These are stories of people trying to make the transition—and the difficulty of making the transition—in a new place, from outsider to insider... The first day inevitably means mistakes, mishaps, fiascos. A true story, told by a former rookie cop. (14 minutes).For years I've wanted to embed selected segments from Ira Glass' remarkable NPR program This American Life, but have been recurrently stymied at my attempts to embed the scripts (I keep getting "cross-scripting errors"??). Earlier this year, giving up on embedding, I did link to the fascinating "Running After Antelope" story.
Now I'll try another workaround, taking advantage of YouTube versions. At the top of this post is one of my all-time favorites - the well-known "Squirrel Cop" story - said to be true, but almost too perfect to be so. And here below is a thought-provoking essay about flight vs. invisibility:
John Hodgman conducts an informal survey in which he asks the age-old question: Which is better: The power of flight or the power of invisibility? He finds that how you answer tells a lot about what kind of person you are. And also, no matter which power people choose, they never use it to fight crime. (14 minutes)
This American Life is so beautifully crafted that it seems a shame to distract from the audio with the visual elements. Perhaps for newbies it would be best to start the video, then open another browser window to continue surfing while enjoying listening to the stories.
Maybe the TAL radio show can get distracted by visuals, but the TAL TV series was just as brilliant as the radio show. Too bad it was too hectic for them to do more than two seasons for Showtime.
ReplyDeleteI heard the follow up on the squirrel cop sometime last year. It's all too real! The guy came on and talked to Ira about it.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, Squirrel Cop never fails to make me laugh - thanks for the reminder!