Megan Tan never felt close to her father. For years they’ve been distant.

Chris Benderev speaks with writer Georgie Codd, who went searching for someone to be the father she never had.

Like a lot of parents, Yibin Li’s dad dedicated himself to making sure his daughter stayed on a path that would lead her to a better life than his. But the obstacles her dad had to surmount to achieve this are unlike those any parent anywhere has faced.

There’s a machine lots of us encounter as a big impersonal, mechanical apparatus, that has a ghost in it. But it’s a ghost that appears to just a small handful of people. Jean Hannah Edelstein tells the story to Ira.

For more than fifty years, Jeanne Darst’s dad neglected to tell his entire family about their entire family. (13 minutes)

Lots of things go unspoken between family members, sometimes for years. We searched for a parent who had a question for their kid that they’d never been able to ask before.

Writer Etgar Keret tells a story about his father, who was constantly imagining parallel universes. In a way, they saved him.

Producer Emanuele Berry and her dad only talked about basketball. But they never talked about a game that her dad had botched.

One night Rosie’s father, busy working, told Rosie, then 9, to stop distracting him with her questions. She should write them all down, he said.

Larry speaks English. His dad speaks Chinese.

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.

Ayelet Waldman says her dad is a bookish man ... a very smart man ... but no man is everything his kids want him to be.

Radio Diaries’ Joe Richman continues William Cimillo’s story and talks to his two sons about what it was like to have lived through the drama that ensued after their father’s big journey.

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.

Chris Garcia and his dad were driving home, listening to oldies, sharing a bag of chips. A totally familiar scene for them.

More stories of dazzling coincidences: an old boyfriend is conjured in Morocco, a jazz singer seems to rise from the dead, and three boys believe they’ve seen a corpse. Plus stories of errant fathers, lost and found.

Amity Bitzel was a teenager when her parents decided to adopt a 27-year-old man. And that wasn't the strange part.

A man has a very clear vision of how he always stood up to his father,protected his mother and fought hard for the truth. Until one day hediscovers actual raw data — secretly recorded conversations — thatthreaten to change his picture of everything.

Ryan Knighton, who was interviewed in the prologue, tells this story about trying to get his daughter to understand his blindness. Ryan is the author of the memoir Cockeyed.

2008 was a hard year for Louis Ortiz. He had lost his job and was playing in pool tournaments in The Bronx to scratch together some money.

Nubar Alexanian was forced to give up one thing—and then gave up another thing by choice. This story was put together by Nubar and his daughter Abby, with help from Jay Allison, for Transom.org, with funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Host Ira Glass plays clips of interviews with several people whose dads have tried reach out to them the best way they know how, which often means...awkwardly.