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’s like to be alive right now. It’s the most popular weekly podcast in the world, and winner of the first ever Pulitzer Prize for a radio show or podcast. Hosted by Ira Glass and produced in collaboration with WBEZ Chicago.
Set that they bothered to build on this television show that wasn't actually adventure related was the doctor's office. I mean, of of all the things. Right? And basically, it's like that with Riverdance. Scott, the physical therapist, has a very big role behind the scenes in Riverdance. Well, his office is like a center for gossip and for people gather there, like, during the show and And how'd the pitch go? Like, give me the pitch. Well, he did didn't he was just basically, like, everybody's doing this. We want everybody to get involved because then our our chances will be better, which is kind of a ridiculous thing to say when you're talking about the lottery because your chances are so slim. Right. You're like, one more person. But we figured out the stats. I guess the stats on the Mega Millions at that point was 1 to 760,000,000,000,000,000, but we figured we had, like, a 340 to 760,000,000,000,000 chance, which sounded better than 1. Because you guys would buy 340 tickets. Yeah. But did it seem, did it seem in some way reasonable? I'm I'm sitting here actually and you're saying these numbers and I'm writing out on a piece of paper 760. And I realized, like, I don't even know, like, wait, is trillion the next one up from 1,000,000,000,000? And then, like, I'm running 340. And then, like, honestly, then you start to cross off a 0 and a 0, and then you got the 34 and the 76, and then, like, a lot of zeros. And it just still seems like there's a lot of zeros there. Like, you're still up in the kind of billions, aren't you, to 1? Yeah. I mean, the chances are so unreasonable at that point. We just kind of forgot about the stats. I I don't even know. I mean, it just got unreasonable. Like, we just thought for some reason if we focused all our energy on this we were gonna win it. People even brought up theories of like quantum physics and how we're all energy. And if we just focus our energy on winning this lottery, like, we'll be able to create our own destiny, if that makes any sense. It
There's a big pane of glass in the top third. Jordan grabs the mic to explain what's gonna happen. I'm pretty much just breaking the window. Now I'm pumping myself up by flexing and shaking my head and I run at it and give it a good punch through the window. And then I stepped back and I looked at this window and there was a a triangular piece of glass. Right, in the middle of it. And I looked at that, and I thought that's funny. I don't remember that glass having blood on it before I punched through it. And step back, and I'm just looking at the audience. And I I looked down down right at my forearm, like, almost to my elbow. And there was a hole. And, like, in that moment in time, it was, like, when things go in slow motion, I remember a severed muscle hanging out. And and I'm looking at my my forearm, and I think about this time that we went hiking in the narrows of Zions National Park, And as Kane, a Rambo knife, and I went to go catch a snake. And I cut the side of this snake in his you could see, like, some stuff coming out this gash. And I and which I immediately regretted, But but I I stood there and I thought about that snake as I looked at my forearm. Yeah. And then it seemed like, bam, fashion motion happens, and I turn around and blood is just, like, just splatting on the floor. And the NC steps in, and I'm showing her my arm. And I'm saying, call an ambulance. And she says, is that real? And Oh, she thought it was a prank. She thought, like, you
Do you get charged with criminal mischief? In this case, it's a weird charge because he didn't actually damage anything. He actually undamaged or repaired the damage the other guy did by covering his plate. So anyway, he was arrested, but it was dismissed. But at the same time, once he got arrested by a cop for under facing a cop's plate, it kinda threw the whole irony ball in the air, and I felt like I should just juggle it. The first spin of the irony ball for Gersh was a kind of Dylan esque protest song that he wrote for his friend Adam. Green. Run. The cops call it criminal mischief. They'll charge you in the 4th degree. The cops call it criminal mischief. It's whatever they decree. Then maybe 2 days after Adam was arrested, Gersh started un vandalizing plates himself. Something clicked in me saying, wait a minute. I should try to get arrested, you know, as a newspaper reporter, as a journalist, which would be awesome getting arrested. Or even better yet, like, getting punched out by somebody on camera. Like, this is the height of my career. I'm not gonna win a Pulitzer, but getting punched out by a