Ian Frazier explores human fallacy and the pivotal question: Does doing something stupid make you an idiot? Or are you merely someone who suffers from idiocy?

A collection of early country classics from the lovesick and broken-hearted — Webb Pierce, George Jones, Hank Williams and many others.

Letters of recommendation, job rejections and sales contests — an exploration of the ups and downs of the modern workplace.

I guess the Grandmother was right — they should have gone to East Tennessee instead. Flannery O’Connor’s brilliant, gothic 1953 short story.

“Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.” These were Stonewall Jackson’s last words, and they provide a poignant and fitting framework around this week’s episode, which explores love, loss, joy and death, and the ways in which they are all interconnected. From the personal to the poetic to the hilarious, we aim to show that laughter and tears often go hand in hand.

We all know the story of Paul Revere’s legendary ride to warn of approaching British forces during the Revolutionary War, but few remember the real hero of the tale — his heroic horse Oatsy. This week, he finally gets his due. And we pay tribute to Sidney Bechet, a musician who embodied the New Orleans ragtime tradition at its best. As we read from his autobiography “Treat It Gentle” we’ll hear of his public debut on the clarinet and how he tried to convince the father of a pregnant teenager that he was the responsible party even though he wasn’t.

Kate Walbert’s 2012 New Yorker short story is set on a buzzing early spring day in Times Square, evoking the unique sense of renewal and energy palpable in New York when the city finally begins to thaw out from a long winter. While dutifully fulfilling her youngest daughter’s wish of visiting the hectic M&M World, Ginny’s day turns tense as she struggles to keep track of her kids and revisits memories of her estranged husband.

We feature another great short story by Alice Munro titled “Axis,” first published in The New Yorker in 2011. As in many of Alice Munro’s short stories, the characters aren’t like anyone I know, but they never seem contrived or invented. I would say that she loves creating characters and then observing them as they go their own way.

This week we return to an early classic episode, an exploration of the impact of passionate and well-crafted speech. Effective rhetoric can rouse supporters and sway opponents, and aptly chosen words have the ability to pierce and persuade like little else. Featuring some of the greatest masters of the craft — Churchill, Shakespeare, Sorkin, and of course, Jack Handey — we will show how great writers have an exceptional ability to inspire, enrage, and enliven their audiences. We will hear Kenneth Branagh’s rendition of the St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V, Winston Churchill delivering his own rousing speech discussing the drumbeat of war building in Germany in 1934, one of Jack Nicholson’s most memorable film speeches of all time from “A Few Good Men,” and Jack Handey’s discovery of Attila the Hun’s least known speech.