This American Life

People deciding to do things that most of us do NOT choose to do. 

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• Prologue: A new documentary called The Boys and the Bees captures a moment where a six-year-old has a very unlikely wish, and his dad decides to grant it. Host Ira Glass talks with filmmaker Arielle Knight about what happens next. (9 minutes)
• Act One: John Tothill tells the story of Edward Dando, a 19th-century British glutton who would eat hundreds of oysters at a time and then run out on the check. John makes the case that we should all be more like Edward Dando. (15 minutes)
• Act Two: Producer Tobin Low listens in as Evan Roberts calls up an ex for the first time in years and tries to make the case that they should have been friends all along. (16 minutes)
• Act Three: Producer Zoe Chace brings us a dispatch from a courtroom in Texas this week, where on the very first day of a landmark federal trial about Antifa, the judge makes an unusual decision that no one sees coming. (15 minutes)

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Kids using perfectly logical arguments and arriving at perfectly wrong conclusions.

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• Prologue: Ira talks with Rebecca who, using perfectly valid evidence, arrived at the perfectly incorrect conclusion that her neighbor, Ronnie Loeberfeld, was the tooth fairy. Ira also talks with Dr. Alison Gopnik, co-author of the book, "The Scientist in the Crib," about what exactly kid logic is. (6 minutes)
• Act One: More stories like the one in the prologue, where kids look at something going on around them, observe it carefully, think about it logically, and come to conclusions that are completely incorrect. (11 minutes)
• Act Two: Michael Chabon reads an excerpt from his short story "Werewolves in Their Youth," from his collection of the same name, about an act of kid logic that succeeds where adult logic fails. (16 minutes)
• Act Three: Howie Chackowicz tried a risky combination when he was little, kid logic with puppy love. He used to think that girls would fall in love with him if they could just see him sleeping or hear him read aloud. He revisits his biggest childhood crush and finds out that not only did his methods not work, but that no one even noticed them. (10 minutes)
• Act Four: Alex Blumberg investigates a little-studied phenomenon: Children who get a mistaken idea in their heads about how something works or what something means, and then don't figure out until well into adulthood that they were wrong. Including the tale of a girl who received a tissue box for Christmas, allegedly painted by trained monkeys. (13 minutes)

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An episode from our show's early days: Stories about what happens when strangers are kind — and when they're not.

• Prologue: Brett Leveridge was standing on the subway platform when a man walked by, stopping in front of each passenger to deliver a quiet verdict: "You're in. You're out. You can stay. You—gotta go." Most people ignored him. But Brett found himself hoping for the thumbs up. (5 minutes)
• Act One: New York City locksmith Joel Kostman tells the story of an act of kindness he committed, hoping for a small reward. (13 minutes)
• Act Two: In 1940, Jack Geiger, at the age of fourteen, left his middle-class Jewish home and knocked on the door of a Black actor named Canada Lee. He asked Lee if he could move in with him. Lee said yes. In Lee's Harlem apartment, Geiger spent a year among many of the great figures of the Harlem Renaissance: Langston Hughes, Billy Strayhorn, Richard Wright, Adam Clayton Powell. (11 minutes)
• Act Three: How two next-door neighbors start treating each other badly, and how their feud becomes an all-consuming obsession. Paul Tough reports. (14 minutes)
• Act Four: For five weeks, a singer named Nick Drakides stood on a stoop in the East Village, singing Sinatra songs late at night to the delight of his neighbors. The cops didn't bust him; the crowds behaved. It was his gift to New York. Blake Eskin tells the story. (12 minutes)

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911 calls unlike any we’ve heard before, and other stories about immigration agents sweeping through America.

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• Prologue: A collection of 911 calls where you can hear immigration enforcement moving through different cities and leaving chaos in their wake. (9 minutes)
• Act One: More 911 calls, including people on the line with dispatchers as ICE is chasing them, trying to puzzle out their next moves. (22 minutes)
• Act Two: Home Depots keep getting raided over and over again in Los Angeles. And day laborers are still showing up in store parking lots to find work every day.  So what’s that like? Months and months of that cat and mouse? Anayansi Diaz-Cortes went to find out. (11 minutes)
• Act Three: Memo Torres tries to build an archive of every person taken by federal agents in Southern California. (11 minutes)

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In the new year, stories of people trying a radical approach to solving their problems.

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• Prologue: Ira meets two sisters who got into a fight, and then learned a lesson in turning the other cheek. (8 minutes)
• Act One: A hardened PI works the toughest case of his very young life. (18 minutes)
• Act Two: Producer Aviva DeKornfeld talks to a man who finds himself the target of vengeful crows. (8 minutes)
• Act Three: Comedian Josh Johnson wonders if some people should’ve been spanked as kids. (10 minutes)
• Act Four: Writer Etgar Keret reads his story about a bus driver who refuses to open the doors for late passengers. (9 minutes)

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When a joke could get you killed, should you say it anyway? A group of Syrian comedians test the limits of their newfound freedom, a year after the fall of the brutal Assad regime.

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• Prologue: Under the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, comedian Sharief Homsi knew which jokes were too dangerous to say on stage. Now that Syria is under the control of a new government, Sharief and the other comedians of “Styria” set out on a national tour to see how far their comedy can go in this new Syria. (6 minutes)
• Act One: The comedians test out risky material and get big laughs on early tour dates. It’s going smoothly until they find out that their show scheduled in the conservative city of Hama is in danger of being cancelled. (13 minutes)
• Act Two: The comedians go to battle with local officials. (18 minutes)
• Act Three: The comedians try everything they can think of to keep their shows from being cancelled. (20 minutes)

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In this special mini-episode -- an extra episode this week! -- we hear from someone in Venezuela with a very specific take on last week's U.S. attack.

