Ira Glass entered on a blackened stage at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center, with the only light source coming from an iPad that cued music to go with his introduction. The radio personality gave fans an experience they are used to when listen to his show, “This American Life.”
Glass eventually appeared in the lights, yet his observations on his own material were honed with the same relaxed, conversational style heard on his radio show, “This American Life.”
Glass, who spoke at the Carpenter Center on Saturday, spoke about his career with National Public Radio and his nearly 20 years of hosting his storytelling radio program.
KPCC, a Southern Californian public radio station, hosted the event.
As a public radio host, his audience is mostly affiliated with hipsters and the elderly, but his likable speaking style and the stories that come from “This American Life” reach out to more than the usual NPR audience.
Glass has appeared on “The Daily Show” and has even had his persona characterized by comedian Fred Armison on “Saturday Night Live.”
Hearing Glass talk about classic episodes from “This American Life” was like if Daniel Day-Lewis provided commentary on the movie “Lincoln” – as Abraham Lincoln. He seemed unflappable, even towards the beginning of the two-hour event when monitors on the stage weren’t working properly, tying the outage into his presentation.
Glass covered classic stories that “This American Life” junkies love, like “Animal Sacrifice,” a story about a pit bull named Piney who has multiple health issues. Glass explained how he produced his shows and how he approaches interviews. He said that the goal of each interview is to get a story out of an individual by asking “what then?” rather than focusing on a news peg.
Glass also offered advice for budding radio producers, saying that typical news reporting stripped the humanity found in even the most desperate of situations, like a woman whose house got stripped of the ground from a tornado. Glass allowed her to describe what was going through her mind, which keeps the humanity factor in the chilling story. Producers on the program approach interviewees as human beings, and often times even the most mundane sounding story can be crafted into a charming slice of Americana, what Glass describs as a “pleasurable surprise”.
“This American Life” approaches radio production differently by using traditional storytelling styles to build suspense and expectation.
He looked back on his early years at NPR, where he was told that, “the job of journalism is not just to tell us what’s new.”
“I was always taught that the job of journalism is to tell what is,” he said.
A particularly interesting part of the evening took place when Glass accepted audience questions. At one point, someone asked him about his legacy and about how he wanted to be viewed by future generations.
Glass laughed, repeated the question, and then said in a matter-of-fact tone that the future people of the world “can go f*ck themselves.”
Glass can be heard weekly on “This American Life,” on KCRW and KPCC or online at thisamericanlife.org.