Episode 117 - Ira Glass
Guest:Lock the gates!
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Really?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Pow!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:And it's also... Eh, what the fuck?
Guest:What's wrong with me?
Guest:It's time for WTF!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:With Mark Maron.
Guest:What the fuck?
Marc:Okay, let's do this, what the fuckers, what the fuck buddies, what the fuckineers, what the fuck nicks.
Marc:This is Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF, the podcast that you've grown to enjoy.
Marc:I'm walking down the streets of New York City right now.
Marc:Have not been to New York City.
Marc:Well, in a few months, but it is a beautiful fall day.
Marc:There is nothing better than a fall day in New York City.
Marc:You know, people are out.
Marc:They're not all exhausted and sweaty from the humidity.
Marc:They're dressed comfortably, but you can just tell that they're filled with a vitality.
Marc:That has eluded them for the entire summer because it was drained out of them because of the relentless humidity.
Marc:I haven't been here, but man, it is great.
Marc:New York City is just like, I don't know how to explain it, but just walking down the street, I'm down here by, I don't know, where I used to live years ago, around 23rd Street and 3rd Avenue.
Marc:Just walking down the street, I saw a guy hawk something up and spit it onto the street.
Marc:It was an amazing moment, and no one noticed it.
Marc:It was just one of those beautiful moments of humanity where this dude was just lumbering down the street and just...
Marc:in something I don't know you just don't see it every day in mixed company and then there was the parade of methadone addicts which I didn't even think existed anymore oh shit there's a Dunkin Donuts Dunkin Donuts coffee I don't know what is in that but fuck
Marc:No, I'm not going to have any.
Marc:Yeah, the parade of methadone addicts.
Marc:And then, like, there's just one after the other.
Marc:Just emaciated, well-dressed women smoking cigarettes and moving very quickly.
Marc:I love this city.
Marc:I don't know if those are three examples of why you would love New York City, but there's a lady in gym pants with her dog who has, oh, Christ, a ribbon in its hair.
Marc:Look, I am heading over to... That guy looks exhausted.
Marc:there's just so many people you're just a part of one big organism here i love it i love it i love being back here so i'm heading over how you doing man see even i can walk down the street talking to myself into a microphone and not get very much attention if i'm getting any attention it's like what the hell is that guy up to does he want to talk to me no i don't
Marc:I'm heading over to Ira Glass.
Marc:I'm heading over to his office, to his studio and office.
Marc:You know Ira Glass from This American Life.
Marc:Obviously, many of you know him.
Marc:He is a defining voice in public radio.
Marc:I reached out.
Marc:He said, sure.
Marc:We're going to do this.
Marc:Now, I like Ira.
Marc:You know, I enjoy listening to This American Life.
Marc:I enjoy knowing what's going to happen.
Marc:Knowing that, like, there's Ira.
Marc:There's his forceful yet precious tone.
Marc:His curiosity and...
Marc:You know, there's also something that just seems so perfect and fragile and smart about this American life that sometimes I resent it, although I know when I'm listening to it, as much as I find it slightly annoying how precious and smart and efficient it is that I will be squirting out tears out of my face.
Marc:I have a tremendous amount of respect for the guy.
Marc:I don't know much about him.
Marc:But I've decided that we're both in the same racket.
Marc:We're both microphone guys.
Marc:And we're both Jews.
Marc:And I think he's a different sort of Jew than me.
Marc:I'd like to hear him say fuck.
Marc:I don't know if he will.
Marc:That's obviously not going to be the thrust of the interview.
Marc:But I'd love it if I were told some sex stories.
Marc:But I don't know that that's going to happen.
Marc:He's a respectable guy.
Marc:See, that's what I think I keep coming around to.
Marc:Oh, shit, I just missed a street because I'm talking to you guys.
Marc:Jesus.
Marc:Is that I feel crass.
Marc:I feel slightly lowbrow all over the place.
Marc:Raw nerve energy with just a peppering of anger and filthiness.
Marc:And I think Ira is like, he is higher than the rest of us somehow.
Marc:He's a better man, a bigger man, a smarter man, a man in control of his game.
Marc:So I don't know what's going to happen.
Marc:But I think it's a meeting of two distinctly different types of, I'm going to say aggressive Jew radio personalities.
Marc:Because I think he's obviously aggressive in his own way.
Marc:It's just so much easier on the spirit than my particular form of expression.
Marc:But I am nervous.
Marc:I'm a little nervous because I'm going to his studio, which means his mics are going to be there.
Marc:I don't know if he was thinking that we would record on his equipment, but that's not going to happen.
Marc:I brought my rig.
Marc:I'm talking in it right now.
Marc:I'm going to try not to let him sit in his chair because being a radio guy, you get in your chair, you get behind your mic.
Marc:All of a sudden, it's your show.
Marc:This is my show.
Marc:What?
Marc:What?
Marc:This is my show, comes in a bag.
Marc:It's got a mic, two mics.
Marc:So that's how we're gonna go at it.
Marc:Hey buddy, you do shaves?
Marc:You do?
Marc:Okay, all right, thanks, thanks.
Marc:Maybe I'll come back.
Marc:I like getting shaves.
Marc:There's so many restaurants here.
Marc:And all of them have people in it.
Marc:I used to eat at that place.
Marc:South Indian vegetarian kosher restaurant.
Marc:Madras Mahal used to eat the buffet there.
Marc:Where else would you see that?
Marc:South Indian vegetarian kosher restaurant.
Marc:That is unbelievable.
Marc:Look, there's people eating right now.
Marc:It's not dinner time.
Marc:You know what?
Marc:I miss New York, but I wouldn't want to live here because I'm drained just walking down the street.
Marc:There's another one of those well-dressed, emaciated women moving quickly, smoking a cigarette.
Marc:Beautiful people here.
Marc:It's a very sexual city.
Marc:Anyways, I wonder what Ira thinks of that.
Marc:I can ask Ira about that.
Marc:Had two slices of pizza today.
Marc:I had to eat them at Bella Napoli up on 49th Street.
Marc:I like that place.
Marc:They do a grandma's slice, it's called.
Marc:It's a thin crust Sicilian.
Marc:Look, I'm not going to start with the food.
Marc:I'll turn this back on when I get to Ira's.
Music
Guest:Sign in.
Guest:It's Ira, right?
Guest:That's Ira, right?
Guest:American Life.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, American Life.
Guest:You listen to that show?
Guest:American Mike?
Guest:No, I don't even know what station there is.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Hey, uh, NPR.
Guest:So it'd be WNYC.
Guest:It's a very good show.
Guest:I think that if you, uh, if you told Ira your story, he would put you on the radio.
Guest:Where are you from?
Guest:You mean originally?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Guyana.
Guest:It sounds like it's American Life Story already.
Guest:Do you have a family still there?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It sounds like something could happen.
Guest:You'll do the rest?
Guest:Thank you very much.
Guest:I'm telling you to be on the show.
Guest:Guyana.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:This is, um, I don't know.
Guest:It's not what I expected.
Guest:Oh, it's old style.
Guest:Oh, boy.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:This is a whole operation here.
Marc:Hi.
Marc:Hi, I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:Yeah, I'm going to interview Ira Glass.
Marc:I hope so.
Marc:Yeah, that's him.
Marc:I can recognize him.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Hello.
Marc:Yes, sir.
Marc:Hi, Ira.
Guest:Nice to meet you.
Guest:Nice to meet you.
Guest:Oh, you look different than your illustration on your podcast.
Marc:Yeah, I'm not.
Marc:I'm the different.
Marc:Yeah, I've done something different.
Marc:I'm trying to look like you.
Guest:And now I'm going in the opposite direction.
Marc:Oh, so we're going there.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So you're going to cut loose and I'm going to tighten up.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:What's going on?
Marc:Are we going to do this?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But let me hand this out to him.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I'll just do one.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:All right.
Guest:You can come back to our living room.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Hi.
Marc:I have coffee.
Guest:All right.
Marc:This is amazing.
Marc:Everybody who works here looks exactly like I thought they would.
Okay.
Marc:I don't know either.
Marc:I'm gonna leave that open.
Marc:Okay, yeah, so you got your tea.
Marc:I've got my coffee.
Guest:Okay, so this is the studio that we do the show out of, and it is always a disappointment I'm opening the door.
Guest:This is it?
Guest:Yeah, this is it.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:It's tiny, right?
Guest:Where's your chair?
Guest:Well, normally I sit there because I'm letting the board.
Guest:You can't sit there today.
Guest:All right, so you'll sit there.
Marc:Yeah, here's what we're going to do.
Marc:I know you've got a board, and we could do it on your equipment, but I decided that we have to break ritual.
