Radiolab - Help!

Episode Date: March 8, 2011

What do you do when your own worst enemy is...you? This hour, Radiolab looks for ways to gain the upper hand over those forces inside us--from unhealthy urges, to creative insights--that seem to have a mind of their own.

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

C. See? Yep. And NPR. Okay, from the top. You ready? Yep. Hello.

Hello. How are you doing? We're going to start things off today with this lady. Zelda Gamson. Welcome to our little spot. It's beautiful. Thank you. She's 80 years old.

These days, Zelda lives a quiet life by the sea. On Martha's Vineyard. Did you have some coffee? She visits with her grandkids, does some gardening. We have a bird feeder, and it is the bird show of the world. But life for Zelda wasn't always so calm. Back in the 60s, when our story begins, she was a very different kind of lady. She even went by a different nickname.

Just Z. Okay, I was a smoker 30 years. I started when I went to college in 9. At first, it was just a cigarette here or there. Letting the bad girl out a bit. And then I got hooked, really, and I couldn't stop. Went to graduate school, smoked, got my dissertation, smoked, got my degree, smoked. And somewhere in the fog, she meets?

Hi. My friend Mary. Also a smoker? Love smoking. Made me feel very elegant. We were very good friends. We were part in the early 60s of the Congress on Racial Equality. Together they'd organize protests.

Well, we would demonstrate. And the two of them would even go undercover to fight. Housing discrimination. And the backdrop to all of this social change? Smoke. You got it. I mean, our houses were filled with these ashtrays. How much were you smoking at that point?

Probably smoked a pack at a day. I was a worse smoker than Mary. You know, I was sometimes up to two packs a day. Wow. You know, I had kids. I was pregnant. You smoked while you were pregnant? I did.

Wow. Yeah. I feel so guilty about that. So at a certain point, Zelda and Mary decide they want to stop. Yeah. Now, Mary, who'd never been as badly addicted as Zelda, it wasn't easy? It was agonizing. But eventually she's able to do it. Zelda? No. I thought sometimes that I could stop, and so I would.

Over and over, she'd throw out her cigarettes. Okay. Done. But then? Then I'd be around somebody with cigarettes. Oh, F. any reason that she'd give herself. Cancer. My kids. The smell. The fact that I could die.

It always lost out to the urge. And I'd always start smoking again. And this is how it would go. Resolve. Failure. Resolve. Failure. Okay, so this is not the most unusual situation in the world?

But the question we want to ask right now is like, how do you get out of this? You know, you want to do something badly, but then another part of you says, no, I don't want to do that. So if you against you, what do you do? I'm Chad Abramrod. I'm Robert Crilwich. This is Radio Lab, and today, the little deals that you make when you are stuck with yourself. Okay, so before talking with Zelda, just so happened that I'd went with Adam Davidson, one of the Planet Money guys, to visit this fellow Nobel Prize winning economist named Thomas Shelling. Who's written a whole lot about the seemingly simple idea of...

Commitment. Arranging it so that you can't compromise. I'll give you an example. Here's one from ancient Greece. Xenophon, the Greek, who was being pursued by a huge army of Persians, had to make a stand on a hillside. And one of his generals said, I don't think this is a good location to make our stand.

There's a cliff behind us. There's no way we can retreat if we need to. And Xenophon told his general, exactly. Welcome the cliff. In fact, he said, here's what we're going to do. We're going to march our armies so that their backs are directly to the cliff. That way. The Persians will know that we can never retreat.

We're bound to fight to the death. You're really binding yourself. You're not binding the other side. Yeah. It's attempting to influence somebody else's choice by restricting your own choice. But then we asked him, what if your adversary isn't on the outside like the Persians, but rather it was, you. How do you do what Xenophon did to yourself? Yeah, I began smoking when I was 17 years old. I did quit several times, but I always... But he did give us some suggestions. One in particular,

that was so awesome to use your favorite word. So diabolical that we just didn't think anyone would ever do it. That is, a... until we met Zelda. Yeah. Fast forward a few decades. 1984. Mary and Zelda now live in different parts of the country. I happen to be going to a conference in Vermont, and Mary picked me up at the airport.

Right. And I was smoking when she picked me up. Which was curious because nobody smokes anymore. She said, why, Zelda? Are you still smoking? And Zelda said, yeah, and don't tell me to stop. I was very belligerent So I went to the conference and smoked And were they guilty cigarettes?

No, they were delicious But what Mary said was starting to worm its way into her brain Are you still smoking? Still smoking? And when she dropped me off at the airport I said, okay Mary As if she had been putting pressure on me Which she wasn't at all If I ever smoke again, I'm going to give $5,000 to the Ku Klux Klan.

What? Did she say $5,000 to the Ku Klux Klan? Correct. This was Shelling's suggestion. It can work. But he didn't think anyone would ever do it. $5,000 to the Ku Klux Klan. It just came out of my mouth.

You know how horrible they are, right? Sure. So heinous. But her and Mary made a deal. Uh, packed. If Zelda smoked, she'd have to tell Mary to send the KKK her money. Take it out of my savings or something. And you were really serious? You were going to do this?

