Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing,
Speaker 1: My chance to talk with artists, policymakers, and performers, to
Speaker 1: hear their stories, what inspired their creations, what decisions changed
Speaker 1: their careers, what relationships influenced their work. Ira Glass caused
Speaker 1: a revolution in public radio, and he is now its
Speaker 1: primary kingmaker. Glass wasn't the first to share well crafted
Speaker 1: stories about so called ordinary people, but his show This
Speaker 1: American Life connected with a younger generation of public radio listeners,
Speaker 1: and they became fiercely loyal. Ira Glass has become so
Speaker 1: popular that the winner of this year's Halloween contest in
Speaker 1: Fort Green, Brooklyn was a dog, the small, white, fluffy type,
Speaker 1: dressed as Ira. This is a level of fame. I
Speaker 1: didn't quite know existing. Is this what you bargain for? No?
Speaker 1: Has this happened to you. I've never won the Ford
Speaker 1: Queen Pupster Halloween custom event. You've got me there? I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm a little jealous. Yeah, yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure jealousy is exactly the right word, but it's something.
Speaker 1: It's a weird thing to have happened. Um, how do
Speaker 1: you feel about? I mean, I listened to Fred Armis
Speaker 1: and do the episode with you where he's doing you,
Speaker 1: and I try to do you all the time because
Speaker 1: you fit into a category all those yours works, Yours is.
Speaker 1: Yours is of a style of announcer, host, journalists, broadcaster,
Speaker 1: or whatever you want to call it. I mean, I
Speaker 1: hear so many people now on the radio who are
Speaker 1: the opposite of what I grew up with. And I
Speaker 1: think it comes down to, like, what do you think
Speaker 1: authority comes from? And back when we were kids, authority
Speaker 1: came from enunciation, precision, delivery, and a kind of gravitas
Speaker 1: that you are bringing to the character you're playing. And
Speaker 1: I think that you know, not just me, but a
Speaker 1: whole generation of people feel like, well, that character is
Speaker 1: obviously a phony pretending to be this like cartoon, sort
Speaker 1: of like the newscaster on The Simpsons with a deep voice,
Speaker 1: having gravitas. And so I think a lot of us
Speaker 1: just when in the other direction. And for me, I
Speaker 1: felt like, you know, any story hits you harder if
Speaker 1: the person delivering it doesn't sound like some news robot,
Speaker 1: but in fact sounds like a real person having the
Speaker 1: reactions a real person would have, and be surprised and
Speaker 1: amazed and amused. The very thing I'm talking about you
Speaker 1: were aware of when you were doing your show and
Speaker 1: conscious of, you know. And I mean I started off
Speaker 1: at MPR when I was nineteen, at MPRE on Washington
Speaker 1: doing what First it was an intern, and then I
Speaker 1: worked on a documentary series where I learned a lot
Speaker 1: of things. By the time I was I was I
Speaker 1: was a production assistant. And all things considered, does that
Speaker 1: mean I've been tween college? Basically, go to Quebec. I
Speaker 1: went to Northwestern for two years and then switched to Brown.
Speaker 1: Graduated from Brown in semiotics, which is a field of
Speaker 1: sort of pretentious literary theory, but actually is all about
Speaker 1: how to structure a narrative. So it's an enormous practical training.
Speaker 1: And there are things that I learned in school that
Speaker 1: I use every day to this day. But anyway, then
Speaker 1: we go back and forth between college and working at NPR.
Speaker 1: And at first when I tried to be on the radio,
Speaker 1: like most people like, I tried to be the official thing,
Speaker 1: and then at some point I trained myself out of
Speaker 1: it because I thought it's not as effective untrained yourself
Speaker 1: out of it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And NPR obviously has
Speaker 1: like a tradition of people going back to the seventies
Speaker 1: who talked not like normal announcers, but like people. Susan
Speaker 1: Stanberg was the host of All Things Considered, which I
Speaker 1: think people today might not even remember this lady who
Speaker 1: really set a tone where she She's just seemed like
Speaker 1: some Upper West Side New York lady, like leaning into
Speaker 1: the microphone mentally talking to you over the radio. You
Speaker 1: just say, mentually the adver mentally, you don't get you
Speaker 1: don't get it. That doesn't get that's a that's that's
Speaker 1: an advert that that's only on the But I got
Speaker 1: she was mentally leading into the microphone, yes, and talking
Speaker 1: like a person. So there were other people doing it.
Speaker 1: I heard people doing it. I was just like, that's
Speaker 1: the direction I gotta go in. I mean, when I
Speaker 1: think about your show, I wonder what it's like for
Speaker 1: you editorially in terms of do you sit there and
Speaker 1: you consciously try to take out of any political point
Speaker 1: of view. I mean the kinds of stories we're doing,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, when we take on something that's
Speaker 1: in the news, you know what we're looking for is
Speaker 1: a story with characters and scenes and emotion and and
Speaker 1: looking for a way to to show something new that
Speaker 1: people don't know. So, for example, when we did an
Speaker 1: hour in Guantanamo, like we didn't go into it advocating
Speaker 1: Guantanamo should be shut down or it shouldn't be shut down,
Speaker 1: you know, like we we don't, we don't have an
Speaker 1: agenda that way. Like when we did an hour on it,
Speaker 1: we did an hour because it had been a couple
Speaker 1: of years into Guantanamo existing, and we read that I
Speaker 1: can't remember the number of people, a number of detainees,
Speaker 1: like a couple of hundred detainees had been released. We
Speaker 1: had discovered, like you know, the US did determined like
Speaker 1: you guys aren't enemy combatants. You guys, you know, go
Speaker 1: back to Pakistan or wherever. And we had noticed that
Speaker 1: nobody in America interviewed them just to ask like the
Speaker 1: normal things you know that like you don't want to know,
Speaker 1: like how were you treated? Do you want to kill us?
Speaker 1: All on that and then so like you go into that,
Speaker 1: like you the question of like what our stand politically
Speaker 1: on Guantanamo is it doesn't know. I appreciate that, but
Speaker 1: I'm warning, do people sometimes view you as being liberal?
