WEBVTT - The Vampire Bat 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:07.880 Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Laura 0:00:07.920 --> 0:00:10.840 and I write a dictionary for our own language and 0:00:11.000 --> 0:00:15.120 mock the cool kids in our new foreign tongue. Lisa 0:00:15.200 --> 0:00:17.360 shows me how to make a spider web string all 0:00:17.400 --> 0:00:20.400 over my bedroom and hang bells on it to detect ghosts. 0:00:20.440 --> 0:00:25.919 While we sleep. For three months, we're happy. Then the 0:00:26.000 --> 0:00:28.840 day after Christmas, my mother sits me down to tell 0:00:28.840 --> 0:00:32.080 me that Laura is dead. She was killed while flying 0:00:32.120 --> 0:00:36.159 home with her entire family grandmother to infant brother, on 0:00:36.200 --> 0:00:39.040 the pan Am flight bombed by Libyan terrorists over lack 0:00:39.080 --> 0:00:44.640 of the Scotland. I am eight. I fall quiet for 0:00:44.640 --> 0:00:47.400 a long periods. I feel like my head is full 0:00:47.400 --> 0:00:53.360 of cotton, feel sleepy and mute and numb. Finally, my 0:00:53.479 --> 0:00:57.000 dad teaches me to read the London Times. You have 0:00:57.080 --> 0:01:00.160 to understand the forces that took her. It will seems 0:01:00.160 --> 0:01:03.880 scary if you do. I think of the faceless monster 0:01:04.000 --> 0:01:08.440 on the cardboards spook House, and I know that he's right. Slowly, 0:01:08.520 --> 0:01:10.839 my world is filled with a new cast of characters, 0:01:11.480 --> 0:01:15.640 Kadafi and Thatcher and Reagan and Gorbachev. They sound like 0:01:15.680 --> 0:01:19.600 exotic fairy tale people, wizards and witches and woodsmen living 0:01:19.600 --> 0:01:24.360 in distant magical forests, but their storybook showdowns can spill 0:01:24.360 --> 0:01:28.560 over into the real world, into my world, and steal 0:01:28.680 --> 0:01:32.000 my friends from the sky, so I have to pay attention. 0:01:34.240 --> 0:01:37.840 That's Emeralist Fox. You know. If I were writing a 0:01:37.880 --> 0:01:40.280 novel about a spy and I had to come up 0:01:40.280 --> 0:01:43.240 with a great name for that spy, I'd like to 0:01:43.280 --> 0:01:46.600 think I could invent a name as perfect as Ameralis Fox. 0:01:47.520 --> 0:01:51.320 But the thing is, Emeralists really was a spy, recruited 0:01:51.320 --> 0:01:53.880 by the CIA at the age of twenty one and 0:01:53.960 --> 0:01:57.880 working under deep cover for nearly a decade. She's the 0:01:57.920 --> 0:02:01.240 author of the memoir Life Undercover, Coming of Age in 0:02:01.280 --> 0:02:05.240 the CIA. This is a story about what happens when 0:02:05.280 --> 0:02:08.440 being a secret and keeping a secret is a matter 0:02:08.520 --> 0:02:20.720 of life and death. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is 0:02:20.840 --> 0:02:24.160 family secrets, the secrets that are kept from us, the 0:02:24.200 --> 0:02:27.400 secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep 0:02:27.440 --> 0:02:37.160 from ourselves. The landscape of my childhood changed every year, 0:02:38.080 --> 0:02:42.079 and I think as a result, eventually I realized that 0:02:42.360 --> 0:02:47.440 my landscape was planet Earth, you know, and that whether 0:02:47.520 --> 0:02:50.480 it was a suit in the Middle East or it 0:02:50.560 --> 0:02:55.480 was a refugee camp in Tanzania, or it was a 0:02:55.520 --> 0:03:00.400 beautiful Downton Abbey type house in the countryside and England 0:03:01.120 --> 0:03:05.200 that humans and the humans that inhabited them were the same, 0:03:05.760 --> 0:03:08.000 you know, and I think that was an enormous gift. 0:03:08.040 --> 0:03:10.200 It didn't always feel that way as a kid, being 0:03:10.240 --> 0:03:13.280 in a new place every year, but I suppose the 0:03:13.400 --> 0:03:16.120 landscape of my childhood was in a sense my family, 0:03:16.320 --> 0:03:19.880 because it was the one consistency between all of these 0:03:19.919 --> 0:03:24.240 places we moved every year because my dad was an 0:03:24.240 --> 0:03:29.520 economist who focused on developing economies and took us with 0:03:29.600 --> 0:03:34.600 him to new countries every year. And you know, my 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:38.520 birthday since September, so every year I would know nobody 0:03:38.880 --> 0:03:41.720 in a new place to invite over for my birthday. 