This American Life - 831: Lists!!!

Episode Date: August 17, 2025

How they organize the chaos of the world, for good and for bad. Prologue: Ira interviews David Wallechinsky, who wrote a wildly popular book in the 1970s called The Book of Lists, full of trivia and research, gathered into lists like "18 Brains" and "What They Weighed." The book sold millions of copies and had four sequels and a brief spin-off TV show. The list books were like the internet, before the internet. (12 minutes)Act One: John Fecile talks to his brother, Pat, about a list their other brother made before he died. They each have different ideas about what the list means and how they feel about it. (14 minutes)Act 2: A brief visit with Bobby, who keeps a list in his phone of all the dogs in his neighborhood and their names to save him from the awkwardness of not knowing the name of someone’s dog – because people get upset if you don’t remember their dog’s name. (3 minutes)Act Two: Reporter M Gessen talks to Russians living in America and elsewhere about the lists the Russian government has put them on in the last few years. M Gessen is also on one of these lists. Each list has its own complex rules and potential consequences for the people on the lists and for their family members who live in Russia. (28 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeaped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. The People's Almanac came out in the mid-1970s. It's hard to imagine a more eccentric bestseller. Over 1,400 pages long, a red-lake an encyclopedia written by an excited and precocious 15-year-old who loved all the obscure details of all the knowledge in all the world. There are sections on the greatest man-made disasters ever, and also one of the greatest prize fighters,

a guide to buried treasure in the United States, biographies of famous and infamous scientists, a history of advertising going back to ancient Greece, and also a chapter about a minister who took over a newspaper for a week in the year 1900, and made all editorial decisions, what was on the front page, what they covered, based on what he believed Jesus would have done if Jesus had gone into the newspaper game.

And at the end of the book was an address. And a note from the authors asking for suggestions for future editions, and asking readers to tell them what parts of the book they liked and disliked. So we eventually received thousands of letters, each of which I read. David Wallachinsky was one of the authors of the People's Almanac. And because of that, I was able to determine that the most popular chapter in the People's Almanac was lists. Lists. Of all the knowledge in the world, people most loved 25 pages out of the 1400-page book,

that had some lists. Some of those lists were boring stuff like the world's 15 biggest cities and 10 tallest buildings and 10 longest rivers. But there were weirder lists. 20 historical figures who were born as illegitimate children. 15 people who had an absurd number of spouses. And this one, there was maybe a little more edgy in 1975 when this was published. 20 celebrities who've been psychoanalyzed.

From letters they got, Wallachinsky says that they learned that one list that readers really loved was Famous people who never existed but lived today, like Sherlock Holmes, Superman, Wonder Woman, Scrooge McDuck. Scrooge McDuck, not technically a person, but you get the idea. And the most popular list was nine breeds of dog that bite the most. So based on that, we decided to do the first book of lists. The first book of lists was an even bigger, even more ridiculously huge bestseller, a pop culture phenomenon. It sold over three million copies.

for sequels, a short-lived TV spinoff, and a board game. I was a teenager in the 1970s. I had no interest in this kind of thing whatsoever, but I remember it being one of those ubiquitous books that you could not help but know about. And looking back on it now, reading the book of lists today, I think they accidentally figured out how to give the pleasure of scrolling the Internet

way before the Internet existed. Basically, it was a way to leaf through impossibly random stuff until something catchy grabbed your eye. We had different kinds of lists. And people were responding to all of them. We had the celebrity lists, you know, where we would ask Ronald Reagan, what are the events in history you wish you could have witnessed? Then there was a straight list that were statistical, you know, what were the worst airlines in the world based on deaths per miles flown. And then my favorite kind of what we called the annotated list where you'd actually have to do some research and then put a paragraph describing.

the entry. The most popular list they ever did was like that. And before I tell you what this list was, I want you to please listen for a second to some of the lists that it had to beat out to be the most popular list. Okay, here we go.

Fifteen famous events that happened in the bathtub. Sixteen, names of things that you never knew had names. Eighteen famous brains and what they weighed. Fourteen men who became units of measurement and the units named after them. Benjamin Franklin's eight reasons to marry an older woman. A lot of competition there. So, what was in that most popular list?

Six sexual positions in order of popularity and then the advantages and disadvantages of each one. Decades later, people still tell me, thank you so much for that list. I learned so much. And maybe this is obvious on its face, but just lay out why that would be such a big deal in the 70s. I think it was a big deal.

deal because nobody talked about it. It wasn't in print. And I think a lot of people only thought there was one sexual position. No. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, I mean, there were people like that. And a lot of the people who would tell me about how it affected them, they read it at a time when they were teenagers. I mean, it's interesting, I just, I just opened it up to that page in the book, and these are so basic. Like, it literally is, like, which person is on top? And whether they're sort of lying, sitting, or standing, and each position gets five sentences maybe, you know, like a sentence of advantage, a sentence of disadvantage, like it's very terse. It's two pages total.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not the Kama Sutra. David Wallachinsky has thought way more about less than most of us. And he told me this one story that illustrates how putting something on. a list has such power. He said that for most of his adult life, he was kind of obsessed about the terrible things that repressive governments around the world do to their people, and he went to write about it for magazines and convince people how important this was, and he really couldn't

figure out how to do that compellingly. And so in 2003, I got this idea. I'll do it as a list. the 10 worst living dictators. And I was obsessive in creating the order of list of worst dictators. I had criteria, different criteria, and then I gave extra credit for dictators who tortured or murdered their political opponents. He published this list with write-ups on each dictator in Parade Magazine,

which was a big deal at the time, reached 32 million people. And it was so popular that, We did it annually, and it became a cover story. So millions of people read about this topic they would not otherwise have read about. The list format made accessible to people a subject they wouldn't, didn't know they might be interested in. They made the subject digestible and human. Here were ten awful human beings you could have feelings about.

