FEMALE SPEAKER: Thank you all so much for coming.
It's my pleasure to introduce our very special guest, Ira
Glass.
[APPLAUSE]
FEMALE SPEAKER: So as I'm sure you know,
Ira is the award winning host and executive producer
of the documentary radio program, "This American
Life," produced by Chicago Public Media
and distributed by Public Radio International.
The program began in 1995 and is now
heard on over 500 public radio stations
each week by more than three million people
and is downloaded as a podcast more than 900,000 times weekly.
So Ira, thanks for joining us.
IRA GLASS: Glad to be here.
FEMALE SPEAKER: I want to start off
with some basic questions about the show.
IRA GLASS: OK.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Where you get the ideas for the show?
What comes first, the theme or the stories?
IRA GLASS: I mean, I get asked this a lot.
I mean generally, what will happen
is someone will pitch a story which we just love as a staff.
Every two weeks, we have a meeting
where we generate new story ideas,
and then people are always looking for stories.
And so somebody will pitch a story
that we just all feel very excited about
and that doesn't go with any of the themes
that we have going on at the time,
and so we'll just basically say, look,
let's do that story as the anchor for some new show,
and then we'll concoct a theme that could possibly contain it.
And sometimes we'll come up with two or three
different themes that could possibly contain it,
and then we'll look on a list of here's
some stories that are left over from other shows
and we never used, and see if we could glue anything to it,
and then we'll start on a search.
And then that search can take us between three
or four months often, and sometimes even more,
and finding ideas for stories is generally-- for us
and I think for anybody-- inefficient.
I think one of the things when you
start to do creative work that nobody really
talks to you about is, where are ideas going to come from?
And you have this idea of they're
going to be sprinkled on your head like fairy dust.
And maybe this is it true in engineering and other kinds
of work, too, but where I just come from
is you have to just surround yourself with a lot of stuff
and a lot of ideas because ideas lead to other ideas.
And so at some point, we'll just go on a massive search which
will include Googling, but also just doing
all kinds of research.
We'll brainstorm different kinds of things
that could possibly fit in the theme.
Often, we're in a situation where
we'll have a very serious story that
will be the anchor with a lot of weight and a lot of stakes,
and so we'll just consciously be looking for something
funny or light or more personal or small, just something
so the whole episode won't be so heavy.
And for us to find three or four stories that'll
end up on the air, often, we'll look
at 15 or 25 different story ideas.
And we'll go into production often on seven or eight
stories, and then we just have to start
making them and commissioning writers
and flying people around the country
and interviewing people, and then we
kill a tremendous amount of material.
It just was built into our production model
from the beginning that we would be killing
between a third and a half of everything we start.
And it's sort of like for the kind of stories
we're doing where we need them to be relatable,
we need a strong character-- at least one,
if not more than one-- we need there to be a plot,
the plot has to be surprising, it
has to do lead to some new thought about the world,
that thought has to be surprising.
It's a lot of criteria to have going
and you really can't tell what's going
to work until you start to make the thing.
And so it's like you want lightning
to strike as an industrial product every week,
and to do that, you just have to wander around
in the rain a lot.
FEMALE SPEAKER: So learning how much you record
and how little of it actually gets onto the show
is pretty surprising to me.
What else surprises people?
IRA GLASS: Because in your view, we just open up the mic
and people are incredibly charming.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Yes.
IRA GLASS: If only.
FEMALE SPEAKER: I think somebody comes up
to you at a dinner party and says,
Ira, I have this great story, and then
you say, let's record it right now,
and then suddenly it's on the radio that week.
IRA GLASS: That would be a dream.
My job would be very easy.
FEMALE SPEAKER: So what else usually surprises people
about the production of the show?
IRA GLASS: I mean, it's a lot of us now.
When we started the show, it was just three people and me,
and now it's a dozen of us making it.
I don't know what would be surprising to people.
When you see a movie, you can just
feel all the money and all the people
behind it, whereas a radio show, if it's working,
it just feels like one person talking to another person,
and so the machinery of it is invisible.
If it's done well, you don't get the feeling
that we've spent four months editing and reediting
and reediting and going back and doing things again.
So I think in general, the machinery of it is surprising.
FEMALE SPEAKER: What about the interviews?
Do you do them face to face?
IRA GLASS: Some, but it doesn't have to face to face.
It's funny with radio, I'll do interviews
where I'll be in a studio in one city
and somebody will be in a studio in another city.
And we use the incredibly primitive technology of I'll
be in the studio and talking to them over the phone,
and we'll send an engineer who will just
sit there with a microphone.
So I'm recording my voice where I am
and they record their voice on a recorder where they are,
and then we just synchronize the two
tapes so it sounds like we're in the same room.
Very complicated.
And it turns out for many things,
that's just as good as being there in person.
It doesn't matter if you're there
for a lot of things, even very personal things.
Because it's almost like we're used
to talking to people on the phone very personally,
and it's almost like the conversation is happening
in the space of radio, if that makes sense.
And I know that some interviewers,
like Terry Gross, who does "Fresh Air,"
she prefers not to be in the studio with the people.
She doesn't want to see them.
She doesn't want them to see her going through her notes.
FEMALE SPEAKER: So I'd love to hear you talk about some
of your favorite episodes.
I know "Testosterone," I think is one of them,
and "Hartford High."
What do you think makes those so successful?
IRA GLASS: I mean, those are such different episodes.
I mean, the episodes that are good
have a really nice mix of being relatable and surprising
and take you into a world that you kind of know
exists but don't really know the details of.
"Harper High School," it was a two episode thing.
We'd never done that before.
And basically, it came out of our senior producer,
Julie Snyder, being really interested in trying
to figure out a way to cover gun violence in Chicago.
Last year, 506 people, I think it was,
were shot in one year in Chicago,
and the number was going up whereas the number was
going down or staying the same in other big cities,
and it was very unclear why the number was so high in Chicago.
560 is a huge number.
New York is three times larger than Chicago,
and the number of shootings in New York was smaller than that.
And in the coverage of it, it was
really hard to even understand the most basic things
like, why are people shooting each other?
You would read in the clippings, so somebody got shot
at the corner of 70th and Stony Island, and you wouldn't know.
Was it a drug thing?
Was it a gang thing?
Was it a domestic thing?
You couldn't even know.
And so we were looking for a way to get a grip on it,
and if you're us, the first thing we need
is plot and story and characters,
and so we have to find a place to locate the story.
And the first thing we tried was on Memorial Day of that year,
50 people were shot in one weekend,
in the Memorial Day weekend.
We felt like, OK, that'll be our frame.
We'll just do Memorial Day weekend
and we'll do those 50 shootings.
