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Transcript

The Big Birthday Party · Revisionist History

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. So I'm calling you because I'm doing a little
0:24
Speaker 1: thing on how I don't like my birthday. Yes, and
0:29
Speaker 1: I have questions for you.
0:33
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm eagerly waiting to hear of this because I
0:38
Speaker 2: have spaid a lot of time one ding what it's
0:41
Speaker 2: all about.
0:42
Speaker 1: That's my mom, Joyce. She's very short, speaks very softly.
0:47
Speaker 1: You would like her. Do you remember ever having a
0:51
Speaker 1: birthday party for me when I was a child.
0:54
Speaker 2: I think we did. We didn't do exotic things. I
0:59
Speaker 2: think you had people sleep over, or you had some
1:03
Speaker 2: people to tea, a few friends from school.
1:08
Speaker 1: I remember there was once a big party, and really
1:13
Speaker 1: and I and I said, and afterwards I said, that's enough.
1:18
Speaker 2: Oh okay, now, well you're going to exclaine what you were?
1:24
Speaker 3: What was enough?
1:28
Speaker 1: In case you're wondering, my mom is a therapist. I
1:33
Speaker 1: just thought it was a I thought it was a
1:35
Speaker 1: needless production to have all these people over.
1:39
Speaker 2: What should it have been instead?
1:41
Speaker 1: Well, what would I do now? Is perfect? Which is nothing?
1:46
Speaker 2: Oh, so you didn't enjoy any part of having friends
1:51
Speaker 2: to eat with you?
1:53
Speaker 1: No, I haven't had a birthday party since. It's worse
1:59
Speaker 1: than that. I don't remember anyone's birthday. I know my
2:03
Speaker 1: mother's but not my father's, one of my brothers, but
2:05
Speaker 1: not the other. One of my daughters was born in
2:08
Speaker 1: July and the other in August, but I'm not sure
2:10
Speaker 1: which is which. If I were to name my five
2:13
Speaker 1: closest friends, I think I know the birthday of one
2:16
Speaker 1: of them. And that's because it's January first. And I
2:19
Speaker 1: just saw him on January first, and he said to me,
2:22
Speaker 1: with tones of great injury and reproach, today is my birthday.
2:26
Speaker 1: But I am sure I'll forget that fact really soon
2:29
Speaker 1: on this particular subject. The overloaded lifeboat that is my
2:33
Speaker 1: memory is refusing all further passengers. And by the way,
2:37
Speaker 1: my mother reminded me, it's not just birthdays that I
2:40
Speaker 1: have a problem with, it's any kind of arbitrary celebration.
2:45
Speaker 4: So you were.
2:48
Speaker 5: A very thoughtful child.
2:50
Speaker 2: The fact, for example, was that you child is your teacher,
2:53
Speaker 2: Miss Brown.
2:55
Speaker 1: Missus Brown was my first grade teacher. I was very
2:57
Speaker 1: fond of Missus Brown. But one day at school she
3:01
Speaker 1: brought up Christmas and Santa Claus.
3:04
Speaker 2: You put your hand up and said, there is no
3:06
Speaker 2: center flower. This was when she had the fair problem,
3:12
Speaker 2: because here she was speaking to a group of small
3:16
Speaker 2: children who wanted to believe.
3:19
Speaker 1: Yes, it's they're linked by the way my disdain for
3:23
Speaker 1: Santa Claus and my disdain for my birthday. Is this
3:27
Speaker 1: part of the same impulse?
3:30
Speaker 5: Yes, of course, Yes, of.
3:33
Speaker 1: Course, says mom the therapist. Why am I telling you
3:38
Speaker 1: all this because last year, twenty twenty five was the
3:43
Speaker 1: tenth anniversary of when we started making Revisionist History, and
3:47
Speaker 1: I forgot all about it, totally skip my mind until
3:51
Speaker 1: I was randomly on the Revision's history dot Com website
3:54
Speaker 1: looking up some forgotten fact from an episode from season
3:57
Speaker 1: one one of my favorite food Fight, and I noticed
4:00
Speaker 1: the release date July fourteenth, twenty sixteen, and I realized,
4:05
Speaker 1: holy mackerel, we've been around for ten years. The Internet
4:10
Speaker 1: tells me that this is the ten or Aluminum anniversary,
4:14
Speaker 1: which I have to say, kind of proves my point.
4:16
Speaker 1: What are you supposed to do in your tenth anniversary?
4:19
Speaker 3: Right?
4:19
Speaker 1: I love you in magic marker on a sheet of tinfoil.
