Doppelgängers | This American Life | Episode 484

Key Takeaway

When a disturbing experience keeps replaying, do not treat isolation, numbing, or constant vigilance as proof that you should handle it alone. Today, name one person or peer group with relevant lived experience and make a concrete connection—send a message, attend a meeting, or ask for a referral. In the episode, both Brandon and Curtis found more support when they connected with people who understood their experiences, rather than carrying anger, nightmares, and fear privately.

Episode Overview

This episode explores doppelgängers through two very different stories: whether fried pork bung can convincingly resemble calamari, and the striking parallels between trauma experienced in war and in a violent Philadelphia neighborhood. The second story follows veteran Brandon Caro and Curtis Jefferson as both describe hypervigilance, grief, rage, self-medication, relationship damage, and the gradual realization that they need support.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Doppelgängers | This American Life | Episode 484 from This American Life. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

1 2 3 Sometimes things aren't what you think they are. And people aren't who you think they are. That's what we're talking about today. I'm Ira Glass. That is really weird to hear you do that. Um I'm here. This is actually Ira Glass. I'm sitting here with Fred Armanson. Hi. Hi. who's probably best known for San, but also Portlandia. And um and I knew that you had worked up an imitation of me because we just happened to meet once. Yeah. And then you said something like, "But you're not famous enough, so I have no use for this on television." I might have said that.

Exactly. Yeah. And uh Yeah. Well, after that, this uh this writer at SNL, Christine Nangle, and I uh we figured out a way to turn it into a sketch that we could put on Weekend Update, the news segment on Saturday Night Live. Uh by chance NPR came up in the news. I think this is around the time that they were talking about cutting some of the funding. Here to comment on NPR's troubles, the host of This American Life, Ira Glass. So, I came out and I'm wearing your glasses and like a wig to look like you.

It's this American life. I'm Ira Glass. Act one. You know, I was thinking the other day and the joke being that you were interviewing people at Weekend Update. Uh Ira, look, you can't bring other people on as your guest. You're my guest. It's just your CEO just resigned and now the Republican budget proposes cutting your funding completely. I mean, aren't you afraid that NPR might start laying people off? Act two. Oh boy. laid off. No guts. So, this never made it to air. This is just the recording from the dress rehearsal.

Why? Why didn't it make it to air? Rita finally gets a job. Who knows? It might have been a little uh unwieldy. So, uh if people want to watch that, the entire video is uh we have a link at our website. Anyway, so we invited you today cuz uh the theme of this week's show is uh doppelgangers. The show is about doppelgangers, about people who are doubles or look alikes. And I realized that because you had worked up this imitation, you could co-host as my doppelganger in this room, in this studio during this broadcast, you this is an audience who actually know who you're playing.

Yes. This is the this is the right venue for it. So So if you're ready, that's what we'll do. Sure. And and you could Another way to look at it is you're you co-hosting with me that this is my show. Exactly. And that's what we're talking about today. I'm Ira Glass. All right. So, let's go to this copy. So, we have some copy for today. Okay. Uh uh that's this one. And let's go to there. And let's just uh Lizzie, why don't you start? Okay. Today on our show, let me think.

I'm just thinking about how I would do it. I would go like today on our show. Oh, yes, that's better. Okay. Today on our show, we have two stories of supposed doppelgangers. We have two stories of supposed doppelgangers. And we try to figure out the truth of them. Do I sound that nasal? Maybe. And we try to figure out the truth of them. One concerns two men who've never met. The other two animals who never meet. I think you should do the next part cuz it's so like Dude, do you want to hear me do it first or you just want to do it?

from WBZ Chicago. It's This American Life distributed by Public Radio International. I feel like a muppet. Why does it make me feel like a muppet, Fred? Seriously, I think you could be a muppet. They I don't know why they don't have a muppet of you. From WBZ Chicago, it's This American Life from WBEZ Chicago. It's This American Life. Distributed by Public Radio International. distributed by Public Radio International. I'm Glass. And I'm Glass. Stay with us. This is American Life. Today's show is a rerun from back in 2013 when Fred Armerson was still in Saturday Night Live and doing Portlandia.

And our show at the time was distributed by Public Radio International. Let's get back to the show. So, Fred, you want to do you want to start act one? Okay. Act one, Dead Ringer. We start today with a story of physical resemblance, not of a person, but of a food. A quick uh warning that if you're squeamish or averse to graphic images of food, there's going to be some of that in this report. Here's Ben Calhoun. I first heard about this whole thing in an email.

It came from a listener, a woman named Emily Rancer. She works in the food industry. And the letter Emily wrote was about a story she'd heard from a farmer. The farmer who told her this is apparently a person of some standing in the pork industry. And admittedly, I don't know the first thing about the pork industry, but he's in charge of a pork producing operation that spans several states. The story he told Emily went something like this. A while ago, he was visiting a pork processing plant in Oklahoma.

