And she'd always go, "Well, when you get your house, you can have what you want in it." So that was her big thing. Or I'd go, "Why are you yelling at Jimmy"-- my youngest brother-- "this way?" And she'd say, "Well, when you have a child, you can treat him the way you want, but I'm going to--" So I have this mental thing, like I always am trying to be better than some experience in my past. It's like I'm always trying to have a better house to show-- like, my parents are going to learn how to raise kids better because of the way I treat my cats? I don't think so. But I realize the most [BLEEP] up thing is-- oh, just one other thing. So my brother, they don't know-- now the cancer, they keep taking tests, and the cancer gets less and less, but he seems to be deteriorating anyway. And now they think it's the drugs. So my mom keeps going, "We need to do an intervention with him on the drugs. And he's not going to listen to me, and he's not going to listen to your father. So we've decided you should do it." I'm like, "Well, can I do an intervention on his answering machine? Because I don't have time to really run over there and do this intervention right at this moment." But I realized I was walking around this week thinking, "You know, when I have cancer, I am going to act so much better." Well, long after all this, Julia Sweeney said that after she made that comment at Un-Cabaret, when she herself was diagnosed with cancer, people who had been at the club that night would come up to her and remind her what she said. Like, you see? You see? What do you really say to that? Well, coming up, how to make jokes about your own cancer and actually get laughs, an onstage demonstration. That's in a minute, from Chicago Public Radio and Public Radio International, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. And most weeks on our program, we choose some subject and invite a wide variety of writers and performers to take a whack at that subject. And if you're just tuning in, what we're doing is that we are devoting an entire hour to these unusual recordings-- sort of part comedy, part diary-- about cancer. This is Julia Sweeney recorded at Un-Cabaret in Los Angeles. We have now arrived at Act Two of our program. In this act, Julia gets diagnosed with cancer herself. And one thing that's interesting about these tapes is that once Julia Sweeney actually gets cancer, the stories get less dark. They are less tragic. There is less trouble in them. This next tape is from May of 1995. This is actually the worst sound quality of any of the tapes we're going to play for you today. And just one quick word for public radio listeners who perhaps do not watch as much television as many Americans do. SNL-- she refers to SNL. SNL, in this context, is Saturday Night Live. So about a month ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. Hold for laugh. All right. I wake up debating how and if I should bring that up. But the thing is, it's not life-threatening and I'm totally fine. And you know, in a way, I'm kind of happy for the experience. But my parents, who are staying with me way too long, and at the tail end of when they were going to be with me, then I got cervical cancer. And so, of course, they wanted to stay longer, which is the last thing I wanted was my parents to stay [BLEEP] longer with me. And then I kept thinking, "How can I lie about my cervical cancer to my parents?" And I'm, like, 35. Can't I just have cancer on my own?" So I had to get this radical hysterectomy, which now that I'm in this whole cancer thing, radical doesn't mean far out in the medical world. I just want to let you know. Anyway, so then my mom, they just make me more nervous than calm. I really have friends that would be there and make it a more calm experience. But my mom goes, "I am going to be with you for every doctor appointment and every surgery you're going to have." And then I found myself saying, like, "My friends who've had hysterectomies didn't have to have their moms with them. They had their hysterectomies on their own." And I just realized how [BLEEP] weird that is, but anyway. And I feel I wouldn't have chosen to have a hysterectomy, I guess. But I kind of feel about my reproductive organs like a bicycle that I've had in the garage, this really great bike that I've just never used. But I want to, you know? But I just never had time. And it's a really good bike. And it's in the garage, and I haven't really been maintaining it. It's all rusty now and everything. But it's there, and I bought it. And it's there. I have a garage for it. And now, I feel like fate is saying to me, "OK, we're taking away your bicycle. You can never ride a bike again." And so then you think, "god, I was really going to ride that bike." But it's not like the end of the world. It's like, well, there's a lot of other things. You can skate. Well, I can take the metaphor forever, but anyway. But young men-- especially at SNL, these young, 22-year-old writers they hire at SNL, they would call and go, [SOUNDING DEVASTATED] "I heard that you were having a hysterectomy." I'd go, "Yeah, well, you know, I don't feel that sad about it." And they'd go, "That is the most tragic thing." These [BLEEP] guys. I'd go, "That's right, because now my worth as a woman has been taken away from me." And they'd go, "Mm-hmm." They don't even realize I'm being sarcastic! And then, I would meet women-- women aren't that much better-- who would have these big new-age solutions. They'd go, "You know, my friend had cervical cancer, and they told her that she had to have a hysterectomy. And she drank carrot juice every day and did yoga. And now she's had seven children." And I'm like, "Get me to the hospital!" Really? Aaagh! I'll just do two more little cancer bits before I'm done. So I'm in the hospital. And they save my ovaries, which I guess is a good thing-- I'm learning all about these biological things-- because the ovaries are the things that make you lubricate when you're aroused, which, by the way, is a very important thing. And if I wanted to have a child surrogately, I could have it. So that was fine. They saved those. But then they didn't know, because I had to have radiation, if it was going to get hit. So they moved my ovaries nine inches up from their normal spot. And then, they said, "Well, if you're really concerned about having a kid with a surrogate, we can harvest 12 eggs now, and we can freeze them for you." And I said, "Oh, OK." And they go, "But the problem is, you have to have the sperm with them in order to freeze them. They can't just be frozen eggs. They have to be fertilized eggs." So I go, "Oh, OK." And then they go, "OK, so are you married?" "No." "Are you going out with somebody?" "Well, kind of." But you know, "Hey, on Friday, before we see French Kiss, could you just fertilize 12 eggs? You know, I know it might not work out. We're just kind of dating, but--" So I go, "How many different sperm people can I have?" And they go, "Well, the start-up costs are kind of high, but you could have five or six." So I could have two eggs per guy. So I thought, OK, so now I feel like I have this dance card with 12 eggs on it. It's like, "If you're nice enough to me, you can have one of my eggs." Anyway, then I just decided that it's just too weird. So I didn't do that. So then the next thing-- this happened only two days ago-- I went into my radiation doctor. And they had to do all these x-rays and MRIs to make sure that my ovaries were out of the way of the radiation. And they cut my fallopian tubes and my uterus is out and all that stuff. So they come in and they go, "We have some bad news. We've lost one of your ovaries." And I go, "Oh, it died?" And they go, "No, we've lost it." And I go, "You what?" And they go, "We can't find it." I go, "You moved them up 10 inches. Aren't they like here or something?" And they go, "Well, one is there." He goes, "Sometimes, ovaries, when they're cut off from their responsibilities, go traveling." And I go, "That ovary! So caught up with that fallopian his whole life, responsible to that damn uterus." He goes, "Oh, it might show up. And it could just go floating through someday, somewhere." I go, "Am I going to cough, and is the ovary-- should I--" That was May of 1995. This next moment is a little further into her treatment-- a month later. And just a quick warning, some of the language here may not be suitable for younger listeners. All right. Oh, I had my vagina tattooed. It's true. Some people say, you know, "I love Tom." Mine says "aim the beams here." I have a little cancer. So I had to have a hysterectomy, and now I'm having radiation. Everything seems to be fine, and I'm on the gazillionth percentile of making it. But it doesn't mean that I don't have to have eight weeks of radiation. So right now, I'm in the fourth week. So when you get radiation, you have to get a tattoo on the area that you're getting radiated. So mine's kind of a really sensitive spot. So I was a little scared. But they're saying, "Oh, no. It'll hurt, but who cares" or something like that. "Don't worry. It'll hurt a lot." So I had to lay there with my pants off. And then they brought in a tattoo artist. There's a person who tattoos you. So this guy, at first, he was kind of smiling at me a little too much, like maybe he recognized me from SNL, but I wasn't sure. And I'm not going to really bring it up. And he's not saying anything. But he gave me that kind of look like, "Hi!" And I was like, "Does everyone who gets radiation get that look?" But anyway. So then, he's tattooing my vagina. So we're spending some time together. And he's down there, doing it. And I just find it so funny that it was hard not to laugh, but you can't laugh because it has to be a really specific spot. But then I keep thinking, "My vagina is getting a tattoo." And then, all of a sudden, he's going like this, and then he goes, "I think the best one is when Pat went to the barber." [BLEEP], you know? I'm like, "Yeah, that was a good one too. I think the kicker is now that Pat has cervical cancer, we know what--" This is so personal. I can't even believe I'm telling you guys this, but I guess that's the whole point of Un-Cabaret, even though it'll make you uncomfortable. So the first half is external radiation, where they beam you from the outside. And then the second half that I start next week is internal radiation. Think about it. OK, so I call it the "dildo of radiation." And in fact, I insist on referring to it as the "dildo of radiation," and the doctors get really upset. Because I go, "When do we start the dildo of radiation?" So I had to go in and get measured, and they had to make this cylinder that fit exactly me and everything. So then I go, "So this dildo of radiation, will it be vibrating?" And then the doctor goes, "Actually, it will be vibrating." And I said, "It will?" It's sick, because the light in this doctor's eyes when he talks about how this is the cutting edge of technology, it scares me because I really feel like that's the point of it is that they get to do this to me. When they go like, "Yes, you really need that, because this is the cutting edge of technology and hardly anyone's gotten this and we're really working on it!" Do I really need it? Anyway, so I have to go. So then last week, they're trying to prepare me for it and everything. And they go, "Well, you know, it lasts three hours." Oh my god, yes! So I go, "Three hours?" And they said yes. And I said, oh. And also, I won't get into details, but the other orifices in that area will also be filled with other instruments for three hours. And when they said, "You have an option. We can send you to the cancer therapist at Cedars-Sinai to learn visualization techniques, or we can give you an IV of Valium. Actually, I kind of feel bad because they really were trying to push the visualization. So I just went, "I am very good at visualizing. I'm an actress and visualization is my hobby and my expertise." I think when it comes to medical procedures, an IV of Valium is going to work a lot better than thinking about an ocean. Oh yeah, this is another sick thing that I do. It's not funny, only sick. I have this thing where the clothes in my closet don't know that I have cancer. And if I haven't worn them since before when I found out I had cancer, I have to tell them when I put my clothes on. So I'll put on a dress, and I'll think, "Oh, this dress doesn't even know." And so then I'll put on the dress and I'll think, "Oh, dress. Don't you realize what's happened to me?" And the dress goes, "That's terrible, but you'll be OK." OK, well, that was June 4, 1995. Not long after that, Julia Sweeney returned to Un-Cabaret. She was getting her treatment, still. And she was getting her treatment at one hospital, and her brother was getting treated at another hospital. And her case, apparently, was this very rare type of cervical cancer. And it turned out that the one doctor in this world who was studying this particular type of cancer happened to be located at his hospital, not at hers. And so at some point, slides of her cells were shipped over to his hospital. And then they were going to do some procedure on her, so she had to get the slides back so they could do this procedure. And she offered to go and fetch the slides herself. I didn't know where I was going. All I knew is his name was Dr. Fu. So I go over, and it's not really part of the hospital where the research is done. It's in this other building, and it's all restricted areas. And I just kept going through doors and doors where people were wearing more and more green things. And more people had masks and stuff. And I was knocking on doors. And everyone was so confused about what I wanted. And I'd have to say, "Hi, I'm looking for the Julia Sweeney cancer slides." And they'd all go, "Oh, for who?" And I'd say, "For Julia Sweeney-- me." And they'd go, oh. And then finally, I found this Dr. Fu's door, and I knocked on it. And this little Asian man opens the door, and it's literally out of a movie. There's books to the ceiling and cobwebs and a little microscope. And he goes, "Yes?" And I said, "Yes, I hear that you have the Julia Sweeney cancer slides." And he says, "Yes." And I go, "Yes, I've come here to pick them up." And he said, "Oh, what project are you working on?" And I said, "Oh, the Julia Sweeney project." And he said, "No, no, no. I mean what research area are you in? And I said, "No, I mean I'm Julia Sweeney." And he said, "What?" And I said, "Yeah, those slides, that's me. Those slides are me. And I want them. Give them back!" And he goes, "You're the person in these slides?" He goes, "Yeah, they're right here." He picks up the slides. And I go, "Yeah." And he goes, "You're this person?" And I go, "Yeah." And he goes, "Oh my god." He goes, "I have been getting grants to study this special kind of cancer for 20 years. And only 50 women in the world have been diagnosed with this special kind of cancer. And you're one of the ones I'm studying, and I've never met in the flesh any of the women that have ever had this cancer except for you." And I said, "Oh." And he's like, "Oh, please come in and sit down." And he said, "Well, how does it feel to have this cancer?" And I said, "Well, you know, I actually have no symptoms. It's kind of hilarious that I just have no symptoms. It seems like all of the problems have been coming from the cure of this, but not from the actual cancer." And he goes, "Oh, there's only 50 women in the world, and none of them have died from it." And I go, "Oh, you can always hope." And I go, "Oh, great." And he wanted to know if I'd been on birth control pills, because that's what he thinks it was related to, which I had. And he's asking me, "What are your habits?" And I go, "Well, I like to run and ski. Maybe people who run and ski and take birth control pills get this cancer." And then he goes, "Well, can I take you out for some coffee or something?" And I said yeah. And then we went and had this coffee, and he was just so happy to be with me, like, meeting this woman who had the cancer. OK, well, then I found out a few weeks later, after the slides went back, that I didn't have that cancer. I had a different kind of really rare cervical cancer, but not that specific kind. And I don't think they ever really told that guy, because this week, he called me up. And he said, "Hey, how are you doing?" and everything. And I said, "Oh, I'm fine. I did all of the surgeries and the radiation. I'm feeling great." And he said, "That's so great." And then I realized that I was too embarrassed to tell him I didn't have his cancer. I go, "Yeah." And he goes, "Well, I'm really glad. No one who's had that cancer has died. They've had to go through hell, but they haven't died." And then I just had to play into it. And then I realized that I'm so co-dependent that I didn't want him to think that I didn't have the cancer he was studying. I had to pretend. So sick. All these stories that we've been hearing began in 1994. And finally, in July of 1995, Julia Sweeney took the stage at Un-Cabaret to announce-- I don't have cancer anymore. I only say this because-- I don't know if anyone was here for other sets where I talked about it-- but I got a little cancer. And I did surgery, and I did radiation. And my last radiation was on Wednesday. And so now I can't say I have cancer anymore, which I have to say, I will totally cop to the fact that I'm kind of missing that, because I just loved not necessarily doing, but having that moment where I could say, "I don't know if you've heard, but I have cancer." But now I can say, "I am in remission." I guess that's the term, although no doctor has even said that to me. They just said, "All right, you did enough. See you later." I said, "Don't you mean to tell me I'm in remission?" So on Wednesday, I had to have my last radiation. And it's this kind of horrible ordeal that lasts three hours and is very personally invasive into certain orifices of your body. Imagine. See, for my surgery-- this is how sick I am-- I had horrible abdominal surgery, and it was incredibly painful, tubes coming out of me. And they gave me Percocet and codeine and everything. And I would be in excruciating pain and not take my pain pills to save them for a day when I'd enjoy them more. That's when my parents were staying with me, and I'd be going, "Aaaaaaa!" And my mother would go, "Take the codeine." And I'd go, "There will be a day when, mixed with a margarita, I will be so much happier." Julia Sweeney survived her cancer and turned these monologues from Un-Cabaret into a one-woman show called God Said, "Ha!" Back in the 1990s, it played in Los Angeles, it played on Broadway at the Lyceum Theater. Julia put it out as a book. Quentin Tarantino turned it into a movie that you can still get on DVD. Anyway, Julia's brother did not survive his cancer. He died two weeks after she was diagnosed. But we thought we'd end our program today with a story from January of 1995. This is taped before Julia knew that she had cancer. And when this was recorded, her brother was still alive, and family was really struggling. So anyway, this is not even funny. OK, I'll just tell it really quick. I went to another audition. It was actually a meeting. I felt like it went really well, and it was like, wow, this is a possibility, and this is great. And I'm driving back from Santa Monica, feeling so happy for the first time in a really long time because my parents are living with me. And I'm so happy. And so I walk in the door, and as I walk in the door, I hear my mother yelling at my brother. "You're drunk. That's what it is." Like some sort of awful Arthur Miller play or something. So then I come in, and I go, "Hi." And she goes, "How was your meeting?" And I go, "It was good." And she goes, "Well, your brother's been drinking. And he is D-R-U-N-K. Then my brother-- oh, this story is too sad. I have to stop it. OK, well, let's just say this. My brother leaves the room and starts smoking pot in the other room. And then my mom's going on and on, and she doesn't know how to tell stories correctly. And I know you're thinking it's a familial trait. But she'll say, "Oh, I have to tell you the most important thing. I went to Pavilions, and I ran into this couple from the Balkans. And your father was reading that book. And then I couldn't find the change for the ten, and then the car, and so--" And I just go, "Oh, huh. When you can't find your change and you meet someone from the Balkans at the store, and why are you talking to people at Pavilions?" So I just walk out of the house and go to the office where my dad is. And my dad goes, "Oh, hi. I borrowed this book off your shelf-- The Balkan Ghost, which is all travel essays written by this reporter about his travels in the Balkans. And those Balkan people, they're crazy. Did you know about Adam the Impaler, who impaled people?" And I go, "Oh, no." And then he says, "Oh, and it reminded me of this other book Rebecca West wrote, this great travelogue that was written in 1937 about her travels in the Balkans, and it really foretold a lot of stuff. And do you know that every major war is started in the Balkans?" And we had this nice little conversation. And he's like, "And how was your meeting?" And I go, "Oh, it was really good." And he goes, "Oh, I'm so glad." Then I come back in the house. Mom goes, "I need to talk to you in the bedroom." So I go-- oh, I'd better go quick because this is so sad-- so I go into the bedroom, and she goes, "Your father is driving me crazy, and I'm leaving him. But I'm not leaving your house, and neither is he." I go, "So what does that mean?" She goes, "It means I am not sleeping in the guest room with him anymore. I need another place to sleep." And I'm thinking, "OK, the brother from Washington is sleeping on the sofa in my office. I'm sleeping in the dining room. My other brother is in my bedroom. My parents are in the guest room. And I just go, "Married people who visit me must sleep together. I do not have enough beds for people to break up while they're visiting me. You must overcome your feelings and just sleep in the same bed. Go in after he's fallen asleep, and get up before he wakes up. And don't touch him in the night, but you've got to stay in the room!" Anyway, so mom sleeps on the couch in the living room. Dad's in the guest room. So we're all in different places. So then, at 5:00 in the morning, I notice the TV pops on, and In a Lonely Place is starting at 5:00 in the morning. Irony. And my mom sits up, and she's going, "What's this?" And there must've been something where I programmed the TV to tape something. She yells from the living room, she goes, "Julie, there's a movie on about a lonely people. What is it?" It's like 5:00 in the morning, so I go, "Oh, In a Lonely Place. Yeah, Nicholas Ray and great film noir, Humphrey Bogart." And she goes, "You know, he was a drunk. In real life, too." And I go, "Oh." "And Gloria Grahame." Anyway, so slowly, the whole family gets up. And then, all of a sudden, it's me, my two brothers, and my mom and dad. And we all watch In a Lonely Place. This is yesterday morning from 5:00 to 7:00 AM. Julia Sweeney at Un-Cabaret in Los Angeles. Lately, Julia has been working on a new one-woman show, that we've actually excerpted on This American Life already, called Letting Go of God. Next month, she plans to put out that show on CD. She's got plans to film that show. There's a book in the works, more live performances, the whole schmear. For details, you can go to her website with the incredibly difficult-to-remember name, www.juliasweeney.com. Today's program was produced by Nancy Updike and myself with Alix Spiegel, Dolores Wilber, and Peter Clowney. Contributing editors for this show, Jack Hitt, Margy Rochlin and Paul Tough. Production help for today's show by [UNINTELLIGIBLE] January and Seth Lind. If today's program has made you curious about Un-Cabaret, they have audio downloads, greatest hits CDs, live shows that they are still doing Los Angeles. Details about all that on the web at www.uncabaret.com. Music help for today's program by Jessica Hopper and by the mysterious and elusive [? Rumpety Rattles. ?] Our website, www.thisamericanlife.org, where you can listen to 10 years of our programs for absolutely free or buy CDs of them. Or you can download today's program and our archives at audible.com/thisamericanlife. WBEZ management oversight for our program by Mr. Torey Malatia, who believes that radio is not a vast information expressway bringing you news and stories and music. "No, I think it's more like a spigot." I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life. PRI, Public Radio International.
|
I had the strangest experience last night. I have these tapes, recorded on my answering machine 10 years ago. Tapes that I had not heard in a decade until last night. And I don't think I can play these tapes for you. I don't think that the people on them would give the permission. On one tape, there's a brief conversation between me and this woman who I lived with for seven years, accidentally recorded by the answering machine just as we were splitting up. And on this tape, she's calling me from the street to say that she's going to a movie with a friend. And I tell her I'd like to come along. She's Gotta Have It is the movie that they're seeing. And she indicates no, that I'm not welcome. And then I tell her, "Well, I guess maybe I really do have too much work to do and some laundry that I have to get done." And later in the conversation, she asks if I'm going to be up late, and I say no. And she says, "Well, I thought you said you had all this work to do," like she's catching me in a lie. I mean, she is. She is catching me in a lie. But you know, a lie that I kind of made at her bidding. And then she asked me if I'm absolutely sure that I'm going to get her laundry done that night. And I tell her I'm sure. It was hard to listen to. I can hear myself being so scared of her in this tape. And in this same conversation, she talks about this guy who, just a few weeks later, she got involved with, her next serious relationship after me. And I talk about this woman who I was just about to start seeing in this serious way, after her. And that part of the conversation is very awkward, very awkward. And before I heard this tape, I could not have remembered much about that summer, that summer where we were splitting up in 1988 after seven years. But hearing the tape, it all came back. Where we lived, what was in the apartment, what we used to wear, how we talked to each other, and how I felt all the time when we were together, this way that I don't feel anymore. And it messed me up. And it wasn't like looking at photos. Pictures are posed. Pictures are these tiny little-- they're tiny. You can hold them in your hand. They're 3-by-5. You can crush a picture. This was not posed. And it was not small. And part of that, I think, is just the power of recordings. And part of it was the fact that we were on the phone. There is something about being on the telephone. It's just so intimate. Talking to a person on the phone, you are right there. You are so close. It's like you're whispering in each other's ears. There are these tapes of Lyndon Johnson on the telephone in this audio book called Taking Charge by historian Michael Beschloss. And Beschloss makes the argument that without these recordings of Lyndon Johnson on the telephone, an important part of Johnson would be completely lost to history. These tapes are so raw. We hear him operating on people in this way that is so-- Beschloss makes the argument that it rarely comes through in transcripts of meetings or public events, him just trying to charm people and flatter them and play on their weaknesses and strong-arm them. And he's more honest on the phone than he was in public. In public, Johnson said that he believed the Warren Commission report. On the telephone, he admitted he didn't believe in it. He didn't believe that a lone assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, acted alone killing JFK. In public, Johnson supported the Vietnam War. On the telephone, he admitted his doubts. I'll tell you, the more I just stayed awake last night thinking about this thing, the more I think of it, I don't know what in the hell-- It looks like, to me, we're getting into another Korea. And it just worries the hell out of me. I don't see what we can ever hope to get out of there with once we're committed. He's talking to National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy. I don't think it's worth fighting for. And I don't think we can get out. And it's just the biggest damn mess-- It is. It's an awful mess. I look at this sergeant of mine this morning. He's got six little old kids over there. And he's getting out my things and bringing me in my night reading and all that kind of stuff. And I just thought about ordering all those kids in there. And what in the hell am I ordering him out there for? What the hell is Vietnam worth to me? What is Laos worth to me? What is it worth to this country? Now, of course, if you start running the communists, they may just chase you right into your own kitchen. Yep, that's the trouble. And that is what the rest of that half of the world is going to think if this thing comes apart on us. That's the dilemma. That's exactly the dilemma. But everybody I talk to that's got any sense in there, they just says, "Oh, my god, please [UNINTELLIGIBLE]" But it's damned easy to get in a war, but it's going to be awfully hard to ever extricate yourself if you get in. It's very easy. I'm very sensitive to the fact that people who are having trouble with-- On the telephone, we are who we truly are, some of the time, anyway. Well, from WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's program, telephone stories, what we reveal about ourselves on the phone that we do not reveal any other way. Act One, When the Wall Came Tumbling Down, the story of a teenager, illegal drug use, lying, stealing, and a kid's life completely changed when he heard how he sounded on the phone. Act Two, When Your Telephone is Your Medium. Sure, you can try to get your pop songs onto records, onto the radio, onto MTV. But what if your medium of choice is the telephone? We offer a case example, the band They Might Be Giants. Act Three, Telephone as History, moments from a normal human life saved on answering machine. Stay with us. I failed English. I failed PE, even, which is difficult to do, unless you're running off getting stoned whenever you're supposed to be running around the track. And I just did whatever I wanted to do, whenever I wanted to do it. I stole money from my parents kind of regularly to finance my marijuana habit. I did break into my parents' tenants', basically, house a few times, mostly to steal drugs, not money. But that was the only stealing that I did. I never actually stole anything except for drugs and money. And the money, I only stole from my parents. Well, I noticed my dad started to punish me for things that I hadn't done, or at least things that he couldn't have possibly known that I had done. And I would have a great weekend planned. For instance, we were going to go out and do whatever sorts of craziness would come up. Maybe we'll go take some LSD or something like that, or mushrooms. And my dad would ground me the day before for no particular reason. And it was very strange. The timing was uncanny. And one day, he was driving me down to school, as he did every morning. And on the way to school, he told me that the administration of Beverly had contacted him and that they had narcs in the school that were posing as students. And they were going to run a sweep of the school and basically bust everyone who was involved in this. So he told me that the administration had contacted him because they knew that I was involved in this whole faction of bad eggs. And they also knew that I was not a dealer. Basically, they were calling him to warn him to basically give me a chance to get out of the bust. So he told me I'd better get it together because it's going to happen very soon. And then, in the same conversation, he started naming all of the names of the kids that were involved. And they were names that there was no way he could know. And so the story was very credible the way it was laid out. And I believed it 100%. And I went to school that day, I remember, and of course, I told all of my friends that there was going to be this major bust happening at Beverly Hills High School very soon. And so everybody better quickly go undercover. And people became much more careful. About a month later, I was in the backyard. And there had been a windstorm the night before, a really big wind. And a panel on the side of the house had come off. And I was in the backyard with my friend. And we were smoking a joint like we always did. Every day after school, we would come home and smoke a joint. And my friend noticed this panel down. I'll never forget this one, actually. He said, "Dude, what is this? Come here, dude. And I'm standing on the other side of the backyard, smoking a joint, looking at the trees. And he's like, "Come here, dude." I walked over. He's like, "Look at this." And it didn't dawn on me. I looked at it, and I was like, "What is it? Strange piece of machinery inside of wall." It made no sense to me whatsoever. And he looked at me. He said, "Dude, your parents are taping your calls." And that meant that dad knew everything. No wonder he was grounding me at such crucial moments in my party life. I'm getting some buds and some coke delivered here tonight. Really? Yeah, so listen, if you guys want to come, just call me before you come. Well, you can come over here if you want. Really? Yeah. Because they're going out, so-- You don't have five grams. Dude, what's the big deal? I'm bumming hard. You're getting an eighth for $25 and a gram. All right, I guess I can-- Is that cool? An eighth for $25 and a gram for $10? Uh-huh. All right. The only weed he can get you is the same weed I can get you. But dude, it's [BLEEP]. When I saw the tape recorder, it was disbelief. I was in a state of disbelief. Pure shock. This is what happened. My son was a very good student. All of a sudden, his grades started collapsing. His school things started collapsing. He started acting like a complete fool. Now, he's ready to graduate from Beverly High. And his attitude is becoming a total [BLEEP] box. He's becoming an asshole everywhere. So I thought, you know, the only way I can figure out what's happening with him is-- because he comes home every day and he's alone a long time at home, got a lot of time on the phone. Right? So I figure, well, what I'll do is that I'll tape record his phone calls. So I went to a lot of people who knew about this kind of stuff. And I said, how can I do this? They said, well, what you have to do is get a voice-activated tape recorder. And you have to hook it up to the phone. So I removed an outside wall of my house, which was a bunch of boards. Removed it, built it into one situation where I could clamp it back on with magnets. So I could take it off and put it back on. I put this tape recorder inside the wall outside of my kitchen. The wire went down, and then it went through the wall into the tape recorder. I figured, nobody's ever going to notice that because it's way down on the bottom, way under everything. And who's going to look for the goddamn wire where the phone goes? Working. Working. Unbelievable. I can't believe that this is going on. It was a multiple emotional cascade because on the one hand, I'm being incredibly violated by my father. But we gave him whatever we could give him, everything we could possibly give him. And then, I felt real violated by the fact that he thought that was nothing. What meant something to him was that he wanted to do these things that he wanted to do. He wanted to be with these people he wanted to be with. Dad, I went home today during fifth mod. Yeah? You turned my room upside down, didn't you? All I know is that there was a note on our front door from Annie. That said? That said someone has been in her apartment again, taking certain things. What? What was missing? Some drugs. There was a note on it-- Have you been going into Annie's again? No. I just got that one bud from my friend, and that's all. I want to know, did you go in her apartment again? Dad, I can't get in her apartment. I want to know, did you go in her apartment? Yes. And I took one minute bud. I didn't take drugs. I took one small bud, and I left. OK, you go to work. But tonight, I want to have a little discussion with you, because I'm going to have to try to find out where you're coming from, and-- Dad, I'm not coming-- I just think I've got you figured out when something else happens. No, Dad. No. [BLEEP] He never came to my work during the day. When he was going to school, never. He'd start coming to my work at lunchtime. And he would say, "Hey, I just came over to see if you guys needed any help or had anything I could do or whatever." And then he'd leave. And there'd be like $100, $200 missing from the drawer. [BLEEP]. I hope Scott didn't score that stuff. Why? Because I want my money back. Because you want to buy blow, or you just don't want to-- No, I have to give that $100 back to my dad. He knows? Yep. How'd he find out? I don't know. The tapes were horrible, redundant, stupid, dull. He goes, "Check this out." And he just hit the accelerator, and the thing took off, man. It was so fast. It's so rad. You know, a teenager gets on the phone, they stay on the phone for a long time. Hours. I would come home, and I would have to listen to three, four hours of tape of him on the phone, saying nothing. I mean dribble, like, "Hey, hey, man. What's up? What are you going to do?" "Hey, what are you going to do?" Hello? Hey. Hey. What's happening? Not much. How was Palm Springs? All right. Really? But the interesting part was that things would come around, like, what are we going to do tomorrow? Hey, why don't we do some coke? Why don't we do some-- But what I tried to do was that, whenever I heard something on this tape that was a direction he was going to go in, I would say, "Could you help me at my shop tomorrow at 4 o'clock? I really need you." And he'd go, "Oh, well, I'm busy." And I'd say, "I don't care how busy you are. I really need you. This is important." And he would shut off the plans. And he would come and help me. So what I tried to do by listening to the tapes was to redirect whatever he was going to do. And I did that. And it worked. It worked. This doesn't have anything to do with parents, man. We're talking serious matters. Dude, what happened? Like Beverly Hills Police Department. Dude, why? I'm not going to tell anybody, don't worry. Because of my known-- Involvement? --involvement with drugs at Beverly Hills High School. They've been calling my dad and asking him if he's ever-- You know what they said to my dad? What? My dad named so many names to me that I've never even said to him. Dude man, they've probably been following you. Dude, it's everybody. They've got about 50 undercover narcs at my school now. What you should do is just stop abruptly. That's what I have-- Dude, don't even talk to those people. I have been. I've fully just stopped. There was no way I could possibly confront him and have a truthful situation come out of it. No. He would never admit that to me. Never. Seeing the tape recorder made me realize, wow, what am I going to do? What's the way out of this? Because I was a conniver. I was going to come up with the best solution to escape. So after some thought, I decided that the best road of action would be to continue my lifestyle, of course, while simultaneously becoming perfect on the telephone. In other words, I would just clean up my act on the phone. You're quitting. I swear. That's it. It's caused me too much trouble. Aren't you going to miss it? No way. Fortunately, pot is one of those things that you like outgrow, kind of. It's not like you mature out of it, but you get bored of it. Yeah, did you get the acid? No, dude. When do you get it? I'm not going to do it, dude. I'll get it for you. But I'm not going to do it. You're not going to do it? No. Why? What's wrong with you, man? What are you on? What are you on? I'm not on anything. I'm just tired. Dude, I'm going straight, man. I'm quitting. OK, well, I want my [BLEEP]. Now, all I have to do is regain the respect of my father. Well, that went on for about a month. It went on for about a month of me being perfect on the telephone. And it worked. He stopped busting me at crucial moments. I was able to go out and do everything I wanted to. I alerted everyone at Beverly that, in fact, there wasn't going to be a sweep, that it was all part of this scandal perpetrated by my father, and much to their relief. And so that went on for about a month, of this counter espionage, I guess you would have to call it. And it worked. It had gotten to the point of deception upon deception upon deception, multiple lies on both sides. So I was very disturbed by the fact that my relationship with my father had so apparently deteriorated. My father means a lot to me. And he did then, and he always has. And I realized the degree to which we had grown apart, basically. So one night, I went out with a couple of friends of mine. And we took some LSD, some very strong LSD that we had bought down in Hollywood from a dealer who was down there at that time, a guy by the name of Strange, was his name, actually. He was an albino. I think he's dead now. But anyway, in the throes of this LSD realization, enlightenment, that I was going through, I realized that the situation with my father was completely unacceptable. And it had to be remedied right away. I had to do something immediately about it. So I told my two poor friends, who were also right in the middle of their trip, getting involved in whatever was going on in their minds. I said, "We have to go to my house. We have to go home right now." So we drove here. And Dad was having a party. There was a party going on. And I walked into the party rather nonchalantly. And I looked at my father with a very serious look. And I said, "I have to talk to you about something." So we walked outside to the yard out front. And I said, basically, "Dad, I know you're taping my calls. And I know you've been taping my calls." It was such a strange sort of accusation I was making, once again, because simultaneously, I was admitting to him that I knew that he knew everything that was going on. So on the one hand, I'm saying, "Dad, how could you be so horrible as to invade my privacy like this?" while simultaneously realizing that he knew that I had been stealing money from him to support my pot habits. And he said, "You're right, I'm taping your calls. I've been doing it for quite a while, as a matter of fact. And I'm not going to do it anymore. I'm not going to tape your telephone calls anymore." He said, "There's something you don't know yet, but I'll tell you now. And perhaps you will not understand what I'm saying. But you think that because I'm your father and I'm in this role of the disciplinarian, that it's between you and I. What you haven't realized yet is that your actions have far more impact on your own life than they will on mine. I've already made my life. You have to make your life. And you don't know it yet." He said, "I'm going to take the tape recorder out tomorrow." And I was waiting for the punishment at this point, because there must be some amazing punishment coming down. Because he knew everything. Military school, or what's he going to do? He said, "I'll take the tape recorder out tomorrow. And there's only one thing I want you to do." And I said, "What?" And he said, "I have about 40 tapes, about 40 90-minute tapes of you. I'm going to give them to you. And I want you to listen to them. And that's all I ask. No punishment. This is over. This chapter is over. But the tapes are now yours." Hello? Hi. What's the matter? Nothing. All right, well, you don't have to talk. It was embarrassing. I was embarrassing myself, listening to myself. Can I ask you something? What's that? Are you awake enough to answer? Yeah, I think I can, if I try real hard. I get the feeling that you've changed the way you feel about me. And I don't like that. Oh, really? I mean, obviously, there's nothing I can do. Nah, nah, nah. Nah, nah, what? I don't know what you're talking about. Well, then, how come you haven't called me in so long? I've been busy. Well, that's really the truth? Yeah, I hope so. It was about a week afterwards, and I couldn't really listen to them. I had a very hard time listening to them. In a way, it was kind of surrealistic because I had no idea what I sounded like. And I didn't like what I sounded like at all. I thought I sounded really kind of unkind, self-serving, mean, basically, and totally uncaring. Hello? Hey, dude. Hey. What's happening? Not much. Do you have any finals tomorrow? Yeah. What? English. Really? Yeah. I still don't have any. I'm kind of busy right now. I can tell. It sounds like people are in the background. They are. Parental units? Huh? Parental units? No, no, no. Friend units. Oh, that sounds radical. Yeah, it is. Bye. Great. I was very self-centered and egotistical and uncaring of other people. It was about me. I was the star of my own stage. And everybody else could basically go to hell, as far as I was concerned. I had never realized that aspect of my personality. I didn't know how mean, in that sense, I had gotten. Hello? Hello, is it possible for me to speak with Mr. Or Mrs. O'Hara? No. Hello? May I speak with Novella? What? Novella. Who is this? My name is Crawford. I'm with the VFW. What is it in regards to? The National Veteran Wheelchair Games. Well, can I take a message for her? No, I'll call back later. Well, listen. Hello? Yes? She's dead. Oh, I see. So, you know, I think-- What is it in regards to? Do you owe us some money? No, we were selling and delivering heavy-duty plastic trash bags to raise funds. So you wanted money. And I remember listening to that on the tapes subsequently. And again, it was just like, my god, I'm a monster. This is outrageous. Look at the way I'm treating people. Because I don't feel that way, and I'm not that type of person. But at the time, I was, very much. And I didn't know it. I didn't know how little I valued friendship or other people's feelings. Then we went to this dance club, and we just met some people. There was these girls. But we weren't going to scam off them. We were just friends. Uh-huh. We waited for like a half hour to get our table-- And did you scam off them? What? Did you scam them? Or no? No. They were just nice? Yeah. They were just like-- It was just conversation. It was-- Bleh. Dude, if I was there, that wouldn't have happened. We would've done some [BLEEP]. It took me about five or six years before I managed to listen to all of them. My course of life changed dramatically because of that event. And a lot changed. I still partied. But I put it back, as far as the importance, where it was on the hierarchy. It was like smoking pot ceased to be number one. And lying, deceiving, cheating, stealing, all of that, I just stopped. Stopped it all. It was amazing. He understood the entire thing that he was doing that was so-- and believe me, it was stupid. Because I never had the opportunity to hear myself. I didn't know. I didn't know what I was doing. The tone of voice of my quote-quote "friends"-- I could hear in their voice on the tapes, pain because of my actions and my uncaring. That was an awakening. I haven't heard from you for a while. Ouch. I haven't heard from you for a while. Yes, you have. Oh yeah, when? Last time we talked, I called you. Oh, you mean you actually keep track? No, I just remember that. Really? I became the watcher of myself while I was acting simultaneously. And I still do that to this day. I see, I'm intensely aware of my effect on other people. That's one thing that definitely came out. It's like I know what other people are feeling about me. That was an interesting look you gave me today. Oh. Ha. I know. So what's the problem with you? What are you pissed off at me for? I don't know. Is is that time of the month again? No. [INAUDIBLE] Well, then, what's wrong? Well, I guess the basic thing is I don't like your fluctuation in attention towards me. What are you talking about? If I'm not going somewhere, if I have not got a set place that I am off to-- and I'm probably usually late-- then I stop and talk to you. Uh-huh. And well, forget it then. [BLEEP]. Wait. Hold on. Mom? It was valuable, very valuable, to be able to witness myself in that way, although painful. I got to see myself. It's a rare gift, in a way, to be able to see yourself from the outside, from an objective point of view. I think it's probably always going to be difficult to watch yourself. Given an opportunity, I think most people would probably not want to see themselves that clearly. Joshua and his father talked to Dave Kestenbaum, who's a writer for Science magazine, and to Julie Snyder. Coming up, telephone as an artistic medium, telephone as muse. What a songwriter can learn from the telephone. That's in a minute, from Public Radio International, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, invite a variety of reporters and writers and performers to tackle that theme. Today's show, things we learn on the phone, who we are on the phone, things we find on the phone that we can not find anywhere else. We have arrived at Act Two of our program, When the Telephone is Your Medium. Well, the band They Might Be Giants do not have a song on every episode of This American Life. But I have to say, most weeks, at some point, contributing editor Sarah Vowell suggests a song of theirs that might work in the show. And that's because they are not only prolific. More than other bands, they write about an astonishing number of things in this surprising, funny way. Also, although they are an actual pop band with actual pop hits, it is hard to think of any band in the last 20 years with more inventive arrangements. They just have this sound, this sense of how different instruments go together. They bring pre-rock instruments into the rock universe in this completely charming way. John Linnell of They Might Be Giants, he is the Keith Richards of the bass clarinet. And at the heart of their artistic practices-- you know we have a theme to the show every week. We have a theme to this show. And you know what the theme is. So you know where I'm going with this-- At the heart of their artistic practice is the telephone. It was, anyway. Still sort of is. Sarah Vowell visited them in Brooklyn. What if art cost a quarter a pop? What if it offered home delivery? What if it was short, but sweet? What if art was just a phone call away? Hello, everybody. This is John of They Might Be Giants. Thank you for calling our Dial-a-Song service. We hope you like it, hope it sounds good over your phone. Thank you for calling. Call back anytime. It's a simple, beautiful idea, that anyone, anywhere, anytime, can phone a number in Brooklyn, listen to one of They Might Be Giants' wonderful or wonderfully weird songs, and it doesn't cost anything more than any other normal call. Dial-a-Song's motto, "Free, when you call from work." When John Flansberg and John Linnell of They Might Be Giants started their Dial-a-Song service 15 years ago, they didn't have a record contract. All they had was an answering machine and a dream. And that dream was to get people besides their friends to hear their music. Then they got a record deal. They were on the radio, on MTV, even. They considered dismantling the democratic empire of Dial-a-Song. But they were afraid their fans would accuse them of selling out, of turning their back on the people-- and by the people, I mean the people. And you can understand that the first year, the first five years, even. But it's been 15 years now. This funny little idea that they had back during the early Reagan administration, now, it's just who they are. Ladies and gentlemen, they rock the stage, they rock the records, they rock the phone lines. Do you remember the first song, the first Dial-a-Song song? I do. Because John said, I set it up. I was living in a different part of Brooklyn, so I phoned him up. And it was "Toddler Hiway." And he recorded it really quietly because we had this problem with the phone machine, where a loud sound with this particular model would actually tell the machine that that was the end of the message. It would think it was the beep. It would think it was the beep. So almost all our songs had to be kind of tamed. And that particular note was completely off-limits. Yeah, anytime there was a long note sung, we would have to break it up. We would actually sort of pop it out of the mix. So it would just be like, "I've been ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah," to kind of keep it from just returning. Sure, there are some adjustments you have to make if the telephone is the medium through which you express your art. But there are certain advantages to this system. You can monitor individual audience response in a way that's unavailable to more successful recording artists who restrict themselves to concerts and radio and TV-- you know, media where more than one person at a time can hear the song. Well, I think up until Dial-a-Song, we were the kind of guys who had a four-track recorder in their bedroom. And we would just overdub our voices or our instruments 5 million times, and go like, "Oh, listen to what the guitar sounds like if it's been overdubbed 5,000 times." And it would just kind of be, wahhhhhh. "Oh, that sounds really cool." And then, doing Dial-a-Song actually made us realize, you're playing the song, people hang up in the middle, you can tell right away if they don't like-- you just sort of play your 5,000 guitar symphony over the thing. And two seconds into it, it's like, click. And you know that they hated it. So it really was-- it was definitely like rock school. It definitely moved us in a particular direction of really clarifying what we were doing, and also clarifying the arrangement, making it really simple sounding so that you could hear what was going on over the phone. Right now, somewhere in this nation, there's a music student spending thousands of dollars to learn a discipline that he might master more quickly if he'd just invest in a decent voicemail system. Has it changed your ideas about where art comes from? Because I was reading that New Yorker article on Frank Sinatra. And there's this part where Ava Gardner runs out on him and breaks his heart. And he helps write "I'm a Fool to Want You." And then he stumbles into the recording studio and does it in one take and stumbles out in tears. But he actually always stumbled in and out of the studio. But also, if you talk to Billy May or talk to the people who put the arrangement together or the person who wrote the song, they might disagree about where the greatness of any given song comes from. They're involved in the process, too. A lot of people like to think of inspiration as being, you're lying on the side of a hill, and you're waiting for the clouds to cover and then the lightning to strike you. It's this really elaborate, long process of kind of waiting for it to happen. And sometimes, I think you can jump into the sky, grab the cloud, and grab the lightning yourself. Many, perhaps most, of the tunes on Dial-a-Song won't end up on a They Might Be Giants album. But all the songs on the band's albums have been previewed on Dial-a-Song, which means that their fans are in on their process. Here's how one of the band's best known singles, "Don't Let's Start," sounded in its initial Dial-a-Song form. And this is the final, more compelling rock and roll "Don't Let's Start" that ended up on the album. The best lyrics in the song are ones they added over what had been just an instrumental bridge in the Dial-a-Song version. [SINGING] No one in the world ever gets what they want, and that is beautiful. Everybody dies frustrated and sad, and that is beautiful. They want what they're-- John Flansberg says he's often surprised by how much They Might Be Giants fans keep track of a song's evolution. There's a song that's actually a bonus track on Factory Showroom. It's before track one, this song called "Token Back to Brooklyn." And I was talking to someone about this yesterday. And it was like this real-- It's the kind of thing that makes me feel like we are freak magnets because the guy was going, "In the song that was on Dial-a-Song, you said you wanted to kill your parents. And then you changed the lyric on the record--" To "tell our parents." "To 'tell our parents.'" And I was just like, "Well--" And he was like, "And like, the reason you did that was, like, why?" Because my mom was going to hear the record, maybe. Yeah, and I explained to him that I really just didn't want to have any more songs about killing my parents. Any more songs? Any more songs. Yeah, we've had songs about killing our parents before. And it really doesn't go over at holiday time. And so he was really disappointed. It was like finding out that Marilyn Manson-- Was a nice guy? --takes the makeup off. One of my favorite They Might Be Giants songs isn't a song at all, but a mysterious recording on the album Miscellaneous T, of two unidentified callers discussing the merits of Dial-a-Song, whose number they found in the band's ad in the Village Voice. What do you make out of that recording? I don't know, [? Laurie, ?] I just don't-- Some kind of singing. They sound like all kinds of people, right? Yeah. And then it says, "Another child is born in India every time you call this number," right? Yeah, right. Does that make any sense to you? No, it doesn't make no sense-- And the guy that spoke, I don't know who he is. Yeah. But it doesn't sound like no answering machine, right? No, it ain't an answering machine, because they're not saying anything. They're just-- But what does he get-- how does he make money on this, whatever he's advertising in the paper? This is the part that don't make no sense. That's where the-- No, that was a woman who phoned up. And the reason why we had this long recording of her was that she was on a conference line with somebody else. This is another early-- Oh, and they were listening to it together? --pop technology. Yeah, she and this guy she had phoned to tell him about Dial-a-Song were listening together. And then, when the machine finished its song, they had this conversation. And they had no way of disconnecting the third line. So we had about 45 minutes of them blabbering on. They've got the craziest things in that paper. But this one here, There Must Be Giants, it's called. And it says, call machine. And they've got the phone number. Yeah. But what kind of money does he make? It don't make no sense. Well, he don't make any money, right? No. Then he's a nut, right? Yeah, [INAUDIBLE]. Do you see any sense to that, There May Be Giants? That recording I have on [INAUDIBLE], did you hear it? Well, I used to call it-- I would call it-- what's the motto? "Free, when you call from work." (SUBJECT) JOHN FLANSBERG: "Free, when you call from work." Yeah, a lot of people do call it from work. But I used to call it when I was really depressed, like so black and blue. And normally, in those situations, I'd try and feed it, and just get drunk and listen to Neil Young and cry myself to sleep. But on the healthier occasions-- Wow. You should hang out with my downstairs neighbors. On the healthier occasions, I'd go like, "I'm going to kick this thing and call Dial-a-Song." And I remember once being just so depressed and in tears. And I called it, and there was a song about how there was an ant crawling up my back. And it really-- it worked. It really cheered me up. It made you feel better. Yeah. See, some people wouldn't have that response to some of those songs. But I always felt like there was something at least happy about the music. For something so impersonal as a machine that you'd call up, that at least it was sort of merry in the music. It's better than that because it kind of includes both. Because it's very darkly merry. So it's kind of that sort of happiness that recognizes the dark side. So there's a whole other level. You had some new song at your show a couple of weeks ago that was very bright and happy, and it was about death, the death man or something like that. That's how I remember it. Yeah. Yeah, the death man. I was picturing sickles. That applies to most of our songs. There's another reason besides this black humor that I call Dial-a-Song when I'm sad. I used to agree with John Linnell. I used to think it was just the deliciously dark They Might Be Giants music that cheered me up during those darkest hour Dial-a-Song calls. And that's part of it. But the thing that's just as reassuring about Dial-a-Song is the idea behind it, namely, that art, like life, doesn't always have to be a big production. Sarah Vowell is the author of the book Take the Cannoli. The often busy Dial-a-Song number-- get out your pens-- 718-387-6962. Act Three, Phone as History. Well, we think of our phone calls and phone messages as so transient, as throwaway moments. Here is another example of a personal human history captured by phone machine, in this case, by Barrett Golding in Bozeman, Montana. The messages were about his father. Hello, Ralph. This is Bea Levine, Janette and Ben Brooks, and Lester and Charlotte Bloom. We're all here having a little afternoon tea. And we wanted to talk to you, but I guess you're out. We want to know how Ralph is. Would you try to call us back one day and let us know what's going on? We all want to know how Ralph is doing. We hope he's doing well. Let us know. Bye. (SUBJECT) WOMAN 1 Mr. Golding, this is [? Dr. Spark's ?] office, confirming your appointment for Tuesday, July 12, at 4:00. You don't need to call us unless there's a problem. Thank you. Hi, this is Rose Bernstein. Just calling to welcome you back, and hope you had a very good time. And we'd like to say hi to you. Bye-bye. It's Leah. I'm just heartsick over what happened. I'll get in touch with you later. [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. Hi, Mrs. Golding. It's Liz calling from Dr. Casey's office. I wanted just to give my condolences and tell you how sorry I am. I think we should touch base at some point. And I'll try calling you again later today. Bye. Hello. It's 12:30. I just got a call in reference to Ralph. Please give me a call whenever you can. Thank you. --going and is there anything I can do to help? We could-- We're all very confused. So give me a call. I wanted just to give you my condolences and tell you how sorry I am. It's Leah. I'm just heartsick over what happened. I'll get in touch with you later. Well, our program was produced by Alix Spiegel and myself, with Julie Snyder and Nancy Updike. Senior editor, Paul Tough. Lyndon Johnson tapes are in stores everywhere. They are from Simon & Schuster. Joe Skyward did the music in Barrett Golding's story in Act Three. If you would care to buy a cassette of this or any of our programs, call us here at WBEZ in Chicago. The phone number, 312-832-3380. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia, who describes his job overseeing us this way. I would come home, and I would have to listen to, like, three, four hours of tape saying nothing. I mean dribble. I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life. PRI, Public Radio International.
