687: Small Things Considered - This American Life
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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 #687 | November 8, 2019 687: Small Things Considered 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 687 集 | 2019 年 11 月 8 日 687：考虑的小事 注意：《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: Prologue Ira Glass Of all the things in the movies that could happen to you-- and there's so many, right-- I think getting shrunk down to a miniature size-- I think that is one that nobody would ever choose.
序言：序言 艾拉·格拉斯 在电影中可能发生在你身上的所有事情中——有很多，对吧——我认为缩小到一个微型尺寸——我认为这是没有人会选择的。
It seems dangerous.
看起来很危险。
It seems frightening.
看起来很可怕。
How Marvel Comics ever thought that shrinking could be a superpower, that is really totally beyond me.
漫威漫画如何认为缩小可以成为一种超能力，这真的完全超出了我的想象。
Turning yourself into a person the size of a pencil eraser?
把自己变成一个橡皮擦大小的人？
It doesn't make anything easier.
它并没有让任何事情变得更容易。
Everything is harder.
一切都更难了。
In the movie Ant-Man, the first time Ant-Man shrinks--
在电影《蚁人》中，蚁人第一次缩小——
What is this?
这是什么？
Ira Glass --he's instantly in mortal danger.
艾拉·格拉斯——他立即面临致命危险。
Water in a bathtub nearly drowns him.
浴缸里的水差点把他淹死。
[SCREAMING] People dancing in an apartment almost crush him with their high-heeled shoes.
[尖叫]在公寓里跳舞的人差点用高跟鞋压死他。
A rat tries to eat him.
一只老鼠想吃掉他。
[GROWLING] It's a ridiculous superpower.
[咆哮]这是一个荒谬的超级大国。
The writers actually have to cheat and give Ant-Man a whole second power, mind control over armies of ants, or he'd never get anything accomplished.
编剧实际上必须作弊并赋予蚁人第二种力量，即对蚂蚁大军的精神控制，否则他永远不会取得任何成就。
But these stories of tiny people, you know, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, The Borrowers-- when I was young, I loved the film Fantastic Voyage-- I do get the appeal of them.
但是这些关于小人物的故事，你知道，亲爱的，我把孩子缩小了，借款人——当我年轻的时候，我喜欢电影《梦幻之旅》——我确实感受到了它们的吸引力。
They give you this feeling of what if.
他们给你一种假设的感觉。
What if I was so small that I could stand between the wafers of an Oreo cookie, that I could climb onto an insect?
如果我很小，可以站在奥利奥饼干之间，可以爬到昆虫身上怎么办？
Last year, when she was in fourth grade, Chloe thought about this a lot.
去年，当她上四年级时，克洛伊经常思考这个问题。
She's a kid in suburban New Jersey.
她是新泽西郊区的一个孩子。
Now that she's in fifth grade, she finds this a little embarrassing.
现在她已经五年级了，她觉得这有点尴尬。
But last year, every night when she'd go to bed, she'd prepare for the possibility that magic might strike while she was asleep, and that she would shrink down to the size of her dollhouse.
但去年，每天晚上睡觉时，她都会做好准备，以防魔法可能会在她睡着时降临，她会缩小到玩具屋的大小。
Those preparations included--
这些准备工作包括——
I would sleep on the edge of my pillow.
我会睡在枕头边上。
It's like the very top of my head is on the pillow, and then the rest of my body is on my bed.
就好像我的头顶放在枕头上，然后身体的其余部分放在床上。
That way, if she shrunk in the middle of the night, she would be on the bed and not on the pillow, which seemed way more treacherous to her.
这样一来，如果她半夜缩起来，她就会在床上，而不是在枕头上，这对她来说显得更加危险。
She also took a slap bracelet, which can stretch out like a ruler, and positioned the ruler very carefully, like a little bridge, from--
她还拿了一个巴掌手链，它可以像尺子一样伸展开来，并且很小心地把尺子摆好，就像一座小桥一样，来自——
The edge of my bed to the edge of my bedside table.
我的床边到床头柜边。
And why?
为什么？
Chloe To walk from my bed to my bedside table where I had the little hammock
克洛伊 从我的床走到我的床头柜，那里有小吊床
The little hammock, which she made for herself to sleep on, which is basically a bracelet of intertwined rubber bands suspended in air on a frame of Q-tips.
她为自己做的睡觉用的小吊床，基本上是一个由缠绕的橡皮筋组成的手镯，悬挂在棉签框架上。
And then I also had a little couch, and the couch was on the bedside table.
然后我还有一个小沙发，沙发就在床头柜上。
So you walk past the ruler.
所以你走过了尺子。
You turn left, you'll see the couch.
向左转，你就会看到沙发。
And if you go a little beyond that, you'll see the hammock.
如果你再往前走一点，你就会看到吊床。
Under the hammock was a calculator that she could step on, like a little footstool, to get up onto the hammock.
吊床下面有一个计算器，她可以踩着它，就像一个小脚凳一样，登上吊床。
And next to the couch was a Post-it folded in half with a note to her parents explaining that she had shrunk, all ready to be unfolded when this really happened to her for real.
沙发旁边有一张对折的便利贴，上面写着一张给她父母的便条，解释说她已经缩小了，等这件事真正发生在她身上时，一切都准备好了。
And finally, every night when she went to bed--
最后，每天晚上当她上床睡觉时——
I took some of the really important things to me, put them in a blanket, and then held onto the blanket every night, hoping that it would turn small with me.
我把一些对我来说非常重要的东西放在毯子里，然后每天晚上都抱着毯子，希望它会随着我而变小。
So what would be wrapped up in the blanket?
那么毯子里会裹什么呢？
My stuffed animal, Boo, my cat stuffed animal, one of my books, and a couple other stuffed animals.
我的毛绒动物 Boo、我的猫毛绒动物、我的一本书和其他一些毛绒动物。
And were you hoping that this would happen, or were you fearing that this would happen, that you would get small?
你是希望这种情况发生，还是担心这种情况发生，担心你会变小？
[BEEPING]
[嘟嘟声]
I was both.
我两者都是。
Ira Glass That beeping that you're hearing-- Chloe was being recorded on a telephone whose batteries started dying at this point in the interview, making that beeping noise.
艾拉·格拉斯（Ira Glass）：你听到的嘟嘟声——克洛伊（Chloe）正在用一部电话进行录音，在采访中，电话的电池在此时开始耗尽，发出嘟嘟声。
The hope because then I would get to live in my dollhouse, which, it had a little swing on the porch.
希望这样我就能住在我的玩具屋里，玩具屋的门廊上有一个小秋千。
It's cool.
这很酷。
And I wouldn't have to watch Netflix with my sister.
我也不必和姐姐一起看 Netflix。
And every popcorn would be a meal.
每颗爆米花都是一顿饭。
The fear was my parents wouldn't be able to hug me.
我担心我的父母无法拥抱我。
I might not have electronics.
我可能没有电子产品。
I wouldn't be able to see my friends, because I would be tiny.
我将无法见到我的朋友，因为我太小了。
And I wouldn't be able to go to the pool.
而且我也不能去游泳池。
[LAUGHS] You wouldn't be able to swim anymore.
[笑]你就不能再游泳了。
Yeah, well, my mom could just set up a little bowl.
是的，好吧，我妈妈可以放一个小碗。
Yeah.
是的。
I was going to say, she could just take a tray of water and just put it out for you.
我想说，她可以拿一盘水给你端出来。
Yeah.
是的。
Ira Glass Once you start to think about the world this way, small stuff can become really transfixing.
Ira Glass 一旦你开始以这种方式思考世界，小事就会变得真正令人震惊。
The sheer tinyness of tiny things can have a kind of mesmerizing power to it.
微小事物的微小可能具有一种令人着迷的力量。
We were talking about this at our office last week, and Bim took the most extreme stand on this.
上周我们在办公室讨论过这个问题，Bim 对此采取了最极端的立场。
I dragged her into the studio to talk about this.
我拉着她进工作室谈这件事。
I just like generally small things.
我只是喜欢一般的小事情。
If there is a small version of a thing, I am interested in seeing it or reading about it or hearing about it.
如果某事物有一个小版本，我有兴趣看到它、阅读它或听到它。
It's Bim who told me about the radically tiny tubs of Vaseline you can buy, which have the exact design of the bigger jars.
Bim 告诉我，你可以买到极小的凡士林桶，其设计与大罐子一模一样。
It's about the size of my thumbnail, maybe my thumbnail and a half.
它大约有我的缩略图大小，也许是我的缩略图的一半。
They're very small.
它们很小。
They're very cute.
它们非常可爱。
They don't look like they're real.
它们看起来不像是真的。
They look like ornaments that you might hang from a Christmas tree.
它们看起来就像挂在圣诞树上的装饰品。
What I like about them is just how small they are.
我喜欢它们的原因是它们很小。
They seem almost pointless.
它们看起来几乎毫无意义。
You can find Vaseline in any number of other sizes.
您可以找到多种其他尺寸的凡士林。
The fact that this exists-- I think it feels like somebody-- yeah, it was just a pointless gesture.
事实上，它的存在——我认为它感觉就像有人——是的，这只是一个毫无意义的姿态。
Let's make Vaseline even smaller.
让我们把凡士林做得更小。
Can you imagine them looking across at one another and kind of going, hey, should we make this smaller?
你能想象他们互相看着对方然后说，嘿，我们应该把这个缩小吗？
And someone said, there's no need.
还有人说，没必要。
And they were like, precisely.
他们就像，确切地说。
And I think small things, by nature, are whimsical.
我认为小事情本质上是异想天开的。
They just feel like, oh, you didn't have to be.
他们只是觉得，哦，你不必这样。
You didn't have to exist, but here you are.
你不必存在，但你就在这里。
And that's what makes them kind of joyful.
这就是让他们感到高兴的原因。
They're just things for the pleasure of smallness and staring at smallness.
它们只是为了享受渺小和凝视渺小而存在的东西。
It's like when you look at broccoli, and you think, oh, I'm a giant, and this is a small tree.
就像当你看着西兰花时，你会想，哦，我是一个巨人，而这是一棵小树。
It's that feeling.
就是那种感觉。
I'm almost 40.
我快40岁了。
[LAUGHTER] Ira Glass Do you still have that feeling?
[笑声] Ira Glass 你还有那种感觉吗？
You'll look at a broccoli, and you'll think it's like a small tree?
你会看着西兰花，你会认为它像一棵小树？
I don't still have that feeling.
我现在还没有那种感觉。
I used to have that feeling when I was a child.
我小时候也曾有过这样的感觉。
I will not be mocked.
我不会被嘲笑。
[LAUGHS]
[笑]
No one has mocked you yet.
还没有人嘲笑过你。
Bim Adewunmi Your face.
Bim Adewunmi 你的脸。
Well, today on our program, "Small Things Considered," we have stories of people overlooking what is so great about the tiny, the minuscule, the peewee, the bite size, and the teensy-weensy.
好吧，今天在我们的节目《考虑的小事》中，我们讲述了人们忽视微小、微小、小便、一口大小和微小的事物的伟大之处的故事。
Also, some very dramatic examples of the power of smallness, including, for instance, the power to end health insurance as we know it for millions of people.
此外，还有一些非常戏剧性的例子，展示了小规模的力量，例如，包括终止我们所知道的数百万人的医疗保险的力量。
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。
My voice is affected by some sort of tiny, tiny bug this week.
这周我的声音受到了某种非常非常小的错误的影响。
Stay with us.
留在我们身边。
Act 1, Coming Up Short.
第一幕，即将到来。
So a while ago, we got an email from a physician who was starting to see a trend that disturbed her, among her patients.
