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Lessons from 863 episodes of This American Life
- xnx 1y agoHttps warning on that site
- gruez 1y agoWorks fine for me? >Not Before: Fri, 20 Jun 2025 00:04:33 GMT >Not After: Thu, 18 Sep 2025 00:04:32 GMT >Thumbprint: 19:6E:D2:41:D7:FA:90:93:CE:CA:2F:8A:AB:65:F5:FC:98:05:AE:B9
- kiernanmcgowan 1y agoThis American Life really does live up to its name - its a real slice of American culture / society on any given week. I imagine its going to be a wellspring of understanding our time for future anthropologists and historians.
- SoftTalker 1y agoInteresting in my nearly 60 years I have never heard of this program.
- kiernanmcgowan 1y agoGive it a listen! It’s a real gem of a show
- pstuart 1y agoNPR has a wealth of great broadcasting in general.
- devilbunny 1y agoIt's not an NPR show, although the public radio stations that carry it usually carry NPR shows as well. It was Public Radio International, then Public Radio Exchange.
- pstuart 1y agoSorry, sloppy on my part -- the NPR branding looms large ;-)
- devilbunny 1y agoEasy mistake to make. They do indeed brand their shows very prominently, making it easy to miss the distributor for those non-NPR shows that only blurb it once at the beginning and once at the end.
- swat535 1y agoRadiolab was one of my favorites.. I stopped following it after Krulwich left in 2015 but they have an excellent archive from back in the day (the 2010s were the best years imo): https://radiolab.org/podcast https://radiolab.org/podcast
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- BeetleB 1y agoIt truly is the best radio show I've heard. I've been listening on and off for over 20 years. If you want some good episodes (do NOT read the summary on the linked pages - some contain spoilers). The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar (https://www.thisamericanlife.org/352/the-ghost-of-bobby-dunbar https://www.thisamericanlife.org/352/the-ghost-of-bobby-dunb...) - about a kid in the first half of the 20th century who was abducted and then returned to his family - except to this day people debate whether the kid who was returned really was the kid who was abducted, and how his descendants have grappled with the issue. When Patents Attack! (https://www.thisamericanlife.org/441/when-patents-attack https://www.thisamericanlife.org/441/when-patents-attack) - an inside peek into how patent trolls work. Petty Tyrant (https://www.thisamericanlife.org/419/petty-tyrant https://www.thisamericanlife.org/419/petty-tyrant) - how a school maintenance employee rose to power by bullying. It's not so much the facts themselves but the masterful storytelling - especially near the end. Dr Gilmer and Mr Hyde (https://www.thisamericanlife.org/492/dr-gilmer-and-mr-hyde https://www.thisamericanlife.org/492/dr-gilmer-and-mr-hyde) - about a doctor in a small town who everyone loved. He committed a heinous crime and ended up in prison. The story involves great investigative journalism on exploring why he committed the crime, and they unearthed very relevant details that were previously unknown (even to the criminal himself). The last two episodes above were by Sarah Koenig, who you may know as the person behind Serial.
- Loughla 1y agoSerial is the best media in the world. Shit town is the best of serial. Seriously listen to it if you haven't. I once drove two hours past my destination because I didn't want to stop listening to it.
- gausswho 1y agoIf you enjoy Serial, I highly recommend CBC's Come By Chance. It's a wonderful tale (the less you know the better) about a family mystery among small coastal villages in Newfoundland.
- ethbr1 1y agoAlso Rest Stop (https://www.thisamericanlife.org/388/rest-stop https://www.thisamericanlife.org/388/rest-stop), where the crew spends 2 continuous days at a rest stop on the New York State Thruway, talking to both the employees and travelers. 129 Cars (https://www.thisamericanlife.org/513/129-cars https://www.thisamericanlife.org/513/129-cars), where the crew spends a month at a random Jeep dealership, as they try to hit their manufacturer-set quota. Amusement Park (https://www.thisamericanlife.org/443/amusement-park https://www.thisamericanlife.org/443/amusement-park), where they follow a bunch of teenage labor at Worlds of Fun in Kansas City, and their only slightly older boss. (Who is possibly the best boss in the history of bossing)
- stevenwoo 1y agoIt only airs at certain times depending upon your local public radio station, usually on weekends so one would have to be almost a regular radio listener to catch it by accident - if you never listened to public radio at the air times on the weekends it would have been easy to miss it during its heyday. With the advent of podcasts it became more widely available but then there is a lot of competition in that media space.
