This is an iHeart Podcast. graduate and master's tuition.
And with 24 -7 mental health support plus career coaching and other services, AMU is committed to your success during and after your service.
Learn more at amu .apus .edu slash military.
That's amu .apus .edu slash military.
Have you ever gotten sick on a very expensive, very non -refundable family trip, Amazon One Medical has 24 -7 virtual care, so you can get help no matter where you are.
And with Amazon Pharmacy, your meds can get delivered right to your hotel fast. It's kind of like the room service of medical care.
Thanks to Amazon, healthcare just got less painful.
I'm here with my cat, Biggie Smalls.
A few weeks ago, someone gave me something called a mill food recycler.
White, maybe knee -high.
Quite elegant, actually.
It's a place to put all your food waste.
You plug it in, hit a button, and everything gets turned into fine, brown, highly nutritious grounds overnight.
And when I brought my meal home, the first thing my wife says is, you can't put that in the kitchen.
It's going to smell.
So I'm like, let me test that hypothesis with the creature in our household who has the very best nose.
Biggie is a pretty short hair, very beautiful cat.
I'm bringing Biggie towards the mill, and if Biggie smells any food, he's going to go meow.
Biggie, what do you have to say?
Anything? Biggie? Biggie?
Nothing. He didn't smell anything.
He totally blew it off.
The Mill Food Recycler.
I have no idea how it works, but it's amazing.
The Mill Food Recycler is brought to you by the same wizards who created the Nest Thermostat and the iPhone.
phone. Go to mill .com slash Malcolm for $75 off a mill.
Meow. To introduce this episode, I just want to relate how random my journey to it was.
I was reading a book.
I can't even remember what it was.
And then a footnote, I always read the the footnotes.
The author said the psychologist whose work she was referring to had done a very strange paper once about Elvis, at which point I stopped reading the book and looked up the very strange paper about Elvis.
It was by Alan Elms. It was amazing.
So immediately I go to the next question.
Was Alan Elms still alive?
Yes, living in Davis, California.
Next step, I got to go see So I immediately fly to San Francisco, rent a car.
But the rental agency is out of all cars except for a bright canary yellow Chevy Corvette, which I take happily.
But then halfway to Davis, driving at speeds that are very, very far from legal, I start thinking, what's this guy going to think of me if I show up in a bright canary yellow Corvette?
He's a brilliant psychologist. I don't want him prejudging me.
so I park it around the corner, walk to his house, and spend a lovely afternoon with him.
Sadly, he was feeling poorly at the time and didn't speak well enough for me to use the tape of his interview, but my spontaneous journey set the correct tone, I think, for this whole episode, which is that it was intended to be a caper, a grand caper, in which many crazy, unexpected things happen.
And, as you will discover, so it was.
By the way, the thing that Alan Elms and I talked the most about was not actually his Elvis paper.
It was another even more genius thing he once wrote about the Wizard of Oz, which I promise you that I will get to one day here at Revisionist History.
Join me for a walk down Revisionist History memory lane.
The New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute is in a very formal European -style building on a quiet side street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
Oak tables, high ceilings, in the library long ribbons of leather -bound volumes, and five different busts of Sigmund Freud all in a row.
I went there to meet with the society's president, Michelle Press, a psychoanalyst herself, with that lovely quality of patience and openness the best therapists always have. I wanted to talk with her about a subject that I've always found deeply interesting, what Freud called parapraxis.
But not just anyone's parapraxis, the king's parapraxis.
My name is Malcolm Gladwell.
You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood.
After the first two episodes on memory earlier this season, I decided to do a third. It involves an odyssey.
This odyssey took me from the pages of the handbook of psychobiography to a shrine in Tennessee Sea to the legendary Battery Studios in Times Square and to the hushed offices of the New York Psychoanalytic Society, where I sat with Michelle Press in search of an answer to a simple question.
What if a singer couldn't remember the words to a song, a song he'd sung a thousand times, particular parts of the song, the same part of the song over and over?
What would that tell us about the singer?
it was a term in german faulty acts or faulty functions it would be slips of the tongue it could be misreadings mishearings but it's freud's invention michelle press is talking about parapraxis from the greek para meaning abnormal beyond praxis meaning act abnormal speech acts or, as they are more colloquially known, Freudian slips.
Does Freud mean that there are no accidental slips or that if you look at the range of accidental slips, you can find meaning in some?
So when you read him, he doesn't want to sound that kind of definitive.
He'll say, yes, maybe one might prove that there are some that are truly accidental or truly a result of fatigue fatigue or of maybe some medical illness.
But he said, if you do the work, one will find the reasons for the slip, that they're not accidental, that they have, he called it a sense, and that that sense has to do with unconscious forces or unconscious ideas that are trying to find expression but are, because they're unacceptable, they emerge in these ways when one might be unguarded.
Now, is that concept of unacceptability central to the notion of parapraxis?
Yes. When I was a lad, an old shepherd was a pup.
Over hills and meadows with strain.