Yeah. But I have to say, after I made this pledge to Mary, under my breath, I said, but I can't be responsible if she smokes again. What? If she smokes again? If she smokes again. Who's the she in that sentence? Me.

You. What does that mean? Well, that means that a part of me, the part of me that was smoking and that might pick up smoking again was an alien part. You're saying you were two people at that moment? Yeah. And she? Zee didn't really want to stop smoking. She?

She, yeah. After the pact, Zelda says that often, when she would fall asleep, I would dream of myself smoking. And she'd wake up. been a terrible sweat. Reach for her cigarettes. But every time she says this other thought would just rush into her mind.

The KKK. Robs, burning crosses, lynchings. Oh, God. And she'd throw the cigarettes down. I couldn't. The idea of them having her money? I can't even imagine it. Sounds like you really backed yourself up

against the cliff. I did. Zelda had found a thought that was hotter than the urge. And she didn't smoke. Look again. Never again? No.

That was it, cold turkey. Wow. Look at this. There's a picture of me on a cruise that Bill and I took. Here she is. It's a profile picture of me. Look at the cigarette. I look gorgeous there.

That's the best picture ever taken of me. Now, if we are many people on the inside, and we've talked about this on the show before, how our brain is literally divided into these camps that sometimes wrestle. Right. Well, the problem, according to Thomas Schelling, is that these selves... Never exists almostaneously.

We're never at the table together. The one who's in charge never confronts the other. I guess that makes it hard to compromise. Although, you know, there is another way to think about the problem. Things that are offered right now have so much more power than things that are offered in the future. This is David Eagleman. He's a neuroscientist. And he says, you know, really, you could think about this. his whole thing as a battle about time.

We'll make all sorts of very poor economic decisions. Now versus later, really. If something is offered right now versus later. When you look at the neuroimaging, it becomes clear that there are different parts of the brain that are battling this out. And the now parts are way stronger. Yes. Here's the key.

What she's doing in the case of the cigarettes is she's saying, I know that I want to win this long-term battle, but I'm having a heck of a time doing it. But if I can make the long-term plan tied into it. to a different immediate feeling of disgust. Then all I have to do is have the disgust battle the desire. I see. So what she's done is she's turned this battle into a present tense battle on both sides.

I want a cigarette now versus I hate the KKK now. Precisely. So it's a now versus now thing. And I think that's the only way we ever win these long-term battles is to give them some sort of emotional salience, some reason why they matter to us right now. Otherwise, it'll never work. And there are any number of ways of doing this.

Here is how Thomas Schelling did it. In 1980, gather my children together. And I said, I quit. And that they should never have respect for their father again if I return to smoking. And he never did it. Yeah, that was it for him. The thing I like about those two stories is that, like,

there's a case where, like, okay, say you've got these cells battling in your head. I've got the now part, the later part, and the later part. The later part's weak. Yeah. In this case, the later part found a way to trick the now parts. And this has a name, this kind of approach. It's called a Ulysses contract.

In the Iliad. Make that the Odyssey. There's a moment where Ulysses and his men have to sail past the island of the Sirens. And Ulysses knows if they hear the siren song, they're dead. Sailors were so attracted to these melodies that they would steer towards them and crash their ships into the rocks and die. So on his way there, before the music, started. He came up with a plan. He had his men lash him to the mast with ropes so that he couldn't

move. And he had them fill their own ears with beeswax. And he said, no matter what I do, no matter how I'm gesticulating or shouting or acting like a crazy man, just keep rowing. Just keep going. And so when they got to the sirens, Ulysses? He goes nuts. And he's screaming and yelling and telling the men, go towards the women. We don't want to pass this up. And of course, the men have beeswax in their ears, they're not swayed by the siren song. Because he had planned for this. The present tense Ulysses. By using his men and the rope had literally bound...

The future Ulysses. To the mast. Because he knew that guy would be weak. We can just move off the ocean for just a moment. Gone. Get out of your ocean. Radio. What a weird medium. Anyway, what if the bargain that you strike

isn't just about something very, very... small in now, like this puff of smoke. What if it's a deal that you have to do? I will decide what you're going to do for every day of the next 40 years. Yeah. What then? Well, this brings us to a story from our producer, Pat Walters. Ready? Mm-hmm. Okay, set it up. Okay. Okay, I'm in Chinatown. About a year ago, a corner of hell and my... My friend Jenny posted something on Twitter. It said, Overheard. I flipped the coin, and I lost my life. I flipped a coin and lost my life? Yes.

And what's Twitter? You know what I mean, she actually heard someone say this? Yeah, she was just like, she's a reporter. She was just chatting with the guy and he said that to her. I flipped a coin and I lost my life. Wow, what was the context? Well, she was getting a massage in Chinatown. And how would that phrase come up in the middle of a massage?

I don't, I honestly don't know. But she's a reporter. Didn't she ask? She didn't say, get your hands off me, man, and tell me the story. I don't know exactly. what went down, but I asked her what the situation was. She said that she basically didn't know anything. But she just heard that.