Marc:I don't want to spill that on the keyboard.
Marc:Have you ever done that?
Guest:No.
No.
Guest:Back when we were in Chicago, we had this huge, huge, beautiful studio at WBEZ, but when we moved here, we tried to just build something fast and cheap.
Guest:And this is what you got?
Guest:Yeah, and it's not even really soundproof, and the architect blames the construction guys, and the construction guys blame the architect, and we never got to the bottom of it.
Marc:Look at this, this is American life.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:This is the whole thing.
Marc:Well, I mean, you know, it's...
Marc:Except for the bureau in Israel and the bureau in West Pennsylvania.
Guest:Yeah, so there's a little mixing console with six inputs and then a couple of CD players, a couple of phoner units, an ISDN line.
Marc:So we're about, I think you're a little older than me, right?
Marc:How old are you?
Marc:51.
Marc:I'm going to be 47, so not that much difference.
Guest:Under the rule of Birbiglia's wife, that means that you'll treat me well in this interview because she says that in your podcast, you suck up to anybody who's older and you're mean to anybody who's younger.
Guest:Your wife says that about me?
Guest:No, Birbiglia's wife says that.
Guest:Mike Birbiglia's wife says that about you.
Guest:She says that's the rule of the Marc Maron podcast.
Guest:She's like, you're totally safe because you're older than Marc Maron.
Guest:Somebody has rules.
Marc:Somebody has created rules that there's some rule to my podcast.
Guest:Well, that's like saying it's not a rule.
Guest:She's more of an anthropologist who observed this in the field through observation.
Uh-huh.
Marc:Well, look, I obviously am going to be pleasant.
Marc:I'm not this is not an investigative piece, but I think that there's some things I need to know because I feel like we're both microphone talkers.
Marc:OK.
Marc:And and that I've I've listened to your show and I know what's going to happen.
Marc:You know, even if you see the thing that that I don't know about you is where do you come from?
Guest:OK.
Marc:And and like, let's say let's go like 12 years old.
Marc:We bar mitzvah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And where?
Guest:Baltimore.
Guest:I'm from suburban Baltimore.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And you come from a large Jewish family?
Guest:No, I have an older sister and a younger sister.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:And then not a lot of cousins, not a lot of, it's a pretty small family, actually.
Marc:But your father's cousin is Philip Glass, is that true?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, so that means you're at the family gatherings and there's Philip Glass.
Guest:No, I've never seen him once at any family holiday, wedding, funeral, nothing.
Guest:Never?
Guest:I've never.
Guest:In fact, I didn't really know Philip until five or six years ago.
Guest:Really?
Marc:See, I had pictured this thing, because when I read that, I was like, oh my God, they have these family gatherings, and Philip Glass, everyone gathers around his new composition, and they go, we don't understand it, but we think he's a genius, and that didn't happen.
Guest:No.
Guest:I mean, there was like, no, no, no.
Guest:There was a divorce in their generation, and so people sort of grew up, I think, pretty far from each other.
Guest:Philip is Philip is definitely really close with his siblings and sees them a lot and I think that they might have that experience that you're describing but not you but not but not us so now in let's say you're 15 years old 16 years old you've got a car yeah what would we be listening to if we're driving in your car
Guest:Well, in the mornings in Baltimore, in the Plymouth satellite that I was driving, the yellow Plymouth satellite that used to be Grandma Frida's, but that I ended up with, I would be listening to, in the mornings it would be Johnny Walker, who was this sort of early proto-shock jock, who I got my first job in radio when I was in high school, writing jokes for him.
Guest:Really?
Guest:My first job was writing jokes.
Marc:That's interesting because I just did an interview with Judd Apatow who also started his obsession with comedy very young at 16.
Marc:So when you were in the car, what kind of music were you listening to?
Guest:I mean, truthfully, music wasn't a big part of my life.
Guest:I mean, I listened to whatever was on the radio.
Guest:I mean, I remember actually when I was a kid, Mark Nasdor...
Guest:my best friend from across the street at one point tried to engage me in a debate over who was better, the Beatles or the Monkees.
Guest:And I remember thinking like, wait, I'm supposed to have an opinion on this?
Guest:Like, I really wasn't.
Guest:Well, that one you should definitely have had an opinion on.
Guest:But I just, I was not inside the world of music in that way.
Guest:I wasn't cool.
Guest:Like when I was in my, when I was in junior high school, I did magic tricks.
Guest:I did children's parties.
Guest:I made animal balloons.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, in fact, I just started doing animal balloons again on stage because I did it once, and people were so blown away that I could make animal balloons.
Guest:Can you do it fast?
Guest:Yeah, I could totally do it fast.
Guest:Can you make Swan Hat?
Guest:I could, yeah.
Guest:I'm not so into the Swan Hat.
Marc:But which ones are your favorites?
Guest:I mean, I can make a very credible Snoopy.
Guest:Really?
Guest:That really looks like Snoopy.
Guest:I can do an elephant.
Guest:I can do a poodle.
Guest:I can do a little mouse.
Guest:I can do lovebirds.
Guest:I probably could do more if I thought about it, but those are the ones I remember.
Guest:What's your version of the Swan Hat?
Guest:The swan shape, the neck of the swan, I always found kind of problematic to make it stay in shape.
Marc:Oh, so you couldn't do it?
Marc:You don't have anything against it?
Marc:Oh, I don't have anything against it.
Marc:Because for me, the kids would be more excited about that when you're like, come here, I'll put this on your head.
Guest:Oh, I could do a hat.
Guest:I just don't like the swan part.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So let's go over that.
Marc:So now you're like a 15-year-old kid and you're entranced by radio.
Guest:No.
Marc:No.
Guest:No.
Marc:So how did you end up writing jokes for the prototype of the shock jock or a talker?
Guest:For Johnny Walker.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it wasn't that I loved radio.
Guest:It's that he seemed cool.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Like every 15-year-old suburban kid, suburban boy anyway in Baltimore thought he was really cool.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we all listened to him.
Guest:And being a kid, being a teenager in the mid-70s, that's right when Saturday Night Live started.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so there was a lot of cool man comedy for a few years there.
Guest:And so that just seemed like something exciting to do.
Guest:In college, in my early years in college, I tried improv comedy.
Guest:And a troupe actually where one of the people went on to Saturday Night Live.
Guest:Who?
Guest:Gary Kroger.
Guest:He wasn't in for very long.
Guest:He was like one of those transitional casts in between.
Guest:Yeah, I kind of remember it.
Marc:I kind of remember it.
Marc:In terms of what drew you to radio, how did you get involved with that at 16?
Marc:What drove you to Walker's show?
Yeah.
Guest:I needed something to do for the summer of my senior year, and I had a job making pizza.
Guest:And at that point, I had stopped doing magic tricks at children's parties.
Marc:I love your show.
Marc:I listen to your show.
Marc:I know I'm going to cry every time that I listen to your show.
Marc:I do know that sometimes when I'm listening to it, I'm like, is it possible that, you know, he's just cool?
Marc:And, you know, in terms of like the way you conduct an interview, that you seem very deliberate and very, you know, sort of softly forceful and very compassionate.
Marc:And then I get mad at you because I'm like, why does he have such a big heart on the radio?
Marc:Does Ira Glass ever say fuck?
Marc:You know, that kind of stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I definitely say fuck.
Guest:In real life, there's a lot more cursing.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Than on the radio.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:All the time.
Marc:Are you running around here?
Marc:Are the people that I just passed in the hallways frightened of you?
Guest:No.
Guest:Not frightened of me yelling.
Guest:I mean, in my early days running the show, I think I had a passive aggressive style that was really dreadful for the people I worked with, where I would get very, very mean to them.
Guest:But I wasn't even totally aware I was being mean.
Guest:I just thought, well, this is the way we're going to do it.
Guest:This is obviously the right way.
Guest:Anybody who could hear this piece would know that you take the music out there and then you've got to do this.
Guest:I think that I was pretty bad.
Guest:But people were politely forceful in letting me know that I was being a bad boss.
Guest:And I feel like now the show's been on for 15 years and I feel like I got a lot better.
Guest:I feel like...
Guest:I feel like that's always in me, ready to happen.
Guest:A kind of very deep bossiness of just winning it my way.
Guest:But at this point now, everybody on the staff, or most of the staff, is as skilled as I am.
Guest:And so it's much more like being in a band that's been together for a long time.
Guest:Like, we've gone through a lot together and we all kind of... And sometimes it's hard to make a decision, truthfully, because we'll just... Like, usually we'll come to decisions like everybody will agree.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or nearly everybody.
Guest:But, like, sometimes we just disagree and then it's really hard to figure out how to have a tiebreaker, sort of.
