What is it about them, our mean friends? They treat us poorly, they don't call us back, they cancel plans at the last minute, and yet we keep coming back for more. Popular bullies exist in business, politics — everywhere. How do they stay so popular?

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• Prologue: We hear kids recorded at Chicago's Navy Pier and at a public swimming pool discussing their mean friends. And Ira Glass interviews Lillie Allison, 15, about the pretty, popular girls who were her best friends—until they cast her out. (5 minutes)
• Act One: Jonathan Goldstein interrogates the girls, now grown up, who terrorized him and his classmates years ago in school—and finds they can be just as scary as ever. (18 minutes)
• Act Two: We conduct an experiment to test whether being nice actually pays by equipping two waitresses with hidden microphones to record their interactions. Each waitress is instructed to be super friendly with half of their tables while remaining aloof with the other half. We then compare the tips to see which approach was more profitable. (10 minutes)
• Act Three: A case study in every word from a friend meaning its opposite. (4 minutes)
• Act Four: An excerpt of Bernard Cooper's story about the bill he got from his own father, for the entire cost of his childhood. Actor Josh Hamilton reads. (19 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

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The story of the most commonly performed surgery, and what goes wrong with it – terribly wrong – 100,000 times a year in the United States. We’re excited to bring you the first episode of The Retrievals, Season 2, the new show from longtime This American Life producer and editor Susan Burton. It’s from Serial Productions and The New York Times.

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• Prologue: Ira Glass introduces the first episode of an inventive new podcast from longtime This American Life producer and editor Susan Burton.
• Act One: Susan Burton introduces Mindy, a labor and delivery nurse at UI Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago. (5 minutes)
• Act Two: Another labor and delivery nurse at UI Health, Clara, gets ready to deliver twins at her own hospital and receives an epidural. (19 minutes)
• Act Three: Clara’s anesthesia is not working. She is now in the middle of major abdominal surgery, and she can feel that surgery. (21 minutes)
• Act Four: Heather, the head of obstetric anesthesia at UI Health, gets up onstage and asks a ballroom full of hundreds of anesthesiologists to wrestle with the question of why patients are feeling pain during C-sections, and what they can do to solve it. (8 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

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Ira Glass talks with longtime producer Nancy Updike about the most personal stories they have put on the radio. This is a sample of the bonus episodes we regularly release to our This American Life Partners.

To gain access to all the bonus episodes AND help us keep making This American Life, join at thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners.