Have you ever downplayed some aspect of your identity? Maybe you don’t hide it, but you don’t bring it up with certain people, either. It turns out that these subtle disguises can have powerful effects on how we view ourselves. This week, we talk with legal scholar Kenji Yoshino about what happens when we soften or edit our true selves.Do you have a follow-up question for Kenji Yoshino after listening to this episode? If you'd be comfortable sharing your question with the larger Hidden Brain audience, please record a voice memo on your phone and email it to us at [email protected]. Use the subject line "covering." Thanks!
Full Episode
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. In November 1971, a man showed up at a flight counter for Northwest Orient Airlines in Portland. He asked to buy a one-way ticket to Seattle. The man provided his name when he bought the ticket. Dan Cooper. He was carrying a black briefcase.
Once on board the aircraft and en route to Seattle, the man showed a flight attendant the contents of his briefcase. It looked like a bomb. In return for releasing passengers unharmed, he demanded $200,000 when the plane landed. He also added an odd request. He wanted four parachutes. After the plane landed in Seattle, the ransom and parachutes were delivered.
Dan Cooper allowed the passengers to disembark, but kept the crew on board. He demanded the plane be refueled and fly to Mexico City. The plane took off a second time. The hijacker ordered the crew to stay in the cockpit. He also demanded the curtains between the coach cabin and first class be closed.
With no one watching him, he opened the rear exit on the plane and leaped with his parachute and his money into a moonless night. Dan Cooper was never caught. His identity remains a mystery. Clearly, the man who showed up at the airline counter that day was not who he said he was. The story of his hijacking, while real, is the stuff of movies and novels.
Today on the show, we look at how many of us go to great lengths to disguise who we are. Most of the time, it isn't because we're planning anything nefarious. It's because we want to fit in or be taken seriously. But such disguises don't just fool others. They have powerful effects on us. What happens when we pretend we are not who we are?
This week on Hidden Brain.
Who are we really and how much of our real selves can we show to the world? These are questions all of us wrestle with. Sometimes we decide to bear it all. Other times we decide to cover up. Kenji Yoshino is a legal scholar at New York University who studies the effects these choices have on us and on those around us. Kenji Yoshino, welcome to Hidden Brain.
Thank you so much for having me.
Kenji, take me back in time to the story of a very prominent American who went to great lengths to manage how people saw him. You've studied America's 32nd president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Tell me his story.
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