6 ms·
This 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
by kiernanmcgowan 1y ago
This 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...
- 1y ago