Sublime

The best part of producing a daily show is knowing that many listeners come to consider you a regular companion. The worst part is hardly having a minute between one deadline and the next and doing everything in a hurry.

It’s my job to help these people, the experts as well as the artists, focus and present their thoughts.

OF COURSE MY LISTENERS ARE INVISIBLE, too—at least to me. I’m always amazed by the diversity of the show’s listeners and the settings they listen in.

But they bear little resemblance to the conversations we have in daily life. Unlike an actual conversation, which requires only two people, a Fresh Air interview is a team effort. One of my producers finds and books the guest, a researcher locates the material I need to look at for background, an associate editor cuts the tape, and the executive pr

That’s one of the reasons I love working on radio: You might be a public figure but you’re essentially just a voice, and this lets each person who listens form whatever image of you he or she wants—tall or short, fat or thin, sex bomb or schoolmarm, straight or gay. The invisibility of radio was something I took comfort in early in my career, when

The answer was something not even many of my colleagues and closest friends know about me, so I was a little hesitant to come right out with it. But I figured that as an interviewer myself, I had a responsibility to answer truthfully. I told the reporter I had wanted to be a lyricist. “No, no,” he said. “Tell me something interesting.” We might as

The interviews on Fresh Air sound conversational, or at least I hope they do.

When it comes to politicians and others in positions of authority, my rules are far less lenient. I don’t elicit their help in drawing the line between public and private, nor do I allow them to start an answer over. Politicians are so skilled at manipulating the press—in staying on-message and evading any question that isn’t to their liking—that i