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

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.

Great stories happen to those who can tell them.

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.

I dont know how to read. I get all my news from Jon Stewart every day.

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.

...these stories are a kind of beacon. By making stories full of empathy and amusement and the sheer pleasure of discovering the world, these writers reassert the fact that we live in a world where joy and empathy and pleasure are all around us, there for the noticing.