This American Life (Unofficial)

Nearly this entire show is devoted to the story of the boat known as "Hitler's Yacht." It's a modern-day fable about what happens when the free market, the media, the World War II buffs, the Neo-Nazis, and the Jews all collide over a huge Nazi tourist trap. The boat arrived in America after World War II, and though there's no evidence that Hitler ever set foot on the decks, the name was attached t...

Stories of kids using perfectly logical arguments and arriving at perfectly wrong conclusions.

For Father's Day, stories of dads who are utterly human in scale.

While the seniors danced at Prom Night 2001 in Hoisington, Kansas—a town of about 3,000—a tornado hit the town, destroying about a third of it. When they emerged from the dance, they discovered what had happened, and in the weeks that followed, they tried to explain to themselves why the tornado hit where it did. Plus other stories that happen on Prom Night.

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

Stories of people trying to love their neighbors, and failing.

Stories about the legacy of absent parents. We hear four cases from the files of the Missing Parents Bureau.

Stories that make us cringe, and an investigation into just what, exactly, makes some stories capable of forcing this physical reaction out of us when other stories don't. We hear tales of personal humiliation, romance gone wrong, and people who profoundly misjudge how they're perceived by others.

A special show, composed entirely of stories from just one This American Life contributor: Scott Carrier, whose strange and compelling stories sound like nothing else on the radio.

Stories of people who try to revisit their childhoods. What they find. And what they do not find.

The story in a way of a town that time forgot, or more accurately, a town that tried to forget the times. A special broadcast co-hosted by award-winning journalist Alex Kotlowitz, author of the books There Are No Children Here and The Other Side of the River.

We answer the following questions about superpowers: Can superheroes be real people? (No.) Can real people become superheroes? (Maybe.) And which is better: flight or invisibility? (Depends who you ask.)

Stories of people living completely outside the grid of American life. Americans in Paris. Chinese in America. West Virginians in treehouses. Mexican-Americans in Rochester.

In the wake of the 2001 election debacle in Florida, the two political halves of this country seemed angrier at each other than they had in decades. This week we bring you tales of that widening rift. Democrats explain why they're having trouble getting over it, and Republicans explain why this is so infuriating.

What goes on while mom and dad are away, that mom and dad never find out about. Including the story of two teenagers who decide to invent children to babysit, as an excuse to get out of their own house.

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

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.

We document one day in a Chicago diner called the Golden Apple, starting at 5 a.m. and going until 5 a.m. the next morning. 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.

Stories for the eve of the Presidential election, in which we try to evade, sidestep or look beneath the candidates' soundbites.

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 pass...

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.

There are all sorts of situations in which we suspect the fix is in, but we almost never find out for certain. On today's show, for once, we find out. The whole program is devoted to one story, in which we go inside the back rooms of one multinational corporation and hear the intricate workings—recorded on tape—of how they put the fix in.

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.

Three stories that consider the question: Does anyone's family ever change?

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?