859: Chaos Graph
This American Life
04/27/25
•67m
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People immersed in chaos try to solve for what it all adds up to.
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- Prologue: A scientist who is used to organizing data starts tracking scientific meetings that seem to exist only on paper—meetings that might decide the fate of years of research. The NIH website shows one reality; the empty conference rooms tell another story. She graphs the chaos. (9 minutes)
- Act One: American doctors returning from Gaza compare notes and start to see a pattern. (28 minutes)
- Act Two: A woman watches her partner get taken in handcuffs with no explanation. Days later, she spots him in the most unexpected place. The coordinates of her life suddenly don't make sense as she navigates the bewildering map of the US immigration system. (23 minutes)
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332: The Ten Commandments
April 20, 2025
•59m
For Easter weekend — and the end of Passover! — stories of people struggling to follow the Ten Commandments.
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- Host Ira Glass reads from the Ten Commandments. Not the original Ten Commandments, but some of the newer, lesser-known ones. There's the Miner's Ten Commandments of 1853, the Ten Commandments of Umpiring, and the Ten Commandments for Math Teachers — just to name a few. (4 minutes)
- Commandments One, Two and Three: As a boy in religious school, Shalom Auslander is informed that his name, Shalom, is one of the names of God, and so he must be very careful not to take his own name in vain. (9 minutes)
- Commandment Four: Six houses of worship in six different cities, each with its own way of honoring the Sabbath. (3 minutes)
- Commandment Five: When Jack Hitt was 11, he did the worst thing his father could have imagined. Neither Jack nor his four siblings will ever forget the punishment. (6 minutes)
- Commandment Six: Alex Blumberg talks to Lt. Col. Lyn Brown, an Army Reserve chaplain who served two tours in Iraq. Brown talks about what "thou shalt not kill" means to soldiers on the battlefield. (6 minutes)
- Commandment Seven: In the book of Matthew, Jesus says that looking lustfully at a woman is like committing adultery in your heart. Contributor David Dickerson was raised as an evangelical Christian, and for many years tried not to have a single lustful thought. (9 minutes)
- Commandment Eight: Ira talks to a waiter named Hassan at Liebman's Deli in the Bronx about some audacious thefts he's witnessed in his years in the restaurant business. (3 minutes)
- Commandment Nine: Chaya Lipschutz wanted to donate one of her kidneys to a stranger. But to save a stranger's life, she had to break the commandment against lying. And the person she had to lie to was her mother. Chaya talked to Sarah Koenig. (8 minutes)
- Commandment Ten: Ira talks to seventh-graders about the things they covet most. (4 minutes)
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638: Rom-Com
May 4, 2025
•63m
The one thing you know for sure when you're watching a romantic comedy is that it's going to turn out okay in the end. When you're living one? Not so much.
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- Prologue: Romantic comedies usually don’t get much respect. Producer Neil Drumming explains what’s so great about them. (5 minutes)
- Act One: Actor Daniel Radcliffe reads a short piece of fiction, “The Present,” from Simon Rich’s book of short stories, “The Last Girlfriend on Earth.” (10 minutes)
- Act Two: Elna Baker interviews comedian Michelle Buteau about one of her first big romantic challenges. (14 minutes)
- Act Three: David Kestenbaum retraces the steps of Steve Snyder, a man who found himself running for love. (9 minutes)
- Act Four: Comedian Jillian Welsh tells Diane Wu about one of the most romantic—and stressful—nights of her life, a night that paralleled the plot of a rom-com in several ways. (16 minutes)
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