395: Middle of the Night

Ira Glass

When I was in my 20s, I worked as a temp typist on the overnight shift. And it was one of my favorite jobs I ever had. I showed up at work at midnight. Downtown was completely dark. Nobody on the streets at all. And I'd take the elevator to the, you know, 20th floor or whatever it was. And it would be all lit up and bustling with activity, dozens of people rushing around. Usually we were hustling out some kind of legal brief or exhibit for court the next day.

I loved being up when the rest of the world was asleep. And the next morning, when I would walk to the subway as the sun was coming up, I loved knowing that everybody else on the street was dragging themselves to their jobs and I was done for the day. It was like I was part of a secret society that's alive in the middle of the night.

Ira Glass

It's a regular thing for Austin and his high school friends at night. The pile into a Honda Odyssey minivan. They remove the backseats and drive around the Northern California suburbs, fake-kidnapping their buddies. 15 of them.

Ira Glass

And then sometime after 1 AM, Ian, the driver, pulls out the soundtrack to the Disneyland ride Space Mountain. He's worked out a way to drive in sync with the soundtrack, to simulate the actual ride.

Ira Glass

This is Austin.

Ira Glass

It's remote enough, by the way, that in a year of doing this, they have never even seen another car.

None of this would be fun during the daytime, Austin says. At night, nobody sees you. You can do anything.

Ira Glass

From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life, distributed by Public Radio International. I'm Ira Glass.

Today on our show, we spend an hour with the secret society that is up in the middle of the night. All the people doing things that they would never do during the daytime, and the people doing things that they might be during the day that just feel different when you do them at night. Moving products, and hauling across a war zone, and caring for sick kids, and just wandering the streets to get out of the house. Everything is different at night. We witness how in five acts. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

Act One. Orange You Glad I Didn't Say Banana?

To get to the Hunts Point Market, you drive through this industrial part of the South Bronx, and at night, it's abandoned. For miles, you pass all these closed auto repair lots and plumbing supply stores. And then you go through a fence, pass some pretty intense security, drive a bit more, and suddenly, boom. You are in the Hunts Point Terminal Market.

And it's like a busy city at rush hour. Bright and loud. Forklifts whipping around, carrying pallets to trucks. Warehouses in long rows, several city blocks long. 60 acres of produce.

When people arrive here at 10 PM to work, what they say to each other is "good morning," because the middle of the night is when the most of the business gets done.

Two members of the team of economics reporters at Planet Money, Adam Davidson and Chana Joffe-Walt usually report on financial markets and derivative markets and currency markets, so they were pleased to get a chance to actually visit a market what people buy and sell stuff that you can see and touch and smell. Here they are.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Eddie One-Way needs some pears.

Adam Davidson

His name is actually Edward Joseph. They call him "Eddie One-Way" because he wants prices to go one way-- down. He's a buyer, one of thousands of guys who show up here every night.

Chana Joffe-Walt

And they're buying for pretty much every grocery store, restaurant, corner market in the northeast. If you have ever bought a Golden Delicious apple or ate a salad in a restaurant between Philly and Boston, chances are it came through here.

And it is nothing like when you or I buy a salad at a restaurant. There are no posted prices. It us pure supply and demand.

Adam Davidson

And right now, demand-- that's Eddie One-Way, the buyer-- is looking for supply.

Adam Davidson

Timmy is a salesman at one of the wholesalers here, to Rigo Brothers.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Eventually, Eddie One-Way finds Timmy, and they enter into a ritual that will happen thousands of times throughout the night. They try to negotiate a price.

Eddie thinks $15 for a box of pears seems fair. Timmy doesn't.

Adam Davidson

Timmy offers Eddie a different kind of pear for $15, which to me looked exactly the same.

Adam Davidson

But Eddie One-Way knows things about pears that I will never know, and he ignores that ridiculous offer.

Adam Davidson

Eventually Eddie One-Way walks away. The night is still young. At this hour the sellers, guys like Timmy, feel like they are in control. They don't want to give anything away too cheap yet. There's lots more buyers still to come. But Eddie, the buyer, is hoping that if he comes back later in the night, Timmy won't have sold that much. He'll be desperate to get rid of his pears, and will accept a lower price. But Eddie's really taking a risk here.

