Stories of people who try simple mind games on others, and then find themselves way in over their heads.

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• Prologue: Host Ira Glass interviews Lori Gottlieb about the time she sent a letter to a writer in a magazine, a letter packed with white lies. (5 minutes)
• Act One: Lori Gottlieb's story continues. One complication led to another, and before long, the writer seemed to be lying to her. Or maybe he wasn't. It was hard to tell. Years later, she still isn't sure what happened. (8 minutes)
• Act Two: A group called Improv Everywhere decides that an unknown band, Ghosts of Pasha, playing their first ever tour in New York, ought to think they're a smash hit. So they study the band's music and then crowd the performance, pretending to be hard-core fans. Improv Everywhere just wants to make the band happy—to give them the best day of their lives. But the band doesn't see it that way. Nor does another subject of one of Improv Everywhere's "missions." (31 minutes)
• Act Three: Scott Carrier and his family live in the same Salt Lake City neighborhood as Elizabeth Smart, the fourteen-year-old whose 2002 kidnapping made international news. Though Smart's picture was plastered everywhere throughout Salt Lake City and thousands of volunteers searched for her, her captors brazenly brought her back to the very neighborhood from which she'd been taken. They walked freely through the streets with her in broad daylight, yet no one recognized her. Scott talks with his neighbors and his son Milo—who had attended grade school with Smart—about what was going through their minds that prevented them from seeing what was right there in plain sight. (12 minutes)

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A group of immigration judges, who almost never speak to the press, describes the dismantling of our immigration court system from the inside.

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• Prologue: Zoe Chace gives an eyewitness account of what has been happening at 26 Federal Plaza, an immigration courthouse in New York City. (5 minutes)
• Act One: The judges walk us through how different their jobs have become in just the past few months, because of sweeping policy changes by Trump’s Department of Justice. (26 minutes)
• Act Two: It gets extremely personal for the judges. Also, the story of one person who got pushed through the new immigration court system this summer. (23 minutes)

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Things are different on college campuses this year. We see inside the drama, with students and staff.

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• Prologue: We go to orientation at Arizona State University and meet international students who are trying to make friends. (6 minutes)
• Act One: The president of the Black Student Union at the University of Utah fights to keep the B in BSU. (30 minutes)
• Act Two: A definition of antisemitism, canceled classes, and angry professors at Columbia University. (16 minutes)

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Small human plans that run into much larger obstacles.

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• Prologue: Angela's dad, an accountant, made a spreadsheet to prepare for their family trip to a national park. But there are things you never think to put in a spreadsheet. (7 minutes)
• Act One: A young couple, excited to start a new chapter in their lives, is suddenly put on a very different trajectory. (30 minutes)
• Act Two: A sixteen-year-old plans out a prank, and a complete stranger from Honduras ends up in a million-dollar deal. What could go wrong? (25 minutes)

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Since October 7th, while the world has focused its attention on Gaza, the Israeli government has tightened the screws on the three million Palestinians in the West Bank in all sorts of dramatic ways. We travel to the West Bank to see these changes in person.

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• Prologue: Ira joins Hamed on his Monday commute. He has to navigate a constantly changing series of checkpoints and roadblocks to get to work each day. Hamed works for Comet-ME, which sets up solar panels, water systems, and security cameras in small villages all over the West Bank. (13 minutes)
• Act One: Settler violence has worsened significantly in the West Bank since October 7, 2023. Yael Even Or travels to a tiny village called Tuba, surrounded by Israeli settlements, to meet the 27-year-old resident trying to protect it. (26 minutes)
• Act 2: Two quick snapshots of life in the West Bank since October 7th. (6 minutes)
• Act Two: After October 7th, Israeli Minister of Security Itamar Ben-Gvir increased restrictions on Palestinian prisoners in Israeli security prisons. Prisoners started dying. Dana Chivvis looks into one of those deaths. (25 minutes)

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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)

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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.

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People on a mission to achieve their goals before their window of opportunity closes.

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• Prologue: Guest host Emmanuel Dzotsi goes to a packed sports bar in Brooklyn for his favorite soccer team’s biggest game in years. (6 minutes)
• Act One: Connie Wang tells the story of a championship window she didn't realize she was in — until it was too late. (14 minutes)
• Act Two: Seth Lind, our Operations Director, isn’t a crier. But he wants to connect with his emotions, so guest host Emmanuel Dzotsi sets up an unconventional experiment. (14 minutes)
• Act Three: Two college baseball teams with horrible losing streaks — a combined 141 games — are scheduled to play each other. One of them must finally win. (14 minutes)

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