In 1956, early in his career, Elvis Presley recorded a song called Old Shep.
It's a sentimental song about a boy and his dog, Shep, written in the 1930s by Red Foley.
The dog gets old and sick.
The vet says there's no hope.
The boy aims his rifle at Shep to put him out of his misery.
But he can't pull the trigger.
He lies down next to Shep, cradles him in his arms as the dog dies.
And the song ends. Old Shelby has gone Where the good doggies go And no more with old Shelby Will I roam But if dogs have a heaven There's one thing I know Old Shep has a wonderful home Old Shep is not one of Elvis' more famous songs.
But in an essay published in 2005 on Elvis, the psychologists Alan Elms and Bruce Heller have an aside about a small but significant discrepancy between the original version of Old Shep and Elvis's cover.
I'm going to come back to Heller and Elms in a while because they really do the most thorough analysis of Elvis's lyrical parapraxis.
But let's start with Old Shep.
Listen to Hank Snow performing the lyrics as they were originally written.
The boy has just put away his gun, realizing he can't shoot Shep.
So I threw down that old gun.
ran right up to his side he laid his faithful old head right on my knee and friends i stroked the best pal that a man ever found i even cried so i scarcely could see me now listen to elvis sing his version I had struck the best friend that a man ever had.
I cried so I scarcely could see.
Hank Snow sings, I stroked the best pal a man ever found.
Meaning that the boy considers an act of violence against his best pal, then decides against it.
and takes instead the path of nurture and sympathy, he recovers his humanity.
But Elvis sings, I had struck the best friend a man ever had, which turns the meaning of the song completely upside down.
The boy does not recover his humanity.
He now holds himself responsible for an act of violence against Shep, an act of violence that in fact he did not commit.
Stroke becomes struck, and all of a sudden a song about moral redemption redemption turns into a song about morbid remorse.
Now I suppose you can say stroke, struck, whatever.
Those two words sound the same.
It's just a cover, but it's not just a cover.
Elvis was obsessed with Old Shep.
It's the first song he ever learned on the guitar.
He played it incessantly as a child.
At age 10, he played it at the Mississippi -Alabama Fair, his first public performance.
He played it at his high school talent show and won.
He played it on dates with girls.
He played it well into his career.
And why does the song resonate so much with him?
It's a song about love, betrayal, and loss, themes that are at the center of Elvis's life.
He's a twinless twin, someone whose twin died in utero, and he's obsessed by that fact.
He brings He brings it up again and again, the loss of someone who should have been his closest friend.
Elvis's mother, Gladys, is to say the least unusual.
She's controlling, intense.
He calls her baby. Gladys died when Elvis was just 23.
When he first saw her casket, he threw himself on top of her body.
Then stepped back and talked about how beautiful she was while pointing to her dead feet.
He called them her little suities.
He did this again and again.
At the end of the funeral service, he lay on top of her casket saying, I want to go with you.
I don't want to stay here.
I can't be without you.
And we haven't even gotten to Priscilla, Elvis's wife.
He spotted her when she was 14 and eventually convinced her to move in with him in Memphis.
Once, Elvis took you to a morgue.
Yes, he did. This is Priscilla being interviewed by Barbara Walters in 1985.
Why? Why that fascination with dead bodies?
I don't know. I don't know what the fascination was.
This was not the first time that he had done this.
I don't know if it was for the shock value, you know, to see how people would react, or just for his own thrill of it.
You wrote, there were times when you and Elvis spent days in the bedroom, freezing bedroom he liked it very cold the windows with blackout drapes so no sunlight entered day after day mm -hmm it went into weeks yes we've stayed like that we had our food delivered by the door and it was cold I mean he did like a cold and it was dark and it could get real lonely and and that's how he liked it at times.
Like a cocoon. Almost like a womb, I guess.
You think? Priscilla and Barbara Walters are on a white couch surrounded by pink flowers.
Priscilla is in a strapless sundress.
She looks amazing. Barbara Walters turns to her and says, Elvis controlled your looks, your clothes, your hair, your makeup.
He controlled you totally.
Totally. Priscilla says, yes, he did.
Then. Six years you lived there before he decided to marry you.
In those six years of sleeping with him every night, he never had intercourse with you.
You wrote in your book that there were times when you begged him.
Six years of that? Priscilla, why?
Why? Well, again, you know, I can only go back to what his concept was as what he wanted in a woman.
And somewhere along in his past, he said that he wanted a virgin.
Elvis is complicated.
And what does Freud's theory of parapraxis say?
That complicated feelings, inappropriate, maybe unacceptable feelings, are normally suppressed, but every now and again some little bit of that buried emotion slips out.
And if you're paying attention and listening closely, that little slip can tell you something.
Struck for stroke. But old Shep is just the beginning.
For Elvis, the real parapraxis occurs occurs in Are You Lonesome Tonight?
A song originally written in the 1920s and which Elvis took to the top of the charts just after he came out of the army.
Are you lonesome tonight?
Are you lonesome tonight?
