This American Life

A boy who can’t dribble gets a coach, a new best friend, and something to believe in.

Why we tell them, and what happens after we do.

Stories of people summoning up stuff that’s usually hidden down deep.

Stories from the upside-down world where conspiracy theorists dwell.

Things we’ve lost in the past year — since the first American coronavirus case — that we haven’t talked about so much. Gossip. The chance to make new friends. And much larger stuff.

There's always someone whose job it is to decide if you measure up.

This holiday season, we bring you a show filled with stories of people going to great lengths to throw a special Christmas for their families.

What the day-to-day business of saving the world looks like. We visit with one group of people who are trying to rescue us from something very large, and another group trying to rescue us from something very small.

To commemorate our show’s 25th year, we have a program about people who were born the year our show went on the air.

For Thanksgiving weekend, stories about food, and people who set out on very particular missions with food. 

What if someone told you about a type of therapy that could help you work through unhealed trauma in just ten sessions? Some people knock through it in two weeks. Jaime Lowe tried the therapy—and recorded it.

For our 25th Anniversary, a favorite episode from 2000. Many Americans have dreamy and romantic ideas about Paris, notions which probably trace back to the 1920s vision of Paris created by the expatriate Americans there. But what's it actually like in Paris if you're an American, without rose-colored glasses?

For our 25th Anniversary, a favorite episode from 2000. We document one day in a Chicago diner called the Golden Apple, starting at 5 a.m. and going until 5 a.m. the next morning. We hear from the waitress who has worked the graveyard shift for over two decades, the regular customers who come every day, the couples working out their problems, assorted drunks, and, of course, cops.

For our 25th Anniversary, a favorite episode from 2002. We devote this entire episode to one story: Over the course of six months, reporter and This American Life contributor Jack Hitt followed a group of inmates at a high-security prison as they rehearsed and staged a production of the last act—Act V—of Hamlet.

For our 25th Anniversary, a favorite episode from 2007. Writer Starlee Kine on what makes the perfect break-up song and whether really sad music can actually make you feel better. Plus, an eight-year-old author of a book about divorce, and other stories from the heart of heartbreak.

For our 25th Anniversary, a favorite episode from 2008. On a summer day in 1951, two baby girls were born in a hospital in small-town Wisconsin. The infants were accidentally switched, and went home with the wrong families. One of the mothers realized the mistake but chose to keep quiet. Until the day, more than 40 years later, when she decided to tell both daughters what happened. How the truth changed two families' lives—and how it didn't.

For our 25th Anniversary, a favorite episode from 2013. We spend a month at a Jeep dealership on Long Island as they try to make their monthly sales goal: 129 cars. If they make it, they'll get a huge bonus from the manufacturer, possibly as high as $85,000 — enough to put them in the black for the month. If they don't make it, it'll be the second month in a row. So they pull out all the stops.

For our 25th Anniversary, a favorite episode from 2018. The one thing you know for sure when you're watching a romantic comedy is that it's going to turn out okay in the end. When you're living one? Not so much.

Stories of people changing their minds.

People grappling with an endless presidential election.