A story about how the adult children in Sandra Tsing Loh's family deal with her father.

Jack Hitt's quest to find out the truth about the man who lived down the street from him 30 years ago in South Carolina: Gordon Langley Hall, a.k.a. Dawn Langley Hall Simmons.

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

Michael Lewis continues readings from his diaries of Morry Taylor's Presidential campaign.

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.

Writer David Sedaris's true account of two Christmas seasons he spent working as an elf at Macy's department store in New York.  When a shorter version of this story first aired on NPR's Morning Edition, it generated more tape requests than any story in the show's history to that point.

Writer Jack Hitt discovers that the world of dinosaurs is a man-made creation, a simulated world that may or may not accurately reflect what happened on earth 100 million years ago. Talking with dinosaur experts like Jack Horner (whose work was the basis of much of the film Jurassic Park), Hitt finds that most of what you think you know about dinosaurs is probably wrong, and that Americans' ideas about dinosaurs go through "fashions" that reflect the national mood: We believed dinosaurs were more aggressive when we were on the brink of World Wars One and Two.

Carmen Delzell/Jay Allison's story on a guitar player.

Sherman Alexie's story "Because My Father was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play the Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock." (15 minutes)

Jack Hitt reviews the strange case of William Kane, his mistress, his family, and fifteen vials of frozen sperm.

Host Ira Glass brings together a panel of Republicans to discuss their lack of excitement about then-presumptive Republican Presidential nominee Bob Dole.

Anthropologists agree that humans stopped being animals when they started walking upright, on two legs. But scientists don't agree on why our ancestors did this.

Eighteen-year-old correspondent Claudia Perez goes to an audition where a thousand Mexican women and girls dress up to play the slain Mexican pop star Selena in an upcoming film about her life. Feelings about Selena run so high that when her fans talk about her, they often cry.

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

David Sedaris reads from his story "Naked." (21 minutes)

Ira talks with Karen Hutt, Director of Religious Education for the First Unitarian Church of Chicago, who one Sunday gave a sermon at the church about her experience as the first black child to integrate the Philadelphia public school system. The sermon inspired a project: Hutt, along with Laura Finnegan, collected an oral history of the experiences of African American members of the congregation about their own experiences as the "first" integrators of their neighborhoods or organizations.

Chicago performance artist John Conners reads from a 1942 book called How To Improve Your Personality, from a chapter instructing men on how to avoid being sissies.

More campaign diaries from The New Republic's Michael Lewis.

Chicago playwright Beau O'Reilly goes with Ira to the Scottie Pippen Dodge Store.Then, singer/songwriter/playwright Jeff Dorchen on Niketown.

Ira takes a Medieval scholar from the University of Chicago, Michael Camille, to Medieval Times — a chain of fake castles where visitors eat Medieval food and drink Medieval Pepsi and watch a supposed recreation of a Medieval jousting tournament. The scholar finds that there are many historical inaccuracies, but that Medieval Times does capture something essential and interesting about the spirit of the Middle Ages.

A reading from the zine Motorbooty about the crisis of World Band Overpopulation. Then, This American Life contributor Sarah Vowell on someone who is not part of the world band overpopulation problem: Scott Lee, the world's greatest fan of the Fastbacks, a respected, semi-obscure Seattle alternative band.

Temporary employment agencies' business has exploded in the last few years as corporations lay off their full-time employees, especially technical workers. This American Life "hired" two temp workers, Lee and Tito, to document their experiences as temps. Ira invites Tito and Lee into the studio to spin some music "appropriate" for temp employees.

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.