不久前，我们收到了一位医生发来的电子邮件，她开始在她的患者中看到一种令她不安的趋势。
She wanted us to look into it.
她希望我们调查一下。
We thought our contributor Scott Brown would be the best person for the job for reasons that'll become clear as he proceeds.
我们认为我们的撰稿人斯科特·布朗将是这项工作的最佳人选，其原因将随着他的进展而变得清晰。
Here's Scott.
这是斯科特。
So this doctor told us that all of these parents have been coming to her, scads of them-- she used the word inundated-- with the same problem.
所以这位医生告诉我们，所有这些父母都来找她，一大群人——她用了“淹没”这个词——有同样的问题。
Their kids were short, not dramatically short.
他们的孩子个子矮，但不是特别矮。
They were just below average height for their age.
他们的身高略低于同龄人的平均身高。
We're talking 9-, 10-, 11-year-old kids.
我们谈论的是 9 岁、10 岁、11 岁的孩子。
And what these parents wanted was for this doctor to prescribe them human growth hormone injections to make their kids taller.
这些父母希望医生给他们注射人类生长激素，让他们的孩子长高。
These are daily injections that cost tens of thousands of dollars a year.
这些是每日注射，每年花费数万美元。
It's usually affluent privileged families, this doctor says, who already have all the advantages.
这位医生说，通常是富裕的特权家庭，他们已经拥有了所有的优势。
She went as far as to call the desire for growth hormone among these folks an epidemic.
她甚至称这些人对生长激素的渴望是一种流行病。
Because I've had parents come to me and say, "Everyone I know is on growth hormone." That was an actual quote.
因为我的父母来找我说：“我认识的每个人都在服用生长激素。”那是一个真实的报价。
Everyone I know is on this stuff.
我认识的每个人都在研究这个东西。
Or, it's all the rage in this anonymous community, a very affluent community.
或者，它在这个匿名社区、一个非常富裕的社区中风靡一时。
This doctor want it to be completely anonymous, by the way.
顺便说一句，这位医生希望它完全匿名。
She feels like she's whistleblowing.
她感觉自己像是在告密。
In fact, this isn't her real voice.
事实上，这并不是她真实的声音。
We swapped her voice for an actor's in our recording of the interview.
我们在采访录音中将她的声音换成了演员的声音。
Since I can't identify her, I'll refer to her from here on as Short Throat.
由于我无法确认她的身份，所以从这里开始我将称她为“短喉咙”。
All we can say is she's a pediatric endocrinologist-- that is, a children's doctor, specializing in stuff like diabetes, thyroid problems, and growth.
我们只能说她是一名儿科内分泌学家——也就是说，一名儿童医生，专门研究糖尿病、甲状腺问题和生长等问题。
She says she got into medicine to treat sick kids, but fully half of her patients are coming to her just for the growth part.
她说她进入医学界是为了治疗生病的孩子，但她的病人中有一半只是为了生长的部分来找她。
So parents will find out one kid is being treated and assume that their child, because they're below average, needs it too.
因此，父母会发现一个孩子正在接受治疗，并认为他们的孩子因为低于平均水平而也需要治疗。
Like, oh, if they're doing it, then am I going to be missing out?
就像，哦，如果他们这样做，那我会错过吗？
In fact, I think the phrase one mom used was something like, I'm just trying to be proactive and worried, I don't miss my window of opportunity.
事实上，我认为一位妈妈用的这句话是这样的，我只是想积极主动并担心，我不会错过机会之窗。
That window is real.
那个窗户是真实的。
Parents have to start their kids on the drug by the time they're hitting puberty.
父母必须在孩子进入青春期时开始服用这种药物。
Short Throat has been practicing for about seven years, but she works closely with other doctors who've been at it for decades.
短喉咙已经执业了大约七年，但她与其他从事该行业数十年的医生密切合作。
And they do say that it's gotten much, much worse.
他们确实说情况变得更糟了。
Like, they don't remember anything like this.
就像，他们不记得这样的事情。
One of my senior colleagues, it's almost like she's surprised every time.
我的一位资深同事，每次她都感到惊讶。
I can't believe this kid came in here.
我不敢相信这孩子居然进来了
Look at this growth chart.
看看这张增长图。
And I walk in the office, and it's a kid growing at the 40th percentile with parents who are the 40th percentile.
当我走进办公室时，我看到一个孩子正在以 40% 的速度成长，而父母也是 40% 的人。
40th percentile, meaning 40% of the rest of the country is shorter than they are, so just below average.
第 40 个百分点，意味着该国其他地区 40% 的人比他们矮，因此略低于平均水平。
And she's like, can you believe they're here for growth?
她说，你能相信他们来这里是为了成长吗？
And I'm like, yes, I can believe that because-- this is, like, everyday you call me in and are flabbergasted by the same thing.
我想，是的，我可以相信这一点，因为——就像，每天你打电话给我，都会对同样的事情感到惊讶。
I had a conversation where I had a patient come see me.
我有一次谈话，有一位病人来看我。
Her son was 5 foot, 7".
她的儿子身高 5 英尺 7 英寸。
Mom was 5' 4".
妈妈身高 5 英尺 4 英寸。
Dad was 5' 8".
爸爸身高 5 英尺 8 英寸。
They wanted treatment.
他们想要治疗。
If you say something to them like, well, his predicted height is 5' 9", you might get a response that's something like, well, that's unacceptable.
如果你对他们说，嗯，他的预计身高是 5 英尺 9 英寸，你可能会得到这样的回应，嗯，这是不可接受的。
[LAUGHS] Short Throat You're laughing, but that's my job.
[笑] 短喉咙 你在笑，但那是我的工作。
I'm laughing for so many different reasons.
我笑的原因有很多。
Do you get it now?
你现在明白了吗？
Scott Brown Oh, I get it.
斯科特·布朗 哦，我明白了。
I've gotten it my whole life.
我一生都得到了它。
This is probably the point in the story where I should level with you, if I could-- short joke!
如果可以的话，这可能就是故事中我应该向你坦白的一点——简短的笑话！
I'm just under 5' 3", which puts me right around the first percentile of American males by height, shorter than 99% of the men in this country.
我的身高略低于 5 英尺 3 英寸，这使我在美国男性身高中处于第一个百分位数左右，比这个国家 99% 的男性矮。
For years, I thought I was 5' 4"-- the second percentile.
多年来，我一直以为自己是 5 英尺 4 英寸——第二个百分位数。
But a recent doctor visit confirmed that I'd been rounding up.
但最近的一次医生检查证实我已经被围捕了。
I've always been the smallest guy in the room, consistently smaller than other kids, for as long as I can remember.
从我记事起，我一直是房间里个子最小的人，一直比其他孩子小。
There are some downsides, sure.
当然，也有一些缺点。
But I think I have a pretty good life.
但我觉得我的生活还算不错。
My successes and failures-- I do not leave them at the tiny feet of my shortness.
我的成功和失败——我不会因为自己的短小而忽略它们。
My height is just one thing about me, not the thing, not the defining thing.
我的身高只是关于我的一件事，而不是那件事，不是决定性的事情。
But recently, I wrote a young adult novel about a 16-year-old boy who's 4 foot 11" and struggling with his identity.
但最近，我写了一本青少年小说，讲述了一个身高 4 英尺 11 英寸的 16 岁男孩与自己的身份作斗争的故事。
And I found myself thinking every day about being short-- what it meant to me, what it might have meant, what I might have missed.
我发现自己每天都在思考做空——它对我意味着什么，它可能意味着什么，我可能错过了什么。
And then I hear from this doctor about all of these parents who think having a son my size is unacceptable and come to her to fix it, to fix them.
然后我从这位医生那里听说所有这些父母都认为生一个我这么大的儿子是不可接受的，所以来找她来解决这个问题，来解决他们的问题。
Short Throat tells the families who just want to enhance their kid's height that she won't do that, but that doesn't always stop them.
短喉咙告诉那些只想提高孩子身高的家庭，她不会这样做，但这并不总能阻止他们。
There are some private practice pediatric endocrinologists in our area who-- the phrase I've used is I feel like they would give growth hormone to a rock if you asked them to-- like, sitting people down and giving them the worst-case scenario height prediction, and then being, like, this is what you need, and then treating them.
我们地区有一些私人执业的儿科内分泌科医生，我用过的一句话是，我觉得如果你要求他们的话，他们会把生长激素注射到石头上，比如让人们坐下来，给他们最坏情况下的身高预测，然后说，这就是你需要的，然后治疗他们。
Oh, so their consult is part of saying, you don't want this short kid here.
哦，所以他们的咨询的一部分是说，你不希望这个矮个子在这里。
You know?
你知道吗？
Yeah.
是的。
Scott Brown You don't want a hobbit.
斯科特·布朗：你不需要霍比特人。
Oh, absolutely.
哦，绝对是。
That's what the paren-- I know the prescribing practices of all of others peds endos in our area.
这就是我知道我们地区所有其他人的处方做法。
Because people bounce around, and they doctor shop, and they want other opinions.
因为人们会四处走动，他们会根据医生的意见进行购买，他们会寻求其他意见。
Among the things that bother her the most, a lot of the parents seem oblivious to the possibility of side effects.
在最让她烦恼的事情中，很多父母似乎都没有意识到副作用的可能性。
But really, the biggest bee in Short Throat's growth hormone bonnet is the fairness aspect.
但实际上，短喉生长激素帽子中最大的蜜蜂是公平方面。
The full treatment over four or five years can cost $300,000 or more.
四五年的完整治疗费用可能高达 30 万美元或更多。
And even though most of these families are rich, they find ways to get it covered by insurance when some of her diabetic patients can't even get the latest insulin pump covered.
尽管这些家庭中的大多数都很富有，但当她的一些糖尿病患者甚至无法购买最新的胰岛素泵时，他们还是想方设法通过保险来获得保险。
She also says she's seen rich families take advantage of patient assistance programs the drug companies offer to needier folks.
她还表示，她看到富裕家庭利用制药公司向有需要的人提供的患者援助计划。
I've seen affluent patients get on these, quote, unquote, "patient assistance programs" when-- OK, this is terrible-- but sometimes I will Zillow their house.
我见过富裕的病人参加这些“病人援助计划”——好吧，这太糟糕了——但有时我会Zillow他们的房子。
And I'll be like, you live in a $6 million home, and you're getting patient assistance for your kid's growth hormone.
我会说，你住在一栋价值 600 万美元的房子里，你的孩子的生长激素需要病人的帮助。
Gross, gross, just gross.
恶心，恶心，简直恶心。
It's important to say, Short Throat does treat some kids with growth hormone-- kids who aren't producing enough of it or any of it on their own.
值得一提的是，短喉确实可以用生长激素治疗一些孩子——那些生长激素分泌不足或自身生长激素分泌不足的孩子。
That's a serious health problem.
这是一个严重的健康问题。
But she'll also treat them if a kid is just going to be really, really short, like way, way below average, like way down in those basement percentiles where I am.
但如果一个孩子真的非常非常矮，远远低于平均水平，就像我所在的那些地下室百分位数那么低，她也会对待他们。
Using growth hormone is kosher in cases like this according to the FDA.
根据 FDA 的说法，在这种情况下使用生长激素是合法的。
That's because there's a diagnosis for people like me.
那是因为像我这样的人有一个诊断。
I learned about it while researching my book.
我在研究我的书时了解到了这一点。
It's called Idiopathic Short Stature, ISS.
它被称为特发性身材矮小，ISS。
Sounds scary, but all it means is I'm short, and no one knows why.
