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Our merch store, which we're calling Camp Radio Lab this time around because there's this great camp-inspired T-shirt, is open for one more week. Head on over to radiolab.org slash shop sometime before July 29th. You can get aforementioned T-shirt as well as hats and sweatpants and other summer gear, water bottle. Once you are decked out in all that Radiolab swag,
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How are those New Year's resolutions from seven months ago? How are you doing with those? I ask because the episode you are about to hear, which is an oldie, it's called You Versus You. It's all about this kind of struggle, this struggle between the person
prudent, well-planned version of you that you imagined in the past and then the impulsive instant gratification chasing you of this moment right now. And if you, like me, are a kind of living, walking mockery of your own imagination of yourself from the past, maybe this episode will help. Who knows? Either way, I hope you enjoy it. Here it is. You versus you.
Okay, from the top. You ready? Yep. Hello. Hello. How are you doing? We're going to start things off today with this lady. Zelda Gamson. Welcome to our little spot. It's beautiful. Thank you. She's 80 years old, and these days, Zelda lives a quiet life by the sea. On Martha's Vineyard. Did you have some coffee? She did.
She visits with her grandkids, does some gardening. We have a bird feeder, and it is the bird show of the world. But life for Zelda wasn't always so calm. Back in the 60s, when our story begins, she was a very different kind of lady. She even went by a different nickname. Just... Zeke.
Okay, I was a smoker 30 years. I started when I went to college in 1954. At first, it was just a cigarette here or there. Letting the bad girl out a bit. And then I got hooked, really, and I couldn't stop. Went to graduate school, smoked, got my dissertation, smoked, got my degree, smoked. And somewhere in the fog, she meets...
Also a smoker. Together they'd organize protests. And the two of them would even go undercover to fight. And the backdrop to all of this social change?
Smoke? Yeah, you got it. I mean, our houses were filled with these ashtrays. How much were you smoking at that point? Probably smoked a packet a day. I was a worse smoker than Mary. You know, I was sometimes up to two packs a day. Wow. You know, I had kids. I was pregnant. Did you smoke while you were pregnant? I did. Wow. Yeah. I feel so guilty about that. So at a certain point, Zelda and Mary decide...
They want to stop. Yeah. Now, Mary, who'd never been as badly addicted as Zelda, it wasn't easy. It was agonizing. But eventually she's able to do it. Zelda? No. I thought sometimes that I could stop, and so I would. Over and over, she'd throw out her cigarettes. Okay. Done. But then? Then I'd be around somebody with cigarettes. Oh, F. Any reason that she'd give herself. Cancer. My kids. The smell. The fact that I could die. It always lost out. Yeah.
to the urge. And I'd always start smoking again. And this is how it would go. Resolve. Failure. Resolve. Failure. Okay, so this is not the most unusual situation in the world. But the question we want to ask right now is like, how do you get out of this? You know, you want to do something badly, but then another part of you says, no, I don't want to do that. So it's you against you. What do you do?
I'm Jad Abumrad. I'm Robert Krolwich. This is Radiolab, and today... The little deals that you make when you are stuck... With yourself. Okay, so before talking with Zelda, it just so happened that I went with Adam Davidson, one of the Planet Money guys, to visit this fellow Nobel Prize winning economist named Thomas Scheller, who's written a whole lot about the seemingly simple idea of... Commitment. Arranging it so that you can't compromise.
I'll give you an example. Here's one from ancient Greece. 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. And Xenophon told his general...
Exactly. Welcome the cliff. In fact, he said, here's what we're going to do. We're going to march our armies so that their backs are directly to the cliff. That way... The Persians will know that we can never retreat. We're bound to fight to the death.
You're really binding yourself. You're not binding the other side. Yeah, it's attempting to influence somebody else's choice by restricting your own choice. But then we asked him, what if your adversary isn't on the outside like the Persians, but rather it was you? How do you do what Xenophon did to yourself? Yeah, I began smoking when I was 17 years old. I did quit several times. I always went back.
But he did give us some suggestions. One in particular that was so awesome, to use your favorite word, so diabolical that we just didn't think anyone would ever do it. That is, until we met Zelda. Yeah. Yeah.
Fast forward a few decades. 1984. Mary and Zelda now live in different parts of the country. I happened to be going to a conference in Vermont, and Mary picked me up at the airport. Right. And I was smoking when she picked me up. Which was curious because nobody smokes anymore. She said, why Zelda? Are you still smoking? And Zelda said, yeah, and don't tell me to stop. Ha ha ha ha.
