Haider Hamza, a young man of Middle Eastern origin, his neck swathed in a kaffiyeh, sets up a booth reminiscent of Lucy’s in the Peanuts comic strip. Except, instead of saying “Psychiatric Help, 5¢ please,” his sign reads “Talk to an Iraqi.”

The student is travelling the US, setting up his booth in parks, used car lots, the beach. Some folks amble over to ask if they have fat people in Iraq. Or water parks. A veteran says he’s proud to have done his tour of duty because “they flew planes into some towers in my hometown,” though his eyes seem less sure. Later, the young daughter of a marine apologizes for the war and then precociously reveals her plans to be president (“2032”).

These scenes are all captured by the camera crew of This American Life, the second season of which is currently re-airing on TMN. Created by geek-chic host Ira Glass, the show was spun off last year from its National Public Radio audio version, which has been running for 13 years and features true stories of everyday Americans, often narrated by the likes of Sarah Vowell and Dave Eggers. It’s earned Glass the title “Best Radio Host in America” from Time magazine as well as Peabody and Edward R. Murrow awards.

There’s been a bit of a pop culture backlash against the radio program, too, perhaps best expressed by The OC’s Summer as “that show where those hipster know-it-alls talk about how fascinating ordinary people are. God.”

Anyway, this is America, where nobody is anybody unless they are somebody on television. The migration from radio to TV actually began in 1999, when Glass first left his Chicago studio to pitch Hollywood. Writing in a Slate.com “diary” — so long ago “blog” wasn’t yet a word — Glass stated, “the stories on the TV program would be the kinds of narratives that we try to do on the radio show: characters and conflict are introduced fast, and you keep listening because you want to find out what happens. Our hope is that the narratives will be so fiercely compelling that we can be less traditional in the way the visuals work. In many stories they’d be more impressionistic, more like a great rock video, more like Errol Morris, than anything on the TV newsmagazine and documentary programs.”

Perhaps the imagery isn’t as experimental as Glass once envisioned, but it is filmed with exceptional panache. This American Life faced some criticism in Season 1, but the second round spends less time on quirk-for-quirk’s-sake. Instead, we meet project kids in Philly who hang at an inner-city stable. As they ride their horses through grey streets before galloping across the green fields of an urban park, their joy is palpable. Or there’s the 27-year-old with such severe physical disabilities he can’t move, talk or even breathe on his own. In a sweet twist, the man is asked who would provide his voice if he could choose and his wish is granted as an unseen Johnny Depp intones his emails through the rest of the segment.

The season ends with an ambitious extended episode trailing the lives of seven Americans, all named John Smith and ranging in age from two months to 79 years. The stories are tragic and triumphant and funny without ever feeling sensationalized.

Some segments fall flat — say, the husband who blames his Iron Curtain upbringing for his not mowing the lawn — but the show always brings a much-appreciated respectfulness to the reality genre. So as the summer schedule fills up with exploitive dreck, the alternative is to tune into This American Life’s moving pictures.

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