This American Life
This American Life
CATEGORY: Arts
This American Life is a weekly public radio show, heard by 2.2 million people on more than 500 stations. Another 2.5 million people download the weekly podcast. It is hosted by Ira Glass, produced in collaboration with Chicago Public Media, delivered to stations by PRX The Public Radio Exchange, and has won all of the major broadcasting awards.
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732: SecretsWhy we tell them, and what happens after we do.
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731: What Lies BeneathStories of people summoning up stuff that’s usually hidden down deep.
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670: Beware the JabberwockStories from the upside-down world where conspiracy theorists dwell.
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489: No Coincidence, No Story!We asked listeners to send us their best coincidence stories, and we got more than 1,300 submissions! There were so many good ones we decided to make a whole show about them. From a chance encounter at a bus st…
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730: The Empty ChairThings we’ve lost in the past year — since the first American coronavirus case — that we haven’t talked about so much. Gossip. The chance to make new friends. And much larger stuff.
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725: Turkey in a Face MaskFor Thanksgiving weekend, stories about food, and people who set out on very particular missions with food.
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726: Twenty-FiveTo commemorate our show’s 25th year, we have a program about people who were born the year our show went on the air.
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727: Boulder v. HillWhat the day-to-day business of saving the world looks like. We visit with one group of people who are trying to rescue us from something very large, and another group trying to rescue us from something very sm…
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728: Lights, Camera, Christmas!This holiday season, we bring you a show filled with stories of people going to great lengths to throw a special Christmas for their families.
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692: The Show of DelightsIn these dark, combative times, we attempt the most radical counterprogramming we could imagine: a show made up entirely of stories about delight.
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729: Making the CutThere's always someone whose job it is to decide if you measure up.
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694: Get Back to Where You Once BelongedPeople looking everywhere to find a place—any place—where, for once, they don't have to be the odd man out.
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619: The Magic ShowJust a few years before he got the internship at NPR that started him in radio, our host Ira Glass had another career. He performed magic at children's birthday parties. A powerful sense of embarrassment has pr…
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682: Ten SessionsWhat if someone told you about a type of therapy that could help you work through unhealed trauma in just ten sessions? Some people knock through it in two weeks. Jaime Lowe tried the therapy—and recorded it.
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Act VFor our 25th Anniversary, a favorite episode from 2002. We devote this entire episode to one story: Over the course of six months, reporter and This American Life contributor Jack Hitt followed a group of inmat…
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Break-UpFor our 25th Anniversary, a favorite episode from 2007. Writer Starlee Kine on what makes the perfect break-up song and whether really sad music can actually make you feel better. Plus, an eight-year-old author…
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Switched at BirthFor our 25th Anniversary, a favorite episode from 2008. On a summer day in 1951, two baby girls were born in a hospital in small-town Wisconsin. The infants were accidentally switched, and went home with the wr…
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24 Hours at the Golden AppleFor our 25th Anniversary, a favorite episode from 2000. We document one day in a Chicago diner called the Golden Apple, starting at 5 a.m. and going until 5 a.m. the next morning. We hear from the waitress who…
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Americans In ParisFor our 25th Anniversary, a favorite episode from 2000. Many Americans have dreamy and romantic ideas about Paris, notions which probably trace back to the 1920s vision of Paris created by the expatriate Americ…
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129 CarsFor our 25th Anniversary, a favorite episode from 2013. We spend a month at a Jeep dealership on Long Island as they try to make their monthly sales goal: 129 cars. If they make it, they'll get a huge bonus fro…
