This American Life

6 Stories

Mike Daisey's Really Sorry —for Real This Time

Performer 'failed to honor the contract with audiences' in Apple exposé

(Newser) - Mike Daisey, the writer/performer at the heart of a controversy over the Apple exposé that proved riddled with what he later termed "theater," is now contrite for his fabrications, reports the LA Times . The man behind the one-man-show The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, apologized on...

NPR Lays Off 7% of Staff, Cuts 2 Shows

Corporate underwriting took big hit in recession

(Newser) - NPR will take two shows off the air and lay off 64 employees—7% of its workforce—to close an unexpected $23 million budget shortfall. Shows getting the ax are "Day to Day" and "News and Notes," both of which sought to diversify NPR's audience. The layoffs...

Choose Your Own Adventure, This American Life Style

Radar makes funny at the expense of Ira Glass' popular franchise

(Newser) - This American Life, providing "a valuable census of liberal America's cultural consciousness since 1996," comes in for a little ribbing from Walker Boyd in Radar. Boyd  spoofs Ira Glass's radio and TV narratives with a Mad Libs-type story generator. Now "your dreams of Ira narrating some touching...

Magic of 'This American Life' Returns to Small Screen

Second season debuts tonight

(Newser) - The stories on the small-screen version of “This American Life” start out small—a husband’s protest over the oppressive American trend of lawn-mowing, a young man living with spinal muscular atrophy—and become something universal, both dark and light, even a little magical, writes Heather Havrilesky on Salon....

Quirk Is the New Kitsch (Sigh)
Quirk Is the
New Kitsch
(Sigh)
Aug 16, 2007 5:13 PM CDT

Quirk Is the New Kitsch (Sigh)

Atlantic writer traces the devolution of idiosyncrasy into idiocy

(Newser) - Quirk is the “ruling sensibility” of today’s culture—random narrative, “mannered ingenuousness”—and it’s become exhausting, writes the Atlantic's Michael Hirschorn. “This American Life” has been the standard-bearer, but the quirk it purveys hasn't held up well in expanding from radio to TV.

'LIFE' GOES ON
'LIFE' GOES ON
Mar 18, 2007 8:43 PM CDT

'LIFE' GOES ON

How do you make beloved public radio program This American Life work on TV?

(Newser) - Stevenson Swanson wonders how and weather Chicago Public Radio god Ira Glass can really do a television show and, even more daring, a show for the premium cable only network, Showtime.

6 Stories