Confessor. Feminist. Adult. What the Hell Happened to Howard Stern?
Scattered among the gleefully vulgar mainstays are now intimate exchanges that have made Mr. Stern one of the most deft interviewers in the business.
“Today, if you go on a TV talk show and give a great six or seven minutes, people will link to it, if it’s incredible,” said Lewis Kay, who oversees media for Tracy Morgan, Amy Poehler and others. “But if you kill on Stern, it moves the needle.”
.. “Aside from the fact that millions of people hear you, the cross section of who hears you is what blew me away,” said Ike Barinholtz, an actor and comedian who has appeared on the show three times since 2014. “When you have a head of a movie studio in Los Angeles and a New York City police officer both tell you that it was good when you made fun of Ronnie the Limo Driver,” — Mr. Stern’s chauffeur and an on-air regular — “you know you’re dealing with a special entity.”
.. Conan O’Brien described himself on the show as “somewhat medicated” in a discussion about his low-level depression... Mr. Stern explained to her: “I used to say bad things about everyone. I was angry, quite frankly. I was an angry young man.”.. Friends and fans attribute Mr. Stern’s evolution in large part to his marriage, in 2008, to Beth Ostrosky Stern, a former model who not only has left him lovestruck, but turned him into an animal rescue advocate... “Being a judge on ‘America’s Got Talent’ said to him, ‘You are deserving, you are legitimate.’ I think it is one reason Howard said to himself, ‘O.K., people really do like me. People really respect me.’ And maybe that chip on his shoulder is gone.”.. Therapy has also been key. For years, Mr. Stern was in four-times-a-week psychoanalysis, as he frequently reminds listeners. (He’s since cut back.) Not only has this given him a modicum of inner peace, it has provided him with a set of tools that he uses on guests the way a well-equipped safecracker opens a vault... Most of the time, though, Mr. Stern probes exactly where you would if you had the nerve... These in-depth interviews are also strategic, as Mr. Stern has intuited that outrageousness won’t suffice on satellite radio, a realm without limits, and therefore a place where nothing is outrageous.