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613
March 31, 2017

OK, I’ll Do It

Stories of people who decide that they are the best person for the job, no matter how dangerous. Including a story about a stay-at-home mom with a history of gun running for a guerilla organization, and a surgeon who does surgery...on himself.

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Vladislav Rogozov, Neil Bermel: BMJ (2009;339:b4965)

Prologue

Host Ira Glass tells the story of what might be one of the most daring surgeries ever performed. (10 minutes)

By

Ira Glass
Act One

Line in the Sand

A Border Patrol agent takes us deep inside his experience patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border. Read by Francisco Cantu, and excerpted from his memoir, “The Line Becomes A River.” (26 minutes)

Act Two

Da-Do-Run-Guns-Mum-Da-Do-Run-Guns

Journalist Reya El-Salahi tells the story of learning something very surprising about her mother’s past, involving a fake marriage, guns and guerrillas. (19 minutes)

By

Reya El-Salahi

Song:

“Rebel Without A Pause” by Public Enemy & “I Don't Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing (Open Up the Door I'll Get It Myself” by James Brown

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Act Two: Sealed With A Diss

An excerpt from “Belles Lettres," a short story by Nafissa Thompson-Spires from her book Heads of the Colored People, performed by actors Erika Alexander and Eisa Davis with a cameo from our colleague Alvin Melathe.
804: The Retrievals
June 30, 2023

Act One

Susan Burton introduces some of the many women who went to a Yale fertility clinic for IVF treatment, and charts their experience from hopeful beginning to excruciatingly painful egg retrieval.

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429
Mar. 11, 2011

Will They Know Me Back Home?

Stories of people who've grown so accustomed to wartime that the lives they've left behind no longer make sense.

492
Apr. 12, 2013

Dr. Gilmer and Mr. Hyde

Did a beloved family doctor with no criminal history suddenly up and strangle his own father?

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