To get these issues free by e-mail each week, along with our regular six-figure audience in over 200 countries, just subscribe using the form at the bottom of the page -- your privacy is secure.

To get these issues free by e-mail each week, along with our regular six-figure audience in over 200 countries, just subscribe using the form at the bottom of the page -- your privacy is secure.
(Or cruise around the web site to see more samples, archive, and info on our terrific book collections of thousands of past stories.)

But it has to be more than that. And it is.

There has to be a reason that so many people -- hundreds of thousands of them -- read This is True, and why they're from so many places. With subscribers in more than 200 countries, there's got to be something here that makes people want to read it week after week.

You've heard the phrase, "Truth is stranger than fiction"? The way Randy puts it is, "Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense." Every week there are stories in True that are just too strange to make up! The week this page was written, for example, True ran the stories below.

One Week's Worth of True Stories

• Several people heeded an anonymous call to protest at Buckingham Palace in London for the right to "walk around in public in the nude". Three naked men were arrested. Virtually at the same time, a Scotland Yard report was issued that concludes that the greatest threat to the royal family is not terrorists, but mentally unbalanced people.

• The Tennessee State Senate approved a bill that allows motorists who run over animals to take them home and eat them. Previous law called for a jail sentence and fine.

• Psychologists say actors can become lost in their roles and lose sight of their own identies.

• A Florida lawyer files suit against a rental car company, saying they should have known the person they rented a car to might get drunk and crash -- because he's Irish, and they should have known the Irish drink a lot.

• A major car company plans to put "people-detecting infrared sensors" in trunks to pop open the lids when it detects people (like a release handle wouldn't be infinitely cheaper and more effective?)

• A major university refused to give Bill Clinton an honorary degree -- because he didn't earn it.

• Harvard Medical School anthropologists say television isn't making people in Fiji fat, but rather provoking eating disorders that go against their culture of liking large bodies.

• Mattel has come up with a way to get fathers to buy several more Barbie dolls for their little girls: dressing the dolls up in sports uniforms.

• And the featured headline of the week makes you wonder what kind of bizarre food fight provoked the Associated Press to announce: "Potato, Dancing Raisins Cut a Deal".

All of that was from just one issue! And we didn't go choose a particularly good issue to write about -- it was pretty much random, taken from the issue that was closest to the date this page was written. However, we openly admit that to have seen all of those stories that week, you would have had to be a "Premium" (paid) subscriber -- more on that below.

We couldn't make up that much weird stuff every week if we tried -- we'd need a huge staff to write it all, and we don't have one -- nor do we want one, since true stories are infinitely better! All of those stories above came from real newspapers -- not junky tabloids like the "National Weekly Star Enquirer" (as we like to call them). And we have a fresh load of that many stories every week -- and we've been doing it every week, non-stop, since 1994! We don't have to make up the stories, because there are that many stories about real people doing outrageous things every week. Really!

Is it Really Free?

Yep. Zip. Nada. No charge. Nothing. While there is a paid subscription option, most people who subscribe to True don't pay a dime: the only thing they had to provide was their e-mail address so we can send it to them. What did they get for free? About half of an issue -- they saw half the stories detailed above. Not descriptions of the stories, the entire stories, four in all, plus the Featured Headline of the Week. (For the rest of the stories, they saw a quick summary so they could see what they missed.) It makes for a nice quick read over the weekend -- or on Monday morning when you get to the office so you can start your week off right. If you really must have all the stories, then we welcome you to pay for them.

Meanwhile, you can subscribe for free and get new issues once per week (and no ad-only mailings!) There's a place below to put your e-mail address so you can get started.