Guest:And who usually wins out?
Guest:I mean, either I or my senior producer, Julie Snyder, wins out.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:And...
Guest:And usually whoever wins out is whoever it means the most to.
Guest:The story.
Guest:Whoever feels the most strongly.
Guest:Generally, we have to go through so much material that we all understand.
Guest:We don't have to put it all out on the line.
Guest:If I think that a one-nice story idea isn't a great idea, but everybody else, or a lot of people think, yeah, yeah, let's keep going with it.
Guest:I'll keep going with it, keep going with it, keep going with it, with the thought of, okay, it might be right and I might be wrong.
Guest:And truthfully, in the last couple of years, there have been a number of things that we've done that I was completely against for a really long time that turned out to be the very best things we did.
Guest:Like last year, we won two awards at the Third Coast Audio Festival, and both of them were for stories I thought like, this is not going to work at all.
Guest:And one of them was this story about kids who were being raised, boys who were being raised as girls and their parents letting them do that.
Guest:And I just thought, well, this has been covered.
Guest:And there was a really good piece in NPR about this at all.
Guest:And what are we really adding?
Guest:And Julie Snyder.
Guest:The senior producer was very, very forcefully feeling like, no, there's this one way that it could work if we can find it to this one scene.
Guest:And she turned out to be 100% right.
Guest:And I think it won some big award.
Guest:And then there was another story that you had the same thing.
Guest:I was sort of against it.
Guest:And I was like, all right, if you think so.
Guest:And then we did it.
Guest:That's interesting.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I want to get into what makes a good story and what makes a good This American Life episode in a minute.
Guest:But can I interrupt for a second?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like one of the things that I've noticed about your podcast is I feel like as a broadcaster, I feel like there's a couple of things you do that are so much better than I'm capable of doing.
Guest:And one of them is that I feel like you're just a much better talker than I am.
Guest:I think innately you have the ability to sit in front of the microphone and just talk.
Guest:I mean, maybe it just comes from doing standup and being used to just getting in front of people and just talking in a way that has a lot of feeling and a lot of heart.
Guest:But I don't think I expose myself that much on the air.
Guest:Like, I bet I don't expose my own feelings about anything in a year as much as you expose in any 10 minutes that begin any of your podcasts.
Guest:And I think...
Guest:just as a personality type, I came to being on the air after a decade of being an editor and a producer.
Guest:And I think that that's still in me and in all the work I do.
Guest:I feel like I hide way, way more.
Guest:And I don't have to remind myself to react to the people I'm talking to and to be in the story in that way.
Guest:But I don't do that much stuff that's really about my feelings.
Guest:And I feel like it's not necessarily my strength.
Guest:Even in person, I feel like I'm always having to, in a conversation, push myself to talk about myself.
Guest:And I feel, in general, just by disposition, much more comfortable asking people questions and listening to people and observing people.
Guest:And I feel like my strength in the show is really as an editor.
Guest:And then I feel like I can perform the show well enough and I can write the show well enough.
Guest:But the part of the doing of the radio show that I like the most is actually the editing.
Marc:Well, that's, yeah.
Marc:I mean, my producer, Brendan McDonald, who's a genius with that, I trust him exclusively with that because it's not my strong suit.
Marc:And I really appreciate you saying that.
Marc:But what's interesting to me about you saying that is that
Marc:I don't know what the history of it is, but your voice and the style of your show now defines NPR.
Marc:And I know it wasn't always like that because if you, you know, coming at it from when you did, it's 15 years ago and you started in radio.
Marc:So what happened after you wrote jokes for Walker?
Marc:I mean, how did you get to NPR?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I wrote folks jokes for Walker, so it was like 1977.
Guest:What kind of jokes?
Marc:You would sit there in the room with this guy who did you get along with him?
Guest:No, not in the room with him.
Guest:No, not in the room with him.
Guest:No, to me, he was like an iconic figure.
Guest:He was like somebody on the radio.
Guest:How did you feel when you met him?
Guest:I was really in awe, and he was a really sweet guy, but he was somebody who I'd heard on the radio, and I was always a little nervous around him.
Guest:I never stopped being nervous around him, and he could not have been like a nicer guy.
Guest:But I remember I sent him three pages of jokes.
Guest:And what Walker would do is he did like a Johnny Walker little news in the morning that was like the Johnny Carson monologue.
Guest:There were topical jokes about stuff happening around Baltimore, national stuff.
Guest:And he was like a local figure.
Guest:He put out books.
Guest:He would do events and thousands of people would show up.
Guest:And it was like a little risque in a way of radio in the 70s.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Did he play music as well?
Guest:He was a DJ.
Guest:He was a DJ who would talk in between.
Guest:And then he had lots of sound carts, which would have people laughing and applause and a crowd.
Guest:It was like a whole... So watching at that time, if you were in the studio... It was super fun.
Marc:Yeah, because there's a lot of things going on.
Marc:There's a lot of things going on.
Marc:Actual noisemakers.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:In this way that was really, really amazing.
Guest:And I remember I would go in the morning down to WFBR, the AM station that he was on, and go down at 5.30 in the morning and deliver the jokes to him.
Guest:And the jokes were like jokey jokes.
Guest:They were just corny.
Guest:I mean, looking back, they weren't sophisticated jokes.
Guest:At the very best, they were like the monologue on a late night talk show.
Marc:It's just funny because I couldn't imagine you writing jokes or doing jokes.
Guest:Well, I wasn't very good.
Guest:I wasn't very good.
Marc:But how long did he keep you around?
Guest:Well, he would throw me $15 a week.
Marc:Come here, kid.
Marc:Go get yourself a sandwich.
Guest:He would get a couple of jokes out of it each day.
Marc:But he was helping you out.
Guest:I think that... Were you a lonely kid?
Guest:No, I had friends and stuff.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:It's more just like, I think he just thought like, oh, what the hell?
Guest:I was just like, I might get something out of this.
Guest:Who knows where this will go?
Guest:And I would go down and watch him do the show for a little while and there he'd go and...
Marc:So how'd you end up at NPR?
Marc:That must have put a bug in your brain enough for you to stay in radio.
Marc:You must have become fascinated at some point.
Guest:If anything, at the end of that summer, I was convinced I could not be Johnny Walker.
Guest:Like I understood that I was not a joke writer and I was not a jokester.
Guest:Were you a radio personality though?
Guest:No.
Guest:In fact, at the end of the summer, he said like, you're going to go off to college.
Guest:It's your freshman year of college.
Guest:Like you and I, let me record a little demo for you so you can get on your college station.
Guest:And I was like, no, it made me so scared.
Guest:I was like, I know that I'll be terrible.
Guest:I don't want to get in front of the microphone.
Guest:And especially to be in front of the microphone in front of him would just have been horrifying.
Guest:And so, no, no, he was a super nice guy.
Guest:He was this figure in Baltimore.
Guest:I can't get across what a big deal it was.
Guest:I sent him off these jokes to the radio station, and I got a phone call from him, and it was him, which was shocking that somebody from the radio would be calling me at home.
Guest:And then he said, I'll send over my man to get you.
Guest:And he had a limo.
Guest:He had a limo.
Guest:And I realized in retrospect, I think it's because he had so many DUIs in his youth that he couldn't drive.
Guest:So he had a limo.
Guest:And this African-American guy, this older African-American guy who drove the limo,
Guest:And he sent over a limo.
Guest:I had never been in a limo.
Guest:And he drove me to a part of Baltimore that I had never been in, which is like this sort of Richie Rich part, Roland Park.
Guest:And he had this really, what seemed to me to be a really big house, but in retrospect, like not that big.
Guest:And he had these paintings on the wall that looked like Rembrandts.
Guest:Like, you know, this sort of super, like chiaroscuro, like spots of light defining the figures.
Guest:And they looked like old, old paintings.
Guest:But then when you looked at the figures, you realized like, oh, it's the Beatles.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:in like helmets and you know what i mean like and i just thought like he was like the coolest it was like the coolest thing yeah you know and he had some sort of like video projection systems and he had a copy of star wars i remember which had just come out and he had a viet yeah on like whatever format it was yeah like his whole life was crazy that was like it it was like yeah and i knew like that was not that was not for me i was more no i was definitely not heading for that
Guest:And so, no, I came out of that and went off to Northwestern and was a radio TV film pre-med major.
Guest:Covering all the bases, huh?
Guest:My parents were sure that I should be a doctor.
Guest:Were you at all?
Guest:I mean, I didn't know that I didn't want to be.
Guest:And it wasn't clear what I was doing.
Marc:For at least two years, you could tell them you were still pre-med.
Guest:Well, and they kept at it.
