This American Life - Enemy Camp 2010

This is where the “and more” part of the tagline at the top of the page comes from. For my second entry I’ve decided to review a work from a medium that’s grown on me this past year and a half. While it’s true that podcasts are nothing new to the media landscape, I got hooked during the long-distance relationship my fiancée (girlfriend at the time) and I had last year. During that time I would drive from the San Francisco Bay Area down to Orange County about twice a month, and it was during those first few rides that I started listening to National Public Radio podcasts. I started listening to NPR in 2008 thanks to my soon to be father-in-law and became hooked almost instantly. Admittedly, part of the attraction comes from the fact that the organization shares my left leaning politics, but most of it comes from their solid programming which always seems to make my drives feel shorter. Aside from the usual news-based and call-in programs (the call-ins are often my least favorite), shows like Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me!, Fresh Air, and A Prairie Home Companion help to round things out with some humor and cool non-fiction programming, many of which can be found in podcast form.

Today’s entry revolves around an episode of one such show airing weekends on NPR called This American Life. The show started in 1995 in Chicago and, since then, has branched out into other areas such as television (the This American Life series ran from 2006-2008 on Showtime), and, of course, podcasts. As the show’s host Ira Glass reminds us at the beginning of each episode, each week the This American Life team selects a theme for the show and brings us documentaries, interviews, short fiction, found tapes, and found writing on that theme, the result of which are some incredible, humorous, and/or touching stories.

This past weekend’s episode entitled Enemy Camp 2010, was a bit of a mixed bag for me. The way the series generally works is that you get, on average, two to four different stories each episode, and one of the real cool things about this show the different angles from which they explore this theme. I often find myself surprised at the nuanced manner in which these stories connect up with their themes, though I have to admit that every so often I run into a story whose connection to the theme in question is a stretch, especially if I was expecting one kind of story and didn’t get it. This week’s theme is one of those that is not very literal-minded at all. As Ira explains at the beginning, the four stories have to do with people sent into an enemy camp, spending some time there, and, eventually, starting to empathize with those they were sent in to spy on. The first story, having to do with a “fixer” Catholic priest was an interesting, and relatively even-handed look at a priest’s experience with the impact of abuse on different congregations. The second, and third took on the topic of parasites (literal, not figurative), and the fourth, the lone fiction entry, dealt with a new relationship and the crass interloper the main character ends up falling for.

As I mentioned before, the first story is not only the longest, but probably the most interesting, especially given how topical it is. The second is also quite fascinating in its own right and if you’ve seen the Discovery Channel series Planet Earth (2006), you’ll be able to quickly recognize one of the parasites identified in the story.

Story three, however, is where things started to go off the rails for me, though not because of the content. This story, about one man’s experience with the healing properties of parasites, was actually not done by the This American Life team, but by another group called Radio Lab, and although This American Life only just started broadcasting this group’s work, I’m still undecided on whether or not I really like it. Radio Lab’s stories are very interesting, but the manner in which they edit them, with narrators coming in and out frequently as if in a conversational way with the subjects, ended up distracting me rather than allowing me to sink into the story. Though I eventually got used to the style, and ended up enjoying the story, things did not look up once the final segment began.

Story number four is one of those stories that has to stretch to grab the theme of the episode. Although the story is fictional, after dealing with some heavier, more reality-based subjects during the previous 45 minutes of the episode, it was the fantastical nature of this story’s premise that I failed to connect with. Even though the story concluded rather sweetly, I have my reservations as to whether or not this story really belonged with the other three. Perhaps the team had an extra 13 or 14 minutes to fill and just couldn’t figure out what to put in there. Although the majority of this episode is great, this last story is certainly passable.

Since I don’t want to end this entry on such a downer, especially on one of my favorite shows, if you’re curious about This American Life, and how to find it, the best place to start would be their website at http://www.thisamericanlife.org/. Here you’ll be able to find their radio and T.V. archive, access to their podcasts, and their store, as well as which local radio station carries them. There’s even an iPhone app for those that would like access to their entire radio archive for $2.99. For those that don’t really feel like diving right on in, the episode I just reviewed will be available for the remainder of this week until Sunday when the NEW free one will come out. After that this episode will be available for download, but for $.99. I know I sound like the NPR pitch-man here, but honestly, check out a few of the episodes. You won’t regret it.