Paul Tough visits Catherine Chalmers. She raises small animals and insects in her apartment, feeds them to each other, and photographs them eating each other.

Writer Tim Melley.

Short fiction by George Saunders.

Sarah Vowell goes home to Montana to try and understand her gunsmith dad a little better.

Kevin Kelly is interviewed.

Ira talks with a gang kid who turned to Jesus with the same ferocity and dedication with which he served his old street gang.

Scott Carrier in Salt Lake City with the latest installment in his 12-year quest to chase down and catch an antelope. This story and others are included in his book Running After Antelope.

A medieval village, a 1900-pound brass kettle, marauding visigoths, and a plan to drench invaders with boiling oil that goes awry. From Ron Carlson's book The Hotel Eden, read by Chicago actor Jeff Dorchen.

The people of Chicago speak out.

A story by Larry Doyle.

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

Gay Talese reads from his classic 1966 Esquire article, in which he followed around Sinatra at the height of Sinatra's power.

Claudia Perez talks about how her 21-year-old brother was shot and the family thought he'd die.

Reporter Scott Carrier and his eleven-year-old daughter Jesse. Scott wrote Running After Antelope.

How a guy named Tom became Camden Joy — and what he gained and what he lost. With Sarah Vowell.

Ron Carlson's short story.

Dishwasher Pete on Letterman.

A hemophiliac teenager who tries to set world records and to motocross.

Beau O'Reilly tells the story of a man who tried to run for President as a utopian nudist.

Susan Berman, author of the memoir Easy Street, the True Story of a Gangster's Daugher, reads from her book about her father Davie Berman, a Jewish gangster and one of the men — with Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel — who created modern Las Vegas. (7 minutes)Act Two continues after the break.

Ira with Lynnette Nyman, who, as a girl, recorded her parents fighting with a cassette recorder she got for Christmas.

Sarah Vowell and her family.

David Sedaris play, with Toby Wherry and Penelope Boyer.

Susanna Kaysen reads from her account of living at McLean psychiatric hospital for about two years, starting when she was eighteen. Her book, Girl, Interrupted, describes daily life on the ward.