After The Flood - Surprising stories from survivors in New Orleans

September 13, 2005 8:38 AM

After The Flood Surprising stories from survivors in New Orleans. We give people who were in the storm more time than daily news coverage can to tell their stories and talk about what they're thinking. This leads to a number of ideas that haven't made it into the regular news coverage. The most recent episode of This American Life is now up on their website--This American Life is one of the best programs on public radio and this was one of their best episodes ever. It is well worth a listen.
posted by y2karl (24 comments total)

Thanks karl, I have been frantically waiting til this came online (can't catch it on the radio, I'm Euro-side). In time, it can probably also be found here or here.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 8:42 AM on September 13, 2005

I love this program too and am anxiously looking forward to streaming it tonight on my home pc.
posted by MetaJohn at 8:46 AM on September 13, 2005

I heard that episode on Sunday morning, and it was indeed one of the best. Ira Glass + Co. really do a good job of getting people to open up and give great interviews. I really appreciated all the different perspectives, especially that of 18 yr. old Ashley Nelson, commenting on her experience, and how she forgot for a bit about how poor her family was when she heard that everyone needed to get away from the storm; and then her family reminding her: "rent a car?? with what money?"
posted by atlatl at 8:47 AM on September 13, 2005

Stupid RealMedia...
The link wouldn't stream. Any other links?
posted by mystyk at 8:49 AM on September 13, 2005

Great show. This was a great episode. There is a grim inmates-running-the-asylum picture painted by the people just trying to get out of the city.
posted by dig_duggler at 8:58 AM on September 13, 2005

Here's a link to the 50 megabyte .rm file, via Coral Cache. You still need Real to play it, but at least you can buffer it. The download is quite slow right now (3 hours to download 1 hour of audio), maybe once the first download completes it will improve.
posted by Nelson at 9:26 AM on September 13, 2005

posted by Pretty_Generic at 9:30 AM on September 13, 2005

This American Life is the best program on the radio, period. Prove me wrong, please if you can.

My favorite episode was 'Falling Out', when a small group of mormon fundamentalists get conflicting messages from god about whether or not it's OK to sleep with more than one of your wives at a time.
posted by mullingitover at 9:34 AM on September 13, 2005

I agree. "Best program on the radio period"
My favorite episode:

Host Ira Glass interviews Joe Amrine, who was falsely accused of murder. But rather than avoid the death penalty Amrine said everything he could think of on the witness stand to get the jury to give him a death sentence. He figured that would be better than life in prison. Since he would need media attention and free legal help to appeal his case, he calculated the only way he could get it was to sit on death row, because nobody pays attention to lifers.

http://www.thislife.org/ra/287.ram
posted by thisisdrew at 9:50 AM on September 13, 2005

I would lovelovelove This American Life if it weren't for the contributors' voices. I think they grew Ira Glass and all his colleagues in underground vats in St. Paul, dialing up the nerdily nasal voice gene to satisfy those hippy-dippy public radio listeners who find the traditional "radio voice" typical of the patriarchy.

mullingitover: Art Bell. Dang it.
posted by brundlefly at 9:54 AM on September 13, 2005

Let me add my admiration for This American Life and Ira Glass. I consider Ira to be pure genius and look forward eagerly to each and every show.

Thanks y2karl and Hi!
posted by nofundy at 10:19 AM on September 13, 2005

The narrative perspective that TAL offers is wonderful, and hard to find elsewhere. As Ira points out the intro, they have the freedom to spend an hour on a theme, and address it however they see fit. Usually, this means sitting down with people and getting complete stories. So few people do this, and it is so powerful. This show was more meaningful to me than any other coverage of the event.

Go listen! It's great! And keep listening to the show - it's not always this poignant or intense, but is almost always really well done. And gems like this show are surprisingly frequent.

And on the voices, I guess it's what you get used to. I have to admit a hidden crush on Sarah Vowell's voice, and I can't read anything by Sedaris without hearing him read it in my head.
posted by heresiarch at 10:25 AM on September 13, 2005

Not related entirely to the topic, but I didn't want to create another FPP on Katrina. Apologies is this is unkosher.

I've been tracking a local story my paper has been covering (disclosure: I work for the newspaper in the second link, but I didn't write the story or take the picture) about the rescue of roughly 1000 chickens from a devastated poultry farm in Mississippi, and their transportation to farm animal havens in New York and California.

San Francisco Chronicle : chicken rescue

Star-Gazette (Elmira, N.Y.): chicken rescue [with photo]

The Leader (Corning, N.Y.) chicken rescue

I'm just curious what people think about saving chickens. One of the more intriguing quotes from the Chronicle article:

"Some folks say, 'Why save chickens when there are people and dogs and cats to save?' ' says the birds' savior, Vacaville resident Kim Sturla, who traveled to Mississippi to rescue the chickens after learning about their plight on television.

"I'm looking at it from the perspective of their lives,' she said. "The life of the chicken is as important to him as the life of the dog or cat is to them."
posted by bugmuncher at 10:44 AM on September 13, 2005

Also not entirely related, but I, also, didn't wan't to create yet another post on Katrina.

Digital Journalist Dispatches - photojournalists tell their stories about covering Katrina.
posted by normy at 11:03 AM on September 13, 2005

Damn, bugmuncher. I don't know if I speak for everyone but I think that would've been a fine FPP.
posted by mullingitover at 11:16 AM on September 13, 2005

Who will speak for the chickens?
posted by mullingitover at 11:30 AM on September 13, 2005

Haha, reading this thread I realized that I don't know what Sarah Vowell looks like so I googled her and came up with this. Maybe you've all seen it before.
Anyway, yes this was an incredible episode of a fantastic show. I am glad to have this as a part of my Saturday morning routine. I couldn't believe the part near the end where the one guy had permission to leave the city and he had to pretend that everyone in his group was in his family, otherwise the authorities wouldn't let them all leave.
posted by Who_Am_I at 11:34 AM on September 13, 2005

Mullingitover, my main apprehension was that I am employed by the second link, and have made only one fpp so far. But if others agree it should be fpp, then by all means, post it.
posted by bugmuncher at 11:45 AM on September 13, 2005

I love TAL.
posted by wrapper at 1:21 PM on September 13, 2005

If the bible belt starts saying "post-deluvian", I'm gone.
posted by NinjaPirate at 2:28 PM on September 13, 2005

Stupid RealMedia... The link wouldn't stream. Any other links?

I've converted the stream to MP3 and made it available via bittorrent.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 3:14 PM on September 13, 2005

I cried no less than three times and laughed out loud at least as many. The best of the radio? Indeed.
posted by jopreacher at 9:42 PM on September 13, 2005

my personal favorite episode was the prison performance of hamlet.

and, Civil_Disobedient, thanks for the torrent! real is the devil!
posted by Igor XA at 11:31 PM on September 14, 2005

You can also hear the episode broken into acts at http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/002376.html#002376. (QuickTime .mov files)
posted by blueberry at 6:34 AM on September 16, 2005