This American Life App Reviews

Once again, TAL has gone above and beyond. An app which unfolds almost gracefully in its effortlessness.

Listening to all the old episodes on my google home, Apple home pod, or Alexa enabled devices would be swell!

Unless I cannot find it, there seems to be no way to build a queue of episodes to play. This is how I use my other podcast app to not mess with my phone while driving/ cleaning/ working out etc. I’ve had to actually pull off and park somewhere, get my phone out and put another podcast on. I know, first world problems but still. It’s an option that exists on plenty of free podcast apps! Other than that, the app works good for me

The app could be so much better if it allowed for listening when the screen is not activated. When the screen goes to sleep mode, the broadcast stops. Keeping the screen engaged during an entire broadcast just kills the battery of my phone.

I download an episode, get on an airplane, airline mode, and I cannot play the episode. Data needed to play a downloaded episode. What’s the point of a podcast then???

Currently the app is very very wonky. It’s not playing anything other than the current episode. Other than that there is either no response at all when I hit play or it seems to start to load and then a pop-up saying “The server cannot be reached please try again later.” For context this happens whether I use my WiFi or data. Also, the streaming/live has never worked. Today’s rating would be zero stars but I have enjoyed using the app in the past so I’m giving it a 3. PS: have tried uninstalling/reinstalling and result is the same.

Please just post ALL episodes Apple Podcasts like every other podcast. I would love share my favorite podcasts with people that have never heard of TAL. Unfortunately I can’t do this with the TAL app because it sends them to the website which doesn’t work well with CarPlay, doesn’t save my place, doesn’t do well with restarting where I left off, doesn’t allow me to download, doesn’t synchronize across devices or the hundreds of other features that are built into the Apple Podcasts App.

#641 “The Walls”. It appears to only episode that won’t play. This is so incredibly frustrating. If I can play any episode, I’d really like to play this episode.

So of course I love TAL. I look forward to it all week and it makes my commute very enjoyable. The thing is, of course I almost never listen to a single episode all at once, I listen while I’m driving so I stop it when I get out of the car and resume where I left off when I get back. The iPhone podcast app has never had a problem saving my place and immediately picking up where I left off once I start my car again. This app though? It happens only about half the time, sometimes the episode will resume as normal, and sometimes it resets to the beginning. It’s of course really frustrating when that happens, because then I have to scroll around and listen for the point where I left off. It’s a hassle. It’s the only problem I have with this app and if they fix it I will update my review to five stars. Until then, I’m going back to listening to TAL on the podcast app.

Yet another update, 05/19: As you might be able to tell, I have used this app for a while. For months now, it has been the best experience so far. The only trouble I run in to now is occasionally losing my place on a given episode. Infrequent enough I barely notice. Thank you for getting back on top of stability! Update: I was stoked when I saw the redesign, and it is definitely better, but it is still a very buggy experience. Downloading apps don’t stay downloaded and it has difficulty handling which ones are already listened to. It also loses my place in the episode. Usable but frustrating. The only hope I have is that they keep updating. Update: THANK YOU FOR THE UPDATE! Original review: TAL is one of my favorite podcasts, and so I jumped at the chance to get a $3 app to hear them all. I was disappointed to find that after owning it for over two years, and several updates, it's still full of bugs. 1. New episodes are missing the thumbnail. It sounds small, but it affects the experience more than I would have thought. [This seems to have been fixed] 2. You can only do the "10-second rewind" inside the app, not on the lock screen or from the control center. 3. There is no "10-second fast-forward". I find it needful from time to time. It's hard to scrub 60 minutes of content on a phone. 4. Some episodes won't play at all after downloaded. I have found some issues can get resolved by deleting and redownloading, but, of course, all of the "heard it" progress is lost. I am reticent to do that. I feel like I have encountered more issues than this, but these are the main ones. Please fix! Brand New Issue: 01/17 After backing up and restoring my iPhone from a 6 to a 7, the downloaded episodes I had previously would not play at all, and when attempting to delete, would strangely remind me that I could only download 5 episodes and needed to delete before downloading more. I eventually decided to delete and redownload, but upon opening, found that no episodes would display newer than May 2014, and the "Recently Aired" seems to also date from this time. It does seem that the newer episodes can be searched, though. Another update: 08/17 I can't even keep up with the issues I have anymore. Updates are few and far between and the app is more unstable than anything. Somebody needs to do a radio show about this app.

As much as I love the show, and I loooove This American Life, the app is only okay. It’s slow, and laggy, and sometimes set up a bit weirdly, but it definitely gets the job done. Still the best couple bucks I’ve ever spent 🙏❤️

I love this American Life but the app doesn’t function all that well. I can go into detail but I’m sure the apps creators know of the problems.....they should fix them.

Accidentally clicked play for a romance story. App doesn’t respond to clicks to play anything else and there seems to be no means to simply clear the playlist. Love story, or app, from hell ;-(

App is very buggy and frustrating. Sometimes it will continue to play when I turn my screen off and other times, once I leave the screen to save battery the episode stops playing.

I absolutely love the content on This American Life. The stories they tell are informative and interesting and you always come out learning something new. However, app has bugs that make the listening experience subpar. The episodes will never pause. I will press the play/pause button if I want to take a break and the button will switch from ⏸ to ▶️ but the podcast will continue playing. No matter how many times I click the button, the episode will keep going. I have to physically clear out of the app to make it stop playing and then my place in the episode gets lost. Please please fix this bug so I can actually enjoy listening to the podcasts!!

The app works great. It saves where I stopped and works with the iPhone headset buttons. It works with my wireless iPhone compatible earbud buttons. It works when I am using another app on the phone. Should have bought this from day one. Much better than the free website version.

I have owned this app for many years and have enjoyed, but lately I started listening again and the app keeps losing my place and starting the show over from the beginning every time. that’s a pretty big error. When it doesn’t start over from the beginning it will just stop in the middle of the story and I have to close it out and re-open it.

