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The Things We Inherit · After the Signal

• 0:00
  [music]
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is After The Signal.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm Thomas Calder.
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  SPEAKER_00: I write stories about inheritance, influence, and the systems we leave behind.
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  SPEAKER_00: But some questions don't belong entirely inside a novel.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's what this is for.
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  SPEAKER_00: When we talk about inheritance, we usually talk about things.
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  SPEAKER_00: A house, money,
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  SPEAKER_00: a piece of furniture,
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  SPEAKER_00: a watch, maybe a box of photographs nobody quite knows what to do with.
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  SPEAKER_00: Those are the things that can be inventoried.
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  SPEAKER_00: They can be appraised, divided, sold, kept, or given away.
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  SPEAKER_00: But I've come to believe that most of what we inherit never appears on an inventory.
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  SPEAKER_00: I learned that after my father died.
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  SPEAKER_00: I was the executor of his will,
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  SPEAKER_00: and like most people who find themselves in that position,
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  SPEAKER_00: I thought I understood what the job was.
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  SPEAKER_00: There would be paperwork,
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  SPEAKER_00: accounts to settle, possessions to distribute, decisions to make, and there were.
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  SPEAKER_00: But something else was happening at the same time.
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  SPEAKER_00: I was beginning to inherit my father's story,
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  SPEAKER_00: and I'm not sure I understood that while it was happening.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's an interesting thing that occurs when a parent dies.
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  SPEAKER_00: For your entire life, that person has been available as a source.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe not always a cooperative source.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe not even a particularly accurate one, but a source.
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  SPEAKER_00: You can ask, why did you do that?
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  SPEAKER_00: Who was that person?
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  SPEAKER_00: Why did we live there?
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  SPEAKER_00: What happened between you and uncle so-and-so?
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  SPEAKER_00: Why did you keep this?
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  SPEAKER_00: Why did you believe that?
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  SPEAKER_00: And then one day the source is gone.
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  SPEAKER_00: The questions aren't.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think that's when inheritance becomes much more interesting
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  SPEAKER_00: because now you're left with evidence,
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  SPEAKER_00: photographs,
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  SPEAKER_00: letters,
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  SPEAKER_00: objects,
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  SPEAKER_00: things you remember hearing when you were 12,
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  SPEAKER_00: Stories your mother told differently,
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  SPEAKER_00: stories your siblings remember differently still,
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  SPEAKER_00: and your own memories, which,
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  SPEAKER_00: if we're being fair, probably aren't nearly as reliable as we'd like to believe.
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  SPEAKER_00: I have photographs of my father and me from when I was a boy.
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  SPEAKER_00: I can look at one of them and think I remember that day.
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  SPEAKER_00: But do I?
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I remember the photograph.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I remember a story someone told about the photograph.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I've seen it so many times that I've constructed a memory around it.
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  SPEAKER_00: After enough years, those things become surprisingly difficult to separate.
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  SPEAKER_00: And yet together, they become part of what we believe about our families.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's fascinating to me because families are constantly creating history
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  SPEAKER_00: without realizing they're doing it.
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  SPEAKER_00: One person tells a story.
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  SPEAKER_00: Someone else repeats it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Certain details survive.
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  SPEAKER_00: Others disappear.
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  SPEAKER_00: A motive gets assigned.
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  SPEAKER_00: A disagreement gets simplified.
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  SPEAKER_00: Eventually the story becomes, that's just what happened.
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  SPEAKER_00: But maybe it isn't.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's simply the version that survived.
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  SPEAKER_00: And here's where I think inheritance becomes a responsibility.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because eventually somebody becomes the keeper of that version.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes intentionally, usually not.
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  SPEAKER_00: You become the person with the photographs.
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  SPEAKER_00: The person with the letters.
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  SPEAKER_00: The person who remembers the story.
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  SPEAKER_00: The person the next generation asks.
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  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly you're not merely remembering the past, you're transmitting it.
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  SPEAKER_00: That distinction matters.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because every time we transmit a story, we make choices.
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  SPEAKER_00: We decide which details matter.
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  SPEAKER_00: We decide what to leave out.
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  SPEAKER_00: We decide whether someone's mistake becomes the defining fact about them.
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  SPEAKER_00: We decide whether an old grievance deserves another generation of life.
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  SPEAKER_00: We decide whether something should be preserved exactly as we received it
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  SPEAKER_00: or understood differently now that we know more.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's a kind of inheritance nobody talks much about,
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  SPEAKER_00: and it may be more consequential than the things listed in a will.
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  SPEAKER_00: When I began writing The Executor's Silence,
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  SPEAKER_00: I thought I was writing about a man who becomes executor of his father's estate
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  SPEAKER_00: and discovers that his father left behind more than he understood.
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  SPEAKER_00: But the deeper I got into the story,
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  SPEAKER_00: the more I realized I was interested in a much larger question.
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  SPEAKER_00: What do we owe what we inherit?
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  SPEAKER_00: Not just financially,
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  SPEAKER_00: morally,
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  SPEAKER_00: Emotionally,
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  SPEAKER_00: historically, if someone hands us a belief, are we obligated to keep believing it?
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  SPEAKER_00: If someone hands us a grievance, are we obligated to continue it?
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  SPEAKER_00: If someone hands us influence, are we entitled to use it however we choose?
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  SPEAKER_00: If someone hands us a story,
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  SPEAKER_00: are we responsible for determining whether it's true before we hand it
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  SPEAKER_00: to somebody else?
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't have neat answers to those questions.
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  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I'm increasingly suspicious of neat answers.
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  SPEAKER_00: But I think the questions matter, because inheritance isn't passive.
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  SPEAKER_00: Eventually, everything we inherit reaches a decision point.
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  SPEAKER_00: Keep it, change it, use it, question it, pass it forward, or let it end with us.
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  SPEAKER_00: My father left me things.
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  SPEAKER_00: Some of them I can hold in my hands.
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  SPEAKER_00: Some of them became part of who I am.
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  SPEAKER_00: And some of them I'm probably still discovering.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's true for all of us.
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  SPEAKER_00: We spend the first part of our lives receiving stories from the people who came before us.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then somewhere along the way, something changes.
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  SPEAKER_00: We become the people telling them.
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  SPEAKER_00: And once that happens, the question is no longer simply, what did we inherit?
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  SPEAKER_00: It becomes, what are we going to do with it?
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm Thomas Calder.
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  SPEAKER_00: This is After the Signal.
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  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, pay attention to what remains.