So is that is that mark yes, that's mark speaking for Scott. So Scott you were born without hearing right? That's great Even though my parents didn't know that until I was teen 18 months old This is a very strange interview because you can't hear that because I have a terrible cold. I can't speak Markets the burden here Yeah, I talked to Scott Crapholthors interpreter Mark Holmes They were in studio in Washington DC about what happened when Scott was 11 or 12 and the government approved the use of cochlear implants And children so Scott got an implant.
He's excited. He thought he'd been in better at school I have my friends date girls and of course he tried to imagine what it would be like to hear to be honest I didn't know what to expect The best analogy I can think of is maybe I was hoping that it would be like That speech was like telepathy instant thought transfer So we had the surgery and then he went to the audiologist to configure the device and what they do is that they hook up the implant to a machine to send different frequencies pulses to try and stimulate the different parts in my cochlea Trying to figure out which one worked and so the first sounds that you hear are those pulses? Yes, and what do they sound like? The first time I heard something I can remember very vividly Because it wasn't really it didn't feel like hearing I felt more like a vibration in my whole body I was sitting there and nothing was happening Except for like a little thing that was tingling throughout my body but eventually after a while the vibrations localized to my ears How I see the first vibrations you couldn't even tell they were coming in three years Right.
I didn't really know that it was sound itself at first and eventually I came to realize Wait a minute This must be it the audiologist just Send me on my way With the cochlear implant on We can only make an educated guess what this way sounds like as this as we understand it from people who could once hear and then later Like got the implants. There's a mechanical edge to the sound that you hear with these devices Musical notes have to be nearly half an octave apart for you to tell a difference between the notes voices of people say that they sound like a robot Daffy-Dud But for Scott whose brain did never develop the neural pathways to process audio there were two big problems that went beyond all of that One was that I couldn't understand any of the sounds it was just all noise that did not Have any ability to distinguish I mean just any right if someone was looking right at you and you were seeing their mouth moving Talking directly to you you actually couldn't tell which of the sounds was the sound of their voice coming out of their mouth It would depend on the environment Because if it was an environment where there was other noises Then I wouldn't really be able to pick out the person's voice from that background If a dog barked or a horn honked you can tell what the sounds were or would cause them A doctor who does these implants told me about a very young patient of his a child who got the implant And then would just flush the toilet over and over Kind of amazed to connect the sound that it made with the action of the thing that they were seeing I was interested in Scott because although I know lots of deaf people say they have no need to learn to hear and they're fine As they are the frown on this procedure Scott is somebody who wanted this to work He imagined what it was going to be like and our show today our radio show today is all stories where people are trying to make Contact for the first time or something that they have never encountered or experienced and Scott situations like a particularly harsh example of that The reality was so far from what he had expected His second big problem with the implants was he didn't have the ability to ignore any sounds well if you're sitting in your office And you listen carefully you might hear things like the computer fan running or your own movements or many different things and Most people have trained themselves to ignore those noises. I Had none of that ability So everything ended up overwhelming me without me being able to stop it or ignore it There's somebody like Scott getting the implant at his age his brain can never catch up and learn to process sound After five years with the implant it was still hard for him to focus if an air condition was on in the room and As for recognizing words if he was in a quiet room and his speech therapist would say a word to him He could actually pick out the word from a list of words that was sitting in front of him and that's about as good as it got So at the end of high school he stopped using the implant and he doesn't miss it The only time he really liked it He says was a very first day when he had his first contact sound I think the first time I heard That was cool things like oh, I can Clink the cookie jar But it got old very fast Well day on our show first contact We have three stories of people in that frightening thrilling first moment of encounter that leap into the unknown Mike R. Bigley talks about an achievement that was literally years in the making for him We have somebody also chatting his way into the lives of people very far away in the middle of a war We have scientists pondering exactly what we should say the very first time we find extraterrestrials to talk to and um What bone-headed things people want to say to them?
WBC Chicago, it's this American life distributed by public radio international. I'm our glass still a little cold this week But feeling just fine stay with us Okay, I don't know why this came to mind out of the blue actually three weeks ago I was walking down the street. It was nighttime. I was with a dog and I thought of this and literally I said out loud.
Oh god Oh god. No, no, no, no Here's what I remembered in junior high school. I was really really young okay. I tried to feel up a girl in front of her family Somehow I thought I could get away with this.