This app serves its purpose which is easy access to all TAL podcasts. However, there are some listening glitches that I hope will be sorted out in the near future. I pause and play often when I’m using this app and the app sometimes won’t load or play the podcast I was on unless I close out of the app completely and reopen the app again. Sort of like turning it on and off. Then, today I encountered another listening glitch. If I press pause on the lock screen or the small listening bar at the bottom of the app, the podcast keeps playing. This is embarrassing because I unplugged my earphones and the podcast wouldn’t stop playing. Everyone in the quiet classroom I was in heard me listening to one of the crime scene episodes. My solution was turning my volume down all the way. This hasn’t been an isolated incident. I’m leaving this review because it has happened three times now in the same day. The most recent time I could only pause the podcast if I went into the app, opened up the podcast episode’s page and paused it there. Hoping the app developers can work this out soon because I paid money for this app!!!

I so wanted to listen to This American Life’s entire archives like I’ve done with Radiolab, but I would go mad having to scroll to my progress point and click play on each individual episode 660+ times! I made it through the frustration of having to buy your dedicated app, okay, you’ve made one of the great, most influential podcasts. But to leave out such a basic feature for an archive so large is really disappointing.

My commute is about 10 -15 minutes, and For some reason I can’t pause, close the app, and come back later and pick up where I left off. Every time it starts me back at the beginning and I have to scrub my way through to remember where I left off. It’s really annoying and not something I would expect from a paid app.

I love TAL and would really enjoy listening to it, but the app simply does not work for me. I click play, nothing happens. I clink download, hoping that might work, nothing happens. I click the episode, it takes me to a page with a blue box and a description, a mention of cookies, but no play button. I would’ve gladly paid $5.99 for an app that works. As it stands, I paid for an app that just sits on my phone doing nothing but taking up space. Also, I really wish they’d bring back the now playing channel. It was fun to have a TAL dedicated radio on my phone. Please fix this app.

I really wanted to like this app because I love the show, however the episodes randomly pause and then I cannot get them to play again. This is really annoying especially because this is a paid app.

If I doesn’t stay on the screen of the app, it doesn’t work. The show stops playing. A funny thing is it works sometimes lol Please fix this!

App crashes any time you try to open the archives. Disappointing.

I’d been using the app for a few years with minimal problems — until today. I updated the app, and now, for the first time, it refuses to play when the phone sleeps or another app is opened, making it useless. The app will play an episode for 30 seconds, then the screen goes dark, and the app stops. Even returning to the home-screen stops the audio. Don’t update.

Does anyone have recommendations for amazing episodes? I’m new to this app and I’m finding that I can also get it for free on the Podcast app on the iPhone. Anyways, not their fault, just wish I would have known to at least try it out before purchasing the whole app as I’m not a big fan right now.

I downloaded the TAL app because I wanted to binge listen after discovering what an amazing, awesome radio show it is. The app was not great, but if I recall correctly, I didn't pay for it; the iteration I first got was freemium and I didn't opt to pay. It was sort of buggy and just not very user friendly so I didn't have a strong inclination to use it, deleted it, in fact. Then TAL reduced its RSS feed to only the five most recent episodes so I looked into re-downloading the app. This time, it was pay only but not so great a price that I thought I'd feel ripped off if it was buggy. I was thoroughly surprised to see that they had totally revamped it and it was now pleasantly user friendly, with a beautiful UI to boot. I really don't understand the current bad reviews. I have an iPhone 6s with iOS 11 and it works flawlessly. It's EASY to navigate back to the "Home" page by tapping "Episodes" permanently at the bottom, where every episode is listed in chronological order from the most recent. You can download an episode from any page then tap the Downloads icon (permanently at the bottom) and it takes you to all your downloaded episodes. Yes, in the Recommended section, sometimes it's only one act of a whole episode—because the recommender wanted to recommend that single part. Go with the flow a little, people. Everything that people complain about in the dedicated app of my other favorite radio show, Radiolab, exists and works in the TAL app. You can mark episodes listened, read descriptions of the episodes, stay where you left off listening, and though I haven't used this function, you can snip audio bits directly out of an episode and embed it in other media—because they so strongly believe in the power of sharing their work that they grant you blanket copyright privileges. All this on top of having full, unfettered access to 600+ episodes of one of the greatest radio shows of the 20th and 21st centuries.

I love this American life and was excited at the prospect of having their entire archive accessible from my phone but the app keep glitching. It’ll let me listen to almost an entire episode but when there’s 10-20 min left it stop playing and refuses to let me download the episode. Not being able to hear the end of a story I’m so interested in is frustrating

Love this content, dearly, and use the app frequently but it is a buggy, glitchy mess. There isn’t another option for accessing this content aside from purchasing podcasts online or listening to them as they are released via an app like Stitcher, but that doesn’t give you access to the whole library. At $5, the app isn’t cheap but is worth it for the ability to listen to anything in the archive, but COME ON GUYS! You need a new developer. There are a multitude of issues, including freezing, buttons not responding, the app needing to be force quit and restarted in order to keep it from pausing the podcast every time my phone goes into lock mode. I also have to remember where I was in the podcast because if I exit the app before it’s done, it doesn’t hold my place and I have to scrub through to get to where I was. Come on Ira Glass, pull it together man and in invest in a better developer, please.

Brilliant podcast. Miserable app. Glitches include: labeling newer episodes as ‘heard’ default to ‘unheard,’; takes a few tries to continue playback with the screen on sleep mode; the pause function sometimes fails; in general, clunky home and UI. Would love a feature where you can make personal playlists, too, where playback of an episode begins as the previous one ends. Seems like they forgot basic stuff, which is a real shame.

Please fix episode syncing. Many times I am listening to an episode and the time to which I have listened doesn’t save. This makes me need to manually scrub through to get back to where I left off. 5 stars otherwise.

There should be a way for you to listen to episodes in a play queue. Other than that great app

I don’t know if it is the app or something with this phone, but whenever this app is not on display on the screen, it stopped playing. Other podcast and music apps do not do this on my phone. It’s obviously does not work for passive listening. Somebody fix this please!

