About this episode

The episode explores how individuals are responding to significant changes in their communities, including a military exercise and a medical emergency.

People dealing with new, glaring, massive changes happening right where they live. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. (00:00:00) Prologue: Rick Cole, a city councilmember in Pasadena, CA, talks to Ira about how he responded to a surprise nighttime military exercise in his neighborhood this June – complete with helicopters, gunfire, and flash bangs. (5 minutes) (00:05:30) Act One: A doctor trained as a midwife tells the eye-popping story of how she and others came together to save a baby during a birth that suddenly went wrong, in a part of rural Maine where the local labor and delivery unit had closed less than a month before. (26 minutes) (00:34:56) Act Two: Producer Valerie Kipnis never felt inside the jokes and stories her family would tell about growing up in the Soviet Union, until she saw this year's Oscar-winning documentary, Mr. Nobody Against Putin. The film follows the changes unfolding in one school as Russia rolled out a nationwide propaganda push after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Valerie interviewed the young teacher at the center of the documentary and learned things that never made it into the film. (21 minutes)…

People in this episode

Host: Ira Glass

Guest: Rick Cole

Topics covered

• military exercises
• birth emergencies
• Soviet Union
• propaganda
• Ukraine invasion
• community response

Keywords

• military exercise
• Pasadena
• birth story
• Soviet Union
• propaganda
• Ukraine
• community changes

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: This American Life

Books & works: Mr. Nobody Against Putin

Places: Pasadena, CA, Maine, Russia, Ukraine

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