In 1996, there were 40 original This American Life episodes; the first nine were broadcast under the original name of the program Your Radio Playhouse.
Description: When comedian Julia Sweeney and her brother both got cancer, she decided to tell the story the best way she knew how: in a comedy club. It might seem like a strange choice, but what resulted is halfway between standup comedy and true-life diary entries.
Description: Susan Bergman's father was a family man, head of the church choir, and, secretly, having sex with men. He died before his children had a chance to really talk to him about what they should make of his hidden life. When Bergman wrote a book about her family's experience, other gay men tried to explain her father's actions to her. That, and other stories of parents deceiving their children.
Description: Stories made from old tapes found in various places, including a "letter on tape" found in a Salvation Army thrift store. Host Ira Glass with tapes of his father on the radio, circa 1956. And radio producer Nora Moreno with tapes of her father, a Spanish broadcasting pioneer in America. Her mother fell in love with him over the radio, with tragic results.
Prologue
Act 1: Berrian Springs Michigan, Circa 1967 – Davis family tapes
Description: Writer Jack Hitt goes on a search for a mysterious neighbor from his childhood in Charleston, South Carolina, and stumbles onto an epic story of the Old South, the New South, gender confusion, Chihuahuas, and changing values in American journalism.
Description: April first is the one day of the year when we're allowed to enjoy deceiving others. But April Fools' Day is for amateur deceivers. The real pros are the people who can't control their lying, who lie without even knowing what the truth is. Everyone's known someone like this, but it's a topic that's only rarely studied or discussed publicly. Journalist and TAL contributing editor Margy Rochlin co-hosts.
Description: A show about something most people have gone through. Friends get together to start a business, start a church, do political action together. And after a while, they start fighting and split up. We hear three true stories.
Description: Stories of the difficult relationships between parents and their grown children, including two long stories from Sandra Tsing Loh about her father.
Description: A set of documentary stories, radio essays and monologues about basketball, the Chicago Bulls, and their grip on Chicagoans' hearts and lives during the NBA Playoffs. These are unusual stories about people in the throes of love for basketball, including a story about the dreams about the Bulls Chicagoans have while sleeping.
Description: Writer David Sedaris recalls the days when his mother and sister played armchair detective—until a very odd crime wave hit within their own home. Plus, host Ira Glass goes out on surveillance with a real-life private eye.
Description: Open Mic at the Lunar Cabaret. Host Ira Glass and playwright David Hauptschein took out advertisements in Chicago inviting people to come to a small theater with letters they've received, sent or found. People came for two nights and read their letters onstage. Some were funny. Some were poignant. They told a wide range of stories: a heartfelt letter from prison, a hilariously pretentious job letter sent to the New Yorker magazine, a ringingly sincere teenage "should we be more than friends" letter. Four hours of letters were recorded in all. These were edited down to an hour of letters, with a few unusual songs about letters thrown in.
Description: Radio producer Scott Carrier quit his job at a low moment in his life. His wife left him and took the kids. And he got a job interviewing schizophrenics for some medical researchers. After doing it a while, he began to wonder if he was a schizophrenic himself. And more stories.
Act 2: Tribe – Peter Clowney interviews cast members of a production of Hair.
Act 3: The Port Chicago 50: An Oral History – Dan Collison interviews Albert Williams, Freddy Meeks, Joseph Small, Percy Robinson, and Robert Routh, survivors of the Port Chicago disaster; unsafe conditions working with ammunition.
Description: Simulated worlds, Civil war reenactments, wax museums, simulated coal mines, fake ethnic restaurants, an ersatz Medieval castle and other re-created worlds that thrive all across America.
Act I: Travels in Hyper-Reality; a Quick National Tour.
Description: Inspired by a spate of new Chicago stage adaptations of the Faust story, This American Life brings you stories of people who made a deal with the devil.
Act I: Dangerous Minds; author and teacher LuAnne Johnson
Act II: Satan's telemarketer; voice artist pastor
Act III: Voyager; Peabody violinist Mendelssohn
Act IV: Carmen becomes Faust
Act V: First Contact; the story of the kid and the devil
Description: In the midst of the five biggest poultry-consumption weeks of the year — the five weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, when Americans consume one-fourth of all the turkey they eat in a year — This American Life presents stories about turkeys, chickens, ducks and fowl of all kinds.
Ducky
Chicken Man
Growing in a Turkey Farm
David Sedaris an excerpt from his diaries: A turkey head.
Chicken Rustler, South African Chicken Blood.
Chicken Man Like The Phoenix - New Episode since 1969
Description: Though being gay no longer has much of a stigma in some parts of the country, being a sissy still does—even among gay men. In this show we have a number of surprising and unusual stories of sissies, their families, and why people still get so upset about them.
Act I: Anti-Oedipus
Act II: Instruction For Sissies; John Conners reads from: "How to Improve Your Personality"
Act III: Pancy Kings Sing Songs Of love; Dave Awl
Act IV: Dan Savage; Who Loves a Sissy? The Other Love That Dares Not Speak Its Name
Description: Stories about the intersection of Christmas and retail, including David Sedaris's story "Santaland Diaries", which was first broadcast on NPR's Morning Edition several years ago in a much shorter version. The diaries are about David's two Christmas seasons working as an elf in Macy's department store on New York's Herald Square. When it was first broadcast, it generated more requests for tapes than any story in Morning Edition's history except the death of Red Barber. Also, David Rakoff on playing Freud in the windows of Barney's department store. And other stories.