And that turned out to be unproducable in the time frame
we wanted because once the people were caught up
in the court system, we couldn't get people to talk to us,
and we couldn't report out the stories with the kind of speed
that you'd want to to get it on the air.
And then we went looking for another frame
and we found this high school, Harper High School,
where 29 kids had been shot in one year.
I can't remember if it's nine-- they
were current or recent students.
So recent students are sort of like a kid who dropped out
as a sophomore, but now he would have been in his junior year
and still friends with everybody in the school.
We were counting those because the school counted them.
So it was 29 current and recent students
and eight or nine of them died in one year.
And if you just think about the trauma
a school goes through if there's one shooting,
and so this is 29 of them.
And this wasn't the most shootings
in Chicago or anything.
And I think what makes an episode like that work
is that, honestly, most of us have no idea what it's
like to live in a community where that many people are
getting shot.
We sent in three reporters for five months
to just camp out in that school and get
to know the staff and the students.
And what was interesting was both being
able to document what that level of violence
does to the kids with the kind of detail
that you don't get to report out that much.
And so there was one kid who was like the Forrest
Gump of the shootings at the school.
He had been at six or seven different shootings,
kids who he knows, close to.
He would just be standing there, they would die right
in front of them, and his own brother
had been shot three times and survived,
but was in a wheelchair at the end of the last shooting.
And where that kid is after that turns out
to be something worth talking about.
And then the staff of the school was really great,
kind of the crypto message of the show, I guess,
was here is like an inner city high school,
and people bring all these associations
to that, and the super competent staff.
And when there was a shooting, they had all these procedures
that they had developed, learning from the Army
these after action reports where they would just
jump into action to figure out, if this kid got shot,
who else did this kid know?
What gang were they in?
What gang is warring with that gang?
And they would just get all the other kids who could possibly
get shot out of the school and to their homes
to get people to safety.
And just so much about that show was really surprising,
so that made that work.
I could talk about this show for a long time.
Gangs in that school turned out to be really different.
It made me feel like such an old person.
The gangs, when I was a reporter in Chicago reporting
on gangs 15, 20 years ago, gangs were a criminal enterprise
like you'd see on "The Wire," and they'd sell drugs,
and they were out to make money.
And I just felt like, these kids today,
they don't even want to make money.
They're not even selling drugs.
And the parents are sort of like what I was.
They thought a street gang was one thing,
and all these things are-- if you heard the show,
it's like your high school clique.
And it's just like a bunch of kids,
but everybody can get a gun.
And so it's just like basically, the neighborhood
is so dangerous, every kid in the school was in a gang.
The nerds were in the gangs, the drama kids were in the gangs,
the band kids were in the gang.
Every kid, you had to be in a gang.
Every kid was in a gang.
And so you'd read about this 15-year-old
that summer got shot.
And you'd read in the paper, she was a member of a gang.
Every kid is in the gang.
She was a band kid.
So a lot of that was surprising, and I
feel like that's what makes it good.
There were characters who, when you
would hear their situation-- the secret power of the radio
or the special power of doing something on the radio
is the fact that you don't see them.
It's easy to create the kind of intimacy
where you feel like you can get to know people very,
very quickly.
We did a TV show for two years and we've done two movies,
and I feel like you can create that kind of intimacy
on film or on video, but you'd really
have to shoot it like a film.
You'd have to light it beautifully
you'd have to like really frame it beautifully,
and just to bring the kind of production values
that you'd have to bring to it to make those stories
work with the sort of immediacy and emotional intimacy
that you get on radio, you'd have
to really throw a tremendous amount of money and production
value at it.
It really would have to be shot like a film,
whereas with us, we're going out with tape recorders.
And just the fact that you don't see the people
and you hear their voice, that has such an immediacy to it
that I feel like that's the special power that radio can
bring to something like that.
And you just feel like you get to know the people so fast
and you're so close up in their world
that it's easy to imagine, here's
what it would be like to be them.
I mean, this is a really long answer to your question,
but I feel like the thing that we
can contribute as reporters in the world that is harder
to achieve than other kinds of journalism
is to do the most basic thing that a story can do,
which is make it possible to imagine, oh, here's
what it would be like to be you.
And I feel like something like that, where you're
talking about gang kids and things like that, where
I think people who are not in a gang
or didn't grow up in that kind of neighborhood
bring all kinds of associations to it,
to be able to illustrate, no, no, no, here's
what it's really like.
If you lived in this neighborhood,
you would be in the gang.
Here's how you would feel and here's how you would be.
That's what we're trying.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Thank you.
IRA GLASS: Oh my god that was silly.
Too long.
I'll be more terse as we go on.
FEMALE SPEAKER: So when I heard that episode,
it was very affecting, and you leave that episode
and you say, what can I do to help?
And I think there was some sort of donations for Harper.
Was there on the website?
IRA GLASS: The school set up a donation page
and they made a quarter million dollars.
And if anybody wants to go, they can use the money.
They're a public school.
But what can you do to help?
There's nothing you can do to help.
Nothing you can do.
I honestly believe it wasn't the kind of thing where-- I mean,
maybe it's cynical to say that, but are you
going to change the social structure of the south side
of Chicago so that kids don't want to join gangs, or make
the neighborhood a safe neighborhood?
I mean, you know how you could help,
is if you could revive the economy of that part
of the city of Chicago so that the entire neighborhood became
safer because the economic level would rise.
I think that would be the thing.
But the fact is in our country, where pockets of violence
happen, it's very poor pockets in cities,
and unless you fix that.
FEMALE SPEAKER: But with episodes,
like "Very Tough Love," you made the story, I think,
because you wanted to tell that story, but--
IRA GLASS: "Very Tough Love," it's about this judge.
There was a judge down in Georgia who--
FEMALE SPEAKER: Yeah, Judge Amanda Williams was in Georgia,
and there was an episode about her drug corps and some very
strict rulings.
And then after the episode aired,
there were some real world consequences for her.
So when you told that story, were you thinking in the back
to your mind, what's Georgia going
to do once this airs, or were you
just telling it to tell an interesting story?
IRA GLASS: I mean, it was first and foremost
an interesting story.
That story, man.
I was down in Georgia.
We had this idea for a show called "Georgia Rambler," based
on an old newspaper column, and the idea
is that this guy would roll into different small towns
in Georgia, this columnist, Charles Salter.
He would just show up in a town and he
would find a story that day about that town,
and it was just portraits of small town life.
And as a staff, we just thought, that would be fun.
Let's do that.
So we each chose a county.
We'd just pick names out of a hat.
And so I ended up with the county that turned out
to be the county that this judge was in,
and you're given one day to find a story under these rules
that we artificially created for ourselves just
to amuse ourselves.
