This American Life

People being dodged, delayed, and evaded—and what they do to put an end to it.

They mean something, whether we want them to or not.

Writer Etgar Keret tries to come up with the stories that capture his late mother, Orna Keret—but it’s hard, he says, because she’s like Maria in West Side Story and she’s also like Thanos from the Avengers. He ends up with a series of very short stories — most just a few paragraphs long — that give glimpses of different sides of her. These written stories are interspersed with off-the-cuff stories he tells host Ira Glass. 

San Francisco’s Spider-Man burglar was remarkable. He dropped into buildings from skylights, leapt 10 feet from one roof to another. But mostly, his talent got him into trouble. This week, his story, and stories of other undesirable talents.

People experiencing Christmas in brand new ways, giving the holiday even more meaning.

Something we’ve never done before: true stories told in the form of a game show.

People trying to coax each other across the line, from one side to the other.

Not long ago, Republicans in Ohio passed a constitutional amendment to end gerrymandering in the state. And then a funny thing happened. The same Ohio Republicans drew electoral maps that violated their own constitutional amendment. They’ll be using them in this week’s midterm elections. We try to understand how that could happen.

We hear from kids who are dealing with some of the country’s most contentious debates. Debates that are supposedly about them.

Two people go on excavations of their families’ pasts. Including the first episode of the new podcast, “We Were Three,” hosted by our longtime producer, Nancy Updike, and from Serial Productions and The New York Times.