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75: Kindness of Strangers

75: Kindness of Strangers

This American Life vor 6 Monaten

What happens when strangers are kind — and when they're not.

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Podcast

This American Life

16 Episoden

Each week we choose a theme. Then anything can happen. This American Life is true stories that unfold like little movies for radio. Personal stories with funny moments, big feelings, and surprising plot twists. Newsy stories that try to capture what it...

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Podcast aneignen

An episode from our show's early days: Stories about what happens
when strangers are kind — and when they're not.

Prologue: Brett Leveridge was standing on the subway platform
when a man walked by, stopping in front of each passenger to
deliver a quiet verdict: "You're in. You're out. You can stay.
You—gotta go." Most people ignored him. But Brett found himself
hoping for the thumbs up. (5 minutes)

Act One: New York City locksmith Joel Kostman tells the story
of an act of kindness he committed, hoping for a small reward.
(13 minutes)

Act Two: In 1940, Jack Geiger, at the age of fourteen, left
his middle-class Jewish home and knocked on the door of a Black
actor named Canada Lee. He asked Lee if he could move in with
him. Lee said yes. In Lee's Harlem apartment, Geiger spent a year
among many of the great figures of the Harlem Renaissance:
Langston Hughes, Billy Strayhorn, Richard Wright, Adam Clayton
Powell. (11 minutes)

Act Three: How two next-door neighbors start treating each
other badly, and how their feud becomes an all-consuming
obsession. Paul Tough reports. (14 minutes)

Act Four: For five weeks, a singer named Nick Drakides stood
on a stoop in the East Village, singing Sinatra songs late at
night to the delight of his neighbors. The cops didn't bust him;
the crowds behaved. It was his gift to New York. Blake Eskin
tells the story. (12 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

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