The Palladium // Friday, Feb. 7, 8 p.m. ET
Photography // Courtesy of the Center
December 2024/January 2025
For over two decades, Peter Sagal has hosted NPR’s “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!,” the topical comedy quiz show heard by millions each week. In this talk, “Front Row at the Sideshow: What I’ve Learned in 25 Years of Hosting America’s Most Beloved News Quiz,” he boils his experience down to important findings, such as what NPR listeners love most, the difference between Republicans and Democrats, why sex makes us crazy, why we’re so susceptible to cultish thinking and the human flaw underlying all our troubles: the inability to admit we’ve been fooled.
Don’t miss an evening with Peter Sagal. Get your tickets at thecenterpresents.org!
Janelle Morrison: Thank you for including Carmel, Indiana, on your tour! What can the audience expect from an evening with you at the Palladium?
Peter Sagal: Let me put it in this way: as you certainly know and your readers might know, I’ve been the host of “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me” for 27 years… January 3 is the anniversary of the first broadcast, and if you think about it, who has a better insight into the common experience of humanity? Someone like [Carmel-native] Steve Inskeep, my colleague at NPR, might interview someone like Tony [Antony] Blinken, the U.S. Secretary of State—this incredibly accomplished guy who speaks four languages, plays rock’n’roll and travels the world dealing with the most difficult concepts, or the guy who just recently was arrested trying to smuggle 100 snakes through airport security. You talk about Blinken, you get a certain idea about people, and when you talk about the other guy, who’s closest to what the real human experience is like, [I’d] argue that’s me. So, [what] I’m going to attempt to do for people in Carmel on February 7 is boil down all that I’ve learned by covering the stupid, the inane, the jealous, the greedy, the impulsive—all the people who end up on our show—and boil it down into what I’ve learned and what there is to share, because I think there’s something to share.
I’ll tell stories about people I’ve covered, ranging from various presidents and politicians to people who smuggle animals through airports, while relating stories to my own personal journey. I think people will come away knowing everything they need to know about life and will never be under any illusions ever again, about anything [laughs].
JM: Prior to hosting “Wait Wait…,” you were writing screenplays. How did you go from a screenwriter to a 27-year host of a popular comedy quiz show?
PS: Pure dumb luck. I’m genuinely embarrassed because I meet very talented young people all the time, and sometimes they’ll ask me how do they get a job like mine or how should they pursue their own dreams doing this, that or the other, and I tell them that they should follow my path in doing something entirely different, and then one day, the phone will ring and offer them a job that they completely don’t deserve. I’m afraid that may not work for them, but that’s all I’ve got.
I was hired, along with a bunch of other people, to be a panelist.
JM: You’ve said that the show wasn’t “very good” in the beginning. What changed?
PS: I was asked if I’d like to host the show after the show underwent some emergency surgery. My wife at the time [now divorced] and I were expecting our first child, and she didn’t really want to live in New York as she was a Midwestern girl from Minnesota, and we had agreed that we would move out of New York to somewhere by our first child’s first birthday. We had no idea where that was going to be, then this job opportunity came up and we moved to Chicago. Looking back, I thought it [would] be something that I’d do for a year or two, maybe three depending on how much I had, and my writing career would continue, and then I’d move on. But that’s not what happened. Instead, 27 years later, I’m here talking to you about it.
JM: From where you sit, looking at the state of the world today, when you hear comments that radio is dead, among other traditional media formats, how important is it that you and colleagues continue to engage NPR audiences with variety?
PS: We are kind of a dinosaur… more of a woolly mammoth. Our extinction is going on, but it’s not quite complete. I think we were lucky enough to have established ourselves early on and not just as a “brand” or “content” or whatever the kids call it these days. It’s kind of a weekly institution. I think we’ve built up a lot of affection in our audience for us.
The other thing that helps us, and this is all me speculating, is we’re on NPR, which people have a lot of loyalty to, but we’re not like NPR. People feel an obligation to get serious, accurate information about the world, and we come along for an hour on the weekend as part of NPR, and we show up making fart jokes, we’re rude to people who are better than us and I actually get to say things on the radio that most people are reduced to shouting at the radio, so that’s fun, right? We’re not a satirical thought leader, and we’re not picking sides—we’re giving people a break. We pride ourselves on being, for the most part, nonpartisan since 90% of our show doesn’t touch on politics. What little [politics] we do is, shall we say, more on personal foils than world-shaking policy.
I’ve always thought of the show as a place, a destination for entertainment that can be enjoyed by everybody. For many years, we’ve heard from conservatives who say they don’t like NPR but love our show because it’s funny. Karl Rove told me that once—no kidding! I don’t know how I feel about that, but it’s true [laughs]. We’re a nice place to take a break from the constant partisan broil that I think is making us all a little crazy.
