As the number of female prisoners climbs, visiting rooms are packed on Mother's Day. Eighty percent of female inmates have children at home.

Los Angeles writer Sandra Tsing Loh on the first day of a relationship. A failing relationship.

In 1940, Jack Geiger, at the age of fourteen, left his middle-class Jewish home and knocked on the door of a black actor named Canada Lee. He asked Lee if he could move in with him.

David Rakoff on how he tried to pass as a local once he moved from Toronto to New York. He claims that there must be a chip in his head — or something like it — that automatically tells him when someone or something famous is Canadian.

Writer David Sedaris on an unwelcome surprise in a toilet — a turd.

Gay Talese reads from his classic 1966 Esquire article, in which he followed around Sinatra at the height of Sinatra's power.

Ira with Sam Franco, a 72-year-old Chicagoan who spent his life playing and teaching accordion. He never became famous.

The bizarre experience of being a guest in museum dedicated to the worst day of your life.

Host Ira talks with comedian Gary Gulman about his transformation from high school nobody to football star.

Producer Zoe Chace and Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel spin through some greatest hits of their weekend in Iowa once more, and Weigel reflects on what’s about to come next in the presidential race.

David Kestenbaum talks about his love of the number zero and its power to destroy. Among zero's victims: one of the most controversial laws in recent memory.

Diane Wu has the story of a woman who goes to South Korea to meet her birth mother, a trip that lets her visit one of the other worlds in which she almost lived.

People want to do the right thing, but it’s not always possible.

A mysterious tunnel in Toronto leads to wild public speculation. Nick Kohler tells Ira the story behind the tunnel, which he wrote about for MacLean’s.

Daniel Alarcón’s dad was obsessed with soccer when he was growing up, but he was only average at soccer. But those who can’t do...find something else to do.

A week after starting classes, a Covid outbreak forces a university to send students back home. Producer Robyn Semien takes a tour of the emptying campus.

Broward County is  one of the bluest counties in Florida, and some of the Democrats who live and vote there are worried their party isn’t doing enough to keep it that way. Lina Misitzis spent some time talking to them about their fears.

Rob and Reyna Mathis go house hunting with their family in Muskegon, Michigan. What they find in a police officer’s home prompts an upsetting debate.

Last year, a woman named Karen Davis started a national letter writing campaign to try to get This American Life to stop the very program we are broadcasting today—the annual Poultry Slam.

There is one line in the executive order that justifies its existence. It’s the second sentence in section 1.

A mysterious tunnel is found in a forest in Toronto. Public speculation is all over the place and totally wrong.

In 2012, the fever broke, and the Albertville city council stopped targeting Latino residents. The mayor says he and the council are taking a cue from the public schools.

Tim Reeves runs a hospital in rural Pennsylvania, and he’s trying to do something that is so hard to do and that he knows is completely up to him.

Writer Marie Phillips believes that magic is not just reserved for the beginning of a relationship.