David Foster Wallace and John Ziegler

Posted by Maximum Fun on 14th November 2007

Faithful listeners may remember a bit of my most recent interview with George Saunders. Somehow (I don’t quite remember how), the subject of David Foster Wallace’s brilliant essay on talk radio came up. The piece (collected both in Wallace’s “Consider the Lobster” and Ira Glass’ “New Kings of Non-Fiction”) examines what kind of man works in talk radio, and how a talker named John Ziegler exemplified that very kind of man.

Well, it looks like John Ziegler’s on his way out at KFI in Los Angeles.

Ziegler told the LA Times: “I have always had a love-hate relationship with talk radio. At its best, it’s a fantastic medium. At its worst it can drain your lifeblood. And I have had the lifeblood drained out of me for a period of time. It’s time for me to move on from KFI’s perspective and mine.”