08 March 2009

This American Life


I got introduced to "This American Life" (and NPR) about 4 years ago when I first moved to the USA. My friend who had a lab across from mine would always be listening to it while he sorted ants. He would always tell me I would love it. I figured I would, since I was a diehard CBC fan in Canada. While I listened to NPR in my car, I just never got in the habit of listening to TAL. 
I'm not a huge fan of cutting fabric. I would find it tedious, but not anymore. I now cut fabric in one hour segments while listening to a TAL podcast. My one problem is that I need an order to everything. I decided that I would listen to every episode. I started with the newest one and continued. This would screw up a week later when a new one was added. I'd listen to the new one again and if I had time to listen to more than one a week I would jump down to where I left off. This was a little confusing. I started keeping track of the episodes in a notebook. Sometimes the "new" one was actually a rerun. My system was clearly flawed... well not exactly flawed, just not efficient or logical. I needed my system to be efficient and logical. I finally changed my system. Today I started at the very beginning. Episode One. I was wary of starting from the beginning because I thought they might not be as good, but so far I am happy with them. I don't know if I will ever catch up. I should make a point of listening to at least two a week. To get started with my new system on the right foot I'm going to listen to Episode Two today!

2 comments:

Taina said...

omg, I love reading about how you select episodes! It's been tough for me, too, because I used to listen to TAL, so I have obviously listened to some episodes more than once and not realized it until 20 mins or so in.

You should get a blackberry! I DL the latest episode and listen to it either while sewing (not near my computer) or on my way to the P.O. I have SO many episodes to still listen to! I loved the one on banking last week!
<3

ambrosius said...

huge TAL fan here too, and the thing is, I enjoy listening to some of them over and over.
I need to start pacing myself, and working for an episode at a time; that's a good idea.