Paula Poundstone will be performing at the Brooklyn Arts Center in Wilmington, NC on Thursday, August 27. Show and ticket info is available at PaulaPoundstone.com. Keep up with her on Youtube or follow her on Instagram @PaulaPoundstone.
Aaleah McConnell: Alrighty. So I wanted to begin by talking about your experience with NPR. You're a regular panel guest on Wait Wait… Don't Tell Me! So I'm curious, what role has NPR played in your life?
Paula Poundstone: There was a cassette tape, and it was from Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, a show that I had never heard before, and the guy I was talking to, he sees it and he goes, "Oh, I love that show, and I said, "Oh, I never heard of it. They asked me to do it. I don't know what it is. And it was, and they sent me, you know, like some sample.
And he was like, It was this guy who was a nanny for me. That's who he was, and he goes, "Oh, you have to do that!” So that's how I came to do Wait Wait… Don't Tell Me! The guy who was my kid's nanny 1000 years ago told me I had to.
So back then we didn't perform in a theater. Everybody went to the studio nearest them, and so there was no, there was no live audience. And within I don't know a few times of me doing it, they, you know, found a home at the time, it was in the basement of a bank in Chicago, and we all flew in and did it there regularly.
AM: Oh wow!
PP: Yeah, which is you know, of course, years later, along came the stay-at-home order, and everybody, We were sort of back to how we had done it before. except the difference being we had been spoiled for years with a live audience.
AM: You know, I hear a lot. Well, you know, when Colbert was still on the air, he would talk about that a lot. How being in the pandemic and shooting from home was just not the same at all.
PP: Oh gosh, yeah, and yet it was a you know it was probably in many ways more more valuable than it had ever been because people really longed for connection and and so those kinds of things like for example I have a podcast it's called Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone and you know the we were forever getting you know emails and notes and stuff from our audience saying ‘oh my gosh you guys are getting me through.’
We do a show every week because we feel like the audience needs it.
Which do you see how tired I look?
AM: Hard at work! So you brought up your podcast. Nobody listens to Paula Poundstone, which is not true. I think a lot of people listen to you.
PP: I don't know, however long it's been seven, eight years, something like that. But you know what happened at a certain point?
Well, two things. Sometimes we get laughing so hard, me and my podcasting partners, and I and I have to think to myself, where am I going to get that? You know, if I don't do this, where am I? And then there's the other thing of the you know of the audience having like a rewarding you know rewarding exchange with the audience. It could just be bots, for all I know. But I've fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker.
AM: Paula, I want to ask: your jokes, you know, they reflect back to us as a society, like how absurd we can be sometimes as humans and not really realize it, but you do it in a way that we can all laugh at ourselves, you know. So I curious. When did you realize that you had that ability?
PP: The first sentence of the second paragraph of the summary letter written by my kindergarten teacher at the end of kindergarten, which I believe they did in lieu of something like a report card, says I have enjoyed many of Paula's humorous comments about our activities.
You know, she she could have written that I interrupted a lot, and and that the other children didn't seem to like me, but she focused on what she considered a positive attribute, and and I was, you know, I think I was, I think it inspired me. I think the idea that an adult found something I said funny was so gratifying, and I love the sound of laughter. So I guess I always just sort of steered in that direction.
AM: So I do want to talk about what people should expect on your tour.
PP: Well, my act is largely autobiographical.
I have 47 years of material rattling around. To some degree, I feel like when I go on stage, it's sort of like somebody being in one of those arcade games where they blow the paper money around, and whatever I can grab, I can keep. That's sort of you know my material is sort of the paper money.
But my favorite part of the night is just talking to the audience. I do the time honored. Where are you from? What do you do for a living? And in this way, little biographies emerge.
AM: But I bet that you know working that way definitely keeps things interesting.
Is there anything that you want people to know any last words that you want to say to our audience to help them understand who Paula is better?
PP: one of the things I learned from the stay at home order. Well, as a performer, I really sort of longed for an audience. You can't do stand-up comedy in your living room, you know, via Zoom. It just doesn't work that way.
I felt the loss. There is something about sitting among a group of people watching something, Doesn't matter. There's something about sitting with other people, having a shared response to something that I think reinforces how much we have in common when we all have the same reaction to something. And I, I don't think I ever realized that until we didn't have it.
So I would love people to come out and see me. that would be great. Thank you. But it doesn't have to be me. But it should be somebody. Make sure you're getting out there and being with other people.
