Endless Thread - Today You, Tomorrow Me

Episode Date: November 13, 2020

10 years ago, Justin found himself on the side of the road with a blown out tire. Hours went by and no one stopped to help. But just as he was about to give up, something happened that changed Justin forever.

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Produced by the I-Lap at WBUR, Boston. Amory, are you ready to do some physicist phrases of your? Sure. Do you know what the Drake equation is? No. No, I do not. So a lot of people think that the Drake equation is like late night, plus you needing my love equals,

he used to call me on myself. But that's not actually what the Drake equation is. You're only embarrassing yourself. So the Drake equation is this like, it's this probabilistic argument used to estimate the number of active, communicative, extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. Just rolls right off the tongue.

Yeah. So basically the probability that there are aliens, right? Mm-hmm. So what about the Fermi paradox? When I say the Fermi paradox, are you like, uh, no doy? Not exactly. I mean, I know it's like aliens, the existence of extraterrestrial life. But I couldn't give a TED talk on it, no.

Okay, so the Fermi paradox simply stated, uh, named, by the way, after physicist Enrico Fermi. Enrico Fermi. Yeah. This is the idea that there's this issue where the mathematical probability of intelligent life beyond planet Earth, aka the Drake equation, doesn't really line up with the total lack of evidence

we have been presented with of aliens. So what you're saying is you're not an avid follower of ancient aliens, the air quotes history channel show. Yes, the existence of the pyramids tells you more about humanity's terrible propensity for slavery than it does past visits from interstellar travelers. Yeah. Okay, fair. But the idea, the Farmy paradox, was presented by Enrico Fermi like 70 years ago. And since then...

Enrico Fermi. Sorry, I just wanted to get one more in. I say keep doing it. Keep doing it. And since then, many different, very smart people have been, for decades, suggest. some possible explanations for this paradox, this idea of not being alone, but, you know, the fact that there still hasn't been a lot of E.T. phone home, if you know what I mean. All right. Get to the point, Prometheus. Okay. So, so one of these possible explanations for the Fermi paradox is that as science and technology advance, all intelligent life just tends to blow itself up before getting anywhere beyond its own solar system.

Like fundamentally it's sort of a humanity is bad argument. We can make the technology to do great things, but we can't have nice things because we're jerks. But some of us are not jerks. Right. That's true. I'd put you in that camp, not a jerk. And this, of course, is the point of this week's story. And I would say an argument of this week's guest, who is kind of famous for putting a big piece of evidence against the humans or jerks.

argument into the public record. So my name's Justin. I'm Reddit user Roner. God, I'm terrible at this guys. You're doing great, Justin. Justin has this epically famous post from 10 years ago called Today You, Tomorrow Me, which we're going to get to. Yes, but first, we asked to Justin about the Fair Me paradox and the humans or

Jerk's explanation at the end of our recent interview with him. And he was into it. I am very familiar with that theory. In a million years, I never would have guessed that we would have gotten this conversation to this question. And I am impressed, sir. I am impressed. This is the hands down the best question I have ever been asked given context. I think, you know, again, as very, very smart monkeys, we have a capacity to do many things. We have a capacity to grow and change internally. We also have the, we have a capacity for curiosity, which probably outstrips every other thing that we have.

So I'm always concerned about the future and whatnot. I'm sure for a number of reasons, we may not hit our interstellar, phase of human development just because we're going to ruin our planet or kill ourselves or decide to go back into the trees. I have no idea. But I know whatever comes, we will be able to change. Will we though? Well, Justin changed. He didn't used to think this way. He was a pessimist. And then 10 years ago, he changed his tune. So we should hear him out. I'm Ben Brock Johnson. I'm Amory Sieverts. And this is endless thrift. The show featuring stories found in the vast ecosystem of online communities called Reddit.

