Ira Glass on Three Decades of ‘This American Life’ Magic

Summary

Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso

Episode: Ira Glass on Three Decades of ‘This American Life’ Magic

Date: May 11, 2025
Guest: Ira Glass
Occasion: 30th Anniversary of This American Life

Overview

In this in-depth conversation, host Sam Fragoso sits down with Ira Glass to reflect on the 30-year journey of This American Life, the transformative power of narrative journalism, Glass’s personal evolution as a storyteller and leader, and the future of public radio in a fractious media landscape. Together, they unpack the craft, struggles, and joys of making one of America’s most beloved radio shows while touching on Glass's family, early influences, editorial style, and thoughts on legacy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Ira's Current Life & Workload

• Ira describes a hectic schedule, balancing travel for reporting and personal life—his partner is filming a TV show in Hungary (04:33).
• Mondays/Tuesdays are intense, with long editorial meetings to shape stories for upcoming episodes (05:17).
• Glass admits these days are hard, not something he looks forward to (“No, making anything...you just have to really focus...it's intense” – Ira Glass, 05:58).

2. The Editorial and Notes Process

• Referencing Out on the Wire, Fragoso has Ira read a passage about taking editorial criticism (“I totally get mad. I’m a goddamn baby...” – Ira Glass reading, 06:26–07:56).
• Glass explains disagreeing with staff notes is rare and that if all senior staff disagree with him, he’s usually wrong (“It’s really important to understand when you’re wrong" – Ira Glass, 08:06).
• Stories that challenge team consensus, especially on polarizing or nuanced subjects, still provoke spirited debate.

3. Reporting, Coverage, and Political Climate

• Glass details reporting in Israel and the West Bank, wanting to challenge cartoonish perceptions by bringing more complexity, even when controversial internally (09:05–11:41).
• On representing conservative voices post-2016 and into 2025: This American Life has covered impacts, but the Trump administration largely avoids interviews (“I would be happy to spend a week with Doge, but Doge isn’t making that on offer” – Ira Glass, 13:12).
• When Fragoso asks if climate pushback ever makes him nervous, Glass responds: “I don’t. No. I don’t think about it at all… This time around I think...we feel a tremendous amount of energy because so much is changing so rapidly” (13:43).

4. Public Radio Funding & Political Attacks

• Glass clarifies how little federal funding NPR and member stations actually get, and how cuts primarily jeopardize rural/community stations (15:05–18:19).
• He disapproves of the “smear” that public radio is biased, insisting, “We try to get all voices and treat all voices equally. Like, our show isn’t alone...I work among people who are trying to do that” – Ira Glass, 18:19.

5. Early Career & Influences

• Glass went to NPR as a 19-year-old with no awareness of its status, hustling tape promos from college radio (19:33–20:04).
• His early magic tricks as a kid influenced his approach: “Let’s put on a show” spirit (20:04).
• Keith Talbot, an experimental producer, was his mentor and inspiration (“It was like being with somebody who just had a really vast sense of what could be done as radio” – Ira Glass, 21:41).
• Fragoso and Glass joke about cutting tape, literal blood, and the obsessive tunnel vision required (“My capacity for tunnel vision...If I’m working on something...I’ve been in relationships where it’s been a real issue” – Ira Glass, 26:10–26:31).

6. Semiotics, Storytelling, and Broadway as Influence

• Broadway musicals subtly shaped Glass’s sense of narrative rhythm (funny beginnings, emotional ends) (27:43–28:48).
• Studying semiotics at Brown, Glass learned to focus on how stories produce pleasure (“What does this do to make you keep turning the page?” – retelling Barthes’s S/Z, 29:48–31:53).
• He details how he builds stories using the “proheretic code” (start with motion/action to pull the listener in), which revolutionized This American Life’s format (31:54–33:35).

7. Family, Emotional Distance, and Personal Growth

• Glass recounts his parents’ skepticism of his career choices, including a Baltimore Sun ad jokingly seeking semiotics majors (34:13–34:30).
• Reflects on the emotional guardedness developed in childhood and the lasting impact on relationships (“Having a mom like that and a dad like that really trained me not to depend on anybody… It made it really hard for me to feel close in relationships. And I spent years...learning to train myself out of [it]” – Ira Glass, 36:06).
• Discusses cutting off communication with his parents in young adulthood—something he now regrets (“I would go weeks without any contact with them at all. And, like, they just were not part of my life for years. And in a way that now, like, I regret” – Ira Glass, 47:30).
• Ties the sense of independence/detachment directly to his ability to persist in creative work and maneuver in large institutions (“Really feeling like nobody’s looking out for you at all just creates a mindset where you just are trying to make stuff happen” – Ira Glass, 50:08–51:28).

8. Launching This American Life

• NPR passed on distributing This American Life initially; WBEZ Chicago became its home (52:00–53:07).
• Early public radio executives “just didn’t get” the show, its conversational style, or Glass as host (“I was just talking like a person talks…this is all we got” – Ira Glass, 53:09).
• There were no expectations of major success. The show was expected to be like “an indie movie...maybe some other people like this kind of thing, and it’ll be good enough that we can, like, keep it going as business” – Ira Glass, 53:37.

9. Perfectionism, Leadership, and Change Over Time

• Glass’s perfectionism in the early years: “I had no boundaries at first...we just work as hard as we can until the thing is as good as it seems it could possibly be” (55:39).
• Over time, staff taught Glass the value of boundaries and more sustainable leadership (“I think I was pretty insufferable...I completely support [the criticism]...But then the downside...really strong compulsive perfectionistic thing” – Ira Glass, 56:43).

10. On Craft, Persistence, and Magic

• Glass relates to the amusement park manager Cole Lindbergh in an iconic story—turning a “corner of the world” into a fun, self-imposed project, finding “pleasure” in work despite the outside view (“I turned my corner of it into my own little fun house based on principles that I invented” – Ira Glass, 59:01).
• Both Sam and Ira discuss running their shows with a “diabolical agenda”—leading interviews with honesty but not manipulation (63:02–64:13).

11. Childlike State, Optimism, and Work’s Cost

• Glass: “Yeah, [the show] held me at a certain age...it takes up so much time. It’s almost like I walked into a room at 36 and then I just lived inside that room...” (64:42).
• A sense of childlike optimism—still necessary to keep the show vibrant every week (“I just have to...feel excited of, like, this one’s gonna be really good...” – Ira Glass, 65:55).

12. Legacy and the Future of the Show

• On legacy: “Fuck legacy. Fuck people of the future...I’m not making a radio show for them.” (“Yes. I stand by that. Yes.” – Ira Glass, 66:40).
• On whether the show can exist without him: “Totally. More people guest hosting, more reporting. The staff is just as well trained...” (66:57).

13. Reflections on Beginnings, Middles, Endings

• Glass’s mom, a therapist, told him: “A lot of people are good at beginnings, but life is mostly the middle.” Glass: “I’m better…at middles than at beginning” (69:20).

14. Thinking About Stopping

• After 800+ episodes: “Do I want to keep having this week? ...It’s the same experience...doing the edits...very, very...repetition” (69:37–70:13).
• But the current “moment” (dramatic political/cultural change) makes it too interesting to leave: “This does not seem like a time to quit” (70:14).
• Glass acknowledges fatigue and the strangeness of possibly stepping away after such a long run (“Even if it’s a thing you love, you just think...I’m ready for something new. I don’t even know what this something new would be...” – 71:17).

15. The Thrill of Storytelling Remains

• Reminded of his favorite interview (“Babysitting,” 2001), Glass explains the joy of transformative, serendipitous encounters (“It was just the best version of what you want from being an interviewer” – 75:58).

16. Media Disinformation and the Role of Journalism

• Glass admits it’s harder now to break through disinformation, but reaffirms the value of factual reporting and radio’s power to convey complexity and human reality (“We can make the world its proper size in people’s heads...That’s something you can still do.” – 80:50–82:25).
• Fragoso asks if Glass ever doubts this value; Glass says, “No, to me, it seems worth doing to me...I’m not at a point of questioning it. I’m really not...” (82:31).
• On the magician’s trick metaphor: Glass: “But all magic tricks are to yourself, really, if you’re doing them right.” (82:55).

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “I totally get mad. I’m a goddamn baby and it’s not good. To show that I know better, I try to keep it to myself, but I’m a big baby." – Ira Glass (06:26)
• “If all the senior people are against me, I’m definitely wrong.” – Ira Glass (08:06)
• “There are stories I pitch and I’m really alone.” – Ira Glass (09:05)
• "Having a mom like that and a dad like that really trained me not to depend on anybody for anything and to really protect myself emotionally..." – Ira Glass (36:06)
• “Legacy? Fuck legacy. Fuck people of the future...I’m not making a radio show for them.” – Ira Glass (66:40)
• “It’s almost like I walked into a room at the age of 36, and then I just lived inside that room and didn’t get out very much.” – Ira Glass (64:42)
• "I'm not interested in legacy...the people who listen now, that's who we make it for..." – Ira Glass (66:40)
• "You never totally get rid of your early instincts, but you can...make yourself be present in the moment." – Ira Glass (36:06)
• “We can still insist on the complicated reality of our world.” – Ira Glass (80:50–82:25)
• “But all magic tricks are to yourself, really, if you’re doing them right.” – Ira Glass (82:55)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 04:33–05:57 – Ira describes his weekly work and editorial process
• 06:16–08:33 – Reading and discussing notes/edit process from Out on the Wire
• 09:05–12:16 – Internal debates over controversial stories, e.g., Israeli settlers
• 13:12–13:43 – On interviewing officials/"the other side"
• 15:05–18:19 – NPR funding, political attacks, and staying independent
• 19:33–21:46 – Ira’s NPR beginnings, tape promos, magic performances
• 27:43–33:35 – Broadway, semiotics, narrative theory influences
• 36:06–40:54 – Family dynamics, independence, and emotional impact
• 52:00–53:37 – NPR’s initial rejection of This American Life
• 55:39–57:42 – Perfectionist culture and evolution as a leader
• 64:42–65:49 – Has the show kept Glass in a suspended, childlike state?
• 66:40–66:57 – Views on legacy, succession, and the show's future
• 69:20–71:17 – Reflections on endings, fatigue, and the difficulty of stepping away
• 75:55–78:27 – Favorite interview: "Babysitting," and finding magic in tape
• 80:48–82:53 – What journalism can still do in a misinformation age

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Tone & Atmosphere

The conversation is celebratory, honest, and thoughtful, marked by humor, introspection, and mutual respect. Fragoso gently challenges Glass, drawing out both personal vulnerability and sharp professional insight. Glass, in turn, is open about his flaws, growth, hopes, and ambivalence about legacy.

