Radiolab - Are You Sure?

Episode Date: March 26, 2013

This hour, we walk the tightrope between doubt and certainty, and wonder if there's a way to make yourself at home on that razor's edge between definitely...and not so sure.

Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From W. N. Y. C.

See? Yeah. And NPR. Okay. So, you know, the core of our job, right, is to ask people questions, right? Yes. Then we sit there for hours and edit the answers. And I've noticed that the answers sometimes have a kind of musicality to them.

Like sometimes you get this. That's right. Yeah. No. Right. Yes. No way. Right.

Right. Yes. Oh. No. I know that. Those are the sharp quick. Sticato. Beats.

Yes. Yes. Yeah. This is like the sound of certainty, right? Yes. No. But there are times when you get a completely different music, you know, like say you're asking a hard question. or a clarifying question, is it A or is it B?

Then, sometimes you get this. I... Well, it's certain... I just... His... Um... I mean, yeah, well... But I think...

You get this kind of melodic wavering. No, I... It's... I... Well, um... I... I don't know. You know. I don't know.

In purely musical terms, the pitches in the first one are like, pow, pow, pow, they're just precise and quick. But in that second category, the pitches are floating up or floating down. They're never stable. You're not a normal person, really. No, it's like that's the sound of... Doubt. Doubt.

You know what we could do... What's that? We have collected some stories, which in a way, they all have doubt in them. They have certainty in them. And what they all are are kind of collisions, really. We have three stories for you. Difficult, complex, emotionally wrenching situations.

Kind of situations that you can't really walk away from. And you can't resolve them. So you have to do something. And that's this show. That's going to be our show. We should call it... Are you sure? No, no.

I don't know yet. I have to think about it. No, that's what I'm suggesting as a name. Are you sure? Are you sure? Yes. Are you sure? He said with certain you're not a doubt.

Okay. I'm Chad I'm Mabumrod. He's Robert Crawlbush's his radio lab. And to get things started. Are you sure? That's good. We start with a producer we've worked with for a very long time, Lulu Miller. A very interesting story, which takes many twists and turns. It begins actually with the fact that as a girl, Lulu really loved rocks. She just loved to sit on rocks.

She loved to think about rocks. She just liked rocks. They felt slightly animate in the way that a tree does or that an animal does. that I know it's not a human, but it's a nice thing in the world that for whatever reason brings about a feeling of peace. Then one day, seventh grade.

Mr. Pricer. He's a science teacher. He did a lesson on inorganic versus organic matter. Mm-hmm. And we make this huge list on the chalkboard. Organic matter. Trees, yep. Dogs, yep.

Pasta, sure. It's kind of blowing our minds because it seems like everything's organic. A corpse was organic. Even a table is organic. Yeah, because wood used to be alive. And then he draws this like harsh white line down the chalkboard. And he writes, inorganic, metal, salt, rocks.

And I was like, oh. No, it sounds a little bit silly, but this was actually a big deal for Lulu. I mean, even when she worked with us, she would talk about this. But then you fast forward many years. Actually, when she was leaving the show, she decided. I decided to bike across the country from California to New York. And she meets somebody who changes things for her and her rocks and pretty much everything. Well, I met him in the middle of possibly the loneliest place in the world.

It's called the loneliest road in America, highway route 50. And it's just a two-lane road that crosses the state of Nevada. Desert, desert, desert. This is the sound of a busted bike, a broken spoke, a ripped tire. Just desert stretches for a hundred miles at a time. Did you end up having this road? To ride 100 miles in one day? Mm-hmm.

Damn. Oh, yeah. Okay, so you're in the middle of this expanse of dread. Yes. And what happens? And we finally make it late in the afternoon to basically our end point for the day. a little gas station with a little diner. And we see out in front of the restaurant this bike

that's like loaded down with so much gear. We were like, oh. Fellow traveler. Yep. So we went in, picked him out immediately. He was the only other person in this kind of like biker bar basically wearing Lycra. He was young. He was early 20s, big red beard, this young dude from Kentucky with a little drawl.

What was his name? His name is Jeff. Jeff Vineyard. So his story was that he was about to be getting married and he was supposed to be doing this trip with his fiancé, Megan. But sort of at the last minute, just due to wedding planning logistics and all that, she had decided not to come on the trip. But, you know, so he's doing it alone and just kind of thinking of it as a little bit of reflection time before he gets married. Okay. He had just finished grad school in geosciences.

So geology and like tracking. earth statistical data. And he was going the same direction that you guys were going? He was going our way too. And he said, you know, oh, look, mind if I ride with you to the campsite? And we said, sure. And then we ended up riding together for about 11 days. So you got to know him.

Really got to know him. So there was another song. This is us in Nevada. What hymns do you know? Well, that was, do you know any of Amazing Grace? Yeah. And that's him singing. It was great.

The other little part to tell you beforehand is just that Jeff grew up very religious. Grandpa was a preacher and his fiancé, Megan, also very devout, very religious, has always felt the presence of God. He actually met Megan through his church. doing mission work down in Louisiana. Can we go look at a rock really quick? Okay. Okay, so we meet this dude, he's a geologist, he sings all the time, and about three or four days into riding together,

he says something that completely changes my understanding of the world. Any clue what that is? No, can I get some water and rinse him off real quick? We are pulled over to the side of the road in Utah, and Jeff has us looking at some rock. Just washing it off. This might be a limestone. And then he just starts casually mentioning how limestone is formed.

So it's a sedimentary rock, and it forms from what used to be the bottom of seafloors. What actually causes it to form is there is plankton in the water, and lots of these small organisms that have very, very, very small shells, you know, microscopic. All that's left of these organisms after they die are their small shells get deposited on the seafloor and then more shells get deposited over top of them. And then over the course of many, many years, you have these very, very thick, almost like drifts of these plankton shells. And then, you know, there's tremendous pressure at the bottom of the seafloor and they compress and they compress and they solidify and they turn into limestone. You're saying that these rocks are made out of thousands and thousands of little... Critters.