He's walking through it with a friend, a guy who managed the plant actually, and at some point, he saw boxes stacked on the floor labeled artificial calamari. He stood there wondering for a second and then he asked his friend what's artificial calamari. Bung his friend replied. It's hog rectum. Rectum that would be sliced into rings, deep fried, and boom, there you have it. Okay, if I can, let me just narrate for you what this would mean. It would mean that in restaurants everywhere, right this second, people are squeezing lemon wedges over crispy golden rings, dipping the rings into marinara sauce, and they're eating hogrectum.

Now they're chewing, satisfied, and deeply clueless. It's payback. It's payback for our blissful ignorance about where our food comes from and how it gets to us. It's amazing and it's perfect. But it also seems like it couldn't possibly be true. So I called up the farmer to talk to him personally. I wanted to hear it firsthand. And the farmer confirmed the story. The entire thing, the boxes, the bung. But when I asked him to go on the record to tape an interview and give his name here on the radio, he very politely declined.

Which seems suspicious, right? When I asked him why, he said he'd spoken with his girlfriend about it, and she suggested that he should think about the words that he wanted to come up when somebody Googled his name. This was all fine, though, because he referred me to the real expert, the guy who gave him the tour of the hog processing plant. And that guy, he agreed to talk. Hello. Hi. Is this Ron? Yeah. Yeah. This is Ron Meek, meat processing plant manager, presently residing in Mountain View, Missouri, where he runs an organic beef processing plant there called Beyond Organic.

If the story really were true, Ron would have been the guy who explained to the farmer what was in those boxes. The boxes are 10 lb boxes and and they were all uh they cut off so much of it like maybe uh a 10 or 12 inch uh piece of the bung. And uh you know what it looks like? This looks like uh after they're cleaned and and washed and everything, they just look like a bunch of big noodles in a box is all it looks like.

But but the specifically the labels that said uh imitation calamari, where where did you personally see the imitation calamari lab? I've never seen a label say that. That's all I was told by the the people that told me that. Uh the people I work for, they told me that. Oh, the people that that you worked for told you that it was used for imitation calamari, right? And is there any possibility that you think that the when they were explaining this to you that that they were kind of having you on a little bit having me on?

Yeah. Like uh bullshitting me. Yeah. Uh well I wouldn't think that but you know it could be 5% could have been that you know but I seriously doubt it. Okay, just to give a little better picture, a pork bung, and bung is the actual industry term for it, is long and floppy and ugly. At one end, it widens out into this more bulbish shape like a pink wrinkly pear. That's the rectum. At the other end, it narrows into a soft pinkish white tube. I know it sounds gross, but also consider we are a nation that eats more than a billion pounds of sausage every year.

Billion with a B. Maybe you like liverwurst or capacola or summer sausage with a natural casing. Then you like me have eaten bung stuffed dried bung. A lot of brz and Italian sausages are stuffed in intestine. So if you eat those regularly, you pretty much live up the street from bong. So why does the idea of a fried ring of bong just feel grosser? Well, partly it's the visual, right? When you see that little ring of calamari, you don't want to picture it in the context of a pig's behind.

Then there are all the people who don't eat pork, period. Ron said there's also another reason just because of the word bung probably I mean people don't just want to jump up and say man I'm going to eat me some bun tonight you know I mean that's just the way it is but the big question the question you've been thinking about since we got on this topic have you or I eaten imitation calamari bung dressed up as seafood well Ron didn't know he said his plan exported a lot of their bung to Asia, but he just didn't know much about what ever happened after it left the door, so he could only speculate.

Anything, he said, would be a wild guess. So, I turned to people who would know. Is pork bung being falsely pedled as calamari? I called the USDA. The USDA's Food Inspection Service issued the following statement to me. Products we inspect, including those derived from pork, must be accurately labeled and cannot purport to be a product of another species. So, it's against the rules. But people break the rules. A recent study of seafood by a group called Oceanana used DNA testing and found that all across the country, fish is regularly being labeled as other species in restaurants and in grocery stores.

Escalar sold as white tuna, Pacific rockfish being fraudulently sold as snapper. In Miami, more than 30% of fish was being sold as something it wasn't. In New York, the number was 39%. Boston, 48%. Los Angeles, are you ready? 55%. 55. That means if you order fish in LA, you are most likely eating a species you did not order. In other words, seafood substitution is rampant in this country. And depending on where you live, from what I can tell, you can get cleaned hog bung for about half the price of clean squid.

So there would be money in it if you could pull off the switch. And as best as I can tell, were you to do this, you would not be caught. A lawyer who's familiar with this area of law and regulation told me, once Bung leaves the plant, there's a variety of agencies and entities that would be in play. USDA, FDA, state, and local government. But ultimately, he said, the regulation we have is not designed to catch an offense like this. It's aimed mostly at sanitation and food safety.

So bottom line, the lawyer said, if somebody wanted to do it, chances are they'd get away with it. So is someone out there doing this? Well, for weeks, I looked for an answer. The USDA says they've never heard of anyone trying to pass pork bung as squid or any other species. I contacted the National Restaurant Association, the National Pork Producers Council, the National Pork Board, a Squid Fisherman's Association. Good afternoon, Cisco and other big food and restaurant supply companies. It's hog what? Uh, bong. Hogre rectum.

