Background and career
Peter Daniel Sagal (born January 31, 1965) is an American humorist, writer, and host of the National Public Radio game show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! and the PBS special Constitution USA with Peter Sagal.
Sagal was raised in a Jewish family in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, son of Matthew and Reeva Sagal. Matthew was a telecommunications executive, and Reeva was a schoolteacher who became a stay-at-home mother. Sagal is a 1987 graduate of Harvard College, where one of his college roommates was future Wall Street Journal correspondent Jess M. Bravin. Together, they entered a competition to write the Hasty Pudding production and were selected to develop their script "Between the Sheiks". Sagal studied English literature at Harvard. While there he wrote and directed other student theater productions. He also spent a summer as a journalist for Cycle, a now defunct motorcycle magazine.
After graduating from Harvard, Sagal pursued several different occupations, all connected to the theater or writing. While living in Los Angeles, he appeared as a contestant on the game show Jeopardy! in April 1988, in which he was placed second. Sagal then moved to New York to pursue a theater writing career. In 1998, he moved to the Chicago area, when he became the host of NPR's Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! news quiz program. He was literary manager for the now-defunct Los Angeles Theater Center, a stage director, an actor, a playwright and a screenwriter, and an extra in a Michael Jackson video. He has also been a journalist, an essayist, a humorist, a travel writer, and an author. Sagal has written several plays that have been performed across the United States and internationally. Some have also been performed as radio plays or podcasts.
Sagal has written screenplays, one for a 1996 science fiction / martial arts thriller, Savage (1996 film). He received a story credit for Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, a 2004 sequel to the original Dirty Dancing adapted from his screenplay Cuba Mine. Sagal said his original screenplay bears little resemblance to the poorly-received film.
Sagal has also written for television shows including,
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!: A Royal Pain in the News (TV Movie 2011) Wait Wait Don't Tell Me Live! (TV Movie 2013) Constitution USA with Peter Sagal (2013) The two Wait Wait pilots are based on the weekly NPR/WBEZ Chicago news quiz radio program which Sagal hosts.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
