![]() The power of this method, one which many podcasts, due to their niche focuses, can never quite live up to, is to find disperse stories on a theme and situate them together in a way that makes them resonate in new ways. Some of these episodes - “The Giant Pool of Money,” “#1 Party School” among them - are so legendary that one can now forget that the show’s bread and butter has always been its act-based structure. During that same five-year period, This American Life began to earn its reputation for blockbuster, hour-long narratives that would carry it into the 2010s. The second fact is that we like long episodes. There was a political dimension to this: as the Bush administration tripped over itself in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and the follies of the Iraq and Afghan Wars became ever more apparent, This American Life was perfectly positioned to reach into the heart of these major stories and record the shifting ground under life in these United States. It might be that no one takes you seriously until you’ve been at work for a decade, or it might just be that this was the moment Gen X became a silent majority of the culture industry. While much of the show’s first 10 years turned around the show’s home base of Chicago, once in New York, the show went global. During this period, production of This American Life moved from Chicago to New York (on account of the show’s brief experimentation with television), and the program became a force beyond itself. First, episodes 300 to 400 (released from roughly 2006 to 2010) indeed constituted a kind of “golden age” for the show. Surveying the following list, two things become apparent. And so, to make a list of the best episodes of This American Life, is to spotlight the work of the many staff and producers who make the show. The variety of styles on display in This American Life has separated the program from a traditional newsmagazine, whether that be 60 Minutes or one found in print. What makes a good This American Life story? The show’s submissions page narrows it down to two principles: “There are characters in some situation, and a conflict,” and “ stories raise some bigger question or issue, some universal thing to think about.” But I would argue that the key ingredient is the contributor. Many other producers from that period: Starlee Kine, Brian Reed, Hillary Frank, Scott Carrier, Jonathan Goldstein, and former intern PJ Vogt, to name just a few, have gone on to create acclaimed podcasts of their own. Two of the biggest names in the podcasting boom - Serial’s Sarah Koenig and Gimlet Media’s Alex Blumberg - were deeply involved with the show’s golden age. Over the last 25 years, the show founded and led by Ira Glass has built a vast network of producers and writers who have set standards across all genres of audio production. And I was definitely afraid of her.First broadcast in November 1995, This American Life is the most influential precursor to narrative podcasting as it exists today. Which really screwed me up because my mom's black. She was like, are you afraid of black people because I primarily had a lot of white friends. But, yeah, there was always that separation but not the way my mom had experienced. That was the first time I encountered a thing where someone was like, you can't hang out with a certain group of people, even if it's your own group of people. And then they were like, she has no right to say that. And they're like, what's wrong? And I was like, Star made me cry. And they were like, what's wrong? And I was like, get away from me. I went to the curb by myself, just cried. ![]() And this one girl turned around, boxed me out of the circle, and was like, "why don't you go back and play with your little white friends?"Īnd I cried instantly. And then I went over to the circle of black girls. There was like a field day or something outside. The friend warned her, they'll find a way around you. One mom I talked to got a call from a friend while this was going on at her house. ![]() They don't want their kids to be humiliated, but it can get overwhelming. This is so common in my town that parents are calling it parasiting. And once they get in, they tell the younger kids, this is our party now. Parents can be yelling at them to get off their lawn, and the kids will pretend to go, but really they are sneaking in around back. The older kids, though, they are not deterred by parents. And at these parties, the parents are home. Upperclassman conspire to target freshman parties, freshman like Ben. But what was happening here is different from those movies in one key way, a way that seems to be specific to my town and towns nearby. His little birthday celebration was crashed. This thing that was happening to Ben, it's straight out of every memorable teen party movie. ![]()
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