831: Lists!!!

Ira Glass

The People's Almanac came out in the mid 1970s-- it's hard to imagine a more eccentric bestseller. Over 1,400 pages long, it read like an encyclopedia written by an excited and precocious 15-year-old who loved all the obscure details of all the knowledge in all the world.

There are sections on the greatest man-made disasters ever, and also on the greatest prizefighters, a guide to buried treasure in the United States, biographies of famous and infamous scientists, a history of advertising going back to ancient Greece, and also a chapter about a minister who took over a newspaper for a week in the year 1900 and made all editorial decisions-- what was on the front page, what they covered, based on what he believed Jesus would have done, if Jesus had gone into the newspaper game. And at the end of the book was an address and a note from the authors asking for suggestions for future editions, and asking readers to tell them what parts of the book they liked and disliked.

Ira Glass

David Wallechinsky was one of the authors of The People's Almanac.

Ira Glass

Lists! Of all the knowledge in the world, people most loved 25 pages, out of the 1,400-page book, that had some lists. Some of those lists were boring stuff, like the world's 15 biggest cities and 10 tallest buildings and 10 longest rivers. But there were weirder lists-- 20 historical figures who were born as illegitimate children, 15 people who had an absurd number of spouses.

And this one that was maybe a little more edgy in 1975 when this was published-- 20 celebrities who've been psychoanalyzed. From the letters they got, Wallechinsky says that they learned that one list that readers really loved was--

Ira Glass

Scrooge McDuck, not technically a person, but you get the idea.

Ira Glass

The first Book of Lists was an even bigger, even more ridiculously huge bestseller, a pop culture phenomenon. It sold over three million copies, had four sequels, a short-lived TV spin off, and a board game. I was a teenager in the 1970s. I had no interest in this kind of thing whatsoever, but I remember it being one of those ubiquitous books that you could not help but know about.

And looking back on it now, reading The Book of Lists today, I think they accidentally figured out how to give the pleasure of scrolling the internet way before the internet existed. Basically, it was a way to leaf through impossibly random stuff until something catchy grabbed your eye.

Ira Glass

The most popular list they ever did was like that. And before I tell you what this list was, I want you to please listen for a second to some of the lists that it had to beat out to be the most popular list.

OK, here we go. [CLEARS THROAT] 15 famous events that happened in the bathtub. 16 names of things that you never knew had names. 18 famous brains and what they weighed. 14 men who became units of measurement and the units named after them. Benjamin Franklin's 8 reasons to marry an older woman. A lot of competition there. So what was in that most popular list?

Ira Glass

David Wallechinsky has thought way more about lists than most of us. And he told me this one story that illustrates how putting something on a list has such power. He said that for most of his adult life, he was kind of obsessed about the terrible things that repressive governments around the world do to their people. And he wanted to write about it for magazines and convince people how important this was. And he really couldn't figure out how to do that compellingly.

Ira Glass

He published this list, with write-ups on each dictator, in Parade Magazine, which was a big deal at the time. It reached 32 million people.

Ira Glass

It made the subject digestible and human. Here were 10 awful human beings you could have feelings about. That's the power of a list. But of course, most of the lists in our lives are different from this. Most are the lists that we write for ourselves. And it's interesting. People put all kinds of things on those lists.

Ira Glass

This is Aviva DeKornfeld, a producer at our show here. And I learned about the very personal and idiosyncratic lists that she keeps in a staff meeting where I talked about Wallechinsky and different kinds of lists. And at that meeting, Aviva started talking about her lists.

Ira Glass

Aviva does keep some lists that lots of people keep-- practical stuff like books she wants to read or gift ideas for people she loves. But then on the Notes app of her phone, there's a whole bunch of lists that have no practical purpose at all, but are really just her organizing the stuff that is rattling around in her head.

Ira Glass

With that in mind, Aviva still keeps old defunct lists because they're like a record of who she was-- lists from when she was a teenager, like "Harmless things my dad hates," or "Things I should have known," or her very first list, "Scenes from my grandmother's nursing home"-- made on weekly visits when she was 14, trying to make sense of that world.

Normally, she doesn't show these lists to anybody. She'd just notice something about herself, and then she'll notice a second example of the same thing, and she starts to collect them so she can stare at the list, try to understand it.

Ira Glass

Today, on our program, lists, and how they tame the chaos of the world. I have to say, I feel very aware in putting together everything that I have said to you so far today. The way I did it is the way I write every radio story I've ever done since, I don't know, forever.

The first thing I do is I make a list of all the possible quotes that I might use. So in this case, it was three single-spaced typed pages of quotes from Aviva and from David Wallechinsky, with asterisks by the quotes I like the most. And then what I do is I stare at the list until it just pops out for me. This quote should come first, and this one second, and this one should end the thing. I have no idea how to write any radio story without a list to take control of all the confusion and all the possible choices that I could make and make it make sense.

So today, lists, how they run the world and everything in it. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. And hold on, I have a list right here. Number 1, stay with us. Number 2, stay with us. Number 3, stay with us.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life, Act 1, "List for Life." So let's start our show today with a list designed as a kind of magical tool for living your life and maximizing your potential and being your very best self. Or anyway, that's what this list was supposed to do. The story comes to us from John Fecile.

John Fecile

I'm on a Zoom call with my brother Pat, talking about a list that was written by our other brother, Mike. And I want to ask him what he thinks I should do with it. It's one of the last pieces of Mike's writing that we have.

My brother Mike died in 2015. That's almost 10 years ago now. Jeez. And trigger warning and all that, he died because of a suicidal act. It's unclear why he did what he did. There were stories his roommates told about paranoia, hallucinations, Mike becoming obsessed with aliens.

It was all so sudden and shocking that my family and I started grasping around for anything, trying to make it all make sense, which brings me to the list. Mike wrote the list the summer he was about to be a sophomore in high school-- 16 principles to live his life by, titled, "Goals for Success," double underlined on a rectangular piece of poster board.

They were corny bro-isms, if I'm being honest. "Make a commitment. Be unselfish. Create unity. Come together as never before." As you can see, Mike was a real overachiever, Type A type. "Improve every day as a player, person, and student. Be tough. Be self-disciplined-- do it right, don't accept less."

He was captain of the high school football team, straight-A student. "Give great effort. Be enthusiastic. Eliminate mistakes. Don't beat yourself." He hung the list on his closet door, facing his bed, so that when he woke up in the morning, the first thing he saw was-- "Expect to win. Be consistent. Develop leadership. Be responsible."

I first noticed the list when I went into Mike's bedroom to steal a pair of his boxers. I was always forgetting to do my laundry. Mike always did his. And my feelings about the list were immediately complicated. I felt like it was somehow judging me. I was the oldest of my siblings. But to me, Mike always felt older.

He was Mr. Rotary Club, Mr. Scheduled Out His Daily Routine. I was Mr. Been Arrested Twice, Mr. Smoking Weed out of an Aluminum Can and Probably Doing Irreparable Damage to my Lungs in the Woods. And Mike knew he was better than me. He even wrote a poem in English class about how disappointed he was in me. I'm not kidding. It was titled "Second Chances."

Back then, I resented the list. I probably made fun of him about it because that was the nature of our relationship, even though we were close. But after he died, I actually saw these principles as something I should live up to. Because at that point, I was spiraling. Mike was 24 when he died. I was 26. I couldn't get myself together-- drinking, depression, a simmering, futile anger at the universe.

The original had been framed. And I asked my parents if I could have it, and hung it up in my apartment by the front door. I thought maybe its commandments might rub off on me. And there it stayed for a bit. I'd glance at it every once in a while and feel again like I was falling short.

So after a couple of years, I took it down. I shoved it in the back of my closet. It just bothered me, the toxic positivity, therapist-waiting-room-posterness of it all. But I also couldn't bear to get rid of it, which is why I called up Pat to finally figure out what to do with it.

John Fecile

Pat was the closest person to Mike in the world. He's two years younger than Mike, who was a year and a half younger than me. Pat and I can't even agree on the most basic things about the list.

John Fecile

Pat saw something in the list that I also felt, but I couldn't necessarily name.

John Fecile

When Mike was a sophomore at Penn State, he started experiencing delusions and he was barely sleeping. But if he felt like he was struggling, he didn't tell anyone. He kept going to class. His roommates noticed. And they were talking about how to get him help. And I think, this is just my opinion, a guess, that Mike didn't want to be found out.

John Fecile

That's Mike's high school football coach, in case you can't just tell from his voice, renaming an award after my brother at a banquet in 2016.

John Fecile

This is really the moment the list passed into lore, when it became the way my brother was remembered. The coach paid to have Goals for Success professionally matted and framed. That's the copy that I have.

He also hung a replica of the list in our high school's weight room, next to a photo of Mike in football gear, with his tough game face on to inspire future generations, which I appreciated. He was putting so much into memorializing Mike. But later, I started worrying about the kids who saw it and whether they might judge themselves by it the same way that I had.

John Fecile

The coach goes on to describe what happened to Mike. He says that he fell from the fourth floor balcony of his dorm and that it was an accident, which he got from my parents. That was how they framed it. But Mike didn't fall. He jumped.

John Fecile

We may have looked good from the outside, but alcoholism and mental illness run in our family and were a big part of my childhood. You don't need to know the specifics. Just know that it was chaos. And not even Mr. Golden Child was spared from it.

But where I struggled and flailed and totally embodied all that chaos, Mike tried to contain it, to impose order on it, to fix it by being perfect. And that's what the list is, a manifestation of his drive to be perfect. That's how Pat sees it, anyway.

John Fecile

The list doesn't just leave out Mike's flaws. It also misses, really, the best stuff about him. He was warm, generous, extremely goofy.

John Fecile

Last year, Pat wrote to the football coach at our high school and asked him to use the list to spread awareness about suicide. He got him to add a line to the bottom of it. It says, "There is great strength in vulnerability, as it takes courage to push through the fear and share one's true self with others."

Recently, after my wife and I moved into our new apartment, I made a decision to hang up the list again. It's in my home office. Now I'm the one looking at it every day. And I don't resent it anymore.

Maybe it still makes me feel a little weird, OK? But I see it for what it is. I don't feel judged by it. And some of the lists, I'm genuinely down with. Create unity is a beautiful idea. It reminds me of the best of Mike. But mostly, I just like looking at my brother's handwriting.

Ira Glass

John Fecile. He's a Senior Producer at the show Snap Judgment. His story was produced by Sean Cole.

Coming up, over a hundred dogs and one giant bear, and its list of enemies. That's in a minute, from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program-- Lists! How they tame the chaos of the world.

Ira Glass

This is Bobby Sherwood, who's friends with one of our producers here, Chris Benderev. And he's showing Chris a lists that he keeps on his phone of neighborhood dogs.

Ira Glass

Bobby keeps this list because there are so many dogs where he lives. There are 130 dogs on this list. And his memory isn't always the greatest. And he's convinced that people can tell if you don't know their dog's name and you're faking it by saying things like--

Ira Glass

And he is not into the potential awkwardness of that. OK, just for context, he does have a list of people like this too, to remember the spouses of friends and coworkers that he's met just once, and people's kids. But the dog list, he also finds it helpful to rank all the dogs. So his dog Chewy's favorites are at the top. And his least favorites are at the bottom.

Ira Glass

To see how this works in practice, Chris followed Bobby to the dog park. And it doesn't take long before they get into a list-needing situation.

Ira Glass

He scrolls down the list on his phone until he gets to the dog park section, searching for a dog with a description--

Ira Glass

He finds nothing. He'll have to add that one to the list. Bobby has no idea how other dog owners do it, keep track of all the dogs, though I think it's entirely possible that other people are no better with the names than he is. And they just don't care.

Ira Glass

When he and Chris get back to the house, they run into a neighbor's dog who somehow wasn't on the list yet.

Ira Glass

Act 2, "Target List." There's some lists you definitely do not want to be on. This past Thanksgiving, M had people come stay with them at a house they affectionately call the dacha because it's out of the city and they're Russian. That's just the word Russians use.

M. Gessen

We totally call it the dacha.

