Host Ira Glass talks with Susan Dentzer, editor of the journal Health Affairs, about what current health reform proposals do to fix the rising costs of healthcare...And points at a surprising, kind of heartening phenomenon happening within the current debate.

Host Ira Glass talks with Michael Perrino, a law professor at St Johns University School of Law in New York, who wrote a book about Ferdinand Pecora called The Hellhound of Wall Street. Pecora was the lead attorney in the Senate Banking Committee hearings in the 1930s looking into wrongdoing in the banking industry.

Back in November, two weeks after he was elected president, Barack Obama delivered a pre-taped speech to an international conference on global warming that was convened in Los Angeles by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. It wasn't Obama's most important speech, but the effect it had on the audience was profound—mostly because they heard it through the haze of the last eight years.

Host Ira Glass talks about the way most political apologies go, and chats with a man named Derek Jones about similar sorts of apologies among preteen girls and King David, in the Old Testament.

Host Ira Glass tells a story about how, when he was in seventh grade, he was over at his best friend's house and saw beer in the fridge. He'd only ever seen beer in fridges on TV; he didn't think it existed in real life.

Marti Noxon used to work for a company that did "product placement" for the movie industry. When auditors came to check that clients were being correctly billed, the company's bosses took unusual steps.

Writer Thomas Frank went on the radio show On Point to talk about his book What's the Matter With Kansas? The book is about how people in his home state keep voting for Republicans even though Republican policies aren't helping them economically. But the people who called in to the radio show didn't exactly see it his way.

Susie and John Drury moved to their farm just two years ago. But when John got sick for awhile, people who were no more than friendly acquaintances started helping out in ways that completely surprised them.

Host Ira Glass talks with two sisters, one high-school age, the other younger, about who gets treated better in the family. They all agree the youngest does.

Ira talks with Chicago Public Radio reporter Shirley Jahad about white Chicagoans and Arab-American Chicagoans facing off, each side waving American flags and shouting "U.S.A."...and how each means very different things when they do it.

Host Ira Glass talks to Bible scholars Paulene A. Viviano of Loyola University and John Spencer of John Carroll University about the story of the golden calf in the book of Exodus.

We hear from Father Jim Kastigar, who got on the wrong side of Town Hall and suffered the kinds of consequences people in Cicero suffer. His parish was denied a permit to hold an outdoor religious ceremony they'd held peacefully for seven years, the youth group's tamale fundraiser was shut down by city inspectors and the parking lot near the church was deemed unfit for Sunday parking.

Host Ira Glass talks with Stephen Nissenbaum, author of a history called The Battle for Christmas, which explains when people started believing in a Santa who arrives Christmas Eve carrying presents. It was in 1822, and incredibly, the poem that created our modern idea of Santa is still around, known by heart by tens of millions.

Judges give their opinions of the drug sentencing laws. Terry Hatter is the Chief U.S.

Scott Richer and Julie Riggs of Louisville, Kentucky, were supposed to have their first kiss at the corner where South Fourth Street meets the alley behind the West End Baptist Church. But it went wrong.

Ira talks about those ephemeral, thrilling radio moments that you happen to catch in passing on stations far away that you never find again. Flipping through the channels.

Ira reads from In Dreams Begin Responsibilities. (7 minutes)

Host Ira Glass talks to a direct descendent of Thomas Jefferson about treating Monticello as his personal playground and about whether monuments to Jefferson should come down.

You can’t get herd immunity until you deal with the herd, and get enough of them moving together in the same direction. That’s been difficult this past year, in a way it’s never been during any other epidemic in our history.

Ira Glass brings us back to the moment of celebration when the anti-gerrymandering constitutional amendment was passed in Ohio.

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

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

Ira brings up a story that got a lot of attention last year, in the New York Times and also on a lot of morning news shows. A couple was sailing across the Pacific Ocean with their two small children, and after three weeks of sailing they signaled for help — which came in the form of four National Guardsmen and a navy vessel.