484: Doppelgängers

Ira Glass

1, 2, 3.

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) 1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3.

Ira Glass

1, 2, 3.

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) 1, 2, 3. 1 2, 3. Sometimes, things aren't what you think they are, and people aren't who you think they are. That's what we're talking about today. I'm Ira Glass.

Ira Glass

That is really weird, to hear you do that.

[LAUGHTER]

I'm here. This is actually Ira Glass. I'm sitting here with Fred Armisen.

Fred Armisen

Hi.

Ira Glass

Hi-- who's probably best known for Saturday Night Live, but also Portlandia. And I knew that you had worked up an imitation of me because we just happened to meet once.

Fred Armisen

Yeah.

Ira Glass

And then you said something like, but you're not famous enough, so I have no use for this on television.

[LAUGHS]

Fred Armisen

I might have said that exactly.

Ira Glass

Yeah, and-- yeah.

Fred Armisen

Well, after that, this writer at SNL, Christine Nangle and I, we figured out a way to turn it into a sketch that we could put on Weekend Update, the news segment on Saturday Night Live. By chance, NPR came up in the news. I think this was around the time that they were talking about cutting some of the funding.

Fred Armisen

So I came out, and I'm wearing your glasses and a wig to look like you.

Ira Glass

And the joke being that you were interviewing people at "Weekend Update."

Ira Glass

So this never made it to air. This is just the recording from the dress rehearsal. Why didn't it make it to air?

Fred Armisen

Who knows? It might have been a little unwieldy.

Ira Glass

So if people want to watch that, the entire video, we have a link at our website. Anyway, so we invited you here today because the theme of this week's show is doppelgangers. The show is about doppelgangers, about people who are doubles or lookalikes. And I realized that because you had worked up this imitation, you could co-host as my doppelganger in this room, in this studio, during this broadcast. This is an audience who will actually know who you're playing.

Fred Armisen

Yes, this is the right venue for it.

Ira Glass

So if you're ready, that's what we'll do.

Fred Armisen

Sure. And another way to look at it is, you're co-hosting with me, that this is my show.

Ira Glass

Exactly.

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) And that's what we're talking about today. I'm Ira Glass.

[LAUGHTER]

Ira Glass

All right, so let's go to this copy. So we have some copy for today. OK. That's this one. And let's go to there. And let's just-- why don't you start?

Fred Armisen

OK. (IMITATING IRA GLASS) Today on our show-- today on our show.

Ira Glass

Let me think. I'm just thinking about how I would do it. I would go, today on our show--

Fred Armisen

Oh, yes. That's better. OK. (IMITATING IRA GLASS) Today on our show--

Ira Glass

We have two stories of supposed doppelgangers.

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) --we have two stories of supposed doppelgangers. And we try to figure out the truth of them.

Ira Glass

Do I sound that nasal?

Fred Armisen

Maybe.

Ira Glass

And we try to figure out the truth of them.

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) And we try to figure out the truth of them.

Ira Glass

One concerns two men who've never met--

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) The other, two animals who never meet.

Ira Glass

I think you should do the next part because it's so-- do you want to hear me do it first? Or do you just want to do it? From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life, distributed by Public Radio International.

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) Distributed by Public Radio International.

[LAUGHTER]

Ira Glass

I feel like a Muppet. Why does it make me feel like a Muppet, Fred? [LAUGHTER] Seriously, why--

Fred Armisen

I think you could be a Muppet. I don't know why they don't have a Muppet of you.

Ira Glass

From WBEZ Chicago, It's This American Life--

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life--

Ira Glass

--distributed by Public Radio International.

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) --distributed by Public Radio International. I'm Ira Glass.

Ira Glass

And I'm Ira Glass.

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) And I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

So Fred, you want to start Act 1?

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) OK, Act 1, Dead Ringer. We start today with a story of physical resemblance, not of a person, but of a food.

Ira Glass

A quick warning that if you're squeamish or averse to graphic images of food, there's going to be some of that in this report. Here's Ben Calhoun.

Ben Calhoun

I first heard about this whole thing in an email. It came from a listener, a woman named Emily Rancer. She works in the food industry.

And the letter Emily wrote was about a story she'd heard from a farmer. The farmer who told her this is apparently a person of some standing in the pork industry. And admittedly, I don't know the first thing about the pork industry, but he's in charge of a pork-producing operation that spans several states.

