867: College Disorientation

Ira Glass

Hey there, everybody, it's Ira with a message for our Life Partners and our potential Life Partners, which, hopefully is you. We're going to make another Ask Me Anything bonus episode where I will answer your questions about the show, or really just about anything at all that you want to ask.

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Seth Lind

A quick warning, there curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that our website, thisamericanlife.org.

Emanuele Berry

From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm EMANUELE Berry, filling in for Ira Glass. OK, school is back. Come with me now. We're going to Tempe, Arizona.

Emanuele Berry

Arizona State University has set up everything you can think of-- karaoke, scavenger hunts, ax throwing, a mechanical bull-- to help new students meet each other and make friends.

Emanuele Berry

This is international student orientation. There are almost 400 new students here from India, China, and lots of other countries who arrived here alone, looking for any excuse to make a connection. Like, these two uncomfortable-looking guys, Nyle and Saud.

One wears an ASU cap. The other has stylish black glasses. They both have braces. They talk to my coworker Miki Meek.

Emanuele Berry

Over 1 million students from all around the world study in the United States. ASU has over 14,000. Standing near the mechanical bull is Anushka and her newly-made friend Krisha, both from India, both computer science majors.

Emanuele Berry

Krisha also had a friend whose visa was rejected. In fact, it was a person she went to for advice on her own student visa interview. She met him on an online ASU forum.

Emanuele Berry

This is her friend Karthik. That's not his real name. He talked to me from India.

Emanuele Berry

Karthik had really planned out his life at ASU. He chose the school because they had one of the few programs specifically for fintech in the country. He'd picked out his dorm room. He knew which clubs he wanted to join, what road trips he wanted to take. He wanted to go to LA. He'd even researched where he was going to eat, picked out an Indian restaurant called Dhaba that he decided would be his go-to.

Emanuele Berry

What he didn't account for was a shift in policy by the Trump administration, which wants fewer foreign students coming to the United States. So this year, there are stricter screenings, more visa rejections.

Estimates are 150,000 fewer student visas will be approved. When Karthik went to the US embassy for his visa interview, he saw this play out. He waited in a long line for hours, dressed in a light blue button down shirt, suit jacket and trousers. His research showed that you were supposed to dress up. Finally, he almost reached the interview window.

Emanuele Berry

And of course, when he got to the window, she rejected him, handed him a slip of paper, sent him on his way. Karthik had to scramble to try and enroll quickly in a school in India.

He really didn't understand why he was rejected. He knew lots of kids got rejected each year, but he thought he was the perfect candidate. He had good grades. He had bank statements that show that he had money to cover his expenses for all four years. And he planned to return to India to run his dad's business. They want proof that you're likely to return home after study.

His rejection-- it just didn't make sense. He's not alone. Things are different on college campuses this year. And it's not just for international students. So many things about college have been upended by a wave of executive orders and lawsuits by the Trump administration. The rules have changed.

In a matter of months, there have been grant suspensions, frozen research projects and funding, DEI bans, accreditation overhauls, hundreds of millions of dollars of settlements with Ivy League schools, and personal battles that have ousted university presidents. Today on our show, we'll hear from people all trying to find their footing right now, puzzling out what's OK and what's not. Stay with us.

It's This American Life. Today's show-- College Disorientation. But before we get started with our first act, there is one thing that I want to note. Today's episode is about college campuses. And this week, there were some big news from a college campus.

Charlie Kirk, a founder of Turning Point USA, was shot and killed. Kirk was a key voice in pushing for a lot of policies and directives rolling out at colleges and universities right now. We've been working on this episode for months. It's not about Turning Point USA or anything related to what happened this week.

OK, so for the first act of our show, we're going to follow one student into college, a girl named Nevaeh Parker in Utah. This story takes place at the University of Utah, not to be confused with Utah Valley University, where Charlie Kirk was shot and killed. This story predates all that. I started following Nevaeh a year ago. This is act one of our show.

Emanuele Berry

Act One, My Black President. I want to tell you about what happened when Nevaeh went to college because I think it shows what this new college landscape might look like. But first, a little bit about who she was before.

From a young age, Nevaeh has been the type of person to see a problem and say, we can fix that. Not just we can fix that, but I can fix that. I'll take that on.

