The New Vice President
From our November 2007 issue: In his new book, Peter Sagal, the smart and impish host of NPR's Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me!, turns his attention to porn, gluttony, swingers' clubs, and other forms of behavior that he'd never, ever have the nerve to do on his own.
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Sagal talks to the fans of Wait Wait during the recent Millennium Park taping.
Fitzgerald is one of 2.3 million listeners tuning in to Wait Wait each week, making it NPR's third-ranked entertainment program, behind Car Talk and A Prairie Home Companion. (Here, the show—put together at the WBEZ offices on Navy Pier and taped live on Thursday evenings—airs on WBEZ, 91.5 FM, at 10 a.m. Saturdays, and repeats 9 a.m. Sundays.) Approaching its tenth anniversary, the hourlong show has captivated news junkies across the country with its lighthearted approach to current events; the program is divided into seven quiz segments, including one in which Kasell reads fill-in-the-blank limericks based on the week's top stories. The show has also turned Sagal into a star, albeit one who can still go unrecognized on the street.
"I am well known among a small niche of the general public," reflects Sagal, 42, during a conversation a few days before the Millennium Park taping. "The rest of the world has never heard of me, but the people who know me are funny and smart and well read and interesting."
He's eating breakfast at a corner booth in a Humboldt Park restaurant, dressed in a dark green cycling jersey and bike shorts, blue saddlebags lying at his side. Sagal sometimes pedals his way from his home in Oak Park to his cubicle at WBEZ, where his bike joins the dozens of others locked outside the station's entrance. If Sagal displays certain stereotypical traits of public radio-ness, much of his growing fame is due to the impish comic relief he provides to NPR. (After dutifully announcing a lead-in to the weekend news at the beginning of each show's taping, he likes to crack up the studio crowd by holding his nose and nasally announcing the familiar refrain "From NPR news in Washington . . .")
Now, that same combination of smarts and class clownishness also fills his first book, The Book of Vice: Very Naughty Things (and How to Do Them), to be published in October by HarperCollins. Much as he does on Wait Wait, Sagal drolly skewers human misbehavior as he reports on the making of a porn video, visits a CPA to the rich and famous, shoots craps, and partakes of a lavish multicourse dinner at Alinea only to leave hungry. While he cringes at certain behavior, Sagal largely avoids making judgments (although he does take a few swipes at President Bush and at William Bennett, author of The Book of Virtues). "More than we want to admit, many of us might want to dabble in such experiences," he says. "I wish I had the balls to play high-stakes poker. I wish I had enough self-regard that I could enjoy a swingers' club. I wish I could travel the world and eat these things. But it all seems silly and self-indulgent to me."
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Photography: Lisa Miller/Tony Armour Photography
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