This American Life
2007 · TV series · documentary · 30 min episodes · 2 seasons
Created by Ira Glass
The Peabody Award-winning public radio series that combines journalism with opinion, fiction and biography becomes this highly anticipated TV series hosted by Ira Glass.
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Would you mind linking to some of the videos? You link here to an episode of This American Life featuring 911 calls.
While disturbing to listen to, without context, I don't hear anything to substantiate the claim of ICE agents menacing anyone they come across.
All the videos I've seen, [1], [2], [3], for example, from a quick check, are ICE reacting unprofessionally and with excessive force against people who are deliberately attempting to obstruct or interfere with them. Let's not play games here and say that they are menacing innocent people walking down the sidewalk. That's not to say that these assaults are justified or appropriate, but let's start the conversation in a good faith position, and not make up bullshit about ICE walking around menacing innocent bystanders.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5aK7o6fEJg
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5w05TcQIVQ
[3] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tOaJAd3lkdM
The thing that's unique about This American Life is that the star of each episode is usually someone just doing their usual job, or going through a situation.
If someone can't empathize with that, it says more about them than the show.
> This American Life is a treasure
In the running for best podcast of all time.
As Canadians though, we just can’t listen anymore, it is too depressing and dystopian.
There was the episode about the nice folks who got new neighbours who started some nut job paramilitary thing with automatic weapons. The nice folks live everyday in fear.
There are the episodes of regular women unable to get basic medical treatment because Roe v Wade.
The list is endless, sadly.
We don’t want to live in that world, and we don’t want it taking over our thoughts either.
I recently listened to this great episode of "This American Life" [1] which talked about this very subject. It was released in June 2023 which might be ancient history in terms of AI. But it discusses whether LLMs are just parrots and is a nice episode intended for general audiences so it is pretty enjoyable. But experts are interviewed so it also seems authoritative.
[1] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/803/greetings-people-of-earth
> But I’ve never heard the word “depression” from her even once. Then you look at today’s younger generations, and you see it everywhere.
Reminds me of Act 2 from this “This American Life” episode. Sub “Toska” for “depression” and maybe you’ll see things in a different light.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/822/transcript
Relevant This American Life episode:
> Jiayang Fan has this theory that because she's spent so much time thinking about her own accent when she speaks English, she believes that when she hears other Chinese-Americans speak, she can tell how old they were when they immigrated to the U.S. (7 minutes)
> We test Jiayang Fan’s self-proclaimed special skill by having her listen to three Chinese-Americans speak, and then guess when they came to the U.S. (20 minutes)
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/786/its-a-game-show
This American Life has an interesting episode on rats.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/801/must-be-rats-on-the-brain
Act One, “Fifty First Rats” (22 minutes), is particularly interesting in that it showcases the inventiveness and awareness of rats.
> I've watched way too many movies depicting americans wearing shoes not only inside their home but in bed
This indeed is how Hollywood popularly depicted Americans, as wearing shoes to bed, in the bathtub or shower, while swimming, and so on. There's the famous line the the Humphrey Bogart / Katherine Hepburn film "A Time To Stand" where the robbers tell Bogie they're going to clean him out, and he says "you can take whatever you want, but you're not getting my shoes!"
There was an episode of This American Life where they delved into Hollywood's preoccupation with people never (ever) taking off their shoes, and one of the things they go into is how Johnston & Murphy (old shoe company) was one of the biggest funders of the original Silver Age studios. It was maybe the first instance of product placement, right up there with cigarettes. Of course Congress eventually got involved in the late 50s and pushed the shoe industry out, paving the way for movies like George Pal's "The Time Machine" which scandalously showed Yvette Mimiuex's bare feet. The French were laughing at us, though, with directors life Truffaut and Godard already showing casual barefootedness in their experimental shorts ("La Pantoufle Perdue" being the best-known and most influential).
I'm an immigrant myself, and I share this sentiment deeply as well. The best description which I ever heard, curiously enough, was on a really old episode of this American life. My memory could be playing tricks on me, but I think it was some small story of folks doing car audio competitions, where the point was to build the car with the loudest possible speaker. It was absurd, silly, and for a nerd, obviously enthralling.
But at some point, I don't know if it is the narrator or someone in the story, but they say something to the effect of: "Everyone wants to be king of the hill, but there aren't enough hills to go around. The US is particularly great at creating more hills."
This American Life, episode 102 (May 22, 1998):
> Act One, Busman's Holiday. Regular listeners to our program may remember Dishwasher Pete who travels from state to state washing dishes and publishing his zine Dishwasher. Usually he only stays in one place for a few weeks. And then he takes the Greyhound bus to the next town. Lately he's been living in Portland. But he was only too happy to get back on the bus.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/102/road-trip
"This American Life" had an episode about someone who's deceased Mom did something similar [1].
It sounded like the Mom was looking both to pass on her wisdom to her child, to help prepare her child, and also to control her child's life after the Mom passed away (it's been a while since I listened to it but I don't remember it being presented as a malicious choice - the Mom herself may not have been conscious of it).
