This American Life show

This American Life

Summary: Official free, weekly podcast of the award-winning radio show "This American Life." First-person stories and short fiction pieces that are touching, funny, and surprising. Hosted by Ira Glass, from WBEZ Chicago Public Media, and distributed by Public Radio International. In mp3 and updated Mondays.

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  • Artist: Chicago Public Media
  • Copyright: Copyright 1995-2015 Chicago Public Media & Ira Glass

Podcasts:

 #110: Mapping | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Five ways of mapping the world. One story about people who make maps the traditional way — by drawing things we can see. And other stories about people who map the world using smell, sound, touch, and taste. The world redrawn by the five senses.

 #482: Lights, Camera, Christmas! | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

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. Including tales of Luna the guinea pig (pictured), Bambi the reindeer, and Jeko the super-powerful (and somewhat-scary) Christmas elf.

 #304: Heretics | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

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 worked for over his entire life.

 #481: This Week | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

This week we take on ... this week. Stories united by one thing: They all happened in the seven days prior to broadcast. We try our hand reporting the global stories in Egypt and Afghanistan; and take on super local stories, too, like a man who tries valiantly — valiantly! — to actually get out of bed when his alarm clock goes off. You can also see this week in pictures. Pictured: Hyder Akbar’s car after he was ambushed in Kunar Province.

 #479: Little War on the Prairie | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Growing up in Mankato, Minnesota, John Biewen says, nobody ever talked about the most important historical event ever to happen there: in 1862, it was the site of the largest mass execution in U.S. history. Thirty-eight Dakota Indians were hanged after a war with white settlers. John went back to Minnesota to figure out what really happened 150 years ago, and why Minnesotans didn’t talk about it much after.

 #449: Middle School | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

This week, at the suggestion of a 14-year-old listener, we bring you stories from the awkward, confusing, hormonally charged world of middle school. Including a teacher who transforms peer pressure into a force for good, and reports from the frontlines of the middle school dance. (Pictured: 7th graders at a costume dance, dressed as chararacters from The Outsiders.)

 #478: Red State Blue State | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Everyone knows that politics is now so divided in our country that not only do the 2 sides disagree on the solutions to the country’s problems, they don’t even agree on what the problems are. It’s 2 versions of the world in collision. This week we hear from people who’ve seen this infect their personal lives. They’ve lost friends. They’ve become estranged from family members. A special pre-election episode of our show.

 #283: Remember Me | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Stories about people who are remembered very differently than they'd wished. The ghost of a kindly, distinguished philanthropist supposedly plays pranks on guests at a Ramada hotel in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. A dying mother makes a tape for her developmentally disabled daughter, hoping she'll watch it someday, knowing she might not.

 #477: Getting Away With It | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Stories of people breaking the rules fully, completely and with no bad consequences. Some justify this by saying they’re doing it for others, or for a greater good. Some really don’t care. And, unlike the mealy weaklings you usually hear on this program: None of these wrongdoers seem regretful about what they’ve done in the slightest.

 #172: 24 Hours at the Golden Apple | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

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 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, various assorted drunks, and, of course, cops.

 #476: What Doesn't Kill You | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Stories of how people cope after brushes with death. Sometimes death comes as a disease. Sometimes it swims up and bites you. And sometimes it's a pen or pencil, sitting there, just waiting for you to ingest it. Tig Notaro's comedy set is at Louis CK's site.

 #475: Send a Message | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

This week people reach out in all kinds of ways to try and get their point across. And the recipients of those messages try to decipher what they mean. Messages in code, over the phone, and from beyond the grave.

 #447: The Incredible Case of the P.I. Moms | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

What do you get when you take a P.I. firm, then add in a bunch of sexy soccer moms, official sponsorship from Glock, a lying boss, and delusions of grandeur? This week's show.

 #474: Back to School | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

As kids and teachers head back to school, we wanted to turn away from questions about politics and unions and money and all the regular school stuff people argue about, and turn to something more optimistic — an emerging theory about what to teach kids, from Paul Tough's new book How Children Succeed. Photo: Theo takes the marshmallow test.

 #352: The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

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 handyman in Mississippi (the picture at left was taken just days later). Reporter Tal McThenia co-authored a book about the Bobby Dunbar story called A Case For Solomon.

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