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American terms and conditions apply. A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbleached in today's episode of the show, if you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website. This American Life, dawg.

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So a couple of years ago, Michael wrote a book about Meryl Streep, and it did fine good reviews, hit the bestseller list for a couple of weeks, and Michael did something that I guess is a normal thing to do.

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If you've worked on anything for a year and a half, including a book, I would occasionally check its ratings on Amazon and buy occasionally, I mean, all the time. And I have to say, most of them were great, you know, there are a lot of people really liked the book right now and has almost 300 customer ratings on Amazon.

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Let's just look it up. Are you getting at there? Yes, I have 295 customer ratings, 46 percent of them are five star ratings, 23 percent are four star ratings. So that's, you know, two thirds of people who rated it loved it. Right. So that's nice. But was those other people, the eight percent who gave him one star, the nine percent who give him two stars? Those are the people he found himself getting stuck on.

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I have to say, I'm not proud of any of this. I'm not proud of talking about this. I wish I was the kind of person who just floated in a cloud above my Amazon ratings. But I'm not I mean, some of the some of the things that people wrote on Amazon just kind of cut to the bone in this way. You know, if someone just says boring, you know, a book, a book critic isn't going to say boring.

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But if an average customer goes on Amazon and says this book is boring, boring, boring, one star, I think is worse than us.

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Sort of smart book critic, you know, explaining why something did or didn't work. Yeah, boring. Bland, hated it. No, there's one that just said no.

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And it just makes you feel terrible. So I would I would check my Amazon score an unhealthy number of times and sometimes before I went to bed, which is a really bad idea, because then you would just drift off to sleep arguing with these people in your head.

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But then Michael stumbled onto this strategy, something he could do to deal with those feelings. This has happened.

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You know, I was just spending too much time thinking about who these people were. And at some point, I just clicked on one of their names, one of the people who who hated your book.

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Yeah. And that brought me to everything else they had reviewed on Amazon. And I realized that when you do that, you see what they liked. And once I saw what some of these people loved on Amazon, it completely neutralized them.

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So let's go through some of the ones that you saw.

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OK, so Kathy gave me two stars. She says, disappointing too much detail about people other than Meryl Streep and not enough about Meryl herself. What did Kathy like? A cupcake stand that comes in lavender with polka dots, five stars, and she just writes, Perfect. What's it say to you? That she has that she has enough cupcakes, that she needs to arrange them on a cupcake stand in polka dots, and that makes her happy. You know, my book cannot speak to that sort of.

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I let me let me try to perfection to Kathy, is this cupcake stand filled cupcakes with polka dots?

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And my book did not give her that same feeling. And that's OK. A reader had given one star and said about his book, a lot of words, but not interesting. Give five stars to bright red yarn. The person who gave him the one word with, you know, gave five stars and a rave to a Tin Kizu person who said Boring, boring, boring. And also the author is so consumed with his lofty vocabulary that the reader falls asleep.

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Give a rave review to a book predicting the end of the world. By 2015, a woman named Wendy get one star telling potential readers to move on. What did she love? OK, so Wendy gave five stars to an Amazon.com gift card, which struck me as nuts. Like, why is anyone raiding Amazon gift cards on Amazon? It's like saying, yes, this 20 dollar bill is worth twenty dollars. Why rate this thing?

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This thing couldn't possibly be good or bad or what have you done? The flip side of this, have you looked up the people who loved your book to see what else they loved? No, I don't want to know anything more about them. They're angels, but we have done that. Let me read some of them to you. This is a woman who gave you five out of five stars.

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Interesting. She says this book was written in very interesting. Merrill's life has been full of interesting people and experiences, and I enjoyed learning more about her.

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She also loved five out of five stars.

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The game of gnomes, garden gnome thrown for the throne room cracks me up. Every time I look at it, it's in my bathroom where my throne is. And here's a picture of the gnome.

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Yeah, that is. That's a gnome. Yeah, she put this in her bathroom. It's in my bathroom, in my throat. She keeps this gnome in her bathroom and she gave it five out of five stars and she also loved my book. I see what you're saying.

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It doesn't mean it's not great if you do it the other way around.

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OK, one more.

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This person, five out of five stars, she chronicles her relationships on stage and off, giving us a clear, unique portrait of a professional also. But not one, not two, but three Amazon gift cards.

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What did you rate them? She rated them five out of five stars. Don't tell me this. She's one of the Amazon gift card. People just buy something. Buy something that you like, a cupcake, stand anything, get a real thing and rate that. I'm sorry. It's why the way Michael sees it, the fact that every single thing on Amazon, every gift card garden, every light bulb and USB cord and mop is measured against every book, every classic film, against every bit of journalism and fiction, against the Bible and the Koran and the Bhagavad Gita all on the same five point scale.

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It's perverse. Those things are different. And of course, these kinds of reviews are everywhere.

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I mean, the way the world is now, you know, there's just constant feedback about everything. You when you take an Uber, you're asked to rate the Uber driver. You know, we're just constantly leaving stars for things, leaving customer reviews. You know that there's Yelp. Everyone is constantly assessing everything that's true.

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Everything here, for example, is a review of the Great Wall of China.

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One star too crowded, too much climbing, missed the greatness of it. It was a lot of steep climbing time. The Parthenon, one star is just a big bunch of columns that lack artistic taste. The Statue of Liberty, one star. Imagine a combination of prison and the worst airport security. If you want to feel embarrassed to be an American, then you can find it here.

