I’m a big fan of Ira Glass and his “This American Life” radio series. I subscribe to the podcast and listen to the episodes whenever I get a chance.
A few years ago I was listening to another NPR series, “Wait wait… don’t tell me!” and Ira was a guest on the program. As is often the case on the program, the guest tells a little about himself before launching into the game. In this case, Ira told an excellent story that I think is the perfect embodiment of his style – understated and humorous with the bonus of an excellent twist.
I recently came across a re-telling of this story, which I didn’t think was as good, so I dug around the archives and found the Wait Wait site with a link to the file.
I’ve copied it here so that you could give it a listen
I apoligize in advance if it’s a little slow to load – That’s a function of my webhosting, which is not a super-duper account. If it’s really bad, you can right-click on the link and download the MP3 file.
I figured it was easier for most to have a slow-loading MP3 file than to go the headache of trying to use the Real Audio file linked to on the NPR site. It’s unfortunate that Real Audio (a loser in the space at this point) just doesn’t give their codecs to Apple and Microsoft for inclusion into iTunes and Windows Media Center.
Give this clip a listen. It’s really funny.