Today’s hour is filled with stories about fantastic critters of all kinds. You'll meet unlikely beasts both real and imagined, and each one might make you think differently of a real-life animal – or person – you love.

(2:26) Japanese storyteller Motoko shares an old Chinese folktale about a father's unlikely relationship with a cricket in "The Golden Eye of the Fighting Cricket," recorded live in the Apple Seed Studio.

(22:46) Host Sam Payne talks about his relationship with a colony of feral cats living in his backyard in today's entry in the Radio Family Journal.

(35:00) A new original audio drama called "The Crystal Whale." The crew of an experimental glass submarine grounded on the bottom of the ocean

faces a giant, mysterious creature that has an unusual fixation on their sub.