Richard Sher: Original Host, Writer, Producer
With the personal motto “Genius don’t cost extra,” Richard Sher produced and hosted Says You! What he would charge for is his work as president and founder of Pipit & Finch, a marketing and media development company with clients such as CBS/Westinghouse, Hearst Broadcasting and National Public Radio. In his spare time, he trained Ollie and desperately pumped friends and strangers alike for words and definitions. With more than 30 years experience in broadcast production, programming, media development and marketing, Richard almost didn’t work in radio. He started out as an optician. Really. We couldn’t see it either.
Barry Nolan: Host
Our diabolically clever television personality extraordinaire has traveled the world covering all manner of stories for TV shows such as Hard Copy, Extra, and ABC’s Over the Edge. He co-hosted Boston’s Evening Magazine on WBZ-TV for nearly a decade and launched Backstage with Barry Nolan for the Comcast Network. A devout Thespian - he’s appeared in numerous films, including The Birdcage, and thrived on stage under the direction of Sir Anthony Quayle. Recently Barry attempted to bring a little sanity to politics as Communications Director of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee. Presently Barry teaches at Boston University and has just co-produced an award-winning independent documentary No Way Out But One. A former psychiatric social worker and a member of Mensa…Ah, it all makes sense now. But for Barry, all that pales next to standing behind the mic as host of Says You!
Stereo Right
Murray Horwitz
Murray’s extraordinary career in the arts and public life include authoring the hit Broadway musical Ain’t Misbehavin’, writing the song lyrics for John Harbison’s The Great Gatsby at the Metropolitan Opera, and originating public radio’s second-best comedy quiz, Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me. He has been a program director at the National Endowment for the Arts, Vice President of Cultural Programming
at NPR, founding Director of the AFI Silver Theater and Cultural Center, and Major Gifts Officer of Washington National Opera. The winner of three Peabody Awards, numerous ASCAP songwriting awards, Tony, Obie, and N.Y. Drama Critics Circle awards, the National Medal of Arts (for NPR Cultural Programming), and the Order of Arts and Letters from the government of France, Murray began his career as a clown in the Ringling Bros., Barnum & Bailey Circus. In our humble opinion, Murray’s finest accomplishment – his frequent guest appearances on Says You!
Francine Achbar
Francine Achbar has been an award winning television writer, producer, and executive but don’t let that fool you. Behind the well-groomed appearance—she loves to dress for radio—resides a demon bluffer. For most of her career she breathed media, having worked in newspapers, at WBZ-TV Boston and American Public Television, and she inhaled the arts. Francine’s impeccable resume may cause one to wonder what she’s doing on “Says You!” the show that applauds foolishness and celebrates deceit. We have yet to find out, but we think it’s because she simply has, like we all do, a gas of a time!
Tony Kahn
Tony’s a guy who has never known precisely what he wanted to do. Writer, producer, narrator, commentator, host—he’s done it all. Tony was the original host of “The World” (BBC and PRI) and is still heard occasionally by more than two million listeners a week as the program’s alternate host. He’s worked with PBS, NPR, A&E, WGBH, WCVB and all the other letters in the alphabet as well as Nickelodeon and Monitor Radio. Tony still receives accolades for his compelling public
radio series “Blacklisted,” which chronicles the Hollywood blacklisting of his screenwriter father Gordon Kahn during the McCarthy era. Tony is consumed by the potential of new media -- a true maverick. His weekly series “Morning Stories” is the very first pod cast heard around the world from Public Radio produced with WGBH in October of 2004. Tony has an uncanny knack for causing host Richard Sher to fall off his stool with laughter – especially with Tony’s definition of “hoove” as “an unsuccessful Heimlich maneuver.”
Stereo Left
Paula Lyons
That scintillating laugh belongs to Paula Lyons, anchor of our stereo left team. Paula is an executive coach who helps business people give great speeches, presentations and media interviews. In New England, Paula is well known for the years she spent as the Consumer Reporter for WBZ-TV and WCVB-TV in Boston. But she’s also known around the country for her work with “Good Morning America” from 1989-1994 and her articles in “Ladies Home Journal.” She has worked as press secretary to Boston Mayor Kevin H. White and taught in the American School of Buenos Aires in Argentina. Handling kids, politicians and business practitioners-- she’s definitely qualified to sit on our panel!
Arnie Reisman
Our “rank raconteur,” currently Poet Laureate of Martha’s Vineyard, spends his days as an award-winning writer/producer/performer working in commercial and public TV, corporate video, journalism and film. (Have you noticed that none of our panelists do just one thing - we should buy stock in Overachievers Anonymous!) Recently, Arnie co-produced a PBS film on Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden, titled “The Powder & the Glory.” His national telecasts include “The Other Side of the Moon” (PBS’ 20th anniversary of the lunar landing) and “PBS’ AIDS Quarterly with Peter Jennings.” He has a healthy roster of corporate clients, has taught at Boston College and Brandeis University, served as executive editor of the city’s leading weekly newspaper and is currently writing a novel and a book of poems. He has also had a few plays produced, just to keep his mind active. You can see Arnie as himself in the movie “Next Stop Wonderland.” Rent it. Arnie’s secret to a happy life? Being married to fellow panelist Paula Lyons. Click here to check out Arnie's book Clara Bow Died for Our Sins.
