This American Life

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.

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• 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)
• Act One: Writer Jiayang Fan wrestles with a very common question she has never quite understood. (5 minutes)
• 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)
• 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)
• 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)
• Act Five: Emmanuel Dzotsi investigates a musical phenomenon very particular to the United States: singers embellishing the end of the national anthem. (9 minutes)

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We try to tell the story of life in America through portraits of life on four different corners, in four different states across the nation.

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• Prologue: Host Ira Glass talks about the Four Corners tourist monument where Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico meet. (2 minutes)
• Act One: Sarah Vowell has a theory that you can tell the entire history of the United States by standing on one street corner—specifically at Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive in Chicago—and describing all the events that happened within eyeshot of the corner. She covers three centuries of history, from Louis Joliet to Keanu Reeves. (21 minutes)
• Act Two: Scott Richer and Julie Riggs of Louisville, Kentucky, were supposed to have their first kiss at the corner where South Fourth Street meets the alley behind the West End Baptist Church. But it went wrong. (7 minutes)
• Act Three: Writer Mike Paterniti tells a story of dogs and a community of dogwalkers that formed on the grounds of an old cemetery at the corner of Vaughn and Clifford in Portland, Maine. (14 minutes)
• Act Four: Writer Achy Obejas reads a piece of short fiction from her book, We Came All the Way from Cuba So You Could Dress Like This? (11 minutes)

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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.

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• 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)
• 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)
• 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)

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It’s the late 1960s, and a California TV repairman named Bob sees an opportunity to help people cheat death with the new science of cryonics. But freezing dead people isn’t easy. And apologizing for the mistakes you make along the way? Even harder.

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• Prologue: Host Ira Glass talks about the way most political apologies go, and chats with a man named Derek Jones about similar sorts of apologies among preteen girls and King David, in the Old Testament. (7 minutes)
• Act One: In the late 1960s, a California TV repairman named Bob Nelson joined a group of enthusiasts who believed they could cheat death with a new technology called cryonics. But freezing dead people so scientists can reanimate them in the future is a lot harder than it sounds. Harder still was admitting to the family members of people Bob had frozen that he'd screwed up. Sam Shaw reports. (42 minutes)
• Act Two: There's a famous William Carlos Williams poem called "This is Just to Say." It's about, among other things, causing a loved one inconvenience and offering a non-apologizing apology. Producer Sean Cole explains that this is possibly the most spoofed poem around. We asked some of our regular contributors to get into the act. Sarah Vowell, David Rakoff, Starlee Kine, Jonathan Goldstein, Shalom Auslander, and Heather O'Neill all came up with their own variations of Williams's classic lines. (7 minutes)

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Regular people trapped inside Greek myths.

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• Prologue: When a mysterious, ripped-open package arrives on Pablo's doorstep, he takes it as a sign. (4 minutes)
• Act One: Pablo flies closer to the sun. (14 minutes)
• Act Two: In Greek mythology, there's Hades, where everyone goes when they die. You have to cross the river Styx to get there, and there’s a gate with this three-headed dog. He’s guarding the entrance and he’s supposed to make sure only actual dead people enter. This story is about a real person in America who stood at those very gates. Which is not the easiest job it turns out, at least not right now. (24 minutes)
• 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)

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We want to believe our lives can be changed by the ideas contained in a book.

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• Prologue: When Alexa was seven, she started going through her grandfather's books. Her grandfather was a playwright and teacher, and through the books—and especially through his notes in the margins—she entered the world of 1930's American theater. And she found a book that changed her life: writer Moss Hart's autobiography Act One. (5 minutes)
• Act One: More of Alexa Junge and how Moss Hart's autobiography changed her life. She followed his path, learned specific lessons, and had a vision of him that was absolutely clear—until she met his widow. (10 minutes)
• Act Two: A book that changed a family's life—temporarily, and not for the better. David Sedaris on what happened when he found a dirty book in the woods and passed it along to his sisters. (9 minutes)
• Act Three: Reporter Jeremy Goldstein tells the story of a man who had many books change his life, even though he'd never read them. (14 minutes)
• Act Four: Writer Meghan Daum travels to De Smet, South Dakota—where Laura Ingalls Wilder lived and set most of her Little House books. What surprises her is how much it matches what she'd imagined. The people there seem to be genuinely living by the values Laura wrote about. (15 minutes)

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Adults telling kids who they are, and kids wondering — are they right?

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• Prologue: Host Ira talks with comedian Gary Gulman about his transformation from high school nobody to football star. (8 minutes)
• Act One: Gary puts on a tough guy costume, but will it turn him into a tough guy? Ira continues Gary Gulman’s story. (17 minutes)
• Act Two: Eleanor Gordon-Smith tells the story of a woman who wants to know why she was taken away from her mom as a kid. A version of this story is in Eleanor’s book Stop Being Reasonable: How We Really Change Our Minds. (30 minutes)

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One family faces the Trump administration’s ban on trans people serving in the military, and responds with a surprising secret weapon.

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• Prologue: Geirid and Chrissy are extreme planners. But about a year ago, they were confronted with a situation that even they had no idea how to plan for. (4 minutes)
• Act One: Geirid and Chrissy make an “in case of emergency, break glass” spreadsheet and get some big news. (14 minutes)
• Act Two: Geirid and Chrissy have less than a month to make a life-changing decision. The government gives them two options, and they try to find a third. (21 minutes)
• Act Three: A short story from Rachel Khong: Two people have a very consequential choice to make, given to them by God. (15 minutes)

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People who end up with far more power than they bargained for, and everything that comes with it.