4:23
Speaker 1: This was back in the summer. So what did I do.
4:26
Speaker 1: I didn't say anything, kept it to myself. It's better
4:29
Speaker 1: this way, I thought, But then I remember to date.
4:31
Speaker 1: I went on many years ago with a girl who
4:33
Speaker 1: told me that she turned her birthday every year into
4:36
Speaker 1: a seven day marathon. She called it, wait for it,
4:39
Speaker 1: Princess Week. Picture me in the darkened bar making sense
4:44
Speaker 1: of that revelation. Good lord, But if someone wants Princess Week,
4:50
Speaker 1: shouldn't we just give them Princess Week. So, all of
4:54
Speaker 1: you insufferably sentimental people out there in listener land, this
4:58
Speaker 1: is for you, a little revisionist history tenth anniversary celebration.
5:12
Speaker 1: To get started, I did little homework, sent out a tweet,
5:16
Speaker 1: asked listeners for feedback, scoured some Reddit threads, talk with
5:20
Speaker 1: people who've been involved in the show over the years,
5:23
Speaker 1: trying to generate a highlight reel for the big birthday party.
5:26
Speaker 1: What was her favorite moment memory? First thing I got
5:29
Speaker 1: back was from my colleague Bend daph Haffrey, who talked
5:32
Speaker 1: to my old producer Elowise Linton about a reporting trip
5:36
Speaker 1: we took back in twenty twenty one for the episode
5:39
Speaker 1: The Dog Will See You Now.
5:41
Speaker 3: Okay, So Malcolm wanted to do an episode on these
5:46
Speaker 3: dogs who were trained to small COVID and we found
5:52
Speaker 3: this center in Alabama that trained these specialized dogs and
6:00
Speaker 3: we all decided to go on a road trip and
6:03
Speaker 3: it was me, Malcolm and Jacob Smith, so Malcolm and
6:07
Speaker 3: two producers. And part of the thing that was fun
6:12
Speaker 3: but also kind of crazy about it was that we
6:14
Speaker 3: were just sort of coming out of COVID, so we
6:16
Speaker 3: hadn't It was fun to take a trip in a
6:18
Speaker 3: moment when there wasn't a lot of socializing or traveling
6:21
Speaker 3: going on.
6:23
Speaker 1: Let me just butt in here and say that no
6:24
Speaker 1: one loves doing Alabama stories more than me. Back in
6:28
Speaker 1: season two, we did The foot Soldier of Birmingham. Season eight,
6:32
Speaker 1: we did an episode called Footnote Remember for our gun
6:36
Speaker 1: series about a guy living on an old plantation outside
6:39
Speaker 1: of Tuskegee. Season ten, we went to Scottsboro, Alabama for
6:43
Speaker 1: an episode of our nineteen thirty six Olympic series. And
6:46
Speaker 1: we just did The Alabama Murders, a seven part series
6:49
Speaker 1: about crime and punishment and redemption set in a little
6:53
Speaker 1: town in northwestern Alabama. Bet and I went twice. Ben
6:57
Speaker 1: went a third time on his own. No one loves
7:00
Speaker 1: Alabama more than I love Alabama. So in the middle
7:05
Speaker 1: of COVID, I want to do a story about how
7:06
Speaker 1: dogs are much better detecting COVID, then even the most
7:10
Speaker 1: sophisticated molecular bio essay, and I find out that one
7:13
Speaker 1: of the biggest COVID canine training centers is an hour's
7:16
Speaker 1: drive from Birmingham, way up in the hills, Alabama. Cute puppies,
7:23
Speaker 1: viral epidemics. My feeling was that this might be the
7:27
Speaker 1: perfect revision's history story.
7:30
Speaker 3: One fun thing that I learned about Malcolm on this
7:32
Speaker 3: trip is that he doesn't believe in using maps, which
7:36
Speaker 3: caused you know, nah, he doesn't want He doesn't mean
7:40
Speaker 3: you can ask him his philosophy on it. I'm sure
7:43
Speaker 3: he has some great answer, but he would not use
7:47
Speaker 3: an app. So it was kind of me and Jacob
7:48
Speaker 3: secretly checking our you know, Google maps and sort of
7:52
Speaker 3: suggesting that he takes certain turns, picking your fingers, sticking
7:56
Speaker 3: it to the wind and being yeah, exactly, yeah, this
8:01
Speaker 3: is true.
8:02
Speaker 1: Since we're talking about my parents, one of my fondest
8:04
Speaker 1: memories of being a kid is driving with my family
8:07
Speaker 1: somewhere and clearly getting hopelessly lost and my father announcing
8:12
Speaker 1: gleefully from the front seat, I'm following my nose. I
8:16
Speaker 1: felt that my young producers deserved a similar experience.
8:21
Speaker 3: And on this long drive road trip, we had to
8:24
Speaker 3: stop for gas, and we stopped at a very desolate
8:28
Speaker 3: gas station, kind of in the middle of nowhere, very
8:31
Speaker 3: in the middle of nowhere, and Malcolm and Jacob both
8:37
Speaker 3: went in to grab something, and I went to the
8:40
Speaker 3: bathroom and I came back out and they were gone,
8:43
Speaker 3: and I left my cellphone in the car, and I
8:49
Speaker 3: just kind of remember calculating what my options were in
8:53
Speaker 3: terms of what I could do. So I remember I
8:56
Speaker 3: went into the I went into the sort of gas
8:59
Speaker 3: station and was concentplating calling my family, calling my roommate
9:06
Speaker 3: and saying, listen, my boss left me at a gas.
9:13
Speaker 1: In fairness to me and Jacob, Elowis had been sitting
9:15
Speaker 1: in the back seat, and she is by nature quite
9:18
Speaker 1: as a church mess, so it makes sense that we
9:20
Speaker 1: might assume that she was back there all the time,
9:23
Speaker 1: reading a book or something. And it did not take
9:25
Speaker 1: that long for us to realize our mistake, maybe ten
9:28
Speaker 1: miles max and the frantic drive back, both Jacob and
9:32
Speaker 1: I felt really, really guilty. Anyway, why am I telling
9:37
Speaker 1: you this story because when I meet listeners, I think
9:39
Speaker 1: they have the impression that this show is some big,
9:42
Speaker 1: well oiled corporate machine, and clearly it's not.
9:47
Speaker 3: I was like, did you try calling me? Like what?
9:50
Speaker 5: One?
9:50
Speaker 3: I don't think we really talked about it, because we're.
9:53
Speaker 1: Also read all right. Speaking of Ben, here's a note
9:57
Speaker 1: from my Twitter call out from a listener named Rob Gilfillian.
10:02
Speaker 1: Here's my question. Malcolm pronounces his colleague's name as Ben
10:05
Speaker 1: Nadaph Haffrey, while Ben calls himself Ben a de Haffrey.
10:10
Speaker 1: It's similar to the difference in pronouncing pecan or pecan,
10:14
Speaker 1: or Caribbean or Caribbean. These two obviously spend a lot
10:18
Speaker 1: of time together. Seems odd. This is so true. It's
10:22
Speaker 1: because I just love a double barreled last name. I
10:24
Speaker 1: wish I had one. My mother's maiden name was Nation.
10:28
Speaker 1: Can you imagine if I were known as Malcolm Nation Gladwell,
10:31
Speaker 1: I would be unstoppable. So I'm deeply appreciative of that
10:35
Speaker 1: nadaph in the middle of Ben's name. I want to
10:38
Speaker 1: give it the kind of relish I believe it deserves.
10:40
Speaker 1: Nadafha is like pickles on a sandwich. It's transformative. The
10:45
Speaker 1: other reason, while I'm on this subject is that this
10:48
Speaker 1: is the price I pay for being the child of
10:50
Speaker 1: a Jamaican and an Englishman who was raised in Canada
10:53
Speaker 1: and then moved to the United States. I have four
10:56
Speaker 1: different pronunciation and accent models bouncing around my head at
11:01
Speaker 1: all times. Everything is up for grabs. The person who
11:05
Speaker 1: knows this better than anyone is my producer, Nina Lawrence.
11:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, you have a real problem with with ambulances.
11:14
Speaker 1: And what do you say? But when the ambulance arrived
11:18
Speaker 1: a few minutes later? What do I say?
11:20
Speaker 6: When the ambulance?
11:22
Speaker 1: And that's the that's what it says, ambulance. What where
11:30
Speaker 1: were we? One more memory. We're celebrating our tenth anniversary,
11:36
Speaker 1: and you were You were the principal figure in the
11:40
Speaker 1: founding of revisionist history.
11:42
Speaker 6: It's crazy, I guess.
11:44
Speaker 7: I mean, yeah, I was there.
11:46
Speaker 1: I was there from the very very start.
11:47
Speaker 7: I remember our very first meeting Bell.
11:51
Speaker 1: The person who taught me everything there is to know
11:53
Speaker 1: about podcasting. I want you to go back. So we
11:58
Speaker 1: we were interviewing people and you waltzed in.
