Is it ok to just work all the time?

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There's this joke from the movie Annie Hall.

It goes like this.

Two elderly women are at a Catscale Mountain Resort, and one of them says, boy, the food at this place is really terrible.

The other one says, yeah, I know.

And such small portions.

The joke in the movie is a metaphor for life about the feeling that it both sucks and also you don't get enough of it.

But lately, it's been in my head because, frankly, I feel the opposite way.

Not about life, about work.

I'm immensely grateful for it.

I love my job.

But sometimes I think, this is all wonderful, but such large portions.

It's so much.

A friend of mine who I talk about this stuff with, a friend who, like me, makes stuff for a living, told me a story related to this about this conversation she'd overheard recently.

She was at an event and found herself sandwiched between two people who professionally make things for the internet.

Both men, one middle-aged, the other younger.

The young man was saying proudly that he just liked his work more than anything else in his life.

More than dating, more than going out, more than making money.

He just wanted to make stuff, because making stuff is what made him feel alive.

He wasn't interested in much else, and he was planning for life without any distractions.

The middle-aged man, he listened, he nodded, and then he asked the younger man, how old are you?

Early 20s.

Okay.

The middle-aged man, who clearly saw himself in this kid, said, the way you feel right now, It'll change.

You're going to get older.

You're going to start to care about making a family.

He said this like it was obvious, a benchmark of maturity.

The gentle implication here was that to care mainly about work was probably a narrow way to live.

But my friend, who is both a mom, but also a person who loves to work, found herself not agreeing with this wise, middle-aged man.

She found herself thinking, wait a minute, people say this kind of thing all the time.

But what if it's not always true?

Maybe for some people, it's okay to focus on work their whole life.

Maybe for some people, that is where they're going to find the most fulfillment, rather than through raising kids.

There are, after all, many ways to find meaning in life.

This was kind of a provocative observation to me, given this moment we're in where very few of us are throwing pride parades for capitalism.

But my friend told me this story, I think, because it harmonized with a question that's been digging at me for a few years.

Is it okay to just work all the time?

The only word we have for someone who prioritizes work in their life is workaholic.

But what is it like to like your job a lot and not have it be a pathology?

Not have it be something you're apologizing for?

If you're lucky enough to get to do what you love, how do you know the right amount to do it?

The portions.

They're so large.

This year, I'll turn 40.

My partner has kids.

I don't.

I find myself wondering, if I keep working like this with these portions, choosing not to have biological children, what, if anything, am I going to regret?

When I close my eyes and try to imagine opening them 20 years from now, what do I need to see to be happy?

So I thought I'd take this question I've been living with and bring it to someone who seemed set up to help answer it.

Can you say your name and what you do?

Sure.

My name is Ira Glass, and I host the podcast, This American Life and radio show, This American Life.

Ira Glass is a very unusual person in many ways, but the unusual part to focus on today is that he's devoted more of his life to work than most people do.

And it seems to have turned out more than fine.

He's made a radio show that is beautiful and influential, and he seems less full of regret than most people I know.

That 20-something-year-old who my friend overheard talking, Ira Glass might be the person who that kid imagines he'll be in 40 years, whether or not he's ever heard of Ira or of This American Life.

Someone who will tinker away at a strange machine that will bring them meaning and fulfillment, the things we all hope to find in life.

This American Life, in case you've never listened to it, it is a weekly show where Ira and his team apply the tools of journalism to tell stories, often about ordinary people's lives.

The show invented the conventions and mission of most of the narrative audio you hear today, the kind of podcasting I practice.

I asked Ira how that kind of work, radio, had first entered his life.

I mean, I really stumbled into working on the radio.

I had no interest in radio at all.

And when I was 19, I was just looking for some summer job in the media.

And the local TV stations in Baltimore didn't have anything, and the local ad agencies didn't have anything, and the local radio stations didn't have anything.

And somebody referred me to this place called MPR in Washington.

So I drove an hour to get to DC.

And I was able to talk my way into, and

like an internship would even be an exaggeration.

It was 1978.

They didn't have an internship program.

I just talked my way into this place.

And

they let me work there for free for the summer.

And I had never heard of them on the radio, nor had most people, because it was 1978.

MPR was only created in the early 70s.

Like they had one afternoon news show that was not very well listened to.

All things considered, no, they weren't even on a satellite.

Like the way the show was distributed was on phone lines around the country.

And then I just started working there and I just found I really liked it and liked the people.

And it was interesting making stuff for the radio.

And I had a couple of turning point moments, but one of them was that

not that first summer, but I got hired back for a real job the second summer by this guy whose job it was to invent new ways to do radio documentary.

His name was Keith Talbot, and one of the things that he was doing, one of the many things he was doing, was working with this guy who would tell stories on the radio named Joe Frank.

Oh, Midnight Special,

I ride the rods ahobo,

not homeless, for this is my home.

A great moving freight train, carrying within it the goods and products that nourish the lifestream of this nation.

And Joe was doing monologues on the radio at the time that were unlike anything I had ever heard.

And Joe is an incredible performer.

and would put kind of a like melodic, dreamy music underneath it.

I sit here with an Eberhard Faber pencil, writing on the back of a greasy envelope aphorisms and instructions to subsequent generations.

A railroad bodhisattva, a public transport Buddha, forever anticipating the next stop.

My liturgy accompanied by the music of Doppler bells as railroad crossings are passed in the deep night.

Always a station,

never a terminal.

Like I had never heard anybody tell a story on the radio, actually.

And so I had never had the experience of listening to somebody tell some story where you just get caught up in the story and you're just like, what is going to happen?

What is going to happen?

