704: Our Pulitzer-Winning Episode
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A quick warning. There are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. Hey, everybody, I have a glass here. So last week our program This American Life won a Pulitzer Prize. It was the very first Pulitzer ever awarded to a radio show or a podcast or audio journalism of any kind. Among broadcasters, this was always kind of a sore point. I have to say that the highest award in journalism, the Pulitzer was off-limits to us. They would not consider us at all for any awards. In fact, a whole other award, the Peabody Award, started in 1940 as a prize for broadcasters. And one of the reasons that it was was that broadcasters wanted their own version of the Pulitzer. So needless to say, everybody here was very excited to get the award, very excited to be the very first broadcasters to do this. And today we're going to replay the episode that won it first ran this past November about things happening at the Mexican border. And what we're going to do is we're going to play the original episode. I'm going to jump in here and there with updates, but mostly you're going to hear what we originally broadcast just FYI, the stuff that we describe happening at the border is pretty much all still happening today, even with COVID-19. And what else do I want to say? The little boy that we start the show with, we have a big update on him at the end of the show. At the border anymore, and we talk to him about it this week. Anyway, I'm saying too much, here's the show. Darwin's nine, and he's a kid who, I don't know, people just give him stuff. When he met my co-worker Aviva, he was playing with a soccer ball somebody gave him, eating a taco somebody else gave him, and Darwin's mom was explaining all this. Can you just describe what just happened? I have no idea, she says. A man, as you're talking about that, people just give him things, walk by and give you how much should he give you? Yes. Wow. 10 pesos. 10 pesos. Why'd he give you that if you've asked him? Darwin gives a little shrug like, "Huh? What can I say?" Because he thought I was asking for a coin. His mom says, "He was just sitting there, eating." You're like king of the camp. Yes, I am the king of the camp, he says. As Aviva sits there with Darwin's mom, Elizabeth, he runs off for 15, 20 minutes at a time, and then returns with cash. Five dollars, she hugs him. Darwin runs to their tent to pull out all the money he saved in show Aviva. $279, a huge wad of cash, which, for context, they're living in a makeshift tent camp in Madamoros, Mexico, right over at the border from Brownsville, Texas, and I mean like immediately
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