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We leave the normal realm of human error and enter the territory of huge breakdowns.
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Prologue: Jack Hitt tells the story of a small-town production of Peter Pan in which all the usual boundaries between the audience and actors dissolve entirely. (6 minutes)Act One: Jack Hitt's Peter Pan story continues. (18 minutes)Act Two: The first day on the job inevitably means mistakes, mishaps, and sometimes, fiascos. A true story, told by a former rookie cop. (13 minutes)Act Three: Comedian Mike Birbiglia talks about the time he ruined a cancer charity event by giving the worst performance of his life. Here's a hint: He improvised. About cancer. (10 minutes)Act Four: Journalist Margy Rochlin on her first big assignment to do a celebrity interview: Moon Unit Zappa in 1982. Midway through the interview: fiasco! (7 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org
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The tiny thing that unravels your world.
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Prologue: Ira talks to Chris Benderev, whose high school years were completely upended by an impromptu thing his teacher said. (8 minutes)Act One: For Producer Lilly Sullivan, there’s one story about her parents that defines how she sees them, their family, and their history. She finds out it might be wrong. (27 minutes)Act Two: For years, Mike Comite has replayed in his head the moment when he and his bandmate blew their shot of making it as musicians. He sets out to uncover how it all went awry. (13 minutes)Act Three: Six million Syrians fled the country after the start of its civil war. A few weeks ago, one woman watched from afar as everything in her home country changed forever – again. (9 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org
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Banias is an 8-year-old kid living in Gaza. And she has a story to tell — many stories, in fact.
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Prologue: While on the phone with reporter Maram Hamaid in Gaza, producer Chana Joffe-Walt gets interrupted by Maram’s daughter––Banias, eight, who grabs the phone from her mother and starts telling us about her life. The narrator arrives. (8 minutes)Part One: Banias, an 8-year-old in Gaza, tells us about her life––her friends, the games she plays, the things she cares about. Everything but the war going on around her. (25 minutes)Part Two: Banias talks about the war. (20 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org
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One call to a very unusual hotline and everything that followed.
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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 help strangers who called. (2 minutes)Act One: The Never Use Alone hotline was set up so that drug users can call if they are say, using heroin by themselves. Someone will stay on the line with them in case they overdose. We hear the recording of one call, from a woman named Kimber. (13 minutes)Act Two: An EMT learns he was connected to the call, in more ways than he realized. (16 minutes)Act Three: Jessie, who took the call, explains how she discovered the hotline. She keeps in touch with Kimber. Until one day, Kimber disappears. (16 minutes)Act Four: We learn what happened to Kimber after she called the line. (10 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org
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Things our dads taught us, whether they intended to or not.
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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 who had invented the famous Trapper Keeper notebook, she was very surprised. As far as she knew, the inventor was very much alive. It was her dad. Not the guy in the obit. (15 minutes)Act Two: A father and son find themselves in a very traditional relationship. Until the end. (21 minutes)Act Three: Simon Rich reads his short story "History Report," in which a father explains the sex robots of the future. And other things as well. (14 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org
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How do you count almost 12 million votes if you’re not the government? This week, we bring you the extraordinary story of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who created the only verifiable public record of votes in their presidential election — and other stories of people trying to correct the official record with their own versions.
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Prologue: Host Ira Glass sets us up for Nancy Updike’s insider account of the recent presidential election in Venezuela. The story is an incredible national drama that plays out in thousands of polling stations across the country, with regular people trying to ensure a fair vote count that everyone can agree on. (2 minutes)Act One: Producer Nancy Updike tells the story of the people of Venezuela trying to prove who won their recent presidential election beyond a shadow of a doubt. (22 minutes)Act Two: Host Ira Glass spent America’s presidential election in the swing state of Michigan, where he found very little dispute over the ballot count from Republican poll challengers in Detroit now that they are doing the counting themselves. (8 minutes)Act Three: This story is about a creepy and dangerous creature that does all kinds of terrible things. It’s also about someone trying to set the record straight on those exact assumptions about this notorious creature. (9 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org
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Keiko was a hugely beloved adventure park attraction. He was also captured in the wild and taken away from his mother when he was just a calf. When Hollywood learned about him, a colossal effort began to un-tame him and send him back to the ocean.
