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The Judgment of Helen Levitt · Revisionist History

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. In the archives of UCLA's Library, there is a
0:23
Speaker 1: remarkable seven hour interview conducted in nineteen eighty eight with
0:27
Speaker 1: a woman named Helen slote Leavitt, along with a separate
0:35
Speaker 1: interview with Helen's husband, Al Lovitt, each conversation spanning an
0:41
Speaker 1: extraordinary period, the Great Depression, the Second World War, the
0:45
Speaker 1: Cold War, the Civil rights movement.
0:49
Speaker 2: What I'd like you to start with is your biographical background,
0:52
Speaker 2: when and where you were born, your parents or family,
0:55
Speaker 2: et cetera.
0:58
Speaker 3: Fine, my roots are solidly middle class Jewish Brooklyn, out
1:07
Speaker 3: of Poland.
1:09
Speaker 1: The interviews were conducted by the historian Larry Sepplayer over
1:13
Speaker 1: the course of many months. He remembers the Levits well,
1:16
Speaker 1: particularly Helen, petite, intense, alive, but in some sense wounded.
1:24
Speaker 4: It was an interesting interview because when I first approached
1:26
Speaker 4: them they said no, you know, they were justifiably, I think,
1:30
Speaker 4: wary of people coming to ask them questions, the answers
1:34
Speaker 4: to which they had refused to give to other people.
1:38
Speaker 4: So I made a deal with them. I said I'd
1:39
Speaker 4: send them five questions through the mail, and then they
1:42
Speaker 4: could look them over. If they thought those were legitimate.
1:44
Speaker 4: We could talk on the phone they would answer them,
1:47
Speaker 4: which they did, and they came to trust me. You
1:50
Speaker 4: know that I wasn't someone who was going to betray
1:53
Speaker 4: them in any way.
1:55
Speaker 1: The Levitts had their reasons for not trusting outsiders, as
1:59
Speaker 1: you will hear.
2:01
Speaker 4: They are you know, you know, the just termed Starker.
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Speaker 4: It means strong, you know, kind of tough, you don't
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Speaker 4: let things than bowl you over. They were Starker's Helen,
2:12
Speaker 4: probably even a little bit more than al.
2:14
Speaker 1: I think Larry Seplaire's conversation with Helen levitt is a
2:18
Speaker 1: masterclass and interviewing technique. Careful, persistent, unflinching, always with the
2:24
Speaker 1: sense that there is something he's trying to uncover. I
2:28
Speaker 1: interview people for a living as well, but I could
2:30
Speaker 1: not have sat so patiently with Helen Lovitt for that long.
2:39
Speaker 1: My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History,
2:43
Speaker 1: my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. In this episode,
2:49
Speaker 1: I want to do something simple. Play you selections from
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Speaker 1: Helen Levitt's interview. I want you to listen to her
2:59
Speaker 1: story in her words and here as I did, about
3:04
Speaker 1: a crucial decision she and her husband made when they
3:06
Speaker 1: were young. At the end, I want you to judge
3:10
Speaker 1: her and decide whether she deserved her fate. Since we
3:14
Speaker 1: seem to be doing a fair amount of this these days,
3:16
Speaker 1: judging people for the things they say and believe, I
3:19
Speaker 1: thought it would be a useful exercise. Helen grew up
3:31
Speaker 1: in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, in a house
3:34
Speaker 1: on the corner of Carroll Street and Kingston Avenue.
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Speaker 3: My paternal grandfather went to parochial high school and then
3:43
Speaker 3: to med school and became a doctor, as did my father.
3:48
Speaker 1: Helen was a precocious child, alert, intelligent. She remembers as
3:55
Speaker 1: a kid reading a charity appeal in the New York
3:57
Speaker 1: Times New York's one hundred Neediest Cases.
4:01
Speaker 3: They gave an each day or each week, actual cases
4:07
Speaker 3: of poor ring people, and I never missed reading every
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Speaker 3: one of those cases, and I agonized as I read them.
4:19
Speaker 1: Once she went to a birthday party for a wealthy
4:21
Speaker 1: friend of hers, held at the Brooklyn Hebrew Orphan Asylum.
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Speaker 3: So here, all we little rich kids went to this terrible, dreary,
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Speaker 3: Dickens like place, and the show was put on, and
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Speaker 3: all of the laworphins were brought in they could watch
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Speaker 3: the show, and then all of the orphans were led
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Speaker 3: away down these dark walls, and there was a horror
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Speaker 3: to it that never left me.
