Ira Glass

Ira Glass is quite enjoyable to listen to primarily because he follows his own advice of being a conversationalist when you’re telling a story. I never once had to rewind or twist my face in confusion because he spoke in a colloquial way. He didn’t shy away from words like “crap” which is a little odd coming from a professional. “You’re on a train that has a destination,” he says when trying to describe an anecdote. That quote stuck out because it just made sense to me. The other part of a story besides the anecdote is the moment of reflection which as he puts it, tells the person, “here’s why the hell you’re listening to this story.” I also liked when he was talking about how telling a story is merely telling a sequence events and he used an example of a man waking up in an eerily quiet house- it was suspenseful yet so simple because all it was was just action and I feel he really proved his point.
I knew firsthand what he was talking about when he said sometimes finding a story idea can take longer than producing the story. Last semester I took a photojournalism class and that was exactly my problem. Once you know what you’re looking to portray, it’s pretty easy but finding the subject matter is the thing that can have you panicking and frustrated. For some assignments I would be searching for the perfect story for three or four days, once I thought of it, it would take me only a half hour to shoot it. Glass was also inspiring; he made storytelling sound like a learning process, where it’s not something you have or don’t have, but rather that you can acquire the skill through hard work and perseverance.