504: How I Got Into College - This American Life
You are using an outdated browser.
您正在使用过时的浏览器。
Please upgrade your browser or activate Google Chrome Frame to improve your experience.
请升级您的浏览器或激活 Google Chrome 浏览器内嵌框架以改善您的体验。
Sign up for a free Life Partners trial, and you can watch the video “A Night of Stories and Improv.”
注册免费试用《Life Partners》，您可以观看视频“故事与即兴表演之夜”。
00:00 00:00 Transcript Share This American Life Life Partners How to Listen Episodes Recommended About Overview Staff Announcements Fellowships Jobs Music Make Radio On The Road FAQ Submissions Merch Contact Us Our Other Shows Merch Follow Us Life Partners Subscribe to our newsletter Full episode Toggle Audio and Transcript Sync Transcript | Episode #504 | August 31, 2018 504: How I Got Into College Note: This American Life is produced for the ear and designed to be heard.
00:00 00:00 文字记录 分享此 美国生活 生活伙伴 如何收听 剧集 推荐 关于 概述 员工公告 奖学金 工作 音乐 在路上制作电台 常见问题解答 提交 商品 联系我们 我们的其他节目 商品 关注我们 生活伙伴 订阅我们的时事通讯 整集 切换音频和文字记录同步 文字记录 | 内容第 504 集 | 2018 年 8 月 31 日 504：我如何进入大学 注：《美国生活》是为耳朵而制作的，旨在让人们听到。
If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page.
如果可以的话，我们强烈建议您收听音频，其中包括页面上没有的情感和重点。
Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.
文字记录是使用语音识别软件和人工转录员结合生成的，可能包含错误。
Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.
请在印刷版引用前检查相应的音频。
Prologue Ira Glass All across the country this month college freshmen are starting their new lives at their new schools.
序言 Ira Glass 这个月全国各地的大学新生都将在新学校开始他们的新生活。
And it is so hard to get into so many schools these days.
现在要进入这么多学校真是太难了。
At Columbia University in New York City, 33,000 people applied.
在纽约市的哥伦比亚大学，有 33,000 人提出申请。
31,000 were rejected.
31,000 人被拒绝。
That is fewer than 7% getting in.
进入的人数不到 7%。
And the students who did get in, the students who made it here, they still wonder how they did it.
而那些真正被录取的学生，那些成功来到这里的学生，他们仍然想知道他们是如何做到的。
You know, it was so hard to get here, what was it that worked?
你知道，来到这里是如此困难，是什么起作用了？
And they have their theories.
他们有他们的理论。
I think it's because my application was very focused on physics, and especially females in physics, because obviously that's a problem.
我认为这是因为我的申请非常关注物理学，尤其是物理学领域的女性，因为显然这是一个问题。
I had decent SAT scores, and I had a good GPA, but I think a big part of it was my essays.
我的 SAT 成绩不错，GPA 也不错，但我认为很大一部分是我的论文。
These Columbia students talked to reporter Phia Bennin.
这些哥伦比亚大学的学生接受了记者菲亚·本宁的采访。
On their very first day on campus, it was obvious who is a freshman because they all had to wear neon bracelets, like they were at a waterpark.
在他们进入校园的第一天，很明显谁是新生，因为他们都必须戴着霓虹灯手镯，就像他们在水上乐园一样。
Well, I've been a competitive gymnast for my entire life.
嗯，我一生都是一名竞技体操运动员。
I was a rhythmic gymnast, and I competed for the US national team.
我是一名艺术体操运动员，并参加过美国国家队的比赛。
I don't know.
我不知道。
I'm pretty diverse, I guess-- Hispanic, disabled, good grades.
我想我是一个很多元化的人——西班牙裔，残疾人，成绩很好。
I'm an Eagle Scout.
我是一名鹰级童子军。
That might have helped too.
这可能也有帮助。
But you do not have to talk to many kids or scratch the surface very far at all before you get this response to the question, what got you into this school?
但是，您不必与很多孩子交谈或深入了解问题的表面，就可以得到对“是什么让您进入这所学校”这个问题的回答。
I have no idea.
我不知道。
Student I still actually have no clue whatsoever.
同学，我其实还是一无所知。
Just the percentage of people that get in is just absolutely minuscule, so it's just what the admissions officers see in you.
被录取的人所占的比例绝对是微乎其微的，所以这正是招生人员在你身上看到的。
And I have no idea what they saw.
我不知道他们看到了什么。
[CHUCKLING]
[咯咯笑]
I totally relate to that.
我完全同意这一点。
I remember I was completely clueless when it came to applying to college-- what to do to get in, what to say on the essays to convince them that I was worthy of their schools.
我记得在申请大学时我完全一无所知——要做什么才能进去，在论文中要说些什么才能让他们相信我值得他们的学校。
And even more basic than that, I really had no idea what would possibly make one school better than another, how to figure out what schools I should apply to.
甚至更基本的是，我真的不知道什么可能使一所学校比另一所学校更好，如何弄清楚我应该申请哪些学校。
It was overwhelming.
这是压倒性的。
And today on our show-- it's September, it's back to school-- we have stories of some of the most boneheaded things people try to do to get into college, plus the truly incredible story of how one man made it into college.
今天在我们的节目中——现在是九月，又回到了学校——我们讲述了人们为进入大学而尝试做的一些最愚蠢的事情的故事，以及一个真正令人难以置信的关于一个人如何进入大学的故事。
That story from writer, Michael Lewis.
这个故事来自作家迈克尔·刘易斯。
From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life.
来自芝加哥 WBEZ 的《This American Life》。
I'm Ira Glass.
我是艾拉·格拉斯。
Stay with us.
留在我们身边。
Act one, "The Old College Try." So here at our radio show, we went looking for a college admissions officer who would tell us the most misguided things that people do when they're applying to schools.
第一幕，“老大学的尝试”。因此，在我们的广播节目中，我们寻找一位大学招生官员，他会告诉我们人们在申请学校时最容易被误导的事情。
And we found Rick Clark, who's director of undergraduate admissions at the Georgia Institute of Technology, better known as Georgia Tech.
我们找到了里克·克拉克 (Rick Clark)，他是佐治亚理工学院 (Georgia Institute of Technology，俗称佐治亚理工学院) 本科生招生主任。
And he said that he and his team are regularly getting emails and phone calls from parents who are pretending to be their own kids.
他说，他和他的团队经常收到冒充自己孩子的父母发来的电子邮件和电话。
And he sent me some of these emails with the names redacted.
他给我发了一些电子邮件，其中的名字经过了编辑。
You forwarded an email like this to us.
您向我们转发了这样的电子邮件。
This is from a mom's email address, and then it's signed from a son.
这是来自一位母亲的电子邮件地址，然后是一位儿子的签名。
Yeah, yeah.
是啊是啊。
Ira Glass And it says, "I was impressed by GT's beautiful campus and its close proximity to so many athletic teams and facilities in Atlanta.
Ira Glass 上面写道：“GT 美丽的校园以及毗邻亚特兰大众多运动队和设施给我留下了深刻的印象。
I look forward to speaking with someone from the business school.
我期待着与商学院的人士交谈。
Thanks again for taking the time to meet with us on Saturday, and thanks for the awesome T-shirt." Now, the word awesome, is that the most common word that parents use to imitate their kids?
再次感谢您周六抽出时间与我们会面，并感谢您送来的很棒的 T 恤。”现在，“棒极了”这个词是父母用来模仿孩子的最常用词吗？
I'd say "awesome" and "cool." If they throw those in, I think they feel like they're covering their bases on impersonating a high school student.
我会说“太棒了”和“酷”。如果他们把这些放进去，我想他们会觉得自己在冒充高中生。
But ironically, I really almost never, in fact, see that in an email from a high school student.
但讽刺的是，事实上，我几乎从未在高中生的电子邮件中看到过这一点。
Ah.
啊。
So Duplicitous parents, please take note.
所以，口是心非的家长们请注意了。
And then on the phone, when the parents call on the phone, do they use the word "awesome?"
然后在电话里，当父母打电话时，他们会用“太棒了”这个词吗？
I actually just did hear from one of my staff members who said they talked to a mom the other day who clearly was trying to sound like her 17-year-old daughter, not so much in the language she was using, but masking her voice.
事实上，我刚刚听到我的一位工作人员说，前几天他们和一位妈妈交谈过，这位妈妈显然试图听起来像她 17 岁的女儿，不是用她所使用的语言，而是掩盖她的声音。
About 15 minutes in, she started using "she" instead of "I," even saying, what if she-- I mean, I wanted to list more activities on the application?
大约 15 分钟后，她开始使用“她”而不是“我”，甚至说，如果她 - 我的意思是，我想在应用程序上列出更多活动怎么办？
Rick Clark says that one thing that has amped this up, all the parents getting in touch, is that lots of schools take into account whether a student shows something called demonstrated interest in their college, meaning, did they show up on campus?
里克·克拉克（Rick Clark）说，所有家长都在联系，导致这种情况加剧的一件事是，许多学校都会考虑学生是否对他们的大学表现出所谓的“表现出兴趣”，也就是说，他们是否出现在校园里？
Did they write emails to the admissions office afterwards?
他们后来给招生办公室写邮件了吗？
Were they in touch?
他们有联系吗？
Georgia Tech, he says, does not take that stuff into account, but parents do not seem to have gotten the memo on that.
他说，佐治亚理工学院并没有考虑到这些因素，但家长们似乎并没有意识到这一点。
He forwarded me an email that a mom wrote to her kid, offering the kid $20 if the kid would email the admissions office, which might have been fine if she hadn't accidentally sent her email to the admissions office.
他给我转发了一封妈妈写给她孩子的电子邮件，如果孩子愿意给招生办公室发电子邮件，他就给她 20 美元，如果她没有不小心把电子邮件发给招生办公室的话，这可能没什么问题。
And Rick Clark says that he gets where the parents are coming from.
里克·克拉克说他了解父母的想法。
He is a parent himself.
他自己也是一位家长。
He wants to do everything he can for his kids.
他想为孩子们做一切他能做的事。
In fact, we've got a five-year-old right now on a waiting list for a charter school.
事实上，我们现在有一个五岁的孩子在特许学校的等候名单上。
Oh, so you have to deal with some admissions persons?
哦，所以你必须和一些招生人员打交道？
Yeah.
是的。
I'm getting a little taste of my own medicine because my kid is seventh on this waiting list.
我正在尝尝自己的苦果，因为我的孩子在等候名单上排名第七。
And my wife the other day was like, we're going to call him every week and see where he is.
有一天我的妻子说，我们每周都会给他打电话，看看他在哪里。
I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
我就像，哇，哇，哇。
You are really flirting with the line between loving him and just really being a stalker here.
你真的在爱他和真正成为跟踪者之间调情。
So you forwarded this email that you all got.
所以你们转发了你们收到的这封电子邮件。
And I guess I shouldn't have been surprised by this, but I've got to say, I didn't think it-- it's from somebody whose kid is not even applying to college.
我想我不应该对此感到惊讶，但我不得不说，我没想到——这是来自一个孩子甚至没有申请大学的人。
It says, "Dear sir or madam, my second grader--"
上面写着：“亲爱的先生或女士，我的二年级学生——”
I can barely finish this sentence.
我好不容易才把这句话说完。
You know this email?
你知道这封电子邮件吗？
Yeah, absolutely.
是的，绝对是。
Ira Glass "My second grader has decided on a career in electrical engineering.
Ira Glass “我的二年级学生决定从事电气工程职业。
He is leaning towards MIT, [LAUGHS] but I do not find them helpful and would prefer a southern culture."
他倾向于麻省理工学院，[笑]，但我认为它们没有帮助，并且更喜欢南方文化。”
[LAUGHTER] I like that he's playing on your pride, on your southern pride.
[笑声]我喜欢他利用你们的骄傲，你们南方的骄傲。
"Would you please tell me how to prepare him for admission?
