Revised: NPR’s podcast, “This American Life,” is brilliantly put together

First Impres­sions

  • I entered “pod­cast” into Google, and a link to “This Amer­i­can Life” was the fifth entry down. This means it’s popular.
  • After click­ing on the link, I had the option to down­load, sub­scribe, stream, or pur­chase the episodes in all forms. I chose free streaming-perfect.
  • I was greet­ed with an episode num­ber, title, date, and descrip­tion at the top of the page with the options to down­load, see the tran­script, favorite it, tweet it, like it, and share it.
  • Under­neath, the pod­cast “535: Ori­gin Sto­ry 2014” was bro­ken into parts includ­ing a pro­logue, and a descrip­tion of each part (also the option to play just that part or repeat it)
  • There were no inter­ac­tive ele­ments or unnec­es­sary graph­ics that dis­tract­ed me — very straight­for­ward, sim­ple, and clean lay-out
  • A side­bar offered me “Ways to Explore” more pod­casts by date, tag, con­trib­u­tor, or loca­tion (what­ev­er is most per­ti­nent to the listener)
Snapshot of NPR's "The Origin Story" on This American Life.
Snap­shot of NPR’s “The Ori­gin Sto­ry” on This Amer­i­can Life.

Con­tent

Each pod­cast has a col­lec­tion of sto­ries. The one I lis­tened to, “The Ori­gin Sto­ry,” holds four per­son­al sto­ries that were all heart­warm­ing, inter­est­ing, and spo­ken well.

Host­ed by Ira Glass, the pod­cast last­ed an hour, and it had my atten­tion for more than 45 min­utes of it (bet­ter than what I can do for class). I cranked the vol­ume up on my speak­ers while I cooked, ironed, and got ready for the day.

The sto­ries they told are ones that I’ve nev­er heard of or thought of search­ing for. I’m glad NPR took it right to me. With great nar­ra­tors and back­ground music in all the right places, there was nev­er a lull through­out the podcast.

I could iden­ti­fy great­ly with two of the sto­ries told because of my own per­son­al expe­ri­ences. The focus of the sto­ries vary great­ly. Though it’s about ori­gins, one sto­ry was about the ori­gin of a restau­rant, anoth­er about adver­tise­ments, and one was about a child under­stand­ing his own origins.

 

I think this was a very effec­tive way of telling sto­ries — by let­ting peo­ple tell their own sto­ries in their own voic­es. As a jour­nal­ist, my main pri­or­i­ty is to give voice to the voice­less and to share the sto­ries that peo­ple have, includ­ing the wis­dom that each sto­ry holds. “This Amer­i­can Life” nailed both on the head. I’m sure there’s are a lot of things to con­sid­er to make a suc­cess­ful pod­cast, but I’d be will­ing to learn how to do so and maybe take up the medi­um as a sto­ry­teller altogether.

Leave a Reply