Host Ira Glass spent America’s presidential election in the swing state of Michigan, where he found very little dispute over the ballot count from Republican poll challengers in Detroit now that they are doing the counting themselves. (8 minutes)

Producer Diane Wu travels to Minnesota, where the turkey set to be pardoned by The President of the United States later this month is having the turkiness trained out of him. (10 minutes)

Who’s trying to bridge the gap between Blue America and Red America? Ira gets a glimpse of one guy who might be able to do just that.

Ira talks about the exciting new series that Serial is doing about Guantánamo Bay.

Host Ira Glass introduces the new series that Serial is doing about Guantánamo Bay. This is the second of two episodes of theirs that we’re airing.

Every year, thousands of teenagers come from all over the world to experience American high school. Last year, thirteen students from Palestine came to the US on a program sponsored by the US State Department.

Producer Zoe Chace compares the letters a person gets and the letters they wish they got.

Ira introduces a new series from Serial Productions and The New York Times. "The Good Whale" is about the killer whale Keiko and is reported by Daniel Alarcón.

Reporter M. Gessen talks to Russians living in America and elsewhere about the lists the Russian government has put them on in the last few years.

Ten different states had abortion rights measures on their ballots this election.

Majid finally gets his day in court.

Sarah Koenig explains what’s probably the best possible outcome that everyone can hope for at this point. And why, when it hits the news someday — if it ever happens — it’s sure to be deeply misunderstood by lots of people.

Reporter Alix Spiegel talks to two people with good reason to fear a second Trump administration. Former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham spent six years with the Trumps but resigned after January 6th and wrote a scathing tell-all book about her experience.

Sometimes we don’t want to say what’s going on because putting it into words would make it real. At other times, words don’t seem to capture the weight of what we want to say.

Ira observes that we are in a moment of national reconsideration.

On this week’s show, we’re airing excerpts of interviews with former hostages produced by an Israeli podcast, Echad Bayom. In these interviews they describe, in a remarkably detailed and complicated way, what happened to them a year ago. We start with Chen Almog-Goldstein.

For years there was a word that Val’s mother did not want to use.

Daniel Alarcón takes us back to the early 90’s when Keiko lived in an adventure park in Mexico City, swimming with human friends. (43 minutes)

Boen’s friend, Andrew, and his parents take what he learned in Part One, throw it into a blender, and push puree.

Since the beginning of the war in Gaza, Yousef Hammash has decided where to go next and when. In Rafah, he is out of options and faces his toughest move yet.

Elena Kostyuchenko tells the story of how she was probably poisoned after reporting on Russian’s invasion of Ukraine, and how she kept not believing it was happening. Bela Shayevich translated this story from Russian and reads it for us. (21 minutes)We adapted this from an article in n+1 magazine.

Banias talks about the war.

Jackson Landers tells the story of a very strange decision he made one summer day. (6 minutes)The name of today’s show is from a quote by climate futurist Alex Steffen, in an article about wildfires by Elizabeth Weil.

We talk to high school seniors in Salt Lake City who are trying to have the perfect year.