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The Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, one star total disgrace. There are no places to rest and reflect in peace.

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Surely a sight that witnessed one of the largest mass murders in history deserves some space for reflection, falling apart and not well maintained.

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Well, WBC, Chicago, it's this American Life. I'm IRA Glass.

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Today on our program in this world where now everyone is a critic, we visit places where reviews really should not be happening.

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And the story of somebody who very much does not want to leave a review and someone else with the guts to say no to all the reviewers and haters of the most hated and worst reviewed thing made this past year. And you know what that is? No, stay with us.

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That one, their eyes were watching God. So some things it just feels wrong when they reviewed.

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And I know it just read you a bunch like that, but when I hear one more, I know I do. OK, this one is for the National Park at Gettysburg, one of the pivotal battlegrounds in the Civil War.

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Woman from Miami gave it three stars and wrote, quote, I guess it's a little moving when you think about freedom and all that stuff, but really, it's a field. So another thing can feel strange to review or read reviews of. Churches. Today's program is recorded and first broadcast just before the pandemic started. That's when one of our contributors, Bay Packer, learned about church reviews.

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I hadn't been to church any church in over a year and I'd lost myself. I was miserable. My career was struggling. Relationships restrained little by little I could see myself eating and going to a new church felt like a last resort. One of my roommates suggested a church that she'd been casually attending down the street First Corinthian Baptist Church, the first Sunday I went, I noticed the line half a block long, mostly of white people and cargo shorts waiting patiently behind a rope.

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An older black man with church flyers in his hand could see. I was confused you and me toward the front door and greeted me as if he were God's bouncer. It's a big place, an old movie theater, about 2000 seats, marble floors, usher chandeliers, a walk down the crowded aisles and ended up sitting next to an elderly woman dressed in her Sunday best with this broad brimmed, regal hat. She reminded me of my great Aunt Louise when I slid it to the pew.

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She hugged me. I didn't realize how much I needed that hug until my eyes started to tear up.

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So just trying to find this opportunity to just relax and to relax the different parts of your body.

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The service began with guided meditation and ended with communion and the choir singing Frankie, Beverly and Maze is happy feelings these.

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70S R and B with the blood of Christ, I thought secular music, lots of young black people, a pastor in jeans at found my home. There was only one problem above me and the far back of the balcony, which was the white people in line from outside. Hundreds of them snapping selfies and gawking, hovering like a gaggle of anthropologists studying black Baptists in their natural habitat.

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Every expression of worship, every tear I shed, every hug I gave, every arm I outstretched to God.

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I felt like I was on display for them. I felt exposed.

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There were baptisms, some of the devout being baptized overcome great odds, one in particular got the Holy Spirit and sobbed in the pool.

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Something unnamed and sacred had led them to that moment.

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And all I could think about with the white people upstairs taking pictures of someone's life altering spiritual journey so they could share them over brunch is really messing with my worship. Why tourists visiting black churches is a thing, especially in Harlem, showing up for free music. It was my first time hearing about it, but I never experienced it before.

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Sure, there were some white congregants sprinkled throughout downstairs, but their members, for lack of a better phrase, they were invited to the cookout, the choice in the balcony.

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They just want a song.

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I kept going to this church every Sunday, but I felt like I was in willingly participating in their gospel concert and struggle to focus on what mattered to me most. My own relationship with the big guy upstairs.

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I was navigating all that when I learned about the reviews, tourist critique, the church online, writing reviews on websites like Yelp and TripAdvisor. Some were fine, similar love the experience and thank the church for welcoming outsiders. Others were not so nice. Quote The music was loud, repetitive and vacuous churches to elevate us to God, not bring him to human level to stars from France. This is a scam. The children singing are circus animals. One star from Italy don't use this place if you are expecting the gospel style of sister act one star.

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And this one is meant to be a compliment, but I bristled from Spain. I will definitely repeat this experience if I go back to New York, do not be afraid to go to Harlem on your own. A lot of white people live there for stars I worship was being graded on a gentrified curve. I got angry. I don't like the choice, but I do love the church.

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It has the familiarity and the warmth that I grew up with, but none of the conservative intolerant baggage, the kind that's hesitant to let women on deacon boards and has strict dress codes. My old church was more insular, more of an old school black Baptist BS, like if you saw a white person during service, it required a whole quizzical discussion in the car ride home where they lost someone special friend Lookbook had none of that.

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And I found it liberating.

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So I kept going to the church. I was going to make the best of it, but it wasn't easy.

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One recent Sunday at church, engrossed in a 15 minute rendition of The Blood Will Never Lose Its Power, I sway to the song meditatively mouthed the words with the choir over and over again.

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I was losing myself and feeling God's presence. And out of the corner of my eye, I noticed it. The glowing of phones in the dark, the older European man with the selfie stick, the backpack leading tourists stepping out before the sermon, three or four at a time.

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Well, we we want to just say welcome, welcome, welcome. We hope that you feel the power of God. We hope that you feel that there's a shift happening in your life as well, and that you can begin to take that shit all back to the, you know, all across the globe to your own homes. And so MSNBC at this time, let us give our guests a warm welcome. Let's give them a hug and show them some love.

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Amen.

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We hug the visitors as the church instructs us to do during the welcome, and immediately afterwards over 45 tourists upped and walked out before the sermon had even begun. All I could think was the audacity. So ruined.

