There is a sort of magic in storytelling, and few have mastered it better than “This American Life” host Ira Glass.

Since the mid-1990s, the nationally syndicated public radio program has blended heartfelt confessions, poignant reporting and quirky detours into something that helps listeners make sense of our country and its people.

But what most people don’t realize is that Glass, 65, isn’t just a figurative magician. He was, at one time, an actual magician. A boy magician. And, more precisely, a Baltimore boy magician.

To understand how Glass transformed from Baltimore’s pint-sized Houdini to the storyteller who captivates millions of listeners most every week, you have to start where it all began — with his family’s roots in a corner grocery store on Bayard Street. With a young man desperate to escape Baltimore County. And with the city itself — the place that first fostered his love for storytelling.

Act I: Maryland roots

Our ears perked up when Glass mentioned on a recent episode of his show that he’d been a boy magician. So The Baltimore Banner turned the tables on the famous host. Right from the beginning, the interview went about as you’d expect.

“Tell me about your family’s history in Maryland.”

“You’re automatically starting with something that I actually don’t know the details of,” he said, before seamlessly launching into an impressively detailed breakdown of the Glasses in Baltimore. His great-grandparents arrived in Baltimore in the late 19th century, part of a wave of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and Germany.

His father’s side opened a corner grocery store near Carroll Park. They lived above it, with several generations taking turns working the aisles below. The store slaughtered chickens, an activity etched so deeply in his father’s and uncle’s memories that they both swore off eating chicken for the rest of their lives.

On his mother’s side, the Politzer family — which, according to Glass, is distantly related to the Pulitzer family — had its own hardworking legacy. His grandfather spent World War II in the shipyards of Fells Point before opening Ye Village Hardware Store, a family staple in Baltimore from about 1955 to 1973.

His parents, Barry Glass and Shirley Politzer, both attended the University of Maryland, where his father worked as a radio DJ at age 19. For a time, his father’s voice filled Baltimore’s airwaves as a local DJ, but the year Ira was born, he swapped the microphone for spreadsheets, becoming an accountant.

Act II: Growing up Baltimore

When an adolescent Ira Glass wandered into the library at the corner of Old Court and Liberty Road, he wasn’t expecting to stumble upon a treasure trove. But there it was: an entire shelf dedicated to books about magic tricks.

“It was crazy to me that anybody could get these books and then you could do these incredible things,” Glass said.

He checked out as many as he could, taught himself a handful of tricks, and started advertising in the Baltimore Jewish Times. His parents chauffeured him to his first few shows, where he charged a modest $5 for his act. Then, the phone rang. It was another magician — a grown-up.

“And he’s like, who are you? Because he also was trying to work at kids’ parties, and then he saw some competition,” Glass said. The magician left him with two pieces of advice: Stop undercutting your prices, and come to Yogi Magic Mart on Saturday.

Glass followed both suggestions. He eventually started charging as much as $15 per show and became a regular at Yogi’s, where Baltimore’s magicians, young and old, swapped secrets and perfected their craft.

Most Saturdays, Glass climbed the store’s windy, dusty stairs where illusions and tricks hung on the walls like trophies. Behind the counter, shopkeepers stood ready to break down each magic trick, step by step, as if unveiling the mysteries of the universe.

For years, Glass found success as a young magician and performed across greater Baltimore. At one point he even performed for Michael Jackson.

“I just thought, like, ‘I can put on a show,’” Glass said. “And obviously that instinct kept through and kind of built me into who I am today.”

Act III: Hometown embrace

For years, every trip Glass took down Old Court Road in Baltimore County was like flipping through a scrapbook.

“There was something nice about driving around a place that was sort of radioactive,” he said.

The Baskin Robbins where he scooped ice cream at his first job. The cemetery he often biked through, trying not to flinch at the gravestones. The library where he found the books that sparked his magic career.

By his 30s and 40s, though, Baltimore had become more of a distant memory, the kind of place you think about fondly but don’t particularly miss. Which, of course, had been his goal all along.

“When I was a kid, I just wanted to get out of Baltimore, really,” Glass said. “I had no idea what else might exist, but I definitely wanted to go.”

His career took him first to NPR in Washington, then to WBEZ in Chicago, where “This American Life” became his signature creation, and finally to New York City, where he lives today.

Whenever he returned to Baltimore, he was struck, he said, by how different it felt from the city he’d left behind.

As his parents aged and he began returning to Maryland more frequently, the pulse of nostalgia started to fade. The differences between Baltimore and everywhere else seemed smaller. New memories began to take root: caring for his ailing parents, taking his father and stepmother to the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

Baltimore, once glowing from the past, softened into something simpler. The city, like magic, was no longer a bygone memory. It was his hometown.

“I have nothing but fond feelings for Baltimore,” Glass said. “If you’re from Baltimore, you just don’t get too big for your britches. That’s built into you.”