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Speaker 1: She was a child of the nineteen thirties, when the
4:48
Speaker 1: grand experiment that was America suddenly turned bleak.
4:53
Speaker 2: Did the depression have much of an impact on your family?
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Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, My father was just this devastated.
5:02
Speaker 1: His medical practice suffered, patients stopped paying, his investments were
5:07
Speaker 1: wiped out.
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Speaker 3: The prohibition was over. I know he was selling liquor
5:13
Speaker 3: prescriptions to the druggists across the street.
5:17
Speaker 2: Was your father a political person at all?
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Speaker 3: Yes, he was what you'd call a parlor pink. He
5:23
Speaker 3: and his friend Harry Silver would fight the revolution in
5:26
Speaker 3: our living room. They would have these vile and political
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Speaker 3: discussion and the women who would sit there so disgusted
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Speaker 3: because these two guys couldn't make a decent living and
5:38
Speaker 3: here they were talking about changing the world. But I
5:42
Speaker 3: realized fairly recently and looking back, that those two guys
5:47
Speaker 3: were doing that for my benefit, because they knew that
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Speaker 3: there was one person in that room who was listening,
5:53
Speaker 3: and that was me.
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Speaker 1: Helen listened as a teenager. She was a junior counselor
6:00
Speaker 1: at her summer camp.
6:01
Speaker 3: And my new friend Ayes came to camp. She was beautiful,
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Speaker 3: and she got these incredible love letters from my radical
6:10
Speaker 3: boyfriend in New York that she would let me read.
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Speaker 3: They were just so romantic and political. She took me
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Speaker 3: to meet him on a night that he was making
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Speaker 3: a speech from a soapbox in Manhattan. That was where
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Speaker 3: I was exposed to the Young Communists.
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Speaker 1: The Young Communist League, the Weisiel, the youth branch of
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Speaker 1: the American Communist Party. Nobody recruited Helen. She just walked
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Speaker 1: up and volunteered. In the thirties, the Young Communist League
6:44
Speaker 1: of America had thousands of members. The WEISIL branch in
6:48
Speaker 1: New York was a world unto itself, filled with ideas
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Speaker 1: and passion. They were people going hungry all over the
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Speaker 1: United States, an ongoing moral catastrophe in the American South,
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Speaker 1: a vicious war in Spain against fascism, not to mention
7:02
Speaker 1: Hitler's rise in Germany. Americans were looking for answers, and
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Speaker 1: many found them in the world's biggest communist empire, the
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Speaker 1: Soviet Union.
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Speaker 3: I found it unfairness of life, unbearable and assumed that God,
7:17
Speaker 3: if it were fixable, how wonderful. And the fact that
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Speaker 3: there was a country, the Soviet Union, which was really
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Speaker 3: trying to fix it, seemed quite marvelous to me.
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Speaker 5: But the first time as I stepped on Soviet soil,
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Speaker 5: I felt myself a full human being, a full human being.
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Speaker 1: The Black American actor and singer Paul Robson, then, at
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Speaker 1: the height of his fame, made a pilgrimage to the
7:46
Speaker 1: mecca of Communism and said, for the first time in
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Speaker 1: my life, I walk in full human dignity.
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Speaker 3: The people who were doing things really out there fighting
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Speaker 3: the good fight with the uncommunists.
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Speaker 1: Helen was now attending Brooklyn College, volunteering in a rat
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Speaker 1: infested building for the YCL, making sandwiches that the branch
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Speaker 1: sell to pay the rent.
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Speaker 3: After I would get out of the kitchen, the rats
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Speaker 3: would take over and I could see them.
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Speaker 1: Helen met al Levitt at summer camp. He was from
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Speaker 1: the Bronx. He wanted to be a writer. He followed
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Speaker 1: her into the YCL. They got married and moved to
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Speaker 1: Los Angeles, had two kids, lived up in the Hollywood Hills.
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Speaker 1: All wrote for the movies and television. Social parables like
8:31
Speaker 1: the nineteen forty eight Technicolor film The Boy with the
8:34
Speaker 1: Green Hair.
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Speaker 6: Everywhere you go people will say, they will say, there
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Speaker 6: is the boy with a green hair, and then people
8:44
Speaker 6: will ask why does he have green hair? So you
8:50
Speaker 6: will tell them because I am a war orphan, and
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Speaker 6: my green hair is to remind you that war is
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Speaker 6: very bad for children who must tell all the people.
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Speaker 1: Helen helped found a nonprofit theater in Hollywood, volunteered ran things.
