329: Nice Work If You Can Get It

Ira Glass

Marsha Ivins is a veteran of five space missions between 1990 and 2001.

Ira Glass

Chris Cassidy was chosen to be an astronaut in 2004.

Ira Glass

Cady Coleman flew space missions in 1995 and, most recently, 1999.

Ira Glass

The astronauts all have offices, three or four of them to a room, on the sixth floor of a nondescript office building. They do some public speaking. Cady, for example, had just talked to a ninth grade biology class. Chris had welcomed the Farm Credit Bank of Texas Annual Stockholders Meeting to Houston just a couple of hours before our interview. If they have a mission coming up, they train all the time, but they almost never have a mission coming up.

Most of the time they spend on the ground seems to be helping design the gear that's used in space, and teaching others how to use that gear and practicing on that gear. They have to do a lot of studying. It's like grad school, one of them said, the operating systems of the space shuttle.

And once a week, each of them has to practice flying a real jet, which is to say it's like any good job. For all the stuff that's kind of interesting and sort of fun, there's lots of stuff that you just kind of have to get through. Cady and Chris both estimated they spend maybe one day a week doing the things that they really love.

Ira Glass

Here's something else. Many astronauts are just incredible super-achievers. Chris Cassidy was a navy seal. He led operations in the caves on the Afghan-Pakistan border. He was awarded two bronze stars at a presidential unit citation.

Cady Coleman has a PhD in polymer science. Before she was an astronaut, her official NASA bio says, she used to quote, "synthesize model compounds to investigate the use of organic polymers for third order nonlinear optical applications, such as advanced computers." These are people who are used to accomplishing big, big things. And the main thing they do as astronauts is not go into space. 44 of the 95 astronauts have never been in space. 19 of the astronauts, like Chris Cassidy, aren't even scheduled for a mission. And time is running out on them. The space shuttle is going to stop flying in 2010. And the next space vehicle isn't going to be ready until 2020. Here's Marsha Ivins.

Ira Glass

And so she does what us non-astronauts do, she gets some of her space exploration on TV.

Ira Glass

Well, from WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life, distributed by Public Radio International. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program, we have stories of dream jobs and how all those jobs, of course, have certain aspects that turn out to be not so perfectly dreamy.

Our show today in four acts. Act One, I'm Not a TV Star, But I Play One on TV. John Hodgman ends up on a dream job that he never even dreamt of himself. Act Two, Show Me the Annuity. In that act, a dream job that you have almost certainly never heard of, unless you have won $1 million in the lottery. Act Three, The Homesick Explorer. Sarah Vowell tells that story. Act Four, Just One Thing Missing, in which a girl is stopped from getting her dream job by one of the most powerful forces on this earth. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

Act One, I'm Not a TV Star, But I Play One on TV.

John Hodgman was a magazine writer and he was a contributor to our radio show, and then he started appearing on television. He now appears about twice a month on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and he appears about one million times a month on a series of ads for Apple Computers. You've probably seen these ads, one of the most noticeable ad campaigns in the country. There's two guys against a white background, one's a Mac, one's a PC. John is the PC.

At one of our live shows in Los Angeles-- Los Angeles, of course, the epicenter of American television production-- John talked about what it is like to have this strange new job.

John Hodgman

Good evening. My name is John Hodgman. Thank you for meeting me here in Los Angeles. I've been enjoying getting to know your city of Los Angeles. Until recently, my only experience within LA had been as a child. I had come here in the early '80s with my dad. He was on business. He took me along. And we went to the Universal Studios tour, and this was traumatic.

What happened was we were sitting on some kind of a bench when I was approached by a small human dressed as Charlie Chaplin. At this time in my life, I had very long hair. I was 10 years old, but I had very long hair. It was a really stupid affectation, but the problem was that people routinely thought that I was a girl. And this would lead to occasional embarrassing situations. Double takes as I entered the men's room, for example. Or being expected, say, to kiss Charlie Chaplin on his white powdered cheek.

And so, after some predictable and annoying cane and bowler hat shenanigans, the moment came. Charlie Chaplin sat next to me and indicated that he was ready for me to kiss him. He waited me out. It was clear what was expected of me and what was going to happen. And finally, I let it happen. So that was my introduction to your city, a traumatic, gender-confused silent comedy date rape.

