08.28.1998
Stories of summer camp. People who love camp say that non-camp people simply don't understand what's so amazing about camp. In this program, we...
01.06.2001
Stories of babysitters, and what goes on while mom and dad are away that mom and dad never find out about.
03.01.2002
Life aboard the USS John C. Stennis, an aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea that's supporting bombing missions over Afghanistan as part of Operation...
08.09.2002
We devote this entire episode to one story: over the course of six months, reporter and TAL contributor Jack Hitt followed a group of inmates at...
07.11.2003
Instead of the regular "each week we choose a theme, and bring you three or four stories on that theme" business, this week we throw all that away...
05.09.2008
A special program about the housing crisis produced in a special collaboration with NPR News. We explain it all to you. What does the housing crisis...
07.25.2008
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...
12.18.2009
This year, The Princeton Review named Penn State the #1 Party School in America. It's a rotating crown—last year it was University of Florida, before...
10.11.1996
Simulated worlds, Civil war reenactments, wax museums, simulated coal mines, fake ethnic restaurants, an ersatz Medieval castle and other re-created...
12.13.1996
Though being gay no longer has much of a stigma in some parts of the country, being a sissy still does—even among gay men. In this show we have a...
04.25.1997
Stories of when things go wrong. Really wrong. When you leave the normal realm of human error, fumble, mishap and mistake and enter the territory of...
11.21.1997
A parable of politics and race in America. The story of Chicago's first black mayor, Harold Washington, told two decades after his death. Washington...
01.02.1998
Numbers lie. Numbers cover over complicated feelings and ambiguous situations. In this week's show, stories of people trying to use numbers to...
01.16.1998
Stories of who we are on the phone, of things we learn on the phone, of things that happen on the phone that don't happen anywhere else.
12.18.1998
Stories about seeing and being seen. Taped before a live audience in Town Hall in New York City in December 1998, this was a co-production with WNYC...
01.08.1999
With the number of prisoners in the United States rising rapidly, we present stories of their lives and the lives of their families and children.
03.10.2000
Stories of dogs and cats and other animals that live in our homes. Exactly how much are they caught up in everyday family dynamics? We answer this...
07.07.2000
Every crime scene hides a story. In this week's show, we hear about crime scenes and the stories they tell.
02.23.2001
We answer the following questions about superpowers: Can superheroes be real people? (No.) Can real people become superheroes? (Maybe.) And which is...
04.06.2001
A special show, composed entirely of stories from just one This American Life contributor: Scott Carrier, whose strange and compelling stories sound...
06.08.2001
While the seniors danced at Prom Night 2001 in Hoisington, Kansas—a town of about 3,000—a tornado hit the town, destroying about a third of it....
08.31.2001
The story of one man's journey from obscurity to international professional celebrity—aided only by his own hard work, a sneaker commercial, and mad...
11.16.2001
Our entire show this week is one long story, sort of a real-life Hardy Boys mystery. More than most of our shows, this one lends itself to a...
01.11.2002
All the stories in this week's show center on personal recordings that one person made for just one other person.
01.18.2002
The story of how the American Psychiatric Association decided in 1973 that homosexuality was no longer a mental illness.
08.30.2002
Stories of people getting more testosterone and coming to regret it. And of people losing it and coming to appreciate life without it. The pros and...
03.07.2003
Stories of people starting over, sometimes because they want to, other times because they have to.
10.24.2003
Some stories we make happen, others happen to us. Extremes from the latter category, where people let things happen to them and don't act, even when...
11.28.2003
During the weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year's — the highest turkey consumption period of the year — we bring you an annual This American...
12.05.2003
Stories from faraway, hard-to-get-to places, where all rules are off, nefarious things happen because no one's looking, and there's no one to appeal...
06.25.2004
Three stories about people who decide to try out a new life — the kind of life their parents never wanted for them.
10.15.2004
Ten years ago, when he was still a reporter for NPR's All Things Considered, host Ira Glass did a year-long series on a Chicago public school where...
02.11.2005
After four lawyers fail to get an innocent man out of prison, his friend takes on the case himself. He becomes a do-it-yourself investigator.
06.03.2005
At a time when House Majority Leader Tom Delay calls for enacting a "Biblical world view" in government, when Christians are asserting their ideals...
12.16.2005
The story of Reverend Carlton Pearson, a renowned evangelical pastor in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who cast aside the idea of Hell, and with it everything he'd...
12.15.2006
Alix Spiegel's story in this episode—"Act One. Which One of These Is Not Like the Others?"—won a 2008 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award.
A...
08.24.2007
Web Extra: Break-Up Song Contest Winners
Writer Starlee Kine on what makes the perfect break-up song and whether really sad music can actually make...
03.14.2008
In 1912 a four year-old boy named Bobby Dunbar went missing in a swamp in Louisiana. Eight months later, he was found in the hands of a wandering...
08.08.2008
Mike Birbiglia got used to strange things happening to him when he slept—until something happened that almost killed him. Mike's story and other...
05.22.2009
A well-known activist—an anarchic, revolutionary activist—is accused of spying on other activists for the FBI. The strangest thing about the rumor is...
09.04.2009
Nine radio producers. Two days. One rest stop on the New York State Thruway. In this show, we’ll bring you stories of people who are just...
02.21.1996
What unites these stories on the surface is that they're all made from old tapes, recordings found in attics and thrift stores. What unites them...
