"The name is definitely a marketing problem."

Radio The Guardian interviews Ira Glass on the occasion of the broadcast of This American Life in the UK. Here's what he thinks is happening with the choice of episodes:

"The name is definitely a marketing problem. I think you can tell we had no intention of being an international show. And there's no one in Britain who's like, ‘You know what I don't get enough of? American culture.’

"The shows that the BBC chose are really traditional, documentary with a capital D, 'we-are-serious-journalist' stories. The first one includes a story about the Holocaust, because everybody knows that that's a classy story to put on the radio. They are feeling protective of us, [worrying] that their audience will notice that the tone is different and jauntier and more conversational, and not understand the seriousness of intent underneath it. I appreciate that whoever is programming for the BBC is trying to protect us."

He's in The Independent too saying many of the same things:

"This is a beach-head from which to proceed," Glass says of his UK plans, his familiar nasal tones coming through loud and clear down the phone from New York. The BBC has cherry-picked 13 episodes from TAL's 524-strong archives; the first, which is classic TAL, featuring a heart-tugging story about the Holocaust, airs at 11am today. And the stories are not just American."

The UK doesn't have its own page yet (presumably because this is just a taster series) but I'll put a link here just in case.

This BBC Radio 4 Extra Life.

Radio BBC Radio 4 Extra is presenting selected reruns of old episodes of This American Life from across its history from this weekend:

"We will be broadcasting a selection of the much celebrated US series on British radio for the first time. Selecting the best of this rich pool of programmes was a difficult task, so I asked colleagues on Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra, all of whom I knew were devotees, to suggest what they thought would sit comfortably on the network alongside the drama, the fiction, the comedy and show off the breadth of This American Life. The final 13 we settled on are just the tip of an impressive back catalogue.

"Taking a theme each week Ira Glass and his team at Chicago Public Media weave interviews, stories, and music to take us on an intense journey into the lives of ordinary and extraordinary people and situations. This American Life experiments with a different way of telling stories. Listeners who have not heard Ira Glass’s quirky style before may find the pace a little unusual but it is that slow reveal, that ability to dance around a theme, to catch you unawares that is so captivating. The layers of people’s lives are peeled away and the exceptional and seemingly mundane become as vivid as a great movie or a great American painting."

Presumably the idea was to choose episodes that are less current affairs heavy, covering more universal themes.  If the ratings are good enough it might convince them to simply run the programme as broadcast on an ongoing basis.  Or at least a few more people to subscribe to the podcast.

This American Valentine's Day.

That Day Yesterday's International doodle on Google's homepage was this cute if otherwise entirely pointless chocolate box interactive thingy but in US visitors were treated to a special episode or Act of This American Life in which Ira introduced clips of people talking about falling in love hidden behind love hearts. Here's Google's take and at TAL's website Ira explains why they did it:

"I’ve been a fan of Google Doodles for a while (though I only recently learned they had a name and that name is Google Doodles). I liked that they seemed able to do anything on their homepage — a crossword puzzle, a Dr. Who video game, a tribute to Saul Bass, a Les Paul guitar or a fully functioning Moog Synthesizer (with its own four-track tape recorder). It’s interesting that in this big global company, with millions or maybe it’s billions of dollars in computer servers everywhere, and all this tech and engineering, they have people doing something for their biggest product – their search engine – that’s so... handmade. And idiosyncratic. This Doodle is their first foray into documentary storytelling and I hope they do more stuff like it. I hope they reach out to Wes Anderson and Laurie Anderson and Anderson Cooper and artists whose names are not Anderson as future collaborators."

Ira mentioned the Doctor Who game. Good god, imagine what an episode of This American Life about Doctor Who would be like: "Act III: I have a fixation with the Monoids..." that sort of thing.

Little boxes, little boxes.

Art Catching up on the pre-Christmas This American Life, I heard yet again of people doing would might be my perfect job. Andy Warhol's Time Capsules was a collecting project in which the artist, from 1974 onwards, stored personal items in anonymous cardboard boxes, six hundred and twelve of them.