This app is horrible. It usually doesn’t stop when I push pause and I often have to shut down the whole app when I need it to stop. I also don’t like the format, which makes it cumbersome to listen to old episodes (so much scrolling). But what can I do? I want to listen!

I really love This American Life. It’s my favorite podcast and makes any mundane activity 10 times better. However, the only reason I paid for this app was to be able to download episodes and hear them on flights (I fly a lot). The app doesn’t play any of my downloaded episodes when I’m offline! Come on... I would have just stuck to the website if I knew that the app wouldn’t let me listen while offline. Pretty upset.

This app is so buggy. Nothing works as intended. The old app was much much better and more user friendly. I’m sorry but whoever designed this new app really ruined it for a lot of people.

I LOVE This American Life, but the app only works about 50% of the time. It’s really frustrating.

I absolutely love TAL. But the audio will just stop all of a sudden, while the episode is still playing. So then I have to rewind the episode and then play this game of pressing play and pause to get it to start playing audio again. Also, if I disconnect the earbuds, the episode starts playing aloud instead of staying paused. It’s really annoying and the app needs to be updated.

Love love love the show but come on, get it together. The most minimal standards and features don’t work -or are just plain wrong. Example: go to recommended lists, say David K’s. The stories he recommended are hyperlinks but NOTHING happens when you click on them. So you do the drudgery of getting back to the main menu ( simpler said than done) to do a search and nothing. David lists “unbreaking the bank” which is either unavailable, does not exist or is named something else. The search results give another show name, not what I wanted (scenes from a recession). In this case, I had to go to my desktop where I discovered the recommendation was a particular segment of “scenes from a recession”. It would have been nice to know that. Keep in mind that your fans do not know the show as well as TAL staff. This is but one tiny beef. I love this show and only bought the app to support TAL but it is easier to access episodes with the browser on your phone. Fix this!

The most current version stops playing if I leave the app 😕

I loved this app until they changed something...now I can only listen to programs from 2014 and earlier. This is not interesting to me.

Well this app is so frustrating I can’t believe I paid for it. I never pay for apps. While listening I was very annoyed to find that it stops playing when your phone goes into lock mode. I was literally driving down the road and every few minutes have to unlock my phone screen for it to start playing again. Also won’t start playing where you left off so I’ve actually given up listening on this app for now. I wish people would give this a one star and not say we’ll I’ll give it 5 stars because it’s a great show but a horrible app. We all know it’s a great show. People who don’t read reviews first will download the app and pay because it says 4 stars which is a good rating for an app. I’ve been a huge fan of the show for years and I would expect more from their app. :(

Had an issue at first with downloading, once I brought it to attention it was fixed in minutes! I could not be happier! My addiction to This American Life just got so much easier! Thank you!

I paid $2.99 and can't download episodes or search for archived ones

What is the point of an audio app that stops playing when the phone screen sleeps? The original app was awful. I was pretty excited when I stumbled on an upgrade. It’s a nice app; it’s an improvement. Except I have to fiddle with my phone to keep listening. Which defeats the purpose of audio entertainment.

I listened to a few newer episodes without problem but the older ones seems to stop playing when my phone’s screen goes to sleep. Only plays when I’ve entered security code.

Ever since the last upgrade this app fails all the time. It freezes, takes forever to download and then the download doesn’t show up under the tab. So disappointed. I’ve been listening to this app for years and it’s honestly been fine. Problems started with last update. Sure wish they would fix all the bugs from the last update.

This seems to be a problem forever with your apps. The last app crash constantly and this redesign, while stable, has to be one of the worst UI on the App Store. It’s completely confusing and nonsensical and lay out and navigation. I’ve gone out of my way to write this review because I know you can do better. Love your show. I’ll put up with this to listen but hope you will invest in a new UI That’s less cluttered, clean, and simple.

how bad this app is. I’m not even going to bother listing all the things wrong since it would take me longer than the developers spent trying to make a quality app. I don’t think you could design an app that functioned worse if you set out to do so. I’ve gone through several versions since it’s release and all have had some amount of totally unacceptable bugs. Such a shame since TAL is a great broadcast. I’ll just rely on the podcast and forego access to all episodes. Not worth the headache.

Update: I was stoked when I saw the redesign, and it is definitely better, but it is still a very buggy experience. Downloading apps don’t stay downloaded and it has difficulty handling which ones are already listened to. It also loses my place in the episode. Usable but frustrating. The only hope I have is that they keep updating. Update: THANK YOU FOR THE UPDATE! Original review: TAL is one of my favorite podcasts, and so I jumped at the chance to get a $3 app to hear them all. I was disappointed to find that after owning it for over two years, and several updates, it's still full of bugs. 1. New episodes are missing the thumbnail. It sounds small, but it affects the experience more than I would have thought. [This seems to have been fixed] 2. You can only do the "10-second rewind" inside the app, not on the lock screen or from the control center. 3. There is no "10-second fast-forward". I find it needful from time to time. It's hard to scrub 60 minutes of content on a phone. 4. Some episodes won't play at all after downloaded. I have found some issues can get resolved by deleting and redownloading, but, of course, all of the "heard it" progress is lost. I am reticent to do that. I feel like I have encountered more issues than this, but these are the main ones. Please fix! Brand New Issue: 01/17 After backing up and restoring my iPhone from a 6 to a 7, the downloaded episodes I had previously would not play at all, and when attempting to delete, would strangely remind me that I could only download 5 episodes and needed to delete before downloading more. I eventually decided to delete and redownload, but upon opening, found that no episodes would display newer than May 2014, and the "Recently Aired" seems to also date from this time. It does seem that the newer episodes can be searched, though. Another update: 08/17 I can't even keep up with the issues I have anymore. Updates are few and far between and the app is more unstable than anything. Somebody needs to do a radio show about this app.

Just updated the app. I choose an episode, tap play, and hear only 20 seconds or so because as soon as the screen darkens, the sound fades away. If I wake up the phone and go back to the app, the episode starts again. Same thing happens if I minimize the app to check email or something. The sound just fades out. Worst podcast app ever.