The story he told Emily went something like this, a while ago, he was visiting a pork processing plant in Oklahoma. He's walking through it with a friend, a guy who managed the plant, actually. And at some point, he saw boxes stacked on the floor, labeled "artificial calamari."

He stood there, wondering for a second. And then he asked his friend, what's artificial calamari? Bung, his friend replied. It's hog rectum, rectum that would be sliced into rings, deep fried, and boom, there you have it.

OK, if I can, let me just narrate for you what this would mean. It would mean that in restaurants everywhere, right this second, people are squeezing lemon wedges over crispy, golden rings, and dipping the rings into marinara sauce, and they're eating hog rectum.

Now, they're chewing, satisfied, and deeply clueless. It's payback. It's payback for our blissful ignorance about where our food comes from and how it gets to us. It's amazing. And it's perfect.

But it also seems like it couldn't possibly be true. So I called up the farmer to talk to him personally. I wanted to hear it firsthand. And the farmer confirmed the story-- the entire thing, the boxes, the bung. But when I asked him to go on the record, to tape an interview, and gave his name here, on the radio, he very politely declined, which seems suspicious, right?

When I asked him why, he said he'd spoken with his girlfriend about it, and she suggested that he should think about the words that he wanted to come up when somebody Googled his name. This was all fine, though, because he referred me to the real expert, the guy who gave him the tour of the hog processing plant. And that guy, he agreed to talk.

[PHONE RINGING]

Ben Calhoun

Yeah, this is Ron Meek, meat processing plant manager, presently residing in Mountain View, Missouri, where he runs an organic beef processing plant there called Beyond Organic. If the story really were true, Ron would have been the guy who explained to the farmer what was in those boxes.

Ben Calhoun

OK, just to give a little better picture, a pork bung-- and "bung" is the actual industry term for it-- is long and floppy and ugly. At one end, it widens out into this more bulbous shape, like a pink, wrinkly pear. That's the rectum. At the other end, it narrows into a soft, pinkish-white tube.

I know, it sounds gross. But also, consider, we are a nation that eats more than a billion pounds of sausage every year, billion with a B. Maybe you like liverwurst or capicola or summer sausage with a natural casing. Then you, like me, have eaten bung-- stuffed, dried bung.

A lot of brats and Italian sausages are stuffed in intestine. So if you eat those regularly, you pretty much live up the street from bung. So why does the idea of a fried ring of bung just feel grosser? Well, partly, it's the visual, right? When you see that little ring of calamari, you don't want to picture it in the context of a pig's behind.

Then there are all the people who don't eat pork, period. Ron said there's also another reason.

Ben Calhoun

But the big question, the question you've been thinking about since we got on this topic, have you or I eaten imitation calamari, bung dressed up as seafood? Well, Ron didn't know. He said his plant exported a lot of their bung to Asia. But he just didn't know much about whatever happened after it left the door. So he could only speculate. Anything, he said, would be a wild guess.

So I turned to people who would know. Is pork bung being falsely peddled as calamari? I called the USDA. The USDA's Food Inspection Service issued the following statement to me. "Products we inspect, including those derived from pork, must be accurately labeled and cannot purport to be a product of another species."

So it's against the rules. But people break the rules. A recent study of seafood by a group called Oceana used DNA testing, and found that all across the country, fish is regularly being labeled as other species in restaurants and in grocery stores, escolar sold as white tuna, Pacific rockfish being fraudulently sold as snapper.

In Miami, more than 30% of fish was being sold as something it wasn't. In New York, the number was 39%, Boston, 48%, Los Angeles-- are you ready? 55%, 55. That means if you order fish in LA, you are most likely eating a species you did not order.

In other words, seafood substitution is rampant in this country. And depending on where you live, from what I can tell, you can get cleaned hog bung for about half the price of clean squid. So there would be money in it if you could pull off the switch. And as best as I can tell, were you to do this, you would not be caught.

A lawyer who's familiar with this area of law and regulation told me, once bung leaves the plant, there's a variety of agencies and entities that would be in play-- USDA, FDA, state, and local government. But ultimately, he said, the regulation we have is not designed to catch an offense like this. It's aimed mostly at sanitation and food safety.

So bottom line, the lawyer said, if somebody wanted to do it, chances are, they'd get away with it. So is someone out there doing this? Well, for weeks, I looked for an answer. The USDA says they've never heard of anyone trying to pass pork bung as squid or any other species.