0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:45.640 But it was an amazing range of experience. I think, 0:03:45.800 --> 0:03:47.760 looking back on it now as an adult, it seemed 0:03:47.880 --> 0:03:50.440 ordinary to me as a child, but it was really 0:03:50.480 --> 0:03:54.240 quite magical. Sure it always does. Right our childhoods just 0:03:54.280 --> 0:03:58.200 feel like that must be the way the whole world lives, absolutely, 0:03:58.360 --> 0:04:01.160 you know, And I think actually it's to milestone when 0:04:01.200 --> 0:04:03.680 you realize that there are so many ways to live 0:04:03.720 --> 0:04:08.000 a life, and the people who have taken another path 0:04:08.360 --> 0:04:11.800 through their life, have from all of the different hills 0:04:11.800 --> 0:04:14.240 and valleys that they've been through that we haven't have, 0:04:14.360 --> 0:04:18.320 had a completely different vantage point on the terrain, and 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:22.000 have intelligence that they can share with us. But definitely 0:04:22.000 --> 0:04:24.719 as a child, I thought, I mean, I knew people 0:04:24.760 --> 0:04:28.279 didn't move every year, but I thought that everyone felt 0:04:28.320 --> 0:04:30.480 as at home in the world as I did. And 0:04:30.520 --> 0:04:33.240 I think it was really sort of getting to university 0:04:33.480 --> 0:04:35.760 and realizing that for many people that was kind of 0:04:35.800 --> 0:04:39.520 the first time that they had had any horizons beyond 0:04:39.600 --> 0:04:44.320 their hometown. Every September when the new school year started, 0:04:44.360 --> 0:04:48.920 Amarillis would find herself beginning again. This might be New York, 0:04:49.480 --> 0:04:55.520 or in the UK, or Jakarta, Zanzibar, Moscow, Thailand. Each 0:04:55.560 --> 0:04:58.840 country had different customs and modes of dress and sights 0:04:58.960 --> 0:05:02.400 and smells, and she grew up having to make sense 0:05:02.520 --> 0:05:08.280 of it all to witness, learn and adapt. It's such 0:05:08.320 --> 0:05:11.440 a primal period and you're kind of trained in a 0:05:11.520 --> 0:05:14.240 very primal sense to look for the archetypes that you 0:05:14.279 --> 0:05:17.000 need to recognize to survive when you're a young child, 0:05:17.080 --> 0:05:19.520 and you look for the caregivers and you look for 0:05:19.560 --> 0:05:22.840 the potential friends, and those people exist everywhere, and so 0:05:22.880 --> 0:05:25.640 I think in a way that the terrain of my 0:05:25.800 --> 0:05:30.200 childhood on the surface looked incredibly varied, but when I 0:05:30.240 --> 0:05:36.919 look back on it, it all feels very warm. I 0:05:37.000 --> 0:05:40.760 had a great sense of safety in my early childhood. 0:05:40.760 --> 0:05:43.840 I think that that changed, as it always does as 0:05:43.880 --> 0:05:46.680 we grow up, But in my early childhood and even 0:05:46.720 --> 0:05:51.119 beyond that, physically, I felt very safe, even in very 0:05:51.320 --> 0:05:55.640 tumultuous environments as a kid, because I've kind of never 0:05:55.680 --> 0:06:02.760 known anything else. Describe your mother me. My mother is 0:06:03.640 --> 0:06:08.280 a poet at heart. She's an artist. Um, she's English, 0:06:08.480 --> 0:06:11.599 and she comes from a very old, you know, kind 0:06:11.600 --> 0:06:15.520 of snazzy English family that kind of knows all the 0:06:15.600 --> 0:06:18.039 rules about what to say and what not to say, 0:06:18.040 --> 0:06:20.520 and what salad work to use and so on. But 0:06:21.160 --> 0:06:26.200 in her heart she is this incredibly free thinker and 0:06:26.240 --> 0:06:30.000 this really radical poet and artist. She went to a 0:06:30.040 --> 0:06:33.640 really interesting school as a child in England called be Dales, 0:06:33.720 --> 0:06:37.160 which has a