A little bit of knowledge.

ARTICLE: What's an article you read this year that blew you away?

"As everybody knows, all over the world, a little bit of knowledge can be a very entertaining thing." - Ira Glass

It wasn't an article that blew me away, it was a radio broadcast. And it didn't blow me away so much as it completely entertained me and got me thinking.

I'm an avid This American Life listener. If you've never listened to the radio show, or watched episodes of it on Showtime, you should definitely check it out. There is a theme to each episode, and a variety of stories on that theme. It has truth and beauty and sadness and humor at its core.

Episode #293 is a humorous one I particularly remember from this year. The theme: knowing too little. It focuses on childhood beliefs held onto well into adulthood, much longer than they should have been.

The show opens with a discussion of the term "modern jackass." All of us, at some point or another, try to impress people in conversation by acting like an expert on something when really, we only know the surface information. This is when we turn into the "modern jackass." For example: politics. Many people support a candidate for surface reasons and don't dig into the actual policies to which the candidate is associated. "He stands for freedom," is a common expression. What does that even mean?!

I admit it. Sometimes I'm a modern jackass. I'm sure you are, too.

The rest of the radio show focuses on invididuals who, for one reason or another, held onto childhood beliefs for way too long, only to come to embarrassing public realizations. I don't want to give the whole episode away, but I'll give you highlights of the first couple examples.

Have you heard of the Nielson Family concept? It was started by Arthur Nielson, who realized that by analyzing the television viewing habits of different households, networks could better satisfy the interests of a mass audience. One kid heard about this growing up and it stuck with him. However, he had a different perspective on what it meant. Here he is:

"Fast forward twenty years. I was talking with a friend of mine who was telling me about her friend, who was selected to be a Nielson family. And I said to her, 'Isn't it weird that they're all named Nielson?' My friend looked at me, for what seemed like a long time. Sometime during her very long pause--because of the very long pause in fact--I realized, of course they're not all named Neilson. That makes no sense at all."

Poor guy.

Another woman clearly had not divided a clear line between fantasy and reality. This is what happened to her at a party:

"It was a group of about five to seven people, kind of standing around the keg, just talking, and somehow a discussion of endangered species came up. I posed the question, 'Is the unicorn endangered or extinct?' And basically there was a big gap of silence. And then everybody laughed. And then that laughter was followed by more silence when they realized I wasn't laughing. And I was like, "Yeah, oh, god, unicorns aren't real?" Oh no."

I'm hoping that these are situations to which we can all relate (unless you are some sort of perfectly knowledgeable human being that never socializes with anyone, therefore never risking the chance of embarrassment). I know I've done it a few times, I'm sure.

When I was younger, but old enough to be past the whole sex education scene, my family was sitting around the table eating dinner. It was brought up that my younger sister Erin and a neighbor boy, Josh, were playing around that day, chasing each other in the yard, hitting each other playfully, etc. I laughed and jokingly spoke up, "Oh, it's just foreplay." My dad turned red and looked at his plate, and Caitlin (the eldest, it being her job to point out stupid mistakes) said, "Kelly, do you even know what that means?" At the time, I thought foreplay was just another word for flirting, not a word about getting hyped up and turned on for sex. There of course was an awkward silence, and I brushed it off and pushed some broccoli around on my plate. I think Caitlin filled me in later.

Luckily, I found that out before I was standing around a keg of people. Some of us are more fortunate than others.

This led to me to having a conversation with some of the students that hang out with me after school. I asked them if they had any weird ideas about life when they were younger, which they realized later were ridiculous. These were some of them:

• That teachers lived at school and had no outside lives.
• That a burn spot in the carpet at school meant the teachers had tried to build a fire at school to keep warm.
• That they had "magic water" at home because when ice cubes were put in a glass, the water level would rise.

It was a pretty great conversation. I would love to hear you guys comment back on any weird ideas you had about the world when you were younger, or any too-late realizations you embarrassingly discovered.

Ciao!