|
Sylvia's parents are immigrants, very traditional. And in Sylvia's house, the men are men, the women are women, just like back in the old country. My brother goes, "Oh, I want tortillas." And my mom, just like right there on, she'll just turn off the TV and she'll go make them. And my brother goes, "I want money." And my mom's right there taking my money. He goes, "Wash this shirt for me. I want to wear it tomorrow." And there goes my mom, washing the shirt. And it's not like that with me. That's the way she thinks. That's the way she is. She's like, he's a boy. For instance, he can't cook for himself. He's a boy. He can't do this because he's a boy. That's a woman's job. My mom always has this little saying that really annoys me. Sometimes when the house is dirty, she says, "Oh, it looks like there's never been women in the house," making it sound like women are supposed to clean. And I'm thinking, Dad can clean. She goes, "No, he's supposed to be in the garage fixing the car or something." It's a typical American story in this country. From the time she was little, Sylvia spoke English better than her parents. She was the one in the family who'd call the phone company or the utilities. She translated teacher conferences. If the family was going somewhere and needed directions, Sylvia was the one who would walk up to a stranger and ask for them. And now, nearly grown up, she wants to be an American girl in a way that her parents don't completely understand. She goes to a big, integrated public school. A few years ago, she started listening to The Cranberries and Nirvana and Metallica, not the kind of stuff her parents knew growing up in small towns in rural Mexico. My mom wants me to be a typical Mexican girl. When I was younger, before I had my cotillion, I used to start liking alternative music. Cotillion's like a coming out party when you turn 15. Yeah, when you turn 15. You have a huge party. You get your own beautiful dress. It's long, and it's big. I started liking alternative music around the age of 14, around the time they started making my cotillion. And I remember my cousins used to say, oh, as soon as you hit your cotillion, you're going to start liking Mexican music. And we're going to start taking you out. Because in my family, as soon as you hit 15, you're allowed to go to Mexican dances. But you usually go with your older cousins. And that's where my mom wanted in me. My mom wanted me to be like my cousins. They went to Mexican dances. They had Mexican boyfriends. I mean, she wanted me to dress like them. She didn't want me to dress kind of alternative. And now sometimes we get into fights and I tell my mom, I'm not like my cousins. I'm like, my cousins are already like 19, 18, and they're already pregnant or married. I'm like, is that what you want me to do with my life? This weekend, this is a particularly urgent question in Sylvia's life. This weekend, January 31, 1998, Sylvia turns 18. She's legally recognized as an adult, capable of deciding for herself what she'll do with her life. And she and her mom have been talking about what she's going to do. Sylvia wants to go to a four year college, wait to get married, wait to have kids. And her mom is trying to understand. Sometimes she's kind of like, yeah, do what you want. Do what you want. Become whatever you want. And there's just times where, like, why do you want to do that? Why do you want to do that? Why do you think you're better than everybody? Why do you think you're special? I'm like, Ma, I don't think I'm special. I just want to do something with my life. When her mom was young, back in Tamaulipas, her mom wanted to go to school. She was admitted to a good school nearby, but her grandfather told her no. He said the only reason the girls go to school is to get boyfriends. So she stopped going in sixth grade. Now she spends most of her time at home, raising Sylvia's brother and sister, taking care of the house, rarely leaving the house. My mom has lived in a box all her life, and I feel like a lot of Mexican women have. When you live in a box, you raise your children in a box. And sometimes I'll just try to climb out. And she's like pushing me in or I'm trying to poke a hole in the box and she tapes it right back up. Well, today on our radio program, Escaping the Box You were Born Into. From WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week, of course, we choose a theme, bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's program in three acts. Act One, An American Girl Turns 18. Act Two, $33 Million Box, the true story of a successful Cincinnati businessman millionaire who escaped his old life and created a new one in one single day by robbing a bank. Act Three, The Feeling You Want and the Feeling You Get. We have an excerpt from David Cale's funny and thrilling story of a middle-aged woman who escapes the box of her own life. Stay with us. Act One, American Girl Turns 18. So Sylvia is living at home, senior in high school, engaged in an ongoing discussion with her mom about what she should be after graduation in four months and whether she'll live a life like her mom's. She's too scared to get out of the box. She is. She even told me. She's just too scared. I mean, if she has to go to my godmother's house, all she has to do do is take one bus and go straight. And she just gets off at a certain stop and walks a block or two. That scares my mom that she's by herself. It scares the hell out of her being by herself. It just really scares her. And I'm always by myself. And I'm always doing things by myself. And I'm always doing things that I want. And I think sometimes she admires me that I'm not scared, but at the same time, she just doesn't-- it's like she admires me that I'm not scared, but I think at the same time she hates me because she's scared. Describe the box that she's in. I would guess it's just the typical Mexican family, where you're married and you have children and you die together. And you travel once in a while to your homeland, and you have usually Mexican music and laughter and drinking and partying. And all the cousins coming together and all the aunts coming together. Do you think she's unhappy? I mean, that sounds like it could be actually kind of nice. Yeah, it could be nice, but, I mean, when you only hang around with that kind of people and that certain people and they're-- because they're kind of also-- not like bigots or something, but they're also really-- kind of like the way she thinks. Everybody thinks the same way. Everybody thinks the same way. And they're not so crazy about people who think differently. Yeah, it's kind of like I'm the outcast of the family. I'm like the black sheep. That's why I really never depended on my parents because I really never had them when I wanted them. And also I never really asked for anything. I never really wanted anything from them. And now that I'm almost going to turn 18, they noticed that I really don't ask anything from them. I remember one time. It's really specific. It happened last year. It just popped into my head. I remember that my grandparents come every summer. And all the uncles and aunts come to the house because our grandparents are there and stuff like that. And I was working, and when I came home, one of my aunts came. She's the second oldest in the family, and I find her really bitter. She's my aunt, and I love her and stuff like that, but she's really bitter. And she had told my mom that really got me mad. This woman who I talk to maybe once or twice a year. And because my mom was raised by this aunt-- she sees her as a mother figure, too-- she has a lot of respect for her. She told my mom that the day that I grew up, I'm going to be ashamed of my parents and especially of her because she has no education and because she's an immigrant of this country. And I told my mom, how dare she say that? She knows nothing about me. Does she want me to become like her kids? Her oldest daughter got pregnant at 16. And her youngest son is kind of like a drifter. He really doesn't know what he does. And I'm like, this woman has the idea that I'm going to be ashamed of my mom because I'm going to have an education and because I'm going to have a career? I suggest to Sylvia that her parents might understand her situation better than she acknowledges. After all, they themselves escaped the box of their own early lives, uprooted themselves from rural Mexico to inner city Chicago, to a country where they didn't even speak the language. Sylvia doesn't buy it. But as we talk, one of the most striking things is how there's still a part of her, the biggest part of her, that wants her parents to simply understand her and how she sees her own life. She still wants to be part of the family. It's like this, sometimes you usually see my mom and my brother talking and stuff like that, and they're goofing off. You see my little sister-- sorry. Do you want some water? No, that's OK. Usually I see my little sister and my dad talking and playing. Or sometimes you see my mom and my little sister laughing and stuff like that. And I'm usually in another room doing my own thing. I usually never do anything with her. And do you feel like that's mostly your choice, that that's the way that you want it? Sometimes I do because a lot of the things that they want me to do, I don't want to do. And it really hurts me that they're not really supportive. So I guess I just try to move myself away from them so they won't hurt me as much. But they don't understand that. They think I'm too strong to be hurt. Yeah. Yeah, but I mean they're not right about that. No, they're not. But getting out of the box doesn't necessarily mean you're any happier. There are plenty of people who start off in a life that's really in a box and get out of it and change all the time. And that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be happy. Yeah. You can be happy in the box or out of the box. It all depends on how you feel. Do you have a sense of what kind of job you might want to yet? I have an idea. I want this job that-- because I want to do digital effects, special digital effects. Like for movies and stuff. Yeah, like Jurassic Park and Men in Black and stuff like that. I think it's so cool. I just want one day to have a job. I usually think of myself sitting, having not like an office to myself but usually have an open space with a lot of different equipment everywhere and sitting in front of the computer and doing all these things on the computer and animating. And getting really frustrated because it takes me like six months to do like a five-second little scene. It's just doing my own thing, not have to get dressed up, go casual, have an eyebrow ring or something on, how my hair whatever color I want, have a real cool boss. But that's just a dream. Have you seen those specials on TV where they show here's how they make these special effects and you see the people and what they look like who do all that work? I've seen the making of Jurassic Park and Titanic and the Space Jam. And that's what I want to do, just use my imagination and make this thing blow up or something. What's your biggest fear in trying to get out of the box? Failing. That's my biggest fear is failing. Because I've done so many things. I've done so many organizations. I've done so many clubs. I did all these classes and all these grades. And it's just going to go to waste. That's my biggest fear that it's going to go to waste, that all that I did is going to amount to nothing. And if you failed, what would it be? Like what would you be? What would be my failure? What would happen to you? Yeah. I would become working an $11 an hour job at like 25 with already two kids and a husband and just doing that, day by day doing the same thing over and over. And what could make you fail? I don't know. Sometimes I feel like my ambition's going to die out. It's kind of like you rebel against everybody because you think you know what you're doing and you know you want to achieve more and you want to do more. But every time you take another step, it just hits you right in the face like, ha, ha, ha, you can't do it. Go back into your line. And after a while, you just get really tired of all the closing of the doors and telling you, no, you can't do this. And you're like, well, maybe they are right. One day I'll just get tired and I'll just say, you win. And do you feel like if you don't get out by the time you're 22 or 23 or 24, it's probably at that's when it would all die, like that's when your ambition would die and you would stay? Yeah, unless I change or something, unless all of a sudden something happens and my parents are supportive. And I don't get into fights as much anymore and I feel like I'm actually wanted around the house or something, and then I feel like I'm happy, like I'm actually happy to be home. Then I wouldn't mind, but I just hope that when I actually do achieve what I want, that is, I want them to say, yeah, she did it. She did it. I guess I was wrong. Sylvia turns 18 this weekend. Happy birthday. Good luck. Act Two. You know who it's been a hard week for? It's been a hard week to be an intern. In fact, you could reasonably argue that in the history of interns, this past week or two, in late January 1998, they have been the low point. An intern here at WBEZ Chicago, home of This American Life, told me that she was waiting for the L train this week. And she's standing there, and this guy strikes up a conversation. And they're talking about this and that. And he says to her at some point, so what do you do? And she tells him that she's an intern. And he says, oh, really? As if she'd just told him, my job, I'm a slut. That's my job. Our senior editor Paul Tough was once an intern. I started in public radio as an intern at National Public Radio in Washington 19 years ago. In fact, I would not have escaped the box that I grew up in if not for that internship. I would not be in radio at all. We at This American Life are a staff of former interns. Producers Alix Spiegel, Nancy Updike, Julie Snyder, all former interns. And so, to strike a small blow for the dignity of interns everywhere in this dire, dire hour our own This American Life intern, the capable and serious-minded Rachel Day will introduce our next act here on the program. Welcome to the show, Rachel. Thank you, Ira. OK. You ready to do this? I think so. All right. Here we go. Here's the keys to the radio show. Drive safe. Bring it back home in one piece. I think we're ready to go. Act Two, $33 Million Box. Barry Miller didn't have the kind of life you'd think he'd want to escape. He owned a clothing store in Cincinnati that was worth $33 million. He could buy whatever he wanted, took $15,000 vacations with his family. But he was unhappy. And one day, he permanently escaped his old life and entered his new one with one simple and unorthodox act. He robbed a bank. Alex Blumberg talked with him at the Hocking Correctional Facility in Nelsonville, Ohio. If you ask Barry Miller what was wrong with making lots of money, he'll tell you this. He used to go to Rome at least twice a year, but he never saw the Coliseum. He never went to the Vatican. If his business was over in the morning, he'd find a flight back in the afternoon. He was driven. His relationship with his family suffered. In Dallas once, I was with my oldest son, my middle child. And I never spent a lot of time with him. I would try to go to his soccer games or those kinds of things, but I never really made it on time. I got there at the last quarter. So we were out. We were driving around. And here I am with my son, and I have so very little to talk to him about and so little that I can relate with him about. We started talking about cars. And so I thought, well, he's interested in cars. Let's go buy a car. So I went to buy a car. We bought a car. Didn't need a car. I could afford to buy a car. We went to buy a car. Looking back, he says he was shallow and vain. He says he was worshiping false gods. At the time though, he only felt a vague nagging that something wasn't right. But he says gradually that feeling became more insistent and took stranger forms. For instance, he says, he started blacking out, losing hours in the day. I was in New York on business, and I lost an afternoon. I didn't really know where I was, what I was doing. I ended up finding myself sitting in a lounge in a building that I recall going into because I had some business to do there, but it was three hours later. I don't know what I did for those three hours. Sometimes you actually make a real decision to change your life and you set about doing it. But just as often, you find yourself sort of edging toward the new life, half consciously. Part of you goes on as you always have while another part secretly plots an ambush. Barry Miller's case is as extreme as you can get. When he describes what happened, it's like he's describing a person in a trance. The day before the bank robbery, I drove by a car rental place. And I stopped. And I rented a car. Now, I have two cars, one I used and one my wife used. I rented a car. I really don't know why I rented the car, but I rented the car. And I continued on my way home, and I recall that we were out of fax paper. And I drive by a Sam's, which is where we used to get our fax paper from. And Sam's is on the right side of the road, and on the left side of the road is a Kmart. So I'm headed toward Sam's to get the fax paper, and I turn into the Kmart lot instead of the Sam's lot. And I bought a ski mask. And this is September, so they're not really out for sale. And I had ski masks at home. I bought a ski mask, and I know I bought the ski mask because at some point in time I come to and I'm sitting in the car and here I have a package with a ski mask in it. So you don't remember buying it? I don't remember buying it, but I know I bought it. The next day, I get up. And I put into my briefcase a gun and a box of bullets. And regress a bit. I bought this gun on June 16 of '95. That would have been 15 months before I used it. I bought the gun because I was going to commit suicide. I had taken the gun. We had a balcony on this condo. And I took the gun one night, and I shot it into the woods. I had never shot a gun in my life. I wanted to know how I felt because I figured if I'm going to put it to my head, I wanted to know where to put it. 15 months later, I get the gun, put it in my briefcase. I leave. And from there I don't really remember exactly what happened. I don't know how I got to the bank. I don't know how I picked that bank or that location. I don't recall specific incidences. Do you remember what you said to the teller? Do you remember? Not exactly. She said at the trial that I said something, give me all of your money, typical what you see in movies. I don't really remember. She said, give me all your money. She hadn't given me all of the money, and I said, all of it or something like that. I really don't remember. What I remember is only from what she said at the trial. When he robbed the bank, he was earning well into six figures a year. His take from the robbery, $8,000. It's a lot to swallow, really, rob a bank, then claim not to remember it, especially when you bought a ski mask and rented a car the day before. And it's possible that Miller made up the story about not remembering when he went to trial. He plead innocent by reason of insanity. The judge didn't buy it. I talked to Steve Tolbert, the prosecutor in Miller's criminal trial. He says it's possible that Miller was in a kind of a haze when he robbed the bank. He'd certainly never heard that defense before. But for Tolbert, it was immaterial. Either way, Miller was guilty of the crime. But even Tolbert questions why a man who could have gotten a substantial loan from any bank in the city would actually need to hold one up for money. And more importantly, why would he have bungled the job so badly? When Miller lays out the facts, it's hard to believe this workaholic, super achiever was really trying to get away with it. Again, if this was a robbery to really get some money, I got to think I would have selected a place that wasn't on a busy street, a busy corner with a police station two blocks away. But in any event, my most vivid memories are after the bank robbery, where here I am, walking down the street that's relatively busy. The parking lot to the bank where I parked my car is in the back. I mean, I didn't even park in front. I had to walk a quarter of a block to get to the car. And I'm walking with a gun in my hand and a mask on my face at whatever time that was in the morning. It wasn't Halloween. The police came relatively quickly. The bag that had the money in it, the dye thing exploded. This big cop with a gun is yelling at me, get down on the ground, get down on the ground. I really didn't totally comprehend all of what he was saying, but I eventually did. And I got down on the ground. And he handcuffed me, put me into his car, and took me away. I'm no longer a rich man. I'm no longer a society person. I'm no longer the person that I was before. I killed that person. I can create this person that I now want to be. I can create a person who has more compassion, a person who wants a different lifestyle, who wants to live a different way. I lived on the top of the hill. I want to live in the valley with everybody else now. A guy in my position, coming from my socioeconomic background does not do what I did. You don't go and rob a bank. So therefore I have now been cast out from my family. And that which they needed from me, I guess I can't give to them. That which I was supposed to be, I'm now an embarrassment, which is rather remarkable because frankly I now am happier with myself as a person than I was during all of that time. This is maybe the hardest thing of all to swallow. Talking to Miller, I got a familiar feeling. He sounded like a new convert to a religion or a junkie who's gone clean, like someone desperate to believe what he is saying is true. And who can blame him? When Barry Miller gets out of jail in four years, he's going to have to rebuild a life from scratch. No family, no job, 68 years old. Despite my doubts, I wanted to believe him too. Alex Blumberg is a writer in Chicago. So Rachel, want to take us to the ID break? Yeah. Coming up, lizards, awkwardness, and falling in love from Public Radio International. That's in a minute when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Rachel Day, the intern here at This American Life. Each week, of course, we choose a theme, invite a variety of writers and performers to take a whack at that them. Today's show, Escaping the Box of Your Own life. We've arrived at Act Three, The Feeling You Want and the Feeling You Get. Rachel, that was such a good job. Good. You are a credit to interns everywhere. I am so glad. In this, their darkest hour. That's right. In this act we have a story from David Cale from a show that premiered here at the Goodman Theatre here in Chicago. And in this show, David Cale comes out on stage in black jeans and a corduroy shirt. And without dressing as a woman or changing his voice in any way, he simply becomes this middle-aged, good-humored British woman named Lillian. The story he tells is of how Lillian escapes the life she's in. She launches herself out of her old life in this kind of half trance, like the bank robber we heard from earlier but not quite so severe. Lillian take steps to destroy her own life while she's only kind of half conscious that that's exactly what is it that she's trying to do. And the incident that gets her out of her old life turns out to be so small and awkward and a bit disappointing, but it does the job. Before we begin this story, a quick warning that there's some sexual content in the story. No nasty words and, of course, nothing as graphic as the network news this week, but some mild sexual content that might not be appropriate for some younger listeners. The thought of someone else inside you is something I could never come to terms with. Keith had said to me before he went up north on that job, "I could get over somebody kissing you or cuddling, but if someone else went inside, I don't think I could ever touch you again." "Don't be dramatic," I said. "Nobody's going anywhere with me." Then almost a minute, the door shut. Keith was hardly in his precious Volvo when I meet little Jimmy in the store, 15 years my junior, with a look on his face the could drag a shipwreck up from the bottom of the ocean. "Wipe that dirty look off your face, Jimmy Foyle," I said, "and stop trying to put your fingers in my mouth. I'm a married woman." I couldn't believe the words were coming out of me. It was like my husband just flew out the window. Jimmy was really what I had in mind for a lover before I said yes to Keith. He was. He was the kind of person I always wanted when I was his age but who never seemed interested in me. I wasn't generally a Jimmy's type. Jimmys didn't generally take notice of women like me. We seemed too tame. Jimmy was a wild one. Rough around the edges, he was a bit of a devil. Didn't give things a lot of thought the way Keith did. And he was funny. Keith had nothing approaching a sense of humor. Actually, Keith was the only person I knew that didn't find me funny in any way. "I can't believe that, Lillian," Jimmy said. "You're a riot." "Oh, how refreshing," I thought, "to be found funny again." It was really the idea of a Jimmy coming along that kept me from completely giving over to Keith. I've been holding out for the thought of a Jimmy for a long time. So when he aimed his eyes at me and came on so strong that day, something in me was saying, it would not be a good idea to turn Jimmy down. It'll be a little fling. You have to work out this Jimmy thing. Lillian, it's between you and yourself. Jimmy knew Keith was out of town. I think he'd even been watching the precious Volvo to see if it was still in the front. He invited me over to his house to see his lizards. "Lizards?" I said. "Yes, lizards," he said. "How peculiar," I said. "All right, Jimmy." He drove his car like he just robbed the bank. We ran a red light. "Hold on to your seat, Lillian," I thought. His car didn't have safety belts. "I cut them off," he said. "They were uncomfortable." I thought about Keith. Keith wouldn't start the engine unless everyone was strapped in. Jimmy's house was lined with tiny aquariums. He got all excited as he told me what the various lizards were and where they came from. He was quite the authority. Outside of the store, he looked much younger. "God, Lillian," I thought, "what are you doing?" When he made his move on me, it was so sudden. Talk about a pounce. Even the lizards scuttled behind their plastic rocks. I immediately felt like I'd been thrown into a wrestling ring. As we were rolling around on his leopard blanket, I must confess, my first thought was, "Am I really enjoying this?" He was so rough and young. There was no warming up with Jimmy. In fact, much to my surprise, it was dreadful. It's funny, I realized I'd gotten used to Keith's mouth. Jimmy had a smaller mouth. I think Keith's tongue was wider, too. There was nothing sensual about Jimmy's tongue. It just sort of flickered around in my mouth, like the tongues of one of those lizards of his. Whatever was wrong with Keith, the sexual part was all right. Or maybe I'd overrated it, but he was considerate. Sexually speaking, I'd say Keith was like a really good waiter in a pretty good restaurant. Very good service but ultimately disappointing food. Jimmy seemed to approach the whole thing like it was some form of kung fu or that I was something that needed to be overthrown. But believe me, I was just laying there. He was nervous, bless him. I tried to get him to ease up. "Slow down," I said, in a voice that was supposed to sound seductive. But I have to admit, it did come out rather motherly. Then he breathed into my ear. "Can I [BLEEP] you, Lillian?" I thought about Keith, what the thought of someone else being inside me would do to him, how it really would be the final straw. And I said, "Yes, Jimmy. If you want." What follows is a brief scene that's too graphic to play for you on the radio. Let's just say things take awhile. Jimmy keeps his eyes scrunched shut. Lillian keeps hers open, lays there thinking about her husband, staring at the aquarium. And I'm looking at Jimmy's lizards. Can they really be happy in those little tanks with a light bulb over their heads morning and night? And he took so long. [YAWNS] It is starting to feel a little like a visit to the dentist more than a sexual fling. Then Jimmy makes a noise like he's been shot in the leg. And I realize, "Thank God." He rolls over to the other side of the blanket. "That was sexy," he says. "Yes," I said. "It was very. Thank you." Lillian, polite to the end. But then Jimmy did some really sweet things. He ran a bath, put something blue in the water. He showed me his muscles. "Ooh," I said. He lit candles. He was quite romantic after all. He was a boy, really. I half expected the police to come barging in and arrest me. "Did I disappoint you?" he asked. "No, of course not," I said. And for a moment, he looked so vulnerable, I thought my heart would break. We sat in the bath. He was behind me. He did my back. Drew objects on my shoulders in soap and had me guess what they were. "It's a giraffe," I said. "No, it's a crane," he said. "You win," I said. He was laughing. He looked even younger with his hair wet. And I'm thinking of Keith in these Volvo, following the taillights of another car with his radio on-- he probably near Scotland by then-- with that perpetually anxious look on his face that he inherited from his father. And they're both nice men. I mean, sweet men, good people. And as the damn television is chattering away in the background, all I can think is, "Well, my dear, now what?" Now we skip ahead five years. Lillian is out of her marriage, working in a bookstore. She decides to go away to Brighton for a little vacation. Well, I was walking along the front, past the chalets on the beach when I hear somebody calling my name. I turned around and see this young man with a beard waving at me. "Who on Earth are you," I thought. I presumed it must be a customer from the store. "It's me," said the man with the beard. "It's Jimmy. Don't you remember?" "Jimmy," I cried, totally taken aback, "You look completely different. I would have walked right past you." Besides the beard, he was much slimmer. And it's probably my imagination, but I think he'd grown. "What are you doing here," I asked. "I live here," he said. "Since when?" "Since about four years ago." I could not get over how different he looked. "I don't know lift weights anymore," he said. "I do tai chi. Lost a lot of bulk. Don't have muscles anymore. And I've gone vegetarian." "And you have the beard now," I chimed. "Yeah, my wife says it gives me authority." "Your wife?" "Can you believe it?" he said. "I got hitched." The whole episode was quite disorienting. Having Jimmy suddenly pop up in the middle of my Brighton after how many years? Five, was it? He asked me if I'd like to grab a bite. I said I would. I have to say, though, it was immediately comfortable between us. One thing about Jimmy and I, we always got along. "I don't drink coffee anymore," he said. "Only herb tea. I'm watching my health, but I can have a chamomile tea and a tofu sandwich. I'm very strict." "Tofu sandwich," I said. "Oh, dear. I should be having a glass of wine, a pastry, a cappuccino, and a cigarette, in that order. Health kick." He laughed. "Oh, good," I thought. "I'm still amusing to him." While he wasn't looking, I glanced at the side of his face. He'd become quite beautiful, delicate almost. In the looks department, I have to say, the little bugger had really come into his own. We went to an awful health restaurant where they had a lot of attitude and no pastry. And when I tried to light a cigarette, I got a lecture on secondhand smoke. He wanted me to meet his wife, thought the two of us would get along. "Why," I couldn't help wondering. "She reminds me of you," he said. "She's a bit older than me, very successful in business, has her own company. She trains executives how to speak in public and how to alter their image so they'll become a more effective tool in the marketplace." The whole enterprise sounded positively creepy. I asked him what his role in all this was. He said he videotaped the executives speaking and that Donna, the wife, would identify their weaknesses and therefore help to rectify them. "How old are you now," I asked, somewhat shifting the subject. "26," he said. "How old are you?" "I'm not telling you how old am," I said. "Let's put it this way. When I write down my date of birth now, I put the word circa next to it." Then he asked if I thought he seemed more mature. Apparently Donna was working on having him project a more mature version of himself. "Have you noticed I'm speaking slower," he asked. "Donna got me to do that. She made me watch a video of myself. I had no idea I talked so quickly." I'd never noticed it. Poor Jimmy was beginning to sound a bit like someone who's had a complete nervous breakdown and who's slowly pasting themselves back together again. And I was gaining the impression he'd married Eva Braun. "She's not pointing any cameras at me," I thought, just as some horrendous-looking alfalfa something or other arrived. God knows what it was, but I wasn't going to eat it. He asked me how what's-his-name was. "You mean Keith," I said. "I have no idea. I haven't seen Keith for nearly two years. The last time I tried to talk to Keith, he said he still wasn't ready to speak to me yet." "Was it because of me," he asked, with a tone of slight self-satisfaction. I have to say, it did irritate me for a moment. I mean, there was a reason Keith and I stayed together for six years. It wasn't a complete waste of time. "Let's just say you didn't help." One thing about Keith, he could read me like a book. He immediately knew what had happened with Jimmy. "The way you talked about him in the store, it was obvious," he'd say. "It's sad," he'd go on. "You're like a little girl. You'll fall for anyone who flatters you." Keith always referred to the thing with Jimmy as the episode. "You haven't been the same person since the episode," was how he put it. I really didn't want to meet Donna. I imagined her as exuding sex appeal and confidence, and I really wasn't feeling up to comparisons. But I went along with it. For some reason, Jimmy was so eager for us to meet. He called her up, warned her we were on our way while I excused myself for an emergency one-on-one between myself and my face in the bathroom mirror. "I hope it's the light in here," I thought. "Either that, my dear, or it is time to lay off the lattes." Donna was on a business call when we walked in, with her back to us. Well, she was nothing at all like I'd anticipated. Donna was a big girl. I mean literally. She must have been at least six feet two. And I have to say-- and this will sound awfully ungenerous on my part, and it is-- but the first thing that drew my attention was her hips. She's probably given birth to something, I presumed. When she turned around, I thought, "Oh, I'm much better looking than you." And I was sort of surprised at myself for how juvenile I was behaving. But I have to say, I did suddenly feel in the mood to be a little threatening. Finally she gets off the phone, waltzes over, extending her hand. "I'm sorry," she says. "The Americans just think I've got all the time in the world. But they're where the money is, so can't be complaining too much now, can we?" Then she kissed Jimmy on the mouth in front of me, which seemed a bit unnecessary, and said, "Hello, James." "James," I thought. "James. Well, excuse me." Jimmy may have been many things. One thing he wasn't was a James. Redirecting her attention towards me, "What line are you in, Lillian," she asks. "Books," I say, "though I seldom read them." "Oh. Publishing," she says. "No," says I. "Secondhand mostly." "Oh," she says. "What a pretty shirt you're wearing." And I thought, "You cow." I was only there for about 10 minutes, which was quite long enough. Donna said she had a meeting to go to. "Oh, AA?" I inquired. "Oh, you're hilarious," she said. "So are you," I replied, which got no response. She said she was going to Germany for the rest of the week and that James had the car. Every time she mentioned James, I had to think for a moment who she was talking about. "You two can get reacquainted," she said. "You don't need me around, now, do you?" For a second, it felt like she was throwing him at me. Jimmy wanted to give me a tour of the south coast. So the following day, after Donna left, he picked me up at the hotel. We went driving in her BMW. "What happened to your car?" I asked. "Donna made me get rid of it," he said. "I liked that car," I protested. "It suited you." "She approves of you," he said. "She thought you were down to earth," which, from a pretentious person, is not a compliment. "She said she thinks you're the kind of woman she could imagine me being with much more than her." "What does she mean by that?" I asked. "I don't know," he said. "Sometimes I think she's tired of being married to people." "I'm her fourth husband." "Oh," I said. Then we just go drove for a while without saying anything. The countryside along the south coast is lovely. I remembered how much I like to be in the passenger seat of a car. While Jimmy was driving, I happened to notice his hands on the steering wheel. They looked older. I looked at mine. I'm sure they do too. He slipped in a cassette tape. I lowered my window. A gust of wind blew through the car. My hair went everywhere. Care and all its relatives seemed to fall out of me. I don't know if it was the sea air or the music, too many cappuccinos or Jimmy, but I felt something like a sudden wave of enthusiasm. He must have thought my mind had just fluttered out the car window. "Right now," I explained, "I feel like I'm right in the world." Driving along the coast, we came to a huge fun fair. Jimmy wanted to get off the road and investigate. I did not take much convincing. As we were going in, he stopped in his tracks. "I always get excited around you," he said. I said, "I feel the same way." I realized what it was. You see, you can be romantic with Jimmy and not feel like a fool. I had been waiting a long time to be romantic with someone. Jimmy was immediately drawn to an enormous roller coaster called the Big Plunge. The Big Plunge was a ride that would go up extremely high and then plummet. Now, I have a terrible fear of heights. "There is no way you're going to get me up on that thing," I said. "You go if you want to. I'll stay here and have a cigarette." "Oh, Lillian, you're afraid of everything," he said. "How dare you?" I said. "I'm not." "Come on," he said. "Fear at a certain point just becomes another bad habit." Which had to have been something he'd picked up from Donna. The only way I could go on the Big Plunge was by going through a complicated psychological snow job in which I rationalize that my fear of heights actually represented my terror of life and that going on the Big Plunge was extremely important for me and could lead to a personal breakthrough. Besides if 10-year-old children could brave it, so could I. "I'm sure I'm the oldest person to ever take the plunge," I cried. The terrified wit. As the ride yanked everyone forward and the squealing began, first off I was petrified. Then I seemed to push through the fear. I have to say, the whole thing did seem like a personal breakthrough. Donna would have been proud of me. Jimmy held my hand for the duration, which was sweet of him. I've never been able to go on those rides before, but I ended up loving it. Went on three more times. It had become completely easy between us. Midway through the day, a strange notion crossed my mind. "I can imagine myself being with you for a long time," I thought. By late afternoon, I realized I really was getting a little lightheaded around Jimmy. I stood at a distance as he was buying tickets for the next ride and tried to give myself a little talking to. "He's 26. He's married. He lives in Brighton," I said to myself. "Lillian, stop it." Then out of the blue, on the Ferris wheel, he gives me a peck on the cheek. "What are you doing?" I asked, trying to not sound delighted and failing abysmally. "I wanted to kiss you," he says. "James," I scolded, "behave." The Ferris wheel then abruptly jolted to a halt, fortunately with us on the low end. While we were waiting to move, Jimmy came out with what seemed like an out of the blue question. "If somebody told you your life would end in, say, a year, do you think you'd start to really live or do you think you'd slip back under the covers and wait for it to be over?" "I think I'd get a move on," I replied. Just then the wheel began to turn. As we were passing the arcade, I noticed a photo booth. "I don't have any pictures of you," I said. "Come on. I need some proof that you exist." We were clowning around in front of the camera. Pictures took forever to come out. When they finally did emerge from the machine, I wasn't quite prepared for what I saw. What took me back about the photos was that we looked like two people who were completely in love with each other. It's a year later. Lillian and Jimmy are married and happy. He had next to nothing in the way of possessions. Everything had belonged to Donna. One of the few things that was actually his was this little tent that he took everywhere just in case he ever felt the urge to sleep outside, he'd say. One Saturday, we took a bus ride into the country. Sure enough, little package came along too. No sooner we're off the bus than Jimmy said, "Let's forget about going home. I want to sleep under the sky." I have to say, the idea did appeal. So we bought some sandwiches and supplies, walked what must have been miles till we found this spot that met Jimmy's definition of the word remote, by which time the sky was quite black. He set up a little tent and pulled out a sleeping bag he'd had all along. By the time we'd eaten, it was late. Jimmy went pretty much straight to sleep. I, on the other hand, just laid there. The ground was uneven to put it mildly. I think we were parked on top of a mole community. My spine was wondering what the hell was going on, and it was damp. But I didn't care. It was so quiet in the open. You could almost hear your moods change. If you laid still enough, you could feel your instincts wriggling to the surface. Hours go by, and I'm still wide awake, thinking, "I'm 41 years old. It's 3 o'clock in the morning. And I'm laying in a field." And the whole thing seemed so absurd. I just started laughing. "You know what?" I thought. "Good things are going to happen. I'm ready for them now. I wasn't before. I am now." "Yes," I thought. "I'm ready to roll my sleeves up. My sleeves are fairly twitching to be rolled for the good things." David Cale's one woman show Lillian premiered at the Goodman Studio Theatre in Chicago. It was directed by Joe Mantello. They're currently in the process of putting the show up in other cities. Watch for it. It's really great. Our program was produced today by Nancy Updike and myself with Alix Spiegel and Julie Snyder. Senior editor Paul Tough. To buy a cassette of this program, call us at WBEZ here in Chicago. Our phone number 312-832-3380. Our email address [email protected] This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia, who's not trying to escape any boxes. I just have to try to put this in a little box like I have every other thing that has been said and done and go on and do my job. That's what I'm going to work at. I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life. PRI. Public Radio International.
