Hey there, it's Ira. So a year ago, we launched our paid subscription, this American Life Partners, to help fund our show.

The economics of making a podcast had changed so much that we felt like we really had no choice.

And now it's been a year. And I'm here to say two things. One, this has been a huge success.

Life partners now fund nearly 25% of the budget of our program.

People seem to like the bonus episodes or cranking out and the other stuff they get.

All of us here at our show are sincerely grateful to all of you who signed up. Thank you.

And that brings me to the second thing I'm here to say, and that is life partners are 25% of our budget right now.

We needed to be 50%.

That's what's going to protect us from shifts in the economics of podcasting.

50% is our goal.

Here is my brief pitch on why you should sign up.

I'm guessing that if you're a regular or semi-regular listener to our program,

a lot of what you probably like about our show is that we're finding these surprising

stories big and small with feelings and, you know, funny moments and everything else that makes

a good story. The thing that you like is

surprisingly expensive. For every story that you hear, we burn through so many stories

that go nowhere. This very week at our pitch meeting, producers researched and pitched

eight stories. Three we said no to. One, we sent the producer back to get more info. And the four that we'll

have, well, we're going to go out and spend more time and more money on those stories. People will

do interviews, and then we'll just see how interesting they really turn out to be. In the end,

after many hours of work, if two of those four stories end up on the air, that would be amazing.

But that whittling down process, eight stories become five maybes, become two finished

...