Speaker 1: Of course they do because because of public radio, which
Speaker 1: is seen as liberal. Though though when you look at
Speaker 1: the studies of like what actually gets covered on the
Speaker 1: news programs in the way it's covered, I feel like
Speaker 1: the numbers bear out the fact that it is not
Speaker 1: more liberal than other news sources. That said, there's a
Speaker 1: tone in the way certain things are covered that conservatives here,
Speaker 1: and from talking to conservatives, like, I know like that,
Speaker 1: I think that's a real thing. Um. I think at
Speaker 1: one point, there was a show that we did on
Speaker 1: one of the elections, and it was about how people
Speaker 1: voted and why they voted the way they voted, And
Speaker 1: I had a long series of discussions with these people
Speaker 1: who are like swing voters because I was fascinated with it. Like, Alec,
Speaker 1: you just think about like an election of like Carry
Speaker 1: versus Bush, and you're coming down to like the last
Speaker 1: three weeks before the election. Who are the people who
Speaker 1: haven't decided? Like how can you like like whatever you say,
Speaker 1: like those are two very different the unknowns. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: what do you have to know? Like you know them
Speaker 1: both really well, Like what exactly? Especially people who are
Speaker 1: following the news, like like what is there to wonder
Speaker 1: about at that point, and I think in that show
Speaker 1: I came out and said, look, I'm a Democrat, just
Speaker 1: said to the audience, because I felt there was a
Speaker 1: point in the discussion. In my interviews people were identifying
Speaker 1: as Republican or Democrats, and I felt like, why pretend
Speaker 1: anything but this like usually about democratic That said, like
Speaker 1: many Democrats, I find them to be the most annoying
Speaker 1: party and so not representing what I believe on so
Speaker 1: many issues, and so lacking in so many ways, and
Speaker 1: so not doing what I would have them do. So
Speaker 1: even saying that I usually about Democrat, I feel like
Speaker 1: it doesn't even get near what my actual politics are.
Speaker 1: But if I have to pick choice reluctantly, it's the
Speaker 1: same thing as like we've done so many stories about God.
Speaker 1: At some point I went on the air and said like, look,
Speaker 1: I don't believe in God. Like I'm just gonna put
Speaker 1: that out in front. So take everything you're about to
Speaker 1: hear with the grain of salt that you should. Right,
Speaker 1: it's just truth and packaging. And I think that it's
Speaker 1: different for me as somebody who's on once a week,
Speaker 1: you know, doing a documentary show that's coming like a
Speaker 1: bunch of different stuff. It's different for me than it
Speaker 1: is for like the hosts of All Things Considered or
Speaker 1: Brian Williams or you know what I mean. Like it's
Speaker 1: just my role is different, and so I think I
Speaker 1: have that freedom. When did you realize you do believe
Speaker 1: in God? How old were you a teenager? Did you
Speaker 1: grow up in a religious household? I grew up. It's weird.
Speaker 1: My parents we were Jews in the suburbs. So I
Speaker 1: went to I went to Hebrew School and then went
Speaker 1: to like the high school version of that. Like, I
Speaker 1: continued past my environments and at some point I realized
Speaker 1: I didn't. It just didn't add up from me, like
Speaker 1: you know, you're in love or you're not in love.
Speaker 1: Like it's just like there's another explanation for everything around me,
Speaker 1: which makes more sense. Then there's a big dad who
Speaker 1: created this all you know, and just you know, universe
Speaker 1: has been here. There was like some sort of something
Speaker 1: that happened, Yeah, something like climbed up on the shores
Speaker 1: of Yeah. Actually when I was thirteen and fourteen, Like
Speaker 1: one of the things that was a huge influence on
Speaker 1: me was you remember that you remember these books. Eric
Speaker 1: van Danikin was the author Chariots of the Gods. Oh
Speaker 1: my God, I love this. And I remember being in
Speaker 1: Hebrew College, bottom of Hebrew College and arguing with the
Speaker 1: teachers there are these old rabbis about like, but this
Speaker 1: passage in like Exodus or Genesis, wouldn't this be better
Speaker 1: explained by these paintings on the ground, you know, like
Speaker 1: that we were actually visited by the whole theory of it.
Speaker 1: For people who don't know what this is, it was
Speaker 1: like this series of books, and there was TV specials
Speaker 1: and stuff that if you actually looked at it, it
Speaker 1: seems like what they're trying to tell us is people
Speaker 1: visited us from outer space and that's that's what they witnessed.
Speaker 1: Scientology really is closer to what we've been exactly. Scientology
Speaker 1: has a good point on it. I remember arguing that
Speaker 1: in Hebrew College with my professors there, and they were
Speaker 1: not They did not buy it, and you probably got slapped,
Speaker 1: like young Woody Allen in radio days, dare you mentioned this?
Speaker 1: Aliens from space? The universe is expanding? What what? What?
Speaker 1: What do you what difference does it make? Are you
Speaker 1: an atheist? No? I believe, I don't know what I
Speaker 1: believe in terms of the specific. I had a Catholic
Speaker 1: priest once say to me, listen, I believe in a
Speaker 1: piece of many religions. The Jews have something to say,
Speaker 1: and the Muslims have something to say, and the Buddhists
Speaker 1: have something to say. The Hindus have something to say.
Speaker 1: He said, sometimes I think I'm a Catholic because they
Speaker 1: just own the nicest real estate and have the nicest
Speaker 1: places to hang out in. And I mean, this is
Speaker 1: a priest that said that to me. He says, you know,
Speaker 1: and I believe in a god I believe in. I mean,
Speaker 1: I believe something had to be responsible for this. And
Speaker 1: I also believe, oddly enough, as a result of some
Speaker 1: stories I've heard on your show. You know, you know,
Speaker 1: life itself and stories that come to me make me
Speaker 1: believe there must be some God behind This is my belief,
Speaker 1: not a fact. Obviously, my atheist message is not coming
Speaker 1: through the subliminal. You fail failing the one thing you
Speaker 1: failed that but you fail. Are there some shows? But
Speaker 1: having said that, I have to say, like we do
Speaker 1: a lot of shows and religion, We do a lot
Speaker 1: of shows on faith because I think it's it's not
Speaker 1: covered very well. Like if it's it's a sort of
Speaker 1: an area of opportunity if you're if you're a reporter
Speaker 1: or a documentary producer, like in America, it's one thing
Speaker 1: that's actually the media do is a terrible job with
Speaker 1: and it's gotten better over the last fifteen years, but
Speaker 1: still like not so great of covering people of faith
Speaker 1: and covering them in terms that are that actually document
Speaker 1: people's relationship with their faith, like generally in the media.
