Ira Glass

Ira Jeffrey Glass (born March 3, 1959) is an American public radio personality.

He is the host and producer of the radio and television series This American Life and has participated in other NPR programs, including Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Talk of the Nation.

His work in radio and television has won him awards, such as the Edward R. Murrow Award for Outstanding Contributions to Public Radio and the George Polk Award in Radio Reporting.

Originally from Baltimore, Glass began working in radio as a teenager.

While attending Brown University, he worked alongside Keith Talbot at NPR during his summer breaks.

He worked as a story editor and interviewer for years before he began to cover his own stories in his late twenties.

After he moved to Chicago, he continued to work on the public radio programs All Things Considered and The Wild Room, the latter of which he co-hosted.

After Glass received a grant from the MacArthur Foundation, he and Torey Malatia developed This American Life, which won a Peabody Award within its first six months and became nationally syndicated a year later.

The show was formulated into a television program of the same name on Showtime that ran for two seasons.

Glass also performs a live show, and has contributed to or written articles, books, and a comic book related to the radio show.

Glass was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on March 3, 1959, to Jewish parents Barry and Shirley Glass, and grew up with two sisters, one younger and one older.

Barry started out as a radio announcer, but eventually became a CPA and businessman who founded the Glass Jacobson Financial Group, while Shirley Glass was a clinical psychologist, whose work prompted The New York Times to call her "the godmother of infidelity research".

As a child, Glass wanted to be an astronaut, while his parents hoped he would become a doctor.

From a young age, he loved comedy and his family frequented the theater.

By the time he was 11, he and his sister put on shows in their house's basement and invited neighborhood children to watch.

As a teen, he moonlighted as a magician.

Glass attended Milford Mill High School in Baltimore County where he held editorial roles as a member of the school's yearbook staff and as co-editor of the student literary magazine.

As a member of the Milford drama club, Glass was cast in several stage productions: his roles include Captain George Brackett in Milford's 1975 production of South Pacific, Lowe in the school's 1976 production of Damn Yankees, and Bud Frump in its 1977 production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

Glass was also a member of the International Thespian Society.

Glass has remarked that his style of journalism is heavily influenced by the musicals he enjoyed when he was younger, especially Fiddler on the Roof.

His involvement in yearbook started in tenth grade and continued until his graduation in 1977.

He was involved in student government during his junior and senior years as a member of the executive board, made Milford's morning announcements, and was a member of the Milford Mill Honor Society in 1977.

While in high school, he wrote jokes for Baltimore radio personality Johnny Walker.

After Glass graduated from high school, he was accepted into Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and was initially a pre-medical student.

He attended with fellow alums Mary Zimmerman and David Sedaris, though he did not know them at the time.

He spent a lot of time at the university's radio station making its promos.

He transferred to Brown University, where he concentrated in semiotics.

There, he was introduced to S/Z by Roland Barthes, an analysis that, in hindsight, "made [him] understand what [he] could do in radio".

He graduated in 1982.

After his freshman year, 19-year-old Glass looked around Baltimore for work in television, radio, and advertising without success; meanwhile, he was employed in the shock trauma unit at a medical center.

After someone at the local rock station recommended that he seek out Jay Kernis at National Public Radio's headquarters in Washington, DC, he found work as an unpaid intern editing promotional announcements, before becoming the production assistant to Keith Talbot.

At the end of the summer, he chose to stay with NPR and abandon medicine, a decision that disappointed his parents.

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."

Glass 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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

In 1989, Glass followed his then-girlfriend, cartoonist Lynda Barry, to Chicago and settled into the Lakeview neighborhood.