And I had been in the county-- literally the first interview
I did was somebody who was like, you know who you should talk
to is this guy, Joe [INAUDIBLE], and he's
in this war with this judge.
And I heard about the judge right away,
and people kept telling me stories about the judge.
And I totally had this feeling of, if these stories are true,
somebody should really investigate this judge.
And I totally had the feeling of,
some reporter should come down here.
And honestly, when people would tell me these stores,
I couldn't tell if the stories were true.
I really had a feeling of, this can't be true.
And then pinning it down and getting people
to go on the record took four or five months.
Every time I would fly back down there, my wife and my staff
were just like, why are you doing this story?
And then it turned out people were
willing to come forward and go on the record.
And I did have a feeling in the back of my mind,
somebody should do something about this if this is true.
And I don't feel like I can claim credit.
At the same time that people were saying things to me,
they were saying things to-- there's a watchdog state
committee that looks for judges who might be doing things that
are bad, and they had been tipped off about this judge
and they were looking into it too.
But I think the visibility of the radio show and the fact
that people from all over the country
heard it gave it a visibility in Georgia.
And honestly, hearing it on the radio, a woman who
had been on the State Supreme Court
got involved in the case as one of the people moving
the case forward.
It raised the profile of it in a way that is very rare.
Honestly, most journalism doesn't achieve anything.
And I think I got into journalism,
like most young people, thinking,
I'm going to make the world a better
place by exposing wrongdoing.
But honestly, most wrongdoing that you expose,
nothing happens.
You can do all the stories you want on Guantanamo and things
that somebody should get in there and fix-- climate change.
Everybody who is going to believe that climate change is
real pretty much believes it, and yet we're not actually
addressing the problem in a way that
is at the scale of the problem itself.
And I just feel like, what is left to say as a reporter?
It's happening, there's more and more evidence all the time.
We can say it again, but you already know it.
And so generally, when you're a reporter,
almost nothing gets any results ever.
That's one of the very few times I've ever
worked on anything that I could say afterwards,
I helped in any way the process of something changing.
FEMALE SPEAKER: What about people's individual lives?
Do they follow up with you and say, after I was on the show,
this happened?
IRA GLASS: After I was on the show, a lot of my friends
got in contact with me over Twitter.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Real world change.
IRA GLASS: Real world change.
I mean, sometimes.
Often, we're just documenting people's personal stories,
and I don't know how much-- I mean, I don't know.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Maybe they would get back in touch with you
and say, hey Ira, I was really having a problem with that.
Now it worked out.
Or just wanted to let you know.
IRA GLASS: No, not that often.
No, no, no.
Like, no, I told that story about my mom and she heard it
and now she's mad at me.
There's a little bit of that.
FEMALE SPEAKER: What about episodes that just flopped
or made you uncomfortable or maybe listening back
to some old ones, you feel like you didn't cover them
in the way you would now?
IRA GLASS: I mean, there definitely are things-- yeah,
there's a lot.
I mean, we're on a lot.
We made a lot of episodes.
And there are things, definitely,
that I really wish we could have done better.
I wish I could think of an example
very quickly for you of one.
There's one that we did last week that on staff, we
wondered if we handled literally the structure of the show
properly.
And it was this one which was built around an idea
that I love.
One of our producers, Sarah Koenig, her mom
has seven rules on things you should never talk about.
Unless you're going through a health crisis,
you should never talk about your health,
like oh, I have this problem in my shoulder.
You should never talk about your dreams.
You should never talk about how you slept last night,
and number one on her list the route you took to get there.
Nobody's interested.
And so she has seven stories, and we thought,
this a really funny premise for the show.
And Sarah said, well, what if we could prove you wrong?
I work with a team of people.
We're very committed to finding interesting stories
on any subject.
What if we can prove that there could be stories on these seven
subjects that could be interesting?
And her mother is like, I don't believe you can do it.
And then it was very much like, OK,
the first scene of "My Fair Lady."
I can take this woman with a cockney accent
and make her into a lady.
That's our mission.
And so we set out as a staff to find seven stories that
would totally be amazing stories of those seven subjects.
And Sarah Koenig is just such an amazing interviewer and writer
on the radio.
And somehow, when the show was done,
all of a sudden the feeling of, oh wait,
did we format the show wrong?
And this is such a nerdy thing, but we
keep coming back to the mom throughout the hour
to check in of like, well, what did you think of that one?
What did you think of that one?
And then we realized at the end-- which
seemed like since there's a drama of what
is she going to think of each story
and is she going to give the thumbs up or thumbs down?
But somehow, weirdly, I think for listeners,
that lowered the stakes.
Did you guys hear this one?
Was it a thumbs up or thumbs down episode?
Thumbs up?
How many of you are thumbs down on it, though?
Some thumbs down.
Because the drama doesn't play perfectly.
And some of the staffers-- I was very much on the side of,
we must have the mom in the studio
because the drama is, is the mom going to give us thumbs up
or thumbs down?
And we'll just do it like we'll tell the stories to the mom.
And then there was a whole contingent on staff
who were just like, no, no, no.
It's going to be more entertaining
not to have the mom there.
And I wonder if we did the wrong thing.
I wonder if it would have been better just to come back
to the mom at the end and just let
her say, nope, I'm still right.
FEMALE SPEAKER: What did she say about the episode?
IRA GLASS: She enjoyed it, and she's still
talking to Sarah, which was our goal.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Well done.
So one thing that I was wondering.
I read an interview you did with "New York Magazine,"
and you gave some snarky responses,
and then some of your fans left angry comments on the article
because you didn't match their expectations of Ira.
IRA GLASS: Wait, what were my snarky responses?
What did I say?
FEMALE SPEAKER: I'll send you the link.
IRA GLASS: I don't even remember this.
OK.
FEMALE SPEAKER: And you didn't match
who they think Ira Glass is, host of "This American Life."
IRA GLASS: Wow.
I am so glad I didn't read these comments.
OK.
Well, let's hear them.
FEMALE SPEAKER: So the question is--
IRA GLASS: Wait.
Do you-- really-- yeah?
FEMALE SPEAKER: Do you think that you
match people's expectations of who you are?
Are you the same person as your narrator self?
IRA GLASS: Oh.
I'm not the same person as my narrator self.
My narrator self is a much more edited down version of myself.
Like any normal person, when I go in public,
there's a lot less cursing than in real life.
FEMALE SPEAKER: That was part of the snark.
IRA GLASS: What?
That I was cursing?
FEMALE SPEAKER: Yeah.
IRA GLASS: What the fuck did I say?
[APPLAUSE]
I've been going around doing this show with these dancers,
with these modern dancers.
