Is there a John Smith in your classroom?

Chicago Theatre #2, originally uploaded by R.A.M.O.N.E..

I've spent several Friday nights listening to the NPR radio program "This American Life." Many times the Chicago-based storytellers have kept me in the car listening for the full hour with a backseat full of melting groceries.

So when I got this email from a producer for the Showtime spin-off of the radio series, I wanted to help.

Producers are looking to do a series of life experience stories on the men named "John Smith."

Specifically, they'd like to know if there is a young John Smith in your Kindermusik classrooms to include in the story.

If there is a John Smith in your classroom, contact "This American Life" producers at 800-463-4505, or email johnsmithcasting@leftright.tv

Here's more from Anna's email:

The idea of the show is to give a sense of what it¹s like to be living and working, growing up and growing old in America right now. We want to do that by talking to people of all different ages who just happen to be named John Smith.

We want to talk about the things that matter most -- jobs, loved
ones, homes, hopes, worries, fears, regrets and so on. We¹d like everyone in the story to be named John Smith because we want the stories to feel universal.

In particular, we're interested in the issues people are facing that are unique to their age. For instance, we'd love to find a young John Smith. Maybe a toddler about to take his first steps, or a child with
his first real bike. Or in the case of Kindermusik, a John Smith learning to speak and sing, move and dance!

To give you a better sense of who we are, here¹s a little background.

"This American Life" is a documentary series that airs on Showtime. The first season in Spring 2007 and we're currently at work on Season 2 which will air later this spring. The series was nominated for three Emmys last year, but it's a spin-off of a public radio program (also called This American Life) that has won most of the major journalism awards in the country, including the Peabody, duPont-Columbia, and Murrow awards.

For more information, please check out the website: www.thislife.org/

I don't know if there's even a single John Smith in the US who's enrolled in Kindermusik classes, but finding a real, live John Smith is harder than you'd think . . . So, we're trying to make our search as wide as possible!

We'd be thrilled to find a John Smith in the age range of newborn
through 7 years old.