this american life, c/d

"This American Life" is .. hit or miss. They can have some really great, riveting stories on there. And then they can have some inane fluff. It all depends how inspired they are I guess. But yeah, that music blows, would it be so hard to VARY IT once in a while? And Sarah Vowell needs to take a long walk off a short pier. But other than those complaints I'm generally a fan of the show.

I don't hate NPR as a whole. I like WNYC's talk guys (Lehrer and Lopate), and I like Terry Gross's guests even if she herself sometimes drives me up a wall (same reaction I have to Charlie Rose, actually). I understand hating NPR, tho -- it seems both symptom and cause of the general self-satisfied ineffectualism of what passes for current American liberalism (of which "This American Life" is a prime example).

I like NPR's "On the Media" and "On Point" and "The Connection." I really miss DC NPR because it has the Kojo Nnamdi show. "Fresh Air".. usually annoying. I find Charlie Rose to be the second most annoying human being on the planet, right after Peggy Noonan.

xpost

I get what Jody is saying, but I think I get that reaction more from Pacifica than NPR. Good sweet Jesus, I LOATHE Pacifica.

everything else I've heard on this amerikan life (not much) -- DUD. Sarah Vowell has to be the most annoying presence on the airwaves. Just the sound of her voice makes me want to head down to the nearest Starbucks with a machete. I'd like to smash her Jonathan Richman albums and force-feed her some consonants.

but let's stay on topic!!

wbai in particular is pretty awful, but it's so earnest that it's sometimes funny.

There have been some good recent TAL shows. I liked the one just last week about the guy who shouted at Bush I. and the one from a few weeks back about the guy who kidnapped Frank Sinatra Jr. and all the ones from Iraq have been generally really good.

On NPR, I like To the Point and Warren Olney, except the other day he was rather short with a (possibly junior) reporter covering Lebanon for the NYT. Their popular music coverage is stuffy.

Ira Glass's voice takes some getting used to. I don't know if his diction is affected or not, but I really hate it when people start imitating the easily recognizable vocal mannerisms of other hosts or DJs, e.g., Jason Bentley on KCRW. I like Gary Calamar's voice on KCRW, although it does get gravelly at times. I also like Jeff Scott's voice on KUCI. Garth Trinidad on KCRW sounds very cool.

not even! it's like they're saying "this is funny" instead of relating a joke that's just funny.

likewise, one of my pet peeves is when hosts/guests/"experts"/whatever feel they have to explain to their audience WHY something is worthwhile. and i'm not just talking about "artist x plays instrument y in style z"; i'm talking about like how in the tmbg movie all the npr people felt the need to point out that it's AWESOME how tmbg are SO HAPPY AND BOUNCY and SO DEPRESSING AT THE SAME TIME!!!! radical, eh? and there's a song about, like, PARTICLES! look ma, brainfood! you know, for kids!

Let's talk about how Terri Gross is the worst interviewer ever to walk the face of this sad planet, shall we?

also i mean, cmon, the music cues are just unbearably bad much of the time, like ear-breakingly bad. have i mentioned this already?

i liked her interview with bobby womack. he seems very pleased to be there, and willing to just sort of shoot the breeze and tell terri the stories she wanted to hear. also he has a nice voice.

And I feel the same way about most everything on NPR. Yeah yeah, All Things Considered, blah blah.

That's not egghead, that's asking him about his job. Asking him about Angie Dickinson insults his intelligence.

WWMWD

What Would Mike Wallace Do?

I know I called them smug upthread and others disagreed, so I'm genuinely questioning whether it's my own hyper-sensitivity to this rather than them!

Did anyone listen to the episode about acetaminophen overdoses? It was interesting but it felt like they were trying really hard to nail the manufacturer (and being only semi-successful at doing so) while largely giving the FDA a pass, never really explaining why it took 30+ years for the agency to approve warning language.

i couldn't make it through the whole episode but it definitely felt like they were reaching.

There was a part early on where the woman who did a lot of the actual research into the number of deaths caused by acetaminophen was mad that McNeil didn't pay any attention to her work. Then the narrator says that McNeil requested to look at her work but she didn't want to give them the data because of confidentiality reasons or something. So what did she expect the company to do, just take their word for it? I'm sure all pharma companies are totally evil but that was pretty representative of their inability to actually pin McNeil down as doing something bad. The closest they got was the company refusing to stop contesting their court loss against the couple whose baby died until the Supreme Court finally rejected the case.

i dunno man i thought it was pretty balanced—like they obv targeted macneil at first but then found there were complicating factors, particularly the fda's process. i thought it was good reporting.

like it seemed they were really resisting the temptation to do overly simplistic finger pointing

That's a more charitable way of thinking about it, sure.