reputation for kind of breaking out of 0:06:37.200 --> 0:06:40.599 the stiff upper lip British mold and creating the kind 0:06:40.640 --> 0:06:44.240 of the hippie free thinkers of the UK. And you know, 0:06:44.640 --> 0:06:48.760 she really gave me a love of the spoken word 0:06:48.800 --> 0:06:52.960 and the written word. I memorized poetry all through my childhood, 0:06:53.440 --> 0:06:56.280 and that was very much down to my mom. You know, 0:06:56.400 --> 0:06:59.560 she had learned poetry growing up in Britain, poetry growing up, 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:03.040 and she walk home from school, skipping classes and walk 0:07:03.120 --> 0:07:06.880 home through the meadows reciting poetry. And it was really 0:07:06.920 --> 0:07:10.000 important to her. And it is now to me to 0:07:10.120 --> 0:07:14.720 have kind of the wisdom of ages past in a 0:07:14.840 --> 0:07:18.280 place that no one can ever take it from you. 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:20.040 You know, I think the things that we learned by 0:07:20.080 --> 0:07:23.960 heart are hours and even in a terrible circumstance, even 0:07:23.960 --> 0:07:26.520 when everything else has been stripped away, you know, no 0:07:26.560 --> 0:07:28.920 one can take that. And my mom really gave me 0:07:28.960 --> 0:07:32.320 that love of art and literature as a way of 0:07:32.440 --> 0:07:40.520 understanding society, challenging society. Tell me about your father. My 0:07:40.760 --> 0:07:47.880 father is much more analytical, much more almost like a 0:07:47.960 --> 0:07:50.560 human computer, I guess you could say. I as a 0:07:50.680 --> 0:07:53.360 child and even now, I sort of always had the 0:07:53.440 --> 0:07:58.840 sense of his knowing everything in terms of fact, not 0:07:58.960 --> 0:08:02.400 so much always in terms of the life experience or 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:06.040 wisdom emotionally in terms of emotional intelligence. To put those 0:08:06.080 --> 0:08:08.960 facts to work in a way that you kind of 0:08:09.040 --> 0:08:13.280 might think of as wisdom. But he is incredibly curious 0:08:13.280 --> 0:08:18.080 and incredibly intelligent in his capabilities, in his ability to 0:08:18.360 --> 0:08:20.760 always be seeking new information and to pull all of 0:08:20.800 --> 0:08:23.720 that information in to kind of constantly update his model 0:08:24.320 --> 0:08:28.160 of the universe and crunch as many numbers as you 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:30.720 could kind of possibly put in front of him. And 0:08:30.800 --> 0:08:33.720 he is in fact an economist by training. He's American. 0:08:33.880 --> 0:08:37.280 Grew up in a little small town called Franklin, bill 0:08:37.320 --> 0:08:39.680 And upstate New York, and was one of only two 0:08:40.080 --> 0:08:42.839 kids in his class to go to college the first, 0:08:42.840 --> 0:08:46.320 and his family very different childhood from my mother, you know, 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:51.319 working class, single mother. And he ended up at the 0:08:51.400 --> 0:08:55.440 University of Chicago and was kind of a wonder kinds there, 0:08:55.600 --> 0:08:58.000 you know, it was loved by all the professors and 0:08:58.000 --> 0:09:01.160 advanced really quickly and up being one of the youngest 0:09:01.520 --> 0:09:05.680 tenured professors there in his early twenties. And met my 0:09:05.760 --> 0:09:08.680 mom that as he sort of moved towards his thirties 0:09:08.679 --> 0:09:12.320 and she was much younger, and they just were as 0:09:12.480 --> 0:09:15.320 different as two people could be. How did they meet? 0:09:16.040 --> 0:09:19.600 They met actually by mistake in a way, and my 0:09:19.720 --> 0:09:22.000 dad had been set up on a blind date with 0:09:22.040 --> 0:09:26.120 my mother's sister when he was visiting London for business, 0:09:26.440 --> 0:09:30.280 and my mother's sister got the stomach flu and and 0:09:30.480 --> 0:09:33.520 send my mother instead, and they went to a little 0:09:33.640 --> 0:09:37.640 night music to play the