“Of course it’s happened,” Mr. Lehrer said of losing his voice, if only temporarily to a nasty cold. His solution, he said over lunch, is to “pump myself up on tea with honey and anti-inflammatories, and limp through as best as I can.” But he knows a trick or two to keep things from getting that bad in the first place.
“I think I’m just well-enough trained from earlier in my life,” said Mr. Lehrer, who is 61. “Having had voice training early, and also growing up as a flute and saxophone player as a kid, I learned good breathing techniques that probably tend to keep my voice in shape. And I try not to eat for a few hours before I go on the air, and I’m constantly drinking water — sip, talk, sip, talk — during the show.”
All this having been said, it should be noted that Mr. Lehrer’s voice, redolent of his New York City upbringing, is not his most prominent feature. Far more important is his inquisitive mind. It has made him and the morning talk program that bears his name a must-listen for any New Yorker in search of reasoned, scream-free discourse on newsy topics, be they the start-up woes of the Affordable Care Act or the cost of Christmas trees.
Come autumn, he will celebrate his 25th anniversary on WNYC. He is also a fixture on the cable station CUNY TV, and in political debates is often one of the journalists hurling questions at the candidates.
For what would be the final installment of “Breaking Bread,” we turned to Mr. Lehrer. He proposed meeting at La Camelia, a Mexican restaurant on Downing Street, a short walk from the WNYC studios on Varick Street. That neighborhood, just north of the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, has had the moniker Hudson Square slapped on it by real-estate types ever eager for fancy names that make it easier for them to collect fancy rents.
Our lunch was simple. Mr. Lehrer started with a corn-and-chicken soup — “if anybody does corn well, it should be a Mexican restaurant,” he said, “or an Iowan restaurant, maybe” — followed by mushroom tacos. The interviewer skipped a starter, and went with chicken tacos. Drinks got no more exciting than club soda.
The breadth of Mr. Lehrer’s range during his two hours on the air each weekday can impress even the not-easily-dazzled. He covers five or six topics. Across the year, he interviews easily 1,000 people. How does he do it?
As for many of us, keeping panic at bay can be a powerful motivator.
“I definitely over-prepare,” gathering more material than is likely to be needed on air, Mr. Lehrer said. “Some of that is motivated by a desire to be thorough, and some by fear of running out of things to say — or more so, usually, embarrassing myself with my stupidity by asking crudely uninformed questions. That’s the source of the fear.”
During lunch, Mr. Lehrer tended to speak slowly and choose his words carefully. With his orderly mind, he never lost his place, even after being distracted; he always picked up where he had left off.
As the soup and tacos arrived, conversation turned to the relative merits of radio and television. Radio “will always be my greatest love,” Mr. Lehrer said. Television is enjoyable, but it can also be “a very cumbersome tool.”
“Basically, all that you have to think about when you’re on the radio is the conversation you’re having,” he said. “On television, you have to think where the cameras are, how good your posture is, what you wear.” That does not mean he shows up at WNYC in, say, pajamas. “I’m supposed to present myself as a serious person,” he said. “But I’ve done overnight talk shows at radio stations before this, where I was underdressed by just about anybody’s standards.”
More often than not, his radio interviews are not conducted face to face. How desirable is that? Isn’t a conversation better when you can see the other person’s reactions?
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