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For Listeners New and Old

This episode offers a rewarding tapestry of radio craft, personal history, and media philosophy—essential for both longtime fans of This American Life and anyone interested in how great stories get made, sustained, and continue to matter in a noisy world.

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Transcript

[Ira Glass]

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[Sam Fragoso]

This is talk easy. I'm sam fragoso. Welcome to the show. Today, in celebration of 30 years of this American life, Ira Glass. Ira co founded the weekly public radio show for WBEZ Chicago back in 1995, and through three decades it's essentially remained faithful to what the New Yorker has lovingly described as Glass's three act structures, chatty cadences and mixture of analysis and whimsy that feels so familiar now as to seem unremarkable. And it's true. Across 850 episodes and nine Peabody Awards, this American Life has become such a staple of, well, American Life that it's hard to remember a time in radio without has the feeling of just kind of always being there. In part because a, at nearly 30 years, it' sort of has. And B, because of how many other shows Ira has either inspired or produced, Serial S Town, the Trojan Horse Affair, it's hard to imagine the Daily from the New York Times or any of the pieces of audio journalism you enjoy without Ira Glass. And so today in New York City, Ira and I talk three decades of this American life. The highs and lows of putting out new work every Sunday, the rigorous editorial process that makes what you hear possible and pleasurable and naturally what he sees as the future of the show. We also tell some of Ira's story as a child magician turned precocious intern at npr, his formative years working under engineer Keith Talbot, and how he learned slowly to tell stories on the radio. And don't worry, we'll play passages from some of his best work and and some of his worst work. Just to be fair. And of course, because it's Mother's Day, we couldn't help but talk about the people responsible for us being here. I can't speak for Ira entirely, although I have a pretty good idea. But I don't think I'd be doing the kind of work I'm doing now without the influence of my mother. The conversations we shared growing up in Chicago, the ones that we've had on this very program and the one I better have before she hears this episode. And so with that, happy Mother's Day to you and yours. And here, after many, many years in the making, is Ira Glass. So you are familiar with the show then?

[Ira Glass]

I mean, when we first discussed me coming on, I did look up the show. And then it's.

[Sam Fragoso]

That was eight years ago.

[Ira Glass]

I know. And so at that point I did. I thought like, huh, seems pretty good. But now I honestly will be completely honest and say, like, I really don't remember what the premise of the show is at all. I understood that you wanted to interview me and felt like, yeah, I remember that show seemed good. Sure.

[Sam Fragoso]

Well, welcome to the program. It's nice to have you here.

[Ira Glass]

What is the premise of the show?

[Sam Fragoso]

Well, we'll get into that. How are you doing?

[Ira Glass]

I mean, it's good. Good. It's a little hectic for me right now because of just there's a bunch of reporting I'm doing and flying around to do that. And I'm about to marry somebody who's working in Hungary. So every now and then I'm going to Hungary to see her.

[Sam Fragoso]

She's directing a movie.

[Ira Glass]

She is directing a TV show actually, and is hectic.

[Sam Fragoso]

Good for you.

[Ira Glass]

It has good and bad. Like, some days I feel like I'm on a treadmill. And then some days it's really interesting.

[Sam Fragoso]

This is probably not how you spend most of your Monday mornings.

[Ira Glass]

No.

[Sam Fragoso]

Or at least you being interviewed. New episodes of this American Life air on Sunday afternoons. When Monday finally rolls around, what does it usually look like for you?

[Ira Glass]

Most Mondays we're prepping stories for the upcoming weeks. And so I'm in edits and stuff or in meetings with people talking about what we're working on and what should move forward quicker and how things will go. But usually Mondays and Tuesdays are really heavy times to finish stories that'll be on the air that week or the week after. Which means that I'll be in these long two or three hour edits where somebody will play a draft of the story and play the quotes and a bunch of us will give notes and adjust it.

[Sam Fragoso]

Do you look forward to those days?

[Ira Glass]

I don't look forward to those days, no. They're hard days. No.

[Sam Fragoso]

It doesn't get easier.

[Ira Glass]

No making anything. It's just like you just have to really focus. And some stories are more fun than others. But then at the point where you're really shaping the story, it's intense. Sometimes it's hard to figure out how to make the thing work. And sometimes the. There's subtle things you have to do.

[Sam Fragoso]

In this illustrated book called out in the Wire, there's a section about the editing process. And I thought maybe you'd want to read from this passage right here.

[Ira Glass]

Sure. This is a comic book manual that this incredibly talented cartoonist did to explain how we make our show and other shows that do sort of narrative radio journalism do all right. So in the book, I say sometimes people give you notes in your piece and you really disagree with the notes. There's something in your piece they really didn't like. The way they say it to you is really wrong headed. But I think you still want to notice that they didn't get this part, even if they're not saying it right. Especially if it's something that you love. If they didn't get it, it means you really need to think, wait, what did I do wrong? That they are not loving this the way that I love it. And even if you hate them, I disagree with everything they're saying. What they're saying to you is, you failed. And then she says, which is a good reason to hate them. And everything they're saying. Then I say, that, of course, is true. Me, I really get mad. I get so mad, I feel like, no, this is good. I'm sure it's good. She says, when you have an edit, you get mad about it. I say, I totally get mad. I'm a goddamn baby and it's not good. To show that I know better, I try to keep it to myself, but I'm a big baby. I totally have a part of me which is like, I know what I'm doing. I'm really good at this. I hired you. You work for me. It's like, don't you know who I am? I produced this show. I don't even say that to anybody. Do you know who I am? I don't usually think it. I am not proud of these feelings that parentheses. Is that actually in there that I don't say that? No. I never have that thought of, like, do you know who I am?

[Sam Fragoso]

You added that now for color.

[Ira Glass]

I did, yeah.

[Sam Fragoso]

And for clarity.

[Ira Glass]

Well, for clarity, that isn't really a thought I really ever have.

[Sam Fragoso]

You never have that thought that you hired all these people?

[Ira Glass]

The only time I have it is when everybody disagrees with me. But then I've learned that if they don't disagree with me, I'm wrong. Like, there have been times when I've said to people, like, well, someday when I get my own radio show, I'll do this story. But that's a hostile thing to say to people who are just trying to make something Good. And like really like if all of them, or even doesn't have to be all of them, but if like all them of like all the senior people are against me, I'm definitely wrong. And it's really important to understand when you're wrong.

[Sam Fragoso]

That book came out in 2015, right around the 20 year anniversary of this American Life. Is that still what the notes process looks like for you and for the rest of the contributors?

[Ira Glass]

Usually, honestly, it doesn't get to that point. Usually people have notes and they make a lot of sense and I do them. It's kind of an unusual note where people, well, I love something and. And other people are saying no or even most notes, we're just making a thing. And the stakes are low, right? This didn't make any sense.

[Sam Fragoso]

Well, when was the last time the stakes were high?

[Ira Glass]

I mean, it happens a bunch. It happens on stories I pitch and I'm really alone. I mean, it's funny, I just last week was in Israel and the west bank doing some reporting and found some things that I really wonder when I present it to the staff, are people

[Sam Fragoso]

going to be like, what?

[Ira Glass]

I mean, I can tell you something like a story that I'm not sure how everybody on staff will react that I was doing when I was in Israel, in the west bank. And there's an anthropologist who spent a lot of time in the settlements spending time with settlers and he wrote some stuff. And I just thought this is a really inside view of what it's like among the settlers from the settlers point of view when they are expanding their settlements and claiming land that they hadn't claimed and he knows them well and the settlers are more complicated and believe things and think things that I really had no idea. Like I read his work and I thought like, oh, my view of the settlers is kind of a cartoon, that they are people, you know, who hold a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other and they believe that this land belongs to the Jews and they're just gonna take it and they feel like they have a right to it. And in fact, he documents something that's much more complicated. And so he was kind enough to go with me to one of the places that he studies and introduced me to a couple people who are in his work and I interviewed them and it was really like incredibly generous on his part to do this and it was really interesting. And I know that, you know, for all the coverage that we're doing of Israel and Gaza and we're doing an entire hour about what's going on in the west bank, mostly. Almost all entirely from the Palestinians point of view, documenting just how much worse and more difficult it's gotten for them since October 7th. So we're doing plenty of stuff about the Palestinian side, and I feel like a lot of my staff will feel like, yes, let's hear from the settler side. But I also think that some people on staff will have questions about it.

[Sam Fragoso]

The younger people.

[Ira Glass]

Not always.

[Sam Fragoso]

Not always does it break around racial lines.

[Ira Glass]

Everybody's an individual.

[Sam Fragoso]

I will say now it sounds like you are running for office, but it's okay.

[Ira Glass]

It's just too, like, it's too inside the office dynamics. And I feel like the people who have questions about it are smart and have good questions, you know what I mean? But that'll be the discussion, you know, for sure. Like, why are we doing this? How are we doing it?

[Sam Fragoso]

And do you anticipate their questions being, why do we need to have this perspective on the show? What value does it bring to our listeners?

[Ira Glass]

I don't think in this case, because this is something that's not covered in the way that we cover it at all. And I think, and it's exciting that we can. That we can take you inside that world in the way that you can on radio, in the way that we do, where really, you'll get to know people as people. But there have been other stories we've done in the past here in America, where we know stories about people who are just, like, openly racist. Where, like, as a staff, we really have, like, really had to talk about, like, like, like, why. Why do this story at all? Like, why hear from this person at all? And in different stories, we've come down in different ways as a group.

