Ira Glass
Ira Glass
Ira Jeffrey Glassis an American public radio personality and the host and producer of the radio and television show This American Life...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRadio Host
Date of Birth3 March 1959
CityBaltimore, MD
CountryUnited States of America
people shocked
I have been shocked at the number of people who don't watch television.
broadcast generally incredibly
Generally the aesthetics of broadcast journalism seem to me to be incredibly primitive.
telling
Any story that I can consider worth telling is one that you could tell in words.
absolutely change forced forces generally people picture realize
People are generally forced to change. We don't want to change, and then something absolutely forces us to realize that what we are doing isn't working or that our picture of the world is wrong. We fail. So we change.
attention banal creates facts happen learned matter move nerd plot rolling simply wonder
One of the things I learned as a young semiotics nerd was that if you have plot moving forward, no matter how banal the facts of it, simply the fact that the plot is rolling forward makes you wonder what's going to happen next, which creates suspense. So you can control peoples' attention simply by having things move forward in a story.
front natural performing talk tendency
It's tricky, performing the show live. Because when you're in a big auditorium, in front of 700 people, the natural tendency is to want to talk louder. You want to project.
corny emotional people power realized smile top
I never realized before this the emotional power of some really simple, corny tropes: people with top hats, people with batons, confetti going off, how important it is to smile.
amazing based basically country figure food grease iconic jordan michael
Grease and starch just always win over protein. In food as in so many things. Look around you, that's what our whole country is based on. It's amazing that Michael Jordan can be an iconic figure because he's basically just protein.
balloon good magician penn performed teenage teller
I'm a big Penn & Teller fan. But I myself was never very good; I was a teenage magician who performed at kids' parties. I can still perform a vanish, credibly, and I still, in special circumstances, will make a balloon animal.
mean performing saying though utter
You get into this situation, performing for T.V., where you have to speak with utter sincerity. It's just like the radio. You have to say it like you mean it, even though the thing you're saying is actually planned out.
excuse happened journalist news sort square stick stops straight territory today
Any journalist who doesn't stick to the day's news is sort of part journalist, part anthropologist. Once the excuse for the story stops being - it happened today - then you're square right in the other territory of journalism, which is just straight up documenting of how we live, and what we think of each other.
advantage career early form latitude official spend trying version
Often they don't take advantage of the latitude they have. They spend a lot of their early career trying to be the - official version - of a reporter. It's all about replicating a kind of stodgy form that already exists.
comics craft crowd free front knows retail somebody stuff success totally work
At some point, all comics have to go out and be retail salesmen doing door-to-door. And this idea of somebody who totally knows their craft having to get up for free in front of a crowd to work out some stuff they're thinking in their head, still, after as much success as you can get, is really interesting.
host life people reactions
When I started 'This American Life', one of the reactions I got was, 'When is the adult going to show up who will host the show?' At some point, people just got used to it.