E9. "The Truth About Thurman" - Is there a "better" decision, when both cause someone to die?
STORY SUMMARY: The main character heads into the military supervisors office. It seems two soldiers have been captured terrorists who are threatening to kill them both unless the US Government tells them before the deadline which to kill, and which to go free. One is a woman, and the other is gay. They want the government to make a Sophie’s Choice, so to speak. The government decides to do neither and launch a rescue operation that fails. Both are killed. The story ends with the original solider who started the story locking himself in his room and killing himself. It turns out he was in a relationship with the woman and she was pregnant with his child.
DISCUSSION: Story is built around a Hobson’s choice. A choice whereby both option are terrible, and you must pick one, or both will happen. It’s interesting in that it makes us decide how we value different people. If they are both in the military, then make the government should not pick, so as not to encourage terrorists to kidnap others. Being in the military, you should know you may have to die for the country. Otherwise, maybe all people are of equal value. Maybe children are worth more? It is fair that he didn’t tell his superior officer about the pregnancy? This is part of the machismo culture whereby men aren’t allowed to feel things, and talk about how things affect them. In real life, of course, he would immediately have been removed from the situation.
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“Is there a better decision, when both cause someone to die?”
Kolby, Jeremy, and Jessica discuss the ethics in the terrorist driven short story, “The Truth About Thurman” by Jenean McBrearty.
Transcription (By: Transcriptions Fast)
The Truth About Thurman
Kolby: Hi, and welcome back again to After Dinner Conversation; short stories for long discussions. I am your co-host Kolby.
Jeremy: I’m your co-host Jeremy.
Jessica: I am a co-host... is there such a thing at three co-hosts?
Kolby: Tri-hosts?
Jessica: I am a side-kick Jessica.
(laughter)
Kolby: And today we are talking about “The Truth About Thurman”...
Jessica: By Jeanean McBrearty.
Kolby: If you haven’t read it yet, you should read it ideally before listening to the podcast. You can get that at amazon.com, you can download it. If you like this podcast, feel free to “like” and “subscribe”. If you’ve got a story you want to submit, go to our website Afterdinnerconversation.com. You can submit stories, we’ll read them, if we love them, then they’ll be one of the ones we discuss someday.
Jessica: Where we at?
Kolby: We are at.... thank you.
Jessica: You’re welcome.
Kolby: We are at La Gattara, where they have cat rental. No, it’s not cat rental, they adopt cats out and they’ve always got loads of cats. We’ve had them... if you hear clicking and clacking in the background it’s not that Jeremy’s a bad sound guy, it’s that...
(laughter)
Jeremy: It could also be that too.
Jessica: It’s also Jeremy.
Kolby: There’s got to be like, what, 25-30 cats in here?
Jessica: There’s... I don’t know if there’s that many.
Jeremy: Maybe 20?
Kolby: There’s like a lot.
Jeremy: High teens.
Kolby: High teens, yeah.
Jessica: And they are adorable. And you can come pay to come and sit and be with them and have them knock your stuff off the table or sit on your laptop, so if you’re missing a cat and you want to come and hang out, you can.
Jeremy: This is a great place.
Kolby: This is our 8th or 9th episode here. It’s really nice of them.
Jeremy: I’m glad you can count.
(laughter)
Kolby: I’m totally loosing count. I don’t know how the people are like, “I’ve done 200 episodes”, I’m like, “How would you even remember that dude?”
Jeremy: Because they write it down.
(laughter)
Jessica: It’s this thing called pen and paper Kolby.
Kolby: I should totally try that. Okay, so for the people that haven’t read “The Truth about Thurman”, Jessica would you, I’m sorry, Jeremy...
Jeremy: Yes.
Kolby: I just gave Jessica a heart attack because she hadn’t prepped the summary. Jeremy has prepped to do the summary.
Jessica: Jeremy does do good summaries.
Kolby: Jeremy, tell us about “The Truth About Thurman” for the people that didn’t read it.
Jeremy: So, as our story opens our protagonist, Captain Thurman, waits to see his commander. When he’s ushered in, they begin discussing the events that lead up to the capture or that led up to the capture of two American soldiers and the ultimatums from the captors. Apparently, the Jihadist captors want the military or the government to pick which soldier will die and which will be released. During these scenes Captain Thurman also displays several odd moments of misogyny, or what’s the other term?