12:05
Speaker 5: Is that? How is that how it felt that?
12:06
Speaker 1: I want that I waltzed in. I know who you were.
12:10
Speaker 1: I did not I did not read your resume in advance.
12:14
Speaker 1: I never do the wait, but I want to know
12:20
Speaker 1: what were you? We had never met.
12:21
Speaker 7: Before, we had never met before.
12:23
Speaker 1: What were your impressions there? I was skinny, Malcolm, what
12:27
Speaker 1: you say?
12:28
Speaker 7: Well, I knew your work coming in, and I had
12:30
Speaker 7: read the outline of your I'd.
12:32
Speaker 1: Given you an outline of some suggested ideas I had
12:36
Speaker 1: for the first season.
12:37
Speaker 7: Yes, yes, and there were some great you know, there
12:39
Speaker 7: was some great stuff in there, but I also saw
12:42
Speaker 7: a lot of sports and cars, and all the sources
12:46
Speaker 7: that you referenced were dudes. And I was just like, Okay,
12:49
Speaker 7: here we go.
12:51
Speaker 1: And so I'm not a mean person, but.
12:54
Speaker 7: I needed to speak my truth, my truth, which was
13:00
Speaker 7: there's some great stuff here, but no woman is ever
13:03
Speaker 7: going to listen to this podcast.
13:06
Speaker 1: So I remember. I remember that perfectly. I I the
13:10
Speaker 1: minute I heard that I fell in love with you.
13:12
Speaker 1: I was like, I was like, so, so, I so
13:16
Speaker 1: want to work with this woman. This is fantastic. It
13:20
Speaker 1: was a show called Revisionist History. The tagline was because
13:23
Speaker 1: sometimes the past deserves a second chance. The premise of
13:27
Speaker 1: the show was that you needed to go back over
13:28
Speaker 1: things that had happened, because chances are you got them wrong.
13:31
Speaker 1: The first time, and Mia walks in, looks at the
13:35
Speaker 1: proposed lineup of episodes and says, you need to go
13:39
Speaker 1: back over them. You got them wrong the first time.
13:42
Speaker 1: Under the circumstances, who could say no? After talking to Mia,
13:48
Speaker 1: I thought of one of my all time favorite songs,
13:51
Speaker 1: David allen Coe's you Never Even Called Me by my Name,
13:53
Speaker 1: which begins with the perfect country opening line, Well.
13:58
Speaker 8: It was all.
14:00
Speaker 5: I could do.
14:03
Speaker 9: You keep from crying.
14:06
Speaker 1: If you've never heard of David allen Coe, By the way,
14:09
Speaker 1: he just read you, a line taken at random from
14:11
Speaker 1: his Wikipedia page. After concluding another prison term in nineteen
14:15
Speaker 1: sixty seven, Co embarked on a music career in Nashville,
14:19
Speaker 1: living in a hearse which he parked in front of
14:21
Speaker 1: the Rymann Auditorium while he performed on the street. How
14:25
Speaker 1: can you not love David allen Coe anyway? Halfway through
14:28
Speaker 1: you never even called me by my name? Coe just
14:31
Speaker 1: stops and says, well.
14:33
Speaker 9: A friend of mine named Steve Goodman wrote that song,
14:37
Speaker 9: and he told me it was the perfect Countrey and
14:39
Speaker 9: Western song. I wrote him back a letter and I
14:42
Speaker 9: told him it was not the perfect Conkrey and Western
14:45
Speaker 9: song because he hadn't said anything at all about mama
14:50
Speaker 9: or trained, or trucked, or prison.
14:56
Speaker 10: Or getting drunk.
14:58
Speaker 1: So then Goodman writes a new verse, sends it to
15:01
Speaker 1: co and Coe says, Okay, now this really is the
15:04
Speaker 1: perfect country and Western song.
15:07
Speaker 9: The last verse goes like this here.
15:10
Speaker 8: And I was drawn to d My mom got out
15:16
Speaker 8: of prison, and I with the picker up.
15:24
Speaker 3: In the right, but before.
15:31
Speaker 8: I could get to the station, now the picker throw
15:40
Speaker 8: she got rid over by a damn the train.
15:47
Speaker 1: I think you can see where I'm going with this.
15:50
Speaker 1: A singer insists on going back over a song, a
15:53
Speaker 1: song that has already been written, because he thinks the
15:56
Speaker 1: songwriter got it wrong the first time. And what's the fix?
