This week’s episode is one of those old questions: what’s the point of suffering? We speak to Canadian author Marina Endicott about her pun-tastic novel Close to Hugh, and her characters’ struggle to figure out how we live in the knowledge of death and suffering and not collapse from sadness.

Then we talk to dancer and Pique Dance Centre instructor María Valencia Alvarez about yearning for a baby brother, being shipped off to boarding school, and growing up fast.