This American Life

This American Life

Each week we choose a theme. Then anything can happen. This American Life is true stories that unfold like little movies for radio. Personal stories with funny moments, big feelings, and surprising plot twists. Newsy stories that try to capture what it’s like to be alive right now. It’s the most popular weekly podcast in the world, and winner of the first ever Pulitzer Prize for a radio show or podcast. Hosted by Ira Glass and produced in collaboration with WBEZ Chicago.

Episodes

July 13, 2025 58 mins

When you’re the only one who can see something, sometimes it feels like you’re in on a special secret. The hard part is getting anyone to believe your secret is real. This week, people trying to show others what they see—including a woman with muscular dystrophy who believes she has the same condition as an Olympic athlete.

Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.

  • Prologue: Ira asks Jeff ...
Mark as Played

Summer is a time when change seems more possible than ever. But is that really how it happens? Can people actually reinvent themselves in the warmer months? This week, we present stories — and some comedy — about people and their summer selves.

Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.

  • Prologue: Host Ira Glass reflects on his feelings about going to the beach. (3 minutes)
  • Act One: Producer ...
Mark as Played
June 29, 2025 58 mins

People on a mission to achieve their goals before their window of opportunity closes.

Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.

  • Prologue: Guest host Emmanuel Dzotsi goes to a packed sports bar in Brooklyn for his favorite soccer team’s biggest game in years. (6 minutes)
  • Act One: Connie Wang tells the story of a championship window she didn't realize she was in — until it was too late. (14 m...
Mark as Played
June 22, 2025 66 mins

On his first day in office, President Trump decided to freeze all U.S. foreign aid. Soon after, his administration effectively dissolved USAID—the federal agency that delivers billions in food, medicine, and other aid worldwide. Many of its programs have been canceled. Now, as USAID officially winds down, we try to assess its impact. What was good? What was not so good? We meet people around the world wrestling with these questions...

Mark as Played
June 1, 2025 61 mins

Conversations across a divide: People who are outside a war zone check in with family, friends, and strangers inside.

Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.

  • Prologue: The Hammash family’s group chat unfolds over texts, starting before the war. (8 minutes)
  • Act One: When Yousef Hammash left Gaza a year ago, his sisters decided to stay behind. We hear about the toll that separation has take...
Mark as Played
May 25, 2025 59 mins

A show about people who are suddenly confronted with who they are.

Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.

  • Prologue: Guest host Aviva DeKornfeld tells Ira Glass about breaking into a community pool as a kid, and the split-second decision that has haunted her ever since. (4 minutes)
  • Act One: Some people are great in a crisis. Others, not so much. Does that mean anything about who we reall...
Mark as Played
April 27, 2025 67 mins

People immersed in chaos try to solve for what it all adds up to.

Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.

  • Prologue: A scientist who is used to organizing data starts tracking scientific meetings that seem to exist only on paper—meetings that might decide the fate of years of research. The NIH website shows one reality; the empty conference rooms tell another story. She graphs the chaos. ...
Mark as Played
April 13, 2025 67 mins

A couple devises a strategy to get their daughter's killer prosecuted and to get attention for other Native families. 

Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.

  • Prologue: Mika Westwolf was killed in a hit-and-run on a Montana highway. Her parents thought the driver might get away with it. The driver was white. Mika was a citizen of the Blackfeet Nation. (1 minute)
  • Act One: Mika’s parents, C...
Mark as Played
March 30, 2025 65 mins

Artifacts and exhibits of this particular moment we are living through.

Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.

  • Exhibit One: Ira talks to producer Emmanuel Dzotsi, who brings the first exhibit into the studio with him: a chunk of concrete with some yellow paint on it. He got it from the demolition site in Washington, DC, where the giant Black Lives Matter letters are being dug out of the...
Mark as Played
March 16, 2025 61 mins

Sometimes, life’s biggest mysteries require one very specific person to answer them.

Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.

  • Prologue: 7-year-old Miles has lots of questions. More specifically, he has questions about the famous car chase from “The Blues Brothers” movie. We arrange for him to talk to stunt coordinator Gary Powell so he can get the answers he so desperately wants. (9 minut...
Mark as Played
October 16, 2024 4 mins

Ira Glass has news to share about some things happening here at This American Life.

To sign up as a Life Partner, visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners.

Mark as Played
September 8, 2023 61 mins

One call to a very unusual hotline and everything that followed.

Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.

  • Prologue: Ira talks about a priest who set up what may have been the first hotline in the United States. It was just him, answering a phone, trying to help strangers who called. (2 minutes)
  • Act One: The Never Use Alone hotline was set up so that drug users can call if they are say, usi...
Mark as Played
June 20, 2014 87 mins

Our most ambitious live show ever! We pulled together a massive team of theater pros at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Opera House—nearly 50 singers, actors, dancers and musicians. The result? Journalism turned into a Broadway musical, into opera. Mike Birbiglia, Sasheer Zamata, Stephin Merritt, Josh Hamilton, Lindsay Mendez, Lin-Manuel Miranda and others.

  • Carin Gilfry explains how she once accidentally locked herself in a ho...
Mark as Played
December 13, 2013 75 mins

We spend a month at a Jeep dealership on Long Island as they try to make their monthly sales goal: 129 cars. If they make it, they'll get a huge bonus from the manufacturer, possibly as high as $85,000 — enough to put them in the black for the month. If they don't make it, it'll be the second month in a row. So they pull out all the stops.

  • It’s mid-October, 2013. Freddie Hoyt tries to rally his sales staff to sell 129 cars and...
Mark as Played
November 3, 2013 57 mins

Stories of when things go wrong. Really wrong. When you leave the normal realm of human error, fumble, mishap, and mistake and enter the territory of really huge breakdowns. Fiascos. Things go so awry that normal social order collapses.

  • Prologue: Jack Hitt tells the story of a small town production of Peter Pan in which the flying apparatus smacks the actors into the furniture, and Captain Hook's hook flies off his arm and hit...
Mark as Played
April 12, 2013 63 mins

A doctor named Benjamin Gilmer gets a job at a rural clinic in North Carolina. He’s replaced another doctor named Gilmer – Dr. Vince Gilmer – who went to prison after killing his own father. But the more Benjamin’s patients tell him about the other Dr. Gilmer, the more confused he becomes. Everyone loved Vince Gilmer. So Benjamin starts digging around, trying to understand how a good man can seemingly turn bad. Sarah Koenig reports...

Mark as Played
July 25, 2008 60 mins

On a summer day in 1951, two baby girls were born in a hospital in small-town Wisconsin. The infants were accidentally switched, and went home with the wrong families.

  • Host Ira Glass introduces four characters: Kay McDonald, who raised a daughter named Sue, and Mary Miller, who raised a daughter named Marti. In 1994, Mary Miller wrote letters to Sue and Marti, confessing the secret she'd kept for 43 years: The daughters had be...
Mark as Played
January 5, 2001 61 mins

What goes on while mom and dad are away, that mom and dad never find out about. Including the story of two teenagers who decide to invent children to babysit, as an excuse to get out of their own house.

  • We listen in on a ritual that happens in millions of families every week: kids getting dropped off at the babysitters. Six-year-old Dylan and nine-year-old Sarah explain what they can and can't get away with when they have a ba...
Mark as Played

Popular Podcasts

    If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.

    24/7 News: The Latest

    The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.

    Crime Junkie

    Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.

    The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

    The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.

    Dateline NBC

    Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com

Advertise With Us
Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.