Speaker 1: Like there's a whole phase of our show where where
Speaker 1: where this was like a big thing we were doing
Speaker 1: a lot of because my feeling like looking at the
Speaker 1: way people who were religious were covered, they would be
Speaker 1: these cartoon characters right like the you know, you see
Speaker 1: them like these right wing, inflexible like doctrinaire and their beliefs.
Speaker 1: And when I compared that to the actual Christians who
Speaker 1: were in my life, they were super thoughtful and way
Speaker 1: more compassionate and way more just just the way they
Speaker 1: lived their religion was so radically different. Even though they
Speaker 1: were very devout, radically different from what I was seeing.
Speaker 1: I was like, we need to document this because this
Speaker 1: is a whole territory of stuff. And so we did
Speaker 1: a whole set of stuff where I went out with
Speaker 1: kids on their mission trip and we did this thing
Speaker 1: about this ministerry named Carlton Pearson, and just we did
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff because it seemed like an uncovered
Speaker 1: territory and obviously like doing that without and he I
Speaker 1: wasn't trying to bring anybody over to my side. That
Speaker 1: would be boring. I wasn't interested. And I had a
Speaker 1: friend of mine who was an actor who I worked
Speaker 1: with once. He was very devout, very observant jew me
Speaker 1: and his wife. And I once said to him, what
Speaker 1: does it mean to you? And like, what what is
Speaker 1: Judaism to you? And he said to me, it's the
Speaker 1: study of how we as human beings distinguished ourselves from
Speaker 1: the animals. And when he said that, it has leveled me.
Speaker 1: I'll take that. I take all these little pieces and
Speaker 1: I say to myself, my dad died and I just
Speaker 1: had this such an incredible emotional connection to my father.
Speaker 1: The President of the United States were shot in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty three. Their energy was such a force in my
Speaker 1: life and them in the world at large. Where did
Speaker 1: they go? Does that energy, that is the human soul
Speaker 1: and the human essence just dissipate and is it, you know,
Speaker 1: like the light switch, like when you think, when you die,
Speaker 1: it just over, It's over. And I do think that
Speaker 1: though I'm all is given pause by this a Billy
Speaker 1: Collins poem called the Afterlife, where the thesis of the
Speaker 1: poem is that each one of us goes to the
Speaker 1: afterlife that he believes in. And I'm always scared of like,
Speaker 1: oh no, if I believe that that's what I'm going
Speaker 1: to get. It's funny I thought the same thing. Someone
Speaker 1: said to me, what do you think is the afterlife?
Speaker 1: And do you believe in that idea? Maybe they based
Speaker 1: it off this poem. They said that when you die,
Speaker 1: it's a soul in your imagination, and they said, what
Speaker 1: do you think happens in the afterlife? I said, mine's
Speaker 1: pretty mundane, mine's pretty sad. He said why. I said,
Speaker 1: when you go into a room and it's a screening
Speaker 1: room and God is there. We sit down and it
Speaker 1: gets you some iced tea and you have a sandwich,
Speaker 1: and he's like, so what do you want to know?
Speaker 1: And you look at me, you know where he knows
Speaker 1: he's God, and you're like, you know, He's like okay.
Speaker 1: Larry Roll the film and they showed me what really
Speaker 1: happened in Kennedy's assassination. I want them to start to
Speaker 1: tell me the truth. Can you also in that version
Speaker 1: of it, be like, Okay, So on this date in
Speaker 1: the year, my wife and I got into an argument.
Speaker 1: I swear she said this, and then I said this,
Speaker 1: and then she said this. She swears mine is very cinematic,
Speaker 1: and I say, they say, okay, show me the movie.
Speaker 1: Who was the girl that really loved me the most? Roland? See,
Speaker 1: you get your answers, You finally get your answers. You
Speaker 1: want your answers, You want your answers. What a shame
Speaker 1: you don't get to do anything with that information, you know,
Speaker 1: like as a film. Like if this were to be
Speaker 1: a film, the thing you're describing it needs a third act.
Speaker 1: Observing that my Afterlife of Fantasy requires a third act
Speaker 1: comes instinctively to Ira. He can't help but think about
Speaker 1: a conversation as if he's the editor, marking the structural
Speaker 1: strengths and weaknesses of each anecdote. More of my conversation
Speaker 1: with Ira Glass coming up next time on Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: We sit down with actress Julianne Moore. She shares her
Speaker 1: special technique for getting ready to play a scene. I'm
Speaker 1: very chatty. I'd like to talk all the way up
Speaker 1: to action. I do, I do, And if you can't
Speaker 1: talk to me, I'm really disappointed. Then I get lonely.
Speaker 1: Want to be lonely. When I'm wanting I want to
Speaker 1: do with my buddy. I'm gonna talk to me. You
Speaker 1: talk to me, friend. Let's be buddies talking to you.
Speaker 1: What did you do this morning? What did you have
Speaker 1: for dinner last night? What are you doing later today?
Speaker 1: Are you cold? Do you like that sweater? Did you
Speaker 1: like my sweater? What are you doing? Action acting? I
Speaker 1: love it. That's my favorite part. Then you get this
Speaker 1: great connection with another human being, and then the scenes
Speaker 1: like Comes Alive, that's Julianne Moore. Next time on Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing. This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing. In January of two thousand twelve, This
Speaker 1: American Life Friend excerpts of performer Mike daisy solo show
Speaker 1: The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. The episode
Speaker 1: featured segments from Daisy's Peace, in which he visited a
Speaker 1: factory in China that made iPhones. Two months after Daisy's
Speaker 1: Peace aired, a reporter discovered discrepancies in his story. Mike
Speaker 1: Daisy had made things up. This American Life retracted the story,
Speaker 1: and Ira and his team had to ask themselves, how
Speaker 1: did this happen? We were pretty good fact checkers, I
Speaker 1: thought before mcdaisy and and uh, you know, I worked
Speaker 1: at MPR News and we were at the level that
Speaker 1: we were at an MPR News like we looked into
Speaker 1: it as well as we could. We talked to over
Speaker 1: a dozen people who had either been in those factories
Speaker 1: or human rights groups that monitored those factories, and you know,
Speaker 1: people confirmed everything that he said in the story as
Speaker 1: things that really happened in these plants, with one exception.