Kolby: Misogyny.
Jeremy: No, anyways, they discuss the characteristics of the two soldiers presumably to find out the potential fallout of watching either of them be murdered by the jihadists. First soldier Whitcomb is gay; the second Chandler is a Jewish woman.
Kolby: Like this is a math problem.
Jeremy: The commander suggest that either way, someone will be offended and bring s up the movie “Sophie’s Choice” saying that no matter who they choose, the Jihadist’s will most likely kill them both. So, and the best thing they can do is ignore the request and work on a rescue. Thurman is unhappy with this response and spend the next 48 hours cleaning and repainting his apartment while watching “Sophie’s Choice” and trying not the think about the torture and violent end the two soldiers will undoubtedly face, as intelligence operators are unable to locate them for a rescue. So, once completed with the remodel of this apartment and the movie, Thurman agrees that his commander is correct: “to be chosen as the insignificant one would be another torturer.”
Kolby: Wow, you pulled that quote right from the story. That’s good.
Jeremy: Yeah. It’s a synopsis.
Kolby: But that’s a direct quote, that’s awesome.
Jeremy: All of this culminated with the reveal that Thurman and Chandler were engaged and he wonders if telling the commander that she was pregnant would have made any difference. The story ends with Thurman shooting himself just as the news reports the videos of the soldiers’ executions have been released.
Kolby: Okay.
Jessica: So, it’s a real light-hearted story. As they all are.
Kolby: Does he paint his entire house black or something, and black over all the mirrors? Velvet?
Jessica: Yeah.
Jeremy: Did he paint it? He was replacing everything with black velvet.
Jessica: I thought he was replaced everything with velvet. Which is covering all the mirrors and stuff is a Jewish tradition when somebody passes away.
Kolby: Jeremy, you have thoughts when you read it?
Jeremy: I mean, the topic they bring up is really good. The idea that to choose; again, “Sophie’s Choice” is a great example to bring into the story.
Kolby: It’s driving me nuts; I can’t remember the name of the term it’s based on. Yeah, I’m going to look it up.
Jeremy: I was thinking toxic masculinity; that was the other term.
Jessica: Toxic masculinity, oh, the commander guy. Yeah, he was kind of...
Jeremy: Well, even Thurman; they’re both a little steeped in that. I feel like the story is pretty well written. You do get the character’s motives and their thoughts in this and it’s an interesting perspective. The question it asked is very hard to answer; how do you choose?
Kolby: Hopsen’s choice.
Jessica: Hopsen’s choice.
Kolby: Yea, if you’re Wikipedia-ing something, Hobson’s choice is the thing you Wikipedia and then “Sophie’s Choice” is the movie that’s roughly based on it. Yeah, sorry, I was going to forget.
Jeremy: No, and don’t they bring it up in “Rick and Morty”, just to choose which of the...
(laughter)
Jessica: I don’t watch it guys.
Kolby: ”Rick and Morty” is good. It’s really good.
Jessica: Whatever.
Kolby: So, I’ll tell you one of the things I really liked about this story is it’s not particularly long, it’s, you know, 5-6 pages. You can read it...
Jeremy: ... in a sitting.
Kolby: ... in not long. And it is kind of a one-trick pony. It’s the what do you do in “Sophie’s Choice” or Hobson’s choice scenario but it doesn’t stretch it out into 35 pages to ask me one questions. Right? And I really appreciated that, that I could be like, “yeah, just give me the...
Jeremy: ...“here’s the scenario”
Kolby: ...”Give me the sketch and give me the choice and let me have something I can decide what I think about it.” And I did appreciate that it was both did something interesting and did it in a brief way, so I didn’t feel like, ya know, I don’t need to know what color.
Jeremy: Right, and not too much character development.
Kolby: And for this kind of thing, I don’t think you necessarily need...
Jeremy: ...too much of that, yeah.
Kolby: yeah, in the same ways.
Jessica: I agree. I think the story does, in a very, you know, limited about of space gives us a kind of scenario for us to mull over. It did remind me, I do want to say before moving on, that “Sophie’s Choice” is a fantastic novel and does a ton of character development and its heart breaking and it makes you cry at the end.
Kolby: I haven’t even seen the movie.
Jessica: The movie is also really good.
Kolby: I skimmed the Wikipedia.
(laughter)
Kolby: I haven’t. I’ll watch it at some point.
