The Erie Canal.

Larry and Nancy head to Diyala Province north of Baghdad, and meet with a mayor and a member of the provincial council—like a state legislature—to see why is politics in Iraq utterly stalled.

In the Middle East, hundreds and hundreds of tunnels connect the Gaza strip and Egypt, allowing supplies to bypass the Israeli blockade against Hamas-controlled Gaza. Producer Nancy Updike speaks with Ira about the tunnels, and plays tape from an interview she conducted with a tunnel owner.

In California, Maryland and Oklahoma, the governors can over-rule parole boards' decisions to free prisoners serving life sentences. In all three states this has evolved to the point where very few prisoners get released.

For the last 13 years, the University of Montevallo in Alabama has held an event called "The Life Raft Debate," where several professors take the stage and each tries to convince the students that his or her discipline—chemistry, say, or communications—is the most essential field of study. But in 2007, a professor named Jon Smith decided that the debate itself needed saving.

The worst violence ended two years ago. Iraq is stable.

Producer Sarah Koenig tells the story of Duke Fightmaster, who refused to give up his simple dream: to replace Conan O'Brien.

Four years ago, Matt Frerking started having attacks where he simply couldn't move his body.

In the world of engineers and investors, there's something called the "elevator pitch." It's what you'd say if you ran into a rich investor in an elevator, and had only 60 seconds to sell your product. The concept is so common that MIT actually hosts a contest for the best elevator pitch.

We end our program with an original song by comedian Dave Hill. Dave is backed up on guitar by Doug Gillard of the bands Guided by Voices and Nada Surf.

On October 13, 2002, David MacLean woke up in India with no memory of who he was or how he got there. He had no choice but to let the people who recognized him—and even strangers—fill in his identity.

When Wells Tower started to try to fix up and save his dad's house, he knew it'd be incredibly hard. Lots of people told him not to.

Michael May tells the story of Barry Cooper, a former crooked narcotics cop who has turned his interest elsewhere...to busting crooked narcotics cops. But after Cooper and a rich benefactor team up to set a trap for the police, Barry's plans are put in jeopardy—including his dream of creating a reality show called "Kop Busters." Michael May is the Culture editor at the Texas Observer.

For 17 months, New York police officer Adrian Schoolcraft recorded himself and his fellow officers on the job, including their supervisors ordering them to do all sorts of things that police aren't supposed to do. For example, downgrading real crimes into lesser ones, so they wouldn't show up in the crime statistics and make their precinct look bad.

In California, a kind of crybaby cottage industry has popped up around, of all things, the Americans with Disabilities Act—the federal law that requires all public places to meet a minimum level of accessibility. Some people make a living by suing business owners for not being up to code.

Rich Carlson and Tom Swenor, two best friends in Michigan, got so fed up with the political process in the country, they decided to form their own Tea Party chapter in Petoskey, Michigan. But as election season revved up and push came to shove, Rich and Tom had very different ideas about how to advance a conservative agenda.

Stand-up comedian Julian McCullough tells this story about heading to someone else's home for the holidays. You can watch Julian's Comedy Central Presents special at his website, julianmccullough.com.

Apricot Irving grew up on a missionary compound in Limbe, in the north of Haiti, and visits the missionary hospital there. It's pretty well stocked and staffed but, oddly, kind of a ghost town.

A hedge fund named Magnetar comes up with an elaborate plan to make money. It sponsors the creation of complicated and ultimately toxic financial securities...while at the same time betting against the very securities it helped create. Planet Money's Alex Blumberg teams up with two investigative reporters from ProPublica, Jake Bernstein and Jesse Eisinger, to tell the story.

One day, Joe Lipari had a frustrating encounter with a worker at the Apple Store. And then Joe did what a lot of us would do: He vented.