Ira Glass talks to Sam Ashner, whose debilitating fear of spiders was ruining his life. So he opted for an extraordinary treatment — the nuclear option — to deal with it.

Ira talks with comedian Rob Delany, who suffered the worst kind of loss a parent can endure — the death of his two-year-old son, Henry. Rob describes what his grief has been like and what he’s learned from it.

Host Ira Glass goes to a block in New York City where, over a year into the pandemic, neighbors are still clapping for health care workers every night at 7 p.m. (7 minutes)

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.

Host Ira Glass talks to writer Mitchell S.

Host Ira Glass takes us on a tour of the various ways the pandemic has affected going to college this year.

A beloved drawing goes missing from Mr. Ablao’s third grade classroom.

A woman’s dog has an unexpected reaction to the pandemic, and a mother has to re-think how to teach her son to drive.

Dr.

Linda Lutton and her eleven year old daughter Pirecua explain what happened the year Pirecua begged for a gift that she turned out to be allergic to. Linda is a reporter at our home station, WBEZ Chicago.

Host Ira Glass plays a recording of a rookie, try-hard, 25-year-old radio reporter.

Vertamae Grosvenor, shows Ira how to tell a chicken is done simply by listening to the sound of the grease.

There is a lot of disinformation surrounding the 2020 presidential election. A few conspiracy theories in particular have gained traction.

Host Ira Glass talks with Georgia Democrats who went out to “cure” ballots in a state with some of the closest results in the country.

Ira gives us a recent shortlist of things that feel almost too unreal to believe as we head into the national election.

Host Ira Glass talks to Jay Van Bavel, who recently found himself trapped in an elevator (in a very 2020 predicament).

Host Ira Glass speaks to Kevin Sheekey, the man tasked with spending $100m of Mike Bloomberg’s billions on securing a Democrat win in the constant battleground state of Florida. He also speaks to producer Lina Misitzis about what’s going on down on the ground with Democrats in the state.

For the past couple-two-three weeks, producer Ben Calhoun has been calling around to small town municipal clerks in his home state of Wisconsin, asking them how mail-in balloting really works. It can be chaotic, they say, but not in the way the president would have you believe.

Host Ira Glass discusses what it means to peacefully transfer power from one president to the next. He points out one of the weirdest things about it, that the new president has to go and sleep in the same bedroom as the previous president.