Ira Glass, the host of This American Life, best describes his radio show turned Showtime television series at the end of each intro segment: “It’s This American Life. I’m Ira Glass. Each week on our program we choose a theme, and bring you a variety of different stories on that theme.” The short stories featured on the show stand among the best writing around today, and they are made all the more powerful by being true. Like all good stories, their plots (or in this case, their subjects) lure you in with some interesting hook and then surprise you by exploring what it means to be human. No matter how quirky or controversial the subject, the subtext of the story is always about something universal that anybody can identify with.
Take for instance the story “The Spy Who Loved Everyone” from the pilot episode of the television adaptation of the show, which began airing on Showtime in 2007. It profiles a group of high-concept pranksters called Improv Everywhere that tries to stage events without creating victims. They claim they don’t want their pranks to come at the expense of innocent bystanders. One night, they give an unknown band called Ghosts of Persha “the best gig ever” by studying their song lyrics, making fake t-shirts, and showing up at their show with about 30 people posing as hardcore Ghosts of Persha fans. The two members of Ghosts of Persha walk away thinking they had the night of their life until they find out on the Internet a few days later that the whole moment was staged. The surface story is interesting enough, but reporter Jorge Just finds depth in the situation by asking the viewer and the band members, “Given a choice between dreams and real life, which would you choose?”
Or take “Tragedy Minus Time Equals Happily Ever After,” the story of Ronald Mallett, a physics professor who has devoted his life to building a time machine and has come astonishingly close to realizing his goal. Underneath the hook of the time machine lies an even more compelling story about a kid who took longer than most people to grow up. A kid who made a vow to build a time machine so he could go back in time and warn his father that he would die from smoking.
In “The Super Always Rings Twice,” reporter Jack Hitt tells a story about when he lived in an apartment in New York in the early 80s “when crack was king, and the murder rates topped 2,000 a year.” He talks with tenants who lived with him during that time about their superintendent, Bob. Bob was a larger-than-life super who seemed to be full of odd quirks and tall tales. He told tenants far-fetched tales about his life as a cattle ranch owner in Brazil, and warned them that the supply closet was booby-trapped, in case they were thinking about stealing light bulbs. One former tenant remembers Bob telling him that he dripped a bag of acid onto homeless people loitering outside of the flat. You know, to get them to go away.
Hitt recalls that Bob claimed he had “a special exemption from the Brazilian Constitution and could murder anyone in Brazil.” Turns out that most of the Bob stories were more than true, especially the one about killing people. The story morphs into a sort of thriller about a conspiracy plot to commit murder. The target of the hit: reporter Jack Hitt.
Most of the stories are touching, and sometimes the show can be depressing, but it always makes you think. Often even the strangest stories can cause you to reflect on your own life. Fans of the show sometimes call them ‘driveway stories,’ because if you’re listening to the story while you’re driving and you pull up in the driveway, you sit there with your car running, because you have to hear how the story ends. Some of them are just intelligent, fun, and unique, such as the piece on Brad Blanton, who ran for Congress on the platform of “radical honesty,” or an investigative piece on what kids think about the way adults talk to them. The best stories combine all of the above qualities.
This American Life is similar to a documentary series or news magazine such as 60 Minutes or Dateline, except it’s smarter and has a pulse. That’s not to say those shows don’t feature intelligent journalism, but This American Life is more interested in storytelling than merely hard-hitting journalism. At the same time, the intelligence of the writing ranks among the best of its peers and represents the best of journalism. It finds a story’s heart and sometimes raises questions rather than spoon-feeding neat messages with simple morals.
This American Life is one of the most edifying shows around, nonfiction or otherwise, and it’s always entertaining. Edification, like education, is about becoming a better person. If a show can do that, then I can’t think of a bigger compliment.
This American Life starts its second season on Showtime in May. The original, arguably superior radio version has been around for years and still runs new episodes on National Public Radio. In Chicago, it airs on 91.5 FM at 7 p.m. on Friday and noon Saturday. Full podcasts of the radio show can be found on This American Life’s website at www.thisamericanlife.org.