This American Life

This American Life is a weekly radio show and podcast hosted by Ira Glass that began in 1995. Chicago station WBEZ originated the show as Your Radio Playhouse before adopting the current title in March 1996.

Public Radio International started syndicating the show nationally in June 1996. The show ended its contract with Public Radio International in June 2014 and chose the Public Radio Exchange to deliver episodes to stations. Glass became the sole owner of the show in 2015 while keeping WBEZ as a partner. Each weekly episode organizes around a central theme introduced by Glass in an opening prologue. Multiple documentary acts follow that theme through interviews, field recordings, and memoirs from regular essayists including David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell.

Showtime aired a television adaptation of the show across two seasons between 2007 and 2008. Live stage performances visited American theaters in 2000, 2003, and 2007, followed by a digital cinema release to movie theaters in May 2008. The team launched the spin-off podcast Serial in October 2014 and introduced another podcast titled S-Town in March 2017. In March 2012, Glass retracted an episode that had aired that January featuring monologist Mike Daisey after reporting revealed that Daisey had fabricated details about a Chinese factory.

The Peabody Awards honored the radio show in 1996, later presenting awards for the episodes Habeas Schmabeas in 2006 and The Pink House at the Center of the World in 2022. The television adaptation collected two Primetime Emmy Awards in 2007 and an additional Emmy in 2008. In May 2020, the Pulitzer Prize Board granted the show the first Pulitzer Prize for Audio Reporting for the episode The Out Crowd. By 2019, weekly radio listenership reached 2.2 million people across the country, alongside 3.6 million weekly podcast downloads.