听起来很可怕，但这仅仅意味着我很矮，而且没有人知道为什么。
And because I fit that diagnosis, I could have been one of Short Throat's patients.
因为我符合这个诊断，所以我可能是短喉症的患者之一。
So yes, even our whistleblower, who believes this stuff is overused, would've treated me if I'd come to her, if my parents had wanted it.
所以，是的，即使我们的举报人认为这些东西被过度使用，如果我去找她，如果我父母愿意的话，也会对待我。
And as one of those otherwise healthy kids who are just short, and who kind of resents the use of the word otherwise, I'd add, all of this looks not a whole lot like medicine.
作为那些身体健康、身材矮小、并且有点讨厌使用“否则”这个词的孩子之一，我想补充一点，所有这些看起来不太像医学。
It looks cosmetic, like a boob job for kids, short kids.
它看起来很化妆品，就像为孩子、矮个子做的隆胸手术。
But before I went off on a Napoleonic rage bender over the claims of this one rogue grow doctor, I thought I'd run those claims by Dr. David B.
但在我对这位流氓种植医生的说法产生拿破仑式的愤怒之前，我想我应该引用大卫·B·肯尼迪博士的这些说法。
Allen, another pediatric endocrinologist, and arguably, the leading expert on this topic.
艾伦是另一位儿科内分泌学家，可以说是该主题的领先专家。
He sat on the panel that wrote the recent guidelines for growth hormone treatments for kids.
他是撰写最近儿童生长激素治疗指南的小组成员。
He's been writing papers about it for three decades, specifically, about idiopathic short stature.
三十年来，他一直在撰写相关论文，特别是关于特发性身材矮小的论文。
You actually-- not to get personal, but you sound like you do fit the diagnosis.
实际上，不是针对个人，但你听起来确实符合诊断。
You may.
你可以。
Did you just diagnose me over the radio?
你刚刚是通过无线电给我诊断的吗？
It's amazing.
太棒了。
I've got a lot of experience.
我有很多经验。
He said he didn't think unnecessary growth hormone treatments for kids was an epidemic, per se.
他说，他认为对儿童进行不必要的生长激素治疗本身并不是一种流行病。
The reluctance of insurance companies to cover such an expensive and iffy treatment keeps widespread use tamped down.
保险公司不愿承担这种昂贵且不确定的治疗费用，从而限制了其广泛使用。
But sure, there are lots of families in more image-conscious, wealthy places who put their kids on it.
但可以肯定的是，在更注重形象、富裕的地方，有很多家庭把他们的孩子放在了上面。
When he writes about using growth hormone for height, not health, the phrase he uses is cosmetic endocrinology.
当他写到使用生长激素来提高身高而不是健康时，他使用的短语是美容内分泌学。
And he told me this story.
他告诉我这个故事。
Back in the day, growth hormone was used almost exclusively on kids who were growth hormone-deficient, the way you give insulin to a diabetic.
过去，生长激素几乎专门用于生长激素缺乏的孩子，就像给糖尿病患者注射胰岛素一样。
And the only source for this stuff back then was the pituitary glands of cadavers, dead people, so the supply was limited.
当时这种东西的唯一来源是尸体的脑下垂体，死人，所以供应是有限的。
Unfortunately, because it came from cadavers, some of it was tainted with a brain disease similar to Mad Cow.
不幸的是，因为它来自尸体，其中一些沾染了类似于疯牛病的脑部疾病。
It was a freak thing.
这是一件奇怪的事情。
This was in the '80s.
那是在 80 年代。
Dozens of young people got sick.
数十名年轻人患病。
Some of them died.
其中一些人死了。
But that same year, synthetic growth hormone became available.
但同年，合成生长激素问世。
Now there was lots of the stuff-- lab-made, safe from contamination.
现在有很多东西是实验室制造的，不受污染。
Dr. Allen told me and my producer, Sean Cole, that the drug industry and doctors started looking around for other uses, like, say, making idiopathically short kids less idiopathically short.
艾伦博士告诉我和我的制片人肖恩·科尔，制药业和医生开始寻找其他用途，比如让特发性矮小的孩子变得不那么特发性矮。
Idiopathic short stature really became a thing once there was growth hormone treatment available that might work.
一旦有可能有效的生长激素治疗，特发性身材矮小就真的成为了一个问题。
It was a descriptive term.
这是一个描述性术语。
Of course, it's been a descriptive term for a long, long time.
当然，很长一段时间以来，它一直是一个描述性术语。
But as a diagnosis, I think it was more really after there was a treatment available.
但作为诊断，我认为在有可用的治疗方法之后才更真实。
It's one of these situations where it's almost like a treatment that's in search of a diagnosis.
在其中一种情况下，它几乎就像一种寻求诊断的治疗。
And also, why are we treating shortness like it's a disease?
而且，为什么我们要把身材矮小当作一种疾病来对待？
Because when you look into it, as researchers have, there's no evidence tying being short to having a bad life.
因为当你仔细研究它时，就像研究人员所做的那样，没有证据表明身材矮小与糟糕的生活有关。
Studies show short kids get teased, bullied.
研究表明矮个子的孩子容易被嘲笑、欺负。
They're often treated as younger than they are.
他们常常被视为比实际年龄更年轻。
But there's no direct connection between being small and failing at life.
但身材矮小和生活失败之间并没有直接联系。
I, for instance, did not end up depressed and alone, living in a tiny cardboard box behind Bob's Big Boy, at least, not because of my height.
例如，我并没有最终感到沮丧和孤独，住在鲍勃的大男孩后面的一个小纸板箱里，至少不是因为我的身高。
Another thing Dr. Allen said is that the use of synthetic growth hormone in kids is generally agreed to be safe.
艾伦博士说的另一件事是，人们普遍认为在儿童中使用合成生长激素是安全的。
But he said, it just hasn't been on the market long enough for us to know yet.
但他说，它上市的时间还不够长，我们还不知道。
There could be an increased risk of cancer down the road.
将来患癌症的风险可能会增加。
One study, and only one, points to more instances of stroke among adults who took the drug as children.
一项研究（也是仅有的一项）指出，儿童时期服用该药的成年人中风的病例较多。
Thing is, we won't really know how dangerous this stuff is until 30, or 40, or 50 years down the line.
问题是，直到 30、40、50 年后我们才会真正知道这些东西有多危险。
Also, on average, kids who take growth hormone might gain three inches, a little less than half an inch per year, but that's average.
此外，平均而言，服用生长激素的孩子可能会长高三英寸，每年略低于半英寸，但这只是平均水平。
Your heightage may vary a lot, could be more, could be less.
您的身高可能相差很大，可能更高，也可能更低。
I'll just note that less than a little less than 1/2 inch a year would be a very sad title for a country song.
我只想指出，对于一首乡村歌曲来说，每年不到 1/2 英寸将是一个非常悲伤的标题。
The darkest irony here is Dr. Allen says the kids you'd think need the drug the most, kids with short parents, are the ones who benefit the least.
最黑暗的讽刺是艾伦博士说，你认为最需要这种药物的孩子，父母身材矮小的孩子，是受益最少的人。
And it's conceivable that there are some risks that we don't yet know about or are just learning about 20 years down the road, that this completely healthy 10-year-old has now been exposed to, for a benefit that we have a lot of difficulty documenting.
可以想象，有一些风险我们还不知道，或者在 20 年后才刚刚了解，而这个完全健康的 10 岁孩子现在已经接触到了这些风险，而我们很难记录下来所带来的好处。
That, to me, that's the conundrum, right?
对我来说，这就是难题，对吗？
Not a conundrum for me.
对我来说不是一个难题。
The health effects are unknown, benefits uncertain, and even if you get taller, you're not necessarily happier?
对健康的影响是未知的，好处是不确定的，即使你长高了，你也不一定更快乐？
Then I'm not putting my kid on it, not for a maximum 3 inches total, not for 1/2 inch a year.
然后我不会让我的孩子穿上它，总共不超过 3 英寸，每年不超过 1/2 英寸。
Who would choose that for their kid?
谁会为他们的孩子选择这个？
I decided to find out.
我决定找出答案。
Are you going to call this growth hormone gate?
你要把这个称为生长激素门吗？
Is that what you're going to call it?
你打算这么称呼它吗？
That sounds snappy.
听起来很敏捷。
We should definitely do that.
我们绝对应该这样做。
[?
[？
?] It's funny, because-- Scott Brown I can't tell you any of these folks' names, either.
？] 这很有趣，因为——斯科特·布朗（Scott Brown），我也不能告诉你这些人的名字。
They're in Southern California.
他们在南加州。
I'll call the dad Jeremy.
我会打电话给爸爸杰里米。
He's a doctor.
他是一名医生。
He's 5 foot 8".
他身高 5 英尺 8 英寸。
The mom, who I'll call Laura, is 5 foot 4".
我称她为劳拉 (Laura) 的妈妈身高 5 英尺 4 英寸。
She's a personal development coach.
她是一名个人发展教练。
There are two kids, Dylan and Marnie, also not their real names.
有两个孩子，迪伦和玛妮，也不是他们的真名。
Dylan's been taking growth hormone injections for five years.
迪伦已经注射生长激素五年了。
We asked Laura why they wanted to be anonymous.
我们问劳拉为什么他们想匿名。
It's a little embarrassing.
有点尴尬。
Most of his, probably, peers don't know.
他的大多数同龄人可能都不知道。
His close friends know.
他的亲密朋友都知道。
But for a girl, it's cute if she's short and petite.
但对于一个女孩子来说，个子矮小娇小才是可爱的。
But for a guy, it kind of says something about your masculinity.
但对于一个男人来说，这有点体现了你的男子气概。
So I just wanted to protect him for whatever reasons-- short-term, long-term.
所以我只是想出于某种原因保护他——短期的，长期的。
They all live in a big, beautiful house with a pool that contains what I'm fairly sure is a water polo goal.
他们都住在一栋又大又漂亮的房子里，房子里有一个游泳池，我相当确定里面有一个水球球门。
Dylan's on the team.
迪伦也在团队中。
The living room is immaculate, like the lobby of a luxury hotel.
客厅一尘不染，就像豪华酒店的大堂一样。
When we got there, there was a dog-grooming van sitting out front in which their dog was being groomed.
当我们到达那里时，前面停着一辆狗美容车，他们的狗正在车里接受美容。
She looked nice afterwards.
后来她看起来很好。
Laura's been worrying about Dylan's size since he was a baby.
劳拉从迪伦还是个婴儿的时候起就一直担心他的身材。
He was born preemie-sized, even though she carried him full-term.
尽管她足月怀了他，但他出生时还是早产儿。
He spent four or five days in the NICU.
他在新生儿重症监护室呆了四五天。
And as he got older, it just seemed like he was having a hard time catching up to his friends in the height department.
随着年龄的增长，他似乎很难赶上身高方面的朋友们。
He was the smallest in his team photos, class photos, always an outlier.
在团队照片、班级照片中，他是个子最小的，总是一个局外人。
So when she found out there was something that might help fix that, it just felt like the right call.
因此，当她发现有一些东西可能有助于解决这个问题时，她觉得这是正确的决定。
To me, it was just a medical choice, and it was never aesthetic.
对我来说，这只是一种医疗选择，而不是美观。
It just was more medical, and I don't know if--
这只是更医学化，我不知道是否——
It's interesting.
这很有趣。
We have slightly different views and perceptions.
我们的观点和看法略有不同。
Again, this is Jeremy.
再说一次，这是杰里米。
He's a doctor, so you'd expect him to come at this from a medical necessity point of view, too, and he does.