- vjvjvjvjghv 1y agoI like the show but it's mostly a slice of American upper middle class who are reasonably well and educated. I don't think the writers can connect to working class people. In a sense it's the typical democrat voter
- 010101010101 1y agoI don’t have any empirical evidence to refute you, but it connected with me as a 17 year old kid living in a mobile home in Mississippi. Almost 25 years later, and in a much different socioeconomic state, it still does. Stories steeped in humanity aren’t biased - less confident about you to be honest.
- monkeyelite 1y agoWhat socioeconomic group did you become from which you are now viewing the material? You’re already describing yourself as having some kind of secular redemption from that life.
- 010101010101 1y agoI described myself being poor (“working class”) and not being poor any more, whatever you’re attempting to read between the lines beyond that isn’t there.
- monkeyelite 1y agoYou claimed this very specific entertainment has universal appeal, and I’m just not sure that’s true. You framed your own experience as the show would.
- 010101010101 1y agoI framed my experience in contrast to the parent’s assertion, and no, I did not make any claim about universality. Be sure that not everyone loves this or any show all you want. You’re continuing to project some sort of nonsense gotcha logic onto a straw man that doesn’t exist.
- karaterobot 1y agoWell, for any future archaeologists reading this, please know that This American Life was a great show that was made for a specific audience, by a specific set of creators, and it absolutely did not represent the breadth of life in America at the turn of the 21st century. This was a common mistake: thinking a rather small niche was universal because it's what you see. It led to a lot of surprises.
- j_bum 1y agoJust to push to have you expand your counterpoint, what other views of American life would you want to see that they haven’t covered?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- timr 1y agoI'm not on the political right, but it's plain that they don't give it equal time. I don't expect the audience cares very much about this, though, which is sort of to OPs implied point. We've reached a place where each side of the political spectrum is not only happily ignorant of the other side's good points, but in fact, fearful of even having the discussion. If you go too far afield from the party line, you will be punished, and public radio (along with non-public radio, cable, broadcast news, and most other forms of legacy media) is a shrinking market, unwilling to alienate the core audience. (The shorthand term for this is "audience capture", and IMO, This American Life has a death grip on a very particular sort of audience, which even if you set partisan politics aside, is representative only of itself.)
- spondylosaurus 1y agoThey do talk to conservatives a lot though. Many recent episodes interviewed Trump voters and sent reporters to Republican rallies to hear those "good points" from the source...
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- js2 1y agoThe only other show that even comes close for me is The Moth. It's a much different format, but the story telling is consistently high quality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moth
- timewizard 1y agoreally missed a chance to write this up into "three acts."
- Bluestein 1y ago"Act I: ..."
- cryzinger 1y agoI considered it but thought it might be too obnoxious/gimmicky for readers who aren't already familiar with the show, lol.
- enlightens 1y agoThanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. He spent his July 4th weekend setting the record for baking the world’s largest deep dish pizza, and as he tells it, having it for dinner was no small feat: > It feels impossible to isolate anything bite-sized out of all that. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
- cryzinger 1y agoOh that's good... And apt considering deep dish is Chicago style!
- RyJones 1y agoI used to listen every week. As I got older, the content got less interesting. I think Ira is a hoopty frood; however, Ira lost touch with "American Life" like 20 years ago.
- Bluestein 1y agoA telling sign of this is how they started just generically advertising the show - listeners must be down ...
- throw-qqqqq 1y ago> I think Ira is a hoopty frood If you reference Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, it’s “hoopy frood” without the ‘t’ :)
- 6forward 1y agoNecessary correction! You’ve saved us from the embarrassment of being demoted to marginally perilous (Earthlings prefer being mostly harmless, of course).
- kridsdale1 1y agoI wouldn’t say they prefer it. It was kinda insulting.
- willturman 1y agoIra Glass’ take on the creative process [1] really resonated with me in the context of creating software or otherwise. [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GHrmKL2XKcE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GHrmKL2XKcE
- adamgordonbell 1y agoLove TAL. Been trying copy and learn from Ira Glass, and his many producers forever. Some episodes hit so hard they can change how you think about something. There is a fun graphic novel about how TAL and other narrative radio shows are made. I forget it's name, buts its great. They also briefly had a TV show that I liked and spun off serial and many other shows and introduced me and the world to David Sedaris.
