This American Life

A show about people who are suddenly confronted with who they are.

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• Prologue: Guest host Aviva DeKornfeld tells Ira Glass about breaking into a community pool as a kid, and the split-second decision that has haunted her ever since. (4 minutes)
• Act One: Some people are great in a crisis. Others, not so much. Does that mean anything about who we really are? Tobin Low investigates. (10 minutes)
• Act Two: Aviva DeKornfeld has the story of Leisha Hailey, who was certain she had the next million-dollar idea. (11 minutes)
• Act Three: Comedian Mike Birbiglia talks about the questions his daughter asks him and how trying to answer them showed him surprising reflections of himself.  (15 minutes)
• Act Four: David Kestenbaum tells the story of the suspicious disappearance of multiple shoes and a woman determined to explain it. (8 minutes)

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Boen Wang has a theory that a lot of the misery in his life can be traced to a single moment that happened years before he was born. So he makes a pilgrimage to see if he’s right.

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• Prologue: Ira talks about what it’s like to go back to 1119 Bayard Street in Baltimore. (6 minutes)
• Part One: Boen visits Norman, Oklahoma, where he was born, to meet the man he thinks changed his parents’ lives—and his life, too. (31 minutes)
• Part Two: Boen’s friend, Andrew, and his parents take what he learned in Part One, throw it into a blender, and push puree. (20 minutes)

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Mike Birbiglia got used to strange things happening to him when he slept—until something happened that almost killed him. This and other reasons to fear sleep, including bedbugs, "The Shining," and mild-mannered husbands who turn into maniacs while asleep.

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• Prologue: Host Ira Glass talks about his fear of sleep, and reports on other people who have very strong reasons of their own to fear bedtime. (8 minutes)
• Act One: Mike Birbiglia talks about the sleepwalking that nearly killed him. (13 minutes)
• Act Two: Producers Nancy Updike and Robyn Semien report on critters that can kill sleep: cockroaches and bedbugs. (11 minutes)
• Act Three: Joel Lovell explains why, as an 11-year-old, he trained himself not to fall asleep, and how that had some unintended consequences. (10 minutes)
• Act Four: Seth Lind explains how he ended up watching Stanley Kubrick's The Shining when he was six years old, and how it led to two years where every night he had trouble falling asleep and nightmares. (7 minutes)
• Act Five: For some people, the fear of sleep is linked to the fear of death. We hear from some of them. (5 minutes)

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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. 

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• Prologue: Romantic comedies usually don’t get much respect.  Producer Neil Drumming explains what’s so great about them. (5 minutes)
• Act One: Actor Daniel Radcliffe reads a short piece of fiction, “The Present,” from Simon Rich’s book of short stories, “The Last Girlfriend on Earth.” (10 minutes)
• Act Two: Elna Baker interviews comedian Michelle Buteau about one of her first big romantic challenges. (14 minutes)
• Act Three: David Kestenbaum retraces the steps of Steve Snyder, a man who found himself running for love. (9 minutes)
• Act Four: Comedian Jillian Welsh tells Diane Wu about one of the most romantic—and stressful—nights of her life, a night that paralleled the plot of a rom-com in several ways. (16 minutes)

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People immersed in chaos try to solve for what it all adds up to.

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• Prologue: A scientist who is used to organizing data starts tracking scientific meetings that seem to exist only on paper—meetings that might decide the fate of years of research. The NIH website shows one reality; the empty conference rooms tell another story. She graphs the chaos. (9 minutes)
• Act One: American doctors returning from Gaza compare notes and start to see a pattern. (28 minutes)
• Act Two: A woman watches her partner get taken in handcuffs with no explanation. Days later, she spots him in the most unexpected place. The coordinates of her life suddenly don't make sense as she navigates the bewildering map of the US immigration system. (23 minutes)

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For Easter weekend — and the end of Passover! — stories of people struggling to follow the Ten Commandments.

