Episodes

An invasion hiding in plain print.

The Ultimate Workaholic

Every house party has a guest who knows too much. A mild little man named Cornelius Appin has spent seventeen years on one problem. He believes he's solved it: he has taught a cat to speak. The company around Lady Blemley's tea table does not believe him — and that, as it happens, is the last comfortable moment anyone in the house will enjoy. Pour yourself some tea. Mind the saucer. Saki was the pen name of Hector Hugh Munro (1870–1916), the sharpest wit of the Edwardian age. Born in Burma an...

Satisfaction Given.

A True Story?

An errand, a name, a question. That's all it takes. Sent east to west on a friend's behalf, a traveler walks into a decayed mining camp in Calaveras County and asks one polite question of one agreeable old man. He is then backed into a corner, blockaded there with a chair, and told at enormous length about Jim Smiley, a gambler who would bet on a horse race, a dog fight, a camp meeting, or two birds on a fence, and who once spent three solid months in his back yard teaching a frog to jump. The...

The Ultimate Silent Treatment

A Dog's Lesson

From just five minutes to life changing

Five dollars, one divorce, and a change of heart

Rabbit Life and Death

Two stories about carrots and sticks.

A young couple has trouble keeping their stories aligned

What the Dog Said

A Parable on Bureaucratic Excess

Stories to Make You Smirk, Smile, Snicker, and Snort

Two Pie Peddlers Scheme to Corner the American Dessert

A Bad Day at the Bank

A Penniless Man and a Preposterous Note

Frontier slang meets the King's English

Genesis, She Said

Genesis, He Said

A Widower, a Widow, and Rather Too Many Children

Red tape meets rapid reproduction