Ira Glass

M is M. Gessen. They write about Russia for The New Yorker and in books. And the day after Thanksgiving, two of their guests left for some other celebration. And a bunch of the remaining guests, four or five people, went on a hike, a pretty vertical one, actually, up a nearby mountain. So they get to a spot way up high.

M. Gessen

Yeah, it's an overlook point. It's pretty tiny. We're all standing pretty close together, looking out at the Catskills and the little town where we live. And then two of us pulled out our phones.

Ira Glass

As one does. How much nature can you take?

M. Gessen

And both of us saw a news item that one of the friends who had left that morning had been declared a foreign agent.

Ira Glass

Foreign agent, in other words, the Russian government just put him on an official list of people that it is not very fond of. Foreign agent is not a good thing.

M. Gessen

And this is something that the Russian government does almost every Friday.

Ira Glass

They put out a list of foreign agents?

M. Gessen

Right. It's like this weird, weird spectator sport to see who is now a foreign agent.

Ira Glass

It's weird. It's like a sinister version of when Oscar nominations come out or something, you know?

M. Gessen

Actually, that's not a bad simile. Because when Oscar nominations come out, then you have to wonder, what's going to be the outcome for any one of these?

Ira Glass

Yeah.

M. Gessen

And with foreign agents, it's a little bit like that. Part of being on the list of foreign agents is that you're put on notice. You're on our radar. We may launch a criminal case against you, which has much harsher consequences.

Ira Glass

Oh, you can graduate from this list to worse lists?

M. Gessen

Yes, they end up on other lists, like the wanted list. Or somebody just stays a foreign agent indefinitely. But it's extremely unpleasant. It sort of reconfigures your world.

Ira Glass

So they're out on this mountain. M and one of the other Russians reads this on their phones, that their friend who they just had Thanksgiving dinner with the night before is now a foreign agent.

M. Gessen

So we both say his last name, Venyavkin. And this is something that's actually happened before between the two of us, where we just take out our phones on a Friday, see a name, and say the name. Because you don't have to say, Venyavkin has been named a foreign agent, because we know it's Friday.

Ira Glass

M says Russia is now in an age of lists. It started when Vladimir Putin created the list of foreign agents when he took the presidency for a second time in 2012. And he started clamping down on dissent. At first, it was just organizations on the foreign agents list-- human rights groups, media outfits.

And then, three and a half years ago, they started adding the names of people to the list. Russia actually modeled its foreign agent law on an American foreign agent law. It dates to the 1930s. One key difference between the two laws, among many, in America, to be a foreign agent, you actually have to be working for or acting on behalf of a foreign government organization.

And you put yourself on the list. You register as a foreign agent. In Russia, the government just puts you on a list, calls you a foreign agent, and voila, you are one. M says this list and the way the Putin government has been using it are typical of the way he's operating these days.

M. Gessen

It's very bureaucratic. And so all these lists have weird nomenclatures. It's foreign agents list or undesirable organizations or unfriendly countries. So the United States, for example, is an unfriendly country to Russia.

Ira Glass

Right.

M. Gessen

What they mean is mortal enemy.

Ira Glass

It's so weird that they feel compelled to divide off the world into the friendly countries and unfriendly countries, that they actually have to write it down on a list.

M. Gessen

That's a great point. It's a combination of a country that has the ideology of a fortress under siege and a country that has a deeply, deeply bureaucratic self-understanding. So everything has to be somehow classified and put down on paper or in an Excel table. This resurgent totalitarianism in Russia, it's really focused on the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy is its heart, its core. And that's why lists are so important.

Ira Glass

Are you on this list?

M. Gessen

I'm not. I'm on a different list, a worse list.

Ira Glass

What list is that?

M. Gessen

I'm on the wanted list, because there's a criminal case against me.

Ira Glass

M says that being put on one of these lists throws you out of the normal world and into this weird, undefined limbo or purgatory, where things are different and more worrisome. Because it's unclear what's going to happen next. What is clear is that it's a permanent status change.

Our program today is about lists. And as part of that, we wanted to hear from people who are on a target list, about what it's like to live that disquieting life. And M agreed to reach out to some to talk about it and talk especially about what it's like to be on the foreign agent list.