We were watching a Jerry Lewis movie on TV and the record remember that I had never touched a girl Before so I don't know why I thought this was gonna happen anyway. So when this came back to me It was really just as horrifying. I mean it was I talk about it now It's just as horrifying as it should have been the day it happened and I bring this all up to say we are all so Clueless as we learn about making out and sex and all that stuff and we begin our today with this story from Mike Rubiguyo nothing explicit happens here at all, but it still might not be right for every young listener in seventh grade people started making Out with each other and I remember this very well because I remember thinking people we know are making out with other people we know But how you know and Just seemed like this alien ritual, you know where these two aliens kind of attached orifices all of a sudden And I was like I am not doing that and collectively all the girls in my class were like that is fine You are not on the list You are not exactly the first time on draft pick for our new activity It just seemed gross to me making out. It's like watching a dog eat spaghetti So I wasn't gonna make out with anyone and I was fine with that But then it started to sort of create factions in the seventh grade class sort of the the make out club and the non make out club I mean these weren't formal organizations That would be very sad a meeting of the non make out club.
I call this meeting to order First order of business Nintendo But but we were the non make out club had you know We had a hard time because we it was we were losing good people by the day and and I feared I Feared that soon I would be the lone member of the non make out club So I was like I need to join the make out club But I didn't have any real prospects I mean I had this one girl with a huge crush on the sat in front of me and class named Lisa Bazzetti And she had to talk to me on the phone every night about homework thanks to alphabetical order And so one time I said something that made her laugh and I was like oh this is great like I gotta do that more And then one time she was actually laughing so hard and she said Mike you got to stop. I'm gonna pee myself And I was like wow It was the closest I'd ever come to a vagina and So I spent the next 15 years trying to get Lisa Bazzetti to pee and that's how I ended up here So I I built up the courage to ask Lisa to go to a carnival with me She said yes, and I was so excited about this I had this idea that we would go to the carnival and I would win her a giant stuff bear and and we would go on rides and then we'd make out like really simple just like the romantic comedy montages and And we took her on a ride called the scrambler. I don't know if you have the scrambler where you live I imagine you do it travels on a truck The premise is that you sit on a two-person pod with the person you're in love with and then that pod goes in a circle Which is part of an even larger circle which is part of an even grander circle as I understand it was originally designed as a medical device for people Who have sharp objects stuck in their throat to help them purge the objects It was called a puker face-rater and it was very successful and then it was co-opted by the carnival workers of America Quo-a and they said you know we like it, but we feel like the name is something of a turdoff and Then and then one guy goes what about the scrambler and they're like nailed it But who is gonna be in charge of this dangerous piece of equipment? And then one guy goes well, I have a nephew who's 16 years old in a small spot 24 hours a day I feel like he might be available And they're like he sounds amazing We don't even need to interview him.
He sounds completely qualified So we sit down on the scrambler and Lisa snuggling up next to me And I was thinking like this is it like this is where it's all gonna happen But I think that when you're 12 years old you just don't understand certain things about the digestive system like you don't You don't know that you shouldn't eat popcorn and peanuts and funnel cake and cotton candy and then go on a machine That scrambles your body of cotton candy being the most insane of these items It's basically like saying we're gonna take sugar which everyone knows is bad But then we'll dress it up like insulation and I'm not sure What the selling point is there is it the sugar or the insulation? So I know from the moment they put the bar seat belt down that I am gonna throw up for sure The bar seat belt is not a very reassuring piece of safety equipment that has never saved anyone's life I mean come on I mean I think the only thing it's ever done right is just held someone's esophagus down to the pavement in a scrambler accident Making sure that they are dead and that they cannot talk about the scrambler accident I know when they put the bar seat belt down. I'm gonna throw up for sure and I even say to the scrambler operator I'm like hey actually and then he was gone Apparently he doesn't enjoy the second half of sentences and And so then I'm scrambling and And I'm scrambling and I'm thinking I need to come up with a plan of some time And my first plan was that I wouldn't look at Lisa and I wouldn't look at any other people So I'm like oh look at Lisa don't look at other people don't look at Lisa don't look at other people I need a new plan and And the new plan was that I needed to tell the scrambler operator That he needed to stop the ride but the mathematics of the scrambler are such that the window of opportunity And which one can communicate with the scrambler operator is a very limited window So I'm like I got all the guys on the run I got all the guys on the run I got all the guys on the run We stop the ride and I'm back 20 yards away 30 yards away 40 yards away 20 yards away. I gotta say louder 20 yards away 40 yards away 40 yards away.