musical in the West End 0:09:37.679 --> 0:09:40.439 in London and had, you know, by all accounts of 0:09:40.600 --> 0:09:43.800 very romantic evening. And then my dad went back to 0:09:43.840 --> 0:09:47.040 America and my mom went and traveled around Greece and 0:09:47.120 --> 0:09:49.160 Italy as a as a kind of backpacker, because she 0:09:49.240 --> 0:09:53.200 was still just fresh out of school. And my dad 0:09:53.200 --> 0:09:55.360 wrote to her and kind of, you know, my Mamo 0:09:55.480 --> 0:09:58.400 says he drew birds on the top of the paper 0:09:58.520 --> 0:10:00.480 in that way that you can write the that looks 0:10:00.520 --> 0:10:03.720 like an m you know, and that that seems so 0:10:04.040 --> 0:10:07.240 romantic because he is so analytical and not an artist, 0:10:07.280 --> 0:10:09.200 and it was sort of his attempt to be romantic 0:10:09.520 --> 0:10:12.520 at any rate. He eventually center of one way playing 0:10:12.520 --> 0:10:16.520 ticket to Chicago, and she went. And I think it 0:10:16.600 --> 0:10:18.760 was such a new world for her, because she was 0:10:18.840 --> 0:10:23.800 coming out of the world of country manor houses in England, 0:10:24.400 --> 0:10:28.800 surrounded by ideas and art and literature and these kind 0:10:28.800 --> 0:10:33.959 of six hundred year old rooms that are incredibly grand, 0:10:34.040 --> 0:10:36.160 but like the heat doesn't work, and there are mice 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:38.040 in the covers, you have to knock on it before 0:10:38.040 --> 0:10:40.720 you open it, you know, just all the contradictions of 0:10:40.720 --> 0:10:44.880 English country life, and suddenly was in the midst of 0:10:44.920 --> 0:10:49.120 this kind of intellectual cauldron at the University of Chicago, 0:10:49.240 --> 0:10:51.320 where every night they were at a different dinner party 0:10:51.440 --> 0:10:57.400 with incredibly articulate, fast, intellectual men and women. But I 0:10:57.400 --> 0:11:00.280 think the women in particular really struck my mom because 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:04.040 they were so different from anyone she had come across 0:11:04.080 --> 0:11:08.280 before that could just repartee on any topic, and we're 0:11:08.360 --> 0:11:11.720 so worldly, and we're ten years older than she was, 0:11:11.800 --> 0:11:14.160 because so is my dad, and I think it was 0:11:14.280 --> 0:11:16.880 quite bewildering for her at the beginning. I think she 0:11:16.960 --> 0:11:20.719 kind of struggled to remember her own worth a little bit. 0:11:20.760 --> 0:11:27.679 Then two huge events occur during Amarilla's childhood. First, her 0:11:27.720 --> 0:11:32.600 older brother, Ben, her partner in crime, compatriot closest person, 0:11:33.240 --> 0:11:36.840 is sent off to boarding school. Ben has learning challenges 0:11:37.080 --> 0:11:40.440 and is also exceptionally bright, with the kind of mind 0:11:40.840 --> 0:11:45.520 that retains detail history musical scores. Ben and Amarilla's have 0:11:45.600 --> 0:11:49.440 always spent lots of time together, haunting museums in various 0:11:49.520 --> 0:11:54.120 cities or attending concerts. He is the consistent backdrop of 0:11:54.120 --> 0:11:58.960 her childhood, her everything, and then just like that, he's 0:11:59.000 --> 0:12:02.520 gone away. He puts a brave face on it, but 0:12:02.600 --> 0:12:07.360 e Marilla's is terribly lonely. The family is now living 0:12:07.360 --> 0:12:10.920 in London and Marilla's is in the third grade. She 0:12:11.040 --> 0:12:16.160 makes new friends, particularly a girl named Laura. Then Laura 0:12:16.280 --> 0:12:20.000 and her entire family are killed on PanAm flight one 0:12:20.040 --> 0:12:24.760 oh three, blown up by a terrorist bomb over Lockerbie, Scotland. 