I thought they could have dug a little deeper into the FDA's process, but I guess they had to trim something down to fit the show's lengths. Though I definitely think they could've turned this particular one into a 2-parter.

I did like the rerun of the story about the cop from the NYPD that was secretly recording everyone, such a great listen. Even though the truth is that this guy was probably taking every opportunity to provoke his superiors, that ending with them showing up at his apartment was super o_O.

House on Loon Lake was pretty interesting, and I liked the one about Asa/Forrest Carter

I don't always love this show, but it's still the best thing I can find for late night straightening up/dish doing

when they're on, there's few better.

Listened to part of an early episode, #14 and realized it was something I had heard back in college but not known what it was at the time. It's great radio - edits of found taped letters of a single family with no interjecting narration. Sounds more like something you'd expect to hear on fmu

FWIW I think I actually started an RFI thread once to ask if anyone knew what this was, and someone suggested it might have been a TAL epsiode. Can't find that thread now.

They're really playing out Tig Notaro now.

last week's tig notaro was a rerun from last year fwiww

Lol Taylor Dane! Bacon! Zombies! Bill Murray!

tbf the line about Taylor Dane saying "you mean my speaking voice?" and "no longer accepting compliments" on her singing because she's an actress now was pretty funny.

TAL aside, I saw Tig last weekend and she was great (and in no way bacon-y).

She seems pretty good overall, just seems like TAL thinks anything she does is worth broadcasting. There was a really boring one earlier this year, something about her being on a roadtrip and looking at gravestones or something? Can barely even remember it. And there's also a little touch of overconfidence in her own funniness in her delivery that I find slightly grating.

man Professor Blastoff is really playing Tig Notaro out, get over it imo

This is very good:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with

I know nobody invited me into this conversation but I really like listening to @BenShapiro. He's interesting. I've learned things.

— Ira Glass (@iraglass) September 12, 2017

has anyone else listened to this episode yet?!
no one i know has posted about it, or even said 1 thing about it
it made me puke!
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/626/white-haze

ugh gavin mcinnes

lol i was button pushing around the radio dial and randomly heard the name "gavin" in a docu piece and instantly i knew EXACTLY what was going on.

I didn't get to finish it yet, I'm like halfway through. It did make me wonder if TAL (TGL?) had been around in 1933 what the quirky episode about Nazis would have sounded like.

Probably much like this episode, going inside a small-town Oddfellows club dealing with a faction of their members becoming the Klan.

xposts
i'm not a regular TAL listener but i heard it during a long drive the other day! and yes, jfc it is insane. both segments were really good, i thought

https://i.redd.it/bgk6ocmvt6ax.jpg

they often have very interesting segments, but i find so many aspects of the format--the sound cues and transitions, the clipped diction of the hosts, the way most interviewees are only given several-second soundbites in which to make a point or convey their personality--extremely off-putting, almost unbearable.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Thursday, February 24, 2005 8:23 PM (twelve years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

12 years on & still the most otm post itt

of all the things to complain about, the worst thing about this show is the contemptuous way ira glass reads the ads at the end

lol i was button pushing around the radio dial and randomly heard the name "gavin" in a docu piece and instantly i knew EXACTLY what was going on.

― felix! phelix! ghelix! (Hunt3r), Monday, September 25, 2017 10:10 PM (yesterday) Bookmark

i was the exact opposite -- i turned it on at the beginning of zoe chace's story and i thought it was about a group of middle school boys who have a stupid club, complete with inane rules (the cereal thing) and then it went to "no wank" territory and then it was like being stuck in one of those money hurricane things only with misogyny, racism, xenophobia, lies, and hate swirling around instead of money. i did not know what i was getting myself into.