[Sam Fragoso]

During Trump's first term, this American Life made a concerted effort to represent conservative voices on the show. But by then, you had many listeners writing in to say they had no interest in listening to the other side. You said in a commencement speech back in 2018 that sending some of our stories into this environment is like throwing baby bunnies into a cage of hungry snakes. Come 2025, do you want to update the animal analogy metaphor? And what would it be in 2025?

[Ira Glass]

I mean, honestly, we haven't gotten pushback from our audience, but we also haven't done a tremendous number of stories from the administration's point of view, partly because they don't want to be interviewed. You know what I mean? I would be happy to spend a week with Doge, but Doge isn't making that on offer.

[Sam Fragoso]

Is this your open invitation to them? Can we send this clip to Doge?

[Ira Glass]

Oh, dude, we've reached out to Doge. We've tried to make this happen. Sure. Send this too.

[Sam Fragoso]

Are they big listeners because of the Elizabeth Warren interview? Actually, I became a meme for Republicans.

[Ira Glass]

So yes, since President Trump has taken office the second time, we've done a tremendous amount of reporting. But mostly it's been just documenting the effects that he's having on people.

[Sam Fragoso]

But the climate of it. Do you feel more nervous about or not?

[Ira Glass]

I don't, no. I don't think about it at all.

[Sam Fragoso]

You never think about it?

[Ira Glass]

I mean, I thought about it a tiny bit and didn't like it, but I really don't think about it. And this time around I haven't thought about it at all. This time around, I think I and bunch of people on staff, we feel a tremendous amount of energy because so much is changing so rapidly. It feels like there's so much to document and report on and understand. And also there's so many things being said by the president and his people that are just so deeply untrue and disturbing that there's a part of me where I just want to get in there and say like, well, that's not true. And just that itself is incredibly energizing.

[Sam Fragoso]

About a year ago, this American Life shifted its ad sales from the New York Times to National Public Media, which is the sponsorship subsidiary of NPR and pbs, both of which the Trump administration has begun to attack through an executive order entitled in all caps, of course, ending taxpayer subsidization of biased media, which is my favorite term, as neither NPR nor pbs, the White House has said, presents a fair, accurate or unbiased portrayal of current events to tax paying citizens. You yourself started working at NPR at the age of 19, I think it was back in 1978.

[Ira Glass]

Yes.

[Sam Fragoso]

Does this attack concern you?

[Ira Glass]

Yes. I mean, there's a bunch of things here. First of all, I should say we are not part of npr. NPR is the organization that makes Morning Edition and All Things Considered and a bunch of other shows. We're an independent show and our partners are WBEZ Chicago, which is a local station. But we are not part of npr. We don't get any federal money at all. So cuts in federal money don't affect our show at all. There's two things going on here. There's the editorial critique of NPR and there's the money part. The money part, the way it shakes out is that NPR itself, the national company, gets 1% of its money from the federal government. And really most of the money goes to the member stations. And for most stations, it's a tiny amount. It's like 3%, 4%, 5%. If you think of stations in a big city like wba, Bur in Boston or KCRW in Los Angeles, and then it goes up to like 10 or 12, 14% for most stations across the country. And for those stations, losing that money is not great. If you have a business and you have to lose 5 to 14% of your budget, that is not great. But you lay some people off, you do fewer things, and you survive. And hopefully listeners will step up and replace some of the money that was coming from the federal government if and when that goes away. So that's one part of it. That's the financial part. There are stations in places like Alaska, where I was yesterday, and stations in small communities, remote communities which have small populations, they serve, get much more money from the federal government. They get 30 or 40%. And those are the stations that'll be damaged the most. They serve the fewest people. But those are people who actually need those stations the most. That's where you'll see a more devastating effect. That's the money part. Then there's the branding problem. Having the president of the United States call your coverage biased. And it's hard to know what to say to that. I'm not in charge of the editorial policies of npr, and I don't listen enough to even have an opinion. But npr, whenever I've heard it, seems like completely mainstream news, just like the way all mainstream news functions. They're on the same news cycle. They overwhelmingly are covering the same things as the New York Times and the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal and CBS and NBC. And so they just seem completely embedded in that. And, you know, there might be things in the fringe that are a little different, but most of what NPR does and did when I was there was. It was a mainstream news source. And for a long time, the right has really had a problem with all of public radio. And partly they don't like the story selection, and partly they don't like the fact that public radio thinks that or documents the fact that the election wasn't stolen in 2020, which the president doesn't believe. And so calling public radio bias seems like a purely political act. And I work on a show where we're trying to document things and everything is fact checked, and I don't know by fact checkers who call every source and make sure that we're not quoting them out of context. And I don't know how we can be fairer. And we try to get all voices and treat all voices equally. Like, our show isn't alone. I think that I work among people who are trying to do that.

[Sam Fragoso]

Is that what concerns you, that you guys have worked so hard to get it right and yet so many people feel as if it's biased and unfair and not based in fact?

[Ira Glass]

I mean, I honestly don't think about this very much. Like, I think our show is gonna be fine just because lots of people listen and we can get advertisers who, like, wanna reach those people and we'll be able to survive. And people seem to want to hear what we're doing. And, like, in that way, like, I don't worry for our show.

[Sam Fragoso]

But you guys have had to do layoffs as well.

[Ira Glass]

That's true, but that's changes in the podcast industry. But still, we're a huge staff of over 30 people, you know, making an hour, one hour weekly show. You know, we're okay, we're fine. And, you know, as somebody who's worked in public radio all my life, like, I don't like that smear put all over our work. And it doesn't seem accurate.

[Sam Fragoso]

When you arrived in Washington, D.C. at the NPR office back in 1978, you went to the office only knowing the name of one employee, a man named Jay Kernis. When you got there, did you have a job in mind?

[Ira Glass]

No, I had nothing in mind. Like, I had never heard of NPR, but nobody had heard of NPR in 1978. It was a tiny, tiny network that had started, I think, six years before, five years before. They didn't have a satellite to distribute their shows. The shows were distributed over phone lines. It was really, really tiny with a tiny audience. And really I was like a college freshman who just finished my freshman year, and I just wanted a job in the media somewhere. I was going to ad agencies and TV stations and radio stations.

[Sam Fragoso]

Did you bring tapes with you?

[Ira Glass]

I did.

[Sam Fragoso]

And did people listen to them right away?

[Ira Glass]

I think somebody did, yeah. I think I ended up doing stuff in the promos department. And I had made promos for my college station at Northwestern, wnur. Like, clever little funny promos. I wish you put clever in quotes. They thought they were clever. We thought they were clever. I don't. I've always had like a kind of like, oh, let's put on a show. I mean, I've talked about this on the radio. Like, when I was 12, like, I took out books on magic from the public library. And they decided, like, I can do that. And then, like, took out ads, you know, like in a weekly five bucks a show. Yeah, yeah. And like, suddenly started performing shows. I think it's very much the same thing.

[Sam Fragoso]

Is it weird for you to look back on that and think, oh, I was confident. Am I rendering that wrong?

[Ira Glass]

No, I was confident enough to try to get a job. You know what I mean? Once I was working at npr, there are all kinds of things I definitely didn't know how to do and took me a long time to figure out how to do and felt great self loathing and lack of confidence about. But the part of getting in the

[Sam Fragoso]

door, that was good.

[Ira Glass]

Yeah.

[Sam Fragoso]

Where did you feel self loathing?

[Ira Glass]

I mean, it took me a decade before I really understood how to write a radio story. Like, I was a good editor from the beginning, but every other skill in radio, like, it took me a long time.

[Sam Fragoso]

You're in college at Brown studying semiotics. You're a production assistant at npr, and that's around the time you meet Keith Talbot.

[Ira Glass]

Yes.

[Sam Fragoso]

You said recently that I would have never ended up making radio like I've had without Keith. What door did he open for you?

[Ira Glass]

I mean, Keith was just this incredible, like, inventor. Like, this very intuitive inventor. Like, Keith was making these shows. This is like the early days of npr. And Keith had talked his way into a job where he would make these shows. He had a series called Radio Experience, and every hour he did invented the entire format of the show anew. So there was one hour. It's funny, I was just talking about this recently where there was an hour where a Back to School special where the narrator is a guy who's sort of leaning into a microphone, who starts by reading an old textbook of school supplies from 1917, and then he starts to imagine a PTA meeting going on somewhere. He's like, Imagine a PTA meeting. It's happening in the gym and it smells like school. And he tells you who the speaker at the meeting is going to be, basically. And then we had an actor play the speaker at this made up PTA meeting. And then the stuff that was the documentary material was we had interviews with people about kids experience at school. And basically the thing that held the show together was the narrator would take you into the mind of individual parents who are sitting at this fictional PTA meeting. And then inside their mind, you would hear the interview tape with real people about real stuff that was going on. That was a normal month's work for Us. And then the next month was Ocean Hour. And Ocean Hour was entirely people just talking about people who are really close to the ocean. Like people who dive, people who live off the ocean, people like scientists who study the ocean. And each segment was something like that. And then the thing that held it together was two men sitting on a pier. And one of the men is telling the other about this imaginary friend he had when he was a kid. And the friend knew everything about the ocean. That's the narration that holds the whole thing together. And then everything is super sound designed. It was like being with somebody who was just like. Had a really vast sense of what could be done as radio. And it totally taught me rules of making something that you can only learn by trying it, and just gave me a sense of the plasticity of radio. And really, the thing we do with this American life is so much narrower. What we do is so tiny and strict. It's like a Mies van der Rohe house compared to a Dr. Seuss drawing, if you compare it to Keith's work.

[Sam Fragoso]

So what were the rules of the Dr. Seuss House?

[Ira Glass]

I mean, the rules of the Dr. Seuss House are just like, we're going to interview people and they're going to say stuff to us, and then we're going to just figure out a way to get it across in a way that no one has ever heard. Like, those are the rules, you know, and we're going to create some sort of sound aesthetic with music and sound that's going to take you from place to place. And it was also a very 70s thing where it didn't explain itself to the listener as deeply as we do on our show. It was like an auteur film. Like, you really had to kind of, like, be there and take it in.

[Sam Fragoso]

There wasn't a lot of hand holding.

[Ira Glass]

There was a certain amount of hand holding, but definitely not the degree to which we do it with our show, where your hand is held entirely every second.