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You've got to get up every morning and let the enemy know. So it used to be my neighbor.

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I I'm listening to the sermon, I felt torn and distracted by the tourists are they have to be there at all? Why do I care so much?

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I asked other congregants of having the tourists there ever made them feel uncomfortable if they thought it was a bit odd, they ever got self-conscious, if it was only me. One, that the tourists were fabulous. Another said they didn't think about it. One woman said my not wanting them there was blasphemous. So, yeah, seems like it was only me. It was confusing. Yes. I don't want the tourists there. But what kind of Christian are behaving when people during a church service?

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So I went to the head of the church, my pastor, Pastor Mike Walrond, to ask, why are these stories here? Why are we letting this happen and how am I supposed to deal with it and see past it? Why do you want the church there?

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I don't necessarily think about wanting tourists. We welcome everyone. So I don't I don't necessarily say, well, I want this these people here and I want those people, whoever comes, I celebrate and we're open.

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So I know their are churches that have said that they wouldn't allow tourists or when they do make the tourists pay a bunch of money to come in, they'll take their money right for us.

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I think everyone here as a tourist and I tell you, I know the power of the word and how the word can spread and how people can take what they hear here.

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And it goes places your words will go to, places that you will never go. And so that's how I always look at it, is an opportunity to spread this word and to get the message out that we're doing and expand and broaden our reach. And sometimes the people who expand and broaden our reach happen to be tourists.

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Pastor Mike also said, my sensitivity about the tourists, though he understands it is generationally different than the older black congregants who perceive the optics of having essentially a section for white people in a more ironic way than I do when I see a lot of tourists who have only white in the balcony because they know history enough to know that's different because historically it was flipped.

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Well, that was a practice country for years where African-Americans had to sit in the balcony, could not worship with white people because African-Americans were relegated to the balcony and could not engage worship experience.

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He knows the tourists are not what everyone wants, but what Pastor Mike wants me to know, that the tourists aren't just in the balcony and they aren't just white. He says the balcony is for large groups of visitors and they just happen to be European. He insists the largest number of tourists in the church aren't white.

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They're black. They blend in sitting down on the main floor with all of us. So he puts it back to me. Is my problem with tourists or with white tourists?

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It's white tourists, he tells me, don't be prejudice, it's wrong, and we start looking at people who enter our spaces of worship and because it's strangers treating them and because they are obviously strangers, because of the racial dimension, then we undermine ourselves as followers of the teachings of Jesus and as people who call ourselves Christians.

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And I know that. But I can't stop feeling exposed. It looks the way it looks, white people staring down on us, praising God.

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The optics are all wrong, I guess, because I feel a certain protectiveness because of the shared experience that we have as black people. I feel like protectiveness of like you, where intoxicated by perceptions and image and optics and optics communicate no substance.

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So the question is not what it appears.

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The question is do I care that question? And the answer is no.

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I can't be consumed with people's perceptions of our space because then I'll be trying to curtail we do to to respond to people's perceptions.

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And that's not who we call to be. I can't.

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So the optics of it mean nothing to me. Pastor Mike knows what it looks like making white people sit in a sectioned off area he knows is provocative. He's fine with it. It's not intended to be punishment. But that doesn't answer my question. How do I block them out when I worship?

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When I worship, I engage God. I could care if it was a one person or two thousand.

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I don't care whose present. It's about me. That moment is a sacred space. I do in the presence of others who are celebrating God. But that's a sacred moment for me. And my sacred moment cannot be intruded upon by anybody. Tourists are not.

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Pastor Mike's words helped a little I'm aspiring to a new level of clarity in my worship, more like his. But I'm still working on myself. I'm not there yet, I still want people there staring at us like we're all some source of entertainment for them.

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But going forward and what I try to do what I can to get the tourists out of my mind and out of my way, starting with this review of CBC from me, Parker from Baltimore with CBC one Sunday and then kept coming back, helped me when I really needed it.

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And if you're a tourist reading this and wonder what the black congregants think of you taking photos during baptisms and baby christenings. I, for one, don't love it. Please stop, help make a great church better. Five stars. Bob Parker, you can be heard on the podcast, but New York magazine, if you Google the First Corinthian Baptist Church, it'll take you to the website F.C., ABC, NYC, where there are videos of sermons and guest speakers and all sorts of other stuff.

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I think we are not going to give you their address as what you're talking about, not as much. She did take some time to show that she did.

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Coming up, a story about somebody who is studiously trying not to give a review and think it's not too much to say. That is very freedom. Depends on that. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

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Support for this American life comes from Wonderings new original series Against the Odds in twenty eighteen twelve teenagers and their soccer coach were trapped six miles deep in a cave with no resources or means of communication. Their only chance of survival was world class cave diver Rick and his dive partner, Jon. With the whole world watching, these heroes were faced with the challenge of their lifetime. Find the boys and get them out safely. Listen to Wonderings Against the Odds on Apple podcasts, Spotify or listen ad free in the wandering app.

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This American Life, I'm IRA Glass. Today's program, Everyone's a critic, tales from a world where everything gets rated and reviewed. We've arrived at Act two of our show Act to Mr. Chen goes to Wuhan. So this next story is about somebody who's studiously trying not to be a critic because of where he lives and what he's doing. His name is Chen Kosher and he lives in China. He's been going around that country to the most controversial places, the places that are the most sensitive as far as the Chinese government is concerned, including Hong Kong and Wuhan, the city where the coronavirus pandemic began.

