Endless Thread - Buck It

Episode Date: August 23, 2018

A Reddit comment about a chance encounter on a train inspires Ben to get hypnotized and Amory to face her fears in front of an audience at an open mic.

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Produced by the I-Lab at WBUR, Boston. No, you know what? I'm not getting out of this one way or the other. You'd limp your way to the place and perform? No. It's like the sooner we do this, the sooner it's over. Is this your best material? This is my only material, and thus it's my best.

The reason I'm heckling Amory in my car on the way to a bar is something called the Ulysses Bucket List Challenge. And it started with a Reddit comment that went viral enough that that comment created its own community. And all of this is why I'm about to put Amory up in front of an audience at a local bar, and it's also why I'm about to be put under. Or if you'll simply relax completely, let the suggestions go directly into your subconscious, and simply go into that deep, hypnotic trance. Okay, before we put anyone under, though, we need a title. Okay, so for title, I'm thinking something in the spirit of how sometimes,

even though something's a little scary, you just have to say, bucket. I see what you did there. What do I have to lose? Exactly. Ready? Three, two, one. Bucket. I'm Ben Brock Johnson, and you're listening to Endless Thread, the show where we feature

stories from the vast ecosystem of online communities called Reddit. I'm here with my co-host and producer Amory Siebertson, and we are coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR station. So, as we said, this episode starts with a pretty famous Reddit post, known as Ulysses Bucket List, and our producer, homie Josh, successfully got in touch with the writer of that post, Yoinkie. I did. He was like, yeah, I'll talk to you guys. And then he kind of ghosted on us.

Not necessarily on purpose. He said he was like traveling around the world or something. So we're going to tell a story our own way. Okay. Ready? Ready. So Yoenki, 2013, as he is known on Reddit, aka Rowan, was born in India. He and his family moved around a lot.

India, Sacramento, Kenya, Fresno, but they end up in Vancouver. And he says his parents are really strict, so they butt heads sometimes. And apparently one day they get... in a big fight and Yoinkie runs away with $4 in his pocket. He gets on the Vancouver Skytrain and starts trying to sort out his entire life plan going forward on a napkin. And, you know, while he's in the midst of figuring out his life plan on a napkin, this girl, a couple years older than him, comes up and is like, What are you writing?

And he tells her, and she starts kind of poking fun at him for thinking that he's actually going to plan out his life on a napkin as you do. but they start talking for a while. And eventually she actually talks him into going back home and making up with his family, right? Yeah, and this is something he's really thankful for. You know, this was a big moment in his life and she made him see the light. She turns him around, literally.

Yeah. And she almost walks him all the way home. Like they get off the same stop and literally she almost walks him all the way home. Almost all the way home. It's like that moment in a romantic comedy where like the guy and the girl there's like the awkward moment waiting

for someone to make a move. That is very romantic comedy. And even more romantic comedy is the fact that just as they're walking away, she turns around and is like, Hey, tell me something that you want me to do. And if you give me the rest of my life to do it, I promise to you I will. Yonke is kind of like, well, that's a strange request,

not what I was expecting. Okay. But the first thing he could think of is for her to sing acapella in front of a group of strangers. Pretty good. That is good. Yeah, that is good. Okay.

And she's like, okay, that's perfect. Great challenge. And then she says, I want you to read from beginning to end Ulysses by James Joyce. Aha. Boom. The Ulysses bucket list challenge was born. But not because of the meeting of some strangers on a train,

but because this meeting results in what Yoinkie describes as a paradigm shift. A real change in his thinking about how he interacts with the world. It's more than just people daring each other to do stuff. It's about finding ways to remember meaningful interactions. Yeah, there are like opportunities for greatness that you have every time you come into contact with someone new. You can make that interaction, however small, awesome and special. So Yoinky told his story about his small special interaction on Reddit, and his post got a huge response. It might be a stretch to say it started a movement, but the post did actually start its own subreddit,

where strangers give each other things to do. Challenges. It's got 14,000 subscribers, a ton of posts and responses, which brings us to another Redditor who we found in Boston. The tipsy yogi, what up. Yep. That's me. Tell me the origin story of this username.

