This American Life Updates

A girl signs up for a class. A couple hires an accountant. A group of co-workers decides to pool their money and buy a couple of lottery tickets. In the beginning, they're full of hope and optimi...

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/306/seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time

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...

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/564/too-soon

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 m...

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/828/minor-crimes-division

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 ...

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/587/the-perils-of-intimacy

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 t...

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/827/all-the-kings-horses

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 Kostyuch...

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/826/unprepared-for-what-has-already-happened

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 O...

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/825/yousef

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 ...

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/824/family-meeting

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 a...

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/823/the-question-trap

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 t...

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/822/the-words-to-say-it