“This American Life” is a radio show hosted by the famous radio personality Ira Glass. The show, originally named Your Radio Playhouse is running from November, 1995 and till three episodes of the show have been aired in 2010. It is basically a non-fictional programme which chooses one particular theme for each episode and then goes to present it from different perspectives. Generally the show is divided in two to five acts and each act presents different journalistic accounts on the theme.
The content of the theme itself can vary greatly from episode to episode. The show can choose for its subject for one episode some current incident, while general social topics are regularly discussed, too. More than the choice of the subject, however, it is the approach that makes the show what it is.
The show can potentially include essays, memoirs, field recordings, short fiction, and found footage and can be an interesting collage of these different journalistic materials.
The host of the show, Ira Glass, was recently at Filene Ladd Music Hall in the Arthur Zankel Music Center to give a presentation on his journey as a journalist and a radio host.
To know more about the show, its history, previous and upcoming episodes you can visit the official website of the show at http://www.thisamericanlife.org/.