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• Prologue: Ira tells the story of two friends who had this incredible power to save someone. And with that great power came great responsibility. (4 minutes)
• Act One: Alex Kotlowitz reports on a woman with the power to change two people's lives — and at the height of her power, she doesn't even know she has it. (25 minutes)
• Act Two: Ira Glass talks with a mother and daughter who spent years watching their neighbor do things they found shocking and felt powerless to stop. Then, suddenly, they get the power to decisively change things permanently. And they have to decide if they will. (14 minutes)
• Act Three: When you're powerless, you spend a lot of time thinking about the people above you — what they want, why they do what they do, whether they'll ever come through. Shalom Auslander has a story about that relationship. (11 minutes)

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Since the war began in Iran, we've heard very little from people inside the country — and there's a reason for that. The entire country has been under an internet blackout. We worked with reporters Roxana Saberi and Fatemeh Jamalpour to get voice memos out of the country. Even though it was dangerous and difficult, people wanted to be heard.

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• Prologue: Shirin's parents suddenly disappear into the blackout. (5 minutes)
• Act One: It’s a war and a blackout. People want to talk about both. (17 minutes)
• Act Two: What happened before America and Israel went to war with Iran. (9 minutes)
• Act Three: Iranians have many opinions about the war, and about each other. (12 minutes)
• Act Four: What happened inside Iran the night President Trump threatened that "a whole civilization could die." And a clue about where the internet blackout is headed. (19 minutes)

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

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The casino game everyone thinks they can beat.

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• Prologue: Host Ira Glass and producer Robyn Semien get a blackjack lesson from Andy Bloch, who played for the MIT blackjack team. He teaches them the basics of card-counting, the technique that gives players an advantage against the house — enough of an advantage that most casinos will ask you to leave if they catch you doing it. (9 minutes)
• Act One: Jack Hitt tells the story of the Christian card-counting team featured in the documentary Holy Rollers, and why they see no contradiction in being devout Christians who spend their days in casinos. (18 minutes)
• Act 2: Ira and Robyn go to the casino to try out their newfound card-counting skills. (5 minutes)
• Act Two: Producer Sarah Koenig tells the story of a woman who sued the casino where she lost her inheritance, saying that it was to blame, not her. (25 minutes)

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Stories of cheating, cheaters, and the cheated.

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• Prologue: Ira talks with Jessica Pressler about a phenomenon she noticed in the wedding notices in The New York Times. Couples were cheerfully telling—as part of their "meet cute" stories—how their relationships began with one of them cheating on a spouse or long-time partner. (4 minutes)
• Act One: From England, Ruby Wright has a story of an affair where—even years after it ended—it wasn't much discussed. (14 minutes)
• Act Two: Ira reviews some infidelity stats from his mother's book on the subject, Not Just Friends. And author James Braly tells a story of temptation live onstage at The Moth. (15 minutes)
• Act Three: Dani Shapiro on the confusing mess things can be during an affair. The story is from her memoir, Slow Motion. (16 minutes)
• Act Four: Etgar Keret describes the moment in the immediate aftermath of an affair. Actor Matt Malloy reads. (4 minutes)

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At a time when the U.S. government is trying to make American history tidier, we try to learn from the mess. Including the untold, messy story of Paul and Essie Robeson.

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• Prologue: Guest Host Emanuele Berry talks to Nichole Hill about the Black movie characters Nichole was curious about as a child. (7 minutes)
• Act One: A giant of the Harlem Renaissance, Paul Robeson was the most famous American of his day. Until he wasn’t. Nichole Hill tells the messy, complicated story of Paul and his wife, Essie Robeson. (38 minutes)
• Act Two: In 1865, a formerly enslaved man named Jourdan Anderson received a letter from his former enslaver, asking Jourdan to return to the plantation and work. Actor Laurence Fishburne reads Jourdan’s response. 

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What happens when a new guy comes on the scene and changes the way everyone relates to each other?

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• Prologue: Ira talks with Sarah Koenig about the first and only time a movie star came to her family's house when she was a kid. It didn't go well, for the celebrity or for her. The star was Robert Redford. He arrived and immediately stole all the attention her parents usually lavished on her, their youngest. Worse, they were nervous and strange around him, not themselves at all. Young Sarah was not pleased. Robert Redford paid the price. (6 minutes)
• Act One: Davy Rothbart's mother is funny, rational, and by most measures, pretty normal. Except that she spends every day in the company of an ancient Buddhist monk named Aaron, who no one else can see. Davy talks to his brothers, father, and eventually his mom, and asks the question they've somehow never managed to discuss: do any of them actually believe he's real? (26 minutes)
• Act Two: Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. had always lived in the shadow of his father's name. But just before his primary, an aide delivered strange news: a second Jesse Jackson had appeared on the same ballot — a retired truck driver with no political experience. Ira reports on whether it was a coincidence or mischief orchestrated by the Congressman's rivals. (9 minutes)
• Act Three: Jonathan Goldstein and Heather O'Neill tell the true story of a man trying to wedge himself into an idyllic family of two. For the first few years, Heather's daughter Arizona was not very fond of Jonathan. He ranked nineteenth on her list of favorite people, behind the neighbor's dog and the plumber. (15 minutes)

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