This American Life | Are we there yet? Stories from the camps


06 08 16 This American Life - 592- Are We There Yet?

Episode 592 of This American Life (Are We There Yet?) wasn’t so much This American Life as This Greek Refugee Camp Life. Ira Glass and Miki Meek presented stories from refugee camps across Greece. The resulting programme showed the power of telling individual stories. It humanised the crisis like nothing else I’ve come across.

The stories were varied. We had teenagers desperate to get back into schools, techniques for dealing with snakes, a bit of interior design in otherwise uniform refugee tents and the depression of getting electricity and wi-fi and realising that the temporary solution might become a little bit more permanent than was hoped.

But they all conveyed the common humanity, dreams and aspirations of camp dwellers and the Greeks who are overseeing them.