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)
• Interview 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)
• Interview Two: Ira asks his parents for advice on how he should build the radio show. His parents don’t hold back. (9 minutes)
• Interview Three: Ira talks with his dad, Barry, about Barry’s own brief and doomed career in radio. (21 minutes)
• Interview Four: An interview with Ira’s mom that, to this day, makes Ira’s skin crawl. (13 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

This American Life privacy policy.
Learn more about sponsor message choices.

Stories that take place on the edge of civilization, just out of sight.

Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.

• Prologue: Every city's got a place like this: that weird no man's land on the outskirts of town, with junk yards and landfills. Charlie Gregerson grew up near that stuff, on Chicago's far south side, and he remembers finding debris from famous Louis Sullivan masterpieces in the garbage dump after those buildings were demolished. (4 minutes)
• Act One: Out for a simple pleasure cruise with two friends, Alex Zharov was planning to see Jamaica Bay in New York City. But this end-of-the-day excursion, which should have only lasted 40 minutes, turns into an out-of-control adventure that left him lost, stranded, and bleeding—all within sight of the Empire State Building. Brett Martin reports. (23 minutes)
• Act Two: There is a four-mile-long bridge in Naan-jing China, famous for how many people jump off to die by suicide. In 2003, a man named Chen Sah began spending all of his weekends on the bridge, trying to single-handedly stop the jumpers. Reporter Mike Paterniti tells his story of meeting Mr. Chen. (15 minutes)
• Act Three: The story of the government cracking down on smokestack emissions at a city factory, even though the residents like the emissions. We hear from Jorge Just, who explains the one, magical secret about Chicago that no one outside Chicago ever believes is true. (9 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

This 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.org

This American Life privacy policy.
Learn more about sponsor message choices.

Stories of high drama from America's workplaces — surprising, emotional places full of the greed, jealousy, and ambition of real politics.

Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.

• Prologue: We hear three stories of how conflicts are resolved in offices. Two of those stories come from sociologist Calvin Morrill, who studied the executive suites at a number of large companies in his book The Executive Way: Conflict Management in Corporations. The last story comes from host Ira Glass, who talks about how he ended up punching his own boss in the stomach in front of all his co-workers. (12 minutes)
• Act One: Starlee Kine with the story of a company in turmoil. A young employee gets in a jam and discovers that in times of trouble, when all else has failed, companies in her industry turn to one woman in a suburban home in Long Island, who solves their corporate problems while the TV plays in the background. (12 minutes)
• Act Two: David Rakoff discusses the world of birthdays and other holidays, as they're celebrated on the job... and what happens when you call yourself an editorial assistant but the editor you're assisting calls you a secretary. (15 minutes)
• Act Three: Julie Snyder explains the office politics of street vendors on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Eighth Street in New York City. With her is sociologist Mitch Duneier, who spent years working with the vendors and writing about them for his book Sidewalk. (14 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

This 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. And makes the case that we should all be more like him. (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.org

This 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.org

This 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.org

This American Life privacy policy.
Learn more about sponsor message choices.

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