0:12:26.840 --> 0:12:29.720 My mom waited until after Christmas to tell me, so 0:12:29.800 --> 0:12:32.400 I always think of it as just after Christmas, but 0:12:32.400 --> 0:12:36.440 it was just before. You know. She'd been traveling back 0:12:36.480 --> 0:12:38.640 with her mom and her dad and her sister to 0:12:38.800 --> 0:12:42.040 go home for Christmas, as so many people on that 0:12:42.120 --> 0:12:45.240 flight were, and they were all gone, you know, And 0:12:45.280 --> 0:12:48.080 I remember my mom saying it's a blessing that they 0:12:48.080 --> 0:12:50.280 were all together, and there's you know, there's no one 0:12:50.320 --> 0:12:52.480 left to grieve them. They all went together, and I 0:12:52.600 --> 0:12:56.680 just it was just so much to process and to absorb. 0:12:56.760 --> 0:12:59.880 I'd never lost anyone really close to me. I'd like 0:13:00.040 --> 0:13:03.240 death was kind of a something I'd read about in books, 0:13:03.280 --> 0:13:06.760 but I'd never really experienced in a deep way until then. 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:10.960 And it's also the first time that you have any 0:13:11.000 --> 0:13:14.080 awareness that there's terrorism in the world, and that's something 0:13:14.160 --> 0:13:16.120 like this can happen, and it can happen on purpose. 0:13:17.320 --> 0:13:21.200 It can happen on purpose that somebody somewhere who never 0:13:21.320 --> 0:13:26.959 knew Laura, never knew me, could make a plan for 0:13:27.040 --> 0:13:29.160 some reason that made no sense to any of us 0:13:29.240 --> 0:13:32.200 and had nothing to do with our lives and steal 0:13:32.800 --> 0:13:36.120 my friend and her entire family from the sky. It 0:13:36.240 --> 0:13:41.320 was just so scary and huge, you know. It was 0:13:41.400 --> 0:13:45.400 just such a big revelation that really shook my world. 0:13:45.640 --> 0:13:49.080 And I think I was really struggling with it because 0:13:49.080 --> 0:13:53.040 my dad stepped in, which was quite rare in general. 0:13:53.120 --> 0:13:55.440 My mom was very much kind of the heart of 0:13:55.440 --> 0:13:58.840 our family, and my dad was sort of, I guess, 0:13:59.480 --> 0:14:02.800 more than the mind, but he was often deploying that 0:14:02.880 --> 0:14:05.560 mind out in the world doing his work, and wasn't 0:14:05.640 --> 0:14:08.320 really a big part of child rearing. But I remember 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:11.280 him stepping in there and introducing me to the newspaper, 0:14:11.920 --> 0:14:15.200 and I think he sensed that I needed to make 0:14:15.280 --> 0:14:20.360 sense of what had happened. I needed to understand why 0:14:20.880 --> 0:14:23.240 somebody had done this thing, and why they had done 0:14:23.240 --> 0:14:26.560 it on purpose, and how it might or might not 0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:30.040 happen again. And I think I've had a hard time 0:14:30.080 --> 0:14:35.120 at the beginning reading those stories as more real than 0:14:36.120 --> 0:14:38.640 the kind of fictional stories that I was used to reading. 0:14:38.880 --> 0:14:41.440 But I also kind of had this constant, sort of 0:14:41.520 --> 0:14:45.600 Damocle's idea hanging over my head that at any given moment, 0:14:45.680 --> 0:14:48.240 one of these things might spill over into real life 0:14:48.240 --> 0:14:51.120 and do this kind of incredible harm. And so you know, 0:14:51.120 --> 0:14:54.080 when I look back on it, it's definitely something of 0:14:54.120 --> 0:14:57.680 the kind of end of innocence, but also the beginning 0:14:57.760 --> 0:15:02.520 of feeling an urge and desire and need to understand 0:15:02.520 --> 0:15:04.720 what was happening in the world, and some sense of 0:15:04.760 --> 0:15:08.520 responsibility of kind of understanding it so that maybe someday 0:15:08.720 --> 0:15:11.880 I could do some small thing to help it be better. 0:15:15.640 --> 0:15:18.200 Will be back in a moment with more family secrets. 0:15:28.640 --> 0:15:32.160 Amarellis grows up paying attention to the news to world events. 