Ira Glass Was TERRIBLE at Radio Before He Reinvented It

The man who reinvented radio storytelling says he was terrible at it for years. He almost quit.

Ira Glass walked into NPR as a nineteen-year-old intern in 1978.

He fell in love with the craft of making stories out of sound.

But for years, his work simply wasn't good, and he knew it.

His taste was sharp, but the tape he produced kept falling short of it.

That gap between ambition and ability is where most people give up.

Glass refused to quit, grinding through year after year until his instincts finally caught up.

Seventeen years in, he launched This American Life, a whole new kind of nonfiction radio.

It told true stories with the intimacy of a friend leaning in close.

That format became the DNA of modern podcasting, and hundreds of shows are his children.

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