650: Change You Can Maybe Believe In

Ira Glass

From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life.

Ira Glass

Kevin Sieff is correspondent for The Washington Post.

Ira Glass

We reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for clarification about all of this, and a spokesperson told us that the 539 children they've said were reunited with parents were all apprehended since May, as part of the administration's zero tolerance policy, and they all were in border patrol custody before being returned to their families. Presumably, being in border patrol custody means they were only in the country a short time and had never been transferred to other agencies, shelters, and foster homes. The spokesperson declined to provide any names of these families or any information about what countries they were from.

But this kind of situation where somebody-- in this case, the President of the United States-- declares that he's changed-- it's all different, he's moving on, no longer separating kids from their parents, but the result is not so clear. That situation, that is what our show is about today. Something happens, maybe you'd like to believe it's true, but you don't know if you should.

We have a bunch of different stories that do not involve the current administration, or any previous ones. One of the stories, in fact, takes us into a noisy world of half-clad soap opera stars and daytime TV hosts, none of whom I bet you have ever heard of. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

Act One, The All Too Real Housewives of Argentina. There's an old saying, don't believe everything you see. But there's a corollary, of course-- don't believe everything you see on TV, especially daytime TV. And it doesn't matter what country you're in. Jasmine Garsd grew up in Argentina and has this story.

Quick warning before we start-- the stories in today's show have some curse words that we have un-beeped here in the podcast version of the show. If you want a version with beeps, maybe you're listening with kids, go to our website. And here's Jasmine.

Jasmine Garsd

I watched a lot of television when I was a kid. My grandmother, Iaia, would pick me up at school and bring me back to her place. Her apartment was dark and humid. It smelled like French bread and the exhaust from the buses on the avenue down below. My grandfather was never around.

Iaia would make tea and then we would go to her bedroom and turn the TV on. And suddenly, colors, sound, and sex would pour into the world. It was the early afternoon. It was time for the talk shows.

Jasmine Garsd

Argentine talk shows are extreme, even for Latin American television. The women are pumped up with silicone and Botox, and sometimes show up wearing almost nothing. The conversation is not just double entendres, but straight up entendres, full-on vulgar language. When I was growing up, it was a parade of pasties, stilettos, feather boas.

One of the most popular shows back then was hosted by a guy named Jorge Rial. He's still on TV. He's kind of the Argentine everyman-- charming and a little bit of a hustler. These days, his TV show is called Intrusos, or Intruders.

It takes place on a set that is just seizure inducing-- neon colors, walls lined with giant video screens. Jorge Rial likes to stir up fights among his voluptuous guests. Every time something shocking is said, ominous music rolls out.

Jasmine Garsd

Once in a while, a woman is so sexy that Jorge Rial bites his lower lip and mugs for the camera. This has been Rial's style for years. Back in the day, Iaia would bring the tea and cookies and lie down next to me in her patent leather platform shoes, which she never took off, not even in bed. My grandmother was the target audience for Rial's show, what's commonly known as "doña rosa," a housewife.

She loved to hate the show, to look disapprovingly at the women and comment how much surgery she's had. "Una prostituta," a prostitute. "una loca." And they give her expensive gifts-- cars, vacations. And I'd look around me my grandmother's lonely apartment and think to myself, wow. That sounds pretty amazing. I knew I didn't want to be a doña rosa when I grew up.

When I was a teenager, I moved to the US and eventually became a journalist. I've lived here for 15 years. Sometimes when I get homesick, I stream Intrusos on YouTube. I leave it on when I cook and clean. When I watch it, I'm not 5,000 miles away. Iaia is alive, nothing has changed much. Nothing ever changes on Argentine daytime TV. Until suddenly, a few months ago, it did.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Jasmine Garsd

One night in February, I was at home in New York cleaning my kitchen. Intrusos was on in the background and I heard this woman with a raspy Lauren Bacall voice. I turned around, soapy sponge in hand, and squinted at the screen-- a tattooed, heavyset woman wearing sneakers.