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Speaker 3: Has been that way. It's always been somebody asked me
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Speaker 3: to do something, you know, I did it, and I
9:16
Speaker 3: always did much more than was asked with me. That
9:20
Speaker 3: was the story of my life.
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Speaker 1: While I was listening to Helen Levitt's story of how
9:26
Speaker 1: she came to join the Communist Party, I couldn't help
9:29
Speaker 1: but think of myself at eighteen, the age that she
9:32
Speaker 1: was when she entered the movement. I just started college.
9:35
Speaker 1: It was the early eighties. I had a poster of
9:38
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan on my wall. If you asked me what
9:41
Speaker 1: I was back then, I would have said I was
9:44
Speaker 1: an anti communist. That was my cause. The Soviet Union
9:48
Speaker 1: had just invaded Afghanistan.
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Speaker 7: The Afghan defenders and the Russian attackers fought bitterly for
9:53
Speaker 7: almost four hours, and according to the Afghan source, casualties
9:57
Speaker 7: on both sides were heavy.
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Speaker 1: It was holding much of Eastern Europe hostage.
10:02
Speaker 8: Poland, now under martial law, is sealed off from the
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Speaker 8: outside world. Britain, America and other Western nations are watching closely.
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Speaker 8: The Soviet Union A party wasn't involved, but from the
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Speaker 8: background they approved.
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Speaker 1: This summer after my sophomore year, I did a journalism
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Speaker 1: internship in Washington, d C. Where we were required to
10:20
Speaker 1: do a research project. Mine was on how many people
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Speaker 1: had been killed by communism. I spent the summer in
10:27
Speaker 1: the Library of Congress trying to track down who was
10:30
Speaker 1: killed in what government manufactured famine or who died in
10:34
Speaker 1: what interment camp. I was horrified. Helen Levitt got caught
10:41
Speaker 1: up in the communist movement at the same age I
10:44
Speaker 1: got caught up in the anti communist movement, and for
10:47
Speaker 1: the same reason, because eighteen is the age that we
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Speaker 1: look for a cause bigger than ourselves. It's funny. I
10:53
Speaker 1: haven't thought about that time in my life for years,
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Speaker 1: except when I listened to Helen Levitt and it all
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Speaker 1: came rushing back.
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Speaker 3: The brightest and the most beautiful were leading the young radicals.
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Speaker 3: I mean they were the most lesling figures on campus.
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Speaker 3: They were the most brilliant professors, no question about it.
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Speaker 3: The only courses that I remember were taught by Marxist professors.
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Speaker 1: I asked you at the beginning to judge her, So next,
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Speaker 1: let's judge her.
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Speaker 3: An you seek, where would they be?
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Speaker 8: Did she used me a.
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Speaker 3: Little bit of us?
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Speaker 1: The leader of the Soviet Union from the late nineteen
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Speaker 1: twenties to nineteen fifty three was Joseph Stalin. He embarked
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Speaker 1: on an aggressive course of nationalation. He collectivized agriculture. Millions
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Speaker 1: of peasants were forced off their land. In the early thirties,
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Speaker 1: agricultural areas like Ukraine were devastated by famine, caused in
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Speaker 1: large part by Stalin's policies. Five to seven million people died.
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Speaker 1: He established the Gulag, a network of prison camps through
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Speaker 1: which eighteen million people were held at one time or another.
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Speaker 1: In the years that the Young Communist League was serving
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Speaker 1: sandwiches in New York City, Stalin launched something called the
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Speaker 1: Great Purge. Seven hundred thousand people were murdered in August
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Speaker 1: of nineteen thirty nine, Stalin signed a non aggression pact
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Speaker 1: with Hitler.
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Speaker 5: We have reached the serious events of the week. Van
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Speaker 5: Ribentrop leaving Berlin for Moscow ushers in a new, incomprehensible
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Speaker 5: chapter in German diplomacy. What has happened to the principles
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Speaker 5: of Maine Camp? Equally, what can Russia have in common
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Speaker 5: with Germany?
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Speaker 1: The hero of the idealists back in Brooklyn had made
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Speaker 1: a deal with a monster. The historian Larry Sepplier interviewed
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Speaker 1: many American Communists from those years, and he told me
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Speaker 1: their unwavering support for Stalin always bothered.
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Speaker 4: Him again and again, even from people who I thought
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Speaker 4: were really incredibly intelligent people. Their main answer was, we
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Speaker 4: thought the party leaders knew better, We thought they had
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Speaker 4: more information, that they were a little more sophisticated in
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Speaker 4: their reasoning, and so we went along. That always threw me.
