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12.29.2000
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Birthdays, anniversaries, and milestones of all sorts...and how they mean something whether we want them to or not. A live show taped for our fifth anniversary, back in 2000, when we went on the road to Boston, New York, Chicago, and L.A. A co-production with public radio stations WBUR, WNYC, WBEZ, and KCRW. |
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12.22.2000
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Stories about the intersection of Christmas and retail, including David Sedaris's story "Santaland Diaries", which was first broadcast on NPR's Morning Edition several years ago in a much shorter version. The diaries are about David's two Christmas seasons working as an elf in Macy's department store on New York's Herald Square. When it was first broadcast, it generated more requests for tapes than any story in Morning Edition's history except the death of Red Barber. Also, David Rakoff on playing Freud in the windows of Barney's department store. And other stories. |
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12.15.2000
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Some people are born to deceive, some achieve deception, and some have deception thrust upon them. This week, an example of each scenario—including one from David Sedaris. |
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12.08.2000
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With the number of prisoners in the United States rising rapidly, we present stories of their lives and the lives of their families and children. |
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12.01.2000
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Stories made from old tapes found in various places, including a "letter on tape" found in a Salvation Army thrift store. Host Ira Glass with tapes of his father on the radio, circa 1956. And radio producer Nora Moreno with tapes of her father, a Spanish broadcasting pioneer in America. Her mother fell in love with him over the radio, with tragic results. |
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11.24.2000
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Stories about kids being mean to each other. |
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11.17.2000
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Starting at 5 am and going until 5 am the next morning, we document a day in a Chicago diner called The Golden Apple. We hear from the waitress who has worked the graveyard shift for over two decades, the regular customers who come every day, the couples working out their problems, assorted drunks, and—of course—cops. |
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11.10.2000
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Four stories about people struggling at the fringes of our nation's media/music/infotainment industry. |
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11.03.2000
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Stories for the eve of the Presidential election, in which we try to evade, sidestep or look beneath the candidates' soundbites. |
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10.27.2000
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We think of crime as a kind of monolithic, menacing presence. But there are many kinds of crimes and many kinds of criminals. Through our crimes, we express who we are. Today we hear of three different criminals and three different kinds of crimes. |
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10.20.2000
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Stories of family businesses, and what happens when the tension of family dynamics collides with the pressure of capitalist market forces. |
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10.13.2000
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We live in a big enough country that there are lots of laws too obscure for most of us to have heard of... but which actually affect tens of thousands of lives in huge ways. This show deals with one of them: a 1996 immigration law that the Immigration Service itself says is unfair. Most of the law's original sponsors in Congress now say they went too far, and that they were too harsh when they passed the law. And yet most of the law's key provisions still stand unchanged. |
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10.06.2000
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Stories of people trying to get rich quick, or otherwise make something for nothing. As everyone knows, there's no such thing as something for nothing. You always pay a price. |
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09.29.2000
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We as a nation declared our independence based on, among other things, the right to pursue our happiness. But what does it mean, over two centuries later, to grow up in a country with an inalienable right to pursue happiness? Stories of people pursuing happiness, and sometimes, achieving it. |
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09.22.2000
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Three stories of people trying to forget the past and move on. |
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09.15.2000
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This week we rerun a show from 2000 about a price fixing conspiracy and the executive who cooperated with the FBI in recording what are probably the most remarkable videotapes ever made of an American company in the middle of a criminal act. The executive then did some things that turned him from the best informant in FBI history into one of the most troubling. A screenwriter named Scott Burns heard this episode of our show on the radio, and—with Matt Damon and Steven Soderbergh—turned it into a film that opens this weekend, "The Informant!" Hear the amazing true story right here. |
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09.08.2000
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Stories of people who are engaged in something that's both difficult and probably futile: trying to control how they'll be seen by generations to come. |
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09.01.2000
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Stories of who we are on the phone, of things we learn on the phone, of things that happen on the phone that don't happen anywhere else. |
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08.25.2000
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Stories of people moving to this country: what they see and hear about America that those of us who were born here don't necessarily see. |
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08.18.2000
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What happens when people with one common interest gather in monstrous, flourescent-lit halls for the weekend? Sometimes they drive each other crazy, sometimes they fall in love. |
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08.11.2000
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Three stories that consider the question: does anyone's family ever change? A woman travels to Alaska to spend some time with her brother, hoping he might change a little. What can happen when a sibling relationship doesn't ever change—over decades. And what if there's literally nothing that can be done to change your dad? |
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08.04.2000
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A show about something most people have gone through. Friends get together to start a business, start a church, do political action together. And after a while, they start fighting and split up. We hear three true stories. |
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07.28.2000
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Many Americans have dreamy and romantic ideas about Paris, notions which probably trace back to the 1920s vision of Paris created by the expatriate Americans there. But what's it actually like in Paris if you're an American, without rose-colored glasses? |
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07.21.2000
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Stories of summer camp. People who love camp say that non-camp people simply don't understand what's so amazing about camp. In this program, we attempt to bridge the gap of misunderstanding between camp people and non-camp people. |
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07.14.2000
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Stories about hitting the open road. Dishwasher Pete takes the bus with strangers, and Margy Rochlin explains her days on the road with George Burns. Plus, a roadtrip to save a marriage. |
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07.07.2000
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Every crime scene hides a story. In this week's show, we hear about crime scenes and the stories they tell. |
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06.30.2000
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Stories of a typically American kind of hero: the person who decides to fight city hall, who stands up alone for what's right, and damn the consequences. We hear the story of two idealists who work in government, two centuries after another set of idealists created the American government. Both of the modern idealists suffer and sacrifice because of their ideals; both lose their jobs. |
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06.23.2000
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Stories of people who did not want to move but circumstance forced their hands, and so they tried to move without really moving. |
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06.16.2000
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Five ways of mapping the world. One story about people who make maps the traditional way—by drawing things we can see. And other stories about people who map the world using smell, sound, touch, and taste. The world redrawn by the five senses. |
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06.09.2000
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Stories of people trying to do good: Why they often fail and why they occasionally succeed. |
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06.02.2000
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05.26.2000
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Stories of when things go wrong. Really wrong. When you leave the normal realm of human error, fumble, mishap and mistake and enter the territory of really huge breakdowns. Fiascos. Things go so awry that normal social order collapses. This week's show is a philosophical inquiry in the nature of fiascos — perhaps the first ever. |
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05.19.2000
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In preparation for what is likely to be a nasty Presidential contest between George H. W. Bush and Al Gore, we hear stories of character assassination ... political and non-political. |
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05.12.2000
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05.05.2000
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The pleasure of being in a rampaging, angry mob ... and the terror of being in a rampaging, angry mob. |
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04.28.2000
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Writer David Sedaris recalls the days when his mother and sister played armchair detective—until a very odd crime wave hit within their own home. Plus, host Ira Glass goes out on surveillance with a real-life private eye. |
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04.21.2000
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Though being gay no longer has much of a stigma in some parts of the country, being a sissy still does—even among gay men. In this show we have a number of surprising and unusual stories of sissies, their families, and why people still get so upset about them. |
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04.14.2000
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04.07.2000
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Stories, tributes, and attempts to understand the Chairman of the Board. |
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03.31.2000
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Usually This American Life brings you stories of people in the middle of big experiences. But sometimes these moments of dramatic change are only half the story. The other half occurs after time passes and they return to revisit what happened, and who they were back when. Today's show is about what they find. |
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03.24.2000
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Can the secular world and the religious world understand each other? We ask that question while visiting Colorado Springs, Colorado, where Pastor Ted Haggard at the New Life Church has put in place a project to pray in front of the home of every person in the city, systematically, block by block and house by house. He's also helped organize a 24-hour, 365-day-a-year "prayer shield" over the city; all-night prayer vigils; and more. |
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03.17.2000
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Stories of people who tell a lie and then believe the lie more than anyone else does. In other words: stories about people pulling hoaxes ... on themselves. |
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03.10.2000
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We try to define the peculiar relationship between humans and animals. One story about a love triangle among two people and a cat. David Sedaris with a retrospective on his family's pets through the ages. And Brady Udall with a tale of love, redemption, and armadillos. They have more in common than you might think. |
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03.03.2000
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Stories of what people are playing at when they play with dolls. |
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02.25.2000
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Two stories of people who try to cross the color line, and why it's still so hard. We hear the story of a failed interracial marriage, and the story of a teenager from a poor inner city neighborhood who ends up at an Ivy League University — and how he barely survives there. |
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02.18.2000
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Stories about seeing and being seen. Taped before a live audience in Town Hall in New York City in December 1998, this was a co-production with WNYC New York, featuring live music by the pop band They Might Be Giants and the This American Life Orchestra. |
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02.11.2000
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Stories of love in its earliest stage. Crushes: what's terrible about them, what's great about them and how they can overshadow real love for some people. |
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02.04.2000
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Stories about the border between mental health and mental illness. |
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01.28.2000
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Today's program is made all of stories from the New Hampshire primary. Voters want to find a candidate who inspires them. Candidates want to inspire. So where's the system failing? Why do most of us feel like the system doesn't produce anyone inspiring? We hear stories that answer why. We hear from voters who've found candidates they love. And we hear what those voters are seeing that the rest of us aren't. |
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01.21.2000
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Stories of kids trying to act like adults—some by choice—some because they're forced to. |
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01.14.2000
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In the hospital, we give up our normal schedule and sleep patterns; we give up our normal food and clothing; we're in a place that has its own rules and its own language and its own customs. And in the midst of all this, there's this complicated human interaction we have to negotiate: We have to deal with doctors and nurses to get the care we need. In this show we hear stories of those delicate and sometimes not-so-delicate negotiations. |
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01.07.2000
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With the number of prisoners in the United States rising rapidly, we present stories of their lives and the lives of their families and children. |
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