This American Life

At a time when the U.S. government is trying to make American history tidier, we try to learn from the mess. Including the untold, messy story of Paul and Essie Robeson. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. Prologue: Guest Host Emanuele Berry talks to Nichole Hill about the Black movie characters Nichole was curious about as a child. (7 minutes) Act One: A giant of the Harlem Renaissance, Paul Robeson was the most famous American of his day. Until he wasn’t. Nichole Hill tells the messy, complicated story of Paul and his wife, Essie Robeson. (38 minutes) Act Two: In 1865, a formerly enslaved man named Jourdan Anderson received a letter from his former enslaver, asking Jourdan to return to the plantation and work. Actor Laurence Fishburne reads Jourdan’s response.  Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.

What happens when a new guy comes on the scene and changes the way everyone relates to each other? Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. Prologue: Ira talks with Sarah Koenig about the first and only time a movie star came to her family's house when she was a kid. It didn't go well, for the celebrity or for her. The star was Robert Redford. He arrived and immediately stole all the attention her parents usually lavished on her, their youngest. Worse, they were nervous and strange around him, not themselves at all. Young Sarah was not pleased. Robert Redford paid the price. (6 minutes) Act One: Davy Rothbart's mother is funny, rational, and by most measures, pretty normal. Except that she spends every day in the company of an ancient Buddhist monk named Aaron, who no one else can see. Davy talks to his brothers, father, and eventually his mom, and asks the question they've somehow never managed to discuss: do any of them actually believe he's real? (26 minutes) Act Two: Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. had always lived in the shadow of his father's name. But just before his primary, an aide delivered strange news: a second Jesse Jackson had appeared on the same ballot — a retired truck driver with no political experience. Ira reports on whether it was a coincidence or mischief orchestrated by the Congressman's rivals. (9 minutes) Act Three: Jonathan Goldstein and Heather O'Neill tell the true story of a man trying to wedge himself into an idyllic family of two. For the first few years, Heather's daughter Arizona was not very fond of Jonathan. He ranked nineteenth on her list of favorite people, behind the neighbor's dog and the plumber. (15 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.

M. Gessen returns to our show with a true-crime story that takes place entirely within their own family. This story comes to us from the producers at Serial Productions—who invented the true-crime podcast more than a decade ago—and from The New York Times. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. Act One: M Gessen tells Ira Glass about the surprising events that prompted them to begin reporting on their own family for their new podcast, The Idiot. They play the first episode of the series. (14 minutes) Act Two: Ira Glass and M Gessen continue to talk through the story of M’s cousin, Allen Gessen. They play more clips from the podcast, and we finally hear about the big, shocking thing that snapped their family apart. (20 minutes) Act Three: M Gessen tells Ira Glass about Allen’s trial, and we hear a recording of his conversation with the undercover agent. (21 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.

In the early days of the radio show, Ira did a series of interviews with his parents that completely changed his relationship with them. This week, he returns to those interviews. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. Prologue: Ira talks about why four conversations reveal how his relationship with his parents changed. (4 minutes) Act One: Ira’s mom, Shirley, is invited to lead a discussion about how to get along with your adult children. Her adult children question her expertise. (9 minutes) Act Two: Ira asks his parents for advice on how he should build the radio show. His parents don’t hold back. (9 minutes) Act Three: Ira talks with his dad, Barry, about Barry’s own brief and doomed career in radio. (21 minutes) Act Four: An interview with Ira’s mom that, to this day, makes Ira’s skin crawl. (13 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.

Stories that take place on the edge of civilization, just out of sight. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. Prologue: Every city's got a place like this: that weird no man's land on the outskirts of town, with junk yards and landfills. Charlie Gregerson grew up near that stuff, on Chicago's far south side, and he remembers finding debris from famous Louis Sullivan masterpieces in the garbage dump after those buildings were demolished. (4 minutes) Act One: Out for a simple pleasure cruise with two friends, Alex Zharov was planning to see Jamaica Bay in New York City. But this end-of-the-day excursion, which should have only lasted 40 minutes, turns into an out-of-control adventure that left him lost, stranded, and bleeding—all within sight of the Empire State Building. Brett Martin reports. (23 minutes) Act Two: There is a four-mile-long bridge in Naan-jing China, famous for how many people jump off to die by suicide. In 2003, a man named Chen Sah began spending all of his weekends on the bridge, trying to single-handedly stop the jumpers. Reporter Mike Paterniti tells his story of meeting Mr. Chen. (15 minutes) Act Three: The story of the government cracking down on smokestack emissions at a city factory, even though the residents like the emissions. We hear from Jorge Just, who explains the one, magical secret about Chicago that no one outside Chicago ever believes is true. (9 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.

Two lawyers who work for ICE step forward and lift the curtain on what is really happening inside our immigration system right now. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. Prologue: Two lawyers dive into the details of what they’ve witnessed behind the scenes in different parts of the immigration system. (2 minutes) Act One: Former ICE attorney Ryan Schwank explains the chaos and dysfunction he observed at an ICE training academy, which led him to whistleblow to Congress two weeks ago. (12 minutes) Act Two: A federal judge orders the government to immediately release a bunch of people from detention. Days pass, and the government doesn’t comply. So the judge calls a hearing to figure out what’s going on. The lawyer's response is not what he or anybody expected. (25 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.

