573: Status Update

Ira Glass

Julia's 13. Jane and Ella are 14. And when they came to our studio for an interview, they did this thing they do all the time when they hang out. They take pictures of themselves. And-- no surprise-- they post them to Instagram.

Ira Glass

It was 11:00 in the morning on a day with no school, not prime time for posting photos at all. Nighttime is usually when you get the most likes and comments. But, you know, 11:00 AM. A minute passes. No response on the photo they took in the studio. And then?

Ira Glass

What they're waiting for is not just likes and comments but a specific kind of comment. This is probably not going to be news to any of you who have teenage girls in your lives, but I bet lots of you do not know about this. They want comments from other girls, and they say the wording is pretty much always the same.

Ira Glass

OK, just to be clear, they say this about everybody's selfies, whether or not the selfies are, in fact, stunning or beautiful. This is super-affirming language that is applied equally to every girl, universally. You've heard of bullying online? This is the opposite.

Ira Glass

The one word you don't say? "Sexy." They explained you could say "hot," but never "sexy."

Ira Glass

This is not about sex. It's not about boys. It's about girls, and friendship. And it's very repetitive-- the same phrases, over and over. I asked them each to pick a selfie that they'd posted and read the comments.

Ira Glass

They say their parents don't understand this. Ella's mom has Instagram, so she sees the pictures and the comments.

Ira Glass

Julia's mom? Same thing.

Ira Glass

So what's it about? Well, the answer to that question is complicated, and it involves going deep into an intricate language that's going on in the comments. Welcome to WBEZ Chicago. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass.

Today's program is about status updates of various kinds-- the literal kind, like on Instagram. But most of our show today is about the kind of slow changes in status that happen to adults, that happen usually when people get money or they get recognition, where what happens is, you know, quiet, and slow, and really, is sometimes kind of rude to talk about. Like, when do you say to anybody, "Hey, you're making a lot more money than you used to." Or, "Hey, you're making a lot less money." Or, "You're making a lot more money than me."

And that's why I wanted to talk to Jane and Ella and Julia. Because for them, this stuff is not gradual or vague or shameful to talk about. It's happening out in the open, online. They're online all the time, constantly getting updates on the social standing of everybody they know, in detail and at incredible speed. And that's what these Instagram comments are all about, if you know how to read them.

Ira Glass

So let's just start right there, with Act 1. Act 1. Finding the Self in Selfie.

So these comments-- you know, you're so beautiful, you're gorgeous, you're cutest-- which look utterly interchangeable to Julia and Ella and Jane's parents, they are in fact a very specific language that tells the girls all kinds of things. And a lot of the meaning in the comments actually has nothing to do with the actual words, whether they say gorgeous, or pretty, or OMG, or whatever. It's about who is doing the commenting, and whether that person likes a photo or comments on the photo-- liking a photo means something totally different than commenting. You comment with somebody you're close to, or who you're trying to get close to. And with a close friend, you kind of have to comment.

Ira Glass

Then, of course, when you do post a comment about a picture, there's the whole politics of whether your friend is going to comment back to your comment. And subtle differences in the wording when they comment back could mean something, even though, to an outsider, the words basically look the same. Julia says that she'll comment back, oh my god, I love you so much, to a close friend who compliments a picture of hers. But she says with somebody you don't know so well, it goes differently.

Ira Glass

Another thing you don't see if you don't know this language of comments and commenting back-- let's say that you comment on somebody's photo. When they comment back, do they comment to you individually? Or do they group you in with 20 or 30 other people and send just one big group comment back to all of you? That tells you where you stand with the person.

Then there are all those situations where somebody choosing not to comment is a really big deal. Like for example, if you post a picture of yourself with a friend and then the friend does not comment on that picture, that's just cold. That is leaving you dangling. Or if you post a selfie, close friends are expected to chime in with support. When they don't?

Ira Glass

Ella and Julia and Jane say that usually, they'll get 130 to 150 likes for any selfie they put up, and anywhere between 30 and 50 comments, which is a good response. And overwhelmingly, these comments are these super-positive, you're so pretty, OMG, you're so cute kind. And a lot of it is heartfelt, girls just trying to be good friends to each other. When you see your friend put herself out there, it's nice to tell her she's pretty.

