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.

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.

Yale psychologist Paul Bloom tells Ira about his research into the morality of babies and young children.

Susan’s investigation continues, and she tells the story of a third person who was close to Ibragim Todashev who was whisked out of the United States after actions by the FBI.

A man posts an ad on Craiglist to find someone to remove his swastika tattoo. Producer Emily Hsiao talked with him about why he got it and why he wants it gone.

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.

Before the war in the East Ramapo, New York school district, there was a truce. Local school officials made a deal with their Hasidic and ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbors: we'll leave you alone to teach your children in private yeshivas as you see fit as long as you allow our public school budget to pass.

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.

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.

Reporter Anna Sale tells the story of the high profile politician who came to her with an issue that had nothing to do with politics and nothing to do with him. Instead it had everything to do with Anna and the state of her love life.

Producer Sean Cole tells the story of a former foster kid who was finally adopted in his mid-30's,and the reason he was taken away from the foster family he loved more than 20 years ago.

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

Ira talks to reporter Jake Halpern about a scene he saw take place in a Georgia courtroom where a couple uttered some magic words that seemed to make their debt disappear completely. Jake describes the scene in his new book, Bad Paper: Chasing Debt from Wall St. to the Underworld.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Producer Ben Calhoun tells Ira about a secret move his friend uses all the time — the "good guy discount" — that gets Ben's friend money off all sorts of items when he's shopping.

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.

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.