他是一名医生，所以你会期望他也从医疗必要性的角度来看待这个问题，他确实这么做了。
But he's totally upfront about his less doctor-y reasons.
但他完全坦率地表达了自己不那么医生般的理由。
I don't know.
我不知道。
Stereotypical-- I'm a guy.
刻板印象——我是个男人。
I want him to be big and strong, if he can be bigger and stronger.
我希望他变得又大又强壮，如果他能变得更大、更强的话。
But to get to that, the risk factor had to be eliminated.
但要做到这一点，必须消除风险因素。
And so what was the point where you were like, well, now we can start thinking about bigger and stronger because I am satisfied that whatever long-term studies they are looking for--
那么，你当时的想法是什么，好吧，现在我们可以开始考虑做大做强，因为我很满意，无论他们正在寻找什么长期研究——
There was a risk.
有风险。
I had to kind of take it.
我不得不接受它。
At least it wasn't my life, so I wasn't worried.
至少那不是我的生活，所以我不担心。
No, I'm just kidding.
不，我只是开玩笑。
Just, no.
只是，不。
[INAUDIBLE] punch you in this interview.
[听不清] 在这次采访中打你。
I'm sorry.
对不起。
No, it was a risk.
不，这是一个风险。
It's not easy making that decision.
做出这个决定并不容易。
Like, gosh, I'm putting my son at risk for diabetes?
就像，天哪，我让我的儿子面临患糖尿病的风险？
My brother has diabetes.
我弟弟患有糖尿病。
I see it.
我看到了。
Just to point out, the risk of diabetes from pediatric growth hormone use is more theoretical than anything else.
需要指出的是，儿童使用生长激素导致的糖尿病风险比其他任何因素都更具理论性。
Doctors monitor for it, but so far, there's no causal link.
医生对此进行了监测，但到目前为止，还没有发现因果关系。
So there was a little bit in the back of my mind, like, oh, boy, what did I just do to my son?
所以我心里有一点，就像，哦，天哪，我刚刚对我儿子做了什么？
Something may have happened that would have been irreversible.
可能发生了一些无法挽回的事情。
And so I would have just never forgiven myself had it happened.
所以如果这件事发生的话我永远不会原谅自己。
There's no question.
毫无疑问。
It was in the back of my brain.
它在我的大脑深处。
I'm a doctor, so I get it.
我是医生，所以我明白。
I've worried about it in the back of my brain.
我心里一直在担心这个问题。
I just don't verbalize it.
我只是不会用语言表达它。
But knock on wood, fortunately, he's been fine, and all we've seen is the benefits.
但幸运的是，他一直很好，我们所看到的只是好处。
Better than fine, Jeremy says.
杰里米说，总比很好好。
The drug seems to be working, and he's satisfied.
药物似乎起了作用，他很满意。
If I search my heart of hearts, at least for myself, I'd be dishonest if I said I didn't have superficial motivations exactly as you describe.
如果我内心深处，至少是我自己，如果我说我没有你所描述的那种肤浅的动机，那我就是不诚实的。
Maybe not said in those words-- you know, a future leader, more attractive to a mate-- but unless you're a giant, who doesn't want to be taller?
也许不是这样说的——你知道，未来的领导者，对伴侣更有吸引力——但除非你是个巨人，谁不想长得更高呢？
But does it feel weird to be kind of like feeding into that?
但融入其中是不是感觉很奇怪？
Like feeding into those--
就像喂食那些——
Stereotypes?
刻板印象？
Scott Brown Yeah, those societal clamoring for more.
斯科特·布朗：是的，那些社会要求更多的人。
No. No weirder than your trying to look nice today.
不，没有什么比你今天试图让自己看起来漂亮更奇怪的了。
Why'd you dress so nicely?
你怎么穿得这么好看？
You're giving into society.
你正在奉献社会。
It looks you've got some nice shoes on.
看起来你穿了一双不错的鞋子。
You've got a collared shirt.
你有一件有领衬衫。
And when you picked your glasses, did you pick the most ugly glasses you could pick?
当你挑选眼镜时，你选过最丑的眼镜吗？
No, you tried to pick some nice glasses, right?
不，你想挑选一些漂亮的眼镜，对吧？
[INAUDIBLE] Jeremy We all, to some degrees-- it's a continuum.
[听不清]杰里米：从某种程度上来说，我们所有人都是一个连续体。
I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
我不认为这有什么问题。
But would you have been sad if he had been Scott's height?
但如果他有斯科特的身高你会感到难过吗？
That stopped the conversation.
谈话就这样停止了。
I offered to stand up for him.
我主动提出为他挺身而出。
This is where I stand up.
这就是我站起来的地方。
Jeremy No, don't do that.
杰里米 不，不要那样做。
I don't know the word sad.
我不知道悲伤这个词。
We would have always wondered, maybe?
我们一直想知道，也许？
Like, what would have happened?
就像，会发生什么？
But it does raise this question of, in a fully pay-to-play society, do you end up with different tiers of people, some of whom have selected characteristics that confer advantages or seem to confer advantages?
但这确实提出了这样一个问题：在一个完全付费游戏的社会中，你最终会遇到不同阶层的人，其中一些人选择了赋予优势或似乎赋予优势的特征吗？
I get it.
我得到它。
This smacks of the whole SAT-gate thing, right?
这有点像 SAT-gate 的事情，对吧？
This is all this whole, let me game the system.
这就是全部，让我来玩弄系统吧。
I want my child to get a 1600 on the SAT.
我希望我的孩子 SAT 成绩能达到 1600 分。
I want my child to go to Harvard.
我想让我的孩子去哈佛。
It smacks of that, and I get it.
这有点像，我明白了。
But at the same time, I don't think it's all that sinister.
但同时，我也不认为这一切有那么险恶。
Like, for us, we just didn't want him to be sitting below the steering wheel and being made fun of or something.
就像，对我们来说，我们只是不想让他坐在方向盘下面被人取笑什么的。
That's kind of like--
这有点像——
Which is where Jeremy and Laura's opinions about the whole thing line up a lot more.
这就是杰里米和劳拉对整件事的看法更加一致的地方。
Laura used to blanch when people would ask if Dylan and his little sister were twins.
当人们问迪伦和他的妹妹是不是双胞胎时，劳拉常常脸色发白。
She's two years younger.
她比她小两岁。
And Laura hated that her son wore clothes made for boys two years younger.
劳拉讨厌她的儿子穿为小两岁男孩设计的衣服。
But all of that's in the past now.
但现在这一切都已成为过去。
Good to meet you, man.
很高兴认识你，伙计。
Scott Brown 15 years old.
斯科特·布朗 15 岁。
He came home from school in the middle of the interview still wearing his school uniform-- white polo, shorts.
采访进行到一半时，他放学回家，仍然穿着校服——白色马球衫和短裤。
He's 5 foot 6" now.
他现在身高 5 英尺 6 英寸。
My producer, Sean, sensitive soul that he is, had us stand back-to-back in the living room.
我的制片人肖恩（Sean）是一个敏感的灵魂，他让我们背靠背站在客厅里。
The back of Scott's head is going right into your neck.
斯科特的后脑勺正伸进你的脖子。
So I wouldn't want to see you guys in an alley fight.
所以我不想看到你们在巷子里打架。
That was hot, Sean.
太热了，肖恩。
That was a little demeaning.
那就有点贬低了。
Here's the thing.
事情是这样的。
Measuring yourself directly, bodily, against another human being-- it's not a natural situation.
直接地、身体地、对照另一个人来衡量自己——这不是一个自然的情况。
As a 43-year-old man standing back-to-back with a 15-year-old, I felt this almost primal humiliation.
作为一个 43 岁的男人和一个 15 岁的男人背对背站着，我感受到了这种近乎原始的羞辱。
And just for a second, I thought, did I miss out on something?
就在那一瞬间，我想，我是不是错过了什么？
I felt a little jealous.
我感到有点嫉妒。
Laura had spread out the charts on the coffee table, inches versus years, Dylan's whole history of growing up, and up, and up from elementary school on, in a laggardly parabola that takes off like a rocket around the time he started the growth hormone.
劳拉在咖啡桌上摊开图表，英寸与年，迪伦从小学开始成长的整个历史，在他开始使用生长激素的时候，像火箭一样缓慢地起飞。
Each dot is a measurement.
每个点都是一个测量值。
You know how I'm in the first height percentile for men in America?
你知道我在美国男性身高中处于第一个百分位吗？
Dylan started off parked between the third and fifth percentile and ended up nearly at the 50th, almost average.
迪伦一开始停在第三百分位和第五百分位之间，最后几乎排在第 50 位，几乎处于平均水平。
It made him feel proud.
这让他感到自豪。
Because I saw each dot climbing, and it was going up.
因为我看到每个点都在攀爬，而且它正在上升。
It was only going up.
它只是在上涨。
And that, to me, was like, OK, I'm getting taller.
对我来说，这就像，好吧，我长高了。
But I'm going to be a little sad that I can't be as tall as I wanted to be.
但我会有点难过，因为我不能达到我想要的高度。
I'd like to be around 5' 10" or 5' 11", for sure.
当然，我希望身高在 5 英尺 10 英寸或 5 英尺 11 英寸左右。
That way, I'm a little bit above average.
这样一来，我就略高于平均水平了。
I've never thought about it that way.
我从来没有这样想过。
What height do I want to be?
我想达到什么高度？
How average would I like to be?
我希望自己的平均水平是多少？
This demand-side attitude about height was alien to me.
这种关于身高的需求方态度对我来说很陌生。
And standing there, between this giant 5 foot 6" child's mastodon-like shoulder blades, I thought about what had brought me here underneath my indignation, my short identitarianism.
站在那儿，在这个巨大的 5 英尺 6 英寸的孩子乳齿状的肩胛骨之间，我思考着是什么让我在我的愤慨之下来到这里，我短暂的身份主义。
Here's the thing I've glossed over a bit-- the downsides of being short.
这是我略过的一点——个子矮的缺点。
I took some hard punches to the stomach in elementary school.
小学时我的肚子挨过重拳。
I often feel taken less seriously by taller people in professional situations.
在职业场合，我常常感觉身材高大的人不太重视。
I prefer phone meetings for that very reason.
正是因为这个原因，我更喜欢电话会议。
I pretty much know that I've had friendships with women that might have been more than friendships if I'd been a few inches higher off the dance floor.
我非常清楚，如果我离舞池高几英寸，我与女性之间的友谊可能会超出友谊。
I've watched the libido drain from my date's eyes as we stand up from the restaurant table after dessert.
当我们吃完甜点从餐厅的桌子上站起来时，我看到我的约会对象眼中的性欲逐渐消失。
I've been judging these people, these parents, trying to check every box, buy every advantage.
我一直在评判这些人，这些父母，试图检查每一个方框，购买每一个优势。
But there was a moment a long time ago when my parents thought about putting me on growth hormone when I was little-- littler-- and they didn't.
但很久以前，我的父母曾想过在我还小的时候给我注射生长激素，但他们没有这么做。
I have this really strong memory of their telling me they'd looked into it.
我对他们告诉我他们已经调查过这个事情有非常强烈的记忆。
We were in a car.
我们在车里。
This would have been the mid-'80s in Virginia.
那是 20 世纪 80 年代中期的弗吉尼亚州。
I remember an apple orchard on our left, a fairground on our right, and my mom telling me they'd considered it and decided against it.
我记得我们左边有一个苹果园，右边有一个游乐场，我妈妈告诉我他们考虑过但决定不这样做。
I remember thinking, why are you telling me this?
我记得当时我在想，你为什么要告诉我这些？
It's like the moment I became short, the first time I really knew.