Chana Joffe-Walt

I know. I actually saw this risk play out with carrots, and it was really stressful. Jeff Steinberg is a buyer like Eddie, and he was looking for this one particular kind of carrot. A fancy one. Loose California. And I followed him around, walking the aisles, one seller to another. And at first, everyone has the carrots, but Jeff is offended-- or at least acts offended-- by the high prices. And then an hour passes. And now nobody has Loose Californias anymore. Jeff can't find the carrots he needs at any price. So he's thinking he may have to settle for something inferior-- Loose Canadians.

Adam Davidson

Jeff asks a seller named Carlos how much for the Loose Canadians. Carlos tells him eight bucks a box.

Chana Joffe-Walt

And sure enough, Jeff comes out of the warehouse, shaking his head.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Around midnight, it starts to get hectic. Buyers fill the streets. Sellers wave their arms and yell into faces and cell phones. There's a lot of sweating. And as the minutes pass, all these little stories emerge.

Midnight, the big story-- tomatoes. They're on fire. Yesterday they were selling for $15. Now they're $25. Everyone is buying.

Adam Davidson

Also breaking this hour-- leafy greens from California. They're huge, because as everyone says, they have weather out there. There's not enough leafy greens coming to satisfy the demand.

Chana Joffe-Walt

It's around this time that we meet Angela Poricelli. Angela is the only woman we see the entire night. She says she knows of only one other woman who works here alongside something like 7,000 men.

Her booth is decorated with pictures. She has a big cross. She brings in fresh flowers every week.

Adam Davidson

She offered me candy. And hanging out with her, we learned that it's not all business here in the middle of the night. We keep seeing her next door neighbor, Henry Polio, stopping by on all sorts of dubious missions. Right now he's looking for a fork.

Adam Davidson

When you buy a few hundred pounds of fruit or vegetables, there is so much you don't know. What's the quality? How long has it been on the truck? Is the price reasonable? And it's true-- sellers and buyers who don't know each other that well, they lie to each other all the time.

So with all this uncertainty, there is tremendous economic value in long-term, trusting relationships.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Hey Adam? You're overthinking it it's so much simpler than that.

I followed Henry from Angela's back to his booth.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Actually, I followed up. Henry doesn't have a wife. He did, but his marriage fell apart. And he blames the night shift for that. They never saw each other. He says all these guys here have wives they never see, kids never see.

So I go back to Angela's, and turns out she's also divorced. She raised two boys on her own. And she says, yeah. The night shift definitely gets in the way of life.

Chana Joffe-Walt

It's one o'clock in the morning, and I'm with Henry again. He's taking a quick break.

Adam Davidson

This is the point in the night where the market really changes. There are none of those people buying fancy stuff for high-end restaurants and specialty Manhattan stores. They're all gone. There's no more high-end guys like Jeff inspecting every carrot.

Chana Joffe-Walt

A whole new group of buyers enters the market now. And they're buying for not-so-fancy places-- bodegas and grocery stores in working class neighborhoods, pushcart vendors. They're not quite as concerned with getting the best possible quality. They want a good price.

Adam Davidson

It's in this second phase that the dynamic between sellers and buyers starts to shift. Remember early in the night, when Eddie One-Way had to go searching for someone to sell him pears? Over the next couple hours, it's the reverse. The sellers are looking for the buyers. And this, says a warehouse man named Thomas Kilgaren--

Chana Joffe-Walt

Nickname Killer--

Adam Davidson

Is the time to see who is a great salesman and who's not.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Selling something that no one wants? That is exactly what a guy named Mike Sack, Big Mike, is trying to do right now. We catch up with him toward the end of the night.

Adam Davidson

Earlier in the night, buyers were begging Big Mike to lower his prices, and he didn't. He refused. And it worked out pretty well for him. He sold a lot of Red Globe grapes and mangoes, and he made a killing in persimmons. But now that daylight's approaching, he's got piles and piles of oranges from Chile, and he's the one begging. He's pleading with one of his regular carports, a guy named Amerigo Perrera, to buy some of those oranges. Amerigo is pretty clear about his wishes.

Chana Joffe-Walt

At around 4 AM, all of the sellers in the market find themselves pretty much in the same situation as Big Mike. Tired and with too many oranges. Listen to Henry-- so tired.

Chana Joffe-Walt

At 5 AM, Henry heads home. He rakes some leaves in the front yard, and then heads to sleep just as the sun comes out.

