371: Scenes From a Mall 12.26.2008
This American Life spends several days in a mall in suburban Tennessee, to document life in the mall during the run-up to Christmas. Also, a rift in a national association of professional ...
370: Ruining It for the Rest of Us 12.19.2008
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.
369: Poultry Slam 2008 11.28.2008
A man in Pakistan wants to break his friend out of prison. He buys him an amulet that supposedly has the power to protect anyone from harm. But just to be on the safe side, he decides to test the ...
368: Who Do You Think You Are? 11.07.2008
This week we bring you stories of privilege and the lengths some will go to to maintain it. In one story, a woman fights—on tape!—with her city's parking enforcer about playing favorites.
367: Ground Game 10.24.2008
This American Life goes to Pennsylvania, a battleground within a battleground, to figure out why, and how, John McCain and Barack Obama both think they can win there. And we get to know the ...
366: A Better Mousetrap 2008 10.10.2008
Stories about people trying to find new solutions to age-old problems—solutions that sometimes cause problems of their own. Alex Blumberg returns (in collaboration with the Planet Money podcast) ...
365: Another Frightening Show About the Economy 10.03.2008
Alex Blumberg and NPR's Adam Davidson—the two guys who reported our Giant Pool of Money episode—are back, in collaboration with the Planet Money podcast.
363: Enforcers 09.12.2008
Stories about people who take the law into their own hands, even when the line between enforcing the rules and breaking them gets kind of hazy.
362: Got You Pegged 08.22.2008
Shalom Auslander goes on vacation with his family, and suspects the beloved, chatty old man in the room next door is an imposter—and sets out to prove it. This and other stories about the pitfalls ...
361: Fear of Sleep 08.08.2008
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, Sleepwalk With Me). This and other ...
360: Switched At Birth 07.25.2008
On a summer day in 1951, two baby girls were born in a hospital in small-town Wisconsin. The infants were accidentally switched, and went home with the wrong families.
358: Social Engineering 06.27.2008
Governments are always looking for ways to change behavior—stopping people from driving drunk, or encouraging them to recycle. This week, we have stories of social engineering on a smaller scale.
357: The Truth Will Out 06.13.2008
Does the truth always come out? Of course not! Though sometimes it comes out in the most uncomfortable ways imaginable. Stories of concealed truths bubbling to the surface, including a brand-new, ...
356: The Prosecutor 05.30.2008
A lawyer in the Justice Department gets the professional opportunity of a lifetime: To be the lead prosecutor in one of the first high-profile terrorist cases since 9/11. But things go badly for him.
355: The Giant Pool of Money 05.09.2008
A special program about the housing crisis produced in a special collaboration with NPR News. We explain it all to you. What does the housing crisis have to do with the turmoil on Wall Street? Why ...
354: Mistakes Were Made 04.18.2008
It's the late 1960s, and in the new technology of cryonics, a California TV repairman named Bob sees an opportunity to help people cheat death. But freezing dead people so scientists can reanimate ...
353: The Audacity of Government 03.28.2008
Stories of the Bush Administration, its unique style of asserting presidential authority, and its quest to redefine the limits of presidential power.
352: The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar 03.14.2008
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 ...
351: Return to Childhood 2008 03.07.2008
Seventh-grader Kayla Hernandez likes to reminisce about when she was a child, back in fifth grade. She visits her school, where her fifth grade class met, and looks at her old books, thinks about ...
350: Human Resources 02.29.2008
The true story of little-known rooms in the New York City Board of Education building. Teachers are told to report there instead of their classrooms. No reason is usually given.
349: Valentine's Day 2008 02.15.2008
Veronica Chater's mother wants to go to a resort in Mexico with a friend. Her father, a former cop with an extravagant sense of security, prepares as if she's headed for a war zone. This, and ...
348: Tough Room 02.08.2008
This week we bring you backstage with comedy writers at The Onion. They start with over 600 potential headlines for their fake-news newspaper each week, and over the course of two days, in the ...
347: Matchmakers 01.18.2008
Sabir, a young man in Afghanistan, thought he'd found true love but he couldn't afford a wedding. So two foreign aid workers, friends of his, decide to come to his rescue. They soon find out ...
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