Naming Names

Host Ira Glass explains that when you name names, when you whistleblow, when you tell on someone, you often do it anonymously. We hear from one anonymous squealer, who was done wrong by her doctor—he messed up a procedure and then refused to fix it. She decided to get even with him by turning him in to the IRS. (6 minutes)

We hear excerpts from two autobiographies which each describe the same moment, but in very different ways. Elia Kazan and Arthur Miller agree that they met with each other in 1952, around the time Kazan named the names of his old friends to the House Committee on Un-American Activities. But they don't agree on what the conversation was like. Kazan describes it in his memoir, A Life, as cordial, supportive. Miller describes it in his Timebends as quietly calamitous. And after this moment, each man went on to defend his position in later work—Miller with The Crucible, about the dangers of bandwagon accusation; and Kazan with On The Waterfront, containing perhaps the single greatest testimony to squealing in the history of film. (11 minutes)