When she was 14 years old, she went to her first protest. George Floyd had just been killed. And she didn't just march. She got on stage, and she read a poem about senseless hate and speaking up. She's like, I, a 14-year-old Black girl in Utah, have the power to combat this thing.

In high school, Nevaeh created a Black Student Union. She wanted a BSU because she and the 10 other Black students-- Utah is pretty white-- were constantly dealing with racist BS from other students and teachers. She'd promote the clubs meetings on the morning announcements, part of her duties as student body president. Of course, she was student body president.

Emanuele Berry

Nevaeh went to the University of Utah. She became the president of the Black Student Union, of course. And she continued to do what she'd done in high school, eagerly try and bring in new students, create a community. Here she is talking to some freshmen while tabling outside the union.

Emanuele Berry

The University of Utah's a big school with over 35,000 students, but only a small number of those are Black students, barely over 1%. Black students at the University of Utah do seem to have one thing in common, which is they didn't want to go to the University of Utah.

I heard this from all of the Black students I talked to, including Nevaeh. They wanted to go to Howard or somewhere more diverse or just get out of Utah. But they came around on the University, in part, because of the Black Student Union.

Nevaeh had met some of her best friends at the BSU. They had a real community on campus. It's hard to feel welcome on a predominantly white campus. I know. I went from an extremely diverse high school to a small, mostly white college to play basketball, and I struggled.

I remember literally scanning the tiny campus as I walked to class, looking for any other Black face, and often finding none. I left that school. I never found a place where I felt like myself. When Nevaeh and the other students at the University talk about what the Black Student Union meant to them, I felt a little jealous.

At Utah, they had biweekly kickbacks and movie nights, study sessions, and threw big parties. And they had the Black Cultural Center, the BSU's home on campus, a literal two-story brick house. After a day of often being the only Black person in classes--

Emanuele Berry

And then last year, all that changed. The state of Utah passed an anti-DEI law, meaning no more Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at any state institutions. The law bans devoting any resources-- money, scholarships, mentoring-- to any specific identity group, like, say, a Black student organization. If public universities didn't comply, they would risk losing their funding.

Nevaeh was president of the Black Student Union that was funded by the University. So she has to figure out what does this mean for them? Can a Black Student Union still exist under this law?

These kinds of anti-DEI laws are reshaping college campuses across the country. Utah was ahead of most of the country. They passed their anti-DEI law a year ago. So they were figuring out how this worked before it went nationwide.

And what happened with Nevaeh and the BSU is a preview of how this could play out elsewhere. So far, 28 other states have these kind of laws on the books. Earlier this year, the Trump administration sent an "End DEI" memo to all colleges and universities, saying that diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts violate civil rights laws.

Specifically, it says DEI discriminates against white people and Asian people, and that, quote, "Educational institutions have toxically indoctrinated students with the false premise that the United States is built upon systemic and structural racism. The Department will no longer tolerate the overt and covert racial discrimination that has become widespread in this nation's educational institutions."

The new guiding principle on campuses across the country is now open to all. That phrase, "open to all," it's at the core of anti-DEI legislation. And from that perspective, the problem with a Black Student Union is it doesn't seem like it's open to all. The laws argue that by serving Black students, it's not serving other students. It's discriminating against everyone else.

So what that means for universities across the country is programs are quietly disappearing. The University of Alabama at Birmingham got rid of its scholarships for Black medical students. The University of Wyoming closed down its Black Social Justice Summer Institute. Ohio University canceled its Black Alumni reunion.

Indiana State University dissolved its Black cultural center, so did Wright State and Texas Tech and Weber State, and the University of Cincinnati, and many more. Appalachian State University eliminated positions in the admissions office that were dedicated to Black student recruitment. Tuskegee University no longer has a program dedicated to training Black women to enter the computer science field.

And in Utah last fall, Nevaeh started to see the new law play out on campus. The first big thing the University of Utah did was dissolve its Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion office. Then no more annual conference for Black high school students, no more scholarships or mentoring programs specifically for Black students. The University didn't cancel the Black Student Union, but they did start to restrict what a Black Student Union could be.

Emanuele Berry

So every time Nevaeh wanted to host an event, she now had to run it by the University. And when the word Black came up to advertise those event--

Emanuele Berry

Nevaeh kept hearing that anything they did needed to be open to all, which was confusing for Nevaeh because everything the BSU did was already open to everyone. Nevaeh was like, this law is coming for us. She needed a way to save the BSU, so she made a choice.

She thought the only way they could survive as the BSU she loved would be to become an independent organization, to separate from the University, not to be a university-sponsored club. They were going to go it alone. This meant losing all their funding, their advisor, the status they had as the official club for Black students at the University of Utah.

Emanuele Berry

To run the BSU independently, they needed money. Nevaeh has to set up a GoFundMe so the BSU can do basic things. She has to figure out where they can meet.

Before the law, one of the places they met regularly was the Black Cultural Center. But after the law, it was unstaffed and didn't have any funding. Nevaeh was told she'd have to make a reservation to book the space.

Emanuele Berry

And that is crazy to ask students to pay so they can gather on a campus they are already paying thousands to go to. They have their first kickback of the year in a classroom they can use for free at the Student Union. Nevaeh tries to organize events that are fun and will bring out students, but won't cost any money.

She emails the Utah Jazz to see if she can get free tickets for a BSU event. It works. They go to a game against the Heat. It's a chaotic start to the semester.

The club is happening. Nevaeh's life is full of tasks-- some of which she expected and some of which she really didn't. For instance, now that the club was no longer part of the University, she was fundraising to keep the BSU alive. Random people from the Salt Lake Community saw that and wanted to share their ideas for how she should run things. So now, she was also a private fundraiser, taking calls before, between, and after classes. She didn't want to miss a possible opportunity.

One time, she got a message from a man who said he was retired and had a background in strategic planning. So she got up early before class to get on Zoom with him.

Emanuele Berry

And he mentioned to Nevaeh that he had money.

This goes nowhere. It does not lead to any donation. Nevaeh and the man never talk again. Calls like these took a lot of time, time that she didn't have.

For the first time, Nevaeh's grades, which had always been perfect, started slipping. Nevaeh started anxiety medication. She was making calculations like, do I do this thing for BSU, or do I do this thing for school? If I skip this assignment, I'll still pass this class. So it's OK, right?

Before the DEI law, the work of making the BSU exist was handled by adults with full-time jobs. Last year, that adult became 19-year-old Nevaeh. Of course, Nevaeh had the support of other BSU members. They told me they really appreciated Nevaeh and that the BSU wouldn't have continued without her. But Nevaeh says people would also text her and say they were too busy or stressed to help out. Nevaeh would always respond kindly.

Emanuele Berry

The University of Utah has had a BSU since the 1960s. Students created it during the fight for civil rights. This new law had wiped out so much of what the BSU had created over seven decades. Nevaeh felt like it couldn't end with her. She felt like she was president of the only organization left to specifically support Black students at the University of Utah, and it had to keep existing.

Nevaeh and the BSU made it to February, Black History month, which meant skate night. Skate night was always one of the biggest events of the year. This year, Nevaeh had thrown a ton of money they'd fundraised into the event.

She bought 70 tickets at the local roller rink, and that's how many people she needed to show up for it to be a success. If they could pull this off on their own, it would feel like the BSU was still thriving on campus. So it's a Saturday night, and the event starts at midnight.

Emanuele Berry

Nevaeh and her VP, Sandrine, are posting on Instagram. Neon purple lights glow in the background as they talk. The two are dressed up-- college night dressed up that is-- cute tops and jeans. Nevaeh has straightened her usually curly hair. Sandrine's is picked out. They seem giddy.

Emanuele Berry

Immediately, it's packed. There's a line out the door. And now Nevaeh's biggest worry is that they won't have enough tickets.

Emanuele Berry

The night cost them thousands of dollars, money Nevaeh had to scramble to raise, but over 300 people showed up.

Emanuele Berry

She pulled it off. She'd protected the thing that she cared about most-- a place where Black students could feel welcome. By the end of the spring semester, she'd tripled BSU membership.

There's something insidious about the anti-DEI laws. They present themselves as civil rights laws, while eliminating so many of the things that the civil rights movement demanded on university campuses. They present themselves as laws to promote inclusion, open to all, while disappearing all the programs and money and support that actually made Black kids feel welcome.

Nevaeh is constantly trying to create space for Black students. The University is literally taking space away. I watched the university do this in real time one day.

