This American Life

Three stories of people who hatched plans in the hopes of making their dreams come true, but were snapped back to reality by unpleasant outcomes: an elementary school student tries to solve a common childhood problem; a rancher resuscitates a beloved pet, which later turns on him; people team to give an unknown rock band the greatest night of its life.

An artist, his Jesus-model, the models girlfriend, the girlfriends father, and a bunch of bearded men all converge in Utah. An elaborate artistic tableau is set up in the desert, and there are several attempts by the faithful and the not-so-faithful to bridge the divide between them. Nancy Updike reports.

What do you do if you dont like where you are in life? You simply decide to move forward, into the next stage, by sheer force of will. A widow; an ambitious, first-time screenwriter; and a 13-year-old girl all charge forward into their futures with uneven results.

Two teenage boys in Philadelphia look for ways to impress girls; and a young man fights for his independence from his mother.

Stories of people trying to make — and remake — history, while others go down in history in ways they never intended. Two Wisconsin convicts gain local fame for almost escaping prison using dental floss. High school students pose for smiley yearbook snapshots, which capture nothing of the dramas in their lives. And a man with a 30-year obsession with one particular bird unveils the grainy, Big Foot-style video evidence that he saw it.

Cartoonist Chris Ware animates a true story that demonstrates that every marriage—even the happiest—is a courtroom. But most of the episode is devoted to the slow-motion disintegration of one couples marriage. The husbands obsession with a legal battle forces the most basic marital questions into the open: what do I need? And what can I put up with?

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