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Chen shows up, looks around, gathers information and posts videos online with the truth of what he's found. Which is risky because China, of course, is an authoritarian country with tight grip on information and total control over the media. Government's version of reality is what's reported in newspapers, on TV and online. So when does all of this he tries very hard not to be a critic, not to venture an opinion doing that could get him in trouble.

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Reporter Gyung Fan watched his videos with fascination for a while when people started getting sick of Ohan last year. Citizen journalists went into the city to document the truth of what was happening. Several were eventually silenced by the government, including Chen. Jiong explains how he got to that point. I've been writing about China for years. I'm from there and I've never seen anyone like Chen. This guy wasn't a professional reporter or political activist, as far as I know, he was just a guy from the mainland who read about the Hong Kong protests in the state papers and wondered, is that the whole story?

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What's really happening? And went to see for himself.

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What's your chin? Chin, chin, chin, chin. Thank you.

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And as usual in this video shot on the waterfront in Hong Kong, he's saying, I want to see with my naked eye what's happening on the ground.

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I want to bear witness to the stories of the people on the ground, trans-Atlantic talker, a 30 something guy with very expressive eyebrows.

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He's running all over the city in a yellow press vest he bought after he saw online that reporters were them at protests. He's a lawyer who was into public speaking a couple years back. He was in a reality TV speech competition, kind of like The Voice for nerds. That was his first brush with being a public person. His video sort of feel like an extension of that speech competition. Instead of talking and explaining things on a stage, he's doing it out in the world.

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Oh, yeah.

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We are in Hong Kong. Chen's coverage is painstakingly neutral. He goes to a pro-democracy protest and also to a pro Beijing rally. At both, he tries to estimate the crowd size and the age of the participants.

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He spends one video explaining subtle differences between factions of the movement and no point in this event and his own political stance.

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In fact, he emphasizes that he will not take us on the telephone.

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You don't need a title that details what kind of leadership he's saying.

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I will try my best to put my prejudice aside and stay neutral about what I see. This neutrality thing is important because across China, most people support or at least go along with the party. They're skeptical of people who defy the government. Those people are seen as troublemakers and dissidents. They're regarded with suspicion and their ideas are easily dismissed.

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Chen didn't want to be dismissed, but what's more, he didn't act like a dissident. He quotes a state newspaper as inspiration for his trip and declares his loyalty to China. Watching him, he seemed genuinely curious about the things he was witnessing and completely sincere. You know, I hope you enjoyed his videos from Hong Kong, reached hundreds of thousands of people on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter. As soon as I saw them, I wanted to talk to him, though I wasn't sure how hard he would be to reach because his last video hinted that he might be in trouble.

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YOSHIHARA learned incident did not help it with an exit from the airport.

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In it, he says, the Chinese Bar Association, the Public Security Bureau and the Ministry of Justice have all called him, telling him to come back and stop this nonsense. At one point, he holds up his law license, saying he knows he may very well lose it after these three days in Hong Kong.

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Once he got home, all his social media accounts were deleted and his videos were purged from the Chinese Internet. But he wasn't hard to reach when I got his number picked up right away. He was a little flustered. He explained he was in the middle of a family situation. His mom found out about his reporting adventure from a cousin's classmate, freaked out and traveled hundreds of miles to his doorstep and moved in with him.

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He was funny about it.

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So I took him to the park.

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And we've been living together for over 20 days and it's been kind of awkward. She follows me wherever I go just now. When when I came down to take your call, she ran after me to the elevator. That's why I was kind of bummed when I answered. Chen's mother was there to save him from himself, he explained last. He decided to go off once again and try something reckless. His mom kept watch on him 24/7 during the day.

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She did not let him out of her sight. At night, he shared his twin sized bed.

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Yeah, I'm uncomfortable, but there's no way around it. It's it's the only way she feels safe. This all sounded very familiar to me.

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I have a mother like this to. 234, just a year younger than me, we both grew up as only children in A.D. China, our mothers have both expressed to us that if anything were to happen to us, they would lose the very will to live to nice things, change in the darkness.

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The hardest thing to deal with is the effects on my family and loved ones.

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That's what pulled them back from his trip to Hong Kong, not because he was worried for himself, but because of the risk of a complicating other people's lives. China was safe, he told me, but he'd been let go from his law firm and he had been interrogated repeatedly on the day he arrived back from Hong Kong. He'd been grilled for eight hours straight. He had to run through every detail of where he was. Each day.

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And then they took me through reeducation on the policies of the Communist Party. The government has a certain perspective about Hong Kong. They said, because I was a lawyer, I should support the Communist Party and its decisions and I didn't go against them and go to certain places and so on and so on.

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Then they tried another attack.

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Then they took on a very parental tone.

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They said, we're doing this because we care about you and to it against each other.

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Oh, you're a young guy with a bright future ahead of you. You've won so many speech and debate prizes when you were young. You've appeared in so many TV shows. You've posted such great content and videos to social media. We think you're really talented.

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We're lucky to have such a great local lawyer, wanted to show you what's going on through the channel. But then you went to Hong Kong and jeopardized all of that and finally they drove it home on the mainland. What I think they will have are you married?

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Look at you. You're over thirty and you haven't married yet. Your parents must be so anxious. People need to prioritize families. You need to start a family and have kids. That's the only way to have a normal life. So don't let your parents worry. You need to hurry up and get that straight.

