Ira Glass
Ira Glass (born March 3, 1959) is a public radio personality, best known as host and producer of the radio show This American Life. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, he is the son of radio announcer/accountant Barry Glass and psychologist/infidelity researcher Shirley Glass. He married Chicago editor Anaheed Alani in August, 2005. He is a second cousin to the composer Philip Glass. He attended Brown University, where he majored in semiotics.
Glass has worked in public radio for over 20 years. He started out as an intern at National Public Radio. He was a reporter and host on several NPR programs, including Morning Edition and All Things Considered.
Since 1994 he has hosted and produced This American Life, from WBEZ. The show became nationally syndicated in June 1996 and is distributed by Public Radio International. It reaches over 1.6 million listeners weekly.
On November 17, 2005, This American Life celebrated its 10th anniversary. The following week, as a special show celebrating the anniversary, the first episode (entitled "New Beginnings") was re-broadcast. Until the re-broadcast aired, the first episode was never heard outside of Chicago. When the first episode was broadcast in 1995, the show was known as Your Radio Playhouse. That first episode includes interviews with talk-show host Joe Franklin and Ira's mother (Shirley Glass), as well as stories by Kevin Kelly (founding editor of Wired magazine), filmmaker/performace artist Lawrence Steger, and more.
External links
- Ira Glass at the Steven Barclay Agency
- Ira Glass Transom.org Manifesto
- Ira Glass: Live and Uncut - Mother Jones interview. August 11, 1998
- Ira Under Glass - Savvy Traveler audio interview. September 12, 1998
- This American Life Forum - An Unofficial site where you can discuss This American Life and Ira Glass.
- Talk of the Nation: An Interview with Ira Glass - Audio interview with Ira Glass from December 22, 2005
- David Mamet, "Radio host: Ira Glass", CNN, 2001
- The Onion A/V Club's interview with Ira Glass, November 5th, 2003