People discovering information about their own lives that they did not know, and suddenly everything looks very different.

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• Prologue: When Pete turned 18, his dad took him on a drive to reveal a family secret he was finally old enough to know. (11 minutes)
• Act One: Sometimes, a lore drop comes when you least expect it.  That happened to Jake Cornell and his grandmother. Producer Aviva DeKornfeld talked to Jake about it. (14 minutes)
• Act Two: Ben Austen had a kind of new lore drop happen to him recently. But it was not the clarifying kind of lore drop, where everything suddenly makes sense — it was kind of the opposite. (29 minutes)

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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)

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The one animal we can’t seem to live without, even when we really, really want to.

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• Prologue: At the announcement of New York City’s inaugural rat czar, we meet Darneice Foster, who despises the rats outside her apartment. And host Ira Glass introduces two special co-hosts for today’s show. (11 minutes)
• Act One: Producer Elna Baker meets Todd Sklar, a man who can’t quit rats. (22 minutes)
• Act Two: Fifty years ago, New York City started to put garbage out in plastic bags. This has become the number one food source for rats. Producer Ike Sriskandarajah investigates the decision that led to the city’s rat baby boom. (10 minutes)
• Act Three: How did Alberta, Canada pull off a feat that has eluded the rest of human civilization? Ira visits the largest rat-less land in the world. (15 minutes)
• Act Four: We drop a hot mic into a hot mess of a rats’ nest. You’ll never believe what happens next. (3 minutes)

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Stories about the intersection of Christmas and retail, originally broadcast in 1996 when our show was only a year old. Including David Sedaris's "Santaland Diaries" about the seasons he spent working as an elf at Macy's.

How one block in Portland, Oregon became a movie-set war zone that lots of people think is a real war zone.

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• Prologue: What the movie Hearts of Darkness and right-wing influencers have in common. (8 minutes)
• Act One: Producers Zoe Chace and Suzanne Gaber follow a bunch of right-wing influencers as they search for Antifa in Portland. (31 minutes)
• Act Two: We meet the so-called leader of Antifa in Portland. (16 minutes)

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The vexing difficulty of finding the perfect gift.

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• Prologue: Host Ira Glass goes to a busy Target store one week before Christmas. Most shoppers he talks to don't think any of their gifts will be returned. (3 minutes)
• Act One: Ian Brown tries, after decades of failure, to give his mother the perfect Christmas gift. He and his brother attempt something they haven't done since they were kids: Rehearse and sing her a program of Christmas carols. (19 minutes)
• Act Two: We play a 1959 original recording of Truman Capote reading his holiday story A Christmas Memory. (18 minutes)
• Act Three: Caitlin Shetterly reports on a true-life holiday fable from rural Maine, complete with a misunderstood recluse with a heart of gold, a deserving family in need, and a very special Christmas tree farm with secrets of its own. (16 minutes)

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When history comes knocking, you have to figure out what to do.

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• Prologue: Brittany’s job is to answer anonymous calls and texts from people in the military. This year, she’s gotten more than usual–most of them are wondering about what to do with orders they’ve been given. Or orders they’re afraid they’ll get someday in the future. (9 minutes)
• Act One: Jad Abumrad tells the story of the "ideological genealogy” of Fela Kuti’s anti-colonial politics–his mother. In late 1940s Nigeria, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti found herself at the center of a big, historical moment: an uprising led by thousands of women selling goods in Nigeria’s markets. Jad goes searching for who she really was, and how she became the person who galvanized a movement when history demanded it of her. (45 minutes)

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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 from the manufacturer, possibly as high as $85,000 — enough to put them in the black for the month. If they don't make it, it'll be the second month in a row. So they pull out all the stops.

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• Prologue: It’s mid-October, 2013. Freddie Hoyt tries to rally his sales staff to sell 129 cars and trucks by the end of the month. Freddie’s the General Manager at Town and Country Jeep Chrysler Dodge Ram in Levittown, NY, on Long Island. Problem is, the customers are not cooperating. (7 1/2 minutes)
• Act One: How we found this car dealer. (2 minutes)
• Act Two: A quick primer of who’s who, and how the place works. (6 minutes)
• Act Three: Salesman Bob Tantillo has the fewest sales of anyone at Town and Country this month. Robyn Semien spoke to him. (4 minutes)
• Act Four: Salesman Jason Mascia has the most sales of anyone this month, as usual. Sean Cole spent a week with him watching how he does it. (8 minutes)
• Act Five: The next-to-last day of the month. Deals fall apart, but not all of them. (10 minutes)
• Act Six: The last day of the month begins. They have to sell nine cars by the end of the day. "God help us," Freddie says. (2 minutes)
• Act Seven: Joe Monti’s real name is Joe Montalbano. But when he started in the car business, he didn't want to lose a sale because a customer couldn’t keep his name straight so he simplified it for the job. He's one of the managers of the used cars department at Town and Country. Sarah Koenig reports on what it'll mean if he doesn’t make this month’s goal. (7 minutes)
• Act Eight: The last day of the month continues and the truism is accurate: some people get great deals because it’s the end of the month and they have to hit their goal. When you look at the numbers, the average car they sell in the last two days actually loses money. (4 minutes)
• Act Nine: Salesman Manny Rosales keeps to himself in the showroom, with his own sales philosophy. He explained it to Brian Reed. (7 minutes)
• Act Ten: The last day of the month ends. (8 minutes)

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