Selvin High School in Chicago is a school where communication isn't the easiest in normal times. Kids constantly have to pass their phones back and forth with Google Translate so they can understand each other. Over half the kids are immigrants or refugees. They come from close to 40 different countries.
They speak over 35 different languages. That's Ellie Fishman, a reporter who spent over three years there and wrote a book about the school called Refugee High. She returned there with one of our producers at the beginning of this school year and was there on the second day of school. Kids are really nervous.
They are not native English speakers. They don't know each other yet, so they're sitting among a bunch of strangers at this point. So there's a lot of, you know, anxiety and nerves. Selvin High School is organized to make them feel at home.
These step of the staircase by the main entrance says welcome in a different language, private spaces for Muslim students to pray, shelves full of winter coats and backpacks for students who arrive with none, special curriculum and services tailored to them. This year, though, it was the first time students were back in person since the pandemic, which posed some special challenges. Like, for instance, English teacher Anne-Marie Hanley was going around the room student by student, doing one of the most pedestrian and beginning of school tasks, filling out the seating chart with the basics. What country are they from?
What do they speak besides English? Abdel, what languages do you speak? I speak Arabic. What languages do you speak, sir?
Okay, now, you heard that student perfectly, because our producer was standing right next to him with a microphone just inches from his face. But that long pause, the fact that this Hanley asked him the question a second time, that's going to make a lot more sense if I just play you the sound from the microphone that is pinched to Ms. Hanley's lapel. This is how she heard that interaction, more or less.
Abdel, what languages do you speak? What languages do you speak, sir? Yeah, she didn't hear them at all. But she's way up at the front of the room, stuck there typing into a computer.
And there's an air purifier, they're putting for COVID humming towards the back of the room. And there's an air conditioner running that's in the window just to her right. And, most important, everybody's in a mask, muffling the students' voices, and making it so she cannot see anybody's mouth move. Now you can see how much I normally read lips.
She can use her questions. And what country were you born in? Egypt. What part of Asia?
No, Egypt. Egypt. Cool. So she keeps going around the room, and this keeps happening.
Again, reporter Ellie Fishman. It seemed to me, having spent a couple years in the school before COVID, that it was just exponentially harder, and there was so much more miscommunication. All right, and then we have Claude. What languages do you speak?
What? What languages do you speak? New Rwanda. And what country were you born in?
Congo. Rwanda. I say Congo. I say Congo.
I say Congo. Congo. Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I thought you said Rwanda.
All right, we'll fix it. It's painful to listen to, hearing these students, and give the teacher exactly what she's asking for. And they are not connecting. In the recording, you can hear Miss Hanley trying to manage this awkwardness.
Said the students from the embarrassment. Turn it all on herself. Sorry, it's the air conditioner. It's not you guys.
Your English is good. It's just this is right in my ear, and it's killing me. By the way, Miss Hanley, she said it is a lot harder to conduct this class without being able to see the kids' mouths. But for her, it really just feels like one more thing to deal with.
I think I worry more that the kid is getting frustrated, because especially at the beginning of the year, you know, I need them to know that I'm listening and they can trust me. And I don't want them to feel as though I'm not listening or I don't care. She says in the months since then, it's gotten a lot easier to communicate. The air conditioning is off.
The more important, everybody's more comfortable with each other and with her, which means they're more comfortable speaking up, rejecting, making themselves heard through the mass. Communication is delicate. If you don't get it right, you can be disastrous. I got her here in Miss Hanley's class, but in our other stories today, it does not go so well.
Like one story, the future of democracy is at stake. In another, a mom tries to say something important to her own daughter so ineffectively. Also, Amelia Bedelia. Remember her?
Who hears and never understands. Where is she today? Here. From WBC Chicago, this is American Life.
I'm Eric Glass. Stay with us. Like one, until the cows come home. So this far story is about a man trying to communicate a thing, a very particular thing, that the 2020 election in the state of Michigan was not stolen, that Joe Biden won.
This is not an outcome this man is particularly happy about. He's a Republican, a state senator, but he says, this is the truth. The man's name is Ed McBroom. He chaired the official state committee that looked into all the claims of election fraud in Michigan.
In the end, they wrote a report concluding that there was, quote, no evidence of widespread or systematic fraud. Lots of his fellow Republicans do not accept this conclusion, and they're not shy about telling him that when they run into him. So Ed has been on a kind of personal campaign to talk to anybody who doubts him, for as long as they want, in hopes of being able to give them the facts they need to reach the same conclusion that he did. My senior editor, David Cashman, wondered if he was persuading anybody that a few months ago went up to spend a day with Ed at the Upper Peninsula State Fair.
Ed promised, if I'm out in the open for five minutes with my cows, somebody will come out and talk about the election. You saved it. I met Ed in the dairy barn at the state fair, with his cows and his kids. That's kind of how he's known.