Adam Davidson

And later that day, a fancy grocery store in Greenwich, Connecticut might have some very nice, but kind of pricey, tomatoes. A high-end restaurant in Manhattan may be offering the chef's tomato bisque.

Chana Joffe-Walt

But further out, in poorer neighborhoods in South Boston, Brooklyn, Queens, tomatoes will be very hard to come by. Oranges, though, will be very cheap. And there will be lots of them.

Ira Glass

Chana Joffe-Walt and Adam Davidson of Planet Money, which is a co-production of our radio show and NPR news. You can hear them three times a week speaking in language anybody can understand about the human drama that's part of all kinds of economic systems at their podcast at www.npr.org/money.

Ira Glass

Act Two. It Was a Dark and Smoky Night.

Jenifer Hixson told this story about the random kinds of things that can happen in the middle of the night at The Moth, where people get on stage and tell personal stories in front of an audience.

Jenifer Hixson

I reached over and secretly undid my seatbelt. And when his foot hit the break at the red light, I flung open the door and I ran. I had no shoes on. I was crying. I had no wallet. But I was OK, because I had my cigarettes.

When you live with someone who has a temper, a very bad temper, a very, very bad temper, you learn to play around that. You learn, this time I'll play possum, and next time I'll just be real nice, or I'll say yes to everything, or you make yourself scarce, or you run. And this was one of the times when you just run.

And as I was running, I thought, this was a great place to jump out. Because there were big lawns and there were cul-de-sacs, and sometimes he would come after me, and drive, and yell stuff at me to get back in, get back in, and I was like, no. I'm out of here. This is great. And I went and hid behind a cabana and he left.

And I started to walk in this beautiful neighborhood. It was 10:30 at night. And there was no sound except for sprinklers. Ch, ch, ch, ch, brrrrr. Ch, ch, ch, ch, brrrr. And I was enjoying myself, and enjoying the absence of anger, and enjoying these few hours I knew I'd have of freedom. And just to perfect it, I thought, I'll have a smoke. And then it occurred to me, with horrifying speed, I don't have a light!

Just then, as if in answer, I see a figure up ahead. Who is that? It's not him, OK. They don't have a dog. Who is that? What are they doing out on this suburban street? And the person comes closer, and I can see it's a woman. And then I can see she has her hands in her face. Oh, she's crying.

And then she sees me, and she composes herself, and she gets closer, and I see she has no shoes on. And just as she passes me, she says, you got a cigarette? And I say, you got a light? And she says, damn, I hope so.

And then first she digs into our cutoffs in the front-- nothing. And then digs in the back, and then she has this vest on that has 50 million little pockets on it. She's checking and checking, and it's looking bad. She digs back in the front again-- deep, deep-- and she pulls out a pack of matches that have been laundered at least once. We open it up and there is one match inside.

OK. Oh my god. This takes on-- it's like Nassau. Now we've got to like, how are we going to do it? OK. And we hunker down. We crouch on the ground. And where's the wind coming from? We're stopping. I take out my cigarettes. Let's get the cigarettes ready. Oh, my brand, she says. And we both have our cigarettes at the ready.

She strikes once, nothing. She strikes again-- yes, fire! Puff, inhale. Mm, sweet kiss of that cigarette. And we sit there, and we're loving the nicotine, and we both need this right now.

Immediately we start to reminisce about our 30 second relationship. "I didn't think that was going to happen!" "Me neither!" "Oh, man, that was close!" "Oh, I'm so lucky I saw you!" "Yeah!'

Then she surprises me by saying, "What was the fight about?" And I say, "What are they all about?" And she said, "I know what you mean." She said, "Was it a bad one?" And I said, "You know, like medium." She said, "Oh."

And we start to trade stories about our lives. We're both from up north. We're both kind of newish to the neighborhood. This is in Florida. We both went to college. Not great colleges, but man, we graduated.

And I'm actually finding myself a little jealous of her, because she has this really cool job washing dogs. She had horses back home, and she really loved animals, and she wants to be a vet, and I'm like, man, you're halfway there! I'm a waitress at an ice cream parlor. So I don't know where I want to be, but I know it's not that.

And then it gets a little deeper, and we share some other stuff about what our lives are like. Things that I can't ever tell people at home. This girl-- I can tell her the really ugly stuff, and she still understands how it can still be pretty. She understands, like, how nice he's going to be when I get home, and how sweet that'll be.

