An hour with Susan Stamberg - Encore

i know thirty nine years ago this week national public radio it's something they'd never done before they took their flagship program all things considered on the road for the very first time and they came to k a n u i'm kate mcintyre and today on k pr preserve the host of all things could so they're back in october nineteen seventy three susan stamberg who returned to juarez this year in a benefit for the lawrence public library called library of cranberries and news stories stamberg spoke at the university of kansas leed center on march thirteenth two thousand twelve thank you saying that this is what i looked like i am so happy to see you nice to put a face with the ear of many analysts suggest like cranberries this evening and i hope you noticed that i just think this is extraordinary to have an entire town turned on its head over cranberries whoever that

might be my late lamented mother love is probably spinning in her grave because i believe it is her recipe they don't need all of those throw at him it's lovely to be here and to be back i am laurence now i know a bad year in the waves of grain i've always known that i had no idea he had bought this in this state but if you stop and think about why and i had totally ahead dorothy had the cranberry slippers makes perfect sense so thank you so much for inviting me here in connection with the place a library that has always been a home for me and to a town that is filled with my earliest memories from all things considered i first came here in early may nineteen seventy two i was as you've heard hosting npr's flagship and only program in those days all things considered and for the very first

time we took the show on the road and when you think we came right here to lawrence a producer and i met two of us these days it takes an armada to take the show on the road i mean you've got an internship that produces you've got used to call and take others but now the mask records of all the people that you need reporters everybody that you need for to take a program on the invasion it was todd somebody and i really had remembers listening because we were like dogs and it was me and clay we came here thanks to play a new art market p i know it's open version got bigger and everything but it was then one of the strongest stations in this brand new public radio network of hours and so that meant it was equipped to facilitate this life protests and very kindly i was put up in the university president's guest cottage and yes you know i was asked to take a peek at it today kady art it took me on the most

fabulous to honor of lawrence this morning at a wonderful time to sort of peaked at the guest coverage from behind whatever the big building is that was blocking our clear site anyway there i was put up as a guest there and i was asked to sign the guinness book well of course happy to do that i wrote susan stamberg national public radio a network of seventy public radio stations across the country non commercial we have about seventy seventy thousand probably listeners i went on and on what's happening at a hedge to explain who we were and we was nineteen seventy two and then i thought i'll see who else has ever stayed here and i turned back page and on the page to its aaron copeland ah i don't back another day leonard bernstein and i thought yeah the heavens i'm going to sleep in an extremely fancy bread

there and also realize how long it was going to take an eternity as a matter fact as it turned out to get down to just a single day without having to do all that fancy resort us i remember about that first and last month's visit and here i was thinking about this ad comes remarkably full circle the day before todd and i left washington dc our headquarters were and still are as they are in washington the nixon administration of his nineteen seventy two had put mines hundreds of them in the harbor of haiphong it was about one of the biggest ports in vietnam and was during those vietnamese war was tapering down but it was by no means over and the idea in this is i do is to force hanoi to get to the negotiation table sent to get moving on bringing about peace this was huge news and i asked adam and was our managing editor then a newspaper got

from the new york times name cleve mathews if you really thought it was still a good idea for me to leave washington given that we would have so much analysis and reporting that we would need to do on the air in the aftermath of this decision and cleave in his infinite wisdom said yes indeed you go of course hugo because the best thing we could do right now is to get reaction from the heart and so i came to lawrence and we put together a panel of local folks i wonder if any of you are here i should have the tax is this to well you were you and i cannot oh no no i just wonder if anybody was a getaway he would've been at it rains and eat you anyway i'll come to simulator where you know i love that i went to the terrific anywhere we had a group of people they were not particularly experts on war or politics in my rider hour or hour in the administration for that matter but they recently thoughtful

extremely engaged citizens and so our brackets would go into a co hosting from washington and warrants and we'd hear report related to go to the war and then i would turn todays panel after various so war stories read to get their reactions and responses what you think what devices is going to make it feel about the administration taking this decision and it really at work very very well win so pleased with it and now he's this comes full circle part i am just back from my very first visit to vietnam week before last i came back i didn't get the iphone but i did see a good deal of the country that all of us have known except those lessons served there ah as the as the result of war stories we knew them as a result of front pages of our newspapers for years and years or terrible footage on television or what we

