This American Life: Episode 233 — "Starting From Scratch"

Date: August 31, 2025
Host: Ira Glass

Overview

In this rerun episode of "This American Life," Ira Glass and the team explore what it feels like to start your life over—from the comic to the existential. Across three acts, the stories focus on individuals at turning points: a New Yorker with reality TV déjà vu, a failed but visionary "Puppy Channel" entrepreneur, and a Las Vegas limo-driving gambler who builds (and loses) fortunes daily. The final act revisits the ultimate fresh start—the world’s first people—in a reimagined, darkly comic take on Adam and Eve.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

Prologue: Jorge’s Apartment Makes National TV

[00:13–06:44]

• Theme: The jarring experience of seeing your fresh start evaluated—and rejected by millions—via national TV.
• Story: Jorge, newly moved to NYC and excited for his clean slate, sees his exact apartment featured (and derided) on "The Bachelorette." Trista, the bachelorette, disparages the state of the apartment, leading to the contestant's rejection, which Jorge takes as a personal blow.
• Insight: Life’s big resets are extremely vulnerable—new environments can amplify feelings of exposure, and when judgment comes from unexpected places, it stings.
• Notable Quotes:
  • "I have to find out why he feels like he can live in an apartment like this." – Trista, The Bachelorette (relayed by Jorge) [04:06]
  • "National television came into his apartment and then kicked him off the island by proxy. He was like collateral damage to a reality show." – Ira Glass [05:45]
• Memorable Moment: The word “squalid” repeated in the New York Post’s article, which Jorge reads with equal parts horror and black humor.

Act One: Puppy Love — The Business Model

[09:07–24:27]

• Theme: Reinventing yourself midlife with a wild idea, and the fine line between visionary and deluded.
• Story: After selling his longtime business, Dan Fitzsimmons sees a gap in television programming during a spell of enforced inactivity (the OJ Simpson trial and a back surgery). His idea: "The Puppy Channel"—24/7 footage of adorable puppies with no hosts, no dialogue, just cuteness and music.
• Key Steps:
  • Produces a pilot ("Puppies, Puppies, Puppies…”), conducts focus groups, pitches cable execs (even Ted Turner).
  • Faces constant skepticism: "You're maybe not gonna give [satellite capacity] up for puppies." – Dan Fitzsimmons [20:57]
  • Attends cable conventions (with his wife Carol in a dog costume, immortalized in Fortune magazine).
  • Media finds the idea charming; actual buyers do not.
  • The project ultimately fails—but as daughter Molly notes, internet demand for puppy videos decades later (on YouTube, Animal Planet, etc.) vindicate his vision.
• Insight: Sometimes being ahead of your time just means you’ll fail in the present. True reinvention risks ridicule and disappointment.
• Notable Quotes:
  • "Having a human being in the picture talking … struck me as against the concept originally of just having a quiet place on television." – Dan Fitzsimmons [22:05]
• Memorable Moment: The family cheers on a tiny puppy finally making its way off a couch: “We all find ourselves talking to the TV. Come on. You can do it.” [16:56]

Act Two: Making Money the Old Fashioned Way

[25:19–43:32]

• Theme: The high-wire act of starting from zero—every single day. The compulsive, creative, and precarious nature of some people’s “resets.”
• Story: Joe (no last name), a Las Vegas limo driver and gambler, turns a $32 float into (sometimes) thousands daily through hustles: airport runs, casino commissions, side gigs selling comped hotel rooms, gambling on blackjack. His thrilling (and reckless) approach to money is legendary—and exhausting.
• Reveals:
  • Joe’s background includes a squandered fortune inherited at 50 and a checkered relationship with casinos (he’s banned from many for being "too lucky").
  • His daughter describes a childhood of constant instability—huge winnings, searching for quarters, moving between extremes.
  • Despite winning big, Joe always returns to the zero point, driven by adrenaline and possibly an addiction to the rush of starting over.
  • Family relations are complicated: his daughter can never quite explain to school friends what he does; his aunt and uncle (a billionaire, board member at the Met) occasionally bail him out.
• Empathy and Judgment:
  • The act closes with Joe’s dry self-awareness and pride in "going out with $32, coming home with $2,000"—knowing he’ll lose it eventually, but for today that's a win.
• Notable Quotes:
  • "One day I could have a million dollars, the next day I'd be broke. But I love it. I love the action. I love the adrenaline." – Joe [27:41]
  • "He’s an opportunist. If there’s an opportunity for him to work the odds or make a dollar, he’ll make 10." – Casino manager George [30:14]
  • "Even when things are really bad, he can always find a way out of it...There's always a way. And he can just laugh about it." – Joe’s daughter [39:00]

