When the best—and perhaps only—way to say something is to write it down. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. * Prologue: Ira goes out with a letter carrier, ‘Grace,’ as she delivers mail on her route. He learns about the people who bring us our mail and also how people treat their mail. (11 minutes) * Act One: Writing a letter decades after an event that shaped her life was the only way that Nicole Piasecki could make some sense of it. (18 minutes) * Act Two: Yorkshire, 1866. A farmer overcomes his timidity and writes a very important letter to a local beauty. (3 minutes) * Act Three: When senior editor David Kestenbaum was still a rookie reporter, he wrote an email to a legend. Then he waited...and waited...for a reply. (6 minutes) * Act Four: A woman writes an unusual letter on behalf of her husband. (1 minute) * Act Five: Producer Zoe Chace compares the letters a person gets and the letters they wish they got. (12 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.

Iowa has three million people and a million come to their State Fair, each with their own goals and dreams for the fair. We hang out with some of them, to see if they get what they hoped for. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. * Prologue: A big bull, a giant slide, and cowboys on horseback shooting balloons are just a few sights you can take in at the Iowa State Fair. Some people come for the spectacle, and some are the spectacle. (8 minutes) * Act One: Bailey Leavitt comes from a family of carnies. For her, one of the most thrilling things she looks for at the fair is someone who is really good at luring people into spending money at their stand. She takes Ira on an insider’s search for “an agent.” (16 minutes) * Act 2: Motley Crue pledged never to play the fairgrounds. Then they did. We wondered what that had been like for them. They agreed to an interview, but then they flinched. (1 minute) * Act Two: What life lessons can kids learn at the 4-H rabbit competition? A lot. (11 minutes) * Act Three: The Iowa State Fair awarded coveted slots to just nine new food vendors this year. All of them are run by people who already own restaurants or who’ve done other big fairs. All except for an unlikely newcomer: Biscuit Bar. (19 minutes) * Act Four: As the ferris wheel goes dark and the fair is closing down, one game is racing to meet their quota. Ira watches until the end. (3 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.

What is it about them, our mean friends? They treat us poorly, they don't call us back, they cancel plans at the last minute, and yet we keep coming back for more. Popular bullies exist in business, politics — everywhere. How do they stay so popular? Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. * Prologue: We hear kids recorded at Chicago's Navy Pier and at a public swimming pool discussing their mean friends. And Ira Glass interviews Lillie Allison, 15, about the pretty, popular girls who were her best friends—until they cast her out. (5 minutes) * Act One: Jonathan Goldstein interrogates the girls, now grown up, who terrorized him and his classmates years ago in school—and finds they can be just as scary as ever. (18 minutes) * Act Two: We conduct an experiment to test whether being nice actually pays by equipping two waitresses with hidden microphones to record their interactions. Each waitress is instructed to be super friendly with half of their tables while remaining aloof with the other half. We then compare the tips to see which approach was more profitable. (10 minutes) * Act Three: A case study in every word from a friend meaning its opposite. (4 minutes) * Act Four: An excerpt of Bernard Cooper's story about the bill he got from his own father, for the entire cost of his childhood. Actor Josh Hamilton reads. (19 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.

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. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. * 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 This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.

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.

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. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. * 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 This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.

Summer is a time when change seems more possible than ever. But is that really how it happens? Can people actually reinvent themselves in the warmer months? This week, we present stories — and some comedy — about people and their summer selves. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. * Prologue: Host Ira Glass reflects on his feelings about going to the beach. (3 minutes) * Act One: Producer Dana Chivvis explores the case of a 66-year-old working lifeguard who is suing New York State for age discrimination after refusing to wear a Speedo on the job. (16 minutes) * Act Two: A troupe of comedians tells personal stories about summer experiences and improvises scenes based on them. (23 minutes) * Act Three: Producer Neil Drumming tells the story of his dad and his family’s timeshare in Orlando, Florida. (14 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.

People on a mission to achieve their goals before their window of opportunity closes. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. * 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) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.

