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Before It Had a Theme
Robert McGinley Myers
A podcast about This American Life, hosted by Rob McGinley Myers and Britta Greene, featuring lovingly irreverent dissections of the show’s best episodes, as well as occasional interviews with other audio storytellers (including people who contributed to the show) all in our attempt to pin down what makes the show great and how it changes the way we think about our own lives.
- 1 hour 54 secondsS2 E4: What's Fun About Being in the Dark - Love and Radio
Show Notes:
The Wisdom of Jay Thunderbolt - Love and Radio
Salvatore Scibona reads Denis Johnson - New Yorker Fiction Podcast
Music:
The Bus at Dawn - Blue Dot Sessions
Orchard Lime - Blue Dot Sessions
Nine Count by Blue Dot Sessions
Plum Blossom - Blue Dot Sessions
Throughput - Blue Dot Sessions
5 December 2024, 1:43 pm - 45 minutes 55 secondsS2 E3: Do We Ever Go Back to That? - TAL: Notes on Camp
Rob and Britta share a discussion they had in 2019 (but never released) about the classic This American Life episode "Notes on Camp." Topics include their own camp experiences, the power of scary stories, Rob's favorite thing ever recorded by any radio show ever, and the wild back story of the beloved camp counselor David Himmel, aka Mr. Popluar.
Show Notes:
Notes on Camp - This American LIfe
“Ira Glass Is a Douche” - Literate Apecast
Longform Interview with Julie Snyder
Music:
Throughput - Blue Dot Sessions
Coffero’s Theme - Bill Frisell
22 October 2024, 9:27 pm - 1 hour 6 minutesS2 E2: Suitcase Full of Cash - Startup Part 2
On the second of a two-part series about the podast Startup, Rob and Britta talk about how the mini-seasons of the podcast Startup about the growth of Gimlet revealed all kinds of details about the troubles at the company, the ill-fated sale to Spotify, and what all this means for the state of narrative audio.
Show Notes:
Skye Pillsbury's newsletter The Squeeze
Galen Beebe's website
Music:
Nine Count by Blue Dot Sessions
Within the Garden Walls by Blue Dot Sessions
Audio Excerpts:
25 September 2024, 5:07 pm - 56 minutes 28 secondsS2 E1: Alarmingly Long Pause - Startup Part 1
On the first episode of the new season Rob and Britta talk about what made them want to restart a show about narrative audio. And they discuss the complicated legacy of a podcast that's having its tenth anniversary this year.
Show Notes:
Music:
Coffaro’s Theme by Bill Frisell
"Arabic Tallow" and "At Our Best Alone" from Blue Dot Sessions
Audio Excerpts:
5 September 2024, 10:34 pm - 3 minutes 13 secondsSeason 2 Teaser
After more than five years of silence, new episodes of this podcast finally are on their way. Season 2 starts September 5, 2024.
3 September 2024, 3:08 pm - 55 minutes 7 secondsS1 E5: One Long Poetic HIPAA Violation - The Job That Takes Over Your Life
Rob and Britta discuss This American Life Episode 37 - The Job that Takes Over Your Life, as well as Britta’s former job fixing scandals for big companies, and Rob’s former job working for Garrison Keillor. Other topics include the great radio reporter Scott Carrier and his masterpiece of a story The Test, and Rob interviews Peter Clowney, one of the original producers of This American Life, about what it was like to work on the show in the early days.
Links and Show Notes:
The Job that Takes Over Your Life
In Particular - Blonde Redhead
Defect2: Curiosidade - John Mcentire Remix
Scott Carrier interview on Tape
Scott Carrier interview on HowSound
Hitchhiker episode of Home of the Brave
24 January 2019, 2:54 am - 51 minutes 18 secondsS1 E4: The Cruelty of Children (Tarantula in a Bowl)
Rob and Britta discuss whether this episode is TAL’s first real masterpiece, the role of David Sedaris in the show’s early years, why “The Man in the Well” is the rare example of great audio fiction, the bone-chilling music of the Bulgarian State Television Female Choir, and why an effort to keep children from excluding each other makes Rob weirdly emotional.
And we talk to the amazing Marlo Mack, from the podcast How to Be a Girl, about her own unique perspective on the cruelty of children.
Links and Show Notes:
David Sedaris on Morning Edition
Coffaro’s Theme by Bill Frisell
Pilentze Pee by Bulgarian State Television Female Choir
Gentle Chase by Podington Bear
10 January 2019, 8:00 am - 51 minutes 41 secondsS1 E3: Accidental Documentaries (Non-humanoid Member of the Family)
Rob and Britta discuss This American Life Episode 14: Accidental Documentaries, including their own experience creating accidental documentaries. The main focus of the discussion is the centerpiece of this episode, a documentary edited out of reel to reel tapes that a family sent back and forth to each other back in 1967. And Rob talks to Joe Silovsky, the man who originally found those tapes and gave them to Ira Glass, and whose work as a performance artist echos the experience he had with those tapes back when he was an art student. And since this is the final episode of the show that originally aired under the name “Your Radio Playhouse,” Rob and Britta talk about some of the worst moments from those early episodes, and their awfulness is inspiring.
Links and Show Notes:
Buried at Sea by MC (900 Ft. Jesus)
Coffero’s Theme by Bill Frisell Quartet
Pilentze Pee by The Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir
Episode 5: Anger and Forgiveness
Gentle Chase by Podington Bear
5 December 2018, 3:49 pm - 57 minutes 40 secondsS1 E2: Double Lives (The Birth of This American Life)
A discussion of This American Life Episode 10: Double Lives. Topics include Rob and Britta's own experiences leading double lives, Rob's childhood habit of breaking into schools at night, why this episode feels like the birth of This American Life, why parents so often hide secrets from their children, what Britta’s parents have been hiding from her, and how it feels to hear Ira Glass talk about sex.
This episode also includes an interview with Peter Bresnan, a podcast producer for Gimlet, about what it's like to listen to this old episode of TAL on the topic of closeted gay men.
Links and Show Notes:
Coffero’s Theme by Bill Frisell Quartet
It Might Get Loud - a documentary about Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White
Another Version of You by Chris Zabriskie
Tell Me I’m Funny - a podcast by Peter Alexander Bresnan
Catalog & Classify by Mark Robinson
21 November 2018, 5:58 pm - 47 minutes 58 secondsS1 E1: New Beginnings (F*** You, Django Reinhardt!)
Rob and Britta discuss the very first episode of This American Life, as well as why the show is worth discussing, how they and others became fans of the show, and why they love Ira Glass’s mother.
Clips from following were used in this episode:
Coffaro’s Theme by Bill Frisell
Episode of Tape with Jonathan Menjivar
Episode of Tape with Ben Calhoun
Ira’s talk at the Third Coast Audio Festival
Longform Podcast, Episode 159: Ira Glass
This American Life, Episode 1: New Beginnings
8 November 2018, 11:54 am - 6 minutes 48 secondsS1 E0: American Whatever
Episode 0 Show Notes
Clips from following were used in this episode:
10 October 2018, 4:09 pm - More Episodes? Get the App
About Before It Had a Theme
Links
Listeners Also Subscribed To
This American Lie
Third Coast Pocket Conference
Centuries of Sound
Tape
Anxious Machine
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