This American Life

By This American Life

Society & Culture Arts

What's This American Life about?

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.

4.6

71,198 ratings

Download our free app to listen on your phone

LAST EPISODE

817: The Cavalry Is Not Coming

12.03.2023

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 ...

This American Life episodes:

12.03.2023 817: The Cavalry Is Not Coming 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 ...
11.26.2023 816: Poultry Slam 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 with Scharlette ...
11.19.2023 815: How I Learned to Shave 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 ...
11.12.2023 814: Parents Are People What happens when you realize the people in charge don’t have the answers. Prologue: Guest Host Chana Joffe-Walt asks her kids when they first encountered adult fallibility. (8 minutes) Act One: A middle schooler really wants to trust the adults ...
11.05.2023 813: Is That What I Look Like? You've been seeing yourself, getting to know what you look like, your whole life. So why does it often take an outsider to see things about you that are obvious, and set you straight? Prologue: Guest host Nancy Updike talks ...
10.29.2023 319: And the Call Was Coming from the Basement For the lead up to Halloween, scary stories that are all true. 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. Ira and ...
10.22.2023 812: The Bear at the End of the Tunnel People who have a good, long time to think about what they’re doing, look hard at what’s ahead of them, and decide to keep moving forward anyway. Prologue: Brothers Wes and Jeff spent a winter tagging black bears in Bryce ...
10.15.2023 477: Getting Away With It People breaking the rules fully, completely, and with no bad consequences. Some justify this by saying they’re doing it for others, or for a greater good. Some really don’t care. And, unlike the mealy weaklings you usually hear on this ...
10.08.2023 751: Audience of One We bring the movies to you. Prologue: Host Ira Glass revisits the one movie he’s seen more than any other, about an ocean liner that gets hit by a tsunami and flips over. (9 minutes) Act One: Our producer, Diane ...
10.01.2023 811: The One Place I Can’t Go Spots we’re avoiding in our private maps of the world. Prologue: Guest host Bim Adewunmi talks to her cousin Kamyl about a funny thing Kamyl did when she was small, regarding a dog named Foxy. (4 minutes) Act One: Comedian ...
09.24.2023 779: Ends of the Earth An exploration of the very upper limits of what you do for someone you love. Prologue: Host Ira Glass explains what we’re doing on today’s show. (2 minutes) Act One: Amy Bloom tells the story of her husband, Brian, getting ...
09.17.2023 810: Say It to My Face Friends and ex-friends finally talk about the one thing between them they've been avoiding. Prologue: Host Ira Glass tells a story he’s never told anyone before, about something someone said to him. (4 minutes) Act One: Gabe Mollica had something ...
09.10.2023 809: The Call One call to a very unusual hotline, and everything that followed. 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 ...
09.03.2023 388: Rest Stop Nine radio reporters. Two days. One rest stop on the New York State Thruway. Stories of people who are just passing through, and the ones who can’t leave, because this is where their jobs are. Act One: Host Ira Glass ...
08.27.2023 323: The Super The mysterious hold supers have on their buildings, or that their buildings have on them. Host Ira Glass visits the Upper East Side building in Manhattan where Peter Roach has been the super for about ten years. Peter has a ...
08.20.2023 808: The Rest of the Story Legendary radio broadcaster Paul Harvey had a popular show called “The Rest of the Story.” Today on our show, we do just that. We hear from people who, whether they want to or not, find themselves face-to-face with the rest ...
08.13.2023 714: Day at the Beach It’s the last few weeks of summer, so we’re going to the beach! This week, stories from the surf and sand. Prologue: Host Ira Glass reflects on his feelings about going to the beach. (3 minutes) Act One: Producer Dana ...
08.06.2023 807: Eight Fights Nadia's family is split between Russia and Ukraine, which is pretty common. And when Russia invaded Ukraine, it didn’t just start fighting on the battlefield. It sparked family conflict, too. An intimate story of the war from writer Masha Gessen. ...
07.30.2023 806: I Can't Quit You, Baby People on the verge of a big change, not wanting to let go. And the people who give them the final push. Prologue: Guest Host Sean Cole gets some scary news about his health, and decides to quit smoking. (5 ...
07.23.2023 199: House on Loon Lake The true story of an abandoned house, discovered by a young boy in the 1970s, and the mysterious family who disappeared without a trace. Ira introduces this week's story. (1 minute) Act One: Adam Beckman tells the first part of ...
07.16.2023 805: The Florida Experiment Governor Ron DeSantis is running for president on the argument that he'll do for America what he's done for Florida. So what's it like in Florida? Prologue: Florida is now the fastest growing state, and DeSantis says people are moving ...
07.09.2023 165: Americans in Paris Many Americans have dreamy and romantic ideas about Paris, notions which probably trace back to the 1920s vision of Paris created by the expatriate Americans there. But what's it actually like in Paris if you're an American, without rose-colored glasses? ...
