Hidden Truths in the Success Stories of Ira Glass and Anthony Bourdain
The story typically started the same way:
"In a fit of hubris..."
That's how the late, great Anthony Bourdain would often explain how he pitched and published an article to The New Yorker -- the same piece that would change his life forever.
He couldn't get it published by local papers, and "in a fit if hubris," he sent it to THAT publication of all places. (Yadda yadda yadda book deal yadda yadda yadda global bestseller yadda yadda yadda TV show.)
To hear him tell it is to come away convinced that one rebellious moment can turn you into a thriving creative success.
Except that wasn't the truth.
Elsewhere in the creative world, in a different medium (audio), we hear the story of a different legend (Ira Glass) told the same way almost everywhere:
He reinvented radio through This American Life.
Yet it was so unique, most execs didn't "get it."
But once a few stations took a chance, Ira's brilliance was undeniable, and the show got picked up by public radio stations across the country.
(Yadda yadda yadda podcasting emerges yadda yadda yadda overseeing Serial and other hits yadda yadda yadda sells his production company to The New York Times.)
To hear people tell it is to come away convinced that an undying commitment to the art can turn you into (you guessed it) a thriving creative success.
Except (you guessed it again) that wasn't the truth.
* * *
Forget Hot Takes; I Like Mine Slowly Simmered
Today's infinite pile of social media posts and the hot take artists behind many of them often strip important nuance from the success stories we receive. Nuance, by the way, does not mean "void of extreme opinions." It means "a subtle distinction or variation." It can also mean "a subtle quality."
The key word here seems to be "subtle." Of course, social media companies know that kind of stuff doesn't recruit enough eyeballs to monetize well using ads, while hot take artists lose their ... jobs? ... if they dare to even utter the word "subtle." So we're left with a glut of stories that become lore, void of the nuance we need to really understand what happened.
Nuance, thy name is truth.
If we plan to learn from our heroes, we ought to learn from a higher-resolution picture of how they really succeeded. Adding more subtle details makes their stories a bit more ... true.
So here we go. Let's add some nuance to the success stories of Tony and Ira that are easy to overlook:
Anthony Bourdain did not successfully pitch The New Yorker in a fit of hubris. His mom knew the editor.
Ira Glass did not successfully pitch countless radio stations thanks to his undying commitment to the art. His promotional materials earned stations more money.
Of course, "In a fit of hubris" sounds a lot better than "In a nice chat between my mom and her friends." But it's less accurate, and if we plan to inform our actual work on the stories of others, then we should look past the pithy to something a bit more ... truth-y.
* * *
This American Business
In a recent interview with Ira Glass by Laura Mayer on her podcast Shameless Acquisition Target, the truth came out.
(Well, I mean, some of it. It's hard to fit a person's lifetime into a show's runtime, no matter how much nuance you deploy.)
Shameless won't make much sense if you don't listen to it in order (which I highly recommend doing), but suffice it to say, the show is a meta exploration of how Laura can get the show acquired and cash in on podcasting's boom. (She previously worked at WNYC, Panoply, SONY, and Midroll. I think she'll find a way.)
Naturally, given the business bent to her show, Laura ventured down this path in the interview, around 31:06:
Laura Mayer: "It's a business story too, the success of [This American Life]."
Ira Glass: "Totally, and can I just say, the business success of the show is something nobody asks me about but I feel very proud of."
As a longtime interviewer myself, I'm turned on (metaphorically) whenever a guest says, Wow, nobody's ever asked me that.
(Okay fine: also sexually.)
The interview continued:
IG: "I was really careful that it would be a successful business -- first of all, that it would survive, because at the beginning, it didn't seem like the most likely thing to succeed."
According to most interpretations, the show is an artistic success, but it never would have had the chance to become an artistic success if not for that oft-overlooked detail.
Ira Glass: Entrepreneur.
According to legend, it's one way. According to the legend, it's another. Which is true? Both. But one is truthier.
Ira told Laura his first task was to talk public radio stations into putting them on the radio, which only a few did, during times nobody listened. When they started, the show's funding was covered by grant money they'd secured, but the goal was to eventually fund their work more directly through carriage fees (i.e. the stations paying to broadcast the show). Each station would pay a show like theirs somewhere between $4k to $6k, and since they needed somewhere north of $250k to operate, they needed a ton of programming directors to agree to pick up the show.
IG: "And the problem is, no station is interested in doing anything new."
To solve that problem, Ira turned to the very same thing Tony Bourdain used to get himself published in The New Yorker. (No, not his mom, but what Bourdain's mom represented.)