I was very belligerent. Yes. So I went to the conference and smoked. And were they guilty cigarettes? No, they were delicious. But what Mary said was starting to worm its way into her brain. Are you still smoking? Still smoking? Still smoking? 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 going to give $5,000 to the Ku Klux Klan. What? Did she say $5,000 to the Ku Klux Klan? Correct. This was Schelling's suggestion. It can work. But he didn't think anyone would ever do it. $5,000 to the Ku Klux Klan. It just came out of my mouth. You know how horrible they are, right? Sure. So heinous. But her and Mary made a deal. A pact. If Zelda smoked, she'd have to tell Mary...
To send the KKK her money. Take it out of my savings or something. And you were really serious you were going to do this? Yeah. But I have to say, after I made this pledge to Mary, under my breath I said, but I can't be responsible if she smokes again. What? If she smokes again? If she smokes again. Who's the she in that sentence? Me. You. What does that mean?
Well, that means that a part of me, the part of me that was smoking and that might pick up smoking again was an alien part. You're saying you were two people at that moment? Yeah. And she? Zeke didn't really...
Want to stop smoking. She. She, yeah. After the pact, Zelda says that often, when she would fall asleep... I would dream of myself smoking. And she'd wake up... In a terrible sweat. Reach for her cigarettes. But every time, she says, this other thought would just rush into her mind. The KKK. Robes, burning crosses, lynchings. Oh, God. And she'd throw the cigarettes down. I couldn't. The idea of them having her money? I can't even imagine it.
Sounds like you really backed yourself up against the cliff. I did. Zelda had found a thought that was hotter than the urge. And she didn't smoke again. Never again? Nope. That was it, cold turkey. Look at this. There's a picture of me on a cruise that Bill and I took. Here she is. It's a profile picture of me. Look at the cigarette. I look gorgeous there. That's the best picture ever taken of me.
Now, if we are many people on the inside, and we've talked about this on the show before, how, like, our brain is literally divided into these camps that sometimes wrestle and fight. Well, the problem, according to Thomas Schelling, is that these selves...
Although, you know, there is another way to think about the problem. Things that are offered right now have so much more power than things that are offered in the future. This is David Eagleman. He's a neuroscientist. And he says, you know, really, you could think about this whole thing as a battle about time. We'll make all sorts of very poor economic decisions. Now versus later, really. If something is offered right now versus later. When you look at the neuroimaging, it becomes clear that there are different parts of the brain that
that are battling this out. And the now part's always stronger. Yes. Here's the key. What she's doing in the case of the cigarettes is she's saying, I know that I want to win this long-term battle, but I'm having a heck of a time doing it. But if I can make the long-term plan work,
tied into a different immediate feeling of disgust. Then all I have to do is have the disgust battle the desire. I see. So what she's done is she's turned this battle into a present tense battle on both sides. I want a cigarette now versus I hate the KKK now. Precisely. So it's a now versus now thing. And I think that's the only way we ever win these long-term battles is to give them some sort of emotional salience that
some reason why they matter to us right now, otherwise it'll never work. And there are any number of ways of doing this. Here is how Thomas Schelling did it. 1980, gather my children together. And I said, I quit. And that they should never have respect for their father again if I return to smoking. And he never did? Yeah, that was it for him. The thing I like about those two stories is that there's a case where
Like, okay, say you've got these cells battling in your head. You've got the now part and the later part, and the later part's weak. Yeah. In this case, the later part found a way to trick the now parts. Mm-hmm.
And this has a name, this kind of approach. It's called a Ulysses contract. In the Iliad... Make that the Odyssey. 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 Sirens' song, they're dead. Sailors were so attracted to these melodies that they would steer towards them and crash their ships into the rocks and die. So on his way there, before the music started...
he came up with a plan. He had his men lash him to the mast with ropes so that he couldn't move. And he had them fill their own ears with beeswax. And he said, no matter what I do, no matter how I'm gesticulating or shouting or acting like a crazy man, just keep rowing, just keep going. And so when they got to the sirens, Ulysses... He goes nuts.
And he's screaming and yelling and telling the men, go towards the women, we don't want to pass this up. And of course the men have beeswax in their ears. They're not swayed by the siren song. Because he had planned for this. The present tense Ulysses, by using his men and the rope, had literally bound the future Ulysses to the mast. Because he knew that guy would be weak.
