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.

Comedian Danny Lobell tells this story about the unintended consequences of bringing new residents to his Brooklyn neighborhood. Namely, a couple of chickens.

A man discovers that his wife is cheating on him, and turns for advice to someone he's sure will have his back: his lawyer in the separation proceedings. Unfortunately for him, this is the worst person he could be turning to for advice...because his wife is cheating with the lawyer.

For a year, Morgan Block saw her pilates instructor, Mary Archbold, twice aweek. She watched closely as Mary demonstrated moves and corrected poses.

Producer Sarah Koenig reports on a company called Journatic, that is producing local journalism in a brand new way.

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

Ten years ago, Congress voted to reform campaign finance, after Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold took up the cause. Here they reunite on the radio, to reminisce and lament how that reform failed.

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.

We asked listeners to call in with their stories of getting away with it, and got nearly 1000 messages. Here are a handful.

Everything about political fundraising is changing right now, because of the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission.

Chana and Alex tell what happened next, when technocrats in Germany andother solvent European countries tried to fix the crisis by actuallyenforcing the original rules for Euro Zone membership. It turned out thateven determining the real deficit in Greece was no easy task.

Famous people are supposed to be somewhere else, invisible to us. Comedian Tig Notaro tells this story about repeatedly running into Taylor Dayne, who was a pop star in the late 80s and early 90s.

Jack Hitt tells the story of the Christian card counting team featured in the documentary Holy Rollers, and why they see no contradiction in being devout Christians who spend their days in casinos. Jack is the author of the book Bunch of Amateurs.

Our story picks back up with the question of how non-cognitive skills can be taught to older kids who have gone much longer without learning things like self-control, conscientiousness and resilience. Ira returns to the story of Kewauna, the Chicago teenager, who talks about the dramatic ways in which she changed her life.

Camas Davis tells a true story about a rabbit kidnapping that saves some rabbits' lives, kills those same rabbits' babies, and leaves students in a Portland rabbit-butchering class scratching their heads.

For generations, the gender of babies born into one family have all beendetermined in advance. The pregnant mothers receive a package in the mail,and if a little pink dress is inside, it's a girl.

Habiba's story continues. Nearly 16 years after investigators first started looking into the Dos Erres massacre, a prosecutor tracks down Oscar and asks him to take a DNA test to see if he is a survivor.

For a generation of baseball fans, when a pitcher suddenly stops being able to perform, it's known as "Steve Blass Disease" — after an all-star pitcher who inexplicably stopped being able to throw strikes. Ira Glass speaks with Steve Blass and others about this phenomenon.

New Jersey governor Chris Christie has led some of the most sweeping budget cuts in the country. Producer Sarah Koenig reports from Trenton, where one third of the police force has been laid off, leading to dramatically increased crime.

At three high schools in Palm Beach County, Florida, several young police officers were sent undercover to pose as students, tasked with making drug arrests. And this, this is the setting for a love story, reported by Robbie Brown.

What should we make of what Mike Daisey saw in China? Our staff did weeks of fact checking to corroborate Daisey's findings. Ira talks with Ian Spaulding, founder and managing director of INFACT Global Partners, which goes into Chinese factories and helps them meet social responsibility standards set by Western companies (Apple's Supplier Responsibility page is here), and with Nicholas Kristof, columnist for The New York Times who has reported in Asian factories.

A teenage girl gets bitten by a shark, rushed to the doctor's office, stitched up, and told she'll be totally fine. Crisis averted, right? Not so much.

A portrait of what it looks like when politics gets polarized, and how hard it is for people in the middle to hang on. Producer Sarah Koenig explains what happened when a wave of Republican politicians swept to power with a three-to-one majority in 2010.