“你能告诉我如何为他入学做准备吗？
He will be an Eagle Scout by then and wants to go to the best school.
那时他将成为一名鹰级童子军，并想进入最好的学校。
Please advise."
请指教。”
Yeah.
是的。
I mean, apparently MIT needs to pay more attention to seven-year-olds in their admission process.
我的意思是，显然麻省理工学院需要在录取过程中更多地关注七岁的孩子。
Rick Clark also sent me a bunch of college essays written by kids that they have gotten at Georgia Tech, again, with the names redacted.
里克·克拉克还给我发了一堆学生写的大学论文，这些论文是他们在佐治亚理工学院获得的，同样，名字也经过了编辑。
Turns out, one common mistake that kids make when they're writing their essays is that they're sending out so many applications, they leave the names of other schools in their essays to Georgia Tech.
事实证明，孩子们在写论文时常犯的一个错误是，他们发出了太多的申请，他们在论文中把其他学校的名字留给了佐治亚理工学院。
All right.
好的。
This is one, in fact, in a, I don't know, 14-line short essay.
事实上，这是一篇我不知道的 14 行短文中的一篇。
They twice mention a wrong school name.
他们两次提到错误的学校名称。
"So after visiting the campus, reading the information brochure, and researching the university website, I understand and believe that Duke offers what I hope to gain from my college experience."
“因此，在参观了校园、阅读了信息手册并研究了大学网站之后，我理解并相信杜克大学提供了我希望从我的大学经历中获得的东西。”
[LAUGHING] They're writing to Georgia Tech.
[笑]他们正在写信给佐治亚理工学院。
And then it skips down a couple lines.
然后它会跳过几行。
And this is what really blows me away, because there's four words here separating two school names.
这才是真正让我震惊的地方，因为这里有四个单词分隔两个学校名称。
"I've chosen to apply early decision to Georgia Tech because I believe Duke is the ideal university for me."
“我选择提前申请佐治亚理工学院，因为我相信杜克大学是我理想的大学。”
Are there trends in what kids are writing about, the way you feel like you see little fads and you get sick of them?
孩子们所写的内容是否有趋势，你是否觉得看到一些小时尚就厌倦了它们？
Oh.
哦。
Well, the age-old one that, I mean, again, pretty much anybody that you would interview who's been in college admission for any period of time would be-- you know, we just call it now the "mission trip" essay.
好吧，我的意思是，几乎任何一个在任何时期内参加过大学入学面试的人都会是——你知道，我们现在称之为“使命之旅”论文。
And great to go on a mission trip, great to have a cultural experience, but inevitably the way it reads is so predictable.
很高兴能够进行一次宣教旅行，很高兴能够获得文化体验，但不可避免的是它的阅读方式是如此可预测。
We flew down to somewhere in Central America, and we got off the plane.
我们飞往中美洲的某个地方，然后下了飞机。
It was really hot.
天气真的很热。
And we got on the bus.
我们上了公共汽车。
And 20 miles outside of the village, our bus broke down, but we got picked up by a chicken truck and taken into town.
在村外 20 英里处，我们的公共汽车抛锚了，但我们被一辆运送鸡肉的卡车接走并送进了城里。
And then over the course of my time there, I went expecting to help others, but it was, in fact, me who was changed.
然后在那段时间里，我期待着帮助别人，但事实上，改变的是我自己。
And even just when you first start reading that essay, you're like, oh, here it comes again.
即使当你第一次开始阅读那篇文章时，你也会想，哦，它又来了。
Most college essays are pretty bad.
大多数大学论文都很糟糕。
Rick estimates that only one out of every 20 or so essays that he reads is any good at all, that is, 19 bad ones if you're counting at home.
里克估计，他读的每 20 篇左右的文章中只有一篇是好的，也就是说，如果你在家里数的话，有 19 篇是坏的。
But he says that he and his colleagues believe that they themselves are partly to blame for the essay questions that they actually put onto the applications, questions that always get the same mundane, suck-uppy answers from kid, after kid, after kid.
但他说，他和他的同事们认为，他们自己对申请中实际提出的论文问题负有部分责任，这些问题总是从一个又一个的孩子那里得到同样平凡、马虎的答案。
Colleges just market themselves so aggressively to so many people.
大学只是向这么多人积极地推销自己。
There's a girl that lives just on our street, and she's a senior this year.
我们街上住着一个女孩，她今年高三了。
And she brought me over the stack of mail that she got from schools.
她给我带来了她从学校收到的一叠邮件。
I mean, this was just the last two months worth of mail, and it had to be two feet tall.
我的意思是，这只是最近两个月的邮件，而且必须有两英尺高。
And opening those up, I mean, they do start to just-- you put your hand over the name of the school, and it could be any place.
打开这些，我的意思是，他们确实开始——你把手放在学校的名称上，它可以是任何地方。
It's funny when you put it that way.
当你这样说的时候就很有趣了。
It's almost like the schools are being as generic in what they're saying to the students as the students are to the schools.
就好像学校对学生说的话就像学生对学校说的一样。
That's right.
这是正确的。
Nobody puts dead squirrels on the front of their college brochure.
没有人会把死松鼠放在大学宣传册的封面上。
I mean, it's all football teams winning, beautiful sunny day, kids under a tree with a professor.
我的意思是，所有足球队都获胜，阳光明媚，孩子们在树下和教授在一起。
I mean, that's every other page.
我的意思是，这是所有其他页面。
It just runs together.
它只是一起运行。
Rick Clark, director of admissions at Georgia Tech.
里克·克拉克 (Rick Clark)，佐治亚理工学院招生主任。
Go Jackets.
去夹克吧。
Act two, "My Ames is True." So Michael Lewis is a pretty well-known writer and reporter.
第二幕，“我的艾姆斯是真的”。所以迈克尔·刘易斯是一位相当著名的作家和记者。
His books, Moneyball, The Blind Side, and The Big Short were made into movies.
他的书《点球成金》、《弱点》和《大空头》被拍成电影。
His bestsellers about Wall Street include Liar's Poker and Flash Boys.
他有关华尔街的畅销书包括《说谎者的扑克》和《闪电男孩》。
But this particular story happens long before he was writing books.
但这个特殊的故事发生在他写书之前很久。
He was in seventh grade in New Orleans, trying to avoid reading them.
他在新奥尔良上七年级，试图避免阅读这些书。
And the English teacher, Mr. Downer, asked us to write a book report on a novel called Johnny Tremain.
英语老师唐纳先生要求我们写一篇关于一本名叫约翰尼·特里梅因的小说的读书报告。
And I went home and I looked at the book.
我回到家，看着这本书。
And I noticed on the back-- there was this great book report with the book, and it was just on the back of the book.
我注意到在书的背面——这本书附有一份很棒的读书报告，它就在书的背面。
Little summary.
小总结。
And I just copied it out and handed it in and [INAUDIBLE] with it.
我只是把它抄下来并交给它并[听不清]。
It came back with an A on it.
它回来了，上面有一个A。
And it says, "See me" on the top in big red ink.
顶部用大红墨水写着“见我”。
And I go to see Mr. Downer, and he says, that's plagiarism.
我去找唐纳先生，他说，这是抄袭。
Oh, my god.
我的天啊。
What's plagiarism?
什么是抄袭？
You had never heard of it?
你从来没有听说过吗？
Michael Lewis Never heard of it.
迈克尔·刘易斯 从没听说过。
And the concept was alien to me.
这个概念对我来说很陌生。
I mean, I just thought it was an odd concept because you repeat what other people say all the time.
我的意思是，我只是觉得这是一个奇怪的概念，因为你总是重复别人说的话。
I was just repeating what someone else said.
我只是重复别人说过的话。
It just seemed like a very intelligent thing to repeat.
重复这似乎是一件非常明智的事情。
And I was telling him this.
我正在告诉他这一点。
I thought I was saving us all a lot of trouble.
我以为我给我们大家省去了很多麻烦。
Saving us trouble, like?
给我们省了麻烦，比如？
Michael Lewis It'll save him the trouble of reading something really awful.
迈克尔·刘易斯：这可以让他免去读一些非常糟糕的东西的麻烦。
And I wouldn't have to write a boring book report or even read the boring book.
我不必写无聊的读书报告，甚至不必阅读无聊的书。
I was doing both of us a favor.
我是在帮我们俩一个忙。
And it seemed kind of counterintuitive to have to generate a thing that had already been done.
必须生成一件已经完成的事情似乎有点违反直觉。
Mr. Downer does not agree, and the middle school principal decides to expel Michael.
唐纳先生不同意，中学校长决定开除迈克尔。
And at this point, do you understand what's wrong with what you've done?
此时，你明白你所做的事情出了什么问题吗？
No, I'm indignant.
不，我很愤怒。
I understand I'm supposed to feel it's wrong, but I don't feel it's wrong.
我知道我应该觉得这是错误的，但我并不觉得这是错误的。
Michael Lewis says, by the way, if you are a seventh grader hearing us talk about this right now and you want to try this with one of his books in your classroom, you totally have his blessing.
迈克尔·刘易斯说，顺便说一句，如果你是一名七年级学生，现在正在听我们谈论这个问题，并且你想在教室里用他的一本书尝试一下，那么你完全得到了他的祝福。
He wishes you the best, though he is pretty sure you're going to get the same results that he did.
他祝愿你一切顺利，尽管他很确定你会得到与他相同的结果。
Anyway, ultimately, his parents get involved.
无论如何，最终他的父母介入了。
Seventh grade Michael Lewis is not expelled from school.
七年级的迈克尔·刘易斯没有被学校开除。
But what I have to do is write 100 times a phrase that Mr. Downer has written on the blackboard, "I will not plagiarize the work of others."
但我要做的就是把唐纳先生在黑板上写下的一句话“我不会抄袭别人的作品”写一百遍。
Wait.
等待。
Michael Lewis The punishment is to plagiarize 100 times, over, and over, and over.
迈克尔·刘易斯 (Michael Lewis) 惩罚是抄袭 100 次，一遍又一遍。
And I didn't understand really the point of this because I thought, well, this is just plagiarizing again.
我真的不明白这有什么意义，因为我想，好吧，这又是抄袭。
And if this is the way they just want to show me that it's supposed to be harder work to plagiarize, that was it.
如果他们只是想通过这种方式向我表明抄袭应该是更困难的工作，那就是这样了。
[LAUGHTER] Ira Glass This has become one of the stories that Michael has found himself telling now and then over the years.
[笑声] Ira Glass 这已经成为迈克尔多年来不时讲述的故事之一。
Every now and then, I wheel it out.
我时不时地把它推出来。
And at some point, it occurred to me that the mere fact I like this story says an awful lot about me.
在某个时刻，我突然意识到，我喜欢这个故事本身就说明了我的很多情况。
And so what does this one say about you?
那么这个人对你有何评价呢？
Well, I think it rhymes with sort of my worldview and the general sense that authority is often absurd, a general sense that punishments often don't fit crimes, a general sense that often things that are supposed to be wrong don't actually feel wrong, and maybe they aren't as wrong as people say.
嗯，我认为这与我的世界观和一般感觉押韵，即权威往往是荒谬的，一般感觉惩罚往往与犯罪不相称，一般感觉通常应该是错误的事情实际上并不感觉错误，也许它们并不像人们所说的那么错误。
You know, we all have certain stories from our childhoods that we trot out from time to time, out of all the thousands of things that ever happened to us.
你知道，我们的童年都有一些故事，我们时不时地从发生在我们身上的成千上万的事情中选出这些故事。
And usually, it's not many stories that we'll actually trot out, right?
通常，我们实际上不会讲很多故事，对吧？
And the choices that we make, you know, the selection that we make of which incidents we find ourselves telling people, it says so much about us and how we see the world, which ones we pick.
我们所做的选择，你知道，我们对我们发现自己告诉人们的事件所做的选择，它充分说明了我们以及我们如何看待世界，我们选择了哪些事件。
And I bring all this up because the actual real story that Michael Lewis is here on the radio show today to report is a very good example of that.
