[RADIOLAB INTRO]

JAD ABUMRAD: Okay, from the top, you ready?

ROBERT KRULWICH: Yep.

JAD: Hello.

ZELDA GAMSON: Hello, hello.

JAD: How are you doing?

JAD: We're going to start things off today with this lady.

ZELDA GAMSON: Zelda Gamson. Welcome to our little spot.

JAD: It's beautiful.

ZELDA GAMSON: Thank you.

JAD: She's 80 years old, and these days Zelda lives a quiet life by the sea.

ZELDA GAMSON: On Martha's Vineyard.

ZELDA GAMSON: Did you have some coffee?

JAD: She visits with her grandkids, does some gardening ...

ZELDA GAMSON: We have a birdfeeder, and it is the bird show of the world ...

JAD: [laughs]

JAD: 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 very different nickname. Just ...

ZELDA GAMSON: Z. [laughs] Okay. I was a smoker 30 years.

JAD: Wow.

ZELDA GAMSON: I started when I went to college in 1954.

JAD: At first it was just a cigarette here and there.

ZELDA GAMSON: 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, got my degree, smoked ...

JAD: And somewhere in the fog she meets ...

MARY: Hi.

ZELDA GAMSON: My friend Mary.

JAD: Also a smoker.

MARY: Love smoking. Made me feel very elegant.

ZELDA GAMSON: [laughing]
MARY: We were very good friends.

ZELDA GAMSON: We were part in the early '60s of the Congress on Racial Equality.

JAD: Together they'd organize protests.

ZELDA GAMSON: Well, we would demonstrate.

JAD: And the two of them would even go undercover to fight ...

MARY: Housing discrimination.

JAD: And the backdrop to all of this social change ...

MARY: Smoke.

ZELDA GAMSON: Smoke.

MARY: Yep, you got it. I mean, our houses were filled with these ashtrays.

JAD: How much were you smoking at that point?

MARY: Probably smoked a packet a day.

ZELDA GAMSON: I was a worse smoker than Mary. You know, I was sometimes up to two packs a day.

JAD: Wow.

ZELDA GAMSON: You know, I had kids. I was pregnant.

JAD: You smoked while you were pregnant?

ZELDA GAMSON: I did.

JAD: Wow.

ZELDA GAMSON: Yeah. I feel so guilty about that.

JAD: So, at a certain point Zelda and Mary decide they want to stop.

ZELDA: Yeah.

MARY: Yeah.

JAD: Now Mary, who'd never been as badly addicted as Zelda, it wasn't easy ...

MARY: It was agonizing.

JAD: But eventually she's able to do it. Zelda ...

ZELDA: No. I thought sometimes that I could stop and so I would ...

JAD: Over and over she'd throw out her cigarettes ...

ZELDA: Okay. Done.

JAD: But then ...

ZELDA: Then I'd be around somebody with cigarettes. Oh, F.

JAD: Any reason that she'd give herself.

ZELDA: Cancer, my kids, the smell, the fact that I could die.

JAD: It always lost out to the urge.

ZELDA: And I'd always start smoking again.

JAD: 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 you want to ask right now is—like—how do you get out of this?

ROBERT: You know, you want to do something badly, but then another part of you says no I don't want to do that. So it's you against you, what do you do?

JAD: I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich. 

JAD: This is Radiolab, and today ...

ROBERT: The little deals that you make when you are stuck.

JAD:  With yourself.

JAD: Okay, so before talking with Zelda it just so happened that I went with Adam Davidson ... 

THOMAS SCHELLING: Hi.

JAD: ... one of the Planet Money guys to visit this fellow Nobel Prize-winning economist named Thomas Schelling who's written a whole lot about the seemingly simple idea of ...

THOMAS SCHELLING: Commitment. Arranging it so that you can't compromise. I'll give you an example.

JAD: Here's one from Ancient Greece.

THOMAS SCHELLING: Xenophon the Greek who was being pursued by a huge army of Persians had to make a stand on a hillside, and one of his generals said I don't think this is a good location to make our stand, there's a cliff behind us, there's no way we can retreat if we need to.

JAD: And Xenophon told his General, "Exactly."

THOMAS SCHELLING: Welcome the cliff.

JAD: In fact, he said, here's what we're gonna do, we're gonna march our armies so that their backs are directly to the cliff, that way That way ...

THOMAS SCHELLING: The Persians will know that we can never retreat, we are bound to fight to the death.

ROBERT KRULWICH: You're really binding yourself, you're not binding the other side.

THOMAS SCHELLING: Yeah, it's—it's attempting to influence somebody else's choice by restricting your own choice.

JAD: But then we asked him what if your adversary isn't on the outside like the Persians, but rather, it was you?

THOMAS SCHELLING: Hmm.

JAD: How do you do what Xeonophon did to yourself?

THOMAS SCHELLING: Yeah I—I began smoking when I was 17 years old, I—I did quit several times but I always went back.

ROBERT: Ooh.

JAD: But he did tell—he did give us suggestions.

ROBERT: Mm-hmm.

JAD: One in particular that was so awesome to use your favorite word.

ROBERT: I hate. I ...

JAD:  So diabolical that we just didn't think anyone would ever do it. That is until we met Zelda.

ZELDA GAMSON: Yup.

JAD: Fast forward a few decades.

ZELDA GAMSON: 1984.

JAD: Mary and Zelda now live in different parts of the country.

ZELDA GAMSON: I happened to be going to a conference in Vermont and Mary picked me up at the airport ...

MARY: Right.

ZELDA GAMSON: And I was smoking when she picked me up.

MARY: Which was curious because nobody smokes anymore.

ZELDA GAMSON: She said, "Why Zelda, are you still smoking?"

MARY:  And Zelda said ...

ZELDA GAMSON: Yeah, and don't tell me to stop!

JAD: [laughs]

ZELDA GAMSON: I was very belligerent.

MARY: Yes.

ZELDA GAMSON: [laughs] So I went to the conference and smoked ...

JAD: And were they guilty cigarettes?

ZELDA GAMSON: Nope. They were delicious.

JAD: [laughs]

JAD: But what Mary said was starting to worm its way into her brain.

ZELDA GAMSON: Are you still smoking?

ZELDA GAMSON: Still smoking?

ZELDA GAMSON: Still smoking?

ZELDA GAMSON: Still smoking?

ZELDA GAMSON: 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."

ROBERT: What?

MARY: Did she say $5,000 to the Ku Klux Klan?

ZELDA GAMSON: Correct.

JAD: This was Schelling's suggestion.

THOMAS SCHELLING: It can work.

JAD: But he didn't think anyone would ever do it.

ZELDA GAMSON: $5,000 to the Ku Klux Klan. It just came out of my mouth. You know how horrible they are, right?

JAD: Sure.

ZELDA GAMSON: So heinous.

JAD: But her and Mary made a deal.