She heard it. And she told me that it was at this place that was like either at one of seven different addresses that she gave me. So I just wandered around. Do you know of some place around here called Health Trail, a massage place? That's no idea. No. Wondered around to several different addresses.

Damn. And eventually I found this tiny little storefront. There was a little sign with some... kind of hidden. Oh. You want to see my son? And I found the guy who said the thing. Hi.

Ooh. How are you? His name is Dennis. And I just asked him, tell me about this coin flip. Can you tell me, can you, so when did this happen? Well, it happened about four years ago. I was 26 and my brother was 21. Both of them had gone to college, Dennis for photography,

his brother for art, and they'd come out of school with these big dreams. Being new places, meeting new people, making a life and making money. But that hadn't really worked out. No job for me. They're having a hard time finding jobs, and they ended up living at home with their dad. Yeah, with my dad. So basically, I just staying home and take picture. And my brother...

He's just working at a restaurant. Low life eater. So this is basically post-college flail. Yeah. Like they're stuck. Stuck in the middle of the world. That's what happened to us. One day, their dad comes up.

to them and says, look, guys. One of you guys got to follow me. I need one of you. I don't care which one of you, but I need one of you to take over the family business. My father's getting all. Just decide I either both of you come out or one of you come out. So one of them now

has to carry on his thing. Yeah. What does the dad do? He runs this massage parlor. Yeah. Sons were not interested. Yeah, neither really want to do it. That's Kai. Kai Wu. Dennis's little brother. Because touching people's food, it sounds kind of disgusting, right? You know, there's always a hairy guy or like some girls like busted toes.

Disgusting and annoying facing your father for 24 hours, seven days a week. Yeah, like a little more than I can take. Like, I love my dad. But you just don't want to follow your dad for step. But their dad says, get over it. It's about family. Keeping the business alive, keeping the technique he has alive in the whole China town. I don't think any massage place or any therapy place will have my father technique.

It's a special kind of thing? Yeah, it's this like deep tissue acupressure. It's pink, Type massage. I don't know have Jenny told you that it's really, really painful. Anyhow, they're sitting at home. And this question is kind of like silently hanging over them for days and weeks. Till one day, they had a friend's place having some tea, talking about their dad, and Dennis looks up at his brother and says...

Let's make a bet. Let's do the tea leaves thing. The what? Let's see what the tea leaves say. Well, Dennis says when you're drinking loose tea the Chinese way, you put the leaves right in the bottom of your cup, and you pour the water over them. Usually, the leaves float up to the top

flat on the surface of the tea, but every now and then. Every tank cup you might see the tips is floating, and the rest of the body is inside of water. So like the stem, sort of? Yeah, yeah. And then the leaf is hanging down? Yeah. You mean like every so often,

instead of the whole leaf being on the top of the water, the leafy part just falls to the bottom? Yeah, and just the tip of the stem is touching the surface of the water, almost like it's hanging down from the surface the water. And this is rare? Yeah. So when you get that, that means good luck. And is that like a traditional... It's fun of old people that was doing that. That's how we understand it when we were

key. So we just decided, okay, whoever gets that? Whoever gets the most lucky tea leaves. Win. Whoever win, you're out. You don't need to work for my dad. Whoever lost, follow my father up for step. They trusted their whole future to this? Yeah. It was like a spur of the moment thing. Yeah, we didn't really plan anything. Sometimes people just flip a coin. They can't figure out which way should they go.

So they just flip a coin. When you pull the hot water in, they were like rolling around. Like a small tornado inside, they were all spinning. And then, once it's done, each cup has a layer of tea leaves on the surface. And Dennis notices it, oh, look at it. That he'd gotten one. One piece. That was like, wow, it's incredible.

Then he looked over to his brother's cup. Oh my God. Way more of these lucky leaves. It was pretty obvious, you know, that he lost. And it wasn't even close. No. Do you remember if he was like angry or... He looks like he was deep in thought.

I don't think like, damn. It was like, it's the worst thing in my life. And it basically was, because now he was bound by these tea leaves to go and work for his dad. Oof. What happened? The first day I come here to work, I don't feel like touching anybody foot. So he forced me to touch his foot. Did he have to, like, grab your hand?

He just sit there, take up his shoe without washing his feet. Okay, that's kind of disgusting. So he just told me to try to work on it. His dad eventually said, practice on your friends. I was like, oh, God, no. They still hate me right now for giving them all the pain. When that was gone, do you remember what was going through your head? Were you like, what am I doing?

Did you feel like you're on the wrong track? Well, I don't know how to explain. Here's the funny thing. Then it says that there came a point. After a month, working on my father's feet, I don't feel disgusting anymore. I feel kind of like it. You liked it? Yeah.

I don't know why. It's just like making me, uh-uh, it seemed nice to work on people. I don't know how to explain. I just stopped falling in love with this job. I don't know how's it happened. I just work in here seven days a week. So I've become part of my life. Wake up in the morning, come here, work,

go home, sleep, come here and work. So it's just become part of my life. And I got a day off, I don't know where to go. I'm just staying home. Let me come back out here and work. That's what happened. It's just, I think that's how a fall in love is. You don't know how to happen, when it's happened.