我之所以提出这一切，是因为迈克尔·刘易斯今天在广播节目中报道的真实故事就是一个很好的例子。
Of course, this is our "How I Got Into College" show, so this is the story of how one guy, named Emir Kamenica, got into college, but it's also an illustration of this other thing.
当然，这是我们的“我如何进入大学”节目，所以这是一个名叫埃米尔·卡梅尼卡的人如何进入大学的故事，但这也是另一件事的例证。
Anyway, here's Michael.
无论如何，这是迈克尔。
I think if I were telling you Emir's story, I'd probably just start at the very beginning, how he was born in Bosnia in 1978, how he grew up in Sarajevo with loving parents and a happy family.
我想如果我要告诉你埃米尔的故事，我可能会从头开始，他如何于1978年出生在波斯尼亚，如何在萨拉热窝与慈爱的父母和幸福的家庭一起长大。
But it's his story, so let's let him tell it the way he tells it.
但这是他的故事，所以让他按照他的方式讲述吧。
All right.
好的。
Well, I guess the natural place to start the story might just be the outset of the war.
嗯，我想故事开始的自然地点可能就是战争的开始。
I was 13 at the time.
当时我13岁。
The war, from my perspective, because I wasn't particularly paying attention to the political situation, comes truly out of nowhere.
在我看来，因为我没有特别关注政治局势，所以这场战争确实是突然发生的。
It's sort of one morning, you wake up expecting the world will look just the way it did yesterday, and instead there are these people in leather jackets with stockings on their heads and machine guns in their hands.
大概是这样的一个早晨，你醒来时以为世界会像昨天一样，但结果却是这些穿着皮夹克、头戴长筒袜、手里拿着机关枪的人。
So the Serb troops hadn't gotten to his neighborhood yet.
所以塞尔维亚军队还没有到达他的邻居。
And one Sunday, his mother took Emir and his sister across the river to visit his great aunt.
一个周日，他的母亲带着埃米尔和他的妹妹过河去看望他的姨婆。
The walk was about a mile.
步行大约一英里。
So when we realized this might not have been a good idea is that we start crossing this bridge, some shooting starts.
因此，当我们意识到这可能不是一个好主意时，我们开始穿过这座桥，一些拍摄开始了。
And it's clear some people are shooting at us because you can see the bullets ricochet around.
很明显有人在向我们开枪，因为你可以看到子弹在周围弹跳。
And we just kind of run.
我们只是逃跑。
They managed to get to the other side of the bridge without getting shot, but they couldn't go back.
他们设法到达桥的另一边而没有被枪杀，但他们无法回去。
And his dad was trapped back where they lived.
他的父亲被困在他们住的地方。
The Serb troops ended up killing a lot of the men in Emir's old neighborhood and raping the women.
塞尔维亚军队最终在埃米尔的老邻居中杀害了许多男人并强奸了妇女。
But when Emir tells the story, he stresses just how lucky they were to get out, for example, how lucky they were to hitch a ride from two women, complete strangers, and to join a convoy of 5,000 Bosnian refugees, all of them women and children fleeing for the Croatian coast, how lucky it was that they owned a camper near the beach where they spent the summers, how lucky it was that it was May, when the weather was warm, how lucky they were even after the weather turned cold and their camper became uninhabitable.
但当埃米尔讲述这个故事时，他强调他们能出去是多么幸运，例如，他们能搭上两个完全陌生的女人的便车，并加入由 5,000 名波斯尼亚难民组成的车队（其中所有都是妇女和儿童）逃往克罗地亚海岸，他们是多么幸运，他们在避暑的海滩附近拥有一辆露营车是多么幸运，现在是五月，天气温暖，即使天气转冷，他们也是多么幸运他们的露营车变得无法居住。
Which was actually another pure, fortuitous coincidence.
这实际上又是一个纯粹的、偶然的巧合。
My mother happened to be in a market and ran across a woman who was my sister's homeroom teacher in Sarajevo.
我母亲碰巧在市场里遇到了一位女士，她是我姐姐在萨拉热窝的班主任。
This woman happened to be moving to London and needed someone to watch her apartment, more good luck.
这位女士恰好要搬到伦敦，需要有人看管她的公寓，祝你好运。
Clearly, there was some bad luck too, but Emir doesn't mention it.
显然，也有一些运气不好，但埃米尔没有提及。
I have to prod him to fill in the piece of the story he most obviously leaves out.
我必须敦促他填写故事中他最明显遗漏的部分。
Yeah.
是的。
Sorry, go on.
抱歉，继续。
Michael Lewis I was going to ask you, do you know exactly what happened to your father?
迈克尔·刘易斯 我想问你，你知道你父亲到底发生了什么事吗？
I don't know exactly what happened.
我不知道到底发生了什么。
What I do know is that a neighbor of ours, a person who lived in our high rise, he found my father's body on the street, and he took him to the local cemetery and buried him.
我所知道的是，我们的一个邻居，一个住在我们高层的人，他在街上发现了我父亲的尸体，他把他带到当地的墓地埋葬了。
So we at least do know where he is.
所以我们至少知道他在哪里。
Anyway, Emir and his mom and his sister moved into this apartment in a city crawling with hostile Croat nationalists.
不管怎样，埃米尔和他的母亲和妹妹搬进了这座充满敌意的克罗地亚民族主义者的城市里的公寓。
His mother wasn't allowed to work.
他的母亲不被允许工作。
And before long, Emir and his sister weren't allowed to go to school.
不久之后，埃米尔和他的妹妹就被禁止去上学了。
When he went outside, Emir would be chased by these thugs who wanted to beat him up just because he was Muslim.
当埃米尔出门时，他会被这些暴徒追赶，因为他是穆斯林，他们想殴打他。
His family wasn't even faintly religious, so he thought this was especially bizarre.
他的家人甚至没有一点宗教信仰，所以他觉得这特别奇怪。
He was stuck inside this apartment.
他被困在这间公寓里。
In his telling, he did almost nothing but read books.
在他的讲述中，他除了读书之外几乎什么也不做。
So I would get the books from the local library.
所以我会从当地图书馆借书。
I would sort of run there to make sure I don't encounter any of the nationalists that are trying to prove their patriotism by beating me up.
我会跑到那里以确保我不会遇到任何试图通过殴打我来证明他们的爱国主义的民族主义者。
And I'm trying to picture this, actually.
事实上，我正在尝试想象这一点。
So you're actually running through the streets with library books under your arms and running back with other library books under your arms?
所以你实际上是夹着图书馆的书在街上跑，然后又夹着其他图书馆的书跑回来？
Yeah.
是的。
It was library books.
那是图书馆的书。
I also tried to teach myself a few things.
我也尝试自学一些东西。
Because eventually, you get bored of reading novels, so I tried to learn some more physics.
因为最终，你会厌倦看小说，所以我尝试学习更多物理。
I read a lot of Freud, which I decided was not that good.
我读了很多弗洛伊德的书，我认为这不是那么好。
And one of the books I read was called The Fortress, by an author called Mesa Selimovic.
我读过的一本书叫《堡垒》，作者是梅萨·塞利莫维奇 (Mesa Selimovic)。
And I do not know why.
我不知道为什么。
I guess, 15, I was impressionable.
我想，15岁，我很容易受影响。
I was very much moved by that novel.
那本小说让我非常感动。
I've never actually read The Fortress.
我从来没有真正读过《堡垒》。
But according to the description on the back of the book, it's about a young man who, quote, "overcomes the psychological anguish of war, only to find that he has emerged a reflective and contemplative man in a society that does not value the subversive implications of these qualities." Emir loved the book.
但根据书背面的描述，这是关于一个年轻人“克服了战争带来的心理痛苦，却发现他在一个不重视这些品质的颠覆性影响的社会中成为了一个善于反思和沉思的人。”埃米尔喜欢这本书。
He read it over and over.
他读了一遍又一遍。
One day, his mother announces that they'd had another lucky break.
有一天，他的母亲宣布他们又迎来了一次幸运的突破。
Out of a million Bosnian refugees, they are among the first few thousand being handed tickets to the United States.
在一百万波斯尼亚难民中，他们是首批获得前往美国门票的数千人之一。
They packed to leave, but all Emir has is some T-shirts, blue jeans, and this library book.
他们收拾行李准备离开，但埃米尔只有一些 T 恤、蓝色牛仔裤和这本图书馆的书。
Which is still in my room.
仍然在我的房间里。
And so when we're packing to leave, I decide to bring it with me to the US as my most prized possession.
因此，当我们收拾行李准备离开时，我决定将它带到美国，作为我最珍贵的财产。
So when you take this book, are you sensitive to the fact you're stealing a library book?
那么，当您拿走这本书时，您是否对自己正在偷一本图书馆的书这一事实感到敏感？
I am entirely aware of that, yeah.
我完全意识到这一点，是的。
I didn't feel like the community or the town had treated me very nicely, so I perhaps had less guilt than I might have in other circumstances.
我觉得社区或城镇对我不太好，所以我的内疚感可能比在其他情况下少。
The UN dropped Emir and his mom and his sister in Atlanta, which was as good as any other place since they didn't know a soul in the entire country.
联合国将埃米尔和他的母亲和妹妹留在亚特兰大，那里和其他地方一样好，因为他们在整个国家都不认识一个人。
They were picked up at the Atlanta airport along with an older Bosnian couple they don't know at all and taken to their new home.
他们和一对完全不认识的波斯尼亚老夫妇在亚特兰大机场被接走，并被带到他们的新家。
And we pull into this apartment complex.
我们驶进了这座公寓大楼。
And I remember very well when the van stopped, I just saw this look of terror on my mother and sister's faces.
我清楚地记得，当货车停下来时，我只看到母亲和姐姐脸上露出恐惧的表情。
So I immediately turned to them, reassuring, said, oh, no, no, no. They're not dropping us off here.
于是我立即转向他们，安慰他们说，哦，不，不，不。他们不会让我们在这里下车的。
This is just where this couple is going.
这正是这对夫妇要去的地方。
We're going elsewhere.
我们要去别的地方。
So the guy opened the door.
于是，那人就打开了门。
The other couple got out.
另一对夫妇也下了车。
And I just sort of, with my hand, signaled to my mother and sister to sit still because surely, surely this is not where we're going.
我只是用手示意我的母亲和妹妹别动，因为这肯定不是我们要去的地方。
But in fact, that was where we were going, and it's just horrible.
但事实上，这就是我们要去的地方，这太可怕了。
There's cockroaches running all over the place.
到处都是蟑螂。
So far as he could tell, there weren't any other white people in the neighborhood.
据他所知，附近没有其他白人。
And to Emir, this whole black people, white people thing was an entirely new experience.
对于埃米尔来说，整个黑人、白人的事情是一种全新的体验。
But the first thing that struck him was that the black people didn't really seem to like the white people very much.
但首先让他震惊的是黑人似乎不太喜欢白人。
Which was particularly ironic, given that, first, I don't know that I'm Muslim.
这特别具有讽刺意味，因为首先，我不知道自己是穆斯林。
All of a sudden, people try and kill me because they think I'm Muslim.
突然间，人们试图杀死我，因为他们认为我是穆斯林。
I did not know I was white.
我不知道我是白人。
Now, all of a sudden, these kids want to beat me up because I'm white.
现在，突然之间，这些孩子想打我，因为我是白人。
Once again, he couldn't leave his home without feeling a little bit scared, even when he went to school, which was called Clarkston High.
再一次，当他离开家时，他会感到有点害怕，即使他去学校，那所学校叫克拉克斯顿高中。
Sitting in his literature class one day, Emir heard a kid get shot right outside the classroom.
有一天，埃米尔坐在文学课上，听到一个孩子在教室外被枪杀。
The teacher was reading out loud from Romeo and Juliet at the time.
