Tim Reeves runs a hospital in rural Pennsylvania, and he’s trying to do something that is so hard to do and that he knows is completely up to him.

The musicians in the orchestra for Phantom of the Opera tell reporter Jay Caspian Kang about what it’s like to play the exact same music every single night—for decades.

Megan Tan never felt close to her father. For years they’ve been distant.

Often bypassing logic, the women go to great lengths to construct elaborate stories to make sense of their inexplicable pain. And then, a letter arrives.

Reporter Chenjerai Kumanyika visits Savannah, Georgia to learn about the city’s popular ghost tours. He’s heard the tourist attractions actually include the brutal reality of slavery.

Dr. Amelia Huntsberger loves everything about her rural town in northern Idaho.

Simon Rich reads his short story "History Report," in which a father explains the sex robots of the future.

It’s been nine months since the first group of people who wanted abortions couldn’t get them in their states. How have their lives changed, or not.

There are certain jobs where thinking about someone else’s life is just built into it. Aviva DeKornfeld has a theory that petsitting is a job like that.

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.

Even people who vehemently disagreed with Heider Garcia wanted him to stay in his job. But then something happened that made staying impossible.

A new resident in Berlin is greeted like a minor celebrity wherever she goes.

In the 1920s, at the height of the Spiritualism movement, a friendship blossomed between two men with opposing views on the topic: Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Houdini was a skeptic.

Alex Blumberg tells the true story of Jerry Springer's life before he was a talk show host.

Jane Doe walks into a public ethics hearing at the Idaho state capitol and navigates the aftermath. (23 minutes)Song: “Here We Have Idaho”  Fiona Apple (vocals) Amy Wood (drums and percussion) David Garza (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, piano, vocals) Sabastian Steinberg (bass, electric autoharp, vocals) John Would (tremolo guitar) Engineered by John Would, Amy Wood, Fiona Apple Mixed and mastered by John Would

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

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.

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.

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

Calvin is an 11 year old who is learning what love is all about, the hard way. (7 minutes)

Nadia remembers the times that Luka’s father would suggest going to Crimea for vacation, as if it wasn’t Ukrainian land occupied by Russia.

Susan Burton introduces some of the many women who went to a Yale fertility clinic for IVF treatment, and charts their experience from hopeful beginning to excruciatingly painful egg retrieval.

Miki Meek reports on the situation for pregnant women in Idaho under the state’s new, post-Roe abortion laws, which are some of the most restrictive in the country. OB-GYNs say the state is in a crisis.