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16: Economy
Mar. 14, 1996

Act Two: The Economy

Temporary employment agencies' business has exploded in the last few years as corporations lay off their full-time employees, especially technical workers. This American Life "hired" two temp workers, Lee and Tito, to document their experiences as temps. Ira invites Tito and Lee into the studio to spin some music "appropriate" for temp employees.
15: Dawn
Feb. 28, 1996

Prologue

Who are the people we remember as significant figures from our childhood? What is their hold on our imaginations as we age? Ira visits McCosh Elementary on Chicago's South Side, where a man everyone calls "Mr. Lewis" is the surrogate dad for hundreds of kids — a nearly mythic figure.

Act One: Berrien Springs, Michigan

A Midwestern family records a "letter on tape" to their son, who is in medical school in California. Three decades later, the recording somehow ends up in a thrift store.

Act Two: Baltimore

Ira plays tapes of his own father, Barry, who was a radio deejay in the mid-1950s. Barry gave up spinning records when he decided that he couldn't make a decent living at it, and for over a decade he was against his son going into radio, not wanting him to waste time the way he did.
13: Love
Feb. 7, 1996

Prologue

Host Ira Glass explores a self-help cassette tape that promises to bring the listener peace about being single. The only problem is that it achieves this by having you envision your perfect romantic partner.

Act One: Yearning

Artist Julie Laffin talks about the inspiration for her "kissing projects." Jessica Yu's film Breathing Lessons is about Mark O'Brien, a man using an "iron lung." In this excerpt, Mark talks about the yearning he tries to quell through the use of sex surrogates. Poet Luis Rodriguez reads his poem "Waiting." Writer Dolores Wilbur tells a story of wanting love.
12: Animals
Jan. 31, 1996

Prologue

Samantha Martin trains raccoons to play basketball and rats to bowl. She says that what we want from animals is for them to imitate humans.
11: Enemies
Jan. 24, 1996

Act One: Dave's Love

Bob and Dave were close childhood friends — until their relationship began to lead their peers to believe that it might be more than a friendship. The accusations led to Dave turning on Bob.

Act Three: Dave's Response

Ira reaches current-day Dave, who is a born-again Christian living with his parents. According to Dave, Bob was at fault for the breakdown in their relationship, because Bob had decided to become friends with someone else.
10: Double Lives
Jan. 17, 1996

Prologue

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.

Act One: The Book Tour

When Susan Bergman wrote a book about her family's experience, other gay men tried to explain her father's actions to her.
9: Julia Sweeney
Jan. 10, 1996

Prologue

Ira talks about the adage "Comedy equals tragedy plus time." Usually it's true, he says, though today's show is devoted to someone who decided to go on stage the same week she was experiencing some horrible things — and talk about those things.
8: New Year
Jan. 3, 1996

Prologue

Host Ira Glass talks about recently released archival television interviews with the Beatles, who suddenly seem a little less magic — and a lot more pedestrian (4 minutes).

Act One

Eighteen-year-old Claudia Perez takes Ira on a tour of her Chicago neighborhood and looks at what 1995 was like for her community.

Act Two

Ira talks with Karen Hutt, Director of Religious Education for the First Unitarian Church of Chicago, who one Sunday gave a sermon at the church about her experience as the first black child to integrate the Philadelphia public school system. The sermon inspired a project: Hutt, along with Laura Finnegan, collected an oral history of the experiences of African American members of the congregation about their own experiences as the "first" integrators of their neighborhoods or organizations.

Act Three

Claudia Perez returns to talk about her year from a more personal perspective.
7: Quitting
Dec. 29, 1995

Prologue

Evan Harris was entrenched in her life, stalled and going nowhere both personally and professionally. A silly conversation with a co-worker about the letter "Q" led her to start a magazine called Quitter Quarterly. That one conversation changed her life completely.

Act Two

Ira explores the question of when it's time to quit a relationship through rare recordings of bickering between roommates—recorded by the next-door neighbors.

Act Two

A story about Christmas at Juvenile Court by Chicago novelist/editor Reginald Gibbons.