Lots of babysitting is done by family members. Hillary Frank reports on what can happen when a teenaged son is put in charge of his younger brothers.

To end this show about parents and children at mealtime, a story about what happens when children have to become the parents. Dave Eggers' mother and father died when he was 21 and his brother Toph was 8.

When Terry Shine's father was in the hospital, Terry and his brothers spent weeks trying to do whatever they could to help. But first they had to learn the language and customs of the average American hospital.

How writer (and frequent This American Life contributor) David Sedaris and his family reacted when Sedaris's mother—a lifelong, unrepentant smoker—developed lung cancer. After a lifetime of barbed, funny remarks, no one in the family is prepared to talk about their feelings.

David Sedaris, on his mother's lung cancer.

Writer Bill Eville and his brother are picked up on the side of the road late at night, and not taken to their destination. (10 minutes)Bill Eville is the author of a collection of essays called Washed Ashore: Family, Fatherhood, and Finding Home on Martha’s Vineyard.

Writer David Sedaris remembers the days his mother and sister played armchair detective, and the odd crime wave that hit their own home. This story, titled "True Detective," appears in David's book Naked.

Writer Donald Antrim's The Hundred Brothers, and the question: What happens when we grow up? (24 minutes)

Writer Brady Udall with another story about what animals can take the place of, in our lives and in our homes—this one involving an armadillo. This work of fiction originally appeared in the Autumn 1999 issue of Story magazine.

Adam Beckman tells the first part of his story, about how, back in the 70s, he and his friends broke into an abandoned  house in the small town of  Freedom, New Hampshire. The home turned out to be a perfect time capsule, containing the furniture, letters and personal effects of an entire family — abandoned for decades.

Continuing from our prologue, host Ira Glass checks in with Lisa and her older daughter, Kennedy, to see how the experiment went. After a month, they've charted surprising results, learned that the girls aren't the only ones in the house who need to change, and found out just how much money it takes to get a twelve-year-old to play with a five-year-old.

Sarah Koenig tells the story of how her stepsister Rue bought a house and moved in—but the former owner did not move out. And won't move out, until he dies.

A story by regular contributor David Sedaris involving his sister Lisa, a secret, and her very understanding parrot. David read this story live, and it's on his CD Live at Carnegie Hall. The story is also published in his book Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim.

Producer Alex Blumberg conducts an investigation, perhaps the first ever, into this American subspecies: People who compulsively imitate their mother's voices in everyday conversation, well into adulthood.

True tales of sibling cruelty.

The story about what happens when you discover the medical reason your mother was such a bad parent all your life.

What can happen if a sibling relationship doesn't ever change. Hillary Frank brings us the story of two sisters, now in their seventies, who have preserved the same relationship they had as girls...for better or worse.

Over the course of his life, Keith Aldrich was a child of the Depression; an aspiring Hollywood actor; a self-styled Beat writer, a member of the New York literati, and then a hippie. Then in the 80's, he became a born-again Christian.

Writer Tim Melley.

Veronica Chater tells the story of her developmentally disabled brother Vincent, who one day quit his job and then quit everything else, mystifying everyone in his life. Veronica is author of the memoir Waiting for the Apocalypse.

Producer Alex Blumberg sets out to find a woman named Susan Jordan, who babysat him and his sister for a year when he was nine. He discovers that each of them remembered something about the other that the other would just as soon forget.