The man who organized the rally in Charlottesville is named Jason Kessler. He says he’s not to blame for the violence that happened there, including the death of a counter protester.

Host Ira Glass explains why some old answering machine messages from a decade ago have such power for him: there's a special power to recordings of phone conversations. The phone is intimate — more intimate than a photograph.

On election night, producer Emmanuel Dzotsi was the last person at our office. Just before midnight, he got on the phone to his mom in Ohio, and recorded their conversation.

After the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, U.S. diplomats had to start working the phones to assemble a coalition of nations to combat this new threat. Some of the calls, you get the feeling, were not the easiest to make.

Modern-day fables of two different kinds of do-gooders during and after the 1994 genocide in the African country of Rwanda. Philip Gourevich, author of the book We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, tells first about international relief workers who served as "caterers" to some of the Hutu powers as they continued their policy of ethnic cleansing after fleeing to refugee camps.

Reporter Jack Hitt explains the alarming difference between theory and practice when it comes to computerized voting machines—specifically, those made by a company called Diebold.

Even people who vehemently disagreed with Heider Garcia wanted him to stay in his job. But then something happened that made staying impossible.

Producer Nancy Updike tells the story of the people of Venezuela trying to prove who won their recent presidential election beyond a shadow of a doubt. (22 minutes)

Hamza and Brian visit Tahir Alam, the alleged mastermind of a plot to ‘Islamize’ Birmingham’s schools.

The secret games delegates play to amuse themselves, differences between Republican and Democratic convention delegates, and more.

Reporter Sam Black visited factory workers in Indiana to see how they were feeling.

Patrick Howell, a gay Republican from Orlando, goes on what might seem like an ill-fated hearts-and-minds mission at the Republican Convention.

Sex advice columnist Dan Savage tells the odd story of how he became a Republican state convention delegate even though he's a Democrat and gay.

Broward County is  one of the bluest counties in Florida, and some of the Democrats who live and vote there are worried their party isn’t doing enough to keep it that way. Lina Misitzis spent some time talking to them about their fears.

Alex Vindman became the face of the first Trump impeachment after he reported to his superiors that Trump had asked the President of Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden, the son of his political opponent. At the time, Vindman believed that his Congressional testimony would not jeopardize him; now, he and his wife Rachel are having second thoughts.

Host Ira Glass plays a voicemail containing something very common but veryrare to hear: an elected official directly asking a lobbyist for money.

The news of the executive order broke while immigrants and refugees were mid-flight. That meant they were stranded in airports around the country.

Senator Jeff Flake tries use his newfound leverage to get a commitment to bring DACA to the Senate floor in exchange for his vote for the Republican tax bill. Things change at the last minute.

Dirty political attacks go back to the very beginning of the American Republic. What's different today, says historian Richard Norton Smith, is that television and the other electronic media have made our contact with the candidates so intimate.

Host Ira Glass zooms in on five surreal minutes of Hungary’s opposition campaign. (5 minutes)

What's French for French Fries? David Sedaris has been following the diplomatic fiascoes of the last few months from Paris, where he lives. Relations between France and the U.S. have been so horrible these days we asked him how it seemed from over there.

On September 29th a medical researcher in Philadelphia fired off a simple, well-meaning tweet, and then barely thought twice about it. Little did she know that by doing that, she was perpetrating covert propaganda on behalf of the U.S. government.

A lawyer tries to help a father separated from his 12-year-old daughter at the border.