Oh my gosh. That's the executive director of the California Wetfish Producers Association. But the answer was pretty much always the same. Nobody had heard of it. But almost to a person, they added that that doesn't mean it's not happening somewhere. Ron Meek said a lot of the bung from his plant got exported. So my next call was to the US Meat Export Federation which confirmed that quote the main destinations for pork bungs are China, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, Korea and the Philippines. They are mainly used for processing but we are aware of some uses in soups and certain entre.

We are not aware of them being used as a substitute for calamari but it's not impossible. So over the past few weeks, I've called Asian food suppliers, people who live in, work in, and eat in those countries. I talked to a woman named Karine Trang, who's written an overarching compendium of Asian cuisines. I've talked to academics at NYU and Havford and USC and Harvard. I've reached out to chefs who know Asian food. The answer, again, always similar. Never heard of it, but it's possible. partly because bung doesn't have such a complicated reputation in Asia where it has to be some kind of secret ingredient like it does here.

On the other hand though, people pointed out that in Korea and Japan, you can't get more than a few hours from the ocean. Squid is cheap and it's readily available. You'd only eat a substitute if you wanted the substitute. Generally, people said if the switch was happening somewhere, they'd guess China. Eventually, I found my way to this guy who I was really excited about. Someone who I thought might have my answer. He was, get this, an anthropologist who lived and worked in China for 40 years where he studied food and specifically meat.

When I talked to him though, he made two points. Point one, my question about this happening in Asia was racist. Even just asking the question was racist because it plays on ignorant stereotypes about other cultures eating things that we perceive as weird. Point two was that Ron Meek, my guy from the pig plant, Ron was pulling my leg and he was getting away with it because I was a dumbass. He told me more than once that I should quote find something worthwhile to do with myself.

When we ended our conversation, he told me that he was refusing to even dignify what I was doing by appearing on the radio or by letting me use his name. Okay. So, to respond to his points one by one, first, am I racist against Asians? Well, I'm half Chinese. My mom's Chinese. Like anyone, I've had the occasional issue with my mother, but this has not been one of them. We grew up eating chicken feet and fish eyes and I think it's possible to raise the question of who eats what without being racist.

His second point though that Ron Meek was pulling my leg. I mean the guy was still an expert on meat in China. So I called Ron back. All right, shoot me some questions, dude. I told him the whole thing about the anthropologist about what he said. I guess I mean the only thing I want to ask you is is are you are you messing with me? No, I mean that was what my boss told me. I was like, "What the hell do we save uh these hog bungs for?" He says they use them for imitation squid and stuff like that.

But so in your in your heart of hearts, do you believe it? Yeah, man. I mean I mean I ain't going to sit here and tell you things that is [ __ ] and play with you when when uh I'm just going off of my knowledge of saving uh hog bugs. I mean you got to think about u how far advanced slaughter houses are, especially big ones that want to make every penny count. Like the one I worked at. You bring the pigs in, you stun them, then you stick them, and the blood goes off into a trough, and it goes down, and it's vacuum sucked out of there with a a vacuum into centrifuges and they separate the blood from the blood plasma.

Uhhuh. And they save that. I mean, they saved the lungs, they saved the pancreas, they saved the spleens, they saved the hearts. The only thing left by the time it's all said and done is a skull and jawbones. I mean, you can be an anthropologist all you want. If you don't work in a processing plant, you don't know. I contacted the plant Ron worked at where this happened. And for what it's worth, they backed him up. They said their sales team had heard of people eating pork bung as imitation calamari, though they hadn't witnessed it firsthand or heard it directly from a customer.

It was all hearsay. So, at the end of all this, I still had no proof that anyone was passing off Bung as Squid. And then I realized I hadn't asked the more basic question here. Could Bung do it? Could it pass as calamari? And that question led me to a guy named Eddie Lynn. Eddie Lynn has eaten a lot of bung. At least a hundred times, he said, probably more. Eddie has a extreme food blog called Deep End Dining and an online TV show called Kamicazi Kitchen.

I can definitely see a resemblance texture-wise. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Um it there it's sort of there's sort of a rubbery texture sort of like a calamarie but you would really have to get rid of that you know you know needless to say foul flavor and odor from the the the uh the bung somehow I hadn't figured that the bung once it was scrubbed and rinsed and cleaned with steam that it would still taste like you know um so yeah you would definitely have to do some major major blanching or or or or brining.

I I meant uh brining. Yeah. Uhhuh. To just to try and leech that those flavors out of there. Yeah. I mean that those flavors have been, you know, marinating in that pig for quite a while. So, a lifetime. Yeah. He thought it wouldn't be easy, but he thought it could be done. And there was only one way to tell if he was right. To cook up some bung and eat it. And if the taste was overwhelming and the texture was all wrong, well then I'd have my answer.