Jessica: I’m just saying the character development isn’t bad, but I think for the purposes of discussing a really interesting moral problem. It also reminded me of “Black Mirror” just the concept of, like.... So, I have trouble watching “Black Mirror” so I don’t watch...
Kolby: You’ll have to give me a background, I don’t know “Black Mirror.”
Jessica: Oh, “Black Mirror” Is a show on Netflix.
Jeremy: It’s on Netflix.
Kolby: I thought they were all individual one-offs.
Jessica: They are.
Kolby: So, you can’t just say it reminds me of “Black Mirror” because I have to know what episode.
Jeremy: Sorry. I think the reason why it reminds me of “Black Mirror” in general is because I think at the end of “Black Mirror” perhaps, and my personal fault in this, I didn’t realize that it is really set up to have you these kind of same “After Dinner Conversation” discussions. Right?
Jeremy: Absolutely.
Kolby: That’s exactly what “Black Mirror” is.
Jessica: But, I have such a hard time just digesting the content that I don’t watch it because it’s too horrifying and I’m a horror writer.
(laughter)
Jessica: So, I find it funny that I just realized sitting that, “Oh, that’s exactly what the “Black Mirror” is doing””
Kolby: The other one is “Love, Death, and Robots” on HBO, also same thing. Each episode is 8-15 minutes. It’s animated.
Jessica: Really?
Kolby: And it’s really just a “here’s a one-trick pony” sort of story but, the trick is always really good.
Jessica: Ok, alright. So, Kolby, one of the things you said was you liked this story because it set up the situation and gave you something to think about on what choice you would have made in this situation. So, well, what did you disagree or did you agree with what happens at the end?
Kolby: Yea, I took I different tact. So, when I see these sort of situations I am of the opinion, and this is tangential to the story a little bit in that, when you pay a kidnapper...
(loud cat noises)
Kolby: Wow, holy cat fight.
Jeremy: Over the bathroom, of course.
Jessica: Again.
Kolby: Again over the bathroom with the litter box. When you pay a kidnapper, you’re telling people, “You should probably kidnap.” When you pay a pirate who steals a ship, to get your ship back, you’re telling them they should do something...
Jeremy: That it’s okay.
Kolby: If being the sort of...
Jeremy: You’re establishing a norm.
Kolby: You’re establishing it’s worth doing.
(cat meow)
Kolby: Wow.
Jessica: Again, we’re in a cat lounge, there’s cats.
Kolby: And so I think, even in this kind of case, if you’re doing it quote-unquote right, if the person says, “Look, we’ve got two people and we’re going to kill one of them”, I think you smart bomb the building that both of them are in and you’re like, “look...”
Jessica: But they couldn’t locate the building.
Kolby: Or in the case of the kidnappers or in the case of the pirate ship, if someone’s like, “How much will you give us for the pirate ship?” You blow up your own ship and you’re like, “Just so you’re not clear, you will never make money doing this.” And then you don’t get elected president again. Let’s also be clear.
(Laughter)
Jessica: Kolby is not running for president.
Kolby: No.
Jessica: So I think that’s a very interesting approach.
Kolby: It’s a logical approach, it’s not a very useful approach.
Jeremy: Empathetic approach.
Kolby: It’s not an empathetic approach.
Jessica: Well, yeah, it might be hard, especially in this scenario. We don’t know where the kidnappers are or the hostages. But it is interesting when we talk about, like so, is this idea that giving terrorists or giving people that either pirates or jihadist or giving them airtime on social media.
Kolby: You’re giving them exactly what they way.
Jessica: Is exactly what they want; so that is the pay-off. And there’s this idea that if we can squash that, if we can remove them from social media, if we can remove, if we can get Twitter to do that or we can get YouTube to do that, they are not getting the payoff and recruitment that they were hoping to get by doing this, but then that also represses the horrors that are happening, and represses freedom of speech.
Kolby: So, one of the things that came up, I think it was New Zealand, they had their first mass shooter in ever, and all the newspapers and the press and everyone cooperatively agreed that they would never say the name of the person.
Jeremy: Right. And you’re starting to see that more often now. And that’s been one of the suggestions that psychologists or everybody has been making is this don’t release their name because this is promoting it to other people who would be copycats and make them before famous.
