This American Life (Unofficial)

We take the stately laws of physics—laws which mathematicians and scientists have spent centuries discovering and verifying—and apply them to the realm of human relationships, to see if they shed useful light on our daily lives.

Stories of people who are trying to convince you that the Devil is there, whispering in your ear...and stories of people who try to deny he's there, against some very heavy evidence.

What happens when a new guy comes on the scene and changes the way everyone relates to each other?

Stories about what happens when you name names. When you turn someone over to the authorities, it can set into motion lots of huge, unintended consequences. A reporter turns over an interviewee to the FBI. A group of teachers turn in their principal. A director turns in his Communist colleagues to the United States Congress.

After a decade in which DNA evidence has freed over 100 people nationwide, it's become clear that DNA evidence isn't just proving wrongdoing by criminals, it's proving wrongdoing by police and prosecutors. In this show, we look at what DNA has revealed to us: how police get innocent people to confess to crimes they didn't commit and how they get witnesses to pin crimes on innocent people.

Two stories that are worst case scenarios for any parent. In each story, when you take apart what happened and how it happened, it's hard to see how anyone could've prevented things from going bad.

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

Stories about people who were told that they're different. Some of them were comfortable with it. Some didn't understand it. And some understood, but didn't like it.

Life aboard the USS John C. Stennis, an aircraft carrier that was stationed in the Arabian Sea and supported bombing missions over Afghanistan. Only a few dozen people on board actually fly jets. It takes the rest of the crew — over 5,000 people — to keep them in the air. This American Life producers visited the Stennis in 2002, about six weeks into its deployment. The hour is devoted to this one...

There's the thing you plan to do, and then there's the thing you end up doing.

The story of how the American Psychiatric Association decided in 1973 that homosexuality was no longer a mental illness.

Personal recordings one person made for just one other person, including what some have called the greatest phone message ever.

Stories of faith: losing it, talking about it, constructing it, and working within it.

In a time of war, when we're all feeling a heightened sense of "us" and "them," we wanted to take up the problem of "them." Some people need a good "them." Other people tend to see all "thems" as more like us. And so we bring you three stories of people misperceiving the them-miness of them.

Of all the wars to win, perhaps the propaganda war is the hardest. In this show, we bring you stories of propaganda wars past and present, by those who fought them and those who survived them.

The true story of an abandoned house, discovered by a young boy in the 1970s, and the mysterious family who disappeared without a trace.

People climbing to be number one. How do they do it? What is the fundamental difference between us and them?

There's the time when you know something is happening, but you're not sure exactly what. The illness before it's diagnosed. The era, before it's been given a title. And something changes when the name is given. Stories of that transformation...between what it is now, and what it was before it had a name.

In the movie Rashomon, one story is told from four different points of view. The story changes dramatically depending on who's telling it. This week, the events of September 11th, and how their meaning changes depending on who you talk to.

In September 2001, we tried to sort out what the war in Afghanistan would be like, and what our lives would be like during this war.

Stories in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001.

In the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a collection of stories in which people try to make sense of loss.

The story of one man's journey from obscurity to international professional celebrity—aided only by his own hard work, a sneaker commercial, and mad handles. And other stories of amateurs hurtling themselves at the pros whose jobs they covet.

Stories for the stultifying, torpor-inducing, hottest heat of summer.

There's a deep impulse in American culture that says that you can make yourself into anyone. Today, three stories about people who tried to do just that.