I’ve been listening to This American Life ever since I realized they put their stuff up on the internet. I was really bored this weekend and listened to a lot of stuff out of the archives, and I found what is probably my favorite piece of all the ones I’ve heard. You can listen to it here (there’s a little blue speaker button on the left). The werewolf bit was fun, but the really amazing part was the last act, about a single mother and her two children who pretended to go babysitting an imaginary family to get out of the house. Good listening, if you’re interested! 
Also fascinating:
My Lobotomy
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5014080
Sad piece. But very much worthwhile.
I remember hearing the one about the two kids with the pretend babysitting job. That was really an amazing story. I keep meaning to go and just start listening to all of them. I’ve never heard one on the radio that wasn’t fascinating.
I may be thinking of something else, but I think there was one where someone had found or bought some tapes that a person had made to send as letters to someone else, like a son or something. I don’t think they were shockingly strange, but a little strange or something. I’ll have to try to find it. It was a weird show.
Tell me, has “This American Life” ever produced a program where a NPR radio station runs a pledge drive and once its over the station announces its decided to radically change their programming for their listeners own good, like it or not?
The station that produces “This American Life” has a history of doing this.
My memory wants to say they once tried to cancel “This American Life” but that might have only been a bad dream I’d had after giving up trying to find “Thistle and Shamrock” on that station.
They tell me WBEZ is going to drop their all night jazz and blues programming.
They’re going to all talk.
I starting relying on CDs to listen to long ago.
WAMC runs Thistle and Shamrock Sunday Evenings at 8 pm EST. I think it’s available on-line at WAMC.org
I don’t think I’ve heard This American Life. Sounds like the Pledge Drive palaver you describe could be part of public radio’s woes.
tjh
Is that the one about the guy (bus driver in boston?) who went in search of the guy who did the ice-pick lobotomies? If so, it was one of the best pieces they’ve ever done.
I’ve never liked This American Life. It’s partly that I can’t get over the way Ira Glass talks, but also it just seems a little melodramatic to me.
Hylde, my local station changed its programming radically a few years ago. Went from three hours of bluegrass a day to about 4 hours a week. I’m still fuming about it, as are probably 50-100 thousand other people. The weird thing is, they did REALLY well for a public radio station during bluegrass hours.
Chicago doesn’t have citywide wireless for me to use my computer in my car like that.
If I had satellite radio my problems would be solved though.
Let me think, pay for satellite radio to hear the music programs I like or just buy the CDs?
Which well it be? Hmmm…
Since NPR in Chicago (“This American Life”'s home station) has switched over to “all talk” its a no brainer I’ll never be pledging again.
If I want to listen to nothing but people talking I have plenty of that going on in my own head.
You could always do a podcast…