Wild Card with Rachel Martin - Ira Glass plays a nicer version of himself on the radio

Episode Date: November 28, 2024

In the world of podcasts and radio, Ira Glass is a legend. But he tells Rachel that he doesn't think about his legacy. He makes his show, "This American Life," for people to enjoy now, and he doesn't care if people forget about it one day. He also tells Rachel, and those in the audience at this live taping, that he's a nicer person on air than face-to-face. To listen sponsor-free, access bonus episodes and support the show, sign up for Wild Card+ at plus.npr.org/wildcard See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

What is something you think people misunderstand about you? I don't think people misunderstand me. I don't know. I know what I think people misunderstand. I think I play a much nicer, more empathetic person on the radio than I am in real life. I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wild Card, the show where cards control the conversation. Each week, my guest chooses questions at random from a deck of cards. Questions about the memories, insights, and beliefs that.

that have shaped them. In junior high school, I remember discovering, like, you could just ask people questions and they'll open up to you and then they feel close to you. My guest this week is Ira Glass. And I remember just doing it as a technique to, like, just get through the awkwardness of social interaction. Near the end of the summer, I was asked to interview Ira Glass at this podcast convention called Podcast Movement.

It probably goes without saying, but Ira Glass is legendary in my audio world. He hosts one of the most famous and successful radio shows and podcasts of all time. We'd never actually met before, so I was super nervous and a smidge intimidated. And when we finally did meet backstage, I was actually surprised because he seemed a little intimidated too. Not by me, to be clear. But by the format of what was going to go down in this live version of our show. He was about to be asked all these really personal questions in front of a really big audience. And as you'll hear, revealing things about himself didn't come naturally when he was younger.

It was something Ira had to learn to do. But I got to say, it wound up being the most lovely time. Of course it did. Ira was thoughtful and funny and really open and honest. He is also skilled at cursing. Okay, so consider yourself warned. So here it is, our special episode with Ira Glass taped live at podcast movement here in Washington, D.C. All right, so there are some rules in this game.

You can skip a question. Okay, if you're just not jibing with a question, you could just be like skip, and then I'll replace it with another one from the deck. Okay, we do have an actual deck of cards, ladies and gentlemen, right here. You also have another tool at your disposal. You get a flip, okay?

So the flip, you can put me on the spot, and I will answer the question before you do. So how do you feel? I feel okay. I feel okay. I've heard the show. I think okay is good. I feel okay.

I should say a very important detail I left out. I know you're going to care about this. There's a prize at the end. I've heard the show, so I know the prize is always the same, and it's more like a participation prize. It is not. You have to really win it. You have to really bring it.

Has any contestant ever lost the prize? No, but that's because they're all really good. Okay. These are the first three cards. I hold them up and then Ira picks randomly. Okay? So he can pick one, two, or three. Ira, what do you go?

Card number one. One. Okay. Question number one. Where did you get to feel independent as a kid? I got to feel independent pretty early on. Like actually my parents, the way they ran our house, my sisters and I were pretty separate from each other

and were off doing our own things from a really young age. And then one of the early things I did that was very independent was I decided at 11 years old or maybe 12 that I was going to be a magician and perform at children's birthday parties. And I was in the Baltimore County Public Library, and in the library, there was like a shelf of books on magic, and I couldn't believe that that was just out in public, and you could, like, learn those things. And from books on

magic, and then a little magic kit that I had been given for Hanukkah one year, I constructed an act and took out ads in the Baltimore Jewish Times and started booking parties. And then an actual professional magician called me up and it's like, who are you? And then he was a really sweet guy, and he was like, because all the magicians know each other in Baltimore and everywhere, actually. And he's like, let me, he's, he invited me downtown to downtown Baltimore where there was a magic store, yogi's magic mart, which was this place like out of a novel. It was like you'd go up these creaky stairs to this place, and there were like all illusions, but also card tricks. And the old magicians would like take you into the back room and show you how to do the trick. and it was like he brought me to this whole community of people.

So I was doing, so I was booking parties and my parents would drive me to the parties. And I did that like through my early teenage years. That's amazing. You know, like when I've asked this question before, people would be like, oh, you know, when I started babysitting for the first time, or my parents let me take the car and I filled it up for gas.

And you're like, no, when I taught myself how to be a magician and started my own business. Yeah, yeah. It's like, like, I think like my history as a kid was, I remember, like, in sixth grade, like, I convinced other kids to put on a production of you're a good man, Charlie Brown.

