Classifieds

#223 - 11 October 2002

In this show we take the classifieds from one Sunday edition of the Chicago Sun-Times and one edition of the local alternative weekly Chicago Reader, and fill a program with stories that come from the ads. Through the jobs offered, the missed connections, the crap that people sell each other and the musicians' ads we get a portrait of a whole city.

Suckers

#222 - 27 September 2002

Some people have a rather dark worldview that divides people into two groups: Suckers and non-suckers. We hear their stories.

Fake I.D.

#221 - 20 September 2002

Stories of people traveling under fake papers, false identities, not for power or personal gain, but for their own deeper personal reasons.

Testosterone

#220 - 30 August 2002

Stories of people getting more testosterone and coming to regret it. And of people losing it and coming to appreciate life without it. The pros and cons of the hormone of desire.

High Speed Chase

#219 - 16 August 2002

Stories of innocent people fleeing from dangerous men in cars who shoot at them. Unlike in the movies, the pursuers aren't foreign agents or rogue CIA agents, but drunk off-duty policemen and small-town teenagers. Real-ife high-speed chases: who gets chased...and who does the chasing.

Act V

#218 - 9 August 2002

We devote this entire episode to one story: Over the course of six months, reporter and TAL contributor Jack Hitt followed a group of inmates at a high-security prison as they rehearsed and staged a production of the last act—Act V—of Hamlet.

Give It to Them

#217 - 2 August 2002

It's been two years since the Mideast peace process collapsed, two years in which each side has done terrible things to the other side. We wanted to understand what that has done to people living in Israel and the West Bank, and to see if anyone is feeling hope.

Give the People What They Want

#216 - 12 July 2002

Stories of people who go to great lengths to give people what they want, and how they're rewarded sometimes, misguided other times.

Ask An Expert

#215 - 14 June 2002

Stories about people who turned to the experts and got horrible advice. One story is about people who went to therapists who made them sicker. Another is about how the hosts of Car Talk inadvertently (or perhaps intentionally) destroyed a car belonging to one of their own employees.

Family Physics

#214 - 31 May 2002

We take the stately laws of physics—laws which mathematicians and scientists have spent centuries discovering and verifying—and apply them to the realm of human relationships, to see if they shed useful light on our daily lives.