It's a shock, but it's in a good way. I'm thinking that, when I will go to clubs, I really want to go there. I really want to try to talk more about my roots, Morocco, friends, and not only comparing-- not only saying, oh, you guys do this? We do that. You guys do this? Man, that's really, really a good shock that you gave me today. There will be a before and after today. I remember, what do you care about? What does he care about? I care about people who say what does he care about. I saw Gad at the Comedy Cellar one more time after that interview, two weeks ago.
He hadn't changed up his set much. He wasn't getting into the personal stuff yet. I asked him why, and he said, revolutions don't happen overnight. The comedians I talked to were adamant. For Gad to come up with the kind of material he's going to need to be great in America-- the personal stuff, the stuff he really cares about-- the only way to develop that is to do painful sets on stage where he tries out all kinds of stuff and lets himself bomb.
In France, he doesn't do that. And Gad told me it goes against all his instincts-- against 22 years of training-- but he's going to have to override that instinct. He's going to have to embrace bombing, learn to fail at comedy at a whole new level, if he's going to succeed here. It's a concept that's totally foreign to him.
Gad Elmaleh is about to embark on a European tour, performing in French-- you know, for a change. American shows resume in the new year. We have some clips of him performing in English on our website, ThisAmericanLife. In February, he'll be in Carnegie Hall. Coming up, a little dog who lives in an apartment and whose favorite toy is called a Giggle Ball goes tete-a-tete with the wily creatures that brought us the bubonic plague.
That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. It's This American Life. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, bring you different kinds of stories on that theme.
Today's show, Becoming a Badger, stories of people trying to become something totally foreign, trying to see the world through new eyes.
Those are the MadHatters from Madison, Wisconsin, singing a fight song from the University of Wisconsin, whose football team, of course, is the Badgers. And with that, we have arrived at Act Two of our program. So we heard at the beginning of our show about an Oxford scholar who was trying to understand what it's like to be an animal. Now, in this act, we hear about an animal trying to understand what it's like to be an animal.
I sometimes have this thought about my own dog, which is his feet never touch the earth. Like, they never touch grass and dirt. He lives in a city. He lives on sidewalk and in a tiny apartment 40 feet above the ground. Our producers Zoe Chace and Emmanuel Dzotsi have this story of a dog-- an urban dog-- getting more in touch with the doggy parts of himself.
When we set out to do this story, Ira was like, you've got to put a mic on our main character. His name is Ray Ray. Ray Ray is a dog-- a terrier. We attached a tiny microphone to his collar. Ray Ray, you're going to be my first radio dog. Ray, say something. A ball is thrown down the hallway. This is what it's like to be Ray Ray. Some mix of eternal optimism and desperation to catch the thing that is getting away from you.
She's the kind of old-school New Yorker that you meet less and less. She was born on the Lower East Side, grew up in Queens, doesn't have a car, doesn't really leave the city. And she's lived in the same tiny, two-room apartment for 30 years. She's a dog person. She lives with this big, quiet greyhound and Ray Ray, the hyper little terrier. He's a rescue. Before that I think he was in a home in New Jersey because he had no street skills at all. And his pads-- like he had never walked on concrete.
His pads were like pink baby pads. Judy trains dogs. She's a dog walker and dog sitter. And not long after she got Ray, she noticed he kind of goes nuts around rats, which, in New York, comes up all the time. Not long ago, he saw a rat just across from the Epiphany Church on 22nd Street, started lunging and pulling at the leash.
One darted out, and he went to nail it. It was so fast that I'm glad that I had a good hold on the leash because he would've yanked the leash right out of my hand. Some dogs are bred to swim. Some are bred to herd sheep or rescue people from the snow. Terriers are bred to hunt rats. They did this in factories and farms in England years ago. They're bred small so they can chase rats into holes.
It's a club of dog owners, mostly terriers. On Friday nights, half a dozen of them take their dogs out onto the streets of New York so their terriers can get a chance to really be terriers, do what they're bred for-- hunt for rats. On Facebook, Judy saw picture after picture of dogs chasing rats.