Speaker 1: He said that he met a fifteen year old going
Speaker 1: into work at a factory making apple products, and all
Speaker 1: the human rights workers everybody we talked to said like,
Speaker 1: actually apples like super great about that, and like would
Speaker 1: be very hard for a subcontractor to have underage workers.
Speaker 1: And has been a leader in this so if that happened,
Speaker 1: it was a fluke. And in the original show we
Speaker 1: did with him, I confronted with that and he's like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, I don't want to tell you anyone I know,
Speaker 1: show me a picture of the person, which isn't really telling,
Speaker 1: but he said, you know they you know, they give
Speaker 1: me proof, and we sort of put it all of
Speaker 1: that out there. Did that make you angry? Well, then
Speaker 1: we found out, like, the one thing that we didn't
Speaker 1: do is we didn't talk to his translator. And he said, look,
Speaker 1: I got this phone number, but when I call it,
Speaker 1: it doesn't you know, it's some lady in China I
Speaker 1: met at the hotel and like, and so we you know,
Speaker 1: we we we gave up, you know, we didn't do that,
Speaker 1: which at that point we should not have put the
Speaker 1: thing on the radio. After we broadcast, another reporter found
Speaker 1: that translator and she said, basically, she was with him
Speaker 1: his whole time and all these things that he says
Speaker 1: happened did not happen. And so did that make you angry?
Speaker 1: People trust you, they admire you, and no one, no
Speaker 1: one falls you for that obviously, And I don't know
Speaker 1: you're not gonna say this. This is me say this.
Speaker 1: Mike Daisy may be gifted, but he's full of ship.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, when that happened, did that piss
Speaker 1: you off? Did that make you angry? I wish him,
Speaker 1: I mean maybe at some level, Like honestly, like my
Speaker 1: first reaction was not being mad at him. Um then
Speaker 1: an atheist thing. No, yeah, we've just given up on
Speaker 1: life Ale no um, I mean I mean, honestly, like
Speaker 1: the main thing I thought is like I just wondered
Speaker 1: if we were all going to keep our jobs, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Like I really wondered, like is
Speaker 1: this it is the radio show over? Like that was
Speaker 1: the main thing I thought. I don't know, I just
Speaker 1: I just it was a mix of things. Mad was
Speaker 1: in there somewhere about definitely was not the biggest part.
Speaker 1: Other people in my staff were definitely way madder at him,
Speaker 1: and we're mad. But I had worked with him so
Speaker 1: closely and adapting the thing for the radio. I felt
Speaker 1: very close to him actually, and I just felt like
Speaker 1: like like your friend did something, I mean, what we
Speaker 1: you know, I just made him doing had a bit
Speaker 1: of a relationship with relationship when I said like, oh no,
Speaker 1: like what have you done? And that was a way
Speaker 1: bigger part of it. But but you were asking has
Speaker 1: they have things changed around the radio show since then?
Speaker 1: And the answer is is yes, And now in addition
Speaker 1: to doing like all the stuff we did back when
Speaker 1: I worked on Morning Edition and all things considered to
Speaker 1: like see the stories are true. We have professional fact checkers,
Speaker 1: like in the New York or something, and so every
Speaker 1: script has gone through by fact checkers who we hire,
Speaker 1: and they go back to all the sources in the
Speaker 1: story and they go back to everything, and it's just
Speaker 1: like it's it's a lot of work, but I have
Speaker 1: to say it's been a glove way. It's been awesome.
Speaker 1: No approtose, but no appropos that when you know setting aside,
Speaker 1: I should say the fact checking thing in the whole
Speaker 1: Daisy thing and how he played that out. Some of
Speaker 1: your shows I listened to you, and these are among
Speaker 1: my favorite shows. I mean, like the Adrian Schoolcraft thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, my my hair was standing up on my
Speaker 1: arms when the cops are in his house in the end,
Speaker 1: they're gonna take them away to quote unquote to the hospital.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean. Do you ever fear any
Speaker 1: blowback from shows like that the Carmen Cigar one that
Speaker 1: was on recently, You over fear that, you know, the
Speaker 1: cops are come and get you, come and get somebody
Speaker 1: in your building, or you really pulled the covers on
Speaker 1: a lot of people on that piece. When the Schoolcrafted,
Speaker 1: I should Schoolcraft died and we had all been published
Speaker 1: in the in the Village Voice, so I felt like
Speaker 1: we were just doing kind of a cover version of
Speaker 1: what they had done in the Village Voice. So no,
Speaker 1: I definitely did not I think have a much bigger
Speaker 1: audience in the Village Voice. Yeah yeah, yeah, but the
Speaker 1: only people who New York cops are care about is
Speaker 1: people in New York, and so like to the Village
Speaker 1: Voice reached everybody who they would care about, Like, No,
Speaker 1: I didn't worry about that, and I didn't worry like
Speaker 1: when we did a show about the FED that like
Speaker 1: the Fed was going to somehow like shut down my
Speaker 1: bank account or something like. No, I would imagine that
Speaker 1: for you. Because you seem like such a level headed guy, smart, mature,
Speaker 1: all all these good things. It must be impossible for
Speaker 1: your very difficult for you to fire someone. Have you
Speaker 1: ever had to fire someone from the from the company. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I've had to fire a few people, yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: And did you do the firing yes? Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean because the Readers Show has been on their since then,
Speaker 1: I work for you. I work for you, and you're
Speaker 1: gonna fire me? Go what do you say? I say, Um, well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's all particular to the circumstances that person,
Speaker 1: isn't it. Um you as it like Donald Trump? Alex,
Speaker 1: you fired like you're fired. That's good, You're fined. Alex.
Speaker 1: You said you do an imitation of me? How would
Speaker 1: you do it? As? No, I can't do it now
Speaker 1: that I'm with you, I can't. You know, you strike me.
Speaker 1: You're really one of the most dense thinker speakers I've
Speaker 1: ever heard in my life. And what you say is
Speaker 1: very lucid and illuminating and smart only on the radio
Speaker 1: real life when you're doing it now and you're so
Speaker 1: you're so seamless, and and the velocity is just breathtaking.
Speaker 1: But what I'm wondering is I also have an image
Speaker 1: of you like a prize fighter, so that when they're
Speaker 1: getting ready for the big fight and they're you know,
Speaker 1: they don't have sex with their wife, they don't drink alcohol,
Speaker 1: they don't need any salt for their blood pressure. They
Speaker 1: lay there in a bathrobe and watch game shows all day.
Speaker 1: They rest, They rest. What does Ira Glass do in
Speaker 1: his private time. I mean when you're not working, when
Speaker 1: you have downtime, When I have downtime, honestly, like I
Speaker 1: don't have a huge amount of downtime, like usually on
Speaker 1: the sliver of it you have. Um, I walk my dog,
Speaker 1: try to spend a little time with my wife. What
Speaker 1: does she do She helps run a website for teenage
Speaker 1: girls with Tommy Givenson. Now I think she just turned
Speaker 1: eighteen year old girl who's starting on Broadway, but has
Speaker 1: this website called Rookie mag dot com. And basically Tavy
Speaker 1: decided that there should when she was fifteen years old
Speaker 1: and in high school, she thought, as a teenage girl,
Speaker 1: there was all this culture being marketed to her, and
Speaker 1: none of it accurately sort of described the world that
Speaker 1: she saw it or seemed to capture the things that
Speaker 1: were most interesting to her. And so she decided she
Speaker 1: would make that herself and organized kind of an army
Speaker 1: of young women to do it. It's three posts a day.
Speaker 1: It's really funny writing and just like it's it's wonderful,
Speaker 1: and so my wife helps her, helps her out. I
Speaker 1: find it incredible that even with the slightest prompting, you
Speaker 1: can give me the bio or the story you can
Speaker 1: tell everyone's story about your own. You can tell everyone
Speaker 1: you you only gave us the dog walking and you said,
Speaker 1: and I love that was very I try to spend
Speaker 1: time with my wife. What other what do you watch news?
Speaker 1: Do you watch TV to like films? Music? I mean, honestly, like,
Speaker 1: I have seen so little of anything in the last
Speaker 1: probably a year, just because um, we have the radio
Speaker 1: show we started the second show. I've been touring with
Speaker 1: a dance show all over the country and so on
Speaker 1: the weekends and either going and making a speech to
Speaker 1: earn enough money to live in New York City because
Speaker 1: I still work at a public radio salary and live
Speaker 1: in New York City, or I go out with this
Speaker 1: dance show where I tour with this professional dance troupe
Speaker 1: where I tell stories and they dance in this way.
Speaker 1: Whose idea was that? That was me and the choreographer.
Speaker 1: It was the choreographer the dance company. We were trying
Speaker 1: to figure out a way to work together. She's like, well,
Speaker 1: let's do a thing where we combine our things, and
Speaker 1: I was like, yes' the speaking yes, you must be
Speaker 1: dancing very fast sometimes sometimes yeah, mus be flying through
Speaker 1: the air. As a matter of fact. Yes, when you
Speaker 1: say trying to make a living on a public radio salary,
Speaker 1: I mean you you could pay yourself. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: this to embarrass you, but you could pay yourself X
Speaker 1: and you don't you fold it all back into the show, correct, Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean you decided to do that because I go
Speaker 1: on the radio and ask people for money, and I
Speaker 1: thought that it's unseemly to be making a crazy amount
Speaker 1: of money if a portion of it is money that
Speaker 1: comes down the amount of money I mean, I feel
Speaker 1: like I don't know, I don't know. I feel like
Speaker 1: I make enough money and then to live in New York,
Speaker 1: you know, like my wife and I were living like
Speaker 1: a you know, like a two room apartment because it's
Speaker 1: Manhattan and where it's in Manhattan. Because I want to
Speaker 1: be able to be I don't want to have to
Speaker 1: commute for four an hour and a half a day
Speaker 1: on a train because I because I want to have
Speaker 1: time that isn't either I don't want to waste how
Speaker 1: I have a day on a train, especially if I'm
Speaker 1: walking a dog for an hour a day. And so
Speaker 1: so we pay a lot of money for a place
Speaker 1: and to afford it. Basically, I was like, I don't
Speaker 1: want to. I don't want to be charging public radio
Speaker 1: listeners for that. What I'll do is I'll go out
Speaker 1: and give speeches to make that money. And so that's
Speaker 1: my system. If you had more time, what would you do?
Speaker 1: I think I would just consume more culture. I would
Speaker 1: I would go to more movies and read more. Like
Speaker 1: I still have never seen you know, half the TV
Speaker 1: shows that I hear about and I know that I'll like,
Speaker 1: but I haven't seen like in a few months ago.
Speaker 1: I watched all of Game of Thrones at some point,
Speaker 1: you know, a year ago. Yeah. I liked it a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And are you saying that in the tone of like,
Speaker 1: no you did not like it? No, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I never cast any judgment or what people like it entertainment.
Speaker 1: Yeah no. And I watched all of Louis, you know,
Speaker 1: like I hadn't caught up on the like I can
Speaker 1: watch old episodes of the match game on the Game
Speaker 1: show Network. I mean, that's that's my comfort zone when
Speaker 1: I was a kid growing up. Love it. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so so no, I do no watching of anything like
Speaker 1: basically I'm working. I'll see a friend, maybe for food,
Speaker 1: see my wife walk the dog, and then that's that's it.
