Before The Cheering Started with Budd Mishkin

Send us Fan MailThere are a lot of different people on a movie set.  It usually helps when all of them are rowing in the same direction.  Erika Burke Rossa got an early lesson in interacting with all sorts of different people, growing up in Hong Kong and Taiwan, then coming to New York to be a dancer, an actor, a social worker and now a first-time feature film director.

Send us Fan MailFRANK FILIPETTICreating Behind The Console If you’re a music buff like me, you could listen to seven time Grammy Award winning engineer and producer Frank Filipetti talk all day long.  There are stories of joy and inspiration and an improbable journey, working with James Taylor and Carly Simon, Broadway musical casts and recording the traditional sounds of the Bush men and women in southern Africa. He can perhaps understand the musician better than most engineers and producers.  In the first ten years of his career, he was that musician, gigging and recording and surviving and dreaming in New York.   And then at 31, he found himself professionally adrift and had to make a decision.  We’ve been the beneficiaries of that decision.Frank is currently part of a show at the Sheen Center in New York called Studio Confidential: Music’s greatest behind the console stories.  Ticket info is at https://www.sheencenter.org/events/detail/studio-confidential-1

Send us Fan MailKEN BELSON“Every Day Is Sunday” The Super Bowl has long been America’s unofficial national holiday.  Ken Belson covers the business of the NFL and other sports, bringing a business journalism background to his work rather than a sports journalism background.  He learned the lessons of how to deal with influential corporate executives as a business reporter in a land not associated with football: Japan.  But those lessons learned long ago laid the groundwork for a new book that tells a story as compelling as any game: “Every Day Is Sunday:  How Jerry Jones, Robert Kraft and Roger Goodell Turned the NFL into a Cultural & Economic Juggernaut.”

Send us Fan MailWe are going deep into the archives for this episode of "Before The Cheering Started with Budd Mishkin."I’ve been blessed to have a long career in broadcast journalism and meet so many intriguing people along the way.  During my years covering sports, when I spent more than a few days and nights at Yankee Stadium, there was nothing better than spending some time with the longtime public address announcer at the Stadium, Bob Sheppard.  For more than fifty years, his voice was an integral part of the experience at Yankee Stadium.  Meeting him and developing a friendship with him was one of the great joys of my life.  He was a thoughtful man, well read, kind and, to use one of his words, “mannerly.”  And he was a wonderful storyteller, without an iota of hubris despite the love and adoration he engendered.  And so when I found an old cassette from my former radio station of an interview I did with Bob in 1986 for “WNBC’s Sportsnight with Dave Sims,” I listened and smiled and wanted to share it.  Bob died in 2010.  He is still beloved and will never be forgotten. 

Send us Fan MailArturo O’Farrill says his piano looks at him every day and asks “want to dance?”Let the playing begin.Arturo O’Farrill’s love affair with music spans generations.  It started with his father Chico and continues with Arturo’s sons Adam and Zack.  He’s shared the love with thousands of students through the years in classrooms and on performance stages.  After almost two decades of ideas and meetings and work, Arturo’s love of Afro Latin jazz will soon have a home in East Harlem.  Casa Belongo.  

Send us Fan MailPerhaps we should have known all along that David Silverman would pursue a life in animation and would make us laugh.  When his father, a professor of chemical engineering, read to him at night, it wasn’t “Goodnight Moon” or “Oh, The Places You’ll Go.”  It was Walt Kelly and the classic comic strip “Pogo.”  At the movies, it was Charlie Chaplin and “Modern Times” and “The Gold Rush,” when David was all of five.  All these years later, after decades of working on “The Simpsons,” the love affair with animation that makes us laugh is still very much alive.

Send us Fan MailEvery once in a while, I turn my attention to stories from my broadcast journalism career, memories that remain vivid years later.  That is certainly the case for December 19, 1995, a night at Madison Square Garden 30 years ago that was easily one of the most dramatic in the building’s history.  I still think of this night three decades later.  And I smile.

Send us Fan MailFor decades, Harvey Araton has used the prism of sports to write about people.  He did so for many years as a columnist for The New York Times.  And then as an author of books like “When The Garden Was Eden: Clyde, the Captain, Dollar Bill and the Glory Days of the New York Knicks,” “Our Last Season: A Writer, A Fan, A Friendship” and his most recent book, a middle grade novel about youth sports called “The Goal of the Game.”I had the pleasure and privilege of watching Harvey in action during hundreds of post games at Madison Square Garden and beyond, and then waking up the next morning to get the paper to see how “Harvey wrote it.”

