Usually This American Life brings you stories of people in the middle of big experiences. But sometimes these moments of dramatic change are only half the story. The other half occurs after time passes and they return to revisit what happened, and who they were back when. Today's show is about what they find.
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Act One
I Used To Bank Here But That Was Long, Long Ago
David Rakoff goes in search of the only existing mementos of a year-and-a-half of his life when he nearly died from Hodgkins Disease. The missing relics are his own pre-chemotherapized sperm — which reside somewhere in a Toronto lab. But over the years, his hospital has moved, the lab has moved, and he has moved. (22 minutes)
Act Two
Exile On Main Street
Keith Gessen, a young Russian emigre, revisits the heroes of his youth: the brave Soviet dissidents who risked their lives at the height of the Cold War. Many of them resettled into comfortable suburban lives in America. That these idealists would wind up on shady streets where private lives are more important than public ones is perplexing to Keith. (18 minutes)
Act Three
Shopping for a Better Future
Producer Julie Snyder looks at what happens in one poor Chicago neighborhood when the community begins to undergo a revitalization and a new store comes to town. (11 minutes)
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Deb Monroe reports on how she has been mapping her own body through her sense of touch.
Act One: Travels in Hyperreality
Host Ira Glass uses Italian author Umberto Eco's essay Travels in Hyperreality as a guidebook to American simulated worlds.
Act One: Thank Heaven For Little Girls — Made Of Plastic
The story of a company trying an experiment at marketing dolls to little girls:A new kind of doll store near Chicago's Magnificent Mile called "American Girl Place." The company has figured out all the ways little girls love dolls and they're trying to sell to nearly every one of those desires.
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