I'm not saying that you'll do this, but it's worth thinking about as you start piling up messages to deliver later.
[1] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/401/transcript
This American Life had an episode on the process some time ago: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/377/scenes-from-a-recession/act-two-3
This is proceeding as it should, and despite the terrible circumstances we should be proud that there are actual functioning institutions to take care of this process. Depositors may not be made whole, but it doesn't look like SVB had a bunch of mortgages of defunct malls in Las Vegas (and similar) like back in the housing crisis. Depositors seem likely to get half their funds back this week and then most of the rest (though likely not all) over the coming weeks.
This is my favourite ever episode of This American Life, about NUMMI, the shop floor level and individually fraternal miracle that was created by workers at Toyota and GM in a CA GM plant, until management shut them down:
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015
In fairness I think Bill Simmons, Joe Rogan, Marc Maron and Adam Carolla have had their praise for moving podcasts along. Same with This American Life.
Serial was different, though in that it was a multi episode look at something. This American life had segments and still had to be designed with the radio listener in mind - who was probably only in the car for 30 min. I don't think Serial is that uniquely good - but it was different. We just are kinda dumb for having all of "podcasts" under one term instead of a bunch of genre terms.
I had a similar experience looking for a background track in an episode of This American Life. I couldn't remember which episode it was, and none of the lyrics were in English. Pretty sure I went through backwards through the episodes and listened to all the credited songs to find it. The song was 69 Police by David Holmes, which still feels perfect to me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWissIWxqKk
On the topic of background music, tons of original background music copies/imitates famous stuff. Sometimes it's "I wanted the sound of X but couldn't afford it", but there are some in-jokes in there too. Wish I could remember some examples.
> Nothing about downloading an MP3 that says they can't put a targeted ad in it; there's podcasts that do that based on your IP. I assume the reason most don't is just how much more trustworthy it sounds when the host reads an ad script live in the episode.
I'm in the UK and noticed both kind of happening: an ad for LinkedIn (I think) was localised to use a UK example in several episodes of This American Life during the last year. It was spliced into the programs seamlessly and sounded just like any of their usual sponsorship segments.
I'm presuming they just edited a handful of versions of the program for their largest listener regions and there was no need to do anything on the fly except pick which to serve. Of course I paid little attention to the ad as I was distracted more by it being the first time I'd noticed that kind of localisation.
This American Life did an episode about these plants and debunked the "Mexican billboard" lie.
I don’t know how representative this is of all dealerships, but This American Life ran an episode on a Long Island dealership struggling to fill the OEM quota of sales for the month. It’s greatly entertaining (and depressing): https://www.thisamericanlife.org/513/129-cars
There is an NPR (National Public Radio) show called "This American Life" and several years back it had an episode devoted to this. They interviewed regulators. The big banks, for instance, will have an office on site for a regulator. The pull is to "go native" at some point.
> Since the initial reporting of this story, information has come to light calling into question Howard Steel’s role in the MSG controversy. For more on this fascinating story, listen to This American Life episode #668.
Does anybody know the conclusion? Was the part about a joke letter because of a bet real or not?
My grandmother spent the last several years of her life living off a fixed income happily occupied with continuing education classes at the local state university. It seemed like a pretty appealing lifestyle to me. It occurred to me that you might even mainstream the idea. Instead of building retirement communities around golf courses, build them around universities. If I'm not mistaken, I think I've seen small advertisements for such things in the back pages of the New Yorker.
Given the costs of modern universities, and the current identity crisis they're facing, this might be a new business model for them, especially if wealthy foreign students are to no longer be admitted to the country.
At the same time, I'm reminded of an exchange from an episode of This American Life about how in some parts of the country state disability payments have become a de facto retirement and welfare system:
Ethel Thomas: You asked me a while back what would be the perfect job. I thought about it, and I said that the perfect job, it would be like I would sit at a desk like the Social Security people, and just weed out all the ones that come in and file for disability.
Chana Joffe-Walt: At first, I thought Ethel's dream job was to be the lady at Social Security, because she thought she'd be good at weeding out the cheaters. But no. After a confusing back and forth, it turned out Ethel wanted this woman's job because she gets to sit. That's it. And when I asked her, OK, but why that lady? Why not any other job where you get to sit? Ethel said she could not think of a single other job where you get to sit all day. She said she'd never seen one.
I brushed this off in the moment. I was getting in my car. It was getting late. And also, it just did not seem possible to me that there would be a place in America today where someone could go her whole working life without any exposure to jobs where you get to sit, until she applied for disability and saw a woman who gets to sit all day.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/490/transcript
There was an episode of This American Life about testosterone [0] that included an interview of an f2m transgender man on HRT. It was quite interesting to hear, the episode in general was exceptionally good and worth giving a listen.
[0] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/220/testosterone
Regarding desegregation of schools - I'm not sure how to solve problems in rural areas, but in suburban ones, it seems like redistricting and redistributing students and teachers over the set of schools almost at random might be an improvement.
