In 2006, there were 17 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.
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.
Shalom Auslander is an American novelist, memoirist, and essayist. He grew up in a strict Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Monsey, New York, where he describes himself as having been "raised like a veal". His writing style is notable for its existentialist themes, biting satire and black humor. His nonfiction often draws comparisons to David Sedaris, while his fiction has drawn comparisons to Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, and Groucho Marx. His books have been translated into over a dozen languages and are published around the world.
"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."