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• Host Ira Glass reads from the Ten Commandments. Not the original Ten Commandments, but some of the newer, lesser-known ones. There's the Miner's Ten Commandments of 1853, the Ten Commandments of Umpiring, and the Ten Commandments for Math Teachers — just to name a few. (4 minutes)
• Commandments One, Two and Three: As a boy in religious school, Shalom Auslander is informed that his name, Shalom, is one of the names of God, and so he must be very careful not to take his own name in vain. (9 minutes)
• Commandment Four: Six houses of worship in six different cities, each with its own way of honoring the Sabbath. (3 minutes)
• Commandment Five: When Jack Hitt was 11, he did the worst thing his father could have imagined. Neither Jack nor his four siblings will ever forget the punishment. (6 minutes)
• Commandment Six: Alex Blumberg talks to Lt. Col. Lyn Brown, an Army Reserve chaplain who served two tours in Iraq. Brown talks about what "thou shalt not kill" means to soldiers on the battlefield. (6 minutes)
• Commandment Seven: In the book of Matthew, Jesus says that looking lustfully at a woman is like committing adultery in your heart. Contributor David Dickerson was raised as an evangelical Christian, and for many years tried not to have a single lustful thought. (9 minutes)
• Commandment Eight: Ira talks to a waiter named Hassan at Liebman's Deli in the Bronx about some audacious thefts he's witnessed in his years in the restaurant business. (3 minutes)
• Commandment Nine: Chaya Lipschutz wanted to donate one of her kidneys to a stranger. But to save a stranger's life, she had to break the commandment against lying. And the person she had to lie to was her mother. Chaya talked to Sarah Koenig. (8 minutes)
• Commandment Ten: Ira talks to seventh-graders about the things they covet most. (4 minutes)

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A couple devises a strategy to get their daughter's killer prosecuted and to get attention for other Native families. 

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• Prologue: Mika Westwolf was killed in a hit-and-run on a Montana highway. Her parents thought the driver might get away with it. The driver was white. Mika was a citizen of the Blackfeet Nation. (1 minute)
• Act One: Mika’s parents, Carissa Heavy Runner and Kevin Howard, share recordings of their interactions with law enforcement. (8 minutes)
• Act Two: Carissa and Kevin take matters into their own hands. (20 minutes)
• Act Three: The county prosecutor explains why he let Mika’s killer out of jail. Will Carissa and Kevin's efforts pay off? Sierra follows them to court. (33 minutes)

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People tossing words out into the world impulsively to ignite and burn over decades.

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• Prologue: Host Ira Glass plays a strange voicemail left by a 96-year-old surgeon about a letter that was written five decades ago. (6 minutes)
• Act One: Producer Lilly Sullivan reports out that voicemail. (13 minutes)
• Act Two: On his deathbed, a wealthy man in Toronto decides to make some trouble. Hundreds of babies are involved. Stephanie Foo tells the story. (25 minutes)
• Act Three: Cyclist Mike Friedman said something to cyclist Ian Dille in the middle of a race that ate at both of them for years. Jared Marcelle tells the story. (12 minutes)

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Artifacts and exhibits of this particular moment we are living through.

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• Exhibit One: Ira talks to producer Emmanuel Dzotsi, who brings the first exhibit into the studio with him: a chunk of concrete with some yellow paint on it. He got it from the demolition site in Washington, DC, where the giant Black Lives Matter letters are being dug out of the street with heavy equipment. (8 minutes)
• Exhibit Two: Producer Aviva DeKornfeld talks to Ranjani Srinivasan, who tells the story of how her life was transformed over five days via a series of events that started out confusing and escalated to frightening. (25 minutes)
• Exhibit Three: Producer Laura Starecheski takes us inside one dramatic court hearing on the Trump administration’s executive order and new policy banning transgender people from serving in the military. (20 minutes)

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The radio version of an episode we did live on stage and beamed to movie theaters. David Sedaris, Tig Notaro, Ryan Knighton, and the late David Rakoff in his final performance on the show. The other half of this two-hour show was visual, including dancers, animation, and more. You can watch it on YouTube.

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• Ira interviews Ryan Knighton, a blind guy who had a very peculiar experience with a hotel room telephone. (7 minutes)
• Act One: Ryan Knighton tells a story about trying to get his daughter to understand his blindness. (7 minutes)
• Act Two: Famous people are supposed to be somewhere else, invisible to us. Comedian Tig Notaro tells this story about repeatedly running into Taylor Dayne, who was a pop star in the late 80s and early 90s. At the end of the story, we have a little surprise for Tig. (16 minutes)
• Act Three: David Rakoff tells this story, about the invisible processes that can happen inside our bodies and the visible effects they eventually have. (15 minutes)
• Act Four: Ira Glass's sister once met David Sedaris, and commented that he was much nicer than she thought he would be, given his writing. David replied, "I'm not nice, just two-faced." In this story, David shares the thoughts running through his head as he attempts to buy a cup of coffee. (8 minutes)

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