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NEWS ABOUT: This American Life

NPR Lays Off 7% of Staff, Cuts 2 Shows

Corporate underwriting took big hit in recession

(Newser) - NPR will take two shows off the air and lay off 64 employees—7% of its workforce—to close an unexpected $23 million budget shortfall. Shows getting the ax are "Day to Day" and "News and Notes," both of which sought to diversify NPR's audience. The layoffs... More »

Choose Your Own Adventure, This American Life Style

Radar makes funny at the expense of Ira Glass' popular franchise

(Newser) - This American Life, providing "a valuable census of liberal America's cultural consciousness since 1996," comes in for a little ribbing from Walker Boyd in Radar. Boyd  spoofs Ira Glass's radio and TV narratives with a Mad Libs-type story generator. Now "your dreams of Ira narrating some touching... More »

Magic of 'This American Life' Returns to Small Screen

Second season debuts tonight

(Newser) - The stories on the small-screen version of “This American Life” start out small—a husband’s protest over the oppressive American trend of lawn-mowing, a young man living with spinal muscular atrophy—and become something universal, both dark and light, even a little magical, writes Heather Havrilesky on Salon.... More »

Quirk Is the New Kitsch (Sigh)

Atlantic writer traces the devolution of idiosyncrasy into idiocy

(Newser) - Quirk is the “ruling sensibility” of today’s culture—random narrative, “mannered ingenuousness”—and it’s become exhausting, writes the Atlantic's Michael Hirschorn. “This American Life” has been the standard-bearer, but the quirk it purveys hasn't held up well in expanding from radio to TV. More »

'LIFE' GOES ON

How do you make beloved public radio program This American Life work on TV?

(Newser) - Stevenson Swanson wonders how and weather Chicago Public Radio god Ira Glass can really do a television show and, even more daring, a show for the premium cable only network, Showtime. More »

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