He seemed slightly embarrassed. The audience, many of whose members had come to put a face to Glass's voice, cheered. Like Glass, This American Life has become a phenomenon. The hour-long weekly program is heard on more than 350 public radio stations nationwide and boasts more than 900,000 listeners. It is the second most popular non-news program on public radio, after Garrison Keillor's enduring A Prairie Home Companion .
Some listeners are so devoted they rearrange their schedules to hear it.
Yet the show defies easy description. Each week's show is organized around a theme. Like a collage artist who starts with carefully chosen pieces and combines them into a single image, Glass manages, through his own commentary, to connect these segments by the end of the hour. In this way, each reveals a broader layer of meaning than was apparent when it stood alone. On the air Glass sounds spontaneous, but what he says, like everything else on This American Life , is thoughtfully choreographed.