Moments when it seems obvious what to do for someone else, so of course you jump in and try to help — and what happens after that.

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(00:00:00) Prologue: Devon Taylor tells host Ira Glass about a time she confronted people who stole $100 from her. (12 minutes)

(00:12:01) Act One: We get to an age when we find ourselves taking care of our parents, whether they want us to or not. Writer Kristen Roupenian wrote this piece of fiction based on something real that happened to a family she knows. (20 minutes)

(00:33:37) Act Two: Two chatbots, stuck in a loop, each trying to help the other. Will they ever break free? (20 minutes)

(00:55:48) Act Three: In Utah, some communities have been fighting measles outbreaks for 14 months. These are some of the longest-running outbreaks in the country. But one of our producers, Miki Meek, heard about how school nurses in a town called Vernal helped end its outbreak in just six weeks. Miki finds out how they did it. (9 minutes)

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As the new school year begins, we have stories from all over the country about people lurching their way through their middle school years – the years when you're figuring out so much. We go to school dances, classrooms, and down to the Mexican border.

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(00:00:00) Prologue: Host Ira Glass interviews a 14-year-old named Annie, who emailed us asking if we would do a show about middle school. She explains why exactly the middle school years can be so daunting. (4 minutes)

(00:05:42) Act One: In an effort to understand the physical and emotional changes middle school kids experience, Ira speaks with reporter Linda Perlstein, who wrote a book called Not Much Just Chillin' about a year she spent following five middle schoolers. Then we hear from producer Alex Blumberg, who was a middle school teacher in Chicago for four years before getting into radio. Alex's takeaway? We shouldn't even try teaching kids at this age. Marion Strok, principal of a successful Chicago school, disagrees. (6 minutes)

(00:11:59) Act Two: We sent correspondents straight to the epicenters of middle school awkwardness: school dances. We spoke with kids across the country during the nervous moments leading up to the dances, and even ventured inside, to the dance itself. (9 minutes)

(00:21:51) Act Three: When Domingo Martinez was growing up in a Mexican-American family in Texas, Domingo's two middle school-aged sisters found a unique way of coping with feelings of inferiority. (11 minutes)

(00:33:40) Act Four: We realized that there are already reporters on the ground, embedded inside middle schools: the kids who report the daily announcements. Producer Jonathan Menjivar wondered what would happen if instead of announcing sports scores and the daily cafeteria menu, the kids reported what's really on their minds. Students at Parkville Middle School outside Baltimore, along with their journalism teacher Ms. Davis, agreed to try out this experiment. (7 minutes)

(00:40:01) Act Five: Producer Sarah Koenig reports on a kid we'll call Leo, whose family moved away from Rochester, NY, leaving behind all of Leo's friends and stranding him in a new — and in his opinion, much worse — middle school. (10 minutes)

(00:50:41) Act Six: Ira speaks with Shannon Grande, a teacher at Rise Academy in Newark, about a seventh grader who had all sorts of problems with behavior, hygiene, and schoolwork. To help turn him around, Grande had to harness the power of peer pressure for good. (7 minutes)

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Cryptic messages on a cell phone and a teeter-totter at a construction site: these are clues people found, trying to make sense of a death.

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(00:00:00) Prologue: Host Ira Glass talks to a guy about a crazy experiment he devised when he was a kid. It almost killed him. (5 minutes)

(00:06:45) Act One: We begin with a woman whose sister has died. She has questions. Her name is Nadia Bowers, and she wrote this to someone she thinks might be of help. (17 minutes)

(00:29:53) Act Two: There’s a problem with having a Facebook account after you’re dead that you’ve never, ever, ever thought about. Producer Stephanie Foo tells this story, about Dave Maher. (14 minutes)

(00:45:49) Act Three: A guy goes to a funeral for someone he doesn’t know at all, and has to piece together everything about him. Producer Dana Chivvis reports. (16 minutes)

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