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This American Life: Episodes

Stories about kids being mean to each other... including a mysterious handbook for bullies, a surprising experiment conducted by a teacher who wants to make kids be nice, and a story of youthful backstabbing told by David Sedaris.<div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.thisamericanlife.org/~ff/talpodcast?a=OMNnEWehKRQ:c1BMkOZXQ1U:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img ...
Dr. Benjamin Gilmer (left) gets a job at a rural clinic. He finds out he’s replaced someone &mdash; also named Dr. Gilmer (picture) &mdash; who went to prison after killing his own father. But the more Benjamin’s patients talk about the other Dr. Gilmer, the more confused he becomes. Everyone loved ...
We pick up where we left off <a href="http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/487/harper-high-school-part-one">last week</a> in our second hour from Harper High School in Chicago. We find out if a shooting in the neighborhood will derail the school's Homecoming game and dance. We hear ...
We spent five months at Harper High School in Chicago, where last year alone 29 current and recent students were shot. 29. We went to get a sense of what it means to live in the midst of all this gun violence, how teens and adults navigate a world of funerals and Homecoming dances. We found so many incredible ...
Five ways of mapping the world. One story about people who make maps the traditional way — by drawing things we can see. And other stories about people who map the world using smell, sound, touch, and taste. The world redrawn by the five senses.<div class="feedflare">
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This holiday season we bring you a show filled with stories of people going to great lengths to throw a special Christmas for their families. Including tales of Luna the guinea pig (pictured), Bambi the reindeer, and Jeko the super-powerful (and somewhat-scary) Christmas elf.<div class="feedflare">
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What animals sacrifice for us, and what we sacrifice for them. Including a story from Susan Orlean about dogs in World War II, and the <em>This American Life</em> staff confronts Ira about his dog, Piney.<br /><br />
<strong>Photo:</strong> Dog wearing suicide bomb vest, 1943.<div class="feedflare">
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<p>This week, at the suggestion of a 14-year-old listener, we bring you stories from the awkward, confusing, hormonally charged world of middle school. Including a teacher who transforms peer pressure into a force for good, and reports from the frontlines of the middle school dance.</p>

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Everyone knows that politics is now so divided in our country that not only do the 2 sides disagree on the solutions to the country’s problems, they don’t even agree on what the problems are. It’s 2 versions of the world in collision. This week we hear from people who’ve seen this infect their ...
Stories of people breaking the rules fully, completely
and with no bad consequences. Some justify this by saying they’re doing it
for others, or for a greater good. Some really don’t care. And, unlike the
mealy weaklings you usually hear on this program: None of these wrongdoers
seem regretful ...
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 (the picture at left was taken just days later). Reporter Tal McThenia co-authored a book about the Bobby Dunbar story called <em><a ...
Mike Birbiglia got used to strange things happening to him when he slept—until something happened that almost killed him (Mike's story is now a feature film, <a href="http://www.thisamericanlife.org/sleepwalk"><em>Sleepwalk With Me</em></a>). This and other reasons to fear sleep, including bedbugs, ...
Only the clever need apply. This week, stories of people acting on a
technicality in the face of some of life's toughest regulators: financial
regulators, parents and God.<div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.thisamericanlife.org/~ff/talpodcast?a=dXO_8EVCOf8:XfdG5knlse0:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/talpodcast?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" ...
Stories about people in trouble, who look for help in mystifying places. A 15-year-old boy travels more than 1,000 miles, alone, to seek out his hero, whom he's never met. And from <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/wiretap"><em>Wiretap</em></a>, Jonathan Goldstein and David Rakoff tell the story of a man with ...
Sometimes when something is happening right under your nose, it becomes even harder to notice than if it were happening in secret. Stories of people of using that to their advantage, including one man who takes down some of the most powerful criminals in the world.<div class="feedflare">
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It used to be that the American expats in China were the big shots. They had the money, the status, the know-how. But that's changed. What's it like to be an American living in China now? And what do they understand about China that we don't?<div class="feedflare">
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Stories about the casino game everyone thinks they can beat. In one, a woman gambles away her inheritance and then sues the casino, saying they're to blame. In another, Christians join forces to take down casinos &mdash; by becoming professional card-counting blackjack players. Plus: MIT Blackjack Team ...
Every crime scene hides a story. In this week's show, we hear about crime scenes and the stories they tell.<div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.thisamericanlife.org/~ff/talpodcast?a=Hofcf722Q74:xcJe-HbdR0k:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/talpodcast?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0" ...
In 1982, the Guatemalan military massacred the villagers of Dos Erres, killing more than 200 people. Thirty years later, a Guatemalan living in the US got a phone call from a woman who told him that two boys had been abducted during the massacre -- and he was one of them. ProPublica's print version: ...
This week, the radio debut of the episode we just did live on stage and beamed to movie theatres all over the country. David Sedaris, David Rakoff, Tig Notaro and Ryan Knighton performed stories. Mike Birbiglia made a short film, co-starring Terry Gross, which you can see <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=YTVFNZKuN-g">here</a>.<div ...
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