This American Life Updates

When Ira Glass met Michael Jackson

adrianne — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:48:35 +0000

From left: Ira Glass, unidentified kid, Michael Jackson. August, 1972.

Ira writes:

I gave a six-minute talk at the Academy of Arts and Letters last week, when they gave me a medal. A section of the talk concerns the photo above, of me and Michael Jackson.. The Academy is supposedly made up of the 250 greatest writers, composers, artists and architects in the country. One has to die for another to join. It's been around since 1898. Its membership is a hilariously intimidating list of writers you read in school and iconic cultural figures you'd never think you could meet: Joan Didion, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, E.L. Doctorow, Paul Auster, Toni Morrison, Robert Coover, Elie Wiesel, Don DeLillo, Tom Wolfe, David McCullough, W.S. Merwin, Claus Oldenburg, I.M. Pei, Richard Serra, Chuck Close, Michael Graves, Red Grooms, Tony Kushner, Maya Lin, David Mamet. The medal I received — for Spoken Language — has these previous winners: Bill Clinton, Mario Cuomo, Paul Robeson, Claude Raines (you know, from Casablanca). Crazy, right? They award the thing on the stage of the vast clubhouse they have in New York, a building the size and general vibe of a museum. There's a room that looks like something from Hogwarts School where members meet, and I was told that each chair has little nameplates with the names of the members who'd been assigned that chair. One of the members said Mark Twain's chair is there. Anyway here's the video. Calvin Trillin, whose writing I’ve always loved, gives the award.

This Week on the Radio: "Hot In My Backyard"

adrianne — Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

After years of being stuck, the national conversation on climate change finally started to shift — just a little — last year, the hottest year on record in the U.S., with Hurricane Sandy flooding the New York subway, drought devastating Midwest farms, and California and Colorado on fire. Lots of people were wondering if global warming had finally arrived, here at home. This week, stories about this new reality.

Broadcast May 18 to May 20

Note about "Dr. Gilmer and Mr. Hyde"

adrianne — Tue, 14 May 2013 17:52:47 +0000

Sarah Koenig here. After our show "Dr. Gilmer and Mr. Hyde" aired, we got some emails about the way I discussed Huntington's Disease in the story. Just to remind you: The story was about a beloved family doctor, Vince Gilmer, who brutally killed his own father. By the end of the story — spoiler coming now — we figure out that Vince has Huntington's Disease, a genetic disorder that can cause physical and psychological symptoms.

The emails pointed out that a listener could walk away from the story believing that Huntington’s Disease led to Vince Gilmer’s violent behavior — that it contributed to the murder. We did not intend to draw that connection. Because I can't say for certain how, or if, Huntington's was affecting Vince at the time.

Michelle Meyer, a fellow at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, wrote to us: "Although the occasional incidents involving people with HD [Huntington’s Disease] who kill themselves or others make for splashy news and riveting human interest stories, the fact is that the vast majority of people with HD are not dangerous to themselves or others."

It’s a sensitive topic, listeners pointed out, because of the history of discrimination against people with the disease. Meyer continued:

"People with HD are instead much more likely to be the victims of violence. They were burned at the stake as witches in Salem and sent to the gas chambers during the Holocaust, for instance. Less dramatically, they are routinely turned away from public accommodations or arrested because their chorea is mistaken for drunkenness. Many who are at risk for HD choose not to be tested, not only because they don't want to know, but also, in many cases, because they fear the consequences of an HD diagnosis for their employment and insurance status … on top of the risk that others will respond to them with irrational fears and prejudices."

So to repeat: I did not mean to imply that Huntington's is what made Vince do this violent thing. Or to imply that he’s not responsible for what he did, because of Huntington's. I regret that I didn't make that clearer in the story. If we rebroadcast the story, we'll correct that.

