It's possible to turn off your emotions and go on autopilot for brief periods with the people you love, and it's possible to shut them down completely. Writer Dani Shapiro reads from her memoir Slow Motion: A True Story.

Gillian's story continues.

A story that takes place at the crossroads where art meets commerce—a place where we can ask the question: Is the art of commerce better than the art of art? Writer (and occasional screenwriter) Sandra Tsing Loh accompanies a Hollywood screenwriter as he tries to sell a movie idea—a comedy in the style of Liar Liar. (19 minutes)

This story is part memoir, part philosophical inquiry into the nature of not doing things. Writer Geoff Dyer had always wanted to write a biography about D.H.

A campaign diary from writer Michael Lewis from four years ago, about a politician you've heard a lot about: John McCain...and the story of a moment when the opposite of normal politics became normal politics.

Twenty-six-year-old Jose William Huezo Soriano—a.k.a. Weasel—grew up in Los Angeles.

Modern-day fables of two different kinds of do-gooders during and after the 1994 genocide in the African country of Rwanda. Philip Gourevich, author of the book We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, tells first about international relief workers who served as "caterers" to some of the Hutu powers as they continued their policy of ethnic cleansing after fleeing to refugee camps.

What do we do when we're not doing something? Not writing a book, not doing our jobs, not falling in love? Sometimes we just feel self-conscious. Sometimes we spend a lot of time explaining ourselves.

Yet another testimony to the power chickens have over our hearts and minds. Jack Hitt reports on an opera about Chicken Little.

Both Bonnie Gaunt and Marilyn Agee have been counting the length of time of all the events in the Bible, and through their calculations, they believe they have individually discovered the exact day that good Christians will be raptured directly to heaven. Bonnie's date: September 11, 1999; Marilyn's date: May 21, 1999.

Building everything that comprises modern life—constructing cities and suburbs both—means trampling nature. And that bothers some people.

The story of someone trying and trying to get close to The Real Thing, and why it was so difficult. Kelly McEvers was a newspaper writer here in Chicago and started to get interested in stories she was hearing about girl gang members.

Writer Achy Obejas reads a piece of short fiction from her book, We Came All the Way from Cuba So You Could Dress Like This? (11 minutes)

The tendency toward self-reinvention is so deep in American culture that we have an entire industry, a self-help industry, telling us how to transform ourselves into someone new. And usually, we see this as a positive thing.

Judges give their opinions of the drug sentencing laws. Terry Hatter is the Chief U.S.

What happens when a dad tries too hard to protect his child from disappointment and instead enthrall the child. With the best of intentions, New Yorker writer Lawrence Weschler did all that, and in the process accidentally broke his daughter's heart.

Kevin's story continues. We hear about his own rise and fall as a pimp, and how he failed in his attempt to be a different kind of pimp—a less cruel kind.

How believing in the end of the world can be the best thing that ever happens to you. Writer Sarah Vowell talks about three end-of-the-world groups she comes to know.

Over two decades ago, not long after he got out of Texas prison for robbery, Ray Hill got a job at his local public radio station, KPFT in Houston. He started a weekly program about Texas prisons that's now the leading muckraking voice in the state when it comes to exposing graft and corruption in prison facilities there.

Some improvements in their missionary work.

The true story of how a multinational chicken company turned a white man into a black man. The man they did it to? An old time Kentucky Colonel who liked to dress up as a Southern plantation owner in string tie and goatee, who happened to be their own spokesman.

We hear the history of why these drug laws were enacted from a firsthand witness. Eric Sterling was the lawyer in charge of drug laws for the House Judiciary Committee during the 1980s, when mandatory minimums were put in place.