Ira Glass

This is really not so different from anybody's life on social media. When I tweet something and a friend favorites it, and another friend retweets with a funny comment, that is totally them saying to me, you're so pretty-- just in a more adult kind of way. And it feels nice.

All three of these girls told me they don't need 50 people telling them that they're pretty all the time. But you know, it's there for the taking. It's like free candy. Why not?

Ira Glass

When a girl posts an unflattering selfie, or just a selfie that makes her look uncool, other girls will take screenshots to save the image and gossip about it later. Happens all the time. And so even though they're old hands at posting selfies-- they've been posting since sixth grade-- it can be nervous-making to post one. So they take precautions.

Ira Glass

They're only three months into high school, so there is a lot at stake right now.

Ira Glass

This is the main thing they get from Instagram, they say. After all, each of them only post a couple pictures a week. Not that much of their time on Instagram is being told they're pretty. Most of it is this, dissecting and calibrating the minutiae of the social diagram.

[MUSIC - "YOU'RE SO BEAUTIFUL" BY JUSSIE SMOLLETT & YAZZ]

Ira Glass

Act 2. Mon Ami Ta-Nehisi. Well, our show today is about status updates. And you know, it's weird when a sudden change of status happens to somebody who you're close with. And that's true whether their status goes up or their status goes down.

One of our producers, Neil Drumming, is best friends with the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, who I think a lot of people heard of for the first time a couple years ago when he wrote this article arguing the case for reparations for black Americans. That article was nothing compared to the attention that Ta-Nehisi got when his latest book was published this summer. The book has been on the New York Times Bestseller List ever since. He's been interviewed all over the place. He's been called the next James Baldwin. Ta-Nehisi Coates was suddenly famous and rich, and Neil, our co-worker, definitely was not. He does fine, but, you know. Anyway, it got Neil thinking.

Quick warning-- there's some cursing in this story that we bleeped on the radio version of our show. Here on the podcast and the internet, we are unbleeping it. If you're somebody who prefers the bleeped version-- maybe you listen to the show with kids-- you can find it at our website.

Neil Drumming

One of the weird things about having a famous friend is that even when he's too busy to hang out, he's sort of around all the time. I hadn't seen Ta-Nehisi in a few months. But in the last year or two, it seemed like everyone was reading his work and talking about it-- everyone on the subway, the President of the United States, my ex who texted me out of the blue to see if I could get her into one of his speaking engagements-- everyone.

But by July, I was cat-sitting just 15 blocks from Ta-Nehisi's apartment and he and I still hadn't connected. We tried, but it just didn't work out. I was walking past a newsstand on Broadway, thinking I should try texting him again, that I had so much to tell him. And when I looked up, he was right in front of me, his big-ass disembodied head staring at me from the cover of New York Magazine.

By the end of the summer, Ta-Nehisi had turned 40 and moved his family to Paris. He won the MacArthur Genius Award. He was across the ocean, and coworkers were congratulating me for him. It's wild having the world talk so much about someone you know and with whom you share so much history. It's exciting and, oddly, kind of gratifying. I'm happy for him.

The thing I'm having trouble with is harder to explain. I know Ta-Nehisi's the same guy-- warm, funny, curious, loves comic books. But he's also a famous writer who lives in Paris, accepts prestigious awards in a tuxedo that he owns, and gets shout-outs from Toni Morrison and Jay Z. He's changing in ways that I'm not. And when people change, they grow apart. And it makes me worry about our friendship.

Like when we're making plans. A couple of months ago, Ta-Nehisi, our other buddy, Rick, and I were supposed to meet for Sunday brunch at our old West Side haunt, The Half King. The Half King is a pub, not a dive, a respectable pub with good service, good beer, and decent food. The morning of the scheduled meeting, he texted to ask if we can meet at the swanky Hotel Marlton instead. His explanation? "I'm becoming that dude."

Rick was understanding. He joked that since eating in Paris, everything back home must taste like dog food. Ta-Nehisi's response? "It's close."

Sometimes he ends emails with unnecessary French interpolations of everyday phrases. In this country, we have a word for such behavior, and it's the same word in Ta-Nehisi's newly adopted language.

