This American Life Adapts Live Monologue For Radio

For those of you who are devoted listeners of This American Life, you have likely already heard last week's terrific episode with storyteller, monologist and self-confessed Apple fanboy, Mike Daisey. If you haven't, what your missing is a terrific audio tale of Daisey recounting the story of his love for technology - the products of Apple specifically - and how he came to think in larger terms about where the stuff we use actually comes from.

In the hour of gripping radio that ensues, Daisey tells his first person account of his amateur sleuthing into the sweat shop culture of China. Specifically focusing on a tech manufacturer called Fox Con, Daisey uses an interpreter to find out what life is really like for these workers.  Once he's exposed to the grimy details, he's left figuring how to reconcile his love of technology with his guilt.

The radio program is a shortened and revised version of the one man show called The Agony And The Ecstasy Of Steve Jobs, that Daisey has been performing for some time at New York's Public Theater. Now, Mike Daisey has written a fascinating blog entry that explains some of the steps and procedures of how the radio program was designed and put together. It's an interesting window in to how we get a radio story about a story on how we get our goods. How very meta-meta.

You can listen to the full episode below. After you have listened to the TAL episode, be sure to check out the Mike Daisey blog article on how it all came together.