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.

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508: Superpowers

05.21.2023

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 ...

This American Life episodes:

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.
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?
07.04.2022 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.

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