People starting over—sometimes because they want to, other times because they have to. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: Host Ira Glass talks to Jorge Just, who thought he'd started over successfully. He'd moved to New York, found an apartment that everyone told him was a great deal, things were looking good. Then a reality television show visited his building. (8 minutes)Act One: Molly FitzSimons tells the story of her father starting over. After 25 years in the same zip code, as an executive in the same company, he moved to Los Angeles and tried to start over in a new life with a new venture: A cable channel, with no people, no talking, no plots, but lots and lots of puppies. (15 minutes)Act Two: Mary Beth Kirchner documents one day in the life of a hustler named Joe, who wakes up every morning broke, hustles as much as $10,000 during the day and then loses most of it by the time he goes to bed. What it's like to start from scratch every day of your life. (18 minutes)Act Three: Jonathan Goldstein reads a story about the first people to ever start from scratch, a couple named Adam and Eve. (14 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

Since October 7th, while the world has focused its attention on Gaza, the Israeli government has tightened the screws on the three million Palestinians in the West Bank in all sorts of dramatic ways. We travel to the West Bank to see these changes in person. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: Ira joins Hamed on his Monday commute. He has to navigate a constantly changing series of checkpoints and roadblocks to get to work each day. Hamed works for Comet-ME, which sets up solar panels, water systems, and security cameras in small villages all over the West Bank. (13 minutes)Act One: Settler violence has worsened significantly in the West Bank since October 7, 2023. Yael Even Or travels to a tiny village called Tuba, surrounded by Israeli settlements, to meet the 27-year-old resident trying to protect it. (26 minutes)Act 2: Two quick snapshots of life in the West Bank since October 7th. (6 minutes)Act Two: After October 7th, Israeli Minister of Security Itamar Ben-Gvir increased restrictions on Palestinian prisoners in Israeli security prisons. Prisoners started dying. Dana Chivvis looks into one of those deaths. (25 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

How they organize the chaos of the world, for good and for bad. Prologue: Ira interviews David Wallechinsky, who wrote a wildly popular book in the 1970s called The Book of Lists, full of trivia and research, gathered into lists like "18 Brains" and "What They Weighed." The book sold millions of copies and had four sequels and a brief spin-off TV show. The list books were like the internet, before the internet. (12 minutes)Act One: John Fecile talks to his brother, Pat, about a list their other brother made before he died. They each have different ideas about what the list means and how they feel about it. (14 minutes)Act 2: A brief visit with Bobby, who keeps a list in his phone of all the dogs in his neighborhood and their names to save him from the awkwardness of not knowing the name of someone’s dog – because people get upset if you don’t remember their dog’s name. (3 minutes)Act Two: Reporter M. Gessen talks to Russians living in America and elsewhere about the lists the Russian government has put them on in the last few years. M. Gessen is also on one of these lists. Each list has its own complex rules and potential consequences for the people on the lists and for their family members who live in Russia. (28 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

When the best—and perhaps only—way to say something is to write it down. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: Ira goes out with a letter carrier, ‘Grace,’ as she delivers mail on her route. He learns about the people who bring us our mail and also how people treat their mail. (11 minutes)Act One: Writing a letter decades after an event that shaped her life was the only way that Nicole Piasecki could make some sense of it. (18 minutes)Act Two: Yorkshire, 1866. A farmer overcomes his timidity and writes a very important letter to a local beauty. (3 minutes)Act Three: When senior editor David Kestenbaum was still a rookie reporter, he wrote an email to a legend. Then he waited...and waited...for a reply. (6 minutes)Act Four: A woman writes an unusual letter on behalf of her husband. (1 minute)Act Five: Producer Zoe Chace compares the letters a person gets and the letters they wish they got. (12 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

