The Leap KQED

Brace Belden was 27 when he snuck into Syria to enlist in a Kurdish militia, leaving his girlfriend, job, and hometown of San Francisco behind. Even he thought it was a dumb idea, but it was also a chance to finally put his beliefs into action.

April hasn't seen Steve in 15 years. So when she gets a call from a lawyer asking about him, she's not sure what to think. As memories from long ago crowd her mind, she's also confronted by an ugly new truth. One that haunts her present and makes her doubt the past.

Daley Dunham was a junior in college at UC Berkeley when he decided to donate sperm. He likened it to donating blood -- an opportunity to do something good for a person in need. Except when you donate blood, you don’t get a tidal wave of children crashing into your life twenty years later.

Stories of unlikely friendships. A man finds himself the sole confidant of an eccentric old man. A woman finds companionship with a catfish that leads her on a journey to the Amazon.

My Linh Le has been lying to her parents about who she is for decades. When she’s with them, she gives them the daughter they want, and she keeps the truth about who she is to herself. But then one night, My Linh has a strange dream and wakes up wondering, at 31 years old, is it finally time to own up to all the lies she's been living since high school?

Sunday, December 9, 1984 is a day Beth McGhee will never forget. It’s the day her three year-old daughter, Neola, vanished, kidnapped by her ex-husband. As Beth launched into the painful search for Neola, she had no idea how long she would be waiting for her daughter to come home. Or if she would come home at all.