899: Reaching Out
This episode appears to contain dynamically inserted ads. Transcript timestamps may be approximate.
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. From WBZChicago, it's This American Life. I'm out of a glass. I recently heard this podcast that was so exciting to hear because it felt like the people who did it invented something completely new, which is so rare, and it's like I feel like they took what shows like ours do and then just pushed it further and further until it became something else. I want to play you some of that show today. It's by somebody I had never heard of before. His name is Sarah Kavato, and the series is called Reaching Out. It's made by Futuro Studios. And as you'll hear, at some point years ago, it seems like Sarah started recording nearly all of his personal conversations, including these especially passive-aggressive conversations with his twin brother that get more interesting and complicated the further you get into the series. And it's just, I don't know, real, messy life captured on recordings in a way that is rare to hear. And then Sarah also invented this way to do that ration, that at first when you heard you're like, "What's happening?" And then I don't know. I really came to love it. And the show is ambitious. I don't know if I've heard another podcast that tries to capture a person's life as completely as this one does, and like just what it feels like to be alive right now. So we're going to exert some of the show today. That's going to be the whole hour. And I just want to say, stay with it. I guarantee it pays off. Here's Sarah. On February 15, 2020, Connor calls you to ask if you want to look for your birth father. You do not record this conversation. This is notable, if only because so much of your life has been recorded. Moments far less consequential than this. You're in Connor's fourth birthday. Here's the rubber nose. Did you guys say that? That can't be a rubber nose. A school performance. You play a scared rabbit. You're only lying. I think you're lying. Don't worry. We'll just go back and we'll kill you. We'll kill you. We'll kill you. I was a party when you were 16 when you first began to record yourself. If you could talk to them about me and it's about like me and it's about things I do, like I figure I should record this.
Transcription truncated.