Gary Gulman

And act one is going to be Gary's story, which we're calling Jersey Shore.

That's going to happen after a quick break.

Stay with us.

That's all in the New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts.

This American Life Today show is a rerun, act one.

So Gary Goleman went to his first football practice, and it was just as bad as he imagined it would be.

Guys rushing him, smash into him on every play.

It's totally painful.

He's completely miserable, bruised.

He was in this one play.

This guy hit me helmet to helmet, and it was so loud, like a gunshot, and everybody noticed it, and they called it a biz.

And the way it got its name was they said, and the Jetsons told me this, they said the biz is the sound that it makes when you get hit in the head during a game, which is bzzz.

And each week the guy who had the best hit on somebody else would get this t-shirt called the biz of the week t-shirt.

And...

Now we know that these things, these biz, they were concussions.

But at the time, in 1988, the concussion protocol was pretty much, you good?

You good?

And that first time that I got biz'd, the Jetsons were so proud of me.

They high-fived me and they patted my head.

The gull man got biz'd, his first biz.