Transcript: 552: Need To Know Basis
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Ira Glass
Act One, Full Disclosure. You know, most of us, we basically just keep stuff to ourselves. Right? We withhold information. We do not say everything. You run into an acquaintance on the street, and they ask you, how are you? You generally do not tell them how you are, really. Adult life means we provide information on a need-to-know basis.
Your mom asks you on the phone about something you think that the two of you are just going to fight about. Sometimes you dodge, right? You do not talk about things that you don't want to talk about.
But what would it be like to not live like that? Well, Michael Leviton knows.
Michael Leviton
I just have a very unusual family. They valued honesty to an extreme extent.
Ira Glass
Michael's in his 30s, and he was raised by parents who encouraged him and his siblings to tell everything, the whole truth, all the time, believing that it hurts relationships when we avoid awkward truths, that we all should just man up and talk things through. We should work things out.
And being honest also means being true to who you are, right? Which, obviously, anybody wants for their kids. But hearing how far his family went with this, it makes you really understand how incredibly strange your daily life would be if you were to never withhold the truth. Like, for a long time, Michael believed that if somebody asked him a question-- I mean, like, any question at all-- he had to answer it honestly.
Michael Leviton
This is funny because in job interviews, people would ask me what my biggest flaw was. And I would go into a long rant about all my flaws and all the negative things anyone's ever said about me. And people would look at me-- I got used to this expression of horror. And sometimes it was kind of comic. People would laugh. Like, wow, you thought you had to actually answer that? You're clearly supposed--
Ira Glass
That's amazing. That's really amazing. Yeah, you are the only person in the history of job interviews to have ever done that.
Michael Leviton
Not the only person.
Ira Glass
That's true. His brother Josh does the same thing. More on that later. Let's stay with Michael for now.
Michael Leviton
OK. One time, I went on a date when I was in college. And I went on this date. And I spent the whole date explaining why she should want to be with me-- you know, what was great about me-- and also why other people didn't want to be with me. I'm saying all the bad things that ever happened to me, why I was rejected by the world.
Now, that was just being honest. I was just telling her all the information necessary, in my mind, to decide whether to be with me. I thought it was my responsibility as a person on a date to explain everything they were dealing with from the first moment of the date so that they could make an informed decision about how to move forward.
Ira Glass
That's what I love about this story, is that you thought you were doing a good job. You thought you were acing the date.
Michael Leviton
Oh, yes.
Ira Glass
For a long time, if Michael decided that he didn't want to hang out with somebody anymore, he would just, you know, come out and say it-- let's not be friends. When he would go and hear musician buddies of his perform, they would ask him afterwards, how'd you like the show? He would do the thing that nobody ever does. He would actually tell them, you know, the arrangements could have been better. You shouldn't play with this band. That first number should be in double time.
If somebody told Michael about a TV show that they liked, or really if they expressed any opinion at all on any subject-- like they told him they loved chocolate-- he could not help himself from offering his own opinion, forcefully. He hates chocolate.
Michael Leviton
And they would see it as, why would this person say this thing? Why would this person trash something I love so immediately? They must just be doing it as an act of aggression.
But really, it was more a gut instinct from my childhood, that conversation was expressing whatever was going on.
Ira Glass
In other words, you expressed your honest feelings about chocolate. Now it's my turn to express my honest feelings about chocolate.
Michael Leviton
Yeah.
Ira Glass
But would you do things, like, you would perceive, in a conversation with somebody you just met, oh, this person's kind of bossy. And then would you say, like, you know, I think you're very bossy?
Michael Leviton
A lot of the time, things like that would happen. Yeah. A lot of time, I would feel like it was my job to observe things and to tell people how they were and go like, oh, it's funny. You know, you do this thing.
And I wouldn't notice that it was triggering to people to say something like that, to go, oh, you notice you're very controlling? Have you noticed that? Like, why are you like that? And I would ask these questions that would lead in horrible directions all the time.
Ira Glass
See, I think all of us have met people who will say, well, I just tell it how it is. And people don't like to hear the truth. And I think most of us just feel like, well, that person is just an asshole or just has something wrong with them, that they don't give a damn about other people's feelings.
And what you're saying is somehow you learned this as a kind of, like, strategy for dealing with the world from the start.
Michael Leviton
Yeah. And to me, it was kind of like an exciting conversational thing to do, to be like, let's talk about ourselves. Everyone's having these small-talk conversations. They're so pointless and boring. Really, we should get to the real stuff immediately.
