JAD ABUMRAD: Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT KRULWICH: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: This is Radiolab. And today ...

ROBERT: Well, we have stories on confrontations, faceoffs, throwdowns. All of them leading to a question that is the title of our show, what's left when you're right?

JAD: Doesn't make a lick of sense yet.

ROBERT: Well, maybe—maybe it will when you hear this story.

JAD: No, I'm afraid not. Won't get clear until a bit later. In any case, this next story began when one of our former producers Lulu Miller called me up and said, "Let's just get in the studio. I want to talk you through something."

LULU MILLER: Okay, should we just go?

JAD: Yeah, so you've been—you've been—so okay. I honestly don't quite know what we're doing. I think you're gonna tell me about something that you've been wanting to tell me about.

LULU: Yes. I wanted to quickly tell you what the idea is while—while I truly, like, am still pretty darn confused by it.

JAD: Okay.

LULU: Yeah.

JAD: Gotcha.

LULU: Okay. So dun dun dun dun, it's about my bike trip across the country.

JAD: You say it with a certain amount of chagrin.

LULU: I don't know. I guess I just get embarrassed because it sounds, like, boring, self-indulgent ...

JAD: Now, when I initially talked with Lulu the—she was planning to write a book about this story that we're gonna tell, and I was really there to just help her sound out the ideas and we were gonna use the recording as a transcript for her. So I was just doing—you know, we were just having a ...

ROBERT: Doing her a favor.

JAD: Kinda. But then when I heard the story, I decided "favor over." Let's make this a radio story, because it's—it's spooky. Actually, everyone here on the staff who heard it has had that reaction. And I think it also asks in its small way a really big question, which is how do you do good in a world that's—well ...

LULU: So I feel like I went into the trip very confident about where I stood on people. Being really sure that inside everybody was, like, just another good soul. You know, everyone has quirks and ticks that make them angry or obnoxious or conceited or depressed. But that those ticks are just kind of like a good soul trying to, like, claw its way ...

JAD: Yeah.

LULU: ... through the world.

JAD: Yeah. No, that strikes me as one of your primary assumptions about the world, just knowing you.

LULU: Yeah. Well, "was." Past tense.

JAD: So something changed on this trip?

LULU: Yeah. There was a moment that—so I did the bike trip with my friend Sue.

JAD: Sue, as she explained is an old friend. They met in college. And she says one of the first things that she noticed about Sue was it she would say the most amazing things. Like for example, she is Korean ...

LULU: And she moved to the States when she was 12.

JAD: Speaks English perfectly. No accent.

LULU: But every now and then she has, like, a language mashup that is so brilliant and she doesn't even notice it. One was like, "I don't know, I was just like running around and I was so crazzled that I dah dah dah dah dah." And it was like, "Ooh. Crazzled. That's not a word, but I know exactly what you mean. That's crazed and frazzled. And actually, that's a better word and then like, you know, "I'm just—I just want to like—why is it when I get down I like to eat all this grubbish? I just don't understand." And, like, grubbish is invented. Or like, "My dad is always worrying that I'm just always gonna be trapezing around and dah dah dah dah dah." And she meant traipsing.

JAD: But trapezing is a much better word.

LULU: But, like, trapezing is better. That's like what our whole generation of, like, lowlife a-holes are doing, we're trapezing.

JAD: Point is, Lulu was drawn to Sue, they became great friends. And part of that connection, this is the key, is that they were so different.

LULU: She has a very different personality than I do.

JAD: Whereas Lulu is kind of your classic optimist, Sue ...

LULU: She's very grouchy and always, like, frustrated by people. And she's really, really smart, so she'll, like, go on the most wonderfully enjoyable rants about people.

JAD: So anyhow, they decide to take this bike trip across the country. They'd actually done one before, so they knew they could travel together. And they obviously knew they had this difference in personality. And in fact, as they were biking and stopping in all these little towns they would sort of joke about it.

LULU: She would always yell at me for being what she called an over-engager, which is like we ask for directions and then I'm like, "Really, old man? Now are you a farmer? Oh, you're a beet farmer. How does beet farming work? Oh, you had—" and she's sitting there like, "Jesus! We have 3,500 miles to go."

