Paul Zimmer at 83 years old is still haunted by something he saw in his teens. Something very few Americans have ever seen: The explosion of an atomic bomb.

Ira and Ben consider how officers could be flagged for bad policing in a more systematic way, rather than the freak occurrence of a couple walking into an officer’s home and finding a KKK application up on his wall.

Julie Snyder talks about a favorite passage from Sarah Vowell's story in episode 107: Trail of Tears. Then she talks about Alex Blumberg's interview with Griffin Hansbury in episode 220: Testosterone.Robyn Semien talks about Ira's interview with Denise Moore, who was trapped in the New Orleans Convention Center after Hurricane Katrina.

Ira talks with a very skeptical national security expert about whether this order actually secures the nation.

One of the things we were excited to investigate when we went to Alabama was to answer the question at the heart of the immigration debate: what does it cost taxpayers when we let in millions of immigrants, documented and undocumented? In Albertville, how much was it? We asked economist Kim Rueben and her colleague Erin Huffer to run the numbers.

The birds Edwin Rist stole were valuable and collected in the mid-1800s by one of the greatest scientific explorers of his time: a man named Alfred Russel Wallace.

The story of a not-very-tall, not-very-athletic man—Colin Pine—who becomes a minor celebrity in the NBA, as the translator for one of the most famous rookies in basketball history: The first Chinese player ever to go number one in the draft, Yao Ming. Reporter Jesse Hardman tells his story.

Allison Silverman reports on This Is Your Life, a show from the 1950s where unsuspecting—and often famous—audience members would have their biographies created on the spot for 40 million viewers. But is that really a present you'd want to receive? Allison is an Emmy Award-winning writer who has worked on The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

Back in the 1990s, a bipartisan team led by the charismatic Barbara Jordan came up with a solution to the immigration debate that would have fixed a lot the things we’re arguing about today.

The news of the executive order broke while immigrants and refugees were mid-flight. That meant they were stranded in airports around the country.

Sean hit up this one piece of coverage that wasn’t like any of the others. He got a little obsessed with it.

Michael Lewis, on McCain and Ifshin.

Host Ira Glass uses Italian author Umberto Eco's essay Travels in Hyperreality as a guidebook to American simulated worlds. Eco says that the urge to create these miniature simulated worlds is a very American impulse — a significant American aesthetic — and one that's not often discussed.

Ira takes a look at the remarkably successful $156 million renovation of Chicago's Navy Pier. He talks with seven employees working at the businesses on the pier.

Producer Alex Blumberg interviews the writer Jon Mooallem, who just wrote a story for the Atavist about a period in the early 1900’s when meat was scarce in the United States. A group of forward-thinking men had a plan to fix that problem.

Ira explains that when Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton all seemed to be against free trade agreements, he got genuinely confused. Is free trade good or bad? Was NAFTA good or evil? Are we down with TPP? He asked Jacob Goldstein of NPR’s Planet Money podcast to explain, once and for all, the pros and cons of free trade.

Producer Sean Cole tells one of his favorite stories — about the ending of the book A Clockwork Orange.

Ira Glass talks with David Axelrod, who was an advisor to Harold Washington and to Barack Obama as well. In 2007, when we last broadcast this show, Ira recorded an interview with Axelrod who was riding on Obama’s campaign bus, during the Democratic Primary in Iowa.

Producer Neil Drumming talks to someone who was not happy with the results of Tuesday’s election. Janelle, who’s black, is bracing herself for the coming days.

Producer Brian Reed tells the story of a city that years ago was given a title and is now saying, "not it!" They want to shed that title once and for all.

Iggy Pop picks up the story of Burroughs by explaining "Cut Up" — Burroughs habit of randomly jumbling, repeating and re-assembling words and phrases in his writing. David Bowie and others picked it up.

Ira talks to 15 year old Jada who, when she was in third grade, moved from Akron Public Schools in Ohio, to the nearby Copley-Fairlawn schools in the suburbs. After two years, Jada was kicked out by administrators who discovered that her mother was using Jada's grandfather's address in Copley, instead of her own in Akron.

Ira talks with Producer Nancy Updike about when she first met Kirk Johnson in 2007. At the time he was mulling a crazy plan that involved Iraqi refugees, the Coast Guard and a boat.