Hey everybody, Ira here.

Okay, so what you're about to hear is a bonus episode, one of 20,

that we've produced and released for our This American Life Partners so far.

And the Life Partners, if you know about this,

are people who pay a little bit of money each month to help us keep making the show.

In return, they get ad-free listening.

They get this list of hundreds of greatest hits episodes right in their podcast feed.

And they also get bonus episodes like this one.

This is one of my favorites that we've done.

It features our producer Nancy Updike and me, and we go through some stories I've done about some very personal things that have happened to me.

I hope you like this. And if you do, I hope you'll choose to subscribe and hear others over at thisamericanlife.org slash life partners.

Subscribing helps us make the show.

It's become an essential part of our budget, part of our plans for the future.

Okay.

Here's the bonus episode.

Hey, their life partners.

Ira here with this bonus episode. For this one, I've asked my coworker Nancy Updike. Hello. Hi. To come to the studio and pick a few favorite stories. And the idea of this kind of bonus episode, and we're going to be doing a bunch of these, is that one of our producers will come to the studio with some story that ran a long time ago, or we have not rerun them, or it's just that we think lots of people might not remember

these particular stories or just their stories that struck the producer as being worthy of being played again.

Yes, all true. So far, you're speaking facts. Thank goodness. And Nancy, we should say that

just to explain your relationship with the show, you actually, you were with the radio show at the very beginning in 1995.

I was the first person you hired.

That's right.

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