[APPLAUSE]
You guys saw the dance show?
So it sounds like it should be awful, but it's fine, right?
It's good.
So as I tell radio stories and these two incredibly talented
women dance, and really, it sounds
like it would be terrible, but it's actually
pretty moving and funny.
And there's a whole section of the show where
I tell a bunch of stories, all of which
include the word "cocksucker," and I feel so aware
of people in the audience.
It's like, OK, you came out to the public radio event.
Here I am, it's just like cocksucker
this and cocksucker that.
[LAUGHTER]
Anyway, so what's the-- so my expectation is that people's
expectations-- I think on the radio,
I'm listening to people in a more focused way,
I've been told, than I do in my real life.
FEMALE SPEAKER: You're doing great right now.
IRA GLASS: Thank you.
Well, this is a focused sort of situation.
I had a friend who once said that the difference between me
on the radio and me in real life is that on the radio,
I'm just not distracted by the 500 other things I'm supposed
to be doing at the same time, whereas in real life,
I think I live in my own little head a lot.
FEMALE SPEAKER: That makes a lot of sense.
IRA GLASS: Thank you for saying that.
Other people in my life, though, would
contest that thought that it makes a lot of sense,
and perhaps wish that it could be a little different.
FEMALE SPEAKER: So you've sort of become this cultural icon.
How does it feel when you see yourself
portrayed in pop culture?
IRA GLASS: Well weirdly, I'm not enough of an icon
that people portray me without me being involved.
FEMALE SPEAKER: There was the one on "The OC."
I feel like you weren't involved with that one.
IRA GLASS: "The OC," that was a really special one.
Yeah, but--
FEMALE SPEAKER: Will you tell that story?
I love that story.
IRA GLASS: Yes.
OK, so I was a super fan of "The OC," and my wife
and I would watch it every week.
FEMALE SPEAKER: You would sing "California."
IRA GLASS: Yes, we would.
We were so into it that at the beginning of each--
I've told this story on the radio.
At the beginning of each episode, my wife and I
would sit on the couch and we would sing along with the song,
(SINGING) do, do, do, do, do, do--
FEMALE SPEAKER: I know it.
IRA GLASS: [SINGING_"CALIFORNIA"] And I
think I had talked about how much I like the show.
I don't think it was like a random-- that
would have been so random.
FEMALE SPEAKER: But it fits the character.
IRA GLASS: It fits the character.
So anyway, at some point-- I actually have a clip of this.
I didn't realize you were going to bring this up,
but I brought a thing with clips that sometimes-- I'll
just tell the story.
Anyway, so I was watching "The OC,"
and there comes a point where Seth and Summer are in a scene,
and I think there's another girl in his room,
that Blondie girl was in his room.
And his girlfriend Summer picks up
and she's like, I hear a woman's voice.
And he comes up with the implausible-- he's like, oh,
I've got the radio on.
"This American Life" is on the radio.
And then she says a line which is like, oh,
that show with-- hold on for a second.
I am going to find it.
She says--
FEMALE SPEAKER: Some egghead thing.
IRA GLASS: She says, oh, that show of know it all hipsters?
Isn't that pretentious show?
It was like a valentine from Summer, who I love, of course.
Here we go.
Here's Seth's question to her.
Can we bring up the sound to the computer?
[AUDIO PLAYBACK]
-That sounded like a girl.
-[STAMMERS] Yeah.
Well, sure.
Because I'm listening to the radio and "This American Life"
is on, and so there's a girl talking.
[END AUDIO PLAYBACK]
IRA GLASS: First of all, that makes no sense at all.
And then her reply, like--
[AUDIO PLAYBACK]
-Is that that show by those hipster know-it-alls
that talk about how fascinating ordinary people are?
[SCOFFS] God.
[END AUDIO PLAYBACK]
IRA GLASS: Is that that show where hipster know-it-alls talk
about how fascinating ordinary people are?
[SCOFFS]
FEMALE SPEAKER: So you were just sitting
on the couch and your wife and you saw it?
IRA GLASS: I totally had a moment of, wait, wait.
What just happened?
What is happening?
A character on the WB just talked to us.
That was crazy.
That was really-- it was crazy.
I was just like, is this on everyone's TV?
I really had a feeling of, am I on some drug flashback
right now?
It really was really, really weird.
That's one of the weirdest things
that's happened for sure.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Well, you chose not to be on "Orange
is the New Black."
IRA GLASS: Yes.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Why not?
IRA GLASS: I didn't want to be myself on another TV show.
I don't know, I felt like it was becoming
a shtick of going on TV shows and playing
myself a little bit.
I mean, this seems like a bratty thing to say--
FEMALE SPEAKER: No, I think it got the same message across.
It didn't need to be you.
As soon as I watched it, I paused it.
I googled, was this supposed to be Ira Glass?
And then it said yes, and I was like, OK,
I can continue watching.
IRA GLASS: Yeah.
FEMALE SPEAKER: The message got across for your fans.
IRA GLASS: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That seemed fine.
I wished them the best, and do wish them the best.
And it's good for the business that the show
was sort of there in a weird crypto way.
But I didn't want to do it.
At that point-- I didn't want to do it.
FEMALE SPEAKER: So shifting gears a bit,
just to talk about technology, what's
your favorite app or your favorite piece of technology?
IRA GLASS: I use a MacBook Air that I think is amazing.
Am I allowed to mention an Apple product here?
I'm constantly amazed at the devices in my life.
My friend Chris Ware is this cartoonist and writer,
and he says he feels like his iPhone is like the tricorder he
wished he had had as a child watching "Star Trek."
It does all the things.
It can tell you anything.
But my technology use is pretty-- basically,
I'm editing on Pro Tools, I'm writing, I'm sending emails,
I'm listening to music while I run, and I'm using maps.
FEMALE SPEAKER: So you don't have Snap Chat?
IRA GLASS: No.
And also, I'm not on Twitter.
I feel like I don't need a creative outlet.
I'm all set.
I don't need a Tumblr.
I'm good.
I'm covered.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Is there anything
that you're waiting for, some piece of technology where it's
like, why doesn't that exist yet?
IRA GLASS: I have to say, there was a piece of technology
that I pitched people for years and then Google invented.
And I feel like our entire radio show runs
on this piece of technology, and it's docs,
it's that you can share a document.
And I used to meet software engineers and I would say,
could you invent something so that for the thing that we're
doing on our show-- we're playing each other's stories,
and then we go over the scripts together.
What you want is something so that somebody in another city
could be looking at the document and you guys are both typing it
at the same time, and people at four or five different desks
can all be typing on, making changes.
I was like, well, that must be easy.
