Ira talks with journalist Jason Bleibtreu about Luther and Johnny Htoo, twelve-year-old twins, and the leaders of a rebel army of Burmese separatists called God's Army. Everyone around them, both their own forces and their enemies, believed they possessed superpowers, that they could not be harmed by bullets, that they had the power to command ghost armies.

How David Sedaris became a Christmas writer — and how he started writing stories about the holiday that are so dark that sometimes it seems that he's trying to single handedly destroy Christmas. We hear from members of David's own family, and from David, all of whom insist that David loves Christmas.

Poet/performer Lisa Buscani tells a story about her father.

Claudia Perez returns to talk about her year from a more personal perspective.

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.

After his mother passes, a man unearths her book collection… and is surprised. (6 1/2 minutes)

During an election in which it feels like the very existence of our democracy hangs in the balance, producer Sean Cole and someone very close to him have been dealing with their own immediate existential questions.

We set up a special 800-number for listeners to call with their true-life scary stories. More than 500 people called.

Comedian Atsuko Okatsuka moved suddenly from Japan to the U.S. when she was eight years old, and has long joked that it was because her grandmother kidnapped her from her dad. But she'd never talked to anyone in her family about what had actually happened. (31 minutes) Tickets for Atsuko’s comedy tour at atsukocomedy.com.

Producer Miki Meek tells the story of a phone booth in Japan that attracts thousands of people who lost loved ones in the 2011 tsunami and earthquake. A Japanese TV crew from NHK Sendai filmed people inside the phone booth, whose phone is not connected to anything at all.

Myron Jones and his sister Carol Bove explain what happened when they were teenagers, and they ended up babysitting children who didn't exist.

Zach and his father enter into an agreement that could change their entire relationship. (9 minutes)

Julia Sweeney reads this story. She's a former Saturday Night Live cast member and star of the sad and comic memoir of life with cancer, God Said, "Ha!," which played on Broadway.

Dee Brown’s routine is thrown totally out of whack when Covid hits.

Parents try to shape who we are in their own image. Producer Neil Drumming spoke to Adam Mansbach, who tried to make his daughter fall in love with hip-hop.

Brent Runyon tells the story of the day in eighth grade that he set himself on fire...and what led to that. He wasn't a loner, he had friends, his mother was a teacher, his parents took an interest in his life.

Chris Garcia and his dad were driving home, listening to oldies, sharing a bag of chips. A totally familiar scene for them.

Writer Doug McGray tells the story of a daughter who wanted to be closer to her mom, and went to extremes to do it. Doug McGray is a fellow at the New America Foundation.

The story about what happens when you discover the medical reason your mother was such a bad parent all your life.

A teenage girl decides the only way forward is to tear something down and rebuild from the ground up. Elna Baker explains.

For more than a decade, Boris Furman has meticulously tracked the whereabouts of his family members, averaging the latitude and longitudes to arrive at “The Family Average Location.” But nobody really knows why.

Chris Benderev speaks with writer Georgie Codd, who went searching for someone to be the father she never had.

Nora Moreno with tapes of her father, a pioneer in Spanish-language broadcasting in America. Her mother fell in love with her father because of his poetic character on the radio, but in real life, the very things that attracted her to him over the radio drove them apart.

Karen sends Nadia a photo which drives them to a final showdown. (12 minutes)