The state senator with the cows and kids. Helen, Melody, Eddie, Carl, Esther. These are the kids, not the cows. There are more.
Rita, Royal, Odell, Oriana, Kenny Jack, Edith, Magnus, and Selah. So there's 13 of them. You want to say a word about what that life is like? You had to pick one word?
One word. I guess I blessed, I guess. Blessed. Or hard.
Blessed or hard. Five of the kids are Ed's. The other eight were his brothers, who died three years ago and lived next door. So the families were always kind of one unit.
There's one photo I saw on Ed's Facebook page of a kid who put together some delightfully crazy outfit. But the thing that stood out to me was the stuff in the background of the photo. Total chaos in the kitchen behind her. Ed's a farmer, a parent, and a state senator.
He says sometimes it's a bit much to handle. I was interested in Ed because, honestly, it's alarming to me, all the people who still believe the election was stolen. In one poll, a third of Americans, and most Republicans. It's bad enough that we as a country seem completely divided on everything.
The climate, vaccines, immigration. But somehow this idea that so many people look at the official election results certified by the states, the method we have for settling all these disputes, and say, that's a lie? That feels particularly unsettling. And so here was Ed, this guy in the trenches, arguing for the facts in a way that few people are.
I wanted to see how that was going and what the conversations were like. Ed ventures out of the dairy barn, where his cows are, past the fair games and the rides, this indoor area where various vendors are set up, and where the Republican Party has a table. Hello, ma'am. Hi.
I was at Pretty Fast last week. People stop by, you know, and catch up. A woman from the Gideon's Bible table across the way comes over to say that they've been praying for me. And then, this man and a woman come over.
The first thing she says is, why aren't you having a full forensic audit? Forensic audit is the battle cry for people who want some external group to look at the ballots and everything. Which, for the record, have already been through a state-led, bipartisan audit in Michigan. So why are you getting a full forensic audit?
We need one. Those two vans that went in the FTC center in the middle of the night with nobody watching, except the cameras. And I saw them, Gateway Pundit. I know they went in there.
A little black bar following them. Ed's approach to these conversations is to answer whatever questions people have in detail, however long it takes. Which is premised on an idea that I hope is true, but I kind of fear isn't. Basically, if you calmly present people with facts, they'll consider them.
The thing the man is asking Ed about is something that got a lot of attention online. A video of a van arriving at the convention center in Detroit after three in the morning with a bunch of ballots. Seems suspicious to them. Ed lays out what is going to be found.
Those were ballots that had been placed in drop boxes. Which he points out he's not a fan of drop boxes. But he says he looked into it. And ballots were just going through the normal procedure.
Though the van didn't have any particular security. So then the question to me is, well, could somebody have done something to those ballots on the way there? Could the driver have been in on it? Switched to a different van with fraudulent ballots?
It would have been super hard, he tells them. The ballots would have to have been prepared in advance. The identifying numbers on the ballots and the addresses on them would have to match up with real voters who hadn't voted elsewhere. And so that's a lot of crazy rigmarole.
And in the end, what are they going to gain when they know that in Detroit, these absentee ballots are going to run 95% for Joe Biden? No way. They always do. No way.
They didn't last election? Sure they did. Not 95%. The absentee ballots in Detroit?
Why am I seeing these news reports of chaos at a polling place? Why am I hearing about late night deliveries? Why did one county here flip so dramatically from one candidate to the other? Why are there rumors of overseas...
It was a long list. I thought, well, I can try to figure this stuff out. He heads the Michigan Senate Oversight Committee. So he started an investigation.
Anyone who had anything to say could testify. The hearings went on for months. And Ed got way into the details. What if someone was given a Sharpie to mark your ballot and it led through?
How does the election management software work? What happens if someone runs a bunch of ballots through the counter twice? That took time for me to learn. And then I had to verify that what I learned was accurate because you don't want to just take one source as authoritative.
I wanted to check others. It took way longer than he thought. He'd run down one theory, but then someone would say, well, what if it happened this way? So he'd look into that.
As the original ideas started to fall to the wayside, I did begin to grow less and less suspicious that I was going to find anything that was going to overturn the results of the election. How much time did you spend looking into it, do you think, also? I don't know. It was hundreds of hours.
Ed put together a 35-page report with a 20-page appendix. He lays out each of the theories and really why they can't be true. When the report came out, both Trump and Obama tweeted about it. Actually, Trump issued a statement since he'd been banned from Twitter.
Ed says he doesn't imagine either of the former presidents actually read it. Dan and Donna, that's their names, did not seem like they had read it. What I want to tell you is that I know you have children. We have seven children.
We have 17 grandchildren. And if we don't straighten this out now, in 2021, I don't like Biden. I like Trump. But that has nothing to do with it at all.