cop would be awesome. That doesn't happen. No. I can't. I can't. I have tabloid backgrounds. But Gersh has seen some other responses by law enforcement to his videos. When he shoots 1, he likes to send it to the agency that employs that particular car owner. So I like I said videos about scuffle cops go to the NYPD, firefighters to the fire department, and so on. And that's gotten occasional results. A former cop who was working with the DA's office resigned, and a guy that Gersh caught 5 times hiding his license plate with leaves resigned from the Department of Citywide Administrative Services. Something about it. Now in fairness, I will say I think the NYPD did something. Because about 6 months ago, I started noticing far fewer police officers were defacing or covering their plate. There have been less police officers involved in these kind of shenanigans. I still notice court officers, federal officials, and firefighters. So
So at the time she accepted, alright, he has an impulse control disorder. And she believed that the disorder is what caused him to steal the very last money she had in this world and forge her name on a check and then search for the check with her, pretending he had no idea where the check could have gone. But that's all she thought he did. That tiny morsel of truth was all she was able to take in at that point. She did not put together the whole truth, that he'd been stealing from her for over a year, that he was the identity thief, not some stranger in a dingy apartment in Chicago. He was the identity thief who made her so totally stressed out over money all the time, who drove her to the point where she was looking over her shoulder as she walked to her own post office box. They stayed together for another year and a half. And before you judge, okay, before you think how could she do that, I'll explain how. It's really interesting and I think it could happen to a lot of us. For starters, her boyfriend had been the one steady thing in her life. Right? She's going through this hard time with banks and credit cards and it's not ending. And he was the one thing she thought she could depend on. It's just hard to let that go. Oh, god. Makes me sound so stupid. But, yeah. I I I I really thought I knew what good was. Like, everything felt so bad and so hard to control. I was like, he has to be good. Because if he's not good, nothing is good. Right. That's the whole premise. That's the premise of your life. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, rationally, there's no way that it was him because, like, he literally supports me. He buys all of our groceries and he pays all of our bills and he is legitimately, like, my personal army to try and figure out the identity fraud. Right. So it just doesn't add up. There's no How could that person also be taking money from me, the person who's actually paying for everything? Right. Yeah. So I was like, why would someone steal from you and then spend it on you? Like, it just didn't make sense to me.
Little thing is still moving forward. And as it got further along, he'd bring home these kind of handmade prototypes of it. The toy that was taking form was sort of a tank dump truck kind of thing. You could program it to carry something to a place and drop it off all on its own. I remember one problem they had was the they couldn't get the tank to go perfectly straight. I remember my dad, you know, having this eureka moment, you know, one day and being like, oh, and he put 2 magnets, opposing each other on the end of the shaft that wasn't on the wheel so that the motors lined up with these magnets, and the magnets grabbed each other without actually touching and kept the motors moving at exactly the same speed. It was brilliant. You know? And he he had, like, those little victories. Imagine that over a 9 month, you know, period where you just keep figuring it out, and then it works, and then it's successful. This is BigTrack, the computer activated truck from MB Electronics. Program in up to 16 commands, and BigTrack will advance, turn, and fire 3 blasts. Milton Bradley sold lots of them, quite a few in Glenside, Pennsylvania where I grew. I remember them popping up in friends' houses after Christmas, and those ads were all over TV. Big track, rolling across the floor in the suburban living room and delivering an apple to dad. Big track for your child from MB Electronics, transporters sold separately. Sales? Best estimate I was able to find, $40,000,000. This project, it gave Peter's dad the thing he'd been wanting, a real success. But people are complicated. He was on top of the world, And I know he felt good. He came home and felt good, but that started to sour as he started to realize how much money the company was gonna make from this toy. Because this was his ship that was supposed to come in. I think he saw it at first, I think he was perfect
