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"Before The Cheering Started with Budd Mishkin" explores the journey to success and professional fulfillment. These are the stories of obstacles overcome, periods of doubt, plan B's and the passion to push through to follow one’s passion and realize a dream. Guests on the first 80 episodes of the podcast have included musicians Shawn Colvin, Sarah Jarosz, Nick Lowe, Steven Van Zandt and John Pizzarelli, writers Nick Hornby, Jacqueline Woodson, Patrick Radden Keefe, Scott Turow and Colum McCa ...
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Send us a text For some 50 years, Jeff Greenfield has written about political campaigns. He’s reported on political campaigns. He’s analyzed political campaigns for viewers on CBS, ABC and CNN. And he was a young speechwriter on one of the most compelling campaigns in American political history: the 1968 Presidential campaign of Bobby Kennedy that …
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Send us a text I first met Michael Byrne in the months after Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Many parts of the New York area were still reeling from the hurricane. Byrne was overseeing FEMA’s response to the hurricane and he was serving the city where he was born and bred, just as he did after 9/11 working for the Department of Homeland Security, just as …
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Send us a text John Hodgman always makes me laugh, in his books, on his podcast and certainly during his long run on The Daily Show. He makes me laugh in interviews as well, but he is also an extremely thoughtful interview, especially about his many and varied influences and how they melded together into the career he’s fashioned. And so, there’s a…
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Send us a text John Hodgman has made a wonderful career out of telling us things that are not true: as the “Resident Expert” and then “Deranged Millionaire” on The Daily Show and the author of three fun books of fake trivia. His warm and clever wit are on display each week on the podcast Judge John Hodgman. He is a thoughtful and compelling intervi…
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Send us a text Barry Sonnenfeld is a storyteller. In film. And in conversation. His journey has taken him from the streets of Washington Heights to the heights of Hollywood. He tells hundreds of these stories in a new memoir, Best Possible Place, Worst Possible Time.” He shared more than a few of them in our conversation.…
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Send us a text Talk to Harry Teinowitz for ten seconds and it’s easy to understand why he’s had a successful career in Chicago sports talk radio. There’s a fun gift of gab, a solid sense of humor and a passionate love of sports. He brought a lot of joy to Chicago sports fans. But then came a DUI, rehab and a coming to terms with his alcohol problem…
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Send us a text Many of us grow up in homes with high expectations, but perhaps not the burden of expectation that Ben Mankiewicz experienced. His grandfather and great uncle were prominent in Hollywood, his father in the world of politics. Ben long ago dreamed of being a baseball broadcaster. Along the way, he worked in sports media, hosted an ecle…
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Send us a text You never know what job you have that will teach you lessons that you’ll use decades later. Growing up as a theater loving kid, Frank Rich got a dream job as a ticket taker in a theater in his hometown of Washington, D.C. And he watched as shows were changed, rewritten, shortened and lengthened from night to night in preparation for …
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Send us a text For much of his adult life as an athlete and attorney, Len Elmore has balanced academics and athletics. That work continues to this day as a Senior Lecturer at Columbia University in the Sports Management program. The balancing act began long ago growing up in New York City, then attending Power Memorial Academy, the University of Ma…
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Send us a text LUCY KAPLANSKY Art + Science = Sweet Music We’ve all come to crossroads in our lives and our careers. Lucy Kaplansky initially chose music. Then she chose school and a doctorate in clinical psychology. She tried pursuing both passions, psychologist by day with a little music on the side. But then came those crossroads. Her many admir…
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Send us a text I first met Sebastian Junger in 2011, only months after the death of his friend and war reporting colleague Tim Hetherington in Libya. Junger was at a crossroads, searching for an experience as intense as war but an experience that doesn’t get you killed. The passion he felt for war reporting has been replaced by the passion for his …
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Send us a text By 1975, Alan Zweibel had decided on a career in comedy writing. He’d written jokes for older borscht belt comics and become friendly with young comics like Billy Crystal. But then he faced a difficult career decision between a relatively sure thing and a leap into the unknown. The decision changed the rest of his life.Learn more abo…
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Send us a text “Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.” Shakespeare forgot about this one: “some are nudged by the rejection of numerous law schools.” Alan Zweibel has written so many words that have made us laugh, through the voices of Gilda Radner, Billy Crystal, Garry Shandling and his own. He was o…
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Send us a text Ruth Reichl never thought she’d make a career out of writing about food. But she has, defying expectations and obliterating boundaries at august publications along the way. She’s found joy and memory and escape in her writing about food: witness her latest book The Paris Novel. But there is also the theme that has stayed true to Reic…
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Send us a text I don’t think it violates some journalistic Edward R. Murrow code to say that some interviews are a labor of love. And if it does, so be it. This is one of them. Paul Shaffer and Will Lee have put a lot of joyful music into the world. They are best known for their work in the Letterman bands, first on NBC and then on CBS, 33 years in…
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Send us a text By 1963, Bill Persky had already worked as a lifeguard at Grossinger’s in the Catskill Mountains and watched the hotel’s standup comics make people laugh. He’d written a show at Syracuse University that won a national collegiate award. He’d worked at an advertising agency and radio station in New York before moving to California to w…
