Mr. Simon

Fresh Air-

GROSS: And I just have to ask you, there is a scene in "The Wire" where two of the teenaged drug dealers are driving from Baltimore to New York to meet their connection and they're listening to a "Prairie Home Companion," and I've never understood the - why "Prairie Home Companion" showed up in that scene. So David Simon, please explain.

Mr. SIMON: Oh god. I have to go back to that? Well..

Mr. SIMON: But we are, you know, we're consumers of NPR. But the thing about that one scene was I actually, when I was doing the book "The Corner," at one point, to make it real to this particular kid, DeAndre McCullough, 15-year-old kid who's slinging drugs on a corner of West Baltimore, I didnt want, you know - he was willing to let me follow him but I didnt want him to do it without really believing it was a book. So a couple months into the process I actually drove him to New York to meet the editor of the book at the publishing house in New York. I wanted him to see that there was really going to be a book and so he shouldnt get into this lightly because he, you know, he was 15 and, you know.

In any event, we got - we hit that point where the Baltimore station, 92-Q, this hip hop station lost - started to fad out and then we started to pick up the Philly stations, you know, near Delaware or something. And he, having never been outside of Baltimore, he expressed that same amazement and we ended up listening to - because it was right sort of down at the end of the dial there -we ended up listening to "Prairie Home Companion." At that point I think he thought that the world had gone insane.