Ira Glass talks to David Shuster

Ira Glass hosts “This American Life,” a weekly public radio show that is heard by more than 2 million people and has won all major broadcasting awards. There is a theme to every episode with a variety of stories built around it, often covered with humor. 

David Shuster: What is an American story? I mean, how do you define what is appropriate for the show and what is not?

Ira Glass: That would be a really good thing for us to figure out. That's an excellent question. We don't even think of the stories as American stories at all. I think the name of the show, "This American Life" — we named it that just because it seemed like it made the thing feel big. But we don't think about whether it's an American story or not. We happen to be Americans. I think for the stories to work they have to be universal.

In other words, stories about love or about hardship or about affection or about loss.     

Exactly.

Do you have a favorite that you've done over the last couple of months or last couple of years?

I have lots of favorites, for different reasons. There was a guy who we had on, and he was in this long-term relationship with somebody who he met and got involved with like his first week of college. They were like the couple among their friends who were like all the other couples. They were sort of like the big-bond couple who would nurse all the other couples when people were feeling bad. Things were going great. At one point they had been together for 12, 13 years, and he says to her, "How come we're not getting married? Everybody around us is getting married. You know, we're about to be 30 years old. Everybody's getting married. We've never even talked about it." She's like, "Well, I think I just, um, I just always assumed that I would sleep with more people. Like, we've been involved, like, basically our whole adult lives. I had one boyfriend before you." So they decide they're going to take a break. They're like, "Well, let's have a one-month break, and we'll just both sleep with other people, and then we'll come back together and get married." So they go on like a Rumspringa — like the Amish. Then they each have the mission, "OK, I'm just going to sleep with a bunch of people." Which of course, you know, just does not work out. Like, it works out exactly like you would expect. It does not go well for them.

How has the show evolved? Because you've been doing it a long time.

What was it like growing up in Baltimore, in Charm City?        

I grew up in the suburbs, and so I think it was very typical of a lot of people who grew up in the suburbs. I mean, I happened to grow up in an unbelievably Jewish suburb, and I don't think I realized as a child just how eccentric that was. Baltimore County has just a huge Jewish population. It was more of an ethnic enclave than I realized. Like, in my elementary school, like, almost nobody celebrated Christmas. Which I was just like — I got to be older, I realized that was really unusual that nobody celebrated Christmas.

But now you're an atheist, so the Jewish upbringing, it's more sort of a cultural identity, not a spiritual connection?

Yes, like many Jews, you know, you don't have to believe in God to be a Jew. You are, whether you choose to be or not. I went to Hebrew school all the way up to the 10th or 11th grade.     

You had the bar mitzvah and the whole thing?

I had a bar mitzvah, the whole thing, and at some point I found that I didn't believe in God, and I've talked about this publicly and on the radio and elsewhere, and it's one of those things where I feel like it's — I don't know. Like, periodically, I'll do stories on evangelical Christians, and when I get along with them, as often I do, at some point they'll be like, "Well, don't you think that there's a reason that you were drawn to do this story? Don't you think there's a reason why we're meeting each other?" And they'll try to sell me on believing in God again. I always feel like I wish I could go there, but I don't. 

You studied semiotics in college.

Yes.

A lot of people don't know what semiotics is. It's, what, the study of symbol in communications? That's not your sort of traditional literature, science and the arts kind of background.

No, it's not your traditional journalism background either. I started working at NPR in Washington. I was working on the news when I was 19. I was working for the network news, on their afternoon news show, "All Things Considered," when I was 19 and 20 and 21. Then I was going back to college and I was studying semiotics, which, like you say, is this incredibly pretentious body of French literary theory. But it actually turns out to be just enormously useful in my daily job, because what it's about is what — it's about how narrative works. It's about how to structure a story so that it will be compelling and get its hooks into you. Semiotics is really interested in the questions like, what keeps you watching something, what keeps you — you know, what keeps you listening to a story on the radio? Like, what keeps you turning the pages in a book? What's the pleasure of it that's moving you forward, that's pulling you in and grabbing you and pulling you forward?

Do you ever go back and look at your old clips and think — or listen to your old clips and think, "Wow, I was really doing that"? 

Yes. I have. Partly because I end up doing little teaching gigs with people who are coming up, and it's a pleasure to be able to play clips of how bad I was not in my second or third or fourth year, but even in my sixth and seventh year. It's like you just think it'll be like in the movies, where you just have talent and you're just going to go out there and you'll be great from the beginning. But, in fact, most of us are really bad for a really long time, and nobody tells you that — that's a normal thing, and you have to fight your way through that. And my early clips are awful. I have years of being awful.

What kind of dog do you have?

I have a pit bull. He's a rescue. He's adorable. 

Dangerous?

I mean, people hear "pit bull," and they kind of shiver sometimes. I think in general, pit bulls are not the dangerous creatures that their public image is. They think that — obviously they can be raised to be very mean, vicious dogs. But if you raise them so they're sweet, they'll be sweet.

Now, when people hear you talk about your dog, that's kind of funny.

People think I'm crazy about my dog. We did one segment about the dog on the radio show, and the staff is just like, "You should do something about the dog." I was like, "I don't even see why this is a story." The staff was like, "No, no. Something crazy is going on." I was like, "I don't see what you're talking about." Then one of my producers basically interviewed me, and that's what we put on the radio. I have never put anything on the air that has gotten such a response as the stuff about the dog. I think it's because people heard what my wife and I do to keep that dog alive and his relationship with us, and I think it was a moment where people were just like, "Oh, you —" I think people just — people did not agree with our choices, many people. A few people strongly agreed with our choices.

Some of the things you did to keep the dog alive include changing its food every six months, worrying about its allergies, everything else.

Yes. We have done that. I think the problem in saying that publicly is that we just come off as, like, the crazy rich person that you would be, you know, spending that kind of money on your dog. I think it put a lot of people off.

There's some validity to it, isn't it?

Well, which part? Crazy part, sure, I embrace. But there's validity to, like, we're making an eccentric choice. I think objectively you are probably right. However, I think there's a lot of people that, once you start to care for some creature, you know — I had never had a pet. Like, I couldn't give a damn about dogs. Really, I didn't even understand why people had pets before I had a dog. I mean, I understood in an abstract way, but I'd had no emotional connection. I think once you make a decision of like, "OK, we're going to keep this thing — we're going to keep this creature alive," I don't know. It doesn't become an option to let it die. You just think like, "Well, we have $1,000 we can throw out this month." Like, "OK, let's go for it."

This interview has been condensed and edited.