Alistair Cooke much preferred radio to television “because the pictures were better,” he often said, quoting the remark of 7-year-old boy that he’d heard of. “You are in charge of the picture,” Cooke elaborated. “If you stand up against the Empire State Building on television and tell its history, which is ghoulish and funny, viewers are saying, ‘He looks a little tired,’ or, ‘He’s not as thin as he used to be.’ Whereas if you tell the story on radio, your words create the picture, and that’s what I love. The voice does the whole thing.”