This American Life

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. 

Prologue: An extended family, and eight fights. (1 minutes)

Fight #1: Luka’s parents – Nadia and Karen – try to figure out where to take him once war breaks out. (6 minutes)

Fight #2: Nadia and Karen have been arguing over Russian-ness since they needed to pick a school for Luka. (10 minutes)

Fights #3 and #4: Nadia remembers the times that Luka’s father would suggest going to Crimea for vacation, as if it wasn’t Ukrainian land occupied by Russia. And she remembers a present that Karen once gave Luka––the sort which had to be smuggled into the country. (6 minutes)

Fight #5: Nadia tells the story of her father, Alex, who lives near Bucha, and how differently he and she view the Russian atrocities there. (10 minutes)

Fight #6: Nadia tells the story of her mother, who lives in Russia, and how she won’t do the one thing Nadia keeps asking her to do. (2 minutes)

Fight #7: Karen sends Nadia a photo which drives them to a final showdown. (12 minutes)

Fight #8: Nadia’s step-father works for the Russian government. How to manage that? (4 minutes)

Epilogue: Nadia and Karen’s son, Luka, who most of these fights are about, gets the last word. (3 minutes)

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 minutes)

Act One: Sean Cole attempts to kick his 35 year-long smoking habit, using a book that’s said to have helped millions of people to quit. (33 minutes)

Act Two: Someone writes into the advice column Dear Sugar to ask whether or not they should quit a relationship, and gets a strange but very persuasive response. (9 minutes)

Act Three: Even people who vehemently disagreed with Heider Garcia wanted him to stay in his job. But then something happened that made staying impossible. Zoe Chace reports. (9 minutes)

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 his story, about how, back in the 70s, he and his friends broke into an abandoned  house in the small town of  Freedom, New Hampshire. The home turned out to be a perfect time capsule, containing the furniture, letters and personal effects of an entire family — abandoned for decades. It seemed like the family just vanished one day, leaving salt and pepper shakers on the table, notes on the bedroom mirror, and a wallet with money still inside. Adam and his friends read the letters, saving some as clues, and never forgot. (30 minutes.)

Act Two: Adam Beckman continues his story. He returns to the town in New Hampshire where he discovered the abandoned house as a kid and tries to find out what happened there. It turns out he's not the only one looking for an answer to that question. (25 minutes)

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 there from all over because of him. We speak to people who did make the move, at least in part, for DeSantis’s policies. (6  minutes)

Act One: Among the big items in DeSantis's run for president is medical freedom. Producer Zoe Chace wanted to understand its appeal and its growing popularity. So she spent some time in Sarasota County, where one man — at the side of former Trump appointee Mike Flynn — is creating a sort of little parallel universe for this very thing. (33 minutes)

Act Two: DeSantis has passed law after law about what can and can’t be taught in Florida classrooms, starting as early as elementary school. And last spring, Florida Republicans introduced a bill initially proposing to ban things like critical race theory and identity politics, or students majoring in things like gender studies in Florida universities. Reporter Emmanuel Dzotsi followed how things unfolded at one of the biggest universities there, Florida State, from the bill’s introduction all the way to its passage. He explains how professors and students have been preparing. (25 minutes)

Act Three: Among the legislation introduced by DeSantis that has passed is a ban on minors receiving transition care. The bill passed into law a few months ago. We speak with a teen whose family has since had to flee the state in order to access the care they needed. (2 minutes)

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?

Host Ira Glass talks with writer David Sedaris at the Louvre in Paris. David's never set foot inside, though he lives just a few minutes away. He says most people go to the Louvre because they think they should. Where he would take them if they wanted to see the city where he's lived for two years is very different. (6 minutes)

Act One: David Sedaris takes Ira on a tour of his favorite spots in Paris. He moved to France with no special feelings for the place. His head wasn't full of Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein and Sartre and Proust; he was a blank slate. And so the places he's found as his favorites tend to be places where the people aren't mean to him when he speaks French, or places where very unusual and fascinating objects are sold, or place that are unlike anywhere in the States. (27 minutes)

Act Two: We hear from two Americans who live in Paris about what it is that draws the people who love France so much. (6 minutes)

Act Three: Is Paris still the racially tolerant place that Richard Wright and James Baldwin discovered in the 1940s? Janet McDonald talks about whether African-Americans are still welcomed in Paris so warmly, even after a half century of African migration to the city. Also: Why it's sometimes better for her to put on a bad American accent. Janet wrote the book Project Girl. (16 minutes)

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 pain — but most of the staff members who fielded the patients’ reports did not know the real reason for the pain, which was that a nurse at the clinic was stealing fentanyl and replacing it with saline. What happened at that clinic? What are the stories we tell about women's pain and what happens when we minimize or dismiss it?

