There are the birds who exist, and then there are the birds who may as well exist. Producer Sean Cole explains.

Ira remembers the time when his older sister, Randi, asked his mother where babies come from.

Host Ira Glass with the last piece in today’s show, inspired by the New York Times podcast, The Daily. (3 minutes)

To cope with the COVID pandemic, producer Sean Cole finds himself turning to a movie about a pandemic. But the virus in this movie isn’t like any you’ve ever heard of.

Producer Sean Cole scrubs in to observe heart surgeon Dr. John Elefteriades, or Dr.

There’s a machine lots of us encounter as a big impersonal, mechanical apparatus, that has a ghost in it. But it’s a ghost that appears to just a small handful of people. Jean Hannah Edelstein tells the story to Ira.

Host Ira Glass goes to a block in New York City where, over a year into the pandemic, neighbors are still clapping for health care workers every night at 7 p.m. (7 minutes)

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.

The pandemic forced restaurant server Shelly Ortiz to put on her “Covid Goggles.” What she saw through them made her reevaluate her ideas of what’s important.

Producer Ben Calhoun investigates a daily mystery—a daily musical mystery. (15 minutes)

Producer Aviva DeKornfeld was interested in the toll that having a wakeup-moment could have on a family, and she heard about someone who had a moment like that over a decade ago. He tried to pull his family into activism too, and what unfolded was the most extreme example of things going badly in a family that Aviva heard of.