|
So Margy's a reporter, and she wanted to do a story about her dad. So she calls him up, asks him if he'd be willing to do it. They have a quick conversation. He says yes. But then he called me back. He called me back a couple of hours later. And he said that he wanted to talk to me about something. And I said, "Well, what?" And he said he wanted me to know that it completely moved him that I wanted to see him with all of his masks off. And I told him, "Well, I don't." Leave the mask on. Leave the mask on. It scared me a little bit. Margy's family is one of those families where everybody tells everything to everybody else all the time anyway. So the thought that her dad would now really let go was kind of daunting. There are just some things you do not want to know even about the people who you're close to. In those moments, when you hit that wall, you get this picture of them and this picture of yourself that is different than you see at any other time. And you have to choose. Do you want that new information or not? Well, from WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, invite a variety of writers and reporters to tackle that theme. Today on our show, Leave the Mask On, stories of those situations when somebody tries to tell you just a little bit more than you really want to know and when you have to decide what are you going to do. Act One, Father's Day, the story of Margy Rochlin, her dad, World War II, and what your kids make of you when you drop one life and start another in your 70s. Act Two, Mama, Can You Hear Me? in which Dan Savage, a man who makes his living writing a nationally syndicated sex advice column admits that there's one group of people he does not want to discuss sex with ever. And sadly for him, it's a group of people who happen to have his home phone number. Act Three, The Unmasking, a story of guys who wear real masks, real masks like superheroes, in their jobs as costumed wrestlers, and how much smaller they feel, how humiliated, when they have to take those masks off. Stay with us. Act One, Father's Day. Well, one of the most unusual things that can happen as you age is to see a new side of somebody in your own family, somebody who you feel like you know backwards and forwards, somebody who you have known for decades. Writer Margy Rochlin had this experience recently with her father as he entered this new world that she never imagined that he could ever be part of. About four years ago, my father made an illegal right-hand turn and ended up at traffic school. At the beginning of the eight-hour course, a pretty, blond instructor asked that each class member stand up in front of the group and give his or her name and talk about the law they violated. This is what my father told me that he said. Look, my name is Fred Rochlin. I was born and raised near Nogales, Arizona. My parents had immigrated there from Russia. It was a border town-- A couple of months before, he had taken a seminar from the famous monologist Spalding Gray called "True Stories: Autobiographical Storytelling." By the time he returned home, he'd accumulated a pocket full of addresses from the 12 or so professional actors that had also attended and a habit of quoting Spalding Gray. Spalding says, "Make 'em laugh, make 'em cry." Spalding says, "Go beyond the frame." Spalding says, "Where's the emotional charge?" Spalding says, "Exaggerate." My father told me that it was very important to "get your work out there." I was flunking out. Well, that December, the Japanese government saw fit to bomb Pearl Harbor. So next month, January, just two weeks before finals, I got very patriotic. And I enlisted in the Army Air Corps. Now, the Army-- My father kept on like this for about 15 minutes. And then the instructor jumped up, began waving her arms in the air, and shouted at him that if he didn't stop talking and sit down, she was going to lose her job. She was swept back to her place at the back of the classroom by booing traffic violators who couldn't believe that the old guy with the thinning hair, the wrinkled khaki pants, and the white tennis shirt was the one that turned this exercise in forced contrition on its ear. And it wound up being kind of simple. It seemed like all the kids that were WASPs got sent off to pilot training. And then, kids with German or Scandinavian last names were sent to bombardier school. Mexican kids were given a choice between paratroops or infantry. And then there were the Jewish kids, what to do with them. Well, hell, there were only 10 of us. And every single one of us was sent to navigation school. See, our drill sergeant explained, "Look, everybody knows you Heebs are good with numbers. And all a navigator is is just a [BLEEP] flying accountant." About a quarter of an hour passed before my father came to the end of his story and walked back to his metal folding chair. Later, he told me that for a couple of seconds, there was only a stunned silence. Then, slowly, he said the class rose to their feet and gave him his first standing ovation. It was nine years ago when my father abandoned the square world of architecture to his partners and retired. The first thing he did was rent a small studio near his house, set up a drafting table, and find himself a handful of jobs. It was around this time that he started showing up at my apartment unexpectedly. At least once a week, my doorbell would ring and there he'd be, standing with his tool box. He'd ask me if I had anything that needed fixing. Whenever he'd say this, he'd always have an uncomfortable look, like he was embarrassed. Until that time, I thought I had seen every kind of expression on my father's face. But back in those days, when he'd be standing there, there was something so vulnerable about him, it was almost as if I was looking at a stranger. So I'd think of something that was broken, and he'd follow me up the steep flight of gray carpeted stairs to my house. And with each step, he'd shake off a little more of the uncertainty until, by the top of the stairs, he'd resemble my father again. Sometimes I'd wonder if I'd only imagined that he'd seem to be feeling a little bit lost. If you were going to draw a timeline that showed the period before and after my father really got into the swing of retirement, the after part would have to begin with Spalding Gray's monologue workshop, because after that, nothing was quite the same again. Before I get too far ahead of myself, it would probably be appropriate to explain what lured my father to alternative theatre. But the truth is, I haven't a clue. I can say that once I discovered that his dramatic sub-genre of choice was semi-autobiographical anecdotes from the 1940s, I found it a lot easier to get behind him 100%. He is an unpredictable man. As far as I'm concerned, he could have just as easily decided to appear naked onstage, wearing a beret, or reciting the speech of my nightmares, which would go something like this-- "My name is Fred Rochlin. My third and worst-behaved daughter is Margy Rochlin. Rarely was there an argument in our household that she wasn't at the heart of." And if this happened, I'd have to do a preemptive strike, getting my version of things out into the zeitgeist before he did. Let his act be spin control. "Writing the One-Person Play," "Go Solo," "The Playwright's Kitchen Ensemble." These are the names of some of the classes that he took, titles that have an uncomplicated sound yet are somehow filled with hope. I can understand why he would thumb through the extension class syllabus and they would beckon to him. For all this, the first time I saw him perform, I was totally surprised what a different world he had become a part of. He was appearing in a group show at a tiny space on a dark side street in Santa Monica. To get in, you walked up this driveway, then into this dusty anteroom, then into this makeshift theater. And against one wall, there were wooden bleachers, splintery gangplanks that my aging relatives who came to support my father teetered along while I held my breath. There wasn't really a stage, just a painted concrete floor with a curtain behind it. The show began. A couple of hairy men performed in drag so unbelievable that it was impossible to know if they'd just failed miserably at trying to pass themselves off as women, or if their disguises were intentionally for laughs. A skinny woman took a running jump and landed on her knees on a wheeled dolly and came whizzing in front of the audience to begin a rambling narrative about religion which culminated with her holding a giant picture frame in front of herself and doing a wriggling booty dance for the crowd. I can't imagine what my relatives were thinking. If you skimmed your finger down the list of names on the program, you'd find my father at the very bottom. It said, "'Old Man in a Baseball Cap' by Fred Rochlin." An hour and a half later, he came out. He looked smaller to me, and he was squinting his eyes tightly. His voice sounded strange, like his, but more emphatic. He talked about being a navigator during World War II, of how he'd witnessed the miracle of childbirth by helping a squadron doctor named Connor deliver the baby of a 15-year-old Italian peasant girl. So Connor lifted up this gal's dress, but he couldn't get it past her belly, her swollen belly. So he reached into his bag, and he pulled out one of those blunt-nosed surgical scissors and went [RIP], and just ripped that rag right apart. Well, I was shocked. Look, I was very young. And although I'd had those usual teenage sexual forays in the backseat of a Chevy, really, I had never, ever seen a naked woman before. And here was this woman, this 14 or 15-year-old woman, with this huge belly and these two tremendous breasts. And her skin, her skin was black and yellow and blue and purple and red and magenta, all blotchy. And Connor said, "Jesus Christ. I think this gal's got peritonitis. Rockets, we've got to do something. We've got to try to save the baby, may not be able to save the mother. You tell Mrs. Carafa to warm some water. We're going to have to do a Cesarean right here, right now. I'm going to make an incision right about here. And you start cutting her pubic hair." And I looked at that pubic hair. She had hair from her belly button, all over her belly, down her hips, down her thighs, all the way to her knees. It was just a mess of hair. Connor brought my dad there as a translator. He spoke Spanish, not Italian, but nobody seemed to care. The two of them lifted the girl onto a table. And the doctor performed a Cesarean and delivered a healthy baby boy. Mr. Carafa came over, poured us each a shot of brandy. We said, "Salud," tossed that down. The girl, she was asleep. And Connor packed up his gear, and we started to go. And Mrs. Carafa stopped me. And she said, "[SPEAKING ITALIAN]?" So I told her, "Guillermo." And she said, "[SPEAKING ITALIAN]." And I said, "Connor, they're naming the baby after you." And Connor just sort of smiled and shrugged. And I was proud of him. And I thought, goddamn, good for you, Connor. And good for the American army. We'd done the right thing. And then we started to go. And this time, she stopped me and said, "[SPEAKING ITALIAN]?" And I said, "Frederico." And she said, "[SPEAKING ITALIAN] Guillermo Frederico Carafa." And after helping bring this baby into the world, my father told what it was like to go on a bombing run seven hours later that culminated with the complete and total destruction of a small town in Hungary that he knew was the wrong target. At the end, the audience did what they did at the traffic school. They rose to their feet and gave him a standing ovation. Then it dawned on me why he was at the very end of the show. No one wanted to follow him. I should have known that he'd do well. He's an overachiever. His success came with a rapidity that made all my struggling actor friends heartsick. He spent two snowy months in residency at the MacDowell Writers' Colony. In his first year as a performer, the national cultural correspondent for the New York Times did a big piece on him, calling his stories "morally complex and starkly funny." Producers and screenwriters want to meet with my father. I'll repeat that. Producers and screenwriters want to meet with my father. 200 people applied to perform at the prestigious Louisville Arts Festival this year. My father was one of the four people chosen. For eight nights, he performed his one-man show. My father, Fred Rochlin, the artist formerly known as Dad. Marushka started off in the wrong direction. OK. Almost. Rather than come downstage, I want you to just move to your right. OK. Marushka started off in the wrong direction. Here's another new experience my dad is having in his 70s. He's doing press with his kid. Though he's having all this success, he's not used to being subjected to the opinions of others. Not that long ago, I went to the small theater where my father rehearses. I snuck into the back of the room and watched him roaming around the stage, his words echoing off the walls. At first, he didn't notice I was there. Then he looked up and saw me. And then he looked away. He looked self-conscious. He didn't look like anyone I knew. "This is awkward," he said. I can't remember him ever saying that to me before. So in other words, the issue of which direction to walk in is raised, dealt with, and resolved all in one spot. And then you move through the next section, which is a whole different thing. My father has a director. Her name is Laurie Lathem. She's a member of the community that he's become a part of that doesn't include his family or his old life. When he first started taking Laurie's classes, he was 30 or 40 years older than everyone else. He didn't seem to mind. This might have been a part of the draw. It made him exotic. I don't know what intrigued him about the out-of-town seminar populated only by militant lesbians. And when I ask him about it now, he pretends not to remember. OK, you're still not telling me about-- I know that you were in a group. I don't know. I really don't know, Margy. I want to be accurate. I don't think so. It may have been some of my folklore, one of my hyperboles. Well, you called me up-- I don't mean to get too insistent here, but you called me up and asked me if I had ever heard of a performer named Muff Diva. Muff Diva. Well, I was not in her class. I wasn't. I would remember that. When he first started talking about it, he would tell me funny stories about young women with tattoos, pierced tongues, and shaved heads, who would only do rants about oppression, about how men kept them down, and how when they said the word "men," the entire room would stare at him. Later, he told me it bugged him at first. "I didn't do anything," he said. Then it went on for so long, and they kept staring at him so accusingly, that he couldn't help but be amused. But then a couple of days later, he called to tell me that he was feeling ashamed that he'd made light of these women. Their angry diatribes had given way to unhappy memories about leaving home too quickly and parents that were critical of them and of trying to make do on small paychecks from their crummy, menial jobs. These women had stirred protective feelings inside of him. "Their lives are so hard," he told me. "I think they think of me as a father." The day after the rehearsal, he does a warm-up show for Louisville. My father's very nervous. Meanwhile, I'm worried that my taping will throw him off. So we pin a wireless mic on him before the performance. And I go outside, and I sit on the stairs. Before the show starts, this is what is recorded straight onto the tape. I don't actually hear it until later. Hitler drove a goddamn BMW. Hitler drove a goddamn BMW, and we're driving them in America today, and it makes me sick. Oh, you son of a-- Hitler drove a goddamn BMW. What do we want to learn about our parents? What do we want to see? This is an odd thing to admit, but when I took the tape home, I realized that I was scared to listen to it. I was scared of what I might find out. Until I listened to this tape, I'd never heard what my father sounded like when I'm not there. Here's what I found out. When I'm not around, he sounds just like him. OK, Frederico? Esto. This is it. Showtime. You bet. Have a great time. Thank you. Forget everything I told you. Just go out there and be big. Got that? It's my stage. But it's a smaller stage than what you think because we've got a bunch of people sitting on the floor. That makes it better. Sure, that's better. So you're just going to have to roll with it. Yeah, you bet. Have a great time. Thank you. What you do is so beautiful. Laurie, you're moving me to tears. Every seat is filled. Grown-ups are sitting on the floor, cross-legged. In fact, there were people in the parking lot arguing over the last few tickets. The space where my father's performing is twice as wide as a bowling lane, and there is a chair and an end table with a bottle of Slivovitz on it. It isn't until the show started that I realized how big of a risk my father's taking. This time, he isn't part of a group. There isn't going to be a girl in a fairy godmother dress babbling about who knows what coming out first so that by comparison, my father seems like the wisest man on the planet. It's just him, slowly working his way towards the front of the audience. And suddenly, I notice I have a terrible knot in my stomach. I sit there on the stairs in the back of the theater. He gets his first laugh, and then another. And now, I feel so relaxed, I can't even pay attention to what he's saying. All I want to do is stare at the faces in the crowd. Everybody seems to be really enjoying themselves, especially whenever my father mentions anything that has to do with sex. Must've been about noon when Marushka woke me up. And she said, "Fred, you think I no beautiful?" And I said, "What the hell you talking about?" And I looked at her. I could see she was crying. And she said, "Me, Fred, me. I a virgin. I don't want to die virgin. Fred, why don't you put your hand on my shishky? Fred, why don't you put your hooey in my piska? Fred, why don't we make fig-fig?" You'd think that this would be the part that would disturb me. But it doesn't. What I find jarring is whenever he talks about killing people. There's one particular moment when he talks about shooting three German soldiers. He's been ejected from his plane, is wandering behind enemy lines, meets this woman, Marushka, who is helping him make his way to Italy. They come to a little village full of American sympathizers. And the head man came over. He made a speech, and I kept hearing the word "Amerikansky." And then we all started walking off toward the outskirts of this village. There was a little hut there. And Marushka said, "Fred, I know you, Fred. Fred, you're not a hard man. But Fred, if they give you a gun, you must do it, Fred. Even if it's against your nature, you must. Or they will kill you and me." Well, I didn't like the way that sounded. That gave me the creeps. And we got to this little hut. And the head man spoke some more. And then he yanked on this chain, and from under the hut crawled these three young German boys. They were guys about my age, about 18 or 19 years old. And they had these German gray uniforms on. And they were barefoot and had SS insignia on the collar. And they had a chain around their neck and around their wrists and around their ankles. They'd been terribly beaten up, covered with [BLEEP] from top to bottom. They looked like miserable dogs. And then the head man smiled. And I heard the word "Amerikansky." And he handed me the burp gun. And Marushka said, "Fred, you must do it, Fred. You must do it." And the villagers start going, "Chata, chata, chata, chata, chata!" Jesus Christ, I didn't want to shoot anybody. And Marushka was hissing, "Fred, do it, do it." And I pulled the trigger. And the gun went burp! And I just sawed those three boys in half. And the villagers just went wild with excitement. And we started walking back toward the village. I've always assumed that this story isn't true. I don't think of my father as this kind of man. In fact, when he showed me an early draft, I told him to take it out. And at first, he did. And then he put it back in. An actor friend of his named Patrick Flanagan told me that one night after class, my father told him that the story about shooting the three German soldiers is true but that he didn't want me or my sisters or my mother to know because he thought it would upset us too much. I asked my dad, "What am I supposed to think?" And I was talking to Patrick Flanagan backstage. And he said to me, "You know the whole story. You know what's true and what isn't. And your dad told me that that part of the story is true, that you actually did do those killings. Well, the interesting thing is the idea that somebody would want to know, and particularly an actor, would want to know whether it's true or not true. I don't even think that's an issue. Again, it's a story, it's a metaphor. I don't know, is there a difference in fact and fiction in your mind? Is there? Big. Really? Yes. So who are you telling the true story to, me or Patrick? Well, that's up to you to decide. Dad, come on. No, I haven't thought this through. You've asked a very good question because other people ask it, too. And I've got to prepare an answer. That's true, but you didn't answer my question. I'm really interested in why-- if, in fact, you told Patrick Flanagan the truth, and me not, why would you do that? I haven't got the vaguest idea what I told Patrick Flanagan. Oh, OK. But the true story is that the gun was handed to a 13-year-old boy, who killed-- that you did not do those killings. That's right. That's a true story. To the best of my knowledge, yeah. To the best of his knowledge? At this point, I have no idea how to assimilate this information. Even seeing my dad squirm under my questions is a side of him I've never seen before. We argued about it so much that I started to get worried. What if he's coming clean about something that he did so many years ago? I asked one of my older sisters if the same thing concerned her. And she told me that she assumes that all the upsetting parts of the story are made up. I don't know which version to believe. My father may have shot those soldiers or he may not have. But one thing is for certain. When he goes to these classes, he can be whomever he wants. And God bless him for that. How wonderful for him that he got the chance. Goodbye, fellas. Thanks for coming. Adios. Thank you. After the show, I sit backstage with my father. People start streaming in. Pretty soon, it's like a cocktail party. And Bob, the engineer who's with me, is looking at these two young women who have burst into the room and are hugging and kissing my father. Bob puts his hand over the microphone and says to me, "Your father knows a lot of babes." The fact that they're babes is a bonus. I think my dad would be just as excited with any kind of fan. What's really wonderful is to see that my father is getting a kind of attention that most people don't get at his age-- frankly, that most people don't get at all. It's just a huge adventure. God, what fun. Afterwards, last night, it was just fun. You mean hanging out and having all those people come and talk-- Yeah, then going over and having a few drinks, doing the whole post-mortem. Like, these kids sent me these cards. And I find it very moving. Will you read me a card? Well, here, you can read it. Can you read it for me? OK, it says, "Fred, you are such an inspiration to me. Good luck in Louisville." Well, that's very nice. And "Fred, once again, you break my heart and put it back together again." Well, you know, not too many people say that to me very often. "You are a source of great inspiration to me and others. The house ain't full for nothing, Fred. I'm proud to be your friend and collaborator." Well, that's a lot of fun. You just need to be moved there. I didn't know that's what the card said. That's so sweet. It is. And Margy, to have this happen to me at my stage of life-- Being realistic, I assume when have 10 years left, it's sort of a nice way to spend the last 10 years. When I was growing up, my father kept his leather flight jacket hanging in his closet. I used to go and stare at it. It's really strange to see it on stage when he tells these stories. Painted on the back of it are 50 yellow outlined pictographs shaped like bombs with fins with the nose side down. Two of these are filled with hash marks. These represent the times he was shot down, once near Italy and another time over Yugoslavia. Here's what happened the second time. One engine was shot out, and the other engine quit. So he bailed out over the Adriatic Sea. Everyone but he and the pilot drowned. My father told me that he tread water. And though he's Jewish, he only knew one prayer, the Shema. And he kept reciting it over and over again. And after six hours, he was rescued by a British navy frigate. He was only 20 years old, and he had three more bombing missions to complete before they sent him home. I know these details because I've heard the story so many times. But there's something different about hearing him tell stories onstage to strangers. Like the story about how his squadron was supposed to bomb a railroad junction in the town Hajduboszormeny. Now, Hajduboszormeny was obviously not a military target. It was just a little old Hungarian farming town. British intelligence had just made a mistake. But the colonel said, "When in doubt, you always follow orders. You can't go wrong that way." And we were at 22,000 feet. And he brought us down to 8,000 feet. And at 8,000 feet with a Norden bombsight, you can't miss. And we were the first squadron that went in there. And Harry got on the bomb site. And he dropped those bombs. And we just blew the hell out of everything. There was nothing left. Blew up every building, every street, every light post, everything. And the next squadron came in. And they dropped their bombs on top of where we had dropped. And then, the next squadron came in. And they dropped their bombs on top of where we had dropped. Then the govern squadron came in. And they dropped their bombs on top of where we had dropped. Look, every plane carries 10,000 pounds of bombs. 10,000 times 28, that's like a quarter million pounds of TNT. Divide that by, say, 2,500 people. That's like 100 pounds of TNT for every man, child, and woman in that village. Hajduboszormeny was no more. It was gone. It was wiped off the face of this earth. It was just a pile of Hungarian dust, a hole in the ground. When I hear my father telling these stories onstage, I always think the same thing. After filling up so much space in my imagination, how come I never thought about what it was like to carry those terrible memories around inside of you? We landed. I got debriefed. I went back to the officers' club, and I was having a brandy. And Captain Bill Connor, the flight surgeon, came in all smiles. And said, "Hey, Rockets! I just came back from the Carafas'. And the baby's doing great, and the mother's doing fine. And the Carafas are happy as hell. They even asked about you. They wanted to know where was Padrito Frederico. They made you and me godfathers. Then he looked at me. He said, "What are you so down in the dumps about?" And I said, "Well, Connor, I'm feeling kind of weird. You know how last night you went out and delivered that baby and I kind of helped? And I was proud of that, Connor. And this morning, we went out. And Connor, I guess we killed 2,500, 3,000 people. And I helped. Connor, what the hell's going on? Isn't this some kind of insanity?" And Connor looked at me. "Rockets, you want to go nuts, be put in the booby hatch, be Section 8 out of the army?" "No." "Then you listen to me. And you do what I tell you to do because I'm right. First, you follow orders. You do what you've been trained to do. Then when you're done, just forget it. Forget it. Just forget it. And that drink you're drinking, Rockets, you finish that drink. And when you're done, have another and another. You do that and you'll be all right." Well, Connor was right. I did what he said. I did my best to forget. And I pretended, and I denied, and I sure did my share of drinking. I grew up watching my father drink and laugh. I've seen him stand at the head of a dinner table filled with relatives and friends and raise a glass of wine, and watched tears slide down his face as he cries his way through a toast. I've seen him drink hundreds of times. At celebrations, at sad occasions, late at night in the kitchen when it was just him and me talking. And I have never thought that when he drinks it's because he's trying to forget something. I never thought about it until I saw him tell other people. Margy Rochlin in Los Angeles. Well, coming up, California Governor Pete Wilson in Lycra tights and a superhero mask on a wrestling mat. Well, somebody like Governor Wilson, anyway. That's in a minute from Public Radio International when our program continues. I'm not here to talk about sex. I'm here to make a confession, to share with you the secret shame of a sex advice columnist. I cannot talk about sex with my family. Anyone else, anywhere else, any kind of sex. But with family, I become, as my little sister Laura will now tell you, a completely different person. You get all, "Ooh, you're my little sister. I don't want to talk to you about sex. Back off. Eww, that's gross." You get all little girlish about it. How can you say that? Because you do. You get all, "Ooh." You turn all red. And you get all high-pitched voiced. And you're all like, "Ooh." My parents brought up four kids. Three boys, one girl. Laura is the youngest. When I came out to my family, Laura was thrilled. She finally had a sister. Now there was someone in the family she could dish about boys with. She was having sex with boys. I was having sex with boys. It made perfect sense to her that the two of us should sit up nights, eating brownies and comparing notes. I remember one of those early conversations. My sister cornered me on the front porch. She wanted some oral sex tips. When I realized why she had cornered me on the porch that night, I wanted to go right back in the house. But considering how well she'd handled the recent news about my sexuality, it didn't seem fair that I should run in and slam the door on her. So though I was dying inside, I shared with Laura the little I knew at that point about oral sex and then got the hell back in the house. So of the six of us in the immediate family, if you were to rank everyone for comfort of talking about sex issues, where would I be? Would I be-- You'd be at the bottom. At the bottom? I would? You'd be at the bottom. But in the extended family, how would you rank me? You mean like Peggy and all those guys? Yeah, like Peggy, Nestor, Amy, Tracy. The whole sort of crowd, the extended family. The aunts, the uncles, the cousins. You'd still be close to the bottom. I would still be close to the bottom. Yeah. I'm not sure where my discomfort came from. My parents were open with us about sex. They would use any opportunity that came along to initiate an educational conversation with us kids about sex. But I'm not convinced their openness was entirely sincere. In the late '70s, moms and dads were under a lot of pressure to be hip. And talking openly with your teens about sex was very hip. It's funny how different people often remember shared experiences in vastly different ways. I recall the times my mother and father talked to us about sex basically like this. They didn't want to talk to us about it. They didn't like talking to us about it. They weren't any good at talking about it. But by god, they were going to be hip parents if it killed them. But maybe I remember those conversations that way because, in fact, I was the one in agony. My mother remembers those conversations differently. We wanted to talk to you about sex. Or at least I did. I can't speak for your father. We thought that we were going to be these great, wonderful, open parents and give you all sorts of information. And you sensed that we were uncomfortable having the conversation? Well, sometimes you used to cover your ears and say, "I don't want to talk about that with you." Oh, really? Yeah. I did that? Yes. I remember one run-from-the-room conversation. My brother Eddie came down to dinner wearing a T-shirt with an oral sex innuendo decal ironed onto it. The four of us kids were snickering. And my parents asked us if we really knew what that T-shirt meant. Then my father explained to us, in great detail, all about oral sex. It was 1978. I was 13 years old. And from watching Three's Company and Hollywood Squares, I had managed to work out exactly what oral sex was all on my own. I didn't need my father to explain it to me with a mouthful of shepherd's pie. Then Mom dropped the bomb. There was nothing wrong with oral sex, she said, so long as the man and the woman engaging in it were in love. Why, she and my father engaged in oral sex. That was all I needed to hear to put me off oral sex for about 15 years. And shepherd's pie. Part of my problem with those parent-kid conversations about sex was a too-vivid imagination. When you're talking about sex with someone, it's hard not to form mental pictures of them actually having sex. And no one likes to picture their parents having sex. When I answer letters in my column, it's different. I don't know what these people look like. I can picture whoever I want. So unless gender comes into the question in some material way, I picture Matt Damon and Brad Pitt. Together. In fact, let's all take a moment, shall we, to enjoy that picture. OK, back to the radio show. Since I started writing a sex column, this thing with the family has gotten worse, especially with my mother. During the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, my mother would grill me about my sex life, asking me the most graphic, intense, probing, involved questions. She was absolutely prosecutorial. She wanted to know what sorts of risks I was taking, with whom, how often, under what circumstances, how much I'd had to drink, what this boy's intentions toward me were, where he was raised, what his people did, how much lube we were using, what kind of condoms we used. I've had conversations with my mother about the theory and practice of anal sex that I don't think many people, living or dead, have had with anyone, least of all their mothers. My mother confides in me, too. We talk about her sex life sometimes. And I've given her advice. But that's as much as I can tell you. Please, please don't ask me for details. When you and I talk about sex, it seems to me that it's mostly at your instigation. Do you think we discuss sex more than your average mother and son? Probably. I don't really know. Do you talk to my brothers about sex? Not really. I don't talk to very many people about sex. Do you talk to Laura, my sister, about sex? No. See, but you do talk to me about it. And why do you think that is? Is it because I work in sex, or is it because I'm gay, or is it because we're exceptionally close? I think we've always had different conversations since you were a little person. Our conversations always tended to get more intense or to cover more area. The only time my mother gets upset about our sex conversations is when I reproduce them in my column. My mom was very upset when my column started running in a weekly paper in our hometown, where she still lives. That first week it ran there, I mentioned details of what she thought was a private conversation we'd had about sex many years before. So now when we talk about sex, my mother takes me on and off the record, like a highly placed Washington source. "Daniel, we're off the record," she'll say before we get into a conversation that I, in all honesty, would rather not be having. When the conversation turns back to more mundane things, she'll announce, "Alrighty, we're back on the record." My mom's a regular Deep Throat. That's a Watergate reference, Mom. Do you think that when I came out, when I told the family I was gay, I sort of made sex an issue in a way? Made sexuality and sex an issue, my sex and sexuality, in the family? So do you think that sort of invited conversations about sex? Oh, definitely. I think your openness brings it out in a lot of people. And you're so open about it, people don't stop to think that it's a subject that you don't want to discuss or there are people that you don't want to discuss it with. Or that I'm only open about it when I'm getting paid. So I'm kind of like a prostitute. I don't know if I'd say that. I would hope that you wouldn't. Good. Well, I won't. Your private persona is very different than your public persona in many areas of your life. Oh, really? Uh-huh. Don't ruin me here, Ma. Don't let the cat out of the bag. I've got a sweet gig going. I don't want it ruined by this interview. What's it worth? No. It's not as raw and crude and uncaring as you sometimes come across in print. Mom, I'm hurt. There, I told on you. Here's the worst thing of all. Since it's common knowledge now that I'm uncomfortable talking about sex with my family, it's become a game, the best way to tease me when I'm home for a visit. At a wedding last month, word spread through my immediate and extended family that I had interviewed my mom and my sister for this radio show about how uncomfortable I am talking with my family about sex. People thought that was pretty funny, considering what I do for a living. Sensing blood in the water, they came after me. Everybody had a sex question for me that day. Aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, great aunts, siblings, the happy couple. My aunt wouldn't let me leave her table until I told her what fisting was. My brother told me all about his last one-nighter. And like some reoccurring nightmare, a female cousin, the same age as my sister was that night on the porch cornered me at the bar and asked for oral sex pointers. By the time my 17-year-old cousin, Chris, insisted on showing me his new nipple rings, I was in hell. When I complained to my mother, she told me to stop whining. Then she asked me a sex question herself. I'd tell you what her question was, but Mom took me off the record. Dan Savage in Seattle. Something about a mask makes a man brazen. That's the thing Atomic Blue taught me. Atomic Blue was the first Mexican wrestler I met. Picture a man in a skull-hugging blue mask, an atom drawn across the forehead, not to mention his Matt Helm black turtleneck, black jeans, tweed jacket, and really fine leather shoes. If Atomic Blue had a code ring, he'd be encrypting. If he had a martini, he'd be imbibing. He's bad. It's Atomic Blue who taught me that Mexican wrestling is not just a sport. Lucha libre is an art form, a tradition, a battle of good versus evil. Lucha libre, Atomic Blue said, is religion. The greatest of all wrestling heroes was El Santo, "The Saint," who not only fought in the ring, but on the screen. From the '40s down to the present, dozens of wrestling stars have played in hundreds of incredibly strange movies, wrapping their limbs around plot devices pried from horror, crime, and science fiction genres. Santo might easily break up a spy ring, pitch woo at a backseat full of chicas, and defeat martians, all in the same picture. Santo did everything without removing his disguise. Even when he directed his pictures, even when he was buried in 1984, Mexico's saint always kept his mask on. We're in a parking lot behind an Anaheim swap meet. Every weekend, they pull a plastic tarp off a regulation ring, set up metal bleachers. It's $10 for adults, who bring plenty of kids. About 50 fans surround the ring this afternoon. Shooting Star wears a black mask. Orange bolts crease his temples. In lucha libre, there are good guys, known as "tecnicos," and bad guys, "rudos." Guess which one Shooting Star is. What country are you guys in, huh? Mexico! Mexico! Mexico! Every time he yells, "USA," fans scream back, "Mexico!" Shooting Star preens before the hostile crowd. He issues challenges to his opponent, to the fans, and, it seems, maybe even to God. It's getting ugly. I didn't quite get that, did you? I don't under-- English, maybe? Is English the country-- In Spanish, Shooting Star calls the hecklers "dirty wetbacks," asks if they're citizens of the US. It seems like everything in Mexican culture, people's worries and fears, plays out in the ring. So it's no surprise that there's a wrestler who's the equivalent of a masked Governor Pete Wilson playing the bad guy, taunting the immigrants in the crowd. What happens in Mexican life happens again in the ring. No one's talking to you, so you just keep your mouth shut. A couple years ago, when reports of a blood-sucking creature feasting on farm animals first shocked Mexico, a new wrestling star called The Goat Sucker suddenly appeared. Other heroes include wrestling priests and social workers. In today's match, one of the luchadores was named El Cholo, a wrestler dressed as a gang banger in saggy pants and colors, flashing gang signs. The luchadore reaches back to prehistoric mass religious rituals of American Indians and echoes to this moment. Many have pointed out how the suave, pipe-smoking, ski-masked, sub-commander Marcos, leader of the Zapatista rebels in northern Mexico, calculatedly evokes the image of El Santo. It's as if Hulk Hogan somehow carried within his form overtones of Daniel Boone and Martin Luther King. This is the power of the mask. It makes superheroes out of die cutters, mechanics, gardeners. In Anaheim, I even met a wrestler who was a chiropractic student. In the ring, a character named El Genie wears harem pants and performs a move he calls "the magic lamp." During the week, the tall, beefy man with a black pony tail is a car upholsterer. When I first started doing this, it was hard to get back to doing what I did, to be in upholstery. Because I would miss being out there, being the superstar. I'd miss it. But in our culture, in the Mexican culture, you get a lot of respect. For example, every time I go to Mexico and I go out-- let's say I go to a dance or something-- I get special treatment. They give me a table, and they treat me to drinks. And it's kind of funny because that's how people are. As soon as you put the mask on, you feel like a total different person. If you're a "heel," which is a bad guy, all of a sudden, you feel this urge to hurt, to inflict pain. And if you're a "face," a good guy, you feel like you've got to go and save the world. It's funny, and it happens. When someone takes your mask off in the ring, and they just take it off, it's like a humiliation. You get humiliated when someone takes your mask off. Whoever loses that match has to take off their mask and never wrestle with it again. It happened to me, yeah. I went against one of the top wrestlers in Mexico. And I lost it in the Mexicali against Fishman. His name was Fishman. And he was my idol as I was growing up. But it came to a head. We had a rivalry that came to a head. And we bet our masks, and he got the better part. And that's the biggest humiliation you can receive in the ring, losing your mask. I saw it once, and I'll never forget. It happened last spring. And for weeks after, I had dreams of masked men, wrestlers, hockey goalies, the guys in KISS. It was the last match of the night, Bulldog Rivera versus Shamu Junior. Shamu was a pudgy tecnico. Nobody had to wonder how he got the name Shamu, no wonder about the whale appliques decorating his Aqua Velva blue mask. The fight was even for a while. But then Bulldog climbs the ropes, leaps at Shamu Junior's torso, and knocks him to his knees. Shamu Junior's in a fog. And Bulldog smoothly reaches back for the laces binding his mask. Oh, god. Everything was going through my-- I thought I would never do it again, I would never wrestle again, that people were just going to forget me right away because I had lost. And I wasn't going to get over it. And it felt-- I cried on top of the ring. I cried when I lost my mask. It was something-- god, it's hard to describe. But it was a feeling of-- I felt alone. I felt so alone that day. But that night, one of my sons was there. And he came up to the ring, and he gave me a hug. And it felt good. It felt a lot better. This is his words. He said, "You know, Dad, it's just a mask. You know?" The unmasking. It's the most sacramental moment. And over the next few minutes, Bulldog returns to the act at will, almost tenderly unlacing as Shamu Junior futilely resists. His head cradled in Bulldog's lap, Shamu Junior pleads with the ref. But then, Bulldog sends the ref sprawling with a kick. There is no hope now. Armed security men are restraining a lady in her 40s with a dye job. All around, there's a call for blood. In an act of lyric defiance, Shamu Junior undoes the rest of his own laces and flings his mask at his opponent. He is utterly humiliated. Losing your mask is like losing your ego, manhood, superpowers, and, since fans typically turn on you, your opportunity to make cash off the books. He buries his face in his hands, fighting off Bulldog's probing fingers. Finally, Bulldog pries away Shamu's hands, and we see his face. Degraded without the mask, he's just a guy, a buzz cut of dark hair, short on the sides. It's the day before Easter. Christ may have risen, but Shamu Junior is taking a fall. RJ Smith is a senior writer for Spin magazine. He had help in the field from Mandalit del Barco. Well, our program was introduced today by Alix Spiegel and myself with Nancy Updike and Julie Snyder. Senior editor, Paul Tough. Contributing editors, Jack Hitt, Margy Rochlin, and Consligliere Sarah Vowell. Production help from Rachel Day, Jorge Just, Todd Bachmann, and Sylvia Lemus. If you'd like to buy a cassette of this or any of our programs, call us here in Chicago, 312-832-3380. Or you know you can listen to most of our program for free at our website www.thisamericanlife.org. Thanks to Elizabeth Meister, who runs the site. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia, who envisions the future of our program this way-- I picture Matt Damon and Brad Pitt. Together. I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life. PRI, Public Radio International.