It just happened. But it was a good loss I was thinking I loved this job. So it sounds like he made this deal with fate and he just got lucky. No. No. Kai has a slightly different read on the whole thing.

Well, so if he had won, would you have had to do it? No. No? No. No? No. Kai says the whole tea leaf deal. It was really just about Dennis. I think at that point in the back of his head,

he wanted to do it. Just an excuse. I think he was just looking for a sign. I'd have to ask Kim, I guess. And when I did ask Dennis, he didn't really agree with his brother. Well, it's just, how you say, sorry. But he didn't entirely disagree either. Not that because I wanted to do it.

It's just like, it's kind of I'm using my brother to push me to work for my dad. What do you mean by that? I don't think he wanted to make his own decision. It might be better I'll just work for my dad, but I don't want him to face him. So if my brother just pushed me, okay, I'll be facing him. Ah. That could be what happened. So we just needed a push.

All right. What a wimpy thing to do, though, you know, when you think about it? Why is that wimpy? Well, I mean, he wanted to be a masseuse, you know? He didn't know what he wanted. You know, he knew, and he set up his brothers and make him do it. No, no. If you call it wimpy.

I call it wimpy. I call it powerfully wimpy, muscularly wimpy. Meaning what? What does that mean? Meaning that, oh, I got one for you. I'm going to lay this. You ready for this? Maybe the new strength is understanding your own wimpiness. What do you think about that? Ooh, I just tied you into a philosophical knot right there, buddy. You're going to be thinking about that one for years. I'm thinking about it. I'm over thinking about it.

Just take it in. Take it in the complexity. Can I speak now? David's going to say something. This is who we are. I mean, that's the reality on the ground. We're just weak. We need help. And I actually think this gives us a new way to think and understand virtue. I think it gives us a much richer view of human nature. Thanks to Pat Walters, our Chinatown correspondent, and to Thomas Schelling, who's written many, many books, including the Strategy of Conflict, and to Adam Davidson from the Amazing

Planet Money team, and to David Eagleman, whose latest book is incognito. We'll be right back. Hey, guys, it's David Eagleman. Radio Lab is funded in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. Hi, this is Zelda Gansson calling. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. Radio Lab is produced by WNYC and distributed by NPR.

Oh, I hope that's okay. End of message. Hey, I'm Chad Abumrad. I'm Robert Crilwich. This is Radio Lab and today... Today we are trying to figure out how to make a deal with yourself when most of you doesn't want to do what the rest of you wants to do. Right. And we've talked about these kinds of deals when it comes to avoiding the sirens,

quitting smoking. Figuring out what to do with the balance of your life. Now we're going to change things a bit. Let's say, instead of being an addict, let's say you're just a writer. Yeah. And you want to be inspired. You want the words to come. And this is a very typical situation. They're not coming. No. No words. So the question is, in that kind of situation, what kind of deals could you make with yourself to get the out. This is fanciful. My friend Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and the writer, he made a deal, which frankly

I find this kind of astonishing. A bargain with creativity, I will tell you, although I probably shouldn't. The first book I wrote, migraine, was very obstructed. And by obstructed, he means he just got stuck.

Day after day, he tried to write something down and it just didn't come. And I was getting desperate on the matter. And finally, on September 1st of 1968, I said to myself, you have 10 days to write this book. If it has not done then, you commit suicide.

Whoa. And under the imagined threat, which seemed to terrorize me in a way... The other half of you thought that the first half of you meant it? Yes. Did the first half of you mean it? I don't know.

But the result of this was that after months of stewing and not doing anything, I started work, and what started as a fearful task soon became a joyful task with its own momentum. And suddenly he had this feeling that there was something inside him? Some engine inside me, a wonderful associative engine, which weaves thoughts together, brings unexpected things into opposition. It had kicked into gear

and was kind of pulling things out of him and putting them right there onto the page. I felt the book was being dictated to me. Really? I was passive. I was the bridge. I was the transmitter. And in fact, I finished the book a day early.

That's a strange way to kick yourself in the pants, I have to say. Yeah, well, for me, a deadline sometimes is felt almost literally as such. This is not an easy way to go to work every day, I wouldn't think. I don't think one can make bargains like that. Definitely not too often. And it will have a cost. Oliver, of course, did that only once, but the story he told God us thinking, is there a bargain that you can make with yourself?

Your creative self. That somehow avoids this terrible cost. Yeah. That led me to a... a woman who just does it differently. Well, I have this fascination with trying to figure out how you can live a lifetime of creativity without cutting your ear off. You know what I mean? And who is, who is that?

Oh, I'm Liz Gilbert. And, well, just something a little bit more. Which Liz Gilbert are you? I'm the Liz Gilbert who wrote the book called Eat Pray, Love. I guess that's the way I should describe myself because that's how my obituary will read. Eat, pray, love, in case you were born under a rock. Or raised by wolves. is one of the most popular books ever, ever, ever in the world.

