This American Life

890: Maximal Americanness

On this country's 250th birthday, we bring you stories about the most American people, places, objects, and social norms that make this country what it is. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners [https://thisamericanlife.supercast.com?utm_id=lifepartners&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=shownotes] to sign up for our premium subscription. * Prologue: Ira talks to Pablo Torre about Major League Baseball’s new challenge system, and how it’s been optimized for maximum drama. (10 minutes) * Act One: Writer Jiayang Fan wrestles with a very common question she has never quite understood. (5 minutes) * Act Two: People come from all over the country to walk down one of Michigan’s tallest sand dunes, and then promptly turn around and trudge back up. Aviva DeKornfeld talks to Americans spending their limited vacation time on this punishing activity. (8 minutes) * Act Three: Emanuele Berry talks to Ira about Season 13 of the reality TV show, Survivor, known to fans as the “race war” season. (8 minutes) * Act Four: Years before his famous dictionary, Noah Webster wrote a book that took on a life of its own and served an unexpected purpose. (8 minutes) * Act Five: Emmanuel Dzotsi investigates a musical phenomenon very particular to the United States: singers embellishing the end of the national anthem. (9 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/890/transcript] This American Life privacy policy. [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/page/privacy-policy] Learn more about sponsor message choices. [https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices]

128: Four Corners

We try to tell the story of life in America through portraits of life on four different corners, in four different states across the nation. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners [https://thisamericanlife.supercast.com?utm_id=lifepartners&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=shownotes] to sign up for our premium subscription. * Prologue: Host Ira Glass talks about the Four Corners tourist monument where Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico meet. (2 minutes) * Act One: Sarah Vowell has a theory that you can tell the entire history of the United States by standing on one street corner—specifically at Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive in Chicago—and describing all the events that happened within eyeshot of the corner. She covers three centuries of history, from Louis Joliet to Keanu Reeves. (21 minutes) * Act Two: Scott Richer and Julie Riggs of Louisville, Kentucky, were supposed to have their first kiss at the corner where South Fourth Street meets the alley behind the West End Baptist Church. But it went wrong. (7 minutes) * Act Three: Writer Mike Paterniti tells a story of dogs and a community of dogwalkers that formed on the grounds of an old cemetery at the corner of Vaughn and Clifford in Portland, Maine. (14 minutes) * Act Four: Writer Achy Obejas reads a piece of short fiction from her book, We Came All the Way from Cuba So You Could Dress Like This? (11 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/128/transcript] This American Life privacy policy. [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/page/privacy-policy] Learn more about sponsor message choices. [https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices]

889: There’s Something About Hail Mary

We spend an hour in the last two minutes of the fourth quarter, behind and desperate, with people trying any damn thing they can think of. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners [https://thisamericanlife.supercast.com?utm_id=lifepartners&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=shownotes] to sign up for our premium subscription. * Prologue: Five years after Ora first started experiencing mysterious and debilitating health problems, she decides to try a treatment that she knows very well might kill her. Host Ira Glass talks to her about the experience. (9 minutes) * Act One: Two lawyers have just three months to stop their client's execution. In Texas, where this story takes place, these kinds of appeals to get people off death row fail 94% of the time. (38 minutes) * Act Two: At the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, migrants figured out an ingenious way to communicate with the activists gathered outside of the detention center’s walls. (13 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/889/transcript] This American Life privacy policy. [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/page/privacy-policy] Learn more about sponsor message choices. [https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices]

354: Mistakes Were Made

It’s the late 1960s, and a California TV repairman named Bob sees an opportunity to help people cheat death with the new science of cryonics. But freezing dead people isn’t easy. And apologizing for the mistakes you make along the way? Even harder. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners [https://thisamericanlife.supercast.com?utm_id=lifepartners&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=shownotes] to sign up for our premium subscription. * Prologue: Host Ira Glass talks about the way most political apologies go, and chats with a man named Derek Jones about similar sorts of apologies among preteen girls and King David, in the Old Testament. (7 minutes) * Act One: In the late 1960s, a California TV repairman named Bob Nelson joined a group of enthusiasts who believed they could cheat death with a new technology called cryonics. But freezing dead people so scientists can reanimate them in the future is a lot harder than it sounds. Harder still was admitting to the family members of people Bob had frozen that he'd screwed up. Sam Shaw reports. (42 minutes) * Act Two: There's a famous William Carlos Williams poem called "This is Just to Say." It's about, among other things, causing a loved one inconvenience and offering a non-apologizing apology. Producer Sean Cole explains that this is possibly the most spoofed poem around. We asked some of our regular contributors to get into the act. Sarah Vowell, David Rakoff, Starlee Kine, Jonathan Goldstein, Shalom Auslander, and Heather O'Neill all came up with their own variations of Williams's classic lines. (7 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/354/transcript] This American Life privacy policy. [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/page/privacy-policy] Learn more about sponsor message choices. [https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices]

888: Not Today, Hades!

Regular people trapped inside Greek myths. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners [https://thisamericanlife.supercast.com?utm_id=lifepartners&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=shownotes] to sign up for our premium subscription. * Prologue: When a mysterious, ripped-open package arrives on Pablo's doorstep, he takes it as a sign. (4 minutes) * Act One: Pablo flies closer to the sun. (14 minutes) * Act Two: In Greek mythology, there's Hades, where everyone goes when they die. You have to cross the river Styx to get there, and there’s a gate with this three-headed dog. He’s guarding the entrance and he’s supposed to make sure only actual dead people enter. This story is about a real person in America who stood at those very gates. Which is not the easiest job it turns out, at least not right now. (24 minutes) * Act Three: A mortal gets the assignment of a lifetime — to go interview an actual god who is living on earth, traveling under the name of Lionel Messi. (11 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/888/transcript] This American Life privacy policy. [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/page/privacy-policy] Learn more about sponsor message choices. [https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices]