Ira Glass

Early career[edit]

After his freshman year, 19-year-old Glass looked around Baltimore for work in television, radio, and advertising without success;^[9][10] meanwhile, he was employed in the shock trauma unit at a medical center.^[18] After someone at the local rock station recommended that he seek out Jay Kernis at National Public Radio's headquarters in Washington, DC,^[10] he found work as an unpaid intern editing promotional announcements, before becoming the production assistant to Keith Talbot.^[21][9] At the end of the summer, he chose to stay with NPR and abandon medicine, a decision that disappointed his parents.^[18] When he graduated from college, they placed a sardonic ad in the classified section of their local newspaper that read, "Corporate office seeks semiotics grad for high paying position."^[22] Talbot brought Glass with him to New York between 1986-87 as an intern on Kids America produced at WNYC.^[23] In Glass' half-hour weekly segments, he took the on-air persona of "Bob" and asked opinion poll style questions.


Glass returned to DC and worked at NPR for 17 years, where he eventually graduated to being a tape-cutter, before becoming a reporter and host on several NPR programs, including Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Talk of the Nation.^[10][24] In an interview, Glass recalled that his first show was with NPR's Joe Frank, and says the experience influenced him in a "huge way", adding: "Before I saw Joe put together a show, I had never thought about radio as a place where you could tell a certain kind of story."^[25] He has also said that editing for Noah Adams, an early host of All Things Considered, taught him how "to step back from the action and move to some bigger thought and then return to the plot", a technique that he still uses to structure This American Life.^[10] As he approached 30, he tried reporting his own stories, but said he was not good at it and that he performed poorly on air, took a long time to create a single piece, and did not have strong interviewing skills.^[26] During this time, he dated a lawyer for seven years who, according to him, made him feel terrible and did not take his work seriously or love him.^[3] He says that while she was away working in Texas, he felt his writing improved in her absence, and their relationship ended by the end of the summer.^[27]


In 1989, Glass followed his then-girlfriend, cartoonist Lynda Barry, to Chicago and settled into the Lakeview neighborhood.^[28] Although he began producing award-winning reports for NPR's All Things Considered, specifically on school reform at Taft High School and Irving Elementary School,^[28] Glass said it was a piece he did on the 75th anniversary of Oreo cookies that taught him how to write for radio.^[29] Soon, he and Gary Covino created and co-hosted a Friday-night WBEZ Chicago Public Radio program called The Wild Room, which featured eclectic content with a loose style and aired for the first time in November 1990.^[30] By this time, Barry and Glass were no longer a couple, but she initially collaborated on the project, even giving the show its title after she and Glass agreed that Covino's suggestion (The Rainbow Room) was "stupid".^[30] The first show aired in November 1990.^[30] In Glass's first professional interview (with Cara Jepsen in 1993), he said: "I like to think of it as the only show on public radio other than Car Talk that both NPR news analyst Daniel Schorr and Kurt Cobain could listen to."^[31] During this time they spent two years reporting on the Chicago Public Schools—one year at a high school, and another at an elementary school. The largest finding of their investigations was that smaller class sizes would contribute to more success in impoverished, inner-city schools.^[32]


Glass eventually tired of "free-form radio" and, looking at other opportunities, began sending grant proposals to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.^[30]