This American Life: Made to Be Broken

This episode was awesome and I listened to it 8/19/2020. I am going to try and include more This American Life episodes because they impart some of my favorite lessons and I do want to make sure I write them down. You can listen to this episode here.

Quick Recap:

So this episode is about the idea of breaking rules in many formats. It talks about a couple of things and I am going to share some of my favorite parts of it.

1) Karura

The first example is karura, requesting an uber driver to cancel the ride and pay them in cash. For the drivers, Uber takes so much of the profit that this is a tangible way to strike back and I love it because it's so simple but powerful. If they follow the rules, they will go home emptyhanded but if they rebel they can make it work for them. Sometimes it's necessary to break rules

2) Jerome Ellis

Sean Cole was at a performance show with a strict 2-minute performance limit to keep the show moving. It was a performance from Jerome that caught his attention as he watched as he went on stage. In the radio show, you hear as he starts to talk and long breaks that at first, you don't understand until he explains his speech impediment. He starts by explaining a law in Brazil where people with speech impediments are given 50% discount for cellphone plans. He explains this at "temporal assessability". He further elaborates,

"So when I was first invited to participate in this magnificent event, I was struck by the two-minute time limit, which later became a two- to the three-minute time limit. And I understood intuitively that the purpose of this time limit was to create as non-hierarchical a space as possible. But in removing one hierarchy, the time limit introduces another. A time limit assumes that all people have relatively equal access to time through their speech, which is not true. Stuttering is very unpredictable. I can rehearse something as many times as I want, but I don't actually know how long it will take to say anything until I have to say it."

This is what he said and Sean cole ended up reaching out to him and asking him questions. I love the fact that Sean Cole recognized that radio itself is biased towards fluid talkers. The way Jerome talks about his stutter is not as if it's something that he has to contend with:

"Jerome Ellis: Sometimes I refer to it as "my stutter," but sometimes I refer to it as "the stutter."

Sean Cole: The stutter.

Jerome Ellis: Because to me, stuttering is not bound to my body, that it is a phenomenon that occurs between me and whoever I'm speaking to. I like to think of it like it's something that we share."

Sean cole finished by mentioning the ending of his speech which was just a single sentence, a quote from a Black Feminist, Kimberle Crenshaw. Here's that quote "Treating different things the same way may generate as much inequality as treating the same things in different ways."

This segment exposed me to how someone can be disadvantaged solely by a time limit. It feels like something that could provide everyone with an equal opportunity, but as the quote suggests you have to recognize that treating different things, different people, in the same way, can also generate inequality. This example of it was for me was so clear to see, but I think of all the times in which it wasn't as clear to see.

3) The third part was about Jefferson bucks, a fictional currency created in an elementary school that became a real hard form of currency. The allocations were deeply unfair because certain students weren't in her homeroom and in her classes. However, kids would trade them for lunches and other things and it shows how we put so much emphasis on currencies as humans. This unfair allocation meant that some students felt angered by the Jefferson bucks. The end tells of a young boy stealing the Jefferson bucks, which seems like an egregious step, but only an expected one from someone unable to get ahead. I love that the implications are deeply political, economic, and historical yet the characters are young kids and their Jefferson bucks were just a bit made by the teacher. However, the harmless Jefferson bucks became a powerful entity much beyond the understanding of Ms. Jefferosn

Quotes

"Because, you see, at the end of the day, the reason why you get up and decide to get into business is, at the end of the day, you get home with something, you see? So if you decide your priority is following rules, most of the days you're going to get home empty-handed. And most of us are young families. You see, we have wives. We have kids in the house. So if you decide that you're going to be strict to the letter, that you're going to follow all the rules, believe you me, your family is going to sleep hungry." - From the Uber Drivers