app_store_button

google_play_button

DK - Details page - Device banner - 894x1036

Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst 

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.

The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln has been in the news thanks to an extra-long deployment that's taken a toll on its crew. What's life on an aircraft carrier at war really like? Back in 2002, we spent a few days on the USS John C. Stennis, which was sending bombing missions into Afghanistan.

Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.

(00:00:00) Prologue: Alex Blumberg talks with sailor Crevon Scott, who stocks vending machines on the Stennis.

(00:04:52) Act One: Aboard the USS Stennis, Ira Glass and Wendy Dorr talk with sailors about life on board. Off duty, people play video games, work out, or practice in one of the ship's many garage bands. Ira and Wendy also talk with sailors about how rumors travel on the ship — conversations that get back to the top brass, who give the producers heat for chasing salacious stories. Ira interviews the captain, James McDonell, and learns the ship is facing a fresh water shortage.

(00:32:30) Act Two: As pilots head to their planes for a mission, they explain how hard it is to land on an aircraft carrier. Wendy talks with sailors Cynthia and David, waiting for the 8PM movie to start, and she and Alex talk with sailors in the mess hall.

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org / This American Life privacy policy. / Learn more about sponsor message choices.

206: Somewhere in the Arabian Sea

Labels are powerful. They can distill you down to a single word. They can get stuck on you without your permission. And sometimes, when they get taken away, they can upend your entire life. On this episode: labels and the havoc they wreak.

Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.

(00:00:00) Prologue: Sara and Ethan have been dating for 10 months. They see each other at least once a week, text pretty much every day, and have been there for each other through hard times. But they refuse to have the “what are we?” conversation. So what gives? Guest host Tobin Low looks into it. (5 minutes)

(00:05:14) Act One: Last week, when Temporary Protected Status, also known as TPS, was cut off for Haitian immigrants, some 300,000 people had their lives upended. Marie, a Certified Nursing Assistant in Boston, was one of them. Producer Chana Joffe-Walt spent time last week with Marie as she tried to figure out exactly when her very last day on the job would be. (21 minutes)

(00:27:57) Act Two: Comedian Janet McNamara was walking off stage 15 years ago when the club owner asked, “Hey, have you ever been tested for autism?” No one had ever asked her this before, so Janet decided to look into it. (17 minutes)

(00:44:01) Act Three: When you get down to it, labels are just our way of pointing out what we think is remarkable about other people. That’s Alfred Jung Lee’s argument. He’s been thinking a lot about how we describe each other, especially as he tries to describe his wife, who passed away from cancer. (10 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org / This American Life privacy policy. / Learn more about sponsor message choices.

895: Label Maker!

People dealing with new, glaring, massive changes happening right where they live.

Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.

(00:00:00) Prologue: Rick Cole, a city councilmember in Pasadena, CA, talks to Ira about how he responded to a surprise nighttime military exercise in his neighborhood this June – complete with helicopters, gunfire, and flash bangs. (5 minutes)

(00:05:30) Act One: A doctor trained as a midwife tells the eye-popping story of how she and others came together to save a baby during a birth that suddenly went wrong, in a part of rural Maine where the local labor and delivery unit had closed less than a month before. (26 minutes)

(00:34:56) Act Two: Producer Valerie Kipnis never felt inside the jokes and stories her family would tell about growing up in the Soviet Union, until she saw this year's Oscar-winning documentary, Mr. Nobody Against Putin. The film follows the changes unfolding in one school as Russia rolled out a nationwide propaganda push after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Valerie interviewed the young teacher at the center of the documentary and learned things that never made it into the film. (21 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org / This American Life privacy policy. / Learn more about sponsor message choices.

894: I Couldn't Help but Notice

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered everyone over 30 in the military to have their testosterone tested. That inspired us to rerun this classic episode where everyone at This American Life tested their testosterone and compared results. It did not lead to workplace harmony.

Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.

(00:00:00) Prologue: Host Ira Glass talks with producer Alex Blumberg, who explains that he wanted to do this show because of his conflicted relationship with his own testosterone. He tells Ira that the reasons go back to a girl in his 8th-grade homeroom. We also hear from a man who stopped producing testosterone due to a medical treatment, and found his entire personality was altered. (10 minutes)

(00:10:45) Act One: What’s it like to get injected with testosterone? When Griffin Hansbury transitioned, he got massive shots of it and was surprised at the effect it had on him. (17 minutes)

(00:27:56) Act Two: The men and women on staff at This American Life decide to get their testosterone levels tested to see who has the most and least, and whether personality traits actually match hormone levels. (13 minutes)

(00:40:16) Act Three: What happens when a man suddenly loses all of his testosterone? We return to Alex Blumberg’s interview from the top of the show with a man who that happened to. He says life without testosterone is life without desire. By that he doesn’t mean sexual desire. He means any desire. (6 minutes)

(00:46:47) Act Four: Novelist Miriam Toews interviews her 15-year-old son, someone at an age when boys experience a jolt of ten or twenty times the testosterone they had as children, about all the things she doesn’t understand about what he’s going through. (11 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org / This American Life privacy policy. / Learn more about sponsor message choices.