Send us Fan MailNew York has long played an important role in sweeping works of fiction and non-fiction, as if the city were a character itself.  That’s certainly the case in the work of Jonathan Mahler, first in his 2005 book “Ladies and Gentleman, The Bronx is Burning,” subtitled “1977, Baseball, Politics And The Battle For The Soul Of A City.”  Now comes a sequel of sorts: “The Gods Of New York: Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists, And The Birth Of The Modern City: 1986-1990.”Mahler was born in New York but bred in California.  His professional career has been the story of coming home.

Send us Fan MailSuzzy Roche has known both sides of the coin in a long musical and acting career.  She’s known the struggle of wondering when the next job is going to come.  But she has also known the joy of writing and performing music and seeing the effects of that music on her many fans through the decades.  When The Roches, sisters Maggie, Terre and Suzzy Roche, first hit in the late 70s, their debut album and initial performances created a buzz long before the internet and viral videos.  Having studied acting in college, Suzzy served as the de facto master of ceremonies on stage.  The songs made us laugh and made us cry.  Then and now.More great music followed.  And so did we.

Send us Fan MailWarren Zanes knows the joy of speeding down the ski slopes and cycling miles of bike lane.  He knows the rush of getting on stage and performing.  And he certainly knows the fulfillment of sitting in front of a blank computer screen and then finding the words to touch music lovers everywhere.  Author.  Musician.  Academic.  And yes, serious skier and cyclist.Dusty Springfield.  Johnny Cash.  Tom Petty.  Bruce Springsteen.  Their fans have all known the experience of reading the eloquent words of Warren Zanes about their musical heroes.The new Springsteen movie about a complicated time in Bruce’s life and career is based on Warren’s 2023 book, “Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making Of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska.”Magic in the night? Indeed.

Send us Fan MailWe witnessed some historic days in the Middle East this week.  What lies ahead is uncertain at best.  What is certain is that David Broza will be singing, bringing joy, optimism and a hope for peace, as he has all over the world for 50 years.   He co-wrote one of his most famous songs, “Yihiye Tov (There Will Be Good), as a peace anthem when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat visited Israel in 1977.  David expected to sing the song for a few months and there would be peace.  He’s still singing it. He’s made music and broken bread with Palestinian musicians for years, perhaps most memorably in his 2013 project, album and film “East Jerusalem/West Jerusalem.”  So who else to talk with at this moment of joy, caution and hope?

Send us Fan MailThis episode is truly a labor of love.Steve Albert and I have been friends for almost forty years.  For all of those years, he has made me laugh.  I thought I knew all of the stories.  I wasn’t even close.  His new book “A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Broadcast Booth” has tons of funny stories, such as honing his broadcasting skills by doing play by play of family dinners growing up in Brooklyn.  There are unusual stories, such as Steve’s teacher in fifth grade announcing to the class that Steve now had a new last name.  And there are poignant stories; Steve was a student at Kent State University on May 4, 1970. So grab a coffee and settle in for a conversation between two friends.

Send us Fan MailThis week’s episode of “Before The Cheering Started with Budd Mishkin” is a bit different.It’s a conversation that is part of a new series that I am hosting, a series of conversations with public artists whose work is found all across America.  These conversations will be found in the Otocast platform, an immersive, innovative, location-based mobile audio guide.  More information at www.otocast.com.If we are fortunate, there is a moment in our lives when the door to the rest of our lives opens up and we know enough to walk through.Such is the case with sculptor Jim Gallucci of Greensboro, North Carolina.  It was more than fifty years ago in Syracuse, not far from where he grew up in Rochester, New York.  Jim experienced that moment, he walked through the door and admirers of his art in North Carolina and beyond are happy that he did.

Send us Fan MailPublic art is everywhere, in towns big and small across the country.  The reaction to public art can be subtle.  It can be emotional.  The impact can be economic.  And the reaction is almost always positive.I’m hosting a new series of conversations with public artists found in the Otocast platform, an immersive, innovative, location-based mobile audio guide.  More information at www.otocast.com.This is one of these conversations.When you think of New York City and art, you might think of the great museums and galleries.  Jack Howard-Potter’s work is showcased for the public to see, with installations in New York and numerous sites beyond, including one memorable piece at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. 

