Thanks to Culture Kitchen's ad lineup, I just learned something I really wanted to know but wouldn't have known to look for any other way, probably. (Keep watching those ads, y'all!)

If Ira Glass' --yes, that's the possessive with an apostrophe and NO extra S! -- new tv show is destined to be as good as his "This American Life" on radio, then I finally have educational justification to add the network airing it to my cable service. His NPR show on superpowers, with John Hodgman interviewing regular folks on the street about whether they'd choose flying or invisibility and why, was an instant classic. And the show about what three things we live and die for -- talk about power of story. . .Ira Glass doesn't tell stories the way anybody else does.

Episode 1 - "Reality Check"
Three stories of people who hatched plans in the hopes of making their dreams come true, but were snapped back to reality by unpleasant outcomes: an elementary school student tries to solve a common childhood problem; a rancher resuscitates a beloved pet, which later turns on him; people team to give an unknown rock band the greatest night of its life.

I remember the last bit, about the unknown rock band, from the radio show. There was a LOT more to it than this, about creativity and community, whether contrived spontaneity and ambush improv is fair (a la Borat?) and whether it's true, for the players OR the unsuspecting audience -- I'm still thinking hard about the cultural questions of meaning it raised for me.

Anyway, check out the video preview here. It's not everyone's taste of course, suitable only for the most culturally precocious children (use your own judgment!) and the prim and proper set will hate it as usual, probably boycott any advertisers, but if it intrigues you as much as it does me, there's time to call the cable company before This American Life comes to hi-def tv debuting March 22 . . .