National Public Radio personality Ira Glass, host of the popular weekly program This American Life, spoke on October 13 to a near full crowd in the Hanaway Theater at the Silver Center.
“Radio is so powerful and used for such interesting things,” Glass said as he sat at a table in a room full of anxious fans and complete darkness, his unique and familiar voice resonating throughout the room, “But, it is rarely used for telling stories,” he said.
Ira Glass created This American Life more than a decade ago to be broadcasted on Chicago Public Radio. The show, which takes a journalistic-style look at the lives of everyday people, has earned a reputation for capturing a literary essence to it, showing an in-depth and intimate look at the featured peoples stories.
Now, a decade later, the program has moved to New York, where a television show of the same name is filmed to be aired on Showtime. On average, over 1.7 million listeners tune in each week from all over the country to listen to Glass show the tales of everyday people. It has also become the most popular podcast in the country.
Glass, using radio equipment that sat on the table in front of him, played some of his most memorable stories, virtually recreating the emotive experience of the show, playing music at the climaxes of the stories to complete the feel.
Some of the stories that he looked back upon featured a girl who was the member of a female gang, an Iraq War veteran coping with seeing Muslims in America as he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, and a worker that fills the vending machines on a navy aircraft carrier.
“News Journalism is not just to tell us what’s news, it’s to tell us what is,” said Glass, still shrouded in darkness, “This is my problem with radio and broadcast journalism; it makes stories seem less interesting than they really are.”
Glass took time to tell the audience the order in which he structures the show, which includes of interviews that he has with people and then edits himself out, leaving the person telling their story. He said one of the key elements during the interview, he’s asking “and then what?” This way, it feels like something is always about to happen, feels like there is always a universal-something at stake. This draws the listeners in and keeps them curious to the very end of the story.
“I think one of the rarest things when you listen to the radio or watch TV,” said Glass, “is to actually be surprised.”
Glass took questions from the crowded audience, who asked about a variety of things ranging from his online poker obsession, the music he uses on the show and how exactly he creates the emotional effect that he does with it, whether or not any of the stories had ever moved him to tears, or how exactly he finds his stories in the first place.
Glass also met the audience in the lobby after the talk, where he held a book signing for his new book, “The New Kings of Nonfiction,” a collection of 14 journalistic nonfiction pieces.
“Not seeing is a power unto itself,” said Glass, looking out into the audience through his thick-brimmed glasses, stationed behind the radio equipment set up on the table before him, “If the talk is from the heart, it just gets you.”