Neil Drumming

I tease him about becoming a snob, but we've never really talked about it. And so, cautiously and nervously, a couple weeks ago, I asked him if we could. We texted back and forth to set a time when we could sit down. At one point, he suggested that I go through his assistant.

Ta-Nehisi was tired from a long day of meetings and signing books, so he and I ended up at the bar of the hotel where he was staying. It's a lavish joint with a rooftop pool deck and big, cushioned banquettes in the lounge. We sat up on the mezzanine, overlooking the low-lit bar.

Neil Drumming

Ta-Nehisi knew we were here to talk about his snobbery, and he wasted zero time getting into character. He told me a story about the other night when he'd had dinner in the restaurant of this very hotel.

Neil Drumming

Ta-Nehisi was fine with that. He loves oysters. It was what happened next that offended him.

Neil Drumming

See, this is what I'm talking about.

I met Ta-Nehisi in the late '90s when we were both working at an alternative weekly newspaper in DC. He was still a student at Howard. I had recently graduated from college.

I'm pretty sure neither of us had ever even tasted an oyster back then. Instead, we bonded over hip hop, two-for-one happy hours, the enduring craziness of white people, and wanting to be better writers than the ones in our favorite rap magazine. We bopped around U Street drinking rail liquor and debating the merits of Ghostface, Buckshot, and Brother J.

We did growing-up stuff, too. We paid rent. We met girls. I remember the day Ta-Nehisi came by the cubicle where I worked to tell me his girlfriend was pregnant. I thought, at 24, his life is over. But soon, I'd have a godson.

We also got pretty serious about writing. Eventually, we both ended up in New York. We got jobs. We got married. Our wives became best friends, as well. We stayed close.

During all those years, I honestly don't recall fine dining being a big part of our lives, so it's kind of bizarre to hear Ta-Nehisi go on about it now. The guy talks about food with almost as much passion and conviction as he writes scathing critiques of American institutionalized racism.

Neil Drumming

I can't imagine feeling so strongly about vegetables. But we're laughing and drinking adult beverages. This is fun and kind of familiar.

Neil Drumming

But remember, it was like you could bring-- everybody brought kind of cheap wine. People were just--

Ira Glass

Like 50-something? It's like Hell's Kitchen.

Maybe it is bringing to fruition something that was already there. Ta-Nehisi was always a little picky about what kind of beer he drank. And he'd get anxious whenever his hair got a little bushy, even back in the broke DC days when a regular haircut was an extravagance. I started to wonder if maybe there had been snobbiness under the surface all along and I just missed it.

Still, those are small things, right? He appreciates a nice meal and a trim. So what?

Neil Drumming

Maybe Ta-Nehisi doesn't care about being with the right people. I've seen him blow off invitations to hang out with TV stars and dodge the attention of world-famous rappers. But he does move in elite circles these days, hanging out with Michael Chabon, collaborating with David Simon, lunches with David Remnick. For the record, that's a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, the creator of The Wire, and the editor of The New Yorker.

Me, I work at home. I cut my own hair. And I definitely prefer burgers to oysters. And that's cool. This isn't about envy for me. I don't feel jealous. I've thought about it, and it's not that.

But it does feel weird, and I'm not sure why. And I just kind of wanted to understand that.

Things did get a little crazy for me after my divorce a couple years ago, more so than I'd like to admit. But it hadn't occurred to me that he would think I was the one who had changed, that that might be the reason for the distance between us. And after the divorce, Ta-Nehisi did keep reaching out. He'd call to talk about writing, or to get feedback on what he was working on, which was always kind of confusing to me.

Neil Drumming

Ta-Nehisi doesn't like having his face on a billboard. He doesn't like being recognized in the street. I know the guy. I don't have many people in my life I know as well as him. He's never wanted to be famous or celebrated. In that way, he's right. He hasn't changed.

He and I talked for two more hours, and it felt like it always has. But we've lost a lot of the other stuff, the stuff that makes most friendships work. We don't go to the same parties or eat in the same restaurants. We don't share as many friends. He's raising a kid, and I just quit Tinder. We don't even live in the same country. Without all of that, what we have left feels more delicate.

So now I have another worry. I worry that the conversation that I just forced us to have, where I made such a big deal out of our differences, has in some way screwed with that friendship even more.

I went to see Ta-Nehisi speak at the Schomburg Center in Harlem. It was the first time I'd been to one of his public appearances in a very long time. The line outside was around the corner. When the audience was let in, they spilled over into a different room. 9,000 people had RSVP'd for 350 seats. Ta-Nehisi was engaging and provocative on stage. I felt proud. He was nice on the mic, and the crowd loved him.

Neil Drumming

Afterwards, I waited outside the green room with Ta-Nehisi's wife and a handful of his friends, some from his Howard days. Celebrities like Common and Usher were there as well, pressing to get backstage to meet him. I chatted with his son, Samori, my godson, about how he was liking Paris. He was having girl trouble. Like his dad used to, I joked.

We had dinner reservations at Red Rooster in Harlem, but it was live jazz night and they wanted us to pay to be quiet. Ta-Nehisi wasn't having it. Later he'd say the joint was bougie. So we went down the street to Sylvia's and had a great time.

Ta-Nehisi climbed into a black SUV, went back to his hotel, and hopped on a plane the next morning. I stood on the street, fumbling with my recorder. For some reason, it took me a really long time to figure out how to turn it off. Then I headed home to Brooklyn. I don't know what's going to happen next.

Ira Glass

Neil Drumming is one of the producers of our show. Coming up, an entire town gets a status update, and they are not super stoked about it. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on the program, of course, we choose a theme, bring you different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's program-- "Status Update."

Today's program is about people whose position in the world changes, in one way or another, and how they deal with it. So far on our show, we've had a literal status update, the social media kind. We've heard what it sounds like inside a friendship where there's been a major shift in status.

And now we've arrived at Act Three of our show. Act Three, There Owes the Neighborhood. In this act, we're going to look at an entire city getting a status update. And the man who gave this city the news about itself was named Paul Kiel. Before the city knew, Paul Kiel knew. And before Paul Kiel knew, nobody knew.

Here's what happened. Paul's an investigative reporter with ProPublica. And he discovered that over the last 15 years, this new kind of debt collector has become more prevalent. These are companies that go after people who owe on their credit cards, or car loans, or hospital bills, or whatever.

And these companies, what they do is they garnish people's wages. They garnish their wages. They take the money right out of their paychecks. Sometimes they go straight into their bank accounts and take the money.

They got this power by taking these people to court. Way more consumers who owe money are being taken to court. These companies sue those consumers, which used to be rare. They sue, and they win. And because they win, they get the power to garnish these wages.

OK, so figuring out that part was just the beginning. Chana Joffe-Walt talked to Paul Kiel.

Chana Joffe-Walt

It was a struggle to get numbers on wage garnishing. How many people? How much money? Where were those people? Paul Kiel loves this kind of thing. He's an even-measured guy who enjoys the grunt work of tracking down which file cabinet in which municipal building of which small town has the information he needs.

Eventually, Paul and his colleague Annie Waldman had managed to track down the names and addresses of every single person who'd been sued for not paying their debts in three cities-- Newark, Chicago, and St. Louis. They put all that information into the computer, and then Paul looked at what they had.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Paul knew people would look at this and think what I thought. This is just discrimination-- companies targeting black people and black neighborhoods.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Paul's first clue to the answer came when he went to a place called Jennings, Missouri. Jennings is a suburb of St. Louis, home to an astonishing amount of wage garnishing. And Jennings is where Paul met Cori Winfield.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Cori was the first person to show Paul her paycheck. She works for a brokerage services firm in St. Louis.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Here's how this happened. Cori was married-- four kids and a neat brick bungalow under a shady tree with a patch of grass just large enough to be called a lawn. She had a mortgage on that brick bungalow, and she had a van she bought in 2009 for $8,000. The loan on that van is the one that got her in trouble. That's the loan Cori's now paying for out of her paycheck.

So the lender in this case was Midwest Acceptance, which is like a St. Louis-based, mostly subprime auto loan company.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Subprime meaning high interest rate. Really high-- 30%. In 2010, Cori stopped paying the car loan. And she stopped paying it for a bunch of reasons. Her husband left, so she had to carry the car loan and the mortgage on the brick bungalow with the small patch of grass all by herself.