On his first day in office, President Trump decided to freeze all U.S. foreign aid. Soon after, his administration effectively dissolved USAID—the federal agency that delivers billions in food, medicine, and other aid worldwide. Many of its programs have been canceled. Now, as USAID officially winds down, we try to assess its impact. What was good? What was not so good? We meet people around the world wrestling with these questions and trying to navigate this chaotic moment. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. * Prologue: Just one box of a specially enriched peanut butter paste can save the life of a severely malnourished child. So why have 500,000 of those boxes been stuck in warehouses in Rhode Island? (13 minutes) * Act One: USAID was founded in 1961. Since then, it has spent hundreds of billions of dollars all over the world. What did that get us? Producer David Kestenbaum talked with Joshua Craze and John Norris about that. (12 minutes) * Act Two: Two Americans moved to Eswatini when that country was the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic. With support from USAID, they built a clinic and started serving HIV+ patients. Now that US support for their clinic has ended, they are wondering if what they did was entirely a good thing. (27 minutes) * Act Three: When USAID suddenly stopped all foreign assistance without warning or a transition plan, it sent people all over the world scrambling. Especially those relying on daily medicine provided by USAID. Producer Ike Sriskandarajah spoke to two families in Kenya who were trying to figure it out. (8 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.

In honor of Father’s Day, stories of sons and daughters finding out the one thing they've always wanted to know about their father. The answers aren't always what they’d hoped for. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. * Prologue: As a kid, Aric Knuth sent cassette tapes to his dad, a merchant marine gone for months at a time. He’d leave one side blank and ask for a reply—but none ever came. Aric talks to Ira Glass about what it was like to finally ask his dad why. (7 minutes) * Act One: Lennard Davis was always told to avoid his no-good Uncle Abie. After his father died, Abie claimed he was actually Lenny’s biological father via artificial insemination. At first, the story seemed possible, then doubtful. It took Lenny more than 20 years to sort out whether it was true, and he finds out the answer—definitively—as tape is rolling. (31 minutes) * Act Two: Paul Tough’s father was a mild-mannered professor—until he suddenly left the family to pursue a lifelong quest: making contact with extraterrestrial life. For the first time, Paul joins him and asks the questions he’s long kept to himself about his father’s alien pursuits. (18 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.

We got a tip about a meat plant selling pig intestines as fake calamari, wondered if it could be true, and decided to investigate. Doppelgängers, doubles, evil twins and not-so-evil twins, this week. Fred Armisen co-hosts with Ira Glass. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. * Prologue: Fred Armisen worked up an imitation of Ira and put it into a sketch on Saturday Night Live a couple of years ago. But when they rehearsed it with an audience, there was not a roar of recognition; it seemed like Ira might not be famous enough to be mocked on network TV. Armisen finally gets a go as Ira’s doppelgänger in our studios by co-hosting this episode. (4 minutes) * Act One: Ben Calhoun tells a story of physical resemblance — not of a person, but of food. A while ago, a farmer walked through a pork processing plant in Oklahoma with a friend who managed it. He came across boxes stacked on the floor with labels that said "artificial calamari." So he asked his friend "What’s artificial calamari?" "Bung," his friend replied. "Hog rectum." Have you or I eaten bung dressed up as seafood? Ben investigated. (26 minutes) * Act Two: For decades, the writer Alex Kotlowitz has been writing about the inner cities and the toll of violence on young people. So when he heard about a program at Drexel University where guys from the inner city get counseling for PTSD, he wondered if the effect of urban violence was comparable to the trauma that a person experiences from war. Kotlowitz talks to a military vet from Afghanistan and a guy from Philadelphia who’s lived in some pretty bad neighborhoods to find out if they are doubles of some sort. (23 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.

Conversations across a divide: People who are outside a war zone check in with family, friends, and strangers inside. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. * Prologue: The Hammash family’s group chat unfolds over texts, starting before the war. (8 minutes) * Act One: When Yousef Hammash left Gaza a year ago, his sisters decided to stay behind. We hear about the toll that separation has taken on Yousef and the sister he’s closest to, Aseel. (30 minutes) * Act Two: Mohammed Mhawish, a reporter who left Gaza a year ago with his family, talks to a young woman in Gaza about how she manages her hunger. Israel blockaded all food from Gaza for more than two months. (15 minutes) * Coda: Chana gives a short update about Banias, a 9-year-old girl in Gaza she's been speaking with for months. (4 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.