I'm like I'm not sure he's paying attention I think he might be smoking pot right now The third time I said please stop that and then I started throwing up and it was not unlike an oscillating long regular, you know Just popcorn and peanuts and insulation really insulating the pavement with my homemade part of all salsa and I Did not look at Lisa, but I'm pretty sure she was staring at me and and we did not make out I'm making out was no longer on the agenda that evening and and so I did not lose my mouth virginity But the next year it actually got worse Because I went to an all-boys Catholic school and and I actually couldn't admit to my peers that I hadn't had my first kiss Because I knew they would make fun of me mercilessly, you know And and so I you know when they would ask I would just be like yeah Yeah, you know and I feared that at some point they would ask follow-up questions, you know, they'd be like oh, yeah What's it like and I'd be like oh it's like looking at ice cream cone Maybe like no, it's not sucking on a rocket pop and I'd be like oh wrong frozen dessert analogy Because these guys that I went to school with I mean they were just make out machines I mean I was sat behind just one guy in class named Sam Richard He already and he was like a make-out ninja like every Monday morning I'd be like what'd you do over the weekend and he would just be like made out with chips And I would be like where and he would be like the mall dude the mall As though that made sense, you know, I was just trying to imagine this like the mall Like what does that mean like he goes to the arcade and kind of like throws quarters around to the ladies and then invites one over to go to Orange Julius and then says hey you want to make out at the phone booth or whatever like I don't even know how that Happens so I thought my only chance to lose my malforgenity was gonna be at the annual St. John's dance They had what they called cattle called dances where they invite all the girls from all over the state to the St John's gymnasium for the sole purpose of making out and this was a gymnasium that was chock full of sweat and bonaka and Led Zeppelin and draw car noir and and and I was I was flanked at the dance by my friend Sam and we were introduced by our friend Tom to this girl These two girls and and and Sam said one of those phrases that we've all heard but is very uncomfortable He said you get that one Which you know I know it's uncomfortable to talk about but I'm okay talking about it Cuz I know I've been on the negative end of that conversation We're where someone some girl says of me like you get that one and then the other girl goes ooh Or even worse you owe me Which which really hurts, you know thinking about someone incurring debt based on based on my appearance? I don't want to hurt someone's credit score So he says you get that one and then I'm fast dancing with this girl Sandra and I'm not great at fast dancing I and I'm losing you know she's losing interest in me by the second and I'm saved by a slow song is their way to heaven Which is an eight. Yeah, it's an eight minute make out anthem And and we're slow dancing you can't mess up slow dancing because it's just kind of a slow-motion hug You know the only way you could mess it up is if you started fast dancing She was like what are you doing?
I don't pick up on social cues So we're slow dancing and all I'm focused on is I just don't want it to fidget too much because I'm a kind of a fidgety person I fear if I fidget too much I could initiate the tilt too early That's one of the main ingredients of making out the tilt and then the area in between the two mouths Which is a very mysterious area. I mean no one has video footage of that area It's like the giant squid of making out no one has seen it alive They've just seen it washed up on shore, which is more specific to the squid side of the analogy, but You know what I mean and so with about three minutes left in stairway to heaven I make the slightest tilt and then Sandra comes in strong and then it was an all-out mouth war you know and and she had artillery because she had braces and It was like a dog eating spaghetti and the fork and And while this oral atrocity is taking place all I can think is I'm not alone anymore I'm not in the non-make out club And it was this real seminal moment for me But I couldn't share it with anyone because I walked out the dance floor and I had to play it off Like like this was something I had done before my friend Sam was like how to go and I was just like it was great Just like always So a few days later I call Sandra and I'm thinking you know Maybe we can have a relationship with some time and she doesn't call me back and and so I go to school and day and I said My friend Tom would introduce just like hey, what's going on with Sandra? And he has this kind of knowing grin on his face. I'm like what what he's like nothing What what what and he's like no And I was like what?
