Grading This American Life on how often they actually make new episodes. They claim to be a weekly show. The benchmark assumes a real weekly show ships 40 original episodes per year (52 weeks minus reasonable breaks). An episode counts as a NEW original only if it has zero rerun or recycled content — every act and segment debuted on that show.
Bars show truly-new episodes only. Dotted overlay shows the additional shows that aired in the same year but contained recycled content — they don't count toward the grade.
How many original episodes TAL is in the hole relative to a true weekly schedule, accumulated across the selected range. Negative = behind.
| Year | Originals | Recycled | Target | Delta | Grade |
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Detected by scanning each episode's official page for explicit references to earlier TAL episodes, "rebroadcast" / "originally aired" language, or "best of" / "favorites" compilation framing. Click an episode to open its page on thisamericanlife.org.
| Ep # | Date | Title | Why it was flagged |
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