Desperate Measures

Stories of people stuck in unfixable situations who try desperate measures. Sometimes these are inventive, sometimes they're ingenious, sometimes they even work. Prologue: Host Ira Glass visits the Richard E. Byrd Community Academy, a public elementary school in Chicago in need of repair. The principal of the school has tried everything. And now, the fifth grade class in Room 405 has taken matters into their own hands. (5 minutes) Hasta La Vista, Arnie: Therapist Scott Miller tells the story of a patient who thought he was Arnold Schwarzenegger. Solving the problem required unusual treatment. Miller is co-director of the Institute for the Study of Therapeutic Change and co-author of The Heart and Soul of Change and other books. This story shows up in the book The Mummy at the Dining Room Table: Eminent Therapists Reveal their Most Unusual Cases, by Jeffrey Kottler and Jon Carlson. (10 minutes) We Built This City On Rock And Coal: Ira talks with a college freshman in Michigan about her governor's new Cool Cities Initiative. (4 minutes) Then Sarah Koenig reports on how the towns of Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk went in for an unusual makeover to try to save their town fifty years ago. (13 minutes) The Router Less Taken: A man tries to unload a piece of junk he bought by selling it on eBay...not by concealing its many terrible properties...but by bragging about them. Which gets results. (8 minutes) The Rocks At Rock Bottom: Hillary Frank speaks with a man who figured out how to get over heartbreak, using only your throwing arm. She's the author of Better Than Running at Night and I Can't Tell You. (9 minutes)