Critters. Pretty much. I thought a rock couldn't have been alive. That's saying that that rock is composed of something, many thousands of things that were once alive. Yeah. I don't know whether I would necessarily call the shell part alive, but... Doesn't matter. I'd heard what I needed to hear.

They do have a little bit of life inside them in a very real, tangible, seeable way. Like, not a poetic idea. They do. Yeah, they do. They do. I mean, it was there at one point. I'm sure I must have in some other way learn this. I mean, this is basic rock knowledge, but I somehow missed it.

You sound very excited. Yes. He gives me my friends back, like with a scientist wand. All right. But, but, but, but, this is not actually the story I want to tell you. It's not, I'm sorry, it took me a little long to get here, but the real story I want to tell you is about a very, very similar thing happening only with much bigger consequences.

Because we kept on riding. I'm in the Utah Hills. We make it through one of the hardest days of biking ever, and we finally make it to Cedar City, Utah. And we decided to go out for pizza to celebrate. We're taking a first bite, and then Jeff, who's usually so just like polite and sweet, he slams down his root beer, and he says,

I was supposed to be getting married today. Whoa. What does that mean? Well, that's what we thought. We were like, what? Finally, he told us this whole story that actually, a couple months before the bike trip, one Tuesday, they were making dinner together. We were at her house and we were cooking. And he basically suddenly felt this feeling inside his chest. Like, right behind my sternum, I just thought, shit. I don't believe in God anymore. Really?

Yeah. Yeah. This just landed on him out of the blue? Completely without warning. Wait, where were, what did it feel like? I don't know. I don't even know if it was like words, but it was just, I don't believe in God. Were you then terrified?

Yeah, who wouldn't be? He'd believed in God his entire life. Yeah. And now, gone. Just like that. Was he thinking about something? I don't know. I kept asking him, and that was the best he could say.

And Megan saw the look on his face and asked him what was wrong. I didn't say anything at the time. I'm just like, just have indigestion. You know, but... A few weeks later. I'd filled her in on that, and that was probably, you know, Megan's a person of deep belief, and that was something she wanted her husband to be at least somewhat on board with.

They put the wedding on hold. Postponed it in good faith that we will work things out. So in a way, what he was doing on the bike trip was literally scanning the hillsides to find some evidence of God to win back his bride. Oh, so this wasn't like a pre-wedding reflective ride thing at all? No way. And you're saying you wanted evidence? Yes. Evidence approved.

I wanted to be on one side of the fence or the other. His one demand for God was, if you exist and you're at all interested in people. Show yourself. There's no reason you shouldn't. So that whole time when I was riding along thinking, yay, my rock buddies are back, Jeff was waiting for some signal from the landscape. There was a time where I'm climbing up this mountain.

Wind comes up behind me and like, I'm thinking, wow, this is great. It feels like I'm being pushed. Yeah. Is this just the wind or is this something else? I don't know. And for the three weeks he'd been riding, nothing had really convinced him.

No. No, no. He was just frustrated. Dispondent, angry. And six days after what was supposed to be Jeff's wedding day. June 4th. We part ways, and then I had no idea what became of him. Huh.

I didn't hear anything from him for almost a year. And then I guess he had my phone number from just, you know, we'd had each other's phones while we were traveling together. and he called and said that he was on a little road trip and he was going to be passing through Charlottesville and could he stay with me for a night? Hello, hello. And I said, sure. Do you want to set the scene for us?

And basically the second he arrives, I asked him, okay, so what happened? Have you found God? Are you with Megan? And I wonder, like, where you are with all that? Oh, you know, golly, that's right there. He told me that toward the end of his ride, he started to get really anxious. Okay. Trip's almost over.

Got like a week. And are you thinking like lightning bolt? Show me an angel? What are you hoping to see? No. Anything. And then he tells me. There was a point outside of Hazard, Kentucky.

He was feeling really low. And then I was eating lunch at Arby's. I know. Okay. This is where the story gets embarrassing. A ceiling tile fell on my sandwich. Okay. Yeah.

Like a plaster ceiling? Yeah, like one of the dropped ceiling tiles, just splat. Wow. Yeah. And so. And then what happened is a guy sitting over at the next table noticed him. Walks over and gives me a sandwich. And we got to talk in.

Of course, like, you know, he's a minister. And Jeff just starts telling him everything that's going on. how he's having trouble with his faith and how he's not sure what's going to happen with Megan. So we talked about that for a while. And at the end of the conversation, the man gives Jeff a blessing. Like a benediction. Have a good journey and be safe. I hate to recount it because it just sounds so a ceiling tile fellow and the guy came over and talked to me.

Like, is that really remarkable? But in that dark place, I feel like maybe it was. I don't know. I'm confused. And when he finally made it home to Megan, that's what he told her. I don't know. Yeah. We both just kind of sat there for a long time because we didn't really know what to do with that.

But I knew in my heart that I wanted to marry someone who shared my faith and just kept hoping that he would find his faith again. And this was just a phase or something. and it was much bigger than that. And eventually, I figured out what I wanted to do and cried a lot, and then I went and talked to him at his house. She just sat him down and gave him his ring back.

It was really sad. Neither of us wanted that to happen. We cried together a little bit, and then I think he needed me to just leave. Yeah. It was definitely. hard to walk out of that room. It didn't work out, so.

I'm up in Columbus. I'm staying in Columbus because I like it there. And you moved up to Columbus to be with her, right? So he got a job. Turning Riches at a bicycle shop. Yeah. It's a long way from geostatistics. Yeah.

I didn't realize that was going to be so. No, don't be. I'm going to try it. Okay. I turned off the tape recorder and took him out to a really good bar. He was headed back to Columbus and, you know, just down. And that's it? That was just it.

That was kind of their ending. And I, you know, I figured that's the end of story. And then yet another year goes by. And luckily we moved slowly on tape, on stories. and a strange invitation appears in my mailbox. I open it up, and it's an invitation to Jeff Vineyard and Megan Sweeney's wedding. Really? Mm-hmm.

Wait, a year goes by and you just suddenly get a thing? To their wedding. What happened? All right. Shall we commence, Lulu? We shall commence? Well, I didn't know what happened. Woo-hoo!

