Glynn Washington adding diversity to radio one story at a time New York AmsterdamNews

"On this night, Washington opens up about his childhood in Pasadena, Calif., which was spent in the now infamous Worldwide Church of God, headed by the apocalyptic radio evangelist Herbert W. Armstrong. Many, including Washington, called the church a cult.  

I don’t know how this is possible, with the sadness and seriousness that was woven throughout the story, but laughter erupted in the room. Here is this man telling us that when he was a 9-year-old, he was going to school and telling his best friend goodbye, sleeping in shoes and trying to get right with Jesus so that he wouldn’t perish in the rapture. He was surrounded by adults who were doing the same thing. His family was almost convinced to send their lifesavings to Armstrong, then pick up and leave their home to follow this self-proclaimed prophet to a “safe place” before God’s rapture came, and we were all laughing. This is a true story, but we can laugh because it’s a part of his life that he has come to terms with. Now he is sharing it with us, so that we can take from it what we need or want."

NPR’s Great Black Hope The Atlantic

"That was 1997, when This American Life, Glass’s public-radio show, was just two years old, and people were beginning to suspect that his style of curated storytelling might be radio’s next big thing. Now Washington, a proud student of Glass’s, is the next big thing. In its first three years, Snap Judgment, Washington’s fast-paced, music-heavy, ethnically variegated take on the public-radio story hour, has spread like left-end-of-the-dial kudzu. It is on 250 stations, reaching nine of the top 10 public-radio markets, and its podcast is downloaded more than half a million times a month. And while there has long been minority talent on public radio—a realm that includes National Public Radio and other producers of non-commercial radio, like American Public Media and Public Radio International—Washington is the first African American host to swing a big cultural stick, the first who seems likely to become a public-radio superstar on the order of Glass or Garrison Keillor."

"Many NPR hosts come from NPR-ish families. Not Washington. “I grew up in a cult,” he told me. His parents were members of the Worldwide Church of God, a sect founded by Herbert W. Armstrong, an apocalyptic radio evangelist based in Pasadena. Washington got out—a story he tells with an escapee’s pride—and went on to the University of Michigan and its law school. He studied in Japan, then worked for the State Department, then ended up directing a program at the University of California at Berkeley. Some of the best Snap Judgment segments are drawn from his own life, and you get the feeling he could carry several episodes a year by himself."