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397
January 1, 2010

2010

At the start of a new year, journalistic outfits put out lots of mealy "perhaps oil prices will rise or perhaps they won't" predictions for the coming year. Instead of that, we asked our contributors to predict real events that will happen to them and the people they know in 2010.
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Prologue

Host Ira Glass goes with Ashli Lewis to a San Francisco psychic to find out if a longstanding prophecy about her is going to come true in 2010. (7 minutes)

By

Ira Glass
Act One

Chronicle Of A Death Foretold

Shalom Auslander knows his next door neighbor will die in 2010. He's the author, most recently, of the memoir Foreskin's Lament. (15 minutes)

By

Shalom Auslander

Song:

“Oh Lately It's So Quiet” by OK Go
Act Two

Lewis Time

Ira with teachers Shraddha Subramaniam and Samantha Cato, and their 2010 predictions for their sixth grade students at Intermediate School 303 in the Bronx, especially a student named Lewis de la Cruz. (5 minutes)

By

Ira Glass
Act Three

Potus Operandi

Jonathan Menjivar has been thinking a lot about 2010 lately, especially about one upcoming event: The birth of his daughter. Jonathan's one of the producers of NPR's Fresh Air. (5 minutes)

By

Jonathan Menjivar
Act Four

Nostra-mom-us

When it comes to predictions, Etgar Keret only trusts one person in his family: His mom. She's amazingly accurate. So he asks her to clue him in about what the future of the mideast will be in 2010. Etgar's an Israeli writer; his latest book of short stories, translated into English, is The Girl on the Fridge. (5 minutes)

By

Etgar Keret
Act Five

Funny You Don't Look Two-ish

Adam Davidson and Alex Blumberg from our Planet Money team report on economic forecasts for 2010 and what they can and cannot accurately predict. Planet Money is a co-production of This American Life and NPR News. (17 minutes)

By

Alex Blumberg
Adam Davidson
Planet Money

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