That's the power of a list. But of course, most of the lists in our lives are different from this. Most are the lists that we write for ourselves. And it's interesting. People put all kinds of things on those lists. Oh, my God. I feel nervous. Why do you feel nervous?

Because I was just looking through my lists, and I just feel like a freak. This is Vivita de Kornfeld, a producer at our show here. And I learned about the very personal and idiosyncratic list that she keeps in a staff meeting where I talked about Wallachinsky and different kinds of lists. And at that meeting, Aviva started talking about her lists. And so I was offering this kind of assuming everyone, I would like start saying my list so then everyone else would be like, yeah, yeah, me too.

And then they would share their list and it would be kind of like this bonding moment. That's what you thought was going to happen. Yeah. And that's not what happened at all. What happened is that I named like a couple of my more recent list. And then everyone started laughing and was like, what the hell? In fact, Laura, our co-worker,

messaged in the chat Aviva's brain with like seven exclamation points. And it felt like a little, I mean, it was all in good spirits, but it felt a little embarrassing. Aviva does keep some lists that lots of people keep. Practical stuff, like books she wants to read,

or gift ideas for people she loves. But then, on the notes app of her phone, there's a whole bunch of lists that have no practical purpose at all. But are really just her sort of organizing the stuff that is rattling around in her head. So a list that is just like organizing my brain is, let me look, things that are off-brand for me, or common things I've never done, or times strangers have involved me in their business for unclear reasons, like on the street or on the subway.

That happens to me all the time. Okay, so then let's dive into those lists. Things that are off-brand for me, read me that list. Okay. I'm bad at jumping. I'm inconsistent with my birth control. You mean you're not taking a pill every day that you should? No.

Why is that off-brand? Because I'm organized. The other thing that's embarrassing about reading these lists is that they're so private, but whatever. I don't care. I can't rollerblade. I hate pita, even though I was vegan for a year and vegetarian for a bunch of years. I just really don't like them. I don't love bowling.

That's a new addition. The last one I really don't want to share, but will, but it probably shouldn't be on the radio because it makes me seem really psychotic, which is that I've never kissed anyone famous, and I just assumed I would have by now. Because you're how old? 30. And so you've kissed a bunch of people. Yeah, a ton.

And the most famous person I've ever kissed is the captain of the Belgian field hockey team, which is not famous. No, that is not famous. No. Yeah. His name was Jay. This list, with a list, common things I've never done, which, by the way, only has two items on it, karaoke and going to Costco. or the list where I feel the emotions that I feel on my body, or the list times people have referred to me as neurodivergent,

even though I don't think I am. All these lists are different ways that Aviva's sort of naming parts of herself for herself. Yeah, yeah, I'm just trying to make sense of who I am and what is going on in my brain. In list form. Yeah, because it's so organized and clear and clean. and the business of making sense of yourself is, I've found to be extremely messy. With that in mind, Viva still keeps old defunct lists

because they're like a record of who she was. Listen when she was a teenager, like harmless things my dad hates, or things I should have known, or her very first list, scenes from my grandmother's nursing home made on weekly visits when she was 14, trying to make sense of that world. Normally, she doesn't show these lists to anybody. She'll just notice something about herself. And then she'll notice a second example of the same thing.

And she starts to collect them so she can stare at the list, try to understand it. And the fact that it's collected on a list, what feeling does that give you once it's on the list? Oh my God, it's like relief. It's so nice. Because it's just bouncing around in my brain. And so once it's on a list, I don't feel like I have to remember it. But it isn't just like you don't have to think about it. Like you don't have to worry about it.

Like before you put it on the list, it seems like there's a kind of fretting of like, what does this mean about me that this is a thing? And then once you put it on the list, you're like, I know what it means. It means it's on this list. Yeah, totally. That's true. Like I exist and this is a thing about me. Today on our program, lists.

I know they tame the chaos of the world. I have to say, I feel very aware in putting together everything. that I've said to you so far today, the way I did it is the way I write every radio story ever does since, I don't know, forever. The first thing I do is I make a list of all the possible quotes that I might use. So in this case, it was three single-space type pages of quotes from Aviva and from David Wallachinsky, with asterisk by the quotes I like the most. And then what I do is I stare at the list until it just pops out for me. This quote should come first, and this one's second, and this one can end the thing. I have no idea how to write any radio story without a list.

to take control of all the confusion and all the possible choices that I could make and make it make sense. So today, lists how they run the world and everything in it for WBEZ Chicago. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. And hold on.

I have a list right here. Number one, stay with us. Number two, stay with us. Number three, stay with us. This message comes from Wise, the app for using money around the globe. When you manage your money with Wise, you'll always get the mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Join millions of customers and visit Wise.com. T's and C's Apply. It says American Life. Today's show is a rerun. Act 1. List for Life.