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Now to the wire.

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So for a full day from 9:00 in the morning to 5:00 in the evening, it would just be that they were using different tactics like that to trying to tell me why going to Hong Kong was wrong.

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But Ken wasn't that troubled by the questioning, he'd been scrupulously neutral when he was in Hong Kong and he believed that would protect him and things would not get worse than this.

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Well, that's what's going on here. So I think it's because I worked so hard to be neutral and to not support or lean towards one side or the other that that I was able to stay safe.

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You shut down the then to got a functional. I asked him the question that had been on my mind all this time. Why did he do it?

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But I hope it's just a passion. Sometimes people say, oh, that was so brave of you. You risked so much in the pursuit of truth. I hate that this has nothing to do with bravery.

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It's it's just a hobby. I mean, you have guys out there who like watches. You have guys who like to fix up their cars, people who like to hike or to ski. This is my hobby. My hobby is engaging with and pursuing the news.

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It's just something I'm interested in hiring and I can almost see him shrugging. On the other side of the line, Chen sees himself as a curious guy collecting facts. He's not out to issue any kind of review. He's not trying to provoke or antagonize the way he talks about his videos. It's like they're an intellectual exercise more than anything else. I'm surprised by how blasé he is about the project. Given the cost to his regular life. I wonder if there's more to it.

[00:33:45]

If his composure is a kind of armor, the one thing he can control. You said that you are like what I called a few months later, in late January, I do a double take when I see a video that Chen posts from the train station in what?

[00:34:12]

It's the city at the center of the coronavirus epidemic. Apparently, he had grabbed his selfie stick and hopped on the last train in as the government put the city on lockdown.

[00:34:22]

It's startling that he's there because access to the city has been severely restricted and heavily enforced. There are very few news sources on the ground at this time.

[00:34:32]

No one dares to go outside and many shops are closed.

[00:34:36]

Chen is this usual, energetic, high spirited, self sneaking and jokes along with the information. He's bewildered by all the elderly people he saw on his trip who still weren't wearing face masks. Are they insane?

[00:34:50]

He asks. The mom them you guys want over the computer?

[00:34:56]

People who who want to beat them back as their kids, we should force them to put our masks with the same energy they exude when pushing us to get married, he says. I watched the video on YouTube where Chen now has a channel and almost half a million followers. It's a website that's banned in China. You can only access it if you hop the firewall, which many people do. Some of them take his videos and spread them on Chinese social media.

[00:35:33]

Over the next few days, Chen goes on a tear through the city, she reports from the market where a number of early cases surfaced from a grocery store, from a funeral parlor, from the construction site for a hospital that's being built almost overnight at a crime scene outside a hospital.

[00:35:53]

One night after hearing that the virus might be transmittable through the eyes. He filmed the video wearing a comically ill fitting pair of swim goggles, wearing a plan which, you know, no good shot year.

[00:36:05]

There's a video shot on the front seat of a car where he's chatting with the four people piled in with him, asking if they have enough food stocked up at home.

[00:36:13]

So he sent a driver to a chilling argument that no one knew the guy in the front has six months stored.

[00:36:23]

He'd been preparing a long time for a food shortage, though he thought it would be from a trade war with America, not a virus to China goofs around with the driver practicing his Wang dialect.

[00:36:39]

Go, go, go, go. More and more, the scenery loves Jillani this year and this year.

[00:36:52]

But he also spends time doing long interviews with locals, drawing out intimate details of people's lives and their honest appraisals of the ongoing crisis. One night, Chen hosts a livestream interview with a middle aged man who goes by the pseudonym Arming Bombings. Father had recently died. He tells Chen that his father had gone to the hospital for a routine physical in early January. He was in his 70s and healthy. He couldn't have known then that the hospital was also seeing patients infected with a mysterious pneumonia soon after his father developed a fever that wouldn't go away.

[00:37:34]

Pharming details the frantic search for treatment in the final weeks of his father's life. How? Because there wasn't adequate equipment at the hospital, he had to spend a whole night pressing his father's leaky oxygen mask in place. He talks about the time a sudden lockdown at the hospital separated panicked family members from their loved ones for 48 hours. It's difficult to listen to Amin describe his father's last day or a whole other shocking new 24 hour body. Also, Paracel Widjojo in Canada.

[00:38:08]

Tom, you are the thing I saw with my own eyes as his heart rate dropped from 120 to zero.

[00:38:17]

I held his hand and saw this happen and it was painful. It was a deep coma already. When they took off his oxygen mask, his mouth was still open. Yes, he suffocated to death them. Aming says he doesn't understand why the government didn't start alerting people back in December to wear masks. He wonders why the state media didn't cover the outbreak more thoroughly if measures had been taken earlier. He says, my father wouldn't have died. A few days from the 10th trip, his own parents sent him a video.

[00:39:04]

They're sitting on a couch looking like they're trying very hard not to mess up the complicated process of face timing their son to draw.

[00:39:13]

We'll have a lot more to Hala.

[00:39:18]

We heard you went to her, he says, apparently Chen has yet again failed to inform his parents he was going on a reporting trip in general because is from his dad, gruffly chides him and tells him to do a good job and not to make trouble while he's there. His mom peers into the frame bar.

[00:39:39]

Drishti Woomelang daughter, Shirley.

[00:39:42]

We support you, she says, but be safe, OK? That only you get out really good for me. The Daltry all really. Chen continues making videos for the next few days, and they're pretty grim. He posts one from inside a hospital covertly filmed while pretending to call someone.

