884: The Idiot

M. Gessen returns to our show with a true-crime story that takes place entirely within their own family. This story comes to us from the producers at Serial Productions—who invented the true-crime podcast more than a decade ago—and from The New York Times. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Act One: M Gessen tells Ira Glass about the surprising events that prompted them to begin reporting on their own family for their new podcast, The Idiot. They play the first episode of the series. (14 minutes)Act Two: Ira Glass and M Gessen continue to talk through the story of M’s cousin, Allen Gessen. They play more clips from the podcast, and we finally hear about the big, shocking thing that snapped their family apart. (20 minutes)Act Three: M Gessen tells Ira Glass about Allen’s trial, and we hear a recording of his conversation with the undercover agent. (21 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

In the early days of the radio show, Ira did a series of interviews with his parents that completely changed his relationship with them. This week, he returns to those interviews. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: Ira talks about why four conversations reveal how his relationship with his parents changed. (4 minutes)Act One: Ira’s mom, Shirley, is invited to lead a discussion about how to get along with your adult children. Her adult children question her expertise. (9 minutes)Act Two: Ira asks his parents for advice on how he should build the radio show. His parents don’t hold back. (9 minutes)Act Three: Ira talks with his dad, Barry, about Barry’s own brief and doomed career in radio. (21 minutes)Act Four: An interview with Ira’s mom that, to this day, makes Ira’s skin crawl. (13 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

Stories that take place on the edge of civilization, just out of sight. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: Every city's got a place like this: that weird no man's land on the outskirts of town, with junk yards and landfills. Charlie Gregerson grew up near that stuff, on Chicago's far south side, and he remembers finding debris from famous Louis Sullivan masterpieces in the garbage dump after those buildings were demolished. (4 minutes)Act One: Out for a simple pleasure cruise with two friends, Alex Zharov was planning to see Jamaica Bay in New York City. But this end-of-the-day excursion, which should have only lasted 40 minutes, turns into an out-of-control adventure that left him lost, stranded, and bleeding—all within sight of the Empire State Building. Brett Martin reports. (23 minutes)Act Two: There is a four-mile-long bridge in Naan-jing China, famous for how many people jump off to die by suicide. In 2003, a man named Chen Sah began spending all of his weekends on the bridge, trying to single-handedly stop the jumpers. Reporter Mike Paterniti tells his story of meeting Mr. Chen. (15 minutes)Act Three: The story of the government cracking down on smokestack emissions at a city factory, even though the residents like the emissions. We hear from Jorge Just, who explains the one, magical secret about Chicago that no one outside Chicago ever believes is true. (9 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

Two lawyers who work for ICE step forward and lift the curtain on what is really happening inside our immigration system right now. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: Two lawyers dive into the details of what they’ve witnessed behind the scenes in different parts of the immigration system. (2 minutes)Act One: Former ICE attorney Ryan Schwank explains the chaos and dysfunction he observed at an ICE training academy, which led him to whistleblow to Congress two weeks ago. (12 minutes)Act Two: A federal judge orders the government to immediately release a bunch of people from detention. Days pass, and the government doesn’t comply. So the judge calls a hearing to figure out what’s going on. The lawyer's response is not what he or anybody expected. (25 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

Stories of high drama from America's workplaces — surprising, emotional places full of the greed, jealousy, and ambition of real politics. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: We hear three stories of how conflicts are resolved in offices. Two of those stories come from sociologist Calvin Morrill, who studied the executive suites at a number of large companies in his book The Executive Way: Conflict Management in Corporations. The last story comes from host Ira Glass, who talks about how he ended up punching his own boss in the stomach in front of all his co-workers. (12 minutes)Act One: Starlee Kine with the story of a company in turmoil. A young employee gets in a jam and discovers that in times of trouble, when all else has failed, companies in her industry turn to one woman in a suburban home in Long Island, who solves their corporate problems while the TV plays in the background. (12 minutes)Act Two: David Rakoff discusses the world of birthdays and other holidays, as they're celebrated on the job... and what happens when you call yourself an editorial assistant but the editor you're assisting calls you a secretary. (15 minutes)Act Three: Julie Snyder explains the office politics of street vendors on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Eighth Street in New York City. With her is sociologist Mitch Duneier, who spent years working with the vendors and writing about them for his book Sidewalk. (14 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