And at this point, I'll be frank. I started to root for the bung. I realized that this is not a story about fraud. It's not a bait and switch story. It's a story about possibility. It's classic rags to riches. It's about whether a cut of meat, perhaps the lowliest, most malignable cut of meat in America, might somehow in at least one place on the planet be dipped in the redemptive oils of the great culinary equalizer that is the deep fryer. And it might emerge transformed, no longer an outcast, but instead hair combed, clean shaven in a suit and tie.

It might walk reborn onto a table. Through sheer force of resemblance, it might be loved. Its history, years of drudgery and hardship, doing the body's least glamorous job, all washed away. No, this is not the story of a con man like Bernie Maidoff. It's Pretty Woman. This is whether Goodwill Hunting finds his way out of Souy. It's whether Charlie on that very last chocolate bar really can get a golden ticket. To do all this, to try it, I called my little sister, Lauren. She's a chef, trained abroad at the Cordon Blue, worked at Michelin Star restaurants.

She's that kind of chef. Soon, we were standing in front of a deli case. And I don't know why I feel hesitant about saying this because I don't think it's racist. It was in Chinatown. Poor phone. There it is. Look at it. It looks like a sphincter. Wait, what do you mean it looks like a This one up here that's cut up. It looks like a butthole. It does. And Lauren had theories about pulling it off, brining, soaking, maybe brazing. But once we got to the store, once she'd seen the meat up close, her doubts got worse.

I think after looking at it, I don't think that I don't think it's going to You don't think it's going to work? No, it's too thick. There's too much mus like muscle tissue. It's too thick. You'd have to use like a ring cutter to make it the right thickness. What do you think those bits are in there? Oh, you know, poo. My sister said Eddie Lynn was definitely right. The giveaway would be the stubborn flavor of poo. That flavor, she said. It's tough to get rid of.

The earth revolves around the sun and bung will always taste like. But there was no backing out now. We would eat. We would eat our way to the truth. And so what if it didn't look good? So what if Bung was destined to taste like Bung? You know who it didn't look good for? And he still put up a fight. Rocky Balboa. That's who. This was it. The Bung versus Calamari. Squid versus tail. The Rumble in the bung hole. We set up the tasting at a restaurant in the low between lunch and dinner.

In the dining room, there was just a few tables eating. And all around the restaurant, the morning shift was wrapping up. As we walked in with a red cooler filled with squid and hogb. So, originally, I'd recruited some half a dozen people from our office at This American Life as tasters. The final group the day of the tasting included from the office Seth Lind and Brian Reed. So, so when's the last time that you guys had calamari? Um, I had calamari probably like a month ago.

And what about what about you, Brian? Um, I haven't had it since we like got this tip about uh about the possible Oh my gosh. Have you been avoiding Yeah. No, totally. And I And like to be honest, like I I ate calamari pretty, you know, I'm like a regular eater of calamari. like not not like all the time, but like it's something I'll routinely order if it's on an appetizer menu, you know? Yeah. I mean, I grew up in like an Italian-American family where like my grandparents were also born here.

I feel like calamari is just big among that sector of people at like, you know, Olive Garden and stuff like that. So, I just grew up eating it, you know. I hadn't realized this. For weeks, Brian had been avoiding calamari. He'd been living in fear. Brian, if you find out that they're in disccernible from each other, will you ever eat calamari again? No, I don't think so. That's why I want to do this, just to know going forward. Back in the kitchen, things were looking bad.

I'd given up on the idea that bung would taste the same as calamari. Now, I'd hung my hopes on the idea that at least visually it would look the same. But as my sister dropped the flowered rings of hog bung into the fryer, they had turned into this kind of big ugly tangled wad. Nothing like the jiggly squid rings. Oh, they're very they're very like scraggly looking. But then, as if by a miracle, they changed. My sister gave a shake to the fry basket, and as they sizzled, the bung just seemed to gracefully snap into rings.

Oh, look at that though. It's like magic. They're like turning into circles. Yeah. So, I'm going to pull these first ones. Soon, we were face to face with the plate. On it, there were two piles of rings, similar in size, similar in shape. The bung had more of a frizzly edge to it, kind of like a fancy onion ring. The calamari was smoother. Okay, so I asked Seth and Brian to just give a first impression. I have a guess, but I could to It's one of those things where like you're pretty sure, but you could totally be wrong.

God, I thought I would be more sure. I don't I'm waffling now. Just My gut reaction is that this was this was calamari. This was not. Okay. Before you eat it, see, I totally thought this was calamari. The other one. Okay. So, I'm going to do it at the same time. Okay. So, just to be clear what's going on here, Seth has chosen one pile of rings, which he thinks is calamari. Brian has done the same thing, only Brian is choosing the other stack of fried rings.

Okay. So, we're about to bite into these simultaneously, which we both think this is calamari, but they're the opposite. But they're the opposite ones. Okay. So, in actuality, Seth is right. Seth is eating calamari. The chewing you hear from Brian's mic, that is the sound of a calamari lover eating fried pig rectum. I should also add there were actually two varieties of bung on the plate that day. One bung that my sister had blanched over and over to mellow any oronyy feal flavor and then untreated straight up bung.

