799: The Lives of Others

This American Life

Society & Culture, News, Politics, Arts

4.6 • 88.8K Ratings

🗓️ 14 May 2023

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Looping thoughts about people you barely know, or don't know at all.

Prologue: We get a tip that an entire town is consumed by a huge, elementary-school-style crush on a local veterinarian. Guest host Lilly Sullivan goes to Utah to investigate the mystery of the hot vet. (8 minutes)
Act One: We do the thing the people in town would rather die than do – spill the crush to the legendary Dr. Artz himself. Lilly Sullivan reports. (8 minutes)
Act Two: Producer Alix Spiegel talks to one of her closest friends, Sarah Blust, about the time Sarah met a stranger who, unbeknownst to her, had already spent years thinking about her. (29 minutes)
Act Three: There are certain jobs where thinking about someone else’s life is just built into it. Aviva DeKornfeld has a theory that petsitting is a job like that. She talks to a couple of pet sitters to find out. (14 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there podcast listeners, I right here with a quick message for today's show.
0:04.8	There is a whole new way to get our program that I want to alert you to.
0:09.5	The New York Times has finished all the beta testing and developing of its new audio app.
0:14.2	And this American life is on there in a really big way.
0:18.1	For starters, you can get our show on the app first thing Saturday morning, which is
0:22.6	a day earlier than our regular podcast feed.
0:26.1	Also, they have our archive hundreds of our best episodes, including lists of my own personal
0:30.4	favorites.
0:31.4	Also, I've worked with our editors to create this American life shorts.
0:35.4	These are individual stories pulled from episodes that you can listen to just one at a time.
0:41.6	Also in the app, they have all the New York Times podcasts, of course, including The Daily
0:45.4	and the new one that I love about technology called HardFork with Kevin Rus and Casey Newton.
0:50.4	We did the collaboration with them a few weeks ago.
0:52.5	Casey's story about Twitter.
0:54.2	The app also has all the new shows being created right now by our co-workers over at Serial.
0:58.6	It has sports shows from the athletic.
1:00.8	It has articles from the Times read by the reporters themselves.
1:03.6	The idea is you can get the actual newspaper while driving or whatever.
1:07.0	There's also an exclusive show called The Headlines 10 Minutes with the top stories each
1:11.5	day that is only in the app.
1:14.0	If you're in New York Times, new subscriber, you get all this for free.
1:16.8	And if you want to try it, sign up for that.
	...

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