This American Life
This American Life (TAL) is a weekly hour-long radio program produced by WBEZ in Chicago and distributed by Public Radio International. Ira Glass created the show, and has served as the producer and host since the first episode, "New Beginnings," debuted on November 17, 1995, and went national in June 1996.
When the show first premiered, it was titled "Your Radio Playhouse." It kept this title until the episode 17, "Name Change," which aired on March 21, 1996. From that episode onwards, the program has aired as TAL.
TAL is primarily a journalistic non-fiction program. Each week's show centers around a particular theme. Examples include "The Cruelty of Children" , "Hoaxing Yourself" , "Accidental Documentaries" and "Fiasco!" . Each show features several acts exploring that theme. A show usually consists of two to five acts, but some have consisted of just one act. One show ("20 Acts in 60 Minutes" ) went the other direction and fit 20 acts into the hour.
Each act is the work of a different contributor, and can take on a number of forms: an essay, an interview, field recordings, found footage or something else. Some acts are funny, some are sad, some are neither, and many are thought-provoking.
TAL currently airs on 420 public radio stations in the United States, reaching an estimated 1.5 million listeners each week.
Other media
Some of the show's episodes are accompanied by multimedia downloads available on This American Life's website. One notable mention is a remake of the Elton John song "Rocket Man" that was produced for the "Classifieds" episode and released as an MP3. The song was performed by a "one day band" composed of musicians looking for work in the classifieds. The band, consisting of various performers (one played a theremin), only met and practiced for one day before recording the song.
Two 2-disc CD sets collecting some of the producers' favorite acts have been released: Lies, Sissies, and Fiascoes was released on May 4, 1999, and Crimebusters & Crossed Wires was released on November 11, 2003.
A 32-page comic book, Radio: an Illustrated Guide (ISBN 0967967104), documents how an episode of TAL is put together. It was drawn by cartoonist Jessica Abel, written by Abel and Glass, and first published in 1999.
In 2002 the show signed a six-figure deal with Warner Brothers giving the studio two years of "first-look" rights to its hundreds of archived and future stories. In the first year of the deal, at least four scripts are being developed. The scripts are inspired by the following stories:
- Niagara (from episode 101 , first broadcast 5/1/1998), stories based on the people of the town of Niagara Falls, New York, who remain after those who sought to exploit the tourism and hydroelectrical opportunities of the area left;
- Babysitting (from episode 175 , first broadcast 1/6/2001), which included a segment entitled In The Event of An Emergency, Put Your Sister in an Upright Position, about several companies that got into the babysitting business for snowbound children at O'Hare International Airport;
- Superpowers: Wonder Woman (a segment from episode 178 , first broadcast 2/23/2001), the story of Zora, whose dreams led her who made a list of all the skills she would need to master if she wanted to actually become the superhero she dreamed of being;
- Act V (from episode 218 , first broadcast 8/9/2002), about the last act of Hamlet as staged by inmates from a maximum security prison.
It is unknown whether any of these will actually make it to the silver screen.
Current contributing editors
Other contributors
See Also
