Fiction

HumorUs Stories — Classic and Original Funny Stories

by Don McDonald

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Latest episodes

The McWilliamses and the Burglar Alarm by Mark Twain — Confounding Contraptions Are Nothing New

October 19, 2026 · 17 min

Mark Twain falls into conversation with a pleasant gentleman who has mild opinions on weather, crops, literature, scandal and religion. Then the talk lands on burglar alarms, and the gentleman is suddenly not mild at all. His was the most…
The Eyes Have It — A Classic Tale by Philip K. Dick

October 12, 2026 · 9 min

Somebody left a paperback on the bus. A man brings it home, settles into his easy-chair, and makes a discovery the rest of us have missed: Earth has been invaded, and the author knows all about it. The proof is right there on the page, and…
The Romance of a Busy Broker — A Classic Humorus Story by O. Henry

October 5, 2026 · 10 min

Wall Street, a spring morning at the turn of the century. The ticker is running hot, the telephone won’t quit, and Harvey Maxwell, broker, is handling it all like a man with springs where his heart should be. His clerk thinks the boss is…
Tobermory — A Classic Short Story by Saki

September 28, 2026 · 20 min

Every house party has a guest who knows too much. A mild little man named Cornelius Appin has spent seventeen years on one problem. He believes he's solved it: he has taught a cat to speak. The company around Lady Blemley's tea table does…
A Foot Too Deep — An Original Short Story by Don McDonald

September 21, 2026 · 15 min

Nobody in New Orleans had ever made Bernard de Marigny look foolish in public. He was rich past counting, small as a foil, and very likely the most dangerous man in Louisiana with a pistol in his hand. Then a blacksmith from a far parish…

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A Slice of Life — A Classic Story by P.G. Wodehouse

September 15, 2026 · 36 min

A man in a country pub insists his story is true. It concerns his brother Wilfred, a chemist of some genius, a jolly outdoor girl with a wholesome sunburn, and a Yorkshire baronet who spells his name with four small f's. Somebody is being…
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain

September 8, 2026 · 15 min

An errand, a name, a question. That's all it takes. Sent east to west on a friend's behalf, a traveler walks into a decayed mining camp in Calaveras County and asks one polite question of one agreeable old man. He is then backed into a…
The Reticence of Lady Anne — A Classic Short Story by Saki

September 1, 2026 · 9 min

A December afternoon, a fire going down, and a marriage stalled halfway through a quarrel nobody bothered to finish. Egbert comes in for tea prepared to be reasonable, then conciliatory, then almost penitent. Lady Anne, rigid in the…
Gipsy — A Classic Comic Tale by Booth Tarkington

August 25, 2026 · 14 min

Duke is a little old dog with a pessimistic worldview and a well-earned suspicion that life rarely improves. Gipsy is a rangy, scarred, yellow-eyed stray cat who lives by his own code and has never met a creature he could not intimidate…
A Wasted Day — A Classic Short Story by Richard Harding Davis

August 18, 2026 · 34 min

Arnold Thorndike buys a Correggio before breakfast and can price his own time to the minute. Two hundred dollars of it. So when he stops his car at the Court of General Sessions to say a word for a young stenographer who got drunk, lost…
The Whirligig of Life — A Classic Short Tale by O. Henry

August 11, 2026 · 14 min

Ransie and Ariela Bilbro come down out of the Cumberland Mountains to have their marriage undone. Justice of the Peace Benaja Widdup can find no law on the subject, so he invents one, and prices it at five dollars, which happens to be…
Chain of Custody — An Original Comedy of Errors by Don McDonald

August 4, 2026 · 19 min

In Maple Glen, nothing ever happens. This week, nothing happens in three separate backyards, after dark, and everyone involved would prefer you didn't ask. A deadpan comedy about honesty, neighbors, and one very patient dog. Find more…

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About the show

Classic Tales and New Laughs from Twain to Today Comedy is the oldest trick in the book (or the short story), and HumorUs goes digging for the funniest classic tales with a few new ones sprinkled in. Each episode is one short story, narrated with care and a raised eyebrow. Bureaucratic guinea pigs that simply will not stop multiplying, courtesy of Ellis Parker Butler. A backwoods divorce that doubles right back into a wedding, by way of O. Henry. A shipwreck that strands exactly the wrong man, from the dry wit of W.W. Jacobs. A town so devoted to oversight it forms a committee to oversee the committees. Some of these tales are a hundred years old. Some are brand new. All of them prove the same stubborn little fact, that a good laugh never goes out of print. So pour something, settle in, and let the great humorists, famous and forgotten alike, humor us. A comedy fiction podcast from Short Storyverses. All episodes are narrated by professional voice actor, Don McDonald. Please help me out. If HumorUs makes you smile, please take ten seconds to give the show five stars in Apple Podcasts. A couple of recent one-star ratings (one stating that I am actually AI) have had an outsized effect on this young show. Your rating genuinely helps. Thanks. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.