This American Life

This American Life is a weekly public radio show broadcast on more than 500 stations to about 1.7 million listeners. It is produced by Chicago Public Radio, distributed by Public Radio International, and has won all of the major broadcasting awards. It is also often the most popular podcast in the country, with more than a half million people downloading each week. From 2006-2008, we produced a television version of This American Life on the Showtime network, which won three Emmys. We're also the co-producers, with NPR News, of the economics podcast and blog Planet Money. And a half dozen stories from the radio show are being developed into films.
The radio show and TV show follow the same format. There’s a theme to each episode, and a variety of stories on that theme. It’s mostly true stories of everyday people, though not always. There’s lots more to the show, but it’s sort of hard to describe. Probably the best way to understand the show is to start at our favorites page, though we do have longer guides to our radio show and our TV show. If you want to dive into the hundreds of episodes we’ve done over the years, there’s an archive of all our old radio shows and listings for all our TV episodes, too.
There are several ways to get the show:

• Stream radio episodes for free from the archive
• Subscribe to the free weekly podcast
• Download the most recent episode a la carte, free, from the homepage
• Download old episodes for $0.99 on iTunes
• Stream episodes through our iPhone app
• Listen on the radio
• Purchase CDs of radio episodes and greatest hits collections
• Purchase DVDs of our TV seasons
• Download TV Season One or Season Two on iTunes

You can also read about shows we're doing on the road, about our staff, about how to submit a story idea, about how to learn to make radio, about our internship program or about about press coverage, check answers to frequently asked questions, or join our group on Facebook.