214: Family Physics

Ira Glass

From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. And of course, every week here, we try to describe and understand the world by listening to all kinds of people that we interview, and to reporters, and writers. And it's occurred to us lately that maybe this is wrongheaded. Maybe if we want real understanding, real explanations, we need to turn to science.

Consider this story, lab partners. When Dennis was a kid, his stepfather always thought that wherever they lived was lousy. He thought the only place worth living in was New York City. This is a man, by the way, who had grown up in a town of a few thousand in Indiana.

Ira Glass

And so they moved to New York, the whole family, when Dennis was 12.

Ira Glass

Now, science can help us understand this story. There's a notion in physics called the mediocrity principle. It requires that no place in the universe is more special than any other place.

The ancients, remember, thought that we are at the center of the universe. The sun and the stars revolved around us. Mediocrity principle says, no, no, that's wrong.

No place is special. And there's nothing special about us. Dennis says, by the way, that all this was obvious to him, even when he was 12, back when his stepdad was itching to move to New York.

Ira Glass

What can the laws of physics tell us about our everyday lives? Consider, please, this experiment in human relations. Kitty and Lars each needed a roommate. They got a place together on July 1.

By July 28, it was clear to both of them they should be more than just roommates. By August 3, Lars had told Kitty that he wanted to marry her. They've been together for years now. They are incredibly happy. And they both say that if they hadn't actually lived together as roommates, if they'd only dated, it never would have worked out.

Ira Glass

What can science tell us about this? OK, well, in physics, there's something called the Casimir Effect. It says that there's an attractive force between objects that are in proximity to each other.

Hendrik Casimir was talking about two uncharged plates, close to each other in a vacuum. It's a very faint sort of force. And a very faint sort of force was all that Lars and Kitty felt for each other at first.

Ira Glass

Now, I need to acknowledge that physicists hate it-- they hate it, they hate it-- when non-scientists do this, when we non-scientists take scientific laws and principles intended for a very different purpose in context, and apply them to ourselves and our petty little relationships with each other. Witness, please, the attitude of Dave Kestenbaum, PhD, who used to be a high-energy experimental particle physicist on the team that discovered the top quark at Fermilab. He's now one of our colleagues on the radio.

Ira Glass

OK, I have to say, that seems entirely reasonable. But we at This American Life-- we just do not care. Our feeling is, once a physicist names something the mediocrity principle, or the uncertainty principle, or the grandfather paradox, basically, they're asking for it.

The mediocrity principle prances into the lives of us non-scientists, all provocative with that all-provocative name, and what, we're not supposed to give that a second glance? We're supposed to stop our brains from instantly seeing that and all these other rules as metaphors to apply hither and thither, wherever we will? Today on our radio program, we ignore the pleas of reasonable people like Dave Kestenbaum and the silent screams of every physicist listening to our program right this moment, and bring you several stories, each one about everyday people in everyday situations, each one illuminated by some scientific law.

It's Family Physics. Our program today in three acts-- Act One, Occam's Razor; Act Two, The Trajectory and Force of Bodies in Orbit; Act Three, Conservation of Energy and Matter. In that act, by the way, we have a story by David Sedaris. Put on your safety goggles and white coats, my friends, and stay with us.

Ira Glass

Act One, Occam's Razor. OK, this is a story about a family that had one theory about how to explain their lives. And then, at some point, that theory came to seem inadequate.

It did not seem to explain the data and evidence before them. And they switched to a different theory. Cris Beam tells the story in Los Angeles.

Cris Beam

David Paladino grew up in an Italian family in an Italian neighborhood west of Chicago. It was the kind of place where, in the early '70s, all the kids wore Italian colors, ate Italian beef and sausage from the corner store, and threw money at the Virgin Mary statue at the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. But while David is Italian, too, he has many childhood stories about things people said to him that just didn't make any sense.

In Sunday school, the other kids called Dave, "Chocolate Bar" and "Blackie." People asked him who is real father was. When he went into stores, the clerks would sometimes follow him around as if he was going to steal something.

When David was 10, his family moved into a townhouse in a more integrated area. Dave went out to play in a nearby playground.

