Radiolab - You v. You

Episode Date: July 22, 2022

This episode, originally aired more than a decade ago, attempts to answer one question: how do you win against your worst impulses? Zelda Gamson tried for decades to stop smoking, but the part of her that wanted to quit couldn’t beat the part of her that refused to let go. Adam Davidson, a co-founder of the NPR podcast Planet Money, talked to one of the greatest negotiators of all time, Nobel Prize-winning Economist Thomas Schelling, whose tactical skills saw him through high-stakes conflicts during the Cold War but fell apart when he tried them on himself in his battle to quit smoking. And a baby Pat Walters complicates things — in a good way — with the story of two brothers, Dennis and Kai Woo, who forged a deal with each other that wound up determining both of their futures. Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [e-mail].  

Hey, I'm Laptop Nossar, this is Radio Lab. Starting with a quick announcement, but a fun one, our merch store, which we're calling Camp Radio Lab this time around, because there's this great camp-inspired T-shirt, is open for one more week. Head on over to radiolab.org slash shop, sometime before July 29th,

you can get aforementioned T-shirt, as well as hats, and sweatbands, and other summer gear water bottle Once you are decked out in all that radio lab swag take a pic tag us on Insta or Twitter Yeah, just show off your nerdy summer self. We'd love to see it again. That is radio lab.org's flash shop for all your summer gear needs Which you will need because it is hot. I am sweating, you may be sweating, you may not be able to think about anything other than the next time you can get in a pool

or walk in freezer or something. But let me ask you about something you are probably not thinking about, which is how are those New Year's resolutions from seven months ago? How you doing with those? I ask because the episode you are about to hear, which is an oldie, it's called you versus you, it's all about this kind

of struggle, this struggle between the prudent, well planned version of you that you imagined in the past and then the impulsive instant ratification chasing you of this moment right now. And if you like me are a kind of living, walking mockery of your own imagination of yourself from the past, maybe this episode will help. Who knows, either way, I hope you enjoy it. Here it is, you versus you. Okay, from the top, you ready?

Yep. Hello. Hello. How are you doing? We're gonna start things off today with this lady. Zelda, Gamson. Welcome to our little spot. It's beautiful.

Thank you. She's 80 years old and 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. Wow. I started when I went to college in 1954.

The 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. 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 organized protests. Well, we would demonstrate. And the two of them would even go under cover 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 ash trees. How much were you smoking at that point? Probably smoked a packet of dead. I was a wear smoker the mirror. You know I was sometimes up to two packs a day. I had kids. I was pregnant.

Did you smoke while you were pregnant? I did. Yeah. I feel so guilty about that. So at a certain point, Zelda and Mary decide they want to stop. 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 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. kids a 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 Abumrun. I'm Robert Crowich. This is Radio Lab and today, I'm the little deal 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 Schell. 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.

Zenneph and 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 Zenefin 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. It's attempting to influence somebody else's choice by restricting your own choice. But then we asked them, what if your adversary isn't on the outside, like the Persians, but rather, it was you. How do you do what Zenefin did to yourself?

Yeah, I began smoking when I was 17 years old. I did quit several times, but I always went back. But he did give us some suggestions, one in particular, that was so awesome to use your favorite words. So, diabolical. Yeah. That we just didn't think anyone would ever do it. That is until we met Zelda.

Yeah. Fast forward a few decades. 1984. Marian 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 is Alta? Are you still smoking? And Zelda said, yeah. And don't tell me to stop. I was very belligerent. Yes. 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? 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 gonna give $5,000 to the Ku Klux Klan. What? She said $5,000 to the Ku Klux Klan, correct. KU Klux Klan. This was shelling's suggestion. It can work.

But you didn't think anyone would ever do it. $5,000 to the Clue Clux clan. It just came out of my mouth. You know how horrible they are, right? Sure. So heinous. But her and Mary made a deal. Oh, 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 gonna 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 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... Z. Didn't really want to stop smoking. 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... ...and a terrible sweat. Reach for her cigarettes But every time she says this other thought would just rush into her mind the KKK robes burning crosses lynchings Oh god, she'd throw the cigarettes down. I couldn't the idea of them having her money. I can't even imagine it 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 again. Never again? Nope. That was it, cold turkey. 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 like our brain is literally divided into these camps that sometimes wrestle and fight, well, the problem, according to Thomas Shelling,

is that these selves never exist simultaneously. 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 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 then 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 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 to figure it 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 Shelling did it. 1980, gather my children together, and I said, I quit, and that they should never have respect for their father again if I returned to smoking. Any, he never did it. Yeah, that was it for him. Huh. 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.

You've got the nail part and the later part and the later part is weak. Yeah. And in this case, the later part found a way to trick the nail parts. And this has a name, this kind of approach. It's called a Ulysses contract. In the Iliad, 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's 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 just stimulating or shouting or acting like a crazy man, just keep rowing, just keep going. And so when they got to the sirens, you lissies? 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 you lissies 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, and what if the bargain that you strike isn't just about something very, very small and 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. I'm in Chinatown. About a year ago. Corner of hell and not my friend Jenny posted something on Twitter. It said, over heard. I flipped the coin and I lost my life. I flipped a coin and lost my life.

Yes. And what's Twitter? You know, 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 and he said that to her I flipped the coin and I lost my life What was the context? I while 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 he's a reporter. Did she didn't she asked? I 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 and massage place? No idea. No. Wandered around to several different addresses. Damn. And eventually I found this tiny little storefront. A little sign with some feet. Kind of hidden. You want to see my son? And I found the guy who said the thing. Hi.