And he was like oh I talked to Sandra and she said that you're the worst kisser. She's ever kissed I know It was devastating, you know because you know first of all because it was probably true and But but more importantly because I couldn't explain to my friends, you know why it was true I couldn't be like well that makes sense because I've never kissed anyone before I had no idea what I'm doing So instead I had to just be like yeah, that sounds about right I'm a terrible kisser. That's kind of my thing, you know But I was lucky because my friend Sam was right there with me and he goes me to do me to A performing story from his new one-man show and his new book and something that the spot with me and other painfully true stories Coming up mistakes. We've made with space aliens already.
We don't even know them and we've made mistakes That's in a minute from wbz Chicago and public radio international when our program continues Just American life from our class each week and a show of course we choose a theme bring you different kinds of stories on that theme today show first Contact stories about people reaching outside with a no outside their comfort zone making contact with something they have only heard about We write back to our show act two brothers from another planet What's amazing about this next story is that this couple befriends these strangers mostly the guy But also the woman and and really they get to know them and what they'll actually really like at this level that is so Intimate it takes them into this world that most of us really don't feel like we have any access to it all Here's a Sarah Blaistell who tells the story Here's what I know about Yumal from the pictures when it's cold, which isn't often he wears grain reds to drive sweaters He can do a cartwheel he likes to hold babies stand next to camels and sit on saggy couches conversing with handsome young men He himself is handsome his big brown eyes thick dark hair a mischievous looking mustache a three-days beard and a tiny gap between his front teeth He's a kind of guy who wholeheartedly smiles and photos rather than trying to look like a badass Yumal lives near Sutter City a poor section in Northeast Baghdad He's the oldest of three Iraqi brothers and he's aged from 17 to 23 since the war started in 2003 the same year He and my husband Sam Taylor started their Sunday phone ritual When Yumal looks back at what's happened during this time He says there haven't been any positive things because of the war but there have been many positive things happening during the war You know I got married I got my children. I met Sam On a recent Saturday night Sam was up late playing Call of Duty on Xbox live with friends and then watching sci-fi films and eating chicken wings with me But he knows he will piss off at least three Iraqis if he's not up by 750 Sunday morning So he sets the alarm then clicks it off when it beeps just five hours later gets his headset ready starts the coffee Then the phone rings like it has almost every week since 2003 Sam's been talking to the boys as we call them Yumal, Sadeem and Mok mood for at least four hours every Sunday for almost seven years But on this Sunday March 28th 2010 when Sam answers the phone Yumal is unusually quiet not really engaged This is about the time Yumal's wife Tamara is supposed to be having her baby. So Sam worries something's gone wrong I'm not sure how to say this Yumal says then he gets quiet again. Are you there Sam?
I'm trying to think of what to say. I'm trying to get the strength to say this This whole time Sam's thinking the new baby has died Tamara has died or both He thinks for sure that's what it is and he doesn't know how he's going to respond And then Yumal says you lie What do you mean? You said that if enough people voted a molecule would be gone and allow we would win a few hours later Sam And I are making a rare Sunday lunch together because the boys hung up earlier than usual Maybe because of their sour moods. Did you tell them allow we would win I ask kind of Sam says well not exactly Sam had told them that if people didn't like a maliki and enough people voted they might get him out He could be gone he hadn't meant for to be a stump speech about the power of democracy He hadn't meant it as a prophecy either and now it's all over the news Noreo maliki saying something to the effect of as Imal puts it I am in power.
I will always be in power After Yumal accused Sam of being a liar. They talked through it They always managed to talk through it after one of the other unwittingly offends or after they've dove too deep into dark topics They usually warm up again by talking about light stuff or joking about stereotypes of East and West Sam will be talking about juice for example and Yumal will say juice But he'll say it like juice and Sam will say that's so cliche the Middle Easterners gotta hate the juice Or Yumal jokes about how sinful Sam is he'll give him a hard time because he had sex before marriage or her last Were you drinking last night? The boys are also really interested in finding videos on YouTube of world leaders crying world leaders doing something embarrassing Especially Arab leaders but others too. They tell Sam.
Oh, there's this new achmedini job wrap you have to hear it's so funny The boys usually leave the conversation and Sam usually follows they'll talk about political news family news work news Since Yumal was conscripted into the army cleaning up after suicide bombings is a regular part of his life When they talked about the violent Sam used to say stuff like maybe this will be over soon or things are going to get better But he stopped saying that now mostly he'll just listen and won't try to explain it away a lot of times They're looking for answers to questions like how would you feel if this was happening to you? Let's say your wife got killed so Sam will say I don't know how I would feel because he doesn't Sam first met Yumal in 2003 at the time Sam was a philosophy undergrad living in Pleasant Grove, Utah He was kind of bored with the politics website He was arguing on so we started playing around with this chat program and met in Israeli there across the universe was his username On Sam's campus. There were widescreen TV's all over the food court blasting the war news one day Sam distinctly remembers There was coverage of the explosions bomb sitting Iraq. It was like they were watching a football game Sam says it seemed wrong to him So he asked this Israeli chat buddy across the universe what he thought about the war What did he think was going to come up it across the universe replied?
I just met in a raki want to meet him sure Sam said so that's when he got a message from Yumal a real live a raki So we started asking him about the war about what was going on outside his window Yumal brought back about the pro democracy propaganda flyers written in English They were floating down onto the streets within a couple of weeks. They were writing each other about more personal stuff Half a year went by and Yumal bought a calling card and asked Sam for his phone number Then early when morning the phone rang and all of a sudden Sam was speaking to someone whose voice he couldn't quite place with an accent Crispin formal like nine he'd ever heard The call started coming in a little bit more when Sam met Yumal's younger brothers Sadeem in mock mood talking was a way to pass the time and it was too dangerous to go out on the streets Sometimes when Yumal and Sadeem and their parents had to leave the house Yumal would ask Sam to babysit mock mood over the phone Just talk to him and keep him company in case he got scared Sadeem's the middle kid three years younger than Yumal and three years older than mock mood Sam remembers a few days he and Sadeem just talked all day from early in the morning till the evening when it started getting dark In that early phone call is Sadeem read Sam some rilca and several Iraqi poets I was working at a teen clinic for girls at the time and as Sadeem reached 15 He would send the girls poems he'd written about life in Iraq They'd respond by writing meth poems and heroin poems and send Sadeem little construction paper cards that said thank you for your service Sadeem told me make sure you show those girls my pictures so they know how cute I am and he was cute Red soccer jerseys curly dark hair big eyes with long lashes When things got bad though after Sadeem and mock mood were injured for the first time by a suicide bombing in 2005 Sadeem started asking me questions like where do those girls you work with cut on their arms and how do you fix PTSD? He'd say he was going to hurt himself and then he'd hang up on us then call back a few minutes later and apologize March 8th 2010 when I answered the phone Yumal says it was a horrible day yesterday The media will tell you the elections were a damn success, but there's no success when people die He's on the bus home coming from just west to the green zone where his brother mock mood lives with their parents Yesterday mock mood had been walking down the street and there was a bomb explosion He came home with a hand just hanging and said that it hurt Yumal says and I said I understand why because it's broken So he had to go to the hospital, but he's home now. Can you hold on a minute?
I'm getting off the bus sure I say It's a Monday I talked to the boys sometimes by phone and email But didn't ask to talk yesterday because I didn't want to mess up mock mood Sunday scheduling Mock mood is 16 and it's a self-proclaimed duty to make sure everyone gets equal time with Sam He even sets an alarm that goes off when one person's turn's finished so the next one can start When I asked how mock mood is doing other than the broken arm Yumal says as you know this year he got a girlfriend and got engaged and then she got killed in a suicide bombing It goes up and down with him. He still has lots of nightmares Yumal believes out of the three boys mock moods most affected by the war He doesn't remember the Iran Iraq war or the Kuwait war and he was too little to remember the deaths caused by the oil for food Program the way Yumal does so when mock mood was 9 in 2003 and the war started he'd never really been around bombs So Yumal says he's the most scared Mock mood is the one Sam talks with most on days other than the scheduled Sundays We'll be in the line at the grocery store and mock mood will text. I'm scared. Yeah, I can't sleep He's got this little Elmo voice.
It's matured slightly over the years But you can almost hear that tiny almost sound when you read his text messages. Sometimes he'll just write yam yam He's been calling Sam that since they first started talking and the name just stuck Yumal's off the bus now walking in Sutter City. He tells me to wait a second a bomb just went off I just want to see where it is he says hold on I hear man's voice very close speaking in Arabic and an ambulance gets loud then moves away They're not driving to the part of the city where mock mood lives So I don't have to be so nervous Yumal says it's a half-hour bus ride from mock moons house to Yumal's He says where mock mood lives there about eight or nine explosions every day and where he lives It's more like two or three and how are you Yumal asks? It's the question.
I find the most insinuating the most difficult to answer pretty good Just go into school and working at the dog daycare Yumal tells me how weird it is. I work with dogs He seems annoyed every time Sam or I coup on the phone about something cute our dogs are doing Here dogs are hated Yumal says if you come near them they growl When you're putting together a body after an explosion the dogs come and try to eat it all you have to kill them I kill a lot of dogs. I remember when mock mood was in a coma once and bleeding and the dog came nibbling on him And I killed him Basically people have a goat or a camel or donkey or horse once we had a hamster named Benjamin Sam probably talks to the boys more than he talks to anybody He always wanted brothers when he was a kid someone to play hide and seek with to play guns with or go somewhere dangerous Sam says his relationship with the boys is like having brothers, but in a different way than you imagine back then more intimate When sedeem and mock mood hit teen hood they turned to Sam for advice They translated the rush of hormones. They were feeling into the English word drifts So they'd ask Sam stuff like how did you handle your drifts and when will the drifts stop?
He said something like the drifts won't stop you just learn how to deal with them and it gets easier after a while The friendship happens so gradually Sam knows it's unusual But it really only hits him how strange it is that he's so close with three people in the middle of a war When the boys tell him something especially disturbing about what they've seen or when Sam tries to explain the phone cause to anyone here He doesn't do that very often because when he's tried it's always seemed to backfire When he told his parents to new Iraqis they seem skeptical and when it comes up with friends some are interested But others think it's weird and treat it like a joke One night Sam was at the twilight lounge with a bunch of friends and sedeem called Sam's friend Anna asked who he was talking to that was so important when he said it was one of his Iraqi friends Anna said she wanted to talk to him Sam had thought it was all in good fun, so he was like all right go ahead and say hi And she said to sedeem say something dirty and Arabic to me Sedeem was so angry. He said to Sam why do you spend time with people like that? Why are there people like that? On January 31st 2009 a year and a half ago Provincial elections held in 14 Iraqi provinces were celebrated in headlines as peaceful and almost violence-free But that morning 17 year old Sedeem told his friends a family and Baghdad.
This is not a country. It's not a democracy It's not peace here nor is it more peaceful. There's no future here He and his 16 year old wife Rashida who was pregnant with twins pulled their adopted daughter Alina at a preschool quit their jobs and signed on with a truck driver who said he would take them out of the country Sedeem told me he left because he didn't want to raise his family in a city so violent He and Rashida have now lost four of their six children although for reasons arguably unrelated to the war Arena died in the womb. Akhmed one of the twins was premature and died 12 days after his birth Their first adopted child abdule passed away in 2008 due to a breathing problem And their second adopted child Alina who was deaf partially blind couldn't walk and was expected to live only until the age of three Passed away from pneumonia two weeks ago at the age of six the two other children are you wad who's one and Selim who's almost two Selim's also adopted He was found on the steps of the child home and the workers called Sedeem and Rashida to see if they would take him At first we said no because we already had Alina and you wad Sedeem says but then of course they sent a damn photo of him So a year ago Sedeem and Rashida were saying goodbye to Baghdad Sedeem can't say how long they spent in the hot dark back of that truck with no bathroom wearing over Alina who was prone to seizures But after a couple of days when the driver finally pushed them out they realized they weren't in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia They were still in Iraq right near the western border After spending a few days in a refugee camp they walked an hour to a village and decided to stay They'd hoped to be counted among the 2.1 million Iraqi refugees who made it to Syria or Jordan or some other country But instead they're counted among the 2.8 million who've been displaced inside Iraq by the war Sedeem found a job almost right away teaching three to five year olds at a mosque They have to learn how to read the Quran in a specific way to recite like singing.
He says the students are very very behaved Sedeem says his new village is so calm. There are no soldiers There's not much traffic and he says people are constantly worried about bombings If you're at the grocery market and you stand in line with 15 people it doesn't really matter because people take it easy He says it's not like in Baghdad where if there are two people in front of you You're like ah there's two people in front of me. I'm gonna die Back in Baghdad in early April about three weeks after the elections your mom was so upset about he sent Sam a series of short text messages He thought he was in danger. There were people coming around his neighborhood He didn't have any details and asked Sam to see what he could find out from news reports Sam found articles online about gunmen dressed as soldiers going door to door in neighborhoods near where your mom's family lived shooting and slitting the throats of Sunnis Yumal is Sunni and Yumal's wife was just about to have her baby She was in the hospital So Yumal took his four-year-old daughter Malika and texted Sam that they were going to stay away from home for a while Neither Sam nor Sadeem heard from Yumal or Makmud for a few weeks after that Finally they got words that little Malika was spotted by a neighbor wandering near some storefronts She was taken to an uncle's house Malika said she'd been with her father when there was a bomb and he told her to run So Sadeem took the 12-hour bus right up to Baghdad to help in the search for his brothers He went on his blog where are you maul where are you Makmud?