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Speaker 4: I mean, I'm still to this day don't really find
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Speaker 4: it convincing.
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Speaker 1: When the Levitts moved to Los Angeles, they joined the
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Speaker 1: Hollywood branch of the Communist Party. The way Helen Levitt
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Speaker 1: talks about it, she makes it sound like a glorified
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Speaker 1: social club. It wasn't.
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Speaker 4: They had various branches, and they would get their orders,
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Speaker 4: as it were, from the county, usually filters from New York.
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Speaker 1: How closely was the National Party under the control of,
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Speaker 1: or in communication with, the Soviet Union in those years.
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Speaker 4: Complete complete control. The Party couldn't do anything that the
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Speaker 4: people in Moscow would disapprove of, and when they did,
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Speaker 4: they were rapidly brought into line.
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Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Stalin's policies were not exactly a secret. The purges,
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Speaker 1: the famine, the pact with Hitler, the show trials, the
14:27
Speaker 1: concentration camps. There were plenty of people in the United
14:31
Speaker 1: States appalled by what was happening in the USSR, just
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Speaker 1: not the members of the Hollywood branch of the Communist Party.
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Speaker 1: At one point, Larry Sepplair asked Helen Levitt if she
14:42
Speaker 1: would have considered herself a Stalinist through this whole era.
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Speaker 1: She said, of course.
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Speaker 3: The general attitude we took in terms of any attacks
14:54
Speaker 3: against the Soviet Union was that the establishment here had
14:59
Speaker 3: so much at stake to undermine any success in the
15:05
Speaker 3: Soviet Union that you couldn't believe anything justified everything. The
15:12
Speaker 3: Nazi Soviet fact did not bother us. We really trusted
15:18
Speaker 3: Stalin that he knew what he was doing.
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Speaker 1: Stalin died in nineteen fifty three. His successor, Nikita Krushev,
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Speaker 1: famously denounced him in nineteen fifty six. After that, it
15:31
Speaker 1: was impossible to maintain the fiction that Stalin was anything
15:35
Speaker 1: except one of the twentieth century's bloodiest dictators. Only then
15:40
Speaker 1: did the Communist Party in Hollywood fade away?
15:43
Speaker 2: Why did you leave the Communist Party? Was that stoudible?
15:45
Speaker 3: Oh, it just disappeared after the Khrushchiev whatever, the Krushev.
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Speaker 2: Report, the secret so called secret speech, whatever.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, the party just disappeared in Hollywood. We
15:57
Speaker 3: didn't leave formally as that saying, you know, we're leaving
16:00
Speaker 3: because there was no party. It just overnight it disappeared.
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Speaker 2: Did you feel embarrassed having supported the Soviet We've seen no.
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Speaker 1: Keep in mind Larry's Sepplayer and hell Novitt are talking
16:16
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty eight, during the final chaotic years of
16:20
Speaker 1: the USSR, when many Russians felt embarrassed about having supported
16:24
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, not hell Nod. There's a famous picture
16:31
Speaker 1: taken at the Yalta conference in nineteen forty five, where
16:34
Speaker 1: the Allies met to play the end of the War, Churchill,
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Speaker 1: FDR and Stalin sitting in a row. As a teenager
16:42
Speaker 1: in my anti communist phase, I was fixated on that photograph. Churchill,
16:47
Speaker 1: the greatest of all British wartime leaders, looks grumpy and indomitable. Roosevelt,
16:52
Speaker 1: who created the modern American state, is thin and drawn.
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Speaker 1: He will be dead instid of a few months. Then
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Speaker 1: there's Stalin on the end, in full Soviet Army dress,
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Speaker 1: looking straight at the camera, with a trace of a
17:06
Speaker 1: smile below his thick mustache. All I could think was,
17:11
Speaker 1: what's so funny? Why is he smiling? How could the
17:15
Speaker 1: others put up with him? I thought of that photograph
17:19
Speaker 1: again when I listened to Helen Levitt rhapsodized about the
17:22
Speaker 1: glories of her Communists past. She looked at those three men,
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Speaker 1: and she cast her lot with the paranoid, homicidal jackass
17:30
Speaker 1: on the end. And why because she mistakenly thought that
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Speaker 1: the way to deal with the world's injustices was to
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Speaker 1: line up behind a monster. In seven hours of talking
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Speaker 1: with Larry Sepplair, Helen Levitt never once comes to terms
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Speaker 1: with the consequences of her beliefs. No remorse, no regrets
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Speaker 1: nothing about her heavy days at Brooklyn College except nostalgia.
