Jesus, I mean, there's just dozens and dozens of incredible episodes, hundreds of
good episodes, and dozens of really meaningful, perspective changing episodes... But really you should just take your finger, scroll as fast you can through the hundreds of episode, count to 3 and just tap your screen... ANd play that one. It'll be good.
What's kinda weird for me is that, although I've been listening to TAL for.. ~14 years or so, I don't subscribe to the podcast. It's one of those weird shows that I prefer to listen to "live" at 1PM on Saturdays. If I miss an episode, I don't sweat it because they usually replay them on my other NPR station Tuesday nights, and I'll listen to it then. If I miss it then, I still don't sweat it because they repeat them during the summer and I catch up then.
As a thought experiment, I've often thought how the podcast world would be different if This American Life never existed. Basically, the sound style of every audio show/podcast today is a mix between This American Life and RadioLab, obviously the two most influential long form audio narratives of the last 30 years. And
everything sounds like it today. I kinda wonder, like, how would everything have changed if TAL and RadioLab just never existed, or if they sounded different, or if they were different in some way...
*edit*
Gimme a min to find my favorite episodes.
Okay I'm back.
- "The Night in Question." I'm a history guy and particularly interested in Middle East / Israeli history, at least I used to be, and this is about the assassination of Yitzak Rabin.
- "Recordings for Someone." This is a multi-act one that's often replayed during the dog days of summer.
- "The Giant Pool of Money." This is the episode that actually launched Planet Money, or well, it was timed with the launch of Planet Money. It's an in-the-moment assessment of the 2008 financial collapse from 2008. Planet Money launched out of this, by Alex Blumberg (who is now the editor/head of Gimlet media, which is why every Gimlet podcast is very TAL / PlanetMoney inspired)
- "No Coincidences, No Story." A wonderful 3 parter about coincidences, and everybody knows someone like one of the storytellers grandmothers. This is often replayed.
- There's two episodes from TAL that cover mostly the same theme, "Middle School" and the one on the Prom. I cant find the link to the Prom one right now, but if you're an urban middle class white dude, I feel like everybody had the same experiences as thse stories, well, not as remarkable, but they capture the essence of being an American middle schooler or prom-goer. Someone link "The Prom" episode... it's an old one, 2001 or 2002. Can't find it searching the archive, the words are too common. This is another one they replay every year.
- Edit: here's The Prom one: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/186/prom
More to come.
Y'know what, can't find em all, but go through these:
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/recommended/staff-recommendations
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/recommended/hour-long-stories
Man I get remeniscient just looking at some of the titles and descriptions of these. They bring me right back to a specific time and place in my life. Just after college, ~2007ish, 2008ish, I was single and kind of sad about life, but my then roommate and I went to the beach almost every weekend that summer, mostly accidentally... like it wasn't something we planned, but we just went every Saturday or Sunday every weekend... which was usually about ~75mins-2hours away, and back then, I'd download these episodes off of the internet however the fuck I got them (probably using Newsgroups then) and burn them to CDs. And almost every weekend, we'd drive down to the beach usually in Rhode Island or Cape Cod and listen to these, plus like... Vampire Weekend, the Decemberists, Okkervil River, and whatever other music we were into, in my shitty sedan. Distinctly remember sitting in traffic on ROute 4 or 1 in Rhode Island, at those two stoplights that you have to sit through going to Newport or Narraganset or whatever, listening to these episodes. It was kind of a shitty time in my life too, had a shitty job, was in between relationships, we were both fucking super broke and in a mountain of bad credit card debt, but I still kind of get nostalgic thinking about listening to some of these episodes going to the beach.
Oh gosh this one too. This is in the series along with "Middle School," "Prom," and some of the others, that if you're a middle class white millennial or gen-xer ... these are describing your life growing up, so acutely. You might not fit that demographic, but it really nails me and these episodes resonate so much with me.
