This story, produced by the podcast Love+Radio, is the story of a woman throwing herself into a business plan that’s really an entire life plan. The piece is non-narrated—just a long interview with the young woman, named Taylor Rose Nations.

After John and Raquel published their story, the U.S. Congress got involved.

Guest host Nancy Updike talks about learning something new, and unpleasant, about herself in — where else — a makeup store. She also talks with other people about moments where someone made an observation about them that was shocking.

Producer Sean Cole visits Chad's Trading Post in Southampton, Massachusetts. One person who works there wears a shirt that says "Chad's Brother;" other shirts say "Chad's Best Friend," "Chad's Cousin," and "Chad's Father." Pictures of Chad are everywhere.

Producer Brian Reed recounts one of the more riveting arguments he's ever heard about whether marijuana is dangerous or relatively benign. It takes place in Congress.

We spend a semester in a public school in New York City called Lyons Community School. Lyons is trying to avoid suspensions, detentions and basically all other forms of traditional punishment.

Longtime This American Life producer Alex Blumberg decided, a while back, to try and start his own business. He also decided to record the whole process, including investor meetings that go off the rails, and other tense and awkward moments that business reporters usually don’t get access to.

When you're a preteen, you walk around every day with the knowledge that your body is about to change. You don’t know exactly when or how.

Producer Sean Cole heads to Toronto to see if it was true what he heard: that lots and lots of the bartenders who used to serve him drinks there were on coke at the time. Then Sean takes Ira through a catalogue of the various professions in which people tend to get high.

Joshuah Bearman tells a story that’s a sequel to his memorable episode about his mother and half-brother David. It’s done onstage as a play that’s structured like a radio documentary, with Josh Hamilton playing Joshuah, and James Ransone playing his brother.

Ira plays tape from an interview that he did more than 20 years ago, with the author Doris Lessing, about her novel The Fifth Child, which tells the story of a woman who gives birth to a goblin-like baby. The archival audio appears courtesy of National Public Radio, Inc.Then Ira's conversation with Cheryl, from the top of the show, continues.

A piece of fiction by BJ Novak called "Julie and the Warlord" that with his help, we’ve turned into a radio drama. It’s from his new book of short stories One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories.

Our listeners sent us 2,600 emails with their own getting high stories. Contributor Elna Baker read a ton of them (other staffers read the rest).

When Jonathan Goldstein was 11, his father gave him a book called Ultra-Psychonics: How to Work Miracles with the Limitless Power of Psycho-Atomic Energy. The book was like a grab bag of every occult, para-psychology, and self-help book popular at the time.

If you haven't spent much time in the southwest, you may not know about this, but there are these border patrol checkpoints that are just in the middle of interstate highways and other roads... not at the border. They're as far as a hundred miles away.

We plays excerpts from Mike Pesca's podcast, The Gist, from Slate. Mike Pesca used to be the sports reporter for NPR, but The Gist isn't about sports.

Ira talks to Joel Gold, a psychologist and author, about a strangely common delusion known as the "Truman Show Delusion," in which patients believe that they are being filmed, 24/7, for a national reality television program. Joel wrote a book with his brother Ian called Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness.

Etgar Keret always had a good relationship with his dad, except for one thing. This was read for us in English translation by actor Michael Chernus.

Alex Blumberg talks to Shane Dubow about a time decades ago, when Shane went sea kayaking and camping with his friends on the beach in Baja California, Mexico. When Shane’s neck stiffens up on him, he finds himself looking for an unlikely chiropractor, in the middle of nowhere.