Dead Animal Man
From Ira Glass | 07:49
Portrait of a guy who picks up dead animals for a living for the DC Dept of Sanitation.
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- Dead Animal Man
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- Ira Glass
Portrait of a guy who picks up dead animals for a living for the DC Dept of Sanitation.
This was first produced in 1989, for Weekend All Things Considered. It ran on This American Life in 1997.
I use it often in reporter seminars because it was a quick-turnaround feature (5 hours of reporting; 2 days to write and produce) that still has a lot of personality. It's funny at the beginning and sort of wistful at the end, though saying that doesn't capture it either. It's just one of those lucky stories with lots of surprising little moments. In reporter seminars, I always point out how, like any good feature story or interview, at some point someone's got to say something big and universal about what's happened in the story. This one does it in the easiest way possible: after all the action, there's 2 1/2 minutes of the guy and me just talking about what the hell it all means. Many reporters aren't sure exactly how to make a scene work on radio, and this story uses every trick in the book: I narrate a lot of the scenes ON SITE, while gathering the tape (like the first scene, where I explain, while running across a highway, that we're running across a highway). There are also incredibly short scenes, sometimes as short as one sentence of setup script and one line of tape. Also, there are lots of tape-to-tape transitions and unusual transitions from one scene to the next. It's a good story to illustrate all the ways to avoid the rut of doing acts&trax&acts&trax, over and over. It's entirely airworthy still, I think. Fun to listen to. Gets laughs. It's one of my favorite stories, out of everything I've produced in over twenty years.
Digital Detox
From John L Myers | 05:55
Spending too much time on Facebook or compulsively checking your smartphone might seem innocuous. But, as more people find it difficult to put their devices down, the idea of getting some help in order to ditch the digital world, if only temporarily - is gaining traction. John Myers tells us about a growing trend known as digital detox.
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- Digital Detox
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- John L Myers
The medical community is starting to take internet addiction more seriously. The American Psychiatric Association plans to include “Internet Use Disorder” (that’s the official medical term) in the appendix of their manual of mental disorders, the DSM. And so, if technology is the new addiction, then digital detox is the new rehab. And yes, there are hotels that offer digital detox rooms and even tech-free public spaces. But for those that need a little more help unplugging, there are digital detox retreats. That’s where Brenda Campbell and her husband [Kord Campbell] ended up. They found a retreat in Northern California.
We'll hear the Campbell's story and talk to the creators of the digital detox retreat they attended. And we'll hear from the manager of a hotel in Pittsburgh who created a digital detox special. Also Psychologist Kelly McGonigal tells us why smartphones are so addictive and what the consequences of their overuse might be.