This episode of This American Life makes a pretty compelling argument to me: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with-part-one
China has cleaned up a lot in the last few years. Went to Shanghai in like 2009 and again in 2017 and it was like night and day. Was dirty, now clean. No idea if it was luck or cultural changes or government mandate or season or what.
As for Paris one of the earlier episodes of "This American Life" is basically about how Paris's reputation is from like 100-120 years ago.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/165/americans-in-paris
It's not the same place it was but it's still promoted as though it is. San Francisco seems similar to me. Much of what SF is famous for is from 100 years ago or more.
While we're on the topic of out dated things. I was amazed that Paris Disneyland has a Hollywood themed park of which a not small percent of which is dedicated to things that were famous in Hollywood 80+ years ago. Maybe people visiting actually know about that stuff but I'd be little surprised that references to movies from the 1930s are still relevant to most guests?
Been in your situation for some years.
My anxiety was a drain on my productivity and happiness. In the end, success mean't understanding it thoroughly.
Limiting human interactions is great for the company's productivity and terrible for your own personal and emotional growth.
Some of the personal strategies that helped me: - Going on a technology cliff for a while, really trying hard to adopt a non-IT/non-code mindset. - Separation of work and life - Understanding the people we work with and why we don't all get along. - Your interests will change over the years. What is cool to code-up today may well bore you at a later date. - Physical exercise, this did wonders. Get to the gym, lift weights, get out and run.
Some resources I kept coming back to: - 16personalities.com or any lengthy MBTI explanations. - Podcasts on people and culture. E.g: This American Life from NPR is a well known one. - Books, movies, plays and podcasts that I initially labeled as 'boring' and uninteresting. This was discovered from all the people I did not vibe with.
Good luck OP. You can do it!
You can live the dream now in Whittier, Alaska at the Begich Towers.
> In addition to the residential areas the building contains the basic services of Whittier: a post office, general store, hospital, the Whittier Police Department, and the mayor's office. There is also a small Methodist Church, a grocery, laundry, a small hotel, conference room, and a play area with an indoor pool.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whittier,_Alaska
There is a "This American Life" episode "Glacial Change" that features the community.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/555/the-incredible-rarity-of-changing-your-mind/act-three-0
This looks like an episode of "This American Life."
Miki Meek a radio producer who I meet on a 4 day trek through Guatemala has a This American Life about a phone booth in the middle of nowhere in Japan with no connections to power, people go there to talk to deceased loved ones. It's a beautiful piece of radio journalism. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/597/one-last-thing-before-i-go?act=1
I guess he is referring to the this american life episode: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/513/129-cars
> we get many more articles about "fat acceptance" and "dangers of exercising" than about the opposite.
Where is this movement you're talking about? Most of the articles I've seen in the mainstream media about "fat acceptance" are quite critical of the concept. I've seen exactly one "fat acceptance" article that seemed OK with it (a recent episode of This American Life), and that was a shock to me.
Data entry of all the addresses that the OCRs failed to read.
OCR was pretty bad back in 1995 (which is why the Palm Pilot had a special handwriting for users to learn).
See this NPR piece: http://www.npr.org/2010/12/28/132393643/Undeliverable-Mail-Is-Auctioned-Off-At-Center-In-Atlanta
Also "Act Three" of Episode 70 of "This American Life": https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/70/other-peoples-mail
This American Life made a whole episode in a dealership which had that exact problem: they had to sell 129 in a month to get a bonus from the manufacturer.
"The last day of the month continues and the truism is accurate: some people get great deals because it’s the end of the month and they have to hit their goal. When you look at the numbers, the average car they sell in the last two days actually loses money."
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/513/129-cars
This American Life had a funny anecdote illustrating the opposite extreme where a woman who doesn't quite understand the meaning of "summer camp" leaves her kids at a campground by themselves for a week.
My mother emigrated to the United States from Germany in the '50s. And her understanding of American culture and traditions wasn't always quite clear. And one of her confusions was about summer camp. She knew that kids should go to summer camp, but she didn't realize that it usually involved 24 hour adult supervision. So one week she drove us up to a campground on the coast of Malibu and set us up in this tent, and left us some groceries, and then she drove home to go back to work.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/109/transcript
First learned about this from This American Life:
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/350/human-resources
And, yes, it was the first thing I thought of, too, when I saw this thread.
If you like this story and/or are a glutton for punishing tales of bad cops hammering good cops, check out the "This American Life" episode about a guy who recorded corruption in the NYPD:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/414/right-to-remain-silent
I'd recommend listening to act one from This American Life ep. 556 (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/556/same-bed-different-dreams). They interview two people captured by Kim Jong-Il to make movies. It sounded like a pretty easy life, but there's no joy in it if you can't leave.
This American Life & Planet Money did a follow-up on this idea three years later: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/483/self-improvement-kick?act=2
Against the odds, Honduras was actually willing to give the "charter city" model a go, but the project turned into a disaster before it even got started. Mostly because Paul Romer is an egotistical, antisocial control freak and nobody could work with him.