当时老师正在大声朗读《罗密欧与朱丽叶》。
I'm not sure if others noticed the kind of appropriateness.
我不确定其他人是否注意到这种适当性。
There was lots of racial tension.
种族关系非常紧张。
I was one of, I would guess, like 12 or 20 white kids in a school of 900.
我猜，我是一所拥有 900 名学生的学校中 12 或 20 名白人孩子中的一员。
There were lots of fights, lots of fighting.
有很多战斗，很多战斗。
Probably the worst class of all, by far, was this biology class.
到目前为止，最糟糕的课程可能是生物课。
And the teacher there-- this was, I think, his first year of teaching.
那里的老师——我想，这是他教学的第一年。
And he did not have any method for controlling the students.
而他也没有任何办法来控制学生。
So one day, he brought a bunny to class, but the other students decided that it would be much more entertaining to use the bunny as a soccer ball.
所以有一天，他带了一只兔子来上课，但其他学生认为用兔子作为足球会更有趣。
So they would just kick the bunny around while the teacher sort of ran around the classroom, trying to stop this.
所以他们只会踢兔子，而老师则在教室里跑来跑去，试图阻止这种情况。
The bunny survived, but it looked like he'd gone blind.
兔子活了下来，但看起来他已经失明了。
One of his eyes was completely mangled.
他的一只眼睛完全被毁掉了。
In those first few months, Emir made just a single friend, another Bosnian refugee named Emil.
在最初的几个月里，埃米尔只结识了一个朋友，另一个名叫埃米尔的波斯尼亚难民。
Emir and Emil were inseparable, but they were joined mainly by their fear of everyone else.
埃米尔和埃米尔形影不离，但他们之所以走到一起，主要是因为对其他人的恐惧。
Terrible.
糟糕的。
Michael Lewis That was another problem.
迈克尔·刘易斯那是另一个问题。
He says he couldn't really talk to the other kids or his teachers, and so he sort of walked around the school in silence, like a mute.
他说他无法真正与其他孩子或他的老师交谈，所以他像一个哑巴一样默默地在学校里走来走去。
To improve his English, he returned to The Fortress, the novel he'd stolen from the Croatian library.
为了提高英语水平，他又回到了从克罗地亚图书馆偷来的小说《堡垒》。
At night, he'd sit down with a dictionary and translate The Fortress from Bosnian to English.
晚上，他会坐下来拿着字典，将《堡垒》从波斯尼亚语翻译成英语。
It was useful because it did improve my English, and it also gave me the sense of sort of-- it made me feel literary.
它很有用，因为它确实提高了我的英语水平，而且它也给了我一种感觉——它让我觉得自己很文学。
It made me feel like I was creating something beautiful.
这让我觉得我正在创造一些美丽的东西。
So he was back to sitting alone in his room with his novel.
于是他又回到自己的房间里独自坐着看小说。
But as Emir tells it, all of this really just set the stage for his biggest stroke of luck, the one that would not only get him into college, but would change his entire life.
但正如埃米尔所说，所有这一切实际上只是为他最大的运气奠定了基础，这不仅能让他进入大学，而且会改变他的整个生活。
It came in the form of a teacher who descended for maybe two weeks upon his English classroom.
它以一位老师的形式出现，他在他的英语教室呆了大约两周。
Emir remembers only her last name, Ames, Miss Ames.
埃米尔只记得她的姓氏，艾姆斯，艾姆斯小姐。
Or maybe it was Mrs. Ames.
或者也许是艾姆斯太太。
He thinks she was an intern training to be a teacher.
他认为她是一名实习生，正在接受培训成为一名教师。
Anyway, she wasn't around for very long.
无论如何，她出现的时间并不长。
Unlike his regular teacher, she was full of energy.
与平时的老师不同，她充满了活力。
She tried all these new tricks to engage their interest.
她尝试了所有这些新技巧来吸引他们的兴趣。
One day, she handed out these photographs to the kids.
有一天，她把这些照片分发给孩子们。
The one she gave to Emir was of a boy with a haunted look on his face, looking over his shoulder.
她送给埃米尔的那张照片是一个男孩，脸上带着一种鬼魂般的表情，回头望着他。
Then she told them all to write an essay about the pictures.
然后她让大家写一篇关于这些照片的文章。
Write an essay-- that's a pretty difficult thing for me, given my limited knowledge of English.
鉴于我的英语知识有限，写一篇文章对我来说是一件相当困难的事情。
So first thought, I'm going to dread this task.
所以首先想到的是，我会害怕这个任务。
But then I realized, there's this really beautiful passage, this beautiful chapter I had translated, I had worked on the previous night from The Fortress.
但后来我意识到，有一段非常美丽的段落，我翻译的这一美丽的章节，是我前一天晚上在《堡垒》中工作的。
So I decide to, pretty much, word for word replicate this passage and use that as my essay for Miss Ames.
因此，我决定逐字逐句地复制这段文字，并将其用作我为艾姆斯小姐撰写的文章。
I still remember a little bit about what the passage was about.
我还记得一点关于这段话的内容。
The protagonist has witnessed an injustice.
主角目睹了不公正的事情。
I remember I closed my essay with this bit of internal monologue, which roughly says, "I'm slowly becoming a repository for decomposing sorrows, regrets, ignored injustice, forgotten promises.
我记得我用这段内心独白结束了我的文章，大致说的是，“我正在慢慢地成为一个分解悲伤、遗憾、忽视的不公正、忘记的承诺的仓库。
I can still feel its stench.
我仍然能感觉到它的恶臭。
But when I get accustomed to it, I will call it experience." And I think Miss Ames was impressed.
但当我习惯了，我会把它称为经验。”我认为艾姆斯小姐印象深刻。
And since The Fortress had never been translated into English, there was exactly zero chance she'd ever catch him.
由于《堡垒》从未被翻译成英文，所以她抓住他的机会几乎为零。
What happened is, the next day, Miss Ames walks up to me and pretty much whispers into my ear, you have to get out of this school, which is not what you typically expect teachers to tell you in school.
第二天，艾姆斯小姐走到我面前，在我耳边低声说道，你必须离开这所学校，这不是你通常期望老师在学校告诉你的。
But I'm like, yeah, where?
但我想，是的，在哪里？
Where do I go?
我该去哪里？
And she said, well, you know, there are private schools.
她说，嗯，你知道，有私立学校。
I was like, well, don't those cost money?
我当时想，好吧，这些不用花钱吗？
She says, well, some of them have financial aid.
她说，好吧，他们中的一些人有经济援助。
In fact, I have a job interview at a very nice private school on Monday.
事实上，周一我有一所非常好的私立学校的工作面试。
Why don't you just come with me and ask whether they have financial aid?
你为什么不跟我一起去问问他们是否有经济援助呢？
And I was like, OK.
我当时想，好吧。
So the following Monday, instead of going to Clarkston High in the morning, Miss Ames comes to pick me up at our apartment complex.
因此，接下来的星期一，艾姆斯小姐早上没有去克拉克斯顿高中，而是来我们的公寓大楼接我。
And she drives me to midtown Atlanta to this just beautiful, wonderful school with manicured lawns.
她开车送我到亚特兰大市中心的一所美丽、美妙的学校，那里有修剪整齐的草坪。
It just looks lovely.
它看起来很可爱。
This new place is called The Paideia School.
这个新地方叫做派迪亚学校。
He's never heard of it.
他从来没有听说过。
So she goes to have her job interview, and I go to the admissions office.
所以她去参加工作面试，我去招生办公室。
And there's the admissions officer.
还有招生官。
So she's sort of looking at me as sort of, so?
所以她有点看我，所以？
And I remember pretty distinctly, I said, I am a Bosnian refugee.
我说，我记得很清楚，我是波斯尼亚难民。
My school is really bad.
我的学校确实很差。
Can I please go here?
我可以去这里吗？
I think I had practiced it ahead of time.
我想我已经提前练习过了。
So it's stuck in my head because I had kind of planned this great pitch that I had, which is, I'm a Bosnian refugee.
所以它一直在我的脑海里，因为我已经计划好了我的这个伟大的宣传，那就是，我是波斯尼亚难民。
My school is really bad.
我的学校确实很差。
Can I please go here?
我可以去这里吗？
She points out to me that applications were due three months ago.
她向我指出申请是三个月前到期的。
She asked whether I need financial aid.
她问我是否需要经济援助。
I asked how much it would be.
我问要多少钱。
She said something, which to me, was equivalent to a bazillion dollars.
她说了一句话，对我来说，这相当于亿万美元。
So I said, yes, I need financial aid.
所以我说，是的，我需要经济援助。
She points out those were given out six months ago.
她指出这些是六个月前发出的。
She then suggests maybe I should think about applying for the following year.
然后她建议我也许应该考虑申请下一年。
And to that, I retort, I'm a Bosnian refugee.
对此，我反驳道，我是波斯尼亚难民。
My school is really, really bad.
我的学校真的非常非常糟糕。
Can I please, please go here?
我可以请你去这里吗？
And I guess that was effective, particularly in conjunction with the essay, which Miss Ames brought to her job interview, so that when she was asked why she wanted to be a teacher, she pulls out this essay and says, because of children like these.
我想这很有效，尤其是与艾姆斯小姐在面试时带来的那篇文章结合起来，所以当她被问到为什么想成为一名教师时，她拿出这篇文章并说，因为像这样的孩子。
These children who plagiarize essays from stolen library books.
这些孩子抄袭偷来的图书馆书籍中的文章。
Emir Kamenica Unbeknownst to me at the time, Paideia is the most PC, diversity-obsessed school south of the Mason-Dixon line.
埃米尔·卡梅尼察（Emir Kamenica）当时我并不知道，派迪亚是梅森-迪克森线以南最注重个人电脑和多样性的学校。
I mean, they really think diversity is important.
我的意思是，他们确实认为多样性很重要。
And a Bosnian refugee, at this time, now that's a very rare commodity.
而波斯尼亚难民，在这个时候，是一种非常稀有的商品。
So they basically managed to dig up some money.
所以他们基本上设法挖到了一些钱。
I was there sophomore, junior, and senior year of high school.
我在那里读高中二年级、三年级和四年级。
And it was a lovely place.
那是一个可爱的地方。
It was a heaven on earth, as far as I was concerned.
对我来说，那是人间天堂。
All the teachers went by their first names.
所有老师都直呼其名。
We had couches instead of desks in the classrooms.
我们教室里没有桌子，而是沙发。
I mean, not just was the school good, I also felt safe.
我的意思是，学校不仅好，而且我也感到安全。
And this feeling of safety had been lacking for the previous few years.
而这种安全感，在前几年都是缺乏的。
And I think it does something to you.
我认为这对你有帮助。
I think you have new resources to pay attention to things about the world which are beautiful, things about the world which are interesting, things about the world which are intriguing.
我认为你有新的资源来关注世界上美丽的事物、世界上有趣的事物、世界上有趣的事物。
I'm speculating here, but I think you're somewhere, at a deep level, distracted by the threat.
我在这里进行推测，但我认为你在某个地方，在深层，被威胁分散了注意力。
I could instead focus on catching up on the things I hadn't learned.
相反，我可以专注于补上我没有学到的东西。
Four years later, he was a student at Harvard on a scholarship that paid for tuition, room, and board.
四年后，他获得了哈佛大学的奖学金，以支付学费、食宿费。
From there, he went and got his PhD in economics, also from Harvard.
从那里，他同样从哈佛大学获得了经济学博士学位。
At Harvard, he met his future wife.
在哈佛，他遇到了他未来的妻子。
And from Harvard, he went to the University of Chicago, which gave him tenure at a young age.
从哈佛大学毕业后，他进入了芝加哥大学，并在年轻时获得了终身教职。
And he's now a rising star in the field of behavioral economics, all because Miss Ames read his plagiarized essay and was fooled by it.
而他现在已经成为行为经济学领域的后起之秀，这一切都是因为艾姆斯小姐读了他抄袭的论文并被它愚弄了。
I mean, it is by far the-- in everyone's life, there are many forks.