Send us Fan Mail AMY ARBUSSeeing Life Through The Lens You might think that a life in photography was always a given for Amy Arbus since her mother Diane Arbus was a photography icon and her father Alan Arbus was also in the field. It was not a given. But after her mother died in 1971 and her father focused on acting, Amy felt a pull towards photography.  She eventually landed a position at The Village Voice and put a stamp on her own style with the feature beloved by New Yorkers, “On The Street.” A subsequent class taught by another photography icon, Richard Avedon, helped set her on her path, with books, exhibits and projects that continue to this day.

Send us Fan MailIt’s been forty years since we first heard Suzanne Vega on record.  That haunting, lyrical sound is still there on her latest album “Flying With Angels.”  The songs are poignant and personal.  Suzanne’s songs have taken her around the world, including a friendship with the late Czech poet, activist and former President Vaclav Havel.  Her musical journey started in New York and that’s where it continues.

Send us Fan MailA little bit of a different Before The Cheering Started episode this weekend.  A mid August weekend always brings memories of Woodstock.  It was a pleasure and privilege to create and host this radio documentary for CBS News Radio in 2019, "Back To The Garden," with stories from the musicians, the festival goers, the organizers, the people who worked the festival and the locals.  Enjoy.

Send us Fan MailAuthor Judy Batalion knows from Holocaust trauma, growing up with survivor grandparents in Montreal.  So when she chanced upon a book written in 1946 about a female resistance fighter in Poland, she was ready to start a journey that lasted more than a decade and resulted in the 2021 book “The Light Of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos.”  It is the largely unknown story of Jewish women in Poland during World War II who showed incredible courage in arming and funding the resistance and saving lives.“The Light of Days” tells an utterly compelling story, as is Judy Batalion’s.

Send us Fan MailI always smile when I think of the apt title of Steve Forbert’s terrific debut album “Alive on Arrival.”  Because he was.  “Alive on Arrival” speaks to the excitement of coming to the big town and making it work.  For Steve Forbert, that meant plenty of hard work, indefatigable optimism and the inspiration of an uncle’s unorthodox career.  Steve has known every up and down of the music industry.  But there is still the joy of playing, writing and creating music that he first felt growing up in Meridian, Mississippi.

Send us Fan MailPeter Asher has been part of the music that has elated and sustained me for some 60 years.  The songs of Peter and Gordon as part of the 1960’s British Invasion still sound fresh and wonderful six decades later.  And the musicians he produced and managed, especially James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt, created the soundtrack of my life.  And Peter still has the touch, co-producing Barbra Streisand’s beautiful album of duets, “The Secret of Life: Partners, Volume Two.”Getting an opportunity to interview him before a live audience at Magical Mystery Camp in upstate New York was a labor of love. I hope you enjoy the latest episode of “Before The Cheering Started with Budd Mishkin.” If you like the episode, please rate and review it on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.  And please share it on social media and by old fashioned word of mouth. 

Send us Fan MailLuis Miranda Jr.’s story is a great American story.  It’s a great New York story.  It’s a great Puerto Rican story.  Long before Hamilton became part of our vocabulary, Luis Miranda Jr. created a new life for himself in New York as a respected and influential advocate, organizer, politico and much more.  And then, thanks in part to the creativity of his son Lin-Manuel, he was able to take these skills and apply them on a bigger stage, more than he could have dreamed of growing up in a small town in Puerto Rico.

Send us Fan MailLarry Charles’ comedy journey has taken him to some of the familiar places for a comedy writer, such as on set for Seinfeld, Mad About You and Curb Your Enthusiasm.  At other times, it’s found him running for a waiting van to escape when a scene in the Borat and Bruno movies goes great but upsets the locals.  And then there have been moments in Iraq and Somalia, finding out that there is indeed standup comedy in some not so funny places for his series Larry Charles’ Dangerous World of Comedy.  It’s times like these when the art of talking your way out of situations, an art learned long ago on the streets of Brooklyn, comes in mighty handy.

Send us Fan MailWillie Nile is a musical lifer, still going strong in his late 70’s with a new album “The Great Yellow Light.”  He’s been a New York singer songwriter who has traveled the country and the world with his guitar for decades.  But when it comes to the lessons learned that shaped his life and musical career, it always comes back to the Buffalo home where his parents raised him, providing Willie with a moral compass that served him well all those years ago.  And now.