After he'd returned to his village with no success We heard from Sadeem's friends in Baghdad Yumal's wife Tamara had had her baby a little girl and was doing fine Yumal and Makmud had been found in a hospital Makmud injured but okay recovering from an infection Yumal in a deep coma with very little brain activity Months before all that Yumal had chosen Sam to be in a ball into his baby Which is sort of like a godfather Since Yumal is still in a coma and the baby's getting on a month and a half old The responsibility falls on Sam, Sadeem and Makmud to help Tamara name her So in early June Sadeem calls he runs name ideas by Sam What do you think about the name Leila? Leila? There's a very similar name in English and an air clapped in song Oh, Sadeem says Is that what Tamara's thinking about? No, that's what I'm thinking about I think that'd be a beautiful name I don't know that or otherwise I was thinking about the name of Mina But then I remembered you have a damn cat name that Sadeem Sorry, did we ruin that name forever?
Hafizah? Say that name again? Hafizah? What does Hafiz mean again?
Love? Yeah, it's the female version of Hafiz I'd be a pretty big fan of that name, Sam says Well, I don't know I'll give Tamara a few names and then she'll see which one she wants to name her But she's such a good little fluffy baby How's the mom doing? She's okay as good as she can be I guess From the hospital in Baghdad, a friend puts the phone up to Yumal so Sam can speak to him There's hope that even though Yumal's in a coma, he might hear and understand the voices of his friends Sam tells Yumal that he loves him As Sam talks, he hears the machines that keep his friend breathing Yumal slept through his 23rd birthday, May 29th His friends have been writing on his Facebook wall and I've been looking at the pictures The last link Yumal posted was the cover of the Aerosmith song Don't want to miss a thing A song I always thought was cheesy so I never opened the link So Yumal can't speak And Sadeem can only call when he visits Baghdad or Basra Sam misses them But he's still in the phone every week to Iraq for four hours He's got a new schedule Some Saturday's he talks to Mokmood and on Sunday's he talks to their friends in a job They tell him whatever news they have about the boys Now they've become Sam's friends too Third-way'sdale lives in Virginia Act 3, Intergalactic Cold Call First contact to science fiction fans means just one thing First contact with extraterrestrials And a SETI that's the search for extraterrestrial intelligence Where scientists use radio telescopes to look for signs of intelligent life elsewhere Actually has a task force, the post-detection task force To enter the question What happens if they find intelligent life elsewhere? And one of the responsibilities of this task force is actually to consider this question What kind of message should we send as our first communication with alien civilization?
So supposing we find that there is a radio source Or at least evidence for alien technology at some particular location in the galaxy This is Professor Paul Davies author of a book about all this The eerie silence and chair of this task force Then the task group feels that in the first instance We should not disclose the coordinates in the sky of this source Simply because we don't want any random crackpot setting themselves up As a self-appointed spokesperson of mankind and commandeering a radio telescope And sending their own home spun wisdom Because if we're going to respond to some sort of contact like this We have to think very carefully about what we want to say In your book, you write A message concocted by a committee would be a recipe for the lowest common denominator And as likely to consist of banalities A statement sewed by a politician or religious leader is too horrible to contemplate What do you think should be in the first message? I err on the side of comprehension That is to say that I think we should pick a message which is certain to be understood by them And that we might pick one of the fundamental numbers that come out of atomic and quantum physics And send that as an indication of our level of understanding of basic science and mathematics Now if we attempted, for example, to send details of the US Constitution Or something of that sort, of course, it would be completely incomprehensible Some people think that music is the finest achievement of the human intellect But it's so musical appreciation is so tied to the human cognitive system It may just be completely meaningless to an alien brain or an alien mind Send that stuff later, Davy says Once you're getting to know us First message, be simple and comprehensible Numbers, send in binary code, zero in ones But apparently not everybody on our planet has gotten this memo Hi, my name is Venetia and I'm part of a groundbreaking new project that lets Vibo users make their mark on history When you're looking to the night sky, there's a star 20 and a half light years away This was on a social networking site called Vibo a little while back There's a planet 20 light years away that this website says theoretically could hold life We want you to create a message that will beam out of our solar system across the galaxy In just over 20 years when the message arises on our target planet The photos, drawings and words submitted by Vibo users Could be the first things that another world ever learned about mankind Well, we got a hold of some of these messages from Vibo users that were actually sent by a radio telescope To this distant alien civilization that they hope anyway is there Presumably super advanced if they can hear and understand us One of the messages here I don't believe in aliens, but I suppose if you're getting this now, I was epically wrong P.S. We invented the George Foreman Grill, therefore we're better than you Another George Samson is amazing and there's a smiley emoticon He's so talented, lovely and gorgeous He's such an inspiration, I'm saying reading it this way because there are exclamation marks by the way He's such an inspiration to other dancers Plus, is there everything he's gotten? Congrats on everything George and good luck for the future.
