The tendency toward self-reinvention is so deep in American culture that we have an entire industry, a self-help industry, telling us how to transform ourselves into someone new. And usually, we see this as a positive thing.

When is a chicken your friend? When is he your dinner? This American Life's former webmeister Elizabeth Meister talks with Kamiko Overs, an 11-year-old girl at the annual poultry exhibition run by the American Poultry Association in Columbus, Ohio. Elizabeth Meister is a producer with Long Haul Productions.

Writer Jack Hitt talks about his daughter Tarpeley's first day in her new school. It was her first "first day" of any kind.

Camp kids explain how their non-camp friends and their non-camp loved ones have no idea why camp is the most important thing in their lives. Most of this hour takes place at a pair of camps in Michigan—Lake of the Woods, a girls camp, and Greenwoods, a boys camp.

Host Ira Glass talk with Claire, who obsessed over a Chilean friend — and then started to tell people she was Chilean herself.

Host Ira Glass describes what thousands of people do all over America on our holiday weekends: we go to historic sites with our kids and stare at bricks and statues, trying to feel some connection with the past. It's not easy.

Another case study of a dad who's waiting to feel closer to his kid. Writer Dan Savage writes the syndicated sex advice column Savage Love. He and his boyfriend Terry spent months trying to adopt and finally adopted a baby boy.

Durrell was a professional musician. He toured Asia, Brazil, Canada, gigs in Paris.

Pierre, a ten year old who boxes in an amateur team on Chicago's south side, and what Muhammad Ali had to do to psych up to win a fight.

Host Ira Glass with Brooklyn schoolteacher Melissa Cantor, who reads from a how-to manual written by a sixth-grade student. It's about how to protect yourself against unwanted visitors.

Two quick real life fables about the power of sibling rivalry.

David Sedaris reads this story. A high-powered theater critic applies his critical skills to the Christmas pageants at local elementary schools.

Host Ira Glass, on the beach with Chris McKinney, a boy scout who is single-handedly trying to stop erosion on one stretch of beach in Mason Neck State Park in Virginia.

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

Writer Jack Hitt tells the story of a small town production of Peter Pan, in which the flying apparatus smacks the actors into the furniture, and Captain Hook's hook flies off his arm and hits an old woman in the stomach. By the end of the evening, firemen have arrived and all the normal boundaries between audience and actors have completely dissolved.

Reporter Scott Carrier and his eleven-year-old daughter Jesse. Scott wrote Running After Antelope.

Daniel Pinkwater reads his children's picture book Devil in the Drain. (4 minutes)