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Speaker 3: Young people who were on the campus who did not
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Speaker 3: get involved, either with the young Communists or the Young Socialists,
18:08
Speaker 3: weren't enough because it was heavy stuff. I mean Angles
18:13
Speaker 3: and even Lenin. I mean Marx is impossible to read,
18:16
Speaker 3: but Angles was comprehensible but very well. It was a
18:20
Speaker 3: challenge to read. But I was very impressed with Angles
18:23
Speaker 3: and Lenin. They both were extraordinary minds and incredible writers.
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Speaker 3: A young people who didn't get in either didn't have
18:32
Speaker 3: the intellectual capacity while the courage.
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Speaker 1: As I listened to the interview, this is the moment
18:42
Speaker 1: that hit me, the sheer arrogance of it. But then
18:47
Speaker 1: I kept listening to the rest of her story. In
18:51
Speaker 1: nineteen forty seven, the Cold War between the USSR and
18:54
Speaker 1: US had just begun. A large chunk of Germany and
18:58
Speaker 1: Eastern Europe was under Soviet control. British Prime Minister Winston
19:02
Speaker 1: Churchill sounded a warning that would instantly become famous.
19:09
Speaker 9: Jordan has descended across the continent behind that line by
19:15
Speaker 9: all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and
19:19
Speaker 9: Eastern Europe.
19:21
Speaker 1: The hunt for communists within the United States became an obsession,
19:25
Speaker 1: starting with Hollywood.
19:27
Speaker 7: This committee, under its mandate from the House of Representatives,
19:31
Speaker 7: has the responsibility of exposing and spotlightings diversive ailments wherever
19:36
Speaker 7: they may exist.
19:38
Speaker 1: In nineteen forty seven, the House Unamerican Activities Committee held hearings.
19:44
Speaker 7: It is only to be expected that Communists would strive
19:47
Speaker 7: desperately to gain entry to the motion picture industry, simply
19:51
Speaker 7: because the industry offers such a tremendous weapon for education
19:56
Speaker 7: and propaganda.
19:57
Speaker 1: Screenwriters and movie stars who were suspected of once being
20:01
Speaker 1: members of the Communist Party were called to testify. Those
20:05
Speaker 1: who refused went to prison. Anyone suspected of Communist time
20:09
Speaker 1: eyes were blacklisted. It was all but impossible for them
20:12
Speaker 1: to work in show business under their own names. The
20:15
Speaker 1: Levitts saw their friends get caught up in the witch
20:18
Speaker 1: hunt one by one, and then one day the witch
20:22
Speaker 1: hunt came for them.
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Speaker 3: You know, things were really going along very nicely. I say,
20:27
Speaker 3: it was a kind of jolly life.
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Speaker 1: It was nineteen fifty one. Helen had just had a baby,
20:32
Speaker 1: their second, a daughter. They had a housekeeper and a nurse.
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Speaker 1: Her husband, Al was a rising star in Hollywood.
20:40
Speaker 3: And then when they came to the door with the subpoena.
20:45
Speaker 3: Was kind of a cold chill, because I knew it
20:46
Speaker 3: was all over.
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Speaker 2: Now, was this a subpoena to appear publicly?
20:51
Speaker 3: Orcipino peer publicly?
20:53
Speaker 2: In Washington.
20:54
Speaker 1: Both the Levitts were called to testify. They were asked
20:58
Speaker 1: about their Communist affiliations. They were forced to take the
21:01
Speaker 1: fifth al Levitt had a statement prepared for his appearance
21:04
Speaker 1: that day. He read it decades later to Larry Sepplair.
21:09
Speaker 10: Every man has the right to be unpopular, or even
21:12
Speaker 10: to be wrong, without suffering the consequence of official censure, blacklist,
21:17
Speaker 10: or a jail. Most peace loving people will find themselves
21:21
Speaker 10: unpopular with this committee. I do not therefore intend to
21:26
Speaker 10: enter my beliefs or my associations in a popularity contest
21:31
Speaker 10: in which the members of this committee are the judges.
21:34
Speaker 10: I shall offer no cooperation to the evil purpose of
21:37
Speaker 10: these hearings, except that which the force of law compels.
21:47
Speaker 3: Extraordinary a committee of Congress. And yet I was very calm,
21:54
Speaker 3: very composed, turned to my lawyers when I needed to.