03.28.1996
April first is the one day of the year when we're allowed to enjoy deceiving others. But April Fools' Day is for amateur deceivers. The real pros are...
06.14.1996
Ira's own father Barry Glass co-hosts this special father's day edition of the show.
09.27.1996
Radio producer Scott Carrier quit his job at a low moment in his life. His wife left him and took the kids. And he got a job interviewing...
12.06.1996
Four stories about people struggling at the fringes of our nation's media/music/infotainment industry.
01.17.1997
Kevin Kelly was in Jerusalem. For reasons too complicated to go into here, he ended up sleeping on the spot where Jesus was supposedly crucified....
05.30.1997
Notes and stories about the Canadians among us. Are they in fact any different from red-blooded Americans? They claim they're not. Skeptical...
09.03.1999
As we head into another Presidential primary season filled with candidates that few people find very inspiring, This American Life broadcasts stories...
10.22.1999
We've all heard occasional news stories about how some of the drug laws enacted in the last 15 years may have gone too far. First time offenders get...
01.28.2000
Today's program is made all of stories from the New Hampshire primary. Voters want to find a candidate who inspires them. Candidates want to inspire...
09.15.2000
There are all sorts of situations in which we suspect the fix is in, but we almost never find out for certain. On today's show, for once, we find out.
03.16.2001
The story in a way of a town that time forgot, or more accurately, a town that tried to forget the times. A special broadcast co-hosted by award-...
04.19.2002
After a decade in which DNA evidence has freed over 100 people nationwide, it's become clear that DNA evidence isn't just proving wrongdoing by...
06.04.2004
Today's show is devoted to just one story. Contributing editor Nancy Updike went to Iraq to try to figure out what it's like to be a private citizen...
09.09.2005
Surprising stories from survivors in New Orleans. We give people who were in the storm more time than daily news coverage can to tell their stories...
09.16.2005
It's the largest mass resettlement that America has seen since the Civil War, as over 400,000 people — victims of Hurricane Katrina — try to find a...
10.07.2005
Stories about people and places that have come back to life after everything seemed lost.
10.28.2005
About a year ago, a study estimated the number of Iraqi casualties since the war began at 100,000 dead — higher than any other estimate. The study...
04.27.2007
An updated version of our episode "Habeas Schmabeas," which won a 2006 Peabody Award.Listen to a special, uncut version.Download a transcript.
The...
05.30.2008
A lawyer in the Justice Department gets the professional opportunity of a lifetime: to be the lead prosecutor in one of the first high-profile...
10.03.2008
Download a transcript. Alex Blumberg and NPR's Adam Davidson—the two guys who reported our Giant Pool of Money episode—are back, in collaboration...
10.24.2008
This American Life goes to Pennsylvania, a battleground within a battleground, to figure out why, and how, John McCain and Barack Obama...
02.27.2009
Download a transcript. The collapse of the banking system explained, in just 59 minutes.
03.27.2009
The economy works in mysterious ways. This week, we highlight the unusual circumstances our economic drought has left us in, and the newly hatched...
06.05.2009
Download a transcript. Since Congress hasn't held 1930's-style hearings into the causes of the financial crisis, we stage one of our own.
08.07.2009
The U.S. government spent two years on a sting operation trapping an Indian man named Hemant Lakhani, whom they suspected of being an illegal arms...
09.25.2009
In which we mark the anniversary of the economic collapse and the anniversary of Planet Money: recapping some of the original episode, The Giant...
10.09.2009
An hour explaining the American health care system, specifically, why it is that costs keep rising. One story looks at the doctors, one at the...
10.16.2009
This week, we bring you a deeper look inside the health insurance industry. The dark side of prescription drug coupons.
07.03.1998
For the July 4th holiday weekend, writer Sarah Vowell and her twin sister re-trace the "Trail of Tears" — the route their Cherokee ancestors took...
08.28.1998
Stories of summer camp. People who love camp say that non-camp people simply don't understand what's so amazing about camp. In this program, we...
07.28.2000
Many Americans have dreamy and romantic ideas about Paris, notions which probably trace back to the 1920s vision of Paris created by the expatriate...
11.17.2000
The This American Life producers document one day in a Chicago diner called The Golden Apple, starting at 5 a.m. and going until 5 a.m. the next...
08.09.2002
We devote this entire episode to one story: over the course of six months, reporter and TAL contributor Jack Hitt followed a group of inmates at...
10.11.2002
In this show we take the classifieds from one Sunday edition of the Chicago Sun-Times and one edition of the local alternative weekly Chicago...
01.31.2003
Teenage Embed, Part One. In January 2002, the President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, spoke at Georgetown University. There he urged Afghan-Americans...
12.12.2003
In early 2003, we brought you a special show about a California teenager, Hyder Akbar, who traveled to Afghanistan, his family's homeland, for the...
09.09.2005
Surprising stories from survivors in New Orleans. We give people who were in the storm more time than daily news coverage can to tell their stories...
12.26.2008
This American Life spends several days in a mall in suburban Tennessee,
09.04.2009
Nine radio producers. Two days. One rest stop on the New York State Thruway. In this show, we’ll bring you stories of people who are just...
12.18.2009
This year, The Princeton Review named Penn State the #1 Party School in America. It's a rotating crown—last year it was University of Florida, before...