This is so interesting. I'm learning about you. And it'll be much more real and interesting.
Ira Glass
You know, which in a way is so idealistic. Think about for a second all the people pleasers who will say anything in a conversation just to kind of get by, all the folks who spend years in therapy getting the courage to tell people what they really think.
Speaking for myself, I feel like I don't even know what I think half the time or what I believe. And I have lots of conversations where I know what I believe, and I don't say it because I don't want to have conflict. I want to avoid conflict. And I think that lots of us are like that.
Not Michael. His parents taught him, be stronger than that.
Mark
I don't know what Michael talked to you about.
Ira Glass
This is Michael's dad, Mark. Everybody says that he was brutally honest when his kids were growing up. He made his living in the music business. And all of his life he has also worked, appropriately enough, as a professional critic. Michael's mom is a therapist who will tell you straight out--
Michael's Mom
I just can't lie.
Ira Glass
But Michael's dad told me he looks back on his kids' childhoods with a lot of regret for just how harshly he would tell everybody the truth all the time, as he saw it, and especially for how frank he was about things with his own kids.
Mark
From my point of view, some of my part was not very age appropriate, let's say. We kind of revealed to the children information about our marriage that most parents, I don't think, would reveal. And more or less left the kids to deal with it.
Ira Glass
Michael had told me about this. There were a few stories of parental over-sharing. But the one that I think captured just how disturbingly far this could go sometimes happened while his parents were splitting up. His parents divorced when he and his siblings were teenagers.
And every year back then, the family would go to a place I was really surprised to hear exists at all-- family therapy camp, where counseling sessions were done in public throughout the day in front of other people. And so they're at this camp, and their parents are having troubles. And in front of other families and therapists and also in front of their own children-- aged 13, 16, and 19-- Michael's parents hashed out their issues.
Michael Leviton
So, for instance, I remember one therapy session that my mother did that was all about how she felt being married to my dad. About feeling invisible, about these kinds of-- talking about very intense, personal-- like her despair and the things that she dealt with in that marriage.
And also, I got to see the man my mother was leaving my father for. They would all be there and talk about their feelings towards each other, talk about what had happened, talk about the grievances they had with each other, fights. They would yell at each other and accuse each other of things and kind of air dirt about what the other had done. And it was all in front of us.
Ira Glass
But did the parents understand like, oh, that was a problem?
Michael Leviton
I don't think so. I think that they, at the time, were very much like, we are speaking our truth. The kids should know what happened. And these are our feelings. And they can just imagine it, but it'd be better if they actually knew what was going on and they knew how we felt.
Ira Glass
Just to be clear, at the time, Michael agreed with this.
Michael Leviton
I was like, oh, this is great. This is how it should be. This is the honest way to deal with it. Everyone else would just hide their divorces, the cowards. They would deal with their divorce in private. And it would be very safe for everyone. But it was actually a lie. The kids wouldn't really know what was going on with their parents.
Ira Glass
So you felt, actually, superior to others.
Michael Leviton
That was a big part of it, I think, that other people are cowards. And they're very weak. And they can't handle the truth. And they're afraid to express who they really are. They're inauthentic out of fear. And we are actually bravely being authentic, expressing how we really feel and not hiding things.
Ira Glass
So these three children grow up like this. And they head out into the world as adults. And they had to confront the fact that these are not the rules that the rest of us are playing under. And the dad says that he knows that he trained them to live in a world that does not exist, a world where people are way more frank with each other than we really are.
Mark
Look, how do you create the world that should exist except by acting as if? Acting the way you want to to make the world through your own actions?
Ira Glass
Three siblings are now in their 20s and 30s. And being honest has meant different things to each of them. For Michael's sister Miriam, it's been the easiest. She said she knows that she is not somebody that anybody would ever tell a secret to. And there are times she can't help herself from saying the truth.
Miriam
Sometimes, like, in work meetings, I'll disagree with something. And then I think, why did I say that?
Ira Glass
But it's manageable, she says. No bad consequences. Michael's brother Josh is also still a believer, which is remarkable considering the one big life-changing way that this level of honesty has affected him. He trained for seven years to work in law enforcement, to be one of those experts who analyzes crime scenes and figures out what kind of gun was used and the bullet trajectories and all that stuff. He has a master's degree in forensic ballistics.
