801: Must Be Rats on the Brain

This American Life

News, Society & Culture, Arts

4.6 • 88.8K Ratings

🗓️ 28 December 2025

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The one animal we can’t seem to live without, even when we really, really want to.

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Prologue: At the announcement of New York City’s inaugural rat czar, we meet Darneice Foster, who despises the rats outside her apartment. And host Ira Glass introduces two special co-hosts for today’s show. (11 minutes)
Act One: Producer Elna Baker meets Todd Sklar, a man who can’t quit rats. (22 minutes)
Act Two: Fifty years ago, New York City started to put garbage out in plastic bags. This has become the number one food source for rats. Producer Ike Sriskandarajah investigates the decision that led to the city’s rat baby boom. (10 minutes)
Act Three: How did Alberta, Canada pull off a feat that has eluded the rest of human civilization? Ira visits the largest rat-less land in the world. (15 minutes)
Act Four: We drop a hot mic into a hot mess of a rats’ nest. You’ll never believe what happens next. (3 minutes)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	From WBC Chicago, it's This American Live.
0:03.2	Good morning, and it's a great morning for New Yorkers and a great morning to be in New York City.
0:11.0	We had a press conference in a park in Harlem for New York's Mayor Adams in April, 2023.
0:15.8	There are two undisputed truths about the Adams administration.
0:21.1	Mayor Eric Adams loves his mother.
0:24.3	Mayor Eric Adams hates rats.
0:27.1	This event was to introduce New Yorkers to their brand new rat czar.
0:31.5	This is the position the mayor created.
0:33.6	That his job listing caught for candidates who were, quote, highly motivated and somewhat bloodthirsty,
0:38.8	with a swashbuckling attitude, crafty humor, and general aura of badassery.
0:44.6	At the time of this press conference, New York's mayor was not popular.
0:48.7	He had huge disapproval ratings on crime and homelessness, fewer than half of all New Yorkers,
0:53.8	like the way he was doing his job.
0:56.1	And we're revisiting this moment because Mayor Adams was about to be replaced on January 1st.
1:03.7	And this is an episode of ours that he inspired that we all at our show really loved,
1:08.9	where we tried some funny things.
1:10.2	We had never tried before.
1:12.3	It's a show about rats in New York and elsewhere.
1:16.7	And as a kind of goodbye to Mayor Adams, we thought we would play this now, our last show
1:21.9	of this year.
1:23.2	Because when this embattled, disliked Mayor, Mayor Adams, would talk about rats, it was with a kind of joy.
1:31.1	It was like he was a dad whose teenage kids would roll their eyes at everything he said.
	...

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