The foreign agent list is interesting, because being on that list really can mean such a wide range of things. Maybe it'll be nothing. Or maybe things will get a lot worse. Here's what M put together.

M. Gessen

I've been watching the foreign agent list grow for a few years. It's now about 400 people, most of them living outside of Russia. And I probably know half of them. That's one reason I've been sort of obsessed with the list. It's a day that changes your life.

M. Gessen

This is Ilya, my friend who was put on the list the Friday after Thanksgiving.

M. Gessen

Here's Galina Arapova's version of the experience of finding out she was on the list. She's a media lawyer who was representing journalists who had been put on the list. Then she was branded a foreign agent herself. She was the first lawyer on the list. She found out when a reporter called to ask her about the implications.

M. Gessen

Being put on the foreign agent list has consequences regardless of where the person lives. And once the Russian government names you a foreign agent, you face a bunch of choices. Because there are all sorts of special rules that apply to foreign agents. And you have to decide whether you're going to comply.

One rule, every time you communicate anything publicly or semi-publicly in the media or in social media or in a dating app even, you have to warn people that they're dealing with a foreign agent. There's a special disclaimer you have to use in extra large type.

M. Gessen

The disclaimer says, this message or information was created and/or disseminated by a foreign agent, non-governmental organization.

M. Gessen

And it gets more Byzantine. A person who has been put on the list must create a corporation. And the corporation, in the eyes of the state, is you. And you are the corporation.

This corporation has to file quarterly financial reports detailing the income you make and the money you spend, submit to an annual audit, and also post regular reports of your activities, whatever that means, on the internet, or submit them to the media for publication. The paperwork has to be perfect every time, but the rules are vague.

M. Gessen

Galina follows the rules. Most of her clients do, even if they're living outside of Russia. Because everyone has someone or something left behind-- family members that the authorities can decide to harass, property the authorities can seize.

My friend Karen decided not to follow the rules. He'd left Russia right after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And a couple of months later, his name popped up on the list. Like everyone, he still had a million things tying him to Russia.

M. Gessen

A little over a year later, Karen found out that he was on another list, the list of extremists and terrorists. This was, you could say, an upgrade. It meant that the Russian state froze whatever assets he still had in Russia. So he'd been smart to sell his apartment.

But being on this list also meant they'd opened a criminal case against him. Just to make this clear, he hadn't been informed that there was a case against him. Karen had to hire a lawyer to figure out what he was charged with and which prosecutor was charging him. Karen and I have talked about this weird process of having to find your own case, because there's also a criminal case against me in Russia.

I found out about it from articles in Russian government media. And then my name appeared on the wanted list. In the hierarchy of lists, the wanted list is probably the worst-- that we know about anyway. I've now been arrested in absentia, and in the next few months, a Moscow court is going to sentence me to 7 or 8 or 9 years in prison.

It took my lawyer two months to find the case against me for, quote, "spreading false information about the Russian military." Karen said I was lucky. It took his lawyer six months to find his case. Karen's crime? Years ago, Karen donated money to Alexei Navalny's anti-corruption foundation. Navalny is the Russian politician who died in an Arctic prison earlier this year.

M. Gessen

By the way, Alexei Navalny was also on the list of extremists and terrorists. He still is on that list, because the authorities say they haven't received proper documentation of his death.

M. Gessen

With the Russian bear on your heels, you have to watch your step. If you're going to travel, you have to ask, is it safe? Can I go there? Ilya Krasilschik, a different Ilya, now divides all the countries in the world into three categories.

M. Gessen

Can go with consequences really means don't go. You don't want the consequences. Ilya started a media outlet called HelpDesk, which reports on the war in Ukraine and helps Ukrainians flee the fighting. In the eyes of the Russian state, he has been a criminal for more than two years for posting about war crimes in Bucha.

I haven't been a criminal for as long as Ilya has, but I've also learned there's a whole convoluted science to it. Some countries will extradite people to Russia, some countries might. And then there's Interpol, the International police, which Russia tries to use to have people detained and sometimes extradited. The planning that goes into traveling to other countries can get very granular.

M. Gessen

You could easily spend all your time, your entire life perfecting the act, being Jerry who keeps evading Tom.

