What happens when you realize the people in charge don’t have the answers. Prologue: Guest Host Chana Joffe-Walt asks her kids when they first encountered adult fallibility. (8 minutes) Act One: A middle schooler really wants to trust the adults have her best interests in mind. But some of the most powerful people at her school begin to make that very difficult. (27 minutes) Postscript: In Israel and Gaza, children are directly facing the fact that the adults around them cannot protect...

You've been seeing yourself, getting to know what you look like, your whole life. So why does it often take an outsider to see things about you that are obvious, and set you straight? Prologue: Guest host Nancy Updike talks about learning something new, and unpleasant, about herself in, where else, a makeup store. She also talks with other people about moments where someone made an observation about them that was shocking. (8 minutes) Act One: Writer Domingo Martinez tells a story from his...

For the lead up to Halloween, scary stories that are all true. Zombie raccoons, haunted houses—real haunted houses!—and things that go "EEEEK!!!" in the night. Plus, a story by David Sedaris in which he walks among the dead. Ira and Albert Donnay read a true ghost story that appeared in a medical journal in 1921. A "Mrs. H" and her family moved into an old rambling house and strange apparitions started appearing, until her brother-in-law figured out the real cause of the ghostly...

People who have a good, long time to think about what they’re doing, look hard at what’s ahead of them, and decide to keep moving forward anyway. Prologue: Brothers Wes and Jeff spent a winter tagging black bears in Bryce Canyon National Park. One of the bears they needed to tag decided to hibernate at the end of an usually long tunnel. Wes and Jeff try to figure out their next move. (5  minutes) Act One: The story of Wes and Jeff venturing into the bear den continues. (11 minutes) Act 2:...

People breaking the rules fully, completely, and with no bad consequences. Some justify this by saying they’re doing it for others, or for a greater good. Some really don’t care. And, unlike the mealy weaklings you usually hear on this program: none of these wrongdoers seems regretful about what they’ve done. Ira takes a flight with travel writer Ken Hegan, to witness Ken deploying a travel gadget that keeps the seat in front of him from reclining. This means more knee space for Ken — but...

We bring the movies to you. Prologue: Host Ira Glass revisits the one movie he’s seen more than any other, about an ocean liner that gets hit by a tsunami and flips over. (9 minutes) Act One: Our producer, Diane Wu, spent most of her life thinking she doesn’t have a unique and personal take on The Sound of Music. She is wrong. (13 minutes) Act Two: To cope with the COVID pandemic, producer Sean Cole finds himself turning to a movie about a pandemic. But the virus in this movie isn’t like...

Spots we’re avoiding in our private maps of the world. Prologue: Guest host Bim Adewunmi talks to her cousin Kamyl about a funny thing Kamyl did when she was small, regarding a dog named Foxy. (4 minutes) Act One: Comedian Atsuko Okatsuka moved suddenly from Japan to the U.S. when she was eight years old, and has long joked that it was because her grandmother kidnapped her from her dad. But she'd never talked to anyone in her family about what had actually happened. (31 minutes) Act Two:...

An exploration of the very upper limits of what you do for someone you love. Prologue: Host Ira Glass explains what we’re doing on today’s show. (2 minutes) Act One: Amy Bloom tells the story of her husband, Brian, getting Alzheimer's and wanting assisted suicide. Her search to find a way to do that led her to Dignitas, in Switzerland. Hear this intimate and frank account of the experience they go through, excerpted from her book, IN LOVE. (39 minutes) Act Two: Comedian Zarna Garg tells...

Friends and ex-friends finally talk about the one thing between them they've been avoiding. Prologue: Host Ira Glass tells a story he’s never told anyone before, about something someone said to him. (4 minutes) Act One: Gabe Mollica had something important he needed to discuss with his friend  — stewed about it for eight years. But rather than go to that friend, he talked about it with everyone other than that one person. (28 minutes) Act Two: Jasmine and Gabbie are best friends. BFFs!...

One call to a very unusual hotline, and everything that followed. Prologue: Ira talks about a priest who set up what may have been the first hotline in the United States. It was just him, answering a phone, trying to help strangers who called. (2 minutes) Act One: The Never Use Alone hotline was set up so that drug users can call if they are say, using heroin by themselves. Someone will stay on the line with them in case they overdose. We hear the recording of one call, from a woman named...

Nine radio reporters. Two days. One rest stop on the New York State Thruway. Stories of people who are just passing through, and the ones who can’t leave, because this is where their jobs are. Act One: Host Ira Glass describes scenes from a rest stop on the New York State Thruway, the Plattekill Travel Plaza, and the kind of people you might meet if you ever stayed long enough to talk with them. These include Robert Woodhill, the general manager, who needs a good sales day so he can beat...

The mysterious hold supers have on their buildings, or that their buildings have on them. Host Ira Glass visits the Upper East Side building in Manhattan where Peter Roach has been the super for about ten years. Peter has a lot of keys. He doesn't know what most of them unlock. (4 minutes) Act One: Reporter Jack Hitt tells the story of how he helped organize tenants and threaten a rent strike in a New York City building back in the 1980s. Before long, Bob, the building super became his...

Legendary radio broadcaster Paul Harvey had a popular show called “The Rest of the Story.” Today on our show, we do just that. We hear from people who, whether they want to or not, find themselves face-to-face with the rest of their stories. Prologue: Legendary broadcaster Paul Harvey had one of the most popular radio shows of all time. For 35 years he served up big twists and  jaw dropping reveals all with his one-of-a-kind delivery. (7 minutes) Act One: Psychiatry used to be all talk....

It’s the last few weeks of summer, so we’re going to the beach! This week, stories from the surf and sand. Prologue: Host Ira Glass reflects on his feelings about going to the beach. (3 minutes) Act One: Producer Dana Chivvis explores the case of a 66-year-old working lifeguard who is suing New York State for age discrimination after refusing to wear a Speedo on the job. (15 minutes) Act Two: Alex Blumberg talks to Shane Dubow about a time decades ago, when Shane went sea kayaking and...

Nadia's family is split between Russia and Ukraine, which is pretty common. And when Russia invaded Ukraine, it didn’t just start fighting on the battlefield. It sparked family conflict, too. An intimate story of the war from writer Masha Gessen.  Prologue: An extended family, and eight fights. (1 minutes) Fight #1: Luka’s parents – Nadia and Karen – try to figure out where to take him once war breaks out. (6 minutes) Fight #2: Nadia and Karen have been arguing over Russian-ness since...

People  on the verge of a big change, not wanting to let go. And the people who give them the final push. Prologue: Guest Host Sean Cole gets some scary news about his health, and decides to quit smoking. (5 minutes) Act One: Sean Cole attempts to kick his 35 year-long smoking habit, using a book that’s said to have helped millions of people to quit. (33 minutes) Act Two: Someone writes into the advice column Dear Sugar to ask whether or not they should quit a relationship, and gets a...

The true story of an abandoned house, discovered by a young boy in the 1970s, and the mysterious family who disappeared without a trace. Ira introduces this week's story. (1 minute) Act One: Adam Beckman tells the first part of his story, about how, back in the 70s, he and his friends broke into an abandoned  house in the small town of  Freedom, New Hampshire. The home turned out to be a perfect time capsule, containing the furniture, letters and personal effects of an entire family —...

Governor Ron DeSantis is running for president on the argument that he'll do for America what he's done for Florida. So what's it like in Florida? Prologue: Florida is now the fastest growing state, and DeSantis says people are moving there from all over because of him. We speak to people who did make the move, at least in part, for DeSantis’s policies. (6  minutes) Act One: Among the big items in DeSantis's run for president is medical freedom. Producer Zoe Chace wanted to understand its...

Many Americans have dreamy and romantic ideas about Paris, notions which probably trace back to the 1920s vision of Paris created by the expatriate Americans there. But what's it actually like in Paris if you're an American, without rose-colored glasses? Host Ira Glass talks with writer David Sedaris at the Louvre in Paris. David's never set foot inside, though he lives just a few minutes away. He says most people go to the Louvre because they think they should. Where he would take them if...

At a Yale fertility clinic, dozens of women began their I.V.F. cycles full of expectation and hope. Then a surgical procedure caused them excruciating pain. In the hours that followed, some of the women called the clinic to report their pain — but most of the staff members who fielded the patients’ reports did not know the real reason for the pain, which was that a nurse at the clinic was stealing fentanyl and replacing it with saline. What happened at that clinic? What are the stories we...

Humans encounter non-human intelligences of various kinds and try to make sense of them. Prologue: Ira has some thoughts about our country’s long history of alien invasion movies. (2 minutes) Act One: In this past year we’ve witnessed a revolution in A.I. since the public rollout of ChatGPT.  Our Senior Editor David Kestenbaum thinks that even though there’s been a ton of coverage, there’s one thing people haven’t talked much about: have these machines gotten to the point that they’re...

Ira's own father, Barry Glass, co-hosts this special Father's Day show. Prologue: Ira talks with his father and co-host for this show, Barry Glass, about his own early days working in radio. (3 minutes) Act One: LA writer/performer Sandra Tsing Loh discovers that a local rock band has recorded a song about her own father, wildly misinterpreting who he is. They think he’s a free spirit; she believes he’s a worried, miserly grump. She invites the band and her father into the studio to...

The one animal we can’t seem to live without, even when we really, really want to. Prologue: At this spring’s announcement of New York City’s inaugural rat czar, we meet Darneice Foster, who despises the rats outside her apartment. And host Ira Glass introduces two special co-hosts for today’s show. (11 minutes) Act One: Producer Elna Baker meets Todd Sklar, a man who can’t quit rats. (22 minutes) Act Two: Fifty years ago, New York City started to put garbage out in plastic bags. This has...

In these dark, combative times, we attempt the most radical counterprogramming we could imagine: a show made up entirely of stories about delight. Prologue: Ira Glass talks to Bim Adewunmi about her understanding of delight through American pop culture and the summer she spent in the US as a 19-year-old. Ira then hands the show over to Bim as guest host. (10 minutes) Act One: Bim talks to poet Ross Gay, whose book inspired today’s show, about the discipline and rigor of seeking and holding...

Five years after the #MeToo explosion, what’s happened in the lives of the women who stepped forward and went public with their stories? We tell the story of a teenager who spoke out against one of the most powerful people in her state, and what happened next. Prologue: Some powerful and well known men lost their jobs after #MeToo. But what about the women at the center of all this who’ve been way less visible after they told what happened to them? We hear about big and small ways the...