Guest:My mom didn't drop that until my mid-30s.
Guest:I remember it was after I was on David Letterman.
Guest:She finally said, oh, maybe it's okay if you don't go to med school.
Guest:Really?
Guest:It took that long?
Guest:No, I had my own national radio show.
Marc:What business is your father in?
Guest:My dad's an accountant.
Marc:Oh, so it was like they wanted something secure.
Guest:They were afraid, right?
Guest:You know, you have your book Jews and your money Jews, and they weren't book Jews.
Guest:They were money Jews.
Guest:And because they both grew up in really poor households, and the drama of their life was like getting into financial security.
Guest:And so the thought that that wasn't what...
Guest:any other kids were going to do was really terrifying.
Marc:I think that's a misunderstanding that some people have about their parents is that they're not stifling you because they want you to do something because they're thinking for themselves.
Marc:They're not thinking.
Marc:It's not narcissistic.
Marc:They're frightened that you will be lost or broke.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And it took me a long time to do that because I think a lot of people fight with their parents.
Guest:Why was that an issue with your parents?
Guest:They wanted you to get a real job.
Marc:My parents were so bad at parenting, really, and really were emotionally not cut out for it that they just assumed I would make do somehow because I was a fairly charismatic kid.
Marc:But there was a point there where I just screwed up in high school.
Marc:I barely made it out of high school.
Marc:and the last year because i always was one of those people that was uh you know mark just doesn't apply himself he's really bright like as a you i got straight a's and you know got into college and then i i did the pre-med thing i said i was for a year but i i just don't i don't have the discipline to to keep studying relentlessly i didn't see the payoff of it yeah what did you did you end up doing well in college
Guest:Yeah, I did fine in college.
Guest:I was a super hard worker.
Marc:Were you taking biology classes?
Guest:Yeah, no, I went up all the way through organic chemistry and I could have kept going with it.
Guest:I mean, after my freshman year, I worked in the shock trauma unit at University of Maryland Hospital.
Guest:for part of the summer and then the other part of the summer i just looked for something in the media and and that and basically i went around to all the radio stations and tv stations and ad agencies looking for what in baltimore looking for anything like i didn't even know what i was looking for so you really had no idea that you were going to be a radio person nothing at all no i had no special feeling about radio if anything like like most people like i was interested in tv like i had no interest at all
Marc:But was there a point where you had a human experience that was compelling you towards... Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And the human experience was that in looking for a job that summer after my freshman year, somebody at the rock station, at the album-oriented rock station, I remember in the basement on Reisterstown Road in Baltimore, he was like, well, I can't give you anything.
Guest:We don't have interns.
Guest:But a friend of mine from University of Maryland, he's working at this outfit, National Public Radio in Washington, D.C.,
Guest:this is 1978 so NPR had only existed for six years and and he's like you know see this guy and maybe he's got something for you and so I went to NPR in DC never having heard of them or heard them on the air yeah and I mean most people hadn't heard of them they were tiny yeah and and just kind of talk talked my way in with this guy I
Guest:And got them to create a summer internship for me in their promo department, and I wrote promos for them.
Guest:For NPR?
Guest:You wrote promos for NPR?
Guest:For the individual shows.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Because if you think about it, they've got daily shows that have to turn on a promo every day.
Guest:Sure, no, yeah.
Guest:And then one of the producers was on staff.
Guest:This is really early in NPR.
Guest:He was on staff just to invent new ways to do documentaries.
Guest:And his name was Keith Talbot.
Guest:And I would do, because I had a lot of time on my hands because I'm the intern, I would do promos for his shows that would recreate the sounds of those shows.
Guest:So he would have original music and he would have, like, they were really beautiful, beautiful shows.
Guest:Actually a lot more innovative than the show I do now.
Marc:So there were a lot of sound textures.
Marc:There would be external stuff, and there would be internal stuff, and there would be music rolling.
Guest:And he would do stuff like he would have the characters and the stories narrate the stories.
Guest:And he did stuff that was like, the show just felt like nothing I'd ever heard on the radio.
Guest:And he was working with this one guy.
Guest:And so basically I did stuff for him and he was impressed that anybody in the promo department was actually aspiring to anything.
Guest:And he was impressed that I could actually make the promos feel just like the shows.
Guest:And he hired me.
Guest:He gave me a paid job the following summer as his production assistant.
Guest:And then from there, I basically just jumped from job to job to job because he was a really amazing person to work for.
Guest:And so half of everything I know about radio, I learned from him while producing stories for him.
Guest:So, and what was the show called?
Guest:I mean, it went under different names.
Guest:It was called Radio Experience.
Guest:It was called Options.
Guest:It was part of a series called Options.
Guest:Like, it went from name to name to name.
Marc:But how was that moment where you had heard the show that, you know, you'd been involved in radio and radio had an effect on your life?
Guest:In a really small way.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I guess, but it sounds to me that even when you were listening to Walker or working for Walker, that even if it was just on, the guy had an effect on your life.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That radio had an effect on your life and that mystery of radio.
Marc:Because when I was in high school, there used to be this junior high, this guy Bobby Box on KQEO AM, who everyone listened to.
Marc:And I remember when he came to host a dance at our school, and he turned out to be a very, very short, very ugly man who wore a very unattractive suit.
Marc:And there was that moment where you're like, the illusion of radio is incredibly powerful.
Marc:And so now you have this experience where you're at NPR and something, this show affects you because the textures and the places you could go in your own mind because of the way this show was produced was overwhelming to you.
Guest:It was overwhelming.
Guest:It was exciting.
Guest:And there was a guy who worked for him.
Guest:Did you ever hear, you're from LA now, right?
Guest:But how long have you been in LA?
Guest:Not that long, since 2004.
Guest:There's a guy who's been on the radio in LA for a long time named Joe Frank, who was on KCRW.
Guest:And he would just get on the mic.
Guest:He would write these stories and tell these stories.
Guest:And he had such a magnetic way of telling a story where the story would start and he had this incredible, he was just an incredible performer.
Guest:And just like the stories, you couldn't even figure out where he was going or why you were still listening, but you could not turn away from it.
Guest:And at the time that I was working for Keith, he was producing Joe.
Guest:And he's like, all right, well, your first assignment is you're going to help this guy get his stuff out.
Guest:And I had never had the experience of hearing something on the radio before.
Guest:Like that was that good.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Like that seemed like that interesting.
Guest:Like I love Johnny Walker because it was funny and because he seemed cool.
Guest:But I never heard something that was emotional in the way that like a great movie was emotional and where you just get caught up in it and your feelings get caught up in it and you just can't stop listening.
Guest:Like I had never had that experience with the radio until I was working for Joe.
Guest:and for Keith.
Guest:And that just got me really, really interested.
Guest:That got me really excited.
Guest:And so basically, I tried to just learn how to do what they were doing.
Guest:All the other parts of it, learning to write for radio, learning to perform on the mic, all the other parts like that came very, very, very hard for me.
Guest:And now, when you say that... I'm going to be a reporter.
Guest:I taught myself to be a reporter.
Marc:And when you say a reporter, there...
Marc:When you're when you're conducting an interview, I mean, when you're listening to somebody, I mean, a reporter is, you know, when it comes to news is one thing, but a reporter when it comes to to emotions and having this follow through where you're acting when you're in the interview and you realize that there's some we can go deeper with this and there's a piece missing.
Marc:You just you find that you do that instinctively.
Marc:Or you have a plan when you hear a general story that you're approaching.
Guest:Well, it's both things.
Guest:Like I have a plan.
Guest:I definitely have a plan.
Guest:But like the most interesting moments come from something just happens.
Guest:Somebody's talking and then you just follow them or lead them based on that thing that they say.
Marc:And do you find that because I this is relatively new to me listening to people.
Marc:And when you say that, like, I express more emotion in 10 minutes and then you feel that you do in general, you know, when I talk to people, the only way I know how to do it is talk about myself.
Marc:and engage on that level, and then I find that people talk almost, they want to talk, and they no longer remember that they're having a conversation on microphones.
Marc:And I'm dealing with professional people, and a lot of times you're dealing with people who are not professional talkers.
Guest:But I think that would work with not professional talkers as well.
Marc:What was your first break in terms of getting on the air?
Guest:To say a break going on the air, it isn't like in other parts of show business or something.
Guest:Even in those things I was doing with Keith, I would appear in them sometimes because I would go out and get the tape.
Guest:And so that was really early on.
Guest:But in terms of just doing something that was my own story...
Guest:I mean, I kept trying to do it all through my 20s.
Marc:What, going out, finding stories, finding subjects to interview?
Guest:Pitching them to editors, getting them on the air.
