500: 500!

Ira Glass

From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life, distributed by Public Radio International. I'm Ira Glass, and this is our 500th episode. And what does that feel like? Well, it feels like both a milestone and it feels like nothing. It fills like an odometer clicking over.

I was talking to the show's senior producer, Julie Snyder, about this. She's been here for 15 of the show's 17 years, since episode number 58.

Julie Snyder

Five hun-- what-- I just-- I just come to work. I do my job. I go home.

Ira Glass

Play each ballgame the best I can.

Julie Snyder

Yeah, exactly.

[LAUGHTER]

No, it really is a blur.

Ira Glass

It is a blur. And over the last few weeks here at the radio show, we talked about what we should do for the 500th episode. And like, first of all, should we mark it at all? You know what I mean? Like 500 shows on the radio actually isn't that big of a deal for most programs. Like Terry Gross, she knocks through 500 shows like every two years. Doesn't even notice. Just spins right by them. Lots of shows are like that.

But, you know, the kind of show that we do here, it takes three or four months to make each episode. So that is different. And besides that, you know, 500, the number 500-- that is a number you notice. And if we didn't do something today, like that would feel weird, you know?

So anyway, so as we talked about different things that we could do for this episode, at some point, Julie had the idea that it might be fun to go back to the archives and choose favorite moments from the last 499 episodes. And all this hour, you're going to be hearing the producers of the program, the people who find the stories and who put them together each week, talking about their very favorite moments that we have ever put on the radio.

And the reasons that the producers picked their favorites, I think, are different than the reasons that most listeners would give. Some of them chose stories that had been, I have to say, completely forgotten by the rest of the staff for years. Some chose just, like, one little section of script. Some chose, like, a scene that secretly made them cry and they never told the rest of us. They said things like this.

Ira Glass

And so I am really excited to play you the stuff that we have found. And let's just jump in.

Ira Glass

Julie Snyder, our senior producer, is the mastermind behind a lot of our most ambitious shows, like Harper High School episodes, if you've heard those. And she came into the studio with a list of favorite stories from over the years, starting with a shortie.

Julie Snyder

It's only like a minute long.

Ira Glass

OK.

Julie Snyder

It's really, really lovely writing that I have thought about ever since it aired, I don't know, 12 years ago, 14 years ago.

Ira Glass

Wow. What in the world are you talking about?

Julie Snyder

It's from Sarah Vowell's Trail of Tears story. Can you guess it?

Ira Glass

Hold on.

Julie Snyder

That's a whole show.

Ira Glass

Like America is a country that hits you but-- that's not the moment.

Julie Snyder

It is.

Ira Glass

It is?

Julie Snyder

It is.

Ira Glass

I can't remember the set-up for it. I just remember the punchline of it.

Julie Snyder

Well, the set-up-- OK. Well, so the story, right, is that Sarah is part Cherokee. And she and her twin sister Amy go on this road trip, going from Georgia driving to Oklahoma, following the Trail of Tears. And--

Ira Glass

That their ancestors had walked before them.

Julie Snyder

Exactly. That their ancestors have walked when the Cherokee were expelled from Georgia. And it's super depressing. I mean, what would a trip like that be? It is. It's just depressing. So it's very hard to know what to do with all these feelings. And so that's where her writing picks up. You want to hear it?

Ira Glass

Yeah.

Julie Snyder

OK. It's "Trail of Tears," starting at 45:14.

Ira Glass

OK, here we go.

[MUSIC - CHUCK BERRY, "BACK IN THE USA"]

Sarah Vowell

The most happiness I find on the trip is when we're in the car and I can blare the Chuck Berry tape I brought. We drive the trail where thousands died, and I listen to music and think, what are we supposed to do with the grizzly past? I feel a righteous anger and bitterness about every historical fact of what the American nation did to the Cherokee. But at the same time, I'm an entirely American creature. I'm in love with this song and the country that gave birth to it.

[MUSIC - CHUCK BERRY, "BACK IN THE USA"]

Listening to "Back in the USA" while driving the Trail of Tears, I turn it over and over in my head. It's a good country. It's a bad country. Good country. Bad country. And of course, it's both. When I think about my relationship with America, I feel like a battered wife. Yeah, he knocks me around a lot, but boy, he sure can dance.

