This American Life
I don’t have a car.
It takes me a long bus ride (or two…wassup MUNI) to get from place to place. I don’t really mind the long bus rides because some entertaining/hilarious shit always seems to go down (and trust I’m always quick to Tweet that shit). But also, it gives me a chance to focus and really listen. Usually I’m listening to music. Not just using music as background, “white noise”, but actually listening critically. Lately, however, I’ve been revisiting one of my podcasts, This American Life.
Honestly, though. I don’t even know how to sell the podcast to you to get you to check it out. Judging from their website, neither do they.
“One of our problems from the start has been that when we try to describe This American Life in a sentence or two, it just sounds awful. For instance: each week we choose a theme and put together different kinds of stories on that theme. That doesn’t sound like something we’d want to listen to on the radio, and it’s our show.
So usually we just say what we’re not. We’re not a news show or a talk show or a call-in show. We’re not really formatted like other radio shows at all. Instead, we do these stories that are like movies for radio. There are people in dramatic situations. Things happen to them. There are funny moments and emotional moments and—hopefully—moments where the people in the story say interesting, surprising things about it all. It has to be surprising. It has to be fun.”
This American Life, sponsored by Chicago Public Radio, debuted in November 1995. Almost 15 years later, the show is still going strong on over 500 affiliate stations, pulling in almost 1.7 million listeners each week as well as offering their show as a free podcast. The show’s creator, Ira Glass, serves as both the producer and the host of the hour-long program. Each show follows a similar format: there’s a different theme each week that is broken down into 2-5 “acts”. Each act is a different interpretation of the theme. Acts vary from first person narratives, essays, memoirs, field recordings to even stand up comedy.
For example, in a recent program entitled “Somewhere Out There”, each act dealt with different interpretations of the theme of love. Following a hilarious prologue where Harvard physics students calculated the mathematical possibility of them finding girlfriends in the city of Boston (the number wasn’t pretty), Act One dealt with a more traditional love story about an American overcoming language and cultural barriers to boo up a Chinese girl during his student exchange program. Act Two dealt with two 8 year old girls who were born boys, but preferred to be girls; they met at a transgender parenting conference and discovered platonic love. Act Three was an excerpt of comedian Mike Birbiglia’s one-man show where he shares high school misadventures of going out with the cool girl, Amanda, and meeting Scott…her other boyfriend.
The real beauty of the program is that each week is a bit of a surprise. You never really know what the show is going to be about. One week will be a collection of memoirs and the next will be a discussion on current world events. Recently, I was schooled on the century old economic theory Obama based his bailout plans on. The only real consistency each week is that the stories will be presented in an entertaining and thoughtful manner, and you’ll come out with a little bit more knowledge than before you started listening.
Jon’s Treat of The Week
The first thought that popped into my brain when I saw this song was “Did they really just fucking remake this song?” I’ve never really been a big fan of remakes, outside of a few exceptions: D’Angelo’s “Feel Like Makin Love” and Aaliyah’s “At Your Best”. Much to my relief, they didn’t remake the song, but sampled it and came up with their own track.
I’m not mad at it.
Actually, I like it…a lot. Don’t sleep. Amerie >>> your favorite pop singer.
