This American Life

Instead of the usual "each week we choose a theme, and bring you 3 or 4 stories on that theme" business, we throw all that away and bring you 20 stories—yes, 20—in 60 minutes.

• Ira Glass introduces the idea of doing 20 stories in one hour.
• Act One: Contributor Starlee Kine talks to actor Tate Donovan about the day he felt he was being exactly the kind of celebrity he'd wanted to be: when suddenly, he was approached by a kid with a camera.
• Act Two: Writer and producer Scott Carrier recognizes a woman he sees in a restaurant.
• Act Three: Susan Drury talks about "Swap and Shop," a local radio classifieds show that has become a low-tech, personable sort of Ebay.
• Act Four: From Patty Martin: a one minute, four second vacation on Nantucket Island, involving a lot of waving.
• Act Five: From Vicki Merrick, Eric Kipp, and Jay Allison at Transom: scallops on Martha's Vineyard.
• Act Six: From Blunt Youth Radio: a story of a possibly bad "food situation" at the cafeteria in juvenile detention.
• Act Seven: Jonathan Goldstein, host of Wiretap, brings us this story about The Penguin as a young man.
• Act Eight: Two brothers, ages 12 and 13, have very different ideas for their dog's name.
• Act Nine: Elaine Boehm overhears a couple in her pet shop, trying to choose a dog collar.
• Act Ten: A two minute play called “Title,” written and performed byGreg Allen and Heather Riordan of theChicago group,The Neo-Futurists. It’s part of their long-running show "TooMuchLightMakestheBabyGoBlind:30Playsin60Minutes."
• Act Eleven: Author David Sedaris on cell phone usage in restrooms.
• Act Twelve: Brent Runyon reports from the kids' section at the public library.
• Act Thirteen: Catherine and John, two college undergrads, do a babysitting gig together. After the kids are asleep and the two of them get hungry, John doesn't think they should eat any of the food in the house; they settle on a compromise.
• Act Fourteen: Mystery and missing flavor at the hot dog plant.
• Act Fifteen: Author David Rakoff worked at an advertising agency, and could see exactly where its technology was going.
• Act Sixteen: Someone sits next to the printer. You see him forty times a day. What's his name? What does he do?
• Act Seventeen: Richard Kerry has an impressive ability: he can recreate the sound of a whole swamp.
• Act Eighteen: Author Chuck Klosterman and his friends make a party game out of comparing television shows to rock bands. They call it "Monkees Equals Monkees."
• Act Nineteen: Every year 1,200 new army cadets arrive at West Point. Once they say a single sentence correctly, they can go to their barracks. But not until then. David Lipsky reports. He's the author of Absolutely American.
• Act Twenty: Teenage girls from a detention center perform a song for their parents.

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

A major political party in a major swing state bets on a new leader: a total political outsider. How does that work out for them?

• Prologue: In 2022, Michigan Republicans ran anti-establishment candidates who claimed the last presidential election was stolen. And they lost big. Now, the state party regroups and must decide whether to stay the course or moderate. (7 minutes)
• Act One: The Michigan GOP’s newly elected leader, Kristina Karamo, faces her first big test: Can she organize and pull off the state party’s fabled, expensive Mackinac Island conference as a political outsider – with no fundraising experience or establishment connections? (9 minutes)
• Act Two: Two young Michigan GOP vice chairs are totally on board with Kristina Karamo’s take on politics and hate the establishment like her. So why do they feel iced out by her? (15 minutes)
• Act Three: At the start of the year, Warren Carpenter was a Kristina Karamo supporter; helped her get elected. Now he’s plotting herouster.(13minutes)
• Act Four: Kristina Karamo and her camp defend themselves against Warren’s attacks that they’re bad at fundraising and bad at leading the party.(13 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

One of our producers, Chana Joffe-Walt, had a series of conversations with a man in Gaza over the course of one week. They're so immediate – and particular to this moment in the war inGaza – that we're bringing them to you now, outside of our regular schedule.

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

In the last year and a half, New York City has scrambled to try and provide shelter and services to over 150,000 migrants. We take a look at how that’s going.

• Prologue: In the middle of the night, host Ira Glass meets a woman on a mission at Port Authority bus station.(13 minutes)
• Act One: Producer Valerie Kipnis follows a group of people who’ve just arrived at their new home, a tent shelter in the middle of nowhere.(11 minutes)
• Act Two: Producer Diane Wu talks to an asylum seeker trying to hustle his way through bureaucratic limbo.(11 minutes)
• Act Three: Host Ira Glass meets some of the city’s newest arrivals in every New Yorker’s least favorite place.(9 minutes)
• Act Four: Three girls, whose families traveled thousands of miles to get to New York, navigate their latest challenge: American middle school.(11 minutes)
• Act 5: One woman needs to find shelter for 27 young men in a matter of hours.(15 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

Something we’ve never done before: true stories told in the form of a game show.

