Reporter Mary Wiltenburg tells the story of a little boy stymied by the question "Where do you come from?" (8 minutes)You can read more of the family’s stories on Mary’s website.
Before the war in the East Ramapo, New York school district, there was a truce. Local school officials made a deal with their Hasidic and ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbors: we'll leave you alone to teach your children in private yeshivas as you see fit as long as you allow our public school budget to pass.
Joshuah Bearman tells a story that’s a sequel to his memorable episode about his mother and half-brother David. It’s done onstage as a play that’s structured like a radio documentary, with Josh Hamilton playing Joshuah, and James Ransone playing his brother.
Producer Sean Cole visits Chad's Trading Post in Southampton, Massachusetts. One person who works there wears a shirt that says "Chad's Brother;" other shirts say "Chad's Best Friend," "Chad's Cousin," and "Chad's Father." Pictures of Chad are everywhere.
A car is a classic place to realize: "oh, I’m lost." But sometimes the realization of being lost comes first, and the car is the solution. Drive, keep driving, get un-lost.
Ira talks to Joel Gold, a psychologist and author, about a strangely common delusion known as the "Truman Show Delusion," in which patients believe that they are being filmed, 24/7, for a national reality television program. Joel wrote a book with his brother Ian called Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness.
Ira talks to "Cheryl," an anonymous blogger who's been documenting life with an 8-year-old son who seems to take pleasure in causing chaos. He's tried to kill his little brother more than once.
David Sedaris comes from a big family, who for many years growing up, took annual vacations to the same beach house. In this story, David tells us about losing a sister last year, and how her death prompted a family reunion back at the beach.
In New York, like in lots of cities, you can call 3-1-1 for help with city services, but there's lots of things that people call in for that operators don't have answers for. And so they improvise.
Radio Diaries’ Joe Richman continues William Cimillo’s story and talks to his two sons about what it was like to have lived through the drama that ensued after their father’s big journey.
Producer Ben Calhoun talks about how the truce in East Ramapo fell apart, and plumbs the depthsof the neighbor-vs-neighbor political war that emerged. Also, we learn that it can, in fact, be a massive deal when you change lawyers — at least when you're a school board.
Ira explains that in May 2013, the FBI shot a guy named Ibragim Todashev in his living room in Florida. Supposedly, right before he died, Todashev implicated himself in a crime, a pretty gruesome one, a triple murder of three drug dealers in Waltham Massachusetts, a Boston suburb.
Ira plays tape from an interview that he did more than 20 years ago, with the author Doris Lessing, about her novel The Fifth Child, which tells the story of a woman who gives birth to a goblin-like baby. The archival audio appears courtesy of National Public Radio, Inc.Then Ira's conversation with Cheryl, from the top of the show, continues.
Lin-Manuel Miranda turns a piece of reporting we broadcast in 2012, into a 14-minute Broadway mini-musical, created by people who normally work on Broadway.
Producer Sean Cole tells the story of a former foster kid who was finally adopted in his mid-30's,and the reason he was taken away from the foster family he loved more than 20 years ago.
This story, produced by the podcast Love+Radio, is the story of a woman throwing herself into a business plan that’s really an entire life plan. The piece is non-narrated—just a long interview with the young woman, named Taylor Rose Nations.
Writer Domingo Martinez tells a story from his memoir The Boy Kings of Texas, about when he was forced to face how he might look in 20 years, if he kept doing what he was doing.
Producer Ben Calhoun tells Ira about a secret move his friend uses all the time — the "good guy discount" — that gets Ben's friend money off all sorts of items when he's shopping.
Host Ira Glass talks to business professor Pino Audia and Fast Company magazine columnist Dan Heath about corporate creation myths and why so many of them involve garages.
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.