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The Story was produced at North Carolina Public Radio - WUNC and was heard on over 100 stations.Visit The Story web site to listen to this program and for more details, archives, show highlights and more podcasts. UPDATE 1.13.2020: The Story web site has been decommissioned and is in the process of being archived. It may return at a later date.

The Free Help Guy Wants To Make Your Life Better

Photo: The Free Help Guy with a hypnotist.
The Free Help Guy

A man in London – who shall remain anonymous – took leave from work earlier this year, and undertook a six-month mission of offering help to anyone who asks for it.
Some requests, like walking a dog or pairing a homeless person with a generous family, have been simple. Others have been more complicated. For example, he often gets e-mails from teenage girls asking for help with problems he’s not qualified to solve.

“There are definitely some things that I think, for the respect of the people getting in touch, I need to be careful with,” he says.

In a conversation with host Dick Gordon, the Free Help Guy – he wants withhold his name until the project is over – talks about the people he’s met, the requests he can’t fulfill, and the types of favors he’s undertaken. They include being put into a trance by a hypnotist needing practice and sending a traveler on a treasure hunt across London.

Hear the full conversation at The Story's site. Also in this show: listeners respond to the story of an adjunct professor who says he’d make more money working at Starbucks; and Tio Hardiman, director of Ceasefire Illinois, says violence is down in the past weeks and he credits intensive one-on-one mediation.

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