Ira Glass’s Commencement Speech at the Columbia Journalism School Graduation

Ira Glass challenges young journalists to tear up old models and find new ways to fight the “massive machine churning out non-factual stories” and come up with “new ideas about how to reach people and what to reach them with.”

Author: Ira Glass
Published: May 17, 2018
Length: 22 minutes (5,503 words)

Radiolab: An Appreciation by Ira Glass

I marvel at Radiolab when I hear it. I feel jealous. Its co-creators Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich have digested all the storytelling and production tricks of everyone in public radio before them, invented some slick moves of their own, and ended up creating the rarest thing you can create in any medium: a new aesthetic. Take the opening of their show on the mathematics of random chance, stochasticity. The first aesthetic choice Jad and Robert make is that they don’t say you’re about to listen to a show about math or science. They don’t use the word stochasticity. They know those things would be a serious turn off for lots of people. In doing this, Jad and Robert sidestep most of the conventions of a normal science show – hell, of most normal broadcast journalism.

Author: Ira Glass
Source: transom.org
Published: Sep 19, 2011
Length: 18 minutes (4,686 words)