Margaret Dunbar Cutright starts looking into her grandfather's disappearance.

Richard Klein of Cornell University explains that the way we view love really began with love poems in the 13th century—an illusion.

Arthur Phillips reads an abridged version of his short story "Wenceslas Square," which takes place in Czechoslovakia at the end of the Cold War. (31 minutes) This story was first published in a collection of essays and fiction called Wild East: Stories from the Last Frontier.

Habeas corpus began in England. And recently, 175 members of the British parliament filed a "friend of the court" brief in one of the U.S.

This American Life contributor Sarah Vowell tells the story of a mapmaker named Charles Preuss who charted the Western Territories with two of American history's legendary explorers—John Charles Fremont and Kit Carson. The maps Preuss made were best sellers and helped open the Western frontier to settlement.

In this show, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Ira and David Hauptschein explored this now utterly quaint question: Are people having experiences on the Internet they wouldn't have anywhere else? Several hundred listeners sent in samples of what they were finding on the Internet. A guy offers a girl a late-night tour of Microsoft...and this actually makes him seem hot.

Habeas corpus began in England. And recently, 175 members of the British parliament filed a "friend of the court" brief in one of the U.S.

Every city's got a place like this: that weird no man's land on the outskirts of town, with junk yards and landfills. Charlie Gregerson grew up near that stuff, on Chicago's far south side, and he remembers finding debris from famous Louis Sullivan masterpieces in the garbage dump after those buildings were demolished.

A brand new Christmas carol gets its world premiere: A song about both Christmas and American history. With lyrics by Sarah Vowell.

Erin Einhorn grew up begging her mother to tell her all about the remarkable story of how she survived World War Two, thanks to a Polish woman named Honorata Skowronski, who risked her life. But her mother didn't like to talk about it.

Sarah Vowell tells the story of General Lafayette's triumphant reunion with America, after becoming really, really unpopular in his native France. Sarah's is the author of “Lafayette in the Somewhat United States” among other books.

Starlee Kine rents a room at a Ramada hotel in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, where a ghost supposedly plays pranks on the guests and staff. The ghost's name is Walter, for Walter Schroeder, the guy who originally built the hotel in the 1920s.

Chris Neary tells the story of how a bungled Nazi sabotage operation from the early days of World War II has become the legal foundation for the Bush administration's current push to try U.S. citizens in military tribunals. But when you return to the original facts of the case, it's not only unclear if they support current Administration policy, it's unclear if they support the Supreme Court's decision in the original case.

Ira talks to historian Ted Widmer about two of the first pen pals in the New World. John Winthrop and Roger Williams were both Puritans in Massachusetts in the 1630s.

Sarah Vowell tells the lost story behind a patriotic song, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." An early version of the song celebrated an American terrorist. She's accompanied by Jon Langford and the band.

Sarah Vowell tells the story about the first time the United States attacked a country that hadn't attacked us first. It was also the first time the U.S. went to a foreign country to force a regime change.

For many years, Israeli citizens learned a sanitized version of what happened during their War of Independence in 1948. They learned that 700,000 Arabs fled the country on their own accord.

A fable of how America got its name, and how it was named after someone who was a fraud, but the kind of fraud people love, the kind of fraud who knows how to please a crowd. Jack Hitt tells the racy and little-known story of how Amerigo Vespucci got his name all over the map of the western hemisphere by telling lies about what he found there—the type of lies which can be found today in the pages of Penthouse magazine.

Ira introduces this week's story.