A look at the Chicago political machine in the days before our story begins.

Some stunning parallels between the political strategies of the two leaders, by John Matisonn.

A communist, the filmmaker Marcel Ophuls, the band Camper Van Beethoven, and other people who may be stuck in the wrong decade.

How journalist Philip Weiss came to agree with some Clinton conspiracy theorists but not to follow their cause. With Paul Tough.

The first part of Josh Seftel and Rich Robinson's documentary about South Africa. Josh meets people who may be distant South African relatives.

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.

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, then-alderman Eugene Sawyer.

Howard Rabinowitz and The Truth About Cats and Dogs. (4 minutes)

Jeff Dorchen reads Italo Calvino's short story All At One Point from Calvino's book Cosmicomics.

Canadians not getting any respect in two locales: A town called Little Canada, Minnesota; and in Canada, where a guy doing a Canadian-heritage art project gets ribbed by his neighbors, who joke that there is no Canadian culture to celebrate. Then, Sarah Vowell speaks with Ian Brown, formerly the host of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's long-running program Sunday Morning. They arm wrestle over what it means to be a Canadian, what it means to be an American, and whether the two are the same.

Dishwasher Pete, author of the book Dishwasher: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States, went to the National Restaurant Association convention on assignment from This American Life.

Michael Ventura, who grew up Sicilian in New York, says that as a kid he thought Sinatra was in his family. His book The Death of Frank Sinatra is not really about Sinatra.

Danny Toro, a member of a Chicago street gang for ten years, explains what gangster movies he liked most in his gang years and why. Scarface, with Al Pacino, was a good movie to get him pumped up to go out with his boys. A Lucky Luciano film taught him a lesson in how to be more compassionate with members of his own gang.

Ira talks with a gang kid who turned to Jesus with the same ferocity and dedication with which he served his old street gang.

In 1940, Jack Geiger, at the age of fourteen, left his middle-class Jewish home and knocked on the door of a black actor named Canada Lee. He asked Lee if he could move in with him.

Hilton Als reads an excerpt from his book The Women. (12 minutes)

Sarah Vowell goes home to Montana to try and understand her gunsmith dad a little better.

Ellery Eskelin never met his father but always heard he was a musical genius. Years after his father's death, Ellery started finding recordings of his musical output: he was the king of "song-poems." These are the songs that result when people answer those ads in the backs of magazines that say, "Send us your lyrics, and we'll write and record your song." Ellery's father's musical output was prodigious — and very odd.

Jack Hitt reports on one woman's opera about Chicken Little.