Kolby: I feel like they want to be famous for it. I think, it doesn’t really go into it in this story, but I think that’s why the terrorists in this story do this is they don’t really care if one person or two person dies, they care if they’re on the news having made the US government choose who dies. And so in that sense, I mean, I guess that they...
Jeremy: They made the right decision.
Kolby: They made the right choice. But, now do you want to be the one to make that phone call to either one of these people parents, families and be like, “hey, we made the good choice but bad news about your whatever?”
Jeremy: And that is one of the things near the end when Thurman is thinking about all these things is specifically that comes up, is who is going to tell the families of these people this is what happened.
Jessica: So, I want to throw some scenarios at your guys. So, would this story have been different if it was a soldier, a US soldier and a soldier from a different country?
Kolby: Shouldn’t be. I would say though, that if it was a soldier and a non-solider...
Jessica: The solider dies. We get that.
Kolby: Yeah, you signed up for that.
Jessica: You signed up for that.
Kolby: Yes, you get free college tuition.
Jessica: Thank you very much for your service. I’m not saying anything but... I think the soldier would also make that choice.
Kolby: Because they know what they signed up for.
Jessica: Right. Would it be any different if it was somebody with an outstanding service record and what’s-his-face, the, who is the director? BRR BRR BRR halt?
Kolby: Someone who defected.
Jessica: Yeah. Somebody who defected from the United States Army.
Kolby: To me, and this is why I think.... this part I didn’t care about this story... the idea that one person is gay, one person is a Jewish woman, I don’t care. You’re not worth more or less because you’re gay or a Jewish woman. I don’t care about that.
Jeremy: But I think they were doing that to begin that discussion, how do you choose? What are all the factors? And the commander says, “It doesn’t matter who you choose, somebody is going to be upset, so the only choice is to not make a choice.”
Jessica: I think it’s interesting. I think the writer did that intentionally to kind of lead us down this idea of evaluating soldiers with like, pro and con’s list and the story didn’t go that route. Which, I thought that was very good, that would make me very uncomfortable, but I, not that being uncomfortable is a bad thing, I love to be uncomfortable, but that we can’t, we to send us down that route of pro and con and they just say, “like it doesn’t really matter, we don’t negotiate.” But I do think about that pro and con list. Like, would it have made a difference had he said that she was pregnant? I don’t, I mean, I don’t know...
Kolby: That might’ve to me actually.
Jessica: Really?
Kolby: Yeah, because here’s, yea...
Jeremy: Because then an innocent civilian.
Jessica: I guess. It’s not an innocent fetus. It’s a clump of cells.
Kolby: Yeah, but, I know, but, and I understand that’s, but I just feel like it has the ability to become a person, it’s a whole thing. Like, I, yeah, I don’t know why that would’ve mattered to me.
Jessica: Huh.
Kolby: The thing that was disappointing to me, and I think it was written to be disappointing to me, it’s not that the writing was disappointing, was that the military was interested in which one was the worse story and so their reason for non-participation wasn’t for the reason’s we’re discussing. It was, “Well, it’s a gay person and it’s a Jewish woman.” But if the person hadn’t been gay and it was just a Jewish person, they’re like, “Oh well, the fallout would be less.” The only reason they did nothing because the scale was balance in the PR fallout. Not because of what we’re discussing which was, a life is a life is a life. Unless you signed up for it, unless you sort of stepped forward in whatever form that you do.
Jessica: Right.
Kolby: And so that part, I think, falls into that sort of toxic masculinity. Just shows the government is just as the sort of blanket inept PR related entity.
Jeremy: Right. What’s the best of the worst case scenarios.
Jessica: And I think the line that you read in your summary Jeremy about...
Kolby: To be thought less.
Jessica: To be thought less. I also found that it was an interesting assumption that the jihadist wouldn’t say, “Oh, they picked you? Great. I’m going to kill this person and then kill them, just kidding they picked the other person, kill them.”
Jeremy: To force the government to make a choice.
Kolby: Why would they keep their word?
Jessica: Exactly.
Kolby: Because the PR goal is for them to have made a choice. Not that we follow through on your choice.
Jessica: Right. Correct. And yeah, I think that...
Kolby: So, one thing I didn’t understand about this story, and I think it since the story perfectly fine, It just didn’t make any sense to be, is the main character Captain Thurman, why he hills himself at the end? Like, obviously because, there’s the Jewish woman...