893: Testosterone

People on journeys they did not intend — or agree to.

Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.

(00:00:00) Prologue: A woman on a nighttime bus ride wakes up to discover the bus driver is taking the passengers somewhere none of them want to go. (8 minutes)

(00:08:11) Act One: Ayman Oghanna was reporting in Syria when he got a surprising call from home: one of his neighbors had been arrested for spying. (13 minutes)

(00:21:18) Act Two: Eileen Sosin Martínez describes life in Havana right now, where blackouts have become so constant that it’s nearly impossible to make ice and garbage trucks don’t collect the trash regularly. (11 minutes)

(00:33:33) Act Three: A beloved tree in England, more than 100 years old, is mysteriously cut down overnight, leaving the country bereft and enraged and out for justice. (15 minutes)

(00:49:31) Act Four: When she was 16, Leticia flew from Sao Paolo, where she lived, to Germany. She was seated next to an older woman who did something so surprising during the flight that Leticia still tells people about it today. (9 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org / This American Life privacy policy. / Learn more about sponsor message choices.

892: Trapped on a Bus

Some people in this country think Antifa is a dangerous domestic terror organization. Some think that’s a complete myth. This week, we go to the federal trial where, for the first time, the government sets out to prove that Antifa is real. Zoe Chace reports.

Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.

(00:00:00) Prologue: Host Ira Glass tells the story of what happened at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas. The government claims this was an attack by an Antifa cell. The defense says it was a protest gone awry. This argument goes to court in a first-of-its-kind trial. (7 minutes)

(00:07:00) Act One: Reporter Zoe Chace walks us through one of the worst days for the defense: all these guns. (5 minutes)

(00:13:51) Act Two: Zoe takes us through the testimony of the government’s Antifa expert. The defense team is optimistic that things are going well for them. (8 minutes)

(00:29:55) Act Three: Zoe goes to jail to talk with one of the cooperating witnesses for the prosecution, a former church lady named Lynette Sharp. She has a lot to say about the events in her life that led her to accept a plea deal and testify against her friends. (24 minutes)

(00:55:17) Act Four: The verdicts come in. (12 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org / This American Life privacy policy. / Learn more about sponsor message choices.

891: The Test Case

On this country's 250th birthday, we bring you stories about the most American people, places, objects, and social norms that make this country what it is.

Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.

(00:00:00) Prologue: Ira talks to Pablo Torre about Major League Baseball’s new challenge system, and how it’s been optimized for maximum drama. (10 minutes)

(00:11:10) Act One: Writer Jiayang Fan wrestles with a very common question she has never quite understood. (5 minutes)

(00:17:15) Act Two: People come from all over the country to walk down one of Michigan’s tallest sand dunes, and then promptly turn around and trudge back up. Aviva DeKornfeld talks to Americans spending their limited vacation time on this punishing activity. (8 minutes)

(00:26:13) Act Three: Emanuele Berry talks to Ira about Season 13 of the reality TV show, Survivor, known to fans as the “race war” season. (8 minutes)

(00:34:08) Act Four: Years before his famous dictionary, Noah Webster wrote a book that took on a life of its own and served an unexpected purpose. (8 minutes)

(00:42:27) Act Five: Emmanuel Dzotsi investigates a musical phenomenon very particular to the United States: singers embellishing the end of the national anthem. (9 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org / This American Life privacy policy. / Learn more about sponsor message choices.

890: Maximal Americanness

We spend an hour in the last two minutes of the fourth quarter, behind and desperate, with people trying any damn thing they can think of.

Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.

(00:00:00) Prologue: Five years after Ora first started experiencing mysterious and debilitating health problems, she decides to try a treatment that she knows very well might kill her. Host Ira Glass talks to her about the experience. (9 minutes)

(00:10:50) Act One: Two lawyers have just three months to stop their client's execution. In Texas, where this story takes place, these kinds of appeals to get people off death row fail 94% of the time. (38 minutes)

(00:48:09) Act Two: At the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, migrants figured out an ingenious way to communicate with the activists gathered outside of the detention center’s walls. (13 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org / This American Life privacy policy. / Learn more about sponsor message choices.

889: There’s Something About Hail Mary

Regular people trapped inside Greek myths.

Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.

(00:00:00) Prologue: When a mysterious, ripped-open package arrives on Pablo's doorstep, he takes it as a sign. (4 minutes)

(00:04:47) Act One: Pablo flies closer to the sun. (14 minutes)

(00:18:29) Act Two: In Greek mythology, a three-headed dog named Cerberus guards the gates to Hades, making sure only those who are actually dead get in. This story is about a real person who had that job in America — a 25-year veteran of the Social Security Administration who was asked, in a secret meeting with DOGE, to declare 6,000 living people dead. He said no. Then the list grew to 2.7 million. (24 minutes)

(00:43:15) Act Three: A mortal gets the assignment of a lifetime — to go interview an actual god who is living on earth, traveling under the name of Lionel Messi. (11 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org / This American Life privacy policy. / Learn more about sponsor message choices.

888: Not Today, Hades!

Ira always hated commencement speeches. Then he felt like he had to give this one.

thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners

888: Not Today, Hades!

Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst

Other podcasts you might like ...