Because we had seen it downtown at the Morris Mechanic Theater in Baltimore, and we just thought that would be fun, and you could get the sheet music for it. And we didn't have a script. We just wrote down what we remembered from the show. And then I cast myself as Charlie Brown, which is basically the model I did

when I started my own radio show, too. actually like let's put on a show I will cast myself as the lead okay three new cards pick a card one two or three two two I love this one what's a moment when a stranger made you feel loved is that a thing that happens a stranger made you feel loved

um I have the experience sometimes where people come up to me and tell me that they really love the radio show and the work I've done. And that has no effect on me at all. Like, it really doesn't. And, like, I'll be with, I'll be with, like, my cousins or my girlfriend or something, and somebody will come up and they'll say something really nice.

And they'll walk away, and my girlfriend or my cousin or my sister will say, like, well, isn't that so nice? And I'd be like, that has no effect. That does not touch me at all. So you know. So now this is. Like, because I have a well of self-doubt and whatever makes you see yourself as not so great. that's deep enough that no number of people walking up to me can ever penetrate the force field,

the depth of that pool. And so I understand that in that situation, my job is to be gracious and to say thank you and to engage them. And I do. And it's totally fine. It's totally pleasant. Like it's totally nice to know that like I'm making a thing with a lot of other people. It's not just me. And people like it. And it makes me feel like I get to keep my job. and everything's going to be fine. And it's better to have that than to have nothing. And it's at the perfect level where it doesn't happen that often.

So when it happens, you think like, oh, that's so nice. But it doesn't touch me ever inside because of how I'm built personally. Do you like interactions with strangers? I do. You're a person who talks to people on the plane randomly? I'll talk to people in the plane, but I have a rule that I only do it while the plane's landing.

When the plane is landing? Right, because there's a defined period of time. Yeah, yeah. You know that there's an end. Do it all the time. Totally. But, yeah, I like talking to strangers. Like, I'm somebody who I like, there's a kind of reporting that a lot of people don't like, but I really love, where you just walk up to strangers in Times Square and you try to get a decent interview out of them.

I hate it so much. See, I love that because to me, that's like walking into a casino. And like, and nine out of ten times the interviews are going to be actively bad or lead nowhere. but the one time out of 10 when it's great, it's so great and it's so much sweeter for the fact that it's random. I spent the weekend at the Iowa State Fair, and I have four of the producers of my staff who are there also, and some of them do not love this, but I really love the thought of like, I'm just going to wander through. I'm going to go from booth to booth. I'm just going to talk to people and just try to, like, connect to them and find something to talk about that has a meaning.

and will amuse me and them. And when I do, it really feels like, it really feels like, like, I've won in a casino. And I also love gambling. So I know what that is. And, um. But it also clearly feels you up. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I like that connection with, with any, with any, like in an interview, when I feel like when an interview goes well, I feel like, and, and I'm really understanding them and they're understanding me and we're really getting along. Like, I find that it's really hard not to kind of fall in love with the other person a little bit. Like, if it's really going well, it gives you a feeling, and I really love that feeling.

And I do really feel a connection. But that is different than feeling loved. So your question, do you have interactions with strangers where you feel loved? No, I don't feel loved. No, I feel love. I didn't mean to point my finger at you there. and that was very aggressive. And then I backed up.

I was like, okay, Ira Glass. I know. I was literally like I know. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. No, sorry. That was very blaming and I apologize for that.

After the break, Ira talks about the difference between real life Ira and the Ira he plays on Mike. Three new cards. They're blue now. Uh, one, two, or three. Three. Three. Oh. Is there a theory that when I hear the show, I feel like I always hear people pick the ones disproportionately.

Is there a theory that, you know, is there a theory that. theory and what happens in the ones and the twos and the threes and are they different? No, I've tried to game this out because I obviously have favorites. Like when I'm like, oh, please pick two. It's so good. So I've tried, and then I try to plan. There's no rhyme. Oh, you have favorites.

Oh, totally. Oh, well, with these three, I want you to pick your favorite. You pick one. I thought about doing this. Dealers' choice. Really? Yeah. Okay.

Okay. Oh, these are all three really good. All right, I'm doing this one. Which number is it? Oh, it's one. It's one. Okay. What is something you think people misunderstand about you?

I don't think people misunderstand me. Like, I don't know. I know what I think people misunderstand. Okay. I think I play a much nicer, more empathetic person on the radio than I am in real life. What I was looking for. And I also don't believe it. I also don't believe it.

You're not a nice, empathetic person? To a point. to the point where I could play it on the radio. But do you get in interactions with people who don't know you, who project things on you, and then it feels sad to be your actual self? I mean, there's like public ira glass and then like normal ira glass.

