Parent Trap

Stories about parents setting accidental traps for their children, and sometimes for themselves, including a story from WNYC's Radiolab about a chimp raised twice—once as a human child, and again as a chimp. Prologue: When Dave Hill was in his late 20s and still basically living at home, he hung out with his mom a lot. But once she used particularly sneaky tactics to get him to attend a church fundraiser. (9 minutes.) Letter Day Saint: Rebecca was 16 years old when her mother Elizabeth died of cancer. But before she died, she wrote letters to Rebecca, to be given to her on her birthday each year for thirteen years. At first the letters were comforting, but as time went on, they had much more complicated effects. David Segal tells the story. David is a reporter for The New York Times. (14 minutes.) Opposite Of Tarzan: Lucy was a chimpanzee raised in captivity, who adopted a surprising number of human traits. But this proved problematic—in quite unexpected ways—when her adoptive human parents decided that Lucy should be released in the wild. This story comes from WNYC's Radiolab, which is distributed by NPR. Radiolab hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich tell the story. (29 minutes.)