Unfiltered, unchained, uncut 100% pure bung. That one, the latter one. Bung at its purest. At the height of its bunginess, this is what Brian was eating. As they ate, Seth still looked confident. I think I think I that was I think I was right. Really? Yeah. I totally think I was right. Game, set, match, bung. And it wasn't just Brian. I thought so. Damian, who manages the restaurant, he also thought it was passable. A few of us picked up a faint flavor of pork rind. But if you weren't really looking for it, you wouldn't notice it was there.

One of the restaurant staff, a guy named Ethan Van Beern, had the simplest, clearest explanation. Um, I think that when you slice something up really thin and deep fried, it's going to taste like something that's been deep fried. If if a plate full of the bun came out, how many people do you think would would even like do you think you'd notice if you were in that setting? I'd say top scenario is somebody says, "This calamari tastes funny and keeps eating it." And as for Brian, oh, Brian, Brian was reeling a bit trying to figure out just what this was going to mean for him.

I'm I I'm sure I've been fooled in the past. I'm just like sure of it. Wait. Oh, you're thinking that you've been places in the past and you've had bugs. I just imagine like seeing a plate that looks like that with this food that looks like this on it. Like sitting with my family growing up. Like we definitely have eaten something that tasted like this and just thought it was calamari for sure. Not only wasn't he sure if he'd ever eat calamari again, he didn't want to eat the calamari on the plate in front of him.

Calamari, I guaranteed him was real. Just to repeat one last time, I have no proof that anyone anywhere has ever tried to pass off pork bung as calamari in a restaurant. All I know is if you wanted to do it, it would be easy. And I'm choosing to believe that it's happening somewhere because at some point in working on this story, I stopped identifying with Brian and anyone who might feel ripped off or grossed out by getting imitation instead of the real thing. Now I identify with the bung.

And I'd like to think that somewhere out there right now under a heat lamp, a platter is sitting. It's warm and it's full of promise and transformation and redemption. That's the world that I'll choose to live in. For me, for you, for the bung, for the bung in all of us, Ben Calhoun, he's one of the producers of our program, or anyway, he was back when he made this story in 2013. Today's show is a rerun. these days. He is the executive producer of the New York Times podcast, The Daily.

Thanks to the restaurant Aurora in Brooklyn, for letting us use their kitchen for our taste test. Okay. Okay. Who was this? Wait, who am I? Well, coming up, Philadelphia and Afghanistan, doppelgangers. It's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio and Public Radio International when our program continues. So we're we're um we're going to start act start here. So we're coming back from the ID break. It's this American life glass. Each week in our show, of course, we choose a theme. Bring different kinds of stories on that theme.

Today's show, doppelgangers. Stories of things that have a double. An evil twin or a not so evil twin. Oh, wait. I should just explain. Oh, right. So, um what? That was just a note to myself. I should explain. No, that was a note to me. So, this is why Fred is here. Fred Armson is co-hosting the show as as me. Um, because this show about doubles and look alikes, right? But we're both creating the same person in in a sense. And and that's kind of what the fun is of Oh, that was really good the way you just did that.

of of death. Finish your thought. I didn't have an end to that thought. I just You just knew that you I like when you when you do little self dis little discovery. All right. Well, we have arrived at act two of our program, act two in country and city. So, for decades now, the writer Alex Cotwitz has been writing about the inner cities and especially the toll of violence on young people. He he's probably best known for his book There are no children here. He appears on our show from time to time.

Recently, he heard uh about an unusual program at Drexel University in Philadelphia where they're giving guys from inner city neighborhoods counseling for symptoms of PTSD. And this interested Alex because for a long time he has wondered whether the violence that he was reporting on in Chicago and its effect on kids and adults was comparable to the effects of trauma that a person experiences at war. So he knew and we know how strange that sounds, you know, to compare being in Afghanistan or Iraq to to working in a street corner in Chicago or some other city.

So Alex tried to see if it was really comparable by doing a pair of interviews. He talked to this vet from Afghanistan and also a guy from Philadelphia who's lived in some pretty bad neighborhoods his whole life. Alex wanted to see if they were doubles of some kind for each other. One of these guys is 28, one is 30, and both of them are trying to make sense of what they experienced. Quick warning that this story includes descriptions of violence and discussions about suicide. Here's Alex.

Here's the first of these two guys, Brandon Caro. Brandon spent a year in Afghanistan. His roughest time was the six months he spent in the eastern part of the country near the Pakistani border. He was a Navy corman, a medic who worked with the Marines. as a teenager. Yeah, I I I certainly lack discipline. Um I've been thrown out of my house more times than I could remember. And uh I was 21 when I enlisted. And really, I enlisted because I had up to that point not finished college.

And it didn't seem as though I was going to finish college anytime soon. Then there's Curtis Jefferson. He grew up in a rough neighborhood in North Philly where he oversaw a small group of guys who sold drugs. He made his first drug sale when he was still in high school. I was 16. My aunt gave me some um she gave me some money for school and I I bought I purchased some some weed and some crack with that. Never bought my clothes. After that, I sold all the drugs.