- 6forward 1y agoAs an occasional listener to TAL I’m wondering how you feel about RadioLab, particularly the older series with Robert and Jad. I’ve always felt RadioLab and TAL fit within the same cabinet in my mind
- detourdog 1y agoThose 2 shows and 99% invisible cover my curiosities.
- adamgordonbell 1y agoI haven't listened to radiolab in a while but I loved it. Some said it was too busy, but it was pretty immersive and told good science stories.
- ethbr1 1y agoNo discussion is complete without mentioning Car Talk. For your existential life quandaries and occasional advice of a mechanical nature. ('Don't trust my brother!')
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- TMEHpodcast 1y agoI’ve often wondered what This American Life would have been if it were British. “Each week, we bring you stories of life in Britain. Not extraordinary life. Not even particularly interesting life. Just… life. Grey, tea-soaked, mildly apologetic life. Today’s theme: Standing Quietly in Queues While Contemplating Death and Crisps.”
- BeetleB 1y agoThey even joked about it in one episode (Bim below is British) Ira: By the way, a very un-British way to organize her life, Bim says, to embrace delight wholeheartedly and un-self-consciously. Bim: Fundamentally, I'm fighting against every urge in me, which is like, don't. Don't do that. Because I'm still British. I can't help that. So I'm always just thinking to myself, just going like, oh, is that too much? I feel very much like somebody's disapproving nanny. Stop that. That's too much emotion. You know, there's a reason why our national sound is a tut. [TUTS] Stop it. It's an admonishment. It's like, stop it, you know? There used to be a talk show, and the theme song was a little child singing in this very sing-songy voice-- (SINGING) it'll never work. It'll never work. And that is how I feel about most things. Ira Glass: That would never be a show here.
- pimlottc 1y agoI'm just happy this article doesn't start with "So I fed all 863 episodes of TAL into ChatGPT and here's what I discovered..."
- kridsdale1 1y agoThat’s what I expected too.
- comrade1234 1y agoI know this American life is good and when I listen to it I almost always think it was worthwhile. However... his voice. It's just so hard for me to listen to him for some reason. Same thing with Hidden Brain. Impactful episodes that can change your life but the guy's voice puts you to sleep so it's like taking an upper and a downer at the same time.
- disposition2 1y ago> On a purely topical level, it was also neat to revisit the last three decades of news and politics and pop culture more or less in reverse. It’s a fictional drama but it’s really interesting to watch ‘Law & Order’ episodes from the 90s and throughout the years. You can kind of witness the erosion of civil liberties over the seasons and as someone who experienced it in real life, it’s pretty wild to see (at least in a fictional universe) how the police state (this is probably a misnomer, but I fail to find the proper wording in this moment) is enabled to supersede civil liberties in the interests of ‘security’ and law enforcement.
- teaearlgraycold 1y ago> I never listen to podcasts at anything other than 1x playback speed, so I at least deserve brownie points for that. Not to start a flame war, but I personally consider it extremely poor taste to listen to high quality content on a faster speed. For something thrown together like a recorded lecture then it makes sense. But for an episode of This American Life? Please take a look in the mirror and ask yourself why.
- GloriousKoji 1y agoI'll bite. In the limitations of my mortal life with it's predestined total allocated time for recorded media there's an infinite amount of high quality content. Savoring an expensive meal is just a way to get maximum value out of it but with endless cheap amounts why not devour it to my hearts content? Quality over quantity but what choice does one make when it's both? Many of these stories have a small narrative arc with very direct emotions it means to invoke. A feeling of nostalgia, of happiness, of sadness, or of anxiety to name a few. Even at a faster speed it will make me think and make me laugh. It's not a work of profound art that I need to stop and contemplate. It's not a comedian's joke with precise timing. In the end it is just audio entertainment. Episodic entertainment not freed from the shackles of churn, or the temptation to fabricate results for a good story. There's not much grand detail for my ears to wander and focus on the way my eyes would wander over paint on a canvas or a room filed with light and sound.
- seany 1y ago[flagged]