Host Ira Glass explains that today's show begins in 1865 and ends today. Ira reads briefly from Lincoln's Second Inaugural address, which describes slavery as America's Original Sin of sorts.

Ira talks with Lee Qi, who came to America from China. He worked in Chinese restaurants in small towns, live in tiny apartments with other illegal immigrants who worked there as well—apartments that were sometimes in the back of the restaurants.

We hear a quick rundown of all the ways that Christian conservatives are making headway in advancing their values as public policy, why they think total separation of church and state is not what the founding fathers intended. And why they're wrong.

Ira goes to the courtroom of Abraham Lincoln Marovitz, who, at 93, presides over the ceremony to make people citizens. In this setting, it's hard to talk about America as it is.

When an Arkansas National Guard Unit is sent off to Iraq, they assume they're going to help rebuild the country, since they're trained as an engineering unit. But once they arrive, they find themselves in a combat zone, unprepared and ill-equipped.

The TV show America's Funniest Home Videos has an archive of over half-a-million video clips. Ira talks with Todd Thicke, the show's co-executive producer, and Trace Beaulieu and Mike Palleschi, two of the show's writers, about what all that footage tells them about Americans that the rest of us don't know.

These teenagers are the children the Christian right has in mind when it holds conferences on what's at stake in America's culture war. On the fourteen-hour drive to West Virginia, we listen to the Backstreet Boys and talk about Dawson's Creek. One of the things that's so interesting about these teenagers is the odd mix of Christian and secular pop in their lives.

A history of the brief mayoral career of Harold Washington, and its lessons for Black and white America, as told by people close to him. Many are activists and politicians: Lu Palmer, Judge Eugene Pincham, Congressman Danny Davis, and then-alderman Eugene Sawyer.

Who’s trying to bridge the gap between Blue America and Red America? Ira gets a glimpse of one guy who might be able to do just that.

Ira interviews three of the people involved in making the documentary How's Your News?, about a team of developmentally disabled people who travel across the country doing man-on-the-street interviews. He talks to two of the developmentally disabled reporters, Susan Harrington and Joe Simon, and to the film's non-disabled director, Arthur Bradford.

Host Ira Glass describes what thousands of people do all over America on our holiday weekends: we go to historic sites with our kids and stare at bricks and statues, trying to feel some connection with the past. It's not easy.

Obesity in America affects a higher percentage of black people than white people. Roxane Gay talks about being black and being fat with host Ira Glass.

Host Ira Glass tells the story of Chris Sewell, who was living on the street and yet somehow managed to find $610,940 of lost money that belonged to the city of New York, hidden away on the Internet.

Host Ira Glass talks to Jay Allison, who is in charge of the team at This I Believe, an essay series. Jay wonders why Ira's never contributed an essay about what he believes.

LuAnne Johnson is a teacher who sold her story to Hollywood and saw it made into the film and TV series Dangerous Minds, in which a character named LuAnne Johnson does things the real LuAnne believes are unethical and silly.

The story of how an understanding of Bible prophecy by the FBI could have prevented the tragedy at Waco at the Branch Davidians compound.

Host Ira Glass talks about the Four Corners tourist monument where Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico meet. He proposes creating our own little monument to America: a four corners show depicting life on four street corners across this great nation.

Ira talks to cyber cafe workers around the world about something that lots of Americans have never heard of, but that people in other countries know all about: a lottery run by the U.S. government where the prize is a visa to come to America. Each year people flock to cyber cafes to enter it, hoping for a lucky break that will change their life.

Ira Glass talks to journalist Jochen Bittner about a political lie from 1920s Germany and the lessons it holds for 2020s America. His op-ed about this ran in the New York Times. Bittner’s one of the people who runs the Opinion section of the German newspaper Die Zeit.

Two brothers set out with a friend to cross America on horseback. They take a tape recorder with them to make a kind of audio journal of their trip.

Host Ira Glass talks with Francine Pascal, who's written or invented the plot lines for over 700 books for teenagers in the various Sweet Valley High series....Sweet Valley Kids, Sweet Valley Twins, Sweet Valley University, Sweet Valley Senior Year. She explains why a prom story is a must for teen movies and TV shows.

An '88 Grand Marquis that Senator Conrad Burns inherited from his mother; a New York taxicab whose driver, Jeff Perkins, tape-records his passengers to help pass the time; a 1980s-era BMW 5 series in which film producer Rob Levine had his first job as driver and assistant to movie producer Edgar Sherrick.

Ira Glass talks to Sam Ashner, whose debilitating fear of spiders was ruining his life. So he opted for an extraordinary treatment — the nuclear option — to deal with it.