Episode

What Are the Odds?

Podcast
Selected Shorts
Published
Mar 12, 2026
Duration seconds
3564
Processing state
not_requested
Canonical source
https://soundcloud.com/selectedshorts/what-are-the-odds
Audio
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/2281825217-selectedshorts-what-are-the-odds.mp3
JSON
/v1/public/podcasts/selected-shorts-2124093/episodes/what-are-the-odds
Markdown
/podcast/selected-shorts-2124093/what-are-the-odds.md

Actions

  • POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/selected-shorts-2124093/episodes/what-are-the-odds/transcription-requests
    Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.
  • GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/selected-shorts-2124093/what-are-the-odds.md
    Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.

Summary

Host Meg Wolitzer presents two stories with unlikely scenarios, rare events that have, at least fictionally, come to pass. Naomi Kritzer uses the idea of “The Little Free Library”—one of those impromptu structures that facilitate the swapping of books—to imagine an exchange of quite a different sort. The reader is Melora Hardin. And Ling Ma imagines how winning the lottery—292.2 million to one—actually plays out. “Winner” is read by Cindy Cheung.