Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeaped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org.
Back when Pete was 18 years old, it was the summer before he went away to college. He's home in the living room with his dad.
And he turns to me and he says, Peter, let's go for a drive. And that was not something that he ever said. That's not something that we did.
So Pete knows something's up, but he has no idea what. They go outside, get in the ballroom. Pete asks his dad.
Shouldn't we get Will, my younger brother, because he was at home.
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Chapter 2: What family secret did Pete discover at 18?
He was probably 13 or 14. And my dad just shook his head, no.
This drive for Pete, alone with his dad, turned out to be kind of a big moment in his life. Before the drive, if he had to describe his family, it wasn't hard. He could do it in two words.
Completely mundane. I mean, we lived outside of D.C. My parents worked for the government. I mean, they were good parents. They were kind and attentive, and we would have dinner every night. My dad would cook dinner.
Good cook?
Oh, incredible cook.
The way Pete remembers it, he did salmon sundaes, made a great pot roast, had a pizza that he'd make on Fridays.
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Chapter 3: How did Jake Cornell's unexpected lore drop affect him?
His mom was the one who'd make sure they did their homework and cleaned their rooms. She was direct and more talkative than their dad. It was really quiet.
They were not gregarious. They didn't really have friends. They didn't really have hobbies.
Okay, and so now he is in the car with his dad. Shuts the two of them. Dad pulls out of the driveway.
So we start driving through our neighborhood, and we get to the stoplight at the end of our neighborhood. And he says to me, Peter, it's time to tell you about the family business. Espionage. I mean, my first reaction was like, what are you doing right now? What kind of joke is this? And then the next thing that he said is open the glove box.
And so I opened the glove box and inside was a sheet of paper and he said, take out that sheet of paper. And so I took it out and, um, I'm scanning the page and it's his resume from the CIA.
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Chapter 4: What was Ben Austen's experience with his sixth-grade teacher's death?
Did you know he worked for the CIA? No. Where'd you think he worked?
Well, he said he worked at the State Department.
But now, on this sheet of paper, listed all the different countries that Pete had lived with his parents, Germany and the Netherlands and Jamaica, countries where Pete had always thought that his dad was going off to an embassy or consulate every day to work for the State Department.
and I'm seeing like counterintelligence and counterinsurgency and deputy chief, chief of station, case officer. Um, I didn't know what to ask next. And I, and I honestly don't know that we talked very much at all. So we actually drove in a big loop and drove back down into the driveway and, um, I was like, oh, wait, does mom know about this? And my dad goes, oh, she works there too.
This stunned him. His daddy could kind of see. His daddy was quiet, like somebody who keeps secrets.
But with my mom, it was completely out of context. It was just a complete surprise because of how she was. What do you mean? She just was somebody who, it just seemed like you were getting exactly what you got. She just didn't really seem like somebody who could deceive. But I guess she was.
And were they the kind of CIA employees who, you know, analyze data and sit at a desk, work a desk? Or were they like out in the field, you know, like spying, like pretending to be people who they aren't, you know, like carrying a gun? Were they that kind of CIA employees?
They were out in the field. Yeah.
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Chapter 5: How did social media change Ben's connection with old friends?
They were undercover. They had passports with other names. And the way it was described to me is that they were not spies. They were recruiting spies from other countries. And in doing so, they were, you know, pretending to be people who they were not.
Pete says before this, he just hadn't really thought much about his parents and their wives and their jobs. He was a kid. He once asked his mom, like, what do you actually do at your government job all day long?
And I think my mom said something like, oh, you know, it's just meetings and memos. And I was like, yeah, I figured. Just boring stuff. Yeah.
Which I have to say, I bet there were meetings and memos, so it's like that isn't a 100% lie. It's just leaving some stuff out.
Yeah. No, definitely using boringness as a kind of deception.
In retrospect, Pete says, there were clues that he could have maybe picked up on. His mom spoke several languages. The family lived most of his life in other countries. His dad owned a 9mm pistol and was always up at 4 in the morning to go running on a track.
It was the fact that his parents didn't have friends and never had anybody over to the house, which of course doesn't mean that you're a spy, but still.
Yeah, it actually wasn't until a lot later that I realized that a lot of adults do have friends and still hang out. And there were things like when I would go to the mall with my mom, she always made sure we knew a code word. And she would say like... Okay, so if mommy's ever not here and somebody comes to pick you up, make sure they know the code word.