MARY: A pact.

JAD: If Zelda smoked she'd have to tell Mary to send the KKK her money.

ZELDA GAMSON: Take it out of my savings or something.

JAD: And you were really serious, you were going to do this?

ZELDA GAMSON: 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.

JAD: What? If she smokes again?

ZELDA GAMSON: If she smokes again.

JAD: Who's the she in that sentence.

ZELDA GAMSON: Me.

JAD: You? What does that mean?

ZELDA GAMSON: Well, that means that a part of me—the part of me that was smoking and might pick up smoking again was an alien part.

JAD: You're saying you were two people at that moment?

ZELDA GAMSON: Yeah.

JAD: And she ...

ZELDA GAMSON: Z. Didn't really want to stop smoking.

JAD: She.

ZELDA GAMSON: She, yeah.

JAD: After the pact Zelda says that often when she would fall asleep ...

ZELDA GAMSON: I would dream of myself smoking ...

JAD: And she'd wake up ...

ZELDA GAMSON: In a terrible sweat ...

JAD: Reach for her cigarettes, but every time she says this other thought would just rush into her mind.

ZELDA GAMSON: The KKK.

JAD: Robes burning, crosses, lynches.

ZELDA GAMSON: Oh God!

JAD: And she'd throw the cigarettes down.

ZELDA GAMSON: I couldn't!
JAD: The idea of them having her money ...

ZELDA GAMSON: I couldn't imagine it.

JAD: Sounds like you really backed yourself up against a cliff.

ZELDA GAMSON: I did.

JAD: Zelda had found a thought that was hotter than the urge.

MARY: And she didn't smoke again.

JAD: Never again?

ZELDA GAMSON: No. That was it. Cold turkey.

JAD: Wow.

ZELDA GAMSON: Look at this. There's a picture of me on a cruise that Bill and I took.

MARY: Here she is.

ZELDA GAMSON: It's a profile picture of me.

MARY: Look at the cigarette.

ZELDA GAMSON: I look gorgeous there. That's the best picture ever taken of me.

JAD: 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, fight. Well the problem ...

THOMAS SCHELLING: I think the problem is ...

JAD: According to Thomas Schelling, is that these selves ...

THOMAS SCHELLING: 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.

ROBERT: Although, you know, there's another way to think about the problem.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: Things that are offered right now have so much more power than things that are offered in the future.

ROBERT: This is David Eagleman. He's a neuroscientist, and he says, you know, really, you can think about this whole thing as a battle about time.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: We'll make all sorts of very poor economic decisions.

ROBERT: Now versus later, really ...

DAVID EAGLEMAN: 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—that are battling this out.

JAD: And the now parts are always stronger.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: 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—the desire ...

ROBERT: I see, so she's—what she's done is she's turned this battle into a present tense battle on both sides. I want a cigarette now ...

JAD: Versus I hate the KKK now ...

ROBERT: Now ...

DAVID EAGLEMAN: Precisely.

ROBERT: So it's a now versus now thing.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: And I think that's the only way we ever win these long term battles is give them some sort of emotional salience. Some reason why they matter to us right now, otherwise it will never work.

JAD: And there are a number of ways of doing this. Here is how Thomas Schelling did it.

THOMAS SCHELLING: 1980. Gather my children together and I said, I quit, and that they should never have respect for their father again if I return to smoking.

ROBERT: And he never—he never did?

JAD: Yeah, that was it for him.

ROBERT: Hmm.

JAD: The thing I—the thing I like about—about those two stories is that like there's the case where, like, okay say you've got these cells battling in your head, you've got the now part, the later part, and the later part is weak, in this case the later part found a way to trick the now parts. And this has a name, this kind of approach, it's called the Ulysses contract, in the Iliad ...

ROBERT: Make that the Odyssey.

JAD: 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 ...

DAVID EAGLEMAN: Sailors were so attracted to these melodies that they would steer towards them and crash their ships into the rocks and die. So, on his way there, before the music started, he came up with a plan, he had his men lash him to the mast with ropes so that he couldn't move and he had them fill their own ears with beeswax, and he said, "No matter what I do, no matter how I'm gesticulating or shouting like a crazy man just keep rowing, just keep going."

JAD: And so, when they got to the sirens Ulysses ...

DAVID EAGLEMAN: 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 Sirens' song.

JAD: Because he had planned for this.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: The present tense Ulysses ...

JAD: By using his men and the rope had literally bound ...

DAVID EAGLEMAN:  ...the future Ulysses ...

JAD: ... to the mast, because he knew that guy would be weak.

ROBERT: We can just move off ocean the for just a moment. 

JAD: Gone. Get out of here ocean.

ROBERT: [laughs] Radio. What a weird medium. Anyway ...

JAD: [laughs] 

ROBERT: Anyway, what if the bargain you strike isn't just about something, you know, very small and now like this puff of smoke, what if it's a deal that you have to do that will decide what you're going to do every day of the next 40 years.

JAD: Yeah.

ROBERT: What then?
JAD: Well, this brings us to a story from our producer Pat Walters, ready?

PAT WALTERS: Mm-hmm.

JAD: Okay, set it up.

PAT: Okay.

PAT: Okay, I'm in Chinatown.

PAT: About a year ago.

PAT: Corner of Pell and Ma.

PAT: My friend Jenny posted something on Twitter, it said: Overheard, "I flipped a coin and I lost my life."

JAD: I flipped a coin and lost my life?

PAT: Yes.

JAD: And what's Twitter?

PAT: [laughs] 

JAD: No, I mean she—she actually heard someone say this?

PAT: Yeah, she was just like—she's a reporter, she was just chatting with the guy and he—and he said that to her. 

PAT: I flipped a coin and I lost my life.

JAD: Wow, what was the context?

PAT: Well, she was getting a massage in Chinatown.

JAD: And how would that phrase come up in the middle of a massage?

PAT: I don't—I honestly don't know.

JAD: But she's a reporter did she—didn't she ask?

PAT: She didn't—I ...

JAD: She didn't say, "Get your hands off me, man, and tell me the story ..."

PAT: 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 ...

JAD: She just heard that ...

PAT: She heard it and she told me that it was at this place that was either at one of seven different addresses that she gave me so I just wandered around.

PAT: Do—do you know of some place around here called Health Trail—massage place?

VOICE: I have no idea.

PAT: No?

PAT: Wandered around to several different addresses ...

PAT: Damn.

PAT: And eventually I found this tiny little store front.

PAT: There's a little sign with some feet. Hello.

PAT: Kind of hidden.

VOICE: Oh, you want to see my—my son?

PAT: And I found the guy who said the thing.

PAT: Hi.

DENNIS: Hi.

PAT: How are you?

PAT: His name is Dennis.

DENNIS: Dennis.

PAT: And I just asked him, "Tell me about this coin flip."

PAT: Can you tell me—can you—so when did this happen?

