Last Best Stories

Parenting, man. It’s complicated. “Critters, Blobs and Swan Dives” gets at how parents think about their kids and how their thinking evolves and changes as a baby becomes a person.

Also in this episode, “Running Through Heartbreak,” about a Missoula woman who lost her person — her adult child — and how she’s managed to still feel her.

"Where we goin' now, boss?" Follow Colin May and a couple of charismatic researchers to Glacier National Park, where a study about habituated goats all mostly ties back to human urine.

The short story in this episode is a sound portrait of Thom Pak, head chef and bottle washer at Missoula's River Wok.

“Your grandmother’s lice got going real good, so I took her down to the river when it got to be 30 below, chopped a hole in the ice and put her in.” There’s more where that came from in Lacy Robert’s story, “How the West Was Won,” including some killer yodeling.

Also: Where’s the weirdest place you’ve put your hand? Think about it. Then listen to some doozies in our second feature.

1-2-3-4-5. You still gonna eat that? Here’s a fun story by Ruth Eddy about people who will and why and the science that says it’s OK.

David "Madman" Poole earned his nickname in high school in Townsend, Montana. It had even more meaning after he woke up nearly buried in snow following a skiing accident when he was working at Copper Mountain in Colorado. Poole was paralyzed from his sternum down. His climb back -- literally and otherwise -- is a story with twists and turns involving a a bike that looks like something out of a Mad Max movie. It was produced by Danielle Thomsen, an independent audio producer in Bozeman, who got to follow a madman up the hill.

Tyler Knott Gregson of Helena starts every day the same way. He gets out of bed, sits down at his kitchen table and pounds out a poem on an old ...

Mary Hickman is a caroling institution outside the Orange Street Food Farm in Missoula. When this longtime Salvation Army bell-ringer was reassigned to a different store, people missed her. Her ...