Send us Fan MailThe story of the 1969 New York Mets, the Amazin’ Mets, has been told for more than five decades.  It will no doubt be told for decades to come.  Art Shamsky has experienced it as a player and an author, playing a key role as a left handed hitter and outfielder in 1969 and then hitting the keys to write several books about the Mets.  His latest is “Mets Stories I Only Tell My Friends.”  Art Shamsky had a long career in baseball.  But his career and his life can be divided up into three categories: before 1969, 1969 and after 1969. Amazin’.

Send us Fan MailDavid Gabriel is a young dancer on the rise as a soloist with New York City Ballet.  The love affair with dance began early.  Really early.  He started watching ballet videos of Mikhail Baryshnikov while growing up in Glenwood Springs, Colorado.  David was 2.  Not long after, the goal became “get to New York, “a dream he has realized.

Send us Fan MailHow many people have written for Sports Illustrated and the Harvard Law Review?Jamal Greene is one of the rare few. His own story is compelling, growing up in a Brooklyn home that produced a constitutional law professor, Jamal, and a world-renowned rapper, his brother Talib Kweli.  Jamal’s experiences at Harvard, Sports Illustrated and Yale Law School eventually led him to teaching constitutional law at a time in our history when its teaching is perhaps more important than ever.  And he is teaching it at Columbia Law School, where constitutional questions don’t just exist in a textbook but right outside the classroom on campus.

Send us Fan MailDid I think that I would read a 500 page book about lacrosse? Uh, no.  But if S.L.(Scott) Price is writing it, I’m reading it.Scott has long been one of our preeminent writers about people through the prism of sports, primarily during his more than two decades at Sports Illustrated.  There were more than a few chapters before he became a must read for so many of us.  There was an early love of reading and newspapers, a cross country trip that fortuitously included a stop at Chapel Hill, NC and a subsequent stint as the college newspaper’s sports editor, covering some sophomore basketball player named Michael Jordan.  When college was done and Scott was back at home waiting tables, those college newspaper articles about Michael Jordan led to a phone call that opened the door to the rest of his life.Lucky for us.

Send us Fan MailIt’s hard to imagine Judy Collins pursuing anything but a life in music.  Music and performing were in the air as she was growing up in Colorado.  There were classical piano lessons with her beloved teacher Antonia Brico.  And Judy’s father was a performer with a radio show.   But it was actually a broken leg in her teens that led Judy down the path to pursuing music full time.  Sorry about the broken leg, Judy, but millions of us are happy that it brought you to a life in music. 

Send us Fan MailFor some 20 years, Simon Shuster has reported from Russia and Ukraine.  He speaks the language and he understands the history of the region, making him the ideal foreign correspondent to report on the lead up to the Russian invasion in 2022 and the subsequent war in Ukraine.  This is not exactly what his folks had in mind when they emigrated from the former Soviet Union in the early 90’s when Simon was a boy, landing in the Bay Area.  But it is in Russia and now Ukraine that Simon has realized his dream of becoming a foreign correspondent, writing “the first draft of history.”

Send us Fan MailA life in show business is not for the faint of heart.  It’s a rollercoaster of joy and disappointment, uplifting highs and debilitating lows.   But if you’re fortunate, a window of opportunity opens up.  And if you’re ready, the rest of your career and life can await on the other side.The window opened for Sydnie Christmas in 2024.  Rather, she opened the window with abandon, applying for the British TV show “Britain’s Got Talent” and taking the show and viewers by storm.And now she’s on the other side.

Send us Fan Mail There’s a great line in the wonderful old film The Front; “it’s nice when nice happens to somebody nice.” That’s been the story around the National Hockey League this season, as Sam Rosen bids farewell after some 40 seasons as the television play by play voice of the New York Rangers.  He’s been saluted with standing ovations in arenas around the league.  Sam is understandably most beloved in New York, not only for the four words “the waiting is over” that signaled the end of a Rangers 54 year Stanley Cup curse in 1994, but for the thousands of games when his voice was a part of our lives, a part of our homes.

Send us Fan Mail Long ago as a film major at City College of New York in the 1970’s, Stanley Nelson found his passion.   We are fortunate that he did.  For almost 40 years, his films have told the story of the African American experience.  Be it Attica or Emmett Till, the Freedom Riders or the Black Panthers, his films speak with an eloquent voice and a captivating camera.  His production company Firelight Media has four new films on the agenda, because there is always more history to be told.

Send us Fan MailTom Chapin is still going strong at the age of 80.  There are performances and projects.  And there’s an appreciation for a life that has brought him experiences that extend far beyond the usual path of the folk musician: searching for sharks on the Indian Ocean, playing basketball at the famed Rucker Court in New York and being assigned a cool nickname to boot, his song being used to wake up astronauts on the Space Shuttle.All of these experiences have made their way into his heart as he and his music have made their way into ours.

Send us Fan MailThose of us who follow the Middle East intensely, reading about it constantly, understand that our reactions are never dispassionate.  Peter Beinart knows this all too well.  For decades, his writing and television appearances have garnered plenty of praise and plenty of criticism, even vitriol.    And that reality won’t likely change with his new book “Being Jewish After The Destruction Of Gaza: A Reckoning.”  Beinart argues that it’s a reckoning that far too few American Jews are having.   You may love the book.  You may hate the book.  But it’s safe to say that you will not be indifferent.

Send us Fan MailHow do you return to a normal life after experiencing pain, loss and then unbridled joy?Alsu Kurmasheva is a Russian American journalist who works for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague.  She was detained in her native Russia while visiting her mother in 2023 and later arrested on charges of “spreading false information” about the Russian military, charges that Alsu and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty deny.  While his wife was detained for more than 9 months, her husband Pavel Butorin, also a journalist for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, advocated for her release while taking care of their two daughters.  Finally, the family’s dreams were realized when Alsu was included in a prisoner swap between Russia and the United States in August, 2024.  Alsu and Pavel are back in Prague, busy with work, raising two daughters and getting accustomed to a new normal: life after detainment.  

Send us Fan MailCaroline Aaron knows from motherhood.   She’s a mom.  As an actor, she’s played plenty of moms, long before she got the mom role for which she is best known, Shirley Maisel in “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”  She’s currently playing a mom in the off-Broadway show “Conversations With Mother.”  But her own mother’s story might be the most compelling of all: a Jew from Selma, Alabama who got married and raised three kids in Richmond, Virginia. Caroline’s father died young, and Caroline watched as her widowed mom got a job as the lone white professor at the historically black college Virginia Union University, all the while advocating for civil rights in the Jim Crow south.  That may sound like a world away from the world of the character Shirley Maisel.  But lessons learned long ago in Richmond have been the ties that bind throughout Caroline Aaron’s long and fulfilling career. 

Send us Fan MailArt seems to be imitating life for actor Gretchen Mol in her new film, the latest Ed Burns project, “Millers in Marriage.”  It’s not the plot of the movie, which covers three complicated and troubled marriages and relationships.  That does not mirror her life.  But Gretchen plays a character who is a middle-aged woman trying to figure out the next chapter, when Gretchen herself is a middle aged actor who has worked consistently while raising a family and is now thinking about the next chapter.

Send us Fan MailBy his mid 50s Craig Taubman had already enjoyed great musical success in the secular and Jewish worlds, with his songs sung at synagogues and Jewish summer camps across the country.  But he felt the need to do more.  So he bought a building in downtown Los Angeles.  His initial proposal was shot down by his daughter.  Craig says she called it “the dumbest idea he ever had.”  Here’s to constructive criticism, because the eventual idea, the Pico Union Project, a multi faith community worship and performing arts center, has brought joy and connection to an L.A. neighborhood, just as his music has done for decades for so many of us.

Send us Fan MailImagine being at work, you make a decision and almost a million people react to that decision.  Immediately.  And in public.  Welcome to the world of Jon Heyman, a veteran baseball writer and reporter who is followed passionately on social media, especially X.  His pronouncements about potential free agent signings are followed like foreign policy announcements or Congressional hearings, only with much more passion.  Years ago, when a tweet was something that we associated with a bird, Jon Heyman got hooked by sports journalism.  And he still is.