DENNIS: Well it happened about four years ago. I was 26 and my brother was 21.

PAT: Both of them had gone to college, Dennis for photography, his brother for art. And they come out of school with these big dreams.

DENNIS: Seeing new places, meeting new people, making a life and making money.

PAT: But that hadn't really worked out.

JAD: Yeah.

DENNIS: No job for me.

PAT: They're having a hard time finding jobs and they ended up living at home with their dad.

DENNIS: Yeah, with my dad. So basically I'm just staying at home, taking pictures. And my brother ...

PAT: He's just working at a restaurant.

DENNIS: No life either.

JAD: So this is basically post-college flail.

PAT: Yeah.

JAD: Like they're stuck.

DENNIS: Stuck in the middle of the road. That's what happened to us.

PAT: One day their dad comes up to them and says, "Look guys ..."

DENNIS: "One of you guys gotta take over for me."

PAT: 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.

DENNIS: My father is getting old he has decided either both of you come out, or one of you come out.

JAD: Oh, so one of them now has to carry on his—his thing.

PAT: Yeah.

JAD: But what does his dad do?

PAT: He runs this massage parlor.

JAD: Yeah.

PAT: Sons were not interested.

KAI WU: So yeah. Neither of us want—really wanted to do it.

PAT: That's Kai.

KAI WU: Kai Wu.

PAT: Dennis's little brother.

DENNIS: Because touching people's foot is some kind of disgusting, right?

KAI WU: You know there's always a hairy guy, or like some girl with, like, busted toes.

DENNIS: Disgusting and annoying. Facing his father for twenty-four hours, seven days a week.

KAI WU: Yeah, a little more than I can take. Like, I love my dad. [laughs]

DENNIS: But you just don't want to follow your dad's footstep.

PAT: But their dad says, "Get over it. This is about family."

DENNIS: 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 would have my father's technique.

JAD: It's a special kind of thing?

PAT: Yeah, it's this, like, deep tissue, acupressure ...

DENNIS: It's painful.

PAT: ... type massage.

DENNIS: I don't know if Jenny told you that.

PAT: No.

DENNIS: It's really, really painful.

PAT: Anyhow, they're sitting at home and this question is kind of like silently hanging over them for days and weeks. 'Til one day, they're at a friend's place having some tea talking about their dad and Dennis looks up at his brother and says ...

DENNIS: Let's make a bet.

KAI WU: Let's do the tea leaves thing.

JAD: The what?

KAI WU: Let's see what the—what the tea leaves say.

PAT: 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 and usually the leaves float up to the top flat on the surface of the tea. But every now and then ...

DENNIS: Every ten cups you might see the tips is floating and the rest of the body is inside the water.

PAT: So like the stem, sort of?
DENNIS: Yeah, yeah.

PAT: And then the leaf is hanging down?

DENNIS: Yeah.

JAD: You mean, like, every so often instead of the whole leaf being on top of the water the leafy part just falls to the bottom? And then ...

PAT: Yeah, and just the—the tip of the stem is touching the—the surface of the water, almost like it's hanging down from the surface of the water.

JAD: And this is rare?

PAT: Yeah.

DENNIS: So when you get that, it means it's good luck.

PAT: And is that like a traditional ...

DENNIS: It's for the old people that was doing it, that's how we understand it when we was kids. So we just decide okay, whoever get that ...

PAT: Whoever gets the most lucky tea leaves.

DENNIS: Win. Whoever win you're out. You don't need to work for my dad. Whoever lost followed my father footstep.

JAD: They trusted their whole future to this?

PAT: Yeah.

KAI WU: It was—it was like a spur of the moment thing.

PAT: It—it was.

KAI WU: Yeah, we didn't—yeah we didn't really plan anything.

DENNIS: It's like sometimes people just flip a coin. Like they can't figure out which way should they go so they just flip a coin. When he pour—pour the hot water in they were, like, rolling around like a small tornado inside, they were spinning.

PAT: And then ...

DENNIS: Once it's done ...

PAT: Each cup has a layer of tea leaves on the surface, and Dennis notices ...

DENNIS: I was like whoa, look at it.

PAT: That he'd gotten one.

DENNIS: One piece. I was like wow. It was, like, incredible.

PAT: Then he looked over to his brother's cup.

DENNIS: Oh my God.

PAT: Way more of these lucky leaves.

KAI WU: It was pretty obvious that he lost.

PAT: It wasn't even close?

KAI WU: No. [laughs]

PAT: Do you remember if he was, like, angry or?

KAI WU: He looked like he was deep in thought. I remember thinking, like, damn!

DENNIS: It was—like, it was the worst thing in my life.

PAT: And it basically was. Because now he was bound by these tea leaves to go and work for his dad.

PAT: What happened? Did you ...

DENNIS: The first day I come here to work I don't feel like touching anybody's foot. So he forced me to touch the foot.

PAT: Did he have to like grab your hand and ...

DENNIS: He would just sit down, take off his shoes without washing his feet. Okay, that's kind of disgusting so—he just tell me to try to work on it.

PAT: His dad eventually said, "Practice on your friends."

DENNIS: I was like, "Oh God, no. They still hate me right now for giving them all the pain."

PAT: When that was gone, do you remember, like, what was going through your head? Were you like, "What am I doing?" Did you feel like you were on the wrong track?

DENNIS: Well, uh, I don't know how to explain it ...

PAT: Here's the funny thing, Dennis says that there came a point ...

DENNIS: After a month working on my father's feet it don't feel disgusting anymore. I feel kind of like it.

JAD: He likes it?

PAT: Yeah.

DENNIS: I don't know why. It just, like, making me. It seems nice to work on people. I don't know how to explain. I just start falling in love with this job.

PAT: Yeah.

DENNIS: I don't know how else it happened, I just started working here seven days a week. It has become part of my life. Wake up in the morning. Come here. Work. Go home. Sleep. Come in and work. So it's—it's become part of my life. You know—I got a day off, I don't know where to go. I'm just staying home. I may come back out here and work. That's what happens. It's just—I—I think that's how falling in love is. You don't know how it's happened, when it's happened, it just happen. It was a good lose, I was thinking. I love this job.

JAD: So it sounds like he made this deal with fate and just got lucky.

PAT: No.

JAD: No?

PAT: Kai has a slightly different read on the whole thing.

PAT: Well, so if he had won would you have to do it?

KAI WU: No.

PAT: No?

KAI WU: No.

PAT: Kai says the whole tea leaf deal was really about Dennis.

KAI WU: I think at that point in the back of his head he wanted to do it. 

PAT: Just an excuse.

KAI WU: I think he was just looking for a sign ...

PAT: I have to ask him, because ...

PAT: And when I did ask Dennis he didn't really agree with his brother.

DENNIS: Well, it is, how you say ...

PAT: But he didn't entirely disagree either.