It became even more popular when the book became a movie. And guess who played Liz? Liz Gilbert is remarkable. Julia Roberts. Her courage in the way. America's sweetheart. And the success was great, but she says, you know, was also kind of frightening because there she was,

back at home. Front of the same old blank page. Well, the new question. How will you ever outdo what you did last time? Suddenly she's back where Oliver was. Obstructed. She didn't think that the success was going to be. there the last time. So was the last time a fluke? Do I even have another big book in me?

Dangerous recipe for madness. Madness. But then she thought back to a conversation that she once had with who. Who? Tom Waits. Huh? Tom Waits. That Tom Waits. That's sort of where this all began was that I was a journalist for GQ and I did an interview with him. And he spoke about the creative process. I think more. more articulately than anybody I have ever heard. And he was talking about how every song has a distinctive identity that it comes into the world with, and it needs to be taken in different ways.

And he said, you know, there are songs that you have to sneak up on like you're hunting for a rare bird. And there are songs that come fully intact like a dream taken through a straw. And there are songs that you find little bits of like pieces of gum underneath the desk. And you scrape them off and you put them together and you make something out of it.

And there are songs, he said, that need to be bullied, where he said he's been in the studio working on a song, and the whole album is done, and this one song won't give itself over. And he said, you know, everyone's gotten used to seeing him do things like this. He'll march up and down the studio talking to the song, saying, the rest of the family's in the car. We're all going on vacation. You coming along or not?

You got 10 minutes or else you're getting left behind, you know? And he's like, you've got to shake it down sometimes. Liz says that interview was maybe the first time she thought of inspiration as an it. And I remember feeling my own center of gravity shift and thinking, wait, you're allowed to talk to this thing? If the source of her ideas was outside her, then she could get some distance from it, maybe negotiate with it, even fight with it, instead of beating herself up all the time. Right. And the story that I love that he told me about where his artistic anxiety ended and his sort of new artistic liberation. began. It was when he's driving along the freeway in Los Angeles and like eight lanes of traffic one day. And this little fragment of a beautiful song comes into his head.

And he has no way to record it. He's got no pencil. He's got no tape recorder. And he's in eight lanes of stressful traffic. And he immediately starts to feel all the old pressure that he's felt his whole life of, I'm not good enough. You know, all the artistic struggle, right? I can't do it. I'm not good enough. I'm going to lose it. It'll haunt me forever. And then he just backed off from it. And instead he established that negotiating distance between him and the melody. And he looked up at the sky and he said, excuse me, can you not see that I'm driving? If you're serious about wanting to exist, I spend eight hours a day in the studio. You're welcome to come and visit me while I'm sitting at the piano.

Otherwise, leave me alone and go bother Leonard Cohen. Oh, that's very bold. It is. I think that's what she wants. She wants you to push back. and she wants you to set some terms and some boundaries. She doesn't want you. Until you go to the Leonard Cohen concert two years later and there it is.

So very kind of you to come to this. Now this idea that somehow the creative act comes from outside you, you get a visit from a somebody. This isn't a new idea. This is a very old idea. You know, the Greeks would call it the muse. The Romans called it the ingenium, the genius. Which was an interesting idea because it's not the way we use genius today, right?

Today we say that a person is a genius, and back then they would have said a person had one. And again, it's this separation so that the creative person has this externalized collaborator. So this is a tinkerbelly kind of a thing? It sprinkles you? It has little wings and it flies away. I think it depends on the process. I mean, it's got a lot of names because it takes a lot of forms, right? And we're talking about all this as though these are, I actually kind of believe this.

Because I don't think it would work otherwise, but I kind of do believe that the world is being constantly circled as though by Gulfstream forces, ideas and creativity that want to be made manifest. And they're looking for portals to come through in people. And if you don't do it, they'll go find someone else, you know. And so you have to convince it that you're serious and you have to show it respect and you have to talk to it and let it know that you're there. Like for the last few years, there's been a novel that has been sort of stirring in me, and I haven't had time to give it the attention. It wants me to give it. But every day I talk to it, and I have a little conversation with it, and I say,

listen, in April, I will be with you. I want you to stay. Don't let me wake up in the New York Times that someone else wrote you. Stay here with me. I'm coming. This sounds like a golden retriever or something. You have to keep petting it. Actually, that's probably as good a metaphor for me as any,

I would relate to that, being half golden retriever myself and liking dogs. That's great. And when you say you talk to it and it's golden retriever form. That's our producer, Pat Walters. Like, do you actually talk to it? Yeah. Out loud? Uh-huh.

I do. I talk. That's why I have to work alone in a quiet room because I talk to it all the time. And I ask you questions. I say, what is it that you want me, what is it you want me to be doing here? Because you seem to be resistant to what I'm trying to do here. Like, show me, give me a clue. Like I, the title.

of e-pray love was the last thing that came of that book. And the book was about to be published, and it had any number of ridiculous, stupid titles that I'm not even tell you because they're so embarrassing and they're so not what that book was meant to be titled. And I ended up writing an email to all my friends and saying the subject heading was title search. And I said, my book won't tell me its name.

