[1] By early 2017, Stern had been broadcasting his radio show on SiriusXM for eleven years and looked into the idea of writing a third book, following Private Parts (1993) and Miss America (1995).

[3] By the time Stern started on the book, he had decided to expand its initial concept and write not only commentary on some of his favorite interviews, but autobiographical chapters on his life and career in recent years.

He decided against using the interviews that Karp originally chose and set about the task of picking his own, trawling through hundreds of transcripts until he settled on 40 and prepared an introduction for each one.

[3] During this process, Stern decided to include passages from on-air conversations with Donald Trump throughout the book that date back as early as 1995.

[3] Stern had to remind Karp to remain patient for him to deliver and dedicated most of his weekends and vacation time to write it, something that he had done on his previous books and vowed "would never do again.

[6] Two months later, Stern apologized to Williams for his reaction: "If 'Hollywood' means that I've evolved in some way and the show has changed, then yeah, she hit the nail on the head.