WNYC Studios is supported by Zuckerman Spader. Through nearly five decades of taking on high-stakes legal matters, Zuckerman Spader is recognized nationally as a premier litigation and investigations firm. Their lawyers routinely represent individuals, organizations, and law firms in business disputes, government, and internal investigations and at trial. When the lawyer you choose matters most. Online at Zuckerman.com.
I'm Maria Konnikova. And I'm Nate Silver. And our new podcast, Risky Business, is a show about making better decisions. We're both journalists who moonlight as poker players, and that's the lens we're going to use to approach this entire show. We're going to be discussing everything from high-stakes poker to personal questions. Like whether I should call a plumber or fix my shower myself. And, of course, we'll be talking about the election, too. Listen to Risky Business wherever you get your podcasts.
We can just move off the ocean for just a moment. Gone. Get out of your ocean. Radio. What a weird medium. Anyway, what if the bargain that you strike isn't just about something, you know, very, 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 for every day of the next 40 years? Yeah. What then?
Well, this brings us to a story from our producer, Pat Walters. Ready? Okay, set it up. Okay. Okay, I'm in Chinatown. About a year ago, my friend Jenny posted something on Twitter. It said, overheard. I flipped a coin and I lost my life. I flipped a coin and lost my life? Yes. And what's Twitter? Twitter.
No, I mean, she actually heard someone say this? Yeah, she was just like, she's a reporter. She was just chatting with the guy and he said that to her. I flipped a coin and I lost my life. Wow, what was the context? Well, she was getting a massage in Chinatown. And how would that phrase come up in the middle of a massage?
I honestly don't know. But she's a reporter. Didn't she ask? She didn't. She didn't say, get your hands off me, man, and tell me the story. I don't know exactly what went down, but I asked her what the situation was. She said that she basically didn't know anything. She just heard that. 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. Do you know of some place around here called Health Trail? A massage place? I have no idea. No? Wandered around to several different addresses. Damn! And eventually I found this tiny little storefront. There's a little sign with some feet. Kind of hidden.
You want to see my son? And I found the guy who said the thing. Hi. How are you? His name is Dennis. And I just asked him, tell me about this coin flip. Can you tell me, so when did this happen? It happened about four years ago. I was 26 and my brother was 21.
Both of them had gone to college, Dennis for photography, his brother for art, and they'd come out of school with these big dreams. But that hadn't really worked out. They were having a hard time finding jobs, and they ended up living at home with their dad. Yeah, with my dad. So basically I just stayed at home to take pictures.
And my brother... He's just working at a restaurant. Low-life eater. So this is basically post-college flail. Yeah. Like they're stuck. Stuck in the middle of the road. That's what happened to us. One day, their dad comes up to them and says, Look, guys. One of you guys gotta follow me.
I need one of you. I don't care which one of you, but I need one of you to take over the family business. My father's getting old. Just decide either both of you come out or one of you come out. So one of them now has to carry on his thing. Yeah. What does the dad do? He runs this massage parlor. Yeah. Sends...
We're not interested. Yeah, neither of us really want to do it. That's Kai. Kai Wu. Dennis' little brother. Because touching people's foot is some kind of disgusting, right? You know, there's always a hairy guy or like some girls like busted toes. Disgusting and annoying facing your father for 24 hours, seven days a week. Yeah, a little more than I can take. Like, I love my dad. But you just don't want to follow your dad's footsteps. But the dad says, get over it.
It's about family. Keeping the business alive. Keeping the technique he has alive in the whole Chinatown. I don't think any massage place or any therapy place will have my father's technique. It's a special kind of thing? Yeah, it's this like...
deep tissue acupressure. It's painful. Type massage. I don't know if Jenny told you that. No. It's really, really painful. Anyhow, they're sitting at home and this question is kind of like silently hanging over them for days and weeks till 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, let's make a bet. Let's do the tea leaves thing. The what? Let's see what the
What the tea leaves say. Well, Dennis says when you're drinking loose tea the Chinese way, you put the leaves right in the bottom of your cup and you pour the water over them. Usually, the leaves float up to the top flat on the surface of the tea. But every now and then... Every 10 cups, you might see the tips is floating and the rest of the body is inside of water. So like the stem, sort of? Yeah, yeah. And then the leaf is hanging down? Yeah. You mean like every so often, instead of the whole leaf being on the top of the water, the leafy part just falls to the bottom?
