Ira Glass

Known for creating, producing, and hosting iconic weekly public radio show This American Life, Ira Glass is coming to MBT to share the things he’s learned over decades of being a storyteller with Seven Things I’ve Learned.  

Over 5 million listeners across the world tune into This American Life. Glass began his career as an intern at National Public Radio’s network headquarters in 1978 when he was 19 years old. He put This American Life on the air in 1995 and has served as an editor for the groundbreaking podcasts Serial, S-Town, and Nice White Parents. Under Glass’ editorial direction, This American Life has won the highest honors for broadcasting and journalistic excellence, including seven Peabody awards and the first Pulitzer Prize ever awarded for audio journalism. In 2021 This American Life episode ‘The Giant Pool of Money’ was inducted into the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry, the first podcast ever to receive this honor.

Using audio clips, music, and video, Glass delivers unique behind the scenes observations sharing lessons from his life and career in storytelling: What inspires him to create? What drives his passion? How have failures and successes informed his decisions? During the evening, Glass will mix stories live onstage and help the audience follow his creative process.

Glass reflects on the creative process, saying “it’s hard to make something that’s interesting. It’s really, really hard. It’s like a law of nature, a law of aerodynamics, that anything that’s written or anything that’s created wants to be mediocre. The natural state of all writing is mediocrity… So what it takes to make anything more than mediocre is such an act of will.”