Abstract
This American Life is a weekly public radio show produced in collaboration with Chicago Public Radio. With more than 2.2 million listeners and over 700 episodes aired, This American Life is currently in its 25th year of broadcasting. This American Life stories are first and foremost based on human interest. The show defines itself as “an interesting sort of journalism” or a type of narrative journalism that serves to represent the lives of not only the average American, but all Americans (This American Life n.d.). With a wide array of topics, This American Life can be used in virtually any undergraduate sociology course or topic, including Introduction to Sociology (e.g., the sociological imagination can be explored using “episode 120, Be Careful Who You Pretend to Be, Act III. What’s So Funny about Peace, Love and Understanding?”), research methodology (e.g., “episode 261, The Sanctity of Marriage, Act I. What Really Happens in a Marriage”), education (e.g., “episode 324, Going Big, Act 1. Harlem Renaissance”), race (e.g., “episode 648, Unteachable Moment, Act 1. All the Caffeine in the World Doesn’t Make You Woke”), class (e.g., “episode 712, Nice White Parents”), gender (“episode 327, Somewhere Out There, Act 2. Tom Girls”), sexuality (e.g., “episode 46, Sissies”), intersectionality (e.g., “episode 142, Barbara”), criminal justice (e.g., “episode 706, A Mess to Be Reckoned With”), politics (e.g., “episode 424, Kid Politics”), health care system (e.g., “episode 719, Trust Me I’m a Doctor”), and global economy (e.g., “episode 423, The Invention of Money, Act I. The Lie That Saved Brazil”), to name a few.
The program typically runs in three acts, with a prologue that serves to introduce listeners to an overarching topic. The prologue episode is approximately five minutes in length, and each individual act averages 15 minutes. The total run time of an episode averages one hour. Individual acts are useful for in-class courses as well as online courses and are ideal for 50-minute class sessions. For instance, the first 20 minutes of a class may be dedicated to providing students with lecture material that frames a social issue or topic. The next 15 minutes would be dedicated to listening to the radio broadcast. The remaining 15 minutes would then be dedicated to a think-pair-share activity associated with applying course material to the This American Life act.
Individual acts and the use of think-pair-share are particularly helpful for entry-level undergraduate courses where students are learning to develop their analytical skills and/or apply concepts and theories to the real world. This American Life acts keep students interested and engaged with the course material while giving students the ability to develop the very same analytical skills that can later be used to interpret and understand empirical articles. The think-pair-share technique can be used in small and large classes alike. The only limitation is the availability of Internet access, a computer, and speakers within the classroom.
Full-length episodes (run time of one hour, on average) are ideal for online upper- and lower-division undergraduate courses. As part of an online course, full-length episodes can be used to replace or supplement assigned empirical articles. Both full-length episodes and acts can be used as resources to help frame or shape online class papers, assignments, or activities. The only potential downside of assigning This American Life episodes or acts is the inability to access an embed code for teaching platforms that would allow instructors to place media directly into a module. As a result, students will only be able to access episodes as external html links.
Course assignments can easily be tied to This American Life. For example, This American Life “episode 557, Birds and Bees” and “episode 341, How to Talk to Kids” can effectively be paired with the TRAILS assignment resource guide “Sex-Ed Story-Time: Understanding and Applying the Social Construction of Sexuality” (Loughrin 2018). This resource guide combines theory, analysis, application, and creativity in an end-of-the-semester project. As part of the assignment, students are asked to create a children’s book that discusses some element of sexuality. They may choose from three specific age groups: (1) early-level readers, ages five to nine or seven to 10; (2) middle-grade readers, ages eight to 12’ or (3) young adult readers, ages 12 to 14 or ages 14 and over. Prior to selecting an age group or topic, students are tasked with reflecting on their own experience with sexual education, be it parental discussion or sexual education in public schools. They are then asked to not only think about what they would have liked to learn about sex/sexuality as a middle schooler or teen but also how they would have liked to learn.
To facilitate a discussion of the how, students can listen to This American Life “episode 341, How to Talk to Kids, Act II. Age of Consent.” In this eight-minute act, host and executive producer Ira Glass interviews 18-year-old Chelsea. Chelsea is an editor for Sex, Etc., a magazine where information on sex is written “for teens, by teens” (Sex, Etc. n.d.). Due to a lack of comprehensive sexual education in the public school system and a perceived lack of willingness for parents to have a frank and open conversation about sex with their children, the editors developed Sex, Etc. to provide their peer group with accurate and medically relevant sexual information and resources. Within the broadcast, Chelsea contends that sexual education was “all over the place” for most of Sex, Etc.’s readers. Some of their readers were not provided with sex education in their public schools, others received abstinence-only education, some were not allowed to ask basic questions about sex and sexuality beyond the abstinence-only curriculum, and others said they had “good teachers” but were still dissatisfied by the sexual education they had received in the classroom. In regard to “the talk,” readers found that their parents had difficulty breaching the topic, were extremely vague, had discussions that lacked basic useful sexual information, or relied on using the pregnancy/STI death scare tactic to dissuade their children from sex. Most readers admitted that they learned about sex from pornography, influencing how they viewed sex and sexual pleasure. Based on her conversations with Sex, Etc. readers, Chelsea provides This American Life parents with advice on how to talk to their own kids about sex. First, she suggests that parents should understand that their teens do not already know the facts and are not receiving these facts through sexual education classes in public schools. Second, no matter how hard or awkward it is, she suggests that parents should at least try to talk to their children about sex.
