Nancy Updike tells the story of the phone call from the prologue.

In the summer of 2006, an FBI official visited a mosque in Orange County, California. His intention was to reassure the community that they weren't being spied on.

Senior editor David Kestenbaum helps his kids set up an ant farm. They follow all the instructions, to the letter! But he ends up learning a lesson he’s pretty sure the manufacturer did not intend.

Elna Baker picks up with Jane Marie’s story. Jane Marie is the host of the podcast The Dream.

Comedian Will Weldon’s ex-wife made a movie loosely based on their marriage. Producer Elna Baker watches the film with Will as he revisits his break-up.

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

Elna Baker investigates the “Shot Girl Summer” phenomenon.

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

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.

So yes, climate change is real and most Americans believe that’s what we’re seeing around us right now. But there are people out there who look at the same evidence the rest of us do and take it to heart in a way most of us don’t.

Chase Friedman was in an accident that left him paralyzed from the shoulders down. Ira Glass talks to him about the unusual goal he set for his recovery.

Reporter Emmanuel Felton called up several Black Capitol Police officers in the days after the attack on the Capitol on January 6th to find out what it was like for them to face off with this mostly white mob. (13 minutes)You can find more of Emmanuel's reporting on race and inequality at BuzzFeed. The video of Eugene Goodman was filmed by Igor Bobic of HuffPost.

Dee Brown’s routine is thrown totally out of whack when Covid hits.

When Adele wrote into our show last summer, she described herself as “the worst phlebotomist in the whole hospital.” Producer Diane Wu couldn’t resist calling her up to find out exactly what she meant by that.

The first act of our show was about someone who has spent decades trying to close the gap with her sister because they were apart until she was eight years old. This next story is the reverse.

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

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.

There’s a machine lots of us encounter as a big impersonal, mechanical apparatus, that has a ghost in it. But it’s a ghost that appears to just a small handful of people. Jean Hannah Edelstein tells the story to Ira.

Carmen Maria Machado tells the story of being stuck in an abusive relationship as a “Choose Your Own Adventure” tale.

Jaime Amor does yoga storytelling for kids at Cosmic Kids Yoga and on YouTube. We ask her to try taking on a film for grownups.

Firefighter and paramedic Sam Gebler gets a glimpse of what lurks beneath the surface of a sunny California afternoon.

What’s it like, being on that boat with the immortal ferryman, heading into the underworld? Writer Marie Phillips imagines one such trip. Actor Noma Dumezweni reads.

Ira goes out birding with birder extraordinaire Noah Strycker, who tells the dramatic story of the bird that changed his life: the turkey vulture.