Susan Burton
Contributors List
Susan was a producer at our show. After she left, she created two diary-style radio stories with an Afghan teenager (shows 230 and 254) and co-wrote a book with him, Come Back to Afghanistan. Her essay in episode 175 was turned into the feature film Unaccompanied Minors.
153: Dolls
Stories of what people are playing at when they play with dolls.
162: Moving
Stories of people who did not want to move but circumstance forced their hands, and so they tried to move without really moving.
167: Memo to the People of the Future
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.
172: 24 Hours at the Golden Apple
The This American Life producers 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,...
175: Babysitting
Stories of babysitters, and what goes on while mom and dad are away that mom and dad never find out about.
186: Prom
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...
219: High Speed Chase
Stories of innocent people fleeing from dangerous men in cars who shoot at them. Unlike in the movies, the pursuers aren't foreign agents or rogue CIA agents, but drunk off-duty policemen and small-town teenagers. Real-ife high-speed...
225: Home Movies
Home movies are often all the same—kids on the beach, people getting married, birthday parties—so why do we make and watch so many of them? Maybe it's because the story they show and the story they tell are different. In this show, we...
230: Come Back to Afghanistan
In January 2002, the President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, spoke at Georgetown University. There he urged Afghan-Americans, especially young ones, to move back to Afghanistan.
244: MacGyver
In real life, we usually never get to invent ingenious solutions, like the guy in the old TV series MacGyver. Today, four real stories in which real people invent amazingly clever solutions to their problems.
254: Teenage Embed, Part Two
In early 2003, we brought you a special show about a California teenager, Hyder Akbar, who traveled to Afghanistan, his family's homeland, for the first time.
370: Ruining It for the Rest of Us
Stories of people who ruin things for everyone else...or who are accused of that. Like the San Diego parents who didn't vaccinate their child for measles.
386: Fine Print
Stories where the fine print changes everything, whether you read it or not.
433: Fine Print 2011
Stories where the fine print changes everything, whether you read it or not.
445: Ten Years In
In this show, we return to people who've been on This American Life in the last ten years, whose lives were drastically altered by 9/11, including Hyder Akbar, an Afghan-American teen who moved to Afghanistan after his father was tapped to...