Megan is walking up right now, actually. Hi. All right. Well, first of all, like, what happened? Because I know nothing. Well, let's have him tell that story and then we'll go from there. I'd reached a point where I was actually back in attending church, I'd found a really friendly congregation here in town.

I was just looking for something familiar because I moved up here and the one person I know is not in my life and I need something else. So I wasn't necessarily going for the preaching. I was just going for the experience. For kind of the pew on the bum and the people around you. Right. I mean, I was singing with our church choir at that point

because I wasn't really sure whether I had any faith or not, but gosh darn, I like singing. And then he told me one day. Just some gosh darn Sunday. I don't know what we were singing. I don't know what the sermon was about. But we were taking communion. As I was taking the elements, I just...

He said he just suddenly felt like... The air charge. Like there is a palpable presence all around. Just almost like a tempest. I felt there was something there. Was it something you felt up in your head? Was it something you felt... sternum, mostly.

Beneath the sternum. Huh. A tightness, a hand. something touching there. Very strange. I don't know what to make of that still. I'm still not sure if it was something divine and otherworldly or if it was just a profound appreciation for the history of that gesture.

I almost just want to say, like, Jeff, right now, do you believe in God? Yeah. It's just really different from what I feel. felt earlier and it's still very uncertain. Megan, when you hear him talk about doubt, is it scary? Is it something you can relate to? I mean, how does it strike you when he talks about it? It is a little scary because I think it's still a hard thing for us. Keep in mind I'm talking to them 10 days before they're about to get married. Is it 10 or 11? I think it's 10. Yeah, 10. Some days, sometimes it seems like, we're going to be.

we're really close on how we believe, and sometimes it seems like we're miles apart. It's confusing sometimes, but that's, I don't know, I'm okay with that. And Megan, are you okay with that? I am. I don't know if it's just me still wishing a little that his faith is more like mine. Maybe I haven't completely let go of that. But on a day-to-day basis, we pray together in the and are able to talk about religious things without fighting with each other. And I think that whatever differences we do have are okay now. Love is a choice.

After a certain point, we just chose that we were going to love each other anyway. Let's pray. Loving God, I pray that it is Megan and Jeff. They go forward and they get married? Yeah. Amen. It was a religious ceremony. and they say their vows.

I just take you Megan to be my wife. I just take you, Megan, be my wife. Promise before God. And I promise before God and all who are present here. And what was just like, as he's saying his vows, you can hear. And encourage you to develop God's gift. The biggest sob I've ever heard just like comes out of his voice. Like, it just felt like bigger than him.

Jeff said later that what that was was not the sound of resolution, but of relief. For as long as we go, Sheldon. For as long as we go, Shelwood. It is my great pleasure to introduce to you, Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey and Megan Vineyard. Big thanks to producer Lulu Miller. We'll continue in a moment.

Message, hen, new. Hi, it's Lulu calling you from D.C. Hi, this is Jeff Vineyard. I'm Megan Vineyard. And I have the credits. Okay, good there. Radio Lab is supported in part. By the National Science Foundation.

And, hold on, going by, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. granting public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www. Sloan.4. Radio Lab is produced by WNYC and distributed by MTR. Um, okay. Bye. End of message. Hey, I'm Chad I boomrod.

I'm Robert Crowley. This is Radio Lab today. Oh, I don't know. We're talking about it. We're in a doubtful state of mind. Constant doubt. That's the topic. Yes.

Like in the last chapter, we met a person. who had a real, a doubt pile up. He lost his faith in God. He lost his girl. That's maybe an extreme example of something that we all go through every day, right? Yeah, I mean, you wake up. And then you have to get something done. And then some little voice inside you says, you know, you can't do that. Not so sure about this, but still you got to act because you're an adult. So what do you do in that case? How do you act without the feeling of certainty? Hello. Hi. Is Annie? Yes. Okay. And we met someone who thinks about this all the time. This is an area that I'm pretty well versed in.

Would this be your stock and trade? This would be very much, so. Her name is Annie Duke. I'm a decision strategist. But you might know her better as a badass poker player. Well, in 2004, I won a bracelet, which is a world championship. I also won the tournament of champions that year. That was the...

She has won a lot. Now, when we called up Annie, we had this idea about poker that I think a lot of people have, which is that it's like this game about... tells and like reading your opponent watching the way their nose quivers so that you can tell when they're bluffing or when they've got a good hand. Nope. Tells are actually a very small part of the game. Fact, she says, they often backfire.

I remember the first tournament I played after it was on TV, I had a hand that was kind of a close decision, and this guy moved all of his chips in to the pot. And God, he was just confident. Like I could see, like he was really confident in it. his hand. So I threw my hand away. But then in a subsequent game, she sees the same guy doing exactly the same thing. He pushes all his chips in, looking super confident. I was like, wow, he must have like a crazy hand like two aces. And he turns his hand over face up and he's super confident in it. And it was a really bad hand. It was just a hand that he thought was good.

So the problem for me was that I read him totally correctly. But what I didn't understand was that he didn't. Let's call him inexperience. He didn't know what a good hand. He didn't know what a good hand or a bad hand was. But then you get players who are a little bit more experienced, and sometimes they would do what's called a reverse tell. Is that like a double fake? Right. They'd basically pretend to be overconfident, so she'd think they're dumb.

And in the biz, we call that Hollywooding. So she says, unless you've played someone a million times, it's really hard to know how to read them. And what's worse, the good players, they do nothing. Doing nothing is the best choice. If you try to disappear. You pick a spot on the table, stare at it. So what do you do in the case where there aren't any signals to read?

And the only thing you really know is that you know nothing. Well, actually, what you sort of figure out is that you don't need to know. The real breakthrough moment for me was when I stopped trying to figure out anything with certainty. And here Annie laid out a way of thinking, a way of taming doubt that we find completely fascinating. And that has paid off for her to the tune of about four. million dollars. Well, you know, I think that... Do you mind if we just back up? Okay. Like, how did you get to be Annie Duke?

