205: Plan B
Update: 2024-01-07
8
Description
There's the thing you plan to do, and then there's the thing you end up doing.
- Ira summarizes the results of an informal poll of about a hundred people, about whether they were living their Plan A or Plan B and recounts a moment from a short story by author Ron Carlson. (2 minutes)
- Act One: John Hodgman first encountered Cuervo Man on a press junket to Cuervo Nation, a small island owned by Jose Cuervo Tequila. Cuervo Man was wearing nothing but a Speedo, wraparound shades, and a red cape. Occasionally he’d stick a toilet plunger on his bald head. John was fascinated and eventually got to know Cuervo Man, whose real name was Ryan. Though the Cuervo act was Ryan’s Plan B, it had a special power that John couldn't help but envy. (19 minutes)
- Act Two: Starlee Kine was becoming friends with a woman named Robin when they started to encounter an obstacle, a common obstacle people run into when the become friends as adults. So Robin invented a Plan B to solve the problem. (6 minutes)
- Act Three: Ira talks with Barry Keenan, who was living a lot of people’s plan A in the early 60’s. He was rich, he was successful. But when he lost all his money and got hooked on painkillers, he switched to a Plan B to make money. He decided to kidnap the 19-year-old Frank Sinatra Jr. (11 minutes)
- Act Four: Jonathan Goldstein took a telemarketing job as a kind of temporary Plan B, never suspecting that it would be a ten year chapter in his life. (10 minutes)
- Act Five: J. Robert Lennon reads an excerpt from his short story "The Accursed Items," in which he demonstrates that even objects can fulfill a fate different from the one for which they were intended. Even inanimate objects can have a plan B. (6 minutes)
Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org
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In Channel
Anyone watching the President Trump town hall? It's all policy, boy. Meanwhile all Joe Jerkoff can talk about is "maga". What a friggin loser.
Seriously, how big of a loser do you have to be to have absolutely NOTHING to run on except how bad you "think" your opponent is? And how terrified of being exposed and desperate do you have to be to weaponize the legal system against him? I can't wait for the debates between Joe Jackoff and PRESIDENT DONALD JOHN TRUMP!
Thoroughly enjoying all the government officials running around today making excuses as to why no one thought it was important to notify the so-called commander in chief that the Secretary of Defense not only had surgery that required general anesthesia, but that he was then admitted to the ICU later due to complications.
Not even the Secretary of Defense has any regard whatsoever for the so-called "commander in chief".
Joe Briben' goes into election season with no accomplishments to run on, nothing but disaster after disaster to his name, constantly screaming incoherently about "MAGA", and the lowest approval rating of any president ever at this time in their term. That's right - lowest ever of anyone including the "orange man" you all hate so much because your TV and your phone apps told you to. From the "most votes ever" to the lowest approval rating ever in three years. How does that happen actually?
The Briben' administration is importing voters in the form of 12 million illegal aliens and trying to prohibit President Donald Trump from running using the courts because he knows he can't win.
Isn't the secretary of Defense supposed to be in DAILY contact with the White House especially in these war-torn times we're now living in under Joe Briben'? So how does he take a powder for three days in the hospital and no one thinks it's important to inform the so-called "president"? I mean, who's really running the show here?