So let's start a show today with a list designed as a kind of magical tool for living your life and maximizing your potential and being your very best self. Or anyway, that's what this list was supposed to do. The story comes to us from John Fasiel. We're ready to talk about the list? Sure. You want to see it? It's right. This is it right here.

When do you want to ask me about it? I'm on a Zoom call with my brother Pat, talking about a list that was written by our other brother, Mike. And I want to ask him what he thinks I should do with it. It's one of the last pieces of Mike's writing that we have. What do you think should be done with this list? I don't care. If you burned it, I wouldn't feel sad. I wouldn't be angry.

I'd say, why'd you burn it without me? My brother Mike died in 2015. That's almost 10 years ago now. Geez. And, you know, trigger warning and all that. he died because of a suicidal act. It's unclear why he did what he did. There were stories his roommates told about paranoia, hallucinations,

Mike becoming obsessed with aliens. It was also sudden and shocking that my family and I started grasping around for anything trying to make it all make sense. Which brings me to the list. Mike wrote the list the summer he was about to be a sophomore in high school. 16 principles to live his life by titled Goals for Success

Double underlined on a rectangular piece of poster board There were corny broisms if I'm being honest Make a commitment Be unselfish Create unity come together as never before As you can see Mike was a real overachiever Type A type

Improve every day as a player Person and student Be tough Be self-disciplined do it right, don't accept less. He was captain of the high school football team, straight A student, give great effort, be enthusiastic, eliminate mistakes, don't beat yourself. He hung the list on his closet door, facing his bed,

so that when he woke up in the morning, the first thing he saw was, expect to win, be consistent, develop leadership, be responsible. I first noticed the list when I went into Mike's bedroom to steal a pair of his boxers. I was always forgetting to do my laundry. Mike always did his. And my feelings about the list were immediately complicated. I felt like it was somehow judging me. I was the oldest of my siblings, but to me, Mike always felt older.

He was Mr. Rotary Club, Mr. Scheduled out his daily routine. I was Mr. Been Arrested Twice, Mr. Smoking Weed Out of an Aluminum Can and Probably Doing Irreperable Damage to My Lungs in the Woods. And Mike knew he was better than me. He even wrote a poem in English class about how disappointed he was in me. I'm not kidding. He was titled Second Chances. Back then, I resented the list. I probably made fun of him about it because that was the nature of our relationship, even though we were close. but after he died,

I actually saw these principles as something I should live up to because at that point I was spiraling. Mike was 24 when he died. I was 26. I couldn't get myself together. Drinking, depression, a simmering, futile anger at the universe.

The original had been framed, and I asked my parents if I could have it and hung it up in my apartment by the front door. I thought maybe its commandments might rub off on me. and there it stayed for a bit. I'd glance at it every once in a while and feel again like I was falling short. So after a couple of years, I took it down.

I shoved it in the back of my closet. It just bothered me, the toxic positivity, therapist waiting room posterness of it all. But I also couldn't bear to get rid of it. Which is why I called up Pat to finally figure out what to do with it. If anything, I would think the list would be cursed.

So you can keep it. It makes you feel better. I don't want anything to do with the list. Pat was the closest person to Mike in the world. He's two years younger than Mike, who is a year and a half younger than me. Pat and I can't even agree on the most basic things about the list. And he had neat handwriting. Like, that was one thing that struck me looking at the list is how neat his handwriting is.

It doesn't look neat. Not to me. Yeah, a way. Are there straight lines? Are we looking at the same photo? Yeah, yeah. No, that's not neat. That's neat. Look at the K. He doesn't even dot the eyes.

But he's consistently not dotting his eyes. That says something. That he never learned how to write the letter I? Pat saw something in the lists that I also felt, but I couldn't necessarily name. What role do you think the list played in his death? I mean, the list didn't play a role, but it's a reflection. of his psychology which played every role in his death and shows you the type of responsibility he felt it shows you the type of pressure he put on himself there's nothing about self-care in it and there's nothing about being true to yourself either it shows you a lot of what was

going on with him and this mindset that he got trapped in and that made him very sick. When Mike was a sophomore at Penn State, he started experiencing delusions and he was barely sleeping. But if he felt like he was struggling, he didn't tell anyone. He kept going to class. His roommates noticed, and they were talking about how to get him help. And I think, this is just my opinion, I guess, that Mike didn't want to be found out. I mean, in the past, I've connected the list to Mike's mindset, as in like he was not somebody who's going to be vulnerable if he was suffering. No, he was not.

Are there any bullet points that stand out to you in particular? There's a bunch. Eliminate mistakes. That's one of the ones that's just so stupid. Eliminate mistakes. we meet. You can't. That's why they're mistakes. Yeah. Create unit. Come together as never before. I mean, you don't, he's not just trying to get people to come together as never before. I like that one. That reminds me of he was a good unifier. You know, he had friends across all the

arbitrary social clicks. After he passed, did you think about the list at all? or did you... I didn't give it a lot of thought until I went to the football banquet and heard Mr. Ricky speak, and then I got pretty angry. And then I was pretty annoyed at the list. One of the captains of our 2018

and a 2009 Garned Valley graduate, Mike Fasiel, embodied the qualities of the coachable player. That's Mike's high school football coach. case he can't just tell from his voice, renaming an award after my brother at a banquet in 2016. Mike created and shared a list of goals for success, 16 standards that he vowed to uphold and to use as a compass to guide his path. They were, make a commitment, be unselfish. This is really the moment the list passed into lore, when it became the way my brother was remembered.