|
From WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Love, love, love, love. Love. What do we talk about when we talk about love? Well, since the 13th century, this is what we talk about, this very moment. A coup de foudre. Coup de foudre, in French, means a bolt of lightning. Seeing someone and in an instant, you've fallen in love. Love which happens in a moment of a flash. This is Richard Klein of Cornell University. In the 13th century, he says, Petrarch was walking by a fountain in the south of France. Turns a corner, sees Laura. Petrarch looks into her eyes and in an instant, his life is transformed. And he writes the first lyric love poems ever written. He says before this moment, one lives in a state of distraction. And things come and go, experiences fragmentary and chaotic. And all of a sudden, at the moment in which you encounter the eye of the other, it turns you into something else. Suddenly you become-- your whole being becomes focused on that experience. And all you want to do, once you've had that experience, is to return over and over to that. 30 years later, in Florence, Dante goes through the same thing when he sees, at the top of a flight of stairs, Beatrice. He writes about it. And the idea of this moment, the bolt of lightning, gets repeated in literature and song and theater all through the Renaissance, up through the 19th century, and into the present day, today. People who have not experienced that bolt of lightning in years. People who have been married for decades go to the movies, watch TV, to see it reenacted over and over. This is what we talk about, when we talk about love. In ancient Greek, the Greeks had two verbs for seeing. [SPEAKING GREEK] and [SPEAKING GREEK]. [SPEAKING GREEK] is a way of seeing what we ordinarily understand as observation. [SPEAKING GREEK] refers to the look that eyes can flash, like lightning, like dragon breath, that not only illuminates the eye, but sends out a kind of fire that penetrates the eye of the other. And they had specifically a separate word for that. That's right, for the moment when the eyes flash. And flash in a way which implies some kind of fateful encounter. I was struck looking at those tapes of Monica Lewinsky embracing the president on those rope lines. The thing that's most compelling about those images is the way her eyes flash at him. One can't help but be struck by the light that's coming from those eyes. OK, now here's the crazy thing. Everybody knows that that moment of initial rapture, that instant when your eyes meet and you're obsessed with the other person, thinking about them all the time. Everybody knows that that feeling doesn't usually last, that in some way it's just a dream. That over time, it changes into something different. Here's the thing. Even on the day that this romantic myth of love was born, that day in the 13th century when Petrarch saw Laura, even on that day, it was clear that it was just a myth, it was just a dream. Petrarch doesn't get the girl. You know, the usual story is that the guy doesn't get the girl. But maybe you never get the girl. Maybe that's the condition of falling in love, that it always remains something sort of inaccessible. The moment that desire is fulfilled, desire dies. Psychologists have estimated that you can only stay in love for 18 months. That's the limit. After that, it becomes something else. It becomes admiration, respect, affection, but-- The dream of it dissolves and becomes something else. Something else. I wonder if you would be saying this and explaining this in these terms if you yourself were falling in love right now. Well, as a matter of fact, I think I am. Well then, you're going to get in trouble when this goes on the radio, aren't you? Oh, I'm going to be in so much trouble, You have no idea. So you're falling in love right now, and you're holding to the idea that this is an illusion-- a sort of an illusory experience? Oh, but all I want is more illusion. More illusion. So today, beloved listener, we come to you with a mission. Sing stories of love. In fact our whole idea of love. These things are usually about how it feels during those first moments of falling in love. Today for Valentine's Day, as a public service, we make an attempt to understand another side of what love means. We bring you stories of couples that all take place decades after the moment their eyes meet. Act One, Before and After. The beginning of love as viewed from a moment near its ending. Act Two, I Met Him at the Yogurt Store, But I Do Not Call Him Leader of the Pack. Flirtation during marriage, a fable that could save your relationship, no kidding. Act Three, Without. Donald Hall documents a relationship whose most intense, most romantic moments came not at the beginning, but at the end. Stay with us. Act One, Before and After. As a kid growing up on the East Coast, in the 1970s, for me, the most romantic songs in the world-- and this is kind of a corny thing to admit now, years later with retrospect-- the most romantic songs in the world were Bruce Springsteen's. Songs about falling in love in run-down beach towns on the Jersey Shore, songs about hitting the road together to, you know, who knows where. But once Bruce hit a certain age, he stopped writing songs about that moment when lightning flashes between people, when their eyes meet. And he wrote a series of songs where basically every song takes place long after the couple fell out of love. And the narrator, the singer of these songs, is remembering that exhilarating moment of falling in love, and then describing the moment he's in now, the drudgery of his marriage now. And he's laying these two moments side by side, trying to make sense of how one of them has any connection in the world to the other. How one of them led to the other. Well, this next story is something like that. It's by Richard Bausch. It's exactly 20 minutes to midnight on this, the eve of my 70th birthday. And I've decided to address you, for a change, in writing, odd as that might seem. I'm perfectly aware of how you're going to take the fact that I'm doing this at all, so late at night with everybody due to arrive tomorrow in the house, still unready. I haven't spent almost five decades with you without learning a few things about you that I can predict and describe with some accuracy. Though I admit that, as you put it, lately we've been more like strangers than husband and wife. Well, so if we are like strangers, perhaps there are some things I can tell you that you won't have already figured out about the way I feel. Tonight, we had another one of those long, silent evenings after an argument. Remember? Over pepper. We had been bickering all day, really, but at dinner, I put pepper on my potatoes, and you said that about how I shouldn't have pepper because it always upsets my stomach. I bothered to remark that I used to eat chili peppers for breakfast, and if I wanted to put plain old ordinary black pepper on my potatoes, as I had been doing for more than 60 years, that was my privilege. Writing this now, it sounds far more testy than I meant it. But that isn't really the point. In any case, you chose to overlook my tone. You simply said, John, you were up all night the last time you had pepper with your dinner. I said, I was up all night because I ate green peppers. Not black pepper, but green pepper. A pepper is a pepper, isn't it? You said. And then I started in on you. I got, as you call it, legal with you, pointing out that green peppers are not black pepper. And from there we moved on to an evening of mutual disregard for each other that ended with your decision to go to bed early. The grandchildren will make you tired, and there's still the house to do. You had every reason to want to get some rest. And yet I felt that you were also making a point of getting yourself out of proximity with me, leaving me to my displeasure, with another ridiculous argument settling between us like a fog. So after you went to bed, I got out the whiskey and started pouring drinks, and I had every intention of putting myself into a stupor. It was also my birthday after all and, forgive this, it's the way I felt at the time, you had nagged me into an argument and then gone off to bed. The day had ended as so many of our days end now and I felt, well, entitled. I had a few drinks, without any appreciable effect, though you might well see this letter as firm evidence to the contrary. And then I decided to do something to shake you up. I would leave. I'd make a lot of noise going out the door. I'd take a walk around the neighborhood and make you wonder where I could be. Perhaps I'd go check into a motel for the night. The thought even crossed my mind that I might leave you all together. I admit that I entertained the thought, Marie. I saw our life together now as the day to day round of petty quarreling and tension, that it's mostly been over the past couple of years or so. And I wanted out as sincerely as I ever wanted out of anything. And I got up from my seat in front of the television, and walked back down the hall to the entrance of our room to look at you. I suppose I hoped you'd still be awake so I could tell you of this momentous decision I felt I'd reached. And maybe you were awake, one of our oldest areas of contention being the noise I make. The feather thin membrane of your sleep that I'm always disturbing with my restlessness in the nights. All right? Assuming you were asleep and don't know that I stood in the doorway of our room, I will say that I stood there for perhaps five minutes looking at you in the half-dark, the shape of your body under the blanket. You really did look like one of the girls when they were little and I used to stand in the doorway of their rooms. Your illness last year made you so small again and, as I said, I thought I had decided to leave you, for your peace as well as mine. I know you have gone to sleep crying, Marie. I know you've felt sorry about things and wished we could find some way to stop irritating each other so much. Well of course, I didn't go anywhere. I came back to this room and drank more of the whiskey and watched television. It was like all the other nights. The shows came on and ended, and the whiskey began to wear off. There was a little rain shower. I had a moment of the shock of knowing I was 70. After the rain ended, I did go outside for a few minutes. I stood on the sidewalk and looked at the house. The kids, with their kids, were on the road somewhere between their homes and here. I walked up to the end of the block and back, and a pleasant breeze blew and shook the drops out of the trees. My stomach was bothering me some and maybe it was the pepper I put on my potatoes. It could just as well have been the whiskey. Anyway, as I came back to the house I began to have the eerie feeling that I had reached the last night of my life. There was this small discomfort in my stomach and no other physical pang or pain, and I am used to the small ills and side effects of my ways of eating and drinking. Yet I felt a sense of the end of things more strongly than I can describe. When I stood in the entrance of our room and looked at you again, wondering if I would make it through to the morning, I suddenly found myself trying to think what I would say to you if indeed this were the last time I would ever be able to speak to you. And I began to know I would write you this letter. At least words in a letter aren't blurred by tone of voice, by the old aggravating sound of me talking to you. I began with this and with the idea that, after months of thinking about it, I would at last try to say something to you that wasn't colored by our disaffection. What I have to tell you must be explained in a rather roundabout way. I've been thinking about my cousin Louise and her husband. When he died and she stayed with us last summer, something brought back to me what is really only the memory of a moment. Yet it reached me, that moment, across more than 50 years. As you know, Louise is nine years older than I and more like an older sister than a cousin. I must have told you at one time or another that I spent some weeks with her back in 1933 when she was first married. The memory I'm talking about comes from that time, and what I have decided I have to tell you comes from that memory. Father had been dead four years. We were all used to the fact that times were hard and that there was no man in the house, though I suppose I filled that role in some titular way. In any case, when Mother became ill, there was the problem of us, her children. Though I was the oldest, I wasn't old enough to stay in the house alone or to nurse her either. My grandfather came up with a solution and everybody went along with it, that I would go to Louise's for a time and the two girls would go to stay with grandfather. So we closed up the house, and I got on a train to Virginia. I was a few weeks shy of 14 years old. I remember that I was not able to believe that anything truly bad would come of Mother's pleurisy and was consequently glad of the opportunity it afforded me to travel the 100 miles south to Charlottesville, where cousin Louise had moved with her new husband only a month earlier after her wedding. Because we traveled so much at the beginning, you never got to really know Charles when he was young. In 1933 he was a very tall, imposing fellow with bright red hair and a graceful way of moving that always made me think of athletics and contests of skill. He had worked at the Navy Yard in Washington and had been laid off in the first months of Roosevelt's New Deal. Louise was teaching in a day school in Charlottesville so they could make ends meet, and Charles was spending most of his time looking for work and fixing up the house. I had only met Charles once or twice before the wedding, but already I admired him and wanted to emulate him. The prospect of spending time in his house, of perhaps going fishing with him in the small streams of central Virginia, was all I thought about on the way down. And I remember that we did go fishing one weekend, that I wound up spending a lot of time with Charles, helping to paint the house and to run water lines under it for indoor plumbing. Oh, I had time with Louise too, listening to her read from the books she wanted me to be interested in, walking with her around Charlottesville in the evenings and looking at the city as it was then. Or sitting on her small porch and talking about the family, Mother's stubborn illness, the children Louise saw every day at school. But what I want to tell you has to do with the very first day I was there. I know you think I use far too much energy thinking about and pining away for the past. And I therefore know that I am taking a risk by talking about this ancient history and by trying to make you see it. But this all has to do with you and me, my dear, and our late inability to find ourselves in the same room together without bitterness and pain. That summer, 1933, was unusually warm in Virginia and the heat, along with my impatience to arrive, made the train almost unbearable. I think it was just past noon when it pulled into the station at Charlottesville, with me hanging out one of the windows looking for Louise or Charles. It was Charles who had come to meet me. He stood in a crisp looking seersucker suit, with a straw boater cocked at just the angle you'd expect a young, newly married man to wear a straw boater, even in the middle of economic disaster. I waved at him and he waved back. And I might have jumped out the window if the train had slowed even a little more than it had, before it stopped in the shade of the platform. I made my way out, carrying a cloth bag my grandfather had given me for the trip. Mother had said through her room that I looked like a carpetbagger. And when I stepped down to shake hands with Charles, I noticed that what I thought was a new suit was tattered at the ends of the sleeves. Well, he said, young John. I smiled at him. I was perceptive enough to see that his cheerfulness was not entirely effortless. He was a man out of work, after all, and so in spite of himself there was worry in his face, the slightest shadow in an otherwise glad and proud countenance. We walk through the station to the street and on up the steep hill to the house, which was a small clapboard structure, a cottage really, with a porch, at the end of a short sidewalk lined with flowers. They were marigolds, I think. And here was Louise, coming out of the house, her arms already stretched wide to embrace me. Lord, she said, I swear you've grown since the wedding, John. Charles took my bag and went inside. Let me look at you, young man, Louise said. I stood for inspection. And as she looked me over, I saw that her hair was pulled back, that a few strands of it had come loose, that it was brilliantly auburn in the sun. I suppose I was little in love with her. She was grown and married now. She was a part of what seemed a great mystery to me even as I was about to enter it. And of course, you remember how that feels, Marie, when one is on the verge of things, nearly adult, nearly old enough to fall in love. I looked at Louise's happy, flushed face and felt a deep ache as she ushered me into her house. I wanted so to be older. Inside, Charles had poured lemonade for us and was sitting in the easy chair by the fireplace already sipping his. Louise wanted to show me the house and the backyard, which she had tilled and turned into a small vegetable garden. But she must have sensed how thirsty I was. And so she asked me to sit down and have a cool drink before she showed me the upstairs. Now, of course, looking back on it, I remember that those rooms she was so anxious to show me were meager indeed. They were not much bigger than closets really, and the paint was faded and dull. The furniture she'd arranged so artfully was coming apart. The pictures she put on the walls were prints she'd cut out, magazine covers mostly. And the curtains over the windows were the same ones that hung in her childhood bedroom for 20 years. Recognize these? She said with a deprecating smile. Of course the quality of her pride had nothing to do with the fineness, or lack of it, in these things, but in the fact that they belonged to her, and that she was a married lady in her own house. On this day in July in 1933, she and Charles are waiting for the delivery of a fan they had scrounged enough money to buy from Sears through the catalog. There were things they would rather have been doing, especially in this heat, and especially with me there. Monticello wasn't far away. The university was within walking distance. And without too much expense, one could ride a taxi to one of the lakes nearby. They had hoped that the fan would arrive before I did. But since it hadn't, and since neither Louise nor Charles was willing to leave the other alone while traipsing off with me that day, there wasn't anything to do but wait around for it. Louise had opened the windows and shut the shades, and we sat in her small living room and drank the lemonade, fanning ourselves with folded parts of Charles's morning newspaper. From time to time an anemic breath of air would move the shades slightly, but everything grew still again. Louise sat on the arm of Charles's chair and I sat on the sofa. We talked about pleurisy and, I think, about the fact that Thomas Jefferson had invented the dumbwaiter, how the plumbing at Monticello was at least a century ahead of its time. Charles remarked that it was the spirit of invention that would make a man's career in these days. That's what I'm aiming for, to be inventive in a job, no matter what it winds up being. When the lemonade ran out, Louise got up and went into the kitchen to make some more. Charles and I talked about taking a weekend to go fishing. He leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head, looking satisfied. In the kitchen Louise was chipping ice for our glasses and she began singing something low, for her own pleasure. A barely audible lilting. And Charles and I sat listening. It occurred to me that I was very happy. I had the sense that soon I would be embarked on my own life as Charles was, and that an attractive woman like Louise would be there with me. Charles yawned and said, god listen to that. Doesn't Louise have the loveliest voice? And that's all I have from that day. I don't even know if the fan arrived later, and I have no clear memory of how we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening. I remember Louise singing a song, her husband leaning back in his chair, folding his hands behind his head, expressing his pleasure in his young wife's voice. I remember that I felt quite extraordinarily content just then. And that's all I remember. But there are, of course, the things we both know. We know they moved to Colorado to be near Charles's parents. We know they never had any children. We know that Charles fell down a shaft at a construction site in the fall of 1957 and was hurt so badly that he never walked again. And I know that when she came to stay with us last summer, she told me she learned to hate him. And not for what she'd had to help him do all those years. No, it started earlier and was deeper than that. She hadn't minded the care of him, the washing and feeding, and all the numberless small tasks she had to perform each and every day, all day. She hadn't minded this. In fact, she thought there was something in her makeup that liked being needed so completely. The trouble was simply that whatever she had once loved in him, she had stopped loving. And for many, many years before he died, she'd felt only suffocation when he was near enough to touch her. Only irritation and anxiety when he spoke. She said all this and then looked at me, her cousin, who had been fortunate enough to have children and to be in love over time, and said, John, how have you and Marie managed it? And what I wanted to tell you has to do with this fact. That while you and I had had one of our whispering arguments only moments before, I feel quite certain of the simple truth of the matter, which is that whatever our complications, we have managed to be in love over time. Louise, I said. People start out with such high hopes, she said, as if I wasn't there. She looked at me. Don't they? Yes, I said. She seemed to consider this a moment and she said, I wonder how it happens. I said, you ought to get some rest, or something equally pointless and admonitory. As she moved away from me, I had an image of Charles standing on the station platform in Charlottesville that summer, the straw boater set at its cocky angle. It was an image I would see most of the rest of that night, and on many another night since. I can almost hear your voice as you point out that once again I've managed to dwell too long on the memory of something that's passed and gone. The difference is that I'm not grieving over the past now. I am merely reporting a memory, so that you might understand what I'm about to say to you. The fact is, we aren't the people we were even then, just a year ago. I know that. As I know things have been slowly eroding between us for a very long time. We are a little tired of each other. And there are annoyances and old scars that won't be obliterated with a letter, even a long one written in the middle of the night in desperate sincerity, under the influence, admittedly, of a considerable portion of bourbon whiskey. But nevertheless with the best intention and hope that you may know how, over the course of this night, I came to the end of needing an explanation for our difficulty. We have reached this place. Everything we say seems rather aggravatingly mindless and automatic, like something one stranger might say to another in one of the thousand circumstances where strangers are thrown together for a time, and the silence begins to grow heavy on their minds and someone has to say something. Darling, we go so long these days without having anything at all to do with each other. And the children are arriving tomorrow, and once more we'll be in the position of making all the gestures that give them back their parents as they think their parents are. And what I wanted to say to you, what came to me as I thought about Louise and Charles on that day so long ago, when they were young and so obviously glad of each other. And I looked at them and knew it and was happy. What came to me was that even the harsh things that happened to them, even the years of anger and silence, even the disappointment and the bitterness and the wanting not to be in the same room anymore. Even all that must have been worth it, for such loveliness. At least I am here at 70 years old hoping so. Tonight, I went back to our room again and stood gazing at you asleep, dreaming whatever you were dreaming. And I had a moment of thinking how we were always friends too. Because what I wanted finally to say, was that I remember well our own sweet times, our own old loveliness. And I would like to think that even if at the very beginning of our lives together, I had somehow been shown that we would end up here, with this longing to be away from each other, this feeling of being trapped together, of being tied to each other in a way that makes us wish for other times, some other place, I would have known enough to accept it all freely for the chance at that love. And if I could, I would do it all again, Marie. All of it. Even the sorrow. My sweet, my dear adversary, for everything that I remember. Richard Bausch's story, "Letter to the Lady of the House," is in his book, Selected Stories from Richard Bausch. That's from the Modern Library. His newest book is called In The Night Season. Coming up, not leaving your husband for the guy in the yogurt store, despite his nose job. That's in a minute from Public Radio International, when our program continuous. It's This American Life, I'm Ira Glass. Each week, of course, we choose a theme, invite a variety of writers and reporters and performers to tackle that theme. Today, for Valentine's Day, we wanted to bring you stories about love, but not the usual kind of love stories which try to capture that moment when your eyes meet and your heart sings, and you fall, fall, fall, fall, fall. No, no, no. We have a different mission. Today, as a public service, we are bringing you love stories about people who have been in the same relationship for years. Stories of love years after the lightning has already struck. We have arrived at Act Two of our show. Act Two, I met him in the yogurt store, and now he is not my leader of the pack. In this act we bring you a true fable of love, a true story. A tale of moral instruction with a lesson for everyone, that happened in the ninth year of marriage between Linda Howard and Richard Bloom, who live in Boca Raton, Florida. After we were married I would say-- was Nicole born yet? Yeah, we had both kids, we had a boy and a girl. And we were-- took the kids out for frozen yogurt one night. And we're in Huntington, where we lived at the time. And we're sitting down, we're ordering, and there's this guy, very good-looking guy standing there, and all of a sudden-- He wasn't that good-looking. All of a sudden, it dawned on me that this was David, this guy who I dated in high school and then years later, had another relationship with, which was kind of a hot and heavy relationship several years later, when we were already out of school for a number of years. And here he was. He had had his nose fixed, and his hair was all white, and to me he looked absolutely gorgeous. And I said, David? Now, his whole family's there. He says, Linda? And it was like everything stopped in my mind at that moment. And it was kind of like we were trying to be very nonchalant with each other here. Oh, this is my husband and these are my kids, and dah dah dah. Meanwhile, the heart is going, ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom. And I know it's an old boyfriend, I could just tell. And I go, hi, I'm the husband. Hi. And my kids, hi. So he and I have this nice little chat while we're standing there, and I'm saying to myself in the car, I know that he is thinking exactly the same thing about me. I know it. There's not a doubt in my mind. And I can't believe that we've just left now and we're not going to each other again. I ask him, what is he doing? And he tells me that he's a psychoanalyst in the city, and this is completely a shock to me. And I tell them that I'm a clinical psychologist. And they have so much in common. We have so much in common and blah blah blah. Well, anyway. The next day I go into my office and there's this-- I press the button on my answering machine-- and there's this long message. And I'm thinking, who could have left me a message that long? And I play it back. Somebody needed help. And it's David and he said-- I can't do that-- when I got in the car, I couldn't stop thinking about you and all of this kind of stuff. And I was just astounded and I had this big smile on my face, and I'm thinking, well there's no way I'm going to call him back. So I don't call him back and a few days later he calls. And he had been saying to me that it was so wonderful to see me and he'd love to get together, and he was kind of reminiscing and so forth. And I didn't call him back. And he called back and he left another message, saying that he was sorry that he had gotten so carried away, and I probably have my own life now and a whole thing, and it's probably difficult for me to call and he understands, and just wanted me to know how great it was to see me and-- Probably have your own life, with the husband, the two kids. I wonder what gave it away. So anyway, at that point, when he said that, I waited a few days and it was just-- I just really wanted to talk to him. So I called him and he said, why don't we meet for-- we had this fabulous, fabulous conversation-- and why don't we meet for coffee. And I got that old feeling. That old feeling of having that rush, you know. And somebody's going to think I'm fabulous all over again. So I started thinking about him and thinking about him. And he said, can we go for coffee? So I said I would think about it. So I said to Richard that night, oh I heard from David. And he said, oh yeah, what did he say? And I said, well, we just had a nice talk, and do you mind if we go for coffee? And he said, do I mind? Well, I wouldn't like it. But if that's what you'd like to do, go ahead. So I thought about it. And now, in the meantime, he's leaving me messages now. And he's saying, I didn't think of you when I got up this morning, I just wanted you to know that I'm not thinking of you when having a coffee break, and these very seductive messages. And I'm just getting obsessed with him, and I'm thinking oh my god I want to see him. Well, it got to a point where I wanted to see him so badly that I was upset. I could not look Richard in the eye. And he came home one Saturday afternoon and I was just terribly upset. I said, Rich, I have to talk to you. He said, what's the matter? And I told him the whole story. And he was amazing. He put his arms around me-- I told him I'm obsessed with him-- he put his arms around me and he just held me. And he said to me, oh honey, I'm so sorry I can't do that for you anymore. And that was all he said. I couldn't believe it. I waited for some kind of a lecture, why didn't you tell me? Something, some sign of jealousy. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Just held me. I was jealous, because-- but what's it going to do? I mean once you've got two kids and you've been with each other for quite a while, before and after marriage, you can't get the thunder and lightning back. It's now-- it's different. Needless to say, I went downstairs to my office and I called David immediately, and I said, this is what just happened. I've been obsessed with you. I told my husband the whole story from beginning to end and this is what he did. He put his arms around me and held me, and I told him what he said. And I said, this is the most amazing man in the world. And David said, you're married to one helluva guy. And I am. I am one helluva guy. I said, yes he is. Don't ever call me again. And that was it. Linda Howard and Richard Bloom have been married for 11 years. They spoke with Stephanie Howard. [SINGING] Here's our story, it's sad but true. [SINGING] About a boy that I once knew. [SINGING] I don't know the rest of the song. [SINGING] I almost took his love and ran around. Act Three, Without. Donald Hall says that when he first got together with his wife, Jane Kenyon, the earliest years were not so very intense. They didn't have that big lightning moment. It was the '70s, he says, by way of explanation. They saw each other while they also saw other people. And then they slowly decided that they had no interest in the other people. And then they got married. And then, three years into the marriage, they moved to a farm in New Hampshire that had been in Donald's family for generations. And it was only then, Donald Hall says, that they entered their most intimate time together. They got closer every year of their marriage, he says, and the closest time of all between them came at the end of their marriage, when after 22 years together, Jane Kenyon got leukemia and he took care of her. During this time, he started to document what was happening between them in his writing. And his newest book of poems, called Without, is all work he began during her illness and after her death in 1995. The poems include sad moments and funny moments, and a million little details of everyday life during a life-threatening crisis. In one poem, Jane stares at the mirror at her bald head and her face, swollen from the drugs that she's taking, and she declares, I am Telly Savalas. In another, Donald asked, why were they not contented four months ago? Because Jane did not have leukemia? A year hence, would he question why he was not contented now? Therefore, he was contented. He writes about the dog Gus reacting to their illness, about Jane trying to finish her own book of poems called Otherwise, and about small moments when they both realize once again, all over again, what's happening to them. Alone together a moment on the 22nd anniversary of their wedding, he clasped her as she stood at the sink, pressing into her backside, rubbing his cheek against the stubble of her skull. He gave her a ring of pink tourmaline with nine small diamonds around it. She put it on her finger, and immediately named it Please Don't Die. They kissed and Jane whispered, timor mortis conturbat me. That last bit, of course, is Latin and Jane was not a Latin scholar, but that's a refrain line of a wonderful medieval Scots' poem about dead poets, and it translates more or less, the fear of death shakes me. Usually when we think about romance, the moment that we think about is the beginning of the romance as the most intense time. And in fact one of the things that happens in these poems is it's just the two of you going through a time that's just as intense. Oh, more intense. More intense. Really, we had a very good marriage. We were very fortunate. We loved the same things. And then we began to be sick. I had cancer a couple of times and then Jane had leukemia, beginning at the age of 46 and dying at 47. Jane was 19 years younger than me. But when you think you're going to lose what you love, when you know it's probably going to happen, then the sweetness of the intensity and the pain of the intensity is greater than ever, I do think I think it was beautiful. I often say that obviously the worst thing in my life is Jane dying. But one of the best things in my life was taking care of her. There's a line in one of the poems actually, where you say, he felt shamed to understand that he would miss the months of sickness and taking care. And I had that thought literally. It's all right to tell lies in books, but this was not a lie. I had that thought and wrote down something like that line the day before we found out that she was going to die. I was optimistic. And I thought, with guilt, I'll be sorry when I can't take care of her anymore. So explain this poem, "Last Days," to me. Well "Last Days" is the poems that I wrote or began to write during the last days of her life. One day in April we had her blood checked, which we did once a week, and it was just fine. And a week later, the leukemia had come back and there was nothing to do. She was going to die. This is after also she went through very intensive chemotherapy and radiation treatment, a bone marrow transplant-- Everything. Yeah, 15 months of a lot of suffering. So this was what we came home with the doctor saying, it might be a month. But it actually took just 11 days. And here are poems out of those 11 days. Home that afternoon, they threw her medicines into the trash. Jane vomited. He wailed, while she remained dry-eyed, silent, trying to let go. At night, he picked up the telephone to make calls that brought a child or a friend into the horror. The next morning, they worked choosing among her poems for Otherwise, picked hymns for her funeral, and supplied each other words as they wrote and revised her obituary. The day after, with more work to do on her book, he saw how weak she felt and said, maybe not now. Maybe later. Jane shook her head. Now, she said. We have to finish it now. Later, as she slid exhausted into sleep, she said, wasn't that fun? To work together. Wasn't that fun? He asked her, what clothes should we dress you in when we bury you? I hadn't thought, she said. I wondered about the white salwar kameez, he said, her favorite Indian silk they bought in Pondicherry a year and a half before, which she wore for best or prettiest afterward. She smiled. Yes, excellent, she said. He didn't tell her that a year earlier, dreaming awake, he had seen her in the coffin in her white salwar kameez. They talked about their adventures, driving through England when they first married, and excursions to China and India. Also they remembered ordinary days, pond summers, working on poems together, walking the dog, reading Chekhov aloud. When he praised thousands of afternoon assignations that carried them into bliss and repose on this painted bed, Jane burst into tears and cried, no more [BLEEP]ing. No more [BLEEP]ing. Incontinent three nights before she died, Jane needed lifting onto the commode. He wiped her and helped her back into bed. At 5:00 he fed the dog and returned to find her across the room, sitting in a straight chair. When she couldn't stand, how could she walk? He figured she would fall and called for an ambulance to the hospital. But when he told Jane, her mouth twisted down and tears started. Do we have to? He canceled. Jane said, Perkins, be with me when I die. Dying is simple, she said. What's worst is the separation. When she no longer spoke, they lay alone together, touching, and she fixed on him her beautiful enormous round, brown eyes, shining, unblinking, and passionate with love and dread. One by one, they came, the oldest and dearest, to say goodbye to this friend of the heart. At first she said their names, wept and touched, then she smiled. Then turned one mouth corner up. On the last day, she stared silent goodbyes, with her hands curled and her eyes stuck open. Leaving his place beside her, where her eyes stared, he told her, I'll put these letters in the box. She had not spoken for three hours. And now Jane said her last words, OK. At 8:00 that night, her eyes open as they stayed until she died, brain-stem breathing started. He bent to kiss her pale cool lips again and felt them one last time gather and purse and peck to kiss him back. In the last hours, she kept her forearms raised with pale fingers clenched at cheek level, like the goddess figurine over the bathroom sink. Sometimes her right fist flicked or spasmed toward her face. For 12 hours until she died, he kept scratching Jane Kenyon's big bony nose. A sharp, almost sweet smell began to rise from her open mouth. That's a line from her, by the way. She wrote a wonderful poem called Gettysburg. And she says a sharp, almost sweet smell began to rise from his open mouth. And nobody has noticed that yet. I'm ripping her off as she dies. She wouldn't mind. She'd be amused. Do you feel like going through the process of revising and finishing this book, and publishing it, has kept you suspended in that period of mourning for her longer than perhaps you would've otherwise? No, I don't think so. I think that it has been very helpful to me in my mourning. I don't think I would have straight away. But I had something to do about it. I really understand that. I think that one of the most common things when somebody is mourning somebody else, is you're not exactly sure what to do with the feeling. Yeah, yeah. It's like, they're unreachable. And then you have all this feeling, and it's like, well, where do you even put it? Where do you put it, yeah. I had a place to put it. I had a reason to wake up in the morning. And especially the first year, when it was very acute, and I screamed a lot and scared the dog. But I had a reason to get up in the morning. Let me ask you about the set of poems, which happens after she dies. And you set about writing a set of letters to her. Did you actually write her letters every day after she died? No. I began-- oh, I found out that Maggie Fisher was pregnant. Maggie was one of Jane's nurses. And the first thought you have is-- everybody does this-- something happens and you think, oh, I can't wait to tell Jane. Uh, I can't do that. And I did what I think probably a lot of people have done. I began to write her letters. And the letter form just took me over. The fact that in the letter I could wander around, I could reminisce, I could look out the window and tell her about the weather. I could tell her about things that she was particularly interested in. This was the first one, "Letter With No Address." Your daffodils rose up and collapsed in their yellow bodies on the hillside garden above the bricks you laid out in sand, squatting with pants pegged and face masked like a beekeeper's against the black flies. Buttercups circle the planks of the old wellhead this May, while your silken gardener's body withers or moulds in the Proctor graveyard. I drive and talk to you crying, then come back to this house to talk to your photographs. There's news to tell you. Maggie Fisher's pregnant. I carried myself like an egg at Abigail's birthday party a week after you died, as three-year-olds bounced uproarious on a mattress. Joyce and I met for lunch at the mall and strolled weepily through Sears and B. Dalton. Today it's four weeks since you lay on our painted bed and I closed your eyes. Yesterday I cut irises to set in a pitcher on your grave. Today I brought a carafe to fill it with fresh water. I remember bone pain, vomiting, and delirium. I remember pond afternoons. My routine is established. Coffee, The Globe, breakfast, writing you this letter at my desk. When I go to bed to sleep after baseball, Gus follows me into the bedroom as he used to follow us. Most of the time he flops down in the parlor, with his head on his paws. Once a week I drive to Tilton to see Dick and Nan. Nan doesn't understand much, but she knows you're dead. I feel her fretting. The tone of Dick and me talking seems to console her. You know now whether the soul survives death or you don't. When you were dying, you said you didn't fear punishment. We never dared to speak of paradise. At 5:00 AM when I walk outside, mist lies thick on the hay fields. By 8:00 the air is clear, cool, sunny with the pale yellow light of mid May. Kearsarge rises huge and distinct, each birch and balsam visible. To the west the waters of Eagle Pond waver and flash through popples just leafing out. Always the weather, writing its book of the world, returns you to me. Ordinary days were best, when we worked over poems in our separate rooms. I remember watching you gaze out the January window into the garden of snow and ice, your face rapt as you imagined burgundy lilies. Your presence in this house is almost as enormous and painful as your absence. Driving home from Tilton, I remember how you cherished that vista with its center the red door of a farmhouse against green fields. Are you past pity? If you have consciousness now, if something I can call "you" has something like consciousness, I doubt you remember the last days. I lift your wasted body onto the commode, your arms looped around my neck, aiming your bony bottom so that it will not bruise on a rail. Faintly, you repeat, Momma, Momma. You lay astonishing in the long box while Alice Ling prayed and sang "Amazing Grace" a capella. Three times today I drove to your grave. Sometimes coming back home to our circular driveway, I imagine you've returned before me, bags of groceries upright in the back of the Saab, its trunk lid delicately raised, as if proposing an encounter, dog fashion, with the Honda. That's like one of my favorite points in all the poem. Good, good. She would have howled, she would have howled. I mean, that's, you know, I'm really addressing her sort of, when I make a joke like that. She would have loved it. Do you find that you're still writing her letters, writing her poems as letters even now? I'm writing-- actually what happened after this, still I've continued to write a lot about Jane, but I'm no longer addressing "you." I'm talking about Jane and "her" and "she." She has receded. This is horrible and inevitable and necessary. I can't talk to her in the second person anymore. Donald Hall. His book of poems about his wife Jane Kenyon is called Without. Man. Our program produced today by Julie Snyder and myself with Alix Spiegel and Nancy Updike. Senior editor for this show Paul Tough. Contributing editors Jack Hitt, Margy Rochlin, and consigliere Sarah Vowell. Production help from Rachel Day. Special thanks today to New Hampshire Public Radio. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia, who told me this week it's OK if I have coffee with other program directors. He said it's OK if I can't get other program directors out of my mind. He was amazing. He put his arms around me and he just held me. And he said to me, oh, honey, I'm so sorry I can't do that for you anymore. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life PRI. Public Radio International.
