We think of our phone calls and phone messages as so transient. We have another example of phones recording personal history: this story from Barrett Golding in Bozeman, Montana, comprised of telephone messages about his father.

Ira Glass speaks with a woman named Angie, who never understood why her dad got so excited about thermoses and phone books... until she happened to see this one movie.  Then Jonathan Goldstein tells a story about his friend Josh Karpati, who has two-year-old twins, and who never leaves the house. Jonathan hosts Wiretap on CBC Radio.

More tape of Chana and her father Bob Wiliford discussing all the things they've never talked about before. Though Chana grew up in Waco, Texas, she left to go to college in Philadelphia.

Chris Garcia and his dad were driving home, listening to oldies, sharing a bag of chips. A totally familiar scene for them.

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.

We hear a series of letters that originally appeared on the brief-lived, little-known, but well-loved webzine Open Letters. They're written by a woman who signs her name as "X" and are addressed to the father of her adolescent son.

Comedian Casey Wilson’s mom was a stabilizing force in her family. So after her unexpected death, both Casey and her father felt devastated and unmoored.

A teenage whiz kid invents a new toy for Milton Bradley. Then the trouble starts.

David Ellis Dickerson tells the story of heading home to Tucson after six years away, having rejected the evangelical Christianity of his family. David came prepared for war, armed with new beliefs.

When Emily Helfgot was ten, her dad was a sex therapist on a call-in radio show, which thoroughly embarrassed her. He also kept a stack of Playboy magazines in their house, in plain sight.

Chris Benderev speaks with writer Georgie Codd, who went searching for someone to be the father she never had.

Producer Jonathan Menjivar tells this story about Naomi Azar and her father Shaul. Shaul had trouble saying a certain phrase to his children, and one day he was put to the test.

Margy's a reporter. When she told her dad that she wanted to write a story about him, he said sure.

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.

A man has a very clear vision of how he always stood up to his father,protected his mother and fought hard for the truth. Until one day hediscovers actual raw data — secretly recorded conversations — thatthreaten to change his picture of everything.

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.

Starlee Kine gets answers about her parents marriage from her dad...after a lifetime of mystery. She and her sister had wanted her parents to divorce since they were little.

Megan Tan never felt close to her father. For years they’ve been distant.

What happens when you want your dad to change—and he wants to change, too—but there's literally nothing that can be done to change him. Jon Sarkin was a chiropractor with workaholic tendencies.

Julie Hill with a story about her six-year-old son, and how he tries to make sense of his father's terminal illness.

David Sedaris with a parable of the pressures on modern women, and how one woman — his sister — responded. David's father thought it was very important that his daughters be thin.

Harry Brakeman University.

David Sedaris, author of Me Talk Pretty One Day, explains how the most important moments of your life can happen in a car...and you can miss them.

Reporter Mark Arax spent three years investigating the murder of his father and yet he's still not at peace when he thinks of his dad's death. (His book is called In My Father's Name: A Family, a Town, a Murder.) This is how it goes sometimes.