Producer David Kestenbaum drops in on some Republicans who are still trying to field a candidate to challenge this president.

David Kestenbaum talks about his love of the number zero and its power to destroy. Among zero's victims: one of the most controversial laws in recent memory.

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.

The discovery of 30 century-old postcards written in old Yiddish by a distant family member challenges David Kestenbaum’s ideas about the unimportance of blood ties.

Senior editor David Kestenbaum helps his kids set up an ant farm. They follow all the instructions, to the letter! But he ends up learning a lesson he’s pretty sure the manufacturer did not intend.

David and Chana meet another toxic asset owner, like themselves. Only difference, David and Chana bought theirs after it was already toxic, for a steep discount, 99% off.

David Kestenbaum desperately wants to set the record straight for everybody about whether aliens regularly visit earth. They don’t, he says.

Planet Money reporters David Kestenbaum and Jacob Goldstein went to Kenya to see the work of a charity called GiveDirectly in action. Instead of funding schools or wells or livestock, GiveDirectly has decided to just give money directly to the poor people who need it, and let them decide how to spend it.

When you need to retrieve all manner of treasures secured behind steel doors and complex locks, there’s one man you can count on: safecracker Dave McOmie.

A state senator tries persuading his own constituents, from his own party, that the 2020 election was not stolen. (17 minutes)


We’ve all heard reports that voter fraud isn’t real. But how do we know that’s true? David Kestenbaum went on a quest to find out if someone had actually put in the work—and run the numbers—to know for certain.

Earlier this month, North Korea fired an intercontinental ballistic missile… one powerful enough, news reports said, to reach Alaska. People were shocked.

David’s story continues. He visits his old physics professor, who helps him figure out what to think.

Mike Wilson, the editor of the Dallas Morning News, recently got some hate mail from conservative readers. They think that the media—and his paper—are biased.

David Kestenbaum tells Ira about the time, when he was doing graduate work in physics, he and his other single friends decided to figure out the mathematical probability that they’d find girlfriends. They wanted to know what the chances were that there was more than one person in the world for them.

This week Southerners were still digging out in the wake of last week's tornados. David Kestenbaum, from our Planet Money team, heads to Tuscaloosa, Alabama where he finds that facts are not so easy to hold onto.

David and Chana buy a toxic asset, from a guy named Wit Solberg, who used to work on Wall Street and now helps small banks who've been saddled with toxic assets. Turns out...it's hard to buy a toxic asset.

We hear two stories of everyday life which are more easily understood if one knows some of the laws of physics, specifically the Mediocrity Principle and the Casimir Effect.

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.

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.

Fewer than 40 million Americans have gotten the vaccine so far, which leaves a lot of people jealous and wondering what happens inside those little rooms.

David Kestenbaum follows one person as they try to find something—a set of words, some facts, a story—to convince Trump Republicans to get themselves vaccinated.