Our friend Michael Ian Black is back to host a twofer Too Hot For Radio episode. First up is actor K. Todd Freeman reading“Pregnant with Peanut Butter” by Michael Czyniejewski. Czyniejewski is the author of three story collections, including Our Bedroom and I Will Love You for the Rest of My Life: Breakup Stories. Performing this story is an actor known for everything from multiple appearances on Broadway to Buffy the Vampire SlayertoA Series of Unfortunate Events. 

Elizabeth Crane is the author of our second story, the unusual and funny “Colonel Sanders Has a Choice (Lives His Best Life)." Crane has written six books including the novel The History of Great Things and the story collection Turf. Our performer is the multi-hyphenate Busy Phillips, who acted in TV shows such as Freaks & Geeks and had her own late-night show Busy Tonight. 

Stay tuned at the end of the show for a great talk between Michael and Elizabeth discussing the origins of her story and her outlook on life.  

Guest host Jane Kaczmarek presents three stories with surprising twists and turns, a reminder that surprises can still be entertaining, even though the world has changed in unpredictable ways.  A wife finds something unexpected in her local thrift shop in “Second Hand,” by Andres Neuman.  The story is performed by Kaczmarek.  Dawn Powell’s “Dinner on the Rocks” is an elegant comedy of bad manners, performed by Christina Pickles.  And the salesman in Hubert Selby Jr.’s “Fortune Cookie” thinks he’s found a formula for success.  Michael Imperioli is the reader.

Guest host Maulik Pancholy presents stories, essays, and poems, and speeches celebrating America’s diversity and wealth of stories, at a time when we need to know we are together, even when we are apart.  An aging father ponders his life in Elizabeth Strout’s “The Walk,” read by Ellen Burstyn.  The whole country’s talking in Susan Minot’s “Listen,” read by Jennifer Ikeda and Khris Lewin.  Julia Alvarez faces prejudice and finds her voice in “Speak! Speak!” read by Selenis Leyva, and Henry Louis Gates introduces works by 19th-century African-American women writers.

Guest host Jane Kaczmarek presents two stories based on fairy tales.  We need good stories more than ever now.  Traditional fairy tales always have a lesson, and these new versions are guaranteed to offer up some pearls about staying strong in difficult times. 

First, a story about an unconventional princess.  Jane Kaczmarek performs Jeanne Desy’s “The Princess Who Stood On Her Own 2 Feet.”

And Brazilian feminist writer Clarice Lispector shares a wealthy woman’s moment of truth in “Beauty and the Beast or The Enormous Wound,” performed by Kate Burton.

In this time of sheltering, we think one of the things that’s magical about short stories is that they bring the world to you.  On this program, guest host Michael Cerveris presents two stories about the difference between what other people observe about us, and who we actually are.  Even though we’re all mostly “home alone” right now, these pieces remind us that when we are out in the world, our inner and outer selves can be very different. 

Cerveris reads “Riding the Doghouse,” a great coming-of-age story about a young boy and his trucker dad, by Randy DeVita, and the superb Kathleen Chalfant brings to life Carol Shields’ “Mrs. Turner Cutting the Grass.”  Mrs. Turner is a suburban widow with sloppy gardening skills—and cellulite—but she has an interesting past. 

Goodness knows we could all use a laugh right now.  So this week we’re offering a Selected Shorts program full of funny stories selected by Andy Borowitz, who’s funny in so many ways. The late columnist Molly Ivins sticks it to pompous politicians in “Tough as Bob War and Other Stuff,” performed by Judith Ivey.  Essayist Sloane Crosley reveals a shameful habit in “The Pony Problem,” performed by Kirsten Vangsness.  Parker Posey delivers a classic Dorothy Parker rant (two Parkers, no waiting) about a lousy dance partner, and Selected Shorts’ late host and founder Isaiah Sheffer speaks truth to toddlers in Ian Frazier’s “Lamentations of the Father.”

We're rebroadcasting one of our earlier episodes in honor of the long-awaited publication of The Mirror & the Light, author Hilary Mantel's final chapter of the trilogy she began with her peerless, Booker Prize-winning novels, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. We found this story in her often wicked short story collection The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher.  “The Long QT” features a standard, modern-day dilemma that delivers an entirely unexpected sort of fright at the end. Host Aparna Nancherla chats with champion open water swimmer, Lynne Cox, a real life survivor of the disorder Mantel's story is based upon. Read by actress Joanne Whalley.

In honor of the human impulse to seek culinary comfort when times are tough, guest host Robert Sean Leonard presents two food-centered stories curated with the online food and cooking community Food52. In J. Robert Lennon’s “Breadman,” artisanal bread threatens a marriage. Kyle MacLachlan is the incredulous spouse.  And Joan Allen performs an excerpt from Nora Ephron’s novel Heartburn, a slice of infidelity in which there are consequences—and pie.

The stories on this program, hosted by Jane Kaczmarek, start out in one place and end up somewhere completely different.  Which pretty much describes our world at the moment.    The three authors also talk about how people connect—something that seems important right now.  Colin Nissan’s “Wedding Announcement” escalates comically in the reading by John Cameron Mitchell.  A wary housewife is surprised by beauty in Michel Faber’s “The Eyes of the Soul,’ performed by Kirsten Vangsness, and teenage lovers grow up quickly in James Lasdun’s “Lime Pickle” performed by David Schwimmer.   (The pickle is really not—do not try this at home!)

Guest host Jane Curtin presents three quirky stories in which a drop or two is taken: Michael Gerber's and Jonathan Schwarz's "What We Talk About When We Talk About Doughnuts" is a riff on a famous Raymond Carver tale; it's performed by Joey Slotnick.  Early New Yorker humorist Corey Ford tells us just what can go wrong at "The Office Party," performed by Jordan Klepper. And wry tale of boozy suburbia, "The Sorrows of Gin," is performed by Kathleen Chalfant.