Selected Shorts – “Just the Thing”
Date: November 20, 2025
Host: Meg Wolitzer
Episode Theme: Fictional Solutions — Stories where something or someone offers just the thing to solve life’s troubles, big and small, from salesmen hawking gadgets, to angels with healing powers, to time travelers who promise a better future.
Episode Overview
In this episode titled “Just the Thing”, Meg Wolitzer presents a trio of short stories in which protagonists, grappling with vexing problems, are confronted with tantalizing solutions. Through the lens of speculative fiction, magical realism, and classic sci-fi, the episode explores whether these “solutions” truly resolve life’s challenges—or only offer momentary solace. The episode’s stories are:
- “Shoulder-Top Secretary” by Shinichi Hoshi – A satirical look at technology and human communication, read by Tom Sesma.
- “It Had Wings” by Allan Gurganus – A touching magical realism tale about an aging widow visited by an angel, read by Marian Seldes.
- “The Toynbee Convector” by Ray Bradbury – A speculative classic about hope, deception, and the future of humankind, performed by Mike Doyle.
1. Introduction: The Allure of Solutions
[03:37]
- Meg Wolitzer sets up the episode’s theme: the irresistible prospect of someone declaring “I’ve got just the thing” when we face a problem, big or small.
- Describes the three stories: encounters with a futuristic salesman, a celestial visitor with mysterious powers, and a time traveler bringing messages from the future.
- Emphasizes how these fictions address the longing for easy fixes—sometimes plausible, sometimes costly—yet always providing hope, if only briefly.
“Whether we’re dealing with life’s little annoyances... or those troubles of larger proportion, it’s a relief to know that someone, somewhere, has a plan.” – Meg Wolitzer [03:39]
2. “Shoulder-Top Secretary” by Shinichi Hoshi
[04:20–11:45]
Read by Tom Sesma
Story Summary
- Setting: A future society where everyone has a robotic parrot on their shoulder—part personal assistant, part conversational interpreter.
- Plot: Zameh, a weary door-to-door salesman, tries unsuccessfully to sell an “electric spider” (an automatic backscratcher) to a homemaker. Both salesman and customer speak only in mutters; their parrots expand, translate, and adorn their speech with elaborate politeness.
- The parrots also summarize the true intentions behind polite words, comically exposing social subtext (“She says: don’t want it.”).
- Zameh’s efforts are fruitless; his boss’s parrot scolds him for low performance, while at the bar, he finds solace in flirtatious banter—again, parrot-mediated.
Key Moments & Quotes
- The Sales Pitch
“It is none other than this magnificent electric spider.... When, for example, your back becomes itchy, you slip this under your clothes. Then the spider automatically finds its way… and gives it a delightful little scratching.” – Zameh’s parrot [06:00]
- Practical Futility
“She says, get lost.” – Zameh’s parrot, bluntly summarizing the customer’s refusal [07:35]
- Corporate Pressures
“You need to buckle down… sell more.” – Boss’s parrot [09:15]
- Bar Relief
The landlady’s parrot greets Zameh “in a sexy voice,” giving him momentary pleasure in an otherwise bleak routine [11:14]
Insights
- Satirizes both technological dependence and the awkwardness of social rituals—robots do the heavy lifting of politeness and translation, yet real human needs remain unmet.
- The story eerily parallels contemporary reliance on digital assistants and the quest to “optimize” communication.
- Wolitzer remarks after the reading:
“There’s something alluring about the idea of someone who shows up at our door and corrects what we say and makes it more palatable…. Maybe we all need a shoulder-top email secretary.” – Meg Wolitzer [11:45]
3. “It Had Wings” by Allan Gurganus
[13:30–25:42]
Read by Marian Seldes
Story Summary
- Protagonist: An older widow, arthritic and lonely, tending to her dishes and burdens.
- Inciting Event: She witnesses something crash-land in her backyard—a wounded, shivering angel.
- She cares for the angel, touching its skin and finding her age-old pains vanish. Her emotional burdens—regrets about her sons, minor grievances—are absorbed by the angel as well.
- The angel, restored by her touch and confessions, regains strength and eventually staggers skyward, departing.
- The widow, rejuvenated but already sensing her pain will inevitably return, is left musing about the brevity of miracles and the quiet heroism of unnoticed lives.
Key Moments & Quotes
- Miraculous Healing
“She gets a mild electric shock and then, odd. Her tickled finger joints stop aching—–they’ve hurt so long.” – Narrator [15:55]
- Intimate Confession
“Bold, she presses her worst hip deep into crackling feathers.... Her griefs seem to fatten him like vitamins.” [18:10]
- Epiphany & Humility
“I’m not just somebody in a house. I’m not just somebody alone in a house. I’m not just somebody else alone in a house.” [24:52]
- Final Image
“She is guarding the world. Only nobody knows.” [25:26]
Insights
- The story gently knits together themes of aging, faith, loss, and everyday dignity.
- The supernatural event is almost less important than the protagonist’s rediscovered sense of agency and hope.
