The story of a typical American family—imaginary poultry—and a handpuppet.

Last year, a woman named Karen Davis started a national letter writing campaign to try to get This American Life to stop the very program we are broadcasting today—the annual Poultry Slam.

Ira with chicken photographer Tamara Staples.

Michael Stumm on the uses of chickens in South African sangoma (witch doctor) culture.

When is a chicken your friend? When is he your dinner? This American Life's former webmeister Elizabeth Meister talks with Kamiko Overs, an 11-year-old girl at the annual poultry exhibition run by the American Poultry Association in Columbus, Ohio. Elizabeth Meister is a producer with Long Haul Productions.

Host Ira Glass point out that it's not enough this time of year that we eat millions of turkeys. Someone also went to the trouble to make up a song about turkeys getting the supernatural power to play baseball.

The story of a typical American family, and how their family dynamic has reorganized itself around an imaginary duck, invented in childhood, who somehow stayed alive well into adulthood.  (14 minutes)

Scharlette Holdman's story continues, in which she and the rest of a legaldefense team try to save a man on death row by finding a star witness — achicken with a specific skill.

Ira accompanies photographer Tamara Staples as she attempts to photograph chickens in the style of high fashion photography. The chickens are not very cooperative. (15 minutes)Tamara's photos have been collected in a book, The Magnificent Chicken: Portraits of the Fairest Fowl.