Our children will never have a free election if this communism and socialism crap. You know, but listen. That's a question you started with. You should be wanted.
That's a question you started with. So, for one thing, the state has done two audits. Not thorough forensic ones like Arizona did. So, I'll tell you.
Again, Ed goes into all the details. The state had already done a thorough audit, where they recounted a sample of paper ballots by hand from all over the state. When we go and recount these precincts by hand, we don't find a single one of them to be out of line. Not one of them is out of line.
And we did this. It's much more substantial audit than just that, because in that audit process, they don't just hand-recount the ballots, but they're also checking the signatures, they're checking the applications, they're checking the paperwork for the testing, they're checking the test decks that go in. So, the clerk's office. And are they all Democrats?
No. All over the state, you have more Republican clerks than you have Democrat clerks all over the state. And most of the counties have multiple parties. So, you have your county clerk within your townships, you have Democrats and Republicans.
And so, these people are all looking at each other. He doesn't seem to be making much that way. The problem Ed runs into all the time is that he'll carefully build this wall out of blocks of facts. But the person he's talking to will just pivot to another claim, which is exactly what happens next.
I'm wondering what is wrong with doing... Well, I'm glad you asked. So, you know, the machines, too. And did they change the batteries in the machines?
So, the machines, they changed the battery in... The idea here is that the batteries have been changed in some of the voting machines, causing them to erase data. Ed tells them the machines with the batteries in them were just machines that mark ballots for people with disabilities, not ballot counting machines. You sound so calm in a lot of this.
Are you feeling calm? You've said these sentences so many times. Is there some part of you that is tired of it? There's a bit of an exhaustion, I suppose.
But, no, I mean, I feel very... I don't know if it's compassionate or just passionate about helping people find the truth. I wanted the truth. I looked hard.
I have resources not every person has because of my position. I use them. Now I want to give the benefit that I have found to other people. I feel like that's the perfect answer.
I guess I'm asking if you actually always feel that way. I would say 99% of the time. Ed has been talking to this couple for about 25 minutes at this point. He doesn't seem to be moving on.
But again, this is his strategy. Answer every question they have. Then something happens, though, that throws a wrench in this whole thing. But now a small crowd of people is gathered around.
And one guy who's been watching jumps in. His first word? Baloney. He tells Ed he just doesn't understand why they can't have an independent audit.
He's pretty insistent. How does he have done for everything? Very substantial. Okay, why were the elections in six states closed off at three in the morning and only to resume at eight when that's never happened before?
It certainly didn't, Michigan. That's a lie. The people are lying to you. It didn't happen.
Now, Ed says, it's no longer just him having a conversation with this couple. It's like a live version of what happens on social media. And I think why things go so badly there. Ed's trying to have one conversation.
It feels like he's maybe getting somewhere. And then this disruptor comes in from the side. You still have Democrat and Republican poll workers there the whole time. It sounds like you've convinced yourself, but I know what I saw.
I can't get past the fact that there's no fraud to be seen earlier. I can say that. I later learned that this guy, he's the son of the couple who was talking to Ed. Ed doesn't convince any of them.
Dan, the dad who'd come up with his wife at the beginning who Ed hoped to make headway with, I'll give him that. He's trying his best. I watched Ed talk to one more woman. She came up after the other's gone.
She was middle-aged and full of questions. She brought up almost an exact list of things the others did. The van in the middle of the night, dead people voting, whether the voting machines could have been hacked. You're saying the modems or the computers were not connected to the internet.
The conversation feels like it's going exactly like the other conversation. They've talked about the hacking possibility for a long time. But then, they talk about Afghanistan and the price of electricity in the Upper Peninsula, which they agree on. It's expensive.
This time, they don't get interrupted by anyone else. It's just two people talking at the state fair, which I think, maybe more than Ed's laying out all the facts, is the reason why this might work. If he can put in enough time with someone, be with him long enough, they get a sense for him. There's a power in physically being in the same space as another person.
They're real in a way that someone online or on TV isn't. Finally, they circle back to the election from so many months ago. Here's how the conversation ends. If something comes up, I hope you will support it.
I want to look for any new compelling issue that we can't answer with the information we have. I'm all ears to hear it. I'm curious, too. I want answers.
But all the issues they bring forward are either flagrantly impossible than do that. They just call me names or say I'm a bad person or paid off. by China and shoot the messenger. And I'm like, please shoot the message for me because that would help me then go forward and find out what I did wrong.
But they don't do that. And it's frustrating because I'm just as curious as you are about it. Talking to you and getting the opposite parts. I appreciate you giving us an open ear to it.
And certainly if you have other questions, if you hear something else, just call, message me, call the office. It's good to hear from you. Thank you. Thanks for your time.
And does it change anything for you? I'm going to go back and reread several things and relisten to a few podcasts and stuff. I hope you'll look up the report. Yeah, I appreciate it.