[00:40:06]

The patients and their family members are bundled up in heavy winter coats and blankets. Almost everyone is attached to IV tubes and oxygen bottles as his camera darts unsteadily through the room.

[00:40:20]

There's a suffocating claustrophobia in front of the commander of the military involvement in another video trying to come across an elderly patient in his wheelchair. Gray, limp, unmoving. A relative leans on the chair, holding his body up front as he films and realizes the patient is dead.

[00:40:42]

And so the woman explains through her face mask that the ambulance arrived too late to save him.

[00:40:52]

Now, she was trying to figure out what to do with the body in front of you.

[00:40:58]

There's a clip of a medical worker in a hospital parking lot.

[00:41:02]

She's squatting by a car, crying into her phone. A colleague tells her it's not that serious and she stands up shaking with anger. I've been coughing for six days. She screams. Don't you dare tell me it's not serious.

[00:41:20]

That was established by the sergeant.

[00:41:36]

For nearly a week, Chen has been posting videos from a city teetering on the edge of a breakdown for nearly a week, he has watched from the sideline observing, listening, studiously reserving judgment. But then on January 30th, when he appears on screen, he isn't reporting.

[00:41:55]

Instead, they acknowledge that the U.S. is alone, hunched in a bed, wearing a tank top with what looks like a bed sheet wrapped around his shoulders.

[00:42:07]

His face is pale and his hair was uncombed.

[00:42:10]

Julie Tinashe are doing here. It's a 27 minute video, much longer than his regular ones.

[00:42:18]

He plays several recap clips, talks about what he's seen, but he isn't his usual charismatic self.

[00:42:26]

Something's off when he's talking about the shortage of virus test kits.

[00:42:30]

He seethes with contempt, gentle humor, gentle. Did you hear that?

[00:42:39]

There aren't enough test kits.

[00:42:41]

He says he counts off all the dysfunctions he's witnessed in the past week from the lack of transport, the shortage of supplies, the piles of unsold donations to the overworked construction workers, the sheer volume of dysfunctions, dysfunctions that gesture at larger failures of the government overwhelms Chen as he speaks.

[00:43:05]

A jittery energy coursing through him. He keeps trying to reset will himself back into a state of collective you, but it's not working.

[00:43:16]

OK, let's keep going through the.

[00:43:20]

Well, sorry, my thoughts are really disorganized because I'm starting to feel afraid, like I'm genuinely starting to feel afraid.

[00:43:28]

The Ministry of Justice is after him calling him, he tells us to the police, too. They've been questioning his parents and suddenly the video takes a turn.

[00:43:40]

The tear in his eyes hardens into something like Rage or Shubha.

[00:43:46]

I am scared, which I'm sure to with a real leader in front of me is the virus.

[00:43:55]

Behind me is the power of China's law enforcement, which do it.

[00:43:59]

But I will persevere as long as I am still alive. I'm going to keep reporting. I'm going to tell people what I see and what I hear.

[00:44:08]

The last minute of the video feels like it's happening in slow motion, tense face, which is small and delicate, grows red, swollen and crazed with their excruciating seconds when his eyes fill up as he speaks through clenched teeth.

[00:44:26]

Well, Jeanne in Boston, I'll just say it harshly is fuck you, I'm not even afraid of dying or. What do you think? I'm afraid of you. Chinese Communist Party. As the video ends, I realize I've stopped breathing. Transcon way past the line that he fought so hard not to cross for as long as I'd known him being a respectable journalist, the kind he aspire to be meant gathering facts without taking a side, but hearing when the facts must have added up to a reality so horrifying that a judgment was demanded.

[00:45:06]

The next day, 10 posts a video apologizing for losing his cool.

[00:45:11]

He goes back to reporter mode, standing outside the apartment of a family whose mother had died that morning to see how long it takes for the funeral home car to come. He's there for an hour. It never comes.

[00:45:32]

He keeps reporting. A week later, a video shows up on Chen's timeline.

[00:45:38]

It's not him.

[00:45:40]

It's his mother that her whole wish to shoot mama.

[00:45:44]

She looks tired and strands of her permed hair have fallen out of a loose ponytail.

[00:45:50]

Her message is short on time. Chen has gone missing.

[00:45:53]

Boehnke among Bodrog. To shoot these fishermen to help me please help me find Chen.

[00:46:00]

She says, please help to light up almost easier.

[00:46:05]

Thank you. Chen's been silent ever since then, he'd given his social media passwords to friends in case he disappeared. One friend says that the police told his parents he'd been put in a medical quarantine, but people in quarantine are usually allowed to keep their phones and to stay in touch with the people outside.

[00:46:27]

No one's heard from Chen. It's been 22 days. Chen, who tried so strenuously to avoid becoming a political dissident, is now being treated like one. Of everything that's happened to him, I suspect what would change him the most is the side of his mother looking exhausted and afraid on video, pleading for his return. Giant fan, she's a staff writer at The New Yorker, says, we first broadcast today's program last fall, it was reported to have been released under surveillance to his parents.

[00:47:11]

The ZHIANG has been unable to get in touch with them to confirm that all of his social media accounts have stayed silent. X ray must love cats, you know, it was comforting that in these dark and divisive times, there was one thing that a fractured America could agree on not that long ago, the movie Cats, based on the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.

