People climbing to be number one. How do they do it? What is the fundamental difference between us and them?

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• Prologue: Ira Glass talks with Paul Feig, who, as a sixth-grader, at the urging of his father, actually read the Dale Carnegie classic How to Win Friends and Influence People. He found that afterward, he had a bleaker understanding of human nature—and even fewer friends than when he started. (9 minutes)
• Act One: David Sedaris has this instructive tale of how, as a boy, with the help of his dad, he tried to bridge the chasm that divides the popular kid from the unpopular — with the sorts of results that perhaps you might anticipate. (14 minutes)
• Act Two: After the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, U.S. diplomats had to start working the phones to assemble a coalition of nations to combat this new threat. Some of the calls, you get the feeling, were not the easiest to make. Writer and performer Tami Sagher imagines what those calls were like. (6 minutes)
• Act Three: To prove this simple point—a familiar one to readers of any women's magazines—we have this true story of moral instruction, told by Luke Burbank in Seattle, about a guy he met on a plane dressed in a hand-sewn Superman costume. (13 minutes)
• Act Four: Jonathan Goldstein with a story about what it's like to date Lois Lane when she's on the rebound from Superman. (13 minutes)

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We leave the normal realm of human error and enter the territory of huge breakdowns.

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• Prologue: Jack Hitt tells the story of a small-town production of Peter Pan in which all the usual boundaries between the audience and actors dissolve entirely. (6 minutes)
• Act One: Jack Hitt's Peter Pan story continues. (18 minutes)
• Act Two: The first day on the job inevitably means mistakes, mishaps, and sometimes, fiascos. A true story, told by a former rookie cop. (13 minutes)
• Act Three: Comedian Mike Birbiglia talks about the time he ruined a cancer charity event by giving the worst performance of his life. Here's a hint: He improvised. About cancer. (10 minutes)
• Act Four: Journalist Margy Rochlin on her first big assignment to do a celebrity interview: Moon Unit Zappa in 1982. Midway through the interview: fiasco! (7 minutes)

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The tiny thing that unravels your world.

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• Prologue: Ira talks to Chris Benderev, whose high school years were completely upended by an impromptu thing his teacher said. (8 minutes)
• Act One: For Producer Lilly Sullivan, there’s one story about her parents that defines how she sees them, their family, and their history. She finds out it might be wrong. (27 minutes)
• Act Two: For years, Mike Comite has replayed in his head the moment when he and his bandmate blew their shot of making it as musicians. He sets out to uncover how it all went awry. (13 minutes)
• Act Three: Six million Syrians fled the country after the start of its civil war. A few weeks ago, one woman watched from afar as everything in her home country changed forever – again. (9 minutes)

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Banias is an 8-year-old kid living in Gaza. And she has a story to tell — many stories, in fact.

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• Prologue: While on the phone with reporter Maram Hamaid in Gaza, producer Chana Joffe-Walt gets interrupted by Maram’s daughter––Banias, eight, who grabs the phone from her mother and starts telling us about her life. The narrator arrives. (8 minutes)
• Part One: Banias, an 8-year-old in Gaza, tells us about her life––her friends, the games she plays, the things she cares about. Everything but the war going on around her. (25 minutes)
• Part Two: Banias talks about the war. (20 minutes)

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How do you count almost 12 million votes if you’re not the government? This week, we bring you the extraordinary story of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who created the only verifiable public record of votes in their presidential election — and other stories of people trying to correct the official record with their own versions.

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• Prologue: Host Ira Glass sets us up for Nancy Updike’s insider account of the recent presidential election in Venezuela. The story is an incredible national drama that plays out in thousands of polling stations across the country, with regular people trying to ensure a fair vote count that everyone can agree on. (2 minutes)
• Act One: Producer Nancy Updike tells the story of the people of Venezuela trying to prove who won their recent presidential election beyond a shadow of a doubt. (22 minutes)
• Act Two: Host Ira Glass spent America’s presidential election in the swing state of Michigan, where he found very little dispute over the ballot count from Republican poll challengers in Detroit now that they are doing the counting themselves. (8 minutes)
• Act Three: This story is about a creepy and dangerous creature that does all kinds of terrible things. It’s also about someone trying to set the record straight on those exact assumptions about this notorious creature. (9 minutes)

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Keiko was a hugely beloved adventure park attraction. He was also captured in the wild and taken away from his mother when he was just a calf. When Hollywood learned about him, a colossal effort began to un-tame him and send him back to the ocean.

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• Prologue: Ira introduces a new series from Serial Productions and The New York Times. "The Good Whale" is about the killer whale Keiko and is reported by Daniel Alarcón. (2 minutes)
• Act One: Daniel Alarcón takes us back to the early 90’s when Keiko lived in an adventure park in Mexico City, swimming with human friends. (43 minutes)
• Act Two: Producer Diane Wu travels to Minnesota, where the turkey set to be pardoned by The President of the United States later this month is having the turkiness trained out of him. (10 minutes)

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With Donald Trump’s victory this week, many people looked at the election results and thought, yeah, this is the country I thought it was. For some people, that was a hopeful thing. For others, kind of the opposite. This week, we talked with people who helped make it happen and some who are looking to what’s next.

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• Prologue: Ira talks with Zoe Chace about watching Trump’s victory from an ecstatic room in Michigan. Then he checks in with a DC cop who was injured at the Capitol on January 6. (7 minutes)
• Act One: Trump has claimed that he will be able to deport between 15 and 20 million people. But neither he nor his team have spelled out exactly how they’d do it. Producer Nadia Reiman looked into what mass deportation could actually look like on the ground if and when it comes to pass. (17 minutes)
• Act Two: Trump won record numbers of Latino voters this year. Ike Sriskandarajah spent the day with a guy in Pennsylvania who's been working to bring Latino voters to Trump for years. (15 minutes)
• Act Three: Ira talks with two of Trump’s “political enemies” about their post-election plans. (8 minutes)
• Act Four: Ten different states had abortion rights measures on their ballots this election. Producer Miki Meek got curious about a particular kind of political ad that aired in many of those states and called up a few of the women whose stories were featured in them. (9 minutes)

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A wee flame, flickering in the dark.

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• Prologue: Who’s trying to bridge the gap between Blue America and Red America? Ira gets a glimpse of one guy who might be able to do just that. (3 minutes)
• Act One: A politically divided couple searches for a news source they both can trust. (26 minutes)
• Act Two: "June" is making a tactical decision about her vote this election. (13 minutes)
• Act Three: Frank Filocomo thinks people care too much about politics when it comes to dating. His dates don’t necessarily agree. (10 minutes)

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