[Sam Fragoso]

When you're working with Keith, you were notorious for lugging stacks of tape into the edit booth and then using a razor blade to cut and splice sequences together until you paired the cuticles of your thumb.

[Ira Glass]

Pairing the cuticles with them was separate from using the razor blade to cut. You had to use the razor blade to cut the tape. And then you're sitting there with a razor blade. And so, you know, you just take it and you just kind of go around the cuticles of your thumb when you're just trying to think of an idea.

[Sam Fragoso]

Yeah, an engineer at the time who went by Skip pz said we'd come in the next morning and see a trail of blood, drops of blood leading to the bathroom. It sounds metaphysical, but in this case, blood was shed on the tape. That's how he described early.

[Ira Glass]

Well, that's very traumatic.

[Sam Fragoso]

Hourglass.

[Ira Glass]

Yeah. Okay.

[Sam Fragoso]

It sounds like a horror movie.

[Ira Glass]

It didn't feel like a horror movie. It just felt like staying late and working on something that you're excited about.

[Sam Fragoso]

Why didn't you clean up the blood?

[Ira Glass]

I didn't know that there was blood. Actually, I didn't know about the blood part. This is the first I'm hearing about that. I didn't realize I was creating a nuisance for my co workers.

[Sam Fragoso]

Do you think maybe you wanted them to see that you were bleeding for the work?

[Ira Glass]

No, no. I think this is more a testament to me just being in my own little world and not noticing things around me that I'm doing.

[Sam Fragoso]

Your capacity for tunnel vision.

[Ira Glass]

I have a really strong capacity for tunnel vision. If I'm working on something like. In fact, I've been in relationships where it's been a real issue that I'll be sitting at a table working on something, and someone will walk over to me and start talking, and it'll take me, like, two or three sentences to even register that they're there. And so I've had to kind of try to train myself out of that, to be a proper social member of the family.

[Sam Fragoso]

How do you do that? And I'm asking purely for selfish reasons,

[Ira Glass]

how do you train yourself out of it? I mean, it's just like, it's not easy. You really just try to be more, like, more responsive and apologetic. Like, the first few sentences I really don't hear at all. And then when I come to, I try to, like, backpedal quickly.

[Sam Fragoso]

That tunnel vision, are you proud of that quality?

[Ira Glass]

I'm neither proud of it nor ashamed of it. It simply is what I am.

[Sam Fragoso]

You're agnostic?

[Ira Glass]

I am agnostic about it. It's way better to be in that state than to be in that kind of thing that happens that I find myself doing that I feel like is much more corrosive, which is you sit down for work and then you realize, oh, there's this email I need to respond to. And then you do that, and then you realize, oh, wait, but I was supposed to schedule this thing, and then you do that, and then you lose half an hour, an hour, and just like, time just evaporates. That. To me, it seems like Way worse of a habit than. Than being actually able to focus and

[Sam Fragoso]

lose yourself before you graduated Brown in 1982. I'm curious about your early influences. There's Keith, who you talked about. There's Joe Frank. But I'm curious, how did your work in semiotics inform your ideas around storytelling?

[Ira Glass]

I think the other big influence on me was Broadway shows, honestly, that I grew up with as a kid and really loved and wanted to. I don't know, like, there's something. I didn't understand it at the time, but in retrospect, there's, like, a feeling to those shows, like the way that they're funny at the beginning and they catch you up in feelings by the end and are about something bigger, the good ones that I wanted to make in my work, but I didn't even understand that that's what I wanted to do. I only kind of realized in retrospect. Oh, that's like. Was the aesthetic that was kind of informing things. But to answer your question about semiotics, like, really semiotics, it was coming along right at the time I was working with Keith, and I was thinking about making stories. And I really wanted to make stories about just kind of everyday life. And it wasn't clear how to do that in a way that would be compelling and on public radio at the time, there was a kind of like a tradition or a thing that they did that when they wanted to go to kind of like normal people, everyday life. There was a kind of, I thought, sort of shticky or kitschy or something thing they did where they would go to people in Missoula, Montana. They had a commentator in Missoula, Montana, who was a wonderful lady who would talk about her garden. And it was a kind of homespun.

[Sam Fragoso]

Wouldn't it begin with a whoosh sound

[Ira Glass]

or something like that tinkles of a wind chime kind of thing. It was very. And then the people were lovely people. Some of the people actually were quite charming and funny writers. And it also didn't seem to document the way that most people lived. Like, most of us in our. Like, I grew up in, like, a normal suburb, and, you know what I mean? Just didn't seem to be about the current world in a way that was compelling and the dramas in people's lives. And so that's what I wanted to do. It seemed like there was, like, a vast territory there of stuff that you could document and make stories about. And then studying semiotics, what was interesting semiotics, in a broad way, is Just this very pretentious body of theory that describes language and narrative as a kind of conspiracy to hold us in our place in the capitalist order. Okay, that part wasn't the part I was so interested in what I was interested in. Or actually I did go through a very lefty phase where I did believe all that and held it very closely and then that kind of wore away.

[Sam Fragoso]

Does that mean you had a ponytail?

[Ira Glass]

I did have a ponytail, but not till later. The part of semiotics that really got to me and spoke to me was that it was a way of looking at movies and stories that was different than the way that, like, you were in high school or like in most literature classes. Like, it was utterly uninterested in the questions that you would get in. Like a regular critique of a work of narrative. Like it was not interested in. Like, what does this say about the author? What does it say about the author's times? What are the themes of the work? It has no interest in that. What Semantics is interested in is how does the work produce pleasure? And there was this one book in particular, I see you brought it here to the interview by Roland Barthes called S Z. Though everybody in the pretentious program I was in called it S Z. And in that book he takes apart. I mean, you have it right there. He takes apart a short story by Balzac, and the story's printed in the back, but he's taking it apart sort of phrase by phrase and sentence by sentence. And what he's interested in is, how does this thing produce pleasure? The question that he's interested in is, why do we keep turning the page? What is it doing that's giving us pleasure? Keep reading and keep going ahead. And also he's interested in this thing that people don't really talk about. He's like, when you get to the end of a story, if it's a really great film or TV episode or book or whatever it is, when you get to the end of a really good one, you have that feeling of like, ah. Like that was so good. He's like, how do you produce that? What's the machinery that produces that? And he identifies five things that a story can do. And interestingly, all of them are actionable in an interview based medium. Basically, I could take the things that he says you need and I could, in interviews get those things, knowing that they would produce stories that would pull you in as a listener and pull you forward and you'd be stuck and you'd want to hear what happens next. And then at the end, if I could deliver on all of the things, it would feel like, ah, that's so good. It was just like an incredibly. It was like a manual. It was like giving me, like a toolkit to use at a time when I really felt like I didn't know how to make something special.

[Sam Fragoso]

What were the five things?

[Ira Glass]

I mean, some of them I almost never use. But the one that we use in this American Life, like the format of this American Life is designed around is this thing that he calls the Pro Heretic code. And the Pro Heretic code is basically this simple principle that if you have any sequence of actions start, no matter how banal, this thing happens, and it leads to this next thing, and it leads to this next thing, and it leads to this next thing, even if all the things are very ordinary. A man wakes up and the house seems very quiet. And he walks to the door of the bedroom and just listens for a second. The house is very quiet. He walks down the stairs. House is very quiet. Nothing is happening in this story. Actually, it's all super banal. But you feel the forward motion of a story happening, and you can feel the intentionality. And you start to wonder what will happen next. And he says that any sequence of actions that you get going will create the question, where are we going? And that's just incredibly useful. That's one of the reasons why this American life just starts in motion. You know what I mean? The most important thing in those interviews that we do at the beginning of the show that open the show is that just like somebody just starts some sequence of action going. So then before you know it, you're two minutes in and you just go, okay, what's going to happen with this person? And even to start a radio show that way, like when we started this American Life, like all the public radio shows started, the way that Fresh Air and All Things Considered started, where there's a billboard and there's theme music and they say, coming up this hour. I just felt like that doesn't make you want to hear the show. And especially for our show, where the things you're going to hear are just like. It's hard to even explain why they're good. That's not going to work for us. And I thought the thing that's going to be more effective to make you want to hear the show is just get the story started and start people in the dream

[Sam Fragoso]

after the break, the dreams of Ira Glass, You get a diploma, 1982. Did your parents give you anything to commemorate the occasion.

[Ira Glass]

Yes. My parents took out an ad in the paper, I think in the Baltimore Sun. My sisters were in on this too, that said, like, semiotics major wanted. And then I think it listed a bunch of skills.

[Sam Fragoso]

High paying, whatever corporate office seeks semiotics grad for high paying position.

[Ira Glass]

Yeah, no, my parents were not into this path. They were still very much like, on the path of, like, why aren't you going to medical school?

[Sam Fragoso]

Did you think it was funny?

[Ira Glass]

I thought it was funny, yeah. Like, I didn't care. I didn't care about the critique, but, like, yeah, it was affectionately done. I don't remember if I was bothered or not. I think it was like, a lot of stuff that was coming at me from my parents all through my 20s, where they completely disapproved of what I was doing working at NPR and just the way I had organized my life. And it did bother me that they disapproved, but at some level I just didn't care and just detached myself from them. I can't remember if this was an example of that or if this was sort of like. I mean, if I were to imagine myself at that age, I would think, like, I could understand that this was a joke and meant nicely and meant with affection, but the underlying feeling of it, I'm sure, would have been a little annoying. I would have had those things together at the same time if I were to imagine myself at that age.

[Sam Fragoso]

You described your father once as, quote, a stereotypically distant 1960s dad. And your mother, who was a therapist is either very, very present for us or deeply not present at all.

[Ira Glass]

Yeah, these are the opening sentences with any therapist, I start with yes, all true.

[Sam Fragoso]

What did that actually look like?

[Ira Glass]

What do you mean?

