599: Seriously?

Ira Glass

OK, so I don't know any other way to get into this than to just say it. I'm alarmed about something with this year's election. And yes, I know everybody is alarmed about this election. That feels like the one bipartisan thing going on in our country, is that everybody on both sides is kind of a little freaked out. But even in that context, there was this one moment where I felt like, oh, this is the world that we're living in? Like, it's this bad? This is a moment that was widely reported. I bet you saw this. September 16, Donald Trump held a press conference to say that he now believes that Barack Obama was born in the United States. And then he added this claim.

Ira Glass

Jake Tapper was doing the live coverage of the press conference on CNN. He's their chief Washington correspondent. And he knew the whole history of the birther controversy. He had covered this for years, knew it backwards and forwards. And I got in touch with him because I wondered what it was like to be on live television when Trump announced this.

Ira Glass

In the live coverage, Tapper almost sounds mad. Here he is on TV.

Ira Glass

OK. At this point, Jake Tapper could not control himself. He ran through all the facts about how we know that Hillary Clinton's campaign did not start the birther issue, and this has been summarized plenty of places by now. Look it up if you're curious. Back in that September press conference, it was the boldness of the lie that was disturbing. Like, seriously? Do you think they were going to believe you? Or do you know that we're not going to believe you and you just don't care?

And it didn't take long for the results of the lie to be measured. Just a few days after the Trump press conference, a Monmouth poll showed that one third of likely voters in Florida believed that Hillary Clinton started the birther controversy. I told this to Jake.

Ira Glass

That would also be a third, about 30%. He's a Christian.

Ira Glass

In just the last two weeks Donald Trump has said that Hillary Clinton may have been on drugs in the second debate. He said Hillary Clinton, quote, "meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of US sovereignty." During the debates, he denied saying that climate change is a hoax created by China and that Japan should get nuclear weapons even though, A, many of us remember him saying those things. It was not that long ago. And B, we can all just find this in our phones in, like, seconds.

These lies are perplexing in their nakedness. Like, he knows lots of us know these are lies, but we're in some kind of new kind of universe where that is normal and that is OK and we will just accept that.

Ira Glass

In addition to his live coverage, Jake did a whole fact-check segment with FactCheck.org about whether Hillary Clinton started the birther movement. But, of course, he's on a network that is seen as so partisan-- it's so hated by some Republicans-- that stadiums full of people chant against them at Trump rallies.

Ira Glass

CNN sucks.

Ira Glass

This is Rush Limbaugh, a couple weeks ago.

Ira Glass

So that's where we are right now. The presentation of facts is seen as partisan opinion, and then every day a barrage of untruths are presented as truth, and we're just supposed to suck it up. That's the moment we live in. That's our country right now. And this is going to continue after this election, no matter who wins. Like, this is the rest of our lives, I think, this post-truth politics. With so many of us getting our news from social media and from sources that we agree with, it's easier than ever to check if a fact is true, and facts matter less than ever.

Well, today on our program, we take stock of how far we've fallen, and we've got some other stuff, too-- about truth and the elections. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass.

Ira Glass

So before I say anything else, I want to say, of course, there is solid, fact-based journalism done on the right. That is not what I'm going to be talking about right now. I'm talking about the stew of websites, talk radio, and commentary that churn out all kinds of stuff every day that is half-true or not true at all. And I feel like for months I have been thinking about this just all the time, how extreme the gap is this year between the reality put forth by the mainstream media and the reality put forth by the right-wing media. Like, why is the gap so big?

This was really driven home to me recently when I've been talking to my uncle Lenny on the phone. My uncle Lenny's 81. He's a retired plastic surgeon outside of San Diego. He gets all of his news from Fox and The Wall Street Journal. Not into President Obama or Hillary Clinton at all. Doesn't like Trump very much, but he's voting for him as the lesser of two evils.

That's right, I'm telling my Republican uncle an Obama joke just to make him happy. A few weeks ago, I started recording conversations with my Uncle Lenny about the election. Mostly we read The New York Times together online and he would tell me what he thought of the stories. But what struck me most about these conversations is when Uncle Lenny would talk about Hillary Clinton, and especially about Barack Obama, the way he sees them. The story in his head about them seemed very out there.

