732: Secrets
Why we tell them, and what happens after we do.
731: What Lies Beneath
Stories of people summoning up stuff that’s usually hidden down deep.
670: Beware the Jabberwock
Stories from the upside-down world where conspiracy theorists dwell.
489: No Coincidence, No Story!
We asked listeners to send us their best coincidence stories, and we got more than 1,300 submissions! There were so many good ones we decided to make a whole show about them. From a chance encounter at a bus station to a romantic dollar bill to a baffling apparition in a college shower stall.
730: The Empty Chair
Things we’ve lost in the past year — since the first American coronavirus case — that we haven’t talked about so much. Gossip. The chance to make new friends. And much larger stuff.
694: Get Back to Where You Once Belonged
People looking everywhere to find a place—any place—where, for once, they don't have to be the odd man out.
729: Making the Cut
There's always someone whose job it is to decide if you measure up.
692: The Show of Delights
In these dark, combative times, we attempt the most radical counterprogramming we could imagine: a show made up entirely of stories about delight.
728: Lights, Camera, Christmas!
This holiday season, we bring you a show filled with stories of people going to great lengths to throw a special Christmas for their families.
727: Boulder v. Hill
What the day-to-day business of saving the world looks like. We visit with one group of people who are trying to rescue us from something very large, and another group trying to rescue us from something very small.
726: Twenty-Five
To commemorate our show’s 25th year, we have a program about people who were born the year our show went on the air.
619: The Magic Show
Just a few years before he got the internship at NPR that started him in radio, our host Ira Glass had another career. He performed magic at children's birthday parties. A powerful sense of embarrassment has prevented him from ever doing an episode on the subject, but when he learned that producer David Kestenbaum was also a kid conjurer, they decided to dive in together.
682: Ten Sessions
What if someone told you about a type of therapy that could help you work through unhealed trauma in just ten sessions? Some people knock through it in two weeks. Jaime Lowe tried the therapy—and recorded it.
24 Hours at the Golden Apple
For our 25th Anniversary, a favorite episode from 2000. We document one day in a Chicago diner called the Golden Apple, starting at 5 a.m. and going until 5 a.m. the next morning. We hear from the waitress who has worked the graveyard shift for over two decades, the regular customers who come every day, the couples working out their problems, assorted drunks, and, of course, cops.
Break-Up
For our 25th Anniversary, a favorite episode from 2007. Writer Starlee Kine on what makes the perfect break-up song and whether really sad music can actually make you feel better. Plus, an eight-year-old author of a book about divorce, and other stories from the heart of heartbreak.
Switched at Birth
For our 25th Anniversary, a favorite episode from 2008. On a summer day in 1951, two baby girls were born in a hospital in small-town Wisconsin. The infants were accidentally switched, and went home with the wrong families. One of the mothers realized the mistake but chose to keep quiet. Until the day, more than 40 years later, when she decided to tell both daughters what happened. How the truth changed two families' lives—and how it didn't.
724: Personal Recount
Stories of people changing their minds.
723: Squeaker
Stories of people grappling with this endless presidential election.
718: Same Bed, Different Dreams
In this moment when our country is so deeply divided, we have stories of people who are tied together, but imagine radically different futures. In one case, a movie star and her ex-husband plot against Kim Jong-Il. In another, a woman stalks her doppelgänger. And sometimes, one bed is the basis for an entire relationship, even for a man who almost never sees the person who shares his bed.
587: The Perils of Intimacy
Stories about mysteries that exist in relationships we thought couldn't possibly surprise us, the strangeness of putting our wants on the line with someone who may not share them at all, and how much we're willing to risk for someone we may never see again.