Ira Glass introduces producer Chana Joffe-Walt, who reports this week's story.

The story of an entire town that gets a status update. Producer Chana Joffe-Walt talked to Paul Kiel of Pro Publica, the man who gave the town its status update.

This American Life producer Chana Joffe-Walt sits in for Ira Glass, because Chana has kids, two young sons. And her oldest, Jacob, has some complicated ideas about people, that Chana wants to straighten out, but doesn’t know exactly how.

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.

Workshops on sexual assault and consent are hugely popular on college campuses around the country. Chana visits one of these workshops to find out what’s being taught, and more importantly, what college boys in particular have already learned about sex, back when they were kids.

Chana Joffe-Walt reports on the Hartford, CT school system, which actively seeks to integrate. The results have been impressive.

The kids who traveled three miles up the road are in their mid-20s now. We hear how what they saw affected them for years, including at college.

Recently, This American Life has been getting a lot of hate mail about the young women on our staff — listeners complain about their "vocal fry." Ira investigates the phenomenon.

While it’s hard to explain to kids how babies come into the world, it might be harder to explain that people leave the world too — especially to a kid whose mom or dad or brother or sister has died. There are grief counseling centers all over the U.S. that cater specifically to children.

Julia Lillis talks to Ira about the huge, romantic move she made after a break up, and how it was both crazy and worth doing.

Comedian W. Kamau Bell has two daughters, and tries to figure out just how much about the violent history of racism and oppression his four-year-old can handle.

It turns out that one of the members of the This American Life staff, Elna Baker, has a kind of anti-game face. She's what's called a chronic blusher.