Ira Glass

I checked this later. Untrue. Dwight Eisenhower played nearly three times as much golf, Woodrow Wilson played four times more than Obama. But everything in Obama's biography seems suspicious to Lenny. Obama claims to have run the Harvard Law Review, Lenny told me. Why didn't he write a single article for them? I looked into it. He did.

Ira Glass

Notice that we're not even out of law school yet, and already this is a narrative where the most mundane details about the man's life are doubted. Already there's this tone of conspiracy and cover-up over nothing.

And I bring this up because these details are part of a story that grew up around Obama in the right-wing media. He's not what he seems. He has a secret agenda. This story got traction, of course, partly because he's black, but the right-wing media would probably do the same thing with a white candidate. I mean, look at some of the things they've said about Hillary Clinton, a candidate who gives them plenty of legitimate things to criticize, and yet somehow they dwell on this nonstop speculation about her health, the earpiece she supposedly wore at the debates.

When Lenny and I talked about this, the story that he believes about Barack Obama and the one that I believe based on the mainstream media, each of us was like, really? You believe that?

Ira Glass

When Lenny talks about Obama's policies, it is all conspiracy. The president is a Muslim. He's on a mission to put Muslims in positions of power and influence. He has an ultra-left-wing agenda to erase the borders with Canada and Mexico and end the United States as we know it.

Ira Glass

OK, I love my uncle. I remember crying as a kid when he went off to Vietnam. Back in the '70s and '80s, he hated liberal politicians, but he hated them because they were liberals. Like, they spent too much money, they were soft on defense. Like, that was enough. He didn't believe these kind of dark conspiracies. That's the thing that's changed, for him, and lots of people, I think.

And those numbers that I quoted him are true. They're from the Department of Homeland Security. But facts do not have a fighting chance against this right-wing fable. And in the last few weeks since I started obsessing over all the lies that are being presented as truth right now, at some point I realized, like, oh, maybe the defining issue of this election is built around a story that isn't true. Like, honestly, this is one that I just took for granted. Like, people talk about this all the time. I hadn't given it a second thought. This issue that propelled Donald Trump to win the Republican nomination. You know the one.

Ira Glass

The premise of the wall is that immigration is out of control. Trump told an interviewer on Fox--

Ira Glass

So when this became the central issue of the Republican primaries, the wall, to me, seemed like it might not be the most practical solution to this problem, but I figured this was a response to a problem facing the country. People might agree or disagree in the way that they would with any policy. But if you look into it, you come right away to this fact. And this is not a big hidden secret or anything. It shows up in news stories from time to time. This flood of people pouring across the border-- the total increase in the number of illegal immigrants in the United States each year-- is zero.

Ira Glass

This is Alex Nowrasteh. He's a conservative, a Republican, the immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

Ira Glass

There's about 350,000 in each direction each year. And it's been that way for years, since 2009. In fact, between 2007 and 2009, at the start of the recession, when jobs dried up, the number of illegal immigrants in our country fell by about a million people. And so why do so many people believe that we're being flooded with immigrants if, in fact, we are not being flooded with immigrants? I ask that question, but of course, you know what the answer is.

Ira Glass

That's Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity on Fox TV two years ago. Stories about our out-of-control immigration system have been a staple of the right-wing media for years now. Ann Coulter here is talking about President Obama's immigration policy, which includes some permissive things but, like I told my Uncle Lenny, he's ordered removals of more illegal immigrants from the country than any president-- 2.5 million.

Coulter characterizes his policy towards immigrants this way.

Ira Glass

Researching all this-- I hadn't listened to Rush Limbaugh for a while, and listening I remembered, oh right, he just makes facts up. Like, that's standard operating procedure on right-wing talk radio.

Here he is, trying to give a little immigration policy history.

Ira Glass

Well, there's a good reason they think you're making it up and lying. Millions of people became legal immigrants during that period. 8 million were granted status as permanent residents. 6.5 million became citizens, according to the federal government.

Alex Nowrasteh, the guy from the Cato Institute, contests all the big plot points that you hear on right-wing media about immigration. That immigrants cause more crime than native born Americans, that they are a drain on taxpayers, and, of course, that they are flooding across the border. I wonder what it was like for him to see those ideas propagated so often, so broadly, and taken so seriously by so many people. Like, to the point where a candidate is proposing a wall and then stadiums cheer.

