This American Life
72 episodes listed below
Ira Glass frames weekly theme-driven segments spanning family secrets to Portland's protest conflict.
This American Life uses patient narration, reported tape, and first-person storytelling to make ordinary scenes carry unexpected weight. Recent episodes move from classic-film obsession and Paul Robeson’s marriage to ICE lawyers, office sabotage, family distance, and Chicago’s buried industrial past.
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This American Life follows a fixed weekly format: Ira Glass introduces a theme, then the episode moves through two or more acts, each a separately produced segment loosely tied to that theme. Segments are reported by a rotating team associated with WBEZ Chicago, including producers like Zoe Chace, and frequently bring in outside contributors — published writers, family members recounting their own history, or hosts of other podcasts appearing as guests. Recurring subject matter includes American political conflict and protest, illustrated by a 2025 episode following livestreamers and law enforcement around a Portland ICE facility, and twentieth-century Black history and civil-rights-era erasure, as in the Paul and Essie Robeson story. Other episodes turn to family dynamics involving grief, disability, or unconventional belief, such as a family's long relationship with a channeled spirit named Aaron, or to colonial-era power struggles, such as Nigerian market women organizing against British colonial rule. The show also runs holiday specials built around returning contributors, including a Christmas rerun of David Sedaris's SantaLand Diaries. Tone shifts from segment to segment: some acts are investigative and sober, others are personal essay, and others are comedic. Episodes are documentary in construction, mixing host narration, archival tape, and field recording rather than a continuous interview format. The core audience is listeners already accustomed to narrative public radio or long-form audio documentary, since episodes assume patience for multi-segment storytelling rather than a single continuous topic. The show is not organized around one beat, such as true crime or politics, but treats a weekly theme as the device connecting otherwise unrelated subject areas. Some segments touch on sensitive material, including discussion of childhood sexual abuse recovery and claims of CIA-related mind-control experimentation, presented within a first-person or historical frame rather than sensationalized.
Made for: Listeners who enjoy long-form narrative public radio, personal essay, and American social and political history told through individual lives.
What sets it apart: Unlike single-topic interview shows, each episode assembles multiple independently produced segments — investigative reporting, historical documentary, and personal essay — organized around one weekly theme rather than a single guest or beat.
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.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
It makes large social forces legible through reported scenes, intimate memories, and a sharp eye for revealing human behavior.
This American Life turns social questions into vivid sequences of testimony, reporting, and remembered detail. Ira Glass guides stories from confrontational livestreamers at a protest to a family's encounters with channeling, while other episodes examine wartime taxation of…
Robert Redford arrives for dinner; you stay for the family weather changing around him.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A sharp, tender episode about families rearranging themselves around charisma, belief, and attention.
The Other Man circles the awkward charge that enters a family when someone else becomes the center of gravity. Sarah remembers Robert Redford coming to her childhood home to read her stepfather's Leonard Peltier manuscript, and what stays with her is not the politics or the…
An early holiday episode finds Christmas in the mall line, the wish list, and the awkward family performance.
Christmas here is less a holiday than a set of props everyone recognizes: the tree, the mall line, the wish list, the pressure to make the day come out right.
A sharp look at how cameras can record public conflict while becoming part of the conflict themselves.
The Making Of turns the making-of movie into a sharper question about public life: what happens when the camera stops being a witness and starts changing the room.
A Target return-counter comedy gives way to a whiskey fruitcake story with a strange, tender holiday edge.
The episode starts at a Target on Chicago's west side, a week before Christmas, where shoppers sound fully convinced that everything in their carts is staying put. Store manager Lee Crum knows better.
Illegal orders, colonial pressure, and the women who knew what obedience could cost.
The episode works by putting refusal and pressure side by side. Six Democrats with military or intelligence backgrounds, including Senators Mark Kelly and Alyssa Slotkin and Congressman Chris DiLuzio, release a video telling people in uniform that illegal orders can and must be…
Jonathan Goldstein tracks down people from someone's past to engineer real reconciliation.
Robert Redford came to Long Island.
Ira Glass interviews M.
Ira Glass reflects on his strained relationship with his parents due to career disapproval and personal judgments, and how starting his radio show unexpectedly healed their bond, leading to conversations he shares in this episode.
This episode explores a desolate area on Chicago's outskirts, where a local guide recounts the transformation of Lake Calumet into a dumping ground for city garbage and architectural rubble from demolished historic buildings.
This episode explores the revelations of two ICE lawyers who became whistleblowers, exposing systemic issues within the U.S.
Ira Glass searches through old tapes for a bonus episode, then tells a story about office sabotage at a banking firm.
This episode features a documentary about a beekeeping family in Georgia, with a focus on the two sons' contrasting personalities.
A woman recalls learning that her friend's dad was the tooth fairy, leading to a family secret.
Ira Glass introduces a rerun episode about the kindness of strangers, featuring a story of a man judging people on a subway platform.
This episode examines 911 calls from communities during federal immigration operations, revealing how ICE agents use deception tactics like posing as exterminators to target people, contrasting with viral videos of individual incidents.
A six-year-old girl named May shares a story about getting angry at her older sister Johanna over a clothing disagreement, revealing insights into sibling dynamics and childhood emotions.
A Syrian stand-up comic shares jokes he could only tell outside his country under Assad's dictatorship.
Ira Glass introduces a bonus episode about the US attack on Venezuela and revisits a story on the 2024 Venezuelan election where the opposition proved they won but Maduro stayed in power.
A man recounts a pivotal car ride with his father at age 18, where his dad hinted at revealing a family secret that would change his understanding of their seemingly mundane life.
A man recalls a moment in high school health class when his basketball coach teacher unexpectedly told the students they wouldn't all stay friends forever, which captured their full attention and left a lasting impression.
This episode revisits a press conference where New York Mayor Eric Adams introduced a rat czar, exploring his focus on rats amid low approval ratings and serving as a farewell to his administration.
Ira offers a Christmas rerun.
A warning comes first.
Christmas shopping starts with confidence.
A warning comes first.
Ira Glass introduces a favorite episode about a car salesman named Freddie, exploring his life and work through personal stories.
Ira Glass searches for an old recording in storage, then transitions to a story about a second-grade guessing game called 'What's in the Box'.
A former Mormon describes living a double life, secretly drinking coffee and dating while maintaining appearances in the church.
A woman recounts a confusing trip to a museum with her developmentally disabled brother's class.
A Palestinian man navigates Israeli military checkpoints to get to work in the West Bank, illustrating the daily challenges of occupation.
This episode explores the eccentric bestseller The People's Almanac and the surprising popularity of its lists section.
A letter carrier named Grace shares her observations and connections with people on her mail route.
Ira Glass introduces a bonus episode featuring producer Nancy Updike's selection of deep-cut stories from the show's archives.
Ira Glass introduces a bonus episode where he and producer Nancy Updike revisit personal stories from the show's history.
Host Emmanuel Jochi shares his experience as an Arsenal fan watching a match in a Brooklyn bar, reflecting on the team's history and emotional highs and lows.
A visit to a warehouse full of lifesaving nutritional paste that cannot be shipped because USAID was dismantled, highlighting the real-world consequences of government policy.
A family group chat reveals the everyday lives and bonds of a Palestinian family before and during the war in Gaza.
A woman recounts sneaking into a closed community pool as a child with her sister and cousin, leading to a panicked escape when alarms go off.
A woman tracks her husband's pizza obsession and a scientist navigates disrupted NIH meetings due to a research grant freeze.