On this selected short, a sea monster, a widow and a woman of a certain age make journeys of discovery. We follow

characters from the surface to the depths, from grief to acceptance, from middle

age to whatever comes next. Join our readers Natasha Rothwell,

Kelly O'Hara, and me Meg Wallettzer.

You're listening to selected shorts

where our greatest actors transport us

through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time. Life is full of changes, whether we like it or not. Some transformations are really

gradual, like the passage from childhood to old age.

You might not even see those changes until later, looking back at photos, and then you're

like, wait, that's me?

Some transformations come about because of great joy or deep grief.

And some take place because of totally unexpected encounters.

You might be just going along living your life and you meet someone and then there's a big swerve on this show a playful fantasy a domestic dilemma and a private odyssey help us adjust to the idea

Our first story is a favorite that we're sharing again,

Seth Freed's Sea Monster.

We wouldn't call it old, though the main characters may predate recorded time, on the surface were on familiar territory, a long-married

couple exploring their relationship. But then suddenly they begin to reveal things about themselves

that they never shared before, and both they and the marriage are transformed.

See Monster is performed by Natasha Rothwell.

Rothwell is known for her work on insecure, and more recently can be seen in the satirical television series The White Lotus.

Here she is with Seth Freed's C- Monster. In a previous life she'd been a monster living on the ocean floor.

She remembered herself well, a coiled mass of dark tentacles,

...