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I'm an NPR listener. Its on when I get into my car, we choose the radio over the TV in our house more often than not, 70% of my conversations start with "Ya know, I heard on the radio today that..." I love the unbiased news, the interesting people and the wealth of knowledge that they selflessly give to me.

But my absolute favorite show is This American Life. I actually won't listen to it on the weekends when it comes on. I get it on podcast and, along with buying old episodes to listen to, will only listen to them in the gym. This insures that I will work out for at least 1 hour because every show is so captivating to me that I will not stop working out because then I will have to stop listening.

So of course when I heard that they were doing a live broadcast in theaters nation wide on May 1st, I went home and instantly bought 2 tickets, even though the price was kind of ridiculous. 20 dollars a person is kinda high, but when your radio show comes on public radio and your TV show comes on Showtime, I guess 20 dollars a head is the middle ground.

The idea was to show some upcoming stories for the TV shows, perform some radio stories, show out takes, and answer fan mail. I didn't really know what to expect because I had never done anything like this before, but I will tell you that it went above and beyond any inclination of how I thought it might pan out.

The stories they played were phenomenal, like a 24 year old Iraqi man who wanted to get a better understanding of what Americans thought of the war, so he went from town to town (mostly in the south) propping up a booth in public places (ala- Lucy from Charlie Brown) that read "Talk to an Iraqi" and just waited for people to approach him. It was hilarious, enlightening, and dreadfully sad in the same breath.

Or a story that a man tells often about the time that he and his wife were walking in NYC and she thought Jackie Onassis was waving at her, so she waved back, only to realize that she was actually waving a cab. And also...that his wife swears he was never actually there when it happened...told by way of a cartoon. Nothing short of brilliant.

Ira Glass even explained that, yes, Tory Mallatia is in fact a real person.

There is really no point here except that This American Life is such great entertainment and if you haven't experienced the radio program, the TV show, or both, don't wait. So, Ladies and gentleman, without further adieu, Ira is waiting for you.