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A quick warning, there are curse words that are unleashed 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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OK, so let's begin today's program with a story about a 25 year old reporter, namely me, at 25. Is that why you was on an NPR program car?

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Glad to hear it, though. I have to say, I think the 25 year old me would find this intro that I'm doing right now to the story to be kind of mumbly and understated. Here's how 25 year old me kicked off his story.

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And now, true to life adventure stories. Yeah, I had four, that's how I talk back then on the radio, today's adventure story began this way. I was sitting outside the office of Betty Bird. She's one of the producers of this radio program and she's blind and just going to set the tape right there.

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I have so much to say about this, but I'm just going to let this play for a minute or two.

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First, stay with me here, OK?

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I'm outside Betty Bird's office, and I overheard her tell this story. She was walking down the street. She was with a friend and some woman. A complete stranger walks up to the two of them, catches up to the two of them.

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And the stranger says to Betty, Well, how did you lose your sight? And I said, I don't usually share that with anybody except friends. And she said, well, I just want to know. I just I just want to know when did you lose your sight and how did it happen? And I said, well, I don't really care to discuss that with strangers. And she said, well, how I don't know what you certainly don't have a very Christian attitude.

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You should be grateful. I've given money to the blind. You should be grateful. I said you've never given any money to me, lady, and across the street to get away from her.

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Now, when I heard this story, I got really excited. And that's because the woman who I've been involved with for the past three years, her name is Karig Machine, has these sorts of experiences with strangers on the street.

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Sorry, I just can't help myself. I have to ask this again.

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Could there be a more awkward way to say my girlfriend than the woman I've been involved with for the past three years? Anyway, my girlfriend, Carrie, who's not blind, by the way, she's only got one full arm, her left arm stops at the elbow and complete strangers have approached her on the street to ask her what happened to her arm. So I didn't say anything about Carrie to Betty at the time. I was just eavesdropping. But I did go home and tell Carrie about Betty's story.

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And her response was shock and excitement of recognition. I've been pretty isolated from other people who are disabled for a number of complicated reasons, but I just have never been in a position to really trade those stories with anybody or to hear that other people have the same experience that I did. So I decided to try to capture stories like this. True to life, adventures with strangers approaching, disabled people on the street for other disabled people and for able bodied people to hear.

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I talked to five people, including Carrie and Betty. Here's Don Aveeno, and this one is a series of personal stories.

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Oliver had said pretty good, Tobi, great funny talkers, me jumping in now and then with narration to point out some bigger lessons that were supposed to draw from the stories playing this for my girlfriend this week excuse me, playing this for the woman I've been involved with for the last year and a half. She had this reaction, which was like, it's clear what you're trying to make and who you want to be, but you're not doing it right.

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And I think it's really a good way to put it. I was vaguely stumbling on my way to making the radio show that you listening to, right. The second where people, you know, come on and tell personal stories. But at twenty five, all the movies I make are really clunky.

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I'm trying so hard, like near the end of the story, when I try to point out some bigger idea from the story, it could not be more didactic.

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Now, if you're an able bodied person listening to this, I don't want to leave you now with fear.

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Somehow, if you scared that you'll say the wrong thing to some disabled person. Here are three general rules that you can follow. No. One, you shouldn't offer help to someone unless they actually look like they need help. And in that case, you should go up to them and you should ask them first if they want your help.

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It's really crazy that I thought that it would be necessary to say this after at that point. Eleven minutes of stories where non disabled people walk up to people with disabilities and make complete jackasses of themselves. Though I have to say I was surprised listening back to this recording, how good the interviews are like that part of it. I head down and also by my sheer desire to entertain this story was the kickoff to a series of stories about awkward encounters between people with disabilities and non disabled people.

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And in I sign up to the story, you can hear a little bit of how I sound today.

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Yes, but also a little bit of the teenage magician that I had been not that long before this.

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This is IRA Glass. I'll be back next week with more true to life adventure stories. Music, Maestro.

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Next week, we hear true life adventure stories from dinner parties, people tend to OK, then it's a clip from next week's story Disabled.

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And then tales of Embarrassment and Inappropriate Behavior by able bodied people next week on this public radio program. This version of the story ran a month before my 25th birthday, and then another version minus the organ music ran on All Things Considered a month after that birthday. And that point was not a beginner in radio.

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I've been doing radio for six years, and at the time I really wondered if I ever was going to get it, like I was a freelancer and I was so slow at making radio stories that to earn money. I also worked as a temp secretary and I would hear the NPR reporters that I admired the most cranking out these like perfect little gems of stories in a day or two. And it was like they had some I know some superpower that was somehow unavailable to me, no matter how hard I tried.

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At 25, I was still figuring a lot of things out.

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And I bring this up today because this fall marks the 25th anniversary of our program, this American Life.

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And rather than spend an hour looking back, it seemed more interesting to do a show about what it means to be 25, like not what it means for a radio show to be 25, because who cares what it means for a person to be 25 at such a particular age.

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You know, you're an adult, but you knew enough to it that it still can feel like you have a long way to go to turn yourself into the person you want to be. So today on our show, we've collected a bunch of stories about all kinds of 25 year olds, some of them struggling, some of them focused and accomplished and not struggling at all. And then a couple who are, you know, somewhere in between from Chicago, it's this American Life.

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I'm IRA Glass.