[00:47:38]

And what everybody agreed was that it was trash variety, called it, quote, a half digested hairball of a movie. Co-writer said it, quote, Always feels like it's two seconds away from turning into a furry orgy in a dumpster.

[00:47:52]

But one of the producers on our program, we found one of the very few people who felt differently than every living reviewer everywhere, somebody who loved the film, which actually kind of became a problem in her house.

[00:48:05]

Here's Linda. One of the many problems with cats, it doesn't really have a plot, but to Dixon, it all makes perfect sense.

[00:48:13]

A bunch of cats known as Jellyroll Cats are auditioning to be the cats selected in sort of this like cultic ritual to ascend to the heavy side layer and be reborn. And so the show is just cats auditioning one after the other to be the one selected.

[00:48:33]

They auditioned to die is basically what they do. Everything about the film that alienated people, the weird CGI, the clumsy writing, the bizarre choreography. Jason Derulo, none of it alienates E.J., which honestly doesn't surprise me. I've known E.J. for years. She's a reporter at Rolling Stone.

[00:48:55]

She's always struck me as dogged someone who perpetually bears witness to the things other people don't really want to take seriously, like things that are widely misunderstood or understood differently.

[00:49:06]

Like I always want to know, like what's the other story here with Kathy?

[00:49:10]

It was very obvious from the second that I saw it like this is going to be like everybody's going to call this the worst movie ever made.

[00:49:15]

But it's also just this very earnest, this this sort of very simple, earnest story about the importance of inclusion.

[00:49:25]

Right. The cats learn a lesson about inclusion. Left that out.

[00:49:32]

Do you think you're being a contrarian? No. I'm telling you, it's the same reason why I like musicals in general, because it's a way for me to sort of access the parts of myself that aren't sort of like coated in cynicism and aren't automatically, like skeptical of everything and questioning everything. Like, it's just it's one of the ways that I can sort of experience the most earnest parts of myself, I guess.

[00:49:57]

And when she saw cats, that's how she responded to it earnestly. She couldn't get it out of her head.

[00:50:03]

The day after I saw cats, my my husband was taking a shower and I went in and I was like, I just need to talk to you about this.

[00:50:12]

Sorry. While he's in the shower, you go into the bathroom and start talking about cats. Yes. I mean, I was just talking at him about cats. I was just like and then this is what this guy looked like. And here's what all Deuteronomy did. An oh, my God, they had they had Ian McKellen like lapping up milk. And like the end, Judi Dench breaks the fourth wall and she says the cat is not a dog.

[00:50:33]

And I just need to tell you this because I don't know how to make sense of it. How often were you talking about it? Constantly. Constantly.

[00:50:46]

How often was she talking about it?

[00:50:48]

Every day, like, a lot of the time. This is her husband, Alex.

[00:50:55]

He looks like Greg Kinnear in the movies with Greg Kinnear is the good guy. Also, he looks really tired, but he's kind.

[00:51:02]

Maybe after the first day or two, it just like it became clear that this was a new obsession and it was here to stay. And how did that make you feel?

[00:51:13]

Sorry for myself.

[00:51:15]

What are the kinds of things that she talks to you about when she talks about this movie, things about the producers that I can't even remember, like how much money Andrew Lloyd Webber made and how much more wealthy he is than Paul McCartney, which kind of astounded me.

[00:51:32]

Is this the kind of thing where, like, you immediately knew you didn't care about any of this? Yeah, yeah, but was there a period of time where you were humoring her? Oh, for sure. I would definitely try to change the topic, play any other music that I could think of, play other music because it started playing the film soundtrack for the only other member of the family, their son, Solomon, a three year old.

[00:51:58]

And Solomon loved it, loved it immediately. And how often do you guys listen to it?

[00:52:03]

Almost every day. Alex basically went from living a life blissfully free of cats to living in an all cats household all the time.

[00:52:13]

He'll just come up to me and say, Daddy, I want Jellico cats or I want Rumple or something like that. And now I have to know what that means.

[00:52:24]

Alex could not understand his wife's love of this movie, which everyone else on the planet seemed to love to hate. The days went by then weeks. He definitely was like, I can't hear about this anymore, like it. And he has since said multiple times that it's ruined his life. If Alex didn't want to talk about cats anymore, E.J. wanted to be a good partner, so she went somewhere else. She announced a new plan in a tweet, quote, My husband couldn't listen to me talking about it anymore.

[00:52:57]

So I'm doing a podcast about the movie musical Cats. It's called Pod Cats.

[00:53:03]

Are you blind when you're born? Can You see In the Dark, which she co-hosts it with her friend Dan. Can you save your bite that it's worse than your bark? If you were and you are, you're the target audience for podcasts where it's pretty.

[00:53:16]

Yeah, it's kind of deeply embarrassing that, like, people, right. You know, are going to listen to the podcast and be like, who is this woman?

[00:53:27]

When you say podcast, you mean this American life? Both I yeah. Primarily podcasts, podcasts, the podcast.

[00:53:34]

We're also going to answer all of your burning questions about cats including but not limited to what's a Jellico cat?

[00:53:42]

What's a jellico. Cats, cats, cats. Cats. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

[00:53:51]

Is it true that you told AJ that Cats is ruining your life?

[00:53:55]

I've probably said that like like we get so little time to ourselves now. Like we have a three year old and we both work crazy hours. Like this is the way that you choose to spend your free time, like by going to see cats and making a podcast about it, like, how can you make that your free time?

