801: Must Be Rats on the Brain

This American Life

Society & Culture, News, Politics, Arts

4.6 • 88.8K Ratings

🗓️ 11 June 2023

⏱️ 71 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.

Prologue: At this spring’s 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)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there, Pat Kess, listeners.
0:02.2	I were here with a message before we start the show today.
0:04.7	We are collaborating with the New York Times on a bunch of things.
0:08.4	One of them is this new audio app that they have just released.
0:12.0	What's interesting about this app is that they're taking a very old school approach to solving
0:16.4	one of the big problems in podcasting.
0:18.8	If you like podcasts, how do you find something next that you'll want to listen to?
0:22.8	I felt this, maybe you felt this.
0:25.0	In this app, what the Times does is they curate a collection of stories and they've invented
0:30.4	something you cannot really find elsewhere.
0:33.5	It's a mix of regular podcasts like the ones they make.
0:37.8	But also they have everything that serial productions makes.
0:41.3	Our show, The American Life is On There, the Heaven edited version of our 800 show archive
0:46.0	where they picked out the best episodes.
0:48.3	Also you can get our newest, latest episodes there Saturday morning, which is before they
0:53.1	appear anywhere else online.
0:55.5	But then in addition to all that, the regular podcast stuff, they got ambitious.
0:59.3	What they do is that they pick articles from all kinds of magazines that are not The
1:03.1	New York Times.
1:04.9	Then if that were not enough, there's a whole thing they call shorts, which is basically
1:08.4	just these little five or eight or nine minute bite-sized stories so they're fast to
1:13.6	consume and it's culture and sports and critics recommending music and books and there's
	...

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