Hey! A story I’ve been producing for more than a year is on This American Life this weekend. It’s an excerpt from our imminent seven part Audible series, The Butterfly Effect.

As my producer Lina Misitzis says, “The TAL excerpt stars two of the most sympathetic people I’ve ever known. They make people’s lives exponentially better, and I can’t wait for you to meet them.”

If you’re an Audible subscriber you can listen to the whole season for free on July 27. If you want to wait until the beginning of November, it’ll be available to everyone for free on iTunes and everywhere else.

I’ve also written a big 4,000 word story for The Guardian about it, and will let you know when it’s published.

Here’s a welcome note:

Hi everyone,

Welcome to The Butterfly Effect. It’s sort of about porn, but it’s about a lot of other things. It’s sad, funny, moving and totally unlike some other nonfiction stories about porn - because it isn’t judgmental or salacious. It’s human and sweet and strange and lovely. It’s a mystery story, an adventure. It’s also, I think, a new way of telling a story. This season follows a single butterfly effect. The flap of the butterfly’s wings is a boy in Brussels having an idea. His idea is how to get rich from giving the world free online porn. Over seven episodes I trace the consequences of this idea, from consequence through to consequence. If you keep going in this way, where might you end up? It turns out you end up in the most surprising and unexpected places.

So if you’re thinking, why do I want to listen to a show about the tech takeover of the porn industry, I have two things to say:

1. Why wouldn’t you want to listen to a show about the tech takeover of the porn industry? That’s a great idea for a show.

2. Would you want to listen to a show about three women destroying a mysterious Norwegian man’s stamp collection? Well, that happens at the end of episode 2. At the end of Episode 3 a woman becomes convinced that she played a part in a murder committed by an Italian priest. At the end of Episode 4 a boy in Oklahoma is forced to move to a house on the very, very edge of his town.

I hope you like our show,

Jon

Here’s a visual preview from the This American Life excerpt: