Ira talks with Zoe Chace about watching Trump’s victory from an ecstatic room in Michigan. Then he checks in with a DC cop who was injured at the Capitol on January 6.
Producer Jane Feltes spends a day with two young Mormons, on mission to possibly the least receptive environment they could find...the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
FBI agents question NSA contractor Reality Winner, who was later charged with leaking evidence of Russian interference in U.S. elections. Even the most casual small talk takes on an air of menace. (18 minutes)This is an excerpt from Is This A Room, a play based on the real FBI interrogation transcript.
A Holiday Inn comes up with a brilliant scheme to increase their roomservice orders. Former room service waiter Cliff Doerksen says there was only one problem with the plan...and it came down to a big, ridiculous, floppy hat.
Thanksgiving 2002, the Ohm family's dinner conversation turned to the recent terrorist attacks. Alexis Ohm, the youngest daughter, made a comment that in retrospect she admits was probably the wrong thing to say with her conservative, military-veteran dad at the table...that Osama bin Laden was hot.
Thanksgiving 2002, the Ohm family's dinner conversation turned to the recent terrorist attacks. Alexis Ohm, the youngest daughter, made a comment that in retrospect she admits was probably the wrong thing to say with her conservative, military-veteran dad at the table...that Osama bin Laden was hot.
Shalom Auslander tells the story of the time he went on vacation, pegged the guest in the room next door as an impostor and devoted his holiday to trying to prove it. Shalom Auslander is the author, most recently, of the novel Hope: A Tragedy.
There is a library that's on the border of Canada and the United States — literally on the border, with part of the library in each country. Producer Zoe Chace interviews journalist Yeganeh Torbati about how lately, it's become a critical space for a surprising set of visitors.
Producer Alex Blumberg explains that he wanted to do this show because of his conflicted relationship with his own testosterone. He tells host Ira Glass that the reasons go back to a girl in his eighth-grade homeroom and the 1970s seminal feminist novel The Women's Room. We also hear from a man who stopped producing testosterone due to a medical treatment and found that his entire personality was altered.
Fewer than 40 million Americans have gotten the vaccine so far, which leaves a lot of people jealous and wondering what happens inside those little rooms.
Milton Reid works as a freelance muralist in one of the largest housing projects in America, Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes. For fifty to two hundred dollars, he'll paint a mural on a resident's living room wall, or in their kitchen, or in the bathroom.
A reading from the zine Motorbooty about the crisis of World Band Overpopulation. Then, This American Life contributor Sarah Vowell on someone who is not part of the world band overpopulation problem: Scott Lee, the world's greatest fan of the Fastbacks, a respected, semi-obscure Seattle alternative band.
Host Ira Glass talks about the infamous line in the band Van Halen's contract insisting that the groups' dressing room include a bowl of M&Ms with all the brown M&Ms removed. Ira used to think this request was just petulant rock-star behavior.
In a part of the mall no shoppers ever see, there's a snug, dark little room with 43 TV screens, one for each of the cameras in the hallways and parking lots, the roof and the loading dock. We hang out with the security people who work in there, seeing what they see.
Lydia Sigwarth spent a lot of time in her public library growing up – all day, almost every day, for six months straight. Producer Stephanie Foo returned to that library with her, after years away.
One of the most powerful forces in a room can be the thing that is unspoken between people. Five writers—Scott Carrier, David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell, Brady Udall and Lan Samantha Chang—give us case examples: stories when they felt the presence of something unspoken.
Writer Rosie Schaap tells the story of how she ingratiated herself into the adult society of the Metroliner commuter train bar car as a teenager. She would cast Tarot card prophesies for riders, in exchange for beer.
Writer Rosie Schaap tells the story of how she ingratiated herself into the adult society of the Metroliner commuter train bar car as a teenager. She would cast Tarot card prophesies for riders, in exchange for beer.
In Richard Brautigan's novel "The Abortion," he imagines a library where regular people can come and drop off their own unpublished books. Nothing is turned away.
Jonathan Goldstein tries to convince his uncle and his father to get into the same room and have a conversation for the first time in decades, before it’s too late and one of them dies.