In 1997, there were 40 new This American Life episodes.
Ira Jeffrey Glass is an American public radio personality. He is the host and producer of the radio and television series This American Life and has participated in other NPR programs, including Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Talk of the Nation. His work in radio and television has won him awards, such as the Edward R. Murrow Award for Outstanding Contributions to Public Radio and the George Polk Award in Radio Reporting.
This American Life (TAL) is an American monthly hour-long radio program produced in collaboration with Chicago Public Media and hosted by Ira Glass. It is broadcast on numerous public radio stations in the United States and internationally, and is also available as a free weekly podcast. Primarily a journalistic non-fiction program, it has also featured essays, memoirs, field recordings, short fiction, and found footage. The first episode aired on November 17, 1995, under the show's original title, Your Radio Playhouse. The series was distributed by Public Radio International until June 2014, when the program became self-distributed with Public Radio Exchange delivering new episodes to public radio stations.
David Raymond Sedaris is an American humorist, comedian, author, and radio contributor. He was publicly recognized in 1992 when National Public Radio broadcast his essay "Santaland Diaries.” He published his first collection of essays and short stories, Barrel Fever, in 1994. His next book, Naked (1997), became his first of a series of New York Times Bestsellers, and his 2000 collection Me Talk Pretty One Day won the Thurber Prize for American Humor.
Amy Louise Sedaris is an American actress, comedian, and writer. Most recently, she has appeared in both The Mandalorian (2019–2023) and The Book of Boba Fett (2022) as Peli Motto. She played Jerri Blank in the Comedy Central comedy series Strangers with Candy (1999–2000) and the prequel film Strangers with Candy (2005), which she also wrote.
"Some Enchanted Evening" is a show tune from the 1949 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific. It has been described as "the single biggest popular hit to come out of any Rodgers and Hammerstein show." Andrew Lloyd Webber describes it as the "greatest song ever written for a musical".
David Benjamin Rakoff was a Canadian-born American writer of prose and poetry based in New York City, who wrote humorous and sometimes autobiographical non-fiction essays. Rakoff was an essayist, journalist, and actor, and a regular contributor to WBEZ's This American Life. Rakoff described himself as a "New York writer" who also happened to be a "Canadian writer", a "mega Jewish writer", a "gay writer", and an "East Asian Studies major who has forgotten most of his Japanese" writer.
Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary is a collection of animal-themed humorous short stories by memoirist and humorist David Sedaris. The collection was published in September 2010.
"The Hanging Stranger" is a science fiction short story by American writer Philip K. Dick, originally published in December 1953 in the magazine Science Fiction Adventures. It has been reprinted in several anthologies, and published in French, Italian and German. It was adapted by Dee Rees into the episode "Kill All Others" or "K.A.O." for the 2017 television series Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams. A book was also released to republish "The Hanging Stranger" along with the nine other stories on which the Electric Dreams episodes were based.