In 2002, there were 25 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 a weekly hour-long American 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.
Jack Hitt is an American author. He has been a contributing editor to Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, This American Life, and the now-defunct magazine Lingua Franca. His work has appeared in such publications as Outside Magazine, Rolling Stone, Wired, Mother Jones, Slate, and Garden & Gun.
Jonathan Goldstein is an American-Canadian author, humorist and radio producer. Goldstein has worked on radio programs and podcasts such as Heavyweight, This American Life, and WireTap. Goldstein's work has been academically examined as representative of "the positioning of Jews and Canadians as potentially overlooked minorities in the late-twentieth- and early twenty-first-century United States".
John Kellogg Hodgman is an American author, actor, and humorist. In addition to his published written works, such as his satirical trilogy The Areas of My Expertise, More Information Than You Require, and That Is All, he is known for his personification of a PC in contrast to Justin Long's personification of a Mac in Apple's "Get a Mac" advertising campaign, and for his work as a contributor on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Stories of Hope and Fear is the fourth compilation album featuring radio broadcasts from This American Life.
"81 Words" is an episode of the popular public radio program, This American Life, which is broadcast from Chicago Public Radio. This episode was originally aired January 18, 2002. The episode is narrated by Alix Spiegel, who was the recipient of the George Foster Peabody Award, the Livingston Award, and the Dupont Award. She won the 2002 Livingston Award in National Reporting for the 204th episode of This American Life, "81 Words". The program is hosted by Ira Glass, who gives the introduction for the episode stating,
"It's just uncanny, I think that's the word. It's just uncanny when something so small, for a moment, for the length of time it takes to sign [he is referring to a pen used to sign major U.S. legal documents] can carry the entire weight of history of a nation. Today's radio program is about something small like that, that was at the epicenter of massive social change in our country for a brief moment."
Alix Spiegel is an American public radio producer and science journalist. She currently works for This American Life. Spiegel previously hosted and produced the NPR program Invisibilia with Lulu Miller and Hanna Rosin. She was one of the early producers of This American Life, then went on to work for National Public Radio and The New York Times.