could bring you on the radio hanoi way into nang saigon these names and i must say i felt it in the beginning going to places that that was so associated with the tragedies of that war but it was also extremely uplifting to eye and see the progress that the vietnamese have made in the thirty seven years since the war ended one little example of that they are i learned and confirmed the number two coffee producers in the world after brazil match the gemini that and you have a wonderful coffee really drink coffee so to make a log mrs i'm very glad to see you and congratulations on the progress that you have made in raising the money and this is quite extraordinary to do the kind of expansion and refurbishing and updating going into your library great to work at this morning with kathleen morgan i really search every nook and cranny of that line for

it and a wonderful children's road when these little as a city daylight is hanging on every word at bravo to you it's very impressive that you have to put that kind of money together and love libraries and i loved books and i love the radio and not necessarily in that order i thought i would talk a little bit about all of that today and to start something images which in my mind any way it makes reading and radio in some ways that i find touching of a neighbor in washington who recently started tutoring a little dc public school girl child isn't the first great she's likely she's quick i'm an artist she says and my neighbor barbara baldwin says that there is often a little difficult to get the artist to sit still and pay attention attention you might say but the minute that barber pulls out a block and starts to read it out loud that child will go so

close to her and sit still as like the children i saw this morning at your public well for barber thinks that it shows that somebody else is reading aloud to that little girl on a regular basis but she knows what to do and the grosso sits reading with closeness with gasoline i agree but to me it also shows the power of story and their story told our lab which is basically my job description and the radio correspondent i tell stories out loud and so did the lead tours i wonder if you you know about them i didn't until i learned about them as i learned so much from public radio for national public radio they were men who sat up on very high stools in the middle of the cigar factories any bore city in florida and probably lots of other places as well back in the nineteen twenties in those days before that was very much radio and certainly no television the lecturers read aloud in

spanish to the cuban cigar workers four in the morning and their high stools i read the newspapers that are at the local paper the national international events of the day in the afternoon they read cervantes and dickens' in translation victor hugo sitting there on their stools reading reading we had no microphones there's no air conditioning and it was florida no machinery just the sound of chopping and cutting as these cigars are being made by hand and the voice reading stories at and these letters were not hired by the factories as a matter of fact the factory owners were a little nervous they were afraid their workers like it to many ideas from all this education that they were getting in the readings and maybe create some labor problem it was the workers themselves who hire each man paid twenty five cents a week and that was a big part of their salaries so the collector would read them and

form them engage them through their workdays and you know i like to think of national public radio and public radio in general as the lecture tours of today everything's different of course now those laws arabia this television the internet and there are millions and millions of listeners it's much more formal education today than people did in the nineteen twenties and much more of the world comes their way but national public radio and hear kay pr in the factory in the office in the car the kitchen the showers sometimes i don't like to think about where people listened to us all of this brings news cultural matters music and the sounds of the womb tell stories out loud all day and through the night seven days a week and that suggests that as i used to joke with my late and beloved colleague daniel schorr for years you know he was on our air seven days a week and i told him once that was only

because they were in a daze anywhere they great gift of radio telling stories that these days much like blackberrys national public radio is transporting itself on the way people listen to us online now i'm a download our stories for podcasts ipods i confess that i still prefer that little box on the bathroom radiator and one in every other room in my house i counted up the other day all together including the current have the leading cause and they buy another just this is going to be a classic and i need to put it in so can listen when i'm living in there but you know i prefer them just aleppo for actual books two kindle or do any other as scary and my love affair with my primaries began on a hundred street in manhattan that moment kansas and this happened to me at the local public library i caught my first library card when i was ten years old and i made a weekly trip to that library