21:59
Speaker 3: But I have footage of us in the hall of
22:07
Speaker 3: the Federal Building minutes after we came out of the
22:11
Speaker 3: hearing room, and I'm so pleased with it. Not only
22:14
Speaker 3: do we look so young, which well, everybody you know
22:17
Speaker 3: is young before they get old. But I'm laughing. You know,
22:22
Speaker 3: we're in such good spirits. I mean, there's no sense
22:25
Speaker 3: of people who have been through an ordeal, but but
22:32
Speaker 3: people who have done something difficult and you know then
22:35
Speaker 3: they did it.
22:38
Speaker 2: Had you decided what you were going to do with
22:40
Speaker 2: the rest of your life now that Alice's professional career
22:43
Speaker 2: was an end, or that's something you've not been thinking
22:47
Speaker 2: about too much.
22:48
Speaker 3: Well, the first thing we did was fire the servants.
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Speaker 2: Did you have a sense, sort of a perspective that
22:57
Speaker 2: this too shall pass? That, oh forever?
23:03
Speaker 3: The blacklist we thought was forever at that point.
23:07
Speaker 1: Hell never had her tax returns in those years in
23:10
Speaker 1: a little pile on the table. She took them out.
23:13
Speaker 2: So nineteen fifty two was the first full blacklist year,
23:16
Speaker 2: and your income that year was.
23:17
Speaker 3: Three thousand, nine hundred and fifty six dollars.
23:20
Speaker 1: Before landing on the blacklist, they had been making as
23:23
Speaker 1: much as twenty thousand dollars a year, very good money
23:26
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen fifties. Now they had to support
23:29
Speaker 1: their two children, on a fraction of that. Al Levitt
23:32
Speaker 1: met a rich man who took pity on him and
23:34
Speaker 1: gave him a job filing. He got seven hundred and
23:38
Speaker 1: twenty two dollars for the year. Al also used a front,
23:42
Speaker 1: which was common practice during the blacklist years. The front
23:45
Speaker 1: pretended to be the writer who got the credit, took
23:48
Speaker 1: half the money. The blacklisted writer did all the work.
23:52
Speaker 1: They were desperate. The next idea was correcting papers from
23:56
Speaker 1: a correspondent school. That job earned two hundred and fifty
24:00
Speaker 1: six dollars.
24:01
Speaker 3: After the kids were sleep we would set up to
24:03
Speaker 3: typewriters in the living room and correct papers from this
24:07
Speaker 3: correspondent school thirty five cents for the first lesson and
24:12
Speaker 3: a dollar for the last lesson, which was a full
24:14
Speaker 3: short story. That was a terrible period alive.
24:19
Speaker 1: They were broke, their marriage was falling apart. Then Al's
24:23
Speaker 1: parents came to visit for two weeks.
24:25
Speaker 3: And we tried to hide from them how terrible things were.
24:29
Speaker 3: When they left, they gave us thirty five dollars for
24:31
Speaker 3: their food, and I had to take it because if
24:34
Speaker 3: I hadn't, they wouldn't have been up.
24:36
Speaker 4: There wasn't a dime in the house.
24:38
Speaker 3: Because I had tried to, you know, make things seemed.
24:41
Speaker 2: Better than they were.
24:44
Speaker 1: Helen Lovett remembered every detail of this time. Their daughter
24:48
Speaker 1: was four and developmentally disabled. She was still drinking from
24:52
Speaker 1: a bottle and waking up two or three times a night.
24:55
Speaker 1: Helen and now were exhausted and most of all alone.
25:00
Speaker 1: Their son Tom was expelled from his school. Everyone around
25:03
Speaker 1: them seemed to be turning their backs from the moment
25:07
Speaker 1: they appeared before Congress. The it's became parias.
25:11
Speaker 3: Our best friend called that night and the ones that
25:16
Speaker 3: we had seen every Saturday night previously at Brantwood, we
25:20
Speaker 3: you know, went so regularly, and said don't come to
25:23
Speaker 3: the party on Friday night. That was a terrible moment.
25:28
Speaker 2: Did you lose a lot of friends? Well, a lot
25:30
Speaker 2: of friends. I know you're not a bitter or angry person,
25:34
Speaker 2: but what weren't you of.
25:35
Speaker 3: I was originally lonely, lonely.
25:38
Speaker 2: He was so sad.
25:40
Speaker 3: We were so lonely. We would have invited out maybe
25:43
Speaker 3: once or twice a year. It was blacklist night. When
25:47
Speaker 3: we were invited, another blacklisted couple would be there.
25:51
Speaker 2: Period.
25:52
Speaker 3: We were never invited to integrated affairs.