07.02.2023 804: The Retrievals At a Yale fertility clinic, dozens of women began their I.V.F. cycles full of expectation and hope. Then a surgical procedure caused them excruciating pain. In the hours that followed, some of the women called the clinic to report their ...
06.25.2023 803: Greetings, People Of Earth Humans encounter non-human intelligences of various kinds and try to make sense of them. Prologue: Ira has some thoughts about our country’s long history of alien invasion movies. (2 minutes) Act One: In this past year we’ve witnessed a revolution ...
06.18.2023 802: Father's Day Ira's own father, Barry Glass, co-hosts this special Father's Day show. Prologue: Ira talks with his father and co-host for this show, Barry Glass, about his own early days working in radio. (3 minutes) Act One: LA writer/performer Sandra Tsing ...
06.11.2023 801: Must Be Rats on the Brain The one animal we can’t seem to live without, even when we really, really want to. Prologue: At this spring’s announcement of New York City’s inaugural rat czar, we meet Darneice Foster, who despises the rats outside her apartment. And ...
06.04.2023 692: The Show of Delights In these dark, combative times, we attempt the most radical counterprogramming we could imagine: a show made up entirely of stories about delight. Prologue: Ira Glass talks to Bim Adewunmi about her understanding of delight through American pop culture and ...
05.28.2023 800: Jane Doe Five years after the #MeToo explosion, what’s happened in the lives of the women who stepped forward and went public with their stories? We tell the story of a teenager who spoke out against one of the most powerful people ...
05.21.2023 508: Superpowers We answer the following questions about superpowers: Can superheroes be real people? (No.) Can real people become superheroes? (Maybe.) And which is better: flight or invisibility? (Depends who you ask.) Host Ira Glass talks to comic artist Chris Ware, who ...
05.14.2023 799: The Lives of Others Looping thoughts about people you barely know, or don't know at all. Prologue: We get a tip that an entire town is consumed by a huge, elementary-school-style crush on a local veterinarian. Guest host Lilly Sullivan goes to Utah to ...
05.07.2023 798: Leaving the Fold A week after Jerry Springer’s death, we go back to a story we first broadcast years ago, about a side of Springer most people don’t know and can’t imagine: his years as an idealistic politician in the mold of Bobby ...
04.30.2023 352: The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar In 1912 a four-year-old boy named Bobby Dunbar went missing in a swamp in Louisiana. Eight months later, he was found in the hands of a wandering handyman in Mississippi. In 2004, Bobby Dunbar's granddaughter discovered a secret beneath the ...
04.23.2023 797: What I Was Thinking As We Were Sinking It's funny the things that go through your head during a disaster. Prologue: Host Ira Glass has fallen off his bike a number of times at this point. He reflects on what goes through his head as he’s going down. ...
04.16.2023 796: What Lies Beneath Summoning up stuff that’s usually hidden down deep. Prologue: A beloved drawing goes missing from Mr. Ablao’s third grade classroom. The class holds a funeral for the drawing, which accidentally unleashes a much bigger feeling than anyone anticipated. (13 minutes) ...
04.09.2023 795: Nine Months Later It’s been nine months since Roe v. Wade was overturned. We talk to people who wanted abortions right when the laws were changing in their states. They had to wait for appointments, for money to travel or abortion pills. And ...
04.02.2023 765: Off Course Three people, and one animal, who know the path their lives will take until, suddenly, they don’t.
03.26.2023 794: So Close and Yet So Far People so close to each other, in extremely intimate situations, who are also a million miles apart. Prologue: Valerie Kipnis tells Ira about riding the subway, shoulder-to-shoulder with someone she knows quite well, pretending she doesn’t see him. (8 minutes) ...
03.19.2023 654: The Feather Heist A flute player breaks into a British museum and makes off with a million dollars worth of dead birds.
03.12.2023 793: The Problem with Ghosts The ghosts that visit us, the ghosts that never do, and the ghosts that walk among us. Prologue: Chaunte Vaughn’s mother recently died of Parkinsons. Even though Chaunte doesn't believe in ghosts, she is visited by her mom's ghost multiple ...
03.05.2023 792: When to Leave People staring down that hardest of questions: Is now the time? To leave? Prologue: Russian forces have besieged the town of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. Shelling is constant. Most residents have fled. But there are holdouts who haven’t left yet. ...
02.26.2023 639: In Dog We Trust Exactly how much are the animals that live in our homes caught up in our everyday family dynamics?
02.19.2023 556: Same Bed, Different Dreams People who are tied together, but imagine radically different futures.
02.12.2023 791: Math or Magic? 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 ...
02.05.2023 542: Wait—Do You Have The Map? Feeling lost and trying to figure out how to move ahead.
01.29.2023 790: You're It Sometimes you raise your hand. Other times you’re just the only one left. Prologue: What happens when an emergency room nurse has an emergency? Kelsay Irby did something that landed her in the headlines. (9 minutes) Act One: Megan Tan ...
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.

Older episodes