This American Life

2016/06 #589 Tell Me I'm Fat [This American Life] 2004/02 #259 "Promised Land" David Rakoff a 20-day fast, if it would bring him any enlightenment. David died in 2012, eight years after reporting this story. [This American Life] 2015/01 The 8 Best ‘This American Life’ Episodes Of All Time. In its nearly 20 years, ‘This American Life’ has regaled us with hundreds of hours of remarkable reporting, essays, and memoirs, led, of course, by Ira Glass’ one-in-a-million delivery.

Here are the best episodes to date! 1. “The Long-Haired Boys”—In this classic 2008 episode, producer Robyn Semien travels across the U.S. interviewing men who had long hair when they were boys. Listeners find out if the men still have long hair as men, and whether they would consider letting their son have long hair. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. [Book] Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio. Ira Glass, the Host of This American Life, Breaks Down the Fine Art of Storytelling. Since 1995, Ira Glass has hosted and produced This American Life (iTunes – Feed – Web Site), the award-winning radio show that presents masterfully-crafted stories to almost 2 million listeners each week.

What’s the secret sauce that goes into making a great story, particularly one primed for radio or TV? Glass spells it out in four parts. Watch them all above. Follow Open Culture on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus, and Flipboard and share intelligent media with your friends. Or better yet, sign up for our daily email and get a daily dose of Open Culture in your inbox. If you’d like to help support Open Culture, please sign up for a 30-day free trial from Audible.com or The Great Courses Plus. Related Content: 2016/05 [guardian] Ira Glass: 'I feel like I’m actually sort of scared all the time' Ira Glass is speaking to me ahead of the final four performances of Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host, the most bizarre live show a radio host has ever put together.

“There’s an old Onion headline which my wife and I like: Ironic Porn Purchase Leads To Unironic Ejaculation,” he says. “That’s very much what this is.” Glass is the voice and brains behind This American Life, the blockbuster radio show and podcast usually delivered in three acts, which reaches more than four million listeners each week. In his 90-minute live show, he accompanies some of those stories with personal anecdotes and back-up dancers. “Radio stories and dance: two things that really have no business being combined at all,” he jokes at the show’s start. It’s an exceedingly strange concept, but somehow, it works – due not just to Glass’s charisma and star power, but the talent and charm of the dancers: Monica Bill Barnes and Anna Bass are raw, funny and expressive, all elbows and eyebrows and understated grace.

2015/09 [Longform] #159: Ira Glass. 2014/07 [LifeHacker] I'm Ira Glass, Host of This American Life, and This Is How I Work. 2012/02 [] Ira Glass on the Secret of Success in Creative Work, Animated in Kinetic Typography. By Maria Popova This American Life host and producer Ira Glass is among our era’s most beloved storytellers.

In this wonderful short motion graphics piece, filmmaker David Shiyang Liu has captured Glass’s now-legendary interview on the art of storytelling in beautifully minimalist and elegant kinetic typography. The gist of Glass’s message for beginners — that grit is what separates mere good taste from great work, and that the only way to bridge the gap between ability and ambition is to actually do the work — is one that rings true for just about every creative discipline, and something I can certainly speak to in my own experience.

The most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work. Look for more of Glass’s singular lens on storytelling in The New Kings of Nonfiction, his fantastically curated anthology of essays by some of today’s finest nonfiction storytellers, the introduction to which alone is an absolute literary masterpiece. via Coudal. 2005/12 [NPR] Ira Glass: 10 Years of 'This Life'