Cris Beam

This is Dave Paladino's father, David Paladino, Sr.

Cris Beam

David and Dave's mom, Carol, went to high school in a neighborhood on Chicago's West Side, called Maywood. In 1968, their junior year, race riots broke out in their school, making national headlines. Kids were pulling guns on each other, and the National Guard was called in.

During this time, David and Carol were dating. They didn't participate in the riots. In fact, Dave was vice president of his senior class, and Carol was a cheerleader. And they were both involved in the student leadership's efforts towards racial harmony.

Cris Beam

This is Dave's mom, Carol.

Cris Beam

At this point, Carol began seeing one basketball player in particular-- Keith Rash, a Black student one year behind her in school.

Cris Beam

Carol was actually four months along before she knew she was pregnant. She got the news from her family doctor a few weeks before Thanksgiving.

Cris Beam

No one but Carol knew about Keith. But as Carol started to show, David assumed the baby was his. Now 18, and in their first semester at a nearby college, they decided to get married over the next school break.

Carol called her mom with the news. Mom screamed and immediately ran next door to gather Carol's grandparents, and then across the street to get her aunt and uncle. Within hours, everyone was assembled, and the patriarchs, David's father and Carol's father, had driven to the college to pick up the kids.

Her mother had an announcement. There would be no delaying this marriage. They were to get their blood tests and rings the next day, the wedding dress the following day, and they'd be married by the end of that weekend by the parish priest. Carol says they were both in shock.

Cris Beam

As David, Jr. got older, he was told the same stories inquisitive strangers were told.

Cris Beam

Until his teens, Dave's family moved a lot, and he says every move was torture. His two sisters would just be asked the regular questions like, where are you from, and what music do you like. But Dave would be asked, who's your real dad, and were you adopted.

So Dave learned to preempt the interrogations. He started wearing T-shirts with slogans like "Proud to be Italian," or "Another Italian masterpiece." And he would announce his heritage to anyone within moments of an introduction. And it wasn't just Dave. The whole family was in denial. Here's his mom.

Cris Beam

When he was 12, Dave and his family moved from Chicago to an upper-middle-class suburb of Los Angeles. And things went pretty smoothly there. Dave turned out to be a great football player, had a lot of friends and girlfriends, and after the initial surge of questions, issues of race or ethnicity, or what are you, just didn't come up too much.

After high school, things got harder. His college, he says, was extremely white, and he just began to feel different. By now, he looked decidedly biracial. When he met white girlfriends' parents, they would sometimes shift uncomfortably.

He learned the phrase, person of color, and thought of himself as both a white person and a person of color, as if there were such a thing. If you saw David on the street, there's no way you'd think he was white. You'd think, biracial, or Puerto Rican, or Dominican.

He's very cute, with tight, soft, curly hair and light mocha-colored skin. By his mid-20s, David was starting to become an actor and go out on auditions. And the roles he was up for were almost always Black or Latin men.

One weekend, when he was in his late 20s, David took a trip to Chicago with one of his college friends, Aaron. They spent some time visiting David's family. They stayed downtown. They partied.

And on their last night in Chicago, after David and Aaron had been drinking till 4:00 in the morning, they finally pulled up to their hotel.

Cris Beam

And when that came out of your mouth, what did you--

Cris Beam

So David had to talk to his mom, but he was terrified, terrified of unraveling a whole family built on the premise of one mom, one dad. Even though they'd gotten divorced years before, this seemed like a cataclysmic rewriting of history. So he waited two whole years and tried not to think about it.

And then, one morning, he drove to his mom's house without telling her why. When he got there, David realized he had no prepared script. So he exchanged a few pleasantries, and he plunged. He said, simply, I need to know where I come from. Carol paused, looked at him, and responded, and you deserve to know.

Cris Beam

With those words, Dave said it was like a symphony surged through his brain. It was a breakthrough and a relief. And contrary to his mom's fears, David wasn't angry with her at all.

He felt like he wasn't emotionally ready to know the truth after struggling personally in college and in the years after, until that very day. He actually felt grateful she waited. He was, though, worried about what David Sr. would do.

