Getting to Know “TED Radio Hour” Host Guy Raz

It would be easy to feel intimidated about a dinner conversation with Guy Raz, host and editorial director of the “TED Radio Hour” and winner of the Edward R. Murrow and Daniel Schorr awards for journalism. You could compare where you were at 25 (singing waitress) to where Raz was (covering Eastern Europe and the Balkans as NPR's Berlin bureau chief). You could let yourself dwell on the fact that he has interviewed everyone from Al Gore to Mark Zuckerberg to, yes, even Taylor Swift. You just have to shake it off … and remind yourself that this is also a man whose bio lists as his favorite role the narrator of “The Cat and the Hat” at his kid’s school and as his favorite pastimes cycling and pickling vegetables. And since Raz knows better than most that the best interviews are conversations – after conducting 6,000 of them – he helps his guests along, at dinner or on-air.