M. Gessen

It used to be, when a friend was named a foreign agent, I would send them a note saying, proud to know you, like it was some sort of recognition. At some point, that stopped feeling right. I didn't feel proud, not when my friends were put on a list and not when I landed on Russia's wanted list.

When that happened, my friend Ilya, the one who was carving the turkeys at Thanksgiving, texted me, "I'm not sure what the protocol is. Do I congratulate you or express condolences?" I felt sad.

M. Gessen

The elephant in the room of my sadness is that being considered a criminal by the Russian state means I'll never be able to go home again, not even if there is a change of regime. I doubt that the first, second, or even third thing they're going to do after Putin is purge all the lists. So like the vast majority of Russians who are on these lists, I'm in exile for life.

For many of us who live outside of Russia, this business of being on lists is really akin to having a troublesome chronic illness. You keep tabs on it. You modify your behavior as necessary. You hope it doesn't kill you. But other than that, you live a relatively normal, American, or German or Dutch life.

For those who are still in Russia, though, the condition can be much more serious. Zoya is one such person. Zoya is not her real name. She's an LGBT activist. And in November of last year, the Russian Supreme Court declared the, quote, "international LGBT movement was an extremist organization."

Zoya had been put on lists even before that, though, internal lists circulated within government agencies. These lists aren't meant to be public, but there is an illicit service that will search different internal lists and databases and send you what they find-- like a Freedom of Information Act request, but fast, unredacted, and for sale.

M. Gessen

On the PDF, the lists you're on are marked in red. So her PDF said extremism and terrorism in red. But again, this wasn't the public list of extremists and terrorists.

M. Gessen

It's like this internal list is the draft of a list. Eventually, Zoya will probably be brought up on charges. She'll be the suspect in a made-up crime. But for now, in draft form, she is merely suspectable.

M. Gessen

And what did Zoya do after finding out she was on this list of people who would eventually, probably be placed on the list of extremists and terrorists? She cried. She started making some plans for leaving the country someday. And she made one very practical plan for staying.

M. Gessen

Zoya has many reasons to stay in Russia. Since her sister died of cancer several years ago, Zoya and Zoya's mother have together been raising Zoya's niece. Zoya's parents don't want to leave. Zoya's partner doesn't want to leave. Most important, Zoya doesn't want to leave.

So she has decided that she will stay as long as she possibly can. She believes the authorities will give her one final warning, something like leave the country now or go to jail, and then she'll leave. I'm not sure why she thinks there will be a warning. When it comes to her niece, though, Zoya is sure that the girl should leave the country as soon as she is old enough.

M. Gessen

Just before we sat down for our interview, Zoya told me something that was still pretty new to her too. She was pregnant.

M. Gessen

It's like this child, when they're born, will already be in one of those lists. Hannah Arendt called bureaucracy the rule by nobody. Maybe that's why it feels so hopeless. They label you an extremist or a foreign agent, and next thing you know, you're using those terms yourself to describe your life.

Because it is your life-- thinking about where you can go, what you can say in public, how you're being singled out by the Russian state can affect people you love, and how it can always, always get worse. And you're never not going to think about it.

Ira Glass

M. Gessen is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of several books, most recently The Future is History.

Ira Glass

This program was produced and edited by Nancy Updike and me. Nancy also produced M. Gessen's story. People who put together today's show today include Michael Comite, Andrea López Cruzado, Aviva DeKornfeld, Bethel Habte, Cassie Howley, Seth Lind, Katherine Rae Mondo, Safiyah Riddle, Ryan Rumery, Alissa Shipp, Christopher Swetala, Marisa Robertson-Textor, and Matt Tierney.

Our Managing Editor is Sarah Abdurrahman. And our Senior Editor is David Kestenbaum. Our Executive Editor is Emanuele Berry. Special thanks today to Elijah Wallechinsky, Lika Kremer, Jinae West, Isaac Arnsdorf, and Martine Powers. Our website, thisamericanlife.org.

If you need something to listen to, you can stream our archive of over 800 episodes for absolutely free, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange.

Thanks, as always, to our co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. How does he describe his own management style? In a list with three main points.

Ira Glass

Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life.