Ira Glass

Ira Glass is the host and creator of the public radio program This American Life. The show is heard each week by over 5 million listeners on public radio stations and podcast.

Glass began his career as an intern at National Public Radio's network headquarters in Washington, DC in 1978, when he was 19 years old. He put This American Life on the air in 1995.  He also served as an editor for the groundbreaking podcasts Serial, S-Town and Nice White Parents.

Under Glass's 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 so honored.

“Mr. Glass is a journalist but also a storyteller who filters his interviews and impressions through a distinctive literary imagination, an eccentric intelligence, and a sympathetic heart.”

— The New York Times

“What’s amazing is how new [This American Life] sounds. It has this beat all to itself...These stories float right into your brain and lodge there.”— The Nation

 “We’re blessed from time to time, with a spontaneous generation of humor and insight....[Ira Glass] finds—uncovers—drama and humor in the most pedestrian of places.”— David Mamet