With this most recent update (I think) you now have to have the app open and the phone awake to listen to episodes. If I switch to another app to do something else or my phone falls asleep, the playback stops.

I like the access and have used this app for years and years, but I frequently can’t get the episodes to play on the redesigned app.

Love this podcast and the idea of this app BUT it doesn’t work well/consistently. For no reason it will just pause or crash completely. I have to restart the app and figure out where I left off a lot. Also, it doesn’t sync with other devices. So if you listen to an episode of a show on your phone and mark is as listen-to, it doesn’t do so on other devices so not great for multiple devices. Fix these issues and it’s golden. Otherwise, not worth the purchase. Just listen using other podcast streaming apps because this one is beyond frustrating. Still getting annoyed with crashed in May 2018. Wish you would do something about this!

The latest update didn’t seem to do anything but cause more bugs. New episodes don’t show up on the main page and I can’t download any episodes!

New app is awesome! Thanks!!

The best show with the worst app. Newest update today deleted all my saved downloads and removed my hundreds of checked marked episodes as well. Just spend some money and get better developers please. The reviews of the Android version are just as bad. One man teams for no name apps run better than this app.

I am a long-time fan of this American life, so I was looking forward to mobile access to archival episodes. However, I wish they could have tried to do less with the app, and done it more reliably. There are many bugs that remain unaddressed since the initial release, and they impact my experience enough that I’ve started listening to other podcasts or just waiting for the weekly release of new this American life episodes, so that I can use the regular iTunes podcast app (which isn’t great, either). A sample list of current bugs: - a random episode I have listened to in the past queues instead of the one I just paused, if I minimize the app and then bring it back up - the list of episodes I’ve downloaded won’t load without LTE or Wi-Fi - all of my checked “listened” marks disappeared after the most recent update - the play tracker skips backward in the episode sometimes (but not always!) if I minimize the app and bring it back up

I love This American Life and I look forward to hearing it every week so I bought this app. The programs and episode are still awesome but this app is so full of bugs that it’s infuriating!

It serves its purpose of listening to the archives. I dig it.

Consider the money you spend on this app a donation to public radio, I guess. Otherwise you just wasted $2.99. I bought it because I wanted to download old episodes for offline listening. The download player is very buggy. You can't play episodes more than once. The player freezes or seems to get stuck, or seems to be trying to play multiple episodes. I don't know, because I'm not a coder, and apparently neither are the people who developed this app.

I have been traveling and downloaded a lot of episodes to listen to on the plane. But when I got on the plane, the downloaded episodes wouldn’t play. I also experienced this problem in other countries where I didn’t have data or WiFi.

The app stops playing when my phone locks. So if I want to listen, I need to continuously unlock my phone, lose battery and be unable to use phone for anything else. Disappointing.

The latest version requires ios11. I'm still running the older version of this app on ios10 and won't be upgrading to ios11 because my phone is an older phone. Recently the content stopped getting new episodes. It would be nice if the older version still works.

I love everything about this app, EXCEPT, that when I download an episode to listen to without wi-fi, I can only listen to the episode while my phone screen is unlocked... It’s bizarre, and if TAL can fix this, the app would be perfect!

What search function?

Love this podcast and the idea of this app BUT it doesn’t work well/consistently. For no reason it will just pause or crash completely. I have to restart the app and figure out where I left off a lot. Also, it doesn’t sync with other devices. So if you listen to an episode of a show on your phone and mark is as listen-to, it doesn’t do so on other devices so not great for multiple devices. Fix these issues and it’s golden. Otherwise, not worth the purchase. Just listen using other podcast streaming apps because this one is beyond frustrating.

I love TAL and the stories— not my complaint. This app is buggy. For me, if I have my google maps directions running it will stop the sound anytime it says a direction and then never pick up again unless I manually press play. The ones I am listening to don’t remember me either. Should be able to log in or something so user data is saved. There definitely is room for improvement.

Another annoyance: If you use TAL while using GPS with iPhone Maps, it will stop your TAL episode and not resume! Ugh. I wasn’t crazy about podcast and was hoping the actual app would be better. Back to the podcast. —————— While I love TAL, there are some issues with the app: 1) The upgrade got rid of all my bookmarks. 2) When you bookmark an episode while in that episode it does NOT mark it bookmarked when looking at the list of episodes. So then you bookmark it again, but it then removes it from the bookmarked list. 3) I changed settings so I saw oldest to newest. But it doesn’t change a single thing. It still lists them all newest to oldest.

I put up with the poor quality of the original app as long as I could then gave up and missed being able to access old episodes more easily (when the app worked, of course.) So, I was thrilled to hear Ira say the app had been revamped. I have a 5 day old iPhone and updated the app to find a fresh, new look and better controls- and the same bugs. It freezes up on me constantly. If I pause and then come back an hour later it’s frozen and won’t play. I have to k*** the app and half the time that works but it starts the episode over and I lose my spot. This is with the most recent episode, by the way- not an archived one. Please, please, fix this thing. Please. Thank you.

The betrayal I feel could be the focus of a TAL show. I loved you TAL. Ira told me to get the app. I believed him. I so wish I hadn’t paid for this c***** app. It is a terrible way to listen to this show. I feel ripped off. Why would you do me so wrong, TAL? ~Coming up, Heather learns to forgive This American Life for doing her wrong after app developers fix all the things that made our app terrible, when we return....~

This is the worst iteration of this app yet. The player is laggy and unresponsive to input. Causes frustration and confusion when trying to listen. Poor communication from app as to what the delay is. Are you buffering? Did you lose connection? Get some more talent on your developer team and fix it!

I hate to write this because of how much I have enjoyed TAL over the years, but here goes: This new app is so full of bugs it’s basically unusable. I tried to listen to the newest show in the car today and no exaggeration here, it stopped around fifty times. Basically every few minutes it just stopped. The buttons do not respond to touch, and I really miss how in the old app you could start a show and still navigate through your phone. It also restarted the show several times and a few times told me that the file of the show was not on the server. I just don’t see myself fighting with this for too much longer. I’m still a fan though. Thank you for listening.