to return and then take off with me a stack of books there was no limit to the number of books in those days i would take ten at a time home with me and i met my way through the entire children's section of that library i read some of you may remember these titles are recognizing the five little peppers and have a drone flies i read always male cat let's all the cherry and snares books for years i wanted to be a nurse to get those sheets bright dresses i said oh what's on the radio and somebody sent me a copy sherry houston there's i think this is the book of my childhood they set a first edition which of course a capitalist owner anything and i read about all those books everything as it was a pretty small children section then now because i was such a serious reader i moved on to the grown up part of human bondage he reached to live for ever amber

these were kind of racy books until the librarian caught me i was having a very interesting time now the library was the place that gave me dreams romance and lessons in life and that weekly visit staggering i mean i was a little kid under the roundtrip wave of these books it was a high point it was part of an adventure that seemed to have no end for me at this stage in my life i figure i have probably read as many books as they had in that little library just of amsterdam avenue in new york but then at the age of ten eleven twelve it just seemed a limitless feast to be better than say bias which was think is still the big fancy delhi on the upper west side you are constant purveyor of that library lots of treats and delights and you know it still is even in all of its basic twenty first century guises i'm quite far from them in that library now but i am just a phone call or

an email away from what has become the most important information source in my life and that's the national public radio references writer we have something like nineteen professional librarians they do research that catalog they transcribed all of our news programs are transcribed they archive and those nineteen people they know absolutely everything it is astonishing or at least they know how to find it out there you know in my day who you were depended greatly on how much you knew now it's conveyed status when i was not any more i think that's a huge change today it's what you know about how to find out of course you know that's always been the goal of education even back in heating up for when i went to barnard college in new york city it summer's for laughing

because education really there was about learning which questions you asked and knowing how to find the answers in think about the answers and then where to go with the information you've gotten just as much as it was about accumulating some vast amount of information yourself about that was always important but today information is available at the click of a mouse and mercifully it is here just in time to fill in for my failing memory this is such a perfect timing i know that i bet five years from now will have little chips embedded they're just rubbing the right place the answer will come instantly we won't be the mouse but i can google we're always asking our librarians for information out and as a radio chauvinist in a high tech world i appreciate the way they enable my show of innocence and their technology getting ready to talk with

you here i asked her if the cyber and the most bizarre question it's that they have been asked to answer so this and don't really think about this one due in the us catholic bishops have facial hair this is so all things considered to do an on air correction of summer border or other what happens very often is that reporters and editors with the best of attention their intentions will make the occasional mistake hard as that is to believe we sometimes make mistakes and some listeners are many out there way you maybe we'll always had you know there's always somebody out there knows more than you do which is one of the wonderful things about being a broadcaster and so our policy is always to write to chat before we aired a correction just as we chat before we hear information and that means make a call

to the reference library and if the listener is right we broadcast correction have no idea what the answer to that one was about facial hair but i'm perfectly confident that in npr reference librarian doug at the answer just as he or she found the answer this one and again it's a request for more things considered they seem to ask an awful lot of question so please find us some quirky and wacky sayings on public street signs that i couldn't help them corzine europe as there used to be a wonderful sound that said don't even think about parking here that's very new york times went up but i'm also very fond of her beauty shop i asked once in denton delaware near a beach that we like to go to an unnamed that beauty shop was cut up and dye d y la but all things considered didn't ask me see they should've i could've given them stuff and scott simon once asked the npr reference library for a list of fat world

leaders i really wanna know why you wanted to know that one and a final example of questions for the npr reference library the tab as smiley show wanted a list of comedians who were born in michigan that's elizabeth in addition to the reference library with the wonderful program and they store and reclaim all of the npr archives at these pretty much every broadcast that we have done since nineteen seventy one when all things considered that first npr program when amir fires program library has music all kinds of cds and they have their secret weapon robert goldstein he is the best friend of music and radio producers and reporters ever hacked you call robert as i have done more times and

i can count and you say i'm doing a story and doubt that it is and i need a debt of the perfect music to play coming out of it and faster than you can hum beethoven's ninth he's there with the cd or a stack of cds and he says checkup that three point seven nine from which i can choose isn't that its journey in such a musical memory but beyond that sort of an editorial memory is understanding how powerful and emotional music can be and exactly what he needs to be to shift the mood or carried to the next facing the program indispensable library service that's robert goldstein enough library shelving those and let's get back to my radio show he's in aa i wanted so that the beauty of radio as the medium for interviews interview is really the basic tool of journalism every story the