At the time, I had no idea why someone would expect a complete stranger to want to kiss them on the cheek. But now I understand, because now I am on television. Now my life has glamour.

There is an original definition of the word "glamour" that I did not know about until I read fantasy novels. A glamour is a kind of magical spell originally, to where glamour is to surround yourself with a kind of aura that causes people to see you in a different way, to see you as you are not. It's a disguise. And being on television, I've discovered, is sort of like wearing a disguise, one that you didn't necessarily choose to put on, and only other people can actually see it.

Over the past year, I've been trying to make sense of exactly how this all came about. I had written a book and I had been asked to be a guest on The Daily Show. And next I was asked to audition for a series of ads for a computer company. And I got that job, too. And just like that, I was on TV, pretty much by accident.

And as a result, I am an older, and fatter, and more jowly person than most people who are making their careers on TV, who are starting out on television now. Here are some of the words that blogs have used when describing me on television. "The pudgy John Hodgman." The chubby John Hodgman." "Round John Hodgman." "Stout John Hodgman." "Tubby John Hodgman." "Portly John Hodgman" and "Cutie." There's always an outlier. That last one came from a website that includes a regular feature mapping out celebrity sightings in New York City. And in this an anonymous tipster reported accurately that I was taking the B train south from my home in Manhattan. And I remembered this. I remember this exact thing happening. I was on the subway and I was wearing my brown jacket and my brown pants, and a neighbor had earlier said, you know, you look like a UPS guy in that outfit. And I was sort of thinking about that, and a woman got on the subway and sort of looked at me like, I know you. But then she just immediately started typing on her BlackBerry.

And then, a guy got on and did sort of the same kind of double take look. And which one of those people is the anonymous tipster? Which one thinks I am cutie?

So highly subjectively, the tipster reported that I was cutie. And then, returning once again to accuracy, the tipster reported I was dressed like a UPS man.

After that these strange brushes with fame, in which I bizarrely was the famous person, started coming about fairly frequently. Dateline, the Radio Shack, Big Y Plaza, Greenfield, Massachusetts, the young guy at the counter asked me to autograph an old receipt that he pulls out of the garbage.

What are you doing here? He asks in a way that conveys several more questions. What are you doing in Massachusetts? In Greenfield? At Radio Shack? At the Big Y Plaza?

I am buying speaker wire, I tell him.

The West Side Highway in the 20s, two men in a brown Chrysler pull up alongside my car. When spotted, double thumbs up.

The Apple Store, SoHo. General storewide freakout.

There are waves of double takes as I walk to buy a cable. The store greeter cannot believe it is me. She jumps up and down. The staff starts to play the ads that I'm in on a giant video screen.

Suddenly, I am like a mascot walking around a theme park. I'm Charlie Chaplin at Universal Studios, and everyone is rushing to kiss me.

Not long ago, I was spotted at the airport in New York on my way here. A successful looking businessman passed by me as I was waiting in line. He immediately smiled and said, what, no corporate jet for you?

Ha ha, I said.

Then the businessman said, whatever they're paying you, you ought to tell them, keep the cash and pay you in flights.

Ha ha, I said.

Beyond ha ha, I didn't know what to say, really, for two reasons. First, because prior to my being on television, businessmen in airports did not generally ever speak to me, or even see me. Second, I have to say I was a little confused. As best as I could make it out, this businessman's financial plan for me was as follows.

I should give up all payment for my work and instead, barter my services for free airfare. I wondered if he had taken his own advice. Had he given up his paycheck for a trip around the world? Had he left his family behind, the children he could no longer feed, and the wife who could not understand his weird decision? Did he now spend his days forever ascending and descending, buckling and unbuckling? And now was he trying to trick me, like a fairy in a fable, into joining his strange, lonely, floating world?

Still, I said, ha ha. In a way, that said, that's a good idea. Because I almost instinctively wanted to please him even though he was clearly insane.

Only much later, like, weeks later, would I consider a different explanation for his behavior, that the businessman was starstruck. He knew me from TV, he wanted to make a connection, and said the first thing that came to his head, a very, very bad business idea that made no sense. And I had to consider for the first time the possibility that I didn't need to please him, the successful businessman was trying to please me.

