In this bonus episode from the This American Life partner archive, Ira Glass talks with longtime producer Nancy Updike about some of the most personal stories the show has aired. They revisit a 2017 essay in which Glass eulogized his longtime friend Mary, and they discuss how he shared his separation from his wife with staff only when he read the piece in an edit.
The pair also reflect on how the absence of music and plot shapes an anecdote-driven story, and on Glass's early decision to keep his face out of publicity. Listeners will hear how the show's early choices about its host's public image took shape.
In this episode Ira Glass, Nancy Updike
This episode's transcript on Ira Glass and Nancy Updike's personal radio stories was made with HappyScribe's AI note taker.
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Hey everybody, Ira here. Um, okay, so what you're about to hear is a bonus episode, one of 20, that we've produced and released for our This American Life partners so far. And, um, the life partners—if you don't know about this—are people who pay a little bit of money each month to help us keep making the show. In return, they get ad-free listening, they get this list of hundreds of greatest hits episodes right in their podcast feed, and they also get bonus episodes like this one. Uh, this is one of my favorites that we've done. It features our producer Nancy Updike and me, and we go through some stories I've done about some very personal things that have happened to me.
I hope you like this, and if you do, I hope you'll choose to subscribe and hear others over at thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners. Subscribing helps us make the show; it's become an essential part of our budget, part of our plans for the future. Okay, here's the bonus episode. Hey there, life partners. Ira here with this bonus episode. Uh, for this one I've asked my coworker Nancy Updike.
Hello.
Hi. To come to the studio and pick a few favorite stories. And the idea of this kind of bonus episode—and we're going to be doing a bunch of these—is that one of our producers will come to the studio with some story that ran a long time ago, or we have not rerun them, or it's just that we think lots of people might not remember these particular stories, or just they're stories that struck the producer as being worthy of being played again.
Yes, all true. So far. You're speaking facts.
All right. Thank goodness. And Nancy, we should say that, uh, just to explain your relationship with the show, you actually—you were with the radio show at the very beginning in 1995.
I was the first person you hired.
That's right. You were at Fresh Air.
I was at Fresh Air, yes.
Um.
Do you remember doing the job interview over the phone? On speaker? I was on speakerphone with you and Tori.
Vaguely. Tori Mounty, of course, who we thank at the end of the show, helped me create the show. No, I mean, I remember the fact of it, and I remember sitting in Tori's office. I can picture it, but I don't remember any of the content. What do you remember?
Um, I remember I'd been working at Fresh Air for a year, and they couldn't hire me full-time. They didn't have the money. And so I was working other jobs to get health insurance and just, you know, live in the world. And I think you asked me about Fresh Air and, you know, did I like working there? Did I want to stay there? And I said, well, they've told me that they can't make an honest woman of me. And I want the ring.
I want a full-time job.
I totally remember this. I totally remember this.
I remember there was a pause at the other end of the line, and I thought, I think I might have scandalized both of them just now. Or maybe I just got the job.
Yeah, I think that sold the job. I think we were into that.
Good. Glad. Check.
I guess we should jump into these stories that you brought. Um, I have to say, like, the set of stories we're doing right now are unusually personal stories for me. Um, talk about this first one you want to play.
So this is a story that you wrote, that, uh, a short essay that I remember hearing at the time. And really doing the thing that people talk about, where they stop what they're doing and just listen. And it was—it was basically a eulogy for your friend Mary. And it was also, uh, a lot about you and your life, things that were happening in your personal life.
And, you know, we've known each other for a long time, but there's huge parts of each other's lives that we don't—we don't know what's going on. And this was one of the times that I remember hearing a story of yours and realizing, oh, this very big thing has happened in Ira's life, and I'm—I wasn't quite aware of it.
Yeah, I have to say, like, that story aired in 2017. You and I had known each other for 22 years, but I hadn't told the staff that I was separated from my wife, Anahid, um, and had been separated at that point for years. And she and I were trying to get back together, and I hadn't told anybody, partly out of a sense of protectiveness, that when we got back together—which I very much assumed was going to happen—um, I didn't want there to be any kind of, like, feeling that people had about her and us being separated.
I just thought that was private. You know, if she would come to the office or come around. And also, I felt like, as everybody's boss, I don't know, I just think it's like, I just think none of us want to hear about the sad personal lives of our bosses. I think that that's like, that should be off-stage. And so I told no one. And the first time I said all the things in this essay to people who I work with for, like, 50 or 60 hours a week was when I read them the essay in an edit.
