"Listening Is Not Living"
Lou spent so many years listening to talk radio that he was left wondering whether there was actually any reason to live.
Social & External
Lou
Unknown Role
It’s This American Life’s wildest, most ambitious live show ever! Nearly 50 actors, singers, dancers, musicians and comedians joined Ira Glass onstage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Opera House on June 7th, 2014 to try some things they'd never tried before. The result? Journalism turned into opera, into plays, into a Broadway musical. Comedy from Mike Birbiglia, and SNL’s Sasheer Zamata. Songs from Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields. Dance from Monica Bill Barnes & Company.
Mark Hunter, a lonely high school student, uses his shortwave radio to moonlight as the popular pirate DJ "Hard Harry." When his show gets blamed for a teen committing suicide, the students clash with high school faculty and the authorities.
Brazil, 2030. The sisters Alayr and Sabrina are hearing on the cell radio the judgment that could change the course of a country "without energy". They are surprised by Fátima, the sister who returns from the dead to fraternize on this historic night.
A series of mysterious crimes threatens the existence of a new radio network.
14 year old Sven is a technical genius, who has rebuilt an old caravan into a radio communication center. Via radio he is in contact with his father, who works at a big ship at the other side of the globe. One day the radio communication is suddenly interrupted by something which sounds like a Latin mass. In school Sven attends a lesson about radio-astronomy. The teacher explains that astronomers can receive radio waves that are thousand years old. Sven understands that the Latin mass he heard was transmitted to him from another age. He gets curious and starts making experiments by connecting his radio kit to bigger aerials. When he sits in the caravan together with his friends Bo and Petra, they not only hear the Latin mass on his radio, but the whole caravan is turned into a time-machine that brings them to the Middle Ages. They get in trouble with some warriors, who capture Petra, while Sven and Bo escape with the help of their time-machine...
A white guy pretends to be a black female talk radio host and becomes a huge hit.
After the death of his mother, a young boy calls a radio station in an attempt to set his father up on a date. Across the country, an engaged woman becomes convinced that they belong together, despite their never having met. Will their paths collide despite the odds?
A disk jockey goes to Vietnam to work for the Armed Forces Radio Service. While he becomes popular among the troops, his superiors disapprove of his humor.
A couple of high school graduates spend one final night cruising the strip with their buddies before they go off to college.
The story of Washington D.C. radio personality Ralph "Petey" Greene, an ex-con who became a popular talk show host and community activist in the 1960s.
When a group of trespassing seniors swim in a pool containing alien cocoons, they find themselves energized with youthful vigor.
Why do we suffer so much if we're just a flea on the Milky Way's back? That's what Erika wants to find out. She's a teenager with generalized anxiety disorder, and as she gets older she discovers that she doesn't fit in with social norms and lives day after day in anguish trying to discover her own personality, which is why she creates a podcast to understand what she's feeling.
All Denny wants to do is get by like everybody else, but there always seems to be something in the way.
The secretary of an affably suave radio mystery host mysteriously commits suicide after his wealthy young niece disappears.
In 1966 a group of determined young men defied the New Zealand government and launched a pirate radio station aboard a ship in the Hauraki Gulf.
In 1944 Poland, a Jewish shop keeper named Jakob is summoned to ghetto headquarters after being caught out after curfew. While waiting for the German Kommondant, Jakob overhears a German radio broadcast about Russian troop movements. Returned to the ghetto, the shopkeeper shares his information with a friend and then rumors fly that there is a secret radio within the ghetto.
The life and career of shock-jock superstar Howard Stern is recounted from his humble beginnings to his view from the top. Possessing a desire to be an on-air personality since childhood, Stern meanders through the radio world, always with his supportive wife, Alison, by his side. Landing a gig in Washington, D.C., Stern meets Robin Quivers, who will become his long-time partner in crime. When the two move to New York, they face the wrath of NBC executives.
Yuddy, a Hong Kong playboy known for breaking girls' hearts, tries to find solace and truth after discovering the woman who raised him isn't his mother.
Trouble begins when a hated cad of a sponsor is found murdered during the climax of a live radio show. A radio engineer then tries to solve the murder.
A disillusioned Seoul woman visits a remote island to reconnect with a childhood friend, only to find her trapped in an oppressive cycle of physical, mental, and sexual abuse. As tensions escalate, the situation spirals into a harrowing tale of survival and retribution.
A journalist finds himself questioning his own life when his best friend, a dying man, offers him some very powerful wisdom and advice for coping in relationships, careers and society.
A man trying to get home to his dog becomes stuck in a time loop that forces him to relive a deadly run-in with a cop.
A rude, contemptuous talk show host becomes overwhelmed by the hatred that surrounds his program just before it goes national.
The story of golf icon and legend, Bobby Jones, who retired from competition at the tender age of 28.
At the end of WWII, Jimmy Picard, a Native American Blackfoot who fought in France, suffers from unexplainable symptoms and is admitted to a military hospital. When doctors suspect schizophrenia, an eccentric psychoanalyst takes up the case and starts a conversation with the veteran.
Tess enlists her biological father – a lovable slacker from the wrong side of the tracks – and the charming juvenile delinquent next door to help her come to grips with the death of her little sister.
An unlikely friendship evolves over one wild night in LA between a struggling journalist and actor Hervé Villechaize, the world's most famous gun-toting dwarf, resulting in life-changing consequences for both.
94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein tries to rebuild her life after the death of her best friend. As a result, she moves back to New York City after living in Florida for decades.
A service which creates holographic projections of late family members allows an elderly woman to spend time with a younger version of her deceased husband.
Four siblings' lives change drastically when their ailing mother takes a turn for the worse over the holiday season.
Years after her son's suicide, a woman longs to confront both the past and a friend of his who took his business idea.
After Margaret, a divorcée living in Dublin, loses her teenage son, she develops an unorthodox relationship with Joe, a homeless youth. Their tentative trust is threatened by his involvement with a violent gang and the escalation of her ex-husband's grieving rage.
When honest ship captain Roy Glennister gets swindled out of his mine claim, he turns to saloon singer Cherry Malotte for assistance in his battle with no-good town kingpin Alexander McNamara.
A man reflects on the lost love of his youth and his long-ago journey from Taiwan to America as he begins to reconnect with his estranged daughter.
When five strangers with nothing in common come together at a remote roadside eatery, they place their orders with the diner's omniscient owner, who seems to know everything about them ... and is eerily reminiscent of Jesus Christ.
An African-American woman becomes an unwitting pioneer for medical breakthroughs when her cells are used to create the first immortal human cell line in the early 1950s.
A psychic's ominous reading sends a man into a tailspin.
A military veteran goes on a journey into the future, where he can foresee his death and is left with questions that could save his life and those he loves.
An unlikely friendship forms between 21 year-old Jane and the elderly Sadie after Jane discovers a hidden stash of money inside an object at Sadie's yard sale.
Frank, a retired Irish seaman, and Walter, a retired Cuban barber, are two lonely old men trapped in the emptiness of their own lives. When they meet in a park Frank is able to start a conversation after several attempts. They begin to spend time together and become friends. But because of their different characters they often quarrel with each other and finally seperate after Frank misbehaves to Walter's friend Elaine.