[PHONE RINGING]

I contacted the National Restaurant Association, the National Pork Producers Council, the National Pork Board--

Ben Calhoun

--a squid fisherman's association--

Ben Calhoun

--Cisco and other big food and restaurant supply companies.

Ben Calhoun

That's the executive director of the California Wet Fish Producers Association. But the answer was pretty much always the same, nobody had heard of it. But almost to a person, they added that that doesn't mean it's not happening somewhere.

Ron Meeks said a lot of the bung from his plant got exported. So my next call was to the US Meat Export Federation, which confirmed that, quote, "the main destinations for pork bungs are China, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, and the Philippines. They are mainly used for processing. But we are aware of some uses in soups and certain entrees. We are not aware of them being used as a substitute for calamari, but it's not impossible," unquote.

So over the past few weeks, I've called Asian food suppliers, people who live in, work in, and eat in those countries. I talked to a woman named Corinne Trang, who's written an overarching compendium of Asian cuisines. I've talked to academics at NYU and Haverford and USC and Harvard. I've reached out to chefs who know Asian food.

The answer, again, always similar-- never heard of it, but it's possible, partly because bung doesn't have such a complicated reputation in Asia, where it has to be some kind of secret ingredient, like it does here. On the other hand, though, people pointed out that in Korea and Japan, you can't get more than a few hours from the ocean. Squid is cheap and it's readily available. You'd only eat a substitute if you wanted the substitute.

Generally, people said, if the switch was happening somewhere, they'd guess China. Eventually, I found my way to this guy, who I was really excited about, someone who I thought might have my answer. He was, get this, an anthropologist who lived and worked in China for 40 years, where he studied food, and specifically, meat.

When I talked to him, though, he made two points. Point one, my question about this happening in Asia was racist. Even just asking the question was racist because it plays on ignorant stereotypes about other cultures eating things that we perceive as weird. Point two was that Ron Meek, my guy from the pig plant, Ron was pulling my leg. And he was getting away with it because I was a dumbass.

He told me more than once that I should, quote, "find something worthwhile to do with myself." When we ended our conversation, he told me that he was refusing to even dignify what I was doing by appearing on the radio or by letting me use his name.

OK, so to respond to his points one by one, first, am I racist against Asians? Well, I'm half Chinese. My mom's Chinese. Like anyone, I've had the occasional issue with my mother. But this has not been one of them. We grew up eating chicken feet and fish eyes. And I think it's possible to raise the question of who eats what without being racist.

His second point, though, that Ron Meek was pulling my leg, I mean, the guy was still an expert on meat in China. So I called Ron back.

Ben Calhoun

I told him the whole thing, about the anthropologist, about what he said.

Ben Calhoun

I contacted the plant Ron worked at, where this happened. And for what it's worth, they backed him up. They said their sales team had heard of people eating pork bung as imitation calamari, though they hadn't witnessed it firsthand or heard it directly from a customer. It was all hearsay.

So at the end of all this, I still had no proof that anyone was passing off bung as squid. And then I realized I hadn't asked the more basic question here. Could bung do it? Could it pass as calamari? And that question led me to a guy named Eddie Lin. Eddie Lin has eaten a lot of bung, at least a hundred times, he said, probably more. Eddie has an extreme food blog called "Deep-End Dining" and an online TV show called Kamikaze Kitchen.

Ben Calhoun

Somehow, I hadn't figured that the bung, once it was scrubbed and rinsed and cleaned with steam, that it would still taste like, you know.

Ben Calhoun

He thought it wouldn't be easy, but he thought it could be done. And there was only one way to tell if he was right, to cook up some bung and eat it. And if the taste was overwhelming and the texture was all wrong, well, then I'd have my answer. And at this point, I'll be frank, I started to root for the bung.

I realized that this is not a story about fraud. It's not a bait-and-switch story. It's a story about possibility. It's classic rags to riches. It's about whether a cut of meat, perhaps the lowliest, most malignable cut of meat in America, might somehow, in at least one place on the planet, be dipped in the redemptive oils of the great culinary equalizer that is the deep fryer. And it might emerge transformed, no longer an outcast, but instead, hair combed, clean-shaven, in a suit and tie. It might walk reborn onto a table.

Through sheer force of resemblance, it might be loved, its history, years of drudgery and hardship, doing the body's least glamorous job, all washed away. No, this is not the story of a con man like Bernie Madoff. It's Pretty Woman. This is whether Good Will Hunting finds his way out of Southie. It's whether Charlie, on that very last chocolate bar, really can get a golden ticket.

