We're All Just Lying to Each Other
The fallacy of memory and the vindication of Brian Williams
Each week, a menu of sorts, around a revolving theme. This week: memories, all alone in the moonlight.
If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Suppertime! I promise to feed you only once a week, and never after midnight.
Ingredient List
🎧 : “Free Brian Williams” by Malcolm Gladwell for Revisionist History (podcast), “How Memory Can Be Manipulated”, Speaking of Psychology (podcast)
📖 : “Revelations” by Katie Herzog // I really enjoyed this, mostly because I talked about this exact same thing on The Drop podcast this week, the reality that some people cannot see images inside their head. I don’t understand how that’s possible, but it’s fascinating to me.
“Your Phone is Why You Don’t Feel Sexy” by Catherine Shannon // I loved this so much, for many reasons, but this pull quote does the best at explaining why:
On a lighter note, aren’t we all so sick of looking stuff up? You know what, maybe I go to a restaurant and it’s bad. Maybe I don’t know what’s good on the menu before I get there. Maybe I throw caution to the wind and put something in the dishwasher without googling if it’s dishwasher safe. Maybe I get a flip phone and get comfortable saying, “I don't know.” While you’re looking down at Google Maps, the love of your life is walking past you on the street. To feel sexy, we need risk and spontaneity. Our phones kill both.
Postcards for Paids
I’ve been creating and sending postcards to my paid subscribers, made from vintage postcards with custom artwork courtesy of the weed packaging I find on the ground in Baltimore. On the back, a handwritten thank you note, of course. Here’s one I sent to Ali in Minnesota (thanks for subscribing!), featuring a western Pennsylvania steel town in the 1950s and a holographic girl sucking a lollipop:
If you’re still waiting on one, don’t worry, I’ll get one to you eventually.
I’m moving my weekly life recap to the end, so if you’re at all interested in reading what’s been going on here in Baltimore, you can find it there (that’s for you, Mom).
And now, onto dinner service.
Course 1
A Word of Gratitude: Mantel Dew
This isn’t really related to this week’s topic, but it’s something I’m thankful for, so it goes in. I came downstairs early this morning to try and finish this newsletter (unsuccessfully, as you usual) and aside from the solar-powered beckoning cat clicking away, all was silent. A rarity in the Reddinger household.
On the wooden mantel that hangs on the wall of our brick rowhome, I have a collection of random things from my travels, bookended by two plants. The plants are heart leaf philodendrons, which I’ve been growing since December when a kind neighbor set some cuttings out on their front stoop for anyone to take and grow.
For those who are unfamiliar, a heart leaf is a green, trailing plant with beautiful leaves that look like– you guessed it– hearts. Each morning, it seems like the vine grows a new leaf, another green heart to join the others. Maybe it was the gummy I took to go to sleep last night, or maybe it was just doing the thing I used to do, but I just stopped to look at it, to ponder.
The different shades of green, the striped pattern all wild and free at birth, soon to settle down and join the uniform emerald tone of the older leaves. There, on the tip of two hearts, tiny water drops, suspended almost impossibly, not knowing if they wanted to leave the leaf and take their chances on the dusty floor below, or melt into the mother they were meant to feed. The way the whole vine reaches for something to hold onto, even if it’s the thinness slice of sunlight.
All of this magic, of course, is happening all the time– while we bring in groceries, while I write to you from across the room, while my kids blare the Captain Underpants theme song above their heads. Who even knows about the hijinks that happen at night. Two young plants, whispering from their beds on opposite sides of the room, telling jokes, planning out grand adventures, unfurling their hearts until one falls asleep and the other shortly after.
The morning comes, the sunlight arriving like a big yawn through the front windows. The plants awaken and stretch out their arms, just a little bit further than yesterday.
And for that I am grateful
Course 2
Appetizer: Morning Coffee
One of the biggest benefits of not drinking as much over the past year and a half is the return of my short-term memory. For years, I was known for the displacement of things. I’ve built such a legacy over the past two decades that I’m not sure it will ever change. The holy trinity of forgetfulness visited me on a daily basis– missing keys, wallet, and phone. In backpack pockets, couch cushions, refrigerator, and on one freakout morning while on a time crunch for a West Coast flight for work– in the cup holder of the folded up stroller. The entire house was turned upside down in five minutes on that day, a record.
I used to have a brilliant memory, especially when I was younger. Names, places, numbers, facts. I was on the winning team in my school district’s Battle of the Books– what further proof do you need? But I can’t lie that years of drinking have certainly dampened that capacity. I can tear through entire novels, fully engaged, and a week later tell you only the major details. Same with movies. Of course, I’m sure that some of that comes with age, but it’s safe to say that my brain isn’t the same lush, verdant landscape it once was. Tumbleweeds are often found camping in the corners of the hippocampus. Oh, hey that thing from last month– there you are!