• Prologue: Jiayang Fan has this theory that because she's spent so much time thinking about her own accent when she speaks English, she believes that when she hears other Chinese-Americans speak, she can tell how old they were when they immigrated to theU.S.(7minutes)
• Act One: We test Jiayang Fan’s self-proclaimed special skill by having her listen to three Chinese-Americans speak, and then guss when they came to the U.S.(20 minutes)
• Act Two: Is it possible for the U.S. to reach the goals set by the Paris Agreement? What steps would we have to take to cut emissions by 50% by 2030? We challenge climate researcher Melissa Lott to get us to that number.(11 minutes)
• Act Three: A game of telephone played on the podcast Normal Gossipreveals how gossip spreads, and why stories change from person to person. (15 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

When you realize that help is not on the way, what do you do next?

• Prologue: Saddam Sayyaleh’s job right now is trying to get trucks filled with aid into Gaza and he knows it’s nowhere close to what’s actually needed. (10 minutes)
• Act One: Tim Reeves runs a hospital in rural Pennsylvania, and he’s trying to do something that is so hard to do and that he knows is completely up to him. (11 minutes)
• Act Two: One of our producers, Nadia Reiman, talked to officials who work in the asylum and refugee branches at the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. They gave her a window into the immigration system under President Biden that you don’t usually get.(32 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

During the highest turkey consumption period of the year,we bring you aThis American Lifetradition: stories of turkeys, chickens, geese, ducks, fowl of all kinds—real and imagined—and their mysterious hold over us.

• Prologue: Ira Glass talks with Scharlette Holdman, who works with defense teams on high profile death row cases, and who has not talked to a reporter in more than 25 years. Why did she suddenly end the moratorium on press? Because her story is about something important: namely, a beautiful chicken. (2 minutes)
• Act One: Scharlette Holdman's story continues, in which she and the rest of a legal defense team try to save a man on death row by finding a star witness — a chicken with a specific skill. (10 minutes)
• Act Two: Yet another testimony to the power chickens have over our hearts and minds. Jack Hitt reports on an opera about Chicken Little. It's performed with dressed-up styrofoam balls, it's sung in Italian and, no kidding, able to make grown men cry.(14 minutes)
• Act Three: Ira accompanies photographer Tamara Staples as she attempts to photograph chickens in the style of high fashion photography.The chickens are not very cooperative.(15 minutes)
• Act Four: Kathie Russo's husband was Spalding Gray, who was best known for delivering monologues onstage—like "Monster in a Box," and "Swimming to Cambodia." On January 10, 2004, he went missing. Witnesses said they saw him on the Staten Island Ferry that night. Two months later, his body was pulled out of the East River. Kathie tells the story of the night he disappeared, and about how, in the weeks following, she and each of their three children were visited by a bird, who seemed to be delivering a message tothem.(9minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

Things our dads taught us, whether they intended to or not.

• Prologue: Ira talks about the time his dad taught him to shave, and how unusual that was. (5 minutes)
• Act One: When Jackie read the obits for the man who had invented the famous Trapper Keeper notebook, she was very surprised. As far as she knew, the inventor was very much alive. It was her dad. Not the guy in the obit. (15 minutes)
• Act Two: A father and son find themselves in a very traditional relationship. Until the end.(21 minutes)
• Act Three: Simon Rich reads his short story "History Report,"in which a father explains the sex robots of the future. And other things as well.(14 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

What happens when you realize the people in charge don’t have the answers.

• Prologue: Guest Host Chana Joffe-Walt asks her kids when they first encountered adult fallibility. (8 minutes)
• Act One: A middle schooler really wants to trust the adults have her best interests in mind. But some of the most powerful people at her school begin to make that very difficult. (27 minutes)
• Postscript: In Israel and Gaza, children are directly facing the fact that the adults around them cannot protect them.(4 minutes)
• Act Two: Comedian Gary Gulman on a choice his dad made for him when he was seven years old. (11 minutes)
• Act Three: There are many kids who do not gradually discover that grown ups don’t have a handle on everything. These kids already know. Miriam Toews’s novel, “Fight Night,” is about a nine-year-old named Swiv who takes care of her grandma and manages her mom’s mental health struggles. Even simple tasks can become complicated, like taking them both on the bus. (7 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

You've been seeing yourself, getting to know what you look like, your whole life. So why does it often take an outsider to see things about you that are obvious, and set you straight?

• Prologue: Guest host Nancy Updike talks about learning something new, and unpleasant, about herself in, where else, a makeup store. She also talks with other people about moments where someone made an observation about them that was shocking. (8 minutes)
• Act One: Writer Domingo Martinez tells a story from his memoir, "The Boy Kings of Texas," about when he was forced to face how he might look in 20 years if he kept doing what he was doing.(12 minutes)
• Act Two: A man has a very clear vision of how he always stood up to his father, protected his mother and fought hard for the truth. Until one day he discovers actual raw data — secretly recorded conversations — that threaten to change his picture of everything. (12 minutes)
• Act Three: Ira Glass interviews actress Molly Ringwald about what happened when she watched one of her own movies, "The Breakfast Club" with her daughter. Ringwald talks about how for the first time, she saw the movie from the parents' point of view, not the kids'. (19 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org