16:00
Speaker 1: Nothing elaborate, the most prosaic of things, the bare essentials
16:04
Speaker 1: for a country singer, Mama, trains, trucks, prisons, and getting
16:10
Speaker 1: That's what I think we've learned over the first ten
16:12
Speaker 1: years of the show that getting something right doesn't require heroics,
16:17
Speaker 1: is just following your nose and turning around when you
16:20
Speaker 1: mistakenly left someone behind. After the break, the celebration continues, Okay,
16:38
Speaker 1: I have some thoughts about the first ten years of
16:40
Speaker 1: Revision's history why it has been so much fun, Because
16:44
Speaker 1: it's been way way more fun than I ever imagined
16:48
Speaker 1: for me. It starts with the difference between reading a
16:51
Speaker 1: story and hearing a story. In reading, the writer is
16:55
Speaker 1: in charge of what appears on the page. If you
16:58
Speaker 1: read one of my books and you liked it, you're
17:00
Speaker 1: giving me a direct compliment. You're saying, I like what
17:03
Speaker 1: you made. But when you listen to a story made
17:07
Speaker 1: up of interviews with all sorts of people, archival tape
17:10
Speaker 1: sitch together with bits of narrative here and there, you
17:13
Speaker 1: aren't saying I like what you made. You're saying I
17:16
Speaker 1: like what you found. And that's a very different thing.
17:21
Speaker 1: One episode listeners ranked as a favorite on my Twitter poll,
17:24
Speaker 1: for example, is My Little one hundred Million from season one,
17:28
Speaker 1: an episode all about the strange phenomenon of wealthy people
17:32
Speaker 1: giving millions of dollars to colleges that already have millions
17:35
Speaker 1: of dollars as opposed to schools that don't have millions
17:38
Speaker 1: of dollars. There's a moment in the episode where I
17:41
Speaker 1: call up John Hennessy, who was the president of Stanford
17:44
Speaker 1: University at the time. Stanford is a tiny fraction of
17:47
Speaker 1: the size of its neighbors in the University of California System.
17:50
Speaker 1: And yet in twenty sixteen, Stamford's endowment was twenty two billion.
17:55
Speaker 1: The UC systems endowment much much smaller, by about eight
18:00
Speaker 1: and a half billion dollars. So I asked Hennessy, do
18:04
Speaker 1: you ever imagine that a president of Stanford might go
18:09
Speaker 1: to a funder and say, at this point in our history,
18:12
Speaker 1: the best use of your money is to give to
18:13
Speaker 1: the UC system, not to Stanford. Well, that would be
18:17
Speaker 1: a hard thing to do, obviously, to.
18:21
Speaker 5: Turn them turn them away.
18:23
Speaker 6: And I think the other question we'd be asked is
18:28
Speaker 6: how can I.
18:28
Speaker 1: Have confidence that they'll use my money?
18:30
Speaker 8: Well, which we're obviously the president of Stanford is not
18:34
Speaker 8: in a position to vouch for. I think.
18:37
Speaker 1: It's an amazing answer. And what's amazing is that he
18:41
Speaker 1: had every reason to duck that question, or brush it aside,
18:45
Speaker 1: or tell a lie, but he doesn't. He decides to
18:48
Speaker 1: be completely honest. He owns up to the fact that
18:51
Speaker 1: even though he is an educator, he is not primarily
18:54
Speaker 1: in the education business. He's in the Stanford business. And
18:58
Speaker 1: I suspect that one of the reasons so many people
19:01
Speaker 1: listed my Little one hundred million, as one of their
19:03
Speaker 1: favorites is because of that little bit of tape from Hennessy.
19:07
Speaker 1: I didn't make that moment. I didn't anticipate it. I
19:10
Speaker 1: didn't manipulate Hennessy into saying it. I stumbled into it.
19:15
Speaker 1: And the wonderful thing about audio is that it allows
19:18
Speaker 1: you to capture those found moments exactly as they're happening.
19:24
Speaker 1: There's an even better example of this. It's from another
19:27
Speaker 1: episode on the List from Listeners, Elvis Analysis Parapraxis season three.
19:33
Speaker 1: If you haven't heard it, the premise is pretty simple.
19:36
Speaker 1: One of Elvis's trademark songs was are You Lonesome Tonight?
19:40
Speaker 1: And in the middle of the song, there's a bridge,
19:42
Speaker 1: a couple of spoken sentences, a little soliloquy, and over
19:46
Speaker 1: and over again, whenever Elvis had to say the bridge,
19:49
Speaker 1: hit screw it up, get the words wrong, break out
19:52
Speaker 1: into totally inappropriate laughter.
