A beautiful story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is recited after some thoughts about always pleasing others. It is impossible, so I spend some time helping you adjust your thoughts and expectations about the reality of disappointing others.

This podcast is designed to put you to sleep. Hopefully this story won't have the opposite effect. Alexander Pushkin writes about an undertaker. I've taken this opportunity to speak about death and grief - things that can keep us awake.

Dorothy Parker wrote this story in 1928. In it she waits by the telephone for a man to call her. Let's explore the uncomfortable task of waiting and the challenge of unfulfilled longing. It's a good thing to wait. It can make us better people.

Let me own the problem of patriarchy, apologize and then read you to sleep with a story by Katherine Mansfield called, The Stranger.

Let me talk you down from your negative thoughts about your body while I read this classic short story from James Baldwin called The Rockpile

Let's talk about the illusion of control and our attempts to manipulate people and circumstances. We need to exercise grace, strength and even when other people's junk spills over onto us. Let me read Hunter Quartermain's Story, a character from King Solomon's Mines which influenced the Lost World genre, as well as the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and India Jones.

On this episode I help you deal with anger, anxiety or grief over a parent before reading this story by Charles Dickens called A Poor Relation's Story

I'll talk you down from your anxieties about romance and then read a short story by Edith Wharton called The Other Two.

Here we still ourselves to listen to the divine silence before hearing a story by Guy de Maupassant called The Necklace

Here I read a section of Maya Angelou's book "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings". The story is about Mrs. Flowers. But first I address unhelpful comparisons we make between ourselves and others.