The coach paid to have goals for success, professionally matted and framed. That's the copy that I have. He also hung a replica of the list in our high school's weight room next to a photo of Mike in football gear with his tough game face on to inspire future generations, which I appreciated. He was putting so much into memorializing Mike. But later, I started worrying about the kids you saw it

and whether they might judge themselves by it, the same way that I had. We want our players to do what you're supposed to do and believe if it is to be, it's up to me. We want them to be model citizens, model athletes, and model sons. In essence, we want them to be like Mike Fasiel. The coach goes on to describe what happened to Mike.

He says that he fell from the fourth floor balcony of his dorm and that it was an accident, which he got from my parents. That was how they framed it. But Mike didn't fall. He jumped. The list makes me feel sad. But that was when the list started making me feel angry.

To me, it's like this obsession with image that is such a toxic quality of the community that we're from and the family that we're from. We may have looked good from the outside, but alcoholism and mental illness run in our family, and we're a big part of my childhood. You don't need to know the specific. just know that it was chaos. And not even Mr. Golden Child was spared from it. But where I struggled and flailed and totally embodied all that chaos, Mike tried to contain it,

to impose order on it, to fix it by being perfect. And that's what the list is, a manifestation of his drive to be perfect. That's how Pat sees it anyway. It's painful for me, the list, because it's about what trauma, did to Mike, and now these adults are waving it around, like it was some sort of thing to be

proud of with him. And it's, it's, there's a lot of things that I, that I'm very proud of that he did. You know, I'd rather those things be remembered than this, um, insane pressure that he put on himself what do you wish he was remembered for what are the things you want him remembered for i think just who he was really i mean there's really nothing to be ashamed of and but like he wasn't this model person like like in school like we sold weed together like we we provided pretty much the entire football team with weed we had like a little business thing going on like It was funny. It wasn't bad.

It was funny. Like, it's also just the truth. Whether it's funny or not funny, you know, I just want the truth remembered. I don't want to, I don't want to have to deal with these fake stories about Mike. When I was at the banquet, and they gave his, they gave a check to the kid that won his award. And dad, and I'm with dad. And, uh, kid comes up. And dad, dad says to him, it was, make sure you spend this on other people.

That's what Mike would have done. And I look at the kid. That's not what I would have done. That's what I said. And I looked at dad and I go, who are you talking about? Talking about Mike? And then I look at the kid and I'm just like, dude, my brother would have spent this on the dumbest shit. All right?

You do it, you do it ever you want with that. money, kid. Go have fun. Really? You said that? Yeah. I mean, he would have. He would have blown that money. He was greedy and also bad with money. He would buy

like a $400 dollar pair of sunglasses and then like accidentally leave them on top of a car and lose them. Didn't he put a subwifor in his in his car to the point? The subwifor was awesome. Okay.

The subwoofer was such a deal and perfectly for the hatchback. The list doesn't just leave out Mike's flaws. It also misses really the best stuff about him. He was warm, generous, extremely goofy. He was curious, and that was a really good quality that he had. He found people really interesting, so he liked to listen. Be curious.

would be a good one to be on here. Yeah. Kids from my grade, they come up to me and they tell me stories about Mike when they started on the football team and they felt they didn't belong there because the older kids were dicks and they said my brother would come around and he would comfort them and he would encourage them. And then I remember hearing from Alia Pramola and she said when they were dating, Mike had a great relationship with her grandmother and he would watch TV with her grandmother.

I think it was like a game shows or something. Maybe it was a wheel of fortune. And he would just watch TV with her and they would shoot the shit. And yeah, those are the stories that, like, I'm proud of because they're a reflection of who he was. He was a good guy that people enjoyed. And that's the kind of stuff I want to remember.

Last year, Pat wrote to the football coach at our high school and asked him to use the list to spread awareness about suicide. He got him to add a line to the bottom of it. It says, there is great strength and vulnerability as it takes courage to push through the fear and share one's true self with others. Recently, after my wife and I moved into our new apartment, I made a decision to hang up the list again.

It's in my home office. Now I'm the one looking at it every day. And I don't resent it anymore. Maybe it still makes me feel a little weird, okay, but I just I see it for what it is. I don't feel judged by it. And some of the lists I'm genuinely

down with. Like, create unity is a beautiful idea. It reminds me of the best of Mike. But mostly, I just like looking at my brother's handwriting. John Fasiel, he's senior producer at the show's Snap Judgment,

his story was produced by Sean Cole. Coming up, over 100 dogs and one giant bear and its list of enemies that's in a minute. I'm Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's this American life from our glass. Today's program has a rerun, lists how they tame the chaos of the world.

This list is all the dogs in my dog's life are kind of segmented by different criteria. This is Bobby Shorewood, who's friends with one of our producers here, Chris Benderov. He's showing Chris the list that he keeps on his phone of neighborhood dogs. We've got Lunchbox, who is a cream Scotty with a turquoise vest. We've got Virgil, who is kind of some kind of doodle dog, but I said Little Fried Chicken Dog, and the owner looks like my friend Otto. Wait, what is Little Fried Chicken Dog?

