Kudos to my friend Joel to recommending a particular podcast from This American Life, which has led to my love of this Chicago radio affiliate and its podcasts. Turns out, it was a radio show on Chicago Public Radio for years and transitioned into a television show on Showtime (gah, if only I had that channel!). The idea is stories -- they tell people's stories and snapshots of people's lives.
From the website:
The radio and TV shows follow the same format. There's a theme to each episode, and a variety of stories on that theme. It's mostly true stories of everyday people, though not always. There's lots more to the show, but, like we said, it's sort of hard to describe.
I am in awe of something so simple that seemed to be missing from my life. With all of the mediums out there for entertainment and news, I miss the simple things that I never really had. Apart from the children's public television shows, I've never really watched or listened to public radio or television. Only recently have I ever listened to NPR. But I find that while I'm copyediting at work each day that I need sound. I need music or a television show to listen to or standup comedy on my ipod or a podcast or...something. The silence kills me. While I have fairly extensive music collection, I can really only listen to it so many times over and over again, nevermind the fact that my iPod is currently out of commission due to the fact that I have misplaced the Ethernet chord that charges it as well as connects it to my iTunes library to allow for the changing of playlists. The other problem is that I the same, though excellent, 2 gigs of songs have been housed there for perhaps a month.
Thanks to my disorganization and slight absentmindedness, I am turning to alternative sources for sound. NPR and Chicago public radio may not be very out there in terms of unknown or crazy choices, but they're fairly radical for me.
I realize that without this chain of events, I may have never found them. I wish someone had thrown them in my face or that I had seen an advertisement for them somewhere, on a bus or on TV or in a magazine or something. I think there's a sentiment that everyone knows that these things are out there and are wonderful but in the face of all the other options, they sort of fade away. Listening to them was never a learned habit, as my parents didn't listen to them.
So, listen away. Check them out. Listen to the amazing stories.
1 comment:
NPR = Brain Crack! If you haven't, try to catch Morning Edition and All Things Considered. The combination delivers a thorough cross-section of current news & culture, with intriguing and surprising perspectives. My days without them are a little less bright.
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