This American Life
182 episodes - English - Latest episode: 19 days ago - ★★★★★ - 82.4K ratingsEach 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.
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Episodes
707: We Are in the Future
June 07, 2020 22:00In this moment of sorrow, protest, and rage in the wake of George Floyd’s death, we offer this as a break from the dreadful present: our show about Afrofuturism. It’s a way of looking at Black culture that’s fantastic and hopeful, which feels especially urgent during a time without a lot of optimism. Featuring the song "The Deep" by clppng.
705: Time Out
May 24, 2020 22:00While sports of all kinds have been put on pause, we bring you favorite stories from back when people were still on football fields, boxing rings, and basketball courts.
704: Our Pulitzer-Winning Episode
May 17, 2020 22:00Last week, our episode "The Out Crowd" won the very first Pulitzer Prize ever awarded to a radio show. This is the episode that won, with some updates on the stories. Hear what the Trump administration’s "Remain in Mexico" policy actually means, on the ground, at the Mexican border.
703: Stuck!
May 10, 2020 22:00During a time when a lot of us feel like we are living in a holding pattern, stories of people feeling stuck.
186: Prom
May 03, 2020 22:00While 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, they tried to explain to themselves why the tornado hit where it did. Plus other stories that happen on Prom Night.
702: One Last Thing Before I Go
April 26, 2020 22:00Words can seem so puny and ineffective sometimes. On this show, we have stories in which ordinary people make last ditch efforts to get through to their loved ones, using a combination of small talk and not-so-small talk.
701: Black Box
April 19, 2020 22:00Desperate to know what happened to his family, a man obsessively decodes the only information about them he can get. That, and other stories of people looking into the void for answers.
700: Embiggening
April 12, 2020 22:00Sometimes a sketch of a thing needs filling in for its true significance to be known.
699: Fiasco!
April 05, 2020 22:00Stories 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.
698: The Test
March 29, 2020 22:00The coronavirus has now fully arrived in the United States. This week, stories of people trying to rise to that challenge, in some pretty extreme situations.
697: Alone Together
March 22, 2020 22:00This week, as the staff creates the episode from their apartments and houses, with our host in quarantine, in this moment when everyone’s reaching out to the people they love, we put together a collection of family stories, with some timely stuff at the top.
696: Low Hum of Menace
March 15, 2020 22:00Things do not seem fine at all, but it’s hard to say why.
693: Abdi the American
February 09, 2020 23:00We return to our story about Abdi Nor from 2015, with some big news about his life today. When we first broadcast the story, Abdi was a Somali refugee living in Kenya desperately trying – against long odds – to get to the United States. Then he got the luckiest break of his life: he won a lottery that puts him on a short list for a U.S. visa. But before he could cash in his golden ticket, the police started raiding his neighborhood, targeting refugees.
640: Five Women
January 26, 2020 23:00As Harvey Weinstein goes to trial, we have a different kind of #MeToo story about several women who worked for the same man. They tell us not only about their troubling encounters with him, but also about their lives beforehand. Who were they when they entered the workplace, and how did their personal histories shape the way they dealt with his harassment?
654: The Feather Heist
January 19, 2020 23:00A flute player breaks into a British museum and makes off with a million dollars worth of dead birds.
667: Wartime Radio
January 05, 2020 23:00Intimate and personal dispatches from two very different battlefields: A small town in the Syrian war. And the U.S. opioid epidemic. Each came from a DIY radio outfit. (Okay, one’s a podcast.)
690: Too Close to Home
December 29, 2019 23:00For the holidays, stories of families finally addressing the thorny thing they’ve never really talked about.
576: Say Yes To Christmas
December 22, 2019 23:00No Christmas can ever be as good as the ones you had as a kid. But this week we go all in and bring the joy, the spontaneity, the sense that anything can happen back to Christmas.
323: The Super
December 15, 2019 23:00Stories of the mysterious hold supers have on their buildings, or their buildings have on them.
689: Digging Up the Bones
December 08, 2019 23:00There's a lot that can be gained from unearthing the past -- learning about oneself, learning about others. But, it doesn't always go how you'd expect.
252: Poultry Slam 2003
December 01, 2019 23:00During the weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year's - the highest turkey consumption period of the year - we bring you an annual This American Life tradition: stories of turkeys, chickens, geese, ducks, fowl of all kinds, real and imagined, and their mysterious hold over us.
688: The Out Crowd
November 17, 2019 23:00Reports from the frontlines of the Trump administration's "Remain in Mexico" asylum policy. We hear from asylum seekers waiting across the border in Mexico, in a makeshift refugee camp, and from the officers who sent them there to wait in the first place.
687: Small Things Considered
November 10, 2019 23:00Stories about being little. Secret writings in tiny letters. The power of a very small number. And a medication that's supposed to cure shortness.
239: Lost in America
November 03, 2019 22:00Stories of people who are lost, histories that are lost, and things that are lost. This show was recorded onstage in front of audiences on a five-city tour in May 2003. The cities: Boston, Washington DC, Portland Oregon, Denver and Chicago. Featuring house band OK Go.
319: And the Call Was Coming from the Basement
October 27, 2019 22:00For the week leading up to Halloween, scary stories that are all true. Kidnappings, zombie raccoons, haunted houses—real haunted houses!—and things that go "EEEEK!!!" in the night. Plus, a story by David Sedaris, in which he walks among the dead.
686: Umbrellas Up
October 20, 2019 22:00For over 100 days now, protesters in Hong Kong have taken to the streets every weekend. What it’s like to live through that.
685: We Come From Small Places
October 13, 2019 22:00The staff goes to one of the biggest parties in New York City, the Labor Day Carnival and the West Indian American Day Parade in Brooklyn.
581: Anatomy of Doubt
October 06, 2019 22:00This week, a story about doubt: how it germinated, spread, and eventually took hold of an entire community, with terrible consequences. A collaboration with The Marshall Project and ProPublica, the print version of the story was written by Ken Armstrong and T. Christian Miller.
683: Beer Summit
September 22, 2019 22:00Two people, sitting down over a beer, hashing out their differences and understanding where the other guy is coming from. Hard to imagine these days, right? It's so rare right now that someone is curious enough to actually see the other person's point of view. This week on the show, beer summits. Including going behind the scenes of the most famous one ever.
681: Escape From the Lab
August 18, 2019 22:00What happens when our most ingenious creations actually make it out into the world.
680: The Weight Of Words
July 28, 2019 22:00Words mean things, but some words are especially meaningful — whether in a survival manual, a song lyric, or a slur.
679: Save the Girl
July 14, 2019 22:00People go on missions to save young girls from danger. But sometimes they get so caught up in the mission that it overshadows the girl herself.