I recognized this woman, a comedian named Senorita Bimbo. The stage name, Bimbo, is ironic. She's anything but. In fact, the very next thing she did was look directly into the camera and offer a statistic about illegal abortions.

Jasmine Garsd

"500,000 women in Argentina have illegal abortions every year," she said. She was wearing a bright green handkerchief around her neck, a provocative symbol everyone in Argentina knows-- the symbol of the fight to legalize abortion. For years, activists have been pushing to get Congress to vote on it.

When I was growing up, abortion was something you just didn't talk about in Argentina, a Catholic country. It's still not something that comes up on daytime TV. Reproductive rights? That's just not Intrusos material. Though here was Jorge Rial, the host, looking intently at Senorita Bimbo.

A few hours later, one of my best friends texted me, "Did you watch Intrusos today?" I sat down at my laptop and started scrolling through the descriptions of the last few episodes. The guests were names I knew-- academics, writers, comedians. What they had in common was, they were all feminists, people who have been on the fringes for years, criticizing sexism in Argentina and demanding women's rights.

I started binge watching. In each episode, there was a nuanced conversation about feminism. Rial looked kind of meek, but not in his usual, "I've been overpowered by sexy ladies" way. He kept delivering these really impassioned monologues saying, I don't want to be a misogynist, a "machista." I'm a recovering machista.

Jasmine Garsd

The Argentine everyman now appeared to be an earnest feminist. This was not the Rial I grew up with. This was not the TV I grew up with. What happened? Could this possibly be sincere? I flew to Argentina to find out.

As soon as I got there, I went to the studios where Intrusos is taped. I met Ana Laura Guevara, one of the show's executive producers.

Jasmine Garsd

To be honest, I wasn't expecting an Intrusos executive producer to be a woman, especially not one like Ana Laura, a self-proclaimed feminist. I had a really hard time wrapping my head around the fact that, for 18 years, she had been behind this totally trashy and objectifying show. Ana Laura told me, it's just a job, one she's good at. It's intensely competitive.

Next segment, a fashion model from the '80s says she has her suspicions about a designer's recent death.

The ratings plummet. Nobody cares. Ana Laura orders them to end the segment early. Interest lags for an instant, and Intrusos moves on.

The story of how the feminists intruded into Intrusos is its own soap opera. There are a gazillion gossip shows in Argentina. It's like this whole universe. Back in January, one of the shows interviewed this famous singer, a leathery guy in a tropical shirt. In the middle of the interview, the singer casually repeats this awful saying I used to hear as a kid-- if someone wants to rape you, relax and enjoy it.

Jasmine Garsd

The first time I heard that was when I was nine years old. I was in the locker room and a girl blurted it out. I thought it was advice. A lot of my friends did, too.

So the singer says this offensive thing. A few days later, on another talk show, a soap opera star blows up about it. Her name is Araceli Gonzales.

When I was a kid, her soap opera was huge. She played a mute. A hunk with feathered hair would talk at her while she listened tearfully. But now she wasn't mute. She said the singer's remark made her sick.

Jasmine Garsd

It was kind of beautiful seeing her get angry after so many years of playing a character literally defined by silence. Ana Laura, from Intrusos, saw the fight happening on TV and she wanted to get a piece of it. She booked Araceli to come on the show.

Jasmine Garsd

She says, "I heard you refer to me as a feminist just now, and I am not a feminist." She is vehemently wagging her finger as she says this.

Jasmine Garsd

"I have a wonderful husband and a lovely son whom I love very much, and I respect men." This set off another firestorm. Here's Ana Laura.

Jasmine Garsd

There were the kinds of tweets you would expect like, quote, "What the fuck does loving your husband and son have to do with being a feminist, you moron?" And here it was, feminists versus the soap opera star, a fight made for daytime television.