Oh, how are you? I'm OK. His name is Dennis. Dennis? And I just asked him. Tell me about this coin flip. Can you tell me, can you, so when did this happen? Well, I 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. In 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 stayed home to picture. And my brother... He's just working at a restaurant. Lowlife Eda. This is basically post-college flail. Yeah, like they're stuck.

Stuck in the middle of the road. 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 decided I either blow up you come out or one of you come out. So one of them now has to carry on his thing? Yeah, what does it that do? He runs this massage parlor. Sends, we're not interested. Yeah, neither of us want to really want to do it. That's Kai Wu. Dennis' little brother.

Because touching people's food is some kind of disgusting, right? You know, there's always a hairy guy or like some girls like buster toes. Disgusting and annoying facing a father for 24 hours, seven days a week. Yeah, a little more than I could take. Like, I love my dad. But you just don't want to follow your dad for a step.

But the dad says, get over it. It's about family keeping the business alive, keeping the technique he has alive in the whole Chinatown. 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 painful type massage.

I don't know, have Jenny told you that. No. It's really painful. Anyhow, they're sitting at home. And this question is kind of like silently hanging over them for days and weeks. To a one day, that a friend's place having some tea, talking about their dad and Dennis looks up at his brother

and says, that's a make-up bed. That's two of his tea leaves thing. The what? Let's see what the, what the little 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, sorry? And then the leaf is hanging down. You mean like every so often instead of the whole leaf being on the top of the water, the leafy park 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 of the water.

And this is rare? Yeah. So when you get that, that's me. It's good luck. It is that like a traditional... It's fun to all the people that was doing it, that's how we understand it when we was kids. So we just decided, okay, where we get that? Whoever gets the most lucky tea leaves.

Wind. Where we're wind, you're out. You don't need to work for my dad. Yeah. Where we lost, follow my father first dad. They trusted their whole future to this? Yeah. It was like a spur of the moment, didn't it?

It was. Yeah, we didn't really plan anything. So sometimes people just flip to this? Yeah. It was like a spur of the moment, didn't it? Yeah, we didn't really plan anything. So, if I'm buying people to flip a coin, they can't figure which way should they go. So, they just flip a coin. When you pull the hot water in, they will like, rolling around,

like a small tomato inside, they are spinning. And then, once it's done each cup has a layer of tea leaves on the surface. And then it's notices, so whoa look at that he'd gotten one. One piece. That was like wow, that was 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 was 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. What happened to you? The first day I come here to work, I don't feel like touching anybody's foot. So he forced me to touch his foot. Did he have to grab your hand? It's just sit there, take a picture, without washing his feet. Okay, that's kind of disgusting. So, he just tell me to try to work on it. Is that eventually said, practice on your friends?

That was an alcohol. 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, where you like, what am I doing? Like, did you feel like you're on the wrong track? Well, I don't know how that's mean 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. He liked it. Yeah, I don't know why. It's just like making me, ah, it's seem nice to work on people. I don't know how that's made. I just thought for enough of this job. I don't know how to happen. I just like working here seven days of the week.

Let's say 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. When I got up there, I don't know where to go. I'm just staying home. Let me come back out here and work. That's what happened.

I think that's how foreign love is. You don't know how to happen, when it's happened. It just happened. It was a good loss. I was thinking, I left this, you don't know how to happen, when it's happened, it just happened. It was a good loss, I was thinking, I left this job. So it sounds like you made this deal with fate, and you just got lucky. No. Kai has a slightly different read on the whole thing. So if he had won, would you have had to do it? No. No? No. No. Kai says a slightly different read on the whole thing. So if he had won, would you have had to do it?

No. No? No. No. Kai says the whole tea leaf deal 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 it did ask Dennis, he didn't really agree with his brother. Well, it's just how you say it is, I mean. But he didn't entirely disagree. It's 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.

That's what he mean by that. I don't think he wanted to make his own decision. It might be better I 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 would he be thinking 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, and he didn't know what he wanted. We know he knew and he set up his brother to make him do it. So it's very, very. No, if you call it wimpy. I call it wimpy. I call it a powerfully wimpy, muscularly wimpy. Meaning what, what is that mean?

Meaning that, oh, I got one for you. I'm gonna lay this, you ready for this. Maybe the new strength is understanding your own wimpyness. What do you think about that? Ooh, I just tied you into a philosophical knot right there, buddy. You're gonna be thinking about that one for years. I'm thinking about it. I'm over thinking about it. The kids should just take it in. Take it in the complexity.

Can I speak now? Yeah, David's gonna 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 this gives us a new way to think about 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 Shelling, who's written many, many books, including the strategy of conflict and and to Adam Davidson from the amazing Planet Money team and to David Eagleman. Something to note since this story aired is that Thomas Shelling passed away in 2016, the age of 95, and Mary Belenky passed away in 2020 at the age of 87.

David Eagleman released a new book in 2020 called Live Wired. You should check it out. It's great read. Radio Lab was created by Chad Up and Rod and is edited by Soren Wheeler, Luthor Miller and Lots of Nasser, Arako hosts. Susie Lechtenberg is our executive producer. Dylan Keith is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Rachel Kusik, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez,

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and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundation of Support for RadioLab was provided by the Alfred P. Stone Foundation. you