我的意思是，到目前为止，每个人的生活中都有很多分叉。
This is by far the biggest one.
这是迄今为止最大的一个。
This has made the most difference.
这带来了最大的不同。
I mean, there's no doubt that my life got onto a very different kind of a track.
我的意思是，毫无疑问我的生活走上了一条完全不同的轨道。
And I'm pretty sure that if it hadn't been for her, I would have stayed in Clarkston High School.
我很确定如果没有她，我就会留在克拉克斯顿高中。
I wouldn't have thought to apply to a private school.
我没想过要申请私立学校。
I most certainly wouldn't have gone to Harvard.
我肯定不会去哈佛。
And she gave me a piece of paper and a pen 10 years ago and said, OK, describe what you think of as the most wonderful life.
十年前她给了我一张纸和一支笔，然后说，好吧，描述一下你认为最美妙的生活。
I think I'd come up with something less good than what it actually is.
我想我会想出一些比实际情况更糟糕的东西。
It's always hard to say how your life would have turned out differently if something hadn't happened to you.
很难说如果没有发生什么事，你的生活会有何不同。
But in Emir's case, there's at least one useful reference point, his Bosnian friend, Emil.
但就埃米尔而言，至少有一个有用的参考点，那就是他的波斯尼亚朋友埃米尔。
Emil hadn't been airlifted out of Clarkston into some fancy private school.
埃米尔并没有被空运离开克拉克斯顿进入某所高档私立学校。
Instead, he dropped out of Clarkston, done some bad things, and actually spent some time in jail.
相反，他从克拉克斯顿退学，做了一些坏事，甚至在监狱里呆了一段时间。
Eventually, he went back to Bosnia-- no Miss Ames, no rescue.
最终，他回到了波斯尼亚——没有艾姆斯小姐，没有救援。
Over the years, Emir's told this story a lot.
多年来，埃米尔多次讲述过这个故事。
It might be his favorite story that he tells about himself.
这可能是他最喜欢讲述自己的故事。
It rhymes with his view of the world, that there's just this huge, accidental component to life's outcomes, that everyone owes at least some of their success not just to chance, but to other people being nice for no reason at all.
这与他的世界观相一致，即生活的结果中存在着巨大的、偶然的成分，每个人的成功至少有一部分不仅归功于偶然，还归功于其他人无缘无故的友善。
What became of Miss Ames?
艾姆斯小姐后来怎样了？
Emir Kamenica I don't know.
埃米尔·卡梅尼察 我不知道。
Turned out she didn't get the job at Paideia, so I never saw her again at Paideia.
结果她没有在派迪亚得到这份工作，所以我再也没有在派迪亚见过她。
In fact, I never saw her again.
事实上，我再也没有见过她。
At some point, the fact that Emir had no idea what had happened to this woman who'd changed his entire life started to bother him.
在某些时候，埃米尔不知道这个改变了他一生的女人发生了什么事，这一事实开始困扰着他。
It's as if the more he told the story, the more grateful he became.
就好像他越讲这个故事，他就越感激。
And the more grateful he became, the more he wanted to find her, to thank her, but also just to show her the life he had because of her.
他越是感激，就越想找到她，感谢她，但也只是想向她展示他因她而拥有的生活。
He Googled around for her, but then realized he didn't have any idea how to spell her name.
他在谷歌上搜索了她的信息，但后来意识到他不知道如何拼写她的名字。
He pestered both of his old schools, but neither of them had any record of her.
他缠着他以前的两所学校，但都没有她的记录。
No one even remembered her.
甚至没有人记得她。
His investigations, such as they were, were sort of half-assed, but what was he going to do?
他的调查确实是半途而废，但他要做什么？
Hire a private eye?
聘请私家侦探？
My name is Irving Botwinick, and my business is called Serving by Irving.
我的名字是 Irving Botwinick，我的公司名为 Serving by Irving。
That's what we do.
这就是我们所做的。
We dig them up.
我们把它们挖出来。
Actually, we have a motto.
事实上，我们有一个座右铭。
If they're alive, we serve them.
如果他们还活着，我们就会为他们服务。
If they're dead, we'll tell you where they're buried.
如果他们死了，我们会告诉你他们埋在哪里。
Irving's a private detective who serves lots of court papers.
欧文是一名私家侦探，负责送达大量法庭文件。
Since Emir wasn't going to hire one, This American Life did it for him.
由于埃米尔不打算雇用一个人，因此《美国生活》为他做了这件事。
All right, so we have somebody we need to find.
好吧，我们需要找到一个人。
OK.
好的。
Emir Kamenica All right.
埃米尔·卡梅尼察 好吧。
[CLEARS THROAT] So the person that I'd like to find is called Miss Ames.
[清嗓子]所以我想找的人叫艾姆斯小姐。
Not sure how to spell that.
不知道如何拼写。
I have reasons to think, I can mention later, that she was married, at least the last time I saw her, which was in 1993 in Atlanta, Georgia.
我有理由认为，我稍后会提到，她已经结婚了，至少我最后一次见到她时是这样，那是 1993 年在佐治亚州亚特兰大。
Emir went on to explain in great detail that he knew basically nothing about her-- height, weight, eye color, all a mystery.
埃米尔接着详细解释说，他对她基本上一无所知——身高、体重、眼睛颜色，全都是个谜。
When Irving asked him what she looked like, he said, quote, "She was neither particularly skinny, nor fat.
当欧文问他她长什么样时，他说：“她既不是特别瘦，也不是特别胖。
Not particularly short, nor tall.
不是特别矮，也不是特别高。
She looked normal," he said.
她看起来很正常，”他说。
About the only thing he remembers about her is what she'd done for him.
关于她，他唯一记得的就是她为他所做的一切。
Irving thought the full-time English teacher would be a good place to start, but Emir didn't remember her name either.
欧文认为全职英语老师是一个很好的起点，但埃米尔也不记得她的名字。
Did you have a class book for that year?
你有那一年的课本吗？
Oh, no. No. Michael Lewis Somehow, Irving seemed to find what Emir was saying useful.
哦，不。不。迈克尔·刘易斯 不知何故，欧文似乎发现埃米尔所说的很有用。
He wrote little notes to himself about what I do not know.
他给自己写了一些关于我不知道的事情的小笔记。
But at the top of the page, he wrote Miss Ames.
但在这页的顶部，他写下了艾姆斯小姐。
Then he wrote a big question mark.
然后他写了一个大大的问号。
Then he asked Emir to go away and write down everything he could remember from that period of his life.
然后他请埃米尔离开并写下他在那段生活中所记得的一切。
But before he lifted a finger to find Miss Ames he said, he needed to do a character check on Emir.
但他说，在他举手去找艾姆斯小姐之前，他需要对埃米尔进行性格检查。
Because a lot of times, investigators get cases where they're trying to track somebody down, and then they go and they kill them.
因为很多时候，调查人员在接到案件时试图追查某人，然后他们就去杀了他们。
So we have to sort of verify what you're telling us is the truth as well.
因此，我们必须验证您告诉我们的内容是否属实。
So Irving, let's just assume that the facts are as bare as they sound.
所以欧文，让我们假设事实就像听起来一样赤裸裸。
Is it hopeless?
难道就没有希望了吗？
No. There's nobody I can't find, I'll put it that way.
不，我找不到任何人，我会这么说。
I could have found Osama bin Laden if they paid me enough to do it.
如果他们付给我足够的钱我就能找到奥萨马·本·拉登。
So how long do you need to do your search?
那么您需要多长时间进行搜索？
When can we expect to be sitting down in a room with Miss Ames?
我们什么时候可以和艾姆斯小姐坐在一个房间里？
Oh, probably before the end of the month, before the end of February.
噢，可能是月底之前，二月底之前。
The end of February came and went.
二月底来了又过去了。
March came and went too, without the slightest trace of Miss Ames.
三月也来了又去，艾姆斯小姐却不见踪影。
It wasn't for lack of trying.
这并不是因为缺乏尝试。
Irving had put his best agent on the case, a woman named Gabriela Galindo.
欧文派了他最好的代理人来处理此案，一位名叫加布里埃拉·加林多（Gabriela Galindo）的女士。
The first thing Gabriela did was to try the public school, but only two teachers who had been there in 1993 were still around.
加布里埃拉做的第一件事就是尝试去公立学校，但现在只剩下两名 1993 年在那里的老师了。
And they had no recollection of not even the English teacher, not even the English teacher.
而且他们连英语老师都没有记忆，连英语老师都没有。
She hired a local detective to go to Clarkston to get the yearbook, but they wouldn't give him one.
她雇了一名当地侦探去克拉克斯顿取年鉴，但他们不给他。
She learned that the Georgia Department of Education keeps a list of all the teachers ever certified in the state, but she couldn't get access to the list.
她了解到佐治亚州教育部保留了该州所有获得认证的教师名单，但她无法访问该名单。
She called nearby colleges to search lists of graduates from the 1990s, still no sign of Miss Ames.
她给附近的大学打电话寻找 90 年代毕业生的名单，仍然没有艾姆斯小姐的踪影。
Out of desperation, she hunted down all the old phone books from the region from the 1990s.
出于绝望，她找到了该地区 20 世纪 90 年代的所有旧电话簿。
These are copies of the phone books that we received going back from 1990 to 1993 of all the people in the greater Atlanta area with the last name Ames, which is a very, very common name, we found.
这些是我们从 1990 年到 1993 年收到的电话簿副本，其中记录了大亚特兰大地区所有姓艾姆斯的人，我们发现这是一个非常非常常见的名字。
And roughly, how many people were there?
大概有多少人？
Oh, my god.
我的天啊。
Oh, hundreds.
哦，数百个。
Michael Lewis And you weren't even sure her name was Ames.
迈克尔·刘易斯：你甚至不确定她的名字叫艾姆斯。
Correct.
正确的。
That's the other thing.
那是另一回事。
That's the other thing.
那是另一回事。
We weren't sure.
我们不确定。
They called every Ames on the list, all these hundreds of names.
他们叫出了名单上的每一个艾姆斯，总共数百个名字。
Still didn't find her.
还是没有找到她。
And it was starting to feel just a little bit weird.
我开始感觉有点奇怪。
A lot of the people Irving goes hunting for don't want to be found, but he finds them anyway.
欧文寻找的很多人都不想被发现，但他还是找到了他们。
Here was someone with no obvious reason not to want to be found, and she'd vanished without a trace.
这是一个没有明显理由不想被发现的人，而她却消失得无影无踪。
After a couple of months of this, you couldn't help but wonder, why was this woman the most difficult person on Earth to find?
几个月后，你不禁会想，为什么这个女人是地球上最难找到的人？
Was it because she wasn't an earthly creature?
是因为她不是地球生物吗？
Not once, but twice this boy had found himself in a world more intent on destroying him than in building him up.
这个男孩不止一次，而是两次发现自己置身于一个更想毁灭他而不是造就他的世界。
Maybe he needed evidence that people weren't all bad.
也许他需要证据证明人们并不都是坏人。
Maybe that's where angels always come from.
也许这就是天使总是来自的地方。
Is this Miss Ames?
这是艾姆斯小姐吗？
Miss Ames Yes, it is.
艾姆斯小姐 是的，是的。
Oh, my goodness.
哦，我的天啊。
It's like finding a ghost, finding you.
就像找到鬼一样，找到你。
It's a pleasure to hear your voice.
很高兴听到你的声音。
Thank you.
谢谢。
Michael Lewis It's just the two of us talking.
迈克尔·刘易斯：只有我们两个人在说话。
Emir isn't in the conversation yet.
埃米尔尚未参与谈话。
I'm going to call you Miss Ames, because I don't want to think of you as anything but Miss Ames.
我会叫你艾姆斯小姐，因为除了艾姆斯小姐，我不想把你看作任何其他人。
I'd much rather be thought of as Lauren.