* * *
Parents Unknown
The story of Bourdain's rise to fame usually began in the same place when he told it: publishing an article about the inner-workings of restaurant kitchens in The New Yorker.
But several years before that, he had already established a consistent writing practice. It's a nuance to the story we need that is often not shared. Before his piece in The New Yorker and before his mega-bestseller, Kitchen Confidential, Bourdain's first written works were actually two crime novels: Bone in the Throat (1995) and Gone Bamboo (1997).
But as the story goes, after unsuccessfully pitching his article in several places, an unknown local paper finally agreed to run it. However, they kept bumping it, and so "in a fit of hubris," he decided to pitch this apparently unpublishable piece, from this allegedly new writer, to a supposedly unsuspecting editor at The New Yorker. (You can still read the article online: Don't Eat Before Reading This.)
Man meets moment. Fates give their blessing. Yadda yadda yadda. Thriving creative success.
That's according to legend and, as far as I can tell in my research, according to the legend. But a crucial ingredient in his success is absent from the telling, which makes it sound pithier but a lot less truthful: Gladys.
Gladys Bourdain was Anthony's mother.
She was also a longtime copyeditor at The New York Times, and around the same time Tony was trying to get his piece published, Gladys paid a visit to a friend, Esther Fein, a reporter at the Times. It turns out Esther's husband, David Remnick, had just started a very interesting new job ... as editor at The New Yorker magazine.
To hear it told by Esther is to receive some nuance omitted in the pithier tellings of Anthony Bourdain's success:
Esther Fein (as told to The New York Times): “[Gladys Bourdain] came over, and she said, ‘You know, your husband’s got this new job ... I hate to sound like a pushy mom, but I’m telling you this with my editor’s hat on, not my mother’s hat on. It’s really good, and it’s really interesting, but nobody will look at it, nobody will call him back or give it a second look. Could you put it in your husband’s hands?’”
Esther convinced her husband to read the piece by the young Bourdain, and after the article ran in the magazine, Tony had a book deal in a matter of days.
The rest, as they say, is truth-y.
* * *
Stop Waiting for the Fates & Start Fighting
While each and every Big Break story makes the hero's moments seem fated, they weren't. They were fought for, tooth and nail. The hero leveraged everything they could from their own life to use as an advantage. I call those things: unfair advantages. They're unique to you. It's unfair that you have access to them -- or that you've learned to wield them with such impunity.
Mind you, privilege is a real thing. Some people have societally-gifted unfair advantages, which are indeed very unfair. Talent and work ethic are evenly distributed, while opportunity is not. But if you're reading this, you and I have won the life lottery in at least some ways. We probably all have homes and enough food to eat, and we all get to sit at computers and do knowledge-based, creative work.
We all have SOME kind of advantages in our careers.
The real questions are: Have you identified yours, and have you leveraged them to their fullest extent?
Tony and Ira did just that.
Anthony Bourdain's advantages were personal.
His mother was a copywriter. She'd seen writing at the highest levels. She helped her son establish a practice and write a couple books. (They flopped until he rose to fame later, but make no mistake: he got stronger as a writer and built some street cred in new circles, outside the kitchen, thanks to those books and therefore his mom.)
Then, when he needed an intro, he got one. Thanks to his mom.
But he also added two other personal advantages to his writing: his knowledge in and experiences of kitchen culture and his love for the darker side of things (crime, music, drugs, stories, etc.). Unlike many of us who overlook the stuff right in front of us every day, Bourdain leaned into these personal interests to turn them into advantages. That started with his crime novels, spilled over into his tell-all article, and of course, later defined his first-person nonfiction books and narrative episodes.
Bourdain's advantages were personal. Anyone who watched him knows just how much of the man they saw on screen, compared to other, more performative or announcer-like TV hosts. Leveraging his unfair advantages then gave him the opportunity to do more and more things that felt true to himself -- things done "in a fit of hubris."
Bourdain's advantages were personal.
Ira Glass's advantages were professional.
When pitching directors of radio programming across the country, he didn't tell them to pick up This American Life because they were transforming radio. He told them to pick up the show because the station would make more money.
The reason why reveals just how entrepreneurial Ira really is -- and why we might be wise to mimic his approach.
