Chapter 1: Katabasis

Reaching Out

The episode follows a deeply introspective narrative of a man navigating the aftermath of his twin brother's sudden interest in finding their absent birth father. Set against the backdrop of the early

Key takeaways

• Connor (the host's twin brother) initiates a search for their birth father on February 15th, 2020, sparking an unrecorded conversation that haunts the narrator.
• The narrator contrasts his structured, loan-funded life with Connor's nomadic, high-risk freedom, highlighting how divergent choices create emotional distance between twins.

Main topics

• Twin dynamics and divergent life paths
• Pandemic isolation and digital documentation

Notable quotes

"The critical difference between you and Connor is this. Long ago, without realizing it, you chose a kind of freedom."

Conclusion

The episode leaves listeners with a meditation on how we curate our lives through memory and

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Join Futuro Plus for early access to the whole season, ad-free listening, and exclusive bonus content for reaching out. Go to futuromediagroup.org backslash join plus to get access today. Speaker 2 (0:22) On February 15th, 2020, Connor calls you to ask if you want to look for your birth father. Speaker 2 (0:30) You do not record this conversation. This is notable if only because so much of your life has been recorded. Moments far less consequential than this. Your and Connor's fourth birthday. Speaker 2 (0:50) A school performance. You play a scared rabbit. Your only line. Speaker 2 (1:00) A house party when you were 16, when you first began to record yourself. Speaker 2 (1:15) These records were made because you or someone else thought the moment was worth keeping. A sort of prescient act, one that assumes that you might want to return, that what is captured here may hold some significance, that what is remembered may cohere somehow with the story of your life as you are meant to understand it. Speaker 2 (1:34) There is a price for what we choose to remember and what we choose to forget. For the story we make of it. If you had known how this would all turn out, maybe you would have recorded everything. Or if you'd known the cost, maybe you would not have recorded anything at all. Speaker 2 (1:52) But you did not know, could not have known. Speaker 2 (1:56) On February 15th, 2020, your brother calls you to ask if you want to look for your birth father. But there is no record of that call. Speaker 2 (2:07) There is, however, a recording of the call you make a few days later. Speaker 4 (2:38) Nothing, my phone is at 10 % by Speaker 5 (2:41) the way. That's cool. I don't, I can't, I don't feel like talking on this one very long. I'm tired. I'm Speaker 4 (2:48) recording. I hope that is okay. Speaker 4 (2:51) Oh, really? Speaker 5 (2:52) Okay. Speaker 4 (2:53) Yeah. Speaker 4 (2:55) That's cool. Speaker 5 (2:57) Are you recording because you want to talk about dad stuff? Speaker 4 (3:01) Yeah, well, not just because of that, but yeah. Speaker 4 (3:05) I thought that's what you wanted to talk about. I have other things on my mind, but... Speaker 2 (3:10) I Speaker 5 (3:10) mean, yeah, that's just like a very intense conversation. Can I tell you something crazy that happened today that has nothing to do with him? Speaker 2 (3:18) These days, you rarely know where Connor is until he's already there. You call and he's in Washington with his girlfriend. You call again and he's barely got service. He's trimming weed in Arcata. Or he's hopped a train to the Midwest. Or he's crashing on a friend's couch in Oakland. Speaker 5 (3:35) So I'm in New Orleans right now, right? Mm-hmm. You know that? You're where? Speaker 2 (3:39) Right now, Connor is partying in New Orleans with his girlfriend. Right now, you are pacing around your room in Harlem, staring at a whiteboard where you have scribbled a list of vague to-dos. Dentist, student loans, respond to email, and clean. You do not bother to erase these tasks each week. The tasks will remain undone, or they will be rewritten. Speaker 5 (4:04) We're walking to go get my bike. And we walked by this guy who apparently used to live here. We keep walking and all of a sudden... Like here be your steps and I look behind He's like walking really quickly to catch up with us. He's looking at music. He's faggot He's like, you can't bring females here. What the fuck do you think you're doing? I was like, it's my girlfriend. And then he kind of just mean mugged and blank stared. And then he walked, but he started walking back to his chair. Right. Speaker 2 (4:36) Connor does not like it when you point out your differences, but contrast is the rightful and unavoidable dominion of twins. There are superficial distinctions, the