How to download old This American Life episodes as MP3s
Once upon a time, you could download old episodes of This American Life by grabbing MP3 file locations from the M3U files posted on their website. The MP3 files lived here:
http://audio.wbez.org/tal/SHOWNUMBER.mp3
But that stopped working.
And these days, though you can still listen to TAL archives, downloading them has become a bit trickier because the shows are hidden behind a flash player. But, that flash player is still pointing to an actual downloadable MP3, and Christopher Soghoian has figured out where they live:
http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/jomamashouse/ismymamashouse/SHOWNUMBER.mp3
Come on… that directory structure is pretty hilarious.
Replace SHOWNUMBER with the episode number (338 for example), and you’re good to go.
I just subscribe to the podcast.
Done. And done.
bz
1 Aug 08 at 8:53 am
Buzz,
Absolutely, subscribing to the podcast works. But the podcast only contains the most recent episode. So if you’re looking for an old episode, you’re out of luck.
-dan
Dan Misener
1 Aug 08 at 4:35 pm
Thank you!
Lindsey
10 Sep 08 at 12:29 pm
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH THAT URL!!!!!!!!!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
also how did you get it out of the flash player, do tell
anton
6 Oct 08 at 9:32 pm
But how do I save it to the computer?
lacie
9 Nov 08 at 9:38 pm
@lacie — in Firefox, File -> Save Page As…
dmisener
10 Nov 08 at 8:06 am