There's this haven on the U.S. railroad—the Amtrak Quiet Car. You can't yammer on your cell phone in the Quiet Car, or yuck it up with your friends, or even talk above a murmur.

This American Life senior producer Julie Snyder found herself in a ten-month battle with her phone company, MCI Worldcom, which had overcharged her $946.36. She spent hours on hold in a bureaucratic nowhere.

Jonathan Goldstein's story about trouble in the Town of Bedrock. One day, when he's backing out of his driveway, Barney accidentally runs over and kills a dinosaur that belongs to his neighbor and best friend, Fred.

Host Ira Glass talks with Chris, who worked for a company that helped deaf people talk over the phone with hearing people. The deaf person would type what they wanted Chris to say, and Chris would say it, then type back the response from the hearing person on the line.

Josh Bearman grew up in California with his dad, stepmom, and brother. But they're not his whole family.

More tape of Chana and her father Bob Wiliford discussing all the things they've never talked about before. Though Chana grew up in Waco, Texas, she left to go to college in Philadelphia.

Nicole Graev, an assistant to the editor at a publishing house, needs to know if her job as an assistant is actually an educational career step or a waste of time. The things she's been doing as an assistant—answering phones, faxing—is entirely different than the skills she needs for the job she really wants: her boss's.

Ira tells the story of how Oscar Ramirez, a Guatemalan immigrant living near Boston, got a phone call with some very strange news about his past. A public prosecutor from Guatemala told Oscar that when he was three years old, he may have been abducted from a massacre at a village called Dos Erres.

Chris Garcia and his dad were driving home, listening to oldies, sharing a bag of chips. A totally familiar scene for them.

This past Christmas a story swept the internet about a football coach at a Christian high school in Texas who inspired his team's fans to root for the opposition: A team from the local juvenile correctional facility. Among the thousands of emails that the coach received in response to his actions, one stood out to him.

Dawna Lentz was a new employee at Quiznos sub shop in Seattle when the franchise owners just gave up. They stopped buying supplies, stopped answering their phones.

Jane Doe sent some questions for us to ask Chanel Miller. For years, Chanel was known as Emily Doe.

Paul was a cop. One night he was pulling second shift when he had a perfectly good idea: He'd stretch out in the back seat and take a little nap during his break.

Lawrence Wright is a reporter for the New Yorker Magazine, and an author of the bestselling book on Al Qaeda, The Looming Tower. He's also one of the few people in America who can say definitively that he was targeted by the U.S.

Foreign correspondent Jim Biederman reports from a cell phone inside the Louvre, in front of the Mona Lisa, on what people say while they're standing in front of some of the world's greatest works of art. It turns out to be pretty banal.

Modern-day fables of two different kinds of do-gooders during and after the 1994 genocide in the African country of Rwanda. Philip Gourevich, author of the book We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, tells first about international relief workers who served as "caterers" to some of the Hutu powers as they continued their policy of ethnic cleansing after fleeing to refugee camps.

Host Ira Glass tells the story of a report by the U.S. intelligence community back in October 2002 that declared that the likelihood of Saddam Hussein using weapons of massive destruction was very low for the "foreseeable future"...unless the U.S. were to launch a military attack on Iraq. In other words, the war to stop him from using weapons of mass destruction would probably cause the thing it was designed to prevent.

Rob Miller is a first lieutenant in the Marine Corps commanding a weapons platoon in "Charlie Company" of the First Battalion, Eighth Marines. He led his men recently in the battle of Fallujah, and in a recent satellite phone call, he told This American Life contributing editor Jack Hitt (who also happens to be his uncle) what we never seem to hear elsewhere: Details of what it's like to fight house-to-house in urban warfare.

When Eric Hayot was 23, he went on an exchange program to China one summer. He took an opera class on a lark, and before he knew it, he was on stage, singing the part of a famous judge.

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.