But he doesn't have a job doing this because when he's asked about his drug use in job interviews, he always admits that in 1997, when he was 14 years old, he tried mushrooms one time.
Josh
People always just ask me, well, why did you tell them about that? Is there a record of it? And no, there's not a record of anything. But I feel like I have to tell the truth. I just never thought about lying, even. I didn't even consider it.
And it seems like everybody's saying that it is OK to lie in certain circumstances because everybody else does. I kind of look at it like in sports. It's kind of saying, these athletes that take steroids, they have to do it because everybody takes steroids in order to compete. And I kind of want to succeed without taking steroids, even in a world that takes steroids, if that makes sense.
Ira Glass
Michael, meanwhile, seems to have had a much harder time than either of his siblings when it comes to honesty. By the time he was in his late 20s, Michael had noticed that acting exactly the way that he thought a principled person should be acting, he was constantly getting in all these awful clashes with people-- like, all the time. And it was confusing. And he didn't like it.
And the part of his life where it was especially vexing was dating. Over and over, he would meet somebody he really liked, go out on a date, and then they'd never want to see him again. And he had no idea what he did.
Michael Leviton
Well, that's the hard thing about dating. It's hard to learn when you're dating because people don't tell you what you did wrong. You don't know why you were rejected. You have to figure it out yourself.
And that's why a lot of dating is a very hard thing to improve. It's really hard to improve your dating because-- like, this is the thing that's famous. If you're a bad kisser, does anyone say, by the way, you're a bad kisser. Here's how to kiss better?
Ira Glass
They just never kiss you again.
Michael Leviton
It's not their responsibility. They never kiss you again.
Ira Glass
Right.
Michael Leviton
And you don't know why you were rejected. It could've been anything. You just have to have your paranoid fantasy of all the millions of things that you think you did wrong. But it could've been anything. Dating's chaos in that way.
Ira Glass
Even when he had dates that for a while seemed to be going OK, he would blurt out something honest, out of habit, and ruin them.
Michael Leviton
If anything beautiful or cool happens, I would stop everything and go, wasn't that an amazing moment? Let's just stop and, like, talk about how amazing that was. That barely ever happens.
And a lot of the time, the moment would be ruined by my commenting on it.
Ira Glass
Like what kind of moment are you talking about?
Michael Leviton
Well, OK. For instance, one time I was walking with this woman. And I was having this date that was going well. And she put a cigarette in her mouth to smoke it. And I grabbed the cigarette out of her mouth and kissed her. And it was great.
And then she stepped away. And we finished this kiss. And I said, wow. That's not something I usually do. That was really amazing. I was actually very inspired there. Usually, I'm just so awkward. And actually, that was much-- and I just ruined the whole thing. There was no reason for me to comment on how cool I had just been.
Ira Glass
Well, I think the key word there was "usually." I think "usually" kind of kills that moment.
Michael Leviton
Oh, yeah. Well, that's actually another thing here. It was my tendency to talk about my general dating experience and to talk about those things just because they were on my mind. When I was on a date, I was naturally thinking about other dates and other things that had happened. So I would say, oh yeah. I've done a couple other amazing things on dates like that. I would just start saying these things, and it would ruin everything.
Ira Glass
I feel like when you tell some of these stories, you're like somebody from another planet or something who got dropped into our world.
Michael Leviton
That's what it felt like. I was in the wrong world. And I didn't understand the concept of politeness. When I read-- I actually, at one point around the same time, read a politeness book. I actually read an etiquette book trying to figure it out. And it was just one advice-- every time, it was just lie, lie, lie.
It was just, oh, here's a situation-- you don't know someone's name? Lie. Here's a situation-- someone's gone through something horrible? Just lie. Here's another situation. It was just--
Ira Glass
Right. It didn't say on the page "lie."
Michael Leviton
No, it didn't say to lie. But every piece of advice looked like--
Ira Glass
That's what it came down to.
Michael Leviton
And it was all about other people's feelings.
Ira Glass
And at some point it occurred to Michael that honesty was coming in the way of noticing other people's feelings. And maybe he needed to change that. And so finally, at 29-- that's five years ago-- he decided he'd had enough, and he started experimenting on his dates with how he acted. Now, these were not complicated experiments by any means. He'd simply have something honest that would occur to him that he wanted to say, and he would not say it.