And the code word was always Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
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Chapter 6: What unresolved feelings did Ben have about his childhood behavior?
Wait, anytime you'd go to the mall, your mom would remind you of this?
Yeah, we'd be in the back seat and she'd be like, okay, boys, what's the code word? And we'd say Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
At the time, he says he chalked it up to 1990s Stranger Danger stuff, but later learned that other parents do not do this. But he told me there was one more clue about his parents' jobs, a clue that was sitting right there during the years they moved back to Virginia.
Maybe the biggest clue of all is that we lived right across the street from the CIA headquarters.
Wait, what?
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense because my dad was super pragmatic and he hated traffic.
To be clear, they weren't literally across the street, but in a neighborhood right across the street. Door to door, less than five minutes. Pete's parents are both dead now. They both retired from the CIA after long careers, which is why it's okay to talk about it here on the radio, by the way. But when Pete learned about this, it really did make their lives seem so much more impressive.
Like they met in the CIA, you know, fell in love in the CIA. They were globetrotting and bringing their kids around and doing God knows what.
I'm not exactly sure how to ask this question, so I'm just going to ask this straight out. The one thing that I know about spies from movies is that they're all really, really hot. Were your parents really hot?
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Chapter 7: How did Eddie's perspective on their childhood differ from Ben's?
There's this concept that originally was in video games and then it spread to TV shows and to social media where, okay, say in a video game, there's the universe that everything takes place in, right? And then at some point, the game creators do a new lore drop where they give backstory or reveal important details that suddenly make everything seem different and richer and more complicated.
She had a whole new light. Pete had that. He had a new lore drop in his actual life. He thought his parents were one thing, then went backstory that changed his whole picture of them. So what's it like to live through in real life?
Yeah, I mean, I think at first it was a shock. The fact that they were able to deceive me for my whole life. And that is just weird. Yeah. it did make me look at them differently. Like, wow, the rug just got pulled from under me. Everything I know is a lie. But then when that wears off, it's kind of like, well, it's still just mom and dad.
Beats as everybody goes through the thing when they grow up, where they're going to see their parents, not just as the boring human furniture around the house of their childhood. And for most of us, the new information that we absorb about our parents happens over years. The new lore drop version that Pete got was just kind of the accelerated program.
Yeah, I got it all in one drive.
Today on our show, we have other human beings who are not video game characters and they're not fictional people on long-running television series who get hit with all new information about their own lives. Backstories that rewrite everything. New lore drops in real life. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. Today on the show, I will still be playing the part that I always play here.
And I have not learned that I am a princess from Genovia and my grandmother is actually Julie Andrews. I am still Ira Glass. Stay with us.
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Chapter 8: What lessons did Ben learn from reconnecting with Eddie?
Here at LifeKit, we take advice seriously. We bring you evidence-based recommendations. And to do that, we talk with researchers and experts on all sorts of topics. Because we have the same questions you do. Like, what's really in my shampoo? Or should I let my kid quit soccer? Or what should I do with my savings in uncertain economic times?
You can listen to NPR's LifeKit in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
This is American Life, Act One. Save the drama for your grandmama. Sometimes, a war drop happens when you least expect it. Look at this next story. Evita Kornfeld explains.
When I first met Jake, it was obvious. This is a guy who is hardwired to try and connect with people. He's like this friendly bulldozer, Kool-Aid manning his way into emotional intimacy. And Jake's always been this way, in part perhaps because he grew up surrounded by people. He comes from this big Irish Catholic family in Rhode Island, and he had a sort of sitcom upbringing.
His aunts and uncles and cousins all lived close by. One grandma lived literally next door. The other set of grandparents lived a 15-minute walk from his house, and Jake saw them every day. It was the best. And then, when he was seven years old, his family moved to Vermont, away from his extended family. And he hated it, really missed them.
And this missing only intensified when his grandma back in Rhode Island was diagnosed with breast cancer. To little Jake, it was obvious what to do.
I just started calling her all the time. And I think because I just wanted to keep talking to her because I was so afraid she was going to die.
Oh, my God. So sweet.
I know. It's funny to think back on because it is it was so purely intentioned. But it's also so the motives of it are so transparent that it must have just been like a reminder to my grandmother every day. Like this kid thinks you're going to die because you might. You know what I mean? She's like, OK, relax. No, she was like, I was trying to like one day of fucking peace.
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