This American Life (Unofficial)

Stories where the fine print changes everything, whether you read it or not.

It's tempting to act as your own lawyer, to argue your own cause. Who better to defend your position than you? This week, stories of pro se defenses: Some brilliant, some disastrous. A man fakes his way into an insane asylum by pretending to be crazy, and then can't argue his way back out. And another man uses vigilante justice to defend his sister's honor, using a strategy he didn't know he had in him.

Sometimes when things go wrong, parsing out who all is to blame and taking them to task is just too complicated and haaaard! What's easy is pinning it all on one person and watching them go down in flames.

This week we bring you little-known and surprising stories of how all sorts of institutions—from a controversial legal precedent to a Hollywood teen dance flick—began. In one story, a man tries to set the record straight about his life's achievements, which he says include inventing thumb wrestling and popularizing the eating of shrimp in the New York area. And the story of a seven-year-old old boy trying to figure out where he comes from.

Since Congress hasn't held 1930's-style hearings into the causes of the financial crisis, we stage one of our own. The subject? The regulators and watchdogs who were supposed to be overseeing the banks and the finance industry—to make sure things wouldn't blow up like they have. Clearly something went wrong. Today we pound a gavel and ask: Where were the watchmen?

A well-known activist—an anarchic, revolutionary activist—is accused of spying on other activists for the FBI. The strangest thing about the rumor is, it's true. How Brandon Darby transformed from cop-hater to federal witness. Plus, a story by Etgar Keret, about a boy who betrays his people with a pair of shoes.

Stories of people who find themselves in situations far from the beaten path, where there are no guidelines and no useful precedents, including the return of Squirrel Cop.

A live episode of the radio program, including stories told on stage by Dan Savage and Mike Birbiglia.

Stories of people forced to let go of their firmly held beliefs. When the daughter of a pro-choice activist concludes that abortion is murder, her mother goes to extraordinary lengths to persuade her daughter to switch sides. And after a woman loses her faith, a football coach—whom she's never met—tries to restore it.

The economy works in mysterious ways. This week, we highlight the unusual circumstances our economic drought has left us in, and the newly hatched plans being made to survive it.

Bernie Epton went down in history as the Other Guy: the white opponent who almost defeated the first black mayor of Chicago. But what's the real story of someone who ended up on the wrong side of history? That and other stories of people with wildly popular or unpopular views for one moment in time, and how those views stand up years, decades, even centuries later.

The collapse of the banking system explained, in just 59 minutes. Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson are back to help all of us understand the news. For instance, when we talk about an insolvent bank, what does it actually mean, and why are we giving hundreds of billions of dollars to rich bankers who screwed up their own businesses? Also, two guys go to New Jersey to look at a toxic asset.

Of all the 6 and a half billion people in the world, what are the odds that any two people are a real match? Stories from people who know they've beat the odds, and the lengths they've gone to do it. Including an American professor who sings Chinese opera for anyone who'll listen, to get one step closer to his mate, and Mike Birbiglia on meeting his girlfriend's... boyfriend.

Stories about what happens when someone new takes over—someone with a vision of how things ought to be. Including international economics correspondent Adam Davidson of the Planet Money podcast on how Obama's new stimulus plan might actually be the first ever test of a very, very old theory.

On the eve of Barack Obama's inauguration, we sent reporters out all over the country to talk to people about how they're feeling about this new president. Do they believe things will change? Do they think there'll be changes in their own lives? From dozens of hours of interviews, at a Marine Corps base and a button factory, at a New Orleans bar and a Florida town that used to be a stronghold for the Ku Klux Klan, we heard opinions about what would happen in America after the ceremony on January 20th, 2009.

This American Life spends several days in a mall in suburban Tennessee, to document life in the mall during the run-up to Christmas. Also, a rift in a national association of professional Santas—the Amalgamated Order of Real Bearded Santas (yes, there is such a group).

Stories of people who ruin things for everyone else...or who are accused of that. Like the San Diego parents who didn't vaccinate their child for measles.

A man in Pakistan wants to break his friend out of prison. He buys him an amulet that supposedly has the power to protect anyone from harm. But just to be on the safe side, he decides to test the amulet by trying it out first. On a chicken.

This week we bring you stories of privilege and the lengths some will go to to maintain it. In one story, a woman fights—on tape!—with her city's parking enforcer about playing favorites.

