The Daily Orange

Media Credit: Will Halsey

Through conversation, humor and insight, radio show host Ira Glass challenged students to harness the power of stories.

Storytelling has the potential to connect people, he said. If done accurately and with compassion, it can provide a necessary level of empathy in a diverse and often divided world.

"It makes me feel sane to feel like, 'OK, I can see inside somebody's life that's different from mine,'" Glass, creator and host of National Public Radio's "This American Life," said to a capacity crowd in Hendricks Chapel Tuesday night.

Immediately after an introduction by Mark Stern, a graduate student in Syracuse University's School of Education who invited Glass to campus, the lights went out. As audience members sat restlessly in the pews turning their heads in confusion, a familiar voice echoed in the dark.

"You have to understand that this is radio," Glass said.

For the first few minutes of the talk, Glass kept the house lights down and played a story from his radio show about a female Puerto Rican gang member and her close encounter with death when she was 14 years old. Not everyone could relate to her lifestyle, but everyone can relate to the fear she felt after she was confronted with a gun, Glass said.

"There's an intimacy to just hearing someone's voice," he said.

After the story, Glass called for the lights and began his interactive lecture.

Glass spoke mostly about his young-adult years and the influence of college. At Brown University, Glass studied semiotics, the study of the significance of signs, symbols and communications. His studies gave him the storytelling skills necessary to command attention.

"Narratives are a back door into a very deep place in us, and a place where reason and logic don't necessarily heal us," Glass said.

By playing some of the show's stories which are structured around reporter interaction and rollercoaster emotions, Glass showed students how his style contradicts the serious nature of the mainstream news today.

"The world that broadcast journalists describe through their tone is a world without humor and surprise and discovery and joy," Glass said.

Glass ended the talk with a popular story from "The Arabian Nights" about a woman who saves her life by telling stories. In the tale, a king marries a new woman each day and then kills her before dawn. One woman defeats the pattern by keeping the king engrossed in a story she told for 1,000 nights - a fictional example of the power of storytelling.

Chicago Public Radio broadcasts Glass's "This American Life," which reaches 1.7 million listeners each week. During its 14-year lifespan, the show has won Peabody, duPont-Columbia University, Edward R. Murrow and Overseas Press Club awards. In 2001, Time magazine awarded Glass with "Best Radio Host in America," according to his show's Web site.

Glass's stories provide valuable lessons for not only communications students, but also to those who want to learn more about other people, said Jonathan Wilson, a graduate fellow studying history in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

"I think his show is important because it teaches us that ordinary people can have extraordinary stories," Wilson said.



vtcrowde@syr.edu

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