Hyder's story continues. He and his convoy of American soldiers run into trouble on their way back home.

Sarah Vowell tells "The Greatest Love Story of the 20th Century," Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash.

Chuck Klosterman talks about the time he MacGyvered his way out of one of the worst situations a boyfriend can find himself in.

Host Ira Glass talks with Alex Meyer, high school sophomore in Seattle and host of the Alex Meyer Show, which he produces in his bedroom, on a castoff home stereo of his dad's. When it became clear that no radio station would ever give him a job, he simply took charge and created his own show to learn what he needed to learn.

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.

Two stories of communication where the words really don't matter: Elizabeth Gilbert tells the story of the worst wedding toast she's ever heard of. This story first appeared on the former website Other People's Stories.

Host Ira Glass talks to Jorge Just, who thought he'd started over successfully. He'd moved to New York, found an apartment that everyone told him was a great deal, things were looking good.

The story of one girl's mission to bring people together everywhere by eliminating small talk forever. This American Life producer Starlee Kine has been going around lecturing audiences on the subject. She encourages them to switch to a new system she's invented, called The Rundown.

Host Ira Glass talks to Anthony Swofford, a former marine sniper and author of the Gulf War memoir Jarhead. He explains what he's seeing when he watches this new war with Iraq on television.

There are squatters who've built entire neighborhoods on top of rotting trash heaps in Mexico. They scavenge in the garbage piles for their living.

Robin Epstein visits people who define this thing called love—for a living. She attends the annual convention of the Romance Writers of America.

Susan Burton tells the story of how she used a clever scheme to get over a broken heart.

In the war on terror, the government is rounding up foreigners, checking their immigration status, and then, sometimes, deporting them. It won't give out their names.

Ira accompanies photographer Tamara Staples as she attempts to photograph chickens in the style of high fashion photography. The chickens are not very cooperative. (15 minutes)Tamara's photos have been collected in a book, The Magnificent Chicken: Portraits of the Fairest Fowl.

When you get to know someone, really know them, you can almost predict their behavior. It's comforting, this intimacy.

John Hodgman tries to tell the real version of a war movie that's already been written, filmed and released on DVD—Star Wars.

Veronica Chater explains the conflict in her house between her love for her pet macaw—a kind of parrot—and her love for her husband and three kids. The macaw wreaks a sort of low-level chaos in the house, because it wants Veronica all to itself.

Nauru is a tiny island, population 12,000, a third of the size of Manhattan and far from anywhere: Yet at the center of several of the decade's biggest global events. Contributing editor Jack Hitt tells the untold story of this dot in the middle of the Pacific and its involvement in the bankrupting of the Russian economy, global terrorism, North Korean defectors, the end of the world, and the late 1980s theatrical flop of a London musical based on the life of Leonardo da Vinci called Leonardo, A Portrait of Love.

The story of an FBI sting that involves gangsters, G-men, and lots and lots of people who want to work in the movies. It's adapted from an article by Elizabeth Gilbert that first appeared in GQ magazine.

The story of a hustler who wakes up every morning broke, hustles as much as $10,000, and then loses most of it by the time he goes to bed.

Producer Alex Blumberg bought a stock on a tip in 1997. By 1998 it was worthless.

We play a 1959 original recording of Truman Capote reading his holiday story A Christmas Memory—and sounding eerily similar to David Sedaris.

Davy Rothbart reads from letters, notes, scraps of paper and school papers, which have been lost by their original owners. He collects and publishes things like this in his magazine, Found Magazine.

The story of a typical American family, and how their family dynamic has reorganized itself around an imaginary duck, invented in childhood, who somehow stayed alive well into adulthood.  (14 minutes)