Yet to many fans of TAL, the story they are most interested in right now is what will become of the show itself. In late January TAL announced that it will collaborate with the Showtime Network to create a TV show debuting next fall or winter. (TIME got an exclusive first look at the pilot episodes: the format of the TV show is identical to the radio broadcast — stories are told mostly in the voices of their subjects while the reporters remain in the background, but the cameras offer even more intimacy by roaming into subjects' living rooms and workplaces.) What TAL didn't reveal in its press releases is that the show staff will be leaving behind their longtime Chicago home base next month and relocating to the brighter lights of New York City, where both the radio and new TV show will be produced.
That news, which recently broke in the city's alternative press under the headline "Going Coastal," has sparked a crisis of cultural confidence among midwesterners. Many are still reeling from the satirical weekly The Onion's move to NYC from Madison, Wisconsin, and they view the loss of TAL in catastrophic terms — as if Garrison Keillor had abandoned St. Paul for L.A., or Click and Clack of Car Talk had traded Beantown for Miami. One post on a local arts blog summed up the collective sentiment; "This American Life leaving Chicago does indeed make us feel like the second city."
Glass admits that the depth of feelings took him by surprise. "I've learned in the last few weeks that people in Chicago feel very possessive about the show," he explains. But as for losing what fans believe is the endearing midwestern voice, Glass says: "I'm in the studio so much that sometimes I feel I could put out the show from Siberia. I feel like the sensibility of the show is the sensibility of those of us who put it together, and we're from all over the country, and we collaborate with all sorts of people who are all over the place."
He adds that the reasons for TAL's move east aren't quite what the bloggers might imagine. While shooting the TV pilot Glass says he insisted on producing the show in Chicago, but quickly realized that would be prohibitively expensive. Since Showtime, as well as Killer Films, the filmmakers who will shoot the show, are all located in New York City, it would have meant flying in staff for each filming.
The thing that mattered most to Glass is that what both of his television partners "like about the show is what we like about the show. We try to tell interesting stories about regular people." And as much as Chicagoans would prefer not to admit it, those people can just as easily be found in the Big Apple as the Windy City.