Host Ira Glass talks with "Jim Steel," who tells a story about the social rules at his high school in Wisconsin.

When she began working as a temp secretary in San Francisco, learning the computers, wasting time, Andrea put together a graph with Microsoft Excel. Its title: My Love Life: A Ten Year Span. It made her feel good.

Cassandra Smith has temptation in Kyoto.

Contributor David Sedaris tells a story about discovering the possibilities—and pitfalls—of travel by hitchhiking.

Guest host Neil Drumming wonders what it would be like to know exactly where he’s from.

Ira remembers the contentious family gatherings of holidays past - and how things have changed.

Host Ira Glass discusses what it means to peacefully transfer power from one president to the next. He points out one of the weirdest things about it, that the new president has to go and sleep in the same bedroom as the previous president.

Ira gives us a recent shortlist of things that feel almost too unreal to believe as we head into the national election.

Host Ira Glass talks to writer Mitchell S.

Host Ira Glass plays clips from Jessica Yu's documentary Men of Reenaction about Civil War reenactments, where the real battle is the one over who is properly authentic and who is not.

Writer/singer/performer Sandra Tsing Loh reads a story about a family vacation arranged by her mother, who believed that vacations couldn't be merely for leisure—they had to be educational. Which is how the family ended up vacationing in...Ethiopia.

Brett Leveridge was standing on the subway. A guy comes walking down the platform, stopping in front of each passenger and delivering a quiet verdict: "You're in.

In order to maintain their status as the friendliest, calmest people on the plane, flight attendants bicker mercilessly behind our backs. Then they cuddle up and sleep right next to each other in the same bed.

It's another not-so-great period in Scott's life. This time he takes a job inside his profession, as a producer for a national commercial radio program.

Sarah Vowell on the joy of making mix tapes of your favorite songs to send to loved ones. She spots an ad for someone who makes them for money. "Prostitute," she thinks.

Boen’s friend, Andrew, and his parents take what he learned in Part One, throw it into a blender, and push puree.

For a look at the nuts and bolts of government job creation, This American Life Senior Producer Julie Snyder and Planet Money correspondent Adam Davidson attend a meeting of the International Economic Developers Council in San Diego.

One way to understand the split inside the Republican party is to look at immigration. It’s this urgent, emotional issue for so much of the party these days.

Ira talks to Luke Huisenga, a Marine sniper who became a fan of Gilmore Girls while on deployment in Iraq.

When Jon Mooallem went to see his six-year-old daughter in a musical at her after-school program, he didn't know what to expect. But it certainly was not the performance saw.

Workshops on sexual assault and consent are hugely popular on college campuses around the country. Chana visits one of these workshops to find out what’s being taught, and more importantly, what college boys in particular have already learned about sex, back when they were kids.

After John and Raquel published their story, the U.S. Congress got involved.

Radio Diaries’ Joe Richman continues William Cimillo’s story and talks to his two sons about what it was like to have lived through the drama that ensued after their father’s big journey.

Comedian Marc Maron, who's been off drugs for more than 15 years, says he still thinks it's okay to laugh at funny drug stories. And then he tells us one of the funniest we heard while putting this show together.