Content? 5 stars. App? Zero stars. If it's not clocking forever then there are play buttons missing and no way to quickly move between episodes. Mostly I spend my time staring at it wondering what it's doing, no clue if my episode will play (spoiler alert, it doesn't.)

The new update had a few glitches at first, but they communicated promptly via email when I reached out and resolved them ASAP. This has always been one of my favorite apps and it continues to be!

The update to the app was much needed. If they can add in chrome cast support it will be a 7 Star app!! Yes, 7 stars! Ira and team will literally break the record for most stars in the App Store.

I like this American life, but this app is terrible. It has wayyyy too many bugs. If you play it without pausing it’s fine, but pause it and good luck playing it again

If you're going to charge for an app at least make one that works! Please fix the bugs!!!

Edit: App has been redesigned and works beautifully now. Do yourself a favor and don't get this app. Episodes past 2014 unavailable. Looks like it has been abandoned. Not sure why TRL would allow themselves to be associated with such a shoddy product.

so wish i could downgrade back to the old one!! major problems 1) my downloads keep disappearing without me removing them 2) when i attempt to download one of these episodes again i receive an error that says its already in my downloads, even though the downloads rabbis empty 3) the episode description page with shortcuts to play the different acts is only available with an internet connection - why!?! 4) episodes that are marked as heard and played again have the heard mark removed automatically 5) the search function & tag, contributor, and year filters are completely separated from the bookmarked, heard, and unheard filters. again, why!?! as an avid user of the original app i am really disappointed with this new version. it’s functionality has been compromised for an updated look.

App update is not keeping my place when I pause then try to come back to finish a show.

Love This American Life. App not good. Worked for first two weeks, but now my downloaded list appears empty although it shows I successfully download episodes. After closing and opening later, what I had downloaded is now gone. Download screen either shows “no downloads” or is simply blank white screen. Then, if I attempt to download again, receive “error: episode already downloaded” What gives? Not a fan. Didn’t pay money to not be able to download. Also, would like better if playback could be sped up/ slowed down at varying speeds like one can do in iPhone podcast app.

Has everything I wanted which was all the podcasts without having to stream from their site. That should solve the data usage. But. It never works correctly. The sound quality is not as good as the Apple Podcasts. It has to be restarted if you switch to another episode. So. It does not transition well at all. If you try and run another app, forget about it. If your screen locks. Forget about it. One thing after the other! But. If you can get an episode going without interruption. You’re golden! For $2.99 I expect more functionality. It’s just a bear to use and makes the car ride more difficult!

This app stops playing when my phone goes into sleep or lock mode. No other app does that - even free apps. DO NOT PAY FOR THIS APP.

TAL is by far the best there is at what they do. My love for their unrivaled storytelling is matched only by my disdain for their horrendous app. The 2018 update has essentially rendered it completely unusable. The variety of bugs I experience each and every time I open the app is breathtaking. Hopefully they can find a developer who is even marginally as good at their job as the rest of the staff is at theirs.

I will pay you if you stop wasting money and time on your own app. Just do everything in the Apple podcasts app. I absolutely love the show and have listened to every single episode. I just wish you stop messing with technology and reinventing what everyone else already does quite well (like a native podcasting app that is built into iOS). Allow *ALL* shows to be downloaded for free like everyone does and accept my money as donations. The worst part is that I constantly want to send a link to an episode to someone who’s never heard of TAL and if I want send them a cool show like NUMMI.. 1. I have to go find it on the TAL website, 2. but they can’t use the native podcasting app because old shows are not available in podcasts 3. So I send them a link the website 4. which doesn’t keep your place or do anything near as good as native podcasting app (e.g. playback performance, downloading, etc.). Lather, rinse and repeat #Fail #PleaseStop

Love the show, but the app is so buggy I’ve had to give up using it. It constantly stalls, freezes, and sometimes stops playing if my screen goes dark. I’m disappointed because I was really looking forward to listening to some of the older shows that are available on the app!

This doesn’t seem to work well at all. Can’t download episodes, really slow. Acts like it’s playing but not outputting anything. Needs bug fixes bad.

I love TAL, but their app is simply terrible! The app jumps every time I hit downloaded episodes.

So, my iPhone locks itself after a few minutes - which I have set in my settings. However this crazy app ALSO stops playing when the phone locks. So annoying. I couldn’t listen to an episode with tapping the screen constantly to keep the phone active. Also, it absolutely does not save where I left off mid episode. I hate this app.

The title kind of says it all. For some reason it doesn’t update to the newest shows very well or efficiently. Also not being able to scroll through individual episodes is ridiculous. Greatest show, worst app.

Worth the purchase.

Cannot get live stream to work. Used to. Reboots don't help

The material is absolutely amazing. But the functionality is literally the worst of any app I use. I have to restart the actual podcast app due to error maybe once a month. I have to restart the TAL app every single time I want to do anything. If I finish an episode, the titles of the others are gone. That’s a restart. If I pause an episode too long, that’s a restart. It’s the same issue everyone else is complaining about. Why is this not fixed?

This went from buggy but useable to broken. You can’t even save episodes anymore. How has this app not been updated for two years? This app should not be on the App Store in this condition, let alone as a paid app. It’s a shame such a great podcast has such a terrible app. I would gladly pay a reasonably priced yearly subscription if that’s what it takes to get a decent iPhone app. Cmon PLEASE get it together with this.

I never write reviews but I just can’t take it anymore! I’m a huge fan of TAL... but this app is terrible. No matter how many times I update it, it still never saves my progress in each episode... and now with the latest update, it doesn’t work with Apple Car Play. Now I can’t listen to the podcast while using the Maps. Think I’m going to have to finally delete. Please fix!!

App is working well for me. I wish that I could mark episodes and/or stories as favorites.

.. so it really hurts to rate the app so badly, but it’s just pointless for fans of the program. It seems to be geared for people who are only recently discovering the program, so they list all their previous episodes (which may or may not play), staff picks, etc. There really is nothing for regular listeners. Even basics like subscribing, indicating episodes I’ve watched (so I can find ones I’ve missed), my favorite episodes so I can revisit and also share with non listeners interested in certain topics...

