This American Life: Difference between revisions

← Older edit

This American Life (view source)

Revision as of 13:45, 3 October 2020

487 bytes added , 3 years ago

no edit summary

Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators

213,536

edits

Revision as of 09:17, 23 March 2014 (view source) Dai-Guard (talk \| contribs) m (trope=>work) ← Older edit		Latest revision as of 13:45, 3 October 2020 (view source) Robkelk (talk \| contribs) No edit summary
(15 intermediate revisions by 4 users not shown)
Line 1: {{work}} [[File:iraglass.jpg\|~~frame~~thumb\|350px\|This American Life host Ira Glass]] {{quote\| ''"It's ''This American Life'', I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our show, we bring you a theme, and then present variations on that theme. This week..."''}} ''[[This American Life]]'' is a long-running (1995-present), award-winning weekly [[Documentary]] series on [[NPR\|American public radio]], hosted by Ira Glass. Produced by Chicago Public Radio, it's a unique take on radio journalism, with a hip, literary style. Often thought of as an [[NPR]] production, it's was actually distributed by its rival, PRI, until it became self-distributed in 2014. However, the show actually does air on many NPR member stations, as those stations are more often than not, also PRI affiliates. (It also airs on [[Canadian Broadcasting Corporation\|CBC Radio]] in [[Canada]] and [[Radio National]] in [[Australia (country)\|Australia]].) They have also done occasional [[Crossover~~\|Crossovers~~]]s, in which NPR reporters like Chana Joffe-Walt present a story on TAL, which adds to the confusion. Indeed, starting in 2008, TAL started a continued partnership with NPR News, the ''Planet Money'' quasi-[[Spin-Off]] podcast, consisting of NPR economics/politics reporters Adam Davidson, David Kestenbaum, Chana Joffe-Walt, and Jacob Goldstein, along with TAL regular Alex Blumberg talking about economics issues, ever since the Blumberg-Davidson ''TAL'' episode "The Giant Pool of Money" (basically the [[Origin Story]] of the financial crisis) proved to be a smash success. The ''Planet Money'' team, confusingly, also appears on actual NPR's ''Morning Edition'' and ''All Things Considered''. Line 18: TAL also has presented a number of live shows throughout its history, and more recently, live digital-cinema broadcasts to movie theaters. These often serve as fundraisers for the radio show. The most recent of these included the live singing debut of [[Joss Whedon]]. Parodies include an article from [[The Onion]] [https://web.archive.org/web/20070509014058/http://www.theonion.com/content/news/this_american_life_completes here], [[Stephen Colbert]]'s [http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/225499/april-22-2009/ira-glass interview with Glass], a few episodes of the [[Kasper Hauser]] podcast ([http://kasperhauser.com/podcasts/tal found here]), and an ongoing series, This American Wife. Available online as a [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Podcast.aspx podcast.], which in 2020 was the first podcast to win a Pulitzer Prize (for "The Out Crowd"). ---- {{tropelist}} ~~=== ''[[This American Life]]'' contains examples of the following tropes: ===~~ * [[American Accents]]: Ira Glass' Baltimorese aside, this show may have recorded every accent in the United States. * [[American Title]] Line 43 ⟶ 42: ** This actually happens a lot, to juxtapose how ''many'' different variations on a story are out there. For example, if the show is about finding your biological parents after a long search, expect the story of the happy reunion to be followed by the story of finding only their graves a week after they died. * [[Once an Episode]]: During the credits, producer Torey Mallatia is quoted as saying something, followed by a clip from earlier in the show. It is inevitably funny, and hence also counts as something of a [[Credits Gag]]. * [[Police Brutality]]: One episode revolved around an NYPD officer who secretly recorded his superiors pushing illegal arrest quotas. When they figured it out, they raided his house with SWAT teams in the guise of "protecting him" from committing suicide. Only his ''second'' recorder saved him from being mentally discharged from the force and discredited. Upon moving to upstate NY, the local cops gave him the [[Rewarded Asas a Traitor Deserves]] treatment. * [[Sheep in Wolf's Clothing]]: In 1996, Dan Savage became a local functionary of the Washington Republican Party in a vain effort to reduce [[Gay Panic]] in state politics. * [[Something Completely Different]]: A show this long-running is bound to have a lot. "20 Acts in 60 Minutes" and "Stories Pitched by Our Parents" are just a small sample. Line 54 ⟶ 53: [[Category:American Series]] [[Category:This American Life]] [[Category:Magazine Show]] [[Category:Radio of the 1990s]] [[Category:Radio of the 2000s]] [[Category:Radio of the 2010s]] [[Category:Radio of the 2020s]] [[Category:Live-Action TV of the 2000s]] [[Category:Pulitzer Prize]] [[Category:TV Series]]