Ira asks Washington-insider Norman Ornstein if we actually need to be paying attention to all of the Fiscal Cliff political news. Or can it wait until next week? Ornstein is the author of the book It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism.

Bill Bradley press secretary Julia Rothwax explains how a political crush works. This is a crush that wants only for a candidate to get elected to office.

Host Ira Glass with Dave Weigel, political reporter for Slate.com, about manufactured outrage in American politics, and how it's an effective way to bring in cash and mobilize your followers, as Christine O'Donnell and former Florida GOP Chairman Jim Greer have demonstrated.

In this act: judge wannabes working with the old boys network.

A campaign diary from writer Michael Lewis from four years ago, about a politician you've heard a lot about: John McCain...and the story of a moment when the opposite of normal politics became normal politics.

Zoe Chace goes to a conference hosted by Turning Point USA, where college students get trained to fight political battles.

Producer Zoe Chace drives around with Washington Post political reporter extraordinaire Dave Weigel. He delights in this special period in the race where it’s easy to trip over people running for president.

Dave Eggers on what happens when politics suddenly becomes your family business. When his brother ran for office, he asked for Dave's help and support.

This American Life senior producer Julie Snyder explains the office politics of street vendors on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Eighth Street in New York City. With her is sociologist Mitch Duneier, who spent years working with the vendors and writing about them for his book Sidewalk.

As a teenager he saw himself as an historical figure, then that ended up becoming true. Producer Zoe Chace tells the story of Newt Gingrich, the man who either reinvented politics or broke it.

Katy Vine reports on yet another promising young person, Tye Thomas, and how he went through the rise and fall of a full political career, in just one year, at the age of 21, in the Texas town of Gun Barrel City.

Radical right wing Mexican-American activist Daniel D.

Two young Michigan GOP vice chairs are totally on board with Kristina Karamo’s take on politics and hate the establishment like her.

The President of the Maryland State Senate, Mike Miller, a veteran political operator, talks about the off-the-cuff remark in 1989 that many people say changed his life forever.

Doug Deason is a political donor trying to make the biggest decision people like him make every four years – which presidential candidate to back. Producer Zoe Chace follows Deason through the unpredictable primaries of the 2016 election.

Political documentaries aren’t for everyone. Especially when they’re over five hours long.

After a 2010 plane crash killed dozens of Polish dignitaries, including the president, some thought that the country would cross the political rift and come together to mourn. Reporter Amy Drozdowska-McGuire tells what happened instead.

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

Ira wonders aloud, when it comes to DACA, with broad support from most Americans, including the majority of Trump voters, leaders of both parties and the president himself: Why is a permanent solution so hard? Why are politics so hard? (2 minutes)

Nadia Reiman talks to Ninotchka and Marco in Florida. The mother and son immigrated from Venezuela, and while they live and work together, they feel very differently about American politics.

Host Ira Glass talks about the way most political apologies go, and chats with a man named Derek Jones about similar sorts of apologies among preteen girls and King David, in the Old Testament.

There's a whole nation where the idea of suckerdom permeates almost every aspect of culture and politics. Adam Davidson reports on the Israeli word "freier," which literally translates as sucker, but means much, much more.

After every school shooting a political debate reemerges about guns. Meanwhile, kids keep going to school.

Dirty political attacks go back to the very beginning of the American Republic. What's different today, says historian Richard Norton Smith, is that television and the other electronic media have made our contact with the candidates so intimate.