"Lies, Sissies and Fiascoes" with Ira Glass

by Alex Koppelman

Since 1978, when he was 19, Ira Glass has been working, in one way or another, for National Public Radio. When he started, he was just an intern, working in Washington, D.C., for the news show All Things Considered. Today, he is the host of one of the network's most popular shows -- This American Life.

Glass is trying to do something different, something radical with his radio show. He's trying to tell a story in a whole new way, use the airwaves in a way they've never been used before. "In a broader way, I think that radio is so much more interesting as a medium than the way it's used usually," he says. "As a medium, it can create all sorts of feelings and effects and be like a good novel. But almost nobody is shooting for that, which is such a shame."

So Glass is working today on exploiting techniques he first discovered as a 19-year-old, 26 years ago. "When I was a tape-cutter on All Things Considered, I'd have two hours to cut a tape from 15 minutes to one minute and there would be certain stretches in the interview where, every time I would go by it on the tape, I would be interested," he says. "So I wondered, what's going on in this passage, what's the machinery of it that makes it more gripping? It wasn't the content, it has to do with the way the story was told. Once you notice that, you can replicate it."

This coming Sunday, Glass will be bringing his show, or at least a dramatization of it, to Princeton -- just him up on stage with a mixing console, recreating and telling stories at the same time, always trying to stretch the boundaries.

"Lies, Sissies and Fiascoes" with Ira Glass, Sun., April 18, 2 p.m., $15-$25, McCarter Theatre, 91 University Place, Princeton, N.J., 609-258-2787.