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" 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. "

Ira Glass

Learn

Story

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" Just when did I get to the point when staying at a hotel wasn't fun? "

" The story is a machine for empathy. In contrast to logic or reason, a story is about emotion that gets staged over a sequence of dramatic moments, so you empathize with the characters without really thinking about it too much. It is a really powerful tool for imagining yourself in other people's situations. "

" I'm a reporter - if I don't interview someone, I don't have much to say, and I definitely can't just sit down and knock out 800 words on any subject you give me. "

" People are generally forced to change. We don't want to change, and then something absolutely forces us to realize that what we are doing isn't working or that our picture of the world is wrong. We fail. So we change. "

" 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 don't meet many people who are talking about shows on Showtime. "

" There is a feeling, when you listen to radio, that it's one person, and they're talking to you, and you really feel their presence as one person. "

" I just have a harder time, I think, feeling close to people without self consciousness. "

" I can only control what I can control. "

" 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. "

" My first job on the radio was writing jokes for a Baltimore DJ called Johnny Walker, who was sort of a '70s era shock jock who all the teenage boys listened to in my school. "

Ira Glass

Jokes

School

" 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. "

Ira Glass

Wrong

Great

" When you're learning, especially to write, unless you're some incredibly gifted writer, a young Malcom Gladwell, say, you need to be imitating people. You need to be imitating how they make their work, how they structure it, how they design the pieces. It gives you chops; it gives you moves. "

" It took, for me, a long time to develop this idea of what to do on the radio. But from the beginning of my time in radio, I had pretty non-traditional tasks. "

Ira Glass

Long Time

Long

" I am mostly a pretty worried person. In conversations, I am always worried about what to say. "

" 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 was a freelancer all through my 20s and was very slow to get good at what I did. "

" 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. "

" I'm trying to make perfect moments. And those generate meaning. If you go deep enough in how to make a moment, very quickly you come to how narrative works - to what we are as a species, how we've come up with telling stories in scenes and images. "

" 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. "

Ira Glass

News

Media

" The flakier your mission, the fiercer you have to be on the business side. "

" I don't know how to read. I get all my news from Jon Stewart every day. "

" I think stories get better the more people try to amuse themselves. "

" I love traveling. But I haven't had big, transformative experiences while on the road. When I go out on the road, it's to go out and get a story or do a promotional event. "

" 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 wish somebody had given me the news that ideas don't just fall on your head like fairy dust. You have to treat that like a job. You have to spend hours each day, where you're just like, 'This is the part of the day when I'm looking for an idea.' "

" 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 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. "