reporters tell on the air starts with a series of information gathering interviews and most of the work of our hosts consists of getting information through the interviews that they can do as somebody who spent most of her protests live as the host and anchor of her program i was very surprised when i discovered have different before broadcast interview post interview is from vee for a reporter's interview and this is something that i learned when i became a reporter the four broadcast interview post interview is a conversation designed to be overheard a conversation designed it to be over her so that the presence of the host is as important in a certain way as the president of the guest since everything that the host says will be broadcast he or she is to choose words very carefully designed questions that will convey

information at the same time it is the question is soliciting information and also the four broadcast interview yesterday shape in advance as part of the host's preparation it used to have a beginning a middle and an end and pretty much everything that you hear on our air is pre recorded and has been highly edited and you can move questions and answers around sometimes to get a better flow in the course of the interview but it's really important bill in that structure before you start recording of the ways the system at cutting pasting he needed to out later but in a reporter's interview where they're just snippets of answers that are going to be used on the huge soundbites you know in a reporter's interview the questions can be asked in any darn ordered hardly matters and then the soundbites get organized labor in and out

written script said the forms are very different as to the interviewing it sells it you really don't have to have fancy question as i've discovered over the years sometimes a very simplest question which is why will be the best questions you can ask you do have to think in advance about what you want to get from the interview and if it's up your information you need to think about how you can get it economically and clearly and keep stopping your guest if you're recording if you don't understand something if it does say something that just not making any sense to you or you know it got a lot of research maybe you understand but your listeners not going to so they need to break it down and say it more simply does nothing wrong ever with admitting that you're not following what's being said but if it's an interview different timing is designed to reveal personality i like to think about how to make something unexpected happened in the course of recording a conversation and here is an old

favorite and appropriately bookish example in july two thousand one not long after the bush choose and to the white house i went over the east wing to interview laura bush it was so early in the administration and it was before nine eleven that she had not yet settled into her permanent office she was known to not like public speaking and really not like interviews her much for that matter and every time i had seen her or read about her frankly she did not seem very interesting to me that maybe a terrible thing to say she clearly was steady and ernest and a leveling force of course for her husband but maybe not good today that is i would interview her but i might not get stuff that was so compelling for my listeners as a result that's one of our high tech terms good tape she had agreed to be interviews our analysis issue was a crazy that it to promote her love of reading and

that this took place just before her very first national book festival she put on one a year i think i'm not sure which it didn't in two thousand one point i pretty much every year that administration should did it really celebrating the book there on the mall in washington so that that this was the first festival and so she agreed and so i carried with me in addition to my tape recorder ah into the white house a plastic safeway band that contained a very well loved crumley edge paperback copy of the brothers care matt sachs actually imagine trying to get into the white house today with the safeway pick and the book really start mean obvious to look at in tennessee have the world's largest and i sat and we started to chat and in the middle of the interview i fished out a book i handed over to her i asked her to please take off the rubber band that was holding it together although i'm recording this

and turn please to the post it that i had put on what i had read was her favorite section of the book and then i asked her to please read it out loud for us and she did and she also said she loved the section mccain right after that part and she went on to talk about that to not let that was a wonderful revelation of her character who's completely unexpected as i say i had made something happen for so she didn't slap or less or get a no i dont you know get a back up and being asked to take off the rubber mask the modern cries of a first lady and then she knew that book so you know and she clearly enjoyed holding it as battered as it was in her hands and all that came out because i have thought ahead of time about what i could make happen that she would not expect to see a little glimpse a little revelation has to sell very often in an

injury have to deal with difficult subjects a really bad period in a person's life and that was an issue for me some years ago when i interviewed paul mccartney sir paul he was my first beatle he'd written a spiritual core rap and that he was about to make its debut at carnegie hall and he agreed to talk with me about it he at that time was in the middle of a really ugly divorce a lot of terrible details dreadful once came out and i did not want to discuss that with him but i felt that i had to acknowledge that we knew about it you know not to simply be oblivious to what his big news was in those days so you start with the question sir paul you're going through rough divorce right now there are harsh accusations from heather mills scandal all over the tabloids doesn't use it provide a refuge for you india times you see how i laid out the information i