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Stay with us. Equine 29 vs. 19. So our first story in today's program is reported by one of the youngest people on our staff, nor Gil, who was 25 when she applied for her job. Here she is now 26 Hiner.

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Hi, IRA.

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So, Nora, before you get to the person who you're doing your story about, just take a second to remind older people what it is like to be the young, least experienced person in some workplace.

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I think it's like it's scary because you're trying to prove to people that you're not an idiot, but then you think you're an idiot too.

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So it's just it's hard. You worry about the smallest things, like stupid things, like how I would send email or like how I'm sitting in my chair. Like, I think you worry about how your coworkers are going to see you. And then you start to realize that no one even cares, like I've definitely shown up late and it made no difference, like nobody was paying attention at all.

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Everyone else is, like, so busy, no one pays attention. But that's like a good thing. Like, once I realized that I didn't feel. As stressed about every little thing. OK, so so the story that you put together that people will here now, it's about somebody who is 25 in the same kind of position that you're in, except in a job where the stakes are higher, right?

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Yeah, way higher. All right. Well, take it from here. I came across a profile in The New York Times this summer about a 25 year old who had a job that seemed very consequential, way more consequential than any I've had. She was a scientist working at the biotech company Regeneron, part of the team racing to find a treatment for covid where actual people's lives are on the line. And I remember thinking she's only 25. How to even get that job?

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Her name is Stephanie Jordano. I wasn't the only person who saw the article and reached out.

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Yeah, it was like teachers from high school, teachers from college, every single one of my ex boyfriends. Moms. That's funny.

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Why do you think you're the boyfriend's moms?

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Not to brag. I know I would invest to bring home to mom and dad in high school. So it's a category that was a superlative in my but you know, moms love thing, but like no unpolite. Stephanie is nice to talk to.

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She laughs a lot and she's funny. She has some pink in her hair. Working on a project like this wasn't some huge goal she'd set out for herself. She loves science, but she loves a lot of other stuff, too.

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Back in January, she was living in New York City with her roommate and commuting to the suburbs for work at Regeneron headquarters. And it was then that covid first became a part of her life much earlier than for most of us in the US and long before there are many confirmed cases or anything close down. She first heard about it at work and didn't think too much of it.

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I guess it was like early mid January when it became like a topic of conversation, like in the lab, not really in like my social sphere is like with anyone else. It was like, honestly, in the beginning, it was just sort of like chatting. It was like, let's just keep an eye on it and see how it spreads. It was like really just like a side idea at the time. And then it got really intense.

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Regeneron has thousands of employees working on all sorts of things. Steffanie, happen to sit right between the two people in her department who are spearheading the covid project. Kristen, the lead set next to her.

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And then right behind me was Vincenzo, who is also on the rapid response team.

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The rapid response team wasn't working on a vaccine. They were making a drug to treat people who got covid and helped them recover. The idea was to make a cocktail of different antibodies to neutralize the virus. Christine and Vincenzo, we're talking about the plan constantly across Stephanie's desk, and Stephanie couldn't help but overhear, but she was busy with her own assignments until one night. This was still back in January, early in the outbreak, when she was getting ready to take the five 30 shuttle bus tour train back to the city.

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She saw Kristen and Vincenzo were in for another late night and offered to stay back and help.

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I saw like if another set of hands were there and that they can go home at like 8:00 p.m. instead of like nine, 30 p.m. At that point, I didn't realize that one day would probably be a lot longer than just one day of taking the shuttle, raising your hand to be the one who stays late.

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This is something we know how to do at twenty five.

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I'm very familiar with this move.

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Within a few days, Stephanie had dropped all her other projects and was working full time on the covid treatment. Her teams project was to come up with a way to quickly screen which antibodies actually worked against the virus.

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As part of that project, Stephanie's assignment was to make what she calls a virus like particle, a fake version of the coronavirus that could infect cells.

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It came down to testing hundreds of different recipes, getting the conditions exactly right. She was working long hours, lots of weekends as the team rushed to get the project in place.

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Her job was slowly becoming her entire life. At some point in February, months before anyone was wearing masks before covid was even officially a pandemic, she started to get nervous riding the pack train every day to work. So in March, she moved from our apartment in Manhattan to a temporary place near a generals headquarters and threw herself fully into the project.

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I was so excited. Yeah, it was a. It was just like a pretty huge undertaking. It was a little sad. I felt really weird leaving the city. I felt weird, like I couldn't see anyone, so I didn't see my boyfriend for like almost two months and it felt really. It felt really hard to prioritize what at the time it was just like my job, just like putting my job before, a lot of things that I normally prioritize.

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But I just knew that, like in my heart, that this was going to be something much more important. After that, every day she'd wake up in her empty Airbnb drive, the seven minutes it took to get to the lab, spend hours each day alone in that lab that had to be kept dark, staring into a microscope. She stay there until around 10:00 or later, only to drive back and do it all over again. It was just really lonely.

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I've never, ever lived alone without any roommates before. So that was really weird. It was really quiet.

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Like, was there a day or a week that it was just like so lonely that you thought maybe you couldn't to do this anymore?

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I just remember being about like one 30 in the morning and the TV in the bedroom. I didn't really know how to use the remote because I never really watched it and I just turned it on. And it was on PBS and it was LCD Soundsystem was like live recording and like. From like 20, 12 inches to me, incredibly sad, and then they played the song All My Friends, which is just like this song about like. No matter what, like at the end of the day, whatever happens, you have people in your life like they're always going to be with you.

