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This American Life
''This American Life'' is a weekly hour-long American radio program produced in collaboration with Chicago Public Media and hosted by Ira Glass. It is broadcast on numerous public radio stations in the United States and internationally, and is also available as a free weekly podcast. Primarily a journalistic non-fiction program, it has also featured essays, memoirs, field recordings, short fiction, and found footage. The first episode aired on November 17, 1995, under the show's original title, ''Your Radio Playhouse''. The series was distributed by Public Radio International until June 2014, when the program became self-distributed with Public Radio Exchange delivering new episodes to public radio stations. A television adaptation of the show ran for two seasons on the Showtime cable network between June 2007 and May 2008. Format Each week's show has a theme, explored in several "acts". On occasion, an entire program will consist of a single act. Each act is produced b ...
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WBEZ
WBEZ (91.5 FM) – branded ''WBEZ 91.5'' – is a non-commercial educational radio station licensed to Chicago, Illinois, and primarily serving the tri-state region of the Chicago metropolitan area. It is owned by Chicago Public Media and is financed by listener contributions, corporate underwriting and some government funding. WBEZ is affiliated with both National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Radio Exchange (PRX). It also broadcasts content from American Public Media and the BBC World Service. It produces several nationally syndicated shows for public radio stations, including documentary program '' This American Life'', and co-produces news and politics quiz program, '' Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!'' with NPR. WBEZ has an effective radiated power (ERP) of 5,700 watts with its transmitter atop the John Hancock Center on North Michigan Avenue. It broadcasts over two HD Radio digital subchannels. It operates full-power repeaters WBEK (91.1 FM) in Kankakee and WBE ...
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Chana Joffe-Walt
Chana Joffe-Walt is a radio journalist and producer. She has worked for '' Planet Money'' and ''This American Life''. Early life Joffe-Walt's parents, Brian Walt and activist Zara Joffe, are South African. She graduated from Oberlin College in 2003. Career Joffe-Walt began her radio career volunteering for a community radio station outside Seattle, KBCS. She was later a reporter for the Seattle radio station KPLU and a freelancer for NPR before being recruited to work for '' Planet Money''. She then became a producer for ''This American Life ''This American Life'' is a weekly hour-long American radio program produced in collaboration with Chicago Public Media and hosted by Ira Glass. It is broadcast on numerous public radio stations in the United States and internationally, and is ...''. In 2020, the ''New York Times'' published '' Nice White Parents'', a five-part podcast reported by Joffe-Walt. Awards In 2016, Joffe-Walt, along with Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ira Glass, ...
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Journalism
Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the "news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree of accuracy. The word, a noun, applies to the journalist, occupation (professional or not), the methods of gathering information, and the organizing literary styles. The appropriate role for journalism varies from country to country, as do perceptions of the profession, and the resulting status. In some nations, the news media are controlled by government and are not independent. In others, news media are independent of the government and operate as private industry. In addition, countries may have differing implementations of laws handling the freedom of speech, freedom of the press as well as slander and Libel, libel cases. The proliferation of the Internet and smartphones has brought significant changes to the media landscape since the turn of the 21st century. This has created a shif ...
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Podcast
A podcast is a Radio program, program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. Typically, a podcast is an Episode, episodic series of digital audio Computer file, files that users can download to a personal device or stream to listen to at a time of their choosing. Podcasts are primarily an audio medium, but some distribute in video, either as their primary content or as a supplement to audio; popularised in recent years by video platform YouTube. In 2025, Bloomberg News, Bloomberg reported that a billion people are watching podcasts on YouTube every month. A podcast series usually features one or more recurring hosts engaged in a discussion about a particular topic or current event. Discussion and content within a podcast can range from carefully scripted to completely improvised. Podcasts combine elaborate and artistic sound production with thematic concerns ranging from scientific research to Slice of life, slice-of-life journalism. Many podcast series ...
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Public Radio
Public broadcasting (or public service broadcasting) is radio, television, and other electronic media outlets whose primary mission is public service with a commitment to avoiding political and commercial influence. Public broadcasters receive funding from diverse sources including license fees, individual contributions and donations, public financing, and corporate underwriting. A public service broadcaster should operate as a non-partisan, non-profit entity, guided by a clear public interest mandate. PSBs must be safeguarded from external interference—especially of a political or commercial nature—in matters related to governance, budgeting, and editorial decision-making. The PSB model relies on an independent and transparent system of governance, encompassing key areas such as editorial policy, managerial appointments, and financial oversight. Common media include AM, FM, and shortwave radio; television; and the Internet. Public broadcasting may be nationally or loc ...
