The New York Times and “This American Life” formed a new partnership this year, and one of my favorite things about it is that we get to bring the show’s vast archive (more than 700 episodes!) to The Times’s audience.
For Thanksgiving listening in a year when so many of us are not with our families because of the pandemic, I’ve picked some shows about family, and some episodes about other stuff, too. I’ve included my favorite interview, possibly my best, I’ve ever done. Listen while cooking or traveling (if you’re risking it) or while doing your Black Friday shopping online.
How do you babysit kids who don’t exist?
Babysitting
What really happens when family members babysit, and Ira’s true feelings about Mary Poppins. Original air date Jan. 5, 2001.
Stories of babysitters — and what goes on while Mom and Dad are away that Mom and Dad never find out about. That includes the story of two teenagers who decide to invent children to babysit, as an excuse to get out of their own house.
The interview that ends this show is my favorite interview I’ve ever done, and maybe my best.
Are you the third wheel in your family?
In Dog We Trust
To what degree can pets replace people in our lives and affect family dynamics? Original air date March 10, 2000.
Because we love our pets, they can also awaken all the other feelings that can accompany love: jealousy, anger, dependence. An episode about dogs, cats and armadillos that live in our homes — and how much they alter family dynamics.
Dim the lights, it’s time for a 108-year-old mystery
The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar
In 2004, Bobby Dunbar’s granddaughter discovered a secret beneath the legend of her grandfather’s kidnapping. Original air date March 14, 2008.
Among these family stories, I wanted to include a family mystery. Yes, this is a dark one! In 1912, a 4-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 — or was he?
A very practical way to deal with grief
One Last Thing Before I Go
Stories where ordinary people rise to see death standing there, open their mouths and something amazing happens. Original air date Sept. 23, 2016.
So many families this year have lost people to Covid-19. It got me thinking about the wind telephone, which a man set up after the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in 2011. It’s an old-fashioned telephone booth families use to “call” their loved ones who died in that natural disaster. That story’s paired in this episode with the story of a father and son trying to sidestep future grief and regret, by staging a very awkward family reunion.
A Native American massacre ordered by Lincoln
Little War on the Prairie
This show about Native Americans and settlers was first broadcast on Thanksgiving weekend Nov. 23, 2012, on the 150th anniversary of the war.
One of my public radio colleagues, John Biewen, grew up in Mankato, Minn., and says nobody ever talked about the most important historical event ever to happen there: In 1862, it was the site of the largest mass execution in U.S. history. Thirty-eight Dakota Indians were hanged after a war with white settlers, at the order of Abraham Lincoln. He set out to uncover the story, and to figure out why nobody talked about it when he was a kid.
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Resist the current awfulness with delight
The Show of Delights
Counterprogramming against coronavirus, election news and everything else that was so hard this year. Original air date Jan. 31, 2020.
In these dark, combative times, my co-worker Bim Adewunmi suggested we try the most radical counterprogramming imaginable: an episode made up entirely of stories about delight. She co-hosts the episode, which is inspired partly by the poet Ross Gay, who said people who don’t take the time to honor the things they take delight in are negligent. But more important, they should share the things they take delight in.
Bonus: That time I was a magician…
The Magic Show
Magicians say it can take years to create and polish a new magic trick. We’ll deconstruct one of them. Original air date June 30, 2017.
Just a few years before I landed the internship at NPR that started me in radio, I had another career: I was a kid magician. So was my colleague at “This American Life,” David Kestenbaum. In this episode, we dive into something we were too untalented for back then — how magicians go about inventing incredible tricks.