这就像我变得矮小的那一刻，我第一次真正知道。
It was official.
这是官方的。
Doctors had been consulted, powerful elixirs considered.
人们咨询了医生，考虑了强力的灵丹妙药。
Maybe none of that should have come as a surprise.
也许这一切都不足为奇。
I'm the outlier amongst my siblings.
我是兄弟姐妹中的异类。
My brother Robert is 6 foot 1".
我的兄弟罗伯特身高 6 英尺 1 英寸。
Even my little sister Holland is taller than I am.
就连我的妹妹 Holland 也比我高。
They take after my dad, who, at 5' 11", is a full foot taller than my mom.
他们模仿我父亲，他身高 5 英尺 11 英寸，比我妈妈高一英尺。
In all these years, we've never talked about that decision.
这么多年，我们从未谈论过这个决定。
Why didn't they want me to get taller?
为什么他们不希望我长高？
Why didn't they make the choice Dylan's parents did?
为什么他们没有做出迪伦父母那样的选择？
I went home, and I asked my mom about that conversation in the car.
我回到家，我向妈妈询问了车上的谈话。
See, I have no memory of this at all.
你看，我对此完全没有记忆。
How did that conversation come up?
那段对话是怎么产生的？
I'm driving you home from school and I go, by the way?
我开车送你放学回家，然后我就走了，顺便问一下？
You know how moms have a way of making the pivotal chapters in your personal history seem less pivotal and more totally apocryphal?
你知道妈妈们是如何让你个人历史中的关键章节显得不那么关键、更完全是杜撰的吗？
Yeah, it was that thing.
是的，就是那件事。
My mom, very convincingly, debunked my big origin story of how I became short.
我妈妈非常令人信服地揭穿了我如何变得矮小的起源故事。
The timeline was wrong.
时间线错了。
The location was wrong.
位置错了。
The only true part was, once upon a time, I found out I was short.
唯一真实的部分是，从前，我发现我很矮。
And I'm clearly more hung up on it than I thought I was.
我显然比我想象的更痴迷于此。
But mom confirmed they did decide not to treat me, and we must have talked about it back then.
但妈妈证实他们确实决定不治疗我，我们当时一定已经讨论过了。
I wanted to know why they didn't treat me.
我想知道他们为什么不对待我。
And the answer was pretty simple.
答案很简单。
When I was about 10, my pediatrician sent me to an endocrinologist to check my growth hormone levels because I was small, and doctors like to check every box.
当我大约 10 岁的时候，我的儿科医生把我送到内分泌科医生那里检查我的生长激素水平，因为我很小，医生喜欢检查每一个方框。
So I got tested.
所以我接受了测试。
I was normal, in terms of hormone levels, anyway, and that's it.
无论如何，就激素水平而言，我是正常的，仅此而已。
They didn't pursue it further.
他们没有进一步追究。
Also, my father was a pharmaceutical researcher who tested experimental medications.
此外，我的父亲是一名药物研究员，负责测试实验药物。
My mom was a nurse.
我妈妈是一名护士。
They know about this stuff.
他们知道这些东西。
And this was right after the stories came out about the tainted growth hormone from cadavers.
就在有关尸体生长激素受污染的故事传出之后。
I had just listened to those stories.
我刚刚听了那些故事。
And it was kind of a gut thing.
这是一种直觉。
It was kind of like, well, it took them 25 years to figure that out that we had this issue.
有点像，嗯，他们花了 25 年才发现我们有这个问题。
It took them 25 years.
他们花了25年的时间。
So am I going to wait 25 years to find out, oh, here's a really bad consequence of growth hormone?
那么我是否要等 25 年才能发现，哦，这是生长激素的一个非常糟糕的后果？
Of the synthetic.
合成的。
And we couldn't foresee it.
我们无法预见。
And I had a healthy son who was thriving, I thought.
我想，我有一个健康的儿子，他正在茁壮成长。
And he was a sharp guy, and I didn't want to screw it up.
他是个很敏锐的人，我不想搞砸。
My parents were trying to protect me by doing nothing, the same way Laura and Jeremy were trying to protect Dylan by doing something, something elemental, making him bigger.
我的父母试图通过什么都不做来保护我，就像劳拉和杰里米试图通过做一些事情来保护迪伦一样，一些基本的事情，让他变得更大。
But for my mom, there's something else.
但对于我妈妈来说，还有别的事情。
She doesn't think of what might have happened if she'd made me bigger.
她没有想到如果她让我变大的话会发生什么。
She thinks about what might have been lost if she had.
她在想，如果她这么做的话，可能会失去什么。
It's always been interesting to me to see genes will out, you know what I mean?
看到基因消失对我来说一直很有趣，你明白我的意思吗？
You know, when you say, wow, you do that?
你知道吗，当你说，哇，你这么做了？
And my dad did that.
我爸爸就是这么做的。
It's like a physical thing that somebody does, or the attitude they have, or the way they handle their hands.
这就像某人做的一件实际的事情，或者他们的态度，或者他们处理双手的方式。
Those are genes coming out.
这些都是基因出来的。
That I'd like to see.
我想看看。
They're familiar to me.
他们对我来说很熟悉。
They're familiar to me too.
他们对我来说也很熟悉。
I remind myself of people I've known-- my grandfather, my uncle, my mom.
我让自己想起我认识的人——我的祖父、我的叔叔、我的妈妈。
I've got their bodies.
我已经拿到了他们的尸体。
I'm built on their blueprints, reliable blueprints that delivered several generations of tiny living things from primordial slime to this crazy, risky, present moment.
我是建立在他们的蓝图之上的，这些可靠的蓝图将几代微小的生物从原始的粘液带到了这个疯狂、危险的当下时刻。
That's no small thing.
这可不是小事。
All I know is this is the box I came in, and I like it in here, I think.
我只知道这就是我进来的盒子，我想我喜欢它。
Scott Brown is a writer producer on the Hulu series Castle Rock.
斯科特·布朗 (Scott Brown) 是 Hulu 系列电视剧 Castle Rock 的编剧制片人。
His young adult novel about a super short kid who grows freakishly tall in a year is called XL.
他的青少年小说《XL》讲述了一个超矮的孩子在一年内长得异常高的故事。
Coming up, when something shrinks, and shrinks, and shrinks, it can undo a 900-page law, and more about the power of tinyness.
接下来，当某个东西不断缩小、缩小、再缩小时，它可以撤销 900 页的法律，以及更多关于微小力量的内容。
That's in a minute, from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues.
稍后，芝加哥公共广播电台将继续我们的节目。
It's This American Life.
这就是美国生活。
I'm Ira Glass.
我是艾拉·格拉斯。
Today's show, "Small Things Considered," stories in defense of the little and the Lilliputian.
今天的节目“考虑的小事”是捍卫小人物和小人国的故事。
We've arrived at Act two of our show.
我们已经到了节目的第二幕了。
Act Two, Let's give them nothing to talk about.
第二幕，让他们无话可说。
David Kestenbaum has this story about something that got shrunk to exactly as small as something could possibly be shrunk with huge consequences that are playing out right now, this very moment.
大卫·凯斯滕鲍姆（David Kestenbaum）有一个故事，讲述的是一些东西被缩小到可能缩小的程度，并产生了巨大的后果，而这些后果正在此时此刻上演。
Here's David.
这是大卫。
This thing that got made small?
这东西变小了？
It's a tax.
这是一种税。
A couple years ago, the government set it to zero-- 0 dollars, 0 cents-- which makes what follows so remarkable.
几年前，政府将其设置为零——0 美元、0 美分——这使得接下来的事情变得如此引人注目。
How could a tax so small it doesn't actually exist cause any trouble?
一个实际上并不存在的小额税收怎么会造成任何麻烦呢？
But before I explain-- and since this show is about the importance of small things-- let me just confess here how much I love zero.
但在我解释之前——因为这个节目是关于小事情的重要性——让我在这里承认我有多么喜欢零。
It's unlike any other number in its capacity for destruction.
它的破坏能力不同于任何其他数字。
0 times anything is 0.
0乘以任何东西都是0。
No matter how big, it always wins.
不管规模有多大，它总是会赢。
And even better is dividing.
更好的是分裂。
When I was a kid in math class, I'd like to put 1 divided by 0 into my calculator.
当我还是个孩子上数学课时，我喜欢将 1 除以 0 放入计算器中。
It would show E for Error, because 1 divided by 0?
它会显示 E 表示错误，因为 1 除以 0？
There is no answer to that.
对此没有答案。
It's undefined.
这是未定义的。
Divide by any other number, and you're fine.
除以任何其他数字，就可以了。
1 divided by 2, for instance, or 57, or 693.
例如，1 除以 2，或 57，或 693。
But put a zero in, and it just blows up.
但如果输入一个零，它就会爆炸。
Mathematicians call this kind of situation a singularity, where the math is not well-behaved.
数学家将这种情况称为奇点，即数学表现不佳的情况。
In fact, it stops making sense.
事实上，它不再有意义了。
There are singularities inside black holes, but I never heard of a real world example outside of that until December 14 last year.
黑洞内部存在奇点，但直到去年 12 月 14 日，我才听说过除此之外的现实世界的例子。
A law that brought health care to millions of Americans has been struck down by a US judge.
一项为数百万美国人提供医疗保健的法律被美国法官否决。
The judge has ruled it unconstitutional.
法官裁定该法案违宪。
Maybe you remember this.
也许你还记得这一点。
A judge in Texas ruled that the entire Affordable Care Act violated the US Constitution.
德克萨斯州的一名法官裁定整个平价医疗法案违反了美国宪法。
This was big news, and it immediately got appealed.
这是一个大新闻，立即引起了上诉。
But the signature domestic policy achievement of the entire Obama presidency, the thing that right now is giving millions of Americans health insurance, that whole thing, this judge was saying, it was unconstitutional, had to go.
但整个奥巴马总统任期内标志性的国内政策成就，即现在为数百万美国人提供医疗保险的事情，这位法官说，整个事情是违宪的，必须废除。
And the thing that set all this off?
引发这一切的是什么？
A zero.
一个零。
Last year, Congress reduced the penalty tax for not having health insurance to zero.
去年，国会将没有医疗保险的罚款税减至零。
The judge ruled that without--
法官裁定，如果没有——
Let me explain how a zero could blow up an entire law.
让我解释一下零如何能够毁掉整个定律。
When Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, was written almost a decade ago, it included this thing that people called the mandate, which basically said, you have to have health insurance.
大约十年前，奥巴马医改（即《平价医疗法案》）制定时，其中包括了人们所说的“强制令”，基本上就是说，你必须拥有健康保险。
And if you don't, you've got to pay a fine.
如果你不这样做，你就必须缴纳罚款。
In 2016, the average fine paid was a little over $700.
2016年，平均缴纳的罚款略高于700美元。
Opponents of the health care law took issue with that part saying, the government can't just force people to buy something they may not want.
医疗保健法的反对者对此部分提出异议，称政府不能强迫人们购买他们可能不想要的东西。
All this went to the Supreme Court, which ruled it was OK because-- and this is key-- the mandate could be viewed as a tax.
所有这些都提交给了最高法院，最高法院裁定这是可以的，因为——这是关键——这项授权可以被视为一种税收。
The government has lots of taxes.
政府有很多税收。
This is one of them, which felt like the end of it.
这是其中之一，感觉像是结束了。
And it was, until this other thing happened that seemed unrelated.
事情确实如此，直到另一件事发生为止，这件事似乎无关紧要。
In 2017, Republicans passed their big tax cut bill.
