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.

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

Producer Emanuele Berry has a day at the mall unlike any other. (7 minutes)

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.

Ira speaks with Professor Glenn Loury. Loury failed to stand up for a light-skinned friend at a black unity rally in the sixties.

Keith Gessen, a young Russian emigre, revisits the heroes of his youth: the brave Soviet dissidents who risked their lives at the height of the Cold War. Many of them resettled into comfortable suburban lives in America.

Marian Fontana's husband was a Brooklyn firefighter who was killed on September 11, 2001. Afterwards, she started an organization, fighting to keep her husband's fire station open, and to help victims' families.

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.

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.

Michael May's story about Brandon Darby continues.

Rebecca Grant introduces us to an abortion pill smuggler, who walks us through her undercover operation to mail pills to people who want medication abortions in places where it's hard to get them.

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.

When Saidu’s friend Marcus-David Peters was killed by police, he wanted to figure out what to do with the weight of that loss. He began following three men who began protesting after the murder of George Floyd. They seemed to know what to do when faced with police violence. Saidu tells the story of their lives after they began protesting with the Warriors in the Garden.

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.

We continue our story about three members of Warriors in the Garden. After a summer of protest, the Warriors have to figure out what to do when their activism draws the attention of the police. (25 minutes)

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.

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.

More stories from Wen Huang that contradict what you think you know about the 1989 student uprising in China.

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.

Jennifer, Ira, and producer Emanuele Berry go to a protest and get tear gassed in front of a Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. (6 minutes)

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.

Brandon Darby was a radical activist and one of the founders of the incredibly effective relief organization Common Ground. Michael May reports on how Darby changed from a revolutionary who wanted the overthrow of the U.S. government into an informant working with the FBI against his former radical allies.

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.

Benjamen Walker of the podcast Theory of Everything tells guest host Sean Cole about an Uber drivers strike he came across in Kenya. The guys who didn’t join the strike and kept driving for Uber made extra money since there were fewer cars on the road.