At a time when the U.S. government is trying to make American history tidier, we try to learn from the mess. Including the untold, messy story of Paul and Essie Robeson. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: Guest Host Emanuele Berry talks to Nichole Hill about the Black movie characters Nichole was curious about as a child. (7 minutes)Act One: A giant of the Harlem Renaissance, Paul Robeson was the most famous American of his day. Until he wasn’t. Nichole Hill tells the messy, complicated story of Paul and his wife, Essie Robeson. (38 minutes)Act Two: In 1865, a formerly enslaved man named Jourdan Anderson received a letter from his former enslaver, asking Jourdan to return to the plantation and work. Actor Laurence Fishburne reads Jourdan’s response. Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

What happens when a new guy comes on the scene and changes the way everyone relates to each other? Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: Ira talks with Sarah Koenig about the first and only time a movie star came to her family's house when she was a kid. It didn't go well, for the celebrity or for her. The star was Robert Redford. He arrived and immediately stole all the attention her parents usually lavished on her, their youngest. Worse, they were nervous and strange around him, not themselves at all. Young Sarah was not pleased. Robert Redford paid the price. (6 minutes)Act One: Davy Rothbart's mother is funny, rational, and by most measures, pretty normal. Except that she spends every day in the company of an ancient Buddhist monk named Aaron, who no one else can see. Davy talks to his brothers, father, and eventually his mom, and asks the question they've somehow never managed to discuss: do any of them actually believe he's real? (26 minutes)Act Two: Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. had always lived in the shadow of his father's name. But just before his primary, an aide delivered strange news: a second Jesse Jackson had appeared on the same ballot — a retired truck driver with no political experience. Ira reports on whether it was a coincidence or mischief orchestrated by the Congressman's rivals. (9 minutes)Act Three: Jonathan Goldstein and Heather O'Neill tell the true story of a man trying to wedge himself into an idyllic family of two. For the first few years, Heather's daughter Arizona was not very fond of Jonathan. He ranked nineteenth on her list of favorite people, behind the neighbor's dog and the plumber. (15 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

M. Gessen returns to our show with a true-crime story that takes place entirely within their own family. This story comes to us from the producers at Serial Productions—who invented the true-crime podcast more than a decade ago—and from The New York Times. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Act One: M Gessen tells Ira Glass about the surprising events that prompted them to begin reporting on their own family for their new podcast, The Idiot. They play the first episode of the series. (14 minutes)Act Two: Ira Glass and M Gessen continue to talk through the story of M’s cousin, Allen Gessen. They play more clips from the podcast, and we finally hear about the big, shocking thing that snapped their family apart. (20 minutes)Act Three: M Gessen tells Ira Glass about Allen’s trial, and we hear a recording of his conversation with the undercover agent. (21 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

In the early days of the radio show, Ira did a series of interviews with his parents that completely changed his relationship with them. This week, he returns to those interviews. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: Ira talks about why four conversations reveal how his relationship with his parents changed. (4 minutes)Act One: Ira’s mom, Shirley, is invited to lead a discussion about how to get along with your adult children. Her adult children question her expertise. (9 minutes)Act Two: Ira asks his parents for advice on how he should build the radio show. His parents don’t hold back. (9 minutes)Act Three: Ira talks with his dad, Barry, about Barry’s own brief and doomed career in radio. (21 minutes)Act Four: An interview with Ira’s mom that, to this day, makes Ira’s skin crawl. (13 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

Two lawyers who work for ICE step forward and lift the curtain on what is really happening inside our immigration system right now. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: Two lawyers dive into the details of what they’ve witnessed behind the scenes in different parts of the immigration system. (2 minutes)Act One: Former ICE attorney Ryan Schwank explains the chaos and dysfunction he observed at an ICE training academy, which led him to whistleblow to Congress two weeks ago. (12 minutes)Act Two: A federal judge orders the government to immediately release a bunch of people from detention. Days pass, and the government doesn’t comply. So the judge calls a hearing to figure out what’s going on. The lawyer's response is not what he or anybody expected. (25 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

People deciding to do things that most of us do NOT choose to do. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: A new documentary called The Boys and the Bees captures a moment where a six-year-old has a very unlikely wish, and his dad decides to grant it. Host Ira Glass talks with filmmaker Arielle Knight about what happens next. (9 minutes)Act One: John Tothill tells the story of Edward Dando, a 19th-century British glutton who would eat hundreds of oysters at a time and then run out on the check. John makes the case that we should all be more like Edward Dando. (15 minutes)Act Two: Producer Tobin Low listens in as Evan Roberts calls up an ex for the first time in years and tries to make the case that they should have been friends all along. (16 minutes)Act Three: Producer Zoe Chace brings us a dispatch from a courtroom in Texas this week, where on the very first day of a landmark federal trial about Antifa, the judge makes an unusual decision that no one sees coming. (15 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

911 calls unlike any we’ve heard before, and other stories about immigration agents sweeping through America. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: A collection of 911 calls where you can hear immigration enforcement moving through different cities and leaving chaos in their wake. (9 minutes)Act One: More 911 calls, including people on the line with dispatchers as ICE is chasing them, trying to puzzle out their next moves. (22 minutes)Act Two: Home Depots keep getting raided over and over again in Los Angeles. And day laborers are still showing up in store parking lots to find work every day. So what’s that like? Months and months of that cat and mouse? Anayansi Diaz-Cortes went to find out. (11 minutes)Act Three: Memo Torres tries to build an archive of every person taken by federal agents in Southern California. (11 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

When a joke could get you killed, should you say it anyway? A group of Syrian comedians test the limits of their newfound freedom, a year after the fall of the brutal Assad regime. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: Under the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, comedian Sharief Homsi knew which jokes were too dangerous to say on stage. Now that Syria is under the control of a new government, Sharief and the other comedians of “Styria” set out on a national tour to see how far their comedy can go in this new Syria. (6 minutes)Act One: The comedians test out risky material and get big laughs on early tour dates. It’s going smoothly until they find out that their show scheduled in the conservative city of Hama is in danger of being cancelled. (13 minutes)Act Two: The comedians go to battle with local officials. (18 minutes)Act Three: The comedians try everything they can think of to keep their shows from being cancelled. (20 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

In this special mini-episode, we hear from someone in Venezuela with a very specific take on last week's U.S. attack.

People discovering information about their own lives that they did not know, and suddenly everything looks very different. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: When Pete turned 18, his dad took him on a drive to reveal a family secret he was finally old enough to know. (11 minutes)Act One: Sometimes, a lore drop comes when you least expect it. That happened to Jake Cornell and his grandmother. Producer Aviva DeKornfeld talked to Jake about it. (14 minutes)Act Two: Ben Austen had a kind of new lore drop happen to him recently. But it was not the clarifying kind of lore drop, where everything suddenly makes sense — it was kind of the opposite. (29 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.