MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Every week, a well-known guest draws a card from our Wild Card deck and answers a big question about their life. This week's guest is a legend in the world of radio. Ira Glass has been hosting "This American Life" for nearly 30 years. He spoke to Wild Card host Rachel Martin in front of a live audience at the Podcast Movement conference this summer. Here's Rachel.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
RACHEL MARTIN: One, two or three?
IRA GLASS: Three.
MARTIN: Three - what is something you think people misunderstand about you?
GLASS: I don't think people misunderstand me.
(LAUGHTER)
GLASS: Like, I don't know. Oh, I know what I think people misunderstand.
MARTIN: OK.
GLASS: I think I play a much nicer, more empathetic person on the radio than I am in real life.
(LAUGHTER)
MARTIN: That's what I was looking for. And I also don't believe it. I also don't believe it. You're not a nice, empathetic person?
GLASS: To a point, to the point where I could play it on the radio.
MARTIN: But do you get in interactions with people who don't know you, who project things on you, and then it feels sad to be your actual self? I mean, there's, like, public Ira Glass, and then, like, normal Ira Glass. How far apart are the two?
GLASS: I contain that sort of empathetic, people-pleasing person who I'm playing on the radio. That's most of who I am. But I'm a person under weekly deadlines, and I get freaked out and tired and irritable and don't want to talk to people and get annoyed. And I curse a lot in real life, and I really love cursing.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
GLASS: So, like, I am that person, but I'm more than that person. I remember there was a thing that happened in the very early days of our radio show where - I'm going to hesitate telling this story 'cause it's a little bit like - a little, like, I don't know - a little self-something, congratulatory or something.
MARTIN: That's OK.
GLASS: But the very first live show we did - or one of the first live shows we did was at town hall in New York City. And the New York Observer - this is like, we'd only been there for a couple of years. And the New York Observer wrote an article coming to the show, and the article was just about - there were a lot of women who had crushes on me over the radio. And they did an article about this in the New York Observer.
And they interviewed my senior producer at the time, Julie Snyder. And Julie said this thing about the fact that that was happening. She said - at the time, our staff was me and three women. She said, you know, look, I love my husband, but I'd love him a lot more if every word he said was edited by three women.
(LAUGHTER)
GLASS: That would be the difference between...
MARTIN: (Laughter).
GLASS: ...The public version and the private version.
MARTIN: That's pretty good.
KELLY: That is Ira Glass talking to Wild Card's Rachel Martin. Do hear Ira talk about "This American Life" being born out of his trouble connecting with people in real life, you can follow the Wild Card podcast. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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