Garbage strewn around the street. Not Judy's scene. But Judy is exceptionally good, I think, at seeing from a dog's perspective. She wants what he wants. And he clearly wants rats. I want to do this with him. I want him to experience a piece of himself that he doesn't get to experience.
Their first hunt is tonight in just a couple hours. The terrier club made clear this would be an audition. Ray Ray would be trying out. Some terriers still have the instinct. You don't have to train them. They're just rat-killing machines.
But other terriers aren't like that. Ray's a bit of a mutt-- a terrier mix. Still, Judy's confident. Prey drive. P-R-E-Y drive. It's prey. There's no doubt in my mind that he will do this. I know he's going to go crazy. At this moment, Ray was attacking a small, blue teddy bear. Watching him do, right now, to some little teddy bear what he's going to do to this rat That's what he does.
They shred. Are you a shredder? That's the level of adversary Ray Ray's had to deal with his whole life thus far-- inanimate, gut full of fluff, no guile, no teeth. I wondered how Ray would do. Later that same night, PM. Grand and Henry Streets. We're just outside a dark playground. It's 90 degrees. It smells like pee and hot garbage. Ray, why are you crying so much?
Because he's anxious? When we catch up with the Ryder Trencher-Fed Society, it's a small group-- two men, a lady, three terriers. They look impatient and serious. Richard is the leader. He's an older guy wearing a baseball cap and Kevlar gloves. Ray Ray immediately starts to bark like crazy at the other terriers. Ray Ray's making a terrible first impression.
One of the other terrier owners shakes his head, and he says he's not sure this is going to work out. Judy finally gets Ray quieted down, and Richard launches into a sort of lecture to Judy, explaining what Ray Ray is going to have to do.
What we're looking for is, primarily, the dog that can hunt by scent here in the city, because the rats are there. You can't see them for the most part. Richard is very serious about this, runs it like a British fox hunt, carries a cane, let's out the occasional And they have battle plans.
There's specific jobs. Some dogs are flushers. The flushers find the rats and chase them out of wherever they're hiding. And there are catchers. The catchers stand just a little ways off, waiting for a rat to come their way. And when the rat comes, the catcher bites. Paco is one of the catch dogs. His owner lays out the strategy.
No, sorry. What's his way in when he's going to kill the rats? Like what's his method? Richard, the leader, says showtime, and we're off. The hunt has begun. A warning to listeners. We told you the dogs are out here killing rats, so be aware.
This gets intense. The 10 of us-- six people, four dogs-- slowly head down Broome Street. And just like in those movie scenes where the special ops team makes its way into enemy territory, it is weirdly quiet.
The dogs are cautious. They sniff at garbage bags, dumpsters. That's me screaming. Two rats just ran out onto the sidewalk. The dogs chase the rats, except for Ray, who just zigzags up and down the sidewalk, excited but confused. The rats sprint in front of us, and then they're gone. Richard's standing by a big SUV. What do you mean? You think the rats are inside this, like, Escalade? No, they're up in the undercarriage, around the axle, around the motorhead.
Little Ray shuffles along a fence with Judy right behind him. Do you feel worried, like he doesn't have the hunter instinct? I know he does. It's just this is his first time, so he's leaving his mark everywhere. And I think that's a poop that I have to clean up. Next stop, a corner store with five huge garbage bags out front.
Richard says this is basically a sure thing. There are always rats in garbage bags outside delis. The dogs start sniffing at it. A couple rats flee the garbage pile and make a dash for the sewer.
The dogs just missed them. Ray's running circles, basically, around the garbage bags. He's like the hype man for the other dogs. He's enthusiastic. Richard, our leader, is not impressed. A guy walks out of the deli. His name is Jonathan Rivera. He lives in the neighborhood. He sees the commotion, and he comes over.
I've seen them many years before, and I appreciate what they're doing. The guys are awesome. I've never seen no one in the whole entire New York City state One of the dogs had dived under a car and come out with a rat in his mouth. What dog is that? What's his name? Hold on. Your dog's name's what? Tanner just kicked ass right now, and got his kill on Broome Street.
