Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
There are moments in each of our lives that seem to change everything. An unexpected diagnosis, the sudden end of a relationship, the loss of a job. As our lives veer off course, it can feel like time is dividing into a before and an after.
I'm Dr. Maya Shankar, a cognitive scientist, and my new book, The Other Side of Change, Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans, is all about how we navigate these inflection points. The Other Side of Change pairs singular, real-life stories with scientific insights to help us find meaning in the tumult of change.
What if we saw the hardest moments in our lives not simply as something to endure, but as an opportunity to reimagine who we can be?
Chapter 2: Why does Malcolm dislike celebrating his birthday?
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So I'm calling you because I'm doing a little thing on how I don't like my birthday.
Yes.
And I have questions for you.
Yes, I'm eagerly waiting to hear this because I have spent a lot of time wondering what it's all about.
That's my mom, Joyce. She's very short, speaks very softly. You would like her. Do you remember ever having a birthday party for me when I was a child?
I think we did. We didn't do exotic things. I think you had people sleep over. Or you had some people to tea a few friends from school.
I remember there was once a big party. Really? And afterwards I said, that's enough.
Okay. Now, well, are you going to explain what was enough?
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Chapter 3: What memorable childhood birthday parties does Malcolm recall?
Cute puppies. Viral epidemics. My feeling was that this might be the perfect revisionist history story.
One fun thing that I learned about Malcolm on this trip is that he doesn't believe in using maps, which caused, you know, maps. You can ask him his philosophy on it. I'm sure he has some great answer, but he would not use a map. So it was kind of me and Jacob secretly checking our, you know, Google Maps and sort of suggesting that he take certain turns.
Licking your fingers, sticking it to the wind and being like, yeah, this is true.
Since we're talking about my parents, one of my fondest memories of being a kid is driving with my family somewhere and clearly getting hopelessly lost. And my father announcing gleefully from the front seat, I'm following my nose. I felt that my young producers deserved a similar experience.
And on this long drive road trip, we had to stop for gas and we stopped at a very desolate gas station, kind of in the middle of nowhere, very in the middle of nowhere. And Malcolm and Jacob both went in to grab something and I went to the bathroom and I came back out and they were gone. And I left my cell phone in the car and I just,
I kind of remember calculating what my options were in terms of what I could do. So I remember I went into the sort of gas station and was contemplating calling my family, calling my roommate and saying, listen, my boss left me at a gas station.
In fairness to me and Jacob, Eloise had been sitting in the back seat, and she is by nature quiet as a church mouse, so it makes sense that we might assume that she was back there all the time, reading a book or something. And it did not take that long for us to realize our mistake, maybe 10 miles max. And in the frantic drive back, both Jacob and I felt really, really guilty.
Anyway, why am I telling you this story? Because when I meet listeners, I think they have the impression that this show is some big, well-oiled corporate machine. And clearly, it's not.
I was like, did you try calling me? Like, what went through there? I don't think we really talked about it because we were all so late.
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Chapter 4: How does Malcolm's mother view the significance of birthday celebrations?
Nadaf is like pickles on a sandwich. It's transformative. The other reason, while I'm on this subject, is that this is the price I pay for being the child of a Jamaican and an Englishman who was raised in Canada and then moved to the United States. I have four different pronunciation and accent models bouncing around my head at all times. Everything is up for grabs.
The person who knows this better than anyone is my producer, Nina Lawrence.
Yeah, you have a real problem with ambulances.
What do you say?
But when the ambulance arrived a few minutes later.
And what do I say?
When the ambulance.
That's what it says. Ambulance. Where were we? One more memory. We're celebrating our 10th anniversary. Oh my God. And you were the principal figure in the founding of Revisionist History, right? That's crazy.
I guess. I mean, yeah, I was there. I was there from the very, very start. I remember our very first meeting.
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Chapter 5: What reflections does Malcolm share about the 10th anniversary of Revisionist History?
Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha!
The Freudian term for what Elvis was doing is called parapraxis, a slip of the tongue that reveals something about the speaker. So the episode was trying to answer, what does Elvis's issue with the bridge tell us about Elvis? Now, I should say, I had all kinds of trouble doing this story. There was a great essay written about Elvis's parapraxis by the psychologist Alan Elms.
So I flew to Sacramento to meet with Elms, but he wasn't well and couldn't really speak. So I kind of gave up, put the story aside for months, until I had the random idea of just going to Nashville and having professional musicians sing Are You Lonesome Tonight and explain to me why the bridge is so complicated.
I went to see Bobby Braddock, one of the legendary Nashville songwriters, and he brought with him a good friend, a singer named Casey Bowles. Casey sang Are You Lonesome Tonight, and then we got on the subject of another song, one of her own. Do you find yourself making the kind of errors, sometimes even subtle ones, that we've been talking about?
That's so interesting. I wrote a song about my mother called Somebody Something. And my mother is adorable. And whenever you heard about things going wrong or like some tumultuous story, it was my dad. And so I finally was like, you know what? Why aren't we the only person in the family that there's nothing I haven't written about? So I was trying to dig dirt on her, and there was nothing.
And so I ended up writing this song about her called Somebody Something. I cry every time I do it. And there is a line that says, you know, she's always been somebody's something. She's lived every life but her own. And it's gone. I can't remember it right now.
I don't know that feeling.
I can't remember it. She's always been somebody's something. She's been everything but alone. A daughter, a mother, a daughter, a lover, a wife and a mother. She's lived every life but her own. Yes, she's always been somebody, something. And there's a line that says, you know, she wonders what it might be like to be somebody else. And she wonders what it feels like to be free.
but she's always imagined being nobody's nothing, and that's something she'd never want to be. But that line usually is just gone. And a lot of times I'll go, hold on, and divert and tell a funny story really quickly. Yeah.
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Chapter 6: What insights were gained from the episode 'The Dog Will See You Now'?
And we go over there and we realize it's Sidney McLachlan.
You're using we liberally here.
It's the greatest, for those who don't know who Sidney McLachlan is, maybe the greatest female runner ever. of the last hundred years. I mean, she's the world record holder a zillion times, double gold medal winner in the Olympics, clearly the greatest American runner of her generation. And it was a foul moment.
Here I was trying, here I was, I went with you to the UCLA track to try and prove to you that there was something beautiful and transcendent about running. And I point out my example here. And my example turns out to be the greatest runner of her generation. It was insane serendipity. It is incredible. Yeah.
Yeah.
One more thought about made things versus found things. Not long ago, I tweeted out the following. A question that has haunted me ever since I've been forced to read Cinderella a zillion times. Why does the coach turn into a pumpkin, the coachman into mice and the dress to rags, but the magical glass slippers are fine? Did the fairy godmother have a carve out for shoes?
A ton of people weighed in with their answers because, I don't know, it seems like a question that really needs an answer. And my favorite was this, from Medlectual, who I think is a neurologist in Switzerland, although who knows. Oh, Malcolm, because magic in fairy tales follows symbolism, not physics. The coach, dress, and servants are a borrowed transformation.
The slippers are proof of identity, not escapism. If they vanished, the story loses its logic and its justice. which is beautiful, right? And I didn't come up with that. I put the question to all of you out there, to the listeners of Revisionist History, people who are as interested as we are in solving life's enduring and consequential, and sometimes not so consequential, mysteries.
One of you, who I've never met, gave me a little gift, which I can in turn share with all of you. Forgive me, I'm going to violate all my principles here and get sentimental. But the great revelation of the last 10 years has been how much all of us here at Revisionist History have enjoyed telling stories for all of you.
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