No Strings Attached

If you're not convinced, maybe you're worried about your privacy. We do, after all, make you give us your e-mail address. If that's your concern, well, quite frankly, we think you're smart. But consider this: we didn't grow to 100,000+ readers in more than 200 countries by giving or selling our member addresses to spammers! We started this in 1994 -- people would hate us by now if we did that (and rightly so). So check out our Your Privacy page -- it's important enough that it's listed in the navigation bar on every one of our main pages (the blue thing to the left). You may also be interested in another link near the bottom of the list, the one to our Spam Primer. It will tell you in no uncertain terms what we think of spammers. We have, in fact, been extremely proactive in educating people about what's so wrong about spam because we think it's bad for the online publishing industry -- our bread and butter. In short, we would never reveal your address to anyone because it's bad for business. It's as simple as that.

When we say "no strings attached", we mean it. You can stay on the free distribution list for as long as you like -- it's not a "free sample" where you have to pay or get booted off. Obviously, we'll try to entice you to "upgrade" your subscription to Premium, and/or pick up some copies of our book collections, but you do not have to buy anything. Our goal is to provide you with such a great product for free that you'll really want to get some books or receive the benefits of a Premium subscription.

Upgrading Has Its Benefits!

What's this about the "Premium" subscription, now? Well, if we had to make a living by giving something away for free to a huge audience on the Internet every week, we would have starved to death years ago. The ongoing weekly costs of this is paid by clearly-marked third-party advertising in our e-mail distribution. (In fact, we hope you find True's included ads interesting and worth visiting the sponsors' sites to see what they offer -- many are unique and interesting products and services in themselves.) And again, we never send ads-only mailings.

Obviously, advertising in a short weekly publication certainly wouldn't pay our online costs and pay the rent or put food on the table, so we have a couple of products that we sell to make our way in the world. The first is the Premium subscription. Premium subscribers get more stories, they get them earlier in the week, they get certain "extras", and they get discounts on the second product: book collections. Plus, there are no third-party ads in the Premium edition, so if you would rather pay a subscription fee than look at ads, we offer that option.

We don't archive past issues of This is True on this web site, we compile them into handsome, well-printed, high-quality books -- one each year. They give you a permanent, easy-to-read archive you can read again and again -- the stories are timeless. Plus, they make terrific gifts! They're definitely not ordinary presents for your friends to set aside! And that's not just our idea: we sell huge quantities each holiday season.

On the navigation bar, you can click through to read about Premium subscriptions by clicking on Premium Upgrade (it costs just $24 per year) and you can read about our several book collections by clicking on True Books (they're just $11 a copy -- less if you're a Premium subscriber). But if you're not convinced you want that now, you may as well start out with a free subscription and make sure you'll like it. We're confident you will, so we're happy to wait for you to upgrade later.

The Third Way: You Don't Have to Choose Between Amateur Junk and the Mega-Media Monolith

(Advanced Webmasters:True-a-Day is also available in a SSI-PHP version)

By adding a single line of code on any page on your site, you can automatically show your visitors a new story every day. What a great way to get return visitors! With the default settings (plus centering), it looks like this:

Why should I subscribe?

We protect your privacy: Our e-mail privacy statement explains it all.

Option One, Premium

• Arrives much sooner than the other feed.
• You get the entire column, not the abbreviated selection in the free feed.
• No third-party advertising to interrupt your reading.
• You get a 20% discount on This is True book collections, with no minimum or maximum -- if you're buying books as gifts (a great idea), this benefit could easily pay for your Premium subscription!

Here's how: For instant online ordering with credit/debit cards, click here for a secure online order page or click here for more information

There are certain stories that just beg to be told to others, especially when there's a photo involved. These stories were put here so you could send the URL to a friend.

• The True Story of Leonard's F-ing Bar (Oct 99)

• New Orleans P.D. Demonstrates How to Act at Mardi Gras (Mar 00)

• Mike the Headless (and still living) Chicken (Mar 00)

• The Lord's Prayer -- via Cell Phone Messaging (Jul 01)

• My Life as a Chair ...or How not to Sneak Across the Border (Jul 01)

• It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's Vaginaboy! (Nov 01)

• The Billy Parcel Service Doll: He Delivers (Jan 02)

• The Sign Marks Where You Can Camp. You thought it was What? (Apr 02)

• If You Keep Getting Lost, Consider Putting Up Your Own Road Signs! (May 02)