As everyone with a therapist knows, good counsel isn't cheap, unless you stay with us for selected shorts.

This week, we've got a lot of advice, absolutely free, from how to fix your printer to relationship advice from your aunt who has been

divorced six times. My advice, stick around.

You're listening to Selected Shorts where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time.

Sit down, relax, and listen, I know exactly what's going on with you. I do. I know all about your

problems. Trust me, I have been exactly where you are right now. And I know it all seems

pretty daunting, but you came to the right place because I know precisely how to fix things.

Isn't that nice to hear?

I mean, okay, that was a kind of make-believe,

but still, just stepping away from being the host

to instead being the confident confidant

made me feel at ease.

When we're deep in a dilemma with no idea how to solve it,

we can feel desperate for the right kind of listener,

someone with a sympathetic ear and a bit of pithy, wise, unassailable advice. Of course, ask for advice

in the real world, and your results may vary. Some people don't listen or just like to hear

themselves talk, or sound like the bookstore's self-help section,

because they also spend a suspicious amount of time in the bookstore's self-help section.

So this week, our fiction asks what advice is really worth?

These stories consider not only how and when to give advice, but why to do it in the first place. In one piece, an

experienced elder provides a wealth of very, very specific life hacks. In a second, a grieving

woman happens upon an unexpected guru, and in a third, a wedding brings out one couple's most

...