We are chain smoking off each other. Oh, that's almost out, come on! And we go through this entire pack until it's gone, and then I say, "You know what? This is a little funny, but you're going to have to show me the way to get home. Because although I'm 23 years old, I don't have my driver's license yet, and I just jumped out right when I needed to." And she says, "Well, why don't you come back to my house and I'll give you a ride?" I say, "OK, great," and we start walking.

And we get to this-- lots of lights. And the roads are getting wider and wider, and there's more cars, and I see lots of stores. You know, laundromats, and dollar stores, and EmergiCenters.

Then we cross over U.S. 1, and she leads me to someplace, and I think, no! But yes. Carl's Efficiency Apartments. This girl lives there. And it's horrible, and it's lit up so bright, just to illuminate the horribleness of it. It's the kind of place where you drive your car right up, and the door's right there, and there's 50 million cigarette butts outside, and there's like doors one through seven, and you know behind every single door there's some horrible misery going on. There's someone crying or drunk or lonely or cruel. And I think, oh, God. She lives here. How awful.

We go to the door, door number four, and she very, very quietly keys in. As soon as the door opens, I hear the blare of television come out, and on the blue light of the television, the smoke of a hundred cigarettes in that little crack of light.

And I hear the man, and he says, "Where were you?" And she says," "Never mind, I'm back." And he says, "You all right?" And she says, "Yeah, I'm all right." And then she turns me and says, "You want a beer?" And he says, "Who the [BLEEP] is that?"

And she pulls me over, and he sees me, and he says, "Oh, hey." I'm not a threat.

Just then he takes a drag of his cigarette and I follow the cigarette down. And I'm surprised when I see, int he crook of his arm, a little boy, sleeping. A toddler. And I think, [GASP]. And just then, the girl reaches underneath the bed and takes out a carton, and she taps out the last pack of cigarettes in there. And on the way up, she kisses the little boy, and then she kisses the man. And the man says again, "You all right?" And she says, "Yeah. I'm just going to go out and smoke with her."

And so we go outside and sit amongst the cigarette butts and smoke. And I say, "Wow, that's your little boy?" And she says, "Yeah, isn't he beautiful?" And I say, "Yeah, he is. He is beautiful." "He's my light. He keeps me going," she says.

We finish our cigarettes. She finishes her beer. I don't have a beer, because I can't go home with beer on my breath. And she goes inside to get the keys.

She takes too long in there getting the keys, and I think something must be wrong. And she comes out and she says, "Look, I'm really sorry. But um, like we don't have any gas in the car, it's already on E, and he needs to get to work in the morning, and um, you know, I'm going to walk to work as it is. So what I did was, though, here, look, I drew out this map for you. And you really, you're like a mile and a half from home, and um, if you walk three streets over, you'll be back on that pretty street, and you just take that, and you'll be fine."

And she also has wrapped up in toilet paper seven cigarettes for me. A third of her pack, I note. And a new pack of matches.

And she tells me, "Goodbye!", and "That was great to meet you," and "How lucky," and "That was fun," and you know, "Let's be friends."

And I say, "Yeah, OK!" and I walk away. But I kind of know we're not going to be friends. I might not ever see her again. And I kind of know, I don't think she's ever going to be a vet.

And I cross, and I walk away. And maybe this would have seemed like a visit from my possible future and scary, but it kind of does the opposite. On the walk home I'm like, man. That was really grim over there.

And I'm going home now to my nice boyfriend, and he's going to be so extra happy to see me. And we have a one-bedroom apartment, and we have two trees, and there's a yard. And we have this jar in the kitchen where there's like loose money that we can use for anything. Like we would never, ever run out of gas. And I don't have a baby, you know? So I can leave whenever I want.

I smoked all seven cigarettes on the way home. And people who have never smoked cigarettes just think ick, disgusting and poison. But unless you've had them, and held them dear, you don't know how great they can be, and what friends and comfort and kinship they can bring.

It took me a long time to quit that the boyfriend, and then to quit smoking. And sometimes I still miss the smoking.

Ira Glass

Jenifer Hixson at The Moth. You can here more stories like this on The Moth's free weekly podcast at themoth.org. They also have a new weekly radio show, The Moth Radio Hour, that's on many public radio stations around the country.

