An excerpt from Heather Woodbury's epic eight-hour solo show WhatEver: An American Odyssey in Eight Acts.

Chicago Playwright Bryn Magnus with a quintessential gun story from his childhood in Wisconsin.  It contains both the fear of guns and the pleasure of shooting one.

David Sedaris recounts his shameful career as a performance artist. Recorded before a live audience by KUOW Seattle.

Writer David Sedaris on an unwelcome surprise in a toilet — a turd.

Host Ira Glass, with a recording of a 1962 Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr., appearance at the Villa Venice, a club outside Chicago. What's fascinating about Sinatra is how he is so many different people at once, and they're all on display in this recording: sentimental crooner, cruel woman-baiter, bully, goofball.

Chicago writer Cheryl Trykv on her own close encounter with Hollywood, the media, and a famous maid.

Dael Orlandersmith's funny, moving story from her Obie-award winning show Beauty's Daughters. Though she's an African-American woman, she transforms herself in this story into a loudmouthed Italian guy. At a wedding, this character meets a woman who reminds him of who he was before he got married and had kids: a guy who loved jazz, a different guy than he is now.

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.

Julia talks about her brother Michael's cancer. He was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, stage four.

A story by Cheryl Trykv, read by the author in front of a live audience at The Hothouse, illustrates what it means when the sinner makes no attempt to seek forgiveness.