There's a lesson here for silicon valley types: Being a genius with a great idea doesn't count for anything if you can't work with other humans to bring your idea into reality.
This story reminds me of the episode on This American Life on doppelgangers, specifically on Calamari Rings. A warning, if you like Calamri Rings, ignorance is bliss.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/484/doppelgangers
It's usually mentioned in a negative context as something young women recently started doing and should stop.
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3626 covers the claims that this is some new trend, many of which are couched in language which implies that kids these days are doing something wrong or degenerate.
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=12774 discusses media coverage a couple of years ago claiming that women's careers (or vocal cords) would be damaged by using vocal fry.
This American Life did an entire episode (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/545/if-you-dont-have-anything-nice-to-say-say-it-in-all-caps?act=2 – http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=17489 has discussion) about the volume and vehemence of the complaints they receive about female cast members' use of vocal fry:
> Listeners have always complained about young women reporting on our show. They used to complain about reporters using the word like and about upspeak, which is when you put a question mark at the end of a sentence and talk like this. But we don't get many emails like that anymore. People who don't like listening to young women on the radio have moved on to vocal fry.
> What's striking in the dozens of emails about vocal fry that we've gotten here at our radio show is how vehement people are. These are some of the angriest emails we ever get. They call these women's voices unbearable, excruciating, annoyingly adolescent, beyond annoying, difficult to pay attention, so severe as to cause discomfort, can't stand the pain, distractingly disgusting, could not get over how annoyed I was, I am so appalled, detracts from the credibility of the journalist, degrades the value of the reportage, it's a choice, very unprofessional.
The part which underscores that there's a strong gender-based component to criticism is that Ira Glass, the male host of This American Life, is basically the king of vocal fry (along with other long-time radio personalities like Carl Kassel or Walter Cronkite) but nobody complains about his usage and on the rare occasions when any mention is made, it's not expressed in the same kind of negative language:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=17496
> Author's take on Dunning-Kruger is a strawman.
That wasn't the author's take on DK, that was the author's take on the pop sci version of DK, very different. It is definitely a straw man, one which David Dunning has also publicly criticized, so the author's in good company.
Here's an episode of This American Life where Dunning claims that he created a meme (his word), but that people misuse DK as an epithet targeted against stupid people, missing the fact that this applies to all of us:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/585/transcript
If you want to see how most people talk about DK, David Dunning runs a quick search on Twitter. I don't think the median depth of understanding on DK is quite as high as you expect...
From reading the end of the story, it is clear that they did not have reasonable suspicion. They had a responsive seller on Craigslist who was selling the same computer as the supposed buyer had lost. Do you believe owning the same model computer is reasonable suspicion? Does use of Craigslist meet your threshold of reasonable suspicion? Their reasonable suspicion was predicated on the signaling of the person inspecting the laptop, and that signal never came.
Interestingly, there was a recent This American Life with almost this exact same setup, but it was approached cautiously and executed correctly. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/549/amateur-hour
This almost seems lifted from the This American Life episode[1], but brought into the newer context of Bitcoin and other virtual currencies.
[1] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/423/the-invention-of-money
I agree voting from your IOT device is something that should happen. We will get there some day.
To get to that point sooner, we should elect more people who are knowledgeable about technology. If you disagree or feel that is an impossible route, you may be able to find others who feel similarly. Personally I think people who feel this way are part of a minority and that limiting your interactions to a certain group is isolating and not productive. I am always looking for ways to engage people with different ideas, both to learn and to share what I've learned.
Ultimately, I reject vox_mollis comment that participation in the democratic process is worthless or powerless. Just listen to This American Life's episode on "Take the Money and Run for Office" [1],
> Barney Frank: If the voters have a position, the votes will kick money's rear end any time. I've never met a politician-- I've been in the legislative bodies for 40 years now-- who, choosing between a significant opinion in his or her district and a number of campaign contributors, doesn't go with the district. [2]
Or look at how Lindsey Graham changed his mind in the encryption case [3]. Our representatives are not entirely useless. Similar to your day job or at your school, some people are good at what they do, and some are bad at it. That's no reason to throw the baby out with the bath water. We have the longest running democratic republic in the world. We should study it, contribute improvements by speaking up and voting, and be proud of it. Much of the rest of the world faces strict repercussions when they even speak against their government.
[1] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/461/take-the-money-and-run-for-office
[2] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/461/transcript
[3] https://youtu.be/zsjZ2r9Ygzw?t=14m30s
You may enjoy This American Life's episode on "Take the Money and Run for Office" [1]
> Dick Durbin: I think most Americans would be shocked-- not surprised, but shocked-- if they knew how much time a United States senator spends raising money. And how much time we spend talking about raising money, and thinking about raising money, and planning to raise money. And, you know, going off on little retreats and conjuring up new ideas on how to raise money. [2]
...
> Barney Frank: If the voters have a position, the votes will kick money's rear end any time. I've never met a politician-- I've been in the legislative bodies for 40 years now-- who, choosing between a significant opinion in his or her district and a number of campaign contributors, doesn't go with the district. [2]
The point is, if they are voted out they lose their jobs and income, therefore they must listen to voters. I'm not saying I support super PACs or anything, but I find it comforting to know that if we come together on something then we do have a role in the democratic process that is stronger than money.