Guest:And little things would get on the air now and then all the time.
Guest:But I wasn't very good at it.
Guest:It took me until I was... I mean, I started this when I was... I started NPR when I was 19.
Guest:And I would say I couldn't competently go out and get a story and write a story that sounded anything like...
Guest:that sounded good until I was probably 27 or 28.
Guest:That sounds about right.
Marc:Eight years to really hone your craft on a microphone, that sounds normal for a comic, for anybody.
Marc:To find your voice and to figure out how to be comfortable with it and to find your groove, that sounds about right.
Marc:Do you have a lot of those old tapes?
Marc:Do you listen to them and ever say, oh my God, that was me?
Guest:i do have them i never listen to them though there's one that i play when i give speeches oh really yeah just to say like this took me a really long time especially when i'm talking to journalism students and things like that to say like it took me a really long time like it took me like longer than anybody i know to get competent at that um and i play them something from from when i was 26 that's just like terrible
Guest:And I play it because I feel like sometimes you hear people who end up having decent jobs and decent work.
Guest:And you hear them say, like, oh, no, I wasn't that good at the beginning.
Guest:It's like a model saying, like, oh, I wasn't pretty in high school or something.
Guest:And I feel like, no, no, I can prove this.
Guest:And I say, this is not from year two or three or four.
Guest:This is from year seven when I'm about to play you.
Guest:I was 26.
Guest:I've been doing this for a long time.
Guest:And it's horrible.
Marc:But it's interesting, too, you're a singular voice, which is no easy task.
Marc:By all critical standards, if you were to go by broadcasting models, like in terms of what I do comedically, I wouldn't call myself an entertainer.
Marc:I know what tradition I'm doing, but I'm not very consistent a lot of times, and I'm very raw.
Marc:And I'm willing to take those risks.
Marc:And I find the people that understand me and like me.
Marc:So your voice, in terms of how you do radio, it wouldn't be like a traditional radio voice.
Marc:And it wouldn't be... I think that at another time, someone might have heard it and say, what's this kid doing?
Guest:But now... No, and in fact, I got that when we started doing this as a national show, when I started doing This American Life.
Guest:That was one of the reactions we got from program directors, which is just...
Guest:There was a feeling of like, at that point, I'd been a reporter for NPR.
Guest:And there was a feeling of like, well, he's nice as the reporter, but like, he can't be the host.
Guest:Can't drive a show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, where's the adult?
Guest:Like, where's the adult?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Where's the adult?
Marc:Is there a grownup in the room?
Guest:Well, seriously.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Stop playing with the knobs?
Guest:Well, kind of.
Guest:That was totally a thing.
Guest:I was just like...
Guest:Who is this kid?
Marc:And you were carried by a few affiliates at the time that that was happening.
Marc:Maybe you were on one or two and then you were trying to get it wider.
Guest:Yeah, that's right.
Marc:And program directors were like, this kid is horrible.
Guest:It wasn't like he was horrible.
Guest:It's just they found it confusing.
Guest:Like there was nothing else that sounded like that on the air.
Guest:And now everything sounds like that on the air.
Guest:Not to me.
Guest:No, I don't know what you're talking about.
Guest:No, have you listened to Morning Edition and All Things Considered?
Guest:No, no.
Marc:Those people were...
Marc:I just mean that there is a style that this American lifestyle that, you know, there are certain comics you use who I know, like Mike and and Rakoff and Sedaris.
Marc:There's a tone to to reporting and personal stories that you hear on NPR that definitely seem to be modeled after after the way you present.
Marc:And I believe that there's a lot of aspiring male and female Ira Glasses in the world of public radio.
Guest:Good luck to them.
Marc:That's what I say.
Guest:My best wishes.
Marc:Do you feel that you are doing like because you say that you're not honest or emotional or whatever it is that you're holding back.
Marc:But it seems to me that you're pretty true to yourself unless, you know, you go home and you're like, I'm home.
Guest:I can yell.
Guest:No, it's not like that.
Guest:No, no, no, no, no.
Guest:No, I feel like I'm honest in the stories and I give my honest reactions and say things that I honestly believe.
Guest:But, you know, I don't, I'm just not there as, I'm not as personally on the line as in any of the little monologues that you do.
Guest:at the beginning of your podcast where you say, well, I'm going to talk to this guy, but I was kind of pissed off at him for a few years, and then I acted sort of like an ass, but then I apologized, and now I'm going to see him again.
Guest:It's going to be a little awkward.
Guest:I never do any of that.
Guest:And also the fact that you're doing it, you don't even seem to be doing it off a script.
Guest:I could show you the scripts that I'm doing.
Guest:I'm doing everything off of like, I write it down beforehand.
Guest:I don't write anything down.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, no, it's a really different set of skills.
Guest:I feel like you have a really different set of skills.
Guest:Like, I'm coming at it from a really different kind of thing.
Marc:It took me a long time to do that, though.
Marc:I mean, you know, I did radio.
Marc:I actually interviewed you once on Air America, on Morning Sedition, during the campaign.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:You know, I was the morning show at Air America when it was up at WBRL.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, no.
Guest:And did I come in?
Guest:I remember going into Air America.
Guest:You came in.
Guest:Yeah, I remember coming in.
Marc:And I was a guy there, and you were talking about Kerry, and you were talking about how you weren't that into him, but we sort of had to be into him at that time.
Marc:And I remember interviewing you, and I remember being nervous at the time, but it was a group situation.
Marc:It was sort of a liberal morning zoo.
Marc:Yeah, I remember.
Marc:And I always worked with other people in radio and I needed to have a booth full of guys listening to me so I could gauge whether I was hitting or whether I was connecting.
Marc:But when I learned to talk to myself or talk just into a mic and have the headphones on, I was thrilled.
Marc:It was a huge breakthrough for me to be able to have a consistent dream of consciousness on a radio mic.
Marc:I can't do that on a stand-up stage.
Marc:I can't do what I do on the podcast on a stand-up stage.
Guest:Because it requires a different kind of focus.
Marc:The context is laughter.
Marc:I mean, the context is, you know, I'm going towards a laugh.
Guest:Of course.
Marc:And if the laugh doesn't happen, then on some level that's failed or else on some level I have to accept that it's entertaining in a different way.
Marc:Whereas when I'm talking like this or I'm talking alone in my garage, that I'm talking directly from my feelings.
Marc:And most of the conflict and struggles that I have, I have decided are valid.
Marc:And I've decided that the internal struggles of what I've done in the past, what I'm thinking about now, and who I am as a person is really what I do.
Marc:And in a lot of my interviews, and this one included, on some level, is me becoming a better person.
Marc:I don't know if you realize that.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:But only in the sense that I was never a guy that talked to a lot of people.
Marc:I have friends, but I always talked at people.
Marc:I never had long conversations that were actually a back and forth where I listened and took things in because I was so self-absorbed.
Marc:So the whole process of the podcast is- That is so interesting to me.
Guest:An experiment in humility.
Guest:There's this thing that Keith, my mentor, used to say where he said, a story, if it's working, is always an answer to the question, how should I live my life?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I feel like that's what you're saying is the structure of the podcast.
Guest:You're saying that that's kind of the structure of the interviews, that it's sort of like you're looking for the answer to a question for yourself.
Marc:Well, really, when I listen to you or even when I'm coming over here, my impression of the world that you live in is sort of a rarefied air to me, that I believe that you have a lot of disciplined people that were relatively decently parented, that have a certain amount of discipline.
Marc:You have a structure.
Marc:You seem to all be fairly sophisticated and educated and read books.
Marc:This is the myth that I put together.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:Boy, I want to take these point by point.
Marc:And that your audience is very sophisticated in the sense that I am in the middle of things.
Marc:I'm a bright guy, but I can also be very crass and very...
Marc:you know, sort of misguided in a lot of ways, and I make a lot of mistakes.
Marc:And I look at this as like, you know, that is radio perfection in a way.
Marc:And now I have to go in there and feel small, like I'm walking over here going, oh, God, now I got to, you know, Ira's this, you know, he's Ira and everyone, you know, he's this mythic presence, you know, he is the perfect radio.
Marc:And even when I'm talking to Birbiglia, I'm like, you know, you guys, you don't frighten people.
Marc:You don't frighten people.
Guest:I don't frighten people.
Guest:He doesn't either.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:Not so much.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, and there's part of me that always is struggling to be accepted.
Marc:But I know that just by my natural intensity and myself involved, you know, kind of spinning that people are going to be like, oh, Christ, Marin's here.
Marc:No one's going to say, oh, Jesus, Ira Glass is going to spoil the party.
Marc:That has never happened.
Guest:I think it could happen for some people.