Well, I was born Annie Letterer, and then I married someone with the last name Duke and thought, that's much easier to be Annie Duke. Well, I went to Columbia undergrad, double major in English literature and psychology. Ah, psychology. Then I went to UPenn, studied cognitive psychology there. I had a National Science Foundation Fellowship. And then right at the end, just really had this realization that I didn't really want to be an academic. Holy hell, like, what am I going to do now? Okay, well, I need some money. I'll play some poker while I'm figuring it out. And has you played a lot of poker to that point?

No, but I'd watch my brother play a lot. Well, she would come out and she would sit behind and watch. That's Annie's brother. This is Howard, Howard Letterer. Sounds exactly like his sister, but with a deep voice. He started mentoring me. A little bit. And I started making money right away.

She was very competitive. Was your mother tearing out her hair at this point? Or was she agreeing with him? Well, at that point, my parents had just given up hope. Yeah. My brother, when he was 18, my grandfather... Grandfather had cut the family a $2,000 check. For the two of us to help with college.

And my brother gambled it away in a little poker room in the back room. Well, that might have been the very early fay. I was a terrible poker player. Howard has since become a very decorated poker player. And he's also been in the news recently because an online poker company he was associated with called Full Tilt has gotten into some legal difficulties. But back when he was starting, he says he would play in these tiny little games. 36 hours straight, which was not atypical for me back then. And it was all very seat of the pants.

But I arrived in this wonderful situation. He was fortunate. He happened to be learning the game, which he would later teach to his sister, at a time, you know, 1983, 1984, when the game was changing radically. Look, poker was this Texas gambler thing happening in Vegas. Like the cliche we just talked about, you know, you play with your gut. With the Texas Dolly and Emerilla Slim and who knows what's going on over there. But then like in so many other things, the geeks took over. Well, you know, there were these games I was playing in. People will peg the change to different times, different places, but for Howard, it began in New York.

York. When he joined this regular game. A huge game. These are Wall Street traders, world champion bridge players, brilliant people. They'd get together after Wall Street closed, play for about eight hours, then go to a bar and carefully deconstruct the eight hours they just played. You know, hey, what were you thinking in that? Why did you do that? You weren't really bluffing, but you made this big bet. And out of those conversations came a style of play that you now find everywhere. Yeah, yeah, hold on. Okay, listen, if you Google the phrase right now, hold them odds chart. You're going to be able to Hold them. Hold them odds chart. We ended up talking to our friend Mike about all this.

My name is Mike Peska. I cover sports for NPR. And he's also spent a fair amount of time in underground Parker clubs. By the way, it's always a misnomer because in New York City, they're always on the ninth floor of an office building or something like that. Anyway, he showed us these charts. Oh, my God. Look at this thing. What is it? It's like my nightmare. It's like a spreadsheet with tons and tons of numbers. Well, first I'll say this.

But Mike says, don't be afraid. These charts? This is how you achieve Zen in an uncertain world. Okay, let's say, let me give you a situation. Let me give you a situation. You're playing the game of Holdham, and there's only one card to come, the River card. That is the last card in Holdham. And you figure, in fact, you know. In Texas Holden, each player gets two secret cards that they can see,

and the dealer puts down a bunch of community cards one by one that everyone can see. And the game is, who can combine their secret cards with the community. community cards to make the best hand. Exactly. Now, say one of your secret cards is a heart. And on the board, the community cards include three, three hearts. Okay. I've got one in my hand, that's four.

Dealers about to deal another card. And if the last card is a heart... Well, damn, I would have a flush, so I want to know. What are the odds? Me getting that last heart. Every decent poker player will know how to calculate this automatically. And for the non-decent ones, well, then there's the charge. You know there are 13 of every suit in the deck.

You know there are 13 hearts in the deck. And there are three hearts on the board. One in my hand. That means that you can figure that there are... 13 minus 3 minus 1. Nine cards in the deck out of the 46 that we don't know about. That can complete my flush. Now look at this chart.

All right. I'm looking at 9. See where the number 9 is? All the way to the right. Uh-huh. Nine flush draw 9. So when you do the odds, you wind up having about a 20% chance of victory. of getting that last heart.

Yeah. Okay, so what do you do in this circumstance? One more time, what are my odds are... Your odds are 20% to win. Do you bet? Do you go for it? Do you stay in, be bold, or do you fold? I... 20%? I fold. I fold. I fold. Of course you fold. I walk away. Get out of there.

I quit the game. Live to fight another day. Exactly. No. No, no, no. No. Not necessarily. And he says there are times when 20, 25% sure means bet, bet, bet. I know that sounds counterintuitive, so let me explain what I mean. And this is the none of it right here. Let's say that someone bets $100 and there's already $200 in the pot.

Okay? That means that for you to continue with your hand, you have to put in $100. So if you win the pot, you'll win $300. And if you lose the pot, you'll lose $100. Right? In order to break even, you could lose the pot three times because you'd lose $100 three times. So that would be negative $300. And you could win the pot once.

That makes sense. Right? Because you're going to get $300 and then you would break even. So you could lose $100 on Monday, $100 on Tuesday. You could lose another $100 on Wednesday. But if you win the $300 back on Thursday, yeah, you're good. You just need to win one out of every four times. So that means that you have to win the pot 25% of the time.

Those are your pot odds. Pot odds are what dictates good bets. The amount that's in the pot determines how certain you have to be that your hand is good. Which is a really cool concept, I think. Because if your pot odds are 25%, then all you really need to be is 25% sure that you have a good hand. Which you are in the heart's case. Sometimes you have to be 40% sure. Sometimes you have to be 30% sure.

You know, if there's $70 in the pot and you only have to call 10. You know, now you're in the 15% range in terms of how certain you have to be that your hand is In that case, you can bet this hand that you're really not sure about, knowing why you might lose this time. If I do that a million times in my poker life, the law of high numbers indicates that I'm going to be very much a winner in the long run. It might be the very long run, but you should be ahead in the long run. Because it's not about winning the hand all the time. It's about winning the hand enough of the time. That is what she got watching her brother.

I'm sure that I'm just quoting him. And that's warm comfort? I mean, that's weird. So the probabilities are what you carry it care about most. Yeah, because that sort of embracing of uncertainty does some really wonderful things for you. If you're in a situation where you only have to have the best hand 25% of the time, if you're playing well, you're going to have a bad hand a lot of the time. It's okay.

It's actually irrelevant. And that's really the big bonus of this way of thinking. You begin to learn how to avoid that very human tendency to feel shamed, embarrassed. When you lose, you just float right above it. If you're making good decisions, then you're making good decisions. You have to be somewhat outcome blind. But sometimes that's not so easy. Yeah.

Case in point. There is no event on the planet like it. 2004. The World Series of Poker, main event. Biggest tournament in all of poker. What a tournament this is to handle emotionally. Three people left at the table. Annie Duke, this guy, Phil Helmuth, who's a big player, and...

Annie's brother Howard. They've played together for so long, but never for two million, never been in this type of position. Two million is on the line. They get their cards. And... Annie Duke with sixes. I had two sixes. Pretty good hand.

And she'll open with 70,000. Big, fat opening bet. Over to Phil. Phil. Phil Helmuth immediately gets out of the way again. He folds. Over to Howard Letterer. And here's where things get interesting.

Instead of folding, like that guy, Phil. My brother moved in on me. Howard goes all in against his sister. Uh-oh. Decision now to Annie with the pocket sixes. Annie thinks, should I stay in? Should I bail? Well, mathematically, two sixes actually rates to be the best hand there.

So... Brother, it's on. Yep. I call. However, when they turn over their carts, and remember, she has two sixes. Actually... He's got a seven. It turned out he had two sevens.

Yep. He gets what he wants. A four to one favorite. I see him, Ben. And Annie knows she's in trouble. Her brother in her commanding position. And he was 82% to win the hand. They both knew that if they play this hand a hundred times,

he's going to win about 82 of them. The only thing that can save her is if the dealer now turns over a six. There's an 18% chance. And here comes the flop. Dealer turns over the cards. And he gets her. Six and a full house. Oh, God.

And she immediately feels horrendous for her brother. And I won the hand. That's the end of the line for Howard Letterer. Annie Duke knocks her big brother out. In the video, you see her getting up from the table, and she hugs her brother. Oh, this is very difficult for Annie. Wow, what a six, Annie. You see her emotions?

I mean, you must have mixed hands about that, baby. Look, I was 82% to win that pot. That was incredibly unlucky hand for you. Yeah, that's your little sister, too. I always just been like, I taught her how to do that. Yeah, no, I wanted to win that hand. That's for sure. I was upset.

When my mom watched that, she called me up and she was, like, in tears, and she was like, how could you knock your brother out of the tournament? And I was like, now I know who your favorite is. Now, here's the thing. And if you, if your superior cards do not win the day, you know, we have a vocabulary to deal with that. It's called a bad beat. A bad beat. A bad beat is when you had the cards that should have won and you got beat.

Wow, there's a term that should catch on right there. If, say, in stock investing, you were to say, look, you invested for all the right reasons, but the stock went down because someone you never heard of shorted it. That was a bad beat. You know what I wonder? What? Like, you know, this whole, uh... Rigorous, probability. way of thinking. Is that something that you just acquire once you know the math, or do you have to

first be of a certain cast of mind in order to kind of get into it? Because I'm not sure it would work for me. You have to be from a pretty unusual family to know to get consolation from that. I'll tell you what our family's like. So my brother and my brother-in-law both knew my boyfriend before me and my boyfriend started dating, okay? And they, when they found out we were going on a date, they made a market for what the probability was that we would actually end up together together. There is a bet. He was willing to give me $27. If they get married, I have to give him 100. I was offering him 73 to 27. What is wrong with you? And I was like, are you insane? We haven't gone on a date together yet. Exactly. They've never gone on a date yet. I made one of the best bets ever.

I assume you'd be happy to lose that bet. I'm going to be thrilled. But that's how gamblers think. I mean, it's not in a bad way or taints anything. It's just that's the way that we memorialize the fact that we had a fundamental difference of opinion. Well, okay, so that works. You know, if you're betting on your sister's marital status, I suppose. But if it's bigger stakes, going back to the beginning of the program,

where we were concerned with the presence or unpresence of God, that's not a mathematical thing. Oh, wow. I'm not so sure that's true. Zarin, would you like to say something? Well, you know, there was a guy named Pascal, I don't know if you've ever heard of him, who thought that you could do exactly that.

So he was one of the first thinkers of probability. So all this stuff we've been talking about. But he, at some point, was also struggling. with the question of God, and he couldn't decide for sure. He always thought there was a chance he did exist, a chance he didn't, so he didn't know what to do. So he came up with an idea. He said, if I decide to believe him him, in that scenario, if he exists,

eternal, forever, happy, happy. If you believe in him and he happens to be there, then you win the pot. Big time. Forever, like infinite. Now, if I decide to not believe in God, that's my other option. Uh-huh. and now I'm a not believer. If he does exist...

And you don't believe. Very, very, very infinite bad. Eternal damnation. Then you go to hell. Then you go to hell. So there's a huge infinite payoff to believing in God. And there's an infinite downside to not believing in God. So the pot odds, so to speak.

Yes, because no matter how unlikely it is that God actually exists, this is like Annie having an infinite amount of money on the table no matter how bad her cards are, how unlikely it is she thinks she'll win, you got to bet. You have to bet. The pot odds are saying that you must believe in God is what you're, is essentially that's what Pascal said. Pascal said if you do the math the way Annie does the math, believe in God. What are the pot odds on God? See, but that's ridiculous, by the way. You know, that's ridiculous. Why? Wait, why? Because you feel like Pascal's faith is lesser, his, his belief in God because he got to it through math. It's somehow lesser than, I don't know, say, St. Augustine or someone you respect. Yes, because we're talking here about grace and love and being connected. And it is a daredevally,

heart of your hearts, full of emotion. That's what rules here. And that's what guide you. It is not calculating the odds. I don't know. The odds are looking pretty divine right now. This is Darlene calling from Kampala, Uganda. Radio Lab is supported in part by the National Science Foundation and by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. Hey, I'm Chad Abumran.

