This American Life:455(submission #3)

This American Life is a radio show that NPR has tasked with liming the "quirky facets of Americana." Broadcasted from WBEZ(in chicago), host Ira Glass takes the listener on an hour-long "journalistic non-fiction" trip through... whatever the show's writers find interesting.

I listened to episode 455, which is titled Continental Breakup. In this show, Ira Glass interviews Alex Blumberg, a writer at the blog Planet Money(another NPR affiliate), and attempts to put the credit crisis in Europe into layman's terms. And they do a pretty good job. They take you back to 100 years ago and the euro's inception and bring you through the events that lead up to today's problems. The relationship between France and Germany is perhaps the most interesting part of this episode:

Chana Joffe

Germany no longer wanted to dominate Europe. It wanted the opposite, actually. It wanted to be a team player, a peacemaker. Germany wanted to be the nicest guy at the European table.

Zoe Chace

Of course, France didn't want Germany to dominate either. Germany would always be bigger, more powerful. So France wanted to link its economy to the German economy. That way Germany's strength would be France's strength.

Chana Joffe

And also, a united Europe would be big enough and rich enough to become the world's other superpower and rival the United States, which both countries liked. All this was making a once-poetic dream much more appealing.

Surprisingly, the host and guest host kept my attention through the entirety of the program. I know that's the point, but if you have the slightest interest in economics you should give this a listen.