I stumbled upon This American Life back when I was still in college, when I used to regularly drive on Friday nights from Clemson, South Carolina to Davidson, North Carolina to visit my girlfriend at the time (who is now my wife). This drive was about four hours long and took me through such great bible-belt towns as Traveller's Rest and Spartanburg, so it didn't take me very long to sort through all the shitty radio stations along the way. Luckily for me, Greenville's WEPR-FM 90.1 broadcasted This American Life on Friday nights from 7:00pm to 8:00pm (and still does), and it quickly became my favorite show on the radio. I've been a TAL proselytizer ever since, probably to the point of annoying my friends.
Ever since living in Europe, I've listened to TAL via their streams at thislife.org, but this has always required you to listen to it via a Real stream or more recently a flash-based stream. TAL also offered the ability to purchase podcasts from iTunes or Audible.com, but as a linux user (and more importantly anti-DRM), I'm unable/refuse to purchase from either. Rejoice, however, as the wonderful people who run TAL will start offering the new TAL episodes via podcast on October 16th:
Coming this Monday: Free This American Life podcasts!
We're thrilled to announce that starting this Monday, October 16, we'll begin a free weekly podcast of This American Life. Each week's show will also be available as a free individual download.
Each week's episode will be posted on the Monday following national broadcast and will be free for seven days. After that initial week, the show will migrate into our 300+ show archive. There you can download from the iTunes Store or Audible.com for only 95 cents an episode. Or you can listen to shows for free anytime (even once they're in our archive), via streaming audio, with our "Flashy" new streaming MP3 player.
So fire up Amarok and add this to your podcast playlist:
Like all public radio, TAL and WBEZ depends on listener support, so please send them a donation to show your appreciation.
October 29th, 2007
Pretty much the same way I discovered TAL
Funny that you mention this as your introduction to This American Life - the same thing happened to me several years ago actually, driving down to the shore to visit friends and coming across a particularly compelling episode on a Friday night. Tumbling down the interstate and craning my neck closer to my old car's last functional speaker, I found myself focused less on the road and more on the amazing stories and reporting conducted by the TAL staff. Horror passed over me as the crackling over the airwaves increased and I realized I was going out of range of the transmission. The only solution was to pull over and wait at the edge of their broadcast zone until the show was over.
Since they've started dropping previous weeks' episodes as podcasts the my iPod is brimming with an overabundance of shows that help out when stuck in a lengthly layover. Their feed is great for picking up information about future shows and other bits not reported during their broadcasts:
http://feeds.thisamericanlife.org/talupdates?format=xml
Favorite episode? Last year's Halloween broadcast. Give it a listen: http://thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1156
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