As I’ve mentioned before, my drinking certainly took a turn for the worse during the pandemic, to the point where I’ll freely confess I had a problem and was using it as an escape mechanism. I took a three-month break in training for the Tokyo Marathon and again for the New York City Marathon and then never really returned to that former level, mostly because I just feel terrible if I have more than two drinks now.
It wasn’t until I dialed back my drinking that I realized why I was so overly forgetful– the effects of alcohol, both in the moment and into the next day, were affecting my memory more than I thought. Whenever I tried to remember where I put something, it was like there was a gray space in my memory. I couldn’t recall the last place I put it, so I’d just tear up the whole house looking for it. The additional uptake of cortisol and the corresponding stress as a result of terrible sleep didn’t help, either.
I’m not saying I’ve been healed by the holy ghost of pseudo sobriety (just ask my wife), but I am saying that the general fog has lifted. I still misplace things, for sure. The difference is that now, I can actually stand there for a second and rewind my memory to the last day or place I had it, and calmly go and retrieve it. On trips, I’m not leaving everything everywhere. I actually remember to repack cords and clothing and computer chargers.
When I flat-out forget things, it’s mostly the way I’ve always forgotten things. My coffee or lunch when I leave the house, especially when I’m taking something else I usually don’t take, when my routine is disrupted. My kids chide me on coming back through the door two or more times to grab something. They don’t realize that this is their destiny, the same way that Rye complains when I “do that thing again”, which is just having a 10-minute conversation with someone when he wants to leave. That’s gonna be you, dude. Just you wait.
Emails– well, who knows where they go to die, but luckily they live forever. And I’ll readily admit that times and appointments are like actual dust in the wind. Maybe they’ll drift into my memory, maybe they won’t. Apparently they make alarms for such things.
Part of getting this newsletter out on a weekly basis is making sure I don’t forget everything, or at least record what I can remember to the best of my ability. If you get this same story a year from now, well– just remember I tried to remember. That right now, in this moment, I feel like I can finally know what can be, unburdened by what has been.
Course 3
The Main: Roadkill Rabbit
Several years ago, Malcolm Gladwell released an episode of his Revisionist History podcast titled “Free Brian Williams.” This was the height of the Revisionist History podcast, before it devolved into promos of other Pushkin podcasts, live shows, guest hosts, sponsored spots, etc. Some would call it the tipping point. At the time, every story was compelling and interesting and caused you to look at the world just a bit differently, or at least question some of your preconceptions of the world and, well– history.
This particular episode, however, didn’t challenge my view of former news correspondent Brian Williams; instead, it confirmed everything I had always believed: that Brian Williams was an innocent man who made an innocent mistake, one that all of us do, every single day. The problem was that he did it in front of a national audience. And for that– his entire reputation, history, and career were burned in the burgeoning fire of the cancel culture wars.
For those who don’t remember (or maybe don’t care), Brian Williams was an award-winning news anchor for NBC Nightly News whose bonafides were as strong as you could ask for: recipient of the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence, a voice of conviction during Hurricane Katrina, winner of an Emmy Award, among others. In short, he was quite possibly the most recognizable face and reliable voice in broadcast journalism at the time.
But in 2015, all of that changed when he told a story. A story about getting hit with an RPG while on assignment in an Army Chinook helicopter in Iraq in 2002. The thing is, he had told this story before. Many times, in fact. It was documented on his own broadcasts, available for everyone to revisit. And over the years, that story changed, little by little, until it was a lie. He was never in a chopper that took fire– that chopper was 30 minutes ahead of him, something that was confirmed by the soldiers in that aircraft.
When the news came out, it was Twitter crucifixion at its best. There was no chance he’d survive, and he didn’t. He was the only contestant on Cancel Culture Island, and after a six-month suspension, he was demoted. He would never be trusted again.
But for two years, I knew it was all wrong, that he never should’ve been canceled, that his apology was real. I knew, because I was a serial liar too.
When I was in the band, we traveled hundreds of miles in the same van to many of the same towns, each day a different place, so many moments packed together that it felt like time travel. Wait, we played in Grand Rapids three days ago? I swear, it was last month. There were plenty of mundane moments punctuated by just as many extreme ones. The sum of all these savory tales made for a stew of good stories.
Tour after tour, year after year, reunion after reunion, these stories would get told. We told them to each other late at night, we told them to friends, we told them to coworkers and on podcasts and on blogs. We told them in newsletters, like I am right now, all of us interpreting and retelling those stories in our own individual way.
