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" Reporters tend to find in others what they are suited to find, so there is a whole school of reporting where they are cynical about the world, and everything reinforces that. Whereas I tend to be optimistic and be amused by people and like them, even rather bad people. "

Ira Glass

Bad People

World

People

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" Radio is for driving. "

Ira Glass

Radio

Driving

" Where radio is different than fiction is that even mediocre fiction needs purpose, a driving question. "

" I read the newspaper, but I live in my own little bubble. "

" 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

" I liked the people at Brown, while I really disliked most of the fellow students I had met at Northwestern. "

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

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

" 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'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 meet many people who are talking about shows on Showtime. "

" You'd think that radio was around long enough that someone would have coined a word for staring into space. "

" 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. "

" I never realized before this the emotional power of some really simple, corny tropes: people with top hats, people with batons, confetti going off, how important it is to smile. "

" When you're working in public radio, you don't have any money to advertise. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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.' "

" There is a kind of structure for a story that was peculiarly compelling for the radio. I thought I had invented it atom-by-atom sitting in an editing booth in Washington on M Street when I was in my 20s. Then I found out that it is one of the oldest forms of telling a story - it was the structure of a sermon. "

" I think people who live in New York don't realize just how much time they spend talking about the subway. "

" 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. "

" When I was a bad writer, I would consciously imitate other NPR writers who I thought were wonderful. I suppose that everyone's artistic practice is different. But I collaborate and sometimes don't agree at all with my collaborators' opinions. It forces you to understand why you don't agree with something: what's the fight you're picking. "

" I've never so appreciated what actors do and how strange it is. "

" 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. "

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

" But sadly, one of the problems with being on public radio is that people tend to think you're being sincere all the time. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "