Growing

Episode 1: New Beginnings
Air Date: 11.17.1995

"The idea of this new little show is stories..."

So begins the first episode of the radio show This American Life, which at the moment helps me get through the Sunday night hours when I'm feeling restless and bored. I've listened to enough episodes at this point to know that the show works as follows: Each one hour (approximately) show has a theme, and the show is split into several parts as contributors from all walks of life tell about their experience broadly relating to the theme. If you're at all interested in the human experience, its a wonderfully entertaining show. I wish there was a This Egyptian Life, or a This Brazilian Life, because I've loved traveling around the world to the limited extent I have, and a show like this about life in those countries would be amazing.

In any case, National Public Radio (NPR) posts the latest episode of the show in podcast form on Sunday afternoon / evening, which means I have something to entertain me on those long Sunday nights when all other hope is lost. I'm thinking around 4 or 5 in the evening, when there doesn't seem like quite enough time to do anything very productive, and the next week is stretching out before you, and I find that I tend to get somewhat restless. Douglas Adams called it "The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul."

What I didn't realize until last night is that the entire series history of the show is available for free to play streaming from your computer. If you want to download a specific episode and put it onto an Ipod it'll cost you a dollar an episode, but for my purposes streaming it live is fine. So my goal in the long term is to try to work my way through the series episode by episode, starting from its beginning in 1995 as Your Radio Playhouse and catching up to today as much as possible.

As I post more about this wonderful show, I'll try communicate why it is I like it so much, and what the show does in terms of helping me understand myself and my love for stories. I'll also talk about how much time it will take to listen to all of these episodes, and whether or not I think its worth it. This is a surprisingly big deal for me because I'm worried that I have a history of starting things that I can't finish, and of generally not being good about valuing my time, and if I do want to finish this I have to figure some things out.

This writing will be as much for myself today and in the future as it will be for anyone else, but if someone else does end up reading these words, and derives something positive from them, it would make me happy.

Quick note: As I'm listening to the first episode, I find out that Ira Glass (the host), is a tall Jewish guy who has a parent working as a therapist. I'm relatively short, but the other two things check out. Except both of my parents are working in social services, not just one. So am I more like Ira Glass than Ira Glass himself, right?