Kim Jong-Il loved movies – but hated all the movies made in North Korea. So he kidnapped a famous South Korean director and his ex-wife, a South Korean film star, locked them up in a villa in North Korea, and forced them to make movies for him.

Evan Osnos, a staff writer for the New Yorker who for years reported on China, tells producer Nancy Updike about an incredibly shrewd and successful propaganda campaign that hinged on two words. Evan's book about China, Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, won the national book award in 2014.

Ira talks to producer Nancy Updike and reporter Dan Ephron, about their interview with the accomplice, Hagai Amir, who showed them the house where he and his brother plotted the murder and the shed where he machined special bullets.

Harmon Leon is a writer and comedian whose cocktail party story about “the-weirdest-gig-I-ever-did” is more weird—by a lot—than anyone else’s we’ve heard. He answered an ad several years ago that called for a hilarious sidekick to a celebrity on a hidden camera show.

Updike and Ephron reconstruct the night of the murder, with Ephron describing what he recalls (he reported from Israel at the time and covered the rally where Rabin was assassinated). A police investigator talks about interrogating Amir in the hours after the assassination.

Julia Lillis talks to Ira about the huge, romantic move she made after a break up, and how it was both crazy and worth doing.

Michael Ventura, who grew up Sicilian in New York, says that as a kid he thought Sinatra was in his family. His book The Death of Frank Sinatra is not really about Sinatra.

Iggy Pop picks up the story of Burroughs by explaining "Cut Up" — Burroughs habit of randomly jumbling, repeating and re-assembling words and phrases in his writing. David Bowie and others picked it up.

Several people who just woke up on red-eye flights talk about their dreams.

Chana Joffe-Walt talks to Kiana, who went to a school that was overwhelmingly black and Latino, but when some white students showed up one day on an exchange program, she went up to them eagerly. And since then, has embarked on a one-woman school integration program.

Ephron takes the shirt Rabin was wearing on the night of the assassination from Israel to the U.S. to have it examined by a gunshot expert. A right-wing activist describes what the assassination meant to her and her settler movement -- a political victory.

Comedian Elsa Waithe tells about going to Time’s Square to take part in the Black Lives Matter protests, and winding up with a huge crush on her arresting officer.

Lots of people in the lower 9th ward believe that the levees were exploded by the US government, and that’s why their neighborhood ended up under water. This makes a lot of sense when you learn about what happened in that same place in 1927.

Why did it take so many years for GM to begin implementing the lessons of NUMMI across the company? NPR Automotive Correspondent Frank Langfitt continues his story.

In order to maintain their status as the friendliest, calmest people on the plane, flight attendants bicker mercilessly behind our backs. Then they cuddle up and sleep right next to each other in the same bed.

Comedian Tig Notaro tells the story about the time she played a string of dates night after night after night in Las Vegas – and bombed every single time. Getting up on stage and pretending like everything was going great was not easy.

Growing up, producer Stephanie Foo was the favorite child of her family in Malaysia. Particularly of the matriarch of the family who everyone called "Auntie." But as an adult, Stephanie found out the complicated truth about why she was the family favorite.

Ira speaks with New York Times Magazine Reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones about her years reporting on education and the various kinds of school reforms administrators have tried to close the achievementgap that never seem to work. Nikole says there's one reform that people have pretty much given upon, despite a lot of evidence that it works – school integration.

Zalena (pictured, right) lived in paradise. She grew up in American Samoa, hanging out on the beach, doing normal teenage things with her friends—until senior year, when her dad decided he was going to move the family to the exact opposite of everything she’d known—a tiny, isolated town in Alaska.

Some of the best improv actors in the country join us for a special Christmas themed performance recorded live at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn. Scott Adsit, Mike Birbiglia, Aidy Bryant, Chris Gethard, Tami Sagher, and Sasheer Zamata dream up a magical world on stage that’s only possible at Christmas.

The kids who traveled three miles up the road are in their mid-20s now. We hear how what they saw affected them for years, including at college.

Recently, This American Life has been getting a lot of hate mail about the young women on our staff — listeners complain about their "vocal fry." Ira investigates the phenomenon.