Three stories about people who decide to try out a new life—the kind of life their parents never wanted for them.
Prologue
How does a person who's not gay convince herself that she is for two years? Host Ira Glass talks to one of the show's contributing editors, Nancy Updike, about her two-year stint believing she was a lesbian, even though she was not attracted to women. (7 minutes)
That's Funny, You Don't Look Jewish
Chaim and Billy both lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, just blocks away from each other, in worlds that almost never collided. Chaim was a Hasidic Jew—he'd never heard pop music or watched MTV. Billy Campion, known as the rocker Vic Thrill, was the star of an underground band. Billy put Chaim, who took on the name Curly Oxide, into the band, and in just one year, he leapt from the 19th century into the 21st. David Segal, rock critic for the Washington Post, reports. (39 minutes)
Song:
Miami Vices
A nice Florida girl changes high schools and takes the opportunity to try on a new personality...the slutty kind. Sascha Rothchild reads from her own teenage diary. Her story was first recorded for Mortified, a stage show in Los Angeles produced by David Nadelberg. Its website: getmortified.com. (8 minutes)
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Act One: The Spy Who Loved Everyone
A group called Improv Everywhere decides that an unknown band, Ghosts of Pasha, playing their first ever tour in New York, ought to think they're a smash hit.
Act Two: Dance
What do we do when we're not doing something? Not writing a book, not doing our jobs, not falling in love? Sometimes we just feel self-conscious.
Act Two: A Trust Without Trust
An accountant, Bruce Wisan, is hired by the state of Utah to clean up a very complicated mess in a complicated place: Short Creek, home to hundreds of members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints—or FLDS, which practices polygamy.
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