IRA GLASS: RADIO ACTIVE "This American Life" host makes journalism's most antiquated medium fun again Click on a section title to hear the interview in streaming audio (requires RealPlayer). 1. Fear of Failure 2. Chicago, NYC and the hip factor 3. Seven degrees of Sam Prekop 4. Baltimore, parents and a famous (distant) relative 5. Success and fame 6. Taking "This American Life" to TV 7. Ambition & the 80-hour work week 8. Sedaris, Vowell and the allure of a funny voice 9. The importance of television 10. Curiosity, professional wrestling and the Pleasure Factor 11. Ira: good. Irony: bad. 12. In the ivory tower Interview & article by Dan Eldridge. Illustration by Mike Minney. Special thanks to studio engineer, Doug Patterson. Ira Glass is talking about television. Some might find his comments somewhat ... unexpected. The founder, host and bespectacled guiding light behind "This American Life"—the documentary-style public radio show heard by roughly one million listeners a week on over 300 stations—isn't preaching about the benefits of TV Turnoff Week. He isn't whining about the sorry state of the intellectual mental landscape, either. He's talking about two of his all-time favorite programs, and about the positive effect they've had on his work. "The stuff that inspires me is so ... idiosyncratic," he says, talking from his cluttered, boxy studio, deep inside the offices of WBEZ on Chicago's Navy Pier. "Like ... God, this is going to sound really strange, but I would probably start with Joss Whedon, the guy who created Buffy the Vampire Slayer.You know, I watch his show every week, and I always really feel like those people are doing such beautiful work, so thoughtfully and carefully and amusingly. Buffyhas the same thing going for it that The West Wingdoes, which is just great comedy and snappy dialogue. I'm very loyal to that." It gives one pause to think that "This American Life," the radio cornerstone of the modern hipster-literati scene, claims as its major inspiration a television show about a teenage blond who slays the undead after school and on weekends. It'd be much easier to digest if Glass proclaimed as his influences Woody Allen's satire, or the experimental prose of David Foster Wallace, or even British black comedy. Let's face it, telling people that you listen to "This American Life" every week is a bit like telling them that you're more in-the-know than they are. And here's the host, the one-man think-tank behind the whole thing, admitting his allegiance to prime time. It's as if he wants to prove to his listeners—and to the stuffy public radio demographic in general—that finding a thrill anywhere you can isn't so shameful after all. Three things you should know about Ira Glass before continuing with this article: 1. He has worked in public radio all his adult life, starting as a 19-year-old intern at NPR's headquarters in Washington, D.C. 2. He believes that for a story to work, it needs to have not only character development, conflict and plot, but also something he calls a "transformative moment"—that point in a story where the protagonist learns something important and is changed forever. 3. He detests irony. When Glass first started working in public radio over 20 years ago, he didn't exactly hold the kind of responsibilities that would foreshadow his current position as one of the medium's reigning voices. He worked on a volunteer basis for many months, pleased to be learning every minute detail of the radio business in exchange for a regular paycheck. Eventually he was promoted to tape cutter, and not long after that was offered a position as a reporter and producer on "All Things Considered." Glass claims to have held, at one point or another, every radio production position available at National Public Radio, including fill-in host on "Talk of the Nation" and journalist for "Morning Edition." It wasn't until 1990, though, that fate intervened in the form of an unusual assignment that gave birth to his signature style of personal, quirky reporting. NPR's "All Things Considered" asked Glass to immerse himself in the world of an urban Chicago high school. The idea was to get to know the students and teachers and to report back on the state of race relations in America. Eventually Glass began spending his days at not one school, but two, and the project was extended from a modest six weeks to an unheard of two years. The pieces Glass wrote up at night and delivered on air the next day began commanding a wider and wider audience—and influence—with each passing week. Not surprisingly, much of the drier, more typically "public radio" reporting didn't stick with the program's listeners. Even today, Glass says, people talk to him about the series, but none of them seem to remember the timely, newsworthy reports. Instead, they remember the ongoing stories about the kids' lives. "There was a lot of policy that I would cover as part of the stories," Glass said in a 1999 interview with Speakmagazine, "but years later, people would remember none of the policy stuff. The stories gave them a different picture of what it's like to be in a public school." By 1995 Glass wielded enough clout to begin working on a program of his own, and in November, the first broadcast of "This American Life" hit the airwaves on WBEZ. As word about the program spread, more and more NPR affiliates across the country picked up the show. Today, you can catch the same episode of "This American Life" at four different times throughout the weekend in Seattle alone. The reason a trend becomes a phenomenon, or, in this case, that an unusual radio program with a fierce cult following begins to command an entire weekly hour in the lives of nearly a million listeners, is something even an astute investigator as Glass can't explain. The Tipping Point,a slim book by New Yorkerstaff writer Malcolm Gladwell, attempts to uncover the mystery behind trends whose popularity suddenly explode. We're told about marketing concepts like "The Stickiness Factor" and "The Phenomenon of Word of Mouth," and especially "The Power of Context," which says that human beings are much more sensitive to their environment than they at first appear to be. But with "This American Life," it may be just a bit simpler—and purer—than all that. If there's a single theme that Glass returns to repeatedly, in nearly every magazine article and every interview, it's the importance of enjoyment in art. And not just pleasure as it relates to the stories and essays aired on his show, but pleasure within the boundaries of the rigid—and often un-fun—world of public broadcasting itself. "People tend to listen to public radio because it's good for them," Glass is fond of saying. "I hate that. It's much more important to me that things are pleasure-oriented. Then, everything else can follow." For the previously uninitiated, here is how an episode of "This American Life" works: 1) For every show, a single theme is chosen. Some sound funny and intriguing, like "Other People's Mail," or "Shoulda Been Dead," or "Cruelty of Children." Others may seem more obvious, like "Music Lessons" or "Babysitting." 