This American Life

Sayre Quevedo’s invented a way to do a podcast that feels completely new. He’s been recording nearly all his conversations for years, and the result is something that captures a person’s life in a raw and complicated way that’s rarely heard. His new show Reaching Out also documents his mutually judge-y relationship with his twin brother as they set out to find their long-lost birth father. Want to watch our live show this Friday? Use free trial code LIVESTREAM when you sign up as a Life Partner.(00:00:00) Prologue: Ira Glass introduces Reaching Out, a podcast that feels like it invented something completely new — an ambitious way of capturing a life in a way we'd never heard before. (1 minute)(00:02:39) Part One: Sayre Quevedo and his brother start the search for their birth father, and they discover that this whole time he’s been a few minutes away from where Sayre lives. (20 minutes)(00:21:49) Part Two: The twins try reaching out in a variety of ways before taking more direct action. Sayre tries to continu

Nikole Hannah-Jones made an argument 10 years ago in The New York Times Magazine that became famous. She wrote about choosing a public school for her daughter, Najya, in one of the most racially and economically segregated school systems in the country: New York City. Nikole chose a regular public school, one that most wealthy and middle-class parents wouldn’t consider, and she challenged other parents to do the same.  She revisits that argument, and that choice, in a series of conversations with producer Chana Joffe-Walt and with her daughter, Najya, who’s now 16 and has her own very different views.  Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.(00:00:00) Prologue: Chana talks with Nikole about what they both remember from being young parents just starting to think about schools for their children. (9 minutes)(00:10:44) Act One: Nikole talks with Chana about Najya’s elementary school and the problems her family navigated there. (15 minutes)(00:25:00) Act Two: Chana talks

People braving the true final frontier — the gap between people born at slightly different times. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.(00:00:00) Prologue: Last fall, some NPR podcasts started getting mysterious comments on Spotify. They made no sense to the staff reading them – until someone from a younger generation cracked the code. (11 minutes)(00:12:00) Act One: When Courtney Maum was eighteen, her mother married a guy she despised. At their wedding, Courtney read a poem she wrote – a pretty dark poem! – which made her mother furious. More than 30 years later, they finally talk about it. (27 minutes)(00:41:53) Act Two: When Ike Sriskandarajah was a teenager in Madison, Wisconsin, he thought he had the greatest job. He worked at the movie theater, wore a cummerbund, and snuck friends in through the back door! It was magical. That was more than 20 years ago. Is it still as great as he remembers? Ike goes back to find out. (8 minutes)(00:50:27) Act Three: Every mo

Cryptic messages on a cell phone and a teeter-totter at a construction site: these are clues people found, trying to make sense of a death. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.(00:00:00) Prologue: Host Ira Glass talks to a guy about a crazy experiment he devised when he was a kid. It almost killed him. (5 minutes)(00:06:45) Act One: We begin with a woman whose sister has died. She has questions. Her name is Nadia Bowers, and she wrote this to someone she thinks might be of help. (17 minutes)(00:29:53) Act Two: There’s a problem with having a Facebook account after you’re dead that you’ve never, ever, ever thought about. Producer Stephanie Foo tells this story, about Dave Maher. (14 minutes)(00:45:49) Act Three: A guy goes to a funeral for someone he doesn’t know at all, and has to piece together everything about him. Producer Dana Chivvis reports. (16 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org / This American Life privacy policy. / Learn more about

Moments when it seems obvious what to do for someone else, so of course you jump in and try to help — and what happens after that.  Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.(00:00:00) Prologue: Devon Taylor tells host Ira Glass about a time she confronted people who stole $100 from her. (12 minutes)(00:12:01) Act One: We get to an age when we find ourselves taking care of our parents, whether they want us to or not. Writer Kristen Roupenian wrote this piece of fiction based on something real that happened to a family she knows. (20 minutes)(00:33:37) Act Two: Two chatbots, stuck in a loop, each trying to help the other. Will they ever break free? (20 minutes)(00:55:48) Act Three: In Utah, some communities have been fighting measles outbreaks for 14 months. These are some of the longest-running outbreaks in the country. But one of our producers, Miki Meek, heard about how school nurses in a town called Vernal helped end its outbreak in just six weeks. Miki finds out how

Labels are powerful. They can distill you down to a single word. They can get stuck on you without your permission. And sometimes, when they get taken away, they can upend your entire life. On this episode: labels and the havoc they wreak. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.(00:00:00) Prologue: Sara and Ethan have been dating for 10 months. They see each other at least once a week, text pretty much every day, and have been there for each other through hard times. But they refuse to have the “what are we?” conversation. So what gives? Guest host Tobin Low looks into it. (5 minutes)(00:05:14) Act One: Last week, when Temporary Protected Status, also known as TPS, was cut off for Haitian immigrants, some 300,000 people had their lives upended. Marie, a Certified Nursing Assistant in Boston, was one of them. Producer Chana Joffe-Walt spent time last week with Marie as she tried to figure out exactly when her very last day on the job would be. (21 minutes)(00:27:57) Ac

People dealing with new, glaring, massive changes happening right where they live. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.(00:00:00) Prologue: Rick Cole, a city councilmember in Pasadena, CA, talks to Ira about how he responded to a surprise nighttime military exercise in his neighborhood this June – complete with helicopters, gunfire, and flash bangs. (5 minutes)(00:05:30) Act One: A doctor trained as a midwife tells the eye-popping story of how she and others came together to save a baby during a birth that suddenly went wrong, in a part of rural Maine where the local labor and delivery unit had closed less than a month before. (26 minutes)(00:34:56) Act Two: Producer Valerie Kipnis never felt inside the jokes and stories her family would tell about growing up in the Soviet Union, until she saw this year's Oscar-winning documentary, Mr. Nobody Against Putin. The film follows the changes unfolding in one school as Russia rolled out a nationwide propaganda push after

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered everyone over 30 in the military to have their testosterone tested. That inspired us to rerun this classic episode where everyone at This American Life tested their testosterone and compared results. It did not lead to workplace harmony. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.(00:00:00) Prologue: Host Ira Glass talks with producer Alex Blumberg, who explains that he wanted to do this show because of his conflicted relationship with his own testosterone. He tells Ira that the reasons go back to a girl in his 8th-grade homeroom. We also hear from a man who stopped producing testosterone due to a medical treatment, and found his entire personality was altered. (10 minutes)(00:10:45) Act One: What’s it like to get injected with testosterone? When Griffin Hansbury transitioned, he got massive shots of it and was surprised at the effect it had on him. (17 minutes)(00:27:56) Act Two: The men and women on staff at This American Life

People on journeys they did not intend — or agree to. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: A woman on a nighttime bus ride wakes up to discover the bus driver is taking the passengers somewhere none of them want to go. (8  minutes)Act One: Ayman Oghanna was reporting in Syria when he got a surprising call from home: one of his neighbors had been arrested for spying. (13 minutes)Act Two: Eileen Sosin Martínez describes life in Havana right now, where blackouts have become so constant that it’s nearly impossible to make ice and garbage trucks don’t collect the trash regularly. (11 minutes)Act Three: A beloved tree in England, more than 100 years old, is mysteriously cut down overnight, leaving the country bereft and enraged and out for justice. (15 minutes)Act Four: When she was 16, Leticia flew from Sao Paolo, where she lived, to Germany. She was seated next to an older woman who did something so surprising during the flight that Leticia still tells people

Some people in this country think Antifa is a dangerous domestic terror organization. Some think that’s a complete myth. This week, we go to the federal trial where, for the first time, the government sets out to prove that Antifa is real. Zoe Chace reports. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: Host Ira Glass tells the story of what happened at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas. The government claims this was an attack by an Antifa cell. The defense says it was a protest gone awry. This argument goes to court in a first-of-its-kind trial. (7 minutes)Act One: Reporter Zoe Chace walks us through one of the worst days for the defense: all these guns. (5 minutes)Act Two: Zoe takes us through the testimony of the government’s Antifa expert. The defense team is optimistic that things are going well for them. (8 minutes)Act Three: Zoe goes to jail to talk with one of the cooperating witnesses for the prosecution, a former church lady named Lynet

Ira always hated commencement speeches. Then he felt like he had to give this one. thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners

People discovering information about their own lives that they did not know and suddenly everything looks very different.

Ira Glass shares some news about This American Life To sign up as a Life Partner, visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners

Ira Glass talks with longtime producer Nancy Updike about the most personal stories they have put on the radio. This is a sample of the bonus episodes we regularly release to our This American Life Partners. To gain access to all the bonus episodes AND help us keep making This American Life, join at thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners.

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.