The rise of NUMMI, or how one of the worst auto plants in America started producing some of its best cars, thanks to lessons learned from the Toyota production system.

Comedy duo Gabe Liedman and Jenny Slate disagree about the awesomeness of Hanukkah... and about the nature of their relationship. Gabe contributes to videogum.com.

For 17 months, New York police officer Adrian Schoolcraft recorded himself and his fellow officers on the job, including their supervisors ordering them to do all sorts of things that police aren't supposed to do. For example, downgrading real crimes into lesser ones, so they wouldn't show up in the crime statistics and make their precinct look bad.

Apricot Irving grew up on a missionary compound in Limbe, in the north of Haiti, and visits the missionary hospital there. It's pretty well stocked and staffed but, oddly, kind of a ghost town.

Foreigners arrive in the United States believing all kinds of misinformation about us...misinformation that turns out to be true. Mary Wiltenburg tells the story.

Ira Glass speaks with JoAnn Chiakulas, the only Juror on the trial of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich who believed he was innocent of trying to sell Barack Obama's senate seat.

The worst violence ended two years ago. Iraq is stable.

Republican Bill Jerke, a very conservative former Colorado State Legislator known as a tax "enemy," has a surprising job this election season. He's going around to lots of different conservative groups and urging voters NOT to vote for three Colorado ballot initiatives that would cut state taxes so severely, they'd essentially strangle state government from here on out.

Host Ira Glass introduces the story of the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., aka NUMMI. In 1984, General Motors and Toyota opened NUMMI as a joint venture.

Stand-up comedian Julian McCullough tells this story about heading to someone else's home for the holidays. You can watch Julian's Comedy Central Presents special at his website, julianmccullough.com.

When Luke Davies was 11 years old in Australia, his family moved from the boring suburbs to an incredibly fun place: a tourist park full of attractions, where his dad had gotten a job. There, he was considered kind of a wimpy kid, until he got his chance to save the day.

Rebecca was 16 years old when her mother Elizabeth died of cancer. But before she died, she wrote letters to Rebecca, to be given to her on her birthday each year for thirteen years.

Fred van Doorninck and George Bass were unlikely candidates for pioneering underwater Byzantine archaeology—Fred hates water, and George found the Byzantine era boring. But that's exactly what they did, when they devoted 50 years to uncovering the mysteries of a shipwreck.

In the world of engineers and investors, there's something called the "elevator pitch." It's what you'd say if you ran into a rich investor in an elevator, and had only 60 seconds to sell your product. The concept is so common that MIT actually hosts a contest for the best elevator pitch.

Patrick Wall was a special kind of monk. He was a fixer.

Adam Davidson and Alex Blumberg from our Planet Money team report on economic forecasts for 2010 and what they can and cannot accurately predict. Planet Money is a co-production of This American Life and NPR News.

Corporate Personhood.

On every British nuclear submarine, there is a safe. Inside that safe is another safe.

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.

Why is it that Barbados and Jamaica faced almost identical financial crises, but now Jamaica is incredibly poor and Barbados is prospering? Alex Blumberg reports on the surprising strategy Barbados used to survive its crisis. Alex first learned about this story from a paper by Peter Blair Henry, the dean of the Stern School of Business at New York University.

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.

Sarah Koenig's story continues. This is the 'fall' half of the rise and fall of Steve Raucci, including secret recordings of the man himself.