How far apart are the two? I contain that sort of empathetic people please person who I'm playing on the radio. That's most of who I am. But I'm a person under weekly deadlines and I get freaked out and tired and irritable and don't want to talk to people and get annoyed. And I curse a lot in real life.

And I really love cursing. So like I am that person, but I'm more than that person. I remember there was a thing that happened in the very early days of our radio show where I'm going to hesitate telling the story because it's a little bit like a little like, I don't know, a little self something, congratulatory or something.

That's okay. But the very first live show we did, one of the first live shows we did was a town hall in New York City and the New York Observer, this is like we only been in there for a couple of years, and the New York Observer wrote an article

coming to the show and the article was just about there were a lot of, there were a lot of women who had crushes on me over the radio. and they did an article about this in the New York Observer. And they interviewed my senior producer at the time, Julie Snyder. And Julie said this thing about the fact that that was happening.

She said, at the time our staff was me and three women. She said, you know, look, I love my husband, but I love him a lot more if every word he said was edited by three women. That would be the difference between the public version and the private version. This is pretty good. Okay, we're remarkably on track. So I'm going to do another dealer's choice. I would not normally do this.

But since we have a little wiggle room, I'm going to ask a second quick. And you gave me license. You said dealer's choice. I'm going to ask a second question on here. What have you found surprising about getting older? What I found surprising about getting older is the most obvious thing about it, which is you really can't negotiate with it at all. It's, you just, you just can't, like, when you turn, I'm over 60 years old. I'm over 65. And, and, or I am 65. And, and there's just no denying that you're old. And there was an earlier phase of it where,

when I was in my 30s, I remember I was at my desk at WBEZ, and it was like 10 o'clock at night, and I was working, and a feeling came over me, and I was like, what is this? What is this? Am I tired? And I remember thinking, like, is this what it's going to be like to get old? I'll be at the office at 9 o'clock, and I'll be tired? And I just remember the contempt I had. I can't believe you're that old until that feeling struck you.

I was like 23 and I'm like, it's 9 o'clock. I'm so tired. Yeah, I can be kind of a tank. So we have three more cards. One, two, or three? I want you to pick the one that you most want me to answer. We're not doing the game, Ira. All right, fine, pick two.

Number two. What a moment. emotion do you understand better than all the others? I've heard you ask this of people on the show. And the emotion I experience the most is a kind of sadness and worry, and it comes so inappropriately at times when it just shouldn't even be there. Just feel like a detached, sad, worried feeling. And I've really been trying to

control it and change it. But I think that there's a part of me going back to when I was a kid, I was kind of a loner kid, and very much identified with Charlie Brown, which is how I ended up putting on a production of you're a good man of Charlie Brown. And like when you're a kid, I think a lot of kids carry a lot of sadness in them and feel sad a lot of the time.

And one of the great things that was great about the Peanuts comic strip is that if you were a kid, it gave you a place to locate that that you could connect to. and that strip was a real comfort for me. But left unattended, that is the feeling that I go back to by default, and I have to actively stop myself from doing it. So sometimes this feels weird, because when I do this show, it's just me and another person in this studio,

and now all of you are getting to witness this. But I'm still going to ask the question. What do you understand to be the root of that sadness? I mean, part of it is just disposition, and then part of it was that in different ways, if you're going to get very real about it, each of my parents were like totally fine parents, like totally lovely middle class parents who looked after us. But my dad was kind of like 1960s era dad who wasn't around that much, and when he was around, he was kind of like exhausted and a little irritable. So he was a distant figure. and my mom was a therapist who was either very, very present for us or deeply not present at all and kind of in the room but not engaging with us.

Like she would be on the phone talking to her friends, she would be doing other things. And so she was a sort of intermittent force of being present. And just I grew up feeling very alone. Do you think that's why you do what you do. do because of what we talked about earlier is that you you were able to create intimacy with strangers for your job in a way that maybe you didn't get. I wasn't so great at making, I wasn't so, I didn't have like great social skills and, and like it didn't, like, I didn't feel comfortable with other kids like immediately or easily. And so I remember consciously, um, in junior high school,

I remember discovering, like, you could just ask people questions, and they'll open up to you, and then they feel close to you. And I remember just doing it as a technique to, like, just get through the awkwardness of social interaction, and people would open up to me, and they'd feel very close to me. And interestingly, it was kind of messed up because I wouldn't open up to them as much. And so I didn't feel close to them.

So I had a whole bunch of middle-level friends who felt very close to me because I would get them to open up, but I didn't feel close to them at all. And honestly, that's a kind of thing. I actually actively had to train myself out of doing and start talking about myself more when I got into my 20s and 30s because I felt like I was in all these unequal friendships.

