Chapter 1: What story does Ira tell about power and responsibility?
Years ago, back when the movie Schindler's List came out, I was friends with these two missionaries. They worked with Chicago gang kids who they would meet in prison and try to bring to God. Anyway, one day I got a call from them and they just had seen Schindler's List and they wanted to talk about it because, you know, call your Jewish friend. They'd seen Schindler's List.
I was their Jewish friend. Anyway, so we got together and what they said was, first of all, we think we understand you better now thanks to Schindler's List. And I think what that was about was They knew about the Holocaust, of course, before this. But it was more of a kind of historical fact.
Like you read about in a book, the reality of what happened in the Holocaust I don't think ever had really hit them. You know, the emotional reality of it. It just hadn't hit them in the gut, all those people dying. So we got together and we talked about it and – They said the scene that touched them most was at the end of the film. And maybe you've seen Schindler's List.
Chapter 2: How does a woman unknowingly change two lives?
It's a scene after the war, and it's this rich guy, Schindler. who had been using his money during the war to save Jews from dying in the concentration camps. And he realizes that now that the war is over, he could have saved so many more people. You know, he still had money he hadn't used. He could have saved more people.
And there's a scene where he goes from person to person saying stuff like, I could have sold this pin, you know, and saved two more Jews. It's gold. Or this car.
This car.
I'm good. What about this car? Why did I keep the car?
Ten people right there. So we're talking about this scene, and my friends Jane and Glenn, the missionaries, say this thing that totally surprised me. They said, that's us. That's our daily life, that scene. That's our life.
This Saturday, for example, Glenn says, he wanted to stay home and watch the ballgame on TV, but he thought to himself, no, no, I've got to go out there and I've got to save another kid. I've got to try to save another kid. I've got to go to the jail. I've got to go to juvie. And they both said that, OK, at the end of their lives, it's going to be just like that scene in Schindler's List.
They're going to go to heaven and they're going to be called to account. And it's going to be all, you know, you took this day off and you pretend to be doing paperwork and you could have been out there saving another kid. Or, you know, you watch The Doubleheader with Cincinnati and there was a teenager who was ready to hear your message and come to God.
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Chapter 3: What shocking actions do the mother and daughter take against their neighbor?
And they were going to be held to account. I think before this conversation, my understanding of Jane and Glenn's life was pretty much exactly like their understanding of the Holocaust. You know, like I understood, like in my head, I understood intellectually that they had given their lives over to serving God. I understood that as a fact. But what it actually meant had not totally penetrated me.
Jane and Glenn, my friends, they were like superheroes, you know. They had this incredible power. the power to save somebody, to bring them to God, to turn somebody's life around. And I got to say, I met kids whose lives were completely straightened out because of them. They did a really nice job. They did save kids.
And with their great power came great responsibility, a responsibility they tried really, really hard to live up to. Well, today on our radio show, we have other people who feel that same sense of power and responsibility in their daily lives.
And I'm not just talking here about judges and doctors and four-star generals and people who you would expect and hope would feel the burden that comes with that amount of power. I'm talking about normal people, people you might not suspect.
Chapter 4: How does Shalom Auslander reflect on powerlessness?
Well, from WBZ Chicago to This American Life, I'm Ira Glass. Our program today, With Great Power, our show in three acts. Act one, objects inside of your mirror are truer than they appear. Act two, unwelcome wagon. Act three, waiting for Joe. In that act, Shalom Auslander has a tale of the being with more power than any other and more responsibility. Stay with us.
This American Life, today's show, is a rerun, act one. Objects inside view mirror are truer than they appear. Well, the woman at the center of this next story has the power to change two people's lives, and change them in a big way. And what's interesting is, at the height of her power, she doesn't even know she has it. Alex Kotlowitz tells the story.
On this one August day in 1979, Carla Dimkoff learned something which shaped the rest of her life and the life of a complete stranger. And the thing about it is, it took 26 years for her to realize that. At the time, Carla was 19 years old.
Chapter 5: What lessons about power are shared through the stories?
She was living in a trailer home in the small town of White Cloud, Michigan, when her father, James Keller, who lived in Tennessee, showed up unannounced driving a motor home. Her father was a bit of a vagabond, someone who lived on the edge. So this surprise visit wasn't all that unusual.
