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Live on tape from my house in Los Angeles. I'm Jesse Thorn and this is the Sound of Young

America from MaximumFun.org.

It's the Sound of Young America. I'm Jesse Thorn. My guest on this week's program is Gideon Yego.

You might know him from his work on MTV News. He's also contributed to public radio

internationals this American life. Here's a clip from his work from the episode Big Wide World.

Heiter Hamza was a professional teenager. This is how his job worked.

Say a group of Japanese dignitaries were coming to Iraq. The Ministry of Information would call

Heiter, and a couple of other teenagers, to come and be the face of Iraqi youth that'd get together.

Or some foreign journalists would show up and want to do a story about Iraqi teens.

Well, the Ministry of Information would assign Heiter to be the subject.

Or Heiter would work as a fixer, helping reporters to find other people to interview,

other kids, people who wouldn't say anything too bad about the regime.

He was part of Saddam's propaganda machine.

And he liked it.

For me, it was kind of cool because I was 19. I got to skip all classes at school.

I didn't have to go to school. I need to go. We just go to my professor and say,

well, I'm one to the Ministry of Information. And Saddam's son, Uday, was the one in charge

on most of the media in Iraq at the time. So I was like, oh, Mr. Uday wants us at the Ministry.

And you go like, of course, of course, just go ahead. And I kept getting straight A's

...