Here's the part of Laura Mayer's interview that caused the electricity running down my arm to finally reach my fingers and urge me to start writing to you today:
LM (narrating): "The idea of quality for quality's sake? It's a hard sell. We can't prove there can be an audience, I've heard. Yes, but how can you prove there isn't an audience if you don't...try to prove...that there's an audience? Even in small ways. Very inexpensive ways. Cheap trial-balloon ways. Cheap trial-balloons from Party City! How does one create new things, new genres, new styles, in an industry that doesn't want to take calculated risks? Let's turn back to our current-favorite fashion moment, the 1990s, when Ira and his team tackled this problem of making newness happen by coming up with an ingenious plan to get This American Life on radio stations and into ears and to get some of that sweet, sweet, carriage-fee income. To do that, they approached public radio program directors with a unique idea."
IG: "And so, to talk them into picking up the show, basically we did killer pledge drives. Because we knew the one thing they needed was they needed a way to get people to donate during the pledge drive, and overwhelmingly the pledge drive materials they were using were really boring and not fun to listen to and not that effective. So we just went out of our way to make killer pledge drive modules that were three, four, five minutes long that were really funny, that had some weird concept. Yanno, calling up listeners who hadn't pledged and making them feel guilty; stopping people outside Starbucks and asking them how much they spend on coffee. Do you listen to public radio? 'Oh, I listen to it all day!' Do you ever pledge? We just kept thinking of one thing after another, and they would run the pledge spots and they would make all this money from them."
The TAL team would even send postcards to radio execs with a similar message, saying:
IG: "Don't pick us up because we are idealistic people trying to reamke the face of public broadcasting. Pick us up because we will make you money. That is our promise to you.
Some radio execs even started calling to ask for their pledge drive materials specifically, to which Ira would happily reply, "They're yours. So long as you pick up our show too."
Ira Glass and his team had an unfair advantage: they knew how to make irresistible, heartwarming radio -- including about uncomfortable daily themes. That was their entire thing! So instead of switching from Art Mode to Marketing Mode to read boring statements about donations, they remained in Art Mode -- and broke the lever clean off.
Their stories were unique and more immersive. So they approached pledge drives the same way.
Their casual narration earned trust more quickly. So they approached pledge drives the same way.
These advantages, applied in an unlikely place, helped the show become an unlikely success.
* * *
The first time I ever realized I should operate this way involved my media kit, the deck I send to sponsors of my creative platform. My first version looked predictable, leading with top-line growth metrics: downloads, views, subscribers, and social followers. But is that what I believe I offer? Is that going to make me competitive? Is that aligned with my core ideas of resonance and storytelling?
No. But I had switched to Sales Mode. I needed to switch back to Storytelling Mode -- and break the lever clean off.
Last year, I started to tell a story through my deck about the change I wanted to inspire in others. I talked about resonance and affinity, depth of connection and effective storytelling -- all the things you read from me here. I used screen shots of qualitative responses, at first showing tweets, then short emails, then massive diatribes from experienced creators and marketers, telling me why they appreciated my work.
"Don't sponsor me if you want to get in front of lots of people. Sponsor me if you want to ensure the right people deeply care. I believe that's what great marketing is for, and that's what this sponsorship is for too."
Although I chose to leave sponsorships behind me for a time (to focus on my upcoming membership), I feel lucky to have worked with creative brands as sponsors, like Wistia, Riverside, Content Marketing Institute, and The Juice.
I used to feel like myself only when creating content and a forced version of me when doing anything sales-related. Now? I'm myself, everywhere. And I'm better at sales.
Don't buy into the pithy stories of big breaks and made-it moments. They lack nuance. You're likely not a single moment of hubris away, and declaring others should care because you're revolutionizing something is far less likely to work than showing them how their goals are better met through your work.
When we leverage our unfair advantages in unlikely ways, we give ourselves more opportunities to excel at the things that give us the most joy. Sales doesn't look like my main thing, but being good at sales allows me to do my main thing more sustainably. And I'm only good at sales because I'm using the same advantages that make me good elsewhere.
The truth is, nothing is fated. Our heroes fought for their breaks. Did they have advantages? Absolutely. But so do we all. Maybe not in ways that mimic our heroes exactly, sure. But you possess a unique blend of knowledge, practice, access, expertise, personal connections, and personality quirks.
Let's each of us stop relying on the fates. I will if you will. Let's instead stake even more of our careers to the things that make us unique -- in the craft, but also around it.
Fight for what you want to exist in this world. Make it beautiful, but also make it viable. Otherwise, you're not really helping yourself or those who benefit from your art.
What are your unfair advantages?
How can you use them more fully?
Even in the most unlikely of places, your work requires more of you.