LWB 0106, take 2. Elvis at the RCA Studios on Music Row in Nashville, April 4th, 1960.
The recordings from the original session now held in the Sony Music Archive.
Yeah, this is, there's numerous takes here, so they fall apart, they make a mistake and what have you.
John Jackson and Vic Anicini from Sony, me, all listening together at the legendary Battery Studios in Manhattan, where everyone from John Lennon to Bruce Springsteen recorded.
Holy ground. I started my quest at the very beginning.
Is your heart filled with me?
Shall I come back again?
Tell me dear Are you lonesome Tonight This voice is so amazing Is he When he records that Are the Jordanaires singing along with him Or are they laying that track down separately No live Everything's live He always preferred to have everyone in one room and record live.
Even in one room, not in booths?
No, no, no. He hated booths.
Recording the song was not Elvis' idea.
It was a favorite of the wife of his manager, Tom Parker.
In the studio, Elvis asked that the lights be turned off so the room was in darkness.
He did five takes. He didn't like any of them.
It was four in the morning when he recorded it.
So he made everyone get out of the studio, go away, and then he just, you know, did it.
And then they, this is the second take, which they told them, of the background singer's, you know, because he said, just stop the tape, you know, I'm done.
They said, just do it once more, because, you know, we hit a P -pop on there.
So the third take ends up being the master.
Oh, I see. And the label held it back for seven, eight months.
Well, they didn't realize what they had on their hands.
Yeah, it was seven months, I think, after they finally released it as a single, and it didn't go out.
He had done eight songs for Elvis' back and this was just like, yeah, just try this one.
Recorded in the wee hours of the morning in darkness as a favor to someone else, a song neither Elvis nor his label particularly liked.
It's almost like the song had a curse on it right from the beginning.
And from then on, Elvis could never quite get it right.
I talked about this with Michelle Prest at the New York Psychoanalytic Society.
society. Elvis wasn't typically someone who forgot the words to the songs he sang.
This is all his examples, sort of his life of him being able to recite, to sing from memory, massive amounts of stuff.
I'm interested about that.
There's a little slip.
I'm worried about that.
I said, I said, I'm worried about that.
I'm interested in that.
And I'm wondering what the, What would you make of that as a psychoanalyst?
I try to go on. But of course, I'm talking to a hardcore Freudian.
I meant to say I was interested, but what came out was worried.
I mean, I'm still caught on your slip, obviously, thinking.
What do you make of it?
So one thought was whether the slip might be a key to something that you're figuring out and puzzling with him.
Because right now you're immersed in him.
Oh, I am. I've been singing this song under my breath for months.
I can't understand why.
I've never been an Elvis fan.
I don't own a single song of his.
Or am I drawn to this story because isn't this story that I'm talking to the great anxiety of anyone in a creative field?
That moment when you lose control, right?
where the presentation to the audience is unmasked.
I want to show you.
I take out my laptop, pull up YouTube.
There's a mountain of Elvis on YouTube.
One of the last performances of his life.
It's bananas. I mean, he's singing a song he's sang thousands of times and he just completely loses control of it.
Now I can skip it Okay now here comes I wonder if You lost the night You know someone said The world's a stage And each of us play a part Play head move Plus tax You read your line so very clearly and now i'm mr q they came back too they forgot the words they had to change when i first saw it it as someone in a i mean i'm not elvis but i'm someone in a creative field it terrified me it's like up on stage doing what he's paid to do and he he just what have you got to do in your life And to go on living without you And the stage is bare And I'm standing there Without any hair I don't know If you
all come back to me I'm gonna hang with you Every live performance He's ever given of this That we have on tape He mangles the bridge He can't do it right He's returning to the song again and again and again and again and doing the same kind of it's always a Brit so the singing part he's almost over how many years did this go on years okay in 1982 this laughing version was already in the UK reached number 25 in the British singles chart at Battery Studios I made the Sony guys play every version they had they even have names Laughing Elvis Crazy Elvis each one stranger than the one before.
The world's a stage and each must play a part.
Oh, God. There's sweat and tears streaming down his face.
And I had no cause to die.
It goes on like this, on and on.
Sing it, baby. Shall I come again?
Tell me, dear, are you lost tonight?
That's it, man. Fourteen years of another brain, but I'll tell you.
This message is brought to you by Applecard. I was just at a theme park in Florida with my almost four -year -old.
Between enjoying the sunshine and the rides, the last thing I wanted to worry about was my wallet.
That's why Apple Card, with Apple Pay, saved my vacation.
One tap at check -in, and I was off to see the attractions.
Every purchase, from hot dogs, and oh, we had hot dogs, to t -shirts, earned me daily cash.
Unlike waiting in line for a ride, there's no waiting until the end of the month for rewards.
And my daily cash is automatically deposited into the savings account I opened through Apple Card, where it earns interest. With Apple Pay's secure technology built right into my iPhone and Apple Watch. I pay to shops, restaurants, and attractions without ever digging from my wallet.
The best part? No fees, no hassles.
I spent less time managing my money and more time doing nothing short of epic.
Apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app on your iPhone.
Subject to credit approval, savings is available to Apple Card owners subject to eligibility.
Variable APRs for Apple Card range from 18 .24 % to 28 .49 % based on credit worthiness.
Rates as of January 1st, 2025.
Savings in Apple Card by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City branch. Member FDIC, terms and more at applecard .com.
Throughout history, there had been people who seemed to have superhuman abilities.
Athletes like Pele, Michael Jordan, and Wayne Gretzky.
mathematicians and scientists like Einstein, Alan Turing, and Stephen Hawking.
And how do you explain a phenomenon like Taylor Swift?
What if I told you that everyone has a superpower within them that just needs to be discovered and let loose, and that there's one scientifically proven method that can help you do just that?
It's called sleep. That's right.
Sleeping has been shown to increase your energy level, improve athletic abilities, boost memory and learning, and improve your immune system, all of which are great reasons to own a Saatva luxury mattress.
Every Saatva is meticulously handcrafted to deliver deep, restorative sleep, the kind of sleep that's critical to recovery and overall well -being.
If you want to sleep better and live up to your full potential, get a Saatva luxury mattress.
You deserve nothing less.
And right now, Now save $200 on $1 ,000 or more at safa .com slash gladwell.
That's S -A -A -T -V -A dot com slash gladwell.
This show is sponsored by Liquid IV.
Okay, I'm here with my old friend, Michael Spector.
Michael, how old are you?
70. And you just cycled here from home.
How many miles is that?
9 .7. It's very hot outside.
Yeah. What do you normally drink to revive yourself?
Water. I have something for you.
No matter how hot your summer gets, Liquid IV can help keep you hydrated for the adventures ahead.
The summer heat means it's the perfect time to try their new Arctic raspberry flavor.
Visit liquidiv .com and use code revisionist at checkout for 20 % off your first order.
We just pour in a little crystals here, just shake it up a little bit.
Just one stick and 60 ounces of water hydrates better than water alone.
Powered by LIV HydroScience, an optimized ratio of electrolytes, essential vitamins, and clinically tested nutrients that turn ordinary water into extraordinary hydration.
Three times the electrolytes of the leading sports drink.
Eight essential vitamins and nutrients, always non -GMO, vegan, gluten -free, dairy -free, and soy -free.
Squeeze the most out of your summer with Liquid IV.
Tear. Pour. Live more.
Go to liquidiv .com and get 20 % off your first order with code REVISIONIST at checkout.
That's 20 % off your first order with code REVISIONIST at liquidiv .com.
I think it's time to teach an old dog new tricks.
Have you ever played this song before?
No, I never played it before.
And it's funny, I played a bunch of his stuff.
stuff. Would you mind flipping the standby switch on the back?
I'm with Jack White at his studio in Nashville, Third Man Records.
Jack White, formerly of the White Stripes, one of the great rock and rollers of his generation and a huge Elvis fan.
He has a shrine to Elvis in his hallway, actual shrine.
All that's missing is flowers.
We met in his private office, lots of black and in yellow and leather and taxidermy.
He sat on the couch with a guitar.
Do you play... Do you play Elvis songs in concert?
Sometimes I do a little bit like a...
What's that? Treat me like a cruel treatment Need a cruel old warning I want you to love me Love me just the same Treat me just the same Oh, love me Sometimes I do that one.
I was going to say, don't stop.
I'm enjoying it. Anything, any other ones you do?
Wait, by the way, why do you, why that one?
What's it about that song?
I had heard that early from a band called the Flat Dew with Jets that I really liked.
And I didn't know it was Elvis.
And then when I had heard the Elvis version I connected the two like, oh no And I started doing it when I played in coffee houses.
I started playing that, I was like sixteen.
Yeah, so It goes back which is funny.
I'd Eventually heard a story of Robert Plant Telling Elvis he loved that song when Led Zeppelin met Elvis and then they walked out out of the hallway that Elvis poked his head Out in the hallway and sang that song to Robert Plant.
They sang it back to each other and Oh, my God!
We were crying, and it must have been an amazing moment.
Jack White owns the original acetate pressing of Elvis' first recording from 1953, My Happiness.
After we talked, White took me into his vault to show it to me.
It's priceless. He asked me if I wanted to hold it.
I was too terrified to say yes.
Jack White seemed like the right person to see to try and understand Elvis' problem in Are You Lonesome Tonight.
All right, let me see if I can take a crack.
I might have to give her a couple world's but Are you lonesome tonight?
Do you miss me tonight?
Are you sorry we drifted apart?
Does your memory stray To a bright summer day When I kissed you And called you sweetheart Do the chairs in your parlor Seam empty and bare Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there?
Is your heart filled with pain?
Shall I come back again?
Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight?
night. That's the first half of the song, the sung version, all questions.
A man is wondering whether his lover misses him.
Then comes the spoken bridge in which the emotional tables are turned and the man leaves himself bare.
Are You Lonesome Tonight has been recorded countless times over the years.
