We receive tons of email, and we're thrilled because we know it means that lots of people are listening to the show. The trouble is, this means we can’t respond to everyone's email personally. So, we ask that you take some time first to research your question yourself by searching our radio archive. Use that search engine! We've been working really hard to flesh the website out with as much information as possible, so chances are good that if you hunt around, you'll find what you're looking for. Likewise if you've forgotten a name or something from a show—try listening to the segment again via our free streaming audio. Thanks for lending a hand.

Our regular weekly broadcasts are closed to the public, but every few years, we go on the road and do live shows, onstage, for broadcast. The most recent, "Return To The Scene Of The Crime," was in May of 2009, recorded in New York City and simulcast to movie theaters all around the country. Right now we have no live shows planned.

For the last half of 2006, there were more repeats than normal, because we were figuring out how to produce the radio and television shows simultaneously. Our small staff averaged one new radio show every three weeks, while making TV. That's now ended, and we're back to our regular production schedule of one new show every other week.

If you're a newbie and you're having trouble setting up podcasts, we recommend first that you check out the info on our podcast page.

If you usually get the podcast just fine, but this week is giving you trouble, check the schedule on our homepage to see if we're podcasting a rerun that you may have already downloaded when it was initially broadcast. Even if you've since deleted the file from iTunes, it will not re-download the episode. (If you'd like to re-download, you can do so from our homepage and then drag the file into your library.)

If you know you have everything set up right and you're still having problems, email web@thislife.org with specific information on what's happening when, and what platform/programs you're using.

If you were not prompted to select a destination for the download, it probably went to your computer desktop or to a “downloads” folder. Our files are named by show number, for example 401.mp3. So if you search for that filename, you should find the file.

Each week's episode is posted on the Monday following national broadcast and is free for seven days. After that initial week, the show migrates into our 400+ episode archive. You can download archived shows from the iTunes Store for only $0.99 an episode. Or you can listen to these shows for free anytime, via streaming audio, right here on our website.

If you've got Flash and a stable, fast (non-dialup) connection, if you're able to stream MP3s from other locations without buffering or dropouts, but you're still having trouble, try this: When you begin streaming a file and the special streaming player pops up, right-click (or control-click on a Mac) and select "Settings" from the pull-down menu. Then select the tab with the image of the file folder. Under the "local storage" option, it says "How much information can audio.thisamericanlife.org store on your computer?" Slide the slider over to "unlimited." This should make a huge difference. If, after doing this you subsequently can't re-stream shows you've started to listen to but want to finish later, just be sure to clear your browser's cache.

If this doesn't work, the culprit may be a temporary Internet burp somewhere between you and us that we can't really treat. You may also have to contact your Internet service provider and ask them to add our audio server to a “safe list.”

Click here.

Showtime approached us; public television didn't. That's how we ended up on Showtime. And one advantage of working with a commercial network is that when they decide to do your series, they can just write a check, and you begin production. Public TV greenlights their series and then begins the fundraising process, which takes years. And though we had no idea what it would be like to work with a commercial network, and had some fears about it, it's been very easy to work with Showtime. As Ira says, "We kept waiting for the moment when they'd say, 'This stuff is fine, but when do the girls take off their tops?'" That never happened. They supported our vision of the show at every step. When they gave us critiques of our stories, the notes were the same kinds of questions we were asking ourselves: "Is this part of the story dramatic enough?" "Can I hear more about this character?" They never overrode any of our creative decisions. It was a very happy working relationship.

Episode CDs cost $13 plus shipping. Click the “Buy CD” links on pages in our radio archive, or you can look at the whole list of shows in our store.

We custom record our This American Life show CDs, which may not be read by older or off-brand CD players. Before contacting us for a replacement, please try the CD in a second, different player. If it works, you can bet the first player is an older (or cheaper) model that just doesn't jive with our CDs. Sadly, there's not much we can do to help, short issue you a refund. If you need to return a CD, drop us an email.

But...if your TAL show CD doesn't work in any player, chances are it's defective. If this is the case, please contact us at 312-948-4680, or by email at orders@thislife.org.

We’re considering it. Android will probably be first. But we want to make sure the iPhone version is stable before moving to different platforms. If Android goes well we may develop it for other phones too.