Friday, January 2, 2015

If you like the podcast: Serial...


For those of you addicted to the Podcast: Serial http://serialpodcast.org.
If you haven't listened to Serial do it right now. It is composed of twelve episodes investigating the true life murder of a high school girl in the late 1990s and the subsequent arrest and sentencing of her ex-boyfriend for the crime who has insisted that he is innocent even after being in prison nearly 15 years. Serial is a spin off of the AMAZING NPR radio show: This American Life http://www.thisamericanlife.org
I have compiled a list of some of my all time favorite episodes of The American Life. There are scores of episodes and here are just a few of my all time faves:
1. The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar. This may be my all time favorite TAL episode. A true life mystery. This would have been perfect for a serialized show but instead the mystery is resolved in a single hour. Fantastic.
2. Switched a birth. This true story, unsurprisingly is about two women who were actually switched at birth at the hospital where they were born. They were raised by the wrong family. This is about the aftermath of the event and how the women were strikingly similar to their actual birth families and terribly different from the families who raised them. Fascinating.
3 House on Loon Lake. True story about a group of boys who stumbled upon an abandoned house in the 1970s which appeared to be left untouched by its inhabitants. Clothes, furniture, dishes even a wallet was left inside. Who lived there and why was it left in such a state? Great fun.
4. Fiasco. The first story about a play production of Peter Pan is all you'll need to be in absolute stitches!
5. Trail of Tears. This episode documents the retracing of the Trail of Tears by Sarah Vowell (author and comedienne) and her twin sister. This just shows you how good a radio program can be. Funny, ironic, bittersweet.
6. Christmas & Commerce featuring a story from David Sedaris's black humored Santaland Diaries where he recounts his time as a Macy's dept store elf. If you like this story you will be happy to know that He has scores of stories on various episodes of This American Life.

No comments:

Post a Comment