[1] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/461/take-the-money-and-run-for-office
[2] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/461/transcript
The Giant Pool of Money episode of This American Life -- on of their most popular episodes in the history of NPR -- does not skimp on the role of low quality borrowers in the financial crisis - http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/355/the-giant-pool-of-money
> Public schools are often filled with petty tyrants
This American Life devoted an entire episode to covering one of them...
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/419/petty-tyrant
New Hampshire has one state representative per 3,291 citizens, which means each representative is being elected by an extremely small electorate. This is the smallest in the country. The US average is one state representative per 60,000, and the largest, California, is 465,674 people per representative.
The state is also subject to huge rapid swings in the majority. In 2008 Republicans won 43.5% of the seats, in 2010 Republicans won 72% of seats, in 2012 they won 45% of the seats, and in 2014 they won 60%.
While you could certainly argue that there are some benefits to this system, This American Life had a good episode on some of the cultural problems that this system has led to (see Act 2) - http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/478/red-state-blue-state
After listening to the latest This American Life the first thing that occurs to me is though the intentions of this are good and their are some good uses for it this might have unintended consequences
The EP of This American Life is that basically with a little practice most blind people can learn to see with echolocation. Yes I know it sounds incredible but listen to the episode. The TL;DL version would be
(1) blind people can learn to echolocate
(2) MRI scans prove they are actually seeing, no colors but shapes
(3) People that could see but then went blind and learned to echolocate confirm they can see.
(4) The fact that most people think blind people can't do anything and need and then offer so much help prevents most blind people from learning to echolocate and start seeing.
don't shoot the messenger.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/544/batman
The silent yet steady substitution of unemployment benefits with federal disability insurance is well covered in an episode of This American Life [1]. We, as a country, have a shoddy system for re-training low-skills workers facing technological obsolescence. We have also set up a system under which unemployment benefits are largely a state liability. Disability, on the other hand, is federally funded. The intersection of these trends, as documented by This American Life, lands us in the curious situation of state governments encouraging their unemployed to seek disability benefits (thereby shifting their burden onto the federal budget).
In the short run, state unemployment and federal disability benefits have similar effects. Social stability is enhanced through buying off the poor. But long-term disability is not designed for the under-trained. Its means-testing paradigm discourages even the exploration of employment options which might jeopardise the applicant's disability status. Thus a one-way valve to dependency on the state's largesse.
[1] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/490/trends-with-benefits
This American Life had a great segment introducing this: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/491/tribes?act=2#play
Here are links that go to MP3 files (versus their webapp players)...
This American Life bookmarklet:
javascript:var i = prompt("TAL episode number:");window.location=i?"http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/jomamashouse/ismymamashouse/"+i+".mp3":"http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives";
Radiolab: http://feeds.wnyc.org/radiolab
Slate's "Working" podcast is pretty new but has been excellent so far. 20-40 minutes each week covering the basics of various people's working day.
You'd probably like "Criminal" which is short crime-related stories. Only a few have been produced, but they've been picked up by the Radiotopia folks to do more and more often.
"WTF with Marc Maron" has some amazing interviews with people from the comedy and music worlds, along with short monologues from Marc's twisted mind. The (pay-for) archives are where the best episodes are (Judd Apatow, Louis CK, Ira Glass, Ken Jeong, Ed Helms, Dick Van Dyke, Mel Brooks, Dave Foley, Dave Grohl, Aubrey Plaza, Bryan Cranston, the list is endless) but the most recent 50 are always free. His interview of Robin Williams was incredible, and he just reposted it in the free stream recently.
Also on my playlist: 99% Invisible (stories about the design of things (more interesting than that sounds)), Good Job Brain! (pubquiz-themed trivia show), Ask Me Another (live trivia show), The Memory Palace (extremely rare, but fantastically interesting episodes), Born Yesterday (interesting tidbits from history), The Bugle (John Oliver riffs with a comic colleague from England), StartUp (Alex Blumberg recounts starting his own podcasting company after leaving This American Life), and of course This American Life and Radiolab (if you can stand the style).
Also, check out the big list of podcasts the new label Wolfpop just put out. Lots of good pop-culture stuff: Nate Corddry Reading Aloud, Denzel Washington is the Greatest Actor of All Time Period, The Canon (histrionic arguments about movies), and Maltin on Movies (calm discussions about movies) are the ones I'm trying at the moment.
Podcasts my family enjoys but I've had to cut mainly just for time: Planet Money (NPR/TAL-style explainers about the economy) and the Sporkful (good-natured arguments about the minutiae of various foods).
NPR has a ton of great, well-produced podcasts and radio-shows-made-into-podcasts: Pop Culture Happy Hour, Dinner Party Download, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, Fresh Air.
Hope that gives you a good starting point.
