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.

Planet Money reporter Chana Joffe-Walt asks a simple question: Who was the federal regulator who was supposed to be regulating AIG? The answer turns out to be far from simple.

While McCain gathers stray Democrats, Obama is trying to find new ones—in the reddest part of the state. To do that, his campaign has launched enormous registration drives, especially among college students.

This American Life regular contributor Davy Rothbart talks about the time a friend asked him to make a decision for her that she really had to make for herself: Whether she should have an abortion. Davy is the founder and publisher of Found Magazine and author of a book of short stories, The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas.

When David Wilcox was eighteen, he set about looking for an apartment in Houston. He had no credit and very little money, but he was determined to move away from home.

As a half-dozen families—including a pregnant woman having contractions and another with a four-week-old baby—are driven around Houston looking for housing, they confront potential neighbors who they believe don't want them...and neighbors they themselves don't want. This American Life producer Lisa Pollak reports.

A story by regular contributor David Sedaris involving his sister Lisa, a secret, and her very understanding parrot. David read this story live, and it's on his CD Live at Carnegie Hall. The story is also published in his book Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim.

Ira spends hours talking to James Hackett, known to his friends, and by the end of the story, to Ira, as Gig. He's a doctor in Cincinnati and a lifelong Republican.

Producer Sarah Koenig talks to the people behind survey results—whose answers determine so much of political news.

Very few Palestinians speak Hebrew, and very few Israelis speak Arabic, even though most Palestinians and Israelis live a short drive from one another. Nancy Updike has this story about Nasser Laham, a Palestinian TV journalist in Bethlehem who has a nightly show where he translates Israeli broadcasts into Arabic.

Susan Drury tells the story of what happens when one of the most respected men in town gets accused of sexual harassment by one of the most trusted women in town. For a lot of the townspeople it was a difficult decision, but they chose to believe him over her.

The story of two amateurs meeting the pros. One is a teenager in New Jersey; the other, our reporter.

You can't do a radio show about worshiping false gods without a story about money...or real estate...or hipness. Fortunately for us, Iggy Scam supplies a story that's about all three.

Producer Alex Blumberg conducts an investigation, perhaps the first ever, into this American subspecies: People who compulsively imitate their mother's voices in everyday conversation, well into adulthood.

A truly remarkable children's book just came back in print: The Lonely Doll, by Dare Wright. Jean Nathan tells the story of the book and its author, and how the author's life came to resemble something from her book.

Chicago performance artist John Conners reads from a 1942 book called How To Improve Your Personality, from a chapter instructing men on how to avoid being sissies.

The latest installment of Michael Lewis's campaign diaries.

Anita was separated from her son at the border a month ago. Jeremy Raff and Nadia Reiman follow her as she tries to get him back.

A whole country gets obsessed with rescuing a missing girl. Aviva DeKornfeld tells what happens.

Producers Marlon Bishop and Nadia Reiman go inside a heated steel pan competition and meet a mother and daughter who could be competing together for the last time.

Reporter Johnny Kauffman embeds with the election staff in Georgia’s most populated county to find out if the staff—who had a horrible go of it during the primary election—can possibly do better this time.

Scott, who had worked as a guard at Guantanamo Bay, sees that the detainee he had been in charge of all those years ago, Mohamedou Ould Slahi, had finally been released. The two of them talk.

Valerie Kipnis tells the story of 12-year-old Ilya, a Ukrainian refugee eager to figure out whether his hometown can still feel like home. He and his family return to Mariupol, a city badly damaged in the war, and now under Russian control.