DENNIS: Not that because I wanted to do it, it's kind of I am using my brother to push me to work for my dad.

PAT: What do you—what do you mean by that?

KAI WU: I don't think he wanted to make his own decision.

DENNIS: It might be better to just work for my dad but I don't want to face him. So if my brother just push me, okay I'll be facing him.

JAD: Ah.

DENNIS: That's—that could be what happened.

JAD: So he just needed a push. All right.

ROBERT: What a wimpy thing to do though, you know, when you think about it.

JAD: Why is that wimpy?

ROBERT: Well, I mean he—he wanted to be a masseuse, you know and ...

JAD: He didn't know what he wanted.

ROBERT: Oh, he knew, and he set up his brother to make him do it.

JAD: No. No. If—if you call it wimpy.

ROBERT: I call it wimpy.

JAD: I call it powerfully wimpy. Muscularly wimpy.

ROBERT: Meaning what? What does that mean?

JAD: 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 wimpiness. What do you think about that? Oh, I just tied—I just tied you into a philosophical knot right there, buddy. You're going to be thinking about that one for years.

ROBERT: I'm thinking about it, I'm overthinking about it now and I ...

JAD: Just take it in, take it in. The complexity ... [laughs]

ROBERT: Can I speak now?

JAD: No, David's going to say something.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: 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.

JAD: Thanks to Pat Walters, our Chinatown correspondent, and to Thomas Schelling who's written many, many books, including The Strategy of Conflict, and to Adam Davidson from the amazing Planet Money team, and to David Eagleman, whose latest book is Incognito. We'll be right back.

[DAVID EAGLEMAN: Hey guys, this is David Eagleman, Radiolab is funded in part by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation. Enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world.]

[ZELDA GAMSON: Hi, this is Zelda Gamson calling, more information about Sloan at ...]

[DAVID EAGLEMAN: www.sloan.org.]

[ZELDA GAMSON: Radiolab is produced by WNYC …]

[DAVID EAGLEMAN: And distributed by NPR.]

[ZELDA GAMSON: Hope that's okay.]

[ANSWERING MACHINE: End of message.]

JAD: Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: This is Radiolab, and today ...

ROBERT: Today we are trying to figure out how to make a deal with yourself when most of you doesn't want to do what the rest of you wants to do.

JAD: Right, and we've talked about these kinds of deals when it comes to avoiding the sirens, quitting smoking ...

ROBERT: Figuring out what to do with the balance of your life.

JAD: Now we're going to change things a bit.

ROBERT: Let's say instead of being an addict let's say you're just ...

JAD: A writer.

ROBERT: Yeah, and you want to be inspired. You want the words to come, and this is a very typical situation.

JAD: They're not coming.

ROBERT: No.

JAD: No words. So the question is in that kind of situation what kind of deals could you make with yourself to get the words out?

OLIVER SACKS: This is—this is fanciful.

ROBERT: My friend Oliver Sacks the neurologist and the writer, he made a deal which frankly, I find this kind of astonishing.

OLIVER SACKS: A bargain with creativity. I will tell you, although I probably shouldn't. The first book I wrote, Migraine, was very obstructed.

ROBERT: By obstructed he means he just got stuck.

OLIVER SACKS: Yes.

ROBERT: Day after day he tried to write something down and it just didn't come.

OLIVER SACKS:  And I was just getting desperate on the matter, and finally on September the 1st of 1968 I said to myself, "You have 10 days to write this book. If it is not done then, you commit suicide."

JAD: Wow!

OLIVER SACKS: And under the imagined threat, which seemed to terrorize me in a way ...

ROBERT: Because you're—you're—what, the other half of you thought that the first half of you meant it?

OLIVER SACKS: Yes.

ROBERT: Did the first half of you mean it?

OLIVER SACKS: I don't know. But the result of this was after months of stewing and not doing anything I started work, and what started as a fearful task soon became a joyful task, with its   own momentum.

ROBERT:  And suddenly he had this feeling that there was something inside him.

OLIVER SACKS: Some engine inside me. A wonderful, associative engine, which—which—which weaves thoughts together, brings unexpected things into apposition ...

ROBERT: It has kicked into gear, and was kind of pulling things out of him and putting them right there on to the page.

OLIVER SACKS: I felt the book was being dictated to me.

ROBERT: Really?

OLIVER SACKS: I—I—I was passive, I was the bridge, I was the transmitter, and in fact, I finished the book a day early.

ROBERT: [laughing] That's a strange way to kick yourself in the pants, I'd say.

OLIVER SACKS: Yes. Yeah well, for me a deadline is sometimes felt almost literally as such.

ROBERT: This is not an easy way to go to work every day, I would think.

OLIVER SACKS: I don't think one can make bargains like that.

JAD: Definitely not too often.

OLIVER SACKS: And it will have a cost.

ROBERT: Oliver, of course, did that only once. But the story he told got us thinking, is there a bargain that you can make with yourself ...

JAD: The creative self ...

ROBERT:  ...that somehow avoids this terrible cost.

JAD: Yeah.

ROBERT: That led me ...

LIZ GILBERT: Okay.

ROBERT: ... to a ...

LIZ GILBERT: Okay.

ROBERT: ... woman who just does it differently.

LIZ GILBERT: Well, I have this fascination with trying to figure out how you can live a lifetime of creativity without cutting your ear off.

ROBERT: [laughs]

LIZ GILBERT: You know what I mean?

JAD: And who is—who is that?

LIZ GILBERT: Oh, I'm Liz Gilbert.

ROBERT: And, well, just something a little bit more.

LIZ GILBERT: Okay. [laughs]

ROBERT: Which Liz Gilbert are you?

LIZ GILBERT: I am—I'm the Liz Gilbert who wrote the book called Eat, Pray, Love. I guess that's the way I should describe myself because that's how my obituary will read.

ROBERT: Eat, Pray, Love in case you were born under a rock ...

JAD: Or raised by wolves.

ROBERT: Is one of the most popular books ever, ever in the world, it became even more popular when the book became a movie, and guess who played Liz?

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Julia Roberts: Liz Gilbert is remarkable ...]

VOICE: Julia ...

ROBERT: Roberts.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Julia Roberts: Her courage, and the way ...]

JAD: America's sweetheart.

ROBERT: And the success was great, but she says, you know, it was also kind of frightening because there she was back at home ...

JAD: In front of the same old blank page ...

ROBERT: With a new question.

LIZ GILBERT: How will you ever outdo what you did last time?

ROBERT: Suddenly she's back where Oliver was.

OLIVER SACKS: Obstructed.

ROBERT: She didn't think that the success was going to be there last time so was the last time a fluke, do I even have another big book in me?

LIZ GILBERT: Dangerous recipe for madness.

JAD: Madness.

ROBERT: But then she thought back to a conversation that she once had with ...

JAD: Who? Who?

ROBERT: Tom Waits.

