Radio producer Scott Carrier quit his job at a low moment in his life. His wife left him and took the kids.

Miki Meek reports on how bad things got for black residents of Miami Gardens, Florida – and why they got so bad – by telling the story of two men, a convenience store owner and one of his employees.

Comedian Aziz Ansari has been touring the country collecting people’s text messages from when they first say hi, and ask each other out. Sociologist Eric Klinenberg wanted to study this raw data of the initial approach a man makes to a woman over text.

Growing up, producer Stephanie Foo was the favorite child of her family in Malaysia. Particularly of the matriarch of the family who everyone called "Auntie." But as an adult, Stephanie found out the complicated truth about why she was the family favorite.

One of the show's producers, Zoe Chace, tells Ira about a joke she made pretty soon after something terrible had happened.And then Ira talks to Amy Silverman about something else being too soon, and how she finally figured out the right moment for it. Amy's blog about her daughter is at girlinapartyhat.com.

As we were putting together this week's show, we thought back to the guy in Act One who was in charge of marketing when Jack in the Box went through an E. Coli crisis.

Rachel has two kids. Elias, age seven, is a vegetarian.

Jesse had been waiting his whole life to fall in love—and then he started getting these letters from the perfect woman, Pamala. She seemed vulnerable.

Ira talks to Joel Gold, a psychologist and author, about a strangely common delusion known as the "Truman Show Delusion," in which patients believe that they are being filmed, 24/7, for a national reality television program.

Nikole Hannah-Jones' story on the Normandy school district from the first part of the show continues.

Some schools make kids take care of eggs in order to teach them about the responsibilities of rearing a child. But at Glen Ridge High, kids are asked to take care of robotic babies. Hilary Frank follows around two teenage “moms" to see how realistic the experience is.

Larry speaks English. His dad speaks Chinese.

Ira talks to a man in his 70s who’s about to travel across the country to tell a woman he loves how he really feels, despite some very real signs that doing so might be a bad idea.

Chana Joffe-Walt talks to Kiana, who went to a school that was overwhelmingly black and Latino, but when some white students showed up one day on an exchange program, she went up to them eagerly. And since then, has embarked on a one-woman school integration program.

Ira speaks with Mike Pesca, host of the sports podcast Hang Up and Listen and Slate's daily podcast The Gist about the whole concept of the game face in sports. What is it exactly? And who might be the best examples of athletes with incredible game faces? Then Ira speaks with writer David Dupuis about the athlete who may have the game face-iest game face in sports history – hockey goalie Terry Sawchuk.

Ira talks to producer Nancy Updike and reporter Dan Ephron, about their interview with the accomplice, Hagai Amir, who showed them the house where he and his brother plotted the murder and the shed where he machined special bullets.

Writer Ariel Sabar tells the story of Roger Barker, a psychologist who believed humans should be studied outside the lab. So Barker dispatched an army of graduate students to follow the children of Oskaloosa, Kansas, and write down every single thing they did.

Chana Joffe-Walt tells what happened when a group of public school students in the Bronx went to visit an elite private school three miles away.

Producer Neil Drumming talks with his friend Ta-Nehisi Coates about Ta-Nehisi’s newfound fame and their friendship.

Leo Hornak's story about Abdi continues. Abdi encounters one obstacle after another on the streets of Nairobi.

A teenager reports what it is like to be inside an abusive relationship with an older man. (29 minutes)This piece was created by WNYC’s Radio Rookies program.

Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall were a comedy duo back in the mid-1960s, playing clubs around Los Angeles, when their agent called to tell them he'd landed them the gig of a lifetime: They were going to be on The Ed Sullivan Show. The only problem was that their performance was a total fiasco, for a bunch of reasons, including one they never saw coming.

Writer and musician Ahamefule Oluo has been puzzling out one story for a lot of his life. It's the story of a stranger, who also, is his dad.

Reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones, who has investigated integration in schools for years, joins ChanaJoffe-Walt to interview the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. The Obama Administration saysit’s in favor of integrating the schools, but doesn’t seem to do so much to promote it.