Ira Glass Wants Radio
To Tell Life’s Lessons

Ira Glass is on a mission. Radio needs to be better, more interesting, and connect us more deeply with each other's lives. Glass practices what he preaches, as host of This American Life, produced in Chicago and heard locally on VPR Sunday nights at 8. Every program has a theme ("Neighbors," "Stories of Loss") which several contributors address.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the pieces have focused on individual experiences, while also looking at past catastrophes that can offer insight about how people cope with them in the long run. For some episodes, dozens of stories may be commissioned, while four are aired each week. It's a casual-sounding show that is rigorously structured and tightly produced.

During his Saturday night talk at Dartmouth's Spaulding Auditorium, he sat at a desk and played the recorded portions of his presentation from various devices, as if we were watching him on the air. The evening started off in the dark, something he said he tried, but was dissuaded by Dartmouth, from doing for the whole presentation.

He complained that most radio and TV segregates the serious from the funny, something that doesn't happen in real life. He played an example he produced ten years ago for "All Things Considered," when Daniel Zwerdling's interviewee at the Exxon Valdez disaster praised, at length, how Dawn dishwashing detergent is best for oil-soaked birds.

"Segregating the funny makes it less real. I actually consider it a failure of craft," he said.

He compared the documentary pieces, diaries, short stories, and interviews on "This American Life" to a guilty pleasure of his, Bible radio. "I find it fascinating, captivating, and it's not even my religion!"

For one thing, he said, religious stations deliver lessons.

"Radio is a particularly didactic medium," he said. "When we [at ‘This American Life’] tell a story, we make the point."

A story is told and a lesson is drawn. As a result, "If somebody doesn't learn something and change, it's not a story for us," Glass said. Part of the structure of his show is, in every story, to answer the question, ‘How is this like all of us?’

"Radio is best when it sounds like speech," he learned from 17 years as a tape-cutter, producer, and correspondent at NPR. A good story for his show should be "easy to relate to, surprising, and"—he smiled—"visual."

"They're little movies for radio."

By David L. Steinhardt

(David Steinhardt lives in Hancock.)