It was a failed business venture. I had originally wanted to host yoga events throughout Boston at bars, you know, do some beer yoga. And there was a lot of enthusiasm about it, but trying to find insurance to cover that is really hard. The tipsy yogi also goes by Andrea Ruano. And saying she has varied interests would be an understatement. I like that you are both the person who tried to start a business doing drunk yoga,

But also apparently a nuclear engineer. Yes, rocket scientist. Is that true? You are literally a rocket scientist? I'm a legit rocket scientist. Damn. Andrea has been a redditor for eight whole years, but she only got around to reading the Ulysses bucket list story about a year ago when a friend sent her the link.

She was so moved by the story that she went right to the Ulysses bucket list subreddit. I just decided to post that it was a cool idea and, you know, wanted to see where it was. would take me. So it did kind of take you somewhere, right? Like you posted something about a year ago? Yeah.

Andrea the rocket scientist asked for a challenge and redditors delivered in spades. Challenge after challenge after challenge. First up, crochet a hat for a newborn and drop it off at a maternity ward. I got some other women at my job involved. And we made something like 50 or 60 hats or something like that.

Whoa. Yeah. And we donated them to the maternity ward up at Beth Israel. All right, let's tick through some of the others here. Email time capsule to your future self? I did that the same day. What did you say? I have no idea.

I have no idea. Did you pick a movie from the AMC Top 100 that you don't think you'd like and watch it? Yeah. I watched the graduate. Oh, and? Eh. The soundtrack was horrible. Shots fired.

Did you sit and eat lunch with someone you didn't know? This one is so embarrassing. Yes, I tried. I tried. Uh-oh. What happened? I was in jury duty and I went to some salad place, I don't know, and I get my food. And the woman was sitting by herself and I asked her, I'm like, hey, can I sit down here?

And she's like, oh, yeah. So she picks up her stuff and walks away as I'm sitting down. Oh, no. It's like, that's not the point. And I was so sad and mortified. Rejection. Okay, so mixed success. But Andrea says that just simply trying is succeeding.

It's powerful. Like, I was challenged to, like, talk to a homeless person, I think, and ask them their story. And there's this woman that I walk by every single day. And every single day I'm like, today's the day I'm going to ask her. Today is the day I'm going to ask her. And I don't. And it forces me to sort of look at myself and think about, you know, what is it about me? Why is this hurdle too big?

And so doing these challenges and exploring different sides of yourself, it's a good thing. So you know we had to do it, right? Had to. Had to. We needed our own bucket list challenge. So why don't you do me first and then I'll do you. Okay. Get hypnotized.

Have you ever been hypnotized before? Never successfully. Never successfully. Yeah. Oh no. I'm going to find a good hypnotist and this is going to work. Listen, I will go to whatever hypnotist that you want me to go to and I promise to participate fully.

Okay. So like if I went to a hypnotist and I was like, I wish I was a little bit taller. I wish I was a baller. I'm going to veto that. I wish I had a girl, blah, blah, blah. I would call her, that whole thing? I couldn't do that. No.

I'm a little scared, but I'm in. That's fair. Okay. What's yours for me? You have to participate in a open mic stand-up comedy. Evening. I knew this was coming. You have to do stand-up comedy.

Minimum five minutes of material. I'll give you three minutes. Three? Okay. That's great. No, actually, let's make it 15. No, no, no, no. Let's make it an hour Netflix special.

Nope. No. I think it seems cool. Like, I feel like it could be really freeing. I'm not feeling the freeing at all, the freeing sense at all right now. now, but who knows? That's why Ulysses bucket list exists, right? It's something that you have done or want to do that you hope other people can experience as well. So from that perspective, well, I do not like your challenge. I accept it. That's going to be awesome.

I'm like tearing up a little bit. Ready or not. Here we come. Oh, no. All right. Let's do it, Ben. All right, let's go. I'm ready. Full disclosure, I was definitely not ready. More proof of that in a minute. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science.

