This American Life, Live

Last week I was able to catch the encore showing of the live taping of This American Life. It was just as awesome as I was hoping it would be. They had some old favorites come back, including Starlee Kine who was featured on a segment from August about Break-Ups. That particular episode is really great because she talks about how while going through her break-up, she concludes that what would help her most would be to write a love song. And who better to help than Phil Collins himself. So she actually writes a song about her break-up and they have her interviewing Phil getting his perspective on the song and her break-up.

The theme of the live show was Returning to the Scene. My favorite story was about a guy who had been hit by a drunk driver, but because of a clerical error by the officer was forced to pay for the damages done in the wreck. The story is just so well told and I don't want to give any spoilers even though I'm pretty sure nobody reading this will bother listening to the episode.

One of the other segments that I really enjoyed featured Joss Whedon's musical Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog. You can see the whole thing for free on Hulu by visiting this link. It's about 43 minutes. Below is one of the songs that comes from it. Whedon is the creator of such shows as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Apparently the guy didn't even know how to read music, but a couple of years ago decided that he wanted to try some different projects so he bought a piano and taught himself how to play. And now the guy is writing funny musicals. Know what else is awesome? In producing the DVD and while having to come up with a DVD commentary, he decided to do the whole thing in musical form as well, and that's what he ended up playing in the live show. Anyway, here's one of the songs from the musical, featuring Neil Patrick Harris:




And I thought this story from The Onion was pretty funny about the radio show. And it's pretty right on. So there you go. It's funny how much I love the show now.