On this selected shorts, WNYC's on the media host,

Brooke Gladstone presents short fiction that illuminates the hilarious, profound, and inspiring ways we seek to understand the human condition.

I'm Meg Wallitzer. 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.

On this show, we're sharing some stories chosen by Brooke Gladstone for an evening she hosted at Symphony Space.

Gladstone is the longtime producer and host of WNYC's radio show and podcast on the media.

And here she is from the stage at Symphony Space.

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to Selected Shorts. I'm your host for the evening, Brooke Gladstone.

If you know me, it's probably from the radio show. Now, when the producers of selected shorts approached me about curating this evening, I thought,

please don't let this be about the media, please.

Let's focus instead on the stories we tell ourselves, the favorite part of my day job.

And they said, sure.

So, each of these stories are in a way about

stories and the particular ways these characters, some familiar, some less so, use them to

define shape and remember who it is they and we think we are.

That was Brooke Gladstone.

In response to her theme, we found three works that explore the idea of stories we tell

ourselves from very different perspectives.

There's a funny tale in which a doctor-patient relationship leads to story hour,

another in which an adult child tries to make

sense of her relationship with her mother, and an emotionally resonant narrative about becoming

...