Selected Shorts: "Classics with a Twist"

Release Date: November 13, 2025
Host: Meg Wolitzer
Guests/Featured Readers: Sara Bareilles, Jim Parsons, Mike Doyle
Theme: Classic tales from literature reimagined for the modern age—funny, thought-provoking, deeply relatable, and always moving.

Overview

In "Classics with a Twist," Selected Shorts presents contemporary spins on beloved literary classics. The episode showcases the flexibility and enduring power of stories by inviting acclaimed writers to refashion Jane Austen, Edgar Allan Poe, and Jack and the Beanstalk for the 21st century. Top-tier performers embody these tales, drawing connections between the universality of human emotion and the quirks of our time. The results are clever, unexpected, and highly entertaining.

Key Discussion Points & Story Summaries

1. Introduction and Episode Theme

[01:07] Meg Wolitzer

• Meg welcomes listeners and introduces the concept: "Classics get a makeover, Jane Austen gets ghosted, Edgar Allan Poe meets the iPhone, and Jack leaves the Beanstalk to become an entrepreneur."
• The stories maintain ties to their origins while embracing modern perspectives—especially the ways our era’s quirks shape familiar narratives.

2. Phantoms and Prejudice – Ginny Hogan (Read by Sara Bareilles)

[04:00-15:41]

Story Summary

A witty mashup of Pride and Prejudice and contemporary dating mores, "Phantoms and Prejudice" sees a present-day narrator sent back to the Bennet household to explain ghosting to Lizzie and her sisters. While Lizzie and family are perplexed by this future phenomenon, their reactions reveal timeless confusion and hurt.

Key Moments & Exchanges

• Defining Ghosting:
  • “Sometimes people you’re dating will get your letter and then they just don’t send one back... It’s called ghosting, because it’s like he just disappeared like a ghost.”
    — Narrator (Sara Bareilles), [04:51]
• Anachronistic Humor:
  • “Don’t worry. In the future you can have jobs and vote and own property, I said. Plus processed food."
    — Narrator, [06:56]
  • On dating: “As a lady who mostly dates aspiring comedians who don’t floss, I kind of get it. Women will put up with a lot.”
    — Narrator, [08:10]
• Classic Character Clashes:
  • Lizzie: "It is one thing not to let a lady own land or inherit her husband’s wealth, but to stop responding to messages... I will not give credence to it.” [05:45]
  • On Darcy: “He really needs to go to therapy for the whole dead parent thing. Like, get a hobby and take responsibility for your actions. Darcy, how long are you really gonna be his Prozac?”
    — Narrator, [09:24]
• Resolution:
  The real Darcy returns, explaining his absence (“I feared my carriage driver had consumption... I decided it would be expedient to appear in person.” [13:51]), restoring Lizzie’s faith, but the narrator wryly observes, “You should have texted, Darc.”

Notable Quotes

• “Dating sucks... I went on two incredible dates with this Argentinian painter, and then I asked if she wanted to meet my mom and she just stopped responding.” — Narrator, [11:23]
• “Every day confirms my belief in the inconsistency of all human characters, even fictional ones.” — Lizzie, [12:16]

Segment Highlight

• [15:41] Meg Wolitzer reflects on Hogan’s "delicious" premise, noting how modern twists on Austen often recast her characters for new generations, and lauds the story’s balance of humor and cultural commentary.

Performer Insight

• Sara Bareilles on Her Reading ([16:44]):
  “I think what was so delightful is bringing the future to the past... What people love about those novels is that they feel contemporary in their own way... By bringing the future lens of the more sort of cynical, critical, modern woman to it, it’s just really charming.”

3. The Telltale Heart – Anthony Mara (Read by Mike Doyle)

[17:55-31:34]

Story Summary

Anthony Mara’s take on Poe’s psychological horror relocates the action to a modern apartment, where the narrator fixates on his roommate’s obsessive use of the iPhone. The murder is driven less by unexplained mania and more by technology-fueled alienation and envy, reimagining Poe’s classic as a darkly comic satire on digital life.

Key Moments & Exchanges

• Technology as Obsession:
  • “His only shortcoming…was his iPhone. Every experience he dutifully engraved via tweet, post, or status…Reality was only visible to Richard at 326ppi.” — Narrator, [18:56]
  • "He wasn’t taking pictures for his Tinder profile anymore. He was taking pictures to delete them.” — Narrator, [20:37]
• Murder Motive Update:
  • “My only madness was mercy. I was no more than a forefinger on the red delete button, finishing what he had himself begun.” — Narrator, [22:50]
• Modernized ‘Heart’ Reveal:
  • Buzzing from under the floorboards is not a literal heart, but the iPhone reacting to texts: “His heart preserved in that cursed phone, shaking with each message she’d sent.” — Narrator, [28:38]
• Climax & Irony:
  • “There. I howled. There he is.” — Narrator revealing the phone to Richard’s date, [30:59]
  • Jim Parsons’ deadpan: “Take it.” [30:56]

Host Reflection

• [31:34] Meg Wolitzer: Praises Mara’s update for making the killer’s obsession feel disturbingly relatable, thanks to "that moment we all recognize—a lost phone revealing itself."

