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This American Life

This American Life

This American Life

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1 Creator

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1 Creator

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.
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409 Listeners

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5 Comments

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Top 10 This American Life Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best This American Life episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to This American Life for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite This American Life episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

This American Life - 809: The Call

809: The Call

This American Life

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12/08/24 • 61 min

One call to a very unusual hotline and everything that followed.

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

  • Prologue: Ira talks about a priest who set up what may have been the first hotline in the United States. It was just him, answering a phone, trying to help strangers who called. (2 minutes)
  • Act One: The Never Use Alone hotline was set up so that drug users can call if they are say, using heroin by themselves. Someone will stay on the line with them in case they overdose. We hear the recording of one call, from a woman named Kimber. (13 minutes)
  • Act Two: An EMT learns he was connected to the call, in more ways than he realized. (16 minutes)
  • Act Three: Jessie, who took the call, explains how she discovered the hotline. She keeps in touch with Kimber. Until one day, Kimber disappears. (16 minutes)
  • Act Four: We learn what happened to Kimber after she called the line. (10 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

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70 Listeners

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This American Life - 806: I Can't Quit You, Baby

806: I Can't Quit You, Baby

This American Life

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07/30/23 • 61 min

People on the verge of a big change, not wanting to let go. And the people who give them the final push.

  • Prologue: Guest Host Sean Cole gets some scary news about his health, and decides to quit smoking. (5 minutes)
  • Act One: Sean Cole attempts to kick his 35 year-long smoking habit, using a book that’s said to have helped millions of people to quit. (33 minutes)
  • Act Two: Someone writes into the advice column Dear Sugar to ask whether or not they should quit a relationship, and gets a strange but very persuasive response. (9 minutes)
  • Act Three: Even people who vehemently disagreed with Heider Garcia wanted him to stay in his job. But then something happened that made staying impossible. Zoe Chace reports. (9 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

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40 Listeners

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This American Life - 810: Say It to My Face

810: Say It to My Face

This American Life

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09/17/23 • 63 min

Friends and ex-friends finally talk about the one thing between them they've been avoiding.

  • Prologue: Host Ira Glass tells a story he’s never told anyone before, about something someone said to him. (4 minutes)
  • Act One: Gabe Mollica had something important he needed to discuss with his friend — stewed about it for eight years. But rather than go to that friend, he talked about it with everyone other than that one person. (28 minutes)
  • Act Two: Jasmine and Gabbie are best friends. BFFs! But there’s something major that they’ve never been able to talk about. Something so important that it makes them wonder, who does this person even think I am? (23 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

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35 Listeners

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This American Life - 813: Is That What I Look Like?
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11/05/23 • 56 min

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

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32 Listeners

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This American Life - 803: Greetings, People Of Earth
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08/04/24 • 63 min

Humans encounter non-human intelligences of various kinds and try to make sense of them.

  • Prologue: Ira has some thoughts about our country’s long history of alien invasion movies. (2 minutes)
  • Act One: We’ve witnessed a revolution in A.I. since the public rollout of ChatGPT. Our Senior Editor David Kestenbaum thinks that even though there’s been a ton of coverage, there’s one thing people haven’t talked much about: have these machines gotten to the point that they’re starting to have something like human intelligence? Where they actually understand language and concepts, and can reason? He talks with scientists at Microsoft who’ve been trying to figure that out. (30 minutes)
  • Act Two: A short piece of fiction from the perspective of aliens who’ve been scouting Earth, from writer Terry Bisson. It’s called “They're Made Out of Meat.” It’s performed by actors Maeve Higgins and H Jon Benjamin. (5 minutes)
  • Act Three: A species of massive, mysterious, highly intelligent beings have recently been making contact with humanity. Or our boats, anyway. Many people seem convinced they are seeking revenge for past injustices. Producer Chris Benderev wondered if that was true. (7 minutes)
  • Act Four: Many of us, especially when we’re young, feel like we’re the alien, trying to understand and fit in with the humans on this planet. Producer Diane Wu spent some time recently with a teenage humanoid who feels that way. (15 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

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29 Listeners

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This American Life - 815: How I Learned to Shave

815: How I Learned to Shave

This American Life

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12/01/24 • 60 min

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

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

  • 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

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27 Listeners

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This American Life - 811: The One Place I Can’t Go
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10/01/23 • 60 min

Spots we’re avoiding in our private maps of the world.

  • Prologue: Guest host Bim Adewunmi talks to her cousin Kamyl about a funny thing Kamyl did when she was small, regarding a dog named Foxy. (4 minutes)
  • Act One: Comedian Atsuko Okatsuka moved suddenly from Japan to the U.S. when she was eight years old, and has long joked that it was because her grandmother kidnapped her from her dad. But she'd never talked to anyone in her family about what had actually happened. (31 minutes)
  • Act Two: Producer Emmanuel Dzotsi has a tale about something he avoids at all costs, even though it seems to follow him everywhere he goes. (8 minutes)
  • Act Three: Writer Tamsyn Muir spent her childhood craving a world that she could not find on earth. So as an adult, she just created it. And it was perfect. Until she became the one person who couldn't go there. (12 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

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26 Listeners

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This American Life - 779: Ends of the Earth

779: Ends of the Earth

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09/24/23 • 66 min

An exploration of the very upper limits of what you do for someone you love.

  • Prologue: Host Ira Glass explains what we’re doing on today’s show. (2 minutes)
  • Act One: Amy Bloom tells the story of her husband, Brian, getting Alzheimer's and wanting assisted suicide. Her search to find a way to do that led her to Dignitas, in Switzerland. Hear this intimate and frank account of the experience they go through, excerpted from her book, IN LOVE. (39 minutes)
  • Act Two: Comedian Zarna Garg tells jokes onstage about the extreme ways she tries to control her daughter Zoya’s life. Zoya explains, they’re not really jokes. Ira Glass talks to both of them about it. (15 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

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24 Listeners

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This American Life - 199: House on Loon Lake

199: House on Loon Lake

This American Life

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07/23/23 • 59 min

The true story of an abandoned house, discovered by a young boy in the 1970s, and the mysterious family who disappeared without a trace.

  • Ira introduces this week's story. (1 minute)
  • Act One: Adam Beckman tells the first part of his story, about how, back in the 70s, he and his friends broke into an abandoned house in the small town of Freedom, New Hampshire. The home turned out to be a perfect time capsule, containing the furniture, letters and personal effects of an entire family — abandoned for decades. It seemed like the family just vanished one day, leaving salt and pepper shakers on the table, notes on the bedroom mirror, and a wallet with money still inside. Adam and his friends read the letters, saving some as clues, and never forgot. (30 minutes.)
  • Act Two: Adam Beckman continues his story. He returns to the town in New Hampshire where he discovered the abandoned house as a kid and tries to find out what happened there. It turns out he's not the only one looking for an answer to that question. (25 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

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24 Listeners

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This American Life - 319: And the Call Was Coming from the Basement
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10/29/23 • 58 min

For the lead up to Halloween, scary stories that are all true. Zombie raccoons, haunted houses—real haunted houses!—and things that go "EEEEK!!!" in the night. Plus, a story by David Sedaris in which he walks among the dead.

  • Ira and Albert Donnay read a true ghost story that appeared in a medical journal in 1921. A "Mrs. H" and her family moved into an old rambling house and strange apparitions started appearing, until her brother-in-law figured out the real cause of the ghostly presences. (6 minutes)
  • Act One: Some of the scariest stories happen when fluffy, innocent creatures turn murderously evil. Producer Alex Blumberg tells one such story, about a raccoon gone bad. (13 minutes)
  • Act Two: Writer Bill Eville and his brother are picked up on the side of the road late at night, and not taken to their destination. (10 minutes)
  • Act Three: We set up a special 800-number for listeners to call with their true-life scary stories. More than 500 people called. The scariest stories we got all had one thing in common. (9 minutes)
  • Act Four: One Halloween, David Sedaris decides to skip all the fake monsters and ghosts and zombies and visit the real thing: dead people, in a morgue. (14 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

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24 Listeners

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FAQ

How many episodes does This American Life have?

This American Life currently has 172 episodes available.

What topics does This American Life cover?

The podcast is about Society & Culture, Podcasts and Arts.

What is the most popular episode on This American Life?

The episode title '809: The Call' is the most popular.

What is the average episode length on This American Life?

The average episode length on This American Life is 62 minutes.

How often are episodes of This American Life released?

Episodes of This American Life are typically released every 7 days.

When was the first episode of This American Life?

The first episode of This American Life was released on Mar 28, 2015.

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