Turns out, Carol said, David Sr. had known for nine years. She had told him before their divorce, and begged him not to tell his son. David Sr. wasn't surprised. He said he always knew somehow, below the surface of consciousness.

There's a principle in science called Occam's Razor. The idea is, if there are two possible explanations for some phenomenon, the simpler one is the better one to use. This principle goes back to Aristotle, who said, essentially, nature operates in the shortest way possible.

And in our daily lives, this is how we usually explain the world to ourselves. But the simple explanation isn't always the one we want. The Paladinos couldn't accept the plain answer that Dave had a different father.

They had to create something far more complex. What started a Carol's small secret simply grew too big to untangle. When David was born, she believed he was her husband's son, and when David Sr. believed that, too, months, and even years later, she thought to herself, why shatter that relationship?

She was so busy with three kids, she could often forget about David's coloring, sometimes even convincing herself that he might be her husband's anyway, that maybe there was something to that recessive gene idea. David Sr. did a similar dance, pushing disturbing questions out of his mind, because subconsciously, he wanted his family, his world, to remain intact.

And the kids, like all kids, crave security, so they kept their questions buried, too. It wasn't that love was blind. It was that everyone was blinded by the fear of losing love.

No one wants to disturb the fragile bonds that keep us standing. Dave says a lot of people don't get this, don't understand why his family didn't always know he was Black.

Cris Beam

As you might expect, David wanted to meet his biological father. He started looking up Keith Rashes in telephone directories and calling them up. After months of reaching confused guys of all races, David finally tracked him down to an address on an Edgware Street in Memphis, Tennessee, no phone number available.

David then avoided the issue again for six months, until he found himself in Florida on a job and decided to rent a car and drive 12 hours across five states in the rain. He found Edgware Street a little after 9:00 on a May morning.

Cris Beam

Keith Rash moved to Memphis about 18 years ago, and now works a security night shift at the FedEx hub. A few months ago, David and I went to Memphis to visit Keith. He's a gregarious, smiley guy, eager to please and excited that he has this brand-new son.

His apartment is almost entirely bare, save for a dining room table, a bed, and some empty boxes, and framed photographs everywhere. Underneath the bed and in the closet, there are more pictures, boxes and boxes of them, in albums and in bags.

Cris Beam

In the time since his first trip to Memphis, Dave has been welcomed into the Rash family. He's met his half-brother and the rest of the family at a reunion in Chicago. He's making plans to spend some time with his grandmother in the next few months in Los Angeles.

Keith gushes and fawns over Dave, bragging about his acting gigs and comparing his good looks to his other son, Shelly. He says they're practically identical. Shelly was raised by his mom across the country, though he would visit Keith sometimes.

Keith shows us photos and tells us stories about his past. There are a lot of people who have died or who he's lost touch with, and he alludes to difficult years and a few run-ins with the law. Now, he says, he lives through his two sons, and he doesn't have many friends or much of a life in Memphis.

He's more stable, mostly watches television, has a few drinks after work. Dave also brought pictures to show Keith. He pulls out a baby picture and some kid shots with his sisters.

Cris Beam

We decide to go out for some barbecue. Keith lets Dave borrow his special Year of the Dragon necklace, and keeps clapping him on the back. David is a little shyer, more watchful.

On the way, I get this glimpse of what Keith is like. His personality is huge. He's funny and charming. He won't call me my first name, Cris, or my last name, Beam, but Beamer. It's hard not to like him.

While we're out, the waitress seems to take a shine to Keith, and he, slowly easing his eyes over the rim of his whiskey glass, tries to pick her up, right in front of his son and a radio reporter with a foot-long microphone.

Cris Beam

We go back to Keith's apartment and listen to music, drink some beers, and hang out. Keith raps along with Tupac. Dave hilariously practices his trained ballet moves to the beat in the middle of the living room. The waitress calls and flirts, but never shows up.

Cris Beam

Keith's fine with the fact that he didn't raise Dave. He implies that he might not have always been the best influence himself. And if he has a problem with the fact that Dave grew up in a white world with no strong Black figures to guide him, he doesn't let on. He says Carol and David provided Dave with the strength of character to handle it.