Not to complain, but this has been something of a difficult adjustment in my life. When you are in your 20s, it seems inevitable, somehow, that you will be on television, or an astronaut, or the president. It is hard-wired into every gland, this ambition to be known and renowned. And then, of course, you grow older, pudgier, stouter, more portly.

Then, just when you've discarded the last shred of a shred of a shred of the fantasy of, say, being an astronaut, to then have someone knock at your door one day and say, it's time. Suit up. It's time to go into outer space. It's exciting, but also unsettling. You think, why now? And your idea of yourself never really catches up. You put on the space suit and you learn to eat dehydrated food and poop while floating upside down or whatever. You adjust, but you never really feel like you're supposed to be up there, orbiting the earth. Thank you very much.

Ira Glass

John Hodgman recorded at Royce Hall in Los Angeles. He's the author of the book, The Areas of My Expertise.

[MUSIC - "FAME AND FORTUNE" BY MISSION OF BURMA]

Ira Glass

Act Two, Show Me the Annuity. Alex Blumberg has this story of a guy who ends up in what turns out to be the perfect job for him.

Alex Blumberg

Ed was working in a bar in Portland, Oregon, where he'd just moved with a bunch of friends from college, when he ran into trouble.

Oregon at the time had pioneered an innovative new method of playing the state lottery. They'd come out with these video poker terminals that you played five card stud on for money, just like if you're playing online or at a casino. The difference was that all the money you won or lost came in or out of the Oregon state lottery fund.

They were incredibly popular. Almost every bar in Portland had a few of these video poker machines. And Ed found them very hard to resist.

Alex Blumberg

Deep in debt and feeling pretty bad, Ed spent the next 14 months living in his parents' basement, stuck in a mid-20s career malaise. Until one night, he got a call from a friend saying that she'd met this guy. He owned a company and that the company was hiring.

Ed came in for an interview, and lo and behold, he got the job, a job that, before the interview, he hadn't even known existed, but for which he was strangely well prepared.

Alex Blumberg

The firm where Ed was hired was one of the first entrants into a fledgling industry, which called itself the lump sum industry. And to understand how it works, you have to understand a little about the lottery.

Most lottery winners, especially in the '90s, when Ed started his job, didn't get all their money up front, but got paid in installments, annuities.

So for example, if you won $1 million, that was actually only $50,000 a year for the next 20 years. 50,000 times 20 is a million. And with taxes, it's not even $50,000. It's more like $35,000.

Alex Blumberg

Ed's job was to find these broke lottery winners and offer them cash up front, a lump sum, in exchange for the yearly checks they'd be getting from the lottery. Of course, the lump sum would be less than the total value of the long-term payments. So if you won $1 million, your lump sum would be about half that.

Alex Blumberg

Ed quickly worked his way up, eventually becoming the best salesmen in the company, with a corner office and a multiple six-figure income.

One thing to keep in mind. Ed was a middleman. He wasn't buying the lottery payments for himself, but on behalf of investors who put up a lump sum of cash now for a guaranteed income stream over the next 20 years. So if an investor was willing to pay, say, $500,000, and Ed got the lottery winner to agree to $480,000, then the firm made $20,000, A big portion of which went to Ed.

The smaller the amount Ed got the lottery winner to agree to, the more money Ed made. And so the last thing Ed wanted to do was get into a deep discussion about the ins and outs of every deal, which, surprisingly, most lottery winners didn't want to do either.

What Ed found was that, if lottery winners felt like they could relate to him, could trust him, then they'd be much more willing to do the deal, no matter what the terms. And Ed found it wasn't hard to get them comfortable because they actually had a lot in common.

Alex Blumberg

We've all heard stories about how winning the lottery can be a mixed blessing, with the unwanted attention and the cousins of friends of coworkers looking for handouts. But when Ed discusses lottery winners, it can sound like he's talking about someone getting cancer. Because in his experience, it's not even a mixed blessing. It's a catastrophe.