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Recruit new talent, reach new audiences, whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. Emery, do you believe in the power of suggestion? Like, you suggesting I eat gum by offering me gum, which you always do, even though you know I'm trying not to chew gum? You're getting very chewy. That's not a thing. Oh, God.

Okay, but I do probably contribute to a lot of your... your gum chewing for that I'm sorry, I'm not sorry, because you love gum. I love gum, and I hate gum. Is that why you wanted me to be hypnotized and why I got hypnotized on your behalf to quit gum? Oh, no. No, you got hypnotized because I want to believe that it's possible. Well, let's get into it. With the help of Boston-based hypnotist Peter Gross, founder of the Boston Hysterical Society,

also of Funnymagic.com. No, he did not hypnotize me into saying his website that I know of, but I did agree to do it, which Peter says is kind of how hypnosis works. He is there to guide me on my own journey. We're going to relax the body even further, having you starting from the top of your head and the bottom of your feet. Relaxing your feet with the next breath you take. now your knees

that's right Emery this is about where I freaked out a little and I have to say I'm not a freaker outer I have been in altered states but for some reason and I guess I was just open to it when he started talking me into the trance I almost like mentally recoiled

because I immediately kind of went deep yeah in this first session you did with him when he did that like and sleep thing and you went from sitting up straight to immediately slumping over, that was convincing. Good, take a deep breath. Three, two, one, eyes open.

Good, sit up. You feeling good? Yeah, feel good. Sit up. Watch my finger. Back and forth. As I draw my finger down, I want you to close your eyes, and sleep all the way down. Bring yourself all the way down.

We do that one more time. Take a deep breath, eyes open. Now, Ben, I actually asked you at some point to consider something that you, you you were working on in your life, something that was in your life, something you're aware of, where you know something that there's something that you can do about it, something you should do about it, something you want to do about it. But you find yourself not doing that thing. It's not important for me to know what it is. It's only important for you to know what it is. So in a second, I'm going to have you take a moment to think about that and clearly make an image

did that thing, that change, that improvement, that invention of something that you want. When you have it, I'd like you to give me just a little nod. So, Ben, did you visualize becoming a baller? Did it happen? Every day. No, not by a long shot. But here is what I think is really interesting about what Peter does. At the end of the day, he's not some Spengali taking control of me. He is someone who is convincing me to convince myself, which is why I make some sense that some of the tasks that he tried to get me to perform

really worked because I had opted in. So he was convincing you to convince yourself that you couldn't do something or that you could do something. Yeah. If you know your eyes are locked shut, do me a favor and give me a little nod of your head so I know your eyes are locked.

It's a funny experience. It's an interesting experience to have those eyes locked shut even though you're trying to open them up. Trying as hard as you can, trying and trying and trying. See, this made sense to me. It is a trick of the mind. A parlor trick, maybe, but it has power.

Emery, do you still want to get hypnotized? Yeah, I do. A lot more than I want to do stand-up comedy again. Yeah, let's talk about that. Okay, so Ben, my first thought when you gave me this challenge was to put out a cry for help on Reddit. So I made a post in the stand-up comedy community, basically saying, where do I begin? And I got some good suggestions.

I thought they were better than good. I thought they were pretty great, actually. Very supportive for the must part. Yeah. So one person said, take something mundane and try to think about it differently, which, let's be real,

is easier said than done. But they happen to use one of my all-time favorite jokes as an example of this. It's this Mitch Headbert joke. You only want to a restaurant on the weekends, it gets busy, so they got to start a waiting list,

they start calling out names. They say like, Dufram, party of you two, table ready for dinner. Dufran, Pardier 2. And if no one answers, they'll say the name again. Dufran, party, a 2. But then if no one answers, they'll just go right down to the next name.

Bush, party of three. Yeah, but what happened to the Dufrans? No one seems to care. So this is genius, right? It takes a really familiar, everyday situation, and somehow makes it new and hilarious. We need help. Bush, search party of three.

