People living in that in-between moment before everything changes. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: Kirk Johnson tells Ira about a strange choice he made during his family’s evacuation from the Sunset Fire in Los Angeles. (5 minutes)Act One: Editor Nancy Updike tries to make sense of this current moment by talking to[...]

In the new year, stories of people trying a radical approach to solving their problems. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.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[...]

People climbing to be number one. How do they do it? What is the fundamental difference between us and them? Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: Ira Glass talks with Paul Feig, who, as a sixth-grader, read the Dale Carnegie classic How to Win Friends and Influence People at the urging of his father. He[...]

We leave the normal realm of human error and enter the territory of huge breakdowns. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: Jack Hitt tells the story of a small-town production of Peter Pan in which all the usual boundaries between the audience and actors dissolve entirely. (6 minutes)Act One: Jack Hitt's Peter[...]

The tiny thing that unravels your world. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.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,[...]

Banias is an 8-year-old kid living in Gaza. And she has a story to tell — many stories, in fact. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: While on the phone with reporter Maram Hamaid in Gaza, producer Chana Joffe-Walt gets interrupted by Maram’s daughter––Banias, eight, who grabs the phone from her mother[...]

How do you count almost 12 million votes if you’re not the government? This week, we bring you the extraordinary story of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who created the only verifiable public record of votes in their presidential election — and other stories of people trying to correct the official record with their own[...]

Keiko was a hugely beloved adventure park attraction. He was also captured in the wild and taken away from his mother when he was just a calf. When Hollywood learned about him, a colossal effort began to un-tame him and send him back to the ocean. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue:[...]

With Donald Trump’s victory this week, many people looked at the election results and thought, yeah, this is the country I thought it was. For some people, that was a hopeful thing. For others, kind of the opposite. This week, we talked with people who helped make it happen and some who are looking to[...]

A wee flame, flickering in the dark. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: Who’s trying to bridge the gap between Blue America and Red America? Ira gets a glimpse of one guy who might be able to do just that. (3 minutes)Act One: A politically divided couple searches for a news source[...]

Ira Glass has news to share about some things happening here at This American Life. To sign up as a Life Partner, visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners.

Boen Wang has a theory that a lot of the misery in his life can be traced to a single moment that happened years before he was born. So he makes a pilgrimage to see if he’s right. Prologue: Ira talks about what it’s like to go back to 1119 Bayard Street in Baltimore. (6 minutes)Part One:[...]

In Rafah, Yousef is out of options and faces his toughest move yet. Prologue: Since the beginning of the war in Gaza, Yousef Hammash has decided where to go next and when. In Rafah, he is out of options and faces his toughest move yet. (5 minutes)Act One: Yousef does not even want to think about[...]