Love it!

Please just post ALL episodes Apple Podcasts like every other podcast so I can share my favorite episodes with people that have never heard of TAL. I can’t do this with the app.

Can’t access shows that aired after 2014 in this current app version. Super annoying.

This app is easy to use and contains more than enough. Highly recommend.

Please update this app! 2 years? Come on now.

Worthless. No iPhone X support. Not functional

The app could be so much better if it allowed for listening when the screen is not activated. When the screen goes to sleep mode, the broadcast stops. Keeping the screen engaged during an entire broadcast just kills the battery of my phone.

TAL is still my favorite podcast. I love that they have their own app and it works very well.

Something happened not I can get a show past 2014. Boooooooo!

I get more updated episodes from the free npr app for the latest American Life podcasts. This app was not user friendly and offered poor value.

Love, love, love it.

- can’t see any episodes past 2014 unless I search for them - every time I try to download an episode, it downloads and then the app crashes. WHY IS IT SO HARD TO DOWNLOAD THIS AMERICAN LIFE?? The episodes don’t actually download when you hit “download” on the web browser and they don’t download on the app. I want to be able to download an episode on my phone and listen to it right then, why is it so difficult to do?!

I really love the show and have followed it all of my adult life! Not sure what happened to the live stream it doesn't work anymore which is a real letdown. Please please please update this app!

The app used to work really well and it was the best way to listen to TAL. Now it is really slow, rarely updates and just doesn't work at all. More often than not, I listen through the website now. I wish I could downgrade my purchase. Please fix this app.

This app is useless! You can’t close the screen and keep the program running. Constantly jumps out of the program and you have to go back and find it, then you have to find out where you left off.

Nice content but definitely needs to be smoothed out

Are used to love this app. I’ve loved listening to all the episodes of T AL. Now I can’t listen to anything. I’ve downloaded episodes and so the Apple let me download anymore. I don’t know which episodes I’ve downloaded I can’t find the episodes I’ve downloaded. I’ve deleted the app and reinstalled it and that hasn’t helped. I can’t find any help online. I really think that TAL needs to address this issue.

I've listened to every single episodes of this radio show and love it but the new version of this app is completely unusable. Not only does the app not remember where I left off in a podcast it I say, answer the phone, but it's nearly impossible to scrub. This essentially forces you to listen to an entire episode at once. Minor quip- updating to new version cleared my "listened to"; not an issue for be because I've heard them all. Edit 10/16/2017: had to reinstall app on my phone and now it will not load episodes later than 2014. I was in the middle of listening to an episode from three days ago before reinstalling the app. What gives?

This American Life has been my favorite since the early aughts. Ira Glass is amazing and this iconic show has ushered in the age of podcasts. This app however is not great. The livestream has stopped working. Also, a sleep timer would be great.

The app can be a bit buggy sometimes when saving and deleting shows, but it's generally pretty good and you just have to love the content that This American Life produces.

App hasn't been updated in years and is completely inundated with bugs.

The app needs updates bad! I’ve had this app forever and I love his show but nothing works anymore. Please fix this. It hasn’t had an update in about 2-3 years! Did you forget about your listeners? I’m giving it 2 Stars bc I can at least listen to old shows. But there is nothing new. Very bummed about this!

Love this American Life, so... three stars right off the bat! I’m an Apple CarPlay user however, and listen primarily in my car. If TAL made this CarPlay compatible so I don’t have to fumble with my phone while driving, well... that’d be a five-star worthy effort, wouldn’t it? Yep!

I will pay you if you stop wasting money and time on your own app. Just do everything in the Apple podcasts app. I absolutely love the show and have listened to every single episode. I just wish you stop messing with technology and reinventing what everyone else already does quite well (like a native podcasting app). Allow *ALL* shows to be downloaded for free like everyone does and accept my money as donations. The worst part is that I constantly want to send a link to an episode to someone who’s never heard of TAL and if I want send them a cool show like NUMMI.. 1. I have to go find it on the website, 2. but then they can’t use the native podcasting app because old shows are not available in podcasts 3. So I send them a link the website 4. which doesn’t keep your place or do anything near as good as native podcasting app (e.g. playback performance, downloading, etc.) #Fail

So let me say I love This American Life. I chose to purchase this app because the sales pitch was: buy this app so that you can access the entire TAL archives. Then a week or two in to my purchase they locked out access to the archives. Not sure if it's a bug or not. There are 50-60 available still through staff favorites page etc. but that's not what was advertised. I see there is a live stream to listen to episodes randomly but it doesn't seem to connect. And if I'm going to listen while I have no cell service then I need to download ahead of time which I can't do with the live stream. So what's the deal? Fix the app and get it back to the original idea. Bottom line, I paid money to download the app so that i can listen to my selection from the archives and that doesn't work! UPDATE********** They have redesigned the app and they are back on track. I just started using the new version but it seems to be everything that was promised. Way to go TAL! You heard the criticism and responded with a great update! I love that I can search episodes by different info. For example if my friend says, “hey I was listening to episode 432 and it so crazy!” I can go search ep 432 download and listen. Changing my review to 5 stars!!! Thanks for making a great product!

All the episodes I downloaded for offline playback are gone. Being able to download any episode and mark them as “Heard” once you finish and bookmark episodes is all great. But basically pointless if all of my downloads just disappear.

This may be a little premature because I just updated but I’m already so pleased. I love, love, love TAL. It’s the show that got me into podcasts and while there are others I like, it’s still my favorite. The old app was a pain. The limited downloads and all the bugs were annoying. I also like all the categories. The best thing about TAL is the big archive and how interesting and relevant the stories can be for many years. I even like listening again sometimes so it’s nice to have things organized so you can pick something based on your mood.

Please allow for speeded listening! Some of the guests speak so slowly and it really helps to be able to listen at 1.5x or twice the speed. Alternatively, allow us to sync this app with Apple’s Podcasts app, so we can hear downloaded episodes of TAL in the Podcasts app.

