Act One: Mr. Popular
David Himmel is a college sophomore and a former camper who became a counselor. He says all the best experiences of his life have been at camp or with camp people.
Act One: Letters
Ira and playwright David Hauptschein took out advertisements in Chicago inviting people to come to a small theater with letters they've received, sent or found. People came for two nights, and read their letters onstage.
Prologue
David Iserson tried to lay low in junior high, staying out of sight to keep from getting teased and bullied. But then he starred in a local TV commercial for his father's furniture store, and all of a sudden everyone knew about him...in a bad way.
Prologue
Host Ira Glass explains how the Planet Money team spent a thousand dollars of their own money to buy a toxic asset, and introduces Planet Money reporters David Kestenbaum and Chana Joffe-Walt. Their stories about "Toxie" have appeared on the Planet Money podcast and daily public radio news shows, and are collected here for the first time, into one epic, Dickensian tale.
Act One: You're Not The President Of Me
Jonathan Chait of The New Republic and David Horowitz of Slate magazine each tell the story of the Florida recount. There is astonishingly little overlap in their accounts.
Act One: Mr. Boder Vanishes
In 1946, a man named David Boder started to investigate the Holocaust before it was known as the Holocaust. He dragged a primitive recording device around Europe and gathered the first recorded testimonials of concentration camp survivors.
Act Three: Contest-osterone
The men and women on staff at This American Life decide to get their testosterone levels tested, to see who has the most and least, and to see if personality traits actually do match up with hormone levels. It turns out to be an exercise that in retrospect, we might not recommend to other close-knit groups of friends or co-workers.
Act Three: From The Audience Seats
Mark O'Brien is in an iron lung and comes out for short periods of time. What does he do with those precious moments free of the machinery that keeps him alive? He goes to the theater.
Prologue
We hear a tape that a man named David Cossin made for a woman in Italy named Allesandra whom he'd met during a week he spent there, and with whom he'd fallen in love. He sent her a dozen tapes, including one where he tries to convince her to move to New York and be with him.
Act Two: The Present and the Future
Ira Glass talks with David Axelrod, who was an advisor to Harold Washington and to Barack Obama as well. In 2007, when we last broadcast this show, Ira recorded an interview with Axelrod who was riding on Obama’s campaign bus, during the Democratic Primary in Iowa.
Act One: The Substance Of Things Hoped For...In Government.
We hear a quick rundown of all the ways that Christian conservatives are making headway in advancing their values as public policy, why they think total separation of church and state is not what the founding fathers intended. And why they're wrong.
Act Two: Paint By Numbers
Alex Melamid and Vitaly Komar hired a polling firm to investigate what people want to see in paintings. Then, using the data, they painted what people want.
Act One
Host Ira Glass shares photos (on the radio) of his family vacation in Hawaii.
Prologue
Host Ira Glass hauls out Ye Olde Book of Christmas Stories, only to realize that everyone's favorite stories are—gasp—missing. Sounding the alarm, he sets off to save Christmas, the only way he knows how.
Act One: Duki
When Danielle's family serves poultry at their dinner table, no one utters the word "chicken." Instead, it is always called "fish." Danielle explains why with the help of her friend "Duki." (16 minutes)
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.
Prologue
Host Ira Glass goes to a busy Target store one week before Christmas. Most shoppers he talks to don't think any of their gifts will be returned.
Kaddish
An Allen Ginsberg poem and Ira Glass.
Prologue
Host Ira Glass goes to Navy Pier to visit the clearance sales.
Prologue
A first-grader explains to host Ira Glass how bullies become bullies. His explanation: They read a book on how to be a bully.
Prologue
As high-school freshmen, Kim, Tiffany, and Laura were enamored of their fellow students who netted the leads in all the school plays. They're seniors now, and they're the ones landing all the lead roles.
Prologue
Ira talks with two New Yorkers on their reactions to seeing something they could never have believed possible. They acted in ways that they never had before, just ran around and around in circles.
Prologue
Host Ira Glass talks with filmmaker Alan Berliner, who for six years collected old home movies he found at thrift stores and garage sales. He says that almost all of them document either rites of passage, like birthdays and weddings, or moments of leisure—the beach is especially big.