This American Life

We answer the following questions about superpowers: Can superheroes be real people? (No.) Can real people become superheroes? (Maybe.) And which is better: flight or invisibility? (Depends who you ask.)  Host Ira Glass talks to comic artist Chris Ware, who thought about superheroes a lot of the time as a kid. He invented his own character and made a superhero costume, which he wore to school under his regular clothes. Everything went fine until he realized he would have to change for gym class. (6 minutes) Act One: John Hodgman conducts an informal survey in which he asks the age-old question: Which is better: The power of flight or the power of invisibility? (14 minutes) Act Two: Kelly McEvers with the story of Zora, a self-made superhero. From the time she was five years old, Zora had recurring dreams in which she was a 6'5" warrior queen, who could fly and shoot lightning from her hands. She made a list, pages and pages long, of all the things she could accomplish to actually become that superhero: martial arts, evasive driving, bomb defusing. By the time she was 30, most of her list had been checked off. She was as close to a superhero as any mortal could hope to come. But her dream had changed. (17 minutes) Act Three: Ira talks with Jonathan Morris, the amazingly funny and charming editor of the website "Gone and Forgotten," an internet archive of failed comic book characters. Jonathan explains what makes a new superhero succeed, and what makes him tank. (9 minutes) Act Four: Of course you can’t be a superhero without a supervillain trying to destroy you. And the most interesting supervillains, of course, are the ones who think that they're the real heroes, not the guys in the capes. Glynn Washington tells the story of Evil D. (9 minutes)

Looping thoughts about people you barely know, or don't know at all.  Prologue: We get a tip that an entire town is consumed by a huge, elementary-school-style crush on a local veterinarian. Guest host Lilly Sullivan goes to Utah to investigate the mystery of the hot vet. (8 minutes) Act One: We do the thing the people in town would rather die than do – spill the crush to the legendary Dr. Artz himself. Lilly Sullivan reports. (8 minutes) Act Two: Producer Alix Spiegel talks to one of her closest friends, Sarah Blust, about the time Sarah met a stranger who, unbeknownst to her, had already spent years thinking about her. (29 minutes) Act Three: There are certain jobs where thinking about someone else’s life is just built into it. Aviva DeKornfeld has a theory that petsitting is a job like that. She talks to a couple of pet sitters to find out. (14 minutes)

A week after Jerry Springer’s death, we go back to a story we first broadcast years ago, about a side of Springer most people don’t know and can’t imagine: his years as an idealistic politician in the mold of Bobby Kennedy. Plus other stories of people who try to leave some moment in their life behind, which can be hard. Prologue: Ira explains the premise of this week’s show, where most of the stories were first broadcast in 2004. (3 minutes) Act One: Alex Blumberg tells the true story of Jerry Springer's life before he was a talk show host. It's the story of an idealistic and serious Jerry Springer, a progressive politician, and the most popular mayor ever of a certain American city. (31 minutes) Act Two: Ira talks with Shalom Auslander, who was raised as an Orthodox Jew and who made a pivotal break with his faith at a Rangers game. (6 minutes) Act Three: The journalist E. Jean Carroll is in court this week with her rape case against Donald Trump. In 2020 she published a series of stories interviewing women who’ve accused President Trump of sexual assault or harassment. At the time, she felt like these stories had been so widely covered that people had gotten used to them and ignored them. Which seemed sort of incredible to her. Back then she adapted one of the stories for our show and we’re replaying it today, a frank conversation with another one of the president’s accusers, Jessica Leeds, who also testified in Carroll’s case against Trump. (16 minutes)

It's funny the things that go through your head during a disaster. Prologue: Host Ira Glass has fallen off his bike a number of times at this point. He reflects on what goes through his head as he’s going down. (2 minutes) Act One: Producer Ike Sriskandarajah revisits a maritime disaster that left an impact on a group of friends from his youth. What he learns forever changes their impressions of that day. (23 minutes) Act Two: When to leave Twitter is a question lots of executives faced when Elon Musk took over the company — those who weren't immediately fired, anyway. We hear an insider’s account from the man who ran Trust & Safety at the company, until he couldn’t stand it anymore. (28 minutes)

The Supreme Court case that overturned Roe v. Wade began with a lawsuit filed by a Mississippi abortion clinic. On the day Roe was overturned, we were there. Stories from the center of this moment of history, the day it happened. Prologue: Host Ira Glass reminds us that, before they change the country, all major Supreme Court cases start with just a person, in a place. (3 minutes) Act One: Documentarian Maisie Crow has been following the fight to stay open by the Jackson Women’s Health Clinic, for ten years. Now the Supreme Court decision is forcing their doors shut for good. She brings us inside as the staff prepares for the day the decision comes down, and then lives through it. (20 minutes) Act Two: Our producer Zoe Chace goes to Fairview Heights, Illinois, where Planned Parenthood has opened a massive new abortion clinic just across the river from Missouri. Abortion is banned in Missouri and lots of the surrounding states now that Roe has been overturned. Illinois is gearing up to get lots and lots of patients now. (5 minutes) Act Three: Zoe Chace spends time with a lawmaker in Missouri on the day Roe fell who’d worked her whole life for this moment and can’t believe it’s really here. (5 minutes) Act Four: Host Ira Glass walks through possible next steps with a pro-life activist who worked on the Texas SB8 bill, that set a precedent for enforcement of abortion bans throughout the country. (8 minutes) Act Five: Rebecca Grant introduces us to an abortion pill smuggler, who walks us through her undercover operation to mail pills to people who want medication abortions in places where it's hard to get them. (9 minutes) Act Six: Emma Green spends time with Anja Baker, who’s working on preparing Mississippi for the influx of babies it will have to absorb now that abortion is illegal in that state. (9 minutes) Act Seven: Maisie Crow is back to take us inside the Jackson clinic once again, as they rally themselves to see all the patients they’d scheduled for the next month to come in in the next ten days, before the ban goes into effect. (3 minutes)

