This American Life

Ping Zhu

Stories about people who accidentally bump into unsettling facts of history in settings meant to teach them history. What they end up learning is very different from what they’re supposed to.

View episode details

Next week preview

Recently Aired

View archive

677

June 14, 2019

Seeing Yourself In the Wild

Stories of those unexpected moments when we see who we really are.

647

June 7, 2019

LaDonna

A security guard at the airport notices something going wrong on the tarmac, and takes it upon herself to fix it.

676

May 31, 2019

Here’s Looking at You, Kid

Adults telling kids who they are, and kids wondering — are they right?

“When I’m trying to explain our program to someone who doesn’t know it, I stammer a bunch of words like ‘entertaining,’ ‘funny,’ ‘surprising plot twists,’ ‘true stories but not boring I swear’ … and then I just give them this list.” — Ira Glass

View this list