[MUSIC - CHUCK BERRY, "BACK IN THE USA"]

Julie Snyder

Isn't that so nice?

Ira Glass

It's perfect.

Julie Snyder

I know. I remember-- I remember when she wrote it. I remember reading it. I remember when it aired. I just thought it was great. I love that writing. And I think about it all the time. I think about it for so many times when trying to put stuff-- like how do you hold two thoughts together?

Ira Glass

You mean about this country?

Julie Snyder

Yes. All right, you want another one?

Ira Glass

Mm-hm.

Julie Snyder

OK, you want to do "Testosterone"?

Ira Glass

Sure.

Julie Snyder

All right. I really do-- so this is another one. I'll just continue to do these through how they personally affected me.

Ira Glass

Good.

Julie Snyder

So "Testosterone," this is the one where I feel so bad for you guys. I feel really bad for men. This blew my mind, the interview that Alex did with Griffin Hansbury.

Ira Glass

Griffin Hansbury.

Julie Snyder

Yeah. And so Griffin was talking to Alex about-- Griffin was born a woman and went to Bryn Mawr, and was a feminist, and really-- you know what I mean?

Ira Glass

Yeah, lesbian feminist.

Julie Snyder

Lesbian feminist. And then so then, Griffin decided to transition, and so he started taking testosterone. And he started taking pretty intense amounts, apparently.

Ira Glass

Like way more than a man has.

Julie Snyder

Yeah, it's like, I think, twice. And so this part of the interview is when Griffin is telling Alex about the effects of the testosterone.

Julie Snyder

And then Alex's final question, when they talk-- you know, when Alex is, um--

Ira Glass

I know exactly. I know it so well because it's one of my favorite ever posed on our show.

Julie Snyder

I know.

Ira Glass

Both Julie and another producer on the radio show, Robyn Semien, surprised me by choosing as one of their favorites this interview that we have never replayed from an episode we have never rerun. This hasn't aired since September 2005. This is the show that we did immediately after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. And what they each wanted to play was the same interview from that show. It was an interview with this woman named Denise Moore.

Denise Moore had stayed behind in New Orleans with her mom, who was a nurse at Memorial Hospital. She was essential personnel, so she had to stay. And her mom asked Denise to stay with her, and also her niece and her niece's two-year-old.

And in this interview, Denise just tells me what happened to them over the course of the first few days after the hurricane. Here's Robyn talking about that interview. She heard this on the radio. She wasn't on staff back then.

Robyn Semien

The shock to my system that happened, listening to that, was so severe that it's one of those shows where I remember exactly where I was. And it's everything that you've heard on the news so far up until that point. I mean, this was kind of Katrina, wall-to-wall media coverage about the Superdome and the convention center.

But just hearing it, I didn't have a way to really let it affect me until I heard one woman's experience, and to let her kind of lay out exactly what was going on. I mean, I don't think I fully realized how desperate I was at the time to have something make sense until I heard this.

Ira Glass

I remember when we put that show together, we all knew that there had already been lots of coverage of Katrina everywhere. And we thought the one thing that we could do was that till then, when you heard from people in New Orleans in the news, it was mostly in tiny little soundbites. And we thought the one contribution we could make was just let people talk longer. You know, it's easier to connect emotionally when you hear more.

And so Denise is one of the interviews where this happens. And what happened to Denise after the flood is the hospital where her mom works at, she stays there for a couple days, then it gets shut down. And then everyone is ordered to move to the convention center, where they're told that there'll be buses to take them to safety out of the city. So they go.

Ira Glass

That was Denise Moore in 2005. The next producer we have is Nancy Updike. Nancy is the only person other than me who's working here now at the show who was actually here at the very beginning of the program. She moved to Chicago, and then a week later, we did our first episode.

And what did you want to hear on today's show?

Nancy Snyder

I want to hear John Hodgman's story, from "The Real Story." Do you remember this?

Ira Glass

I think about this story all the time because the beginning of it is so beautiful.

Nancy Snyder

It's-- I mean, I think it's one of the best pieces of writing that's ever been on the show. It's so inviting and funny, and it keeps making these turns.

Ira Glass

OK, so looking this up on our website, this is Episode 232, February 2003. Let's hear that.

Nancy Snyder

It's perfect.

