Talk radio: A Q&A with Ira Glass

Ira Glass is at the top of his game.

“This American Life,” the radio show he created, just turned 13, and he and his staff have completed two seasons of a televised “This American Life” for the Showtime cable network.
He’s deciding how or whether to proceed — Glass said Showtime wants more episodes, but he and his staff are not sure what they want to do: another season, a special or a series of specials.

 Last year, Glass edited and wrote the introduction to the anthology “The New Kings of Nonfiction.” On Saturday night, he’s coming to Sangamon Auditorium to talk about his work and perform pieces from “TAL,” as the show is known among its fans.

Glass spoke to The State Journal-Register by telephone Monday from his offices in New York City. In this Q&A, Glass discusses "This American Life" and

In several recent episodes, “TAL” has been credited with helping people understand the financial crisis in a new light. When approaching hard news, does it feel like you’re doing things differently than you would normally do?

It’s funny, because at the beginning, when I started the radio show, the rule was that there would be nothing on the show that would refer to the news stories that you would hear on the rest of public radio.

And then we were a couple years in and it felt like it would be interesting to apply the kinds of storytelling that we’re doing to the daily news. I came out of a hard news background. I was a producer and reporter for NPR’s daily news shows for years before I started on “This American Life.”

It seemed exciting, the idea of taking the kind of storytelling we were doing — where there’s characters and scenes and funny moments and emotional moments, and doing that but with things that were more topical — it just seemed like it would be exciting to do. And especially since 9/11, that’s become a lot of what we do. 

In a 2000 commencement speech to journalism graduate students at the University of California, you said, “The person I’m playing — that character on the radio — that character is a little more observing and meek.” How much of your presence on the radio, on the TV show, is you versus you playing “you?”

The person I’m playing on the radio, first of all, curses a lot less than I curse in real life. And the person I play on the radio — I’m interested in the same things as that person, it’s just that when I’m not on the radio, I’m boring a lot more of the time. It’s nice to have the opportunity to have one little arena of my life where I can edit out the stupid things I say and the questions that go nowhere and really think through what would be interesting. I don’t know how people live, who don’t have that ability to have one arena where you can finally say it the right way — where you really mean it.

And have background music.

Exactly. How people function without the background music in any part of their life is hard to understand. One of the advantages of the weekly show and doing a show in the format that we’re doing is that … reporters can have more of a voice and be more like themselves and don’t have to be such neutral, blank ciphers.

And because it’s radio broadcasting, I think it makes the stories more interesting if the person who’s presenting the story seems like an interesting, three-dimensional person, too. Obviously you want that person to be fair to the interviewees, but within that there’s a huge range of things that someone can express.

It sounds like what you talked about in your introduction to the anthology, “The New Kings of Nonfiction,” about reporters putting their own personal stamp in their stories.

Yeah, I know, I think often people who got a more traditional kind of journalism training, they’ll say in this way, “Well that’s just putting yourself in the story.” And I always feel like, “Yeah.” Why shouldn’t you, if you have an appropriate sense about it?

Obviously there are things that you shouldn’t be saying, that would be inappropriate, but I think that there’s a huge gray area where there’s plenty that a person can express, in terms of expressing — I think it’s OK for a reporter to be amazed or to be amused, to be curious, and I think that reporting that leaves that out, leaves out a lot of what makes something interesting. 

Are you more of a celebrity now, either living in New York or from doing the TV show? How has your life changed?

It’s changed a little because of that, but honestly it’s less of a change than you would think. The radio and television show don’t have the kind of reach where it’s like when Regis Philbin walks down the street. Occasionally someone recognizes me and says something … but I think it’s possible that people are recognizing me but I never know. In terms of people recognizing me and making themselves known to me, that doesn’t happen that often. And that’s perfectly fine — that it doesn’t happen that often. I mean, it’d be fine if it happened more often and it’d be fine if it never happened. I’m not at a level of fame where it’s intrusive in any way. Like, we live in a walk-up and nobody really seems to know or care who I am because people don’t listen to the public radio anyway.

But you’re well known enough to be booked into an auditorium in Springfield, Illinois.

Yes. Well that’s the power of the radio. I mean the thing that I’m doing in Springfield is to talk about the radio show and what we’re trying to do, and partly to perform parts of the radio show and — I don’t know. But I guess (I’m known) well enough to fill an auditorium in a city that we’re on.

You said people might recognize you but don’t come up to you and make that known. Does that say something about public radio listeners?

It’s funny, I feel like when people walk up to me, it doesn’t seem like they find me to be an intimidating sort of celebrity to talk to.

I was thinking more of the too-cool-for-school demographic. You don’t want to be somebody who’s fawning over his or her public radio hero.

Maybe. I feel like radio is such a personal medium and such a friendly medium, and our show especially has the sound of — I think people hear our show and they just think, “Well that doesn’t seem that hard. I can do that,” since I don’t sound like such a traditional announcer. …
I don’t think people are hanging back because they’re intimidated. Like, if I saw Philip Roth in line at the bank machine, I wouldn’t say a word, because I don’t know what I would — that’s intimidating. Or Leonard Cohen, or — there’s lots of people who you don’t really want to talk to. I feel like there isn’t a too-cool-for-school thing.