To do all this, to try it, I called my little sister, Lauren. She's a chef, trained abroad at The Cordon Bleu, worked at Michelin-star restaurants. She's that kind of chef. Soon, we were standing in front of a deli case. And I don't know why I feel hesitant about saying this because I don't think it's racist. It was in Chinatown.

And Lauren had theories about pulling it off-- brining, soaking, maybe braising. But once we got to the store, once she'd seen the meat up close, her doubts got worse.

Ben Calhoun

My sister said Eddie Lin was definitely right. The giveaway would be the stubborn flavor of poo. That flavor, she said, it's tough to get rid of. The Earth revolves around the sun. And bung will always taste like [BLEEP].

But there was no backing out now. We would eat. We would eat our way to the truth. And so what if it didn't look good? So what if bung was destined to taste like bung? You know who it didn't look good for, and he still put up a fight? Rocky Balboa, that's who. This was it, the bung versus calamari, squid versus tail, The Rumble in the Bunghole.

We set up the tasting at a restaurant, in the lull between lunch and dinner. In the dining room, there was just a few tables eating. And all around the restaurant, the morning shift was wrapping up as we walked in with a red cooler filled with squid and hog bung.

So originally, I'd recruited some half a dozen people from our office at This American Life as tasters. The final group the day of the tasting included, from the office, Seth Lind and Brian Reed.

Ben Calhoun

I hadn't realized this. For weeks, Brian had been avoiding calamari. He'd been living in fear.

Ben Calhoun

Back in the kitchen, things were looking bad. I'd given up on the idea that bung would taste the same as calamari. Now I'd hung my hopes on the idea that at least visually, it would look the same. But as my sister dropped the flowered rings of hog bung into the fryer, they had turned into this kind of big, ugly, tangled wad, nothing like the jiggly squid rings.

But then, as if by a miracle, they changed. My sister gave a shake to the fry basket, and as they sizzled, the bung just seemed to gracefully snap into rings.

Ben Calhoun

Soon, we were face to face with the plate. On it, there were two piles of rings, similar in size, similar in shape. The bung had more of a frizzly edge to it, kind of like a fancy onion ring. The calamari was smoother.

I asked Seth and Brian to just give a first impression.

Ben Calhoun

OK, so just to be clear what's going on here, Seth has chosen one pile of rings which he thinks is calamari. Brian has done the same thing, only Brian is choosing the other stack of fried rings.

Ben Calhoun

So in actuality, Seth is right. Seth is eating calamari. The chewing you hear from Brian's mic, that is the sound of a calamari lover eating fried pig rectum. I should also add there were actually two varieties of bung on the plate that day, one bung that my sister had blanched over and over to mellow any organ-y, fecal flavor, and then untreated, straight-up bung, unfiltered, unchained, uncut, 100% pure bung. That one, the latter one, bung at its purest, at the height of its bunginess, this is what Brian was eating. As they ate, Seth still looked confident.

Ben Calhoun

Game, set, match, bung. And it wasn't just Brian. I thought so. Damien, who manages the restaurant, he also thought it was passable. A few of us picked up a faint flavor of pork rind, but if you weren't really looking for it, you wouldn't notice it was there. One of the restaurant staff, a guy named Ethan Vanburen, had the simplest, clearest explanation.

Ben Calhoun

If a plate full of the bung came out, how many people do you think would even-- do you think you'd notice if you were in that setting?

Ben Calhoun

And as for Brian-- oh, Brian-- Brian was reeling a bit, trying to figure out just what this was going to mean for him.

Ben Calhoun

Not only wasn't he sure if he'd ever eat calamari again, he didn't want to eat the calamari on the plate in front of him, calamari I guaranteed him, was real.

Just to repeat one last time, I have no proof that anyone, anywhere, has ever tried to pass off pork bung as calamari in a restaurant. All I know is, if you wanted to do it, it would be easy. And I'm choosing to believe that it's happening somewhere, because at some point in working on this story, I stopped identifying with Brian and anyone who might feel ripped off or grossed out by getting imitation instead of the real thing.

Now, I identify with the bung. I'd like to think that somewhere out there, right now, under a heat lamp, a platter is sitting. It's warm, and it's full of promise and transformation and redemption. That's the world that I'll choose to live in for me, for you, for the bung. For the bung in all of us.

Ira Glass

Ben Calhoun, he's one of the producers of our program.

