a fan edit of thisamericanlife.org
#143 - 22 October 1999
We've all heard occasional news stories about how some of the drug laws enacted in the last 15 years may have gone too far. First time offenders get locked up for decades. Judges—even Republican appointees—say that mandatory minimum sentences prevent them from making fair rulings. But have sentences really gone too far?
#142 - 15 October 1999
We hear the story of one African-American single mother. Barbara Clinkscales recorded her family's life over the course of seven months for This American Life. Her life defies—or makes irrelevant—most of our typical notions of inner-city, black single mothers.
#141 - 1 October 1999
Stories of people who are trying to make invisible worlds visible, and what happens when you make them visible.
#140 - 24 September 1999
Stories of family businesses, and what happens when the tension of family dynamics collides with the pressure of capitalist market forces.
#139 - 3 September 1999
Stories of political idealists, stories designed to provide some small sense of hope about American politics. Most of these were first broadcast during the 1996 Presidential race.
#138 - 27 August 1999
Stories of people drawn to some idea, some picture, some "thing" that they just want to be. How some people imitate this "thing" innocently, some less innocently, and how easy it is to slip from one to the other.
#137 - 20 August 1999
Stories of people who believe a book changed their life. It's a romantic notion, and one reason we believe it is because we want to believe our lives can be changed by something so simple as an idea — or a set of ideas contained in a book.
#136 - 6 August 1999
Three stories, three people, and three sets of maps. Stories of people trying to figure out where they are in the world in the most literal and least literal ways possible. We explore what it's like to be lost—how we all struggle in that moment not to give ourselves over to fear but try to enjoy it.
#135 - 23 July 1999
We think of crime as a kind of monolithic, menacing presence. But there are many kinds of crimes and many kinds of criminals. Through our crimes, we express who we are. Today we hear of three different criminals and three different kinds of crimes.
#134 - 9 July 1999
Stories about what happens when we don't do something. It turns out that not falling in love, not doing our jobs, not spending time with our families is every bit as vivid and complicated an experience as doing something.