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I was like in this apartment alone doing God knows what. Haven't seen anyone I love and care about and don't know the next time that I will. And I was just like watching. I just sort of hysterically crying, which is like really dramatic. But I think that was probably the lowest moment. Meanwhile, outside of Stefanie's Airbnb in the lab, things were turning for the worst hospitals in New York worried about having enough PPE. The school's restaurants and bars started shutting down.

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There was one moment during those first few intense months of work that stood out to Stephanie. It was when she finally got one of the first key steps in the experiment to work. She was testing to see if her virus like particles, the fake viruses were infecting cells and acting like the real thing. To do this, she designed an experiment that would cause cells to glow green if they were infected. She spent days trying to get the conditions right and then one day.

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Oh, my God, I was on the unlink the ice, one of our microscopes here. And you can scan the whole place and it's like three thousand images. And I just remember, like, it hit like fifteen hundred. And I saw green and I was like, oh. And I just like ran out of the room and found my balls and guibord. How did your boss react? I think you I think everyone else was like, yeah, it works because it was for me.

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I was like when I did it.

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And when you're new and not used to things going right, even getting the smallest thing to work out can feel huge. Getting those cells light up green was just a tiny step in a thousand other steps that ultimately worked out. Regeneron started testing their antibody cocktail in June. It was one of the treatments President Trump got back in October and it was just approved to be used in emergencies by the FDA last month. It's not a cure all, but the treatment has been shown to help some high risk patients.

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Do you ever feel like like this is going to be a sports analogy, but like you're a rookie who played a couple innings on a team that won the World Series. Do you ever feel like that?

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Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That's a really good way to put it. I guess the stick with the sports analogy, like a lot of the time, like in like big meetings and stuff, like I would be like on the sidelines, you know, like listening in. And even if it was like data that, like I helped, like, generate, I'd still be like, wow, who put that together? That looks amazing.

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You're so modest, Stephanie. I wish I could be like anything I like. I could fluctuate between, like thinking like I am a God does not really feel like being like, wow, like I look awesome. I'm doing awesome. I got a 401k like, yeah, that's better than me.

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And I'm like, oh, you know, I'm just like a regular idiot.

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Just trying to figure out, do you think this is going to be the biggest thing you'll ever do in your life?

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It's kind of sad to think of it like that, but I can't imagine anything else being being as impactful, hopefully.

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It doesn't end here, so it's not all downhill from here. It might be a quarter life crisis. You know, I just I let myself go. I don't know. But I hope not. I'm hopeful about it. She told me she knows she is in some super genius. A lot of scientists could have done what she did. She just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

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Nergal is the direction Photoshop.

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Back to buy like a butterfly. So we turn next to another 25 year old who's already achieved some things in her life, in fact, achieved at a level that most of us never get to, even when we're older.

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Her name is Claressa Shields, and she has won two Olympic gold medals in women's boxing. And in addition to that, all kinds of other championship titles and belts and accolades.

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But this year, this year at 25, her big accomplishment was different, with boxing shut down for covid. She bought a house, she bought a house on the outskirts of her hometown, Flint, Michigan, Suja Johnson has known Caressa for almost a decade. She made a radio story about caressa with the documentary series Radio Diaries and then produced a film about her called T. Rex, her fight for gold.

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She got in touch again with Caressa to ask about this latest achievement.

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The idea of Clarissa owning a house is wild to me because I've known her since she was 16. I met her at a boxing tournament in 2011. I was photographing and interviewing the women who were competing to be on the first ever Olympic team for women's boxing. It was Clarissa's first adult tournament, and she made heads turn more soon.

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She was faster and stronger than any other boxer. But what really caught my attention was this determined look in her eyes that in the way she touched her chest when she won like she was already the greatest, Clarissa's one of my favorite people. It's been a privilege to have a front row seat on her life all these years, including this new chapter ever since she was 16. She told me she wanted two things, a gold medal. She got her first one a year later and a house, a safe place for her and her family.

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All right. She gave me a little tour of it on face time.

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So here we are. And my house, this is my fireplace here on top of my fireplace.

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I have, of course, my TV. Then I have the 20 20 Barbie doll of the year. That's my smoke detector, haven't changed batteries. It's nice, not massive, but big brick and grey vinyl siding with generous windows, a two car garage. It's got three bedrooms, a Jacuzzi in the master bathroom, which was a big selling point. She says when she first saw the living room, she thought she'd need three or four couches to fill the space.

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There's also a pool in the back that she says can fit about 20 people in a yard in the dining room, along welcoming table set for eight. And at the head of it, a hint of her royalty.

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The queen tier is down there. Oh, my. Is my chair. Oh, there are the other chair. I don't even have the studded diamonds.

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That one does have a chair studded with real diamonds.

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Why not? Because you have a throne. I don't know. Just enough of that.

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Chairs in all to chair. So it didn't cost like that much. And then we come over here. I have my trophy case, which I only got one my daughter feel turning twenty five.

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The most exciting thing that I've done is buy my house. I'm like a big person with numbers, so 25, you know, two plus five or seven and seven is my favorite number. So I knew that something special happened at twenty five in my life, but I just didn't see me like buying like, like buying a house. It all just kind of just happened. Yeah, I just feel like it's the opposite of what I grew up in.

