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Host and Executive Producer
Ira Glass started working in public radio in 1978, when he was 19, as an
intern at National Public
Radio's Washington headquarters. Over the course of the next 17
years, he worked on nearly every NPR news show and did nearly every
production job they had: he was a tape-cutter, desk assistant, newscast
writer, editor, producer, reporter, and substitute host. He spent a year
in a high school for NPR, and a year in an elementary school, filing
every week or two for All Things Considered. He moved to Chicago in
1989 and put This American Life on the air in November of 1995.
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Director of Photography, Television
Adam Beckman is a freelance cinematographer based in
New York. He got his start shooting music videos in the late '80s for
groups like Run-D.M.C., Green Day, and Radiohead. In the years since,
he's photographed movies, documentaries, and lots and lots of TV
commercials. Adam met the staff of This American Life in 2001,
when he reported and wrote the story “House on Loon Lake,”
produced by his wife, former TAL staff producer Wendy Dorr.
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Producer, Radio
Executive Producer, Television
Alex Blumberg is a former TAL administrator who, prior to rejoining us in the summer of 1999, worked as a freelance radio reporter, contributing to TAL, the Savvy Traveller and Chicago Public Radio. He also teaches at Columbia University in NYC.
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Contributing Editor
Susan Burton is a former TAL producer. Her TAL-broadcast documentaries with Hyder Akbar, Come Back to Afghanistan and Teenage Embed, won several awards, including the Third Coast International Audio Festival's silver prize and an Overseas Press Club citation. She and Hyder co-wrote a book (also called Come Back to Afghanistan) based on experiences detailed in the documentaries. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, and she is a former editor of Harper's. A movie, Unaccompanied Minors, based on her essay of the same name, broadcast in our Babysitting show, was released in 2006.
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Producer, Radio
Producer and Series Music Supervisor, Television
Before her internship with us in 2002, Jane Feltes was programming director for The University of Illinois at Chicago's student radio station. She became a producer in spring 2004.
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Contributing Editor
Jonathan Goldstein (pictured) is another former TAL producer, and author of the books Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bible!, Lenny Bruce is Dead and Schmelvis: In Search of Elvis Presley's Jewish Roots.
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Contributing Editor
Jack Hitt is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and Harper's. His work ranges from the Peter Pan segment on Fiasco! to the Hamlet in jail program entitled Act V. He got his start in journalism as editor of the Paperclip, the magazine of Porter-Gaud School's first through sixth grade, where he published some of the finest haiku penned by well-off pre-teens in all of South Carolina's lowcountry.
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Music Guru, Radio
In addition to helping select music for TAL, Jessica Hopper is a music journalist and author. Her work is routinely found in The Chicago Reader, Chicago Tribune and LA Weekly. She is also the author of The Girls' Guide to Rocking and blogs at Tiny Lucky Genius.
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Founded in 1995, Killer Films is run by Christine Vachon, Pamela
Koffler, and Katie Roumel. Recent productions include Todd Haynes's
I'm Not There with Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere,
and Heath Ledger; An American Crime with Catherine Keener, Ellen
Page, James Franco, and Bradley Whitford; Savage Grace with
Julianne Moore; and Then She Found Me, co-written and directed by
Helen Hunt and starring Hunt, Bette Midler, Colin Firth, and Matthew
Broderick. Prior films include Far from Heaven, which received
four Academy Award nominations in 2002; John Cameron Mitchell's
Hedwig and the Angry Inch; and Mark Romanek's One Hour
Photo with Robin Williams. This American Life is Killer's
first foray into episodic TV.
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Producer
Before joining the show as a producer in January 2004, Sarah Koenig was a political reporter at the Baltimore Sun, and before that at the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire. She also lived in Russia for three years, working first for ABC News and then for The New York Times.
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The two founders of Left/Right, Banks Tarver and Ken Druckerman, have
worked in every conceivable corner of non-fiction television, from
documentaries about first-time political candidates to a reality
television series starring Mr. T. Their hit series Growing Up
Gotti was rated one of the ten best shows of 2004 by the New York
Times—the only unscripted series to make the list.
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Production Manager
Before joining the show as production manager in April 2006, Seth Lind managed all things technical at The Radio Foundation. He also produced radio pieces, directed the short documentary film Barbara Leather, and shot and co-produced Stranger: Bernie Worrell on Earth, a film about the genius keyboardist of Parliament-Funkadelic.
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Web Manager
Before joining TAL in November 2007, Adrianne worked as site editor and podcast host for the Public Radio Exchange. She has been a contributing writer/producer for Love and Radio, and spends her spare time tinkering on a blog.
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Producer
Lisa Pollak joined the show as a producer in April 2004, after seven years as a features writer at the Baltimore Sun. She's also worked as a reporter for the News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.) and the Charlotte Observer. As a print reporter she won the Pulitzer Prize in features writing and the Ernie Pyle Award for human interest writing.
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Producer, Radio
Producer, Television
Before becoming a producer in June 2007, Robyn Semien was an associate editor on the first season of TAL television.
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Producer
Alissa Shipp joined This American Life in the summer of 2006 from Warner Brothers Pictures, where she served as TAL's executive liaison. She's also worked as a book scout and as an associate with literary agent Nicole Aragi. Alissa handles film rights, development, and production for TAL, and also looks for literary material for the show.
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Senior Producer, Radio
Executive Producer, Television
Prior to joining our staff, Julie Snyder was a reporter for WGN radio in Chicago, and also was news director at KZSC, Santa Cruz's public radio station.
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Producer
Nancy Updike is one of the founding producers of our show. Her stories appear in "Sissies," "Crime Scene," "24 Hours at the Golden Apple," and other episodes. Her hour-long Iraq story, "I'm from the Private Sector and I'm Here to Help," won the Edward R. Murrow Award for best news documentary and the Scripps-Howard National Journalism Award in radio. She was nominated for an Emmy for her story "God’s Close-Up," from the first season of the TAL TV show.
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Contributing Editor
Sarah Vowell is the author of the books Assassination Vacation, The Partly Cloudy Patriot, Take the Cannoli: Stories from the New World, and Radio On: A Listener's Diary. Her criticism and reporting has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, including Esquire, Time, Spin, and McSweeney's>. She has appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman, Late Night with Conan O'Brien>, and her TAL piece on Frank Sinatra's "My Way" was featured on ABC's Nightline the day Sinatra died. Her work is archived at a page on Hearing Voices' web site; visit for more links and photos. Her speaking schedule is online too.
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Director and Co-Executive Producer, Television
Chris Wilcha is the only living person who's directed both Ira Glass and
Mr. T. He's also directed promos, pilots, and short films for MTV, PBS,
Sundance Channel, and TV Land—including The Social History of
the Mosh Pit, Second Hand Stories, and, with the
aforementioned T., I Pity the Fool. His first-person documentary
The Target Shoots First, about his experience as a junior
marketing executive at the mail order music club Columbia House during
the heady, breakthrough days of "alternative music," won lots of awards
at film festivals and was broadcast on both Cinemax and Sundance
Channel.
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