100 Objects #20: AA Sobriety Chip
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100 Objects #20: AA Sobriety Chip

B2Upper-intermediateOctober 2, 202652 min
  • Documentary

Comedian, writer, and podcaster Jamie Loftus has always known about Alcoholics Anonymous. As a kid, she loved the album where her dad kept all his AA chips – that little piece of plastic that marks a day, a month, a year of sobriety. Now as an adult, Jamie has her own AA sobriety chip, and getting it made her wonder where it came from. What she found is that imbued in that little chip is a hidden history — from Prohibition to women’s suffrage — of America’s relationship to gender, religion, and morality. A History of the United States in...

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Today on the show, we have the incredible comedian, writer, and podcaster, Jamie Loftus.

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We talked about it at home like a friend that lived in the same neighborhood.

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B2 · Upper-intermediate

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  • 317 harder words (B2 and up) in the whole episode.

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0:00

Our story begins in 1835. Or maybe 1935. Or maybe the last time you woke up with a hangover from the wine at the gas station. You know, Franzia's evil cousin, and you asked yourself, is this normal? Is it normal to feel this way? Let's work our way backwards. Today on the show, we have the incredible comedian, writer, and podcaster, Jamie Loftus.

0:29

I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't know what Alcoholics Anonymous was. We talked about it at home like a friend that lived in the same neighborhood. Dad was going to a meeting tonight, so wait outside or in the hallway of the high school until it's over, then walk through the cloud of cigarette smoke and friendly conversation

0:48

when the AA hour, and it was always exactly an hour, was up. I can count on one hand for my entire childhood, a time where a close family member drank and front of the kids, even though pictures from before I was born were so full of alcohol that you couldn't always make out the ruddy-faced younger versions of my dad, aunts, and uncles.

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