[Sam Fragoso]

Well, hyper presence. I'm being paid attention to profoundly, and then sometimes not. So was that confusing, you mean when

[Ira Glass]

I was a kid for my mom? Yeah, it was confusing, yeah, of course. And trained me not to depend on people. I think my parents meant well. And they aren't the kind of parents where I feel like I have real complaints against them. I feel like my parents were your ordinary level of. Did a good job in some ways, did a bad job in some ways, had their heart in the right place, like parents. Not tragic in any way, but having a mom like that and a dad like that really trained me not to depend on anybody for anything and to really protect myself emotionally around other people and to view it as my job to manage people because they both sort of like, at some point I realized, like, I Have to manage how I deal with them, you know, I mean, to get really real about it, you know, just so in ways, it made it really hard for me to feel close in relationships. And I spent years in relationships learning to train myself out of. Then it's the sort of thing like, you never totally get rid of your early instincts, but you can totally manage them and make yourself be present in the moment. But I'm really old. Youthful, though, you know, like, youthful enough. I just think everybody has their stuff. They've had to work on it. For me that, like, just being able to be close to somebody in a relationship, it took me a really long time to learn. Like, I feel like my first marriage. I feel like I didn't know it at the beginning. I didn't know how to do it. I think it really made things difficult. I mean, I know it did. It took me a while.

[Sam Fragoso]

When you were 23 or 24 and you first moved to New York, you were living on the Lower east side in an apartment on the corner of Rivington and Allen. Mm. In an illegal sublet that you were paying $145 a month for.

[Ira Glass]

This is all true.

[Sam Fragoso]

With a bathtub, I think, in the middle of the living room.

[Ira Glass]

Old school, Lower east side apartment.

[Sam Fragoso]

Tenement in that sublet. Going to and from work. Was it hard to not. I mean, when you say you couldn't depend on people, that seems really hard, given the conditions I just outlined in that apartment. And a kid trying to make something work.

[Ira Glass]

My experience of it was not that at all, like. No, I just trained myself to depend on myself. I was like, okay, I'm just gonna make this work. Like, it just seemed fine. No, I was pretty happy.

[Sam Fragoso]

So my framing's just completely off?

[Ira Glass]

Yeah. No, no. I was not sad in any way about that. No, no. Like, the crappy apartment that smelled like either rats or rat poison. I never figured out which inside. Like, it was just like an adventure. It just seemed like, you know, just seemed like I'm living in New York City and I'm trying to learn to make radio stories better. And, you know, sometimes I get things on the air and, like, everything seemed fine. That was, like, pretty happy time.

[Sam Fragoso]

So did you see my framing as kind of, like, alien?

[Ira Glass]

Like, I see it as, like, not my experience at all. But wait, why do you see it that way? Why is that your instinct that it would be sad?

[Sam Fragoso]

Well, candidly, I don't think I could experience the last seven minutes after what you just shared and not feel a tremendous amount of sadness. Because that's what you were communicating.

[Ira Glass]

I mean, it's interesting. I feel a little like, I think because we're in a format where I'm presenting information to you. Like, I'm so not living inside the feeling of the thing I'm talking about, that that wasn't my experience of it. But that makes sense to me, what you're saying.

[Sam Fragoso]

There's a gap, there's a distance between the thing you're describing and the actual feeling of that thing.

[Ira Glass]

Yeah, I mean, you know, the stuff with my parents when I was going through, it was really hard. Like, it was hard for me to feel close to them. And it trained me in a way that it became hard to be close in, like, intimate relationships. But I also had other things going on that I was excited about and doing and, like, always felt like I'm moving forward and I'm doing stuff that I'd never done before. And so, like, not just for the purposes of this interview, but in general, I feel like I've just been really lucky to get to do stuff that I like to do. Like most people don't.

[Sam Fragoso]

Why don't we talk about what you were doing at that time? There's an interview that you did that is often quoted and talked about. In the beginning, the work you make is painful in part because of how mediocre you are. That's basically what the clip is. And then it's not on par with the taste that got you into it. And so I thought, why don't we play a snippet from a piece you did about seven or eight years into making radio?

[Ira Glass]

That'd be great. It's not such a long way from the local grocery store to the international debate over whether sorghum and meat production are causing corn to decline in Latin America. Okay, so even just that first sentence is like, it barely makes any sense. It's so compressed, you know what I mean? You can barely understand what I'm talking about. But it is kind of high concept. This is me trying to say there's things going on in other countries that we are the beneficiaries of standing here in our local grocery store. And this particular story, actually, if I were to do it today, the pitch is good. The pitch is like, in well meaning ways, USAID goes into all these poor countries and trains farmers to not make subsistence farming their livelihood, but in fact to produce stuff for export to us in our grocery stores. And it drives a lot of them out of business. We accidentally drive a lot of people off the land and as part of that, we end up with cheaper prices for frozen vegetables. So that's not a bad pitch, but everything I'm doing makes this terrible. If you want to play a little more.

[Sam Fragoso]

Sure, we'll play a little more.

[Ira Glass]

There's a general air of prosperity here, partly thanks to Mexican imports of U.S. grains, which helped boost our farm economy. Just notice how I'm performing. I'm just underlining every third word instead of speaking like a normal person. Mexico is now one of our biggest grain customers, buying a half billion to a billion dollars worth every year, including corn, to feed its people and sort of to feed its livestock. This helps cut our own trade deficit and benefits everyone in the US Economy. But in Mexico, this policy has led to fewer tortillas for the poor and unappetizing tortillas for everyone else.

[Sam Fragoso]

When do you think your taste and your talent converged?

[Ira Glass]

I was about 10 years in, and it wasn't on every story, but I started to do stories that had the feeling that I wanted stories to have where they were, like, chatty and funny. And the people who I was interviewing came through in a three dimensional way. And there were a couple of turning point stories that I would make a thing. I'd be like, oh, that one right there. That's the thing. I'm shooting for one early one like, that was about a guy who picked up dead animals from the street.

[Sam Fragoso]

It was called Dead Animal Man.

[Ira Glass]

Yeah. And it really was. And it was made in like, three days. I went out in like a Wednesday and put it on the air on Saturday. You know, it could be this American life story. It's basically a guy who picks up dead animals off the street as part of the DC Department of Sanitation. And the thing that's interesting about it is, like, he loves the job. He really. He, like, he's very. He's very. It's easy and he doesn't mind it. He was like a fun person to talk to. Like, there are exchanges where I would just, like. He says something, I'm just like, that is not true. And then he laughs.

[Sam Fragoso]

You call him the Grim Reaper in the tape.

[Ira Glass]

Yeah.

[Sam Fragoso]

And he says, I'm not the Grim Reaper. I'm the undertaker.

[Ira Glass]

I give him decent disposal. He says, yeah, in those early stories,

[Sam Fragoso]

you're 10 years in at that point. How did you understand what makes a good interview?

[Ira Glass]

Trial and error. Like, I just noticed what, had a feeling.

[Sam Fragoso]

And the feeling was want.

[Ira Glass]

I mean, partly, like, there's just a feeling that you get if you're in, like, an emotional, real conversation. With another person, and you feel like they're hearing what you say, and you're hearing what they say, and you're going back and forth. Like, it's rare to have those conversations in real life. Like, if most of us have, like, one every other day, that would be a ton. You know what I mean? If you have that kind of conversation with somebody on tape, like, weirdly, it creates the same feeling in the listener as if they had been in the conversation. And that just became a thing that I started to try to go for, is try to get to that place in talking to people that it really felt like, oh, we're really hearing each other and talking, and just. Because that just carries so much feeling to it. And then the other things that make an interview good, you know, things have to be surprising. They have to be telling a story that's interesting. Like, you know, just. It's good if they're funny. It's good if the thing gets emotional. Like, just like all the normal things.

[Sam Fragoso]

You would think we're Talking around the 30th anniversary of this American life, But before you make the show, I want to, like, close the loop on this chapter of you finding your voice and making sense of yourself. You have this line in a commencement speech that I've just been replaying in my head all week, and you're telling kids who are about to leave college, you will be stupid. You will worry your parents as I worried mine. You will question your own choices. For many years, I made anywhere from $12,000 to $18,000. My parents, throughout my 20s, when I was working in public radio, they completely opposed everything that I was doing. And there are things I said to my mother, to both of my parents in my 20s that I still regret. And I don't know if it's because I just turned 30. And so this is on my mind a little bit more. But in those fights, in those heated exchanges, what do you wish you held in?

[Ira Glass]

I was really judgy of them. And, I mean, this is so personal and about them, but, like, separate from their, like, not agreeing with the things I was doing in my life, they had, like, moved into, like, a really big, beautiful house after my sisters and I moved out, because suddenly they had money. And it seemed to me in my 20s that that's what they were about. Like, that was what their values were about, was having these things and having these pretty things and having this pretty house in a way that now I just view very differently. Like, my mom got cancer not long after that, and that House was real comfort to her, you know? And, like. And why shouldn't they have something nice? You know? Like, I just don't see it the way I did as a kid. And then the thing I regret actually, like, more than specific things that happened. When we would argue about, like, what I was doing with my life, like, the thing I regret more is just, like, I completely detached from them. I really just did not have much contact with them. I would go weeks without any contact with them at all. And, like, they just were not part of my life for years. And in a way that now, like, I regret.

[Sam Fragoso]

I don't know.

[Ira Glass]

It's like, I wasn't getting anything from having contact with them, and I cut them off. And I would do it differently if I could. Now, like, I understand why I did it, but I don't think it was the right way to handle it. And they weren't handling things great on their side, but I can. Like, I didn't know what I did. I remember there was a point where, like, I was traveling somewhere, and my mom was talking to me on the phone, and she said, can you leave the numbers of the places that you'll be? And I remember it just enraged me that they would feel protective. I was traveling overseas for the first time, and they're like, well, give us the numbers of the places you are, just in case, whatever. And I got off the phone, I felt enraged. And then I had this thought where I thought, they think that they're my parents. And then they thought, like, oh, but I guess they are my parents. I totally went through the cycle of. I was enraged, and then I was like, oh, but then I'm being an idiot. They actually are my parents. And, like, okay, I'll give them the numbers, but. But I noted that, like, that that thought could occur to me that, like, who do they think they are?

[Sam Fragoso]

But why were you enraged?

[Ira Glass]

Because I just felt like, you're not involved in the story of me, you know, Like, I'm just, like, making this on my own and, you know, making things happen on my own and, you know.

[Sam Fragoso]

You thought they cared more about the house than you?

