There is a library that's on the border of Canada and the United States — literally on the border, with part of the library in each country. Producer Zoe Chace interviews journalist Yeganeh Torbati about how lately, it's become a critical space for a surprising set of visitors.

Ira talks to producer Sean Cole about a video he found of the rap duo Run the Jewels—giving advice to teenage girls.

Host Ira Glass explains the premise of the show, and we hear what's actually going on inside five of these cars.

This American Life gets a return visit from Evan Harris, the woman who used to believe that quitting was the one thing at the heart of all human existence.

After his mother passes, a man unearths her book collection… and is surprised. (6 1/2 minutes)

Host Ira Glass plays a recording of a rookie, try-hard, 25-year-old radio reporter.

Sometimes we don’t want to say what’s going on because putting it into words would make it real. At other times, words don’t seem to capture the weight of what we want to say.

A story about polygraph operator Doug Williams, created by the podcast Love + Radio, that’ll be part of their upcoming season. Produced by Jacob McClelland, Ana Adlerstein, Steven Jackson and Nick van der Kolk.

A woman befriends her neighbor, only to find herself dragged into a world of make-believe we almost never get to see inside. Producer Jonathan Menjivar tells what happened.

Producer Aviva DeKornfeld was interested in the toll that having a wakeup-moment could have on a family, and she heard about someone who had a moment like that over a decade ago. He tried to pull his family into activism too, and what unfolded was the most extreme example of things going badly in a family that Aviva heard of.

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.

Sean continues his story about Rookie Magazine's Ask A Grown, and goes through some particularly interesting moments of advice from famous people to regular teen girls. Watch more videos from Ask A Grown. (14 1/2 minutes) Ira's Ask A Grown Video

In every house, behind every closed door, a private drama is unfolding. In the Rivera house, the drama comes in the form of a question: should they stay or should they go? This question winds its way around the house until someone finally answers it.

Ira Glass rides around with a man in the man's hometown...a man who doesn't want us to say his name on the radio. Why? Because he's secretly a Democrat, in a small town dominated by Republicans.

Host Ira Glass reads from a letter Benjamin Franklin wrote, and discusses it with Jack Hitt.

When writer Chuck Klosterman got back from a trip to Germany, friends asked him what Germans were like. Did nine days as an American tourist make him qualified to answer? In this excerpt of an essay he wrote for Esquire magazine, Chuck explains why not.

A recording of a very unusual conversation that came about in an unusual way. Filmmaker named Eugene Jarecki made a documentary about the drug war, prisons and the criminal justice system called The House I Live In.He’s been taking it around the country and showing it in prisons, and producer Brian Reed went to one of these screenings where an inmate and a corrections staff member ended up talking face-to-face.

Host Ira Glass talks with Kayla Hernandez, a seventh-grader who likes to reminisce about when she was a child, back in fifth grade. She visits Room 211 in her school, where her fifth grade class met, and looks at her old books, thinks about what happened there.

Host Ira Glass talks to Governor Jay Nixon of Missouri on a press conference he held to announce the creation of just one job.

Carmen Delzell on a deal she made with the devil when she turned 30.

Note: This story only appears in the podcast version of the show.This clip is from what Ira calls “the beachiest show” public radio ever made. It’s a segment from NPR’s 1970’s show, Ocean Hour.

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.

Host Ira Glass describes a recent terrorism case in Newburgh, N.Y., in which four men were arrested after planting bombs in front of a synagogue and Jewish community center. Ira discusses the case with Aziz Huq, assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School and co-author of Unchecked and Unbalanced: Presidential Power in a Time of Terror. Huq says the Newburgh case isn't what it seems, because without the help of a government informant, the four men probably wouldn't have been able to organize an act of terrorism.

Host Ira Glass talks with Jane Espenson—who's written for the TV shows Battlestar Galactica and Gilmore Girls—and with J.J. Abrams—one of the creators of the hit shows Lost, Alias, and Felicity—about how we might be in the midst of another Golden Age of television.