12.20.96
Stories about the intersection of Christmas and retail, including David Sedaris's story "Santaland Diaries," which was first broadcast on...
12.13.96
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...
12.6.96
Four stories about people struggling at the fringes of our nation's media/music/infotainment industry.
11.29.96
In the midst of the five biggest poultry-consumption weeks of the year — the five weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, when Americans...
11.22.96
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...
10.25.96
This week: A show for Halloween. Stories of things that are supposed to be scary, but aren't.
10.11.96
Simulated worlds, Civil war reenactments, wax museums, simulated coal mines, fake ethnic restaurants, an ersatz Medieval castle and other...
9.27.96
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...
9.20.96
Host Ira Glass and playwright David Hauptschein took out advertisements in Chicago inviting people to come to a small theater with letters...
9.6.96
Evocative, funny, emotional stories collected over the last few months that haven't fit into any of our regular "theme" shows.
8.30.96
Unusual stories from the 1996 Democratic Convention in Chicago, with scenes and moments not documented elsewhere.
8.23.96
Host Ira Glass spent a Saturday night — from 9:00 p.m. until dawn the next morning — at one of the most frenetic, joyous, efficient, angry...
8.16.96
Unusual stories about day-to-day life at the Republican Convention.
7.26.96
Stories of obsession and compulsion. What happens when a little idea starts to control you. Co-hosted by Paul Tough.
7.12.96
Writer David Sedaris recalls the days when his mother and sister played armchair detective — until a very odd crime wave hit within their...
6.14.96
Ira's own father Barry Glass co-hosts this special father's day edition of the show.
6.7.96
A set of documentary stories, radio essays and monologues about basketball, the Chicago Bulls, and their grip on Chicagoans' hearts and...
5.24.96
Stories of girls who have to figure out how they're going to act when the ground rules are constantly shifting.
5.3.96
Stories of the difficult relationships between parents and their grown children, including two long stories from Sandra Tsing Loh about her...
4.19.96
Stories of hero worship, of people admiring someone from afar, and trying to get closer to them.
4.12.96
Men who had comfortable, decent lives, yet decided to do something wild and eccentric with their lives instead.
3.28.96
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...
2.28.96
Writer Jack Hitt goes on a search for a mysterious neighbor from his childhood in Charleston, South Carolina, and stumbles onto an epic...
2.21.96
What unites these stories on the surface is that they're all made from old tapes, recordings found in attics and thrift stores. What unites...
2.7.96
Explorations of the dream of true love ... and the difficulties with achieving and maintaining that dream.
1.31.96
Stories about the animalness of animals, the irreducible ways in which they are not human.
1.24.96
A story of a friendship between two adolescent boys that was destroyed through the manipulative acts of one of them.
1.10.96
When comedienne Julia Sweeney and her brother both got cancer, she decided to tell the story the best way she knew how: in a comedy club....
