"This American Life", by Ira Glass, NPR

In Seattle, KUOW, 94.9 runs "This American Life" on Friday night at 8pm, and again on Saturday at noon. Each show has a theme. Glass talks about the theme a bit, but most of the show is people talking about their own experiences. Very intense stuff.

I was most impressed by the episode entitled "Compulsive Liars". Several people talked about friendships or closer relationships with people who lied nearly all the time. I can still hear the woman who said repeatedly, "But I think he really did love me," as she struggled to find something true in her failed marriage. The guy who talked about a college roommate was much less upset, but no less confused. Most of us can accept that people don't always tell the truth, but when it seems like another person can't be honest, that rips the foundation out from under us. We are lost. We don't know what to make of anything that's said or done.

I think the funniest episode was "Fiasco!" Those poor folks trying to do a production of Peter Pan just had everything going against them.

Tonight's episode (3/6/98) was entitled, "Monogamy and Its Discontents". Since I'm not monogamous, I was real interested to hear what Glass would do with this theme. Luke and I ceased our endless keyboard pounding to listen while we ate dinner.

The first bit was about a monogamous woman who got a big crush on a guy. I was struck by how unsettling an attraction would feel if you were serious about your monogamous commitment. You might not even notice the feeling until it got intense, because part of how you shut off attraction is simply by not thinking about it. Maybe that's why monogamously coupled people have such a bad rep among us non-monogamous folks -- once an attraction overcomes the main barrier, sometimes it is "Flame on!" with no serious consideration of consequences.

Another interesting bit was Dan Savage talking a study of long-term couples. A large sample was interviewed over the course of twenty years, and there was no difference in survival rate between non-monogamous couples and monogamous ones. He also said their agreements weren't just experiments, they stuck with them throughout the course of the relationship. Interesting as a refutation of the, "It's just a phase," reaction, but what's the other side of such a statistic? Can you say that couples who try to change agreements don't tend to last?

I know enough about statistics to realize this suggestion can't be stated as a conclusion without examining the numbers, and I don't have access to them. However, I can feel why it might be a serious upheaval in a relationship to change such a core agreement. All involved would have to be real well tuned to their reptile brain, or real lucky, to make a change like that work.

One way or another, most of Glass's shows affect me like that -- I start thinking about all kinds of things, sometimes from a new point of view. I think this radio series is literally great. Jane Emily says, "Check it out." The "This American Life" web page has audio clips for most of them, starting roughly a week after air time. Here's a list of my current favorites:

• Monogamy and Its Discontents
• Compulsive Liars
• Supposed To Die
• Fiasco
• Jobs That Take Over Your Life
• Sissies