And Ana Laura knew it. And she also knew Jorge Rial, the host of the show-- something had been changing with him lately. Like, he'd been saying to anyone who would listen--

Jasmine Garsd

So she approached him in the dressing room and they started talking. Maybe we should have a feminist on the show to explain what feminism is.

Jasmine Garsd

They decided on a well-known feminist academic, Flor Freijo. And even she'll tell you she's a safe bet for a show like Intrusos. She's thin and blonde. So Flor gets invited to Intrusos and the very first question Jorge Rial asks her is, what is feminism?

Jasmine Garsd

Of all the strange things I'd seen on Argentine TV, this might be one of the oddest. Against a neon fizz background, Flor Freijo does a feminism 101. At the bottom of the screen, a banner in bold letters reads, "Feminism-- it's a movement for women's rights." Flor starts explaining, feminism is a movement for women's rights. It started in the 19th century. It has to do with the division of labor, child rearing. Jorge Rial is listening, completely mesmerized, his little eyebrows furrowed, scratching his beard. And while all this is happening, Ana Laura is sitting in the control room upstairs, watching everything, of course-- and also keeping her eye on the ratings monitor. The control room is usually a chaotic mess of yelling, but now, with Flor speaking--

Jasmine Garsd

And then the spell is broken because the phone rings in the control room. It's Araceli, the soap opera star who's the whole reason Flora's here. She wants to talk to Flor live, right now. Everyone in the control room is geared up for a good old-fashioed Intrusos spat.

Jasmine Garsd

Flor was kind of shocked.

Jasmine Garsd

But it wasn't an ambush. Araceli wasn't calling to fight. Instead she tells Flor, I've been listening really well to what you're saying. And she wanted the audience to know that she didn't know what feminism was until just now, when she was watching TV and saw Flor explain it.

She starts telling the story of her life through various generations of women, her own single mother and herself. She talks about how she had been sexually abused as a child and emotionally abused as an adult. And Araceli told Flor, I know what you're talking about and I agree with you. If this means being a feminist, then I'm a feminist.

Jasmine Garsd

Flor nods, and gives a thumbs up. By the way, this is never how Intrusos finishes. People don't just listen to each other and change their minds. And the ratings-- Ana Laura says the ratings were great, strong enough that she decided, let's do this again tomorrow. And so it began.

[OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING]

Over the next few days, some of the most famous feminists in Argentina came onto Intrusos. Comedians, authors, professors-- audiences were stunned. Someone tweeted, "My ideology is starting to converge with Jorge Rial's, and that terrifies me." It was pretty strange for everyone. This very misogynistic show had suddenly become like, the public town hall on feminism in Argentina. And the ratings were not just good. Ana Laura says they were higher than normal. She was delighted that she could keep this going.

Jasmine Garsd

Midway through all of this is when I tuned in, when I started streaming in New York. The show was like, going through hundreds of years of feminism in a couple of days. They passed through topics like LGBT rights, workplace harassment, income inequality. And then the most taboo thing of all-- abortion.

Jorge Rial tied the green handkerchief around his wrist, the one activists who want to legalize abortion wear. And then he invited the large woman with the gravelly voice who I saw at home in New York City, Senorita Bimbo. Right off the bat she said, the fact that there's a fat girl on Argentine TV is already a victory.

Jasmine Garsd

She told me she was actually pretty nervous.

Jasmine Garsd

But she powered through. She had a mission.

Jasmine Garsd

On Intrusos, Senorita Bimbo talked about how abortion is so taboo, you don't even talk about it in fiction. In Argentine TV and film, unwanted pregnancy is solved by a villain pushing you down the stairs and causing you to miscarry.

Jasmine Garsd

And then about 30 seconds before they cut to commercial and moved to the next guest, Senorita Bimbo said something about abortion that surprised even her.

