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Prologue

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.

Act One: Prisoner Of Love

Shant Kenderian reads from his memoir 1001 Nights In the Iraqi Army: The True Story of a Chicago Student Held as a POW By the Americans During Desert Storm. During the first Persian Gulf war, Shant (reluctantly) fought for Saddam Hussein.

Act Two: The Diary Of Mrs. Sam Horrigan.

Sixteen-year-old Catalina Puente, one of WNYC's Radio Rookies, gets caught up in a complete and total obsession when a student shows up at her high school looking just like Sam Horrigan, a little-known TV actor she likes. This story was produced by Czerina Patel at Radio Rookies.

Prologue

Host Ira Glass talks to film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader about an anonymous love letter that turned out to be very different than it seemed.

Prologue

We hear Billie Holliday, Keely Smith and Leo Reisman (with Anita Boyer) asking the musical question, "What Is This Thing Called Love?" And, reporter Sean Cole talks about love with Joe and Helen Garland, who fell in love during World War II, but married other people. Thirty years later they met again, felt the same love they felt when they were young, divorced their respective spouses, and finally married each other.

Act One: Inside The Romance Industry

Robin Epstein visits people who define this thing called love—for a living. She attends the annual convention of the Romance Writers of America.

Act Two: View From The Other Half

An act named after two TV shows, one where women sit around and talk, the other where men sit around and talk. If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, when you switch from one planet to another, what do you need to know about love? We hear from several transsexual men who've done exactly that.

Act Three: A Love Story

Sarah Vowell tells "The Greatest Love Story of the 20th Century," Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash.

Prologue

Host Ira Glass talks with Michael Beaumier, who runs the personals section of the Chicago Reader, and who functions as a kind of guardian angel for many of the singles who advertise in his paper.

Act Two: On The Border Between Good And Bad

Another story of someone using the word love as they try to make sense of things. Russell Banks reads an edited version of his short story "Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story," which appears in its full version in his collection The Angel on the Roof.

Act Three: Mr. Fun

Jonathan Goldstein and Heather O'Neill tell the true story of what happens when a person tries to intrude on a idyllic family of two, one of whom loves him, one of whom does not. For the first few years Jonathan knew Heather, her daughter Arizona was not very fond of him.

Prologue

We hear a tape that a man named David Cossin made for a woman in Italy named Allesandra whom he'd met during a week he spent there, and with whom he'd fallen in love. He sent her a dozen tapes, including one where he tries to convince her to move to New York and be with him.

Act Four: Love Story

David Cossin's and Allesandra Pomarico's story from the prologue continues. We hear more of David's tapes, and they both tell us how successful the tapes were.

Act Four: You Call That Love?

There is that moment when you're falling for someone, before either of you says the word love...but when you both FEEL it. But then once the word love is applied to a feeling...is it possible we're all actually referring to different feelings? Jonathan Goldstein tells a story about what if the word love didn't exist.