This American Life
I’ve spent a few hours today listening to This American Life streaming on their website as I’ve been doing some cleaning up of my apartment. I’m always struck by just how good a show it is, by how interesting the people’s stories and by how well they manage to present things.
I was even listening to the very first episode they ever aired (well, actually it was a 10th anniversary re-broadcast of it) and I was very impressed by how consistently good it has managed to be for the eleven years it’s been on the air.
Apparently they’re now offering episodes for 95 cents an episode at the iTunes store, so I may very well end up downloading quite a few episodes there so I can listen to them while walking to and from work and while driving to and from Baltimore. They have yet to change price of all their old episodes to 95 cents, though, so I’m waiting for the price-drop before going on a buying spree 
It’s definitely some of the best radio I know of. It’s not good for listening to while working because I really want to give it a lot of attention. While I can sort of half-listen to Science Friday, for instance, or even occasionally to Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me, I feel like This American Life sort of demands more of my attention, much like listening to a good audiobook (like George RR Martin, say).
Yeah, This American Life is fanatastic and I should listen to it more. More!
Are they still going to do the streaming for free or is it going to be iTunes all the way now?
They still have streaming for free at thislife.org. And thank goodness it’s no longer Real-Audio only. Peee-yew!
I actually finished up listening to all their archives while packing to move. I just need to stay caught up on the current episodes.
Friday night at the college they’re showing the documentary film Troop 1500, about a troop of Girl Scouts whose mothers are all in jail. It was excerpted in the TAL episode Parental Guidance Suggested. A Beloit alumna was involved with the Girl Scouts and will be speaking after one of the showings. I was thinking about going, but my interest in the subject is kind of limited to the TAL-ness of it, I’m afraid, and I suspect that drooling on the couch in front of the goddamnoisybox is going to win the “What to do Friday Night?” war.
Wow, sounds like your Friday nights are a lot more exciting now that there’s no Games Club to go to?
And yes, it’s still free streaming. But I’m probably going to download it for the car trips. I figure it’s well worth a dollar an episode. Even if I listen to episodes the entire way there, it’s only about as expensive as stopping for a fast food meal en route, pretty much.
The only problem of listening to it streaming on iTunes is that you can’t pause it, which you can on RealPlayer. That is a major problem, I would say
Agreed. It was also nice to be able to rewind/fast-forward in RA.
I also found, at least using Jason’s PC, that Windows Media Player did a much better job providing smooth streaming than iTunes! (HERESY! HERESY!) With iTunes I experienced increasing pauses, and sometimes it would become almost unlistenable, but would have much fewer glitches if I opened the same file immediately in WMP.
Maybe M$ sabotages iTunes streaming function in some way.
Alas, if that were the case, streaming on iTunes on a mac ought to work… and it doesn’t.
There’s one player on OS X that does allow pausing, apparently (there’s a thing on the TAL webpage about different media players), but iTunes is not it.