Like you said, it's 58 pages. It's all up to you. It was the furthest I saw him get that day. It tells me he has seen people change their minds.
But usually he learns it because they come back to him later. Sometimes with follow-up questions. He wasn't surprised nobody switched sides right in front of us. You can't expect anybody to just disregard their long-held viewpoint or the narrative that they've accepted as being true.
You can't expect them on the spot to really discard that. They need time to think. I pointed out that, according to the national poll from earlier in the summer, something like two-thirds of Republicans or people who lean Republican believe Biden only won because of voter fraud. Ed says in his experience it's fewer, but he humors me.
Can we do the math for a second? Sure. How many people are in your Senate district? Around 270-ish, I would say.
A thousand. Okay, how many of those lean Republican? We go with half. That is 90,000 people would need to be convinced if each conversation is 20 minutes.
Defined by three, that's the number of hours. If you're trying to overwhelm me with the impracticalities of me one at a time unit, you don't have to. I'm already aware of that. It comes out to 14 years.
And that's if it works. I was curious if that last moment had talked to her mind at all. The one who had told him it was nice to hear the other side and was maybe going to go read his report. So I reached out.
She said over email she still believed there was election fraud in Michigan, enough to overturn the outcome. And that Ed McBroom was covering it up. This is maybe the best case scenario for changing people's minds on this issue. Like, I do think if anyone could sway people, it might be Ed.
Someone from their own party who also hadn't wanted Biden to win, who explains it all so patiently and clearly. And it's still so hard. Ed reads a lot of American history. I asked him if he worried about the same thing I do.
They were so divided. Neither side seems to be able to communicate with each other. No one seems willing to question what they think they know. I asked if he thought we were going off the rails this time and if what we were going through might be fatal in some way.
He said he didn't know. He said the social fabric has been stretched before and we've gotten through it. I hope that that's going to be the case now, but I think there's reasons to have some doubt about that too and to have some trepidation. That keeps me up at night, you know.
It really does. I understand. I try not to let it worry me because I firmly believe that we're in God's hands and the nation is in his hands and we'll trend in the direction that brings him the most glory. I didn't ask what someone was supposed to hold on to if they don't believe that.
Ed's going to keep talking to people. There are lots of issues like this, he says. You just go person to person as long as it takes. That's the job.
Do you have a guest now? The senior editor of a show. Back to how I met my mother. So one of the producers of the senior editor of a show, Elna Baker, comes to a long line of passive-aggressive communicators.
By the way, they know this, they own it. One of her grandmother wanted to get messed across like don't leave change lying around. She put an article on the fridge saying coddler chokes on Penny and then just leave it to everybody else to connect the dots. Elna's mother communicates in the same indirect way which became a problem in the years after Elna left the church.
Elna's family's Mormon and her mom had some important things that she wanted to say to her. Here's Elna. This all started when I made a joke about me buying weed to my brother. Careful, he said.
If mom were to hear that, she'd send an email to the whole family about how you're an addict. I laughed. And then I was like, wait, what? That was way too specific.
Did mom send an email to the whole family about me being an addict? And he was like, um, nothing, never mind. Which could only mean one thing. She did.
It took several runs of questioning before I got the whole story. The email he was referencing, my mom had sent it 10 years ago. At the time, I was about to host a comedy show in New York where me and a bunch of performers would play drinking games on stage. It was called The Drunk Show.
The show was being promoted online. My mom, a devout Mormon, saw an article about it and freaked out. Mormons don't drink. It's against the religion.
And what I learned from my brother years after the fact is that my mom was so worried that I was doing this show, she sent an email to my family, my extended family, uncles, cousins, and family friends who I grew up with like the Mitchells, the Coxes, Heidi, my middle school drama teacher. Dear friends, it begins. I am writing because I am concerned about the direction Elma's life has turned. She is spiraling downward fast.
My mom then explains to them that I'm doing this event called The Drunk Show, then writes, I am very concerned. In our family, you are either an alcoholic or a Mormon. And I think she may be headed in the wrong direction. I don't know what I can do personally.
She doesn't hear me. I'm gonna interject here that I didn't hear her because she never said anything to me about it. In the email, she inserts a link to the article about The Drunk Show and then reveals her grandmaster plan. She's been commenting on the article under fake names, warning me not to do the show.
Can everyone else please make up fake accounts and also comment? This way, I'll cancel the show. She ends, thanks, pray for us both, please. When I read this email, I was mortified.
I drink socially. I'm not an alcoholic. But since I never intercepted the email, I worried everyone who got it had thought this for years. I immediately clicked on the link to the article.
At the bottom of the page, there were four comments from four different people trolling me, all clearly my mother. Her first fake character is Carol from the West Village who says, quote, encouraging irresponsible drinking that could end in hospitalization of performers is an invitation to a lawsuit. Don't be idiots. The three other comments escalate from there.