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Send us a text What is it like to create something early in your life and then watch as that creation has a tangible effect on people decades later? Musicians know the feeling. Actors and writers too. It’s a feeling Bill Persky knows well. He and his writing partner Sam Denoff wrote many of the classic episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show, a 1960’s s…
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Send us a text It seems easy for former professional athletes to live in the past. They practiced their whole lives to play the game and now it’s gone. Fans are constantly reminding them of games long ago, occasionally waiting on long lines for a picture and an autograph at a card show. New York Rangers fans often remind Stephane Matteau of his Gam…
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Send us a text Jay Z once memorably rapped “if skills sold, truth be told, I’d probably be lyrically, Talib Kweli.”Many are the influences that have shaped Talib Kweli’s words and music for decades: the Brooklyn of his youth, the ubiquitous books and records in that Brooklyn home, the academic careers of his parents as professors and administrators…
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Send us a text Adriana Trigiani has had a long love affair with the written word. And she’s pretty comfortable with the spoken word too. She has quite a story to tell as a novelist/TV writer/film director/podcast host whose journey brought her from a small mining town in Virginia to New York. And she tells that story with insight and humor. Her tho…
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Send us a text Shawn Colvin has been making music, beautiful music, for a long time. She’s known the heights of winning Grammy Awards, including song of the year and record of the year for Sunny Came Home in 1998. She’s known the hills and valleys of the business, especially early on, playing in cover bands, dive bars, taking day jobs before her ca…
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Send us a text Stan Fischler has been in the hockey world for 70 years, primarily as a writer and broadcaster. His passion for the sport has never waned, even as a 92 year old who now covers and writes about hockey from a small village in northern Israel, where he lives with his son and family. He is the sport’s connection, from Richard to Howe to …
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Send us a text I first met Maurice Ashley in New York in 1994. He was announcing a chess tournament with all of the fervor and excitement of Marv Albert and John Madden. 30 years later, his passion for the sport is the same, perhaps greater. He’s an historic figure in chess as the first African American grandmaster. But that’s only a small part of …
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Send us a text It was the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald who famously wrote “there are no second acts in America.” Scott, meet Steve Hindy. He’s had an amazing second act, made that much more compelling by his first act, covering wars and revolutions in the Middle East, the taking of the American hostages in Iran in 1979 and surviving the assassination…
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Send us a text If we’re lucky, we find work that is our passion. In a sense, it doesn’t even feel like work. Long ago, Bill Raftery found that passion analyzing basketball games on TV. And we are the lucky ones.What we don’t see is the immense amount of preparation he puts into every game. What millions of us do see and hear and experience is the j…
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Send us a text Growing up on Long Island, Bob Gruen’s parents wanted him to work 9-5. And for much of his life, he did. 9PM-5AM. He’s spent 60 years documenting rock ‘n roll through photographs. Bob wasn’t photographing the scene. He was part of the scene, earning the trust of musicians, hanging out with them, touring with them, befriending them an…
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Send us a text Former athletes have all kinds of second careers once their playing days are over. There are lawyers and doctors, business people and broadcasters, lots and lots of broadcasters. But I know of no other former great athlete who has pursued the world of green technology. Mike Richter was always one of my favorite interviews during my s…
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Send us a text In the world of downtown cabaret and theater, Justin Vivian Bond is nothing less than an icon. For more than 30 years, their performances have compelled audiences, initially in small performance spaces and eventually at Carnegie Hall and beyond. They created their most memorable character while still in their 20’s: a boozy, opinionat…
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Send us a text Lea Carpenter has had an unlikely and compelling path to becoming a writer of novels about espionage: Princeton and Harvard, working for both Senator Biden and Beau Biden and a 10 year magazine publishing career working for the likes of Francis Ford Coppola and John F. Kennedy Jr. There is a powerful connection in her writing to a su…
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Send us a text I first met Kenny Vance at one of the hardest times in his life. It was a few months after Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and his house on the beach in the Rockaways of New York had been completely destroyed. And yet even that couldn’t dampen his sweet spirit, his good humor and the joy he has gotten out of a life in music. Kenny grew up in…
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Send us a text There’s no need to categorize the music of Sarah Jarosz. OK, you can put it in one category: good. She has a contemporary sound and a sensibility that pays homage to the musical shoulders on which she stands. She is thoughtful in music and conversation, about the musically vibrant Texas small town of her youth, her time at the New En…
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Send us a text Talent will always win out. At least, I hope so. Talent and creativity and humor and perseverance. But all of us need a moment that opens the window to the rest of our lives. That window opened for Nick Hornby during a conversation with an agent that was not going particularly well. Nick decided “what the hell” at the end of the conv…
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Send us a text Nick Hornby has never written the phone book, to use an old expression. But if he did, I’d read it. Hornby is one of those writers who elicits unbridled enthusiasm from his unabashed admirers. Count me in, thanks to books like High Fidelity, Fever Pitch and About A Boy. He always had a love of reading and writing and music and sports…