|
Yes, yes, yes. Like you, I have heard everything I ever care to hear for the rest of my life about President Clinton and his marriage. But you know, there was a brief moment, at the very beginning of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, when the public discussion included not only the questions of impeachment and lying and is it about sex, or isn't it about sex-- all that stuff-- but also questions about marriage, about how bad it is, how common it is, for people to be unfaithful to their spouses. And it wasn't just the Lewinsky scandal that made that happen. Around the time the Lewinsky story broke, Roy Romer, the governor of Colorado, the head of the Democratic party, publicly declared that for 16 years, he'd had a relationship outside his marriage with an aide named B.J. Thornberry. He told the press that his wife and family knew about the relationship and that they accepted it. And he argued in his press conference that it might be helpful if we would talk about what really happens in marriages, long-term marriages, instead of what we usually pretend. Bea and I have been married 45 years. Is that right, 45? And it's a very strong relationship, solid. In the course of 45 years, in many marriages in this country, different attitudes develop in a marriage. About 50% of them end up in divorce. They can't work it out. But in those who remain married, there still are times in which there are different feelings and different relationships. All families, I think, have these kinds of problems from time to time. They handle them differently. All of you listen carefully. All of you listen carefully. I'm trying to live out a life based upon what I truly believe and truly value. Now, oftentimes, the societal norms don't fully accommodate the way I see it. I have to work that out. I'm trying to say I have conducted myself to my wife, to my children, and to B.J. in a way which I tried to be very honest and open and true to what I felt and believed. Here is the window of discussion that's being opened up right now in our country. It came up with Roy Romer. It came up with Bill Clinton before him. And it has to do with monogamy, how to think about it. In a magazine called Critical Inquiry, a Northwestern University professor named Laura Kipnis makes the case that there are a lot of marriages where people are simply unhappy. And these people are like workers who are alienated from their jobs, numb, going nowhere. You know, we're told these days that we're supposed to work at marriage the way that we're supposed to work at a job. And so you work your job, and you work at home. And what do you get? And for these people in unfulfilling marriages, she says, having an affair is like a wildcat strike. It's an action, a civil action, a small attempt at altering the business-as-usual of their own lives. All the norms that people feel are the ones that you have to subscribe to and live up to don't work for a lot of people. And I think that's what's so interesting about politician adultery, is that everybody's very morally punitive about it, or that's kind of the usual way of talking about it. But nobody really talks about, well, why are these guys risking their careers and having these affairs? These guys who are supposed to be so streetwise and savvy and canny in every way, putting everything on the line. So and why? Well, I guess what I'm saying is that one, people are trawling around for ways to somehow improve the quality of their life, that people feel, in a lot of cases, that they're somehow not getting what they should be getting, that normal life and the couple form, it just doesn't deliver what it's supposed to. It doesn't cover everything. It doesn't work. It doesn't make people happy. I know that sounds a little banal. It doesn't seem to say enough. But I guess I think happiness is a pretty big question. And it's one that there just are very few ways of talking about. And I think that's what's so interesting about what's going on now, because it's opening up this way to talk about things that are just never talked about. What would it be like if politicians talked about, really, the fabric of people's daily lives, what it would take to be happy, what it would take to be fulfilled? Just to summarize, I was trying to describe life as it really happens to families. And when you're in political life, there is such a hot stream of focus on you that you really do not have opportunity, the chance to say, there are tough, ambiguous things you have to decide. Most of us, I think, are very hesitant to believe that any kind of non-monogamous relationship can work. And Roy Romer did not have an easy press conference. The 69-year-old professional pol, a glad hand from the world of soundbites and fund-raising dinners, found himself theorizing publicly about trust and love and what marriage is. You see, this is the issue. What is fidelity? Fidelity is what kind of openness you have, what kind of trust you have, which is based upon truth and openness. And so in my own family, we discussed that at some length. And we have tried to arrive at an understanding of what our feelings are, our needs are, and work it out with that kind of fidelity. Well, from WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today in our program, monogamy and its discontents. Stories of people struggling to redefine monogamy, to stay monogamous, and what we should make of these ad hoc experiments in everyday life. Today, we hear case examples. Act One, Scientific Experiment, the story of a couple, the wife got a crush on another man, and how they tried to contain the crush, channel the crushy feeling, and what happens when you apply rational ideas to irrational feelings. Act Two, Love and Happiness. Dan Savage talks to real non-monogamous couples, who explain whether they're actually happy and why it might be OK to see other partners, but only if it happens in other time zones. Act Three, Istanbul. Ian Brown talks about the experience that most of us have struggling to stay monogamous, and what we should think of that struggle. Stay with us. We started one evening, an evening like any other, which we spent as a couple with a friend, actually, somewhat of an associate of mine. And we just had dinner in a restaurant. And after that, we decided to go and have a drink at his place. Ah, dinner. Well, at dinner, I noticed that Dick was making eye contact with me across the table. And at one point in the evening, he'd looked at me, the way I was dressed. We'd met each other once or twice before. And he said, "You look as though you're really ready to come out, come out with something." Anyway, it was very strong, and it was very sexy. It was like Dick and I were speaking a secret language in front of Sylvere. He lived in a desert somewhere. And it was quite a long drive through the mountains and down the desert, and then winding along roads until we reached his house, which was the last house in a little desert town, really the last stop before nowhere. And then we had an evening together, which was, I thought, pretty nice. And we got some drinks and listened to music and saw Dick's video. And it was one of these evenings that turns to be like morning. Dick played us a video that he'd made that was commissioned by English Public Television of himself dressed as Johnny Cash, riding his horse into the heart of darkness and talking about earthquakes and longing and despair. And it was then that I fell totally in love with Dick. Watching him dressed as Johnny Cash? Yeah. I was not quite aware that there was anything happening between Dick and Chris, my wife. And there was not much happening, except in her mind, I guess. And then we went to bed. We stumble off to bed at 2 o'clock in the morning, me and Sylvere on the sofa bed in the living room, Dick in his bedroom on the other side of the wall with the door closed. And all night long, I found myself dreaming that I had moved across the wall and I was in bed with Dick. And in the morning-- we're on a kind of extended sofa-- and in the morning, Dick was gone. And Chris started fantasizing about the fact that he-- before realizing he was left, she fantasized about the fact that he was like smoking a cigarette in his bed. And then we discovered he was gone. And we waited a bit and then decided to go back to our place. And that was the main substance of what became an extended story. We left, and we went and had breakfast at the IHOP down the road. And I couldn't stop talking about it. We talk about all these things and things that go through our head. And I guess I pay attention to them, but I didn't pay special attention to it at that point. It didn't seem like anything real. And I didn't feel threatened by it at all. We weren't really very sexual at that point in our relationship anymore. And the way that we compensated for the lack of sex was we would deconstruct everything. We'd tell each other everything. That's how you stay intimate with somebody. So I told Sylvere everything that had happened to me that night and everything that was on my mind. And we couldn't stop talking about it. And all the way back, we kept talking about what happened last night with Dick, last night with Dick, our night with Dick. Chris has crushes once in a while. The only defense with a usual couple, I guess, is that we talk about it and laugh about it or explore it a little bit. But that's part of being together. We share everything. Well, I was tormented. So I went to Sylvere, and I was, "Oh, Sylvere, what should I do? What should I do? Maybe I should write a letter." And Sylvere said, "Yes, of course. That's a great idea, Chris. I think you should write a letter. I'll help you. Let's get the computer. Let's set it up right now. We'll write a letter to Dick." Turning it into a project was turning it into something we could do together. See, I decided from the beginning I wasn't going to be jealous, because I've been through that. And I don't have any respect for it. And I don't think that marriage is a property in which you own anyone. I never agreed with myself when I felt jealous, although I recognize the emotion, which is very powerful. And so you started writing letters. And you wrote the first letter. I wrote the first letter, yes, because I knew Dick much better. And I liked the idea. I liked Dick. I liked him then, and I kind of like him now. Sylvere wrote the first letter. And Sylvere wrote a really good letter. But it wasn't enough. And when Sylvere finished his letter, I knew that there were things that I could add. And his letter prompted me to write my letter. So I wrote my first letter. And then Sylvere was very critical of my first letter. And he said, "This and this and this are wrong, and you could do it better." Well, we both sat down to write the second draft, Sylvere's second letter and my second letter. And the notion from the very beginning was that you would write the letters, but you would not send them? No. I think the notion at the very beginning was that we would send them. But after you've written a first draft and a second draft, and then a third and a fourth and a fifth letter, and you have a stack of letters-- in fact, after three days, we had maybe 80 pages of letters-- it reaches a point where you can't possibly send the letter. Well, first of all, the way we wrote the letter was the essential thing, because the idea was not to write letters in repose and think about the words. We both have a computer. And we're sitting in front of each other and basically dictating the letter to the other person. OK, this is from the first letter that I wrote to Dick. "Crestline, California, December 9, 1994. Dear Dick, when you called on Sunday night, I was writing a description of your face. I couldn't talk and hung up on the bottom end of the romantic equation with beating heart and sweaty palms. It's incredible to feel this way. For 10 years, my life's been organized around avoiding this painful elemental state. Sylvere, who's typing this, says this letter lacks a point. What reaction am I looking for? He says I'm squashing out all the trembly little things he found so touching. But Dick, I know that as you read this, you'll know these things are true. Being in love with you, being ready to take this ride, made me feel 16, hunched up in a leather jacket in a corner with my friends. A timeless image. It's about not giving a [BLEEP] or seeing all the consequences looming and doing something anyway. Sylvere thinks he's that kind of anarchist. But he's not. I love you, Dick. Chris." Could you open to page 49? Most of the letters take the form of real letters, but this is a letter which takes the form of dialogue between the two of you. Do you want me to read that? Yeah. Basically, it's this dialogue between you and Chris. And yeah, could you please? Yeah, each of us typing on a typewriter. "Chris-- Sylvere, this is like the institute of emotional research. Sylvere-- The only way we can recapture any feeling is by evoking Dick. Chris-- He's our imaginary friend. Sylvere-- Do we need that? It's so mixed up. At times, we reach these peaks of real possession at his expense. But through it, we're able to see him more clearly than he ever would himself. Chris-- Don't be so presumptuous. You keep talking about Dick as if he was your little brother. You think you have his number. Sylvere-- Well, I don't have the same take on him as you do. Chris-- I don't have a take. I'm in love with him. Sylvere-- It's so unfair. What has he done to deserve this? 8:45 PM." Sylvere, as you wrote these letters, did you find most of the time that you were writing in the letters, urging Chris not to love him, or urging Chris to love him? Well, it all depends. What happened is that I got involved in the project. And when she got too intense about it, I started being anxious about it and upset. But when, somehow, the project became elusive and we were beginning to lose the thread, then I would somehow push her to get back into it, I guess because it was a form of communing. It was a form of being together. It was a good excuse to play a game together-- the conjugal game, the jealous husband game. I don't know. Do you feel like part of what writing the letters was about was trying to keep this feeling, this transgressive feeling, this crush, penned in within the bounds of your marriage vows? You know, we never said to ourselves, "We're going to write letters because we don't want to transgress the bounds of our marriage." We never said that. But at a certain point, Sylvere and I looked at each other and said, "This is the closest we've been in years. We're having more fun together having this adventure, writing these letters, being in love with this third person, than we've had in our entire marriage. What's threatening to tear us apart is, in fact, bringing us closer together." Sylvere fell deeply in love with me while this correspondence was going on, in a way that he had never been in love with me before. Our connection had been very intellectual, very professional. But it'd never been a grand passion or a great love. And I really felt the lack of that in my life. So one of the things that happened between the two of you is, as you went through this process, your sex life returned. Right, which is one of the good things that can happen out of bad ones. And that's a great gift. At the very last phase of this dual correspondence to Dick, of me and Sylvere writing letters to Dick, we were at our house in upstate New York. And we decided that our lives were a lot like Charles and Emma Bovary's, trapped in the provinces of Yonville. Sylvere decided to become Charles Bovary. So he wrote a letter to Dick as Charles Bovary, thanking him for the fact that he and I had started having sex together again. "Thurman, New York, January 12, 1995, Thursday. Dear Dick, this is Charles Bovary. Emma and I have been living together for some nine years. Everyone knows what this entails. Passion becomes tenderness. Tenderness turns soft. Sex became short and somewhat wobbly. We had sex rarely, pretending it didn't matter. Our love increased, and sex was sublimated to more worthy social endeavors-- art, careers, property. Still occasionally, the troubling thought surfaced that a couple without sex is hardly a couple at all. It's at this point, Dick, after we'd convinced ourselves that a life without sex was a better life, that you entered our life like an angel of mercy. Emma's desiring elsewhere enabled me to regain desire. How it happened remains a miracle. It returned suddenly about a week ago, the spirit of sex, like one of these little Roman gods, touching every part of my body, arousing them to the sacredness of pleasure, as if the veil had lifted and a new field of human possibility revealed. I dedicate this letter to you, Dick. With all my love, Charles." Do you think that Sylvere had any feelings of jealousy? Well, of course he did. I mean, how could this happen and Sylvere not be jealous? But Sylvere is a very reasonable and reflective person. So as these emotions start to come up, like jealousy, he looks at them and says, "Well, hmm. Is that really the way I want to feel? Is that the way I want to handle this? Is that the kind of person I want to be?" And he says, "No." So then he looks around for another angle. What angle, what position could he take, that would avoid jealousy? Because jealousy-- really, to be the jealous husband, is just to be such a buffoon. Yes, there were moments where I felt dumped and I felt betrayed and I felt it was going too far and I wanted to backtrack. And it wasn't always possible. Months passed. Chris kept writing love letters to Dick. The experiment of containing her feelings in a rational little art project was, in fact, unleashing her feelings. She became obsessed. She says it was like self-hypnosis. Dick never wrote back. She fell deeper and deeper in love. And as she wrote, she started to reflect on her marriage, on how she'd become an appendage to Sylvere, how she no longer had a separate life, a separate identity. She was resentful. It became a roller coaster. And you're not always in control. And of course, the marriage was at stake. And the marriage, she broke. After months of writing these letters to Dick, it became impossible for me to continue living with Sylvere the way I had. Explain that. Well, OK. Things changed very drastically, because at the end of what I call the first round of letters, after we'd written about 200 pages together, I actually gave them to Dick. We were out in California, and we had another dinner with Dick. And I presented the letters to Dick. Well, Dick was gob-struck. He couldn't believe it. What did he say? Was he horror-struck? No. You see, Dick had said something to me pretty early on in the correspondence. He said, "Right now, I'm at a point in my life where I'm experimenting with what it's like to never say no, to say yes to everything that comes along." So he decided not to say no to me and to my project. He didn't give me any encouragement. He didn't participate in it. But he never said no. He never said stop. We had a house in upstate New York, and I moved up there alone that winter to be alone to write to Dick. And I called Dick, and I told him that I'd left my husband and that I really wanted to see him alone, and could I come out and spend a weekend with him. Well, he said yes. He said, "I won't say no." When she actually met Dick, I was out of my mind, of course. So. Well, the plan was that I was going to drive out to his place as soon as I got off the plane. And I did that. It was a Thursday night. It was raining. I was terribly nervous. I'd changed clothes two or three times-- on the plane, in the rental car office. And I got to Dick's house. And he was there. And I saw him through the plate-glass window. And he was deep in thought. He was grading papers. And I knocked on the door, and he answered it. And he brushed me very lightly on the side of the cheek. And I came in. We had a drink. And very soon, the conversation came around to him asking me, "Why are you here?" He started attacking me. And he said, "I think you're demonic and psychotic." He started screaming at me. "You don't know me. We've had two or three evenings, talked on the phone once or twice. And you project this [BLEEP] over me. You kidnap me. You stalk me, invade me with your games. And I don't want it. I never asked for it. I think you're evil and psychotic." I didn't know what to do. I was completely devastated. Except for the evil and psychotic part, do you see why he would say, "You don't know who I am, and we've only spent a couple of times together, and you've imagined this intense thing?" Well, yes. I suppose on a certain level, he had his point. He had his point. But he was so resolutely and methodically cruel to me. There was a definite turning moment, where he just decided to kind of play things a different way. I asked him if he wanted to see me again over the weekend. And he turned to me and said, "I don't know. Do you want to?" And I said, "Yes, I do. Absolutely. Definitely." And he started repeating my words, "Yes. Definitely. Absolutely." And then he said, "Well, I'm sorry. I have a friend coming into town for the weekend." And he made this friend sound like, of course, a longstanding affair from way back. So when he saw that I was disappointed, he jumped on me. And he said, "What's the matter? Did I burst your balloon, destroy the fantasy?" Sylvere, one way to read this story of what happened is that Chris had a crush. And by having her write all these letters, by encouraging her to write all these letters, that you unconsciously, perhaps, created a situation where she would have all these things to present to Dick, and he would reject her. Maybe you're right in the sense that both of us started writing letters, making it very difficult for him to have a position in relation to it. It wasn't as if something was happening between him and a woman. It was a whole marriage that was coming down on his knees. That's what you mean. And I think it's right. And I guess it was something in the back of my mind, yes. As long as we made it a project and we were together, that started in such a way that may have made it impossible to turn into a private affair, because it was, to start with, so public. After some time, Chris and Sylvere were reconciled. They're still married, but their jobs have now taken them to opposite sides of the country. He lives on the East Coast. She lives on the West. They talk every day, or nearly every day. They lean on each other, share their lives. And for now, they're non-monogamous. Each of them sees other people from time to time. We married, and things keep changing. In a sense, we see each other for a week once a month, sometimes more, sometimes less. And we spend time together. We enjoy being together. Most often, we feel very close. And we manage, I guess, after a few years, to keep this closeness in spite of other involvements that we are in. Some of them may be final. We don't know. It's a very shaky proposition, in the sense that you get carried away by the situation you're in. We live in totally different situations. So the risk is always there that something is going to happen and make it final. It's after having gone through this experience together-- and at every moment, really, we were in it together. In all of my pain, in all of his pain, we were there together with each other, because we didn't have any other way of being. After going through that, well, it just seems inevitable to us that, one way or another, we will be intimately connected. We will be responsible for each other for the rest of our lives. When you think about this whole experience, what do you think you learned from it? What do I think I learned from it? Yeah. Well, I learned that you have to pay for indulgence, because, at some level, it was also indulgent. It was a project. It was a risky operation. It was also playing with fire. I think the thing that most of us find so threatening about a non-monogamous relationship is we just don't want to have to go through the jealousy. I know. But I guess if you've been through the jealousy to the extent that I have been and I'm sure other people have been, and you learn from it. And what you learn is that there are ways of avoiding it. And one of the ways is not try to imagine what the other person is doing and try not to have images or to focus on that. And you realize that the partner can very well have a life. And you don't have to take it as something that concerns you. See, it concerns the person. It's not done to do you harm. It's not done to betray you. It's done because the other person has a life. The whole question of faithfulness and fidelity seems so-- I don't know, small, compared to loyalty and a lifetime commitment to another person. Sylvere Lotringer and Chris Kraus. She collected their letters, plus an account of what happened, in a book called I Love Dick, published by Semiotext(e). Coming up, 82 monogamous couples, 82 non-monogamous couples. Who's happier? Who's more likely to stay married? Answers, real answers, in a minute, from Public Radio International when our program continues. With apologies to Leo Tolstoy, monogamous couples are all alike. Each non-monogamous couple is non-monogamous in its own way. For a non-monogamous arrangement to function properly-- "properly" meaning no blood, no tears-- both persons involved have to agree on a set of rules. The rules of monogamy are pretty simple and straightforward. After you've said, "Honey, let's not have sex with other people," what's left to discuss? But functional non-monogamy, the having of sex with persons other than your partner, with your partner's foreknowledge and consent, well, that sort of an arrangement requires some delicate negotiation. If it's OK with you for your partner to have sex with other people, does that mean it's OK for your partner to have sex with other people under any circumstances? In the bed you share? With your best friend? Probably not. And that's where the rules come in. The rules vary from couple to couple. I've heard of couples who weren't allowed to sleep with each other's friends or with their exes. Not in our apartment, house, bed, is a common one. I've been in three non-monogamous relationships. In one, we could sleep with other people so long as we weren't in the same time zone. In another, outside encounters were limited to a certain few and very specific sex acts that, for a certain few and very specific reasons, we didn't enjoy doing together. One straight couple I recently heard about has a rule that requires them to lie to each other. Not just lie, but lie convincingly. The idea seems to be that it's OK if they sleep with other people. They're just not allowed to make the other person feel bad by actually letting them know about it. A clumsy lie would be as bad as telling them. I interviewed one woman who was in a non-monogamous relationship for three years. The rules were very jokey. The rules were mostly centered around making sure that nobody got involved with somebody who was better than the person they're already involved with, which was each other. So I wouldn't want him to have sex with someone who was terribly sexy or smart or witty or funny-- So nobody sexier, smarter, wittier, or funnier than you. No, they all had to be a little bit lame. The rules seem to fall into three broad categories-- who you can have sex with, under what circumstances, and what you can tell your partner about it. It's that third set of rules that are the stickiest. How much do you want to know? If your partner has sex with a tree in a forest and you're not around to hear it, did it actually happen? The woman I interviewed made a non-disclosure pact with her boyfriend. But ultimately, they couldn't live up to their "don't ask, don't tell" policy. They began sharing their experiences with each other, which resulted in competition. If one got some on the side, the other felt entitled and would go looking for it. Breaking their own "don't ask, don't tell" rule was complicating their arrangement, which begs the biggest question of all. Do these non-monogamous arrangements work? Was this couple happy? Well, it worked and it didn't work. There was a part of me that felt like being non-monogamous sort of created this hollow core in the center of the relationship. Like I really loved this person, but I wasn't sure I could trust him as far as I could throw him. You didn't fully possess him. I didn't fully possess him. And I think part of it was I didn't want to be fully possessed. Back when she was in her non-monogamous relationship, all her straight friends thought she was crazy. Her gay friends, however, were supportive and provided her and her boyfriend with role models. Non-monogamy is more common among gay couples than straight or lesbian couples. It makes some gay politicos uncomfortable when anyone points this out. But every study of long-term male couples has demonstrated this. Sometimes, gay couples even skip a formal rules conversation, so established are non-monogamous relationship models in the gay community. I think non-monogamy is easier for a lot of gay men because gay men think about sex differently than straight people do. We recognize that different sex acts carry different degrees of intimacy. Many non-monogamous gay couples have a rule that stems from this commonsense notion. Outside sex is OK, goes the rule, so long as it does not include penetration. This rule allows for outside encounters, protects both partners from disease, and holds in reserve a few especially intimate sex acts that the gay couple, while non-monogamous, share only with each other. Since so many straight people-- not all, but many-- can't imagine having sex without intercourse, this rule just wouldn't work as well for them. My friend Dave is gay, and he's currently in a non-monogamous relationship. The rules we set down came about without really speaking of them. We just had a friend over, and things got kind of saucy. And we found ourselves goofing around with a third person. And-- Very often, when gay men talk about these open arrangements or something, they'll use words and phrases like "goofing around" or "playing," and all these sort of harmless sounding-- whereas when straight people talk about it, it's like you "had sex" with another person. One of the things about gay sex that I sometimes think straight people have a hard time understanding is the possibility of having sort of Boy Scouty, camaraderie sex, where you're just sort of goofing around, to get back to that phrase. You think that's part of the difference between-- Absolutely. It truly is goofing around. It's mashing, it's making out, it's rolling around, because it's got to stay physically very superficial. As I said earlier, I was in three non-monogamous relationships-- past tense. All of them ended. And the woman I spoke with earlier is no longer in her non-monogamous relationship. Judging from just her and me, you would think non-monogamous relationships don't last. Well, you'd be wrong. Dr. Arline Rubin conducted the single largest study comparing non-monogamous couples to monogamous ones. Dr. Rubin interviewed 164 couples, half monogamous, half not, and did follow-up interviews with all 164 couples after 5, 10, and 19 years. Dr. Rubin discovered that there was no difference. Non-monogamous couples were just as happy or just as miserable as monogamous ones. And the number of couples who stayed together was exactly the same. Non-monogamy was no indication of instability or a lack of commitment. According to Dr. Rubin, whether a couple is monogamous has nothing to do with how long they stay together. Dave and his boyfriend, Eric, had been together for five years, and they're still going strong. What would you say to people who assert that monogamy in a relationship is an indication of the seriousness of the relationship? That if two people are being monogamous, obviously, they're in it for the long haul, and they take their relationship seriously, and they put each other first, whereas if people are in a non-monogamous relationship, obviously, they're more casual about each other and their relationship isn't going to last as long. As for the first part of that, that monogamy is the sign of a true relationship, I would say, if it's true for you, then it's true. As for the assumption that a non-monogamous relationship is inherently less valuable or less committed, I would disagree just on the fact that the conversations that Eric and I have had to have in maintaining a somewhat open relationship have brought about a level of intimacy we wouldn't have tapped any other way. I mean, it seems like everybody talks about monogamy as something that you do for somebody else, that I will be faithful to you because I love you. But I actually came to feel like non-monogamy was something that you could do for somebody else. You could let them be who they were and still love them and still be committed to them. The other assumption that is often made about non-monogamy is that it's a phase. A couple may open their relationship for a time, but they will, once they get serious, return to monogamy. Dr. Rubin's studies have shown that this isn't true either. The couples she followed, all straight and now all in their late 50s and 60s, with houses, mortgages, and kids, as their marriages went on, these couples pretty much stuck to what they'd been doing all along, whether it was monogamy or non-monogamy. So it isn't an experiment or a phase. It's a choice. And like Dave says, it works for the couples that it works for. Dan Savage writes a syndicated sex advice column, Savage Love. He also works at The Stranger, a newspaper in Seattle. There's a couple across my street who make love in their living room. I hear them in the evening when I walk after dinner. From the sidewalk, I can see cream walls, a mantel draped in animal hides, African carvings. The woman makes most of the noise, mid-range "ohs" a second apart, dropping like small, crystal cups out of the open French windows of their flat. Passion and disregard for the neighbors, a tremendous combination. The air stops moving around me. Is their sex better than my own? I wonder what she looks like when she's moaning. Does she love him? Presuming it's a him, which I always do. Or is she there just for the sex? I can never decide which would be more exciting. I imagine she's in her 30s and that she has dark hair, an ordinary woman with ordinary chores, whose passion is nonetheless excitingly unsuppressable in the evening. But which woman is it? Is the moaner the doctor who just had a baby, only now returning to sex? The Mexican girl who works out all the time at the gym? Or the Chinese caterer, the woman who drives the Volvo with Ohio license plates? Her cries never last more than half a block. Walking back to my house, I usually have a few bent, embarrassed thoughts. I think, you're a 39-year-old married man who stands in front of his house, listening to an unseen couple make love. You're sick. But I keep stepping out there, hoping to hear that little duet. My wife wants to have a baby. And it's not just talk or a plan she inherited at birth or the fantasizing she used to practice with her girlfriends-- "Well, I want to have four." No, this is different, more insistent. "When would you like to start?" she said again this morning, third time in a week, as we read the newspaper over breakfast. The sun was already bearing down furiously at half past 8:00 in the goddamn morning. I could hear the buzz of a weed whacker next door. "Anytime you like," I said, not taking my eyes off the paper. I didn't want to encourage her because the truth is this. Some days, I'm for it. But when I'm not for it, I'm really not for it. My wife's body has changed. Her body, overtaken by hormonal committee, is telling her to get on with its grandest physical purpose. I can see it in the slight post-marital widening of her hips, no less sexy than the originals, but still, wider, when she lilts away from the bed at night to perform her ablutions. I can see it in her taste in clothes. She doesn't go anymore for the sprayed-on Lycra skirts I used to buy her. Even in her sexual habits-- she has less interest in sex than she used to. She wants to make love now, for keeps. Pause here for sadness. Last week, as if by magic, two baby books appeared in the pile on the floor on her side of the bed-- at the bottom of the pile, but there they were. I walked into the bedroom, saw them like a promise I made long ago, and had to leave the house. I went to a matinee. When did all that happen? I can't remember anything. The dates of our courtship, the countless touching things she claims I said, they're at best a blur to me, a fog of declarations. One day, I was living my comfortable life. And the next, she was living with me. On a bad day, it makes me nervous to remember all this. On a bad day, when I think about the slow gelling of our togetherness, its gathering weight and formality, the muscle around my heart closes in and my breath come short and I start to panic. One day, she and I were dating. And then we were living together. And then we bought a house. And then we'd married. And then she wanted to have a baby. An escalator of commitments onto which I had apparently stepped. My friends were astonished. They said I wasn't the type to marry. A few of them had made bets against it. I told them I wanted "to find out what lay on the other side of boredom." I stole that line from an old girlfriend. I thought I was an adventurer. And yet, here I stand, in a well-trimmed front yard, surrounded by neighbors and swing sets and sport utility vehicles, the movable monuments of domesticity, listening to a couple copulate. And across the yards, I see another man looking warily back at me, doing exactly the same thing. Just because I'm married now and practicing what's known as monogamy doesn't mean I don't think about other women, because I do. I still conjure up women from my past. And I still ask myself the question. You know the question. Every man does. Women have their own version of it. The question is the question you ask yourself every time you see a woman on the street, every single time, no matter who she is, how old she is, no matter how attractive she is or isn't. And the question is, "Would I sleep with her, or her, or how about her?" Not "Will I sleep with her?" or "How can I sleep with her?" or even "Could I sleep with her?" The question is, "Would I?" But even though I always ask the question, I don't act on it, because I'm trying to be monogamous. That's why monogamy has such a bad reputation. It's boring. Monogamy is the habit of not acting on what you want. I even hate the word itself. It sound so staid, so bourgeois. Monogamy, like a board game, the approximation of excitement. Sometimes, of course, I hear about open marriages. Jung had one, Sartre had one, Henry Miller, Dickens, Freud. I hear about open marriages, and they seem like some fabulous, exotic city that I've always wanted to visit but never seem to get to. Istanbul. Open marriages are like Istanbul, some ancient, mysterious place where there are minarets and strange music, where one entire civilization suddenly ends and a whole new, stranger one begins. A whole new religion, even, the mysterious East. I've always wanted to go to Istanbul. Like most couples, my wife and I sometimes talk about open marriage. Well, I say we talk about it. It'd be more accurate to say that the subject comes up and immediately lies down again. We'll be lying in bed in the dark and talking about our lives, about what we like and what we miss, in that quiet, pleasant way you do when you're trying to be monogamous. Then my wife will say in the dark, "You know, if you ever have sex with someone else, some passing fling, I don't want you to tell me about it." And I say, "Really?" I say, "Really?" because I don't know what else to say. If I say, "OK, Honey, that's fine with me," she'll say, "What, are you thinking about it?" And then I'll have to say, "Of course not," even if I am. So I say, "Really?" Or I'll say something noncommittal, like, "Don't worry." Whatever I say, a few minutes go by. And then she always says, still in the dark, "But I don't want you to sleep with someone else, anyway. OK?" And I say, "OK." That's the kind of conversation you have when you agree to be monogamous. I don't want to sleep with anyone else. Or to be more exact, I'd like to, but I really don't have the constitution for infidelity or for an open marriage or for the guilt. Monogamy may be boring, but the alternatives take up a lot more time and energy. When I hear stories about the president and I think, he must have an arrangement with Hillary, I think, gee, that must be great. But some part of me also feels-- not disappointed, not morally outraged, nothing that loud and sharp and pompous, but-- sad. That's the word-- sad. And I'm not sure I know why. I'm not even sure I know why I'm trying to stay monogamous. Why have I chosen this route over the other? I don't pretend it has anything to do with moral standards. In fact, I suspect it comes down to something my wife once said to me. We were having one of our conversational minuets in the dark, one of our gentle but ever so delicate chats about faithfulness, when my wife said that the only thing she missed as a monogamous woman-- at least I assume she was speaking as a monogamous woman-- was newness, new bodies, new hands, new sex. I said I knew what she meant. And I said, "But isn't that kind of sad? I mean, if you go through your whole life, 20, 30, 40, 60 years of marriage without ever straying, you do that, you never get to know what it's like to be unfaithful. You never get to know what it feels like to be emotionally illegal. And that's an important feeling, one of the great human themes, after all, a whole constellation of humanity you'll never know." My wife was quiet for a long time. And I could hear the fridge downstairs. And in the street light coming through the curtains, I could just see her outline. And I thought to myself, I've spent a long time in this bed. "Yes," my wife said then, "That's true. But if you do sleep around, you'll never know what it's like to be faithful to one person your whole life, which might also be an 'important constellation of humanity.'" There was just a touch of sarcasm in her voice. And then it was my turn to lie in the dark for a long time. I'd never considered monogamy as an adventure. I thought it was, well, domestic travel, where no international borders are crossed. But monogamy is an adventure, and in some ways, a more mysterious one than open marriage. Because trying to be faithful to one person is a trip that takes time. And you never really know if you're getting close or if you've reached the destination. You never really know when you've arrived. For my generation-- the first one that assumed free love for both sexes was a birthright-- for us, monogamy is the last sexual mystery on Earth, the great unknown. We've tried everything else. It's certainly a different kind of trip than open marriage, which has lots of stops along the way. But most of them are the same. Maybe that's the problem with open marriage-- not many surprises. It's titillating, but not very mysterious. Maybe that's why hearing about open marriages always makes me a little sad, why there's always a whiff of defeat about them. I lay there in the dark beside my wife, thinking about all this, as I say, for a long time. I thought about that dream of hers, to be faithful her whole life. I thought, it's a sweet dream, almost like an ideal. And I knew I didn't want to be the one to prove to her that it couldn't come true. It scared me, too, all that responsibility, because it's not such a wise thing to promise. Anyway, I'm trying to be monogamous, maybe not even for myself. Maybe I'm just doing it for her. Is that so unusual? Maybe if I do it for her long enough, I'll start to do it for me, as well. It's not that I don't want to go to Istanbul anymore. I really want to. In fact, I think about Istanbul all the time, if only to remind myself that it's still there. It's just that there's this other place I want to get to first, a little town that, for the longest time, I never even knew was there. Ian Brown is the host of Talking Books on the Sunday edition of CBC's This Morning. Part of his comments are from his book Man Medium Rare. Well, our program was produced today by Alix Spiegel and myself with Nancy Updike and Julie Snyder. Senior editor Paul Tough, contributing editors Jack Hitt, Margy Rochlin, and consigliere Sarah Vowell. Production help from Rachel Day, Jorge Just, Todd Bachmann, and Sylvia Lemus. If you'd like to buy a cassette of this program, call us here at WBEZ in Chicago, 312-832-3380. Or you know you can listen to most of our programs for free on the internet at our website, www.thislife.org. Thanks to Elizabeth Meister, who runs the site. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia, who says about being a program director, It isn't an experiment or a phase. It's a choice. I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of this American life. PRI, Public Radio International.
|
102557. The number had been on his left arm since the war, since the concentration camps, his three years in Auschwitz. And one day, a couple of years ago, living in New York City, it occurred to him, 102557, the number given to him by the Nazis, he could play the lottery with it. Well, yeah, when it came to lottery, I sometimes played the number, but I gave it up, because it came to my mind, I said I shouldn't do this. Did you ever win? No. No. Never won any money on that number? No. But you decided you shouldn't do it. No. How come? Because I think that I should not remind myself of this whole thing. When something terrible happens to you, in the moment of crisis, it's rare that you can meditate over what it means. When Jan Tomare was in the concentration camps, when he was sent to work in the German coal mines, when he was selected for experimental surgery by the Germans, he didn't have bad dreams then, he says. No. You were just looking to get food and stuff like that. You're just looking at how it's going to be, what happened in the morning. And as I am getting older, I'm more and more haunted by my past and the fate of my family, crying almost every night. I mean, I can't do anything about it anymore. So I try to be busy. I try to read book. I try to make anything, to do anything, to forget. I read papers. I read books. I read everything. About the present, not about the past, you mean. Yeah. What memories come back? Sometimes, Jan says, he'll remember a holiday meal, some small happy memory of his family, who died in the gas chambers. But that's rare. Mostly it's the bad moments which come back. And among those, the one he returns to more than any other moment, is the day in May of 1942, when his family was rounded up by the Germans and arrested. The whole thing was, back then, we were all taken to this place, [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE]. And this came, and they took my family, my little brother. He was a little genius. And my sister. And they put them in those big commercial wagons, where they used to ship cows and then everything. It was the last time he saw his sister, his little brother, his mother, his stepfather, a moment that, no matter how many times you look at it, never makes sense. One minute, your life is one thing, small, private, the next it's something else, thrown about by forces so much bigger. You're seized from your normal and pinned in the beam of history. From WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program, Pinned in History, stories of people who were lifted out of everyday life, thrown into much bigger events, and how that made sense of what they did years after the fact. Act One, Book of Job, a man who betrayed his friends, and then betrayed the people who he betrayed his friends for. Act Two, God of War, how a guy with one year of psychology graduate school got put in a position to decide who would stay at the front lines in Vietnam and who could go home, and what he did with that power, a power he never wanted, and what he makes of all of it now. Stay with us. Act One. So it's one thing if your life is thrown about by forces beyond your control. It's another if you go out of your way to insert yourself into history, and hurt people, and ruin other people's lives as part of that. How do you make sense of events for which you only have yourself to blame? Scott Carrier has this first story. February 17, 1957 was the worst day of Harvey Matusow's life. At 2:30 in the morning, his mother called to say that his father had died. At 8:30, his boss called to tell him not to come into work, that he was fired. At 11:30, his wife called from California, saying she was close to Mexico and that she wanted a divorce. Then at 2:30 in the afternoon, Harvey's lawyer called to say that the Circuit Court of Appeals in New York had turned down his appeal, and that he'd be going to a federal penitentiary for five years. You know what Harvey did? I laughed. I couldn't stop laughing. People were coming to my mother's house to pay respects, to get ready for the funeral, and there I was laughing. And a friend of mine said, read the book of Job. And I read the book of Job that night and I continued to laugh. And I took on the name Job that day. And I've identified with him ever since. Job Matusow, born a Jew in the Bronx. Job Matusow, ready to die a Mormon in Glenwood, Utah. Job Matusow, liberator of Europe. Job Matusow, Communist. Job Matusow, who turned and became a paid informant against the Communists during the McCarthy era. Job Matusow, who turned again and said he'd lied and made it up, and that the Justice Department knew he was lying and, in fact, encouraged it. Job Matusow, the most hated man in America. Job Matusow, Cockyboo the clown. Job Matusow, who's been married 10 times to nine different women and is still one of the loneliest old men you'd ever want to meet. Job Matusow, manager, program director, and creator of SCAT-TV, the first and only public access station in central Utah. Job Matusow, con man who tells you upfront that he's a con man and then cons you. Job Matusow, coyote of all coyotes. I represented the most anarchistic of anarchists. I turned on the Communists and then I turned on the extreme right, and put a plague on both their houses. The trick with a coyote is to not take sides. The trick is to see all things as being equal. This means accepting whatever the coyote says as being true, but it also means you accept the exact opposite of whatever the coyote says as being true as well. Yeah, we have a song in our Magic Mouse Children's Theatre, which goes like, [SINGING] when I spend the whole day cooking and it burns when I'm not looking, I just smile and shrug my shoulders, that's the way it is. That's the way it is, by golly. That's the way it is, by golly. That's the way it is, by golly. That's the way it is. [END SINGING]. And that's the way it is. This is the way Job tells the story. This is the way he explains the events that led up to the worst day of his life and his decision to call himself Job, like from the Bible. First he was a kid on the streets in the Bronx, running bets for Phil the bookie, and delivering bribes to policemen. Then his brother went off to the Second World War and got shot down over Germany. Then Job enlisted, and managed through a miracle to find his brother's unmarked grave in Nuremberg. Then he helped liberate Europe by digging bodies from out of the rubble and hanging out in coffee shops with French intellectuals. When I joined the Communist Party, it was as a result of the experiences with Communists in Europe in World War II. I found the Communists were the only substantial group of people who effectively stood up to Hitler and fought him effectively in occupied Europe. And wherever I went and liberated Europe, and I was part of the infantry that liberated Europe, I found Communists who were romantic to me, who were real. In the Ernest Hemingway sense, the romance of Communism. And you hear songs like, [SINGING "VIVA LA QUINTA BRIGADE"]. Viva the 15th brigade. They stood up to Franco. [SINGING "VIVA LA QUINTA BRIGADE"]. So it wasn't difficult for me to become a Communist. Job joined the party in New York City in 1946. By 1947, he was a full-time employee, operating the switchboard and screening calls at the national headquarters during the day, and organizing youth meetings at night. He says he had the honor to raise the first ever Chinese Communist flag flown in the United States. He says he carried Paul Robeson, Jr., under a blanket in the back seat of his car into the riots of Peekskill. He was, he says, deeply involved in these struggles. In the late '40s, it was a radical thing to be a Communist. It was the beginning of the Cold War, the beginning of the Evil Empire. Lots of people, in fact most people, believed that a war with the Soviet Union was inevitable. Then, in 1950, we did go to war with Communists in Korea. And at that point, it was not radical to be a Communist, it was impossible to be a Communist. Being a Communist meant losing your job and being publicly vilified, maybe even going to jail. Job, being more coyote than Communist, saw that things were getting kind of hot. He says when things get hot, he finds another place to play, at least that's how he tells the story sometimes. Other times, he tells it like this. The Communist Party to me became very phony, phony as a $3 bill. I found it hypocritical and dishonest, and maybe because I was too romantic when I entered into it. And I figured the Cold War was getting crazier, the prosecutions, the persecutions were getting crazier, so I called the FBI. I dialed [UNINTELLIGIBLE] 23500. And I said, hi, my name is Harvey Matusow, I'm a member of the Communist Party, I want to talk to you. And that was the extent of the conversation, and we made a time to meet. So the government wanted me to be a witness. And I met at a rendezvous point on the East River Drive, real clandestine. And this limousine pulls up. This guy gets out, introduces himself as Roy Cohn. I get in the back of the limo, and we take off. And we talk in the car. And he's interviewing me. And this is a guy who grew up in my neighborhood in the Bronx. We have a lot in common. We're the same age. We were born a few months apart. And we hit it off real well. And while we were getting ready to prepare me for my testimony in the case, I used to go out and party with Roy Cohn. What would you do when you partied? We'd go to the Stork Club. We'd go to 21. We'd party. You know, how the young guys in their mid-20s go out and party. Job became a paid political informer, which was also a radical thing to be. At that time in the early '50s, the exploits of FBI informers were celebrated in motion pictures, in television serials, in books, and in magazine articles. They were portrayed as brave heroes who risked their lives as Communists, only to emerge as true patriots, indispensable, as J. Edgar Hoover once said, to the American way of life. And it was a lucrative profession. The most charismatic informers supplemented their incomes with generous lecture fees, royalties from bestselling books, as well as radio, television, and film rights to their harrowing exposes of the red menace. Though only 26 years old, Job met with immediate success. In his first appearance on the witness stand in 1951, at a hearing of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, he was billed as an authority on the Communist conspiracy to penetrate the youth of America. Overnight, his name was in the headlines. "Witness Bears Plot to Infiltrate the Boy Scouts." "Secret FBI Man Reveals 3,500 Students Recruited Here for Red Fifth Column." "Communists Use Sex to Lure Members." Job was a hit, a rising star. I play-acted. I made up a game. I made up a story. I did something nobody else did. All these other witnesses were old men and old women. And here I come on, a war veteran from two wars that he enlisted in in his 20s, and is talking about Communism and youth. And all these other guys were in the 50s and 60s. I was a breath of fresh air for them. Job testified in front of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, the Government Operations Committee, the Subversive Activities Control Board hearings, and in two criminal prosecutions for the Justice Department, one of which was the famous First Amendment case against union organizer, Clinton Jencks. Job named hundreds of people as Communists or Communist sympathizers, many of whom had been his friends. When he ran out of people to name, he started making up stories, anything that would make a good performance, anything that would make it in the papers. For instance, on one of his lecture tours, he told a group of high school students in Pocatello, Idaho that he'd been sent by a Czechoslovakian delegation to New Mexico, where he set up a system of espionage at Los Alamos. He also said that the Soviet Union has scheduled 1961 as the year it would take over the United States. The press loved him, and he loved the press. Here I was meeting with people, editors of the Hearst newspapers, making up stories with them. I mean, I was going out and having dinner every night with the columnist Walter Winchell, and he fell in love with me. So I'd go out at his old Cadillac convertible, and he had a police radio-- and he was the best known journalist in the country at the time-- and we'd go chase police calls. He'd listen to the police calls and he'd show up, and he wore a gun. The guy was a madman, and I'd hang out with him. And I'd hang out every night. I'd go to Toot Shor's bar and hang out with all the celebrities from Hollywood and big shot, big [BLEEP], you know. It was a whole different dance, a whole different ballgame. Where I fabricated stories is like, I said-- because I belonged to the American Newspaper Guild and was involved in organizing the union-- that the Sunday New York Times I said had 126 Communists working for it, when they only had either 78 or 96 employees. At this point, I forget which figure. And nobody, not even the New York Times, ever questioned that. Did you know that it was going to be on the news that night? Oh, yeah, every night for weeks. And I'd turn on the box and we'd watch the news, and there I was, day after day, freaking out Americans. And you knew you were doing it? Oh, I was very conscious of it, yeah. I knew I had the whole nation. I was in everybody's living room. It's a very strong feeling. In 1952, after Job was already a hotshot paid political informer, he walked into Senator Joseph McCarthy's office in Washington and offered his services in McCarthy's reelection campaign. He became, he says, close friends with McCarthy. He says he even delivered 70% of McCarthy's campaign speeches when the senator was in the hospital for alcohol-related illnesses. Through McCarthy, Job met the heiress, Arvilla Bentley, one of McCarthy's biggest financial supporters. She became Job's second wife. It was unreal, married a woman who had millions of dollars and she was a party giver and lived on fancy Foxhall Road. The house is now the German ambassador's residence. And here I came from the streets of the Bronx running bets for Phil the bookie, and I'm throwing dinner parties in Washington. My next door neighbor is Governor Averell Harriman, or ambassador Harriman at that time. And when he moved out to go back to New York to become governor, Secretary of Treasury Humphrey moved in next door. He'd be working the garden, and I'd be out talking to the secretary of treasury because he was my neighbor. It wasn't a real world. It was so surreal, it was like a Salvador Dali painting. The only thing it missed were the melting clocks rolling off the rocks and the furniture. We're in Job's car, driving down the highway in central Utah. His car's a 1970 Cadillac Brougham DeVille, of a color I've studied but am unable to discern, tarnished gold or tarnished silver, or both. He got the car, he says, by getting down on his knees and praying. He asked God to give him a car, and God gave him this one. I've lived in London, in Paris, in New York, Melbourne, and Sydney, in Berlin, in San Francisco, in Boston, and you name it and I've lived there. But none of it beats what I got here. Two years ago, Job came to the small farming community of Glenwood, Utah, in an old school bus loaded with consumer-grade video production equipment. And in short order, he started Six Counties Access Television, a public access station that shows high school band practice, the local church choir doing "The Messiah," drill team competitions, and also the Magic Mouse Magazine, Job's nonviolent kid show. He has more than 100 hours of Magic Mouse Magazine on tape. Each show is hosted by Job playing Cockyboo the clown. Right now, we're in the car, driving around, changing the Magic Mouse tapes at various cable downlink stations scattered around the countryside. On the seat between us are two little dogs, tiny dogs, each so small I can close my thumb and index finger around their necks. And one dog is on top and humping the other dog, and she's looking up at me with big, woeful eyes, all the woe of [UNINTELLIGIBLE] conception. Job is driving the car, but he has some back trouble and he can't really sit up high enough to see over the dashboard or the long hood of the car. And then he has the car in cruise control, so his feet are way back from the pedals, nowhere near the pedals, and it's like he's just acting like he's driving, like the car is floating down the road on a cloud. Job tells me he was responsible for the creation of the Freedom of Information Act. He tells me he was the person who started the myth about getting high off smoking banana peels. He tells me he was the developer of the stringless Yo-Yo, which, he says, in 1957, was the second-best selling children's toy in America, right behind the hula hoop. He tells me that there's more creative talent in these small Utah towns than anywhere else he's been in the world. There's more creative talent in this valley, per capita, than any place I have ever been on the planet Earth, anywhere. And it's got an innocence about it, which makes it beautiful for me. It's not jaundiced, as Hollywood and New York is jaundiced. We stop by a mailbox in front of a small white house. The mailbox says "Mike," just Mike. Mike comes out of the house and gets in the backseat, wearing a balaclava ski mask pulled down over his face, like we're going to rob a bank or something. We stay in the car for about an hour, and Mike doesn't take the mask off. Mike is the television station's technical engineer, and Job's best friend. He's also the opposite of Job in every way. Job likes to talk, and he likes to talk about himself and how he fits into the bigger picture of things. Mike almost never talks, and when he does, he talks about flywheels and edit functions and videocassette recorders. Job likes to be seen and known. Mike hides behind his balaclava. Job has dogs, but he's actually much more like a cat himself. Mike has a cat, but he's actually much more like a dog himself. And so on. The best way I can describe Mike to somebody is that he couldn't tell a lie if he wanted to. And I don't meet many people of that pure a spirit much in my life, very rare. And when I meet somebody with that pure a spirit, I want to nurture it and enjoy it and be around it, because it'll never sell you short. It'll never be dishonest with you. So at one time, you were associating and hanging out with some of the most important people of the century. And now you live in Glenwood, Utah, and you hang out with Mike. Hang out with my friend, Mike. And he's very special. By 1954, the whole witch hunt of Communists was beginning to fall apart. Edward R. Murrow broadcast his famous expose on Joe McCarthy, and then McCarthy himself was investigated in the Army-McCarthy hearings. McCarthy responded in part by turning up the heat on Job, asking him to supply names of writers and journalists who were Commies or sympathizers. But by this time, Job was having second thoughts. Being a paid informer had been like being a Communist, in that it had been fun for a while, but then it got scary. He decided it was maybe time to come clean. This is when job recognized Jesus Christ as his personal saviour, and was baptized into the Mormon church. I took to it like a duck to water. Are you kidding? The Mormon church? Wow. Everything I wanted in my life in this gospel, in this lifestyle, and in the way the people were, in the caring for each other. And then my conscience really got to bum me out. Here I was baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, and I was living with all these misdeeds. And I finally said I gotta stop the bull [BLEEP], and it's not blacklisting was my business. But I was a false witness upfront, all the way. Let it go. According to a friend of mine who is a wise man, and also a good Mormon, there are three things you need to do in order to repent, in order to achieve forgiveness. The first is, you have to try not to do the bad thing again. The second is, you have to try to compensate your victims. The third is, you have to find some kind of peace with yourself. Of these three, the third is by far the most difficult to achieve. Job started with the first two things by visiting and apologizing to some of the people he'd named in front of the committees, people whose lives he'd ruined. He told them that he wanted to try to pay them back by writing a book about how he lied and made things up, a book that would hopefully bring down the McCarthy era once and for all. Then he asked each of them if they might want to put up some money to help get the book published. It felt real good to go to people and ask forgiveness. Were any of them upset? When I go to somebody and say, hey look, I was an asshole, I was this, I was that, and I'm sorry, and I shouldn't have done it, and please forgive me, and if you don't, I'm still asking your forgiveness, and that's a good clean feeling. It's a rich feeling. It balances the body out, man. It really does. None of the men that Job visited wanted to publish his book, however. And he decided that it was time to leave his old life behind, and go to Utah and marry a Mormon girl. He set off by walking and hitchhiking across Texas, wearing German desert army fatigues, black boots, a black beret, a black beard, and a backpack full of Old Testament puppets. At night, he'd stop in hospitals and small towns and ask if he could perform his puppet show for the kids in exchange for a bed and something to eat. He traveled like this across Texas and into New Mexico. And in New Mexico, he got a message from his mother. A publisher in New York wanted him to write his book. Even though Job was very close to a nice, quiet life in Utah, he decided he had an obligation to set the record straight. So he went back to New York City. Coming up, trying to set the record straight, and because of it, ending up in prison the most hated man in America. That's in a minute, from Public Radio International, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, and bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's program, people whose lives were pinned in history, caught up in huge historical events, and what they made of their actions years after the fact, when it was quiet enough to make sense of anything. Scott Carrier's story about Harvey Matusow, Job Matusow, continues. Job has moved back to New York, invited to write a book, hoping to set the record straight. The publishers set him up with an apartment in Manhattan, and a stenographer. And in four months, Job dictated False Witness, his book describing in detail how he'd lied and fabricated stories, and how the government prosecutors had known he was lying and even participated in the process. In particular, he named Roy Cohn, his old friend and government prosecutor in the trial of the communist leaders in New York, and also in the Jencks trial. In his book, and also under oath, in an affidavit, Job said that Cohn had known that he was lying in the trials, and had even encouraged him to do it. Cohn denied everything. Even before the book was published, Job was called in front of some of the same committees he'd appeared before as an expert witness, only now he was the accused. am not an expert on this subject of Communism. I was not a leader in the Communist Party. I was a Communist flunky in a club on the lower east side of New York. And through a few lies, I built myself up into an expert on Communism. And you expect me to start sounding off about what the Communist Party thinks and does, about what orders come from Moscow, if any? I was finally letting it out and kicking all the shackles off this play-acting. I wasn't play-acting when I was testifying. I knew they were going to put me in jail, so what could they do? Are you afraid of the truth, sir? Sir? Are you afraid of the truth, sir? I am not afraid of any truth that you can give, because I don't think there's any truth in your body. They were freaking out. Like Sourwine, the chief council of the committee, says, haven't you called yourself leader of the Communist youth movement? And I responded, I lied. And everybody laughed. Haven't you found yourself leader of the Communist youth movement in this country? I lied. You're the one who's responsible for my role as a witness, not I. You're responsible by creating the fear and hysteria in this country, where people can't talk to one another, where neighbor can't talk to neighbor without fear of being called a Communist. You're responsible for the hysteria. We forced you? Yes, sir, by creating a fear and hysteria in this country which this country's never seen before, where people can't turn around and talk to their neighbors without fear of being called a Communist. Honest, decent people. You're the one who's responsible for my role as a witness, not I. I knew that when I wrote the book, I was going to go to jail. There was no question in my mind. From the beginning, when you were writing the book? Oh yeah. When that became part of my consciousness, I knew, as sure as God made little apples, I was either going to be assassinated or go to jail, or both. And I was perfectly prepared for it. In fact, part of me wanted to be assassinated. It would've been a great release, finally. I wrote the book, I did the recantation, I straightened the record out, and if somebody wants to blow me away and let me go home to God, I'll be home with my father. What a blessing. This brings us up to the worst day of Job's life, the day he decided to call himself Job, like from the Bible, only if you'll remember, the Job in the Bible was an innocent man, a virtuous man, who suffered only because of a bet God made with the Devil, whereas Job from Glenwood, Utah is a man who, through his own selfish desires, brought pain and suffering to a lot of people. In his book False Witness, published in 1955, Job confesses his sins and writes about how he was a bad man who's trying to repent. But when he tells the same story now, in 1998, he sometimes describes the events as if he were a victim of circumstance, or at least that things were never black and white, and that he was simply doing the best he could all along. 