0:15:32.640 --> 0:15:36.320 When she's twelve, her father is working in Moscow and 0:15:36.360 --> 0:15:39.920 there is a siege. For a number of panicked hours, 0:15:39.960 --> 0:15:44.720 he is unreachable. When he returns safely home, he registers 0:15:44.720 --> 0:15:47.880 that Emorrealis needs to see more of what's actually happening 0:15:47.880 --> 0:15:51.600 on the ground, so that in its tangibility, it will 0:15:51.640 --> 0:15:54.640 be less frightening to her. So on his next trip 0:15:54.680 --> 0:15:57.800 to Moscow, during a time of protests and a fight 0:15:57.880 --> 0:16:03.440 for democracy, he invite try to join him. I think 0:16:03.480 --> 0:16:07.080 it was a great insight on his part. I think 0:16:07.080 --> 0:16:10.240 he probably recognized the part of my d n A 0:16:10.400 --> 0:16:12.960 that was his, you know, which is this part that 0:16:13.480 --> 0:16:18.560 finds things that I can understand and no up close 0:16:18.600 --> 0:16:22.160 and personal, much less scary than the kind of shadows 0:16:22.200 --> 0:16:25.760 and boogeymen and monsters in the closet. You know. I 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:31.080 also was scared for him going back, and he felt 0:16:31.080 --> 0:16:35.320 as though if I could go and see the thing 0:16:35.480 --> 0:16:38.600 that was scaring me up close and personal, that I 0:16:38.600 --> 0:16:41.320 would understand it, and then maybe there would be some 0:16:41.440 --> 0:16:45.200 jagged edges that really were there, but in seeing them 0:16:45.240 --> 0:16:47.640 I would not be imagining them as worse than they were. 0:16:48.240 --> 0:16:50.720 And he was right about that, not only that time, 0:16:50.760 --> 0:16:54.280 but pretty much in every other circumstance thereafter. I mean, 0:16:54.320 --> 0:16:57.160 it became, I guess you could say, a coping mechanism 0:16:57.240 --> 0:17:00.480 for me every time something really scared me to try 0:17:00.520 --> 0:17:02.640 to take it apart and understand it, or to get 0:17:02.640 --> 0:17:05.320 to know it better rather than to avoid it. And 0:17:05.440 --> 0:17:08.679 that practice has turned out to be a great gift 0:17:09.080 --> 0:17:12.720 because I think you know, especially if you fast forward 0:17:12.760 --> 0:17:16.560 to today's world where everything is seen through the lens 0:17:16.600 --> 0:17:19.800 of media and social media, all of which is kind 0:17:19.800 --> 0:17:23.840 of designed to make scary things even scarier for profit. 0:17:24.400 --> 0:17:28.800 The habit of sidestepping that narrative and going out and 0:17:29.080 --> 0:17:32.719 meeting the scary people or seeing the scary place for yourself, 0:17:33.240 --> 0:17:36.600 that's been an enormous gift in my life and making 0:17:36.600 --> 0:17:39.920 me feel safer and making me feel better about the 0:17:39.960 --> 0:17:43.160 future that's to come. That reminds me of a great 0:17:43.240 --> 0:17:46.040 moment in your story where it's like kind of a 0:17:46.040 --> 0:17:51.240 perfect metaphor where you describe this little toy vampire bat 0:17:51.320 --> 0:17:54.760 that your brother had had and it scared you. You 0:17:54.880 --> 0:17:59.280 started dreaming you hated that bat. And what your father 0:17:59.359 --> 0:18:03.920 did in that situation, which struck me as so wise, 0:18:04.359 --> 0:18:06.720 and it's the same really as as what you're saying 0:18:06.800 --> 0:18:09.320 is it's like a childhood version of it. Is he 0:18:09.440 --> 0:18:13.440 sat you on the floor and pulled apart the bat, 0:18:13.680 --> 0:18:16.400 and I took a part the bat, laid out all 0:18:16.400 --> 0:18:20.960 the pieces of the bat, the battery and everything about 0:18:21.000 --> 0:18:23.760 what made that bat look scary, and then you write 0:18:23.760 --> 0:18:27.560 after that I had never been afraid of him again. Absolutely. 0:18:27.880 --> 0:18:30.080 It was a story that I went back to so 0:18:30.280 --> 0:18:34.720 often in my mind um as I got older and older, 0:18:34.760 --> 0:18:39.240 and things that seemed just as existentially terrifying as that 0:18:39.359 --> 0:18:41.639 vampire bat had to me when I was a child. 0:18:41.920 --> 0:18:44.280 And I mean, by the way, this thing was really scary. 