NPR host Ira Glass’ rough year continues with the announcement that illness will keep him from appearing at his Mountain Winery show scheduled for tonight. The show has been rescheduled for June 30.
Glass is the executive producer host of NPR’s iconic show This American Life, and is on tour with his show Reinventing Radio: An Evening With Ira Glass.
Glass, a sometimes polarizing figure who nonetheless has been credited with transforming the very concept of radio storytelling since his show began in 1995, has had a bumpy ride this year. In March, a This American Life story featuring former Silicon Valley tech worker Mike Daisey blew up in his face when a number of fabrications in Daisey’s story came to light. The episode, which was the most downloaded in the show’s history, included parts of Daisey’s monologue from his one-man show The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. In an open letter retracting the story, Glass admitted there were a number of “significant fabrications” in Daisey’s story of visiting a factory in China that produces iPhones and other Apple products. Certain details didn’t match up to known facts—and others couldn’t be verified at all—in Daisey’s tales of underage workers, mangled hands and chemical poisoning on Apple assembly lines.
A live event in March centered around the This American Life episode and featuring a Q&A with Daisey was subsequently cancelled. Later that month, Glass cancelled a Reinventing Radio date in Hartford, Connecticut.
Tickets for tonight’s show will be honored at the June 30 date.
.Ira Glass Illness Forces Last-Minute Cancellation of Mountain Winery Show