[Ira Glass]

I didn't think it that far, but I thought. No. I mean, I knew that it wasn't

[Sam Fragoso]

as simple as that or the lifestyle, whatever it was, that those were the priorities.

[Ira Glass]

I thought that those were the priorities. I mean, I knew that they. I knew that they had some feeling about me. Like, you know, I could see that, like, it wasn't, like, at the expense of me. That wasn't the Math of that. Those are kind of two separate thoughts. I felt judgmental of the choices that they were making in the same way that they were feeling judgmental of the choices I was making. Do you know what I mean? Like, that was sort of my defense back at them, I think, was like, they were judgmental about the idealistic choices I was making. So I was judgmental at the materialistic choices they were making. And that was our standoff.

[Sam Fragoso]

You know, the math doesn't have to make sense, right?

[Ira Glass]

Yeah, of course. You know, even the idea that, like, you know, your parents are uninvolved in, like, who you become, you know what I mean? Like, you don't have a choice in the ways that they've already shaped you. Before you walk out the door, was

[Sam Fragoso]

there some part of you that felt like you needed the story to go? Like, Ira leaves home and makes it on his own?

[Ira Glass]

The story I was telling myself wasn't a heroic story. It was just, I shouldn't depend on them for anything.

[Sam Fragoso]

Anyone for anything or anyone for anything.

[Ira Glass]

Yeah. But I have to say that really serves you well if you're somebody who wants to make stuff in the world. Do you know what I mean? I had this experience at NPR where other people at npr, NPR would do stuff that they didn't like to them and wouldn't give them the jobs they wanted and would do this or that. NPR is a big company, you know what I mean? News staffers, they would do things that people would get upset about. I always just felt like, dude, NPR doesn't care about us. It's fine. We don't need the NPR to care about us. NPR is here for us to use to get our stuff on the air. And our job is to be cunning and figure out what levers we pull to get the things on the air that we want to get on the air, which is basically, I think, the attitude you have to have if you're going to make anything. And that's the attitude I had in making the show that I make. I just sort of feel like there's stuff here. Nobody cares if I succeed in the way that I want to succeed. But I can see, oh, if I talk to this person, this will work with their thing, and this will work with their thing. And you can just talk enough people into the thing you're doing that you can get stuff done that you want to do. So really feeling like nobody's looking out for you at all just creates a mindset where you just are trying to make stuff happen and you understand it's up to you to make it happen. And even in a week to week way, making the radio show just like at some point you just feel like, here's what we've got to do if we're going to do the thing.

[Sam Fragoso]

So when you created this American Life in 1995, the first show was November 17th. Having had all this experience at NPR, how did you think about creating a show? Creating a space where you would be working with people and you would be cultivating talent? Cause it sounds to me like you did try in a way that NPR is a huge company, can't always show up for its employees. It sounds like you guys were pretty entwined when you started the show.

[Ira Glass]

Yes, but NPR wasn't interested in starting the show. So my partner was the local public radio station in Chicago. I was living in Chicago. We raised the money on our own without npr. We started as like a local show just to like figure out how to make the show for a few months. And then we're like, okay, let's get a distributor. Let's. International distributor. And I went to npr, where I know everybody. I grew up there since I was 19. At this point, I'm 36. And at that point, we were fully funded. We had won the Peabody Award, we were on over a hundred stations, and we still couldn't talk NPR into picking up the show. They just went, didn't get the show.

[Sam Fragoso]

What did they not get?

[Ira Glass]

I mean, it's funny, the people in the news division who I'd worked with got it. They had a feeling of like, we own this kid. Like, we made him out of nothing. Everything he learned, he learned in these hallways, and we own him. And this should be ours too. But the people who ran the kind of like the part of the company that bought new shows and paid for new shows, they just didn't get it. It just sounded too different from other things on public radio. I mean, now it's really hard to remember that because we've been for public radio for so long. It just sounds like it belongs on public radio. But at the.

[Sam Fragoso]

It sounds like it is public radio.

[Ira Glass]

It is public radio. Right. But at the time, I just didn't sound like a host of a National public radio program. I was just talking like a person talks. And when we were trying to market the show, in fact, program directors would say, harry's a good reporter. We've heard him All Things Considered, but are you gonna get a real host? And we'd be like, no, this is it. This is all we got.

[Sam Fragoso]

And Thinking about the beginnings of the show, how did you think it was gonna work out before it happened? And then how did it really work out?

[Ira Glass]

I mean, how I thought it might work out is that we would get to do this for a few years, and we'd be on some stations, and, like, then, who knows? Like, maybe. Maybe we'd stay on the air, but maybe it would just be, like, a thing that, like, some people like, and that'll be that. Like, our business plan was, like, let's try to get on. I think it was 65 stations in the first year. We were so much more successful than we anticipated. And Tori Malatea, who I started the show with, we just thought, like, we like this show, but we can't tell if public radio, which seemed very square to us, would like the show. And nobody had had made a hit show on public radio in a decade. So it wasn't even clear, like, if you could even talk your way onto stations and make a hit show happen. And then we really saw the show more as, like, an indie movie of, like, we like this kind of thing. Maybe some other people like this kind of thing, and it'll be good enough that we can, like, keep it going as business. That's really about as far as we went, two, three years. Let's just see what happens. And then it succeeded at a level so quickly that we never anticipated. And the only thing that I can compare it to is 16 years later, 17 years later, we started serial. The thing it took us a year to do serial did in, like, three weeks, four weeks. It took us a year to get to a million listeners. And cereal got there in four weeks because the Internet had happened in between the two. Right.

[Sam Fragoso]

With that success, in your desire to get it right, I have quote after quote here from your colleagues talking about your perfectionist streak, how you'll call late at night asking if this tape works or if this works better. How were you with boundaries? Was that something you understood? Because I'm thinking about the kid who was cutting his thumb while he tried to figure out the story, not knowing there was blood trailing to the bathroom. Did that even track to you? Was that something you thought about as a manager of a show, as running a show?

[Ira Glass]

I had no boundaries at first. I didn't even understand it. And the idea is we just work as hard as we can until the thing is as good as it seems like it could possibly be. And I expected that of everybody else and anybody who wasn't like that, I didn't understand. And that was like that was just the basics of it. And then gradually over time, over years, other people impressed in me that, like, that's not really the best way to work with other people. And I believe them, I stand with them. And against my 36 year old, naive, never having been a boss self. And I think I was pretty insufferable. I think if you were to talk to some of the original staffers of the show, they would. And I completely support them, I'm sure. It was just like, there was a good side to it, there was a bad side to it. The good side of it is like it was an adventure and we were making a thing and it was really fun to make something that nobody ever made and inventing the thing as we were going. But then the downside of it is, yeah, just really strong, compulsive, perfectionistic thing.

[Sam Fragoso]

What did insufferable IRA look and sound like?

[Ira Glass]

I just think I would get impatient with people when something wasn't made the way that I could see, like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Can't you see? It could be like this, you know, this thing I saw this quote from Michael Cunningham that really got to me because I feel like it really described my experience learning to make things. Michael Cunningham wrote the Hours and he was quoted in a book. He said, I don't believe in talent. What I believe in is that there's a certain kind of person who just gets very interested in the question in kind of an almost OCD ish way, how can I make this better? And then they just keep reiterating and making the thing better and better and better. And that was my experience of learning to make radio. I was not good, but I was very interested in how do I make this have more feeling, how do I make this work, how do I make this be magnetic where you can't not listen. And that process. And then once the show got started, it was the same thing. How can we make this better? How can we make this better?

[Sam Fragoso]

David Remnick said to me once, a lot of what I do is just the mental illness of persistence.

[Ira Glass]

Yeah. But I also feel like it's like a comforting thing to know that most of making something, like, there's not like a. I guess there is like a sort of magic when an idea comes into your head that you never had before, but really, like, you can just wheel that into existence just by doing the dumb clerical task of forcing yourself to think through, what do I want the tape to be? Or once you have the tape, which parts are the most exciting to me, and what order could I put them in and just start to play the game of that? It's almost like a clerical thing you're doing that then produces the artistic result.

[Sam Fragoso]

Yeah. Every week I get the sense that my job is more clerical than anything else. But the thing that I keep coming back to, the thing that I think may speak to the tendency you're talking about, is an episode called amusement park from 2011. And the main character of it is a manager at one of these parks. His name's Cole. And you've said that of all the interviews you've done, there is no character you identify with as much as him.

[Ira Glass]

Yeah.

[Sam Fragoso]

Why?

[Ira Glass]

I mean, it's interesting. He got into working in an amusement park as a kid in the same way that I was a teenager. He was a teenager, and he really loved the amusement park. Like, he loved roller coasters especially, but he really just loved everything about an amusement park. And so he was in the least glamorous part of the park. He was in the games section. You know, you throw, like, ring toss and you throw a beanbag at bottles and stuff. It's not the thing that anybody picks to work in, but that's where he was assigned. And then he just focused everything he had on making that job the most wonderful job you could have. And then soon enough, he's in charge of that whole section of the park, and he's hiring dozens of teenagers to work for him each summer. And then he pits them in competitions against each other. There's an entire bracket of competition where they're competing for who can get the most people to play their games. And all the kids really get into it. He invents songs to sing them at the beginning of the day. And just he completely. The job shapes him, and he transforms the job into a thing that's there for his pleasure and the pleasure of others. And I felt like, when I looked at that, I just felt like, oh, that was my experience at npr once I was there. I really loved radio and what they were making and wanted to know everything about it. But then I also turned my corner of it into my own little fun house based on principles that I invented, and then enlisted other people in it. And then he just gets to a point. I mean, he gets to a point where he sort of ages out of running the games thing at an amusement park. And that's the kind of the point at which I meet him in the story, which isn't. Which, you know, fortunately for me, though, like, I'm not in a kind of job where you like age out like that.

[Sam Fragoso]

His interest is having fun and getting his colleagues to do more than they probably wanted to do or imagined themselves doing. Mainly because he just wants them to buy in.

