796: What Lies Beneath
This American Life
04/16/23
•62m
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Summoning up stuff that’s usually hidden down deep.
- Prologue: A beloved drawing goes missing from Mr. Ablao’s third grade classroom. The class holds a funeral for the drawing, which accidentally unleashes a much bigger feeling than anyone anticipated. (13 minutes)
- Act One: The musicians in the orchestra for Phantom of the Opera tell reporter Jay Caspian Kang about what it’s like to play the exact same music every single night—for decades. And how they’ve learned to make their peace with it. (26 minutes)
- Act Two: Producer Elna Baker’s mom doles out some very harsh feedback for her daughter, which goes unnoticed for ten years. (15 minutes)
Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org
Previous Episode
795: Nine Months Later
April 9, 2023
•63m
It’s been nine months since Roe v. Wade was overturned. We talk to people who wanted abortions right when the laws were changing in their states. They had to wait for appointments, for money to travel or abortion pills. And during that waiting, a lot of interesting things happened. We see how much life has changed, nine months later.
- Prologue: Nine months ago, these people wanted abortions. But then, the laws changed. They had to wait to get an appointment, figure out how to get out of state or order abortion pills. In that waiting, other things happened. (5 minutes)
- Act One: In the months following the court’s decision, two women are stalled getting abortions. Reporter Caroline Kitchener follows Kae and Taylor in those early months, as they try to figure out what to do. And we see what happens when both women each come into contact with the anti-abortion movement. (19 minutes)
- Act Two: Doctors say one effect of the new bans is people seeking abortions much later into their second trimesters. Caroline got interested in a girl like that in Oklahoma. (18 minutes)
- Act Three: It’s been nine months since the first group of people who wanted abortions couldn’t get them in their states. How have their lives changed, or not. (12 minutes)
Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org
Next Episode
352: The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar
April 30, 2023
•60m
In 1912 a four-year-old boy named Bobby Dunbar went missing in a swamp in Louisiana. Eight months later, he was found in the hands of a wandering handyman in Mississippi. In 2004, Bobby Dunbar's granddaughter discovered a secret beneath the legend of her grandfather's kidnapping, a secret whose revelation would divide her own family, bring redemption to another, and become the answer to a third family's century-old prayer.
- Ira Glass plays the song "Mystery of the Dunbar's Child" by Richard "Rabbit" Brown. It describes Bobby Dunbar's disappearance and recovery and the trial of his kidnapper, all of which was front page news from 1912 to 1914. Almost a century after it happened, Bobby Dunbar's granddaughter, Margaret Dunbar Cutright, was looking into her grandfather's disappearance and found that the truth was actually more interesting than the legend. And a lot more troubling. (1 minute)
- Act One: Reporter Tal McThenia tells the first half of Margaret's story. Everyone in her family knew the legend. Her grandfather went missing in a swamp in Louisiana, and was found 8 months later in Mississippi, in the hands of a wandering handyman named William Walters. But then another woman came forward and claimed the boy as hers. There was a big trial, and the boy was awarded to the Dunbars. In 1999, Margaret's father gave her a scrapbook full of newspaper clippings from the period. A lot of the clippings didn't match up exactly with her family's legend. So Margaret went on a quest to learn as much as she could, to small town libraries and archives all through the south, and eventually, to the living children of the "other mother," a woman named Julia Anderson. Her family had their own legend about the kidnapping. But in the Anderson version, Julia's son Bruce was the boy who was kidnapped, and it was Margaret's family, the Dunbars, who kidnapped him. (23 minutes)
- Act Two: Tal McThenia's story continues. Margaret meets the living relatives of the kidnapper, William Walters, discovers a long lost court file with lots of answers, and finally arrives at an incontrovertible truth, which, depending on your point of view, is either very troubling, or the answer to your prayers. (32 minutes)
Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org
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