This American Life

For Easter weekend — and the end of Passover! — stories of people struggling to follow the Ten Commandments.

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• Host Ira Glass reads from the Ten Commandments. Not the original Ten Commandments, but some of the newer, lesser-known ones. There's the Miner's Ten Commandments of 1853, the Ten Commandments of Umpiring, and the Ten Commandments for Math Teachers — just to name a few. (4 minutes)
• Commandments One, Two and Three: As a boy in religious school, Shalom Auslander is informed that his name, Shalom, is one of the names of God, and so he must be very careful not to take his own name in vain. (9 minutes)
• Commandment Four: Six houses of worship in six different cities, each with its own way of honoring the Sabbath. (3 minutes)
• Commandment Five: When Jack Hitt was 11, he did the worst thing his father could have imagined. Neither Jack nor his four siblings will ever forget the punishment. (6 minutes)
• Commandment Six: Alex Blumberg talks to Lt. Col. Lyn Brown, an Army Reserve chaplain who served two tours in Iraq. Brown talks about what "thou shalt not kill" means to soldiers on the battlefield. (6 minutes)
• Commandment Seven: In the book of Matthew, Jesus says that looking lustfully at a woman is like committing adultery in your heart. Contributor David Dickerson was raised as an evangelical Christian, and for many years tried not to have a single lustful thought. (9 minutes)
• Commandment Eight: Ira talks to a waiter named Hassan at Liebman's Deli in the Bronx about some audacious thefts he's witnessed in his years in the restaurant business. (3 minutes)
• Commandment Nine: Chaya Lipschutz wanted to donate one of her kidneys to a stranger. But to save a stranger's life, she had to break the commandment against lying. And the person she had to lie to was her mother. Chaya talked to Sarah Koenig. (8 minutes)
• Commandment Ten: Ira talks to seventh-graders about the things they covet most. (4 minutes)

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A couple devises a strategy to get their daughter's killer prosecuted and to get attention for other Native families. 

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• Prologue: Mika Westwolf was killed in a hit-and-run on a Montana highway. Her parents thought the driver might get away with it. The driver was white. Mika was a citizen of the Blackfeet Nation. (1 minute)
• Act One: Mika’s parents, Carissa Heavy Runner and Kevin Howard, share recordings of their interactions with law enforcement. (8 minutes)
• Act Two: Carissa and Kevin take matters into their own hands. (20 minutes)
• Act Three: The county prosecutor explains why he let Mika’s killer out of jail. Will Carissa and Kevin's efforts pay off? Sierra follows them to court. (33 minutes)

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People tossing words out into the world impulsively to ignite and burn over decades.

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• Prologue: Host Ira Glass plays a strange voicemail left by a 96-year-old surgeon about a letter that was written five decades ago. (6 minutes)
• Act One: Producer Lilly Sullivan reports out that voicemail. (13 minutes)
• Act Two: On his deathbed, a wealthy man in Toronto decides to make some trouble. Hundreds of babies are involved. Stephanie Foo tells the story. (25 minutes)
• Act Three: Cyclist Mike Friedman said something to cyclist Ian Dille in the middle of a race that ate at both of them for years. Jared Marcelle tells the story. (12 minutes)

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Artifacts and exhibits of this particular moment we are living through.

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• Exhibit One: Ira talks to producer Emmanuel Dzotsi, who brings the first exhibit into the studio with him: a chunk of concrete with some yellow paint on it. He got it from the demolition site in Washington, DC, where the giant Black Lives Matter letters are being dug out of the street with heavy equipment. (8 minutes)
• Exhibit Two: Producer Aviva DeKornfeld talks to Ranjani Srinivasan, who tells the story of how her life was transformed over five days via a series of events that started out confusing and escalated to frightening. (25 minutes)
• Exhibit Three: Producer Laura Starecheski takes us inside one dramatic court hearing on the Trump administration’s executive order and new policy banning transgender people from serving in the military. (20 minutes)

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The radio version of an episode we did live on stage and beamed to movie theaters. David Sedaris, Tig Notaro, Ryan Knighton, and the late David Rakoff in his final performance on the show. The other half of this two-hour show was visual, including dancers, animation, and more. You can watch it on YouTube.

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• Ira interviews Ryan Knighton, a blind guy who had a very peculiar experience with a hotel room telephone. (7 minutes)
• Act One: Ryan Knighton tells a story about trying to get his daughter to understand his blindness. (7 minutes)
• Act Two: Famous people are supposed to be somewhere else, invisible to us. Comedian Tig Notaro tells this story about repeatedly running into Taylor Dayne, who was a pop star in the late 80s and early 90s. At the end of the story, we have a little surprise for Tig. (16 minutes)
• Act Three: David Rakoff tells this story, about the invisible processes that can happen inside our bodies and the visible effects they eventually have. (15 minutes)
• Act Four: Ira Glass's sister once met David Sedaris, and commented that he was much nicer than she thought he would be, given his writing. David replied, "I'm not nice, just two-faced." In this story, David shares the thoughts running through his head as he attempts to buy a cup of coffee. (8 minutes)

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