I’ve been listening to the free weekly podcast of This American Life for about a year now, and it never fails to deliver. It’s a public radio show that tells thoughtful, well-produced stories about relatively average people in the U.S. It always has smooth, catchy musical segues and at least one lough out loud moment per episode. (The most recent episode is always free to download/podcast and you can listen to the archives but not download them without paying)
In the most recent show, the host mentioned an Onion article about the show that cut deep, and if you’re familiar with the show it’s the best summary you’ll ever read.
An excerpt from “This American Life Completes Documentation Of Liberal, Upper-Middle-Class Existence“:
Also aiding the [show] were the many contributors to This American Life, who took time from their best-selling essay-writing careers to donate personal anecdotes about dropping out of prestigious art schools, taking harrowing but poignant childhood vacations to the Grand Canyon, and the unique challenges of growing up in families supportive of their homosexuality.
Anyway, just thought I’d take a minute to plug both This American Life and The Onion for being super high quality and super free.
Bonus Content:
The Onion: American Life Turns Into Bad Jerry Bruckheimer Movie – Amazing parody of the “9-11 feels like a movie” phenomenon written in September 2001.
YouTube: POWERTHIRST!!! (via. Sarah)
One correction. “This American Life” is Public Radio, meaning “paid for by taxpayers”, meaning “not free”.
Another Correction: Most of the funding for this American Life and PRI comes from listener and corporate sponsorship. According to Wikipedia, for whatever that’s worth, only 2% comes from the govt. But yeah, not free.
yeah. I’m with you Brendan. Also, for the record, I meant free in the promotional sense, as in ‘that link will let you listen without paying’, rather than the productional sense, which I think is obvious, SOMEONE has to pay for a professional radio show.