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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.

Zach Mack and his dad try to mend a rift between them in a very unusual way. 

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 • Prologue: Ira Glass introduces Zach Mack’s story. (1 minute)
 • Part One: Zach and his father enter into an agreement that could change their entire relationship. (9 minutes)
 • Part Two: Zach’s mother and sister weigh in on the agreement. (28 minutes)
 • Part Three: With the year coming to an end, someone is going to have to say, “You were right, and I was wrong.” Will it change anything? (16 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

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854: Ten Things I Don't Want to Hate About You

Unnecessary and outrageous lies that make you wonder — why lie about that in the first place?

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 • Prologue: Kasey, a woman who prides herself on her truthfulness, tries to help host Ira Glass figure out how to stop lying about one specific thing. (10 minutes)
 • Act One: Producer Dana Chivvis talks to reporter Liz Flock about a strange experience she had in 2011. (21 minutes)
 • Act Two: Host Ira Glass talks with M. Gessen about a lie they've been seeing out in the world a lot recently — the “bully lie.” (15 minutes)
 • Act Three: We find someone brave enough to stand up and make a case FOR lying. That person is producer Ike Sriskandarajah. (8 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

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855: That’s a Weird Thing to Lie About

Sometimes, life’s biggest mysteries require one very specific person to answer them.

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 • Prologue: 7-year-old Miles has lots of questions. More specifically, he has questions about the famous car chase from “The Blues Brothers” movie. We arrange for him to talk to stunt coordinator Gary Powell so he can get the answers he so desperately wants. (9 minutes)
 • Act One: Producer Aviva DeKornfeld looks into why comedian Daniel Sloss’s comedy special has been responsible for so many couples breaking up. (17 minutes)
 • Act Two: We hear from Kwaneta Harris, a former nurse incarcerated in Texas, who is constantly asked for medical advice by her neighbors. (17 minutes)
 • Act Three: Producer Diane Wu talks to Juna, a young woman who is getting advice from someone uniquely equipped to guide her to the love life she wants. (12 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

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856: You’ve Come to the Right Person

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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857: Museum of Now

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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859: Chaos Graph

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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860: Suddenly: A Mirror!

Conversations across a divide: People who are outside a war zone check in with family, friends, and strangers inside.

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 • Prologue: The Hammash family’s group chat unfolds over texts, starting before the war. (8 minutes)
 • Act One: When Yousef Hammash left Gaza a year ago, his sisters decided to stay behind. We hear about the toll that separation has taken on Yousef and the sister he’s closest to, Aseel. (30 minutes)
 • Act Two: Mohammed Mhawish, a reporter who left Gaza a year ago with his family, talks to a young woman in Gaza about how she manages her hunger. Israel blockaded all food from Gaza for more than two months. (15 minutes)
 • Coda: Chana gives a short update about Banias, a 9-year-old girl in Gaza she's been speaking with for months. (4 minutes)

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861: Group Chat

We got a tip about a meat plant selling pig intestines as fake calamari, wondered if it could be true, and decided to investigate. Doppelgängers, doubles, evil twins and not-so-evil twins, this week. Fred Armisen co-hosts with Ira Glass.

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 • Prologue: Fred Armisen worked up an imitation of Ira and put it into a sketch on Saturday Night Live a couple of years ago. But when they rehearsed it with an audience, there was not a roar of recognition; it seemed like Ira might not be famous enough to be mocked on network TV. Armisen finally gets a go as Ira’s doppelgänger in our studios by co-hosting this episode. (4 minutes)
 • Act One: Ben Calhoun tells a story of physical resemblance — not of a person, but of food. A while ago, a farmer walked through a pork processing plant in Oklahoma with a friend who managed it. He came across boxes stacked on the floor with labels that said "artificial calamari." So he asked his friend "What’s artificial calamari?" "Bung," his friend replied. "Hog rectum." Have you or I eaten bung dressed up as seafood? Ben investigated. (26 minutes)
 • Act Two: For decades, the writer Alex Kotlowitz has been writing about the inner cities and the toll of violence on young people. So when he heard about a program at Drexel University where guys from the inner city get counseling for PTSD, he wondered if the effect of urban violence was comparable to the trauma that a person experiences from war. Kotlowitz talks to a military vet from Afghanistan and a guy from Philadelphia who’s lived in some pretty bad neighborhoods to find out if they are doubles of some sort. (23 minutes)

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484: Doppelgängers

In honor of Father’s Day, stories of sons and daughters finding out the one thing they've always wanted to know about their father. The answers aren't always what they’d hoped for.

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 • Prologue: As a kid, Aric Knuth sent cassette tapes to his dad, a merchant marine gone for months at a time. He’d leave one side blank and ask for a reply—but none ever came. Aric talks to Ira Glass about what it was like to finally ask his dad why. (7 minutes)
 • Act One: Lennard Davis was always told to avoid his no-good Uncle Abie. After his father died, Abie claimed he was actually Lenny’s biological father via artificial insemination. At first, the story seemed possible, then doubtful. It took Lenny more than 20 years to sort out whether it was true, and he finds out the answer—definitively—as tape is rolling. (31 minutes)
 • Act Two: Paul Tough’s father was a mild-mannered professor—until he suddenly left the family to pursue a lifelong quest: making contact with extraterrestrial life. For the first time, Paul joins him and asks the questions he’s long kept to himself about his father’s alien pursuits. (18 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

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289: Go Ask Your Father

Ira Glass has news to share about some things happening here at This American Life.

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861: Group Chat

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