What I'm Listening To: 'Walking Across America'

This American Life is one of my favorite podcasts. Every Monday morning, I look forward to loading it up on our Apple TV and finding out what new stories Ira Glass and his team will have for me. 

I discovered This American Life completely by accident before I ever moved here. It was one of the top podcasts on iTunes so one time I downloaded a few episodes out of curiosity. When we had just moved into our new house and had no internet connection yet, I listened to an episode while setting our new kitchen to rights and was instantly hooked. It was the slow storytelling that drew me in and the sheer quirkiness of some of the stories featured. Most of all, however, it was the slow pace of the show, the fact that every story was given its chance to unfold as it needed to without the pressure of advertising and soundbites and zingers and driving web traffic. 

Now that I actually live in America, my appreciation of 'This American Life' has changed as I can set it into its cultural context. It turns out that Ira Glass is not a twenty-something guy doing a low-key public radio gig, as I thought when I first heard the show, but is something of a left-wing cultural icon. It turns out that NPR is a national cliche for being right-on and wholesome, although you could kind of tell that from the content of the show already.

I have noticed recently that TAL has been running more repeats or re-hashing old episodes and splicing them together with newer material so that does make me wonder if the show is being affected by budget cuts or if this was always the case and I'm just noticing now because I've been listening to the podcast regularly for a couple of years.

This week's episode, Hit the Road, was a great example of how good This American Life can be when it airs fresh material from new writers, however.

The first part was dedicated to a project by a new writer, Andrew Forsthoefel, who decided that, at 23, he would walk across America instead of continuing in his graduate job. What's interesting about his journey is that he spends his time listening to people's stories along the way and gathering their memories of their own lives. He wore a sign 'Walking to Listen' on his back throughout his journey. Something about this story really appealed to me. It had a very Studs Terkel feel to it, focusing on individual experiences to build a picture of local history. 

The whole project is available here with videos and photos of his trip. Forsthoefel is also planning a book about this journey and, I say, more power to him.