And can all of you help me? And a friend of mine wrote back and said, if you're going to talk to it like that, it's not going to tell you anything. My book, correct. Right? So I really did that night. So you sweet talked it back into... Sweetheart, listen, I respect you, I love you, I honor you, I have defended you these last few years, I want to bring you into the world, but you have to tell me.

And the next day, eat, pray, love. Just like that. And you know it because it's... I know the difference between something I thought of and something that I was given. I can tell the difference. She says sometimes it's the whole scene, sometimes it's just a word. maybe a phrase. And then you have the job to make it into something.

Wait, but if I say to you, two roads diverge, yellow wood. Two roads diverge in the yellow wood. So you can write that down. Two roads diverge in yellow wood. Then you're done. Do you know how that poem got written? No.

So he was working for, I may be exaggerating this because I tend to, but I'm going to tell it my way, how I heard it. He was working for, months and months and months on what was going to be the greatest epic poem of his life. It was the biggest challenge he was going to be up there

with the masters with this. You should name the person we're talking about it. Yes, this would be Mr. Frost. Robert Frost. And he worked on it for forever and ever, I mean perspiration, perspiration, perspiration, right? And it was 20, 30 pages long

and it was, I don't know what the meter was. Whatever it was, it was the most ambitious thing he'd ever done, and it was arduous and it probably had sweat all over it. Put it down. went to sleep, woke up, sat down, and wrote two roads. In one setting, this tiny, perfect, immaculate thing was created that had nothing to do with what he had just done.

He earned it. I think the angels reward people who are at their desk at 6 o'clock in the morning working. And he earned it by showing his intent to be a great poet. And they said, okay, cool, you showed your intent. That thing you just wrote was crap. I'm going to give you this one. Here's your reward. What evidence do you have for this point?

None. None. Except for that it's a great story. And I like the idea. And I feel like, I really do feel like when they see me working, they take pity on me. And they say, look, you're showing a real commitment to this. You've been up at 5 o'clock every morning for the last year working on this novel. I'm just going to give you the ending, you know?

Or I'm going to spare you from that really bad idea you just having. You know, I always think of it as like Henry Ford's famous line about how creativity is 99% perspiration and one percent inspiration, which is a very much. mechanical way to divide it up, but it also assumes that those two things have equal weight, that they're the same quality, right? I agree with 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration, but it's 99% oyster, 1% pearl. You can't even compare the matter. Like, it's a bargain to get 1% inspiration. You know, it's a miracle. I could get with the muses. Mm-hmm. Sort of. What do you mean? Well, I think it's interesting that you can hear at one point she says that she believes it.

I actually kind of believe it. And then another point she says, it just makes a good story. It's a great story. And I like the idea. So you can hear her negotiating with the idea. Yeah, of course. She's a little bit between the two thoughts. Which is interesting.

I mean, you know, you know, a serious neuroscientist would tell you that it's all in your unconscious. It's all you all the time. But another way to think of it is. is to say that you got a gift. And therefore it's not all about you when it's bad, and it's still about you when it's good, but it's not all about you. It's just this business of all.

This is a form of well-organized modesty. It's a nice phrase. I'm just going to go with that. It's time for us and our fairies to go to break. This is Drew Lewis from Salt Lake City. Radio Lab is supported in part 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 Chadabumrod.

I'm Robert Krollwitch. This is Radio Lab today. We are continuing our search for ways to outside oneself solve the problems going on inside oneself. Ooh, that was nicely done. Now, thinking back to Oliver Sacks' story that we heard at the top of the last segment, this notion that one might use terror to broker a relationship with one's creative self or one's perhaps addicted self, let's take that idea and kick it up a notch. All right.

Maybe two notches. For that, we go to reporter Gregory Warner. Reporter with Marketplace. Though Marketplace was nice enough to let us borrow him for this story he's about to tell. Right. Now, you understand that I have no idea, Gregory, none of what. whatever, what is you're about to tell me. I've been purposely kept in the dark.

Yes. Unless of course you have already told me somewhere on the street somewhere. No, I'm sure you've forgotten that. Oh, good, okay. So Greg, just set it up. How did you find out about this? I heard about it while washing dishes, actually.

My wife is telling me about a friend's ex-boyfriend who was an alcoholic. Friends ex-boyfriend. Friends ex-boyfriend is an alcoholic in Russia. He's Russian. And this man didn't want to drink anymore. And so the treatment that he got was to have a capsule surgically inserted under the skin, some kind of chemical compound, that if he drank again,

this capsule would explode into his bloodstream and kill him. What? Which he was given a bomb. Yeah. That would be triggered by his bad behavior. Exactly. And that's all you knew. That's all I knew.

Well, but wait a second. Who would do this? Who did he go to? Well, that's what I... Fortunately, I was on my way to Russia. Oh. And what was the question in your mind? Was this real?

Check, check. So, I get to Moscow, and I hired a fixer interpreter. Her name's Anna Masterova. It's hard to tell what street I'm on right now. She had found this clinic that does this treatment. We go in through the gate. We call this area lungs of Moscow. The lungs of Moscow.

