Host Ira Glass tells the story of writer turned activist Bill McKibben. McKibben is trying to reinvent progressive politics when it come to climate change.

Producer Ben Calhoun tells the story of Josh Inglett. Josh was a college student from Portage, Wisconsin who was appointed to the Board of Regents for the University of Wisconsin system.

Producer Sarah Koenig talks with historian Nancy Tomes about a presidential scandal known as The Petticoat Affair. It involved Andrew Jackson and the honor of a woman who he didn't sleep with.

A young idealist named Octavio Sanchez is chief of staff to the president of Honduras. He gets an idea: What if you could cure all your country's ills by just ... starting over? In one little spot, you could create a whole new, perfect city.

Kirk sleepwalks through an open window and into a completely different life. He explains how he starts compiling a list of Iraqis who’d worked with the U.S. government after the invasion, whose lives were now in danger because of that.

Producer Ben Calhoun tells the story of a former Congressional Representative from South Carolina, Bob Inglis. Inglis is a conservative Republican who once doubted climate science.

In Israel, Sayed Kashua, writes a weekly newspaper column that are these very frank, entertaining conversations about his day-to-day life. A few years ago, he moved his family from East Jerusalem (where most of the Arabs in the city live) to West Jerusalem (where it’s almost all Jews, not Arabs) and that kind of blew people’s minds, his included.

Julia Lurie is an American teaching English at an all-girls high school in Gwangju, a city in South Korea. When she first got there, some things struck her as strange: On every floor of the school there was a full-length mirror, as well as a scale.

Fred Armisen worked up an imitation of Ira and put it into a sketch on Saturday Night Live a couple years ago. But when they rehearsed it with an audience, there was not a roar of recognition; it seemed like Ira might not be famous enough to be mocked on network TV.

Once the Fair Housing Act became law in 1968, there was some question about how to implement it and enforce it. George Romney, the former Republican Governor of Michigan and newly-appointed Secretary of HUD, was a true believer in the need to make the Fair Housing Law a powerful one — a robust attempt to change the course of the nation's racial segregation.

A group of people have a dream club that meets twice a month to talk about their dreams. Sarah and her mom join one of their meetings.

Late in the semester, Principal Sanders takes a look at her budget. It doesn't look good.

There is a Native American tribe in California called the Chukchansi that’s fighting over the most basic thing any group can fight over — who should be a member? David Ferry explains just how bitter their dispute has become.

Kelly McEvers with the story of Zora, a self-made superhero. From the time she was five years old, Zora had recurring dreams in which she was a 6'5" warrior queen, who could fly and shoot lightning from her hands.

While we were putting together this week's show, we heard about a real life avenger with a secret identity in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Writer Yuri Herrera lived on the border for several years and spent a lot of time in Juarez.

Michael Lewis’ story continues, and he figures out why Emir Kamenica insists on remembering, and telling, the story of his life the way he does — even when he finds out that some of the facts may be wrong.

Reporter Nancy Updike talks to a group of New York City residents about their frustrating attempts to rent an apartment. With hidden microphones, we hear landlords and supers tell the apartment hunters that there's nothing available.

Reporter Yowei Shaw tells the story of the first group of 28 captives that Meron spoke to, the obstacles she faced in trying to publicize their plight and her decision to try to raise ransom money to free them.

Producer Nancy Updike goes to the West Bank to investigate why Israeli soldiers routinely wake up Palestinian families in the middle of the night, to take photos of the teen boys in the house.

Amity Bitzel was a teenager when her parents decided to adopt a 27-year-old man. And that wasn't the strange part.

Ben Calhoun tells a story of physical resemblance — not of a person, but of food. A while ago, a farmer walked through a pork processing plant in Oklahoma with a friend who managed it.

Writer Michael Lewis tells the story of a man named Emir Kamenica, whose path to college started with fleeing the war in Bosnia and becoming a refugee in the United States. Then he had a stroke of luck: a student teacher read an essay he’d plagiarized from a book he’d stolen from a library back in Bosnia, and was so impressed that she got him out of a bad high school and into a much better one.

Reporter Michael May tells the story of activists from the National Immigrant Youth Alliance who intentionally got arrested for being undocumented. They believed if they could get inside the Broward Transitional Center in Florida, they could prevent lots of the immigrants there from being deported.