David Sedaris
Contributors List
David's the author of many bestselling books. Many stories from the early ones appeared first on the radio, before showing up in print.
4: Vacations
Stories about vacations gone awry—or perhaps vacations that never should have happened.
11: Enemies
A story of a friendship between two adolescent boys that was destroyed through the manipulative acts of one of them.
12: Animals
Stories about the animalness of animals, the irreducible ways in which they are not human.
23: Drama Bug
Stories of the people who fall for a life in the theater.
27: The Cruelty of Children
Stories about kids being mean to each other.
28: Detectives
Writer David Sedaris recalls the days when his mother and sister played armchair detective — until a very odd crime wave hit within their own home. Plus, host Ira Glass goes out on surveillance with a real-life private eye.
35: Fall Clearance Sale
Evocative, funny, emotional stories collected over the last few months that haven't fit into any of our regular "theme" shows.
44: Poultry Slam 1996
In the midst of the five biggest poultry-consumption weeks of the year—the five weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, when Americans consume one-fourth of all the turkey they eat in a year—This American Life presents stories about...
47: Christmas and Commerce
Stories about the intersection of Christmas and retail, including David Sedaris's story "Santaland Diaries," which was first broadcast on NPR's Morning Edition many years ago in a much shorter version.
49: Animals
Stories about the animalness of animals, the irreducible ways in which they are not human.
52: Edge of Sanity
Stories about the border between mental health and mental illness.
57: Delivery
Stories about the delivery business and the people in it. UPS men, bike messengers, FedEx dispatchers. Includes a new radio play by David Sedaris, in which we give him one sound effects record and this assignment: His radio play can only...
60: Business of Death
Usually we talk about death as a tragedy, a mystery, a hard-to-comprehend fact of life. But in addition to all that, for all sorts of people it's also ... a job.
67: Your Dream, My Nightmare
Could it be more obvious? Stories in which someone's dream is someone else's nightmare. All of us get into these situations with strangers, with the people we love most, with our own parents, with our children.
82: Haunted
Stories of people who are haunted, not by ghosts or phantoms, but by other people.
87: A Very Special Sedaris Christmas
Stories from David Sedaris's book of Christmas stories, Holidays on Ice, read onstage by David, Julia Sweeney and actor Matt Malloy.
97: Death to Wacky
An assault on the idea of wackiness. And then, an appreciation of wackiness, and an analysis of wackiness in American culture. Thirteen ways to describe wackiness.
99: I Enjoy Being A Girl, Sort Of
Variations on what it means to be a girl and what it means to be a woman.
104: Music Lessons
What's frustrating about music lessons, what's miraculous about them, and what they actually teach us. This show was recorded in front of a live audience at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, with help from KQED-FM,...
136: You Are Here
Three stories, three people, and three sets of maps. Stories of people trying to figure out where they are in the world in the most literal and least literal ways possible. We explore what it's like to be lost—how we all struggle in that...
137: The Book That Changed Your Life
Stories of people who believe a book changed their life. It's a romantic notion, and one reason we believe it is because we want to believe our lives can be changed by something so simple as an idea — or a set of ideas contained in a book.
141: Invisible Worlds
Stories of people who are trying to make invisible worlds visible, and what happens when you make them visible.
148: The Angels Wanna Wear My Red Suit
A special Christmas edition of our show, with stories about Santa Claus—the many many different versions of Santa Claus. It was in America, in New York, that people started believing in the modern idea of Santa—a guy who comes down the...
154: In Dog We Trust
Stories of dogs and cats and other animals that live in our homes. Exactly how much are they caught up in everyday family dynamics? We answer this question and others.
161: Million Bubbles
Imagine that you could somehow look down from above, onto all the streets and avenues and country roads and highways of this nation...each car below its own tiny subculture on wheels...glass and steel worlds rolling down the street...
173: Three Kinds of Deception
A story of self-deception, a story about deceiving others, and a story about accidental deception. And how one type of deception can easily turn into another.
193: Stories of Loss
In the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a collection of stories in which people try to make sense of loss.
194: Before and After
Stories in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001.
198: How to Win Friends and Influence People
Stories of people climbing to be number one. How do they do it? What is the fundamental difference between us and them?
201: Them
In a time of war, when we're all feeling a heightened sense of "us" and "them," we wanted to take up the problem of "them." Some people need a good "them." Other people tend to see all "thems" as more like us. And so we bring you three...
214: Family Physics
We take the stately laws of physics—laws which mathematicians and scientists have spent centuries discovering and verifying—and apply them to the realm of human relationships, to see if they shed useful light on our daily lives.
221: Fake I.D.
Stories of people traveling under fake papers, false identities, not for power or personal gain, but for their own deeper personal reasons.
225: Home Movies
Home movies are often all the same—kids on the beach, people getting married, birthday parties—so why do we make and watch so many of them? Maybe it's because the story they show and the story they tell are different. In this show, we...
235: The Balloon Goes Up
Stories from the beginnings of the war in Iraq, and how it compares with wars in our country's past.
240: I'm In Charge Now
Stories of people putting themselves in charge in very unlikely, unpromising circumstances.
241: 20 Acts in 60 Minutes
Instead of the usual "each week we choose a theme, and bring you 3 or 4 stories on that theme" business, we throw all that away and bring you 20 stories—yes, 20—in 60 minutes.
257: What I Should've Said
People return to the scene of the crime where they should have spoken clearly, plainly, forcefully...to review what the hell went wrong, and in a few cases, to fix it. Jonathan Goldstein tries to stop time. Charles Monroe tries to figure...
277: Apology
It's rare that a successful apology happens. One where you apologize to someone, not for selfish reasons, but because you're really sorry and you want them to know that, and when the person you're apologizing to really hears what you're...
288: Not What I Meant
Stories about how easy it is for communication to go awry, and what the consequences can be after it does.
303: David and Goliath
Variations on an old tale, with very modern consequences. Cambodia is competing with other nations for the business of big clothing companies all over the world...but they've vowed to follow fair labor practices. Other countries end up...
305: The This American Life Holiday Spectacular
A full-throttle, show-stopping, no-holds-barred Christmas Spectacular! Shedding the crusty old Christmas stories of yore, we bring you new holiday classics. With special musical guest Marah!
308: Star-Crossed Love
In honor of Valentine's Day, This American Life brings you stories of how love blossoms, even when (perhaps) it shouldn't.
309: Cat and Mouse
Stories about the kinds of chase games that just never end. From the high California desert to a high-end furniture showroom.
315: The Parrot and the Potbellied Pig
Original stories from David Sedaris, Jonathan Goldstein, and others, on two animals who don't even seem like they should know each other, much less appear on the same radio show.
319: And the Call Was Coming from the Basement
For Halloween, scary stories that are all true. Kidnappings, zombie raccoons, haunted houses—real haunted houses!—and things that go "EEEEK!!!" in the night. Plus, a new story by David Sedaris, in which he walks among the dead.
415: Crybabies
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...
