I suppose I shouldn't go around admitting I speak untruths on the radio. When I say something untrue on the air, I mean for it to be transparently untrue. I assume people know when I'm just saying something for effect. Or to be funny.
— Ira Glass
Radio is more powerful the closer we mimic the way we actually speak to each other. That's why Howard Stern is such a great radio talent. People on his show are actually speaking to each other. You might not like what they're saying, but they're real conversations.
Writing is just very difficult. I'm an adequate performer. And I think I have a special talent as an editor. Editing is what I do best.
'Smallville' is like a Domino's pizza. While you're eating, you're thinking, 'This is good, and it reminds me of pizza, but there's not enough flavor in each bite.' That's the feeling you have the entire time with 'Smallville' - that it's just about to be good, but it never is.
For me to do a story, something has to happen to someone. It's a story in the way you learn what a story is in third grade, where there is a person, and things happen to them, and then something big happens, and they realize something new.
I'm a cliche.
In general in New York, we all eat like kings. Insane quality, mind-blowing variety, at all price ranges.
Traditional broadcast media seems old-fashioned and vague to me. When I watch television news, I'm aware of what skilled journalists they are, but I find it hard because of the corny way they present it.
I was a temp secretary for a long time, and I went at it with a passion, and I tried to do a nice job in all my jobs.
I am such a do-goody, people-pleasing kid - or I was - I don't think I've ever been fired, not even from an ice cream shop, magician for kids' parties, not even in my early jobs in radio.
I'm not a natural storyteller at all. If anything, I'm a natural interviewer, a natural listener, but I'm not a natural storyteller.
I don't read novels, but my semiotics study influenced everything about the way I read and edit and write.
I didn't watch T.V. from the time I was 18 'til my mid-30s. And then I got a T.V. to watch 'The Sopranos.' I realized, 'Oh, T.V. is really interesting.'
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?
I think one of the reasons that I got so good at it, as somebody making radio stories, is that on the radio I can actually - I can understand what's happening in the interview and can make a connection in a way that makes sense.
If you want somebody to tell you a story, one of the most easiest and effective ways is if you're telling them a story.
I don't tweet because I don't need another creative venue. I don't need another form for self-expression. I don't need another way to get my thoughts out to people. I have one. I'm good.
I think good radio often uses the techniques of fiction: characters, scenes, a big urgent emotional question. And as in the best fiction, tone counts for a lot. But a lot of effective and interesting radio is based on one character who reacts to the world.
The radio is good for taking somebody else's experience and making you understand what it would be like. Because when you don't see someone, but you hear them talking - and, uh, that is what radio is all about - it's like when someone is talking from the heart. Everything about it conspires to take you into somebody else's world.
The TiVo is really an amazing machine. Like everyone who has one, I totally recommend it. Just as everyone who's married will tell you to get married, and everyone who has a baby tells you to have a baby, everyone who owns a TiVo will tell you to get a TiVo, and they'll say things like 'Your life will be completely different.' It's true.
The Flash could do everything twice as fast. Except you never saw him think twice as fast or speak twice as fast. Could he do math faster than the other superheroes? Could he compute the tip for the bill twice as fast?
I don't know how to read. I get all my news from Jon Stewart every day.
Not owning a car anymore, I feel like I'm barely an American. I miss it. And I barely ever get to listen to the radio in the car, which is the best place for radio.
I'll meet listeners who tell me what a great voice I have. But I don't have a great voice for radio. My voice is the utterly normal voice, but sheer repetition has made them think it's OK. Mick Jagger once was asked, 'What makes a hit song? He said, 'Repetition.'
I don't think I'm better than everyone else at anything, but I am very quick at organizing a big mass of interview tape into a structure.
Honestly, like, I'm a superfan of the 'New York Times,' but I know nothing about how they put it together, and I really don't care.
I'm not a go-in-for-the-kill kind of interviewer. It's a great thing to me, that kind of interviewer, but I'm not it. It doesn't play to my strengths at all. I like to interview people who are interested in telling their story and tell it as truthfully as they can.
I don't go looking for stories with the idea of wrongness in my head, no. But the fact is, a lot of great stories hinge on people being wrong.
Harry Potter to me is a bore. His talent arrives as a gift; he's chosen. Who can identify with that? But Hermione - she's working harder than anyone, she's half outsider, right? Half Muggle. She shouldn't be there at all. It's so unfair that Harry's the star of the books, given how hard she worked to get her powers.
I've actually done events at radio stations where I feel like I've had to give a little talk in behalf of television as a medium.
I have a pit bull. He's a rescue. He's adorable.
I just have a harder time, I think, feeling close to people without self consciousness.
I don't own a radio. I listen to everything through apps or on my iPhone. And then I download the shows I like. Shows like 'Fresh Air', 'Radiolab', 'Snap Judgement', all those shows.
I am mostly a pretty worried person. In conversations, I am always worried about what to say.
It's tricky, performing the show live. Because when you're in a big auditorium, in front of 700 people, the natural tendency is to want to talk louder. You want to project.
I liked the people at Brown, while I really disliked most of the fellow students I had met at Northwestern.
I was a semiotics major at Brown, and there's this idea that stories are better, books are better, and movies are better if they cocked you off your axis and you were completely disoriented and you'd really have to rethink everything. Nobody has that experience, actually.
I don't meet many people who are talking about shows on Showtime.
I didn't have any particular talent for fiction. I took a class in college.
I like excess. And giant M&M's.
When I started 'This American Life', one of the reactions I got was, 'When is the adult going to show up who will host the show?' At some point, people just got used to it.
I eat the same breakfast and lunch every day, both at my desk. I employ no time-saving tricks at all.
I read the newspaper, but I live in my own little bubble.
When I was in college, I was a semiotics major, which is this hopelessly pretentious body of French literary theory.
I'm in production year round. I work long hours. I have a dog and a wife. There's not a lot of available time for consuming any culture: T.V., movies, books. When I read, it's generally magazines, newspapers and web sites.
It's rare for me to read any fiction. I almost only read nonfiction. I don't believe in guilty pleasures, I only believe in pleasures. People who call reading detective fiction or eating dessert a guilty pleasure make me want to puke.
I have been shocked at the number of people who don't watch television.
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.
I feel like in an interview situation, it's a kind of intimacy that I can understand and handle - versus in real life, when I'm much more of a bumbler and have a hard time.
I don't take care of my voice at all, which is one reason that I sound as bad as I do.