Send us Fan MailJoy Sela is in the first stages of a career as a filmmaker.  Her first documentary, “The Other,” takes on a topic with so many elements: passion, emotion, history, geography, anger and loss.   The Middle East.   In the spirit of the great documentarian Albert Maysles, Joy Sela puts a mirror up to the many Israelis and Palestinians in the film and listens to their stories of heartbreak and death.  And their stories of small, away from the limelight moments of friendship and a painful but possible path to peace. 

Send us Fan MailTony Pallagrosi uses one word frequently when talking about his career as a musician, promoter and musical entrepreneur: luck. Sure, a well-timed quitting of a garage band may have put him in a position to be able to join a great band, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes.  But there’s nothing lucky about the work that Tony and the team at Light of Day Foundation have done for 25 years, raising money for Parkinson’s research and other related diseases.  Light of Day is preparing for the Winterfest 25 festival, an annual series of concerts and musical events in New Jersey that has raised millions.   Luck is good.  Teamwork is better. You can get information about all of the Winterfest 25 shows at https://lightofday.org/

Send us Fan MailSome stories never leave you.  Like the admonition from Dr. Kathie-Ann Joseph’s aunt when her niece was admitted to Harvard; “You’re not lucky.  You worked hard for this.”   I first met and interviewed Dr. Joseph, a leading breast cancer surgeon and researcher in New York in 2007.  Her story, her message, her inspiration is just as profound all these years later.

Send us Fan MailWhat is it about the power of a photograph: the joy, the passion, the emotion of one moment in time? For more than 40 years, Lynn Goldsmith’s photographs have made us smile, made us think and made us feel.  She is best known for her rock ‘n roll photographs, but along the way, she was a musician, a TV director and the co manager of a big 1970’s band, Grand Funk Railroad.  She pursued it all at one (shutter) speed: full steam ahead. 

Send us Fan MailIn his 20’s, Michael Giacchino had a love of movies and music and a job in marketing.  But he’d put himself in a position to succeed.  When the window of opportunity opened, he was ready.

Send us Fan MailImagine movies without music.  Impossible.  It’s part of the magic.  And Michael Giacchino creates that magic, in movies like Coco, The Batman, Ratatouille, Jojo Rabbit and his Oscar winner, Up.  A love of movies came early.  Michael was the kid in the neighborhood making super 8 films.  The love of music followed.  Eventually, his two loves met and thus a career was forged.  And now it’s come full circle; Michael is making his feature directorial debut with a remake of the 1954 sci fi thriller Them.  Those super 8 films of his youth were a lifetime ago.  But his passion for making music and movies is as bright as ever.

Send us Fan MailEd Burns has mined his experience growing up in an Irish American family on Long Island over the course of his long career as an independent filmmaker, most notably in his breakthrough film The Brothers McMullen in 1995.  He has written thousands of words on the page that end up on the screen.   Now the words are staying on the page in his novel “A Kid From Marlboro Road.”  It’s hardly autobiographical but clearly influenced by those years long ago as a kid on Long Island.  His parents gave him roots and introduced him to the worlds of theater and writing and books.  Ed’s career has taken him around the world while never straying far from home.

Send us Fan Mail For some 50 years, Jeff Greenfield has written about political campaigns.  He’s reported on political campaigns.  He’s analyzed political campaigns for viewers on CBS, ABC and CNN.  And he was a young speechwriter on one of the most compelling campaigns in American political history: the 1968 Presidential campaign of Bobby Kennedy that ended in Kennedy’s assassination. So in the immediate aftermath of the 2024 Presidential campaign, who better to talk to than Jeff Greenfield.

Send us Fan Mail I first met Michael Byrne in the months after Hurricane Sandy in 2012.  Many parts of the New York area were still reeling from the hurricane.  Byrne was overseeing FEMA’s response to the hurricane and he was serving the city where he was born and bred, just as he did after 9/11 working for the Department of Homeland Security, just as he had working for the city’s Office of Emergency Management, just as he had as an FDNY firefighter, much like the uncles he watched as a young kid.     He learned the lessons of a life of service early and he’s never forgotten them.

Send us Fan MailJohn Hodgman always makes me laugh, in his books, on his podcast and certainly during his long run on The Daily Show.  He makes me laugh in interviews as well, but he is also an extremely thoughtful interview, especially about his many and varied influences and how they melded together into the career he’s fashioned.  And so, there’s a part two of our conversation.  Besides, you have to love any guy who was voted in 8th grade “most likely to become the editor of The New Yorker.”