Seattle writer and syndicated sex columnist Dan Savage, on how there's a stigma against sissies even among gay men. Gay personals ads are filled with men who want "straight acting/straight appearing" partners.

An original radio drama called "Kathleen on the Carpet," in which animals talk and hold their own "animal court." It's a comedy by David Sedaris, starring our own radio theater company, the Pinetree Gang.

Ira meets the workers of the Wiener Circle; they're screaming and cursing at each other, and the customers, and they actually seem really happy. And then we meet some of the customers.

When Susan Bergman wrote a book about her family's experience, other gay men tried to explain her father's actions to her.

Chicago writer/musician Rennie Sparks, a member of the independent band The Handsome Family, reads "Skanks," a story of a girl struggling in a situation where some rules are strict, but other rules are up for grabs.

Author and kindergarten teacher (and MacArthur Genius Grant recipient) Vivian Paley tells the story of an experiment she conducted in her classroom to make children less cruel to each other. She instituted a rule: "You can't say 'You can't play.'" In other words, if two children are playing, and a third child comes over and wants to join them, they can't tell him or her to get lost.

Susan Bergman's father was a family man, head of the church choir, and, secretly, having sex with men. He died before his children had a chance to really talk to him about what they should make of his hidden life.

Greg Whitehead, with screams from the This American Life audience.

Sketches from the neo-futurists on the subject of double lives.

Ira continues the story about his conversation with his mom. Then he calls her up on the air.

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

Two-and-a-half years after Jack Hitt wrote the story that makes up Act One of our show, he returned to the tale of Dawn Langley Simmons.

One of the boys from the book There Are No Children Here goes back to his old neighborhood across from the Convention site.

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

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.

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.

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

Host Ira Glass follows the last month of rehearsals of Oak Park and River Forest High School's production of Neil Simon's Lost In Yonkers.

Julia talks about her brother Michael's cancer. He was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, stage four.

A girl who adored her father tries to figure out what to think after he takes some of her college money and lies to her about it. Also, a woman whose fiancé runs up $10,000 in credit card charges on her Visa card and vanishes.

An excerpt from Your Radio is Haunted. (6 minutes)

Chicago writer Beau O'Reilly writes about a group of close friends who formed an activist group in the seventies. They split apart because of one woman.