Ira interviews David Wallechinsky, who wrote a wildly popular book in the 1970s called The Book of Lists, full of trivia and research, gathered into lists like "18 Brains" and "What They Weighed." The book sold millions of copies and had four sequels and a brief spin-off TV show. The list books were like the internet, before the internet.

Host Ira Glass bikes around Manhattan with Gersh Kuntzman, in search of illegal license plates.

Ira tells the stories of three things that broke–two of them in his own family. (8 minutes)

Jackson Landers tells the story of a very strange decision he made one summer day. (6 minutes)The name of today’s show is from a quote by climate futurist Alex Steffen, in an article about wildfires by Elizabeth Weil.

A family sits down to discuss one thing.

Host Ira Glass talks with producer Tobin Low about the question he got asked after he and his husband moved in together, and what he thinks people were really asking. (4 minutes)

Sometimes we don’t want to say what’s going on because putting it into words would make it real. At other times, words don’t seem to capture the weight of what we want to say.

A Boston woman takes her dog for a walk and suddenly finds herself in a terrible situation she never anticipated.

In 2022, Michigan Republicans ran anti-establishment candidates who claimed the last presidential election was stolen. And they lost big.

In the middle of the night, host Ira Glass meets a woman on a mission at Port Authority bus station. (13 minutes)

Saddam Sayyaleh’s job right now is trying to get trucks filled with aid into Gaza and he knows it’s nowhere close to what’s actually needed.

Ira talks about the time his dad taught him to shave, and how unusual that was.

Ira Glass interviews actress Molly Ringwald about what happened when she watched one of her own movies, "The Breakfast Club" with her daughter. Ringwald talks about how for the first time, she saw the movie from the parents' point of view, not the kids'.

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.

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) Tickets for Atsuko’s comedy tour at atsukocomedy.com.

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.

Legendary broadcaster Paul Harvey had one of the most popular radio shows of all time.

Florida is now the fastest growing state, and DeSantis says people are moving there from all over because of him.

Ira has some thoughts about our country’s long history of alien invasion movies.

Ira talks with his father and co-host for this show, Barry Glass, about his own early days working in radio.

At this spring’s announcement of New York City’s inaugural rat czar, we meet Darneice Foster, who despises the rats outside her apartment.