676: Here’s Looking at You, Kid
This American Life
This American Life
4.5 • 91.3K Ratings
🗓️ 24 May 2026
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Adults telling kids who they are, and kids wondering — are they right?
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- Prologue: Host Ira talks with comedian Gary Gulman about his transformation from high school nobody to football star. (8 minutes)
- Act One: Gary puts on a tough guy costume, but will it turn him into a tough guy? Ira continues Gary Gulman’s story. (17 minutes)
- Act Two: Eleanor Gordon-Smith tells the story of a woman who wants to know why she was taken away from her mom as a kid. A version of this story is in Eleanor’s book Stop Being Reasonable: How We Really Change Our Minds. (30 minutes)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeaped in today's episode of the show. |
| 0:05.3 | If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. |
| 0:11.7 | Gary did not want to become a football player. |
| 0:14.1 | No interest in the game at all. |
| 0:16.0 | He was a timid kid, the kind of kid who, in baseball, would close his eyes when he was up at bat. |
| 0:20.9 | He was so scared of getting hit by the ball. |
| 0:23.6 | But when you're in high school, you know, your personality's still up for grabs. |
| 0:27.3 | And at Gary's high school, there was not one person, but two people with a very different |
| 0:31.4 | vision of who he was. |
| 0:33.1 | They were assistant high school football coaches and very noticeable big personalities and they were twins |
| 0:39.0 | and i didn't really know their name i'd seen them around they were super handsome and in great |
| 0:44.4 | shape i mean they were ripped and they would wear gold's gym tank tops and jams these shorts these |
| 0:51.5 | Hawaiian shorts they would wear those and they had really long hair, |
| 0:55.3 | and they were very charming, charismatic, funny, and they were known as the Jetsons, which was this |
| 1:03.1 | self-proclaimed nickname. |
| 1:07.0 | Wait, they called themselves, the Jetsons, they referred to themselves? |
| 1:10.5 | Yeah, because the Jetsons was people from the future, and they felt that they were like that. They were definitely the first people I ever noticed who referred to themselves in the... Is it the third person? Yeah. Yeah. The Jetsons are coming to get you. The Jetsons will see you. The Jetsons. That's what they would say. Sometimes they would say Johnny Jetson will be with you today. |
| 1:31.3 | Joe Jetsons will see you. The Jetsons. That's what they would say. And sometimes they would say Johnny Jetson will be with you today. Joe Jetson will be with you tomorrow. |
| 1:33.3 | They're like magical figures. |
| 1:35.3 | Yeah, they really were. |
| 1:37.3 | And these magical figures, these assistant football coaches, they gave Gary his own nickname in the fall of junior year. |
| 1:43.3 | It was not a glittery name, like the Jetsons. |
... |
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