I think people who stay away, stay away out of a feeling like, “Oh yeah, there he is,” like they feel no need to talk to me. And the people who talk to me, they’re perfectly — I don’t know how to say it — they seem very at ease and very normal about the whole thing. It doesn’t seem like a big deal to them. It just seems like, “Oh, this is the guy. I’ve heard of him. And there he is.”
That’s the feeling I always get, it doesn’t seem like crazy-stalker-superfan-groupie.

Are there celebrities you’ve met — have you had that experience of having to talk to someone you idolize?

I have. There’s a whole class of celebrities who one thinks are just fantastic at their jobs, and then somehow you get into a situation where you accidentally end up meeting them. Honestly, in the last three years I’ve met so many famous people who I never thought anyone would ever meet, including me.

Is that because you moved to New York?

Partly it’s the New York thing. I’ll be asked to be one of 15 people at a charity thing and you end up meeting — I met Edie Falco from “The Sopranos.” Edie Falco! She’s amazing at what she does, but what do you talk to Edie Falco about? I admire her a lot, but it’s not like I’m in the drama business where I can talk about all of our mutual friends. That can be very strange for all concerned. It’s funny because I was backstage at a thing and there was Edie Falco, and also backstage at the same thing were John Waters and Kevin Bacon.

So you’re in the six degrees (of Kevin Bacon) now?

Yeah, right? Well I made a point not to meet Kevin Bacon. I just feel like, what am I going to talk to Kevin Bacon about? And John Waters — I’m from Baltimore, I really do idolize John Waters, but I just felt too shy to go up to him.

And you don’t have any regrets about that?

That one I do kind of have some regrets about. But then I just feel like it’s sort of a weird puzzle where suddenly you’re standing with somebody you really admire and then you wonder, well, what can I say that can live up this odd occasion that I’m in? I feel like if I had known that this was going to happen, I totally would have thought of something. But you’re standing around in some dingy green room, and you just think, I’m going to sit over here and talk to the publicist about her kid.

You’ve done lectures and TAL shows live before, what format will your Springfield show take?

It’s not going to be a full-on live show. This is much more of a thing where I’m talking about the radio show and then I go – basically I’m on stage and I’m talking about the radio show and I have the gear to create the sound of the radio show on stage.

So I have CD players and music with quotes, and so I’m both talking about stories on the radio show and then just performing certain stories on the radio show, too. It’s an excuse to play a bunch of funny stories and favorite stories from over the years.

What’s the status of the TV show?

We’ve done two seasons and truthfully it’s not clear — we’re on hiatus right now — and it’s not clear in what form we’ll be coming back — if we’ll be doing a special or another season or what.

Is that Showtime’s decision?

That’s us. Showtime basically said, “We’ll do whatever you want.” They would like it if we would come back with a full season. Truthfully, since the beginning they’ve wanted regular TV seasons with 10 or 12 episodes and we’ve basically said, no no no, let’s do six, just because it’s so time-consuming to make the TV show and to do it in addition to the radio show is hard.

Why did you decide to make a TV show of “This American Life”?

They came to us and asked, “Do you want to do this.” At first, in a lot of ways, we said no. Finally they said, “Well you can just try it. Just shoot 20 minutes of stuff and see if you like it.” And we made a couple stories and thought, well that’s kind of interesting.

The challenge of it seemed interesting and it seemed exciting to get a chance to play like that and to do stories with pictures. Like it wasn’t a business move, it was much more just people who were willing to let us do whatever we wanted and they’d put it on television and finance it and it seemed like they were very like-minded about what they wanted us to do and it just seemed like it could be fun. Like it wasn’t more sophisticated than that.

Was the radio show getting boring?

No. No, nothing like that. I think the radio show is continuously renewing itself as we find new contributors and staff people. It seems like if anything, (with) the radio show there’s always a ton of things to do and to try and a ton of ideas. And if anything, one of the problems with doing TV —one of the accidental side effects — is that we couldn’t do as many of the most ambitious things that we like to do on the radio just because the TV was sucking up so much time.

Do you plan to stay in New York? Have you ever considered coming back to Chicago?

Yes, very much. And very much WBEZ would like us to come back because it would be a little cheaper. And by a little cheaper I mean a lot cheaper. … Everybody needs to get paid more to live in New York City where it’s so much more expensive to live. It is really — I mean I know it’s kind of a cliche, but I found it really surprising how much more it costs. So there’s that to deal with. (Another) problem is that a lot of the staff have now put down roots here — people have babies and kids and schools that they have their kids in. The thought of moving is hard and the thought of not moving is hard.

Brian Mackey can be reached at (217) 747-9587 or brian.mackey@sj-r.com.

IRA GLASS
Radio Stories and Other Stories

• When
8 p.m. Saturday

• Where
Sangamon Auditorium, on the campus of the University of Illinois at Springfield

• Tickets
$42 and $37, available at the Sangamon Auditorium ticket office, by phone at 206-6160 or at sangamonauditorium.org.