- Memorable moment: The widow, after this miraculous encounter, turns back to the dishes—the world persists, everyday life resumes, and yet she has been changed.
- Wolitzer reflects:
“Whether or not you believe in angels, Gurganis hints at how difficult it can be to prolong the positive effects of even our most transformational moments.” – Meg Wolitzer [25:42]
4. “The Toynbee Convector” by Ray Bradbury
[28:31–55:51]
Read by Mike Doyle
Story Summary
- Setup: Reporter Roger Shumway is granted a rare interview with legendary inventor Craig Bennett Stiles, purportedly the only successful time traveler, now 130 years old.
- Backdrop: A century ago, Stiles claimed to have visited a glorious, utopian future, bringing back photos, artifacts, and a message that inspired the world to right its course—solving environmental crises, ending war, curing diseases.
- Climax: As they await the supposed anniversary “return” of Stiles’s time-traveling self (a televised spectacle for a waiting world), Stiles privately confesses to Shumway:
“I lied. I never went anywhere. I stayed, but made it seem I went. There is no time machine, only something that looks like one.” – Stiles [43:22]
- Stiles explains his actions sprung from a desperate, era-wide lack of hope; he faked his trip to the future to give humanity something to aspire to, catalyzing real change through “promise” rather than proof.
- As the world waits for a miracle, Stiles dies, leaving the legacy—and burden—of his hopeful lie to Shumway, who destroys the evidence and commits to carrying forth the myth.
- The story ends with the reporter rising back to the world—both burdened and buoyed by having witnessed the weight of dreams.
Key Moments & Quotes
- The Lie That Saved the World
“Life has always been lying to ourselves... to gently lie and prove the lie true, to weave dreams and put brains and ideas and flesh of the truly real beneath the dreams. Everything, finally, is a promise.” – Stiles [52:13]
- Despair of the Past
“Everywhere was professional despair, intellectual ennui, political cynicism. And what wasn’t ennui and cynicism was rampant skepticism and incipient nihilism.” [43:58]
- Sacrifice for Hope
"You see the point, don’t you, son? [...] Life has always been lying to ourselves as boys, young men, old men..." – Stiles [52:02]
- Passing the Torch
“I nominate you, as son, to explain.” – Stiles to Shumway [53:38]
- Humanity’s Need for Uplift
“So yes, as today’s stories illustrate, a miracle cure can be nice to entertain for a moment. After that brief escape, it’s probably best to rely on ourselves to make any changes we want to see in the world.” – Meg Wolitzer [57:39]
Insights
- Bradbury’s story is a meditation on optimism, collective imagination, and the necessary fictions that drive humanity to strive for better.
- The episode ends poignantly, the magical solution revealed as a benevolent fabrication—a recognition that miracles may not arrive from outside, but are often sparked by the stories we choose to believe and act on.
5. Behind the Curtain: Mike Doyle on Storytelling
[56:42–57:39]
- Mike Doyle (actor for “The Toynbee Convector”) describes his preparation for reading short fiction:
“I read it several times silently, and then every morning for like the 10 days prior, I read it out loud… to, you know, annotate and figure out where pauses are, what the important words are, what the sense of the piece are… and try to honor that.” [56:46]
- Expresses the show’s value as a haven for getting lost in stories, and the arts’ power to let us “live vicariously, explore, dream, wish through other people’s words and other people’s art.” [57:16]
6. Conclusion & Reflections
[57:39]
- Wolitzer draws the episode together:
- “A miracle cure can be nice to entertain for a moment. After that brief escape, it’s probably best to rely on ourselves to make any changes we want to see in the world.”
- Invites listeners: “But of course, if you run into a winged celestial being that offers to fix everything, by all means, let us know. We might even consider bringing them on as an intern.” [57:39]
Notable Quotes & Timestamps
- “There’s something alluring about the idea of someone who shows up at our door and corrects what we say…”
– Meg Wolitzer [11:45] - “She is guarding the world. Only nobody knows.”
– Gurganus (narrator) [25:26] - “Life has always been lying to ourselves... to gently lie and prove the lie true... Everything, finally, is a promise.”
– Ray Bradbury (Stiles), [52:13]
Key Segments & Timestamps
- Intro & Theme Overview: [03:37–04:20]
- “Shoulder-Top Secretary”: [04:20–11:45]
- Wolitzer’s Reflection: [11:45–13:30]
- “It Had Wings”: [13:30–25:42]
- Wolitzer on Gurganus: [25:42–26:34]
- “The Toynbee Convector”: [28:31–55:51]
- Mike Doyle on Storytelling: [56:42–57:39]
- Episode Wrap-up: [57:39–end]
Tone & Style
The stories blend satire, gentle melancholy, and uplift. Wolitzer’s hosting is warm, introspective, and lightly humorous, emphasizing the connection between fiction and our shared hopes for resolution and meaning.
For listeners and readers alike, “Just the Thing” is a meditation on our endless quest for solutions, the humanizing value of small miracles—real or imagined—and the power of stories to offer both comfort and challenge in the face of the everyday.