Jeremy: ...who he’s engaged too.
Kolby: Like, I get that, but like, people’s engaged died all the time.
Jeremy: But he doesn’t want to see her beheading.
Kolby: Sure. Don’t watch the YouTube video; I’m totally down with that.
Jessica: But, so, I disagree.
Kolby: I just don’t know why he killed himself at the end.
Jessica: I don’t think it’s because he doesn’t want to see her beheading, not that he wants to see her beheading....
Kolby: I thought it was because he didn’t tell the person in charge that he knew her.
Jessica: So, I wonder if it’s this deeper. So, there is some hints through the story of this kind of personal struggle to have a relationship and there’s like, the relationship...
Kolby: You’re a cat whisperer.
Jessica: I have a cat that’s sitting on my story. I can’t reference it, so I’m going to have to go from memory; it has a pink bowtie on. It’s very cute. So, from memory there’s a metal that’s...
Jeremy: Right, he has a triathlon metal.
Jessica: Oh it a triathlon metal. Encased in...
Jeremy: Plexiglas.
Jessica: On the mantle and that’s it. And the relationship with the mother is a little odd. His decision to get married seems to be based on that there is a metal there and it would look good with a diamond ring. I don’t know.
Jeremy: It’s a little...
Kolby: It’s a little hard to follow.
Jessica: So, I wonder if he has just a very difficult time...
Jeremy: Interacting with people in general.
Jessica: Interacting with people in general and then he finally finds somebody that he is in love with, and then he can’t act in a way to save her and withheld information and living with that, is too hard. This idea that, “I was involved in the decision and I did nothing and she dies and therefore, it’s...”
Jeremy: It’s his fault.
Jessica: It’s his fault.
Jeremy: I can see that.
Kolby: I also think that had he been doing this right, and maybe he even had an obligation to, I don’t know anything about the military, he should have told somebody. He shouldn’t have even been in those rooms, right?
Jessica: Yeah.
Kolby: He should’ve been like, “hey, by the way, I’m engaged to this person.” They’d be like, “We understand. We’re going to show you to the other room. We have somebody who’s going to fill your place for you. This is not your problem anymore.”
Jessica: Yeah.
Kolby: But, it doesn’t serve the story to do that.
Jeremy: Correct.
Jessica: What I would say is that, oh how to put this...
Kolby: You’re going to try to not get yourself in trouble?
Jessica: Yep. I think...
Kolby: Don’t be a disappointment to your daughter. Don’t be a disappointment to your daughter.
Jessica: I think a lot of white dudes think that they can act in a way that is unbiased in...
Jeremy: In those situations.
Jessica: In those situations.
Kolby: Because that’s the manly thing to do.
Jessica: Right. Going back to that idea that we we’re talking about with like toxic masculinity, Here’s, you know, he says some things that come from a place of toxic masculinity that, to me, he says I can. And he acts without bias for the most part.
Kolby: Until he blocks himself in the room by himself. But in public, he’s..
Jeremy: ...he’s compartmentalizing and...
Jessica: ...And he thinks, and this idea that, to go back to that idea of toxic masculinity, it is a societal problem that we do not allow men to say, like “Hey, this is going to personally effect me, I’m going to recues myself.” And we don’t let men do that. If women do it, and we allow women to do that, we absolutely do, we also think that’s very weak. Right, we’re like, “geez.”
Kolby: Man up.
Jessica: Uggh. Exactly. Man Up. Man Up.
Kolby: Grow a pair.
Jessica: Right. And so perhaps with the, maybe what we can say is that, the end of the story is perhaps a bit of a statement of the effect of toxic masculinity. This idea that you must be brave, you must be unbiased, and at the end it will kill you. Good luck white dude.
(laughter)
Kolby: I don’t know where I saw this from, it might’ve been a Simpson’s episode, I don’t know, but somebody is having a conversation with an old crusty old guy, and he said, “I don’t know what to do?” And he’s like, “You swallow that down, and you swallow it and you swallow it and you swallow it.” And he’s like, “really grandpa?” and he’s like, “yeah and then you get cancer in your stomach and you die.”
(Laughter)
Jessica: That is absolutely from the Simpsons. I totally remember that episode.
Kolby: But that’s, I think that is part of that culture of toxic masculinity of like, “I’m going to internalize and internalize and internalize because I have some societal obligation to take that on silently. And be the cowboy in the west or whatever.” As opposed to just being like, “Man, I had a hard day” or “I saw a Hallmark commercial and it made me cry.”
