This American Life (Unofficial)

While the seniors danced at Prom Night 2001 in Hoisington, Kansas—a town of about 3,000—a tornado hit the town, destroying about a third of it. When they emerged from the dance, they discovered what had happened, and in the weeks that followed, they tried to explain to themselves why the tornado hit where it did. Plus other stories that happen on Prom Night.

Stories of people worshiping false idols, and whether that's always a bad thing.

Stories of people trying to love their neighbors, and failing.

Stories about the legacy of absent parents. We hear four cases from the files of the Missing Parents Bureau.

Stories that make us cringe, and an investigation into just what, exactly, makes some stories capable of forcing this physical reaction out of us when other stories don't. We hear tales of personal humiliation, romance gone wrong, and people who profoundly misjudge how they're perceived by others.

A special show, composed entirely of stories from just one This American Life contributor: Scott Carrier, whose strange and compelling stories sound like nothing else on the radio.

Stories of people who try to revisit their childhoods. What they find. And what they do not find.

The story in a way of a town that time forgot, or more accurately, a town that tried to forget the times. A special broadcast co-hosted by award-winning journalist Alex Kotlowitz, author of the books There Are No Children Here and The Other Side of the River.

We answer the following questions about superpowers: Can superheroes be real people? (No.) Can real people become superheroes? (Maybe.) And which is better: flight or invisibility? (Depends who you ask.)

Stories of people living completely outside the grid of American life. Americans in Paris. Chinese in America. West Virginians in treehouses. Mexican-Americans in Rochester.

In the wake of the 2001 election debacle in Florida, the two political halves of this country seemed angrier at each other than they had in decades. This week we bring you tales of that widening rift. Democrats explain why they're having trouble getting over it, and Republicans explain why this is so infuriating.

What goes on while mom and dad are away, that mom and dad never find out about. Including the story of two teenagers who decide to invent children to babysit, as an excuse to get out of their own house.

They mean something, whether we want them to or not.

A story of self-deception, a story about deceiving others, and a story about accidental deception. And how one type of deception can easily turn into another.

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

Stories for the eve of the Presidential election, in which we try to evade, sidestep or look beneath the candidates' soundbites.

We live in a big enough country that there are lots of laws too obscure for most of us to have heard of...but which actually affect tens of thousands of lives in huge ways. This show deals with one of them: A 1996 immigration law that the Immigration Service itself says is unfair. Most of the law's original sponsors in Congress now say they went too far, and that they were too harsh when they passed the law. And yet most of the law's key provisions still stand unchanged.

We as a nation declared our independence based on, among other things, the right to pursue our happiness. But what does it mean, over two centuries later, to grow up in a country with an inalienable right to pursue happiness? Stories of people pursuing happiness, and sometimes, achieving it.

There are all sorts of situations in which we suspect the fix is in, but we almost never find out for certain. On today's show, for once, we find out. The whole program is devoted to one story, in which we go inside the back rooms of one multinational corporation and hear the intricate workings—recorded on tape—of how they put the fix in.

Stories of people who are engaged in something that's both difficult and probably futile: Trying to control how they'll be seen by generations to come.

Three stories that consider the question: Does anyone's family ever change?

Many Americans have dreamy and romantic ideas about Paris, notions which probably trace back to the 1920s vision of Paris created by the expatriate Americans there. But what's it actually like in Paris if you're an American, without rose-colored glasses?

Every crime scene hides a story. In this week's show, we hear about crime scenes and the stories they tell.

Stories of a typically American kind of hero: The person who decides to fight city hall, who stands up alone for what's right, and damn the consequences. We hear the story of two idealists who work in government, two centuries after another set of idealists created the American government. Both of the modern idealists suffer and sacrifice because of their ideals; both lose their jobs.

Stories of people who did not want to move but circumstance forced their hands, and so they tried to move without really moving.

Imagine that you could somehow look down from above, onto all the streets and avenues and country roads and highways of this nation...each car below its own tiny subculture on wheels...glass and steel worlds rolling down the street alongside each other. We hear what's going on inside some of these cars.

In context of the Presidential contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore, we hear stories of character assassination—political and non-political.