didn't stop to ask about it but i went onto a different subject to let him and also from melissa's know that i knew we knew but i want to talk about something else as it is it was really very good he said yes music has been a refuge all his life so that told you that it was a safe place in some ways for a place to be creative in god or at another level to go someplace else is art but you do do so off with a very nice chat and some were in the middle of that it was targeting a choir boy in his teens and he said i would go across to the church near penny lane and i thought oh this is a myth i'm doing is like shakespeare's saying when i was in avon i mean it was really thrilling anyway stories on the

radio and books and libraries i think they give shape to our allies and gravy alexis tell lies and tell stories that would otherwise remained untold and you know this i think is journalism's most solemn assignment to my way of thinking to give voice to the voiceless the old saw is that journalists and comforts the afflicted and afflict the comfortable that's a good one too and my marvelous medium of radio that inexpensive quick efficient medium the medium of the human voice fred rogers i did some television work with him years ago specials that special problems he wanted to do for the parents of his audience of mr rogers is to say there's something almost primal about the voice alone telling stories primal as seen from the wu from the cradle of their mother's voice he said that strikes right to our storytelling story

loving hearts stories as old as time as old as fire and the cave when they sat around griping about how today's hunt had gone no matter how modern the technology becomes no matter how many tweets and twitches become available to as they always the stories and the most important one is this is the most important part will have meaning and will have content to them one of my favorite stories and mapping app because i wanted to questions for news web only one of my favorite stories is about somebody ran up to henry david thoreau the philosopher and writer back in the nineteenth century has also said <unk> there is this new invention it's called telegram and let somebody in texas communicate like that with somebody and main is in that wonderful is that exciting and henry david thoreau percent and

smiled and then he said yes but what did they have to say to his as a man and thank you so much for conducting this little sermon that with you this evening in celebration of your soon to be out of the oven as the fur wrap new library that you're gonna get insights into that attitudes can be wonderful thanks for asking the air i'll take any questions now and i haven't talked about my cranberry so i'm delighted to do that if you wish thanks to irritation for listening to npr special correspondent susan stamberg favorite folk at the university of kansas center on march thirteenth two thousand twelve in celebration of the lawrence public libraries successful building campaign she now takes questions from the audience hi i was wondering how what you do to build a rope or with someone you're

interviewing because i know you probably can't see them face to face and and they're in another studio yeah or even the telephone in the old days it would walk away with in a way he's here are engineers and obviously radio tags don't like phones as we call them because says sounds you know the sound doesn't it is a great is that high fidelity but i'm lucky because for several reasons first of all the microphone inside the telephone was the one we know it is where is the coach of the microphone under somebody's snows of can be intimidating not so much another synonym starting out but also i like the cracker will follow the fact that it has a certain excitement to it and it also makes you have to work harder to listen i always like it but it's not such a hard work on the telephone for those races of people tend to be more comfortable with that when you get into a studio and very often the interviews we do

are not done face to face someone else's here in lawrence and be hooked up to us by satellite to i can talk to them in our studio in washington will sound as if we're in the same room and most of the time were careful not enough then i'm guilty of doing this and that to explain where the guest is just not you so that's a little harder to get someone in the studio where he's awful headsets and sipping from all the equipment so i usually i say something silly or try to get them to land in some ways we need to take a lead on their voices i'm an engineer developed a great question he says people say enough about forming something so we can set a level blinking an engineered yeast ask them to tell what they had for breakfast so and people really get into that so that sort of eases and i don't do any ahead of time chatting i don't like to do warm up chats my colleagues a number of them do but i just don't i like to go on for several reasons one i like to go right it

is against that energy level and to again with the memory i remember what i said ahead of time and when we were recording you know as i get into the conversation that this thing that either way you're supposed to listen to fear to hear in an interview i can i try to do that to listen back here so i hear the edits and it here if i need to build in on tuesday is a detectable tell me to move along if it is built on to take some transition from the last interesting thing that was said and away from this boring stuff was being said right now instead of the set sleeves and always have to be your head as you go that it is your listeners of the rampant banks and bury us susan oh i my name is tony wilson sure you don't remember me but when you are in nineteen seventy two you came to a party at my house

