This American Life
This American Life
273 people rated this podcast
This American Life
This American LifeEpisodes
This American Life
This American Life
273 people rated this podcast
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Episodes of This American Life
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The trial for the men accused of orchestrating the September 11 terrorist attacks still hasn’t started yet. Family members of those who died that day are still hoping for some kind of accountability, more than 22 years later. This week, the sto
For years, Majid believed that if he could testify in court about what happened to him when he was held in a CIA black site, a judge and jury would give him a break. Finally, he got a chance to see if he was right.Prologue: Ira talks about the
While the seniors danced at Prom Night 2001 in Hoisington, Kansas—a town of about 3,000—a tornado hit the town, destroying about a third of it. When they emerged from the dance, they discovered what had happened, and in the weeks that followed,
Gladiators in the Colosseum. Sideshow performers. Reality television. We've always loved to gawk at the misery or majesty of others. But this week, we ask the question: What's it like when the tables are turned and all eyes are on you?Prologue
It can be hard to know the right moment for something to happen.Prologue: When Jordan was going into his senior year of high school in small town Utah, he and his buddies all lived together in a house, daring each other into Jackass-style pran
People taking it upon themselves to solve the tiny, overlooked crimes of the world.Prologue: Host Ira Glass bikes around Manhattan with Gersh Kuntzman, in search of illegal license plates. (11 minutes)Act One: Writer Michael Harriot reexamines
Mysteries that exist in relationships we thought couldn't possibly surprise us.Prologue: Ira talks to Rachel Rosenthal, who spent years trying to figure out who had stolen her identity. She was closing bank account after bank account, getting
The things we break and the ones we can't fix.Prologue: Ira tells the stories of three things that broke–two of them in his own family. (8 minutes)Act One: A teenage whiz kid invents a new toy for Milton Bradley. Then the trouble starts. (28 m
People waking up to the fact that the world has suddenly changed.Prologue: Jackson Landers tells the story of a very strange decision he made one summer day. (6 minutes)Act One: Elena Kostyuchenko tells the story of how she was probably poison
A series of phone calls to a man in Gaza named Yousef Hammash, between early December and now. He talks about what he and his family are experiencing, sometimes as they are experiencing it.Act One: Over the course of one week in December, Yous
Your mother and I have something we want to talk with you about.Prologue: A family sits down to discuss one thing. But then the true purpose of the meeting emerges. (9 ½ minutes)Act One: For one kibbutz-dwelling family in Israel, the decision
When it comes to finding love, there seems to be two schools of thought on the best way to go about it. One says, wait for that lightning-strike magic. The other says, make a calculation and choose the best option available. Who has it right?P
An investigation of when and why people ask loaded questions that are a proxy for something else.Prologue: Host Ira Glass talks with producer Tobin Low about the question he got asked after he and his husband moved in together, and what he thi
What it means to have words—and to lose them.Prologue: Sometimes we don’t want to say what’s going on because putting it into words would make it real. At other times, words don’t seem to capture the weight of what we want to say. Susanna Foge
People finding themselves in situations that are worse than they thought and deciding to really go with it.Prologue: A Boston woman takes her dog for a walk and suddenly finds herself in a terrible situation she never anticipated. The strange
Often we see someone’s situation from the outside and think we know exactly what’s going on. This week, we get inside and find out just how much more interesting the reality of it is.A mysterious tunnel is found in a forest in Toronto. Public
There's the thing you plan to do, and then there's the thing you end up doing.Ira summarizes the results of an informal poll of about a hundred people, about whether they were living their Plan A or Plan B and recounts a moment from a short st
Instead of the usual "each week we choose a theme, and bring you 3 or 4 stories on that theme" business, we throw all that away and bring you 20 stories—yes, 20—in 60 minutes.Ira Glass introduces the idea of doing 20 stories in one hour.Act On
A major political party in a major swing state bets on a new leader: a total political outsider. How does that work out for them?Prologue: In 2022, Michigan Republicans ran anti-establishment candidates who claimed the last presidential electi
A series of conversations with a man in Gaza over the course of one week.Act One: One of our producers, Chana Joffe-Walt, had a series of conversations with a man in Gaza over the course of one week. They're so immediate – and particular to th
In the last year and a half, New York City has scrambled to try and provide shelter and services to over 150,000 migrants. We take a look at how that’s going.Prologue: In the middle of the night, host Ira Glass meets a woman on a mission at Po
Something we’ve never done before: true stories told in the form of a game show.Prologue: Jiayang Fan has this theory that because she's spent so much time thinking about her own accent when she speaks English, she believes that when she hears
When you realize that help is not on the way, what do you do next?Prologue: Saddam Sayyaleh’s job right now is trying to get trucks filled with aid into Gaza and he knows it’s nowhere close to what’s actually needed. (10 minutes)Act One: Tim R
During the highest turkey consumption period of the year, we bring you a This American Life tradition: stories of turkeys, chickens, geese, ducks, fowl of all kinds—real and imagined—and their mysterious hold over us.Prologue: Ira Glass talks
Things our dads taught us, whether they intended to or not.Prologue: Ira talks about the time his dad taught him to shave, and how unusual that was. (5 minutes)Act One: When Jackie read the obits for the man who had invented the famous Trapper
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