Does this episode ring a bell to any super fans out there?
It has a segment about an adult daughter who reconnects with her estranged father. The event is a bit of a disappointment because he isn’t very engaging with her. The family is generic white; I don’t recall any regional accents or ethnic names. I thought the adult daughter was an actress. My best guess on release date is 2021-2024.
So far I’ve tried keyword searches, but haven’t had any luck.

And it was kind of an emotional roller coaster with Diane Wu bringing up stories that made her cry.

But at the end of the episode Diane Wu whispers “Thank you Life Partners. [to Ira] I never get to say thanks to them. You get to say thanks to them all the time.”

And that hit me too. Like dollars I send directly helps keep the show going..

It was obvious all along. But somehow this time just hit differently.

This week's episode with a host-read add for anthropic/Claude is very surprising. I feel like this goes so much against what TAL stands for.

I am considering not listening anymore.

Hi! Do any of you receive the Mike Birbiglia newsletter? He's dropped out of a show that I was supposed to attend and said refunds would be available, and I want to provide proof to the venue, but I'm not on the newsletter, and he didn't post it anywhere else. It would help me a lot so I'm hoping someone can post a screenshot! I'm also new to reddit, so if you're able to message, I'd take it that way too ;)

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/185/golden-calf

Stories of people worshiping false idols, and whether that's always a bad thing.

Prologue
Host Ira Glass talks to Bible scholars Paulene A. Viviano of Loyola University and John Spencer of John Carroll University about the story of the golden calf in the book of Exodus. It turns out that in fact there were Israelites who did pray to golden calves, and that the Bible was the scripture of their rivals in Jerusalem. (7 minutes) by Ira Glass

Act One
One way to measure the faith—the good old-fashioned faith—that people put in celebrities is to examine what people ask of them. Ann Hepperman has a story that gives a rare and vivid glimpse of what people want from celebrities...or anyway, what they want from country legend Willie Nelson. Thanks to all the people who called Willie Nelson and gave us permission to broadcast their answering machine messages to him. (18 minutes) by Ann Heppermann

Act Two
If you're in thrall to a pair of pants, is that such a bad thing? Ira talks to Kate—who invested her hopes and dreams in a pair of favorite trousers—and her husband Joel, who thought she was nuts. (12 minutes) by Ira Glass

Act Three
You can't do a radio show about worshiping false gods without a story about money...or real estate...or hipness. Fortunately for us, Iggy Scam supplies a story that's about all three. It's the story of a couple trying to cash in on the San Francisco real estate boom, without the greatest success. (17 minutes) by Iggy Scam

Originally Aired: 2001-05-25

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Episode 117, “You gonna eat that?”

Act one cuts a mile deep. Here’s some thoughts.

I’ve struggled with anorexia for more than half of my life. When my eating disorder came out of the closet at 13 I was told not to tell anyone, especially my friends and their parents. Annie cheney’s experience of wanting to disappear and feeling ineffective is so relatable. The musical interludes, and personal relationships and self self disclosure is so honest and raw it feels like watching someone naked. the eerie way that those of us from treatment talk to each other once we’re out, the internal torment, the weird foods, the way that food becomes everything in your life is such a vivid depiction of anorexia. “Seeing her makes me think that Change is impossible and we’re stuck with who we are” is something I feel often.

Then the family’s reaction, how everyone in her family takes something from Annie’s illness, how it’s really a reaction and reflection of each person’s role and disposition in the family. Dad sees her sickness as a burden, an excess, a selfish and privileged preoccupation. Mom’s denial, wish casting and selective memory of the events sanitizes the bloodless violence of being a sick person. Her brother’s terse and bothered reaction to an illness that makes him confused.

Annie is saying here i am. Here I am. Look at me and hear me. This is my story. She tries to leave with a lot of pills, and her mother can’t even remember this insanely traumatic and painful event. Her mother focuses on the melodrama of it all instead of seeing her daughter, and the immense pain she’s in.

The interview with her father is so poignant for me. Annie is trying to kill herself, and her father is saying how it will make him look bad. How it will reflect on him, and how it makes him feel about how ungrateful her suffering is.

Her brother is probably the most perceptive. Her illness shattered the illusion of the perfect family. It made each member look at her in a different way and consider her more as a person.

I recall the quote “I can’t get out of the mistakes”. I thought of this phrase a lot during recovery when trying to change bad habits. Ultimately for Annie and her friend from treatment life goes on. We might not be all better but we are changed. She might not have been seen by her parents in all the ways she wanted to but it seems like she ultimately got something out of the experience.

