"Mind Games" - This American Life

It has been known for quite a while now that This American Life is one of the hottest radio documentary stations on the East Coast. Personally, this is the first time that I found one of their shows interesting enough to compel me to listen to an hour of talking. I was astounded. Not only did I get to hear the types of stories that I love so much (because psychology interests me greatly), but I really got to experience a somewhat different type of media for the first time.

Let's get down to the program itself. This program was the most recently aired audio documentary on the sight, and it was (of course) about mind games. It was "stories of people who try simple mind games on others, and then find themselves way in over their heads." Just this summary is enough to grab the attention of any passers-by. The program was just as the summary had described. Host Ira Glass covered three stories which each revolved around a different type of mind game.

You may have heard of the group Improv Everywhere before. This a group which coordinates "missions" which have the goal of giving random people a day of bizarre happiness. This is what made the show for me. The stories that Improv Everywhere are involved in (two in this show) are both stories which involve a lot of fun and a bit of heart break. You are kept in the dark until the very end about whether they were successful missions at all.

The other two main stories are slightly more serious and showed the darker side of these mind games. In the first story, a woman told a little white lie and ended up being lied to herself. In the last story, the program focuses on the event where a girl was taken hostage, brainwashed, and ended up walking the very streets she used to live on for months before she was even noticed. These two stories, although much more serious than the other one in my opinion, offer a much more realistic depiction of what can happen when people mess with each others' head.

If you find psychology or any other types of trickery interesting, Mind Games is a audio documentary that I highly recommend. If you don't find those things interesting... Oh let's face it everyone finds those things interesting at some level.

Here you can listen to and read the summary for "Mind Games": http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1329

Website for Improv Everywhere (You know that you are interested): http://improveverywhere.com/