NWAA, KNKX 88.5FM, and The Stranger present
Ira Glass: Stories for a Sunday Afternoon
Sunday March 14, 2027 · 2pm
S. Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium at Benaroya Hall
Presale begins October 1, 2026 at 10am Pacific Time.
Click here to purchase presale tickets
“This American Life’s approach was so revolutionary, the results didn’t seem like documentaries at all. Now all radio documentaries sound a bit like TAL.” — The Guardian
“This American Life began as an experiment in form and tone; the idea was to produce a distinct narrative style of radio storytelling. It’s a testament to This American Life’s impact and ubiquity that its chatty style of narration now looms over audio producers everywhere.”— New York Magazine
This American Life host Ira Glass returns to Seattle for an afternoon of storytelling in the style he pioneered on his hit radio show: funny stories with feelings. His program is heard each week by over three million NPR listeners and has won the highest honors in broadcasting, including three Emmys (for a TV adaptation), eight Peabody Awards and the first Pulitzer Prize ever given to a radio show or podcast. For decades, it’s also been one of the most popular podcasts in the world. Glass invented a way to tell stories that reshaped audio storytelling and has been widely imitated. Whether you’re a longtime fan of the show or discovering his work for the first time, you’re in for an afternoon of funny and moving stories about people who may as well be your neighbors, your friends, or you.
About the artist:
Ira Glass is the host and creator of the public radio program This American Life. The show is heard each week by over 5 million listeners on public radio stations or his podcast.
Glass began his career as an intern at National Public Radio’s network headquarters in Washington, DC in 1978, when he was 19 years old. He put This American Life on the air in 1995. He also served as an editor for the groundbreaking podcasts Serial, S-Town and Nice White Parents.
Under Glass’s editorial direction, This American Life has won the highest honors for broadcasting and journalistic excellence, including nine Peabody awards and the first Pulitzer Prize ever awarded for audio journalism. In 2021 This American Life episode ‘The Giant Pool of Money’ was inducted into the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry, the first podcast ever so honored. In 2025 This American Life, Serial, S-Town and Nice White Parents were listed on Time magazine’s 100 Best Podcasts of All Time.
“It can be easy to take the greatness of “This American Life,” the weekly public-radio show and podcast hosted by Ira Glass, for granted. It was instrumental in creating a genre of audio journalism that has flourished in recent decades, especially since the podcast boom—which was initiated by the show’s first spinoff, “Serial,” in 2014. Like “The Daily Show” or Second City, “This American Life” has trained a generation of talented people, and Glass’s three-act structures, chatty cadences, and mixture of analysis and whimsy are now so familiar as to seem unremarkable.”