This American Life started in 1995 in Chicago. It went national in early 1996 and in the years since, it's won a lot of awards—the Peabody, the duPont-Columbia, the Murrow, and the Overseas Press Club, to name a few. Ira Glass, the host of the show, was named best radio host in the country by Time Magazine and received the highest individual honor in public broadcasting, the Edward R. Murrow Award. The American Journalism Review declared that the show is at "the vanguard of a journalistic revolution."
The program is produced by Chicago Public Media, distributed by Public Radio International, and airs on more than 500 public radio stations across the country. They say 1.7 million people listen to us on the radio each week, which sometimes is hard to imagine. It's probably airing this weekend on a station near you. Most weeks This American Life is also the most popular podcast in the country, with more than half a million downloads.