And I guess from there, that's where it started. I seen that money come in and I wasn't asking the wife for no money like like especially with my I wasn't back and forth in her pockets and all that. So from there it was all she wrote. Okay. They're two completely different people who made very different choices in their lives. But I spoke to each of them looking for similarities in their experiences. And honestly there were more than I expected. Here's the first similarity. For Curtis on the street and for Brandon in Afghanistan, they could never let their guard down.

During his tour, Brandon was charged with training Afghan soldiers. And in May 2007, he heard about Afghan soldiers who attacked their American trainers. They had weapons around us all the time. on convoys. We would have to line them up in the morning and collect their cell phones because we couldn't trust them not to inform on us to Taliban fighters. It was exhausting trying to keep an eye on the Afghan soldiers and look out for IEDs or snipers because you trying to focus on one thing trying to get money but the same thing.

You know eventually somebody going to come up and test you. Somebody want to test you. Somebody going to rob you. Somebody going to send some to your boys. They going to get robbed. Somebody going to send shots through your way or something. It felt like a piano could fall on you at any time. You know, that's what it felt like to be on patrol and especially to be on patrol with the Afghans. When you out there, you you notice different things. For one, people with the hands in their pockets.

You're looking for someone that doesn't look right, that doesn't feel right. Another thing, people got hoodies on, especially black. It's a certain look. put the hoodie on their face. You can't even see their eyeballs. Like, come on. It's daytime. You I can't see your face. Let me see your eyes or something. I would watch the way they looked at me, you know, if they would stare back at me, if they would smile at me, you know, if a person always got to keep touching their side, like you're not going in your pocket.

You you touching something. And I I've been out there so long. I could tell if somebody got a gun on them or not. For some reason, it was always like a white Toyota Camry that was packed with explosives and driven into a convoy or driven into a checkpoint. Grand Mars. Who else? Crown Victoria. That's a dope boy car. When I seen them cars when I was on the streets is either get ready, go for the straps, go to the guns, or get out the way. That might be the hop out boys come stick you up.

Here's something else they shared. They both saw people killed and then had to figure out how to keep going. The first fatality Brandon ever saw came when a convoy, which he was originally scheduled to be a part of, was hit. They brought the casualties into our base. And when we swung open the two doors that opened up into the cab of the truck, I was looking at just a heap a mass of of flesh and that gray digital pattern army uniform. But there was no form to what I was looking at.

I knew that what I was looking at was human, but I didn't know what position the body was in because it had been so badly damaged. Um, and so we got in into the cab and we started to put him into a bag and I tried not to look at his face. I remember thinking like, don't look at his face. Don't look at his face. But I I had to inevitably. Um, it was by far the most intimate, gorious thing I've ever experienced in my life.

My first time seeing somebody shot was my own mother. I was 5 years old going on six. We was living in the projects, um, Bloomberg projects. My mom's, uh, she just got, um, her degree in nursing. She was a nurse. Nice little job. She was working to get us out the projects. Then one morning she was going out to work. Gave my mom a kiss from the lips. She tell my grandma I'll see y'all later. I'm going to work. Soon as she was out to work, I just heard all this shooting.

Like by that time I knew what shooting was. But you know there it was. She just got caught up in a shootout. Somebody uh knocked on the door. She told my grand said, "Barbar on the ground." All I know is my grandma was screaming and hollering. She ran outside and there she was right on the ground. Just red blood. Just nothing but blood just looking at like I'm 5 years old. Like what's wrong with mommy? Grandma like what's wrong with her? My grandma crying and screaming.

She ain't even like she didn't even say nothing. Like she just keep telling me go in the house. Go in the house. I was angry a lot like every day. Every day because I thought about my mom every day. Every day. Every day. I still think about her every day. From that point on. It was very difficult for me to sleep, to focus. I didn't realize how much those things really had made an impact on me, but they did. I've seen a lot of people get shot.

I've seen people get shot by cops. I didn't seen best friends shoot each other. I didn't seen all types of crazy stuff. I don't know. There was a convoy that went up to Naray in which there was a sniper attack that killed my old sergeant and his sergeant. There was the rocket propelled grenade attack on a tent inside our FOB followed up by machine gun fire. I can say I had seen like a dozen. And and for me to not even be like no cop or no doctor or nothing like that's a whole lot to see somebody killed and dead like that's a whole lot.

This brings us to the third parallel. They buried their feelings. Well, you know, after my mom got shot, I didn't get no counseling. I didn't get no counselor at all cuz and my aunt asked me too, like my aunt gave me the decision and she asked me one day. She I was I had to been like 12. She was like, "Do you want to go to cancer?" And I told her, "No, for what?" Like I don't need to talk to nobody. I was so much in denial.

I think I can handle everything by myself, but I really couldn't. I I think at that point I was probably still in denial. I knew I knew that I was toing around a lot of emotional baggage. Um, as much as I wanted to talk to people about how I really felt, I also didn't want to talk about it at all. The more the more I give it air, the more real it would be. And I didn't want it to be real. I just wanted it to be over.

