Episodes

  • Trailer

    Trailer
    Jun 16 2022
    In this poignant and deeply personal audio experience, host Maria Luisa Tucker investigates the disappearance of her own father, and uses the many theories that emerge to explore what it means to be a family today. Luisa’s father disappeared into the 3-million-acre Tonto National Forest on a cold February day in 2006. As time passed and no clear information emerged, everyone around her had a different theory about what had happened to him: maybe he’d gotten lost on a hike in the mountains. He could have run off with another woman, or gotten so enraged with his wife and kids that he left to avoid hurting them. Or maybe he walked into the woods to die. Years later, Luisa realized that each theory revealed something about her family, and, in turn, our cultural understanding of love, care, the parent-child relationship, self-sufficiency vs. community, and more. In this five-part series, Luisa weaves together scenes from the search for her father with theory and research about love and family, as well as moments from her life now as a mother. Conversations with her loved ones as well as psychologists, anthropologists, and scholars will challenge listeners' ideas of what family is, or should be.
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    2 mins
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  • Episode 1: Self-reliance / The Forest

    Episode 1: Self-reliance / The Forest
    Jun 16 2022
    Tucker gets a call that her dad has disappeared into the forest and starts searching for him, assuming he went on a solo camping trip without telling his wife or kids. She talks to anthropologist Meredith Small about why so many American families value independence more than connection.
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    42 mins
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  • Episode 2: Silence / The Gun

    Episode 2: Silence / The Gun
    Jun 16 2022
    As the search continues, Tucker wonders if anger drove her father away. She talks to psychologist Michael Addis about how male depression often expresses itself as anger.
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    32 mins
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  • Episode 3: Love / The Other Woman

    Episode 3: Love / The Other Woman
    Jun 16 2022
    A tip leads Tucker to believe her dad ran off with another woman. Later, she thinks back on how her dad understood love, and talks to her husband and therapist about where the intersection of love and obligation.
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    33 mins
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  • Episode 4: Pain / The Pills

    Episode 4: Pain / The Pills
    Jun 16 2022
    A search team follows some footprints into the forest and finds a clue. Tucker talks to her Aunt Michelle about her dad’s struggle with addiction.
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    44 mins
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  • Episode 5: Memory / The Cast Iron Pan

    Episode 5: Memory / The Cast Iron Pan
    Jun 16 2022
    Fifteen years after her dad’s disappearance, Tucker talks to essayist Siri Hustvedt about how family members often remember events differently, and fact-checks some of her own childhood memories with her oldest friend.
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    30 mins
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