[kiernanmcgowan]

This American Life really does live up to its name - its a real slice of American culture / society on any given week. I imagine its going to be a wellspring of understanding our time for future anthropologists and historians.

[karaterobot]

Well, for any future archaeologists reading this, please know that This American Life was a great show that was made for a specific audience, by a specific set of creators, and it absolutely did not represent the breadth of life in America at the turn of the 21st century. This was a common mistake: thinking a rather small niche was universal because it's what you see. It led to a lot of surprises.

[j_bum]

Just to push to have you expand your counterpoint, what other views of American life would you want to see that they haven’t covered?

[timr]

I'm not on the political right, but it's plain that they don't give it equal time.

I don't expect the audience cares very much about this, though, which is sort of to OPs implied point. We've reached a place where each side of the political spectrum is not only happily ignorant of the other side's good points, but in fact, fearful of even having the discussion. If you go too far afield from the party line, you will be punished, and public radio (along with non-public radio, cable, broadcast news, and most other forms of legacy media) is a shrinking market, unwilling to alienate the core audience.

(The shorthand term for this is "audience capture", and IMO, This American Life has a death grip on a very particular sort of audience, which even if you set partisan politics aside, is representative only of itself.)

[BeetleB]

> I'm not on the political right, but it's plain that they don't give it equal time.

OP said it's a "slice", not a "statistically accurate representation". I think his intent was to say "They cover everything", not "They cover everything in due proportion".

And, BTW, I've yet to find any show (news or entertainment) that is even close to being statistically accurate representation of society. Such shows will not survive - not enough people will listen.

[timr]

See my reply to the sibling comment. I don't know what a "statistically accurate representation of society" would be, nor do I hold that up as my standard here.

> Such shows will not survive - not enough people will listen.

Well yes, exactly. TAL has an editorial voice, it's clear what that voice is (even if it's difficult to describe in conventional political terms), but it's not inaccurate to say that the voice is left of center. Moreover, it must be, because that is the market for the show.

[j_bum]

This is a good counterpoint that I hadn’t considered, honestly.

That even if a show is apolitical (or mostly apolitical like TAL), it will inherently have some political bias because the creators are inherently biased.

This will create a “niche” for the show, whether it’s intentional or not. Thanks for expanding my perspective on this.

Reminds me of a recent quote from a scientist interviewed by the NYT, who said that science is inherently political, because the system and people it’s built on are political.

[teaearlgraycold]

I love hearing good points from opponents. I live on this earth to learn and those are some of the better learning moments.

[spondylosaurus]

They do talk to conservatives a lot though. Many recent episodes interviewed Trump voters and sent reporters to Republican rallies to hear those "good points" from the source...

[timr]

Yeah, I didn't say they never cover them. They do it -- to their credit -- and I'd even go so far as to say that they're one of the more balanced programs on public radio.

But they're still far from actually balanced. As a frequent listener, I'd characterize their overall coverage of conservatives as "a bemused, curious foreign tourist".

[watwut]

Balanced does not mean nor should mean "actively making them look better and hiding ugly parts".

[ethbr1]

To be fair, it's getting more difficult to find erudite, well-spoken enunciation of mainstream conservative views these days.

Mostly because the people who would be able to do that have "chosen" to retire.

[stevenwoo]

The spouses of MAGA husbands sounded like abuse victims or hostages in that one episode.

[watwut]

Meh, what was actually missing in media was accurate representation of political right goals.

Their good points are repeated all the time and their bad ppints are sanewashed. Their really bad points are ignored and you are called names when you accursately deacribe them. Until actually get their way at which point we blame the democrats for not opposing them strongly enough or for being supposed cause of backslash.

But, media and shows are afraid to show conservatives truthfully or in truly critical way.

[cryzinger]

I think TAL is pretty good about this, particularly when it comes to showing the actual fallout from various policies being implemented. And it's not strictly partisan (one of the stories I linked to in my writeup is about sex workers who were harmed by SESTA-FOSTA, which had plenty of Democratic support) or strictly negative, but obviously a lot of... serious and controversial policies have been implemented in the past few years so those get a fair bit of airtime.

In any case I think the "going and talking to real people" storytelling method is hard to beat. Just a couple weeks ago they did some stories about the immediate impacts of USAID cuts. And their episode about the "remain in Mexico" policy for asylum-seekers won the first-ever Pulitzer prize for radio reporting!

[stevenwoo]

Different program but on same network, Planet Money often covers economics from the perspective of neoliberalism or establishment in short digestible episodes.

[SoftTalker]

Interesting in my nearly 60 years I have never heard of this program.

[BeetleB]

It truly is the best radio show I've heard. I've been listening on and off for over 20 years.

If you want some good episodes (do NOT read the summary on the linked pages - some contain spoilers).

The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar (https://www.thisamericanlife.org/352/the-ghost-of-bobby-dunb...) - about a kid in the first half of the 20th century who was abducted and then returned to his family - except to this day people debate whether the kid who was returned really was the kid who was abducted, and how his descendants have grappled with the issue.

When Patents Attack! (https://www.thisamericanlife.org/441/when-patents-attack) - an inside peek into how patent trolls work.

Petty Tyrant (https://www.thisamericanlife.org/419/petty-tyrant) - how a school maintenance employee rose to power by bullying. It's not so much the facts themselves but the masterful storytelling - especially near the end.

Dr Gilmer and Mr Hyde (https://www.thisamericanlife.org/492/dr-gilmer-and-mr-hyde) - about a doctor in a small town who everyone loved. He committed a heinous crime and ended up in prison. The story involves great investigative journalism on exploring why he committed the crime, and they unearthed very relevant details that were previously unknown (even to the criminal himself).

The last two episodes above were by Sarah Koenig, who you may know as the person behind Serial.

[ethbr1]

Also Rest Stop (https://www.thisamericanlife.org/388/rest-stop), where the crew spends 2 continuous days at a rest stop on the New York State Thruway, talking to both the employees and travelers.

129 Cars (https://www.thisamericanlife.org/513/129-cars), where the crew spends a month at a random Jeep dealership, as they try to hit their manufacturer-set quota.

Amusement Park (https://www.thisamericanlife.org/443/amusement-park), where they follow a bunch of teenage labor at Worlds of Fun in Kansas City, and their only slightly older boss. (Who is possibly the best boss in the history of bossing)

[Loughla]

Serial is the best media in the world. Shit town is the best of serial. Seriously listen to it if you haven't. I once drove two hours past my destination because I didn't want to stop listening to it.

[gausswho]

If you enjoy Serial, I highly recommend CBC's Come By Chance. It's a wonderful tale (the less you know the better) about a family mystery among small coastal villages in Newfoundland.

[kiernanmcgowan]

Give it a listen! It’s a real gem of a show

[pstuart]

NPR has a wealth of great broadcasting in general.

[devilbunny]

It's not an NPR show, although the public radio stations that carry it usually carry NPR shows as well. It was Public Radio International, then Public Radio Exchange.

[pstuart]

Sorry, sloppy on my part -- the NPR branding looms large ;-)

[devilbunny]

Easy mistake to make. They do indeed brand their shows very prominently, making it easy to miss the distributor for those non-NPR shows that only blurb it once at the beginning and once at the end.

[swat535]

Radiolab was one of my favorites..

I stopped following it after Krulwich left in 2015 but they have an excellent archive from back in the day (the 2010s were the best years imo):

https://radiolab.org/podcast

[stevenwoo]

It only airs at certain times depending upon your local public radio station, usually on weekends so one would have to be almost a regular radio listener to catch it by accident - if you never listened to public radio at the air times on the weekends it would have been easy to miss it during its heyday. With the advent of podcasts it became more widely available but then there is a lot of competition in that media space.

[vjvjvjvjghv]

I like the show but it's mostly a slice of American upper middle class who are reasonably well and educated. I don't think the writers can connect to working class people. In a sense it's the typical democrat voter

[010101010101]

I don’t have any empirical evidence to refute you, but it connected with me as a 17 year old kid living in a mobile home in Mississippi. Almost 25 years later, and in a much different socioeconomic state, it still does.

Stories steeped in humanity aren’t biased - less confident about you to be honest.

[monkeyelite]

What socioeconomic group did you become from which you are now viewing the material?

You’re already describing yourself as having some kind of secular redemption from that life.

[010101010101]

I described myself being poor (“working class”) and not being poor any more, whatever you’re attempting to read between the lines beyond that isn’t there.

[monkeyelite]

You claimed this very specific entertainment has universal appeal, and I’m just not sure that’s true.

You framed your own experience as the show would.

[010101010101]

I framed my experience in contrast to the parent’s assertion, and no, I did not make any claim about universality. Be sure that not everyone loves this or any show all you want.

You’re continuing to project some sort of nonsense gotcha logic onto a straw man that doesn’t exist.

[ethbr1]

The thing that's unique about This American Life is that the star of each episode is usually someone just doing their usual job, or going through a situation.

If someone can't empathize with that, it says more about them than the show.