我更愿意被认为是劳伦。
It's a lot sexier.
这更性感了。
Well, you know, we didn't actually think of you as a sex object when we were thinking of Miss Ames.
好吧，你知道，当我们想到艾姆斯小姐时，我们实际上并没有把你视为性对象。
We thought of you as an angel coming out of the sky.
我们把你视为从天而降的天使。
Well, that's good too.
嗯，那也很好。
Michael Lewis Here's how they found her.
迈克尔·刘易斯 他们是这样找到她的。
Gabriela finally got her hands on that list of all the teachers certified in the state of Georgia.
加布里埃拉终于拿到了佐治亚州所有获得认证的教师名单。
She noticed one of the women named Ames had allowed her certification to lapse.
她注意到一位名叫艾姆斯的女性允许她的认证失效。
This one Ames, she tracked down in West Virginia and left messages for her saying only that she was looking for an English teacher on behalf of a former student.
她在西弗吉尼亚州找到了这个艾姆斯，并给她留言，只说她正在为一名以前的学生寻找一名英语老师。
And I immediately knew.
我立刻就知道了。
She didn't mention Emir's name.
她没有提到埃米尔的名字。
I just knew.
我刚刚知道。
It never crossed my mind that it would be anybody but Emir, frankly.
坦率地说，我从来没想过除了埃米尔之外还有其他人。
I mean, I knew one day he'd be a famous something.
我的意思是，我知道有一天他会成为一名名人。
The basic plan was to fly Miss Ames to Chicago to meet Emir, but I wanted to ask her what she remembered before Emir had a chance to tell her what she should remember.
基本计划是让艾姆斯小姐飞往芝加哥与埃米尔会面，但我想在埃米尔有机会告诉她应该记住什么之前问她还记得什么。
She told me that she was 36 years old when she arrived at Clarkston High as a student teacher.
她告诉我，当她来到克拉克斯顿高中担任见习老师时，她已经 36 岁了。
She'd recently married a man named Chris Ames, and they decided they wouldn't have children of their own.
她最近嫁给了一个名叫克里斯·艾姆斯的男人，他们决定不再有自己的孩子。
She thinks that maybe the faint regrets of that decision made her want to go out of her way to help some kid.
她认为，也许是对这个决定的微弱后悔让她想不遗余力地帮助某个孩子。
Anyway, she noticed this extremely talented boy in her class and watched him, not for two weeks as an intern, as Emir had told me, but for many months, an entire semester in which she was put in charge of his class, she says, as his full-time English teacher.
不管怎样，她在班上注意到了这个非常有才华的男孩，并观察了他，不是像埃米尔告诉我的那样，作为实习生看了两周，而是看了好几个月，整个学期，她说，她作为他的全职英语老师负责他的班级。
And how was Emir's English at the time?
埃米尔当时的英语怎么样？
It was tremendous.
这是巨大的。
It was absolutely tremendous, really, really good.
这绝对是巨大的，真的，真的很棒。
There were other differences in their stories.
他们的故事还有其他差异。
For example, Emir said the public school was terrifying and useless.
例如，埃米尔说公立学校可怕且无用。
Miss Ames didn't agree.
艾姆斯小姐不同意。
Well certainly, there were drugs.
当然，有毒品。
And I'm sure there was some violence, but it wasn't a ghetto school.
我确信存在一些暴力，但那不是一所贫民窟学校。
No, it was a quirky, quasi-city, quasi-suburban school that had a great student body that was interesting because they were from so many different places.
不，这是一所古怪的、准城市、准郊区的学校，它有一个很棒的学生群体，这很有趣，因为他们来自很多不同的地方。
By that, she means from all over the world-- Kenya, Somalia, Bosnia, Vietnam, Korea.
她指的是来自世界各地的人——肯尼亚、索马里、波斯尼亚、越南、韩国。
The place was like a teenage UN, in her telling.
用她的话说，这个地方就像一个十几岁的联合国。
But the most glaring gap between their two stories was a central plot point, the key moment, the plagiarized essay.
但他们两个故事之间最明显的差距是中心情节点、关键时刻、抄袭的文章。
In Emir's version, it's what saves him.
在埃米尔的版本中，这就是拯救他的东西。
But Miss Ames doesn't even remember it.
但艾姆斯小姐根本不记得了。
She recalls the moment she decided to move him to private school this way.
她回忆起她决定以这种方式把他转到私立学校的那一刻。
Well, actually, I think it was the day that he diagrammed sentences for me on the blackboard for the rest of the students.
嗯，实际上，我认为那天他为我在黑板上为其他学生画了句子。
[LAUGHS] I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out how to make them learn it.
[笑]我一生都无法弄清楚如何让他们学习它。
And it was just mind-numbingly boring.
这实在是太无聊了。
And Emir said to me, you know, I really think I can explain this, and they'll understand it.
埃米尔对我说，你知道，我真的认为我可以解释这一点，他们会理解的。
So he took over.
于是他接手了。
And it was a great class, and he did a wonderful job.
这是一堂很棒的课，他做得也很棒。
And it just occurred to me, right there on the spot, this kid is just capable of so much more than this school can offer him.
我就在现场突然想到，这个孩子的能力远远超出了这所学校所能提供给他的。
Still, no essay.
仍然没有论文。
I give her a little nudge.
我轻轻推了她一下。
And do you remember any particular piece of work he did?
您还记得他做过的任何具体工作吗？
When you think back of his work as a student, did anything in particular catch your attention?
当你回想起他学生时代的工作时，有什么特别引起你注意的吗？
He wrote an essay about losing his dad in Bosnia and his family coming to America.
他写了一篇关于在波斯尼亚失去父亲和家人来到美国的文章。
That was incredibly moving and beautifully written.
那真是令人难以置信的感人且写得非常漂亮。
Huh.
呵呵。
It sounds like a different essay, but at least it's an essay.
这听起来像是一篇不同的论文，但至少它是一篇论文。
But as soon as she brings up the essay, she drops it.
但她一提起这篇文章，就又扔掉了。
We took a stab, I remember, at poetry in that class, and he was very good at that.
我记得，我们在那堂课上尝试了诗歌，他非常擅长这一点。
He understood meter right away.
他立刻就明白了米。
But I did speak with his math and science teachers, and they said that he was working at a level that was beyond anything that was taught, even in the senior year at the AP level, and that they just were trying to find things to give him to do because he was just so advanced.
但我确实和他的数学和科学老师谈过，他们说他的工作水平超出了所教的任何水平，即使是在 AP 级别的高年级，他们只是试图找到让他做的事情，因为他太先进了。
The essay on which Emir has based his entire life story had nothing to do with her decision to help him.
埃米尔的整个人生故事所依据的这篇文章与她帮助他的决定无关。
That much was clear.
这已经很清楚了。
It was also clear that Miss Ames hadn't grabbed him on some mistaken whim, but only after observing his rare combination of genius and kindness for months.
很明显，艾姆斯小姐并不是出于某种错误的心血来潮而抓住他的，而是在观察了他几个月来罕见的天才与善良的结合之后才开始的。
And then she'd gone and created a battle plan to move him out of public school and into private.
然后她制定了一项作战计划，将他从公立学校转入私立学校。
She didn't ever have any job interview at the private school.
她从未在私立学校接受过任何工作面试。
She thinks maybe she told him that just to avoid getting his hopes up.
她想也许她告诉他这些只是为了避免让他抱太大希望。
I had done a lot of investigation.
我做了很多调查。
I met with my colleagues over there, and sent records over, and made a lot of sales pitches, and was told that there may not be enough scholarship money.
我和那边的同事见了面，发了唱片，做了很多推销，被告知奖学金可能不够。
It was kind of late, this and that, but I kept pushing and pushing.
虽然已经很晚了，但我还是继续努力。
And finally, we got him an appointment over there.
最后，我们给他预约了那里。
It isn't just the details that conflict here, it's the whole moral of the story.
这里冲突的不仅仅是细节，还有整个故事的寓意。
Miss Ames doesn't believe for a minute that she made all that much of a difference to Emir.
艾姆斯小姐一点也不相信她给埃米尔带来了那么大的改变。
She thinks he was so ridiculously gifted that he would've gone on to greater things, even if he'd stayed at Clarkston.
她认为他的天赋实在是太可笑了，即使他留在克拉克斯顿，他也会继续做更伟大的事情。
Well, you know, frankly, he didn't even need to go to high school.
嗯，你知道，坦率地说，他甚至不需要上高中。
He could have gone straight to college.
他本来可以直接上大学。
He just needed to grow up.
他只需要长大。
I mean, I'm not joking.
我的意思是，我不是在开玩笑。
I just don't think any teacher would get another student like Emir in a lifetime.
我只是认为任何老师一生中都不会再遇到像埃米尔这样的学生。
I had my once-in-a-lifetime student right off the bat.
我立刻就有了我一生一次的学生。
Did you feel any impulse to get back in touch with him?
你有没有想要和他重新取得联系的冲动？
No, let the chicks fly.
不，让小鸡飞吧。
I'm not really a kid person.
我真的不是一个小孩子。
Sorry.
对不起。
[LAUGHS] No. You know, we had our own lives, and I wanted him to have his life.
[笑]不。你知道，我们有自己的生活，我希望他有他的生活。
And I didn't earn his way into Paideia or Harvard, he did it.
我没有通过他的努力进入派迪亚或哈佛，而是他做到了。
It's his accomplishment.
这是他的成就。
What happens when the story a person is telling about his life gets fact checked?
当一个人讲述的关于他的生活的故事得到事实核查时会发生什么？
I don't mean what happens when you say you graduated from college when you actually didn't.
我并不是说当你说你大学毕业而实际上没有毕业时会发生什么。
And your employer finds out, and you get fired.
你的雇主发现了，你就被解雇了。
I mean, what happens when you really want to believe your life story was this.
我的意思是，当你真的想相信你的人生故事就是这样时，会发生什么。
And then you get told by someone who knows better, nope, actually it wasn't this, it was that?
然后你会被更了解的人告诉你，不，实际上不是这个，是那个？
I know you're honest.
我知道你很诚实。
A few weeks later, Miss Ames and I meet up in Chicago.
几周后，艾姆斯小姐和我在芝加哥见面。
We're visiting Emir at his job at the University of Chicago Business School.
我们正在芝加哥大学商学院拜访埃米尔。
Up until the time she got our call, the only way Miss Ames has even tried to keep track of Emir is by checking the list of Nobel Prize winners each year to see if his name is on it.
在接到我们的电话之前，艾姆斯小姐试图追踪埃米尔的唯一方法就是每年检查诺贝尔奖获得者名单，看看他的名字是否在上面。
And oddly enough, it's not a totally crazy way to try to keep track of him.
奇怪的是，试图追踪他并不是一种完全疯狂的方式。
He hasn't gotten the Nobel Prize yet, but he's the sort of person who might.
他还没有获得诺贝尔奖，但他是那种有可能获得诺贝尔奖的人。
His colleagues say he's brilliant, and half of them already have gotten the Nobel Prize.
他的同事们都说他很聪明，其中一半人已经获得了诺贝尔奖。
Excuse me, where can we get an elevator to the fifth floor?
请问，我们在哪里可以乘电梯到五楼？
The Chicago Business School feels less like a school than the headquarters of a highly successful corporation or maybe a Swiss resort.
芝加哥商学院给人的感觉不太像一所学校，而更像是一家非常成功的公司的总部，或者可能是一个瑞士度假胜地。
This way.
这边走。
There he is.
他就在那里。
Emir Kamenica Hi.
埃米尔·卡梅尼察 你好。
--gorgeous.
- 华丽的。
Ira Glass OK.
艾拉·格拉斯 好的。
And at that point, we have to take a break.
到那时，我们必须休息一下。
What happens when Emir and Miss Ames sit down and compare notes about his past?
当埃米尔和艾姆斯小姐坐下来交换关于他的过去的笔记时，会发生什么？
Michael Lewis will be back with that in just one minute, from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues.
