Bullseye with Jesse Thorne is a production of maximum fun.org and is distributed by NPR. Hey! It's Bolsai. I'm Jesse Thorne. The public radio show This American Life has... Well, just going to take a

simple water here before I get into this. And a deep breath? This American life has been on the air for almost 30 years.

It has won nine P-Bodies, an Edward R. Murrow Award, and a Pulitzer.

It was a TV show on Showtime.

It has literally millions of podcast listeners.

It's spin-off serial basically made podcasts a thing.

And this year, this American life passed 800 episodes.

As of this recording, they are at 812.

And here's maybe the most amazing thing of all. It is still really, really great.

For all the reasons it always has been.

It's engrossing and funny and moving and for new ones too.

As its resources have grown so have its ambitions and these days it's often the show

telling the most compelling stories about the most important issues in our world.

Of course, behind all that, all this time, Ira Glass.

He created the show way back when.

He's still steering the ship now at 64. There is of course a brilliant

staff, but the buck still stops with Ira. To celebrate this American life hitting

800 episodes, we talked with the man himself and I do want to mention

that toward the end for reasons too complicated to explain.

He and I each use a somewhat vulgar word for Tush.

Tush's.

Anyway, here he is.

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