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.

A short story by Lydia Davis about trying to calculate the cost of a love affair. The story is read by actor Matt Malloy.

Host Ira Glass talks to Mariya Karimjee about a college application essay question. Essay B asks students to imagine a person they might meet in college—someone from a very different background.

Host Ira Glass talks to sportswriters Jason Kirk and Spencer Hall about life in a sportsless world. Read Jason and Spencer’s essay about this.

Mitchell S Jackson profiles Ahmaud Arbery, who was 25 years old when he was shot to death by three white men in Georgia earlier this year.

Ira talks to Rick Clark, director of undergraduate admissions at the Georgia Institute of Technology, better known as Georgia Tech. Clark says the latest trend in misguided college admissions efforts: parents emailing and calling the admissions office, pretending to be their own children.

Tim Kreider almost died after he was stabbed in the throat. But that wasn't nearly as interesting as the year that followed.

Writer Bill Eville and his brother are picked up on the side of the road late at night, and not taken to their destination. (10 minutes)Bill Eville is the author of a collection of essays called Washed Ashore: Family, Fatherhood, and Finding Home on Martha’s Vineyard.

Mosi Secret’s story continues. We find out about a Black student who struggled at VES.

Writing a letter decades after an event that shaped her life was the only way that Nicole Piasecki could make some sense of it.

Sarah Vowell introduces you to a magazine that—if you're lucky—you've never had to read. A magazine called Living Without. Her story is part of the Hearing Voices project, which gets funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Schools ask their students the strangest essay questions sometimes.

Paul Zimmer is eighty-three years old now, and he’s still haunted by something he saw in his teens. Something very few Americans have ever seen: The explosion of an atomic bomb.

Before Sinatra died, Sarah Vowell appeared on this radio program and made a prediction about how network news would cover Sinatra's death ... and she made a simple plea. We hear whether her prediction came true.

Paul Zimmer at 83 years old is still haunted by something he saw in his teens. Something very few Americans have ever seen: The explosion of an atomic bomb.

Host Ira Glass talks about his experiences reporting on education and theunending question of how we can make schools better. He discusses theChicago Teachers strike and an essay by writer Alex Kotlowitz that talksabout how the strike raises questions about the severity of this challenge.

Before Sinatra died, Sarah Vowell appeared on this radio program and made a prediction about how network news would cover Sinatra's death ... and she made a simple plea. We hear whether her prediction came true.

What divorce looks like from the dog's point of view. (5 minutes)This monologue was performed by Merrill Markoe and recorded at Un-Cabaret in Los Angeles.

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.

Ira talks to Australian novelist Gerald Murnane. He’s never left Australia.

When writer Chuck Klosterman got back from a trip to Germany, friends asked him what Germans were like. Did nine days as an American tourist make him qualified to answer? In this excerpt of an essay he wrote for Esquire magazine, Chuck explains why not.

Writer Danielle Evans has been almost completely alone all quarantine — and she’s had time to think about grief, and loneliness and what might come after this pandemic is over. (17 minutes)A version of this essay first appeared in the Corona Correspondences series at The Sewanee Review.

Writer Michael Lewis tells the story of a man named Emir Kamenica, whose path to college started with fleeing the war in Bosnia and becoming a refugee in the United States. Then he had a stroke of luck: a student teacher read an essay he’d plagiarized from a book he’d stolen from a library back in Bosnia, and was so impressed that she got him out of a bad high school and into a much better one.

Host Ira Glass uses Italian author Umberto Eco's essay Travels in Hyperreality as a guidebook to American simulated worlds. Eco says that the urge to create these miniature simulated worlds is a very American impulse — a significant American aesthetic — and one that's not often discussed.