This American Life (Unofficial)

Stories about people who have the right to remain silent, but choose not to exercise that right—including police officer Adrian Schoolcraft, who secretly recorded his supervisors telling officers to manipulate crime statistics and make illegal arrests. The Village Voice series that broke Schoolcraft's story, written by Graham Rayman, is here.

In the 1970s a reporter named Charles Salter wrote a column for the Atlanta Journal called "Georgia Rambler." He'd get into his car, head out to some small town, and ask around until he found a story. This week, nine of us go to Georgia to try it out for ourselves, in small towns all over the state.

Back in the 1980s Michael Larson made the most money ever on the game show Press Your Luck. And it was no accident—Larson had a plan to get rich that surprised everyone: The home viewers, the show's producers and mostly Larson himself. This and other stories of million dollar ideas, including some from our listeners.

Stories of first encounters with unknown and distant beings: Girls, foreigners and perhaps even aliens. Including a story by comedian Mike Birbiglia about his first kiss.

Richard Ravitch has helped fix three governmental crises, including when New York City nearly went bankrupt in 1975. What's changed, to make it so much harder for him to solve the state's current financial crisis?

Stories of people held captive — by criminals, by paperwork, and in one man's case, his own body — and the ways they try to cope.

Unprecedented amounts of money have been pledged to Haitian relief in the last few months. American households have given over $1 billion and in March, 120 countries pledged over $9 billion(!) to rebuild. The only problem is that—historically—blanketing a country in aid and money has never really worked so well. Is there a chance this time things could be different?

We bring you stories of bridges from three different countries, including one in China that's famous for its massive size and its high suicide rate. One takes it upon himself to patrol the bridge, looking for jumpers. You can read entries from the watchman's blog here. This and other stories where we stop before getting to the other side.

Can a rat crawl through your plumbing and end up in your toilet? Can your cell phone give you a brain tumor?

For seven months a team of investigative journalists from ProPublica looked into a story for us, the inside story of one company that made hundreds of millions of dollars for itself while worsening the financial crisis for the rest of us.

Living behind enemy lines, among the enemy, it's sometimes hard to remember why you're fighting in the first place.

A car plant in Fremont California that might have saved the U.S. car industry. In 1984, General Motors and Toyota opened NUMMI as a joint venture. Toyota showed GM the secrets of its production system: How it made cars of much higher quality and much lower cost than GM achieved. Frank Langfitt explains why GM didn't learn the lessons—until it was too late.

Stories about one person single-handedly taking charge of a situation gone wrong.

Stories about parents setting accidental traps for their children, and sometimes for themselves, including a story from WNYC's Radiolab about a chimp raised twice—once as a human child, and again as a chimp.

We try something harder than anything we've ever tried before, by taking the random ideas that members of our own families have told us would be "perfect for the show," and turning them into actual stories.

A man named David Maclean finds himself in a train station in India, with no idea how he got there or who he is. His memory gone, he has no choice but to let other people—police, doctors, friends, family—create an identity for him. David's book about this incident is called The Answer to the Riddle Is Me. Plus other stories of filling in the blank.

Stories of people betting on something with very bad odds, mostly because they have no other choice.

At the start of a new year, journalistic outfits put out lots of mealy "perhaps oil prices will rise or perhaps they won't" predictions for the coming year. Instead of that, we asked our contributors to predict real events that will happen to them and the people they know in 2010.

In 2009, The Princeton Review named Penn State the #1 Party School in America. It's a rotating crown—last year it was University of Florida, before that it was West Virginia University. So we wondered: what's it like to be at the country's top party school?

Stories of people who are up while the rest of us are sleeping—some for work, some for play, and some for a free sandwich. Including the story of a woman walking alone at night, who encounters another woman walking alone at night, for the exact same reason, and a whole population of people haggling over the cost of oranges at 3 in the morning.

Stories about people who take the bait, and those who place it. Including the story of man who tries to investigate a neighborhood crime and ends up in jail himself. And the story of the pitfalls of luring customers to a make-believe pizza delivery place.

Stories of cheating, cheaters, and the cheated.

This week, we bring you a deeper look inside the health insurance industry. The dark side of prescription drug coupons. A story about Pet Health Insurance, which is in its infancy, and how it is changing human behaviors—for example, if you have the pet health insurance, you bring your pet to the vet more often, and the vet makes more money and...well, you can see the parallels.

An hour explaining the American health care system, specifically, why it is that costs keep rising. One story looks at the doctors, one at the patients and one at the insurance industry.

In which we mark the anniversary of the economic collapse and the anniversary of Planet Money: Recapping some of the original episode, The Giant Pool of Money, and finding out what's happened to all those guys in the year since.