Cris Beam

For his part, Dave has had two years now to adapt to the fact that he's Black, and he's still adjusting. It's awkward sometimes. He says there are some things he never learned or got used to.

Cris Beam

So you're nervous.

Cris Beam

What's amazing about this story is that nobody's mad. Keith's not bitter that he had no access to his son. David's not mad at his mother and never has been. Even Dave Sr. isn't angry. He still feels just as much David's father as he ever did, which brings us back to Occam's Razor, the principle that the simplest explanation for something is the best one.

In a family, the explanation that seems simplest can switch over time. When David was young, the simpler thing to believe was that his parents were his parents and his family was his family, and that he was a Paladino. As he got older, that story got harder to maintain, and the other explanation, that Keith was his father, became the simplest for everyone.

And when the family shifted from one story to the other, they didn't get caught up in issues of race, and paternity, and lying, and betrayal. When the truth came out, the truth that the whole family was fearing for so long, it didn't spark any great drama at all. It just put people at peace.

Ira Glass

Cris Beam in Los Angeles.

Coming up, David Sedaris conducts an experiment with fluids and heat in a 2-and-1/2-foot tube. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme and bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's program, Family Physics, stories of everyday life which we come to understand better by applying the laws and principles of science. We have arrived at act two of our program, Act Two, The Trajectory and Force of Bodies in Orbit.

Jon Ronson is a writer living in England. He does an occasional documentary story for British television. And he tells this modest story of the universal laws which govern our daily behavior. In it, he is in a reluctant orbit around his parents, and his parents are in a rather energetic orbit, around, well, you'll see.

Jon Ronson

My family runs a hotel in the Brecon Beacons mountain range of mid-Wales. I go home to the hotel every Christmas, and at some point, I always manage to say, I treat this place just like a hotel, and this always gets a big laugh.

Sometimes, famous people stay at the hotel, too, which my parents treat as a perk of the job. My mother always calls me up when it happens. When the British TV news reporter, John Cole, was there recently, my mother phoned me up and said, guess what? John Cole's staying here! Oh, and he hasn't heard of you!

A few years ago, John Birt, the Director General of the BBC, came in to have lunch. My father approached his table. Are you John Birt? He asked. Yes, said Jon Birt.

I wonder if you can help, said my father. The TV reception in this area can be all crackly and fuzzy. Is there anything you can do about this? I think my father wanted John Birt to get onto the roof and fix the aerial.

We spoke about all sorts, my father told me on the phone afterwards, the problems I'm having with my car. He couldn't believe it's been in the garage six times. Oh, and he hasn't heard of you, added my mother on the extension line.

Recently, my parents won the coveted Welsh Hotel of the Year competition. It was a big honor, and they wanted to do something to commemorate the success. So they decided to commission a portrait painter to immortalize the Ronsons.

We've decided to have a group family portrait commissioned, said my mother on the phone, a Ronson family portrait to be hung in the bar. Will you be available for a sitting? Certainly, I said. Who's doing it?

He's a brilliant but troubled local artist, she said. He did the mural for the new Cardiff multiplex. You must have heard of it. No, I said. Oh, come on! She said. It's been in all the papers. Anyway, he paints hotels, too. He came up to ask us if we wanted ours painted.

You mean, he depicts hotels on canvas? I asked. Oh, no, no, she said. He actually paints the walls of hotels. So he's a painter and a decorator? I asked. What's your problem? Said my mother. Are you being snooty?

It turned out that the brilliant but troubled artist's particular subspecialty is painting celebrities in classical Renaissance settings, like Clint Eastwood ascending to heaven surrounded by angels. His loving recreations of celebrities set my parents thinking, so many famous people stay at their hotel. What if the Ronson family portrait was extended to include celebrities?

Listen to this, said my mother on the phone the next day. We, the family, will be standing in the grounds of the hotel, surrounded by famous people. Which famous people? I asked. You mean, the famous people who've stayed at the hotel?