JAD: So it was sort of charming, they would tease one another. But then they came to this moment where that difference between them stopped being charming and it got kind of dangerous.

LULU: Basically, long story short ...

JAD: A few weeks into the trip, Lulu's front wheel is busted and they roll into this town ...

LULU: Called Pittsburg, Kansas.

JAD: Kind of a small, forgotten town in eastern Kansas near Missouri.

LULU: There is nobody there. It was like all desolate and hot.

JAD: But there was a bike shop.

LULU: So we went to the bike shop and the bike mechanic there, Roger ...

JAD: Big, bald guy.

LULU: Was like, "Well, I don't have any wheels, but I can build you one. If you guys can stay a day, I could build you one today and have it for you tomorrow."

JAD: So they went off, checked email, set up camp. Came back early the next morning.

LULU: We got there, and we could tell he hadn't even started it.

JAD: The wheel was just hanging there where they'd left it. And Lulu says at this point her and Sue started going in opposite directions.

LULU: So I registered that and I was like, "Uh, maybe it only takes an hour to make a wheel and he'll have it ready by 11," you know? And Sue registered that and was just like, "What the F?"

JAD: She said, "I'm gonna talk to this guy."

LULU: I immediately got, like, hot and flushed and didn't want her to say anything.

JAD: Lulu rushes Sue out of the store, telling Roger ...

LULU: "Well, we'll come back soon."

JAD: Two hours later they return again.

LULU: And the bike wheel is still there, not even touched. Sue really wanted to say something, and I think we kind of had a skirmish in the back. Like, I was like, "No, don't." Like, I could tell he was kind of not taking us seriously, but I still was like, if we continue to be nice to him, what reason would he have to, like, sabotage us or—or not follow through? If we just keep treating him with respect, he'll treat us with respect.

JAD: And she says Sue on the other hand was like, "Lulu, don't you see? Like, this guy thinks we're just like these dilettante-ish college girls. This is some weird power thing. He's taking advantage of us." And Lulu's like, "No, he's not."

LULU: And then this, like, stupid "Is Roger gonna make a bike wheel?" turned into a ...

JAD: Turned into a test?

LULU: Yeah. Turned into, like, a test of the human spirit.

JAD: Yeah.

JAD: A few more hours pass. Lulu and Sue are sitting on this couch in the back of the store not talking to each other.

LULU: And then his two little boys come in. He has two little boys, and they were like, "Daddy, can we go soon?" And he's like, "Oh, I got to finish this, but then we can go on the ride." And it—and I remember—I remember he called them "sweetie," and I remember that being, like, a point for me. Because this is, like, a man who calls his little boys "sweetie." Like, that's a good person, you know?

JAD: A few more hours pass and they're still sitting there on this couch, now with these two little boys.

LULU: All four of us on this couch. And they were watching Nickelodeon cartoons.

JAD: And in the middle of the cartoons according to Lulu, there was a commercial for the Army, like a recruiting ad. And she says that was the moment where Sue just lost it. She turned to Lulu ...

LULU: And maybe it was one sentence, and maybe it was 45 minutes. Like, I don't know. But she said, you know, something along the lines of, "The way you think you are in the world as, like, so nice to people, that's a form of deceit."

JAD: And then she says Sue stormed right up to Roger.

LULU: And I'm sitting on this couch fuming.

JAD: And she laid into him.

LULU: "We're not gonna make it by dark and we have to get there, and this is your fault." And she, like, demanded that one of the, like, younger guys that worked in his store give us a ride. And he's like, "Well, this guy's got things to do." And it was just this horrible thing that I was just like, "Ugh." And on my way out ...

JAD: After Sue had already walked out ...

LULU: I tried to say something to Roger like, "Hey, I'm really sorry. I just—it's been a—" you know, I tried to kind of like apologize for her and for myself. And he was like, "Well, tell your friend, so sorry to have inconvenienced her vacation."

JAD: Lulu said that feeling, like this guy that doesn't know them just now assumes they are these spoiled college girls, that just ate at her. She kept thinking, "I don't get it. Like, if we had just been nice to the guy instead of confronting him maybe he wouldn't think that about us." Making matters worse, after they left the bike shop they piled into this car and this kid from Roger's bike shop drove them into Missouri, because that's what Sue had demanded.

