Crimebusters + Crossed Wires: Stories from This American Life

Crimebusters and Crossed Wires is a collection of ten stories, with true tales of (sometimes hapless) crimefighters and investigators of all sorts on one CD, and real-life adventures in miscommunication on the other.

From a bungling, squirrel-chasing cop who burns, bloodies, and tears apart a new house in pursuit of the rogue rodent, to a father who resorts to tapping his drug-using teen’s phone, Crimebusters and Crossed Wires offers comical and poignant insight. Among the storytellers featured are best-selling writers David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell.

If storytelling and oral history often seem like endangered species in a culture dominated by disposable infotainment, NPR host Ira Glass could be seen as something of a preservationist, his low-key passion for the magic moments that inform everyday life the driving force behind his successful This American Life radio series. This second series anthology culls its 10 stories onto two discs loosely centered around notions of "Crimebusters" and "Crossed Wires." And while professional writers like Sarah Vowell and David Sedaris (whose bemused take on nationality-diverse French class attempting to explain their various impressions of Easter is characterized by mounting, masterfully constructed hilarity) participate, they are hard-pressed to better the tales of everyday people that are the collection's de facto focal points: a rookie cop's efforts at corralling a household-invading squirrel turning into chaotic slapstick worthy of Sellers or Benigni; a Beverly Hills teen and his father making war, then peace over a spiraling drug problem; Starlee Kline and Mekons founder Jon Langford forming a band of strangers solely through classified ads. Less enamored of their own voices and ideas, those tales of "everyday people" are the collection's true treasures. --Jerry McCulley