Comments on: Unofficial This American Life Podcast is no More

By: george

george — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 22:39:04 +0000

I’ve added a new set of links that I don’t think require the firefox trick. Got them by decompiling the flash player on the TAL site. http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/jomamashouse/ismymamashouse/SHOWNUMBER.mp3 Just replace SHOWNUMBER with the show number, like 314. You can also use this http://www.dirtygreek.org/stuff/tal.php?min=314&max=321

By: Snortblog » This American life podcasts

Snortblog » This American life podcasts — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 11:30:13 +0000

[...] I love This American Life (TAL). It’s a wonderful public radio show. In each episode, they have stories that revolve around a particular theme, like this week’s theme, entitled “fiasco”. I’ve had my eye on their website for several years. They’ve made their shows available in the Real Media format for as long as I’ve visited their site. Real Media is not exactly handy for listening to with an mp3 player, but by using audio capture software like Audacity, it wouldn’t be hard to convert shows into the mp3 format for happy unencumbered personal listening, though this probably isn’t what TAL intended. At long last, TAL added mp3 files to the site. Then somebody went to the trouble of repackaging links to mp3s on the TAL website as an RSS feed, thus making it easy for anybody with podcasting client software like iTunes or Juice to get it. Apparently, TAL wasn’t too happy about this; they apparently contacted the poor sod and asked him to take down the feed. However, TAL rose to the challenge. [...]

By: This American Life at real buried treasure

This American Life at real buried treasure — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 19:52:38 +0000

[...] However, I really enjoy This American Life when I do tune in. The problem in the past is the show is on around 5:00 PM on Sunday afternoons on the local NPR station. And honestly, I don’t seek out radio programming any more. So, I don’t think to listen in. And, up until now, their show is available only in Real Audio format. And quite frankly, Real sucks. Their software is malware at best and their content shotty (except for something like TAL). They are the RC Cola to the world of new media. For a while, The Future is Yesterday posted unofficial podcasts of the show by linking to mp3’s on their own servers. Jared got in a little hot water and decided to stop as they made the shows available via Audible.com. The problem was they show is great, but not $4 a download great. [...]

By: Peripatetic Circumambulant » This Life podcast

Peripatetic Circumambulant » This Life podcast — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 05:00:59 +0000

[...] The news is rumbling across the web. I saw this BoingBoing post about it. The interested background is that several sites created their own podcasts of the show that simply pointed to shows located on TAL servers. TAL requested that they stop, and the unofficial podcast that was taken down as was another. STL blogger DiatribeR also posted on the news, too. [...]

By: Kisha

Kisha — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 07:47:24 +0000

Seems that PRI has decided to create an official This American Life podcast. You can find it here. The mp3s are available for one week and then streaming or purchase from Audible is your next option. Good news?

By: Audiophile

Audiophile — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 15:43:29 +0000

Public radio is public and should be free. We donate to our local public radio station. I discovered TAL in 1997 when I lived on the west coast. It’s great. I listened only occasionally since then because of family obligations and a less than ideal local broadcast time. I’m an insomniac, so I listen to my mp3 player during the night. I was using Total Recorder and winamp to record the archive and xfer to my player. (Sure beats listening to Art Bell on am radio. I knew I had to stop the day I found myself trying to remember the three signs a person had been abducted by aliens!)

One day I listened to a TAL episode in WMP and noticed that the file was being downloaded to my PC, not streamed. Took 3 mins each episode. Okay, so it was downloaded to a hidden system folder which was not difficult to find. TAL was giving every episode away for free, so I’m enjoying them. As I understand it, Fair Use lets all of us record it from streaming internet radio or from the official web site. How many of us have listened to Ira say for years “where you can listen to all of our programs for FREE.”

It’s on tonight on WBEZ at 7 central, or you can record it from another affiliate station which broadcasts in higher quality and stereo.

That’d be a nice project: post a list of public radio stations streaming high quality stereo feeds.

Diane Rehm recently started making podcasts available. Each podcast starts with a 20 second ad. Of course, the ads are included in each episode anyway, but TAL could adopt this model.

By: Disciples with Microphones Blog » Blog Archive » Can a Publisher decide how an MP3 is used?

Sun, 10 Sep 2006 02:06:45 +0000

[...] There is an interesting conversation happening in the blogosphere about web content. I had seen this conversation begin late last week but since I was on the road, I did not watch how it has developed. iJim sent me a link to a story on ZDNet.com. It discusses the issue in detail. There is also a post on the Techdirt blog that provides a good summary. I was appreciative of this since I had missed this story as it developed on the Red Jar blog. [...]

By: miles

miles — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 13:59:29 +0000

The worst thing is, I’ve downloaded two TAL programs through iTunes and the quality is terrible! You can download free, top quality podcasts of Open Source and On the Media but have to pay $4 to crackly, staticy podcasts of TAL? TAL used to be on the cutting edge; now it’s starting to look prehistoric.

By: PC ?

PC ? — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 19:36:14 +0000

Just as an update: The lastest TAL e-mail update states that streaming shows will soon be accessible on the site using some sort of flash player. Meanwhile, individual show downloads on Audible and soon iTunes will be dropped to 95 cents a piece. That seems more than reasonable. Kudos to them.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 18:27:45 +0000

Until they name it something other than ‘public radio,’ I’ll still expect that the best way to make a copy of a program for the future is via tape deck on a boom box.

By: dk

dk — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 12:51:01 +0000

It’s only $4? How much do you spend for cigarettes or coffee each day? If it was $10 or $20, OK, I understand, but $4? TAL is worth your $4, and if they say they need it to pay underpaid radio contributors, I believe them. This isn’t Enron or IBM or GE. It’s Ira. I’ll take his word for it and consider you cheap.

By: ethanlindsey.com » Podcasts and Public Radio

ethanlindsey.com » Podcasts and Public Radio — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 18:31:46 +0000

[...] In the end, TAL asked the deep-linkers to shut it down, which they did. And it sounds as if the show’s producers have finally found a way to close the loophole he was exploiting. [...]

By: adhonus

adhonus — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 13:39:01 +0000

If you want other content for free, I’d suggest looking for other podcasts. Why not try Benjamen Walker’s The Theory of Everything? http://www.toeradio.org/

By: PC ?

PC ? — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 15:34:43 +0000

Nevermind. After tracking down a bunch of .dll’s (in some cases, trying multiple versions to get the right one), finally got curl working on the PC at home. Thanks guys! Incidentally, I agree with Stefan that I’d much prefer to have these higher quality versions and make a straight donation to TAL than to pay a premium for inferior quality, DRM, and Audible taking a cut before the producers and the authors see the money.

By: PC ?

PC ? — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 00:41:24 +0000

Grr…I have no problem getting curl to work on my Mac at work, but I can’t get wget to work on my PC at home. I’m finding the url based on the instructions above but I keep getting “ERROR -1: Malformed status line”