2017年，共和党通过了大规模减税法案。
And one of the taxes in there that they cut-- this was just a sentence-- was the mandate, the fine that you have to pay if you don't have insurance.
他们削减的税收之一——这只是一句话——是强制令，如果你没有保险，你必须支付的罚款。
They cut it to zero.
他们将其削减为零。
It really does seem like most lawmakers in Congress did not understand that this one little change could be the basis for getting all 900-plus pages of the ACA ruled unconstitutional.
国会中的大多数立法者似乎确实不明白，这一小小的改变可能会成为 ACA 全部 900 多页被裁定违宪的基础。
I couldn't find any record of lawmakers even mentioning it in the floor debate or the news coverage.
我找不到任何立法者在现场辩论或新闻报道中提到这一点的记录。
One person who did see that, who put together how zero could undo the whole law, was someone not in Washington at all, a guy in Wisconsin, Misha Tseytlin, who then was the state solicitor general.
一个人确实看到了这一点，并提出了零如何能够废除整个法律的人，他根本不在华盛顿，是威斯康星州的米沙·泽特林（Misha Tseytlin），他当时是州副检察长。
I found him on Facebook.
我在脸书上找到了他。
His profile picture was from an Ultimate Frisbee tournament.
他的个人资料照片来自一场极限飞盘锦标赛。
He politely declined to comment.
他礼貌地拒绝发表评论。
But from legal filings, we know his basic argument.
但从法律文件中，我们知道了他的基本论点。
Tseytlin's logic was that, if the tax is zero, then there is no tax.
采特林的逻辑是，如果税收为零，那么就没有税收。
And what you're left with in the law is this line that basically says, people shall buy health insurance.
法律中剩下的就是这句话，基本上是说，人们应该购买健康保险。
That was OK as part of a tax, like, you shall buy health insurance, or pay a penalty.
作为税收的一部分，这是可以的，比如，你应该购买健康保险，或者支付罚款。
But now the tax was zero, the text of the law was simply telling people to buy health insurance-- unconstitutional.
但现在税收为零，法律文本只是告诉人们购买健康保险——违宪。
That is how a tax of zero ends up in a federal appeals court.
这就是零税最终进入联邦上诉法院的原因。
Most of America's kind of in the courtroom, too-- 18 red states on one side, 16 blue states on the other.
美国的大多数人也都在法庭上——一侧有 18 个红州，另一侧有 16 个蓝州。
I reached out to someone involved in the case, Nick Bagley, professor at the University of Michigan Law School.
我联系了涉案人员、密歇根大学法学院教授尼克·巴格利。
I talked to him about the part of the case that I find so transfixing.
我和他谈论了案件中令我震惊的部分。
Can I say the part that stood out to me?
我能说一下对我来说最突出的部分吗？
Yeah.
是的。
David Kestenbaum I used to work in physics.
David Kestenbaum 我曾经从事物理学工作。
And they call it a singularity, like it's a zero in the denominator, like it creates a black hole.
他们称其为奇点，就像分母中的零一样，就像它创造了一个黑洞一样。
Yeah.
是的。
And you're putting your finger on one of--
你把手指放在其中之一上——
Bagley, to be clear, thinks the first judge got it totally wrong.
需要明确的是，巴格利认为第一位法官完全错误。
He's worked on a brief filed in the appeals case, and he's been writing about it.
他正在撰写上诉案件的一份摘要，并且一直在撰写相关内容。
He pointed out something I honestly had not considered.
他指出了一些我确实没有考虑到的事情。
And I've encouraged, and others have encouraged, Congress, at least the House of Representatives, to pass a bill that would set a $1 tax.
我和其他人都鼓励国会，至少是众议院，通过一项设定 1 美元税的法案。
Oh, really?
哦真的吗？
Nick Bagley Yeah, the House could've passed a bill that made this whole lawsuit go away tomorrow.
尼克·巴格利：是的，众议院本来可以通过一项法案，让整个诉讼明天就结束。
It would be the jot of a pen.
这将是一支笔的一点点。
And if the House passes it, and the Senate doesn't want to pass it, well, hang that around the Senate's neck in the next presidential election.
如果众议院通过了它，而参议院不想通过它，那么，在下一次总统选举中，把它挂在参议院的脖子上。
Make it their albatross to carry.
让它成为他们的负担。
Wait, wait, wait.
等等，等等，等等。
Hang on.
不挂断。
That would work, right?
那会起作用，对吧？
If they just--
如果他们只是——
Absolutely.
绝对的。
David Kestenbaum This whole case goes away if they set it to $1.
David Kestenbaum 如果他们将其设置为 1 美元，整个情况就会消失。
Yeah, there's a bunch of different ways you can do it.
是的，有很多不同的方法可以做到这一点。
A penny, too, right?
一分钱也行吧？
Nick Bagley A penny, sure.
尼克·巴格利 一分钱，当然。
But how can it matter that it's $1 or zero, like, really, really?
但它是 1 美元还是零，真的，真的有什么关系呢？
It can't, and it shouldn't.
它不能，也不应该。
And again, you're putting your finger on--
再说一次，你把手指放在——
Well, I understand that legally it might, but it seems crazy, also, that it might.
嗯，我知道从法律上来说它可能是这样，但它也可能看起来很疯狂。
Yeah.
是的。
That's one of the great things about the law.
这是法律的伟大之处之一。
The great things, yeah.
伟大的事情，是的。
Nick Bagley Well, no, no, no, what I mean what is that, if it seems crazy to you, it probably is.
尼克·巴格利（Nick Bagley）好吧，不，不，不，我的意思是什么，如果你觉得这很疯狂，那么它可能就是这样。
And if the argument is too cute by half, it probably is.
如果这个论点太过可爱了，那么它很可能就是这样。
I talked to Bagley back in July on the day that the appeals court heard the case.
七月，上诉法院审理此案的那天，我曾与巴格利进行过交谈。
We listened together online.
我们一起在线听。
The arguments the lawyers made were all about standing, severability doctrine, the meaning of the word shall.
律师们提出的论点都是关于诉讼资格、可分割性原则以及“应”一词的含义。
What did Congress intend when it set the tax to zero?
国会将税收定为零的意图是什么？
It did not go well for the Affordable Care Act, for Bagley's side.
对于巴格利的一方来说，《平价医疗法案》进展并不顺利。
You could tell from the judge's questions.
从法官的提问就可以看出来。
Bagley's exact words while we listened included things like--
我们听时巴格利的原话包括这样的内容——
And finally-- Nick Bagley This is about as bad as you could expect from an oral argument.
最后——尼克·巴格利（Nick Bagley） 这和你在口头辩论中所能想象到的一样糟糕。
Thank you, your honor.
谢谢您，尊敬的阁下。
David Kestenbaum He was truly surprised.
David Kestenbaum 他真的很惊讶。
He thought the legal argument that zero could take down the whole law was, quote, "weak to the point of frivolousness." To Randy Barnett, though, this all seems totally logical.
他认为，零可以推翻整个法律的法律论据“弱到了无聊的地步”。然而，对于兰迪·巴尼特来说，这一切似乎完全合乎逻辑。
Barnett is a professor at Georgetown Law and has been vocal on the other side.
巴尼特是乔治城大学法学院的教授，他一直在另一方面发声。
If the tax is zero, Barnett says, the mandate's unconstitutional.
巴尼特说，如果税收为零，这项授权就是违宪的。
He doesn't think the court can strike out just that one part of the law, so the whole thing has to go.
他认为法院不能仅仅废除法律的这一部分，所以整个事情都必须取消。
To me, it seems quite reasonable because it's a straightforward application of severability doctrine as I understand it.
对我来说，这似乎很合理，因为据我所知，这是可分割性原则的直接应用。
People on the other side feel like this case is an example of weird legal reasoning being used to get to a particular conclusion.
另一方的人觉得这个案子是一个奇怪的法律推理被用来得出特定结论的例子。
Are there other legal decisions that look that way to you?
您认为还有其他类似的法律决定吗？
Yeah.
是的。
I would say that any decision that says that Congress has the power, under its power to regulate commerce among the several states--
我想说的是，任何表明国会有权根据其权力监管几个州之间的商业的决定——
Short answer, yes, which is to say, liberals have their examples of what they see as activist judges inventing bizarre arguments, and so do conservatives, and libertarians like Barnett, and everyone else.
简短的回答是，是的，也就是说，自由主义者有他们认为的激进法官发明奇怪论点的例子，保守派、像巴内特这样的自由主义者以及其他人也是如此。
He told me about this case that he argued before the Supreme Court, and lost 6 to 3.
他告诉我他在最高法院辩论的这个案子，结果以六比三败诉。
The court ruled that a woman in California couldn't grow medical marijuana at her own house in her own garden to take for her own back pain because of the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution.
法院裁定，由于宪法中的州际商业条款，加利福尼亚州的一名妇女不能在自己的房子里、自己的花园里种植医用大麻来治疗自己的背痛。
That sounds a little crazy to me.
这对我来说听起来有点疯狂。
And yet, those kinds of rulings happen all the time.
然而，此类裁决却时常发生。
Give me another one.
再给我一张。
Randy Barnett How much airtime am I going to get?
兰迪·巴尼特 我可以获得多少通话时间？
I asked Barnett what he made of the fact that this case is how we are deciding whether millions of Americans will have health insurance, and that it all seemed to stem, in some way, from the weird power of zero.
我问巴尼特，他如何看待这个案例，即我们如何决定数百万美国人是否拥有医疗保险，而这一切似乎都在某种程度上源于零的奇怪力量。
Does it seem odd to you that we are in this position?
您是否觉得我们现在的处境很奇怪？
It just seems odd that somehow there would be a difference between Congress setting a tax to a penny and zero.
国会将税收定为一便士和零之间存在某种差异，这似乎很奇怪。
Whenever you have a distinction, there's going to be marginal cases in which that distinction could make a difference, and the distinction could look arbitrary.
每当你有区别时，总会有一些边缘情况，这种区别可能会产生影响，而且这种区别可能看起来是任意的。
That's just the way law works.
这就是法律的运作方式。
It works that way all the time.
它一直都是这样运作的。
You're speeding, by the way, when you go 36 miles an hour in a 35 mile-an-hour zone.
顺便说一句，当你在 35 英里每小时的区域以 36 英里每小时的速度行驶时，你就超速了。
But why is 36 miles an hour-- why is that a terrible speed when 35 miles an hour is perfectly OK?
但为什么是每小时 36 英里——为什么这个速度太可怕了，而每小时 35 英里完全可以呢？
You could say that-- well, I'm not sure how to respond to that.
你可以这么说——好吧，我不知道该如何回应。
[LAUGHTER] David Kestenbaum I'm not sure how to ask it, either.
[笑声] David Kestenbaum 我也不知道如何问。
Here are my feelings.
这是我的感受。
Having big things like this decided in the courts on legal grounds that most people will never understand-- it does not seem ideal to me.
像这样的大事在法庭上以大多数人永远无法理解的法律依据做出裁决——这对我来说似乎并不理想。
The appeals court is supposed to issue its ruling any day now.
上诉法院现在应该随时发布裁决。
It seems quite possible this thing is headed for the Supreme Court.
这件事似乎很可能会提交最高法院。
It's like this little tax set to zero has created a legal wormhole with red states gathered on one side, blue states on the other, a vortex of high-level legal math in the middle.
就好像这种零税率的小额税收创造了一个法律虫洞，红色州聚集在一侧，蓝色州聚集在另一侧，中间是一个高级法律数学的漩涡。
I worry it's going to suck us all into some other dimension.
我担心它会把我们所有人吸进另一个维度。
We'll cross some event horizon from which there is no return.