Because the wind is coming through this area. And we arrive at this sort of large house, kind of a drab exterior. They us immediately into a waiting room. There's a fish tank, there are plants. Wow, pretty lush. So it wasn't very hospitally? No, not very hospitally. Very comfortable.

Guys are real lazy fish. And then... For summit. The head doctor is named Vychislav. Vyazov Davidov. He greets us, we come into his pretty spare office. You describe Vyatislav Davidov? He looks actually exactly as you'd guess

a Russian psychotherapist, narcologist would look. I have no guess for that. Maybe I'd take that back. He's got a pointy beard and he's got a bulbous head. He's got a chemical reaction. Bright, bright, bright green eyes. And this man is a doctor. And this man is absolutely a doctor.

There are degrees on the wall. So usually this capsule is inserted into the buttocks. Actually, that's why it was called a torpedo. Because it is placed in a person's body and kept the way a torpedo in a submarine is kept. In your butt? Well, under the skin. And how does, if the person drinks, does it make them, Is it sick or does it make them die?

Exclute death, it's not, it doesn't... It shouldn't kill you. You should kill you. One can never exclude death, but of course the doctor is not going to kill his patient. Very poor.

But, personal will feel very bad, extremely bad. You will have, you will have, pains, almost unbearable pains. Accelerated heart rate, shortness of breath, nausea, stomach, vomiting, throbbing headache, visual disturbance, mental confusion,

and circulatory collapse. And these medicine can remain in the body from a short period of time to three years, for instance. But the pill is real? Well, so that's exactly what I asked him next. Is the capsule in some way a placebo? A placebo? Yeah.

It's not a placebo. It's not a placebo. You're not a placebo. If you don't believe, I can give you a pill and that will be like coding for one day. Okay. Wait. You took the freaking pill? I said I would.

Can you give me a pill that would last three years? You would give me a tabletka, which three years, if you agree? Gregory, what the... No, I'll tell you what I was thinking. Because at this point, Davidov and I had been talking for like two hours, and he hadn't let me out of the office. I had asked to see the procedure room.

I had asked to see the torpedo. And so I realized the only way to actually see it was to agree to have it done. You'll be a patient. Yeah. You ready? Yeah, let's go. We leave the office.

We go down a hall. and up some stairs. There's no lush carpet, no fish tanks, no plants. Bligh, was that someone screaming? Yeah. Ah, yeah, there's a psychoschicke. No, it's a psychiatric clinic. Meanwhile, my translator is getting worried, she's like,

You know, if you meet a friend in Russia, you have to go drinking with them. I said, then, you know, and I'll die in his arm. So he leads me in his arms. He leads me into this room. It looks, I mean, just like an exam room in a doctor's clinic. There's the sink and the nurse, a heart defibrillator machine. Can I see the... And he just immediately ignores me.

He kind of picks up some instruments, washes his hands. Can I see the torpedo? He then turns and he says, yes, there is a cut. He does a stabbing motion with his hand. He makes a small cut. This is how deep it is. So he's going in? Well, just before he's going to actually cut open my butt,

and he does this with everybody, he gives you a pill, which is the same drug, but it only lasts for one day. And then he tests it. He tests it. How does that work? You take a pill and you'll give you a drop of vodka. He puts just a drop of vodka on your tongue.

Drop of vodka. Once that drop of vodka hits my tongue, I will feel all those symptoms. Your heart sinks, you can't breathe. In general, a person feels he's dying. The body, the heart is still. Sometimes people are so scared,

they urinate right here. Maybe I can I take it at home? No, no, I don't want to take it. Check it out. I can't do it. I'm not strong enough. He at that point realized he had won. And he shows me the pill at this point.

This is what is inserted in the book. body. Really? This is it? It's so... Little. Little? Little. About the size of a, uh, a Tic-Tac. A Tick-Tac. Okay. The Tick-Tac torpedo. It comes right off the lips. It turns out that inside that little pill is a very real drug. It's called dysulfurum. And it was actually a substance that was used in the rubber industry.

This is Eugene. Eugene Reichel. I am an assistant professor at the University of Chicago. He's writing a whole book. about these treatment programs in Russia. He says this drug was discovered back in the early 1900s. And they found that the workers in the rubber industry were unable to tolerate alcohol. This is kind of folk knowledge in that industry for a while. So is it like, don't give that guy a beer.

He works in rubber. I mean, basically what dysulfram does is it creates a kind of toxic byproduct. Dysulfram blocks a certain enzyme from being absorbed, and it causes all these very real symptoms. So you'd get a little bit poisoned. Yeah. And is this used outside of these Russian clinics? It is, but there is a big difference. Only in Russian clinics do they have these long-acting capsules?

A long-acting form of dysopharam, which is not something that exists. These sub-dermal implants, basically, they don't actually release any dysophram after, you know, the first week or something like that. So if I had taken that drop of alcohol, then I would have. felt all those symptoms, but it doesn't last for longer than a week. Yeah. So effectively, that's basically a scam. I believe scam is the word you're looking for. Like, how mainstream is this? I mean, is this the equivalent of like guava pills or whatever they are where you can find them in like vitamin shops, but they're kind of fringy? That's the thing, is that this is not fringy at all. You know, over 60% of the treatment methods offered by Russian narcologists.

