That's why he's one of the best, it's true: poker, especially online, is a solitary occupation; some form of entertainment is essential, and you don't get any reading done while playing poker. And while you might love TV and movies, it's commonly known to be just about impossible to focus on the plot and nuances of a scripted, visual piece of entertainment while also making multiple complex decisions for real money.
Music, of course, soothes the soul in adequate measure, but it's hard to lose yourself in the emotional pleasure of sound for 8+ hours on end while also trying to make a living using game theory. Over the years, I came to rely primarily on recorded conversation to fill the long, lonely hours of online poker sessions.
Like much of my friend's poker advice, it took me years to fully implement his entertainment strategy, but eventually I became acquainted with a great crop of broadcast personalities, and, in the case of Stern and other other influential broadcasters like Tom Scharpling, entire broadcast families. The type of family that is generally more reliable than your actual family.
Renewing my Sirius subscription was the first thing I did on the first morning after I relocated to Canada after Black Friday. I had been a Stern listener since high school but became estranged from my radio family when they left terrestrial airwaves. As soon as I had to depart my physical home in the US, it was almost like an instinct, a homing beacon, that called me back to Howard Stern. That, and a clip from one of Howard's masterful celebrity interviews, with Lady Gaga in 2011:
Prior to that, I had made inquiries into the creative whereabouts of Marc Maron (who I remembered from the late 90s as a comic who went on Conan's show and told hilarious jokes about his subway ride to the studio) and discovered that he had a podcast called WTF.
During interviews with fellow comedians, Maron virtually reinvented his career--as well as parts of his personality and his psyche--with each twice-weekly episode. Most importantly for me, he was contributing to the spirit of longform, fun radio that was filling the void of my work days. It was inspiring to watch his career develop throughout the process of re-examining his life as discussed with his peers, but it was also refreshing to simply hear intelligent people have honest conversations.
To name a few other podcasters: Julie Klausner is still, for my money, the most impressive freeform monologuist in the game and does excellent, focused interviews. Jake Fogelenst has been doing this type of DIY broadcasting since he was in high school, and the Fogelnest Files is consistent and uniquely entertaining. If I want to listen to other podcasts where comedians talk to other comedians about the business of comedy, I will listen to Dom Irrera's or Greg Fitzsimmons' show.
And I fux with the Champs. Neal Brennan and Moshe Kasher have managed to put together a product that is both way funnier and way smarter than every other podcast involving two guys in a room riffing with a guest. My post-relocation roommate David and I had more bonding moments while listening to the Champs than probably any other piece of entertainment we sought out during months of cohabitation.
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It's encouraging to remember how rough around the edges some, if not all, of the above mentioned broadcasters were to start. Even vintage Stern, from before he mastered his cadence and tenor, can be cringe-inducing. In recent years on the Best Show, Scharpling would happily tell his own stories about the unanimity of discouraging remarks he had to persevere against before finding his groove as a broadcaster. Brennan reflects that the Champs should re-interview early guests now that they're actually good at conducting interviews.
As far as my own nascent experiments with the medium have been going: I can't think of any undertaking that I've approached with as much consideration and planning as the Dope Stories podcast, yet I every time I sit down in front of the microphone in our studio or listen to the raw cut of one of our episodes, I'm reminded of a dozen new things that I need to work on or had never thought of.
In other words, I still think I suck as a broadcaster, but I am aware that there's a clear and steep learning curve which I hope to climb efficiently. Just as I learned poker, I am trying to learn from those who currently do it better than I do. I'm also thankful to have a more literate, mentally organized partner in Pauly.
It's still a challenge for me to a) express my own thoughts coherently, much less b) listen to and process the thoughts that Pauly is presenting in our conversations and c) react to his comments while also maintaining the thread of whatever thought I had while d) trying to prevent my mind from jumping to another thought.
Now that we are trying to broaden our voice and incorporate guests to the mix, the mini-architecture of that process is even more elaborate. It's now important to e) absorb the guest's story while also f) advancing our own concept of the show's themes and sometimes g) having to spontaneously consider new ways of thinking about an event or ideology. With both of our first two interviews, I noticed places I wish I had asked better questions, listened more closely to answers or thought more intelligently about certain things in the first place.
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| 2012 WSOP Champion Greg Merson |
Luckily, our guests have delivered in the spaces where I still see room for improvement in my skills as an interviewer: Our first longform interview took place over Skype with 2012 World Series of Poker Champion, Greg Merson, who chronicles a string of substance abuse issues and details how his life with and without substances has played a sometimes uneasy role in his occupation as a full time professional gambler.
For more information about all of our episodes so far, check out the Dope Stories Episode Guide.
And our episode 8 guest is very special--a true "get"--because I regard Dr. Carl Hart as an intellectual godfather to some of the ideas that buoyed the creation of Dope Stories. It was an interesting talk for me, and I'll write about it more as the episode date approaches (Thursday, March 20th).
For now I'll just tease it by saying that the most enjoyable part was how gracefully he schooled me on some of my own sloppy thinking.
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| Columbia Professor and author of High Price Dr. Carl Hart in the Dope Stories studio |