He did this all the time. He would basically abandon my mom, and he would just take off for days at a time, and he would end up wherever he wanted in several different states. And this time, he ended back up in Michigan.
Carla was kind of at loose ends herself. She'd been raising a daughter alone, and the day her father arrived, Carla had gotten married to a man she'd met just a week before. Her father gave them $20 as a wedding gift and wished them well. Then they went their separate ways for the evening. Carla and her new husband got home around 2 a.m., but her father was still out.
He stayed out most of the night.
When I got up the next morning, it was fairly early. I want to say between 7 and 9, 10 a.m. He was in the driveway, walked outside, and I said, you know, hi, where you been?
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Chapter 6: How do the characters grapple with their newfound power?
And at some point he told me he had been at the lamplight bar for a little while, and I was kind of puzzled because the bars close at 2.15 or 2.30, and I wondered where he had been the rest of the evening, and I really never got an answer to that.
Even stranger was what he was doing in the driveway. He was repairing the side view mirror on his motorhome.
It had actually been broken off, and he was putting a whole new mirror on it. And... He was just doing it in such a hurry and throwing parts into his vehicle, which I thought was strange. Why throw all the junk when you're 10 feet from a dumpster into the motorhome? And he was in just such a hurry about it. It just struck me odd for a minute.
And the next thing I know, he said, well, I'm out of here. And he left. And I didn't speak to him probably for... several months to a year.
It wasn't just that Carla's father was a drifter. That makes him seem benign.
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Chapter 7: What consequences arise from the choices made by the characters?
He was, by Carla's recollection, a violent man. Carla remembers once she was slurping while eating spaghetti, and he hurled the table on its side. But it was much worse than that. When Carla turned 11, her mother told her that her father had molested a young girl.
Carla tried to protect others in the family, and that brought her into direct conflict with her dad, like one of the times he went after her mother.
I stepped into the middle of it, and he punched me in the jaw. And I ended up in the emergency room later that evening.
How old were you?
Around 16. At that point, I became afraid physically of my father and emotionally of him, and I was afraid to be alone with him after that.
This is all important to know in order to understand what happened next.
Shortly after Carla's dad drove out of town, Carla picked up the Times Indicator, the local newspaper, and read that on the very same night her dad didn't come home, just hours before she found him in the driveway fixing his busted side-view mirror, a 19-year-old woman had been killed on a nearby road, a deep gash in her head.
In the article, the sheriff said, and I quote, we assume she was hit by an unknown vehicle, maybe by a mirror or some projection.
I just said, oh my God. I had an overwhelming feeling that my father had killed someone.
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Chapter 8: What final reflections do the guests share about power and responsibility?
And I just needed to tell what I knew.
At first she went to her minister, who urged her to go to the police, which she did the very next day. She had a friend drive her to the police station in town, where she learned that the detective in charge of the case wasn't in. So she left him a note.
This is the letter I wrote to Detective Foster, and it says, Mr. Foster, I would like to speak with you concerning the death of Christy Ringler. I do not have a car. If you could possibly stop out to my house after 3 p.m. today, it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, Mrs. Tarrow. That evening, there were two detectives that actually came out. They were dressed in plain clothes.
They knocked on the door. They came in. I told them the whole story about my dad had been here. He had been gone all night. Gave them just a little bit of a history of my dad, not a whole lot of history. And they were like, okay, well, we have this information. Thank you. I had the feeling when they came in the door that they thought they were wasting their time. I don't even think they sat down.
They stood there just kind of towering over me. And I was clearly intimidated by the whole situation, not really ever dealing with anything like this. And maybe I just made myself sound unsure.
See, Carla laid out two possible scenarios for the detectives. One, that her father accidentally struck this girl while driving home from the Lamplight Bar. That seemed likely given his shattered side view mirror and his eagerness to get out of town. The other, well, she thought it was possible that her father had killed Christy Ringley on purpose.
that knowing her dad, maybe he tried to flirt with Christy at the lamplight, that maybe she'd repelled his advances, and that maybe on the way home he saw her on the road and rammed her with his side-view mirror. Carla now believes, though, that the speculative scenario didn't sit too well with the detectives.
They made me feel like a fool, like I had a grudge to grind when I was trying to get my father in trouble or something. And just this poor trailer park person.
Were you conscious about living in a trailer, about being poor?
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