Michael Leviton
I saw in a very visceral way how I could change my behavior and it would go over better. And I could actually have a great time if I just shut up about certain things. I actually made a list of things not to talk about.
Ira Glass
You made a list of things not to talk about?
Michael Leviton
An actual written list of things not to talk about.
Ira Glass
Do you still have that list?
Michael Leviton
I actually do. Yeah. I add to it sometimes still because it's hard for me to remember. I have to concentrate very hard to not follow my gut instinct to tell the whole truth about things.
Ira Glass
On that list-- you don't have to give an opinion. You don't have to say things out loud. Just because they're true is not helpful. You can choose not to answer a question. Don't fully explain. Make it quick. Say you'll tell them later. End the conversation first. Don't try to impress.
Michael Leviton
One actually really good one was to stop explicitly describing myself in any way, positive or negative. That I didn't have to say, oh, I'm this kind of person. I do this.
Ira Glass
Why would that come up at all in a conversation? It would be like, I'm the sort of person who-- why would you be saying that?
Michael Leviton
Because I believed that's what conversation was. And they couldn't see those things. I didn't understand that they could see those things in your behavior, that they would read behind what you said and learn things. You had to say it explicitly. Otherwise, you were misleading them.
Ira Glass
OK. Next one?
Michael Leviton
At one point, I resolved that if I didn't recognize someone or I didn't remember their name to just pretend I did, which is something-- I used to always go, oh, I don't recognize you. Or, oh, we've met before? I don't remember. Or, I don't remember your name. I realized that I could pretend to know someone's name while I figured out what their name was. And that changed so much.
Ira Glass
One year his New Year's resolutions, typed out, were, quote, "tell no one about my problems. Listen to how others feel instead of telling them how I feel. Pretend more and people please. Remember to make others feel like I find them smart and cool. Act like I agree."
On the same page-- quote, "my list of things that I am not allowed to talk about-- ideological commentary, unnecessary brutal truths, triggering questions and unwanted inquiries. Avoid asking people what they mean when they use certain words." Or there's this one--
Michael Leviton
OK. So I wrote here, "Take nothing at face value. Don't investigate things people say. Remember their minds are chaos."
Ira Glass
Wait, what do you mean by that?
Michael Leviton
I know. It's a strange, strange thing to say. What I meant was that people-- I was of the mindset that other people were saying what they meant. And I would sometimes get into ideological battles with people who hadn't even really been thinking very hard about what they'd said. Because I would say, well, do you really mean that? I mean, what do you mean when you say that? And I would investigate it further. And it would become this attack, when really they didn't mean--
Ira Glass
They didn't mean anything.
Michael Leviton
They didn't mean anything by it. They were just saying things they thought were socially acceptable kind of conversations that I would agree with. But then it would devolve into this horrible discussion. And a lot of time, I would get kind of angry. And sometimes, they would say, you know, it's like I don't really mean anything by it. Like they would start to backtrack because they hadn't ever meant it in the first place.
Ira Glass
"Remember their minds are chaos"?
Michael Leviton
Yeah, meaning that there's lots of stuff going on that leads to why people say what they say and that I can't know what those things are. That their minds are chaos of feelings, that they're human beings.
Ira Glass
What was kind of inspiring talking to Michael is that although he seemed like somebody who'd dropped into our world without a clue about how the rest of us behave, he then made a study of why he was failing. And he came to conclusions on his own. And he made up this to-do list. And then, like a scientist in a science fiction film who brews up a miracle elixir in the lab and then decides that he should be one to try it first, Michael has put his theories into action.
And it's working. He's had girlfriends. Last November, he married one of those girlfriends. And so these days, when he's being, like, super-honest in some inappropriate situation, his wife will say to him, wow. That was an interesting way to handle that. Or wow, we're doing that now?
He says he still has a way to go with all this stuff. But what he's concluded after this lifelong experiment in honesty is that honesty is not enough. You have to read people for signs that they do not need or do not want to hear the entire truth. And in fact, the whole idea of a world where everybody is honest all the time?
Michael Leviton
It was almost a world where people didn't have feelings. The idea that someone would be upset-- that they weren't supposed to get upset. They were supposed to just hear what I said and go, oh, wow. OK. That's cool. You were honest. I value that.
Ira Glass
In the real world, Michael says, people have all kinds of feelings swirling around in their heads and insecurities and struggles. What they say may or may not be what they believe. And he says, that's great. That's normal. It's chaos.
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