This American Life

We discover what we believe might be the original recipe for Coca-Cola…and share it with you! When this episode first aired in 2011, it made international headlines. This, and another story about telling copies from originals.

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(00:00:00) Act One: The formula for Coca-Cola is one of the most jealously guarded trade secrets in the world. So we were surprised to find a 1979 newspaper article that might contain the original recipe for Coke. We were even more surprised when we found reasons to believe the recipe is real. (26 minutes)
(00:26:26) Act Two: Jake Halpern tells this story about document expert John Reznikoff, who came into possession of some materials which — if authentic — would change history. Then, things got complicated (32 minutes)
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Sayre Quevedo’s invented a way to do a podcast that feels completely new. He’s been recording nearly all his conversations for years, and the result is something that captures a person’s life in a raw and complicated way that’s rarely heard. His new show Reaching Out also documents his mutually judge-y relationship with his twin brother as they set out to find their long-lost birth father.

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(00:00:00) Prologue: Ira Glass introduces Reaching Out, a podcast that feels like it invented something completely new — an ambitious way of capturing a life in a way we'd never heard before. (1 minute)
(00:02:39) Part One: Sayre Quevedo and his brother start the search for their birth father, and they discover that this whole time he’s been a few minutes away from where Sayre lives. (20 minutes)
(00:21:49) Part Two: The twins try reaching out in a variety of ways before taking more direct action. Sayre tries to continue life as normal. (12 minutes)
(00:34:50) Part Three: Sayre and Connor go in person to face their dad. (24 minutes)
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Nikole Hannah-Jones made an argument 10 years ago in The New York Times Magazine that became famous. She wrote about choosing a public school for her daughter, Najya, in one of the most racially and economically segregated school systems in the country: New York City. Nikole chose a regular public school, one that most wealthy and middle-class parents wouldn’t consider, and she challenged other parents to do the same. 

She revisits that argument, and that choice, in a series of conversations with producer Chana Joffe-Walt and with her daughter, Najya, who’s now 16 and has her own very different views. 

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(00:00:00) Prologue: Chana talks with Nikole about what they both remember from being young parents just starting to think about schools for their children. (9 minutes)
(00:10:41) Act One: Nikole talks with Chana about Najya’s elementary school and the problems her family navigated there. (15 minutes)
(00:25:57) Act Two: Chana talks with Najya about her memories of elementary and middle school and how she felt about her mom’s choices. (9 minutes)
(00:31:40) Act Three: Nikole and Najya talk about what changed when Najya pushed back against her mom’s choices for elementary and middle school and got to choose her own high school. (10 minutes)
(00:42:08) Act Four: Nikole and Najya talk with each other about the different choices they made and the questions they still have for each other. (9 minutes)
(00:51:06) Act Five: Nikole fact-checks her memory against her old emails with Najya’s elementary school and has a painful revelation. (7 minutes)
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People braving the true final frontier — the gap between people born at slightly different times.

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(00:00:00) Prologue: Last fall, some NPR podcasts started getting mysterious comments on Spotify. They made no sense to the staff reading them – until someone from a younger generation cracked the code. (11 minutes)
(00:12:00) Act One: When Courtney Maum was eighteen, her mother married a guy she despised. At their wedding, Courtney read a poem she wrote – a pretty dark poem! – which made her mother furious. More than 30 years later, they finally talk about it. (27 minutes)
(00:41:53) Act Two: When Ike Sriskandarajah was a teenager in Madison, Wisconsin, he thought he had the greatest job. He worked at the movie theater, wore a cummerbund, and snuck friends in through the back door! It was magical. That was more than 20 years ago. Is it still as great as he remembers? Ike goes back to find out. (8 minutes)
(00:50:27) Act Three: Every morning, Myra Flynn finds herself in a standoff with her daughter over her hair. Recently, to understand why these hair sessions are so fraught, Myra started recording them. What she heard sent her on a quest to get answers from her own mother. (11 minutes)
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Cryptic messages on a cell phone and a teeter-totter at a construction site: these are clues people found, trying to make sense of a death.

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(00:00:00) Prologue: Host Ira Glass talks to a guy about a crazy experiment he devised when he was a kid. It almost killed him. (5 minutes)
(00:06:45) Act One: We begin with a woman whose sister has died. She has questions. Her name is Nadia Bowers, and she wrote this to someone she thinks might be of help. (17 minutes)
(00:29:53) Act Two: There’s a problem with having a Facebook account after you’re dead that you’ve never, ever, ever thought about. Producer Stephanie Foo tells this story, about Dave Maher. (14 minutes)
(00:45:49) Act Three: A guy goes to a funeral for someone he doesn’t know at all, and has to piece together everything about him. Producer Dana Chivvis reports. (16 minutes)
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