Seven Things I've Learned Program

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Seven Things I’ve Learned: An Evening with Ira Glass

Saturday

NOV 5 7:30 pm

This event is made possible through the generous support of Irvine and Ellen Hockaday.

Sponsored by

Kansas Public Radio, your local connection to NPR News, classical music, jazz and This American Life, is proud to sponsor Seven Things I’ve Learned: An Evening with Ira Glass at the Lied Center on November 5.

NOV 5 | Seven Things I’ve Learned: An Evening with Ira Glass

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There will be no intermission.

Seven Things I’ve Learned: An Evening with Ira Glass Ira Glass is the creator, producer & host of This American Life, the iconic weekly public radio program with millions of listeners around the world. Using audio clips, music and video, Ira Glass delivers a unique talk; sharing lessons from his life and career in storytelling: What inspires him to create? What drives his passion? How have failures and successes informed his decisions? During his presentation, Ira Glass will mix stories live onstage and help his audience better follow the creative process of one of our foremost storytellers.

“It’s hard to make something that’s interesting. It’s really, really hard. It’s like a law of nature, a law of aerodynamics, that anything that’s written or anything that’s created wants to be mediocre. The natural state of all writing is mediocrity... So what it takes to make anything more than mediocre is such an act of will...” — Ira Glass “We live in a world where joy and empathy and pleasure are all around us, there for the noticing.” — Ira Glass “You will be fierce. You will fearless. And you will make work you know in your heart is not as good as you want it to be.” — Ira Glass

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 2.2 million listeners on more than 500 public radio stations in the United States, Australia and Canada, with another 2.2 million downloading each podcast. For years, it was the most popular podcast on iTunes, until the staff created the program Serial, which has over 10 million people downloading each episode.

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. Over the years, he worked on nearly every NPR network news program and held virtually every production job in NPR’s Washington headquarters. He has been a tape cutter, newscast writer, desk assistant, editor, reporter and producer. He has filled in as host of Talk of the Nation and Weekend All Things Considered.

A television adaptation of This American Life ran on Showtime for two seasons in 2007 and 2008, winning three Emmys. Glass is one of the producers of Mike Birbiglia’s new film Don’t Think Twice and produced and co-wrote Birbiglia’s first film Sleepwalk with Me. Under Glass’s editorial direction, This American Life has won the highest honors for broadcasting and journalistic excellence, including five Peabody awards. The American Journalism Review declared that the show is “at the vanguard of a journalistic revolution.”