25:56
Speaker 1: We were never invited to integrated affairs. They were utterly excluded.
26:04
Speaker 1: When faced with someone whose actions and views we disapprove of,
26:08
Speaker 1: we have many options anger, concern, persuasion. We can chastise
26:13
Speaker 1: them or try to reform them. But what was done
26:16
Speaker 1: to the Levits was something different. Exclusion. Exclusion is sanctioned
26:22
Speaker 1: without restraint, and while we're equipped to deal with anger
26:25
Speaker 1: and conflict, we're not equipped to be cast out of
26:28
Speaker 1: the community to which we belong. Its Why solitary confinement
26:33
Speaker 1: is so excruciatingly painful, or why school suspensions have been
26:37
Speaker 1: shown again and again to be the most counterproductive of
26:41
Speaker 1: all educational interventions, and yet a third of all American
26:45
Speaker 1: children will be suspended over the course of their schooling.
26:48
Speaker 1: We can't help ourselves.
26:50
Speaker 11: As I look back.
26:51
Speaker 3: That was the That was the toughest thing. The loneliness
26:57
Speaker 3: was simply dreadful.
27:00
Speaker 1: My eighteen year old self would have welcomed Helen Levitt's punishment,
27:04
Speaker 1: but now all I can think of is how carelessly
27:07
Speaker 1: and casually we imposed this kind of brutal social sanction
27:11
Speaker 1: on others. Exclusion is not justice, It's cruelty. The Levitts
27:33
Speaker 1: clawed their way back into show business. Both of them
27:36
Speaker 1: wrote scripts under assumed names. They called themselves the Augusts,
27:41
Speaker 1: but they never had the kind of career as screenwriters
27:44
Speaker 1: they once imagined for themselves. Using the big screen to
27:47
Speaker 1: tackle serious issues. Al Levitt wrote for TV sitcoms.
27:52
Speaker 10: I'm sorry, Greg, but football is out.
27:56
Speaker 1: Like this Brady Bunch episode where Greg, one of the
27:59
Speaker 1: many Brady kids, wants to play football and his mom
28:02
Speaker 1: worries he'll get injured.
28:04
Speaker 3: Mom, a guy can get hurt right in his own home,
28:06
Speaker 3: like falling in the bathtub.
28:08
Speaker 10: I'm oh, sure, din't have two other guys in the
28:10
Speaker 10: bathtub with him trying to knock him down.
28:13
Speaker 1: The Levits did more than sitcoms. They became active in
28:16
Speaker 1: the Writers Guild, where Helen led a mentorship program for
28:19
Speaker 1: young black screenwriters.
28:21
Speaker 3: Because it's just grotesque that they simply are not hired
28:27
Speaker 3: to write on white shows. Almost all their employment is
28:32
Speaker 3: on shows about blacks.
28:34
Speaker 2: Just to go pay you to do this, No, I would.
28:37
Speaker 3: Dream of taking money for teaching black writers.
28:41
Speaker 2: If you're teaching white writers, would you dream.
28:42
Speaker 3: Of taking I don't want to be I don't want
28:44
Speaker 3: to be a teacher for money. I mean, that's just
28:47
Speaker 3: not what I do.
28:48
Speaker 1: One cause led to another. A friend of the Levits
28:51
Speaker 1: had a heart attack. The paramedics took forty minutes to arrive.
28:55
Speaker 1: After that, the Levitz decided that they needed to learn CPR.
29:00
Speaker 3: Because whatever we found ourselves in such a circumstance, we
29:04
Speaker 3: would want to be the people who knew.
29:07
Speaker 1: Helen was in her sixties by this.
29:08
Speaker 3: Point, so it was very stress difficult for me because
29:12
Speaker 3: I never moved a muscle in my life, and I
29:17
Speaker 3: didn't even know then that I have had asthma all
29:20
Speaker 3: my life. And then the breathing was very difficult, the
29:23
Speaker 3: compressions with it. I really went into training because I
29:26
Speaker 3: was determined that I was going to pass. There were
29:30
Speaker 3: eighteen of us who took the course, and on the
29:32
Speaker 3: eleven passed, and I squeaked through.
29:36
Speaker 6: Here in this country, thousands of TV and movie script
29:39
Speaker 6: writers walked off their jobs today.
29:41
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty one, the writer's guild called a strike.
29:45
Speaker 1: The Levitt's old leftists that they were had to support it.
29:48
Speaker 2: The other two strikes.
