Jerry Seinfeld Gets Technical

Summary

Podcast Summary: Jerry Seinfeld Gets Technical

Podcast: The New Yorker Radio Hour
Host: David Remnick
Guest: Jerry Seinfeld
Date: January 5, 2018
Note: Live interview from the New Yorker Festival

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Episode Overview

This episode features an in-depth, lively conversation between David Remnick and iconic comedian Jerry Seinfeld. The discussion, recorded live at the New Yorker Festival, explores Seinfeld's origins in comedy, his meticulous approach to joke construction, reflections on the legacy of “Seinfeld,” and broader commentary on the art and status of comedy versus acting. Throughout, Seinfeld dissects technical aspects of humor with warmth and honed observational wit, offering rare insight for both fans and aspiring comedians.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Seinfeld’s Origins in Comedy

• Falling in Love with Comedy
  • Seinfeld explains he didn’t set out to become a comedian for fame or certainty of success, but out of sheer passion.
    • “I really didn't think that I could, and I didn't really care whether I could or I couldn't. I had. I just got to this point where I was so in love with it that I just decided, what's the difference? It seemed much more important to me to do the thing you want to do than success or failure.” – Jerry Seinfeld [01:41]
• Comedy Influences
  • Early obsessions: TV comedies like "Laugh-In," "Get Smart," and classic comedy albums from the 60s.
  • Most influential: George Carlin, particularly his shift from mainstream to countercultural comedy.
    • “George Carlin's famous seven dirty words you can't say on television. Not a funny bit, really. Just cursing, you know, which you don't like. Personally. It doesn't work for my style.” – Jerry Seinfeld [04:27]
  • Seinfeld emphasizes that his focus is always on what’s funny rather than the political or edgy angle.

The Craft of Joke Construction

• Analysis of His First Joke
  • Seinfeld deconstructs his first successful bit—about left-handed people and negative connotations of “left.”
    • “Left handed. People do not like that the word left is so often associated with negative things...” – Jerry Seinfeld [05:41]
  • Importance of rhythm and mapping out jokes in advance:
    • “The rhythm is 90% of that joke.” – Jerry Seinfeld [07:16]
  • Technical breakdown:
    • Using a universal setup (group of people who don’t like something) to prime the audience.
    • Delivering lines with crafted timing.

The Role of Comedy and Stand-Up

• Obsessive, Daily Craft
  • When asked how long it takes to construct an hour-and-fifteen-minute show:
    • “It's like asking God how much time goes into an oak tree...I do it every day. I do it all day.” – Jerry Seinfeld [09:05]
• Personal and Family Background
  • Seinfeld’s childhood: Lonely, highly independent, parents were orphans who provided "benign neglect," fostering freedom.
    • “I was like a raccoon to my parents. I mean, you kind of know it's around, but you don't really know where it is. You know, they had no interest in any of my activities...which was very fun and freeing.” – Jerry Seinfeld [09:55]
  • Never aimed to impress adults or his family with humor; comedy was a private pursuit.

Comedy vs. Acting

• View on Acting’s Cultural Status
  • Seinfeld feels that acting is overvalued compared to comedy, which demands original thought and technical skill.
    • “I feel the esteem to which actors are held is a bit high in our culture...Did you write that? Did you think of that?” – Jerry Seinfeld [12:29]
    • “Yeah, you're an actor. Stand over here. Here's the clothes you put on. Say what we're going to say. Ready?” – Jerry Seinfeld [13:31]
  • Comedians, in his view, are more deserving of cultural admiration due to the difficulty and originality of their craft.

Creating and Ending "Seinfeld"

• Origin Story
  • Seinfeld and Larry David were acquaintances, not close friends, united by their idiosyncratic conversations.
    • “I want the show to sound like when Larry and I talk, it's about a sound.” – Jerry Seinfeld [15:18]
  • Much of the show’s texture — e.g., debates about aliens, zoos, and circuses — originated from their real conversations.
• Seinfeld’s “Nothing” Myth
  • Denies pushing the idea that the show was “about nothing.”
    • “I never fed this. I never promoted this. It's so stupid. Everything's about nothing.” – Jerry Seinfeld [18:43]
    • Compares his observational comedy to John McPhee’s revered New Yorker essays:
      • “It's the same damn thing. It's an end up comedy.” – Jerry Seinfeld [19:12]
• Ending the Series
  • After nine intense years and immense creative effort, he had no desire to repeat the experience.
    • “There was no way you would want to revisit that.” – Jerry Seinfeld [16:40]
  • The show’s initial success wasn’t guaranteed due to its eccentricity.
    • “I never thought this was a mainstream thing that the general public would like. I thought it was too eccentric.” – Jerry Seinfeld [16:57]
• The Possibility of Another Phenomenon
  • Sees the rise of another universally embraced sitcom as possible, but acknowledges the near-impossible creative alchemy needed.
    • “You have to be just so goddamn funny that they love it. They can't get enough of it. But that's hard to do.” – Jerry Seinfeld [17:49]

