I occasionally listen to this podcast called ‘This American Life’. It’s an audio format, and a very popular podcast in the state. As far as I know, it always ranks top in the podcast chart there. They release their one-hour long episode every week, and one-hour is not short at all, right? But the stories they come up with every week are very interesting, and sometimes, inspiring. What I like about this podcast is that they’re not really trying to teach or inspire listeners, but many times deliver unique messages. I find it very helpful for english learners like us, but it’s somewhat challenging as the speakers are speaking real native, real-life American English. And especially the host of this podcast speaks extremely fast, and murmurs a lot, making things harder. Well, it’s quite tough at least for me. But I’m sure you would also find it very interesting and useful, picking up lots of real-life expressions. The hardest part is that the host is speaking too fast but other than that, you’re gonna love it.

I’m halfway through this week’s episode now, and the first story that I listened to was about a Korean-American thief. He was addicted to gambling, and started stealing money from shops to get money for gambling. In the daytime, he was being kind to everyone, always put together, and looked very hard-working. But at night, he turned into a spider man, breaking into many shops and stealing money from their safe. He got caught by the police finally, confessed everything he did, and served some time in prison. After being released, he tried very hard to turn over a new leaf but it just didn’t work out so well. You know, addiction is something that you can’t really control many times. He fell into that vicious cycle of stealing money and gambling with that money. Interestingly enough, he was really good at all this stealing thing. He became very famous among police for his great skill of intruding buildings, stealing money, and escaping without ever being noticed.

Well, should I be proud, as a Korean, of the fact that he is so brilliant anyway? That was my first thought when I heard this episode, honestly. So, this podcast goes this way. It doesn’t really try to extract some inspiring messages or what not, but just comes up with interesting stories every week. And the real people who have been through those events and incidents came out and tell you their stories, in their own voices. And this week’s episode is so far so good to me, since the Korean-American, the thief, and his friend speak good english. I’m going to listen to the rest of the episode on my way home