This American Life
By Public Radio Exchange (PRX)
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Description
This American Life is a hit public radio show and most weeks, the most popular podcast in the country.
This app gives you on-demand access to all episodes going back to the show's launch in 1995. In other words, you get the full archive of the series, at your fingertips. You can stream for free or (for 99 cents) download any episode, search by episode name or by a favorite contributor's name, or listen in order from the beginning.
This is a big deal, in both senses of the word. There's so much in here – hundreds of shows – you'd need 17 days and nights of listening to catch up. Every new episode is automatically added to the app. The app also connects you to all the episodes of the This American Life television show, which won three Emmys and aired on the Showtime network. (You have to pay 1.99 to download each full episodes from iTunes.)
SPECIAL FEATURES
*Never-before and rarely-before heard audio and video extras: including behind-the-scenes video with the show's producers, video outtakes from the TAL TV show, a video excerpt (of Mike Birbiglia) from TAL's live cinema event, Ira Glass interviews Terry Gross and vice versa, and some very old radio stories produced by host Ira Glass, including four Morning Edition stories by David Sedaris.
*Browse by show contributor (including Sedaris, Birbiglia, Sarah Vowell, John Hodgman, and more)
*Share episodes by email, Facebook, and Twitter
*Keep your own favorites list, and get staff favorites, too
*Station finder for listening to TAL on the radio in your area
*A blog with show news and events
*A countdown to the live weekly broadcast, which you can stream from the app.
This American Life is mostly true stories of everyday people, but it's also really hard to describe. Here's what it's not: It's not a news show or a talk show or a call-in show. Instead, it's stories that are like little movies for radio. There are funny moments and emotional moments and moments where the people in the story say interesting, surprising things about it all. It's a public radio show for people who don't necessarily like public radio. It's produced by Chicago Public Radio and distributed by Public Radio International.
Your purchase of this app helps fund This American Life.
What's New in Version 2.30.3
* Updates to improve audio playback and reliability
* Bug fixes
iPhone Screenshots
Customer Reviews
Great show, great idea, persistent bugs
This app has several bugs that have been around a LOOONG time that really need to be fixed:
1) It often doesn't remember your place when you stop and start an episode. Sometimes it does, usually not. But it really needs bookmarking.
2) You can only save 1 episode at a time for offline listening. Should be more.
3) The play position bar completely covers the navigation buttons, making it tricky to do anything while you've got an episode playing (such as selecting a different episode instead). You hide the bar by pressing the "Now Playing" button, which is not at all intuitive and I keep forgetting
4) The position bar is too sensitive. It's very difficult to go precisely to a given point in the episode. The app also lacks a "skip ahead/back x seconds" function.
5) When an episode finishes playing, the app immediately begins to replay the same episode at the beginning.
I love the show, but subscribing to the podcast tends to be a technically better way to listen for me….
Thanks for adding act markers!
Thanks for adding the act markers! The one way it could be made better would be to have a description of the currently playing act. Or a list with the descriptions of all of them. But maybe that would require a UI change.
TAL app redemption
As long as I have loved this show, I was sad the app was so buggy for so long. No longer. Everything about it is great, no crashing anymore. Plays great in background etc. BUY THIS APP
- $2.99
- Category: Entertainment
- Updated: Apr 18, 2012
- Version: 2.30.3
- Size: 5.1 MB
- Language: English
- Seller: PRX Inc
- © 2011
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.Requires iOS 4.0 or later.