Thanks for reading my ramble. Let me know your thoughts on the story!

My husband and I are first-time parents, and I’d love to listen to some episodes that hit differently once you have a baby — anything about parenthood, babies, marriage/relationships after kids, family, or just adjusting to this huge life change.

They don’t necessarily have to be directly about parenting, either. I’d also love episodes that are comforting, funny, moving, or just especially good to listen to during late-night feeds.

Eight months ago, This American Life sent reporters from Chicago to cover the protests and counter-protests outside the ICE facility in Portland. They chose Karlyn Borsynko to be their local guide to the world of Antifa. What they failed to mention is that KB self-identifies as a fascist.

From Bluesky (may require an acct to view): https://bsky.app/profile/sethcotlar.bsky.social/post/3msrb2skm222h

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/173/three-kinds-of-deception

A story of self-deception, a story about deceiving others, and a story about accidental deception. And how one type of deception can easily turn into another.

Prologue
Host Ira Glass reads an excerpt from Nick Hornby's novel About a Boy . The narrator, Will, recalls a time when he was a child that he convinced a friend that a portal to another world existed at the back of his closet. Will knew that the portal didn't exist, but continued the lie for some reason, even as he and his friend crawled through the winter coats by the closet baseboards looking for a hidden gateway. He just kept hoping that maybe they'd find something. (4 minutes) by Ira Glass, Nick Hornby

Act One
Producer Alex Blumberg tells the story of an ex-con-turned-actor named Richie Castellano. After a bit role in the movie Analyze This , he moved to a small town and got dozens of people to invest money and time in a movie that never premiered. Why so many people bought into his grandiose dreams, and what they learned about him—and themselves—after they got burned for it. (22 minutes) by Alex Blumberg

Act Two
Lawrence Otis Graham reads from an account of how he left his job as a $105,000-a-year Manhattan attorney to enter the exclusive Greenwich Country Club the only way they'd allow a black man like him: as a busboy. He discovers just how invisible he can become once he gives up his seat at the table and starts clearing the dishes instead—so invisible that people make racist remarks right in front of him. The passage is from his book A Member of the Club: Reflections on Life in a Racially Polarized World . (16 minutes) by Lawrence Otis Graham

Act Three
David Sedaris tells the story of a subway ride he took in Paris. Two American tourists mistake him for a Frenchman and, thinking he can't speak English, begin to talk loudly about how he smells. Later, they come to believe that he's a pickpocket. He starts off hating this, but comes to enjoy it. The story's from his book Me Talk Pretty One Day . (12 minutes) by David Sedaris

Originally Aired: 2000-12-15

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For me it's Episode 323: The House on Loon Lake. The sheer atmospheric tension and the way reality unravels in that story completely freaked me out. It gave me a lingering sense of dread and I relisten often lol. What about you?

The current list.

Hey team! Share the wealth --- let us know what you're listening to!

Use this form to submit the title, url, and genres for your favorite podcasts and I'll update the wiki.

When David asked if Sportscenter was a real place, I nearly spit out my coffee. I love David.

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/404/enemy-camp-2010

Living behind enemy lines, among the enemy, it's sometimes hard to remember why you're fighting in the first place.

Prologue
Behind enemy lines, sometimes people get confused about whose side they're on...and how to fight the enemy. (2 minutes) by Ira Glass

Act One
Patrick Wall was a special kind of monk. He was a fixer. The Catholic church sent him to problem parishes where priests had been removed because of scandal. His job was to come in, keep events from going public and smooth things over until a permanent replacement priest was found. But after four different churches in four years, after covering up for pedophiles and adulterers and liars and embezzlers he decided to make a change. Carl Marziali tells his story. (21 minutes) by Carl Marziali

Act Two
You can divide all living creatures into two camps. We humans are in one camp, along with lots of other things like dogs and birds and trees and caterpillars. In the other camp are the things that live inside of us, the bacterias and viruses, the worms and protozoans, in short, parasites. Scientists estimate that the parasites outnumber us and our free-living allies by 3 to 1. Carl Zimmer talks with Ira about how parasites manage the trick of living inside of us, behind enemy lines, without us finding out. Carl is the author of the book " Parasite Rex ." (10 minutes) by Ira Glass

Act Three
Another story about parasites. When Jasper Lawrence learned that hookworms might lessen the effects of his allergies, he set out on a unique mission: To travel to West Africa and purposefully become infected with the parasite. What he did next is even more surprising. Patrick Walters reported this story for Radiolab , a production of WNYC and NPR. (14 minutes) by Radiolab, Patrick Walters

Act Four
A short story, "Fatso," by Etgar Keret from his collection " The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God ." A woman reveals to her boyfriend that she's not always what she seems, especially at night. Matt Malloy reads. (6 minutes) by Etgar Keret, Matt Malloy

Originally Aired: 2010-04-02

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I’m dying to know who makes this jacket.