Also, Cori's stepfather died. She got a new boyfriend. Her boyfriend was killed. She took a brief absence from work. One of her dogs died. She describes herself at this time as very distracted.

Chana Joffe-Walt

And they were sending lots of notices. They were calling, too.

Chana Joffe-Walt

The grandma. This turned out to be Paul's answer. Cori did have a grandma she often called, but her grandma was already trying to help Cori save her house. And she was helping Cori with car rides once Midwest repo'd Cori's car.

Her grandma was also helping Cori's mom and her uncle. And she was doing all that on a pension. Cori's grandma was the only person she'd ever been able to call in this kind of situation.

If you ask people, could you borrow $3,000 from a friend or family member in an emergency? White people are much more likely to say yes. Poor whites, a white person living in abject poverty, has roughly the same ability to borrow $3,000 in an emergency as a middle-class black person. That's according to the largest national survey of consumer finance. If you compare Jennings, where Cori was, to white towns where people make the same amount of money?

Chana Joffe-Walt

Paul knew all of this before he started looking into wage garnishing. He knew this history, from Jim Crow laws all the way up through restrictive covenants in housing. He knew the data. But it wasn't until Cori that he considered it the answer to his puzzle.

Which is interesting. The wealth gap is such a basic old fact about America that it's become a saggy, meaningless phrase. "The widening wealth gap." "How to narrow the wealth gap."

Chana Joffe-Walt

Paul found himself in a peculiar situation. He had a detailed spreadsheet, with addresses, listing everyone who hasn't paid their debts, how much they owed, and for what. Basically he had a map of the neighborhood he was standing in that included intimate details about people's financial lives.

Chana Joffe-Walt

On some blocks, it was every other house. Sometimes there were a few in just one house. It was a social map of the neighborhood that was the opposite of the carefully curated status updates you usually see.

What Paul could see was something real and messy-- what was going on with people's finances. And he wondered, if you live here, do you just know about this? Or do you actually need to see the map to picture it?

Chana Joffe-Walt

This woman, Devorah, had been sued for money she owed the Metropolitan Sewer District. But she did not know that they'd sued her next door neighbor, too. Up the street and around the corner, Paul finds a block party going on. He sees a guy barbecuing in front of his house, and he knows this guy was sued, too. But the guy doesn't feel like talking about it.

The next few people did talk to Paul about it, and the disruption that led to them being sued-- a health incident, a family issue. For Latanya Graves, it was when she lost her job.

Chana Joffe-Walt

And how they had no one to call who could help.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Paul stopped by a brick bungalow, Cori Winfield's house. Only it's not her house anymore, because Cori lost the house to foreclosure after the car loan. It is now Rosalyn Turner's house. Rosalyn also has had her wages garnished. She was working at Walmart, and suddenly a quarter of her paycheck started disappearing.

Chana Joffe-Walt

And Paul learned something else.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Rosalyn didn't know about Cori. Cori didn't know about Rosalyn. Paul was giving an entire neighborhood a status update on itself. Not that he'd set out to do that, but there he was, letting people know where they stood, relative to one another, even sometimes within the same family.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Like here, in Dora Byrd's house. Paul asks, who's Camille Lee?

Chana Joffe-Walt

In this one family, Dora Byrd had been sued for debt, her daughter had been sued for debt-- now she was learning her granddaughter had been sued for debt. Dora Byrd would try to help her granddaughter, now that she knows, but it will be hard, because a third of Dora's savings was garnished, too.

On his last day in Jennings, Paul stopped by a brick house with three lawsuits.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Miranda Jones. She welcomed him in.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Although it made sense, given the fact that she seemed to be commanding various operations by cellphone on a Saturday.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Paul tells Councilwoman Jones about his data.

Chana Joffe-Walt

The mayor called right back.

Chana Joffe-Walt

The mayor said she'd be happy to meet Paul in her office.

Chana Joffe-Walt

They sat down in the council chambers.