Like, some doodles have tight, curly, brown hair, fur, and it looks exactly like fried chicken. So this dog literally looks like a walking piece of fried chicken. Bobby keeps this list because there are so many dogs where he lives. There are like 130 dogs on this list. His memory isn't always the greatest, and he's convinced that people can tell if you don't know their dog's name and you're faking it by saying things like,

how's he or she doing today, or how's your puppy? And he is not into the potential awkwardness of that. And, okay, just for context, he does have a list of people like this, too, to remember the spouses of friends and coworkers that he's not just ones and people's kids. But the dog list, he also finds it helpful to rank all the dogs. So his dog Chewy's favorites are at the top, and his least favorites are at the bottom. Like, there are some dogs that bully Chewy, so we throw them at the bottom of the list, and then we know, hey, this one is who beats up Chewy.

You might want to believe that name. To see how this works in practice, Chris followed Bobby to the dog park. And it doesn't take long before they get into a whist-needing situation. I definitely think I recognize that dog. The tall doodle over there? Walk me through what you're doing. So I see a big boy. I'm sure Chewy's run into at this dog park before.

Let me see. He scrolls down the list on his phone. until he gets to the dog park section, searching for a dog with the description. Shaggy brown doodle, yeah. I don't know. He finds nothing. He'll have to add that one to the list.

Bobby has no idea how other dog owners do it, keep track of all the dogs. Though I think it's entirely possible that other people are no better with the names than he is, but they just don't care. When he and Chris get back to the house, they run into a neighbor's dog who somehow wasn't on the list yet. I'm going to add it to the list, though.

I actually, I've actually bumped into that dog many times. And he always says he's friendly. And it's like, yeah, I know. Like, we've met like 10 times. You think he doesn't remember you? I don't know. I don't know. That guy needs a list, though, you know?

Act 2. Parket list. There's some list you definitely do not want to be on. One Thanksgiving, not long ago, M had people come stay with them at a house they affectionately called the Dacha, because it's out of the city and the Russian. That's just the word Russians use. We totally call it the Dasha.

M is M Gessen. They read about Russia for the New York Times and books. And the day after Thanksgiving, two of their guests left for some of their celebration, and a bunch of the remaining guests, four or five people, went on a hike. Pretty vertical one, actually, up in nearby mountain. So they get to a spot way up high. Yeah, it's an overlook point. It's pretty tiny.

We're all standing pretty close together, looking out at the Catskills and the little town where we live, and then two of us pulled out our phones. As one does. How much nature can you take? And both of us saw a news item that one of the friends who had left that morning had been declared a foreign agent.

Foreign agent. In other words, the Russian government just put them on an official list of people that it is not very fond of. Foreign agent is not a good thing. And this is something that the Russian government does almost every Friday. They put out a list of foreign agents.

Right. It's like this weird, weird spectator sport to see who is now a foreign agent. It's weird. It's like a sinister version of like when Oscar nominations come out or something, you know? Actually, that's not a bad simile because, you know, when Oscar nominations come out,

then you have to wonder what's going to be the outcome for any one of these. And with foreign agents, it's a little bit like that. Part of being on the list of foreign agents is that you're put on notice, right? You're on our raider, we may launch a criminal case against you, which has much harsher consequences. Oh, you can graduate from this.

list to worse lists? Yes. They end up on other lists like the wanted list, or somebody just stays a foreign agent indefinitely. But it's extremely unpleasant. It sort of reconfigures your world. So,

the route on this mountain, M and one of the other Russians reads us on their phones that their friend who they just had Thanksgiving dinner with the night before is now a foreign agent. So we both say his last name. name, Vinyafkin. And this is something that's actually happened before between the two of us, where we just

take out our phones on a Friday, see a name, and say the name, because you don't have to say, you know, Vinyafkin has been named before an agent, because we know it's Friday. M says Russia is now in an age of lists. One of the reasons that we thought to rerun this episode this week is the President Trump is meeting with Vladimir Putin, who's a notorious list maker. He uses lists as an important way that he exercises power. And M says that Russia's current age of lists started when Vladimir Putin created the list of foreign agents. It was back when he first took the presidency for a second time in 2012 and started clamping down on dissent.

At first, it was just organizations on the foreign agents list, human rights groups, media outfits. And then, three and a half years ago, they started adding the names of people to the list. list. Russia actually modeled as a foreign agent law on an American foreign agent law that dates in the 1930s. One key difference between the two laws, among many. In America, to be a foreign agent, you actually have to be working for or acting on behalf of a foreign government organization, and you put yourself on the list. You register as a foreign agent. In Russia, the government just puts you on a list, calls you a foreign agent, and voila, you are one. M says, this list and the way the Putin government's been using it

are typical of the way he's operating these days. It's like very bureaucratic. And so all these lists have weird nomenclosures, right? It's foreign agents list or undesirable organizations or unfriendly countries.

