Michael Ventura, who grew up Sicilian in New York, says that as a kid he thought Sinatra was in his family. His book The Death of Frank Sinatra is not really about Sinatra.

Writer Julie Showalter on her parents' romance.

Reporter Eric Mennel introduces Host Ira Glass to church planters, a group of evangelical Christians who apply the lessons of Silicon Valley to their goals of building new churches and growing their flock. (9 ½ minutes)

Producer David Kestenbaum explains how teachers at his sons’ preschool installed a “tattle phone” where kids could register their complaints about each other. David rigged it up to record those complaints and document the unfairnesses of preschool.

Producer Lina Misitzis revisits a moment in a TV special that’s stuck with her for over twenty years.

An inventor designs a robotic device that creates a dilemma for the administrators and judges of a major electronics trade show.

David Kestenbaum finds out about a speech that, in another world, President Clinton gave on August 17, 1998.

Producer Emanuele Berry talks to Jiayang Fan about how Jiayang’s trying to protect her mother, who she worries about as the virus spreads across New York City.

Ben Calhoun talks to a man in ICE detention in Louisiana about how he and people around him are following the election. But right as the results are coming in, the man’s case takes a serious turn.

Elna Baker investigates the “Shot Girl Summer” phenomenon.

Vladmir Putin’s approval rating among Russians is always stunningly high. Ira talks to reporter Charles Maynes to find out if that number is real and how it could be that high.

LA writer/performer Sandra Tsing Loh discovers that a local rock band has recorded a song about her own father, wildly misinterpreting who he is. They think he’s a free spirit; she believes he’s a worried, miserly grump.

There’s a seismic, historic change going on in the Republican party this year. Producer Zoe Chace tells Ira about a place you can eavesdrop on a group of Republican friends as they fret and argue about that change week after week: a podcast called Ricochet.

Julie Hill with a story about her six-year-old son, and how he tries to make sense of his father's terminal illness.

We asked reporters all over the country to go out and talk to people about what they're thinking as Barack Obama gets ready to take office. We got dozens of hours of interviews.

Susan lays out her theory of what the truth is in this case. And she explains what we still don’t know.

Reporter Nancy Updike spends two days with Neal Smither, who cleans up crime scenes for a living, and comes away wanting to open his Los Angeles franchise, despite the gore—or maybe because of it.

Kenia and her brother Henrri make a trip back to El Salvador, for the first time in 12 years, since they immigrated to the US. For the last few years they've been protected from deportation, but are worried things might change under President Trump. Seth Freed Wessler reports.

Producer Valerie Kipnis follows a group of people who’ve just arrived at their new home, a tent shelter in the middle of nowhere. (11 minutes)Reporting help from Jika Gonzalez.

Kristina Karamo and her camp defend themselves against Warren’s attacks that they’re bad at fundraising and bad at leading the party. (13 minutes)

Growing up, producer Stephanie Foo was the favorite child of her family in Malaysia. Particularly of the matriarch of the family who everyone called "Auntie." But as an adult, Stephanie found out the complicated truth about why she was the family favorite.

Donald Trump has talked about taking revenge on his enemies since the early days of his 2024 presidential campaign.

At the announcement of New York City’s inaugural rat czar, we meet Darneice Foster, who despises the rats outside her apartment.

In the 1920s, at the height of the Spiritualism movement, a friendship blossomed between two men with opposing views on the topic: Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Houdini was a skeptic.