Heritage Minutes: Marconi

It’s This American Life’s wildest, most ambitious live show ever! Nearly 50 actors, singers, dancers, musicians and comedians joined Ira Glass onstage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Opera House on June 7th, 2014 to try some things they'd never tried before. The result? Journalism turned into opera, into plays, into a Broadway musical. Comedy from Mike Birbiglia, and SNL’s Sasheer Zamata. Songs from Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields. Dance from Monica Bill Barnes & Company.

On a clear and frigid Christmas Eve in 1998, in a small, forgotten city, a solitary taxi driver on the graveyard shift breathlessly awaits the sight of the International Space Station. As the hours count down, a parade of offbeat misfits derail his plans, propelling the story to its exhilarating climax. In this poetic, hilarious and often absurd tale, complete strangers discover unexpected unity and a newfound understanding of their place among the stars.

Yuddy, a Hong Kong playboy known for breaking girls' hearts, tries to find solace and truth after discovering the woman who raised him isn't his mother.

A letter is addressed to three wives from their 'best friend', announcing that she's running away with one of their husbands – but she doesn't specify which one.

Seven recent graduates, underemployed and frustrated, reunite in their Michigan college town.

Night radio host Sam is in love with Emily. Afraid of showing his feelings he rejects her advances - to a point. Plagued by alcohol addiction and depression, he also has a less worldly problem: He (and the others) are vampires who are keen to hide this from the new station manager. All is explained in this black comedy.

Six years ago NASA discovered the possibility of alien life within our solar system. A probe was launched to collect samples, but crashed upon re-entry over Central America. Soon after, new life forms began to appear and half of Mexico was quarantined as an infected zone. Today, the American and Mexican military still struggle to contain "the creatures," while a journalist agrees to escort a shaken tourist through the infected zone in Mexico to the safety of the U.S. border.

A radio host's dark past comes back to haunt him, leading to dire consequences.

A C-47 transport plane, named the Corsair, makes a forced landing in the frozen wastelands of Labrador, and the plane's pilot, Captain Dooley, must keep his men alive in deadly conditions while awaiting rescue.

Two brothers in their seventies, Pa and Moe, have lived together all their lives in a little house in the country, the only interruption being when Pa made a weekend trip to Småland on his moped during the second World War. The past returns when his adult son dating from his Swedish visit, Konrad, comes to live with them after his mother has fallen ill. Soon Moe is about to discover that three is indeed a crowd...

Two estranged sisters reunite to sell their late father's radio station, but unresolved issues from their past complicate their plans to move on.

It’s 1988 and, at the height of the Iran-Iraq War, Tehran is bombed relentlessly. The days that pass are full of foreboding, and yet, love, affection, hope and life itself manage to sweep away the fear of death from those surrounded by it. Love may often be difficult to comprehend, but death is a horrible certitude. ‘Bomb, A Love Story’ shows how, even when faced with the darkness of death, love and hope will find a way.

A series of surreal short scenes portraying a suburban family and their everyday rituals.

A radio-show assistant meets a budding screenwriter during a group-therapy session for sex addicts.

Margaret Ross is an impoverished old woman who lives alone in a seedy apartment and enjoys a rich fantasy life as an heiress. One day she discovers stolen money hidden by her son and believes her fantasy has come true.

After a mass shooting at a police funeral, reclusive ex-cop Gannon finds himself unwittingly forced out of retirement when he realizes that the killer belongs to the same militia he joined after quitting the force.

After discovering a box of old love letters sent to her mother by a mysterious stranger, Anna, a young radio deejay, begins a torrid affair with a married man. Burning attraction brings them together, but the reality does not come close to the passion expressed in the letters.

The secretary of an affably suave radio mystery host mysteriously commits suicide after his wealthy young niece disappears.

After the death of his mother, a young boy calls a radio station in an attempt to set his father up on a date. Across the country, an engaged woman becomes convinced that they belong together, despite their never having met. Will their paths collide despite the odds?

A couple of high school graduates spend one final night cruising the strip with their buddies before they go off to college.