This American Life (Unofficial)

Stories about the pitfalls of trying to do the right thing.

When he was a teenager, Haider worked in the Iraqi Ministry of Information. He was specially trained to talk to visiting dignitaries and foreign reporters, and he loved his job. It was exciting, and he was treated like a celebrity.

Josh's mother and younger brother were a mess. His mother drank too much. His brother got arrested a lot. Josh hadn't lived with them since he was nine, and they didn't play much of a role in his daily life—until duty called, and they took over his life. Josh told the sequel to this story at our live show in 2014.

Four years into the Iraq War, what have we learned? Soldiers, civilians, Iraqis, and Americans talk—and sometimes yell—about what they've learned in the last few years...including how to stay alive and why the aftermath of a war can be the trickiest time of all.

For Easter weekend — and the end of Passover! — stories of people struggling to follow the Ten Commandments.

An updated version of our episode "Habeas Schmabeas," which won a 2006 Peabody Award. Listen to a special, uncut version.

Stories of people trying to recover from damage to their reputations—sometimes caused by others, sometimes self-inflicted.

Stories of sudden fame, quick riches, and the downside of the dream job.

Stories recorded during our 2007 live tour. Sarah Vowell, David Rakoff, Dan Savage, and other favorite contributors went on the road with us to New York, Boston, Minneapolis, Chicago, Seattle, and Los Angeles; and performed brand-new stories in front of sold-out audiences.

Stories of proxy fights, proxy arguments, and proxy situations of all kinds.

A man with social anxiety goes through a transformation on a TV game show, a young woman with high ideals has them dashed by a TV game show, and teams compete to solve some of the hardest puzzles in the world, for fun.

An old man in Brooklyn invites some homeless prostitutes into his house on a cold winter night. They never leave. Plus other stories about houses, such as the United States Congress, where the inhabitants don't always act as they should.

An American reporter in Iraq decides to rent a house in a residential Baghdad neighborhood rather than live in a hotel and be an easy target for insurgents. And an eleven-year-old boy figures out an ingenious way to see his dead father again. Big ideas gone amok.

The mysterious hold supers have on their buildings, or that their buildings have on them.

A Muslim woman persuades her husband that their family would be happier if they left the West Bank and moved to America. They do, and things are good...until September 11. After that, the elementary school their daughter goes to begins using a textbook that says Muslims want to kill Christians.

Stories of people who are in over their heads and trying to stay afloat.

Recently, the British medical journal The Lancet published an study which updated their estimate of the number of Iraqis who've died since the U.S. invasion. With that in mind, we revisit a show we did in 2005 about the earlier study published in Lancet estimating the number of Iraqi deaths. That study was mostly ignored in the U.S. Alex Blumberg revisits the original study and looks at the new one.

For the lead up to Halloween, scary stories that are all true. Zombie raccoons, haunted houses—real haunted houses!—and things that go "EEEEK!!!" in the night. Plus, a story by David Sedaris in which he walks among the dead.

A family wishes for years that they could do something to stop their neighbor's shocking behavior. Suddenly they get the power to decisively change things forever...and they have to decide whether they will. This, and other stories of everyday people who get saddled with great power—and the great sense of responsibility that goes with it.

Can love be taught? A family uses a controversial therapy to train their son to love them. And other stories about the hard and sometimes painful work of loving other people.

True stories that follow the plotline of the old kid's song "The Cat Came Back." It's the simplest plot in the world: Something you thought was gone forever keeps returning, against all odds.

Original stories from David Sedaris, Jonathan Goldstein, and others, on two animals who don't even seem like they should know each other, much less appear on the same radio show.

A grown man tries to get to the bottom of why his schoolmates threw him in a lake 20 years earlier. And a woman buys a house on the cheap, with the understanding that the seller will soon vacate. Ten years later, she's still waiting.

Stories about kids who actually want their parents looking out for them.

In this show we return to two radio programs originally broadcast in 1996 and 1997. In one show, listeners came onstage with their letters, which they read aloud. In another, listeners from around the country talked about all the brand new sorts of experiences they were having with this new technology that had entered everyone's lives, the Internet. Each show, in its way, is a kind of time capsule.