Ira Glass

[LAUGHS]

Nancy Snyder

It's perfect. And then the whole essay, it makes this incredible turn at the end to his mom dying. And that's why he's been obsessively rewriting The Phantom Menace in his head, that he's turning away from this terrible thing that's happening.

Ira Glass

Nancy Updike, talking about John Hodgman's writing. When I sat down in the studio with Sarah Koenig to talk about her favorite moments to play on the show today, her favorites included some of Nancy's writing. And just to introduce Sarah, she's been here at the show for nearly a decade. She's reported lots of stories.

She's filled in as host now and then, most recently of the "Coincidences" show. And she brought a whole list of favorites into the studio. And she said some of Nancy's writing has just stayed with her.

Sarah Koenig

Do you remember all that nice writing, and I was listening to, "I'm From the Private Sector and I'm Here to Help," when she went to Iraq.

Ira Glass

There's a passage about-- are you going to talk about the passage about that one guy who's leading the--

Sarah Koenig

Hank.

Ira Glass

Hank. Where she describes Hank.

Sarah Koenig

Yeah, that whole opening thing with Hank, she has this light touch, and it's funny. And you immediately feel like, oh, I know who this guy is. So this is show number 266. It's from, I think, 2005. 2004, maybe.

Ira Glass

It's 2004. It's June 2004. And it's pretty early in the coverage of the private contractors in Iraq.

Sarah Koenig

Right. And one of the companies she focused on was this security company called Custer Battles. And it turned out that they were kind of in some trouble. And so she just hangs out with Hank for a while.

Nancy Updike

Hank is the man who was brought in to clean up Custer Battles' PSD operation. Hank has a vision for the kind of men he wants working for him.

Nancy Updike

It's possible Hank came up with this description by looking in the mirror. He's a 49-year-old man with small blue eyes, a former paratrooper and ranger. The son of a decorated soldier. Married to the daughter of a soldier. Father of two soldiers, one of whom was in Iraq and is now in Afghanistan on a mission he can't talk about.

Hank is cryptic. He doesn't want me to use his last name. He won't even tell me what rank he achieved. I looked it up later-- lieutenant colonel.

He's done private security work overseas before. He won't give details, of course. But he will-- and this is the thing about Hank-- he will poke fun at it.

Nancy Updike

So he wants his PSD guys to have the look.

Nancy Updike

And he walks around doing that look. But he also knows it's all a bit of a put-on. A man dance, as he calls it. And with tens of thousands of American military and ex-military and private military in Iraq right now, it's very possible that we are standing in the middle of the largest man dance on the planet.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Ira Glass

OK, so what else you got?

Sarah Koenig

I have to say, this story, the one I'm going to pick right now, is the one, sort of, if people don't know the show, this is the one where I'm like, just listen to this one. It's from 2007. It's "Duty Calls." It's Josh Bearman's story about his family.

Ira Glass

Oh yeah, that's a really beautiful story.

Sarah Koenig

And it's so deftly done, in this way where if you really think about what the story's about-- it's like in someone else's hands, it could just be this cliche of like, oh, you know, my mom's an alcoholic and my brother's a screw-up. And all the cliches that could go along with that. And you know who these people are.

And then you listen to his and you realize, like, no, you don't know. And it's so compelling. And everyone in it, it turns out to be so likable, you know? You sort of-- and that's, I feel like, in a way, the surprise of the story, which is also super raw in parts.

Ira Glass

Which part should we play?

Sarah Koenig

I don't know. The scene that really got me is when he talks to his-- it's a conversation between Josh and his mom. And it starts at 19:07. Are you on the thing?

Ira Glass

Mm-hm.

Sarah Koenig

If you start it at 19:07, where they just have this conversation, and so much is happening in the course of this conversation, where like, he's sort of angry and she gets kind of defensive. And then she sort of says this really honest thing that makes you understand how she's been feeling all this time.

Ira Glass

Yeah, OK, so this is episode 334, from June of 2007.

Sarah Koenig

Isn't that good?

Ira Glass

Yeah. OK, so what else you got?

Sarah Koenig

So there's one-- I don't know if it's too weirdly self-referential or sycophantic or something. But there's this really nice moment of you and Tami Sagher that I came across. It's not one that's in my pantheon at all, but just as I was looking back at old stories, I was like, oh, what's this one? And I listened back.

