This American Life: Quiz Show
February 18th, 2008 by Russell DaviesWe could probably point to This American Life every week, but I thought I’d mention this show because it fits in so neatly with Steve’s post about Glenn Gould. The whole show’s great; the segment from RTE about the unlikely Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? winner brings a tear to the eye. But the best bit, for me, is the segment in the middle about the competitors in the MIT Mystery Hunt. The guy who finally self-diagnoses his social awkwardness (”I was informing people, against their will”) clearly had more self-awareness than Gould, who’s belief that he was funny was so far, far from the truth. I won’t post an MP3, because they charge for downloads on the site, but you can listen to the whole thing for free here. And if you don’t subscribe to the free podcast, you should.
February 19th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
hello
firstly let me say that i think speechification is wonderful and ama subscriber to your podcast. Then may i ask if i could reques “the museum of Curiosity” tomorrow (wednesday) at 6.30 on R4 , a panel show which whihc features Bill Bailey and some other panel members which tackles subjects as diverse as the Big Bang , dadaism and others.
thank you
robbie nolan
February 20th, 2008 at 12:59 am
Lovely show. And one thing I loved about it was the way Ronan Kelly from RTE pops up a few minutes in. We’ve featured him here before: http://speechification.com/?s=ronan&key=
February 21st, 2008 at 8:38 am
I respect your not making an MP3 since they try to charge for downloads. However, their Flash player really just gets an MP3 behind the scenes, so Safari will tell you where it is under Window -> Activity. (Many other browsers will give up the link somewhere, too.)
It’s slightly odd to free the audio file for a week, then lock it back up again. It’s more odd still to run a different set of URLs which happily serve all the MP3s for a long time.
Thanks for all the great tips for things to listen to. A wonderful site.