We hear the eerily calm answering machine message that Brita Bonechi leaves for her husband, Rob, after she's had an accident and is trapped upside down in her car.

Ira talks about the classic biography of an American pimp, Iceberg Slim's Pimp: The Story of My Life, and explains today's show. He warns listeners that although there's no sex in the show at all, there is a scene or two in which men hit women.

The modern history of Niagara Falls can be divided roughly into three phases: Schemers who came in trying to exploit the Falls for tourism and failed; schemers who came in and tried to exploit the Falls for hydroelectric power, who've all gone; and the people who are left in Niagara today. Our show is about this last group: People who live in the aftermath.

The small town dilemma.

Writer Jack Hitt discovers that the world of dinosaurs is a man-made creation, a simulated world that may or may not accurately reflect what happened on earth 100 million years ago. Talking with dinosaur experts like Jack Horner (whose work was the basis of much of the film Jurassic Park), Hitt finds that most of what you think you know about dinosaurs is probably wrong, and that Americans' ideas about dinosaurs go through "fashions" that reflect the national mood: We believed dinosaurs were more aggressive when we were on the brink of World Wars One and Two.

Ira explains the premise of this week’s show, where most of the stories were first broadcast in 2004.

Ira Glass and Kelefa Sanneh talk about Starbucks’ racial bias training program, which Kalefa recently discussed with Howard Schultz.

Producer Zoe Chace attends the DeploraBall, a party for trolls and others who say they memed Trump into the presidency.

The discovery of 30 century-old postcards written in old Yiddish by a distant family member challenges David Kestenbaum’s ideas about the unimportance of blood ties.

Ira finds a ridiculous comment thread on the Internet about an optical illusion.

As a new high school principal, Dr. Whitfield felt moved by the national renouncement of racism he saw all around him in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

Ira with two magicians who take the premise of magic – that it’s all about deception – and try to stand that on its head to get to something utterly real, unfaked and emotional. (16 minutes) David Blaine is on tour for the summer.

Writer John Hodgman in New York tells the story of how he dreamt of getting to know the B-movie star Bruce Campbell, and how his unlikely dream accidentally came true, partly to his delight, partly to his horror.

A truly remarkable children's book just came back in print: The Lonely Doll, by Dare Wright. Jean Nathan tells the story of the book and its author, and how the author's life came to resemble something from her book.

A story by therapist Lauren Slater about a case she had with a tough man obsessed with porn and how he changed.

Reporter Katie Mingle wonders why the 211 hotline in the San Francisco Bay Area for people experiencing homelessness so often turns out to be a dead end for them.

One of the last independent newspapers in Russia finds new ways to cover a war that the government doesn’t want them to cover.

An odd occurrence at 124 East Fourth Street in Manhattan's East Village. For the last five weeks, a singer named Nick Drakides has stood on the stoop singing Sinatra songs late at night to the delight of his neighbors.

A group called NO/AIDS heads into bars to offer free HIV testing for high-risk people. Writer Nathaniel Rich tells the story of one man's test.

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.

Ira Glass speaks with several members of the Planet Money team, who all found themselves—in the course of their reporting—independently asking the same stoner-ish question: What is money? Ira and Planet Money producer Jacob Goldstein discuss a pre-industrial society on the island of Yap that used giant stones as currency. The book that Jacob read about Yap is called The Island of Stone Money.

The worst violence ended two years ago. Iraq is stable.

What do we do when we're not doing something? Not writing a book, not doing our jobs, not falling in love? Sometimes we just feel self-conscious. Sometimes we spend a lot of time explaining ourselves.