Ira Glass

We're blessed, from time to time, with a spontaneous generation of humor and insight. And nowhere is this more exciting than in the emergence or the reinvention of an art form. Ruth Draper did it onstage. She took a parlor turn, the monologue, and turned it into great American drama. Nichols and May took the traditions of the Jewish wedding jester, the commedia dell'arte and the vaudeville comic, and invented improvisational theater. And now here's Ira Glass, 42, who seems to have reinvented radio.

Each week his public-radio show This American Life chooses a subject and invites writers to expatiate personal stories on that theme. Glass once did three hours on chickens. The piece de resistance was a memoir of an Israeli chicken kibbutz. The experience not only revealed the storyteller's true sexual orientation, but showed that even immersion in the hell of the mass poultered won't turn one off the bird. "Oh no," he said. "You'll still eat chicken, and you'll chew real slow."

A recent Glass money pitch for public radio hijacked the form and, I am sure, brought home the bacon. He found and interviewed a well-to-do gent who had neglected to contribute to his station. "But you listen to the station. You enjoy the programs. The station pays me. Do you think I should work for nothing?" Glass asked. "Well, no, I..." the man replied. And then there followed an impossibly long pause, which just got longer and longer, and sadder and funnier.

The old Jewish joke goes, "How do you make a Romanian omelet? First, steal two eggs." Glass's programs sound as if their creator began by stealing a microphone. He finds--uncovers--drama and humor in the most pedestrian of places. O thou woods colt of Lord Buckley, out of Diane Arbus. Go thou and conquer.

David Mamet has written numerous films and plays, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984

(C) 2001 DAVID MAMET