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Selected Shorts

Selected Shorts

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Spellbinding short stories by established and emerging writers take on a new life when they are performed by stars of the stage and screen.More from Selected Shorts »

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Welcome to Night Vale

Hosts of the hit podcast offer up some of their favorite weird stories by Will Eno, Yoko Ogawa, Shirley Jackson, Patricia Lockwood, and Mallory Ortberg, performed by Cecil Baldwin, Marin Ireland, Dylan Marron, and Mara Wilson.

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Funny/Scary for Halloween

Fantasy writer Neil Gaiman presents four eerie tales. Disaster looms for a busy dentist in Charles Baxter’s “Through the Safety Net,” read by Becky Ann Baker. Mark Richard’s “Strays” refers to dogs and two woeful kids. Gaiman reads his own chilling “Click-Clack, The Rattlebag,” and John Cameron Mitchell reads Gaiman’s “October Tale.”

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1:01:07

All Tangled Up

A character playing hooky from work gets trapped by “The Lie,” in this story by TC Boyle read by Stephen Colbert. Thomas Meehan has a great party in “Yma Dream,” until it turns into a nightmare. Christine Baranski reads. Guest host Wyatt Cenac finishes up with “Pride and Prejudice.” In twenty tweets. Really.

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59:09

Figuring it Out

Guest host Michael Cerveris presents two stories about people—and not people—in search of solutions. A marriage is in crisis in Jeffrey Eugenides’ “Find the Bad Guy,” read by John Benjamin Hickey. And a mainframe has an identity crisis in “The Adventure of the Computer Program,” by Seth Fried, read by Santino Fontana.

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59:57

Flash Forward

Guest host Cynthia Nixon presents two stories about finding happiness in unexpected places. In Michel Faber’s “Vanilla Bright Like Eminem” a single moment illuminates the life of a family. The reader is Daniel Gerroll. In Roxanne Gay’s “North Country,” an academic is a fish out of water in a backwoods community, until love finds her. Adepero Oduye reads.

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59:56

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