Sons and daughters get to find out the one thing they've always wanted to know about their father. The answers aren't always what they hope for.
Prologue
When Aric Knuth was a little kid, his dad would leave for six months at a time. He was a merchant marine. And Aric would record cassettes of himself and send them. He'd leave one side blank, for his father to record a response. But he never did, even though Aric asked him to on every tape. Aric talks to host Ira Glass about what it was like to finally ask his dad why. (7 minutes)
Make Him Say Uncle
Lennard Davis grew up hearing from his parents that he should, at all costs, avoid being like his good-for-nothing Uncle Abie. Later, after his father died, that very same uncle told him that his father was not, in fact, his father. Instead, he said, Lenny was a product of artificial insemination, and he, Uncle Abie, was the sperm donor. At first, the evidence points to the possible truth of Abie's story, then more evidence seems to indicate he was lying. It takes Lenny more than 20 years to sort out whether it was true, and he finds out the answer—definitively—as tape is rolling. (31 minutes)
My Favorite Martian
Paul Tough's father was a mild-mannered professor. And then one day he left his family and went on a quest. In this story, for the first time, Paul joins him on that quest: To make contact with extraterrestrial life. Paul asks his father the questions he's always wanted answered about his alien pursuits. Paul Tough is one of the original contributing editors to This American Life. He is the author of How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character. (18 minutes)
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Act One
Over the course of his life, Keith Aldrich was a child of the Depression in Oklahoma; a preacher-in-training in booming California; an aspiring Hollywood actor; in the 1950s, a self-styled Beat writer, and then a man in a gray flannel suit; in the 1960s, a member of the New York literati, and then a hippie; in the 1970s, a denizen of the suburbs with a partying, Ice Storm kind of life. Then in the 80's, when the moral majority helped put Ronald Reagan in office, he became a born-again Christian.
Working In Another Decade [Retracted]
This episode originally included a story by reporter Stephen Glass (no relation to Ira) about an internship at George Washington's former plantation, which we have removed because of questions about its truthfulness.
Act Three: Dad
Poet/performer Lisa Buscani tells a story about her father.
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