I wanted to like this but if I pause the episode and come back to it later, it doesn’t pick up where I left off. I have to start it from the beginning again.

All I want to do is listen to This American Life but this app doesn’t keep playing when you switch to other apps, or your screen goes black, which it does many times during my commute. Please fix! I just want to listen to your show!!

Thanks! I actually stopped using this app when it was changed a few years ago. This new revision is better than ever - bookmarks and a sleep timer!

I'm a long time listener and a software engineer. This app in its current iteration is a great start but there are so many bugs that need to be resolved before I can regularly use it everyday. I notice when changed from wifi to network connection while listening to an episode that is not downloaded the app would often hang and pause the episode. Sometimes when I play an episode and lock the screen the episode pauses as well. Bookmarking episodes doesn't always bookmark the episode. The app lacks many features such as: Playback speed Playback resume when app closes List of partially listened to episodes Random episode/shuffle feature (from the list of unheard episodes) If all you need from this app is the ability to listen to any episode, it does a great job. If you want more, it doesn't quite hit the mark. I don't regret spending money on the app from the company that has provided me countless hours of quality content. The app has basic functionality but I do hope it improves in feature iterations.

I used this app all the time. Now the app closes and the story stops playing when my home screen goes to sleep. If I want to listen to a whole story I have to change my phone settings just for that story so that my phone stays awake and drains the battery and then change it back. It's also difficult to navigate.

The show is great but this app has a lot of bugs. Worst bug is that the audio stops when the phone is locked, so I need to constantly unlock the phone to keep it going.

Wish I could go back to the old version! The new one won’t even play audio without my phone screen being on and this app being active! Please fix this update!!

This app is terrible. It wasn't updating with new episodes so I tried to delete and reinstall. Now there are no episodes past 2014!!!!!! Want a refund. Update 1/15/17: woohoo new version of App is working great! So happy!! Thank you for fixing it! Update 1/23/2018: ok so the app is good but still some bugs. New episodes aren’t downloading properly to the download list. When I try to download the episode again I get an error saying I already downloaded it even though it isn’t on the list. In addition, the app doesn’t save my place in new episodes when I turn off the app and return at a later time.

Much improved over the old app so far.

I had this app a year or two ago and abandoned it because it was so buggy. When Ira said there was a new app recently, I ran back... only to find the same issues again. TAL itself remains phenomenal, so this isn’t a rating of the radio show. This one star goes right to this app, which has proven itself to be a functional and logical nightmare for the second time. It stops playing and freezes. It doesn’t let you pick up where you left off on an episode if you close the app down, which you have to do a lot, because it freezes. It stops responding out of nowhere. It makes you reapply your search filters every time you open the app. So far, pre-2014 episodes are still accessible... but last time they just disappeared, so I feel like my days with them are numbered. TAL team, PLEASE either fix the app or stop taunting us with it. The promises are what hurts the most! ☹️

This app is unusable now. It randomly stops playing with great frequency and never remembers where it left off when I reopen the app so it’s impossible to safely use it while I drive. It’s unresponsive to the control center that shows up while your phone is locked, and attempting to skip forward or back can cause playback to stop entirely. Even if the episode is downloaded to your phone, switching from Wi-Fi to cellular data (like when you drive away from your house) will interrupt playback. Playback is also stopped if an episode finishes downloading as you’re listening to it. Incredibly disappointing as the old version was just fine for me.

If I leave the app and come back, most of the time it will not pick off where I left off and I need to scrub through to find the last thing I listened to. Agree with other reviewers that the content is great. But for now, will be using the built in Podcast app.

Should be able to play in background. Otherwise, love it.

The new app is much improved over the old one. I miss the blue in the logo and branding.

This app has always had issues, but this latest redesign/update really has some problems. Content doesn’t download, doesn’t save your place so you have to fast forward to find your previous spot. It quits unexpectedly... so many things! The content is great and I really like the sleek new look, but PLEASE fix these bugs!!

I paid for this app happily. What I didn’t expect was that I couldn’t close my phone and lock it and still listen to my show. Little strange. I’m positive this will be addressed in the coming days. Sooner the better...

All of my bookmarks/favorites, all of my heard episodes, and all of my downloads are gone thanks to the new update. There are hundreds of episodes that I have listened to over the years that will take a lot of work to recover. Not to pleased about that. Still love the show but not happy.

I wish TAL was as good at picking a developer as they are at telling a story. This is a totally unusable app the last one was terrible so I stopped using it. When I heard on the podcast app that they had a new one that was supposedly great I opened it up and it took forever just to play an episode. Nothing responds. I kept pressing the tiny little play button thinking I had missed it, but then realized that nothing else in the app was responding anymore either. Now, when I try to play an episode I get an error message telling me the episode is not on the server. :/

I was really excited to learn about this app so now I could listen to all of the episodes instead of just what is released each week. I’m hoping the bugs will be fixed because I’m disappointed, especially since I paid $2.99 for this app. It’s really annoying that when you go back into the app that you can’t immediately return to the episode you were already playing. Also several times I’ve clicked on an episode for it to tell me that they are working on the site. Please fix the problems.

How do I get a refund? Not a single podcast says it is available to listen to. “Error - the file for podcast #630 is not available on the server.” What am I paying for? The icon? Please get me a refund. Very disappointed.

Has the episodes, doesn’t crash, but the podcast stops randomly and won’t work with headphone buttons.I have to open to the app to pause or play and even then doesn’t work at times.

Features: bookmarks, great search tool, downloads, episode and segment lists made by contributors. AND the entire TAL archive. A bargain at $2.99. If you like This American Life at all, you’ll like this app.

The old one was good so far the new one seems even better. Very pleased

I like the show enough to call my app purchase a donation to a great production. The app is always crashing, never “finds the episodes on the server”, and is slow. I had the old version and that one would never load new episodes, saw the update and was excited that some issues might be fixed. Nope.

