Our podcast The Truth Lies in Bedtime Stories, from See Through News, Series 7, Marcus & Jemima – how I deal with people at parties who assume I have children, George reviews everything we’ve learned about his children, the nature of truth and lies, and finally reveals the truth, largely.
In Episode 7, George reflects on the nature of truth and lies, reviews everything we’ve learned about his children, finally revealing the truth, largely.
To hear the whole yarn in one go, there’s the Omnibus edition.
To have it spun out episode by episode, like all stories, it’s best to start at the beginning:
Episode 3: An Illuminating Story
Episode 4: Further Clarifications
Episode 5: Further Clarifications
Narration and series theme music by George Hinchliffe
Produced & mixed by SternWriter
Podcast sting by Samuel Wain
If you enjoyed this series, why not try:
- Series 1: The Story of Ganbaatar – the only qualified deep-sea navigator in Mongolia
- Series 2: Betrayed – A Tale of Christmas Spiritual Pollution
- Series 3: Life on the Edge – Taiwan, China, America and the Moment I Realised Mrs. Wang Was Mostly Guessing What Her Husband Said
- Series 4: The Quiet Revolutionary – the heroic role played in a plot to assassinate the King by someone you’ve all heard of
- Series 5: A Classical Chinese Dirty Joke, Told Thrice
- Series 6: Teetering – how a Hawaiian beach bum held my career in the balance
The Truth Lies in Bedtime Stories is a See Through News production.
See Through News is a non-profit social media network with the Goal of Speeding Up Carbon Drawdown by Helping the Inactive Become Active.
For more visit seethroughnews.org
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Transcript
Episode 7 : All Is Revealed, Largely
[SternWriter]
Why have we evolved to prefer stories to reality?
Hmm. I think it is true that as humans we tend to like stories that are beguiling rather than drawing reasonable conclusions from statistical analysis of what happened.
So, for example, when we’re all sitting round the table and we’ve not quite finished the bottle of champagne, I can’t imagine a circumstance where people would do that. But I understand that this sometimes happens and people say if you simply put a spoon in the top of the champagne bottle, it will stop the bubbles getting out.
Why anybody would think that is beyond me because bubbles clearly are going to come up in the liquid and go into the air. And so the champagne is going to go flat. But people persist in saying that you put a spoon in the top and I suppose if you’ve had a few drinks and there’s a spoon lying around on the table, but you can’t get the cork back into the top of the bottle, this is a thing that might spring to mind and I’ve heard no end of people telling me that this is a fact and it’s true.
I’ve proved it beyond a shadow of doubt that it’s not true. It just doesn’t work at all. I’ve tried to demonstrate it to other people, but they won’t have it. They say, Oh, I think there are still some bubbles there. When two days later the thing is flat as a fart, you know?
But nevertheless, this is what people do and I think the story because you can conceive of it and if it were true, it would be something that’s on a human scale rather than some microscopic analysis or an exhaustive story about statistics and physics and chemistry and whatnot. People like it.
And I think a lot of things are like that. Politicians do tend to reassure us and tell us all sorts of things. Let us say a lie repeated endlessly becomes something that a lot of people believe, especially if a high status politician has repeated it, whereas a sceptical person would say that is a load of nonsense. I’m not buying that.
But it does become a thing. We believe whether it’s a significant thing about pollution or profit or who’s running away with the proceeds from some nefarious scheme or whether it’s just some nonsense about bubbles in champagne, we as a species seem to want to believe the beguiling or interesting story rather than facing up to the fact.
When people have asked me for my CV resume, the story of my life, I’ve said, ‘Oh yes, I run Brown’s garage up Harehills Lane in Leeds, you know, just a small garage. We do MOTs re-bore, de-coke’, or at least that’s what I used to say when that would have been a perfectly reasonable thing to say.
I’ve no idea about what happens to cars these days. I think it’s more like computer diagnosis and install a new unit. But in those days’ re-bore and de-coke’ sounded quite credible.
And then at other times I’ve told people that I’d been a professional wrestler, but I was looking for something else. I’d saved up the prize money so there was no great urgency. And at one stage I’d been an unarmed combat instructor.
Of course, that was when I was in the armed forces again, but that was not the version of the Metaverse which led me to what was the story. I can’t remember why I’m now the dishonourable discharge. There was no honourable or dishonourable discharge.
But indeed, you know, when people say, ‘So where did all these children feature in the story?’ I can say it happened over several years. And from Marcus right through to Maaike and Bas, there were a lot of children.
[SternWriter]
So, so just to be clear, was it not just Marcus and Jemima? We’ve called this series Marcus and Jemima, but actually there were many more children.
[George]
This is what I said, Yes. And when people ask me for the truth, I’ve said indeed there were a lot of children with 13 children altogether.
[SternWriter]
So can you just go through their names?
[George]
Marcus, Jemima, Clytemnestra, Hubert and Walter? Oh, I missed out Lily, Wayne, Taylor, Warren, Skye, Augusta, Maaike and Bas.
[SternWriter]
So. You really have 13 children?
[George]
No, I was lying.
If you enjoyed Marcus & Jemima, please try our other podcast series, all of which are also entirely true, largely.