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) Ben Calhoun, he's one of the producers of our program. Thanks to the restaurant Aurora, in Brooklyn, for letting us use their kitchen for our taste test.

Ira Glass

OK.

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) OK, who is this? Wait, who am I?

Ira Glass

Well, coming up, Philadelphia and Afghanistan, doppelgangers?

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) That's in a minute. From Chicago Public Radio and Public Radio International, when our program continues.

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) So we're going to start act 2?

Ira Glass

Start here. So we're coming back from the ID break.

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our show, of course, we choose a theme. We bring you different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show, doppelgangers, stories of things that have a double, an evil twin, or a not-so-evil twin.

Ira Glass

Oh, wait, I should just explain. Oh, right, so--

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) What?

Ira Glass

That was just a note to myself. I should explain.

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) No, that was a note to me.

[LAUGHTER]

Ira Glass

So this is why Fred is here. Fred Armisen is co-hosting the show as me because it's a show about doubles and lookalikes.

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) Right, but we're both creating the same person, in a sense. And that's what the fun is of--

Ira Glass

Oh, that was really good, the way you just did that.

[LAUGHS]

Finish your thought.

Fred Armisen

I didn't have an end to that thought. I just--

Ira Glass

You just knew that--

Fred Armisen

I like when you do the little self-- the little discovery.

Ira Glass

All right, well, we have arrived at Act 2 of our program, Act 2, In Country and City. So for decades now, the writer Alex Kotlowitz has been writing about the inner cities, and especially the toll of violence on young people. He's probably best known for his book, There Are No Children Here. He appears on our show from time to time.

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) Recently, he heard about an unusual program at Drexel University in Philadelphia, where they're giving guys from inner city neighborhoods counseling for symptoms of PTSD.

Ira Glass

And this interested Alex, because for a long time, he has wondered whether the violence that he was reporting on in Chicago and its effect on kids and adults was comparable to the effects of trauma that a person experiences at war.

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) So he knew, and we know, how strange that sounds, to compare being in Afghanistan or Iraq to working a street corner in Chicago or some other city.

Ira Glass

So Alex tried to see if it was really comparable by doing a pair of interviews. He talked to this vet from Afghanistan and also a guy from Philadelphia, who's lived in some pretty bad neighborhoods his whole life. Alex wanted to see if they were doubles of some kind for each other.

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) One of these guys is 28, one is 30, and both of them are trying to make sense of what they experienced. Here's Alex.

Alex Kotlowitz

Here's the first of these two guys, Brandon Caro. Brandon spent a year in Afghanistan. His roughest time was the six months he spent in the eastern part of the country, near the Pakistani border. He was a Navy corpsman, a medic who worked with the Marines.

Alex Kotlowitz

Then there's Curtis Jefferson. He grew up in a rough neighborhood in North Philly, where he oversaw a small group of guys who sold drugs. He made his first drug sale when he was still in high school.

Alex Kotlowitz

OK, they're two completely different people who made very different choices in their lives. But I spoke to each of them, looking for similarities in their experiences. And honestly, there were more than I expected. Here's the first similarity.

For Curtis on the street, and for Brandon in Afghanistan, they could never let their guard down. During his tour, Brandon was charged with training Afghan soldiers. And in May 2007, he heard about Afghan soldiers who attacked their American trainers.

Alex Kotlowitz

Here's something else they shared. They both saw people killed, and then had to figure out how to keep going. The first fatality Brandon ever saw came when a convoy, which he was originally scheduled to be a part of, was hit.

Alex Kotlowitz

This brings us to the third parallel, they buried their feelings.

Alex Kotlowitz

The fourth shared experience-- raw, unfiltered rage.

Alex Kotlowitz

Here's something I didn't expect with either of them. The toughest times weren't when they were on the battlefield or in the streets. It was when things were quiet. That's when they struggled the most.

Alex Kotlowitz

For both, reality eventually caught up to their fears. In the spring of 2006, Curtis told us he got caught in a shootout with rival drug dealers. The first bullet, to his back, spun him around. He got hit four more times, in the stomach and in the arm. As a result, he walks doubled over, like an old man. Because a permanent nerve damage, he falls a lot. And when he's under stress or eats the wrong food, he has bleeding from his intestines.

Brandon, too, was hurt in a rollover when his Humvee fell off a small cliff. Brandon had been manning the turret, and fortunately, another soldier pulled him in just as the vehicle rolled. He suffered three fractures of his vertebrae and two herniated disks, and the pain kept him up nights, even after he left Afghanistan.