我们将跨越一些无法返回的事件视界。
It'll tear our atoms apart.
它会把我们的原子撕裂。
It'll tear us apart.
它会让我们分开。
Either that, or a neatly typed opinion will come out some Tuesday morning in June.
要么是这样，要么是六月的某个星期二早上，一份打印整齐的意见就会出来。
David Kestenbaum is the executive editor of our show.
大卫·凯斯滕鲍姆是我们节目的执行编辑。
So we end our show today with this last story of small things that are anything but small from Lilly Sullivan.
因此，我们以莉莉·沙利文 (Lilly Sullivan) 讲述的最后一个小故事来结束今天的节目，这些小事一点也不小。
When I was in my early 20s, I spent a lot of my time looking at job postings online.
当我 20 岁出头的时候，我花了很多时间在网上查看招聘信息。
I'd read the qualifications section-- leadership skills, self-starter, results-oriented.
我读了资格部分——领导技能、自我启动、结果导向。
And then I'd look at myself-- broke, weird, shy to the point of silence-- and miss the deadline, which is when I stumbled on a story called "The Job Application." It's by this writer, Robert Walser.
然后我会看着自己——身无分文、怪异、害羞到沉默——然后错过了最后期限，就在那时我偶然发现了一个叫做“工作申请”的故事。这是作家罗伯特·沃尔泽的作品。
The story is told in the form of a cover letter, but instead of selling himself, he just offers an honest assessment of who he is.
这个故事以求职信的形式讲述，但他并没有推销自己，而是对自己进行了诚实的评估。
"Esteemed gentlemen, I am a poor, young, unemployed person.
“尊敬的先生们，我是一个贫穷、年轻、失业的人。
Large and difficult tasks I cannot perform, and obligations of a far-ranging sort are too strenuous for my mind.
我无法完成大而困难的任务，而范围广泛的义务对我来说太繁重了。
I'm not particularly clever.
我不是特别聪明。
And first and foremost, I do not like to strain my intelligence overmuch.
首先，我不喜欢过度消耗我的智力。
I'm a dreamer rather than a thinker, a zero rather than a force, dim rather than sharp.
我是梦想家而不是思想家，是零而不是力量，是暗淡而不是敏锐。
The passion to go far in the world is unknown to me."
在世界上走得更远的热情是我所不知道的。”
I remember thinking, you're not supposed to tell people that stuff.
我记得我当时想，你不应该告诉别人这些事情。
He was being funny and mocking the whole song and dance.
他很有趣，嘲笑整首歌和舞蹈。
But at the same time, he wasn't making it up.
但与此同时，他并没有弥补。
He needed a job.
他需要一份工作。
He ends the letter, "Well, so now you know what sort of a person I am.
他在信的结尾说道：“好吧，现在你知道我是一个什么样的人了。
I am sincere and honest, and I'm aware that this signifies precious little in the world in which we live.
我是真诚和诚实的，我知道这对于我们生活的世界来说意义不大。
So I shall be waiting, esteemed gentlemen.
所以我会等待，尊敬的先生们。
Your respectful servant, positively drowning in obedience."
您尊敬的仆人，绝对服从您。”
I know almost nothing about this writer, but I loved him for writing this because the thing is, feeling so worthless at that age-- it was terrifying, when your brain isn't orderly and results-oriented, like an effective human's.
我对这位作家几乎一无所知，但我喜欢他写的这篇文章，因为事情是这样的，在那个年纪感觉自己毫无价值——当你的大脑不像一个高效的人那样井然有序、以结果为导向时，这真是太可怕了。
I'd have a rough shift temping or waitressing.
我会经历一个艰难的轮班临时工或女服务员。
People can be awful when you're at the bottom.
当你处于底层时，人们可能会很糟糕。
And I'd come home just dreading the rest of my life, and he got that.
我回到家只是担心我的余生，他明白了。
I started reading more of his stuff.
我开始阅读更多他的作品。
One of my favorites is a novel about boys in a school where they're training to be servants.
我最喜欢的一本小说是关于男孩在一所学校接受仆人训练的小说。
He wrote, "In one thing, we pupils are all similar.
他写道：“在一件事上，我们学生都很相似。
We are small, small all the way down the scale to utter worthlessness.
我们都很渺小，渺小到毫无价值。
One thing I do know for certain-- in later life, I shall be a charming, utterly spherical zero."
我确实知道一件事——在以后的生活中，我将成为一个迷人的、完全球形的零。”
Robert Walser-- turns out he's Swiss, born in 1878.
罗伯特·瓦尔泽 (Robert Walser)——原来他是瑞士人，出生于 1878 年。
And for a moment, it looked like he was going to be the next big thing.
有一瞬间，他似乎将成为下一个大人物。
Kafka, who was younger than him, was a fan.
比他年轻的卡夫卡是他的粉丝。
When Kafka came onto the scene, one critic back then explained Kafka by saying, hey, this guy's kind of like Robert Walser.
当卡夫卡出现时，当时的一位评论家这样解释卡夫卡：嘿，这家伙有点像罗伯特·瓦尔泽。
And there was this delighted absurdity to his work.
他的作品中有一种令人愉悦的荒诞感。
He'd poke fun at himself for being small, but there was always an edge to it.
他会嘲笑自己身材矮小，但总有一个优势。
Worse than being weak, were the people deluded enough to think they're great.
比软弱更糟糕的是，人们被欺骗到认为自己很伟大。
It's so pompous.
真是太浮夸了
He wasn't mean, exactly, more just entertained by their foolishness.
确切地说，他并不是刻薄，他只是对他们的愚蠢感到高兴。
I started to see the world that way, too.
我也开始以这种方式看待世界。
But then one day, a few years later, I was at a bookstore, and I saw a new Robert Walser book on the shelf, more of his work translated into English.
但几年后的一天，我在一家书店，看到书架上有一本罗伯特·沃尔泽的新书，他的更多作品被翻译成英文。
I started reading the introduction, and it had all this stuff I hadn't known before about his life.
我开始阅读简介，里面有我以前不知道的关于他的生活的所有内容。
It said that Walser had spent the last third of his life in a mental hospital-- schizophrenia.
据说瓦尔泽在精神病院度过了他生命的最后三分之一——精神分裂症。
He lived there for 27 years until he died.
他在那里住了27年直到去世。
I was floored and so sad for him.
我很震惊，为他感到难过。
This was the writer I turned to as a roadmap to remind myself that there are people out there like me, and they're fine, and he was the best of our kind of people.
我向这位作家寻求帮助，作为我的路线图，提醒自己，外面还有像我这样的人，他们都很好，而他是我们这类人中最好的。
It freaked me out.
这把我吓坏了。
Like, that's what life did to him?
这就是生活对他所做的吗？
It turns out Robert Walser had a little early success, but not much after that.
事实证明，罗伯特·瓦尔泽（Robert Walser）早期取得了一些成功，但此后却没有取得多大成功。
Writers liked him, but his books didn't sell well.
作家们喜欢他，但他的书卖得不好。
And he was predictably terrible at marketing himself.
不出所料，他在推销自己方面很糟糕。
After flailing for a while, he left the art scene in Berlin and moved back home to Switzerland.
经过一段时间的挣扎后，他离开了柏林的艺术界，搬回了瑞士的家乡。
And once he's there, his life starts falling apart.
一旦他到达那里，他的生活就开始崩溃。
He couldn't really get his books published anymore.
他再也无法真正出版他的书了。
He starts renting out single rooms, month to month, from old ladies, reduces his possessions to a single suitcase.
他开始逐月向老太太出租单间，他的财产只剩下一个手提箱。
He's unhappy, alone all the time, mentally shaky.
他不快乐，总是孤独，精神不稳定。
He'd get nightmares and stay up all night pacing and muttering to himself.
他会做噩梦，彻夜不眠，踱步，自言自语。
Eventually, he checks himself into a mental hospital.
最终，他把自己送进了精神病院。
It's 1929.
现在是 1929 年。
He asks the staff to put him in the shared dorm because-- this breaks my heart-- he's afraid to be alone.
他要求工作人员把他安排在共用宿舍里，因为——这让我心碎——他害怕独自一人。
They diagnose him with schizophrenia.
他们诊断他患有精神分裂症。
He's there voluntarily at first, but later, he gets committed against his will, kicking and screaming as they force him into the car for the transfer.
起初他是自愿在那里的，但后来，他被迫违背自己的意愿，在他们强迫他上车准备转移时又踢又叫。
He spends the rest of his life in a sanitarium.
他在疗养院度过了余生。
There's a story that, when people encouraged him to write again, he said, I'm not here to write.
有一个故事，当人们鼓励他再次写作时，他说，我不是来写作的。
I'm here to be mad.
我是来生气的
And the world forgot about him, and then he died, on Christmas Day, actually, in 1956.
世界忘记了他，然后他就在 1956 年的圣诞节那天去世了。
He goes for a walk outside of his asylum, and he collapses.
他在精神病院外散步，然后倒下了。
A couple kids find his body in a field of snow.
几个孩子在雪地里发现了他的尸体。
Someone actually took a photo.
还真有人拍了照片。
Robert Walser is lying face up, one arm outstretched, dark clothes against white snow, his hat a few feet away.
罗伯特·瓦尔泽面朝上躺着，一只手臂伸出，黑色的衣服映衬着白雪，他的帽子距离他几英尺远。
The book I was looking at had something else, something eerie.
我正在看的那本书还有一些别的东西，一些令人毛骨悚然的东西。
I didn't know what to make of it.
我不知道该怎么办。
After Walser died, a nurse in one of his hospitals came forward with these strange scraps of paper.
瓦尔泽去世后，他所在医院的一名护士带着这些奇怪的纸片走上前来。
His sister had a shoebox full of them too-- hundreds of little scraps, used postcards, business cards, old calendar pages ripped in half.
他姐姐的鞋盒里也装满了这些东西——数百件小碎片、用过的明信片、名片、撕成两半的旧日历页。
And those little shreds were just covered in ant-like pencil markings, dense little rows of tiny slashes and ticks, packed onto shreds of paper.
这些小碎片上覆盖着蚂蚁般的铅笔标记，密密麻麻的小排小斜线和勾号，挤在纸碎片上。
Everyone thinks it's just mad-man scrawl, and they put the papers away.
每个人都认为这只是疯子的潦草，然后他们把文件收了起来。
A few months later, his friend, who, for years, was one of the only people who really visited him in the hospital, publishes a blown-up photo of one of these scraps in a Swiss literary magazine.
几个月后，他的朋友（多年来，他是唯一真正到医院探望过他的人之一）在一份瑞士文学杂志上发表了其中一张碎片的放大照片。
"Undecipherable," he writes, "a product of Walser's schizophrenia." But when the magazine comes out, a grad student writes in saying, Wait, I can read this.
“无法辨认，”他写道，“是瓦尔泽精神分裂症的产物。”但当杂志出版时，一位研究生写道，等等，我可以读到这个。
I think those scratchings are letters.
我认为那些划痕是字母。
He got the papers and spent months staring at 24 pages trying to decipher the tiny handwriting.
他拿到了这些文件，花了几个月的时间盯着 24 页，试图解读那些微小的字迹。
It turned out to be an entire novel.
原来这是一本完整的小说。
But there were still hundreds more scraps.
但还有数百个残片。
It wasn't until the 1980s that someone tackled the rest of them, another grad student named Bernhard Echte, 21 at the time.
直到 20 世纪 80 年代，才有人解决了剩下的人，另一位研究生名叫伯恩哈德·埃希特 (Bernhard Echte)，当时 21 岁。
He'd actually been on his way to becoming a doctor.