Oh, no, said my mother. Any famous people that we choose. I fell silent on the other end of the phone, trying to let the incredible of this proposed project sink in. My mother carried on.

She said, we're working on a tight deadline. Send a Polaroid of yourself to the artist. You have to come up with your three famous people by Wednesday-- living or dead, comedian, statesmen, actors, anything.

Let me clarify this in my head, I said. There's nothing to clarify! Said my mother. Don't you think it may come across as a little self-aggrandizing? I asked.

I'm choosing President Kennedy, Gandhi, and Churchill, said my mother. My father came onto the phone. Who are you choosing? I asked him. Gary Player, Arnold Palmer, and Jack Nicklaus, he said. All golfers? I asked.

Who are you choosing? Asked my father. My mind drew a blank. In fact, I began to panic. I imagined, in hundreds of years' time, notable art historians gathered around the painting, making sarcastic comments.

Paintings are so permanent. I was to be frozen in time for eternity with three celebrities. And now, the question was, which celebrities best represented Jon Ronson's essence? It was easy for my father.

It was as if each of his three golfers portrayed a different subtlety to his personality. There was Arnold Palmer, the kind and thoughtful golfer with the common touch. There was Jack Nicklaus, the fiery, steely golfer who once said, nobody ever remembers who finished second at anything. And there was Gary Player, the philosophical golfer whose 10 commandments for life, as seen on GaryPlayer.com, includes, the fox fears not the man who boasts by night, but the man who rises early in the morning.

But who could I choose? I found myself feeling hostile to the whole idea, a hostility that manifested itself in a lazy choice of celebrities. I'm going for The Beverley Sisters, I told my mother on the phone.

I actually have no interest in girl groups of the 1940s, but I did know that The Beverley Sisters all looked exactly alike, and my choice was designed to be viewed by art historians of the future as an ironic silent protest. You can't have The Beverley Sisters, said my mother, knowing me well enough to understand all of this in an instant.

How about Sister Sledge? I said. Are you trying to ruin this? Said my mother. I relented and opted for my real all-time celebrity hero. Randy Newman, I said.

Nobody knows what Randy Newman looks like! She snapped. In the end, we compromised. For all time, it would be Jon Ronson, Ike and Tina Turner, and Boris Yeltsin.

The Ronsons were going to be hobnobbing amongst the stars. The laws of physics tells us that one needs to be very careful approaching a star. If your trajectory and speed are just right, you'll go into orbit, safe and sound, glowing in the warm, beautiful starlight.

If you mess up in any way, the wrong direction, the wrong speed, you'll hurtle into the face of the star and be vaporized. And only the star will remain. My parents were involving us in a very dangerous game.

A few days later, my mother called to tell me that the concept had slightly changed. Each Ronson, she said, would no longer be just standing and chatting to the celebrities. We were to be serving them drinks.

This was, after all, a hotel. So now, I was to be frozen in time in an act of subservience to Boris Yeltsin. A few days later, the concept changed yet again. It was back to standing and chatting, but this time, the Ronsons would be talking, and the celebrities would be listening.

So you'll be talking? I clarified. And Kennedy, Gandhi, and Churchill will be listening? What's the problem? Said my mother. Oh, nothing, nothing, I said. I'm just worried that people may get the wrong idea, you know, that we consider ourselves as good as Kennedy and--

What are you saying? Said my mother. Nothing, I said. I changed the subject. What will you be talking to Kennedy, Gandhi, and Churchill about? What do you mean, what will I be talking to them about? Said my mother.

Nothing! I'm talking to them about nothing! It's a painting! Maybe Dad would be talking to the golfers about the amount of times his car has been in the garage, I suggested.

I sent in my Polaroids, and we all waited. Months passed. My father would telephone the artist from time to time to find out how things were going, and when was it going to be finished. Most often, the artist didn't pick up. And when he did, he was a man of few words, words that were spoken gruffly.

Nearly there, he said. Are you pleased with it so far? Asked my father. Don't worry, said the artist. My father began to worry.

The day of the grand unveiling came without warning. The artist just turned up one morning, carrying a large canvas covered in a white sheet. He propped it up against the bar. The family gathered around it with a sense of great expectation.

