One Halloween, David Sedaris decides to skip all the fake monsters and ghosts and zombies and visit the real thing: dead people, in a morgue. (14 minutes)David’s latest book is Happy-Go-Lucky.

Host Ira Glass talks with Andy Woolworth, an executive vice president in charge of new product development at the world's largest manufacturer of mousetraps, Woodstrean Corporation, in Lititz, Pennsylvania. About once a month, Andy is contacted by someone who thinks he's invented a better mousetrap.

Davy Rothbart was on a 136-city tour appearing on morning TV talk shows to promote his book Found: The Best Lost, Tossed, and Forgotten Items from Around the World. Just before one appearance he had what seemed like a great idea at the time.

Dan Savage made a pledge over a decade ago that he hoped would just vanish. But it somehow returns from oblivion.

A couple uses a controversial therapy to train their son to love them.

Jack Hitt explains how President Bush's War on Terror changed the rules for prisoners of war and how it is that under those rules, it'd be possible that someone whose classified file declares that they pose no threat to the United States could still be locked up indefinitely—potentially forever!—at Guantanamo. (26 minutes).Clarification: When Seton Hall professor Baher Azmy discusses the classified file of his client, Murat Kurnaz, he is referring to information that had previously been made public and published in the Washington Post.

Host Ira Glass interviews the mother and daughter in a family who wished for years they could do something to stop their neighbor from all kinds of shocking behavior. Suddenly they get the power to decisively change things forever...and they have to decide whether they will.

A husband and wife face a decision about their autistic son's future, and whether he should continue to live with their family. 

In New Orleans, visitors can take a bus tour called "HURRICANE KATRINA: AMERICA'S GREATEST CATASTROPHE," put on by the Gray Line bus company. (The tour is also sometimes called "Hurricane Katrina: America's Worst Catastrophe.") It's designed for out-of-towners, but we asked a local to take the tour and give us their impressions.

The Lancet's new study of deaths in Iraq, by the same research team that did the earlier study, yielded an astounding number—650,000 civilian deaths. Producer Alex Blumberg talks to Ira about the debate over this new study.

Psychologist Harry Harlow sets out to prove, through a series of experiments with monkeys, that love is a key to normal development in children.

When Emily Helfgot was ten, her dad was a sex therapist on a call-in radio show, which thoroughly embarrassed her. He also kept a stack of Playboy magazines in their house, in plain sight.

Joseph Margulies, a lawyer for one of the detainees at Guantanamo, explains how the detention facility there was created to be an ideal interrogation facility. Any possible comfort, such as water or natural light, is controlled entirely by the interrogators.

Sixteen-year-old Catalina Puente, one of WNYC's Radio Rookies, gets caught up in a complete and total obsession when a student shows up at her high school looking just like Sam Horrigan, a little-known TV actor she likes. This story was produced by Czerina Patel at Radio Rookies.

Host Ira Glass talks with Rosie Schaap about an unlikely love affair between a dog and a parrot, and how the dog betrayed the bird's trust, never to regain it.

Writer Larry Doyle on a love that will not die, no matter how dead it is.

Host Ira Glass talks to Adam Stein about the very real cat-and-mouse game between his friends and the vice principal of his high school that preoccupied them throughout their high school careers.

Susan Drury tells the story of Chauncey Julius, who ended up in over his head completely by accident. As a high school student, Chauncey decided to turn his life around, only to be overwhelmed by all the attention he got for his achievements.

Michael Beaumier tells a story about a family member who keeps vanishing and returning. This is an excerpt from Michael's book I Know You're Out There.

Ira and playwright David Hauptschein took out advertisements in Chicago inviting people to come to a small theater with letters they've received, sent or found. People came for two nights, and read their letters onstage.

The New York advertising agency where Shalom Auslander works got an assignment from the State Department back in 2001: Sell American values to the Muslim world. Now they just have to figure out exactly what to say to millions of people they know absolutely nothing about.

Host Ira Glass talks to ordinary Iraqis about life in their country since the U.S. invasion. Every one of them has friends and relatives—civilians—who've been killed in the violence there.