Malcolm Gladwell is a best-selling author and famous journalist at the New Yorker magazine. But not always.

David Rakoff discusses the world of birthdays and other holidays, as they're celebrated on the job... and what happens when you call yourself an editorial assistant but the editor you're assisting calls you a secretary. He read this story before a live audience at Town Hall in New York City, during a This American Life live show.

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.

Ira interviews Ryan Knighton, a blind guy who had a very peculiar experience with a hotel room telephone.

This American Life contributor John Hodgman was unexpectedly chosen to be in a series of high-profile Apple Computer commercials (he plays a PC). He tells the story of what happens when celebrity hunts you down and finds you...on your living room couch, pushing 40, and a couple sizes larger than you want to be.

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.

One Halloween, David Sedaris decides to skip all the fake monsters and ghosts and zombies and visit the real thing: dead people, in a morgue. (14 minutes)David’s latest book is Happy-Go-Lucky.

David Sedaris recounts his shameful career as a performance artist. Recorded before a live audience by KUOW Seattle.

David Sedaris outlines an experiment he conducted with fluids and a tube and a bag. The result: The Stadium Pal.

Ira says a few words about what he learned from working on a television show himself and about what it's like to hear your name mentioned casually by a fictional character on a prime time drama.

Mike Birbiglia talks about the sleepwalking that nearly killed him. (13 minutes)This story is an excerpt of Mike's one-man show, "Sleepwalk with Me," which also became feature film, produced and co-written by Ira Glass.

Writer David Sedaris on an unwelcome surprise in a toilet — a turd.

Comedian Mike Birbiglia talks about the time he ruined a cancer charity event, by giving the worst performance of his life. (Here's a hint: He improvised.

One night on stage, comedian Julian McCullough had an intense pain in his stomach, which he assumed was food poisoning. But it turned out to be a much more serious internal battle.

David Sedaris has this instructive tale of how, as a boy, with the help of his dad, he tried to bridge the chasm that divides the popular kid from the unpopular — with the sorts of results that perhaps you might anticipate.

We hear the story of a disastrous birthday party and how it's hard not to see these kinds of moments as symbolic of something bad.

Carin Gilfry explains how she once accidentally locked herself in a hotel closet, and because today’s show is being broadcast from an opera house stage, Ira is able to take the story to a place he never usually can.

A live performance detailing a humiliating love affair. When comedian Mike Birbiglia was in high school, he fell for a cool girl named Amanda.

Joe Lockhart was press secretary for President Bill Clinton. He recently told stories from his time on the job—live onstage at a performance space in New York City called The Moth, where regular people share stories about their lives—in front of a boisterous crowd.

David Sedaris reads one of his funniest and most affecting stories from his book Naked before a live audience. As an adolescent boy, David feared he might be a homosexual.

Ryan Knighton tells a story about trying to get his daughter to understand his blindness.

Writer David Rakoff travels to a place where everyone seems to be looking at him, a place where no one follows the customs people follow back home in New York City, a place called...New Hampshire.

Sara was raised in a fancy suburban neighborhood with strict parents who liked to flaunt their wealth—with his and hers Porsches, for instance. But when Sara was 12, her mother and father sat her down in the den with her siblings, and told them that their father had done a terrible thing, and their lives were about to change forever.

Sarah Vowell examines what happens when TV takes on a subject it really has no business exploring at all, but seems fairly obsessed with nonetheless: The Pilgrims. Sarah's most recent book is Assassination Vacation.