881: I Want What I Want
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A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbearped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. There's a new film at the Tinna Festival, it's called The Boys and the Bees. Just want to price it Sundance. It's about a real family with two sons, the dad's a beekeeper in Georgia, and I talked to the filmmaker Ariel Knight, she pointed out the two boys are very different. Carver six, Arrow's four. Arrow is the youngest and he's kind of always bouncing around, he's comedic relief in the film. And Carver is the oldest and he's a lot more serious, he's a lot more thoughtful. Carver's the one who reminds the little brother what the rules are, Arrow just breezes past them. And the way all this plays out, and this family beekeepers, Arrow's been stung many, many times by bees, and Carver has never been stung. And how do you explain that? I mean, you know, Carver is probably always paying attention, taking his time, moving slowly. The world's far lower. Exactly. And Arrow just sort of puts on his suit too fast and there's a bee in there or, you know, he steps somewhere where he shouldn't or he's just, you know. They have parents who have made a very deliberate choice to spend a ton of time with their kids, bird watching and fishing and going through the woods and lifting up rocks to see what's underneath them, explaining everything about nature. And there's a scene that Ariel captured on film of the boys with her dad, Nehemiah. So we were wrapping up filming for the day and Nehemiah, usually in the evening, will check on the bees. So he's checking on the bees, he's lifting the racks of beehives out of their boxes, and then he gets stung. Ouch. I got me. You boys back up though, I don't, you all don't have a suit on me and they just stung me so I don't want you to get stung. But what does it feel like? It hurts so bad. I mean, you can handle it. Oliver creeps up to his dad and says something that I couldn't hear in the moment, but that Nehemiah repeats and he says. You want to get stung? Yeah, everybody been in my stung for me. I don't know if mommy would want you to get intentionally stung. It kind of hurts, boy. It kind of hurts. I know that hurts, Harper says. I can get the bee and put it on you and it can sting you. Okay, could we just talk about that choice that he's making there? So Nehemiah has said multiple times that growing up, he'd always wished that the adults around him had been more curious about the things that he was curious about, the kinds of adventures that he was interested in getting into as a kid. And he also seems very awake to these little teachable moments.
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