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
grabbing interested keeps pages pleasure pulling questions turning watching
Semiotics is really interested in the questions like, what keeps you watching something, what keeps you - you know, what keeps you listening to a story on the radio? Like, what keeps you turning the pages in a book? What's the pleasure of it that's moving you forward, that's pulling you in and grabbing you and pulling you forward?
great interested people telling truthfully
I'm not a go-in-for-the-kill kind of interviewer. It's a great thing to me, that kind of interviewer, but I'm not it. It doesn't play to my strengths at all. I like to interview people who are interested in telling their story and tell it as truthfully as they can.
interested network talked
I only got interested in radio once I talked my way into an internship at NPR's headquarters in Washington, D.C. in 1978, never having heard the network on the air.
amuse characters describe happen heard interest interested people public radio stories
For most people when you say - public radio - they automatically think it's like medicine. We only do stories that amuse and interest us. For people who haven't heard the show, we describe it like a movie where there are characters and you're interested in what's going to happen to them.
america attention country culture current expect idealism informed interested level older people somebody step totally touch utterly vision
Her vision of what the country is, and what she should be writing about, is totally her own. She's utterly in step with the current moment, ... She's in touch with contemporary culture and the things people in their 20s are interested in, but it's all informed with a level of attention and idealism about America as a place you would expect from somebody much older and tweedier.
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.
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.
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.
time watch
I didn't watch T.V. from the time I was 18 'til my mid-30s. And then I got a T.V. to watch 'The Sopranos.' I realized, 'Oh, T.V. is really interesting.'
generally movies shows symbolism
I hate dream sequences in movies and T.V. shows generally for their heavy-handed symbolism and storytelling tediousness.
baby belief remember
I remember clearly that when I was little it was explained to me [that] the way that babies were made was that God put the baby into some lady's stomach, right? And, at some point, I learned how it really happened, and really that was the beginning of the end of my belief in God. Up until that point, it had always been a really weird act of intervention on God's part.
people
For people starting public radio shows, one of the things you have to do is you have to talk every single public radio station into picking you up.
thinking people radio
But sadly, one of the problems with being on public radio is that people tend to think you're being sincere all the time.