821: Embrace the Suck

This American Life

Society & Culture, News, Politics, Arts

4.6 • 88.8K Ratings

🗓️ 21 January 2024

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

People finding themselves in situations that are worse than they thought and deciding to really go with it.

Prologue: A Boston woman takes her dog for a walk and suddenly finds herself in a terrible situation she never anticipated. The strange thing is, it helps her. (9 minutes)
Act One: Two college friends try to stop Donald Trump’s primary season momentum by convincing New Hampshire voters to vote against everything they care about. Producer Zoe Chace follows along. (22 minutes)
Act Two: When producer Ike Sriskandarajah tries to sleep-train his baby, a neighbor decides to call the police. Later, Ike thinks, "I can work with that." (9 minutes)
Act Three: A story by producer Boen Wang about how to get through a summer of bad days. (9 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

Transcript

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0:00.0	A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show.
0:05.4	If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, this American Life.
0:10.0	org.
0:11.0	Kendra and her husband and their two kids moved back to Boston and it wasn't going great for her.
0:17.0	She's a teacher but hadn't found a teaching job yet, so she did odd jobs.
0:23.0	A little thing at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library,
0:26.0	she worked as an usher for the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
0:29.0	Which can I say these are like the kind of Boston specific jobs
0:32.0	you would give a character who moved to Boston in a bad movie.
0:35.0	Like the only thing I wasn't doing is like selling foam fingers at Fenway Pack.
0:41.0	And I made like very little money.
0:45.0	She's actually pretty depressed.
0:46.8	Just dragging herself through the motions of living,
0:49.9	not looking forward to anything.
0:52.1	And it wouldn't go away.
0:53.1	She couldn't shake it.
0:54.3	I would wake up in the morning and feel sort of irritated,
0:58.3	like, oh, this again.
1:00.2	I went to work and I would put a smile on my face but I oftentimes would not hear anything
1:06.6	anyone said to me.
1:08.6	So she's four months into this new downer of her life and she gets off work and it's April, one of the first bright sunny days after a long dark winter.
1:17.0	She's excited to take her dog Skyler to Walliston Beach near her house on this pretty day.
	...

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