My favorite podcast is This American Life. I am smitten with Ira Glass, his reporting style, and how he tells stories with empathy and humor. The topics he explores are quirky, engaging, and more unifying than divisive, which I like.
Every This American Life episode tells several stories connected by a common theme. One of my favorites was an episode called Kid Logic.
It was about how kids see something happening, observe it carefully, think about it logically, consider how one thing connects to the next, and arrive at an incorrect conclusion. And sometimes, these wrong beliefs stay with us into adulthood and can cause embarrassment.
Ira interviewed a man who, when he was 12, heard adults say that one must consult the Nielsen family to find out how popular a television show is. As an adult, he knew that didn't make sense.
Why would they only ask people named Nielsen which shows they liked? So he assumed they just asked a small percentage of people and then extrapolated that Nielson was a good family name to sample for this purpose.
He knew this wasn't how they measured public opinion now. Still, it seemed like the Nielsen surveys had been around for a while. He figured they were just a holdover from a less statistically rigorous time.
When he was 32, a friend told this guy she'd been selected to be a Nielsen family. And he said to her, "Isn't it weird that they're all named Nielsen?" His friend looked at him strangely, and he realized his mistake and couldn't believe he'd gotten this far without thinking it through.
This happened to me recently while rambling in Vancouver's Stanley Park with my friend Tracy Britnell who was visiting from Toronto. We were circumnavigating the seawall and came to the iconic statue in the Pacific about halfway along. I said: "I love this mermaid," and explained how when I was a kid, my mom, sister, and I would visit the park, and the first thing I always wanted to see was the mermaid.
Tracy looked at me like I was off my rocker and said, "That's not a mermaid." I started arguing with her, and she said, "She has two legs and is wearing a mask and snorkel. And the large plaque in front of the statue says Woman Wearing a Wetsuit."
What a beautiful reminder of the remarkable power of imagination.
Do you have funny childhood beliefs you brought with you into adulthood or stories of your kids doing the same? Drop your stories in the comments.
READ MORE > JT's Tales From The Trail, Rambler Cafe Blog
Leave a comment