Alec Baldwin reads Steven Millhauser

Perhaps you were fortunate enough last weekend to be listening to public radio at just the right time to hear Alec Baldwin on ?Selected Shorts? read "The Dome," a Pushcart Prize-winning story by Skidmore's Pulitzer-Prize winning author Steven Millhauser.

I wasn't. Chances are you weren't either. But of course that no longer matters because these great public-radio shows are now available online.

?The Dome? is an ?architectural fantasy that imagines a time, in the not too distant future, when America will be entirely enclosed in a sphere, and how human life will alter as a result.?

Here?s how to get it.

First, if you have not already made Apple?s iTunes a fixture on your desktop, do so now. Go to the iTunes Web site and download the iTunes browser.

Once you've installed iTunes, it?s easy. Key ?Selected Shorts? into the iTunes search bar. This will bring up the ?Selected Shorts? page. Click ?Subscribe.? This will bring into your iTunes browser all recent shows. Click the November 9 show, titled ?Pressing Engagements,? then listen and enjoy.

"Things in the world now appear smaller, more toylike," the tale begins. "An object that once towered above us?a tall pine, a steep hill, a snowcapped mountain? is itself dwarfed by the Dome, which by the ever-present fact of its vastness miniaturizes what it encloses..."