Ira Glass on Three Decades of ‘This American Life’ Magic

Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso

Lemonada Media

Society & Culture, Film Interviews, Tv & Film

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 11 May 2025

⏱️ 90 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Thirty years. Over 850 episodes. Nine Peabodys. One Pulitzer. And yet somehow, three decades in, This American Life (and its creator, Ira Glass) remains as innovative and timely as ever.

We begin with a week in the life of Ira: a typical Monday at This American Life (4:52), the rigorous notes process (6:05), and how the team selects the stories it wants to tell that Sunday (8:23). Then, we unpack Trump’s ongoing threats to slash government funding for public media (14:14), Glass’ formative days as a teenage intern at NPR (19:06), and the radio mentors who shaped his ideas around narrative (27:18).

On the back-half, we discuss how his taste and talent eventually converged (42:03), what makes a good interview (45:36), the guest he most identifies with (1:00:25), the episode he’s most proud of (1:15:31), and, naturally, the future of This American Life (1:20:07).

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Lemonada
0:02.0	Lemonada
0:04.0	This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam for Goso. Welcome to the show.
0:43.8	Today, in celebration of 30 years of this American life, Ira Glass.
0:50.4	Ira co-founded the weekly public radio show for WBEZ Chicago back in 1995.
0:56.5	And through three decades, it's essentially remained faithful to what the New Yorker has lovingly described as glasses three-act structures, chatty cadences, and mixture of analysis and whimsy
1:03.6	that feels so familiar now as to seem unremarkable. And it's true, across 850 episodes and nine Peabody Awards, this American
1:14.1	life has become such a staple of, well, American life, that it's hard to remember a time
1:20.3	and radio without it. It has the feeling of just kind of always being there, in part because,
1:26.6	A, at nearly 30 years, it sort of has,
1:30.8	and B, because of how many other shows Ira has either inspired or produced. Serial,
1:37.4	S-Town, the Trojan Horse Affair. It's hard to imagine the daily from the New York Times
1:42.0	or any of the pieces of audio journalism you enjoy
1:45.2	without Ira Glass. And so today, in New York City, Ira and I talk three decades of this American life,
1:54.3	the highs and lows of putting out new work every Sunday, the rigorous editorial process
2:00.0	that makes what you hear possible and pleasurable,
2:03.6	and naturally what he sees as the future of the show. We also tell some of IRIS story,
2:10.3	as a child magician turned precocious intern at NPR, his formative years working under engineer
2:16.9	Keith Talbot, and how he learned slowly to tell
2:20.8	stories on the radio. And don't worry, we'll play passages from some of his best work and some of his
2:26.8	worst work, just to be fair. And of course, because it's Mother's Day, we couldn't help but talk
2:33.1	about the people responsible for us being here.
	...

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