[Ira Glass]

Yeah, like there's a point in that story, like I remember where everything he's doing is gonna mean more people pay to play games and the amusement park will make more money. But to him, money, it's like, if you think about the money, it's so small minded. Money seems so puny compared to his goal, which is like, we are here for our pleasure. All of us, like the people running the games, the people in the games, and we're gonna just organize everything for our pleasure.

[Sam Fragoso]

Well, why don't we take a listen to that? This is Ira and Cole Lindbergh, the games manager at the Worlds of Fun amusement park from episode 443 of this American Life.

[Cole Lindbergh]

A couple years ago we did a thing called Toss the Boss. And basically what happened was, is that every single day I'd pull a game out of the hat. And if that game was the number one game in the park for that day, then that section would get to throw me in the pond. The pond is not a good looking pond. It's gross and, you know, it smells. And the deal was is that if you, you are the number one game in the park, you get to throw me in the pond.

[Ira Glass]

So finally one day, the game that he picked from the hat that day tried their hardest and actually became the number one game in the park for the day. And

[Sam Fragoso]

two, three,

[Ira Glass]

Colt, of course they made a video about this because, you know, it's present day America. And Colt went and told his peers, his colleagues, the guys who run the games departments at the other parks, all about what happened.

[Cole Lindbergh]

I go and I tell the other parks about this and I showed a picture, you know, like, oh, there's me all soaking wet. And I mean, I kind of got laughed at, you know, like, why would you ever do that? And to me, in my mind, I was just like, why would you not do that? You know, why would you not want to get people excited about working in the game that they're in? At least they may try. They may do a little bit more, and if I can get a little bit more out of them, we're good. Even if the game only makes a little bit more money.

[Ira Glass]

Also, it's more fun for the kids.

[Cole Lindbergh]

Exactly. It's all about more fun.

[Sam Fragoso]

Yeah.

[Ira Glass]

That's me running my diabolical agenda on this nice man.

[Sam Fragoso]

Yes. Which I feel like at times I've been doing to you in this interview, I'm running my diabolical agenda, which is not that diabolical, but that's any interview.

[Ira Glass]

That's the premise of any interview. The interviewer runs their diabolical agenda.

[Sam Fragoso]

It's true. Although I've tried to lead it with love. I hope that's clear.

[Ira Glass]

But why would that make a difference to me if you're doing it with love? Like, I don't care if you're doing it with love. All I'm care is that it's good.

[Sam Fragoso]

I don't think those are mutually exclusive. They're not, because there's a distinction I make that I decided to make when I started the show nine years ago, which is I came up writing print magazine profiles where you could write any story you wanted to write based on the 30 minutes you got. I can manipulate it in any which way. And when I started Talk Easy, I thought, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to ask questions that I think are unseemly or kind of gratuitous or driven by a desire for a headline. I'm going to make a show that tries to show up for people.

[Ira Glass]

Oh, I respect that. I mean, I guess I'm trying to do that, too. Like, I'm trying to capture people as they are. Yeah.

[Sam Fragoso]

Not as I want them to be. Not framing them in a way that's unfair. I'm trying to create some kind of vision or portrait that feels honest.

[Ira Glass]

Okay. That makes sense to me.

[Sam Fragoso]

You asked us of Cole, and I'm curious, in thinking about 30 years of this American life, it's something that entertains you, making this show. In some ways. Has it also suspended you in a childlike state?

[Ira Glass]

100%, yeah. Yeah, it held me at a certain age, but partly because it, like, it takes up so much time. It's almost like I walked into. Like, I walked into a room at the age of 36, and then I just lived inside that room and didn't get out very much. And so, yeah, it suspended me at a certain point in my life. And I feel like I did have to grow in other ways, like through being married and through ending the marriage and through other relationships. But in certain ways, like, yeah, it just held me at a certain age.

[Sam Fragoso]

In what ways?

[Ira Glass]

As a boss, I've really changed. As a person who works with other people, I feel like I really have had to learn to work with other people in a way that I didn't understand at the beginning. And Then in my relationships with my friends and the people I love, I feel like I really had to learn that. So it didn't suspend change in that way. But there's just something. I think that there's something over optimistic and a little immature in me that was true at 36 that I still have now.

[Sam Fragoso]

Do you think that's what's required to make a show like this American Life every Sunday?

[Ira Glass]

I don't know. I suppose somebody else could do it differently. For me, it's been important that it just been, I don't know, driven by a kind of optimism of, oh, we're really gonna make a good one this week. You know what I mean? I just have to. I don't know, it's just hard to make a show unless you can really feel excited of, like, this one's gonna be really good. Huh. I feel like at some point during the process, I really need to feel that, or it's just really, I can't do it. And so for me, that's been important.

[Sam Fragoso]

When the subject of legacy is brought up, you have a tendency to say something like, and you've said this in many interviews, fuck legacy. Fuck people of the future. Fuck the people who will be alive, having lunch and seeing movies. Fuck them. I hate them. I'm not making a radio show for them.

[Ira Glass]

Yes. I stand by that. Yes. Yeah. The people of the future who are around after I'm dead, I don't want them to perish or something, but I'm not making a product for them.

[Sam Fragoso]

Can this American Life exist without you?

[Ira Glass]

Totally. Yeah. In fact, one of the things that we're doing more of is more people guest hosting more people, whatever. With the thought that actually I could just. Just have more space to do reporting. It's really hard to actually ever get out in the field. The fact that I just spent like a week in the west bank, and then hopefully we'll be going down to Louisiana this week to do some more reporting. That's all a function of other people can definitely host the show. I work with a bunch of people who are just as well trained and just as good at radio as I am. And just like, yeah, it's a really

[Sam Fragoso]

wonderful staff on your first episode of this American Life. This is November 1995. It was called, I believe, New Beginnings. And in it, fittingly for Mother's Day, you call up your mom. Here she is.

[Ira Glass]

She's a therapist. And sometimes she gets called by the papers and stuff.

[Ira Glass's Mother]

Romantic love.

[Ira Glass]

Sure.

[Ira Glass's Mother]

And people's expectations about relationships. And one of the things I believe is that there are a lot of people who are good at beginnings, but they're not good at middles.

[Ira Glass]

Which means what?

[Ira Glass's Mother]

Means that they like the beginning where there's all this idealization and romantic projections and the other person can be who they think they should be rather than who they are. And when they get to the middle phase.

[Ira Glass]

All right, I'm just going to stop the tape. All right, listen, all of you in the audience right now, let's just agree right now. It's the very beginning of our relationship. It's the very beginning of our radio relationship right now. This is our little first little radio date. And I just don't want any idealizing on either side. Okay, let's just make eye contact right now. What Judge Franklin said about the eye contact, no idealizing, where there's more of

[Ira Glass's Mother]

reality based relationship, they kind of run away from it because it's not as exciting.

[Ira Glass]

It's interesting that you say that because actually, as we've approached the first show, I've realized that I am much more comfortable with the notion of kind of everyday, workaday sort of radio work and, you know, being on every week and, you know, having pieces on the air. But the notion of saying, like, in a really big way, okay, this is the beginning. It's the beginning. And we're going to have like a big beginning and we're going to make an epic statement I feel very uncomfortable with.

[Ira Glass's Mother]

So you are good at middles?

[Ira Glass]

I'm better, I think, at middles than at beginning.

[Ira Glass's Mother]

That's good. That's good. Because practically all of life is the middle.

[Sam Fragoso]

A lot of people are good at beginnings, but life is mostly the middle. And you say, I'm actually pretty good at middles. How are you at endings? I mean, some part of you must

[Ira Glass]

be thinking about, oh, for sure. Yeah, yeah. Like, how long do I want to keep doing this? For sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you do anything over 800 times and you just think like, okay, so this is interesting, but do I want to keep having this week, the week that I had this week? Do I want to have this week again next week? That's that feeling of being in suspended animation. Even though the content changes, it's the same experience often of going through and doing the edits and making the thing and writing the thing. It's just very, very doing the mixed notes and should the music come in here or here? It's a similar set of questions over and over. And I totally think about, how many years can I do this?

[Sam Fragoso]

What do you think that is?

[Ira Glass]

I don't know. It's funny. I was just talking to Steph about this. I think for now, I still have this feeling of this time that we're in. Feels like an especially interesting time to be documenting the massive changes our country seems to be going through. And so this does not seem like a time to quit. This seems like a time where it feels incredibly lucky to be able to have a tape recorder and be able to write stuff and put it out. It seems really, really interesting. But I could imagine at some point stopping. I definitely can.

[Sam Fragoso]

In the beginning, when you had those 80 hour weeks and you were in that Ashlyn apartment and you would go home and you would look up at

[Ira Glass]

the ceiling, I know what you're about to say. Yeah, I remember there was a point a couple years into the show of, like, I was working. Every waking minute I would look at the ceiling. I'd be like, wait, how long do we agree to do this? This is like, wait, we just do this forever? Like, this is just, like, we don't get to stop this.

[Sam Fragoso]

The machine I created and signed up for.

[Ira Glass]

Yeah.

[Sam Fragoso]

When you look up at the ceiling, now you're in a much nicer home, I presume. What do you think about.

[Ira Glass]

I mean, I appreciate how unusual the situation I and my coworkers are in that we work in a show where 3 million, over 3 million people hear it each week, and we're fully funded and we get to have our jobs. There's no adult supervision. Nobody tells us, you can't do this or you should do that. Like, we're our own bosses. Anything we can think to make, we get to make. Like, nobody gets this. And they feel very awake to the fact that it's a really hard thing to walk away from. It took a really long time to get to that point. The people I work with are the best in the world at making this kind of thing. And I feel like the last year or two or three of shows, I feel like these are some of the best years we've ever had, just in terms of just the variety of things and the level of reporting and just the feeling and the stories and just. I feel like, you know, it's just a very hard thing to walk away from. I remember, like, somebody talked about Dave Letterman stepping down, and, like, it's just a weird thing to think. Like, you just would, like, have this way of talking to the country, and then you just be like, okay, I'm not gonna do that anymore. You know what I mean? Like, I Totally understand that. Like, it just is a weird thing to give up. But I'm tired sometimes in a way that I never was before. Literally, just the repetition of doing the same thing over and over, even if it's a thing you love, you just think, like, okay, I'm ready for something new. I don't even know what this something new would be. And I talk about it with the people I love, I'm close to.