Act Three: The First Starting From Scratch (Adam and Eve Retold by Jonathan Goldstein)

[45:51–60:23]

• Theme: Creation as ultimate reset—loneliness, confusion, accidental beauty and mayhem at the world’s first beginning.
• Style: Wry, modern retelling of Genesis, full of deadpan humor and existential asides.
• Summary:
  • Adam, newly created, is a dope; Eve, astute and restless, quickly becomes bored and then fixated on the forbidden Tree of Knowledge.
  • The snake, pictured as a resentful failed favorite, plots Adam’s downfall, while Eve and he exchange philosophical banter.
  • The infamous bite brings not only shame but a burst of sensory clarity and emotional intensity.
  • After the fall, Adam becomes nostalgic, telling grandchildren tales of Eden’s impossible sunsets and “eating God.”
• Insight: Every new beginning is, by definition, strange and lonely. The quest for knowledge (and companionship) is what makes us human, even if it complicates paradise.
• Notable Passages:
  • "Adam was close to the animals and spent all day talking to them. Except for God, Eve had no one." – Jonathan Goldstein [46:32]
  • "It was on such an occasion that she met the snake ... she realized in a flash the world was anywhere from 60 to 80% oilier than she would have ever imagined." – Jonathan Goldstein [52:42]
  • "When you ate the fruit in Eden, it was like eating God, and God was delicious. When you wanted him, you just grabbed him. Now when he ate fruit, he could only taste what was not there." – Jonathan Goldstein [59:11]

Timestamps for Important Segments

• Jorge’s TV Apartment: [00:13–06:44]
• Act 1: The Puppy Channel: [09:07–24:27]
• Act 2: Joe’s Limo/Gambling Life: [25:19–43:32]
• Act 3: Adam and Eve Retold: [45:51–60:23]

Memorable Moments & Quotes

• On total vulnerability:
  "I never wanted America to judge me and tell me my apartment sucked." – Jorge [06:01]
• On the Puppy Channel as TV’s antidote:
  "One person my father talked to characterized the Puppy Channel as the antidote to television. ... But implicit in this notion is that regular TV is something you need a refuge from. That's a tough sell to the people who make it." – Molly Fitzsimmons [22:35]
• On making and remaking a fortune:
  "If Joe just worked 5 days a week making 2000 and never lost it back. That'd be a half million dollars a year." – Mary Beth Kirchner [43:11]
• On nostalgia for beginnings:
  "This sunset isn’t bad, but the sunsets in Eden, they burned your nose hairs. They made your ears bleed. ... When you ate the fruit in Eden, it was like eating God, and God was delicious. ... Now when he ate fruit, he could only taste what was not there." – Jonathan Goldstein (Adam’s monologue) [59:11]

Tone and Language

The stories balance comedy, pathos, and wonder, often with a dry, self-deprecating wit. Interviews and narration capture the mix of hopefulness and insecurity that comes with starting from scratch—layered with philosophical and emotional insight.

Summary

"Starting From Scratch" explores the messy beauty of making a new start, in apartments, business ventures, or even human existence itself. Whether sabotaged by reality TV, dismissed by cable execs, or risking all on a single draw of the cards, these stories show beginnings are raw, electric, and infinitely human.

For more, listen free at thisamericanlife.org.