Speechification

Three things you could do if you were feeling charitable (and not just broke or depressed) here on the wrong side of Christmas:

You could give some money to Chicago Public Radio, the station that makes This American Life. We've featured the show four or five times here but never included it in the podcast because public radio in the States is funded almost entirely from donations so nicking it would feel wrong. They're already laying people off in response to the recession (so is NPR) so they could evidently do with the help. Make a donation here.

You could support Radio 4's annual Christmas appeal which, for the last 82 years, has been for the work of St-Martin-in-the-Fields with homeless and needy people in London and all over the country. Make a donation here.

You could pass a few dollars in Jimmy Wales' direction, if you think Wikipedia's important. I can't count the number of links I've made to Wikipedia from Speechification. Imperfect it may be but it's becoming the backbone of the emerging 'semantic web' and a lot of people, including the BBC, have begun to use it as a 'controlled vocabulary' for other organised content. We evidently can't live without it. Make a donation here.

This won't go in the podcast because I just feel bad about uploading This American Life while they're making such an earnest effort to make a living from this stuff over there. So you'll just have to get over to the web site where you can listen to the show for nothing in your browser (or pay for a download). The second item in this episode (which starts at about 8:10) is a really gorgeous little story, told by crime writer (Clockers and Lush Life), TV script writer (The Wire) and screenwriter (The Color of Money) Richard Price.

It's a snapshot from the time he's spent shadowing NYC cops while researching his writing and it was actually recorded at a 'storytelling club' in New York that I'd now really like to visit called The Moth (and they have their own excellent podcast). His language is so disarming, so light of touch (and so American) you'll find yourself laughing with pleasure at the dialogue and the picture painted (or your money back).

So we have a problem. Out there in Radio Land there exist a few radio programmes that are always always good, week-after-week, show-after-show. I don't know why but—if you ask me—a disproportionately large number of these programmes comes from America, where they have no state broadcaster and precious little state funding for radio.

Why is this a problem? Of course it's not really a problem. It's just that, here at speechification, we like to bring you a variety of great speech radio. How can we do that if the producers of This American Life keep coming up with clever and beautiful shows like this one? This episode is about memory. Read about it here.

We're not linking to MP3s for This American Life since the show is self-funding so you should really get over there and pop a few quid in the collecting tin—the podcast is free. In fact, I think they're developing a pretty interesting economic model: the streaming MP3 and the podcast are free but if you want to download and keep the show you pay 95 cents. I wonder if it works.

I love how this is starting to work. Matt Jones emailed us at the weekend about an excellent episode of Excess Baggage about maps. Which we stuck up. Which led Garret Keogh to alert us to this fantastic episode of This American Life, also about maps. If you don't know This American Life it's a podcast that's well worth subscribing too. Easily the best radio programme in the US, possibly in the world. Thanks to everyone for the suggestions.