Guest:But yeah, I totally understand what you're saying.
Guest:I think that the aesthetic of what I'm making and who I am by personality is I want to be liked.
Guest:I want people to get the work.
Guest:I want people to get caught up in it.
Guest:and and and like that's its primary motive and so the notion that we would make something that would be so in your face that people would get mad at us like it isn't it isn't like somehow it's just it that is not who I that's not who I am to be or even to allow yourself to be rudderless I mean to have a lack of control around what you're doing I mean which is which is it's the way I'm using to do what I do yeah that like if you were to get on
Marc:your show and go, I don't know what the hell is going to happen today.
Marc:I don't feel right.
Marc:I'm not comfortable with this story.
Marc:I'm an idiot.
Guest:See, but that would be a great radio.
Marc:I wish I was the person to pull that off.
Guest:Well, I could, I think.
Guest:I guess, I don't know.
Marc:What are the struggles that you, what are the inner dialogues that Ira Glass has in terms of insecurity or in terms of anger or in terms of your process?
Marc:When you're creating something, as an artistic person, as a creator, what are the struggles that you have?
Guest:I mean, partly it's just the struggle to just make the thing interesting.
Guest:Like some of the stories are just not inherently interesting.
Guest:Let me think for a second about what you're really asking me.
Guest:Well, have you ever said, I can't do this anymore?
Marc:You might not just have that in you.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I mean, truthfully, the last couple months, this summer somehow has been so horrible for me, where I thought...
Guest:We were doing a tremendous amount of production, a tremendous amount of stuff on the show where I thought I was going to get a break during the summer.
Guest:And then I stumbled onto this one story that I just thought like, oh, I have to do this.
Guest:And then we needed me to do this other story just to fill out a show.
Guest:And there's a story that we did last week on the radio show about this policeman named Adrian Schoolcraft.
Guest:And it's kind of an amazing story.
Guest:He secretly taped on his job at the NYPD for 17 months, including all sorts of stuff where his bosses were telling him and the fellow officers to do things that are illegal, making illegal arrests and also taking real crimes and downgrading them to lesser crimes so their stats look better.
Guest:And so we have him, and we have the reporter who broke the story, and we have these guys who are experts on this kind of thing.
Guest:We have the tapes, all these incredible tapes of these cops being bossed around by their bosses.
Guest:And really dramatic stuff happens to Schoolcraft as a result of him ... There's a huge retaliation against him, which he records- Within the force.
Guest:Within the force, which he records.
Guest:Like Circuco.
Guest:i guess yeah yeah and um and and the entire time i was working on the story i wanted to kill myself and kill everyone who was making me do it and uh because i feel like because i just i just didn't want to do one more story so it was just about the work it's about the volume of work and also feeling like with something like that at very best all i'm doing is taking the reporter who broke the story for the village voice
Guest:at the very best, I'm like doing a cover version of a song that he's already recorded perfectly.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like at the very best, all I'm going to be is transparent.
Guest:And then it's a really complicated technical thing to do.
Guest:Like it's 40 minutes of radio and it's like you're weaving in all these different voices and all the sound and you're starting off with, you know, like so much material.
Guest:Just the interviews themselves are seven or eight hours.
Guest:And just, you know, just like making the thing go is just like such a technical kind of...
Guest:It's just a series of decisions, one after another after another.
Guest:There's no shortcut to do, but just to listen to it and then listen to it again and listen to it again and recut it and recut it and think about it.
Guest:Should this part be in script or in tape?
Guest:It's a lot of work.
Guest:It's a crazy amount of work.
Marc:And it seemed unending.
Marc:So the dread came.
Guest:Meanwhile, while we're in the middle of negotiating various contracts and I'm supposed to be doing the pledge drive and I'm writing pledge spots for Alec Baldwin and going into the studio with him and, you know, and we have a show where we send two people to Iraq and we have, you know, and like, you know, I'm occasionally getting drawn into discussions on like, what should the shape of this really be?
Guest:And, you know, just like a lot of things going on around here at once.
Guest:And, you know, and we have...
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:There's a lot of whining.
Guest:And so it's just too much of a thing.
Guest:Yeah, it's overwhelming.
Guest:And then I feel like also as a show, I feel like we should constantly be reinventing what we're doing.
Guest:And in these weeks where I'm caught up for three or four days just in my room writing, there's no time to actually talk to anybody or think about what's the next thing we're going to make up that no one's ever done.
Guest:You know, like like like this past year, we've we've been on this huge effort to not only do more sort of hardcore investigative kinds of stuff, like these big shows about Haiti and health care and things like that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it was just like weird stuff that we thought would be fun.
Guest:Like we did a show of stories that our parents pitched to us.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which was like incredibly difficult, weirdly, because the story ideas are such hard ones to do.
Guest:And a show where we went to the nation's number one party school and a show where we all went, we basically just dropped into small towns in Georgia and each would have a day or two to find a story.
Guest:And I feel like we need to be like,
Guest:finding more contributors and new contributors.
Guest:There's a lot of things that I feel like it would be nice if we could just run at as a staff, but there's no time to think about that.
Marc:Have you ever had that moment where, because you're busy, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Do you ever have moments when you're interviewing people in these different walks of life where you actually think like, I'm not doing a real job?
Guest:No, I never think that.
Guest:It feels like a real job.
Guest:It was like a real job.
Marc:But you feel that is your story personally as interesting as the stories that you're chasing?
Guest:No, I don't feel like my story is as interesting as the stories I'm chasing.
Guest:I mean, the stories where it's good, it'll be somebody who's saying something that I find that I can relate to in a particularly personal way.
Guest:But that can be almost anything.
Guest:kind of story, really, if the person is expressive enough and kind of the right kind of connection happens between me and them.
Guest:It's like, it's so weird because- No, do you feel like, oh, am I really, is this really a job?
Guest:That's like a question that happens for you?
Marc:Well, what the question is, is that, you know, when I look at my life or the scope of my life or what my life is, because like, you know, what you responded to in my voice is that, you know, I spin a lot of plates, you know, all the time and they're the same plates.
Marc:Like, you know, like there's a there's a point where I'm sort of like, I don't know if I'm ever going to change.
Guest:Right, I know.
Guest:But the thing that makes something good is if somebody's talking in a way where it's relatable.
Guest:And I feel like the way that you talk about yourself is relatable.
Guest:And so it's possible for there to be a connection that has so much feeling as a listener.
Marc:Well, I am confident in that.
Marc:But a lot of times, I wonder...
Marc:For instance, I've actually pitched stories to your show, and this is how weird I am.
Marc:I'm on the list, and occasionally I've nailed one in, but I don't have a sense of my life being ... I don't remember what the show was that you were doing, but I had this incident happen to me that I, for some reason, in my mind, thought this would be a This American Life story.
Guest:Okay, let's hear it.
Guest:Let's hear it.
Marc:Well, I don't remember what show it was for.
Guest:It doesn't matter.
Guest:Do you remember the incident?
Marc:Of course I remember the incident.
Marc:The incident was, you know, I was divorced.
Marc:I was in the middle of my divorce and I'd met a woman and we started having a fling.
Marc:And it was very intense.
Marc:It was very sexual.
Marc:It was crazy because she would only come over during the day and whatnot.
Marc:And she said she had been, you know, she was separated as well.
Marc:And we were both sort of heartbroken and this and that.
Marc:And then after a certain point, she, you know, I break it off and she shows up at my house at night, you know, sort of half drunk saying, I'm here.
Marc:And I'm like, I don't understand.
Marc:And she goes, didn't you want me here?
Marc:And I'm like, no.
Marc:So I thought she was losing her mind.
Marc:It turns out she tells me after a while, she finally fesses up.
Marc:She keeps coming at me after a certain point.
Marc:She didn't want to end it.
Marc:And she fesses up that she had never been separated, that she had told me she was separated, that she was still with the man she was with.
Marc:They had two kids and that she was doing it behind his back.
Marc:And he had caught on and it set up an email account that looked like my name.
Marc:He had set up an email account to look like me and was it was sending her emails to meet me and stuff.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:And so she was showing up thinking that I had told her to come over with this email and it turned out it was her husband or the guy that she lived with.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:So he knew all of this.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And then like when she came over and told me that I thought to myself, well, I don't know this guy.
Marc:This could get me hurt.
Marc:This is a lot of trouble.
Marc:And I really had no idea.
Marc:And I felt like a victim in this situation to a certain degree because I wouldn't do that.
Marc:Like, I call her phone to tell her to, you know, to make sure she deals with this, you know, like on her way home.
Marc:And then he answers the phone.
Marc:And I go, you know, he goes, who's this?
Marc:I go, it's Mark.
