"This American Life is a weekly public radio show broadcast on more than 500 stations to about 1.8 million listeners. It is produced by Chicago Public Media, distributed by Public Radio International, and has won all of the major broadcasting awards. It is also often the most popular podcast in the country, with around 850,000 people downloading each week. From 2006-2008, we produced a television version of This American Life on the Showtime network, which won three Emmys. We're also the co-producers, with NPR News, of the economics podcast and blog Planet Money. And a half dozen stories from the radio show are being developed into films.
The radio show and TV show follow the same format. There's a theme to each episode, and a variety of stories on that theme. It's mostly true stories of everyday people, though not always. There's lots more to the show, but it's sort of hard to describe. Probably the best way to understand the show is to start at our favorites page, though we do have longer guides to our radio show and our TV show. If you want to dive into the hundreds of episodes we've done over the years, there's an archive of all our old radio shows and listings for all our TV episodes, too." (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/about)
Type of Material:
Collection of radio shows and television shows.
Recommended Uses:
Could be used in class to introduce a sociological concept. Alternatively, particular segments could be incorporated into a homework assignment.
Technical Requirements:
html/text; audio
Identify Major Learning Goals:
This site offers common interest stories regarding many areas of life. It can be used like many other media venues - TED, YouTube, etc. to find short personal stories to introduce various sociological concepts.
Target Student Population:
High school students and undergraduates, but the material is useful and interesting for all levels.
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:
Basic internet skills -- searching, clicking, etc.
Content Quality
Rating:
Strengths:
Enormous depth of material - from the profound to the silly. Huge archive of material spanning twenty years. Relatively easy to search.
Concerns:
All audio means it takes real time to listen to the material. Transcripts would be helpful.
Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool
Rating:
Strengths:
The strength is that instructors could draw from it in order to stir curiosity in students and engage those students who think sociology isn’t relevant to the experiences of their everyday lives. It deals with real people in real life situations. By telling a story the listener can be brought to an understanding that can be quite enlightening.
Concerns:
It is not explicitly designed to address sociological concepts or ideas. Thus it will take work on the part of a creative instructor to make the material relevant for any particular class.
Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty
Rating:
Strengths:
Content is available for download and is clearly displayed and easy to find. The search function is handy and easy to use.
Concerns:
Because the site is geared toward the general public, sociological search terms may not result in relevant information.
Other Issues and Comments:
Updated weekly - a very current resource that is also historical.
Creative Commons:
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