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The show was amazing! Ira Glass is brilliant and insightful. The stories were funny, poignant, sometimes sad, but always thoroughly engaging. It was fun to hear and see how he builds a story with the music and clips from the interviewees. I LOVE This American Life and I could have watched and listened to Ira for hours.
Ira is an engaging and humble presenter. This was a fabulous show!
Huge Ira Glass fan, and this didn't disappoint =] The venue is lovely as well, although parking is a bit of a challenge with the construction.
We had such a great time at the show. As always, Ira Glass delivered in so many ways. Humor and Humanity laced through thought provoking his life lessons. I brought a skeptic and left with an engaged new fan. Ira Glass was able to showcase his many talents and left me wanting more! Wonderful.
As always, Ira does not disappoint. He is charming, disarming utterly delightful! My daughter and I are both in love.
He is a truly delightful person and his personality totally shined through during his talk.
Very interesting content, and he has a charming appearance--BUT on stage, it was hard to understand his words! He seemed to be running words together and using lots of vocal fillers, such as "like" and "um." Was really looking forward to seeing him but was disappointed. I will stick to enjoying him on the radio going forward.
Glass brought so much more to the stage than simply retelling some of his best stories from "This American Life." He's every bit as down to earth as he is brilliant. If you're wondering whether his radio presence translates to a live performance, it does - and more.
If you have any appreciation for the public radio behemoth known as Ira Glass and his groundbreaking series, This American Life, you will enjoy this show about the things he has learned during his time in radio. Refreshingly honest with comical stories and some of his most difficult moments up to this point.
Great venue; great journalist. It was a packed house of appreciative fans and Ira was at his best. So refreshing to LISTEN rather than stare at a screen/computer/phone. Yes, he used media in his presentation, but it was tastefully done and fully illustrated the points he wanted to make. It was all over way too soon and I marveled how much Des Moines has grown, how much talent has been to and is coming to Hoyt-Sherman, and how close my home is to this venue. Thank you for all your efforts. I know these things don't come off without loads of effort behind the scene.
Purely delighful experience being entertained and educated by Ira Glass (even with technical problems....Hoyt Sherman Place needs plans B and C?!?). Lovely, lovely venue with amazing hospitality! Definitely would recommend!!!
I wasn't sure what to expect but listening to Ira Glass share tales of lessons he has learned turned out to be a really engaging and fun event. I love Ira Glass and would listen to him read the encyclopedia. I was pleasantly surprised by this event and would highly recommend it to anyone else who loves a good story teller. The dream team would be if he and David Sedaris hit the road together and put on a show.
Ira Glass's talk on the 7 things he learned made me even more of a fan. As a writer, I gained insight into his style and even picked up a few tips to apply to my own writing. Thank you for an excellent lecture!
I've listened to This American Life for many years and when I saw that Ira Glass was coming to the Smith Center in Las Vegas I was excited to see his live show. I like the radio program and have listened to most of the episodes spanning its 20-year history. It used to be my favorite story-based audio program. I say “used to be" because it seems that for the past year or so, This American Life has become what seems like an agitprop sounding board for the progressive left and it’s just impossible to listen to. Anyway, I was hoping the live show would reflect the radio program of old so I purchased tickets. My wife, who is unfamiliar with the radio program, and largely apolitical, accompanied me to the show. The live show consists of Glass, standing alone in a bright spotlight stage left, conducting various audio and video clips on a large screen to the right via hand-held electronic tablet. Essentially, it's a handful of stories from the radio program illustrated using video footage from the TAL television show. Glass interrupts the clips frequently in order to add clarification and commentary. Other than a few times where he stops and delivers a lengthy set up, or monologue, this is the extent of the show. I am a relatively introspective person, and as I mentioned, I really like Glass' radio program, but this didn't feel like it was worthy of a live event. About 30 minutes into it, I could tell that my wife was feeling the same. Having said that, I felt shut out when, Glass suddenly launched a ham fisted tirade aimed at the idiocy of the Trump administration. His polemic was so trite he could have summoned perpetually-provoked MSNBC star Rachel Maddow to the stage and the script would have remained exactly the same. This is not what I signed up for. Fortunately, it seemed things were going to improve when, after ten or fifteen minutes, Glass finished his anti-Trump broadside and introduced another topic. Then, about three quarters of the way into the show, Glass picked up where he left off with his criticism of the current presidential administration, this time stepping away from the audio/video and lurching into a sort of one man meandering soliloquy, saying things like, “I don’t know, I don’t know, I just don’t understand it,” and, “it just doesn’t seem like this administration is concerned with facts,” and, “I don’t get it, I’m confused.” This rambling rant drifted from Obamacare to the “Muslim ban,” to the incoherency of the current administration’s press briefings. And every five minutes or so Glass would say, “I know, it’s Saturday night; it’s your weekend and you probably don’t want to hear this,” yet, each time he would continue to soliloquize as if he were alone, getting ready in the morning, talking to himself. I asked my wife if she wouldn’t mind if we left. She concurred and as we were leaving, I heard a guy in one of the isles we passed say to me, “I’m right with you, bro. Come on, honey, let’s get out of here.” As we exited the hall my wife, who attends probably a dozen events at the Smith Center every year, said aloud, “Well, that was the worst show I’ve ever seen here.” If you lean to the left, you might be happy attending this show (though you might not). If you sit anywhere else, including that gray area in the middle, you might regret wasting the time and dropping the cash on the ticket price for what I would describe as a boring, preachy progressive polemic.
Loved this show. Lots of "This American Life" references, so if you are a fan of the show, this is a great show to see, but you also get some personal stories from Ira. There are more than 7 Things, but that's okay. We would have sat there until the sun came up the next morning listening to him talk. Fantastic show!
The performance was innovative and engaging. Though significant, technology played a proper supporting role. It was never allowed to upstage the performer. The interplay of journalistic reporting and traditional storytelling of was purposeful and satisfying.
I've been a fan of This American Life for as long as I can remember, so it was great to get a chance to see Ira Glass in person. If you like TAL, you'll really enjoy this!
What a wonderful way to spend a Saturday Evening. Ira Glass put on an incredible show...very authentic and entertaining. His show shed light on the journalistic process and his growth as a journalist. I thought the mixture of voice recording, video and live presentation was well done. It was an intimate setting, even in a large venue like the DPAC.
While the stories themselves were excellent, Mr. Glass was disorganized and repetitive. The program was way too long and lacked discipline and focus.
So great! Entertaining and informative. Happy with the 2 hour length as well, felt like a good amount of time.