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Chicago Public Media
Chicago Public Media (CPM) is a not-for-profit radio and print media company. CPM operates as the primary National Public Radio member organization for Chicago. It owns three non-commercial educational FM broadcast stations and one FM translator. In addition to local news and information productions, it produces the programs '' Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!'' for NPR stations, and '' This American Life'' which is distributed by PRX to other radio stations. On January 30, 2022, Chicago Public Media acquired the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' daily newspaper. Radio stations * 91.5 WBEZ is Chicago's main public radio station. CPM and WBEZ were both known as "Chicago Public Radio" in the past. It is rebroadcast by 90.7 WBEQ in Morris, 91.1 WBEK in Kankakee, and translators 91.1 W216CL in Chicago and 91.7 FM W219CD in Elgin. * 89.5 WBEW at Chesterton, Indiana is an urban formatted station branded "Vocalo". * 90.7 WRTE in Chicago has rebroadcast College of DuPage-owned jazz station W ...
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Radio
Radio is the technology of communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 3  hertz (Hz) and 300  gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitter connected to an antenna which radiates the waves. They can be received by other antennas connected to a radio receiver; this is the fundamental principle of radio communication. In addition to communication, radio is used for radar, radio navigation, remote control, remote sensing, and other applications. In radio communication, used in radio and television broadcasting, cell phones, two-way radios, wireless networking, and satellite communication, among numerous other uses, radio waves are used to carry information across space from a transmitter to a receiver, by modulating the radio signal (impressing an information signal on the radio wave by varying some aspect of the wave) in the transmitter. In radar, used to locate and track ob ...
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Google Podcasts
Google Podcasts was a podcast application developed by Google and released on June 18, 2018, for Android devices, and released on iOS devices on March 24, 2020. On September 28, 2023, Google announced that it would shut down the service in the United States on April 2, 2024, with a migration path to YouTube Music. Outside the United States, it was shut down on June 24, 2024. History The Google Podcasts app was first released for Android on June 18, 2018. A web-based player was spotted in March 2019 and became more widely available after Google added podcast features to search results in May 2019. In October 2019, the Android app received a redesign using Google Material Theme. The iOS version launched on March 24, 2020. In May 2020, Google announced that users could transfer their podcast subscriptions and history from Google Play Music to Google Podcasts. In February 2023, Google podcast executives Kai Chuk and Steve McClendon announced that podcasts would be added to You ...
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SoundCloud
SoundCloud is a German audio streaming service owned and operated by SoundCloud Global Limited & Co. KG. The service enables its users to upload, promote, and share audio. Founded in 2007 by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, SoundCloud is one of the largest music streaming services in the world and is available in 190 countries and territories. The service has more than 76 million active monthly users and over 200 million audio tracks as of November 2021. SoundCloud offers both free and paid memberships on the platform, available for mobile, desktop and Xbox devices. SoundCloud has evolved from a traditional online streaming platform to an entertainment company. History SoundCloud was established in Berlin on August 27, 2007, by Swedish sound designer Alexander Ljung and Swedish electronic musician Eric Wahlforss; SoundCloud's website was launched on October 17, 2008. It was originally intended to allow musicians to collaborate by facilitating the sharing and discussion ...
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ITunes
iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating systems, and can be used to rip songs from CDs as well as playing content from dynamic, smart playlists. It includes options for sound optimization and wirelessly sharing iTunes libraries. iTunes was announced by Apple CEO Steve Jobs on January 9, 2001. Its original and main focus was music, with a library offering organization and storage of Mac users' music collections. With the 2003 addition of the iTunes Store for purchasing and downloading digital music, and a Windows version of the program, it became an ubiquitous tool for managing music and configuring other features on Apple's line of iPod media players, which extended to the iPhone and iPad upon their introduction. From 2005 on, Apple expanded its core music features with s ...
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Stereophonic Sound
Stereophonic sound, commonly shortened to stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that recreates a multi-directional, 3-dimensional audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two independent audio channels through a configuration of two loudspeakers (or stereo headphones) in such a way as to create the impression of sound heard from various directions, as in natural hearing. Because the multi-dimensional perspective is the crucial aspect, the term ''stereophonic'' also applies to systems with more than two channels or speakers such as quadraphonic and surround sound. Binaural recording, Binaural sound systems are also ''stereophonic''. Stereo sound has been in common use since the 1970s in entertainment media such as broadcast radio, recorded music, television, video cameras, cinema, computer audio, and the Internet. Etymology The word ''stereophonic'' derives from the Greek language, Greek (''stereós'', "firm, solid") + (''phōnḗ'', "sound, tone, voice" ...
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Chicago, Illinois
Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of United States cities by population, third-most populous city in the United States after New York City and Los Angeles. As the county seat, seat of Cook County, Illinois, Cook County, the List of the most populous counties in the United States, second-most populous county in the U.S., Chicago is the center of the Chicago metropolitan area, often colloquially called "Chicagoland" and home to 9.6 million residents. Located on the shore of Lake Michigan, Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837 near a Chicago Portage, portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River, Mississippi River watershed. It grew rapidly in the mid-19th century. In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed several square miles and left more than 100,000 homeless, but ...
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