You can eat once you find the Dufran. You also snuck into the common thread of my post and wrote, She is Not Funny, Please Help Her, They're going to eat her alive up there. Yeah, I feel like I had to play that role, and I was just trying to heckle you before you got up to the stage so that you could be prepared for the heckle, like the possibility of bombing. Mm-hmm. So speaking of bombing, I asked a stand-up comedian about this.

Her name is Ellen Mosquito. She happens to be my future sister-in-law, and I was talking to her here at a bus stop. bombing is part of the deal. It really is. Like you could be going along and having a good stretch of like, yeah, that was a good set. And then every so often, you just bomb. It's kind of like a right of passage, your first big bomb.

After hearing Ellen say this, I kind of started to embrace the impending bomb. You know, like if it's inevitable, why stress about this so much? But then I had a stand-up nightmare. You dreamt that you were as tall as Kempend? Heaven Heart and then you woke up and it was real. Yeah, exactly. No, it was one of those classic on-stage nightmares where, you know, you don't know your lines, you're completely unprepared and you just kind of melt from shame under the lights.

Got it. So after that, I doubled down on writing material and I called up someone we both know, actually, and hopefully some of our listeners know him too. I am A.J. Foster, stand-up comedian, and I am from the Bronx, New York. AJ, who talks to us for our episode, there was an attempt. AJ is comedy legit. Even stand-up comedy legit.

Yeah, AJ's gone on tour with Jay Farrow from Saturday Night Live. He's performed all over the country. I vividly remember when I first left for college. Right before my freshman orientation, it was my 18th birthday, my mom giving me this gift bag. It's like a little care package. It's got my favorite snacks in and some school supplies.

I'm like, that's a very thoughtful mom. Thank you so much. And she's like, there's more. So I peel a tissue paper bag. literally a hundred condoms in the bottom of the bag. I learned something very important about my mom that day. I learned that she was a really big optimist. What would you say is the anatomy of a good joke?

A good analogy for it is like in basketball, a crossover. Your whole goal for the crossover is you get your opponent leaning one way. You're making them think you're going to drive to the right. And then at the last second, you just cross the ball over to the left hand and you go the other way. It's unexpected. It catches them off guard. And then that gets people to laugh. I have one of those in what I've prepared so far.

You want to hear it? That's, yeah. Lay it on me. I'm from Cleveland. And so I have a bit about Cleveland in here. I say like, okay, Cleveland is named for Moses Cleveland, who was from Connecticut. Right? That's kind of funny.

I'm trying here, AJ. I was taking a sip of water as you said that. I feel like you were expected a much bigger life. Oh, I was. I was. You didn't spit the water out? No. You aren't rolling on the floor?

No. Damn it. I actually have my opening joke here. Do you want, can I say it to you? And we can kind of workshop it a little bit, and you can tell me the ways in which it needs improvement. So I am planning to tell people that, you know, I make a podcast. in partnership with Reddit that no, I'm not a comedian. I don't take this very seriously.

So I'm going to ask, are there any hardcore Redditors out there? And if anybody raises their hand, I'm going to say, what are you doing out of your basement? Your mom was expecting you home for dinner like three hours ago. That's a good joke right there. I really like it. Yes. All right, Amory, you got your coaching.

Let's go to the tape. All right. All right, so we have four first timers on the list tonight, and this is your first of them. Guys, please give it up for your first version of the evening. Amory! And I just want to say that going into this, you looked so unhappy. Like, really, I don't think I've ever seen the Amory face that I saw that night waiting to get called up at the tavern at the end of the world in Boston on a Wednesday night. Good.

I'm glad that you were feeling the daggers that I was directing in your direction. No, but seriously, my heart has never pounded so forcefully. But you know what? All that hand-wringing, you looked calm and collected when you picked up the mic. Hello. My name is Amory. It rhymes with Mammery. If there were several of me up here, we'd have Pollyammery. I would make this more interesting, wouldn't it? This is my very first stand-up set. Thank you.

Yeah, I don't do this. I make a podcast for a living, and it's a podcast about Reddit, actually. Do we have any redditors out there in the house? Yeah? What are you doing out of your basement? Your mom expected you home for dinner like three hours ago. No, I'm glad you're here.

