Comedian Paula Poundstone says the time for cowardice is over

As a regular panelist on NPR’s “Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me!,” comedian Paula Poundstone is used to answering question after question about events from that week’s news.

A young Poundstone would be happy with this, as the comedian’s gift of gab wasn’t always appreciated when she was a student.

Poundstone has included “academic references,” or report cards, on her website. In one, from science teacher Miss Coonly at Fairbank Elementary School, the comments include, “She does need to learn to stick to the point of the discussion and to refrain from asking impossible hypothetical questions.”

Looking back on her elementary school days, Poundstone said she had to spend a lot of time in the hallway because she talked so much in class. She didn’t typically make it as far as the principal’s office, but it was definitely known that being a “compulsive talker” was disruptive.

But another comment, from Carolyn O. Bump, Poundstone’s kindergarten teacher at Sudbury Co-operative Pre-school, sparked something in Poundstone that she didn’t even fully understand at the time.

“I have enjoyed Paula’s humorous comments on some of our activities,” Bump wrote.

“Even before I knew what the word ‘comedian’ meant, people used to use that word to me,” Poundstone said.

She grew up listening to Bill Cosby albums with her parents but, growing up in a small town in Massachusetts, she didn’t have access to comedy clubs and didn’t realize Cosby was performing in front of an audience. Because of this, she imagined herself becoming a comedic actress in the same vein as Lily Tomlin, Carol vw Burnett, Madeline Kahn and Gilda Radner.

Dreams of the screen turned to dreams of being on stage once Poundstone began bussing tables in Boston. She saw a poster advertising the club’s stand up comedy nights and watched a show, immediately deciding she could get up and tell jokes too.

The year was 1979, and Poundstone’s been performing ever since. Her early material, much like it is now, was very autobiographical, with jokes about bussing tables and taking public transportation around the city.

Early on, she also began chatting with audience members during her sets This element began because Poundstone sometimes got so nervous that she’d forget her five minutes of material the moment she stepped onstage.

Other times though, something about a member of the audience would catch her eye, and she’d ask questions to satiate her own curiosity but would then have trouble smoothly transitioning back to her written material.

“I used to take notes after every set I had done,” she said. “I did that for years. It was mostly a waste of time. One night, as I was taking notes after my set, it dawned on me that, I had good jokes, but the best part of the night was unscripted. Before, I felt that when I did that, I was coloring out of the lines, right? I was screwing it up somehow. And then I went, ‘No, this is really where the heart and soul of it is.’ “

Poundstone has never decided to wing it on stage, saying she has scaffolding in her head of things she plans to talk about. Outside of that scaffolding, there is nearly 50 years of material rattling around her brain.

But she does “set (her) sails” based on responses she gets from simple questions like “Where are you from?” and “What do you do for a living?,” keeping her, and the audience, on their toes.

This quick wit has served her well on “Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me!” Poundstone didn’t intentionally seek out radio appearances. In fact, she wasn’t familiar with “Wait Wait” when the show reached out to her about appearing as a panelist.

NPR sent her a cassette of the show, which Poundstone put on her kitchen island and promptly forgot about. One day, her children’s nanny noticed the tape and told her he loved the show and that she had to be a panelist.

“So that’s why I did it,” Poundstone said simply, and she’s been part of the show for 24 years.

In the beginning of her time with the show, panelists often went to the public radio or NPR station closest to them, got mic’d up and went into a recording booth to make the show. Poundstone said she initially wasn’t sure when to interject but has gotten more comfortable with the format over time.

Panelists, she assures readers who listen to the show, aren’t given scripts. They don’t know the questions ahead of time, but there’s nothing stopping them from writing material based on what’s happened in the news. Poundstone isn’t aware of any panelists that actually do that, but the option is available.

“I like that feeling that I’m in a batting cage, and I get a good ball shot at me,” Poundstone said. “Sometimes I swing and I miss and sometimes I get a little piece of it. I like that feeling. I also feel that it was the best showcase of what I do.”

Poundstone generally keeps up on the news with or without “Wait, Wait,” but when preparing for a show, she will check in on the “news of the weird,” as that’s usually where she gets tripped up. It’s embarrassing for her to admit, she said, but she does actually like to win the “Wait, Wait” game.

When asked how she takes a break from the grind of staying on top of the daily news, the good, bad and the ugly, Poundstone admits she really doesn’t. For more than three months, Poundstone has posted a daily “Hey Donald Trump” video to her social media accounts speaking directly to him about something that’s caught her attention that day.

Most of the videos take about three hours to make between filming and editing, so she squeezes them in whenever and wherever she can, be it at home or while on the road.

She sees it as a small form of civil disobedience, of protesting on her own.

“I am really trying hard to be one of the people with an oar in the water here, just trying to do my share,” she said.

Poundstone gives shoutouts to many media outlets and journalists, fellow comedian Stephen Colbert and historian Heather Cox Richardson, who writes “Letters from an American,” which puts current political happenings into the larger context of American history, for standing up to the powers in charge in their own way.

Throughout her career, Poundstone has made jokes about Republican presidents and has had Republicans in her audience laughing at her jokes. Trump’s presidencies have been something different, with voters acting as if they were in a cult.

Poundstone doesn’t want to upset or lose audience members, and she assures readers her shows are funny and light-hearted, but, she said, the time for cowardice is over.

“I’m not giving a lecture during,” she said. “That’s not what I’m doing. It’s a comedy show. I do feel that it’s important to use that platform to move us in the right direction.”

Poundstone has had a few audience members walk out of her shows in the past, but she likens it to when then-Vice President Mike Pence left an Indianapolis Colts game in 2017 after members of the San Francisco 49ers kneeled during the national anthem. Pence wasn’t really there to watch the game, Poundstone said. Instead, he wanted to make a point of walking out of the game.

“They weren’t really audience members; they were pretend audience members that made this big show of storming out…” she said. “It was sometime after that that I just went, ‘You know what? Screw it. I’m not apologizing.’”

Though her mind, and much of her career, centers on politics, which can be heavy day in and day out, Poundstone considers herself lucky to be a comedian because the job ultimately lifts her up.

“The world is in a difficult, difficult place, but many nights of the week, I get to go be in a room with people laughing, often laughing at the dire straits we’re in,” she said. “It really gives me the chance to walk out of there and spit on my hands and get another grip, which is what we all have to do at this point, because you can’t just give up.”