I'm Robert Prilwich. This is Radio Lab. And we're still talking about certain things. versus doubt. And in this final story, the two once again collide, but this time it's in a way that's almost unimaginable. I remember running along railroad track, a seldom used railroad track, but just thinking, God, it would be a blessing of a train just came along and flotten me. It was like... We need to warn you now, if there are young or sensitive listeners listening right now, this next piece depicts graphic violence and it can be pretty disturbing. So if you're listening with kids, this would be a good time to ask them to leave the room or for you to put on headphones. This piece comes from our producer, Pat Walters.

I guess we could just start at the beginning. So could you just, I don't know, set the scene. It was 1985? Yes. It was 1985. Penny Burnson. And in 1985, Penny and her husband, Tom, we're living in Wisconsin. On the shores of Lake Michigan.

In a little town called Manitwark. owned a small third-generation family business. And what kind of business was that? Burns' candies. It opened seven days a week, 10 to 10, 363 days a year. But sometimes in the summer, Vinny and Tom would cut out early and... Go to the beach.

That's where we went that day. July 29, 1985. Blue skies, probably in the 70s. Perfect day to be at the beach with your family. They parked the car. Two, three o'clock in the afternoon and set up camp near the water. And I was reading a book about Lizzie Borden, the infamous Axe Murder.

But after about like an hour of reading this book, Penny set it down and said to my husband, I can't believe I'm reading this gruesome book. On a beautiful day, I'm going to go for a jog. Penny heads north along the water. And when I was within about a half mile of my starting point, there was a guy standing with a leather jacket slung over his shoulder. And as I jog by, he said, it's a great day. I glanced at him and said, it's a beautiful day for a jog. Didn't really think anything of it.

Jogged three miles, turned around, and I saw it. Same guy. come out from under a half-fallen tree and head towards me. She started to run. And we should say this next part gets graphic and violent. Made the mistake of running into the water to try and get away from him and realized how slowly I was running in the water as I ran back to the beach. This man caught up with me, put me in a chokehold, and said,

we're going to take a little walk up into the sand dunes. He pushed me up over the first sand dune. no longer visible to anybody. Started asking me to do sexual things. He was trying to remove my swimsuit, and I twisted to try and get away, and he tightened his grip and said, do what I tell you, I've got a knife. Two thoughts went through my mind. Stay really calm and get a good look at this guy. Caucasian, sandy blonde hair, curly, beard and mustache, hairy hands, short stubby fingers. He pushed me down on the ground and was kneeling over me. And when I was refusing, what he would do was he would strangle me until I would about lose consciousness.

And he would loosen his grip and say, now are you going to do it? And I would refuse. And as I'm talking, I managed to get one leg up and I kicked him in the groin. But unfortunately, it didn't incapacitate him. It enraged him. And he said, no, I'm going to kill you. Now you're going to die. Meanwhile, Tom is getting worried.

Because she was so predictable in her patterns, she would normally be gone 45 minutes to an hour. After an hour and a half, he started pacing the beach. At two hours. He called the cops. The police brought in jet skis. Were you thinking that she'd... I thought, I was fairly convinced that she probably had drowned. In Manitwock, you don't think about crime.

You didn't lock your doors. You didn't, you know, many people left their keys in their car. He started hitting my head either on a rock or a tree stump some hard object. At one point he broke my nose and then strangled me until I lost consciousness. Sometime later, Penny woke up. When I came to, I was lying on my back in the sand. She saw that she was naked and alone. I thought maybe he's in the woods, you know, watching to see if I've survived

or if he's accomplished what he set out to do. So I tried to stand up, was two weak, and fell over. And she noticed when she fell down that her hands were covered in blood. And I thought, this is evidence I need to preserve this. So I crawled through the sand kind of on my knees and the heels of my hands. Making sure she was keeping her fingers up out of the sand. As soon as I saw her, I knew that she had been beaten. You never want to see someone like that, and I hope I never see that again.

The paramedics rushed penit of the ER. The next thing she remembers, she was lying in a hospital bed surrounded by doctors and nurses. Stitching facial cuts, and then there's a female deputy who's questioning me. She asked Penny to describe the guy. Caucasian, sandy blonde hair, curly, hairy hand, stubby fingers. In the next morning, the cops brought Penny down to the police station for a lineup. And this is where you, like, go into a room and there's a one-way mirror. You can see them, they can't see you.

There were nine guys. Each of the nine had a number around their neck from one to nine. She looked at one guy, then another. than another. And when I came to, I don't know if he was number three, I don't recall exactly. One particular guy of the nine. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I remember the color draining from my face, visceral gut reaction.

Like, oh my God, this is the guy. Barely any time had passed since the attack. She was positive. The sheriff wasn't surprised. They'd had their eye on this guy for a while. His name was Stephen Avery. He'd been arrested for some small-time stuff, burglary, cruelty to animals. And most recently,

attempted assault at rifle point. He pulled a gun on a woman. So the DA indicted him for attacking Penny. The trial was fast. Very fast. Penny got on the stand and said, I was 100% certain that Stephen Avery was the man who assaulted me. She had no doubt.

She looked people squarely in the eye. Her recollections were unequivocal. She was a very strong witness. This is Fred Hazelwood. He was the judge on the case. Here in Manitwark County. Tell me about his alibi. His alibi was that he just didn't have the time to commit the crime.

Because he was shopping. He bought some paint, I believe, or drywall compound. I'm not sure what. He was also working that day before the alleged assault, helping his family pour cement for some project at home. That was his testimony and the testimony of a whole bunch of other witnesses. 16. Only problem was nearly all of them were family.

And the stories were too similar. This is Tom again. Virtually identical. It sounded like they had gotten together and talked. That was a credibility issue that affected the defense witnesses. And there was one other big problem for Avery, his clothes. There was not a microscopic speck of concrete dust on any of the clothes that he wore that day. And he indicated at the trial that he had worked the end of the concrete shoot.

Well, anyone that has ever done that at the end of a concrete truck knows that that just comes out and splashes. After deliberating for two days, the jury found Steve Avery guilty. Guilty on three counts, as I recall. Yeah, sexual assault. Fifteen years. Attempted murder. Fifteen years. And I believe, false imprisonment.