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Send us a text You don’t need to be a great musician like Steven Van Zandt, Bruce Springsteen or Paul Shaffer to understand the greatness of Darlene Love. Perhaps they understand it on a more musical level, but anyone who has ever heard that amazing voice gets it. Her songs radiate joy, none more so than the classic of this season, “Christmas (Baby…
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Send us a text Mike Massimino is smart. No surprise there. He’s a graduate of Columbia, MIT and the NASA space program. But he’s also incredibly thoughtful about the lessons while preparing for his two space shuttle flights, the time he spent in space and the clarity it gave him about life back on earth. And he’s downright funny when talking about …
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Send us a text Lisa Lucas has many of the wonderful qualities that a compelling character in one of the books she publishes might have. She’s smart. She’s thoughtful. And she’s really funny. Have you ever known anyone who breezily refers to the classic The Brothers Karamazov as “ The Brothers K?” She’s the Senior Vice President and Publisher of Pan…
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Send us a text Chandrika Tandon has a head for business and a soul for music. She’s reached incredible heights in both fields. It’s a remarkable story. Where others see obstacles she sees opportunities, from growing up in India to coming to the United States and then realizing her dream of making music while raising a family and wielding influence …
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Send us a text At this profoundly dark time, a show of hope and wonder is taking place at a small and intimate theater in Greenwich Village. The show is called “Asi Wind’s Inner Circle.” If you love magic, you’ll love it. If you hate magic, you’ll love it. It is unlike any show I’ve ever seen, where the audience plays an integral role in the entire…
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Send us a text Nick Lowe has been writing and singing his songs for some 50 years. Some songs, like the exquisite “Stoplight Roses” are known by his ardent fans. Others, like “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding” are known around the world. More than a few iconic musicians have covered his songs, including Elvis Costello and Johnn…
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Send us a text There’s something beautiful about a musician who has been writing and performing for decades and is still out there, finding inspiration to write and create special moments for the audience. And yes, there is something beautiful about Nick Lowe. There are the catchy songs that we first loved when we were younger and the poignant song…
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Send us a text From the outside, it seems that it’s been a brilliant trajectory for Rob Simmelkjaer, from Ivy League college and law school to prestigious legal and media positions. But to steal a piece of wisdom from Rob himself, no one’s trajectory is a straight line. The path has now led him to his “dream job” as the CEO of New York Road Runners…
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Send us a text Spend 12 seconds talking to Gabi Conti and you get it, that California blast of energy born out of growing up in the Northeast. She’s written, directed and hosted new media and old. She jokes that she peaked at Emerson College, where the window to the rest of her life opened. In those early years in the business, when obstacles had t…
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Send us a text We all have books, music, movies, pieces of art that elate us in good times and sustain us in hard times. The 1975 book "The Doonesbury Chronicles" is at the top of the list for me. I frequently go back to it, rereading strips that I've read a hundred times. Garry Trudeau created Doonesbury, initially called Bull Tales, at Yale in th…
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Send us a text It’s one thing to have a successful book, and Freaknomics, the 2005 book Stephen Dubner co-authored with economist Steven Levitt, is very successful, with million of copies sold and translated all over the world. But it’s rare that a successful book becomes a radio show, a podcast and a small cottage industry. And it’s even rarer tha…
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Send us a text It’s not every standup comedian who has the London School of Economics on the resume. In fact, Hari Kondabolu may be the only standup who has the London School of Economics on his resume. It may not reflect how funny he is, but it shines a bit of a light on how thoughtful his work is. He is perhaps best known for creating the documen…
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Send us a text A poster changed Dr. Irwin Redlener’s life. Sure, he likely would have been a doctor that put good into the world. But in the early 1970’s, a poster he saw asking young doctors to go to a poor, rural county in Arkansas lit a fire inside him and set him on a path with no looking back, working as a team with his wife Karen, a health pr…
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Send us a text Sports fans know Ian Eagle. They know him from announcing NFL football, NBA and college basketball, the Brooklyn Nets and so many other gigs. He adds to every broadcast with his great preparation, excitement and sharp sense of humor. But his fans might not know that Ian comes to the performance aspect of his work honestly. He grew up…
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Send us a text I had the pleasure and privilege of interviewing Clarence Jones for a NY1 profile in 2008. In 2013, it was an honor to share the stage at the 92nd St. Y and moderate a conversation with Clarence, Harry Belafonte and Julian Bond to commemorate 50 years since the 1963 March on Washington. And it was fascinating to speak with him this w…
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Send us a text Dan Barry paid his dues on his journey to becoming an acclaimed author and writer and columnist for The New York Times. There was a first job at a small paper in Connecticut where he covered the murder of one of his newspaper colleagues. There was a disastrous first job interview at the Times, having nothing to do with Dan or actuall…
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Send us a text If you’ve read Dan Barry’s books and his work in The New York Times, you know. If you haven’t, time to start. He’s eloquently told the story of people across the country with a nod to the“operatic”lives he witnessed growing up in a working class neighborhood on Long Island. And he is a gifted storyteller, about his Irish Catholic hom…
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