When Molly Antopol was in 7th grade she learned what abortion was—and it sounded to her like murder. Her mom, a pro-choice activist made it her mission to change her daughter's mind.

Working in a poultry processing plant is one of the most unpleasant jobs you can get in this country. It's low-paid, dangerous and difficult.

Sara was raised in a fancy suburban neighborhood with strict parents who liked to flaunt their wealth—with his and hers Porsches, for instance. But when Sara was 12, her mother and father sat her down in the den with her siblings, and told them that their father had done a terrible thing, and their lives were about to change forever.

Host Ira Glass introduces a story on the most ambitious and hopeful solution to urban poverty in the country—the Harlem Children's Zone. The project's goal is nothing less than changing the lives of thousands of children in Harlem, starting at birth and continuing until they go to college.

Tim White used to be a gang leader in Chicago, but now he's a "violence interrupter" for a program called CeaseFire. Host Ira Glass talks to Tim about his work, and why he thinks it can keep young gang members from killing each other.

Producer Jane Feltes spends a day with two young Mormons, on mission to possibly the least receptive environment they could find...the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Chaya Lipschutz, an Orthodox Jewish woman from Brooklyn, donated her kidney to a stranger. After that, she decided to spend all her time trying to match up potential donors with kidney patients.

Anthony Pico was a foster kid for most of his life. His mother was a crack addict who abandoned him, and he bounced around from house to house, relative to relative.

Host Ira Glass talks to Tim Jaccard, who used to be a police medic. The calls he hated most were all the same: "Baby not breathing." So in 1998, he helped write the first "safe haven" law, which allows mothers to safely abandon their babies without getting into trouble.

Ira tells the story of two friends of his who were like superheroes. They had this incredible power to save someone.

Todd Bachmann tells about the time he offered to help out a Catholic charity and ended up getting bamboozled by a nun.

Host Ira Glass talks to Stephen Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics, about one of the men in his book, a guy named Stetson Kennedy. In the 1940s, Kennedy, a Southerner, infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan.

This American Life producer Lisa Pollak goes canvassing with her friend Andy in Ohio. He's a first time door-knocker for MoveOn.

The FCC says it just wants a little civility on the nation's airwaves. And by tightening the rules on what swear words are allowed, government officials say they're protecting kids.

The true story of a young activist, Charles Monroe-Kane (now a producer at WPR's To the Best of Our Knowledge), who, in his very first political action, heckled the leader of the free world...and failed horribly...leaving him mulling it over late at night, for years.

We hear the story of someone trying to help all sorts of people who absolutely do not want his help. Nancy Updike reports on Dror Etkes, who has taken it as his personal mission to document the spread of Israeli settlements in the West Bank: Every shack, mobile home, housing cluster, bypass road and town.

Scott Carrier tells the story of how the environmentalist that ranchers hated the most—whom they tried to run out of town and hanged in effigy—came to take the ranchers' side of things. Some funding for this story comes from Hearingvoices.com and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Two women in a small town find themselves on opposite sides of a protest. One is for the war in Iraq, one is against it, but despite this, they cross enemy lines and become friends.

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.

For months Bill and Liz have gone around New York City with a sign that says "Talk To Me." It works. In subways and bars, on the street or in office lobbies, people come up and talk to them about any old thing.

We got a new President, but after the recount mess in Florida in the fall of 2001 and the Supreme Court decision that ended the election, some people were having a hard time moving on. Why? Why couldn't they just let it go? Host Ira Glass talks with people at the inauguration.

What happens when seventh graders become an angry mob? Karen Bernstein reports on her own seventh grade class from small-town Connecticut. In 1973, a teacher turned them into an angry mob, an event they all remember decades later.