I can't show no weakness cuz you know what I mean? My homies need me out there. And I've been doing that for years. It's to the point like I started getting adapted to it like it like but at the same time I was still scared like don't nobody want to die like that. The fourth shared experience raw unfiltered rage. I was def I was definitely looking for for revenge for my mom when I was about 10 years old. I told my I was going, you know, look for the people.

They killed my mom and I was, you know, I was going to go back down to the projects and I was going to kill them. That's all I always thought like that. I mean, the way I felt about the Afghans, I began to just hate that whole culture entirely. I hated them. There was one time we were driving on an extremely extremely dangerous road and and we had come very close to falling off the cliff which would have killed us. Uh and the truck to our front was a truck filled with Afghan soldiers and they were pointing and laughing at us for for almost falling off.

And in that moment, more than any other moment, I I wanted to open up on them and kill every one of them. I realized how much anger and resentment I have and how dangerous that is. Man, I shot my uh sister boyfriend, you know. I mean, he ain't I don't know. I was just I think I had one of them moments like it had to been cuz I really it just took one word and it just set me off for no reason like just thinking about everything and I just shot him.

I felt some type of way. I made the situation deepen and it wasn't you know what I mean? It wasn't even that deep but I've been holding a lot of stuff in you know and cuz he cuz he was always trying to discipline me. That's what it was I didn't like about like he always try to discipline me like all my sisters is way older than me like 40 pushing 50. See what I'm saying? Like I'm the youngest and I'm the only boy. Like so you know her boyfriends you know they just oh you need to stop getting the streets like but it's just how he was saying it like like don't raise your voice at me like and he talking about yeah I'm going to take you out in the street and fight you and all this you going to learn your lesson like it just was the the part when he was like yeah I'mma knock you the out like and that just went in my head like what first thing I do is grab my gun come around the corner.

He was outside too. Like and I'm thinking the whole time like I hope he ain't really outside. I like he think I'm going to fight him. Like I'm not fighting this man. I'm going kill him. I didn't even give him give him a chance to get put his hands up. He was soon as I got around he was just all on my face just backed up and shot him. Shot him right in the stomach. I thought I was going to kill him. I thought he was dead though.

I guess everything work out his ways like he ain't he ain't pressing he ain't tell you know he still survive so here's something I didn't expect with either of them toughest times weren't when they were on the battlefield or in the streets it was when things were quiet that's when they struggled the most the worst times for me were the times where we weren't out on patrol because that's when I was alone with my thoughts. I would try to clear my head. It was impossible. These thoughts would just appear.

I would worry. I thought about what it would be like to be shot. I might daydream and just look at my ceiling or something, watch TV like, damn, just imagine bullets going ripping through my body. like you know mother just come out with a gun just start shooting everything I'm getting hit everybody getting hit I would think what it would feel like to be to be blown up in an IED to be pinned down and have the vehicle set ablaze and and to burn alive to be trapped in the truck because the doors were too heavy to cut through or to or to to pull open.

seeing it like just seeing it with my own eyes just look seeing blood and me just falling to the ground like and is it too late for the ambulance would I still be alive and the ambulance come get me or that crazy kind of stuff like when you sit and think about that stuff that kind of stuff drive you crazy for both reality eventually caught up to their fears in the spring of 2006 Curtis told us he got caught in a shootout with rival drug dealers the first bullet to his back spun him around.

He got hit four more times in the stomach and in the arm. As a result, he walks doubled over like an old man. Because of permanent nerve damage, he falls a lot and when he's under stress or eats the wrong food, he has bleeding from his intestines. Brandon, too, was hurt in a rollover when his humvey fell off a small cliff. Brandon had been manning the turret, and fortunately, another soldier pulled him in just as a vehicle rolled. He suffered three fractures of his vertebrae and two herniated discs and the pain kept them up nights even after he left Afghanistan.

Both men were on a lot of medications after their injuries and our sick similarity may not be so surprising. They self-medicated. I had started to drink again and on the weekends I would drink heavily. That makes my body just feel a little better like just just a little basic Mary Jane that's all. Usually a Crown and Coke was my drink of choice and I would probably drink at least five up to eight nine 10 in the night. But you know sometimes I it do give me the opposite effect.

When I was very very drunk, I would start to cry because of how upset I was because you know when I smoke it put me on a mellow then you know you just start thinking then that's when all the thoughts just come like oh what the hell they just come from like and I like oh some thoughts I think sometime I don't want to think about echo number seven they lashed out at friends and family Curtis had night terrors and would awake in the middle of the night thinking his girlfriend was someone who was trying to shoot him.

He'd push her, he'd hit her in the head, he'd call her names. I just was like, "Dan, I know I'm hurting this girl. Like, I'm really putting my hands on her like a man like putting marks on her arms and so I'm going I'm losing it." Like, and that's and I just like like Brandon had a difficult relationship with a girlfriend, too. They'd get into huge arguments and she'd get scared. One time Brandon got so agitated a friend intervened and tried to calm him down. Brandon punched him.