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

The right of habeas corpus has been a part of our country's legal tradition longer than we've actually been a country. It means that our government has to explain why it's holding a person in custody. But now, the War on Terror has nixed many of the rules we used to think of as fundamental. At Guantanamo Bay, our government initially claimed that prisoners should not be covered by habeas—or even by the Geneva Conventions—because they're the most fearsome enemies we have. But is that true? Is it a camp full of terrorists, or a camp full of our mistakes?

Stories about the kinds of chase games that just never end. From the high California desert to a high-end furniture showroom.

In honor of Valentine's Day, This American Life brings you stories of how love blossoms, even when (perhaps) it shouldn't.

Stories that take place on the edge of civilization, just out of sight.

A girl signs up for a class. A couple hires an accountant. A group of co-workers decides to pool their money and buy a couple of lottery tickets. In the beginning, they're full of hope and optimism — and then something turns. Stories of good ideas gone bad.

A full-throttle, show-stopping, no-holds-barred Christmas Spectacular! Shedding the crusty old Christmas stories of yore, we bring you new holiday classics. With special musical guest Marah!

The story of Reverend Carlton Pearson. He was a rising star in the evangelical movement when he cast aside the idea of hell and, with it, everything he'd worked for over his entire life.

Variations on an old tale, with very modern consequences. Cambodia is competing with other nations for the business of big clothing companies all over the world...but they've vowed to follow fair labor practices. Other countries end up with the contracts, and the profits.

Someone once said, "If you're not willing to be changed by a place, there's no point in going." This week, stories about what happens when you land in a whole new world.

Stories about the lengths we go to make things right, and about what money can and cannot fix.

About a year ago, a study estimated the number of Iraqi casualties since the war began at 100,000 dead—higher than any other estimate. The study was mostly ignored. Alex Blumberg revisits that study to look at the reality behind it. In Act One he reports that not only is the study probably accurate, but it says that most of the deaths were caused by coalition forces (despite concerted efforts to avoid civilian casualties). In Act Two, we hear U.S. forces trying to cope in the aftermath of some of those deaths.

Stories about people and places that have come back to life after everything seemed lost.

How far will we go to get money? And once we've got it, what should we spend it on? The first half of this show is on making money, and the second half on spending it.

It's the largest mass resettlement that America has seen since the Civil War, as over 400,000 people—victims of Hurricane Katrina—try to find a new place to live. From the Houston Astrodome to an abandoned New Orleans street, stories of people looking for home...and finding something else.

Surprising stories from survivors in New Orleans. We give people who were in the storm more time than daily news coverage can to tell their stories and talk about what they're thinking. This leads to a number of ideas that haven't made it into the regular news coverage.

Stories about being sucked into something against your will. In one story, a 9/11 widow finds herself having to comfort another distraught woman on national TV. And in a story by Nick Hornby, a boy is forced to play soccer to save his nation.

Stories of people and institutions who are worried about what the world thinks of them, and who take action...decisive action.

Stories about the pitfalls of knowing just a little bit too little.

The U.S. government spent two years on a sting operation trapping an Indian man named Hemant Lakhani, whom they suspected of being an illegal arms dealer. It's one of the few cases that has gone to trial in the War on Terror, and one the Justice Department has pointed to as one of their big successes. In the end, they got Lakhani, red-handed, delivering a missile to a terrorist in New Jersey. The only problem was, nothing in the sting was what it appeared to be. Including the missile.

Stories about getting back together with your parent, your spouse, your ... Brahman bull. And how it never goes the way you think it's going to.

At a time when House Majority Leader Tom Delay calls for enacting a "Biblical world view" in government, when Christians are asserting their ideals in the selection of judges, in public school science classes and elsewhere, This American Life spends an hour trying to remember why anyone liked the separation of church and state in the first place.

In honor of Father’s Day, stories of sons and daughters finding out the one thing they've always wanted to know about their father. The answers aren't always what they’d hoped for.

Stories about how easy it is for communication to go awry, and what the consequences can be after it does.

Stories about people who end up making choices they'd rather not make, when their options begin to run out. Sometimes this works out great; sometimes not so great.