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Clarissa never had a solid home for very long growing up. She lived at something like a dozen addresses before she was 17, had to deal with all kinds of abuse and deprivation, and it started early. She was moved out of her mom's place when she was five.

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And I live with my grandmother to the age of nine. And all this time I spent away from my younger brothers and my sisters also to move back and my mom abusing alcohol and moved out from with my mom and moved in with my coach, Jason. That was my decision.

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Jason and his wife Maggie. Clarissa calls her mama, Mickey. That was when she was 17, the first time she had her own bed, her own room. She was there a little more than a year, then started living on her own, lived in Colorado for a couple of years, in Florida for a couple more. I was rented. So now having an entire house of her own, it's a big deal.

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And I have to say, like, I've had some great moments in my life as I am a two time Olympic gold medalist and nine time world champion and three division world champion faster than any other male boxer in history, but any other boxer in history, period. But when I got the keys to my house, it was over. Well, my feeling of like. Joy and.

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Internal happiness of knowing that I'll never be homeless ever again in my life, like I'll never have to worry about where I'm going to live, you know, my family, if they need somewhere to come stay, if I can't find them somewhere to stay, always have an extra room for them and just game like this whole sense of just like you really grown now.

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I mean, I have a therapist now just to help me deal with the stress of just not being able to fight, all of her fights were canceled this year because of coronavirus.

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She says it's been really hard on her because I'm used to fighting all the time and being on TV and always being on the go. And it's like having to deal with all the trolls on Instagram and Twitter and just deal with life in general and how to express my emotions. Not with anger, but. And not with tears and nothing, it's a depression. Depression is too hard to do it by myself, so. That's twenty five year old decisions putting yourself in therapy.

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Yeah. I couldn't imagine being 17, owning a house, why it just wouldn't work out like I would I would throw parties all the time.

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To paraphrase Corinthians, when Clarissa was a kid, she had the dreams of a kid. She told me when she was 16 that she wanted to have 10 children by the age of twenty six, not factoring in the difficult math of that or how 10 pregnancies might affect her boxing career.

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She laughs about that now. But the spirit of that dream has stayed with her surrounding herself, with family being a protector. And slowly, the details became more realistic, she thought winning the gold medals would lead to a bunch of endorsement deals and that she could buy a house not just for herself, but for her mom, preferably somewhere other than Flint, which can be pretty rough.

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But the endorsements didn't materialize. So she made the transition from the amateurs to the pros, started earning a steady living as a boxer, and she thought she could at least convince her family to move away with her, which is why it was surprising to me that she wound up at the house in Flint.

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I remember the goal that you had was to get out of Flint. Mm hmm. That was one of the reasons why you wanted to get the gold medal. So that you and your family could get out of Flint is you wouldn't have to live there. I don't know, I want a better life for myself, you know, I want to be more financially stable. I wanted to have, you know, food to be. So I don't think it was like not being clean.

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I think it's more like I just don't want to be poor.

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And what about, like, getting your family out? That used to talk a lot about getting your family out of Flint to like, you know, keep them safe over time.

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I've also tried they're like when I moved to Florida, my younger brother moved with me, but my younger sister, my mother wouldn't wouldn't come. It was like, all right, so now I'm just in Florida with none of my family except my little brother, the I quite a little bit. Well, we were talking four of Clarissa's nieces were huddled together on the big gray sectional sofa in the living room, her nieces and nephews are over a lot these days playing video games, jumping in the pool.

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She's strict with them sometimes when the house gets messy. She makes her nephew fat. Daddy do the vacuuming, but she likes having them all there.

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And there aren't 10 of them. There are 11. She's filled her house with a bevy of kids like she wanted, just not in the way she expected, which is true generally for her at the moment, the life she has now with the house in Flint. It's not what she imagined, but it fits all her needs and desires. It's what boxers do. They respond to what's thrown at them. And they just. But she says this isn't the end.

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She still has big dreams. In fact, she just announced that she signed a multiyear deal to be a mixed martial arts fighter where the money is better for women.

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She wants to buy a second house, a mansion in Vegas.

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To Jay Johnson, she's a writer and filmmaker, her film tracks about his journey to the Olympics. You can find at PBS, Doug. Coming up, a woman of twenty five who decides after years of saying no to her parents about something, try tried their way for once. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

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This American Life mirrored glass, today's program, 25 to commemorate our 25th year on the air, we have stories today about people, human beings who were created the same year as our program. We have stories of 25 year olds.

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And I just want to note before we go to the next story, that the one other thing that we've done to mark our 25th year is that we set up a webpage with a list of favorite episodes from over the years. It has the very easy to remember address this American Life dog slash 25 years.

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And if you go there, you'll see a mix of like audience favorites, but also like some deep cuts.

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I bet you have never heard or you probably don't remember if you did hear my personal suggestion among those, OK, is is the show called I Am from the private sector and I'm here to help where Nancy Updike takes you into this world of like not the American military, but the private contractors who worked alongside the military in Baghdad in 2004. And the episode is like part I don't know, like the office or Veep and part, you know, like a war.

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There are lots of other shows in addition to that one ready for your holiday, listening while you're cooking or shopping online or whatever. Anyway, this American Life dog, 25 years. And with that, we have arrived at Act three of our show, Act three, the rest of his life.

