Ira talks to Joel Gold, a psychologist and author, about a strangely common delusion known as the "Truman Show Delusion," in which patients believe that they are being filmed, 24/7, for a national reality television program.

Many couples eventually encounter this problem: One person in the couple trots out the same story over and over, and the other person has to just listen. But what do the stories we tell in front of our significant others mean, and what do the significant others really think of them? Ira talks to three couples about the stories they've each told and heard countless times, and why.

Anthony Swofford reads an excerpt from his memoir, Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles, about his experience fighting in the first Gulf War in 1991, as a Marine sniper.

Comedian, performer and author Dave Hill gets the message, loud and clear, from a Gatorade bottle on a subway platform. Dave is the author of Tasteful Nudes ... and Other Misguided Attempts at Personal Growth and Validation.

Actor Matt Malloy reads a short piece of fiction called "Shoes," about a boy trying not to be a turncoat. It's from Etgar Keret's book of short fiction The Busdriver Who Wanted to Be God, and Other Stories.

Ira talks about two live shows that This American Life put on in the early days, both co-hosted by David Hauptschein.

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.

David Sedaris wishes he could take back a wish. He's the author of Me Talk Pretty One Day and other books.

One day comic Jay Larson's phone rang. And the people on the other end of the line thought they knew who they were talking to.

Two college baseball teams with horrible losing streaks — a combined 141 games — are scheduled to play each other.

From England, Ruby Wright has a story of an affair where—even years after it ended—it wasn't much discussed. Ruby Wright's radio show Ruby's Chicky Boil-Ups airs every other Sunday on Radionowhere.

Producer Alix Spiegel talks to one of her closest friends, Sarah Blust, about the time Sarah met a stranger who, unbeknownst to her, had already spent years thinking about her. (29 minutes)

Hillary Frank explains how an invitation to a business meeting, sent through the mail in 1963, kept two sides of a family from speaking to each other for most of the second half of the 20th Century.

A short story by Jhumpa Lahiri, from her book of short stories The Interpreter of Maladies. The story is read by Mira Nair, director of the movies Mississippi Masala, Monsoon Wedding, and others.

One great thing about staying in a camp of 130 other Christians is the much-better-than-in-school chance of meeting a nice, cute Christian boy.

One of the 590,000 casualties of U.S. Covid-19 this year was Leiah Danielle Jones.

What does “thank you” actually look like? And who gets one? For Flato Alexander and other essential workers, all sorts of symbols that hadn’t bothered them much before suddenly became unbearable.

A bunch of high school students gets taken to see a movie that’s supposed to teach them about history. But they end up learning about a lot of other stuff instead.

Producer Chana Joffe-Walt talks to researcher Mary Koss about how she came to see a thing that others couldn’t, and about what she did with that knowledge. (15 minutes)

Chana and Alex tell what happened next, when technocrats in Germany andother solvent European countries tried to fix the crisis by actuallyenforcing the original rules for Euro Zone membership. It turned out thateven determining the real deficit in Greece was no easy task.

Ira continues with Cole Lindbergh and the hundred teenagers who work for himin the games department at Worlds of Fun. We watch them compete againsteach other to see who can do the most business, in Cole's Sweet Sixteenbracket tournament, which pits all 32 games in the park against each other.

When a pet dies, to what degree can it be replaced by another? And to what degree can pets replace people in our lives? David Sedaris tells this story of cats and dogs and other animals.

Ira Glass travels through Israel with Adam Davidson, who speaks Hebrew and has countless Israeli cousins and other family members. They find that the entire country has moved to the right in reaction to Palestinian violence.