Barbara Clinkscales grew up in Chicago's public housing projects, had her first child when she was 15, and is now—over two decades later—struggling to get her teenage son to finish his senior year of high school. Barbara is a working mom, with a network of close friends who look out for her.

In this act we hear two stories of people who stumbled upon a place where they instantly and instinctively felt more at home than in their real homes. Stephen Dubner, author of the memoir Turbulent Souls: A Catholic Son's Return to His Jewish Family, talks about an encounter with a Jewish man named Irving that changed his life.

What if you asked people for advice and actually took all the advice that everyone gave you? As an experiment, writer Sarah Vowell tried exactly that, when she recently solicited advice from many different people about insomnia.

As the number of female prisoners climbs, visiting rooms are packed on Mother's Day. Eighty percent of female inmates have children at home.

There are the people who take two hours to get dressed every day, who dress primarily to be seen, and then there are most of the rest of us. Writer Sarah Vowell decides to make the leap into the two-hours group.

A story by Jay Allison and Annie Cheney, from Jay's Life Stories series. Annie tells a story of eating and not eating, and a life seen through one meal.

Host Ira Glass talks with a guy who hit the road after his mother's death, hoping for some experience that would change him and shed light on what just happened. This never happens to him, or to most of us.

Deb Monroe's two daughters as they fight.

Ira reads an excerpt from James Ellroy's memoir My Dark Places.

Host Ira Glass talks to Amanda, who's 16 and lives with her mom in a Christian commune in Chicago.

Julie throws up.

Brett Leveridge reads from his column for Might magazine, which he turned into the book Men My Mother Dated and Other Mostly True Tales.

An excerpt from Your Radio is Haunted. (6 minutes)

Writer David Sedaris remembers the days his mother and sister played armchair detective, and the odd crime wave that hit their own home. This story, titled "True Detective," appears in David's book Naked.

Ira's mom is invited to speak to a group of Jewish mothers who only discuss one topic: their relationships with their adult children.

A Midwestern family records a "letter on tape" to their son, who is in medical school in California. Three decades later, the recording somehow ends up in a thrift store.

Sketches from the neo-futurists on the subject of double lives.

Former Harpers magazine editor and TAL contributor Jack Hitt wrote an editorial about Susan Smith, who murdered her two children in South Carolina. The editorial redirected the rage from Smith toward Hitt.