Here's the weirdest part. She wrote all these comments while she was staying with me. She was in town the week of The Drunk Show. We slept in the same bed.
But she didn't say a word to me about it. As interventions go, it was the least successful one I've ever heard of or could imagine. No one else among the family or friends chimed in and I, the target of the intervention, never knew what happened. I never heard of or read the comments online until my brother accidentally let it slip years later.
Since I found out about this, I wondered why my mom chose to communicate this message to me the way she did. But I've never asked her because I figured it would just lead to a fight and no answers. But we're much closer now than we were when I did The Drunk Show. Why not try?
To my surprise, she agreed to talk about it. But on these conditions, Dad had to be there in case we needed mediation, I had to come home for Christmas in exchange, and most importantly, I could only do this story if she got to write the ending, which we'll get to later. Talk for a second. Hi, Alma, how are you?
Oh, I'm being sexy. Hi, Mom. I'm trying out a lower voice because I think my voice is too sweet to you. Don't do that.
Don't spend the whole interview not being yourself. We started at the beginning. How did my mother decide that anonymous comments online would be the best way to reach me? She said my sister Julia told her about The Drunk Show.
So I'm laying there on the couch, I'm at your apartment, probably about five in the morning, and I'm stewing over this, I can't sleep, I haven't slept for hours, and then I just have this little epiphany. I can put this on here in somebody else's voice. I don't have to use my own voice. And then maybe she'll take it seriously.
You just need to hear it from New Yorkers. Why? Come on, Ellie, you're from New York, you live in New York, and you value their opinions. More than yours.
Oh, absolutely. Because I'm, you know, this fuddy-duddy, old-fashioned Mormon lady that doesn't know anything. You know, I'm, like, from 1950, I'm like June Cleaver. Are you saying that you are like that or that you think I think I am?
That's what I think you think I am, yeah. Before things get too tense, my mom and I pull up the comments page together. The first thing I learned was how fleshed out these people were in my mom's mind. Like Carol from the West Village, who warned that irresponsible drinking could lead to lawsuits.
She's a lawyer? Because that's the way a lawyer would say things, isn't it? Okay. She's dealt with lawsuits that have involved drunk drivers or something with alcohol that's involved, right?
To be clear, nowhere in the comments does it say Carol is a lawyer. For each entry, there's just a name and location. Like Don from the Upper West Side. Pretty ritzy area, right?
Who's Don in your mind? Don is a comedian. Oh. He's older.
He used to do kind of old-style comedy. Again, reading the comments, you'd never know Don was a comedian. Yeah, he's just disgusted with how comedy has evolved in the last 15 years or so. What does Don think about me doing this show?
He says, comedy, where you are laughing at the performers and not with the performers is not comedy. It is tragedy. Is this really what NYC comedy is reduced to? Are you really not cleverer than this?
Why did you think, like, Don saying this to me would reach me? Well, you love comedians. I mean, it's all about comedy for you. So, of course, if this is not going to be funny, then maybe we shouldn't do this.
The next comic comes from the East Village from a commenter named Please. Okay, so I'm thinking this is a policeman. And his name is Please? Yeah, Officer Please.
It doesn't say Officer Mom. It's just, like, Plane. Why is this policeman writing me? Why is he so offended by the show?
Well, he says, 10 years after 9-11 and this is where New York is? Come on. The show is on September 17th. I think this week, of all weeks, we should all be a little more sensitive and full of introspection.
Okay, um, can we just... I think we can both agree that you went real big on this one. I hit the 9-11 button. Her last comment is a straight-up Mormon talking point.
Alcoholism and all other addictions take away freedom of choice. Seven minutes after she posted that, she sent the mass email. My mom said she went so hard because... So, I have two uncles who died of alcoholism poisoning.
My uncle died at age 30. My other uncle came to my wedding completely drunk and ended up dead about two years later from alcoholism. Gary's grandfather died of alcoholism. So, that's how I get there.
It's not like it's a Mormon thing. It's an experience that has affected me. It affected my mother. She was just devastated over her brother and his alcoholism.
Stopping the drunk show meant stopping me from becoming one of these people. My mom said she saw the promo photo of me sipping a drink on the page announcing the show and thought, has she lost her mind? She has relatives who died of alcoholism. She's been taught since she was a little girl to be careful around alcohol.
And then she completely blocked out everything I've ever taught her. Did you ever consider just calling me? Elna, we've already been there. You don't hear me.
You just don't hear me. It's just a joke. You have to hear it from somebody who you think is credible. Come on, admit it, Elna.
You know you would have just laughed. You would have called Kevin, you would have had a good laugh, and you would have had the show anyway. But you didn't think... Come on, admit it.
