"Simple curiosity goes incredibly far."
Ira Glass Offers Some Insight Into His American Life

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Ira Glass began his public radio career as an intern at NPR in Washington in 1978. But it was "This American Life," the award-winning weekly story anthology he created in 1995, that's made him, well, as famous as people in public broadcasting get. The second season of "This American Life's" TV incarnation airs on Showtime next month, and next Saturday Glass appears at Lisner Auditorium. We caught up with the Baltimore native by phone the morning after his first day off in six weeks.

-- Chris Klimek

People have shared some of the most intimate experiences of their lives on your show. How do you get them to do that?

The fact that we are (a) interested and (b) incredibly nosy makes people open up. Being genuinely, actually interested in what they went through and what they think of it goes a long way. It's not very fancy, as a reporting tactic. [Laughs.] Simple curiosity goes incredibly far.

You lost weight for the TV show. Why? You're not on camera much, and you're seated behind a desk when you are.

I was just aware before we started doing the TV show that I would have to look at a lot of pictures of myself, and I knew that would be painful if I didn't like the way I looked. It wasn't anything more complicated than that -- the network didn't care. Simply by cutting out starches from my diet and going to the gym every day for, like, 40 minutes, I lost about 30 pounds pretty quickly.

The most vulnerable I've ever heard you sound on the air was an episode called "Get Over It!," where you spoke about shopping for clothes with a recent ex-girlfriend. You're married now, to a fellow journalist to boot. Do you feel less free to talk about your private life?

[Laughs.] It's pretty much the ground rules of the marriage that I talk about nothing that happens between us on the air except for anything that I clear with her. So, yeah.

You moved to New York in March 2006 to do the TV show after being in Chicago for more than a decade. How's that been?

New York is really, really fun, and there's a lot to do. But there were definitely advantages to Chicago, like being able to drive. I really miss driving. Living in New York, I don't feel like I live in the United States of America. I feel like I live in a very special little enclave, and I'm not so fond of that. I liked being in the Midwest.

You're turning 50 next year. Any interest in writing fiction, for prose or film?

Any story I'd want to tell, I'd want to do in radio or on a TV show. I had the experience about two years ago of co-writing a romantic comedy with this screenwriter and director named Dylan Kidd. It didn't go anywhere, like most of these things don't go anywhere, but it was really, really fun to do. I feel like I know how to make this radio show. . . . It's plenty hard enough to get that right.