What I Learned from Television

Stories recorded during our 2007 live tour. Sarah Vowell, David Rakoff, Dan Savage, and other favorite contributors went on the road with us to New York, Boston, Minneapolis, Chicago, Seattle, and Los Angeles; and performed brand-new stories in front of sold-out audiences. Prologue: Host Ira Glass talks with Jane Espenson—who's written for the TV shows Battlestar Galactica and Gilmore Girls—and with J.J. Abrams—one of the creators of the hit shows Lost, Alias, and Felicity—about how we might be in the midst of another Golden Age of television. (4 minutes) 29: This American Life contributor David Rakoff, who swore off TV in college, returns to it in dramatic fashion: He attempts to watch the same amount of television as the average American—29 hours in one week. David is author, most recently, of the book Don't Get Too Comfortable. (15 minutes) Turkeys In Pilgrim Clothing: Sarah Vowell examines what happens when TV takes on a subject it really has no business exploring at all, but seems fairly obsessed with nonetheless: The Pilgrims. Sarah's most recent book is Assassination Vacation. (10 minutes) Radio On The Tv: Ira says a few words about what he learned from working on a television show himself and about what it's like to hear your name mentioned casually by a fictional character on a prime time drama. (5 minutes) My Other Dog's A German Shepherd: Regular This American Life contributor Dan Savage, a syndicated sex columnist with possibly the filthiest mouth of anyone you could ever meet, finds a TV program so dirty, so weird, and so perverted that he won't let his son watch it—even though it's a kids' show, made for kids, and broadcast on a network for kids. Dan's most recent book is The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family (15 minutes)