A year after working for the American Public Media Marketplace franchise as a contract researcher and digital associate producer, Adam Popescu returns the favor this week in the form of a fun LA Weekly item.

His focus is the overnight routine in downtown LA of the half-dozen or so staffers who put together the hourly Marketplace Morning Report. Popescu leads with a contributor wrinkle that, somehow, seems like it could only happen in public radio:

At 3:30 a.m., [show producer] Ethan Lindsey is on the phone with reporter Stephen Beard, who lives and reports from an off-grid farm outside of London. Beard, who cuts his own firewood, had suffered wood-chip splinters to the eye that forced him to the emergency room and out of the morning rotation.

“Why were you chopping firewood last night?” Lindsey asks. He turns to his co-workers. “Most of the time I wear my protective goggles,” he says.

An off-the-grid, overseas reporter; hilarious. There’s also lots of good stuff in the article about how various members of the crew cope individually with the rigors of a graveyard-shifted media occupation.