This American Life "Accidental Documentaries"

I listened to the "Accidental Documentaries" episode of This American Life, which aired all the way back in 1996! I decided to look beyond the "favorites" and search by category instead, and this caught my eye. This episode seems to be a bit different from others because it is constructed from previously and unprofessionally recorded material.

Ira Glass states in the beginning of the episode that a good recording comes from people who are so used to being recorded that they are almost bored with it. He says that comfort is key, that people need to be comfortable around the person who is recording. I automatically agreed because I have already experienced this while interviewing and following.

What Ira said also made me think about my experience recording my friends a couple weeks ago. After I recorded some needed material one night, I sat around with a few close friends in my room, drinking beers as they spoke into the microphones while I recorded. They talked about their days, pretended to be radio personalities, put on different voices, and generally joked around. By only recording a few minutes of nonsense, I felt like it was the most personally close thing that I had recorded all day, and I saved it on my computer. To me, it is significant.

Which is what made this whole episode so special. There is a family recording messages to their son who is away at college. It made me miss my family so much I swear I could feel my heart sinking down into the depths of my stomach. Today is my father's birthday, and the more I listened, the more each story dealt with fatherhood. The way fatherhood is portrayed in this format comes across so much more personally specific than interviews in a studio. Glass plays clips of his father when he himself was a radio personality in his 20's, providing his own thoughts and opinions throughout. He also gets his father on the phone to talk about his experiences. We only hear commercial radio speaking, but with Ira and his father's commentary, it becomes so much more.

To wrap up, maybe this was not the "traditional" This American Life episode makeup. Yes, it still had a prologue and three acts, but the source material was different. Regardless, it worked. And I felt comforted by the old recordings, and moved by the relationships beneath the voices.