You know it. You know you would have rolled your eyes at me. But you didn't even try. Elna, just tell me.
What's the truth on your end? Well, I don't think... I would have done exactly what you're saying. But if we had a full conversation where we really talked...
So, for example, I didn't know until just now, until we've had this conversation. I didn't really know that much about your family history with drinking. You don't talk about these unpleasant things. So that when you're...
So against drinking, I think I did think it just had to do with Mormonism and not that it had to do with really painful things you witnessed in your life because you never told me about them. I'm sure I've said this statement before in your life. In our family, you were either a Mormon or an alcoholic. Alcoholic.
Yeah, I heard that one before. Yeah, I just didn't believe it. She'd said this to me all my life, but I was missing the context. I've never met any of these family members who drank.
I don't remember her ever mentioning any of these stories. I saw my mother as sheltered. Almost all her friends are Mormon. I just thought, she doesn't know what she's talking about.
Which was unfair. When I make a radio story, I listen to my interviews over and over again. And this time, something unusual started to happen. With each listen, my mother sounded less and less like my mother.
Like, I stopped hearing her the way I usually do, rolling my eyes, getting defensive. And I actually started to hear what she had to say. This is the line that struck me the hardest. Ella, we've already been there.
You don't hear me. She's right. And I can hear in her voice that this has been hurting her feelings for years. And that's my fault.
I see why she thinks it's hopeless to talk to me about drinking. About anything. I'm incredibly dismissive. That's my part in this.
In her part, she was totally upfront about that. She didn't want to confront me about drinking because she has so much trouble with confrontation of any kind. With anyone. Going back to when she was young.
I mean, it was a little kid I used to just admit fault to anything that happened in our family in order to get the confrontation to be over with. I never understood before this conversation what that feels like for her. She panics, feels trapped, like she needs to run, tightness in her chest, which is what makes this conversation so hard. It's just, we're doing exactly what I hate to do.
What? Talk about conflict. So what's happening to you when we do it? Well, let's see.
I'm totally my thumbs, right? I'm feeling my neck turn to stone. This cord, which is already coiled up, has been triple coiled for the headphones. So, yeah.
Well, thank you for putting yourself in your most uncomfortable place. Sure, you're welcome. I'll have anything for my daughter. Anyway, this meant, from the tone of her voice, it was time to stop.
This was the most direct conversation I've ever had with my mother and the longest real conversation we've ever had. She'd gone above and beyond and did something she did not enjoy for me. I could return the favor and call it a day. Well, folks, my ticket home for Christmas is booked.
And now, for the ending my mother requested. It comes down to three words. She was right. Not about me spiraling downward fast, but about the drunk show.
For the record, the drunk show was a disaster. I was the one who organized the drinking games, but because I'd only recently left the church, I was brand new to drinking, and all the penalties in the games were things like take four shots of whiskey. Things went off the rails quickly. A performer threw a chair at an audience member.
I drunk dialed my ex from the stage and the call went so badly that I started crying in front of the audience. Ira, who was in the show, got blackout drunk for the first time in his life, he said, and then threw up into a trash bag. And someone ended up in the hospital. My mom knew none of those details, of course, but big picture, Carol from the West Village knew what she was talking about when she said irresponsible drinking can lead to hospitalization.
In other words, Mom was right. Adam Baker is one of the producers of our show. Coming up, we hop on a Zoom with the most literal-minded character in children's fiction. That's in a minute from the Dog of Bubble Radio when our program continues.
This is American Life from our class, today's program. What we've got here is failure to communicate. Thank you, Cool Hand Luke. Today's show, we have people trying, sometimes saying the exact right words that you think would get across the meaning, and it does not work for all kinds of reasons.
We've arrived at Act 3 of our show. Act 3, Amelia Vidalia works from home. So, thinking about miscommunicated messages this week, a bunch of us here at a radio show remembering Amelia Vidalia. You know her?
She's a main character in some kids' books from the 60s that have just lived on, a housekeeper who takes any instruction way too literally. Like, the family asks Amelia Vidalia to draw the drapes, and then Amelia Vidalia pulls out a pen and paper and draws a picture of the family's curtains. These stories, of course, are so old-fashioned, and we wondered what life might be like if Amelia Vidalia were around today, and we asked a writer, Hallie Cantor, to think it through for us. Here is what Hallie came up with, this writer for us, by Hanna Einweider.
It was Amelia Vidalia's first day working from home, and she opened her laptop while still in her pajamas. My, what a nice situation, said Amelia Vidalia. I'm gonna like working here. Amelia Vidalia's boss, Mrs.
Rogers, had sent her an email with a list of instructions. Amelia Vidalia read, First thing in the morning, touch base with H.R. That's odd, thought Amelia Vidalia, but she knew her job was to do what Mrs. Rogers wanted.
