There are certain areas on the radio dial to which the average college-aged student has never been. Somewhere in that deep, dark netherregion of the radio lurks the greatest show known to man, \This American Life."" Mixing a keen insight into the human psyche with funky music and a radio voice to die for, Ira Glass, creator of ""This American Life,"" each week assembles a cast of commentaries, personal essays and vignettes. ""This American Life"" features regulars such as author David Sedaris and personal submissions from the public surrounding themes such as ""Superpowers,"" ""Monogamy"" and a personal favorite, ""Fiasco!"" Glass recently spoke to The Daily Cardinal about rocky beginnings, evolving creativity and sacrificing one's life for one's country to fill vending machines for the United States Armed Forces.
The Daily Cardinal: What was it that first attracted you to radio?
Ira Glass: At first it wasn't anything about radio, per se. It literally was the only place I could get an internship. I had never heard of National Public Radio. I didn't come from the kind of family where you listen to public radio. It was just a place where they had really nice studios and they had a lot of people who seemed funny and smart. That was the extent of the attraction.
And then after that it was fun. My first job there, my first internship was in putting together promos, which is actually a perfect exercise because each one you can make it so it's like a 30-second radio show with all the elements you have in a much longer, more complicated thing, where you have music and sound and various voices; where you have to work on the timing and pacing. Actually, one of the things we do with the interns here at ""This American Life"" is they are responsible for the promos, because they are a really nice exercise for form.
DC: What are some early experiences you had in radio or at ""This American Life?""
IG: When I first started working in radio, almost everything I did was really terrible for a really long time, with the exception of editing sound. That came easily to me, every other aspect of it was really, really hard- learning to write for radio, learning to figure out how a story worked, learning to figure out what you ask, what you don't ask in an interview. It took me eight or 10 years before I could actually report a story quickly enough to actually do it as my job, and I just kept plugging away.
DC: When did you begin to develop the concept of ""This American Life?"" Did you always have enough freedom to do what you wanted to?
IG: I was always lucky in that I always got a lot of independence as a producer and a reporter for NPR. I was a producer, sort of a behind-the-scenes person for all of my 20's. And I was trying to be a reporter but as I said I was terrible at it. I was a pretty good tape cutter but I was really bad at everything else. And then at some point I did manage to make myself into a reporter and so I was doing all sorts of stories and they gave me a lot of freedom.
I was given the freedom to develop a sort of style where the stories would be more like the kinds of stories I like now. They're more like movies for radio, little movies for radio. Once I developed that style I just felt like, God, it would be really nice if there were a show where all the stories were like this. You know how on public radio shows, if you hear them, you'll get the news and all, but then there'll be that one story that'll sort of make you stop in your tracks. It's just someone talking really emotionally, or it's really funny or it's just some really special story. And it's just like, someone should make a show just out of these stories and forget the news! And so that's what I thought I would do, just do a whole show out of that.
DC: Has the show evolved throughout the years?
IG: It's evolved a lot because a lot of the show is just whoever's working on it. It's not just me, it's five of us putting it together. At any given times it's a combination of my tastes and everyone else's tastes. One of the things that happened over the last few years is since Sept. 11 we've done way more news-y stuff. But when we do the news-y stuff, the current events stuff, we do it also in the style we do it, that is, there are characters and it's funny, and it's just different than what you'd get on the news.
We opened the show with someone who is 19 who traveled halfway around the world and her job in the war on terrorism is that she stocks vending machines with candy for 10 hours a day. Like the boat is 5,000 people, it's so big that there are enough vending machines that you can spend your whole day loading Snickers bars and Skittles into these machines. This is what she gave up her whole life for: 'I'm going to serve my country.' And there she is out in the middle of nowhere.
DC: Are there any other particularly rewarding interviews that stick out in your mind, ones that made you think about the events that have occurred in our current daily lives?
IG: One of the things that we can do-you know we're not a news show, we're way more feature-y-one of the things we can do is since we have a week to put the show together we can go for something that is more emotional, that just gets to your heart more. So the week the war in Iraq started we had a long talk with an Iraqi about what it is like to be living in Baghdad and hating Saddam Hussein, just hating his guts, and then have bombs falling on your neighborhood.
And how you feel about the United States, and how you feel about Saddam, and what do you tell your kids? This was just so eloquent. He said, 'Yeah, sure, we hated Saddam, but we don't like you!' He was just like, these people are going to kill me.
He discussed what it was like when Baghdad was bombed if you live in Baghdad, because he was there during the Persian Gulf War. In the news, we were hearing from the embedded soldiers and from the reporters in those two hotels in downtown Baghdad, and we were hearing from people in command in Kuwait, but we weren't actually hearing from Iraqis saying, 'This is what it feels like to be in this situation.'
You know, you wonder, and it makes the whole thing more real. I feel like when it comes to the news I am a way more normal person than an actual news person, where I feel like most of the news seems pretty dry to me or hard to relate to. Though I feel like we're successful when we make it possible for us, the staff, to relate to it, to say okay now, I get it, that's what it's all about.
