This American Life
5.0/5
Critic Rating
4.5/5
Listener Rating
Each week we choose a theme. Then anything can happen. This American Life is true stories that unfold like little movies for radio. Personal stories with funny moments, big feelings, and surprising plot twists. Newsy stories that try to capture what it’s like to be alive right now. It’s the most popular weekly podcast in the world, and winner of the first ever Pulitzer Prize for a radio show or podcast. Hosted by Ira Glass and produced in collaboration with WBEZ Chicago.
Critic Reviews
Score: 5
Nicholas Quah • Vulture • Jun 6, 2023
"...traumatizing effects of the public ethics hearing..."
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."