I basically said, like, okay, I have something I think can fill the show, uh, this week, and so let me read it to you. And then that was how they found out. I had to tell them, look, I'm going to say some things here that you guys don't know, and then I read this essay.
And I remember, I remember, I was not in that edit, um, but I remember people telling me, holy shit.
Yeah. All right, let me play it.
Okay.
This is March 17th, 2017. And the theme of that episode was, um, ask a grown-up. Act 4, ask a very grown woman. A few days ago, my friend Mary A. Hearn died. Mary was 89. For the last 10 years, I've talked to her nearly every day. She and I met in the dog park, and we organized our lives to meet there at 10 each night, which took a little more organization for me than for her.
She'd been retired for years. I had a job. I traveled for my job. She'd had many very old-fashioned New York City jobs. She was a telephone switchboard operator and then the switchboard supervisor at Altman's department store for years, when both Altman's and telephone switchboards existed. Lived on a pension from a union in a rent-controlled apartment. When I traveled and when her health eventually stopped her from going to the park, we talk on the phone every night. Okay, this is a very personal thing to say on the radio, but my wife and I separated a few years ago.
And so for years now, Mary has usually been the person who I talk to last before I'd go to sleep. That's not a part of your day you let just anybody into. But I've never had a friendship like my friendship with her, where you just check in every day. Mary is the person who I would watch presidential debates and election results with, and so most nights she and I would catch up on the news, and we would talk about my day. And then she and I would talk about what happened that day with her and with John, her developmentally disabled cousin, 73 years old, who she cared for and housed for over four decades.
Mary cooked dinner for John every night, pot roast and mashed potatoes kinds of dinners, dinners she did not eat herself. John's conversation style is to walk into a room and make a bitter pronouncement on some subject, often something he saw on the news. In the last year, he's become convinced that there are bed bugs in his room, or some kind of bugs, something that is biting him in his sleep. And although there's nothing there, really, there's just, like, nothing at all, it's all in his head, he got obsessed, and he would haul shirts and pillowcases into the dining room to show Mary, insisting that the little dots in the fabric are living creatures and not just, like, the design of the cloth.
And for months I've been telling Mary, like, this is a new turn for John. Like, he was always incredibly bullheaded, but now he had crossed over into something new. This just seemed like delusion and seemed sad in this whole new way. And I just thought we should have the exterminator come in and, like, put on a big show and pretend to spray for bed bugs and put John's mind at ease. And nobody in this world had more compassion for John than Mary, but somehow this bed bug thing was, like, a bridge too far for her. She did not want to indulge him on this one. She felt like if she started spending money on that, like, what was going to be next?
It just seemed like a slippery slope. So every night I would hear the latest with John and the bed bugs and the various relatives, uh, Maureen and her kids in Washington State, John's brother Neil, who I've never met, but I know all about his years on the NYPD and his pension and what booze he likes, his recent surgery, his recovery from the surgery. I have relatives of my own, lots of them, I don't know as well as this man, Neil, who I've never met. Mary and I were good enough friends that we would bore each other, which you only get with your family and your closest friends who you spend so much time with.
Some nights I would be aware that she was, like, ushering me off the phone. She would say to me, "You must be very tired," which I knew was the signal for she'd had enough of me for the night. Mary lived her whole life in one spot, in apartments on the same two blocks of New York City. This is 9th Avenue between 20th and 22nd Street. She died two blocks from where she grew up. She saw the neighborhood change over the years from longshoremen who worked the Chelsea Piers to gay men in the 1970s, the YMCA of the song YMCA is just a couple blocks over on 23rd Street, to rich people today.
She seemed to be constantly writing checks to help out various nieces and their kids who needed the help. John basically showed up at her door in the mid-'70s. Nobody else in the family would take him. Her friend Jean came and lived with her for years. Red was a homeless guy she took in when he got his life together. Now he's a nurse. Beau needed a place when gentrification knocked him out of one of the last cheap apartments in the neighborhood. Her cousin Tom stayed during a rough patch. Everybody knew Mary was a soft touch for strays needing a home. Dogs, cats, people.
She and I would do the New York Times crossword puzzle together. She had a dark sense of humor, was quick with a fatalistic joke. When we'd go to plays and movies, she was fine if it was a comedy, but always preferred something sad. Said it was the Irish in her. Three years ago, I was invited to give a speech in Ireland, and Mary went with me as my plus one. Though her house is decorated with little Irish sayings and knickknacks, this was her first trip to the country. And we visited the church in Kinsale, where her father was baptized in 1889, before he left for America.
