The Lives of Others - This American Life (2024)

FAQs

What is the point of this American life? ›

Mostly we do journalism, but an entertaining kind of journalism that's built around plot. In other words, stories! Our favorite sorts of stories have compelling people at the center of them, funny moments, big feelings, surprising plot twists, and interesting ideas. Like little movies for radio.

Each week there are a bunch of stories organized around a theme. The stories are the same sorts we do on the radio, true stories about real people.

New episodes are free for ten weeks on podcast apps like Apple Podcasts, Radio Public, etc. Our entire archive — more than 800 episodes — is available to stream or download here on our website.

In 2015, Glass became the sole owner of This American Life; WBEZ continued as a production partner on the show and on Serial with future shows to be independent. In 2017, This American Life launched the podcast S-Town through the spinoff company Serial Productions.

Glass can be heard in all but four episodes. In July 2013, the 500th episode premiered. For the 2013 fiscal year, the WBEZ board voted to raise Glass's salary from $170,000 annually to $278,000.

The topics and stories are consistently surprising and interesting-- not necessarily an easy feat after this many years running. It's well-researched, well-produced, captivating and shockingly humble for all of its popularity and longevity.

Reviews of This American Life - Chartable. “The sad pathology of a sad family makes for great entertainment complete with reality series-style wacky music, and no actual birds. Bird lovers will rightly hate this segment.”

In 2020 Serial Productions, which made those shows, became part of The New York Times Company. They've made several series since then, including Nice White Parents, The Trojan Horse Affair, The Coldest Case in Laramie, and more. Serial launched in October 2014 as the first spin-off from This American Life.

This American Life is an American television series based on the radio program of the same name. Like the radio program, the series is hosted by Ira Glass. The series premiered on March 22, 2007. Two seasons of the show aired on Showtime.

Does this American Life have transcripts? ›

If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.

Just update and you'll have it. Here's the app on IOS and Android. Erik Jarlsson designed our new logo.

This American Life has been aligned with the New York Times since 2020, when as part of a deal to buy Serial Productions it also formed a partnership with the WBEZ Chicago-based show to handle ad sales and develop new projects.

At $40 per CPM and 3,400,000 downloads, Serial could have made $272,000 per episode, which comes out to $3.3 million for the season. More than enough to cover the costs. Serial's first season had five staff members: host, executive producer, producer, manager, and editorial advisor.

This American Life and Serial Productions make radio programs and podcasts including This American Life, Serial, and S-Town. Our offices are in New York City.

“The central message is about guns and violence in America and the fact that we deal with them and consume them as part of entertainment on one hand, and on the other hand, is a part of our national conversation,” Ramsey tells TIME.

The book is said to "offer a manifesto of Progressive beliefs" that "anticipated the transition from competitive to corporate capitalism and from limited government to the welfare state."

Significance. John Gast uses this painting to convey the idea of manifest destiny that is widely known in America at this time. Much of the west was still occupied by Native Americans in 1872, but Gast portrays the idea that America was destined to expand to this area as part of Manifest Destiny.

In his defining statement The Promise of American Life, Croly argued for the inadequacy of both the Jeffersonian constitutional tradition of weak national government and the Hamiltonian vision of strong national government, which Croly favored.