Hi Heather! I can't wait for the irony of this weeks' "people are dying, kill your TV" idiot.

Since we don't have pay channels, I've never had an opportunity to watch This American Life on Showtime. But I have been wondering for some years now what exactly Ira Glass might look like. Well, thanks to salon, I now know exactly what he looks like, less like John Turturro than I might have imagined, but close enough. Ira's image makes a really welcome change from The Other Guy whose face has been all over salon for weeks and weeks now. Thanks!

p.s. You've done a great job of capturing TAL's somewhat illusive ambiance, Rebecca.

I liked This American Life on radio and have never seen it on TV, but to cut to the point... it's about time to write about BSG!

...and how weird it is this season. Weird and full of Baltar.

Baltar is cunning, Baltar is shrewd, Baltar is the only interesting Galactica dude.

The first season was wonderful. Something about seeing the visual aspect of the radio show was just...great. It really is something to see.

Katetex, I don't have Showtime either but you can download the episodes from ITunes. I'll have to wait till these get put up there before I can see them as well.

OK, I will watch it. The first time I watched this show (On TV!?) I was disappointed; maybe I liked my own imagination on the radio show better. After this description I will watch it, though.

I think This American Life is one of the most intelligent, interesting and riveting, sometimes breath-taking, radio shows -- I sometimes have to turn it off, however. The producers and Ira Glass et al. brilliantly keep to the format with all its unique and amazing qualities.

I loved all the descriptions of both the show and its parts and the fantasy of the '50s Heather Havrilesky describes. (But how does a woman who is young enough to have a kid in daycare know so well about this time period? Sure we wore cinch belts and full full skirts which we could swirl, and did, but -- and I don't want to ruin Heather's fantasy; it is hers and stands by itself -- but everything around it wasn't that great, not like in the movies. I love the point, though, that This American Life has the possibility of making our mundane things, when looked at through its ineffable lens, LIKE the certain things picked out and put into a movie and palatable and (what's another word for:) romantic.)

[Heather Havrilesky is brilliant and always a pleasure to read. I do hope she is making huge huge bucks.]

This piece is a fantastic look at the human condition as well as how TAL works to reflect ourselves back to us in such fun and meaningful ways. Thank you, Heather! I've been a TAL junkie for years, and you got it right!

...because I don't get Showtime. Generally, the only thing Showtime has that HBO doesn't is gay and lesbian softcore porn, and straight-man porn introduced by David Duchovny. That isn't much, although it does poke HBO in the place where it is the most sensitive, its fear of nudity and sexual material.

That's a shame, because I used to see original and interesting material on Showtime. Brothers was a decent sitcom about straights and gays coping with each other's lives that was non-exploitative and occasionally poignant. SCTV in its declining days found a home there. There was even Steambath, based on the off-Broadway play, about an afterlife in a steam room where the bitter, angry towel attendant was actually God. Oh, and they also recorded George Hearn and Angela Lansbury's performance of Sweeney Todd.

But Showtime found its niche; porn. And I guess they have to be blessed for that, because American culture has gone so right-wing in the last couple of decades, it's surprising anyone does porn any more. (When was the last time a mainstream film showed any nudity? Maybe that lunatic underground filmmaker Damon Packard is right; there's no nudity because civilization was supposed to have ended in 1985, and didn't.)

Incidentally, I love the "World War II Homefront America" period of history too. But I remember some real things that happened; race riots, long shifts at war plants with no breaks or vacations or time off, black market smuggling of meat (including a revival of cattle rustling) and censorship of radio so fierce you couldn't even say the name "Mae West" for a few years. Kinda kills that drug-induced nostalgic feeling expressed in the column.

but I have to diverge on this one. I find Ira Glass to be less observer and more condescending hipster. Personal conclusions are impossible, as Glass (or the writers) take great pains to state the obvious.

However, if Heather likes it, I'll watch an episode with an open mind.

Lovely article, Heather. It's ironic to me that someone who is writing about an ultimately, okay usually, shallow medium manages to pen such poetic thoughts. The shows that you write about are secondary. I read your columns to savor your humor and wry observations. Keep up the good work.

Can kiss my sweet ass.

Oh, irony! The little delusions in life drink our milkshake sometimes. Ira IS precious - the show brings so much to an already-failed empire - one would mistake it for a country full of human beings wanting more than material stuffing. If the camera angle is weird, we may believe in OUR fantasy of how the life is for the little girl, not hers, not the Iraqi's and not the well-intentioned producers.

What distinguishes and crowns the effort since Day 1 on public radio is this: Americans are curious about who The Other Guy really is. Because Americans, unlike Europeans, Asians, even Mexicans, really DO NOT know who THEY are.

And each week, on one (now) TV show, "this land is your land, this land is my land..." . It is not a quaint idea to observe and pay attention to human beings in the Empire, especially as they aspire and perspire to different rhythms than The Official Beat permits. In a nation of freedom, it really is amazing to learn just how diverse and irreverent people truly are. Heather, Ira thanks you! - voice of Johnny Depp