Producer Miki Meek tells the story of a phone booth in Japan that attracts thousands of people who lost loved ones in the 2011 tsunami and earthquake. A Japanese TV crew from NHK Sendai filmed people inside the phone booth, whose phone is not connected to anything at all.

Producer Miki Meek tells the story of a phone booth in Japan that attracts thousands of people who lost loved ones in the 2011 tsunami and earthquake.

Seth Freed Wessler reports on people going the opposite direction over the US/Mexico border. Each year hundreds of thousands of people are deported from the US to Mexico — tens of thousands more choose to leave on their own — and lots of them make the journey after years and years living in the states.

Erin Einhorn's story continues. She tells what happens once she arrives in Poland.

We meet Russell, 19, the best mobile phone salesman in the mall — and possibly anywhere. His talent for sales is matched only by those of his girlfriend, Chandler, 18, a waitress.

We think of our phone calls and phone messages as so transient. We have another example of phones recording personal history: this story from Barrett Golding in Bozeman, Montana, comprised of telephone messages about his father.

Comedian Aziz Ansari has been touring the country collecting people’s text messages from when they first say hi, and ask each other out. Sociologist Eric Klinenberg wanted to study this raw data of the initial approach a man makes to a woman over text.

The man who organized the rally in Charlottesville is named Jason Kessler. He says he’s not to blame for the violence that happened there, including the death of a counter protester.

Abdurahman Tohti left his home country, China, behind 7 years ago to move to Turkey, safe from the Chinese regime that discriminates and arbitrarily detains Uyghurs, specifically, which Abdurahman is. Reporter Durrie Bouscaren talks to him about what happened to his wife and children and extended family in China, and the endless challenges he faces trying to be sure they are safe.

Over the last few years, producer Chana Joffe-Walt has been checking in with someone who wears the mantle of being “it” well. She’s a school principal named Teresa Hill.

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

While on the phone with reporter Maram Hamaid in Gaza, producer Chana Joffe-Walt gets interrupted by Maram’s daughter––Banias, eight, who grabs the phone from her mother and starts telling us about her life. The narrator arrives. (8 minutes)

There are thousands of voices passing through your body right now on radio waves—signals from cellular phones and cordless phones, military transmissions and baby monitors. You're not supposed to listen in on these.

Author David Sedaris on cell phone usage in restrooms.

Host Ira Glass explains why some old answering machine messages from a decade ago have such power for him: there's a special power to recordings of phone conversations. The phone is intimate — more intimate than a photograph.

Host Ira Glass with Sarah, who did phone sex and nude dancing.

Host Ira Glass describes scenes from a rest stop on the New York State Thruway, the Plattekill Travel Plaza, and the kind of people you might meet if you ever stayed long enough to talk with them. These include Robert Woodhill, the general manager, who needs a good sales day so he can beat his friend Andy, who manages a rest stop in Maine, in their weekly competition.

We hear a phone call from this week between Kirk Johnson in California, and Ajmal, a man standing in a canal outside the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Host Ira Glass talks with David Kestenbaum about a phone app that can create alternate universes with the press of a button.

Jane, Julia and Ella continue describing the complex social map that is constantly changing in their phones.

Jessica Riddle reports on how, as a teenager, she and her friends would pick up the phone and dial the letters of the name "Heather" and talk to the old man who'd pick up the phone. At first they'd just prank call him.

David Wilcox tells the story of how his mother, who was dying of lung cancer, made a short videotape for his sister, who is severely developmentally disabled. She hoped the tape would become a daily part of her daughter's life, like the other music and movies she liked to play, that she would watch it and remember her mother.

Do cell phones give people brain tumors? Ira speaks with Christopher Ketcham, who wrote an article on this subject for GQ magazine.