Teachings of Ira Glass

Ira Glass is an award-winning public radio host, most known for his work in This American Life and Morning Edition, All Things Considered. For this unit, I watched his 4-part YouTube series, “Ira Glass on Storytelling“, and here are the main points he made.

The Anecdote and the Reflection

In the first part of his series, Ira Glass explains the 2 Building Blocks in broadcasting, which differs from other forms of storytelling.

• The Anecdote
  • This refers to the basic sequence of events that the story consists of. The sequence could be made of actions, surprises, thoughts, and basically anything else that can be told in sequence to recount a story. The anecdote is important for drawing in the audience, setting up points of interest that may raise questions that the listeners will expect to be answered by the end.
• The Reflection
  • This is where the story is given its meaning. To quote Ira Glass, “here’s why the hell you’re listening to this story.” The reflection ties up the story into a neat bow, exhibiting why this story is being broadcasted and what importance it has in the bigger picture.

Ira Glass emphasized that both parts are important to developing an interesting and effective story that people will want to listen to, and that one cannot go without the other.

Finding a Good Story

This is the second part in the series, where Ira Glass explains how finding the right story takes almost as long as actually developing the story. He goes on about how you have to be “ruthless” when producing a story, and that sometimes you have to scrap stories that aren’t working the way they should. This could be for multiple reasons, such as the guest not having the right speaking voice, there not being a good chemistry between the host and the guest, and so on. Ira Glass emphasizes how sometimes you have to throw away a bad story in order for your good story to be properly made.

The Beginner’s 2 Common Pitfalls

Here, Ira Glass explains the common mistakes beginner broadcasters make when on the radio. His first is an observation of how beginners tend to try and imitate what they see on TV. This is usually in terms of voice, as they will try to talk in a way they see other broadcasters speak. The reason this is ineffective is because, as Ira Glass explains, your authentic voice is the only one that will make your show interesting. Audiences like to hear the host’s real voice over any imitations of other people. The second pitfall is what Ira Glass describes as having “a horrible personality.” The audience needs to like you, and you need to have a balance between talking tastefully about yourself and letting the guest speak as well. There needs to be that balance in order for the show to seem as an authentic and interesting dialogue.

Radio in Practice – Orson Wells

In addition to learning from Ira Glass, I listened to the “War of the Worlds” 1938 Radio Broadcast, in which the novel by the same name was read over radio in a way so convincing that many people believed the broadcast to be discussing real events. While listening to this, I noticed various techniques in the sound used to elevate the story being told. First of all, the dramatic music at the beginning sets the mood for the rest of the story. There are many points where sound is layered to imitate the environment in which the events of the story are taking place, with examples being applauses, background music, ticking clocks, and so on. I also like how there is a radio within the radio broadcast, being the radio within the story. This is probably what convinced certain people that this broadcast was giving genuine news updates.

What I Learned

There are many components to making a good audio story. It’s important to make sure the choices you make are deliberately working towards a coherent and interesting story, such as pacing, layering, reflection and personability. While audio storytelling is no easy feat, the gratification of having developed a story of quality is worth the effort.