Category Archives: New Books in Biography

As you can imagine, I love talking about Jim Henson — so much so, that it’s sometimes difficult for me to keep things short.  That’s why I love doing online interviews and podcasts, where you’ve got the time to stretch out, tell longer stories, and/or go on at length, as needed.  And sometimes even when not needed.

To that end, I point you toward three extended interviews I’ve done in the past few weeks, some of which you can watch, and a few of which you can even download and listen to later. Because nothing gets you moving quicker on the treadmill than listening to me in your headphones.

First, here’s a nearly hour-long interview I did with Oline Eaton for New Books In Biography.  In the interest of full disclosure, Oline’s a fellow member of BIO and a friend, but all that really means is that when you put the two of us together, we love to talk shop — so this interview spends some time on the process of writing and researching biography.  And you’ll even get a little behind-the-scenes look at the writing of the book’s prologue, which — spoiler alert! — I actually wrote last.

Next, here’s A Bit of Chat I did with the smart and cheeky Ken Plume.  If you’re a Muppet fan, you know that Ken knows his stuff — heck, in Jim Henson, I cited a number of interviews he’s conducted over the years with folks like Frank Oz and Steve Whitmire. We had a great time together, and talked for nearly an hour about Jim, the Muppets, mugs on The Daily Show, and the choreography of the unseen (a term I wish I could claim, but it’s Ken’s, not mine, darn it). I could have kept going much longer, but I had to take a phone call for another interview — and you’ll hear me answer the phone and apologetically bring the interview to a rather anticlimactic end.  Hopefully, Ken and I can do it again sometime, since things were really getting good.

Finally, during my trip to New Mexico at the end of October, I sat down for an interview at the local PBS station in Albuquerque to tape New Mexico In Focus. The regular host was out that day, so I got fill-in host Larry Ahrens instead — and I have to tell you, as a New Mexican, there’s actually no other interviewer I’d rather sit with.  Larry’s a New Mexico institution, hosting radio and TV shows for nearly as long as I can remember.  He had also really done his homework, which always makes for a fun interview — and since it was PBS, we talked quite a bit of Sesame Street, of course.

Here’s the New Mexico In Focus piece:

….and we were having so much fun with that, that we taped a Web Extra: