Outsourcing

While listened to the The Moth Podcast today, I heard the October 20th episode which is entitled "My Outsourced Life" and features a guy named A.J. Jacobs In it, Jacobs recounts his experience in hiring an Indian outsourcing company (Brickwork India) to handle some work tasks for him, before eventually hiring them to handle a plethora of personal tasks in his life. The story is also recounted in an article he wrote about it in Esquire which can be found here.

While his experience was entertaining and interesting, at the end of the podcast, Jacobs was talking about how he had been racked with guilt that perhaps in hiring this foreign firm, he was taking jobs away from hard-working Americans. That is, until he received an email from a guy who had an IT job that was outsourced to India. After reading Jacobs' article, the guy hired an outsourcing firm to find him a job, which they managed to do in about a week.

This has really got me thinking. I am currently trying to find a job, in real estate, which is proving to be quite difficult, not surprisingly. If this firm can really do what they guy said what they did for him, I believe I would seriously consider hiring them, assuming if I could manage to gather up the necessary cash.

This post doesn't really have a particular "point," however I just really found that one idea quite compelling.

Podcast love: "This American Life"

Having never really listened to public radio growing up, and after going through a 9-12 month stint, several years ago, of embracing political views somewhere right of Sean Hannity, I was pretty well convinced that NPR was a radio station that would have been officially endorsed by Stalin himself. While I had occasionally happened across an odd episode of "The Thistle and Shamrock" (which is awesome, by the way), the only other radio show I had heard of on NPR was "This American Life," though I had never listened to it, and didn't really have any interest in finding out what it was all about.

Well, this summer, while still unemployed and looking for a summer internship, I was taking full advantage of Netflix's streaming video content and came across the 1st season of "This American Life" that aired on Showtime. Curious, and bored, I took a chance and really enjoyed it. It was quirky, interesting, insightful, and entertaining. After this, I was hooked.

Since mid-June I have been downloading and listening to the weekly podcast. Since I spent a lot of time in the car this summer, it provided a nice bit of variety from music. Anyways, I really look forward to Monday each week when the new podcast goes up, and it is one of the highlights of my week to listen to it. I enjoy the variety of topics, stories, and types narratives that they manage to incorporate every week, and the filler music is usually superb. I have also discovered that "This American Life" is not a tool of the Left, and although it does occasionally have a leftist slant, it's not really something that bothers me anymore. And, I must say, that their episode a couple of weeks ago entitled "Another Frightening Show About the Economy" did a superb job of explaining some of the less well known problems associated with the financial meltdown.

So, I have two real points to this post:

1.- If you haven't listened to "This American Life," sign up for the podcast on Itunes and give it a try. Burn it on a CD and pop it in next time you're going to be spending an hour in the car.

2.- I am looking for other good podcasts and would love some suggestions. I've tried "Prairie Home Companion" and it didn't really do it for me, and I will occasionally listen to episodes of "Steve Brown, Etc.", but I'm still looking for something else. I think some of the other NPR podcasts would be alright, but so many of them are daily news and I don't really listen to podcasts every day, so by the time I get around to listening to them, they're out of date. Anyways, let me know your suggestions.