Speaker 1: It's midnight, and then I'll go to the gym. It's
Speaker 1: not so super glam. And then if I had more time,
Speaker 1: I would just basically you're working, consume more culture. I
Speaker 1: feel like, if anything, it's it's a problem the way
Speaker 1: I'm doing this because I'm not consuming enough. Do you
Speaker 1: think it's gonna last forever? I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: have another plan besides this like this. I like this
Speaker 1: so like I like making stuff. I like editing, I
Speaker 1: like writing. People. Yeah, like like people love show and
Speaker 1: and it's secure, like it just feels like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: it's it's there's enough people who like it that it's
Speaker 1: a totally solid business. And then also it does well
Speaker 1: enough that we can experiment. I put on a movie
Speaker 1: with Mike Brebigulia, you know, a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: and we can um, you know, and we do these
Speaker 1: events where we do them on stage and beam them
Speaker 1: into movie theaters around the country. And we did a
Speaker 1: show at BAM where we had, you know, somebody wrote
Speaker 1: a musical for it and opera and all this stuff
Speaker 1: built out of real stories about journalism. Turned into like
Speaker 1: a Broadway musical with real Broadway you know, performers, you know,
Speaker 1: and so like it's big enough that we can kind
Speaker 1: of do anything we want with that, and that's just
Speaker 1: you know, it's just lovely, Like I don't know what
Speaker 1: else the person could want. Do people when when you
Speaker 1: do the show, do people only the people in the
Speaker 1: house they pitched the ideas or do people outside pitch
Speaker 1: you ideas? Oh my goodness. Yeah. I mean there was
Speaker 1: a period where I mean people right into our website
Speaker 1: and there's a place, you know, where you can pitch
Speaker 1: a story, and then there's a person or two on
Speaker 1: staff who go through that looking for the stories that
Speaker 1: might work. And there are phases where there's something on
Speaker 1: the show every week or every other week from that list.
Speaker 1: Like it's not unusual that people will pitch us and
Speaker 1: those stories will end up on the show. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the opening of the show that we did
Speaker 1: at BAM was the story of this girl woman who
Speaker 1: accidentally locked herself into a closet. She was an opera singer,
Speaker 1: but she makes her living partly reading books on tape,
Speaker 1: and she was in a hotel room and she's like
Speaker 1: I got to record this book on tape on a deadline.
Speaker 1: So she goes into the closet and puts you know,
Speaker 1: like pillows all around to like cushion the sound. And
Speaker 1: her computer is sitting in the hotel room and she
Speaker 1: pulls the microphone because the computer out a worrying sound,
Speaker 1: and she pulls the microphone into the closet, closes the door.
Speaker 1: She starts to record, and then she was I messed
Speaker 1: that up, and she's gonna go out and started over again.
Speaker 1: I started a new file, and she goes to open
Speaker 1: the door and the doors locked, like there's something wrong
Speaker 1: with the mechanics. You can't get out of the closet,
Speaker 1: But the thing is still recording. You hear her all
Speaker 1: the steps she goes through and trying to get out
Speaker 1: of this closet, including yelling to people down the hall.
Speaker 1: Some German tourists go by, and so that was just
Speaker 1: somebody she wrote us, you know, like that that's the
Speaker 1: opening of the show. That that she told us that story,
Speaker 1: And at some point in the interview was like, okay,
Speaker 1: so if you you're an opera singer, if you were
Speaker 1: to stage this as an opera, what would it be?
Speaker 1: And she's like I think it would be a minimalist opera, like,
Speaker 1: you know, just this repetitive music. And I was just
Speaker 1: saying help, help, help, over and over, and I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I have the hook up for that. My
Speaker 1: cousin is Philip Glass, so we had him. Right. We
Speaker 1: commissioned that as an opera that we performed on stage
Speaker 1: at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Alright, Golfrey. Ira Glass
Speaker 1: has a natural talent for creating compelling radio. I wanted
Speaker 1: to follow up with him and find out why is
Speaker 1: his show so successful? We have him? You have me? Hello?
Speaker 1: I have you? Send it way more romantic than I
Speaker 1: met it? Did you have me? Hi? This is Ira
Speaker 1: Glass Glass. They're life. I can't do I can't do it.
Speaker 1: I can't do it because I can't do it when
Speaker 1: you try, because to do it, it's like it's like
Speaker 1: a state of mind. You know, it's like a state
Speaker 1: of plane. But you But you know what's funny is
Speaker 1: you are someone when I made that comment to you
Speaker 1: about the announcer thing and people who are a different
Speaker 1: type of radio broadcaster, but you are someone who does
Speaker 1: not have uh you know, you've got a good delivery
Speaker 1: and you're a great radio broadcaster, and everything and the
Speaker 1: speed of it and the velocity of it is obviously
Speaker 1: a signature of yours. But what kills me is your
Speaker 1: mastery of what you say, Like do you go back
Speaker 1: sometimes I have to recorded again and again, or do
Speaker 1: you just zip through that thing like you're just shooting
Speaker 1: down a loose ride. I wish I could. I wish
Speaker 1: I could do that. When we record my parts of
Speaker 1: the show, I'll do more than one take, for sure,
Speaker 1: but not a lot of takes. No too, can I say?
Speaker 1: It took me a long time to go and how
Speaker 1: to perform on the radio, like I was so bad
Speaker 1: at the beginning. I was awful, Like sometimes I play
Speaker 1: for students, how I sounded not in my first year,
Speaker 1: in my second year, but in year seven. And I
Speaker 1: could play for you on your podcast if you want
Speaker 1: to in your show like like I'm awful, Like I
Speaker 1: had not mastered it. I had to consciously said it
Speaker 1: as a project for myself, I'm going to try to
Speaker 1: perform on the air of the way I talk. We
Speaker 1: would you so you wanted to stop doing what I
Speaker 1: sounded like somebody imitating an MPR reporter but failing. If
Speaker 1: you give me one minute. I could walk into the
Speaker 1: room and get a clip, and I could we have
Speaker 1: to pay it back. You do that too bad? This
Speaker 1: is in television, because I'll show you clips of me
Speaker 1: on the soap opera I was on back. You don't
Speaker 1: know what dad is? Do you see that? Hold on
Speaker 1: this canna take me a second to bring it up
Speaker 1: on the board. We stand by. Are you sure you
Speaker 1: want us to hear this? Now? My job is secure?
Speaker 1: I'm fine? Hold on? I mean, just do you find
Speaker 1: that in terms of an editorial ear? Do you always
Speaker 1: have that on over dinner at a family reunion wherever
Speaker 1: you are? Is there an editorial filter toever? Or do
Speaker 1: you ever just not? No, no, because that would be
Speaker 1: like a crazy person. That's like saying, are you ever
Speaker 1: not acting like? No? Of course you turn it off.
