This American Life (Unofficial)

Stories about people who take grand, sweeping approaches to solving problems of all sorts.

Stories about people who take the law into their own hands, even when the line between enforcing the rules and breaking them gets kind of hazy.

Shalom Auslander goes on vacation with his family, and suspects the beloved, chatty old man in the room next door is an imposter—and sets out to prove it. This and other stories about the pitfalls of making snap judgments about others.

Mike Birbiglia got used to strange things happening to him when he slept—until something happened that almost killed him. This and other reasons to fear sleep, including bedbugs, "The Shining," and mild-mannered husbands who turn into maniacs while asleep.

On a summer day in 1951, two baby girls were born in a hospital in small-town Wisconsin. The infants were accidentally switched, and went home with the wrong families.

Stories of people haunted by guilt over their role in others' deaths, even when everyone agrees they're blameless.

Governments are always looking for ways to change behavior—stopping people from driving drunk, or encouraging them to recycle. This week, we have stories of social engineering on a smaller scale.

Does the truth always come out? Of course not! Though sometimes it comes out in the most uncomfortable ways imaginable. Stories of concealed truths bubbling to the surface, including a brand-new, unpublished story by fiction writer and filmmaker Etgar Keret.

A lawyer in the Justice Department gets the professional opportunity of a lifetime: To be the lead prosecutor in one of the first high-profile terrorist cases since 9/11. But things go badly for him.

A special program about the housing crisis produced in a special collaboration with NPR News. We explain it all to you. What does the housing crisis have to do with the turmoil on Wall Street? Why did banks make half-million dollar loans to people without jobs or income? And why is everyone talking so much about the 1930s?

It’s the late 1960s, and a California TV repairman named Bob sees an opportunity to help people cheat death with the new science of cryonics. But freezing dead people isn’t easy. And apologizing for the mistakes you make along the way? Even harder.

Stories of the Bush Administration, its unique style of asserting presidential authority, and its quest to redefine the limits of presidential power.

In 1912 a four-year-old boy named Bobby Dunbar went missing in a swamp in Louisiana. Eight months later, he was found in the hands of a wandering handyman in Mississippi. In 2004, Bobby Dunbar's granddaughter discovered a secret beneath the legend of her grandfather's kidnapping, a secret whose revelation would divide her own family, bring redemption to another, and become the answer to a third fa...

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

The true story of little-known rooms in the New York City Board of Education building. Teachers are told to report there instead of their classrooms. No reason is usually given.

Veronica Chater's mother wants to go to a resort in Mexico with a friend. Her father, a former cop with an extravagant sense of security, prepares as if she's headed for a war zone. This, and other stories about couples, that happen decades after the moment their eyes meet.

This week we bring you backstage with comedy writers at The Onion. They start with over 600 potential headlines for their fake-news newspaper each week, and over the course of two days, in the very tough room that is their editorial conference room, they select 16 to go in the paper. Plus other people speaking their minds in very tough rooms.

Sabir, a young man in Afghanistan, thought he'd found true love but he couldn't afford a wedding. So two foreign aid workers, friends of his, decide to come to his rescue. They soon find out making a lasting love match isn't as simple as writing a check.

A 79-year-old woman, Mary Ann, dies in Los Angeles. She's lived alone for decades. No one knows her—or her next of kin. There's a body to be buried, a house full of stuff to get rid of.

A young girl named Sarah receives a heart transplant from a boy her age, and her mother sets off to find out more about the kid who saved her daughter's life. But years later, Sarah's not sure she wants to know.

Stories of the unintended consequences of market forces.

For Thanksgiving, the time of year when poultry consumption is highest, it's our annual program about turkeys, chickens, and fowl of all types.

There are umpteen TV shows about solving murders, endless whodunits in bookstores. But what happens to the people left behind after the detectives close the case? Three stories about children trying to figure out how to live normally after their parents have died.

Stories of adults taking very different approaches to communicating with children.

Stories of people trying to exorcize their inner demons.