484: Doppelgängers

This American Life

Society & Culture, News, Politics, Arts

4.6 • 88.8K Ratings

🗓️ 8 June 2025

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We got a tip about a meat plant selling pig intestines as fake calamari, wondered if it could be true, and decided to investigate. Doppelgängers, doubles, evil twins and not-so-evil twins, this week. Fred Armisen co-hosts with Ira Glass.

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Prologue: Fred Armisen worked up an imitation of Ira and put it into a sketch on Saturday Night Live a couple of years ago. But when they rehearsed it with an audience, there was not a roar of recognition; it seemed like Ira might not be famous enough to be mocked on network TV. Armisen finally gets a go as Ira’s doppelgänger in our studios by co-hosting this episode. (4 minutes)
Act One: Ben Calhoun tells a story of physical resemblance — not of a person, but of food. A while ago, a farmer walked through a pork processing plant in Oklahoma with a friend who managed it. He came across boxes stacked on the floor with labels that said "artificial calamari." So he asked his friend "What’s artificial calamari?" "Bung," his friend replied. "Hog rectum." Have you or I eaten bung dressed up as seafood? Ben investigated. (26 minutes)
Act Two: For decades, the writer Alex Kotlowitz has been writing about the inner cities and the toll of violence on young people. So when he heard about a program at Drexel University where guys from the inner city get counseling for PTSD, he wondered if the effect of urban violence was comparable to the trauma that a person experiences from war. Kotlowitz talks to a military vet from Afghanistan and a guy from Philadelphia who’s lived in some pretty bad neighborhoods to find out if they are doubles of some sort. (23 minutes)

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0:00.0	One, two, three.
0:02.2	One, two, three.
0:03.0	One, two, three.
0:04.0	One, two, three.
0:05.0	One, two, three.
0:06.0	One, two, three.
0:07.0	Sometimes things aren't what you think they are, and people aren't who you think they are.
0:15.0	That's what we're talking about today.
0:18.0	On my earglass.
0:20.0	That is really weird. Here you do that. I'm here. This is
0:24.9	actually Ira Glass. I'm sitting here with Fred Armisen. Hi. Hi. Who's probably best known for
0:30.4	Saturday Night but also Portlandia. And I knew that you had worked up an imitation of me because
0:36.5	we just happened to meet once.
0:38.8	And then you said something like, but you're not famous enough.
0:42.2	So I have no use for this on television.
0:44.8	I might have said that exactly.
0:47.1	Yeah.
0:48.8	Well, after that, this writer at S&L, Christine Nangle and I, we figured out a way to turn it into a sketch that we could put on weekend update.
0:57.0	The news segment on Saturday Night Live.
0:59.0	By chance NPR came up in the news. I think this was around the time that they were talking about cutting some of the funding.
1:05.0	Here to comment on NPR's troubles, the host of this American life, Ira Glass.
1:10.0	So I came out and I'm wearing your glasses and like a wig to look like you.
	...

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