this american client

The This American Life client library.

Get structured data on transcripts, episodes, et c without worrying about all of the web scraping details. Intermediate results are cached to keep it snappy.

Install

pip install this-american-life

Using the client

Everything starts with the import

from thisamericanlife import ThisAmericanLife

tal = ThisAmericanLife()

Get the episode and act summaries

ep_one = tal.episodes.get(episode_number=1)

print('Title       : ' + ep_one.title)
print('Date on air : ' + ep_one.date_on_air)
print('Description : ' + ep_one.description)

# the name and short description of each act
print(ep_one.act_summaries)

Get the transcript of an episode

ep_one_transcript = tal.transcripts.get(episode_number=1)

print(ep_one_transcript.transcript[0])

# result ...
# {
#   "act_id": "prologue", "act_number": 1, "act_title": "Prologue", 
#   "begin": "00:00:00.17",  
#   "line": "Joe Franklin?", 
#   "speaker": "interviewer", 
#   "speaker_name": "Ira Glass"
# }