Ira Glass on storytelling


Thanks to David for pointing me to this series of interviews (YouTube) with Ira Glass. His weekly program, This American Life, is the best example of what radio can and should be. But that doesn’t sound quite right to me any longer, since I began listening to the program via podcast.

So let’s call it the best example of what storytelling can and should be. “Radio” makes it about the medium. And it never was, not really.

My take-away from the first segment of the interview is that it takes as much time to find a good story, as it does to write and produce the story. He says the TAL team spends about half of their time searching for that good story to tell.

PS: I had never seen Ira Glass and he looks exactly like he sounds.