What would radio and podcasting be without Ira Glass? It’s difficult to imagine a mediascape without the deeply intelligent, shrewd, and sympathetic contributions of Glass, who spearheads This American Life and an assortment of other programs and projects. With his live show Seven Things I’ve Learned at the Granada Theatre on Saturday, October 7, the celebrated, syndicated personality will share stories and insights from his life in media. I recently spoke with Glass about This American Life, work anxiety, and the future.
What is up ahead in the fall for This American Life? We’re working on a bunch of new podcasts, and on Serial, Season Three, and getting out the radio show — we’ve got a bunch of political stuff about this one town in Alabama that I’m super-excited about.
This American Life does a great job of being balanced and compassionate, but has it been hard to be so with a president and political climate that have been antagonistic to public radio? Whatever the politics are, we do that exactly the same now as we’ve done the whole time we’ve done it. … We’re living through a historic change in our country’s politics, so it’s been really interesting to report on. Very early on in the primary process, the media were super interested in the rise of Donald Trump, and there was a ton of reporting on this. In the mainstream media, there was an anthropological feeling to it: Look at these specimens, like this man; what could it be all about; what are their income characteristics … very anthropological. For our show, that isn’t what we try to do. We do stories about people where there’s a plot, and we connect to them, relate to them. We’ve done stories about people on the right where politics aren’t part of the story, and it was really interesting — from those stories, our listeners got a very thorough and vivid sense of why people who love Trump love Trump.