Ira Glass

Alex used this phrase that I'd never heard before-- Patriotic Correctness. It's like political correctness, but the right-wing version of that. Like, if you say that there is no flood of immigrants coming across the border, well, that is just out of bounds. That's not something you say. You are not patriotically correct. So people do not even give him a chance.

I think that's because politics, at some level, is more than the sum of facts. It's an identity. You know, you're a Republican or you're a Democrat, and then there's a whole set of stories and beliefs that go with that identity. And facts do not have much power against a set of beliefs. Those of us in the fact business-- our facts are puny compared to that.

Ira Glass

Act two, Judges with Grudges.

So let's turn now, in this election year, to the story of one little referendum on one state ballot. Here's how we heard about it. A few years ago we devoted an entire episode of our program to the story of this judge in Georgia, a woman named Amanda Williams. Judge Williams had a history of doing things that it seemed like judges just should not do. For instance, she put a teenager named Lindsey Dills into solitary confinement for an indefinite period of time. Indefinite, like, until further notice. No end date. No access to a lawyer. Lindsey told me--

Ira Glass

Finally, during this confinement, Lindsey tried to kill herself. We attempted to interviewed Judge Williams about this and some other issues, but she declined to comment on those issues. So while I was working on that story, an official commission in Georgia that is charged with investigating judicial ethics violations was also looking into Judge Williams. The commission later filed a 14-count ethics complaint against her. Shortly after that, Judge William stepped down from the bench.

The commission that filed those charges-- before we did that story, I didn't even know anything like this existed, but all states have them. Sometimes they're called JQCs, for Judicial Qualifications Commissions-- that's what the one in Georgia is called-- and they are the way that we as a country have come up with for getting rid of judges who do bad things. Georgia's JQC seemed pretty impressive. They have a tiny staff, seven members, who work pro bono. They are not paid. And in the past decade, in addition to Judge Williams, over 60 judges in Georgia have stepped down after being investigated.

So we did that story years ago. And then a few months ago, one of my sources in Georgia called me to say, guess what? Lawmakers in Georgia were trying to neuter the JQC, and the whole thing was going to be on the ballot this fall. And, OK, I know that state-level politics can be kind of nutty sometimes, but my question was, OK, here's an example of a government agency doing a good job. It would seem like a very low cost. Like, how can something like that happen, right? Like, why was this on the ballot? It seemed like the only people who would benefit from weakening the JQC would be bad judges. Like, that is not a big constituency. Like, who's going to vote for that in a democracy?

Well, one of our producers, Dave Kestenbaum, flew to Atlanta to figure out what was going on. A quick warning to podcast and internet listeners. There is some language in the story that we have un-beeped here in the internet version of our show. If you prefer a beeped version of our program, go to our website.

Dave Kestenbaum

To understand this referendum, you first need a little background on Georgia's JQC, and just how aggressive it's been at going after judges. More than anyone, the person who probably embodies the boldness and zeal of the mission is Richard Hyde. Hyde is a commission member. He was their paid investigator for a decade. I've heard him describe himself as "the point of the spear," and once at a legislative hearing under oath, "the turd in the punchbowl."

When I asked him about the 60 judges that had resigned, and that that seemed like a lot, he shrugged.

Dave Kestenbaum

Hyde calls it "the Georgia method." He's traveled to Ukraine to train officials there how to do it. Basically, they'll get some tip about something a judge may have done, they'll investigate the hell out of it, and if they find something, they'll confront the judge. Hyde says he'll explain that the judge has the right to a public trial, but then he'll just say this--

Dave Kestenbaum

Honestly, I can't tell if that question is some high-minded way of trying to engage a judge's inner sense of duty, or just a fancy version of, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.

Judges are powerful people, but Hyde is not easily intimidated. He used to be a street cop. Back then he would tow the cars of state lawmakers who had double-parked near the state capitol. Once, he shot an escaped chimpanzee who was attacking people on a street. He felt bad about that. In the Atlanta school testing scandal where teachers were doctoring students' test scores, it was Hyde who got an elementary school teacher to wear a wire, which broke the whole thing open. One news story quoted someone saying they would "rather have a wasting disease than to be investigated by Hyde." He's just so relentless.

But Hyde says the JQC is not out to get judges. They're just trying to protect the public. If a judge slips up, they try to work things out. Here's an example of that. When I went to interview Hyde, he'd brought along a transcript of a case they'd had to look into. It's a murder case, and the defendant is refusing to use a lawyer. Just refusing. He starts actually swearing at the judge, using profanity. The judge tries to reason with him, and then this happens. I had Hyde read this part.

