Ira Glass

Ira Glass (born March 3, 1959, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.) is an American television and radio personality who was the popular host of a radio program (begun 1995 and later adapted for television) called This American Life.

In 1978 Glass talked his way into an internship at National Public Radio (NPR) in Washington, D.C. He quickly became enamoured with the medium, and he started working for NPR soon after graduating (1982) from Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, with a degree in semiotics. Glass was a jack-of-all-trades at NPR, holding positions as wide-ranging as tape cutter, copy writer, and producer and occasionally serving as a guest host on Talk of the Nation and All Things Considered.

Glass moved to Chicago in 1989 to become a reporter for NPR’s Chicago bureau. His accounts of local attempts at school restructuring won awards from both the National Education Association and the Education Writers Association and further burnished his public radio star. Glass’s prominence led to an offer from the MacArthur Foundation to produce and host a new radio show that would focus on Chicago-area writers and performers. Originally titled Your Radio Playhouse, Glass’s show first aired on Chicago’s public radio station, WBEZ, in November 1995 as a series of thematically related stories narrated by various reporters, writers, and artists. It was an instant hit with listeners and was nationally syndicated the following year as This American Life. The show also drew critical acclaim, and it received a Peabody Award within its first two years on the air. (Peabody Awards are administered by the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, and they recognize meritorious service in television, radio, and other electronic media.) As This American Life continued, it developed a strong cult following, which led to unheard-of—by public radio standards—touring shows, CD collections, and movie adaptations of some of its stories (Unaccompanied Minors [2006], Come Sunday [2018], and Ode to Joy [2019]), on all of which Glass served as an executive producer or producer. The program was honoured with additional Peabody Awards in 2007, 2009, 2013, 2014, and 2016, as well as a Pulitzer Prize in 2020.

In 2006 Glass moved This American Life to New York City so that he could work on a television adaptation of the program. When the TV version debuted on Showtime the following year, many critics initially doubted that the radio show’s idiosyncratic format would translate to the small screen. The one facet of the television program that they apparently took for granted, however, was Glass, whose ingratiating TV presence and expert framing of the stories were singled out for praise by reviewers after the first installments aired. While some of the often-insular public radio fan base blanched at the idea of a radio show moving to television—Glass was called “Judas” at one speaking engagement soon after the deal was announced—the radio program (along with its associated podcast) continued to thrive alongside its televised sister show. At the same time, the challenge of producing both programs led Glass to end the TV show after its second season (2008).

In addition to his radio and television work, Glass edited The New Kings of Nonfiction (2007), an anthology of essays by such writers as David Foster Wallace, Malcolm Gladwell, and Bill Buford. He also cowrote and produced the film Sleepwalk with Me (2012), an adaptation of a one-man show starring comedian (and frequent This American Life contributor) Mike Birbiglia. Glass also was a producer on Birbiglia’s film Don’t Think Twice (2016), which was about a New York City improv comedy troupe.