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On Early Ambition:
  • “I had no normal social experience at all. But I didn't think I was missing anything. And even now, to this day, most of regular life doesn't interest me at all.” – Jerry Seinfeld [09:25]
• On Parental Neglect as Freedom:
  • “You kind of know it's around, but you don't really know where it is...” (Describing himself as a raccoon to his parents) – Jerry Seinfeld [09:55]
• On Stand-Up’s Emotional Toll:
  • “To be a young comedian whose material is sketchy, [you need] a thick skin to the point of being almost a sociopath.” – David Remnick [11:40]
  • “Unless you just know you can't leave this world...you found your thing.” – Jerry Seinfeld [11:56]
• On Awards and Prestige:
  • “Why is he so important if you didn't think him anything, you know, that we have.” — Jerry Seinfeld, critiquing TV actors’ status [13:29]
• On the Core of Comedy:
  • “I like to invent a new way of looking at something that changes the way you look at it permanently.” – Jerry Seinfeld [04:43]
• Defending Observational Comedy:
  • “When he does it, it's an art because it's the goddamn New Yorker. When I do it, it's just an airline peanuts joke.” – Jerry Seinfeld [19:30]

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Important Timestamps

• [01:41] – Seinfeld discusses his motivation to do comedy
• [03:22] – Influence of George Carlin
• [05:41] – Performs and analyzes his first joke
• [07:16] – Technical discussion on timing in jokes
• [09:05] – How long it takes to build a comedy set
• [09:55] – Describing his childhood and parental style
• [12:29] – Seinfeld critiques actors’ cultural status
• [15:18] – How “Seinfeld” the show emerged from Seinfeld and David’s conversations
• [16:40] – Why he didn’t want to repeat the sitcom experience
• [18:43] – Debunking the “show about nothing” myth, comparing himself to John McPhee

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Tone and Energy

The tone is both reflective and characteristically sharp, combining Seinfeld’s technical, sometimes deadpan humor, with Remnick’s genuine curiosity and admiration. Seinfeld remains analytical, occasionally irreverent, and always driven by a commitment to the purity and difficulty of stand-up comedy.

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For New Listeners

This episode is highly recommended if you're interested in the mechanics of comedy, the psychology of a highly successful comedian, or the creative history behind one of America’s most influential sitcoms. Seinfeld’s candid insights and Remnick’s relaxed, incisive questions make this a masterclass in comedic thought—offering depth, humor, and inspiration for creators and fans alike.

Transcript

[David Remnick]

This is World Trade Center.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

Bomb one World Observatory. Observatory straight up the block for West Boulevard and make that right. I basically just think it would be.

[Narrator/Producer]

Interesting to look at the emergence of a criminal economy.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

And also, I'm always amazed that there.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

Aren'T more profiles of her out there, this really subversive, strange thing in rap.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

Especially, and see what their lives are like on both sides of the border.

[Narrator/Producer]

From one World Trade center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

[David Remnick]

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Today's episode, I hope, is a little treat. A live interview I did at the New Yorker Festival in the fall with somebody I've admired for quite a long time. When I went out on stage to introduce him, though, I was. I was almost at a loss for words, as you'll hear, because this guy, if you'll excuse the cliche, it happens to be accurate, needs no introduction.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

Welcome to the New Yorker Festival. I'm David Remnick. You know who that is? That's Jerry Seinfeld. And no flash photography, no recording.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

Why not?

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

You want him to flash away? All right. You feel like Jackie Kennedy or something?

[Jerry Seinfeld]

That's ok. Yeah.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

All right. Get it out of your system now. So you've got this new special on Netflix, Jerry before Seinfeld. And one of the amazing confessional parts of it is that you begin talking about the construction of a joke, your first joke. What made you think you could do this thing, be a comedian, just from being funny in the house?

[Jerry Seinfeld]

I really didn't. The truth is, I really didn't think that I could, and I didn't really care whether I could or I couldn't. I had. I just got to this point where I was so in love with it that I just decided, what's the difference? You know, what's the difference? It seemed much more important to me to do the thing you want to do than success or failure. This is 1975, you know, and we were still a little bit of the, you know, vapors of the 60s, where you did what you believed in. And it wasn't a success culture. It was more of a soul culture, I think.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

And you were encouraged to be like that by your parents?

[Jerry Seinfeld]

No, I really didn't have any idea if I could do it.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

What inspired you about comedy? What were you watching on television or listening to records?

[Jerry Seinfeld]

Everything. Everything. I was not a very social kid, but I did get a TV in my room when my parents got a New tv. I got them to get me the old tv.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

You got a TV in your room?

[Jerry Seinfeld]

Yeah, I had a TV in my room and I never came out of the room again. And I just watched laughing and movies and Get Smart and I just inhaled this stuff and I just couldn't get enough of it.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

Did you listen to records too?

[Jerry Seinfeld]

Records? I had all the comedy albums of all the great 60s comics.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

So was there anybody in particular of all those albums that you're putting on your. On your record player or watching on TV that was really, was the most suggestive to you about What's George Carlin?

[Jerry Seinfeld]

AM&FM. That was when he made his transition. Wow. Very educated audience we have here. That was when he made his transition from suit and tie, you know, kind of crowd pleasing to comedian to the counterculture tie, dyed T shirt comedian. Which by the way, to me the only difference was the clothes.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

He was just as radical in a tie.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

No, he wasn't. But he was just as funny. See the political aspect of comedy, which people for some reason like to grind on. Why don't you do more political things? And this is political. This guy's not political. Who cares if someone split? All I care about is how funny is this guy, how much funny, really funny stuff does he have or she have? That's going to make me laugh. That is the entire objective to me. So anyway, so like George Carlin's famous seven dirty words you can't say on television. Not a funny bit, really. Just cursing, you know, which you don't like. Personally. It doesn't work for my style. No. Why? It takes me out of doing the more difficult things that I'm trying to do, which is to. I like to invent a new way of looking at something that changes the way you look at it permanently.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

Particularly language.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

Particularly language. And I like to find things in language. I do a thing in that Netflix special about when you grow up on Long island, you live on Long Island. We lived in the city, but then we lived on Long Island.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

Right.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

That you can't live in Long Island. You can just. It's one of those places, you just stay on it. So once you hear that bit, you know, you say, well, we get on the train, even though there's nobody on the train. We're in the train. But you don't say in the. Let's get in the train. Nobody says, come on, we'll get in the train. You say, let's get on the train.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

Yeah.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

So once you find something like that and really explode it, like A diagram is what I try to do then. Now you see it that way forever.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

You talk about this first joke in the Netflix special and let's listen to it. Let's watch.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

And I only had one joke that worked, which I'm gonna do for you right now. And if you ever think yourself that you might want to someday do comedy, this is not the way you do it. Don't ever say, I'm going to tell you a joke now. So I'm left handed. Left handed. People do not like that the word left is so often associated with negative things. Do left feet, left handed compliment. What are we having for dinner? Leftovers. You go to a party, there's nobody there. Where'd everybody go? They left. That was it. That was my first joke.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

That joke. That joke which you pooh pooh a little bit. But that joke is very in your voice. As many years ago as it was.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

How was.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

Do you have any recollection of how it was conceived, how it came about?

[Jerry Seinfeld]

Well, I am left handed and I guess I just occurred to me that these left words are negative. And then it starts with left handed compliment, you know. You hear that? Yep. And then I thought, well, that's weird. Why are they putting that on us? You know, And I don't know. Left. They left, you know, But I even. So that was the joke.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

But the timing of it, the delay.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

The rhythm of it. Yes, the delay. The rhythm is 90% of that joke.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

And how conceived is that how mapped out is that or is it rehearsed?

[Jerry Seinfeld]

Very mapped out. Very figured out. You know, where'd everybody go? They left. A question is always a very good springboard for a joke. There's another small thing, if you really want to get technical about comedy, which I think you do.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

I do.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

It is true. To say to the audience, I'm going to do this joke for you right now. You're really in that moment. You're in a hole right there with the audience. You've taken them out of a comedic atmosphere. And the reason I'm able to get back into it, which was a line that I had to write, which was left handed. People do not like. That sentence freezes the audience. This is a. You're now talking about a group of people that don't like something. This just clears their mind out to what is coming. Left handed people are a group and they don't like something. And that is actually what enables me to do the joke. And that was, you know, when I put this show together, I spent many hours on these Little things, just because it's what I like to do. But that was the line that I needed and that's why that thing actually works, because of what left handed people do not like. So that enables me to do. Which I'm going to do for you right now. I'm going to tell you my first joke and I'm going to do it for you right now. Which I knew they would like that because he's going to give us a little present.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

So the other night I saw you at the Beacon and it was an.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

Hour, about an hour and 15.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

How much time goes into the construction of an hour and 15 minute piece of comedy?

[Jerry Seinfeld]

It's like asking God how much time goes into an oak tree. I don't know, I just. I do it every day. I do it all day. I don't know, I plant a tree, it grows, eventually it's an oak tree, who the hell cares? That's all I can do. I don't know.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

What were you like in high school? Were you considered a weirdo, an outsider or.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

You know what? I don't know why it never bothered me that I was not. I had no normal social experience at all. But I didn't think I was missing anything. And even now, to this day, most of regular life doesn't interest me at all.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

No. Now your parents were both orphans. Did that create any unusual home life? What was that?

[Jerry Seinfeld]

I think it did. There was a very, what I call a benign neglect in my house. I do this a bit in the show that I was like a raccoon to my parents. I mean, you kind of know it's around, but you don't really know where it is. You know, they had no interest in any of my activities, school grades, social life, health, safety or education zero, which was very fun and freeing, you know, which I also mentioned in the show that I was never funny around them, ever. And so when I.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

Dinner table.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

No, no, I couldn't. I didn't want to make adults laugh. I don't know why, I just didn't. I didn't know how to do it.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

Was the goal when you were a kid, did you want to wait so.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

Just to finish that? So when I told them I was going to be a comedian, they went, okay, you know, do whatever you want.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

That's amazing.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

Yeah. Why is that amazing?

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

Jewish parents who just think, go be a comedian, get on the train.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

Yeah, but remember, they were orphans. They didn't get married till they were in their 40s, which in, you know, 1950 was, you know, they were wild dogs themselves. They didn't fit in any normal.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

How did they view as you started to progress a little bit in the clubs? Did they ever come see you?

[Jerry Seinfeld]

Mm.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

How'd they react to it?

[Jerry Seinfeld]

They liked it. You know, they. I don't remember. I was such a nervous wreck myself that it was my, you know, my gay closet moment was to tell them I'm funny. You know, you don't know this, but I'm funny.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

Heartbreaking.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

Yeah. And I want to live a funny lifestyle. Out.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

But it must require to be a young comedian whose material is sketchy, a thick skin to the point of being almost a sociopath. Well, do you ignore that?

[Jerry Seinfeld]

It does. It does. Unless you just know you can't leave this world. You just can't. So it doesn't matter how hard it is or how much pain there may be, you know, you have no choice. You know, you found your thing. If you're lucky in life, if you find your thing, that this is my thing. I know how to do this. I'm good at this.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

I get the feeling that even though you were and have been an actor, that maybe acting is not a form that you hold in the highest esteem.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

Well, that's probably true. It's very observant of you to pick that little raisin out of my rice pudding. What I don't like, I think, is the I feel the esteem to which actors are held is a bit high in our culture. A bit high. Did you write that? Did you think of that? You know, and remember, as comedians, we would go on the Tonight show and, you know, some loser that's got. Is on some stupid sitcom who stinks and that's bad, comes out there and tells you a story about it. He took a vacation in Mexico and how the pipe burst, you know, and then you come out there and you've got five killer minutes and you get that audience rolling and then you go back behind the curtain. Get out of here. We want to talk with this guy with his legs crossed and going. And then I did this, and then I did that, and I just felt like, why? Why is he so important if you didn't think him anything, you know, that we have.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

He just pretended to be someone.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

Yeah, you're an actor. Stand over here. Here's the clothes you put on. Say what we're going to say. Ready? Ready? And say what we told you to say. That's acting. There's nothing wrong with it.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

No.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

But I just hold comedians in much higher regard. It's a much, much more difficult thing.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

To do was doing the show as satisfying as stand up at that time.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

In my career to pull that off, to do a sitcom and make it work. And I'm not an actor or a screenwriter or an editor or I don't know casting. Larry and I, we didn't know anything. So the excitement in that moment that we were making this show work and the network didn't even want us to be making our own decisions because we had no experience until we proved to them that we knew what to do. What we knew was what's funny. We didn't know story, we didn't know character. We learned that as we went along, but we knew what was funny. So once they had confidence, yeah, that was exciting. But having done it, I would never want to do it again.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

So how was it conceived? On the back of a napkin in a coffee shop. How did you come together and say, we've got to do this?

[Jerry Seinfeld]

Larry and I, and we were not really good friends. We were just kind of acquaintances.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

And he's more of a failed stand up. He had a rougher time.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

He did, he did. But whenever we would talk, it was never about anything important. And it was completely obsessive and hilarious and insane. And I thought, I want the show to sound like when Larry and I.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

Talk, it's about a sound.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

It's about sound. Yeah. In the opening of the show, a lot of times Jerry and George will be discussing, if you're captured by aliens and taken back to their planet, would you rather be in the zoo or the circus? You know, that is me and Larry talking. We're not talking about our families or politics or, you know, that's what we're talking about.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

And you're how old when this is starting to happen?

[Jerry Seinfeld]

34.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

You're talking about aliens and zoos and 34.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

The other great gift of comedy is you never have to leave childhood because you're rewarded for your most juvenile impulses.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

You had this incredibly intense creative period of doing the Seinfeld show and most people to do another show after a big hit, and it's a long. And it went on for nine, nine years. The idea of doing another show, it really blows people away. Like David Chase did the Sopranos for I don't know how many seasons. And he just said, I can't. It's too consuming, too exhausting. Did you figure when you came to the end of that, there's just no way?

[Jerry Seinfeld]

There's no. Well, David Chase. I'm doing David Chase's job. And James Gandolfini's job.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

Right.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

Okay. And I did that for nine years. So there's absolutely no way. First of all, that experience was so, through my great good fortune, just came out so well. There was no way you would want to revisit that.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

When did you know it was going to work? Right away?

[Jerry Seinfeld]

No, no. I thought in the beginning that this might find a little cult audience somewhere in the cities and might survive that way. But I never thought this was a mainstream thing that the general public would like. I thought it was too eccentric.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

Too eccentric, too ethnic, Too odd.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

I wouldn't call it ethnic, but it was just the things, you know, being captured by aliens in zoos and circuses, anything that's, you know, the biggest comedy was ALF at that time, you know, so that's what a really big comedy is.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

And it was, in some way, it was the last comedy of that anywhere approaching that quality. But that had that kind of general audience that's just, oh, yeah, never gonna happen again. That was the end of that.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

That was the end of it. Yeah.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

Why did it blow up? Just because the profusion of cable television and. Do you think that's unfortunate in any way?

[Jerry Seinfeld]

I think it's. I always think it's possible something. It's possible for someone to make another show that. That could capture the whole country. I think it's possible. It just has to be that funny. You have to be just so goddamn funny that they love it. They can't get enough of it. But that's hard to do. To do that, you need, you know, you need all those actors. You need a perfect group of actors, and then you need 13 writers. And then you need this person running all that who's totally focused on making this whole thing work. And that's just a lot of relationships and a lot of little pieces of talent.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

I think it's a misconception that you fed at times that the show was about nothing. That was always the line.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

I never fed this. I never promoted this. It's so stupid. It's so. Everything's about nothing. There was an article in the. It was in the Sunday Times Magazine last Sunday, that writer. What was his name? Tate or something? And they talk about his great writing. He was a New Yorker writer, McPhee. Oh, that guy McPhee. Okay, I know him. Right?

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

Yeah.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

Okay.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

John McPhee.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

What is his name?

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

John McPhee.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

John McPhee. So they're writing about this guy, and he writes for the New Yorker. And it's so fantastic that he takes these small moments of life and makes them into these interesting things. It's the same damn thing. It's an end up comedy.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

I gotta say. The idea that John McPhee, Jerry Seinfeld doing the same thing, that never occurred to you?

[Jerry Seinfeld]

Well, according to the article, he makes things out of ordinary life moments, observing ordinary life moments and making you see them in a different way. This is his great art. When he does it, it's an art because it's the goddamn New Yorker. When I do it, it's just an airline peanuts joke.

[Interviewer (David Remnick)]

Jerry, thank you very much.

[Jerry Seinfeld]

Thank you.

[David Remnick]

Jerry Seinfeld. He's doing a stand up show in Louisiana and Alabama this week and then he's in Illinois, Missouri and all over the country.3 April. Thanks for listening today and if you haven't been to our website lately, please Visit [e-mail] We've just got a redesign for the new year and if we do say so ourselves, it looks pretty good. Every episode, every segment we've ever broadcast is there and you can subscribe to our podcast so you never miss a thing. I'm David Remnick. See you next time.

[Narrator/Producer]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards with additional music by Alexis Cuadrado. This episode was produced with special help from the staff of the New Yorker Festival, Rhonda Sherman, Alexis Goldberg, David Ohana, Bradley Gee and Hilary Leichter Griffin. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.