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So some of us here at the radio show read this essay back in June that really got to us that Michael Jackson wrote about a 25 year old, the essays about Ahmad Aubury, who was 25 when he was pursued by three white men in Georgia and shot to death while out for a run.

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The essay was published in Runner's World magazine. And as you'll hear, it leans into the running parts of things just a little bit. But it's also so much more than that. Mitchell talked to Ahmad's closest friends and his family members to create a portrait of a moderate that is really unlike anything else we had seen about him. We ask Mitchell to adapt a version of his essay for our program today. Here he is. Imod Obree, by all accounts, love to run, but he wasn't, by his own account, a runner.

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There's no evidence of my training for 10 K's or full hour half marathons or obsessing over his miles or PRR times, but he loved it. My would run in a white t shirt and khaki shorts, he'd run shirtless and basketball shorts, he'd run in a tank top and hoop shoes as his day one homeboy came, something he could run and anything. When I came home from college, he and my were cruised to one end of the longest spanning bridge in all of Georgia.

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They do some warm up stretching and jump back and forth across at a distance of just under three miles. The pair would keep a steady pace, but sometimes Cheam says Ma would push him.

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On February twenty third of this year, Mott went out for a run. The location of this run was a subdivision in Glynn County called Sutil Assures it's a neighborhood and waterfront properties of upper and middle class families of retired folk and fresh transplants. No one can know for sure the route he took before reaching satellite shores, but he set off from his home. So that means there's a good chance, though, his run, he passed homes, flying a Confederate flag with a don't tread on me Gadsden flag and hell homes warning no trespassing.

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On February 20 30, when mom went jogging, he was dressed and light colored, low top 90s and white t shirt and khaki cargo shorts. Dad, who was twenty five years old, child alone. My family home in Brunswick, the one where he lived at the time he was killed, is a mere two miles from satellite shores. But in meaningful ways, it's almost another country. Matter of fact, the poverty rate of white, young, black residents call the week is a staggering thirty eight percent.

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The week is where my my kids armory was born on May eight nineteen ninety four. It was a third love child of Wonder Cooper Jones and Marcus Aubury senior. They're working class family, including his older brother, Marcus Buck Jr. and sister Jasmine. The family called Amont Cares, a shortened version of his middle name, while his friends call it mud. Mine had a slight gap in his front teeth and dark skin, forever burnished by hours outside. When Matt was a middle school, the family moved to a small White House in Breckenridge Drive where continue to share a room with his brother Perry's Big Brother book, My was the slob.

[00:33:39]

In high school, I landed a gig at the local McDonald's. He did it to keep some scratch in his pocket, but also to help his mother, who often worked two jobs. Some days, my homeboy Keane would swoop in from work and wear them to the Golden Isles YMCA. They would hope and work out for six or seven hours straight before popping over to the Glam Place Mall for the prize and wine combo at American Deli and heading right back for Buku hours, more of plane and training.

[00:34:09]

Back then, my favorite slim jeans, bright color polo and rugby, and kept his hair shorn low. But the Christmas event chops my played football from the Peewee Me to high school and ended up an undersized varsity linebacker. But he was also a team captain who led US Brunswick High School pirates and pregame chants, though never counted or strong on super hard and fearlessness on the field and often astonishes coaches with big hits in his senior year made the storied Florida Georgia more of the border all star game.

[00:34:46]

Not to mention this was South Georgia football. So my compete in a league that produced pros and play before some of the biggest high school football crowds in the country. Before it was an all star, though, my tore his ACL the meniscus in a GB game while the less dedicated player might have given up. He committed to a laborious rehab his junior year. He wore a leg brace, a hindrance that diminished his chance of playing in college like mud.

[00:35:18]

I was a passionate high school athlete. My sport was who? Like mud, no major college program offered me a scholarship. Both mine and me intended small schools in our home state market after a year and returned to Brunswick in his mother's home. I, too, quit my first community college, but unlike mine, there was no need to return home to my mother's cramped apartment as I was living there all the while. The year after he graduated, MIT was arrested for carrying a gun and sentenced to five years of probation, which he violated by shoplifting.

[00:35:53]

A few years after I graduated high school, I was arrested with drugs and a gun and sentenced to 16 months in an Oregon state prison. At 25, Mar was a runner, whatever reason to believe his life had more miles ahead of it. The behind it at twenty five Ironroad in the first of two graduate writing programs today. My dear God, why is Dad and I by grace, I'm a writer professor hurtling toward middle age. And one on four p.m. on February 2013, a security camera shows twenty five year old Ahmad Aubury wandering up a sunny patch of narrow road and stopping on the lawn of a sand colored under-construction bungalow addressed to 20 satellite drive.

[00:36:47]

Maybe he wondered what the skeleton of beams and sheetrock and piping and wire would look like when it was finished. Maybe he imagined a family who could afford to live in a place so close to the water. Well, we know for sure is that while inside my tent, none of the construction materials laying about. We also know that wasn't the first person whose curiosity urged them into the site. Security cameras recorded a white couple one evening, a pair of white boys one day, and on four occasions what appears to be the same person, a slim young black man with wild natural hair and tattoos on his shoulders and arms.

[00:37:26]

The home owner will confirm that nothing was ever stolen or damaged during any of the visits. And one or seven p.m., a neighbor spying on my dad called 911 one, there's a guy in the house right now, he told the dispatcher and went on to describe my black guy white T-shirt. The dispatcher replied, I just need to know what he was doing wrong, the collar and watch me leave the sign. He's running down the street. He said to the dispatcher, My dog past the house located a few doors down.

[00:38:00]

Another neighbor, Gregory McMichael, an ex cop that had once had his power to arrest. Stripped for failing to obtain use of force training, Gregory and his son Travis MacMichael arm themselves the son with a shotgun in the father with a three fifty seven and hopped in a white Ford pickup truck from his front yard. William Rodding Brian saw his neighbors hounding. Matt jumped in his pickup and joined the chase. Mud ran in double back to elude the McMichaels, maybe recalling all the times he joked a would be tackler on the field only to find himself facing down Brian's pickup.

[00:38:42]

The other MacMichael Gregory climbed into the bed of his son's truck, the one with the Confederate decal toolbox. Armed with this 357, he called nine one one. There's a black male running down the street, Gregory told Dispatch Mudflat four minutes. That must have felt like an eone.

[00:39:04]

He found himself running toward a red faced Travis MacMichael, who stood inside the door of his truck with a shotgun name, by one way and the other. Stop right there. Damage stop shot at Gregory my crossed in front of the hood of the truck with Travis head in the mouth and shot him and no more than a heartbeat.

[00:39:25]

The buckshot hit me in the chest, puncturing his right lung, ribs and sternum, and yet somehow he wrestled with Travis for the shotgun and yet somehow he managed to punch at him, fighting for what he must have sensed for the rest of his life. Travis fired a shotgun a second time grazi Mustang, he fired a third point blank shot, this time piercing mud in his upper chest. Shotgun in hand, Travis backed away watch might collapse in May, not the slightest effort to tend him.

[00:40:00]

Are the police report his father, still clutching his revolver, ran to wear my face down, blood leaking out of his wounds, rolled him on his back and checked for weapons that he or no one else found. Glynn County police siren onto still a drive within seconds of the slain, they caught in the scene and investigated. They question the McMichaels Gregoris hands bloody from rolling mud onto his back. They also questioned William Bryan. And in an act that is itself another violence they let out, we go about their merry way is free man for almost three months.

[00:40:40]

But before those squad cars reached the scene, Travis MacMichael, per Brian's statement to investigators in May, called the twenty five year old whose life he just see supercharging a fucking inWorld.

[00:40:59]

Ask yourself who deserves to run, who has the right to ask yourself, who's a runner, what do they look like? Ask yourself where do they live and what do they run and where can't they live and where can't they run past? What are the sanctions for selling the right to live and run or goddamn you mean to even exist in the world in question that two. The NAACP wants to find lynching as a death in which one there was evidence that a person was killed to the death was illegal.

[00:41:37]

And three, a group of at least three actors participated in the killing. On February twenty third, twenty twenty, a black man out for a run was lynched in Glynn County, Georgia. He was twenty five years young, his name was Imod, Marcus Aubury, called Kids by his beloved son, marred by most others. And what I want you to know about my God is that he had a gift for impression's and a special knack for mimicking Martin Lawrence.

[00:42:05]

And what I want you to know about my dad is that he was fond of sweets and requested his mother's fudge cake for the birthday parties. You often share with his big sister that he signed the cards he bought for his mother, baby boy. That he jammed his pinky hooping in high school and instead of getting it treated like his sister, Jasmine advised, he let it heal on its own, forever bent. What I want you to know about Mod is that the love of his short life, Shenise told me he sometimes recorded their conversations so he could listen to her voice when they were apart.

[00:42:39]

What you should know about mine is that he adored his nephews, Marcus the Third, and Michael Aubrey, that when they were upset as babies, he'd take them for long walks in their stroller until they calmed. But you should know about Mod is that when a college friend asks his big sister, which parents she called first ever in serious trouble, she said neither did she call him. What I want you to know about my dad is that he was an avid connoisseur of the make chicken sandwich with cheese, you should know that my dreams of a career as an electrician and of owning a construction company, you should know that he told his boys and he wanted them all to buy a huge plot of land, good houses on it and live in a gated community with their families.

[00:43:22]

You should know that mine never flew on a plane, but wondered last year for trips to Jamaica, Africa, Japan, what you must know about money is that when Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael and William Riley Bryant stalked and killed him less than three months shy was twenty six birthday. He left behind his mother, Wanda, his father, Marcus, Cynthia, his brother Buck, his sister Jasmine, his maternal grandmother, Ella, his nephews, six uncles, tennants, a host of cousins, all of whom are unimaginably, irrevocably incontrovertibly poor from his absence.

[00:44:01]

Amide Markets Arbor was more than a viral video. He was more than a hashtag or a name on a list of tragic victims. He was more than a headline or an op ed or a news package with a news cycle with more than a retweeted or shared post. He doubtless was more than our likes or emoji tears or hearts or praying hands. He was more than IRP t shirt or placard, you were damn sure was more than the latest reason for your liberal white friends.

[00:44:28]

Ephemeral outrage. He was more than a rally or march, was more than a symbol, more than a movement, more than a cause. He was loved. Mitchell Jackson, the full essay that he wrote about him out Aubury, you can read online, it was in Runner's World. He's a poet, a fiction writer. His latest book is a memoir. It is called Survival Math Notes on an all-American Family. They, McMichaels and William Bryan have been indicted on nine charges, each, including malice murder and four counts of felony murder.

[00:45:04]

All three men have pleaded not guilty.

[00:45:06]

I'll play you catch. By your streets be paved with gold. For Bachelorette in Arlington, Linda Mohammed turned 25 this July in May, maybe the last place that she expected to be back at her parents house in Texas.

[00:45:55]

She had fought hard to get out of that home. Her parents, Palestinian with traditional values and of the four kids in her family. Lina is the only one to move out before getting married and without getting married, she moved away to pursue a career. Being independent is very important to her. But then covid hit.

[00:46:13]

Lina explains what happened after two months in lockdown alone.

[00:46:17]

I thought I was doing OK, but when I did a story for my job at The Washington Post, where I admitted to a former prisoner who was kept in solitary confinement in Iran that I was losing my mind, and did he have any advice on how I could cope? My boss gently suggested that maybe moving home to Texas back in with my parents was a way to go. It was a hard decision to make. To my surprise, being home was actually fun.

[00:46:46]

I forgot how much my parents act like comedy duo. They make fun of each other. When my dad, who I call Baba Misplaces his tools, he'll start yelling and gesturing wildly. Obama will start mimicking him until he realizes how ridiculous he looks and laughs.

[00:47:02]

I'm their only child who he grew up in both Jordan and the U.S. So the one thing they're in alliance on is making fun of how American I am. This was the good side of being home, the bad side.

[00:47:14]

I was immediately reminded of all the ways my parents felt responsible for directing my life. Mama interrupted a work Zoome meeting to tell me to make my bed and Warlick Michelle a letter to be held better, which means please, for the sake of God, clean this dumpster. We also get into screaming matches about how I don't pray enough, which is a funny thing to scream about. And always we fight about the fact that I am not yet married. I'd be fixing my hijab in the kitchen and she'd sneak up behind me.

[00:47:47]

Lina, if you wear high like that, your hairline will recede and you'll end up alone. What?

[00:47:53]

I'm only trying to help. In her eyes, I should have gotten married by at least 23 and now I was about to turn 25, which sent Obama into panic mode 25.

[00:48:08]

For many Arab women like me, turning 25 feels like the cutoff age for eligibility, especially if you come from a lower class family, which I do. I grew up hearing about that age and fearing it.

[00:48:22]

At 25, you start getting called Arnis, which means spinster momma will say, Do you think you're still young? Of course I'm still young.

[00:48:33]

To what she'll respond Ellika, Dick and Hamar roulade, which means other girls your age have so many kids, it's uncountable. The thing is, they act like I don't want to get married, but I do, I want to find someone. In fact, I always imagined I'd be married by now. I just didn't want to do it the way my parents expected a traditional arranged marriage. I thought it would happen naturally. It hasn't. I even almost got married when I was 19, but that was a disaster.

[00:49:05]

Since then, I've tried my way. I've dated in college. I've also used Tinder Bumble Tinder, which is the Muslim tinder and must match and unfortunately named Muslim dating app. It has not worked. One guy really understood the Arab side of me but couldn't speak English. Another was so funny. But look down on women who swore the guy I was engaged to was charming but so controlling that he was adamantly opposed to me interviewing men. Which is hard when you're a journalist.

[00:49:38]

After all that, I was still alone. So a few weeks before my 25th birthday when Mama got a call seemingly out of the blue about an eligible boy, I did something I'd never done before. I said, OK, I'll meet him partly to please her and get her off my back.

[00:49:56]

And partly because I realized if I was so bad at choosing for myself, who's to say my parents can do better?

[00:50:03]

So I agreed to a traditional setup. Our mothers arranged for our first date with both sets of parents and my family's living room.

[00:50:12]

Mama, help me get ready. As I was getting dressed, she reminded me of all the things I couldn't do. Don't you dare tell him that you have PCOS, that's polycystic ovarian syndrome.

[00:50:23]

It could make him worried. You can't have kids. Don't bring up that you're taking antidepressants, have anxiety or that you go to therapy or that you were married. It was technically just an engagement or that you've ever dated before. If he asks about any of this, change the subject.

[00:50:41]

My dad arrived, he was actually kind of cute in person, but it was awkward. I mean, our parents were on a date with us, though it became a rare glimpse into what my parents are like on dates.

[00:50:53]

Mama turns out, is an overshare and Bubba is super chill on these living room dates.

[00:51:01]

I shouldn't be the one asking the questions because it's considered the man's job to initiate all conversation. But the guy isn't saying anything. So Barbara jumped in acting like my standon. He knows what I'm looking for in a guy. So all his questions were secretly related to my deal breakers, like I want to be with someone who speaks Arabic. Baba started grilling him. How good is your Arabic? Can you read and write? His mom answered for him.

[00:51:27]

Of course he can. Suddenly the two parents were battling it out.

[00:51:32]

Baba said, Can you recite Koran? His mother jumped in. Yes, and his voice is so beautiful. The guy interrupted her. Actually, I can't. I burst out laughing. I was on the fence. This man wouldn't even make eye contact with me. OK, so he's a shy guy. That means I'd have to drastically tone myself down. But then when he told Baba that for his job he can live and work anywhere, I got excited.