LULU: And we paid him and the kid was really nice, but I just was like, this feels so—like, I feel so disgusting being in this car with her. And it just like, the whole thing was awful. Got to Missouri, and I just remember, like, Missouri passing in a blur of me being like, "I am riding with a crazy person." Like ...

JAD: So you felt like suddenly this difference between you guys was serious.

LULU: Yeah.

JAD: And just to walk me through a little bit about—I mean ...

LULU: Well, I have to—I do have to warn you, though, this isn't the moment.

JAD: This is not the moment.

LULU: This is not the moment.

JAD: Okay.

LULU: So let me ...

JAD: Do you want to tell me about the moment?

LULU: Yeah, I want to tell you about the moment, really bad.

JAD: Okay, take me there.

LULU: Okay, so I was just like, finish this trip. And then we get to Damascus, Virginia, where the transcontinental bike route that we were riding crosses with the Appalachian Trail. So it's like, in the mountains. And the town put this little—so they have tons of people coming through. So they put this free hostel for bikers and hikers to stay. And it's unmanned, no one's there. It's basically just kind of like an empty house with wooden bunk beds you can lie your sleeping bag on and a kitchen. So we get there and these two Appalachian hikers are staying there too. And it's just us and them.

JAD: Guy and a girl. The guy she says was maybe 23. Brown hair, super blue eyes.

LULU: The other hiker, she's a young girl doing it by herself. And we're all talking. It's late and we're in this, like, little living room area. And he kind of immediately jumps into the conversation and just starts, like, taking it over with his life story, which is that he thinks he's a prophet. He has the gift of prophecy. He also has the gift of extreme empathy where he can come into a room and he'll be, like, deafened by all the thoughts he can hear in other people.

JAD: Wow. All right.

LULU: And I was kind of like, "All right, we've got a nutter, but I know what he's saying." And Sue was, like, rolling her eyes and then he says, "Oh, and you know, I prophesied the Virginia Tech shootings." And it's like, "Oh, okay." So then there's, like, this silence and it's now like 10:30 pm, and I don't know what you say in that moment. I don't—you know, like, I think, like, in a way make him not feel crazy for that is—somehow in that moment, my instinct is like, just don't rattle this guy, maybe.

JAD: Yeah.

LULU: And then he says, "Another time, I was getting off from work. I was walking home from the bus." He was, like, worked as a chef or cook, you know, in a kitchen and he was walking home from the bus, and he was really late. And he said, "And an African-American woman came up to me dressed in really, like, revealing clothings and turned out she was a prostitute and she offered her services to me. And I said 'No.' And then I blacked out and the next moment I came to and I had a knife around her throat."

JAD: Whoa.

LULU: There was, like, this pause, and then ...

SUE: I remember just, like, my heart almost, like, pounding. Not of nervousness. It was just like but, but, but, but. Just I couldn't let him go on.

JAD: This, of course, is Sue.

LULU: She just starts attacking him.

SUE: I had to correct him.

LULU: "I think that's really irresponsible."

SUE: He pulled out a knife, he said and he was gonna do something. And the fact that he just so cavalierly said that ...

LULU: And I'm, like, staring at her, clenching my teeth. Like, "What the f are you doing? Like, this is—don't behave this way, but don't behave this way right now with this person, please."

SUE: No, you're wrong. Like, if he didn't want to be corrected, he wouldn't have told that story.

LULU: She says, "You know, I think this isn't demonic possession. You need to, like, seek counseling."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Sue: You should confront the—you should talk to a therapist.]

JAD: That moment, Lulu says, she reached down and hit record on her tape recorder, figuring all right if this guy snaps, at least I'll have it on tape for the police. You'll hear his voice in here, but we've concealed his identity.

LULU: And he's like, "Oh, what? I'm crazy because I am, like, influenced by other things?" And she said, "You know, you never know." And the word schizophrenia fell out.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Sue: ... develop schizophrenia.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, man: Schizophrenia?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Sue: Yeah. I know it's a big word, but it's ...]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, man: Everybody has to have psychological issue in the end.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Sue: But you do.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, man: No, I don't.]

