The podcast and stream versions of the show include a story here that is not included in broadcast. It catches us up with an Iraqi translator named Basim, who fled the country to Norway after his life was threatened because he aided the American forces.

At Sullivan High School in Chicago, being able to communicate is key. (5 minutes)

Leo Hornak's story about Abdi continues. Abdi encounters one obstacle after another on the streets of Nairobi.

Ira talks to cyber cafe workers around the world about something that lots of Americans have never heard of, but that people in other countries know all about: a lottery run by the U.S. government where the prize is a visa to come to America. Each year people flock to cyber cafes to enter it, hoping for a lucky break that will change their life.

There is one line in the executive order that justifies its existence. It’s the second sentence in section 1.

Leo Hornak's story about Abdi continues. Abdi encounters one obstacle after another on the streets of Nairobi.

Nancy returns with a story that explains the origins of the special visa program for interpreters. A decade ago, a young guy named Kirk Johnson inadvertently became the point person for American policy about the Iraqis and Afghans endangered by their work for us.

Yousef does not even want to think about leaving Gaza. (18 minutes)

Brian Reed continues his story about the town of Homer, Alaska. He talked to all sorts of people involved in the debate over whether the town should welcome immigrants.

What if a new Palestinian leader came on the scene who was neither part of the corrupt autocracy of the Palestinian Authority, nor part of fundamentalist, suicide-bombing Hamas? Nancy Updike follows around possible future Palestinian political candidate Mustafa Barghouti, a doctor who's well known for setting up clinics.

When Anh Tuan Hoang was 12 and living in Vietnam back in 1980, his cousin was scheming up a way to escape the country by boat. Anh Tuan was invited too.

Late at night on the evening Russia invaded Ukraine, Ira talks to two people who escaped to Lviv, near the Polish border: a woman we call Natalie, and the Ukraine Correspondent for The Economist, Richard Ensor. Natalie’s harrowing story about escaping Kyiv is not the sort of war story that makes you think, "I can't imagine what it'd be like to go through that.” In fact it’s just the opposite.

Russian forces have besieged the town of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. Shelling is constant.

Ira talks with reporter My Thuan Tran of The Los Angeles Times about how San Jose City Councilwoman Madison Nguyen went from being the "golden child" of the Vietnamese community to someone who faced weekly protests and a hunger striker. Turns out red-baiting is alive and well in the Vietnamese-American community.

Host Ira Glass talks with producer Alex Blumberg about going on a date with a woman from Russia.

Ira talks with a very skeptical national security expert about whether this order actually secures the nation.

Seattle writer and syndicated sex columnist Dan Savage, on how there's a stigma against sissies even among gay men. Gay personals ads are filled with men who want "straight acting/straight appearing" partners.

After hearing about the heist, Kirk Wallace Johnson gets sucked into the feather underground. He ends up discovering things that the people in charge of the theft investigation didn’t.

In 1946, a man named David Boder started to investigate the Holocaust before it was known as the Holocaust. He dragged a primitive recording device around Europe and gathered the first recorded testimonials of concentration camp survivors.

Ira talks to our Senior Producer Brian Reed about a fight that’s been brewing in the remote town of Homer, Alaska over a resolution that states that Homer welcomes immigrants. Which is odd.

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.

Host Ira Glass talks with producer Alex Blumberg and his parents about a bad dog they once had, and how nothing—not getting hit by cars, attacked by bigger dogs, or being shipped off to live on a farm—could stop this dog from coming home. "The Cat Came Back" is sung by Nedelle Torrisi.

Last year, a woman named Karen Davis started a national letter writing campaign to try to get This American Life to stop the very program we are broadcasting today—the annual Poultry Slam.

Saddam Sayyaleh’s job right now is trying to get trucks filled with aid into Gaza and he knows it’s nowhere close to what’s actually needed.