When he was a kid, Josh Martin's mother Nancy told him that if anythingever happened to her, he needed to take care of his brother Ben. This confusedJosh, because Ben was his older brother, and he felt that if anything heshould be the one taken care of.

Novelist Miriam Toews, author of The X Letters (which appeared in an earlier episode of the show), tells the story of a road trip she took with her 15-year-old son.

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

Ira continues the story about his conversation with his mom. Then he calls her up on the air.

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.

Myron Jones and his sister Carol Bove explain what happened when they were teenagers, and they ended up babysitting children who didn't exist.

Writer/singer/performer Sandra Tsing Loh reads a story about a family vacation arranged by her mother, who believed that vacations couldn't be merely for leisure—they had to be educational. Which is how the family ended up vacationing in...Ethiopia.

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.

A tale of two siblings — separated, but not at birth. Reporter Paul Tough and his sister grew up in Toronto, the most American of Canadian cities.

Geoffrey Canada, author of the book Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence in America, talks about what it's like to carry a gun. He also talks about what poor neighborhoods in New York were like before the proliferation of handguns among young people.  When he grew up in the South Bronx, kids had fistfights in a very formal arrangement with formal rules that everyone lived by. He reads from his book and talks with Ira.

Scott Carrier in Salt Lake City with a story about whether it's possible to be a good person if you're not a Christian.

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.

A family dreams of life in rural Maine, moves there, and then things get really complicated.

Scott Carrier tells the story of trying to bring a part of the outside world inside the house when he was a boy. His brother wanted to capture a rattlesnake and bring it home and keep in the basement, as a secret.

Two brothers set out with a friend to cross America on horseback. They take a tape recorder with them to make a kind of audio journal of their trip.

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.

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.

Writer Tim Melley.

Scott Carrier in Salt Lake City with the latest installment in his 12-year quest to chase down and catch an antelope. This story and others are included in his book Running After Antelope.

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.

What if you asked people for advice and actually took all the advice that everyone gave you? As an experiment, writer Sarah Vowell tried exactly that, when she recently solicited advice from many different people about insomnia.

A collection of small stories, all on the the theme introduced in the prologue—the first few months after the divorce, and suddenly, your parents are less composed, more flawed, and more human, than perhaps you've ever seen them.

Julia Pimsleur travels to Alaska to spend some time with her brother, hoping he might change a little—just as he hopes that she'll change a little.