Summoning up stuff that’s usually hidden down deep. Prologue: A beloved drawing goes missing from Mr. Ablao’s third grade classroom. The class holds a funeral for the drawing, which accidentally unleashes a much bigger feeling than anyone anticipated. (13  minutes) Act One: The musicians in the orchestra for Phantom of the Opera tell reporter Jay Caspian Kang about what it’s like to play the exact same music every single night—for decades. And how they’ve learned to make their peace with it. (26 minutes) Act Two: Producer Elna Baker’s mom doles out some very harsh feedback for her daughter, which goes unnoticed for ten years. (15 minutes)

It’s been nine months since Roe v. Wade was overturned. We talk to people who wanted abortions right when the laws were changing in their states. They had to wait for appointments, for money to travel or abortion pills. And during that waiting, a lot of interesting things happened. We see how much life has changed, nine months later. Prologue: Nine months ago, these people wanted abortions. But then, the laws changed. They had to wait to get an appointment, figure out how to get out of state or order abortion pills.  In that waiting, other things happened. (5 minutes) Act One: In the months following the court’s decision, two women are stalled getting abortions. Reporter Caroline Kitchener follows Kae and Taylor in those early months, as they try to figure out what to do. And we see what happens when both women each come into contact with the anti-abortion movement. (19 minutes) Act Two: Doctors say one effect of the new bans is people seeking abortions much later into their second trimesters. Caroline got interested in a girl like that in Oklahoma. (18 minutes) Act Three: It’s been nine months since the first group of people who wanted abortions couldn’t get them in their states. How have their lives changed, or not. (12 minutes)

People ​so close to each other, ​in ​extremely intimate situations​,​ who are also a million miles apart. Prologue: Valerie Kipnis tells Ira about riding the subway, shoulder-to-shoulder with someone she knows quite well, pretending she doesn’t see him. (8 minutes) Act One: How much can you trust whether somebody who you think is close to you really is close to you? Saidu Tejan-Thomas Jr.’s been thinking about that question since a recent visit with some of his childhood friends in Sierra Leone. (37 minutes) Act Two: Comedian Tig Notaro has the story of someone as close as her actual bedside yet who, in another way, is impossibly far away. (9 minutes)

The ghosts that visit us, the ghosts that never do, and the ghosts that walk among us. Prologue: Chaunte Vaughn’s mother recently died of Parkinsons. Even though Chaunte doesn't believe in ghosts, she is visited by her mom's ghost multiple times. And, to Chaunte’s disappointment, everything her mother's ghost has to say seems pointless. (8 minutes) Act One: Reporter Chenjerai Kumanyika visits Savannah, Georgia to learn about the city’s popular ghost tours. He’s heard the tourist attractions actually include the brutal reality of slavery. What he finds is more sinister and complex than advertised. (23 minutes) Act Two: Abby Stein’s youngest sister got married last month, the last of 13 kids in their family. At the wedding, an uninvited guest showed up. (12 minutes) Act Three: In the 1920s, at the height of the Spiritualism movement, a friendship blossomed between two men with opposing views on the topic: Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Houdini was a skeptic. Conan Doyle was the de facto leader of the movement. On a vacation in Atlantic City, the famous author tried to help his skeptical friend talk to the ghost of his beloved mother. Sean Cole reports. (13 minutes)

People staring down that hardest of questions: Is now the time? To leave? Prologue: Russian forces have besieged the town of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. Shelling is constant. Most residents have fled. But there are holdouts who haven’t left yet. Producer Valerie Kipnis introduces guest host Nancy Updike to a volunteer evacuator, Kuba Stasiak, who is trying to get the remaining people out safely. (13 minutes) Act One: Dr. Amelia Huntsberger loves everything about her rural town in northern Idaho. Her OB-GYN practice. Her patients. Her family. But for almost a year, she’s been fighting a losing battle, and realizing that she and her family might soon have to pull up stakes and leave. (28 minutes) Act Two: Masha Gessen has fled their home country, Russia, twice. First as a teenager, then again as an adult. Both times, the country had become unlivable for Masha. Now Masha is watching and reporting on Russians leaving the country in droves, and reflecting on their own reasons for leaving when they did. (13 minutes)