Two years for false imprisonment. 32 years altogether. To be served consecutively. So you go back to the chocolate shop and try to carry on with life as it was before? Essentially. But that obviously wasn't so easy. Nightmare. flashbacks. She was angry.

You know, blowing up at my kids. Her husband? Sometimes I wouldn't want my husband to be protective, and other times he would think he was being protective, and I would say, like, I can take care of myself. When a guy in the street whistled at her? I turned around and just let loose with every obscenity in the book. She said she started seeing a therapist, which helped

a little. But even a year after Steve's conviction, she was still struggling with all this anger. And then one snowy afternoon. Maybe winter of 86, 87. She went to see a talk by this social worker. Dr. Mark Umbright from the University of Minnesota. And I don't remember exactly what he said.

I don't think he used the word forgiveness, but he said at some point, victims reached the point where they understand that the anger and hatred their feeling is really damaging themselves and their families, and they need to let go of it. And I left the presentation at the next break. I went home, I got my cross-country skis.

I went to Point Beach State Park and skied to the point, where I was the exact spot where I'd been assaulted and basically said to myself, Steve, you don't have power over me anymore. So that was a turning point. Penny actually started working in the prison. She'd go and tell inmates her story.

Hoping to teach the impact of crime and hope that they might make the leap to changing their behavior. Meanwhile. Stephen Avery has a number of appeals, and he's turned down at all his appeals. She had told the district attorney If anyone so much as breathed Stephen Avery's name in court, I want to be notified and I want to be there for every hearing.

I did show up. And I'm getting more and more angry every time there's appeal. Like, is there no finality? Is there no closure to this? He kept asking the court to review the evidence over and over again. And I'm thinking, why is he so persistent? And then one Sunday morning. In early September...

In 2003, 18 years after Steve Avery's conviction, Penny gets a call from her lawyer friend, Jeannie. And Janine has called and said, can I stop by? I want to talk to you about a restorative justice initiative at Marquette. Frankly, it was the truth. But it wasn't why I was driving a manor to walk on a Sunday. On her way, Janine called Penny's husband, who had left town for a business trip that morning. Janine told me what she had just discovered and heard. It was about a DNA test.

She asked Tom to turn around. Tom and I both pulled into the driveway. Together. Simultaneously. I walk outside, and both of them are ashen. And in that moment, she knew. I knew instantly. I always remember the look on her face.

The DNA is back. It is not Stephen Avery. She just fell apart. I told her I wanted to go in and sit down, and she went and sat on the couch next to Tom. They explained to her, the Wisconsin Innocence Project had re-evaluated some of the biological material

from the crime scene. Some hairs. And determined that an innocent person has spent 18 years, I think it was 18 years one month and 13 days in prison for something he did not do. You know, she looked very frightened. And I said, Penny, I want you to remember all the good you've done. Working in the prisons, all the men you've reached. You know, I mean, she didn't say much. I remember feeling if I wrote down every good deed I had done from the day I was born until today, it would not possibly be sufficient to balance the scales

in terms of this horrendous error that I've made. That day was worse than the day I was assaulted. And there was one more thing. Then I learned not only was there an exoneration, but there was a hit. The court told Penny that the DNA belonged to a man named Gregory Allen, who at that moment was imprisoned for... A very brutal rape of a woman in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

He'd actually been charged with an attempted assault on the same beach where I was assaulted. His nickname was the Sandman because he liked to come up over the sand dunes and grab someone. And for 10 years, while Steve Avery was in prison, he'd walked free. So I'm thinking how many other women have had their lives turned upside down and inside out because I misidentified the man who assaulted me. As it turned out, Gregory Allen was serving his sentence, a 60-year sentence. at the prison in Green Bay. Where Penny had actually been working.

And as a matter of fact, he was about two weeks from being in Penny's next class. No way. No, absolutely. And so Penny would never have known this man that would have been sitting feet away from her. In his cell, they found a scrapbook where he had documented all the appeals of Stephen Avery over all those years. Oh, that's really creepy. That's more than creepy. September 11, 2003, Steve Avery was set free.

As soon as he walked out of the gate of the prison, he was mobbed by reporters. It was the news story in Wisconsin, and he was considered a celebrity. There was a legislator who actually put together a Steve and Avery fund that people can contribute to because he really had no resources and no job skills because he's been in prison for 18 years. You know, there was a beauty salon in Green Bay that gave him a makeover. I remember sending my husband out of town and saying, no, I just need to be alone. And I decided I'm going out running. And I remember running along railroad track, a seldom used railroad track, but just thinking,

God, it would be a blessing of a train just came along and flattened me. It was like, what do I do? I can't make this right. She says every time she saw Stephen Abreu's face. He was on the front page of our local Manitouc newspaper every day for two to three weeks. Two things would happen. She'd think, how could I have done this to this man? But at the very same moment, she thought that.

The hair on the back of my neck would stand up. Even after you knew. Even after I knew intellectually he was innocent. But emotionally, this is. This is the man who I've seen in my nightmares and flashbacks for 18 years. So those two weeks after where his face is in the paper every day, it must have been very strange. It was strange.

And then it's also strange to feel like an offender. A little aside here, when I saw Gregory Allen's picture, the picture of my actual perpetrator, there was absolutely no physical reaction from me. I would swear I'd never seen it before in my life. So my therapist said to me, you will never be able to attach to Gregory Allen the feelings you had towards Stephen Avery.

What you have to do is work on removing those feelings from Steve and looking at Steve as this is an innocent person. Not long after his exoneration, Penny had written to Steve asking if she could meet him and apologize in person. And about a year and a half after his exoneration, he agreed. I was so nervous. Can you set the scene? Are you in like a little room? We're in a small office, like a two-room office.

In a legislative building in the state capital. There's a sofa and a few chairs. Penny got there first. Eventually, Steve walked in. Steve had his attorney, Keith Finley, there from the Innocence Project. I stand up, I extend my hand to Steve. He gives me this hearty handshake. Our lives have been intertwined for almost two decades,

and it's the first time we've physically touched. Touched. He sits down. We talked about things like he had a nephew who was killed in a car accident when he was in prison. and couldn't go to the funeral. His grandmother died. He couldn't go to her funeral. His wife had divorced him.