So the United States, for example, is an unfriendly country to Russia. Right. What they mean is like mortal enemy. It's so weird that they feel compelled to divide off the world into the friendly countries

and non-friendly countries that they actually have to write it down on a list. That's a great point. I mean, it's a very, you know, it's a combination of a country

that has the ideology of a fortress under siege and a country that has a deeply, deeply bureaucratic self-understanding. So everything has to be somehow classified and put down on paper

or, you know, in an Excel table. this resurgent totalitarianism and Russia it's really focused on the bureaucracy like the bureaucracy

is it's hard at its its core and that's why lists are so important are you in this list I'm not

I'm on a different list a worse list what list is that I'm on the wanted list because there's a criminal case against me. M says that being put on one of these lists throws you out of the normal world

and into this weird, undefined limbo or purgatory where things are different and more worrisome because it's unclear what's going to happen next. What is clear is that it's a permanent status change. Our program today is about lists and as part of that we wanted to hear from people

who are on a target list about what it's like to live that disquieting life. And M agreed to reach out to some to talk about it, and talk especially about what it's like to be on the foreign agent list. The foreign agent list is interesting because being on that list really can mean such a wide range of things. Like maybe it'll be nothing, or maybe things will get a lot worse. Here's what I'm put together. I've been watching the foreign agent list grow for a few years.

It's now about 400 people, most of them living outside of Russia, and I probably know half of them. That's one reason I've been sort of obsessed with the list. It's a day that changes your life. Just I was cutting the turkey, and I believe that it was, I was in the midst of cutting my fourth turkey in a row. This is Ilya, my friend who was put on the list the Friday after Thanksgiving. Fourth Turkey that weekend or fourth turkey that day? Probably that weekend. And then I saw my wife coming to me, and my...

And I realized that she was pale and just, I realized that something happened. And then she told me that I was declared a foreign agent. Here's Galena Arapovus version of the experience of finding out she was on the list. She's a media lawyer who was representing journalists who had been put on the list. Then she was branded a foreign agent herself. She was the first lawyer on the list. She found out when a reporter called to ask her about the implications. Believe me or not, like for the first few seconds,

I didn't realize that he's actually saying to me that my name appeared on the list. I thought that he was asking me to provide a comment like, what would happen? What if you appear on the list? How that would affect your life? And then I just realized that it's actually not a hypothetical. That he's actually informing me that my name is on the list. Being put on the foreign agent list has consequences regardless of where the person lives.

And once the Russian government names you a foreign agent, you face a bunch of choices. Because there are all sorts of special rules that apply to foreign agents. And you have to decide whether you're going to comply. One rule. Every time you communicate anything publicly or semi-publicly, in the media, or in social media, or in a dating app even, you have to warn people that they're dealing with a foreign agent. There's a special disclaimer you have to use, an extra large type. It's huge. It has to be like in font and letters to why it's bigger than the main text.

Do you remember the exact words? You can say them in Russian if you want. Yes. The disclaimer says this message or information was created and or disseminated by a foreign agent non-governmental organization. Which is quite like a big paragraph, considering the size.

In social media, it would be like in caps lock. It's in all caps, yeah. And it gets more Byzantine. A person who has been put on the list must create a corporation. And the corporation in the eyes of the state is you. And you are the corporation. This corporation has to file quarterly

financial reports, detailing the income you make and the money you spend, submit to an annual audit, and also post regular reports of your activities, whatever that means, on the internet, or submit them to the media for publication. The paperwork has to be perfect every time, but the rules are vague. So you can make mistakes easily, and then, if you made a mistake, here government comes with a fine. First fine, second fine. and then criminal case. So it's all made as a big trap. And all these games around it,

it's like Tom and Jerry game. They are just running after us and we're trying to run away, trying to still do the job. Galena follows the rules. Most of her clients do. Even if they're living outside of Russia. Because everyone has someone or something left behind. Family members that the authorities

can decide to harass, property the authorities can seize. My friend Karen decided not to follow the rules. He'd left Russia right after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and a couple of months later, his name popped up on the list. Like everyone, he still had a million things tending him to Russia. So I knew that I'm not going to play by those rules, and I decided to just. get rid of everything I had back there, including my apartment. So you were thinking that now that you were on this list of foreign agents, your property in Russia was in danger, and you should basically take money out of the country?

Yes. What did that feel like? It felt like nothing. I told myself, like, we don't go there. I mean, in that infinite depth of feelings about, you know, your country, everybody who you left there and stuff, it can drive you crazy. So I just didn't feel anything. A little over a year later, Karan found out that he was.

was on another list, the list of extremists and terrorists. This was, you could say, an upgrade. It meant that the Russian state froze whatever assets he still had in Russia, so he'd been smart to sell his apartment. But being on this list also meant they'd opened a criminal case against him. Just to make this clear, Hedman informed that there was a case against him. Karen had to hire a lawyer to figure out what he was charged with and which prosecutor was charging him. Karan and I have talked about this weird process of having to find your own case, because there's also a criminal case against me in Russia. I found out about it from articles in Russian government media,

and then my name appeared on the wanted list. In the hierarchy of lists, the wanted list is probably the worst, that we know about anyway. I've now been arrested in absentia, and in the next few months, a Moscow court is going to sentence me to seven or eight or nine years in prison. It took my lawyer two months to find the case against me for, quote, spreading false information about the Russian military.

