The universe has good news for the lost, lonely, and heart sick.

Dear sugars is here speaking straight into your ears.

I'm Steve Almond.

I'm Cheryl Stray.

This is Dear Sugar's.

Dear someone, won't you please?

Shear bit of sweetness with me.

I check my mailbox every day.

For an issue you send my will.

Woo!

Hi Steve.

Hi Cheryl.

So here we are Steve tonight at Revolution Hall in Portland, Oregon.

We do these live shows maybe once a year so we always love it because it's so wonderful to see you all.

When we are in the studio making the podcast, I always think like is anyone even listening?

But then everywhere we go people will come up to me in the grocery store and say, I was in the next aisle and I heard you and I recognized your voice from the Vodgas.

Yes.

I do not have that experience.

But interestingly people will occasionally walk up to me at a bus depot or a down in the mouth diner and they'll say, are you Steve Almond?

And I'll say, yes I am and they'll say, do you think Cheryl Stray would blur my book?

So as our listeners know we almost always have a topic or a theme and tonight we are going to discuss this theme that is the title of Steve's new book, Bad Stories.

He wrote about it in the cultural political collective sense but so often the advice we give is about counseling people to revise that narrative, to think of a new way to think of their lives, their relationships or their capacities for change and transformation.

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