80% of the people who I named before the committee were Communists, and they were sure of it. There wasn't a question of my lying about it. What was wrong was that I was naming them at all. But at the same time, I started to have a fantasy, and based on the experiences I had in Europe at the end of World War II. There were many French Communists who would tell me stories of how they, repugnant as it was, went to work for the SS and the Gestapo and the German authorities that occupied France. And they did so so they could spy on the Germans. And I used to fantasize-- and it was strictly a fantasy, and I don't want to give it any more credence than that-- that I went to the FBI and did to the FBI what these people had done to the Gestapo. In the end, Job was sent to jail for perjury. When he got out after four years in 1961, he found work publishing avant-garde art books and helping to edit the East Village Other, which, according to Job, was the first underground newspaper in America. In the '60s and early '70s, he traveled to England, France, and Australia. But everywhere he went, his past was right behind him. So I realized at that point that, regardless of what I did, whatever accomplishment I may have, it's going to be attacked and its foundations are going to be chipped away at by the past and people's view and their perception of me in the McCarthy period. And at that point, I realized that I really am not going to care about what they think anymore. Job came back to the States in 1973 and began to commit his life to serving others and doing the Lord's work, as a sort of penance. He set up homeless shelters and soup kitchens in New York and Massachusetts, and collected used clothes and food that he drove out to South Dakota and delivered to the Sioux Indians. He moved around a lot, from one city to another, from one wife to another. He was like Chuck Connors in the TV show, The Rifleman, an officer in the US Calvary who had somehow blacked out in battle and deserted his men, and was court martialed. They broke the rifleman's saber, and he was branded, scorned as the man who ran. Every week, the rifleman tried to redeem himself by saving lives and helping people out of trouble, and by getting rid of the bad guys in town. But he could never shake his past. He could never even remember what had happened. In 1977, Job moved to Tucson, Arizona, where he fell in with a troupe of street musicians and performers that he managed and organized into the Magic Mouse Theater, a nonviolent kids TV show on the local public access TV station. Job, of course, was the host of the program, Job playing Cockyboo the clown. Cockyboo is an old clown, dressed in rags that were once the clothes of a rich man, top hat and tuxedo coat. He's more scary than funny, and he's always trying to tell you something that you feel like you should be able to understand, but you can't. It all started a long, long time ago. It was in a faraway place, close to the hearts of those knowing love. And there was a village called Angelville. Now, if you're going too fast or happened to sneeze, you wouldn't see it. And the only way one could get to Angelville was to find the secret path which led to the center of everything. Job lives in a small adobe house he calls the Gandhi Peace Center, a shelter for homeless men. But the only homeless men here tonight seems to be Job Matusow. His bedroom is also the production room for the TV station, and it's crammed with blinking VCRs and scattered videocassettes and various dust-covered memorabilia from the past. It's dinner time, and Job is sitting on a sunken bed, feeding his five little dogs. This is Mabel Muldoon. And this is Mopsy Muldoon. And this one is Buster Brown the Coolest Dog in Doggy Town. And they're my family. I like hanging out with dogs and people with disabilities. In order to achieve forgiveness, you must do three things. Of these three, the third, finding peace with yourself, is by far the most difficult. If you're able to do this, if you can find redemption, then when bad thing you did comes up again in memory or in conversation, it doesn't matter anymore, whether you were a victim a fate, or whether you caused it all to happen by your own conscious actions, whether you were just doing the best you could under the circumstances, or whether you were evil. When you have truly been forgiven, the bad thing doesn't have an effect on you anymore. It just goes right through you. Look, in the other room, I've got a big picture of Ray Cohn. It's a three-foot by five-foot photograph of Roy Cohn, big. Morton Downey, Jr., gave it to me one day in New York. And I put that picture up of Roy Cohn, that same picture, when he died on July 1, 1988. And I start to say a kaddish for him. And I don't let his spirit go, and he's the man I should be hating the most in the world. He sent me to jail for five years, and he was a miserable human being to a lot of people and did a lot of harm, much more than I ever did. And I still pray for the man. And his big picture's up in my studio, because I don't want to forget that I can forgive. The most enjoyable time I have in life right now is when I sometimes have to get in my car at 4:30 or 5:00 in the morning here in central Utah and drive the 175 miles to Salt Lake City. And it's still dark, and I get in the car, and it's high in the mountains. And when I get in the car, I have a prayer, and then I start to conjure up the spirit of every human being I have ever known who has gone to spirit, starting with my parents, and my brother, and my aunts, and my uncles, and my grandparents, and then all the people I've ever known, including Senator Joseph McCarthy-- 44 uncles and aunts, including Roy Cohn, my countless cousins, and then all the friends and people I've known in my life who have gone to spirit. Job told me this story in his house. He told me the same story in his car. And I take a quiet moment and I say to each one, good morning, I love you, and you're not forgotten. I've never told this story to anybody before. Scott, this is amazing that I've shared this with you. It's a very private thing. But I want to state that, when I think of all the people, that means all the people I ever knew, the saints and the sinners, and sometimes especially the sinners. Reporter Scott Carrier lives in Salt Lake City. Act Two, God of War. This is the story about somebody who, like Job Matusow, had power over people's lives, thanks to a convergence of historical forces. But unlike Job Matusow, this man made a decision about what he thought about his role in history, at the time that it all happened. And he hasn't wavered much about it since. It has taken a kind of toll on him, though. Jeffrey Harris served as a kind of psychologist for the Army during the Vietnam War, even though he had no graduate degree in psychology. It was his job to decide who could go home and who had to stay at the front. In other words, who might die and who might have a chance at living. He only had one year of grad school. His tour of duty began at Chu Lai. It's right on the South China Sea. We had a beach right there. So we were kind of on the beach, and fairly far away from the perimeter. It's fairly safe. We'd get rockets in periodically that'd make you run for cover, but anything that hit over where we were was going to be stray because they'd generally aim their rockets at the airfield. I told my wife, I'm going to go over there and I'm going to stay as safe as possible and try to make it through the year and come back. That's what I want to do. That all changed after I got there. I mean, first place you start seeing people coming in out of the field, and it's hard not to identify with the war in some sense. So what do you mean, identify with the war? Well, there's a certain excitement to it. And if you're back in the rear, back someplace going through somewhat meaningless kind of procedures, you know, just practicing rote, over and over and over again, field training exercises, war games, and all the other stuff that you do, you know, inspection, shining your boots, marching, then the things that are going on are going on out there. I'll give you an example. The commanding officer of that company decided that he was going to beautify the place. He was going to plant palm trees and put in sidewalks. You know, you've got to get out there and do this. Many soldiers volunteer. If they're in a safe place, it's not uncommon to volunteer to out where the action is, to get away from the bull [BLEEP] at the rear. The captain invites me into his little office and he says, we have a situation and we need a volunteer. You know, we considered the other social work specialists around here, but we figure you're the most qualified, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I said, what the hell are you asking me to volunteer for? Now, remember, I'm in Chu Lai, out on the beach. We'd go down there and drink beer and swim, the other kinds of things you do in Vietnam, sit there and smoke a joint and watch the moon rise. It's kind of a nice place. And I said, what are you asking me to volunteer for? And he says, well, the 196th Infantry Brigade is going away. And it was at that time-- I don't know whether you remember-- but it was when the siege on Hue was taking place. This was right after the Tet Offensive. In fact, it's the setting for Full Metal Jacket. He says, 196th is going away, and we'd like you to go with them. And my stomach just went [MAKES PLOPPING SOUND]. And I'm sitting there looking at this guy. And so what I finally did, I got to use the-- Actually, the thing that ended up getting me out in the field was I couldn't pass up a good one liner. I turned to him and I said, yeah, I've been wanting to get out of this chicken [BLEEP] anyway. And I couldn't pass up the one-liner. You know, it was one of those mixed feelings. Did I want to go through this whole situation and someday my grandkids come out and say, grandpa, were you in the war? Yeah. What did you do? Planted palm trees. Furthermore, they were right. I mean, when he said, you're the most qualified, he was right. I conceivably was-- well, I was. I was the most qualified there, and I knew that. Even though I didn't know what the hell I was doing, I knew none of us did. So I went. I am out with a medical unit. And we have our own little kind of a hospital to handle incoming casualties, which could either be some sort of physical casualty or psychiatric casualty. And I have to give you an idea of what our hospital looked like. The hospital that we'd worked in was built out of ammo boxes that were filled with sand-- that was the walls-- and a plywood kind of a roof over this thing. That was basically it. Plywood floor. What the equivalent of a bed was a stretcher. What you had was like saw horses set up, and the casualties would come in on stretchers and you'd lay the stretchers over the saw horses. That's essentially what the hospital looked like. And I am the only-- what would you call it? I'm the only thing close to a psychologist they've got, even though I'm only an enlisted man. And it was frightening for me. It was very scary for me. They're going to tell me, this individual is yours, and you've got to deal with it, when my background was essentially running rats around mazes. And what in the hell am I doing here? And often, when we get casualties, one out of four would be psychiatric. So I was dealing one out of-- 25% often would be-- And they'd say, Harris, he's yours. Take what used to be called combat fatigue. That term was not used in Vietnam. It has been used previously. Shell-shocked is another term. It's the notion of somebody situationally that has reacted to a very high-stress situation, and in some sense or another, broken down. That was a common sort of thing that I had to deal with. You weren't looking at psychotic behavior. You weren't looking at somebody that was having delusions or hallucinations. You were looking at someone that's basically in sort of a major panic attack. Sometimes it was. You'd see panic attacks. But kind of a breakdown and a return to sort of a childishness, help me, help me. I can't handle myself. I can't handle this. I'm weak. And crying, crying to become-- How can I put it? Somebody to help them, somebody to save them. And given the situations that they were in, it's quite understandable. They might have been walking along and all of a sudden, their whole unit's gone and they're there. They wanted me to state that they were psychiatrically, in some constitutional way, unable to go back into that kind of situation, that they had to be removed from the danger because there was something wrong with them. They're saying that they can't do it. They may not be saying that explicitly, but the body language and the language and everything implied that. And furthermore, quite often it was quite explicit. I can't go back out there. I can't do it. I'll break down. I'll die. I'm unable to do this. I'm not strong enough. I mean, you can play with the theory theoretically yourself. What happens to somebody when you turn to them, and they say, I'm too weak, I can't handle this kind of situation. Other people can handle stress, other people can handle danger, I can't. And I turn to them and I agree, and I say, that's right, that's the kind of person you are. So I didn't say that. I placed the responsibility back on them, that they've got to make a choice, that I am not going to tell them that they're too weak, or that they're too incapable of handling stress, that there's something constitutionally or genetically or whatever the hell it is wrong with them that makes them different from other people. And also that the reaction is a human reaction, and conceivably it could happen to anybody, any of us. And my rule was basically none of us go home unless we all go home. And so, for the combat fatigue or acute situational reaction, the response was that, you are going back to your unit. I'm not going to take you out. I'm not going to give you a diagnosis and tell you-- I'm not going to send you back to a hospital on the basis that there's something psychologically wrong with you. And it's a simple philosophy. If you fall of the horse, you get back on. You go back into the situation and you deal with. Now, the individual, they'll say, I can't. I'll say, well, you've got a choice. You can go back to your unit commander and refuse. Well, they'll throw me in the stockade. I say, that's a possibility. Another possibility is that they'll send you back to the rear and have you folding blankets in some supply room. I don't know what they'll do. But I'm not going to make the decision. You've got to make a decision. Do I sound like it was not difficult for me? Quite often, I could've pulled people back, sent them back to the rear. I could have done a number of things. I had the power to do that, even though I was only an enlisted man. I was the only one they had. And I had that kind of power, and it was very frightening for me. It was something that I had never planned on. I had never taken that kind of responsibility in my life, and had never planned on taking it. And there is sense in which you do become inert. You're able to look at something and say, oh, there it is. You look at something gruesome. That was a common expression in Vietnam-- There it is. You walk up on somebody and he's got his head blown off and his guts are all over, and people look at it and say, there it is, and walk on. How else do you deal with sort of thing? What do you say? You say, there it is. So you do develop a defense, which for me was kind of frightening after I realized I had it. After I came back from Vietnam, that was part of a change that had occurred to me that I was not sure that I wanted to maintain, was this being able to emotionally distance myself from pain, from somebody else's pain. At the same time, I don't want to give it up. Dr. Jeffrey Harris is now a psychologist practicing in Salt Lake City. He spoke with Scott Carrier. Well, our program produced today by Alix Spiegel and myself, with Nancy Updike and Julie Snyder. Senior editor Paul Tough. Contributing editors, Jack Hitt, Margy Rochlin, and consigliere Sarah Vowell. Production help from Rachel Day and [? Suyuni ?] Davenport. "That's The Way It Is" was played on acoustic guitar for us by Michael Kirkpatrick. If you want to buy a cassette of this program, call us here at the WBEZ in Chicago. The phone number, 312-832-3380. Our email address, [email protected] This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia, who also describes himself as-- The person who started the myth about getting high off smoking banana peels. I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life. PRI, Public Radio International.
|
Not long ago I went to see this movie called Fast, Cheap & Out of Control. Hadn't read any reviews, hadn't seen any ads for it. Didn't know anything about it, really. Except that it was by Errol Morris, a documentary filmmaker whose work I like. And that friends of mine enjoyed it. And it was great. It had funny moments and reflective moments and interesting characters. Totally satisfying, soulful film. And after the movie I'm walking through the theater lobby and I see the poster for the movie, which I somehow missed on my way in. It was a bright, unnatural yellow. The main characters from the film are photographed with this fish eye lens so their heads are huge and their bodies are tiny. And there, in big print, the poster says these words, "The bizarre at its best." And I realized what was going on. Someone, somewhere thought that this film was wacky. Or they thought they could sell it as wacky. Which, if you see the film, is astounding. It's a great film but it's not wacky. There's a whole section of the film about death, a meditation on death. It's not wacky. Tom Bernard is one of the co-presidents of Sony Picture Classics. He saw what a great film Fast, Cheap & Out of Control was and bought the distribution rights from Errol Morris in a bathroom, at the Sundance film festival. It was, he says, the only quiet place to get anything done without competitors overhearing. And he says they market the film as wacky for a simple reason. Wacky sells. Market a film as wacky and people come to see it. Well, I mean, to me one of the ultimate wacky sells on a movie was Brazil. And what was the sell? I don't even remember that. What was the ad campaign? It was just a bizarre campaign with sort of South American lettering style, you know? Right. It had Brazil and a lot of wacky lines and colors. We had a movie, Crumb, which was a very, very moving film but to talk about R. Crumb, the guy's a wacky guy. Even In the Company of Men was a very dark comedy and wacky to some extent. That's a movie we released and I think the campaign is a bit strange, a bit wacky. I don't know if you've seen any of these films, but they are-- every single one of them-- they are very dark films. These are bleak films, really. I suggested to Mr. Bernard that wacky seems to miss a lot of what these films are about. He said, no no no no. Look at the four characters in Fast, Cheap & Out of Control. Two of them are scientists. One's an expert on robots. One, the world's leading authority on naked mole rats. There's a lion tamer. There's a guy who carves trees and bushes into the shapes of animals. And, said Mr. Bernard, that is, by most people's objective standards, actually kind of wacky. The film is a very strange film. The people are very strange. I think, in word of mouth, people would talk about it and they'd say, look at these crazy guys, let's go see what they're up to. You know what I realized, as we talk, is that I guess I just don't think of people as wacky. I guess some people just think of people as wacky and some don't. I mean, when I think of all the people in this Errol Morris film, or I think of R. Crumb, I think of them as being people who are fundamentally very, very serious. Do you see them as crazy guys? Or eccentric guys? Or wacky guys? I think they're very eccentric and very wacky. And I think that if you know people in your world that you consider genius, and I think these guys are all geniuses at what they do, they sort of have a view that is so focused and so-- would people call Albert Einstein eccentric? With all respect to Mr. Bernard, who, as far as I'm concerned is doing God's work, distributing these unusual, interesting, amazing films, with all respect I have a different point of view about this. Wacky to me seems to miss the point of everything interesting. Wacky eradicates empathy and thoughtfulness and feeling. Wacky is what people say when they're too polite to say freak. Wacky is what people say when they don't want to feel anything or think anything. Wacky is what people say when they don't know what else to say. When you call somebody wacky you're ignoring who they are and painting a big smiley face on top of their real face. I didn't used to have an opinion about wackiness, one way or another. But after I saw Fast, Cheap & Out of Control I did. And that opinion is death to wacky. Death to wacky. And then we started putting this week's program together, this week's radio program. And everything I thought about wacky got thrown up in the air again. Well, from WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International it's This American Life, I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program, 13 ways of looking at wacky. Act One, Negative. Writer David Sedaris faces a sheet of glass, a glass of milk, a floor of carpet tacks, and a photographer with big, big ideas. Act Two, The Good, the Bad, and the Wacky. We squint our eyes and try to distinguish good kitsch from bad kitsch, good wacky from bad wacky. Act Three, The Politics of Wacky. A conversation with Michael Lewis about republicans, the press, and, of course, wackiness. Acts Four through Ten, well, you'll see about those. Act Eleven, Self-Proclaimed Wacky. We find someone who is not called wacky by marketers or promoters, she calls herself wacky. Act Twelve, Sidestepping Wackiness and Seriousness and Embracing Both. Act Thirteen, Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Wacky. That story from our own Sarah Vowel. Stay with us. Act one, "Negative." David Sedaris is a regular contributor here on This American Life. A Morning Edition commentator. Author of the books Naked and Barrel Fever. His stories are the sort of complicated mix of seriousness and funny that is easy to love but comes nowhere near, I have to say, nowhere near to wacky. What follows is a set of true stories plus a fictional story inspired by the true ones. I wore my new tie to this afternoon's photo shoot. It was an extravagant purchase but I justified it thinking of all the money I would have spent on ties if I'd had a real job. I thought the magazine would want a picture of me standing with my book, so I packed a copy along with an extra shirt in case they had something against white. I arrived in the studio where the photographer said, "I'm not loving that tie much at all." He didn't care for the shirt, either and called out to his assistant, "Brian, hey Brian, do we still have that t-shirt from last week?" The t-shirt was produced and I explained that I'm incapable of wearing anything with words on it, especially the words "Deliveries in Rear." "You are gay, aren't you?" the photographer asked. "It says right here in your press kit. Have I got the wrong person?" When it came to wearing that t-shirt he most definitely had the wrong person. "Well, maybe you can turn it inside out," he said. "We won't be seeing much of it anyway since I'd like to get you crouched down on your hands and knees. Seeing as you're an author and all, I thought it might be fun if we shot you cleaning the bathroom floor, the black and white tiles are going to look great. So what do you say you change out of that shirt and we get started?" Then he called for his assistant to fill up a bucket of sudsy water, adding that the bubbles on top should be as fat as possible. As a professional photographer, I have to say that my two greatest assets are my tenacity and my sense of humor. These are the tools I use on a daily basis because it's not just knowing how to operate a camera, it's also knowing how to get into a person's head, really camp out for a while. I'm not saying this right. So let me give you a little example. After she won the Pulitzer Prize, everyone thought of Bobby Fingerton as some sort of a genius. Which is fine, but you could tell she'd really let it go to her head. It wasn't physically huge, not like a medicine ball, but you could see that she had this, um, this, uh, false idea of her own value or whatever. This is something a person like me can spot right off the bat. It's a gift I have. Just like my sense of humor and my tenacity. I'd seen her picture in a few of the weeklies and she was always, um, and she was always enthroned, you know what I mean? Just sitting there, propped up against the sofa cushions with a quill in her hands. Terrible pictures. They put you right to sleep but that's how it is when the photographer caves in to someone who's clinging to this very, very antique-y, destructive sense of dignity. She clearly likes to play the grand duchess, but me? I'm looking for something wacky. Something nutty that will jump off the page saying, hey, is this person crazy or what? I mean, people like that. It's a kick. It's easy when you're taking a picture of an actor because they'll just do anything for attention. I'm like, excuse me Mr. Cutahey but do you think you could maybe dip your head into this cauldron of steaming cocoa? And before I can tell him we need to wait a while and let it cool down, I look up and guy's already done it. I mean, there he is, his skin peeling off in sheets and he's there asking if he should do it again because that's the way actors are. They're not calling out the hounds or blubbering to their publicists, because they know how to cooperate and have a little fun. Actors are no problem, whatsoever. But get yourself a politician or anyone owning a typewriter and you're in for a first class headache because these people have egos like you wouldn't believe. And you can quote me on that. Can we get another round here? Yeah, thank you. You're a lovely individual. I told myself I'd try to be more aggressive and stand up to these photographers, but so far it isn't working. I'd like to ask if they've read or even seen my new book, but the question sounds snotty. I understand that they're busy people, I'd just like to know why they think I should be pictured drinking tea with a stuffed squirrel, or cradling an oversized can of fruit cocktail. I've never written about either of those things. My theory is that if you're good looking, they'll dress you up in embarrassingly trendy clothes but at least allow you stand upright. If you happen to be on the plain side they'll come up with a gimmick designed to make you look even worse than you already do. To complain is to insist against all reason that you're good looking, and that's even more embarrassing than going along with the humiliating little scenarios these people always seem so proud of. Today's photographer studied me for a few moments before asking if I'd brought another change of clothes. With the help of his assistant he then proceeded to clamp a large sheet of glass to a standing metal frame. Once the window was securely in place, he asked his assistant for a carton of milk. Then he looked at me, took a sip of the milk, and spat it out onto the glass. "What I want you do," he said, "is to press your face again that milk stain. Really smash it up against there as hard as you can." When I hesitated he said, "Don't worry, the glass isn't going to fall. We've made sure of that." In his mind, this was my only concern. That the glass might break. So a servant leads me into the house and I walk into this paneled office where Bobby Fingerton raised her fat head and lowers those little half glasses people wear when they want to look smart or something. Now, I don't know what she's thinking, but I'm wondering, how can we turn this thing around and have a little fun with it? Because, hey, I'm a professional too. I deserve a little respect. But when I very playfully suggested it might be funny shoot her dressed as Aunt Jemima, I swear to God, the woman bit my head right off my shoulders. Not literally, but, you know, as a figure of speech. And I'm a smart person so when she refused the Aunt Jemima bit I figured she had some sort of a weight issue, which, OK, I'm as sensitive as the next guy. I can deal with that. So I said, all right, what if we shoot you as Prissy from Gone With the Wind or maybe, I don't know, Moms Mabley, she was thin. I was trying to work with her. Maybe, you know, have some laughs but she automatically assumed this, this expression. I don't know what else to call it. She looked like she was sucking on a handful of change. Just horrible. Hateful face and for no reason whatsoever. But me, see, I've been at this a long time and I knew there was no way I was going to back off, not on this one. Because if nothing else this business has taught me how to read people. Not their books or whatever. But their inner, inner stuff. You know what I mean? All the psychological crap that makes them tick or whatever. So when Bobby Fingerton refused to dress like Aunt Jemima or Moms Mabely I suddenly got the message. That underneath all the praise, all the hoopla, she was ashamed of being black. And it was like, like a light went on in my head. It was like, bingo. I always thought there was nothing worse than a tech rehearsal but that was before I met today's photographer. Because we're busy trying to open this play, I asked if he would mind coming to the theater. He set up his lights in the basement and greeted me saying, "You're a smoker aren't you? Do I have the right person?" I said, "Yes. I smoke." And he handed me a package of novelty cigarettes designed to look as though they were lit. "I want you to put these in your mouth," he said. "Not the individual cigarettes, but the whole package." There were maybe three cigarettes altogether but what with the cardboard backing and the plastic cover, the package was the size of one of those soap carriers children sometimes take to camp. It was a tight and nasty tasting fit, but whenever you complain the photographers act like you're ruining not just their day but their entire life. This is their livelihood and here you are, spoiling it with your vanity. The underlying message is that they're doing you a favor. Here you'll be in a magazine, people will read about you and maybe buy the book, shouldn't you be grateful? I thought of the people who might buy the book based on this picture, and then I withdrew the package from my mouth saying that it felt silly to me. I thought I explained myself fairly well. The photographer crossed his arms and nodded in all the right places before saying, "What if we get you lying on the ground with an extension cord in your mouth? That might be fun. What do you say?" So Bobby Fingerton gave me three options. She said I could either photograph her standing beside the window, seated at what I thought was a very pretentious desk made from the hatch of an old slave ship, or else I could leave. I mean, can you beat that? She's telling me what to do. Now, I wasn't about to lower myself to her level so I let her think that oh, she'd really busted my balls. Like, oh, I'm really hurting now. And I said, very formal like, I said, "All right then Ms. Fingerton, let's try you standing by the window." So she takes her post and I knocked off maybe two or three rolls. And then I had my assistant sneak outside and toss an M80 into her window box just to see what would happen. Talk about that a good hunch. What with the noise of the shattered glass her eyes, I swear on my mother's grave, the size of [LAUGHTER] coasters, and her mouth closed up into this perfect little circle that was just, that was just-- I mean, the word priceless doesn't even begin to do it justice. It was one of those moments when you know for certain that there is indeed a God and he's actually playing on your team. No questions asked. So, I got the whole thing on film, which was just an absolute gas. I still-- just last night I looked at it and gave myself a stomach ache I was laughing so hard. After the shot I took the best picture back to the studio and-- we have computers and so forth. So what I did was darken her skin a little and erase the view from her window. There's some flowering trees or whatever, but I blotted them out and replaced them with this field of watermelons that just stretched on and on forever. Because the whole thing just screamed Mammy. But in a good way, because-- I don't know when the last time you saw that movie, but Mammy was actually a very nurturing person. The shot was-- I don't mean to brag or anything-- but it was pretty amazing in terms of being out there, approaching that line between funny and maybe too funny for certain kinds of people. The magazine decided to put it on the cover and once it came out the Fingerton crowed went absolutely bananas. I mean, her majesty wrote me a five page hate letter just teaming with spelling errors. If she wants to continue publishing these books of hers, she really needs to lighten up and have some fun. To see her take this too seriously would actually cause me pain. You know what I mean? Stuff like this just tears me up. I swear it does. David Sedaris read from his diaries. [? Toby Warey ?] played the photographer. Amy Sedaris played the woman silently listening at the bar. Act Two, The Good, the Bad and the Wacky. Wacky sells and wacky is being sold to us. From the new Carrot Top movie to reissues of 1950s lounge music to Nick at Night, souvenir lunch boxes from old TV shows, and lava lamps, and anything at all having to do with The Brady Bunch, there is a mass merchandising of pre-digestive kitsch in our American culture right now. And is that always a bad thing? Is it always somebody's cynical marketing idea? Is there good wackiness out there? I mean, there are things that are wacky. I do believe in the concept of wacky but I agree with you that it's being misused horribly. Josh Glenn is editor of Hermenaut, a magazine that analyzes pop culture in all sorts of ways. And we asked him for guidance in distinguishing in the flood of wacky that surrounds us, between good wacky and bad wacky. Glenn says if we want to understand this we have to begin with the way that things are made, the intent behind them. Some products and films and books which end up classified as wacky are things that were created without any kind of wacky intent. Objects in films and songs that were created in pure earnestness, meant to be taken seriously. And then, at the other end of the scale, there are things that are created from the outset with the intention of being wacky. The daffy, the zany. Like Bugs Bunny cartoons, Jim Carrey movies, Adam Sandler. Stuff that, you know, it was created wackily and it's meant to be received wackily. I don't have a problem with that. You don't have a problem with that? No. I mean, I like Adam Sandler movies a lot. I hate Jim Carrey, but Adam Sandler is great. That's wackiness done really well. Three Stooges I used to watch a lot when I was a kid. Vaudeville stuff, that's wacky. It's interesting because I never thought about it this way before, but there simply is wacky which is done better and wacky which is done worse. Yeah. Yeah. Now, here's the thing. And here's where I think the out of whack is confused with the wacky in our culture, if you will. The way these cultural products are created and the way they are received obviously don't always line up just right. Something that was created with a great deal of earnestness might completely fail at what it was trying to do. Let's take an example. If you think of, like, Ed Wood movies as a classic example. He wasn't joking when he made Plan 9 From Outer Space He was trying to make a science fiction movie. He thought it was a good movie. I'm not saying that he was in earnest in the sense that he was trying to uplift us or anything, he was just trying to entertain us. But it was a very in earnest attempt to make a good science fiction movie. He failed completely because he's a terrible director. However, he had a really original vision and he wasn't being wacky. he wasn't just trying to make us split our sides at watching his movies. Like Jim Carrey's movies. Everything that's out of whack is not wacky. If you see what I'm saying. So when I go into a video store and I see an Ed Wood movie and it's package wackily and they talk about the wacky vision of Ed Wood on the back cover, that's aggravating. And Plan 9 From Outer Space is just wacky. and if you rent it all, which you probably wouldn't, you'd rent it when you feel like laughing at something. Having a sort of hipper than thou evening, I guess. It's great that they found some way to sell them, get them in the stores. You know, whatever. I'm happy to rent a movie that's package is wacky if that's what it takes to get it in the store. However, I think you could also talk about the wackification of American culture, where we are really not allowed to see anything that's between earnest and silly. When, of course, you can look at all kinds of cultural products that were meant to be taken very seriously and find them funny. Yet, at the same time, have a lot of respect for them or find them beautiful or find them moving. There's all kinds of more emotionally engaged ways you can deal with failed seriousness. Like for example you, what would be something like that? For me, like ABBA for instance. ABBA is an example of failed seriousness. Their music is not intended to be funny. It's extremely overly passionate, overly dripping with emotion and sentimentality in a way that we find hilarious now. Yet, at the same time, they meant it. And if can sort of engage with what they were trying to do, you can both laugh in it, and be very moved by it. And that's your relation to it. That's what you feel about ABBA. Josh Glenn. His essay in the latest issue of Hermenaut distinguishes between two reactions to wackiness or kitsch. Those two reactions, camp, a kind of loving, emotionally engaged response, and cheese, which sneers at it. Act Three, The Politics of Wackiness. Some of the most interesting reporting in the 1996 presidential election was by Michael Lewis, who published his campaign diaries in the New Republic magazine and then wrote a book, Trail Fever, from those diaries. Before that he wrote a book called Liar's Poker about his years working on Wall Street. On the campaign trail he noticed that the candidates who tended to have any original ideas at all, the candidates who were the most interesting, were usually pegged by the media as being, guess, wacky. I think that it's not just in politics but also in big business. I think you find that anybody who's got the ring of authenticity, anybody who behaves the way real human beings behave in a context where powerful men are engaged in their epic struggle for power, gets tagged with being wacky, or being offbeat or oddball. I mean, there's nothing more alarming or dissonant in national politics than a politician that tells the truth and talks like a ordinary human being talks. As opposed to the way a national politician talks. So let me ask you to give an example of a candidate like this. Probably the best example is Morry Taylor. He was this guy who'd come out of the midwest who ran a, what? A billion and a half dollar company and whose workers adored him and who was qualified in every way really to be talking about some of the big problems that faced the country. But because he was funny and because he didn't take himself or the process all too seriously, he got tagged as being kind of odd and offbeat and not serious. He talked-- he was the only guy I met on the whole campaign trail who was running for office who talked to me the way normal people talk. And who made sense to me in some ways. And yet, precisely for that reason, he was marginalized. And considered wacky, considered not to be a serious contender, not to be the sort of person who could get elected president. And he had serious ideas as well, right? Oh, very serious ideas. In fact, when you took his ideas, when you stripped them away from the man and you just pulled the ideas, he routinely beat Clinton and Dole. I mean, people would say, we want that platform as opposed to the Clinton platform or the Dole platform. His platform was perfectly respectable. It was that it was being presented-- the problem wasn't the message, it was the messenger. That the messenger was a real person. And that was not, that's not what you do in politics. You're not allowed to be funny. You're not allowed to be funny, I'll put in another way, you're not allowed to be funny when you're also serious at the same time. The jokes have a certain place. But funny serious doesn't really work. Like, what's the place of the jokes? A joke is, in politics, something you tell at the beginning of your serious speech and everybody knows it's the joke because it's the beginning of the speech and it's the one about the three farmers in Iowa. It's not actually funny. It's a ritual joke. But to be actually funny, that's dangerous. To use humor as a way of conveying ideas, that's not so good. It makes people nervous. I remember one of the most memorable scenes in Trail Fever, when you were out there, is that you had heard about Alan Keyes, Republican candidate, very serious guy. And you'd heard about him and you were anticipating he was going to be completely wacky, from what you had heard. Wacky is putting it kindly. I thought he was possibly insane. All you heard about this guy was there's this crazy black man running for the Republican nomination. And nobody takes him seriously. But when you actually got out there with him-- Then you actually went and saw one of his speeches. And it was the most extraordinary thing. I mean, he was in the middle of the dead of a winner, in the middle of a snowstorm, in the middle of Iowa. 500 farmers turn out hear Alan Keyes say what he has to say. And it turns out that he's speaking very sincerely to what people want to hear. He had a single message. And the message was, look America, all you want to talk about is money and money problems, the deficit, taxes, so on and so forth. But the real problems in this country are moral problems, not money problems. He was genuinely a moralist. And the way he presented his views was pulpit thumping. I mean, he would burn the paint off the walls when he talked. It was the most extraordinary display of oratorical skill. But even that, in fact, doesn't really have its place in presidential politics anymore because it's extreme, it's entertaining. That's not what you do. I mean, the phoniest candidates in some ways were taken the most serious simply because they were phony. Lamar Alexander was taken seriously for no reason other than he was a great phony and people assume that great phonies succeed in that process. Anybody who was authentic, or had any kind of integrity started with one strike against them because people just assumed, or reporters just assumed, that this character isn't suited for the process. It's interesting because the same thing-- I'm just thinking about what you're saying about how serious and funny aren't allowed to coexist in the same person. In the news itself, in a certain way, like in the way the news media covers things, series and funny are segregated usually. In mainstream news, think about the network news. Oh yes. The anchors, if you really look at them, they will tell you, oh, now we-- every now and then they might do something that's a joke, and they tell the joke about the spaghetti harvest in Italy where people are actually getting spaghetti off of trees, or whatever it is they're doing, some joke story. But it's a joke story. If you're doing a serious story, humor is never allowed to creep into it. You ask why that is. I mean, it's a great question why that is. I think it's because the people who are in the seriousness business, big businessmen, national politicians, national news reporters, one of their great fears is to be taken unseriously. That they're seriousness what they're selling. And they can never let that guard down, because if they let it down then all of a sudden they open themselves to a different kind of criticism. Oh, he's not a serious person. Do you think we actually pay a political price as a nation for this kind of segregation that we do between seriousness on the one hand and wackiness on the other? That is, everybody gets classified or seems to get classified in political life-- you're either one or the other and there's very little middle ground. You're either the super serious candidate, a little pompous, or you're just discarded as the kind of wacky goofball. Including people who are very serious like Pat Buchanan. It's very clear that the price you pay is you don't get a very honest public debate. There are lots of things you can't say just because it doesn't sound right. And sounding right is all important. And sounding right means being serious all the time. The second price you pay, and it's hard to measure, is that no one is interested. It doesn't ring true the way issues are discussed. It does seem like people just posturing. And the reason it seems that way is because that's what they're doing. Michael Lewis. Author of the book Trail Fever. Coming up, what the truly wacky do with the nation's leading business newspaper. How Peter Jennings can help you evade wackiness and seriousness. And Sarah Vowel, A Streetcar Named Desire, and William Shatner together in the same story. That's in a minute. From Public Radio International when our program continues. It's This American Life, I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our show, of course, we choose a theme, bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's program, Death to Wacky. Or, rather, 13 ways to describe wacky. And in our irrepressible, madcap style, we've now skipped to Act Eleven. This program goes to 11. Self-Made Wacky. Not all wackiness is, of course, created by marketers and merchandisers. No, no, no, no, no. It occurs in nature. Some people simply see themselves as wacky. Take this personals ad from the Chicago Reader. "Joining the firm. Fun, sensual, buxom, brilliant blond SWF seeks never married SWM, 34-41, exercise partner who also has adipose tissue to melt and would enjoy burning calories, regaining fitness, with wacky, warm, enthusiastic partner. A definite physical fitness relationship. Maybe more? Sincere replies only." So we gave her a call. I think maybe I'm just a little bit unconventional. My friends do call me wacky. I mean, they think I'm pretty open-minded and just a very spontaneous kind of person. And I think that's what they really consider wacky to be. And maybe also just the different things that I'm involved with, like, perhaps, I know how to speak six foreign languages. Wow. So, you know, I'll start with a language, or I'll be listening to somebody with a conversation, and then I'll just kind of like, slide right in, not even knowing the people. And they think it's very, they think it's kind of a wacky kind of a thing to do. And maybe sometimes, not all the time, in college once I pretended to be a foreign exchange student. And different maybe parties I've thrown in the past. Like, you know, bring your favorite wig or Wall Street Journal party. Some kind of-- Bring your favorite wig or Wall Street Journal. That the choice? A wig or the Wall Street Journal? No, no, no, no. Bring your favorite wig party or a Wall Street Journal party or something like that. What happens at a Wall Street Journal party? You have everybody bring the Wall Street Journal, the Wall Street Journals, and you put them all over the floor and the walls and everything. It's just, you know, one of the Wall Street Journal parties, that's all. And then what happens? And that's it. That's all. Just something fun and maybe out of the ordinary instead of, you know, just having a regular party, just tell everybody, bring a copy of the Wall Street Journal and you have a Wall Street Journal party. And then you just tape it up to the walls-- Yeah, tape it up to the the walls or around the floor. And you put it on the floor-- Whatever. You know, that's it. What happens after a few hours at a Wall Street Journal party? Do people talk about the Wall Street Journal? Yeah, they'll talk about what they've read or what's been happening. They'll give different critiques and different things and the current events that have been happening or something like that. You know, I've got to say, you know, that is wacky. Yeah. You know there's a kind of person who likes being called wacky and a kind of person who doesn't. It seems like you're pretty comfortable with it. Yeah. It doesn't bother me. I don't take it as a negative thing and I don't take it as a positive thing. I think it's just an observation. And do you think it's wackiness when people call you back for the personalize ads? Hm-mmm. One of the things that we've been told by marketing people in this week's show is that wacky sells. Yeah, wacky sells, right. And are you finding that's true with you? I think that wacky does sell. I think that wacky sells because people are so afraid to be wacky and so they want to tap into that thing that makes them curious about what wacky is all about. And that wacky people do things that unwacky people are too frightened or too conservative to do. So how many responses have you gotten to your ad? I have gotten probably about 30 responses, which I think is pretty good. And of those have any of them mentioned the wackiness? Some have mentioned the wackiness, yes. They have? Hm-mmm. Because I guess I was wondering if you think that it's wacky that's selling, or if you think it's more like, you know, fun, sensual, buxom, brilliant blond. Oh, come on. What do you think? I think the wacky puts them at ease. My intention with wacky is, number one, it was very-- it's an honest description. And number two, I think it kind of puts people at ease, too, to not think that I'm some kind of fashion model or some very serious person that only perfect GQ men must apply to my ad and I won't consider anybody else. Right. Sensual, buxom, brilliant blonde might be a little intimidating. Right. Exactly. So you know, wacky and warm is part of my package too. And it's selling. Yeah. Exactly. Maria. And advertiser in the Chicago Reader. Act Twelve, Evading Wacky and Serious. As we've said in this show, if you're in certain kinds of jobs, business, politics, the news, there are lots of jobs actually, and you're funny, you're encouraged to either suppress that side of yourself or simply become the wacky guy. You can either be Edward R. Murrow or Andy Rooney. And of course nobody is going to send Andy Rooney to cover the Oklahoma City bombing or something serious. But in that landscape there are all sorts of people who avoid being pushed into either box, people whose work has serious intent and humor and lots else besides. Robert Krulwich is somebody like that. His news stories on NPR, and CBS, and ABC are surprising and like no one else's. I still remember today a fake opera called Grosso Interesa that he must have staged-- it must have been 15 years ago on NPR'S All Things Considered using the voice of the chairman of the federal reserve laced into actual operatic music to explain and analyze Reaganomics. Krulwich says the thing about trying to occupy this territory that is neither super serious nor wacky, this middle territory, is that sometimes people simply do not know what to make of it. And you stumble into all these unexpected responses. For example, one time on the Peter Jennings program on ABC News I decided and he decided, he agreed, we'd do a series during one of the Olympics seasons, we'd do a series in which I created something called the Insect Olympics. Where I chose I think five insects who could outperform the human champion by a multiple of at least 20, as I recall. And it was done with pure joy and we took it very seriously. So we were very careful to select the strongest or the fastest or the best in whatever category it was insect and then choose the equivalent human being. So what happened the first night of this series is I had chosen speed, there was going to be a sprint. And the fastest sprinter in the world was an American, a black American. And the fastest insect in the world-- and we had a real runoff here between the entomology departments at Cornell, University Illinois, and I think the winner was out on the west coast, between two different insects, but the one that one was the cockroach. Cockroaches go incredibly fast. We set up this elaborate system where we had a treadmill, and there was this cockroach going an incredibly fast speed, jumping over little-- it was wonderful to see. And, by the way, when cockroaches go really fast, they go up on their back legs, their front legs are up in the air so they're bipedal, just like we are. So there's even like an equivalency. Anyway, I was totally enraptured by this thing. I thought it had great teacherlyness, it had great humor, it had great wisdom, and all the things you flatter yourself about. We put it on television and the lights on the switchboard started lighting up almost immediately on Peter's desk, at my desk, in my office, and all over the newsroom. Black Americans all over the country look at this thing, and they're thinking we have this champion human being, who happens to be our race, and this [BLEEP] on television goes up and compares us to vermin. That's how they see the cockroach. Of course, if you think about it, of course cockroaches have a very bad reputation. But I'd gotten so into the insect world I'd lost the sense that cockroaches are bad news, or have a bad reputation. So I'm picking up the phone and one person after another is accusing me. And here you are in the joy of the moment. You've created this thing that you're so proud of. And then you're so ashamed by the second call. So ashamed. And it was awful. Then Peter Jennings did this amazing thing, I thought, which gives you a sense of how subtle television can get when it wants to. He said, well, what's on tomorrow night? I was worried he was going to say, let's chuck the whole thing I can't take the heat. But instead he said, what's on tomorrow night? I said, well, we have a rhinoceros beetle who is going to outperform a Chinese weight lifter. He says, OK. Then he says to me, I'm going to really like tomorrow's piece. Then he walks away. I have no idea what that means. Really like? He kind of liked this one. So I tune on the TV the next night and he's sitting there and he says-- first, when it comes to the end of the show, and this is going be the piece, he lights up, his face just turns like all happy. And he says and now something really special. A lot of you called yesterday, we share your fascination-- I mean, I was just thinking-- with the human relations between the species and blah blah blah. And then he says, like almost licking his lips, now let's watch this. It had the effect of somebody stepping up at their own dinner table and saying, I cooked this meatloaf, let's taste this. I mean, it would have been very bad manners at that moment not to like what followed. But after it was over he did a non-verbal act which was very interesting. The piece ends and he just sits there silently glowing. It's the only way I could describe it. And then he sucks in his breath and he goes on. In other news, blah blah blah. And that act by the anchor, and this has happened to me with Susan Stamberg at NPR, other anchors too who just-- If they insist that this isn't wacky. If they say, no, I'm the man in the center, I'm the center of gravity here, the center likes this, then you do. Then you do. The calls went 180 degrees the other direction. Wonderful, marvelous. And I have to assign it, I think, mostly not to the substance of the two pieces but to Peter's display. Robert Krulwich is a correspondent for ABC News. He is currently working on a serious history of the United States told from the point of view of Barbie. Act Thirteen, Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Wacky. Now with this examination of the split in our culture that creates wacky, the split that demands that things either be totally serious or totally goofy, we have this story from our contributing editor Sarah Vowel. One of the most gut wrenching half hours of public radio each week is a program produced in Chicago called Magnificent Obsession. It listens in on recovering drug and alcohol addicts telling their stories. Some are hopeful, some are funny, but many are just harrowing. The drunken mother crawling, literally crawling, out of stores with her children in tow. The teenager whose parents find her lying in her own vomit. She said, my dad said, oh we should we should clean her up. And my mom said, no, let her lie in it. Maybe she'll learn something. Well I did. I learned to try to throw up before I passed out. I decided that my husband should be dead. And I planned what I call today, the perfect murder. I've got to tell you that I was on Valiums at the time. That I was going to put the Valiums in the beer. I was going to have him drink it and I was going to cut him in little bitty pieces with a Black and Decker saw and throw Humpty Dumpty all over Illinois. I'm looking at a photograph of the producer of that program. His name is Jim Nayder. It's in People magazine. He's mugging for the camera. I have cotton in my ears and I'm just sort of making a face that, sort of nauseous look. And was it their idea to put cotton in your ears? It was my idea for the cotton, but not the nauseous look. Jim Nader is the Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Wacky of public radio. He divides his time between documenting the horror stories of addicts and spinning grand pop mistakes on his nationally syndicated three-minute-long Annoying Music Show. I heard about this show before I actually heard it. And the idea sounds awful, disingenuous. What's easier than taking potshots at the musical oeuvre of the Brady Bunch? Then I actually listened to it. It turns out that Nayder's work is not the nadir of civilization I anticipated. The show is actually pleasurable and real, partly because of Nayder's deadpan announcing. He's not a wacky guy spinning another wacky disk. He does the show straight, as if he were a classical music announcer riffing on the significance of the post neo whatchamacallit. Hi, I'm Jim Nayder and welcome to The Annoying Music Show. Often the very best annoying music is produced went two great forms of music are combined, creating music so annoying it's almost dangerous. Today we have the perfect annoying example. It's a mix of bluegrass and soul performed by the Burns Brothers. Most of my passion, I think, goes into Magnificent Obsession. The experience of Magnificent Obsession in a week to me is much more moving on a bunch of levels. Number one, someone will make contact with me to be on the show. I'll go to their office or their kitchen or they'll come to my little studio, and in the course of a couple of hours they'll have sit there and told me their deepest, darkest, funniest, most uplifting experience. And I've never met this person before. I think that's why that's more my passion. It feels more important work. Guess which show's more popular. The emotionally gruesome alcoholic adventure or Mae West singing "When a Man Loves a Woman?" Magnificent Obsession airs on 47 stations. The Annoying Music Show is on 123. On WBEZ, Nayder's home station, The Annoying Music Show is heard on Saturday afternoons by loads of listeners. Magnificent Obsession is on at 4:30 in the morning. Even Nayder sleeps through it. You might think that Nayder would be, well, annoyed by The Annoying Show's Darwinian lead considering that he says magnificent obsession is his true passion. But no matter how many times you ask him how he feels about that, his answer is that it makes sense. Which is so mature. He understands that that's the way the world works. Yeah. I don't want to over analyze it. I think people just need a good laugh. You know? I think people are desperate for a good laugh. So both shows actually are kind of a response to human pain in a way, if you describe it that way. Absolutely. Maybe this is way too obvious, but I was thinking about where your two worlds collide. The annoying music and drugs. And I was thinking, of course, it is William Shatner's "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds." You know, you've got LSD, you've got this Beatles' butchering. I mean, it's like one of those things where, you know, some people remember where they were when Kennedy was shot. I remember where I was when I heard that song the first time. I was like, you know, my world turned around. And, you know, I prefer it to the Beatles now. I mean, it is like the most joyous, most humbling, most magnificent piece of music I could imagine and I can't even imagine doing it. And it's a complete mystery to me why that is. Like, why do you think that song is so powerful? And people agree. Someone told me that when William Shatner was on Conan O'Brien the other week, that they played "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" when he came out. So it's like, oh, it's not just me. I think a lot of that is the power of Captain Kirk, William Shatner. Or even when he does, when Shatner does "Mr. Tambourine Man." You know how it goes out, where he's screaming, "Mr. Tambourine Man." And it's like, you know, Marlon Brando yelling "Stella." Which brings us to the fundamental problem of wackiness. Is it OK to like it? What if it can't be helped? Sometimes when I listen to The Annoying Music Show, a show that I really love and yet I find myself questioning that love. And I feel like the part of me that loves it is sort of dead inside. Like, there's something-- Cynical, you're cynical? Is that it? Is it, like, the guilt of irony? Do you see it as an ironic show? Yeah. And and it pains me sometimes to think that there are artists that I really like that the only chance I'll get to play their music is to highlight an annoying song. I just sort of grew up buying 78s and old records and I love Kate Smith and Bing Crosby and all those people. And there's-- Kate Smith singing "The Ballad of the Green Beret" is an instant hit on The Annoying Music Show. And that's the only chance I'll get to play Kate Smith on there. So there is a twinge of I'm really knocking this artist in some way. The problem with doing a supposedly wacky show, or a deadly serious one, is that all the other parts of your personality never get expressed. Nayder's two shows must require a fairly schizophrenic to do list. Like one minute he's looking for the best possible worst version of Rod Stewart's "Do You Think i'm Sexy?" and the next minute he's editing the cautionary tale of a drunk who lived in alleys. But if his psyche has dual citizenship his pocketbook has pledged allegiance to the wacky flag. The Annoying Music Show is his moneymaker. Prostitution. Income and getting my daughter through college. Go ahead and laugh, but in two years The Annoying Music Show will gross enough that Nayder won't need another source of income. There will be CDs, there will be paraphernalia. Yes, this paraphernalia will be wacky. His daughter's college tuition will be paid for through the sale of hats equipped with ear plugs, and barf bags. It is a tribute to the power of wackiness that with millions of people in recovery programs all over this great nation, Nayder won't be financing his daughter's education with profits from Magnificent Obsession coffee thermoses or souvenir nicotine patches. Wacky sells. And we at This American Life are not above cashing in. Pledge drive's coming up, so let's take it out with a song. Maestro. Sarah Vowell is the author of Radio On and a columnist for Salon magazine online. Wacky and warm is part of my package too. Indeed it is. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life. PRI, Public Radio International.