Dave Kestenbaum

The defendant threatens to kill the judge's family, and the judge just kind of loses it. When the defendant says he's going to masturbate in court, the judge says, why don't you do that right now? Do it now. Do it now. Hyde says the judge had a stellar record before this, so the JQC, when it heard about it, did what it often does. It had the judge in for a little talk, to discuss what had happened and how to avoid it again. They publicly reprimanded him and the judge went back to being a judge.

But Hyde says there are more extreme cases. Like the time a judge, in court, took a gun out and told the witness she was, quote, "killing her case and might as well shoot her lawyer." And then there was this other time. An attorney said that a judge hearing her case had sexually harassed her, at one point leaving her a phone message in which he, the judge, identified himself as Santa Claus and said the following, "hey, hey, hey, little girl. Want to sit on Santa's face?" The woman gave the recording of that message to Richard Hyde, and Hyde went out to talk to the judge.

Dave Kestenbaum

Before we get to why some in the legislature wanted to dismantle and remake the JQC, it's interesting to see how badly they wanted to change it. This is not an easy thing to do. In Georgia, like in a lot of states, the Judicial Qualifications Commission, this entity with the power to remove judges for unethical behavior, is written into the Constitution. One lawyer who helped put it there-- this was back in the '70s-- told me it was put in the Constitution expressly to avoid political tampering. People make a basic separation of powers argument. Keep the JQC independent. If lawmakers got their hands on it, they might pressure JQC members to drop cases against their friends, or go after a judge they don't like.

But this past January, one Friday afternoon, House Resolution 1113 was introduced, a bill proposing an amendment to the Constitution that would abolish the JQC and allow lawmakers to remake it however they saw fit.

Lester Tate, at the time a member of the JQC, says he'd pulled into his driveway when someone called with the news. Tate was furious. It seemed like a straight-up power grab. He told me he saw HR 1113 as an act of war.

Dave Kestenbaum

There's one little detail worth pointing out here. It gets mentioned in a lot of the local news coverage. One of the sponsors of the bill is a representative named Johnny Caldwell. Before being a lawmaker, Caldwell was a judge. The judge who was accused of leaving the Santa Claus "sit on my face" voicemail. Representative Caldwell declined our request for an interview.

Dave Kestenbaum

Altering the Constitution is a big deal. For starters, any proposed change has to be approved by 2/3 of the House and 2/3 of the Senate. Then the voters have to approve it as well. Republicans introduced the measure, and they had the votes in the House. But in the Senate, it was tight. If all the Republicans voted for it, the bill would pass.

But here they had a problem. A man named Josh McKoon. McKoon is a Republican who seems to enjoy not voting Republican sometimes. He's loved politics since he was a kid. Favorite President, Calvin Coolidge. McKoon is chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and he thought taking the JQC out of the Constitution, letting politicians remake it however they wanted, sounded like a terrible idea.

Dave Kestenbaum

This is McKoon on one of the last nights of the legislative session for the year. The bill, at this point, has failed to pass once, but it's coming up for another vote. McKoon doesn't shout. His tones is more, (INCREDULOUS) seriously?

Dave Kestenbaum

McKoon is particularly upset about how the legislature would remake the JQC. The JQC has seven members, and lawmakers want to give the Speaker of the House and the president of the Senate the power to pick four of the seven seats. Currently they pick zero.

I looked into what other states do. According to the Center for Judicial Ethics, only one state gives lawmakers the power to pick a majority of its JQC members.

Dave Kestenbaum

McKoon began to suspect that this was all about personal gripes, or lawmakers who are friends with judges who the JQC had investigated. The Speaker of the House, in particular, seemed unusually determined to overhaul this little commission. This became very clear in the final days of the session. Time was running out to pass the bill. McKoon says he and the other Republican senators got pulled into this urgent meeting.

Dave Kestenbaum

Two days before the end of the session-- it's after 9:00 PM-- the bill comes up for a final vote.