Generally kept secret during his lifetime, they were discovered when he died and since there's been an ongoing project to open and discover exactly what's in them.

Starlee Kine meets the staff at the Warhol Museum undertaking the task.

See also Stanley Kubrick's boxes, I expect. And since we're on the subject:

Review 2013: Not The Doctor: This American Life's The Seven Things You're Not Supposed to Talk About.

Radio After last year hick-up with the retraction of Mike Daisey's story about the manufacture of Apple products, This American Life has quickly bounced back with another series of compulsive episodes with a two parter about Chicago's Harper High School, the scene of a mass shooting, an investigation into the federal disability payments system and of course its five hundredth episode. There's also been a noticeable shift back towards a higher proportion of less newsier, more whimsical episodes of which this recent episode is an example. As the synopsis describes, "producer Sarah Koenig's mother lives by a set of rules about conversation. She has an actual list of off-limits topics, including how you slept, your period, your health, your diet and more. You don't talk about these things, she says, "because nobody cares", and the programme sets about finding interesting stories which disprove the items on the list.  As ever, it's the thing of This American Life which makes this entertaining, the deference of the producers to Sarah's mother calling her Mrs. Matthiessen and Mrs. Metthiessen herself who sounds like a stereotypical upper middle-class parent from a Disney film.  Incidentally, I pretty much agree with everything she says.  I hate small talk, mostly because never very good at it.

"all the world's a stage"

Radio Bree Davies of the Denver Westword fails to meet Ira Glass really and writes about the encounter in the style that has all the elements of a This American Life story, including an answer machine message from Ira:

"I talk to strangers on a daily basis; it's part of my job as a reporter to engage with people I don't know in a way that makes them feel comfortable enough to tell me things about themselves. But this guy was a fucking champ, smiling and posing with a ten-year-old cool nerd in a collared shirt, entertaining pitch after pitch from random folks who probably saw this event as their one chance to get their "incredible" story set to atmospheric music and shared with the world on public radio. The place was swarming with dorks (like me) who thought that Ira Glass and the writers and producers and broadcast journalists of National Public Radio were the shit!"

Obviously if this TAL, Ira would have warned us beforehand that they had beeped a number of profanities for the broadcast version but that they would appear unbeeped in the podcast, in case there are children in the room.

Shakespeare on This American Life: Drama Bug

As readers of my other blog will know, I'm currently listening to All of This American Life in Order and little did I realise that I'd soon find something worth writing about here so I've decided to run a parallel series of posts for this blog in which I'll highlight any episodes with major references to Shakespeare.  For all I know, this could be the only one.  We'll see.

Episode 23, Drama Bug, first broadcast on the 5th October 1996 features a classic story from regular contributor David Sedaris about his early experiences as an actor and the second section concentrates on his appearance as one of the touring actors in an amateur production of Hamlet. 

I've embedded both parts above for speed, but this whole vintage episode is worth your time, with presenter Ira Glass shadowing a school putting on a production of Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers and the theatre going experiences of a man who breathes through an iron lung and also contracted the drama bug after seeing Hamlet.

"This week's theme ... my sex tape."

Radio

""Well, from WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life, I'm Ira Glass. Each week, of course, we choose a theme and bring you a variety of stories on that theme. This week's theme ... my sex tape."
--Ira Glass, Host

Not really. It's a parody. But a very good one. The music utilisation is particularly forensic. [via]

Updated 12/10/2011 A further This American Life deconstruction: This Spotify Playlist.  Now you too can be Alex Blumberg.  "Then Slovakia, one of the smallest nations in the European Union, voted against something called the European Financial Stability Facility package and the continent faced fiscal collapse."  Cue Ghosts I by Nine Inch Nails. [via]

Updated 15/10/2011 Ira has heard the sex tape. Or part of it. He tells the Village Voice:

"I've listened to about three minutes of it. His imitation of my writing and delivery are so dead-on, it was hard to keep listening and I stopped. If I had to articulate why, I think it was because hearing his version of me, made what I do on the air seem kind of dumb. And the impersonation was so good, I couldn't really pick a fight with it. So I had to decide, do I want to see myself as kind of trite and dumb? Seemed better to stop. Maybe I'll go back sometime."

