One Monday earlier this month, we sent five producers to record what happened at library reference desks around the country.

Reporter Nancy Updike spends two days with Neal Smither, who cleans up crime scenes for a living, and comes away wanting to open his Los Angeles franchise, despite the gore — or maybe because of it.

Host Ira Glass takes a tour to walls all around the world. (9 minutes)

Sometimes criminals return to the scene of their misdeeds — to try to make things right, to try to undo the past. Katie Davis reports on her neighbor Bobby, who returned to the scene where he robbed people and conned people. This time, he came to coach little league.

  

Marjory Stoneman Douglas had just completed a schoolwide upgrade on their emergency plans, just a month before the mass shooting at their school. Producer Robyn Semien talks to two teachers at the school about how that training both benefited them, and didn’t.

A doctor tries to investigate something that horrifies her, but people tell her it’s not worth thinking about. It’s the way it’s done.

Kelefa Sanneh sits in on one of Starbucks’ anti-racial bias classes. There’s one thing that no one seems to want to talk about.

LaDonna sets out to understand how this place is run.

The story of two young people who, in their search to figure out who they were, pretended to be people they weren't. Both were from small towns; both took on false identities.

Ira Glass talks with producer Lilly Sullivan about a story she heard growing up about men messing with a girl’s mind. Lilly can relate. (9 minutes)

A man tries something he’s never done before and discovers a new passion. A work of short fiction written by Neil Drumming and read by actor Dorian Missick.

Reporter Jasmine Garsd grew up in Argentina watching talk shows, which were kind of extreme even for Latin American television. The women on screen were pumped with silicone and Botox, and sometimes showed up wearing almost nothing.

When Jeff Beals learned who was going to run in the Democratic primary for NY-19, he was disappointed. Beals, a progressive, thought the Democrats jumping in were conventional candidates, ones who embodied what he thinks is a failed strategy for his party: raising lots of money from big donors and lobbyists, and buying TV ads.

Producer Chana Joffe-Walt fills in for Ira Glass this week. We hear from a person you don’t normally hear from in these kinds of stories — the partner of a man who has been accused of sexual harassment.

Where do parents go when they’re deported? For some, the answer is: as close as possible to their kids. That often means Nogales, Mexico.

Producer David Kestenbaum took issue with the entire premise of today’s show, and explains why.

Shalom Auslander reads his true story, "The Blessing Bee." It's about the time when, as a third-grader at an Orthodox Jewish school, Shalom saw his chance to both make his mom proud, and push his drunken father out of the picture. Part of his scheme involved winning the school's bee on the complicated Hebrew blessings you say before eating certain foods.

When a pet dies, to what degree can it be replaced by another? And to what degree can pets replace people in our lives? David Sedaris tells this story of cats and dogs and other animals.