849: The Narrator
This American Life
This American Life
4.5 • 91.3K Ratings
🗓️ 15 December 2024
⏱️ 58 minutes
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Summary
Banias is an 8-year-old kid living in Gaza. And she has a story to tell — many stories, in fact.
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- Prologue: While on the phone with reporter Maram Hamaid in Gaza, producer Chana Joffe-Walt gets interrupted by Maram’s daughter––Banias, eight, who grabs the phone from her mother and starts telling us about her life. The narrator arrives. (8 minutes)
- Part One: Banias, an 8-year-old in Gaza, tells us about her life––her friends, the games she plays, the things she cares about. Everything but the war going on around her. (25 minutes)
- Part Two: Banias talks about the war. (20 minutes)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. |
| 0:04.8 | I'm Hannah Jaffe Walt sitting in for Ira Glass. |
| 0:07.9 | This all started with a phone call, a call that eventually led to this episode. |
| 0:12.7 | So that's where I'm going to start. |
| 0:14.7 | I was talking to a journalist in Gaza on the phone. |
| 0:17.4 | Hello? |
| 0:18.1 | Hi, this is Hannah. |
| 0:19.4 | Hi. |
| 0:20.3 | How are you? This was back in April. I'd been speaking |
| 0:23.7 | to people in Gaza for months by then, but nobody where Maram was in the middle area, Derbala. |
| 0:29.9 | Maram Humade. She's a reporter for Al Jazeera English. We were chatting. I was asking some |
| 0:36.2 | pretty basic questions about what she was experiencing, what she was seeing, what the day had been like. |
| 0:41.3 | She got interrupted. |
| 0:42.7 | It was, yeah, you know, a little bit calm day in there, Balah. |
| 0:47.6 | You know, like... |
| 0:48.3 | So, Banyas is listening. |
| 0:51.2 | I need to introduce Banias to you. |
| 0:53.6 | Hi, Vena. |
| 0:54.3 | Hi. |
| 0:55.5 | How are you? |
| 0:57.5 | I'm fine. Thank you. |
| 0:59.6 | Good. Marama and I kept talking or trying to. |
... |
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