NJ native hosts game show with twist of the news

by Ron Kaplan
NJJN Staff Writer

As religious leader of Temple Emanu-El in Westfield, Rabbi Douglas Sagal would never engage in lashon hara (speaking evil), especially against his own brother, Peter, host of the popular National Public Radio “oddly informative news quiz,” Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me.

Still, he couldn’t resist applying the playful needle.

“I’m astonished by the number of people who listen. Peter deserves this wonderful success,” Rabbi Sagal said. “[But] I tease him all the time that he’s not as funny as Jon Stewart.”

Peter Sagal does not take the bait. “On one level, I have the greatest job in the world,” he told NJJN in a phone interview. “I get to have fun, I get to have a moderate, in fact perfect, level of fame, in that no one bothers me when I’m walking in the street, but once a week I get to get up in front of 500-1,000 people who are very excited to see me.

“I get to travel around the country,” he added, “and to meet really interesting people and talk to [celebrities such as] Tom Hanks on the phone” during the show’s weekly celebrity guest segment.

In May, the rabbi’s younger brother marked his eighth anniversary at the helm of Wait Wait, a panel and listener call-in program that takes a humorous look at people and events in the news. In recent months it has been among the top 10 downloaded “podcasts” at Apple’s iTunes store, and was ranked as one of the top 10 podcasts by Time magazine.

Peter Sagal enjoys the praise and the audience, but “at the same time, I have to tell you, this isn’t exactly what I planned to do with my life. I’m an insult to all those people who said, ‘I want to grow up and host a radio show,’ because I got to do it without ever trying. I often think about getting back into writing, which was my first love and what I thought I was supposed to be doing. And maybe I will some day.”

The Sagal family — parents Matthew and Reeva and brothers Doug, Peter, and Roger, an attorney living in Ridgeway, Colo. — lived in Berkeley Heights and attended the Summit Jewish Community Center, where the boys celebrated their b’nei mitzva.

After graduating from Governor Livingston Regional High School (the “Regional” was later dropped), Peter, 41, attended Harvard University, where he earned a degree in English literature. It was there that he developed a talent for playwriting and went to California to seek his fortune. Among his credits is the screenplay for Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights.

“My brother and I reacted to [our Jewish upbringing] in slightly different ways,” Peter Sagal said. “He, of course, went off to become a rabbi and I did not, to put it mildly. I am — what I believe the current euphemism is — a cultural Jew. I haven’t been to a synagogue that was not my brother’s…in 15 years. Without my brother there, it’s not some place I choose to go.”

As if to emphasize his point, Sagal said he married the “quintessential blond shiksa” he met while on a writing fellowship in Minnesota. He and his wife, Beth, moved to the Park Slope section of Brooklyn but, nearly a decade ago, decided they weren’t crazy about raising a family in a frenetic New York City environment.

About that time, Sagal was asked to be a panelist on Wait Wait, then in its infancy. With disappointing ratings, the producers realized they needed to tweak the program and asked if he would like to take over as host. It meant moving to the Chicago area, where the program was based. “It was a great pivotal point,” he said, giving him the chance to live in a big city atmosphere, while fulfilling his wife’s desire to return to the Midwest. The couple have three daughters, Rose, eight; Grace, five; and Willa, two.

The show is taped before a live audience at Chicago’s Chase Auditorium. Eight to 12 times a year, Sagal packs up his gang — including NPR newscaster and sidekick Carl Kasell and a revolving set of panelists that includes comedian Paula Poundstone, writers P.J. O’Rourke and Roy Blount Jr., and radio personality Tom Bodett — and hits the road.

Sagal had extra praise for Kasell, a veteran newscaster who has appeared on NPR’s Morning Edition since its inception in 1979. “Carl was attached to [Wait Wait] before I was. His answer to any request is ‘I’d love to.’ He’s the greatest straight man in the world; he’ll try anything.”

Originally carried on only seven stations, Wait Wait can now be heard on 350 outlets and has an audience of two million listeners. The program is broadcast on various public radio stations in the metropolitan area, including WNYC, WBGO-FM, and WNYE-FM.

Sagal welcomes the new podcast technology, which allows fans to download the weekly broadcasts onto their iPods and MP3 players and listen on their own schedules. From Sagal’s “selfish perspective…it exposes people to what’s going on,” he said. “People might hear about us and more people hear and might get turned on to public radio.

“We pride ourselves on having a general level of sophistication. If I may be so bold,” said Sagal, displaying the dry wit that makes him such a favorite with his audience, “people who like us are more intelligent.”