19:56
Speaker 2: The World's of stags and East must play a part.
20:11
Speaker 1: The Freudian term for what Elvis was doing is called parapraxis,
20:15
Speaker 1: a slip of the tongue that reveals something about the speaker.
20:19
Speaker 1: So the episode was trying to answer, what does Elvis's
20:22
Speaker 1: issue with the bridge. Tell us about Elvis. Now, I
20:26
Speaker 1: should say I had all kinds of trouble doing this story.
20:28
Speaker 1: There was a great essay written about Elvis's parapraxis by
20:31
Speaker 1: the psychologist Alan Elms, so I flew to Sacramento to
20:35
Speaker 1: meet with Elms, but he wasn't well and couldn't really speak,
20:38
Speaker 1: so I kind of gave up put the story aside
20:41
Speaker 1: for months until I had the random idea of just
20:44
Speaker 1: going to Nashville and having professional musicians sing are You
20:48
Speaker 1: Lonesome Tonight and explain to me why the bridge is
20:50
Speaker 1: so complicated. I went to see Bobby Braddock, one of
20:54
Speaker 1: the legendary Nashville songwriters, and he brought with him a
20:57
Speaker 1: good friend, a singer named Casey Bowles. Casey sang are
21:01
Speaker 1: You Lonesome Tonight? And then we got on the subject
21:04
Speaker 1: of another song, one of her own. Do you find
21:07
Speaker 1: yourself making the kind of errors sometimes even subtle ones
21:11
Speaker 1: that you know you've been talking about?
21:13
Speaker 5: That's so interesting. I wrote a song about my mother
21:16
Speaker 5: called Somebody Something, and my mother is adorable. And whenever
21:21
Speaker 5: you heard about things going wrong or like some tumultu
21:24
Speaker 5: a story, it was my dad, and so I finally
21:26
Speaker 5: was like, you know what, wantn't we the only person
21:27
Speaker 5: in the family that there's nothing I have it written about?
21:30
Speaker 5: So it's trying to dig dirt on.
21:31
Speaker 6: Her and there was nothing.
21:33
Speaker 5: And so I ended up writing this song about her,
21:35
Speaker 5: called Somebody Something, and I cry every time I do it.
21:39
Speaker 5: And there is a line that says, you know, she's
21:43
Speaker 5: always been somebody something. She's lived every life but her own,
21:48
Speaker 5: and it's gone. I can't remember it right now. I
21:51
Speaker 5: don't know that feeling. I can't remember it.
21:54
Speaker 6: She's always been somebody something. It's been everything but.
21:57
Speaker 5: Alone, a daughter, a mother, a lot, a daughter, a lover,
22:02
Speaker 5: a wife, and a mother. She's lived every life but
22:06
Speaker 5: her own. Yeah, she's always been so it's something. And
22:10
Speaker 5: there's a line that says, you know, she she wonders
22:13
Speaker 5: what it might be like to be somebody else, and
22:16
Speaker 5: she wonders what it feels like to be free, but
22:22
Speaker 5: she's always imagined being nobody's nothing, and that's something she
22:25
Speaker 5: never want to be. But that line usually is just gone.
22:30
Speaker 5: And a lot of times I'll go hold on and
22:32
Speaker 5: divert and tell a funny story really quickly.
22:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, wait, what's the specific line that's gone is which one?
22:42
Speaker 5: Uh? What's going again? She's always been somebody's synth. That's
22:46
Speaker 5: been everything but alone, daughter, lover, a daughter, a lover,
22:49
Speaker 5: a wife, and a mother. She's been everything.
22:54
Speaker 3: But alone.
22:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, why is it that lone?
22:58
Speaker 5: I don't know. I think that.
23:05
Speaker 6: I don't know.
23:05
Speaker 5: I think when you even she's so when you see
23:08
Speaker 5: somebody to give so much of themselves, and that's truly
23:11
Speaker 5: the only thing that she will never experience. And I
23:13
Speaker 5: think it's what I've experienced the most of.
23:17
Speaker 1: I go to Nashville to write a story about parapraxis,
23:19
Speaker 1: and what happens I find pair of praxis. It occurs
23:24
Speaker 1: before my eyes, and I was lucky enough to have
23:26
Speaker 1: the tape recorder running. And the reason I love that
23:29
Speaker 1: episode and why so many listeners over the years have
23:32
Speaker 1: said it's their favorite, is that you the listener, and
23:35
Speaker 1: me the host get to participate in this little golden
23:39
Speaker 1: moment of serendipity together we Casey, can you play that
23:43
Speaker 1: song for us? Is it gonna be two?
