This American Life

Small human plans that run into much larger obstacles. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners [https://thisamericanlife.supercast.com?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=shownotes&utm_id=lifepartners] to sign up for our premium subscription. * Prologue: Angela's dad, an accountant, made a spreadsheet to prepare for their family trip to a national park. But there are things you never think to put in a spreadsheet. (7 minutes) * Act One: A young couple, excited to start a new chapter in their lives, is suddenly put on a very different trajectory. (30 minutes) * Act Two: A sixteen-year-old plans out a prank, and a complete stranger from Honduras ends up in a million-dollar deal. What could go wrong? (25 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/866/transcript] This American Life privacy policy. [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/page/privacy-policy] Learn more about sponsor message choices. [https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices]

People starting over—sometimes because they want to, other times because they have to. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners [https://thisamericanlife.supercast.com] 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.org [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/233/transcript] This American Life privacy policy. [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/page/privacy-policy] Learn more about sponsor message choices. [https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices]

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 [https://thisamericanlife.supercast.com] 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.org [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/865/transcript] This American Life privacy policy. [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/page/privacy-policy] Learn more about sponsor message choices. [https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices]

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.org [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/831/transcript] This American Life privacy policy. [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/page/privacy-policy] Learn more about sponsor message choices. [https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices]

When the best—and perhaps only—way to say something is to write it down. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners [https://thisamericanlife.supercast.com] 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.org [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/838/transcript] This American Life privacy policy. [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/page/privacy-policy] Learn more about sponsor message choices. [https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices]