From a conversation between Robert Krulwich and Ira Glass, on the occassion of This American Life's 10-year anniversary. Go read the whole thing. It's chock full of inspirations and insights. Anyone else as obsessed with TAL as I am? Anyone have any favorite episodes they want to mention?
Most people think that what reporting is, is you go to powerful people or really fascinating people and you say, “Whassup?” You know? You go to their press conferences, you follow them around, you ask them for formal interviews. A story gathers around a public figure or someone whom the public already has identified, and tries to notice them well – tries to explain them, understand them, explicate them, celebrate them, something. You start in a well-lit space, and you use whatever your talent is to examine it. But your version of it is sort of upside-down. It's more like “Let's go to spaces where we all are, all the time, by ourselves. Let's go to jealousy, let's go to growing up, let's go to my love of my gun, let's go to the little vanities that take place between one person and another – let's just go to where people spend 96 percent of their lives and turn on the lights.”
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