443: Amusement Park
This American Life
08/10/26
•62m
About
Comments
Featured In
We head to some of the happiest places on earth: amusement parks! Ira Glass takes us behind the scenes at Worlds of Fun in Kansas City, where the young staff – coached by a funny, fun-loving boss just a little older than they are – truly seem to love their jobs.
Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.
(00:00:00) Prologue: Host Ira Glass walks through a Kansas City, Missouri amusement park called Worlds of Fun with Cole Lindbergh, who had a season pass to the park as a little kid, started working there in the summers at 14, and then stayed on. Now he's a full-time, year-round employee who runs the games department. He may do this job better than anyone in the country. (9 minutes)
(00:09:26) Act One: Ira continues with Cole Lindbergh and the teenagers who work for him in the games department at Worlds of Fun. We watch them compete against each other to see who can do the most business. (23 minutes)
(00:32:26) Act Two: We asked for your stories about amusement parks. Three hundred of you called in, with stories of fear, floating carnies and, um, vomit. (9 minutes)
(00:42:15) Act Three: Jonathan Goldstein returns to Wildwood, New Jersey, where he spent one not-fateful summer when he was sixteen. (13 minutes)
Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org / This American Life privacy policy. / Learn more about sponsor message choices.
Previous Episode
894: I Couldn't Help but Notice
August 3
•60m
People dealing with new, glaring, massive changes happening right where they live.
Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.
(00:00:00) Prologue: Rick Cole, a city councilmember in Pasadena, CA, talks to Ira about how he responded to a surprise nighttime military exercise in his neighborhood this June – complete with helicopters, gunfire, and flash bangs. (5 minutes)
(00:05:30) Act One: A doctor trained as a midwife tells the eye-popping story of how she and others came together to save a baby during a birth that suddenly went wrong, in a part of rural Maine where the local labor and delivery unit had closed less than a month before. (26 minutes)
(00:34:56) Act Two: Producer Valerie Kipnis never felt inside the jokes and stories her family would tell about growing up in the Soviet Union, until she saw this year's Oscar-winning documentary, Mr. Nobody Against Putin. The film follows the changes unfolding in one school as Russia rolled out a nationwide propaganda push after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Valerie interviewed the young teacher at the center of the documentary and learned things that never made it into the film. (21 minutes)
Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org / This American Life privacy policy. / Learn more about sponsor message choices.
Next Episode
895: Label Maker!
August 17
•59m
Labels are powerful. They can distill you down to a single word. They can get stuck on you without your permission. And sometimes, when they get taken away, they can upend your entire life. On this episode: labels and the havoc they wreak.
Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.
(00:00:00) Prologue: Sara and Ethan have been dating for 10 months. They see each other at least once a week, text pretty much every day, and have been there for each other through hard times. But they refuse to have the “what are we?” conversation. So what gives? Guest host Tobin Low looks into it. (5 minutes)
(00:05:14) Act One: Last week, when Temporary Protected Status, also known as TPS, was cut off for Haitian immigrants, some 300,000 people had their lives upended. Marie, a Certified Nursing Assistant in Boston, was one of them. Producer Chana Joffe-Walt spent time last week with Marie as she tried to figure out exactly when her very last day on the job would be. (21 minutes)
(00:27:57) Act Two: Comedian Janet McNamara was walking off stage 15 years ago when the club owner asked, “Hey, have you ever been tested for autism?” No one had ever asked her this before, so Janet decided to look into it. (17 minutes)
(00:44:01) Act Three: When you get down to it, labels are just our way of pointing out what we think is remarkable about other people. That’s Alfred Jung Lee’s argument. He’s been thinking a lot about how we describe each other, especially as he tries to describe his wife, who passed away from cancer. (10 minutes)
Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org / This American Life privacy policy. / Learn more about sponsor message choices.
If you like this episode you’ll love
Promoted