A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeaped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. From WBE, Zichikov, it's This American Life, from Ira Glass, and I am joined in the studio by M. Gessen. Hello. Hi, Er. So nice to have you back here. It's always lovely to be here.

And the story that you're about to tell today is one that you've been telling for years?

Yeah.

First, it was just, you know, there's something weird going on in my family,

but also of insane ways that my family talks about these crazy events.

And is this story a story that when you would tell it to friends and loved ones,

was it a funny story?

I hesitate to say that it was a funny story, but yes, yes, it was a funny story.

And, I mean, maybe that's also just the only way that we can deal with things that are unbelievable.

It wasn't until I started reporting it that I realized how horrible the story actually was.

And when you started to report it, this was years ago.

Originally, this was going to be a story for this American life.

And then at some point it just got too big.

Like, it was like, we cannot contain this in one episode of our show.

And you turned it into this podcast with Serial.

Yes.

And it's now a five-part series with Serial that was released this week. And you've been doing read-throughs of drafts, as you've been writing drafts that have set in on. And I just want to say, like, I just, I love this show and feel like this show is so different from other podcasts that I have heard in a bunch of interesting ways. And what we're going to do today on our program is we're going to walk through enough of the story so that listeners here can hear what I'm hearing in it. And then if they want, they can go and listen to the whole thing. From WBEC Chicago, it's This American Life, I'm Ira Glass. That's going to be our show today. And we're going to begin by playing the first

episode of the series, which is almost like a prologue and sets the whole thing up. Is there anything

else that we should say before we play that? No, I think we can jump in. Okay. Let's just jump

in with that. My family, if I had to give it an adjective, is elastic.

Forty-five years ago, my parents, my little brother and I, came over to this country from the Soviet Union,

extending the family across continents.

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