When Larry leaves his old life behind and joins a monastery, Ethan struggles to understand his best friend's decision.

Reporter Scott Carrier does a story about Harvey "Job" Matusow.

A Hollywood TV producer tries to convince a church of evangelical Christians to sell out a member of their own congregation. Matt Malloy reads. He was one of the stars of the acclaimed independent film In the Company of Men.Also in this act: Dickens vs.

Susan Bergman and the Christian convention. Susan is the author of Anonymity.

Binjamin Wilkomirski and New York writer Blake Eskin try and figure out if they are related. NOTE: A few years after this interview aired, Binjamin Wilkomirski and his Holocaust memoir Fragments were shown to be fabrications. Blake Eskin chronicled this story in his 2002 book A Life In Pieces: The Making and Unmaking of Binjamin Wilkomirski.

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.

Mary and Manfred Rauer have been married 22 years. He's a devout Christian, goes to church every week, reads the Bible every day, was head of his congregation.

Host Ira Glass talks to Amanda, who's 16 and lives with her mom in a Christian commune in Chicago.

A documentary by Cecilia Vaisman and Christina Egloff, with Jay Allison, about a white woman named Carolyn Wren Shannon, who grew up hating blacks in a Catholic neighborhood, and how her attitudes change.

Ira talks with a gang kid who turned to Jesus with the same ferocity and dedication with which he served his old street gang.

Producer Nancy Updike with Ki Kim, who's not afraid of walking on coals. But maybe he should have been.

Kevin Kelly is interviewed.

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

An Orthodox Jew talks about whether Hasidic Judaism is like an obsession.

Scott Carrier documents a group in Manti, Utah, that left the Mormon church and formed its own polygamous church. The members started fighting, broke up, and no longer speak.

Ira reaches current-day Dave, who is a born-again Christian living with his parents. According to Dave, Bob was at fault for the breakdown in their relationship, because Bob had decided to become friends with someone else.

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.

Peter Clowney reports on Christmas at the Faith Tabernacle Baptist Church. Music from Faith Tabernacle Baptist Church all through the hour.

Glen Fitzgerald, a Chicago missionary who works with gang members, talks about his concept of forgiveness, and how important it is to being Christian.

Poet Michael Warr talks with Ira and reads some of his poems inspired by his childhood. Warr grew up as a Jehovah's Witness and found that he had some problems with the religion's rules.

After he goes to Jerusalem and sleeps on what is supposedly the very spot where Jesus was crucified, Kevin Kelly has a revelation: that he should live the next six months as if he would die at the end of them. So he gives away nearly everything he owns, and tries to live each day as if his death is imminent — which turns out to be a great challenge.