Jeremy: God, that Sarah McLachlan song.
Kolby: We went to the Musical Instrument Museum last night, and I’m watching this thing on the thing, and I’m like, “I’m going to cry”
Jessica: Kolby cried at the...
Kolby: I totally cried at the Musical Instrument Museum.
Jessica: Well, there was a really great exhibit about the kids, I don’t, it was Paraguay where kids were making instruments from trash.
Kolby: Literally going through a trash heap, and banging out and like getting....
Jessica: Beautiful violin and that cello, that was...
Kolby: They played better than you in a lot of ways.
Jessica: I mean, bar low.
(laughter)
Kolby: Out of a gas can by the way.
Jessica: And then I cried during Malory wedding ceremony, which I’ve seen that video literally a thousand times on YouTube, and still cry.
Jeremy: But you still cried.
Jessica: But very socially acceptable for me to boohoo through a museum...
Kolby: ..but not for me.
Jessica: ...but not Kolby.
Kolby: Yeah, I don’t mind crying actually. I feel like that’s how you know you’re alive. Like, if you’ve had a good cry, that’s how you’re like, “You know what? I still am able to feel things that make me cry.”
Jessica: I wish that I was more okay with crying. I’m not. But I cry all the freaking time. All the time. Hallmark commercials, trailers, to really terrible movies, I cry all the time. I cry all the time. My daughter loves to stare at me while I’m crying.
Kolby: My wife does the same thing. She’s like, ‘Are you crying?’ And I’m like, “Of course I am. I cry at everything, shush up.”
Jeremy: You should watch “Grave of the Fireflies.”
Jessica: (gasp) No, you shouldn’t. It was the like first movie Jeremy recommended to me when we first met and I never will forgive him for it.
(laughter)
Kolby: Alright, anything else about this story you want to discuss?
Jeremy: One of your questions...
Kolby: What are the questions? Was there one you liked that you wanted to discuss a little bit?
Jeremy: Discuss because it reminded me, you said.
Kolby: Hobson’s choice, I did find it.
Jeremy: Hobson’s choice... something about, should there be a criteria, should there be a pecking order of who should get saved first?
Kolby: For me, it’s just you’re in the military or you’re not in the military.
Jessica: Okay, but what about Titanic?
Jeremy: But, what this reminded me of, it references “The Radio Lab” or “This American Life”. There’s one of those about the hospital in New Orleans during Katrina where because of the fallout of this hospital, they, the medical community, has developed a process to choose who gets saved.
Kolby: Who gets taken out of the hospital in the event there’s a limited amount of time to do it?
Jeremy: Yes.
Kolby: I’m really glad it’s medical personnel who make that choice, but it has to be made.
Jeremy: Right.
Kolby: So, here’s the other one that I think has come up as well, is the concern about self-driving cars. That if they’re given a choice, you’re now relinquishing that choice of like, kid runs in front of the street, person on the side of the street riding a bicycle, and the car is now going to make this choice of which is more valuable or which has the higher percentage of safety of whatever. Do we want to remove these Hobson’s choice from our driving process? I’m going to take one quick tangent because I totally forgot about the questions. Are there times when you think, if it’s not a life or death Hobson’s choice, just the sort of you get one or you get neither, where it is okay to say I’ll take one? Like you can have pie or cake, but you can’t have both?
Jessica: Ok, so...
Kolby: I won’t take it away from the life or death scenario.
Jessica: Oh. I mean, that’s easy.
Kolby: Yes, the answer is yes?
Jessica: The answers cake.
Kolby: Okay. Alright
(laughter)
Jessica: I mean, unless it’s a crème pie, because we can have a different discussion. But, yes.
Jeremy: That’s our next podcast.
(laughter)
Jessica: Pie or cake?
Kolby: Pie or cake! Pie or death? Cake or death?
Jessica: Cake or death.
(laughter)
Jessica: Uh... Cake?
(laughter)
Kolby: I’m going to go one other question for you then, what about if you’re the general guy or the guy making those decisions and one of them is a family member, one of the people that’s captured is a family member?
Jessica: Don’t you recues yourself?
Jeremy: You absolutely should.
Jessica: OK, well, if you’re asking me, as like....