他实际上已经踏上了成为一名医生的道路。
But when he discovered Robert Walser, he stopped that life in its tracks, switched to literature to spend more time with Robert Walser.
但当他发现罗伯特·瓦尔泽时，他停止了这种生活，转而从事文学，以便花更多时间与罗伯特·瓦尔泽在一起。
Because I was-- normal literature, normal text, notes-- I think most of them are boring.
因为我——普通的文学、普通的文本、笔记——我认为它们中的大多数都很无聊。
But Robert Walser, he's melancholic.
但罗伯特·瓦尔泽，他很忧郁。
He's funny.
他很有趣。
He is writing about everything and about nothing.
他写的是一切，又什么都没有。
And I started to read him when I was 17, and I read for him almost every day since then.
我从17岁开始读他的书，从那时起我几乎每天都为他读书。
He talked to the archive where the shreds are being kept, and they agreed to let him see them, try to decipher some more.
他与保存碎片的档案馆进行了交谈，他们同意让他查看它们，并尝试破译更多内容。
And when he sees them for the first time, he's stunned.
当他第一次看到他们时，他惊呆了。
The writing is microscopic, each letter just a speck, about two millimeters at first, and as the years go by, they get smaller, down to 1 millimeter-- these tiny bold characters, like miniature Japanese calligraphy.
字迹极其微小，每个字母只是一个小点，最初只有两毫米左右，随着时间的推移，它们越来越小，只有一毫米——这些微小的粗体字，就像微型日本书法一样。
But the really difficult fact is the density of the lines because there's no distance between the lines.
但真正困难的事实是线条的密度，因为线条之间没有距离。
Right, because if the letters are a millimeter, the pencil marking must be half a millimeter.
是的，因为如果字母是一毫米，那么铅笔标记必须是半毫米。
Yes, yes.
是的，是的。
And this is very, very difficult because the pencil is not as sharp as it should be.
这是非常非常困难的，因为铅笔没有应有的锋利。
He brought that up a few times.
他多次提到过这一点。
Like, couldn't he sharpen his pencil?
比如，他不能削铅笔吗？
And this is the problem because you never know what letter is there and how many.
这就是问题所在，因为你永远不知道那里有什么字母以及有多少个。
But if you can read, you can read it because you don't spell letter for letter, but you identify the form of the word.
但如果你能读，你就能读它，因为你不会逐个字母地拼写，但你会识别单词的形式。
You can't identify the individual letters, but somehow when you look at them all together, sometimes you can tell what it says.
你无法识别单个字母，但不知何故，当你把它们放在一起时，有时你可以分辨出它写的是什么。
A word will reveal itself.
一句话就会显露出来。
He started working on it full time with a partner.
他开始与一位合作伙伴全职合作。
They'd sit at typewriters across from each other in a little room filled with cigarette smoke, bent over these magnifying glasses called thread counters, and they'd stare at the words.
他们坐在一个充满香烟烟雾的小房间里，面对面地坐在打字机前，弯腰看着这些被称为线程计数器的放大镜，盯着那些文字。
When they'd get stumped on a word, which happened constantly, they had the system where they'd rattle off gibberish and random syllables.
当他们被某个单词难住时（这种情况经常发生），他们会用系统来胡言乱语和随机音节。
Bernhard and the other guy would work separately on a scrap for a while, then they'd compare their guesses.
伯恩哈德和另一个人会分别处理一段时间的片段，然后比较他们的猜测。
If they had come to the same conclusion, they decided it was right.
如果他们得出相同的结论，他们就认为这是正确的。
The project was supposed to take four years.
该项目原定需要四年时间。
It ended up taking 20.
最终花了20。
Bernhard did the last six years alone.
伯恩哈德独自完成了过去的六年。
He had started when he was 21 and finished when he was 41.
他21岁开始创作，41岁结束。
And when he'd finally finished, those 526 scraps turned into six volumes of work, The Microscripts, 2,000-some pages of stories, comedy, little dramas, a novel about a robber who doesn't steal much of anything.
当他最终完成时，这 526 份残片变成了六卷书、缩微脚本、2000 多页的故事、喜剧、小戏剧，以及一本关于一个不偷太多东西的强盗的小说。
I had pictured this writing as sad little notes to no one.
我本以为这篇文章只是写给任何人的悲伤的小笔记。
But when you read it, it's like Walser's back, happily throwing stones.
但当你读到它时，就像瓦尔泽的背影，快乐地扔石头。
Like he writes, "I've no use for these graspers.
正如他所写，“这些抓握器对我来说没有用处。
Pleasure-seekers overlook life's true pleasures.
追求快乐的人忽视了生活的真正快乐。
They aren't serious, which makes them boring, and they can't help being bored with me, since I'm bored with them."
他们不认真，这让他们很无聊，他们情不自禁地对我感到无聊，因为我对他们感到无聊。”
Some things scholars have figured out-- Walser wrote most of these scraps before the asylum, so this romantic idea of one man alone, writing his masterpieces while locked away, seems like it didn't happen that way.
学者们已经弄清楚了一些事情——瓦尔泽在进入疯人院之前写下了大部分这些残片，所以一个人独自在被关起来的时候写下他的杰作的浪漫想法似乎并没有发生。
And it seems like he probably wasn't schizophrenic.
看来他可能没有精神分裂症。
Bernhard has studied all the medical records.
伯恩哈德研究了所有的医疗记录。
Walser's own doctor thought he was fine and should go home.
瓦尔泽的医生认为他很好，应该回家。
Psychiatrists who study him now don't think he was schizophrenic either.
现在研究他的精神科医生也不认为他患有精神分裂症。
He didn't really have the symptoms.
他确实没有任何症状。
Also, that thing he's famous for saying, "I'm not here to write.
此外，他因说“我来这里不是为了写作”而闻名。
I'm here to be mad"-- people who study him think he likely didn't say that, that it's a myth, and that the truth is he got trapped there for the most infuriatingly mundane reason-- medical bureaucracy.
我来这里是为了生气”——研究他的人认为他可能没有这么说，这是一个神话，事实是他被困在那里是因为最令人恼火的世俗原因——医疗官僚主义。
Once he lost his rights, he couldn't get them back, couldn't sign himself out.
一旦他失去了权利，他就无法收回这些权利，也无法退出。
And during the 27 years he was there, a lot happened in the world-- World War II.
在他在那里的 27 年里，世界上发生了很多事情——第二次世界大战。
That circle of writers who might have known his work, people who might have remembered that he was there, had scattered.
那些可能知道他的作品、可能还记得他在那里的作家圈子已经散去。
Their books were banned.
他们的书被禁。
They were living in exile or dying violently.
他们要么流亡，要么惨死。
Kafka's family members were killed in the Holocaust.
卡夫卡的家人在大屠杀中丧生。
So some writer no one read anymore, who no one ever really knew in the first place, people had other things to worry about.
因此，对于一些没人再读的作家，从一开始就没有人真正了解他，人们还有其他事情需要担心。
One scholar told me, she thinks that, at some point, Walser probably could have gotten out of the hospital if he wanted to, but he stopped trying.
一位学者告诉我，她认为，在某个时候，如果瓦尔泽愿意的话，他可能可以出院，但他停止了尝试。
I wondered why he spent so many years writing things that even he probably couldn't read.
我想知道为什么他花了这么多年的时间写一些连他自己也可能看不懂的东西。
He explained to someone, in those years when he was really depressed, when publishers didn't want his work anymore, he had bad writer's block.
他向某人解释说，在那些年，当他非常沮丧的时候，当出版商不再想要他的作品时，他就有了糟糕的作家障碍。
He describes it as a cramp in his brain.
他将其描述为大脑痉挛。
And he explains that writing this tiny hurts.
他解释说，写这个小东西很痛苦。
So he can take the cramp in his brain and put it into his hand, instead.
这样他就可以把大脑中的痉挛放在手上。
And once he does that, his mind is clear, and he can think again.
一旦他这样做了，他的头脑就清晰了，他可以再次思考。
On a page of a calendar he'd cut into pieces, he writes about why he did it all in pencil.
在他剪成碎片的日历的一页上，他用铅笔写下了为什么要做这一切。
One day, he figured out that a pen made him nervous-- all those mistakes, cross-outs, in ink.
有一天，他发现一支笔让他紧张——所有这些错误、划掉、用墨水写的。
But if he used a pencil instead and labored over this tiny writing, he explains, "This labor looked to me like a pleasure, as it were.
但如果他用铅笔来代替这个小字，他解释道：“在我看来，这种劳动可以说是一种乐趣。
I felt it would make me healthy.
我觉得这会让我健康。
A smile of satisfaction would creep into my soul each time, like a smile of amicable self-derision.
每次，一种满足的微笑都会爬进我的灵魂，就像一种友好的自嘲的微笑。
It seemed to me, the pencil let me work more dreamily, peacefully, cosily, contemplatively.
在我看来，铅笔让我工作起来更加梦幻、平静、舒适、沉思。
I believe that the process I just described would blossom into a peculiar form of happiness."
我相信我刚才描述的过程会绽放出一种特殊形式的幸福。”
That his handwriting was small is in close connection with his convictions about life and what is interesting in life.
他的字迹很小，这与他对生活的信念和生活的乐趣密切相关。
He was not interested in great importance and things which are big and everybody knew about.
他对非常重要的事情以及每个人都知道的大事不感兴趣。
The interesting things are the small things.
有趣的事情都是小事情。
The idea I'd had about his life in the asylum, how he died, how awful it all seemed to me-- Bernhard doesn't see it that way.
我对他在疯人院的生活、他是怎么死的、这一切对我来说是多么可怕的想法——伯恩哈德不这么认为。
He's studied Walser his whole life, every letter and document.
他一生都在研究瓦尔泽，研究每一封信件和文件。
He even bought the house where Walser once lived, and he lives there now.
他甚至买了瓦尔泽曾经住过的房子，现在就住在那里。
He knows his life inside and out, and he thinks it's not tragic.
他对自己的生活了如指掌，他认为这并不悲惨。
He says, Walser usually seems kind of OK.
他说，瓦尔泽通常看起来还不错。
Not happy, exactly, but content.
确切地说，不是快乐，而是满足。
"Life without success," Walser once wrote, "can also be beautiful." His was.
瓦尔泽曾经写道：“没有成功的生活也可以是美丽的。”他的是。
There's power in being OK with being nothing.
坦然无事是有力量的。
It's honest.
这是诚实的。
And you can't crush nothing.
而且你无法压碎任何东西。
He made his life smaller and smaller until he almost didn't exist anymore, and then he didn't, an utterly spherical zero.
他让自己的生命变得越来越小，直到他几乎不再存在，然后他就不存在了，一个完全球形的零。
Lilly Sullivan is one of the producers of our show.
莉莉·沙利文是我们节目的制片人之一。
Other details about Walser's life and work in her story came from Susan Bernofsky.
故事中有关瓦尔泽生活和工作的其他细节来自苏珊·伯诺夫斯基。
Thanks to Susan Bernofsky.
感谢苏珊·伯诺夫斯基。
She has translated eight of his books, and has just written the first-ever English biography of Walser full of the new information she's uncovered.
她翻译了他的八本书，并且刚刚写了第一本瓦尔泽英文传记，其中充满了她发现的新信息。
It'll come out in about a year from Yale University Press.
该书将在大约一年后由耶鲁大学出版社出版。
Credits Bernhard Echte Normal literature, normal texts, notes-- I think most of them are boring.
Bernhard Echte 来源：普通文学、普通文本、笔记——我认为其中大部分都很无聊。
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。
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。