She was not somebody to turn to for relationship advice. She'd never been in love. As well as we knew each other and as much as we talked, I could never bring myself to ask if she had ever kissed anybody. Boy, man, woman. I'm fairly sure the answer was no, and I didn't want to make her say it out loud. The only crush that she ever admitted to was a boy she knew back when she was a teenager and got tuberculosis and lived in a TB ward uptown. He was smart, soft-spoken. And if I remember right, he also had TB, though he didn't survive it.
So she knew about as much about being in a marriage as I knew about running a 1950s-era telephone switchboard, which meant that if I had a bad day with my wife Anahid, and that's all I was thinking about, Mary was not a helpful person to talk to at all. For one thing, she was entirely and uncritically on my side in any dispute. Even disputes where I knew I was in the wrong and I told her I was in the wrong, she would come back time and again to a kind of depressionary view of marriage as a kind of practical arrangement that was not necessarily about happiness.
In her view, I was making most of the money in the family. Anahid was comfortable, living in a nice apartment, could buy stuff she wanted. Why would Anahid complain? Why wasn't she grateful? She had it so easy. I would try to explain to her the things that I was doing that rightly disappointed Anahid. Mary would shake her head. I don't see what she has to complain about. Today's radio show is about asking a grown-up for advice. I am fully grown up. And I'm older than I sound on the radio. I just turned 58. That's basically 60.
That's old enough that last week, when I read something by somebody in their 30s who said, "Well, of course nobody ever fully feels like a grown-up," I wanted to say, "No, I actually feel like a grown-up. I feel like a grown-up. I feel my responsibilities. I feel the weight of them. I know when I have lived up to my own ideals for how I want to be in the world and treat others around me, and when I haven't, I feel it. I feel tired in this way that I definitely did not when I was younger." And I'm talking about Mary here on the radio right now because, frankly, it's hard for me to think or talk about anything else this week, but also because this week's theme about asking advice from a grown-up.
When you get to a certain age, you realize each grown-up is good for advice, but on certain subjects and not on other subjects, and you have to be picky and choose the right grown-up for the right subjects. And then I think a morning this week, when you get to a certain age, there aren't many grown-ups older than you to ask advice from. The ones you love die off. And then, and this is a total unforeseen pisser, you miss their crappy bad advice.
You really miss it. Because even the worst advice from a friend comes with a second message, and that's just, "I got your back." Mary gave me some really useless marriage advice, and I gave her completely unwanted and unheeded advice about her cousin's nonexistent bed bugs. And we each ignored the other's advice, but we did heed the other message. She had my back, I had hers, which in the end, of course, was more important anyway.
I haven't heard that since we broadcast it.
Yeah.
Oh my God, I'm crying. Okay, let's talk. Um.
Well, I have a question.
All right.
Which part got to you?
Just the end. I had forgotten the turn to, like, um, you miss their bad advice.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's very present tense. Up until then, it's sort of like, it's funny because, like, um, you think about it, like, how hard it is to write certain things, and you and I will, like, spend weeks writing something, and, like, really, I sat down and wrote this in, like, uh, it was the easiest thing I'd ever written. Like, I just sat down. All that was in me. The structure was self-apparent, and just I sat down and wrote it straight. Like, in real time, you know, as fast as I could type, almost as fast as I could say it. It came out, and then I adjusted little things, but that was basically it.
Um, so when it turns from the past to the present of just, like, what it's like to miss somebody, you know, that's when it got to me.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's present tense for both of us right now.
Oh, yeah?
Um, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, the first person I watched die was my, my mother's second husband.
Yeah.
Um.
And then I know.
I think it's much.
Year and a half. Your mom died.
Like, $10 a month. And so.
Died.
Yeah, yeah. When you, when you got to the line toward the end where you say, "I'm talking about this partly because it's hard to talk about anything else this week," that makes so much sense to me. When somebody, somebody dies you're close to, um, they're so present in your head and you feel a little crazy. Like, you know, intellectually, the people I'm talking to at the grocery store, they did not know my mother. Why would they be thinking about her? Just, you know, act normal, act normal.
But all of this is sort of churning in your head. And yeah, I really, I, I felt that line, um, that it's hard to talk about anything else. And it, it makes, it makes sense to me that, um, you sat down and wrote it and it was just there. Like.
Yeah.
I don't know, should we go to craft and turn away from just sadness?
Sure. Yeah.
Um, I noticed that there was no music.
