David Sedaris reads this story. A high-powered theater critic applies his critical skills to the Christmas pageants at local elementary schools.

Writer David Sedaris on parents' dreams and children's nightmares.

An original radio drama called "Kathleen on the Carpet," in which animals talk and hold their own "animal court." It's a comedy by David Sedaris, starring our own radio theater company, the Pinetree Gang.

One of the most powerful forces in a room can be the thing that is unspoken between people. Five writers—Scott Carrier, David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell, Brady Udall and Lan Samantha Chang—give us case examples: stories when they felt the presence of something unspoken.

Our senior editor David Kestenbaum introduces us to someone who is literally running around the block as a way to solve one of his problems. David tries to figure out why it works.

Producer David Kestenbaum explains how teachers at his sons’ preschool installed a “tattle phone” where kids could register their complaints about each other. David rigged it up to record those complaints and document the unfairnesses of preschool.

David Himmel is a college sophomore and a former camper who became a counselor. He says all the best experiences of his life have been at camp or with camp people.

A first-grader explains to host Ira Glass how bullies become bullies. His explanation: They read a book on how to be a bully.

Host Ira Glass reads an excerpt from Nick Hornby's novel About a Boy. The narrator, Will, recalls a time when he was a child that he convinced a friend that a portal to another world existed at the back of his closet.

Jay Allison and his 12-year-old daughter discuss what radio station to listen to. She wants music.

Durrell was a professional musician. He toured Asia, Brazil, Canada, gigs in Paris.

Lilly Sullivan tells the story of an elementary school “movie day” that went horribly wrong for many of the kids. (20 minutes)

Genevieve Jurgensen and her husband Laurent lost their two daughters—Elise and Mathilde—at the ages of 4 and 7. Actress Felicity Jones reads from her book The Disappearance: A Memoir of Loss, in which Jurgensen tries to explain their lives and their deaths to a friend, in a series of letters.

Daniel Pinkwater reads his children's picture book Devil in the Drain. (4 minutes)

Scott Carrier and his family live in the same Salt Lake City neighborhood as Elizabeth Smart, the fourteen-year-old whose kidnapping made international news in 2002. Though pictures of Smart were everywhere in Salt Lake City, and thousands of volunteers searched for her, her captors brought her back to the neighborhood she was taken from, and they walked freely through the streets with her.

When is a chicken your friend? When is he your dinner? This American Life's former webmeister Elizabeth Meister talks with Kamiko Overs, an 11-year-old girl at the annual poultry exhibition run by the American Poultry Association in Columbus, Ohio. Elizabeth Meister is a producer with Long Haul Productions.

An endocrinologist wrote the show about a wave of parents coming to her to treat their short (but otherwise healthy) children with human growth hormone. Contributor Scott Brown investigates.

Producer Alex Blumberg conducts an investigation, perhaps the first ever, into this American subspecies: People who compulsively imitate their mother's voices in everyday conversation, well into adulthood.

Leo’s family moved away from Rochester, NY, leaving behind all of Leo's friends and stranding him in a new — and in his opinion, much worse — middle school. (10 minutes)

Shalom Auslander reads his true story, "The Blessing Bee." It's about the time when, as a third-grader at an Orthodox Jewish school, Shalom saw his chance to both make his mom proud, and push his drunken father out of the picture. Part of his scheme involved winning the school's bee on the complicated Hebrew blessings you say before eating certain foods.

Host Ira Glass talks to two different people who have stories they just can't get over...stories that make them cringe...and stories from which we can glean what makes a cringe story different from other kinds of stories.

Six-year-old DJ has two dads, Dan Savage and Terry Miller. DJ is being raised by two gay men, but he has a preschooler's understanding of what gay means.

When Sarah was 10 years old, she got a heart transplant. Soon after, her mother decided to find out more about the person who saved her daughter's life.

A husband and wife face a decision about their autistic son's future, and whether he should continue to live with their family.