On selected shorts this week, interventions.

What happens when outside agents step into other people's lives?

We find out in stories by Stephen King and Jamel Brinkley,

where a persuasive stranger and a neighborhood

oddball turn out to be agents of change. I'm Meg sense that it involves interference in a situation or a life, and that it's not always welcome. These days, one of the most common associations

is with family and friends concerned with a loved one's self-destructive behavior. It's purposeful.

But there's also the idea of chance or even divine intervention. In Greek mythology and classical

drama, intervention usually involved the presence seen or unseen of the gods.

The results were sometimes devastatingly violent, and sometimes covertly benign or spectacularly magically transforming.

So yes, Helen, the Trojan War was a bummer, but only you got to be the most beautiful

woman in the world. Our stories on this show explore different manifestations of intervention.

In the first, the road to recovery takes a twist. In the second, a neighborhood oddball turns out

to have hidden strengths. Our first story, the fifth step, is by Stephen King.

King is, of course, the author of such horror classics as Carrie and The Shining,

but also boasts a powerful portfolio of short fiction.

The story is read by David Morse, an actor with an equally large range, from his early work on the hit television series St. Elsewhere, to his award-winning performance in the Broadway revival of Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive. And he has been in three King adaptations, including The Green Mile. Here he is with the author's The Fifth Step.

The Fifth Step.

Harold Jameson, once chief engineer of New York City Sanitation Department, enjoyed retirement.

He knew from his small circle of friends that some didn't, so he considered himself lucky.

He had an acre of garden in Upper Manhattan that he shared with several like-minded horticulturalists.

He had discovered Netflix, and he was making inroads and the books he'd always meant to read.

He still missed his wife, a victim of breast cancer five years previous. But aside from that, persistent ache,

...