Oh, that's true. It's, it's funny, there were a couple pauses where I was like, "Ugh, that pause isn't long enough." And there were a couple lines that I'm, a couple lines that I'm reading. Oh, I could, I could do that. I could say that more naturally. You can tell I'm reading that line. I totally. Yeah, there were a couple pauses. I was like, "Ugh." It went into my head for, like, 0.4 seconds. I had 0.4 seconds right there. Because I'm a crazy person.
Well, you know, listening to your own stories, it's always.
Yeah.
It's, yeah.
Yeah, no music. Yeah, it was a hard thing to figure out where you'd put the music without it being corny.
Well, and it, I don't think it, it drags, uh, at all.
Yeah.
And even though you're, you're sort of spinning from, from thing to thing, and there's no clear plot because it's just this person has died and you're going to talk about that person.
Yeah.
Like, that's.
That's the whole agenda. Yeah.
Yeah, that's the whole agenda.
Versus everything else we make where we're so clear about, like, here are the stakes, the plot starts, you have plot, then turn, then turn.
Often, yes.
Yeah, this is the other, this is the other structure where basically it's just going to be a series of anecdotes, and then the thing either lives or dies on whether each anecdote teaches you something new and is gripping enough and interesting enough in and of itself. So you sort of, like, you don't have the benefit of structure to keep it interesting.
Yeah.
Because you have no structure except for here's another one.
Right.
And now here's another one, and now here's another one. And then so each, so there's more burden on each thing.
Yeah.
That's why we almost never use the structure, because it's very hard to have individual anecdotes that are, um, feel like they've got enough weight that you would keep listening.
Yeah. Yeah. I really like the, um, you know, talking about her cousin John and the, the scene of him sort of dragging stuff out into the living room and having this fear and obsession with, with bugs. You know, you sort of go into that whole extended thing. And then we go into other relatives of Mary who you have heard so much about and.
Oh my God. Neil, who I finally met. Who I finally met.
Really?
Yeah, yeah, when she died.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
I was surprised hearing it, actually, how deep I go into the John thing. Like, I remembered I wrote that in there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's nice.
Yeah.
It's nice because you, you know, you get a, a sort of deep feel for her and for him, um, at her.
It's funny because one thing that I remember we cut is I put in so many more details about Neil. Like, I know about his poker game.
Right.
I know, like, I know so much about Neil. And, like, I thought it was kind of funny, like, how far it could go. People were like, "Oh, just stop after the whiskey." Like, there was a whole other, like, section to that list that were just like, "This, you've made your point. Let's, let's keep going."
That's good editing.
Yeah. Do you have more to say?
There's just one, one more, one more thing, um, which is, uh, you know, obviously the bombshell is that, is that you were separated from your, from your wife Anahid. But it, there's, like, you share more in this, in this story in a really kind of, um, just little moments here and there that is, it's just surprising, you know, to say, "I'm older than I sound on the radio."
Hmm.
And, um.
Yeah.
And it's hard to think about anything else this week that you're, you're, you're, um, you're not quite breaking the fourth wall. But I think that is, that's one of the things I like about it is that you're also just, just being, being open in a way that is, that is different but doesn't feel, um, I don't know, off-putting or maudlin.
It's interesting that you're pointing this out because actually my, my thought about, like, what you're supposed to be if you're on the radio in this particular job and my particular job has changed since we started the radio show. Like, and I really started with the sense of, um, it's better not to be too specific about who I am, um, and, and to be a more of a vague presence that all I am is a person who, like, who likes these kinds of stories. And so, and so, and so that way anything can be projected on me and I'm kind of a blank slate in a way that, like, I feel like Terry Gross, uh, when you hear Terry on the air, she just seemed like this really smart person who was interested in these different things.
And, and I remember when I, I met her in person for the first time, I had been hearing her on the radio for years, and I really just thought and think that she's just the best at that job that you could be.
Yeah.
And, um, and the more you know about interviewing on the radio, the better she seems, actually.
Absolutely.
Like, the more I like you guys just how hard it is to do something that looks so simple.
Yeah.
Um, to interview the most famous people in the world and somehow get something out of them that they haven't said or thought before, and they sound like they're a human being having a conversation or to jump in. Anyway, blah, blah, I could say a lot about her, but I remember when I met her, I realized I hadn't ever pictured who she would be, like what she looked like. And what she looks like in real life is she's sort of, sort of, sort of a short, slim, glasses-wearing woman, which when you see her, you're just like, "Yeah, that's about right," you know? But like, I realized, like, I hadn't, I hadn't stopped to think.
