We’ve been pretty busy just getting the basic routine down around here. J’s been lobbying hard to pull out the Halloween decorations, but I generally try to resist until October. The official household rule is that I don’t pull out exciting holiday decorations until the entire house is beautifully clean.  It’s an excellent motivator. When we were outside the other day, J saw leaves falling and argued that if there was an enormous pile of autumn leaves on our front lawn before the house became beautifully clean, we should take out the Halloween stuff. I readily agreed, although I was saddened to hear that she thought it would take weeks and weeks before our house was clean. I mean, seriously: it’s not that bad.
Anyway, speaking of cleaning, when I’m doing something extraordinarily lame, like washing the kitchen floor or cleaning the bathroom or driving for a long time, I like to listen to stories.  So I’m sharing my favorite story sources.
This American Life is a public radio show that usually tells a few different stories all centered around a theme, like Summer Camp or Ruining it for the Rest of Us or Poultry Slam. The stories might be family dramas or peculiar social experiments or stand-up comedy, but they’re generally good. I’ve mentioned this before, from the “live” blogging car trip adventure.
Radiolab is another public radio that has a similar premise, except that all of the stories are related to science. The other day I was listening to the Oops show on the radio while doing errands, and I had to sit in the grocery store parking lot to listen to the end of one of the stories.
The Moth is a storytelling organization. You can listen to stories directly off their website or subscribe to their podcast for a weekly story.
The only bummer, for all of these, is that many are not appropriate for kids for a variety of reasons. So I usually just gather up podcasts and listen to them with headphones either when I’m alone or when the kids are off playing elsewhere in the house.
Anyone have any other good sites to recommend?
Chad
I have those three plus the “Risk!” pocast on my ipod. Risk is very similar to the Moth.
Katie
Thanks, Chad–I’ve got to check it out.
Kelly
Planet Money – Alex Bloomberg works on both TAL and PM – and PM is incredibly entertaining and educational. They do a good job of making Economics fun.
When I’m through the rest of my podcasts, I’ll comb The Story for a show – they’re more hit and miss, but they have also done some really amazing stories.
Katie
Yeah, I’ve been meaning to start doing Planet Money, too. . . .