(Newswire.net — May 29, 2017) — Once a producer – always a producer. American television writer and producer Norman Lear has started his own podcast at the age of 94.
In hi show “All of the Above,” with Norman Lear, the producer has hosted a number of guests from showbiz, including actors Amy Poehler, Martin Sheen and this week, “Veep” and “Seinfeld” star Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the USA Today reports.
The show is a part of the Podcast One network that broadcasts on Apple Podcasts and the Podcastone app.
“I like talking, I like listening, I like interactions,” Lear told USA Today, adding that he loves “to gab.” This was the first talk show Lear hosted in his more than a half a century long career. He began by writing jokes for Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, and now he plunged into digital entertainment.
At the age of 94, hosting a talk show gives him new energy and the will to wake up every morning. “I like going to bed with something on my mind for the next day, I like waking up to that,” Lear said.
Despite his age, Lear is still an active producer. He is producing a revival of 1975-1984 series “One Day at a Time,” for Netflix. The new episodes feature three generations of a Cuban-American family living in Los Angeles instead of an Anglo woman raising two teens in Indianapolis.
In an upcoming June 5 HBO documentary about other 90-year-old show biz legends, Norman Lear would appear as one of the few survivors in the Hollywood industry, along with Carl Reiner, Betty White, Mel Brooks and Dick Van Dyke.
Lear is familiar with radio and TV, but the Internet as a mass medium was unexplored territory for him. “I didn’t even know what a podcast was,” when it was suggested, Lear said, admitting he has not listened to any since he started doing the show.
Born almost a century ago, Lear misses the shows as they once were, gathering people once a week. “I’d like the curtain to come down, and everyone to come back next week. It makes for better shows.”
But that’s not the way the world is now, he admits.