Jasmine Garsd

Misoprostol-- she says, I want girls to know about misoprostol. This is a really big deal. Officially, misoprostol is a drug used to treat stomach ulcers, but it can also be used to induce labor. So in a continent where abortion is mostly banned, women take it if they want to miscarry. People call it the DIY abortion. She's talking about doing something illegal on one of the most popular daytime talk shows, watched by housewives. That same day, misoprostol was one of the most Googled words in the country. "I think you're underestimating your audience," Senorita Bimbo said on the show. Doña rosa is dead-- doña rosa, that stereotypical Argentine housewife.

Jasmine Garsd

Of course, none of this would have happened on Intrusos if the ratings had been bad. And the ratings were great for reasons that Jorge Rial and Ana Laura can claim no credit for at all. Feminism has been gaining critical mass in Argentina for the last couple of years. The movement was triggered by these brutal murders of young women, often by boyfriends, husbands, and fathers.

Women started protesting. A whole crusade was born. It was called Ni Una Menos, not one less woman. And since 2015, this has grown to the point where it's impossible to ignore and has expanded to abortion rights, street harassment, and equal pay.

It's young people on social media, comedians on YouTube, pop stars on Instagram, gigantic demonstrations. It just wasn't a topic for daytime talk shows until Jorge, Ana Laura, and Intrusos.

During that week on Intrusos, there was this explosion of tweets from young girls perplexed but ecstatic to see feminism on daytime TV. This one girl, Anita Ocampo tweeted, "I showed my dad the Intrusos episode with Senorita Bimbo." I dropped by her house and she told me, these feminists were explaining to Jorge Rial all the things she'd tried to explain but couldn't get her parents to understand. So one night she approached her dad.

Jasmine Garsd

And she told him, if you watch this episode of Intrusos on YouTube with me, I'll massage your feet. She ended up getting the whole family to watch. She showed them Senorita Bimbo. She pointed to Jorge Rial wearing the same green handkerchief she wears and said, look, it's just like mine.

Jasmine Garsd

It opened up a conversation, which she says they've been having ever since. Anita's mom says she saw Jorge Rial talk about how he's a recovering chauvinist and she says, so is she.

Jasmine Garsd

I'm at, like, 70% feminism, she says. I still have 30% left to go.

During my week in Argentina I kept trying to talk to Jorge Rial, and he kept blowing me off. Had he really converted to feminism? Everyone I asked rolled their eyes and pointed to the last few decades of his career. They pointed to his recent vicious public fight with one of his daughters. They pointed to how late he is to the whole feminism thing. He's a Johnny come lately. He's only doing this because it will make him more popular. After days of giving me the runaround, he told me to just send my questions. And finally, on my very last night in Argentina, my phone lit up. It was voice memos from Jorge Rial.

Jasmine Garsd

"What happened to me?" Rial says. "What made me bring all these feminists onto Intrusos?"

Jasmine Garsd

He talks about his 18-year-old daughter, Rosio, and how she's a feminist. "We have these very interesting talks over dinner," he says, "And she started opening this world up to me. I am 56 years old. I was raised in a completely sexist culture and I didn't get it. That's why I say I'm a recovering chauvinist, thanks to my daughter. My daughter made me change."

Jasmine Garsd

Jorge Rial knows that I think Intrusos is stupid. He knows most people do. That's the show's superpower.

Jasmine Garsd

"Frívolo--" we're frivolous. We're a show about showbiz. No one suspected that this is where feminism could win. We eluded the firewalls that kept feminism off of TV. There was this wall, you couldn't talk about these things on TV.

And suddenly it happened on Intrusos. "But to be honest," he said, "it's all because of feminists. They knew any place is good, if you have a strong message."

Jasmine Garsd

After the week of feminism, Intrusos was left with a split personality. These days, it's a mix of fighting starlets and women's rights activists. Jorge Rial's social media is a mix of World Cup woes, celebrity gossip, and then these really earnest feminist tweets.

Like this one a few weeks ago-- "They came to make things better for the coming generations, for our daughters and their daughters, and also for men. The men who come after us must be better than us. We did everything wrong."

