This American Life contributor David Rakoff, who swore off TV in college, returns to it in dramatic fashion: He attempts to watch the same amount of television as the average American—29 hours in one week. David is author, most recently, of the book Don't Get Too Comfortable.

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

In families with sisters, every sister has their role to play. And whatever your role is, it sort of becomes your identity: the sweet one, the diva, the rebel.

Writer Tamsyn Muir spent her childhood craving a world that she could not find on earth. So as an adult, she just created it.

Kenia and her brother Henrri make a trip back to El Salvador, for the first time in 12 years, since they immigrated to the US. For the last few years they've been protected from deportation, but are worried things might change under President Trump. Seth Freed Wessler reports.

Ira explains that when Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton all seemed to be against free trade agreements, he got genuinely confused. Is free trade good or bad? Was NAFTA good or evil? Are we down with TPP? He asked Jacob Goldstein of NPR’s Planet Money podcast to explain, once and for all, the pros and cons of free trade.

Host Ira Glass interviews Lindy West about her experience “coming out” as fat.

Three teenage girls explain why they are constantly telling their friends they are beautiful on Instagram.

Residents of the Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans felt so strongly against hurricane tours after the storm, that legislation made the bus tours illegal there. Ira Glass talks to residents about the problem with bus tours, and takes us on a walking tour of the area, to meet people who are there now, 10 years after the storm.

Producer Ben Calhoun tells Ira about a secret move his friend uses all the time — the "good guy discount" — that gets Ben's friend money off all sorts of items when he's shopping.

Sarah's mom, Mrs. Matthiessen, doubts that the staff of This American Life can find great stories about her conversational no-nos.

Sierra Teller Ornelas tells a story about the time as a 10 year old she went on a very short, but memorable adventure in a car with the coolest girl she knew. Sierra's story was recorded live at the L.A. storytelling series Public School and aired on the CBC radio show WireTap with Jonathan Goldstein.

In the aftermath of the Boston bombings, the Internet has been awash with images from the marathon, all in the name of trying to figure out who’s behind the attack. Ira talks to Reddit moderator Zach Barnett about how hard it is not to project suspicions onto these images.

In preparing for this show, we started reaching out to Americans living in China and asking for their stories. A shocking amount of the expats came back with stories about different times they were on Chinese television.

Ira interviews Ryan Knighton, a blind guy who had a very peculiar experience with a hotel room telephone.

Because the line between a mortal and venial sin can be hazy, sometimes the only way to tell is to test it. And that's particularly true when you're a kid, trying to figure out if you agree with where your parents draw that line.

We realized that there are already reporters on the ground, embedded inside middle schools: The kids who report the daily announcements, sometimes on video with full newscast sets. Producer Jonathan Menjivar wondered what would happen if instead of announcing sports scores and the daily cafeteria menu, the kids reported what's really on their minds.

The formula for Coca-Cola is one of the most jealously guarded trade secrets in the world. So we were surprised to come across a 1979 newspaper article with what looked like the original recipe for Coke.

Though the name of the Federal Reserve includes the word "federal," it's not actually part of the government. It's an independent institution tasked with something very simple, but very huge: Creating money out of thin air.

Comedy duo Gabe Liedman and Jenny Slate disagree about the awesomeness of Hanukkah... and about the nature of their relationship. Gabe contributes to videogum.com.

Ira Glass speaks with Paul Davies, chair of the Post-Detection Task Force of SETI. That stands for the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, and Paul’s task is to figure out what to say to space aliens if we find them.

Ira talks with Shalom Auslander, who was raised as an Orthodox Jew and who made a pivotal break with his faith at a Rangers game. Shalom Auslander is the author of a book of short stories, called Beware of God.

We head to deep inside the natural habitat of frenemies: Reality TV. Rich Juzwiak is a full-time blogger for VH1 and his own pop-culture blog which means he's spent a lot of time watching and dissecting reality TV shows.