EDIT: some other podcasts I've listened to but given up for various reasons, but which are definitely worth checking out: The Moth, RISK, Snap Judgment, On Being, Life of the Law (I think).
I discovered that I could listen to This American Life while playing Borderlands (and its sequels). The game doesn't have characters that talk to you nonstop (especially when you are playing side missions) and something about the shoot-y gameplay meshes extremely well with talk radio.
The weird part is that the two mediums got completely and inseparably tangled together in my memory. When I think of a specific This American Life episode I can instantly recall the 3d layout of the level that I happened to be exploring while listening to the episode. And when backtracking later in the game I see the terrain features and the ideas and important parts of the show flood back into my mind.
I find it very strange, and very interesting, too.
i've only started listening to podcasts in the last 3 or 4 months, but what you said really resonates. i subscribe to about 40 podcasts now, and it lets me soundtrack all of the mundane and tedious things in my life (the hour+ of walking i do every day, the hour+ of jogging i do every other day, the hour+ of cooking i do every day, etc) is soundtracked by either neat minidocumentaries or conversations between people i think are funny and interesting. between podcasts and my chromecast i've completely severed myself from traditional broadcast media and i feel much richer for it.
a few recommended podcasts for others who may want some:
-the podcasts of npr's better shows: this american life, radiolab, the moth, snap judgment, the organist -- by extension, serial, which isnt an npr show but is TAL affiliated
-the radiotopia.fm suite: 99% invisible is the best known, but all of them are top notch imo
-the duckfeed.tv suite: best known for watch out for fireballs, weekly discussions of a different retro video game; all of their shows are videogame oriented, and frankly while i barely play video games at all anymore i enjoy listening to their discussions
-no such thing as a fish: weekly half hour of a group of people quickly rattling off interesting facts
-i don't even own a television: reviews of bad books in discussion format
-the flop house: reviews of bad movies in discussion format
-roderick on the line: conversational comedy podcast
-uhh yeah dude: long-running general comedy podcast
Any time cryogenics comes up I'm reminded of this story from This American Life:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/354/mistakes-were-made
I believe you are referring to Season 2 Episode 1 of This American Life the tv show titled "Escape". Two sentence summary from the site:
"Mike and his mom get caught up in a fight that lots of kids have with their parents. Except in their case, due to some very specialized circumstances, they go through the fight in slow motion, over the course of years."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002V87A4S/ref=atv_feed_catalog?tag=imdb-amazonvideo-20
My primary intent was the "public as noncommercial" meaning. That's an increasingly blurry line. I've been a watcher and listener for long enough that I remember when there were far fewer credits and they were much less specific.
There's the other can of worms about various influencers of what appears (or doesn't) on PBS, NPR, PRI, and APM. There's Noam Chomsky having interviews and essays pulled on minutes' notice from NPR, Koch intervention with IIRC WBUR Boston, and numerous other instances. I've been noting a general lack of appropriate coverage for well over a decade, though some of that may simply be my own increasing sensitivity.
Not that there aren't exceptions. Terry Gross's "Fresh Air", Ira Glass's "This American Life", "Bill Moyers and Company", and "The Commonwealth Club" tend to provide some of the most insightful programming. If I had to choose between the news coverage and those four programs (three of which are once a week), I'd pick the latter. "Planet Money" has been good but gets washed out when it's in a normal news broadcast.
Listening to a local station's pledge recently I was struck by the comment that the three most-valued aspects of programming were all long-form programs: a call-in talk show generally committing a full hour to a single issue, Fresh Air, and This American Life. They're also all associated with a single principle personality. I see this as a call for giving time to explore a topic in depth rather than the several minutes' limit imposed by other formats (which itself is far longer than most commercial news programs). Though the non-frantic nature of the programs also possibly plays a role: these are thoughtful conversations between adults. I can't stand the commercial documentary breathless reporter, hyperbole, and thumping soundtrack format at all (usually encountered through YouTube samplings if at all these days).
This American Life: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/284/should-i-stay-or-should-i-go
In case anyone missed it, This American Life had two great shows about patent trolls, including Intellectual Ventures:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/496/when-patents-attack-part-two
I always knew that patent trolls were a problem, and that the US patent system had big issues, but these shows made it oh-so-clear just how bad things are.
In two words: Maslow's hierarchy. [1]
The best places I know have people who are working from higher-layer motivations, and corporate cultures that encourage that by treating people as adults, supporting them, giving them wide latitude to get things done, et cetera.
The worse are the opposite. The people there are desperate for money to survive. The corporate cultures are disempowering, controlling, contemptuous.
It's commonly thought in the US that these are just two different sorts of people, the high-class creatives who should be given latitude, and the low-class proles who must be controlled like surly teens if they are to get anything done.
But that's not true. For example, Toyota's great success comes mainly from treating factory workers with deep respect. [2] And it works here, too. This American Life tells the story [3] of Toyota turning GM's worst plant into one of the best. Same people, just a different culture.
