128: Four Corners

We try to tell the story of life in America through portraits of life on four different corners, in four different states across the nation. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.

Prologue: Host Ira Glass talks about the Four Corners tourist monument where Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico meet. (2 minutes)
Act One: Sarah Vowell has a theory that you can tell the entire history of the United States by standing on one street corner—specifically at Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive in Chicago—and describing all the events that happened within eyeshot of the corner. She covers three centuries of history, from Louis Joliet to Keanu Reeves. (21 minutes)
Act Two: Scott Richer and Julie Riggs of Louisville, Kentucky, were supposed to have their first kiss at the corner where South Fourth Street meets the alley behind the West End Baptist Church. But it went wrong. (7 minutes)
Act Three: Writer Mike Paterniti tells a story of dogs and a community of dogwalkers that formed on the grounds of an old cemetery at the corner of Vaughn and Clifford in Portland, Maine. (14 minutes)
Act Four: Writer Achy Obejas reads a piece of short fiction from her book, We Came All the Way from Cuba So You Could Dress Like This? (11 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org This American Life privacy policy.
Learn more about sponsor message choices.

🎬 SEE THE STORY UNFOLD:
Want to see the original photos, documents, and the faces behind this week's acts?
👇 View the visual archive for this episode here:
https://goo.su/XwNQm
(Updated for each story)

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(41)

899: Reaching Out

Sayre Quevedo’s invented a way to do a podcast that feels completely new. He’s been recording nearly all his conversations for years, and the result is something that captures a person’s life in a raw...

5 Okt 1h 1min

898: An Argument

Nikole Hannah-Jones made an argument 10 years ago in The New York Times Magazine that became famous. She wrote about choosing a public school for her daughter, Najya, in one of the most racially and e...

26 Sep 1h 1min

897: Intergenerational Space Travel

People braving the true final frontier — the gap between people born at slightly different times. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.(00:00:00) Prologue: ...

21 Sep 1h 5min

646: The Secret of My Death

Cryptic messages on a cell phone and a teeter-totter at a construction site: these are clues people found, trying to make sense of a death. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our ...

14 Sep 1h 5min

449: Middle School

As the new school year begins, we have stories today from all over the country about people lurching their way through their middle school years – the years when you're figuring out so, so much. We go...

7 Sep 59min

896: I Know What You Need

Moments when it seems obvious what to do for someone else, so of course you jump in and try to help — and what happens after that. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium ...

31 Aug 1h 7min

206: Somewhere in the Arabian Sea

The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln has been in the news over an extra-long deployment that's taking a toll on its crew. Back in 2002, we explored life aboard another aircraft carrier, the USS Jo...

24 Aug 59min

895: Label Maker!

Labels are powerful. They can distill you down to a single word. They can get stuck on you without your permission. And sometimes, when they get taken away, they can upend your entire life. On this ep...

17 Aug 57min