About The Staff

From left: the staff at that time, a rear view of Ira Glass, Alex Blumberg, Starlee Kine, Jonathan Goldstein, and out-of-range of camerashot, Julie Snyder, Blue Chevigny, Todd Bachmann and Elizabeth Meister.

Here you'll find some info on each of us, along with some random photographs culled from our snapshot collections, like the photo (right), taken at our live show in Chicago, December, 2000.

This American Life host and producer Ira Glass started working in public radio in 1978 when he was 19, as an intern at National Public Radio's Washington Headquarters. Over the course of the next 17 years, he worked on nearly every NPR news show, and did nearly every production job they had: he was a tape cutter, desk assistant, newscast writer, editor, producer, reporter and substitute host. He moved to Chicago in 1989. From there, he did several documentary series about public schools and about race relations for NPR. One followed a group of sophomores at Lincoln Park High School over a span of three years. Another documented school reform at Taft High School for a year. Yet another tracked life at Washington Irving Elementary School for a year. This American Life went on the air in November of 1995. Photo courtesy Sean Hemmerle.
See Ira's speaking schedule.

The production staff of This American Life includes Senior Producer Julie Snyder, and producers Alex Blumberg, Diane Cook, Wendy Dorr, Jane Feltes Sarah Koenig and Lisa Pollak.

Prior to joining our staff, Julie Snyder (Photo copyright 1999 Jon Hughes) was a reporter for WGN radio in Chicago, and also was news director at KZSC, Santa Cruz's public radio station.
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Alex Blumberg (Photo copyright 1999 Jon Hughes) is a former TAL administrator who, prior to rejoining us in the summer of '99, worked as a freelance radio reporter, contributing to TAL, the Savvy Traveller and Chicago Public Radio.
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A graduate of the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, Diane Cook paid her dues as TAL intern and Chicago Public Radio receptionist before becoming a producer in the fall of 2002. Illustration by Arthur Jones
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Wendy Dorr was a producer at Radio Diaries in NYC before joining the staff of TAL in May 2001. She is pictured here – safe in her cranial – on board the USS John C. Stennis in January, 2002.
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Before her internship with us in 2002, Jane Feltes was Programming Director for The University of Illinois at Chicago's student radio station. She became a producer in spring 2004. Photo by Lauren Foster.
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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
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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
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Contributing Editors for This American Life are Susan Burton, Jonathan Goldstein, Jack Hitt, Margy Rochlin, Alix Spiegel, Nancy Updike and Sarah Vowell.

Susan Burton is a former TAL producer. Her documentaries with Hyder Akbar, "Come Back to Afghanistan." and "Teenage Embed," have won several awards, including the Third Coast International Audio Festival's silver prize and an Overseas Press Club citation. She and Hyder are currently at work on a book about his experiences in Afghanistan, to be published by Bloomsbury in 2005. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, and she is a former editor of Harper's.
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Jonathan Goldstein (pictured) is another former TAL producer, and author of the books Lenny Bruce is Dead and Schmelvis: In Search of Elvis Presley's Jewish Roots.
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Jack Hitt is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and Harper's. His work ranges from the Peter Pan segment on "Fiasco!," to the Hamlet in jail program entitled "Act V." He got his start in journalism as editor of the Paperclip, the magazine of Porter-Gaud School's first through sixth grade, where he published some of the finest haiku penned by well-off pre-teens in all of South Carolina's lowcountry.
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Margy Rochlin is a regular contributor to the New York Times, and a freelancer for many national magazines. She's done stories for All Things Considered, Morning Edition and Soundprint, and won the Pen Center West 1994 Literary Award for Journalism. Back to Top

Alix Spiegel (pictured, with Nancy Updike) was one of the original TAL producers, starting as an unpaid staffer for the show; she now works for the science desk at National Public Radio in Washington. DC, covering mental health and the psychotherapy industry. She won the Livingston Award for her This American Life documentary "81 Words," and occasionally contributes to the New York Times Magazine. During her four years at TAL, she produced many of our best hours, shows including "Pray," "Niagara" and "Pimp Anthropology." Back to Top

Nancy Updike wrote stories for "Sissies," “Blame It on Art” and other shows while she was a producer for TAL’s first four years. Her stories also appear in "Crime Scene," "24 Hours at the Golden Apple," “Cringe,” and her hour- long piece “I’m From the Private Sector and I’m Here to Help” (about American civilians working in Iraq) won the 2004 Scripps-Howard National Journalism Award in radio. She's written for The New York Times Magazine, The Boston Globe, Salon, Mother Jones and the LA Weekly.
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Sarah Vowell (right) is the author of the books The Partly Cloudy Patriot, Take the Cannoli: Stories from the New World, and Radio On: A Listener's Diary. Her criticism and reporting has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, including Esquire, Time, Spin and McSweeney's. She has appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, and her TAL piece on Frank Sinatra's "My Way" was featured on ABC's Nightline the day Sinatra died. Her work is archived at a page on Hearing Voices' website; visit for more links and photos. Her speaking schedule is online, too.
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TAL's support staff includes our production manager, Todd Bachmann, and our web manager, Elizabeth Meister.

Production manager Todd Bachmann (left) is the towering Nordic he-man who keeps the show on course. A human Swiss Army Knife with a Big Blue brain, he knows everything and can do anything, including make great radio – you've heard him looking for lost pets on the Classifieds show and looking for lame excuses on the Testosterone show. In the fine tradition of Bob Hope and Howard Stern, Todd has worked in radio, television and film, a media employment hat trick that's left him with only one frontier left to conquer. Next up, Ice Capades.
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Web manager Elizabeth Meister (at left) can either be found tending to her eggplants in her Chicago yard, wandering small backroads in places like North Dakota, or collaborating on radio documentaries with her husband for their production company, Long Haul Productions. Her radio stories have been on All Things Considered and other shows, she's reported for TAL, written for travel guides, and has pretty much the same haircut now that she did in 1976.

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