A note from Wild Card host Rachel Martin: It probably goes without saying, but Ira Glass is legendary in my audio world. He hosts This American Life, one of the most famous and successful radio shows and podcasts of all time. And so when I got an invitation to interview him live at a convention called Podcast Movement, I was super nervous and a smidge intimidated.

When we met backstage, I was surprised to find out he seemed a little intimidated too. Not by me, to be clear, but by the format of Wild Card. He was about to be asked all these potentially personal questions — in front of a really big audience. And he told me that revealing things about himself didn’t come naturally when he was younger — it was something he had to learn to do. But to his credit, he bravely faced the deck and answered every question that came his way.

This Wild Card interview has been edited for length and clarity. Host Rachel Martin asks guests randomly-selected questions from a deck of cards. Tap play above to listen to the full podcast, or read an excerpt below.

Question 1: What is something you think people misunderstand about you?

Ira Glass: I play a much nicer, more empathetic person on the radio than I am in real life.

Rachel Martin: I don’t believe it. You’re not a nice, empathetic person?

Glass: To a point — to the point where I could play it on the radio.

Martin: So there’s like public Ira Glass and then like normal Ira Glass. How far apart are the two?

Glass: Um, I contain that sort of empathetic, people-pleasing person who I’m playing on the radio. That’s most of who I am, but I’m a person under weekly deadlines. And I get freaked out and tired and irritable and don’t want to talk to people. And I get annoyed. And I curse a lot. I really love cursing. So, like, I am that person, but I’m more than that person.

I hesitate telling this story because it’s a little self-something, congratulatory, or something. But one of the very first live shows was a town hall in New York City. And The New York Observer wrote an article about coming to the show, and the article was just about how there were a lot of women who had crushes on me over the radio.

And for the article, they interviewed my senior producer at the time, Julie Snyder. At the time, our staff was me and three women. And she said, “Look, I love my husband. But I’d love him a lot more if every word he said was edited by three women.” That’s the difference between the public and private version of me.

Question 2: Do you think about the legacy that you will leave behind?

Glass: No, I do not. I think that’s bull****. I don’t care at all about that. F*** legacy. F*** people of the future. F*** people who will be after all of us are dead. F*** the people who will be alive, having lunch and seeing movies. F*** them. I hate them. I’m not making a radio show for them. I’m making a show for people who hear it now. And when it’s done and we don’t make it anymore, it’s perfectly fine for it to vanish into the mists of time. Like everything will, and it’s fine if that happens very quickly. It doesn’t matter.

Martin: I asked the poet Nikki Giovanni and she basically said the same thing. And she told me that she is often engaged with people who think a lot about their legacy — even thinking about the stamps that America will make with their visage.

Glass: That’s sad. That’s just a sad person. That’s pathetic. Unless you’re President Obama, unless you’re an actual historical figure. Like, that’s appropriate for him to think about his legacy. But he’s the first Black president of the United States. He should think about that.

Question 3: What truth guides your life more than any other?

Glass: I mean, the actual truth is a little embarrassing to say, and I’ve never put it to myself this way, but I think it’s true: I feel like I’m trying to be a good boy. I’m trying to show that I really am trying my hardest all the time to those around me.

I’m given a simple thing to do. And then I make it way more complicated and spend a lot more time on it than I probably should. Or there’s some like thing in a mix that four other people have heard, and it’s Friday, and then I just hear it and say we have to put three-fourths of a second pause here and four-tenths of a second pause there to make this last moment work, which I would like to believe makes it better.

And I feel like I’m always being a good soldier in appropriate and inappropriate situations. In personal situations where it’s intrusive and not called for, and in work situations where I work with super competent, the very best-at-their-jobs-in-the-world people who very much don’t need my help sometimes. And so it’s a quality that is both good and bad.

On-air challenge: Tomorrow is Cyber Monday. I’ve brought a game of Categories based on the word CYBER. For each category I give, name something in it starting with each of the letters C-Y-B-E-R.

For example, if the category were “Two-Syllable Girls’ Names,” you might say Connie, Yvette, Betty, Ellen, and Rachel. Any answer that works is OK, and you can give the answers in any order.

1. Colors
2. Garden Vegetables
3. Mammals with Three-Letter Names
4. Popular Websites

Last week’s challenge: Last week’s challenge comes from listener Greg VanMechelen, of  Berkeley, Calif. Name a state capital. Inside it in consecutive letters is the first name of a popular TV character of the past. Remove that name, and the remaining letters in order will spell the first name of a popular TV game show host of the past. What is the capital and what are the names?

Challenge answer: Montgomery (Ala.) –> Gomer (Pyle), Monty (Hall)

Winner: Greg Felton of Stateline, Nev.

