Sometimes you embark on an adventure thinking it’s going to be hard, but then it winds up being harder than you ever imagined. You’re in way over your head, but somehow, you get through it, and you find yourself a little bruised, but wiser on the other side. We’ve got an hour of stories like that for you today.

(1:58) Storyteller Charlotte Blake Alston shares an African tale about a girl given a seemingly straightforward job of making clothes that ends up taking her into a den of monsters in "Thakane the Brave," recorded live in the Apple Seed Studio

(20:32) Host Sam Payne spins a yarn in which he and his brother have an encounter with a ghostly dog in a spooky old cabin in today's entry in the Radio Family Journal

(32:58) An original audio drama called "The Shiny" about a squirrel who feels overwhelmed by the task before her: traversing the San Fernando Zoo in search of an elusive treasure known as The Shiny!