The story of the most commonly performed surgery, and what goes wrong with it – terribly wrong – 100,000 times a year in the United States. We’re excited to bring you the first episode of The Retrievals, Season 2, the new show from longtime This American Life producer and editor Susan Burton. It’s from Serial Productions and The New York Times. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: Ira Glass introduces the first episode of an inventive new podcast from longtime This American Life producer and editor Susan Burton.Act One: Susan Burton introduces Mindy, a labor and delivery nurse at UI Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago. (5 minutes)Act Two: Another labor and delivery nurse at UI Health, Clara, gets ready to deliver twins at her own hospital and receives an epidural. (19 minutes)Act Three: Clara’s anesthesia is not working. She is now in the middle of major abdominal surgery, and she can feel that surgery. (21 minutes)Act Four: Heather, the head of obstetric anesthesia at UI Health, gets up onstage and asks a ballroom full of hundreds of anesthesiologists to wrestle with the question of why patients are feeling pain during C-sections, and what they can do to solve it. (8 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

Ira Glass talks with longtime producer Nancy Updike about the most personal stories they have put on the radio. This is a sample of the bonus episodes we regularly release to our This American Life Partners. To gain access to all the bonus episodes AND help us keep making This American Life, join at thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners.

People on a mission to achieve their goals before their window of opportunity closes. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: Guest host Emmanuel Dzotsi goes to a packed sports bar in Brooklyn for his favorite soccer team’s biggest game in years. (6 minutes)Act One: Connie Wang tells the story of a championship window she didn't realize she was in — until it was too late. (14 minutes)Act Two: Seth Lind, our Operations Director, isn’t a crier. But he wants to connect with his emotions, so guest host Emmanuel Dzotsi sets up an unconventional experiment. (14 minutes)Act Three: Two college baseball teams with horrible losing streaks — a combined 141 games — are scheduled to play each other. One of them must finally win. (14 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

On his first day in office, President Trump decided to freeze all U.S. foreign aid. Soon after, his administration effectively dissolved USAID—the federal agency that delivers billions in food, medicine, and other aid worldwide. Many of its programs have been canceled. Now, as USAID officially winds down, we try to assess its impact. What was good? What was not so good? We meet people around the world wrestling with these questions and trying to navigate this chaotic moment. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: Just one box of a specially enriched peanut butter paste can save the life of a severely malnourished child. So why have 500,000 of those boxes been stuck in warehouses in Rhode Island? (13 minutes)Act One: USAID was founded in 1961. Since then, it has spent hundreds of billions of dollars all over the world. What did that get us? Producer David Kestenbaum talked with Joshua Craze and John Norris about that. (12 minutes)Act Two: Two Americans moved to Eswatini when that country was the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic. With support from USAID, they built a clinic and started serving HIV+ patients. Now that US support for their clinic has ended, they are wondering if what they did was entirely a good thing. (27 minutes)Act Three: When USAID suddenly stopped all foreign assistance without warning or a transition plan, it sent people all over the world scrambling. Especially those relying on daily medicine provided by USAID. Producer Ike Sriskandarajah spoke to two families in Kenya who were trying to figure it out. (8 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

Conversations across a divide: People who are outside a war zone check in with family, friends, and strangers inside. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: The Hammash family’s group chat unfolds over texts, starting before the war. (8 minutes)Act One: When Yousef Hammash left Gaza a year ago, his sisters decided to stay behind. We hear about the toll that separation has taken on Yousef and the sister he’s closest to, Aseel. (30 minutes)Act Two: Mohammed Mhawish, a reporter who left Gaza a year ago with his family, talks to a young woman in Gaza about how she manages her hunger. Israel blockaded all food from Gaza for more than two months. (15 minutes)Coda: Chana gives a short update about Banias, a 9-year-old girl in Gaza she's been speaking with for months. (4 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

A show about people who are suddenly confronted with who they are. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. Prologue: Guest host Aviva DeKornfeld tells Ira Glass about breaking into a community pool as a kid, and the split-second decision that has haunted her ever since. (4 minutes)Act One: Some people are great in a crisis. Others, not so much. Does that mean anything about who we really are? Tobin Low investigates. (10 minutes)Act Two: Aviva DeKornfeld has the story of Leisha Hailey, who was certain she had the next million-dollar idea. (11 minutes)Act Three: Comedian Mike Birbiglia talks about the questions his daughter asks him and how trying to answer them showed him surprising reflections of himself. (15 minutes)Act Four: David Kestenbaum tells the story of the suspicious disappearance of multiple shoes and a woman determined to explain it. (8 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.