Bonus: Nancy's Deep Cuts
This American Life
07/17/25
•26m
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Ira Glass talks with longtime producer Nancy Updike about the most personal stories they have put on the radio. This is a sample of the bonus episodes we regularly release to our This American Life Partners.
To gain access to all the bonus episodes AND help us keep making This American Life, join at thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners.
Previous Episode
577: Something Only I Can See
July 13, 2025
•58m
When you’re the only one who can see something, sometimes it feels like you’re in on a special secret. The hard part is getting anyone to believe your secret is real. This week, people trying to show others what they see—including a woman with muscular dystrophy who believes she has the same condition as an Olympic athlete.
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- Prologue: Ira asks Jeff Emtman to do the impossible—describe the indescribable color he sees in his left eye. (5 minutes)
- Act One: Journalist David Epstein tells the story of Jill Viles, who has muscular dystrophy and can’t walk. But she believes that she somehow has the same condition as one of the best hurdlers in the world, Priscilla Lopes-Schliep. (36 minutes)
- Act Two: Producer Nancy Updike speaks with comedian Tig Notaro about her mother-in-law, Carol. Carol came up with a joke that is only funny to one person—herself. But she loved it so much, Tig had to have her perform it onstage. (9 minutes)
- Act Three: Actor Alex Karpovsky reads a short story by Etgar Keret, from his book, “The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God." (4 minutes)
Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org
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Next Episode
864: Chicago Hope
July 20, 2025
•59m
The story of the most commonly performed surgery, and what goes wrong with it – terribly wrong – 100,000 times a year in the United States. We’re excited to bring you the first episode of The Retrievals, Season 2, the new show from longtime This American Life producer and editor Susan Burton. It’s from Serial Productions and The New York Times.
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- Prologue: Ira Glass introduces the first episode of an inventive new podcast from longtime This American Life producer and editor Susan Burton.
- Act One: Susan Burton introduces Mindy, a labor and delivery nurse at UI Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago. (5 minutes)
- Act Two: Another labor and delivery nurse at UI Health, Clara, gets ready to deliver twins at her own hospital and receives an epidural. (19 minutes)
- Act Three: Clara’s anesthesia is not working. She is now in the middle of major abdominal surgery, and she can feel that surgery. (21 minutes)
- Act Four: Heather, the head of obstetric anesthesia at UI Health, gets up onstage and asks a ballroom full of hundreds of anesthesiologists to wrestle with the question of why patients are feeling pain during C-sections, and what they can do to solve it. (8 minutes)
Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org
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