And I remember sitting in Empires old Studio 2 on the first floor of their original headquarters on M Street in Washington,

watching Joe record.

his narration and I just remember thinking like I don't know what this is but I want to do that like whatever that is Like, I just, I had never had the experience of like getting caught up in some story and realizing, like, oh, radio can do this.

Like, I had no idea of that.

And so, for me, that was that, that was that moment.

And so, it was the feeling of

the feeling this is provoking in me.

I want to learn how to provoke that feeling.

Or I just want to spend more time with this feeling or near this feeling.

I was just like, this thing that he's doing, I want to do.

Like, like, I didn't come into being in

being on the radio by, by, by being a journalist.

Like, like, the thing that I liked when I was a kid was like, I liked Broadway shows and I liked movies and I liked comedians.

And so I really didn't know anything about journalism.

What I was interested in was like, oh, it's a story.

And it just, like, it just gave me this feeling.

And I wanted to find out what was going to happen.

And literally, just, I just felt swept up in it.

And then, and then, if anything, like the next decade of my life and more, it was me trying to figure out how to make something that was that but they were true stories about real people

you know what i mean who i could interview and making interviews into a thing that had that kind of feeling and just that kind of just pulled you in and pulled you forward and you just had to keep listening like like just i just wanted to do that i had that in my head i know that

you've told the story of sort of that part of your life a bit and also how

frustrating challenging it was to like have the feeling you wanted to have and still be figuring out how to evoke it.

The part I'm curious about is like,

I think there's a way that radio grabbed you that is almost more like

like, I don't know that everyone has the experience of falling in love with work.

And I think in some ways, because this American life has been so successful, your relationship to it seems less unusual than it is.

Like

there's something unusual about

every week for decades,

a huge part of your mind is focused on how do I make one hour of audio as compelling as possible.

Like most people,

given the same problem to solve,

it will feel like a boring problem to them or it'll feel like they like doing it for a while, but then they get more interested in something else.

And you have found that, like, the various permutations of this problem are the place that you've wanted to spend your time.

And I'm curious, at what point

was that obvious to you?

Like, at what point had you fallen in love with the thing enough that you were like, I want to put this at the center of my life and keep it there?

I think the real answer is like right at the very beginning, like from the first time I was making

anything.

Like,

it just was interesting to me when parts of it would work.

And then the stuff that didn't work, I wanted to solve.

And then enough things,

like really early on in the first year or two,

even with rudimentary skills, I was good enough that I could get decent interview tape.

And then I was good enough as an editor that I could shape it in a way that it would have a feeling to it and a forward motion to it.

And really early on, I was doing interviews and putting music underneath it.

I did that as that was the style that my mentor, Keith, worked in, and I learned from him, actually.

I mean, that part of this American Life sound really comes from me working with somebody else who taught me.

And then

there's this novelist, Michael Cunningham, who wrote The Hours, and he's written a bunch of other books.

He said this thing in an interview that I saw where I feel like, oh, he really like put a thing in a way where I've never thought that.

But as soon as I read it, I was like, oh, that's definitely what I think.

Where he said that, he said he doesn't believe in talent.

He said he thinks what happens is that a certain kind of person gets a sort of obsessive interest in how do I make this better.

And that's definitely just was when I saw when I saw that quote, I was like, oh, that is exactly what happened to me.

I wasn't that good.

Like, I was a terrible writer, I was a terrible performer in the era, but like, I was just very interested in, like, I can feel that this could get better.

Like, how do you make this better?

And just that was just very interesting to me.

And

then I was lucky in that like NPR in the 70s and 80s was just like a place where

it was encouraged to a small degree, not to a large degree, but there was like enough room in the system that you could just experiment with stuff and get it on the air in front of lots of people.

And so I was sort of lucky to be in a place where I could

keep trying different things and

it was rewarded.

And were you like

in those years when you're enjoying obsessing over trying to make the thing a little bit better,

were you in a room with people who had the same obsession or were you the unusual person who's like, they're going home, you're staying to try to tweak it a little bit more?

I was, there were other people, but there weren't many of them who were sticking around and staying.

Like i i was generally the one who was staying the longest

and did you think about like did you feel like

good bad unusual about that or was it just what it was i didn't feel bad about it and i didn't think anything of it i just knew that that's what i wanted to do and i was going to do it i was willful

And what, were you picturing a future?

Were you like, in 10 years, I'm going to be doing this?

Or was it just like, this is what I want to do and I'm going to do it?

It was just, this is what I'm going going to do and I'm going to do it.

And I could feel that

it was getting better.

Like I could feel that I was getting better at it.

And I had a vague sense in my head that maybe someday I would do a show.

Like I did have that.

But then if I could have articulated to you what the show was,

it would have been to kind of like, I don't know, stories about everyday people.

Like it was very vague.

What I did know is like, I just, it felt like there was something vast

there that radio could do that it wasn't doing.

And so it felt like a process of discovery.

And

I remember like one of the very first people, if not the very first person to write about this American life, was this writer named Bill McKibben.

And he wrote like a little one-page review that was in like The Nation, right?

Which is a publication, which I don't even know if it exists anymore.

Maybe it does.

Anyway, and he said this thing where he said about the show, he said the thing that was interesting about it was radio.

He says, but what's interesting is it feels so new

and and that always stuck with me that it just because it seemed new to me too it felt like it felt like um

it felt like oh this this is just like a new way to do things to franklin i'm ready it's ira glass here oh you're the mc on the show ira i am the mc on the show great ira ira ira ira ira oh great now hold on one second ira don't don't go away this is the very first episode of this american life which aired in chicago in 1995.

it starts with ira calling joe franklin not Joe Frank, the guy who inspired Ira to want to make weirder radio, but Joe Franklin, a different radio host credited with inventing the talk radio format.

Ira is calling this Joe for advice.

This Joe has no idea who Ira Glass is.

A fact which the Ira of 30 years ago tells the listeners he's getting a kick out of.

Well, you know, one great thing about starting a new show is utter anonymity.

Nobody really knows what to expect from you.

This interviewee did not know us from Adam.

Okay, we're what?

About a minute.

We're one minute five into the new show.

Right now, it is stretching in front of us.

A perfect future, yet to be fulfilled.

And I feel like at this point, like the sound of this American life has been around for decades and lots of people have made their own variations on it.

that I think people take it for granted and don't realize that it was like it was new in its time.

For somebody to narrate the way that I'm narrating in the show, nobody was doing that.

Like, we had to convince, you know, program directors to run the show.

They're like, you know, because it was like a weird way to talk on the radio at the time.

Back then, the show was so new that they hadn't even settled on what would be their final name.

From WBEZ in the glorious city of Chicago, Illinois.

Name of this show is Your Radio Playhouse.

I'm your MC.

I'm your MC, Ira Glass.

Okay, the idea of this show, this new little show, is stories.

Some by journalists and documentary producers like myself, some just regular people telling their own little stories, some by artists and writers and performers of all different kinds.

And the idea is we're going to bring you stuff you're not going to find anywhere else, and there's also going to be music.

And tonight's show, we thought we would have kind of a theme.

Tonight's show is going to be new beginnings.

And to kick things off, I called the man's lady.

A lot of you know how this is going to go.

The new little show with people telling their own little stories.

It's all going to grow into something very big.

Really, the most successful radio show of its kind.

Ira Glass would become, in certain households, a household name.

We're going to take a short break.

When we come back, does it take working too much to build something that is that special?

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Welcome back to the show.

And back to 1995, Ira Glass was beginning a new radio show.

He had a sense of the kind of stories he wanted to hear on air, a sense that audio might be able to do things it was not currently doing.

But Ira says he did not have a very detailed vision beyond that for how things were going to work.

All I'm picturing is like, I think we could make this thing and that would be interesting to do.

Like, it's not, I didn't picture like, here's where it'll be in five years or 10 years or something.

Like, I just thought, like, this seems like something a person could make.

And I think I could make this.

And honestly, like, I was scared that somebody else would get to the idea before I would.

It seems so obvious to me that you could do

like a show with sort of emotional narrative stories,

which when I look back on it, I guess that's kind of crazy because it was so hard to do.

Do you know what I mean?

What was hard about it in the beginning?

I mean, what was hard about it in the beginning is every single part of it was new.

Like even to produce that many stories

so quickly every week was something I hadn't been in charge of or done.

Like it was a show whose format had not existed before.

And so every single person who was hired had to be taught the format of this thing which had never existed and then taught how to make it.

And I remember like everybody who came to work for the show at the beginning said like it took a year before they felt like they knew what they were doing.

And so during that first year, there was a lot of like teaching people and here's how you do this and doing it over and over and over until people got the hang of it.

And

yeah, and I remember it was like 10 or 15 years into doing that that there were enough shows imitating us or the style of this American life that we could just hire somebody and they would know how to structure a story in our style.

And in the beginning, like, what did a work week look like?

Like the first, because you guys were doing year one.

It's either 48 or 43 episodes.

I think it was 48 new episodes.

I think it's 48 because I've looked at it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like that's what I remember is 48.

Yeah, because we had nothing to rerun because we had never been on the air.

And the way that we structured it is we knew at the beginning this might be kind of rocky.

So we weren't a national show for the first six months.

We were a local show in Chicago and we were just making them to like learn how to make the show.

And so we'd make a show every week and

send it out in Chicago with the thought of like, we're going to get good enough about this that in May or June or something, we'll be good enough that we can send it out to the whole public radio system.

This is pre-podcasting.

And basically, the way I remember it, it was four of us making the show, and we were either working or asleep.

All the time.

Yeah.

And did that feel,

what did that feel like?

I mean,

I remember it

being okay with me.

You know what I mean?

I remember there was a point,

at some point in the first year or two, I remember lying in bed at my old apartment on Ashland in Chicago

and staring up at the ceiling and thinking, wait, I signed up for this for how long?

Like, wait, this was just going to go on forever?

Like,

we're going to do this?

And I remember I asked one of the old NPR hosts, Scott Simon, who I had seen go from being like a reporter on NPR to a program host doing weekend edition with Scott Simons, who was doing a weekly show, and we were doing a weekly show.

And i remember running into him in year two or three and asking how long will it be like this

and he really thought about it he's like he paused and thought and then he said five years

it's going to be like this for five years and he was right

for five years it was you're working or you're asleep

i mean i know that it wasn't just that but that kind of but kind of yeah

and to what degree like i feel like i know the answer is both, but to what degree did that feel like

you were a character punished in like a Greek myth or you were filled with like holy fire and it was enjoyable?

I think there's a weird thing that

people say when people say like, I love my work.

Do you know what I mean?

Like you said it earlier.

And I always think it's like a little weird when people say like, I love my work.

Because I think that when you're working that much,

like you don't love your work.

There are parts of it that you really enjoy, but then making that much stuff, working for that many hours, you don't love it.

It's oppressive.

Like it's both something that like you're into

and that like really

fucked you up.

You know what I mean?

Like like I've compared it to like,

oh, I like.

Everything in my world I created, right?

Like I hired all the people.

I invented the format of the show.

Like every every single part of it is, is a, you know, like I helped choose the color of the couch in the meeting room when we moved there, you know, just like every part of it, you know, like I created.