23:45
Speaker 6: Let's say, okay, okay, well, I will say if this happens,
24:07
Speaker 6: what did I just say?
24:09
Speaker 5: I'm thinking about Mama.
24:11
Speaker 6: She grew up playing cowgirl.
24:12
Speaker 4: She grew up playing cowgirl in a railroad town, dreaming
24:20
Speaker 4: she'd see Hollywood someday. She knew some distant Friday night.
24:29
Speaker 10: With a cigarette hole just right, Fate would come in
24:35
Speaker 10: and carry away. As far as she could see from
24:43
Speaker 10: the air, those were just facts.
24:46
Speaker 6: So that's all right.
24:50
Speaker 1: Hold one second, there it is again. Pair of Praxis.
24:54
Speaker 10: Married in December.
24:56
Speaker 4: Anywhere you can address her, Mama maid. She looked dog
25:02
Speaker 4: grown up standing there like that.
25:05
Speaker 1: I've been making things my whole life. What I've learned
25:08
Speaker 1: over the last ten years of doing this is that
25:10
Speaker 1: I much prefer finding things.
25:12
Speaker 10: It's all around.
25:15
Speaker 4: May love and the greyhound coming back. As far as
25:22
Speaker 4: she could say from there, those were just the facts.
25:25
Speaker 1: Lie, We'll be right back.
25:27
Speaker 4: You went from somebody's daughter.
25:32
Speaker 6: Somebody.
25:39
Speaker 1: So I wanted to go over our greatest found moment,
25:43
Speaker 1: and I want to see whether you believe this is
25:45
Speaker 1: our greatest found moment. I called up Ben Nadaph halfway
25:50
Speaker 1: again to talk about at the time we went to
25:51
Speaker 1: Los Angeles for our nineteen thirty six Olympics series, and
25:55
Speaker 1: we go and see the legendary Milan Tiff who I've
25:58
Speaker 1: been obsessed with since I was a kid, and.
26:00
Speaker 2: I knew I'd never heard of true form.
26:03
Speaker 1: No one almost no one has ever heard of Milan
26:06
Speaker 1: Tiff because he was briefly the had a triple jumper
26:10
Speaker 1: in the world in some point in the nineteen seventies.
26:13
Speaker 1: So you understand, it's a small universe. There's a small
26:15
Speaker 1: universe of people who remember track and field in the seventies,
26:18
Speaker 1: and an even smaller universe of people who followed the
26:20
Speaker 1: triple jump.
26:21
Speaker 8: And above that, at the top of the funnel is
26:23
Speaker 8: people who know, yeah right, what triple Yeah right?
26:27
Speaker 1: But Milan was this kind of spectral brilliant. He was
26:30
Speaker 1: an artist. He spoke in these kind of these kind
26:34
Speaker 1: of gnomic utterances.
26:36
Speaker 2: He was one of the trippiest mornings of my life.
26:38
Speaker 1: It was he was he was just a he was drugs.
26:41
Speaker 3: It was.
26:42
Speaker 1: He's so fascinating and kind of just like I immediately
26:46
Speaker 1: knew we were in some magical universe when we went
26:49
Speaker 1: to see Milan Tiff. Milan takes us to the UCLA
26:53
Speaker 1: track and he wants to show us the secrets to
26:57
Speaker 1: the triple jump, and my interest in all of this,
27:01
Speaker 1: I'm actually because I'm a huge truck and field fan.
27:03
Speaker 1: I am. I'm just so happy to be at the
27:06
Speaker 1: UCLA track, and I'm aware of the fact that you don't.
27:09
Speaker 1: You're not a track and field fan, and I'm desperate
27:12
Speaker 1: to kind of impress upon you why this is the
27:14
Speaker 1: greatest sport of all time and I want you to
27:17
Speaker 1: appreciate the beauty of running, which to my mind, is
27:22
Speaker 1: the reason you watch track and field. And so I
27:24
Speaker 1: see out of the corner of my eye a woman
27:26
Speaker 1: running two hundred meter intervals on the track, and I
27:30
Speaker 1: say to you, Ben.
27:32
Speaker 2: I could see it.
27:32
Speaker 3: I could see it.
27:33
Speaker 1: You could see it. You could see it. And I
27:34
Speaker 1: said to you, I actually went back over the tape.
27:36
Speaker 1: I said to you, I don't know who that is,
27:39
Speaker 1: but that's a great runner. And then she got closer
27:42
Speaker 1: and stopped and was chatting with Milan, and we go
27:46
Speaker 1: over there and we realize it's Sydney McLoughlin's liberal here.
