Mike Daisey performs an excerpt that was adapted for radio from his one-man show "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs." A lifelong Apple superfan, Daisey sees some photos online from the inside of a factory that makes iPhones, starts to wonder about the people working there, and flies to China to meet them. His show restarts a run at New York's Public Theater later this month.

Lisa Pollak goes to the Enchanted Snowfall at La Encantada Mall, where the snow is "98 percent magic; 2 percent soap." (4 minutes)

Host Ira Glass talks about his experiences reporting on education and theunending question of how we can make schools better. He discusses theChicago Teachers strike and an essay by writer Alex Kotlowitz that talksabout how the strike raises questions about the severity of this challenge.

What if someone mistakes you for someone else, and you decide to just go with it? Actor John Conlee reads this story from Etgar Keret's book Suddenly a Knock on the Door. In the podcast version, Etgar returns to explain the real-life experience that inspired him to write the story.

2008 was a hard year for Louis Ortiz. He had lost his job and was playing in pool tournaments in The Bronx to scratch together some money.

Host Ira Glass speaks with an Apple device about its origin.

Host Ira Glass speaks with various people who regularly eat foods that give them severe allergic reactions, stomach cramping and trips to the hospital.

Ben Loory wrote and tells this story, which begins with a duck falling in love with a rock.

This American Life contributor Hyder Akbar heads into Kunar Province in Eastern Afghanistan to report back on life there this week. Things look good until he gets ambushed, shot at and his car catches on fire on his way back home.

Kurt Braunohler and his girlfriend had been together for thirteen years, and they were only 30. They wondered why they had never considered marriage, and realized that they needed to sleep with other people before they tied the knot.

Producer Alex Blumberg tells the story of how Oklahoma, against huge odds, came to have the first and best publicly-funded pre-school system in the country, and how one businessman joined the fight because a cardboard box full of evidence convinced him that pre-school was the smartest business decision the state could make.

There are about seventy thousand Americans living in mainland China today, according to the Chinese and US governments. A lot of the Americans in China only stay for a few years, but then there are others — American ex-pats who’ve lived in China for a decade or more with no foreseeable plans to come home.

A teenager runs away from home to move in with someone he's never met, his idol, the person he respects most of all — a fantasy writer named Piers Anthony. Logan Hill reports.

A boy rides shotgun in a memorable car ride with his mother, and in the process learns how his father earns money for their family. This story appears in Domingo Martinez’s memoir, The Boy Kings of Texas, which was a finalist for the National Book Award.

A 17-year-old Ethiopian girl who is just learning English goes with her teacher to face her fears head-on: She orders tea in a local coffee shop. A woman in America talks to Ira about her husband, in Syria, who is currently negotiating with kidnappers for the release of two of his employees.

For years, Jorge Salcedo was chief of security for the Cali drug cartel in Colombia. He was in charge of protecting some of the most powerful criminals in the world...until he decided to take them down.

Lying is a sin. But what about the lies that we all collectively believe because they give us hope? Jonathan Goldstein tells this story about confronting the truth.

Ira speaks with a reality TV producer named Bill Langworthy, who has noticed that people do things in front of the camera that they would never, ever do in their actual lives.

Tim Kreider almost died after he was stabbed in the throat. But that wasn't nearly as interesting as the year that followed.

When the Euro arrived in 2002, the BBC called it "the most ambitiousfinancial and political change since money began." Here in the US we don'tthink of it as that revolutionary, but in Europe it truly changed howmillions of people lived. Adam Davidson and Chana Joffe-Walt report.

Ira talks to comedian Tig Notaro, who recently had a bunch of horrible things happen to her all in the course of 4 months.

Ira talks with Paul Tough, author of the book How Children Succeed, about the traditional ways we measure ability and intelligence in American schools. They talk about the focus on cognitive abilities and conventional "book smarts." They discuss the current emphasis on these kinds of skills in American education, and the emphasis on standardized testing, and then turn our attention to a growing body of research that suggests we may be on the verge of a new approach to some of the biggest challenges facing American schools today.