Steeplejacking is the art of scaling buildings and other edificies to do jobs that are too high for ordinary carpenters and painters. In the earlier part of the 20th century, it was a door to door free enterprise that anyone with a few supplies and some gull could do.

To understand how simultaneously unfitting and apt this job was for Bob Richards to do in 1952, you have to understand his life and journey up to this point of his life in his twenties. Bob's life could easily span several hour long radio shows with surprising twists and turns, especially coming from well dressed, clean-cut, average looking 77 year old British man who was born in South Africa. At the time he started steeple jacking, he had a degree in Physical from George Washington University and had been offered to start in a PhD program there. He had also already snuck into the United States off a ship he worked on in Africa, been in jail and had hitchhiked across the United States. After hitchhiking across the US, he got a job in California at a chemical plant. After only 7 months, the job was finished, he was paid nicely and that’s where our story starts in Los Angeles….

Anna is a Montessori teacher in the suburbs and is not someone with any experience with the outdoors. A few years ago, however, she decided to bring the nature that she is so unfamiliar with into the classroom by going on a naturalist retreat in Vermont.

It ended up being a City Mouse, Country Mouse story where the City Mouse learns about herself, nature and childhood through experiences in vulnerability and fear.

When Kate's friends found a chicken running down the street in Brooklyn, New York followed by a man yelling "Chicken soup! Chicken soup!", they knew they had to take her in. After several months living unappreciated in a punk house in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, they knew she couldn't stay. So Andrew took her in and soon fell in love with the remarkably affectionate bird. This story is just one of the many in this episode that hightlights the increasing presence of chickens in urban spaces. Radio Waves visits Declan Walsh, who raises chickens in Red Hook, Brooklyn and talk to Erika Shultz and Maggie Anderson who house them in Seattle, Washington. We also talk to Susan Orlean, who discusses the history of urban chicken raising and the industry that has built up around the recent fad.

When Jim saw the elusive and hated Dean McGowan coming across campus, he knew he had to ask him about the controversial tutition hike for his big scoop. However, an the Dean was about to tell him off a man weilding a pie slammed it into the Dean's face and gave Jim the scoop of his life. As he wrote the story, he made up a name for the man and added lots of nonexistant details. After the paper ran, he got a letter from Pie Man telling him where he'd strike next. He realized that he had created a campus folk legend.

Peter Torraca restores old airplanes at the Intrepid Air, Space and Sea Museum. On a recent day, he was busy patching new skin onto a 1960s era F3H Demon. The plane was huge and barely fit the 60 foot long restoration tent on the aircraft carrier’s flight deck.

Torraca was never a navy mechanic and never worked with fighter planes. But aviation is a childhood passion of his, passed down to him from his father.

“My dad, he wanted to be a pilot. He started building model airplanes,” said Torraca. “From birth I was just surrounded with balsa dust, all the ephemera that goes along with the model aviation world.”

Torraca’s love for aviation led him to get a pilots license and buy a plane during the 20-year period he was a graphic designer. But when Torraca was out of work in 2010, he was restless. His wife suggested he volunteer at the Intrepid working on the planes. Since he had some experience already, he excelled and was hired. It was a welcomed but unexpected career switch.

“I’ve been building model airplanes since I was seven and this is a dream,” said Torraca choking up a bit. “This is a dream come true.”