Of the winners he's met, he figures 80% of them wished they'd never won. More money often just intensifies your own worst tendencies and allows you to get in much worse trouble, be it through gambling, philandering, drinking, or just plain boneheadedness than you ever could have at $15 an hour. And, he says, it makes you paranoid.

He did a deal with one woman. He showed up at her house for their appointment.

Alex Blumberg

But the dogs were just the tip of the paranoia iceberg. The woman agreed to Ed's figure from her doorway, grabbed her keys, and said, let's go. They headed to the notary, she in her car, Ed in his rental. But when Ed pulled into the parking space at the notary, the woman zoomed away. Eventually, she called Ed from a pay phone and told him that she was reconsidering. Ed tried to talk her down over the phone, but this was a little difficult.

Alex Blumberg

Ed left his job after seven years, partly for reasons anyone leaves a high stakes, high pressure sales job: the stress, the competition, the constant travel. But there was another part, too. Ed believed in the lump sum option. Still does. It makes more sense to take the money up front and invest it, than it does to let the state hold onto it interest free for 20 years. But it doesn't necessarily make sense to buy the lump sum from Ed, the middle man, because he's taking a cut for himself. And this was the inescapable truth to Ed's job, a truth that, because he identified so much with lottery winners, he found it especially hard to ignore.

The more the lottery winners liked him, the less likely they were to notice how big a cut he took. And the more desperate they were for cash, the more lucrative Ed's deal was likely to be.

Alex Blumberg

In the year since Ed first got into the business, the lump sum industry has gone through huge changes. New companies entered the field, increasing competition. The states themselves got into the action. A decade ago, almost none of them offered a lump sum option to their lottery winners. Today, almost all of them do.

And they offer pretty much the exact same terms Ed was offering, roughly $0.5 million up front on a $1 million win, but minus, of course, Ed's commission. The state has effectively cut out the middlemen like Ed. The overwhelming majority of winners take their deal.

Ira Glass

Alex Blumberg is one of the producers of our program. Ed Ugel has written a book about his time in the lottery industry. It comes out in September and is called, Money for Nothing.

Coming up, out on the frontier, treading the new world. The only thing lacking is a salt shaker. That's in a minute, from Chicago Public Radio and Public Radio International, when our program continues.

[MUSIC - "WORK SONG" BY VINCE GUERALDI]

Ira Glass

It's This American Life, I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose some theme, bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show, Nice Work If You Can Get It, stories about people who land dream jobs, and how even dream jobs have parts that aren't really necessary so dreamy.

We've arrived at Act Three of our show. Act Three, The Homesick Explorer.

When we think of the Fremont expeditions to map the American West, as we so often do, we think of epic men, the kind of men who don't call their jobs jobs. They call their jobs destinies. Well, Sarah Vowell has some thoughts about one of the lesser-known guys on that trip, and the job he did.

Sarah Vowell

John Charles Fremont was the spirited flashing light of a man from whom Las Vegas' flashy, lit-up Fremont Street would one day get its name.

In 1842, the United States government sent him to lead one of the most important expeditions of the 19th century, a mission to make maps and issue reports on what would come to be called the Oregon Trail. He hired the famous fur trapper and mountaineer, Kit Carson, to be the expedition scout. To make maps and drawings along the way, Fremont employed a German immigrant named Charles Preuss.

Fremont's lively report to Congress of his findings, illustrated with Preuss's drawings and maps, became a bestseller. And Preuss's map of the Oregon trail Congress published in 1846 was soon crammed into the glove box of every Conestoga rolling West.

If you ever had to reach across a copy of the Book of Mormon blocking the Parmesan cheese at a pizza place outside of Provo, it's because Brigham Young was so intrigued with Fremont's description of the bucolic area surrounding Utah's Great Salt Lake, he promptly moved his Mormon brethren there.

So Charles Preuss was one of the most important, influential, and talented cartographers of his generation. Problem was, this excellent mapmaker just so happened to loathe pretty much every minute of actual exploring. Preuss's diaries from his three trips out West with Fremont seethe with manly, gung-ho cowboy bravery like--

Sarah Vowell

Or, mulling over the roasting mule meat that is to be his dinner.