Speaker 1: You do turn it off, of course, of course, of course,
Speaker 1: because I'm not insane. But if somebody a medical doctor,
Speaker 1: if somebody's just tell a story, it's a good story, obviously,
Speaker 1: Like I you know, I'm in the market for stories,
Speaker 1: and do you know I think, like, hey, maybe that
Speaker 1: would be for the show. But that's pretty rare to
Speaker 1: happen in hold on here, we go here. So again,
Speaker 1: this is not your one year, two year, three year,
Speaker 1: four year, five year, six This is years since you
Speaker 1: last weekend. Yeah, exactly as last weekend. Right, It's not
Speaker 1: such a long way from the local grocery store to
Speaker 1: the international debate for whether sorghum and meat production are
Speaker 1: causing corn to decline in Latin America. Okay, first of all,
Speaker 1: that makes no sense, but let's keep going. There's a
Speaker 1: general air of prosperity here, partly thanks to Mexican imports
Speaker 1: of US grains, which helped boost our farm economy. I
Speaker 1: just want to say, if you're going to be an announcement,
Speaker 1: just don't emphasize every other word. But what kills me
Speaker 1: is you're doing exactly what like you know, of all
Speaker 1: the NPR radio host do is hitting that. You know,
Speaker 1: one of the things we realize about the downturn in
Speaker 1: the stock market today is the revel of the data,
Speaker 1: and they're doing exactly what you're doing. It's before I
Speaker 1: understood that to sound okay on the radio, you should
Speaker 1: just talk like a person talks like a human being,
Speaker 1: talks like you're playing a character, and the character as
Speaker 1: a human being Mexico is now one of our biggest
Speaker 1: grain customers, ruying a half bill into a billion dollars
Speaker 1: worth every year, including corn defeat its people and sorghum
Speaker 1: defeat its livestock. This helps cut our own trade deficit
Speaker 1: and benefits everyone in the US economy. But in Mexico
Speaker 1: this policy has led to fewer tortillas for the poor
Speaker 1: and on appetizing tortillas for everyone else. I would just
Speaker 1: know also that that this makes no sense at all.
Speaker 1: Like the writing is awful, it's not just that the
Speaker 1: performance is awful, like literally, like you can't tell what
Speaker 1: the story is. It's a style. I mean that was
Speaker 1: you you were working it out. I mean, it is
Speaker 1: funny you do make Kairasdhl sound like Lenny Bruce. But
Speaker 1: it's incredible. I mean, I think there must be an
Speaker 1: acting version of this, because I think when people become reporters,
Speaker 1: they want to sound like the real deal, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, And so you want to sound I
Speaker 1: wanted to sound like a reporter, and so this is
Speaker 1: what I thought the equivalent in in in the businesses.
Speaker 1: I was did a TV show years ago, and in
Speaker 1: the show there was a woman who was the matriarch
Speaker 1: of a town and I had the scene with her
Speaker 1: where I'm kind of shaming her, like well, you know,
Speaker 1: how could you do this and turn your back? And
Speaker 1: we did take one and I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: how could you do this? And like the tears are
Speaker 1: rolling down my face? Take two and finally like take through.
Speaker 1: The director goes, what are you doing? And I'm sorry?
Speaker 1: He goes, what do you what? Why are you charging
Speaker 1: it with so much emotion? Like you're playing the whole
Speaker 1: episode in the Swan scene, You're putting every beat of
Speaker 1: the entire He's like, well, you don't gotta calm down.
Speaker 1: We're going to get there. When you're a young actor,
Speaker 1: you emote and you kind of imbue things with that
Speaker 1: unnecessarily and inappropriately just to do it. You think that's
Speaker 1: that you do too much. I interviewed Billy Collins, who
Speaker 1: is the Pope Lariat is writing I really love and
Speaker 1: so idiosyncratic, like he so sounds like himself, And I
Speaker 1: asked him like, did you always write like this? He's
Speaker 1: like no, At first I wrote like I thought it
Speaker 1: was a beat poet, you know, like, and I tried
Speaker 1: to write like that. I think it's common that people
Speaker 1: try to do like the official deal that they think
Speaker 1: it is before they realized, like, no, I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: a version of me in this How do you think
Speaker 1: your life would be different if you had a child?
Speaker 1: I mean I would work less, do work less, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would just I would work less. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's a whole world of things that one gets out
Speaker 1: of having children. Made know, there are that that I'm
Speaker 1: not getting in my life. There's a kind of love
Speaker 1: that people have for their kids, and an experience you
Speaker 1: have raising a person from a baby to an adult
Speaker 1: that's profound, that has many parts of it that like
Speaker 1: I am never going to have, like and I feel
Speaker 1: a little out of touch with with a really common
Speaker 1: experience that lots of people have. But but I'm okay
Speaker 1: with this choice. In what way is the show reflective
Speaker 1: of who you are? I mean, this show reflects my taste,
Speaker 1: but also I have to say the taste of my coworkers,
Speaker 1: you know, like it's not just mine at this point,
Speaker 1: Like it's something that we all share. And I happen
Speaker 1: to be the front man, which in that way it's
Speaker 1: different than than it was from the beginning, Like I
Speaker 1: am the frontman for this thing that we make together,
Speaker 1: like somebody who's in a band that's been playing for
Speaker 1: a long time. So my last question for you, I
Speaker 1: know we're gonna lose you, is, um, what tips do
Speaker 1: you have for people that are interviewers? Oh? Wow, Um,
Speaker 1: what tips do you have from me? Quite frankly, I think,
Speaker 1: I mean, I've I've heard tons of your shows, and
Speaker 1: I really like your show. I think you're a very
Speaker 1: skilled interviewer. Um. And one of the things that you
Speaker 1: do an interview as a party, and you're the host
Speaker 1: of the party, and the interviewee will do what you do.
Speaker 1: What you model is what they do too. Like it's
Speaker 1: just human nature. And so if you tell a lot
Speaker 1: of funny stories, they will tell you funny stories back.
Speaker 1: And if you tell personal stories, they'll tell personal stories back.