A This American Life episode about impersonations can't be too long in coming ...

"Yes, I must"

Travel David Sedaris in China.  Warning -- article contains some scenes of a scatological nature:

"Another thing one notices in China is the turds. "Oh please," you're probably thinking. "Must you?"

To this I answer, "Yes, I must", for if they didn't affect the food itself, they affected the way I thought about it. In Tokyo, I once saw a dog pee on the sidewalk. Then its owner reached into a bag, pulled out a bottle of water and rinsed the urine off the pavement. As for dog faeces, I never saw any trace of them. In Beijing, you see an overwhelming amount of shit. Some of it can be blamed on pets, but a lot of it comes from people. Chinese babies do without diapers, wearing instead these strange little pants with a slit in the rear. When a child has to go, its parents direct it towards the kerb or, if they're indoors, to a spot they think of as "kerby". "Last month I saw a kid shit in the produce aisle of our Chengdu Walmart," a young woman named Bridget told me.

This was the seventh day of my visit and so desensitised was I that my first response was, "You have a Walmart?"

This American Life on The Simpsons ...

and for free.

Journalism Sometimes it's possible to be ready to blog about something then find someone else has done the job for you, ironically on this occasion since Sian is writing about someone else who is trying to get someone to else to do a job for them, and for free.

The whys and wherefores are captured here but what it boils down to is a freelancer who writes for "womens" magazines wanting an intern to essentially find stories and do the grunt work on stories to save her the bother, unpaid.

As Sian notes it's been knocking around in Twitter all day but there's been no word from the journalist who has generally been kicked around by social networking's core user base for her presumptuousness.

Internships have been something of a transparent dangling carrot for me.  I know that they would be valuable experience and good fun, but I feel so old now that the imperative to also have money to walk around, eat and pay the rent also weighs heavy.

Unless anyone, as ever, has any ideas ...

It reminds me of an article I read many moons ago about an intern who hired an intern (the source of which I can't remember so again, ironically, I've asked someone else).  Expect an update should it turn up.

Updated:  06/07/2010

It was an article I heard.  Many thanks to Apricot at AskMe for identifying that (somewhat inevitably) it was a piece on This American Life in episode #385, Pro Se:

Act Four. Underling Gets An Underling.

Stef Willen tells Ira about a time that she took matters into her own hands, even though she was only a lowly production assistant on a reality show. (7 minutes)

the midst of.

Journalism Ira Glass, presenter of This American Life, gives a fascinating interview about his craft to Slate. Um, ah, the following quote is out of context, but he describes how I feel much of the time:

"But there's a really fascinating instance of what you're talking about in Chuck Klosterman's new book [Eating the Dinosaur]. I feel like this is a really weird example to bring up, but he interviews me and Errol Morris about interviewing. It's a really funny chapter because I give all of these totally Pollyanna answers—I mean, things I really believe, but I'm like [here he goes into an earnest falsetto, like a very sincere Chipmunk] "I just think that people open up because they sense that somebody's really interested. It's just a natural human thing." And Errol is like "I DOUBT WHETHER WE KNOW OURSELVES, AND THE ACT OF BEING INTERVIEWED IS AN ACT OF ASSERTING A SELF WHICH WE HOPE IS TRUE." Seriously, every answer is like this. I'm like, "I just think it's really swell being interviewed!" And he's like "THERE IS NO SELF.""

I'm in the midst of listening to my fifth production of Hamlet this week (in a desperate attempt to catch up for the project) and I know I'm no further down the line in understanding the play or being able to talk intelligently about it out loud.