The Black Student Union used to have a home on campus, the Black Cultural Center. It'd been one of Nevaeh's favorite places on campus. The house was still there, but the University wouldn't tell them what was going to happen with it. They just kept saying they were working on it and they'd try and reopen it. It just sat there the whole year, often locked. The old Black Cultural Center staff gone.

And then at the end of the school year, the University quietly renamed it. It was no longer the Black Cultural Center. It was now the Center for Community and Cultural Engagement. Nevaeh and I drove by.

It's a two-story brick house. When we pulled up, the door was actually propped open.

Emanuele Berry

We open the door and walk into the house. Nevaeh seems annoyed but ready to show me around.

Emanuele Berry

There's a white woman sitting behind a desk inside. She's one of the employees of the new center. Nevaeh brightly says hello to her and begins my tour.

There's a little seating area and a library of books, Black History books, a signed copy of Langston Hughes. She shows me a meeting room, a kitchen filled with snacks, a bunch of closets all over the house. In every room, there is a closet filled with BSU supplies, things like notebooks, pencils, postcards, tables, buckets of candy.

Emanuele Berry

Nevaeh was excited and proud to show me around, but I have to admit it was also kind of eerie. So much of it is exactly as Nevaeh remembered it. Even the former director of the BCC's name is still painted above his office door.

Emanuele Berry

We end the tour at a beautiful mural by the entrance. It's a big white sankofa bird with an African tribal pattern behind it. And then in big block letters next to it, it says, The University of Utah's Black Cultural Center.

Emanuele Berry

The staffer at the desk interrupts Nevaeh's tour to explain the sign change.

Emanuele Berry

Nevaeh points to the mural with the bird and the words Black Cultural Center.

Emanuele Berry

Nevaeh thanks the woman for her honesty, and we start to head out.

Emanuele Berry

Nevaeh is no longer the high school kid making chipper morning announcements. Nevaeh's only 20. She was three years old when Obama was elected president, came of age in the era of Black Squares and Black Lives Matter protest.

In her mind, the country was shifting to a more accepting place. And where we are now, the world she's navigating it's so different than the one she grew up believing in. I talked with the University about the sign change. They said Black gives the impression that the center isn't open to all.

So I asked, can you say the word Black? They said, it depends. If it's cultural, educational, yes. If it's tied to resources, no. They said they had to be careful. They run all their events like Pride Week, Women's Week, Black anything by lawyers.

I just want to say one more thing about the word Black. It's just a word. Who cares? But it's not. It's a word that was decided on by Black people. There's a long list of shitty and degrading words that white people have lodged at us, enslaved and murdered us for. Black is the word we got to add to the list, the one that we got to choose, capital B Black.

We are Black. It's very-- call us by our name. Removing Black, taking that off the list of acceptable words as a way of saying you don't decide, we do.

Nevaeh, though, she refuses to be erased. Even after that terrible year with the anti-DEI law, Nevaeh is still pushing forward, still determined to keep the Black Student Union alive. She just started her junior year. On the first day of school, she's outside tabling for the BSU. A young woman approaches. She's a transfer student from Oregon.

Emanuele Berry

In this post-DEI era, I think on a lot of campuses how welcome you are as a Black student-- the difference between feeling like you belong or don't belong-- will depend on if you have a Nevaeh or not.

Miki Meek reported this story with me, additional editing from Robyn Semien.

Coming up, since he's away and I'm hosting, we're going to talk about Ira for 15 minutes. That's after the break from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

It's This American Life. I'm Emanuele Berry, sitting in for Ira Glass. Today's show, College Disorientation. In this hour, we're looking at some of the dramatic shifts in higher education, a flood of executive orders and memos from the Trump administration. Let me just run down a few of the new directives for America's colleges and universities.

There was a January executive order called Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing, the Dear Colleague letter in February. March, a new task force starts to investigate DEI and antisemitism.

In April, the NIH starts requiring researchers to certify that their colleges do not have any DEI programs. Then in May, the Department of Justice launches a Civil Rights Fraud Initiative. And one of the most dramatic and public interventions the Trump administration has taken on is with a few high-profile, elite schools-- Brown, Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Emanuele Berry

And that's act two. Act Two, the Art of the Deal. Something we've never really seen before is a presidential administration withholding millions in federal research money from schools it claims are centers of indoctrination and antisemitism. Columbia University was the first school to have one of those showdowns with the administration.

