This American Life

This American Life

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.

Beschikbare afleveringen

  • 564: Too Soon?

    It can be hard to know the right moment for something to happen. Prologue: When Jordan was going into his senior year of high school in small town Utah, he and his buddies all lived together in a house, daring each other into...

  • 828: Minor Crimes Division

    People taking it upon themselves to solve the tiny, overlooked crimes of the world. Prologue: Host Ira Glass bikes around Manhattan with Gersh Kuntzman, in search of illegal license plates. (11 minutes) Act One: Writer Michael...

  • 587: The Perils of Intimacy

    Mysteries that exist in relationships we thought couldn't possibly surprise us. Prologue: Ira talks to Rachel Rosenthal, who spent years trying to figure out who had stolen her identity. She was closing bank account after bank...

  • 827: All the King's Horses

    The things we break and the ones we can't fix. Prologue: Ira tells the stories of three things that broke–two of them in his own family. (8 minutes) Act One: A teenage whiz kid invents a new toy for Milton Bradley. Then the trouble...

  • 826: Unprepared for What Has Already Happened

    People waking up to the fact that the world has suddenly changed. Prologue: Jackson Landers tells the story of a very strange decision he made one summer day. (6 minutes) Act One: Elena Kostyuchenko tells the story of how she was...

  • 825: Yousef

    A series of phone calls to a man in Gaza named Yousef Hammash, between early December and now. He talks about what he and his family are experiencing, sometimes as they are experiencing it. Act One: Over the course of one week in...

  • 824: Family Meeting

    Your mother and I have something we want to talk with you about. Prologue: A family sits down to discuss one thing. But then the true purpose of the meeting emerges. (9 ½ minutes) Act One: For one kibbutz-dwelling family in Israel,...

  • 823: The Question Trap

    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...

  • 822: The Words to Say It

    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....

  • 821: Embrace the Suck

    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....