People caught in limbo, using ingenuity and guile to try to get themselves out.
-
Download Control-click (or right-click) Tap and hold to download
- Transcript
Download the hold music, Opus No. 1, from Act One.
Prologue
Rachel has two kids. Elias, age seven, is a vegetarian. Theo, age five, is not. But Elias wants Theo, and everyone else in the house, to be vegetarian too. So Rachel and her husband are in the middle of negotiating the desires of two very strong willed kids. (12 minutes)
Do You Hear What I Hear?
Sara Corbett's father-in-law Dick is 81. And he's become obsessed with a limbo most of us hate – the music he hears whenever he's on hold. (14 minutes)
Sara is co-author of the book A House in the Sky.
The hold music, Opus No. 1, was composed by Tim Carleton and Darrick Deel. It's available on YouTube, Spotify, and Amazon.
Song:
Sunrise, Sun-Get
Mark Oppenheimer reports on agunah in the Orthodox Jewish community. An agunah is a woman whose husband refuses to give her a divorce – in Hebrew it means "chained wife." If you're an Orthodox Jew, strictly following Jewish law, the only real way to get divorced is if your husband agrees to hand you a piece of paper called a get. Without the get, women who want out of their marriages can stay chained to their husbands for years. In New York, a couple of rabbis were recently accused of using violence to force men to give their wives a get. (17 minutes)
Mark’s latest book is Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood.
Song:
The Contrails of My Tears
Brett Martin documents a previously unnoticed human phenomenon, one that involves airplanes, crying, and Reese Witherspoon. (11 minutes)
Brett is the author of the book Difficult Men.
Related
Act Five: What Are The Chances?
Act One: Cops and Mobbers
Act One: Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow
Staff Recommendations
Tell Me I’m Fat
Maybe it’s time to rethink the way we see being fat.
Middle School
Stories from the awkward, confusing, hormonally charged world of middle school.