The Literary Disco podcast made me want to throw my laptop at the wall

One of the stranger things that happened in the period just before lockdown was the sudden disappearance of audiences from TV and radio shows. Late-night hosts told jokes to silent rooms in front of a white background, dutifully pausing for a laugh that never came; panel shows were broadcast without so much as the sound of tumbleweed. Punchlines flopped, charisma evaporated. It was as if Earth’s comedians had been banished to some purgatorial realm, where they would be forced to tell jokes to no one as a form of penance.

Comedy needs an audience. It’s not clear that the same is true of short stories. In Selected Shorts, well-known actors read short stories to a room full of people. The actors in question include LeVar Burton and David Schwimmer, while the stories come from storied writers such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Ursula K. Le Guin. In America, the show runs as an extremely successful live radio show, touring the country and attracting more than 300,000 listeners.