The day after he tweeted that on June 14, Argentina's lower house of Congress approved a bill to legalize abortion. After an all-night debate, it barely passed by only four votes. And it yet has to pass the upper house. Still, outside Congress, thousands of women and activists who'd gathered to wait for the results celebrated wildly.

Every time I spoke to those women about what role television like Intrusos played in all this, they got uncomfortable. On my last day in Argentina I grabbed a coffee with an old friend from high school, Jordana Timerman. She recently wrote an op-ed for the New York Times about the push to legalize abortion in Argentina, and we talked about the role pop culture played in that.

Jasmine Garsd

In other words, the message needs to go into homes in the most remote locations of the country. And TV is one of the only ways to do that. Jordana was saying Intrusos helped. But when I asked her about whether we should thank Jorge Rial, she just laughs.

Jasmine Garsd

I know what she means. After so many years of awful television and this guy's shenanigans, I just don't want to tip my hat to him. And maybe that's part of his penance. He did something good and no one will ever thank him for it.

Ira Glass

Jasmine Garsd, she's an NPR reporter. This story was co-produced with Marianne McCune as part of a collaboration with the NPR podcast, Rough Translation. If you have not heard that show, the premise is they look at how things we talk about here in the United States get talked about elsewhere around the world.

This leads into all kinds of stories that take you deep into other cultures and countries in this way. This is very unusual. Rough Translation, find it at Apple podcasts or the nine million other places you can get a podcast these days.

[MUSIC - "MACHISTA" BY BUFFALO MOON]

Coming up, OK, you've heard about good cop, bad cop. But what about a bad cop who now says he's a good cop, and really, really, really, really wants everybody to believe him? That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, Change You Can Maybe Believe In. We have stories where things happen that you want to believe, you wish you could believe, but something tells you maybe you should not believe. We've arrived at Act Two of our program. Act Two, You Have The Right To Remain Angry.

This story is about a man whose job was to uphold the law and he was terrible at it. He says he's changed though, completely changed. Lilly Sullivan, one of our producers, heard about him from some video she saw.

Lilly Sullivan

There's this news story. I've watched it a bunch of times, my friend sent it to me. Not because she thought I'd like it-- she knew I wouldn't.

Lilly Sullivan

This was on CBS national news in 2016. The guy talking, who got framed, is black. The cop who framed him is white. So after it comes out that the guy had been wrongly convicted he gets out of prison. He'd been in for three years. And he gets this job at a coffee shop. You know who his boss is? The cop, the guy who framed him. He was now the manager there.

Lilly Sullivan

The cop apologized, and the guy who was framed forgave him.

Lilly Sullivan

The reporter couldn't stop fawning over how lovely it was.

Lilly Sullivan

The problem with this story was, it wasn't the whole story. When my friend sent it to me, she told me the cop, whose name is Andrew Collins, he didn't just put one innocent guy in prison. I Googled this cop and it turns out he falsified police reports and warrants. He lied on the stand. At least 62 cases were either overturned or got thrown out.

The small town of Benton Harbor ended up having to pay five and a half million dollars in settlements for civil rights violations. Then he befriends one guy and all that goes away? None of the other 61 victims even gets a mention? And then he gets to go on TV and tell his story over and over, because annoyingly, America seems to love this kind of story of forgiveness.

Lilly Sullivan

That's talk show host, Steve Harvey. And here's Megyn Kelly on NBC.

Lilly Sullivan

Mike Huckabee on Fox.

Lilly Sullivan

Racial reconciliation-- really? That's pretty big, as if this one story could hit Undo on a whole country's worth of harm. These stories are always about people who forgive, preaching this forgiveness thing as some kind of tidy remedy that can set the world right.

Lilly Sullivan

Look, I'm not from this town. This had nothing to do with me. But I wondered if lots of people there saw this coverage and rolled their eyes. What about the people who don't forgive? Visit Benton Harbor. They're not hard to find.