Everyone looked at the covered painting and at the brilliant but troubled artist, trying to scrutinize his facial expression. It was, well, troubled. The artist said, I think you ought to know that I'm going through a creative stage, which some people find difficult to connect to.

There was a nervous silence. What I'm saying, he continued, is there's a possibility you may not like it. The Ronsons looked anxiously at one another.

Then, with a flourish, the artist whipped off the sheet. There you go, he said. For a moment, the Ronsons just stared. My mother whispered, oh my God.

She clutched her chest, yelped quietly, and stormed out of the room. My brother and his wife followed, as a show of unity, slamming the door behind them. The artist was left alone with my father.

They didn't make eye contact. They just stared at the painting. The famous people had all been painted with tender accuracy. There were a few celebrities like Clint Eastwood that none of the Ronsons had actually asked for.

But that wasn't the problem. The problem was that although the celebrities were lovingly depicted, the Ronsons stood amongst them as human, grotesqueries, repulsive caricatures of monsters. My brother looked like Frankenstein. He had a bolt through his neck.

It was disturbing and humiliating. My parents looked like hastily sketched recovering drug addicts. I looked like a gawky, spotty adolescent, frozen in a gormless pose.

Sorry, said the painter, looking at the floor. We're not paying for it, said my father. There was a long silence. My father ordered the artist to paint the Ronsons out. And after much negotiation, he agreed.

He turned my mother into Woody Allen. That's kind of humiliating in itself, that the easiest brush over would render her as Woody Allen. My father is Jimmy Carter. I like to think the artist chose Jimmy Carter, the famed peacemaker, to replace my dad in an homage to my father's diplomacy, as he was the only Ronson who didn't storm out.

My brother was turned into David Rockefeller, and his wife was turned into Henry Kissinger, which I interpret as an act of hostility. The only Ronson left in the portrait is, oddly, me. The painting now hangs between the cigarette machine and the coat stand of the bar in my family's hotel.

And it's the cause of much interest amongst the customers. They crowd around it, trying to guess who everyone is. That's Kennedy, they say. Look, Boris Yeltsin! Nobody gets David Rockefeller. I have to say, it's David Rockefeller!

Ah, they reply. David Rockefeller. They stare blankly at the likeness of me, too, for whole minutes at a time, trying to figure out who exactly I am. I'm famous! I say. I've been on TV.

But they all just squint and shrug. If my mother is there, she'll cheerfully pipe in. Oh, they've never heard of you.

Ira Glass

Jon Ronson. He's the author of The Men Who Stare at Goats and other books.

[MUSIC - "STARS IN MY LIFE" BY THE FLATLANDERS]

(SINGING) The stars in my life will shine like sunshine. If only I can see your smiling face. Though this universe collapses on occasion, the stars in my life will stay in place.

Ira Glass

Act Three, Conservation of Matter and Energy. Matter and energy are different versions of each other. And while you can convert one into the other, they cannot be created or destroyed. David Sedaris was reminded of this basic principle of matter recently when he tried a personal experiment of his own with an accessory he bought himself.

His story was recorded in front of a live audience by Seattle Arts and Lectures. Quick warning to the squeamish-- this story contains possibly sensitive content. There's nothing sexual or graphic, but some people might find it gross.

Ira Glass

David Sedaris, who was recorded by Seattle Arts and Lectures. He is the author of many fine books, and he's out on the road these days, giving talks. To find out when he's coming to your town, visit DavidSedarisBooks.com

Ira Glass

Well, our program was produced today by Jonathan Goldstein and myself, with Alex Blumberg, Wendy Dorr, and Starlee Kine. Senior producer for today's show was Julie Snyder.

Contributing editors for today's show-- Susan Burton, Rebecca Carroll, Jack Hitt, Margie Rockland, Alix Spiegel, Paul Tough, Nancy Updike, and consigliere Sarah Vowell. Music help today from Jamie Hodge and Sarah Vowell.

Our website, ThisAmericanLife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia, who explained some recent decisions at the radio station this way.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life.