People deciding to do things that most of us do NOT choose to do.  Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: A new documentary called The Boys and the Bees captures a moment where a six-year-old has a very unlikely wish, and his dad decides to grant it. Host Ira Glass talks with filmmaker Arielle Knight about what happens next. (9 minutes)Act One: John Tothill tells the story of Edward Dando, a 19th-century British glutton who would eat hundreds of oysters at a time and then run out on the check. John makes the case that we should all be more like Edward Dando. (15 minutes)Act Two: Producer Tobin Low listens in as Evan Roberts calls up an ex for the first time in years and tries to make the case that they should have been friends all along. (16 minutes)Act Three: Producer Zoe Chace brings us a dispatch from a courtroom in Texas this week, where on the very first day of a landmark federal trial about Antifa, the judge makes an unusual decision that no one sees coming. (15 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

Kids using perfectly logical arguments and arriving at perfectly wrong conclusions. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: Ira talks with Rebecca who, using perfectly valid evidence, arrived at the perfectly incorrect conclusion that her neighbor, Ronnie Loeberfeld, was the tooth fairy. Ira also talks with Dr. Alison Gopnik, co-author of the book, "The Scientist in the Crib," about what exactly kid logic is. (6 minutes)Act One: More stories like the one in the prologue, where kids look at something going on around them, observe it carefully, think about it logically, and come to conclusions that are completely incorrect. (11 minutes)Act Two: Michael Chabon reads an excerpt from his short story "Werewolves in Their Youth," from his collection of the same name, about an act of kid logic that succeeds where adult logic fails. (16 minutes)Act Three: Howie Chackowicz tried a risky combination when he was little, kid logic with puppy love. He used to think that girls would fall in love with him if they could just see him sleeping or hear him read aloud. He revisits his biggest childhood crush and finds out that not only did his methods not work, but that no one even noticed them. (10 minutes)Act Four: Alex Blumberg investigates a little-studied phenomenon: Children who get a mistaken idea in their heads about how something works or what something means, and then don't figure out until well into adulthood that they were wrong. Including the tale of a girl who received a tissue box for Christmas, allegedly painted by trained monkeys. (13 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

An episode from our show's early days: Stories about what happens when strangers are kind — and when they're not. Prologue: Brett Leveridge was standing on the subway platform when a man walked by, stopping in front of each passenger to deliver a quiet verdict: "You're in. You're out. You can stay. You—gotta go." Most people ignored him. But Brett found himself hoping for the thumbs up. (5 minutes)Act One: New York City locksmith Joel Kostman tells the story of an act of kindness he committed, hoping for a small reward. (13 minutes)Act Two: In 1940, Jack Geiger, at the age of fourteen, left his middle-class Jewish home and knocked on the door of a Black actor named Canada Lee. He asked Lee if he could move in with him. Lee said yes. In Lee's Harlem apartment, Geiger spent a year among many of the great figures of the Harlem Renaissance: Langston Hughes, Billy Strayhorn, Richard Wright, Adam Clayton Powell. (11 minutes)Act Three: How two next-door neighbors start treating each other badly, and how their feud becomes an all-consuming obsession. Paul Tough reports. (14 minutes)Act Four: For five weeks, a singer named Nick Drakides stood on a stoop in the East Village, singing Sinatra songs late at night to the delight of his neighbors. The cops didn't bust him; the crowds behaved. It was his gift to New York. Blake Eskin tells the story. (12 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

911 calls unlike any we’ve heard before, and other stories about immigration agents sweeping through America. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: A collection of 911 calls where you can hear immigration enforcement moving through different cities and leaving chaos in their wake. (9 minutes)Act One: More 911 calls, including people on the line with dispatchers as ICE is chasing them, trying to puzzle out their next moves. (22 minutes)Act Two: Home Depots keep getting raided over and over again in Los Angeles. And day laborers are still showing up in store parking lots to find work every day.  So what’s that like? Months and months of that cat and mouse? Anayansi Diaz-Cortes went to find out. (11 minutes)Act Three: Memo Torres tries to build an archive of every person taken by federal agents in Southern California. (11 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

In the new year, stories of people trying a radical approach to solving their problems. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: Ira meets two sisters who got into a fight, and then learned a lesson in turning the other cheek. (8 minutes)Act One: A hardened PI works the toughest case of his very young life. (18 minutes)Act Two: Producer Aviva DeKornfeld talks to a man who finds himself the target of vengeful crows. (8 minutes)Act Three: Comedian Josh Johnson wonders if some people should’ve been spanked as kids. (10 minutes)Act Four: Writer Etgar Keret reads his story about a bus driver who refuses to open the doors for late passengers. (9 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.