0:18:44.359 --> 0:18:48.359 It had like it had read pretend blood that swirled around, 0:18:48.440 --> 0:18:51.160 and it's probiscus and my brother, would you know, bring 0:18:51.200 --> 0:18:53.520 it up and squeeze its stomach to get the get 0:18:53.560 --> 0:18:56.680 blood swirling. And as it as it approached my arm, 0:18:56.680 --> 0:18:59.159 and I was pretty young, I really felt that this 0:18:59.240 --> 0:19:02.320 thing was a threat to my survival, you know. And 0:19:02.560 --> 0:19:04.800 as I got older, there were other things that I 0:19:04.840 --> 0:19:08.280 thought were threats to my survival, and that memory of 0:19:08.359 --> 0:19:12.000 kind of okay, but what if you give this the 0:19:12.080 --> 0:19:14.480 vampire bat treatment. You know, what if you set out 0:19:14.520 --> 0:19:16.840 the towel and you take this thing apart, piece by 0:19:16.840 --> 0:19:20.119 piece and figure out that that blood swirling around in 0:19:20.160 --> 0:19:23.479 the probiscus is really just a piece of plastic with 0:19:23.520 --> 0:19:25.960 red paint, and when it swirls, it looks scary, but 0:19:26.119 --> 0:19:28.440 when you take it out, it's not, you know, and 0:19:28.680 --> 0:19:32.280 understand what the source of fuel is that's fueling this 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:35.479 what is that battery? And as I got older and 0:19:35.520 --> 0:19:39.000 began thinking about the things that scared me in my 0:19:39.040 --> 0:19:41.240 own personal life and then the things that scared me 0:19:41.280 --> 0:19:44.679 in geopolitics and in security and in the world, that 0:19:44.800 --> 0:19:48.359 same idea applies. And it's allowed me to see people 0:19:48.440 --> 0:19:51.240 as the humans that they are instead of the kind 0:19:51.240 --> 0:19:54.160 of vampire bat that they might feel when you first 0:19:54.240 --> 0:19:57.840 hear whatever the threat and the story is, It's like 0:19:57.880 --> 0:20:00.800 there was a training ground there almost for Yeah, what 0:20:00.840 --> 0:20:03.720 would end up being your path? Yeah? I think my 0:20:03.800 --> 0:20:06.160 dad was just trying to get some sleep, honestly, because 0:20:06.240 --> 0:20:09.200 I kept having nightmares about this thing. But it turned 0:20:09.240 --> 0:20:13.400 out to be a really great life. Lesson A Marillas 0:20:13.440 --> 0:20:15.520 grows up to be the kind of young woman who, 0:20:15.560 --> 0:20:18.840 as a senior in high school, cuts school because she 0:20:18.920 --> 0:20:22.280 hears that Houston Smith is speaking in d C. It's 0:20:22.280 --> 0:20:25.320 a rare opportunity to hear Smith, who is one of 0:20:25.359 --> 0:20:29.840 the world's most influential scholars in religious studies. So she 0:20:29.960 --> 0:20:34.640 plays hoockey and gets a demerit. Can you believe it? 0:20:36.359 --> 0:20:38.919 She isn't off somewhere smoking weed or making out with 0:20:38.920 --> 0:20:44.320 her boyfriend no, she's educating herself, but hey, that's high school. 0:20:45.920 --> 0:20:49.320 Her innerpendulum swings back and forth between her passions and 0:20:49.400 --> 0:20:55.440 interests poetry, literature, the space program, a life of public service. 0:20:56.920 --> 0:21:01.360 For college, she debates between the Naval Academy and Oxford University. 0:21:01.720 --> 0:21:05.679 She chooses Oxford, and when she graduates from Oxford, she 0:21:05.880 --> 0:21:09.719 enrolls in a master's program in conflict and terrorism at 0:21:09.760 --> 0:21:14.399 Georgetown's School of Foreign Service. So you go to graduate 0:21:14.440 --> 0:21:20.800 school at Georgetown and you are recruited by the CIA. Yeah, 0:21:20.920 --> 0:21:22.960 I mean it sounds crazy when you say it that way. 0:21:23.119 --> 0:21:25.480 I A friend of mine said, you know, it must 0:21:25.480 --> 0:21:27.560 be hard if you ever go to therapy, because the 0:21:27.560 --> 0:21:29.800 therapist is sort of trained to think that anyone who 0:21:29.840 --> 0:21:34.879 thinks they work for CIA is crazy. Um. But the 0:21:35.080 --> 0:21:37.520 approach at the time nine eleven had just happened, and 0:21:37.600 --> 0:21:41.160 nine eleven for me was an incredibly I guess the 0:21:41.200 --> 0:21:45.240 word today is triggering thing in in that obviously was 0:21:45.280 --> 0:21:48.520 for all of us an incredible national trauma. I