This American Life

5.0/5

Critic Rating

4.5/5

Listener Rating

This American Life is a weekly public radio show, heard by 2.2 million people on more than 500 stations. Another 2.5 million people download the weekly podcast. It is hosted by Ira Glass, produced in collaboration with Chicago Public Media, delivered to stations by PRX The Public Radio Exchange, and has won all of the major broadcasting awards.


Critic Reviews

Score: 5

Nicholas Quah • Vulture Jun 6, 2023

"...traumatizing effects of the public ethics hearing..."

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Listener Reviews

Score: 4.5

Cara L. Dec 16, 2021

"A man who was imprisoned for 14 years in Guantanamo Bay, without charges, gets out and issues an invitation to all the people who kept him there to talk. This podcast includes three conversations with his guards. I couldn't believe what I was listening to as I was listening to it. It's very powerful stuff and feels like quite a privilege, being a "fly on the wall", so to speak. Each guard has a different attitude towards the detainee."


Score: 4.5

Cara L. Jun 7, 2020

"A pretty harrowing episode of This American Life exploring US/Mexican immigration. We meet a child living on the border trying hard to get into the US as well as a father and son that get rejected from the US, sent back into Mexico only to be kidnapped and held for ransom. We hear from border control police that find it really difficult, morally, to uphold new immigration policies at the border. This particular episode won the very first Pulitzer Prize ever awarded to a radio show and it’s easy to see why."


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