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
The one thing you know for sure when you're watching a romantic comedy is that it's going to turn out okay in the end. When you're living one? Not so much.
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- Prologue: Romantic comedies usually don’t get much respect. Producer Neil Drumming explains what’s so great about them. (5 minutes)
- Act One: Actor Daniel Radcliffe reads a short piece of fictio...
People immersed in chaos try to solve for what it all adds up to.
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- 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. ...
For Easter weekend — and the end of Passover! — stories of people struggling to follow the Ten Commandments.
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- Host Ira Glass reads from the Ten Commandments. Not the original Ten Commandments, but some of the newer, lesser-known ones. There's the Miner's Ten Commandments of 1853, the Ten Commandments of Umpiring, and the Ten Commandments for Math Te...
A couple devises a strategy to get their daughter's killer prosecuted and to get attention for other Native families.
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- 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...
Artifacts and exhibits of this particular moment we are living through.
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- 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...
Sometimes, life’s biggest mysteries require one very specific person to answer them.
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- 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...
Unnecessary and outrageous lies that make you wonder — why lie about that in the first place?
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- Prologue: Kasey, a woman who prides herself on her truthfulness, tries to help host Ira Glass figure out how to stop lying about one specific thing. (10 minutes)
- Act One: Producer Dana Chivvis talks to reporter Liz Flock about a strange experience she had i...
Zach Mack and his dad try to mend a rift between them in a very unusual way.
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- Prologue: Ira Glass introduces Zach Mack’s story. (1 minute)
- Part One: Zach and his father enter into an agreement that could change their entire relationship. (9 minutes)
- Part Two: Zach’s mother and sister weigh in on the agreement. (28 minutes)
- Part Three: With the year co...
People stuck in a loop, trying to find their way out.
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- Prologue: Host Ira Glass talks to B.A. Parker about her birthday tradition. (6 minutes)
- Act One: Producer Aviva DeKornfeld speaks with a father and daughter who have been playing the same game for 25 years. (9 minutes)
- Act Two: Talia Augustidis asks a single question over and over. (5 minutes)
- Act ...
People living in that in-between moment before everything changes.
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- Prologue: Kirk Johnson tells Ira about a strange choice he made during his family’s evacuation from the Sunset Fire in Los Angeles. (5 minutes)
- Act One: Editor Nancy Updike tries to make sense of this current moment by talking to a master of dark comedy, Armando Ianucci. (19 minutes)
- ...
Ira Glass has news to share about some things happening here at This American Life.
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