Writer Ariel Sabar tells the story of Roger Barker, a psychologist who believed that humans should be studied outside the lab. So Barker dispatched an army of graduate students to follow the children of Oskaloosa, Kansas, and write down every single thing they did.

In New York, like in lots of cities, you can call 3-1-1 for help with city services, but there's lots of things that people call in for that operators don't have answers for. And so they improvise.

A short story by John Jodzio that reveals the truth about infants. It's read by Sara Mollo-Christensen.

Host Ira Glass talks to business professor Pino Audia and Fast Company magazine columnist Dan Heath about corporate creation myths and why so many of them involve garages.

Comedian Marc Maron, who's been off drugs for more than 15 years, says he still thinks it's okay to laugh at funny drug stories. And then he tells us one of the funniest we heard while putting this show together.

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.

Producer Miki Meek tells the story of a man named Will Ream who is trying to figure out what is best for his children, and having some regrets about how things worked out. To tell this story we collaborated with songwriter Stephin Merritt.

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.

A woman, who got in a car accident and was in a coma for 52 days, woke up having forgotten the last two years of her life — during which she'd divorced her husband. Producer Miki Meek spent a week with this family, in the midst of their difficult situation.  (14 minutes)

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.

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 Ben Calhoun talks about how the truce in East Ramapo fell apart, and plumbs the depthsof the neighbor-vs-neighbor political war that emerged. Also, we learn that it can, in fact, be a massive deal when you change lawyers — at least when you're a school board.

Ira talks to Planet Money reporter Zoe Chace about the day she spent with an 11-year-old entrepreneur named Asia Newson, who has a company called SuperBusinessGirl. Zoe says Asia is a natural at making people want to buy whatever she’s selling.

Note: This story only appears in the podcast version of the show.This clip is from what Ira calls “the beachiest show” public radio ever made. It’s a segment from NPR’s 1970’s show, Ocean Hour.

We hear what the New York Fed and Goldman Sachs say about all this. We hear a New York Fed supervisor tell Carmen Segarra how an examiner should talk and act to be successful at the Fed.

Ira recounts the story of William Cimillo, a New York bus driver who snapped one day, left his regular route, and drove his municipal bus down to Florida.

Ben Calhoun's story on the East Ramapo school district feud continues. We hear from a former member of the board.

Comedian Mike Birbiglia, his wife, and his cat take a trip together and meet some parasitic zombie mice.

Host Ira Glass tell the story of a city pride campaign in Calgary, Canada. He speaks with life-long Calgarian Ken Lima-Cuelho who explains how much people in the city loved the campaign — and the song at the center of it, "Hello Calgary." Except, Ira, and the song's composer, Frank Gari, have some bad news for Ken.

Ira introduces Carmen Segarra, a bank examiner for the Federal Reserve in New York who, in 2012, started secretly recording as she and her colleagues went about regulating one of the most powerful financial institutions in the country. This was during a time when the New York Fed was trying to become a stronger regulator, so that it wouldn't fail to miss another financial crisis like it did with the meltdown in 2008.

Producers Jonathan Goldstein and Sean Cole were fascinated by a recent Pew Research statistic stating that 9% of Americans want to travel through time.