Host Ira Glass explains that today's show begins in 1865 and ends today. Ira reads briefly from Lincoln's Second Inaugural address, which describes slavery as America's Original Sin of sorts.

Reporter Chenjerai Kumanyika visits Savannah, Georgia to learn about the city’s popular ghost tours. He’s heard the tourist attractions actually include the brutal reality of slavery.

Reporter Jon Ronson tells the story of how, in the immediate wake of September 11, he became convinced that a man he'd done a story on was responsible for the Anthrax attacks in America. So he did something he'd never done before, he ratted out his source to the FBI.

Bim Adewunmi talks about the feeling of now.

Over the last few years, there’s been a flood of kids from Central America who’ve arrived in the United States by themselves. With no adults.

Davy Rothbart reads from letters, notes, scraps of paper and school papers, which have been lost by their original owners. He collects and publishes things like this in his magazine, Found Magazine.

Sometimes even when you live through something, it can be hard to see it for what it is. Reporter Katie Worth has a story about a 7th-grader in that position.

Host Ira Glass tells the story of Marisela and Yadira, who were honors students in high school. They wanted to go to the best colleges, but they couldn't get federally-funded scholarships because they weren't U.S. citizens; they had come from Mexico when they were little.

Sarah Vowell tells the lost story behind a patriotic song, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." An early version of the song celebrated an American terrorist. She's accompanied by Jon Langford and the band.

An audio diary of two people using the classified ads to find jobs. Produced by Joe Richman, the awarding winning producer of the series Radio Diaries.

If you haven't spent much time in the southwest, you may not know about this, but there are these border patrol checkpoints that are just in the middle of interstate highways and other roads... not at the border. They're as far as a hundred miles away.

Ira talks with Lee Qi, who came to America from China. He worked in Chinese restaurants in small towns, live in tiny apartments with other illegal immigrants who worked there as well—apartments that were sometimes in the back of the restaurants.

This is a story of a father and son—told by the son, Juan Zaldivar, who was born in Cuba. Juan has spent the past four years shooting a movie about his father, to try to reassure him that he did the right thing to leave Cuba with his family in the 1980s and come to America.

The first in a series of pieces in the coming months on This American Life: Non-journalists covering aspects of the Presidential campaign. First up: Chicago playwright David Isaacson presents a piece on Pat Buchanan.

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. (39 minutes)Harold Washington died on November 25, 1987.  This show was first broadcast ten years later, in 1997.

Producer Aviva DeKornfeld talks to Ranjani Srinivasan, who tells the story of how her life was transformed over five days via a series of events that started out confusing and escalated to frightening. (25 minutes)

Sarah Vowell tells the story of General Lafayette's triumphant reunion with America, after becoming really, really unpopular in his native France. Sarah's is the author of “Lafayette in the Somewhat United States” among other books.

Comedian W. Kamau Bell has two daughters, and tries to figure out just how much about the violent history of racism and oppression his four-year-old can handle.

We hear a quick rundown of all the ways that Christian conservatives are making headway in advancing their values as public policy, why they think total separation of church and state is not what the founding fathers intended. And why they're wrong.

When an Arkansas National Guard Unit is sent off to Iraq, they assume they're going to help rebuild the country, since they're trained as an engineering unit. But once they arrive, they find themselves in a combat zone, unprepared and ill-equipped.

Host Ira Glass spent America’s presidential election in the swing state of Michigan, where he found very little dispute over the ballot count from Republican poll challengers in Detroit now that they are doing the counting themselves. (8 minutes)

Ira goes to the courtroom of Abraham Lincoln Marovitz, who, at 93, presides over the ceremony to make people citizens. In this setting, it's hard to talk about America as it is.

The journalist E. Jean Carroll is in court this week with her rape case against Donald Trump.