And I think the fact that, in a way, I was such a moron at normal social interaction gave me the skills to do the job I do now, but also the kind of story and aesthetic that we make on this American life, it's built around a kind of intimacy in the way the interviews happen and the kind of connection I make with the people and the other reporters and producers make with the people on the air. And I think only a person who had trouble connecting to people in their actual life

would go to the trouble to invent that format. You know, like the fact that that, I ended up making that is a direct result of the fact that it was always so hard for me. And the fact that the connection, you know, means something to me, that I feel something from it, that I get something from it, that I have a hard time sometimes getting from other people in real life, or used to anyway. Yeah, like that's a big part of where the show comes from. That's what I was going to ask.

Has it gotten better in your actual life? Oh, much better. You can say things to people. You can create a two-way street. Oh, yeah, yeah, like all the time. Yeah, like that's something I consciously tried to fix and I feel like I really did fix. But again, like, you never completely fix something about yourself.

You always have to remind yourself sometimes to, like, go back to where you are. But no, like I'm very close to lots of people. You have friends, Ira Glass is basically what I'm asking. When I have time to see them, yes. Yeah, yeah, lots of people I love. In our final round, Ira talks about what pushes him to keep doing good work.

That's coming up after the break. Three new cards. They're red now, the cards. Could you work your mic a little closer? Can I do what? Can you work your mic a little closer? Like this? Just a little closer than you were.

Okay. He's producing me. That's fine. I mean, if you're going to have a guest produce your show, you want it to be you. Okay. One, two, or three. Okay, I could pick a card,

but would you prefer to pick the one that you wouldn't have to most ask? Let's do both. pick a card and then I'll pick another card. Great. I'll pick number two. Okay. Do you think about the legacy that you will leave behind? No, I do not. Yeah. I think that's bullshit. I don't care at all about that.

Fuck legacy. Fuck people of the future. Fuck, fuck people who will be alive. After all of us are dead, fuck the people who will be alive. Having lunch and seeing movies. Fuck them. I hate them. I'm not making a radio show for that.

I'm making a show for people who hear it now. And when it's done and we don't make it anymore, it's perfectly fine for it to vanish into the midst of time. Like, everything will. And it's fine if that happens very quickly. It doesn't matter. That's not what this show is for. I love that answer.

And people who feel other eyes, I think they're really small. Fuck up. Yeah. I asked Nikki Giovanni that question, poet, acclaimed, awesome woman. And she basically said the same thing. And she told me that she is often engaged with people who think a lot about their legacy. And they actually plan the stamps that America is going to make with their visage on them. And she was like, screw them.

That's sad. It's so sad if that's how you, like, it's just a sad person. That's pathetic. Unless you're like President Obama. You know what I mean? Like, unless you're an actual historic figure. They're like, that's inappropriate for him to think about his legacy. But he's fucking the first black president in the United States.

He should think about that. You know, sometimes we talk about like retiring cards when someone's given the perfect answer. And I think this one just went by bye. I'm going to ask one. How often do you think about dying? I think about it all the time. Yeah. Yeah, and always have since I was seven when my Uncle Lenny went to Vietnam.

And I was really upset about that. and he finally he did not die in Vietnam he just died this last year and no don't be sorry he survived Vietnam and had kids and grandkids but like I was very scared that he was going to die

and then I was very certain that since the Vietnam War had been going on my entire life that I also would be sent to Vietnam and I was certain since I was kind of a pudgy unathletic kid who hated sports that watching

Vietnam on TV seemed like a lot of running and a lot of things I was really bad at and I was certain I was going to be really bad at Vietnam and I was certain that I was going to be one of the people who died and so I would try to picture that at night and I would lie in bed as a little kid and try to picture what it means for the whole universe to go on forever without me in it. And I got pretty good at that. And so I've always carried that with me. And is that unsettling? Thinking about the universe without you?

Of course it's unsettling. Yeah. It's non-existence. I don't even like going to sleep. Like, I don't even like, like, no, it's true. I don't like going to sleep because I don't like the idea of being unconscious. To me, it's just like, it's just, I can't believe it's the system. Like, I really, like, that's really our system is that we just have to be

unconscious for like five or six or eight hours every day. Like we literally would just like we will be dead for like, we would not exist for like that's, we would stop existing the most basic thing. But this seems to be a contrary answer to your other notion about legacy. Like isn't it entwined? Like you just don't exist anymore. You're just gone.

I know, but I like existing. Yeah. Yeah. I get it. Okay. These are the last three cards. You better get it right, otherwise you don't win the prize. I would be so excited if I would be your first guest who didn't win the prize.

