Stand up comedian and Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! veteran Paula Poundstone talks about her 25 years on the show

For longtime public radio listeners the name Paula Poundstone will no doubt be familiar.

The standup comedian has been gracing CapRadio’s airwaves for over 20 years as perhaps the most well-known panelist on Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!

And that is just the tip of the iceberg of a comedic career that spans late night TV from Carson to Colbert and a podcast called “Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone.”

Insight Senior Producer Andrew Garcia sat down with Paula, ahead of her performance tonight at the Crest Theater, to talk about her time on ‘Wait Wait’. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Interview highlights

What has it been like doing your podcast for close to ten years now?

The other day we were actually cited on Forbes.com, they had an article about podcasting. It was sort of talking about, you know, mistakes that podcasts make. But as it turns out, they were citing us as a successful podcast.

Our producer saw it and she sent it around to all of us and we were very excited. “Oh oh look our podcast was mentioned!” But if you read the article a little bit deeper. It went on to say, “by success he didn't mean that you made money or had a lot of listeners.” [Both laugh]

Anyways we don't make money and we don't have, you know, millions of listeners. Certainly I started out because I really thought, "Oh, this is a great way that I don't have to travel and I can have an income." And you couldn't survive for a day on what you make from podcasting. 

Having said that, I think we had been on for a year and something before COVID. And it really was this kind of lifeline both between me and my partners on the podcast itself, but also between us and listeners. So many listeners would say to us, "Oh my gosh, you're getting us through this difficult time." And boy, I am a sucker for those words. Somebody says that to me, it doesn't matter how little money I make and how hard I [have to] work by god, I'll do it!

You're very well known for your ability to improvise. It serves you well on the podcast, your stand-up routines, Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! Do you think being able to have the skills and the mindset of improv can help people in their day-to-day lives? 

Well, I don't know that I am a good improviser. I mean there's that word sort of means more than one thing. I did a few years ago now or maybe it was several years ago now.

I just decided that I would like to take improv classes. And so I took some classes with the Groundlings. I made some really wonderful friends as a result. But I suck at improv that way. You know, the thing where you have a partner and you build on a story together and you sort of pull stuff from thin air. I'm not good at that at all!

What I can do is be on stage and not have an act. I can have a conversation with an audience member that is unique to that night and won't be repeated and is funny. But that's just conversational skill.

And also I have 47 years of material rattling around somewhere in my head. And sometimes I'll pull something that seems germane to the conversation and throw that in.

This is an obligatory Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! question since this is a public radio program. You debuted on ‘Wait, Wait’ shortly after it started, what space does this show hold in the greater pantheon of your career? 

It's been so much fun. I think I've been on for something like 25 years. Broadcast productions have long done this thing where they pretend to be spontaneous. Whether it's say something like Hollywood Squares for example. I'm talking about the original with Paul Lynde in the center square and he was so damn funny. Well, come to find out those were written! Now, somebody had to think it up at one time.

But television has long loved to have this illusion that it's all just off the top of your head. When someone goes on a late night talk show, they have spent, you know, lord knows how much time talking with a producer to come up with what stories they might talk about that are entertaining. And so the truth is there's very little spontaneity. 

So I get a chance to do Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, which by the way I had never heard of at the time. We were all in whatever studio was closest to our house. I was in the LA NPR studio in a you know sitting in sort of a lonely room with a headset on. They explained to me how to do it and then they start up the show and this voice keeps coming on in my headset saying “jump in anytime, say anything you want.”

I can't tell you how foreign that is to anything that's televised or ‘radioized’ or whatever it is. And I couldn't get over how much they wanted me to just jump in. So for me—I'm a compulsive talker to begin with and I rarely edit—it was such a wonderful environment to be in. Normally saying a joke that comes into my head, you know, it's what I got thrown out of class [for].

It's a miracle that I know phonics because elementary school was such a difficult fit for me. I was forever being told I had to go sit in the hall because I couldn't stop talking. And now here I was on this show where they solicited that. 

There is a great line in the movie Dumbo because the mouse, Timothy, becomes his manager. When Dumbo and Timothy drank water from a barrel that the clowns had spiked. And they end up in a tree and you remember the blackbirds are making fun of them and astounded that they're in this tree. Well when they finally realize that Dumbo can fly and Dumbo was ostracized because he has these huge ears.

And Timothy says to him, “Dumbo, the very thing that brought you down is going to bring you up, up, up." And I had a little mini-story like that with Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! All those years being told, “don't say that. No, it has to be scripted.” And now the very thing that brought me down was going to, I mean, I can't say it brought me “up, up, up” but it brought me up!