Glass having a gas taking radio show on tour
Seven Things I have Learned brings broadcast raconteur’s very human stories alive
In 1995, WBEZ and its parent company Chicago Public Media began broadcasting a show called This American Life. In 2018, the program’s weekly American listenership was 1.8 million. Add in the international audience — CBC picked up This American Life in 2011 — and well over two million people tune in to hear the show. There are also about 2.2 million downloads of the podcast every week.
One person smiling wide about that success is Ira Glass.
The host and producer of This American Life has received countless honours for his dedicated journalism and storytelling. Beginning at age 19, Glass worked in public radio and always went after stories that were smart, personal, often irreverent and told something about the greater human condition through their subjects. These resonated with listeners and This American Life has taken the approach to other shows it produces such as the wildly popular Serial and podcast S-Town.
Born and raised in Baltimore, Glass has been taking This American Life on the road for live performances since 2000. His latest show is titled Seven Things I’ve Learned.
“We’ve taken This American Life out on the road a few times before and it’s always been a positive experience, one that we have really developed into a pretty slick, efficient and effective production now,” said Glass. “When you are connecting with people in a live room, as opposed to coming from a speaker, it’s going to be very different and it has been. We can all agree radio isn’t a visual experience, but the history of storytelling is one of group activity.”
The new presentation is a multimedia event chronicling Glass’ life and his long career in storytelling. Counting down seven key points accompanied with stories, Glass shares his experiences and gets the audience involved in the act as well. A one time school theatre club member, he calls upon his acting chops and reviews suggest he’s got plenty.
In fact, some of the methodology of This American
Life’s storytelling format comes from the classic three act play idea of slow build, tension and conflict, then resolution.
“In essence, the main thing that we did on This American Life is narrative, non-fiction storytelling,” he said. “But the stories are structured in the way that is a bit classic with character and plot development you might see in a piece of fiction. I never would have anticipated the day would come when we would be going on live theatre tours, let alone being around this long.”
In fact, nobody did. This American Life came about on a shoestring budget even for a public radio program. Most figured it would have a few years life in it, not be entering its third decade.
While he may still see himself as “mostly an editor” and play down his celebrity, there is a machine around the show and its spinoffs. Glass is the maestro. Just being a good host doesn’t get you the Medal for Spoken Language from the American Academy of the Arts or an induction into the National Radio Hall of Fame.
It also doesn’t give you the kind of pull to publish a comic book (with Jessica Abel) titled Radio: An Illustrated Guide, which demonstrates how This American Life is produced and how to produce your own show too. Isn’t this like shooting yourself in the foot?
Glass doesn’t think so. Of course, when you have over four million people tuning in to hear you speak every week, nobody is going to beat you by copying you. Rather, the host thought working with cartoonist Abel, who followed up this book some years later with Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio, was really fun.
“It was kind of like making the book you wanted to have when you were starting out that didn’t exist,” he said.
Strangely enough, the same could be said about This American Life. It was the show nobody knew they wanted until they had it. Now it’s like an old friend.
I never would have anticipated the day would come when we would be going on live theatre tours”
Ira Glass