"'Do you ever think about old Jonny Swiggert?' Bobby asked me. We were standing under the awning of Sam's All-Night Coffee and Donuts, sipping hot coffee from polystyrene cups. Light rain was falling and the autumn air had a winter chill...."

London cabbies must know the city, but maybe the old ones know something more. When a dark mystery pulls you like a magnet, do you follow?

"The 1 mg. tablet of clonazepam needs thirty minutes to kick in so I take that first. Then I put on a polyester shirt and my tan leisure suit, and load up the VCR."

A new twist on time travel, but also an investigation of self. Can perseverance overcome fate? What would you do to save a life?

"Energy was all ours and we burned it. We'd run down the beach, us girls, until the jagged water-edge turned us back. We'd hop stairs to the roof and scream until a flashlight halted us."

Two vignettes from a woman's life. Welding torch, highway, tattoos, dusty junk... Can we make judgments? What have we learned?

"It hadn't rained yet, so Ket looked out at the grey morning and limped out to join the rest. He had to lean on the old stub of a spear he'd carried since the hunt that had made his reputation."

Life is more than the struggle to survive. What might have been the origins of art in our prehistoric ancestors?

"The truth is, things were not working out well. Cate and I had been fighting a lot lately, and at the root of it was the cliche I hated to admit: money." A man looks back to the dawn of his marriage. Was their union doomed by esoteric mysteries? Perhaps he needs to see through her eyes.

"She was a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee. And evil was the hour when she saw, and loved, and wedded the painter."

A strange little vignette by the lauded (or is that laudanum?) master of romantic gloom. And an attempt to interview the author. What were we thinking?

"Simon Bearde, a steward on the SS Pandora, made a discovery just as his vessel had passed over the equator into the Southern Hemisphere."

Young men at sea with their rituals and rackets, a line crossed, a deep thought, a big wave... and are bacteria and ocean liners actually alike?

"It was early fall, 2001, and I was at the Rosebud Indian reservation to teach a class in Non-Violent Civil Disobedience."

Tobacco offerings, a sweat lodge... a young man not only meets a different culture, but experiences something beyond explanation. Can you ask for what you need? What dark future approaches?

"One sunny afternoon under clear skies the life of one Uretherer V. Lamb, 63, pataphysician, of Interlachen, Florida, was changed for all time."

The Grim Reaper visits Florida wearing a silly tie. One man's life is done...or is it? What happens if you subvert the cosmic order?

"'It was the girl.' The old man leaned forward, bracing against the worn-out armchair as though he were trying to escape its grasp. 'April Cooper. She was the real killer.'"

A podcast about a podcast about a long-ago murder spree. Crime ripples across generations. Can a broken family be mended? Can we ever really know someone?