75: Kindness of Strangers
This American Life
This American Life
4.5 • 91.3K Ratings
🗓️ 8 February 2026
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
An episode from our show's early days: Stories about what happens when strangers are kind — and when they're not.
- Prologue: Brett Leveridge was standing on the subway platform when a man walked by, stopping in front of each passenger to deliver a quiet verdict: "You're in. You're out. You can stay. You—gotta go." Most people ignored him. But Brett found himself hoping for the thumbs up. (5 minutes)
- Act One: New York City locksmith Joel Kostman tells the story of an act of kindness he committed, hoping for a small reward. (13 minutes)
- Act Two: In 1940, Jack Geiger, at the age of fourteen, left his middle-class Jewish home and knocked on the door of a Black actor named Canada Lee. He asked Lee if he could move in with him. Lee said yes. In Lee's Harlem apartment, Geiger spent a year among many of the great figures of the Harlem Renaissance: Langston Hughes, Billy Strayhorn, Richard Wright, Adam Clayton Powell. (11 minutes)
- Act Three: How two next-door neighbors start treating each other badly, and how their feud becomes an all-consuming obsession. Paul Tough reports. (14 minutes)
- Act Four: For five weeks, a singer named Nick Drakides stood on a stoop in the East Village, singing Sinatra songs late at night to the delight of his neighbors. The cops didn't bust him; the crowds behaved. It was his gift to New York. Blake Eskin tells the story. (12 minutes)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everybody, it's Ira Glass. Today shows a rerun from the early years of our program. This is from back in the 1990s. It's a subject that just felt like it might feel good to talk about today, which is kindness. Specifically, the kindness of strangers. |
| 0:16.3 | Brett was standing at a subway platform. Afternoon rush hour. It was crowded. And he noticed this guy |
| 0:21.8 | didn't seem homeless, decent clothes, stopping in front of each person, looking into his or her eyes, |
| 0:28.5 | saying something, and moving on to the next person. Turns out the guy was telling people, |
| 0:33.8 | they could stay or they had to go, or they were in or they were out. |
| 0:37.2 | Literally, what would he say? Well, literally, it would be, it would be you, you're out. You're gone. |
| 0:43.7 | You're gone. You're okay. You can stay. And then do people leave? No, not at all. I mean, |
| 0:50.4 | and no one argued with him. |
| 1:01.0 | Brett wrote about the incident on his personal website, Brett News. |
| 1:04.8 | I'm asking you to read a little bit of your account of this from your website. |
| 1:09.5 | You write about who he decided to keep and who he decided to go. |
| 1:12.6 | Right. These are the last few people before he reaches me. The 50-ish woman in the business suit and thick glasses is summarily dismissed. |
| 1:18.6 | The homie and the baggy shorts in Chicago Bulls jersey makes the cut. |
| 1:22.6 | The young immigrant mother who seems not to grasp the import of this moment, is given the okay. |
| 1:28.3 | Oh, versus you who's grasping just how important this. |
| 1:30.3 | Right. |
| 1:31.3 | The bookish man in the maroon cardigan sweater with balding head and red face has cut loose |
| 1:38.3 | with particular relish. |
| 1:40.3 | There is something about the judgment of strangers. |
| 1:45.0 | When the clerk in the record store seems unimpressed by your choice of CDs, |
| 1:49.0 | when the one cute person on the bus gives you a look like, |
| 1:52.0 | out of my way. |
... |
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