27:52
Speaker 1: It's the greatest. For those who don't know who Sidney
27:54
Speaker 1: McLaughlin is, maybe the greatest female runner of the last
27:59
Speaker 1: one hundred years. I mean, she's the world record holder,
28:02
Speaker 1: a zillion times, double gold medal winner in the Olympics.
28:06
Speaker 1: Clearly the greatest American runner of her generation. And it
28:10
Speaker 1: was a found moment here I was trying here is
28:12
Speaker 1: I went with you to the UCLA track to try
28:15
Speaker 1: and prove to you that there was something beautiful and
28:18
Speaker 1: transcendent about running. And I point out my example, and
28:26
Speaker 1: my example turns out to be the greatest runner of
28:28
Speaker 1: her generation. It was like, it was insane serendipity.
28:32
Speaker 3: It is incredible.
28:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, one more thought about made things versus found things.
28:40
Speaker 1: Not long ago, I tweeted out the following a question
28:44
Speaker 1: that has haunted me ever since I've been forced to
28:46
Speaker 1: read Cinderella a zillion times. Why does the coach turn
28:50
Speaker 1: into a pumpkin, the coachman into mice, and the dress
28:53
Speaker 1: to rags, but the magical glass slippers are fine? Did
28:56
Speaker 1: the fairy godmother have a carve out for shoes? A
29:00
Speaker 1: ton of people weighed in with their answers because I
29:02
Speaker 1: don't know. It seems like a question that really needs
29:05
Speaker 1: an answer. And my favorite was this from med lecture,
29:09
Speaker 1: who I think is a neurologist in Switzerland, although who knows, oh, Malcolm,
29:14
Speaker 1: Because magic and fairy tales follows symbolism, not physics. The
29:19
Speaker 1: coach dress and servants are borrowed transformation. The slippers are
29:23
Speaker 1: proof of identity, not escapism. If they vanished, the story
29:28
Speaker 1: loses its logic and its justice, which is beautiful right.
29:34
Speaker 1: And I didn't come up with that. I put the
29:36
Speaker 1: question to all of you out there, to the listeners
29:38
Speaker 1: of revisionist history, people who are as interested as we
29:41
Speaker 1: are in solving lives enduring and consequential and sometimes not
29:47
Speaker 1: so consequential mysteries. One of you, who've never met, gave
29:51
Speaker 1: me a little gift which I can in turn share
29:54
Speaker 1: with all of you. Forgive me. I'm going to violate
29:57
Speaker 1: all my principles here and get sentimental. But the great
30:01
Speaker 1: revelation of the last ten years has been how much
30:04
Speaker 1: all of us here re visions history, have enjoyed telling
30:07
Speaker 1: stories for all of you, you, stories about the unexpected,
30:12
Speaker 1: captured in real time, with real voices and real emotion
30:16
Speaker 1: and a real sense of awe, about the endless surprises
30:19
Speaker 1: the world has in store for us. I run into
30:21
Speaker 1: you as I'm walking down the street. We're going through
30:24
Speaker 1: an airport, and from emails in my inbox. Let me
30:28
Speaker 1: just say it's been one of the great joys of
30:30
Speaker 1: my life to meet all of you Happy ten Anniversary
30:37
Speaker 1: Revisionist History, Well it was on that.
30:51
Speaker 10: Six farm Crime.
30:53
Speaker 1: Revision's History is produced by Lucy Sullivan, bend at Aff Haffrey,
30:57
Speaker 1: and Nina Bird Lawrence. Our editor is Karen Shakerji. Fact
31:00
Speaker 1: checking by Onica Robbins. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith.
31:04
Speaker 1: Engineering by Nina Bird Lawrence. Original music by Luis Kara,
31:08
Speaker 1: Sound design and mastering by Jake Gorsky. Special thanks to
31:12
Speaker 1: my mom and to Jim Sullivan, my producer, Lucy's father
31:16
Speaker 1: for recording his very own rendition of you never even
31:19
Speaker 1: called me by my name, which Lucy tells me her
31:22
Speaker 1: dad sang to her all the time when she was
31:25
Speaker 1: growing up. I'm Malcolm Baba.
31:29
Speaker 10: And I never minded Arland but never.
31:54
Speaker 1: Maybe this is exactly this is exactly what I needed. Oh,
31:58
Speaker 1: very good, good, very lovely to be you welcome, Thank you, mommy.
32:03
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you soon.
32:05
Speaker 2: We'll talk to again, Okay, yeah,