And I realized some of the things I like best on the show are when you're just interviewing someone, and you get a little off-topic, and suddenly something really revealing happens. I feel like it happens kind of a lot when you're interviewing people. And I don't know. You say stuff in interviews that I find really surprising.

And so anyway, there's this nice moment in-- I think it's show 314. It's a show called "It's Never Over." And it's the last act. And it's just this interview with Tami Sagher about this joke that she'd thought up like four years earlier and never deployed, because it was a topical joke about Ralph Nader. And then this opportunity comes for her to deploy this joke.

Ira Glass

Tami Sagher, I should say, is a comedy writer, and she was deploying this joke in a room full of writers at her brand new job.

Sarah Koenig

And she just nails it, and everyone thinks it's this off-the-cuff hilarious comment, not knowing that she'd been saving it up for all this time. And it, like, gets teed up for her perfectly, and she just, like, lets it off really casually, and everybody laughs.

And there's this moment right after that where the anecdote has been told. She has the slightly larger thought, like you'd think, done. And then it keeps going, and it's good. And that's at-- I don't know if you want to play it, but that's at 50:22 of that show.

Ira Glass

Hold on.

Ira Glass

So wait, so that thing that I say, that's the thing?

Sarah Koenig

That's the thing.

Ira Glass

Yeah. God, I totally did not remember saying that until just now. Yeah, that's so true of me.

Sarah Koenig

It's so personal. And I feel like it's really-- I don't know. Like I've known you for 10 years now, right? And I heard you say that. I was like, oh, right. That's right. Because I was like, I know there's a lot of times in interviews where I've just been listening in, and you'll reveal this thing, and I'm always just like, that's ballsy.

Ira Glass

To me that's just so obvious that you would do that if you have something like that to do, because it's good tape. Like your job is to make good tape. You know what I mean? Like that's our job, is to make good tape.

Sarah Koenig

I know, but I feel like that's the thing that's different, right? Like you're willing to kind of exploit anything you've got in there. And I think a lot of people, for a lot of people, that stuff is just off-limits.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Ira Glass

Sarah Koenig. Coming up, me and Bruce Banner, so similar. And more favorites from the past 499 episodes. That's in a minute. From Chicago Public Radio and Public Radio International, saying this now for the 500th time, when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. It is our 500th episode. We're spending it by having the producers of the program come into the studio and pick their favorite moments from the last 17 and 1/2 years of shows. God, it sounds like so many.

Well, four of the producers of the show, when they came in to talk about the favorites, they said they thought of all the possible stories they could play today, the story that meant the most to them was the one when they first heard our show or first noticed it doing something different from other radio shows.

Jonathan Goldstein

For me, it was sort of like, what-- what is this thing?

Ira Glass

That's Jonathan Goldstein. He was a producer on the show for a few years, and he's continued to do stories for us since. Longtime listeners may remember the story of the phone message, "You and the Little Mermaid can go eff yourselves." Anyway, he's now the host of the Public Radio show and podcast called WireTap. And he said this about his first time hearing our show.

Jonathan Goldstein

There was a particular kind of mood to it, and it just-- it really, it sucked me in. You know which one I'm talking about?

Ira Glass

No, I don't.

Jonathan Goldstein

It's the top, the prologue, to "The Cruelty of Children."

Ira Glass

Oh, that's so interesting. No one has mentioned that one at all, and that's totally a favorite of mine.

Jonathan Goldstein

Really? Well, OK, so I haven't heard it in years. And so I was surprised by a couple things. One, that it was two minutes long.

Ira Glass

Wow, is that true? It's that fast?

Jonathan Goldstein

Yeah. And it's so funny, because in my memory, it was like half the show or something, which is insane. And you come on and you're saying, I was talking to a first-grader about libraries--

Ira Glass

I was talking to a first-grader about libraries.

Jonathan Goldstein

Then I suddenly found myself talking about bullies.

Ira Glass

And I suddenly found myself talking about bullies. That's the thing about the idea of bullies. The idea is so powerful that it can derail any conversation and pull it towards its own orbit.

Here's how it happened. We were on a school bus. I was asking the first-grader what kinds of books he takes out from the library.

Jonathan Goldstein

Like I couldn't even wrap my head around it. Like, I didn't even understand. Like who is this guy? Why is he talking to a first-grader in the first place? You know what I mean?

Ira Glass

Yeah.

Jonathan Goldstein

Like, why are you-- like were you out for coffee? Are there six-year-olds in your social circle? And because it was like my first glimpse into the world of the show, my sense of it was, here's this guy who's this kind of like wandering America, like the Incredible Hulk or something. Like with his jacket slung over his shoulder down a highway with his microphone out, looking for company and taking it wherever he can get it. Whether it's in a roadside coffee shop or on a school bus talking to a six-year-old.

Ira Glass

And that was all it took. Suddenly, he launches into this big thing.

Ira Glass

As far as I was able to determine later, talking with parents and teachers and consulting with books in print, there is no book-- [LAUGHS] There is no real book that corresponds to the book this first-grader thinks he saw the bully read.

And you know, it's a shame. It was such a comforting thought. Why are people bullies? Why are they so mean? Why do they push you sometimes, and take your change, and say nasty things? Maybe they're just getting it from a book.

Ira Glass

Next up is Brian Reed. Brian is one of our newest staffers. He was an intern here. He's been a producer for a year and a half. Regular listeners may remember the story that he produced about Guatemala last year, and that guy who survived a massacre at a place called Dos Erres.

Anyway, the story that Brian wanted to play today was also the first story that he remembers hearing, though he did not hear this story on the radio. When he was in college, I came and spoke, and I played this story from the stage.

Brian Reed

Yeah, and I think-- I mean, I knew what the show was, because clearly I went to see you. But I don't remember ever hearing the show before that. I don't have a memory of it.

Ira Glass

Wow.

Brian Reed

Yeah. And it's this little story that Jack Hitt told on the "Kid Logic" episode.

Ira Glass

Jack Hitt. Alex Blumberg has been with our program on and off since 1997. He's one of the co-creators of Planet Money, the podcast and the website, which is a co-production of our show and NPR News. He created a [INAUDIBLE] of money with Adam Davidson, and Alex picked, as his pick for today, one of Adam's very first radio stories from 15 years ago.

Alex Blumberg

It was on the show that we had called "How To." And the premise was that there's this group of people who calculate how much a human life is worth. And they're insurance adjusters. And Adam Davidson--

Ira Glass

And this is so if somebody dies in an accident or something, they can tell you how much you can get for that person's life?

Alex Blumberg

Yeah, for like a wrongful death suit. And insurance adjusters are sort of very familiar with this. And so Adam Davidson goes and basically asks the question, how much is my life worth now, and what could I do to make my life worth more if I wanted to?

Ira Glass

Right, which is good premise. Like the premise is great.

Alex Blumberg

And that's exactly the type of premise that you would go out, and then it would just be quashed by reality. And you know, there's this thing that happens were you sort of say, like, here's what I think the story is going to be. And then what always happens is you go out, and you're like, aah, the actual story is way more complicated.

Ira Glass

Yeah, and it's not as good. It doesn't--

Alex Blumberg

Not as good, and it's not as funny or outrageous or whatever you're thinking it will be.

Ira Glass

The thing you hope for, it wasn't true.

Alex Blumberg

It wasn't this. And then at some point, the words "actuarial tables" are going to mentioned, and then you're screwed.

Ira Glass

No, no, no, yeah, and then people turn off the radio when they hear that.

Alex Blumberg

Yeah, exactly. And this is the story where it's actually the opposite. Like you think it's going to be good, and then what actually happens is even better.

Ira Glass

OK, so I'm just bringing this up on the computer. This to show number 94 from 1998.

Alex Blumberg

It's like the first three minutes of it.

Adam Davidson

When I was seven, my mom told me about a guy who died because his car blew up. It was the manufacturer's fault, and the man's relatives sued and got about $300,000. I remember wondering about that number. I remember thinking, if you were going to assign a number to human life, it would have to be huge, at least a million. To my seven-year-old mind, a million seemed like the start of the really big numbers.

The other day, I wanted to find out how much my life was worth, so I want to talk to this guy, George Karas, an adjuster in Merrillville, Indiana. He looked me over, asked me my stats-- age, job, marital status.

Alex Blumberg

And then it just gets better, because listen, they fight now about it.

