For public radio listeners, Ira Glass needs no introduction. The creator and longtime host of This American Life will be in Birmingham for a show Saturday at UAB's Alys Stephens Center. WBHM’s Vahini Shori spoke with him about the stage show and heard some of his reflections from his decades on the air.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Your new show that's coming to Birmingham, Seven Things I've Learned, can you describe it a little bit? What makes it different from This American Life?
A bunch of things make it different. One is that I'm there in person and you see me there. And I mean, honestly, it's not that different than the radio show. I needed to write a show and I felt like I gotta call this something that seems like something.
So I call it Seven Things I've Learned, but really it's just seven stories that are fun to tell on a Saturday night.
Are they autobiographical?
Some of them And then the other ones are just really wonderful stories. I'm there on stage and I can play sound and sound cues so I can basically mix something that sounds exactly like our radio show.
It's designed so that people who know our radio show will bring people who don't know it. And so we can pick up more listeners.
How fun! Well, I'm excited to see it. I'm curious, if you could take me back to the beginning of your career, what did you think that you wanted out of it?
Honestly, like when I started doing radio, it just was something that I liked.
I just enjoyed it. I enjoyed interviewing people. I enjoyed editing. I enjoyed writing. Even though at the time when I started, I was a terrible writer. But I just liked making stuff and I wanted the work to be special.
Do you still feel that same energy of pursuing something really interesting?
I do. I'm really corny in that way, where even though we're in production all the time, it can get kind of tiring. But then there's a story which I'm excited about. I just feel like I'm like a dog with a bone or something.
I just feel like, “Oh my God, we gotta do that.” I'm not very complicated when it comes to that.
Speaking of public media. At this point, you're sort of an ambassador for it and narrative storytelling. What do you make of that role or responsibility? Does it feel like a responsibility?
I don't know. I guess in some little way, if somebody wants me to talk to a class or something, I try to be useful. It doesn't feel like a very big responsibility I have to say.
I don't get called on to do very much.
Really?
I had a weird assignment actually. There's a conference of the advertisers where all the brands get together, called the IAB conference, the International Association for Broadcasters. It was two months ago, and the NPR sales team was like, “Here's this thing we need: we need you to come and give the keynote speech in the opening session and just make the case for audio.”
What did you play? I don't know what I could think of playing that would make the point to a bunch of advertisers, but I guess your archive might be bigger than mine.
Yeah, we have a lot of old stories. I actually chose this clip of tape. It was this woman who was a gang member when I interviewed her, a girl gang member.
She's a really tough kid, you know what I mean? She's in a Chicago street gang and she talks about the first time she thought somebody was gonna shoot her and kill her. And the way she talks about it, about realizing, “Oh my God, they're gonna kill me right here and my mom is gonna find my body on the sidewalk and that'll be it, the end of my life.”
And she just described that experience in a way where you so relate to her and she's kind of funny when she talks about it, but also she was so scared. I just feel like it just takes you into her world so fast within like 40 seconds. You just feel like, “I love this girl and also I completely understand her and also I'm just transported.”
And so I played that 'cause I feel like it really illustrates the intimacy of the medium and just how radio, more than TV, and more than social media even weirdly, just not seeing somebody has this incredible power.
This American Life has been on air for decades now. I'm curious to know on this end of your career, what it feels like to sustain something for that long, a single project?
Honestly, as you're talking to me, if we're gonna be really, really honest, I'm actually in the middle of taking a little break from the show. Taking a couple weeks off to actually think, “should I keep doing this?” I don't know. It's exciting to make the show, but also, I don't know. I should figure out, do I wanna be doing this in five years?
Do I wanna write a book sometime? Do I wanna write a screenplay? I'm taking a minute.
Is this the first time you've had this thought or feeling?
Yeah. Over the last couple years. Yeah.
That's pretty remarkable in itself.
I don't think that's remarkable.
It's a hard thing to get bored at 'cause it's so different every week. And most people work the same job for 30 years. That's not an unusual thing. I'm like any adult who reaches the age of 60. Most of us have been doing the same thing for a long time and I feel like I'm not different than most people. I feel like I'm having the utterly typical experience that I'm sure anybody in any job has if they run a store, if they're a doctor or whatever.
I'm kind of excited to know this. I don't know that it changes anything for me, but I appreciate you telling me.
Oh, it'll happen to you, Vahini. It's gonna happen to you. Remember my words, Vahini. Remember my words decades from now. Vahini, you're gonna wake up. And you're gonna be like, “Oh my God, he's right. He was right.”
When you're thrown into the beginning of something, whether it's a musical or a streaming podcast, are there certain things that you always want to be true of the finished product?
Just that it gets to you.
When we think about different ways to tell a story via musical or graphic novel or audio documentary, does it ever feel obvious to break form?
The musical was not a solution to a question. The musical was just, that would be fun.
Sometimes you really do have to break form just to figure out how to tell the story, especially if you have a thing where sometimes it's really hard to know how to start a story in a way that'll make a person wanna listen to the rest of it. Do you know what I mean? Especially if the story's gonna get kind of dark, but you feel like it's worth it. As a producer, you think like, “This is a story I think people will like if they could just get 10 minutes in.” But how do we start it so they'll actually get 10 minutes in?
And so yeah, sometimes you really have to invent a new form for it because there's no other way to do it.
Birmingham is a city of a lot of creatives who are likely public radio listeners and are excited to come see your show. Is there something that creatives can particularly look forward to in your show?
I do. One of the lessons I talk about is “stuff I wish somebody had told me when I was starting out” and I play an example of an early story of mine where I'm not good and I talk about how I wish I thought about it back then and what to do when your work isn't where you want it to be.
So there is something directed specifically towards other people in the audience who wanna make stuff for a living.
I think a lot of people will be really excited to catch you here in Birmingham
I hope people come out. It's a fun show.
Vahini Shori is a Report for America corps member covering faith and culture for WBHM.
This reporting is supported by WBHM’s Local Journalism Innovation Fund. Find out more about the fund and how to donate here.