And since we only have very little time left, maybe I won't win the prize. I want you to win. Okay. One, two, or three? Three. Three. Okay. Oh, interesting.

I feel like you're not going to like this question, but I'm going to ask it anyway, because it is what showed up. Don't make fun of it. Okay. What truth guides your life more than any other? Be real. I mean, the actual truth is a little embarrassing to say, which is why I'm pausing and closing my eyes. But now I'll open them.

And that is that I've never thought about it this way and I've never put it to myself this way and I've never had this thought before, but I think it's true is that I feel like I'm in a, I feel like I'm trying to, I'm trying to, I'm like it's,

I don't know the best way to put this, but it's like I'm trying to be like a good boy. Like I'm trying to be like, I'm just trying to show like I really am trying my hardest all the time to those around me. And I am generally kind of trying my hardest all the time. But this is like,

I worry about saying that. It's like somebody in a job interview saying, you know, the problem with me is like, I just try too hard. I can't stop a task. So, but I think that, but there's a real like, I'm given a simple thing

to do and then I make it way more complicated and spend a lot more time on it than I probably should. Or there's some like thing in a mix that four other people have heard and it's Friday, and this isn't not, this is actually an example. from real life. And then I just hear it and I'm just to be like we have to put three-fourths of a second pause here and four-tenths of a second pause there to make this last moment work,

which I would like to believe makes it better. And I don't know. Like there's just like, I feel like I'm always being a good soldier in appropriate and inappropriate situations, in personal situations where it's intrusive and not called for and in work situations where I work with super competent, the very best other jobs in the world, people who very much don't need my help sometimes. And so it's a quality that is both good and bad. It's just like wanting to just like, no, I want to do it better.

I'm going to do it better. I'm going to show you how good I am, but not good like you'll be impressed, but just you'll think like, oh, look, you were good, like with a dog, like, good boy. Like, you really tried, good boy. That's why you're so tired at 9 o'clock. Like, honestly, that sounds exhausting.

You know what I mean? Trying so hard. Yeah. Yeah, can be. You won the game. Wait, but there's more. There's a prize. Do you know what it is?

I do know what it is. The prize in every show is that you tell people you get to go back to one memory from whenever. Or whenever. And you get to be in it and share it and talk it through in detail. And so since I've heard the show, knowing that I was going to be here, I did try to think about what I would say. And the memory I have is... I didn't make the sound effect. So the prize is a trip in our memory time machine where you go back, you pick a memory, you get to relive it.

It's not a memory you want to change. change anything about you just want to linger there a little longer. Doodleoo, doodoo, doodoo, dolelele. Does that help you get in the... It does, yes. That actually is like, it's actually, I thumbs up to that. Okay. What moment do you choose?

I actually had a moment a couple months ago when I was looking at old photos from when I was 12 and 13 of my bar mitzvah. And there were pictures taken. in that my parents' house or my house of just like all my relatives from that time. And I remember thinking it was like watching a TV show with the original cast in it. Do you know what I mean? Like there were shows like where they changed the cast so for many seasons and like like all the different Star Trek franchises, right?

But it was like, oh my God, it's like the original cast. It's like William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. It's like the original. Like when they swap out BJ Honeycut, and you're like, I know, that's not that guy anymore. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I remember, like, and I just like looking at the pictures, like, oh, my God, it's like my grandma Malia and my grandfather and my parents and all these people who are, everybody's dead. And like my, you know, my aunt Hortense and my uncle Max arguing with my uncle Lenny about politics.

And just like, and there's a point during the bar mitz room, I did my magic act for all my relatives and they pretended to be pleased. and like and there's pictures of me like holding up the props for the magic act and all of them standing around looking bemused and not as enchanted as I thought at the time I think and and and and I would want to go back to that or like a dinner that the family would go out to this restaurant called the Pimico Hotel that was this like Baltimore institution

and just like just to observe that again just to like I mean, that's it. There's no plot to this particular narrative, but just the thought of like re-immersing with the original cast and seeing them in their complexity. It has been such a pleasure. Thank you for doing this.

Thank you guys for having us. Ira Glass. Thanks so much. I enjoyed it. As you may have noticed, we stopped calling the memory time machine a prize. Soon after this taping, by the way. I'm not going to say that's entirely because of Ira. but he might have played a little role.

This episode was produced by Lee Hale and Ramelewood and edited by Dave Blanchard. It was mastered by Gilly Moon. Special thanks to Seth Lind and everyone at podcast movement for their help. Wildcard's executive producer is Beth Donovan. Our theme music is by Romteen Arablee. You can reach out to us at Wildcard at npr.org. We'll shuffle the deck and be back with more next week.

See you then.