Reporter Jasmine Garsd grew up in Argentina watching talk shows, which were kind of extreme even for Latin American television. The women on screen were pumped with silicone and Botox, and sometimes showed up wearing almost nothing.

Shawn Allee tells a story of the oldest kind of million dollar idea, the scam. Or was it an honest venture? Back in the 1980s Michael Larson made the most money ever on the game show Press Your Luck.

What does it mean to talk like a real Southerner—and why a multimillion industry can't seem to figure it out. Southern expatriate Mark Schone dissects Southern accents as they're portrayed in movies and TV shows.

Ira talks to Luke Huisenga, a Marine sniper who became a fan of Gilmore Girls while on deployment in Iraq.

What happens when a chicken crosses the thin yellow line that divides the animals we eat from the animals we keep as pets. Jonathan Gold, food writer for Gourmet magazine, tells how he accidentally came to adopt a chicken, and what happened to his opinion of chickens afterwards.

We head to deep inside the natural habitat of frenemies: Reality TV. Rich Juzwiak is a full-time blogger for VH1 and his own pop-culture blog which means he's spent a lot of time watching and dissecting reality TV shows.

Thanh Tan was a TV reporter in Boise, Idaho, when her boss passed along what seemed like a hot news tip: A sex offender was working with kids at a local ice rink, as a hockey referee. But when she looked into it, she found out the crime was more than a decade old.

Producer Stephanie Foo speaks to Nasubi, a Japanese comedian who, in the 90s, just wanted a little bit of fame. So he was thrilled when he won an opportunity to have his own segment on a Japanese reality TV show.

Dishwasher Pete on Letterman.

This American Life contributor John Hodgman was unexpectedly chosen to be in a series of high-profile Apple Computer commercials (he plays a PC). He tells the story of what happens when celebrity hunts you down and finds you...on your living room couch, pushing 40, and a couple sizes larger than you want to be.

Dan Taberski takes us into the world of the TV shows Cops and Live PD. And talks to people about what it’s like to be caught by the police and caught on camera at the same time.

Roger Dowds won several hundred thousand pounds on the Irish version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, which is why Ronan Kelly, the host an Irish public radio program, first went to interview him. During their talk together, it became clear that Roger was a very unlikely game show champion.

Former Saturday Night Live writer Robert Smigel — who impersonates Dole on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and the deceased Dana Carvey Show — gives step-by-step instructions on how to imitate the Republican nominee.

Ira reports on a week he spent on the set of the TV show M*A*S*H in 1979, supposedly to do a story about the program for National Public Radio. He was 20 years old.

Starlee Kine tells the story of a man more obsessed with reruns than even she is. Director Trent Harris made a movie called The Beaver Trilogy.