'This American Life' :: On the Road with Ira Glass

If you haven't heard of NPR's "This American Life," it's high time for you to discover this gem. The weekly episodic radio show, hosted by the indomitable Ira Glass, is a jewel in the crown of American broadcasting.

The show follows a different central theme each week, usually with five or six stories that talk about things as varied as how cops see the world differently, about a man who is obsessed with Niagara Falls, or how rare it is for people to actually change their minds about strong-held beliefs around hot button issues such as climate change, gun control, religion or even LGBT rights. It's fascinating listening, and as compelling as it can get.

The stories the show offers range from the serious to the ridiculously absurd, from hilarious to painfully poignant, and are all used to reflect a different viewpoint. Told not from the standpoint of right or wrong, specifically, but brilliantly used as a tool to reflect the narratives of both sides of a theme or issue. Sophisticated and meticulous are words I would use to describe
the ways in which each story is constructed. Guided carefully by solid, journalistic integrity, they tell people's stories from all over the world in an attempt to explain what drives our actions, why we do what we do, and the consequences they might have on what comes next. Stories told without judgement, respecting listeners enough to keep emotional reactionism at bay, as differing points of view are rolled out and presented.

"This American Life" is all about the stories and people who make up this vast, varied and always complicated world and Ira Glass is the yarn-spinner that leads the always-fascinating narrative.

The Rage Monthly recently spoke with Glass about how it all works.

You are such a master at the narrative and such an amazing storyteller. I'm interested to know if that was a tradition you were surrounded with, or was it primarily a skill you developed?

No, no, there wasn't. I was a total suburban kid. In fact, in real life, I don't think I'm an especially talented storyteller. I feel like I had to learn the elements of a great story while making radio stories, because I didn't have any special talent for it as a person. Like in my marriage -- my wife was definitely the more charismatic, interesting storyteller when we were out with friends. In our office, I am not the most dynamic, talented storyteller. Not even close; there are at least four or five people ahead of me. If something super interesting happens I can tell, but I'm not a really great storyteller like the ones who can make anything that happens to them pretty interesting.

There's a school of thought around talent that says it's really all about commitment, practice and focus on your craft. There are, of course, exceptions like Pavarotti or someone like Aretha Franklin, but even for them it's still about commitment. Any thoughts on that concept?

I've thought about this a lot, yes. I was not somebody who had a special, innate talent for anything, except maybe for editing. The working and liked NPR. Somebody would hire me as their P.A. (production assistant) and I would get a couple weeks on the news desk writing the newscast, then a couple weeks on the overnights. It was much more haphazard, there was no plan to it at all. I was consciously trying to do a good job and to get better. By the time I was 20, I was filling in as a production assistant on the staff of "All Things Considered," pitching stories in story meetings and getting on the air, not as the reporter, because I wasn't good enough. But I'd have ideas
and the hosts who were more skilled would execute the interview and I'd cut the tape.

It seemed amazing to me that I was getting stuff out on national radio show when I was 20 and it was really exciting. I loved those lower level production jobs, it was so much fun. The motivation for doing it wasn't so sophisticated, it was more like, "What would be fun to do next?"

It's interesting when I talk to young journalists now. I feel like nobody says to you, when you're a young reporter, "Be out to amuse yourself, that's what will make your work better." When you're training people, there is obviously so much to focus on. Getting the story correct, being fair to all sides, things like that. But honestly, I think that being out for your own amusement is just as vitally important if work is going to be special.

That's especially true with the kind of format you're working in. If you weren't interested and personally connected to the stories you do, it would completely come across.

Yes. Especially with stories where there is no news hook at all. The only thing that keeps them in the air, the helium that keeps them going, is that we're excited about it. We, as a staff, think it's interesting, and that's actually kind of enough to make it work. For me, from the time I started working at NPR, I really enjoyed making stuff, it was a pleasure. It was hard and didn't always go well, but overall it was fun.

To this day it doesn't feel any different, and is exciting to work on the show. We're constantly trying to invent stuff for ourselves that will be new or fun, things like stage shows. We've done a couple movies and did TV for a little while, made little videos and put out a comic book and even a paint-by- numbers book. We'll spend a month at a car dealership and that will be an episode, or we'll spend 24 hours at a 24-hour restaurant, and that will be another episode. Inventing stuff that nobody's done is the most fun version of it.

I admire "This American Life" so much, because of that constant reinvention. Yet there is such a consistency to it, and the narrative has a vulnerability to it. You make it personal and open yourselves up and it drives the story forward.

Yes, absolutely, and that is very conscious. We do a very specialized type of storytelling and, as you mentioned early on in this, they are stories that grab you. They grab you because there is a narrative, there is a plot pulling you forward, and you want to hear what's going to happen next. We are really just following the rules of broadcast radio, it's much more interesting if the person telling the story is a three-dimensional person. To be fair to all sides of the story and not be part of the story, but just to be a person who is there meeting the people and having reactions to them. That just makes radio and the story better.

When you prepare stories for the show, how does the writing and editing process work? Is it a writing partnership, a committee process or is the writing solely yours?

We're a very handmade show. Each reporter writes their own stories, and
I write my own as well. The group process we have is around editing. For any given story that we'll do, whoever the reporter is, when we're at the point where we have our script and quotes, we'll basically read through the story in real time, play the quote and people will listen. They take notes and pick it apart and we'll rewrite and restructure, doing that five or six times to get to the final draft. Each time, we add a person who has not heard the story,
so you have one more person who is completely fresh to it. It's very labor intensive. That's actually one of the things I talk about in this talk. I put up a slide of our story list for any given episode and I say, "These are the four stories that went on the air, these are the nine others that we looked into that didn't make it on the air for this week's show." The amount of labor that leads to just nothing is immense in this kind of reporting.

Can you talk a little more about what audiences can expect from your upcoming show?

It's a show where I stand on stage with an iPad and can play clips and music to sort of recreate the feel of the radio show, live, as I narrate. In addition, there are also video clips and little movies we've made over the years, outtakes and some of the different things we've tried. It's a mix of fun stories to tell on stage and present to the audience and behind the scenes things that go into making "This American Life."

For more information about Ira Glass check out his website at iraglass.com

For more of Ira's fascinating interview, go to ragemonthly.com