L. L. Bean's amazing return policy

YouTube link.

This broadcast of This American Life had a remarkable segment about L.L. Bean's return policy.  I know everyone is always in a hurry, but just listen to the first five minutes and I think you'll finish the segment.  It begins at the 29:50 mark of the embedded video, or you can jump to that point automatically using this link: This American Life

A poignant story about a cab ride

I first heard the story perhaps ten years ago, I believe on This American Life - a simple, brief story about an elderly lady taking a ride in a taxicab.   It was incredibly touching.  Later I heard (?where) that it was fiction disguised as a true story.  Now, a report in the StarTribune indicates that it was, in fact, a true story, and that the author was in fact a cab driver:

Kent Nerburn is an author and sculptor, a husband, grandfather and long-time advocate for Native Americans. This week, 65-year-old Nerburn also is an Internet sensation.

A poignant essay Nerburn penned more than 15 years ago about his time as a Minneapolis cab driver has made that thoroughly 21st century leap: It's gone viral. His piece has been reprinted on Huffington Post and Snopes.com (which confirmed that, yes, it really happened!), shared nearly 40,000 times on Facebook and viewed more than 780,000 times on Zenmoments.org.

Most sites have titled it "The Cab Ride" or The Taxi Driver," but Nerburn's original title reflects the soul-filled insights of a man with a doctoral degree in religious studies. He calls it: "And where there is sadness, joy."..

When in his late 30s and single, Nerburn worked as a sculptor, but it was tough to make ends meet. He started driving a cab during the night shift. One night, he responded to a call at 2:30 a.m. from someone living at a four-plex near the University of Minnesota...

When he arrived, all he saw was a single light in a ground-floor window. He almost drove away, afraid, but something kept him there. He walked to the door and knocked. A frail elderly woman stood before him with her suitcase...

You can read one version of the story at Snopes, but I'm hoping some reader of this blog will know of an audio link (it may be at T.A.L., but I can't find it with a keyword search and can't remember the program title).

Consider Shenzhen

Excerpts from a recent episode of This American Life:

Shenzhen is a city without history. The people who live there will tell you that, because 31 years ago Shenzhen was a small town. It had little reed huts, little reed walkways between the huts. The men would fish in the late afternoon. I hear it was lovely.

Today Shenzhen is a city of 14 million people. It is larger than New York City... And the most amazing thing is, almost no one in America knows its name...

Foxconn, a single company, makes a staggering amount of the electronics you use every day. They make electronics for Apple, Dell, Nokia, Panasonic, HP, Samsung, Sony, Lenovo, a third of all of it... including MacBook Pros and iPhones and iPads...

The Foxconn plant in Shenzhen has 430,000 workers. That can be a difficult number to conceptualize. I find it's useful to instead think about how there are more than 20 cafeterias at the plant. And then you just have to understand that workers told me that these cafeterias can hold up to 10,000 people. So now you just need to visualize a cafeteria that seats 10,000 people. I'll wait...

And along the edges of each enormous building [described earlier as an "arcology" :.) ] are the nets, because right at the time that I am making this visit, there's been an epidemic of suicides at the Foxconn plant. Week after week, worker after worker has been climbing all the way up to the tops of these enormous buildings and then throwing themselves off, killing themselves in a brutal and public manner, not thinking very much about just how bad this makes Foxconn look. Foxconn's response to month after month of suicides has been to put up these nets...

And I say to her, you seem kind of young. How old are you? And she says, I'm 13. And I say, 13? That's young. Is it hard to get work at Foxconn when you're-- and she says oh no. And her friends all agree, they don't really check ages... Do you really think Apple doesn't know? In a company obsessed with the details, with the aluminum being milled just so, with the glass being fitted perfectly into the case, do you really think it's credible that they don't know? Or are they just doing what we are all doing? Do they just see what they want to see?..

"Squirrel Cop" and "Flight vs. Invisibility"

YouTube link. 

YouTube link.

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)

YouTube link. 

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.

Persistence Hunting

YouTube link.

Several years ago while on a long drive I heard on the radio a segment of This American Life* in which a man explained his quest to run down antelope in the wild. It sounds ludicrous, since antelope can run 40 mph. But the key is that man is built for endurance running; most animals can only achieve short bursts of speed before becoming anaerobic.

As you watch this video of a man outrunning a kudu in the Kalahari, you may be viewing a scene that is essentially unchanged from a million years ago when Homo erectus evolved as a hunter of the plains.

* I just found the episode - "Running Down Antelope." It first aired in 1997, but is available for listening (free) at This American Life. The link will take you to a one-hour program; just skip to the 5-minute mark to hear the antelope venture. It's truly fascinating - and for those not familiar with TAL, a good introduction to (in my opinion) the best program on radio.

What teachers do in the "rubber room"

Associated Press is carrying a story today about New York City, and the use (or misuse) of the "rubber room" for teachers removed from classroom duties for administrative reasons. On an average day, seven hundred teachers go to rooms where they do nothing (useful); they read a book, play cards, take a nap, and talk or fight with each other. And this goes on for months and years - sometimes many years - at full salary.

Reading this report, I am reminded that This American Life did an audio segment on the same topic just two months ago. Go to THIS LINK and click on the little orange icon that says "Full Episode" to hear the program (to jump to the "rubber room" segment, move the slider forward to the 6:20 point). It's free and easy, and there are a myriad of other great programs available on the website's home page. I'll do a fuller blog entry on This American Life at some later time; to my mind it's one of the treasures of the radio world, and I'm glad it's available as podcasts.