tangent

At the same time, it was telling that a common reaction to Landry’s tangent was:

The tangents, the idiosyncrasies of the hosts and the glimpses of private life leave listeners feeling connected.

They are deployed for pauses and interruptions in speech; they precede bursts of exposition, neat summings-up and lengthy tangents.

"Some of them will run straight, some of them will not start at all, some of them will go off on a tangent or bite each other," she explained.

I didn’t have the good sense to note the context of my favorite opening tangents, or what day a particularly goofy segment aired.