The intersection of Christmas and retail, including David Sedaris's "Santaland Diaries."

A family where the father was one kind of sissy and the son was another kind, and how the family was destroyed despite the fact that no one wanted it to be.

People struggling at the fringes of our nation's infotainment industry.

Stories about turkeys, chickens, ducks, and fowl of all kinds.

People who made a deal with the devil.

Trying to forget the past and move on.

Stories of the election you can't hear anywhere else.

Spalding Gray on finding the zen of skiing.

Stories of things that are supposed to be scary, but aren't.

Civil War reenactments, wax museums, simulated coal mines, fake ethnic restaurants, an ersatz Medieval castle, and other re-created worlds that thrive all across America.

Scott Carrier got a job interviewing schizophrenics. After awhile, he began to wonder if he was a schizophrenic himself.

We took out advertisements in Chicago inviting people to share letters they've received, sent, or found.

Stories that haven't fit into any of our regular "theme" shows.

Unusual stories from the 1996 Democratic Convention in Chicago.

Ira Glass spends a night at one of the most boisterous hot dog stands in the nation: Chicago's Wiener Circle.

Unusual stories about day-to-day life at the Republican Convention.

Stories of people whose lives are transformed by music.

What happens when a little idea starts to control you.

Unusual perspectives on the presumptive Republican nominee.

David Sedaris recalls the days when his mother and sister played armchair detective.

A story of youthful backstabbing by David Sedaris.

Ira's own father, Barry Glass, co-hosts this special Father's Day show.

The Chicago Bulls and their grip on Chicagoans' hearts and lives during the NBA playoffs.

Girls who have to figure out how they're going to act when the ground rules are constantly shifting.

Stories of the people who fall for a life in the theater.

Stories of the difficult relationships between parents and their grown children.

Friends get together to start a business, start a church, do political action together. And after a while, they start fighting and split up.

Stories of admiring someone from afar, and trying to get closer to them.

Men who had comfortable, decent lives, yet decided to do something wild and eccentric.

A girl who adored her father tries to figure out what to think after he takes some of her college money and lies to her about it.

Our first show as This American Life.

Politics, the economy, and the big picture.

Jack Hitt stumbles onto an epic story of the Old South and changing cultural norms in America.

Stories made from old recordings found in attics and thrift stores.

The dream of true love and the difficulties with achieving and maintaining that dream.

The animalness of animals, and the irreducible ways in which they are not human.

A friendship between two young boys that was destroyed through the manipulative acts of one of them.

People living their lives, just like the rest of us. Plus an extra life.

Julia Sweeney and her brother found out they each had cancer six months apart.

Reflecting back on 1995.