Got his kill. And he is the MVP for the night. Tanner, 1-plus. The other dogs, zero. Hunger Games. Let's go. Jonathan whips out his phone, takes a selfie with the dead rat, and puts it up on Snapchat.
Richard holds the rat up to Ray to get some sort of reaction, but Ray Ray just looks at it. Judy's lowering expectations. I don't think he's going to get one tonight. I think he's too much of a newbie. Tanner is the oldest, blindest, deafest dog here. He just killed a rat. Paco just got one, too, but Ray Ray's score is still at zero. Though, I think that doesn't really capture the situation, because, obviously, you know who's really winning?
The rats. Richard ran the numbers for us. A dog comes in season and is breedable once every six to nine months. A rat comes in season and is breedable every three days. The gestation period is 21 to 23 days. The average litter is 10 to Now, you want to do a little bit of the math, you start with one pair of rats today, days from now you have 24, rats.
Maybe the most intelligent thing that I've ever heard was somebody said that, in New York City, you're never more than 30 feet from a rat. One estimate says there are something like 2 million rats in New York City. It's taken us an hour to kill two of them. We try a couple more spots.
We slip into a construction site through a gap in the fence. To me, as a New Yorker, this feels very wrong. Like, you don't go to these places in the city, because rats. They have their corners of the city. We have ours. They are in the subway tracks. We are on the platform. They're in the shadows, and we stay in the lights. It feels physically hard to force myself into this territory.
We're in some kind of an enclosure. It's really smelly and dirty. Everybody freeze. Hold Ray right there. There's a rat ready to come out. He's looking for food. He's not looking for rats. Oh my god.
But then we come to this dark alley. And this time, they specifically set it up for Ray to make a kill. Judy and Ray Ray stay just inside the alleyway. Behind us, there's a guy peeing into a dumpster. At the end of the alley is one of the dog owners, Susan. She looks so out of place.
She's in shorts, white running shoes, standing in the middle of a pile of garbage, poking at it with sticks. She's trying to flush out a rat for her dog to catch. Judy, Ray, and I just watch. We're just seeing this so differently. Judy is thinking, that's amazing. I'm thinking, that's disgusting. Here's how Ray's feeling as he's watching. No rats run our way, so Judy decides, screw the battle plan. She's going to let Ray off leash, and tears off to find the other dogs in the garbage pile.
One rat emerges from the scrum and runs under a stack of loose boards next to the sidewalk. Ray heads in after it. This is the sound of him banging his head and paws under those boards. I'm just going to pause things for a moment here, because what happened next goes really fast. And amazingly, we actually have a picture of this exact moment that Bill took with some kind of high-speed camera.
The rat looks like it's doing some move from The Matrix , like slow-motion flying through the air, twisting at the waist, right across Paco's face, trying to escape his assailants. And then Good boy! Judith, wonderful. Ray doesn't kill the rat. He misses him. But he pushes the rat right into Paco's face. I'm going to give Ray Ray an assist on this one. He wants back in. He's going after him. He's got the gene turned on now. Ray's passed the test.
He's a hunter. Episode guide. Play trailer See more at IMDbPro. Episodes 8. Browse episodes. Top Top-rated. Trailer Official Trailer. Huge In France. Photos Top cast Edit. Jordan Ver Hoeve Luke as Luke. Erinn Hayes Vivian as Vivian. Keana Marie James as James. Austin Fryberger Zene as Zene. Brittany Ross Heather as Heather. The first time they meet, Madison makes a move on Brian and the two end up having sex in his car.
The relationship is shown to have come to an end as Madison cries about Brian stealing her credit cards, and tells Vivian that she never should have left the retreat.
While a second season has not been officially confirmed, stars have said that it could be a possibility. So, for the second season, the show might want to consider fleshing out its female characters, giving them motivation and arcs that revolve around more than just money, sex or fame. Turn on web notifications for latest news Notifications can be turned off anytime from browser settings.
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