Both men were on a lot of medications after their injuries. And our sixth similarity may not be so surprising-- they self-medicated.

Alex Kotlowitz

Echo number seven, they lashed out at friends and family. Curtis had night terrors, and would wake in the middle of the night thinking his girlfriend was someone who was trying to shoot him. He'd push her. He'd hit her in the head. He'd call her names.

Alex Kotlowitz

Brandon had a difficult relationship with a girlfriend, too. They'd get into huge arguments and she'd get scared. One time, Brandon got so agitated, a friend intervened and tried to calm him down. Brandon punched him. His girlfriend locked herself in her room and called the police.

Alex Kotlowitz

Both Brandon and Curtis have gotten help. Brandon's in AA and went through a writing program for veterans at NYU. Curtis is receiving counseling through the program at Drexel that offers help to guys coming off the street. But finally, it's here where their stories diverge. Brandon's tour ended, and he's now thousands of miles from the dangers of Afghanistan. Curtis still lives in his old neighborhood, where the danger's ongoing.

Alex Kotlowitz

Not long ago, a guy was shot and killed down the block from where he lives. And Curtis happened to see the body on the ground.

Alex Kotlowitz

Curtis worries that because of the way he walks, perpetually bent over, he looks weak and that people will target him, rob him, beat him up, shoot him, take revenge. I wonder, for someone like Curtis, if it's really post-traumatic stress, since really, there's nothing post about it.

Brandon, meanwhile, says he doesn't talk to his friends or family about his anger and his nightmares, which he still has regularly. He tried counseling, but didn't like it. So he sought out other veterans who understand what he's been through.

And Curtis now attends group counseling with others who, like himself, were once running the streets. That's the final echo. They've both come to realize that they're not alone.

Fred Armisen

Alex Kotlowitz.

Ira Glass

His books and documentaries include, most recently, the film The Interrupters, which he wrote and co-produced, which is at iTunes, Netflix, Amazon, and on DVD.

OK, so should we do the credits?

Fred Armisen

Yeah, let's do it. Are you ready? God, you do this whole thing at the end of every show?

Ira Glass

Yeah. OK. Ready?

Fred Armisen

You've got to hire someone to do that. (IMITATING IRA GLASS) Well, our program was produced today by Miki Meek and myself--

Ira Glass

With Alex Blumberg, Ben Calhoun, Sarah Koenig, Jonathan Menjivar, Brian Reed, Robyn Semien, Alissa Shipp, and Nancy Updike.

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) Our senior producer's Julie Snyder.

Ira Glass

Production help from Tarek Fouda and Phia Bennin.

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) Seth Lind is our operations director.

Ira Glass

Emily Condon's our production manager.

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) Elise Bergerson's our administrative assistant.

Ira Glass

Music help from Damien Graef and Rob Geddis.

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) Special thanks today to Jack Chen, Marissa Gillette, Katie Conner.

Ira Glass

Mat Hannigan, Mike Reed, Chris Waldrup, Damien Graef, his kitchen crew, and everyone who ate the bung.

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) Ted Corbin and Tony Thompson of the Healing Hurt People Program at Drexel University.

Ira Glass

Nate Beaver, Amy Drozdowska.

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) Eleanora Monticella, Kevin Miller.

Ira Glass

Zachary Sussman at NYU--

(BOTH) and Michelle Harris.

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) Our website, where for the first time ever, you can watch the videotape of the Saturday Night Live dress rehearsal of me doing Ira Glass.

Ira Glass

That address, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International.

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) WBEZ management oversight for our show by our boss, Mr. Torey Malatia.

Ira Glass

After a hard day at the radio station, he always declares on his way out the door--

I'm Ira Glass.

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) And I'm Ira Glass.

Ira Glass

He's actually Fred Armisen, by the way. Portlandia season 3, that's Friday nights?

Fred Armisen

On IFC.

Ira Glass

IFC season 3, back next week with more stories of

(BOTH) This American Life.

[SAMMY DAVIS, JR., "ME AND MY SHADOW"]

OK, I think we're done. And I think we should cut.

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) I think we are, I think-- are we OK?

Ira Glass

I think we're OK.

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) I'm not too worried about it.

Ira Glass

I think we got it.

Fred Armisen

(IMITATING IRA GLASS) I wouldn't worry about it.

Announcer

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