JAD: Ah! Tom Waits.

ROBERT: That Tom Waits.

LIZ GILBERT: That's sort of where this all began is that I was a—I was a journalist for GQ and I did an interview with him, and he spoke about the creative process I think more articulately than anybody I have ever heard. And he was talking about how every song has a distinctive identity that it comes into the world with, and it needs to be taken in different ways, and he said, "You know, there are songs that you have to sneak up on like you're hunting for a rare bird, and there are songs that come fully intact like a dream taken through a straw, and there are songs that you find little bits of like pieces of gum under the desk and you scrape them off and you put them together and you make something out of it." And he said there are songs that need to be bullied, where he said he's been in the studio working on a song, and the whole album is done, and this one song won't give itself over. And he said, you know, everyone's gotten used to seeing him do stuff like this, he'll march around the studio talking to the song, saying, "The rest of the family's in the car, we're all going on vacation, you're coming along or not? You got 10 minutes or else you're getting left behind," you know? And he's like, you gotta shake it down sometimes.

ROBERT: Liz says that interview was maybe the first time that she thought of inspiration as—as—as an ...

LIZ GILBERT: It. I remember feeling my own center of gravity shift, and thinking wait, you're allowed to talk to this thing?

ROBERT: If the source of her ideas was outside her then she could get some distance from it, maybe negotiate with it, even fight with it, instead of beating herself up all the time.

LIZ GILBERT: Right, and the—the story that I loved that he told me about where his artistic anxiety ended and his sort of new artistic liberation began is when he's driving along the freeway in Los Angeles in like eight lanes of traffic one day and this little fragment of a beautiful song comes into his head.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Tom Waits Singing: Sun come up it was blue and gold ...]

LIZ GILBERT: And he has no way to record it. He's got no pencil, he's got no tape recorder, and he's in eight lanes of stressful traffic.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Tom Waits Singing: Sun come up it was blue and gold ...]

LIZ GILBERT: And he immediately starts to feel all the old pressure that he's felt all his life of I'm not good enough, I—you know, all the old artistic struggle, right? I can't do it, I'm not good enough, I'm gonna lose it, it'll haunt me forever. And then he just backed off from it, and instead he established that negotiating distance between him and the melody and he looked up in the sky and said, "Excuse me, can you not see that I am driving? If you're serious about wanting to exist I spend eight hours a day in the studio, you're welcome to come and visit me while I'm sitting at the piano, otherwise just leave me alone and go bother Leonard Cohen."

ROBERT: Oh, that's very bold.

LIZ GILBERT: It is. I think that's what she wants. She wants you to push back and she wants you to set some terms and some boundaries. She doesn't want you ...

ROBERT: Until you go to the Leonard Cohen concert two years later and there it [bleep] is.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Leonard Cohen Concert: So very kind of you to come to this.]

ROBERT: Now this idea that somehow the creative act comes from outside you. You get a visit from a somebody. This isn't a new idea, this is a very old idea.

LIZ GILBERT: You know, the Greeks would call it a Muse, the Romans called it the Ingenium, the Genius. Which was an interesting idea because it's not the way we use genius today, right. Today we say a person is a genius and back then they would have said that a person had one. And again, it's this separation so that the creative person has this externalized collaborator.

ROBERT: So this is a Tinkerbell-y kind of a thing? It sprinkles you. It has little wings and it flies away?

LIZ GILBERT: I think it depends—I think it depends on the process, I mean, it's got a lot of names because it takes a lot of forms, right? And—and we're talking about all this as though these are—I actually kind of believe this, because I don't think it would work otherwise, but I kind of do believe that the world is being constantly circled as though by gulf stream forces, ideas and creativity that want to be made manifest, and they're looking for portals to come through in people. And if you don't do it they'll go find someone else, you know? And—and so you have to convince it you're serious, and—and you have to show it respect and you have to talk to it and let it know you're there. Like, for the last few years there's been a novel that has been sort of stirring in me and I haven't had time to give it the attention it wants me to give it, but every day I talk to it and I have a little conversation with it and I say "Listen, I'm—in April I will be with you. I want you to stay. Don't let me wake up and read in the New York Times that someone else wrote you. Stay here with me, I'm coming.

ROBERT: This sounds like it's a golden retriever or something. You have to keep petting it.

LIZ GILBERT: Actually, that's probably as good a metaphor for me as any because I would relate to that, being half golden retriever myself and liking dogs, that's great.

PAT: And when you say you talk to it in its golden retriever form ...

ROBERT: That's our producer Pat Walters.

PAT: Like do you actually talk to it?

LIZ GILBERT: Yeah. [laughing]

PAT: Out loud?

LIZ GILBERT: I do. I talk—that's why I have to work alone in a quiet room, because I talk to it all the time. And I ask it questions, I say, "What do you—what is it you want me—what is it that you want me to be doing here, because you seem to be resistant to what I'm trying to do here." Like, show me, give me a clue. Like I—the title of Eat, Pray, Love was the last thing that came of that book, and—and the book was about to be published, and it had any number of ridiculous, stupid titles that—that I'm not going to tell you because they're so embarrassing and they're so not what that book was meant to be titled, and I ended up writing an email to all my friends and saying, the subject heading was title search, and I said my [bleep] book won't tell me it's name and can—can all of you help me, and a friend of mine wrote back and said, "Um, if you're going to talk to it like that it's not going to tell you anything." My [bleep] book, right? So I really did that night.

ROBERT: So you sweet talked it back into ...

LIZ GILBERT: Sweetheart, listen. I respect you, I love you, I honor you, I have defended you these last few years, I want to bring you into the world but you have to tell me your name. And the next day. Eat, Pray, Love.

ROBERT: Just like that.

LIZ GILBERT: And you know it because it's—I know the difference between something I thought of and something I was given. I can—I can tell the difference.

ROBERT: Hmm.

ROBERT: She says sometimes it's the whole scene, sometimes it's just a word, maybe a phrase.

LIZ GILBERT: And then you have the job to make it into something.

ROBERT: Wait, but if I—if I say to you two roads diverged in a yellow wood.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Two roads diverged in a yellow wood ...]

ROBERT: So you can write that down, two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and you're done.

LIZ GILBERT: Do you know how that poem got written?

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Two roads ...]

LIZ GILBERT: So he was working for—I may be exaggerating this because I tend to, but I'm going to tell it my way—how I heard it.

ROBERT: Okay. [laughs]

LIZ GILBERT: He was working for months and months on a—on what was going to be the greatest epic poem of his life. It was the biggest challenge he was taking on—he was going to be up there with the masters with this.

ROBERT: You should name the person we're talking about.

LIZ GILBERT: Yes, this would be Mr. Frost.

ROBERT: Robert Frost.