And so I can't complain about my life.

And, and, and what it feels like is, I mean, I've said this before, but it's true.

It's sort of like, I get to go to this restaurant and they always serve me my very favorite meal, but I'm never ever allowed to leave the table.

You know, like it has that feeling.

And it's funny, like it didn't occur to me, but like then somebody somebody pointed out, like, oh, this feeling that you're having of being like, I'm really into this.

This is very interesting.

And I also hate it is exactly what people raising children feel.

Yes.

Yeah.

But that didn't occur to me till years later

because I had no interest in raising children.

Like, I really, I just really didn't think about it.

And I think part of that really was a kind of immaturity.

Like, I was like a kid who was like 14, who really loved making stuff.

And then I just kept making stuff.

Like, I was 18 or 19 when I started working at NPR.

You know what I mean?

Like I was a kid.

I had been doing magic shows four years before that, like kids' parties.

Like I was a kid.

And, but then this seemed really interesting in the way that doing magic shows seemed really interesting.

And then that part of my personality just really took over.

And

I really think that socially,

like I was really arrested for a long time.

And it was only like

really like, I think in my 40s that I came out of that and like started to

grow again, partly because I finally had free time to be around other people.

You know, we started the radio show when I was 36, so five years in, I was 41.

And it was really like in my 40s, where finally, I sort of experienced what a lot of people experience in their 20s and 30s, where I would like

have free time occasionally and, you know, spend time with other people.

And at that point, like, had somebody who I really loved and eventually got married to and like, you know, just had, and we had a dog and like had a bunch of like the normal experiences that like a lot of other people have.

But before then, I was totally content

to be this separate person and to be somebody who very much, I was a lot weirder socially then.

I was the sort of person who would sort of

make my way through conversations with people, asking them questions and taking information, but very much in a kind of like,

like

I wasn't letting myself get close to that many people.

Like I didn't know how.

Like I had to, I really had to consciously

change the way I was.

I mean, this is so personal, but it's true.

Like, like I was much more of a weirdo.

I mean, I'd be interested for you to talk to some of the people I worked with at the beginning of this American Life and see if they would, if they would see it this way.

But, but like in retrospect, I definitely see it this way.

Like I know what I consciously willed to happen in my personality and it happened.

So for you,

I think one of the things that I puzzle through

as you talk about this stuff is that there's a lot of cultural warning signs around work and like not working too much and not becoming a workaholic and not making your work your identity.

And I think for someone like you, part of what is confusing is that you're describing a period in your life, a chapter where you devoted yourself more to work than people are supposed to.

And

it was rewarding and interesting.

And you built something

that matters a lot to a lot of people.

And also where

you

suffered, you know, in some ways.

I mean,

I knew you were.

But I didn't suffer.

Like, like, it's like it's hard working 70 or 80 hours a week, but it's still just making a radio show.

Like, it's, there's not, that's not actual science.

I'm not saying you were like, uh, no, no, but, but can I say, like, yeah, like for me, yeah, there was no question.

I never questioned it while it was going on.

I don't question it in retrospect.

Yeah.

I feel like that's what I wanted to do.

That's what I had to do.

And I feel like there are narratives of other kinds of people who make stuff where like that's sort of romanticized.

You know, people go off and they paint or they write and they do whatever it is, they write music, you know, like, like, and and that's seen as a kind of positive thing.

Like, I don't have a feeling about whether that's positive or negative.

Like, I understand in retrospect, it's not the path that most people chose or choose, but like, I don't have a problem with the fact that I chose it.

I felt like I liked it, I wanted it, I was gonna do what I wanted to do, and that was what I was gonna do.

Like, I don't know, it was stubborn.

Yeah, and it's not that I don't think it's like

WBZ WBZ should like offer you like emotional compensation or anything like that, or that I'm like, don't you secretly regret it?

It's more just interesting.

I understand all the feelings that led you to make the choices you made, I think.

And I also understand the feeling of

stepping back at some point and saying, oh,

there are parts of this.

When you put all your focus on one thing, you can have moments where you step back and you think, oh, there's like more I want to learn or other places I want to grow.

And I won't entirely be able to do that through

like just feeding more of myself into the machine that I'm building.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, but that doesn't feel like that's about the beginning of starting the video show.

That feels like more like what it's like now.

Like, do I want to keep throwing myself into this machine that I built?

How do you think about that?

I find that very confusing.

Like, honestly, like, like, like, you know, we're about to come up on our our 850th episode.

And there's a part of me where I feel like I really adore the people I work with.

I feel like this last year, we've made shows that are as good as anything we've ever made.

And shows that I've been very excited to get on the air.

Like, you know, you, that feeling of like, oh, that was a really good one.

Oh, I can't wait to hear people hear that.

I feel like I've felt that over and over this year.

But, um, but I had this, I did this exercise like a couple of months ago where I had to pick out greatest hits episodes to create a greatest hits archive.

And

actually,

I had never really gone through the archive of all 800 episodes to think about which ones of these are really so good, I think that somebody today could enjoyably listen to this show from 20 years ago or 15 years ago or 25 years ago, you know?

And then when I see like the number of episodes in a year, some years where I was like, like over the years, like as one home, we would make 26 or 28 or 30 or 34 shows a year.

So out of the 30 shows we did that year,

there are

eight or ten really wonderful ones.

So let's say eight out of 30 shows.

And then you think, I spent three-fourths of my year.

I spent nine months that year on stuff that was just meh

in retrospect.

And then it makes you look at like this last year, you know, and like, and I feel like actually this last year, our batting average was way better than that.