And just the tip of the stem is touching the surface of the water, almost like it's hanging down from the surface of the water. And this is rare? Yeah. So when you get that, that means good luck. Is that like a traditional... It's from the old people that was doing it. That's how we understand it when we was kids. So we just decide, okay, whoever gets that... Whoever gets the most lucky tea leaves... Win. Win.
Whoever wins, you're out. You don't need to work for my dad. Whoever lost, follow my father's footsteps. They trusted their whole future to this? Yeah. It was like a spur of the moment thing. Yeah, we didn't really plan anything. Sometimes people just flip a coin. They can't figure out which way should they go, so they just flip a coin. When you pour the hot water in, they were like rolling around like a small tornado inside. They were spinning.
And then, once it's done, each cup has a layer of tea leaves on the surface. And Dennis notices, "Whoa, look at it!" that he'd gotten one. One piece. So I was like, "Wow! That's incredible." Then he looked over to his brother's cup. Oh my god. Way more of these lucky leaves. It was pretty obvious, you know, that he lost. And it wasn't even close. No. Do you remember if he was, like, angry or...? He looks like he was deep in thought. You know what I'm thinking? It was like, "This is the worst thing in my life."
And it basically was. Because now he was bound by these tea leaves to go and work for his dad. What happened? The first day I come here to work, I don't feel like touching anybody's foot. So he forced me to touch his foot. Did he have to, like, grab your hand? He would just sit there, take off his shoes, without washing his feet. Okay, that's kind of disgusting. So he just told me to try to work on it. His dad eventually said,
I was like, "Oh God, no." They still hate me right now for giving them all the pain. Well, I don't know how to explain. After a month working on my father's feet, I don't feel disgusting anymore.
I feel kind of like it. You liked it? Yeah. I don't know why. It's just like making me, uh, it seemed nice to work on people. Um, I don't know how to explain. I just stopped falling in love with this job. Yeah. I don't know how's it happen. It's just that I work in here seven days a week. So I've become part of my life. Wake up in the morning, come here, work.
Go home, sleep, come here and work. So it's just become part of my life. When I got a day off, I don't know where to go. I'm just staying home. Let me come back out here and work. That's what happened. I think that's how falling in love is. You don't know how it's going to happen, when it's going to happen. It just happens. It was a good loss, I was thinking. I love this job. So it sounds like he made this deal with fate and he just got lucky.
No. No. Kai has a slightly different read on the whole thing. Well, so if he had won, would you have had to do it? No.
No? No. No? No. Kai says the whole tea leaf deal was really just about Dennis. I think at that point, in the back of his head, he wanted to do it. Just an excuse. I think he was just looking for a sign. I'd have to ask him, I guess. And when I did ask Dennis, he didn't really agree with his brother. Well, it's just, uh, how you say it is, I'm... But he didn't entirely disagree either. Not that because I wanted to do it. It's just like, it's kind of I'm using my brother to push me to work for my dad.
What do you mean by that? I don't think he wanted to make his own decision. It might be better I just work for my dad, but I don't want to face him. So if my brother just pushed me, okay, I'll be facing him. Ah. That could be what happened.
So he just needed a push. All right. What a wimpy thing to do, though, you know, when you think about it. Why is that wimpy? Well, I mean, he wanted to be a masseuse, you know. He didn't know what he wanted. Well, he knew, and he set up his brothers to make him do it. No, no. If you call it wimpy. I call it wimpy. I call it powerfully wimpy. Muscularly wimpy. Meaning what? What does that mean? Meaning that, oh, I got one for you. I'm going to lay this. You ready for this? Maybe the new strength is.
is understanding your own wimpiness. What do you think about that? Ooh, I just tied you into a philosophical knot right there, buddy. You're going to be thinking about that one for years. I'm thinking about it. I'm overthinking about it. Just take it in. Take it in. The complexity. Can I speak now? No. David's going to say something. This is who we are. I mean, that's the reality on the ground. We're just weak. We need help. And I actually think this gives us a new way to think about and understand virtue. ♪
I think it gives us a much richer view of human nature.
Thanks to Pat Walters, our Chinatown correspondent, and to Thomas 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. Something to note since this story aired is that Thomas Schelling passed away in 2016 at the age of 95, and Mary Belenke passed away in 2020 at the age of 87. David Eagleman released a new book in 2020 called Livewired. You should check it out. It's a great read. ♪
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