Academic

The FiveThirtyEight Blog has an interesting post on the dynamics of talk radio and conservatism. Particularly interesting is a long quote on David Foster Wallace’s take on what it means to be good at talk radio and what this means. Here’s a brief excerpt:

Hosting talk radio is an exotic, high-pressure gig that not many people are fit for, and being truly good at it requires skills so specialized that many of them don’t have names.

To appreciate these skills and some of the difficulties involved, you might wish to do an experiment. Try sitting alone in a room with a clock, turning on a tape recorder, and starting to speak into it. Speak about anything you want?with the proviso that your topic, and your opinions on it, must be of interest to some group of strangers who you imagine will be listening to the tape.

The basic idea is that one has to stimulate listeners in talk radio because most are listening to it while not paying close attention and it also operates in real time, meaning that no one ever tracks back to check on what you said earlier (”perpetual amnesiac state”). H/T to ER Blog.