It withheld $400 million in federal funding until Columbia agreed to a settlement, one that came with a number of conditions. One of those conditions-- the administration wanted Columbia to more formally incorporate a controversial, government-approved definition of antisemitism. It's known as the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition, I-H-R-A, or IHRA for short.

The IHRA definition was already one of several definitions Columbia considered when it evaluated claims of antisemitism. But now IHRA was officially incorporated, alongside some new, unprecedented government oversight. Professors at Columbia have been trying to figure out what does the IHRA definition mean for them and their classes this year? Ike Sriskandarajah has been talking to ones who are worried and making plans.

Ike Sriskandarajah

The definition itself is pretty straightforward. It's about the length of a tweet-- basically, antisemitism is a hatred of Jews, but it comes with 11 examples that expand on that definition. Most are pretty obvious-- calling for the killing of Jews, denying the Holocaust. Those are antisemitic.

But where it gets tricky are a few examples that blur the line between antisemitism and criticism of the state of Israel. Professors told me that's the part they're worried about. They have to figure out how to teach under this new rule.

I heard about three different strategies. First are the professors who say they can't teach. Marianne Hirsch canceled her class. She teaches comparative literature and gender studies at Columbia.

Ike Sriskandarajah

One of the IHRA examples on her mind when thinking about her lecture on the first day of class-- example 10, comparing contemporary Israeli policies to that of the Nazis.

Ike Sriskandarajah

Professor Hirsch has dedicated her career to studying the effects of trauma. She's Jewish. And her parents survived the Holocaust. And she's worried about IHRA, partly because in 2023 a student formally accused her of antisemitism.

It was in a class similar to the one she just described. She shared some recent articles related to the war in Gaza that she thought were important. But a student complained, saying they weren't relevant to the class and that some of the reading rationalized acts of antisemitism. The charge against Professor Hirsch was eventually dropped. But she came out of it feeling like she can't run her class the way she wants to. And that was before IHRA. So that's the first thing Columbia professors are doing, dropping their courses.

One of the best known Palestinian scholars, Rashid Khalidi, withdrew his course on modern Middle East History. The professor said in an open letter, quote, "It is impossible to teach this course and much else in light of Columbia's adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism."

The second thing professors are doing because of IHRA, tweaking what they teach. Professor Najam Haider teaches courses about Islam, including Islam in the postcolonial world. He talks about scholars like other people talk about celebs. And one of his favorites is someone he is now concerned about assigning.

Ike Sriskandarajah

I gotta say, Hannah Arendt came up in nearly every call, eight times alone in my conversation with Professor Haider. If you haven't read her, don't worry. It's still early in the semester. The CliffsNotes version is she's an influential Jewish journalist and scholar who fled Nazi Germany. She came to America and famously coined the phrase "the banality of evil" to describe the mindset in Germany that led to the Holocaust. Like Professor Hirsch, Professor Haider is also worried about that IHRA example, the one about drawing comparisons to Nazis, which Arendt does.

Ike Sriskandarajah

he's already dropped Hannah Arendt from his syllabus. And Professor Haider says his untenured colleagues are going even further out of their way to avoid controversy.

Ike Sriskandarajah

Orientalism sounds like the ramen flavor, but it's a kind of racism.

Ike Sriskandarajah

The third strategy professors are trying is to do nothing. These teachers are not canceling their classes. They're not changing their classes, even though they think the material they teach will be in violation of IHRA, like Professor Thea Abu El-Haj. She's an educational anthropologist who focuses on Palestinians in the diaspora. She's Palestinian, and she's concerned about the ambiguity of the IHRA examples. She wondered if her entire class might violate the IHRA example number 7, denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination by claiming that the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavor?

Ike Sriskandarajah

Her sister, Nadia Abu El-Haj, is also a professor at Columbia. She teaches an anthropology of war class and directs the Center for Palestine Studies. And she says she's not considering revising anything for IHRA, not in her class, not in events at the center.

Ike Sriskandarajah

She's already gamed out in her head how the consequences will unfold.

Ike Sriskandarajah

she's a tenured professor who, theoretically, they can't fire except in the most extreme circumstances.

