Rag Radio host Claire Davenport spoke with Bob Eckstein to learn more about where West Side Rag’s Friday cartoonist gets the inspirations for his work. Eckstein says reading the Rag regularly “gives me a heads up of what’s sort of on people’s minds that week.”

As for how he goes from inspiration to final product, Eckstein says he’ll start work at 5:30 in the morning; once he’s got a firm idea (the hard part), he needs just an hour or two to finish the drawing. A draft idea he submitted to the New Yorker one recent morning was accepted, turned into a polished cartoon, and published immediately, all by the time many people would have been just starting their second cup of morning coffee.

You can hear Rag Radio’s conversation with Eckstein below (music courtesy of Blue Dot Sessions).

And listen to an earlier installment, a conversation with WSR reporter Gus Saltonstall.