Coming up, the time of night in Iraq when you can fool yourself into thinking that you're not in Iraq at all. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio and Public Radio International when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our show, of course, we choose a theme, bring you different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show, The Middle of the Night. Stories that happen when most of us are already asleep.

We've arrived at Act Three of our show. Act Three. The Early Bird Catches the Chicken

Now a story about that people staying up all night hoping for nothing more than a chicken sandwich. When the change Chick-Fil-A opens a new store, they encourage people to line up 24 hours ahead of time, at 6 AM the day before. And for 100 people who do that, Chick-Fil-A gives away coupons for a year of Chick-Fil-A. One combo meal per week. 52 coupons, which is worth, if you add it up, 260 bucks.

Well, Dave Hill and Shaina Feinberg were curious about who comes out for that, because a lot of people do. Neither of them is real reporter. Shaina is a very funny writer. Dave is a musician and a comedian. But when a new Chick-Fil-A store opened in Orlando, Florida recently, they went down to stay up all night and see what happens.

Dave Hill

OK. It's about nine o'clock. Shaina's trying to set up the tent right now. I would totally help her, but I'm busy reporting. How's it going, Shaina?

Shaina Feinberg

Good. I think we put this into here, and then we can-- this is where I don't get-- how does this bend?

Dave Hill

Again, I would help, if I could, but I can't. I'm busy reporting. Can we interview you?

Dave Hill

Do you know how to set up tents?

Dave Hill

Do you know how to set up our tent?

Dave Hill

That'd be awesome.

Dave Hill

It's 11:23. We're sitting here in the parking lot across from Chick-Fil-A, just to see it from afar, I guess. I'm going to sit closer to you, if you're comfortable with that.

Shaina Feinberg

Yeah, that's fine. I think we should describe what we see.

Dave Hill

Well, we're pretty much in like a regular strip mall parking lot. There's a Blockbuster. There's that that rib place that we ate earlier that I'm kind of regretting.

Shaina Feinberg

Yeah. And basically, there's a lot of tents up.

Dave Hill

Easily the most tents I've ever seen in a fast food restaurant parking lot in my lifetime.

It's weird with radio. You've got to fill in the blanks. The visuals.

We should we should go get some celery and break it, like old time radio.

Shaina Feinberg

So people will be like, what is that noise?

Dave Hill

Oh. I just broke my arm in two for no apparent reason.

Dave Hill

Oh hey. This is Dave. It's about 4:15 AM and there's not much action going on right now. Shaina's back in the tent. Not sure what she's doing. Probably thinking about me, I guess. Tension's been-- not a bad tension. Just excitement, I guess, between us. It's been pretty incredible.

Shaina Feinberg

It's now 4:15, and everybody is sleeping, for the most part. I think it's going pretty well. I like Dave. He's so nice. Wish I could figure out if he was straight or gay. I can't really figure it out. But if I figured out if he was straight or gay, then I would totally set him up with someone. Just have to figure out what his type is, you know?

Dave Hill

OK. Check this out.

Dave Hill

This guy, it's like five in the morning. And this guy just came from out of nowhere and is screaming and preaching.

Shaina Feinberg

OK. It is now 5:40 in the morning, and people are lined up to get their 52 coupons. And everyone is looking really, incredibly jazzed.

Dave Hill

Hey Shaina, let's sing the song we wrote. Ready?

Shaina Feinberg

Yeah.

Dave Hill

All right. Here we go.

[SINGING]

Chick-Fil-A.

Shaina Feinberg

Chick-Fil-A.

Dave Hill

If you like chicken, go to--

Shaina Feinberg

Chick-Fil-A.

Dave Hill

Chick-Fil-A.

Shaina Feinberg

Chick-Fil-A.

Dave Hill

If you like chicken, why not--

Shaina Feinberg

Go to Chick-Fil-A!

Dave Hill

Waffle fries and lemonade. These are just a couple of the items that they have available at Chick-Fil-A. And at first that carrot and raisin salad is a little bit suspicious.

But you know what, I've tried it. And as it turns out--

Shaina Feinberg

Quite delicious.

Dave Hill

That's right. Chick-Fil-A, Chick-Fil-A...

[END SINGING]

Ira Glass

Dave Hill and Shaina Feinberg.

Ira Glass

Act Four. Midnight Run.