A lot of performers leave out the bridge because it's corny and way too long and hard. Elvis kept it in.
So does Jack White.
Thing came back too.
You seemed to change, you acted strange.
And why, I've never known.
Honey, you lied when you said you loved me.
And I had no cause to doubt you.
But I'd rather go on hearing your lies than to go on living without you.
Now the stage is bare.
And I'm standing there With emptiness all around And if you won't come back to me Then maybe bring the curtain down Is your heart filled with pain?
Shall I come back again?
Tell me dear I'll get lonesome tonight Whoa!
Wait, you enjoyed that.
I did. I guess there's some nice parts where it gets the, you can see playing that live.
Now that I just did that, like, well, we just did that.
I played it once yesterday, reading this.
But now playing like that I could see Wow live you could really That really could be a really emotional song So I didn't really think about it Until just then What led you to think that just now?
Because it feels like It's got a lot of minor chords So that already gets you in that Melancholy vibe But it has that What just occurred to me now He doesn't really care If she's lonesome he's lonesome the singer is lonesome and it's a it's a MacGuffin to pretend like I'm worried about you are you lonesome tonight you know but it's really the singer is worried about himself so that could be you know you take that kind of emotional song and you put years and years on stage and then you put drugs in the mix and then in your own state of mind at the time it could be you could be onto something there
it could be be a real diversion, that it's too powerful to sing.
What's fascinating is the sung parts, the singer is in control, and he's worried about her.
Right, right. The spoken parts, the singer is vulnerable.
Yeah. He's confessing his own, and it's so screwed up.
It's like, I know you lied to me, and I wish you hadn't.
Right. I wish I didn't know that you lied to me, because I'd rather be in the state of being deceived than know the truth, which is like 17 convolutions of neuroticism.
He's still blaming her, most of the lines, still pointing the finger.
White says you can't run from that kind of emotion, not if you're singing the song properly.
And so when he writes songs, he tries to establish some distance between himself and the feelings he's singing about.
I try to push it into a character standpoint rather than it being a self -confession, confessional for me, because I think that would be really hard to consistently keep living that moment over and over and over again.
I've definitely seen older artists ignoring certain parts of their, certain songs in their career because it's probably too close to home about something or other.
But you can't avoid a song's emotional effects all the time.
And especially not when you have to read a soliloquy in the middle of it, which is what the Are You Lonesome bridge is.
A speech parachuted into the heart of the song.
I had a little flub moment at one point, trying to figure out, well, wait a minute, it's a waltz.
You know, you have that, so if I'm like...
I wonder if two, three so one, two, three one, two, three two, three so your brain kind of wants to go I wonder if you're lonesome tonight that's what your brain wants to do and you know someone said that the world's a stage and we must each play a part then it starts to get that's kind of hard oh I see it breaks down yeah I can definitely say that this would be a lot easier if someone else was playing guitar and I could just recite that part.
Wait, should I recite it while you play the guitar?
Yeah, let's do that.
Do we do that? I'm not going to torture you with my rendition of the spoken bridge.
Well, maybe later. I'm just saying, until I die, I can say I played with Jack White.
And then, because how many opportunities am I going to get like this?
I asked Jack White to help me edit the soliloquy if one were to rewrite it I'm thinking you you lose the first three lines fate had me playing in love you as my sweetheart or even act one was when we met why don't they just start with act one act one was when we met I loved you at first glance You read your lines so carefully Never missed a cue What did I do there?
You said carefully instead of cleverly Beautiful Then came act two You seemed to change You acted strange What did Jack White do there?
The actual lyric is You read your lines so cleverly He said Sometimes, you know, I love him so much that, you know, I'm afraid to learn more about certain things.
and you're so close to it and you've experienced certain things about nothing in comparison to what he went through but we do the same kind of thing.
We perform and we go on stages and we make records and all this stuff.
I'm from a different time period but you notice these tiny little moments that are when you see something and you're like, oh, I know exactly what that's about.
I know exactly what that feels like.
There are ten known live recordings of Elvis performing Are You Lonesome Tonight, starting in 1961 in a concert at Block Arena in Honolulu, up to the end of Elvis' life in 1977.
Alan Elms and Bruce Heller analyzed them all in their essay Twelve Ways to Say Lonesome, assessing error and control in the music of Elvis Presley.
elms and heller find that elvis performs the sung portion of are you lonesome tonight more or less flawlessly because the sung portion is the part of the song where the singer is in control but in the spoken bridge the narrator is suddenly the one who's been deceived and rejected and that's the part elvis can't get right Elms and Heller count a total of 109 errors in those 10 live performances of The Spoken Bridge 29 of which involve just four lines I loved you at first glance where he confesses the depths of his feelings you seemed to change you acted strange where he testifies to his betrayal
and rejection and why I've never known where he expresses his feelings of anger and victimization and with emptiness all around where he admits to his loneliness.
The most problematic renditions of the bridge are the later ones, which come after the summer of 1972.
What happens in the summer of 1972?
And one day you went in and said, I'm leaving.