After listening to the This American Life broadcast, students should be asked to think about how they would develop a resource that parents and/or educators can read to children or adolescents to help facilitate the sex conversation. This class discussion can include a conversation on how parents and educators can approach different age groups and a debate over what level of sexual knowledge is appropriate for adolescents or middle schoolers. Likewise, students interested in developing a young adult book can be asked to think about what material must be involved to encourage teens to actively seek out/pick up a sexual education book rather than simply turning to pornography for immediate (and inaccurate) answers.
To facilitate a classroom on the what, students can listen to This American Life “episode 557, Birds & Bees, Act I. Some Like It Not, on the Neck.” In this 13-minute act, reporter Chana Joffe-Walt observes a college sexual assault and consent workshop to find out what undergraduates are being taught and how this contrasts with what male college students have already learned about sex. Consent is key to the workshop, prompting several questions from male participants: “How many times does a woman have to give consent during sex?” “Do I have to keep asking if she seems into it?” “Won’t continuously asking for consent kill the mood?” There are three clear areas that prompt this confusion: (1) Males seem to learn about what women want from other males, (2) males tend to learn about sexual pleasure from pornography, and (3) the baseball analogy frequently used to define sexual levels places sex as a competitive game, with opposing sides, that can be won or lost. Joffe-Walt concludes that the current manner of learning about sex is backwards. Adolescents and teens learn all the wrong things from various unreliable sources and spend the early years of their sexual encounters learning the basics of sex and consent. After listening to the This American Life broadcast, students can then be asked to contemplate what should be learned prior to becoming sexually active, what should be learned at specific age ranges, and what should be learned to comprehend the basics of sex and consent. This broadcast easily facilitates a discussion on consent, respect, body positivity, sexualization, the influence of pornography, and the damage that inaccurate sexual information can cause.
After listening to both acts, students can then flesh out the basics of what children, adolescents, and teens should know and how they should learn about sex and sexuality. When constructing their own sexual education book, students are then well prepared to offer a resource to parents and/or educators that displays mastery of a complex issue. In addition to the creative portion, students can also be asked to justify their creations in a short paper that is designed to not only have students reflect on their work but also understand how theoretical concepts apply to their books. From this perspective, This American Life gives students context for a larger project/assignment while providing them with compelling material to discuss and flesh out complicated issues in a classroom setting.
Similar to This American Life, the book project can be applied to almost any social issue or area in sociology. For example, This American Life “episode 557, Birds & Bees, Act 2. If You See Racism, Say Racism” discusses the issue of explaining race and racism to children. In this 22-minute act, comedian and television host of CNN’s United Shades of America, W. Kamau Bell, reflects on his own experiences with discrimination in an attempt to decipher when he should teach his biracial daughters about racism. During the latter half of the act, Bell interviews Cliff and Kadijah Means, father and daughter, about their own discussions of systemic racism. Kadijah reflects on learning about slavery, brutality, injustice, and inequality from a very young age. Although she admits that she did not always immediately process the information in a way that was entirely healthy (at the age of five she told her church congregation that blacks and whites should not be in contact with one another), knowledge of such complicated and often unspoken issues provided her with a realistic lens to effectively navigate her social world as a black woman. This act can facilitate a classroom conversation surrounding the issue of race at a time when these discussions have become heavily politicized. Likewise, questions such as “How would you approach talking to children about race?” or “At what age should children learn about issues of race and diversity?” can provide for a lively and informative classroom discussion. These questions allow students to move away from their personal opinions about race and racism, instead allowing them to critically evaluate the larger social issue as it effects individual socialization. Instructors can then expand on the “Sex-Ed Story-Time” project by asking students to develop a book that helps parents explain race and racism to their children.
Overall, This American Life is a phenomenal resource that relates to nearly any sociological subject. However, instructors should be aware of two potential weaknesses of the series. First, with over 700 episodes and an average of three acts per episode, there may be too much material to filter through. Although a keyword search feature is available on the This American Life website, it may be difficult for new adapters to find an ideal episode or act for a specific assignment, activity, or project. Second, instructors must be aware of a potential perceived liberal bias by students. For instance, “episode 477, Cops See It Differently, Part 1” and “episode 478, Cops See It Differently, Part 2” is a two-hour-long investigation of police brutality, race relations, and the lack of diversity training available to new officers who may negatively react to suspects based on unconscious racial biases. Although an extremely informative piece of journalism, students may disengage with the material if they feel it is contrary to their own personal beliefs (particularly with hot-button issues) or if they believe their instructor is operating on a liberal agenda. In this case, instructors should be sensitive to their audience and perhaps select episodes that effectively discuss their topic or interest from a more neutral standpoint.