Director's Notes: 203 - The Kareem Nazari Show

My driving instructor when I was 15 years old gave us a lecture about driving while tired. It's dangerous, but there are some things you can do to keep yourself awake. The most obvious thing is caffeine: diet colas and black coffee, specifically. He recommended avoiding sugar entirely bc it provides a brief rush of energy and then a crash. There's also turning your air conditioner up, especially if it's cold outside.  The heater can make you sleepy. And finally, he recommended listening to talk radio. 

Talk radio, per his description, was polarizing and aggravating. It's designed to rile up potential callers, to keep listeners on the edge of their anger. And if you can keep your mind activated with some form of rage, that'll keep you awake. 

So I started listening to talk radio whenever I was driving at night. I sometimes was able to find Art Bell. I definitely remember Love Lines, and Dr. Laura, Sporting News Radio, and countless conservative pundits ranting about god knows what. 

But you know what? I loved it all. In fact, it got to the point where I wasn't even that riled up anymore. Talk radio had started to make me sleepy. It's the cadence, the formatics, the lo-fi compression of AM radio and telephone lines. The comforting mystery of invisible waves bringing voices of people from all over the country into my little 1987 Mazda pickup truck. The feeling of being alone but surrounded by people. 

Have you ever fallen asleep at a party? I don't mean like you got wasted and passed out. I mean like you were at a friend's house playing games or watching movies and you got so comforted by the conversations, that the voices sort of swaddled you and you curled up happy on some beanbag chair or futon or whatever? Yeah, that's what late night talk radio does to me. So I had to stop listening to it while driving, and that's how I got into musicals, because I would play cast recordings and sing along to keep my energy up. 

Anyway, I'm still quite fond of a rich voice filling my ears, battling with callers, and reading copy for unregulated dietary supplements. Welcome to Night Vale obviously comes from this part of me. But I realized we hadn't ever really done the call-in show before. And while there are only 3 callers in this episode, it was fun to get to play with some of that talk radio dynamic, the battle between know-it-all host and defensive caller. 

OTHER THINGS: 

There are the added bonuses of getting back to the life and times of former intern Kareem (voiced by Adal Rifai of Hello from the Magic Tavern and Hey Riddle Riddle, as well as one of my all-time favorite humans), the mystery of Michigan, and a return to doppelgangery. Also the other two voices on the show, JPC and Erin Keif, are Adal's co-hosts on Hey Riddle Riddle. They're very funny people with terrific chemistry. It was a delight all the way around. 

Also, high fives to Disparition for top notch mixing, and I adore that opening musical riff.

Finally, weird trivia bit, but this is only the second time (I believe) that the Weather song was not introduced as "the weather." I could be wrong on that, but I know I'm right that this is the first time that the weather song is mentioned by song and band name in the episode itself. So that's fun. Go give some love to the terrific Scarlet Sails.

- Jeffrey Cranor
March 1, 2022