lessons from 863 episodes of this american life

It took me a decade, but now I can finally say it: I’ve listened to every episode of This American Life. Or at least every episode they’ve aired so far, which right now means… all 863 of them.

Anyone who knows me well enough will not be surprised to hear this, lol.

the finish line #

I don’t think my speed was especially notable. The show itself turns 30 this year, which means my listen-through was only three times faster than if I’d been tuning in since day one.¹ But I didn’t start out with any kind of goal or expectation that I’d ever finish; if anything, I kinda treated the show’s back catalog as a bottomless well of entertainment that I could tap forever, and only realized a few years ago that I might actually reach the end of it. At which point I figured I might as well try.

For those of you who would sneer at my feat, you should know two things: first, that I’m very loyal, and second, that I know what I like. But I also think you’re missing out.

the formula #

There are plenty of high-minded (and truthful) reasons I could give to explain why I love This American Life: those signature stories that manage to be funny and surprising and candid and moving—but “moving” in a non-corny way—all at the same time; the amount of random stuff I’ve learned about far-flung topics over the years, and still remember, and will regularly cite in conversation if you don’t restrain me fast enough; the music, obviously. And I very much appreciate the showrunners’ willingness to take principled but not-always-popular stances in their stories, whether it was about the Iraq War twenty years ago or trans teens today.²

But I think the show’s secret sauce, the thing that compelled me to listen to 36 consecutive days’ worth of radio programming, comes down to a pretty basic formula:

compelling-ness = quality * novelty

Quality: Even if you travel way back into the TAL archives like I did, you can expect a consistent level of quality from just about every episode—you’ll get an hour of radio that’s informative or entertaining or (usually) both, with solid production values, and a reasonable expectation that any nonfiction stories you hear have been fact-checked appropriately. And the music is always excellent.

Novelty: At the same time, anyone who’s listened to the show can tell you how it works: each week, of course, they choose a theme, then bring us a variety of stories (or sometimes just one long story) on that theme. Which is a formula, sure, but a formula where novelty is baked into the fabric of it. The weekly theme can be anything from The Ten Commandments to Running After Antelope to Embrace the Suck. There are no recurring segments. And the actual stories span different formats and genres, and come from different producers who have their own distinct styles and specialties, plus sometimes there are guest contributors, and there’s a ton of different music throughout.

Compelling-ness: Which, when you put those two things together, means you’re all but guaranteed to hear something that’s new and unexpected, but also good. And at least for me and the way I’m wired, that combination is total fucking catnip.

Like, imagine a restaurant that surprises you with a different meal every time you dine there, and it’s usually something you’ve never tried before (or at least a twist on a dish you’re familiar with), and no matter what it is you always like it enough to clean your plate. I would absolutely eat there 800+ times. They’d have a picture of me on their wall shaking hands with the owner.

So even though I listened to 863 episodes of the same show, it’s never really the same show. Which is exactly why I love it. Any given episode can include a current-events story, or a personal history, or a profile, or a piece of short fiction, or a bit of serious journalism, or something more lighthearted, or one of those documentary-ish stories where they just follow people around and see what kind of drama unfolds, or any combination of those. Sometimes Tig Notaro is there. The point is that I don’t need to know what I’m getting ahead of time because I trust that I’ll enjoy it, and I inevitably do, and then I get to be surprised and satisfied at the same time.³

radio time machine #

One fun thing about following the same show across such a long period was getting to watch (hear?) the progress of its creative arc over time. Especially since I jumped back and forth between new episodes as they popped up in my feed and increasingly old episodes as I crawled through the archives, which made it easy to compare the two. TAL has definitely retained the same core identity all these years, but I don’t think it fell into the trap many long-running projects do where they stagnate or start half-assing it; if anything, the show slowly became a more refined, deliberate version of itself. The stories got more ambitious. They brought more people on board. And they expanded their music catalog enough that they didn’t have to keep using that one song in every episode.

Ira has a famous quote about the talent gap—and like, I don’t mention this to imply that early TAL was bad. The show hit its stride pretty quickly. It’s more that I think the “keep going”-type advice hits harder when you have proof that it came from someone who’s iterated relentlessly on the same damn thing for so long.⁴ And I know that sheer time and effort aren’t the only requirements for success (or if not outright success, then for generally Getting Better At Stuff), but for those of us still trying to close that gap, it’s encouraging to think that the big ugly slog of self-improvement is just something you have to push through versus a sign that you’re on the wrong path.

On a purely topical level, it was also neat to revisit the last three decades of news and politics and pop culture more or less in reverse. Some of these throwbacks filled holes in my knowledge that were frankly overdue to be filled, like what exactly caused the subprime mortgage crisis, or that I didn’t realize needed to be filled, like why people still talk about the ‘96 Bulls. And I got to see how certain things haven’t changed at all: I recently heard an election-year episode where someone bemoaned how abortions and gay people were destroying America, and that’s why they were voting for… Bob Dole.

TAL and me #

My friend who read a draft of this post said I should end on a reflection of how I’ve changed over the course of those 863 episodes, which I thought was both apt and ironic, because ending with a reflection is such an archetypal TAL story structure that I’m mad I didn’t think of it myself, but the friend who suggested it has never actually listened to the show. (Yet. Apparently my draft might’ve convinced her.)

Part of me wanted to shoot it down, though, just for a lack of knowing what to say. I think the before and after here is almost too stark; that ten year listen-through spanned a little more than a third of my own American life.⁵ When I first started listening I was a college student with time to kill at a summer job, and since then I’ve gained a wife and a career and a few chronic ailments and have, shall we say, lived through some major world events. It feels impossible to isolate anything bite-sized out of all that.

There are some takeaways I could offer that are broadly true but still seem kinda forced: that the show fed on my innate curiosity and trained me to point it towards the small and seemingly unremarkable facets of everyday life; or how I’ve developed a taste for stories that resist obvious, easy conclusions and instead force you to challenge your own kneejerk took-it-for-granted expectations; or how I’ve grown to admire people who can understand and empathize with different points of view without compromising their own. Which are all nice enough, but they could just as easily be general lessons in the vein of “learning how to be a fucking adult.” And might make me sound way more enlightened than I really am.

So I guess my cop-out answer is to turn this into something about how my single-minded listenership is one of the rare things that hasn’t changed over the past decade. Whatever else has happened—for better and for worse and for all those average days that make up the majority of a life—I’ve kept tuning in. And I don’t plan to stop anytime soon.