Zoe Chace goes to a conference hosted by Turning Point USA, where college students get trained to fight political battles.

Host Ira Glass goes to Tijuana, Mexico where people trying to come to the U.S. asking for asylum have devised a new way to keep track of their place in line.  (11 minutes)Cindy Carcamo first wrote about this story for the Los Angeles Times.

Producer Ben Calhoun gets on the road with presidential hopeful Andrew Yang as he bestows free money on an Iowa family to make a point.

Ira plays excerpts from a 1966 episode of Studs Terkel's WFMT radio show, with guest Mike Royko talking about a scandal.

Producer Zoe Chace gets into the room that Ira has been wondering about. Specifically, the headquarters of fast food chain Hardee's.

Cyclist Mike Friedman said something to cyclist Ian Dille in the middle of a race that ate at both of them for years. Jared Marcelle tells the story.

Two women attempt very different transformations. One wants to become a mother.

We turn now to one of the loneliest experiences a person can have: marriage. Ira listens to two people trying to break through what’s going wrong in their marriage, an excerpt from a new podcast in which real couples have a real therapy session with a real therapist, Esther Perel.

Radio producer Scott Carrier quit his job at a low moment in his life. His wife left him and took the kids.

Reporter Ben Calhoun tells the story of Terrance Green, a 16-year-old who was killed three years ago but is still an iconic presence at Harper.

For generations, the gender of babies born into one family have all beendetermined in advance. The pregnant mothers receive a package in the mail,and if a little pink dress is inside, it's a girl.

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.

Act two showed us a moment before infidelity occurs. In this act, Dani Shapiro has a story about the confusing mess things can be during an affair.

Are doctors to blame for the rising costs? NPR Science Correspondent Alix Spiegel reports on the shocking results of studies about varied health care spending. Hear more health care stories this week from Alix at npr.org.

When John came back from fighting in Iraq, he refused to leave his house. He was paranoid.

Every winter, some of the world's best puzzle solvers gather in Boston for the MIT mystery hunt, a competition in which teams of puzzle enthusiasts spend between 24 and 72 straight hours trying to solve what just may be the hardest recreational puzzles in the world. This American Life producer Lisa Pollak hung out with one team (named Dr. Awkward...a palindrome) as they worked towards the ultimate answer, the location of a coin, buried somewhere on the MIT campus. Check out the puzzles from that year's hunt.

Beau O'Reilly gets a chance to settle a 17-year-old score with the help of the Chicago police.

Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall were a comedy duo back in the mid-1960s, playing clubs around Los Angeles, when their agent called to tell them he'd landed them the gig of a lifetime: They were going to be on The Ed Sullivan Show. The only problem was that their performance was a total fiasco, for a bunch of reasons, including one they never saw coming.

Until recently, most insurance companies didn't want doctors to apologize to patients they'd harmed, for fear it could be used against them in lawsuits. Now, though, there's a new movement encouraging doctors to 'fess up and say sorry.

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

Jonathan Goldstein with a story of the kind of preferential treatment we all dream of, where waiters routinely bring us extra appetizers on the house, delivery men throw a little something special into our take-out orders, and deli owners regularly comp us free pickles and chips. He talks with his friend Howard, who lives this dream, about all the work that went into making it a reality.

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

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