This American Life producer Sarah Koenig visits Pearlington, Mississippi, a town in danger of not starting up again after Hurricane Katrina. It's in Hancock County, the Ground Zero of the hurricane's devastation.

This American Life producer Sarah Koenig checks out competing sales techniques at a Chevy dealership on the south side of Chicago. It turns out the number two salesman thinks he's number one, and the number one salesman...is a grandmother, Yvonne Hawk.

Matthew Chasteen is 18 years old. He's joined the Navy, and he's voting for the first time.

Ira talks with a college freshman in Michigan about her governor's new Cool Cities Initiative. (4 minutes) Then Sarah Koenig reports on how the towns of Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk went in for an unusual makeover to try to save their town fifty years ago.

Producer Sarah Koenig talks to the people behind survey results—whose answers determine so much of political news.

The story of a band of libertarians with a plan to take over a state. They call it the Free State Project and it goes like this: They pick a state with a low population, 20,000 of them move to it, establish a voting majority, and run it according to libertarian principles.

The story of a man who committed a murder when he was a teenager. He got away with it, and didn't tell the police for twenty years.

Host Ira Glass talks with Sarah Koenig, about the first and only time a movie star came over to her family's house when she was a kid, and how it didn't go too well, for the celebrity or for her. The movie star, Robert Redford, ended up stealing all her parents' attention, attention they usually lavished on Sarah, the youngest.

Sarah Koenig tells the story of how her stepsister Rue bought a house and moved in—but the former owner did not move out. And won't move out, until he dies.

Usually it's difficult to get to know the front-runner in a Presidential race. With the most to lose, front-runners are the least spontaneous candidates.