当我们的节目继续进行时，迈克尔·刘易斯将在一分钟后从芝加哥公共广播电台返回。
It's This American Life.
这就是美国生活。
I'm Ira Glass.
我是艾拉·格拉斯。
Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, bring you different kinds of stories on that theme.
当然，我们每周的节目都会选择一个主题，为您带来有关该主题的不同类型的故事。
Today's show, "How I Got Into College." We first aired this show a few years back.
今天的节目是《我是如何考上大学的》。几年前我们首次播出了这个节目。
Michael Lewis, if you heard before the break, he's telling the story of two people who are seeing each other again for the very first time in two decades.
迈克尔·刘易斯（Michael Lewis），如果你在休息前听过的话，他正在讲述两个人二十年来第一次再次见面的故事。
And let's just pick up right where we left off before the break.
让我们从休息前停下的地方继续。
Hi.
你好。
Miss Ames --gorgeous.
艾姆斯小姐——美丽极了。
It's wonderful to see you after all this time.
这么久之后见到你真是太好了。
Indeed.
的确。
Indeed.
的确。
Miss Ames Thanks, for having us.
艾姆斯小姐谢谢你邀请我们。
Emir and Miss Ames make awkward chit chat for a few minutes, and then we all go into his office to talk.
埃米尔和艾姆斯小姐尴尬地闲聊了几分钟，然后我们都走进他的办公室交谈。
There's a giant, vaguely familiar painting on one of the walls.
其中一面墙上有一幅巨大的、依稀熟悉的画作。
Emir explains that it's a forgery by some guy in China who specializes in them.
埃米尔解释说，这是中国某个专门研究它们的人伪造的。
Miss Ames is more interested in his coffee table.
艾姆斯小姐对他的咖啡桌更感兴趣。
Do you know my parents had that exact same coffee table in our house growing up?
你知道我父母从小就在家里有一张一模一样的咖啡桌吗？
But this is a knockoff.
但这是仿冒品。
Michael Lewis That's a knockoff.
迈克尔·刘易斯 那是山寨货。
Yeah, it's a knockoff.
是的，这是一个仿制品。
Miss Ames It's a knockoff, but it is beautiful.
艾姆斯小姐，虽然是仿制品，但很漂亮。
Well, it's a very poorly done knockoff Noguchi.
好吧，这是一个做得非常糟糕的山寨野口。
Yes.
是的。
Emir Kamenica You can tell it's not real, so I don't think it counts as plagiarism.
Emir Kamenica：你可以看出这不是真的，所以我认为这不算抄袭。
Anything else around here that's not what it purports to be?
这里还有什么不是它所声称的那样的东西吗？
We eventually settle into Emir's office and turn our attention to Emir's memories, which, thanks to Miss Ames, are suddenly a little problematic themselves.
我们最终在埃米尔的办公室安顿下来，并将注意力转向埃米尔的记忆，多亏了艾姆斯小姐，这些记忆本身突然有点问题了。
He tells his story all over again until he gets to what he sees as its biggest turning point.
他一遍又一遍地讲述他的故事，直到他看到了他认为最大的转折点。
So I try to put down, to the extent which I could, word for word, this beautiful passage from this accomplished writer.
因此，我试图尽我所能，逐字逐句地写下这位杰出作家的这段美丽的段落。
He doesn't change any of the facts, but his tone is just a tiny bit less certain, maybe because he sees Miss Ames writhing in her chair.
他没有改变任何事实，但他的语气只是有点不太确定，也许是因为他看到艾姆斯小姐在椅子上扭动。
Yeah.
是的。
I mouthed to you, he plagiarized it.
我用嘴对你说，他抄袭了。
I'm horrified.
我很害怕。
I'm truly horrified.
我真的很害怕。
No one wants to be duped.
没有人愿意被欺骗。
Here's the safest way to plagiarize-- do it in the distant past.
这是最安全的抄袭方式——在遥远的过去进行。
The teacher is no longer capable of getting angry about it, and the plagiarist is no longer even faintly embarrassed.
老师再也没有资格生气，抄袭者也不再感到一丝尴尬。
Emir finishes his story with the same punchline, in that brief moment, Miss Ames mistakes him for a genius and gets him into a school that gets him into Harvard.
埃米尔用同样的妙语结束了他的故事，在那短暂的时刻，艾姆斯小姐误认为他是天才，并让他进入一所学校，让他进入哈佛。
But Miss Ames is now shaking her head.
但艾姆斯小姐现在却摇摇头。
It didn't happen that fast, though.
不过，事情并没有那么快发生。
It was April when we went.
我们去的时候是四月。
You know, I'd already worked with you for a couple of months when we went in to see--
你知道，当我们进去看看时，我已经和你一起工作了几个月了——
Do you remember that?
你还记得吗？
Miss Ames --to see the people at Paideia.
艾姆斯小姐——去看望派迪亚的人们。
I'd seen a lot more work than just one essay.
我看到的作品不仅仅是一篇论文。
And seeing what he could do in class on a daily basis was more impressive to me.
看到他每天在课堂上能做的事情给我留下了更深刻的印象。
It's about now that Emir begins to see that Miss Ames is screwing up his life story.
埃米尔现在开始发现艾姆斯小姐正在搞砸他的人生故事。
The plagiarized essay is the key to the thing.
抄袭论文是事情的关键。
Without it, his story and his life isn't about luck and chance and the guiding hand of a guardian angel he didn't deserve, it's about something else.
没有它，他的故事和他的生活就不是关于运气和机会，也不是关于他不值得的守护天使的指导，而是关于其他事情。
And he doesn't want it to be about something else.
他不希望事情与其他事情有关。
I recognize that my memory of it is somewhat spotty, but I do have what seems like a pretty distinct memory of the essay sort of triggering the conversation that, you should get out of this school, followed very closely on the heels--
我承认我对它的记忆有点参差不齐，但我确实对这篇文章有一个相当清晰的记忆，引发了这样的对话，你应该离开这所学校，紧随其后——
It may have, but I was already convinced.
可能有，但我已经确信了。
--of the essay.
——论文的内容。
Miss Ames I promise you.
艾姆斯小姐我向你保证。
So it still could have been the proximate cause, even if not the deep cause.
因此，即使不是深层原因，它仍然可能是直接原因。
OK.
好的。
Michael Lewis But not really.
迈克尔·刘易斯 但事实并非如此。
There's a bunch of stuff, she says, which he can't bring himself to accept.
她说，有很多事情他无法让自己接受。
For instance, that the school she pulled him out of wasn't an educational dead end, but an interesting and diverse place in which he could have gotten a great education.
例如，她把他从学校拉出来的学校并不是教育的死胡同，而是一个有趣且多样化的地方，他可以在那里接受良好的教育。
I remember the racial mix as being very few-- I remember being one of 12 white kids in a school of 900.
我记得种族混合的情况很少——我记得我是一所 900 名学生中的 12 个白人孩子之一。
That's not right?
这不对吧？
I think it was probably more 40% African American, 40% international and kids from all over the world.
我认为可能有超过 40% 的非裔美国人、40% 的国际人士和来自世界各地的孩子。
And about 20% of the kids were white kids who were longtime Clarkston residents.
大约 20% 的孩子是长期居住在克拉克斯顿的白人孩子。
Family after family lived there.
一个又一个的家庭住在那里。
That's certainly not my recollection.
这当然不是我的记忆。
But then again, this is a matter for research rather than debate.
但话又说回来，这是一个需要研究而不是争论的问题。
It's probably easy to check.
可能很容易检查。
Here it is, a single objective fact that they disagree about that can be checked, a fact that might shed light on whose version of this story is more strictly true.
在这里，他们不同意的一个客观事实可以被检查，这个事实可能会揭示谁的故事版本更严格地真实。
So later, we checked it.
所以后来我们查了一下。
The school district couldn't give us statistics for the year Emir was there, but they have them for the following year.
学区无法向我们提供埃米尔在那一年的统计数据，但他们有第二年的统计数据。
Emir's estimate that he was one of a dozen white kids in the school leaves out, oh, roughly 200 other white kids.
埃米尔估计他是学校里十几个白人孩子之一，遗漏了，哦，还有大约 200 个其他白人孩子。
They made up 17% of the school, pretty close to Miss Ames' estimate.
他们占学校人数的 17%，与艾姆斯小姐的估计相当接近。
Emir listens politely to Miss Ames' account of how and why she helped him and how and why it didn't actually matter all that much, as he was clearly destined for great things.
埃米尔礼貌地聆听艾姆斯小姐讲述她如何以及为何帮助他，以及如何以及为什么这实际上并不那么重要，因为他显然注定要成就伟大的事业。
You would have gotten into the honors program at UGA from Clarkston or gone to Georgia Tech.
你本来可以从克拉克斯顿进入佐治亚大学的荣誉课程，或者去佐治亚理工学院。
And from an undergraduate degree in the honors program at UGA or Georgia Tech, you could have gotten into Harvard for a PhD, or Chicago, or Stanford.
如果你获得了佐治亚大学或佐治亚理工学院荣誉课程的本科学位，你本可以进入哈佛大学、芝加哥大学或斯坦福大学攻读博士学位。
I mean, it's doable.
我的意思是，这是可行的。
It happens.
它发生了。
I know people who've done it.
我认识做过这事的人。
If Emir cares what Miss Ames thinks, he's doing a pretty good job of hiding his interest.
如果埃米尔关心艾姆斯小姐的想法，那么他在隐藏自己的兴趣方面做得很好。
It isn't until she describes what happened after she helped him out that he becomes truly excited.
直到她描述了她帮助他之后发生的事情，他才真正兴奋起来。
There were quite a few people at the school who weren't thrilled with the fact that I poached their best student, so they sent me to the absolute worst school in the county and put me under the new principal there, who had been the assistant principal at Clarkston.
学校里有相当多的人对我挖走了他们最好的学生这一事实感到不高兴，所以他们把我送到了县里绝对最差的学校，并把我安置在那里的新校长手下，他曾是克拉克斯顿的副校长。
And he brought me in his office and said, you know, you've got a lot of high-minded ideas, and you don't know what you're talking about, and it's going to be my job to break you in, and you're going to learn how to do this right, and so forth and so on.
他把我带到他的办公室，说，你知道，你有很多高尚的想法，但你不知道自己在说什么，我的工作就是让你融入，你将学习如何正确地做到这一点，等等。
And it was really rough year.
那一年真的很艰难。
He did break me in.
他确实闯入了我。
In fact, he broke me because I quit.
事实上，他因为我辞职而伤害了我。
I couldn't take it anymore.
我再也受不了了。
So he did this because you had poached Emir from the school?
所以他这么做是因为你从学校挖走了埃米尔？
For helping Emir to move from the public school to the private school, Miss Ames was more or less driven out of teaching.
由于帮助埃米尔从公立学校转到私立学校，艾姆斯小姐或多或少被赶出了教学岗位。
She quit, changed careers, and eventually moved with her husband to West Virginia, where she's now an interior designer.
她辞职了，改变了职业，最终与丈夫搬到了西弗吉尼亚州，现在她在那里担任室内设计师。
I mean, wait.
我的意思是，等等。
So to get this right, you are telling me not only did you go through all of this trouble, but--
所以为了解决这个问题，你告诉我你不仅经历了所有这些麻烦，而且——
Why is it not fair?
为什么不公平？
It's incredibly important.
这非常重要。
It transforms what-- you know, this is just changing by the minute from my conceptualization of, you know, well, you know, we-- for two weeks, you said, you should go to this place.
它改变了——你知道，这只是在改变我的概念，你知道，嗯，你知道，我们——两周以来，你说，你应该去这个地方。
It was fantastic.
太棒了。
It made all the difference.
它使一切变得不同。
That's enough, because that changed my life.