[Sam Fragoso]

Is that a surprising feeling, being tired?

[Ira Glass]

Oh, my God. Every. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't approve of it. I don't. It's like, I don't approve of being tired. I don't approve of that kind of whining or I just. I'm just completely against that.

[Sam Fragoso]

You're anti whining.

[Ira Glass]

Everybody's anti whining. That's not.

[Sam Fragoso]

That's not true.

[Ira Glass]

Yeah, like, you know, just. Yeah, Like, I don't. Yeah, I don't want to be weak. It's confusing, that part of it. And then it stops being confusing. Like, then I'm out talking to people with the tape recorder and seeing things I've never seen, and people are saying stuff that I couldn't have imagined, they say. And then that's not confusing anymore. And then I feel like, oh, my God, this is so fun. This is amazing.

[Sam Fragoso]

You know that still thrills you.

[Ira Glass]

You'd have to be dead for that, not to throw you. What could be more interesting than to get to see something new and be so on the inside of something new?

[Sam Fragoso]

In celebration of that, I want to play a clip. This comes from a 2001 piece called Babysitting. Why is that interview your favorite interview you've ever done?

[Ira Glass]

It's my favorite interview because I went into it. You go into every interview not sure what's gonna happen, and I go in with a plan. And then in that interview, it just works out so much better than the plan. He is such a special interviewee. The story that I thought we were going in for was this sort of funny, cute story about him and his sister and they made up a family that they were babysitting for to his mother. Right? Made. Yeah, exactly. Told his mother that they were babysitting for this family which didn't exist. But in fact, the story comes out to be this very emotional and pretty deep story about how his mother was just an incompetent mother and sort of like, Olivia Soprano, like, sort of, like, had ill will towards him and his sister, and, like, at some point she sent him off to an orphanage, though he was not an orphan to live, which he feels like saved his life. And it's just like. It just starts off with this, like, piece of candy premise and then turns into this thing that's so much deeper. And then once we're in the thing, I would just make up questions to ask him. What if you could run into the kids in that family you babysat for today?

[Sam Fragoso]

The imaginary kids?

[Ira Glass]

The imaginary kids. Like, what are they doing today?

[Ira Glass's Mother]

They would be in. Let's see, there are three. They would be 56, 57 years old. I've wondered where they're living, how they're doing.

[Ira Glass]

Where do you picture them?

[Ira Glass's Mother]

I picture them doing very well and kind of dull now.

[Ira Glass]

Really?

[Ira Glass's Mother]

Yeah. I don't picture them as being terribly interesting. They're more conservative than their parents, but nice, pleasant, good people.

[Ira Glass]

Where do you think they're living?

[Ira Glass's Mother]

I'm afraid I think they're living in Florida.

[Ira Glass]

They are not too far from where you are.

[Ira Glass's Mother]

I may run into them in the store.

[Ira Glass]

Usually you ask questions like that of an interviewee, and usually it goes nowhere. And with him, every time I would make up a weird question like that, he would hit it out of the park and just say something so interesting and surprising and emotional and real, and it just really loved him. And it was just such a special experience to do the interview. It's sort of like, as an interviewer, you go into a situation and you throw your pitches and then they hit back some of them, and they don't hit back others. And this one, he just. Like, everything I threw, he could hit. And it was just. The whole interview is so much more vast than I imagined it would be going in. And then, coincidentally, Jonathan Goldstein, who hosts Heavyweight, had just come to work at this American Life. This was so long ago. And he was the producer on that interview. And I think it might have been the very first interview he ever sat in on that someone else had done. So he had just come to us from the cbc, and he's new at the show, and it's the first week or two he's there, and this is the interview that he sits in on. And I remember we came out of the studio and he's like, wow, this is really. This place is really different than.

[Sam Fragoso]

Is it always going to be like

[Ira Glass]

this kind of thing? It never. I tell him it's never. It will never be like this again. You saw, like, a completely singular event.

[Sam Fragoso]

The man said to you. When he went home from the orphanage, his mom asked, did you ever think about me when you were up There. And from that moment on, at the age of 10, that man said to you, I never asked her for a thing again. Now it's impossible for me to not hear you and feel you in that.

[Ira Glass]

Oh, you mean that he drew the same conclusion about his mom that I drew about my parents, about everyone. Oh, that's really interesting. I never considered whether the actual content of the story got to me because I related to it, but the fact that he had to conclude through the way that she treated him that he was on his own and that that actually is what made him healthy. Yeah, I totally connect to that. And maybe that was part of the reason why it meant so much to me. But I will say, Link, the other part was just the thing that I'm saying to you. It was a remarkable experience as an interview to just. It was just the best version of what you want from being an interviewer. You know, it just went in knowing next to nothing. And then it was just so meaningful. Everything that he said.

[Sam Fragoso]

I can't help but think about where we started this conversation. The climate in which we both make work, which seems to have only gotten worse since that 2018 commencement speech we talked about.

[Ira Glass]

Yes.

[Sam Fragoso]

Where the informational ecosystem. You said this will be around for the rest of our lives. That's the most frightening thing to me. That disinformation and misinformation is as popular as ever. That people spread it gleefully and with reckless abandon. That was in 2018.

[Ira Glass]

Yeah, that's before 300,000 people died of misinformation because they didn't believe that the COVID vaccine would help them. Yeah, before we had, like, mass casualties

[Sam Fragoso]

to misinformation seven years later. I know you talked about being a hopeful person, an optimistic person about the work, but it seemed harder and harder to get the work to reach the people it needs to reach. Where do you see or how do you see your role in all of this?

[Ira Glass]

I mean, I thought about this a lot. You know, you say, like, the people the work needs to reach. Like, I don't believe in that exactly. I just think they're the people who, like, it does reach. You know, I think there's two things that a radio show like ours can do in the environment that we're in. Right. Like, we're in an environment where nobody's interested in hearing the facts of something. Nobody's interested in being convinced of anything by something they hear on the radio, but nobody was ever interested in being convinced by something they heard on the radio. Nobody ever changed their opinion on anything. Because they heard something on the radio.

[Sam Fragoso]

Thank God. Once or twice, maybe.

[Ira Glass]

Maybe. To answer your question, I think there's two things a show like ours can do, and one is we can point out when something isn't true. And I still think that that's important. And especially in the environment we are in now, where just routinely the president trots out facts that are incorrect to support policies that are brand new. Ukraine started the war with Russia. People on Social Security are, you know, mass numbers of them are getting checks even though these people are 150 years old. So it's fraud, you know. You know, USAID spent millions of dollars buying condoms for Hamas. You know, just like, just every policy is justified with things that are untrue. So just like being factual, I think, still means something and it's important.

[Sam Fragoso]

Still means something to you.

[Ira Glass]

It still means something to me. Yeah. It still feels important to do. But then, in addition, I think that there's something that you can do on the radio in the format that we're in, which is that because radio is such an intimate medium, it's like we can introduce you to people who are in the middle of some news event that you've heard of. That one of those news events where, like, it's just portrayed in such a cartoonish way, and we can say, like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, whatever you decide you think about this event, like, it's not what the picture you have in your head, it's this other, more complicated thing. Like, we can just insist on the. On the real world. We can insist on the complicated reality of our world. We could. We can just. We can make the world its proper size in people's heads and make what people are going through who are far away from them real to them. That's something you can still do. And so I feel like we've done just so much coverage in the last few years on things like trying to make stories about people who are in the middle of the Gaza war. But not victimy, corny, cartoonish, simple stories, but stories where these people just seem like thoughtful people trying to make decisions about their lives, or just the people who are being. Who the Trump administration is trying to kick out of the country for all the reasons that the Trump administration is trying to kick them out. Well, let's just get to know them. Let's just get right in there with them. I think that that's something that radio is suited for, and then people can decide what they think.

[Sam Fragoso]

I hear you saying that. Are there days that you have a hard time believing that.

[Ira Glass]

Believing what? Believing that that's worth doing. No, to me, it seems worth doing to me. It feels unambiguously. I'm interested in doing it and it's something I feel like, yeah, I'm interested in doing it, and I'm not at a point of questioning it. I'm really not. Maybe I should be. I feel like you're implying maybe I'm kidding myself, but I feel like if I am kidding myself, I'm okay with that.

[Sam Fragoso]

Yeah, it's like a magic trick, but to yourself.

[Ira Glass]

But all magic tricks are to yourself, really, if you're doing them right. If you stand in front of a mirror and make a coin disappear, it looks like it disappears to you.

[Sam Fragoso]

Well, I thank you for doing magic tricks for, I think, 30 years.

[Ira Glass]

Nice segue. I respect what you just did, and I don't mean to laugh. It's a laughter of recognition, not a laughter of laughter.

[Sam Fragoso]

Yes to 30 years. Congratulations.

[Ira Glass]

Thanks so much.

[Sam Fragoso]

Ira Glass have a good one.

[Ira Glass]

Sa.

[Cole Lindbergh]

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[Sam Fragoso]

And that's our show. If you enjoyed today's episode with Ira Glass, be sure to share it on social media. Share it with a friend. Leave us five stars on Spotify. Review the show on Apple. All of it really does help us continue making Talk Easy each and every Sunday. Special thanks this week goes to the team at this American Life. I also want to thank Josh Bierman, PJ Vogt, Jacob Weisberg, and our guest today, Ira Glass. If you enjoyed hearing Ira, I'd recommend my talks with David Remnick, Gia Tolentino and Wesley Morris. To hear those and more Lemonada podcasts. Listen on Apple, Spotify or wherever you like to listen. You can also subscribe to Lemonada Premium for all of our bonus content. Just hit the subscribe button on Apple Podcasts or head to lemonadapremium.com Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Janik Sabra. Today's Talk was edited by Matt Sasaki and mixed by Andrew Vastola. This episode was taped out of City box in New York City. Our music comes from Dylan Peck. Our illustrations are by Krisha Shanoi. Photographs today are by Sarah Schneider. Additional research comes from Sharia Aranque and Pierce Harvey. This episode was made in partnership with the good people at lebanata Media. And I'm Sam Vergoso. Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next week with another episode. Until then, stay safe and solo.