“What do you think about Beyoncé?” and other questions raised by people on first dates.

Host Ira Glass revisits the one movie he’s seen more than any other, about an ocean liner that gets hit by a tsunami and flips over. (9 minutes)

Host Ira Glass revisits the one movie he’s seen more than any other, about an ocean liner that gets hit by a tsunami and flips over. (9 minutes)

Some people are great in a crisis. Others, not so much.

David Beers explains the gorgeous, modern vision that drew his family, and tons of other families, to California, and then what happened after they arrived.

A communist, the filmmaker Marcel Ophuls, the band Camper Van Beethoven, and other people who may be stuck in the wrong decade.

Producer Zoe Chace attends the DeploraBall, a party for trolls and others who say they memed Trump into the presidency.

When Susan Bergman wrote a book about her family's experience, other gay men tried to explain her father's actions to her.

What one professor saw in voter registrations that others didn’t.

Etgar's mom invents a business for herself where other women look to her like a queen.

Louann Mims, a 78-year-old retiree, planned to leave her New Orleans house before the floodwaters rose, but then the water came rushing in and she was trapped in her house for eight days on the only thing that would float: her extra firm Sterns and Foster mattress. Ms.

When adults talk babytalk to each other, it is precisely to avoid having real conversations and experiencing real moments with each other. People almost never discuss babytalk in public. This American Life producer Nancy Updike and her boyfriend—Chicago journalist Adam Davidson—agreed to step forward and speak the truth on the subject.

Ira Glass mentions a very silly mistake he made with a girl when he was in junior high. Then comedian Mike Birbiglia tells the story of his rocky foray into the world of making out with girls.

Back in 1999 there was series of bombings of apartment buildings in Moscow and across Russia. 300 people died. It happened just as Vladimir Putin was coming to power.

Producer Alex Blumberg sets out to find a woman named Susan Jordan, who babysat him and his sister for a year when he was nine. He discovers that each of them remembered something about the other that the other would just as soon forget.

Alex Blumberg sets out to find a woman named Susan Jordan, who babysat him and his sister for a year when he was nine. He discovers that each of them remembered something about the other that the other would just as soon forget.

NPR's Adam Davidson tells a true story from his own childhood. He was sent to a camp run by the Israeli army at its own training facility.

In any family, giving other people what they want becomes fantastically complicated, often because people tend to give others the things they'd like themselves. Curtis Sittenfeld explains how the drama plays out in her family, when it comes to her father's weight.

Host Ira Glass talks with a bunch of special ed students. By and large, they thought of themselves as regular kids—until each experienced a shocking moment of revelation when they discovered that they were not the same as other kids, and that the other kids already knew that...and had known for a long time.

Ira talks to Joel Gold, a psychologist and author, about a strangely common delusion known as the "Truman Show Delusion," in which patients believe that they are being filmed, 24/7, for a national reality television program.

Many couples eventually encounter this problem: One person in the couple trots out the same story over and over, and the other person has to just listen. But what do the stories we tell in front of our significant others mean, and what do the significant others really think of them? Ira talks to three couples about the stories they've each told and heard countless times, and why.

Anthony Swofford reads an excerpt from his memoir, Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles, about his experience fighting in the first Gulf War in 1991, as a Marine sniper.

Comedian, performer and author Dave Hill gets the message, loud and clear, from a Gatorade bottle on a subway platform. Dave is the author of Tasteful Nudes ... and Other Misguided Attempts at Personal Growth and Validation.

Actor Matt Malloy reads a short piece of fiction called "Shoes," about a boy trying not to be a turncoat. It's from Etgar Keret's book of short fiction The Busdriver Who Wanted to Be God, and Other Stories.