this american life

827: All the King’s Horses

The things we break and the ones we can’t fix.

  • Prologue: Ira tells the stories of three things that broke–two of them in his own family. (8 minutes)
  • Act One: A teenage whiz kid invents a new toy for Milton Bradley. Then the trouble starts. (28 minutes)
  • Act Two: Reporter Dana Ballout sifts through a very long list–the list of journalists killed in the Israel-Hamas war–and comes back with five small fragments of the lives of the people on it. (10 minutes)
  • Act Three: A skateboarding legend makes a final attempt at a high-flying trick. (6 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org