What happens when you want your dad to change—and he wants to change, too—but there's literally nothing that can be done to change him. Jon Sarkin was a chiropractor with workaholic tendencies.

Paul Tough visits Catherine Chalmers. She raises small animals and insects in her apartment, feeds them to each other, and photographs them eating each other.

This American Life contributor Paul Tough visits Catherine Chalmers. She raises small animals and insects in her apartment, feeds them to each other, and photographs them eating each other.

Sarah Vowell puts her foot down. She says that contrary to all the wide-eyed voyeurs we've heard up until this point in the program, reading other people's mail is wrong, simply wrong.

Milton Reid works as a freelance muralist in one of the largest housing projects in America, Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes. For fifty to two hundred dollars, he'll paint a mural on a resident's living room wall, or in their kitchen, or in the bathroom.

Alex Melamid and Vitaly Komar hired a polling firm to investigate what people want to see in paintings. Then, using the data, they painted what people want.

Foreign correspondent Jim Biederman reports from a cell phone inside the Louvre, in front of the Mona Lisa, on what people say while they're standing in front of some of the world's greatest works of art. It turns out to be pretty banal.

Ira with chicken photographer Tamara Staples.

Artist Julie Laffin talks about the inspiration for her "kissing projects." Jessica Yu's film Breathing Lessons is about Mark O'Brien, a man using an "iron lung." In this excerpt, Mark talks about the yearning he tries to quell through the use of sex surrogates. Poet Luis Rodriguez reads his poem "Waiting." Writer Dolores Wilbur tells a story of wanting love.

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)

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.

The story of a series of misunderstandings with very dire consequences. Shaheen was stopped by the police, who looked at what was in his car and before Shaheen knew it, he'd come to the attention of some of the highest ranking officials in the Defense Department.

Sarah Vowell, on selling the secrets of art dealer Graham Arader.

Food writer Jonathan Gold tells what it's like to panfry a chicken—with a live chicken watching you the entire time.

Ira discusses James Comey’s Senate testimony this week, testimony that called the president a liar. And producer Sean Cole talks with Theo Greenly about a lie that bothered him for a while, a lie involving his cousin, an artist named Kenny Scharf.

Recently, host Ira Glass and his friend Etgar Keret were at an exhibit of photography by Cindy Sherman, and a woman came up to Etgar claiming to be Cindy Sherman. Then she said she wasn't.

Reporter Paul Tough talks with Aaron Hsu-Flanders, an acknowledged master in the field of animal balloons, who says that artistic jealousies have ruined his life. Even in the world of latex giraffes and doggies, there are artistic rivalries and bitterness.

The most innocent possible student uprising imaginable...documented by an actual student, Hillary Frank, using the crude tools of a telephone answering machine and a shiny red boom box.

Painter Schandra Singh usually sells her paintings to wealthy art collectors. So when she gets a letter from a father of a boy with autism, saying his son loves her work, she decides to do a trade with him, one of her sketches for one of his.

Jon Ronson tells the story of how his parents decided to commission a family portrait, and how things went awry because of the brilliant but troubled local artist they hired for the job. In the story, Jon circles in a reluctant orbit around his parents, and his parents are in a rather energetic orbit of their own.

Host Ira Glass talks with writer David Sedaris at the Louvre in Paris. David's never set foot inside, though he lives just a few minutes away.

In a way, it's the most classic cat-and-mouse game of all: A nimble graffiti writer dashes out into the night to leave his mark. Watching and waiting for him are the stronger—if less agile—NYPD Vandal Squad, whose sole mission is their arrest.

More of Alexa Junge and how Moss Hart's autobiography changed her life. She followed his path, learned specific lessons, and had a vision of him that was absolutely clear—until she met his widow.