725: Turkey in a Face Mask

For Thanksgiving weekend, stories about food, and people who set out on very particular missions with food. 

5d

Act V

For our 25th Anniversary, a favorite episode from 2002. We devote this entire episode to one story: Over the course of six months, reporter and This American Life contributor Jack Hitt followed a group of inmates at a high-security prison as they rehearsed and staged a production of the last act—Act V—of Hamlet.

3w

Switched at Birth

For our 25th Anniversary, a favorite episode from 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 the wrong families. One of the mothers realized the mistake but chose to keep quiet. Until the day, more than 40 years later, when she decided to tell...

3w

724: Personal Recount

Stories of people changing their minds.

3w

723: Squeaker

Stories of people grappling with this endless presidential election.

4w

722: The Unreality of Now

Ahead of the election, we have stories about people trying to live in the unreality that defines this moment. Election officials combat a contagion among their very own workers; people who've never owned guns suddenly go buy them; and two women who allege they were sexually assaulted by the president compare notes.

Nov 2020

721: The Walls Close In

Stories of people who find themselves stuck in small spaces—an elevator, an attic, an orchestra pit—trying to make sense of their new surroundings. 

Oct 2020

720: The Moment After This Moment

Stories about people who are worried — or not worried enough! — about what's hurtling unstoppably towards them.

Oct 2020

719: Trust Me I’m a Doctor

A doctor who breaks the law might go to jail like anybody else. But who decides if that doctor gets to keep their medical license? On today’s show, the not-often-talked-about realm of licensing boards, and the disturbing decisions they sometimes make.   

Oct 2020

718: Same Bed, Different Dreams

In this moment when our country is so deeply divided, we have stories of people who are tied together, but imagine radically different futures. In one case, a movie star and her ex-husband plot against Kim Jong-Il. In another, a woman stalks her doppelgänger. And sometimes, one bed is the basis for an entire relationship, even for a man who almost never...

Sep 2020