heart of glass

Because I’m such a nerd, I give money to public radio. Making a recent donation scored me the nerdliest of rewards: tickets to see “This American Life” host Ira Glass at Atlanta’s Symphony Hall last night.
It was a geeky delight.
Glass, seated behind a desk on stage, played sound clips from the show and pontificated on the curious art of broadcast for an hour and a half. Though the content of his lecture touched on some behind-the-scenes aspects of putting the show together (how do they settle upon a theme, are pieces solicited or assigned), he was more interested in talking about bigger ideas such as storytelling philosophy and the constraints of a visual versus aural medium. It felt almost like a lecture in a journalism class—in a good way.
Glass ventured into a lengthy diatribe against the false gravitas that most TV and radio journalists bring to their stories; he called the fake-sounding broadcasting accent an “aesthetic mistake” that ends up stripping most stories of their relevance, and of their joy.
He also talked about how he’d realized well into his career that he structured all the segments on “This American Life” in essentially the same way: anecdote, anecdote, anecdote, reflection. He later realized that this is the basic structure of a sermon. He’d been working his entire adult life on this thing that was immediately obvious to anyone who’d ever sat through a worthwhile Sunday morning religious service.

What’s funny is that the recent New Yorker review of the new “This American Life” series on Showtime slams Glass for that very structure. I was disappointed, but also intrigued, to read Nancy Franklin’s dismissal of the program because, as she puts it “meaning is being forced into it.” God forbid.
She goes on to rail against Glass’s unusual voice (not exactly a hard target) and then, in the unkindest cut, says, “Glass hasn’t done anything really new here—unless you count the gimmick of having him speak while sitting at a desk that’s placed somewhere out of doors.”

I couldn’t disagree with her more. The Showtime series is, in my opinion, one of the most fresh and moving arrivals on television in a mighty long time. The BF and I became instant devotees and have seen all but one of the episodes, which have been visually thrilling so far and with more of the same oddball but oh-so-familiar human stories that make the radio program sing.

As expected, the audience at Symphony Hall last night erupted in applause when Glass announced that Showtime wants to do a second season. Curiously enough, he says he and his staff aren’t convinced they want one. He spoke of the TV show as a distraction from the radio program, and pointed out that public radio gets a heckuva lot larger audience than cable TV, which surprised me.

If you’re not watching the Showtime series, here’s a taste of what you’re missing.