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

We give Danny Drennan, the writer behind the website Inquisitor Mediarama, a little assignment.

Radio producer Scott Carrier quit his job at a low moment in his life. His wife left him and took the kids.

When Susan Bergman wrote a book about her family's experience, other gay men tried to explain her father's actions to her.

Chicago writer Beau O'Reilly writes about a group of close friends who formed an activist group in the seventies. They split apart because of one woman.

Ira Glass worked for NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered for seventeen years, and shares a few thoughts on the devices he and his colleagues used to simulate the real world on those shows.

Host Ira Glass goes to Navy Pier to visit the clearance sales.

Host Ira Glass with some tape he recorded of a high school senior prom. Kids goof around in the car after the prom and get lost looking for a friend's house.

This American Life associate producer Peter Clowney visits a modern-day touring company of Hair. They don't just believe they're doing a job as professional actors. They're living as a modern-day tribe of hippies — with all the tensions of any communal living.

Susan Bergman's father was a family man, head of the church choir, and, secretly, having sex with men. He died before his children had a chance to really talk to him about what they should make of his hidden life.

Claudia Perez returns to talk about her year from a more personal perspective.

Excerpts from lessons found on old record, especially a Helen Gurley Brown disc called How to Love a Man, which instructs men on how to have an affair.

Bob and Dave were close childhood friends — until their relationship began to lead their peers to believe that it might be more than a friendship. The accusations led to Dave turning on Bob.

Seattle writer and syndicated sex columnist Dan Savage, on how there's a stigma against sissies even among gay men. Gay personals ads are filled with men who want "straight acting/straight appearing" partners.

The secret games delegates play to amuse themselves, differences between Republican and Democratic convention delegates, and more.

Ira meets the workers of the Wiener Circle; they're screaming and cursing at each other, and the customers, and they actually seem really happy. And then we meet some of the customers.

Ira takes a look at the remarkably successful $156 million renovation of Chicago's Navy Pier. He talks with seven employees working at the businesses on the pier.

Erika Yeomans sees a young man's photo in an art magazine and decides to track him down. Problem is: he's Dutch, he's a performance artist, and he's dead.

Chicago writer Cheryl Trykv on her own close encounter with Hollywood, the media, and a famous maid.

We hear campaign diaries from author Michael Lewis, who is on the campaign trail for the New Republic magazine.

Ira talks with Karen Hutt, Director of Religious Education for the First Unitarian Church of Chicago, who one Sunday gave a sermon at the church about her experience as the first black child to integrate the Philadelphia public school system. The sermon inspired a project: Hutt, along with Laura Finnegan, collected an oral history of the experiences of African American members of the congregation about their own experiences as the "first" integrators of their neighborhoods or organizations.

Ira went out on surveillance with a real private eye in Chicago expecting it to be drudge work with none of the glamour of movie detectives. He was wrong.

David Sedaris reads from his story "Naked." (21 minutes)

Eighteen-year-old Claudia Perez takes Ira on a tour of her Chicago neighborhood and looks at what 1995 was like for her community.