Wow. Wow. 60, like more than half? Yes. Yeah, and Eugene emailed later to say he was just being conservative. The real number is closer to 80%. Wow. I had coded, which happened 15 years before he died.

My own translator, Anna, her uncle went through this procedure. When he was drunk, he didn't care. Before I remember my grandmother crying all the time because he could go fishing and then disappear for a night. And this guy, textbook alcoholic. Everybody knew that he was drunk. Went through this coding procedure. It's called coding because it wasn't the drug form that goes in your butt.

It was actually a kind of hypnotic suggestion that goes in your brain. But same general procedure. The doctor in the white gone, he was doing something. thing with his hands, some gestures in front of Sergei's face. And then Sergey closed his eyes and he had a feeling that some wicked force was pulled out of his body. And this guy finished high school? This guy was an aeronautical engineer.

Oh. My sense is that there's some people who suspend their disbelief because at some level they have the motivation to do that. But if it only lasts a week, why wouldn't people, like after two weeks or a month or six months, just start, just take a sip and realize, oh, nothing happened, and they just start drinking again. But some people do. Some people do. First of all, there are lots of people who do go to 12-step therapy and who do go to... 60%.

60%. You said that 80%. Yeah, no, no, no. I know. I know. It is very prevalent and very popular. When you listen to the story, we thought there's something Russian about this. Yeah.

That it's got a sense of summaries. and belief all sort of asserted by a higher authority with no way to check or to second guess. Even the way in which repression is used instead of acceptance. It just feels very Russian and wouldn't work in Manhattan, wouldn't work in Los Angeles, wouldn't work in Chicago. I think that here's the distinction. In North America, the prevailing understanding of addiction is that it's a disease of denial. It's not about the substance as much as it is about the fact that you're kind of out of touch with some kind of truths about yourself and your condition. That's a radically different understanding of what the problem is than the one that underline.

But as a, I'm sorry to interrupt. As a skeptical American, I got to say there is something about this treatment, this Russian treatment that makes sense to me. It seems to me when you're in the grips of an addiction, you've already lost control of a certain part of yourself or a part of yourself is already in control that shouldn't be. And you can try and kind of love that part and and make peace with it and hug it and do the 12-step thing. Or you can destroy it. You know, build a wall around it so that you don't have to deal with it. That's what Davidov is so good at, imprisoning that part of you.

Do you know what attacks of panic are? Very strong fear. Strach. It's fear. Very strong fear. Do you understand what it is? This is when Dr. Davidov told me that he said, that he had trained as a psychotherapist during the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 80s.

He says to me, imagine a situation where a soldier sees his friend on the road. He has minds tied to his body. He has no ears, no eyes, his legs are cut. But he's still alive. According to all rules, this kind of person should be taken to the hospital. But after seeing this, every single. soldier says to his friend, if you find me in this kind of condition tortured by the Mujahideen, kill me. Just watching these tortures, if you can drive a person crazy.

Is that just something he was having you imagine? Are you saying that's something he saw? That's something he saw. What he learned from the way in which these Mujahideen were fighting this war is that you can kill your enemy, that's one method of warfare, or you can strike fear into the heart of your enemy and kill not only that soldier, but terrorize his whole platoon. And what rules this world? Fear. If he could make you afraid, he could change you.

This coding, it's completely. changed his life. This is her uncle? He became very... I had a feeling that he sort of discovered the life for himself once again. He started

gardening, he started picking mushrooms. Do you think coding worked? I guess. Yeah, I don't know how it worked, but it did work for him. Because he

hadn't drunk until the rest of his life. Thanks, Greg. All right, thanks. Okay. I got to say that. That right there, that's a Ulysses contract. Yes. Except for instead of the rope, you got fear.

Right, as opposed to, say, if Ulysses went through, um, went through, you know, counseling about the sirens and, you know, it's not necessary, you know, in fact, the sirens aren't that hot, in fact you'll die. Yeah, and, you know, you really have a wife. She's nice, too. Anyhow, thanks to Marketplace for letting us borrow Greg. Greg has a great series he's putting together on, what is it? Yeah, a series of stories on Marketplace about the economics of health care in Russia.

Which you can get to from Marketplace.org or also Radiolab.org. And if you go there, I can subscribe to our podcast. Even Wiley Ulysses' wife, Penelope, just signed up the other week. I'm Chadabumra. I'm Robert Krollwitch. Thanks for listening. I'm Anamasaerova. Radio Lab is produced by Jack Adamrad, Lynn Levy.

Our staff includes Sorin Wheeler. Soren Wheeler. Sorin Wheeler. Ellen Horn, Tim Howard, Renna Farrell, and Pat Walters. With help from Jessica Groh, Douglas Smith, Luke Caldenetti, and Abby Wendell. Special thanks to Kate Edgar and Dennis McAarves. D'Sidanae. All back.

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