We asked listeners to send us their best coincidence stories, and we got more than 1,300 submissions! There were so many good ones that 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.

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(00:00:00) Prologue: Hannah Jacoby tells the story of when she and her best friend Lindsey bonded over those toy soldiers with the parachutes, called (really) Poopatroopers — and how the little jumpers perfectly bookended their high-school years. And guest host Sarah Koenig explains the very interesting trends we discovered in our listeners' coincidences. (9 minutes)

(00:09:23) Act One: A surprising number of coincidences involve grandmothers. One grandma has so many coincidences happen to her that it drives her granddaughter, 16-year-old Juliana Bontrager, to try to beat her at her own coincidence game. We also hear from Blake Oliver about a very strange appearance his grandma once made. (9 minutes)

(00:18:27) Act Two: When it comes to love, coincidences tend to loom extra-large. Stephen Lee tells about the time his parents first met his fiance’s parents, and his future mother-in-law dropped a coincidence bomb. And we hear how a dollar bill ended up clinching a marriage, after floating around Chicago for years. (10 minutes)

(00:28:15) Act Three: Ryan Rozar told us about a confounding coincidence that was visited on him in college. We didn’t think it was a coincidence at all, so we set out to prove him wrong. (8 minutes)

(00:37:31) Act Four: More stories of dazzling coincidences: an old boyfriend is conjured in Morocco, a jazz singer seems to rise from the dead, and three boys believe they’ve seen a corpse. Plus stories of errant fathers, lost and found. (13 minutes)

(00:49:47) Act Five: Kerry Weeks tells about the time he lost a pocketknife and turned to the galaxy for help. (7 minutes)

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Sayre Quevedo’s invented a way to do a podcast that feels completely new. He’s been recording nearly all his conversations for years, and the result is something that captures a person’s life in a raw and complicated way that’s rarely heard. His new show Reaching Out also documents his mutually judge-y relationship with his twin brother as they set out to find their long-lost birth father.

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(00:00:00) Prologue: Ira Glass introduces Reaching Out, a podcast that feels like it invented something completely new — an ambitious way of capturing a life in a way we'd never heard before. (1 minute)

(00:02:39) Part One: Sayre Quevedo and his brother start the search for their birth father, and they discover that this whole time he’s been a few minutes away from where Sayre lives. (20 minutes)

(00:21:57) Part Two: The twins try reaching out in a variety of ways before taking more direct action. Sayre tries to continue life as normal. (12 minutes)

(00:34:00) Part Three: Sayre and Connor go in person to face their dad. (24 minutes)

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We discover what we believe might be the original recipe for Coca-Cola…and share it with you! When this episode first aired in 2011, it made international headlines. This, and another story about telling copies from originals.

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(00:00:00) Act One: The formula for Coca-Cola is one of the most jealously guarded trade secrets in the world. So we were surprised to find a 1979 newspaper article that appeared to show Coke's original recipe. We spoke with historian Mark Pendergrast, author of For God, Country and Coca-Cola, and were even more surprised to find reasons to believe the recipe is real. (25 minutes)

(00:26:26) Act Two: Jake Halpern tells this story about document expert John Reznikoff, who came into possession of some materials which—if authentic—would change history. Then things got complicated. (32 minutes)

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