831: Lists!!!

A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeeped 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 Lincoln encyclopedia written by an excited and precocious 15-year-old who loved all the obscure details of all the knowledge in all the world.

So, we eventually received thousands of letters, each of which I read.

David Walachinsky 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 1,400-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, this was maybe a little more edgy, in 1975 when this was published, 20 celebrities who had been psychoanalyzed.

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 3 million copies, had four 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.

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 was statistical, you know, what were the worst airlines in the world, based on deaths per miles flown? And then my favorite kind were what we called the annotated lists, 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.

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 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, essentially, I just opened it up to that page in the book. And these are so basic. 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 advantages, sentence of disadvantages. Like it's very terse.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's not the Kama Sutra.

The Book of Lists and the success of the Book of Lists demonstrate so clearly that putting something on a list can have such power and can reach people. But, of course, most of the lists in our lives are the ones we write for ourselves. And it's interesting. People put all kinds of things on them.

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 Aviva de Kornfeld, a producer at our show here. And I learned about the very personal and idiosyncratic lists that she keeps in a staff meeting where I talked about Walachinsky 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, and 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 a couple of my more recent lists and then everyone started laughing and was like, what the hell? In fact, Laura, our coworker, messaged in the chat Aviva's brain with like seven exclamation points. And it felt like a little...

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, um, let me look, uh, 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 your 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. Um, I can't rollerblade. I hate PETA, even though I was vegan for a year and vegetarian for a bunch of years. I just really don't like them.

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, or the 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, Aviva still keeps old defunct lists because they're like a record of who she was. Lists from 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.

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, it's 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 I've ever done, 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.

You ready to talk about the list?

Sure.

You want to see it? It's right... This? is it right here.

Why don't 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.

If anything, I would think the list would be cursed. So you can keep it. If 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.

Doesn't look neat. Not to me. Yeah, way. Are those 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 I's.

But he's consistently not dotting his I's. That says something.

That he never learned how to write the letter I?

Pat saw something in the list 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.

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, a guess, that Mike didn't want to be found out.

No, he was not.

Are there any bullet points that stand out to you in particular?

There's a bunch.

You can't. That's why they're mistakes.

Yeah. Create unity. Come together as never before.

I like that one. That reminds me of, he was a good unifier. He had friends across all the arbitrary social cliques. After he passed, did you think about the list at all?

I didn't give it a lot of thought until I went to the football banquet and heard Mr. Rickey 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 Garner Valley graduate, Mike Fasile, embodied the qualities of a coachable player.

That's Mike's high school football coach, in case you 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.

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 Fasile.

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 still makes me feel sad, but that was when the list started, making me feel angry.

We may have looked good from the outside, but alcoholism and mental illness run in our family, and were a big part of my childhood. You don't need to know the specifics, just know that it was chaos. And not even Mr. Goldenchild 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.

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. There's a lot of things that I'm very proud of that he did. I'd rather those things be remembered than this 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. But he wasn't this model person. in school. We sold weed together.

That's not what he would have done.

That's what I said. I looked at Dad, and I go, who are you talking about? Talking about Mike? Then I look at the kid, and I'm just like, Dude, my brother would have spent this on the dumbest shit.

Really? He said that?

Yeah!

He would have won that money. He was greedy and also bad with money.

He would buy a $400 pair of sunglasses, and then accidentally leave them on top of a car and lose them.

Didn't he put a subwoofer in his car?

Okay.

The subwoofer was awesome. The subwoofer was such a deal, and perfectly for the hatchback. Dad put his foot down for the subwoofer.

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.

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. They said my brother would come around, and he would comfort them, and he would encourage them. Then I remember hearing from Alia Primola, 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 game shows or something.

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 in vulnerability, as it takes courage to push through the fear and share one's true self with others.

Coming up, over a hundred dogs and one giant bear and his list of enemies. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues.

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?

Walk me through what you're doing.

So, 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 till 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.

You think he doesn't remember you?

I don't know. I don't know. That guy needs a list, though, you know?

We totally call it the Dacha.

Masha is Masha Gessen. They write about Russia for The New Yorker and in books. And the day after Thanksgiving, two of their guests left for some other celebration. And a bunch of the remaining guests, four or five people, went on a hike. Pretty vertical one, actually.

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 him 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 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. You're on our radar.

Or 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, they're out on this mountain. Masha and one of the other Russians read this 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. Vinyavkin.

Masha says Russia is now in an age of lists. It started when Vladimir Putin created the list of foreign agents when he took the presidency for a second time in 2012.. And he started clamping down on dissent. At first, it was just organizations on the foreign agents list. Human rights groups, media outfits.

It's like very bureaucratic. And so, all these lists have weird nomenclatures, 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 unfriendly 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, like, 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 in Russia, it's really focused on the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy is,

Masha, are you on 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.

Masha 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 it's 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.

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.

I was cutting the turkey, and I believe that 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 I realized that she was pale. I realized that something happened. And then she told me that I was declared a foreign agent.

Here's Galina Arapova's 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.

So I knew that I'm not gonna play by those rules, and I decided to just.

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.

A little over a year later, Karen found out that he 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.

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 the 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 small-minded.

Small-minded?

Yeah, strong, hostile, and small-minded. Sort of feeling that they are like a big, angry animal who is trying to attack you when they are scared of you and who can kill you because they are scared of you.

Let's just call this animal what it is. You're describing a bear. A Russian bear.

That's such a cliche. Come on.

With a 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 go, maybe can go, can go, with consequences.

Can go with consequences really means don't go. You don't want the consequences.

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. 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, proud to know you. Like. it was some sort of recognition. At some point, that stopped feeling right. I don't feel proud.

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.

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's 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.

You can just pay a very small amount, like $30, and download everything what they have on you,

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.

So, the reason you wanted to say it in Russian is because, not because you can't translate it, but because it's, the word doesn't exist. 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, Zoya 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.

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 it now. You cannot be in safe. You have to be prepared every day that you could be arrested.

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 me a door. 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 time to throw away the toilet, everything that you have. I didn't explain to them why I need this door. I think that probably it's a more understandable reason for them.

How many locks 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 at risk. And also, I have to fix my dog. My dog will protect me and they could shoot.

dog. So you have to put your dog in the other 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 Zoya's niece.

I don't believe that she will have a future. I don't believe that.

What if I said all the same things to you?

It's good if someone wishes me all the best.

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 the child.

It's like this child, when they're born, will already be on one of those lists.

a pair of shoes, a record by the Moody Blues, a bottle of Chanel, number five, a poster of a band called Dead or Alive, silk negligee and a black garter belt,

a book about how to get to know yourself,

the shirt you adopted used to be mine,

these are some of the things you left behind.

Thank you. A special thanks today to Elijah Walachinski, Lika Kremer, Janaye West, Isaac Arnstorf, and Martine Powers. Our website, thisamericanlife.org. If you need something to listen to, you can stream our archive over for 800 episodes for absolutely free, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange.

hostile, and small-minded.

All right, Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life. A rosary,

a glassine bag,

packed up on my door,

just one word,

goodbye.