So Amelia Vidalia got a pair of scissors and some paper, cut out the letters H and R, and walked to the baseball field. She walked around the whole diamond and touched each base with H and R. Done. A text came in from Mrs.
Rogers. Morning, team, let's hop on the Zoom when you're ready. Amelia Vidalia joined the Zoom call and began jumping up and down. What are you doing, Amelia Vidalia, asked Mrs.
Rogers. I'm hopping on the Zoom, of course, said Amelia Vidalia. Oh, uh, okay, said Mrs. Rogers.
You know what, Amelia Vidalia, we actually don't need you on this call after all. Why don't you just go order your lunch? You got it, said Amelia Vidalia. Mrs.
Rogers hadn't said what order to put her lunch in, so Amelia Vidalia decided to be an overachiever. First, she ordered her lunch by height. Then she ordered her lunch alphabetically. Bread, cheese, chips, lettuce, tomato, turkey, water.
Perfect. Amelia Vidalia checked her list for Mrs. Rogers again. Write some copy for the new homepage.
So Amelia Vidalia sat at her laptop and typed the words, The new homepage, 50 times in a row. Writing some copy sure was easy. Soon after she had sent in her work, Mrs. Rogers called, sounding angry.
Amelia Vidalia, I hired you to increase our brand engagement, not to waste my time. You're fired. Amelia Vidalia was stunned. When she told her roommate Alexis what happened, Alexis asked how she was going to make rent.
I can't think about putting on a revival of a 1996 musical right now, Alexis, said Amelia Vidalia. I just lost my job. Then she heard the sound of hammering and frustrated cursing from outside. She went to investigate and saw a man trying to construct something out of wood and nails.
Amelia Vidalia introduced herself. The man, Alfonso Bedonso, explained that his boss had asked him to build a deck for a presentation tomorrow. I've been working for hours, but I just don't understand how he expects me to build a deck in one day. The same sorts of things have been happening to me, Amelia Vidalia said.
Then Amelia Vidalia had an idea. She knelt in front of Alfonso Bedonso and proposed marriage. Alfonso Bedonso accepted immediately. Amelia Vidalia was thrilled.
Now that I've increased engagement, Mrs. Rogers will definitely give me my job back. Also, can I move in with you? I'm pretty sure my roommate is changing the locks.
Why do the locks need changing? Alfonso Bedonso asked. Were their clothes dirty? Amelia Vidalia looked at him.
Her soulmate. Hannah Einwinder, a big story by Halle Cantor. He was the main writer of Magical Girl Friendship Squad. Her website, HalleCantor.com.
You can hear and see more of Hannah on HBO's Hacks. Act 4, The Importance of Meeting Ernest. So we end today's program with one final act of miscommunication. A dad who has a crucial bit of information that everyone in his family would want to know.
That he somehow had a guy's dimension for over a half century. Jeannie Darce tells what happened. I was the last one to meet Ernest because I was the last one to find out Ernest existed. Here's what happened.
My sister Amy stopped by my sister Liz's house to discuss a very urgent matter. An outlandish story that my father was hitting on a priest at the Westport Catholic Church. Liz cut her off. Dad is not gay.
But if he was, nobody cares. Amy shot back. Well, you don't know dad as well as you think you do. He has a son in New Orleans.
Liz yells, wait, what? Amy says, Google Ernie the Attorney. The second Liz tells me this, of course, I flip open my laptop and Google Ernie the Attorney. And Ernie the Attorney's face, which is identical to my father's face, pops up off the screen and attaches itself to my eyeballs.
He looks more like my father than any of us. He looks more like my father than my father. Liz calls my dad. Hey dad, um, Amy said she found you Googling this guy late at night and that he's your son.
That you have a son in New Orleans. My dad says, you mean the doctor? Liz yells, there's a doctor too? Oh, sorry, I meant the attorney.
Oh, well, that's true. He acts like he wasn't keeping this from us for 62 years. We just weren't asking the right questions. He never told anyone, I'm sure, because he knew my mom would never stop bringing it up.
And then he, rather matter-of-factly, tells Liz that when he was a 24-year-old reporter in New Orleans, he met a 22-year-old married Panamanian woman named Raquel Elena Lefebvre. He called her Rocky. And they had an affair. Her husband, a Swedish psychoanalyst who was a decade older, was infertile and didn't tell her that when they got married.
He was also a philanderer. Everyone in the story, I should just say, men, women, everyone in the story is a philanderer. So, initially, Rocky's just looking to conceive, but she and my father fall in love. Then Rocky's father, a Panamanian businessman, comes to the States and the three of them have lunch.
Her father, my father, and a newly pregnant Rocky. She presents my father to ask if she can be the Swedish psychoanalyst. Her father says, no, you're staying put. Because Alice isn't playing some part, but perhaps my father making $56 a week being another part.
