Ira Glass is best known for being the host of This American Life, a program listened to by over 3 million people each week via podcast or their local public radio station. He is also a big fan of magic and has had Derek DelGaudio and David Blaine on the show.
Glass’ love of the conjuring arts started when he was a young teenager in Baltimore, Maryland, and he stumbled across an entire shelf of magic books at his local library. “It was crazy to me that anybody could get these books and then you could do these incredible things,” Glass told The Baltimore Banner in an article about growing up in the city.
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Glass learned some tricks and then began booking shows for $5 a pop. “I just thought, like, ‘I can put on a show,’” he said. “And obviously that instinct kept through and kind of built me into who I am today.”
His prices brought him to the attention of a local magician, who gave him a call and told him to raise his rate and head over to Yogi Magic Mart that Saturday. Whether the magician directed him to the Saturday meet-up for the “Yogi Youngsters” or the session for Yogi (adult) club members is unclear, but Glass became a part of the Baltimore magic community and continued to perform, even raising his rates to $15 per show.
Glass, now 65, hung up his red-and-black cape by the time he was 19 and started his internship at NPR in Washington, D.C. For years, he was admittedly embarrassed by his first career, but with a 2017 This American Life episode on magic, he appears to have embraced his kid magician self, who would undoubtedly be over the moon to find himself mentioned in Genii.
Listen to Ira Glass and David Kestenbaum reminisce about being kid magicians in episode 619 of This American Life.
Early magician photos courtesy of Ira Glass