Marc:And then I knew the guy's name by that point.
Marc:I said, is this so-and-so?
Marc:He goes, yeah.
Marc:And I just said, look, I don't know.
Marc:I didn't know anything about this.
Marc:I would never have done that to you.
Marc:I feel horrible about what I put you through because I certainly wouldn't have done that had I known you guys were still involved.
Marc:And I was misled.
Marc:And I feel awful about it.
Marc:And I just want to apologize.
Marc:for that he goes well I appreciate that and and at least somebody's telling me the truth right and then she like you know after a week or so she sends she sends me an email and copies him on it saying you guys you know I screwed everything up you guys should really be friends you know you guys would get along great together I'm an idiot and it was just crazy and and then I'd run like I thought this was guy was gonna kill me because there was this other point where he knew who I was and he saw me in my car and he chased me down in his truck after this
Marc:No, this was in the middle of it.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:And he was up alongside of me, and I didn't know who he was.
Marc:And he goes, you're that comedian, aren't you?
Marc:And I go, yeah.
Marc:He goes, you think you're a pretty smart guy, don't you?
Marc:I had no idea who he was.
Marc:I go, I guess so.
Marc:He goes, yeah, all right.
Marc:I know who you are, basically.
Marc:And storms off.
Marc:So I felt threatened, and I realized who he was.
Marc:And I thought that, for some reason, was an American Life moment where I called her, and I got him on the phone.
Marc:And you and he make it right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:it was sort of dramatic but then i run into him again at the in a parking lot in the bank by this point i knew what he looked like and i'm walking on the bank and he's walking towards me and it was one of these words like what am i going to get hit where are we with this and he literally was like hey i'm like hey he's like you know uh look i just want you to know that everything's cool with us and that you know we know common people and you know that was a hard part of my life and uh but but you know and i say why you know apologize he says this to you yeah
Marc:And that, you know, I just I just want you to know that that I'm sorry I behaved that way and I chased you down in my truck and that kind of stuff.
Marc:And and that and I said, well, is everything working out or what?
Marc:He's like, you know, we're trying and I appreciate your honesty in that.
Marc:And we walked away from it.
Marc:It's crazy.
Guest:That's a crazy story.
Guest:Though I have no idea if that could be a story on the radio on our show.
Guest:And it's not clear to me, like, what does that story mean?
Guest:Yeah, tell me what it does.
Marc:Okay, so let's approach it like an American Life story.
Marc:Now, what do you look for when you do that?
Marc:I mean, there's got to be a plot.
Guest:The plot's got to be surprising.
Guest:So it's got that.
Guest:And there's got to be somebody to relate to.
Guest:So it's got you.
Guest:So it's got that.
Guest:But it's like, what's the story about?
Guest:Is it about like you're being caught off guard twice in this thing where first you think the relationship is you and her and you've got this like...
Guest:fling going and then you find out no no it's not that because she's been lying about her situation and then and then you're scared like you think it's a second situation right like so it flips from like i couldn't get killed i don't know this guy right and then it would have a period where you're scared right like so there's a first period where it's just like easy the second period it's scared
Guest:And for that to really work best, the first part has to seem really easy and she has to seem great.
Guest:And the second part, your perception of her has to totally, it sounds like it did totally change to like, is she nuts?
Guest:Um, and, and what's she doing?
Guest:And suddenly in this figure who seemed like, Oh, this figure of fun suddenly turns out to be like this totally creepy.
Guest:Who are you sort of figure?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that's kind of interesting.
Guest:Um,
Guest:And then it flips again because now he's the frightening figure too.
Guest:First she flips from being kind of a sympathetic figure in your life to an unsympathetic figure.
Guest:And then he flips from being this frightening figure to being like, okay, we can understand each other.
Guest:And I feel like what you need is something that you plant at the beginning of the story or some question that's going through your head or some anxiety that's going on in your life that can resolve with him.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:With that moment.
Guest:I see.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's almost like it needs a through line or it needs a mission in a way as a story.
Guest:It needs a question at the beginning.
Guest:It needs you to be struggling with something that gets resolved in that moment with him on the phone.
Marc:Well, I think that if it was anything, it was that my reaction to my ex leaving me, I reacted out of spite and I did everything I could include do a one-man show about her.
Marc:Out of spite, primarily.
Marc:And I did everything I could to make her life difficult for leaving me.
Marc:And this guy was in a similar situation, though they had kids.
Marc:And that me having this moment of empathy with him and realizing his pain and how he handled it, which was very different than the way I handled my situation, was really a higher road.
Marc:Yeah, I don't know what he put her through.
Marc:But if I were him, I would never have stopped hating me.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:That's interesting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's interesting.
Guest:That's interesting.
Guest:Especially, and just structurally in a story, if your character was looking for the higher road from the beginning in some way.
Guest:I mean, to play it all out like this, it sounds so corny.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:It all sounds like such corny building blocks or something.
Marc:But what are the fundamental building blocks?
Marc:I see what we just did with that story.
Marc:But when you have a story, what has to be present for you?
Guest:I mean, like mostly like the thing has to be, I mean, it's weird, you know, like partly it's just the fact pattern of the story has to be kind of interesting and the world of it has to be kind of interesting.
Guest:It's like a song, like some songs, the melodies are just like more appealing just inherently.
Guest:And that's true for a story too.
Guest:Like the characters and the setting and the plot are just inherently more kind of exciting to listen to.
Guest:So it needs that.
Guest:And then just in terms of the way we talk about it here amongst ourselves, there has to be a plot, there has to be individual scenes and moments that you can name where things change and people see something different and people where things are revealed where there's tension, normal dramatic tension and things come to a head.
Guest:And then because it's radio partly, and radio is such a talking medium, you want there to be some idea in it.
Guest:I think generally most radio stories work best if where they lead you to is some thought about the world, either that you've had before but haven't really felt so much or that you haven't had before.
Guest:And so you want the plot to be surprising, you want the idea about the world to be surprising.
Guest:play it out loud like this sounds very formulaic but but within that structure that's kind of what within the structure of what we do it's which is super traditional storytelling i mean it really is just like things proceed chronologically mostly on the show and and and we're telling very traditional sorts of stories and getting very traditional kind of like narrative satisfaction out of it um like that that's that's what you need
Guest:Can I say the way that you constantly describe yourself is self-involved throughout this whole hour?
Guest:And I have to say that would totally be the way I would describe myself.
Guest:That would be the first thing I would say.
Guest:In talking to people about myself and with the people who I'm close to, I think that would absolutely be the first way I would describe myself.
Guest:I'm incredibly self-involved.
Guest:but in some sort of sneaky way in the guise of being interested in other people.
Guest:I mean, I actually am deeply interested in other people, but in my actual life, what I really am is very self-involved in the project of making the stuff that I like to make.
Marc:But I think that we both share the experience of being in conversation, being engaged in these moments on the mic and in something that is very, is the word visceral and immediate,
Marc:even if it's scripted, but when you're talking to another individual, that implies, just by the fact that there's an other there, that those are the moments where if we are listening, we are not self-involved.
Marc:So that is where we live our life.
Marc:And I think that the authenticity of what you do when you're in conversation with somebody is what makes the humanness so palpable and so engaging.
Marc:And I think that's the beautiful thing about people in general.
Marc:And I find that when I'm doing it in terms of saying that it helps me in my life is that if left to my own devices, if I wasn't in comedy or radio, I think I'd drift away into isolation and just sit and think about shit all the time.
Marc:And I don't know how much I would talk to other people.
Marc:I have longer conversations on my show than I have in my real life ever.
Guest:Yeah, I do too.
Guest:I do too.
Guest:I do too.
Guest:Like a friend once said about me, she gets asked, what's it like?
Guest:What am I like in real life?
Guest:And she's like, well, he's like that, but he never talks to you for that long.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Because we're thinking.
Guest:Or something.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I don't feel proud of it.
Guest:I know that it's not...
Guest:good but I mean and and I also know that like like one of the reasons like the only way that you could become as obsessed with you know creating an hour of radio where people are talking and every moment has meaning like the only kind of person who would go into a project like that is somebody who is awkward and
Guest:in actual social situations.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:In real conversations, I've had to train myself through adolescence and into adulthood to be present and to interact with people.
Guest:And I feel like it's that kind of focus that I brought to making interviews happen and stories happen on the radio.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And in a way, it's like you're saying, the most alive moments that you feel is when you're interacting in that way.
Guest:I mean, I feel like the most...
Guest:The easiest kind of interaction I have is the conversations I have in making the stories for the show.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, other conversations I'm fine with.
Guest:I adore the people I work with.
Guest:I'm not crazy.
Guest:I'm close to people.
