Summary: In This Episode: Uncommon Sense relaunches this week with a slight change of focus.<br> <br> <a href="#transcript">Jump to Transcript</a><br> <a href="https://thisistrue.com/category/podcasts/">How to Subscribe and List of All Episodes</a><br> Show Notes<br> <br> * A quick (four-minute) intro on how the Uncommon Sense podcast is changing.<br> * If you already subscribe to the podcast with an app, you don’t have to do anything to continue to get it. The “feed” remains the same.<br> * Yes, the <a href="https://thisistrue.com/no-longer-weird/">No Longer Weird list</a> will be maintained, and added to. But additions won’t be mentioned in the podcast episodes.<br> * I will continue to have transcripts of each episode made for those who would rather read than listen (or want to know what that mumbled word was!)<br> * I appreciate your listening. -rc<br> <br> <a name="transcript"></a><br> Transcript<br> Welcome to the relaunch of Uncommon Sense, the podcast of This is True. This “Episode Zero” is a brief introduction.<br> I’m Randy Cassingham, founder of This is True, and like my newsletter, I mean for this podcast to provide thought-provoking entertainment, but they’re going to be doing that in slightly different ways.<br> The This is True newsletter, available at thisistrue.com, is the oldest online entertainment feature, launched in June 1994 and written every week since. TRUE mostly tells stories of people who didn’t think, who couldn’t muster up an ounce of common sense when they needed it.<br> While that’s certainly entertaining, simply laughing at what I call obliviots isn’t really the point. The idea is to also be thought-provoking by showing just how dumb we humans can be — all of us — and why taking just a little more time to think is such a good idea. They’re the kinds of stories that smart parents read to their kids, or, if they’re a bit older, they let them read the stories themselves. Many parents have told me they use This is True to teach their children the value of thinking — and the consequences of not thinking. Not by trying to scare them about unlikely scenarios, but story after story after story of real people who did truly dumb things, and either suffered the consequences or put a huge burden on others — and usually both! And best of all, the kids can draw those conclusions themselves, which really drives home the lessons.<br> The first year of the podcast pretty much extended that theme, often retelling or getting deeper into the stories from the newsletters. But the episodes that I really liked the most, and were often the most popular, were actually a little bit different.<br> Those were the episodes where I talked about people who did think, and therefore enriched our lives. They went above and beyond, and provided a positive example for kids, and adults, to follow. They are, as I’ve often said, the people who exhibit Uncommon Sense — which, after all, has been This is True’s tagline for a while now — it’s what I’m trying to encourage. Yet their stories are not often told very widely, and I aim to change that.<br> So I’ve taken down that first year of the podcast. For this relaunch, I’ll be focusing more on the totally cool people who set good examples. Since some of the previous episodes did focus on that, at least in part, I’ll be re-recording and re-releasing them, so the best stuff won’t be lost, don’t worry!<br> You can listen using your favorite podcast app, which automatically downloads episodes for you, or you can stream each episode from its Show Page on the This is True site. That page will have a transcript of its episode, and will include any links available for more information.<br> Two of my favorite episodes are coming up soon: my impressions when I went to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to witness the destruction of the Cassini spacecraft, and the story of a woman who realized the best way to help her country was to beco...
