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

Host Ira Glass, with a recording of a 1962 Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr., appearance at the Villa Venice, a club outside Chicago. What's fascinating about Sinatra is how he is so many different people at once, and they're all on display in this recording: sentimental crooner, cruel woman-baiter, bully, goofball.

Three teenage girls explain why they are constantly telling their friends they are beautiful on Instagram.

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.

Erik Larson has read lots of captain’s logs while researching big historical events. When he found the log of Captain Walther Schwieger, the guy who headed the U-boat that sank the Lusitania, he knew something didn’t sound right.

Comedian W. Kamau Bell has two daughters, and tries to figure out just how much about the violent history of racism and oppression his four-year-old can handle.

Producer Ben Calhoun tells Ira about a secret move his friend uses all the time — the "good guy discount" — that gets Ben's friend money off all sorts of items when he's shopping.

Ira talks with a guy in Chicago named Josh who likes to spend time going bird watching. But one day, Josh was out in a park with his binoculars and he discovered something he definitely did not want to know about.

Some schools make kids take care of eggs in order to teach them about the responsibilities of rearing a child. But at Glen Ridge High, kids are asked to take care of robotic babies. Hilary Frank follows around two teenage “moms" to see how realistic the experience is.

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.

Sara Corbett's father-in-law Dick is 81. And he's become obsessed with a limbo most of us hate – the music he hears whenever he's on hold. (14 minutes)Sara is co-author of the book A House in the Sky.The hold music, Opus No. 1, was composed by Tim Carleton and Darrick Deel.

Michael Ventura, who grew up Sicilian in New York, says that as a kid he thought Sinatra was in his family. His book The Death of Frank Sinatra is not really about Sinatra.

When Adriana Cardona-Maguigad started talking to homeless men in the Chicago neighborhood she works in, she discovered that many of them had the same, very strange backstory. Adriana tellsIra how she stumbled upon this.

Ben tries the good guy discount, to see if he can pull it off, as Ira tags along.

When Miles and Katie are burglarized by a few teenaged criminals, Katie decides to use her rookie sleuthing skills to take them down.

Ira talks to producer Nancy Updike and reporter Dan Ephron, about their interview with the accomplice, Hagai Amir, who showed them the house where he and his brother plotted the murder and the shed where he machined special bullets.

Nikole Hannah-Jones reports on a school district that accidentally stumbled on an integration programin recent years. It's the Normandy School District in Normandy, Missouri.

Producer Zoe Chace tells the story of a community college student named Demetrius who seemed like he was doing exceptionally well in school. But as Zoe followed Demetrius over a semester, she discovered that there were things about his academic past that he had kept a secret.

Producer Stephanie Foo fell hard for a new holiday tradition this year – Turkey Fryer PSAs created by fire departments across the country.

Robyn Semien talks to St. Claude Internet Café owner Kirk Washington about what’s changed the most in his life, post-Katrina.

Zalena (pictured, right) lived in paradise. She grew up in American Samoa, hanging out on the beach, doing normal teenage things with her friends—until senior year, when her dad decided he was going to move the family to the exact opposite of everything she’d known—a tiny, isolated town in Alaska.