Dishwasher Pete on Letterman.

Thomas Lynch reads from his book The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade.

Geoffrey Canada, author of the book Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence in America, talks about what it's like to carry a gun. He also talks about what poor neighborhoods in New York were like before the proliferation of handguns among young people.  When he grew up in the South Bronx, kids had fistfights in a very formal arrangement with formal rules that everyone lived by. He reads from his book and talks with Ira.

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

Ira with a girl gang member about the day she nearly died.

Sarah Vowell, on selling the secrets of art dealer Graham Arader.

Meema Spadola with Lou Zeidberg.

Rennie Sparks from the band The Handsome Family.

Host Ira Glass, with a recording of a 1962 Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr., appearance at the Villa Venice, a club outside Chicago. What's fascinating about Sinatra is how he is so many different people at once, and they're all on display in this recording: sentimental crooner, cruel woman-baiter, bully, goofball.

A history of the brief mayoral career of Harold Washington, and its lessons for black and white America, as told by people close to him. Many are activists and politicians: Lu Palmer, Judge Eugene Pincham, Congressman Danny Davis, then-alderman Eugene Sawyer.

Susan Bergman and the Christian convention. Susan is the author of Anonymity.

A hemophiliac teenager who tries to set world records and to motocross.

Writer David Sedaris on an unwelcome surprise in a toilet — a turd.

A family dreams of life in rural Maine, moves there, and then things get really complicated.

Ira with Lynnette Nyman, who, as a girl, recorded her parents fighting with a cassette recorder she got for Christmas.

Writer David Sedaris on parents' dreams and children's nightmares.

Sarah Vowell and her family.

The first part of Josh Seftel and Rich Robinson's documentary about South Africa. Josh meets people who may be distant South African relatives.

John Connors has very mixed emotions about attending a convention for viewers of the TV program Dark Shadows.

Paul Johnson, Carlos Appleby, and Sanantonio Brooks talk about how their housing project is like a small town.

Paul Tough visits Catherine Chalmers. She raises small animals and insects in her apartment, feeds them to each other, and photographs them eating each other.

Tapes from the Apology Line and interview with "Mrs. Apology," Marissa Bridge.