875: I Hate Mysteries
Episode
62 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Productivity, Health & Wellness, Relationships
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓Teaching uncertainty tolerance: Manitou School uses a mystery box exercise where students guess contents but never receive answers, training seven-year-olds to endure discomfort of not knowing as preparation for life's unanswerable questions, though students consistently resist and attempt theft.
- ✓Deep excavation investigation: Filmmaker Elijah Sullivan spent nine years tracking diggers who created a 60-foot illegal shaft on Mount Shasta in 2009, eventually learning workers were paid via unlimited credit card to extract mysterious rocks transported to Florida, possibly connected to Saint Germain mythology.
- ✓Immigration enforcement impact: Operation Midway Blitz detained over 500 people in Chicago neighborhoods within ten days, causing schools to see attendance drop from 30 students to three, families selling recently purchased homes, and community members developing alert systems using car horns and whistles for safety.
- ✓Mystery resolution disappointment: The largest glitter buyer mystery, which sparked years of speculation about military applications or secret industries, was solved in 2019 revealing boats use glitter for sparkly paint, demonstrating how mundane answers often disappoint compared to imaginative theories people develop.
- ✓Adaptive survival strategies: Chicago residents created rapid response networks including printed booklets with whistle codes, continuous communication chains checking on family members, and avoiding public spaces like schools and swap meets, fundamentally altering daily routines to navigate enforcement presence in their neighborhoods.
What It Covers
This American Life explores human responses to unsolved mysteries through three stories: second graders learning to tolerate uncertainty, a filmmaker investigating an illegal 60-foot hole dug on Mount Shasta, and life under immigration enforcement in Chicago neighborhoods.
Key Questions Answered
- •Teaching uncertainty tolerance: Manitou School uses a mystery box exercise where students guess contents but never receive answers, training seven-year-olds to endure discomfort of not knowing as preparation for life's unanswerable questions, though students consistently resist and attempt theft.
- •Deep excavation investigation: Filmmaker Elijah Sullivan spent nine years tracking diggers who created a 60-foot illegal shaft on Mount Shasta in 2009, eventually learning workers were paid via unlimited credit card to extract mysterious rocks transported to Florida, possibly connected to Saint Germain mythology.
- •Immigration enforcement impact: Operation Midway Blitz detained over 500 people in Chicago neighborhoods within ten days, causing schools to see attendance drop from 30 students to three, families selling recently purchased homes, and community members developing alert systems using car horns and whistles for safety.
- •Mystery resolution disappointment: The largest glitter buyer mystery, which sparked years of speculation about military applications or secret industries, was solved in 2019 revealing boats use glitter for sparkly paint, demonstrating how mundane answers often disappoint compared to imaginative theories people develop.
- •Adaptive survival strategies: Chicago residents created rapid response networks including printed booklets with whistle codes, continuous communication chains checking on family members, and avoiding public spaces like schools and swap meets, fundamentally altering daily routines to navigate enforcement presence in their neighborhoods.
Notable Moment
A nail salon worker asks a regular customer whether she should send her eight-year-old son to school after classmates heard screams of someone being detained outside the building, with only three of thirty students attending the next day despite school reassurances about safety.
Episode Transcript
Support for This American Life comes from Amazon One Medical and Amazon Pharmacy. If you rely on medication, what you don't need is anxiety about that medication. Wondering things like, are the meds going to get refilled on time? Do I need to renew my prescription? Do I need an appointment to get them renewed? Amazon One Medical has twenty four seven virtual care, and Amazon pharmacy delivers meds to you fast. With Amazon, health care just got less painful. A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ike Sriskamdaraja filling in for Ira Glass. Calm bodies, calm voices, calm minds. It's calm for now. Are you ready? In the second grade classroom in Cold Spring, New York, there are about a dozen kids sitting close around a rug, knees touching. Let's listen to the sound of the bell. These kids are getting ready for a very particular lesson. It's one that I heard about from my coworker, Nadia. I asked my wife, who's a teacher, and she knew about it too. So we're going to do And a friend of mine says he still remembers this lesson from when he was in third grade. The way we start It stuck with him. Mindfulness. And I wanted to see this rite of passage play out for myself. Alright. So the game we're gonna play today is called What's in the Box? Have you played this game before? Yes. It's a guessing game that's kinda famous here. Miss Maria, the director of the Manitou School, holds up a white cardboard box about the size of a shoebox. So I have put something in this box, and you can't break it by shaking it. So you can shake it, you can move it, and we're gonna pass the box around, and you're going to tell me what you think is in the box. K? The kids seem amused. They wanna try. Sorry? She passes the box to the child on her left. What's in the box? Shakes it a little. Legos. A stapler? Maybe mobiles on mobiles and balls. I have a box. As the box makes it around the 13 students, strategies start to emerge. One thoughtful little girl in purple glasses and snow boots shakes it real hard. That doesn't get her any closer. The next time around, she takes off her own beaded necklace. She shakes that close to her ears. Then she closes her eyes and shakes the box. I hope I hope I hope this. Because I kinda, okay. Definitely not what I thought. The rattles are different. Nobody has gotten it. Yeah. Feels like it's time to bring in a dedicated professional in the answers getting business, and the kids allow it. Guys check the box? You guys don't mind? So I pick up the box, …
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“Manitou School uses a mystery box exercise where students guess contents but never receive answers, training seven-year-olds to endure discomfort of not knowing as preparation for life's unanswerable questions”
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