Recently, This American Life has been getting a lot of hate mail about the young women on our staff — listeners complain about their "vocal fry." Ira investigates the phenomenon.

We start out exploration of discipline and schools at the very beginning … in preschool. Tunette Powell is a writer in Omaha and mother to JJ and Joah.

The pandemic forced restaurant server Shelly Ortiz to put on her “Covid Goggles.” What she saw through them made her reevaluate her ideas of what’s important.

LaDonna Powell starts her new job out on the tarmac at the airport.

Host Ira Glass with Walt Strommer, on Dreams of Disabled People.

With the year coming to an end, someone is going to have to say, “You were right, and I was wrong.” Will it change anything? (16 minutes)This story is a collaboration with NPR's Embedded podcast, which released a three-part series about Zach and his father.

Though the name of the Federal Reserve includes the word "federal," it's not actually part of the government. It's an independent institution tasked with something very simple, but very huge: Creating money out of thin air.

Comedian Kurt Braunohler makes a wrong choice, for his own amusement.

More tape of Chana and her father Bob Wiliford discussing all the things they've never talked about before. Though Chana grew up in Waco, Texas, she left to go to college in Philadelphia.

Comedian Gary Gulman on a choice his dad made for him when he was seven years old.

We close the show with one more excerpt from Lindy West’s book, Shrill.

We ask 18-year-old Chana Wiliford and her father in Texas if they'd be willing to have a conversation on tape in which each of them gets to ask the other the questions they've never asked before. In the conversation, Chana is half his child, half his peer.

Al Drucker used to work for the IRS doing tax enforcement. One thing he found really helpful in the job was when someone from the public would give a tip on who he should look into.

Mohammed Mhawish, a reporter who left Gaza a year ago with his family, talks to a young woman in Gaza about how she manages her hunger. Israel blockaded all food from Gaza for more than two months. (15 minutes)Mohammed Mhawish is a contributing writer for The Nation, which is where we first read about his experiences with hunger in "What It Feels Like to Starve."

A woman in Springfield Oregon named Angela Jane Evancie tries to get her boyfriend, sleepy grad student Morgan Peach, to wake up during finals week.

(Podcast and Internet Only) Another tragic figure this year is the head of the Republican National Comittee Reince Priebus, who has the job of holding the whole party together. A grueling and thankless job, this year.

We’ve been wondering about some of the things President Obama thinks about the current election, but can’t say publicly. But since he hasn’t told us his thoughts explicitly, we asked singer/songwriter Sara Bareilles – who did the Broadway musical “Waitress” – to imagine those thoughts for us.

Reporter Hillary Frank finds out there is this tradition going on in her town, where big kids take over younger kids’ parties—and she investigates how one kid goes from freaked out to an instigator.

There are many kids who do not gradually discover that grown ups don’t have a handle on everything.  These kids already know. Miriam Toews’s novel, “Fight Night,” is about a nine-year-old named Swiv who takes care of her grandma and manages her mom’s mental health struggles.

Writer Lindy West has been harassed by hundreds of trolls online. But only one ever apologized for his remarks.