Sarah Vowell

Preuss's boss on the trip, John Charles Fremont, was manifest destiny's advance man. As a young surveyor, he'd cut his teeth mapping the Cherokee lands in the southeast in the 1830s, so the US government had an accurate account of the real estate it was about to steal.

Later on, Fremont came home from his expeditions out West a hero and celebrity. His nickname, "The Pathfinder." He went on to become the first presidential candidate of the Republican party. And the signature image used for all his later self-promotion, including his presidential campaign, was one incident from his Western journeys. It became the iconic moment of his life, what crossing the Delaware was for Washington, what tripping over the ottoman was for Dick Van Dyke. Fremont climbed alone to what he thought was the highest peak in the Rockies, stood up straight and tall and jabbed an American flag into the mountain top, Old Glory whipping defiantly in the icy wind.

Think about the kind of person you have to be to do that, to be so unapologetically grand.

Preuss, meanwhile, was farther down the mountain, striking a less Neil Armstrongy pose.

Sarah Vowell

Fremont wrote of this climb that, standing where never a human foot had stood before, that he "felt the exaltation of first explorers."

Preuss put it this way.

Sarah Vowell

Preuss's resentment of the bugs, the landscape, the Indians, and the monotony, pales compared to his many varied flipouts about food. His entry for June 12, 1842 cheers up with the slaughter of an ox. Preuss thinks that after the meat ages overnight--

Sarah Vowell

June 13.

Sarah Vowell

Preuss has an entire subset of food complaints involving salt and the lack thereof. One of his happiest entries takes place in the Sierra Mountains on February 15, 1843, near what is now the California-Nevada border.

Sarah Vowell

Preuss was so giddy about the salt that he doesn't mention what the expedition was doing while they were waiting around for the seasoning to show up: discovering Lake Tahoe.

It makes sense that Preuss, a man who was outstanding at measuring and drawing and using barometric data to construct a two-dimensional topographical representation of a mountain, might suck at climbing said mountain. Cartography was Preuss's calling. But in order for him to do the job he loved to do, he had to live a life he hated.

The thing I admire most about Charles Preuss is that Fremont, his boss, apparently had no idea just how miserable the cartographer was on the job. Preuss' diaries were meant for one reader, his wife, and they weren't published until 1958, after Preuss and all his colleagues had been dead for a century.

In fact, Fremont commended Preuss for "his even temper and patient endurance of hardship," noting Preuss had a "cheerful philosophy of his own, which often brightened dark situations."

I respect that. Preuss had a job to do and he bucked up and did it.

The other people on these expeditions, John Charles Fremont, and his legendary scout, Kit Carson, are the sort of grand, hardy, how-the-west-was-won figures who are easily made into colossal statues. But there's something comforting, even heroic, about a human scale footnote like Preuss, a man who made history even though all he ever wanted was to make maps.

Ira Glass

Sarah Vowell. She's the author most recently of Assassination Vacation. Charles Preuss' diaries were read by actor Dermot Mulroney.

[MUSIC - "DESERT BLUES" BY JIMMIE RODGERS]

Ira Glass

Act Four, Just One Thing Missing.

Well, we end our show today with somebody who was blocked from getting their dream job, blocked by the government of the United States of America. Douglas McGray has the story. He's changed the name of the woman in this story to protect her identity.

Douglas McGray

Martha doesn't like to talk about her future anymore. She'd wanted to go to med school, become an OB/GYN. And she's exactly the kind of kid everyone roots for.

She grew up in a poor, mostly immigrant neighborhood in east LA, where most people didn't graduate from high school, and nobody talked about college. But Martha got into UCLA. She couldn't believe it, UCLA.

She majored in chemistry, threw herself into six-hour lab sessions, ran a volunteer organization on campus. But the fact is, she can't become a doctor. She can't work at all in the United States, not legally, anyway. She's an undocumented immigrant. Her mother brought her to the US from Mexico when she was nine.

So now she's a waitress, earning minimum wage, working off the books. And it may be the best job she can hope to get. The worst part?

Douglas McGray

When Martha arrived at UCLA, she figured she'd be the only undocumented kid there. But she was wrong. She found others. A high school valedictorian and prom queen from Compton who went to UCLA when the Marines rejected her. Only legal residents can enlist.