This week’s challenge:  This week’s challenge comes from the crossword constructor and editor Peter Gordon. Think of a classic television actor — first and last names. Add a long-E sound at the end of each name and you’ll get two things that are worn while sleeping. What are they?

Submit Your Answer

If you know the answer to the challenge, submit it here by Thursday, December 5th, 2024 at 3 p.m. ET. Listeners whose answers are selected win a chance to play the on-air puzzle. Important: include a phone number where we can reach you.

When I asked my mother what she might like for her birthday this year, she quickly texted back: Nothing. We are downsizing.

My parents already live in a small house — a former fishing cabin on the edge of a lake. Our family moved a few times when my brothers and I were growing up, our childhood belongings pared down at each step. My parents relocated after we graduated from college, stripping their belongings down further and shipping what furniture was left to each of us kids. I got the Sellers Hoosier, a wooden hutch with a built-in tin flour bin and a metal bread kneading shelf, now more than 100 years old, that my great-grandmother used to bake on.

I wondered what was left for them to downsize. And then it hit me: Were they doing the Swedish death clean? “Döstädning: The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning” is the bestselling book that sparked a TV show and popularized a decluttering technique that has people clean up their belongings before they die, so their friends and family won’t have to. My mother will be 80 this year, my father 82 — was there something they weren’t telling me?

It turned out that my parents hadn’t seen the show or read the book. The real problem was that they had just inherited a bunch of “stuff” from my aunt, who has dementia and was moving into assisted living. My mom told me about all the things my aunt had treasured and saved that now sat in cardboard boxes: plates and linen dish towels commemorating the British Royals; Hummel figurines (and some fakes); newspaper clippings. There were also letters, photos, notes and journals. Birthday cards. Those personal items we save, private and special only to us. Our “stuff.” My aunt had never intended for anyone else to see it or have to deal with it.

My mother didn’t think it was appropriate to throw any of it away, not while my aunt was still alive. “She asked that some of the Princess Diana things be sent to you,” Mom confessed. “But,” she whispered, “I don’t think you’d want it.” She’s right, I don’t, but the larger question is: Who does?

The idea of döstädning (and the fact that my aunt clearly didn’t get around to it) made me think about all the stuff I’ve collected over the years. When I moved from New York to Los Angeles more than 20 years ago, I couldn’t afford to ship most of my books, so I sent only the most precious, signed editions I had. I also sent the journals I’d written in for years, stuffed with the small details of my life in New York City. What I wore on a first date. A promotion. An unrequited crush. I was moving to Los Angeles for love, but I couldn’t part with these chronicles of all my previous relationships.

Now those journals live in the garage of my family’s Los Feliz house. I know exactly which plastic bin they’re in, even though I haven’t read them since I left New York. If I were to die tomorrow, how would I feel about someone else reading them — my parents, my son, my husband? And if I don’t want anyone reading them after I’m gone, why have I kept them?

This led me to ask my friends and family: Is there anything that you would want automatically destroyed after your death, before your loved ones found it? Most of the answers revolved around sex: naked photos, sex toys, pornography, dirty notes and sexts. Other answers were more comical: A pot stash they didn’t want kids to find; specifically, weed butter in the freezer. The secret family in New Jersey (I think he was joking).

Some people revealed that they had pacts with a friend or relative to destroy certain items after their death. I loved the idea of a trusted friend tossing all my buried secrets, until I remembered what happened to Franz Kafka. His friend and literary executor, Max Brod, had been entrusted to burn all of Kafka’s letters and manuscripts after his death — a wish Kafka put in writing, even though Brod told him he wouldn’t do it. Indeed, Brod published the material, and we would not have “The Trial,” “The Castle” or other great works had he followed Kafka’s instructions.

Did Brod have the right to overrule his friend? Perhaps it’s better to ask if Kafka had the right to ask that the manuscripts be destroyed. As an artist, do you owe the world your work, even after death?

My friend Cecil, a novelist, says: “As artists, it’s our gig to keep the embarrassing things that inspire us around. We are complex, and hopefully everyone gets that.” She says her journals would make a “boring read” — but if she asked me to destroy all her works after her death and I found some beautiful piece of writing among them, I would be torn about how to proceed.

Even though I’ve published a memoir and works of fiction that allow readers a glimpse into my life, I still have parts of myself that I don’t want anyone to see. In this age of over-sharing, talking about what I would want wiped out after my death has given me a better understanding of döstädning and its appeal. It’s less about saving our families from having to do the cleaning-up work, and more about applying some small measure of control over how we are remembered by those we loved. Perhaps it’s also a nudge to live a life worthy of remembering — sex toys and all — while we still can.

Cylin Busby is an author and screenwriter. Her latest book is “The Bookstore Cat.”