We're coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR station. Today's episode. Today you? Tomorrow me. The year was 2010. Remember 2010? Back when our problems seemed more like this? You know, I had a few, you know, car troubles. You know, I didn't have as much money then as I have now. Justin was having the kind of year that many of us would. would be happy to put behind us. I had gone through a breakup with a long, you know,

from a long-term relationship that was a bummer at the time. I, you know, had to move. There was, you know, just all these tiny little things, you know, that just they felt big in the time. But looking back, you know, during 2020, they feel like, you know, tiny little speed bumps. Justin says he's a pretty negative person, but we don't believe him.

I don't really remember moving into that apartment that I complained about. I don't, I remember the guys who got gas. for me when my car ran out. I don't really remember getting, you know, ticked off and being stuck on the side of the street for an hour. You know, it's just, it's funny how, you know, the further way you get from it, the more positive aspects kind of float to the surface. And frankly, I just don't even remember the negative anymore. It sounds like maybe you're not the person you think you are. And what I mean by that is you, you say that you're the type of person generally who focuses on the negative. But I don't know, what I'm hearing right now is kind of goes against that a little bit.

Yeah, it requires 10 years. It requires 10 full years. Then the statute of limitations has expired in my brain, and I can start focusing on all the positive. But it also sounds like this thing that happened to you also had a pretty big impact, maybe, on the way that you look at the world, maybe. I don't know. Well, that's, honestly, that's kind of the only reason why I was interested in talking to you guys about it.

This thing that happened to Justin has become Reddit lore. He originally told the story. in a comment on a post that asked, have you ever picked up a hitchhiker? Justin's response is a journey. And he read it for us in full. Just about every time I see someone, I stop. I kind of got out of the habit in the last couple of years,

moved to a big city and all that. My girlfriend wasn't too stoked on the practice. Then some shit happened to me that changed me and I'm back to offering rides habitually. If you would indulge me, it's a long story and has almost nothing to do with hitchhiking other than happening on a road. This past year I've had three instances of car trouble, a blowout on a freeway, a bunch of blown fuses, and an out-of-gas situation.

All of them were while driving other people's cars, which, for some reason, makes it worse on an emotional level. It makes it worse on a practical level as well, but with the fact that I carry things like a jack and extra fuses in my car and know enough not to park facing downhill on a steep incline with less than a gallon of fuel. Anyway, each of these times this shit happened, I was disgusted with how people would not bother to help me. I spent hours on the side of the freeway waiting, watching roadside assistance vehicles blow past me for AAA to show. The four gas stations I asked for a gas can at told me that they couldn't loan me one for my safety, but I could buy a really shitty one-gallon one with no cap for $15. It was enough each time to make you say shit like this country is going to hell in a hand basket.

But you know who came to my rescue all three times? Immigrants. Mexican immigrants. None of them spoke a lick of the language, but one of those dudes had a profound effect on me. He was the guy that stopped to help me with a blowout with his whole family of six-in-toe. I was on the side of the road for close to four hours. Big Jeep, blown rear tire, had a spare but no jack. I had signs in the windows for the car, big signs that said, need a jack, and offered money, no dice.

Right as I was about to give up and just hitch out of there, a van pulls over and dude bounds out. He sizes the situation up and calls for his youngest daughter who speaks English. He conveys through her that he has a jack, but it's too small for the Jeep, so we will need to brace it. He produces a saw from the van and cuts a log out of the down tree on the side of the road. We rolled it over, put his jack on top and bam in business. I start taking the wheel off, and, if you can believe it, I broke his tire iron. It was one of the collapsible ones, and I wasn't. I wasn't careful, and I snapped the head I needed to clean off.

Fuck. No worries. He runs to the van, gives it to his wife, and she's gone in a flash, down the road to buy a tire iron. She's back in 15 minutes. We finished the job with a little sweat and cussing. Stupid log was starting to give. And I'm a very, very happy man.

We are both filthy and sweaty. The wife produces a large jug of water for us to wash her hands in. I tried to put a 20 in the man's hands, but he wouldn't take it. So instead, I gave it to his wife as quietly as I could. I thanked them up one side and down the other. I asked the little girl where they lived, thinking maybe I could send them a gift for being so awesome. She says they live in Mexico.

