This American Life – Details, episodes & analysis

Ira Glass has news to share about some things happening here at This American Life.

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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.

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Ira Glass shares some news about This American Life

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People deciding to do things that most of us do NOT choose to do. 

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• 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

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Two lawyers who work for ICE step forward and lift the curtain on what is really happening inside our immigration system right now.

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• 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

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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.

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• 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)

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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.

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• 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)

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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.

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• 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. 

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Ira always hated commencement speeches. Then he felt like he had to give this one.

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