I can honestly say I am the luckiest man around to be able to have worked at a job I love for so many years. It's truly been a joy for me.
For more than three decades, Carl Kasell brought authority to public radio and America never stopped listening.
His start in radio was at the age of 16, filing through his proudest vinyl and recording homemade commercial slots on his grandmother's Victrola. He went on to DJ a late-night music show for his local station and spent a lifelong career on air. Behind his passion for public radio was a familiar voice that became synonymous for listeners of NPR's favorite quiz show, Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me, with over 2,000 custom voice memos and a few magic tricks to prove it. Kasell passed away last year at the age of 84 but his legacy will continue to be etched in the fabric of NPR programming forever.
Carl connected all of us. He connected us to the news and the world in his decades as a journalist and as a newscaster. He connected us to laughter and to the absurdity of life in his work with Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! And through it all, he connected us to something deeper: a human way of seeing the world, a human way of seeing each other and a human way of seeing ourselves.
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