THIS AMERICAN LIFE

About the Show

Each week, This American Life takes an intimate look at the drama of the Everyman. Each show is loosely centered around a theme, and veteran producer Ira Glass shoots from the hip, exploring the lives of oddballs, antiheroes, and just plain folks who would quietly fade into our homogenized national landscape without the prodding spotlight of This American Life. The program shares stories of life and love through monologues, documentaries, short radio plays, “found recordings,” and original works for radio.

Every show is unique, and its mood ranges from somber to satirical, thought-provoking to laugh-out-loud, depending on the story and the voices that tell it. The staff’s favorite past episodes include “Notes on Camp” which told the stories of life at one summer camp (including the counselor everyone’s in love with and adolescent girls consulting a Ouiji board to find out who’ll be named captain in the camp’s color wars); “Act V” which followed prison inmates as they rehearsed and staged the last act of Shakespeare’s Hamlet; and “Somewhere in the Arabian Sea,” about life onboard an aircraft carrier fighting the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Described as “arguably the funniest hour ever produced about the War on Terror,” this episode introduced listeners to a woman who risked her life in the war zone to stock vending machines with candy for 12 hours a day.

About the Host

Ira Glass began his career as an intern at National Public Radio’s network headquarters in Washington, DC in 1978, when he was just 19 years old. Over the years, he worked on nearly every NPR network news program and held virtually every production job in NPR’s Washington headquarters. He has been a tape cutter, newscast writer, desk assistant, editor, and producer. He has filled in as host of Talk of the Nation and Weekend All Things Considered.

Under Glass’s editorial direction, This American Life has won the highest honors for broadcasting and journalistic excellence, including the Peabody and duPont-Columbia awards, as well as the Robert F. Kennedy Award. American Journalism Review declared that the show is “at the vanguard of a journalistic revolution.” It has attracted continuous national media attention over the years, including features in The New York Times, Vogue, Entertainment Weekly, and numerous other publications. Ira Glass has made appearances on the “Late Show with David Letterman” and “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” In 2001, Time magazine named Glass “Best Radio Host in America.” In the fall of 2006, the television adaptation of This American Life, produced by Glass and his staff, will premiere on Showtime.

Visit the This American Life web site.