Which public radio show became the first podcast to win the Pulitzer Prize for Audio Reporting?

The public radio show that became the first podcast to win the Pulitzer Prize for Audio Reporting is This American Life.

This American Life won the inaugural Pulitzer Prize for Audio Reporting in 2020. The winning work was “The Out Crowd,” an episode about the Trump administration’s Remain in Mexico policy and its human consequences for asylum seekers. The Pulitzer citation praised the reporting for illuminating the policy’s personal impact through intimate, revelatory storytelling.

The award recognized the staff of This American Life together with journalist Molly O’Toole of the Los Angeles Times and freelancer Emily Green of Vice News. That detail matters because the prize was shared for collaborative reporting, rather than being an award to Ira Glass alone. This American Life began as a public radio program in Chicago in 1995 and later became one of the most influential narrative podcasts. The Pulitzer category itself was new, so the show was not the first podcast to win any Pulitzer category; it was the first recipient of the newly created audio-reporting prize.