Stories of moms: How they treat us, how we treat them.

The pleasure of being in a rampaging, angry mob...and the terror of being in a rampaging, angry mob.

All those people you see in the middle of the workday, in coffee shops and bookstores? Who are they? Why aren't they at work?

Usually This American Life brings you stories of people in the middle of big experiences. But sometimes these moments of dramatic change are only half the story. The other half occurs after time passes and they return to revisit what happened, and who they were back when. Today's show is about what they find.

Stories of people who tell a lie and then believe the lie more than anyone else does. In other words: Stories about people pulling hoaxes...on themselves.

Stories of dogs and cats and other animals that live in our homes. Exactly how much are they caught up in everyday family dynamics? We answer this question and others.

Stories of what people are playing at when they play with dolls.

Stories of love in its earliest stage. Crushes: what's terrible about them, what's great about them and how they can overshadow real love for some people.

Today's program is made all of stories from the New Hampshire primary. Voters want to find a candidate who inspires them. Candidates want to inspire. So where's the system failing? Why do most of us feel like the system doesn't produce anyone inspiring? We hear stories that answer why. We hear from voters who've found candidates they love. And we hear what those voters are seeing that the rest of us aren't.

Stories of kids trying to act like adults—some by choice—some because they're forced to.

In the hospital, we give up our normal schedule and sleep patterns; we give up our normal food and clothing; we're in a place that has its own rules and its own language and its own customs. And in the midst of all this, there's this complicated human interaction we have to negotiate: We have to deal with doctors and nurses to get the care we need. In this show we hear stories of those delicate and sometimes not-so-delicate negotiations.

A special Christmas edition of our show, with stories about Santa Claus—me It was in America, in New York, that people started believing in the modern idea of Santa—a guy who comes down the chimney with a sack of goodies. But America has invented a few other Santas as well.

It's an odd fact of religious life in America that in this country founded by Christians, in which a majority of people say they believe in God and identify themselves as Christians, that so many religious Christians feel they're an oppressed minority. They say the media doesn't share their values. That secular institutions undermine their beliefs. And the job of raising Christian children, they'll tell you, is like trying to do God's work from behind enemy lines. This week we're devoting our whole show to the kids they're struggling to bring up.

Stories of nature creeping into man-made environments. Of nature sneaking in places where its very presence is a rebuke to the notion that we as a species have things under control.

For Thanksgiving, the time of year when poultry consumption is highest, it's our annual program about turkeys, chickens, fowl of all types, and their mysterious hold over our imaginations. This show includes favorite stories from previous Poultry Shows, and some new stories.

One reason we tell stories is to explain things to ourselves that cannot, in the end, always be explained. When someone we're close to dies, we struggle for a way to get our minds around the fact of their absence. And often—the stories we invent aren't quite up to the job. In this week's show, people struggle to invent words adequate to cope with death.

We've all heard occasional news stories about how some of the drug laws enacted in the last 15 years may have gone too far. First time offenders get locked up for decades. Judges—even Republican appointees—say that mandatory minimum sentences prevent them from making fair rulings. But have sentences really gone too far? This hour examines the areas where a consensus is growing on the problems in federal drug laws, and it explains the areas where drug laws seem to be administered fairly.

We hear the story of one African-American single mother. Barbara Clinkscales recorded her family's life over the course of seven months for This American Life. Her life defies—or makes irrelevant—most of our typical notions of inner-city, black single mothers.

Stories of people who are trying to make invisible worlds visible, and what happens when you make them visible.

Stories of family businesses, and what happens when the tension of family dynamics collides with the pressure of capitalist market forces.

Stories of political idealists, stories designed to provide some small sense of hope about American politics. Most of these were first broadcast during the 1996 Presidential race.

Stories of people drawn to some idea, some picture, some "thing" that they just want to be. How some people imitate this "thing" innocently, some less innocently, and how easy it is to slip from one to the other.

Stories of people who believe a book changed their life. It's a romantic notion, and one reason we believe it is because we want to believe our lives can be changed by something so simple as an idea — or a set of ideas contained in a book.