779: Ends of the Earth

09/24/23 • 66 min

24 Listeners

An exploration of the very upper limits of what you do for someone you love.

Prologue: Host Ira Glass explains what we’re doing on today’s show. (2 minutes)
Act One: Amy Bloom tells the story of her husband, Brian, getting Alzheimer's and wanting assisted suicide. Her search to find a way to do that led her to Dignitas, in Switzerland. Hear this intimate and frank account of the experience they go through, excerpted from her book, IN LOVE. (39 minutes)
Act Two: Comedian Zarna Garg tells jokes onstage about the extreme ways she tries to control her daughter Zoya’s life. Zoya explains, they’re not really jokes. Ira Glass talks to both of them about it. (15 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

An exploration of the very upper limits of what you do for someone you love.

Prologue: Host Ira Glass explains what we’re doing on today’s show. (2 minutes)
Act One: Amy Bloom tells the story of her husband, Brian, getting Alzheimer's and wanting assisted suicide. Her search to find a way to do that led her to Dignitas, in Switzerland. Hear this intimate and frank account of the experience they go through, excerpted from her book, IN LOVE. (39 minutes)
Act Two: Comedian Zarna Garg tells jokes onstage about the extreme ways she tries to control her daughter Zoya’s life. Zoya explains, they’re not really jokes. Ira Glass talks to both of them about it. (15 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

Friends and ex-friends finally talk about the one thing between them they've been avoiding.

Prologue: Host Ira Glass tells a story he’s never told anyone before, about something someone said to him. (4 minutes)
Act One: Gabe Mollica had something important he needed to discuss with his friend — stewed about it for eight years. But rather than go to that friend, he talked about it with everyone other than that one person. (28 minutes)
Act Two: Jasmine and Gabbie are best friends. BFFs! But there’s something major that they’ve never been able to talk about. Something so important that it makes them wonder, who does this person even think I am? (23 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

Spots we’re avoiding in our private maps of the world.

Prologue: Guest host Bim Adewunmi talks to her cousin Kamyl about a funny thing Kamyl did when she was small, regarding a dog named Foxy. (4 minutes)
Act One: Comedian Atsuko Okatsuka moved suddenly from Japan to the U.S. when she was eight years old, and has long joked that it was because her grandmother kidnapped her from her dad. But she'd never talked to anyone in her family about what had actually happened. (31 minutes)
Act Two: Producer Emmanuel Dzotsi has a tale about something he avoids at all costs, even though it seems to follow him everywhere he goes. (8 minutes)
Act Three: Writer Tamsyn Muir spent her childhood craving a world that she could not find on earth. So as an adult, she just created it. And it was perfect. Until she became the one person who couldn't go there. (12 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org