[00:54:18]

So Alix's, I want to talk to his wife about this thing that she loves, which I get. Except for one thing, he's passing all of this judgement, but he's never actually seen the movie. So I set it up for all three of us to go see cats at the one theater within 234 miles that's still playing it.

[00:54:36]

We have decided to do this. We get to the theater just after 9:00 and take three seats in the back. E.J. and Alex next to each other. I'm next to Alex. I figured the theater would be empty. It wasn't.

[00:54:49]

All three of us take turns remarking on the surprisingly good turnout, which including US totals nine.

[00:54:56]

There are definitely more people than I thought there would be. In front of us are four teenagers slouched in their seats.

[00:55:03]

They're laughing throughout the previews, which makes me think they're probably stoned. E.J. notices them too. If people are not here for the right reason.

[00:55:13]

The film opens with a burlap sack tossed in an alleyway which obviously is full of alley cats. Dozens of them circle the disposed sack, hissing, also doing pirouettes. And just to be clear, by cats, I mean human adults with fur digitally attached their skin.

[00:55:31]

No one of them rips open the still moving bag, allowing whatever is inside of it to break free and what it is inside of this bag, also a cat.

[00:55:42]

Oh, no. Look what the cat dragged in. You can stop the ball on an empty stomach.

[00:55:50]

Look, I'm not going to pretend cats isn't a train wreck. Alex covers his mouth with his hand like he's hiding his abject horror.

[00:55:58]

But then about 15 minutes into the movie, when Rebel Wilson starts singing and dancing with a parade of cockroaches, I realized something.

[00:56:07]

He and Alex are on a really good date for most of the movie.

[00:56:11]

They hold hands.

[00:56:12]

Alex kisses Edge's palm three times, which coincides with the number of times she calls something the best part of the movie since she was. This is the best part.

[00:56:26]

I think what makes us a good date has nothing to do with what they're doing, but instead with the fact that they're doing it together.

[00:56:32]

When Judi Dench is old, Deuteronomy shows up who, by the way, is for some reason wearing a fur coat atop her little coat of fur.

[00:56:39]

Alex hums along with the rest of the cats who are there to welcome her because, of course, he knows the music. It's been playing in his house nonstop for months.

[00:56:48]

And he's really just. The movie ends just before midnight, E.J. says they need to get home back to their son and sister, we split a cab and I ask Alex how he liked this movie that to quote him has ruined his life.

[00:57:08]

I liked it a lot more than I thought I would, actually. And why I liked what's his name, e.g., the railway cat symbol things. Kimball things killed it.

[00:57:22]

So something you told me before we went in. Is that part of you really does think that he just kind of just being contrarian and liking this movie. And I'm wondering if you still feel that way. Do you still feel that way?

[00:57:35]

No, I don't. I don't feel that way. I think I kind of have an understanding. I could just I can see how, despite it being a horrible movie, you can, like, genuinely appreciate it. It just kind of feels good. It's kind of like joyous. I don't know. And I'm kind of. Yeah. I'm eager to unpack this with you more, A.J.. I think you're only going to feel that way for a limited period of time.

[00:58:03]

That's that's probably true. When movies end, the lights are still dim, the credits roll. There's this moment, it's just before people start getting up.

[00:58:15]

Everyone's quiet. It's like waking up from a dream. And then suddenly you check back into the reality of your own life. I figure that's the moment I'm catching Alex and the lights haven't totally gone back up yet.

[00:58:30]

This is not how he really feels. But then a week later, I got a text from E.J., she says that last night, while she and her son were listening to cats, Alex felt it along with the same song I caught him humming to at the movies.

[00:58:46]

I think he's turned, she says.

[00:58:54]

We Animosities is one of the producers of our show. Knowing how she's working on wall, you're doing this dance, don't talk stone talking as the ball comes back and says. I think to said. Our program is produced this week by William RCTs, people who put together today's show includes on the Baker Manual Buried in Chevis, No Guilt Damián Gravestone Nothing Catherine Raimondo, Nattie Raymond, Robert Semino was Ship Christopher Satava, Matt Tierney and Julie Whitaker. Managing editor for today's program was Diane Whipple, executive editor with David Kestenbaum.

[00:59:48]

Additional production help on today's rerun from Ari Sapperstein.

[00:59:51]

Special thanks. Today to Emily Lou Yangzhou, Robert to John Wesley Morton and Heaven Barney. I should begin with Michael Shulman. The book that he wrote about Meryl Streep is called Her Again. If you buy it on Amazon, don't forget to write a review of our website, This American Life Dog. We can listen to our archive of nearly 700 shows for absolutely free. This American life is delivered to public radio stations by parks. The Public Radio Exchange.

[01:00:15]

Thanks as always, for program's cofounder, Mr Malatya.

[01:00:18]

You know, whenever he comes to New York City, there's only one deli that he wants to go to for corned beef.

[01:00:23]

Cats, cats, cats. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I'll have what he's having an IRA Glass back next week with more stories of this American life. Next week on the podcast, This American Life, for a long time, people have said the SATs are biased against certain groups of kids and we should not require them.

[01:01:05]

And then this year, because of the pandemic, most of the top colleges stopped. I was studying. I had that book open, so I threw it across my bed. I wrote my mom was the first person I told. So I ran to her, gave her a hug. We like Joan. Who wins and who loses. Is the pandemic those college admissions into chaos next week on the podcast or your local public radio station?