Ira Glass Moderates Anti-Genocide Event in NYC

seth — Tue, 14 May 2013 14:44:16 +0000

Ira here. I'm hosting an event in New York for the US Holocaust Memorial Museum this coming Wednesday, May 22nd. Tickets are pricey — they're raising money — but they have me interviewing some incredible people onstage. Eugenie Mukeshimana is a survivor of the Rwandan genocide; Thomas Buergenthal was in Auschwitz as a boy; with a remarkable lack of bitterness about the past, he went on to become a judge at the International Criminal Court of Justice in The Hague. Funds raised will support the Museum's Center for the Prevention of Genocide.

Scion "Motivate" Winners

seth — Thu, 09 May 2013 16:20:06 +0000

One of the underwriters on our show, the car company Scion, has a promotion called Motivate, inviting entrepreneurs to submit one-minute videos describing business ideas. Scion chose ten winners to each receive a cash prize, a Scion and access to business mentors. Here are three of the winning submissions.

Notes for Notes
A nonprofit program that provides kids with free access to instruments, recording studios and music instruction. Santa Barbara, CA and Nashville, TN.

Lilco
A letterpress and graphic design studio. Dallas, TX.

Wonderheads
A theater company specializing in mask performance. Portland, OR.

This post is part of an underwriting package purchased by Scion.

"What Happened at Dos Erres" Wins Overseas Press Club Awards

seth — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 16:39:43 +0000

Our episode "What Happened at Dos Erres," an investigation into a massacre in Guatemala in the 1980s, has won two awards from the Overseas Press Club. "Dos Erres," a collaboration with ProPublica and Fundación MEPI, won the Lowell Thomas Award for radio reporting and the Joe and Laurie Dine Award for human rights reporting. Habiba Nosheen reported the story. Brian Reed produced it.

From the award announcement: "The judges were riveted as they listened to this compelling and beautifully narrated story of recent events and the violent massacre of more than 200 people in the village of Dos Erres in Guatamala more than two decades ago. In 2012 the discovery of a father, still alive, and his son Oscar Ramirez, an undocumented worker in the U.S., each of whom assumed the other dead in the tragedy, prompted reporter Nosheen and producer Reed to devote five months to researching the story, finding victims and perpetrators. As a result, Ramirez was granted political asylum in the U.S. and several implicated soldiers have been apprehended for trial."

Previously, "What Happened at Dos Erres" won the Peabody Award, the Dart Award, and the Silver Award at the Third Coast International Audio Festival.

Image: Oscar Ramírez Castañeda, photographed by Matthew Healey for ProPublica

Please Donate to Support Our Free Podcast and Streaming

seth — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 15:08:54 +0000

4/22 UPDATE: We have met our goal, covering the cost of podcast bandwidth for the year. Any additional donations will help us produce stories. Thank you to everyone who donated!

Ira Glass writes:

Hi everyone. If you listen to our podcast or stream shows here on the website, you are costing us a bit of money. So many people stream and download our program that it cost our home radio radio station WBEZ Chicago $170,000 dollars this past year for the Internet bandwidth to deliver the program. I know that number is insane. And that’s just bandwidth, not servers or personnel or any other costs.

If you donate just $5 or $10, it more than covers the cost of getting the show to you online. Plus we use these donations to fund especially expensive projects, like when we sent three reporters to Harper High School this Fall, on and off over five months. Expensive! Or when we sent reporters to Guatemala for that story last May about the guy who discovered that the man he thought was his father actually was one of the commanders of an army unit that killed most of his family and his entire village back in the 1980s.

Your donation does NOT cover the cost of having Fred Armisen come in and imitate me hosting our show. That cost like, nothing. When we needed to go through 1700 coincidence stories you sent in for the episode “No Coincidence, No Story” – also surprisingly cheap!

I used to go on the podcast and website several weeks each year and ask for donations. You might have noticed that we haven't done it since 2011, a year and a half ago. If this campaign goes well, it'll be just this week.

I hope you’ll consider donating. We’ll put the money to good use. And thanks.