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Prologue: Ira introduces a new series from Serial Productions and The New York Times. "The Good Whale" is about the killer whale Keiko and is reported by Daniel Alarcón. (2 minutes)Act One: Daniel Alarcón takes us back to the early 90’s when Keiko lived in an adventure park in Mexico City, swimming with human friends. (43 minutes)Act Two: Producer Diane Wu travels to Minnesota, where the turkey set to be pardoned by The President of the United States later this month is having the turkiness trained out of him. (10 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org
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With Donald Trump’s victory this week, many people looked at the election results and thought, yeah, this is the country I thought it was. For some people, that was a hopeful thing. For others, kind of the opposite. This week, we talked with people who helped make it happen and some who are looking to what’s next.
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Prologue: Ira talks with Zoe Chace about watching Trump’s victory from an ecstatic room in Michigan. Then he checks in with a DC cop who was injured at the Capitol on January 6. (7 minutes)Act One: Trump has claimed that he will be able to deport between 15 and 20 million people. But neither he nor his team have spelled out exactly how they’d do it. Producer Nadia Reiman looked into what mass deportation could actually look like on the ground if and when it comes to pass. (17 minutes)Act Two: Trump won record numbers of Latino voters this year. Ike Sriskandarajah spent the day with a guy in Pennsylvania who's been working to bring Latino voters to Trump for years. (15 minutes)Act Three: Ira talks with two of Trump’s “political enemies” about their post-election plans. (8 minutes)Act Four: Ten different states had abortion rights measures on their ballots this election. Producer Miki Meek got curious about a particular kind of political ad that aired in many of those states and called up a few of the women whose stories were featured in them. (9 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org
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A wee flame, flickering in the dark.
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Prologue: Who’s trying to bridge the gap between Blue America and Red America? Ira gets a glimpse of one guy who might be able to do just that. (3 minutes)Act One: A politically divided couple searches for a news source they both can trust. (26 minutes)Act Two: "June" is making a tactical decision about her vote this election. (13 minutes)Act Three: Frank Filocomo thinks people care too much about politics when it comes to dating. His dates don’t necessarily agree. (10 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org
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Thirteen parole board members decide whether or not one man should be released from prison.
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Prologue: Henry Dee has been locked up for most of his life, nearly 50 years. Now, he’s up for parole. Reporter Ben Austen tells the story. (19 minutes)Part 1: The parole board members puzzle through the pros and cons of releasing Henry Dee from prison and cast their votes. (26 minutes)Part 2: Reporter Ben Austen continues the story. (8 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org
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Ira Glass has news to share about some things happening here at This American Life.
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So much of the fight for the presidency is coming down to battles for small slices of voters who can help throw swing states to one candidate or another. Abbas Alawieh, a leader in the Uncommitted movement, grapples with how to get his voters the thing they want.
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Prologue: When you have some power, but not a lot, how do you wield it when you’re suddenly cast into the spotlight? (4 minutes)Act One: Zoe Chace and Ben Terris follow Abbas Alawieh as he fights to broker a deal at the DNC – a way to potentially satisfy the people who voted “Uncommitted” in the primaries as a protest vote against Biden’s handling of the war in Israel and Gaza. (33 minutes)Act Two: Three weeks after the Democratic National Convention, Abbas speaks at a tense community meeting in Michigan about the Uncommitted organizers’ general election recommendation and hears back from voters on how they feel about the Democratic nominee at this point. (15 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org
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Chen Almog-Goldstein was kidnapped by Hamas along with her three youngest children on October 7, 2023. This week, she tells the story of their life as hostages in Gaza.
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Prologue: The 251 hostages taken by Hamas a year ago have become a divisive symbol in Israel. Host Ira Glass talks about the father of one hostage, and what happened to him at a protest last week when he called for a hostage deal. (6 minutes)Part One: On this week’s show, we’re airing excerpts of interviews with former hostages produced by an Israeli podcast, Echad Bayom. In these interviews they describe, in a remarkably detailed and complicated way, what happened to them a year ago. Part Two: Chen’s story continues, with a description of what it was like to be hidden in a small apartment with her children and their captors. (6 minutes)Part Three: Chen talks about the complicated relationship between her family and the people holding them hostage. (6 minutes)Part Four: Chen describes hearing the Israeli news while in captivity, including one night when her own father was interviewed. (4 minutes)Part Five: Chen talks about what it was like to walk around the streets of Gaza in disguise and their eventual release, 51 days after they were taken from their home. (13 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org
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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.
