Emanuele Berry and Ira Glass watch a Soviet film from 1936. A bizarre cameo of an African American baby in an all-white crowd makes Emanuele wonder about what it’s like to be Black in a country with so few Black people.

Host Ira Glass gives an update on his health status after going into quarantine last week, and David Kestenbaum interviews a 71 year old trying to avoid the virus.

Jennifer, Ira, and producer Emanuele Berry go to a protest and get tear gassed in front of a Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. (6 minutes)

David Kestenbaum talks to one teacher there who’s already gone through a month of in-person learning to see what the  future might hold for other schools.

Host Ira Glass talks to a direct descendent of Thomas Jefferson about treating Monticello as his personal playground and about whether monuments to Jefferson should come down.

Dana Chivvis’s story on the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners continues with Dr. Michael LaPaglia’s contested case hearing.

Host Ira Glass talks with Georgia Democrats who went out to “cure” ballots in a state with some of the closest results in the country.

Linda Lutton and her eleven year old daughter Pirecua explain what happened the year Pirecua begged for a gift that she turned out to be allergic to. Linda is a reporter at our home station, WBEZ Chicago.

Lissa knows how to read people, how to pull information out of them that others can’t. Because of this, she’s able to find out what happened to her niece in just five days.

Comedian and actor Azie Dungey recounts her time playing a slave for visiting tourists at George Washington’s estate in Mount Vernon.

Ira calls up his mother Shirley Glass after unexpectedly finding her quoted as a “sexpert” in Marie Claire magazine, back in 1996. One of the first stories we did on our show.

Abdurahman Tohti left his home country, China, behind 7 years ago to move to Turkey, safe from the Chinese regime that discriminates and arbitrarily detains Uyghurs, specifically, which Abdurahman is. Reporter Durrie Bouscaren talks to him about what happened to his wife and children and extended family in China, and the endless challenges he faces trying to be sure they are safe.

Jonathan Goldstein tries to convince his uncle and his father to get into the same room and have a conversation for the first time in decades, before it’s too late and one of them dies.

Bim Adewunmi talks about the feeling of now.

Host Ira Glass calls Jennifer to talk about the new security law. (12 minutes)

Host Ira Glass speaks to Kevin Sheekey, the man tasked with spending $100m of Mike Bloomberg’s billions on securing a Democrat win in the constant battleground state of Florida. He also speaks to producer Lina Misitzis about what’s going on down on the ground with Democrats in the state.

Reporter Lizzie Johnson calls her grandpa after he unexpectedly changes his mind about something. (9 minutes)

For years one group of people has been trying to push a giant boulder to the top of a hill, like Sisyphus. But in this case, it looks like they’ve actually succeeded! David Kestenbaum spoke with four scientists who have been working on a coronavirus vaccine, one that was just shown to work.

Writer Etgar Keret tells a story about his father, who was constantly imagining parallel universes. In a way, they saved him.

Producer Emanuele Berry talks to Jiayang Fan about how Jiayang’s trying to protect her mother, who she worries about as the virus spreads across New York City.

Ira and producer Neil Drumming visit a comic book store in Philadelphia to try and help Ira understand Afrofuturism.

We meet the doctors. Rana Awdish spends hours of each day walking the floors of the ICU checking in on her co-workers, which means that maybe more than any single person in the hospital she knows best what the staff has been going through at each stage of this pandemic. One doctor that has deep ties to Detroit is Geneva Tatem.