798: Leaving the Fold
This American Life
05/07/23
•63m
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A week after Jerry Springer’s death, we go back to a story we first broadcast years ago, about a side of Springer most people don’t know and can’t imagine: his years as an idealistic politician in the mold of Bobby Kennedy. Plus other stories of people who try to leave some moment in their life behind, which can be hard.
- Prologue: Ira explains the premise of this week’s show, where most of the stories were first broadcast in 2004. (3 minutes)
- Act One: Alex Blumberg tells the true story of Jerry Springer's life before he was a talk show host. It's the story of an idealistic and serious Jerry Springer, a progressive politician, and the most popular mayor ever of a certain American city. (31 minutes)
- Act Two: Ira talks with Shalom Auslander, who was raised as an Orthodox Jew and who made a pivotal break with his faith at a Rangers game. (6 minutes)
- Act Three: The journalist E. Jean Carroll is in court this week with her rape case against Donald Trump. In 2020 she published a series of stories interviewing women who’ve accused President Trump of sexual assault or harassment. At the time, she felt like these stories had been so widely covered that people had gotten used to them and ignored them. Which seemed sort of incredible to her. Back then she adapted one of the stories for our show and we’re replaying it today, a frank conversation with another one of the president’s accusers, Jessica Leeds, who also testified in Carroll’s case against Trump. (16 minutes)
Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org
Previous 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
Next Episode
799: The Lives of Others
May 14, 2023
•65m
Looping thoughts about people you barely know, or don't know at all.
- Prologue: We get a tip that an entire town is consumed by a huge, elementary-school-style crush on a local veterinarian. Guest host Lilly Sullivan goes to Utah to investigate the mystery of the hot vet. (8 minutes)
- Act One: We do the thing the people in town would rather die than do – spill the crush to the legendary Dr. Artz himself. Lilly Sullivan reports. (8 minutes)
- Act Two: Producer Alix Spiegel talks to one of her closest friends, Sarah Blust, about the time Sarah met a stranger who, unbeknownst to her, had already spent years thinking about her. (29 minutes)
- Act Three: There are certain jobs where thinking about someone else’s life is just built into it. Aviva DeKornfeld has a theory that petsitting is a job like that. She talks to a couple of pet sitters to find out. (14 minutes)
Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org
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