Karen said I was lucky. It took his lawyer six months to find his case. Karen's crime? Years ago, Karen donated money to Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation. Navalny is the Russian politician who died in an Arctic prison earlier this year. And when did you give my money? to the Navalny organization, do you remember? Well, for years.

And that was, of course, it was long before they labeled Navalny Foundation as illegal or extremist or anything else. I was one of thousands of people, I believe, who supported Navalny and his foundation. Do you have any idea how much money you gave them? Not that much. I believe, a few hundred dollars total.

By the way, Alexei Navalny was also on the list of extremists and terrorists. He still is on that list. Because the authorities say they haven't received proper documentation of his death. You know, any contact with Russian state recently resembles more and more sort of contact with hooligans back in elementary or middle school. Bullies. Yeah, like with bullies. This is a feeling that they are very strong, very hostile, and very mild, small-minded.

Yeah, strong, hostile, and small-minded, sort of feeling that they are like big, angry animal who is, trying to attack you when they're scared of you. And who can, like, kill you because they're scared of you. Let's just call this animal what it is. You're describing a bear, Russian bear. That's such a cliche. Come on. With the Russian bear on your heels, you have to watch your step.

If you're going to travel, you have to ask, is it safe? Can I go there? Ilya Krasilchik, a different Ilya, now divides all the countries in the world into three categories. Can't go, maybe can go, can go with consequences. Can go with consequences really means don't go. You don't want the consequences. Ilya started a media outlet called to Help Desk, which reports on the war in Ukraine and helps Ukrainians flee the fighting. In the eyes of the Russian state, he has been a criminal for more than two.

years, for posting about war crimes on Boucher. I haven't been in criminal for as long as Elia has, but I've also learned there's a whole convoluted science to it. Some countries will extradite people to Russia. Some countries might. And then there's Interpol, the international police, which Russia tries to use to have people detained and sometimes extradited. The planning that goes into traveling to other countries can get very granular.

Sometimes it's not about where. you go, but about which company you fly. And this is really difficult, because, for example, Turkish airlines have, if something will happen, they can land in Russia because they have this airport as the Plan B airport. But you need to call every airline and ask them for every route, and I think somebody should do this. You could easily spend all your time, your entire life, perfecting the act, being Jerry who keeps evading Tom. So it's absurd, and absurd should be fun. I don't know, like Kafka.

Yeah, Kafka is funny in some way, but it's also awful. It used to be when a friend was named a foreign agent, I would send them a note saying, I'm proud to know you. Like it was some sort of recognition. At some point, that stopped feeling right. I don't feel proud, not when my friends were put in a list, and not when I landed on Russia's wanted list. When that happened, my friend Elia, the one who was carving the turkeys at Thanksgiving,

texted me, I'm not sure where the protocol is. Do I congratulate you or express condolences? I felt sad. Help me understand the sadness, because, you know, when I found out that, there was a criminal case against me and then later when I found out that I was arrested in absentia

in a sense intellectually it's almost exciting and as people often say it's a sort of recognition and I felt profoundly sad I felt

like I was carrying around another burden that hadn't been there before. What is it? It's a good one. If I'm telling you something rude, if I'm telling you I hate you, it's okay to be sad about that

because it's sad that someone hates me. And when I'm saying that, well, I'm honored by that, or they're stupid. I feel that this reaction just shielding you from the sadness and tragedy of that. The elephant in the room of my sadness is that being considered a criminal

by the Russian state means I'll never be able to go home again. Not even if there is a change of regime. I doubt that the first, second or even third thing they're going to do after Putin is purge all the lists. So like the vast majority of Russians who are on these lists, I'm in exile for life.

For many of us who live outside of Russia, this business of being on lists is really akin to having a troublesome chronic illness. You keep tabs on it, you modify your behavior is necessary, you hope it doesn't kill you, but other than that, you live a relatively normal American or German or Dutch life.

For those who are still in Russia, though, a condition can be much more serious. Zoya is one such person. Zoya is not her real name. She's an LGBT activist, and in November of last year, the Russian Supreme Court declared the, quote, international LGBT movement was an extremist organization. Zoya had been put on lists even before that, though. Internal lists circulated within government agencies. These lists aren't meant to be public.

but there's an illicit service that will search different internal lists and databases and send you what they find, like a Freedom of Information Act request, but fast, unredacted, and for sale. You can just pay very small amount, like $30, and download everything what they have on you, including these informal lists that police create for their work. you will be able to see how this regime see you, what do they have on you, do they follow your flights, do they, like, it's enough information. And what you get is an Excel document or PDF?

PDF, PDF document. On the PDF, the lists you're on are marked in red. So her PDF said extremism and terrorism in red. But again, this wasn't the public list. of extremists and terrorists. Yeah, it's two different lists. If it's possible, I will say it to you in Russian. They're not, they're going to be able to say it in Russian.

Podosurvanie in extremism, in undergris. If you can translate it. So the reason you wanted to say it in Russian is not because you can't translate it, but because the word doesn't exist. Yeah. Right?