Lilly Sullivan

This is Robert Walker, also known as White Boy Rob.

Lilly Sullivan

I met him at his house. Or the truth is, I surprised him at his house. I found him in his backyard, riding his lawnmower in his sweatpants. Rob's definitely noticed that no one's doing a TV story about how he feels about this cop.

Lilly Sullivan

Rob says Collins was so corrupt that people would do all kinds of things just to stay out of his way. For a while, one of the local radio stations, 105.3, would warn people whenever Collins was on duty. This one time, they did a special show-- call in and tell us your Corrupt Collins story. So one day, Rob's at a stoplight and he sees Collins in the lane next to him.

Lilly Sullivan

Collins throws on his lights and sirens. And Rob's like, I'm not stopping. Instead, he says, he just keeps driving, under the speed limit with Collins following him, lights and sirens on. Rob drives for four minutes like this, all the way to the police station, the only place he thinks he might be safe.

Lilly Sullivan

What did they say to you?

Lilly Sullivan

Rob went to jail that day. Not for drugs-- Collins didn't find any. But he arrested Rob anyway for fleeing and eluding. Rob didn't do much time, a couple of days, bonded out $3,000. But he did get convicted. In Michigan, fleeing and eluding is a felony. It's still on his record.

This other guy, Quacy Roberts, suffered more. In 2008, Quacy was leaving his girlfriend's house, hot summer day, when Collins and his partner pulled up. The partner said he'd seen Quacy throw something. Collins patted Quacy down while his partner walked around the block.

The partner came back and waved a baggie of crack in Quacy's face. Quacy says it wasn't his, but he ended up serving a year in jail. It was a terrible year to be in jail. He and his girlfriend were about to have a baby. The baby didn't make it.

Lilly Sullivan

He still thinks about the baby.

Lilly Sullivan

Quacy couldn't be with his girlfriend for any of that. He had to hear about it through the prison phone. Not long after that, his girlfriend met someone else. So he's pretty angry at Collins.

Quacy's seen those news stories too. His mom called him once and told him to turn on the Megyn Kelly show, one of those stories with Andrew Collins and Jameel McGee, the guy who forgave him.

Lilly Sullivan

Quacy hasn't seen Collins since he went to jail, so Quacy never got an apology. But he thinks he deserves one. I asked if he wanted to meet with Collins. He said yeah.

It was easier to find Collins. He actually has a publicist from when he and Jameel wrote a book together. It came out last year. It's described as "an unlikely journey of forgiveness and friendship." Collins is big-- 6'1", blue eyes, dresses like a surfer who's also on the football team, who's also in a Christian punk band-- flip-flops, shorts, a few tattoos, some with scripture.

These days, he freely admits that he'd pull people over without probable cause, write phony police reports, falsify warrants, plant drugs in people's cars. I think one of the ways he's able to sleep at night is that he believes nearly all the people he wrongly arrested were drug dealers. He thought they should be in jail. And about those TV stories, I was surprised, but Collins actually agrees with me. He thinks it's messed up how they all focus on him and Jameel and forgiveness and ignore the harm he did to so many people in the community.

Lilly Sullivan

I'm happy to be that reporter. And he said he was game to meet with Quacy. He sees as his responsibility to apologize as much as he can. It's his restitution, he says. And he has a whole way he deals with conversations like this. He's worked out all the words, the best way to do it.

Lilly Sullivan

Collins suggested that he and Quacy meet at the office of this Christian organization where he volunteers. It had been 10 years since they'd seen each other.

Lilly Sullivan

They sit down. Collins says, I'm trying to remember exactly how I know you. I know we've had plenty of run-ins.

Lilly Sullivan

They talk about the day that Collins and his partner arrested Quacy. Collins' partner was dirty, too. He went to prison after Collins did. And he's actually the one who said he saw Quacy throw the baggie of drugs, which Quacy says he didn't do. Collins says he remembers going back to the spot later to take photos for the trial and realizing his partner was probably lying. He couldn't have seen what he said he saw. There were trees in the way.