His girlfriend locked herself in her room and called the police. Police came and I was inside and the police rang the doorbell and I opened it up and it was two cops, a guy and a girl cop. And I asked the guy, "Is your weapon loaded?" He said, "Why would you ask me something like that?" I said, "Because I want you to shoot me in the head. I just sitting on my bedroom and I had my gun under my bed under the sneaker box. I had a a 40 40 mag big big old cowboy gun and that's when you know my grandma caught the gun in my mouth.

Yeah. She just opened the door to make sure I was cool. It just was one of them days she open the door and no gun in my mouth like she didn't know what to do. She didn't know to come closer or back to stay back like she didn't know what to do. So she looking at me start hoping it's crying and she didn't she didn't want to come next to me and that so she's just talking to me the whole time like come on baby it's all right.

I love you. You're my grandson like you know your mom ain't leave you out here on earth for this. like you plus you just got shot five times. Like why are you like it's going to be all right. We going to get some help for you and everything like I just I just took it out deep decocked it and put it back in the box and just sat there and called my homie up and bring some weed around the corner and got high and that's how that went.

Both Brandon and Curtis have gotten help. Brandon's an AA and went through a writing program for veterans at NYU. Curtis is receiving counseling through the program at Drexle that offers help to guys coming off the street. But finally, it's here where their stories diverge. Brandon's tour ended and he's now thousands of miles from the dangers of Afghanistan. Curtis still lives in his old neighborhood where the danger is ongoing. When I get my money right, I'm definitely moving. I'm doing move. That's that's that's that's a priority I'm working on right now.

I'm out. I'm going to live somewhere comfortable that I know I can walk the neighborhood. You know, I could sit out there on my step all day, all night if I wanted to. Not long ago, a guy was shot and killed down the block from where he lives. And Curtis happened to see the body on the ground. And I just was thinking about a lot of that that that I was paused like I just was like yo in shock like damn that boy was on the ground and that was me.

It's just I'm living like he died like and I'm like damn this and it just felt like I felt all them bullets all over again. Curtis worries that because of the way he walks perpetually bent over he looks weak and that people will target him, rob him, beat him up, shoot him, take revenge. I wonder for someone like Curtis if it's really post-traumatic stress since really there's nothing post about it. Brandon, meanwhile, says he doesn't talk to his friends or family about his anger and his nightmares, which he still has regularly.

He tried counseling but didn't like it. So, he sought out other veterans who understand what he's been through. And Curtis now attends group counseling with others who, like himself, were once running the streets. That's the final echo. They've both come to realize that they're not alone. Alex Kotawitz. Alex's books and documentaries include the book An American Summer about Gun Violence and One Summer in Chicago. Since we last aired this episode, Curtis Jefferson has died. Brennan Caro has continued writing. He has a novel, Old Silk Road, which tells the story of a medic in the Afghan War.

Like the wallpaper sticks to the wall. Like the sea shark clings to the sea. Like you'll never get rid of your shadow. Frank, you'll never get rid of me. Okay. So, should we do the credits? Yeah. Let's do it. You ready? God, you do this whole thing every at the end of every show. Yeah. Okay. Ready? Got to hire someone to do that. Well, our program was produced today by Mickey Meek and myself with Alex Bloomberg, Ben Calhoun, Sarah Kenny, Jonathan Heivar, Brian Reed, Robin Simeon, Alissa Ship, and Nancy Updike.

Our senior producers, Julie Snyder helping this rerun from Stone Nelson and Angela Javasi. Seth Lind is our operations director. Emily Condan's our production manager. Elise Bergerson's our administrative assistant. Music help from Damen Gray from Rob Gettis. Special thanks today to Jack Chen, Maris Gillette, Katy Connor, Natt Hennean, Mike, Chris Waldrup, Damen Gra, his kitchen crew, and everyone who ate the bung, Ted Corbin, and Tony Thompson of the Healing Hurt People program at Drexler University, Nate. Beaver, Amy Droska, Nora Monachella, Kevin Miller, Zachary Susman at NYU, and Michelle Harris.

Our website where you can watch the videotape of the Saturday Night Live dress rehearsal of me doing glass. That address this americanlife.org or also at our website. T-shirts and prints inspired by Ben Calhoun's Kamari story. They show basically an illustration of a pig like you would see at a butcher and then coming out of its butt is a squid. It turns into a squid at the butt and they're awesome. And you can buy them as a t-shirt or as a print at thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the public radio exchange.

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We stick together like I think we're done. And I think we should I think we are. I think Are we okay? I think I think I think I I think we're I'm not too worried about it. I think we're pretty I think we got it. I wouldn't worry about it. for my shadow and me. Next week on the podcast of this American life, we visit a hospital in Africa complete with beautiful operating rooms and flying drones that carry snake bite antivenenom that treated a big chunk of its country's people for absolutely free.

In February, their funding was shut down when the Trump administration closed USAD. And now the people running this hospital are pondering what was good and what was bad about what they built here. That's next week on the podcast or in your local public radio station.