Ike Sriskandarajah

She has no idea. And all these professors, they're just guessing because Columbia did not just agree to the IHRA definition. Columbia agreed to have a monitor, a person who'd watch over everything that Columbia said it would do under its settlement with the government.

But what will the monitor do? What's his budget? How many people can he hire? It's unclear. Columbia says the monitor does not have oversight over academic content or curriculum. But when I read the terms of the agreement, it says the monitor will have access to, quote, "all agreement-related individuals, facilities, disciplinary hearings, and the scene of any occurrence that the monitor deems necessary," also, quote, "all documents and data related to the agreement." That seems like a lot of stuff.

The monitor, Bart Schwartz, declined to answer our questions. Najam Haider, the religion professor, told me he's been asking his bosses, is this monitor going to be reviewing what I teach?

Ike Sriskandarajah

I did talk to one faculty member who falls into none of these three categories when it comes to the IHRA definition. She's in a category that I call, no big deal. And she comes to that conclusion based on the job that she's had on campus the last two years as co-chair of Columbia's Task Force on Antisemitism, Professor Ester Fuchs.

She didn't think the school should formally use IHRA. The task force had a different definition of antisemitism that they recommended. She doesn't like how the government is using antisemitism as a weapon to bully college campuses into all sorts of changes. But unlike her colleagues, she doesn't think IHRA is that big a deal.

Ike Sriskandarajah

The agreement does explicitly say the government won't, quote, "Dictate faculty hiring, university hiring, admissions decisions, or the content of academic speech." But the agreement also gives the government broad oversight over academic departments, complaints of antisemitism, and admissions. And the agreement requires a review of educational programs to ensure they are, quote, "comprehensive and balanced."

So you can read it Professor Fuch's way, or you can read it the way the other professors I talked to read it. But let me just say this, for Professor Fuchs, the conclusion is unambiguous-- there's nothing to be scared of.

Ike Sriskandarajah

So what is going to happen this year? Which way is this going to go? I read the agreement between the government and Columbia again last night. It's sprawling. For a battle that started over antisemitism, the document also covers trans students in locker rooms and international students and admissions and DEI.

And what the agreement does is it lets the Trump administration crack down on any of that if it decides the University is out of line. Maybe it'll choose IHRA, maybe it'll choose something else. Between the withholding of hundreds of millions of dollars, IHRA, the monitor, this administration has given themselves a new set of tools to transform higher ed.

Emanuele Berry

Ike Sriskandarajah is a producer on our show.

Emanuele Berry

Our program was produced by Miki Meek and Emannuel Dzotsi. It was edited by Chana Joffe-Walt. People who put together today's show include Phia Bennin, Zoe Chace, Michael Comite, Suzanne Gaber, Sophie Gill, Valerie Kipnis, Katherine Rae Mando, Stowe Nelson, Nadia Reiman, Anthony Roman, Ryan Rumery, Frances Swanson, Christopher Swetala, Marisa Robertson-Textor, Nancy Updike, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu. Our managing editor Sarah Abdurrahman, and our senior editor is David Kestenbaum.

Special thanks to Meligha Garfield, Sandrine Mimche, Sadie Werner, Kathryn Bond Stockton, Alex Tokita, Karen Kwan, Bilal Kuchay, Mariya Karimjee, Mike Gavin, Azmat Khan, Maryam Alwan, Cameron Jones, Yoni Kurtz, Allie Arcese, Melanie Storey, Tennessee Watson, Madelyn Beck, Kenneth Stern, Noah Lederman, Xavier Westergaard, Chrystal Bell, and Maya Perkins.

Special thanks as well to the Office of International Student Services and the Office of International Studies and Programs at Michigan State University, and Arno Rosenfeld, who writes the newsletter Antisemitism Decoded at The Forward.

Thanks also to our This American Life Partners. Sign up as a Life Partner and you'll get ad-free listening, a greatest hits archive right in your podcast feed, plus regular exclusive bonus episodes, including dozens that we've already released. Join us at thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange.

Thanks, as always, to my boss, Ira Glass, who is off this week doing his side hustle, as a personal assistant for Harry and Meghan. One of his most important duties is the wake up call. For old time's sake, he likes to do it this way.

Emanuele Berry

I'm Emanuele Berry. Ira Glass will be back next week with more stories of This American Life.