This American Life goes to Pennsylvania, a battleground within a battleground, to figure out why, and how, John McCain and Barack Obama both think they can win there. And we get to know the ordinary people who've become the candidates' most forceful foot soldiers.

Stories about people trying to find new solutions to age-old problems—solutions that sometimes cause problems of their own.

Alex Blumberg and NPR's Adam Davidson—the two guys who reported our Giant Pool of Money episode—are back, in collaboration with the Planet Money podcast.

Stories about people who take grand, sweeping approaches to solving problems of all sorts.

Stories about people who take the law into their own hands, even when the line between enforcing the rules and breaking them gets kind of hazy.

Shalom Auslander goes on vacation with his family, and 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.

Mike Birbiglia got used to strange things happening to him when he slept—until something happened that almost killed him. This and other reasons to fear sleep, including bedbugs, "The Shining," and mild-mannered husbands who turn into maniacs while asleep.

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.

Stories of people haunted by guilt over their role in others' deaths, even when everyone agrees they're blameless.

Governments are always looking for ways to change behavior—stopping people from driving drunk, or encouraging them to recycle. This week, we have stories of social engineering on a smaller scale.

Does the truth always come out? Of course not! Though sometimes it comes out in the most uncomfortable ways imaginable. Stories of concealed truths bubbling to the surface, including a brand-new, unpublished story by fiction writer and filmmaker Etgar Keret.

A lawyer in the Justice Department gets the professional opportunity of a lifetime: To be the lead prosecutor in one of the first high-profile terrorist cases since 9/11. But things go badly for him.

A special program about the housing crisis produced in a special collaboration with NPR News. We explain it all to you. What does the housing crisis have to do with the turmoil on Wall Street? Why did banks make half-million dollar loans to people without jobs or income? And why is everyone talking so much about the 1930s?

It’s the late 1960s, and a California TV repairman named Bob sees an opportunity to help people cheat death with the new science of cryonics. But freezing dead people isn’t easy. And apologizing for the mistakes you make along the way? Even harder.

Stories of the Bush Administration, its unique style of asserting presidential authority, and its quest to redefine the limits of presidential power.

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. In 2004, Bobby Dunbar's granddaughter discovered a secret beneath the legend of her grandfather's kidnapping, a secret whose revelation would divide her own family, bring redemption to another, and become the answer to a third family's century-old prayer.

People who try to revisit their childhoods—what they find and what they do not find.

The true story of little-known rooms in the New York City Board of Education building. Teachers are told to report there instead of their classrooms. No reason is usually given.

Veronica Chater's mother wants to go to a resort in Mexico with a friend. Her father, a former cop with an extravagant sense of security, prepares as if she's headed for a war zone. This, and other stories about couples, that happen decades after the moment their eyes meet.

This week we bring you backstage with comedy writers at The Onion. They start with over 600 potential headlines for their fake-news newspaper each week, and over the course of two days, in the very tough room that is their editorial conference room, they select 16 to go in the paper. Plus other people speaking their minds in very tough rooms.

Sabir, a young man in Afghanistan, thought he'd found true love but he couldn't afford a wedding. So two foreign aid workers, friends of his, decide to come to his rescue. They soon find out making a lasting love match isn't as simple as writing a check.

A 79-year-old woman, Mary Ann, dies in Los Angeles. She's lived alone for decades. No one knows her—or her next of kin. There's a body to be buried, a house full of stuff to get rid of.

A young girl named Sarah receives a heart transplant from a boy her age, and her mother sets off to find out more about the kid who saved her daughter's life. But years later, Sarah's not sure she wants to know.

Stories of the unintended consequences of market forces.

For Thanksgiving, the time of year when poultry consumption is highest, it's our annual program about turkeys, chickens, and fowl of all types.

There are umpteen TV shows about solving murders, endless whodunits in bookstores. But what happens to the people left behind after the detectives close the case? Three stories about children trying to figure out how to live normally after their parents have died.

Stories of adults taking very different approaches to communicating with children.

Stories of people trying to exorcize their inner demons.

Stories from the heart of heartbreak.

Stories of what can happen when you go from being a private person to a public face.

Stories about people taking history into their own hands. We hear from two men in two different wars. One is trying to make a difference in the current war in Iraq. The other is with the CIA at the very end of the Cold War.