This week on Selected Shorts, stories to which we can all relate about problems without solutions.

Dream apartments and nightmarish co-op boards, lovable siblings with an aptitude for disaster, charismatic therapists, or is that

just a projection? Stay with me, Meg Wallitzer, and we'll at least look at some fictional solutions.

Look up problem solving on Google, and you'll get an array of definitions from sources ranging from your friendly bot to the Harvard Business Review.

All agree that the process involves identifying the problem and then proceeding to the solution in neat stages.

You probably first encountered the concept in a school math class. The yucky piles

of numbers suddenly made sense because, as your teacher explained, there was a step-by-step

approach that would yield a satisfying solution. But that's because math has rules. Life, not so much.

So problems in the real world can often seem just maddening on a

practical level. Why can't you assemble the desk which has an actual name, Tonstad, that you

bought at IKEA? Or insurmountable on an existential level, you're going to need a bigger psyche.

And sometimes, of course, there simply aren't good solutions at all,

only choices that lead to different kinds of trouble. Where trouble goes, fiction follows.

And on this program, we've gathered together three intriguing works in three completely different styles,

fantastical, satirical, and lyrical. Each offers up a juicy problem, but you'll

hear why we think of them as unsolvable. In the first story, finding the perfect apartment,

if you're Franz Kafka. In the second, how do you solve a problem like your disaster-prone sister?

And in the third, therapy may turn out to be the

problem and not the solution. Our first story is The Board by Elif Batuman. Batumann, a staff

writer for the New Yorker, has authored two novels, The Idiot and a sequel, Either or, and

the memoir The Possessed. Reader Cindy Chung can be seen on television in many shows, including New Amsterdam and

homeland, and on stage in classics like Antigone, and in her solo show, Speak Up, Connie.

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