Our program ends with a story of knowing your enemy in a more domestic setting: In a marriage. Actor Matt Malloy reads the story by Etgar Keret. "Eight Percent of Nothing" is from a collection of stories called The Nimrod Flip-Out.

There's a whole nation where the idea of suckerdom permeates almost every aspect of culture and politics. Adam Davidson reports on the Israeli word "freier," which literally translates as sucker, but means much, much more.

We hear a tape that a man named David Cossin made for a woman in Italy named Allesandra whom he'd met during a week he spent there, and with whom he'd fallen in love. He sent her a dozen tapes, including one where he tries to convince her to move to New York and be with him.

How writer (and frequent This American Life contributor) David Sedaris and his family reacted when Sedaris's mother—a lifelong, unrepentant smoker—developed lung cancer. After a lifetime of barbed, funny remarks, no one in the family is prepared to talk about their feelings.

Ira Glass introduces this episode about... fish?

Some of us have tragedy thrust upon us. Some of us allow ourselves a few moments to contemplate the worst that could happen.

Host Ira Glass lays out the premise of this week's show.

David Sedaris, on his mother's lung cancer.

Ira's mom is invited to speak to a group of Jewish mothers who only discuss one topic: their relationships with their adult children.

Host Ira Glass plays recordings from the Satanic Prayer Line, and speaks to the line’s creator, Chris Allert.

Producer Emanuele Berry gets a text message from the other side of the crisis.

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.

Ira and his friend Danielle, whose family says they're eating fish when in fact it's turkey or chicken, for an unusual reason.

Valerie Kipnis tells Ira about riding the subway, shoulder-to-shoulder with someone she knows quite well, pretending she doesn’t see him.

On September 29th a medical researcher in Philadelphia fired off a simple, well-meaning tweet, and then barely thought twice about it. Little did she know that by doing that, she was perpetrating covert propaganda on behalf of the U.S. government.

Ira talks to Rick Clark, director of undergraduate admissions at the Georgia Institute of Technology, better known as Georgia Tech. Clark says the latest trend in misguided college admissions efforts: parents emailing and calling the admissions office, pretending to be their own children.

This week Southerners were still digging out in the wake of last week's tornados. David Kestenbaum, from our Planet Money team, heads to Tuscaloosa, Alabama where he finds that facts are not so easy to hold onto.

Starlee Kine tells the story of a man more obsessed with reruns than even she is. Director Trent Harris made a movie called The Beaver Trilogy.

Host Ira Glass interviews Lori Gottlieb about the time she sent a letter to a writer in a magazine, a letter packed with white lies.

Aimee Bender reads her story "The Rememberer," about a woman whose lover is undergoing reverse evolution. One day he's a man, the next, a salamander.

Host Ira Glass talks with Michael Beaumier, who runs the personals section of the Chicago Reader, and who functions as a kind of guardian angel for many of the singles who advertise in his paper.

In Seattle, Dan Savage and his boyfriend adopted a son, DJ. It was an open adoption, so the birth mother could keep in touch with her kid.

Sean Cole guest hosts. He was attacked in the street and happens to have a recording of the moment right afterwards.

Lissa Yellow Bird started searching for missing people after an oil worker disappeared from the reservation Lissa’s from. Since then, many Native American families have asked for Lissa’s help looking for their loved ones, too.