There was another man in your life.
He was your karate teacher Right Mike Stone And you went off then And lived with him Yeah Priscilla Presley Back on the couch With Barbara Walters America's prime time Freudian It was said that Elvis Tried to kill him Or wanted him killed Right Do you believe that?
I think at that time yes He did He wanted that to happen I do the chairs in your parlor See you empty and bare Do you gaze at your bald head And wish you had hair Is your heart filled with pain Shall I come back Tell me dear Are you lonesome Oh Lord, Lord I wonder how...
A man who fears betrayal and abandonment is betrayed and abandoned.
And I had no cause to die.
It's too much. He's a wreck.
So you, baby. Shall I come back?
again tell me dear are you lonesome you know what's weird being sick and then having to fight the health care system while you're already feeling awful first you call then you wait then you finally get an appointment scheduled two weeks away I remember the last time I was really sick and thought I might have a bad sinus infection or the flu.
I wasn't sure what to do, but I was sure that I didn't want to spend the day attempting to get an appointment at a doctor's office just to figure out what treatment I needed.
That's where Amazon One Medical changes everything.
You can see a medical provider way faster with 24 -7 care right from your couch, your office, your kid's soccer game, or wherever you are.
And the cool thing is it's so simple, so efficient.
Just quality care when you need it.
Isn't that how health care should always work?
And when it comes to meds, Amazon Pharmacy delivers your prescriptions right to your door.
No driving across town, no standing in line, no awkward pharmacy counter conversations, which is very relevant for me.
As a Yale professor who teaches one of the biggest classes on campus, it's always awkward for me and my students when I see them in line at my university pharmacy.
With Amazon One Medical and Amazon Pharmacy, it's simple and discreet.
Health care just got less painful.
Hello, hello. Malcolm Glaubel here from Revisionist History.
You know, I'm always seeking out the story behind the story, looking for bold thinking, brave collaboration, and the kind of game changers who make a real difference in the world.
That's why I was truly inspired when I found out about the work 3AM Innovations has been doing to make firefighting safer.
The story begins, as many do, with a problem.
How can you keep fire crews informed, connected, and, as I mentioned, safe when they're doing their vital work.
3AM Innovation's solution to this problem is Florian, an innovative piece of technology that is already changing the way firefighters communicate.
From dispatch to on -scene activities and even all the way to post -fire training efforts, Florian is a powerhouse that offers an unparalleled amount of data for everyone along the command chain.
chaîne. 3D mapping, hydrogen status, automated tracking of crews, and more are all available at any moment, making the near -impossible task of managing a chaotic situation on the ground, well, possible.
The whole system is powered by T -Mobile for Business's powerful 5G network.
But it's more than that.
3AM Innovations have teamed up with partners like Microsoft, Panasonic, and others to ensure this essential tech is operational when needed most. That spirit of selfless collaboration is just a small part of why T -Mobile for Business gave 3AM Innovations its 2024 Innovation in Community Award. T -Mobile for Business will once again be honoring outside -the -box thinking like this on October 20th in Orlando, Florida.
If your company is a T -Mobile for Business customer, You can nominate your team, group or organization for this unique award show.
Head to T -Mobile dot com slash enter for more details on how to enter.
I'll be there. Will you?
Picture this. You're in the garage, hands covered in grease.
Just finished tuning up your engine with a part you found on eBay.
And you realize, you know what?
I could also use some new brakes.
So where do you go next?
Back to eBay. You can find anything there.
It's unreal. Wipers, headlights, even cold air intakes.
It's all there. And you've got eBay guaranteed fit.
You order a part, and if it doesn't fit, send it back.
Simple as that. Look, DIY fixes can be major.
Doesn't matter if it's just maintenance or a major mod.
You got it, especially when things are guaranteed to fit.
So when you dive into your next car project, start with eBay.
All the parts you need at prices you'll love.
Guaranteed to fit every time.
eBay. Things. People.
Love. After I left Jack White, I went to see Bobby Braddock, just down the street at the Sony Studios on Nashville's Music Row.
This was just tuned.
Good. You may remember Bobby Braddock from Season 2 of Revisionist History.
He's the legendary songwriter I called the King of Tears.
Braddock wanted to introduce me to a good friend of his, a singer -songwriter named Casey Bowles.
Come on. That's the church across Alto.
30 -something, long red hair, the kind of person who, if you touch, you expect a little jolt of static.
It'll work. You want to sing that song?
You want me to sing that song?
We were in the biggest of the Sony recording studios on the main floor, in a corner where the piano was.
Casey sang Are You Lonesome Tonight with Bobby on the piano. Then we sat and they talked about Nashville.
They talked about how they both grew up in the Church of Christ, the most strict of Southern fundamentalist denominations.
And they talked about Elvis.
My dad thought he was Elvis, I think.
Yeah, he really, he was a Church of Christ song leader and really wanted to be a Jordanaire, badly.
And so Ray Walker was one of the Jordanaires and he tried to emulate him by way of dress and hairstyle.
