Looking through Ira Glass

From restroom fiascos to kids dropping the "F-bomb," Ira Glass has heard it all. \nNational Public Radio host Ira Glass spoke to an audience Saturday at the IU Auditorium about the importance of personal narrative and story-telling in the most candid way he could: by telling the story of his own radio show. \nThe show, "This American Life," has been on the air since 1995 and has since created over 300 hour-long episodes, pulling in over 1.7 million listeners each week. Rather than focusing on hard news, "This American Life" is a "slice-of-life," show, telling personal anecdotes or narratives relating to a specific theme in a three-act format, encompassing three different that tie together.\n"Public broadcasting gets a bad rep for being anti-fun," Glass said, reflecting on the dilemma of objective news-reporting. \n"The world that the news describes, through tone, is a world without pleasure and humor. And that makes the world seem smaller than it is." \nThat's not to say "This American Life" isn't an objective program -- it is. The show strives to present stories and situations without any personal bias from staff members, Glass said in an e-mail interview. \n"It's a tough thing to figure out how to do," he said. "Generally, we just follow the facts to whatever conclusions are completely inevitable. That way is more the way of traditional journalism and can lead to powerful stories." \nThe point of the show, Glass told the audience, is to capture a single moment -- whether it's talking to Katrina survivors about their pain, or to a child about using the "F word" -- and show how that moment transcends the situation to become a universal feeling all listeners can relate to. \n"It makes us feel less crazy," he said. "There's something about the sound of a voice that's hard to do in print ... if someone is talking from their heart, it just totally gets to you." \nGlass, in his own way, embodies the true point of the show. Throughout the hour and 30 minute appearance, he rambled off-topic to reminisce about personal memories, consistently revealing a little more than he meant to (at age 19 he saw his first naked woman -- a coma patient). However, Glass continued to keep the audience on the edge of their seats by being personal, real and above all, heart-breakingly honest. \n"Without that moment of reflection, it's not as satisfying," he said, explaining to the audience the importance of not only documenting a story, but listening to the author work out what it meant in a larger sense. \nGlass sat at a desk surrounded by radio equipment, using equipment on his left to play the gentle music underlying each week's show and equipment on his right to play clips. \nSenior Owen Sutkowski said he thought the set-up was appropriate for the show. \n"I love that they brought the radio equipment," he said. "He was so at home with the equipment on stage. He was so fluid." \nGlass was also openly opinionated -- a divergence from his observational role on-air -- about the Federal Communications Commission's regulation of the airwaves, playing a clip that is now "too hot" for radio. In the clip, David Sedaris agonized over an un-flushable, "huge turd" someone had left in the toilet at a friend's house, horrified at the idea that if he left it sitting there, someone would think it was his. \nFearing FCC regulations, NPR no longer plays the clip in re-runs -- if it were subject to penalty, broadcasting it on the 500 public radio stations the show runs on could cost $250 million. \nGlass expressed his disappointment in the government for holding the media to such strict standards while abandoning its responsibility to U.S. citizens in recent months. \n"I find the whole witch-hunt of this incredibly offensive," he said. "There are so many bad things happening… after Hurricane Katrina, I had this feeling like, 'We're on our own.'" \nThough Glass said he sometimes wants to quit his job to become more politically engaged, he assured audience members he would not leave the airwaves anytime soon, despite a deal with Showtime that could possibly mean a television version of the radio show. \nGlass said he had mixed feelings about appearing on national television. \n"It doesn't frighten me, but I don't look forward to it," he said. "I don't care to be recognized." \nGraduate student Roberta Burns, a long time fan of the show, said she was glad she attended. \n"I loved it," she said. "It had all the magic his radio show has, right there in front of you"