这就足够了，因为这改变了我的生活。
So what I'm learning only now is that you did all of these things, and then that you were basically cast out of the apparent paradise, which is Clarkston, which I still find a little doubling, increasing by an order of magnitude what was already an enormous amount of gratitude.
所以我现在才了解到的是，你做了所有这些事情，然后你基本上被赶出了表面上的天堂，即克拉克斯顿，我仍然发现它加倍了，增加了一个数量级，而这本来就已经是巨大的感激之情。
That night, Emir invited Miss Ames to his house for dinner and to meet his wife and 18-month-old daughter.
那天晚上，埃米尔邀请艾姆斯小姐到他家吃晚饭，并会见他的妻子和 18 个月大的女儿。
He wanted to show her the life that he never would have had if not for her.
他想向她展示如果没有她他永远不会拥有的生活。
Much, much later, after dinner and drinks, and more drinks, and after he's passed out some stiff cocktail from the old country, I ask Emir how it'll change his life story, now that he's heard what actually happened.
很久很久以后，在吃完晚饭、喝了一杯又喝了更多酒之后，在他喝了一些来自故乡的烈性鸡尾酒之后，我问埃米尔，既然他已经听说了实际发生的事情，这将如何改变他的人生故事。
He said he'd incorporate the fact that Miss Ames got punished for helping him, which of course only makes the story better.
他说他会加入艾姆斯小姐因帮助他而受到惩罚的事实，这当然只会让故事变得更好。
She's now not only an angel, but a martyr.
她现在不仅是一个天使，而且是一个烈士。
But what about the plagiarized essay from the stolen library book on which the whole story turns?
但是，整个故事的起点是那篇被盗的图书馆书籍中抄袭的文章呢？
I mean, suppose that the story was-- just let's kind of do a thought experiment-- there was no recollection of the essay, none whatsoever.
我的意思是，假设这个故事——让我们做一个思想实验——没有对这篇文章的回忆，没有任何记忆。
I wouldn't enjoy telling the story about the essay at that point.
那时我不喜欢讲述这篇文章的故事。
Wait.
等待。
We don't have to do that thought experiment.
我们不必做那个思想实验。
That's what really happened.
这就是真正发生的事情。
Miss Ames actually didn't remember the essay.
艾姆斯小姐实际上不记得那篇文章了。
Emir's already forgotten that fact.
埃米尔已经忘记了这个事实。
I wasn't convinced by the alternative account.
我不相信替代帐户。
Genuinely, because it was so apparent that I was also diagramming sentences, which does make a far worse story, dramatically speaking.
说实话，因为太明显了，我也在用图解表达句子，戏剧性地说，这确实让故事变得更糟。
I diagrammed this sentence.
我把这句话画了图。
And boy, you know how well I diagrammed it?
孩子，你知道我把它画得有多好吗？
It was just fantastic.
太棒了。
I mean, the verbs, and the nouns, and the adjectives, and the adverbs were all just separate.
我的意思是，动词、名词、形容词和副词都是分开的。
I didn't really see the point of torturing Emir any further.
我真的不认为进一步折磨埃米尔有什么意义。
He needed his story to be what it was, and so he was sticking to it.
他需要让他的故事成为现实，所以他坚持下去。
The question was, why?
问题是，为什么？
What did it do for him?
这对他有什么作用？
Why does a man who makes his career as a scientist cling to his story, in spite of evidence that it isn't true?
为什么一个以科学家为职业的人坚持自己的故事，尽管有证据表明这不是真的？
And that's when it dawns on me, Emir Kamenica is just an unusually happy human being.
就在那时，我突然意识到，埃米尔·卡梅尼察只是一个异常快乐的人。
He exudes the emotion from every pore.
他的每一个毛孔都散发着情感。
Have you always been happy?
你一直都很快乐吗？
Emir Kamenica I think I've been happy for a pretty long time now.
埃米尔·卡梅尼察（Emir Kamenica） 我想我已经快乐了很长一段时间了。
Now, there's no obvious connection between a person's happiness and the way he tells stories about himself, but I think there's a not so obvious one.
现在，一个人的幸福感和他讲述自己故事的方式之间并没有明显的联系，但我认为存在着一种不那么明显的联系。
When you insist the way that Emir does that you're both lucky and indebted to other people, well, you're sort of prepared to see life as a happy accident, aren't you?
当你坚持埃米尔的做法时，你既幸运又受惠于他人，那么，你就已经准备好将生活视为一场幸福的意外，不是吗？
It's just very different than if you tell yourself that you simply deserve all the good stuff that happens to you because you happen to be born a genius, or suffered so much, or worked so hard.
这与你告诉自己你应该得到发生在你身上的所有美好事物是非常不同的，因为你碰巧生来就是天才，或者遭受了如此多的苦难，或者工作如此努力。
That way of telling the story-- well, that's what you hear from every miserable bond trader at Goldman Sachs, or for that matter, every other A-hole who ever walked the earth.
这种讲述故事的方式——好吧，这就是你从高盛每一个悲惨的债券交易员那里听到的，或者就此而言，从地球上每一个走过的混蛋那里听到的。
It's at this exact moment when the subject of happiness comes up that Emir's wife, Yelena, becomes very interested.
正是在这个时刻，当幸福这个话题出现时，埃米尔的妻子叶莲娜变得非常感兴趣。
Both I know it and all of my friends know that he's the happiest person that we've met.
我知道，我所有的朋友都知道，他是我们见过的最幸福的人。
You can't fake it.
你无法伪造它。
You can't decide that I'm just going to be happy, because it will unravel very quickly.
你不能决定我会快乐，因为它很快就会崩溃。
And you will find reasons to be grumpy.
你会找到脾气暴躁的理由。
The reason her husband's so happy, she thinks, has to do with the way he filters the world around him, the way he decides not just what to think about, but how to think about it.
她认为，她丈夫如此幸福的原因与他过滤周围世界的方式有关，他不仅决定思考什么，还决定如何思考它。
She says she sees him do this all the time.
她说她经常看到他这样做。
It's a micro decision.
这是一个微观决定。
I've seen him get some news and decide how to feel about that.
我见过他得到一些消息并决定对此有何感受。
It's a practiced decision, but I still observed Emir making that decision.
这是一个经过实践的决定，但我仍然观察到埃米尔做出了这个决定。
And I've tried to crack that code by living with him.
我试图通过和他住在一起来破解这个密码。
[CHUCKLES]
[笑声]
Crack what code?
破解什么密码？
Yelena The code of happiness, making that decision of how you're going to feel about something.
Yelena 幸福的密码，决定你对某事的感受。
These stories we tell about ourselves, they're almost like our infrastructure, like railroads or highways.
我们讲述的这些关于我们自己的故事，它们几乎就像我们的基础设施，如铁路或高速公路。
We can build them almost any way we want to.
我们几乎可以用任何我们想要的方式来构建它们。
But once they're in place, this whole inner landscape grows up around them.
但一旦他们就位，整个内在景观就会在他们周围成长。
So maybe the point here is that you should be careful about how you tell your story, or at least conscious of it.
所以也许这里的要点是你应该小心讲述你的故事的方式，或者至少意识到这一点。
Because once you've told it, once you've built the highway, it's just very hard to move it.
因为一旦你告诉了它，一旦你修建了高速公路，就很难移动它。
Even if your story is about an angel who came out of nowhere and saved your life, even then, not even the angel herself can change it.
即使你的故事是关于一个不知从何而来并拯救了你生命的天使，即使如此，即使是天使本人也无法改变它。
Michael Lewis.
迈克尔·刘易斯.
His newest book is called The Coming Storm.
他的最新著作名为《即将到来的风暴》。
It is only available as an audio book.
它仅作为有声读物提供。
Is this the future, friends?
朋友们，这就是未来吗？
It's available exclusively on audible.com.
它仅在 audible.com 上提供。
Emir and his wife, Yelena, now have two little kids.
埃米尔和他的妻子叶莲娜现在有两个小孩。
They're still in Chicago.
他们还在芝加哥。
[MUSIC - THE QUEERS, "I WANNA BE HAPPY"]
[音乐 - 酷儿们，“我想要快乐”]
(SINGING) I wanna be happy.
（唱歌）我想要快乐。
I don't wanna be sad.
我不想悲伤。
I wanna be a good boy.
我想做一个好孩子。
I don't wanna be bad.
我不想做坏事。
I wanna be happy, yeah, I wanna be happy so bad.
我想要快乐，是的，我非常想要快乐。
I wanna be happy, yeah, I really do, but everybody's saying I'm no good for you.
我想快乐，是的，我真的很想，但每个人都说我不适合你。
They know I'm a cretin and I know it's true, but I don't care.
他们知道我是个白痴，我也知道这是真的，但我不在乎。
Our program was produced today by Nancy Updike and myself, with Alex Blumberg, Ben Calhoun, Sarah Koenig, Miki Meek, Jonathan Menjivar, Lisa Pollak, Brian Reed, Robyn Semien, and Alissa Shipp.
今天我们的节目由南希·厄普代克和我本人、亚历克斯·布伦伯格、本·卡尔霍恩、莎拉·科尼格、米基·米克、乔纳森·门吉瓦、丽莎·波拉克、布莱恩·里德、罗宾·塞米恩和艾丽莎·希普共同制作。
Our senior producer for today's show is Julie Snyder.
我们今天节目的高级制片人是朱莉·斯奈德。
Production help from Anna Martin.
安娜·马丁的制作帮助。
Our technical director is Matt Tierney.
我们的技术总监是马特·蒂尔尼。
Mixing help today from Catherine Raimondo.
今天由凯瑟琳·雷蒙多 (Catherine Raimondo) 提供混合帮助。
Research help from Michelle Harris.
米歇尔·哈里斯的研究帮助。
Music help from Damian Graef from Rob Geddis.
达米安·格雷夫 (Damian Graef) 和罗布·格迪斯 (Rob Geddis) 提供音乐帮助。
Special thanks today to Sarah Craig, Jim Richards, Claire Vaye Watkins, Joe Jennings, Rachel [?
今天特别感谢莎拉·克雷格、吉姆·理查兹、克莱尔·瓦耶·沃特金斯、乔·詹宁斯、雷切尔 [？
Colwell, ?] and Serving by Irving.
科尔韦尔，？]和欧文的服务。
Our website, thisamericanlife.org, where you can hear any of our old episodes for absolutely free, or download as many as you like using the This American Life app.
我们的网站 thisamericanlife.org，您可以在其中完全免费收听我们的任何旧剧集，或者使用 This American Life 应用程序下载任意数量的剧集。
This American Life is distributed by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange.
《美国生活》由公共广播电台 PRX 发行。
Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia.
一如既往地感谢我们项目的联合创始人 Torey Malatia 先生。
I beat him at backgammon last night.
昨晚我在双陆棋中击败了他。
I don't know.
我不知道。
He took it hard.
他很难接受。
I'm slowly becoming a repository for decomposing sorrows, regrets, ignored injustice, forgotten promises.
我正在慢慢地成为一个分解悲伤、遗憾、被忽视的不公正、被遗忘的承诺的仓库。
I'm Ira Glass.
我是艾拉·格拉斯。
Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
下周我们将带来更多《美国生活》的故事。
[MUSIC - THE QUEERS, "I WANNA BE HAPPY"]
[音乐 - 酷儿们，“我想要快乐”]
(SINGING) It's all I wanna do.
（唱歌）这就是我想做的一切。
I wanna be happy with you.
我想和你一起幸福。
It's all I wanna do.
这就是我想做的一切。
I wanna be happy with you.
我想和你一起幸福。
It's all I wanna do.
这就是我想做的一切。
I wanna be happy with you.
我想和你一起幸福。
It's all I wanna do.
这就是我想做的一切。
I wanna be happy with you.
我想和你一起幸福。
This American Life is produced in collaboration with WBEZ Chicago and delivered to stations by PRX The Public Radio Exchange.
《This American Life》与 WBEZ Chicago 合作制作，并由 PRX 公共广播电台传送到各电台。