Carolyn Faye Fox
Carolyn Faye Fox has the most difficult job on the panel – she sits first seat. Irrefutably the most eager punster of all the panelists and creator of the “Says You!” slogan “High Definition Radio,” Carolyn has finally found a vehicle through which she can best express herself. As Richard always said, “Carolyn is always a second away from telling us what she really thinks!” She’s a Contributing Editor at The Improper Bostonian, an accomplished food critic, travel writer, and an ad hoc marketing consultant. And to our knowledge, she may be one of the few Sarah Lawrence graduates ever to dance live - on stage - with Chuck Berry.
Frequent Guest Appearances
Fletcher ‘Flash’ Wiley
Flash Wiley is a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, a Fulbright Scholar and a former Captain in the U.S. Air Force. He also received a Masters in public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and his law degree from Harvard Law School. But all this pales in comparison to his status as Boston’s self-proclaimed ‘best over-60 power forward.’ Flash and Richard first met- actually collided- on the basketball court where a significant respect was found for each other’s love of gamesmanship. Currently a prominent figure in the legal community, Flash is extensively involved in Boston civic and charitable activities, including tenure as Chairman of the Board of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. Still, it’s his appearances on Says You! that earn him the most recognition among game-players and word-a-philes nationwide.
Lenore Shannon
Lenore Shannon's life long love of words and games hit its stride when she dropped to one knee and proposed to her now-husband after he was able to beat her at Scrabble. An enthusiastic albeit erstwhile SaysYou-er, Lenore hails from Boston. Currently she writes and produces "The Tribulations of Paulette", a podcast that chronicles an overworked and mid-life-confused housewife who gets into skirmishes with a kooky friend, an elderly couple and a former boyfriend from high school. Lenore sums it up as Lucy Ricardo meets Larry David. From time to time she's told that it's very funny.
Tom Kemp
Although actor Tom Kemp is a Long Island native, you may think of him as a Bostonian, given his roles in films such as Shutter Island, The Departed, Mystic River, and Gone Baby Gone…as well as a turn as Whitey Bulger in “Unsolved Mysteries.” Yet versatility is his stock in trade. Proficient in bodysurfing, squash, and accents such as BBC and Cockney, he is also lead singer with an R & B group - The Basics. Clearly, this Tom Kemp is not to be confused with the political theorist and Marxist economic historian of the same name…despite the fact that our Tom played Che Guevara early in his career.
Garland Waller
An award-winning producer of both independent documentaries and syndicated programs, Garland is the Director of the TV Graduate Program at Boston University’s College of Communication. More to the point, she is fiendishly literate, with an all-out infectious laugh and a sharp wit that never cuts anyone because she’s a Quaker. Richard always said that the elegant repartee between Garland and her husband, Barry Nolan, reminded him of the graceful partnership of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.
Behind the Scenes
Dave Zobel: Writo-Rooter
Not long after becoming the “Says You!” Hall of Fame’s very first inductee, Dave won — equally inexplicably — the Bulwer-Lytton (“It Was a Dark and Stormy Night”) [Bad] Fiction Contest. A self-styled “science humorist,” he also designs teaching kits for the LA nonprofit T4T.org, which rescues factory discards and turns them into science and art materials for schools. His book The Science of TV’s The Big Bang Theory uses sitcom dialogue as a transparent excuse to get all giddy and frothy-at-the-mouth about science, and his Bent Book of Boatspeak, a singularly unhelpful sailing manual, still washes ashore occasionally.
Phil Salkind: Thesaurus Wrecks
Philip Salkind has finally parlayed his unbelievable mastery of the arcane into a paying gig. He first met Richard across the bar at a health club restaurant where Phil, an underemployed musician, was slinging chardonnay and the occasional carrot juice while dazzling patrons with his television game show prowess. Quick to notice talent in the raw and on the the cheap, Richard hired Phil and thus began a collaboration that defines creative tension to this day. At present, during extended periods of hiatus from the Says You! juggernaut, he labors in the grove of telecommunications technology, building devices that are designed to locate his stock options.
Nat Segaloff: Script Savant
Nat Segaloff is the author of numerous books and monographs including biographies of Arthur Penn, William Friedkin, Paul Mazursky, John Milius, and Stirling Silliphant. His forthcoming book is the memoir, “Screen Saver: Private Stories of Public Hollywood,” available from the usual sources after Labor Day. He is just finishing the biography of speculative fiction writer Harlan Ellison that will be published in 2017.
Antonio Oliart: the Secretary of Sound
How does the principal flautist of the Mexico City Symphony find his way to a barn in Lincoln, Massachusetts? Such was Antonio’s journey from musical virtuoso to Says You! Major Domo. Faced with engineering a show often interrupted by passing locomotives and bovine bellowing, he managed to give the show its clear and distinct sound and never miss a muttered musing or whispered witticism. A graduate of McGill University and producer of CD’s for labels worldwide – Antonio is a mastering engineer, editor, and recording genius. And some day we hope he’ll be proud enough of his contribution to our show… to put it on his resume.
Zach Moore: the AP with the Get-Up-and-Go
A much-in-demand lighting designer and stage manager at the tender age of 22, this CalArts graduate and internationally recognized technical talent still manages to cram his duties as the associate producer of Says You! into his 120-hour work week schedule. And why would he sacrifice so much to spend time with us? Zach contends that much as he enjoys the banter, it’s not for the love of words. As much as he enjoys the pitiful stipend, it’s not about the money. For Zach, it’s not about any of those things. He simply loves Says You!