Pete found a bag of maybe a hundred letters in a dumpster and found himself completely wrapped up in the lives of the two people in the letters.

Emanuele Berry talks to Khalilah, who got involved as a poll watcher this year and ended up inside a national news story. (7 minutes)

Duke Stalling, whose mother’s birthday party was pepper sprayed by Officer Anderson when he showed up on a noise complaint, reacts to the city’s deal with Anderson.

Tamar Brott, on growing up with two music prodigies, and Sandra Tsing Loh's sister Kaitlin, a ballet prodigy.

David Kestenbaum tells the story of a man on the verge of one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time … right on the verge. (4 minutes) 

Producer Zoe Chace hung out with some immigration lawyers who are getting calls from their nervous clients.

Ira continues the story about his conversation with his mom. Then he calls her up on the air.

After his mother passes, a man unearths her book collection… and is surprised. (6 1/2 minutes)

Producer Karen Duffin visits someone who actually knows the man who’s going to be President: Donald Trump’s neighbor.

Ira introduces this week's show, which includes two stories of people who speak up when most people would keep quiet.

The true story of a dinner conversation in which several Americans came to realize how many iconic Americans are, in fact, Canadian. "If William Shatner's Canadian," one insists, "then I could be Canadian." Another opines that there should be a law against Peter Jennings, a Canadian, hosting a network news program.

When Bernie Epton ran for mayor of Chicago in 1983, he was a long shot—Chicago historically voted in democrat mayors, and Bernie himself didn't think he stood a chance. Beyond that, Bernie was a moderate republican, with some liberal tendencies: He was a opponent of McCarthyism, he marched in Memphis after Dr.

Germs were first understood at the turn of the 20th century and it turns out that the aesthetics of everyday life during this century—the way we dress, the way we groom ourselves, the way we make our homes—are all partly a response to this newfangled idea of germs.

Ira talks with divorce mediator Barry Berkman about why it's bad when the justice system gets involved in a break-up.

Ira's good friend Mary Ahearn died this week. She was thirty years older than him...so, decidedly more grown-up than he.

A few times every summer, for complicated scientific reasons, thousands of live fish, crab and shrimp wash up onto the beaches of Mobile Bay, Alabama, on the Gulf Coast. It's a natural event—like a hurricane, but good.

A recording of comedian Tig Notaro in the process of trying to catch up to the present and absolutely not being able to. (8 minutes)Tig’s new stand-up special, Hello Again, comes out in two weeks on Amazon.

Ira Glass talks to This American Life Producer Jane Feltes abouta recent date she was set up on by a friend. The date was awful—the guyseemed stoned the whole time.

Kids do not like getting told it’ll make sense when they’re older. They’re pretty sure the grown-ups are wrong, and whatever the conversation is, they’re up for it.

In California, a kind of crybaby cottage industry has popped up around, of all things, the Americans with Disabilities Act—the federal law that requires all public places to meet a minimum level of accessibility. Some people make a living by suing business owners for not being up to code.

Rich Carlson and Tom Swenor, two best friends in Michigan, got so fed up with the political process in the country, they decided to form their own Tea Party chapter in Petoskey, Michigan. But as election season revved up and push came to shove, Rich and Tom had very different ideas about how to advance a conservative agenda.

A Walter Mondale-voting, gay-rights-supporting unrepentant liberal signs up as a Republican party member—and ends up a party functionary—a delegate to the state Republican convention...where he wreaks havoc. Dan Savage tells the story.

Chana Joffe-Walt talks to Kiana, who went to a school that was overwhelmingly black and Latino, but when some white students showed up one day on an exchange program, she went up to them eagerly. And since then, has embarked on a one-woman school integration program.