This American Life contributor Hyder Akbar heads into Kunar Province in Eastern Afghanistan to report back on life there this week. Things look good until he gets ambushed, shot at and his car catches on fire on his way back home.

New Yorker staff writer Kelefa Sanneh tells the story of exorcist Bob Larson’s trip into the world of heavy metal.

Paul Tough’s father was a mild-mannered professor—until he suddenly left the family to pursue a lifelong quest: making contact with extraterrestrial life. For the first time, Paul joins him and asks the questions he’s long kept to himself about his father’s alien pursuits.

Mike Wilson, the editor of the Dallas Morning News, recently got some hate mail from conservative readers. They think that the media—and his paper—are biased.

About fifteen miles from Pearlington, Bay St. Louis and Waveland are other communities struggling to bring themselves back to life.

Wilt Chamberlain - easily one of the best basketball players of all time - was a terrible free throw shooter. Except for one season when he changed technique and scored more free throws in one game than anyone ever has.

For decades, the writer Alex Kotlowitz has been writing about the inner cities and the toll of violence on young people. So when he heard about a program at Drexel University where guys from the inner city get counseling for PTSD, he wondered if the effect of urban violence was comparable to the trauma that a person experiences from war.

Mohammed Aden was just a regular Minnesotan dad who unwittingly became governor of a region in Somalia. As governor, one of his main goals was to eliminate piracy.

Zoe Chace and Ben Terris follow Abbas Alawieh as he fights to broker a deal at the DNC – a way to potentially satisfy the people who voted “Uncommitted” in the primaries as a protest vote against Biden’s handling of the war in Israel and Gaza.