Kolby: Do you still take the moral high ground or do you say like...
Jessica: I will give you a scenario that is similar, but maybe not exact.
Kolby: Okay.
Jessica: San Diego is where I’m from, well, not where I’m from-from, but it’s where I live, and we get riptides all the time. So my husband was with me, and his best friend was visiting from Kentucky and we were swimming and we were caught in a riptide. Yep. So, I had the choice...
Kolby: That’s something from a movie.
Jessica: Yea, riptides are actually very common and they’re super easy to get out of.
Kolby: You just sort of swim sideways, just don’t panic.
Jessica: You swim parallel to the beach until you’re out of the riptide and then you swim in. You don’t panic, Alex.
(Laughter)
Kolby: Did Alex panic and try to swim against the rip tide?
Jessica: Well, I don’t think either of them understood that they were in a riptide. I think that if you’ve never been in a riptide before you don’t necessarily. But, I hadn’t either but I am a swimmer, so I was confident in the water. And so I had this choice to stay with them and try to help them get to the beach, or get to the beach myself. And I knew, like I was close enough to it and I did tell them they were in a riptide.
Kolby: That they should swim sideways.
Jessica: I did. But I don’t think they quite understood, or maybe believed, I don’t know. And so, I had to make this choice of whether I tried to stay with them, and I 100,000% picked myself.
(laughter)
Jessica: I swim parallel to the beach and swam in. I passed a lifeguard on the way in.
Kolby: “By the way, my husband’s out there dying. I saved myself so that I could come here and tell you my husband’s out there dying”
Jeremy: “I told them but they’re toxic masculinity is keeping them out there.”
Kolby: They don’t like to listen to me because I’m a woman. I tried to get the guy next to me who was a man to tell, but he wouldn’t do it. I thought they might listen to him.
(laughter)
Jessica: But It was one of those moments I got to the beach and it was interesting because I think before that situation, I always thought that I...
Jeremy: ...I would help.
Jessica: I’m very much, I love other human beings, I’m very into other humans, I think we’re all so amazing, and I thought for sure I would try to save that person, and I was like, “Nope, me first. I will save myself” And I knew there is extenuating circumstance, I knew there was a lifeguard on duty, I knew she could come out and save them, and by the way she did not have to pull them in.
Kolby: Did you think to yourself, “90% chance they’ll figure this out, I’m going to go swim for shore”?
Jessica: I don’t know that I thought even 90%, I thought maybe...
Kolby: 70%?
Jessica: 70%.
(laughter)
Kolby: Oh my god.
Jeremy: The odds are still good.
Jessica: Odds are still good.
Kolby: The odds are still in your favor.
Jessica: Yeah, so I will say, I mean that I made that choice in real life and it was not the choice I thought I would make.
Kolby: Well, there ya go. You are listening to After Dinner Conversation with myself, with Jeremy, with Jessica. We’ve had a great time talking about our Hobson’s choice in this story, “The Truth About Thurman”. I think we’ve decided that Jessica is willing to let her family die.
Jessica: Not my family, just my husband guys.
Kolby: Just her husband.
Jessica: I love you Alex.
(laugher)
Jessica: I swear, I would not let you die.
Kolby: And that because Jeremy has one, served in the military, we’d let him die first.
Jessica: Yeah.
Kolby: Because you signed up for life, right? You’re always, once you signed up your life, you’re the first one to go?
Jessica: I didn’t even think about that, but absolutely, but yea. Letting him die first.
Kolby: And we’re here in La Gattara with cats having a great times. We heard a couple of them having a disagreement over something. There’s probably a Hobson’s choice about the litter box. You either get one littler box or you get no litter box. And if you enjoyed this as much as we enjoy doing them, please “like” and “subscribe”. We have a heck of a great time doing it. We’re glad that you’re watching and that allows us to continue doing it. Next week, we have another story. You have the email with the story list?
Jeremy: The “Alpha Dye Shirt Factory”
Kolby: Oh the “Alpha Dye Shirt Factory.” This is a... I can’t tell if it’s a comedy or a tragedy, we’ll see, but the story is a fire breaks out, okay it’s a tragedy, out at a garment factory and one worker has to make a life or death choice. So, join us next week. And we’ll have that discussion and we’ll probably pick on each other a little bit more and pet some cats and have a great ‘ol time. Thank you for joining us. Bye.