2) The hour-long program is split into four separate segments, not including a brief intro, with a different writer or artist interpreting that week's theme as he or she sees fit. Many of the pieces are personal essays about true events, but some are fictional stories, interviews, or stream of consciousness rants. This formula could come off as amateurish—even embarrassing—but in the capable hands of Glass (who's often referred to as a "Master Editor" among his co-workers), the most random-sounding themes have a surprising way of reflecting the real world with an accuracy, brilliance and eccentricity that simply isn't heard (or seen) anywhere else. Take, for instance, a show called "The Secret World of Daytime" that first aired in April of 2000. During one segment, a reporter from the New York Observer,George Gurley, asks himself a question: Why are there so many people walking around during the day, when everyone else is at work? Who are these people, and why aren't they at work themselves? What are their lives like? It's a quintessential "This American Life" question because we've probably all wondered the same thing on occasion, but have been too embarrassed to ask anyone. Determined to put an end to the mystery, Gurley takes to the streets of Manhattan and starts asking people what they're doing, and why they're not at work. Most of the answers are exactly what you'd expect: A retired man who collects social security is taking a stroll through the park, a 34-year-old actor who works nights is running errands, an out-of-towner is on a business trip. But the final conversation with a man named Howard Monath reveals the most. Monath is a middle-aged man found loafing on a park bench somewhere in SoHo, sipping a latte and staring into the sky. Gurley describes him as "beatific." We soon learn that Monath is not only loafing today, but that he loafs everyday, and he even goes so far as to describe his daily life—and his personal philosophy—as one gigantic embodiment of loafing. We also learn that Monath's uncle once owned the publishing house Simon & Schuster, where Monath worked for years, holding down a respectable nine-to-five schedule just like everyone else. At some point along the way, though, "something happened" to Monath (disappointingly, we're never told exactly what), and he made the decision to quit the workaday world for good. Today, he's more than content to sit on park benches and dream of work he'll never have to do. Listening to Gurley's interview with Monath, the same kind of revelation occurs as when we spend time with a great work of art, be it a classic novel, an insightful documentary film, or in this case, a radio program. Although life is uncertain and often seems pointless and cruel, it just as often offers hopeful moments of surprise, joy and meaning. In Monath's story, this realization happens when he explains his abrupt and drastic decision to spend the rest of his life in an unrepentant quest for pleasure. To Ira Glass, thatis the transformative moment: Howard Monath experiences a meaning-of-life epiphany and shares it with the listening audience. Presumably, neither party will ever think about life in exactly the same way again. Something great just happened, and in stark contrast to a caffeinated world where information is traded at the speed of light, it happened on the radio. Talking to Ira Glass is nothing if not a sobering experience. Like most over educated journalists (he was pre med at Northwestern before graduating from Brown with a degree in semiotics), Glass is notorious for knowing a little something about everything. And not only can he talk for ages in response to the blandest, most poorly phrased interview questions, but he does so with such a semantic grace, such absolute niceness—not the attitude one might expect from a personality as unconsciously cool as his. A bored, disaffected attitude—this would make sense. So would an ironic demeanor, or a sarcastic outer-critic. But Glass exhibits none of these things, and neither does his show. This genuineness, many believe, is what gives "This American Life" its wide-reaching appeal. "I don't think it's hard to do things that are honest and sincere," says Glass. "I mean, I feel like irony is very '90s ... or even '80s! I just think it's really old. And I don't believe that I'm that unusual of a media consumer that it's just me thinking this. I think we're all a little tired of it." Without a doubt, the anti-irony policy at "This American Life" enables countless listeners to consider topics that in another medium would be received with ridicule or scorn. Unbiased religious reporting, for example, has become a show trademark. In September 1997, a groundbreaking episode called "Pray" aired in which a staff member, Alix Spiegel, flew to Colorado Springs to investigate a quickly growing citywide "prayer project." The congregation of a local church was attempting to pray in front of every home in the city, block by block and house by house. Spiegel begins questioning her own religious beliefs by the end of the program, and even considers moving to Colorado Springs to join the prayer group. ("Transformative moment," anyone?) Instead of being comic or incredulous, though, the piece comes across with a nerve-shaking sense of sincerity. The narrative never wanders into satire or patronization. Many listeners admitted to being left in tears at the end of the episode. This brand of honest and non-judgmental reporting has taken Glass from poorly paid tape cutter to cultural icon. Soon, he just might be headed for unexplored territory. For the past two years, the team at "This American Life" has been working on a new project: taking the program to television. In June of 1999, Glass pitched his idea to every major network in Los Angeles. He received two offers. Ultimately, however, he decided to produce the show on his own terms, with his own money. Many longtime listeners radically oppose the plan, fearing it will expose the program and its ideas to an audience not able—or willing—to properly digest its message. But as far as Glass is concerned, those critics couldn't be further off the mark. "I don't view television as low-brow," he explains. "I simply feel that's a crude way to think about it. I think we get our pleasure where we get it, and things touch us that touch us. We're lucky if any work does that, so why make the division?" As Glass's career expands to reflect this sentiment, one inevitability looms: For this public radio veteran, moving his acclaimed program to a new medium will surely yield its own share of transformative moments.