This American Life

My new favorite thing in the world is my This American Life (thisamericanlife.org) podcast. I go out walking and never quite know what I'm going to hear. It's put out by NPR/PRI. I get the podcast for free on iTunes. It's an hour-long show with 2 or 3 stories that have a similar theme. They're just stories told by someone involved in them. They tell a little piece of themselves. I'm a firm believer, though I somtimes forget this, that you can learn something amazing from every single person on earth if you only take the time to listen to them. This radio show validates that.

This morning I heard a story about an 80 year old man who let his house become overrun with prostitutes and drugs. On the surface it seems pretty cut and dry, the old man was an idiot. But when you really listen to his side and really examine, you start to understand people and how they get themselves in such situations. Another was about an Iraqi POW and lady American soldier who fell in love in Iraq. It was really quite sad. But my favorite so far has been this woman Erin who's mother was being hidden by a Polish during the Nazi occupation when she was just a girl. Erin wanted to get in touch with the family who saved her parent's life. Her mother's father had thanked them by letting them live in his apartment building for free and letting them keep the rent from all the tennants. He left them the building and moved to America with his daughter and started his life. Erin decided to go to this building in Poland and find them. She found out that the family was in trouble because they didn't have a legal claim to the building so all the tennants quit paying rent. She set out to try and help them get the building on paper legally. It's very long and complicated and is still ongoing. I must have listened to her tell that story 5 times as I lay awake on sleepless nights.

I absolutely love things like this. I love hearing snippets of people's lives. To me, real life is so much more interesting than fiction, than anything anyone could make up. All you need to know is where to find it, where to look for it. I absolutely can't recommend this podcast/radio show enough. If you're lucky enough to get it, tune in to it. As an aside, I'm constantly amazed and disheartened that a city the size of Houston doesn't have a proper NPR station. We get a few hours in the morning, a few in the evening, and a smattering on the weekends. Mostly they play classical music. I have nothing against classical, but dammit, Grand Rapids had THREE more or less full time NPR stations. Thank God for podcasts and iTunes and mp3 players.