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)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org
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In Rafah, Yousef is out of options and faces his toughest move yet.
Prologue: Since the beginning of the war in Gaza, Yousef Hammash has decided where to go next and when. In Rafah, he is out of options and faces his toughest move yet. (5 minutes)Act One: Yousef does not even want to think about leaving Gaza. (18 minutes)Act Two: The actual price — in cash — of getting out of Gaza. (31 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org
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Every crime scene hides a story. In this week's show, we hear about crime scenes and the stories they tell.
Medical Examiner D.J. Drakovic, in Pontiac Michigan, explains how every crime scene is like a novel. (5 minutes)Act One: Reporter Nancy Updike spends two days with Neal Smither, who cleans up crime scenes for a living, and comes away wanting to open his Los Angeles franchise, despite the gore — or maybe because of it. (12 minutes)Act Two: Actor Matt Malloy reads a short story by Aimee Bender, from her book “The Girl in the Flammable Skirt," about what can be and cannot be recovered from a crime scene, or from anywhere. (12 minutes)Act Three: Sometimes criminals return to the scene of their misdeeds — to try to make things right, to try to undo the past. Katie Davis reports on her neighbor Bobby, who returned to the scene where he robbed people and conned people. This time, he came to coach little league. (22 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org
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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 available. Who has it right?
Prologue: When guest host Tobin Low was looking for a husband, he got opposing advice from two of the most important people in his life, his mom and his best friend. (8 minutes)Act One: Zarna Garg had a clear plan for how she was going to find a husband. Things did not go as she expected. (17 minutes)Act Two: People who fall in love at first sight often describe it as a kind of magic. One of our producers, Aviva DeKornfeld, is skeptical of these sorts of claims. And also a little envious. (10 minutes)Act Three: Calvin is an 11 year old who is learning what love is all about, the hard way. (7 minutes)Act Four: Writer Marie Phillips believes that magic is not just reserved for the beginning of a relationship. In fact, she says the real magic can be found in the end, once you decide to finally leave. (8 minutes)Coda: Tobin Low tells us which camp he falls in — math or magic. (2 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org
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An investigation of when and why people ask loaded questions that are a proxy for something else.
Prologue: Host Ira Glass talks with producer Tobin Low about the question he got asked after he and his husband moved in together, and what he thinks people were really asking. (4 minutes)Act One: “What do you think about Beyoncé?” and other questions that are asked a lot, raised by people on first dates. (12 minutes)Act Two: When a common, seemingly innocuous question goes wildly off the rails. (13 minutes)Act Three: Why are people asking me if my mother recognizes me, when it’s totally beside the point? (14 minutes)Act Four: Schools ask their students the strangest essay questions sometimes. The experience of tutoring anxious teenagers through how to answer them requires a balladier, singing their lived experience to a crowd as though it were the Middle Ages. (10 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org
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What it means to have words—and to lose them.
Prologue: Sometimes we don’t want to say what’s going on because putting it into words would make it real. At other times, words don’t seem to capture the weight of what we want to say. Susanna Fogel talks about her friend Margaret Riley, who died earlier this week. (6 minutes)Act One: The story of a woman from Gaza City who ran out of words. Seventy-two days into the war, Youmna stopped talking. (27 minutes)Act Two: For years there was a word that Val’s mother did not want to use. Val sets out to figure out why. (22 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org
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People finding themselves in situations that are worse than they thought and deciding to really go with it.
Prologue: A Boston woman takes her dog for a walk and suddenly finds herself in a terrible situation she never anticipated. The strange thing is, it helps her. (9 minutes)Act One: Two college friends try to stop Donald Trump’s primary season momentum by convincing New Hampshire voters to vote against everything they care about. Producer Zoe Chace follows along. (22 minutes)Act Two: When producer Ike Sriskandarajah tries to sleep-train his baby, a neighbor decides to call the police. Later, Ike thinks, "I can work with that." (9 minutes)Act Three: A story by producer Boen Wang about how to get through a summer of bad days. (9 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org
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