So if people are receiving a basic income, jobs will have to shift toward the model that motivates people through the higher end of Maslow's hierarchy. Money will be part of why people show up, but it would not longer be the only reason.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs [2] Liker's Toyota Kata is a great book on this. [3] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/403/nummi
The same topic was covered (by the author) on Act I of this week's 'This American Life'
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/503/i-was-just-trying-to-help
The US is already doing something similar for potential terrorists - - they essentially handhold people they believe to have the potential to carry out a terrorist plot. This American Life had an episode called The Convert [1] and Rolling Stones had a similar article [2]
[1] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/471/the-convert
[2] http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/how-fbi-entrapment-is-inventing-terrorists-and-letting-bad-guys-off-the-hook-20120515?stop_mobi=yes
This American Life had a very disturbing story about how the NYPD turned on the cop that outed them for this and other stuff.
See Act 2: Is That a Tape Recorder in Your Pocket, or Are You Just Unhappy to See Me?
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/414/right-to-remain-silent
Hunh? I'm a bit confused why you've singled This American Life out here.
Mike Daisey is an interesting case, and someone who published a lot on the story he fabricated in a lot of different outlets. This American Life were the ones were simply the ones who confronted Daisey directly and publicly. Jonah Lehrer, the extent to which he was a contributor to TAL, was certainly not a frequent contributor (in fact I don't remember which of their episodes he's been on at all), but he is much more associated with his magazine work.
Actually i checked This American Life's site. They don't have Jonah Lehrer listed at all (although they do have a colleague of mine listed twice under misspellings of her name): http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/contributor
Then checkout This American Life for an episode on scambaiters that leaves you unsure exactly what to think about the whole mess:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/363/enforcers
There was a This American Life/Radiolab story about a guy who rolled his own Helminthic Therapy. If it weren't for the fact that the therapy was illegal (which is a whole other issue) and therefore very difficult for him to get, it would hardly have been a "story." Just an amazing cure for allergies/autoimmune problems. But the story was really in how he had to wander all over Africa shuffling through latrines to get a few hookworms. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/404/enemy-camp-2010 . It's act 3.
What is fundamentally flawed with the state of journalism is not what Mike Daisey does. He's an actor who created a one man show.
What is flawed is that journalists continue to mistake his one man show for investigative reporting. The extent to which it is occurring borders on the deliberate.
Rob Schmitz's investigation is the journalistic equivalent to revealing that Julius Caesar could not have said:
Forget not, in your speed, Antonius, To touch Calpurnia; for our elders say, The barren, touched in this holy chase, Shake off their sterile curse.
because he did not speak Elizabethan English.
Schmitz should be able to distinguish between a news report and entertainment. He should be able to provide context for the large themes in Daisey's performance given that they coincide with his own journalistic reports for Marketplace. He could have done actual journalism, instead he conflated theater with journalism and then revealed it as theater while pretending to conduct journalism.
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/apple-economy/app...
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/tech/apple-economy/china-c...
Ira Glass from the transcript of the original This American Life piece:
When I saw Mike Daisey perform this story on stage, when I left the theater I had a lot of questions. I mean, he's not a reporter, and I wondered, did he get it right?
The journalistic failings fall on journalists. Mr. Glass knew Daisey wasn't a reporter all along.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/454/t...
"Journalists do tell stories, but they make sure those stories are true, verified, factual."
Some of them do. Sadly, it's somewhat of a dying art. The retraction episode of This American Life might be the apex of such activity in traditional journalism for all we know. Most other news outlets fall far short of that standard.
Told on This American Life: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/134/we-didnt
How many more incidents of this variety before foreigners (and foreign investment and foreign inventors and foreign entrepreneurs) stop coming to the US? After reading this and listening to the latest episode of "This American Life" (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/456/reap-what-you-sow?act=1), I can't help but wonder if the right in the US will "reap what they sow" and end up with an impoverished shell of an empire that no one wants to illegally enter.
Edit: Based on the down votes this comment is receiving, I assume some people disagree. I'd be curious if the source of that disagreement is a feeling that this incident will not have any impact on the likelihood of other foreigners visiting?
This American Life is a weekly public radio show broadcast on more than 500 stations to about 1.8 million listeners. It is produced by Chicago Public Media, distributed by Public Radio International, and has won all of the major broadcasting awards. It is also often the most popular podcast in the country, with around 700,000 people downloading each week.
They also have mobile apps, but you don't have to use them to download the episode.
The grieving process is very important and when it is subverted by the continued opening of woulds, it can cause problems. There is a great This American Life about this, where a 16 year olds mother dies but left her notes to be given to her on specific days (typically birthdays). The results are very interesting:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/401/parent-trap
> Software patents are a joke, just listen to this now famous 'This American Life' piece: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/w...
This is a fantastic episode but you don't seem to have paid much attention: it's a piece against patent trolls, not patents.
Patent trolls need to go, but the jury is still out on software patents.
It can still be amazing squared :). This American Life is actually one of my favorite things. I always look forward to new episodes, and love going through old ones in their iPhone app.
