Author David Sedaris on cell phone usage in restrooms.

David Sedaris tells a story about how, as a teenager, he was scared of certain people...until he made them scared of him, one fateful night. Sedaris is the author of Me Talk Pretty One Day and other books.

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

What's French for French Fries? David Sedaris has been following the diplomatic fiascoes of the last few months from Paris, where he lives. Relations between France and the U.S. have been so horrible these days we asked him how it seemed from over there.

Author David Rakoff worked at an advertising agency, and could see exactly where its technology was going.

David Rakoff tells a story from when he was a kid, about the day he realized the he would inevitably be viewed a certain way by his classmates, no matter what he did or said.

Every year 1,200 new army cadets arrive at West Point. Once they say a single sentence correctly, they can go to their barracks.

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.

Host Ira Glass goes to a busy Target store one week before Christmas. Most shoppers he talks to don't think any of their gifts will be returned.

A lot of life's inevitability is hazy; it'll happen some time, but you're not sure when. But with pregnancy, it's on an invariable schedule: forty weeks.

A two minute play called “Title,” written and performed by Greg Allen and Heather Riordan of the Chicago group, The Neo-Futurists.

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 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.

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.

Author Chuck Klosterman and his friends make a party game out of comparing television shows to rock bands.

A case study in every word from a friend meaning its opposite. An excerpt from the short story "The Underminer." A book based on the story is forthcoming from Bloomsbury USA.

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

For over two decades, there's been a secret court in the United States called the FISA court (short for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act). Its job is to authorize wiretaps on possible foreign spies and foreign agents.

For many years, Israeli citizens learned a sanitized version of what happened during their War of Independence in 1948. They learned that 700,000 Arabs fled the country on their own accord.

A few times every summer, for complicated scientific reasons, thousands of live fish, crab and shrimp wash up onto the beaches of Mobile Bay, Alabama, on the Gulf Coast. It's a natural event—like a hurricane, but good.

Sarah Vowell tells the lost story behind a patriotic song, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." An early version of the song celebrated an American terrorist. She's accompanied by Jon Langford and the band.

The story of a band of libertarians with a plan to take over a state. They call it the Free State Project and it goes like this: They pick a state with a low population, 20,000 of them move to it, establish a voting majority, and run it according to libertarian principles.

An excerpt of Bernard Cooper's story about the bill he got from his own father, for the entire cost of his childhood. Actor Josh Hamilton reads.