36: Letters
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From PRI Public Radio International, from PRI Public Radio International, from WBZ Chicago. It's this American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today, our program comes to you from a club on Chicago's North Side, the greener cabaret, and we're here to conduct a little radio experiment. Over the last two weeks here in Chicago, we have advertised, we have asked for people to come in here today with letters, letters they've found, letters they've been sent, letters they have sent. And what we're going to do is conduct an open mic session, basically let people come up and read their letters. And we've asked people to change the names in the letters to protect both the innocent and the guilty, otherwise the ground rule is these letters are real. I'll be co-hosting today's show with playwright David Halpeshine, and it's David who actually created the idea of the letters show. He's done this several times around Chicago. If I had people to bring in their letters and read them on stage, he's also done a diary show where people have read from their diaries and a true story show where people come up on stage and just tell true stories. David, thank you for agreeing to try this on the radio. Well, thank you, Ira, for having me. All right. So how do we begin this? What are the rules? What do people need to know? Okay. There are a few basic rules. You see this egg timer here? My grandmother made soft-boiled eggs for me when I was eight years old using this egg timer. This egg timer will get you off the stage after five minutes. When you hear that, you must stop. If you're really nervous, I usually bring a pillow for people to rest their heads on, but tonight I have this little elephant for people to hold in case they're really-- He's holding up a-- Oh, it's a rhino. Sorry, sorry, sorry. You're holding up a six-inch-long gray rhinoceros. Yeah, and I will leave this up here in a podium. So if anyone gets really tense, which is fine, you're allowed to be nervous, just hang on to this. I hold in my hand a bowl, a silver bowl full of pieces of paper on which members of our audience here have written their names. Please pick the first name, Ira. John Biederman, coming up. [applause] It's always a very strange and powerful thing to be first. Okay, these are a-- I'll read you a couple of things from Carolyn. This down the side of this has listed a few band names. Whitesnake, Judas Priest, Aussie, Led Zeppelin, Miley Crew, Except, Iron Maiden, Black Rose, Jafria. Where the hell.
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