Labels are powerful. They can distill you down to a single word. They can get stuck on you without your permission. And sometimes, when they get taken away, they can upend your entire life. On this episode: labels and the havoc they wreak.

00:00:00 Prologue: Sara and Ethan have been dating for 10 months. They see each other at least once a week, text pretty much every day, and have been there for each other through hard times. But they refuse to have the “what are we?” conversation. So what gives? Guest host Tobin Low looks into it. (5 minutes)
00:05:14 Act One: Last week, when Temporary Protected Status, also known as TPS, was cut off for Haitian immigrants, some 300,000 people had their lives upended. Marie, a Certified Nursing Assistant in Boston, was one of them. Producer Chana Joffe-Walt spent time last week with Marie as she tried to figure out exactly when her very last day on the job would be. (21 minutes)
00:27:57 Act Two: Comedian Janet McNamara was walking off stage 15 years ago when the club owner asked, “Hey, have you ever been tested for autism?” No one had ever asked her this before, so Janet decided to look into it. (17 minutes)
00:44:01 Act Three: When you get down to it, labels are just our way of pointing out what we think is remarkable about other people. That’s Alfred Jung Lee’s argument. He’s been thinking a lot about how we describe each other, especially as he tries to describe his wife, who passed away from cancer. (10 minutes)

Subscribe to support the show, get bonus content, and access to our greatest hits archive: https://bit.ly/3QANCX4

Episode transcript: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/895/transcript

Ira Glass talks about Cole Lindbergh, who went to work at Worlds of Fun in Kansas City as a teenager and ended up running the park's entire games department — reinventing the job to make it as fun as possible for the teenagers he supervised. Ira says he related to him more than anyone he's ever done a story about.

Hear the full story in our episode Amusement Park: https://link.podtrac.com/j67ly07m

How is Ira's Russian? In this week's episode of This American Life, producer Valerie Kipnis helps Ira with his pronunciation and also tells the story of the changes unfolding in one school as Russia rolled out a nationwide propaganda push after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Listen to the full story: https://link.podtrac.com/xktceoq3

We head to some of the happiest places on earth: amusement parks! Ira Glass takes us behind the scenes at Worlds of Fun in Kansas City, where the young staff – coached by a funny, fun-loving boss just a little older than they are – truly seem to love their jobs.  

00:00:00 Prologue: Host Ira Glass walks through a Kansas City Missouri amusement park called Worlds of Fun with Cole Lindbergh, who had a season pass to the park as a little kid, starting working there summers at 14, and then just stayed. Now he's a full-time, year-round employee, running the games department. It's possible he does this job better than anyone in the country. (9 minutes)
00:09:26 Act One: Ira continues with Cole Lindbergh and the teenagers who work for him in the games department at Worlds of Fun. We watch them compete against each other to see who can do the most business. (23 minutes)
00:32:26 Act Two: We asked for your stories about amusement parks. Three hundred of you
called in, with stories of fear, floating carnies and, um, vomit. (9
minutes)
00:42:15 Act Three: Jonathan Goldstein returns to Wildwood, New Jersey, where he spent one not-fateful summer when he was sixteen. (13 minutes)

Subscribe to support the show, get bonus content, and access to our greatest hits archive: https://bit.ly/3QANCX4

Episode transcript: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/443/transcript

How was Ira's Russian? In this week's episode of This American Life, producer Valerie Kipnis helps Ira with his pronunciation and also tells the story of the changes unfolding in one school as Russia rolled out a nationwide propaganda push after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Listen to the full story: https://link.podtrac.com/xktceoq3