Recalling the years when he worked low-level publishing jobs, David describes the life of a writer who doesn’t actually write.

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

A group called NO/AIDS heads into bars to offer free HIV testing for high-risk people. Writer Nathaniel Rich tells the story of one man's test.

Host Ira Glass speaks with various people who regularly eat foods that give them severe allergic reactions, stomach cramping and trips to the hospital.

When the Euro arrived in 2002, the BBC called it "the most ambitiousfinancial and political change since money began." Here in the US we don'tthink of it as that revolutionary, but in Europe it truly changed howmillions of people lived. Adam Davidson and Chana Joffe-Walt report.

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

Because the line between a mortal and venial sin can be hazy, sometimes the only way to tell is to test it. And that's particularly true when you're a kid, trying to figure out if you agree with where your parents draw that line.

Jessica Benko tells the story of a woman named Cathy who was almost killed several times by a thought that she just couldn't get rid of.

Sonari Glinton tells the story of how a Catholic nun teaches an entire school on Chicago's South Side that we are all truly made in God's image. Sonari is a reporter for NPR News.

There are so few farmers in the United States that in 1993, the census stopped counting the number of Americans who live on farms at the time. But in China, despite the vast migration to cities in recent years, more than half the country still lives in rural areas.

In the town of Nowthen, MN, residents held meetings to debate whether a police force is worth the cost. And in Springfield, IL, the state police motorcycle division has been cut, leading to an increase in highway fatalities.

Kurt Braunohler and his girlfriend had been together for thirteen years, and they were only 30. They wondered why they had never considered marriage, and realized that they needed to sleep with other people before they tied the knot.

At a Muslim community center in New York, two lawyers teach a workshop on how to react when an FBI agent shows up at the door asking questions. The workshop is a project of CLEAR — Creating Law Enforcement Accountability and Responsibility — at the City University of New York School of Law.

Recently, host Ira Glass and his friend Etgar Keret were at an exhibit of photography by Cindy Sherman, and a woman came up to Etgar claiming to be Cindy Sherman. Then she said she wasn't.

Camas Davis tells a true story about a rabbit kidnapping that saves some rabbits' lives, kills those same rabbits' babies, and leaves students in a Portland rabbit-butchering class scratching their heads.

Linda Lutton and her eleven year old daughter Pirecua explain what happened the year Pirecua begged for a gift that she turned out to be allergic to. Linda is a reporter at our home station, WBEZ Chicago.

For a year, Morgan Block saw her pilates instructor, Mary Archbold, twice aweek. She watched closely as Mary demonstrated moves and corrected poses.

Ira tells the story of how Oscar Ramirez, a Guatemalan immigrant living near Boston, got a phone call with some very strange news about his past. A public prosecutor from Guatemala told Oscar that when he was three years old, he may have been abducted from a massacre at a village called Dos Erres.

Ten years ago, Congress voted to reform campaign finance, after Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold took up the cause. Here they reunite on the radio, to reminisce and lament how that reform failed.

David Rakoff died on August 9, 2012. He’d appeared on This American Life 25 times, first in 1996, during the third month of the show; his last appearance was just a few weeks before he died.

Maya Gurantz tells the story of Glenn and Laurie Mutchler, who go further than most parents to create a magical Christmas for their kids, Colin, Erica and Adam. Theirs included a family mythology of Santas that had its own logic, with many Santas and a family elf named Jeko, who were never jolly and often thrillingly scary.

For a generation of baseball fans, when a pitcher suddenly stops being able to perform, it's known as "Steve Blass Disease" — after an all-star pitcher who inexplicably stopped being able to throw strikes. Ira Glass speaks with Steve Blass and others about this phenomenon.

A portrait of what it looks like when politics gets polarized, and how hard it is for people in the middle to hang on. Producer Sarah Koenig explains what happened when a wave of Republican politicians swept to power with a three-to-one majority in 2010.

David Rakoff tells this story, about the invisible processes that can happen inside our bodies and the visible effects they eventually have. (15 minutes)David died three months after this performance, in August 2012.