They're here so mommy and daddy can pick peaches for the next few weeks. After that, they're going to pick cherries, then go back home. She asks if I've had lunch, and I told her no, she gave me a tamale from her cooler. The best fucking tamale I've ever had. So to clarify, a family that is undoubtedly poorer than you, me, and just about everyone else on that stretch of road, working on a seasonal basis where time is money,

took an hour or two out of their day to help some strange dude on the side of the road when people in tow trucks were just passing him by. Wow. But we aren't done yet. I thank them again and walk back to my car and open the foil on the tamale because I'm starving at this point. What do I find inside my fucking $20 bill? I whirl around and run up to the van and the guy rolls his window down.

He sees the 20 in my hand and just shaking his head, no, like he won't take it. All I can think to say is, porfavor, porfavor, porfavor, with my hands out. Dude just smiles, shakes his head with what looks like great concentration tries his hardest to speak to me in English. Today, you, tomorrow me. Rolled up his window, drove away, his daughter waving to me in the rear view. I sat in my car eating the best fucking tamale of all time and I just cried. It has been a rough year and nothing has broke my way.

This was so out of left field I just couldn't deal. In the five months since I have changed a couple of tires given a few rides to gas stations and once went 50 miles out of my way to get a girl to an airport. I won't accept money every time I tell them the same thing

when we are through. Today, you, tomorrow me. More in a minute. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But, but if we do, You also like to get into other kinds of stories, stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs.

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the Creative Studio from WBUR's Business Partnerships Team. Become a thought leader. Recruit new talent, reach new audiences, whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. Justin's Today, You, Tomorrow Me, Post is what we call in the biz a feel-good story. I am incapable of reading that without choking up. I am sorry. You don't need to apologize for that. I'm more emotional in my older age as I advance in age. I'm quick to choke up with things that touch me, I suppose.

Okay. If sharing a touching story was all we were hoping to accomplish in this episode, we would end it right now. Roll the credits. But as you can probably tell by the way we started this episode, we had bigger questions for Justin. because on the one hand, his post got this huge response. The bulk of the messages I get are from folks who either want to tell me a story about when this happened to them, when someone helped them. And then, you know, kind of half of those are also folks who just said, you know, thank you for your story. I get it now. And I promise you I'm going to be a better person.

I'm going to start helping people. But then, on the other hand, it's been 10 years since Justin made this post. It's been shared across Reddit and beyond. Countless people have seen it and been moved by it. But Powell moved, moved enough to start actually being better people, helping other people. Whatever good deeds this post may have inspired over the last 10 years, I think we can all agree the world could use a lot more of today, you, tomorrow me. But a lot of people wrote to Justin saying that they aren't sure where to start.

They are sure that it probably won't be on the first. side of the road. You don't have to pull over, you know, like, you don't need to do that at all. Like, you can help in so many different ways. You know, you can volunteer your time. You can donate money. You can raise awareness for different causes. You can pick up litter in your neighborhood. You can check in on your neighbors. You can make sure that your neighbors all know each other and that, you know, you're checking in on each other enough that you know if somebody's got a hardship that they need help with. 2020 has been rough, though. And some of you might be thinking,

wait, I have a hardship. Today, me, someday you, when I have the money or energy or time. I really do wonder if, you know, a lot of folks kind of see it as aspirational. Like, I wish I was in a place where I felt like I could do that. You know, like, is it a privilege to have the time to help? You know what I mean? Like, you can look at it from that aspect, too. Like, you know, some folks really don't have the time in their day.

I'm very fortunate to have that time. You know, I don't have kids. I've got a partner that, you know, shares, you know, does, let's face it, you know, the bulk of the taking care of me. So I've got the time to, you know, lend to other folks. And I think, you know, I think people want to help. I think they want to feel like they have the opportunity to do it. And we don't really give folks that opportunity or we haven't really set people up for that opportunity. You know what I mean?

Mm-hmm. But in this case, it was a family that maybe didn't have the time and did it anyway. Well, you know, I thought about that a lot. Like, what's the difference between me and that family? And like, the difference between us is, in that moment at least, you know, that, you know, I had a certain set of expectations. And, you know, when I'm concerned about keeping up with the Joneses or making sure the next paychecks here or making that next payment or upgrading the car or buying the new toy or the new boat or, you know, whatever it is that I'm doing, um, it's easy for me to justify that I don't have time.

I don't have time to be helpful. Um, and I, you know, I, I, I wonder if those folks have a different perception of what success is, you know, like, because I wonder if they even would have this question. You know what I mean? Like the question of like, you know, you know, Do I have time or do I make time? When your whole ethos is like, today, you, tomorrow me, like, you don't really think in those terms, I don't think. He doesn't think because even though Justin is the today, you, tomorrow me guy on Reddit now, he still strives to live up to that idea, like the rest of us. And he told us over and over again during our interview. I am the messenger.

That is all I am. I am the guy who was unprepared for a fairly minor, you know, auto. emotive maintenance task. But the messenger matters, right? Because messengers multiply. You know, I always laugh. Like, when I think about how many places this thing has shown up, right? So like, I'm not terribly religious. I'm a non-believer. And I've had, you know, multiple, you know, clergymen and women reach out to me and say, hey, I'm, you know, either asking permission or just letting me know, hey, I use this on Sunday or I use this on Saturday at my congregation. Another messenger, Chris Neal, a filmmaker who Justin says is the 15th person to adapt this story into a short film.

Thank you. Today, you. Tomorrow, me. Now, we want to be clear about something. Justin's story isn't trying to paint a group of people with broad strokes, and neither are we. This is really a story about one family that made a choice to help, when it would have been a lot easier not to. Have you ever tried to find this family who helped you that day? There would be no, I honestly, I would have no idea how to start. There's, I mean, I've had people ask me that before. Like, you know, have you tried reaching out to farms?

Like, I don't think you guys understand how many farms there are in Oregon. It would be impossible. Like, if you and your family were in a van on Highway 217 in the Portland area, sometime in the middle of July. I want to say it was actually early July 2010, and you helped a doofy, tall, white guy with a gold jeep that had a tire blown out. Please reach out to this podcast or WBR in Boston.

I would love to speak to you. And now here we are, another couple of messengers sharing this with you. And maybe you'll pass it along, or maybe you'll just keep it in mind as you go about your life. Maybe when the aliens get here, that's the first thing they'll say to us. Today you. Tomorrow me.

And then they'll hand us the technology for interstellar travel, and then they'll get up, get back into their car, and zoom off. A girl can dream. That'd be cool. But as silly as all of that sounds, it does get at this fundamental question we all struggle with, especially when we are going through a hard time. Are people good or are we bad? And how you feel about that really influences your behavior as you go through life, right? If you go through life like Justin and this family,

maybe you're a little more willing to reach out and help someone because you assume that they're good people and your good people, so you should help one another. And as a species, that can be a force multiplier. It can be a philosophy that helps us not blow ourselves up. because today you, tomorrow me. That's why I think it's kind of cool to have something, you know, so universal encapsulated in four words. You could create a number of, you know, hypothetical big time questions around it just because it's so universal.

And it gets back to the point of we're all connected. We're all just on a rock flying through space, folks. We're all here together. We've got a very, very short period of time to do. do it in the grand scheme of things. And there's a whole lot to see and experience and do and feel and love and think. And you don't have enough time to do it all anyway. So, you know, let's help each other make the most of the time we have. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR Boston's NPR station in partnership with Reddit.

Josh Swartz is our producer, extra production help from Frank Hernandez. Mix, sound design, and original music by Matt Reed. Michael Pope is our advisor at Reddit. On Reddit, we, we, our endless underscore thread. If you want to reach out, give us a story tip so we can tell it like we did today. Or contribute art for an upcoming episode. You can hit us up there as well. Yeah, and speaking of art, special thanks to Anna Karakalu,

who made original art for this episode. Hell yes. You can find that and a link to her Instagram on our website, WBUR.org slash Endless Thread. My co-host is Amory Sewardson. My co-host is Ben Brock Johnson. We'll let ourselves out.