A lot of stories from your life, the more you tell them, the less power they have over you. But cringe stories often don't seem to lose their power over time.

Alex Vindman became the face of the first Trump impeachment after he reported to his superiors that Trump had asked the President of Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden, the son of his political opponent. At the time, Vindman believed that his Congressional testimony would not jeopardize him; now, he and his wife Rachel are having second thoughts.

When she was in kindergarten, Jennifer, along with her brother and mother,was held hostage by an armed gunman for four days. Their father was a drugdealer and had disappeared with a bunch of cocaine that belonged to someoneelse.

Robert Granger was a patient in Pod 4 for several weeks. During that time, his daughter learns something about him she'd never realized before.

The Never Use Alone hotline was set up so that drug users can call if they are say, using heroin by themselves. Someone will stay on the line with them in case they overdose.

An act named after two TV shows, one where women sit around and talk, the other where men sit around and talk. If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, when you switch from one planet to another, what do you need to know about love? We hear from several transsexual men who've done exactly that.

Writer Quincy Troupe talks about how, as a boy, he idolized Miles Davis, and how, as a man, he actually became one of Davis's closest friends. And how his picture of the man changed.

Writer David Sedaris's true account of two Christmas seasons he spent working as an elf at Macy's department store in New York.  When a shorter version of this story first aired on NPR's Morning Edition, it generated more tape requests than any story in the show's history to that point.

Bailey Leavitt comes from a family of carnies. For her, one of the most thrilling things she looks for at the fair is someone who is really good at luring people into spending money at their stand.

Reporter Aaron Reiss found a woman that an entire community calls, in order to find out the names of the very streets they're walking on. She's the gatekeeper for a series of secret underground maps of New York City.

Host Ira Glass talks with Adam Mansbach about what happened when he went looking for an apartment and was mistaken for someone else. Adam is the author of the book Go The F*** To Sleep.

A Holiday Inn comes up with a brilliant scheme to increase their roomservice orders. Former room service waiter Cliff Doerksen says there was only one problem with the plan...and it came down to a big, ridiculous, floppy hat.

When Janice Powell's husband went to prison, he wrote her a letter every day for eight years. When he was at home, he'd drink and get violent, but Janice said that the years in prison were the best of their relationship.

Two stories of communication where the words really don't matter: Elizabeth Gilbert tells the story of the worst wedding toast she's ever heard of. This story first appeared on the former website Other People's Stories.

Host Ira Glass plays a strange voicemail left by a 96-year-old surgeon about a letter that was written five decades ago. (6 minutes)

Yowei’s story continues. Meron learns whether or not the kidnappers can be trusted to keep their word when she pays the ransom, and what will become of the hostages.

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.

Host Ira Glass plays a voicemail containing something very common but veryrare to hear: an elected official directly asking a lobbyist for money.

Host Ira Glass talks to Tim Jaccard, who used to be a police medic. The calls he hated most were all the same: "Baby not breathing." So in 1998, he helped write the first "safe haven" law, which allows mothers to safely abandon their babies without getting into trouble.

Kevin Murphy is a college student in Idaho who stutters. Using the power of radio editing, he and the production staff of This American Life removed his pauses, stutters and repeats so that he could record a message the way it seems the rest of the world would like to hear him sound.

Ira reads an excerpt from James Ellroy's memoir My Dark Places.

Sara Corbett's father-in-law Dick is 81. And he's become obsessed with a limbo most of us hate – the music he hears whenever he's on hold.

Our producer Zoe Chace goes to Fairview Heights, Illinois, where Planned Parenthood has opened a massive new abortion clinic just across the river from Missouri. Abortion is banned in Missouri and lots of the surrounding states now that Roe has been overturned.