So happy TAL updated their app. Having every episode ever just taps away is amazing. So far, the app is flawless. Can’t wait to go deep in the archive and listen to all the This American Life I’ve missed!

Using iphone7 most updated iOS. Frustrating that the most basic controls of the app are not working consistently. Also app doesn’t remember where I was in the episode if it quit.

I love This American Life, but this app (that costs $3) does not work well. My issue is that whenever my phone locks, the episode will pause. It will not play in lock mode. The app has to be open. I can’t listen in the background while using other apps either? I hope this gets fixed soon.

This app is terrible. It wasn't updating with new episodes so I tried to delete and reinstall. Now there are no episodes past 2014!!!!!! Want a refund. Update 1/15/17: woohoo new version of App is working great! So happy!! Thank you for fixing it!

Hi Ira, I’m a long time devotee of TAL. Just paid $2.99 for this app, and I can’t get it to play anything. I’m an iOS developer. I work for a company called Intrepid that makes apps and other consumer-facing digital products for lots of companies. Take a look at our website. Let us help you.

I will pay you if you stop wasting money and time on your own app. Just do everything in the Apple podcasts app. I absolutely love the show and have listened to every single episode. I just wish you stop messing with technology and reinventing what everyone else already does quite well (like a native podcasting app). Allow *ALL* shows to be downloaded for free like everyone does and accept my money as donations. The worst part is that I constantly want to send a link to an episode to someone who’s never heard of TAL and if I want send them a cool show like NUMMI.. 1. I have to go find it on the website, 2. but then they can’t use the native podcasting app because old shows are not available in podcasts 3. So I send them a link the website 4. which doesn’t keep your place or do anything near as good as native podcasting app (e.g. playback performance, downloading, etc.)

Jesus, why can’t you guys build a good app? The play/pause button does not work much of the time. The app has to be in focus, and the phone’s screen not off, in order for audio to play (!!!!). This means that I must choose between basic phone security and battery life, or using your app. Time to fire the clowns who made this beta app for you and hire someone who actually knows what they are doing. But the new logo is nice.

Wish you still had it organized by years, wish things were easier to find, wish I wasn’t running into so many “housekeeping “ pages. It LOOKS great, but the old app was much more user friendly. Oh and it worked. Still love the show, still will use the app but only because I have no other choice. Good luck with the new app!

The new look is great. Easy to navigate, but now the audio pauses every time the iPad auto locks. So I either have to set it to never auto lock, which is a battery killer, or I have to tap the screen every few minutes to prevent auto lock. Hopefully they fix this in an update. Great show, as it has always been.

SO excited that the app has finally been updated-- I gave up on it a few years ago due to poor functionality, seems to work smoothly now! However, I am very disappointed that rather than fixing the 24/7 stream function, it appears to have been removed from the app. Good thing I can still listen to it on TuneIn (as I've already been doing for years since it hasn't worked in the app since like 2015!). The quality of the content is so good, I'll let it slide. 😘

Finally! The old app was slow, the upgrade is definitely not. Gone are the bugs and quirks. The new app looks coleando, easy to navigate and all the features work as they should. Much needed, great job. Thanks!

The app always had glitches. Now it has more glitches and they took away some features.

Always been a fan of This American Life. Got this app because they made their website harder to navigate to the archived shows but this app is just like the old website so it's well worth the few bucks. Love to support public radio anyway. Just please don't change the format of this app!

I’ve had this app for years. Despite the glitches, I felt it was worth a few bucks to be able to access and play old episodes and bookmark my favorites to play again later (esp. on long road trips). Over time the glitches got increasingly annoying so I more or less stopped using the app. I was SO happy to see that TAL finally updated their app and with a full overhaul/makeover. The new app is much more visually appealing, user-friendly, and includes has a lot more options for downloading that make play back a lot easier. This upgrade was long overdue but I am very happy and grateful!

Nearly every aspect of the new app is totally broken. It’s clear that nobody even tested this.

Please allow for speeded listening! Some of the guests speak so slowly and it really helps to be able to listen at 1.5x or twice the speed.

Update: THANK YOU FOR THE UPDATE! Original review: TAL is one of my favorite podcasts, and so I jumped at the chance to get a $3 app to hear them all. I was disappointed to find that after owning it for over two years, and several updates, it's still full of bugs. 1. New episodes are missing the thumbnail. It sounds small, but it affects the experience more than I would have thought. [This seems to have been fixed] 2. You can only do the "10-second rewind" inside the app, not on the lock screen or from the control center. 3. There is no "10-second fast-forward". I find it needful from time to time. It's hard to scrub 60 minutes of content on a phone. 4. Some episodes won't play at all after downloaded. I have found some issues can get resolved by deleting and redownloading, but, of course, all of the "heard it" progress is lost. I am reticent to do that. I feel like I have encountered more issues than this, but these are the main ones. Please fix! Brand New Issue: 01/17 After backing up and restoring my iPhone from a 6 to a 7, the downloaded episodes I had previously would not play at all, and when attempting to delete, would strangely remind me that I could only download 5 episodes and needed to delete before downloading more. I eventually decided to delete and redownload, but upon opening, found that no episodes would display newer than May 2014, and the "Recently Aired" seems to also date from this time. It does seem that the newer episodes can be searched, though. Another update: 08/17 I can't even keep up with the issues I have anymore. Updates are few and far between and the app is more unstable than anything. Somebody needs to do a radio show about this app.

This used to be a great app. Access to current and all previous episodes, extra content, etc.; it was exactly as advertised. With the last several updates (the last one being 2 years ago?), however, it's lost nearly all functionality. You cannot browse the archive anymore, offline listening is broken, and good luck getting it to refresh with new episodes. Save some time and listen to TAL on Apple’s Podcasts app. It’s a better audio player anyway...

Love the show and shows but the app doesn’t work very well. Hard to replay the show the live streaming 24 seven shows doesn’t work at all on my app never start playing.Keep up the good content but has somebody that knows how to make apps work make your app work. Or at least I hope you didn’t pay them very much. And I promise not to create run on sentences anymore