So, my father feels the child is in a marriage, has a father, and there's nothing he can do. He moves back to St. Louis, marries my mother, and has us four girls, and doesn't ever interact with this truth again. How does someone do that?
I call my dad the next day. I've been freaking out. My friends are freaking out. It's like the March girls have discovered to have a brother.
When I get him on the phone, he says, now listen, Jane Jo, I put Elizabeth at about 80% chance of being mine, but you, I gotta put your numbers a lot lower than that. But really, both of you ought to get DNA tests, because your mother was wild, and she was beautiful, and of course, she drank too much. Dad? What?
I get off the phone, and remember, I had done a 23andMe a few years back. So I go to the site, suddenly I'm on a side project of proving my father was actually my father, and I click a link I'd never seen before, view all DNA relatives, and Ernie the attorney's face pops up off the screen again, along with his three kids identified as my half-nieces and nephew. I have no idea why confirming Ernest is my brother confirms my father is my father, but it just does. The question now is, do we contact this sweet-looking, innocent 62-year-old man and overturn everything he believes about his identity?
We decide to go for it, and I email him, saying, I believe you're my half-brother. And then Liz and I have like crazy people for the next 24 hours until he emails back, and the next day, we're meeting for the first time on Zoom. He tells us that his parents got divorced when he was five, and it was a big custody battle, and when he was 17, his mother, in a fit of boozy despair, blurted out that his father was not his father, that his father was a man named Stephen Garst, who was a writer from St. Louis.
And then Ernest, raised by a psychoanalyst, says he considered the information and had no idea what to do with it, and promptly requested it, and no one ever talked about it after that day. He says he never thought of it again until I emailed him. One weird coincidence, he tells us that for years, his father dated a woman who lived in Bronxville, New York, and they would go visit her all the time, in Bronxville, where we live. We could have run into him at the A&P.
The following week, Liz goes to my dad's and helps him get on Zoom with everybody, and suddenly I'm watching my 87-year-old father meet his 62-year-old son, and I'm seeing Ernie get information about his mother from my dad, who remembers absolutely every detail about everything. The restaurants they went to, how she called her dog Daisy Desi in her accent, how every time they would part, they would walk about 100 feet in opposite directions, and my father would turn around and yell, hey Rocky! And when she turned around, my dad would make this embracing gesture with his arms. Ernest says to me, it's amazing to talk about my mom with a man who loved her, which Swedish dad did not.
Ernie sends us pictures of Rocky. She looks like a Panamanian Sophie Loren. In fact, Rocky was a lot like my mom. She was beautiful, sort of fancy.
Her grandfather was the president of Panama. She drank too much, smoked too much, and had major depression. But also what made it so exciting was how together an adulty he was. He sent me a card with a watercolor drawing of his house in New Orleans on the front, which when I got it, I was like, oh my god, he's got stationery?
None of us girls have stationery. He's decent and caring and even-tempered. He asks me how I am and how I feel about this or that, and then he waits for me to answer. He made me Rocky's Panamanian Christmas cookies.
He's kind, not something in great supply in my show-voting, drinking, fancy family. Kind is what my mother would have said about people who couldn't go with each of a cocktail party, people who just weren't with it. I started to feel like this was our chance to be a bona fide, loving family, so Liz and I are we going to get together at holidays with our kids for years to come? We'd get together in person in Liz's backyard to find out.
You know, no pressure. Since Ernie is a lot more normal than we are, after he accepts the invitation to come and meet all of us, Liz and I agree we need to get our curve appeal together. Just a light and touching of a few family dramas, you know, just price out some smoke and a few mirrors. I mean, should we say mom died of alcoholism in a West Village a**hole with mice running around, or should we just say she was a rich girl from St.
Louis who was a champion equestrian and debutante? And do we mention that Amy married a Tunisian man and took off to his family's farm in Tunisia and didn't speak to the U.S. for eight years, but is now back and never really explained any of this to us? The real worry, though, is, of course, my father.
How do we prevent Ernie from seeing that while my father is the ideal person to sit next to at a bar, funny, a million stories, a truly entertaining, charismatic man, those aren't the most important qualities in a father. He's painfully unaware of other people's needs and feelings. And when you really do need him, he's just not able to be there for you in the way that you want him to be. Like when my mother died of a stroke after years of really grim alcoholism, he offered no words of comfort, but instead asked me what we should do with the bloody couch that she died on.
Should I go over to Mamas and take that bloody couch out of you so you girls don't have to see it? Although where the hell am I going to drag a bloody couch? I'll probably get arrested. Is seeing that bloody couch going to traumatize you girls, do you think?
When I tried to get him to talk about what he was feeling or take some interest in what I was feeling, he wasn't mean about it. He's not a mean person. It's more like he just can't do it. Like he gently rewrapped the conversation in a different direction.