4. Jacked – Michael Cunningham (Read by Jim Parsons)

[35:29-55:38]

Story Summary

Cunningham’s “Jacked” is a biting, modern-psychological retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk through the lens of 21st-century entitlement, late capitalism, and family dysfunction. Jack transforms from a feckless boy into an adult defined by opportunism and need.

Key Moments & Exchanges

• Modern Jack:
  • “There are any number of boys like Jack. Boys who prefer the crazy promise, the long shot, who insist that they’re natural born winners...They DJ at friends’ parties believing a club owner will show up sooner or later and hire them to spin for the multitudes.” — Narrator, [36:01]
• Satirizing Family & Ambition:
  • “Jack’s mother, upset when he strides back into the house, holds out his hand and shows her what he’s gotten for the cow—she is. What have I done?...How exactly did I raise you to be this cavalier and unreliable?” — Narrator, [36:55]
• Fairy Tale Meets Late Capitalism:
  • “Jack’s mother invested the gold in stocks and real estate…They continue living together as mother and son. Jack doesn’t date.” — Narrator, [42:41]
  • “We always want more, though some of us want more than others, it’s true. But we always want more of something. More love, more youth, more.” — Narrator, [46:47]
• Giant’s Wife Dynamic:
  • “There’s the appeal of the young thief who robs you and climbs back down off your cloud…It’s possible to love his greed and narcissism, to grant him that which is beyond your own capacities.” — Narrator, [44:42]
• Poignant Ending:
  • Only the (magic) harp is "rested and sorrowful...The harp, long mute, dreams of the time when it lived on a cloud and played music too beautiful for anyone but the giant to [hear].” — Narrator, [55:04]

Host Reflection

• [55:38] Meg Wolitzer: Applauds Cunningham’s irony and his probing of family dynamics and moral ambiguity, transforming Jack from a folk hero into a "comedy of errors" protagonist and exposing the mythos behind the “triumph” in fairy tales.

Author Interview Highlights

• [56:19, 57:04] Michael Cunningham on Fairy Tales:
  • “I think...these versions of the fairy tales are kind of myself as an adult, trying to answer myself as a very small child and say, well, this is what happens happily ever after.”
  • On Jack & the Beanstalk: “Jack climbs up the beanstalk and the giant’s wife lets him in. Whoa, whoa. Hot little dude. And he steals her husband’s gold. And then after a while he comes back and she lets him in again. What’s going on in that marriage, right?”

Notable Quotes

• “What people love about those novels is that they feel contemporary in their own way...by bringing the future lens of the more sort of cynical, critical, modern woman to it, it’s just really charming.”
  — Sara Bareilles, [16:44]

• “In addition to a Find My Phone app, there ought to be a Lose My Phone app. But it would clearly also be a Lose My Mind app...”
  — Meg Wolitzer, [31:34]

• “Mothers, try to be realistic about your imbecile sons. No matter how charming their sly little grins...don’t be surprised if you find that you’ve fallen on the bathroom floor and end up spending the night there because he’s out drinking with his friends till dawn.”
  — Jim Parsons as Narrator in “Jacked”, [38:26]

Important Timestamps

• 01:07 — Meg Wolitzer introduces the “Classics with a Twist” theme.
• 04:00 — Sara Bareilles’ reading of “Phantoms and Prejudice” begins.
• 13:51 — Mr. Darcy returns, clearing up the ghosting confusion.
• 15:41 — Meg reflects on the Austen reimagining; Sara Bareilles’ backstage interview at [16:44].
• 17:55 — Mike Doyle begins reading “The Telltale Heart” by Anthony Mara.
• 28:38 — The ‘heartbeat’ is revealed to be an iPhone buzzing.
• 30:56 — Darkly humorous climax: “Take it.” (Jim Parsons).
• 31:34 — Meg's commentary on Poe’s legacy and the modern twist.
• 35:29 — Jim Parsons reads “Jacked” by Michael Cunningham.
• 46:47 — Reflection on insatiable human desires.
• 55:38 — Meg wraps up the Jack retelling with sharp insights.
• 56:19 — Mini-interview with Michael Cunningham about fairy tales.
• 58:01 — Invitation to the full Cunningham interview available online.

Tone and Style

The episode balances intellectual playfulness, satirical humor, and genuine fondness for literary tradition. Each story and discussion fuses contemporary wit with underlying seriousness, often poking fun at present-day absurdities while honoring the emotional truths at the heart of the classics.

Conclusion

"Classics with a Twist" reminds listeners that even the oldest stories are never fully settled. Each generation finds new meaning—sometimes through social media, sometimes through therapy speak, sometimes by interrogating the roots of ambition and self-delusion. The episode closes by urging listeners to seek out fresh retellings and dig into the stories they thought they knew, as both comfort and transformation always lie in fiction’s familiar forms.