For the last five years or so, Johnny Dark has kept up a very specific, unusual, and labor intensive daily practice.

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.

For years, producer Lilly Sullivan has wondered what goes on beneath the surface in the mind of one of her good friends and co-workers, Diane. This week, she tries to get to the bottom of it. (11 minutes)This was the story director Greta Gerwig gave to Margot Robbie, while Robbie was trying to figure out how to play Barbie.

We put out a call for embarrassing stories and got back more than 1000.

Producer Chana Joffe-Walt talks to a seventh grader who doesn’t have a seventh grade, or an eighth grade. (11 minutes)

Elna Baker investigates the “Shot Girl Summer” phenomenon.

Producer Chana Joffe-Walt wondered what it was like for surviving MTA employees coping with the loss of their co-workers due to Covid-19. She met one in particular who’s had a hard time saying goodbye.

Guest host Susan Burton watches videos of female legislators sharing very private stories.

David Kestenbaum follows one person as they try to find something—a set of words, some facts, a story—to convince Trump Republicans to get themselves vaccinated.

The story of one woman’s mission to bring people together everywhere by eliminating small talk forever. Starlee Kine has been going around lecturing audiences on the subject.

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 any you’ve ever heard of.

When the United States Congress saw a problem — sex trafficking — it acted to eliminate it.

Reporter Katie Mingle wonders why the 211 hotline in the San Francisco Bay Area for people experiencing homelessness so often turns out to be a dead end for them.

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

Station agent Moneta Lewis worked underground to shepherd disappearing commuters during the darkest days of the pandemic.

At a Muslim community center in New York, two lawyers teach a workshop on how to react when an FBI agent shows up at the door asking questions. The workshop is a project of CLEAR — Creating Law Enforcement Accountability and Responsibility — at the City University of New York School of Law.

Fifteen years after a bloody Shakespeare production that, at its height, had people fainting night after night, producer Bim Adewunmi talks to its director, Lucy Bailey.

Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi takes Ira to an annual tradition in his hometown of Santa Fe, where people have figured out a surprisingly effective way to deal with the problems of the world, large and small.

Vauhini Vara lost her sister when she was in college. Even though Vauhini’s a writer now, she’d never really been able to write about her sister.

Susan Burton talks to women about why it’s so hard to talk about eating disorders.

Mohamedou talks to a man he only knew as Mr. X and who still gives him nightmares.

In families with sisters, every sister has their role to play. And whatever your role is, it sort of becomes your identity: the sweet one, the diva, the rebel.

Producer Sean Cole scrubs in to observe heart surgeon Dr. John Elefteriades, or Dr.