Occasionally we get lucky and stumble across interesting works of art buried deep in the cultural mud—where they would probably stay—if folk like us weren’t out there dirt-fishing for hidden gems. A couple of nights ago, as luck would have it, my metal detector started singing loudly during an ancient episode of This American Life. If you aren’t familiar, Ira Glass, who is an enormously talented public radio host out of Chicago, has created a stunning body of work with this program, on both radio and television, which I have followed on and off for years. The concept is simple and therefore brilliant: just film people being people with all of their foibles and hopes and victories and crushing defeats, center the pieces around a theme, and let the world speak for itself without offering an editorial opinion.
They used to call that journalism.
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