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an 'American Life'
Master storyteller who talks to listeners as friends
By Gabriel Spitzer
"I don’t really
like stuff which is ‘good for me’ very much," says Ira Glass.
Glass would rather tell you a good story than teach
you a lesson.
Glass is the creator and host of Public Radio International’s
"This American Life," a weekly documentary radio program out of WBEZ in
Chicago.
So much of public radio fare is like medicine. Even at its
best, it’s often St. Joseph’s Aspirin, medicine disguised as candy.
Perhaps that’s why "This American Life,"
which Glass hosts, is the hottest show
on public radio and one of the most thoughtful, funny and innovative
programs anywhere on the dial.
The show’s weekly audience has doubled over the last two
years, to 1.1 million listeners each week. It is now carried on 417
stations across the country.
Most striking is how devoted the show’s fans
are. The average listening time for an hour-long program on public radio
is about 15 minutes. The average listening time for "This American Life" is
about 48 minutes.
Fans listen in the driveway, not leaving the car until the
show is through. They schedule their day around it. They even buy the
wonky comic book that Glass and his staff created about the making of the
show.
"We’re making a show that pleases us, with the thought
that there will be enough other people like us that it will have an
audience," says Glass.
Flip through the low end of the dial on Saturday or Sunday—if
you come upon "This American Life," you’ll recognize it immediately.
Part of the show’s signature is Glass’s voice.
Halting, youthful, replete with pauses and interjections like "you
know," and "do I have to spell this out?" Glass talks on
radio the way he talks to his friends.
The stories on "This American Life" are told. That seems like
an odd thing to say, but so many stories in radio, television or print are
just there. The teller is invisible.
"There is a tradition in American journalism where
the reporter is present as a character in the story. Weirdly, in sports
journalism it’s completely standard practice. In other kinds of
journalism it’s much rarer," says Glass.
"There’s a nervousness in newspapers and television
stations; they want to be taken seriously, and that neurosis ends up
dictating a certain style. I don’t understand why there has to be such
nervousness; it’s not like they’re going out and making stuff up. They
don’t have to get pompous about it for us to believe them."
As the show’s writers and producers tell a
story, there is usually some moment of empathy, where the storyteller, and
the listener, have no choice but to identify with the subject, be it a
telephone psychic or a man who stands for three days with his hand on a
truck.
"I feel that from empathy you get more information. In
certain stories, the writer has a hard time not making fun of the subject.
There have been a couple of cases where, through unsuccessful editing, we
didn’t manage to eradicate it, and I always regret it."
"This American Life" once did a story about single farmers, and
how difficult it is for them to meet other single farmers. So they form
groups, often traveling hundreds of miles to meet other
"available" agriculturalists.
"At one point, the writer just observed how awkward
these people are with each other, in a very high-school way. There’s a
way to render the scene so that we imagine being them, and a way to render
the scene so they’re just kind of funny. And I think we leaned too hard
on the it’s-just-kind-of-funny side. I just find that approach
wrongheaded."
For the show’s 100th episode, Glass and his
staff produced a show simply titled "Radio." For one of the
pieces, called "The Radio that Most People Listen To," Glass
visited a local rock station, to watch the science of commercial radio at
work.
As with most commercial radio, the station figures its
playlist through telephone polling. If a song doesn’t test well with the
target audience, it’s out.
"I don’t get inside rock stations much. The way they
program their station was very different from all the principles by which
I’m doing my job," Glass recalls.
"This station was targeted toward middle-aged
African-American women. It’s all about what songs those women already
like, and then they create a mix of songs that those women will stay tuned
for."
Glass came out of that story much more sympathetic to
commercial radio than he thought he would. Actually, he found the process
oddly democratic.
"There’s a really easy thing that one could do
in a story like that, which is to dismiss the commercial broadcasters, and
dismiss what most people like. Whereas, most things that most people like,
I like. I listen to the Howard Stern show every day. My favorite TV
shows are ‘The West Wing’ and ‘The Simpsons.’ I don’t have any
reason to look down on anyone’s taste.
"I think middle-aged black women should be able to turn
on the radio and hear songs they like. That’s a public service, that
makes everybody feel better. Who else is looking out for this population
of women? It’s not like the city of Chicago is going out of its way to
provide entertainment in the middle of the day."
April 5, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
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