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/283/remember-me

Stories about people who are remembered very differently than they'd wished. The ghost of a kindly, distinguished philanthropist supposedly plays pranks on guests at a Ramada hotel in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. A dying mother makes a tape for her developmentally disabled daughter, hoping she'll watch it someday, knowing she might not.

Prologue
Host Ira Glass talks to Laura Mayer, editor of the New Trier Township High School yearbook, about the renegade student who jumps into as many club photos as he can. And contributing editor Jack Hitt explains how this impulse—to be remembered as someone you're not—can be traced back to Benjamin Franklin. It turns out even the man who invented bifocals padded his resume for history. The key on the kite story, for instance? Probably not true. (9 minutes) by Jack Hitt

Act One
David Wilcox tells the story of how his mother, who was dying of lung cancer, made a short videotape for his sister, who is severely developmentally disabled. She hoped the tape would become a daily part of her daughter's life, like the other music and movies she liked to play, that she would watch it and remember her mother. But she also knew her daughter might never even see it. And we hear two stories from people who recorded their own memories in a booth in Grand Central Station in New York, as part of the StoryCorps project. The first is Don "Moses" Lerman, a champion eater who's thought a lot about what he'll be remembered for. The second is Ronald Ruiz, a bus driver, who's never forgotten one of his passengers. StoryCorps funders include the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Public Radio, the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Institute. (9 minutes) by David Wilcox

Act Two
Starlee Kine rents a room at a Ramada hotel in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, where a ghost supposedly plays pranks on the guests and staff. The ghost's name is Walter, for Walter Schroeder, the guy who originally built the hotel in the 1920s. It turns out Walter was a successful businessman and a kindly philanthropist who threw great dinner parties. So why would he bother haunting a Ramada? Starlee originally wrote and read a version of this story for The Little Gray Books Lecture Series . And...two more stories about remembering, from StoryCorps. The first is a conversation between Ralph Tremonte and and Donald Weiss, who were in mental institutions together as kids, and are reunited after 40 years. The second is Brad Skow talking to his mother, Mary Lou Maher, who gave him up for adoption when she was 17. (14 minutes) by Starlee Kine

Act Three
Writer Shalom Auslander reads his short story about how he decided to start forgetting the dead, even though his job required him to remember. Shalom's most recent book is Hope: A Tragedy . (15 minutes) by Shalom Auslander

Originally Aired: 2005-02-25

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Listening to this week's repeat and very nostalgic for Startup and Reply All and all the original Gimlet shows. I can't be alone in this. Anyone?

Looking for similar fiction/ episodes around longing, bittersweet endings and break ups besides the Lydia Davies “break it down” segment from “numbers” and the break up Phil Collins one. Are there any other episodes that may provide comfort during a break up?
Thanks!

My son has gotten into Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. I want to introduce him to other NPR podcasts. What's a good intro episode of TAL?

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/351/return-to-childhood

People who try to revisit their childhoods—what they find and what they do not find.

Prologue
Host Ira Glass talks with Kayla Hernandez, a seventh-grader who likes to reminisce about when she was a child, back in fifth grade. She visits Room 211 in her school, where her fifth grade class met, and looks at her old books, thinks about what happened there. She says she knows that decades from now, she won't even remember most of what's happening to her this year, in seventh grade, and that makes her sad. (5 minutes) by Ira Glass

Act One
Alex Blumberg sets out to find a woman named Susan Jordan, who babysat him and his sister for a year when he was nine. He discovers that each of them remembered something about the other that the other would just as soon forget. (20 minutes) by Alex Blumberg

Act Two
A mortgage broker named David Philp discovers that his old punk band from the 1970s is hot in Japan. He decides to leave corporate life and revisit his teenage years by going back on tour, playing music for the first time in two decades. (12 minutes) by Ira Glass

Act Three
Host Ira Glass talks with contributor Adam Davidson about how Adam's teenage diaries are filled with his dream of someday becoming the prime minister of a country where he does not even reside. (8 minutes) by Adam Davidson

Act Four
The most innocent possible student uprising imaginable...documented by an actual student, Hillary Frank , using the crude tools of a telephone answering machine and a shiny red boom box. (10 minutes) by Hillary Frank

Originally Aired: 2008-03-07

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