Adam Davidson

My life, worth less than half a second of one commercial on Seinfeld. George explains it this way. I'm single, got no dependents, and as far as he's concerned, no one would be all that affected by my death. I argued with him, pointed out my parents need me. I make them laugh. I tease them in a way that nobody else can.

Ira Glass

Oh, my god, this guy is totally fighting with Adam.

[LAUGHTER]

Alex Blumberg

I love that. I love it. Yeah. That's it. I mean, there's one more funny moment, if you wanted to play the--

Ira Glass

Yeah, let's hear it.

Alex Blumberg

I mean, it just comes right after that. It's like the next section, where he talks about-- he basically sort of hectors at him even more, because he says, there's one way that you could raise the value, is if you have a partner who loves you.

Alex Blumberg

Yeah. That guy was amazing.

Ira Glass

Alex Blumberg. So as we've approached the 500th episode, I've been asked a lot about what stories and moments over the years are my favorites. And I'm asked that a lot in general, but that has totally stepped up lately. And some of my favorites really are the same shows, I think, that listeners pick when they pick their favorites.

There's the camp show. The aircraft carrier. "Harper High School." "Switched at Birth." Sarah Koenig's episode about the two Dr. Gilmers, recently. Starlee Kine's break-up story. "The Giant Pool of Money." The Harold Washington show-- forgive me for half minute, those of you who don't know our show so well, that I'm naming stuff without playing clips. There's no time to play all this stuff.

But I think honestly-- and I'm not totally proud of this-- a lot of my favorite moments are just things that I like for completely selfish reasons. Like I got a chance to say something that meant a lot to me for whatever reason. Or really, when the experience of making a story, just the experience of making it, meant a lot to me, like working on the episode last year after David Rakoff died.

Or back in the year 2000, I visited David Sedaris in Paris for a show. Or making a batch of Coca-Cola from what we believe is one of the original recipes. Or years ago, going to Medieval Times with a medieval scholar, who's now passed away. Or going to Georgia over and over and over and getting to know people and trying to get them to speak on the record about this small-town judge for the story I was doing.

Or my parents used to be on the show a lot, a lot, in the early years of the show. And I'll play you a clip. This is my mom, from our very first episode. Just listen to how skeptical she sounds at first in this clip.

Ira Glass

I'm just going to stop that clip. Can I just say? I look nothing like Hugh Grant. Only my mother could think I look like Hugh Grant.

Anyway, one of the big surprises, actually, of doing the radio show is that it brought me a lot closer with my parents. Things were pretty chilly between us before then because they disapproved of what I was doing with my life. I have joked in the past that my parents are the only Jews in America who do not like Public Radio. But having them be part of this thing that meant so much to me, being on the radio show, really made us closer in a way that I never anticipated could have happened.

And they came around on the Public Radio stuff. Here's my dad from show number 94-- this is February 1998-- coming on the air with some constructive criticism about the way that I read the show's credits.

Ira Glass

OK, enough of that. Hi, Dad.

Ira Glass

OK, so I'd like to end the show today with this last story. This is one of Julie's picks. Here she is.

Julie Snyder

And the only reason I bring up this one is because I know a lot of people have told me, oh, that they've listened to the show and cried, or they hear a lot of different stories and it makes them cry. Or I don't like listening to the show sometimes, because it totally makes me cry.

I'm a little more hard-hearted. I don't cry as easily. I'm always like a little dumbfounded when people tell me about the things that made them cry. Sure, it's sad. I'm not gonna cry. Also, there's just the working here. Once you've heard something a couple of times and stuff, it doesn't make you cry anymore, you know?

There is one story, and I have heard this story so many times. And then I had to listen to just to make sure that it held up before I came and talked to you. I cried. Seriously, like throat catching, cried walking down Seventh Avenue yesterday morning, coming into work. Of where I was like, oh my god, somebody's going to see that I'm crying.

Ira Glass

To my own show.

Julie Snyder

To my own show.

[BOTH LAUGH]

A story that I totally know how this goes.

Ira Glass

What story is it?

Julie Snyder

I can't believe you don't obviously know.

Ira Glass

What is it?

Julie Snyder

"Mama, I'm Sorry."

Ira Glass

Awww.

Julie Snyder

Oh, it gets me every time.

Ira Glass

OK, all right. So this is from our show "20 Acts in 60 Minutes."