and i the last time i saw you you were sitting on my water bag and eating spaghetti how law and the amazing thing is we both still look to say i am and certainly was very square i think that was my first waterbed d'etat minds to see you know i did that once now i think you know that's they're whiter how do you go about retelling the cranberry story every year and finding new ways to keep the story fresh from listeners and this all started out nineteen sixty one i must have been i was taken to allentown pennsylvania to be inspected by my in laws to be

and i said at the time to my then fiance lou stamberg you know if i had that you never would've set but in allentown anyway there was a standard it's an at the thanksgiving dinner my mother in law marjorie stamper served this incredible though it was happening at night because they expect abysmal the color of activism which is true but into english is tanking tart very unusual ice ah this is great particularly the recipe for this thinking i would be winning her heart and she would prevent a means of government that took many more years i'm not sure i ever achieve that and that is a lot so sure he provided the recipe to be rude to him i still have it in your hand reading newspaper and our shortly after that i started my first radio job which was at the local public radio

station very much like kate you hear was at wamu on the campus of american university in washington dc it's still one of the powerhouse stations of national public radio and it is thanksgiving came and i think now with this radio this recipe and you know i was producing a daily program i wasn't on the year and stay behind the scenes to me that are just a little cameo says i was the dusek it say what's going to be on the track i just do this because i think it's a great recipe and i want to share with people and was such a nation of strangers everybody's moving around all the time people like tradition and maybe this'll be a tradition something i could use every year and that's how it began in the early sixties before there ever was a national public radio i'm here to become a lot of seventy one so npr yes it was and people say got any ideas i said well you know for the

last several years i've been doing this recipe would you like me to do it when they were desperate to fill the program poses that it was a ninety minute program we had nothing you know i used to sometimes when there was nothing volunteer offered to do my interpretive dance somehow desperate as they were they never took me out but that's how i started doing that nationally and it was a simple recitation i just read through the thing and somewhere maybe in the twenty three year bob edwards said to me you know why you disguised their thing but just common ingredient have some fun to play with and i had no idea what he was talking about are heavy he set foot over us you know do something unexpected and serve that's how bad that's when it became really hard to try to think up and it's an original idea some way to see it on the radio and just have that appear in the middle of something else that i was doing the last year was a somebody

asked me to go to the national archives into an onstage interview with three former white house chefs and requesting to me in september i the bingo problem solved that's what i'll do so i went and we sat on the stage and i asked him about cooking for nancy reagan what could she be on a leaf leavitt she was so thin we hadn't really nice chat and then i just stood up and handed out copies of a kid was a surprise and i said would you mind could you read this out loud and then tell me what you think of the survey get them at the ingredients thinly recording although they read the concrete the ads and the funniest of their chefs either finish be entering the directions the instructions and he said and then you throw about law but in that case we slap it on because the headline was the host in introducing him said thanksgiving is coming we don't know the obamas are going to camp david if they are the navy's in charge of the kitchen

but if they're at the white house it will be the white house chef and susan spoke recently with several of the thanksgiving at the west and that's and i started by asking many years he's glad his sleeves and all of that but it's not just for the sunni if you haven't i think it's written on cards each must all take it home and try but the reason it's so it's become such a thing is because of that strange ingredients cranberry that's fine sugar that's fine now it gets weird it and sour cream and here's the truly weird part worse radish a grind it all together it and freeze it say you can measure color become specific members and sour cream freeze it and take it to thaw the morning of thanksgiving and maybe the night before so becomes kind of chunky and i see it it's really got out and try but that's so every year itches it was warmer and when i come up with the idea and

so relieved to get it there's a one year somebody set it to music he wrote you wrote a classical composition in boston and got a soprano in there to sing it and i went out me and sat with them they would perform in there and we'll have a microphone sometimes we had sensed i thought i need to keep my my conduct of the interview the whole time this authority letting my way through it it was so you know you did this really serious they went here during during the clinton impeachment during the monica lewinski and when the radio test runs being brock is to hearing this so i incorporated that tape making the cranberry relish that it was dead you have any ideas for this year and what is large and that much

