Original fiction by Ira Sher about a group of children who find a man trapped in a well but decide not to get him any help.

The story of a woman whose husband lies to her compulsively. At some point, she starts to ask him questions that'll make him lie to her, just to amuse herself.

Fiction writer George Saunders reads his story "Offloading for Mrs Schwartz," from his book CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. It's the story of someone who can't get over the death of his ex-wife.

Radio producer Scott Carrier quit his job at a low moment in his life. His wife left him and took the kids.

Excerpts from lessons found on old record, especially a Helen Gurley Brown disc called How to Love a Man, which instructs men on how to have an affair.

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

A first-grader explains to host Ira Glass how bullies become bullies. His explanation: They read a book on how to be a bully.

David Sedaris continues his story.

Radio producer Dan Gediman's story about his older brother, "Alex Jones," who he idolized when they were kids. After many unsuccessful attempts to become a rock star, he finally made it in music, as a Tom Jones impersonator.

Susan Bergman returns to read an excerpt from her book.

Even the most innocent office job can take over your life. A story by fiction writer Daniel Orozco about one such job.

David Sedaris reads one of his funniest and most affecting stories from his book Naked before a live audience. As an adolescent boy, David feared he might be a homosexual.

This American Life producer Nancy Updike on a family where the father was one kind of sissy and the son was another kind, and how the family was destroyed despite the fact that no one wanted it to be.

Ira describes a wedding held in the dingy basement room of the City of Chicago's Marriage Court.

Nora Moreno with tapes of her father, a pioneer in Spanish-language broadcasting in America. Her mother fell in love with her father because of his poetic character on the radio, but in real life, the very things that attracted her to him over the radio drove them apart.

This American Life associate producer Peter Clowney visits a modern-day touring company of Hair. They don't just believe they're doing a job as professional actors. They're living as a modern-day tribe of hippies — with all the tensions of any communal living.

Sex advice columnist Dan Savage tells the odd story of how he became a Republican state convention delegate even though he's a Democrat and gay.

LA writer/performer Sandra Tsing Loh discovers that a local rock band has recorded a song about her own father, wildly misinterpreting who he is. They think he's a free spirit; she believes he's a worried, miserly grump.

David Rakoff tells about his experience playing Sigmund Freud in the window of upscale Barney's department store in Manhattan. For Christmas. This was the first of dozens of appearances on our show by David Rakoff, who died in 2012.

A talk with a father who's deceiving his own children.

Kara instructs some of her male friends on the proper ways to treat a girl.

Ira talks about one of the purest expressions of ordinary folks' desire to be detectives: a child's detective notebook — full of information, secret codes, cases, and an application to become an FBI agent.

We give Danny Drennan, the writer behind the website Inquisitor Mediarama, a little assignment.

Host Ira Glass plays clips from Jessica Yu's documentary Men of Reenaction about Civil War reenactments, where the real battle is the one over who is properly authentic and who is not.