This American life

Join host Ira Glass and his company, as they bring a different theme to life each week, in the format of the popular Chicago radio show by the same name. In Escape, teenage boys in Philadelphia impress girls using a mode of transportation obsolete in their neighborhood since the 19th century, and a young man's fight for independence from his mother is complicated by some very specialized circumstances. In Two wars, we learn about two foreigners in the U.S.: one is an Iraqi refugee, traveling the U.S. to let Americans ask him anything they want, and an immigrant from Bulgaria, who realizes that an ongoing argument with his American wife about lawn maintenance has to do with the life he left behind the Iron Curtain twenty years before. Going down in history tells the stories of people trying to make and remake history, including Wisconsin convicts attempting a prison break using dental floss, high school students whose yearbook photos show nothing of the drama in their lives, and a man with a decades-long obsession with one particular bird, who reveals the footage that may prove he's actually seen it. Underdogs features the world of boxing, way down the "food chain" from championship fights, and a group of New York kids who fight bullies by being funny. Scenes from a marriage profiles cartoonist Chris Ward's illustrations showing that every marriage, even a happy one, is a courtroom, and the disintegration of another couple's marriage is chronicled, as the husband's obsession with a legal forces them to face some tough questions. John Smith is the story of one life, told through the eyes of people all over the country who share the name John Smith.