Prologue

When Adele wrote into our show last summer, she described herself as “the worst phlebotomist in the whole hospital.” Producer Diane Wu couldn’t resist calling her up to find out exactly what she meant by that.

Reporter Nancy Updike spends two days with Neal Smither, who cleans up crime scenes for a living, and comes away wanting to open his Los Angeles franchise, despite the gore — or maybe because of it.

Seth Freed Wessler reports on people going the opposite direction over the US/Mexico border.

Ira’s story of Yibin Li continues.

Disinformation and propaganda works differently in Putin’s Russia than it did during the Soviet Union.

Protestors came out across Russia after the Ukraine invasion.