I noticed something though, after a half decade or so of telling these stories– we’re all just standing in a barnyard throwing bullshit back and forth. The main points are mostly correct, but also, sometimes they’re not. The minor points, the details– they’re almost surely wrong or a shade off, their patina worn down. From the telling and retelling, we pull in other people’s threads and weave them into the story. Sometimes those threads are from entirely different stories or places or times. Sometimes I hear a story so many times that I end up placing myself inside that story, even when I wasn’t there.
Take, for instance, the time our drummer almost ran over our guitarist’s head.
It was our first and only West Coast tour, and having played a show in Seattle the night before, we were trying to make our next one in Boise. We had never played Idaho and wanted to check it off the list, so it was imperative that we made the show so we could play for a crowd of six alcoholics at the local dive bar. The problem was that– to entertain these superfans– we had to go up and over a mountain range in a blizzard.
Undeterred by the fact that we were driving a 15-passenger van pulling a dual-axle trailer into white-out conditions, we chained up our tires and headed into the Cascades, home to Mount Rainier, an actual volcano. The drive was grueling. At one point, in the very thick of things, our chains were coming undone. This was, after all, the first time we had ever put chains on our van and I’m sure we got whatever set was cheapest at the local truck stop. Everyone except me exited the van to assess the situation. I attempted to provide moral support by staying warm in the bunk bed next to the tank of grease in the back of the van.
At some point, our drummer (Marc) got in the driver’s seat, ready to test out the fix of the chains. The problem was that our guitarist (Rabbit) was still working on it, his head next to the rear tire. Our drummer put the van into gear and started rolling forward. Rabbit frantically reached up and pounded his hand on the side of the door and Marc hit the brakes just before Rabbit’s head turned the snow bright red. Anyway, that’s what I think happened.
Because when I look at the movie in my mind, it looks like I was outside of the van, looking down at what was going on. I’ve heard the story so many times, imagined the words being told to me, that it feels like I was right there watching it. Part of me also thinks Rabbit’s hat was under the tire, a detail that is conflated with a story of my 5-year-old brother who was riding a bike in a parking lot when he slid under a passing car that braked just in time to pinch his head between the tire and the pavement. His hat was actually under that tire since helmets were a sign of weakness back then.
I can see both of those scenes vividly in my head, but I saw neither of them in real life. In fact, there are details in the above paragraphs that I can certainly guarantee are wrong, that our guitarist, lead singer, and drummer all remember differently. From the depth of the snow to the color of our clothes to the actual order of events. The thing is– we’re all wrong and we’re all correct. Both are true.
Which is how I know Brian Williams was telling the truth, even though he was lying. He was in a tense situation, one shared with a bunch of other people but was incredibly unique. The unit he was reporting on did indeed take RPG fire (just not his chopper) and all the aircraft emergency landed together and spent two harrowing days in the desert waiting for safety. In telling the story over and over again, it only takes a couple viewpoint changes to see how the lines could become blurred.
You may think: “That’s not me. The thing that happened to me, that major life event– I know exactly how that went down. It was so memorable that I remember it perfectly.” This, however, is the perfect recipe for remembering something incorrectly. By repeating it in our minds, its susceptible to change– polish this detail over here, brighten up this corner, turn down the contrast over there. Years later, it’s not the same story, but we remember it just as clearly.
Everyone thinks their memory is perfect. It’s why we’ll swear on a Bible and testify in court when we see a crime happen in front of us.
A few years ago, I was on a jury for a murder trial in Baltimore. An eyewitness was called to the stand by the prosecution. This was the brother of the deceased, who was face to face with the murderer at the time of the killing. The prosecutor asked him if he saw the weapon, and he answered in the affirmative. The gun was pointed at his face, which he dodged as the gunman pulled the trigger, which then fired into his brother’s neck, killing him within a minute. The prosecutor asked if he could describe the gun. The witness said, “Yes, it was a revolver.” The prosecutor stopped in his tracks and looked at him, replying, “You’re sure it was a revolver?” “Yes, a hundred percent, the kind you spin around, with six bullets,” he said, actually making the spinning motion with his hand.
Except, the murder weapon wasn’t a revolver. It was a Glock– a 9 mm handgun with a magazine, not a cylinder. The two handguns couldn’t have been more different. But the witness wasn’t lying, that’s exactly what he saw in his mind. It’s what he remembered, so clearly, that he was willing to put the justice of his brother’s murder on the line. Maybe he owned a revolver himself, maybe he saw another murder or a TV show or played with a toy version as a kid. Whatever the case, that small-yet-major detail almost resulted in a hung jury until we saw video evidence on an officer-worn camera in the aftermath of the shooting that confirmed the suspect was guilty.