[00:52:01]

Other guys had always expected me to give up my career and follow theirs with this guy. I could keep my job and he could tag along. So what if we have nothing else in common? But then his mom started talking to me.

[00:52:15]

I was telling her about my life in DC, blah, blah, blah, when she caught me off and said, Yeah, I saw that in the ad. My mind just completely stopped the ad. Try not to show her that I was clearly surprised, but in my head I was like, what the fuck is this woman talking about? What ad? I thought someone just happened to suggest to our mothers that we meet. But there was an ad, mama, who clearly heard this, too, acted like she didn't.

[00:52:45]

They change the subject.

[00:52:46]

But by the time we got to coffee, it was all I could think about.

[00:52:52]

As soon as they left, Mama explained it wasn't her, but the arrow, it was a friend, but mama left it up and kept it from me because she thought I'd hate it. I found the ad. I hate it.

[00:53:04]

It starts with a line of pink emoji, flowers and emoji I would never use, by the way. Then it reads 25 year old Palestinian born in Jordan, living in the U.S. since 2012, studied here.

[00:53:19]

Beautiful, fair skin, blue eyes, veiled, beautiful Tabata, Kurama, Lapuerta, labeller blessed be the most gracious.

[00:53:28]

There is no power except in Allah. She got married without sexual relations. That's referring to the engagement. I broke off her request as a highly educated young man. Contact me for the mothers. No serious inquiries, only everything about it makes me cringe.

[00:53:46]

The fact it exists, the details, it includes. My eyes aren't even blue.

[00:53:51]

I don't like what they're selling, my white skin, my lack of sexual relations. It doesn't include anything about me that I'm proud of or anything that actually mattered.

[00:54:02]

The ad lays out so plainly the enormous gap between who I am and who I would need to be to match with someone in my community. The description of this Lena is so far from me, it kind of hurts to read. Looking at the ad, I realized I'm probably not going to find the partner, I want someone who's in between two worlds in the ways I am, in the ways I want to keep being.

[00:54:30]

It feels so final. I am 25 and there is no one for me.

[00:54:37]

But for what it's worth, if I were to rewrite the ad, here's what it would say llena twenty five wants to become a foreign correspondent, loves finding and making stories. She's religious in her own way. She fasts but doesn't pray. She reads the Koran daily but has smoked weed before. She has PCOS, goes to therapy, has been depressed, has had anxiety, has a mustache and a beard, will not relocate for a man's career, will not erase herself for your approval.

[00:55:11]

Worries this means she will end up alone.

[00:55:20]

Mohammed, she's a producer of the daily WashingtonPost podcast, Post reports you can find her. Yes. Right now on Bumbo.

[00:55:33]

Is it too late now, Kazantsev? I could fly, I could be behind their. Leave plenty of lies there, 25. But are you scared again, get an order was the turning coat in this song that you're hearing right now by twenty five year old Robbie Grote has written for our program today, performed by the Philadelphia band The Districts with Katherine Lampaul. Our program is produced today by Sean Cole and Diane Whu.

[00:56:55]

People put together Today Show includes Dragoon Me, I own a Baker, Susan Burton, Ben Calhoun, Dennis Revesby with the Cornfeld, Jill Damián grave kind of Joffre Walt Mickey, Miguelina Midcity, St. Nelson, Catherine Reymundo, Ben Feiglin, Nadia Raymonde, Robyn Semien, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Satava and Matt Tierney, our managing editor. Sarah Abdurrahman, senior editor David Kestenbaum, our executive editor.

[00:57:14]

As Manuell Barry, special thanks to David Lee Sapolsky Guy Hager Chunying Jinyang to the young Oliver Wang, Pnina Beed, Julian Brizzi, Jeremy Willis, Ginna, Greg Wushan, Joe Richman, Tony Householder, Jasmine and Becca Consignee. Alex Might Rorschach's in Memory, Alex Lee, Katrina Montano's and Daliah Jones. Quick reminder about the Web page that we have set up with favorite episodes from about 25 years on the air.

[00:57:36]

Their little blurbs to me explaining what is so special about each of the shows, the website address. So easy to remember. You could probably say it along with me right now, right.

[00:57:43]

This American Life, August 25 years. Those are the numbers, two and five in there. This American life is delivered to public radio stations by parks. The Public Radio Exchange support for this American life comes from Sitka. Salmon shares a community supported fishery delivering seasonal shares of traceable wild Alaska seafood, meet their fleet access recipes and order at Sitka Salmon shares.

[00:58:07]

Dotcom used code to call for a special discount.

[00:58:11]

Thanks as always. The program's co-founder, Mr. Troy Maletta. You know, when he was 25, he was at Woodstock.

[00:58:17]

You know, all the smoke in the air from all that weed toy was not used to that at all.

[00:58:23]

Kept falling asleep and while the bands played, he'd wake up now and then to say there'd be quite a little bit.

[00:58:30]

I'm IRA Glass, back next week with more true to life adventure stories.

[00:58:35]

Hit it, Maestro. Next week on the podcast of this American Life wildfire season, it's lasting longer and longer in California for the teams that are fighting these massive fires month after month, it's like Groundhog Day.

[00:59:04]

Wake up, fight the fire, come back, sleep, wake up and repeat, as one guy put it, our with low pay, miserable conditions.

[00:59:12]

And anymore, you guys, why is that an official motto or official model living in a fire camp next week on the podcast or on your local public radio station?