— Ira

First Lady Michelle Obama to visit Harper High School

seth — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 14:28:03 +0000

We just learned that First Lady Michelle Obama will visit students and counselors at Harper High School today, after addressing a meeting to address youth violence in Chicago hosted by mayor Rahm Emanuel. In February we produced two hours of stories about Harper.

From the White House press release:

Following the First Lady's remarks on youth empowerment at the “Joint Luncheon Meeting: Working Together to Address Youth Violence in Chicago,” hosted by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, she will meet with a small group of students and counselors at Harper High to hear firsthand about their experiences.

Harper High School is a Chicago public school that has been profoundly affected by violence – 29 current or former students have been shot in the past year; 8 of them died.
...
Harper High School is located on Chicago’s South Side and serves the West Englewood neighborhood. Of the high school’s approximately 600 students, the majority are considered ‘low-income’ and 22% are enrolled in special education courses.

The First Lady’s remarks to the “Joint Luncheon Meeting: Working Together to Address Youth Violence in Chicago” will be livestreamed at digital.cityofchicago.org.

One Radio Host, Two Dancers

seth — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 21:01:09 +0000

Photo by Ebru YILDIZ

Ira writes:

People of Philadelphia, I’m coming to town in two weeks to stage the world premiere of this show I’ve been working on for months. It has a completely ridiculous premise: radio stories... plus dance. The dance part is done by Monica Bill Barnes & Company. They’re the incredible dancers we had in our live cinema show last May. I suppose you can figure out who does the radio stories part of the show.

The show’s a mix of two things that really have no business being on stage together at all. Dance is all visuals, no talking. Radio’s all talking, no visuals. But what the stories on our show have in common with dance is music. That’s a start. And Monica Bill Barnes and Anna Bass are such funny, human-scale, relatable sorts of performers; their sensibility somehow matches a lot of what we do on the radio show.

I know this whole thing sounds a little nuts but I swear it’s pretty great. Huge laughs. Big emotions. The one time we’ve tried this on stage was a ten-minute excerpt at Carnegie Hall and it brought down the house. Seriously.

The Philadelphia shows are on Saturday, April 20th and Sunday, April 21st. We’ve priced tickets on the cheap side – they start at $20. I really really hope you come out.

TICKETS

SHOW SITE

"What Happened at Dos Erres" Wins the Peabody Award

seth — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 15:28:41 +0000

We're proud to announce that our episode "What Happened at Dos Erres," about a massacre in Guatemala in the 1980s, has won a Peabody Award. Congratulations to reporter Habiba Nosheen, producer Brian Reed, and our collaborators at Pro Publica and Fundacion MEPI.

And congratulations to our colleagues at PRI, NPR, Radio Diaries and WNYC, who also won awards.

COMPLETE LIST OF WINNERS

"Trends With Benefits" Web Extra

seth — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 16:42:44 +0000

The Planet Money team created a web version of our episode "Trends With Benefits."

By Chana Joffe-Walt

In the past three decades, the number of Americans who are on disability has skyrocketed. The rise has come even as medical advances have allowed many more people to remain on the job and new laws have banned workplace discrimination against the disabled. Every month, 14 million people now get a disability check from the government.

The federal government spends more money each year on cash payments for disabled former workers than it spends on food stamps and welfare combined. Yet people relying on disability payments are often overlooked in discussions of the social safety net. People on federal disability do not work. Yet, because they are not technically part of the labor force, they are not counted among the unemployed.

In other words, people on disability don't show up in any of the places we usually look to see how the economy is doing. But the story of these programs — who goes on them, and why, and what happens after that — is, to a large extent, the story of the U.S. economy. It's the story not only of an aging workforce, but also of a hidden, increasingly expensive safety net.

For the last six months, I've been reporting on the growth of federal disability programs. I've been trying to understand what disability means for American workers, and, more broadly, what it means for poor people in America nearly 20 years after we ended welfare as we knew it.

Chana's story - including video, startling graphs, and photos of interviewees — continues on the Planet Money website.