time anybody else would be taking that twenty seven more question you're listening to npr news susan stamberg speaking at the leed center on march thirteenth two thousand twelve the next question from the audience do you ever get to work with any of the people from other public radio shows like the cartel guys or michael feldman that michael so much of the when he was going on the air i don't think i've ever met but when he was putting that show on the ongoing nationally that i don't i interviewed him on all things considered that it in a little help with blues but tom and ray i'd put on the radio i flipped at weekend edition sunday on the year after i left all things considered and in that first line that we're the merry arts it's for five minutes and will shortz as i designed a program in i think i wanted it to sound like the art leisure section of the new york times didn't want to be a news program in stations

all said they didn't want anyone that wanted culture essentially so i thought what i like to do and what people do on sundays they tinker with their cars they like to cook i had alice waters do you know her name the gray she invented american cooking essentially and sam says god she did cooking and the problem for me was to our program and we didn't physically cook anything but we at the things that we could take breaks from put it in the oven for ten minutes and so i go into something else on the radio in ten minutes later come back and you give the next instruction it was very regional so the list the roads and we'll get that out i had young children they're screaming it is a vivid do i was writing and editing our listeners god love them but outside of a love story that tom and ray i'd like to tell it to you okay out there are many versions of this story but i like mine the best were putting the show on me and we're asking the us stations <unk> this new program what have you got

going on locally they think might work nationally on the sunday morning program and so station sent us air checks the things they were doing and the boston station wbur have had these guys on their hair for ten years as a local show called car talk and they sent a cassette and air check of one of their programs and that that take made the rounds at national public radio it went to our news director who was then robert siegel and he listened to and so on chants of this nun who will be only is this is why i love my version of this story and then it went to out of the one who is my producer for weekend sunday kitty ferguson and she listened she said when lobsters fly and i took it home plate for my husband loves cars and lived alone for we met in boston so in the blessing to andy this season season i think sending you going to do much to new

program that bad and i said i said is my favorite part i love these guys everybody loves cars their accent is fantastic there's polaris a funny they're going to get despite such a big they started five minutes every sunday and they didn't like the idea of the format was i would join in this little window and they hated it that worked there were brothers they are brothers they'd worked together ten years who have made but i said now in a reunion hosted the program we need due to an insulated to what we're doing and here's how i won their hearts and this was not at all manipulate i didn't know what i was doing but they still can't tell us two and i said i have a nineteen seventy four dodge dart it and then this was nineteen eighty seven a pub and back to that they said i

am paris's history so i left the program ha and they got a full show and they've been under since i do love that story yes i'll try to get in and report and i used to say it was my role model and he was who i wanted to be when i grew up he had the office right next to me ah and i'm not and had such enormous respect for him as well you simply extraordinary and i was driving fan letters and i did it once again during the clinton impeachment hearings as he would now the protests alive and on one of those mornings i was anchoring morning edition ah and he was working in a studio that they are doing a live broadcast and that he come over to me and do a live five minute chat summary for morning edition and turner and go back across the hall and do that i wrote in the family and i said i watched him this morning i sell it again you didn't drop the stage you three

incisive thought that time machine but it really did quite a door and how when he died the family was fighting continues after spiking it out and there was a letter box was in one with his name on the side and i asked if i could have it so it's in my office now i think it's been very odd use quite simply reading i don't think i ever met but again hosting morning edition i had to work with her as did many of us and neal conan faulted the longest act in shelby is this is so hard to tell you never knew where he was going to go blind and he would go off on these tangents with neil hughes remember that the wives and the areas in the backyard he did not to get infected peaceful scores and i don't i know nothing about sports you have a basketball team here and to stan but that

