A group called NO/AIDS heads into bars to offer free HIV testing for high-risk people. Writer Nathaniel Rich tells the story of one man's test.

Jeanne Darst tells a story about that iconic crime of passion: snooping. Jeanne is the author of the memoir Fiction Ruined My Family.

The story of Craig Monteilh continues: What happens when you turn someone in to the FBI who, it turns out, is working for the FBI? Trevor Aaronson, whom Sam Black interviewed for this story, has a book coming out called The Terror Factory.

Ira talks to John Biewen about how remarkable it is that he could grow up in a town and never learn about the most significant event in its history. This show about Native Americans and settlers was first broadcast on Thanksgiving weekend 2012, on the 150th anniversary of the war.

Lying is a sin. But what about the lies that we all collectively believe because they give us hope? Jonathan Goldstein tells this story about confronting the truth.

Producer Jonathan Menjivar tells the story of John Smid, a gay man who did not want to be gay, and who tried to get other gay people to suppress their urges as well. Then...John changed.

What should we make of what Mike Daisey saw in China? Our staff did weeks of fact checking to corroborate Daisey's findings. Ira talks with Ian Spaulding, founder and managing director of INFACT Global Partners, which goes into Chinese factories and helps them meet social responsibility standards set by Western companies (Apple's Supplier Responsibility page is here), and with Nicholas Kristof, columnist for The New York Times who has reported in Asian factories.

A boy rides shotgun in a memorable car ride with his mother, and in the process learns how his father earns money for their family. This story appears in Domingo Martinez’s memoir, The Boy Kings of Texas, which was a finalist for the National Book Award.

An estate attorney in Rhode Island discovers the investor's Holy Grail: a financial scheme that guarantees only reward and no risk. All upside with no downside.

Chana and Alex tell what happened next, when technocrats in Germany andother solvent European countries tried to fix the crisis by actuallyenforcing the original rules for Euro Zone membership. It turned out thateven determining the real deficit in Greece was no easy task.

Famous people are supposed to be somewhere else, invisible to us. Comedian Tig Notaro tells this story about repeatedly running into Taylor Dayne, who was a pop star in the late 80s and early 90s.

In the summer of 2006, an FBI official visited a mosque in Orange County, California. His intention was to reassure the community that they weren’t being spied on.

There are about seventy thousand Americans living in mainland China today, according to the Chinese and US governments. A lot of the Americans in China only stay for a few years, but then there are others — American ex-pats who’ve lived in China for a decade or more with no foreseeable plans to come home.

Maya Gurantz tells the story of Glenn and Laurie Mutchler, who go further than most parents to create a magical Christmas for their kids, Colin, Erica and Adam. Theirs included a family mythology of Santas that had its own logic, with many Santas and a family elf named Jeko, who were never jolly and often thrillingly scary.

Ira talks with Paul Tough, author of the book How Children Succeed, about the traditional ways we measure ability and intelligence in American schools. They talk about the focus on cognitive abilities and conventional "book smarts." They discuss the current emphasis on these kinds of skills in American education, and the emphasis on standardized testing, and then turn our attention to a growing body of research that suggests we may be on the verge of a new approach to some of the biggest challenges facing American schools today.

Planet Money reporters Chana Joffe-Walt and Zoe Chace tells the story of the far-fetched, 150 year-old dream of a universal European currency.

A man who believes he's turning into a cockroach reaches out to a world famous doctor for advice. Except the doctor will only respond in rhyme.

Linda Lutton and her eleven year old daughter Pirecua explain what happened the year Pirecua begged for a gift that she turned out to be allergic to. Linda is a reporter at our home station, WBEZ Chicago.

It's been a tumultuous week of protests and demonstrations in Egypt. NancyUpdike talks to two Egyptian men whose ideologies are completely opposite,except one thing unites them: Their anger at the United States.

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.

Reporter Josh Bearman tells Ira a story about two coded messages that Galileo sent to fellow scientist Johannes Kepler back in the 17th century. Galileo was trying to tell Kepler about some of the amazing discoveries he made with his new telescope.

Ira tells the story of how Oscar Ramirez, a Guatemalan immigrant living near Boston, got a phone call with some very strange news about his past. A public prosecutor from Guatemala told Oscar that when he was three years old, he may have been abducted from a massacre at a village called Dos Erres.