I love you, XX Another I love someone very much, but they got someone else Another Anybody for cup of tea? Another You're lucky to live over 20 light years from Earth By the time you read this, I will be getting my state pension And my country's capital London will be underwater due to global warming Melting our ice caps, the white bits that you see at the top and bottom of our planet P.S. don't invent slash use fossil fuel-based engines And this one, my favorite Hi aliens, if you get this and you get coordinates and stuff on Earth, please don't come and kill Because that's not nice Thanks, unless you kill us Then no thanks One more get Nagle People also sent on pictures of themselves, of their guitars and drum sets, their several stick figure drawings, their lots of logos from sports teams And a surprising number of photos of Heath Ledger as the Joker In the case of these exercises where messages have been invited using social networking sites Again Professor Paul Davies It's alarming and a bit depressing to see the sort of messages people send in Mostly there are the level of sentiments about their boyfriends or girlfriends or something of that sort I have to say that I myself don't have any great misgivings Because I think the chances of these transmitted signals ever being picked up by an alien civilization are very small Also he says, the aliens won't understand a word of it in all likelihood He also takes a dim view of the space probes that NASA has sent out with messages for other civilizations The Voyager spacecraft had an actual phonograph record with sounds from Earth We've sent the Beatles song across the universe into space The pina space grad had a plaque on it with drawings of a naked man and woman The man's hand raised and greeting Davies has written about this in his book The picture is dominated by the human shapes Yet our physical form is probably the least significant thing we can say It's almost completely irrelevant both scientifically and culturally To put it bluntly, it gives a damn what we look like The raised hand is the height of absurdity Such a culturally specific mannerism will be utterly incomprehensible to another species Especially one that might not have limbs This half hearted attempt to put our stamp on the cosmic community Is distinctive in its narrow mindedness and preoccupation with 20th century science and human affairs For now though, since it seems that anybody can borrow one of these radio telescopes to beam out a message But we're sending into space including stuff like this from the Bebo project We have pointless sports such as golf, you hit a ball with a stick, an aim for a hole, also a game for the rich Now we have fun games like rugby, we heard each other from a ball to gain points Football was a boring game to some and not to other But if you think of it, all sports are pointless Just something to keep us happy For our program was produced today by Lisa Pollock and me With Alex Bloomberg and Calhoun Chink Felt to Sarah Koenig-Rudd and Bill Rede Robin Sime Alyssa Shivnancey, an update by senior producers Julie Snyder Seth Linde is our production manager Emily Conde is our office manager Music out from Jessica Hopper Jonathan Mitchell created our audio simulation of the sound that Scott heard with his cochlear implant in the open of today's show Special thanks to David Brin, Dr. Peter Rowland of the Dallas cochlear implant program at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center to John Ronson for putting us on the call of Davies The John's funny, charming article in the Guardian about Davies Our website, Thisamericanlife.org, where right now you can see more of the messages that Bebo users beamed up into space If you aren't already in space and seeing them already from space How likely is that really?
This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International WBEZ Management Oversight Program by our boss, Mr. Troy Malatia, who's ready to let the truth be known I'm a terrible kisser, that's kind of my thing, you know On our glass, back next week, the most stories of this American life Me too, dude! Me too! I'm Public Radio International