Holiday Specials
We are thankful for you, our listeners, for making Iowa Public Radio a part of your holiday traditions. Starting with this Thanksgiving and continuing through the New Year, we're airing long-time favorites and new holiday specials across our stations.
Find your local signal, tell your smart speakers to play Iowa Public Radio or download our app to listen to your holiday favorites.
Thanksgiving Specials on IPR News
We’ve got programming to help you prepare a delicious dinner, check a few people off your holiday shopping list or accompany you on your travels.
Turkey Confidential
10 a.m. & 7 p.m., Thanksgiving Day
It’s the must-listen annual episode from The Splendid Table, with Francis Lam and an amazing roster of guests: best-selling cookbook author Melissa Clark, award-winning TV personality and chef Ayesha Nurdjaja, TV personality and author Monti Carlo, and food journalist J. Kenji López-Alt. The group takes calls and comes to the rescue of Thanksgiving cooks, kitchen helpers, and dinner guests during the biggest cooking day of the year
The Enemies of Gratitude
Noon, Thanksgiving Day
Hidden Brain explores one of the mysteries of human behavior — that it’s often easier for us to focus on what’s going wrong than on what’s going right in our lives. Why is that? They explore this question with psychologist Thomas Gilovich, who studies the barriers that prevent us from feeling gratitude, and how we can overcome them.
Why it’s so Hard to Break up with Fast Fashion
10 a.m. & 7 p.m., Black Friday
The consequences of fast fashion are well known: worker exploitation, environmental damage and poor quality items. And yet many of us keep buying it — either unknowingly, in willful ignorance, or because it feels like there is no other option. Fashion industry insider Amanda Lee McCarty joins host Anita Rao to interrogate why fast fashion has such a particular hold on us…and what we can do about it.
The Business and Economics of Food
Noon & 8 p.m., Black Friday
This holiday season, many families are feeling the crunch of high prices, whether it’s baking ingredients, your holiday bird or persistently high gas prices. The team from Marketplace brings you a collection of stories about the business and economics of food. Get tips on substitutions that’ll keep your holiday shopping list affordable. Go bow hunting with one of Marketplace’s hosts (and cook up a mean squirrel stew). Visit a fish market owned and operated by indigenous fishers to learn how business is shifting in response to declining salmon run. And feast at an Afghan restaurant in Houston, where the Afghan community has grown dramatically since the fall of Kabul five years ago. Join in for an hour-long special hosted by Kristin Schwab.
Hannukah Specials on IPR News
Hanukkah Lights 2026
7 p.m., December 4
12 p.m., December 12
For this year’s Hanukkah Lights, actor Josh Stamberg, the son of NPR's beloved Susan Stamberg, shares some of the storytelling with Hanukkah Lights host Murray Horwitz. Together, they present The Devil’s Trick by Isaac Bashevis Singer and a work new to the program: The Little Hanukkah Lamp by I.L. Peretz.