Ira Glass started working in public radio in 1978, when he was 19, as an intern at NPR's headquarters in DC. Over the next 17 years, he worked on nearly every NPR news show and did nearly every production job they had: tape-cutter, desk assistant, newscast writer, editor, producer, reporter, and substitute host. He spent a year in a high school for NPR, and a year in an elementary school, filing stories for All Things Considered. He moved to Chicago in 1989 and put This American Life on the air in 1995.
Ira Glass
Host and Executive Producer
Elise Bergerson
Administrative Assistant
Elise joined This American Life in August 2012. Prior to this she worked as the Middle East and Asia Program Associate at the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum, coordinating closed-door meetings on policy responses to international conflict for the United Nations. Before that, she worked with UN High Commissioner for Refugees in New Delhi, India, managing a refugee protection clinic. She holds a BA in Political Science from Barnard College.
Alex Blumberg
Producer
Alex Blumberg is a former This American Life administrator who, prior to rejoining us as a producer in the summer of 1999, worked as a freelance radio reporter, contributing to TAL, the Savvy Traveller and Chicago Public Radio. Lately Alex has been focusing on economics reporting via Planet Money, a collaboration between This American Life and NPR. He also teaches at Columbia University in NYC.
Ben Calhoun
Producer
Ben Calhoun joined the show as a producer in April 2010. Before that, he was a reporter who contributed to most every major public radio news entity heard in the country—including Radiolab, NPR, the BBC, and Marketplace. Ben worked in WBEZ’s newsroom for eight years, where he reported on politics and did documentary work. You can follow Ben on Twitter.
Emily Condon
Production Manager
Before joining the TAL staff, Emily Condon ran the Oak Street Cinema, a single-screen revival movie theatre in Minneapolis, and got a Master's at The New School for Social Research. She infrequently shares her interest in deadball-era baseball here and occasionally writes for Reverse Shot and Rookie.
Sarah Koenig
Producer
Before joining the show as a producer in January 2004, Sarah Koenig was a political reporter at the Baltimore Sun, and before that at the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire. She also lived in Russia for three years, working first for ABC News and then for The New York Times.
Seth Lind
Director of Operations
Before joining the show as production manager in 2006, Seth Lind managed all things technical at The Radio Foundation. He also produced a few radio pieces, and worked on several films. Seth performs improv comedy with the group Thank You, Robot. From 2008-2012, he hosted a live monthly storytelling show called Told.
Adrianne Mathiowetz
Web Manager
Before joining This American Life in November 2007, Adrianne worked as site editor and podcast host for the Public Radio Exchange. She has been a contributing writer/producer for Love and Radio, and is a documentary photography graduate from Salt.
Miki Meek
Producer
Miki Meek interned and freelanced for the show before joining the staff in December 2012. Previously, she worked as an online producer and editor at National Geographic and The New York Times. Miki has won two Emmy awards for new approaches to documentary programming.
Jonathan Menjivar
Producer
Jonathan Menjivar was a contributor to This American Life before joining
the staff in July 2010. He was previously a producer Fresh Air with Terry Gross and reported stories for other public radio shows including
Studio 360 and Marketplace.
Lisa Pollak
Producer
Lisa Pollak joined the show as a producer in April 2004, after seven years as a features writer at the Baltimore Sun. She's also worked as a reporter for the News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.) and the Charlotte Observer. As a print reporter she won the Pulitzer Prize in features writing and the Ernie Pyle Award for human interest writing.
Brian Reed
Producer
Brian Reed first came to This American Life as an intern, and rejoined our staff as a producer in October 2011. In the interim he was a producer at StoryCorps. Brian also reported and produced stories for NPR as a Kroc Fellow and as their first Above the Fray Fellow.
Robyn Semien
Producer
Before becoming a producer in June 2007, Robyn Semien was an associate editor on the first season of This American Life television.
Alissa Shipp
Producer
Alissa Shipp joined This American Life in the summer of 2006 from Warner Brothers Pictures, where she served as TAL's executive liaison. She's also worked as a book scout and as an associate with literary agent Nicole Aragi. Alissa handles film rights, development, and production for TAL, and also looks for literary material for the show.
Julie Snyder
Senior Producer
Prior to joining our staff, Julie Snyder was a reporter for WGN radio in Chicago, and also was news director at KZSC, Santa Cruz's public radio station.
Nancy Updike
Producer
Nancy Updike is one of the founding producers of our show. Her stories appear in "Sissies," "Crime Scene," "24 Hours at the Golden Apple," and other episodes. Her hour-long Iraq story, "I'm from the Private Sector and I'm Here to Help," won the Edward R. Murrow Award for best news documentary and the Scripps-Howard National Journalism Award in radio. She was nominated for an Emmy for her story "God’s Close-Up," from the first season of the TAL TV show.
Adam Beckman
Director of Photography
Adam Beckman is a freelance cinematographer based in New York. He got his start shooting music videos in the late '80s for groups like Run-D.M.C., Green Day, and Radiohead. In the years since, he's photographed movies, documentaries, and lots and lots of TV commercials. Adam met the staff of This American Life in 2001, when he reported and wrote the story “House on Loon Lake,” produced by his wife, former TAL staff producer Wendy Dorr.
Killer Films
Founded in 1995, Killer Films is run by Christine Vachon, Pamela Koffler, and Katie Roumel. Recent productions include I'm Not There with Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, and Heath Ledger; Savage Grace with Julianne Moore; and Then She Found Me, co-written and directed by Helen Hunt. Prior films include Far from Heaven, which received four Academy Award nominations in 2002; Hedwig and the Angry Inch; and Mark Romanek's One Hour Photo with Robin Williams. This American Life is Killer's first foray into episodic TV.
Left/Right Productions
The two founders of Left/Right, Banks Tarver and Ken Druckerman, have worked in every conceivable corner of non-fiction television, from documentaries about first-time political candidates to a reality television series starring Mr. T. Their hit series Growing Up Gotti was rated one of the ten best shows of 2004 by the New York Times—the only unscripted series to make the list.
Chris Wilcha
Director and Co-Executive Producer
Chris Wilcha is the only living person who's directed both Ira Glass and Mr. T. He's also directed promos, pilots, and short films for MTV, PBS, Sundance Channel, and TV Land—including The Social History of the Mosh Pit, Second Hand Stories, and, with the aforementioned T., I Pity the Fool. His first-person documentary The Target Shoots First won lots of awards at film festivals and was broadcast on both Cinemax and Sundance Channel.