Stories of high drama from America's workplaces — surprising, emotional places full of the greed, jealousy, and ambition of real politics. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. Prologue: We hear three stories of how conflicts are resolved in offices. Two of those stories come from sociologist Calvin Morrill, who studied the executive suites at a number of large companies in his book The Executive Way: Conflict Management in Corporations. The last story comes from host Ira Glass, who talks about how he ended up punching his own boss in the stomach in front of all his co-workers. (12 minutes) Act One: Starlee Kine with the story of a company in turmoil. A young employee gets in a jam and discovers that in times of trouble, when all else has failed, companies in her industry turn to one woman in a suburban home in Long Island, who solves their corporate problems while the TV plays in the background. (12 minutes) Act Two: David Rakoff discusses the world of birthdays and other holidays, as they're celebrated on the job... and what happens when you call yourself an editorial assistant but the editor you're assisting calls you a secretary. (15 minutes) Act Three: Julie Snyder explains the office politics of street vendors on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Eighth Street in New York City. With her is sociologist Mitch Duneier, who spent years working with the vendors and writing about them for his book Sidewalk. (14 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.

People deciding to do things that most of us do NOT choose to do.  Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. Prologue: A new documentary called The Boys and the Bees captures a moment where a six-year-old has a very unlikely wish, and his dad decides to grant it. Host Ira Glass talks with filmmaker Arielle Knight about what happens next. (9 minutes) Act One: John Tothill tells the story of Edward Dando, a 19th-century British glutton who would eat hundreds of oysters at a time and then run out on the check. John makes the case that we should all be more like Edward Dando. (15 minutes) Act Two: Producer Tobin Low listens in as Evan Roberts calls up an ex for the first time in years and tries to make the case that they should have been friends all along. (16 minutes) Act Three: Producer Zoe Chace brings us a dispatch from a courtroom in Texas this week, where on the very first day of a landmark federal trial about Antifa, the judge makes an unusual decision that no one sees coming. (15 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.

An episode from our show's early days: Stories about what happens when strangers are kind — and when they're not. Prologue: Brett Leveridge was standing on the subway platform when a man walked by, stopping in front of each passenger to deliver a quiet verdict: "You're in. You're out. You can stay. You—gotta go." Most people ignored him. But Brett found himself hoping for the thumbs up. (5 minutes) Act One: New York City locksmith Joel Kostman tells the story of an act of kindness he committed, hoping for a small reward. (13 minutes) Act Two: In 1940, Jack Geiger, at the age of fourteen, left his middle-class Jewish home and knocked on the door of a Black actor named Canada Lee. He asked Lee if he could move in with him. Lee said yes. In Lee's Harlem apartment, Geiger spent a year among many of the great figures of the Harlem Renaissance: Langston Hughes, Billy Strayhorn, Richard Wright, Adam Clayton Powell. (11 minutes) Act Three: How two next-door neighbors start treating each other badly, and how their feud becomes an all-consuming obsession. Paul Tough reports. (14 minutes) Act Four: For five weeks, a singer named Nick Drakides stood on a stoop in the East Village, singing Sinatra songs late at night to the delight of his neighbors. The cops didn't bust him; the crowds behaved. It was his gift to New York. Blake Eskin tells the story. (12 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.

911 calls unlike any we’ve heard before, and other stories about immigration agents sweeping through America. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. Prologue: A collection of 911 calls where you can hear immigration enforcement moving through different cities and leaving chaos in their wake. (9 minutes) Act One: More 911 calls, including people on the line with dispatchers as ICE is chasing them, trying to puzzle out their next moves. (22 minutes) Act Two: Home Depots keep getting raided over and over again in Los Angeles. And day laborers are still showing up in store parking lots to find work every day.  So what’s that like? Months and months of that cat and mouse? Anayansi Diaz-Cortes went to find out. (11 minutes) Act Three: Memo Torres tries to build an archive of every person taken by federal agents in Southern California. (11 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.

When a joke could get you killed, should you say it anyway? A group of Syrian comedians test the limits of their newfound freedom, a year after the fall of the brutal Assad regime. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. Prologue: Under the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, comedian Sharief Homsi knew which jokes were too dangerous to say on stage. Now that Syria is under the control of a new government, Sharief and the other comedians of “Styria” set out on a national tour to see how far their comedy can go in this new Syria. (6 minutes) Act One: The comedians test out risky material and get big laughs on early tour dates. It’s going smoothly until they find out that their show scheduled in the conservative city of Hama is in danger of being cancelled. (13 minutes) Act Two: The comedians go to battle with local officials. (18 minutes) Act Three: The comedians try everything they can think of to keep their shows from being cancelled. (20 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.

In this special mini-episode, we hear from someone in Venezuela with a very specific take on last week's U.S. attack.