And so I grew up either hearing him say, say, hello, darling, nice to see you, or doing this sort of, you know, is it vaudeville style or just sort of a over -the -top modeling style, I guess.
Is modeling the way you'd say it?
Modeling? Then Bobby Braddock started talking about recitations, the spoken part in many older country songs, and he made the same point that Jack White did, that they're much easier if they're set to music, if you could just as easily sing them.
Like on one of Braddock's most famous songs, He stopped loving her to stay.
The recitation's like.
She came to see him one last time.
Oh, we all wondered if she would.
You could sing that.
She came to see him one last time.
Oh, we all wondered if she would.
And that works either way.
But this is just like, Like, we got this song, let's get a recitation, throw it in there.
And Elvis made it work.
And I'm thinking just instinctively, just because he was just so good.
Recitations are unusual these days.
Braddock hasn't written one since something he did for Toby Keith in the 1990s.
Last successful recitation song I had was actually a hip -hop thing.
I don't want to talk about me.
But that was talking, talking, talking.
See, Toby Keith, that's what I'm thinking about.
Wait, can you play a little slice of that, do you remember?
Oh, gosh, I never do that.
When I do that, I always do it with a karaoke thing where I get up there and play the thing.
I want to talk about me, I want to talk about I, I want to talk about number one.
You talk about your work, how your boss is a jerk.
You talk about your church and your head.
Talk about the trouble you've been having with your brother and your daddy and your mother and your crazy ex -lover, you know.
But it fits that. And then the menstrual period line, which everybody said, you can't put that in a song, nobody will ever cut it, you know.
And it was one of the biggest songs they ever had.
About your medical charts and when you start.
Take that out. Nobody recorded it.
Toby Keith did. He's probably the only one who would have, though.
Then I showed them the prize.
I brought it in my bag.
My copy of the Handbook of Psychobiography containing the Heller and Elms essay.
Hold on, I have my book here to tell you.
Oh, that's fascinating.
Yeah, that is fascinating.
To a pair of Elvis fanatics, it was like I'd unearthed the Dead Sea Scrolls.
What's the book? It's a book called Handbook of Psychobiography, and it has an essay on this song.
Wow, psycho -biography.
And so, yeah, so here's, so this guy has gone through, he made a chart of all of the lyrical mistakes that Elvis made in every known live recording.
What? Oh, my gosh. Yeah.
These were two songwriters and I felt they immediately saw themselves in that chart.
Do you find yourself making the kind of errors sometimes, even subtle ones that we've been talking about?
That's so interesting.
I wrote a song about my mother called Somebody Something.
And my mother is adorable.
And whenever you heard about things going wrong or like some tumultuous story, it was my dad.
And so I finally was like, you know what?
Why aren't we the only person in the family that there's nothing I haven't written about?
So I was trying to dig dirt on her and there was nothing.
and so I ended up writing this song about her called Somebody Something and I cry every time I do it and there is a line that says she's always been somebody something she's lived every life but her own and it's gone I can't remember it right now I don't know that feeling I can't remember it There's always been somebody something It's been everything but alone A daughter, a mother, a life A daughter, a lover her wife and a mother she's lived every life but her own yes she's always been somebody something and there's a line that says you know she she wonders what it might be like to be somebody
else and she wonders what it feels like to be free but she's always imagined being nobody's nothing and that's something she never want to be but that line usually is just gone and um a lot of times I'll go, hold on, and divert and tell a funny story really quickly.
Yeah. Wait, what's—the specific line that's gone is which one?
Well, it's gone again.
She's always been somebody—she's been everything but alone.
Daughter, a lover, a wife, and a mother.
She's been everything but alone.
Yeah. Yeah. Why is it that line?
I don't know. No, I think that, I don't know, I think when you see somebody give so much of themselves and that's truly the only thing that she will never experience and I think it's what I've experienced the most of.
A minute before, we were joking about Toby Keith.
Now Casey is pensive as she compares her mother's life to her own.
not being able to make a relationship work the first 18000 times out of the gate or you know officially the first two and um not being a mother and you're still real close to her right yeah love her she's wonderful go to church with her right do i sit still because she makes me and i stay awake and it's good when i was when i was a kid if i'd get bored in church and my My mother would reach down and pinch me.
Oh, I got smacked. Wait, Casey, can you play that song for us?
Or is it going to be two?
Let's see. Okay. Okay, well, we'll see if this happens.
She grew up playing cowgirl girl in a railroad town dreaming she'd see oh shoot hold on there's a line about elvis in this that's just random hold on dreaming she'd see hollywood i'm gonna do again what did i just say sorry i'm thinking about mom she grew up playing cowgirl I was a little girl in a railroad town Dreamin' she'd see Hollywood someday She knew some distant Friday night With a cigarette to hold just right Fate would come and carry her away As far as she could see from there Those were just the bags of...
That's not right. Hold one second.
My first reaction to Casey's failure of memory was to be embarrassed for her, worried that she had lost control.
That's the way we're trained to think.
Just listen to the words I've just used.
Failure. Embarrassed.
Worried. In one way or another, Rather, that's what this season of Revisionist History has been about, about the ways we judge each other for our mistakes and choices.
The easiest thing in the world is to look at those mistakes and condemn.
The much harder thing is to look at those mistakes and understand.
She married in December, maybe work In a dress her mama made She looked all grown up standing there like that Had a honeymoon in Memphis town Yeah, she looked for Elvis all around Made love in the Greyhound Coming back As far as she could see from there Those were just the facts of life He went from somebody's daughter To somebody's wife Parapraxis is not failure.
When the performer slips, the audience is not cheated.
It's the opposite. Parapraxis is a gift. I presented myself as interested in this story.
But now you know that this subject doesn't just interest me.
It worries me. Losing control is my great anxiety.
When Jack White said, carefully instead of cleverly, it was a hint that playing Elvis wasn't a trivial matter for him.
It was a sacred act.
Carefully, full of care.
And Elvis, after the loss of Priscilla, sang a song he'd sung a thousand times, only now in a way that gave the audience a window on his pain.
Mistakes reveal our vulnerabilities.
They are the way the world understands us, the way performers make their performances real.
So Bobby Braddock and I sat there, listening to Casey sing.
Tears in her eyes, fumbling to remember the lyrics of a song about her mother.
Fumbling, not because her mother didn't matter to her, but because she did.
She's been somebody, something She's been everything but alone The daughter Daughter, lover The wife and the mother She's lived every life but her own She'd say that's just called being a woman She's always there Somebody, something God, this is beautiful.
Why are you covering your mouth?
I'm just, it's just weird. Because I've never, it's just weird when you're thinking about what it is.
Like, I just thought, oh, bad memory.
Too many songs. Old.
Too many songs in there.
But at any point in time, I could pull out a rap from New Edition from 1982.
Like, why is that in there?
And something that you wrote is not in there.
That is so weird. It's not weird. A lesser person would have sung it perfectly.
Thank you for listening to season three of Revisionist History.
And if you liked this episode, you'll enjoy my new series launching later this year.
It's called Broken Record, and you can subscribe right now on Apple Podcasts.
Revisionist History is a Panoply production The senior producer is Mia LaBelle with Jacob Smith and Camille Baptista Our editor is Julia Barton Flan Williams is our engineer Fact -checking by Beth Johnson Original music by Luis Guerra Special thanks to Kim Green and Hal Humphreys of Storyboard EMP in Nashville and here in New York thanks to Jason Gambrow Evan Viola Rachel Strom Nicole Buncis Kate Mescal Kristen Meinzer Carly Migliore Andy Bowers and of course El Jefe Jacob Weisberg I'm Malcolm Gladwell I'm Malcolm Gladwell Okay.
So it'll be, I wonder if you're lonesome tonight.
You know, someone said that the world's a stage and each must play a part.
Fate had me playing in love.
You was my sweetheart.
Act one was when we met.
I loved you at first glance.
You read your lines so cleverly and never missed a cue.
Then came act two. You seemed to change, and you acted strange, and why, I'll never know.
Honey, you lied when you said you loved me, and I had no cause to doubt you, but I'd rather go on hearing your lies than go on living without you.
Now the stage is bare and I'm standing there with emptiness all around and if you won't come back to me then make them bring the curtain down.
How am I doing? Nice.
Very good. I'm not very musical.
No, it's very good.
It's good. Give it.
American Military University is the number one provider of education to our military and veterans in this country.
They offer something truly unique, special rates and grants for the entire family, making education affordable not just for those who serve, but also for their loved ones.
If you have a military or veteran family member and you're looking for affordable, high -quality education, education, AMU is the place for you.
Visit amu .apus .edu slash military to learn more.
That's amu .apus .edu slash military.
This podcast is supported by BetterHelp, offering licensed therapists you can connect with via video, phone, or chat.
Here's BetterHelp head of clinical operations Hesu Jo, discussing who can benefit from therapy.
I think a lot of people think that you're supposed to be going to therapy once you're like having panic attacks every day.
But before you get to that point, I think once you start even noticing that you feel a little bit off and you can't maintain this harmony that you once had in relationships, that could be a sign that maybe you want to go talk to somebody.
There's always a a benefit in talking to someone because we can all benefit from improved insight about ourselves and who we are and how we behave with other people.
So if you're human, that's like a good indicator that you could benefit from talking to somebody.
Find out if therapy is right for you.
Visit betterhelp .com today.
That's betterhelp .com.
Deadline shift, plans change, and sometimes you You just need promo products fast. Turn to 4imprint.
That's the number four imprint.
4imprint has hundreds of promotional items available with 24 -hour turnaround.
From custom apparel and drinkware to trade show gear, writing tools, and more.
Your logo is printed with care.
Your order ships fast. And with their 360 -degree guarantee, you'll know it'll show up right and on time.
That's the certainty of 4imprint.
Check out the full 24 -hour selection at 4imprint .com.
4imprint. For certain.
