Producer Alex Blumberg introduces us to Richard, a former executive at a big time marketing firm who smoked pot daily — sometimes at work. As it turns out, Alex is intimately familiar with how Richard's getting high kept him from focusing on the important things in his life.

Mark Oppenheimer reports on agunah in the Orthodox Jewish community. An agunah is a woman whose husband refuses to give her a divorce – in Hebrew it means "chained wife." If you're an Orthodox Jew, strictly following Jewish law, the only real way to get divorced is if your husband agrees to hand you a piece of paper called a get.

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.

Ayelet Waldman says her dad is a bookish man ... a very smart man ... but no man is everything his kids want him to be.

Producer Jonathan Menjivar tells the story of a bad baby who stopped being bad. At two years old, Comedian Chris Gethard had a knack for dancing on his mother's last nerve.

There's this woman Hamida Gulistani who advocates for women's rights in Afghanistan. For a few years when the US presence in the country was at its greatest, she felt like someone had her back … she felt safer … she saw some progress.

When Elna Baker was a kid, she hit her younger sister on the head with a broom, then lied and said it was an accident. So Elna’s dad held a family trial to find the truth.

Tina Dupuy was a teenage alcoholic. She joined Alcoholics Anonymous at the age of 12, got sober by 13.

Producer Chana Joffe-Walt talks to a woman named Karen Stobbe and her husband Mondy about a plan they've recently enacted in their family. Karen's mother lives with them and she has dementia.

James Spring tells the story of the "Caminata Nocturna" — a simulated illegal border crossing run by a small town in Mexico. The event was recently criticized by conservative media as a training camp for illegal immigration.

Susan Zalkind spent six months investigating all this for Boston Magazine and This American Life. And she has a personal connection to the 2011 triple murder.

This next story is about a couple in a relationship that’s unlike the homes either of them grew up in. They’re married.

Sarah Koenig tells the story of her father, Julian Koenig, the legendary advertising copywriter whose work includes the slogan "Timex takes a licking and keeps on ticking" and Volkswagen's "Think Small" ads. For years, Sarah has heard her dad accuse a former partner of stealing some of his best ideas, but until recently, she never paid much attention.

Sarah Koenig tells the story of the murder of Hae Min Lee, a popular high-school senior in Baltimore County, Maryland. She disappeared after school one day in January, 1999.

Alex Blumberg takes us to an American classroom where students are reading a classic, The Education of Little Tree, by Forrest Carter. The book is marketed as a simple homespun autobiography of a Cherokee orphan.

There’s been a big, messy, fascinating story unfolding in Los Angeles for awhile… involving two big law enforcement agencies: the LA county sheriff’s department, which is huge, and the FBI. A secret investigation got exposed.