Actually, we, like, we made a ton of great shows, but still,

it's like, what's the point of,

of making like 900 of these or 950 or a thousand?

Like, how many years left do I have in my life?

And, like, haven't I kind of made the point of like,

you know, this would be a nice way to do a radio show.

You know what I mean?

Like, and like, do I need to be in there?

And then also, like, there's all the ones that aren't as good, which kind of just some weeks stuff doesn't come together.

Like, the story you're hoping would work doesn't work, or it's not as good as you hoped.

And so then you feel like, all right, I'm going to make this as good as I can.

But like, and oh, there's one great story in this show, but then the others doing

kind of, they're okay.

And like, you know, just sort of like, it's just where you don't feel like, oh, this is why I'm doing this with my life.

You know, like, yeah, like, and I don't know what to do with that.

And, and, uh,

and then also, if we're going to be really honest, like

something that's so personal is that like my partner now is just like so incredibly productive.

And it's like

she's like, she has a new TV show that she's off filming right now.

But then after that, she has like a bunch of different movies that like she's written and other things she's being asked to direct.

And I just feel like, well, watching her, I just feel like, well, wait, I could be doing more.

I certainly could be, you know, doing more.

Like more stuff or more?

I don't know, just more stuff that I feel like super thrilled about.

You know?

Is this the first time you've had a partner who had the same like

much higher than average relationship to work as you?

I mean,

I've had a few partners who really work was a huge part of their life and a main thing in their life in the way it is for me.

But this is the first time I've been involved with somebody whose work habits are so close to mine.

That's what I mean.

Where she'll just work all the time if it's something that seems worth doing.

Yeah.

Like, and in fact, like one of the things we'll do together is that like, we'll have study hall together where like

we'll be like, well, let's get together, but like, we'll just kind of sit across from each other.

Did you have a moment like before

you mentioned there's this sort of like five years for the thing to become more sane moment?

After five years, were you at a place where it was clear?

Like, did you have a moment where it wasn't clear the show was going to work, where you had to contend with the idea that you might be pouring so much of your time and thought into something that could just like

disappear.

Yeah, of course.

That was the entire first five years, pretty much.

Like it seemed like I could be putting all this work into this thing and it could vanish.

But honestly, that seemed fine to me.

I didn't.

Oh, yeah.

Like, who cares?

Like, like,

like, I would just, I would find something else to do.

Like, I don't know.

I just knew like, like, not that many people knew how to edit tape and knew how to make a nice story for NPR.

I knew if, like, if this blew up, I could just go back to all things considered a morning edition.

I'd be fine.

It would be fine.

I would find something else to do.

In fact, like, in the early contracts for This American Life, we had never had to like clear rights for something.

Like I didn't know how to do it.

And I didn't know, I wasn't smart enough to ask like a proper intellectual property lawyer, how do you do this?

And so basically we would just write up contracts based on sort of common sense.

And I remember if like David Sederos would read a story on the show, we would get the rights to broadcast it and rebroadcast it for three years.

And I remember thinking like, if this show lasts three years and we have to go back and renegotiate that contract, that would be a problem I would love to have.

It seems so unlikely.

It's funny to understand that like you work this much and this obsessively, but it's not from a place of

terror.

It was from a place of terror.

Okay.

Yeah.

Like I didn't want the thing to be bad.

Yeah.

Like it, and that was terrifying.

But I also felt like if this doesn't work out, if people don't like this show, if this isn't something

good,

then that's fine.

I had worked on a bunch of different shows and some had blown up.

I mean, I never started my own show besides the Wild Room, the go-to-local show that I did with my friends.

Yeah.

You know, but like, I had worked on a bunch of shows and some had blown up.

And I don't know, like, everybody, everybody moved on.

It was, it would be fine.

And so then it becomes stable.

You enter a period where.

After five years, like basically, like it took that long for the finances of it to be solid enough and the audience to be solid enough that it was clear, like, okay, we're we're going to be fine.

We're not running, running, running.

We're just to get this thing going.

Like, like we had, we were on hundreds of radio stations and we had a solid audience and we had advertising money and we had carriage fees that stations would pay to run the show.

And like it was a financially solid, from that point forward, the show has always been profitable every year.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: But even as a profitable show that's not

confronting an existential question all the time,

even your relationship to that show, as I understand it, you're not working a 40-hour work week most of the time.

No, no, it would still be like 60 or 70 hours.

You know, and some weeks more.

And the driver's week for it to be very good.

Yeah.

Like, why make something if it's not going to be special?

Like, why even why bother if you're not going to try to make it like this is going to be amazing?

If it's not going to be amazing, the world has enough stuff that's meh that you don't need to bother, which is why, in retrospect, it's so disappointing to look back at like the percentage that are just kind of like, that was fine.

That was fine.

There's one good story in there.

So, is that the first moment that you've had

where you feel in a deep way or in an unsettled way, like

a why about all this stuff?

Like a why am I doing this?

Recently?

Yeah.

Yes.

And it's, and it's more just like, do I continue doing it?

Like, I don't retrospectively regret any of it, but it's more just like, should I keep doing this or should I just find something else to do?

And the math of that, of the, of that particular question is

like,

like, I'm better at doing this than I am at probably anything else I would come up with, at least right away.

You know, like, I've been practicing this one, like, so I can do this one well.

And honestly, like, you, you kind of, like,

like, I went to the trouble with a bunch of people to like get this show to the point where, like, millions of people hear it each week.

And so that's a hard thing

to turn your back on.

Like, like, it's funded.

It's stable.

Millions of people hear it every week.

And so to turn your back on that, like, nobody gets that.

Do you know what I mean?

Like it's just an incredibly rare thing.

