But you can make good radio, interesting radio, great radio even, without an urgent question, a burning issue at stake.

You'd think that radio was around long enough that someone would have coined a word for staring into space.

It's not a terribly original thing to say, but I love Raymond Carver. For one thing, he's fun to read out loud.

But you can make good radio, interesting radio, great radio even, without an urgent question, a burning issue at stake.

Just when did I get to the point when staying at a hotel wasn't fun?

When I say something untrue on the air, I mean for it to be transparently untrue. I assume people know when I'm just saying something for effect. Or to be funny.

But sadly, one of the problems with being on public radio is that people tend to think you're being sincere all the time.

One reason I do the live shows - and the monthly speeches at public radio stations - is to remind myself that people hear the show, that it has an audience, that it exists in the world. It's so easy to forget that.

In some theoretical way I know that a half-million people hear the show. But in a day-to-day way, there's not much evidence of it.

I think good radio often uses the techniques of fiction: characters, scenes, a big urgent emotional question. And as in the best fiction, tone counts for a lot.

Where radio is different than fiction is that even mediocre fiction needs purpose, a driving question.

We're Jews, my family, and Jews break down into two distinct subcultures: book Jews and money Jews. We were money Jews.

I suppose I shouldn't go around admitting I speak untruths on the radio.

'Smallville' is like a Domino's pizza. While you're eating, you're thinking, 'This is good, and it reminds me of pizza, but there's not enough flavor in each bite.' That's the feeling you have the entire time with 'Smallville' - that it's just about to be good, but it never is.

A lot of broadcasting, I think, is doing a tremendous amount of preparation and trying to act like, 'Oh, this thought is just occurring to me right now' - and speaking sincerely.

Any story hits you harder if the person delivering it doesn't sound like some news robot but in fact sounds like a real person having the reactions a real person would.

At some point, all comics have to go out and be retail salesmen doing door-to-door. And this idea of somebody who totally knows their craft having to get up for free in front of a crowd to work out some stuff they're thinking in their head, still, after as much success as you can get, is really interesting.

For me to do a story, something has to happen to someone. It's a story in the way you learn what a story is in third grade, where there is a person, and things happen to them, and then something big happens, and they realize something new.

Grease and starch just always win over protein. In food as in so many things. Look around you, that's what our whole country is based on. It's amazing that Michael Jordan can be an iconic figure because he's basically just protein.

Harry Potter to me is a bore. His talent arrives as a gift; he's chosen. Who can identify with that? But Hermione - she's working harder than anyone, she's half outsider, right? Half Muggle. She shouldn't be there at all. It's so unfair that Harry's the star of the books, given how hard she worked to get her powers.

Honestly, I am so ignorant of how dance works that I can't even imagine a story that you would want to tell through movement.

Honestly, I find the analysis of dreams is one of the dullest things. I say this as a therapist kid. I find them deeply uninteresting, as a window to the soul.

Honestly, like, I'm a superfan of the 'New York Times,' but I know nothing about how they put it together, and I really don't care.

Honestly, there are so many things about structuring a story for film and telling a story for film that are really different from doing radio.

I am mostly a pretty worried person. In conversations, I am always worried about what to say.

I am such a do-goody, people-pleasing kid - or I was - I don't think I've ever been fired, not even from an ice cream shop, magician for kids' parties, not even in my early jobs in radio.

I can only control what I can control.

I didn't have any particular talent for fiction. I took a class in college.

I didn't watch T.V. from the time I was 18 'til my mid-30s. And then I got a T.V. to watch 'The Sopranos.' I realized, 'Oh, T.V. is really interesting.'

I don't go looking for stories with the idea of wrongness in my head, no. But the fact is, a lot of great stories hinge on people being wrong.

I don't know how to read. I get all my news from Jon Stewart every day.

I don't meet many people who are talking about shows on Showtime.

I don't own a radio. I listen to everything through apps or on my iPhone. And then I download the shows I like. Shows like 'Fresh Air', 'Radiolab', 'Snap Judgement', all those shows.

I don't read novels, but my semiotics study influenced everything about the way I read and edit and write.

I don't take care of my voice at all, which is one reason that I sound as bad as I do.

I don't think I'm better than everyone else at anything, but I am very quick at organizing a big mass of interview tape into a structure.

I don't tweet because I don't need another creative venue. I don't need another form for self-expression. I don't need another way to get my thoughts out to people. I have one. I'm good.

I eat the same breakfast and lunch every day, both at my desk. I employ no time-saving tricks at all.

I feel like in an interview situation, it's a kind of intimacy that I can understand and handle - versus in real life, when I'm much more of a bumbler and have a hard time.

I feel like, in general in my work life, my main goal has been to just be in a situation where I'm not bored with my job. That's been the entire principle. Got my wish.

I hate dream sequences in movies and T.V. shows generally for their heavy-handed symbolism and storytelling tediousness.

I have a pit bull. He's a rescue. He's adorable.

I have been shocked at the number of people who don't watch television.

I just have a harder time, I think, feeling close to people without self consciousness.

I like excess. And giant M&M's.

I liked the people at Brown, while I really disliked most of the fellow students I had met at Northwestern.

I love traveling. But I haven't had big, transformative experiences while on the road. When I go out on the road, it's to go out and get a story or do a promotional event.

I never realized before this the emotional power of some really simple, corny tropes: people with top hats, people with batons, confetti going off, how important it is to smile.

I only got interested in radio once I talked my way into an internship at NPR's headquarters in Washington, D.C. in 1978, never having heard the network on the air.