I read the episode description, in the rss, that it was about McInnes' Proud Boys and figured I didn't need to have them in my head for an hour. Was this wrong?

well, it depends. i actively avoid knowing more than i have to about people who organize to hate me (or anyone) so I didn't know anything about this group. one hour of auditory information about them >>>> than [x] hours reading about them and i'm glad i know to look out for them now. i think it's definitely worth your time.

definitely not easy listening though

I had never heard of mcinnes or the proud boys so I was astonished at the whole thing, especially how Dante got involved. And extra especially the no wank thing. Wtf. But the episode was good because it was more than just a series of absurd facts. I thought the producer did a good job of subtly showing the common ground that misogyist bros share with white supremacists

Ugh iPhone typos sorry

agree

i didn't know about them either and i appreciated the encapsulated approach + the clear intersection of the various hateful ideas that characterize all of these groups + the utterly disingenuous way they attempt to distinguish themselves from hate groups
it did nothing to dispel my belief that aggrieved men joining groups will eventually wind up in the same place

also clearly it turned my stomach -- misogyny is totally ok as a characterizing feature of these groups and the only time they get hella defensive -- the breaking point -- is when someone calls them a racist. it reinforced my feeling that there are virtually no social consequences for being an open misogynist.

I knew a lot about the Proud Boys and Gavin already and even No Wanks -- although I didn't know Dante specifically and I had always heard it referred to as "No Fap." I mostly just know this stuff from spending too much time online and from listening to podcasts like Chapo Trap House.

I guess it's good ultimately that TAL is letting a mainstream audience know what these groups are really about. At the same time I found myself getting enraged at the reporter at times for sounding so naive, which is very typical of TAL when it approaches this kind of subject.

The story of the main guy's radicalization (I'm suddenly blanking on his name, the one who organized C-ville) was something I wasn't aware of and was sort of interesting, in part because it was so mundane, and in part because it was exactly the mix of legit economic grievance and illegitimate white entitlement that I thought was animating a lot of the movement. In other words, the fact that this guy with a degree and tons of student debt had trouble getting a job that gave him full time hours and healthcare is a real concern that is pervasive in our economy and is definitely part of the "swamp" that these groups breed in. Yet how he responded to that situation and who he blamed for it is a sign of white supremacist attitudes that pervade our society.

I got particularly mad when the reporter left that message for him that was like "Hey, what's up, do you want a race war, lemme know, ok thanks bye!"

jason kessler iirc
"i didn't get the job!" --> white genocide?!!? his education has backfired if he is using his excellent argumentation skills to defend this indefensible point.

I guess it's good ultimately that TAL is letting a mainstream audience know what these groups are really about. At the same time I found myself getting enraged at the reporter at times for sounding so naive, which is very typical of TAL when it approaches this kind of subject.
yeah -- i literally can't spend too much time exposing myself to learning about these people because it -- no exaggeration -- gives me nightmares and makes me feel i'm under attack (panic, anxiety, triggers, etc) due to my particular life circumstances so i appreciated the primer. maybe it's naive to people who can stomach more info about this than i can, but i just can't -- my armor (previously pretty strong!) has been destroyed by constant assault :(

This episode sounds simultaneously like something that I'm glad exists (because a blindingly-bright light needs to be shone into every rathole where creeps like this congregate) and something I should never listen to (because I will die of a rage aneurysm).

as i said, i puked after i heard it
still glad i listened

I just hope every liberal who hears this ep thinks about it before the next time they start equivocating about how Antifa is also bad.

I found myself getting enraged at the reporter at times for sounding so naive, which is very typical of TAL when it approaches this kind of subject.

i can definitely see feeling that way, but maybe it was just a stylistic choice for how to structure the story and gradually open it up for viewers without alienating them? it would be really tough to jump into the middle of that story - OK, we're in proud boy central, and no one masturbates, except for once a month, and they do this because some guy they're calling the pope of the proud boys has advised them not to masturbate, but also to hit on 5 women a day to build up their confidence, and

it's so complicated -- i thought they did a good job of focusing on the evolution of the groups instead of dwelling on the utter ridiculousness of their individual beliefs

even though the beginning of chace's story did sound like she was describing a bunch of middle school dorkboys desperate for a group to join

another intersection - if all these dorkboy bros just decided to stay home and play games like counterstrike or overwatch instead, they'd fit right in and also get exposed to the same kind of racist and sexist rhetoric

This recent segment is about a former ILXor: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/646/the-secret-of-my-death/act-two-5

ha! i just thought about good old dave the other day

great segment. thanks for posting,