Speaker 1: And I feel there was a phase in your show where,
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, you had on a series of people
Speaker 1: and it was like her Balbert and uh, I don't
Speaker 1: can adict to have it was like this, but her
Speaker 1: Baber was definitely like this, where people who went through
Speaker 1: their lives and we're hugely successful and then had their
Speaker 1: hearts broken or had failed and then had to call
Speaker 1: their way back where in those interviews you talked to
Speaker 1: about yourself in this way that made them talk about
Speaker 1: themselves more. It's not exactly an interviewing trick, but in interviews,
Speaker 1: you know, I will talk about myself with the interviewees
Speaker 1: because I know that if I talk about myself in
Speaker 1: a way that's real. First of all, they feel safer
Speaker 1: because I'm also talking about myself and will open up more,
Speaker 1: and then they talk about themselves, and so it's like
Speaker 1: a fair swath. And the other thing I try to
Speaker 1: do is like with Outpert is a perfect example of
Speaker 1: the first question I asked myself as what are they
Speaker 1: used to Herb Albert and his partner Jerry Moss sold
Speaker 1: A and M records for like hundreds and hundreds of
Speaker 1: millions of dollars back then. And this is a guy
Speaker 1: that had artistic success as a musician. He was very
Speaker 1: admired as an instrumentalist. He had as many hits as
Speaker 1: like the Beatles, and then and then he has his
Speaker 1: career as a record producer with all these legendary acts.
Speaker 1: And then they walk in the room and so many
Speaker 1: people in the room might go, I don't know who
Speaker 1: that is, but you have to sit there and go,
Speaker 1: this person was big time once and they were big,
Speaker 1: you know, and you got to treat them like they're big. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's so inter one time. You have to treat them
Speaker 1: with the respect that they once commanded. The phrase I
Speaker 1: always uses, what are they used to? And I give
Speaker 1: it is so interesting. See, I never interview anybody that famous,
Speaker 1: Like I don't interview anybody who's big. I sort of
Speaker 1: took myself out of that game because it made me
Speaker 1: so nervous, and also I think that that's a different
Speaker 1: kind of interview then I'm especially good at. Like I
Speaker 1: feel like interviewing somebody who's famous, you're constantly battling against
Speaker 1: the fact that they've been interviewed so many times and
Speaker 1: had to tell their stories so many times, and so
Speaker 1: you constantly are having to struggle for an angle in
Speaker 1: on them that will seem alive to them and and
Speaker 1: no knock against them, Like it's hard to be interviewed
Speaker 1: over and over and over about your own life and
Speaker 1: how many stories do any of us have, and how
Speaker 1: many anecdotes do we have? They're even worth telling other people,
Speaker 1: especially a group of strangers. And then the thing that
Speaker 1: I think Terry Gross does really beautifully. And the thing
Speaker 1: that I hear you do is like it's almost like
Speaker 1: an empathetic act of like like what is the world
Speaker 1: to them? And how am I going to angle something
Speaker 1: in that will get them to say something. I remember
Speaker 1: one of my favorite questions I ever heard Terry Gross
Speaker 1: ask she she she was interviewing Ricky Jay. You know
Speaker 1: that's right, the magician and um and sort of scholar
Speaker 1: of magic but also an incredible card magician and I'm
Speaker 1: super smart man Jesus. Anyway, So so she's interviewing and yeah,
Speaker 1: she says to him. At some point in the interview
Speaker 1: this thing which requires like so going inside his head.
Speaker 1: She says to him, Um, sometimes are there ever any
Speaker 1: magic tricks that you do where the thing that we
Speaker 1: don't see, that you know is happening, is actually more
Speaker 1: interesting than the thing that we see. And he totally
Speaker 1: got excited. He's like, yes, yes, absolutely, And she says, well,
Speaker 1: can you tell me about that? And he's like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: of course you child. Yeah, but for even get to
Speaker 1: that question means so imagining her way into his life.
Speaker 1: And I feel like when interviewing goes well, like somebody's
Speaker 1: just has good taste about doing that. You know, you
Speaker 1: know what I realized you are. Now I'm gonna end
Speaker 1: with this. You know what I realize you are. Now?
Speaker 1: You're like the Allen add You're like the Shane of
Speaker 1: radio hosts. I don't even know who this. You don't
Speaker 1: know who Shane is? I know that that's in the
Speaker 1: movie Kid and Alan Lad played Shane and he kills
Speaker 1: Wilson the bad guy at the end. I'm doing you
Speaker 1: a favorite here because no percent of your audience doesn't
Speaker 1: know who Shane is. Okay, of course they do. My
Speaker 1: audience is Lena Dunham's audience. I'm fifty six years old.
Speaker 1: Of course, my audience, I'll have you know I hosted
Speaker 1: Turner Classic movies. Of course my audience knows who Shane is.
Speaker 1: An Alan Lad? What year did that movie about eight Cares?
Speaker 1: What year it came out? How dare you question my
Speaker 1: prove Let's bring along the young people and the young
Speaker 1: people here? Dare you derail me paying you the highest compliment,
Speaker 1: which you have the quickness of the of the most
Speaker 1: lethal gunfighter, even when you're talking extemporaneously, like now, you
Speaker 1: are so goddamn quick it's scary. You have some condition.
Speaker 1: You're like rain Man condition, like that, what's the one
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Brush played with the piano player and of the one? Yea,
Speaker 1: I remember thee I see, I remember Shane and we
Speaker 1: don't remember the movie Shine Shine, which you're like, you
Speaker 1: are so damn fast. It's just Shane or am I shine?
Speaker 1: That's going to be my new Twitter hand? You remember Shane? End?
Speaker 1: How does it end? Exactly? Shane and shin you see
Speaker 1: there you are again trumping me god in the end
Speaker 1: that the boy Brandon Dewill Yills come back. Shane see
Speaker 1: like the greatest shooter in the Westerns. That makes you
Speaker 1: sound lame gunfighter. He's a gunfighter. You're a gunfighter, right?
Speaker 1: Is what we use for a video games, a shooter
Speaker 1: as a shooter first person? How old are you again?
Speaker 1: You're kidding? Will you live in a young man's world?
Speaker 1: You're listening to here's the thing, this is Alec Baldwin.
Speaker 1: Let me just say, for this follow up call, thank
Speaker 1: you Shane for bring us a moment to the double
Speaker 1: back come back. I don't have to go back all right? Goodbye,
Speaker 1: h