Welcome to Home of the Brave. I am in Tasmania of all places. Tasmania is an island,

200 miles south of Australia.

It's a part of Australia.

And I'm near a town called Lancesden.

It's a very beautiful place. The countryside reminds me of Sonoma, California actually, and there are

vineyards here, just not anywhere near as many people. Very nice forests with eucalyptus trees, pine trees. I've seen some

wallabies and I'm told there are platypuses in the pond. If I'm lucky I can see some. I'm here because I was invited to speak about

podcasting at a music festival, the Panama Festival that's held out in the woods.

About 1,200 people are coming, they're going to camp out

and listen to different bands over the weekend, Saturday and Sunday,

and then I'm flying to Stockholm, Sweden where I'm

going to talk about podcasting at a radio conference. So podcasting is just very

popular all around the world now.

And today on the show I'm going to play a story

that was originally broadcast on this American Life

1996 as a way of paying tribute to that program, this American life,

and also serial because I think that the current craze in podcasting is due to Ira Glass and his crew.

They built this huge audience.

Everywhere I go, all around the world, people know those programs and they love them and they just want to talk about

so I feel like I'm riding a wave that those guys created. So thanks guys, guys. I really appreciate it. This story started when Elise Spiegel

one of the first producers that this American Life called

and said they were working on a show called Get Over It,

...