This is Ira Glass of This American Life, and we asked you to turn in your friends, your family, your loved ones—basically any long-time listener who you think should be pledging but hasn't. And you did.

[Phone rings]

Woman's voice: Hello?

Ira Glass: Hi, is this Megan?

M: Yes, this is Megan.

IG: Hey, Megan, it's Ira Glass, and I'm calling because I got an e-mail from your friend Elizabeth Dayton.

M: Yes.

IG: She wrote me and said, "My best friend Megan is an exemplary human being in every respect except for this: She is a non-pledger."

M: [Laughs] She turned me in?

IG: She turned you in. "She has been a student for the past two years," your friend writes, "but has just landed a new job with a comfortable salary, a salary I would like to note that is considerably greater than mine. I share her frugality, but it is time for her to come to the other side."

M: Oh, Elizabeth, Elizabeth. She's a wise friend, and I will agree that I should pay my dues.

IG: So, why haven't you pledged?

M: Well, at times I've just thought that the money could be better spent elsewhere.

IG: [Music starts in the background] Like what?

M: Perhaps buying extra fruit that's on sale. Or part of my money that I could have contributed was being spent for happy hour after a very harsh week at school—not that I'm helping myself out here.

IG: No, you are not.

[Phone conversation fades out]

IG: Happy hour? Can I just say that if each of you who were listening right now would just call and pledge and don't bother with, like, the dollar a day amount. If each of you would call and pledge the amount that it cost to buy a round of drinks for your friends, ladies and gentlemen, we could end the pledge drive right now. Maybe forever. It would be the biggest deluge of money we'd ever seen if every person would give us $15, public radio would just be set for years.

[Back to the phone call]

M: I would agree that it would be [incomprehensible] right now.

IG: Friends, is this you? Have you been listening for years and never donated? I don't think you should make us come after you. Don't be like Megan.

M: Huge amounts of shame washing over me right now. It is excruciating, and my face is a little flushed right now.

IG: Do the thing you know you've been meaning to do.

M: Save yourself.

IG: Yes, save yourself.

M: Just go ahead and pledge.

IG: And here's how you pledge.