Guest:But I know that the easiest and often the most fulfilling and usually the longest conversations in my day are the ones that happen when I'm getting tape.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And in a way, the most intimate, the most intimate.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:I feel that way with crowds.
Marc:I'm more intimate and more emotionally open with crowds and with people I talk to on the show than I am in my personal life.
Marc:My personal life's a disaster emotionally in a lot of ways.
Marc:And I guess this is the reason why we picked this to be our life's work.
Marc:And the reason why it functions for us is that we are able to get out of ourselves.
Marc:Were you a person or are you a person that thinks about what people are thinking about you?
Marc:Not in the audience.
Marc:No, no, but I mean in life, growing up.
Marc:Because I find that being insulated in myself, that being self-involved, if I'm in conversation, I'm making assumptions about what the other person thinks about me.
Guest:I'm only that way in the most worried kind of way, where I'm worried that I'm getting someone else mad, or I'm worried that they're bored, or I'm worried.
Guest:I don't have a positive version of it where I think...
Guest:Where I think, oh, they really like me now.
Guest:That's hard to penetrate.
Marc:Have you ever felt threatened or like you were in a situation on the air or in an interview where you didn't know if you could handle the emotions that were being stirred up in your subject or in a conversation or that you thought that they would be mad at you?
Guest:Well, there are times where I think that they might be mad at me because...
Guest:especially in like the real reported pieces, like if somebody's doing something and we're documenting it or I'm documenting it and I disagree with them or I'm going to say, you know, if I want to say something negative about them on the air,
Guest:It's not just like kind of a good rule of thumb, but I feel like it's only human decency to say it to their face.
Guest:And so I go into the interviews knowing like, okay, I know this is kind of where they stand and I'm going to have to confront them about this and this and this.
Guest:And because I want to be able to say it about them or like, this is my theory about them.
Guest:I need to test it on them.
Guest:And give them a chance to defend themselves.
Guest:And and so so I can be very nervous with that.
Marc:Isn't that a rush, though?
Marc:I mean, knowing that you have to do that.
Marc:And it's like, even if it's a decent thing to do, it's not necessarily the first thing you want to do.
Marc:I mean, it's a discipline.
Guest:Like, you know, when you're working up to that moment where I've got to call him on this shit.
Guest:well your mencia interview i feel like was like masterful i feel like the second mencia interview was crazy it was crazy yeah and like he just kept going yeah it didn't stop yeah yeah but but i don't get so much of a rush out of it i feel like i don't get so much rush out of it to me it's just like oh oh see i would call that a rush oh really well i mean anxiety yeah rushes aren't necessarily good all the time oh oh really yeah a lot of times rushes are just like i'm doing this
Marc:You're not like, this is fun, but here we go.
Marc:Okay, then I definitely get that.
Marc:That's being alive.
Marc:When you talk on the mic, are you talking knowing that your relationship with your listeners is a one-on-one relationship?
Guest:Yeah, of course.
Guest:I mean, you can't perform on radio unless you feel that.
Guest:Yeah, you have to be talking to one person.
Guest:And you know that in your head.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's just like, at this point, I'm not even thinking about that.
Guest:That's just built into me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Why?
Guest:And you are too, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's the only way I can think about it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I think we've done it.
Guest:Is that the dramatic end of the podcast?
Guest:I think we've done it.
Guest:I think it's fake.
Marc:I think we're done.
Marc:That's our arc.
Marc:Do you have kids?
Marc:No.
Marc:Do you?
Marc:No.
Marc:I've had two wives.
Marc:I have no kids.
Marc:You have a wife.
Marc:I have a wife.
Marc:That's good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's going good.
Guest:It's going good?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's good.
Guest:It's not easy, is it?
Guest:No, it's not easy.
Guest:No, she would say the same, I think.
Guest:I feel like I can say that safely, knowing she's going to hear every word of this.
Guest:Does she listen?
Guest:Yeah, she's a big fan of your podcast, yeah.
Guest:She is?
Guest:She was listening before me.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:Is she the one that said that the interesting thing about the Maria Bamford interview is when you realize that I'm exactly the kind of man that Maria is talking about?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, wait, how did you, like, yeah, she did say that.
Marc:Because I talked to Virbiglia.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, she said that.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I have to say, I listened to the Maria Bamford interview, and that does make it really, really interesting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In fact, I listened to it thinking, like, I wonder if this happens fast enough to work on our show, but it doesn't happen quite quick enough.
Guest:I was just like, God, what a natural scene, but it doesn't happen quite explicitly enough to just excerpt.
Marc:Yeah, well, I can't, you know, I can't draw those kind of things where I'm having a conversation.
Marc:I was so thrilled to just have the conversation because she's like this unique, angelic being.
Marc:And when I knew I was going to be locked in a car with her for an hour, I was like, oh, my God, this is it.
Marc:This has got to happen.
Marc:And we're driving down the street holding these mics.
Guest:But wait, did you know when you got in the car that she was going to tell you this story that was going to be so similar to your own story, but her perspective?
Marc:I knew nothing.
Marc:I don't know much about people I talked to.
Marc:I mean, our approaches are so different.
Marc:A lot of the people that I talked to
Marc:Like, you know, I listen to your show, but I'm not, you know, I don't know everything about you and I'm not, you know, I don't have time to listen to a lot of stuff.
Marc:People like Mencia, I don't really know him.
Marc:And I only knew what I went into that interview was, how does a guy who was this hated publicly, you know, live with himself?
Marc:That's a good question.
Marc:That's all you need.
Marc:And why is he getting this short?
Marc:He is a comedian.
Marc:And I didn't know the full story.
Marc:See, this is how my investigative journalism works, is that I did that first interview without all the facts.
Marc:And he was basically just steamrolling me, and he had a whole deliberate, like, he was going to reinvigorate his career and redefine himself on my podcast.
Marc:And after I did that, I was like, I can't put that up.
Marc:And then some guys said, well, go talk to these other guys.
Marc:And then I was able to say, well, what about this?
Marc:What about this?
Marc:What about this?
Marc:And just to see the turmoil and pain of this guy.
Guest:I know.
Guest:It made it so much fun to listen to.
Guest:It was so interesting.
Guest:It just really unspooled in a really nice way.
Marc:Yeah, I got to listen to it again.
Guest:It's very dramatic.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, this was I found pretty dramatic for me.
Marc:I think we did good.
Marc:Do you feel satisfied?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, I didn't expect, you know, like I didn't expect you to come unraveled.
Guest:You didn't want me to cry?
Marc:That would have been good, but you know what?
Marc:Next time.
Marc:There's no way I was going to get at it.
Marc:So I will try to figure out a... I usually don't talk about being self-involved.
Guest:I think it's the first time I've ever talked about that on an interview.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I think people accept that with us, but I still think that that what you're doing for people, what I learned from radio and what I learned with the podcast more than anything else is that, you know, honesty, however it comes out and sharing the human experience in an intimate way has it really helps people.
Marc:feel not alone and I think not what you do that you know whatever you may think of it or whatever reason that people listen to it that the struggles that you're capturing and what you're drawing out of people really makes people it creates a community in a weird way of people who are listening to you alone you know feel not alone all right good is that good yeah all right thanks Ira okay
Marc:Okay, that's it, folks.
Marc:That was me and Ira Glass.
Marc:It happened.
Marc:I feel like it went well.
Marc:And I heard back from somebody that Ira was actually learned something from my interview style.
Marc:It's not clear what he learned or whether he'll be using it, but I heard things from a friend that it did have an impact on him, and certainly talking to Ira had an impact on me, and that was a good one.
Marc:It was a good experience for me.
Marc:because I always thought Ira was untouchable, and I believe I touched him.
Marc:I know I did.
Marc:I shook his hand.
Marc:Anyways, that is the show.
Marc:Please go to WTFPod.com and do some things.
Marc:Get on the mailing list so you know what's going on.
Marc:Kick a few shekels into the hat if you could.
Marc:Throw me a couple bucks.
Marc:I could use the jack, the bread, the green...
Marc:Uh, this is how I make a living.
Marc:Uh, that is the truth.
Marc:So if you could do that, go to the donate button, buy some of the new t-shirts.
Marc:There's a lot of fun things.
Marc:And I believe we're going to create a new site soon.
Marc:That's a little easy to navigate.
Marc:Go, go get the, uh, the app.
Marc:There's a WTF app.
Marc:You can go to, uh, on a iTunes, look up WTF, Mark Maron and get yourself that, uh, that app thingy.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Punchline magazine, just coffee.coop.
Marc:Uh, you know, the, you know, the score.
Marc:I'm going to Costco now.
Marc:I'll talk to you later.