Another time, I had to testify in court about an officer who had killed a dog in the parking lot beside our house. Someone’s pet got out of the house, the police were called, an officer showed up, an eyewitness heard him say “I’m gonna fucking slit this thing’s throat,” and that’s exactly what happened. Allegedly. The whole thing happened out of view from my second story window, but I did capture video of them pulling the dead dog into the middle of the parking lot. When an investigator came and questioned me about the incident, I went out to the parking lot and described what I saw. Afterwards, I watched the video I took on my phone, a video that I had watched at least 10 times already. A few of the key details– the positioning of the officers, in particular– were completely wrong. Even now, I can’t remember which version of my memory was correct. And I took this video!
Now imagine this scenario, in the reverse, extrapolated over time. How many innocent men have died in prison? Not because somebody intentionally perjured on the stand, but because somebody told the clearest version of the truth in their mind– which just happened to be a lie. It’s why I don’t know that I ever want to be on the stand as an eyewitness. I personally don’t trust myself, because I sure as hell don’t trust anyone else.
Those are far more serious stakes than a botched attempt at stolen valor from a nightly newscaster.
In the same way that nobody thinks they’d ever be the person to leave their infant in a hot car, nobody thinks they’re the one that is misremembering a story and telling a lie over and over. All of us are both of those people. Our minds are both more malleable and more rigid than we think. While we crave routine, we are also susceptible to influence. Both victims of routine– one being disrupted, the other being enforced.
I doubt Brian Williams will be ever fully forgiven for what he did, at least in the eyes of the general public, and surely in the eyes of everyone with a deep distrust of mainstream media. His story is just another arrow in their quiver, the person and their livelihood be damned. I know that eventually Brian Williams was allowed back on the air in a lesser capacity, but for all his strengths and history of successes, he’ll always be remembered– ironically– for misremembering. He apologized profusely, of course, and acknowledged that his memory shifted, that he never meant to put himself in the same heroic realm of the soldiers in Iraq. In that moment, he told the truth.
In the same way, I’d like to apologize to all my friends and family members of both the past and present. Everything I write in this newsletter is exactly how I remember it and picture it my head, and that’s a problem. Because it’s not one hundred percent true.
Unfortunately, I can’t rely on your memory either, because you’re wrong too.
Course 4
Dessert: Drumsticks
In Phil Collins’ hit song “In The Air Tonight”, we hear him sing the following lyrics:
Well, I remember, I remember, don't worry
How could I ever forget?
It's the first time
The last time we ever met
The entire bar is concerning– right after telling her to remember, he tells her that it’s “the first time, the last time we ever met,” a contradiction at best, a delusional lie at worst. You’re remembering both the first time as the last time as the same time, and telling her not to worry, and no amount of epic drums or end-of-song fadeout is going to change that.
The song was purportedly written in the throes of his divorce, but when you write a line like: “Well, if you told me you were drowning, I would not lend a hand,” I mean… she should probably be worried.
More than likely, Phil kept forgetting their anniversary, or how to call home collect when on tour, and then she cheated on him, and that was that.
Still, it’s a great song, so I’m willing to forget this all happened.
This Past Week
Kept pretty busy this last week, but was able to make it out for a Wednesday night run with the Faster Bastards in Druid Hill park. Had some good workouts that I nailed, so felt good about that. Had to push my long run back to MONDAY morning (ugh), because Kimi was out of town for a beach weekend with some friends so I was on full dad duty. I did manage to get in a 7-mile run on Saturday morning while they watched the rest of Angels in the Outfield, so that was nice. Also went to our neighborhood watch party for the Olympics opening ceremony, so that was a lot of fun catching up with some neighbors and letting the kids run wild.
Also, if you’re not a follower of Believe in the Run, then it may be news to you, but I will be in Paris next week for the Olympics (August 6). Couldn’t be more stoked for this once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Some other things I wrote this week:
Nike Pegasus Plus (shoe review for Believe in the Run)
Tracksmith’s Federation Collection Celebrates the Spirit of the Paris Games (Believe in the Run)
I also contribute to The Drop, a weekly email from Believe in the Run, where I round-up running news and stories in a generally sarcastic (and sometimes heartfelt) manner. You can subscribe here.
END OF MENU
Thank you for dining with me this evening, I hope the service was acceptable. Tips (whether monetary or recommendations to others) are appreciated, but not expected.
I don't know man...I feel like my memory is pretty spot on