Friday 7:00 - 8:00pm, Saturday 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Join veteran NPR producer Ira Glass as he pushes the envelope of radio performance with a show that’s part journalism, part arts, and entirely compelling and unique. Each week, This American Life chooses a theme. Glass does a story or two, and he invites a variety of writers and performers to take a whack at the theme, with stories, monologues, short radio plays, miniature documentaries, “found recordings” and original works for radio.
#497: This Week
This week we return to one of our favorite themes: This Week! All of the stories in the show are things that have taken place in the last seven days. We've got our own take on the big, national stories of the week but we also turn a searchlight across America and find the smaller, more personal and more spectacular stories that most of us never hear.
#488: Harper High School, Part Two
We pick up where we left off last week in our second hour from Harper High School in Chicago. We find out if a shooting in the neighborhood will derail the school's Homecoming game and dance. We hear the origin story of one of Harper's gangs. And we ask a group of teenagers: where do you get your guns? Harper has set up a donation page here.
#487: Harper High School, Part One
We spent five months at Harper High School in Chicago, where last year alone 29 current and recent students were shot. 29. We went to get a sense of what it means to live in the midst of all this gun violence, how teens and adults navigate a world of funerals and Homecoming dances. We found so many incredible and surprising stories, this show is a two-parter; you can listen to Part Two here.