SUE: I do remember he was like, "No!"

LULU: He's like, "You're calling me schizophrenic? No, no! It's so typical you would go to that." And she's just, like, taking him to town, and they are fighting and I'm scared.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Sue: Because then you allow the possibility that it's a spiritual problem.]

SUE: We just kept arguing.

JAD: And, like, why? What we trying to get from this guy?

SUE: To admit that I almost killed someone. I almost killed someone. Period.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, man: But it wasn't me. It was me but it wasn't me.]

LULU: And she was just like, "But why are you telling us this? You come out, you show us your journal, you tell us this story. We've known you for three seconds. You clearly are—want to be judged."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Sue: And so I have to judge it.]

LULU: "So your laws are the Bible, which seem to be what you rely on say to respect the laws of the land. How dare you take, like, a life, a human sacred life, you know, in your hands."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Sue: No, you almost murdered a Black woman. That's scary to me. And the fact that you won't confront it as that is even worse.]

LULU: You almost did that. And she, like—I don't know. I had this moment. Like, suddenly ...

JAD: Lulu says she's not sure why.

LULU: But it turned. And I was like, I am so, like, proud to be associated with somebody like this. Like, I am—I would never do any of that. And she just, like, knows how to—stands up for things. And it turned for him too. He kind of like over time slowly started backing down and even conceding I really might need help and I don't know how to get it. And then she sort of softened, and they were really having a conversation. And this thing inside him, like, a different him came out. Like, not the weird crazy person I was just tolerantly accepting. Like, a little being, a real confused person came out and was talking to her, you know? And everyone else kind of dropped away, and—and they, like, go out and share this cigarette on the porch and come back literally like, arm in—like, arms slung over each other.

SUE: I think when you get to the bottom of something with someone, you feel a kind of kinship, right?

LULU: You know, I don't know what they said out there. And all I knew in the moment was like, I'm so proud of her. I'm so, like, proud to be with this person. Like, I realized that she has so much—she just has so much more hope. Like, she is just enraged by anyone who doesn't, like, live up to their potential. Like, I don't—it's like my little theory was like, oh, we're all just selfish and we all kind of are assholes, but—and we're all—you know, but be nice about it. And she, like, has this—a true hope. Like, that actually we could—that actually, like, we're capable of better.

SUE: That's a really Utopian reading of such a crappy part of my personality.

LULU: Seriously? Like, you can't even give me that? Like, is there really no part of you that sees what is so good about this?

SUE: But Lulu, the reason why I say it's romanticizing is that it's actually—it's a kind of, you know, it's like scratching out a scab or something, and that's what I tend to do. And it's hurtful for the parties involved. And it's alienating to me, right? Nobody wants to be around that person.

LULU: But the change you create on the other side? I mean, it's change. It's like, my way of being maybe feels good in the moment and it enables stasis, you know?

SUE: But it also sustains a relationship, right?

JAD: Well, let me ask you this: have you had issues with being cruel to friends and losing friends or something?

SUE: [laughs]

JAD: I mean, I'm just guessing based on what you're—what you just said.

SUE: Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

JAD: Sue actually said that when she got home from the bike trip, her roommates at the place where she was staying confronted her.

SUE: "We think you have an anger problem." So I just—I moved out. There was a big blowout fight and then I moved out.

JAD: So the story leaves you with some questions. Like, if you agree that people are messed up. Like, of course they are. We all are. Then what's the best way to heal people? I mean, do you decide as Lulu does or did, that you should approach the world with kindness and happiness no matter how the world greets you? Or is that kind of giving up? Like, a happy hopelessness. So then do you put your foot down as Sue did and say, "No, you are messed up. Don't be messed up." Is that hope? Or just being mean?

SUE: I don't know. I don't know.

LULU: I don't know. I'm still confused. I'm still very confused.

SUE: Maybe I have it all wrong.

ROBERT: Thank you, Lulu. Thank you, Sue. Thank you, Jad.

JAD: And thank you, big thanks to Damiano Marchetti.

ROBERT: We'll be right back.

 

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