So it's like if they added another suffix to the word suspect. So it's like it's closest to if they called you suspectable in extremism and suspectable in terrorism. Yes. It's like this internal list is the draft of a list. like eventually Zoe will probably be brought up on charges she'll be the suspect in a made-up crime but for now in draft form

she's merely suspectable can you tell me why you were trying to buy this information I think it's for me to understand reality around me because when you are inside country you very often don't feel that it's risky to stay there

and where you get this information you understand that no you cannot be in safe you have to be prepared every day that you could be arrested they could come to your flat and it's not a question will they come or not they will just the question is when and will you have time to leave country will you have time to say goodbye for your parents or not. And what did Zoya do after finding out she was on this list of people who would eventually, probably, be placed on the list of extremists and terrorists? She cried. She started making some plans for leaving the country someday. And she made one very practical plan for staying. We bought a very good door.

And when I came to the shop, I asked a guy to recommend my door. The best, the best when police will come and they want to break this door, I need like 50 minutes, 20 minutes. And they choose this door for me. This was the main criteria. When you were buying the door, what did they think you needed it for? They thought that I'm a drug dealer. And the guy told me that, okay, you will have a time like to throw away. to the toilet, everything that you have.

I didn't explain them why I need this door. I think that probably it's a more understandable reason for them. Police usually come in the morning, every evening, before I'm going to sleep. I check the door. Everything, all this, everything should be closed. Because if not, then I will not have this 20 minutes. How many logs does the door have? Three.

And why do you need 20 minutes? I need to clean my computer and contacts because if I will not do this, then all my friends will be in the risk. And also, I have to fix my dog. My dog will protect me and they could shoot a dog. So you have to put your dog in there. room. Yeah, in the bathroom and ask them and kindly ask them to not touch him. Zoya has many reasons to stay in Russia. Since her sister died of cancer several years ago,

Zoya and Zoya's mother have together been raising Zoe's niece. Zoya's parents don't want to leave. Zoya's partner doesn't want to leave. Most important, Zoya doesn't want to leave. So she has decided that she will stay as long as she has. she possibly can. She believes the authorities will give her one final warning, something like, leave the country now, go to jail, and then she'll leave.

I'm not sure why she thinks there will be a warning. When it comes to her niece, though, Zoe is sure that the girl should leave the country as soon as she's old enough. I don't believe that she will have a future. I don't believe that life will be better in Russia. I see now how many people support Putin in these elections

and how people celebrate it. And I wish all the best for my niece. I want her to live in a free country with the possibility to choose partners, work, opinion, and everything. What if I said all the same things to you? It's good if someone wish me all the best. But my niece will, this is what I wish for her.

But of course, she will decide. Just before we sat down for our interview, Zoya told me something that was still pretty new to her too. She was pregnant. I am in a huge crisis now because today, all morning, I just cry. And I feel it how I start to care not about myself, but about a child. It's like this child when they're born will already be on one of those lists. Hannah Arendt called bureaucracy, the rule by nobody.

Maybe that's why it feels so hopeless. They label you an extremist or a foreign agent, and next thing you know, you're using those terms, yourself, to describe your life, because it is your life. Thinking about where you can go, what you can say in public, how you're being singled out by the Russian state can affect people you love, and how it can always, always get worse. And you're never not going to think about it. Am guessing, is an opinion calmness with the New York Times.

and the author of several books, including The Future is History, How Totalitarianism Reclined Russia. In the year since the story first aired, Zoya had her baby and she is still in Moscow. M was sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison for, quote, distributing false information about the Russian armed forces. by the Moody Blues of Bottle Chanel number five A poster of a band called Better Alive. Silk and a Lechette and a black garbelting book about how to get to know yourself. The shirt you adopted used to be mine.

These are some of the things you let me are. Today's program was produced and edited by Nancy Updike and me. Nancy also produced M. Gesson's story. People will be together today's show today include Michael Cometay, Andrea Lopez Crusado of Hugo to Cornfield, Bethel Hopty, Cassie Halle, Seth Lynn, Catherine Raimondo, Safia Riddle, Ryan Rummary, Alyssa Schittler, Melissa Schip, Christopher, Christopher, Marisa Robertson, and Matt Tierney. Our managing editor, Sarah Abduram, and our senior editor is David Kestimbaum. Our executive editor. Help on today's rerun from Suzanne Gavre and Stone Nelson. Special thanks today to Elijah Wallachinsky, Lika Kremmer, Jena West, Isaac Arnsdorf, and Martine Powers. As always, I hope you will consider becoming a This American Life partner. You get to listen to our show without any ads. in it. You get dozens of bonus episodes that honestly have tried to be so much better than we ever dreamed they would be when we first cooked up the idea of doing bonus episodes. And you get a whole greatest hits archive that appears right in your podcast feed. So if you're looking for something good to listen to, it is right there in your feed to sign up for this. Go to this AmericanLife.org slash life partner. This American Life has delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the public radio exchange. Thanks as always to our co-founder, Mystery Malatia. How's he described? episode management style, and a list with three main points. Strong, hostile, and small-minded.

All right, glass. Back next week with more stories of this American life. A rosary. A glass-deam bag. One word. Packed up on my door. It's one word. Goodbye.

Next week on the podcast of This American Life, a man and his car. You know, like, some people also, like, use the pronoun it for the car. I use the pronoun she for her, like, and people say you are in a relationship with this car. In small community where he lives, this guy Ali has the only car, making him the unofficial taxi driver delivery guy and school bus driver. So what happens when his car makes an enemy? That's next week on the podcast on your local public radio station.