People discovering information about their own lives that they did not know, and suddenly everything looks very different. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. Prologue: When Pete turned 18, his dad took him on a drive to reveal a family secret he was finally old enough to know. (11 minutes) Act One: Sometimes, a lore drop comes when you least expect it.  That happened to Jake Cornell and his grandmother. Producer Aviva DeKornfeld talked to Jake about it. (14 minutes) Act Two: Ben Austen had a kind of new lore drop happen to him recently. But it was not the clarifying kind of lore drop, where everything suddenly makes sense — it was kind of the opposite. (29 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.

Stories about the intersection of Christmas and retail, originally broadcast in 1996 when our show was only a year old. Including David Sedaris's "Santaland Diaries" about the seasons he spent working as an elf at Macy's.

How one block in Portland, Oregon became a movie-set war zone that lots of people think is a real war zone. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription — or to give one as a gift! Prologue: What the movie Hearts of Darkness and right-wing influencers have in common. (8 minutes) Act One: Producers Zoe Chace and Suzanne Gaber follow a bunch of right-wing influencers as they search for Antifa in Portland. (31 minutes) Act Two: We meet the so-called leader of Antifa in Portland. (16 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.

The vexing difficulty of finding the perfect gift. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. Prologue: Host Ira Glass goes to a busy Target store one week before Christmas. Most shoppers he talks to don't think any of their gifts will be returned. (3 minutes) Act One: Ian Brown tries, after decades of failure, to give his mother the perfect Christmas gift. He and his brother attempt something they haven't done since they were kids: Rehearse and sing her a program of Christmas carols. (19 minutes) Act Two: We play a 1959 original recording of Truman Capote reading his holiday story A Christmas Memory. (18 minutes) Act Three: Caitlin Shetterly reports on a true-life holiday fable from rural Maine, complete with a misunderstood recluse with a heart of gold, a deserving family in need, and a very special Christmas tree farm with secrets of its own. (16 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.

When history comes knocking, you have to figure out what to do. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. Prologue: Brittany’s job is to answer anonymous calls and texts from people in the military. This year, she’s gotten more than usual–most of them are wondering about what to do with orders they’ve been given. Or orders they’re afraid they’ll get someday in the future. (9 minutes) Act One: Jad Abumrad tells the story of the "ideological genealogy” of Fela Kuti’s anti-colonial politics–his mother. In late 1940s Nigeria, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti found herself at the center of a big, historical moment: an uprising led by thousands of women selling goods in Nigeria’s markets. Jad goes searching for who she really was, and how she became the person who galvanized a movement when history demanded it of her. (45 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.

What’s in the box? What’s in the $%&ing box?!? Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. Prologue: A class of second graders is handed a sealed box with a mystery object inside. They are supposed to guess what it is, but the lesson goes off the rails. (8 minutes) Act One: A man is hired along with a crew to dig a mysterious hole on the slopes of Mt. Shasta. The hole goes sixty feet down. But what are they looking for? (24 minutes) Act 2: A sparkly mystery. One woman hopes the military-industrial complex is involved. (4 minutes) Act Two: What happens when the full force of the federal government arrives on your block? (14 minutes) Act Three: A comedian finds himself trapped in an uncomfortable mystery in the backseat of a cab. (4 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.

What’s great about living in a family is that everyone sees everything differently. Also, that’s what’s awful about living in a family. We go behind closed doors with two families.   Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. Prologue: When Heather Gay started taking steps away from Mormonism, she thought it was her secret. That her daughters had no idea. Until she talked to them about their mismatched memories. (17 minutes) Act One: In every house, behind every closed door, a private drama is unfolding. In the Rivera house, the drama comes in the form of a question: should they stay or should they go? This question winds its way around the house until someone finally answers it. (44 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.

Shalom Auslander goes on vacation with his family, suspects the beloved, chatty old man in the room next door is an imposter, and sets out to prove it. This and other stories about the pitfalls of making snap judgments about others. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. Prologue: Amy Roberts thought it was obvious that she was an adult, not a kid, and she assumed the friendly man working at the children's museum knew it too. Unfortunately, the man had Amy pegged all wrong. And by the time she figured it out, it was too late for either of them to save face. Host Ira Glass talks to Amy about the embarrassing ordeal that taught her never to assume she knows what someone else is thinking. (8 minutes) Act One: While riding in a patrol car to research a novel, crime writer Richard Price witnessed a misunderstanding that, for many people, is pretty much accepted as an upsetting fact of life. Richard Price told this story, which he describes as a tale taken from real life and dramatized, onstage at The Moth in New York. (12 minutes) Act Two: There are situations where making judgments about people based on limited information is not only accepted but required. One of those situations is open adoption, where birth mothers actually choose the adoptive parents for their child. Producer Nancy Updike talks to a pregnant woman named Kim, going through the first stage of open adoption: reading dozens of letters from prospective parents, all of whom seem utterly capable and appealing. (6 minutes) Act Three: David Rakoff picks a fight with a hit Broadway show. (6 minutes) Act Four: Shalom Auslander tells the story of the time he went on vacation, pegged the guest in the room next door as an imposter, and devoted his holiday to trying to prove it. Shalom is the author of Feh: a Memoir. (22 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.