And if I leave it and give it to other people to run, like,

you know, I'm not going to find something that will have that big of an audience.

And then I'll have to do what other people do, which is like, I'll have to pitch things and get people to fund it and be in that world again.

Right.

You don't get to pick the color of the couch.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

And so it's hard to move from a situation where like I work with a bunch of people and we have complete freedom to do whatever we we want.

There's no adult supervision above us.

Like we really do whatever we think is best.

And like lots of people hear it and it's funded.

Like that's so, so rare.

So like it's a hard thing to walk away from.

When you picture walking away from it, like in the world where you imagine doing it, what do you imagine?

Like what's the feeling of imagining that?

I literally don't even know what would be on the other side of it.

It's like imagining what happens after your own.

death or something.

Or like, or like, I remember before I traveled to a foreign country, I remember I was just, I had no picture of what it would be like like like I had seen pictures of other countries but I really just hadn't I couldn't form it in my head you know right because you're a person who's had the same job like the exact same job for

30 years since 1995 but then the job was basically just a variation of every job I had since I was 19 yeah you know like I just got to do more interesting stuff but it was still just basically you go into the beginning of the week you think like what could we possibly do that people would find fun to listen to?

And it's part of the reason why, like,

the thrust of my questions for you are like, would you have, how do you feel about the choices you've made?

But hearing you describe it, it's more

you're just like, you have a personality and your personality has found what it likes to do and it does that thing.

Like it's not as if you sat down when you were 19 and thought,

would I be most happy if I became obsessed with radio?

No.

No.

No, it could have been something else.

But I happened to end up at a place at NPR in the 70s where

the things I could get obsessive about were in front of me.

But it could have been something else.

If I had ended up in a TV station, I would be on TV

or making TV.

I don't think I'd probably be on TV, but I'd be making TV.

We're going to take a short break.

When we come back, families.

How do you think about not having kids of your own and choosing to spend some of that energy on just working more?

What is it like to just be okay with that?

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Welcome back to the show.

This whole conversation had begun because of that conversation my friend had overheard, where a young person was saying they wanted to work all the time, and an older person was responding essentially by saying that that was an immature desire.

The subtext here, I'm pretty sure, was family.

Many people, even the ones who love to work, choose to have children.

Some people choose not to.

But the idea is that if the focus of your life remains your work, you may at some point regret that choice.

We're told over and over that nobody on their deathbed ever wished they'd worked more.

I actually tried to fact-check this by barging into several local hospices with my microphone in hand, screaming questions at the infirm and the dying.

Regrettably, I was asked to leave.

So instead, I resumed my conversation with Ira.

When you describe like years where you're pulling 60, 70, 8 hour work weeks, like that is not something you can easily do with a family.

No.

But you work with people who are also radio obsessives.

And then as the show has progressed, many of them have had families.

But so for you, and again, it's not as if you were spending decades making the show thinking, I want to have a family.

You always thought you didn't.

But had had you thought that, you would have thought, that's incompatible with the job I'm doing because the job as I'm doing it requires a level of presence and attention where you'd either have to be

kind of not a great father or have a very different relationship to your work.

Yes.

And I really thought about that.

In fact, with my wife, when we talked about, should we have kids?

One of the things that I felt at the time was like, I'm barely holding it together now without having kids.

Like, I don't know how I would be able to

manage if we had kids.

I mean, at that point, the staff of the radio show, when she and I were considering this, was still pretty small.

It was just still seven people, which is a lot of people for a weekly radio show.

But for like a super highly produced one, it was still,

you know,

it was hard to get the show on the air.

And so I didn't know how we would do it.

Like, I just didn't know how to do it.

There came a point in my life after I was married and divorced that I lived with somebody who had a little boy.

And when we got together, he was

five.

He just turned six, like when we when we got together.

And

at some point we moved in.

And I had the experience of like living with somebody and her kid and really was very totally involved in the kid's life.

And, you know, just in the most everyday way that you can be if it's three people living in a small apartment and one of you is under 10.

And so like doing his homework with them and inventing games with them and just sitting around and doing stuff and watching TV and leaning on each other and just like, and I, and I feel like I really, I had the experience then I realized like, oh, I really did not picture what this would be like.

Like when I pictured having kids, I pictured the kind of baby phase that I'd seen friends go through.

And I hadn't pictured this.

And I feel like for the first time, I felt like, oh, I totally get it in an emotional way.

Like I understood in the abstract why people have children before this, you know, like it's not that complicated of a thing to understand.

But I didn't get like why it could feel good to me to do it.

Like, I really liked it.

I really liked having a kid in the house.

I really liked being one of the adults, caring for that kid and looking out for that kid and thinking about that kid and having like a daily relationship.

And his mom was like, should we have a kid?

You know?

And

it's funny, like, I mean, the real honest answer is I wasn't sure how I would manage that with my job.

And I didn't want to be, I didn't want to have a kid if I was going to be absent.

Yeah.

You know?

Can I say, like, if I had wanted it enough, I would have figured it out.

And if part of what you're trying to figure out is like, would you have regrets if you had a kid?

You should talk to somebody

who's had to make that trade-off about how they feel about that, because I think that people do have really strong feelings about that.

I mean, it's funny because Mike Berbiglia has a joke in his show, The New One, and I only know this because I helped him on that show, he's my friend.

And that whole show is about him trying to figure out: should he have a kid?

And the first half of the show, he's basically giving all the reasons not to have a kid, and then they have the kid.

But one of the things he talks about

is sort of like

your work will be worse.

And like he says,

that's a problem.

It's like your work will be worse.

And he's like, and you can say it's not going to be, but it's going to be.

That feels true to me.

And I've talked to people, like podcast hosts, writers who are like, no, no, no, it deepens your work.

You know, it gives you all these other thoughts and concerns and deeper questions and it makes you think differently and it changes how you are as a person.

And when they say it, I believe them.

And then later I think,

but you have fewer hours and you have a person that you're responsible for.

Like right now, I feel responsible to a bunch of people I don't know.

And I like that responsibility.

Like I don't,

like is maybe the wrong word.

Something draws me to that responsibility.

But if there was like a human being that needed to be fed and clothed and like protected from the cold.

Well, and loved and given your attention.

Like

this human being will want your attention, specifically attention from you.

Yes,

I think that reduces the amount of hours you can be like, well, that's true.

I don't know.

Like, I think I'm not somebody to ask about this part of it.

You should ask somebody who knows better.

What did you make of what Mike said?

Like, joking lets you say things that are true, and then everybody laughs, and then nobody has to deal with how true they may or may not be.

But

if his you and I both know people who have kids whose work is amazing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So clearly some people figure it out.

I think it's also confusing because it's like

the reason I wanted to talk to you about this is because I think that

you are evidence that a person can have a fulfilling and meaningful life that does not involve biological progeny.

Like I don't think,

I don't think it's like, I don't think you're like a cautionary tale.

And I think people very rarely make the case like our all the cultural,

or not all, but most of the cultural messaging is like suspicious of the, of the idea that you wouldn't do this.

And

I don't know.

Yeah, you're,

I think like, uh, the idea that it's a way that people grow and change and that it's one of the core human experiences, like it's really hard for me to, I don't believe that there's anything after this.

And so I want to experience as much of it as possible.

There's also a lot of people who had kids who shouldn't have or shouldn't have is a very strong way to put it.

But there's people, I get emails from people who are like, here's my question.

Is parenting as hard for other people as it is for me?

And like, I love my kids, but I don't love parenthood.

And I feel like I've given my life away.

And like, what's the answer to that?

When you had

like a non-biological kid, kid show up in your life and you found yourself in a father-like role, role,

was there any part of you that thought, oh, what if I'd had a kid 10 years ago and been there through all the not fun parts of it?

No.

Zero.

None.

I always wondered if you felt that way.

Not at all.

Hold on.

Let me think if that's the honest answer.

No, I wondered about it, but not

I wondered about it.

I wondered about it, but not in like a deep yearning way.

Just in a curious way.

Yeah.

Like, what would this have been like?

And I guess that would have been kind of interesting.

But I didn't,

I don't know.

Like,

yeah, it wasn't,

it didn't then lead me to a sense of regret and, oh, let's make a baby.

Right.

And when you say, like, you said before, that.

One thing it made you understand is that the way you had thought of parenthood or fatherhood was somewhat immature.

Like, what do you mean by that?

I just really hadn't thought about what the day-to-day experience is of living with a kid and just how nice it is

and like what is fulfilling about it and what you get back from it.

I hadn't thought about what you get back from it.

All I'd thought about is like what you throw into it.

And what do you get back from it?

Like you, not one.

I mean, part, I just really like love this kid.

And

I mean, everything I'm going to say is so corny, just like seeing him grow, seeing him learn new things, teaching him little stuff that then he can do.

Just being, just,

I mean, it's funny, like, I just remember the first time we were sitting on the couch and he just leaned himself against me to watch something.

And it just was really

meaningful that there's like this person who like trusted me and was leaning on me and

wanted to be close to me in that way.

Like,

yeah, like it,

I mean, like this is like a really terrible, not analogous thing, but it reminds me of when I first had a dog.

Like I had never had dogs.

My ex-wife really loved dogs and always had a dog.

And so we got a dog.

And

really for the first few years, I really just saw the dog as a job.

And like, I would spend an hour a day easily like walking the dog, dealing with the dog, whatever, walking the dog for sure.

And

playing with the dog.

And it really took me years before like I understood the concept of like, oh, you're supposed to get something back from this.

Like, like, it really didn't occur to me.

I just really thought like, like, and, and, um, like, oh, and cause, cause the dog would be affectionate with me, but I just thought, like, well, of course you're affectionate with me.

Like, you don't know anybody in New York except me and her.

Like, like, you know what I mean?

Like, like, I'm, like, you don't know anybody.

Like, I'm one of two people you know.

Yeah.

You have to be nice to me.

But with this little boy, like, you know, just very early on, like, it, it just got to me.

Like, like, I, I could see what I was getting back from it.

And, and it felt like something big to get back from somebody.

Did you feel like it changed you at all?

I mean, I always really loved kids.

I just hadn't had the experience of like living with a kid.

Did it change me at all?

It did change me.

Yeah, it did change me.

Like it made me a lot more awake to what all the people in my life are going through who have...

kids.

I think I was really insensitive about it.

Like I understood the idea of it, but I think I wasn't sensitive to the feeling of it.

And

it's just like such a weird combination of like labor and affection.

And

yeah, like it made me

in the way that going through something makes you just more awake to what everybody else is experiencing who goes through it.

Like I'm glad, I'm glad I know that.

I'm glad I know what parents are going through in a way that's more lived.

On my part, I think that that makes me way more awake and sensitive to the people around me who are raising kids.

So what have we learned this week?

My question had been, is it okay to work all the time?

And clearly for some people, for Ira, the answer is yes.

But what do you actually do with that yes?

There's another question, one that may be in the best interest of the show to avoid, which would be, is it possible the entire concept of advice is a little hopeless?

How likely is it that someone can distill a lesson from their life and hand it to you and have you just apply it like it came from your own mind?

