This American Life Live!

Last night Lindsay and I went to see a live in-theater podcast of This American Life, hosted by Ira Glass. If you've never listened to an episode, you need to get online and do so. I've listened to just about every one of the some 300 that are avaliable to stream and enjoy for free. New episodes I eagerly await each weekend to listen to on National Public Radio. The episodes consist of stories and essays, interviews documenting everyday people's lives, which are extrordinary. Recently the show has put out one sesason on television, and this live theater podcast was marking the second season's beginning on Showtime. Ira is the host of the show, and he played some clips of outtakes, played some recorded interview clips, talked about the transition from radio to TV, and answered auudience questions, all live from New York. He gave a nod to all the people attending in different theaters across the country, with a special thank you to the only 2 tickets sold in Victorville, Ca, which cracked me up. Some of the stories presented last night were urban kids who live in innercity Philidelphia who keep and ride horses around the extremely non-rural environment, 2 inmates who constructed an escape ladder to scale a prison wall entirely of thousands of yards of dental floss, Jr. High School boys who want to be stand up comedians, an Iraqi man who traveled southern and mid-western Americal all summer sitting in a Lucy Peanut's style booth with a big sign that read "Talk To An Iraqi" so he could interview people about why they wanted to invade his country and what they percieved the war to be like. Each story was so great, we where laughing out loud and clapping thorugh the whole show. At the end during a Q&A one man in the audience asked Ira if he could do a show interviewing celebrities, who he's like to invite, and I loved Ira's totally honest, matter of fact response. He said the famouses are simply too boring and normal to him. It rang so true, I was delighted.
I listen online at work a lot, and am sometimes moved to tears by this show. I've often thought about buying some of the CDs they offer and giving them as gifts to fiends and family, and I may do it for Christmas this year. It's so good, you just want to share and talk about it all the time after you hear it.