Davy Rothbart was on a 136-city tour appearing on morning TV talk shows to promote his book Found: The Best Lost, Tossed, and Forgotten Items from Around the World. Just before one appearance he had what seemed like a great idea at the time.

Back in the late 1960s, a wealthy tobacco heiress saw that integration was happening all around the country—except at prep schools in the South. So she set out to find the best Black students in neighborhood public schools—in hopes of teaching the white prep-school students to be less bigoted. Mosi Secret tells the story of how the first two Black students to integrate Virginia Episcopal School succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations.

Ira talks to the teen editors of Sex, Etc., a national magazine for teenagers, about the mistakes parents make when talking—or not talking—to their kids about sex. Then, the story of what happened when one anonymous mother learned that her daughter was having sex. All the names in this essay have been changed, and it's read on the air by producer Julie Snyder.

If part of the impulse behind the Tiananmen Square uprising was the pure desire to feel like life had possibility, that the future had potential...that impulse was behind another movement. This one among young people in Eastern Europe back before the Berlin Wall fell.

Most sperm banks provide all sorts of information about their donors: Education level, medical background. They even have videotaped interviews and recorded answers to essay questions.

Ira takes a Medieval scholar from the University of Chicago, Michael Camille, to Medieval Times — a chain of fake castles where visitors eat Medieval food and drink Medieval Pepsi and watch a supposed recreation of a Medieval jousting tournament. The scholar finds that there are many historical inaccuracies, but that Medieval Times does capture something essential and interesting about the spirit of the Middle Ages.

Host Ira Glass introduces the show and goes straight to Act One.

Students all over are starting college this month, and some of them still have a nagging question: what, exactly, got me in? An admissions officer talks about the most wrongheaded things applicants try. And Michael Lewis has the incredible story of how a stolen library book got one man into his dream school.

Ira Glass reads a favorite passage from the writing of the recently deceased poet Donald Hall.

A guy goes to a funeral for someone he doesn’t know at all, and has to piece together everything about him.

Michael Lewis’ story continues, and he figures out why Emir Kamenica insists on remembering, and telling, the story of his life the way he does — even when he finds out that some of the facts may be wrong.

A story by Bia Lowe.

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

Rany Jazayerli was thrilled when one of his closest friends, Mazen, was hired by the Obama campaign as the liaison to the Muslim community, in the months before the presidential election. It only took 3 weeks for a newspaper to attack his character, and for Mazen to resign from the job of a lifetime.

In this act, writer Michael Kinsley describes harnessing the power of his own mind to deal with his Parkinson's diagnosis. Michael Kinsley is a contributing columnist for Vanity Fair and the Washington Post.

Writer Greil Marcus explains what rock fans use dead rock stars for.

Etgar remembers throwing a fit at a restaurant as a little boy, and what his mother said to him. (3 minutes)Most of these stories about Etgar's mom were written for an exhibition about her called "Inside Out" at the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

Elena Kostyuchenko tells the story of how she was probably poisoned after reporting on Russian’s invasion of Ukraine, and how she kept not believing it was happening. Bela Shayevich translated this story from Russian and reads it for us. (21 minutes)We adapted this from an article in n+1 magazine.

Todd Bachmann tells about the time he offered to help out a Catholic charity and ended up getting bamboozled by a nun.

Ira talks with Josh Glenn, editor of Hermenaut, who explains the difference between Good Wacky and Bad Wacky.

Pete found a bag of maybe a hundred letters in a dumpster and found himself completely wrapped up in the lives of the two people in the letters.

Host Ira Glass wonders what the Democrats stand for, and then goes in search of an answer.

Host Ira Glass plays clips from Jessica Yu's documentary Men of Reenaction about Civil War reenactments, where the real battle is the one over who is properly authentic and who is not.

Why are people asking me if my mother recognizes me, when it’s totally beside the point? (14 minutes)Janelle Taylor originally wrote about her mother in an academic paper for Medical Anthropology Quarterly.