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The (Wacky) World According to John Hodgman

John Hodgman is a very funny man.

The writer and humorist is a sometime contributor to the public radio show This American Life and cable television's The Daily Show.

Currently, he is getting even more TV exposure in an ad campaign for Apple computers, in which he plays a tweedy, lumpy and awkward PC opposite a relaxed, cool, slim young man, who is a Mac.

Hodgman is also author of The Areas of My Expertise -- an almanac of random, fascinating and utterly unreliable information -- which is coming out in paperback.

A Yale-educated, former literary agent, Hodgman has the gift of being outrageously but quietly convincing.

He begins at the absolute outer edge of credibility and, as if he is holding your hand, walks you over the edge into a very funny mix of reality and nonsense.

Take hobos, for instance -- or as Hodgman refers to it, the "hobo movement in the United States." He discusses at length hobo hieroglyphics, the only hobo Cabinet member in U.S. history and Walker Evans, who Hodgman describes as being a secret agent posing as a photographer in order to assassinate prominent hobo leaders.

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Prior to his retirement, Robert Siegel was the senior host of NPR's award-winning evening newsmagazine All Things Considered. With 40 years of experience working in radio news, Siegel hosted the country's most-listened-to, afternoon-drive-time news radio program and reported on stories and happenings all over the globe, and reported from a variety of locations across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia. He signed off in his final broadcast of All Things Considered on January 5, 2018.