878: New Lore Drop
This American Life
This American Life
4.5 • 91.3K Ratings
🗓️ 11 January 2026
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
People discovering information about their own lives that they did not know, and suddenly everything looks very different.
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- Prologue: When Pete turned 18, his dad took him on a drive to reveal a family secret he was finally old enough to know. (11 minutes)
- Act One: Sometimes, a lore drop comes when you least expect it. That happened to Jake Cornell and his grandmother. Producer Aviva DeKornfeld talked to Jake about it. (14 minutes)
- Act Two: Ben Austen had a kind of new lore drop happen to him recently. But it was not the clarifying kind of lore drop, where everything suddenly makes sense — it was kind of the opposite. (29 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. |
| 0:05.3 | If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. |
| 0:11.5 | Back when Pete was 18 years old, it was a summer before he went away to college. |
| 0:15.5 | He's home in the living room with his dad. |
| 0:18.4 | And he turns to me and he says, |
| 0:23.4 | Peter, let's go for a drive. |
| 0:29.2 | And that was not something that he ever said. |
| 0:30.9 | That's not something that we did. |
| 0:34.1 | So Pete knows something's up, but he's no idea what. |
| 0:36.4 | They go outside, get in the Volvo. |
| 0:38.0 | Pete asked his dad. |
| 0:40.9 | Shouldn't we get Will, my younger brother, |
| 0:41.8 | because he was at home. |
| 0:43.1 | He was probably 13 or 14. |
| 0:45.3 | And my dad just shook his head. |
| 0:45.6 | No. |
| 0:49.8 | This drive, for Pete, alone with his dad, |
| 0:52.0 | turned out to be kind of a big moment in his life. |
| 0:56.6 | Before the drive, if he had to describe his family, it wasn't hard. |
| 0:58.8 | He could do it in two words. |
| 1:01.6 | Completely mundane. |
| 1:04.4 | I mean, we lived outside of D.C. |
... |
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