LIZ GILBERT: And—and—and he worked on it for, you know, for ever and ever. I mean, perspiration, perspiration, perspiration, right? And it was 20, 30 pages long, and I don't know what the meter was, whatever it was it was the most ambitious thing he'd ever done, and it was arduous and it probably had sweat all over it. Put it down, went to sleep, woke up, sat down and wrote two—two roads in—all of this in one setting this tiny, perfect immaculate thing was created that had nothing to do with what he had just done. He earned it. I think the angels reward people who are at their desk at six o'clock in the morning working, and he earned it by showing his—his intent to be a great poet, and they said okay cool, you showed your intent, that thing you just wrote was crap, I'm gonna give you this one, here's your reward, so then I ...

ROBERT: What evidence do you have for this?

LIZ GILBERT: None.

ROBERT:  ...of justice?

LIZ GILBERT: None. None, except for that it's a great story, and I like the idea and I feel like—I really do feel like when they see me working they take pity on me, and they say look, you're showing a real commitment to this, you've been up at 5:00 every morning for the last year working on this novel I'm just gonna give you the ending you know, or I'm, I'm gonna spare you from that really bad idea you just had. And, you know, I always think of it like Henry Ford's famous line about how creativity is 99 percent perspiration and one percent inspiration, which is a very mechanical way to divide it up, but it also assumes that those two things have equal weight, that they're the same quality, right? I agree with 99 percent perspiration one percent inspiration, but it's 99 percent oyster, one percent pearl. You can't even compare the matter. Like, it's a bargain to get one percent inspiration, you know, it's a miracle.

JAD: I could get with the muses.

ROBERT: Mm-hmm.

JAD: Sort of.

ROBERT: What do you mean?

JAD: Well I think it's interesting that you can hear at one point she says that she believes it.

LIZ GILBERT: I just kind of believe it.

JAD: And at another point she says it just makes a good story.

LIZ GILBERT: It's a great story, and I like the idea ...

JAD: So you can hear her negotiating with the idea.

ROBERT: Yeah, of course. She's a little bit between the two thoughts.

JAD: Which is interesting ...

ROBERT: I mean, you know—you know a serious neuroscientist would tell you ...

JAD: That it's all in your unconscious ...

ROBERT: It's all you all the time. But another way to think of it is to—is to say that you got a gift and—and therefore it's not all about you and it's bad, and it's still about you when it's good, but it's not all about you, it's just this business of all.

JAD: All right. Okay.

ROBERT: This is a form of well-organized modesty.

JAD: It's a nice phrase I'm just gonna—just gonna go with that.

ROBERT: Yay.

JAD: It's time for us and our fairies to go to break.

ROBERT: [laughing]

[LISTENER: This is Drew Louis from Salt Lake City. Radiolab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org.]

JAD: Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: This is Radiolab, today ...

ROBERT: We are continuing our search for ways to outside one's self solve the problems going on inside one's self.

JAD: Whoo. That was nicely done. Now thinking back to Oliver Sack's story that we heard at the top of the last segment ...

ROBERT: Mm-hmm.

JAD: This notion that you—one might use terror to—to broker a relationship with one's creative self, or one's, perhaps, addicted self, let's take that idea and kick it up a notch, maybe two notches.

GREGORY WARNER: All right, let's just—let's just go, I mean ...

JAD: For that we go to reporter Gregory Warner.

GREGORY WARNER: Reporter with Marketplace.

JAD: Though Marketplace was nice enough to let us borrow him for this story he's about to tell. 

GREGORY WARNER: Right.

ROBERT: Now you understand that I have no idea, Gregory, none whatever it is that you're about to tell me, I—I've been purposely been kept in the dark.

JAD: Yes.

ROBERT: Unless, of course, you've already told me somewhere—on the street somewhere.

JAD: [laughs]

GREGORY WARNER: No, I'm sure you've forgotten that.

ROBERT: Oh good, okay.

JAD: So Greg, just set it up. How did you find out about this?

GREGORY WARNER: I—I heard about it while washing dishes, actually.

JAD: Oh.

GREGORY WARNER: My wife was telling me about a friend's ex-boyfriend who was an alcoholic.

JAD: A friend's ex-boyfriend.

GREGORY WARNER: Friend's ex-boyfriend who's an alcoholic in Russia, he's—he's Russian, and this man didn't want to drink anymore and the treatment that he got was to have a capsule inserted under the skin, some kind of chemical compound that if he drank again this capsule would explode into his bloodstream and kill him.

ROBERT: What? Wait, he was given a bomb that would be triggered by his bad behavior?

GREGORY WARNER: Exactly.

JAD: And that's all you knew.

GREGORY WARNER: That's all I knew.

ROBERT: Well, but wait a second. Who would do this? Who—who did he go to?

GREGORY WARNER: Well that's—that's what I—fortunately I was on my way to Russia.

JAD: [laughs]

ROBERT: Oh.

JAD: And—and what was the question on your mind. Was this real?

GREGORY WARNER: Check, check.

GREGORY WARNER: So I get to Moscow, and I had hired an interpreter, her name is Ana Masterova.

ANA MASTEROVA: It's hard to tell what—what street I'm on right now.

GREGORY WARNER: She had found this clinic that does this treatment. We go in through the gate ...

ANA MASTEROVA: We call this area Lungs of Moscow.

GREGORY WARNER: The Lungs of Moscow.

ANA MASTEROVA: Because the wind is coming through this area, it's coming southwest.

GREGORY WARNER: And we arrive at this sort of large house, kind of a drab exterior, they usher us immediately into a waiting room. There's a fish tank, there are plants ...

JAD: Oh.

GREGORY WARNER: Pretty lush.

JAD: So it wasn't very hospital-y?

GREGORY WARNER: No, not very hospital-y, very, very comfortable.

GREGORY WARNER: That's a real lazy fish.

GREGORY WARNER: And then we're summoned.

GREGORY WARNER: Hi, my name is ...

GREGORY WARNER: The head doctor is named Viacheslav Davydov. He greets us, we—we come into his—his pretty spare office.

ROBERT: Can you describe Viacheslav Davydov?

GREGORY WARNER: He looks actually exactly as you'd guess a—a Russian psychotherapist narcologist would look.

JAD: I have no guess for that.

ROBERT: What is that? Yeah. [laughs]

GREGORY WARNER: Maybe I take that back.

JAD: [laughs] 

GREGORY WARNER: He's got a pointy beard, and he's got a bulbous head.

VIACHESLAV DAVYDOV: [speaking Russian]

GREGORY WARNER: Bright, bright green eyes.

VIACHESLAV DAVYDOV: [speaking Russian]
JAD: And this man is a doctor?

GREGORY WARNER: And this man is absolutely a doctor. There are degrees on the wall.

ANA MASTEROVA: So usually this capsule is inserted into the buttocks. Actually, that's why it was called a torpedo. Because it is placed in a person's butt and kept the way a torpedo in a submarine is kept.

ROBERT: In your butt?