That is rough to listen back to. I'm glad it's over, Ben. I would say you were not amazing. But, you know, who is? Especially their first time. You did well. I stand by what I said outside the bar. I thought you were in the top 20th percentile

of everyone who performed. You know, I will say. Maybe 30th, but you were up there. I will say there were some people in there tonight who genuinely bombed, right? Yeah. That is fair to say. And you were not one of them. I was not one of them.

Like, I was not funny, but I did not get up there and... You had a couple moments. Set completed, it's over with. It's not going to happen again. That you know up. You've signed me up for next week already. You're already on the list, my friend. Okay, all of this is well and good,

and you may go on to do a stand-up comedy open mic, and I may go on to be hypnotized into quitting gum, but did this exercise change your worldview, Ben? I think it did, and I have a piece of proof, which is recently I was swimming in a pond, and I swam up to a total stranger who was in an inner tube and holding a beer, and I convinced that stranger to pour some beer into my mouth.

And I think that's because this whole thing has reminded me about the spectrum of how we interact with each other, even and maybe particularly when we're interacting with strangers. And it's broader than we realize or remember, and you can raise the stakes of those little tiny interactions in a good way. You can inspire someone to do something positive when they interact with someone else, too. And that's what's important to remember here, I think. Yeah. I guess my takeaway from this is that I'm staying open to the fact that, although I'm still feeling a little, like, traumatized from doing stand-up.

Okay, no, none of that. You didn't have to do it. I'm open to the fact, and I hope that someday I will feel like I really did learn from this, or I learned something about myself, or I grew in some way from this experience. You'll feel whole again? Oh, God. Well, we should also say this about the original Ulysses bucket list story. 14 years after the original chance meeting happened,

a Redditor showed up in the comments reacting to Yoinkie's story. And they said that they knew a girl named Amanda a similar age who had told the same, same story about Yoinkie, turns out she was that Amanda, and she and Yoinkie reconnected over email. So, amazing plot twist. And I want to read this quote from the end of his original post, because it kind of ties things up nicely. This is Yoinkie writing about Amanda. She gave me a gift that has never once stopped giving. So wherever you may be, thank you for giving me the Ulysses bucket list. And I swear I'll finish it one day. My life advice, simple. Create your own Ulysses bucket list. Okay. So to that point, if you have a bucket list item that you want one of us to do,

you can write us an email, endless thread at wbUR.org. We can't promise we'll do them all, but we will consider every single one, especially ones that make Emery do stand up again. You scamp. Guilty is charged. And by the way, Yoenki, we talked to you so many times on Reddit, but we never got your phone number. So we'd still love to chat if you'd like to speak with us sometime, Even if you haven't read Ulysses yet, it's cool. We'd still love to talk to you, so get in touch. If for some strange reason you want to catch more of Amory's first ever stand-up comedy set, you can find that at WBUR.org slash Endless Thread.

Endless Thread is a production of WBUR, Boston's NPR station in partnership with Reddit. Our show is a dream realized by Jessica Alpert, and when we asked if she wanted to do a stand-up set for the show, She said, Not my job. Iris Adler is our executive producer, and you'd never suspect it, but she is all over the...

Sub-reddit drama. Mix and sound designed by Paul Vikas and John Parati, who said listening to Ben get hypnotized was like... Tripping through time. Our web producer is Megan Kelly, who's always bragging about her... Thrift store halls. Michael Pope is our advisor at Reddit,

and whenever we tell him our latest episode ideas, he can't figure out if we're... Drunk or a kid. Even though you don't always hear his voice, it seems important to point out that our fellow producer Josh Swartz can also say that Endless Thread is something I made. Extra production assistance from James Lindberg. Our intern is Josh Luckens.

Our theme music is by Squelcher. Thanks to Redditor Joe Simpson Art for this week's artwork, it is called The Sliding Doors. On Reddit, we are endless underscore thread. If you want to contribute art for an upcoming episode or give us a juicy story tip so we can tell it like we did today, hit us up there. My co-host and producer is Amory Sieverts. I'm senior producer and host Ben Brock Johnson. I'll let myself out.