When she was 16, Ellaraino visited her great-grandmother, Silvia, for the first time. And Silvia had plenty of stories to tell. They were about being a teenager — and seeing the Civil War, and slavery, come to an end.

Jane Lynch tells David Greene that her career got a giant boost from a Frosted Flakes commercial, and her personal life benefited enormously from a letter she wrote and thought she might never choose to send.

Teacher and writer Debra Nunnally Beaupre is a black woman who lives in a village in New Hampshire. But exploring the area, she often seeks out drive-thrus, hoping to avoid a repeat of experiencing racism in unknown places.

One customer was nabbed by police for sampling raw meat in a Pennsylvania store. A family of five was living in a car at a Walmart in Florida. And at a store in Missouri, a girl had a run-in with a monkey. At any given moment, there are 850,000 Americans inside a Walmart store. Something weird is bound to happen.

Student-athletes are being used and abused by the NCAA, says commentator Frank Deford, and a new article supports his view. The article provides ample evidence that student-athletes are lacking in their rights as American citizens.

Lightning struck twice in author Brad Meltzer's family — literally. In a piece dedicated to the memory of his father, he examines the familiar, and familial, tale of one fateful summer at Camp Na-sho-pa.