GREGORY WARNER: Well, under the skin of your butt.

ROBERT: Under? Oh.

GREGORY WARNER: And how does—if the person drinks does it make them sick, or does it make them die?

GREGORY WARNER: He said, you know, it doesn't—it shouldn't kill you.

JAD: It shouldn't. [laughs]

ANA MASTEROVA: One can never exclude death, but of course the doctor is not going to kill his patient. But the person will feel bad, extremely bad. He will have pains almost unbearable.

GREGORY WARNER: Accelerated heart rate, shortness of breath.

ANA MASTEROVA: Everything.

GREGORY WARNER: Nausea.

ANA MASTEROVA: Stomach.

GREGORY WARNER: Vomiting, throbbing headache.

ANA MASTEROVA: Headache.

GREGORY WARNER: Visual disturbance. Mental confusion ...

ANA MASTEROVA: You can't breathe.

GREGORY WARNER: And circulatory collapse.

ANA MASTEROVA: And this medicine can remain in the body for a short period of time to like three years for instance.

ROBERT: But the pill is real?

GREGORY WARNER: So that's exactly what I asked him next.

GREGORY WARNER: Is the capsule in some way a placebo?

ANA MASTEROVA: Yes, it's not a placebo.

JAD: It's not a placebo.

ANA MASTEROVA: If you don't believe I can give you a pill and that will be like coding for one day.

GREGORY WARNER: Okay.

ROBERT: You agreed.

JAD: Wait. You took the freaking pill?

GREGORY WARNER: I said I would.

GREGORY WARNER: And can you give me a pill that would last three years?

ANA MASTEROVA: If you agree.

JAD: Gregory, what the [bleep]?

ROBERT: You're a crazy person.

GREGORY WARNER: I'll tell you what I was thinking, because at this point Davidov and I had been talking for like two hours and he hadn't let me out of the office. I had asked to see the procedure room and I had asked to see the torpedo, and so I realized the only way to actually see it was to agree to have it done.

ROBERT: Oh.

ANA MASTEROVA: Patient. You'll be a patient.

GREGORY WARNER: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

VIACHESLAV DAVYDOV: You ready?

GREGORY WARNER: Yeah, let's go.

GREGORY WARNER: We leave the office, we go down a hallway and some stairs. There's no lush carpet, no fish tanks, no plants. 

JAD: Was that someone screaming?

GREGORY WARNER: Yeah.

ANA MASTEROVA: No, it's a psychiatry clinic.

GREGORY WARNER: Meanwhile, my translator's getting worried, she's like ...

ANA MASTEROVA: What if you meet a friend?

GREGORY WARNER: You know, if you meet a friend in Russia you have to go drinking with them, I said, then, you know ...

GREGORY WARNER: Then I'll—then I'll die in his arms.

JAD: [laughs]

GREGORY WARNER: So he leads me into this room. It looks just like an exam room in a doctor's clinic. There's the sink and the nurse, the heart defibrillator machine ...

JAD: Oh no.

GREGORY WARNER: Can I see the ...

GREGORY WARNER: And he just immediately ignores me, kind of picks up some instruments, washes his hands ...

GREGORY WARNER: Can I see the torpedo?

GREGORY WARNER: He then turns, and says yes, there is a cut. He does a stabbing motion with his hand.

ANA MASTEROVA: Make a small cut ...

GREGORY WARNER: This is how deep it is ...

ANA MASTEROVA: Surgical instrument ...

ROBERT KRULWICH: So he's going in?

GREGORY WARNER: Well, just before he's going to cut open my butt—and he does this with everybody, he gives you a pill, which is the same drug, but it only lasts for one day and then he tests it.

JAD: He tests it.

ROBERT: How does that work?

ANA MASTEROVA: You take a pill and he'll give you a drop of alcohol.

GREGORY WARNER: He puts just a drop of vodka ...

ANA MASTEROVA: Small drop of ...

GREGORY WARNER:   ...on your tongue.

ANA MASTEROVA:  ...alcohol, and he ...

ROBERT: A drop of vodka.

GREGORY WARNER: Once that drop of Vodka hits my tongue I will feel all those symptoms.

ANA MASTEROVA: Your heart sinks, you can't breathe. And generally, that person feels that he's dying. Sometimes people are so scared they urinate right here.

GREGORY WARNER: Maybe—can I take it at home?

JAD: [laughs]

GREGORY WARNER: So I ...

GREGORY WARNER: Actually no, I don't want to take it ...

GREGORY WARNER: ... chickened out ...

JAD: Whew.

GREGORY WARNER: I'm not strong enough.

GREGORY WARNER: He at that point had realized he had won and he shows me the pill at this point.

ANA MASTEROVA: This is what is inserted in the body.

GREGORY WARNER: Really, this is it? It's so ...

VIACHESLAV DAVYDOV: Little.

JAD: Little.

VIACHESLAV DAVYDOV: Little.

GREGORY WARNER: About the size of a tic-tac.

ROBERT: A tic-tac.

JAD: Okay.

ROBERT: The tic-tac torpedo. It just comes right off the lips.

GREGORY WARNER: It turns out that inside that little pill is a very real drug. It's called Disulfiram.

EUGENE RAIKHEL: And it was—it was actually a substance that was used in the rubber industry.

GREGORY WARNER: This is Eugene.

EUGENE RAIKHEL: Eugene Raikhel, I'm an assistant professor at the University of Chicago.

GREGORY WARNER: He's writing a—a whole book about these treatment programs in Russia. He says this drug was discovered back in the early 1900s.

EUGENE RAIKHEL: And they found that the—that the workers in the rubber industry were unable to tolerate alcohol. This is kind of folk knowledge in that—in that industry for a while.

JAD: So, is it like, "Don't give that guy a beer, he works in rubber?"

EUGENE RAIKHEL: I mean basically what Disulfiram does is—is it creates a kind of toxic byproduct.

GREGORY WARNER: Disulfiram blocks a certain enzyme from being absorbed and it causes all these very real symptoms.

ROBERT: So you'd get a little bit poisoned.

EUGENE RAIKHEL: Yeah.

JAD: And is this used outside of these Russian clinics?

GREGORY WARNER: It—it—it is, but there is a big difference, and only in these Russian clinics do they have these long-acting capsules ...

EUGENE RAIKHEL: Long-acting form of Disulfiram, which is not something that exists. The subdermal implants, basically they—they don't release any disulfiram after—you know—the first week, or something like that.

GREGORY WARNER: So—so if I had taken that drop of alcohol then I would've felt all those symptoms but it doesn't last for longer than a week.

EUGENE RAIKHEL: Yeah, so effectively that's—basically a ...

ROBERT: Scam, I believe scam is the word you're looking for.

EUGENE RAIKHEL: [laughs] Um ...

JAD: Like, how mainstream is this? I mean is this the equivalent of like guava pills or whatever they are, where you can find them in like vitamin shops but they're kind of fringey?

