What Happened to Howard Stern?

Late career Howard Stern show is a fantastic show. Yes, there are the usual collections of low-brow humor, stunts and fart jokes. However, every now and then there will be an A or B level movie/TV/sport star on and Howard can spend an hour or hour and half extracting every little juicy story out of them. He can get people to tell all kinds of stories about their lives and keeps them on task and focused on telling the story. You hang on every word and every sentence and you just don't want to get out of your car when you listen to him. I really believe that there is simply no better interviewer than Howard Stern. He has the ability and the medium to do such a fantastic job.

Great article (I'm a fan of the show.) If I may turn the discussion toward something a bit more HN-relevant, a few questions:

* The engineer in me is always intrigued by the operations of the show. Does anyone have any details on the equipment / software they use? I tried to gleam some juicy stuff from this shot:

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/07/31/arts/31STERNJP1/3...

But the blur effect makes it hard to make anything out.

We get to hear littles glimpses of things in the Gary-to-Howard banter ("Howard check JD Page 3 in Blue").

* Any sense of what Fred uses on his end? He obviously has a library of clips from the ages that he can pull up pretty quickly.

* Does he get real-time feedback / jokes / stuff from his writers / Benjy? Does that work over IM, or are people handing him slips of paper?

I'm seriously surprised its taken this long for the Times and the media in general to realize what an incredible interviewer he is. He pulls stuff out of people you never hear anywhere.

I can say some of the celebs they have on there I truly despised, then I hear Stern interview them and come away actually liking them. He just seems to get people to open up and then tell some heartfelt stories.

Case in point - never a huge Billy Joel fan. Stern had him in a few years back. Billy sat at a piano during the interview and would plunk around and sing parts of songs while Stern asked questions about everything. It was simply one of the best interviews I've heard. So laid back, and Billy is one smart cat. So many things I learned about him and how his brain ticks and his process for creating music.

I came away from that having a huge change of heart and a ton more respect for what he's done in the industry. No one, and I mean no one, could have an interview like that with Billy. I'm convinced Stern was the only guy capable of pulling out the stuff that he did and the piano and everything, just amazing.

The other interview I will always remember was the TV show he had where he would interview celebs. He was the last person to interview Phil Hartman, with his wife there no less, days before he was murdered. Another great interview that showed a lot of his insecurities and how talented he really was. At the end, Stern had this list of accents (around 8-10 I think) and Hartman, in classic fashion whipped through them all, flawlessly I might add to end the interview.

I think if you weed through all the sexual innuendos and stripper games, you can see not only is Stern incredibly talented as an interviewer, but the love he has for his guests and the rest of the people he works with (Robin, Fred, Ba Ba Booey, Scott, Richard and Sal) is clear.

I made a typical snarky baby boomer comment at a dinner about the talent of Lady GaGa in her meat dress days.

Someone sent me a link to a performance of hers on Howard Stern. Told him now I have two reason not to listen to it ;<).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cce36nhHTP8

But I listened and was blown away. For those not listening Stern said after she was done that it was one of the best live performances in the history of his show.

Love Stern, listen to him almost every day. I also generally don't care for celebrities, but when he interviews them I do care. It's the most real you'll ever see them.

NYT can't go a single, off-topic article without crap-smearing Trump. When a media outlet covers a person 100% negatively, at what point does its readership begin to realize there may be a conflict of interest? Or does the collective cognitive dissonance take care of that all by itself?

His 1997 (semi?) biographical film Private Parts is full of lascivious shenanigans that you might expect from a "shock jock", but it's also thoughtful and charming.

My wife, a conservative Christian, was dismayed when he joined America's Got Talent as a judge, due to his radio antics. But he quickly won her over as her favorite judge—he was good, he was insightful, he was serious and honest in a way the other judges never managed. I was impressed how he managed to show a very different side to himself from what people expected, and I'm sure it won him a lot of new fans. It was a great move on his part.

I'd just like to point out that in addition to his radio show he had a very unique and entertaining sketch comedy/variety show. Known to many fans as the "Channel 9 Howard Stern Show" (as not to be mistaken for the "Howard Stern Show"). It ran from 1990-1992 on Saturday nights and contained all original content and skits (as opposed to video of his radio show like the E! show that came later). Extremely entertaining and original, definitely worth checking out for anyone who has an interest in the evolution or career of Howard Stern.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Howard_Stern_Show_(WWOR)

Sirius did a huge audio production called "The History of Howard Stern" which they'd play when Howard went on vacation or filming America's Got Talent. It's absolutely massive. Must be 60+ hours.

It goes into incredible detail of every point of his career and plays all the old key moments. It's an amazing listen. Really interesting watching his personality evolve from a geeky Weird Al type guy into what he's become.

I loved it so much I converted it into a podcast feed for myself to listen to whenever I have free time. I think I'm only like 75% through and I've been listening to it for over a year.

Howard has always been fantastic at interviews, no matter what time frame you're looking at. Its everything else that has changed. I miss Artie.

Howard Stern, the vanguard of the Society of the Spectacle.

“What stops us from looking at ourselves and seeing ourselves is that we’re kind of ugly, if we really, if we look really hard,” Mr. Murray replied. “We’re not who we think we are. We’re not, uh we’re not as wonderful as we think we are.”

Classic example of an ugly person who has limited awareness of the fact that he is an individual who is individual from other people.

What an odd article to be posted on hacker news. Stern is the consumate shape shifting media personality, in turns erudite, vulgar, brash, sensitive - all to keep the listeners tuned in and consuming the ads. He's a variant of the Kardashians - famous for being famous having adopted the style of an eighties rock musician.

Anything to stay in the limelight...