How do you count almost 12 million votes if you’re not the government? This week, we bring you the extraordinary story of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who created the only verifiable public record of votes in their presidential election — and other stories of people trying to correct the official record with their own versions.

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• Prologue: Host Ira Glass sets us up for Nancy Updike’s insider account of the recent presidential election in Venezuela. The story is an incredible national drama that plays out in thousands of polling stations across the country, with regular people trying to ensure a fair vote count that everyone can agree on. (2 minutes)
• Act One: Producer Nancy Updike tells the story of the people of Venezuela trying to prove who won their recent presidential election beyond a shadow of a doubt. (22 minutes)
• Act Two: Host Ira Glass spent America’s presidential election in the swing state of Michigan, where he found very little dispute over the ballot count from Republican poll challengers in Detroit now that they are doing the counting themselves. (8 minutes)
• Act Three: This story is about a creepy and dangerous creature that does all kinds of terrible things. It’s also about someone trying to set the record straight on those exact assumptions about this notorious creature. (9 minutes)

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Keiko was a hugely beloved adventure park attraction. He was also captured in the wild and taken away from his mother when he was just a calf. When Hollywood learned about him, a colossal effort began to un-tame him and send him back to the ocean.

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• Prologue: Ira introduces a new series from Serial Productions and The New York Times. "The Good Whale" is about the killer whale Keiko and is reported by Daniel Alarcón. (2 minutes)
• Act One: Daniel Alarcón takes us back to the early 90’s when Keiko lived in an adventure park in Mexico City, swimming with human friends. (43 minutes)
• Act Two: Producer Diane Wu travels to Minnesota, where the turkey set to be pardoned by The President of the United States later this month is having the turkiness trained out of him. (10 minutes)

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With Donald Trump’s victory this week, many people looked at the election results and thought, yeah, this is the country I thought it was. For some people, that was a hopeful thing. For others, kind of the opposite. This week, we talked with people who helped make it happen and some who are looking to what’s next.

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• Prologue: Ira talks with Zoe Chace about watching Trump’s victory from an ecstatic room in Michigan. Then he checks in with a DC cop who was injured at the Capitol on January 6. (7 minutes)
• Act One: Trump has claimed that he will be able to deport between 15 and 20 million people. But neither he nor his team have spelled out exactly how they’d do it. Producer Nadia Reiman looked into what mass deportation could actually look like on the ground if and when it comes to pass. (17 minutes)
• Act Two: Trump won record numbers of Latino voters this year. Ike Sriskandarajah spent the day with a guy in Pennsylvania who's been working to bring Latino voters to Trump for years. (15 minutes)
• Act Three: Ira talks with two of Trump’s “political enemies” about their post-election plans. (8 minutes)
• Act Four: Ten different states had abortion rights measures on their ballots this election. Producer Miki Meek got curious about a particular kind of political ad that aired in many of those states and called up a few of the women whose stories were featured in them. (9 minutes)

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A wee flame, flickering in the dark.

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• Prologue: Who’s trying to bridge the gap between Blue America and Red America? Ira gets a glimpse of one guy who might be able to do just that. (3 minutes)
• Act One: A politically divided couple searches for a news source they both can trust. (26 minutes)
• Act Two: "June" is making a tactical decision about her vote this election. (13 minutes)
• Act Three: Frank Filocomo thinks people care too much about politics when it comes to dating. His dates don’t necessarily agree. (10 minutes)

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People who tell a lie and then believe the lie more than anyone else.

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• Prologue: Sean Cole explains why he decided that he would speak with a British accent—morning, noon and night—from the age of fourteen until he was sixteen, and how he believed the lie that he was British must be true. (3 minutes)
• Act One: The story of two young people who, in their search to figure out who they were, pretended to be people they weren't. Both were from small towns; both took on false identities. For two years in high school, producer Sean Cole spoke with a British accent. As a freshman in college, Joel Lovell told lies about his own diet and about his parents. (15 minutes)
• Act Two: The story of a con man, one of the most successful salesmen in a long-running multimillion-dollar telemarketing scam, who finally got caught when he was conned himself. Producer Nancy Updike talks about the case with Dale Sekovich, Federal Trade Commission investigator. (16 minutes)
• Act Three: Shalom Auslander reads his true story, "The Blessing Bee." It's about the time when, as a third-grader at an Orthodox Jewish school, Shalom saw his chance to both make his mom proud, and push his drunken father out of the picture. Part of his scheme involved winning the school's bee on the complicated Hebrew blessings you say before eating certain foods. The other part of the scheme: Sinning. (19 minutes)

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Thirteen parole board members decide whether or not one man should be released from prison.

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• Prologue: Henry Dee has been locked up for most of his life, nearly 50 years. Now, he’s up for parole. Reporter Ben Austen tells the story. (19 minutes)
• Part 1: The parole board members puzzle through the pros and cons of releasing Henry Dee from prison and cast their votes. (26 minutes)
• Part 2: Reporter Ben Austen continues the story. (8 minutes)

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So much of the fight for the presidency is coming down to battles for small slices of voters who can help throw swing states to one candidate or another. Abbas Alawieh, a leader in the Uncommitted movement, grapples with how to get his voters the thing they want.

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• Prologue: When you have some power, but not a lot, how do you wield it when you’re suddenly cast into the spotlight? (4 minutes)
• Act One: Zoe Chace and Ben Terris follow Abbas Alawieh as he fights to broker a deal at the DNC – a way to potentially satisfy the people who voted “Uncommitted” in the primaries as a protest vote against Biden’s handling of the war in Israel and Gaza. (33 minutes)
• Act Two: Three weeks after the Democratic National Convention, Abbas speaks at a tense community meeting in Michigan about the Uncommitted organizers’ general election recommendation and hears back from voters on how they feel about the Democratic nominee at this point. (15 minutes)

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Chen Almog-Goldstein was kidnapped by Hamas along with her three youngest children on October 7, 2023. This week, she tells the story of their life as hostages in Gaza.

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• Prologue: The 251 hostages taken by Hamas a year ago have become a divisive symbol in Israel. Host Ira Glass talks about the father of one hostage, and what happened to him at a protest last week when he called for a hostage deal. (6 minutes)
• Part One: On this week’s show, we’re airing excerpts of interviews with former hostages produced by an Israeli podcast, Echad Bayom. In these interviews they describe, in a remarkably detailed and complicated way, what happened to them a year ago.
• Part Two: Chen’s story continues, with a description of what it was like to be hidden in a small apartment with her children and their captors. (6 minutes)
• Part Three: Chen talks about the complicated relationship between her family and the people holding them hostage. (6 minutes)
• Part Four: Chen describes hearing the Israeli news while in captivity, including one night when her own father was interviewed. (4 minutes)
• Part Five: Chen talks about what it was like to walk around the streets of Gaza in disguise and their eventual release, 51 days after they were taken from their home. (13 minutes)

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