An endocrinologist wrote the show about a wave of parents coming to her to treat their short (but otherwise healthy) children with human growth hormone. Contributor Scott Brown investigates.

Sketches from the neo-futurists on the subject of double lives.

Producer Jane Feltes talks with her parents about staying up at night with a sick child—specifically, after Jane had a serious injury when she was six.

Dr. David Kalenberger is the head of a fertility clinic in Oklahoma City.

Lisa LaBorde has two daughters, and having grown up an only child, she can't understand why they fight all the time. Her idea of sisterhood is more like a scene from The Sound of Music. Wanting to create that kind of bond for her girls, Lisa decides to enlist the aid of science to see if she can turn these enemies into friends—in just one month.

When Amy Silverman's daughter was born with Down syndrome, she followed the advice of all the parents she met: She signed her daughter up for "early intervention" therapy. But her daughter's progress had unexpected consequences, forcing Amy to make a choice she'd never predicted.

Producer Ben Calhoun talks about the moment when the cool teacher at school told the girls they should pay attention to Ben, and they did. Then Ira Glass interviews actress Molly Ringwald about what happened when she watched one of her own movies, The Breakfast Club, with her daughter.

Lulu tells the story of Daniel Kish, who’s blind, but can navigate the world by clicking with his tongue. This gives him so much information about what’s around him, he does all sorts of things most blind people don’t.

Barbara Clinkscales grew up in Chicago's public housing projects, had her first child when she was 15, and is now—over two decades later—struggling to get her teenage son to finish his senior year of high school. Barbara is a working mom, with a network of close friends who look out for her.

Reporter Ted Gesing interviews Mike Nyberg about adopting a little girl from Samoa, only to learn over time that her Samoan family had no intention of giving her up for adoption. The US adoption agency had told the Nybergs that their adoption would be closed, and that their little girl Elleia had been living in a foster home waiting for adoptive parents; but in Samoa, Elleia's parents were told that their daughter could come to the US and receive a better education, and that the adoptive family would send money and regular updates on their daughter's progress.

Beau O'Reilly and his mother Winifred, who had 14 children, discuss her secret feelings about Johnny Cash and other matters on Mother's Day.

Regular This American Life contributor Dan Savage, a syndicated sex columnist with possibly the filthiest mouth of anyone you could ever meet, finds a TV program so dirty, so weird, and so perverted that he won't let his son watch it—even though it's a kids' show, made for kids, and broadcast on a network for kids.

Professor Glenn Loury from Boston University and John Simpkins on basketball, hockey, and what makes a real black person.

Host Ira Glass talks with Cate, a white woman with a black, adopted, seven-year-old son, Glen. Sometimes Glen threatens that he's going to return to his real family—royalty, in Africa.

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.

Parents try to shape who we are in their own image. Producer Neil Drumming spoke to Adam Mansbach, who tried to make his daughter fall in love with hip-hop.

Barbara's story continues, as she hears some terrible news about her son.

Adam Gopnik reads a story from his book Paris to the Moon, about living in Paris with his family and wanting his son to be a bit more American. He tells him a bedtime story about the most American thing he can think of: baseball.

Dan Savage makes the case for yelling at children. He also reflects on how his views on how to talk to kids have changed over the years.

When David Ellis Dickerson was 12, he got a new bike, and his father decided to use the occasion to teach David a lesson. But the lesson David learned wasn't the one his father intended.

In Seattle, Dan Savage and his boyfriend adopted a son, DJ. It was an open adoption, so the birth mother could keep in touch with her kid.

Reporter Scott Carrier and his eleven-year-old daughter Jesse. Scott wrote Running After Antelope.

Kitty Felde explores the mystic link between boys and guns when her cousin's husband, a liberal in Berkeley, gives her lessons in his newest toy: a gun that shoots potatoes 450 feet in the air. The "spud gun" has a special property: Any man who sees it instantly wants one.

The story of a father who relies on the help of his neighbors in order to take his baby daughter out on a walk. Actor Daniel Beirne reads this excerpt from Ryan Knighton's book C'mon Papa: Dispatches From a Dad in the Dark (which is not yet available in the US).