29:49
Speaker 3: The key stumbling block is the union's demand for a
29:52
Speaker 3: share of home video profits. I looked at each other
29:57
Speaker 3: that we've got all this CPR skill in the guild
30:00
Speaker 3: now if anybody has a heart attack on the picket line, boy,
30:05
Speaker 3: we better really be prepared.
30:08
Speaker 1: The two of them consulted with doctors, trained people to
30:11
Speaker 1: teach CPR, organized the group of first aid workers into teams.
30:15
Speaker 3: And I remember realizing and saying at the time that
30:18
Speaker 3: the Writer's guilled picket Line eighty one was probably the
30:22
Speaker 3: safest place in the world to have heart attack, because
30:24
Speaker 3: at no point were more than sixty seconds away from
30:27
Speaker 3: somebody who knew CPR. And so I'm kind of like
30:30
Speaker 3: a general, you know, deploying my forces at every picket
30:35
Speaker 3: or my students from my black writers workshop wanted to
30:38
Speaker 3: work for me, So I've got a core, very loyal
30:43
Speaker 3: young people. I had planned to stay home and write
30:45
Speaker 3: a screenplay, but maybe this is better.
30:50
Speaker 1: Helen Levitt got there in the end, not on the
30:53
Speaker 1: grand moral political stage that she had imagined for herself
30:56
Speaker 1: as a child. She wasn't very good at the grand
30:59
Speaker 1: and the political. She was better at smaller and more
31:03
Speaker 1: ordinary causes, giving a voice to black screenwriters, or on
31:07
Speaker 1: the picket line, making sure no medical emergency was left unattended,
31:13
Speaker 1: caring for the neediest cases.
31:17
Speaker 4: There's another Yearish expression called goutnashuma, which kind of means
31:21
Speaker 4: good in themselves, you know, kind of just intrinsically good
31:25
Speaker 4: people who, as you say, strive to strive to know
31:29
Speaker 4: what the right thing to do is and then do it,
31:32
Speaker 4: and sometimes they have detours along the way.
31:35
Speaker 1: What my younger self did not understand is that there
31:38
Speaker 1: is no perfect and easy path to conscience. Sometimes it's
31:42
Speaker 1: circuitous and full of unfortunate detours. And maybe what we
31:47
Speaker 1: owe each other is faith and patience, because some of
31:51
Speaker 1: us will take longer than others to figure out where
31:54
Speaker 1: our conscience lies. Can you describe them? What do they
31:58
Speaker 1: look like? I recently called up Alan Helen's son, Tom
32:01
Speaker 1: on Zoom. I wanted to ask him about his parents.
32:05
Speaker 11: My dad looked at a little bit like me. He
32:08
Speaker 11: was slightly taller. My mother was short. She was about
32:13
Speaker 11: five foot. I have pictures of him I can show you.
32:16
Speaker 11: Would you like me to do that? Oh yea hey,
32:18
Speaker 11: hang on just a moment. I'll have to go to
32:20
Speaker 11: the other room.
32:21
Speaker 1: Tom Levitt came back with two black and white photographs
32:24
Speaker 1: in wooden frames. He held them up to the camera.
32:28
Speaker 11: Here's my dad.
32:29
Speaker 1: Oh he does look like you.
32:31
Speaker 2: Uh huh, yeah, that's almost nice.
32:33
Speaker 1: I'm Kenny.
32:34
Speaker 4: That's your father, yeah, and here's my mom.
32:39
Speaker 1: Well, I see Helen Lovet, slender short, wearing an elegant
32:47
Speaker 1: black dress, smiling at the camera, eyes full of intelligence
32:51
Speaker 1: and compassion and life. Born in Brooklyn nineteen sixteen, died
32:56
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles nineteen ninety three. Can I judge Helen
33:00
Speaker 1: love It? I know her now and what she went through?
33:05
Speaker 2: I can't.
33:20
Speaker 1: Revisionous History is produced by me LaBelle Lee Mengistu and
33:24
Speaker 1: Jacob Smith, with Eloise Linton and on a naim Our.
33:29
Speaker 1: Editor is Julia Barton. Original scoring by Luis Garra, mastering
33:33
Speaker 1: by Flon Williams and engineering by Martin Gonzalez. Fact checking
33:38
Speaker 1: by Amy Gaines, and special thanks to the Pushkin crew.
33:42
Speaker 1: Had a fine Carl Migliori, Maya Knigg, Danielle Lacan, Maggie Taylor,
33:47
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Nicole Morano, Jason Gambrel and of course Jacob Iceberg.
33:53
Speaker 1: I'm Malcolm Gladwell. If you love this show and others
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