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
trying want stuff
You just want to try a bunch of stuff, because you don't know what's going to be great.
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.
cool production stuff work
I started out doing production work on promos, stuff like that. I didn't think it was cool to be working for NPR. I didn't need anything to be cool. I just wanted something to do that would be interesting. It was fun. I didn't think of it as anything else but fun.
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.
writing creating lucky
If you're not failing all the time, you're not creating a situation where you can get lucky.
thinking frightening
I'm going to go with Chihuahua, just because I can't think of anything more frightening than a giant Chihuahua.