This American Life host Ira Glass and producer Susan Burton spent a week in August recording a suburban Chicago youth group at every stage of their very first mission trip. The teenagers were from Covenant Presbyterian Church in Chicago. They went to West Virginia, to fix up someone's house, and to witness about their faith to strangers. The goal: That they mature from a child's kind of faith to an adult's. There's a boom in mission trips like this right now, a boom that crosses denominations.
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Act Two: Killing Me Softly
Producer Emmanuel Dzotsi has a tale about something he avoids at all costs, even though it seems to follow him everywhere he goes. (8 minutes)
Act One: Music of the Night after Night after Night
The musicians in the orchestra for Phantom of the Opera tell reporter Jay Caspian Kang about what it’s like to play the exact same music every single night—for decades.
Act One: Voice Over
Sandy Allen tells the story of learning to play an instrument that suddenly sounds very different — his own voice.
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