Cool article about the rise of public radio in recent years, thanks to a reinvention of the medium by shows like This American life, Radiolab, and Sound Opinions:

I talked recently with Robert Krulwich, who first joined the NPR network just a few years after All Things Considered went on the air in the Nixon era and now cohosts the public radio program Radiolab, and he remembers those days as filled with invention:

“Radio was dead—it was top 40. All the smarties were at the Times or The Washington Post, or if you didn’t want to be Woodward and Bernstein you went to work for Walter Cronkite at the Tiffany network. This group of nutty people wandered in and said, let’s do radio. We’ll reinvent it. Jump thirty-five or forty years ahead and where is Walter Cronkite? What happened to The Washington Post? And guess what, the nutty radio people have suddenly emerged as the focus for a huge audience. And now they have a little of the swagger of the Timesmen.”

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/all-programs-considered/?page=1

Saw this when it was played on This American Life – Live!, but never knew it was put up on Vimeo.

I love that Andrew Bird song that the short is accompanied by.

And Chris Ware just rocks ass on all levels.

Oh holy poo poo, this looks to be fantastic:

Ira Glass will host an actual episode of the radio program, performed onstage by some of our favorite contributors. Dan Savage, Starlee Kine, and Mike Birbiglia will tell stories. David Rakoff and Dave Hill will conduct a ‘special investigation.’ Plus a new cartoon by Chris Ware, additional visuals by Arthur Jones, and a very special appearance by Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer! The performance will last around two hours. We’re going to capture the whole thing with a bunch of HD cameras, and send it live* to movie theatres all over the country.

It’s gonna be a fun night. We hope you’ll come.

One night only. Thursday, April 23rd. In select movie theatres and performing arts centers nationwide.

*8 PM EDT / 7 PM CDT / 6 PM MDT and time delayed to 8PM PDT (also 8 PM in Arizona and 7 PM in Hawaii).

You can get tickets here, and for 20$ each, this seems like a bargain to see some TAL Ira Glass action live.

(I just got two tix to the only Rochester showing @ Tinseltown.)

As an avid RSS feed reader reader/podcast subscriber, I decided that I would try and come up with a new blog or podcast every week to share with Juice The Blog. Hopefully I will do this more than once. I know it says weekly, but I’m also a total slacker.

For those of you unfamiliar with podcasts and subscribing to podcasts, here is a really old but still relevant tutorial from your friends at Apple: http://www.apple.com/support/ilife/tutorials/itunes/it5-1.html

First up here at Eric’s Weekly (or Close to Weekly) Blog/Podcast Review (or EW(oCtW)B/PR, for short) is a longtime favorite and staple for hipster podcast listeners, This American Life. Every week, This American Life comes up with a theme and brings you a number of different stories on that theme. It is sort of like documentary radio, with interviews, narration, and some sound design. The stories are about everything from politics, to breakups, to get rich quick schemes, but usually focus on the human interest stories of the people involved.

This American Life is hosted by cool-guy Ira Glass.

More like Ira GlassES, am I right? Anyways, he’s a cool dude with a kindof annoying voice. I don’t really mind it, but you’ll know what I mean. Here’s a really cool video of him talking about taste and making good stuff:

You can listen to This American Life via the iTunes store or from their website. So yeah, do it up and tell me what you think in the comments. Until next week…

UPDATE: Awesome episode about the economic crisis that you should probably listen to: http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1263