Ira Glass, the host of the popular NPR show “This American Life,” returns to Santa Barbara accompanied by pair of dancers on stage as he tells his stories
Evan Agostini photo
Fans of “This American Life” know, and some of us love, host Ira Glass’ voice, soft, quick, worldly and wordy, but it’s only recently that audiences have come to know what he looks like. After thirty-some years in radio, to see the voice made flesh was strange, at first. When his popular NPR/PRI radio hour went on tour as a live, HD simulcast show a few years back, or for those who have seen him in rare, live appearances, it was interesting, but not astounding.
The bespectacled man, curly hair like his cousin, composer Philip Glass, did what he usually does: sit at a desk and cue up story after story, and provide the framing structure to lead us through it. But his spirit of adventure and of rising to a challenge — the same one, he says, that led him to start broadcasting in the first place — has found him heading a very odd evening this coming Saturday: Ira Glass will appear with two dancers who will accompany his evening of stories. It’s a “This American Life” that moves, called “One Radio Host, Two Dancers.”