Host Ira Glass reflects on his feelings about going to the beach.

Ten years ago Jonathan Menjivar was on the cusp of something big: the birth of his daughter.

Producer Neil Drumming tells the story of his dad and his family’s timeshare in Orlando, Florida.

In just one year, everything in one ordinary public middle school changed. It went from an incoming class of thirty sixth graders—most of them Black, Latino, and Middle Eastern—to a class of 103 sixth graders.

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

On a friend’s recommendation, B.A. Parker decides to try attending First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem.

Bim talks to poet Ross Gay, whose book inspired today’s show, about the discipline and rigor of seeking and holding onto delight.

Nadia’s family has been isolating and disinfecting everything for weeks, and yet a cold still managed to creep in. How?

A while ago, a farmer walked through a pork processing plant in Oklahoma with a friend who managed it. He came across boxes stacked on the floor with labels that said "artificial calamari." Ben investigates the physical resemblance between two very different types of food.

Law professor Rebecca Allensworth has been studying another realm of civic-minded individuals charged with helping society function: medical licensing boards. They’re mostly doctors deciding whether other doctors should be allowed to keep practicing medicine.

Ira gives us a recent shortlist of things that feel almost too unreal to believe as we head into the national election.

Diane Wu has the story of a woman who goes to South Korea to meet her birth mother, a trip that lets her visit one of the other worlds in which she almost lived.

A mysterious tunnel in Toronto leads to wild public speculation. Nick Kohler tells Ira the story behind the tunnel, which he wrote about for MacLean’s.

Alex Blumberg talks to Shane Dubow about a time decades ago, when Shane went sea kayaking and camping with his friends on the beach in Baja California, Mexico. When Shane’s neck stiffens up on him, he finds himself looking for an unlikely chiropractor, in the middle of nowhere.

Turning 25 has always been a very specific deadline for Linah Mohammad: a deadline to get married.

Producers Diane Wu and Lina Misitzis spend the night at a corner grocery store in Brooklyn, New York and talk to some of the people that pass by. (25 minutes)

An average Chinese citizen decides to go to Wuhan, the heart of the coronavirus epidemic, to see for himself what’s happening there.

The discovery of new information casts a new light on a high school competition. Producer Sean Cole talks to some of the people involved, more than a decade later.

The statistics on first time gun ownership are higher than ever in America.

Mitchell S Jackson profiles Ahmaud Arbery, who was 25 years old when he was shot to death by three white men in Georgia earlier this year.

Maya Gurantz tells the story of Glenn and Laurie Mutchler, who go further than most parents to create a magical Christmas for their kids, Colin, Erica and Adam. Theirs included a family mythology of Santas that had its own logic, with many Santas and a family elf named Jeko, who were never jolly and often thrillingly scary.

Producer Miki Meek speaks to Noriko Meek, her 72-year-old mother, about discovering delight late in life.

Lina Misitzis talks to the one person in America who loves the movie everyone else in America loves to hate. (11 minutes)

Benjamen Walker of the podcast Theory of Everything tells guest host Sean Cole about an Uber drivers strike he came across in Kenya. The guys who didn’t join the strike and kept driving for Uber made extra money since there were fewer cars on the road.