{"id":15479,"date":"2025-05-16T13:00:36","date_gmt":"2025-05-16T13:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/?p=15479"},"modified":"2025-05-16T13:00:37","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T13:00:37","slug":"ira-glass-storytelling-lessons-30-years-this-american-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2025\/05\/16\/ira-glass-storytelling-lessons-30-years-this-american-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Ira Glass on storytelling lessons from 30 years of \u2018This American Life\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":" \n
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Sign up for the Nieman Storyboard newsletter,<\/em><\/a>\u00a0delivered every Friday in your inbox.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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***<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Dear Storyboard community, <\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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This November marks 30 years since the first episode<\/a> of \u201cThis American Life,\u201d which forever changed storytelling for radio (and later, podcasting). In those three decades, host and co-creator Ira Glass has dispensed many memorable and quotable lessons on the craft. For example, there\u2019s a whole genre of YouTube videos dedicated to Glass\u2019s thoughts on the \u201ctaste-talent gap.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Now here\u2019s one more, from a wonderful new interview with Talk Easy\u2019s Sam Fragoso<\/a> (hat-tip Julie Shapiro) that\u2019s both succinct and will make you rethink every lede you ever wrote or plan to write: <\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The format of \u201cThis American Life\u201d is designed around this thing that [Roland Barthes] calls the proairetic code<\/a>. And the proairetic code is basically this simple principle that if you have any sequence of actions start, no matter how banal, [with] \u201cThis thing happens and it leads to this next thing, and it leads to this next thing,\u201d even if all the things are very ordinary. [For example,] \u201da man wakes up and the house seems very quiet, and he walks to the door of the bedroom and just listens for a second, and the house is very quiet. He walks down the stairs; the house is very quiet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n \n

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Nothing is happening in this story, actually. It’s all, like, super banal, but you feel the forward motion of a story happening and you can feel the intentionality and you start to wonder what will happen next. And he says that any sequence of actions that you get going will create the question, \u201dWhere are we going?\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n \n

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And that’s just incredibly useful. That’s one of the reasons why \u201cThis American Life\u201d just starts in motion.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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‘TAL’ producer Nadia Reiman on storytelling with agency <\/h2>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
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To see that theory in action, here\u2019s the opening of Act Two<\/a> of the latest (and 859th) episode of \u201cThis American Life,” in which Pulitzer Prize-winning producer Nadia Reiman<\/a> introduces us to a young woman recording her fianc\u00e9 as he gives himself a tattoo on his stomach. <\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The woman, Mari, retails a list<\/a> of all the \u201cridiculous\u201d art he has on his body \u2014 foreshadowing what we already sense is coming: <\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Reiman: <\/strong>When Mari shows me this video, it feels like something I’m not supposed to be watching. On the screen is her fianc\u00e9, Mikael. He’s shirtless. He’s crisply lined up. He’s young, 23, bright green eyes, wild curly hair tucked under a baseball cap, and he’s holding a tattoo gun, giving himself a tattoo on his stomach while she teases him, says he’s never going to tattoo her again.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n \n

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[MIKAEL LAUGHING]<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n \n

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He looks up and laughs, his mouth full of braces. Mari is always sort of dragging Mikael about his tattoos. He has lots of them, some which Mari finds offensively dumb.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n \n

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Mari<\/strong><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n \n

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[SPEAKING SPANISH]<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n \n

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Interpreter<\/strong><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n \n

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He has a Mickey Mouse, but the Mickey Mouse is smoking. He used to smoke, and he used to do ridiculous things like that, because to me, they’re ridiculous things. But yeah.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n \n

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And then behind that, he has a little hand, like a little hand with an eye. And he tells me that eye sees everything. And I was just like, bueno, OK.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n \n

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Mari<\/strong><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n \n

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[SPEAKING SPANISH]<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n \n

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Interpreter<\/strong><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n \n

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And he has something else there, like just \u2014 like an ugly doll, like it looks like a toad. It has big eyes.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n \n

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Mari<\/strong><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n \n

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[SPEAKING SPANISH]<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n \n

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Nadia Reiman<\/strong><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n \n

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It’s E.T. smoking a blunt. Mari is not her real name. She’s from Venezuela. She’s here applying for asylum, which is legal, but that seems to matter less and less nowadays in terms of who gets deported, hence the alias.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Mikael, who had also applied for asylum, was arrested by unidentified officers \u2014\u00a0presumably from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or working with them. Mari later spotted him in a video among the 238 Venezuelan migrants who were taken out of the U.S. and sent to the CECOT prison in El Salvador. <\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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As Reiman reports, \u201cMari is convinced that Mikael’s tattoos, that’s the only reason the government thinks he’s a gang member, which is not crazy. The government is looking at tattoos. They have a list of Tren de Aragua suspicious tattoos, and it is broad \u2014 trains, crowns, roses, clocks, star, a Michael Jordan. If this is a list of gang tattoos, everyone under 50 is in a gang.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Reiman told me she discovered Mari and Mikael’s story while working on a different “TAL” piece, “our \u2018Museum of Now\u2019 show<\/a>, which was supposed to be about artifacts that say something about the moment. I was interested in people who found out where their loved ones were through a video of some sort. So I asked around immigration lawyers and wanted to know if any of them had clients who had experienced this. Mikael’s lawyer told me about Mari and put me in touch with her.” <\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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When I talked to her I liked how she was able to describe things in scenes. She also was so open and direct \u2014 and just so young. Such a picture of most of the folks affected by this CECOT thing. While at the same time she was so ACTIVE. She did so much \u2014 she found the lawyer, she talked to her boss. She’s a person with a lot of agency and motion, so that made her a solid character to me. Someone I wanted to get to know.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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As for Glass’s comments about starting stories in motion, Reiman said: <\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I am what I would call a plot jock, so it’s hard for me to think about how to start a story without thinking about the action that happens first, what happens next \u2026 and almost all of my stories are structured chronologically. For this one, we started with the tattoo tape simply because it was a scene that said something about Mari and Mikael’s dynamic as a couple. And Mari’s eye-rolling about his tattoos helps you know them and picture them in a real and funny way before you get to what happened to them. Otherwise I think it’s too easy for stories of people that went through something traumatic to feel truly 3-D. If you start straight with the police coming, they become characters that something happens to, rather than full people with agency. So that was the thought behind that.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Storytelling is a puzzle, and the care Reiman takes to center her subjects’ agency and humanity makes it all the more impactful. <\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Links of note <\/h2>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
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