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This American Life engagement report

@ThisAmerLife - 370K followers on X

Measured over 20 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on September 1, 2026.

Engagement

Bottom 10% for its size
Per follower
0.002%
of 370K followers
Per impression
0.195%
4.6K views on a typical post
Reach
1.24%
of its followers see a post
Typical post
9
interactions (median)
Saved
0.033%
2 bookmarks on a typical post
Posting rate
0.7/day
active 43% of days
Peak time
13:00 UTC
Monday

A typical post picks up 9 interactions against 370K followers, an engagement rate of 0.002%. Measured over 20 original posts, its engagement rate beats 9% of 3,899 tracked accounts of a similar size. That is a reason to look at how the audience behaves - reply depth, saves, whether the followers are recent - rather than a conclusion about it on its own. Posts are seen about 4.6K times each, and 0.195% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 1.24% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 0.7 post a day over the last 30 days, though only 43% of days saw any activity at all. Most posts go out around 13:00 UTC, and Monday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 20 posts sampled, 55% carry an image or video and 95% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 83 interactions, about 9.2x its own typical post.

Measured over 20 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on September 1, 2026.

Compared with accounts its own size

This American Life's engagement rate beats 9% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (3,899 accounts, accounts of similar size (decile 6 of 10)). A percentile is spread evenly by construction, so 50 really is the middle of that group and 90 really is its top tenth.

On engagement per impression rather than per follower it beats 11% of the same group. When those two numbers disagree, the gap is about how far its posts travel rather than how people react to them.

Where this sits in the catalog

At 0.002%, This American Life sits above the 10th percentile of the 37,701 accounts in this comparison. That places it in the bottom 25% band, which runs below 0.012%.

p100.002%
p250.012%
p50 (median)0.081%
p750.439%
p902.10%
p99156.3%
Engagement rate as a share of followers, across the 37,701 accounts we have scanned enough to measure. The axis is logarithmic, because the top and bottom of this population are about 104,204 times apart and a linear axis would flatten everything below the median into a single point.
Show the percentile table
Engagement rate percentiles
PercentileEngagement rate
10th percentile0.002%
25th percentile0.012%
50th percentile0.081%
75th percentile0.439%
90th percentile2.10%
99th percentile156.3%

This ruler is the whole measured catalog, not a size-matched group: it shows where the raw rate falls across every account we can measure, all of which are large. For a like-for-like comparison, read the size-band percentile above instead. See how the bands are built

Posting timing

This account posts most often around 13:00 UTC, and Monday is its busiest day of the week. The bars below are the catalog-wide pattern, with this account's own busiest slot marked. They do not show how this account performs at each hour: we keep one aggregate per account, not one per hour, so that measurement does not exist in our data.

Engagement by hour posted, UTCTwenty-four bars, one per UTC hour. Each bar shows how posts published in that hour compare with their own authors' median engagement. Bars above the centre line ran higher than the median, bars below ran lower. A marker flags Busiest hour: 13:00 UTC.
0003060912151821
Above the authors' own mediansBelowScale: plus or minus 6%Busiest hour: 13:00 UTC
Show engagement by hour posted, utc as a table
Engagement by hour posted, UTC
Hour (UTC)Vs author medianPosts
00:00 UTC-1%53K
01:00 UTC-2%53K
02:00 UTC-3%52K
03:00 UTC-4%55K
04:00 UTC-6%44K
05:00 UTC-4%43K
06:00 UTC-4%50K
07:00 UTC-5%54K
08:00 UTC-4%63K
09:00 UTC-3%72K
10:00 UTC-2%75K
11:00 UTC-3%81K
12:00 UTC-2%90K
13:00 UTC-2%98K
14:00 UTC-3%101K
15:00 UTC-2%105K
16:00 UTC-4%102K
17:00 UTC-3%95K
18:00 UTC-1%88K
19:00 UTC-2%83K
20:00 UTC-1%77K
21:00 UTC-1%69K
22:00 UTC-2%60K
23:00 UTC-2%53K
Engagement by day of weekSeven bars, one per weekday, Sunday first. Each bar shows how posts published on that day compare with their own authors' median engagement. Bars above the centre line ran higher than the median, bars below ran lower. A marker flags Busiest day: Monday.
SunMonTueWedThuFriSat
Above the authors' own mediansBelowScale: plus or minus 5%Busiest day: Monday
Show engagement by day of week as a table
Engagement by day of week
DayVs author medianPosts
Sunday+5%238K
Monday0%302K
Tuesday-3%302K
Wednesday-1%257K
Thursday-2%250K
Friday-3%259K
Saturday+3%233K
See what moves engagement across the whole catalogWhat counts as a good engagement rate at this size

Best tweets

  • Aug 17, 20269.2x their median

    The teenager Ira Glass related to more than anyone he's ever done a story about. Hear the episode: https://t.co/bSmkAQIcTa https://t.co/CD4CxCzh3T

    7570112K viewsView on X
  • Aug 31, 20267.2x their median

    A guy hooked two Claude chatbots up to talk to each other. Each one insisted it was the real AI, and the other one was human. What happens when they can't stop talking? Hear the story: https://t.co/yJptfnxHzd https://t.co/GtjXspAjCh

    5744011K viewsView on X
  • Aug 5, 20264.3x their median

    How was Ira's Russian? https://t.co/UKo0OQRUz1

    333219.5K viewsView on X
  • Jul 28, 20264.1x their median

    "This is not something that brings about workplace harmony." https://t.co/WPauEznHkF https://t.co/LB1yMpTr88

    342108.8K viewsView on X
  • Jun 29, 20263.8x their median

    Sarah Vowell has a theory that you can tell the entire history of the United States by standing on one street corner—Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive in Chicago. https://t.co/2F2HANJ9HD

    283214.3K viewsView on X
  • Jul 6, 20263.4x their median

    What happens when you tell Americans not to do something? Just one of the stories in our newest episode "Maximal Americanness." https://t.co/9wmMIIvJ8B https://t.co/UrPwHhay7w

    283007.7K viewsView on X
  • Jul 17, 20262.9x their median

    The government set out to prove that Antifa is real, in the first federal case charging people with material support to terrorists for their involvement. https://t.co/HAxq8Z4xkl https://t.co/nkMSNfYkoq

    223015.1K viewsView on X
  • Jun 28, 20262.6x their median

    How do you get a message out of a detention center? At an ICE facility in San Diego, detainees figured it out — bottles with notes taped on, thrown over 90 feet of wall. Listen: https://t.co/YlTIzOfuCc https://t.co/feo9qOaKne

    184015.2K viewsView on X
  • Aug 17, 20262.4x their median

    Ira and Tobin were both called "husky" as kids. Decades later, neither of them has quite shaken it. This week's episode has four stories about the power of labels. Listen: https://t.co/MBSsrjBD8c https://t.co/YaA44wSgCC

    161235.9K viewsView on X
  • Jun 22, 20262.3x their median

    At the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, migrants figured out an ingenious way to communicate with the activists gathered outside of the detention center’s walls. https://t.co/u0X6VnUXKp https://t.co/9ySaDkWy8Z

    147003.1K viewsView on X

Ranked by total interactions across everything we have tracked for this account, which is a longer history than the 30-day window the rates above use. The multiple compares each post to this account's own median.

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Reading these numbers

A typical post picks up 9 interactions against 370K followers, an engagement rate of 0.002%. Measured over 20 original posts, its engagement rate beats 9% of 3,899 tracked accounts of a similar size. That is a reason to look at how the audience behaves - reply depth, saves, whether the followers are recent - rather than a conclusion about it on its own. Posts are seen about 4.6K times each, and 0.195% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 1.24% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 0.7 post a day over the last 30 days, though only 43% of days saw any activity at all. Most posts go out around 13:00 UTC, and Monday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 20 posts sampled, 55% carry an image or video and 95% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 83 interactions, about 9.2x its own typical post.

What is This American Life's engagement rate on X?
This American Life (@ThisAmerLife) has an engagement rate of 0.002%, based on the median interactions across 20 original posts from the last 30 days against 370,463 followers. Replies, reposts and quote-posts of other people are excluded from that sample.
Is that a good engagement rate?
At 0.002%, This American Life sits above the 10th percentile of the 37,701 accounts in this comparison. Those comparison accounts are all large ones, because our scanning cadence is weighted towards big accounts, so this is a ranking among peers of similar scale rather than a ranking across X.
Does @ThisAmerLife have real engagement?
Its engagement rate beats 9% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (3,899 accounts), which puts it in the bottom 10% for its size group. Ranking inside a size band matters because engagement rate falls as accounts grow, so a raw rate would mostly re-measure the follower count. It is a starting point for a look at follower quality, not a verdict on it.
When does @ThisAmerLife post?
Most posts go out around 13:00 UTC, and Monday is its busiest day, at roughly 0.7 posts per day across the measured window.

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