And I kept waiting for somebody to do it,
and then you guys did it, and our whole show
runs on Google Docs.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Well, if you think of anything else,
this is the right room to ask for it.
IRA GLASS: Really?
FEMALE SPEAKER: Yeah.
IRA GLASS: Can I just say, in the Calendar program
on the iPhone, it has two what I consider bugs.
It's on your phone and it makes you type in your name
and tell it who you are every day.
And so you'll be riding a bike, realizing
you have to check your calendar, and then you
have to stop and enter in your name.
That's not-- why?
Why do you--
FEMALE SPEAKER: It sounds like a pitch for Glass.
IRA GLASS: Really?
For the glasses thing?
FEMALE SPEAKER: Yeah, because it's like, oh,
it would just pop right up.
IRA GLASS: Sure.
FEMALE SPEAKER: OK.
Well, we'll talk to someone on calendar, see what we can do.
IRA GLASS: And then it asks me every day,
do I want it on my home screen, and it's on my home screen.
And there's no way to tell it, you're
already living on my home screen.
Stop asking me.
You live there now.
Look around.
You're on the home screen.
I can't give you better placement.
You have the number one placement on the phone.
You're at the top of the phone.
I'm going think if I have any other engineering
problems I want to solve.
No.
I feel like things have been amazing with technology.
There's a lot of things wrong with this country
and the world, but our computers and phones, we're doing great.
Also, cable TV, fine.
Doing fine.
Plenty of good TV to watch.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Does any piece of technology scare you?
IRA GLASS: I mean, no.
Does any piece of technology scare you?
FEMALE SPEAKER: There's all these articles
about privacy and people watching
you and ubiquitous cameras.
I didn't know if that was something
that you worried about.
IRA GLASS: No.
I mean, I suppose I should, but I don't.
No.
Honestly, I'm so full of fear about other things,
I can't organize my--
FEMALE SPEAKER: There's not enough room.
IRA GLASS: No, it's true.
I feel like I'm constantly on deadline,
I'm constantly having to finish things which aren't finished.
Right now as I sit here, I actually
should be going through tape about this car dealership
so I could have a draft of my story
by Monday, which is the deadline I have for myself,
and here I am sitting here.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Thanks for being here.
IRA GLASS: Yeah.
So with all of that fear going through my system,
what time do I have to be thinking
about how I'm being surveilled by cameras all the time who
will watch me making my stupid fucking story?
What do I care?
Go ahead, watch.
FEMALE SPEAKER: So since your radio show started in 1995,
how has technology changed how you work?
IRA GLASS: The basics since '95 haven't changed.
When I started in radio, I was editing reel to reel tape
and stuff, and so I switched over from analog to digital,
but that happened around '95, actually.
The main way that technology has changed the radio show
is that we can get it out to more people more efficiently.
Seth, when did we start doing the podcast?
SETH LIND: 2006.
IRA GLASS: 2006.
OK, so 2006, our audience on the radio--
that's Seth Lind, who runs the business side of the radio
show.
[APPLAUSE]
Seth, you'll be up here-- what's that?
SETH LIND: I said our stock is up 3%.
IRA GLASS: So 2006, when we started
the podcast, our audience on the radio
was about 1.8 million people listening on 500 public radio
stations, which is middle range for a public radio show,
for a national show.
"Morning Edition," kicks our ass,
Garrison Keillor kicks our ass, but we still
have an edge over "Radio Lab," thank god.
Those guys.
Since then, basically, what's happened
is the radio audience has stayed at about the same level.
They actually measure radio audiences more accurately now,
so we know that the number has been not 1.8,
but it's been probably a little higher than that.
And the radio audience has stayed there
while we've gained basically a million people every week
downloading who we didn't have before.
And that was a real question for radio
when podcasting and internet distribution would come in,
how it would cannibalize radio.
And I think in some parts of radio, it's been very bad,
but for shows like ours, it's been really, really good.
That's been the main way.
And I think part of the reason why we work on the internet
is because accidentally, the aesthetics of the show
match the aesthetics of the internet.
That is, I feel like most communication on the internet
is very much a very one to one, I'm talking to you.
And even if it's a blog or something
else like comments or anything, it's very much,
I'm writing to you.
You're right there on the other side of this thing
and I'm talking to you one on one,
and radio is exactly that when it's done well.
And so I feel like it has the feeling that it belongs there.
We did nothing to market it or make it successful.
It just happened.
FEMALE SPEAKER: So with the podcast,
you can listen to one episode, you can listen to one act.
You can pick and choose.
Do you think that changes how people consume your stories?
IRA GLASS: I don't know.
Honestly, Seth would know better than this
because he looks at the numbers.
Do people listen to one story, or are people
listening to whole episodes?
SETH LIND: Whole episodes.
IRA GLASS: They do.
They're listening to whole episodes.
Weirdly, figuring out how to do journalism on the internet,
like NPR and other outfits have tried
to figure out ways to do it.
And for a while, they thought people
would be curating their own content,
and that you'd put out a lot of small, little pieces
of journalism, and then people would
like pick and choose from among them.
But it turns out people don't want to go to the trouble
generally, for audio, anyway.
And one of the things that it seems like people will listen
to is actually long form narrative.
And so yeah, I guess they're listening to the whole hour.
FEMALE SPEAKER: That's interesting to hear.
But with the live stream, they're
probably just tuning in at some point.
IRA GLASS: The live stream is pretty new,
though, so we don't know.
FEMALE SPEAKER: That'll be interesting to see.
IRA GLASS: We have a 24 hour live stream now,
a 24 hour radio station that only plays us, which is a dream
that I never wanted.
FEMALE SPEAKER: So are there any stories, maybe about technology
or otherwise, that just floating in your head
that you've been trying to find a way to tell on the radio
but they don't fit into a theme right now?
IRA GLASS: Not about technology.
Honestly, being here, I guess I could have prepared more
by thinking more about technology and things
like that.
The only technology story, truthfully,
that I've been interested in that we looked
into that I still feel like I don't totally understand
is, why isn't there kind of a moon shot sort of engineering
solution to climate change?
Why isn't that a business for somebody
to do to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere
and like fix the actual planet?
It seems like that's a good business for somebody
who knows about things like that.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Have you looked into it?
Are people doing it?
IRA GLASS: We've looked into it.
We reported it out a little bit, and there are efforts
and it's not an easy technical problem
to not consume more energy in the process.
You know what I mean?
You don't want to make the problem worse
by solving the problem.
So it turns out to be a not trivial problem,
but it also seems like it isn't a big war going on
to solve that problem.
It seems like it's a couple of people trying
it, and not at a huge scale either, is what we found out
in our reporting.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Why don't you think
people are more worried about it?
IRA GLASS: I don't know enough about it to know.
I don't know.
I don't totally understand that.
I feel like I'd have to report it out more.
FEMALE SPEAKER: So if you had to choose
one class for every student to take, what would it be?
IRA GLASS: Wow.
A class that they don't already take?
FEMALE SPEAKER: Yeah, or maybe tweaking
the way something is done in classrooms or in education.
IRA GLASS: I mean, there is a thing
in writing that I feel like I had to learn on my own
that I'm surprised isn't taught in school,
and that is people don't teach story structure properly
in school.
I think that when we're all taught how to write,
we're taught topic sentences.
We're taught the way that you would write an essay with topic
sentences at the beginning of paragraphs,
and then you fill out the paragraphs,
and that basically was learning to write in school.
But in fact, there's a structure of telling
a story that's more effective than that, that I feel like I
had to learn by reading and trial and error and whatever,
which is much more anecdote based.
So for example, the stories on our show, the structure of them
is really built around plot and ideas,
and it's a very old structure.
It's a very traditional kind of story structure
where you want to just think through the sequence of actions
where one thing leads to the next, leads to the next,
leads to the next.
And so really, you want to break down
whatever is going to happen into this happened,
and then this happened, and then this happened, and then
happened.
And the advantage of having forward motion
is that it inherently creates suspense
because you wonder what's going to happen next.
And so you hold people's attention because simply moving
forward action, it's like you create suspense
and you can do it with the most banal story possible,
or the most everyday story.
And so as long as one thing is leading to the next,
is leading to the next, you create suspense.
And then periodically, you want to jump out of the action
and have some thought about what the story means.
And it's really the structure of a sermon.
A sermon is basically composed of a series of anecdotes
and then thoughts about what the anecdotes are.
Certain writers just naturally write that way,
and radio definitely works best that way,
and there's a certain kind of journalism
that works that way, too.
If you read a really great narrative writer
like Malcom Gladwell or Michael Lewis,
they're constantly giving you the action
and jumping out of the action to make some thought
and then back into the action.
And that's the structure of "Moneyball,"
and that's the structure of a lot of really great books.
And when we're in school, nobody tells
us, that's a way to write that's so much easier, actually,
in a certain way, and is so much more mesmerizing
than topic sentences, because you're
utilizing this thing that's so primal within us
because you can create suspense.
And I feel like the thing that we
don't learn when we're learning to write in school
is how to make it fascinating.
FEMALE SPEAKER: That's really interesting
because in some of our meetings earlier,
we were learning about how it's half technology and half
the story because you need people
to adopt and to understand and appreciate
what you're building.
And there's such a big push now for STEM and for all
of these science and math based educational initiatives,
but it would be really interesting to also push
stories because without those stories,
how do you get people to appreciate technology?
IRA GLASS: I guess.
I mean, stories are also an end in and of themselves,
I would say, but yeah.
FEMALE SPEAKER: No, I'm saying if you have to justify it.
But yes, I think it's an interesting point that we're
taught to write in this very basic way
and there's a lot more art to it.
IRA GLASS: Yeah.
Though I also think you can learn to be a good writer.
I was a bad writer.
I was bad, actively bad, and I willed myself to get better
and really tried to learn, what are
the building blocks of a story?
And I think often people who aren't naturally good writers,
you're just intimidated because you
feel like, again, you have to be touched by an angel
to be a good writer, but you just
have to have taste about what's interesting, I think.
FEMALE SPEAKER: So what's your advice for someone
who wants to become a better storyteller?
IRA GLASS: Just start.
Start making it.
Don't wait.
Just start making stuff.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Cool.
So now we'd like to open it up to questions from the audience,
so there's a microphone right there.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
Thanks for coming.
I wand to follow up on a question
that Logan posed earlier, and I thought you addressed more
from the technology perspective.
But she had asked how technology has changed
the making of the show in the time
that you've been working on it, and generally
since you've been working in radio.
And not just from the technological perspective,
but I guess from the idea perspective, how has-- I'm
thinking about your comment about all the 500 things
that are distracting you and keeping you
from focusing on certain things.
Does technology or that ability to have that distraction
take away the idle moments that you
might have had to brainstorm or think about something,
and do you have self imposed free time from technology
to help cope with that, if that's a problem?
IRA GLASS: That's a really interesting question.
No, not for me.
My day is pretty much jam packed with things that I organized
for myself and obligations that I accidentally
created for myself, and things that I thought, oh, that would
be a really fun little project, and then of course it
ends up consuming 90 hours a week.
I don't have the problem where I feel like, oh, I'm
so distracted by my devices or anything like that.
I don't have that.
I don't have that at all.
And I also don't believe that people's attention
spans are getting shorter.
I think it's such fucking horseshit.
I just think it's the stupidest.
I feel like the success of "Radiolab,"
and shows like ours, and the fact that you can get people
who are 14 years old to listen to an hour long podcast,
and there's tons of them.
People will pay attention if something's
kind of interesting.
AUDIENCE: Would you characterize yourself and the people
on your staff as people who are constantly checking your phones
and looking at your devices?
IRA GLASS: No, I would not.
I mean, maybe-- Seth, would you characterize the people
on our staff as people-- no, we're not.
No.
We work in an office where we have a computer in front
of us all day long, so there's no reason
to check a phone for anything, and we're old.
People are in their 30s and 40s.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
IRA GLASS: Sure.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
So one of my favorite shows is the "Harper High School"
episode of "This American Life."
I actually used to be a teacher on the south side of Chicago.
It was along the lines of what you
were talking about with the--
IRA GLASS: Which school were you?
AUDIENCE: The elementary school I
taught at was Howe Elementary.
It's actually on the west side.
But I also taught in Altgeld Gardens at Fenger High School.
IRA GLASS: You taught at Fenger High School?
AUDIENCE: That was very brief--
IRA GLASS: Were you there when that kid got killed?
AUDIENCE: So for people who don't remember,
this was the kid who was beat to death with a two by four
and it was captured on video.
This was in the Altgeld Gardens neighborhood
in Chicago, which is a very dangerous and isolated place
of violence and poverty and depression,
and so I taught there several months after that happened.
I was about there or four months after that.
And so that personally was a deeply affecting episode to me.
And even with the discussion of what
we were talking about today, about what can we possibly
do upon hearing that?
As a journalist, if you're reading
about this in a newspaper, the newspaper
is obligated to present a balanced, neutral view
of what's going on.
It's not hopeful or it's not depressing, it's just,
this is what's happening.
So with your platform, do you feel
compelled to end the story in a certain hopeful tone,
or as bleak as it really is, or do you feel some obligation
to present it in a way that you feel
is the best way to present it to the audience?
And then as a second part of the question,
with the advent of podcasting and so on and so forth,
with the amount of probably interviews that you guys
did for the story, do you guys feel maybe
that there's opportunity to just place those on there
and have people draw their own conclusions?
We had an hour long story.
We could only fit so much in, but here's all
this other stuff that we collected.
Maybe if you go through and listen to it,
you can draw your own conclusions.
Have you guys given thought to that?
IRA GLASS: To the second thing, absolutely not, no.
Partly because just hearing raw interviews
without the context of, who is this kid that's explaining what
is going on, just feels like it's not
doing the kids justice.
And I feel like in the shows that we're doing,
we're trying to present it in as compelling a way as possible
and let people have their own thoughts about it.
I don't feel like we're trying to preach,
here's what you should think about this.
If anything, "Harper High School"
is an example of most people have no idea
what it's like in a neighborhood like that.
Most people don't live in neighborhoods like that.
And to even get across, here's what
this feels like, here's what this
is in a way that's three dimensional,
that in itself, we felt like that was going
to be the new thing we were going to do,
and we didn't have to prescribe anything.
And truthfully, like I was saying
before, I don't know-- if somebody's
got some suggestions, you know what I mean?
We would say to the principal, what
do you guys-- we have a whole section of the story
on the money problems the school has, and they were getting
some extra money for a while and that money was all going away.
And it looked like, in fact, they
were going to be having to let go of the two
social workers in the school because of budget cuts.
And now that school got so much attention,
Michelle Obama's been there and those kids
have gone to the White House.
There's a lot of attention on that one school,
but of course, Fenger is just as bad still.
And Fenger is being run by an incredibly wonderful principal.
People are trying to fix these schools.
It's not like-- so anyway, no, we
wouldn't put up the other material on the web.
And then do we feel an obligation?
I feel like yes, we go into those shows
with a real missionary sense.
I mean, that's true of a lot of things we do.
I mean, some of the stories we do,
we just do for fun, like the seven things
that Sarah's mom doesn't think you should ever talk about.
We don't really want to rid the world of people talking
about what route they took to dinner.
We don't care.
It just seemed funny.
But something like Harper or the story with a judge.
Honestly, probably a third of everything we do,
why be a broadcaster if you don't have the feeling of,
somebody should talk about this, and let's talk about it.
But are you expressing a dissatisfaction
with where it went, because if you are, that's OK?
AUDIENCE: No, no.
I actually was one of the kids that you
discuss who was sort of grandfathered
into-- I was suspended twice from my middle school
for being "in a gang."
It was really just a group of friends,
but we engaged in gang-like activity
where we got together and beat people up.
That was considered gang activity and stuff.
And so in the segment on the Straight Legs
where they talk about kids, as soon as they hit 15,
if you're not in a gang, you either need to find one
or they'll find one for you.
So even if I had any sort of critical thoughts
about the way that the story was presented,
the fact that the story was being told
was more than enough for me, because that was so far
beyond what most cursory glances at the issue were doing.
So that's why I appreciate the show
because as they said in "The OC" segment,
it's making ordinary lives seem amazing.
And it might be told from the hipster elitist perspective,
but at least somebody is telling it.
So that alone, that is considered progress,
then so be it.
You sort of just have to take what's given.
So I appreciate the work that you're doing,
and please keep it up.
IRA GLASS: Thanks.
[APPLAUSE]
AUDIENCE: Hi.
So do you go to the gym every day?
That wasn't supposed to be funny.
What do you listen to, if anything?
IRA GLASS: It's funny because I can't listen to podcasts.
I used to listen to Terry Gross, but I
feel like actually, I have to have music playing.
And so lately, I've been listening to my nephew's band
Heart Sounds.
I just started listening to Taylor Swift and Katy Perry,
and "What Does the Fox Say."
I want to add to my public speech
a whole fact check about what does
the fox say, because it doesn't say that song-- it's
totally inaccurate, that song.
[LAUGHTER]
AUDIENCE: My question is more similar
to the previous question, which is that a lot of your episodes
seem to end on a sobering or sad note.
I understand that you said you want
to tell a surprising story with strong characters,
but you also mentioned earlier that journalists
can't do anything, and that it's hopeless.
IRA GLASS: No, no, wait, wait, wait.
You're overstating.
It's more like it's rare for you to see direct consequences
in the world of having put a story out there.
It's rare.
AUDIENCE: But for the Harper School,
for instance, you said, what can you do to change this?
IRA GLASS: Well that's something-- right, you'd
have to change the economic structure of poor neighborhoods
in Chicago to change that fundamentally,
which is beyond most people's power.
Perhaps if one ran a big, multimillion dollar company,
whatever.
AUDIENCE: I wish I ran a multimillion dollar company.
So what would you say is the purpose of the show, then?
Is it to effect a change, or is it for entertainment?
If you admit that most people who are listening to this
will drink their coffee, say, hm, OK, and can't do anything
about it, why do you do it?
IRA GLASS: I think the show is an entertainment.
I think it's an entertainment.
I think that one of the things that
was part of the idea of the show from the beginning
is that you could do journalism and you
could do public broadcasting that
would have all the ideals of the very best journalism,
but also be fundamentally an entertainment, that you would
listen because you're feelings would get caught up
and you'd get caught up in the characters
and things like that.
I and the staff, we think of the show as entertainment.
We think of it as we are in it to amuse ourselves,
but because of the kind of people
we are, that sort of amusement also
involves-- we're interested in things in the world
and we want to know what's going on a neighborhood like West
Englewood.
But if we go into West Englewood,
we're not trying to do it a sad sacky kind of sad, corny way.
We want to be engaged in the people and the characters.
I don't know.
The show is an entertainment, and I
feel like to pretend that there's
something else about it, I feel like it's
enough to be an entertainment.
Most things that try to be an entertainment don't succeed.
Simply to achieve that is hard.
AUDIENCE: OK, thank you.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
Thanks for being here.
My question is, do you think that besides location, there's
anything distinctly American about the stories you tell?
And also, do you know if you have
listeners who are non-American?
IRA GLASS: We do know we have listeners who are non-American
because we have podcast numbers.
Seth, how much of our audience is overseas?
Do you have a microphone back there?
SETH LIND: Yeah.
About 10% to 15%.
IRA GLASS: OK.
And do I think of the stories as particularly American?
I think that the things in the stories,
generally if the stories are any good,
there's a universal quality to them that could be anywhere.
But also, we happen to be Americans.
Our tastes are American, the things
that interest us are American.
So I feel like it's kind of both things at the same time.