Chana Joffe-Walt

This should not be unbelievable by this point, right? Because Paul knows the data, has walked the streets. He's stared at the map. But still, it feels unbelievable. To the mayor, too, the mayor who has detailed knowledge of this particular community, who has experienced this herself. When Paul showed her her own block on his laptop?

Chana Joffe-Walt

"They're Just Suing All of Us." That was the front-page headline of the St. Louis Post Dispatch. Paul wrote a story for the paper about all this last month. So now, this thing that no one ever talks about, no one wants to talk about, that everyone is just keeping as their own private shame, was out. What happens then? How does this unusual and sudden sort of status update change things?

Chana Joffe-Walt

This is the mayor, Yolanda Henderson.

Chana Joffe-Walt

I heard this from a few people. Now that they know their neighbors are in the same situation, they still don't want to talk about it. It's embarrassing. Mayor Henderson had her mayor's wages garnished just six months after she was elected. A very awkward finance person had the unlucky job of telling the new mayor that she'd be seeing a deduction in her next paycheck.

And Mayor Henderson had some questions about what that meant, which she was too embarrassed to ask, for weeks. The mayor. Not some disempowered nobody-- the mayor. It wasn't until she was giving me a tour of City Hall that she decided to finally stop by the finance office again.

Chana Joffe-Walt

It is standard. Unsurprising. That was actually the most consistent reason people gave for why they don't talk about this. It wasn't that surprising.

They did find it surprising when they learned how many of their neighbors had been garnished. But then, just a few minutes later, it stopped feeling surprising. They already knew everyone around them had very little to draw on. It wasn't really a status update. It was just status quo.

Ira Glass

Chana Joffe-Walt is one of the producers of our program. You can read Paul Kiel's reporting about all this at ProPublica.org.

Ira Glass

Act Four, 76-year-old Quarterback Throws Hail Mary Pass. OK, everybody. To close out show right now, I have an actual status update, a real-life status update, on somebody who was on our show a few weeks ago that many of you have written to us asking about.

If you heard our show a few weeks ago, we had this 76-year-old man who wanted to ask this woman to marry him. He'd been visiting her for years, flying across the country to see her. He would stay at her house, hang out with her as friends, though he always wanted to be more than friends.

And he'd had a crush on this woman since he was the age of those girls you heard at the beginning of our program today, since high school. This girl he was about to ask to marry him was very relevant back then.

Ira Glass

And right before he left to fly and ask her the big question, he changed his plan. He decided that instead of asking her to marry him, he would just tell her his feelings and ask her if she wanted to be in a real committed relationship with him.

And he did it. And OK, I'm just going to cut to the chase. She turned him down. Turned him down flat. No interest at all.

She'd been married for 50 years. She didn't want it again, with him or anybody. Her life was full of friends. Didn't need it. That's what she said. Though, of course, that's basically the senior citizen way of saying, you know, it's not you, it's me.

He says, right at the beginning of his visit, he got a sign of where her feelings were when he made the suggestion for the week together.

Ira Glass

He was less sad about it than you might think, because he finally knew the truth, knew it was hopeless with her. He could move on. And he's kind of excited to move on. He says he knows now. If you meet somebody who's truly right for you, it shouldn't take years for both of you to recognize it and feel it.

Ira Glass

Life's too short. He's hoping his status is going to change one more time.

Ira Glass

Well, our program was produced today by Chana Joffe-Walt and Zoe Chace, Sean Cole, Neil Drumming, Stephanie Foo, Miki Meek, Jonathan Menjivar, Robin Semien, Alissa Shipp, and Nancy Updike. Our senior producer is Brian Reed. Our editor is Joel Lovell.

Julie Snyder's our editorial consultant. Our technical director is Matt Tierney. Production help from Lilly Sullivan. Seth Lind is our operations director. Emily Condon's our production manager. Elyse Bergerson's our business operations manager. Elna Baker scouts stories for our show. Kimberly Henderson is our office coordinator.

Research help from Christopher Swetala. Music help today from Damien Graef and Rob Geddis. Special thanks today to Annie Waldman, Tracy Webber, Jacob Goldstein, Ricardo Gutierrez, and Lila Margolis. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Our website, ThisAmericanLife.org.

Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torrey Malatia, who looks into the bathroom mirror every single morning of every single day and says--

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.