870: My Other Self

This American Life

Society & Culture, News, Politics, Arts

4.6 • 88.8K Ratings

🗓️ 12 October 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What happens when people create alternate versions of themselves and release them into the wild?

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Prologue: Host Ira Glass talks about a recent experience being interviewed and the realization that he was being asked about another version of himself. (4 minutes)
Act One: Reporter Evan Ratliff creates an AI version of himself and then sets it loose on the world. This story was adapted from Evan's podcast, Shell Game. (43 minutes)
Act Two: Emmanuel Dzotsi explores the phenomenon of people lying on first dates to project a better version of themselves. Plus, he gets into a very personal example from his own life. (8 minutes)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeaped in today's episode of the show.
0:05.1	If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org.
0:11.6	I had a weird experience this week.
0:13.8	I was asked to be a guest on the podcast Pablo Torre finds out.
0:17.9	I'm a fan in this podcast.
0:19.2	I like Pablo.
0:20.1	He and I had drinks together a couple months ago.
0:22.3	We did a story of his on our show a few weeks back. I respect his work. And so we sat down in the
0:27.8	studio and he explained why we were there. It went back to the night we got a drink together.
0:33.3	The question of when did you know you wanted to get Ira into the studio and talk to him?
0:36.9	It was when I asked you like about the last time you watched television.
0:41.4	Yeah.
0:41.7	And at that time, I'm not sure if I had watched it in months.
0:45.0	And I've never seen a big chunk of the interview was just about stuff I had never seen on TV
0:49.5	and what TV shows I had seen going back decades.
0:53.8	And what was interesting to Pablo was that most of it did not match what he had. and what TV shows I had seen going back decades.
0:57.7	And what was interesting to Pablo was that most of it did not match.
0:59.3	What do you imagine I'd be watching?
1:04.5	Like, I told him I'd seen all of the Gilmore girls, all of the O.C.
1:07.9	At one point, I talked about how I liked the comedian Bert Kreischer,
1:11.4	who, if you don't know him, is a very funny, growy sort of comedian.
1:15.7	Why do you, how, okay, so just as a general stereotype.
	...

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