New location for This American Life Mp3s
Summary: The episodes can be found by going here:
http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/jomamashouse/ismymamashouse/EPISODENUMBER.mp3
Up until mid 2006, This American Life (a popular and awesome radio show on NPR) had "streaming" mp3 files of their archived shows on their website. They had struck a deal with iTunes/Audible.com to sell the shows for download - so they didn't have any great incentive to make free podcasts/.xml feeds available.
Then some enterprising Internet user created an unofficial .xml feed of their archived shows, so that you could download the "streaming" mp3 files to your ipod. It's worth noting of course, that it's almost impossible to make a mp3 file streaming only. All you can do, is make it difficult to download.
And so, for much of 2006, you could either manually download the shows from this address (http://audio.wbez.org/tal/SHOWNUMBER.mp3), which no longer works, or you could use the ultra-nifty unofficial podcast (http://www.redjar.org/radio/tal/archive/).
This American Life's lawyers (or someone there) didn't seem to like this, and sent the podcast guy a cease and desist letter. Stop it, or else. While his unofficial podcast feed went down, their directory structure/naming scheme persisted, and so savvy Internet users were still able to download all the old TAL eposides with a few issues of the "wget" command.
In October of 2006, This American Life announces that they're going to offer free podcasts of their 2 most recent shows. All the old shows will still be available for free, streaming online, or for podcast purchase from the Itunes store/Audible.com
It seemed like a happy compromise.
The only problem was, in the process of doing this, they replaced their streaming mp3 links with a sneaky flash plugin - which made is particularly difficult to figure out where the files are kept - at least by doing a "view source" in the browser...
Today, I wanted to load up my ipod (since I'm flying to New Jersey later) with the TAL episodes that I missed over Xmas... the old method of using 'wget' didn't work, so I fired up wireshark - a packet sniffer - and discovered that TAL has moved to a new directory structure..
I'm happy to share this useful tidbit of info.
This American Life episodes may now be downloaded at http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/jomamashouse/ismymamashouse/
EPISODENUMBER.mp3
Clearly, someone over there has a sense of humor.
29 comments:
it restores my faith in america that someone is working so hard to access these radio shows. well done.
never heard of this show but now i am sort of hooked. Thanks.
Thanks for the link--but is this different than grabbing the free podcast via iTunes? (http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewArtist?id=181471774&forceArtistPage=1)
thanks, this is great.
Hey, public radio ought to belong to the public, and information wants to be free.
fuck'em lawyers.
wow i love you man ... great work. peeves me no end for ages that you can't go and get an older show. have an 8 hour road trip (one way) i'm making and now i can get my tal fix all the way there and back if i want!
just want to say thanks!
so can i somehow save these quicktime episodes to my itunes library?
thanks there -- it's August already and the link formulation still works!
Thanks!
thanks!
http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/jomamashouse/ismymamashouse/188.mp3
Awesome! Thank you, this still works!jf
Sorry about my ignorance, but the thing starts playing when I paste in the link and enter the relevant episode number. What do I do to save it?
To the guy above me: simply go to File -> Save Page As
This works in firefox, anyway.
thanks a bunch!
Thanks! Still works 6/14/08.
Thanks a million. I tried time and again to sift through the page source. I never thought of sniffing out the packets. Good work!
oh my gosh thank you so much for the info about the "this american life" website. i just found out about this show from a friend and now i'm hooked.
You're the best! Thanks! I'm going to share this with people who otherwise would not have listened to public radio.
Still working at of 9/10 - Thanks!
still works 10/12/08
You da man! Thanks! (Worked 10/24)
worked 12/09/08
Worked 2/19/08. Thx
Worked on 3/11/09
Question: I saved the MPEG to my Desktop...how do I get it into itunes so that I can put it on my ipod. Or, is there another way to get it on the ipod?
Didn't work on 5/6/09. :( Unless I'm doing something wrong...
not working 5-22-09 :(
correction: it seems to work for older episodes, but not the current one..
Not working June 2, 2009
Worked fine for me on 6/9/09 using Foxfire. Thanks!
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