kinds of differences strangers point out when you inevitably pull up a photo of Connor after they learn you're a twin. Your tightly coiled curls, Connor's loose wavy hair, Connor's growth spurt at 16. your 5'7", which you say is 5'8". But nothing makes you feel more different from your brother than when he tells you these kinds of stories, because it is in these stories that your critical difference becomes most obvious. Speaker 5 (5:18) And the fucking guy is like a block away from us. Whoa. I just had fucking like these knives in his hand and like polishing his knives on his shirt and like looking at us. Speaker 2 (5:29) The critical difference between you and Connor is this. Long ago, without realizing it, you chose a kind of freedom. The kind that imparts stability and safety and that you pay for in unsubsidized loans, quarterly job reviews, happy hours with coworkers, boring party conversation, conferences with field practitioners. mid-century modern furniture, boxing classes, and dental checkups. And Connor chose a kind of freedom that comes with land projects, one-off jobs at biker festivals, wide-open mountain ranges from the Union Pacific Line, and that he pays for in a persistent smoker's cough, weeks on remote weed farms with fish fans, and being pursued in New Orleans by a guy with a knife. Speaker 5 (6:12) It was just like a psycho-ass move. So yeah, that was crazy. That's why I was talking to you. Speaker 2 (6:19) You do not return to the subject of your birth father tonight. You talk about your mother, who left her apartment in Oakland after they raised the rent a few months ago. She's dog-sitting for strangers now to save money. Speaker 5 (6:31) She's, like, talking to me about how she's, like, bouncing around a bunch right now. Speaker 4 (6:37) Yep. Living that nomadic lifestyle, am I right? Speaker 5 (6:41) Uh-huh. Speaker 2 (6:42) You wrestle about timing for your next call. Speaker 5 (6:45) Yeah, I probably can't talk tomorrow, but I can talk sometime in the next few days. Speaker 4 (6:51) Tell me what time. Speaker 5 (6:53) And they did. I don't have a schedule. Speaker 2 (6:56) Your brother thinks you are a judgmental normie, and you think he is a judgmental hobo. This is the shared cost of your divergent freedoms. You both pay for your choices with the degree of distance it puts between you. But you do love each other, and you are trying to be better, to be nicer, to be closer. This routine of phone calls which began a few months ago is your attempt. Speaker 4 (7:20) and drink water and eat meals. Yeah, we Speaker 5 (7:23) have a house. I love you. We Speaker 4 (7:24) can cook. Yeah, I know you're not like eating over a trash fire. Okay, I love you. Okay, there's nothing wrong with that. Speaker 2 (7:33) It's unlikely you speak about your father again, but it's hard to say for sure. There are no records of phone calls with Connor that week or the next. You assume his impulse to look for your father is a passing one. You doubt you follow up. You went through your phase, of course, the one that you imagine most fatherless teenagers go through, in which your father's absence took on an outsized significance, in which your adolescent brain dissected and disassembled its meaning in relation to your sense of self. Was your fatherlessness, while you felt so apart from others, was his abandonment a sort of permanent wound on your psyche? Only one way to find out. Write a lot of shitty poetry. Speaker 2 (8:14) None of those poems are recorded. Thank God. But one vestige remains. A play about two boys waiting to meet their father at a cafe. You wrote it when you were 17. It was called, perhaps a little over-precisely, Waiting to Meet Your Father, and was haltingly, painfully acted out by two fellow art students. Speaker 1 (8:36) What if he doesn't show? He will. And if he doesn't? I'll be okay. Speaker 2 (8:47) The central tension of the play is that the two boys are waiting at a cafe to meet their father who they've never known. But he is running late, or maybe he is standing them up. The brothers argue about whether or not they should wait to find out which one it is. One boy is sure it won't be worth it. The other is adamant they stay. Speaker 1 (9:06) Do you think about him a lot? No. Do you? Well, sometimes. Like when we're about to fall asleep, it's... usually while I'm not thinking that I think about it the most, you know, it's... It's one of those things where when my mind is just drifting, I'll suddenly start wondering about him. And then I'll have to make myself do something to take my mind off him. The more I think about trying to think about him, the more I end up thinking about him. Speaker 2 (9:30) In the end. Speaker 1 (9:32) Let's go Are you sure? Yeah. Speaker 2 (9:37) Their