Another valedictorian, brought to the United States as an infant who spoke her first word in English. A shy girl who arrived as a toddler and took 11 AP classes in high school. They're a tiny, close community. They actually have a small student club. They go out and mentor undocumented high school kids and raise money for scholarships. And they understand each other in a way that no one else can, like what they go through to stay in school.

Most live really far from campus. Two and a half hours in Martha's case. And they have to be creative to survive.

Douglas McGray

20 years ago, California allowed undocumented kids to go to state universities with financial aid and everything. Five years later, the courts reversed that. Kids like Martha would have to pay huge out-of-state fees. Four years after that, a ballot initiative barred undocumented kids from college altogether. Then the courts got involved again.

Today, the laws for someone like Martha are different in every state. 10 states, including California and Texas, allow undocumented kids to go to state schools and pay in-state tuition, but no financial aid, no Pell Grant, no work study job, not even a student loan.

To apply for a green card, which would solve all their problems, Martha would have to quit school, move to Mexico, wait in a line that can stretch 10 or 15 years, and most likely get rejected.

Last year, Martha found a perfect job to support herself, on campus even. But she couldn't accept it. A UCLA professor needed a research assistant, someone to help her interview Spanish-speaking families in East LA. Martha knew the neighborhood, spoke Spanish fluently. The professor called Martha to say she got the job.

Douglas McGray

When Martha and I talked, she kept calling herself a quitter. She said the word like it was the worst word she knew. She said it over and over. I told her she was being ridiculous. I've known Martha for almost two years and I've never seen someone put so much pressure on herself.

When her grades were mediocre, she wouldn't blame her home life, or her commute, or the pair of double waitressing shifts she worked most weekends. She would just say she hadn't tried hard enough.

One quarter, desperate to find more time to study, she actually started driving to school even though it scared her to drive without a license. As an undocumented immigrant, she's not allowed to get one.

I kept asking her, what do you mean, quitter? Finally, she explained.

Douglas McGray

What happened to Martha is she saw graduation approaching and after it, nothing. The blankness of her future, suddenly only weeks away, drained the fight right out of her. Her entire college career seemed like a mean joke. She had exhausted herself working twice as hard as most of her classmates to get a UCLA education, Plus waitressing, plus the commute, plus cooking and cleaning when her parents were working, which was most of the time. And for what? She had no way to pay for a medical degree, and no hope of becoming a licensed doctor if she did.

There's a very simple solution to all of this. A bill called the Dream Act would offer conditional citizenship to those few kids, like Martha, who grow up in the United States and make it to college or the military.

If they get a degree, or finish their service, they become full citizens. By 2004, the Senate version of the Dream Act had actually picked up 47 co-sponsors. But the Dream Act keeps getting bogged down in immigration politics, tacked onto a bunch of big, messy immigration proposals that nobody in Congress could agree on.

Earlier this year, the Dream Act was introduced again in the House and Senate.

Douglas McGray

Martha went back to school a few days ago, and I don't think her temporary dropout counts as quitting, no matter how she sees it. She hasn't given up hope. Maybe the laws will change. Maybe there'll be a normal life for her here after all. She graduates in June.

Ira Glass

Douglas McGray. He's a fellow at the New America Foundation.

Ira Glass

Well, our program was produced today by Alex Blumberg and myself, with Jane Feltes, Sarah Koenig, Lisa Pollak, and Nancy Updike. Our senior producer is Julie Snyder. Production help from Seth Lind and Tommy Andres. Music help from Jessica Hopper. Our longtime webmaster, Elizabeth Meister, who created our website, is retiring from the website to go make radio herself. She has done an amazing job thinking through what it is that we would do on the internet in the first place and then making it happen for so many years. I do not know what would be doing on the web without her. Elizabeth, we all wish you the best.

You can see the latest incarnation of our website, souped up now with podcasts and free video, at www.thisamericanlife.org.

[ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS]

This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International.

[FUNDING CREDITS]

WBEZ management oversight for our program by Mr. Torey Malatia, who cannot wait to slip into his monogrammed silk bathrobe, ease into his leather chair and listen to this week's shows.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of this American life.

Announcer

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