Crimebusters + Crossed Wires: Stories from This American Life

If storytelling and oral history often seem like endangered species in a culture dominated by disposable infotainment, NPR host Ira Glass could be seen as something of a preservationist, his low-key passion for the magic moments that inform everyday life the driving force behind his successful This American Life radio series. This second series anthology culls its 10 stories onto two discs loosely centered around notions of "Crimebusters" and "Crossed Wires." And while professional writers like Sarah Vowell and David Sedaris (whose bemused take on nationality-diverse French class attempting to explain their various impressions of Easter is characterized by mounting, masterfully constructed hilarity) participate, they are hard-pressed to better the tales of everyday people that are the collection's de facto focal points: a rookie cop's efforts at corralling a household-invading squirrel turning into chaotic slapstick worthy of Sellers or Benigni; a Beverly Hills teen and his father making war, then peace over a spiraling drug problem; Starlee Kline and Mekons founder Jon Langford forming a band of strangers solely through classified ads. Less enamored of their own voices and ideas, those tales of "everyday people" are the collection's true treasures. --Jerry McCulley

Contents:

Disc 1
1. Squirrel Cop - A Police Officer Somewhere on the East Coast
2. Loser - fiction by Aimee Bender, read by Matt Malloy
3. Flight vs. Invisibility
4. Watching the Detective
5. The Greatest Phone Message of All Time

Disc 2
1. Jesus Shaves
2. Say It to Me in Guy Language
3. When the Wall Came Tumbling Down - A Teenager and His Dad
4. Everyone Speaks Elton John
5. Music Lessons

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