A little while back, after we did a program that all took place at a rest stop on the side of the highway, we got an email from specialist Lindsay Freeland, who's in the Oregon National Guard, and who heard the episode by podcast from where she's stationed in Iraq. She wrote to us about the road trips that she goes on in her job, in the middle of the night, without real rest stops, to forward operating bases across the country. Quote, "It's late, it's dark, and it's not the normal to be up and driving to a destination. Here in Iraq, this is our military time for driving, late at night, due to the agreement between the American military and the Iraqi military to conduct most convoy operations at night to bring a normalcy back to the Iraqi local nationals."

One of our producers, Nancy Updike, reached Lindsay Freeland on the phone and learned that she's 24. Just got to Iraq in July. Started doing these convoys in August, mostly transporting fuel. There are three people in her vehicle. She's a driver. There's also a gunner and a commander. And it's so noisy that they have to talk to each other over headsets for the whole trip.

What's amazing is how huge these convoys are-- 20 to 100 trucks, plus another 11 military vehicles providing security, which is what Lindsay's in.

Ira Glass

Specialist Lindsay Freeland of Alpha Company 141 with the Organ National Guard in Iraq, talking with Nancy Updike.

Ira Glass

Act Five. Bump in the Night.

We end our show today with this story about a very common experience-- staying up all night with a sick child. One of our producers, Jane Feltes, tells what happened to her and her parents back when she was six years old and her parents were 26. They were visiting family friends with holidays in the UP, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, which is the part of the state that isn't, you know, the mitten. Here's Jane.

Jane Feltes

This night, a lot of adults wanted to go out, so my mom volunteered to babysit about seven of us kids altogether. And all the kids' bunks were upstairs in this old, old log cabin, and the staircase to get upstairs had no railing. It was just kind of, shoots out into the middle of the room.

And I remember we all got our pajamas on, and we all ran upstairs.

Jane Feltes

So that's my dad. My mom somehow piled seven kids into a car that wasn't even hers, that was sitting in the driveway, and drove us all to the bar. And she didn't know how to get there, but an eight year old in the car did, so he instructed her. And my mom and my dad, and me and my brother-- we just drove to the nearest hospital, which was in Newberry, which was a really, really tiny town in the Upper Peninsula.

Jane Feltes

Home, at the time, was Ann Arbor, Michigan, where my dad went to school and where they knew there was a trauma center where if, you know, worst case scenario was happening, something could be done about it.

And I remember very little from that night, but just coming to in little flashes in the first hospital, and in the car. And I remember everything looked like I was in that movie Tron. You know, it was all very, like, black, and the edges of everything kind of glowed bright neon colors. And I wasn't walking, and I wasn't really moving much, except to throw up.

Jane Feltes

That's true. That was one of the main lasting effects of the accident. We got to the hospital, and they did a CT scan, and found that I had what's called a contrecoup lesion in my brain. And I wasn't really able to walk for a couple of weeks. And then I didn't get back to school regularly-- I think I was out for like a month.

So that first night driving home after the accident just led to hundreds and hundreds of nights like that, where I was up all night sick. I started getting really bad migraines. I would always get them, like, two, three, four in the morning. I would wake up and I'd see these sparkly lights kind of around the edge of my field of vision. Then there's a little bit of, like, TV v static that gets bigger and bigger over the course of an hour until I'm blind. And then it's like worst-- pain so bad that it makes you throw up.

Jane Feltes

It was nice of them to get up with me like that. But after a while, it just started to seem pointless, because there wasn't really anything that they could do to make me feel better.

My mom says when you do get up to take care of kids in the middle of the night, it can feel like you're the only people awake in the whole world. And that was true the first night, when we drove through the Upper Peninsula. And it was true for all the nights my mom got up with me. And it's true now that I have to deal with it all by myself.

Ira Glass

Jane Feltes.

Our program was produced today by Robyn Semien with Alex Blumberg, Jane Feltes, Sara Koenig, Lisa Pollak, Alissa Shipp, and Nancy Updike. Our senior producer is Julie Snyder. Production help from Aaron Scott. Seth Lind is our production manager, Emily Condon our office manager. Our music consultant is Jessica Hopper.

[ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS]

Our website, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight for our program by our boss, Mr. Torey Malatia, who comes to me every week as I'm preparing the credits of the program and pleads with me--