Julie Snyder

Yep.

Ira Glass

Act 20. "The Greatest Moment I Ever Saw On a Stage." I'll say, first of all, that this moment that I saw caught me completely off-guard. I was at a play where I was not expecting anything special. It was put on by an organization that works with teenagers. Music Theater Workshop is what it's called. And among other things, they get kids who are locked up in Chicago's juvenile detention center, the Audy Home, to write and perform musicals about their lives.

This one was performed by teenage girls. OK, so we're in the detention center. Folding chairs have been set up. The girl's parents-- it's mostly mothers and grandmothers, very few men-- are sitting directly in front of the stage.

And imagine for a minute what it's like to be one of those parents, OK? Your kid's locked up, possibly on very serious charges, some of these girls were. You're worried about what's going to happen to them next. You're probably still mad that they didn't listen to you in the first place and got into all this trouble, and ended up behind bars.

What can theater possibly do for you in this situation? You know? It seems like such an old-fashioned idea that it can do anything.

So there's this one scene in the play.

Ira Glass

And it's a story of this girl named Candace. And Candace basically wanted better clothes so the other kids at school wouldn't laugh at her. And she steals some clothes from Nike Town and she gets in trouble. She gets caught.

And then she joins a gang to earn some money and be more popular. Her mom finds some drugs in the house, and a gun, and feels completely betrayed because that was not how she raised her daughter. And one thing leads to another, and Candace gets locked up.

Then the girl narrating the story says, and this is how Candace feels about her mom now. And then all the girls in the play come out on the stage and stand in a line, facing their mothers and grandmothers who are right there in front of them.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Ira Glass

One of the verses goes, Mama, I'm sorry for making you come to court, for almost losing your job to give me moral support. Mama, I'm sorry for putting you through all the stress, for making you worry yourself and depressed. I'm ready to come back home. I'm willing to make a change.

And by this time, the girls are all crying. The parents are all crying. And each girl has a cut-out-- you know, like a little heart, like on Valentine's Day? Like that, made from red construction paper. Like the size of your palm. And written on each one is the words "I'm sorry."

And each girl goes out to the audience, to where her mom is sitting or her grandma is sitting and hands her the heart. And the parents are crying, and the kids are crying, and everybody is hugging. It was really something.

Ira Glass

Here they were, not just saying this to their mothers, but saying it publicly, in front of the world, in front of their friends. Saying this thing that could be so hard to say in any case, you know? Singing it out, and hoping it can heal something that is going to be hard to heal, no matter what you do.

Julie Snyder

(TEARFULLY BUT LAUGHING) Isn't it the worst?

Julie Snyder

I find it so sad.

Ira Glass

Well, our program was produced today by Sarah Koenig and myself, with Alex Blumberg, Ben Calhoun, Miki Meek, Jonathan Menjivar, Lisa Pollak, Brian Reed, Robyn Semien, Alissa Shipp, and Nancy Updike. Our senior producer is Julie Snyder.

Thanks today to all the other producers who have worked on the show over the years, who did such a beautiful job making the stories that you heard today-- Peter Clowney, Alix Spiegel, Doris Wilbur, Susan Burton, Blue Chevigny, Wendy Dorr, Starlee Kine, Jonathan Goldstein, Diane Cook, John Jeter, and Jane Feltes AKA Jane MariE.

Thanks bigger than I think thanks can actually say to Torey Malatia, who I started the radio show with at WBEZ. Production help today from Thea Benin. Seth Lind is our operations director. Emily Condon's our production manager. Elise Bergerson's our administrative assistant. Music help from Damien Graef and Robb Geddes.

Our website, where we have added all kinds of extra stuff this week for the 500th episode-- thanks to Rich Orris for helping with that. And where you can listen to all 500 episodes for absolutely free on your computer or using our app on your cellphone or iPad. We also have lists that we hope are helpful of listeners' favorite shows at our website, thisamericanlife.org.

This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. I hope my father heard me read these credits and felt I did OK. WBEZ management oversight for our show by our boss, Mr. Torey Malatia, who has this message today.

Torey Malatia

Hello, I'm Torey Malatia. I am a real person. Happy 500th episode. Now get back to work.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.

[MUSIC - MATT POSS BAND, "AMERICAN LIFE"]

Announcer

PRI. Public Radio International.