This week on SELECTED SHORTS, guest host DeRay Mckesson presents four works that consider the Black experience in America from bold perspectives.  Former Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm recalled her historic victory in her essay “Unbought and Unbossed.”  An excerpt is read by Crystal Dickinson.  James Baldwin’s powerful letter to his nephew, “My Dungeon Shook,” is read by Christopher Jackson.  Poet Sonia Sanchez recalls a life-altering encounter with Malcolm X in “Homegirls on St. Nicholas Avenue,” read by Marsha Stephanie Blake, and Percival Everett turns the tables on Southern racists in “The Appropriation of Cultures,” read by Wren T. Brown.

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Kids using perfectly logical arguments and arriving at perfectly wrong conclusions.

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Prologue: Ira talks with Rebecca who, using perfectly valid evidence, arrived at the perfectly incorrect conclusion that her neighbor, Ronnie Loeberfeld, was the tooth fairy. Ira also talks with Dr. Alison Gopnik, co-author of the book, "The Scientist in the Crib," about what exactly kid logic is. (6 minutes)Act One: More stories like the one in the prologue, where kids look at something going on around them, observe it carefully, think about it logically, and come to conclusions that are completely incorrect. (11 minutes)Act Two: Michael Chabon reads an excerpt from his short story "Werewolves in Their Youth," from his collection of the same name, about an act of kid logic that succeeds where adult logic fails. (16 minutes)Act Three: Howie Chackowicz tried a risky combination when he was little, kid logic with puppy love. He used to think that girls would fall in love with him if they could just see him sleeping or hear him read aloud. He revisits his biggest childhood crush and finds out that not only did his methods not work, but that no one even noticed them. (10 minutes)Act Four: Alex Blumberg investigates a little-studied phenomenon: Children who get a mistaken idea in their heads about how something works or what something means, and then don't figure out until well into adulthood that they were wrong. Including the tale of a girl who received a tissue box for Christmas, allegedly painted by trained monkeys. (13 minutes)

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This week on SELECTED SHORTS, host Meg Wolitzer presents three stories about problems without solutions.  In Elif Batuman’s “The Board,” read by Cindy Cheung, the protagonist has found the perfect apartment, but he has to satisfy a Kafka-esque co-op committee.  Jesse Eisenberg imagines an irritating sibling with problems of global proportions in ““My Little Sister Texts Me with Her Problems,” read by real-life sisters Lacey Lamar and Amber Ruffin.  And a patient is drawn to her therapist—but is this a bad thing? in Esther Freud’s “Transference,” read by Claire Danes. 

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An episode from our show's early days: Stories about what happens when strangers are kind — and when they're not.

Prologue: Brett Leveridge was standing on the subway platform when a man walked by, stopping in front of each passenger to deliver a quiet verdict: "You're in. You're out. You can stay. You—gotta go." Most people ignored him. But Brett found himself hoping for the thumbs up. (5 minutes)Act One: New York City locksmith Joel Kostman tells the story of an act of kindness he committed, hoping for a small reward. (13 minutes)Act Two: In 1940, Jack Geiger, at the age of fourteen, left his middle-class Jewish home and knocked on the door of a black actor named Canada Lee. He asked Lee if he could move in with him. Lee said yes. In Lee's Harlem apartment, Geiger spent a year among many of the great figures of the Harlem Renaissance: Langston Hughes, Billy Strayhorn, Richard Wright, Adam Clayton Powell. (11 minutes)Act Three: How two next-door neighbors start treating each other badly, and how their feud becomes an all-consuming obsession. Paul Tough reports. (14 minutes)Act Four: For five weeks, a singer named Nick Drakides stood on a stoop in the East Village, singing Sinatra songs late at night to the delight of his neighbors. The cops didn't bust him; the crowds behaved. It was his gift to New York. Blake Eskin tells the story. (12 minutes)

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Host Meg Wolitzer presents two stories that demonstrate the ways in which characters—like all of us—can play many different roles in one another's lives, and in the world around us. Cherline Bazile’s “Tender,” which guest editor Min Jin Lee included in Best American Short Stories 2023, reflects the contradictory nature of friendship.  It’s read by Anna Uzele.  And our second story, Grace Paley’s “The Contest,” reflects the contradictory nature of courtship, as the bewildered narrator is alternatively flattered and bullied by a girl with way more on the ball than he has.He tells us so himself, in the voice of actor Justin Bartha.

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