Dave Kestenbaum

A minute later, the bill narrowly passes. If you look at the breakdown, you can see what happened. One Democrat crossed party lines and voted in favor. A woman named Donzella James. She declined to talk with us, but a newspaper reporter who was in the room, Greg Bluestein with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, says it was totally clear what had happened. Republicans had made a trade. They'd offered to support a bill that she'd been trying to get through for years, to turn the area where she lived into a city. The bill was to put a referendum on the ballot about it. Bluestein says he knows this trade happened because a Republican, at this point, walked up and just started narrating what was going on.

Dave Kestenbaum

In case there was any doubt, the very next bill brought up was for the city referendum, which passed easily. Lawmakers were willing to create a city to get control of the JQC.

If you're wondering why this was such a priority, why the Speaker of the House seemed so determined to push this through, Josh McKoon, the Republican, wondered that too. So we asked around.

Dave Kestenbaum

The state bar. This takes a little explaining, but stick with me. The speaker has a longstanding, very heated feud with the state bar. The bar has filed charges against him that could get him disbarred. I've read some of the back and forth. It sounds like people yelling at each other in the most formal language possible. Like, "it is clear that absurdity is no prohibition on the actions of the state bar."

What does all this have to do with the JQC? The bar currently gets to a appoint three members of the JQC. If these changes go through, the bar will get zero. To McKoon, it looked like revenge. The House Speaker declined to comment.

This is the story I initially heard, at least, about how petty politics, personal gripes, and a Santa Claus voicemail were threatening to gut an institution that was doing its job, and doing it quite well. It's the kind of story that one side of an issue tells itself all the time, I think. And when you hear something like that, it can be hard to imagine any other version. But, of course, there is another side. And on that side, another story involving the very same events. So come with me. Let's cross over to that other side. Let's try to get to the bottom of this one ballot measure in one state.

Dave Kestenbaum

This is Cynthia Becker testifying at a recent hearing before lawmakers. Until recently, she was a judge. And in the alternate narrative of this story, she's the main character.

Dave Kestenbaum

Becker was investigated by the JQC and was visibly furious about how it all went down. She says she was called in to talk to JQC members about some complaint, but she wasn't told what it was. Turns out, there was a question about whether she had denied somebody bail-- a former school superintendent who ended up spending four days in jail.

She says when she got to the JQC one of the members just started yelling at her.

Dave Kestenbaum

Lester Tate, the commission member you heard comparing the JQC bill to the attack on Pearl Harbor. According to notes from that meeting, at one point, Judge Becker started weeping. The whole thing, she says, was recorded without her knowledge.

Another judge who testified said that the same JQC member, Lester Tate, behaved improperly in his court. According to an affidavit by a court clerk Tate, quote, "turned bright red all over and got extremely upset." A month later, Richard Hyde, the crusading investigator you heard at the beginning of the story, showed up demanding to see documents. A court clerk wrote, quote, "he was questioning me like a drill sergeant in the army. He almost brought me to tears. I have never had anyone treat me like this." The judge, Mitchell Scoggins, says Hyde then went through his things.

Dave Kestenbaum

Lester Tate denies doing anything wrong in either case. In fact, he's resigned in protest over this whole effort to remake the JQC.

Richard Hyde told me things did get heated when he came by court that day, but here's what he said about searching that judge's desk.

Dave Kestenbaum

Richard Hyde has publicly said that the JQC owes a couple judges an apology for how their cases were handled-- but just a couple. Which of those judges who step down do you really want back on the bench, he asks? Most of the complaints, he says, are just from a few people.

Dave Kestenbaum

Hyde was quick to say that the vast majority of judges do a fine job, under difficult circumstances. But, he says, sitting up there in that black robe with the gavel, it can go to some people's heads.

Dave Kestenbaum

One way to summarize the criticism of the JQC is that some of its members have fallen prey to their own version of black robe syndrome. After all, there is the power of being a judge. But then there is the power of judging the judges.

Even after hearing these stories, it wasn't clear to me why lawmakers felt the need to amend the Constitution and give themselves control over the JQC. I didn't see how that would fix whatever problems there were. As I've said, the Speaker of the House wouldn't talk. Neither would the representative who allegedly left the Santa Claus voicemail. So I found someone else.

Dave Kestenbaum

I looked this up. What she'd done, according to the indictment, was lie to the JQC. It's a felony offense with possible jail time.

Dave Kestenbaum

Willard says these judges think they're coming in for an informal conversation, so it seems unfair to him that they can get charged with a felony if they misremember or mis-state something. He says the whole point of these meetings is to try to work things out. Most judges just need a little counseling, like the judge who imploded under a barrage of F-bombs.

If every judge who goes to talk to the JQC has to worry about being charged with a felony, what judge would ever come talk to them? He says the same thing that happened to Amanda Williams also happen to Judge Becker, the one who said she was yelled at and recorded without her knowledge. She later faced six felony charges for making false statements in that meeting. The charges were dropped, but in the end, she had to promise not to be a judge again.

The JQC has changed its policy since then. It no longer records its meetings with judges. But Becker said she felt sucker-punched by the whole thing.

Dave Kestenbaum

I asked Willard if I could just run down the things his opponents say is happening here, to play the other side's narrative for him. Actually, I had a whole list written out on a sheet of paper.

I asked him why one of the co-sponsors is the guy who had allegedly left the Santa Claus voicemail. Willard said the co-sponsor thing-- that was kind of his fault. He says he'd just gone out looking for legislators to sign on.

Dave Kestenbaum

I asked about the vote trading in the Senate. He said, I don't know. That's the Senate's side. I look back at my paper. What else you got, he says?

Ira Glass

Dave Kestenbaum is one of the producers of our program. Coming up, one of the stars of Hamilton sings the words that Barack Obama is not saying but might be thinking. We are not sure if he's thinking this. We made this up. That's a minute, from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, the sometimes-frightening chasm between the way the two sides in this election see everything. We take stock. We have arrived at Act Three of our program. Act Three, Aw, Do we NAFTA?

So the one big thing this year that it has felt like the presidential candidates are not disagreeing about is free trade. But it's weird. Both parties used to agree free trade is good. This year, they seem to be agreeing it's bad.

During the primaries this year, when Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, and Hillary Clinton were out bad-mouthing deals like the TPP and free trade in general, I had this feeling, like, wait, is it supposed to be good or bad? Like, I can't even tell anymore. Like, what happened? I felt genuinely confused about what to think. Are these deals good or bad? And so I asked Jacob Goldstein from NPR's economics podcast Planet Money to come in and just help me briefly weigh the pros and cons of these deals.

Ira Glass

Jacob Goldstein. You can download the great show he co-hosts, NPR's Planet Money podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

Ira Glass

Which brings us to Act Four, Seriously?

Ira Glass

Well, the sometimes-fact-free utterances of one of the candidates for president this year has been such an issue that several times Barack Obama has spoken about facts and their importance over the last few months. At the Rutgers University commencement this spring he talked about how we live in a moment when, quote, "opinions masquerade as facts, and the wildest conspiracy theories are taken as gospel."

Ira Glass

There's this thing that we've been talking about here at our program, that Donald Trump probably would not have happened if there had not been a black president. You know, like, Trump rose to prominence among Republicans as the leading proponent of the idea that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. And the sudden visibility that we're seeing of white nationalism during this presidential race-- that is hard to imagine if there had not been a black president right before it.

Donald Trump is one of the consequences of the Obama presidency. And we've been talking about how that's probably a thought that's occurred to the president. But, as far as we can tell, he has not spoken about that publicly. And so wondering what his thoughts might be, we decided to try something. We asked a songwriter, Sara Bareilles, to write a song imagining Barack Obama's thoughts on that and on Trump, and we present that now.

Sarah puts out albums of her own, but she also wrote a Broadway show, Waitress, and she invited a Broadway colleague to sing this, Leslie Odom Jr., one of the stars of Hamilton. Here's the song.

[MUSIC - SARA BAREILLES, "SERIOUSLY"]

Ira Glass

Leslie Odom Jr., singing words and music by Sarah Bareilles. We also shot a video of Leslie Odom Jr. singing this song. It'll be up online soon.

Well, our program was produced today by Dana Chivvis and Susan Burton. Our production staff, Zoe Chace, Sean Cole, Neil Drumming, Karen Duffin, Emmanuel Dzotsi, Stephanie Foo, Chana Joffe-Walt, David Kestenbaum, Miki Meek, Jonathan Menjivar, Robyn Semien, Matt Tierney, and Nancy Updike. Research help today from Christopher Swetala and Michelle Harris. Music help from Damien Grave.

[ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS]

Our website, ThisAmericanLife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder Mr. Torey Malatia, who is so tired of dealing with radio hosts. They are so spoiled.

Ira Glass

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