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—and how they’ve learned to make their peace with it. (22 minutes)

Kim Jong-Il loved movies, but hated all the movies made in North Korea. So he kidnapped a famous South Korean director and his ex-wife—a South Korean film star—locked them up in a villa in North Korea, and forced them to make movies for him. Nancy Updike tells the story.

Dana Chivvis’s story on the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners continues with Dr. Michael LaPaglia’s contested case hearing.

Jerome Ellis is a composer and musician. But this year, at an annual New Year's Day performance event, he got on stage with no instrument, or anything else, and broke a small rule in a monumental way.

Producer Neil Drumming spends a couple days exploring Detroit, first with a quirky mayoral candidate running an Afrofuturist campaign, and then with a couple of locals.

We meet the doctors. Rana Awdish spends hours of each day walking the floors of the ICU checking in on her co-workers, which means that maybe more than any single person in the hospital she knows best what the staff has been going through at each stage of this pandemic. One doctor that has deep ties to Detroit is Geneva Tatem.

A school that has prepared for every Covid scenario faces a problem they never saw coming. Stephanie Wang tells the story of one Indiana school's first day in person.

Food writer Jonathan Gold tells what it's like to pan-fry a chicken—with a live chicken watching you the entire time.

Bim talks to poet Ross Gay, whose book inspired today’s show, about the discipline and rigor of seeking and holding onto delight.

Raul felt like he had found his spot in the world: a job he was good at, a group of people he liked and admired. And then he got kicked out.

Host Ira Glass talks with writer Michael Schulman about a book he wrote.

Jennifer, Ira, and producer Emanuele Berry go to a protest and get tear gassed in front of a Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. (6 minutes)

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.

To cope with this pandemic, producer Sean Cole finds himself turning to a movie about a pandemic, What's So Bad About Feeling Good? But the virus in this movie isn’t like any you’ve ever heard of. (20 minutes)

Maya Gurantz tells the story of Glenn and Laurie Mutchler, who go further than most parents to create a magical Christmas for their kids, Colin, Erica and Adam. Theirs included a family mythology of Santas that had its own logic, with many Santas and a family elf named Jeko, who were never jolly and often thrillingly scary.

A nurse giving instructions to her partner in case she dies from COVID-19; a brother and sister talking every day, all of a sudden. (9 minutes)We first heard about nurse Elise Barrett in a story by Eric Boodman for STAT.

Producer Lilly Sullivan used to feel such a strong kinship with “the loneliest creature on earth” that one of her first radio pieces seven years ago was about him. (9 minutes) You can read Lilly's 2013 report about this whale.

Reporter Lizzie Johnson calls her grandpa after he unexpectedly changes his mind about something. (9 minutes)

Leo Hornak's story about Abdi continues. Abdi encounters one obstacle after another on the streets of Nairobi.

In just one year, everything in one ordinary public middle school changed. It went from an incoming class of thirty sixth graders—most of them Black, Latino, and Middle Eastern—to a class of 103 sixth graders.

As a kid, comedian Tone Bell was a rule follower. But there was one time he got into big trouble when he broke the rules in a serious way. There’s a Polaroid commemorating the event that’s become part of family lore. Tone tells producer Elna Baker what happened.

Khristen, a single mom, decides to secretly record her home inspector to catch him sexually harassing her. Eight years later, reporter Jessica Lussenhop checks in with Khristen to talk about what the recording meant back then versus now.

Stephanie Foo talks to a father trying to go about his day while his daughter comes to him over and over, with some things on her mind.