|
Pierre is 10, and he practices in matches of the Stateway Park Gladiators, his community boxing team. At the end of a fight, if Pierre needs that extra boost, he has a special technique. He says he got it thinking about the cartoon, The Incredible Hulk. Because I was thinking about the Hulk when [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. So Incredible Hulk, throw you down and stuff. He go wild and stuff. When he spars, here's what happens. His buddies on the team, led by Coach Frank Smith, start chanting. Hulk time, baby. Hulk time, baby. He's getting mad. Uh oh. Hulk time, baby. And then Pierre, in the middle of the ring, starts to shake. His whole body vibrates. His head lowers. His eyes get glassy. He transforms from a loser into somebody who dominates with punches, with a crazy flurry of hitting. I started hitting him so hard when I get mad, thinking I was going to lose. And I turn to Hulk. I look all wild, silly. When I get to punching, there ain't going to be no taps. It's going to be hard, like real fighting people. And they winning belts and stuff. A guy named Max Kellerman, who does this public access TV show called, Max on Boxing, told me this story. He said that in Muhammad Ali's biography, Ali said that when he was hit really hard in the ring, he would enter this room in his mind. A room he says that all boxers enter when they're beaten hard enough. And on the wall of the room were these masks. And at some point, Ali had a fight where he took a real pounding and he entered the room and he looked around at the masks and he realized that he could put one of the masks on. So he did and he says that's how he was able to last the round. Hulk time. Hulk time. Hulk time. It's the most natural thing in the world to punch someone in the face. And it's also the most unnatural. You have to psych up. You have to transform yourself. You have to do something to become the person who could put himself or herself straight into danger and throw the punch. And then, once you become that person, once you become that, then who are you? From WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program, Throwing the First Punch. And who you become when you're able to throw the first punch. And how hard it is to stop being the person who throws the first punch. Round One, I Would Probably Slug Jesus, A nice guy from Brooklyn explains why he loved to fight in bars and how hard it is to stop. Round Two, To Boldly Go Where No Woman Has Gone Before, the story of someone who finds the thing that means more to her than anything in the world is boxing and why she has to give it up. Round Three, Fighting Is Work, A man who, at 2:30 in the morning in a club in Chicago, takes on all comers, and beats them, and well and why for him it's just a job. Stay with us. Round One. Manny Howard grew up in Brooklyn in a working class Irish enclave. He learned to fight with the other kids there. And he loved fighting, saw himself as a bully. He was such a committed fighter that when he got older he became the first person to get suspended from Vassar College for fighting. And now he's trying to stop. He's trying to stop being the one who always throws a punch. But moving from that world into the world that most of us inhabit isn't easy. He spoke with Paul Tough. Heidi takes a cab ride home every night, which is $8.50. And we took this ride that ended up being $11.00. Clearly the meter was fast and I said to the guy, give me the receipt. I'm not going to pay for the ride. And he said, oh, I knew the meter was fast. I meant to get that fixed. One thing led to another and I basically snapped and grabbed him and folded him up. He was outside of the cab and I was outside of the cab and I threw him inside the cab and slammed the door on his legs and he drove away. So was it like a standoff sort of thing where the two of you were standing outside the cab sort of shoving each other? Yeah, you pay me. You pay me. No, I won't pay you. You pay me no. No, I won't pay you. And then he said that I was an enemy of the people. Which, since he was ripping me off, seemed like a pretty outrageous claim. But I snapped, and I just charged him. That's a failing on my part. I should be able to take his number and complain to the Taxi and Limousine Commission and take him to court, do it the right way. There's always a way out of a fight. You were with your wife and you were with another guy. And how did the two of them react? Sam loved it, and Heidi hated it. Heidi walked away. Did she give you a hard time? Oh, yeah. I had to sleep out of the house. I had to go around the corner, sleep at my mom's house. Arguably, a fair punishment. I remember being a little kid and running away from a fight and being terrified and being blind and running and running and running and running. And it occurred to me that if people-- it's like playground fighting, but it's pretty traumatic when you're a little kid. Somebody chasing you around threatening to beat you over the head and you're just terrified about what-- you're not sure exactly what it is except that somebody said they're going to beat you over the head. So you run and you run and you run and you hope that you never get caught. And then, if you do get caught, you get a beating on the head. It's more humiliating than it is hurtful. But at some point you decide, well, I'm not going to be the guy being chased in the playground. I'm going to do the chasing. It's as much to avoid the humiliation of having to run away as it is really enjoying doling it out. Although you quickly learn to enjoy being a bully. But you're saying there was a moment where you made that decision for yourself? Yeah, I thought if you can choose to be the guy throwing the beating, then you might as well be that guy instead of the guy getting the beating. The things that I learned early on were you prepare for a fight way ahead of time. If you're going to go out at night, you wear big shoes because you end up on the floor getting dragged around and sometimes you have to kick people. Always throw the first punch. Punch in the throat and the eyes, the nuts, and the knees. Don't bother with any other part of the body if you want to win the fight. Never tell anybody you're going to fight them. Just punch them. It's important to be the guy who can throw the punch to me. And it's more important than whether or not you win the fights or not, I think. But it's a hard thing to do, to throw a punch. Because you don't know what's going to happen afterwards. Then you get your ass kicked, and it's happened a lot. You throw a punch and then they come back at you 10 at a time and you lost that one. Before I got into fights, or before I had my first fight and was mostly running away from fights, everything seemed to happen really, really quickly. Never was clear in your memory what had happened and why you were running down the street or the panic. But after the first fight, I realized that if you actually get in a fight, everything slows down. I suppose it's adrenaline. You have time to think about everything. It's like being in a car crash. You notice things-- what people are looking at, what the person you're about to fight with is looking at, what he's paying attention to, where his hands are, if he's the kind of guy who's going to hit you first, all that stuff. You have this heightened awareness. It doesn't hurt then, but it's scary. But nothing hurts really. Really? So when you're in a fight there's no pain at all? I mean, I'm sure that there is, but it's not unbearable pain. You don't give up because of the pain. And I don't think I've ever been beaten bad enough so that you would-- I've never been beaten with a bat so that things break and start working. But being punched doesn't really hurt. It's just exhausting. That's why fights don't last very long. It's too exhausting. It's exhausting to punch something, or it's exhausting to get punched by somebody? Both. How is that exhausting? It takes a lot of energy to punch somebody, and it hurts a lot when you do it. I know that you're never more tired than after you've gotten a good beating or you've given one. And it doesn't seem to be any more tiring getting beaten than beating up somebody. We were at some college bar and somebody came running over all dramatic and flushed and said Evan was in the hospital and had his teeth knocked out by the rugby team. So we all got in this car and drove to the hospital-- I think it was St. Francis Hospital in Poughkeepsie-- and stormed the emergency room through the double doors, screaming Evan's name, looking for Evan, feeling very excitable. And Evan appeared from behind the screen. I'll never forget his face. His front two teeth were just gone, and his lips were all swollen He had these big eye like, big, puppy dog eyes. And he's speaking with a lisp, talking to us. And very dramatically somebody-- it was probably me-- said, what do you want to do? Do you want to go get them, or do you want to call college court in the morning and press charges? Because we can't do both. It was kind of a little bit of a movie moment? Oh, God. It's hideous, yeah. And so Evan of course said, with his big lips said, let's get them. About eight of us went to a bar off campus where we knew the rugby team would be. And we called them out to have a fight. What do you mean? How'd you do that? We opened the door and started screaming at them to come out and fight. We'd been drinking for the most part of the evening, so I don't remember exactly what it was that was said. Anyway, 11 guys piled out of the bar with about five rugby girls, the women who hung around with the rugby team. And Evan started insulting the women, which just incited everybody. Including actually, the rugby coach was there as well. A guy named Dennis. And at some point Dennis got upset because Evan was insulting his girlfriend and rushed Evan. And Evan ran away. And poor Evan had had his teeth knocked out already. But that wasn't good for morale for the troops. Because everybody but me and the two other guys named John left. And the fight had already progressed to a point where we were in a circle of guys and it was about to happen. So there was no real going back. And I'll never forget watching John-- the bigger of the two Johns-- grab a guy named Andy by the balls and by the throat and lift him up over his shoulders and over a bush, where he just disappeared. There were no more Andy. And then he clapped his hands, cleaned his hands, and walked away across the street to find somebody else to punch. Now I remember seeing that while I was getting the back of my head and the front of my head pounded at the same time by two other guys. Every time I turned around to face somebody to fight them, the guy behind me would punch me in the back of the head. And I remember thinking, this is how people die in fights. This is what happens. You get hit so hard that your neck breaks. And then I heard this inhuman scream. And I looked on the floor, and there was the other John, the smaller of the two Johns. And the rugby coach had three fingers of John's hand is his mouth. And there was blood rimming from his mouth. He was chewing on John's fingers. And John couldn't move, and his hands were being chewed on. I was so freaked out by that. I walked over and I kicked the coach in his head as hard as I could. And his jaw sprung open, and he sort of looked around. And he got up. And so it was me and the coach facing each other. And he just started walking towards me. And I started walking backwards. And he just kept coming. And I thought, well, I can walk all the way home. He's just going to follow me, so I better just stop. And then I stopped and as he came towards me, I set my foot and took that step forward and I punched him as hard as I could in the face. Harder than I've ever punched anybody in my life. And he fell over. And first of all, it hurt like hell. My hand hurt. And I thought, wow, I knocked out the coach. But he popped up, like one of those Bozo the Clown punching dolls. He was on the ground for a second before he was standing up again. A second where everything was working out. Time slows down. And he just kept coming. And so I turned around to run away. And I turned around and ran into a visiting alumni whose name was Bear. And he was so much bigger than me. He just got me in a bear hug, which I guess what he's named for. And he turned me on my head, and he dropped me on my face on the concrete, right on the curb. And then the coach stood on my head and started stomping my head into the road. And it's one of those suburban roads that are paved with gravel. And so I got all the skin torn off the high point on my face, above my eye and on my chin and on my jaw. And then mercifully, we all heard police sirens. I remember seeing Dennis the next morning after breakfast. My face was still all raw, and he had this big, black eye. I looked at his face and he looked at my face and we sort of apologized to each other in that way without saying I'm sorry. And we got along fine after that. We never had any trouble. And that's true for the rest of the team. If anything, we all never spoke about it again. But we all got along much better afterwards. Do you feel like there's some fights in which it's just like-- I mean if you're at a bar and you're with some people who want to fight and there's other people who want to fight, I mean that's just-- everybody wins? Yeah, it's a win-win. We used to do that. We'd just fight with each other. John broke a chair over my head once. Over my back, not really my head when I was getting up from him throwing me on the ground. And it was fine. It was part of the fun. We decided to have a fight. He poked me, I poked him. He punched me, I punched him and then we were going. And it wasn't play fighting at all. I would really, really, really feel bad about myself if I did any of the things that I did then, now. I suppose at some point it doesn't seem appropriate anymore to be behaving that way, to be looking for a fight. I see it differently. Besides my wife. So do you feel like-- I mean, you talked about this one moment on the schoolyard where you decided you were going to be the guy who punched instead of the guy who got punched. Do you feel like now you're trying to make the opposite decision, you're trying to become the guy who runs away again? I have the self-confidence now, I think, having been a bully, that I can do without it. I wouldn't be satisfied with that answer if I had never done it, if I had gone from running away to finding a solution to the problem. I'd always be haunted by the-- why didn't you just pound the guy into the ground, see if that doesn't solve the problem. And a lot of times it does. It's really fun sometimes. Square off against a guy in a bar and you know before the fight starts that you're just going to kick his ass. And he's a schmuck, and he's starting a fight with you. And he's starting a fight with you with his arms at his sides and he's leading with his face. You just can't wait for him to say enough for you to just pop him in the face. Have it be done with and hopefully you really humiliate him. That's fun. So even now you would still feel that way in a bar if there was a guy just being clearly the idiot? You'd take the first swing and you'd feel good about it? I don't know. Part of me would like to say yes, definitely. And part of me knows that I wouldn't do that anymore. In fact, I was thinking about this the other day. I wondered if I would turn the other cheek if something happened. I just don't think I would. I don't have the strength, the fortitude, to do that. What do you think of that line in the Bible of turning the other cheek? I don't even know where to start with it. I don't know where to start with it. I can only understand it as a metaphor. I don't know how you apply it. I've only ever been in situations since I decided that I was going to be the guy throwing the punches, not getting them that I looked for the fight. So I'm the other end of the spectrum. One day I'll probably slug Jesus. I don't think that I've got what it takes to take a hit. I've spent so much time defining myself as a guy who never would. We have a neighbor who has a dog who barks all the time, and I used to get in big screaming matches with him about the dog. His behavior as a neighbor is outrageous. He's a bad neighbor. He should be punished. But I can't punish him. I'm not the one who's going to do the punishing. So I made that decision. And when I think about this particular instance, I think there was a time when I would have fed the dog steel wool or broken glass or something and then created a situation where the dog was dead and I obviously did it. And then there would be a fight and I could muster all the moral righteousness for being falsely accused of killing this dog and then beating the guy up as well. That sounds like something I would-- I love the idea of it now. But I know that I'm not going to poison the guy's dog. So we're just going to keep going around and around in this horrible circle where I frown at him when he says hi to me and I let him know that I disapprove of him. That's the problem with the world where you don't throw punches, things just go on and on. It's true. Exactly right. No quick resolution. Manny Howard still lives in Brooklyn where he writes a column about bars for the New York Press and does other writing. He talked to This American Life senior editor Paul Tough. When is fighting cathartic? In Kodiak, Alaska, on the Fourth of July, in front of the American legion Hall, they used to set up a boxing ring and all day long, with hundreds of people watching, the citizens of Kodiak would fight. Third grade kids, fifth grade kids, and adults, lots of adults. They called it rough house boxing. Radio producers Nikki Silva and Davia Nelson, The Kitchen Sisters, witnessed it a few years back. A lot of these were sort of grudge matches that had built up on fishing boats all season, and people can't very well on a fishing boat, duke it out, and have a successful run. So it's I'll meet ya at the Fourth of July and we'll work this out then. Do you see people fight their own employers? Yeah, a guy told us about fighting his own boss and that he'd given his boss two black eyes but that he had almost had a heart attack in the ring while giving his boss two black eyes. And he had to go to the hospital for a couple of hours after the event to kind of recover. It was ugly. Well, we need some more people on up here. Women preferably. Little kids. In listening to the tape, we're hearing the emcee of the boxing event urge different couples that he knows are having marital trouble to get in the ring. Come on, Roxanne. Come on, Jack. get in the ring. Jones, you and Roxanne get in there. Art, how about you over there? It was kind of an all-purpose kind of a cleansing. A kind of a village cleansing. And I have always called the event Yom Kippur with Gloves. Because to me, I was raised with what Yom Kippur was. Let me just say that Yom Kippur is the Jewish holiday of atonement. Which you had to atone for your sins and you had to at least forgive. You might not forget, but you got to get over it. You got to move on. You got to work it out. You've got one day to do it. It was great too because it was sort of like the block party gone wild. Block party with silks. The crowd fed it, and the crowd was like hungry for the game, for the sport. And people were all around us commentating, practically grabbing the microphone to get their two cents worth in. --difference in weight. Look like a boy against a man. [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE] I don't even know how to say this. You know what this puts to shame is like Judge Wapner and The People's Court. That isn't what you want to see. What you want to see is this. If this were on TV, don't you think this would be just like a huge thing? Where like two people who have a grudge come before whoever the host of the show is going to be. Let's say George Foreman. And he's the referee of the match. He's the Judge Wapner of this thing. And then the two people would come before him, and they both would sign some sort of liability form before they go on. And just like The People's Court, then they would explain what their little tiff was about. And then we'd watch them duke it out. And it would be called The People's Ring. The People's Ring. Seriously, when you think about this, do you think this would be a healthy thing if more people had this in their lives? Or do you think there's something kind of horrifying about it too? I do think it would be healthy if there was some-- Nikki's making-- No. --worse face. I know. I'd be kind of horrified. We might have to box it out. I know, we will. The Kitchen Sisters get in the ring. I don't know. I can't see it. Look, I'm not going to start the committee to let's spread rough house boxing for the millennium throughout America. I'm not arguing for violence. I'm not defending violence. I just think you can't deny the violence inside most people. Nikki Silva and Davia Nelson. The town of Kodiak stopped rough house boxing years ago because of insurance reasons. There was no way to prevent lawsuits about split eyes and busted noses. Those insurance companies ruining our great American traditions. Coming up, girl meets ring, girl loves ring, girl leaves ring, sort of. And boxing as a job. That's in a minute from Public Radio International when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's program, being the person who throws the first punch and what happens to you when you become that person and how hard it is to stop being that person. We've arrived at Act Two of our show. Round Two, To Boldly Go Where No Woman has Gone Before. We have this story of loving to fight from Meema Spadola. Maritza was an accountant, a financial analyst at a huge insurance company. She was living day to day like anybody else. Then she heard about this boxing class that was being offered at the company gym. Some guy named Milton was teaching. Maritza liked sports. She'd even taken an aerobic boxing class before, so she decided to go down and check it out. Here I am in a suit, coming in. It's the first time. I didn't have a chance to change. So I'm walking in all suited up. So he comes in, he's saying well, you know, I'm hear to teach boxing. I said, well, so? And? I wasn't impressed. So Maritza comes up and she's so short. She goes, I want to get rid of my stomach. I want to get rid of my gut. And so she was so short. I look at her. I go, honey, I teach boxing. This ain't boxing aerobics. You know, aero boxing. This is boxing. You want to learn how to box, you came to the right place. If you want to come and dance around, jump around, I says, I'm not the guy for you. So this ain't what you want. He wasn't even thinking about me. There's another girl who thinks this is aero-- I mean-- so I threw a punch at him. Oh, you got a pretty good punch there. And he goes, let me see what you got. Bam, bam. You got a pretty good punch there, he goes. But who taught you how to box? Two steps. Then he's like trying to fix me. I'm going to teach you how to weave, but I'm going to shine you up like an old shoe and polish you up. He made me laugh. I thought he was amusing. I found it amusing. It reminded me of watching the old movies and this guy telling me I'm like an old shoe. He's going to polish me. This guy's got an act. So I started working with her every day, come down with the pads. Giving her combinations so she started falling into place. So I was like, whoa. I said, you know something? If I could bring you to my gym in Brooklyn, I says, you could win in New York City Golden Gloves. She goes, I can? I go, honey, what I got you doing right now, no girl fights the way you do right now. That's how it all started. Every day after work in Manhattan, Maritza would take the subway all the way out to Brooklyn to train for three or four hours at Milton's gym and then go all the way back home to Queens. She spent her weekends at the gym. No one in her old life understood what she was doing. She'd grown up in the projects, put herself through college, gotten an MBA, held a good paying job, and here she was back so close to the streets. When she got a broken nose and black eyes in the ring, she lied to her coworkers about it, didn't tell them she was boxing. Her parents didn't approve of women fighting. They were conservative, born in Puerto Rico. Her friends were suspicious of her weight loss. They accused her of being anorexic, infected with HIV, or addicted to drugs. But at the gym, everyone believed in her. Maritza was the only girl at Milton's, his first girl, so she'd spar with the men there. She took Joey one day and she was throwing nonstop combinations and punches repetitiously. There was an old man sitting down in the chair and he goes, god damn that boy can throw some punches. She had the head gear on. So when she finished he came over to me. He goes, that's going to be one good damn fighter. That boy is going to be great. He goes, who is that? I go, what guy you talking about? He goes, that guy. I go, I hate to tell you this, that's no guy. He goes, what do you mean, that's no guy? Looked like a guy. I go, that's a girl. That ain't no damn girl. I go, that's a girl. He goes, get out of here. So I said, Maritza come here. So she come over to me and I took off her head gear. I go, does she look like a girl now? He goes, oh. Looking at Maritza, you probably wouldn't think boxer. She's small, just over 5 feet tall and only 106 pounds. Her features are fine and delicate. But when she talks about her love for boxing, you can see her in the ring. She's radiant. It's like speaking to someone who's had a religious conversion. Boxing has shed a light on me. It's like my vision. It's like I just obtained vision. This is what I was put here for. Ladies and gentlemen, tonight's next bout is the women's 106 pound class. The referee is Pete Santiago. In the gold corner, Maritza Arroyo, from the Supreme Team Boxing Club. Arroyo is a financial analyst and a part-time personal trainer. She's been boxing for a year and is a Metros champ. This is her first-- With Milton's training, Maritza was unbeatable. Within a year she had taken all the amateur titles in New York. She won the Metros, the Empire States, and in '96 she won the biggest of all, the Golden Gloves in Madison Square Garden, a fight televised around the world, held in a ring where some of the greatest boxers in history have fought. Two straight left hands by Arroyo. And another straight left. Four straight left hands by Arroyo. Maritza and I get together to watch the video of her '96 Golden Gloves win. The Garden's packed. The crowd's going wild. Martiza's incredibly fast and beautiful in the ring. Watching her, you understand what it means to be a smart fighter. She's calculated. The woman she's fighting is taller than she is, with longer arms. So Maritza ducks down low and jabs up to the body, choosing where she lands her punches-- to the ribs, then to the chest. And when her opponent can barely catch her breath, Maritza's up, giving her a fierce combination to the face and head. There goes the upper cuts. There goes another one to the body. Ow. Another one to the body. Another one. Another one. And another. Followed by a big right hook. Manson in trouble. In the last 10 seconds, Manson gets in a good punch, straight to Maritza's face. Maritza stumbles back and then seems to go crazy. She throws nonstop combinations, and the crowd is screaming. There, there goes the hook. See that? That's it. 10 seconds. Bam. There you go. I threw it all. Go, go. There you go. There you go. There you go. There you go. Throw it. I missed a lot, but I threw. Can we just watch the last 10 seconds? That was so cool. Oh my God, you are so good, Maritza. I want to see you fight so badly. After the fight ends, we're laughing. We keep rewinding to watch Maritza's amazing finale. I'm like, really? You got it good, right? Well, OK. All right. All right. All right. All right. OK, OK. That was a grin. That was a good grin. We're both completely high and hysterical. Maritza's face is transformed. This is pure joy. And in a way, it's terrible because we both know she's quitting boxing. Maritza wants to go pro, but there doesn't seem to be any way she could make a living at boxing. She's only 106 pounds. They don't even have a name for her weight class. If she went pro, no one knows of any women who are good enough to match her. As it is, there are only two amateur women at her level. In all her title matches, she's always been put up against these same two opponents over and over. And she's beat them every time. Maritza's lucky enough to have found the thing she loves, the thing that makes her life complete, but unlucky enough that the timing worked out all wrong. More women are getting into boxing all the time and starting younger. In 10 years, there may be enough women that Maritza would be able to make a career of it. But she's already in her 30s. She says she has to be realistic about the future. So she's gone back to school, and she's working full-time. I get mixed feelings. When I go into the gym, I want to do it. But when I come away from the gym and I start looking at reality, it's like, I'm sad. It's a sadness. On the outside, no one sees it. But on the inside it's like it died. It's like, God, it could have been you. You should be in there boxing. It's like she's in love with someone she knows she has to leave. So she circles around boxing, quits, comes back for one night stands. Last year, Milton signed her up for the Metros tournament without telling her. On the night of the fight, he called her from ringside and told her they were holding up the match for her. Maritza got in her car and drove from Queens to Brooklyn, while Milton lied to the judges about Maritza being stuck in traffic. She arrived, beat in her opponent in three rounds flat, but was so disgusted with herself for fighting when she was trying to retire that she left without even collecting her trophy. But being back in the game felt too good and after that win, she just couldn't bring herself to walk away. Despite her reservations, she went on to fight in the 1997 New York Gloves and, of course, won. For his part, Milton had no reservations. Maritza will always be his best girl, his first girl. But he's now becoming resigned to the fact that she doesn't have much time left in boxing. She boxes like street people were to call [UNINTELLIGIBLE] in his prime. She's slick. She's smart. She thinks in there. She doesn't really get hit. She don't let you give her a beating. She hands out the beatings. You know, I wish I would've found her when she was a little bit younger. A lot younger. Here's how hard this is for Maritza. Even her plans for retirement from boxing include boxing. She's training to be a massage therapist. To massage boxers, she says. She quit her job as an accountant and now works full-time as a trainer in a gym. She has this theory that she'll get over boxing by going to boxing matches all the time. Maybe I'll overcome it by being there. Maybe that's what I need to do, is to face it. To face the fact that finally I'm not doing it anymore, that I'm not going to be boxing anymore. Maybe that's what I need. Go. There it is. That's good. Come out here real quick. There you go. See the difference? Go. In February, just after Maritza misses the deadline for the 1998 Golden Gloves, I go to Milton's gym to see her fight. Even though these days Maritza isn't there much anymore, Milton has promised me that Maritza will spar with a new girl he's training. We wait and wait and no Maritza. An hour passes. When she finally shows, she looks worn out and tired. She's not dressed to box, and she says she's got the flu. She's not going to fight. Right away everyone starts pushing her. Well, let's just do a little. You want to? But I got nothing with me. What do you need? Everything. I don't have nothing. She says she didn't bring her shoes. She doesn't have any of her gear. Milton points to some shoes lying in the corner, says they're her size. Suddenly Maritza doesn't look so tired. But I got to tell you, I have no mouthpiece. Then Maritza drops the pretense. We head down in the elevator to her car. It turns out she's been carrying her gloves, her mouthpiece, her wraps, all of her equipment in her car for the past year just in case. I knew this was going to happen. That's why I don't want to come around. That's why I don't want to come. You've got the biggest smile on your face. You look so happy right now. Because I love boxing. That's why. It's what's got me where I'm at today. Very happy and very balanced I guess. We're around Second Avenue. Second Avenue. Between Second and Third and 13th Street. So here I am with no voice, going in this room to go spar. Is that crazy? That's crazy. She grabs her bag, and we race back to the gym. And as Maritza's getting dressed, I notice she wears tiny golden gloves on a chain around her neck. Milton stands ringside, pumped up, ready to see his favorite in action again. This is Howard Kelso live right here from Supreme Team Boxing. Box. Relax your shoulders, Maritza. Relax your shoulders. Too tight. Oh, good one. Maritza's stiff at first. Then she starts to relax. She's ducking down, dancing around the ring. And in the last 10 seconds of the fight, she has a surge of energy. She's punching hard, moving fast, throwing nonstop combinations. Come on, girls. Time. And afterwards, she's pumped up with adrenaline, sweating, laughing with Milton and the guys in the gym. She says she'll be back to spar and train every week. And even though she's missed the deadline for this year's Golden Gloves, she swears she'll take the gloves next year. Stay tuned for 1999, she says. Stay tuned. But Maritza doesn't show at Milton's the next week or the week after. She breaks two appointments with me. She doesn't return my calls. And when I finally reach her, she's angry. Angry she fought again. Scared she's getting sucked back in. And how about the fact that you're still carrying around your gear? Well, I guess I can't let go of boxing yet. Maybe it's my security blanket. It's like always knowing that it's always there, that I can always hit that bag. I get in front of the mirror at my house every day. Just jab and come around and do the moves. It's my connection to boxing. I carry this with me. I sleep with it. I have gloves in my car. I love it. It's me. That story by Meema Spadola, a documentary filmmaker in New York, who also boxes. Round Three, Hard Work. Well, so far on our program we've heard from people who love being the person who throws a punch, unofficial fighters and amateurs. This is a different kind of story. Frankie Cruz Junior boxed in the Olympics twice, won silver and bronze medals. He's a six time Florida State Golden Glove champ, four time National Golden Glove champ. And a year ago he quit amateur fighting, decided he was going to try to make a living from boxing. It's the kind of job where people try to hit and injure you for a living, but you get no health insurance. In a year Frankie's had a broken rib, broken ankle, broken hand, a case of cauliflower ear that's gone untreated. And he's not officially even gone pro yet. He spoke with This American Life producer Julie Snyder. Frankie Cruz got his job from one punch. A year ago in a nightclub in Miami, the 170-pound Frankie knocked out a guy weighing 260 with a right hand. He says the punch brought everyone to their feet, including a middle-aged dance club owner from Chicago named Ruben Pazmino. That night, Ruben had a vision for his Tropicana Club, and it revolved around Frankie Cruz. Later that week, Frankie was on a plane to Chicago. I came in a limousine. They wanted to pick me up in a limousine. They took me to Tropicana. They treat me the nice way. It was fun. Let's get ready to rumble! It's 2:30 in the morning at the Tropicana, a Latino nightclub that houses four bars, a VIP room, a restaurant, and a huge dance floor with a balcony. It's 2:30 in the morning and nearly a thousand people are packed inside on a Tuesday. After the weightlifting contest and after the lip syncing and after the four erotic dancers finish massaging a shirtless man with baby oil, there's boxing in a regulation ring set up in the middle of the dance floor. It's fight night, and the star is walking in the door. It's Frankie. Hip and beautiful Latinas turn to look at the 5 foot 10 Nicaraguan born fighter with dyed blond hair and a broken nose. He's not yet dressed in his boxing gear. Instead he wears a mustard-colored sports coat, slacks, and so much jewelry that he literally makes noise when he moves. Here's Frankie's job. Here's the job he left his kids and family for. It's free-for-all boxing. Anyone can fight. You can fight. I could fight. Anyone. All you have to do is sign a release form agreeing that if your nose breaks, teeth get punched out, or you end up with a mild concussion, you know it's your fault for being too drunk and easily encouraged by your friends to get into a boxing ring in the first place. You can choose to fight your best friend, your nemesis, or you can take your chances and fight Frankie. If you knock down Frankie, you get $1,000 in cash or the mysterious grand prize. Everyone goes for the cash. The first guy that did it was wow, he took so much punch. He didn't want to go down. But you know, he finally quit in the second round. And then another one came, bigger. And every time bigger and bigger. [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE] please come to the ring. Frankie will fight anyone who signs up. Sometimes he's boxed five or six matches in one night, an incredible feat of endurance, something no pro boxer will ever do. And Frankie gets paid the same whether he fights one guy or five guys. He's fought with one arm tied behind his back. He's fought three guys at once. He's fought, in all, 128 fights at the Tropicana. He's won 127. Frankie won't say how much he gets paid, but it's not much. And he says he sends most of that money back to his ex-wife, his three children, and his grandmother in Miami. So he's broke all the time. For the first seven months he was in Chicago, Frankie lived in a back room of the Tropicana. He also worked as a bouncer on the nights he wasn't boxing. So for days on end, Frankie never left the club. Sometimes on a Saturday or Sunday when the business offices were closed, Frankie would be locked inside and would have to wait for the Tropicana to open in order to leave. He says he didn't mind it that much until Ruben, the owner, took his television set away in order to start up a new karaoke night. I finished fighting sometimes four or five guys in the night. I used to go outside and cry and say, why I'm doing this? I think I'm not getting paid enough to do it. Everything is business. And if you don't talk business good, you don't study the business good, you will never make it. OK, uno, dos, tres, por favor! Right now two African American guys from the audience have signed up to fight each other and are going at it in the ring. Both weigh well over 200 pounds. While they clumsily stumble around the ring, taking wide punches and falling against the ropes, the almost preteen-looking ring girls get instructions on what they're supposed to do when Frankie re-enters the ring. Walk around that way real sexy and then stop in front of the camera so he can take a picture of it. You take your robe off when you get inside the ring. And then you put your robe on before you get back out. The girls in thong bikinis hustle around as Frankie emerges, now wearing a blue and gold running suit, a straw cowboy hat, and a Nicaraguan scarf tied around his neck. Frankie stands with the announcer while the two ring girls walk in circles, each holding an end of his championship belt. The belt always gets the center spotlight. When training, Frankie lays the belt down next to his treadmill, says a prayer, and starts running. It's on the floor next to him when he's jumping rope. Once when I showed up to interview him at his gym, before we could go off to talk, he opened his gym bag and pulled out a little plastic stand that you use for picture frames. He put the stand on a desk facing the front door of the gym and put the belt on it. On one end of the belt is Frankie's name. On the other, Viva Auto Sales Park because unfortunately, the Tropicana didn't give him the belt. For several months Frankie says, he continually asked Ruben for one but kept getting blown off. I just thought at least to get a boxer of the year in the club. And I've been talking about him. Do some thing special, you know? When I wanted to get the belt for him I want him to present it, give it to me. But he never gone there and told me here, Frankie. Here, go have fun. It's not fair. Instead, a friend introduced Frankie to the owner of Viva Auto Sales. The guy agreed to buy the belt for Frankie if he could put the Viva name on it. It's a good investment. You meet Frankie, you meet the belt. Leaving the belt with the ring girls, Frankie climbs between the ropes and gets in his corner. His managers, Danny and Hank, are there with him. They're grooming him to go pro in June. They give him a place to live. They see that he eats right, doesn't drink, and trains every day. Frankie's opponent doesn't look too intimidating. Staggering, he enters the ring wearing jeans, a long sleeve green shirt, and Doc Martens. He's at least 240 pounds, complete with overhanging gut and love handles. It would take a lot of alcohol to make someone like this believe he belongs in a ring with a trained Olympic medalist. But he's had a lot of alcohol. Hank and Danny size up the guy. The fact that he's drunk means his fighting may be sloppy. But it also makes it harder on Frankie because the drunks don't feel the pain as much. As the bell goes off, Hank screams instructions from the corner. Get out of there. Get out of there. Come on. Frankie's splayed against the ropes. In a shocking move, Frankie's opponent came racing out of the corner and immediately began swinging. It's a barfighter's tactic, get in the first punch. He gets Frankie up against the ropes in the corner and on the defense, as Frankie only manages to get in a few body jabs. Punch him. Frankie, punch him. There you go! Don't let him push you around. It never occurred to me how hard Frankie would have to work to win his fights, how much of a beating he takes. He looks tired and confused. I want him on the floor. On the floor. On the floor. At the end of the first round, Hank and Danny counsel Frankie in the corner. Mostly it's a big pep talk. You're the champ, they yell. You're the champ. Frankie, hey! Show me some intensity. You know what to do. Kick his ass. In round two, Frankie comes back. His opponent's punches becomes weaker. At times they miss Frankie completely. And almost gently, Frankie edges the guy up against the ropes in his own corner and does combinations to his head, pounds away at him. Blood spurts everywhere. It's an incredible moment, satisfying in a way I never would have guessed. Sweat and spit fly off Frankie's body. Hank and Danny go wild. The crowd goes wild. Frankie breaks the guy's nose and the ref ends the fight. When Frankie staggers back and drops his hands, blood drips from his gloves onto the starched, white mat. Hank screams at him. Hey, that's the beating I like to see. That's the way you throw the punches. Boxing can make you feel so small. The force of the punches is so brutal and penetrating that it's almost mythical. When Frankie climbed out of the ring, he asked me if I was impressed. I couldn't even answer. I couldn't talk to him. In only a few minutes, this guy who has to beg for a belt from a used car dealership suddenly seemed untouchable. I've asked Frankie over and over what he loves about boxing, and he doesn't really say anything. He doesn't like hurting people. He doesn't have any romantic ideas about the tradition of boxing or its primal appeal. That's not why he boxes. It's a job. A job that doesn't pay all that much in grimy, punishing, working conditions. A job that he's good at, but that doesn't hold a lot of mystery anymore. The one thing that makes it special for Frankie is the crowds. What I love about boxing is the people. I think if people don't go see you, it won't be fun. I believe the people, even if they're not cheering for me, or they're booing for me-- but after I win or after I finish the fight, I know I got all those people who didn't cheer for me, they're going to give me their hands and they're going to say, wow, you had a great fight. After his match, Frankie begins jumping around, running through the crowds up to the top floor of the nightclub, looking for fans. He does this every time, Hank says. When Frankie sees me, he stops and motions for me to follow, so I can record how much the crowd loves him. Frankie. Yeah, baby. Congratulations, brother. You're getting bigger and bigger, baby. I'm getting better and better too. That's right. You knocked that guy pretty good, esse. Out of the ring looking for attention, Frankie doesn't seem like a giant anymore. He's a guy, boyish even. A lot of people come over and shake his hand, say a word. A lot more push right by him, heading down to the ring where six women from the audience are now taking part in a do-it-yourself strip tease. Men in the audience pull dollar bills from their wallets and shove past. They don't look at Frankie. Oh, it's Lisa's birthday today, y'all. Say happy birthday to Lisa. That story from This American Life producer Julie Snyder. We thought we'd close out our program today with this recording. It's Muhammad Ali, then Cassius Clay, recorded in 1964. Well, our program was produced today by Julie Snyder and myself with Alix Spiegel and Nancy Updike. Senior editor Paul Tough. Contributing editors Jack Hitt, Margy Rochlin and Consigliere Sarah Vowell. Production help from Rachel Day, Laura Doggett and [? Sahini ?] Davenport. If you want to buy a cassette of this program, call us at WBEZ here in Chicago, 312-832-3380. 312-832-3380. Our email address [email protected] This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia, who every single day calls me into his office, points to a picture of Garrison Keillor and says-- Let's get him. I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life. PRI. Public Radio International.
