SPRING 2018 22 | FRONTDOORSMEDIA .COM Spring Arts & Culture Directory producers — does make people feel closer to the show, and it makes people feel closer to us,” he said. “Saying it that way makes it sound like a mercenary strategy or something and it’s not. It really is that we’re just trying to make something that’s good.” In addition to the anecdotes about the reporters’ personal lives, listeners also gain insight into the reporter’s own experience navigating the story. One of the most impactful examples being Sarah Koenig’s reporting on “Serial,” the first spin-off of “This American Life.” “We’re very careful to strike a balance where we’re telling a fact-based story, where sometimes the reporter in it says, ‘Here’s what I was thinking at this point,’” said Glass. “Which is very much the model of ‘Serial.’ With Sarah, you know, she flips back and forth over the course of those episodes, thinking that the young man at the center was guilty or not guilty of committing a murder. That’s something we do with our stories on ‘This American Life’ all the time. I have to say there’s a deep tradition in journalism of that.” The explorative commentary lends itself to another critically important aspect of the success of “This American Life” — stories that provide commentary and context, differentiating themselves from the daily news journalism many are accustomed to. Glass recounts research done by National Public Radio on the listening habits of its NPR One app listeners that suggests that even in our fast-paced, attention-scattered society, people are still looking for stories and the context that makes them relevant. “People would stop listening to stories that would begin with, ‘Here’s what happened today.’ The ones that people would continue listening to would be the ones that would start with, ‘Here’s this issue. Here’s this thing that happens,’” he said. “They would get to the today later, so even though what we’re trained to do as journalists is say, ‘Here’s what happened today,’ it actually turns out that’s not as interesting as someone giving a little context first. If you think about it from a human perspective that makes a lot of sense, because it gives stakes to what happened today.” Glass also notes the inherent power of radio, which he says has an immediate intimacy. “It’s somebody talking and you don’t see them and you’re just hearing their voice. There’s something incredibly powerful about that,” he said. “We send out an intern and the intern comes back with a tape that has that quality, like a beginner can do it on radio. It’s just incredibly powerful and that’s the special power of the medium; it’s like a machine for empathy in that way.” Despite this, even Glass shares that he was not always great at being on the radio, with one of the lessons at his talk being that it’s normal to be bad at something before you’re good. “It was a really long process of trial and error and being bad at and forcing myself to just go with it and fight another day,” he said of improving his skills. “When I first started ‘This American Life,’ one of the complaints we would get from program directors around the country was, ‘This is a pretty good show but are you going to get somebody to host?’” Glass said. “There was a feeling of ‘Ira’s a pretty good reporter, like he was a good reporter when he was on ‘All Things Considered’ but they wanted someone to be, like, the host.” However, the most enviable talent Glass has developed over the years may be an ability to make listeners care about a topic they’d never explore otherwise — like car dealership sales quotas, monkey selfies and their legal implications, the life of a polygraph operator and countless more. “What makes a really great radio show is that it starts with something that if you aren’t interested in it to start with, they make you really interested in it,” he said. “When it’s working well, you kind of like the person who’s telling the story and then they pull you into something that’s new.

SPRING 2018 FRONTDOORSMEDIA .COM | 23 From the diverse line-up of Music in the Garden, to hundreds of butterflies waiting to greet you, experience the dazzling array of exhibitions and events at the Garden this spring. SPRING BUTTERFLY EXHIBIT SPRING 2018 GET YOUR TICKETS today select nights FEB. 2 – JUNE 22 FEB. 24 - MAY 13