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.

LuAnne Johnson is a teacher who sold her story to Hollywood and saw it made into the film and TV series Dangerous Minds, in which a character named LuAnne Johnson does things the real LuAnne believes are unethical and silly.

An excerpt from Spalding Gray's monologue It's a Slippery Slope. Gray has been called "America's premiere storyteller." His monologue Swimming To Cambodia was made into a feature film.

Nora Moreno with tapes of her father, a pioneer in Spanish-language broadcasting in America. Her mother fell in love with her father because of his poetic character on the radio, but in real life, the very things that attracted her to him over the radio drove them apart.

Jack Hitt's quest to find out the truth about the man who lived down the street from him 30 years ago in South Carolina: Gordon Langley Hall, a.k.a. Dawn Langley Hall Simmons.

In the second half of the show, she talks about her own cancer — cervical cancer that was diagnosed six months after her brother got sick. Julia eventually turned some of these vignettes into a one-woman show called God Said, Ha!, which Quentin Tarantino made into a movie and Julia released as a book.

Radio producer Dan Gediman's story about his older brother, "Alex Jones," who he idolized when they were kids. After many unsuccessful attempts to become a rock star, he finally made it in music, as a Tom Jones impersonator.

Ira speaks with Professor Glenn Loury. Loury failed to stand up for a light-skinned friend at a black unity rally in the sixties.

Found tape of a conversation about bringing back the dead.

The secret games delegates play to amuse themselves, differences between Republican and Democratic convention delegates, and more.

Sandra's father decides, at age 70, to take a Chinese wife.

The late Ron Brown, the former U.S. Secretary of Commerce, could have had an easy life, but chose instead to take on stressful, difficult tasks.

We hear campaign diaries from author Michael Lewis, who is on the campaign trail for the New Republic magazine.

Carmen Delzell on a deal she made with the devil when she turned 30.

Chicago playwright David Isaacson, on hating the Bulls.Then, Nancy Updike presents a sound portrait of a Philadelphia woman and her basketball trophies.

Writer David Sedaris remembers the days his mother and sister played armchair detective, and the odd crime wave that hit their own home. This story, titled "True Detective," appears in David's book Naked.

Host Ira Glass talks changing the name of the show from Your Radio Playhouse and stumbles on a more fundamental truth about naming things: The people with an investment in the name can be incredibly divisive. He consults television talk show host Joe Franklin for advice.

Writer Jack Hitt discovers that the world of dinosaurs is a man-made creation, a simulated world that may or may not accurately reflect what happened on earth 100 million years ago. Talking with dinosaur experts like Jack Horner (whose work was the basis of much of the film Jurassic Park), Hitt finds that most of what you think you know about dinosaurs is probably wrong, and that Americans' ideas about dinosaurs go through "fashions" that reflect the national mood: We believed dinosaurs were more aggressive when we were on the brink of World Wars One and Two.

David Sedaris reads one of his funniest and most affecting stories from his book Naked before a live audience. As an adolescent boy, David feared he might be a homosexual.

Kara instructs some of her male friends on the proper ways to treat a girl.

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

Michael Lewis, on McCain and Ifshin.

Host Ira Glass uses Italian author Umberto Eco's essay Travels in Hyperreality as a guidebook to American simulated worlds. Eco says that the urge to create these miniature simulated worlds is a very American impulse — a significant American aesthetic — and one that's not often discussed.