OK Glass
by Scott Hardie on September 18, 2014
Last weekend, Kelly and I drove up to St. Petersburg with friends to see Ira Glass present a one-man stage show explaining how he makes This American Life on the radio. I had no prior familiarity with his work, having not heard the radio show unlike the fans that I went with, but I think it's long past time that I started listening to the celebrated series online.
Glass talked about how he studied semiotics in college, and that made a lot of sense: He approaches the radio show not like a journalist, but like a storyteller, using structure rather than content to build the audience's interest. He broke down some of his most famous episodes and explained how he organized them to build mysteries in the mind of the listener and establish universal connections to the people in the tale. I'm absolutely going to start applying his lessons to my own storytelling.
The stage show was frequently funny -- Glass has the skills to be a comedian, if not the psychopathology -- but for the cost of the tickets, I guess I expected more. It was over so soon, after Glass explained maybe four aspects about how his show works, and there was no visual element to the show other than Glass just walking around the stage, gesturing as he talked. The radio show has zero visual component, so I thought maybe the stage show would project images onto a screen or bring out some props or something to differentiate it. The stage show did include several requests to donate to the local NPR member station, so it was like the radio in that sense.
Even though stage show itself was not very good despite some laughs, I'll be glad that I went if it gets me listening to the backlog of This American Life online and gets me to approach storytelling in a new way.
Logical Operator
The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »
Veterans
Thank you. You deserve to hear those two words much more than you do. You may not agree with my vote last week, but I'm grateful for the sacrifices you made that let me cast it. Go »Survivor Guilty
As a longtime Survivor viewer, I've been bothered by its slow decline. Some of the show's problems are apparent on its surface, like Jeff Probst's appalling gender bias and the show's overemphasis on tacky "themes" for the season. But I got to thinking about what's wrong under the surface, on a conceptual level. Go »Emails!
Does the Internet baffle you? Try Gabe & Max's Internet Thing. Thanks, Marlon. Go »Maybe It's Warwick Davis
(link) Go »Summer of Suck
It's been a tough summer so far. Here's venting. - Some good people were laid off in my department. Go »
