Producer Nancy Updike shares a pattern that she's noticed recently: eleven steps that Middle Eastern dictators have been taking on the path to losing power.

The story of a clandestine radio station the CIA set up back in the good old, bad old days of the 1950s, to overthrow Guatemala. The coup succeeded because of the immense power of radio.

In Tehran in 2004, Omid Memarian confessed to doing things he'd never done, meeting people he'd never met, following plots he'd never heard of. Why he did that, and why a lot of other people have confessed to the same things, is all in the fine print. This American Life producer Nancy Updike tells the story.

In Iraq, everyone from the militant group known as ISIS to the government security forces and shiite militias have been putting on such a deliberate show. Each faction has its own videos, parades, flags, propaganda and counter-propaganda.

The newspaper Military Times did a survey of 2000 active duty servicemen and women, asking them about the new president. Presented with the statement, "As president, Barack Obama will have my best interests at heart," 36 percent agreed...43 percent disagreed.

This American Life producer Nancy Updike tells the story of Conrad Crane, the head of the U.S. Army Military History Institute.

After the recession hit, Colorado Springs was in rough shape. City services were being cut left and right.

Unlike Reykjavik, some cities don't coddle citizens in their idiosyncratic beliefs about nature. We hear New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani react (with vehemence) to a man who believes New Yorkers should have the right to keep ferrets in their homes.

Two stories about daily life in Cicero. First the tale of Dave Boyle, who stumbled into Cicero politics accidentally in the 1980s, suffered the bruises, and left town.

In the summer of 2006, an FBI official visited a mosque in Orange County, California. His intention was to reassure the community that they weren't being spied on.

The 22-year-old woman from the beginning of the show catches up with producer Diane Wu. Things are different.

A few years back Alex Kotlowitz wrote a book called There Are No Children Here, about two boys growing up in Chicago's Henry Horner public housing projects. Those projects were across the street from the site of the 1996 Democratic Convention in Chicago, and when the convention came to town, money poured in for a makeover.

A protestor who thinks the Hong Kong police are terrible has a chat with his dad — a police officer.  Alan Yu reports. (12 minutes)

A Walter Mondale-voting, gay-rights-supporting unrepentant liberal signs up as a Republican party member—and ends up a party functionary—a delegate to the state Republican convention...where he wreaks havoc. Dan Savage tells the story.

A bunch of 22-year-olds from Hong Kong explain why they are cursed and what that means for their and Hong Kong’s future. (17 minutes)

We hear the first part of our story about Archer Daniels Midland and FBI informant Mark Whitacre. In this half, Whitacre inadvertently ends up a cooperating witness—and turns himself into one of the best cooperating witnesses in the history of U.S. law enforcement, gathering evidence with an adeptness few have matched.

Los Angeles Times reporter Molly O’Toole talks to U.S. asylum officers—the people who end up sending migrants back to Mexico. And they don’t feel good about it.

In the summer of 2006, an FBI official visited a mosque in Orange County, California. His intention was to reassure the community that they weren’t being spied on.

Despite the town's resistance, Hispanics now make up three quarters of the population. And yet the incumbent Town President, Betty Loren-Maltese, seems likely to win the next election.

A 22-year-old woman has been going to protest in Hong Kong for more than four months. She’s got packing her bag for a protest down to a science.

Producer Alex Blumberg tells the story of Jeff Smith, a former Missouri State Senator who spent last year in federal prison. The story of how Jeff ended up there includes large sins, but begins with a relatively small one.

Al Jurczynski is the mayor of Schenectady, New York. For the past year, he's embarked on a strange recruitment campaign, to convince Guyanese immigrants living in Queens, New York, to move upstate to Schenectady.