We always believe in advice when we're asking for it, but when we hand it out, we see its limits.

I'm thinking about this this week because Ira's mind seems to have this quality I really admire.

He's an artist, but somehow he does not seem particularly tortured.

He wants the work to be good, he obsesses over it, but he doesn't seem to beat himself up much.

If that was something you could learn, wouldn't you want to?

Anyway, I had one more question about legacy.

Okay, people obviously have children for all sorts of reasons.

Like maybe they think that putting someone else's needs above their own is something that's going to help them evolve.

Or maybe they just want to give someone who doesn't exist yet the gift of life that they've been able to experience.

But I think when I've thought about it, a feeling I've had, and I think a feeling a lot of people have, is just that we get scared about dying and we want to leave something behind.

And I'm curious whether that is a feeling that you have at all.

Like just the feeling of thinking about what you want to leave behind when you're gone.

I mean, I really don't hold much value in the idea of what you leave behind.

I don't think it matters because you don't exist anymore.

Like I have a very like, I have like the most primitive

view of it that I can't defend, but I just feel like it really doesn't matter once I don't exist.

I mean, maybe if I had kids, I would see that differently.

Like, I want the world to keep spinning and I want things to be okay for people.

And I want, you know, the world not to head towards catastrophe because in just an abstract way, like I care about the people of the future in the way I care about anybody who I don't know, you know, but like,

but really, like, who cares?

Like,

like, honestly, who cares?

Like, nobody needs to hear these radio shows that I made after I'm dead.

Like, they're not designed for that.

They're designed for the people who are around when they're made.

And that's what they're made for.

And there was something really nice back before the internet that we would make the radio show and it would go out on the radio.

And you could buy a cassette, I guess, but people didn't really do that.

You know what I mean?

Like, you could buy a tape and we would mail you a tape.

But basically, like for most people, like overwhelmingly, you would hear something on the radio and then you would never hear it again.

And then it would get better in your mind.

You know, like the show would improve with age.

And that was kind of cool to make something that was like

it existed for a moment for you to share with somebody

like an intimate moment with another person.

And it's okay for that to be all it is.

Like it doesn't have to last for centuries.

And I just think like

death is a real thing and it's absolutely finite.

And I don't believe in an an afterlife.

And

so that doesn't motivate me.

I hope this isn't like a disrespectful thing to say, but

that's not just like, because that's a very interesting and unusual thought, but that's really how you feel like in your bones.

It's not just like an interesting thought.

Yes.

Yeah.

Like the radio show is so much more successful than I ever anticipated it could be.

Like like it just, it's just,

it's amazing it's lasted this long and it's nice that people like it.

And I feel lucky that, that I get a chance to work on it because it's, it's fun to make and also a pain in the ass and horrible sometimes, but fun also.

And

yeah, like it doesn't need to be more than this.

It's just a fucking radio show.

You know what I mean?

Like, it's just a show.

We're just making a show.

Like, there's so much stuff that people are making.

But it's funny.

I mean, and it's like, I admire the way you see it.

It sounds very sane, but it's funny that you're both like, it's just a show and

it's, it's almost like better that it's ephemeral.

And,

you know, you, you spend hours and hours and hours of your life just trying to make the minutes of this thing better.

I know, but like millions of people hear it.

More people than I'll ever meet hear it.

Like it's already reached as many people.

as it ever needs to reach.

Like, and if it reached a lot more, that would be okay too.

But like, it reaches so many people.

Like, I'm ambitious, and I embrace that.

You know what I mean?

Like, I'm ambitious, but my ambition is I want to make something that's exactly the way I want it to be.

And I want it to be something that'll reach a lot of people, but it doesn't have to reach everybody.

Like, it doesn't have to be for everybody.

It doesn't have to be everybody's taste.

It doesn't have to be for people of the future.

Fuck people of the future.

They'll find some fucking way to entertain themselves.

They don't need me.

They're making more people

who are younger than me who can do that.

Like, the plenty of smart funny capable people can make things for the people of the future they don't need to listen to radio shows from the 1990s

so to the degree that you think about legacy it's like you want to leave space for other people like you hope that you don't take up space that would even show more concern for the people of the future than i feel but sure that has so much dignity yes my legacy is that i want to create space for the young people like whatever they don't need my help they're going to be fine somebody who wants to make something will will stand up and somebody wants wants to be on stage.

And it's totally fine.

They don't need my help.

Ira Glass.

He hosts the podcast and radio show This American Life.

And if you are someone far off one day in the future listening to this recording, he hopes you'll stop.

Search Engine is a presentation of Odyssey and Jigsaw Productions.

It was created by me, PJ Vote, and Shruti Pinamanani, and is produced by Garrett Graham and Noah John.

Fact-checking by Claire Hyman.

Theme, original composition, and mixing by Armin Bazarian.

Additional production support by Sean Merton.

If you would like to help support our show, keep it alive, and get ad-free episodes, zero reruns, and the occasional bonus audio, please consider signing up for Incognito Mode.

You can learn more at searchengine.show.

This week, we gave Incognito Mode listeners early access to tickets for our live show at the Bell House.

Our executive producers are Jenna Weiss Burman and Leah Reese Dennis.

Thanks to the team at Jigsaw, Alex Gibney, Rich Perello, and John Schmidt.

And to the team at Odyssey: J.D.

Crowley, Rob Morandi, Craig Cox, Eric Donnelly, Colin Gaynor, Matt Casey, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, and Hilary Schuff.

Our agent is Oren Rosenbaum at UTA.

Follow and listen to Search Engine with PJ Vote now, for free, on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thank you for listening.

We'll see you next week.

This episode is brought to you in part by Odo.

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