...these stories are a kind of beacon. By making stories full of empathy and amusement and the sheer pleasure of discovering the world, these writers reassert the fact that we live in a world where joy and empathy and pleasure are all around us, there for the noticing.

I seen a pig so big it’d block out the sun.

Go looking for an idea and it'll show up. Begin now.

I dont know how to read. I get all my news from Jon Stewart every day.

But sadly, one of the problems with being on public radio is that people tend to think you're being sincere all the time.

In some theoretical way I know that a half-million people hear the show. But in a day-to-day way, there's not much evidence of it.

You'd think that radio was around long enough that someone would have coined a word for staring into space.