Michael Lewis on duck hunting.

A history of the brief mayoral career of Harold Washington, and its lessons for Black and white America, as told by people close to him. Many are activists and politicians: Lu Palmer, Judge Eugene Pincham, Congressman Danny Davis, and then-alderman Eugene Sawyer.

Sandy Tolan interviewed Susan's friends and family to make an unusual and powerful documentary about who she was and about the world she inhabited.

Writer David Sedaris on parents' dreams and children's nightmares.

The day Lawrence Steger left the AIDS clinic for the big road trip.

Jack Hitt reports on one woman's opera about Chicken Little.

Ira with Lynnette Nyman, who, as a girl, recorded her parents fighting with a cassette recorder she got for Christmas.

Geoffrey Canada, author of the book Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence in America, talks about what it's like to carry a gun. He also talks about what poor neighborhoods in New York were like before the proliferation of handguns among young people.  When he grew up in the South Bronx, kids had fistfights in a very formal arrangement with formal rules that everyone lived by. He reads from his book and talks with Ira.

Cheryl Trykv hears she's gonna live.

An interracial couple takes a plantation tour.

First, an interview with Jim Nelson, then, an interview with Eli, a computer hacker who was thrown in prison by federal authorities for his crimes.

The small town dilemma.

A medieval village, a 1900-pound brass kettle, marauding visigoths, and a plan to drench invaders with boiling oil that goes awry. From Ron Carlson's book The Hotel Eden, read by Chicago actor Jeff Dorchen.

Karl T. Wright's and Wendy Miller's game show wedding.

Singles in Agriculture. By reporter Liz Weil and Alix Spiegel.

Short fiction by George Saunders.

Host Ira Glass explains that today's show begins in 1865 and ends today. Ira reads briefly from Lincoln's Second Inaugural address, which describes slavery as America's Original Sin of sorts.

How journalist Philip Weiss came to agree with some Clinton conspiracy theorists but not to follow their cause. With Paul Tough.

Dishwasher Pete, author of the book Dishwasher: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States, went to the National Restaurant Association convention on assignment from This American Life.

Scott Carrier visits a courtroom where teenagers are tried and convicted by their teenage peers in Tucson, Arizona.

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.