theory was you know struggle struggle so i i just found that i just talk talk think it's up ah it was interesting to find his resentment rhymes dowry or is for variety has led bob loved him and that was a fabulous combination ladies that are so huge i owe my name is sandi and i want to thank you for coming in nineteen seventy two and forty years later both it's delightful to see you in person i only listen to npr and i get very disturbed when i here the possibility that funding is not what it needs to be so as the founding mother of npr what do you see as its future is enormous i'm really not worried he said my lips i don't know about the future of radio three people

keep telling me that i don't believe it's a dying medium but i think the weather is so dominant now in the field their future of sound is enormous and stories told a lab is enormous whether you can sit with my age refused to listen is questionable but what's so astonishing and i never would've been able to predict it out when we started although we were enormously ambitious from day one but i never could have predicted that we will become the primary source of information for so many people in this country we went on two newspapers were flourishing towns had morning and evening newspapers this week commercial television networks would damage and serious about their news to ensure worked one of them so i never could have imagined that newspapers would begin to shrivel as they are my new york times which i still take every day is looks anorexic most of the time so i could pick it up with that thinking since online advertising is so down

and i could never have i imagine that television the news on television would have deteriorated to the level that it happens that people would turn to as so i think there's always a future there will always be a need for serious and balanced reporting about the state of the world so i'm not worried about that in terms of funding you know where i hear the economy's getting better and then i feel that our listeners are so devoted to us that that is a place that's one of the last places that they will cut as far as quickly to do to lie in a look what you've done in prioritize and say that this is important to me i will pay for and i believe that will happen with public radio two is not easy it's never been easy has never been enough forward to match what our ambitions are and what we can hear in our minds years for that yeah i'm i'm actually hopeful

a ha amazing to see you standing here i feel like it should make eggs and bacon something i'm of the generation the morning edition sunday that you were hosting us what i know you from and i always listened to the puzzle with will shortz you guys are like an old married couple no you elena you well you could hear more like that is okay maybe well was there a time that you and we'll work especially angry with each other but he went ahead and this is something that bothers me they just like you're the nicest uncle you know anyone not to npr but i have started there

again it was the idea what you like to do on sunday mornings i'd love to do the sunday puzzle so i called a friend of mine kept her teens theater actor named richard martin and lyricist but he used to do that but so far it is harper's magazine and as it we come here and do the puzzle every week every sunday he said i can too busy but you need to call this guy's names will shortz he's the editor of athens ga games magazine and see if you're doing and so we counted them well and the way we started the west it was way our hand i carried no interest in trying to get answers so the whole thing starts out as like this will would give the question and i'd go ah honey i don't need to be that's an argument of why do better in my kitchen might say you know these years the navy did all the microphone with it i am an actor i left the producer the program came up with a great

idea to involve listeners get listeners in on and having them do the senate's us much better drug testing now i do better with the answer is no that they don't have to be on the radio with the media but i think it will be a new thing i am i am i work at their public library in the children's room and so my question is who's your favorite storytellers oh my goodness well you know thats just come to me because i got an email to david it's the hundredth anniversary of his birth to another name studs terkel yeah that's not i mean he's written he's done but with their oral histories but just as a man who spins tales and spins stories i would say he is for much of her writing life

mapped the recent books joan didion i'm staying out of this extraordinary profound influence on my chin was i right i'm noah adams always love john mcphee these are non fiction writers you know people we take lessons from justice it i have from npr people listen to alex chadwick was when this place with her handlers staff and sky simon says well so listening to writing for radio so different it's like i couldn't and he can't you need to put in places to breathe and you can't live very long complicated sensitive to i think here but favorite authors philip roth and that's a pretty good list at it they hear a lot that even a thing to susan stamberg special correspondent for national public

radio stamberg spoke at the university of kansas leed center on march thirteenth two thousand twelve in a benefit for the lord's public library her talk wasn't idle libraries cranberries and news stories audio recording of this event was provided by chubby smith and came out entire k pr present is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas from npr's susan stamberg to nancy pearl supreme court chief justice john roberts to president obama each week a pr presence brings you some of the most interesting people in the area it's a locally produced radio from right here i think at our studios we can only do it with your support if you meant to call in a pledge during fall fanfare two thousand twelve but didn't get around to it you can't let our mind at our website k pr that kay you that ed you and thanks for supporting katie our prisons