Lilly Sullivan

Quacy thought Collins had gotten off way too easy for what he did. He only spent a year and a half in jail. Colin says he hears that a lot.

Lilly Sullivan

A lot of the conversation was awkward. Collins took a long time to get to his apology, and when he did, it was kind of indirect. It seems like Quacy barely even noticed.

Lilly Sullivan

What got to Quacy more than the apology was something that they saw eye to eye on, and kind of bonded over. For most of the hour, they talked about how bad the policing is in Benton Harbor. Benton Harbor is 85% black with a police department that's mostly white that has a history of misconduct. There have been decades of protests against the police and a few riots.

Collins has named names in court depositions, talked about how many officers were complicit in bad policing. He spends a lot of his book detailing illegal behavior by cops that he says he witnessed and participated in. He talks to police trainees about corruption and racism and how easy it is to slip into those things.

So he and Quacy got into all of that. They know the same stories, same cops and judges and prosecutors, people they both believe to be crooked who never got caught. There's lots of insider talk.

Lilly Sullivan

Collins really was trying to connect and win Quacy over. He even offered to help Quacy with a case he has pending.

Lilly Sullivan

They seem to get along fine. They were polite enough. Quacy seemed like, whatever. An ex-cop who says he's on your side? It can't hurt.

After it was over, I walked with Quacy to his car.

Lilly Sullivan

Meaning, Collins didn't invent dirty policing, but he admitted to it. Collins confirmed everything Quacy already believed about the courts and prosecutors and judges, and about the Benton Harbor police who usually deny everything.

Lilly Sullivan

Rob Walker, who used to be known as White Boy Rob, he sees things differently.

Lilly Sullivan

As I said, he didn't want to talk with Collins. But he told me they did bump into each other accidentally. It's a small town. It happened at that cafe from the news story.

Lilly Sullivan

He'd changed a lot. Back when Collins arrested him, he'd been away from drugs for years. Everyone knew that, he says. He even put on his license plate, game over. And it was on his car that day that Collins pulled him over.

Rob's gotten plaques from the city for his community work. He started an annual picnic with free rides and food, paid for it all out of pocket. But he still has a felony on his record from that run-in with Collins.

Lilly Sullivan

A takeaway which, of course, is the opposite of all of those news stories.

Lilly Sullivan

The story of someone who doesn't forgive, who thinks being angry is a totally reasonable way to feel. Yeah, maybe it's not heartwarming. But what's wrong with bearing a grudge forever? It could be something to hold onto that keeps you sane.

Ira Glass

Lilly Sullivan is one of the producers of our show.

[MUSIC - "MAKE A CHANGE" BY DURAND JONES & THE INDICATIONS]

Ira Glass

Our program is produced today by Robyn Semien. The people who put together our show today include Ellen Baker, Ben Calhoun, Zoe Chace, Sean Cole, Whitney Dangerfield, Neil Drumming, Jarrett Floyd, Damien Grave, David Kestenbaum, Nikki Meek, Alvin Mellot, Nadia Raymond, Alyssa Ship, Julie Snyder, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney. Our senior producer is Brian Reed. Our managing editor is Susan Burton. Special thanks to Carolina Iwanow, Louise Seamster, Paz Saravia, Laura Rajchman, Barbara Barisch, Naomi Daremblum, Joanna Broder, Reverend Edward Pinkney, Gregory Warner, Ashley Lopez, and Ben Philpott.

Our website, thisamericanlife.org, where you can listen to our archive of over 600 episodes for absolutely free. 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. You know, he was complaining today about how he'd gotten two tickets-- two, both for littering.

Ira Glass

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

[MUSIC - "MAKE A CHANGE" BY DURAND JONES & THE INDICATIONS]