He's estranged from his children. Some of them, I know he had one daughter who really stood by him. So I brought up these losses and... Apologized for each one individually. He's very quiet, sort of just acknowledge him with a knot of his head. And he said, I don't blame you, I blame the police. Because it turned out in the weeks before Penny was attacked, the police had been watching Gregory Allen.

because he was a known sex offender. They were actually tailing him for two weeks prior to my assault, checking on him sometimes as often as a dozen times a day. On July 29, 1985, the day I was assaulted, they checked on him once in the morning, and then due to a high volume of police calls, were unable to check on him anymore that day, and that's the afternoon I was assaulted.

Eventually, after Penny and Steve had been sitting in that little room for a while. Time was up, and there was no more to be said. and I stood up and walked over to Steve and said to Steve, is it okay if I give you a hug? And he didn't even respond. He just grabbed me in a big bear hug. And I said so only he could hear, Steve, I'm so sorry. And he said, it's okay, this is over.

And for him to say, it's okay, it's over. When I know full well, his journey is just beginning, and he's got a hell of a road. That's one of the most grace-filled things that's ever been said to me. Fast forward. About two years after that meeting. I get a call from Janine Gessky, my attorney friend. The one who delivered the news about the exoneration.

Who says... Something's happened. There's a woman, photographer, who's missing. Teresa Hallbach disappeared at October 31st after visiting the suspect, Stephen Avery, to take pictures of a car he was selling. And they are searching the Avery property. I encouraged her. I tried to tell. or stay out of this.

But Penny went on the local news. And said, I cannot believe this. That she didn't believe it could be Stephen Avery, that she didn't believe he would be capable of such a thing. And other people in town thought that too, that this was just another false accusation. But eventually, after a couple of days of searching,

the remains of Teresa's body, burned human bone and teeth, were eventually found in a burn barrel at the Avery Auto Salvage yard. Stephen Avery claimed that he was innocent, that he was set up by the police. But a few months later, his nephew came forward. And he tells police in an interrogation that the day of the murder, he went to Stephen Avery's trailer,

he heard screams inside, Stephen came to the door in a t-shirt in Jim shorts, who's sweating. And inside, the nephew sees Teresa Halbach bound to the bed. And what happens next, according to Stephen's nephew, is one of the most awful things I've ever heard. Stephen asks his nephew to rape Teresa with him and then together they kill her

Oh my God You start questioning your own judgment I can't even trust my senses I can't trust my eyes to tell me what I thought I recorded accurately about the world And then when he gets convicted for killing Teresa It's like what kind of character judge am I Now I can't even judge character I can't

She'd been certain twice and wrong twice. And then a worse thought occurred to her. Would Teresa Hallbach be alive today if I hadn't misidentified my assailant? Meaning what exactly like? Well, I accuse Steve of something he doesn't do. He's convicted. He spends 18 years in prison. Prison is enormously damaging to guilty people.

What happens to someone who's innocent? In other words, did her initial certainty that Steve Avery was her assailant? Did that turn him into the guy who murdered Teresa Halbach? No, I, uh, no. No. Judge Hazelwood doesn't buy that argument. Not at all. Not at all. For one, if you look at the group of people who've been set free after a wrongful conviction,

the vast majority of them do okay. They don't commit serious crimes after they've been released from prison. And this was a man with a violent past. Oh, yeah. Well before Penny, he'd pulled a gun on a woman. In the broad light of day. and demanded that she... Come with him.

Nothing happened because the police intervened. But what if they hadn't? I saw the potential for violence in him. But I would be wrong to say I saw on him a Teresa Halbach. I didn't. And so I asked him if this case had shaken his confidence in his judgment the way it had for Penny. At first, I tried to figure out what in the world did we do wrong.

And I pretty much came to the conclusion that... At least as far as the courts were concerned. We did get it right. And we still got a bad result. That's going to be a problem as long as humans judge other human activity. We're not always going to get it right. That's actually the one thing we can be certain of, he says. But cases like Avery are rare.

I was 25 years on the bench and 15 years or more as a lawyer before that. I don't think I've ever seen one quite like Stephen Avery. He says Stephen Avery is an outlier. He's the lesson you don't learn. It's like I was fishing last spring in Sanibel on Sanibel Island, and I was in up to my waist trying to fly casting for Snook. It's a kind of fish. And all of a sudden this rather dark shape swam right by me about eight feet long.

I thought to myself, that's a bull shark. And here I am waist deep. And this shark swam maybe a foot away from me as he went by. What if he'd bumped into me? Yeah. What are the odds of this happening? But, you know, life is like that. We face the unexpected, the unknown.

But you're not going to never go fishing there again, are you? Oh, no. No, that wouldn't keep me from going fishing. Then again, the judge did. didn't get bitten. I kept thinking over and over at the end of this, like the Hallbach family. How do they move on after something like this? Did you call them? I tried. I reached out to a couple of the family members, but I never heard back. And what about Penny? Well, she and Tom sold the chocolate shop and moved to Chicago. Well, I'm retired. So right now I do a lot of volunteer work,

the Center on Wrongful Convictions, Children's Hospital. I volunteer at the Morton Arboretum, and so a variety of things. together. She seems to be doing just fine. I mean, I question much more. I question things a lot more. Yeah, I think there's much more doubt. And I think I'm much

more comfortable living with uncertainty. I've kind of had... I mean, I have to be. Producer Pat Walters. For more information on anything that you heard in this hour, visit RadioLab.org. Thanks to Pat, thanks to Lulu, and all the producers who helped us with this episode. And thank you

guys for listening. Tom Bernson calling. Penny Burnson calling. Radio Lab is produced by Janabomrath. Our staff includes Ellen Horn, Thorne Wheeler, Pat Walters, Tim Howard, Brenna Farrell, Molly Webster, Melissa O'Donnell,

Dailant Keefe, Lynn Levy, and Andy Mills, with help from Lulu Miller, Meg Balls, Douglas Q, Smith, Kelsey Padgett, and Megan Tarr. End of message.