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.

Host Ira Glass talks to Chicago Tribune newspaper columnist Amy Dickinson ("Ask Amy"), the heir to Ann Landers, as she reads letters from those readers who don't yet know their love is doomed.

Jonathan Goldstein retells the original sink-or-swim story, the one about Noah and the flood. Jonathan is host of the CBC radio show WireTap.

When you're powerless, you think a lot about the powerful figures above you. Especially when their actions just make no sense.

A friend tells Jonathan Goldstein how a trip with a pot-bellied pig ended up revealing his character and making his girlfriend leave. Jonathan Goldstein is the host of the radio show Wiretap on the CBC, where a version of this story originally aired.

Television comedy writer Tami Sagher describes what can happen when you sit on a joke for years, as she did, before the perfect opportunity to tell it comes along.

Some of the scariest stories happen when fluffy, innocent creatures turn murderously evil. Producer Alex Blumberg tells one such story, about a raccoon gone bad.

When Gene Cheek was ten years old, his mother began dating a black man. It was 1961, in North Carolina.

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.

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.

Nellie Thomas sold ammunition illegally on the South side of Chicago. He made a good living—in cash.

It was two months into the tour. Katie Else and the rest of the Riverdance cast had been performing eight shows a week. They decided to pool their money for the Mega-Millions lottery.

Alex Kotlowitz reports on a woman with the power to change two people's lives...and at the height of her power, she doesn't even know she has it. Alex is the author of Never a City So Real and other books.

This parrot story began as a journalism school assignment. Then, for reporters Alex Lane and Eric Holm, it became something much bigger.