The Retrievals, a new five-part series from Serial Productions, is hosted and reported by longtime This American Life producer and editor Susan Burton. We're excited to bring you the first episode today.

Prologue: Ira Glass introduces the first episode of a new podcast from longtime This American Life producer and editor Susan Burton. (1 minute)

Act One: Susan Burton introduces some of the many women who went to a Yale fertility clinic for IVF treatment, and charts their experience from hopeful beginning to excruciatingly painful egg retrieval. (27 minutes)

Act Two: Often bypassing logic, the women go to great lengths to construct elaborate stories to make sense of their inexplicable pain. And then, a letter arrives. (25 minutes)

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 Loh discovers that a local rock band has recorded a song about her own father, wildly misinterpreting who he is. They think he’s a free spirit; she believes he’s a worried, miserly grump. She invites the band and her father into the studio to discuss it. (10 minutes)

Act Two: Ian Brown explains the lengths a normal dad will go to give his daughter a memorable birthday party, including a birthday stunt so crass that he and his wife shocked all of their friends. (12 minutes)

Act Three: Audio artist Jay Allison and writer Dan Robb present an audio montage on the moment Robb’s parents divorced. (11 minutes)

Act Four: Chicago playwright Beau O’Reilly talks about how he reconciled with his estranged father years ago by becoming an alcoholic just like him. (14 minutes)

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 the summer she spent in the US as a 19-year-old. Ira then hands the show over to Bim as guest host. (10 minutes)

Act One: Bim talks to poet Ross Gay, whose book inspired today’s show, about the discipline and rigor of seeking and holding onto delight. (8 minutes)

Act Two: Producer Robyn Semien captures a special morning for her five-year-old son, Cole, who is doing something delightful for the very first time: he’s getting to ride the school bus. (4 minutes)

Act Three: Producer Miki Meek speaks to Noriko Meek, her 72-year-old mother, about discovering delight late in life. (8 minutes)

Act Four: Producer Dana Chivvis follows the night zookeeper at the Denver Zoo as she doles out snacks and tucks the animals in. (9 minutes)

Act Five: What happens when a dealer of delight gets depressed? Podcast host Tracy Clayton talks to Bim Adewunmi about the road back. (17 minutes)

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 in her state, and what happened next.

Prologue: Some powerful and well known men lost their jobs after #MeToo. But what about the women at the center of all this who’ve been way less visible after they told what happened to them? We hear about big and small ways the aftermath of coming forward continues to pop up in their daily lives. (10 minutes)

Act One: Back in 2021, a 19-year-old intern at the Idaho state legislature reported that a state Representative named Aaron von Ehlinger raped her. She went by the name Jane Doe. There was a public ethics hearing and Ehlinger resigned. State legislators talked about how proud they were of their ability to do the right thing so quickly. But the story that the public knows is very different from what actually happened to Jane. She talks about it in-depth for the first time. (25 minutes)

Act Two: Jane Doe walks into a public ethics hearing at the Idaho state capitol and navigates the aftermath. (23 minutes)

Act Three: Jane Doe sent some questions for us to ask Chanel Miller. For years, Chanel was known as Emily Doe. She wrote a victim impact statement that millions of people read. (A swimmer at Stanford University named Brock Turner sexually assaulted her while she was unconscious.) She talks about how she decided to come out with her real name and who Emily Doe is to her now. (9 minutes)

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 thought about superheroes a lot of the time as a kid. He invented his own character and made a superhero costume, which he wore to school under his regular clothes. Everything went fine until he realized he would have to change for gym class. (6 minutes)

Act One: John Hodgman conducts an informal survey in which he asks the age-old question: Which is better: The power of flight or the power of invisibility? (14 minutes)

Act Two: Kelly McEvers with the story of Zora, a self-made superhero. From the time she was five years old, Zora had recurring dreams in which she was a 6'5" warrior queen, who could fly and shoot lightning from her hands. She made a list, pages and pages long, of all the things she could accomplish to actually become that superhero: martial arts, evasive driving, bomb defusing. By the time she was 30, most of her list had been checked off. She was as close to a superhero as any mortal could hope to come. But her dream had changed. (17 minutes)

Act Three: Ira talks with Jonathan Morris, the amazingly funny and charming editor of the website "Gone and Forgotten," an internet archive of failed comic book characters. Jonathan explains what makes a new superhero succeed, and what makes him tank. (9 minutes)

Act Four: Of course you can’t be a superhero without a supervillain trying to destroy you. And the most interesting supervillains, of course, are the ones who think that they're the real heroes, not the guys in the capes. Glynn Washington tells the story of Evil D. (9 minutes)