EUGENE RAIKHEL: That's the thing is that this is not fringey at all. You know, over 60 percent of the treatment options offered by Russian narc—narcologists.

JAD: Wow.

ROBERT: 6-0, 60, like more than half?

EUGENE RAIKHEL: Yep, yep, yes, yes.

GREGORY WARNER: Yeah and Eugene emailed later to say he was just being conservative. The real number is closer to 80 percent.

JAD: Wow!

ANA MASTEROVA: ... had coded, which happened 15 years before he died.

GREGORY WARNER: My own translator Ana, her uncle went through this procedure.

ANA MASTEROVA: When he—when he was drunk he—he didn't care. Before, I remember my grandmother crying all the time because he could go fishing and then disappeared for a night.

GREGORY WARNER:  And this guy, texbook alcoholic.

ANA MASTEROVA: Everybody knew that he was drunk.

GREGORY WARNER:  Went through this coding procedure—it's called coding because it wasn't the drug form that goes in your butt it was actually a—a kind of hypnotic suggestion that goes in your brain, but same general procedure.

ANA MASTEROVA: ... doctor in the white gown. He was doing something with his hands, some gestures in Sergei's face, and then he, Sergei, closed his eyes and he had the feeling that some wicked force was pulled out of his body.

ROBERT: And this guy finished high school?

GREGORY WARNER: This guy was an aeronautical engineer.

ROBERT: Oh.

GREGORY WARNER: My sense is that—that there's some people who suspend their disbelief, because at some level there's the motivation to do that.

JAD: But if it only lasts a week why wouldn't people like after two weeks or a month or six months just start—just take a sip and realize oh, nothing happened and they just start drinking again?

GREGORY WARNER: Well, some people do.

JAD: Some people do.

GREGORY WARNER: First of all, there are lots of people who do go to 12-step therapy, and who go—do go to ...

ROBERT: 60 percent. 60 percent. You said that.

JAD: 80 percent.

GREGORY WARNER: No, no, no, no, no. I know. I know. It's—it is very prevalent and very popular.

ROBERT: When you listen to the story we thought there's something very Russian about this. It ...

GREGORY WARNER: Yeah.

ROBERT: That it's got a—a sense of submission and belief all sort of asserted by a higher authority with no way to check or no way to second guess.

GREGORY WARNER: Even the way in which repression is used instead of acceptance.

ROBERT: It just feels very Russian and wouldn't work in Manhattan, wouldn't work in Los Angeles, wouldn't work in Chicago.

GREGORY WARNER: I think the—here's the distinction, in North America, the prevailing understanding of addiction is it is a disease of denial, it's not about the substance as much as it is that you're kind of out of touch with some kind of truths about yourself and your condition. That's a radically different understanding of what the problem is than the one that underlines ...

JAD: But as a—I'm sorry to interrupt—as a skeptical American, I've got to say there is something about this treatment, this Russian treatment, that makes sense to me. Seems to me when you're in the grips of an addiction you've already lost control of a certain part of yourself or a part of yourself is already in control that shouldn't be, and you can try and kind of love that part and make peace with it and hug it and do the 12-step thing, or you can [bleep] destroy it, you know, build a wall around it so you don't have to deal with it.

GREGORY WARNER: That's what Davydov is so good at, imprisoning that part of you.

VIACHESLAV DAVYDOV: [speaking Russian]

ANA MASTEROVA: Do you know what panic—attacks of panic are?

VIACHESLAV DAVYDOV: Strak.

VIACHESLAV DAVYDOV: [speaking Russian] ...strak.

JAD: Strak?

GREGORY WARNER: Strak is fear.

JAD: Fear.

ANA MASTEROVA: Very strong fear, do you understand what it is?

GREGORY WARNER: Very strong—very strong fear.

GREGORY WARNER: This is when Dr. Davydov told me that he had trained as a psychotherapist during the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the '80s. He says to me imagine a situation where a soldier sees his friend on the road. He has mines tied to his body, he has no ears, no eyes, his legs are cut but he's still alive. According to all rules this kind of person should be taken to the hospital. But after seeing this every soldier says to his friend, "If you find me in this kind of condition, tortured by the Mujahideen, kill me." Just watching these tortures can drive a person crazy.

JAD: Is that just something he was having you imagine, or are you saying that's something he saw?

GREGORY WARNER: That's something he saw. What he learned from the way in which these Mujahideen were fighting this war is that you can—you can kill your enemy—that's one method of warfare—or you can strike fear into the heart of your enemy and kill not only that soldier but terrorize his whole platoon.

ANA MASTEROVA: And what rules this world?

VIACHESLAV DAVYDOV: Strak.

ANA MASTEROVA: Fear.

GREGORY WARNER: If he could make you afraid he could change you.

ANA MASTEROVA: This coding, it completely changed his life.

JAD: This is her uncle?

GREGORY WARNER: Yeah.

ANA MASTEROVA: He became very—I had a feeling that he sort of discovered the life for himself again. He started gardening. He started picking mushrooms.

GREGORY WARNER: Do you think coding worked?

ANA MASTEROVA: I guess. Yeah, I don't know how it worked but it worked for him because he hadn't drank 'til the rest of his life.

JAD: Thanks Greg.

GREGORY WARNER: All right, thanks.

ROBERT: Okay.

JAD: I got to say that—that right there, that's Ulysses's contract.

ROBERT: Yes.

JAD: Except for instead of the rope you got fear.

GREGORY WARNER: Right, as opposed to say if Ulysses went through—went through—you know counseling about the—the sirens and—it's not necessary—in fact the sirens aren't that hot, in fact you'll die. Yeah, and you know you really have a wife. She's nice too.

JAD: Anyhow, thanks to Marketplace for letting us borrow Greg. Greg has a great series he's putting together on—what is it?

GREGORY WARNER: Yeah, a series of stories on Marketplace about the economics of healthcare in—in Russia.

JAD: Which you can get to from Marketplace, or also Radiolab. And if you go there you can subscribe to our podcast.

ROBERT: Even wily Ulysses's wife Penelope just signed up the other week.

JAD: I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: Thanks for listening.

[ANA MASTEROVA: I'm Ana Masterova, Radiolab is produced by Jad Abumrad and Lynn Levy. Our staff includes Soren Wheeler ...]

[VOICE: Soren Wheeler ...]

[ANA MASTEROVA: Soren Wheelie—Wheeler ...]

[VOICE: Ellen Horne, Tim Howard, Brenna Farrell and Pat Walters.]

[ANA MASTEROVA: With help from Jessica Gross, Douglas Smith ...]

[VOICE: Luke Calzonetti and Abby Wendle.]

[ANA MASTEROVA: Special thanks to Kate Edgar and Dennis McArth. [speaking Russian]]

[ANSWERING MACHINE: End of message.]

 

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