Planet Money is actually a co-production of This American Life and NPR, and there's often a lot of overlap (for example, they devoted a full TAL episode to Toxie, a story that was developed over several episodes of the Planet Money podcast).
I remember an episode where this american life explained why health insurance came to be like it is.
I was specifically interested in the fact that they said during WWII wages where not allowed to increase, so the only things that employers could increase were benefits. This was the biggest factor in making Health Insurance employer-based.
I think the This American Life episode popularized it:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/389/frenemies
"This American Life" had a great segment awhile back on the Rubber Room, which is this room in the NYC school system where teachers who are under investigation or something get stuck. They report there instead of their classrooms, and some of these teachers have been stuck there for years because they can't be fired. Pretty incredible.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/350/Human-Resources
I can't seem to find a free version online, but This American Life's TV show, the episode called "Pandora's Box" is very eye opening. They go to a modern pig farm and it's as disturbing and disgusting as this article makes it sound.
I thought it was very interesting that they had to scrub down before they could enter for fear that they might introduce germs to the pigs.
Snowboarding, hiking, cycling, basement dance parties, photography, making random videos, this american life on NPR, watching geeked out documentaries like helvetica, and getting up on my wife... not necessarily in that order. Oh, and eating, I love eating.
Do it. Love your itinerary.
Obligations and responsibilities aside, you'll regret not doing it. The cost may exceed your budget but the payoff in experential value may be well worth it. Even if you don't tax yourself by trying to produce a viral video. And, I'm going to make the presumption you have an itch to be a filmmaker.
As for the viral video, think along the lines of "Where the hell is Matt?" - e.g. do something common in each different city - like go visit all the Indian buffets in the local area and get everyone there to do a Bollywood dance number. Or visit all the local coffee shops and interview their owners. Or interview people about how the economy has affected them. Or interview the people of a certain type of scene in each city. Or visit people in senior centers and ask them about the one most important thing in life they've learned/their signature story. Or whatever. Something that sincerely interests you. If you're passionate about startups, connect with the startup scene in each city. It depends on what your lifelong interests are. Watch/listen to "This American Life" for inspiration.
Visiting fourteen different cities in 30 days. Wow. You could get a lot of raw footage for a documentary festival entry. Or even stock footage.
This is one of the most profound pieces of short documentary I have ever seen.
Watch the whole thing on Netflix: http://www.netflix.com/Signin?nextpage=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.netflix.com%2FWiPlayer%3Fmovieid%3D70119568
Or search for This American Life s02e01.
Mike continues to blog at http://www.lithiumcreations.com/.
I didn't really find anything helpful, but there is a story that's going around conservative blogs that it was the liberals' obsession with extending credit to minorities that ultimately caused the crisis.
There's a lot of things wrong with that story. This American Life just did a segment on it. They point out that the problem really originates elsewhere, on Wall Street, and that both conservatives and liberals share the blame here. Listen to the second segment of this episode:
http://thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1265
It's arguable that the mere existence of the Fed or FDIC does contribute to overconfidence, especially when it's pursuing a low interest rate policy.
This American Life "The Giant Pool of Money" episode offers a good background on the crisis: http://www.thislife.org/extras/radio/355_transcript.pdf
Act I: "Alan Greenspan: 'The FOMC stands prepared to maintain a highly accommodative stance of policy for as long as needed to promote satisfactory economic performance.'...
What he’s technically saying is he’s going to keep the Fed Funds rate at the absurdly low level of one percent. It tells every investor in the world: you are not going to make any money at all on US treasury bonds for a very long time. Go somewhere else. We can’t help you."
Act II "And they sold so many mortgages that there came a point in 2003 where just about everybody who wanted a mortgage and was qualified to get one .... had gotten one.
But the pool of money had just gotten started. They wanted more mortgage backed securities.
So Wall Street had to find more people to take out mortgages. Which meant lending to people who never would’ve qualified before."
"At the height I was making between 75 and 100 grand a month" -Glen Pizzolorusso, who was an area sales manager at an outfit called WMC mortgage in upstate New York."
Act III: "The global pool of money is avoiding anything with even the slightest hint of risk and that affects everybody, no matter who you are. It's harder to borrow money to buy a house, or build a factory, or bring your country boldly into the 21st century. Take Iceland. A year ago it was easy for them to borrow billions. Now, they're seen as too risky. Their central bank has to pay more than 15 percent interest get anyone to loan them money. They could do better putting their national debt on a credit card."
His series on the Chicago radio is great. It's called "This American Life". I caught an episode of it on Showtime, the TV series is equally brilliant. It's good to see good TV like this at the time when cable's dominated by nonsense like The Hills and all the dumb reality shows.
This American Life did a great segment on some dancers from one of the Riverdance companies, and how their job was coveted (it was incredibly stable income for a dancer) but also tedious and repetitive. Every show, they were basically mailing in their performances, full of faked energy and enthusiasm.
One week, they purchased a large number of lottery tickets as a group, and found that their excitement for winning the lottery (and therefore quitting Riverdance) was more than their excitement for the job itself.
Here's the link -- act two is the one that you want:
http://thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=306