This week, stories about people trying their best to turn themselves into something else—like a badger. Or a professional comedian, in a language they didn’t grow up speaking.
Prologue
Charles Foster has always been obsessed with trying to figure out how animals see the world. So he decides to find out—by living life as a badger. His book about this is called Being a Beast. (8 1/2 minutes)
Je Suis Ici Toute La Semaine
French comedian Gad Elmaleh is known as the Jerry Seinfeld of France. He sells out arenas. Gets recognized on the street. But he’s deciding to give all of that up to try to make it big in America. In English, which he hasn’t totally mastered. And what’s funny in French, to French people, is not the same as what’s funny in English, to Americans. Zack McDermott tells the story. (28 minutes)
Song:
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime
Terriers have been bred for hundreds of years to kill rats. Ray Ray is a terrier, but he lives in a comfy apartment in New York City. His owner, Judy, isn’t sure about whether he still has his rat hunting instincts. So producers Zoe Chace and Emmanuel Dzotsi follow along as Ray goes on his first NYC rat hunt with the Ryders Alley Trencher-fed Society. (16 1/2 minutes)
Song:
Related
Act One: Christmas On A High Wire
Act Three: People Who Love Chickens And Hate This American Life
Act Two: The Dinner
Staff Recommendations
Sissies
A family where the father was one kind of sissy and the son was another kind, and how the family was destroyed despite the fact that no one wanted it to be.
What Happened at Dos Erres
A Guatemalan immigrant living near Boston gets a phone call with some very strange news about his past.