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228
January 3, 2003

You Are So Beautiful…To Me

Two stories about love, and what people mean when they use the word love. Or, looked at differently, two modern-day reinterpretations of the Frog Prince story. One concerns a pretty man falling in love with an unlikely woman. And an unlikely woman falling in love with a pretty bird.

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Jennifer Barnard

Prologue

Host Ira Glass explains how you can get away with anything if you claim you did it for love. (3 minutes)

By

Ira Glass
Act One

Polly Wants More Than A Cracker

Veronica Chater explains the conflict in her house between her love for her pet macaw—a kind of parrot—and her love for her husband and three kids. The macaw wreaks a sort of low-level chaos in the house, because it wants Veronica all to itself. (10 minutes)

By

Veronica Chater

Song:

“You Are So Beautiful” by Joe Cocker, Tanya Tucker, Kenny Rankin and Babyface
Act Two

On The Border Between Good And Bad

Another story of someone using the word love as they try to make sense of things. Russell Banks reads an edited version of his short story "Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story," which appears in its full version in his collection The Angel on the Roof. (42 minutes)

By

Russell Banks

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Act V

A group of inmates at a high-security prison stage a production of the last act of Hamlet.

487
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We spent five months at a high school in Chicago where in the last year 29 current and recent students were shot.

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This American Life is produced in collaboration with WBEZ Chicago and delivered to stations by PRX The Public Radio Exchange.

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