This American Life

For the last few weeks, I've been hooked on listening to the popular radio show, This American Life. For those of you who don't know, it's an hour-long show featuring stories (usually true, sometimes fiction) revolving around a certain theme. The stories are usually told by writers or reporters, and are always worth listening to no matter what the theme is. It's not centered around be American necessarily, it just captures stories from all walks of life, which happen to be in America. I tend to listen to them in the morning when I'm just getting started, during breakfast, etc. You can listen to past episodes for free on their website, so I've been taking advantage of that. If you go under favorites, you can hear some of the best ones too. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/
You can also hear it on NPR, though I'm not sure when necessarily. I have one student who is pretty advanced, so I will be recommending her to listen to things like this online, as it will help her improve her listening and real-world vocabulary. She already does some translating, so I think it will be a good next step, as well as a window into American culture.