AUDIENCE: You recently rebroadcasted an updated
version of an older episode that I really loved,
the "Fiasco" episode.
IRA GLASS: Yes.
AUDIENCE: And one of the segments
in the "Fiasco" episode is a reporter talking
about her fiasco interview, and I was really curious
if you ever had an interview or an experience
producing the show that you would describe as a fiasco,
and if so, what was it?
IRA GLASS: I haven't had anything
as spectacular as that reporter who, in the middle of a very
tense interview, squirted coffee or iced tea
or something out of her nose, bringing her interview
to a stop and simultaneously winning over the interviewee.
So I don't have as dramatic a story as that to tell.
A lot of things have gone really badly for me in interviews.
When you do a lot of interviews, you make every mistake.
But I don't have an answer that's
to the level of your question.
AUDIENCE: Anything particularly noteworthy
that's not at the level of that kind of a fiasco?
It's OK if you don't.
IRA GLASS: Nothing comes to mind.
It's a really good question, but I don't have an answer.
AUDIENCE: OK.
Well, thanks.
IRA GLASS: Which is honestly a real interviewing problem.
Often, the question is better than any answer
that the interviewee comes up with.
So my heart goes out to you in your excellence
and in my failure to rise to the excellence of your question.
Yes?
AUDIENCE: Hi.
I have two questions.
Do you have any dream episodes or goals for the next 10 years
for the show?
And then also, I was listening to the "Superhero" episode--
IRA GLASS: Let me answer that one first.
I'm constantly having dream episodes and ideas for things
we want to do, but then we do them.
It's kind of a rolling project.
Let me think if there's anything in particular right this day.
No, nothing today.
I feel like the stuff that we want to do, we do,
but I don't have anything right now.
What else?
AUDIENCE: And then after the "Superhero" episode, would you
choose flight or invisibility and why?
IRA GLASS: I absolutely would choose invisibility.
I know myself very well, and the kind
of crouching, lurking, nobody can see me,
I will watch you sort of situation,
I'm totally comfortable with.
AUDIENCE: Cool.
IRA GLASS: Flying from place to place,
I can buy a ticket on an airplane.
AUDIENCE: Airplanes are so terrible.
IRA GLASS: Really?
No.
I don't feel that way at all.
AUDIENCE: Have you ever had a really good story
on an airplane?
IRA GLASS: No, because any really good story
would involve near death whatever.
I'm happy to keep it the way it is.
No, airplanes are amazing.
I can't believe you're complaining about airplanes.
That's a technology which is totally wonderful.
You get on an object that moves you really fast,
and it's super comfortable, and nobody
can reach you on the phone so far.
It's awesome.
Every part of it is great.
AUDIENCE: You must be in first class.
IRA GLASS: What?
AUDIENCE: You must be in first class.
IRA GLASS: No.
I am so not in first class.
Are you kidding?
No.
I spilled coffee in the car on the way over here and I
didn't-- that's the level that I'm at.
No, no, no, no.
I can tell you one thing.
We are talking about starting another podcast.
That's one dream for the show, is that a bunch of us
feel like we should start making more stuff,
and hopefully in the next year, we'll
be coming out with more podcasts.
And one idea that we're really excited about
is the idea that we would do a show that's exactly
the opposite of our show and do it as a podcast,
and instead of it being each week we choose
a different theme, we would do the thing that journalism never
does, and every week, we would go back
to exactly the same story and give you the next chapter of it
and let it unfold over time.
And so we're hoping to roll that out
in January if all goes as planned.
We just started talking about it in the last week or two,
so maybe it's not going to happen,
but I feel like it would be really exciting,
and hopefully the first of other projects.
AUDIENCE: That leads perfectly into my question.
The first "This American Life" episode
I remember listening to on the radio in high school
was about undocumented immigrants
who got caught up in jail for some minor offense
and then were never able to get out because they didn't
have proper documentation.
I always wonder when I listen to these stories, what
happens to these people five, ten years down
the road, or even a couple months, in some cases.
You just mentioned you might start a podcast where
you follow up with the people in your previous stories.
I'm sure that manpower is a factor.
You only have so many editors and producers.
Have you ever thought of maybe tapping into your audience base
and having maybe grassroots reporters follow
up on these stories to give you more manpower to?
IRA GLASS: No, we haven't.
No, because generally, I feel like it's rare
for there to be a story like that where there's people
sitting in prison at the end of it
and you wonder, when are they going to get out?
What's going to happen?
Generally, the stories end.
In a very bratty way, I feel like there's nothing else
to say, and that's the end of the story.
You know what I mean?
AUDIENCE: Do your other producers
and writers feel the same way?
They feel like, OK, we're done.
IRA GLASS: I haven't polled them.
I don't know.
Maybe they do, maybe they don't.
I mean, I can tell you that when we do reruns, we do go back
and we check with all the characters in the stories.
And we do that because we made the mistake once
of rerunning this story about this couple,
and then it turned out one of them had died,
and we were just like, oh no.
That was years and years ago, so now we go back
and we check on everybody.
So when we rerun that episode, if we ever do, we'll go back
and we'll know what happened to them.
But you yourself, if you're so curious-- their names are
in the stories.
You can check it yourself.
I don't know why I'm putting this back on you.
At "The New York Times," they don't
go back to everything in the archive and tell you,
here's what happened.
I'm reacting very defensively, which
means you're probably right.
[LAUGHTER]
Yes?
AUDIENCE: So what's your one advice
for improving storytelling skills?
IRA GLASS: Are you trying to do storytelling?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
IRA GLASS: In what kind of context?
AUDIENCE: Well, I love storytelling,
and I think you are the best I've heard so far,
so I wanted to get one advice from you.
IRA GLASS: See, but in real life,
I'm not a great storyteller.
I'm only really good on the radio.
I need production values for it to work.
AUDIENCE: So your advice is production value?
IRA GLASS: Absolutely.
If you can just get a little music playing
underneath as you talk.
I mean, are you talking about storytelling
in your everyday life?
AUDIENCE: No, more in writing.
IRA GLASS: In writing.
I mean, honestly, obviously, the most important part
is you want to amuse yourself.
The storytelling we do, I feel like if you're
showing your stuff to friends and they're honest with you
about what's working and what isn't,
obviously, that's a huge help.
I don't think I have super smart tips
that I can impart in a second.
The things that I'm interested in
do have the kind of structure that I'm
saying, where it's very plot based.
I feel like that just gives things an enormous power.
That was a terrible answer.
I'm so sorry.
FEMALE SPEAKER: And on that note--
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
FEMALE SPEAKER: Good job.
IRA GLASS: Thanks.
FEMALE SPEAKER: That was fun.
That was great.
[MUSIC PLAYING]