Gay marriage is now legal in Washington, D.C., and Mexico City. It’s a time that makes it easy to be proud about being married. (Or to get legally married, if you haven’t already been able to do so yet.) To all of you couples now eligible for tax breaks and a bureaucratically-recognized thing for one [...]
A few years ago, I did a semester-long stint as a substitute teacher. I’d never had any kind of pedagogical training and had no clue what to do when a particularly loud-mouthed seventh-grader wouldn’t sit and keep his mouth shut during the “quiet homework time” that the teacher’s notes told me that the kids were [...]
Bob isn’t off this week; he’s just hunkered in a bunker. Brooke sunk her feelings into a clunker of an opening to this week’s episode. Sort of like how I just did, back there. Anyway, I don’t know what’s up with Bob being away from his regular microphone – and I know that coupling a [...]
On the week before This American Life airs their second dive into the Giant Pool of Money, they’ve decided to air one of my favorite episodes ever, “The Fix is In“. It’s about a food additive company involved in a global price fixing scheme and the informant that helped the FBI bust the companies involved. [...]
I need to apologize to Brooke Gladstone for just one moment. It’s a little more than a week late, but if you’ll excuse me: Brooke, I’m sorry about that gushy voicemail I sent. Sort of. The sentiment behind it was sincere, if strong enough to be a little embarassing. Anyway, Kerry and I are both [...]
 I checked. I haven’t written about Mulatu Astatke before. I find this completely shocking. For the last two or three years, after almost every episode of “This American Life,” I have had this song stuck in my head: YeÌ€gelleÌ Tezeta And I couldn’t be happier with that state of affairs. There aren’t many songs [...]
“Air” Rollercoaster, originally uploaded by nic0. I bought a new battery for my iBook last night. Which means that after months of eyeing a room’s outlets anytime I wanted to use my computer, I’m finally back to the land of laptop users enjoying the convenience they paid for. But part of me wonders if my [...]
It’s nice when people you like work well together. You get the best parts of each world. Like when “This American Life” works with “Planet Money” to get in-depth coverage of the current financial crisis that truly reaches for the emotional core of the story. As much as I like the work that happens when [...]
Today, Barack Obama was sworn in as president, and NPR was all over it (as were we all – who else got one of those “STOP STREAMING THE INAUGURATION!” emails at work today?). NPR has collected all of their Inauguration ’09 coverage onto one helpful page. There are photos, stories, 105 year-olds, and all kinds [...]
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Is it a travesty or just a bad tragedy?
Tonight, I ran out of space on the external hard drive that houses two important things: my iTunes library, and every episode of This American Life aired since they started podcasting. Truly, the latter is a vast storehouse of knowledge, wit, and storytelling matched only by the Library at Alexandria, lost to history. I kept [...]