|
So a new girl transfers into Rebecca's high school, an all-girls school. And it took a little while for everybody to figure her out because she transferred in from public school. Actually, from one of the best public schools in the city. But still, in their eyes-- She like had a lot of background. And so when she came here, people thought she's nothing. She's another-- Public school kid? Oh, so she's just like-- She's ghetto. She's ghetto? She's ghetto, meaning she's from public school? No. Just the style. Does she dress ghetto? At first. When she first came there. Ghetto hoochie mama. Ghetto hoochie mama. I have to admit I did not know exactly what she meant by that. So helpfully, Rebecca searched her brain for another phrase to explain it. Booty house girl. Do you what house music is? Yeah, of course. She was the kind of girl who all into booty house music. Fact is, there are so many ways of being a teenage girl, and you can switch from one to another Like one friend of Rebecca's who started high school with blond hair, blue eyes. She started with the alternative, preppy girls. Gap clothes. Straight, Gap, Banana Republic khakis, the crewneck sweaters. How'd she talk when she was alternative? With no accent, no inflection on anything. She was just kind of like, yeah, dude. Yeah. That year, that was freshman year. And then she went to the Spanish group after, the Latinas. And she dressed in big, gold hoop earrings and real dark lipstick, like almost black. And the real thick eyeliner. And then she started saying-- she'll be talking to you and she says but. She wouldn't say but anymore, she'd say pero. That's Spanish. And she'll go mira, mira. You know, mean look. Look, look, look. Right. She got more and more into it where she'd say instead of "look at that fine guy," "oh, look at that papi over there." That was all of sophomore year. And then, junior year she was kind of getting like-- well, we called it ghetto style. Because all of a sudden, she was dressing with big, baggy pants, windbreakers, Nike shirts, big gold chains. And if she wanted to tell you-- so she got excited. She'd get real excited. And OK, she came up to me one day and she's, oh, girl, we was driving in the car. We saw this guy. He was fine. And he looked my way and I was like, what's up, baby. Wow. And she got real into it though, smacking her lips and [MAKES LIP SMACKING SOUND]. She gets hyper. And she's slamming her hands. So that was her black year basically? I think. Now senior year, that girl is a Clueless girl. Clueless. Meaning she acts and dresses like the characters in the movie and the TV show Clueless. Stacked shoes, polyester bellbottoms, retro '70s style. It's hard to imagine many boys changing style this quickly, this willfully, this many times. It is very, very girl. Transforming yourself head to toe every year because you can. And because you're expected to be that obsessed with how you look. So Rebecca, we're thinking about calling this week's show, I Enjoy Being a Girl, Sort Of. And I just want to ask, do you have any thoughts on that theme? Sort of? Well, I love being a girl. How so? Because we get to the fun things. The fun things being? I mean, we can do whatever we want with our faces, with our clothes, with our hair. And well also because girls don't get as much pressure from things like gangs and all that stuff that guys do. We don't have to be hard and try to be, like macho. But we could if we want to. And since all the equal rights have come up, we can do whatever. Like way more options than back in the day. It's perfect. It's perfect? Well, no, no. OK, it's not perfect. But it's getting there. And it's better than being a guy? Yeah. Well, today on our program, enjoying being a girl, sort of, and sort of not. Act One, Fatty Suit. David Sedaris explains how one girl sidestepped her father's wish that she be thin and pretty and focus on getting a man through a technique that was almost like a kind of industrial sabotage. Act Two, How to Be a Man. Writer Sarah Miller attends a class in New York City that teaches women how to walk and talk and act like men. Act Three, Strength in Numbers. Six women, a van, a 12 hour drive to Mississippi that starts in the middle of the night and ends in a casino in a cotton field. Act Four, Taking Sisterhood One Step further. A happily married polygamist wife explains how having eight women married to one man is the ultimate feminist lifestyle. From WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass, stay with us. Act One, Fatty Suit. David Sedaris has this parable of the pressures on modern women and how one woman, his sister, responded. My father called me late one recent Sunday evening, excited with the news that my sister, Amy, was scheduled to appear in a magazine article on young, New York women. Can you imagine, he asked. My God, put a camera in front of that girl and she'll shine like a diamond! Between the single men and the job opportunities, her phone is going to be ringing right off the hook! My father has always placed a great deal of importance on his daughter's physical beauty. It is to him, their greatest asset, and he monitors their appearance with an almost freakish intensity. Because it was always assumed that we would go to college, my brother and I were free to grow as plump and ugly as we liked. I might wander freely through the house drinking pancake batter from a plastic bucket, but the moment one of my sisters overspilled her bikini, our father was right there to mix his metaphors. Jesus, Flossy, what are we running here, a dairy farm? Look at you, you're the size of a tank. Two few more pounds and you won't be able to cross state lines without a trucking license. Three of my sisters responded to this pressure by losing themselves, however briefly, to drugs and alcohol. The one exception is my sister, Amy, who for as long as I can remember has chosen to lose herself in others. For Amy, school was dedicated solely to the study or her teachers. She meticulously charted the reputation of their shoes and blouses and was quick to pinpoint their mannerisms. Practicing alone in the basement, she would pace before her king-sized blackboard in full costume. Her imaginary classroom was a forum where the teachers ignored the lesson plan, preferring instead to discuss their elaborate home lives, which most often involved the bedridden mother forced to take oxygen through a tank. My sister turned that same eye on the adults my parents knew from the neighborhood and country club. Choosing from her box of wigs and castoff dresses, she would prepare herself a false cocktail and sat at the rec room bar, mastering their slurred inflections. She was great as Flow Wagner and Eleanor Kelleher. But vocally, her best impersonation was of Penny Midland, a stylish, 50-year-old woman who work part-time at an art gallery my parents used to visit on a regular basis. Wearing a white page boy wig and one of my mother's better caftans, Amy began calling my father at the office. Lou, Penny Midland here. How the hell are you? An awkward conversationalist, our father would fidget before saying, Penny. Well, what do you know? Gosh it's good be hear your voice. The first few times she called, Amy discussed gallery business. But little by little, she began complaining about her husband, a Westinghouse executive named Van. I want out, she'd say. It isn't that I don't care for him as a friend, but at this point in my life I don't know that I can stay married to a man who, well, a man who likes boys. I don't know how else to say it. The man likes boys and that's the way it is. Our father offered comfort with such standard noncommittal phrases as, "I guess it takes two to tango," or "You hang in there, baby." Oh, Lou, it just feels so good to talk to someone who really understands. I walked into the kitchen late one afternoon and came upon my 12-year-old sister propositioning her father. I was thinking that maybe you and I could get together some time, just for laughs. Unless we felt like taking it to another level. Amy studied her reflection in the oven door, brushing the white bangs away from her forehead with her heavily jeweled fingers. All I'm saying is that I find you to be a very attractive man. Is that a crime? This was what my mother meant when she accused people of playing a dangerous game. Were my father to accept Penny's offer, Amy would have known him as a philanderer and wondered who else he might have slept with. Everything he'd ever said would be called into question and scanned for possible sexual content. Was that really a business trip, or had he snuck off to Myrtle Beach with one of the Stravidies twins? It is to his credit that our father was such a gentleman. Stammering that he was very flattered to be asked, he let Penny down as gently as possible. He offered to set her up with some available bachelors he knew from his office at IBM and told my sister to take care of herself. Adding that she was a very special woman who deserved to be happy. It was years before Amy admitted what she had done. They were relatively uneventful years for our family and I imagine, a very confusing period of time for poor Penny Midland, who was frequently visited at the art gallery by my father and any number of his divorced business associates. Here's the gal I was telling you about, he'd say to Bob Sweetie or Tommy Lattermore. I think the two of you would make a dynamite couple. I swear to God. Maybe some night this week the two of you could slip away and maybe have a few drinks. Give it a try why don't you? The passage of time has not altered my father's obsessive attention to my sister's weight and appearance. And because of that, most of them keep their distance, checking in only by phone. Is it just my imagination, he'll ask, or has your voice gotten fatter? You sound chubby to me. Is everything OK? Because she has maintained her beautiful skin and youthful figure, Amy is my father's greatest treasure. She is by far, the most attractive member of our family. Yet she spent most of her life admiring skin diseases and praying for a hump. It's not fair that I can't grow a beard she'll say, gluing a pebble-sized wort to the side of her nose. Compliments are genuinely lost on her. She can't see any benefit to being herself and is constantly searching for what she considers a flattering disguise. She's got all the neck braces and false teeth a person could want, and recently spent a good deal of money on a customized fatty suit she enjoys wearing beneath sweat pants as tight and uninviting as sausage casings. She couldn't afford the matching top and is reduced to waddling the streets much like two women fused together in some sort of a cruel experiment. From the waist up, she's slim and fit, chugging forward on legs the size of tree trunks and followed by a wide, dimpled bottom so thick she could sit on a knitting needle and never feel a thing. She wore it home last Christmas where our startled, heartbroken father met us at the airport. He managed to silence his disapproval on the short ride to the house, but the moment Amy stepped into the bathroom he turned to me shouting, what the hell has happened to her? Jesus Christ Almighty, this is tearing me apart. I'm in real pain here. What? Your sister, that's what. The girl's ass is the size of a beanbag chair. I thought you were supposed to be keeping an eye on her? I begged him to lower his voice. Please dad, don't mention it in front of her. Amy's very sensitive about her-- you know. Her what? Go ahead and say it. Her big fat ass. That's what she's ashamed of, and she should be. Christ Almighty, they could land choppers on ass like that. Oh, dad. Don't try to defend her, wise guy. She's a single woman and the clock is ticking away. How is she supposed to find a husband with an ass like that? Well, I said, a lot of men like that. He looked at me with great pity and shook his head. What you don't know could fill a book. My father composed himself when Amy re-entered the room, but the moment she opened the freezer door he acted as though she were tossing a lit match into the gas tank of his Porsche. What in God's name are you doing? Look at you, you're killing yourself. Amy hugged a quart of ice cream to her chest and searched the drawers for a shovel-sized spoon. Your problem is that you're bored, my father said. You're bored and lonely and you're eating garbage to feel some kind of stinking void. I know what you're going through and believe me, you can lick this. First of all, Amy said, I'm not bored. And besides that, all I've eaten today are a stack of pancakes, four donuts, a danish at the airport, and a couple of really small brownies on the plane. She kept it up until our father, his voice cracking with pain, offered to find her some professional help. I'm begging you to reach out before it's too late. We can do this together. There are programs and camps that specialize in this kind of thing. But first, you have to admit that you have a problem. When Amy rejected his offer, he attempted to set an example. Settling down to Christmas dinner, he pretended to be satisfied with nothing but a sliver of white meat accompanied by a single spear of broccoli. His athletic regime became theatric. That felt great, he'd say, finishing a round of sit-ups. Now I'll do some squat thrusts, a couple dozen pushups, and it's off for a satisfying run. Anyone want to join me? Amy? She kept to her fatty suit until her legs were chafed and pimpled. It was on the morning of our return flight when she revealed her joke and our father, bracing himself against the countertop, wept with the light. Ha-ha he laughed as though he were reading the words off a page, the way he's always done. Ha-ha-ha, you really had me going. Ha-ha. I knew you'd never let yourself go. The fatty suit only reinvigorated him for the photo shoot he called about with such enthusiasm. She had me fooled for a minute there, but even with a fat ass, you can't disguise the fact that she's a beautiful person and that's what really matters. Do you happen to know if they're going to be hiring a professional hairstylist, someone who really knows what they're doing? I sure as hell hope so because her hair is awfully thin and someone needs to talk her into losing those bangs. There's a lot I don't tell my father when he calls asking after Amy. He wouldn't understand that she has no interest in getting married and was in fact, quite happy to break up with her live-in boyfriend. He was a pleasant, hardworking fellow, whom she replaced with a dwarf rabbit named Tattletale. Tattletale enjoys chewing electrical cords, and as a result my sister's phone is often out of order. But it doesn't seem to bother her that available men can't get through. The last time she was asked out by a successful bachelor she paused for a few moments before saying, thanks for asking, but I'm really just not into white guys right now. This alone would have given my father an aneurysm. The clock is ticking, he says. If she waits much longer she'll be alone for the rest of her life. This seems to suit Amy just fine. For the time being, she seems perfectly content with her rabbit and an imaginary boyfriend she has named Ricky. We'll be walking the streets of her West Village neighborhood, running errands, when she'll turn to me saying, Ricky gave me a bumper pool table for our one-month anniversary. I came home this afternoon and there it was parked beside the baby grand electric organ he gave me for President's Day. I didn't know you played pool, I'll say. When did you start? How did you learn? Oh, a few months ago. Ricky taught me how to play on our last flight to Korea. You didn't tell me he was Korean? Oh, she'll say, he's not. He just has a lot of friends there, so we go to Korea a lot. She carries on like this and after a while, Ricky seems not only real, but very likable. Hey, my father will ask, what do you know about this Ricky person? Amy seems to think he's really something. What exactly has she told you? It's always best to ask what he's already heard. For all I know, Amy could have claimed that Ricky was a Navy SEAL, or the chief surgeon at a hospital specializing in diseases of the kidney or pancreas. When my father called asking about the photo shoot, I feigned ignorance. I didn't tell him that at the scheduled time, my sister arrived at the studio with unwashed hair and took her place beside a half dozen women carefully dressed in flattering outfits. She waited while the others had their hair styled into the current fashion. One by one, their brows were trained while makeup artists made the most of their lips and cheek bones. When called fourth to the styling table, Amy said only, I want to look like someone has beaten me up really, really bad. The makeup artist did a fine job. The black eyes and purple jaw were accentuated by a series of scratch marks on her forehead. Puss yellow pools surround her blistered nose and her swollen lips were fenced with mean rows of brackish stitches. Amy was enchanted with her new look. Following the photo shoot, she wore her bruises to the dry cleaner and grocery store. Most people nervously looked away. But on the rare occasion someone asked what had happened, my sister smiled as brightly as possible saying, I'm in love. Can you believe it? I'm finally, totally in love. And you know what? It feels great. David Sedaris is the author most recently of, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, and editor of the collection, Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules: An Anthology of Outstanding Stories. This story was originally written for Vogue magazine, which then rejected it without explanation. One Vogue employee speculated that perhaps it did not conform enough with Vogue's notions of feminine beauty. David's sister Amy is among other things, a star of the TV show and someday to be released movie, Strangers with Candy. Act Two, How To Be a Man. Well, one of the problems in doing a show like we're doing this week, a show made of different stories that seem to go together because they were all about, at some level, different ways of being a woman or a girl, is that you find yourself treading around all these broad generalizations about men and women that actually none of us really believe. But we figured, we came this far with this theme, we might as well head down the river into the heart of darkness of gender cliches. And playing the Martin Sheen role in our little gender apocalypse now will be Sarah Miller. Sarah Miller for a while, had the odd job of being a woman who wrote a sex column for men in a men's magazine, Details. That job seemed to consist mostly of correcting guys gross misperceptions about women. We sent her to a class we heard about in New York City run by a woman named Diane Tore. A class that tries to teach women how to dress and walk and talk like men. So it's kind of a reverse on her regular job. Sarah Miller put on a loose fitting flannel shirt and tried to imagine transforming herself not just into any man, but into the kind of man who does not have a kind of ambiguous mix of traditionally male and female traits. She would become a guy's guy. I have to admit the idea of the workshop made me anxious. Just before I went I told a friend that I was afraid I already seemed like a guy. I'm tall, I'm loud, I swear a lot. I told them I was afraid that Diane would say something to me like, God, you're a natural. And I would take this to mean, you are naturally coarse and masculine. And naturally, not at all pretty. I shouldn't have worried. It turns out there's a whole world of gestures and attitudes between me in a flannel shirt and me being mistaken for a man. There's the proper way to walk, for example. Diane demonstrated. Sense of resolution ownership. Sense that when I walk into this room, anything, anybody, could be mine. I could own anything and anybody, or everything, in this room. For that moment that my eyes rest there. So that sense of ownership is conveyed in the gaze. They're not afraid to take up the space or to own the space. Or to check things out. How's this place structured? So when you walk you think you have a perimeter, a boundary of about three foot around you, OK? And this [UNINTELLIGIBLE], the way he walks, it's coming from the shoulders. The hips are tight and he goes side to side at the same time he goes forward. So it's like this 360 degrees moat around me, OK? Then we gave it a try. I thought slumping was the quickest route to maleness, but when I looked around I saw the other stood ramrod straight. We examined each other for clues. And maybe just introduce yourself to different people in the room. Just shake hands. Don't smile. Stop smiling. Smiling was the one thing none of us could seem to cut out. Diane had to remind us again and again. So as it became clear to me that I was not going to leave as a convincing man, I manufactured a goal for myself. I was here, I decided, to learn arrogance. Yeah. So you want to cover the nipples first of all. Going to start wrapping from the bottom. An ACE bandage, my sisters, is the first tool you need on your path to gender liberation. Mine was double wide. It kept snapping out of my hands as I wrapped it around my chest. It's got to be quite tight. But not so tight that you can't breath. That's ridiculous. So remember, you're going to be wearing this the whole day and evening. So should be OK. All right, here we go. This was the actual song we were listening to as we wrapped our chest down. Diane had brought along a tape called "Frat Rock" to enhance that double X chromosome vibe we were all striving for. My clothes, two big Levi's, a plaid flannel shirt, a Princeton t-shirt with Hebrew letters, all would have hung nicely on a guy's broad shoulders and slim hips. But I looked a little lumpy. My breasts had not disappeared so much as retreated under extreme duress to the middle of my chest. Two sad, misplaced lumps uncertain of their meaning. My whiskers were good, but my eyes-- Diane pointed this out about all of us-- retained the hopeful sweetness of femininity. And if I resembled anything, it was only some strange hybrid of a lumberjack, lady from Lady and the Tramp, and Marie Antoinette. I made up a new identity. Now my name was Dan Rosen. I was a Brown dropout who worked at St. Mark's Bookshop. I stacked the [UNINTELLIGIBLE] readers. I bought Paul Auster novels on discount. My parents lived in Mt. Kisco and were lame. Brown was lame. I was lame. I'm Dan. I'm Dan. The thing is that you are using the same [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. Hello, hello, hello. --rhythm. I'm Dan and my boobs hurt. As Dan I sat down for my eating lesson and I noticed that none of us were really winning any surprises in the realness department. Two of the girls had long hair tied back in ponytails. When you looked at them you had a split second to decide if they were women dressed up as men or the Allman Brothers, and it wasn't a tough call. One of them asked Diane how we should be sitting. With your legs open. Until you're taking as much space as possible. Really? Yeah, you see guys on diners. You sit next to them and they'll be in these little round seats. And their knees will be pushing right into your-- On a subway. The subways as well. We could sit and eat with our legs as wide as we wanted, but we were not men. One of the Allman Brothers spent the meal nibbling her way through about half a piece of pita bread. Eating it with the slow deliberation of one not at peace with food. The other Allman Brother looked a little bit like a guy, but she had this way of nodding and saying, uh hmm when she listened and it gave her away. Only Diane, dressed up as her alter ego, Dan King, looked like a guy. It was the eyes more than anything else. Her's were cool, detached. They assumed rather than asked. We were all too eager and naive looking. I said that we looked like little does tenderly eating grass and everyone laughed. When we finished eating, the place was a mess. Food, napkins, and take-out containers everywhere. No one wanted clean up. We sat in our men's clothes, staring at everything, not moving. I knew what we were thinking. So now we got to get some [BLEEP] bitches to clean this [BLEEP] up, huh? Yeah. My highest hope for the workshop once I realized I was in very little danger of actually resembling a man, was that I would have some great insight into the mystery of what makes men men and women women. But I think there's no mystery left. The train of gender is too familiar, full of places we visited way too many times. Men are detached, unapologetic, unafraid to take up space. Women are conciliatory and self-effacing. Men gulp, women sip. I'm not sure there's anything Diane or anyone could say that would really surprise any of us. I did have one moment in the workshop where I was walking across the floor, shoulders hunched, lips in a scowl, where I felt what it must be like to Dan Rosen. College dropout, keeper of the magazine section. Is this it, I thought? Is this what it feels like to be a guy? But I realized that what I felt-- useless, defensive, underachieving, bored, tragically adolescent-- was not about feeling like a guy, but about remembering what it felt like to be in my early 20s. What it felt like to be a failure. And I don't need to be in drag to tap into that. As our graduation ceremony for the workshop, we wanted to go to a men's club to watch strippers. But it was a Sunday night in Giuliani's New York and we couldn't find a single one open. I was secretly relieved when we ended up at a restaurant in the West Village. Right there in the booth I surreptitiously unwrapped my chest. I ordered a Diet Coke and a salad. Sarah Miller. These days she writes a column for Men's Health magazine. Her novel, Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn, is coming out this March. Coming up, polygamy as feminist lifestyle. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio and Public Radio International when our program continues. It's This American Life, I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, invite a variety of writers and reporters and everyday people to come in and speak on that theme. Today on our program, I Enjoy Being a Girl, Sort Of. In this second half of our program, we turned the stories of individual women and girls to stories of groups of women and girls. We have arrived at Act Three, Strength in Numbers. This is the story about one group of women. And I have to say that every woman working on this show at some point during this last week has expressed a little envy for the women in this group. And I think maybe the best way to start their story is with their road trip. Barbara, Jewel, Lynn, Tiny, Valerie, and Rosetta decided to leave the husbands and kids and grandkids behind and hit the road. I was the first pick up. And? And they picked me up about 4 o'clock. 4 o'clock in the morning? 4:00 AM. We arrived at the donut place and they were not open. They did not open til 7:00. That is sad when you arrive at the donut place-- you were earlier then. They were not open. And they would not open to 7:00 on the dot. We're waiting on 6 o'clock, so we can go into the donut place. I think [UNINTELLIGIBLE] in there. We got three hens in the car planning on how we could go up to Rosewood hospital and sneak up in the room. So it's like 4:00 in the morning. Sometime between 4:00 and 6:00 in the morning on a Friday morning and you decide you're going to visit one of your friends, one the hens who's in the hospital before you hit the road. That was going to be a break in. Yeah, but you know I thought we'd kind of pose as doctors and we're coming to see [? Marilyn Jones. ?] There's a special case. They do it on TV all the time. I can flash my DCFS badge. I was going to play like I worked for DCFS. I do work for DCFS. Department of Children and Family Services. Department of Children and Family Services. State agency. So I was going to show my ID and said that I had to talk to her about her kids. At 5:00 in the morning? I'm from DCFS, I got to talk to you about your kids at 5:00 in the morning. Now see, I was the last one they picked up, so I didn't know anything about that. And your reaction was? I would not have agreed with that. My [UNINTELLIGIBLE] out. I'm with DCFS legal. I need to have her sign some papers. She has high blood pressure and her sugar is up, so we don't want to excite her too much, but we want to give her that hen love. Well, not right now, Rosetta. And hen love. Give her a big hug and kiss. The Hens. Most of them have known each other since they were teenagers, growing up in Inglewood on Chicago's south side. A couple joined the group when they were working with other hands at the switchboard at The Palmer House, a fancy Chicago Hotel. Nine women. And every March they take a big trip together or they throw a party. Like the dinner dance they threw for themselves and their families where everybody wore white and gold. Everybody. This March, they took a tape recorder and drove from Chicago to a casino in Mississippi and back in three days. They visited a stray Hen who works down at the casino, Sally. Three of the Hens-- Jewel, Tiny, and Lynn came into the studio to talk about trip and explain what the Hens are all about. In the South, they say that when it's a bunch of women that get together, a bunch of hens. Yeah, they say it in kind of a mean way. Yeah, but we didn't take it as being means. Hens to the Hilt. Hilt. That was our original name. Because when we traveled, we only stayed at Hilton Hotels. Well, hell, your husband said something about they ain't nothing but a bunch of hens. Bunch of hens. Now he did say that in a mean way. In a very mean way. And you guys will help each other out, like if somebody's out of work or if somebody needs some money. You guys will help out? We just did something like that recently. The last barbecue holiday. Valerie's son went out to the army, so we came together with our families and had a big barbecue. And at that barbecue we scraped together the little money that we had left to send him off to let him know we care. And sent him off with money in his pocket with all our phone numbers and our addresses. Have you got a letter yet? I haven't gotten anything yet. But we know he's doing fine. We try to do things like that to let each other's family know that we care. So when your kids were growing up, when your kids were coming up, would you have a lot of contact with each other, talking about all the stuff they were doing? My kids basically stay with Jill and Barbara all the time. We all had apartments next door to each other. When our babies were one and two. 101, 102, 103. I was 101, Tiny was 102, and Barbara was 103. There's a moment in the tape that you guys recorded on this last trip where really, literally everyone in the van is talking at the same time. And we understand each other. Now let me get to just the facts of how this weekend worked. You guys left at 4:00 in the morning on Friday morning and then you drove for how many hours? Because you were heading from Illinois from Chicago through Tennessee, all the way to-- 12. It took us 12 hours. You drove 12 straight hours more or less? And where did you-- Oh, we stopped. Oh, we stopped at a great place. And I got this great restaurant in Lambert's. Home of the throwed rolls. It's like, Jill, what you talking about? I said, you guys, they throw the rolls at you. People in the place throwing rolls and you have to catch them. Throwing rolls at you? Throwing dinner rolls at you. Hot dinner rolls at you. Catch, catch, catch! Because their rolls are so good that they couldn't serve them fast enough. So one day the owner just threw one and that's how it started. So all you have to do is hold up your hand and they throw it and you catch it. Now there's a recording of this and somebody apparently is not doing a very good job doing the catching. Me. All right, so what's the name of this place for people listening on the radio-- Lambert's. Lambert's and where is it? At interstate 57 and 55 there's Lambert's. Every time we get together is not fun and games, but then when we get together the following time we laugh about it. Because the last time we went to Oakbrook that really wasn't fun. Why? What happened? For years, Valerie has always so to speak, picked on Tony. Tony. You know because Tony is the slow one. She's very slow. You have to wait for her. Help her. She walks with a cane sometime. Yeah, you know, so she can't decide what she wants to put on. And so this particular night, Valerie just picked on Tony one too many times. It was about some pictures or something. So the next thing I know, Tony had jumped up out her chair and [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. It was like RoboCop. She said, whoomp, whoomp, whoomp. Coming over there to get Valerie. Just stomps across the room. No, Sally and I looked at each other. We said, oh, no. We ran. We left from there because I said I'm not-- we left. That's the closest to a couple hens fighting. But it wasn't funny at the time. But we get together now and we laugh about it. There's a point where you guys are in the van and you got into this conversation about abortion that began when somebody was talking about these stories in the newspaper. And there came a point in that conversation, Tiny, where you said, we were such brave souls to have our kids when we did. Because most of you had your kids when you were teenagers. Right. We all did. And then Barbara says-- she's kind of off mike. You can barely hear it. She says, well not so brave. I was seven months pregnant before told my father. I never forget the look in daddy's face. Whoo! Boy I'm glad I made it through that! What did he do? What did he say? You know how daddy had that vein on his head that pops, and it started jumping. And he looked at me-- That's scary. And he said, whose is it? I said Robert's! Tell him real quick! You know, momma worked at St. Luke Presbytarian Hospital. And she took me for her-- We're not going to have the same amount of fun every time we get together because our lives are changing. Like one time we sat around talking about getting old. We're realizing that, heck, we're getting older and there was health issues. This year we had a serious issue we faced. We faced Tiny's father dying. But also, you knew him going back to when you were younger too. Yeah, Mr. [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. I was very scared of that man. So you arrive at the hotel Friday. A little before six. A little before six Friday. And describe the hotel. Beautiful. It was beautiful. It was like Vegas sitting in the middle of a cotton field. Yes, it was. Do your husbands have anything like this with their male friends? No. No? We have tried to encourage it, but they never do. They're real supportive now. We really had to go through a lot. And they do get crazy. Like the closer we get to that departing time-- They come up with their little bitty things. Little things, little things that aggravate you. But my husband has really gotten used to it. I'm thinking he's really gotten tired of me because he's-- remember when all came to pick me up. He was just calm in the chair. And that's not like Dale. He's like, see you all. You all have a good time. John was the one. Now this is my son. He calls me in the room. Ma, I want to pray with you. I said, OK, John. I just want to pray for your safe trip. I said, OK, John. And he's holding my hand and he's praying. That was so funny. And I'm like, OK, John. You know, five minutes later he's still praying. I'm like, OK, John. Amen. Bye. I got to get on my trip. My Hens are waiting for me. I have to deal with John now. What would your husbands, what would they used to do? What'd they used to say when you were about to get to go on a trip. When you coming back? Can we say this on the radio? Now, my other relationships could not deal with the Hens and we had to break up. We had to be lesbians. Seriously. Yes. Oh, we're a bunch of lesbians. And I broke up with-- That's what they would say, you're a bunch of lesbians? They could not deal with the idea of women get together. We're going to sleep together, you know? Because we have so many beds. Each room have a bed in it. We're going to sleep together. Somebody's going to sleep with me that weekend. But the men in your lives, they must have their friends who they hang with? Yeah, they do. They do. But they don't have the same kind of bond. You know, they got friends that they hang with. I don't think men have the same kind of relationship that women have. Yeah, I think it's very much a women's thing. Definitely a women's thing. I think it's very much a women's thing. When I get with the Hens, I'm me. I'm Tiny. You know, I don't have to be [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. I don't have to be wife. I don't have to be mother. I'm not sitting up there flirting with anybody where I got to be a sexy broad. I'm Tiny, naturally. And anything that comes to my mind I can say it. And they're going to say, oh, is that how you think about it? Well I think this way and I like that input. But it's a natural thing. Hey, my seatbelt is working-- Everybody in here [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE]. The Hens-- Tiny, Lynn and Jewel in the studio. Also, Barbara, Rosetta, Valerie, Sally, Tony and Jan. This next song is the song that they always play driving home from their trips when they have to return to their husbands and kids and real life. Act Four, Taking Sisterhood One Step Further. If you ask Elizabeth Joseph, it was the only reasonable choice to marry a man who was already married to five women. She met her husband when she was a senior in college. Well, you look at somebody in my situation. I was almost 21 years old. I could either marry somebody my own age and take another 10 years and finish the job of raising him, his mother started. Or I could marry a proven failure and I practice divorce law. I know there's all kinds of wonderful excuses for divorce, but by definition it's a failure. Or I could have found myself somebody who had proven himself to be a good husband, but maybe I didn't want to marry a 65-year-old widower. So in Alex, there was no gamble. He was demonstrably a good husband, demonstrably a good father. So there was little risk to the situation. Elizabeth Joseph is as an attorney and now public affairs director of a radio station in Utah. We offer her story as part of our show as another example in the continuum of how to be a woman or a girl. She says that because she was in a polygamist marriage, she could do things like go off to law school and finish school and not have to worry who was taking care of the kids or her husband. There were other wives around for that. In short, she says, polygamy is the ultimate feminist lifestyle. It's having a man on your own terms. You know, he's in your bed. He's in your house at your invitation. The juggling act that so many women have to put on with respect to careers and family is so much relieved in our situation because there are so many of us to share those kinds of household duties and child rearing and husband taking care of. So I'm able to go to work with a guilt free heart and child never sees the inside of a daycare center or anything like that. They're home with people who care about them. Now your husband has eight wives? Yes. And how many of the wives actually stay home? Do all of them work? Do just some of them work? Yeah, we all work. We all work. About nine years ago three of us had babies all in the same year and there was one wife in particular that we really wanted to watch out for the kids while we were at work. And so we went to her and said how much is it going to take to get you to quit your job for a couple of years til the kids go to school? So she did that for us. Then she went back to work. And when you say, how much would it take you, did the rest of you pay her? Yeah, the three of us paid her. Wow. It was only fair, she was working hard. So when you first met your husband, had you been considering polygamy as an option? Oh, only very recently because a friend of his had proposed to me also. But no, I didn't even know it existed when I was in college until I met my husband and his friend. I had no idea anybody was doing it modernly. I was aware of the LDS history of the last century. The Mormon church, the Latter Day Saints Church? And when you met him, he was already married to five women at that point, right? Correct. How did a courtship happen? Like what actually happened? Well, we were separated by a thousand miles. He proposed by letter. And I flew down and spent my spring break my senior year with him and his family. He had married two of my best friends from college. So I came I thought as much to see them as him. But I just needed to check out the situation. And I went home married. What did your family say? They were understandably upset. My dad was very educated, but a Montana cowboy and he told my brothers to get their rifles and they were coming after me. Wow. My mother's a very educated, smart women and she was heartbroken, but she wasn't willing to give the association with her only daughter to maintain a point. Can I ask you to just explain kind of the practical terms of it? Like does everybody live in separate houses? Does everybody live in the same house? How often do you see Alex? I see Alex every day for sure. Structurally, I have a home that I share with another wife just because it's so huge. But Margaret has her own place, Beau has our own place, Joanna has her own place. But we're all right close together. It's not like if he's at Diane and [? Don's ?] house, I walk right in the front door and make myself at home. I mean, we enjoy each other's company. Margaret likes to say that he's more fun when there's more than one of us just because that's his nature. And yeah, there's three of us that have anniversaries real close together and it's a longstanding tradition for the four of us to go out to dinner together near those anniversary. You know, the family spends a lot of time together. The kids are very fond of one another from the different mothers. So how many kids are there in the family? 20. And I'd say about half are grown. And then, how often will he actually stay with you if I can ask you questions that personal. Yeah, we actually stay with him. He's got his own quarters. But over the years it's varied. When I was 20 I had one kind of sexual appetite and now that I'm in my-- I hate to say this-- mid 40s, it's a little different. But in talking to my monogamous friends, I have that kind of exchange with him as often or more often than they do. You know, roughly average once a week. It just depends. I've heard Mormon men talk about polygamy and talking about the advantage of it as being this. They say that there's certain things that a woman looks to a man for in terms of wanting to talk about things and wanting to be close regarding certain kinds of issues and have a certain kind of close friendship that a lot of men just they don't talk that way. They don't relate to other people that way. And so one of the advantages of polygamy is that the women, the wives, can get that from the other wives. That's one of the huge advantages. That's a really nice thing. I mean, some of our funnest times have been when he's been like on a business trip and we'll get together and have a tequila party or something and just laugh our heads off. Just have a good time. Because the way the wives feel about one another is we're just extraordinarily proud of one another. We're extremely proud to be associated with one another. And we've had women come into the situation and look into it. And we didn't like them, and we got rid of them. We're women. We're good at it. Do you have some sort of veto power over whether a woman actually gets to marry in? It's de facto, OK? The rule is he'll marry whom he pleases. But he has learned over the years that if we don't like them, his relationship with them is going nowhere. So we've chased off our share. And do people get jealous? Do you get jealous? Well, you know, us American girls are raised to be very insecure and jealous. Neither of which is a trait that you would want to embrace. So in the early years I think as with any marriage, it takes a while to feel your way and get that security established. And yeah, there were times when I'd go well, why-- gee, you know, I can see way he likes Margaret. She does that so well and I don't. But then after a while you go, yeah, but look what I do that Margaret doesn't. And he does that. That's his job is to give you that security that he loves you for what you are. And 25 years into this deal and we've sort of got it down pat. We're not too threatened at all. Is this something that you think should be widely recommended to people? Or do you feel like that you are just in a special situation with a special man and it's not applicable to other people's lives? It's only a certain kind of people. For example, I had a son who he had a family. And I have a son. But anyway, a girl came to him who'd grown up in our community and she said what I said. You're obviously a good father and husband. Can I marry you? And he really liked this girl. But he was blown away. He goes, I don't know if I can do this. And of course I knew him very well, my son. I said, Stewart, you're one of the few guys I think can. And he lasted like two months. And why do you think it didn't work for him? Well, usually two wives is very difficult. You really need a third to balance it out. But usually, the most common scenario is the two women will gang up on the guy. But you're thinking like 1 out of 10 men that you know could do it or like it's more m 1 out a 100? More like 1 out of 1,000, if not 10,000. Wow. It's not easy. That's why most of his boys will tell you they wouldn't entertain it because they know how difficult it is. Because they watch their dad do it. And the main difficulty is just keeping everybody satisfied and happy? Well, yeah. You got to be way smart. Like he says, how would you like eight women working your inventory 24 hours a day we? And we do. We do. We're strong willed, independent, say what we think. I haven't met anybody that could do what Alex has done. I've met polygamists, long-term polygamists, who I admire and respect for what they've done. But in terms of demonstration, it doesn't come anything close to his family. Elizabeth Joseph in Utah. Our website, www.thisamericanlife.org where you can listen to our programs for absolutely free or buy CDs of them. Or you know you can download today's program in our archives at audible.com/thisamericanlife. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight from Mr. Torey Malatia who says that from now on he wants to be called- Ghetto hoochie mama. Or perhaps you would prefer-- Booty house girl. I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of this American life. PRI, Public Radio International.
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.