I had no image in my head for, for what she looked like. And I think partly it's because of that neutrality. And, and when we started this American Life, one of the things that I was really dugging my heels on was, like, I felt like there should be no photos of me.
I remember.
Used as publicity for the show. And so the early, the first publicity photo that we took for the show in 1995, I'm holding a sign in front of my face that says, "Radio equals no pictures."
Yes.
And that was, and then people would want to do stories.
For years.
For years.
That was.
Well, for a year and a half, two years. Yeah.
It seemed.
It seemed like a long time.
It seemed longer.
Yeah, time moved and, yeah, time seemed longer then. But anyway, and then finally my sisters were like, "You got, you gotta cut it out. Like, it's, it's a dumb gimmick. You gotta cut it out." But I felt like, "No, no, no, it's radio. The whole point is that, that you don't want to see the people on the radio." That's one of the powers of the radio is that, is that it's just a voice. And, um, and I felt like, and, and, and then it turned out, I didn't know this, that in order to publicize anything in the United States of America and probably elsewhere, even if it's a newspaper, they want to take your picture. And I remember, like, going on a little, like, dumb diatribe of, like, "Look how weak, how, how they don't trust the power of words."
Like, they're a newspaper. They feel like they can't do it without images. They're so dependent on images. And, and, um, but then it just turned out if we wanted people to hear the radio show and we wanted people to write about it, I had to have my picture taken. And also, as my sisters pointed out, it was kind of pretentious.
What a radio snob.
I was such a radio snob. I know. I know. I know. I remember when we did our TV show, like, one of the things that was so, I had, I was so, like, I was so, like, when we started, I was like, "Images add nothing. Anything that you can do with visuals, you should be able to do without pictures."
How would I do a TV show then?
Well, it seemed fun to do it. And then, well, and also, by the time we started it, I was like, "Oh, the images add so much more. You can do so much with images." It's such another, like, toy box to play in. But I really entered into it with a real childish pro-radio snobbery.
But that's so, that doesn't make any sense to me that you thought that you were supposed to be a, a blank slate or this sort of anonymous everyman at all. I mean, you, you know, you were interviewing your mom about how she was a.
A sex therapist.
A sex therapist.
A sex.
She was quoted in, in Vogue.
As Marie Claire.
Marie Claire as a, as a sex therapist.
Yeah.
Um.
No, that's very specific. But.
And, and also, you know, telling the story about, you know, about Danielle and, and, um.
Yeah.
What was the name of the, the.
Uh, Ducky.
Ducky.
Ducky, her imaginary friend, her family's imaginary friend, Ducky.
Yeah.
Right? Oh, these are all stories from the early days of the show.
Yeah, but they're, and they're not, you know, I could be anybody. I mean, you're a very specific person in all of these stories.
I suppose that's true, but that's not the story I was telling myself.
This is fascinating.
I grant you I was wrong.
All right.
All right, Nancy. Well, thank you for doing this with me.
It was fun.
It was, in a sad way, very fun.
I know. I know. Even the sad.
Even the sad was kind of fun.
Yeah, no.
Yeah. All right.
Yeah.
And I should also say that you brought two other stories to play also interesting, um, personal ones, and we are going to save those for another bonus episode because it feels like we've talked for long enough now. Okay. Hi, it's Ira right now, today, in the present, putting a tag on the end of this show. Um, we did, in fact, release that second bonus episode with Nancy and so many more episodes after that. AMA episodes, stage performances, and a lot more like this where staffers kind of dig up old, mostly forgotten stories.
You can get access to all of those, and most important, help us keep making the show by subscribing at thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners. The link is in the show notes. If you're using Apple Podcasts, you can actually sign up right in Apple Podcasts. Okay. We'll close out with this. Okay, you ready to go?
I thought you were starting.
I'll start. I'll start.
Oh, hi.
Hi. Um, I'm Ira Glass.
I'm Mary, Irish friend.
This is Mary recorded a couple years ago when she and I shot a video explaining to older listeners how to download a podcast, which Mary knew how to do. I don't need to give away your age, but is it safe to say you are an actual older person?
I'm on the dark side of 85. How's that?
Okay.
Ira Glass talks with longtime producer Nancy Updike about the most personal stories they have put on the radio. This is a sample of the bonus episodes we regularly release to our This American Life Partners.
To gain access to all the bonus episodes AND help us keep making This American Life, join at thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners.