Welcome to Strangers from KCW and Radiotopia. I'm Leah Tao. And I'm just going to come right out and say it. We don't have a brand new story for you today. It's a story from the first season of strangers, which has been offline for almost three years, so many of you won't have heard it. But some of you will, and if you're one of those,

I know you might be disappointed, but I hope you'll forgive us.

Last week, I had an honest-to-goodness vacation for five days, where I was really off the grid,

and it was one of the greatest times of my entire life. But I returned home on

Sunday, all tanned and rested, to discover that the story we were working on had fallen through

because the subject had pulled out, and that we didn't have an episode to post today.

It was like I squeezed the very last drops out of summer with a mini-September vacation.

And the moment I returned home, the universe slammed me in the head and said,

Not so fast, lady.

Didn't you get the memo?

Summer is over.

Labor Day has come and gone.

Kids are doing homework and eating their vegetables,

and grown-ups are cramming into cars and trains at 8 a.m. wondering where yet another summer went,

and what the hell they're doing with their lives. So instead of the episode we meant to do, we're going to give you two episodes, one today and one in another week or so, both from the first season of strangers.

So not brand new material, but two for the price of one, and both relate to the theme of work.

And the way it defines us, confounds us, builds us up, breaks us down. We could call it a back-to-the-grind miniseries. And both are lighter stories, not gut-wrenching

dramas with definitive answers, but entertaining musings on the recurring question of

how to be a grown-up.

And now, without further ado, here is the first of those two episodes with my original introduction,

which I left in because I thought it was kind of fun to hear how I framed things then.

I sound a bit younger, I think. Here goes.

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