Who are you now and who did you used to be on this selected shorts changing bodies and altered lives. I'm your host Meg Walitzer.

Stay with me.

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

Our sense of self is shaped by lots of different forces, our age, our moods, our bodies, our relationships,

were never just one thing, we're always transitioning into the next version of ourselves.

I think sometimes we force that transition a little. When I went to college

I dressed in collegiate outfits from women's magazines. For years I'd been wearing corduroies

and Dr. Scholes and suddenly I was in a skirt with one of those giant weird

safety pins in it. Later, when I decided to be a writer, I actually bought a beret.

The three stories on this program explore the phenomenon of a changing self from a variety of

perspectives. In the first curious but clueless young men explore the boundaries of

love and friendship. In the second a trans woman explores her life before and after the change, and in the third, a

divorced couple probe the sore tooth of their marriage, with surprisingly funny results,

for us, if not for them.

Yolchintosun's Muzzophish and Bananas is a tender, unconventional and unexpected coming

of age story.

Two teens on the awkward cusp of manhood test ideas of friendship and love,

and they have only an ancient chimpanzee as a model.

The story comes to us courtesy of words without borders,

and its translator Abby Comstock Gay commented on their website about the power

of Tossoon's work to capture youth awash all at once in anticipation, hope, crushing

loneliness and confusion.

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