This American Life

By This American Life

Society & Culture Arts

What's This American Life about?

This American Life is a weekly public radio show, heard by 2.2 million people on more than 500 stations. Another 2.5 million people download the weekly podcast. It is hosted by Ira Glass, produced in collaboration with Chicago Public Media, delivered to stations by PRX The Public Radio Exchange, and has won all of the major broadcasting awards.

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LAST EPISODE

790: You're It

01.29.2023

Sometimes you raise your hand. Other times you’re just the only one left.

This American Life episodes:

01.29.2023 790: You're It Sometimes you raise your hand. Other times you’re just the only one left.
01.22.2023 789: The Runaround People being dodged, delayed, and evaded—and what they do to put an end to it.
01.15.2023 174: Birthdays, Anniversaries, and Milestones They mean something, whether we want them to or not.
01.08.2023 788: Half-Baked Stories About My Dead Mom Writer Etgar Keret tries to come up with the stories that capture his late mother, Orna Keret—but it’s hard, he says, because she’s like Maria in West Side Story and she’s also like Thanos from the Avengers. He ends up ...
01.01.2023 598: My Undesirable Talent San Francisco’s Spider-Man burglar was remarkable. He dropped into buildings from skylights, leapt 10 feet from one roof to another. But mostly, his talent got him into trouble. This week, his story, and stories of other undesirable talents.
12.25.2022 787: Baby's First Christmas People experiencing Christmas in brand new ways, giving the holiday even more meaning.
12.18.2022 757: The Ghost in the Machine People use machines to find people they lost.
12.11.2022 402: Save the Day Stories about one person single-handedly taking charge of a situation gone wrong.
12.04.2022 786: It's a Game Show! Something we’ve never done before: true stories told in the form of a game show.
11.27.2022 785: Through the Looking Glass People trying to coax each other across the line, from one side to the other.
11.20.2022 351: Return to Childhood People who try to revisit their childhoods—what they find and what they do not find.
11.13.2022 732: Secrets Why we tell them, and what happens after we do.
11.06.2022 784: Mapmaker, Mapmaker, Make Me a Map Not long ago, Republicans in Ohio passed a constitutional amendment to end gerrymandering in the state. And then a funny thing happened. The same Ohio Republicans drew electoral maps that violated their own constitutional amendment. They’ll be using them in ...
10.30.2022 783: Kids These Days We hear from kids who are dealing with some of the country’s most contentious debates. Debates that are supposedly about them.
10.23.2022 754: Spark Bird Stories about birds and the hearts they sway, the havoc they wreak, the lives they change.
10.16.2022 782: Family Dig Two people go on excavations of their families’ pasts. Including the first episode of the new podcast, “We Were Three,” hosted by our longtime producer, Nancy Updike, and from Serial Productions and The New York Times.
10.09.2022 781: Watching the Watchers People taking it upon themselves to keep an eye on those in charge.
10.02.2022 780: Setting the Record Straight Getting to the facts can be difficult, but it’s always the right thing to do. Except when it isn’t.
09.25.2022 750: The Ferryman Getting from Point A to Point B—with expert assistance.
09.18.2022 779: Ends of the Earth An exploration of the very upper limits of what you do for someone you love.
09.11.2022 550: Three Miles There’s a program that brings together kids from two schools. One school is public and in the country’s poorest congressional district. The other is private and costs $43,000/year. They are three miles apart. The hope is that kids connect, but ...
09.04.2022 528: The Radio Drama Episode 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 ...
08.28.2022 778: Me Minus Me When a fundamental part of yourself changes dramatically, are you still who you thought you were?
08.21.2022 102: Road Trip! With so many songs, movies, and books about the joy of the open road, it's hard to take just a normal road trip without huge expectations.
08.14.2022 777: Name. Age. Detail. Ten people were killed at a grocery store in Buffalo, NY. Their stories, as you’ve never heard them.
08.07.2022 625: Essay B In 1967, the first two Black students were enrolled at an all-white private boarding school in Virginia. The main reason they were there? To benefit the white kids.
07.31.2022 776: I Work Better on Deadline Stories of people racing against time to solve a problem. Will they make it?
07.24.2022 109: Notes on Camp People who love summer camp say that non-camp people simply don't understand what's so amazing about it. We attempt to bridge this gap of misunderstanding between camp people and non-camp people.
07.17.2022 400: Stories Pitched by Our Parents We try something harder than anything we've ever tried before, by taking the random ideas that members of our own families have told us would be "perfect for the show," and turning them into actual stories.
07.10.2022 775: The Possum Experiment An investigation into a very basic question about people: Are most of us bad or good?
07.03.2022 774: The Pink House at the Center of the World The Supreme Court case that overturned Roe v. Wade began with a lawsuit filed by a Mississippi abortion clinic. On the day Roe was overturned, we were there. Stories from the center of this moment of history, the day it ...
06.26.2022 583: It’ll Make Sense When You’re Older Kids do not like being told it’ll make sense when they’re older. They’re pretty sure the grown-ups are wrong.
06.19.2022 773: The Longest Distance Between Two Points Getting from A to B via Z.
06.12.2022 672: No Fair! Stories of very small injustices and also one very big one.
06.05.2022 772: The Kids' Table Kids navigating hairy situations all on their own, with no help from grown-ups.
05.29.2022 771: The Parents Step In Government isn’t doing much to prevent school shootings. So parents are jumping in: parents whose kids have died in mass shootings, in the wake of each shooting. They take practical, effective action — and they get results.
05.22.2022 638: Rom-Com 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. This week, stories that unfold like rom-coms.
05.15.2022 605: Kid Logic Kids using perfectly logical arguments, and arriving at perfectly wrong conclusions.
05.08.2022 770: My Lying Eyes People staring squarely at the truth, and still finding it hard to believe what they’re seeing.
05.01.2022 769: The Reluctant Explorer A man finds himself thrust into a new world he didn’t necessarily ask to visit. He takes a look around.
04.24.2022 768: The Other Front Lines Four personal stories from the war in Ukraine.
04.17.2022 360: Switched at Birth 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.
04.10.2022 767: Do Not Go Gentle In this moment when autocrats and almost-autocrats are getting bolder and more powerful, we bring you two stories of resistance, from Hungary and Russia.
04.03.2022 766: Well Someone Had to Do SOMETHING! People trying to jump in and solve other people's problems, putting themselves directly in the gap between the problem and the solution.
03.27.2022 523: Death and Taxes It is a peculiar feeling to know with certainty that something big is about to happen to you. This week, we watch people go right up to the edge of inevitable change.
03.20.2022 765: Off Course Three people, and one animal, who know the path their lives will take until, suddenly, they don’t.
03.13.2022 764: School's Out Forever The pandemic broke school. Can we ever go back?
03.06.2022 175: Babysitting 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.
02.27.2022 763: The Other Mr. President Stories about Vladimir Putin. Did he come to power in 1999 by killing hundreds of innocent Russians? How’s he really seen in his home country? This show is a mix of old and new stories we’ve done about him.
02.20.2022 466: Blackjack The casino game everyone thinks they can beat.

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