This American Life (Unofficial)

m Including one story about nine public officials whose constituents are trying to throw them out of office, and another story about a man's very physical battle with himself.

Yes yes yes you've heard it all before, when it comes to stories of fathers and their children. There's the story of the kid who idolizes his dad, but then learns something and becomes disappointed. Or the opposite story, where the kid gives up on his dad when he's still young, and then much later comes to have a grudging respect. This week for fathers day: surprising stories of fathers trying to...

Stories about standing up to the man—or, really, the men. Nurses at a small Texas hospital report a well-connected doctor for dangerous medical practices, and find themselves under arrest. Plus...how political operators in Chicago get to be judges.

We heard about a test that could determine if someone was a psychopath. So, naturally, our staff decided to take it.

It seems like every politician has a plan for putting people back to work. But we and the Planet Money team couldn’t help but wonder…how do you create a job? Can politicians truly create many jobs? Is it possible the whole thing is just well-intentioned hot air?

This week we're trying something we've never tried before: An hour of stories about...this week. We take a crack at major news events, like what's happening in Egypt; and at the most minor, like an 8-year-old who's finally taking the training wheels off her bike. The stories are united by one thing: They all happened in the seven days prior to broadcast.

Stories where the fine print changes everything, whether you read it or not.

When is it time to walk away, and when is it time to run? This week we have the story of an entire country deciding whether to give up on just one of its citizens, when to hold 'em in order to win nearly a million dollars in poker, and a new story from Dave Dickerson.

When things are awkward or uncomfortable or distressing, a lot of times it's easier to not think about it. This week we have stories of people pretending that everything is okay and ignoring the awful stuff that's staring them straight in the face. Including a story of deceit and intrigue involving commemorative spoons from the Kennedy Center.

A drug court program that we believe is run differently from every other drug court in the country, doing some things that are contrary to the very philosophy of drug court. The result? People with offenses that would get minimal or no sentences elsewhere sometimes end up in the system five to ten years.

Stories of people who've grown so accustomed to wartime that the lives they've left behind no longer make sense. Including a US battalion going home on leave after 15 months of deployment, and an Iraqi translator's story of life after the gig is up.

Stories about the perils of giving and receiving gifts: Ones that go over spectacularly well in spite of being in poor taste, and ones that flop even with the best intentions. Including what happens when—surprise!—your whole past gets laid out for a live TV audience.

The formula for Coca-Cola is one of the most jealously guarded trade secrets in the world. Locked in a vault in Atlanta. Supposedly unreplicable. But we think we may have found the original recipe. And to see if the formula actually might be Coke, we made a batch. Or, anyway, we asked the folks at Jones Soda and Sovereign Flavors to whip up some up, to see if it tastes like Coke.

This week we bring you backstage with comedy writers at The Onion. They start with over 600 potential headlines for their fake-news newspaper each week, and over the course of two days, in the very tough room that is their editorial conference room, they select 16 to go in the paper. Plus other people speaking their minds in very tough rooms.

This week we have stories where people's reactions move very slowly, including the story of a wedding 17 years in the making, and what it's like when you have a terminal illness that's supposed to kill you in a year or two, and it decides to take its time. Note: The story in Act One isn’t suitable for children, and we’d like to note a trigger warning to survivors of abuse.

What if, say, the U.S.-led invasion of Grenada in 1983 had been decided, not by Ronald Reagan, but by a bunch of middle-schoolers? And what if every rule at your high school had been determined, not by teachers and administrators, but entirely by teenagers? This week, stories about whether, when it comes to governing, kids do any better than grown-ups.

Five reporters stumbled on what seems like a basic question: What is money? The unsettling answer they found: Money is fiction. Photo: Stone money on the island of Yap.

The holidays are stressful so we booked a seasonal pick-me-up: an hour of comedy. Including comedians Wyatt Cenac, Mike Birbiglia, Julian McCullough, Jenny Slate, Gabe Liedman and Edith Zimmerman. Musical guests: Dave Hill and Doug Gillard.

Is it stubbornness? Tenacity? Survival of the fittest? This week, stories about people who feel compelled to keep going, especially when everyone else has given up.

It’s amazing just how much drama can take place in the mini-universe of a neighborhood. This week we bring you stories of neighbors watching out for each other, for better and worse, including a story from CBC's WireTap.

In Schenectady, New York, a school maintenance man named Steve Raucci works his way up the ranks for 30 years, until finally he's in charge of the maintenance department. That's when he starts messing with his employees. Teasing them at meetings. Punishing them with crummy work assignments. Or worse things, like secretly slashing their tires in the middle of the night. Ten years after his arrest,...

In January 2010, reporters from Planet Money bought a toxic asset—you know, the things that blew up wall street banks, sank the economy and brought the global financial system to a halt—one of those. And "Toxie" turned out to be an encyclopedia of the financial crisis.

A show for this year's midterm elections. Two best friends in Michigan, both political novices, get tired of yelling at their TVs and take matters into their own hands. They form a Tea Party chapter to effect political change. But when push comes to shove and they have to choose a candidate, their ideologies, their principles and their friendship explode.

Operation Iraqi Freedom is over. And the next chapter of Iraq is being written now. But what actually happened there the last seven years? Producer Nancy Updike and reporter Larry Kaplow spent a month in Iraq talking to Iraqis and Americans about the war that tore the country apart, and what's happening as we try to put it back together.

Crybabies are annoying. They whine, they complain, sometimes they ruin it for the rest of us. But being a crybaby can be a really effective tactic. We have stories of crybabies in sports, in politics, on Wall Street, on the streets of California, including a new story by David Sedaris.