think 0:21:48.560 --> 0:21:52.480 on top of that, for me, it brought back Laura's death, 0:21:52.640 --> 0:21:57.960 and this idea of terrorism is something that can completely, um, 0:21:58.000 --> 0:22:01.439 you know, derail the world old and the lives of 0:22:01.520 --> 0:22:05.760 people in it with no warning. And I was in 0:22:05.880 --> 0:22:07.960 d C in that day, you know, and the black 0:22:08.000 --> 0:22:11.680 smoke over the Pentagon, and my little sisters were evacuated 0:22:11.680 --> 0:22:13.480 from the Cathedral school because they thought it might be 0:22:13.480 --> 0:22:16.080 a target, and it was. It was all kind of 0:22:16.359 --> 0:22:20.359 it felt very reminiscent in odd ways of losing Laura. 0:22:20.960 --> 0:22:25.200 And so after all of that, I was really set 0:22:25.359 --> 0:22:27.800 on kind of in a way, I guess you could say, 0:22:27.840 --> 0:22:30.679 going back to that vampire bad advice of my dad's 0:22:30.800 --> 0:22:35.119 from my childhood and trying to figure out, you know, 0:22:35.240 --> 0:22:37.480 how do we take this thing apart and figure out 0:22:37.520 --> 0:22:40.760 what makes it tick. The agency person who I first 0:22:40.760 --> 0:22:44.360 spoke with was a CIA officer, but he was declared, 0:22:44.440 --> 0:22:48.440 he wasn't undercover, and he was working as a professor 0:22:48.480 --> 0:22:53.879 at Georgetown teaching classes in the subject of intelligence, you know, 0:22:53.960 --> 0:22:56.000 what what it means and what its impact is on 0:22:56.040 --> 0:22:58.640 geopolitics and so on. So he was kind of openly 0:22:58.720 --> 0:23:01.840 teaching students, and so when we first talked, I think 0:23:02.119 --> 0:23:05.119 I was so surprised by kind of how humble and 0:23:05.160 --> 0:23:07.639 curious and quiet he was, and it was just nothing 0:23:07.720 --> 0:23:11.640 like the movies, and he really seemed to have that 0:23:11.720 --> 0:23:15.000 same interest that I did in taking this thing apart 0:23:15.200 --> 0:23:18.960 and and understanding what drives it and from what the 0:23:19.080 --> 0:23:22.480 humanity is behind it, in order to find some way 0:23:22.520 --> 0:23:25.919 to make it stop. And that really spoke to me 0:23:25.960 --> 0:23:29.320 in a way that I never expected the intelligence world 0:23:29.359 --> 0:23:33.159 to be something that I would find any appealing. Like 0:23:33.320 --> 0:23:38.560 the CIA officer who is Emoralyss's professor, other CIA officers 0:23:38.560 --> 0:23:43.440 she meets strike her as curious, humble, and genuinely interested 0:23:43.480 --> 0:23:48.359 in questions beginning with the word why. She begins a 0:23:48.440 --> 0:23:53.440 long process of interviews and exams while playing language aptitude tests, 0:23:53.680 --> 0:23:58.760 psych evaluations, and polygraphs. At the age of twenty two, 0:23:59.119 --> 0:24:03.280 she receives a provisional offer of employment. She has a 0:24:03.280 --> 0:24:07.000 friend from Georgetown named Jim, who has also undergone the 0:24:07.160 --> 0:24:11.480 arduous application process. The two of them confide in each 0:24:11.480 --> 0:24:16.120 other traveled together as they await word. Then Amarillis receives 0:24:16.160 --> 0:24:21.879 a cryptic message her security clearance top secret clearance is complete. 0:24:22.720 --> 0:24:26.240 She's given instructions to report to CIA headquarters in Langley, 0:24:26.320 --> 0:24:30.000 Virginia the following week, and in the meantime to tell 0:24:30.040 --> 0:24:32.840 anyone who knows she's applied that she did not make 0:24:32.920 --> 0:24:37.040 the cut. She meets Jim that night, looks him in 0:24:37.080 --> 0:24:41.360 the eye and tells him her first lie, and then 0:24:41.440 --> 0:24:45.040 she starts to cry. He was the last person who 0:24:45.040 --> 0:24:49.919 had known her truth, and now she has lost him. 0:24:49.920 --> 0:24:53.040 But maybe maybe there's one other person who can know 0:24:53.080 --> 0:24:55.840 at least something of the truth of her life. Her 0:24:55.880 --> 0:24:59.679 boyfriend from the UK, Anthony, if he's to move to 0:24:59.680 --> 0:25:01.800