I’ve always had a problematic relationship to the news, and I’ve struggled to navigate that even more since this pandemic began. I talk to my father about the night I yelled at him over his insufficient fear of the virus, and I look back on a 1954 essay by E.B. White about the disparity between his experience of a hurricane and the coverage he hear…

Like most people, I imagine, I've been having a lot of anxious thoughts these days. And I’ve been wishing I could get those thoughts out of my head. Then I remembered that I used to have a podcast called Anxious Machine. So here’s my first episode in three years, part of a planned, ongoing audio journal. This episode starts with some thoughts about…

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 t…

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…

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 Silov…

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 he…

I'm announcing a whole new podcast, and giving you a listen to the first episode. The podcast is called Before It Had a Theme, and on it, Britta Greene an I discuss and deconstruct old episodes of This American Life. On this episode, we discuss the very first episode of that show, as well as why the show is worth discussing, how we and others becam…

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 I…

Episode 0 Show Notes Clips from following were used in this episode: This American Life, Episode 1: New Beginnings This American Life, Episode 17: Name Change/No Theme Longform Podcast, Episode 159: Ira Glass Coffaro’s Theme by Bill Frisell

Sometimes in your life, you reach a crossroads, go on a men’s weekend, spend too much time alone in the forest, have a mid-life crisis, and start thinking you can change the world with your podcast. This episode is about that happening to me. Part one of a three-part series. Support Anxious Machine on Patreon Subscribe (or write a review) in iTunes…

Parents of young children have an especially fraught relationship with their smartphones. On the one hand, these devices are indispensable tools for getting things done and staying connected to the adult world while in the midst of childcare. On the other hand, the culture is constantly telling parents, and particularly mothers, that they’re too di…

This past week, my kids went back to school. Summer vacation has come and gone. And that’s gotten me thinking about the very idea of summer vacation because every summer, for the past several years, my wife, her sisters and our families have had this tradition of going to a cabin for a few days to get out of the city. We don’t own a cabin. We have …

Since the wide-spread adoption of embalming in the United States, most Americans have turned the process of handling the deceased over to experts in the undertaking business. On this episode, the story of one family who decided that they wanted to be the ones to wash and prepare the body of the son and brother they’d lost. This episode was previous…

My older brother Scott lives almost completely outside the network of modern life: he has no internet, no email address, no cable TV or satellite, not even an antenna for his television. Until recently, he didn’t even have a bank account or a telephone. In this episode, I try to get to the bottom of why he hates computers, and especially the intern…

Humans have been reading for thousands of years, but ever since the invention of television, people have been worried that reading is in decline. The latest worry is that, even if the Internet has caused an uptick in the quantity of our reading, we're reading on screens instead of paper, and this seems to degrade the quality of our reading. On this…

When she was growing up, Adrienne didn’t want to believe she was losing her hearing, and she didn’t want to wear hearing aids. This is the story of how she decided to embrace the technology that restored her hearing, and what happened when she did. Support Anxious Machine on Patreon Subscribe (or write a review) in iTunes Patrons: Mark Bramhill Mus…

When I heard the news of the recent Supreme Court ruling on marriage between same sex couples, I wanted to go back to an interview I did in 2009 with two women who decided to get married before it was legal in their state. It’s easy to forget what couples like them had to go through back then — traveling outside of their state to get a document tha…

Amelia’s childhood was largely devoid of technology. But when she got a computer and the internet in her own bedroom, she found the new mode of communication through chatrooms and email utterly addictive. She’s struggled ever since with how much technology she wants in her life, especially now that she’s a mother. Support Anxious Machine on Patreon…

Bernard did not get along with his father, who expected him to work like a full-time employee in the family gas station starting when Bernard was just eight years old. But then Bernard went off to the army, and when he came home, an incident with a gun changed his relationship to his father, to society, and to himself. Subscribe (or write a review)…

Humans have been getting intoxicated, and finding new ways to get intoxicated, for thousands of years. On this episode, I explore the history of intoxication, and how that history played out in the life of one young woman. Subscribe (or write a review) in iTunes Links: In researching this topic, I relied on the following sources (in addition to Wik…

I recently decided to ask a big question at a cocktail party. This episode is about asking the question, some of the answers I got, and how that question is shaping the stories I’m trying to tell in the second season of this show. Subscribe in iTunes Share Your Story Music: I Am Running Down the Long Hallway of Viewmont Elementary by Chris Zabriski…

I’ve always loved telling the story of the first (and only) time I got punched in the face, and not because I won the fight. I lost, by a long shot. But it’s a story about standing up to one of the toughest scariest guys in my high school, and it made me feel like a hero. But the stories we tell about ourselves are rarely the whole story. This stor…

Sara thought she knew her son, but then a medical diagnosis left her questioning everything. This is the story of how she coped when the medical treatment turned him into a completely different child. Subscribe (or write a review) in iTunes Music: Mario Bava Sleeps in a Little Later Than He Expected by Chris Zabriskie Enough of Our Machines by Son …

Fewer and fewer people writes letters anymore, especially by hand. It’s a dying technology. But for this episode, I have a story from the 20th century about how a single, handwritten letter changed the course of a life. Subscribe (or write a review) in iTunes Music: CGI Snake by Chris Zabriskie Constellation by Podington Bear…

Sarah’s parents got divorced when she was little. She and her siblings stayed with their mom, even though Sarah preferred her father’s company. She only saw her father for dinner once a week and stayed with him every other weekend. When she got to talk to him on the phone, her mother often stood nearby and listened. So when email entered their live…

Mohamed fell in love with air travel at a young age. He lived in Kuwait, but he would fly with his family back to Egypt at the end of every school year, so air travel was imbued with the pleasure of summer, vacation, family, and fun. Then he grew up and moved to the United States, and suddenly air travel was much more expensive, much more difficult…

Kate Hopper had dreamed of a totally natural birth, with no drugs and no medical interventions. But when her baby was born two months early, Kate had to enter the unnatural world of the neonatal intensive care unit, where incubators, tubes, and monitors kept her daughter at a distance, and where Kate had to struggle to find her own identity as a mo…

Tanya grew up in a home with only one approved hour of television a week. She had no music in her bedroom, no cellphone, and no computer access, unless her mother was watching over her shoulder. In Krystyna’s house, on the other hand, the TV was always on, and she could watch whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted. She now worries, as a single mo…

Andria Williams met her husband Dave when they were in their first year of high school. They’ve been together now for almost two decades, but they’ve also spent a significant portion of that time living apart, conducting their relationship over a long distance. Over the course of those two decades, the technology of communication has also changed i…

On this episode, my guest is Stephen Hackett, who publishes the website 512 Pixels and co-hosts the podcast Connected. We talk about what it’s like to put the life of someone you love, someone you would protect with your own life, in the hands of medical experts. Stephen has written a number of pieces on this topic over the years. These are my favo…